#Saint Hippolyte

[huariqueje]

Saint Hippolyte at Dusk  -   John O'Grady

Irish , b.  1960 -

Acrylic on canvas ,    31.75  x 31.75  in.

[lagazettecatalane]

La bullinada d'anguilles d'en Josep i Felip

Excellente vidéo, du rire, de la bonne humeur autour de la préparation d'un plat emblématique catalan !

La “véritaple” bullinada d’anguilles de Joseph et Philippe Négrier cuite au feu de bois…. Par Jean-Luc Modat Je me suis fixé pour devoir celui de débusquer, de glaner, de vieilles recettes catalanes populaires aux empreintes rurales afin d’entretenir leurs mémoires à transmettre aux jeunes générations en perte de sens et de valeurs… Ce joyeux film de prés de 10 min consacre la recette de la…

[le-journal-catalan]

Inauguration de la Plateforme de Déchets Végétaux de Torreilles

Inauguration de la Plateforme de Déchets Végétaux de Torreilles

Communiqué de presse Depuis 2014, il existait sur ce site une plateforme de déchets végétaux mitoyenne à la déchèterie de Torreilles créée par le Sydetom66. Elle avait été dimensionnée à l’époque pour accueillir un gisement de déchets végétaux de 2 000 tonnes par an. La fermeture de la plateforme privée de Saint Hippolyte en 2020 nous a amené à agrandir le site de Torreilles pour pouvoir…

[postcard-from-the-past]

Street scene in Saint-Hippolyte, Franche-Comté region of France

French vintage postcard

[yama-bato]

©yama-bato  

“ENTRE SAINT-HIPPOLYTE ET L’ÉTANG DE SALSE-LEUCATE SE TROUVE UN PETIT HAVRE DE NATURE ET DE BIODIVERSITÉ SUR LEQUEL ON VOUS EMMÈNE EN BALADE...”( https://perpignanmediterraneetourisme.fr/balade-nature-a-saint-hippolyte)

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

Capture of Joan of Arc - Adolf Alexander Dillens (detail) // The Arrest of Joan of Arc - Adèle Martin // Jeanne d’Arc en prison (Joan of Arc in Prison) - Gillot Saint-Evre // Joan of Arc interrogated in her prison cell by the Cardinal of Winchester - Hippolyte Delaroche // Jeanne d’Arc emprisonnée, en prière (Joan of Arc Imprisoned, in Prayer) - Attributed to Charles-Henri Michel // Sun Bleached Flies - Ethel Cain

[amateurvoltaire]

When you get publicly slapped by 4 surrealist poets because you insulted a guy's historical crush

(translation and context under the cut)

Gallantly Defending Robespierre’s Honour

In the conservative daily paper, Le Gaulois, on March 3, 1923, the journalist and man of letters, Wieland Mayr, expressed his pleasure: there would not be, he wrote, a "vile apotheosis" for "that holy scoundrel" Robespierre. On the other hand, Mathiez had the Surrealists with him. Following the article in Le Gaulois, Robert Desnos (1), accompanied by Paul Éluard (2), Max Ernst (3), and André Breton (4), summoned Mayr in a café and publicly slapped him for insulting the memory of "the Incorruptible."

Why did Mayr get Slapped?

In short: studying history in the 1920s was a messy business, especially when it came to the French Revolution….

To explain why Mayr ended up getting slapped, please allow me to briefly dive into the French Revolution's historiography during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Keep in mind, that this is a grossly oversimplified version.

Before 1848, it was pretty standard for French republicans to proudly see themselves as inheritors of Robespierre’s legacy. (If you’ve ever wondered why in Les Misérables, Enjolras’ character is very much channeling Robespierre and Saint-Just, here’s your answer!) However, things start to change with the Second Republic.

In 1847, Jules Michelet brought back the negative portrayal of Robespierre as a tyrannical "priest" and leader of a new cult. This narrative helped fuel an increasing dislike for Robespierre, with radicals like Auguste Blanqui arguing that the real revolutionaries were the atheistic Hébertists, not the Robespierrists.

