CHAPTER III
PROPHECIES OF CAZOTTE
THE school of unknown philosophers founded by Martines de Pasqually and continued by L. C. de Saint-Martin seems to have incorporated the last adepts of true initiation. Saint-Martin was acquainted with the ancient key of the Tarot—the mystery, that is to say, of sacred alphabets and hieratic hieroglyphics. He has left many very curious pantacles which have never been engraved and of which we possess copies. One of them is the traditional key of the Great Work and is called by Saint-Martin the key of hell, because it is that of riches.1 The Martinists were the last Christians in the cohort of illuminés, and it was they who initiated the famous Cazotte.
We have said that during the eighteenth century a schism took place in illuminism: on the one hand, the wardens of the traditions concerning Nature and science wished to restore the hierarchy; there were others, on the contrary, who desired to level all things by disclosing the Great Arcanum, thus rendering the royalty and priesthood alike impossible in the world. Among the latter, some were ambitious and unscrupulous, seeking to erect a throne for themselves over the ruins of the world. Others were dupes and zanies. The true initiates beheld with dismay the launching of society towards the abyss, and they foresaw all the terrors of anarchy. That revolution which was destined at a later period to manifest before the dying genius of Vergniaud under the sombre figure of Saturn devouring his children had already shewn itself fully armed in the prophetic dreams of Cazotte. On a certain evening, when he was surrounded by blind instruments of the Jacobinism to come, he predicted the doom of all—for the strongest and weakest the scaffold, for the enthusiasts, suicide—and his prophecy, which at the moment was rather like a sombre jest, was destined to be realised amply.2 As a fact, it was only the calculus of probabilities, and it proved strictly correct because it dealt with chances which had already become fatal consequences. La Harpe, who was impressed by the prediction, amplified the details, to make it appear more marvellous.3 He mentioned, for example, the exact number of times that a certain guest of the moment would draw the razor across his throat. Poetic licence of this kind may be forgiven to the tellers of unusual stories; such adornments are of the substance of style and poetry rather than untruths.
The gift of absolute liberty to men who are unequal by Nature is an organisation of social war; when those who should restrain the headlong instincts of the crowd are so mad as to unloose them, it does not need a great magician to foresee that they will be the first to be devoured, since animal lusis are bound to prey upon one another until the appearance of a bold and skilful huntsman who will end them by shot and snare. Cazotte foresaw Marat, as Marat in his turn foresaw reaction and a dictator. Cazotte made his first appearance in public as the author of some literary trifles, and it is said that he owed his initiation to the romance of Le Diable Amoureux. There is no question that it is full of magical intuitions, and love, that supreme ordeal of life, is depicted in its pages under the true light of the doctrine of adeptship. Passion in a state of delirium and folly invincible for those who are slaves of imagination, physical love is but death in the guise of allurement, seeking to renew its harvest by means of birth. The physical Venus is death, painted and habited like a courtesan; Cupid also is a destroyer, like his mother, for whom he recruits victims. When the courtesan is satiated, death unmasl's and calls in turn for its prey. This is why the Church—which safeguards birth by sanctifying marriage—lays bare in their true colours the debaucheries which are mortal, by condemning without pity all the disorders of love. If she who is beloved is not indeed an angel, earning immortality by sacrifice to duty in the arms of him whom she loves, she is a stryge who expends, exhausts and slays him, finally exposing herself before him in all the hideousness of her animal egoism. Woe to the victims of the Le Diable Amoureux, thrice woe to those who are beguiled by the lascivious endearments of Biondetta. Speedily the gracious countenance of the girl will change into that camel's head which appears so tragically at the end of the romance of Cazotte.
According to the Kabalists there are two queens of the stryges in Sheol—one is Lilith, the mother of abortions, and the other is Nehamah, fatal and murderous in her beauty. When a man is false to the spouse set apart for him by heaven, when he is abandoned to the disorders of a sterile passion, God withdraws his legitimate bride and delivers him to the embraces of Nehamah, who assumes at need all charms of maidenhood and of love; she turns the hearts of fathers, and at her instigation they abandon all the duties owing to their children; she brings married men to widowhood; while those who are consecrated to God she coerces into sacrilegious marriage. When she assumes the rôle of a wife she is, however unmasked easily, for on her marriage day she appears in a state of baldness, that hair which is the veil of modesty for womanhood being forbidden her on this occasion. Later on she assumes airs of despair and disgust with existence; she preaches suicide, deserts him who cohabits with her, having first sealed him between the eyes with an infernal star. The Kabalists say further that Nehamah may become a mother but she never rears her children, as she gives them to her fatal sister to devour.
