Lavater, who also died violently, was utterly given over to evocations; he had two spirits at his command and belonged to a circle which cultivated catalepsy by the help of a harmonica. A magical chain was formed; a species of imbecile served as the spirit’s interpreter and wrote under his control.[338] This spirit gave out that he was a Jewish Kabalist who died before the birth of Jesus Christ, and the things which the medium recorded under his influence were worthy of Cahagnet’s somnambulists.[339] There was, for example, a revelation on sufferings in the life beyond, the communicating spirit stating that the soul of the emperor Francis was compelled to calculate the number and exact condition of all the snail-shells which may exist and have existed in the whole universe. He made known also that the true names of the three Magi were not, as tradition tells us, Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar, but on the contrary Vrasapharmion, Melchisedek and Baleathrasaron; it is like reading the names written by our modern process of table-turning. The spirit also testified that he was himself doing penance for having threatened his father with the magical sword and that he felt disposed to make his friends a present of his portrait. Paper, paints and brushes were placed at his request behind a screen; he was then seen to design on the screen the outline of a small hand; a slight friction was audible on the paper; when it ceased everyone pressed forward and found rudely painted the likeness of an old Rabbi vested in black, with a white ruffle over the shoulders and a black skull-cap, a costume altogether eccentric for a personage who was anterior to Jesus Christ. The painting, for the rest, was smudged and ill-drawn, resembling the work of a child amusing himself by daubing with eyes shut.[340] The written instructions of the medium under the inspiration of Gablidone vie in their obscurity with the characteristics of German metaphysicians. “The attribute of majesty must not be conferred lightly,” says this authority, “for majesty is a derivation from Mage, seeing that the Magi were pontiffs and kings; they were therefore the primeval majesties. It is against the majesty of God that we offend when we sin mortally; we wound Him as Father, casting death into the sources of life. The fountain of the Father is light and life; that of the Son is blood and water; while the splendour of the Holy Spirit is fire and gold. We sin against the Father by falsehood, against the Son by hatred and against the Holy Spirit by debauchery, which is the work of death and destruction.” The good Lavater received these communications like oracles and when he asked for some further illuminations, Gablidone proceeded as follows: “The great revealer of mysteries shall come, and he will be born in the next century. The religion of the patriarchs will then be known on earth; it will explain to mankind the triad of Agion, Helion, Tetragrammaton; and the Saviour whose body is girt with a triangle shall be shewn on the fourth step of the altar; the apex of the triangle will be red and the device of mystery thereon will be: Venite ad patres osphal. One of the auditors demanded the meaning of the last word, and the medium wrote as follows without other explanations: Alphos, M: Aphon, Eliphismatis. Certain interpreters have concluded that the magus whose advent was announced in the course of the nineteenth century would be named Maphon and would be the son of Eliphisma, but this reading may be somewhat speculative.
There is nothing more dangerous than mysticism, for the mania which it begets baffles every combination of human wisdom. It is ever the fools who upset the world and that which great statesmen never foresee is the desperate work of a maniac. The architect of the temple of Diana at Ephesus promised himself eternal glory, but he counted without Erostratus. The Girondins did not foresee Marat. What is needed to alter the equilibrium of the world? asked Pascal, on the subject of Cromwell. The answer is, a speck of gravel formed by chance in the entrails of a man. So do the great events come about through causes which in themselves are nothing. When any temple of civilisation crashes down, it is always the work of a blind man, like Samson, who shakes the pillars thereof. Some wretched preacher, belonging to the dregs of the people, is suffering from insomnia and believes himself elected to deliver the world from anti-Christ. Accordingly he stabs Henry IV and reveals to France in its consternation the name of Ravaillac. The German thaumaturgists regarded Napoleon as the Apollyon mentioned in the Apocalypse and one of their neophytes, named Stabs, came forward to kill the military Atlas, who at the given moment was carrying on his shoulders a world snatched from the chaos of anarchy. But that magnetic influence which the Emperor called his star was more potent than the fanatical impulse of the German occult circles. Stabs could not or dared not strike; Napoleon himself questioned him; he admired his resolution and courage; but, as he understood his own greatness, he would not detract from the new Scevola by forgiving him; he shewed his estimation indeed by taking him seriously and allowing him to be shot.