Jump to the Third Republic, and the negative sentiment towards Robespierre was only getting stronger, driven by voices like Hippolyte Taine, who painted Robespierre as a mediocre figure, overwhelmed by his role. This trend was politically motivated, aiming to reshape the Revolution's legacy to align with the Third Republic's secular values. Obviously, Robespierre, the "fanatic pontiff" of the Supreme Being, didn’t quite fit this revised narrative and was made out to be the villain. Alphonse Aulard (a historian willing to stretch the truth to make his point) continued pushing Danton as the face of secular republicanism. Albert Mathiez, one of Aulard’s students, was not having any of it and strongly disagreed with his mentor’s approach.

The general disdain for Robespierre began to shift after World War I. One reason was that people could better appreciate the actions of the Revolutionary Government after experiencing the repression during the war themselves. Albert Mathiez and his colleagues were actively working to change Robespierre's tarnished image. With tensions high, it's no wonder Mayr ended up being publicly slapped by a bunch of poets who were defending the Incorruptible's honour!

Notes

Robert Desnos (1900-1945) was a French poet deeply associated with the Surrealist movement, known for his revolutionary contributions to both poetry and resistance during World War II.

Paul Éluard (1895-1952) was a French poet and one of the founding members of the Surrealist movement, celebrated for his lyrical and passionate writings on love and liberty.

Max Ernst (1891-1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet, a pioneering figure in the Dada and Surrealist movements known for his inventive use of collage and exploration of the unconscious.

André Breton (1896-1966) was a French writer, poet, and anti-fascist, best known as the principal founder and leading theorist of Surrealism, promoting the liberation of the human mind.

Source: The text in the picture comes from Robespierre and the Social Republic by Albert Mathiez

[stanthefrogs]

Saint Sébastien

Hippolyte Delaroche, ca. 1856

[napoleonic-sexyman-tournament]

Friends, enemies, comrades, Jacobins, Monarchist, Bonapartists, gather round. We have an important announcement:

The continent is beset with war. A tenacious general from Corsica has ignited conflict from Madrid to Moscow and made ancient dynasties tremble. Depending on your particular political leanings, this is either the triumph of a great man out of the chaos of The Terror, a betrayal of the values of the French Revolution, or the rule of the greatest upstart tyrant since Caesar.

But, our grand tournament is here to ask the most important question: Now that the flower of European nobility is arrayed on the battlefield in the sexiest uniforms that European history has yet produced (or indeed, may ever produce), who is the most fuckable?

The bracket is here: full bracket and just quadrant I

Want to nominate someone from the Western Hemisphere who was involved in the ever so sexy dismantling of the Spanish empire? (or the Portuguese or French American colonies as well) You can do it here

The People have created this list of nominees:

France:

Jean Lannes

Josephine de Beauharnais

Thérésa Tallien

Jean-Andoche Junot

Joseph Fouché

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Joachim Murat

Michel Ney

Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (Charles XIV of Sweden)

Louis-Francois Lejeune

Pierre Jacques Étienne Cambrinne

Napoleon I

Marshal Louis-Gabriel Suchet

Jacques de Trobriand

Jean de dieu soult.

François-Étienne-Christophe Kellermann

17.Louis Davout

Pauline Bonaparte, Duchess of Guastalla

Eugène de Beauharnais

Jean-Baptiste Bessières

Antoine-Jean Gros

Jérôme Bonaparte

Andrea Masséna

Antoine Charles Louis de Lasalle

Germaine de Staël

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas

René de Traviere (The Purple Mask)

Claude Victor Perrin

Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr

François Joseph Lefebvre

Major Andre Cotard (Hornblower Series)

Edouard Mortier

Hippolyte Charles

Nicolas Charles Oudinot

Emmanuel de Grouchy

Pierre-Charles Villeneuve

Géraud Duroc

Georges Pontmercy (Les Mis)

Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont

Juliette Récamier

Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey

Louis-Alexandre Berthier

Étienne Jacques-Joseph-Alexandre Macdonald

Jean-Mathieu-Philibert Sérurier

Catherine Dominique de Pérignon

Guillaume Marie-Anne Brune

Jean-Baptiste Jourdan

Charles-Pierre Augereau

Auguste François-Marie de Colbert-Chabanais

England:

Richard Sharpe (The Sharpe Series)

Tom Pullings (Master and Commander)

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Jonathan Strange (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell)

Captain Jack Aubrey (Aubrey/Maturin books)

Horatio Hornblower (the Hornblower Books)

