Dissertation prepared for the MA

offered at the

Faculty of Religious Studies, University of Amsterdam 2006 2007.

First reader: Prof. dr. Wouter J. Hanegraaff

Second reader: Dr. Marco Pasi

Alexandra H.M. Nagel

(xnagel@yahoo.com)
student number 0051101

Eindhoven, August 12, 2007

1. Introduction (p. 3): The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn developed a ritual to
marry one of its members with an elemental. This seems a very strange, even peculiar
thing to do what could be behind it? One of the keys to make sense of the matter
appears to be

(1670) by Montfaucon de Villars, but who is he,

and what does the novel convey?

2. General background (p. 7): Intimate relationships between humans and nonhumans
go back to Greek myths, and Medieval stories of the devil who in the shape of succubi
and incubi, seduces men and women.

3. Specific background (p. 11): It turns out that the life and works of the Abb Villars
are intriguing:
a. His personal life is characterised by family drama.
b. Religious tensions are addressed humoristically in

by

enlightened advocating that elementals, in order to gain a soul, ought to marry

humans.
c. It is one of the occult related ideas floating around in the second half of seventeenth
century Europe: the air was crowded by creatures.

4. Reception (p. 27): At the end of the nineteenth century, works leading back to
are numerous since
a. the theme of love between humans and elementals introduced by Villars had
developed continuously within the arts, and
b. within esoteric discourse, people like liphas Lvi and Madame Blavatsky had
pondered on the wisdom offered by Villars.

5. Assessment (p. 53): Knowing the above, it makes sense as to how Samuel L.
MacGregor Mathers, chief of the Golden Dawn, must have come to view human
relationships with elementals seriously instead of satirically, as has been Villars
intent.

6. Epilogue (p. 58): Interestingly enough, in modern times

occasionally is acknowledged as a source of information within UFO discourse.

Appendix 1. The editions of

and its sequels (p. 62)

Appendix 2. Was Villars part of the circle of dAubignac? (p. 69)

Appendix 3. Ludovico M. Sinistrari and

(p. 70)

Appendix 4. Illustrations (p. 73):

1. Paracelsus on elementals and marriage with humans
2. Saint Anthony tempted by demons
3. Aerial beings in Bishop Agobards Lyon
4. The fairy tale
5.

(1782) and Henry Fuseli

6.

(1798) by Thomas Stothard

7.

(1789) by Fuseli and Erasmus Darwin

8. !

(1811) by Baron Motte de la Fouqu

9. Mary Taglioni and

10. #
11.

"

(1832)

(1842) by Edward Bulwer Lytton

"

(1842) by Charles Mackay

12. Georg von Welling on

13. General Ethan Allen Hitchcock on

Acknowledgements (p. 90)

Bibliography (p. 92)

Cover

(c. 1819 1823) by Henry Fuseli.

!
The Order most responsible for the survival of much of Western esotericism in the
twenty first century has been the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which came
into existence during the 1880s in London. At the end of 1895 the initial arguments
arose over what developed into a severe crisis within the Golden Dawn. The conflict
began with Annie Hornimans strong reaction to Edward Berridges advances towards
female adepts in the Order, and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers teaching
concerning the relation between men and elementals and their possible intercourse.1
Berridge advocated ideas developed by Thomas Lake Harris, who believed in a
dyadic deity, fays (fairies), group marriage, and the search for a soul mate. He also
taught a technique whereby the practitioners charge each other with desire but refrain
from orgasm and/or ejaculation.2 Such intimate teachings were difficult to accept for
the sensitive, wealthy and generous spinster Horniman, particularly in combination
with rumours that Berridge brought it, or parts of it, or parts which he considered to
be related to Harris teachings into practice. Besides, Horniman had experienced how
Berridge attempted, inappropriately, to kiss her.3 She wrote three letters to Mathers
concerning the matter, demanding in one of them that something be done about
Berridge. Furthermore, Mary Greer informs about the episode, Horniman
wrote Mathers that she could not accept the propriety of the teachings [Mathers
paper concerning an important dogma on the subject of the relation between men and
Elementals, even for the purposes of procreation] nor contemplate making such
alliances either on her own part or on the part of any of her friends or companions.
Mathers had recommended that Mrs. Ann Carden, known as %
Elemental marriage, because she was in &

, take part in an

danger of invoking an incubus

instead of a Fay, through want of self control. Annie expressed doubt about the

Schuchard 1975: 641; Cogdill & Cogdill 1990; Greer 1995: 160.

Hulett 1943: 747; Colquhoun 1975: 149; Greer 1995: 160, 431 note 24.

Greer 1995: 160. Greer adds that another adept, Helen Rand, backed up Hornimans experience:

Berridge had tried to kiss her, Rand, too, upon which Rand, together with Wynn Westcott, drafted a
letter to MacGregor Mathers. It is unknown whether the letter was really sent or not (Howe 1972: 120
121).

wisdom of such teachings, implying that Mathers may have perverted them through
some impurity of his own, or even more shockingly, of '

s [the adepts name

of Mathers wife Moina, AN]. She then gave Mathers an ultimatum, saying that she
was suspending herself from the Order until Mathers could be sufficiently awakened
from [his] habitual lethargy, to act with energy and decision.4

Obviously, the latter was a provocative insult. Horniman received a reply to her
complaints, a letter written by Moina Bergson Mathers. Now, what does not concern
me here is the development of the argument between Horniman and the Matherses,
and consequently Hornimans resignation from the Order a year later.5 What does
concern me is the content and the background of the Elemental Theory issued by
Mathers, and, in particular, the marriage ritual recommended to Mrs Carden, which
suggests intercourse between men or women, and nonhuman beings called elementals.
For, as Moina tackled the conflict, the Elemental Theory was the principal subject
of Hornimans letters.6 Once considered to be a plausible option, the topic is an
intriguing one and bound to stir up intense debates, even in wider occult circles. At
least at some point Helena P. Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, accused
Hiram Butler a sexual magus, astrologer, and publisher of the magazine
7

and Thomas Lake Harris of begetting children on the astral plane through

such intercourse.8
Unfortunately, Mathers paper Elemental Theory is lost, Greer notes,9 a reason for her
to quote Moinas letter of December 31, 1985 to Annie Horniman in full.10 The
additional bits and pieces on the elemental teaching derived from it can be boiled
down to the fact that Horniman got the idea of having been asked to give up her self
4

Greer 1995: 161, quoting from the letter written January 14, 1895 by MacGregor Mathers to

Horniman in Howe 1972: 124.

5

Money was an underlying aspect of the conflict. Horniman sent the Matherses, always short of

income, a cheque on a regularly basis, but she didnt see her money spent wisely (Cogdill & Cogdill
1990).
6

Greer 1995: 161. See also Owen 2004: 101 102.

Godwin, Chanel & Deveney 1995: 213.

Deveney 1997: 251. See also Godwin, Chanel & Deveney 1995: 72, and Deveney 1997: 225.

Greer 1995: 160.

10

Greer 1995: 161 162, quoting from Howe 1972: 117 119.

respect; that Moina considered Horniman, being a Theoricus Adept, not to be in a

position to give an opinion on the subject of elemental and human sexual
connections; and that if elementals form a considerable part of you, they are not so
incongruous to the human as Horniman implied. Regarding her own position towards
the issue, Moina shared with Annie that she and Mathers had stayed perfectly clean,
i.e. they had not consummated their marriage. Hereupon she continued:
To return to the Elementals, the story of Melusina, Undine, and others you will know
of all refer to marriages between human and elemental and you think them probably
very charming stories, because they have a halo of poetry round them.11

As previously remarked, the topic is intriguing. And it raises questions. For example,
how to envision marriage with an elemental? What would be the difference between a
fay, an incubus, and an elemental? How can elementals form a part of the humans
composition? Is perhaps their mutual offspring somewhere in play? What is behind
Blavatskys accusation to Hiram and Harris? What do the stories of Melusina and
Undine convey? Or, more basic, what is the origin of the ideas about elementals and
their relationship with mankind?

None of these matters is elaborated on by Greer. Almost the same is valid for John
Patrick Deveney. In his biography on the sexual mage Paschal B. Randolph, Deveney
refers on various occasions, each time in a slightly different setting but related to
Randolphs ideas on sexual union between humans and elementals, to the novel
(1670) by Nicolas Pierre Henri Montfaucon de Villars.12
Mentioned too are the poem
Popes epic

"

(1842) by Charles Mackay, Alexander

(1717), the fairytale !

(1811) by Baron de la

Motte Fouqu, a work on incubi and succubi by Father Sinistrari,13 and the Abb
Boullans advocation of the Christian duty of celestializing elementals through
unions of life and of being celestialized in turn by similar unions with superior

11

Greer 1995: 162, quoting from Howe 1972: 118.

12

Deveney 1997: 122, 225, 251, 401 note 61, 441 note 5, 501 note 12.

13

Deveney 1997: 251. Perhaps the manuscript Deveney refers to,

, published first in

1875, is a forgery, see Appendix 3.

entities.14 But then, who are these authors? What do their works concern? Why
would they, or why would it be of importance to sexual esoteric discourse?

Consulting the

enlightened me slightly

further through an extensive fourfold entry entitled Intermediary Beings of which a

relatively short section is devoted to Elementals and Desincarnated Entities.15
Although in fact known much earlier in European folklore, this category of beings
was raised to prominence by Paracelsus in 1530.16 Elemental spirits are the nymphs,
sylphs, gnomes and salamanders. Each of them is believed to live in one of the four
elements water, air, earth, and fire respectively; the spirits consequently share the
natures of the elements. The popularity of the elementals was enhanced, Jean Pierre
Brach points out, by Montfaucon de Villars

, which enjoyed

considerable fame and was to foster a whole occultistic and literary posterity on the
subject, all over Europe and up to our day.17

While I did not know what the book by Villars conveyed, it seemed obvious it had
been an influential one, and presumably had links to the works by Pope, Fouqu, and
Mackay. Henceforth, I had enough leads to get started. There were several names and
works I could look into in order to answer my main research question: How to explain
that the Golden Dawn designed a ritual to marry one of its members to an elemental?

As was to be expected, the leads led to other leads, which led to even more leads and
information. A choice had to be made as what to include, what to exclude. The result
of my decision to keep a reasonable amount of data coming from different angles a
decision made in order to sketch the diverse influences Villars novel had, and how
14

Deveney 1997: 225. Godwin, Chanel & Deveney 1995: 72 73: The bizarre Abb Boullan, whose

ideas so divided French occultists at the very time that the H.B. of L. [Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor]
was spreading there, taught his disciples to perform sexual unions of life with superior celestial
beings and the souls of the dead, so as to celestialize themselves; and with Elementals so as to
celestialize them. See also Introvigne 1997: 113.
15

Brach 2005. The paragraph Elementals and Desincarnated Entities covers a half page only.

16

According to Robert Blaser, Kurt Goldammer, and Andreas Kilcher the book was published first in

1566 (Paracelsus 1960: 5; Goldammer 1980: 113; Kilcher 2004: 190), a discrepancy I have not looked
into.
17

Brach 2005: 626 627.

these interfere with one another is that part of the material is included as visual or
literal illustrations to the thread of the thesis. Summaries or excerpts of novels, and
paintings of elementals have been put in frames in Appendix 4. They enliven the
multi faceted bedding which surfaced once I had begun to follow the original leads.

That said, after offering some general background information (2), my findings and
argument unfolds. The life and major work of Montfaucon de Villars and his times
are described in 3. From there the

trail is tracked in the arts,

i.e. in poems, paintings, and fairytales in which sylphs, undines or salamanders play a
major role (4a). Several of these are created by artists who had an interest in esoteric
knowledge, but the emphasis here is on the visualisation and portrayals of the
elementals within the arts. In 4b the focus shifts towards esoteric discourse. The
appearances of Villars is particularly highlighted and discussed in the writings of
liphas Lvi, and Madame Blavatsky.

Although it is still difficult for modern day people to view the subject matter
seriously, knowing what I know now, even if quite a bit of the nitty gritty remains
obscure, it does make sense MacGregor Mathers developed a marital ritual involving
a human being and an elemental (5). And perhaps just as unexpected, in a more or
less similar way it makes sense that currently

has been taken up

in the flow of stories related to UFO abductions (Epilogue, 6).

" #

$%
%

&

Soon after my initial incredulous reaction to the Golden Dawns marriage ritual for a
woman and an elemental, I had to admit this may be acceptable from a practical,
common sense point of view, from a mythological one it certainly is not. In fact, the
notion of relationships between humans and nonhuman beings, even the concept of
marriage and intimacy, is in itself an ancient one embedded in rich traditions. Greek
mythology relates many liaisons between gods and mortals resulting in semi divine

offspring.18 Among the tales is the one of Achilles, son of the mortal king Peleus, and
the divine sea nymph Thetis, one of the fifty Nereids, daughters of the sea god Nereus
and the Oceanid Doris. Legendary through the Trojan war, Achilles was killed by the
shot of an arrow in his heel, the single vulnerable spot of his physical body. Another
tale involves Zeus (Jupiter), who in the guise of a swan had intercourse with Leda,
queen of Sparta. After their copulation Leda produced two eggs. From one sprang
Polydeuces (by the Romans known as Pollux) and Helen, from the other Castor and
Clytemnestra. Castor and Pollux are the celestial twin brothers, two stars in the zodiac
sign Gemini, and Patrons of Rome.

Originally in ancient Greek texts, the word

always clear what its distinction is with

means divine being, and it is not

, god. Later in the Hellenistic period,

becomes fairly common for evil spirit. As Georg Luck explains, whose
writing on daemology is illuminating, in the New Testament, as well as in the
pagan texts, we hear of

that entered into persons and caused illness,

19

especially mental illness.

Exorcists were believed to be able to cure people by

driving bad spirits out. The term

originally meant messenger, and whether it

was a good or bad spirit depended on whom it was sent by, an angel or a daemon. In
order to confuse people, occasionally lower spirits pretended to be higher ones only
advanced theurgists could tell the difference. Ideas like these developed over time. So
around 1200 AD Gervase of Tilbury could write:
Apuleius, however, in his book ) "

, says that between the

moon and the earth dwell unclean spirits which are called incubi, from their
oppression (incubatio) of the mind; for they afflict peoples minds in their sleep,
making them believe they are falling from a height or suffocating. They have partly
the nature of human beings and partly that of angels, and when they wish they assume
human form and sleep with women. Merlin is said to have been fathered by one of
these, for he was born, according to the History of the Britons, of a woman but had no
human father. And they say that the Antichrist will be begotten in this way, and will
claim on this account to be the son of a virgin. We know that many things are seen
every day relating to these phenomena. We have actually observed that some demons
18

Among the many books on Greek mythology I chose Willis 2000.

19

Luck 1987: 164. See also Brach 2005: 617.

love women with such passion that they break into unheard of acts of lewdness, and
when they come to bed with them they bear down upon them with extraordinary
pressure, and yet are seen by no one else.20

All through the Middle Ages people believed an incubus to be a demon lover who
preyed on young women by night. To deceive a woman, the incubus would take on a
human form, sometimes disguising himself as the womans husband. Its female
equivalent was the succubus, seeking out male victims. There were diverse theories as
to whether or not the devil could impregnate women. If so, the most voiced theory
was that the devil as a succubus could collect semen from a man, and, changing into
an incubus, could discharge it in a woman. Once conceived by the Demons love, so a
more than once rehearsed case of a girl had shown, the child could turn out to be
monstrous. One of the theoretical problems theologians had to deal with was the
status of such offspring: did it have a soul? Towards the end of the fifteenth century,
linked to the appearance of the

(c. 1486) by Heinrich Kramer

and Jacob Sprenger, a major change in perception occurred. People became convinced
of the existence of sorcerers who had signed a pact with the devil, authors of witch
studies inform.21 The conviction persisted for three centuries. Sorcerers, it was
believed, gathered in nocturnal sabbaths during which they worshipped the devil. The
feasts ended with a great banquet at which children were devoured, followed by an
orgy in which sorcerers coupled with demon succubi and witches with incubi.22 Yet
as Walter Stephens has argued, what really interested the interrogators of the evil
doers was the knowledge to gain about the nature of demons. Witches intimacy with
incubi supposedly gave them facts or insight the clergy was deeply interested in,
therefore witches were interrogated ad nauseam.23

Counter to the ideas about the relationship between witches and the devil are the ideas
based upon the "

"

. The language of mystics like Origen, Hadewych, and

Bernard of Clairvaux is clearly erotic. Jesus as bridegroom, Jerusalem as bride,

embraces and kisses between bride and groom have led to a stream within mysticism
20

Gervase of Tilbury cited in Meyrone 2006: 46.

21

See for instance Mackay 1962: 480 481; Masters 1962; Sallmann 1993; Stephens 2002.

22

Sallmann 1993: 446.

23

Stephens 2002: 14 ff.

earmarked as bridal mysticism. Frequently erotic in nature is also the complex

relationship between the Unicorn and the Virgin Mary or a young, beautiful woman, a
theme carrying a long tradition in Christian symbolism. Albertus Magnus (1200
1280) for instance acknowledged the creature with overwhelming horn power as
Christ, and vividly stated:
[T]he Unicorn raged in heaven and earth until our radiant Lady took Him in her lap
when He penetrated her citadel that is to say, into the lap of her chaste body, so that
she could nurse Him at her breast and dress Him in humble flesh...24

Another source where humans encounter nonhuman beings is of course to be found in

folklore. There are many stories in which fairies steal human babies and swap them
with their ugly own, the so called changelings;25 mutual off spring can be illustrated
by the tale of Tom Thumb;26 the importance of intimate affection by the story of the
princess who had to kiss a frog. Paracelsus treatise
+

"

"

* "

(Appendix 4, Frame 1) basically

mingles folklore inclined tales like Melusina (Appendix 4, Frame 4) with those on
incubi and succubi. Although %

is all about fairies

interaction with humans, Shakespeare actually does not seem to have known much
and cared less about such popular beliefs.27 Nevertheless, once adapted by
Shakespeare, folkloristic beliefs about the fairy king Oberon, the fairy queen Titania,
and the changeling Puck (Robin Goodfellow) were brought to an artistic level.28 %
,

challenged stage directors to be creative and inventive.

The play was performed over most of the time during a century and a half after its
creation around 1595, and again in the second half of the nineteenth century up to the

24

Albertus Magnus cited in Gotfredsen 1999: 37.

25

For an extensive explanation on changelings see Briggs 1976: 69 72, and Silver 1999: 62 78 (the

latter includes a series of photos of uncanny faces of babies that may explain the folklore around
changelings); for brief ones consult Rose 1998: 64, or Simpson & Roud 2000: 53.
26

Briggs 1976: 402 404; Rose 1998: 311; Simpson & Roud 2000: 362 363; Wood 2001: 31 32.

27

Dobson 2001: 134.

28

The figures Oberon, Titania, and Puck trace back to the thirteenth century French romance $

&. Another source %

owes to is Apuleis

) of the second century, translated into English in 1566 (Dobson 2001: 297).

10

twentieth century.29 Themes from it became visualised in paintings by Henry Fuseli,

and the visionary William Blake, the forerunners of the Victorian fairy painters.30
Many of the nineteenth century paintings depict fairies as beautiful thinly clothed
women with eerie, transparent insect type wings thereby, intentionally or otherwise,
arousing attractive, intimate fantasies in men, which is a notion ultimately linking
back in time to Villars

'
'

%
*

Details about the life of Nicolas Pierre Henri Montfaucon de Villars are merely
scattered throughout the literature. From what I had access to some promising works
remained out of reach31 my conclusion is that most authors repeat a few facts
written down first in the late seventeenth, and early eighteenth century;32 only
centuries later a handful of scholars unearthed new bits and pieces.33 Put together, the
available information offers an unusual combination of activities and character traits
of the man.
29

Dobson 2001: 298 299. The play inspired others to more or less similar stage performances where

fairies, dryads, sylphs, half human and half nonhuman beings play a role (Lambourne 1997).
30

Maas 1997: 11 12; Phillpotts 1999: 13, 46; Silver 1999: 20 ff; Wood 2001: 11, 18.

31

I have been unable to obtain a. Doyon 1942 (perhaps not so promising since Laufer in Villars 1963:

62 judged it a spirituelle version romance of Doyons introduction to Villars 1921); b. Mot 1970;
and the introductions by c. Clara Miccinelli & Carlo Animato, d. Horacio Vazquez Rial, and e. Ramos
Gmez & Mara Teresa (Table 2, Nos. 3, 4 and 6 in Appendix 1).
32

Many refer to the remark about Villars by Vigneul Marville (penname of Pre Bonaventure

dArgonne) in

,$

, Paris, 1699 (quoted in full by Laufer in Villars

1963: 10 note 3), a comment written in a letter by Madame Svign to her daughter on September 16,
1671 (cited among others in Villars 1921: XIX, and McKenna 1990: 236 237), and Pierre Bayle in his
$
33

/ .

The three scholars adding new data to Villars personal life are Doyon in Villars 1921: V XLII, Nelli

1978: 127 145, McKenna 1990: 230 250, and McKenna 1998. Mot 1970 is consulted by Nelli 1978:
128, 133. It brought some family details to the fore not mentioned by any one else. (Descotes 1980,
McKenna 1990, and McKenna 1998 refer to neither Nelli 1978 nor Mot 1970.) Antoine Adam relates
Villars to the Abb dAubignac, see Appendix 2.

11

Born at the estate du Vilar (diocese dAlet, south of Carcassonne) in 1638,34 as third
son of Jean Franois de Montfaucon and Jeanne Ferrouil de Montgaillard, two noble
families from the Languedoc, Nicolas was destined to the Church by his mother. He
was named after the bishop and count of Alet, Nicolas Pavillon.35 Assigned the
position in 1637, Pavillon arrived in Alet in 163936 and found the people occupied
with all kinds of illegal pleasures of life, in a region controlled by the capricious
Jacques dAoustenc, and, later, his sons Pierre and Bernard.37 Not without dispute,
Pavillon turned the diocese into a place of pilgrimage for friends of Port Royal, the
monastery close to Paris known for its involvement with the theological doctrines of
Cornelius Jansenius (1585 1638), and Blaise Pascal (1623 1662).38

From correspondence between the Benedictine monk and archaeologist Dom Bernard
de Montfaucon (1655 1741) to his sister Madame dAoustenc, and their genealogy, it
is deducted that the two were related to Nicolas Pierre Henri Montfaucon. Bernard de
Montfaucon had an older half brother named Jean Franois de Montfaucon de La
Pjan, who thus had family ties to Nicolas Pierre Henri as well.39 More about the
latter in due course.

Having received his education at the diocese seminary, and the University of
Toulouse, and apparently bright, ambitious but poor, the young Abb decided to try

34

The best discussion about Villars year of birth and death is presented by Nelli 1978: 133 134, who,

however, did not offer the date April 30, 1673 for Villars day of passing that McKenna 1990: 238 note
37, saw in a manuscript. The years most often mentioned for his birth are 1635, 1638, and 1640. See
notes 36 and 61.
35

Nelli 1978: 127.

