A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult (6 page)

Born in one of Poland's wealthiest aristocratic families, by the end of his life, Potocki had become something of a superman. A famed traveller, ethnologist, linguist and fantasist, Potocki combined Enlightenment rationalism with a Romantic appetite for the strange and uncanny. His many accomplishments include an ethnographic excursion to Mongolia (following journeys to Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey and Morocco), the first balloon flight over Warsaw, fluency in eight languages (including the secret patois of the Circassian nobleman), opening the first free reading room in Poland, a period of service with the Knights of Malta (including a sea battle against the Barbary pirates), and a quest for the original manuscript of the Arabian Nights. In between all of this, Potocki found time to devote himself to writing, as well as to a profound study of occultism. He also found himself embroiled in the mystical political intrigues that made Europe in the days before the Revolution a warren of secret societies and esoteric enclaves.

Among the many cities to which Cagliostro brought his Egyptian Rite was Warsaw, where he opened a lodge in 1780. By this time, a powerful splinter group had emerged within the Masonic fold. On 1 May 1776, Adam Weishaupt, a professor of canonical law at Ingoldstat University in Bavaria, gave birth to his brainchild: the Illuminati. Drunk with the elixir of Enlightenment rationalism, Weishaupt had a vision of a free, egalitarian Europe, rid of the tyranny of the monarchies and the Church. To achieve his end, Weishaupt inaugurated a secret society. He then became a Freemason, in order to appropriate the lodges' vast network of contacts and hierarchies. His disciples quickly infiltrated most other lodges, which were already filled with members of various other secret secret societies. (The situation resembles somewhat the plot of Chesterton's The Man Who was Thursday) Cagliostro, it is believed, was an early convert to Weishaupt's cause, and it is possible that at least some of the activity of his Egyptian Rite initiations included drawing in potential new followers. It's possible that Potocki was initiated into Cagliostro's Warsaw lodge: it's clear at any rate that he was a Mason. If so, and if Cagliostro was sifting his initiates for new recruits, then Potocki was certainly the kind of man he would target.

Two factors suggest this indeed may have been the case. One is Potocki's passion for anything Islamic. Like William Beckford, - an early reading of the Arabian Nights proved decisive; Potocki spoke fluent Arabic, and after his visit to Constantinople, the Count often dressed in burnous and fez. This is significant, not only in the general sense of `the East' as a metaphor of mystery and exoticism, but in the more specific sense that, among the many eminent figures that Weishaupt claimed were initiates in the Illuminati, Mohammed figures largely. The fact that the prophet himself was a member of Weishaupt's society would certainly have piqued the young Count's interest.

Stronger evidence for a connection between Potocki and the Illuminati however is The Saragossa Manuscript itself. Throughout his life Potocki advocated an inconsistent array of political beliefs; but in the atmosphere of preRevolutionary Paris, like many others, he more than likely shared in the hope that a new Golden Age was about to dawn. An activist by nature, participation in a society dedicated to help bring this along would have appealed to him. Secret knowledge and scenes and motifs of initiation run through The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. One of its central figures, the Great Sheikh of the Gomelez family, is the head of a gigantic scheme that in many ways resembles the machinations of Weishaupt. Sentiments of tolerance, egalitarianism, universal brotherhood, and what we today would call multiculturalism - all part of the Illuminati platform - are evident throughout the book. Other `evidence' is the fact that Potocki set his adventure in Spain. With his formidable erudition, Potocki may have been aware of earlier, Spanish Illuminist sects, like the Alumbrados, or `Illuminated Ones', who began in Guadalajara in the early 1500s. The Alumbrados believed in an "illumination by the Holy Spirit" and persisted until the Inquisition suppressed them in 1623, accusing them, among other things, of practising sexual perversion. He may also have been aware of another sect of `Illuminated Ones', the Roshaniya, who flourished in Afghanistan also in the 1500s. Like Weishaupt's Illuminati, the Roshaniya aimed at gaining political control by upsetting the status quo; for some authorities, there is a possible connection between the Roshaniya and another Islamic secret society, the 11th century Assassins. Here Potocki's love of Islam would have forged a link.'