William Laurence (The Temeraire Series)

Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey

Beau Brummell

Emma, Lady Hamilton

Benjamin Bathurst

Horatio Nelson

Admiral Edward Pellew

Sir Philip Bowes Vere Broke

Sidney Smith

Percy Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford

George IV

Capt. Anthony Trumbull (The Pride and the Passion)

Barbara Childe (An Infamous Army)

Doctor Maturin (Aubrey/Maturin books)

William Pitt the Younger

Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (Lord Castlereagh)

George Canning

Scotland:

Thomas Cochrane

Colquhoun Grant

Ireland:

Arthur O'Connor

Thomas Russell

Robert Emmet

Austria:

Klemens von Metternich

Friedrich Bianchi, Duke of Casalanza

Franz I/II

Archduke Karl

Marie Louise

Franz Grillparzer

Wilhelmine von Biron

Poland:

Wincenty Krasiński

Józef Antoni Poniatowski

Józef Zajączek

Maria Walewska

Władysław Franciszek Jabłonowski

Adam Jerzy Czartoryski

Antoni Amilkar Kosiński

Zofia Czartoryska-Zamoyska

Stanislaw Kurcyusz

Russia:

Alexander I Pavlovich

Alexander Andreevich Durov

Prince Andrei (War and Peace)

Pyotr Bagration

Mikhail Miloradovich

Levin August von Bennigsen

Pavel Stroganov

Empress Elizabeth Alexeievna

Karl Wilhelm von Toll

Dmitri Kuruta

Alexander Alexeevich Tuchkov

Barclay de Tolly

Fyodor Grigorevich Gogel

Ekaterina Pavlovna Bagration

Ippolit Kuragin (War and Peace)

Prussia:

Louise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Gebard von Blücher

Carl von Clausewitz

Frederick William III

Gerhard von Scharnhorst

Louis Ferdinand of Prussia

Friederike of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Alexander von Humboldt

Dorothea von Biron

The Netherlands:

Ida St Elme

Wiliam, Prince of Orange

The Papal States:

Pius VII

Portugal:

João Severiano Maciel da Costa

Spain:

Juan Martín Díez

José de Palafox

Inês Bilbatua (Goya's Ghosts)

Haiti:

Alexandre Pétion

Sardinia:

Vittorio Emanuele I

Lombardy:

Alessandro Manzoni

Denmark:

Frederik VI

Sweden:

Gustav IV Adolph

[random-brushstrokes]

Eugène Emmanuel Amaury Duval - Madame de Loynes (1862)

When Amaury-Duval painted her portrait, the Comtesse de Loynes was still just Jeanne de Tourbey. The daughter of working-class parents from Reims, she took advantage of her beauty and wit to conquer Paris and, through her lover Prince Napoleon, to open one of the most brilliant Second Empire literary salons. This was keenly attended by writers and critics such as Charles Sainte-Beuve, Hippolyte Taine, Alexandre Dumas, and also Gustave Flaubert, who admired her "panther-like graces and devilish wit". To do justice to such charms, Amaury-Duval called upon all the expertise he'd gleaned from portraits by his master Ingres; set in a jewel case of buttercup silk cushions, the brilliant black taffeta gown —extended by the deep purple drape and the jet-black hair— lend the downy face the opaline brightness of moonlight. The hypnotic gaze from the shaded gray eyes, framed by earrings in the neo-Greek style, celebrates the gift of this "admirable listener". But, comparable to the gaze of the Comtesse de Castiglione in her photographic self-portraits, this stage effect also introduces the intoxicating allure of the female sphinx, the enigmatic femme fatale, which enjoyed great success with the symbolists at the end of the century. The critic Emile Cantrel observed that, "There is a world and a half-world in those eyes". (source)

[josefavomjaaga]

Suchet and Soult, 1813

That Napoleon’s marshals in Spain most of the time were busy being at odds with each other is well-known. Marshals Soult and Suchet were no exception. Suchet in particular seems to have rather disliked Soult, if it is true that as early as 1805 he specifically wanted to leave Soult’s army corps and had himself be transferred to Lannes’ instead. Their relations probably did not get much better in Spain, considering the animosity between Joseph and Soult, and Suchet’s close family relations with Joseph.

