Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival

11. The Pundit

II The Pundit In july 1861 an Italian nobleman of occult leanings was walking past a bookshop in Marseillesand noticed in the window a copy of Levi's Dogme et rituel de la haute ma gie. He bought the book and wassoon eager to get in touch with itsauthor.The correspondence which ensued was later to result in his becoming one of Levi's closest disciples. This man was Baron Nicolas-Joseph Spedalieri, born in Sicily in 1812 ofan old and distinguished family. In his twenties he had become interested in magic and mysticismand had read the works of Saint-Martin. Later he had joined a Martinist society at Naples. At the age of about thirty he had come to live in France. Levi must have been impressed by Spedalieri for one of the first things he sent to the Baron was a copy of his manuscript work, the ells majeures et clavicules de Salomon, written in 1860. This work was published posthumously in 1896, but as the original consistslargely of hand-coloured illustrations, most of its value is lost in the printed edition, which contains no colour plates.' At the end of the book is a note stating that the manuscript was 'copied for the exclusive and personal use of Monsieur le Baron Spedalieri in October and November 1861'. The work contains some important evidence about Levi's doctrines, and I shall later discuss it in detail. In one of his letters to the Baron, Levi wrote: 'I have twelve disciples, but they are not all in Paris. Of the twelve, four, counting you, are my devoted friends. One of these four is a doctor in Berlin; the two others are great Polish noblemen. Of these four, you are the most advanced in Theosophy; the Berlin doctor has made great progress with the Cabala, one of the Polish nobles is a first-rate scholar of hermetic philosophy, The Pundit 125 the other is enamoured of science; and science has turned him from the man of pleasure, which he was, into a man of duty and reason.' The two Polish noblemen referred to were Count Alexander Braszynsky and Count Georges de Mniszech. The Berlin doctor was a man of Polish origin named Nowakowski who had been led to occultism through an interest in the dervishes. In another letter to Spedalieri, Levi gives his recipe for a wellordered life. 'A great calmness of spirit, a great cleanliness of body, a constantly even temperature, rather on the cold side than too hot, a dry and well-aired lodging, where nothing is incongruous and there is no reminder of the base needs of life (I would bejust as ashamed to display a wash-basin in my apartment as to go out into the street without my trousers), wellregulated meals proportional to the appetite which should be satisfied but not over-stimulated. Simple and substantial food; stop work before one becomes tired; take moderate and regular exercise; never allow yourself to become over-excited in the evening, to ensure that the greatest possiblecalm precedessleep.' The sober life recommended by Levi was in contrast to the general mood of Paris in the 1860s. The Second Empire was at its extravagant zenith. Napoleon III and his beautiful Empress Eugenic set the tone for the gay life in which Paris revelled. Yet there was a hint of desperation in this revelry, as though the COl,Ultry were trying to shut out the ominous rumblings from abroad, such as the Russian suppression of the Polish uprising, in which the Braszynsky brothers lost most of their estates. Many people must have sensed that the golden years of Napoleon Ill's reign could not continue for long and sought to distract themselves from the future in any way they could. One of the symptoms of this mood was a growth ofinterest in spiritualism, and in the early 1860s all ofParis was talking of the exploits of the American medium Daniel Dunglas Home, whose book, Revelations of my Supernatural Life, was published in a French edition in 1863. Home was the illegitimate son of the 11th Earl of Home and a Southampton chambermaid; Sir Alec Douglas-Home is therefore his great-nephew. Eliphas Levi regarded Home with scorn and included a long attack on the medium in La eM des grandes mysteres. T:he following anecdote is given as one indication of the bogus nature ofHome's claims: 126...