Ghosts, Vampires & Other Stories (Volume VI)

Estética del Mal: Conceptos y Representaciones. XXXIII Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte. Universidad Nacional Auonóma de México. Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, México 2013.

This essay will address the notions of the Satanic and the Luciferian in the writings of Walter Benjamin and Roger Caillois, two critical thinkers who either skirted or were involved in surrealist circles in Paris in the 1930s. Within the surrealist milieu, the notion of evil had certain significations that underlined the movement's relations with Romanticism and Symbolism. As followers of the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Joris-Karl Huysmans, the surrealists embraced a position of rebellion aimed at the provocation of bourgeois and clerical sensibilities. Many of the surrealists had been involved in the Dada movement, and, carrying forward the Dadaist revolt against received authority, they struck out frequently against the rhetoric of church and nationhood, which, with their internationalist outlook, they experienced as particularly insidious during and after the First World War. The founder of the Zurich Dada group, Hugo Ball, modelled himself as a heretic during his performances at the Cabaret Voltaire, which he described as a mixture of 'buffoonery and requiem mass,' based on a 'synthesis of the romantic, dandyish, and demonic theories of the nineteenth-century.' 1 In a mixture of shamanism and religious liturgy, Ball would dress as a 'magical bishop,' reciting his poems-without-words 'in a church style,' his voice taking on 'the ancient cadence of a priestly lamentation.' 2 Ball's Dadaism was therefore developed directly from the essence of nineteenth-century theories of demonism and the Satanic into an openly rebellious critique of religious dogma. While those Dadaists who went on to develop surrealism in the early 1920s did not necessarily share Ball's mysticism, the surrealists certainly inherited the provocative anti-clericalism of Ball's earlier collective.

Co py r ig h t e d by Az o t h P u b l is h in g Co ., I n c .

EMLC, 2019

Correspondences: An Online Journal for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism, 2017

A review article examining three recent publications in the academic study of Satanism.

The Journal of American Culture, 2004

Numen

La Rosa di Paracelso, 2017

among the most familiar forms given to Lucifer in Western culture, but from the eighteenth century onwards, a more Promethean figure emerged, whom many Romantic poets, artists and authors sought to redeem. The phenomenon of “Literary” or “Romantic Satanism” was the product of sociocultural ferment throughout the “long eighteenth century” and the cultural impact of the French revolution. This Promethean Lucifer lay at the heart of much of the thought of visionary occult author Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918), who reinterpreted Scripture, conflating it with Platonic thought and ancient theogonies to produce his own syncretic cosmology in which it is the task of humanity to redeem and liberate a slandered and misunderstood Light-bringer along with his offspring. While very much in the spirit of his time, Péladan’s perspective clearly diverges from the Romantic Satanism and the heroic, revolutionary Lucifer of many of his contemporaries. He acknowledges that Lucifer and his angels sinned, but considers it to have been an error “made out of love,” going so far as to deny the existence of evil itself. He could fathom neither the concept of original sin as an immutable curse, nor the eternal condemnation of Satan or mankind. This preoccupation is central to his work, resting on his conviction that the true cause of the Fall was the misguided love of the creator-angels for their human creations. Believing that the great thinkers and artists of history were descendants of the fallen angels, Péladan’s approach is one of heartfelt Christian compassion and faith in liberation through repentance, drawing on diverse sources including apocryphal Scripture and Aeschylean drama to flesh out his theory. This paper untangles the complex, and often misperceived web of Péladan’s complex reimagining of a Promethean Lucifer as forefather of the arts and, by extension, his influence on the artists of the Salons de la Rose + Croix as well as other authors and occultists of his time.

Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, Vol. II, 2016

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, 2021