Suchet seems to have had a bit of a reputation for being the jealous kind. In any case, if this scene from 1813 is to be believed, he was not ready to be under the command of Soult under any circumstances, not even for the sake of France. It’s from the "Mémoires anecdotiques" by general Armand Alexandre Hippolyte Marquis de Bonneval, whose author had become Soult’s aide de camp quite against his will, but apparently, by the time they reached Spain, despite himself was already fully included in his military family.

Context: After an insuccessful attempt to save Pamplona, Soult, rather belatedly charged by Napoleon to take full command in Spain in summer 1813, when Joseph had lost the battle of Vitoria, wanted to unite what was left of Joseph’s forces with those still under the command of Marshal Suchet, in order to defend France’s borders from Wellington’s approaching army. He thus needed to contact Suchet in Catalonia. Bonneval writes:

I was entrusted with this mission and went via Perpignan to Barcelona, where Marshall Suchet was. He listened to me with complacency; then, after having discussed at length the arrangements to be made to effect this junction, he declared it necessary to make a movement in the direction of Valencia to sweep away the Spanish armies and thus ensure the safety of the portion of his army he would leave in Catalonia. So we set off, and having achieved the goal Marshal Suchet had in mind, we returned to Barcelona.

And it was on the journey back that Soult’s idea was discussed once more.

While riding side by side with me, Marshal Suchet asked me: "What will my position be with regard to Marshal Soult, Monsieur de Bonneval?" - "But," I replied, "Monsieur le maréchal, it can only be, in any case, that of a marshal of the Empire; however, if Your Excellency asks me if Marshal Soult will be willing to give up his position of seniority and lieutenant of the Emperor, my mission does not go as far as that." The marshal turned very cold and stopped talking to me.

As a matter of fact, according to Bonneval, Suchet at this point had decided that Soult’s plan was "untimely and inconvenient". Bonneval tried to talk him out of that, but in vain.

He persisted; and I saw that there was nothing to do but to take leave of him and return to Marshal Soult. On arriving at Saint-Jean de Luz, at about 2 o'clock in the morning, I found my comrades at table over champagne and oysters. They all stood up and invited me to join in the feast.

Because apparently, even without the original line-up of Saint-Chamans, Lameth, Soult’s brother Pierre etc., the tradition of all-night parties was still kept alive.

"I shall return to you shortly," I told them, "but first I must go and make the Marshal swallow the biggest of all oysters." When I arrived at his place, Marshal Soult was awake; in fact, he never slept with more than one eye closed. "Ah! it's you, my dear Bonneval," he said to me. "Is Marshal Suchet on his way?"- "He is still in Barcelona, Monsieur le Maréchal, certainly sleeping better than you." And I gave him all the details of my failure. He then burst into a holy rage against the foolish pride and ineptitude of the Duke of Albufera, throwing his cap at the ceiling and hurling the foulest words in his vocabulary. Then, calmer again: "Go and rest, my dear friend," he said. I went straight to the oysters and champagne.

That last sentence is just 😂. Obviously, everybody had their priorities straight.

Interestingly enough, Bonneval later, like Saint-Chamans, would become a staunch royalist and have a fall-out with Soult for political reasons. Yet he apparently always held Soult in high esteem personally, and claims to always have hoped Soult would "see reason" and "return to the path of honour", i.e., to the cause of the older branch of Bourbons.

[le-journal-catalan]

Inauguration de l'extension de la déchèterie de Perpignan

Le territoire de Perpignan Méditerranée Métropole comprend 10 déchèteries (dont 4 équipées de plateformes dédiées aux déchets verts), 2 éco sites, 1 centre d’accueil de déchets verts et 1 quai de transfert ; le tout géré par 51 agents, dont 34 en régie communautaire et 17 de prestataires privés.Les déchèteries du Soler, Saint-Hippolyte et Villeneuve de la Raho ont la particularité d’avoir été…

[vitruvianmanbara]

just curious but why are you so into st sebastian? like ive been following you for long enough to know your interests in the classical and in eroticism vary far and wide (as a true connoisseur's should 🫡) but why return to that particular iteration over and over

Hmmm this was a harder question to answer than I thought it would be! I think I initially became interested in the various depictions because I noticed how they have been and continue to be reiterated in all types of media, not just the visual arts....artists of all sorts do this with religious motifs, but Sebastian's historical associations with homosexuality (and his role as a plague saint) make those depictions particularly fascinating to me.