36

Although Nelli was aware Pavillons ordainment as bishop of Alet in 1637, he did not take this into

account when discussing Villars year of birth, which, in case Villars was named after Pavillon indeed,
seems more likely to have been 1638, not 1635 or 1640, the other years mentioned in sources. Adding
35, the age at which Villars is said to have died, to 1638 sums up to 1673, which corroborates with
McKennas reference to Villars year of death, see notes 34 and 61.
37

McKenna 1998; see also McKenna 1990: 238. On the dubious financial affairs of dAoustencs, see

Larguier 2005.
38

Most informative on Port Royal are Lesaulnier & McKenna 2004.

39

McKenna 1990: 238; McKenna 1998; McKenna 2004. See also Omont 1892: 85.

12

his fortune by preaching in Paris, where he arrived at the end of 1660.40 He quickly
began to meet libertines regularly at the tavern at the Porte de Richelieu, a group
actively distributing des nouvelles et libelles against the King and the State.41 It
landed him in trouble: Pierre de Villars, as he is recorded in files, was arrested in early
1661. Considered un provincial plus maladroit que dangereux he was set free,
together with others convicted for the same reason, soon after the death of Cardinal
Giulio Mazarin, the libertines opponent. The following year the Abb Villars is
spotted in Toulouse through another police rapport. Accused by their nephew Pierre
de Ferrouil, Nicolas Pierre Henri, his two brothers Gabriel and Louis, their sister
Anne, and a valet, were condemned August 12, 1662 for the murder on Pierres
father, Paul de Ferrouil. Now, the reason why the four Montfaucon children and an
accomplice must have killed Paul de Ferrouil is that Paul de Ferrouil, sieur de
Montgaillard, previously had murdered his sisters husband, Jean Franois de
Montfaucon, i.e. the father of Gabriel, Louis, Nicolas Pierre Henri, and Anne. (Ren
Nelli suspects they wanted to recuperate their part of their mothers inheritance.42)
The four disappeared; only the valet was convicted. The Abb travelled to Paris again,
but was back in Toulouse anew when Pierre de Ferrouil sought revenge, and placed a
new complaint. Probably with the intention to end the family feud once and for all,
the children Montfaucon set out to assassinate their nephew,
mais ils ne russissent aprs avoir bless mort une femme de garde, qu incendier
le chteau de Montgaillard, dune faon si complte, il est vrai, qui tous les
membres de limmeuble furent consums. Un nouvel arrt du Parlement de
Toulouse condamna, le 2 dcembre 1669, les Montfaucon tre attachs, briss,
rompus sur roue jusqu la mort, plus une indemnit de six mille livres accorde
Ferrouil.43

Again without getting caught, Villars took off to Paris for a third time. He must have
continued his participation in the literary circles which Vieul Marville characterises as

40

Doyon in Villars 1921: VI.

41

Doyon in Villars 1921: VII; Nelli 1978: 128.

42

Nelli 1978: 129.

43

Nelli 1978: 129.

13

une cabale de gens de bel esprit & de belle humeur comme lui.44 Hubert Juin keenly
concludes Villars to be an abb de hasard et non de vocation; Roger Laufer an
abb de salon.45 Dominique Descotes believes he probably frequented lacadmie
dAubignac.46 All three descriptions seem to fit for Villars participated with an
erudite, polemical, and even quite original manner in the complex debate between
Jesuits, Jansenists, Pascalisants, and friends of Port Royal. Complex because it is
difficult to sort out the differences between the Jansenists, Pascalisants, friends of
Port Royal, and others.47 The broad range of contemporary theological issues were
criticized by him from a libertine and enlightened point of view in a satirical style of
writing. To fully assess this style, and its novelty, a further study is needed: there may
be an important key in the milieu of the Abb dAubignac, but as far as I am aware,
no one has looked into this in depth (Appendix 2). Anyway, the writing brought
Villars once more in trouble, and, although not fairly acknowledged, it also brought
him lasting fame.

"

, anonymously published

first on September 28, 1670,48 was an instant hit. A second print with the authors
name was issued before the end of the year, and many more followed, proving its
success which lasted for over a century (Appendix 1).
polemicised the controversy, initiated by Isaac Louis Le Maitre de Sacys translation
of the New Testament in 1667,49 between Jansenists (Port Royal) and Jesuits by
introducing a third party to the scene, the obscure occultists, personified in the
character of the Count de Gabalis. Since the novel satirically challenged common,
contemporary religious views, and carried some dangerous implications, Antoine
44

Vigneul Marville cited by Laufer in Villars 1963: 10 note 3. See note 32.

45

Laufer in Villars 1963: 54; Juin in Villars 1966: 11.

46

Descotes 1980: 4.

47

In a much more extensive manner than Rabbe 1870 and Descotes 1980, McKenna 1990: 230 ff, 1998

presents Villars in the theological discourse of Paris during the second half of the seventeenth century.
48

Doyon in Villars 1921: XI; Wagner 1939: 201 202 note 2. Laufer in Villars 1963: 7 says that the

books first edition was registered on November 28, 1670.

49

McKenna 1990: 230; McKenna 1998.

and Villars

contributed to the complicated controversy between Gilles Mnage and Dominique Bouhours. Their
quarrel at the end of 1672 portrays the tableau satirique des critiques littraires et des grammairiens
at its height (McKenna 1998).

14

Arnauld (1612 1692; brother of the sisters Mre Angelique, and Mre Agnes, who
both served as abbess of Port Royal) chase Villars away from either lHtel de Lionne
or lHtel de Liancourt,50 and banned the book;51 the archbishop of Paris, Guillaume
Du Plessis de La Brunetire, forbade Villars to preach at Saint Thomas on January 28,
1671.52 According to Antony McKenna the events were reported by someone named
Monsieur de la Pranie, whom he, aided by research from Jean Lesaulnier, identifies
as Jean Franois Montfaucon de La Pjan, the relative of the Abb Villars mentioned
above!53 On the recommendation of Nicolas Pavillon, the bishop of Alet after whom
the Abb Villars was named, Jean Franois Montfaucon de La Pjan had become
tutor to the children of Prince de Conti in Paris in 1669. Consequently, Jean Franois
was a friend of Port Royal. Most likely Montfaucon de La Pjan played a role in the
tension between Villars and friends of Port Royal. He even may have been behind the
decisions to chase his cousin away, to ban further publication of the book, and/or to
interdict Villars to preach.

Nonetheless, within a year a reprint of

was issued in

Amsterdam,54 and Nicolas Pierre Henri wrote three, probably four, more works. In
early 1671
treatise

-. .

(in two parts) appeared, on September 25 the

came out, and somewhere during the same year the novel
was printed. Actually, the latter contains two novels.55

,%
,

treatises, whereas ,%

-. .

, and

are relatively short

consists of c. 750 pages written, Laufer

expounds, bcls et embrouills, in a hasty and confusing style, implying that

50

McKennas source notes lHtel de Lionne, but he wonders whether it not equally could be lHtel

de Liancourt (McKenna 1990: 236 note 30). Named after the owner/financer, respectively Marquis de
Lionne, and Marquis de Liancourt, both are mansions (and/or public buildings) in Paris.
51

McKenna 1990: 235.

52

Mme Svign cited in McKenna 1990: 236; McKenna 1998.

53

McKenna 1990: 236 note 30; McKenna 1998; McKenna 2004. See also Omont 1892: 85, 89 who

knows the governor of the two princes de Conti by the name of Jean Franois de Lapejean.
54

Among others see Wolfstieg 1912: 954; Laufer in Villars 1963: 56, No. 4; Coumont 2004: 358,

M84.4.
55

Laufer in Villars 1963: 16 17: the first volume is entitled %

, the second

,%

. See also Treske 1933: 13; Declercq 1984.

15

Villars combined and/or used texts previously prepared.56 Interesting to note is the
observation by scholars that the fifth and last dialogue of
the first systematic critique to Pascals +

formulates

. , a fact not unknown among

57

Pascalisants.

Mentioned in the literature occasionally is the fourth title, another short treatise,
. &

also published in 1671.58 Its

,%

author is the Abb de Lignages, said to be the pseudonym of N. P. H. Montfaucon de

Villars,59 who tries to justify the reinstallation of severe rules on abstinence by the
Abb de Ranc for the Abbey of the Trappists, a procedure giving rise to lively
resistance among monks. Laufer considers the work not in accordance with Villars
other writings it seems too profane and he offers a few more objections but
ultimately has no decisive arguments to refute Villars as the man behind the
pseudonym.60

After these publications it became quiet around the writer priest. Villars was killed by
un coup de pistolet at the age of thirty five by one of his relatives (was it Pierre de
Ferrouil?), on the route from Paris to Lyon.61 Presumably, the family feud had led to
his unfortunate death. Shortly thereafter rumours have it that he was killed by gnomes

56

Laufer in Villars 1963: 15. Mme Svign, cited in McKenna 1990: 237, remarked critically: Il

[Villars] fait un livre en 15 jours.

57

Rabbe 1870; Bremond 1921; Doyon in Villars 1921: XXIII ff; Laufer in Villars 1963: 167 168;

Descotes 1980; McKenna 1990: 230 ff; McKenna 1998. Reading into this subject, i.e. the theological
dispute connected to Pascals +

. , and the role Villars works played in this, leads too far astray

from the purpose of this dissertation.

58

Doyon in Villars 1921: XXXI; Treske 1933: 13; Mariel in Villars 1961: 21; Laufer in Villars 1966:

13; Nelli 1978: 132; Declercq 1984. Treske knows two other works ascribed to Villars:
+

, and

1 %

aus denen eine den Lehren von Port Royal

feindliche Einstellung spricht, works I have not looked into.

59

Doyon in Villars 1921: XXXI.

60

Laufer in Villars 1966: 13.

61

Baron Trouv cited in Nelli 1978: 134. See also Bremond 1921: 911, and notes 34 and 36.

16

and sylphs in disguise, as punishment for having made public secrets about the
elementals the Count de Gabalis had entrusted upon him... 62

'

The tale of

, by far Villars most famous work, is told as a

dialogue. Five chapters cover the five meetings the Abb claims to have had with the
protagonist, the Count de Gabalis, a mysterious erudite person from Germany owning
an estate close to the borders of Poland. Briefly after their encounters the grand
Seigneur & grand Cabaliste died of an apoplectic fit at least, that is what the Father
tells his readers on the very first page. Prior to the five encounters, the reader is
informed, he had corresponded with the illustrious German. Being on his way from
Germany to England, the so called Count of Kabbalah63 had stayed a while in Paris,
and were it not for Saturn in an angle, in his own house, and retrograde in Villars
horoscope, and Jupiter in the Ascendant (something we learn in the Cabala the
wisest of all men have), the Count might have decided not to meet Villars.64

On various occasions either the Count or the Abb uses the word Cabaliste or
Cabale supposedly Kabbalistic secrets are revealed and discussed. But the Jewish
wisdom is passed on by sheer name dropping: Raymond Lulle, Prince de la Mirande
[sic], Guillaume Postel. The suggestion that Villars occult inspiration stems from two
letters written by the alchemist Gioseppe Francesco Borri (1616 1695), letters
eventually published in Borris

62

, has been refuted on the

Voltaire, cited by Mariel in Villars 1961: 31. Due to its wittiness, almost all authors writing about

Villars I am no exception! mention this peculiar explanation. See among others Doyon in Villars
1921: XXX; Treske 1933: 12; Mariel in Villars 1961: 21; Laufer in Villars 1963: 10 note 3; Nelli 1978:
133; Descotes 1980: 4.
63

About Gabalis = Kabbalah see Treske 1933: 13 note 14; Seeber 1944: 74; Mariel in Villars 1961: 18;

Laufer in Villars 1963: 161; Peuckert 1967: 460 ff, 497 ff.
64

Villars 1997: 3. The lines carrying astrological terminology must stem from Jerome Cardan, see for

instance Cardans aphorisms relating to nativities in Bonatus & Cardan of Milan 1993: 77.

17

grounds that it has to be the other way around.65 Strands of ideas of, and references to
quite a bunch of other, often quite well known authors were added by Villars and give
the text an erudite flavour. Yet it is Paracelsus, whose complete oeuvre had been
published in Latin, in Genova, 1658, the most learned man who ever lived, the
divine, the almost to be worshipped Paracelsus, according to the Count, who inspired
Villars.66

The plot, the secrets revealed by the Count, concern the four Peoples of the
elements inhabiting the seas, rivers, air, flames, and earth. They are long lived but
mortal creatures without a soul. Since they were very unhappy with this, God, whose
mercy is boundless, let the creatures have the awareness that just as man, by the
alliance which he has contracted with God, has been made a participant in Divinity, so
the Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders, by the alliance which they have it in
their power to contract a man, can become participants in immortality.67 In other
words, the elementals were capable of Beatitude if they were fortunate enough to
marry a sage or one of our daughters. Precisely these few basic ideas originate in
Paracelsus

111. (Appendix 4, Frame 1). From hereon Villars builds

his own story. Whereas Paracelsus emphasises the water elementals (undines), and
wood creatures, Villars focuses on the sylphs. The alteration makes sense when one
considers that the element air had become a topic of scientific research for Blaise
Pascal. Pascal disagreed with Ren Descartes about the nature of air (was it a vacuum
or not?), and had his brother in law climb mountains carrying a recently invented
piece of measuring equipment, the barometer. To Pascals findings, air had a finite
65

Villars 1788: iv; Treske 1933: 22 23; Seeber 1944: 75; Mackay 1962: 211; Laufer in Villars 1963:

24, Juin in Villars 1966: 25; Schuchard 1975: 171 172; commentaries in Villars 1997: xiii xiv.
Presumably Borri copied from
then included the letters in

in (made up) letters, antedated these to 1666, and

2

which was published first in 1781.

NB. According to Marco Pasi (email August 9, 2007), in an Italian edition of

(Appendix 1, Table 2, No. 3) apparently some new evidence is presented in support of the thesis of
Villars plagiarising Borri.
66

Villars 1997: 63. For the linkages between Villars and Paracelsians, see Laufer in Villars 1963: 26

31, and Goldammer 1980: 89 ff. An exception to view Paracelsus as source of inspiration for Villars is
Wagner 1939: 202, who argues Villars fourfold of elementals to be a synthesis of ideas developed by
Michael Psellus and Agrippa.
67

Villars 1997: 35.

18

weight a conclusion Descartes never became convinced of.68 By choosing sylphs,

the elements of the air, instead of water nymphs, Villars hints to Pascal the scientist,
one of the men he was arguing with in the novel as a theologian. Sylphs suit the
public discourse much better than nymphs, or, for that matter, salamanders or gnomes.

Then, the Count teaches, ever since Adam sinned with Eve, the elementals, in
particular the sylphs and salamanders, had developed love relationships with humans.
Once upon a time a sylph had been advised by the sages to take the likeness of a
mans wife, so the man would not discover that he actually loved a sylph an idea
directly derived from the rich bed of stories about demons intrusive ways to seduce
women. The couples even brought forth great children. During the discussions the
Count de Gabalis mentions several. Zoroaster, Romulus, Servius Tullius, and
Hercules were sons of salamanders, Plato, Alexander the Great, Melchizedek, and
Merlin of sylphs.

Wittiness in the tale occurs when the Count brings up magic in the format of
Porphyrus fire oracles, and a Prayer of the Salamanders. When advising his new
pupil, an advice based upon the Abbs horoscope, communion with a Salamander,
and marriage with a Sylph, Gabalis explains that to attract the spirits, one
has only to seal a goblet full of compressed Air, Water, or Earth and to leave it
exposed to the Sun for a month. Then separate the Elements scientifically, which is
particularly easy to do with Water and Earth. It is marvellous what a magnet for
attracting Nymphs, Sylphs, and Gnomes, each one of these purified Elements is. After
taking the smallest possible quantity every day for some months, one sees in the air
the flying Commonwealth of the Sylphs, the Nymphs come in crowds to the shores,
the Guardians of the Treasures parade their riches. Thus, without symbols, without
ceremonies, without barbaric words, one becomes ruler over these Peoples. They
exact no worship whatever from the Sage, whose superiority to themselves they fully
recognise. Thus venerable Nature teaches her children to repair the elements by

68

Rupp 2006: 137 138.

19

means of the Elements. Thus man recovers his natural empire, and can do all things in
the Elements without the Devil, and without Black Art.69

Ever a sceptic, ever a free, enlightened kind of thinker Villars has difficulties
imagining the elements not as imps of Satan but as beautiful beings. Besides, how
could a single elemental furnish blood, flesh and bones? Throughout their
conversations Villars remains critical towards the Counts teachings. Still, Gabalis
continues stoically, occasionally showing emotion through a smile or a shrug with the
shoulders. He only slightly gives in to the Fathers worries about the Devil, when he
confesses that the elementals tenderness
is apt to be somewhat violent. But if exasperated women have been known to murder
their perjured lovers, we must not wonder that these beautiful and faithful mistresses
fly into a passion when they are betrayed, and all the more so since they only require
men to abstain from women whose imperfections they cannot tolerate, and give us
leave to love as many of their number as we please. They prefer the interest and
immortality of their companions to their personal satisfaction, and they are very glad
to have the Sages give to their Republic as many immortal children as possible.70

With the obvious intent to convince Villars, the Great Kabbalist states at some point
to summon the Sylphs of Cardan. It does not happen, at least not in the story, but
again, it is a humorous element tying in with public knowledge of the occult. For
Fazio Cardan, the father of Girolamo (Jerome) Cardan, one of the many historical
figures flitting through the novel and well known for his astrological almanacs,71 had
been visited by seven unknown beings, clothed in different colours, who made rather
strange statements to him as to their nature and occupation.72 These unknown beings,
69

Villars 1997: 51. The description the flying Commonwealth of the Sylph in French is la

rpublique volante des Sylphes (Villars 1900: 18).

70

Villars 1997: 137 139. Note the word republic: a hint to Villars criticism towards the monarchy?

71

See note 64.

72

Villars 1997: 15. The commentaries in Villars 1963: 162, and Villars 1997: 208 210 inform that

Jerome Cardan (1501 1576) discovered a note among his fathers papers, dated August 13, 1491, in
which he described an encounter with seven men that had lasted for over three hours. Facius Cardan,
Jeromes father, had asked them who they were they were men composed, as it were, of air, and
subject to birth and death, but their lives might even reach to three hundred years of duration, they
had answered. They were more closely related to the gods than mankind, but were yet separated from

20

the Count explains, had been Sylphs. Other legendary figures mentioned are the
divine Anthony (Appendix 4, Frame 2), the celebrated Magdalen of the Cross,
Abbess of a Monastery at Cordova in Spain, the blessed Danhuzerus, the worthy
Agobard, Bishop of Lyons (Appendix 4, Frame 3). Mostly the content of the legends
is not explained; the figures are used in arguments and the reader is supposed to
immediately know the basic details attached to these devout men and women. As is
the case with Cardan, de Gabalis explains each and every peculiar case as if it
involves elementals, not demons, not witches. While talking about the Comtes de
Cleves Villars interrupts the Count, I verily believe, Sir, he declares, that you are
about to tell me the fairy tale of Melusina.73 When comparing the reaction, alias
interpretation of de Gabalis concerning the story of the water nymph with a modern
day encyclopaedia entry on Melusina, it is obvious Villars again in an amusing
way alters the tale to fit his own agenda (Appendix 4, Frame 4).

Towards the end of the book Villars seems willing to go along with the uncommon
teachings of the Count. But this is in words uttered to the Count; to the reader Villars
talks otherwise. Were he certain that his readers would have the proper spirit, and
not take it amiss that he amuses himself at the expense of fools, the Father would
love to publish a series of similar conversations (something he did not, others
pretending to be him did, see Appendix 1).74 Villars even emphasises the reader ought
not to suspect him of giving credit to occult sciences under the pretence of
ridiculing those sciences. The warning has been to no avail. Over the centuries
several people did come to believe the Count of Gabalis to have been a real sage. In
case someone had doubts, it has even been advised to leave the question open and
attend to the teachings of the book, for it all had meaning to the inner life; it was in

them by an almost immeasurable distance. The source of the authors of the commentaries: Cardan
1550: book XIX.
In

'

Jerome Cardan wrote about the demon his father openly confessed attended

him; Cardan senior accepted it as a familiar spirit (Cardan 1962: 10, 297 note 3).
73

Villars 1997: 153. See also Laufer in Villars 1963: 173 174.

74

Villars 1997: 201.

21

the inner life where the Count and the novel could leave a subtle influence upon the
mind and prepare it for a flight upwards!75

Due to the popularity of the novel, ideas developed by Villars have been picked up by
diverse authors who have used it in very creative ways. In their turn, those new works
were read and used by others after them, and it is through this chain of reading,
getting inspired, creatively making use of particular ideas and constructing
innovatively fresh yet related works that

has evolved out of its

original setting into something with an existence of its own. It enabled the
elementals to develop into related but separate genres elaborated on in 4.

'$

It has been said before that the basic ideas of the Count of Gabalis teachings were
taken from Paracelsus. The novel then was spiced up with sentences filled with
astrological terminology, conjuring practices, and references to legendary and
folkloristic figures involving incubi and succubi. During the second half of the
seventeenth century, tales and theories about witches, Satan, (elemental) spirits,
intercourse, and the probable offspring of interracial copulation were an integrated
part of societys discourse. The air and the earth were, so to speak, crowded with all
kinds of nonhuman beings, and, as a result, there were more authors addressing the
subject of the beings interactions with humans. Millions of spiritual creatures walk
the Earth / Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep, John Milton writes
metaphorically in his famous drama +

(1667) about the entrance of evil

(and its beings) into the world and Gods war against Satan.76 These millions of
spiritual creatures get a more concrete shape in Johannes Prtorius eccentric
%
75

Seeber 1944: 76 note 17, quoting from a Theosophic article by Bjerregaard 1914. Note also Waite

1923: 37, 39 40; Hall 1939: 7; Goldammer 1980: 159 note 3. Treske 1933: 26, referring to Gardner
1923: Although written in a satirical vein, yet it contains profound truths; possibly the author found it
necessary in those days to disseminate knowledge in this fashion.
76

Lines 677 678 of book IV by Milton 1999.

