Stanislas de Guaita...could have reading everything and understanding everything with prodigious ease. The most obscure texts became illuminate...he projected the clarity of his solar spirit onto them.
Stanislas de Guaita (6 April 1861, Tarquimpol, Moselle – 19 December 1897, Tarquimpol) was a French poet based in Paris, an expert on esotericism and European mysticism, and an active member of the Rosicrucian Order. He was very celebrated and successful in his time. He had many disputes with other people who were involved with occultism and magic. Occultism and magic were part of his novels.
Early life
De Guaita came from a noble Italian family who had relocated to France, and as such his title was 'Marquis', or Marquess. He was born in the castle of Alteville in the commune of Tarquimpol, Moselle, and went to school at the lyceum in Nancy, where he studied chemistry, metaphysics and Cabala.[1] As a young man, he moved to Paris, and his luxurious apartment became a meeting place for poets, artists, and writers who were interested in esotericism and mysticism. In the 1880s, Guaita published two collections of poetry The Dark Muse (1883) and The Mystic Rose (1885), which became popular.
Rosicrucian activities
De Guaita's drawings of the upright and inverted pentagrams, representing Spirit over matter (holiness) and matter over Spirit (evil), respectively, from his book La Clef de la Magie Noire, in 1897.
De Guaita was influenced by the writings of l'Abbé Alphonse-Louis Constant, alias Eliphas Lévi, a prominent French occultist who was initiated in London to rosicrucianism by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1854.[2] Eliphas Lévi was also initiated as a Freemason on 14 March 1861 in the Grand Orient de France Lodge La Rose du Parfait Silence at the Orient of Paris. De Guaita became further interested in occultism after reading a novel by Joséphin Péladan which was interwoven with Rosicrucian and occult themes. In Paris, de Guaita and Péladan became acquainted, and in 1884, the two decided to try to rebuild the Rosicrucian Brotherhood.[2] They recruited Gérard Encausse to help rebuild the brotherhood. Encausse, who went by the pseudonym “Papus”, was a Spanish-born French physician and occultist who had written books on magic, Cabalah and the Tarot.
In 1888, De Guaita founded the Ordre kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix, or the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross. Rosicrucianism is an esoteric movement which first began with the publication of the three Rosicrucian Manifestos in the early 17th century. Guaita's Rosicrucian Order provided training in the Cabala, an esoteric form of Jewish and Christian mysticism, which attempts to reveal hidden mystical insights in the Bible and divine nature.[1] The order also conducted examinations and provided university degrees on Cabala topics. Guaita had a large private library of books on metaphysical issues, magic, and the "hidden sciences." He was nicknamed the "Prince of the Rosicrucians" by his contemporaries for his broad learning on Rosicrucian issues. Papus, Peladan, and Antoine de La Rochefoucauld were prominent members. Maurice Barrès was a close friend of De Guaita.
In the late 1880s, the Abbé Boullan, a defrocked Catholic Priest and the head of a schismatic branch called the “Church of the Carmel” led a “magical war” against de Guaita. French-Belgian novelist Joris K. Huysmans, a supporter of Boullan, portrayed De Guaita as a Satanic sorcerer in the novel La Bas. Another of Boullan’s supporters, the writer Jules Bois, challenged De Guaita to a pistol duel. De Guaita agreed and took part in the duel, but as both men missed, no one was hurt.
By the 1890s, De Guaita's, Papus' and Péladan’s collaboration became increasingly strained by disagreements over strategy and doctrines. Guaita and Papus lost the support of Péladan, who left to start a competing order. It is in the writings of his friend and childhood roommate Péladan that Stanislas de Guaïta found his first entry into the world of Tradition. Subsequently, reading the work of Eliphas Lévi, of which he would henceforth become the commentator and theorist, initiated him into Christian mysticism; Fabre d'Olivet directs him towards the great mysteries in general and towards the Hebrew language; and Saint-Yves d'Alveydre initiated him into the Synarchy. He joined the very recent Martinist Order of his friend Papus, then a medical student, whose pseudonym he mocked.