It's difficult for me to write a coherent analysis on this, but some aspects of his gay icon status I find really interesting - quotes are pulled from the fantastic article "Losing his religion - Saint Sebastian as contemporary gay martyr" by Richard A. Kaye:

That he is primarily depicted as a solitary figure, something that might seem at odds with the way even classical representations of him are read as gay or sexually ambiguous

A great quote about the above: "The martyr's self-absorbed detachment of visual affect is a fundamental aspect of his intricate mythology, for an archetypal image of an ecstatically self-preoccupied nude male would seem to grant erotic permission to nobody, and, yet, paradoxically to every viewer. In rough psychoanalytic terms, then, the martyr provides the opportunity for an unobstructed, unmediated erotization [...] As with the solitary youth depicted in Michelangelo's David or Hippolyte Flandrin's Jeune homme nu assis au bord de la mer [...], Sebastian's basic narcissism provides for what might be terms a polymorphously perverse response on the part of the viewer." (p.90)

Depictions are so frequently located at the intersection of alternative modes of male eroticism (the erotic as a solo activity, an invitation to freely regard the vulnerable exposed body, the "feminized" posing typical to some St. Sebastian art) and death, lending themselves to associations with gay sexuality and sadomasochism. The facts that 1) in the Bible, Sebastian continue to survive after being shot full of arrows, and 2) is so often depicted responding to penetration with either an expression of calm acceptance or with facial & body language that straddle the line between pleasure and pain, lend themselves to associations of voluntary participation in alternative, marginalized forms of pleasure.

There is some interesting scholarship on the way St. Sebastian's association with gayness track onto the medicalization of homosexuality - early sexologists like Hirschfeld actually explicitly identified images of St. Sebastian as ones that "inverts" tend to be drawn to.

The politicization of Sebastian imagery post-Stonewall and AIDS is something not often talked about (on here at least), but is really fascinating. Some people soured on him post-Stonewall, seeing him as too passive an icon for the politically charged moment.

With AIDS, "Sebastian the historic soldier comes to represent the militant, newly politicized homosexual, beautifully exposed to his fate but non-passively [...] In the late 1980s and early 1990s, one witnesses a double transformation of Saint Sebastian: first, as a saint invoked to ward off the plague [...] and, second, as a politically charged figure signifying not so much sado-masochism as government neglect and social hostility. As such, Saint Sebastian symbolically encapsulates (and partly resolves) what the critic Douglas Crimp has identified as two vital, supposedly irreconcilable, components of gay culture in the age of AIDS: the labour of mourning and the work of political activism." (p.98)

Something I haven't seen discussed in the scholarship on Saint Sebastian and AIDs is an analysis of Sebastian being tended by Saint Irene imagery...not sure if it's unexplored or if I just haven't found it yet, but I think of this a lot in association with lesbian blood drives, as well as a group of nuns & a female pastor I know who have shared stories with me about caring for men with AIDS (and eventually arranging their funerals and burials) when their families would not show up.

Anyway...you get the idea! I love the way the eroticism of Sebastian imagery has been received and richly interpreted in so many ways across history, the explicit tie ins to issues of gay self-identity and politics definitely make him of special interest to me! 🏹

[yama-bato2]

au bord du canal PAUL RIQUET ©yama-bato  

Canal Paul Riquet à Saint-Hippolyte  

[lady-charinette]

Watched Cyrano (2021) last night and I cannot get over the moment where the soldiers/guards begin to sing "Wherever I Fall".

I have a wife, I haven't seen. Since lilacs bloomed in Saint-Hippolyte,

she always wears them in her hair,

she let's them fall down everywhere.

I can see her in the glowing light dressing without a sound.

I promised I'd be home all right

But I gotta lay this body down

So take this letter to my wife

And tell her that I loved my life

And tell my boys, the Lord he found me.

When I say their names out loud, they're all around me.

Tell them not to cry at all.