22

(1666), a large collection of rare and well known legends and

myths of elemental spirits like Alpmnnergen, Drachenfinder, Feuer , Stein ,

und Waldmnner, Luftleute und Windmenschen, Pflanzleute, and Zwerge.77
(Almost 160 years later, in 1834, Heinrich Heine, writing about Elementargeister
himself, characterised, to my opinion still accurately, %

as a

Wust von Unsinn, grubbed up superstition, learned quotations, melancholic and

adventurous histories.78) Besides, not only in books occult and divine powers, and/or
the interaction between humans and demons, and/or the existence of intermediary
beings were brought to the fore. In her PhD dissertation, Julitte van den Elsen
convincingly argues monsters, demons, very strange stories, malformed babies (were
those the result of copulation between humans and nonhumans?), and the like to be
sincere topics discussed in public newspapers and periodicals.79

On the one hand, showing the air inhabited by all sorts of nonhuman creatures backs
up the argument Villars addressed contemporary popular discourse about the
supernatural and magic, i.e. the era, Pierre Mariel poignantly characterises, in which
quatre cents femmes faisaient bien leurs affaires en regardant dans les mains, and
people tirait lhoroscope de chaque enfant en mme temps quon le baptisait.80 On
the other hand, zooming into particular books illustrates how authors grounded in the
same rich bed of anecdotal and exemplary cases did address ideas and issues in
specific ways. Particular themes directly or indirectly hinted at by Villars, and names
dropped by him, light up quite differently in works of others. This will be highlighted
by means of a few details taken from two associatively comparable manuscripts, and
the nightmare.

As badinage and amusement, Jean de La Fontaine (1621 1695), most famous for his
fables in which animal characters were modelled after diverse personae in French
society, wrote a new version of Apuleius ancient tale of Psyche and Eros (Cupid),
%

Paris, a year before Barbin printed

. It was published in 1669 by Claude Barbin in

. Set in contemporary time,

77

Prtorius 1666. Johannes Prtorius was the writers name of Hans Schulz (1630 1680).

78

Heine 1834: 21 22. Floeck 1909: 14 talks about der sensationslsterne Joh. Praetorius.

79

van der Elsen 2003.

80

Mariel in Villars 1961: 11.

23

La Fontaine unfolds the tale of the young princess Psyche (psyche is Greek for soul),
the goddess Venus (utterly jealous of Psyches beauty), Cupid (son of Venus; Venus
asks him to cause Psyche to fall in love with the ugliest man on earth, but he
accidentally pricks himself so Psyche falls in love with him), Zephyrus (the west
wind, caretaker of Psyche), and a host of additional creatures such as satyrs, dryads,
fauns, nymphs, Jupiter, Pan. Psyche and Cupids love story is read by the friends
Polyphide, Acante, Ariste and Glaste. After Psyches parents consultation of an
oracle, somewhere along the line an episode follows in which Psyche fears she is
expecting a child from a monster. The drama ends with the couples marriage in
heaven and the birth of their beautiful child, Volupt. Staging the friends meeting in
Versailles, La Fontaine makes the four discuss elements of the tale, and let them write
some poems, one of them with the lines
Assemblez, sans aller si loin,
Vaux, Liancourt, et leurs naads,
Y joignant, en cas de besoin,
Ruel avecques ses cascades.81

The topoi of an affair between a mortal and a god, mythic creatures, oracles, and the
fear of a monstrous offspring are pictured vividly and in a modern way by La
Fontaine, not only through major elements like the four friends against the
environmental background of Versailles, but also through minor details like the
cascades in Richelieus park at Rueil, and statues in the gardens of Vaux and
Liancourt. Villars did the very same. He located the meetings between the Count and
himself in present time, and during their second meeting the two went to Ruel, a
pleasant place, where the Count made straight for the gardens labyrinth.82 Whilst the
tales were staged in the natural, physical world, strictly speaking both authors wrote
fantasy, a genre for which La Fontaine, especially through his fables, is appraised as
its initiator. Villars set the trend for romantic reveries between humans and sylphs, or
undines, or salamanders, elaborated on in 4a. Still, even though subjects in both
novels are similar, the major subjects themselves are treated rather differently. La
81

La Fontaine 1965: 413.

82

Villars 1997: 21, 23, 71. Not being well informed (see on the gardens at Rueil Woodbridge 1981),

Scarboro 1985: 237 considers Ruel a city.

24

Fontaines usage of the ancient tale is a novelty83 but the intimacy between, and
marriage of, Psyche and Cupid, and the birth of Volupt, does not question the
possibility of such a relationship proper, nor the quality of a child from mixed
parental bloodlines. The whereabouts of a god and human ultimately remain in the
realm of myth; no secrets about the supernatural are revealed.

A complex topic connected to sexual affairs between humans and nonhumans, one
also having a long history and nowadays explained as a health disorder called sleep
paralysis, is the nightmare.84 In the thirteenth century Gervase of Tilbury (see the
citation on p. 8 9) considered spirits unclean incubi, partly human, partly angelic.
Some incubi, Gervase of Tilbury believed, could love women with such passion the
women experienced something then identified as a nightmare. Three centuries later
Paracelsus thought nightmares to stem from incubi and succubi, beings he believed to
be spirits formed of the semen of those who commit the unnatural sin of Onan by
which he seems to have meant masturbation.85 Villars did not use the word
nightmare, but since its implied meaning was commonly known, he must have been
aware of it, and addressed the subject. Above all, he advocated marriage, hence
intercourse with elementals, stated that the tenderness of elementals is apt to be
somewhat violent (i.e. elementals have an evil streak), and he considered it difficult
to imagine elements not as Satans imps. By writing so, Villars challenged the idea of
witches copulation with the devil, and precisely therefore
carried some dangerous implications.

Completely different in focus compared to the two novels of Villars and La Fontaine,
is

"

, a manuscript about abnormal phenomena, often dealing

with super and subterranean inhabitants witnessed in the Scottish Highlands, written
by Minister Robert Kirk (1644 1692). Spurred through curiosity about the natural
83

est un conte rotique, merveilleux, une romance spirituelle et

enleve, une tude de lme et des interdits du mariage. Ce roman a compltement drout << la
critique >> contemporaine, par son mlange de prciosit, dhumour, de galanterie et dallusions
mythologiques (Fontimpe 2001: 30).
84

Broughton 1968: 1071; Schneck 1969. See also Powell 1973: 42 ff; Blackmore 1998; Bown 2004:

152 153, 161 ff; Appendix 4, Frame 5.

85

Masters 1962: 8.

25

philosopher Robert Boyle (1627 1691), the text of Kirk and his notion of pre
cognition (clairvoyance, second sight) have led to our modern understanding of these
words. From a clairvoyant as opposed to a sylph point of view, Kirk refers to a story
of Jerome Cardans father, a figure Villars also brings up:

Cardan speaks of his father his

the species of his friend in a Moonshyne night

riding fiercely by his window on a whett horse, the verie night his friend dyd at a
vast distance from him,

that som alteration would suddenly

ensue.86

Picking from the same pool of anecdotes Villars had to his disposal, obviously Kirk
chose an incident out of Fazio Cardans life suited to his subject of interest. Note in
addition the way in which Kirk puts together the nightmare, succubi, ladies of the
aereal order, and aerel neighbours, i.e. the spirits of the air who do not change into
beautiful, romantically inclined sylphs:
And the most furious tribe of the Dmons are not permitted by providence to attacke
men so frequentlie either by night, or by day: For in our High Lands, as there be
many fair Ladies of this aereal order which doe often tryst with lascivious young men
in the qualitie of succubi or lightsom paramours and strumpets [] so doe manie of
our Highlanders (as if a strangling by the night Mare, pressed with a fearful dream, or
rather possessed by one of our aerel Neighbours [)].87

In brief, Prtorius curious compilation of stories, the usage of Apuleius tale by La

Fontaine, Kirks "

, (and modern academic studies like Michael

Hunter of Kirks manuscript , and van den Elsen, neither elaborated on here), help
much in gaining insight in the discourse of the time concerning the supernatural. They
prove the intensity of diverse ideas about the reality of elementals and aereal, mythic
or devilish creatures at the end of the seventeenth century, the era in which
Montfaucon de Villars composed

. It is to the Abbs credit to

have made occult knowledge and teachings sound hilarious and serious at the same
86

Hunter & Kirk 2001: 97, my

. Hunter notes to this passage: The Italian natural philosopher

Girolamo Cardan (1501 1576) does indeed record the preternatural abilities of his father, Fazio (1444
1524), see Cardan 1550: book xix (De dmonibus), and Cardan 1558: book xvi, ch. 93.
87

Hunter & Kirk 2001: 98.

26

time. Hence, to believers ears the novel whispers secret truths and wisdom, to non
believers it sparks enlightened, humorous insights.

- (

&

$%

As a result of its success the novels plot of romantic love relationships between
humans and elementals, mostly sylphs, was taken up and expanded on. Currently
sylphs are recognized as a topos in French literature, poetry, and comedies;88 closely
related are the water fairies, or undines, in German romantic literature and music;89
English literature and visual arts reveal intertwined connections between fairies,
sylphs and undines.90 At first sight, the occasions in which

is

acknowledged to have played a role in the (romantic) portrayal of elementals are not
manifold; a few authors mention or refer to Villars themselves, other authors,
especially those who prepared introductions to new editions of

show its influence to a high degree. In hindsight it even seems that over the years a
reasonable amount of academics have paid attention to Villars: I could compile a
much longer list than I had originally anticipated. Still, what is missing is an updated,
scholarly study, one that integrates the various studies, bits and pieces loosely or
strongly related to the impact of

in esoteric discourse. What

follows is a first attempt to bring order to the relatively wide range of material, the
elements discovered to answer my research question.

The first half of this section covers the artistic works inspired by Villars story
whereby attention is also given to esoteric connections. The main focus of the second
half of the section is the way in which

has appeared in literature

earmarked as esoteric. Through both lines works surface which must have had the
interest of members of the Golden Dawn.
88

Doyon in Villars 1921: XIV ff, XXXIV ff; Seeber 1944; Laufer in Villars 1963: 48 52; Juin in

Villars 1966: 13 ff; Delon 1999: 7 ff.

89

Goldammer 1980; Krieger 2000.

90

See the studies by Maas 1997; Silver 1999; Bown 2001; Purkiss 2001; Wood 2001.

27

+.

The author regularly referred to as the one in debt to Villars is, because he said so
himself, the famous English poet Alexander Pope (1688 1744). His mock epic
, a satirical poem of five cantos, was written in several phases. After
the initial version in 1711, the first two cantos were published in 1712. The final
version appeared in 1717, and the third, already extended to five parts, in 1714.91 The
latter includes a dedicatory letter to Mrs Arabella Fermor in which Pope explains how
he came to signify an important part of the poem to the Machinery, a term
invented by the Critics by which he means the section enacted by deities, angels, or
demons:
These Machines I determined to raise on a very new and odd foundation, the
Rosicrucian doctrine of Spirits. (...) The best account I know of them is in a French
book called

, which both in its title and size is so like a novel,

that many of the fair sex have read it for one by mistake. According to these
gentlemen [the Rosicrusians], the four elements are inhabited by spirits, which they
call Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders. The Gnomes or Daemons of Earth
delight in mischief; but the Sylphs, whose habitation is in the air, are the best
conditioned creatures imaginable. For they say, any mortals may enjoy the most
intimate familiarities with these gentle spirits...92

In 1680 two men, independent from one another, translated

into

English. The better known one by Philip Ayres was published by B.M., printer to the
Cabalistical Society of the Sages, at the Sign of the Rosy Crusian (Appendix 1, Table
1, No. 2). Whereas the novel was not written as a Rosicrucian novel Villars did not
hint at secret brotherhoods, nor did he drop the name Christian Rosenkreuz93 , and it

91

The amount of versions of

differs. Cummings 2005 counts three; Schuchard

1975: 171, and Constantine 1997 are more precise and count four. Rogers 2004: 241, 245 246
describes the sequence of versions in even further detail.
92

Pope 1967: 86 87. I have no clue which critics invented the term Rosicrucian Machinery.

93

The possibility of Villars having known the apothecaire Jacob Rose, who founded a Rosicrucian

group in 1660 which lasted till 1676, as hypothetically suggested by Mariel in Villars 1961: 15 17, and
Nelli 1978: 131, is unlikely. Perhaps Villars was aware of Rosicrucian thought, but if so, it must have

28

was understood at the time of publication Villars amused his audience by making fun
of all kinds of beliefs in the supernatural,94 many not long afterwards have come to
consider

as a Rosicrucian novel. Ayres even altered the

translation to that effect he added lines to it, among them the sentence It must
needs be a Ravishing sight, (said I [Villars], smiling) to see a

, in a Chair preaching to all these little Gentle Folke.95 The incorporation

of the novel within Rosicrucianism is not so strange if one considers that Paracelsus
forms an integral part of its thought, and one of its three founding documents is
entitled

(1616) a multi layered tale about marriage. It has

to be noted though, that this chemical wedding is alchemical (and mystical) in

nature, it does not concern the idea of elementals opportunity to gain a soul; the
novel by Johann Valentin Andreae symbolizes a sacred marriage between the
material and the spiritual, it is about regeneration, the birthing of nature, and the
coming of a perfectly pure man.96

Anyway, since Pope explicitly claims to have set

on the

Rosicrucian doctrine of spirits, he must have read the edition translated by Ayres. A
question lingers nonetheless: why does Pope state that many of the fair sex read
Villars novel as a

2 , hence insinuating that those people did not read it as a story

containing serious (esoteric) knowledge whereas he did? Pat Rogers believes there is
little chance the poet was hoodwinked by this opportunistic and in some ways
mischievous book.97 Perhaps he is right, but by the same token Rogers projects a
biased personal opinion onto him since he does not offer a reason why Pope would
not have been misled. Be that as it may,

contributed to the

been one of the many occult lines of thought he used to engage polemically in the debate between
Jansenists, Pascalisants, Jesuits, et cetera.
94

Christian Huygens informed his brother Lodewijk in a letter dated July 31, 1671, about a new book

he had come across in Paris that people considered bien escrit et dune maniere agreable, and seemed
to have been prepared to mock cabbalistic visions (Laufer in Villars 1963: 47).
95

Villars 1680: 169.

96

Edighoffer 2005: 1012. According to Edighoffer 2005: 1010 all of Paracelsus elementary beings

recur in the Rosicrucian novel

(1614), indicating that from the very start of

Rosicrucianism the nymphs, sylphs, pygmies, salamanders, and other spirits have been part of the
Rosicrucian discourse. See for example Mackay 1962: 196.
97

Rogers 2004: 66.

29

perception of

as a text revealing secret Rosicrucian insights.

Those involved or interested in Rosicrucianism would want to know what the Count
of Gabalis had taught.

Popes satire, summarized in a nutshell, tells of the stunningly beautiful Belinda who
awakes one morning and is warned by her guardian air spirit named Aerial to be
careful during the day. Foreseeing disaster, Aerial doesnt know what it might
convey, so when Belinda prepares herself she is to go out on a boat trip on the
Thames Aerial summons fifty of his companion sylphs to guard Belindas petticoat
and the ringlets in her hair. Among the admirers awaiting Belinda at the riverbank is a
young, adventurous Baron who has set himself to win the trophy of trophies, one of
Belindas golden locks. To make sure he wins, the Baron previously had lighted an
altar fire, and prayed to the gods. All the sylphs warnings to Belinda were to no avail.
The terrible crime committed on her, the rape, happens when the Baron succeeds in
snipping off a lock (Appendix 4, Frame 6).
Much can be said and has been said about the poem.98 Regarding the skilful manner in
which Pope uses implications of

Patricia Brckman elucidates

on Belindas lapdog Shock. At some point Shock is equated with a husband. Aware of
the Count de Gabalis Rosicrucian philosophy, it is obvious to Brckman that
Shock is a sylph in disguise. Since ordinary men and women may mistake the
friendly sylphs for demons, she notes,
the sylphs often appear in animal shape to diminish this Aversion, which is had
against them. In these forms, says the Count, they

address themselves to the wanton Frailty of

Lovely "
your little -

, but not at a

; who are affrighted at a

, or

. I could tell you many Tales of

, and certain pretty

in the World... 99

The observation by Brckmann is sharp. She is not aware, however, of Ayers

amendments to Villars text: Villars did not say sylphs transformed in dogs or
98

See Rogers 2004: 240 246; Cummings 2005, and many others.

99

Brckmann 1964: 262, quoting from Villars 1680: 156 157 (Appendix 1, Table 1, No. 2).

30

monkeys (or bears, for that is in the 1680 version also).100 It is Ayers comic addition
to the novel, one that, via Pope, found expression again in Robert Southeys poem
(1799).101

Save romance between a sylph and a human being, Popes vivid writing spurred the
development of the visualization of humans involved with elementals engravings of
Belinda, the Baron and sylphs illustrated several publication of the poem. When in
1798 a new edition was planned by Francis Isaac Du Roveray (1772 1849), Du
Roveray wrote to Henry Fuseli (1741 1825) requesting the favour of a painting to be
reproduced and incorporated in the new edition.102 Fuseli complied.103 Prior to Du
Roverays request, the Swiss born painter, educated to become a Zwinglian minister
(a function he never professed), had envisioned elements of
his paintings

and -

in
.104 To

, %3

(1791), poems written by his friend Erasmus Darwin (1731 1802),105 Fuseli
contributed the frontispiece, offering visual expression to the doctrine of elementals
which Darwin, influenced by Pope, explained in the Apology, thought to afford a
proper machinery for a Botanic poem (Appendix 4, Frame 7).106 The subjects and
dates of these works are indications that Fuseli had at least taken notice of
100

Unaware of Brckmans article, Donna Scarboro also studied the influence of

upon

, and observed the dog similarity (Scarboro 1985: 235). Her source is the

1680 English translation by A. Lovell, an edition I have not had access to, but seen from her notes, it
comes across as very similar to Ayers. This surprises me since the two English translations are said to
be made independent from one another. Based upon other remarks by Scarboro, for instance the
statement that the object of Villars satire was alchemical material and Rosicrucian philosophy
(Scarboro 1985: 236, 239), it is obvious that much of her analysis is off the mark.
101

Southey 1850: 114 116. The poet within the poem first obtains Delias pocket handkerchief,

invokes in verse 2 the spirits of the elements, and casts Delias fury in verse 4 while scissors divide a
fair lock. Thereupon Delia cries: You stupid Puppy, .. you have spoild my Wig! (Southey 1850:
116).
102

Weinglass 1982: 180 181.

103

Tomory 1972: 112 113, plate VIII

104

"

; Weinglass 1982: 191.

Constantine 1997; Weinglass 1982: 180 note 3.

was probably painted

between 1780 1790.

105

Schuchard 1975: 447. See also Frayling 2006: 15.

106

Tomory 1972: 166, quoting from Darwin, thereby referring to

and

31

several years before 1798. In conjunction with his works depicting scenes
from %

, Fuseli is nowadays revered as a forerunner of the

Victorian fairy painters. His portrayal of romantic yet sinister scenes filled with
nonhuman creatures took off the visual art of fairies; due to Fuseli the nymphs and
airy creatures gained a strong impetus to enter our three dimensional world.

Now, from the perspective of the present research several personae, their works,
friendships and connections conglomerate around Fuseli although not necessarily on
a personal level namely Thomas Stothard, Motte Fouqu, William Blake, E.T.A.
Hoffmann (through Fouqu), and Theodor von Holst. Goethe, interested in
Rosicrucianism and influenced by the alchemist Georg von Welling (Appendix 4,
Frame 12), is neglected for I did not see him mentioned in combination with Villars in
the literature studied, nor did I locate obvious traces of

in his

. Except for Goethe, of whom I am not completely certain, all of these men
created novels, poems or paintings that substantiate love relationships between
humans and elementals.

Other than Fuseli, Du Rovery invited Thomas Stothard to prepare illustrations to the
1798 edition of

. He complied too, and by intentionally

envisioning sylphs in the possession of butterfly wings, he became the first to portray
sylphs like fairies.107 Stothards sylphs look like little cherubs not equipped with
wings made of feathers but by the type insects have an artistic novelty inspired by
Popes poetic description of the sylphs guarding Belinda (Appendix 4, Frame 6).
Eventually, in combination with the development of novels and performances on
stage like

"

, a story written for a ballet (Appendix 4, Frame 9), Stothards

puttis grew up to sensuous, female beauties.

Towards the end of his life, around 1819 1823, Fuseli created a series of works based
on !
107

, a story about a love relationship between a water nymph and a knight

Halsband 1980: 39. See also Phillpotts 1999: 32 33. Several engravings made by others before

Stothard to illustrate

show similar puttis (see figures 9, 16, 62 64 in Halsband

1980), yet, as Halsband points out, Stothard purposely went out into the field to study insect wings to
equip his puttis. Perhaps, Halsband 1980: 39 note 20 adds, Blake had suggested this idea to Stothard,
and Blake may have been influenced by Fuseli who had been an entomologist since the age of twelve.

32

(Appendix 4, Frame 8).108 The couple marries but the commitment ends in tragedy as
soon as Huldbrand, the knight, divorces Undine to marry Bertalda instead, whereupon
Undine loses her chance to obtain a soul. The author, Baron Friedrich de la Motte
Fouqu (1777 1843) published the fairy tale in 1811. Although Fouqu explicitly
states he drew inspiration from Paracelsus, it is, due to the dramatic storyline, unlikely
he would not have drawn from

as well.109 Fouqu could have

read the German translation of 1780 and sourced it back to Paracelsus since the Count
of Gabalis so highly praised the man. He may also have read stories about sylphs from
eighteenth century France that had entered the literary scene after the Count had
revealed some secrets to Villars. Or, as Oswald Floeck rightly suggests, Fouqu could
have taken notice of Christoph Martin Wielands first prose novel (fable),
%

" 2

2 (1764).110 The protagonist of the latter, Don

Sylvio, modelled after Cervantes Don Quijote, confuses the world of facts with the
world of fantasy, but his marriage to the fairy princess Donna Felicia bedeutet die
Umkehr aus der Phantasiewelt in die Wirklichkeit des Lebens.111 On several
occasions Wieland refers to Villars or der begeisterte Graf von Gabalis.112

The third person entangled with Fuseli is William Blake, pupil and friend of Fuseli,
whose esoteric interests have been unravelled by Marsha Keith Schuchard. Among
her findings are lines in Blakes

(1804) she connects to

The Fairies, Nymphs, Gnomes, and Genii of the Four Elements,

Unforgiving & unalterable, these cannot be Regenerated
108

Tomory 1972: 182; Browne 1994: 19, 22, 57 58. Browne considers Fuselis follower and friend

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794 1847) a likely candidate to have directed Fuseli to Fouqus
!

, but also proposes Fuselis pupil Theodor von Holst. The boy was barely ten(!) years of age

when Fuseli must have read the tale. Wainewright himself painted Fouqus water sprite twice, in 1821
and 1823 (Browne 1994: 48 note 35).
109

Seeber 1944: 74 note 10; Peuckert 1967: 498, 504; Goldammer 1980: 89, 96; Delon 1999: 31.

110

Floeck 1909: 1; Seeber 1944: 80 82.

111

Jahn 1981: 314.

112

Wieland 1984 (Band 11): 67 note 20, 172 note 3; (Band 12): 200 note 1, 205, 208 note 3. Wielands

source is Villars 1742 Tome 1 (which is confusing, see Table 1, Nos. 11 14, in Appendix 1).
Through his poem )

(1780), Wieland also conglomerates to Fuseli (Silver 1999: 18; Myrone

2006: 116).

33

But must be Created, for they know only of Generation.

