This page is a collection of recorded lectures I have delivered on Péladan at various venues over the past few years, gathered here as an offering to the Pansophers community. Additional multimedia (podcasts and other lectures) is available here.
Esoteric art and literature as vehicles for change: Joséphin Péladan’s vision for a spiritual revolution
About: Dr Sasha Chaitow delivers an Invited guest lecture as part of the “Aesthetic and Scientific Epistemologies of the Occult in the XIX Century,” a lecture series organised by ETH University – Zurich‘s ongoing project “Scientificization and aestheticization of esotericism in the long 19th Century.”
Introduction to Joséphin Péladan | Sapere Aude
Image and Logos: Symbolic Vocabularies & Inspired Revelations | Trans-States 2, University of Northampton 2019
About: Occult visionary author Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918) dedicated his life and prodigious literary output to his attempt to provoke a collective social awakening through the display of symbolist artwork and production of symbolist literature on a massive scale. He produced copious theoretical tomes explaining the esoteric theory that underpinned both his motivation and his guidance to members of his audience seeking a gnostic awakening. Although notorious for his eccentricity, his influence reached as far as South America and influenced literary and artistic circles in several European countries. Despite being forgotten for the best part of the 20th century, recent years have seen a revival of interest in Péladan and attempts have been made to provide a deeper understanding of the purpose of the Salons de Rose+Croix that were his brain-child. After summarising both the context and the specifics of Péladan’s worldview, aims, and modus operandi, I will discuss the syncretic framework upon which his vision was built and explore the questions of how this was meant to work in practical terms. He combined Orphic Mysteries, Aeschylean tragedy, Scripture, and Enochian revelation, perceiving humanity as the epicentre and deciding force in the Platonic attempt to emerge from the cave of darkness. In a surprising twist on Platonic thought, he used the arts in their entirety to approach the world at large, convinced that in so doing, a deeper human impulse would discover its celestial heritage. Although the results of these attempts were undoubtedly mixed, on an artistic level in particular, Péladan influenced many artists to produce work inspired by these notions. The unwavering goal was to spark a form of revelation in his contemporaries. It is the shape, content, and mechanism of that revelation that this talk will explore.
Saving the Lives of Angels: Redemption Through the Arts
About: Influenced by Platonic philosophy and Luciferian theology, Péladan’s grand vision comprised an imaginal world in which artist-initiates would form the inner circle, designed to ignite a collective awakening in society and replace religion with art. The artist-initiates would raise the souls of the masses to ecstasy through aesthetic bombardment with symbolic images that would simultaneously stimulate the intellect and the soul. The ultimate end of this awakening would be restitution for the Fall of man and angels through human creativity. Péladan’s work attempts to dissolve boundaries on several levels. He broke with esoteric “secrecy” and published self-initiation manuals proclaiming his message; he used every artistic communication channel available to disseminate his message; inspired scores of artists to take up his cause; and produced a vast literary oeuvre to support and explain his philosophy. Very much the product of his time, his work reflects the birth of Modernism and the growing social turmoil during the early 20th century. After a brief introduction to Péladan’s life and times and a contextualisation of his core message, this paper focuses on his concept of the role of art and artists and their power to effect individual and social change according to his esoteric-aesthetic philosophy.
