Péladan published several dozen books, hundreds of articles, essays, and pamphlets throughout his lifetime. Though vast and easy to get lost in, his body of work is unified by his grand vision for sparking a spiritual renaissance, and his various types of written output were carefully designed to target specific audiences. If read together as he intended, the 21 novels of his La Decadence Latine cycle, and the 7 esoteric handbooks of his Amphithéâtre des Sciences Mortes (1892–1911) series, reveal the full breadth and coherence of his work. Péladan himself says as much, and in the introductions to some of his works he often wonders quite plaintively why he is misunderstood, since he intentionally designed his work to be read this way.
Despite his own apparent social awkwardness, Péladan had an insightful, if idealistic, perspective of human nature. Following Plato, he separated society into three categories of people: the mob, who he thought little better than “beasts”; those with potential for awakening, the ensouled, whom he named animiques and who required support and guidance to discover and develop their true selves; and, initiates: those who would spearhead the social regeneration he desperately sought. He believed artists to already be initiates, daemons born into human form whose task it must be to remind humanity of their divine origins.
Handbooks for self-initiation
His occult curriculum included concordances with other esoteric systems, detailed advice on navigating society, politics, and relationships, and close instructions for shedding social conditioning that entrapped one in the mire of social decadence. He laid this system out in seven volumes.
The first three, Comment on devient Mage (1891), Comment on devient fée (1892), and Comment on devient Ar(t)iste (1894), were respectively aimed at men, women, and artists of his time. He believed each of these groups required specific steps in order to awaken into their true nature, and having done so, to join the sacred cause of bringing the whole of society closer to reunification with the divine.
The next three books: Le Livre du Sceptre (1895); L’Occulte Catholique (1898); and Traité des Antinomies (1901) can be seen as elaborations on the esoteric concepts explored in the first three, focusing on different aspects of life, metaphysical considerations, and addressing what seem like philosophical contradictions. The final book, La Science d’Amour (1911) looks specifically at matters of love and departs somewhat from the structured curriculum, so it is considered hors-serie, though important for the insights it offers.
The first 6 books, and the first triad in particular, are all structured around three basic levels: a septenary for neophytes, followed by an advanced 12-stage process for more advanced ‘students,’ and a final triad that Péladan names “Triad of the Holy Spirit.” We can look at these as a loose three-degree system, where each degree requires multiple steps before it is completed. However, there are no formal initiations in Péladan’s system. He is very explicit about this: he did not approve of closed-door esoteric “orders” and he disdained secrecy, as is obvious from the amount of material he published for public consumption. I have explained his thoughts on this in detail here.
The content
It needs to be emphasised that this is a system for self-initiation. Here’s what Péladan says about it:
Do not seek to discover whether every precept [taught here] belongs to me, or whether I have borrowed it from Pythagoras. Is he the best? You be the best…
Let us be the [representation of the best of] All that is Past in the face of All-Paris [all that modern society has distorted]. Let us be enthusiasm* in the face of blaggardry. Let us be leaders in the face of scoundrels. Let us be ourselves, and let our personalities, reflecting [their quality] wherever we move, triumph over sin and public opinion.
(Comment on devient Mage, p. 2; Le Figaro, 2 September 1891, Manifesto de la Rose+Croix).
*The deeper meaning of the word “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek εν+θεός, literally meaning: to have God within, or to be imbued with the breath of God. By “blaggardry,” Péladan is referring to superficial conversation with no depth or substance.
From the above, it should be clear that if approached as Péladan intended, it does not lend itself to adaptation for a closed, structured order with a rigid degree system, because nobody can confer the initiation but life itself. Péladan spells this out repeatedly, and is very clear that he thinks both the closed-order format, and the idea of elaborate ritual, are more distracting and hollow, than the very hard work of living one’s initiatory process directly in everyday life. Readers should be aware that if they see closed groups spring up promising initiation into Péladan’s system, it will already be a distortion of Péladan’s actual vision. That is not what he taught: evidenced by the fact that he published this material out in plain sight.
There is nobody to tell the initiate when they have reached the desired stage, apart from their own self, and Péladan provides ample examples of how this works. He has also incorporated several different ways of achieving the same goals, depending on one’s personality type, way of thinking (more theoretical or more scientific), and one’s actual reality (economic and marital status), so there is no single “true” path for a specific individual. In short: he knows there are many paths to the same mountain peak, and provides a roadmap of those paths, complete with pitfalls, caves to rest in, and where one can find clear water to gather strength for the journey.
That is the sum total of his method, structured on the basis of core principles connected to Kabbalistic, “Chaldean,” and Christian correspondences (among others). The end goal itself is to live as a true Rosicrucian, according to the basic principles of the Fama; someone who can contribute to a brighter society and assist with raising collective consciousness towards reintegration with our divine origins: within the mortal lifespan.
No secrecy?
What becomes quickly obvious when one actually reads Péladan’s material as he intended (for which he provides guidance), is that the secrecy is imposed by the sheer density and depth of the material itself. It will mean little to the uninitiated, and because it requires disciplined inner work, as Péladan explicitly explains, it will still not reveal its true content unless one actually follows his guidance.