These are the Gods of the Kingdoms of the Earth 113

In another work, 6

(1804 1820), Blake uses, according to Schuchard the

Rosicrucian elements in a more extensive and even ritualistic sense:

And sixty four thousand Genii, guard the Eastern Gate :
And sixty four thousand Gnomes, guard the Northern Gate :
And sixty four thousand Nymphs, guard the Western Gate :
And sixty four thousand Fairies, guard the Southern Gate.114

A sentence in the same plate of this poem contains a few words Schuchard considers
related to

, namely the Cities of the Salamandrine men, a

highly technical Rosicrucian term which referred to the Salamanders particular

protection of occult philosophers.115
Taking into account Blakes attraction to a wide range of authors one has to think of
Swedenborg, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Francis Mercurius van Helmont and the
social milieu he was engaged in,116 the notion of the four elementals must have been
so common to him that it is difficult to connect these passages to Villars only. To
suggest a direct connection seems merely wishful thinking on Schuchards side.
Besides, the idea of elementals not being able to regenerate themselves stems from
neither Paracelsus nor Villars, for their focus is on the elementals intent to obtain
immortality, something to be gained by the lifelong love of a human being. Yet even
though I consider Schuchards suggestions of Villars influence on Blake not strong
and highly coloured for she views Villars as a Rosicrucian, she may have a point. It is
113

Blake 1978: 113; the spelling of Blake cited by Schuchard 1975: 472 is slightly different. In an

earlier passage in the same work, Blake 1978: 107 talks about time, its moments, minutes, hours, days,
months, years and ages, and ends the section: All are the works of Fairy hands of the Four Elements.
114

Blake 1953: 14, Plate 13; the punction of Blake cited by Schuchard 1975: 472 is slightly different.

See also Blake 1953: 36, Plate 32, where he speaks of the Four Elements separating from the Limbs of
Albion: / These are their names in the Vegetative Generation. (...) And they divided into Four ravening
deathlike Forms, / Fairies & Genii & Nymphs & Gnomes of the Elements.
115

Blake 1953: 14, Plate 13; Schuchard 1975: 473.

116

Spector 2005: 173 174.

34

very plausible Blake was aware of

. His sincere interest in the

esotericism must have made him familiar with ideas about elementals; either through
his own endeavours or through Fuseli and/or others, he will have come across the
novel.

The fourth figure is the talented and in German literature well known Ernst Theodor
Amadeus Hoffmann (1776 1822), who was befriended by Fouqu.117 In an incredibly
rich and imaginative manner, Hoffmann mingles and merges together in the fairytale
(1814) strands of esoteric thought and practices, among them
alchemy,

118

animal magnetism,119 and the use of magical mirrors.120 The main

character in the story, the student Anselmus, is in love with Serpentina, the daughter
of Anselmus patron, the archivist Lindhorst. Serpentina is a bright green snake. By
sheer coincidence Anselmus sees her on Ascension Day when she is playing with her
two sisters in a tree. He immediately falls for her deep sparkling, gorgeous eyes, and
crystal clear voice. About two thirds of the way into the tale, Serpentina informs
Anselmus that her father belongs to the lineage of Salamanders; her mother was a
green Snake.121 They lived in wonderful Atlantis. She elaborates on things happened
in the past, and, as things ought to unfold in fairytales, a clue follows. If Serpentina
marries a man, she and her love can return to Atlantis. The same is possible for her
sisters. After eleven chapters, Hoffmann, the narrator, is at a standstill, or so he lets
the reader know. Just then he receives a letter from the royal archivist, the
Salamander Lindhorst enlightening him on matters not of importance here, except
for a tiny reference Hoffmann puts in, namely that the elemental spirits nach Gabalis

117

Having corresponded for some time, Hoffmann and Fouqu first met in person in Berlin in 1814.

Their friendship lasted till Hoffmanns death eight years later (Wittkop Mnardeau 1983: 114 115).
118

Lindhorst, a character in the story, is said to own a chemical laboratory and rare, ancient Arabic and

Coptic manuscripts (Hoffmann 1982: 21 22).

119

Right at the beginning, the protagonist Anselmus is pictured as hugging the tree where he had seen

the storys character Serpentina, a scene Tatar 1975: 368 369 convincingly connects to the tree
magnetised by Marquis de Puysgur in Buzancy. For Hoffmanns interest in animal magnetism, see
Wittkop Mnardeau 1983: 93 94.
120

In the tale the girl Veronika, having an eye on Anselmus, used a magical mirror to capture

Anselmus fancy, see Whrl 1982: 77 78.

121

Hoffmann 1982: 57. Whrl 1982: 36 relates this passage to

and !

35

und Swedenborg are not to be fully trusted.122 In other words, Hoffmann was aware
of Villars

A year after the appearance of !

, Hoffmann requested Fouqu to convert the

text into a libretto something Fouqu followed up on. !

%

*#

, composed by Hoffmann, had its premiere in Berlin on August 3, 1816.123 A

century before, the folktale

had been performed as a comedy in Paris.

Probably as a result of the popularity of !

century

as tale and opera, in the nineteenth

becomes an opera by Karl Freiherr von Perfall, a fairy play by

Ferdinand Langer, and the overture of an unfinished opera from Mendelssohn and
Bartholdi.124 And Fouqus tale had more spin offs. According to Carole Silver, Hans
Christian Andersens famous
!

,125 and

(1837) is a reworking of themes in

"

(1891) by Oscar Wilde (1854 1900)126 is

seen by her as a direct comment on Andersen:

Inverting the tradition that elementals, including undines and mermaids, seek human
lovers in order to gain souls and the chance of salvation, Wilde makes his fisherman
discard his soul and renounce the claims of society religion, and commerceall for
love. The fishermans reward is union with his fairy bride, though he must die to
127

attain it.

However, it is easy to connect Wildes novel directly to Fouqus !

, and I

cannot think of a reason (other than neglect) why Silver did not link the two
together.128 It may have been unfamiliarity with

, for themes like

122

Hoffmann 1982: 132; Goldammer 1980: 115.

123

The premiere was performed zum Geburtstag des Knigs Friedrich Wilhelm III (Krieger 2000:

13; see also Whrl 1982: 36; Wittkop Mnardeau 1983: 84; Maas 1997: 32).
124

Krieger 2000: 128 129.

125

Silver 1999: 107.

126

Wilde 1909: 69 134.

127

Silver 1999: 223 note 26.

128

Two similarities: 1. Undines last kiss to Huldbrand takes Hulbrands soul away (he dies). ~ When

the fisherman kissed with mad lips the cold lips of the Mermaid his heart breaks (he dies too), but
precisely in that moment the fishermans soul, which had departed him, could find an entrance in it. 2.

36

elementals, the gain or loss of a soul through marriage ultimately do stem from
(and Paracelsus). Besides, Wilde must have had a leaning to
esoteric thought through connections with the Theosophical Society and the Golden
Dawn. Wilde, his brother Willie and their mother attended meetings at the
Theosophical Society, and his wife Constance briefly was a member of the Society.129
His friends William B. Yeats and J.H. Fitzgerald Molloy were members of the Golden
Dawn, as were Mary E. Haweis, whose book on dress reform Wilde admired, and,
again, his wife, who was initiated in November 1888, and left the Order a year
later.130 Elementals were an integral part of teachings in occult milieus. If Wilde, as a
writer, had an interest in such thought, and was surrounded by people who did too, he
will have been familiar with either !

or

(or both),

probably enjoyed it as a good read, and took a story line from it.

There is another line from the cluster around Fuseli leading to Theosophy and the
Golden Dawn. It runs via the fifth person tied in with him his pupil and admirer,
Theodor Matthias von Holst (1810 1844).131 Von Holst, who by the way also admired
E.T.A. Hoffmann,132 painted twice -

(1830 and

1830 1835), scenes he took from !

(Appendix 4, Frame 8). The first Bertalda

painting was purchased in 1832 by Bulwer Lytton, patron of von Holst.133 Edward
George Bulwer Lytton (1803 1873) was interested in folklore, and portrayals of it in
the arts.134 He also had a sincere interest in esoteric thought, and certainly had read

At the day of Huldbrands funeral a well springs forth at the cemetery. ~ Three years after the
fishermans death a priest sees strange flowers of a curious beauty and with sweet odour.
129

Owen 2004: 108.

130

Gray 1990: 2 3.

131

Von Holst painted between 1820 1830

"

, envisioning the scene from

which Fuseli had envisioned to illustrate Du Roverys 1798 edition of the work (Halsband
1980: plate I).
132

%
133

Browne 1994: 17 18. One of the pictures sold after von Holsts death is entitled
(Brown 1994: 107, No. 121), the name of main character in

Browne 1994: 56; Meyrone 2006: 164. The painting purchased by Bulwer Lytton envisions in front

of Berthalda a pair of trampling legs, presumably a gnomes. These resemble the arms Fuseli invented
for the elemental presenting Flora with gifts from the earth, see Appendix 4, Frame 7.
134

Bulwer Lytton once requested his friend Daniel Maclise (1806 1870) to make him a painting of Pan

and dancing fairies. An engraving of this painting was incorporated in Bulwer Lyttons

37

, as he quotes it, and uses it in his novel #

(1842). A

Rosicrucian novel, it is a story about an initiate named Zanoni who falls in love with
Viola.135 Their relationship is blessed by the birth of a gifted child, but because of
loving Viola Zanoni looses his immortality.

A love story between a man and an elemental published in the same year as #
was written by the journalist, poet, songwriter and linguist Charles Mackay (1814
1889), quite well read in esoteric lore as his
poem

"

(1841) testifies. His

about the immortalization of the lovely fire spirit

(elemental) by her love for a man is in no way as literary rich compared to

;136 what makes the novel noteworthy is the introduction to the second
edition, in 1853, where Mackay refers to Popes
long passage of

, and cites a

to shew whence the author derived the idea of

the Salamandrine.137

What these works of art show is that in England and Germany the elementals,
especially the water and fire types romantically involved with humans, vividly and in
abundance entered the aristocratic, and artistic milieu of the nineteenth century. The
many stories of fairy brides, more so than fairy grooms, fascinated Victorian
folklorists, who studied them endlessly. It is a development Silver relates to the rights
and roles of women in their time.138 In France a different yet comparable development
took place. Soon after the elementals romantic debut in Villars tale, the sylphs
(1834), a book notably influenced by Fouqus !

, combining contemporary German

folklore, travel writing, and romance (Maas 1997: 89; Zaczek 2005: 24; Meyrone 2006: 164). Bulwer
Lytton was not the only one interested in art depicting elementals. Maclise, another admirer of Fuseli
(Wood 2001: 65), painted "

in 1844. Perhaps he was inspired by von Holsts work

seen at Bulwer Lyttons, or, more likely, by the ballet )

by Jules Peron which had been

performed in London first in 1843. Maclises painting was purchased by Queen Victoria as a birthday
present for Prince Albert (Gere 1997: 66; Bown 2001: 72; Wood 2001: 64, 65; Zaczek 2005: 24).
135

See Appendix 4, Frame 10. A drawing entitled % "

by von Holst was posthumous,

in 1845, exhibited at the British Institution (Browne 1994: 52, 111).

136

Deveney 1997: 501 note 12. For a summary of

137

Mackay 2006: v vi.

138

Silver 1999: 89 ff. Owen 2004: 85 ff shows how the same topic of womens rights and (sexual)

"

, see Appendix 4, Frame 11.

freedom interfered with the new occultism of the last two decades of the nineteenth century England.

38

infiltrated society: they appeared in literature and were on stage even before the end
of the seventeenth century.139 This continued throughout the eighteenth century, and
then, in 1832, a very pretty young lady with wings dancing on tiptoes stunned the
audience. Performed first in Paris, then London,

"

initiated the romantic

ballet. It brought Marie Taglioni (1804 1884), the dancer for whom

"

was

written, fame like a modern day movie or pop star. She inspired poets, painters, and
designers; taglioniser became a French verb meaning to imitate Maries hairdo or
style of dressing. When Taglioni retired, a series of water colours were made in her
honour, works nowadays included in studies of fairy art (Appendix 4, Frame 9).

Naturally, due to the popularity of dramatic stories of humans in love with elementals,
the theme was embroidered on in a variety of ways. Sylphs portrayed as guardian
angels for instance,140 or elementals conservatively interpreted as evil creatures.141
Perhaps because the gnomes associate best with Satans imps (Appendix 4, Frame 5),
they have not marked the visual arts to the degree the sylphs and undines have.
Among the many novels, plays, ballets, paintings featuring elementals it is sometimes
easy to trace

as source of (deluded) inspiration. The connection

is not always obvious, but those looking into issues definitely trace Villars
influence.142

As explained earlier, soon after the initial editions

interpreted as a Rosicrucian novel. When
139
140

became
enhanced interest in

Seeber 1944: 72 ff; Juin in Villars 1966: 12 ff; Delon 1999: 7 ff.
de Lichtfield 1796. Originally written in English, the author, whose real name is identified as

lisabeth J.P. Montolieu, translated it into French. The slim booklet is illustrated with two engravings,
and a piece of music (staves) entitled
141

. (Seeber 1944: 82 dates the novel to 1784.)

Cazotte 2003. The major source for Cazotte was

(see among other references

the notes by Yves Giraud in Cazotte 2003). Winkler 1988 analyses the influence of
on Hoffmanns novel

(1822). His article brings more connections to the fore

between the Romantic German authors and Cazottes tale, thus

Bulwer Lytton turned Cazotte, the author of
#
142

&

.
&, into a character in his novel

(Bulwer Lytton 1853: book I, chapter 6).

See references in note 88 90. See also Maurevert 1920: 227 ff; Eigeldinger 1969; Kilcher 2004.

39

, a new English translation was prepared in 1714, introduced by

Monsieur Pierre Bayle who accepted Villars, just like Ayres and Pope, to belong to
the Rosicrucian sect. The conviction that

is a Rosicrucian

novel has survived until the twentieth century. Both Erika Treske, and Marsha Keith
Schuchard, respectively in their 1933 and 1975 dissertations, mark and treat it as such,
as do Christopher McIntosh and Pat Rogers in more recent academic works.143
Schuchard makes a connection to Kabbalah when she links Villars to the visionary
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 1772) and Gioseppe Borri:
In 1931 Acton discovered in Swedenborgs unpublished notebooks many references
to the Cabala, including notes on the Sephiroth, and quotes from the Roscrucian
novel, The Comte de Gabalis. Swedenborg also owned a rare copy of Borris
Cabalistic work, The Key to the Cabinet, which was believed to be the source of
Gabalis.144

In my view she is here similarly mistaken as with her Rosicrucian interpretation of

Villars. The formulation suggests

to contain Kabbalistic secrets

but the French priest only hinted upon the subject. As a result of such interpretations,
and of course the supposed veiled seriousness of Villars conjuring practices and a
prayer of salamanders (see p. 19), Villars has been read by esotericists with
particular mindsets. Among those who studied the secrets revealed by the Count were
the alchemists Georg von Welling and General Ethan Allen Hitchcock. The former
considered Villars a lousy philosopher; the latter thought him to exhibit the secret
language of the Rosicrucian Society (Appendix 4, Frames 12 and 13). The natural
clairvoyant spiritualist and forerunner of Occultism Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825
1875) considered

a humorous bit of badinage.145 Paul Marteau

143

McIntosh 1987: 177; Rogers 2004: 66.

144

Schuchard 1975: 237, referring to Acton 1931. On Borri as source for Villars, see note 65.

145

Deveney 1997: 441 note 4. Randolph also knew Charles Mackay (Frame 11, Appendix 3), whom he

classed among the paper stainer Rosicrucians (Deveney 1997: 501 note 12). Randolph developed the
concept of blending, influenced by his experience of sensing other entities than the spirits of the
dead. Believing in a vast hierarchy of entities, with and without bodies, living and nonliving, he taught
the existence of the elementalsthe natural spirits of the elements who never had been part of the
world of men, and believed in unregenerate souls of disembodied men, who roamed the world,
confined to the middle state as larvae, and preyed as vampires upon mediums, Deveney 1997:

40

claims that Jean Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis dArgens (1704 1771), refers to Villars
and his

in his

(1741) as an authority,

but recent research by Andreas Kilcher has refuted such an interpretation: the Marquis
dArgens was inspired by Villars only for its early satiric, enlightened reasoning.146
On the other hand, authors who were influential for the teachings of the Golden Dawn
like Bulwer Lytton, liphas Lvi, and Arthur E. Waite (1857 1942) in his younger
years,147 refer to Villars as someone who Knows. The following elaborates on what
has been derived theoretically, and what has developed practically by means of
rituals. The latter makes sense since people had experiences with beings they believed
to be elementals. Ultimately these ideas and examples link the subject matter back to
where my quest began, Annie Horniman and the elemental marriage ritual.

Villars ideas about elementals are incorporated in theoretic esoteric thought

A few passages in $

(1860) strongly suggest that liphas Lvi

(pseudonym of Alphonse Louis Constant, 1810 1875) had given Villars treatise quite
a bit of thought, and jumbled it with ideas he had picked up from others. The single
immediate reference to the Abb is preceded by Lvis explanation of the
development of the soul from a Kabbalistic point of view, and when he leaps to one
of the most dangerous secrets in the domain of Magic, namely the existence of those
fluidic

27 known in ancient theurgy under the name of elementary spirits.148 Then,

it was the ill starred Abb Villars having jested with such terrible revelations who
had to pay for his imprudence with his life, Lvi writes.149 Elementary spirits, say
273 274 explains. Unlike Villars (and Mackay), Randolphs theory was not spun around the idea of
elementals with the desire to gain a soul. For him the access to, and control over, celestial powers lies
in the control of sexual powers; through physical union good, positive angelic forces could be invited
into ones life, as could negative, evil forces. The quality of a child, he believed, depended on the
quality of the forces attracted at the moment of its conception, and, according to Deveney, he
undoubtedly exercised his secret sexual techniques to the full in the conception of his last child,
Osiris Budh Randolph (Deveney 1997: 187).
146

Marteau in Villars 1921: LVIII; Kilcher 2004: 185 186, 188, 191 ff.

147

Waite 1923: 37 40, 49. See also note 149.

148

Lvi 1913: 109.

149

Lvi 1913: 109. Commenting in the English translation,

, Waite in Lvi 1913:

110 note 1, indicates he believes otherwise. The mode of treatment of the subject of communication

41

the Kabalists in their most secret books, presumably one of them is

,
are children of the solitude of Adam, born of his dreams when he yearned for the
woman who as yet had not been given to him by God. According to Paracelsus, the
blood lost at certain regular periods by the female sex and the nocturnal emissions to
which male celibates are subject in dream people the air with phantoms. The
hypothetical origin of

27, according to the masters, is here indicated with sufficient

clearness and further explanation may be spared.

Such

27 have an arial body formed from vapour of blood, for which reason they

are attracted towards spilt blood and in older days drew nourishment from the smoke
of sacrifices. They are those monstrous offspring of nightmare which used to be
called

and

. When sufficiently condensed to be visible, they are as a

vapour tinged by the reflection of an image; they have no personal life, but they
mimic that of the magus who evokes them, as the shadow images the body. They
collect above all about idiots and those immoral creatures whose isolation abandons
them to irregular habits.150

It is quite remarkable how in a few sentences Lvi brings rather different strands of
thought together. Kabbalah, Adam and Eve, womans period, mans nocturnal
emissions (which must refer to Paracelsus, see p. 25), larvae, aerial bodies,
nightmares, incubi and succubi, the magus... Lvi is thoroughly informed, is the
impression one gets, but looked at more closely it turns out like a series of ideas and
notions he stirs together to create his own kind of wisdom. When Lvi lectures on,
and discusses paradise where Adam and Eve lived before the Fall, Adam and Eve
were alone and naked, he says, and
no one obeyed their caprice of thought. They forgot their life in Eden, or viewed it
only as a dream seen through the glass of memory. But the realms of paradise still and
with elementary spirits was too much a jeu desprit to take seriously. Over the years Waite must have
adjusted his opinion since in 1891 he had written: The most popular presentation of the doctrine of
Elementary Spirits is found in a little book entitled the Comte de Gabalis, (...) It possesses the
meritwhich is rare in a popular handbookof being quite representative and accurate so far as it
goes, and albeit so doubtful in its character as to have frequently passed for a satire, it is an excellent
tract for citation within its individual lines (Waite 1923: 37).
150

Lvi 1913: 111 112.

42

forever extend above the earthly atmosphere, inhabited by sylphs and salamanders,
who are thus constituted guardians of mans domain, like mournful retainers in the
house of a master whose return they expect no more.151

Without doubt, the earthly atmosphere Lvi inhabits with sylphs and salamanders
stems from Paracelsus and/or de Gabalis. How they came to be

of

mans domains is a notion, as far as I know, Lvi took from someone else or derived
himself. Several pages thereafter he continues:
Imaginations were fired by these astonishing fictions when the visions in the air
began to be seen in the full light of day. They signified unquestionably the descent of
sylphs and salamanders in search of their former masters. Voyages to the land of
sylphs were talked of on all sides, as we talk at the present day of animated tables and
fluidic manifestations.152

The visions in the air must refer to stories repeated by Villars, most likely the ones
involving Fazio Cardan (see note 72), and Agobard (Appendix 4, Frame 3), yet Lvi
connects these unusual apparitions with uncommon events happening in his own time
the knocking tables of spiritualists. Several pages further, Lvi moves back in time,
to the witch hunt set up by ecclesiastical authorities:
The folly took possession even of strong minds, and it was time for an intervention on
part of the Church, which does not relish the supernatural being hawked in the public
streets, seeing that such disclosures, by imperilling the respect due to authority and to
the hierarchic chain of instruction, cannot be attributed to the spirit of order and light.
The cloud phantoms were therefore arraigned and accused of being hell born
illusions, while the peopleanxious to get something into their handsbegan
crusade against sorcerers. The public folly turned to a paroxysm of mania; strangers
in country places were accused of descending from heaven and were killed without
mercy; imbeciles confessed that they had been abducted by sylphs or demons; others
who had boasted like this previously either would not or could not unsay it; they were

151

Lvi 1913: 244.

152

Lvi 1913: 224.

43

burned or drowned, and, according to Garinet, the number who perished throughout
the kingdom almost exceeds belief.1 153

Here again Lvi incorporates ideas from Villars and merges them with others, but
now there is a clue. Namely Waites information in footnote 1 of the quoted passage
for it leads to a precise reference in Garinets $

(1818),
.154

to which Waite correctly adds Garinet derived the data from

In another passage, Lvi says something about the famous Kabalist Zedekias to
which Waite again correctly adds this also was derived from Garinet.155 What Waite
does not say is that the Count of Gabalis had dropped the very same name, the
fameux Cabaliste Zedechias.156

The conclusion to be drawn from this is that Lvi must have read Villars, and
certainly had read Garinets $

. On three occasions

Garinet mentions Villars novel as source for factual data,

157

so for sure Jules Garinet

(1797 1877), a lawyer at the Cour Royale de Paris, a literary man and historian, had
sincerely taken notice of

. No believer in magic himself, Garinet

merely passes on information dealing with sorcery and magic of France past. It is
Lvi who, aided by Garinet, distilled hidden, occult insights from Villars and
incorporated these in his own thinking.

