"To Catholicism?"
It appears so. Occultism has played its part, by giving a scientific explanation of miracles and demonology. Theosophy, the forerunner of religion, has fulfilled its function, when it has revived belief in a world-order which punishes and rewards, Karma will be replaced by God, and the Mahatmas will be revealed as the new-born powers, the chastising and instructing spirits. Buddhism in Young France has preached renunciation of the world and the worship of sorrow, which leads direct to Golgotha.
As regards the homesick longing I feel for the bosom of the Mother Church, that is a long story, which I may summarise as follows:
When Swedenborg taught me that it is unlawful to quit the religion of one's ancestors, he said that with reference to Protestantism, which is treason against the Mother Church. Or, to put it better, Protestantism is a punishment inflicted on the barbarians of the North. Protestantism is the Exile, the Babylonish Captivity, but the Return seems near, the Return to the promised land. The immense progress which Catholicism makes in America, England, and Scandinavia seems to point towards a great reconciliation, in which the Greek Church, which has already stretched out her hand towards the West, is not to be forgotten.
That is the dream of the socialists regarding the restoration of the United States of the West, but taken in a spiritual sense. But I beg you not to think that it is a political theory which takes me back to the Roman Church. I have not sought Catholicism; it has found a place in me, after following me for years. My child, who became a Catholic against my will, has shown me the beauty of a cult which has maintained itself unaltered from the first, and I have always preferred the original to the copy. The considerable time I spent in my child's native country gave me opportunity to observe and admire the sincerity of the religious life there. I have been also influenced by my stay in the St. Louis Hospital, and finally by the occurrences of the last few weeks. After contemplating my life, which has whirled me round like some of the damned in Dante's hell, and after discovering that my existence in general had no other object but to humble and to defile me, I determined to anticipate my executioner, and take in hand my own torture. I determined to live in the midst of sufferings, dirt, and death-agonies, and with this object I prepared to seek a post as attendant on the sick in the Hôpital des Frères St. Jean de Dieu in Paris. This idea occurred to me on the morning of April 29th, after I had met an old woman with a head resembling a skull. When I return home, I find Séraphita lying open on my table, and on the right page a splinter of wood, which points to the following sentence: "Do for God what you would do for your own ambitious plans, what you do when you devote yourself to your art, what you have done when you love someone more than Him, or when you have investigated a secret of science! Is God not Science Itself?..."
In the afternoon the newspaper L'Éclair arrived, and, strange to say, the Hôpital des Frères St. Jean de Dieu is twice mentioned in it.
On May 1st I read for the first time in my life Sar Peladan's Comment on devient un Mage.
Sar Peladan, hitherto unknown to me, overcomes me like a storm, a revelation of the higher man, Nietzsche's Superman, and with him Catholicism makes its solemn and victorious entry into my life.
Has "He who should come" come already in the person of Sar Peladan. The Poet-Thinker-Prophet—is it he, or do we wait for another?
I know not, but after I have passed through these antechambers of a new life, I begin on May 3rd to write this book.