Heaven is wherever I fall.

and this:

I have a girl, I think I love her

Should have told her, instead I told her mother

I gave her chocolates, I bought a ring

But I never told her anything

But I can see her in every detail now

Turning in my mind

I barely knew that girl at all

But I will love her till the end of time

So take this letter to my girl

Tell her that I saw the whole world

Say that right before I fell

I said her name out loud: Isabel

Tell her not to cry at all

Heaven is wherever I fall

...and this:

I have a father, he isn't well

Thinks he might be going to hell

He was a sinner, he liked to fight

So I don't know, he might be right

I can see him every Sunday morning

Diving into the fray

He wasn't one of God's best men

But I loved him anyway

So take this letter to him, please

Tell him I can't wait to see him

I went in first, I rang the bell

I called his name out loud and I gave 'em hell

So tell him not to cry at all

Heaven is wherever I fall

[mask131]

Occult Paris (2-A)

In the spring of 1948, three sisters – Leah, Margaret and Kate Fox, living in a rural town near Rochester in the state of New-York – claimed to have communicated with the dead, thanks to a turning table. People became obsessed with this trio of mediums and their poltergeists, and this was the start of the “spiritism craze”. This passion for communicating with the spirits soon reached Europe – and nor France, nor its capital Paris escaped it. In the upper classes of the capital, or in the “avant-garde milieu”, everybody tried to invoke the souls of the deceased inside tables for a little chat. Turning tables became one of the main entertainments of the time – or rather, a “spiritual sport”. It was the “greatest phenomenon” of the century, for many. But for the Church of France, it was something quite different… To quote the Chevalier Gougenot des Mousseaux, in his “La magie au dix-neuvième siècle” (Magic in the 19th century), “Magic, magnetism, somnambulism, spiritism, hypnotism – they are all but Satanism!”. The situation was taken very seriously by the religious authorities, to the point that the abbot Mautain, vicar of the archdiocese of Paris and doctor in theology, published a text tiled “Avertissement aux Chrétiens sur les tables tournantes”, “Warning for Christians about turning tables”. In it he described his experience seeing one day a basket twist itself “like a snake” and flee by crawling in front of a Gospel. The abbot Chevrojon, vicar of Saint-Roch, rather confessed having to battle against a “possessed stool”. For all the men of God of the time, spiritism was the work of the devil. As for the scientists of the Académie des sciences, it was all just charlatanism. For these rational and rigorist scholars, these tables could only turn through magician tricks, or by the subconscious muscular impulsions of the participants. For them, it was all just collective hallucinations, or autosuggestions.

But despite all the condemnations, despite all the warnings, despite all the debunking, people never stopped being obsessed with spiritism. In 1856, the emperor Napoléon III himself received officially in the Tuileries the Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home. During the séance they organized, a tale, several chairs and several furniture pieces started to float, while a host of famous spirits were invoked: Hortense de Beauharnais, Napoléon Ier, Marie-Antoinette, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Blaise Pascal! But Home wanted to impress his imperial hosts too much, and this was his downfall: he was proven a fake when the Imperial Court went with him to Biarritz. There, “ghost hands” caressed the face of the empress Eugénie – but it was revealed to be the foot of the medium, wearing a glove! As it turns out, Home wasn’t a medium but a talented illusionists and hypnotists. Home was asked to leave France immediately – but despite this disgrace at the highest level of the government, secret societies and occult organizations of all sorts kept flowering and multiplying throughout France: spiritualists, theosophists, martinists, Rosicrucians, kabbalists, gnostics, neo-pagans, luciferians, Satanists… But three men in particular became extremely famous.