Equally complex is Madame Blavatskys incorporation, c.q. interpretation of Villars

in her writings. Helena P. Blavatsky (1831 1891) read the queer book of the old
, immortalized by the Abb Villars at least twice. Once the edition
153

Lvi 1913: 244 245.

154

Garinet 1818: 37 writes about Agobard, bishop of Lyon, who freed three men and a woman having

descended from navires ariens from credulity of the masses by setting them free as ambassadors of
the sylphs. His his source is referred to as Le comte de Gabalis, cinquime entretien.
155

Garinet 1818: 34 ff; Lvi 1913: 243.

156

Villars 1963: 133; 1997: 187, 306. Except in the index of Del Rio,

1 Laufer in Villars 1963:

176 did not trace Zedechias (Zedekias). The Brothers in Villars 1997: 306 recognized him as the
Jewish physician from the ninth century in favour with the Emperor Charles the Bald. A great wizard,
he is said sonst in der Lufft herum geflogen [zu sein], und allerhand andere vergleichen Zauckel
Streiche vorgegeven [zu haben], (Zedler c. 2001: 305).
157

Garinet 1818: xxxviij, 37.

44

published in Bath (Table 1, No. 18 in Appendix 1), and once years ago. Her
humble opinion as regards the work isif any one cares to hear itthat one may
search for months and never find the demarcation in it between the Spirits of the
Sance rooms and the Sylphs and Undines of the French satire, Blavatsky writes in a
confusing article on elementals.158 Such works as the

, she remarks,

have to be quietly analyzed and their true character shown, lest they should be made
to serve as a sledge hammer to pulverize those works which

assume a

humorous tone in speaking of mysterious, if not altogether sacred, things, and say
what they have to. And it is most positively maintained that there are more truths
uttered in the witty

and

of that satire, full of preeminently

occult and actual facts, than most people, and Spiritualist especially, would care to
learn.159

In the article she manifests a strong reaction to what she seems to consider as follies
of her time, for instance a case involving a herd of spiritual children bred with a
holy Spirit, and a case of spiritual intercourse which a well known New York medium
claimed to have with her astral husbandthe nightly consort.160 Those who are
inclined to see an innocent pastime in nightly and daily intercourse with the so called
Spirits of the Dead should to be careful, she advises. And:
Let those who

our warnings and doctrine and make merry over

themexplain after analysing it dispassionately, the mystery and the

of

such facts as the existence in the minds of certain Mediums and Sensitives of their
with male and female Spirits. Explanations of lunacy and
hallucination will never do, when placed face to face with the

of

SPIRIT MATERIALIZATIONS. If there are Spirits capable of drinking tea and wine, of
eating apples and cakes, of kissing and touching the visitors of the Sance rooms, all
of which facts have been proven as well as the existence of those visitors
158

Blavatsky 1890: 178. The article must have been written around 1888.

159

Blavatsky 1890: 179 180.

160

Blavatsky 1890: 181. Blavatsky doesnt offer a name, but the woman she knew in New York

resembles Ida Craddock. Having had a very satisfying sexual relationship with a lover between 1889
and 1891 but being unmarried caused Craddock (1857 1902) to write $ 2

. Her

experiences were presented as stemming from love making with her angelic husband named Soph: it is
made up marriage between a woman and a celestial being (Chappell 2003).

45

themselves3
3

"

161

Basically, Blavatsky does give merit to some basic ideas expressed by Villars (and,
according to her, Roman Catholics, Spiritualists, and Eastern religions) because of her
belief in the existence of denizens of the spheres and their interaction with humans.
In her perspective a hierarchy of beings exists. All orders of the hierarchy have their
own name, place and functions assigned to it in nature. The mere difference
between the Theosophical view and that of the Roman Catholic Church, or
Spiritualists, or others, she explains, is in the naming of these groups of beings.

The rather, perhaps unexpected, positive judgement Blavatsky stamps on

and the acceptance of the idea that spirits can perform matrimonial
duties, ought to be linked to #
formulated in #
! 2

. A fan of Bulwer Lytton, H.P.B. accepts ideas

to be based on Truth. Writing about elementaries in 9

(1877), rehearsed in an article in

in 1893, she credits Bulwer Lytton

as the author who, like no one else in the world of literature, had given
a more truthful or more poetical description of these beings. Now, himself a thing
not of matter but an Idea of joy and light, [Bulwer Lytton passed away in 1873,
AN] his words sound more like the faithful echo of memory than the exuberant
outflow of mere imagination.162

The appraisal is followed by a page long citation from #

, and ends with another

comment to make sure to take the step from reading #

as just a story (note the

parallel with Pope viewing

) to accepting it as information

written by a wise man. In her opinion, the passage she quotes, the insufficient sketch
of elemental beings void of divine spirit, was given by a man whom many with
reason believed to know more than he was prepared to admit in the face of an
incredulous public.163 For a more complete sketch of the elementals, we have to look

161

Blavatsky 1890: 181.

162

Blavatsky 1910: 285; Blavatsky 1893: 538.

163

Blavatsky 1910: 286; Blavatsky 1893: 539.

46

at the introduction pages of 9

! 2

, where H.B.P. presents her own description

of elemental spirits. They are the

creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and water, and called by the
kabalists gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines. They may be termed the forces
of nature, and will either operate effects as the servile agents of general law, or may
be employed by the disembodied spirits whether pure or impure and by living
adepts of magic and sorcery, to produce desired phenomenal results.164

Now, according to Blavatsky, these elementals can never become man a notion
opposing Villars and Paracelsus for she makes a difference between element
element

and

spirits. The latter are the disembodied souls of the depraved; these souls

having at some time prior to death separated from themselves their divine spirits, and
so lost their chance for immortality.165 I will go further neither into the background
of the differences between these two types of beings and its further development nor
into how it relates to the teachings in #

and

as this will

culminate in a theoretical exercise too detailed for my quest.166 I continue in another

direction instead, namely the fact that some testified to have seen elementals. Much
more than in the writings by Paracelsus and Villars, and/or quite different compared
to the understanding(s) of nonhuman creatures up to the seventeenth century, the

164

Blavatsky 1910: xxix.

165

Blavatsky 1910: xxx.

166

An impression of this entangled web: Lvi, according to Blavatsky 1893: 546, makes little, if any,

distinction between Elementary Spirits who have been men, and those being which people the
elements, and are the blind forces of nature. The same seems valid for Bulwer Lytton, for in the
passage Blavatsky cites from #

the difference between element

and elementar

is not

clearcut. Regarding the reality of elementals, Blavatsky traces Randolphs footsteps (Deveney 1997:
274). Bjerregaard 1887, Nizida 1888 1889, Olcott 1891, Leadbeater 1907, and D.D.W. 1909 contribute
to the interpretation, c.q. understanding of elementals through articles in Theosophical journals.
Leadbeater 1900 discusses various classes of nature spirits, and consciously and unconsciously formed
elementals. The latter, he states, can also be called artificial elementals. Kingsford, cited by Silver
1999: 39, insists that a distinction ... be made between astral and elemental spirits and

, and

Rev. William A. Ayton warns Frederick L. Gardner in 1892 that to accept services of Elementals is
most dangerous (Howe 1972: 147). Already in 1891 Waite shows awareness of various beliefs people
treasure about elementary spirits (Waite 1923: 36 ff).

47

reality of elementals entered the actual world of experience. It must have stirred the
interest in nature spirits.

Supernatural experiences with elementals

To prove the reality of elemental spirits, i.e. other spirits than the disembodied human
spirits, Blavatsky adds in a footnote an account of a clairvoyant which had appeared
in the

"

of June 29, 1877. A thunder storm approaching, the

seeress saw a bright spirit emerge from a dark cloud and pass with lightning speed
across the sky, and a few minutes after, a diagonal line of dark spirits in the clouds,
the woman had stated.167 In the same note Blavatsky refers to Emma Hardinge Britten
(1823 1899); she had published accounts of experiences with the elementals, and two
years before, at the end of August 1875, also H.P.B.s partner Colonel Henry Steel
Olcott (1832 1907) had seen them. Casually, Olcott had met a stranger, a fair
skinned Asiatic he was never to meet again, fluent in English, whom he invited to his
chambers.
We opened the folding doors which separated the sitting [room] from the small
bedroom, sat on chairs facing the wide doorway, and by a wonderful process of Maya
(I now suppose) I saw the bedroom converted, as it were, into a cube of empty space.
The furniture had disappeared from my view, and there appeared alternately vivid
scenes of water, cloudy atmosphere, subterranean caves, and an active vulcano; each
of the elements teeming with beings, and shapes, and faces, of which I caught more or
less transient glimpses. Some of the forms were lovely, some malignant and fierce,
some terrible. They would float into view as gently as bubbles on a smooth stream, or
dart across the scene and disappear, or play and gambol together in flame or flood.
Anon, a misshapen monster, as horrid to see as the pictures in Barretts

, would

glare at me and plunge forward, as though it wished to seize me as the wounded tiger
does its victim, yet fading out on reaching the boundary of the cube of visualised
, where the two rooms joined. It was trying to ones nerves, but after my
experiences at Eddys [William Eddy, a medium, AN] I managed not to weaken.168

167

Blavatsky 1910: xxix footnote.

168

Olcott 1974: 111 112. Olcott 1891 discusses a story of an Indian family harassed by fire elementals,

and how to attract them, and how to drive them away by means of ceremonial magic.

48

Olcott, Hardinge Britten, and the seeress in the newspaper were not the only ones
witnessing elementals. Spiritualists and occultists increasingly reported about them.
Anna Kingsford (1846 1888) for instance beheld a dwarf figure, which she
recognized as that of an elemental of the order of the gnomes, or earth spirits, for it
was costumed as a labourer, and carried a long handled shovel, their distinguishing
symbol,169 and Violet Tweedale wrote of being terrified in a hotel room in
Switzerland by a large headed, vicious elemental gnome.170 Moreover, folklore and
its stories about fairies and changelings constituted something more than stories. It
offered people an explanatory framework including guidelines for action, as a case
like Bridget Cleary illustrates171 , or was a source of inspiration to quite a number of
authors. One of them is William B. Yeats (1865 1939), a member of the Golden
Dawn and friend of Oscar Wilde. He wrote several poems about encounters between
mortals and fairies.172

Rituals to attract elementals

During the last decades of the nineteenth century another aspect developed namely
rites and ceremonies to attract the spirits of nature. The alchemist von Welling had
looked into Villars for that purpose, and disregarded Villars (Appendix 4, Frame 12).
169

Silver 1999: 127, quoting from Arnold 1913: 210.

170

Silver 1999: 127.

171

To illustrate the deeply engrained belief in changelings, both Silver 1999: 63 65, and Purkiss 2000:

299 relate the story of Michael Cleary who accepted the explanation that his wife Bridget had been
abducted by fairies. Cleary performed a ritual to get her back: he set her on fire. Aged 26, Bridget died
in March 1895. Although Purkiss is quite critical when it comes to belief in the existence of fairies, she
(Purkiss 2001: 299 300) refers in this case to the argument put forward by Bourke 1999, namely that
the story of Bridget Cleary is not a simple story of a folktale understood too literally, but that in the
folk culture of which Yeats and co. made so much, Michael Clearys actions may have been perfectly
reasonable. Silver 1999: 65 reasons along the same line.
172

It has been suggested by scholars of fairy literature that Yeats portrayal of the fairies was deeply

affected by his unanswered love for Maud Gonne (1866 1953), another member of the Golden Dawn.
Perhaps they could not come together in the real world because Maud was fairy taken? Purkiss 2000:
296 put forward, and Silver 1999: 179 180 suggests that Yeats constructed Gonne as his leanhaun
shee, a soulless destructive beauty in Irish mythology, a figure portrayed in his works like a
succubus. Of course Purkiss and Silver do not really believe such explanations, but their remarks
could have had real weight in Yeats life, ergo, they made their puns.

49

However, by the second half of the nineteenth century the novel by Villars was so old,
so earmarked as Rosicrucian, and after all it did contain a conjuring practice to
summon elementals, that it was studied by occultists in search of ancient secrets and
rites. Lvi is one those men. In 1861, a year after the publication of

, the book in which he had taken up information from Villars and Garinet, he
went for a second trip to London. According to Schuchard and Nelson Stewart, Lvi,
assisted by Bulwer Lytton, performed a rite of ceremonial magic to evoke
elementary spirits on top of the Pantheon.173 Theoretically speaking, it is possible
the men intended to attract elementals on the roof of a store in Regent Street, but then,
hardly more than this meagre slice of information, information even stemming from
others, is offered by the two. And according to Joscelyn Godwin, Lvi had tried to
evoke the shadow of Apollonius of Tyana, which does not indicate the summoning
of elementals.174 Yet there is another example indicating the summation of
elementals, one that is clearly connected to

At the end of 1885, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, known as the H.B. of L.,
a short lived but ultimately very influential occult organisation devoted to private,
practical teachings, and founded between the founding of the Theosophical Society in
1875, and of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888 , prepared a ceremony
on the elementals.175 Designed for exterior initiation, the ritual consisted of two
parts. The first involved the orison (conjuration) of the sylphs, undines,
173

Schuchard 1975: 569, referring to Nelson, p. 36, which has to be Stewart 1927: 36. (Thanks to

Marco Pasi for directing me to the book of Stewart, email May 5, 2007.)
174

Godwin 1994: 215; Godwin 2005: 215. No sources are offered by Godwin. Besides this, plus the

minor information given by Schuchard and Nelson, there is more confusing the matter. Godwin 1994:
215, Godwin 2005: 215, and Schuchard 1975: 569 are writing about a ritual Lvi performed in 1861.
The passage by Stewart does not mention the year 1861: Lvi came to London in 1853 [sic 1854],
Stewart 1927: 36 writes. From there he moves to the evidence of contact between Lvi and Bulwer
Lytton, which he found in a publication by A.E. Waite. Waite had discovered a letter written by Lvi to
Bulwer Lytton. According to Stewart 1927: 36 37, Waite said that the letter, the sole evidence I so far
have not traced, makes mention of an evocation of elementary spirits performed on the top of the
London Pantheon, an evocation whereby Bulwer Lytton assisted. In an appendix Stewart 1927: 56
this letter to have been written in 1861. Ergo, it questionable that a ritual on the roof of a store
down town London ever took place.
175

Godwin, Chanel & Deveney 1995: 109 120.

50

salamanders, and gnomes; the second was a ceremonial lecture on the origin and
progress of the spirit atom and the immortal portion of the human soul. The
complete concept was pieced together from A.E. Waites digest of liphas Lvis
works and from the

.176 In the Rites and Ceremony of the H.B. of

L.
it is vaguely taught that control of the Elementals is an essential step in the
development of the will, and the Elementals are somehow aids or instruments for
the development of clairvoyance and astral sight, but the exact procedure is not made
clear.177

Insisting on the existence of elementals, the H.B. of L. did not emphasize the
elementals part in the development of mankind, as did others again a theoretical
subject too elaborate for this dissertation. Interestingly enough, although the rituals
were considered important, they did not play a major role in the Order, and as a result
of disruptions, the lodge structure of the H. B. of L. fell apart in the spring of 1886,
and the ritual was seldom, if ever, carried into effect within the Order itself.

Before moving to rituals developed by the Golden Dawn in which elementals are
addressed, a remark should be made on the state of elemental affairs and Villars a few
decades later. The actual experiences of (clairvoyantly) seeing elementals, in
conjunction with the theoretical, esoteric development of ideas about a hierarchy of
beings, caused, as Carole Silver rightly observes, the elementals to come of age,
meaning that over time further definition and classification took place. By 1913
Charles Leadbeater had set up a chart, The Evolution of Life, where the division
air fire water earth corresponding to sylphs salamanders undines gnomes was not
obvious anymore, it had developed into an expanded scheme of all sorts of beings.178
Then, when in 1928 writer, lecturer, and collector of esoteric books and manuscripts

176

Godwin, Chanel & Deveney 1995: 107. They refer to Lvi 1886: 122 ff, and add A version of the

prayer of the Salamanders is given in Villars, 169 171, and in Fryar, 102 103 [see respectively Nos. 20,
and 18 in Table 1, Appendix 1]. The Oraison des Salamandres is in Villars 1963: 125 126; Villars
1997: 87, 89.
177

Godwin, Chanel & Deveney 1995: 107.

178

Silver 1999: 38, 53.

51

Manly P. Hall (1901 1990) devotes a chapter on the elements and their inhabitants in
his opus

"

% %

, he seems overwhelmed by the amount of

sources. Apart from Paracelsus, whose fourfold type of elementals he followed to

structure the chapter, the concept of nature spirits had perpetuated literature. Hall has
to list the works of Shakespeare, Pope, Bulwer Lytton, James M. Barrie (+
:

, 1905), and the famous bowlers that Rip Van Winkel

encountered in the Catskill Mountains, are well known characters to students of

literature.179 To round up the chapter, he refers to a strange concept, somewhat at
variance with the conventional, namely what evolved by the Count de Gabalis
concerning the

, which he considers to represent the union of

a human being with an elemental.180 Thereupon Hall mentions the names of those
whom Villars had asserted to have had elemental ancestors. Although in the passages
on gnomes and salamanders the Abb Villars is referred to by him as an authority,
these few last lines read as if Hall does not really know what to make of
.181

Needless to say, many of those pondering on elementals and their relationship(s) with
mankind consulted and studied the information offered by

Some dismissed Villars, others revered him, or the Count, as an initiate. Within the
esoteric milieus of the late nineteenth century and onwards, the novels original intent
and setting were completely lost. As far as I can argue, the story was Villars
enlightened, satirical contribution to a religious debate between friends of Port Royal,
Jesuits, libertines, and Pascalisants; in my view he never wrote it to be accepted as a
serious teaching on esoteric knowledge for he merely hinted upon diverse sources of
esoteric wisdom. Yet people in later times were not limited anymore by knowledge
about the social and cultural context in which Villars wrote the novel. To the contrary,
they were completely free to interpret

secrets, and perhaps

puzzlesome wisdom, in any way that suited them. Although the badinage has been
noted, it is revelatory to see Bulwer Lytton, Lvi, Blavatsky, the H.B. of L., Hall, et
179

Hall 1997: CV.

180

Hall 1997: CVIII.

181

Hall 1997: CVI, CVII. Later in life Hall writes in neutral, and balanced words about
. The book caused a considerable stir, he now knows, and some took it to be merely fiction,

whereas others conceived a more profound meaning from it (Hall 1939: 7).

52

al. seriously refer to, or build upon Villars. They were, at least partly, composing their
insights concerning (the nature of) elementals from mere satire. Ambiguity has it that
Villars satire was built on some genuine esoteric sources.

0 (

$%

&
.

%
/

The member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn who was to marry an
elemental was Ann Carden. I have not traced anything on Mrs Carden whose motto
and name in the Order was %
James Carden,

other than that she was the wife of Alexander

, that they joined the Golden Dawn March 1891, and had a

daughter Pamela.182 Nor have I discovered anything specific on the elemental

marriage ritual; only traces of related information have surfaced.

When in her study on the Golden Dawn Ithell Colquhoun discusses the concept of
sexual magic, she mentions Thomas Lake Harris (1823 1903), who supposedly
advocated what has become known as karezza, and tantric techniques.183 The two
chiefs of the Order, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854 1918) and William
Wynn Westcott (1848 1925), seem to have been in accord with the tradition of the
latter for the advanced Tantrika has methods of obtaining a Daimon lover.184 The
influence of Harris upon the developments giving rise to disruption in the Order, has
been explained in 1. Colquhoun is also aware of the European world of folklore
carrying ample stories about fairy brides and grooms. Referring to Melusine and her
offspring, the Lusignan line, she considers it difficult to dismiss these as mere fantasy
182

Howe 1972: 97; Colquhoun 1975: 294. Pamela too was a member of the Golden Dawn.

183

Colquhoun 1975: 292 293. See also Howe 1972: 65 note 2, and Owen 2004: 100. However, I

wonder if it is justified to connect Harris sexual teachings to karezza. To my knowledge Alice Bunker
Stockham (1833 1912) is the one who popularized the term from the Italian caress through her
book :

55 in which she propagated birth control and marital pleasure. According to Arthur Versluis

(email correspondence May 28, 2006), the first use of karezza in English is uncertain, and as far as he
knows, Harris did not teach anything under the term. Also, Versluis checked, karezza is not in the
index of Schneider & Lawton 1942, to whom both Colquhoun and Howe refer.
184

Colquhoun 1975: 294.

53

 it would imply that all our forebears would have to be classified as mentally
deranged. Moina Mathers (1865 1928), she resumes, disliked the idea of Elemental
mates as much as human ones, but since Moina sincerely believed in the Rosicrucian
teaching of intercourse between humans and elementals, she did not doubt the
possibility of such.185 From a letter to Frederic Lees in 1899 on the role of women as
priestess, it can be deducted that Moinas beliefs in natures intelligences were
intertwined with beliefs on womans special (magical) role in the scheme of things:
The idea of the priestess is at the root of all ancient beliefs. (...) That is where the
magical power of woman is found. She finds her force in her alliance with the
sympathetic energies of Nature. And what is Nature if it is not assemblage of thought
clothed with matter and ideas which seek to materialise in themselves? What is this
eternal attraction between ideas and matter? It is the secret of life. Have you ever
realised that there does not exist a single flame without a special intelligence which
animates it, or a single grain of sand to which an idea is not attached, the idea which
formed it? 9

Woman is the magician born of Nature by reason of her great natural sensibility, and
of her instructive sympathy with such
*

.186

The passage merely confirms what could be distilled from the information presented
in the Introduction of this thesis, i.e. the sinceritys of Moinas writing about the
Elemental Theory and Ann Cardens elemental marriage. The same is valid for the
letter Samuel Mathers wrote to Annie E.F. Horniman (1860 1937) on January 8,
1896; it repeats what Moina had already explained in hers, written over a week
before, to Horniman:
And now I must ask you, whenever matters of

& arise in the Order, and you are

asked for instruction thereon; to refer them to G.H. Frater N.O.M. [Westcott]; and not
judge them yourself, until you can do so

185

from your outer personality.