In light of all these influences, Guaita advocates a spiritualism exalting the Christian Tradition, which, thanks to the possible establishment of synarchy – an ideal form of government – should lead to the advent of the kingdom of God. In 1888, in the same spirit, he founded with Péladan the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix, of which Papus immediately joined, Erik Satie and the artists' banker, Olivier Dubs also joined. Peladan then separated from it to found another order: the Catholic Rosicrucians, alleging its refusal of operative magic. In 1887, in collaboration with his secretary and friend Oswald Wirth, he created a Kabbalistic Tarot which is reproduced in the Tarot des Bohemiens by Papus3.
In 1893, the Order of Guaita was attacked by Huysmans, who accused it of bewitching the defrocked Lyon abbot Joseph-Antoine Boullan from a distance. Duels ensue; Huysmans and Jules Bois oppose Papus and Guaita.
Stanislas is still this young poet less fascinated by Baudelairian taste than by the perfect aesthetic of Parnassus by Leconte Delisle and Mallarmé. Moreover, Alain Mercier4, will confirm that Guaita poet “by his classicism of form and writing, is closer to the Parnassians than to the Symbolists. Thus there were two distinct beings in him: the aristocratic and generous hermetic on the one hand, the tormented poet worried about artifice on the other. It was the writer Mendès who encouraged him to read Éliphas Lévi. His original drawing of an inverted pentagram with a goat's head appeared in La Clef de la Magie Noire (The Key to Black Magic), published the year he died. It later became conflated with Baphomet, or the Sabbatic Goat.
He died on December 19, 1897, at the age of 36, in Alteville. He is buried in Tarquimpol7,8. The causes of his early death were explained by kidney problems or drug use. Regarding drugs, he wrote:
“Coca, like hashish, but in other ways, exerts a direct and powerful action on the astral body; its customary use unties, in man, certain compressive links of his hyperphysical nature – links whose persistence is for the greatest number a guarantee of salvation. If I spoke without hesitation on this point, I would encounter unbelievers, even among occultists. I must confine myself to advice. — You who value your life, your reason, the health of your soul, avoid hypodermic injections of cocaine like the plague. Without speaking of the habit which is created very quickly (even more imperative, more tenacious and more fatal a hundred times than any other of the same kind), a particular state has taken birth. »
His rich library, made up of works, parchments, alchemical treatises and grimoires dating back to time immemorial, was dispersed during several sales in Paris, in 1899 (Dorbon - René Philippon), and in 1968 (Drouot ) and 2014 (Piasa).
Stanislas de Guaita seen by his contemporaries
“He spent five months of the year in a small ground floor on Avenue Trudaine, where he only received a few occultists, and from which he sometimes did not leave for weeks. There he had amassed a whole strange and precious library, Latin texts from the Middle Ages, old grimoires loaded with pentacles, parchments illuminated with miniatures, alchemy treatises, the most esteemed editions of Van Helmont, Paracelsus, Raymond Lulle , Saint-Martin, Martinès de Pasqually, Corneille Agrippa, Pierre de Lancre, Knorr de Rosenroth, manuscripts by Eliphas, bindings signed Derome, Capé, Trautz-Bauzonnet, Chambolle-Duru, works of contemporary science. » (Maurice Barrès, A renovator of occultism: Stanislas de Guaita, Chamuel, 1898, p. 29)
“Starting from Eliphas Lévi, he went back to the Kabbalists of the Renaissance and the Hermetic Philosophers of the Middle Ages, reading everything and understanding everything with prodigious ease. The most obscure texts became illuminated as soon as he projected the clarity of his solar spirit onto them. He played with metaphysical problems and I was far from being able to follow him..." (Oswald Wirth, Le Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen Âge, Émile Nourry, Paris, 1927.)
“He was very rich, and had devoted himself to occult sciences without knowledge or method. He only saw the picturesque side of it, like Rembrandt, like Téniers, like Jordaëns. Dressed in a red robe, sword in hand, in a setting that Breughel would not have disavowed, he evoked fantasies and dissolved larvae. The truth is that, saturated with morphine and alcohol, he really believed he saw animals climbing along his limbs, and specters moving stubbornly before his eyes. » (Michel de Lézinier, With Huysmans - Promenades et souvenirs, Paris, Delpeuch, 1928.)