1) Allan Kardec

Born in Lyon in 1804, Hippolyte Léon Rivail settled at a very young age in Paris, where he opened a school (35, rue de Sèvres) where he taught based on the modern methods of the Swiss pedagogue Jean-Henry Pestalozzi, himself a fervent follower of Rousseau’s theories. Unfortunately, Rivail’s schools barely hold for a few years before closing – Rivail switched to the writing of manuals of grammar, arithmetic, chemistry and biology. It is when he was writing a chapter about the magnetism of animals that a friend of his told him about his personal “table experience”. Rivail had reached his fifties when he first took part in a séance of turning tables. He soon regularly visited these mediumnic séances – one rue de la Grange-Batelière, another rue Tiquetonne, a third rue de Rochechouart… One medium claimed that Rivail was actually the reincarnation of an old Breton druid by the name of Allan Kardec – and so the former teacher took this pseudonym as his new name. In 1857, the “new” Allan Kardec published the first and the most famous of his books, “Le Livre des Esprits”, The Book of Spirits, that he claims to have written under the command of… spirits! On the first day of April 1858, he creates in his home (8, rue des Martyrs) la Société spirite de Paris (The Spiritualist Society of Paris), and a newspaper by the name of “La Revue spirite” (The Spiritualist Review). Since his apartment becomes too small to welcome his many friends and disciples, Allan Kardec starts hosting reunions at the Palais-Royal, first in the galerie de Valois, than in the galerie Montpensier, and finally at the rue Sainte-Anne. Kardec created a true religion, whose influenced reached all of Europe – and even Brazil! He wrote many, many books: Qu’est-ce que le spiritisme? (What is spiritism?), Instruction pratique sur les manifestations spirites (Pratical instructions about spiritualist manifestations), Le Livre des médiums (The Book of mediums), L’Evangile selon le spiritism (The Spiritism Gospel), Le Ciel et l’Enfer ou La Justice Divine (Heaven and Hell, or the Divin Justice), and finally, La Genèse, les Miracles et les Prédictions selon le spiritisme (The Genesis, the Miracles and the Predictions according to spiritualism). In 1869, Allan Kardec did not die – but rather was “disembodied”, and his empty body buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery. His grave, in the shape of a dolmen, is still one of the most famous tombstones of the entire cemetery.

2) Éliphas Lévi

Eliphas Lévi was the man who invented in the French language the word “occultisme”, “occultism”. Born Alphonse-Louis Constant in 1810, in the Odéon neighborhood, son of a shoemaker, he soon enters the seminary of Saint-Sulpice and he could have become a priest… if only he could “keep it in his pants”, if you excuse the expression. Young Constant was sent to a young girl’s house to catechize her, only for him to seduce and flirt with her – which officially put an end to his possible priestly career. His mother, who was a very pious woman, was so despaired and heartbroken by this she killed herself. Gifted for drawing, the young Constant started to live and work in artists studios, while enjoying a very lustful and un-chaste life. He notably was the lover of Flora Tristan, a socialist and feminist activist who would later become famous for being the grandmother of Paul Gauguin. Constant then became part of the staff of the collège oratorien de Juilly – and it was during this time that he wrote his first book, La Bible de la liberté (The Bible of freedom).

As soon as it was published, the book was pulled out of libraries, forbidden from being published, and both the author and edtor were summoned in the assize court of Paris for “attack against the public and religious property and moral”. Constant was locked up in the Sainte-Pélagie prison for eleven months, and when he got out he married Marie-Noémie Cadiot, an eighteen year old woman (he was over thirty!). He wrote a pamphlet called “La Voix de la famine” (The Voice of famine), and he was once again condemned to one year of prison. He however only did half of his time in prison – which allowed him to participate in the revolution of February 1848. He was now a wanted man – in fact, a revolutionary who happened to look like him was shot dead rue Saint-Martin! A few years later, in the 120 boulevard du Montparnasse, he wrote the book that truly started his legend: Dogme et rituel de la haute magie (Dogma and ritual of the high magic). To publish this book he took the pseudonym of Éliphas Lévi, which was the Hebraic translation of Alphonse-Louis. In this book, the author created the portrait of a fantastical creature that was then copy-pasted and spread through the press: Baphomet, the so-called idol worshiped by the Templar Knights. Lévi described the creature as having the head of a goat, the breast of a woman, hooves, wings, and a pentagram on the forehead – sitting cross-legged while flames burn over its head. After this first success, Lévi kept producing best-sellers: Histoire de la magie (History of magic), La Clef des grands mystères (The Key of great mysteries), La Science des esprits (The Science of spirits), Le Grand Arcane (The Great Arcana)… Admired by the occultists of his time, he regularly gave tarot readings or chiromancy readings, and he started practicing alchemical experiments. He became friend with Alexandre Dumas, wrote several songs, became a guest in several literary salons, and he even was presented to Victor Hugo throughout the daughter of Théophile Gautier, Judith Gautier. He died in 1875 and was buried in the cemetery of Ivry.

