The Socialist Roots and Utopian Dreams of Eliphas Lévi

“Man is himself the creator of his heaven and hell, and there are no demons except our own follies.”

-from Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi (1896)

Some of the most persuasive revolutionaries in history have been renegade clerics. Moses, for example, was said to be “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians”. A number of Hellenistic writers (as shown by Herbert Broderick in his work Moses the Egyptian) took this to mean that Moses was a hierogrammateus, a “scribe-priest”. Similarly, it seems Zoroaster, years before he unveiled the gospel of Ahura Mazda, had cut his teeth in the priestcraft of Old Persia.

In Renaissance times, the Dominicans Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella hazarded their lives to propagate their radical ideas about the nature of the universe. Bruno, the premier romantic idealist, gazed unboundedly into the coruscant celestial expanse, speculating that humans could become divinities through discipline and mystic insight. Campanella on the other hand, drawing on the more earthly Machiavelli, wrote that specially-trained teams of “armed prophets” could reform the thinking of the masses and usher in a utopian era.

In the nineteenth century, an oft-jailed ex-priest named Alphonse Louis Constant (later known as Eliphas Lévi) inherited the mantle of these subversive religionists. Half-poet, half-socialist, Lévi preached the “good news” of occultism and the “science” of the magi. For Lévi, occultism was a kind of askesis, a way of living by which one could acquire mental invincibility by surmounting his own base passions. Like the notorious Aleister Crowley (who believed himself to be Lévi’s successor), Lévi saw magical practice as a valuable method of experimenting with and exploring the psyche.

As he understood it, certain operations were in effect soul-exercises, designed to facilitate the liberation of the mind. Ultimately, the progressive emancipation of individuals would elevate society as a whole. Lévi expounded on this utopian idea in numerous theses and in no time began to almost universally be regarded as an authority on the occult sciences. The theologian Paul Carus in his journal The Open Court described him as a “dreamer, a visionary prophet”, while Helena Blavatsky in a letter written in 1881 praised him as “the most learned Kabbalist and Occultist of our age”.

Lévi however, much like today’s controversialists (all of whom are fated to spar with an “enlightened” and “well-meaning” commentariat), was not immune to attacks from self-described cognoscenti. Notably, one of these critics was the folklorist, Charles Godfrey Leland. Leland, who was known for his easy-going temperament and pluralistic, grassroots approach to occult studies, complained in his book Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune-Telling that Lévi was of “no weight whatever as an authority”. Leland, as far as we know, did not personally know Lévi, but he could have heard a thing or two about Lévi’s personality from his friend, the novelist and parliamentarian Lord Edward-Bulwer Lytton. Tradition has it that Lévi and Bulwer-Lytton interacted at some point, but the exact details of their relationship remain to be convincingly explicated.

Fortunately, other details about Lévi’s politics and literary career have come to light; due in part to the assiduous work of  Dr Julian Strube. Indeed, it is perhaps no mere coincidence that Strube is—like the innovative esotericist Johannes Trithemius—an alumnus of the University of Heidelberg. His dissertation (published in 2016) unpacks the socialist and neo-Catholic origins of Lévi’s ideas. We spoke with Strube to gain a better understanding of the influences behind Lévi’s political ambitions and spiritual beliefs.

The Custodian: What was your first impression of Lévi’s writings? Has your opinion of him changed over the years?

Dr Julian Strube: My opinion has actually changed quite a bit! When I first planned the research for my PhD, Lévi was supposed to be the subject of one chapter only. I had the idea of tracing down how the first use of the language of “occultism” developed from France to Germany and Britain, and Lévi was widely known to be the first who had employed it. But when I worked through his writings, I became increasingly surprised, even baffled.

I employ an approach in my work that is called “genealogical”, which means that I work my way backwards in time, beginning with present-day research and then, in Lévi’s case, starting with his occultist writings until I have reached his earliest publications. In the process, I contextualise the source material and try to understand where the author got his or her ideas from. Traditionally, historians start at some point in the past and then work their way forward, ending up with the most recent sources. So when you look at former studies about Lévi, scholars started with, say, medieval or Renaissance magic and then looked at the influences of authors such as Agrippa or Paracelsus that would resurface in Lévi’s writings.

This is one major reason for why you have that narrative of Lévi being a “rénovateur de l’occultisme”—people did not even look at contemporary sources for his ideas, rather they put him in a longer tradition of magic and related subjects. Of course, this is mainly due to the fact that his pedigree as the rediscoverer of ancient doctrines had already been cemented by occultist narratives after his death. But it’s hard to take a critical perspective on such narratives if you have already implicitly accepted that Lévi’s ideas were an outcome of an ancient tradition rather than of the 1830s, right?