Stanislas de Guaita...could have reading everything and understanding everything with prodigious ease. The most obscure texts became illuminate...he projected the clarity of his solar spirit onto them.
Stanislas de Guaita (6 April 1861, Tarquimpol, Moselle – 19 December 1897, Tarquimpol) was a French poet based in Paris, an expert on esotericism and European mysticism, and an active member of the Rosicrucian Order. He was very celebrated and successful in his time. He had many disputes with other people who were involved with occultism and magic. Occultism and magic were part of his novels.
Early life
De Guaita came from a noble Italian family who had relocated to France, and as such his title was 'Marquis', or Marquess. He was born in the castle of Alteville in the commune of Tarquimpol, Moselle, and went to school at the lyceum in Nancy, where he studied chemistry, metaphysics and Cabala.[1] As a young man, he moved to Paris, and his luxurious apartment became a meeting place for poets, artists, and writers who were interested in esotericism and mysticism. In the 1880s, Guaita published two collections of poetry The Dark Muse (1883) and The Mystic Rose (1885), which became popular.
Rosicrucian activities
De Guaita's drawings of the upright and inverted pentagrams, representing Spirit over matter (holiness) and matter over Spirit (evil), respectively, from his book La Clef de la Magie Noire, in 1897.
De Guaita was influenced by the writings of l'Abbé Alphonse-Louis Constant, alias Eliphas Lévi, a prominent French occultist who was initiated in London to rosicrucianism by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1854.[2] Eliphas Lévi was also initiated as a Freemason on 14 March 1861 in the Grand Orient de France Lodge La Rose du Parfait Silence at the Orient of Paris. De Guaita became further interested in occultism after reading a novel by Joséphin Péladan which was interwoven with Rosicrucian and occult themes. In Paris, de Guaita and Péladan became acquainted, and in 1884, the two decided to try to rebuild the Rosicrucian Brotherhood.[2] They recruited Gérard Encausse to help rebuild the brotherhood. Encausse, who went by the pseudonym “Papus”, was a Spanish-born French physician and occultist who had written books on magic, Cabalah and the Tarot.
In 1888, De Guaita founded the Ordre kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix, or the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross. Rosicrucianism is an esoteric movement which first began with the publication of the three Rosicrucian Manifestos in the early 17th century. Guaita's Rosicrucian Order provided training in the Cabala, an esoteric form of Jewish and Christian mysticism, which attempts to reveal hidden mystical insights in the Bible and divine nature.[1] The order also conducted examinations and provided university degrees on Cabala topics. Guaita had a large private library of books on metaphysical issues, magic, and the "hidden sciences." He was nicknamed the "Prince of the Rosicrucians" by his contemporaries for his broad learning on Rosicrucian issues. Papus, Peladan, and Antoine de La Rochefoucauld were prominent members. Maurice Barrès was a close friend of De Guaita.
In the late 1880s, the Abbé Boullan, a defrocked Catholic Priest and the head of a schismatic branch called the “Church of the Carmel” led a “magical war” against de Guaita. French-Belgian novelist Joris K. Huysmans, a supporter of Boullan, portrayed De Guaita as a Satanic sorcerer in the novel La Bas. Another of Boullan’s supporters, the writer Jules Bois, challenged De Guaita to a pistol duel. De Guaita agreed and took part in the duel, but as both men missed, no one was hurt.
By the 1890s, De Guaita's, Papus' and Péladan’s collaboration became increasingly strained by disagreements over strategy and doctrines. Guaita and Papus lost the support of Péladan, who left to start a competing order. It is in the writings of his friend and childhood roommate Péladan that Stanislas de Guaïta found his first entry into the world of Tradition. Subsequently, reading the work of Eliphas Lévi, of which he would henceforth become the commentator and theorist, initiated him into Christian mysticism; Fabre d'Olivet directs him towards the great mysteries in general and towards the Hebrew language; and Saint-Yves d'Alveydre initiated him into the Synarchy. He joined the very recent Martinist Order of his friend Papus, then a medical student, whose pseudonym he mocked.