Colquhoun 1975: 294 does not offer a source for Moina Mathers belief in the Rosicrucian

teachings.
186

Greer 1995: 227 228, my

54

I do not want to rake up the matter of your previous letters, but I may say: re
Amoreshe was recommended Elemental marriage, because of in her case the
extreme danger of invoking an incubus instead of a Fay, through want of self control.
Re 3 = 8 Soul Lecture. I intruded the parenthesis in my letter concerning abuse of
conjurative force against an invoked Elemental to answer this.
And now, as I close this letter of probably unpalatable advice to you, so do I close it
in all friendship and sincerity; hoping that this time at least you will be able to
comprehend my meaning; and that in it I am neither charging you with error in the
3

of your working, nor denying the great part of your occult power which has

been well and worthily used, nor intentionally using my authority as a Chief to wound
your feelings and lower your self respect.187

Evidently, the issue I set out to explore in the Introduction, the initial spark leading to
the crisis in the Order that, to put it plainly, sounded quite bizarre, comes across rather
differently against the background of ideas, novels, and works of art presented in the
subsequent chapters. Mathers ideas developed on rich and fertile grounds. Not only
were spirits, and nature spirits, part of esoteric literature, the non corporeal beings
were seen or experienced by people, there were the tales in folklore about fairies and
creatures,

there were the works of art in which undines, sylphs and salamanders

played major roles. Therefore, Moina Mathers could easily have written the story of
Melusina, Undine, and others in her letter it were simply common notions in their
time, they were an integrated element of their occult and artistic, social milieu. The
same holds for the terms incubus and fay. In the world of spirit beings all sorts of
entities were distinguished, and one, especially one studying and practicing magic,
would know that incubi and succubi are nasty, evil creatures, as opposed to,
presumably, fairies. Moreover, people deeply interested in the occult during the
second half of the nineteenth century knew one another personally, or were aware of
each other. All participated in the same discourse. Among the many connections are
facts like Westcott and Yeats having belonged to Blavatskys inner circle of the
Theosophical Society, Westcott being befriended by Anna Kingsford, Olcott meeting
and reading Randolph, and the fact that the Matherses nicknamed one another after
two main characters in #

.188

187

Howe 1972: 123.

188

Colquhoun 1975: 51; Greer 1995: 47 ff; Deveney 1997: 274 ff; Gilbert 2005: 545 ff.

55

As a result the teachings on esoteric subject matters and the structure of initiation
levels within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn differed from

were similar

to those of the Theosophical Society, and the H.B. of L. Several rituals of the Golden
Dawn, collected and described by Israel Regardie, illustrate that the nature spirits
were assigned a fundamental place in their system of belief. The Symbol of Venus
on the Tree of Life embracing the Sephirot, for instance, were given names in a
hierarchic manner and were especially connected with the Four Elements:189
(

Aretz

Ruach

Maim

Asch

Adonai ()

Shaddai ()

Elohim ()

Yhvh ()

North

East

West

South

( $

Auriel

Raphael

Gabriel

Michael

Phorlakh

Chassan

Taliahad

Aral

Kerub

Ariel

Tharsis

Seraph

Ghob

Paralda

Nichsa

Djin

Gnomes

Sylphs

Undines

Salamanders

3
3
4

Another example can be taken from the beginning of the second initiation ritual when
the Hierophant is supposed to speak sentences like: In the name of Adonai Melekh
and of the Bride and Queen of the Kingdom, Spirits of the Earth adore Adonai!, In
the Name of Auriel, the Great Archangel of Earth, and by the sign of the Head of the
Ox Spirits of the Earth, adore Adonai!, and towards the end The Fan, Lamp, Cup
and Salt represent the four Elements themselves whose inhabitants are the Sylphs,
Salamanders, Undines and Gnomes.190

Still, contrary to what might be expected at this point, Ann Cardens marriage to an
elemental unfortunately remains enigmatic. It is said that she was in search of self
control, and, therefore, was in danger of attracting an incubus instead of a fay. But
what were they working on, or working with? If Carden, through want of self
control, was susceptible to attracting a dark instead of an uplifting occult force, how
did the Matherses know she was in want of self control, and how does self control
189

The table is adapted from the information offered by Regardie 1971 (Vol. 1): 158 159.

190

Regardie 1971 (Vol. 2): 47, 80.

56

relate to a dark force? Where or when does the dark force make place for a friendlier
spirit, say a fay? Fays, by the way, are not in the fourfold hierarchy of beings cited
above. Presumably the remedy for Cardens anticipated danger was a ritual to marry
an elemental. Did they prefer a particular elemental, say a sylph? If so, how were they
to distinguish between a sylph, undine, salamander or gnome, and a fay? And then, in
his letter to Horniman Mathers addresses the subject of sex, immediately followed by
the sentence through which we know he recommended Mrs Carden marriage with an
elemental. Even though marriage not necessarely implies intercourse remember,
Moina claimed she and her husband stayed perfectly clean , it suggests a linkage
between a ritual and sexual activity (with an elemental). But how? What may it have
entailed? No clues to this could be derived from the literature on humans relating to
elementals, nor to incubi and succubi, for I did not find graphic descriptions other
than a handful of nightmares. Besides, descriptions of what witches had to endure
once loved by a demon only are related to pornography in a comment by Herbert
.191

Thurston on

Again, how and why to envision Ann Carden marrying an elemental? Pondering on
the how from a practical point of view: What would the marriage ritual have looked
like? Something involving prayers, the usage of mirrors, and invocations like the
Count of Gabalis had talked about? Naturally, sylphs and undines depicted as
beautiful young female or nice handsome male humans, as they developed into after
publication of

, do not require an explanatory text or an overly

vivid imagination to envision a ritualistic scene, but difficulties for the mind arise
when, for example, a salamander transfigures into a snake as happens in Hoffmanns
tale

+ . Pondering on the why: The Count of Gabalis advocated humans

to have offspring with elementals since they would bring forth great men and women;
he mentioned several historical personae who, he stated, had been the son of a human
and a salamander, or sylph. Improvement of the human race is a concept Bulwer
Lytton and Blavatsky valued,192 but I have no clue concerning Mathers ideas on the
subject. Without doubt Mathers was aware of horrific ideas held in the past when
191

Thurston 1927: 443. See Appendix 3.

192

Similarly inclined is Randolphs sexual magic, see note 145. In

(1871) Bulwer

Lytton depicts a race with superior powers. It became an influential novel in twentieth century science
fiction literature (Godwin 2005: 217).

57

humans would have children with the devil they would be monstrous, Lvi had
believed so. Those notions are intimately connected to theoretically inclined ones
about the conception of malformed babies. If not related to Satan, folklore would have
it that fairies changelings would be the explanation for misbegotten children. Yet
contrary to those ideas are the tales in folklore in which fairies brought forth
exceptional offspring. One can think of Merlin, Tom Thumb and Thumbelina, and the
lineage of Melusine. Whether this in any way was incorporated in the Elemental
Theory is unknown.

To bring the above back to Annie Horniman: The result of my research is that several
different lines of thought concerning humans offspring, and humans place in a
hierarchy of beings were crisscrossing, and interfering with one another at the end of
the nineteenth century. Samuel Mathers advise to Ann Carden to marry an elemental
simply hooks into ideas floating around at the time. But then, unfortunately, I do not
know what may have upset Horniman so deeply other than the tantric breathing
techniques and Berridge kissing her inappropriately. Except when Horniman,
privately in her mind, equated intimacy with an elemental not romantically as
envisioned in the picture on the cover of this thesis but like a Fusilian nightmare (see
the picture in Frame 5, Appendix 4), I consider most ideas about elementals hard to
imagine as fearful or disgusting. Stating this, however, I do realise that maybe I am
too engrained with the unconscious twenty first century understanding of issues.

8 9

Pursuing the research topic, in addition to visiting the libraries, the Internet was
fruitfully googled. At first sight it came as a complete surprise to see
pop up on UFO websites.193 If there were clues in Villars novel about extra
terrestrials and unidentified flying objects, I certainly had missed them.

193

Gmez 2002. Among a few others, reference to

is made on the homepage Ufo

sektes http://home.zonnet.nl/pharez/fre_cult.htm (visited May 6, 2006). On UFOs and aliens in general,

I consulted Randles 1999, and Challoner 2005.

58

The main source for the connection happens to be +

(1969) by

Jacques Vallee who most likely was made aware of Villars through one of the original
UFO popularizers, Raymond Drake (1913 1989). In his quest for early stories on
invaders from space, Drake roamed old and ancient literature and apparently found
some in the 1963 edition of

. At least that is the book he referred

to, and must have followed up on for he wrote:

Much of the phenomena now attributed to UFOS in Mediaeval times were considered
to be manifestations of aerial demons. Agobard in AD 840257 described wizards from
the skies stoned to death in Lyons (...). Paracelsus and Montfaucon de Villars in
258

in the seventeenth century wrote learnedly of Sylphs,

Salamanders, Gnomes and Nymphs appearing before men, stressing the enchantments
of Babylon, supported by many ancient and mediaeval theologians quoting
paranormal phenomena some of which we associate with Spacemen.194

Contrary to the highly coloured, missionary style by Drake, the French American
Vallee approached the UFO matter with an observational, academic perspective. He
then became the first to notice similarities between alien stories which truly
happened and stories in which fairies abduct humans. In both fairy and alien lore
people encounter strange beings, see apparitions, or experience intercourse with
nonhumans, so on and so forth. Starting from the hypothetical point of view that UFO
phenomena may be much older than the twentieth century, Vallee, like Drake, began
to collect cases. The quest led him, as indicated above most likely via Drake, to
, and he must have studied the same edition as Drake did, the one
with an introduction by Roger Laufer, or the 1913 one commented on extensively by
The Brothers. Although Vallees notes mention Villars only once, three of the many
names and events the Count and Villars brought up were incorporated in +
, thereby referring to original sources which Laufer and The Brothers had
also tracked down. The episodes Vallee considered worth retelling involve the learned
men who had encountered humanoids, and/or had seen des Navires ariens dune
structure admirable (wonderfully constructed aerial ships), i.e. the cases of Saint
194

Drake 1968: 203. Note 257 in the quotation refers to Migne. +

Anno 840.

1%

. Tom. CIV.

. Saeculum IX; note 258 to Villars 1963 (i.e. No. 23 in Table 1,

Appendix 1).

59

Anthony who lived around 300 AD,195 the Archbishop of Lyon, Agobard (779
840),196 and Fazio Cardan who left a note dated August 13, 1491, found by his son
Girolamo Cardan.197

Vallee took notice of the [pseudo?] Ludovico Sinistraris

as well; he

cited from him the extensive description of a young woman named Hieronyma, who
for a long time was harassed by an incubus. Vallee: As a theologian, Fr. Sinistrari
was as puzzled by such reports as most modern students of UFO lore are by the
Villas Boas case.198 Brazilian Antonio Villas Boas had been 23 when mid October
1957 he was abducted by four beings. Taken into their egg shaped craft, he was
seduced by a beautiful female creature with white hair. She uttered strange noises.
Twice Antonio and the modern succubus had intercourse. The second time the female
had rubbed her belly and pointed to the sky, as if she indicated to have his baby
somewhere in space.199 Hence, Vallee noticed characteristics strikingly similar
between contemporary humans harassed by aliens, and humans harassed by incubi or
succubi in Medieval times.

Seven years later, Vallees quest for explanations of UFO manifestations brought him
in touch with the Order of Melchizedek founded in California by Hiram Erastus
Butler (d. 1916).200 And now things really begin to loop back to one another for it was
this man, Butler (and Thomas Lake Harris), whom Madame Blavatsky had accused
of begetting children on the astral plane.201 And it was Butlers magazine,
of which Charles Mackay, the author of

"

, had been

managing editor during the late 1880s.202

195

Vallee 1969: 8 9; Villars 1963: 108 109; Villars 1997: 120 124; Appendix 4, Frame 2.

196

Vallee 1969: 9 13; Villars 1680: 172, 176 177; Villars 1963: 133 135; Villars 1997: 189 194, 308.

See also Garinet 1818: 45 46, and Appendix 4, Frame 3. Agobard wrote about people who believed in
a certain region, which they call Magonia, whence ships sail in the clouds, a passage both Vallee
1969: 9, and The Brothers in Villars 1997: 194 cite.
197

Vallee 1969: 13 14; Villars 1963: 73, 108, 110; Villars 1997: 15, 117, 119, 121, 208 209.

198

Vallee 1969: 123. On the Villas Boas case see Vallee 1969: 114 116.

199

Randles 1999: 26.

200

Vallee 1980: 136 ff.

201

Deveney 1997: 251.

202

Godwin, Chanel & Deveney 1995: 213; Deveney 1997: 506 507 note 32.

60

To end the present quest, a final link may be mentioned. In 1997 the unpublished
manuscript %

"

8 by Susan Blackmore achieved

much comment, UFO specialist Jenny Randles observed.203 Aliens and sleep
paralysis? Apparently the horrific nightmares, in our era explained as phenomena of a
particular sleeping disorder, now have become clothed in a meaningful manner in
twentieth century occult language... Yet after humans copulations with ancient and
medieval incubi and succubi, romantic tales about men and women with sylphs,
undines, or salamanders, the Golden Dawns ritual to marry one of its members with
an elemental, and modern high tech fertilisation schemes set up by aliens, I cannot but
wonder what will follow next!

203

Randles 1999: 182. I only looked into Blackmore 1998, a report of an experiment with school

children who had been read a story about aliens, and were asked to fill in a questionnaire afterwards.

61

To sort out precisely how many editions there have been of

is

difficult for two major, closely intertwined reasons. The first concerns the amount.
The entry Montfaucon de Villars by Jean!Pierre Coumont counts 37 between 1670
up to our era, including translations and sequels.204 Another elaborate compilation has
been prepared by Roger Laufer; less extensive ones by August Wolfstieg, Erika
Treske, Edward Seeber, Pierre Mariel, Hubert Juin (pseudonym of Hubert Loesscher),
and the Pierre Marteau Library.205 To compare these lists, the notes added to them,
and notes offered by other authors to particular editions is quite a puzzle, one that I
have not solved completely despite the fact that my search was aided by having access
to over two dozen of them (Table 1). Three examples. Upon the publication by
Bibliothque Chacornac, Paris, 1900, entitled

Juin

commented it est assez fautive. Il faut retenir, parmi les ditions modernes.206
However, Laufer apparently was unaware of this edition (it is not on his list),
Coumont did not make a comment on it,207 and my impression is that although I noted
some differences, the text is a reprint of the original.208 Second: Laufer lists an Italian
translation of 1751, and an English one of 1922, neither of which is part of Coumonts
compilation. Nor did Coumont include the 1886 English edition published in Bath by
Robert H. Fryer, referred to by Blavatsky, and Godwin, Chanel & Deveney.209
Coumont does mention an 1897 edition produced by Fryar, namely
204

Coumont 2004: 357!361. Surfing the internet has brought even more editions to light, ones not

included by Coumont. See Table 2.

205

Wolfstieg 1912: 954; Treske 1933: 63; Seeber 1944: 72 note 6, 73 note 7; Mariel in Villars 1961:

27!28; Laufer in Villars 1963: 55!61; Juin in Villars 1966: 24. See also the homepage of Pierre
Marteau, http://www.pierre!marteau.com (consulted March 5, 2006).
206

Juin in Villars 1966: 24.

207

Coumont 2004: 359 (M84.23).

208

For instance, Villars second entretien, or meeting with the Count, ends in Villars 1900 on p. 28.

The story continues with paragraphs of the quatrime entretien (Villars 1900: 28!34), only to start the
troisime entretien on p. 35. The last paragraph of Villars second entretien in the edition by The
Brothers (Villars 1997: 65) corresponds with Villars 1900: 22, not Villars 1900: 28. In other words, in
Villars 1900 the order of the pages has become messed up, but as far as I can tell, the content is
conform Villars 1670.
209

Blavatsky 1890, and Godwin, Chanel & Deveney 1995: 107, 444. See Table 1, No. 18.

62

which
he, between brackets, ascribes to Le Pre Antoine Androl.210

is one of the works Coumont, Wolfstieg, Doyon, Treske,

Seeber, Laufer, and others note to have been ascribed to the Abb de Villars but
which cannot possibly have been written by him.
and

are the titles of other novels, similar

incorrect ascribed to Villars. Besides distorting the compilations of

by including the various sequels some even call them forgeries the titles
of the latter two do not always cover the exact same content. Whereas nouveaux in
the 1684 edition must hint at a new letter (Rponse la lettre de Monseigneur)
added to it, in the 1715 edition it implies a complete new novel. Previously, this new
novel portraying Matre Jean le Brun, le grand
had been published in 1708 titled

from Ireland,
.

Moreover, occasionally some of the novels published separately became bound

together hence the suggestion the works must be the products of one and the same
author. This happened for instance with Nos. 8, 9, and 10 (in the collection of the
University of Amsterdam Library), and Nos. 11, 12 and 14 (in the collection of the
Ritman Library) in Table 1. Jacques le Jeune, an Amsterdam printer, really did
integrate two of the novels.211 Pages 1!148 of his edition of
(1700) carry the original 1670 text except for the Lettre Monseigneur. It is put
on p. 256 ff, following the second part paginated 149!255. As one of the main
characters in this second part, the author presents a woman:
Je leur accorderay le divertissement tout entier, en racontant le plus essentiel, de la
conversation que nous emes avec lui, Madame la Vicomtesse Martesie212

Obviously the novel was prepared to follow up on

for towards

the end of his revelations about the Count, Villars had proposed a part Two:
210

Coumont 2004: 360 (M84.31). According to Coumont 2004: 359 (M84.15, M84.18), this book came

out first in 1718, and was translated into English in 1742.

211

Laufer in Villars 1963: 58 (No. 10); Coumont 2004: 358 (M84.10).

212

Villars 1700: 153.

63

Ainsi finit lentretien du Comte de Gabalis. Il revint le lendemain, & me porta le

Discours quil avoit fait aux peuples soterrains; il est merveilleux! Je le donnerais
avec la suite des Entretiens quune Vicomtesse & moy nous avons eus avec ce Grand
homme213

Something similarly complicated happened with editions published by the Brothers

Vaillant in London, 1742 (Table 1, Nos. 11!14).

Most likely the authors of the sequels did criticize, just as Villars had done, issues at
stake in their contemporary discourses. In other words, the novels figuring Madame la
Vicomtesse Martesie, le Matre Jean le Brun, and Marchal de Schomburg (the
protagonist in

) could be viewed within their particular social

timeframes. As far as I am aware, no one has studied the content and context of the
sequels, except Bremond, Doyon, Bila, and Laufer, who have made a few very brief
remarks.214

Table 1. Various editions of

by Nicolas!Pierre!Henri Montfaucon de

Villars, together with works related to the Count of Gabalis and ascribed to Villars.215

1670

The original edition.

R; M84.1.216
.
Paris: Claude Barbin.

213

Villars 1670: 315.

214

Bremond 1921: 912!913; Doyon in Villars 1921: XXIX; Bila 1925: 91, 97!98; Laufer in Villars

1963: 13!14. Meyer 1885!1892: 208 (Vol. 16) characterizes

(1715) (Table 1, No. 9, hence No. 6), as a geistreiche Satire auf die Philosophie des
Descartes. See also Declercq 1984.
215

All books in the Table either involve the Count de Gabalis directly, or are somehow related to it.

Not studied are

! "

"

(1827) attributed to a

descendant of the Count de Gabalis, referred to by Wolfstieg 1912: 889, and the manuscript
#

(c. 1715) described by

Doyon in Villars 1921: xlv!xlviii, referred to by Bila 1925: 97, Mariel in Villars 1961: 30 note 6, and
Laufer in Villars 1963: 48 note 27.

64

1680

1684

!
&"
!
. London: B.M. (printer to
the Cabalistical Society of the Sages,
at the Sign of the Rosy Crusian).
P.A. GENT
[Philip
AYRES],
translator, notes.

Cologne:

Paul

de

English amended (!) translation of the 1670

original. The letter to my Lord was
transferred from the end to the beginning. The
novel ends with Translators Animadversions
on the foregoing Discourses.
R; M84.27.

The 1670 original text to which a letter

Rponse la lettre de Monseigneur, has
been added.
la R; M84.6.

Tenaille.
4

[c. 1691]

The 1670 original text to which Rponse la

( lettre de Monseigneur has been added.
* . R; UvA; M84.7.

'
)
Cologne: Pierre Marteau.
5

1700

Pp. 1!148 carry the original 1670 text,

( followed, pp. 149!255, by, again, the title
page
(
+ ,
&
which supposedly is Villars announced
#
)
Amsterdam: follow up. A main character in this section is
Madame la Vicomtesse Martesie. This second
Jacques Le Jeune.
part is ascribed, incorrectly, to Villars. Printed
Illustrated with several engravings.
on p. 256 is the first original letter of the 1670
edition.
UvA; M84.10.

1708

Incorrectly ascribed to Villars. The main

character is Mr Jean le Brun. In a note on the
opening page it is said that this novel
. appeared first 30 years after the murder of the
author.
R; UvA; M84.12.

,
$
Amsterdam: Estienne Roger.
7

1714

1715a

.
" !
. London: B. Lintott, E. Curll.
Mons. Pierre BAYLE, introduction.

'
)
Amsterdam: Pierre de Coup.
9

The original 1670 text.

( UvA; M84.14.
* .

1715b

Incorrectly ascribed to Villars. The main

character is a Mr Jean le Brun.
R; UvA; (M84.13?).
,
$
Amsterdam: Pierre de Coup.

216

Translation of the 1670 original. The last

sentences of the fifth discourse and the Lettre
Monseigneur have been omitted.
R; M84.29.

The abbreviations: R (Ritman Library), UvA (University of Amsterdam Library), VU (Library of

the Free University, Amsterdam), KB (Royal Library, The Hague), M84.x (the code given by Coumant
to the various editions of

in Coumont 2004: 357!361).

65

10

Ascribed to Villars, but the author presumably

is Le Pre Antoine ANDROL. A main figure
in the novel is Marchal de Schomberg.
R; UvA; M84.15.

1718
. La Haye.

11

12

13

1742a
#

The title does not cover the content, for it

contains only the 1670 original plus the
( Rponse la lettre de Monseigneur.
R.
. London: les Frres Vaillant.

The title does not cover the content, for it

begins with
. A mort du
( Marchal de Schomberg..., i.e. the tale
written by Antoine ANDROL.
. London: les Frres Vaillant.
R.

1742b!1

1742b!2

Incorrectly ascribed to Villars. The content

partly follows the title, for the page
( numbering starts with p. 157, and begins
sixime entretien. Although the first
sentences differ, the story is the same as the
. London: les Frres Vaillant.
ones mentioned by Nos. 6 and 9; the main
character is Jean le Brun.
R; M84.18.

14

Incorrectly ascribed to Villars. Main character

is Jean le Brun.
. R.

1742c
,
/ 0
London: les Frres Vaillant.

15

1782

!
2
3
Berlin: Friedrich Maurer.
Translator, introduction.

16

1788

4 "

1
!

German translation of the 1670 original.

. R; M84.37.

The volume contains four novels, the first, pp.

56. 3!123 being the original 1670
, to which the Rponse has been
Amsterdam / Paris.
Charles George Thomas GARNIER, added.
VU; M84.19; available on the homepage
introduction.
Gallica,
France
National
Library,
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark (visited Feb. 8, 2007).
+

17

[c. 1796]

The original 1670 text.