When I arrived at Lévi’s writings predating the 1850s, I was so fascinated that I decided to focus on that period in my PhD. When I was reading his occultist writings, my first impression was, honestly, not very positive. He is all over the place and very pompous (practically all contemporaries, including his closest friends, found his grandeur quite noticeable). Going through his writings of the 1840s, I was amazed to find that many of his later ideas were already there, coming from a socialist radical! Piece by piece, the emergence of his occultist writings made a lot of sense when I saw them in their historical context, and when I understood what his actual sources were. That I found utterly fascinating.

C: How were his books first marketed in France? How were his ideas initially received by his peers?

J: I suppose we are talking about his occultist writings here. During his lifetime, Lévi’s influence was very limited. He had a small circle of disciples and maintained contact with some of his political comrades. He remained politically active, although he had to be very cautious in the 1850s due to the harsh censorship after the failed revolution of 1848. While he was already publishing his occultist writings as Eliphas Lévi, he was almost thrown in jail for the third time of his life, so after that, he kept a low profile until there was an amnesty in 1860.

Contemporaries noted his new identity as a magician mostly with amusement or bewilderment. The general public knew him as the radical and somewhat crazy Abbé Constant, so they were not too surprised—especially since so many socialists had become magnetists, Spiritualists, etc. The socialists and heterodox Catholics who formed his former milieu were bitterly divided over the disaster of 1848, but Lévi did team up with some authors who sought alternative routes to personal and social transformation. Dogme et rituel was marketed as a book dealing with magnetism, but claiming to be superior to the theories of the disciples of Mesmer and the emerging Spiritualists.

The fact that the volumes were first delivered in several livraisons (whose final size was not yet clear) demonstrates that he did not enter the stage with a big bang. He first published his ideas about magic in a socialist journal, using his civil name. Some critics just saw him as another theorist of magnetism with a radical background. There were really much more influential and famous authors dealing with almost the same issues, on who Lévi relied quite a lot, such as Du Potet. Over time, he did attract a substantial readership that was fascinated by his historical narratives and eclecticism. That said, he died in poverty and ended up in an anonymous mass grave, which underlines that it was only after his death that he was turned into a celebrity.

C: We spoke a few months back about the continuing popularity of A.E. Waite’s outdated translations of Dogme et rituel de la haute magie. Why do you think the majority of Lévi’s works have not been translated into English?

J: They are quite unsystematic and repetitive. It has often been said, for instance by Waite himself, that one only needs to read Dogme et rituel, Histoire, and perhaps La clef des grands mystères. That is not entirely true, because there are some quite remarkable developments in his later writings! But these are scattered throughout the volumes. Lévi also copied long passages from his earlier socialist writings, which remained unnoticed. I would actually find it much more interesting to translate some of those, for instance, La Mère de Dieu, Le livre des larmes, or La Bible de la liberté, which got him into jail for the first time. The interest in those writings has been very low, I guess also because people have mostly accepted the narrative of later occultists that it was only in the 1850s that he “saw the light”. Honestly, I find his earlier writings much more interesting. Who knows, maybe people will become more interested in them in the future.

C: As regards Lévi’s magical outlook, you’ve written in Aeon and elsewhere that Lévi essentially wanted to establish an aristocratic society in which enlightened ecclesiarchs would temporarily serve as benevolent rulers; facilitating (not unlike the legendary Rosicrucians) the self-initiation of their not-yet-awakened subjects. At the same time, you’ve noted that Lévi saw himself as a revolutionary and radical; “heir” to “heretical” traditions deriving from the Apostle John which eschewed traditional Catholicism (i.e. Catholicism as understood by the “masses”). Can you tell us a little more about how Lévi reconciled his socialist leanings, Catholic faith, and absolutist ideas?

J: The short answer is that these were standard notions among July Monarchy socialists. The Saint-Simonians, the Fourierists, and a heterogeneous flock of others wanted pretty much that. It would be more accurate to say that we are talking about a meritocracy here, not an aristocracy (the Saint-Simonian motto was “to each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its works”). If you look at the history of socialism form that angle, you can even say the same about Marxist strands. What was the dictatorship of the proletariat supposed to do? Think about the Leninist avant-garde. Those are later developments of the kinds of socialism that Lévi propagated himself (he was mostly influenced by Fourierism).