Carl Sand, who killed Kotzebue, was also an unfortunate derelict child of mysticism, misled by the secret societies, in which vengeance was sworn upon daggers. Kotzebue may have deserved cudgelling, but the weapon of Sand reinstated and made him a martyr. It is indeed grand to perish as the enemy and victim of those who wreak vengeance by means of ambuscades and assassinations. The secret societies of Germany practised rites which were less or more comparable to those of Magic. In the brotherhood of Mopses, for example, the mysteries of the Sabbath and the secret reception of Templars were renewed in mitigated and almost humorous forms. The Baphometic Goat was replaced by a dog, as if Hermanubis were substituted for Pan, or science for Nature—the latter being an equivalent change, since Nature is known solely by the intermediation of science. The two sexes were admitted by the Mopses, as was the case at the Sabbath; the reception was accompanied by barkings and grimaces, and, as among the Templars, the Neophyte was invited to take his choice between kissing the back parts of the devil, the Grand Master or the Mopse, which was a small image of card-board, covered with silk, and representing a dog, called Mops in German. The salutation in question was the condition of reception and recalls that which was offered to the Goat of Mendes in the initiations of the Sabbath. The Mopses took no pledges other than on their word of honour, which is the most sacred of all oaths for self-respecting people. Their meetings were occasions for dancing and festivity—again like those of the Sabbath—except that the ladies were clothed, and did not hang live cats from their girdles or eat little children: it was altogether a civilised Sabbath.[341]
Magic had its epic in Germany and the Sabbath its great poet; the epic was the colossal drama of Faust—that completed Babel of human genius. Goethe was initiated into all mysteries of magical philosophy; in his youth he had even practised the ceremonial part. The result of his daring experiments was to produce in him, for the time being, a profound disgust with life and a strong inclination towards death. As a fact, he accomplished his suicide, not by a literal act but in a book; he composed the romance of Werther, the fatal work which preaches death and has had so many proselytes; then, victorious over discouragement and disgust, and having entered the serene realms of peace and truth, he wrote Faust. It is a magnificent commentary on one of the most beautiful episodes in the Gospel—the parable of the prodigal son. It is initiation into sin by rebellious science, into suffering by sin, into expiation and harmonious science by suffering. Human genius, represented by Faust, employs as its lackey the spirit of evil, who aspires to become master; it exhausts quickly all the delight that is attributed by imagination to unlawful love; it goes through orgies of folly; then, drawn by the charm of sovereign beauty, it rises from the abyss of disillusion to the heights of abstraction and imperishable beauty. There Mephistopheles is at his ease no longer; the implacable laughter turns sad; Voltaire gives place to Chateaubriand. In proportion as the light manifests, the angel of Darkness writhes and tosses; he is bound by celestial angels; he admires them against his will; he loves, weeps and is conquered.
In the first part of the drama, we see Faust separated by violence from Margaret; the heavenly voices cry that she is saved, even as she is being led to execution. But can that Faust be lost who is always loved by Margaret? Is not his heart already espoused to heaven? The great work of redemption in virtue of solidarity moves on to its fulfilment. How should the victim ever be consoled for her sufferings, did she not convert her executioner? Is not forgiveness the revenge of the children of heaven? The love which has first reached the empyrean draws science after it by sympathy; Christianity uprises in its admirable synthesis. The new Eve has washed the mark from the forehead of Cain with the blood of Abel, and she weeps with joy over her two children, who hold her in their joint embrace. To make room for the extension of heaven, hell—which has become useless—ceases. The problem of evil has found its definitive solution, and good—alone necessary and alone triumphant—shall reign henceforth eternally.
Hereof is the glorious dream of the greatest of all poets, but the philosopher, by misfortune, forgets the laws of equilibrium; he would swallow up light in a shadowless splendour and motion in an absolute repose, which would signify cessation of life. So long as there is visible light, there will be shadow in proportion therewith. Repose will never be happiness, unless equilibrated by an analogous and contrary movement. So long as there shall be free benediction, blasphemy will remain possible; so long as heaven remains, a hell there will also be. It is the unchangeable law of Nature and the eternal will of that justice whose other name is God.
CHAPTER VII
EMPIRE AND RESTORATION
Napoleon filled the world with wonders, and in that world was himself the greatest wonder of all. The Empress Josephine, his wife, curious and credulous as a creole, passed from enchantments to enchantments. A glory of this kind had, as we are told, been promised her by an old gipsy woman, and the folk of the countryside still believe that she was herself the Emperor’s good genius. As a fact, she was a sweet and modest counsellor who would have saved him from many perils, had he always listened to her warnings, but he was impelled forward by fatality, or rather by providence, and that which was to befall him had been decreed beforehand. In a prophecy attributed to St. Césaire but signed Jean de Vatiguerro, and found in the Liber Mirabilis, a collection of predictions printed in 1524,[342] there are the following astonishing sentences.
“The churches shall be defiled and profaned, and the public worship suspended. The eagle shall take flight over the world and overcome many nations. The greatest prince and most august sovereign in all the West shall be put to rout after a supernatural defeat. A most noble prince shall be sent into captivity by his enemies and shall mourn in thinking of those who were devoted to him. Before peace is restored to France, the same events shall be repeated again and again. The eagle shall be crowned with a triple diadem, shall return victorious to his eyrie and shall leave it only to ascend into heaven.”
After predicting the spoliation of churches and the murder of priests, Nostradamus foretells the birth of an emperor in the vicinity of Italy and says that his reign will cost France a great outpouring of blood, while those who belong to him will betray him and charge him with the spilling of blood.