UvA; M84.20.
.
Metz: F.G. Behmer.

18

1886

8
:

!
'
#
;

9
!
, "

7#

3
#
-

!
"

This limited edition of 250 copies, published

! by Robert Fryar, is a reprint of the English
translation by Philip Ayres in 1680, meaning
it includes the amended 1670 text (No. 2). The
English title page is followed by the title page
Hargrave Jennings
added a note on the first two pages. The
3 < letter to my Lord is moved to the beginning,
and the text in the Appendix contains four

"
!
7&"

66

0
0

19

"
!#

'
. Bath.

1900

9
0
0
Bibliothque Chacornac.
Publisher, introduction.

20

1913

1921

Follows the 1671 edition published in

. Paris: Amsterdam. See note 208.
UvA; M84.23.

'
! A new translation of the 1670 original, in
9
;
which Lettre Monseigneur has been
". London: The Brothers. omitted, but a large number of notes, prepared
by The Brothers, have been added.217
R; M84.32.

21

long excerpts from [pseudo?!]Sinistraris

".
R.

After an extensive introduction by Ren!Louis

Doyon, and a brief one by Paul Marteau, the
&
> '
text of the original 1670
is presented, followed, pp. 127!
& !
4
? > ).
260, by
'@
'
in which Jean le Brun portrays the
,
+ ?
' 7
-$A$
( > )B
?
main character.
,
&#' 9#C.
Paris:
La R.
Connaissance.
9

22

1961

9
The original 1670 text.
0
0
. Paris: La R; M84.24.
Colombe.
Pierre MARIEL, introduction and
notes.

23

1963

+
The original 1670 text, followed by Villars
Paris: A.G. Nizet.
1671 novel.
Roger LAUFER, introduction and KB; M84.25.
commentaries.

24

1966

9
The original 1670 text.
0
0
. Paris: Pierre VU; M84.26.
Belfond.
Hubert JUIN, introduction.

25

[1997]

;
#
&
D
,
Kessinger.
26

217

2005

&"
!
3
!
. New York:

Facsimile of the 1913 edition published by

The Brothers, London, i.e. a translation of the
1670 original.
UvA.

Reprint of the 1913 translation by The

0
0
. 333 Via Nefanda, Brothers (No. 20), minus the massive amount
Legag, Leng: Unspeakable Press.
of notes.
Homepage of The Temple of the Presence,
http://www.templeofthepresence.org/Gabalis.
pdf (visited Feb. 8, 2007).

A reprint in 1922 of this edition belongs to the collection of the Library of the Theosophical Society,

Amsterdam. The collection carries two more editions of

that I have not looked

into.

67

Table 2. Relatively recent (translated) editions of

by Nicolas!Pierre!

Henri Montfaucon de Villars, traced on the Internet (but not been able to see and leaf through
personally).

1963,
1965 &
1996
1985

. Mokelumne Hill, CA: Spiral bound reprint of the 1913 edition

by The Brothers (Table 1, No. 20).

Health Research.

E
E

Italian translation, presumably of the

1670 original.

. Genova: Phoenix.

1986

F: '
Italian translation, presumably of the
E
. Genova: ECIG.
1670 original. The editors traced its
Clara MICCINELLI & Carlo ANIMATO, connection with Gioseppe Borris
introduction and notes.
.

1992

+
. Spanish translation, presumably of the
Madrid: Bruguera (Biblioteca de El Sol, nr 1670 original.
259).
Horacio VAZQUEZ RIAL, introduction.
Ernesto POSSE, translator.

1997 &
2005

&"
!

,
#
3
!
D
Lightning Source.
6

2004

2005

0
#

Most likely a reprint of the 1913 edition

by The Brothers (Table 1, No. 20).

;
&
,

Translation from French into Catalan of

:9
Villars
, presumably
4
" 9 0 !
. Valladolid: Universidad the 1670 edition, and Crebillons
0"
.
de Valladolid.
Ramos GMEZ & Mara TERESA,
translation and introduction.

- 0 ! "A
& !

Classics.

. New York: Cosimo English translation, which must be a

reprint of the 1913 edition by The
Brothers (Table 1, No. 20) for it
contains 388 pages.

68

!"

&

'

Antoine Adam views Nicholas!Pierre!Henri Montfaucon de Villars as an author who

must have been affiliated with the Academy of dAubignac, an observation, as far as I
can tell, no one else made except Dominique Descotes, but he got it from Adam.218
Franois Hdelin (1604!1676), the Abb dAubignac and de Meymac, is author of,
among other works,

0 "

(1627), ,

&

(1662!1663) and the still rather well known

(1657). Adams observation strikes me as important in order to

expand on insights about Villars and his time; studying dAubignac, his feuds and
friends seems promising for at least four reasons:

* Several names like Jean Racine, Pierre Corneille, and Gilles Mnage being
mentioned in relationship with dAubignac, are mentioned also in relationship with
Villars.
* Noted most often as dAubignacs main message in

is that

plays have to capture the attention of its spectators, therefore theatre must comply
with lopinion et le sentiment des hommes.219 By means of
and

(1671) in which the publics reception of Racines play

was voiced,220 Villars did appeal to the general public.

* The Abb dAubignac developed a style of dramatic criticism which marginalized
him in the political arena.221 Villars did the same, with similar consequences.
* Adam relates Villars also to Pierre de Saint!Glas, the Abb de Saint!Ussans.222 Born
in Toulouse, the city where Villars received part of his education, Saint!Glas was a
friend of Gabriel Guret (1641!1688) who belonged to dAubignacs close circle.223
218

Adam 1958: 341 note 1; Descotes 1980: 4. (Descotes reference is Adam 1958: 343 [sic].)

DAubignac is not mentioned for instance by Rabbe 1870; Bila 1925: 91!101; Wagner 1939: 201!204
note 2; McKenna 1990; Delon 1999: 7!31; Lesaulnier & McKenna 2004; Doyon & Marteau, Mariel,
Laufer, and Juin in respectively Villars 1921, 1961, 1963, and 1966.
219

Murray 1987: 170.

220

Laufer in Villars 1963: 63; Declercq 1984.

221

Murray 1987: 161!162.

222

Adam 1958: 336!337, 340, 341!342 note 1.

223

Adam 1958: 159 note 1, 342 (last line of p. 341 note 1).

69

!(

+ ,

A few aspects of the life and works of the Italian Ludovico Maria Sinistrari (1622!
1701) of the Order of Reformed Minors of the Strict Observance of Saint Francis have
been elucidated by Isidor Liseux (1835!1894), the discoverer, or so he claimed, of the
manuscript - -

. The original document, which

is said to have been prepared at the end of the seventeenth century, was not published
until 1875 in Paris, three years after the erudite Liseux said to have bought it more or
less serendipitously from an antique bookseller in London. Liseux provided a preface
to the Latin text and added a French translation; four years later (1879), an English
translation followed. In 1927 the Reverend Montague Summers (1880!1948)
translated [pseudo?!]Sinistraris treatise anew from Latin into English, to which he
added a different, extensive introduction, thereby borrowing from the data offered
previously by Liseux. Summers was convinced Sinistrari had dictated the text of
" to a scribe,224 but nowadays it is, according to Massimo Introvigne,

pratiquement tabli quil sagissait dun faux, un faux orchestr par le Bibliophile
Jacob, savoir Paul Lacroix () et rdig par lrudite Liseux.225 However, to
prove this is not so easy as it may seem at first sight. My investigation has led to
important uncertainties; much more research is necessary to sort out the origin(s) of
- -

If a forgery, it is a clever yet confusing piece of work that has become, after its
entrance into the public domain, part of the discourse on relationships between
humans and spiritual, celestial, and elemental beings. Robert Fryer values long
citations from it an illustrative appendix to
included the complete text in his book 9

, and Robert Masters

9

; Blavatsky refers to it in her

article Thoughts on the Elementals, Paul Marteau in a foreword to another new

224

Summers introduction to and English translation of - -

form Appendix B in

Masters 1962: 191!267. Masters 1962: 287!308 adds quite a substantial amount of background
information to persons and issues mentioned in it. Masters 1962: 275 note 9 considers Summers a good
scholar, but Thurston 1927: 443 ff severely critiques Summers and his works.
225

Introvigne 1997: 134!135, referring to Mercier 1969: 240!241. Thanks to Marco Pasi (personal

communication on May 5, 2007) for making me aware of the controversy concerning the origin of
-

".

70

edition of

, Deveney in a footnote to his study on Randolph,

Vallee in his study on UFO abductions.226 Therefore it is worthy of attention.

The ingenious text ought to be viewed, according to Liseux, in relation to Sinistraris

major treatise, - -

(1700), a work extraordinarily complete,

dealing with all imaginable crimes, sins, and offences, and in most cases discussing
the punishments due to the crime, the penalties inflicted both by the ecclesiastical
and by the civil law.227 Except for demoniality (dealt with on barely five pages228),
$!

was very complete and thorough. Consequently, it

covered a few issues so delicate that the complete book became registered on the
=

from 1709 till 1753, a quite remarkable fact since

Sinistrari is known as a theologian specialized in crimes and law.

The specific topic dealt with in -

" concerns intercourse with demons. In

order to say something about women and men (but mainly women) being confronted
with a sexual affair with a demon, i.e. incubi and succubi, [pseudo?!]Sinistrari treads
a careful path on which he contradicts himself. Demarcating demoniality from
bestiality, intercourse with the latter is defined as having sex with a beast (ignored are
beasts like the Unicorn, and Zeus transformed into a swan, making love to Leda).
Demoniality involves copulation with a corpse (...), a senseless and motionless
corpse which is but accidentally moved through the power of the Demon.229 Incubi
and succubi have truly sexual passions and desires they even may have sex with
horses, mares and other beasts but differ from the evil spirits that witches and
sorceresses seek out, in the sense that they are defined by him as incorporeal
Demons.230 At pains to prove incubi a kind of their own, [pseudo?!]Sinistrari
considers them higher than beasts, and believes they have their own sperm. He also
believes historical figures like Romulus and Remus, Servius!Tullius, Plato, Alexander
226

Table 1, No. 2 in Appendix 1; Blavatsky 1890: 181!182 note; Marteau in Villars 1921: LVII!LVIII;

Masters 1962: 191!267; Vallee 1969: 123; Deveney 1997: 251, 490!491 note 54, referring to Villars
1886 (Appendix 1, Table 1,.No. 18).
227

Summers in Masters 1962: 196.

228

Liseux in [pseudo?!]Sinistrari 1879: xv.

229

[pseudo?!]Sinistrari 1879: 9; [pseudo?!]Sinistrari in Masters 1962: 201.

230

[pseudo?!]Sinistrari 1879: 129; [pseudo?!]Sinistrari in Masters 1962: 236.

71

the Great, Seluecus [sic?], the King of Syria, Scipio Africanus the Elder, Caesar
Augustus, Aristomenes the Messenian, Merlin, and the damnable Heresiarch
ycleped Martin Luther to be the Demons children.231 (Here one must wonder: When
[pseudo?!]Sinistrari writes this, is he saying that these famous men were conceived by
sperm of an incubus, or does he consider the men to be offspring of the Demon? If the
latter, how can this be?)

An argument set up by [pseudo?!]Sinistrari revolves around Saint Anthony who, so

the Italian Father writes, had met a dwarf!like little man one day with a horned
brow and goats feet. Fearing an encounter with the devil, Saint Anthony guarded
himself with the sign of the Cross before daring to inquire who the creature was. From
the answer received, Saint Anthony deduced the creature to be some kind of animal.
On the grounds that the tiny fellow a) had approached Saint Anthony (and had not
been deterred by the sign of the Cross), b) said he was mortal, c) said that the God of
all had suffered in human flesh, d) beseeched Saint Anthony to pray for him and his
kind, e) claimed to be on a mission from his people, and f) said he was one of those
whom

"

0 "

, [pseudo?!

]Father Sinistrari deduces the very same, namely that the little creature was not a
demon, and concludes that Incubi are rational animals, capable of salvation and
damnation.232

Hereupon [pseudo?!]Sinistrari presents other facts and arguments, like the apparition
of little men in the mines frequently noted by George Agricola, and Saint Augustine
who had spoken about Demons as aerial animals. The treatise ends with his
conclusion that it cannot be a sin for men and women to mix with incubi, unless they
believe them to be devils and because of this belief intentionally have intercourse with
them. As a rule, out of Italy(!), such crimes are punished by the gallows and the
stake.233

231

[pseudo?!]Sinistrari 1879: 55; Masters 1962: 43; [pseudo?!]Sinistrari in Masters 1962: 214!215.

232

[pseudo?!]Sinistrari 1879: 163!173; [pseudo?!]Sinistrari in Masters 1962: 246!248.

233

[pseudo?!]Sinistrari 1879: 243; [pseudo?!]Sinistrari in Masters 1962: 267.

72

!Paracelsus on elementals and marriage with humans

Passages taken from

0

"

0"

,"

by Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim, 1493!1541):

* zubeschreib die vier Geschlecht der Geistmenschen / als nemlich / von den
Wasserleuten / von den Bergleuten / von den Ferleuten / vnd Windleuten. Dorbey auch
begriffen werden vnter denen vier Geschlechten / die Rysen / die Melosinen / der Venusberg /
vnd was denen gleich ist / die wir als Menschen ansehen zusein / vund doch nicht au Adam:
sondern ein anderi Geschopfft vnnd Creatur / geschieden von Mensen vnd von allen
Thieren.234
* Der Mensch hatte ein Seel / der Geist nit.235
* Nun volgt aber au dem / das sie zum Menschen verheyrat werden / also das ein
Wasserfraw ein Mann au Adam nimpt / vnnd halt mit jhm Hau / vnnd gebiert. Von den
Kindern wissen / dz solches Geber dem Man nachschlecht: drumb dz der Vatter ein Mensch
ist au Adam / drumb so wird dem Kind ein Seel eingossen / vnd wird gleich einem rechten
Menschen / der ein Seel hatt vnd das Ewige. Nun aber weitter so ist das auch in gutten wissen
/ zuermessen / das auch solch Frawen Seel endpfahen in dem / so sie vermehlet werden / also
das sie wie ander Frawen vor Gott un durch Gott erlost sind.236
* So ist auch nicht minder / nit all seind uns zu verheyrathen: Die Wasserleut am ersten /
vnnd seind auch die Nechsten: Die Waldtleut am nechsten nach jhnen: Dornach die
Bergmenlein vnd Erdtmenlein / welche doch selten gegen Menschen verheyrat werden /
sondern allein mit diensten verplicht: vnd die Aethnischen gar nicht gegen Menschen theyll
haben / sich mit jnen zu verbinden / vnnd doch aber dienstbar. So wissen auch / das solche
zwey / nemlich Erdmenlein vnd Aethnischen / werden fr Geister geacht / vnnd nicht fr ein
Creatur dofr sie sie angesehene wirdt / als ob es ein Schein nur sey / oder Gespenst. Do
wissen ein solchs daruon / wie sie erscheinen / also seind sie / Fleisch vnd Blutt / wie ein
ander Mensch / vnd dorbey als ein Geist behend vnd schnell.237

234

Paracelsus 1960: 11.

235

Paracelsus 1960: 14.

236

Paracelsus 1960: 24.

237

Paracelsus 1960: 25.

73

".

Saint Anthony tempted by demons

Engraving

!0

" (c. 1470) by Martin Schongauer.238

While still young Saint Anthony (c. 250 c. 355) of Egypt embraced the life of the ascetics in
his vicinity. After his parents death, he gave up everything to follow the Savior literally, and
withdrew in solitude into the desert. Throughout his long life, he was tempted by the devil in
the shape of all kinds of creatures.239 Remaining steadfast a lover of God, he attracted a
number of disciples to a hermit's life in the desert. A small monastery was formed at the
place, and for years to come he was an inspiration for many.

Due to multiplication by printing, Schongauers engraving was widely influential. It also was
highly innovative, Walter Stephens explains, for the demons assault took place in the air
rather than on the ground.240 Up till then, the latter had been the standard in hagiographic
accounts of Saint Anthonys temptations.

238

Downloaded October 8, 2006 from the homepage Olgas Gallery, http://www.abcgallery.com/saints;

a copy is in Stephens 2002: 113.

239

Athanasius et al. 1907: 3!75; Vivian 1996: 15!23.

240

Stephens 2002: 110.

74

(.

Aerial beings visiting Bishop Agobards Lyon

Medieval picture of the aerial ship landing in Lyon.241

Born in Spain, Agobard (c. 770!840) was taken to France at the age of three. At the age of
twenty he arrived in Lyon. He became a priest in 804 AD. Wikipedia informs: [H]e wrote
extensively not only theological works but also political pamphlets and dissertations. His
writings reveal a clear intellect and independent judgment. In his writings against popular
superstitions, he denounced the trial by ordeal of fire and water, the belief in witchcraft, and
the ascription of tempests to magic, maintained the Carolingian opposition to image!worship,
but carried his logic farther and opposed the adoration of the saints. () Agobards works
were lost until 1605, when a manuscript was discovered in Lyons and published by Paprius
Masson, and again by Baluze in 1666.242

In his argument to prove the existence of sylphs, Villars addresses several passages from
Agobards

,243 one of them involving wonderfully constructed

aerial ships, whose flying squadrons roved at the will of Zephyrs.244 One day, among
instances, it chanced at Lyons that three men and a woman were seen descending from these
aerial ships. The entire city gathered about them, crying out that they were magicians and
were sent by Grimaldus, Duke of Beneventum, Charlemagnes enemy, to destroy the French
harvests. In vain the four innocents sought to vindicate themselves by saying that they were
their own country!fold, and had been carried away a short time since by miraculous men who
had shown them to give an account of what they had seen. The frenzied populace paid no
heed to their defence, and were on the point of casting them into the fire when the worthy
Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, who having been a monk in that city had acquired considerable
241

Downloaded from the homepage RR0, http://www.rr0.org/Agobard.html, on February 7, 2007.

242

Wikipedia 2007.

243

Villars sources in Agobard have been diligently sorted out by The Brothers, see Villars 1997: 190,

194, 308.
244

Villars 1997: 189.

75

authority there, came running at the noise, and having heard the accusations of the people and
the defence of the accused, gravely pronounced that both one and the other were false. That it
was not true that these men had fallen from the sky, and that what they said they had seen
there was impossible.
The people believed what their good father Agobard said rather than their own eyes, were
pacified, set at liberty the four Ambassadors of the Sylphs, and received with wonder the
book which Agobard wrote to confirm the judgment which he had pronounced. Thus the
testimony of these four witnesses was rendered vain.245

Now, the original passage of Agobard runs as follows: We have, however, seen and heard
many men plunged in such great stupidity, and in such depths of folly, as to believe and say
that there is a certain region, which they call Magonia, whence ships sail in the clouds, in
order to carry back to that region those fruits of the earth which are destroyed by hail and
tempests; the sailors paying rewards to the storm wizards and themselves receiving corn and
other produce. Out of the number of those whose blind folly was deep enough to allow them
to believe these things possible, I saw several exhibiting, in a certain concourse of people,
four persons in bondsthree men and a woman who they said had fallen from these same
ships; after keeping them for some days in captivity, they had brought them before the
assembled multitude, as we have said, in our presence to be stoned. But truth prevailed.246

The two citations illustrate the way in which Villars took an old anecdote from a critical
mind, Agobards critical towards supersticious, and magical beliefs , and amended it by
stating the woman and the three men to be sylphs. When doing so, Villars will never have
imagined that his recording of Agobards story of the three men and a woman who descended
from an aerial ship in Lyon around 800, would make it into twentieth century UFO discourse
(see 6)!

245

Villars 1997: 191, 193. (And/or see Villars 1680: 176!177, Villars 1900: 65.)

246

The Brothers in Villars 1997: 194, citing and translated from Agobards
, chapter ii. The original in Latin and translated in French is available on the homepage RR0

http://www.rr0.org/Agobard.html, (downloaded February 7, 2007).

76

The fairy tale &

-.

Three medieval images of Melusina downloaded from the Internet (original dates and sources
unknown).

Melusine, Melosina, or Melusina is the old French folktale of a watersprite written down first
in

&

(1388) by Jean dArras. The encyclopedia 0

elaborates: Melusine was the daughter of Pressina, the fairy guardian

of a fountain, by a mortal king, Elinus of Albany (Scotland). When these two married, it was
on the fairy pledge that he should never see her in childbed. Like all such legendary fairy
promises, it was broken. Elinus saw her at the birth of their last child. The broken vow
deprived him of his wife and their three daughtersMelusine, Melior, and Platinawho
were compelled to return to their fairy court. When these daughters assumed their full
supernatural powers, they took revenge on their father, sealing him forever in a cave in
Northumbria. Realizing what they had done, Pressina cursed each of her daughters, and
Melusine was to become a water serpent from her waist to her feet once a week. It was
decreed that she would never experience love until she found someone who agreed not to see
her on that day, and if this were broken, she would be condemned to exist only as a hideous
winged snake. Melusine met and married Count Raymond of Poitiers, who built the Chateau
of Lusignan for her. Most of their children were deformed from the start in some awful
manner, but the last two were normal. Eventually the count also broke his vow, and Melusine
leaped from the castle ramparts to eternity as the winged serpent mermaid, leaving a noble
line of descendants, claimed to be the ancestors of the French monarchy.247

247

Rose 1998: 217. See furthermore Floeck 1909: 48!60; Laufer in de Villars 1963: 173!174; Briggs

1976: 285!287; Goldammer 1980: 93!94, 115; Phillpotts 1999: 77. Also Prtorius 1666 (part II): 2,
297, and Garinet 1818: 72!73 refer to Melusine.

77

At some point Montfaucon de Villars put in the mouth of the Comte de Gabalis: Ah! he
[the Count] replied, If you deny the story of Melusina I am inclined to think you prejudiced.
But in order to deny it you must burn the books of the great Paracelsus who affirms in five or
six different places that nothing is more certain than in the fact that his same Melusina was a
Nymph. And you must give the lie to your historians who say that since her death or, to speak
more accurately, since she disappeared from the sight of her husband, whenever her
descendants are threatened with misfortune, or a King of France is to die in some
extraordinary way, she never fails to appear in mourning upon the great tower of the Chteau
of Lusignan which she had built. If you persist in maintaining that she was an evil spirit, you
will pick a quarrel with all those who are descended from this Nymph, or who are related to
her house.248

A peculiar interpretation of Melusina is given by liphas Lvi. After a brief summary of the
tale he explains that it refers to the dangers of sacrilegious initiations, or profanation of the
mysteries of religion and of love.249 According to Lvi it is a legend imitated from the fable
of , "

, and borrowed from ancient druid traditions. Contrary to occasions in which Arthur

Waite corrected Lvis interpretations, this time Waite leaves it to the reader to decide
whether Lvis backtracking of Melusina to antiquity is warranted or not. After the
indifference, Waite offers his one view upon the fairytales &

and , "

, and his

interpretation illustrates how time and again old stories can take on complete different
meanings. Waites focus is on mystical marriage: The allegory in the latter [, "

] is that

of the assumption of the soul by the Divine Spirit, so that all which is capable of redemption
in our human nature, its emotion, its desire and its love, may enter into the glorious estate of
the mystic marriage. The allegory in the former case [&

] is that of the union instituted

between the psychic part and all that is of earth in our nature; but this earth is not capable of
true marriage, and whereas the other experiment ends in the world of unity, this terminates, as
it can only, in that of separation.250

248

Villars 1997: 153. Villars reference to Paracelsus is justified, see Paracelsus 1960: 30!32. See also

Laufer in Villars 1963: 173!174.