3) Papus

Born in Spain of a French father and Spanish mother, Gérard Encausse was just a child when his parents settled in Montmartre. He had a pretty normal childhood at the Rollin school (today’s Jacques-Decour highschool), where he had already created an esoteric journal and a secret society with other teenagers. Becoming a medicine student, he actually spends most of his time studying divinatory arts, the tarot, the Kabbalah, and the arts of chiromancy, numerology and hypnosis. He takes the pseudonym of “Papus”, the name of a genius doctor of Antiquity. Papus was a “bon vivant”, as we say in France, a man who enjoyed all the pleasures of life and hanged out with the bohème of Montmartre – he notably spent a lot of time in Le Chat noir cabaret. Papus was for a time part of the Theosophical Society created in the United-States by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, but he soon decided to stay independent and create his own organization. Or rather, re-crate, as he resurrected l’Ordre martiniste (The Martinist Order), inspired by the mage of the 18th century, Martinès de Pasqually. The first Martinist loge was in the 24, rue Pigalle. Papus had a clear sense of hierarchy and of mise en scène: as the leader of the Order, he goes by the title “The Unknown Philosopher”, while his right hands take titles such as “The Unknown Brother”, “The Initiated Brother”, “The Associated Brother”. During their ceremonies, the members of the Order wear a red dress, a black silk mask and Egyptian cloth-strips similar to the one wrapping up mummies, while holding a sword. In its peak, the Order had twenty thousand members spread across Europe, Russia and the United-States.

Papus worked however outside of his personal organization: he also worked to rebuild the ancient brotherhood of the Kabbalistic Rose Cross. In 1889, he participates to the first International Spiritualist Congress, that takes place in Paris, rue Cadet, while also founding the GIEE – the Groupe indépendant d’études ésotériques (The Independent Group of Esoteric Studies), which is opened by a conference at the 44, rue Turbigo, and which gathers all of the spiritualists of Paris. All the disciples participating to this opening conference notably obtain a diploma. The next yar, Papus creates with the poet Lucien Chamuel “la librairie du Merveilleux”, the book-shop of the Marvelous, 29 rue de Trévise. In the back-room, Papus and his friend work on creating their journal “L’Initiation”, that Rome itself blacklisted, their monthly publication L’Union occulte (The Occult Union), as well as their weekly “Le Voile d’Isis” (The Veil of Isis), and various almanacs. It was also in the backroom of the bookshop that you could find the seat of La Faculté libre des sciences hermétiques (The Free Faculty of Hermetic Sciences).

In 1902, Papus and Lucien Chamuel sell the book-shop of the Marvelous to open a new bookshop, this one called “librairie d’Hermétisme” (Bookshop of Hermetism), at the 3 and 5 rue de Savoie – plus an annex rue Séguier. By now, the personal office of the occult master looked like an Egyptian temple: he notably wrote there many of the 160 various texts that were attributed to him. In 1905, the tsar Nicolas II invites him to Saint-Petersburg for a spiritism séance: it was said that during this meeting, the French wizard managed to invoke the ghost of Alexandre III (which, according to the rumors, made Rasputin very jealous). In June of 1908, Papus gathers at Paris the Spiritualist Congress, gathering thirty thousand members from all of Europe – it took place in the salle des Sociétés savants, in the 8th of rue Danton. During the Great War, Papus was named chief-physician paramedic, but he did not survive the war, dying of tuberculosis before the end of the conflict. Some whispered that he might have been cursed by an envious Rasputin…

 Some additional notes, to understand the Papus article:

# Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, born in Russia, founded in New-York in 1875 the Theosophical Society, which soon spread world-wide. Her teachings were a syncretism of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianism and esoteric thinking. In Paris, the theosophy received its first disciples in 1883. A journal, Le Lotus Bleu (The Blue Lotus) was founded. The seat of the French Theosophical Society was at the 4, square Rapp, in the seventh arrondissement.

# Jacques Martinès de Pasqually, a Portuguese Jew that converted himself to Catholicism, travelled in France in 1750 and founded there the society of the Order of the Mason Knights elected Cohen (Cohen, in Hebrew, meaning “priests”). Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, nicknamed “The Unknown Philosopher”, was his secretary. The Martinist Order, or Martinism, offered to its adepts to become “beings of God” by mixing spirituality and magic.

# The Rose Cross is a secret and mystic brotherhood created by Christian Rosenkreutz in Germany in the 17th century. Very soon, it became a phenomenon in Paris. The Rosicrucian Order preaches justice and truth.