In light of all these influences, Guaita advocates a spiritualism exalting the Christian Tradition, which, thanks to the possible establishment of synarchy – an ideal form of government – should lead to the advent of the kingdom of God. In 1888, in the same spirit, he founded with Péladan the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix, of which Papus immediately joined, Erik Satie and the artists' banker, Olivier Dubs also joined. Peladan then separated from it to found another order: the Catholic Rosicrucians, alleging its refusal of operative magic. In 1887, in collaboration with his secretary and friend Oswald Wirth, he created a Kabbalistic Tarot which is reproduced in the Tarot des Bohemiens by Papus3.
In 1893, the Order of Guaita was attacked by Huysmans, who accused it of bewitching the defrocked Lyon abbot Joseph-Antoine Boullan from a distance. Duels ensue; Huysmans and Jules Bois oppose Papus and Guaita.
Stanislas is still this young poet less fascinated by Baudelairian taste than by the perfect aesthetic of Parnassus by Leconte Delisle and Mallarmé. Moreover, Alain Mercier4, will confirm that Guaita poet “by his classicism of form and writing, is closer to the Parnassians than to the Symbolists. Thus there were two distinct beings in him: the aristocratic and generous hermetic on the one hand, the tormented poet worried about artifice on the other. It was the writer Mendès who encouraged him to read Éliphas Lévi. His original drawing of an inverted pentagram with a goat's head appeared in La Clef de la Magie Noire (The Key to Black Magic), published the year he died. It later became conflated with Baphomet, or the Sabbatic Goat.
He died on December 19, 1897, at the age of 36, in Alteville. He is buried in Tarquimpol7,8. The causes of his early death were explained by kidney problems or drug use. Regarding drugs, he wrote:
“Coca, like hashish, but in other ways, exerts a direct and powerful action on the astral body; its customary use unties, in man, certain compressive links of his hyperphysical nature – links whose persistence is for the greatest number a guarantee of salvation. If I spoke without hesitation on this point, I would encounter unbelievers, even among occultists. I must confine myself to advice. — You who value your life, your reason, the health of your soul, avoid hypodermic injections of cocaine like the plague. Without speaking of the habit which is created very quickly (even more imperative, more tenacious and more fatal a hundred times than any other of the same kind), a particular state has taken birth. »
His rich library, made up of works, parchments, alchemical treatises and grimoires dating back to time immemorial, was dispersed during several sales in Paris, in 1899 (Dorbon - René Philippon), and in 1968 (Drouot ) and 2014 (Piasa).
Stanislas de Guaita seen by his contemporaries
“He spent five months of the year in a small ground floor on Avenue Trudaine, where he only received a few occultists, and from which he sometimes did not leave for weeks. There he had amassed a whole strange and precious library, Latin texts from the Middle Ages, old grimoires loaded with pentacles, parchments illuminated with miniatures, alchemy treatises, the most esteemed editions of Van Helmont, Paracelsus, Raymond Lulle , Saint-Martin, Martinès de Pasqually, Corneille Agrippa, Pierre de Lancre, Knorr de Rosenroth, manuscripts by Eliphas, bindings signed Derome, Capé, Trautz-Bauzonnet, Chambolle-Duru, works of contemporary science. » (Maurice Barrès, A renovator of occultism: Stanislas de Guaita, Chamuel, 1898, p. 29)
“Starting from Eliphas Lévi, he went back to the Kabbalists of the Renaissance and the Hermetic Philosophers of the Middle Ages, reading everything and understanding everything with prodigious ease. The most obscure texts became illuminated as soon as he projected the clarity of his solar spirit onto them. He played with metaphysical problems and I was far from being able to follow him..." (Oswald Wirth, Le Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen Âge, Émile Nourry, Paris, 1927.)
“He was very rich, and had devoted himself to occult sciences without knowledge or method. He only saw the picturesque side of it, like Rembrandt, like Téniers, like Jordaëns. Dressed in a red robe, sword in hand, in a setting that Breughel would not have disavowed, he evoked fantasies and dissolved larvae. The truth is that, saturated with morphine and alcohol, he really believed he saw animals climbing along his limbs, and specters moving stubbornly before his eyes. » (Michel de Lézinier, With Huysmans - Promenades et souvenirs, Paris, Delpeuch, 1928.)