249

Lvi 1913: 234.

250

Waite in Lvi 1913: 234 note 2.

78

(1782) and Henry Fuseli

by Henry Fuseli, exhibited first at the Royal Academy 1782.251

Fuselis most famous work depicts an attractive young woman stretched out on her back on a
bed. On top of her sits an ugly, evil!looking creature; the head of a horse peeps out in
bewilderment from behind long curtains. Preoccupied with the notion marriage with
elementals, and its natural extension intercourse between humans and elementals, it
seemed obvious to me that Fuseli had envisioned the latter: the woman had been intimate with
a gnome. The question arises whether

may have inspired him to create

the painting. After all, one of the theoretical difficulties has been to distinguish elementals
from Satans imps. Of the four types of elementals, the gnomes delight most in mischief, and
an engraving of another version of

has been added as an extra!illustration to

(see Frame 7).252 Ergo, could Fuseli not have combined very creatively
elements from different sources, one of them being Villars tale?

It is likely to assume that Fuseli had taken notice of

painted his works based upon Alexander Popes
had read the poets mock epic while painting

'

by the time he
!

<. But whether or not he

is impossible to say. He

certainly must have been aware of Pope and his works since 1763, the year his German

251

Copied from Meyrone 2006: 14. Among many others, also in Tomory 1972: plate I; Chappell 1986:

figure 37; Phillpotts 1999: 76!77.

252

Powell 1973: 58!60; Weinglass 1994: 59!60; Frayling 2006: 15; Myrone 2006: 43.

79

was published in Berlin.253 Montagu had

translation of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

had a lively correspondence with the English poet, and Fuseli had a strong interest in English
literature, ergo, he might have read
reference to

'

< then. If so, he would have noted the

and he may have seen that Pope equated gnomes with

Deamons of the Earth. Furthermore, neither magus nor Rosicrucian, nor Swedenborgian
nor Freemason, Fuseli had a broad interest in esoteric lore and knowledge. He was befriended
by Caspar Lavater (1741!1801), Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740!1812), and William
Blake (1757!1827); he knew men like Richard Cosway (1742!1821), and Thomas Stothard
(1755!1834), all having a sincere interest in mesmerism and (other) esoteric currents. Also,
Fuseli contributed articles to
254

Mirror,

&

, or Magical and Physiognomical

and one about fairies to Thomas Crokers %

offer evidence that

"

.255 Still, all this does not

may have inspired Fuseli in any way at the time he

worked on his

. Besides, both sale catalogues of 1825 and 1827 of Fuselis library

do not include a copy of Villars novel.256

'

0.

< (1798) by Thomas Stothard

Watercolour by Thomas Stothard for

'

< by

Alexander Pope (Du Roveray edition 1798), envisioning the

moment when fifty sylphs are busying themselves around
Belindas petticoat and the Baron is about to rape Belinda by
cutting one of her golden locks. Popes description of the
sylphs:
Some to the Sun their Insect!Wings unfold,
Waft on the Breeze, or sink in Clouds of Gold.
Transparant Forms, too fine for mortal Sight,

253

Tomory 1972: 11. Fuseli had no high praise of Popes prose, Halsband 1980: 44 informs, except for
'

<, which, Fuseli had said, showed poetic genius.

254

Schuchard 1975: 437, 446. The magazine began publication in 1791 and lasted till 1793.

255

Silver 1999: 20, referring to the third and last volume of Croker 1825!1828.

256

The catalogues do list the six volumes of Popes poetical works published 1805, and the 1798 plates

of

'

<, see Weinglass 1982: 586 No. 74, and 587 No. 97.

80

Their fluid Bodies half dissolvd in Light.257

1.

"
258

(1791).

"

(1789) by Fuseli and Erasmus Darwin

by Henry Fuseli, frontispiece to Erasmus Darwins

Notice the arms of a gnome on the foreground that hold out jewels from

the earth, and see the similarity with the trampling legs of the figure at Bertaldas feet, detail
from

"#

Lines 69!80 from

(c. 1830) by Theodor von Holst (see Frame 8).

" !4

, Canto 1, the first of the two poems in

:259

Fair Spring advancing calls her featherd quire,

And tunes to softer notes her laughing lyre;
Bids her gay hours on purple pinions move,
And arms her Zyphyrs with the shafts of Love,
257

The figure is copied from Constantine 1997. It is also in Halsband 1980: plate III. Black and white

copies are in Maas 1997: 22, and Bown 2001: 47. The four lines cited are in Canto II of

'

<, see Pope 1967: 93!94, Constantine 1997, Phillpotts 1999: 33, Wood 2001: 32.
258

Copied from Tomory 1972: figure 173. See also Schuchard 1975: 448!449; Weinglass 1994: 123

figure 114. NB. Also William Blake prepared illustrations to Darwins book.
259

Darwin 2001.

81

Pleased GNOMES, ascending from their earthy beds,

Play round her graceful footsteps, as she treads;
Gay SYLPHS attendant beat the fragrant air
On winnowing wings, and waft her golden hair;
Blue NYMPHS emerging leave their sparkling streams,
and FIERY FORMS alight from orient beams;
Muskd in the roses lap fresh dews they shed,
Or breathe celestial lustres round her head.

2.

Left: C

(1811) by Baron Motte de la Fouqu

(c. 1819!1823), water colour, is Henry Fuselis interpretation of

Huldbrand pressing Undine affectionately to his bossom.260 At the right is another scene
taken from Fouqus novel:

"#

(c. 1830), oil on canvas, by

261

Theodor von Holst.

260

Copied from Meyrone 2006: 99. Other pictures are in Tomory 1972: plate XIII, and figure 146, and

Browne 1994: figure 20.

261

Copied from Meyrone 2006: 165. See also Browne 1994: 90!93.

82

The fairy tale C

starts out at the moment when the handsome knight Huldbrand of

Ringstetten finds himself in a fishermans village and meets the beautiful Undine and her
elderly foster parents. The fisherman informs Huldbrand how he and his wife, shortly after
having lost their child, found the three or four year old girl left at their door. Naturally they
took her in as their own, and raised her. What only Undine knows (not even her step parents
are aware of this) is that she is an elemental and in order to gain a soul and assume full human
emotion, she is to marry a man who loves her as much as she loves him. He may never betray
her any fall from grace will mean she is reclaimed by the waterfolk. Now that Huldbrand,
who had been ordered by Bertalda, daughter of the duke, um den Zauberwald zu ergrnden,
got lost and had run into Undine, he falls in love and marries her.
When the freshly wed couple takes to the city, Bertalda arrives at the scene. She and Undine
have the strange feeling they know one another. As it turns out, Bertalda is the lost daughter
of the fisher!folk who after her disappearance has been adopted by the duke. A relative of
Undine, the old water spirit Khleborn, warns Undine that if Huldbrand betrays her, she has
to return to her own folk. He tries to help her by scaring Bertalda through sending evil spirits
to her.
In the meantime Huldbrand gets torn between the two. He bestows upon Bertalda a golden
necklace, a precious gift which unexpectedly is ripped away from her by an evil hand and
dragged into the water. Witnessing this, Undine calls forth from the water a beautiful coral
necklace. She lovingly hands it to Bertalda. But then Huldbrand freaks out. He throws the
jewellery Undine wanted to hand to Bertalda back into the water, yelling angrily: So hast du
denn immer Verbindung mit ihnen [the water elements]? Bleib bei ihnen in aller Hexen
Namen mit all deinen Geschenken, und lass uns Menschen zufrieden, Gauklerin du!262
Severely hurt, Undine takes to the water and disappears. Time goes by and Huldbrand decides
to marry Bertalda. But on the evening of his second wedding he gets the impulse to go to the
well in the courtyard where he meets Undine and then knows he cannot but die. Undine kisses
him heavenly taking away his last breath (read: taking his soul). On the day of Huldbrands
funeral a well springs forth in the cemetery. For ages to come people believe it is the
repudiated Undine die auf diese Art noch immer mit freundlichen Armen ihren Liebling
umfasse.263

262

Fouqu 2001: 85.

263

Fouqu 2001: 99. Summaries are available in Goldammer 1980: 30 ff; Browne 1994: 91; Warrack

1997: 33!34; Rose 1998: 322; Krieger 2000: 7; Bown 2001: 72; Myrone 2006: 98, 164. For an
elaborate study study, see Floeck 1909.

83

Anecdotally, Maggie Fox, one of the famous Fox sisters, was given a copy of C

in 1853

by her lover Elisha Kent Kane. The book undoubtedly reflected Kanes views and fears of
Maggie: despite Undines innocent charm, as a sea nymph she was kin to the Siren, notes the
biographer of the sisters, Barbara Weisberg.264 Kate Fox was also compared to Undine:
Harriet Beecher Stowe did so in a letter she wrote to George Eliot on February 8, 1972.265

3.

Mary Taglioni and

0"

Left:

(1832)

0"

(1845), one of the series of six watercolours to mark Marie

Taglionis retirement, made by Alfred Edward Chalon.266

0"

(1832), written by the tenor Adolphe Nourrit

(1802!1839), is based upon

"

)#

(1822)

by Charles Nodier, a novel of the sylph topos. The plot of the

performance in a nutshell:
On the eve of his wedding with Effie, the Scottish farmer
James sees a beautiful sylph through the window. He gets
torn between his love for Effie and the sylph. When a witch
named Madge prophecies the future for Effie and her friends, James sends Madge away. The
next day, during the wedding ceremony, at the moment when Effie and James are on the point
of exchanging rings, James is enticed by the sylph. Taking a shawl along given to him by Old
Madge who wickedly put poison on it, he dances into the woods meanwhile wrapping the
shawl around the sylph. The effect of the poison is disastrous the wings fall off. Without
them, Sylphide is bound to die...267

264

Weisberg 2004: 161.

265

Weisberg 2004: 214, 300 note 27.

266

Taken from Maas 1997: 77. See also Lambourne 1997: 49, Maas 1997: 76; Wood 2001: 54!55.

267

There are many websites with information about the ballet

0"

, among them the homepage

Dans Maar!, visited July 9, 2006, http://mediatheek.thinkquest.nl/~kld011/dansmaar/ .

84

(1842) by Edward Bulwer Lytton

The novels description by Christopher McIntosh: The Rosicrucian theme is firmly

established in the introduction, in which the author, posing as editor of the text, describes
how, as a young man, he was in the habit of frequenting an old bookshop in Covent Garden,
whose dusty shelves were stacked with volumes on alchemy, astrology, Qabalah and related
subjects. Its owner, whom Bulwer!Lytton calls by his initial D, was evidently well versed in
these subjects and always reluctant to part with his books. (...) On entering the shop the young
man finds the owner in conversation with an old and venerable!looking customer whom he is
treating with great respect. They are talking about an august fraternity, and the young man,
pricking up his ears, enters the discussion by asking the bookshelves about material on the
Rosicrucians. (...) After they have talked for a while, however, the old man says that if they
meet again I may be able to direct your researches to the proper sources of intelligence. Four
days later the young man (...) is invited to the old mans house near by. After this he becomes
a regular visitor and benefits from his friends great store of learning. The old man tells him
that he has written a book and extracts from his young friend a promise to prepare it for the
public. Accordingly, after his friends death, the young man receives a manuscript in cipher,
together with a key. The translation proves to be a difficult task and takes him several years.
The resulting narrative is presented as the text of Zanoni.268
In the novel Zanoni and Mejnour (Zanonis spiritual master) are the last survivors of an
ancient brotherhood. Both prolonged their existence through the elixir of life, but Zanoni
loses his immortality by falling in love with Viola. Because of falling in love, Zanoni
sacrifices himself for her. Their love is sealed with the birth of an exceptionally gifted child,
who at the end of the tale is the only survivor of the brotherhood.

A passage where Glyndon, the character in the novel whom the narrator met in the old
bookshop, and the narrator talk about Villars and

I thought it better, therefore, to turn the conversation.

"Revenons a nos moutons," said I; "you promised to enlighten my ignorance as to the
Rosicrucians."
"Well!" quoth he, rather sternly; "but for what purpose? Perhaps you desire only to
enter the temple in order to ridicule the rites?"
"What do you take me for! Surely, were I so inclined, the fate of the Abbe de Villars
is a sufficient warning to all men not to treat idly of the realms of the Salamander and the
268

McIntosh 1987: 110!111.

85

Sylph. Everybody knows how mysteriously that ingenious personage was deprived of his life,
in revenge for the witty mockeries of his 'Comte de Gabalis.'"
"Salamander and Sylph! I see that you fall into the vulgar error, and translate literally
the allegorical language of the mystics."
With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very interesting, and, as it
seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of the tenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he
asserted, still existed, and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound researches into
natural science and occult philosophy.269

Joscelyn Godwin describes the novel as an encyclopedia of ideas about the occult sciences,
and its world!view is of a universe populated by beings at every level: not just the physical
series from galaxy to microbe that was currently exciting Victorian scientists, but an unseen
hierarchy which could, by the proper means, be rendered perceptible. The lowest of them are
the spirits of the four elements: the Gnomes, Undines, Sylphs, and Salamanders of Paracelsus
.270

and of the

(1842) by Charles Mackay

A prolific writer, Charles Mackays inspiration for a long poem about the love between a
mortal man and a fire elemental, stems from

and

'

<.

The poem consists of seven cantos, is easy reading, and lightened up by romantic illustrations
in the second edition published 1853. Summary of the poem:
When Sir Gilbert was on his way home from war, he had a vision in his sleep of a maiden
sweet, she stood unscorched amid the fire. The girl in his dream turns out to be the
peasant girl Amethysta. The two fall in love. Then Gilbert decides to return to his home
town (to inform his folks he made it through the war), and finds his old sire having found him
a fine bride, Rosaline. Proud of his rank, a baron bold, Gilbert marries Rosalind and not the
maid without a name. Alas, after the wedding vows are declared, he regrets his move, takes
off to the woods, wanders around, encounters an old woman whom he begins to serve.
Busying himself with daily chores, he laments about his mistake and his love Amethysta, who
is nowhere to be found. Days pass by. Nothing happens until Gilbert returns to his hometown,
only to find that all believe he has died he reads it on his own tombstone and Rosaline is
269

Bulwer Lytton 1853: xiii.

270

Godwin 2005: 216.

86

to marry a new love. Thereupon Gilbert feels free to return once more to the woods. Instead
of finding the old woman he had been looking after, Amethysta awaits him. All the time she
had been in disguise; his services to the old woman had shown his repentance for having
married Rosaline. Now love triumphs, and Amethysta has the crown of human joy, her
happy soul shall never die! But legend has it that

The maiden perished on her bridal day;

Slain by excess of rapturous joy, she fell
Lifeless upon the breast she loved so well.271

"

Georg von Welling on

According to Will!Erich Peuckert and Antoine Faivre, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749!
1832), one of the Romantic German writers who must have known Fouqu, Hoffmann, and
others, had a sincere interest in Rosicrucianism and alchemy, instilled in him by reading in his
younger, Frankfurter years the $

(1735) by the

German theosophic alchemist Georg von Welling (1655!1727).272

The third volume, eighth chapter of this opus conveys von Wellings polemic against
.273 Like Villars, von Welling built on Paracelsus ideas about four types of
elementals, and since he took Villars seriously, von Welling depicted the elementals like
humans. For reasons unknown the alchemist viewed the Abb Villars and the Count of
Gabalis as one and the same person, and called him den berhmten Abb de Villarceau.274
Counter to the similarities, Peuckert explains the point where von Welling parts from Villars,
whereby he cites from von Welling:

[]Ferner sagt gedachter Abb de Villarceau Comte de Gabalis, seye zum Zweck zu
kommen, ein sicheres und gewisses Mittel, dessen man sich bedienen soll, wann man zur
Bekanntschaft der Menschen im Element des Feuers (welche er absurd Salamandres, wir
hingegen Pyranthropos nennen) kommen wolle. Man mu, sagt er, das Element des Feuers, so
in uns selbsten ist, zum hchsten reinigen, und erhhen; mann darff nur das allgemeine Welt!
271

Mackay 2006: 139.

272

Peuckert 1967: 512; Goldammer 1980: 114, 136; Faivre 2005: 1167.

273

Peuckert 1967: 504.

274

Peuckert 1967: 497.

87

Feuer durch hole Spiegel in einer glsernen Kugel concentriren und es folgt das im Comte
de Gabalis beschriebene Experiment. Aber allhier knnen wir nicht umhin zu sagen, da
der Comte de Gabalis gar ein schlechter Philosophus gewesen syn msse; Er hat wohl luten
aber nicht zusammen schlagen gehrt, sonsten er nicht so in den Tag hinein geschrieben
haben wrde, das rothe Sonnen!Pulver in einer glsernen Kugel zu concentriren, indeme
warlich ein anders dazu gehret, diesen rothen mnnlichen Schweffel der Weisen zu
erhaschen. Er sagt wohl etwas mit der glsernen Kugel; wie es denn durch diesen Weg
geschehen kan; allein von dem magnetischen Vehiculo sag er nichts, darum willen wir auch
schweigen. Ein deutlich Entsprechendes sagt Welling darnach ber Villars Nymphen. Und
dann erklrt er schroff: wir mibilligen aber gntzlich den Zweck, welchen ihm Comte de
Gabalis vorstellet, nemlich durch offt gedachte Geist!Menschen die Unsterblichkeit zu wege
zu bringen, mit andern Worten, so nahe Welling auch Villars und seiner Dichtung steht, im
letzten verwift er ihn und seine cabbalistischen Phantasien. Der Weg geht zwar vom Comte
zu ihm, aber dieser Weg zerbricht, bei Welling fngt eine neue kabbalistische Ordnung an
und eine neue Situation.275

So, even though

originally did have an influence on von Wellings

thinking, the impact of the novel ended right here. Von Welling considered Villars a bad
philosopher, and put Villars aside, a decision rightly made since Villars was neither Cabalist
nor Rosicrucian, neither philosopher nor alchemist. Villars did have an agenda but it did not
involve offering secret truths.

General Ethan Allen Hitchcock on

Among the persons probably known by Edward Bulwer Lytton was, Marsha Schuchard
explains, the American General Ethan Allen Hitchcock (1798!1870), whose '
#

"

of spiritual alchemy.

<

(1857) contributed considerably to the emergence of the concept

276

In this book Hitchcock speculates about a Secret Society and the

secret language its members may have used to communicate with one another. To illustrate
the idea he singles out

. Not accepting it as a work written by an

alchemist, but as a Rosicrucian, Hitchcock believes the novel to exhibit something of the

275

Peuckert 1967: 507.

276

Schuchard 1975: 574, 582.

88

manner by which the members of that fraternity approached strangers, and sounded them
upon the subject of becoming members.277 Members of the Rosicrucian Society, he reasons,
would have agreed to speak and write of each other before the uninitiated as sylphs, fairies,
elfs, gnomes, and salamanders.278 It is not explained from where Hitchcock develops this
idea. Persuaded to accept it as Rosicrucian, the book made some talk recently he claims, but
who may have persuaded him, and who was, or who were talking about it, is obscure. Could it
have been Bulwer Lytton who persuaded Hitchcock? Or liphas Lvi whom Hitchcock, again
according to Schuchard, also knew?279 Or is the novel discussed in the writings by Gabriele
Rossetti that Hitchcock had discovered in 1844 and highly appreciated,280 i.e., had by any
chance Rossetti Senior persuaded the General?
No answers are available to these questions. Therefore, the only conclusion to be drawn from
the passage by Hitchcock is that the Abb Villars was viewed in the first half of the
nineteenth century as a Rosicrucian, and that

was read seriously by

Hitchcock, and, most likely, by those on whose recommendation(s) Hitchcock had considered
the work.

277

Hitchcock 1991: 152; Hitchcock cited by Hall 1976: 26.

278

Hitchcock 1991: 151!152; Hitchcock cited by Hall 1976: 26.

279

Schuchard 1975: 574.

280

Schuchard 1975: 577; Pinchard 2005: 298. Gabriele Rossetti (1783!1854), father of the painter

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Schuchard 1975: 577 informs, was a Masonic Carbonari, who devoted his life
to researching the great Masonic conspiracy (), from Dante into the nineteenth century. Interested
in Masonic conspiracy, the secrets revealed by the Count of Gabalis will have appealed to Rossetti
the Elder. Since Hitchcock studied Rossettis writings, it may have been Rossetti who introduced
Hitchcock to

89

&

In one way or another many people have played a role in the production of this
dissertation. The initial stimulus came from Marco Pasis MA Course reader $
*

== 3

&

(February!June 2006 semester). A few articles in this reader put me on the track of
, and, although I originally only intended to write a final course
paper, the amount of material related to the novel was so extensive that, in
consultation with Wouter Hanegraaff and stimulated by his advise to take the
momentum of inspiration, I decided to expand the project into an MA thesis. Then,
when Wouter read the first draft almost a year ago, he praised half of it as good, the
other half as bad (and by implication, very bad). Due to his feedback, I switched
focus, and the dramatic, primary title,
metamorphosed into a happier counterpart, &

=
;

;
9

Access to the large quantity of books and articles listed in the Bibliography has been
made possible by a number of almost invisible or virtual people working in
libraries and bookshops, or active on the Internet, who aided in obtaining the material
I was interested in. To mention only four: Martin Kral (University of Amsterdam
Library) remembered at some point my name without having seen it on a computer
screen or a slip of paper in a book I was about to borrow. Cisca van Heertum (Ritman
Library) contacted Carlos Gilly who had borrowed the 1961 edition of
but currently lives abroad. Gilly kindly scanned and emailed me the
requested pages. A few email!exchanges with Marcel Roggemans led me to Ren
Nellis .

, a book I would never have discovered without

Roggemans website.

Another group of more visible people who have had an invisible influence on the
content of the dissertation, consists of friends, fellow students, colleagues, and family.
Many of these shared in the fun (or frustration) which I derived from my findings
connected to the witziger Kopf Villars,281 thereby doubled the fun (or helped to
dissipate the frustration).
281

Meyer 1885!1892: 208 (Vol. 16).

90

During the last phase, polyglot and friend!on!the!other!side!of!the!globe Brian Steel

vetted my English expression; Marco and Wouters reading of a final draft resulted in
my consideration of some further sources, and closer analysis of a few issues. Any
remaining mistakes and shortcomings, however, are my own.

To each and every one of you, a hearty thank you for contributing to my quest!

91

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