However, he spells out that if one is looking for phantasmagoria – fireworks, fancy titles, and sparkly rituals, then they’re not suited to his system. His path leads to a form of liberation from material concerns that is also found in a number of ascetic traditions, and indeed, Péladan points to these as helpful examples to follow, while explaining that the key elements can be adapted to everyday life. He emphasises that discipline, routine, and sacrifices of some simple pleasures will be required, and a whole new way of thinking adopted. His promise is that this will lead to discovery of one’s true nature as a divine entity born into matter not as a punishment, but with the divine charge to mirror the divine creative impulse, and in so doing, redeem the whole of humanity through one’s efforts. This is to be achieved while living in the world, not distant from it, but by developing the self-awareness and self-discipline to avoid being tempted by its sirens.
Péladan’s concepts are firmly rooted in Neoplatonism, Kabbalah (especially Lurianic Kabbalah and the concept of Tikkun Olam – healing the world), and illustrated through world mythology which he reviews and retells as a coherent creation and fall narrative, essentially looking to explain the existence of evil. His interpretation is strongly influenced by Eastern Orthodox perspectives, and his lip-service to Catholicism in fact (according to Péladan himself) refers to the meaning of καθολικός – universalist – Christianity. He insists that the earnest neophyte should devote themselves to studying the sources that he recommends, and as one moves through the books, we see that he offers the necessary context as well. He takes pains to acknowledge that some paths work better for different people, and so offers several different ways of reaching the same goal, all tuned to his 7-12-3 step curriculum.
Where to find out more?
Few have read and understood Péladan’s purpose and vision contained in these books; the best summary and outline is contained in the now rare La pensée et les secrets du Sâr Joséphin Péladan by his successor, Dr. Edouard Bertholet, published in 1952. However, this material has not been made accessible before in English. Most scholarship on Péladan is in French, and most of it (apart from the work of Bertholet, Dantinne, and more recently Bonnerot), severely misinterprets his work, relying only on secondary sources, and ignoring what Péladan actually says. This is what I tackled in my research, by actually studying the whole breadth of Péladan’s output and placing it within its historical and cultural context, while looking at the esoteric ideas in the context of 19th century esotericism.
Most of Péladan’s work is freely available to download and read from https://www.bnf.fr/fr. However, its sheer volume and the language barrier to non-francophones has historically made this difficult to approach.
I have provided quite a lot of material in previous publications (see links here), and am working on a three-volume annotated Péladan anthology contracted to Theion Publishing, due out in 2024-2026, in which I will tackle his esoteric curriculum in the first volume. However, after receiving several requests, I will also be running a series of workshops that also focus on this material, with the first beginning on 15 February 2022, hosted by Treadwell’s Events. Details and booking info for these workshops is available here .
This first course (of several), will focus only on the Neophyte level from all 7 books, and is the first of its kind to follow a hybrid design, aiming at scholars, practitioners, and artists alike. There is more information on the structure and context of his system here.
Course objectives
For scholars, this will function as an immersion course in esoteric philosophy. They will be able to take the further reading/references and compare Péladan’s material to other, perhaps more familiar systems, and they will have the opportunity to listen to practitioner perspectives, which may be valuable depending on one’s approach.
For practitioners, this gives them all the key material they need to begin reflecting and, if they wish, applying Péladan’s system to their own lives. That is not something anybody can lead or train them in. It’s not built that way. It’s a personal decision, whose timeline depends on the individual and the particularities of their personality and lives. The interactive segment of the workshops is designed to provide support in understanding the material and encountering different perspectives – the application however, is something to be done in one’s own time.
For artists, Péladan has provided a wealth of inspiration, guidelines, and perspectives that can deeply enrich their work, and can be interpreted however a given artist wishes. I have shared my own journey with this particular approach here; however there are as many “correct” applications as there are artists. The course, as above, gives them access to the core principles and philosophies; from there it is their decision what they do with it.
Those wishing to read more about Péladan’s initiatory system specifically for men and women, may wish to explore this article, which offers the context of his worldview and cosmology feeding into his system. Future articles will explore some of these elements in more depth.
For course details see this link, and for more on the Péladan project see this link. Sasha’s personal website is here.
Disclaimer
I wish to emphasise that I am not providing “training” or promising to “initiate” anybody whatsoever. This is a self-initiation system that rests on the individual’s work, so that is actually impossible, and if anybody, myself included, were to claim to be doing something of that sort, it would be disingenuous and misleading. I am a scholar, not an esoteric teacher. I am also the only English-speaking scholar to have studied the breadth of Péladan’s work in depth, and to have had that work acknowledged by specialist academics, specialist publishers, and esoteric groups. So, what I am doing in these workshops is making Péladan’s system accessible to those unfamiliar with his thought and work, curating, translating and offering time for discussion and reflection on the core elements of each stage in his system, and providing an in-depth explanation of his philosophy and intentions. The material is all his, and rests on his instructions, not my ideas about them. He created a complicated roadmap; I’m adapting it to modern times, in English. That’s where my task ends. Those who read French and have a solid grounding in the relevant esoteric context can undoubtedly do this for themselves.