All this is speculation. What's not in doubt are the genuine occult themes that appear throughout The Saragossa Manuscript. I can only mention some of these. The gallows that the young Alphonse finds himself under after his night of passion with Emina and Zubeida suggest the Tarot trump of the Hanged Man, a symbol of spiritual death and initiation. The weird adventures and tales within tales, in which Alphonse is unsure whether he is awake, dreaming or under the influence of hashish, is a reminder of the ambiguous nature of reality. They take place within the liminal space between sleep and consciousness, the hypnagogic realm of magic and the paranormal. Several well known occult figures appear: Apollonius of Tyana, Knorr von Rosenroth, and Simon Magus. Several `doublings' too: the Celestial Twins, invoked by the student kabbalist, suggest alchemical themes of integration as well as the esoteric notion of the doppelganger or astral body. Many of the doublings are of a sexual nature, suggesting strange erotic practices. Alphonse's encounter with Emina and Zubeida, whom he meets in a cellar, indicates the uncertain territory he is about to enter. These delightful but possibly dangerous twins are `subterraneans', creatures of the underworld. They are also devotees of a strange, foreign faith.

One motif that Potocki shares with William Beckford, whose Vathek he would surely have known, is a stairway of 1,500 steps. In Beckford's Arabian nightmare, the steps lead upward, to the top of Caliph Vathek's hubristic tower. In Potocki, they lead down, into a cave and the underworld. Here Potocki alludes to the central secret society of European legend: the Rosicrucians. In Rosicrucian legend, Christian Rosenkruz, the mythical founder of the society, was buried in 1484, in a hidden tomb, after dying at the age of 106. In 1604, the tomb was said to have been discovered and, inside, his uncorrupted body lay in a seven-sided vault, lit by a powerful lamp. The Rosicrucians were hermeticists, kabbalists and alchemists; one of their tracts promise that anyone coming forth to join them would receive "more gold than both the Indies bring to the king of Spain." The gold they meant, however, was not the vulgar metal, but a more spiritual kind. The cave Alphonse finds himself in is illuminated by many lamps; there he finds a massive vein of gold and the tools necessary to extract the precious metal. Each day he digs out a quantity equal to his own weight. The gold he extracts is surely Rosicrucian, and the fact that Christian Rosenkruz received his occult wisdom in Damascus would be another enticement for the Islamophile Potocki.

The count's mystical proclivities, however, did not save him from a macabre fate. The collapse of the Illuminati, suppressed in 1785, along with the entire Masonic project, filled Potocki, as well as many of his contemporaries, with despair. The Revolution had turned into a charnel house, with the dictator Napoleon rising out of the slaughter. Personal scandal troubled him too; incest was mentioned in connection with his divorce from his second wife. Alone in his castle on his Podolia estate, ill health, boredom, melancholia and disillusionment led to morbid fantasies. The thought that he had become a werewolf obsessed him. Potocki is said to have taken the silver knob of a sugar bowl, filed this into a bullet, then had it blessed by his chaplain. Then, on 20 November 1815, he put the barrel of his pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. A sad end to a man whose brilliant masterpiece - full of tolerance, curiosity and a lively interest in the beliefs of other cultures - displays the best virtues of the occult Enlightenment.

The Illuminati

Of the many branches that grew from the Masonic tree, none gathered as much calumny as Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati. Founded on 1 May 1776, two months before the American Declaration of Independence, Weishaupt's dreams of an egalitarian Europe, as well as his means of fulfilling them, were soundly crushed less than a decade later. In 1785, both freemasonry and the Illuminati were outlawed by the elector of Bavaria. The ostensible reason for their suppression was the suspicion that the Illuminati were implicated in an Austrian plot to subvert Bavaria and bring about its annexation to the House of Hapsburg. But a general uncertainty about the political ideals of freemasonry, mixed with sensational, if exaggerated `exposes' of some of the society's beliefs and practices, as well as personal revelations about Weishaupt, created an atmosphere inimitable to secret societies of any kind. By 1789, when the aims of universal brotherhood and freedom began their descent into the Terror, esoteric groups of any sort had acquired a bad reputation.