These Kabalistic allegories, which are found in the Hebrew book concerning the Revolution of Souls, included by Rosenroth in the collection of the Kabbala Denudata1 and otherwise met with in Talmudic commentaries on the Sota, must have been either known or divined by the author of Le Diable Amoureux. Hence we are told that after the publication of his novel, Cazotte had a visit from an unknown person who was wrapped in a mantle, after the traditional manner of emissaries of the Secret Tribunal. The visitor made signs to Cazotte which he failed to understand and then asked whether indeed he had not been initiated. On receiving a reply in the negative, the stranger assumed a less sombre expression and then said: “I perceive that you are not an unfaithful recipient of our secrets but rather a vessel of election prepared for knowledge. Do you wish to rule in reality over human passions and over impure spirits?” Cazotte displayed his curiosity; a long talk followed; it was the preface to other meetings; and the author of Le Diable Amoureux was called to initiation at the end. He became a devout supporter of order and authority as a consequence and also a redoubtable enemy of anarchists.
We have seen that, according to the symbolism of Cagliostro, there is a mountain into which those must go up who are on the quest of regeneration; this mountain is white with light, like Tabor, or red with fire and blood, like Sinai and Calvary. The Zohar says that there are two chromatic syntheses; one of them is white and is that of peace and moral light; the other, which is red, is that of war and material life. The Jacobins had plotted to unroll the standard of blood, and their altar was erected on the red mountain. Cazotte was enrolled under the banner of light, and his mystical tabernacle was established on the white mountain. That which was stained with blood triumphed for a moment, and Cazotte was proscribed. The heroic girl who was his daughter saved him from the slaughter at the Abbey; it so happened that the prefix denoting nobility was not attached to her name and she was spared therefore that horrible toast of fraternity which immortalised the filial piety of Mlle de Sombreuil, who, to be vindicated from the charge of aristocracy, drank the health of her father in the blood-stained glass of cut-throats.
Cazotte was in a position to foretell his own death, because conscience compelled him to fight against anarchy even to the last. He obeyed it, was arrested for the second time and brought before the revolutionary tribunal as one condemned already. The President who pronounced his sentence added an allocution full of esteem and regret, pledging his victim to be worthy of himself unto the end and to die nobly as he had lived. Even in episodes of the tribunal, the revolution was a civil war and the brethren exchanged salutations as they condemned one another to death. The explanation is that there was the sincerity ol conviction on both sides and both were entitled to respect. Whosoever dies for that which he thinks to be true is a hero in even his deception, and the anarchists ol the ensanguined mountain were not only intrepid when despatching others to the scaffold, but ascended it themselves without blanching. Let God and posterity be their judges.
1 Saint-Martin did not continue the school of theurgic Masonry founded by Martines de Pasqually. He abandoned the school and all active connection with Rites and Lodges. The evidence for his acquaintance with the Tarot rests on the fact that his Tableau Natural des Rapports qui existent entre Dieu, l'Homme et l'Univers happens to be divided into 22 sections, and there are 22 Tarot Trumps Major. On the same evidence the same assertion is made in respect of the Apocalypse. That which seemed adequate for Éliphas Lévi continues to be found sufficient for the school of Martinism today and for its Grand Master, Papus.
2 See Deleuze: Mémoires sur la Faculté de la Prévision, 1836.
3 The reader who is in search of romances may also consult P. Christian: Histoire de la Magie, published about 1871. It pretends that Court de Gebelin left an account in MS. of the interrogation of Count Cagliostro in the presence of many Masonic dignitaries, including Cazotte, at the Masonic Convention of Paris. The date was May 10, 1785. Cagliostro on that occasion predicted the chief events of the French Revolution, and, at the suggestion of Cazotte, gave the name, then unknown, of the Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte.
1 The Tractates de Revolutionibus Animarum was the work of R. Isaac de Loria, a German Kabalist. It is contained in the second volume of Kabbala Denudata. It is not allegorical and it has no Talmudic or Zoharic authority. As it was translated into French in 1905, most people can judge for themselves on the subject.