The second large influence is what was called “Neo-Catholicism,” a reformist current of mostly young, energetic Catholics, some of which, including their leader Lamennais, turned into socialists. For young radicals who were socialised (pun intended) in the 1830s and 1840s, the ideas of a Lamennais, Fourier, Saint-Simon were part of the same movement. This was often facilitated by Romantic writers such as George Sand, a chief influence on young Constant. You see, several later readers of Lévi’s occultist writings said that he performed a political U-turn after 1848, turning to Catholic hierarchy, absolutism, etc. A prime example is his reverence for the ultra-Catholic traditionalist Joseph de Maistre. The problem with that is that July Monarchy socialists worshipped de Maistre, and of course, the Abbé Constant did it, too. It is the very same elements that later observers regarded as the most radical breaks in his thought that you find in his earliest writings!

If you know that context, then there is no need to reconcile socialist leanings, Catholic faith, and absolutist ideas. They were part of the same ideology. Young Constant wrote that on about every other page he published, referring to his own credo at some point as communisme néo-catholique.

C: What was Lévi’s opinion of Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits? Did he see them as paragons of the ideal hierarch-occultist?

J: Lévi’s relationship with the Church was… complicated. He changed his public attitude to it repeatedly, depending on his precarious situation. Accordingly, the Jesuits were either praised by him or viciously denounced. In his later writings, you can even find diametrically opposed statements about them within the same book. Lévi’s most basic conviction was that he represented true Catholicism, that this true Catholicism was identical with true socialism, and that the knowledge of what that supposed to mean was unknown to the masses—well, it was occult.

He developed the narrative of a chain of initiates or hierophants who carry that knowledge through the ages from his earliest radical writing in 1841 onward. You find it almost fully developed in 1845. Sometimes the Jesuits were part of that tradition, sometimes not. But that is not the point, since Lévi just kept on elaborating, in fairly flamboyant ways, the overall narrative. If you want to learn some details about that, you can check out my article on the “Baphomet” that I wrote for the open-access journal Correspondences.

C: What do we know about Lévi’s relationship with his children? Did they take an interest in his work?

J: His private life is a story of tragedy, which appears to have mainly resulted from his personal shortcomings. One of those was a habit to produce children with women which whom he claimed to have platonic relationships. According to Paul Chacornac, there was a late reconciliation with his son. But the relevant correspondence has been lost, so we have to rely on the statement of a biographer who did his best to depict Lévi in the most favourable light even under the most unfavourable circumstances.

C:  It’s known that Lévi and Edward Bulwer Lytton corresponded with one another, and scholars have alleged that Lytton participated in or witnessed one of Lévi’s spirit-evocations. Have you come across anything in Lévi’s writings that might shed more light on their relationship?

J: I have found no evidence that confirms that Bulwer-Lytton actually participated in the famous evocation. But I think it to be likely. Everyone who knows a bit about Bulwer-Lytton can imagine that he wouldn’t have passed on a magical ceremony performed by a mysterious French Kabbalist if he had any chance to attend. In any case, his opinion of Lévi seems to have been lower than what you usually read. In A Strange Story, a very British footnote says that Lévi’s Dogme et rituel was “less remarkable for its learning than for the earnest belief of a scholar of our own day.” That’s not too flattering.

C: On that note, based on your reading of Lévi, do you think that his dismissive view of ceremonial magic and mysticism can be attributed to his preoccupation with devising and promoting a “rationalistic” theory of everything?

J: That certainly plays a role in it. Like other socialists and the Neo-Catholics, the Abbé Constant was obsessed with stressing his thorough rationalism already in the 1840s. I would say, though, that the main reason since the 1850s was Spiritualism. Lévi really despised Spiritualism. He regarded it as charlatanry, superstition, and heresy (the bad kind). Apart from that, he saw real danger in the practice of ceremonial magic. He was a trained theologian, after all.

C: What would you say was Lévi’s greatest contribution to Western esotericism? Why do you think it’s important that scholars of magical literature not disregard his political objectives?

J: Lévi was a wildly creative synthesiser who devoured the most radical thoughts of his time and turned them into a vibrant mosaic whose variance attracted an audience for all kinds of reasons. I think that, even without knowing the actual historical context of his writings, you can feel that there are some really extreme ideas underlying his occultisme. I can think of only few people who represent some of the most significant tendencies of their time in such an extraordinary way. After all, that is why I wrote much more about that context than about Lévi himself.

  Dealing with that context, your own most radical insight might be (hopefully, after reading my work) that Lévi’s occultisme was not the outcome of some obscure, underground, ancient tradition. It emerged right out of the very reformist movements that, in common historical narratives, one would least associate with occultism! I would argue that this has some very profound consequences for how we write the history of esotericism, but also the history of socialism, of Catholicism, of religion, secularisation, modernisation! I find that to be a whole set of good reasons to pay more attention to the historical context in which the founder of occultism and one of the most important modern writers of magic developed his ideas.

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