If it's true that in actual practice the Illuminati achieved appreciably little, it's also true that in myth they have exerted an influence on modern occult thought equal to the Knights Templars, Rosicrucians and Freemasons, with all of whom they have been linked at various times. It's one of the ironies of history that this should be the case, because in its inception, the Illuminati was in fact an opponent of all mysticism and occultism, seeing in these the very obscurantism it was created to combat. Weishaupt (1748-1830) was a fanatical rationalist, dedicated to annihilating religion and other superstitions, which he saw as leaden constraints on the . human mind. Perhaps his early instruction in a Jesuit college implanted this hatred; if so, it also instilled an admiration for his instructors' organizational skills. Weishaupt's scheme was in many ways a gigantic oxymoron: he adopted the strict hierarchical forms of religious orders and mystical societies, in order to promote a philosophy of rational egalitarianism. Perhaps it was this internal contradiction, and not the elector of Bavaria, that brought about the society's downfall.

Weishaupt's skill at political machination began early, during his university years, when he intrigued his way into coveted positions. It was also then that his taste for disciples and need to dominate began to appear. As J.M. Roberts in The Mythology of the Secret Societies suggests, an early reading of accounts of the Pythagoreans and the ancient Greek mysteries piqued an appetite for initiations, rites and trials. This led naturally to freemasonry. But at the first portal, Weishaupt was turned away, mostly because he couldn't afford the dues. Undeterred, his answer was to form his own society.

Weishaupt's original goal was to break the iron grip the Jesuits had on Bavaria, which in an increasing enlightened Europe, remained in an intellectual Middle Age. Soon, though, his plans grew, until they were encapsulated in a succinct and, to the persons in question, distinctly dangerous formula. The Illuminati would work toward a future in which:

Princes and nations shall disappear without violence from the face of the Earth, the human race will become one family and the world the abode of reasonable men. Morality alone will bring about this change imperceptibly ... Why should it be impossible that the human race should attain to its highest perfection, the capacity to judge itself? ... this revolution shall be the work of Secret Societies.

A year after starting the Illuminati, Weishaupt tried again to join the Freemasons. This time he was successful, entering a Strict Observance lodge. Thus began his infiltration into the elder society. His aim was to select the more enlightened members of the craft, and to slowly introduce them to Illuminist ideology. It met with some success. Taking the code name Spartacus, with his associates Baron von Knigge and the bookseller Johann Bode, Weishaupt's influence reached across Bavaria, setting up Illuminist camps in several Masonic lodges. Munich and Eichstadt became centres for Illuminist training, and in many other lodges Illuminist ideas penetrated the Masonic orthodoxy. True to his Jesuit upbringing, Weishaupt justified his less-than admirable means by pointing to the desirable end, and his success seemed to corroborate this. Beyond Bavaria the order reached to central and southern Germany and Austria; Italy, Grenoble, Strasbourg and Lyon felt its influence. Mozart, Schiller and.Goethe were absorbed, and there was talk in Vienna that Joseph II would soon be too. By 1782 it had about three hundred members, and in the next year, it reached Bohemia and Milan, with Hungary soon to follow Oddly France, no stranger to secret societies, resisted incursions.

Things began to unravel when Baron Knigge and Weishaupt quarrelled. Knigge was an altogether more mystical soul than Weishaupt, having been a Mason and a member of other secret societies when recruited into the Illuminati. It was in fact his failure to enter a Rosicrucian sect that interested him in Weishaupt's Order: the promise of secrets and hidden knowledge attracted him powerfully. Knigge brought in many new members, but when his advance along the Illuminist path seemed oddly stalled, he confronted Weishaupt, who, rather than lose a talented convert, revealed the real plan of the society. Weishaupt gradually gave way to Knigge's increasingly more mystical designs, a development totally at odds with his initial aims. Eventually, Weishaupt decided that Knigge would have to go. The Baron did, but not before revealing the society's secrets to its opponents.

Other problems cropped up. Masons not attracted to Weishaupt's revolutionary designs began to speak openly against the Illuminati. Dark rumours circulated. Less circumspect Illuminists spoke about the inequities of kings and princes. Like today, suspicion that members of the order had already infiltrated the government was widespread. Disaffected members warned of the society's hideous plans. The newspapers called for action, and on 23 June 1784, the citizens of Bavaria were forbidden to belong to any secret society of any sort. A deluge of publications denouncing the Illuminati appeared, along with a trickle of pamphlets defending the Freemasons and distinguishing them from Weishaupt's perfidious association. These did little to stem the anti-esoteric tide. Less than a year later, another edict appeared, specifically condemning the Illuminati and Freemasons. Governments across Europe followed suit and turned a wary eye upon the orders.