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Modern Occult Rhetoric Mass Media and the Drama of
Secrecy in the Twentieth Century 1st Edition Joshua
Gunn Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Joshua Gunn
ISBN(s): 9780817314668, 0817314660
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 11.47 MB
Year: 2005
Language: english
Modern Occult Rhetoric
Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique
Series Editor
John Louis Lucaites

Editorial Board
Richard Bauman
Carole Blair
Dilip Gaonkar
Robert Hariman
Steven Mailloux
Raymie E. McKerrow
Toby Miller
Austin Sarat
Janet Staiger
Barbie Zelizer
Modern Occult Rhetoric
Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in
the Twentieth Century

JOS H UA G U N N
Copyright © 2005
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeface: Sabon

∞
The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.

ISBN: 978-0-8173-5656-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN: 978-0-8173-8541-5 (electronic)
A previous edition of this book has been catalogued by the Library of Con-
gress.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gunn, Joshua, 1973–

Modern occult rhetoric : mass media and the drama of secrecy in the twen-
tieth century / Joshua Gunn.
p. cm. — (Rhetoric, culture, and social critique)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8173-1466-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Occultism—Social aspects. 2. Popular culture—History—20th century.
3. Language and languages—Miscellanea. 4. Mass media. I. Title. II. Series.
BF1439.G86 2005
130´.1´4—dc22
2004029046

Earlier versions or portions of chapters in this study appeared in the following

publications: “H. P. Blavatsky and the Magic of Esoteric Language,” Journal
of Communication and Religion 25 (2002): 193–227; “An Occult Poetics,
or, the Secret Rhetoric of Religion,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34 (2004):
29–54; and “Prime Time-Satanism: Postmodern Occultism and the Rumor-
work of Iconic Topoi,” Visual Communication 4 (2005): 93–120.
For Robert Icabod Ebenezer Alexander Perry Garcella Philbert
Algernon Scott
Contents

List of Illustrations / ix
Acknowledgments / xi
Introduction / xv

Part I: Esoterica
1. What Is the Occult? / 3
Interlude: Erasing the Grooves: On Cold Feet / 27
2. Toward an Occult Poetics / 35
Interlude: Mysteries of the Unknown / 53
3. H. P. Blavatsky and the Magic of Esoteric Language / 56
4. On Textual Occultism / 79

Part II: Exoterica

Interlude: Re-membering Crowley / 109
5. Aleister Crowley and the Hermeneutic of Authority / 116
Interlude: On Stolen Letters and Lettered Secrets / 138
6. The Death of the Modern Magus: “The Masses” and
Irony’s Other / 143
7. Prime-Time Satanism: Stock Footage and the Death of Modern
Occultism / 172
8. The Allegory of The Ninth Gate / 204
Epilogue: The Fool’s Yapping Cur / 230
Appendix 1: Scholarship on Occultism / 237
Appendix 2: Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law / 249
viii / contents
Notes / 265
Selected Bibliography / 305
Index / 329
Illustrations

1. Eliphas Lévi / 4
2. The Sabbatic Goat / 5
3. Goëtic Circle of Black Evocation and Pacts / 25
4. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky / 55
5. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky / 59
6. Aleister Crowley / 110
7. Aleister Crowley / 146
8. The Baphomet of the Church of Satan / 187
Acknowledgments

This book began as a doctoral dissertation that I wrote during study

at the University of Minnesota. I thank the many kind and patient
folks at the University of Alabama Press, as well as three important
scholarly mentors, for preparing me to do battle with the Demons of
the Warmed-Over (if readers notice that these demons have not been
completely exorcized, however, then I am entirely to blame). The idea
for a book on secrets was hatched in an “Introduction to Rhetorical
Criticism” course taught by my adviser, Robert L. Scott, in the very
early hours of a cold Minnesota winter day. Despite reading numerous
error-¤lled essays, Professor Scott encouraged further study. He read,
reread, and read yet again every chapter, tirelessly recommending
changes and suggesting new areas of inquiry. I dedicate this book to
Dr. Scott for his kindness, his caring, his parenting, and above all his
humanity (“27 April: Old father, old arti¤cer, stand me now and ever
in good stead”). Karlyn Kohrs Campbell was also instrumental in the
completion of this book. Chapters 2 and 3 began as a project on H. P.
Blavatsky in her rhetorical criticism seminar. I learned how to write
and teach by working with Dr. Campbell, and her continual encour-
agement, love, and support has motivated me to do my best. Finally, I
owe many thanks to Barry Brummett (otherwise known as “Sheridan,
Returned from the Grave”), who has been vetting my scholarship ever
since I started sending essays out for review. Barry read the manuscript
closely, made numerous, helpful suggestions, and made me my ¤rst
rum and tonic on Sunday, May 30, 2004.
Other faculty at the University of Minnesota contributed either di-
rectly or indirectly to this project. I thank Robin Brown for the many
days we have spent in conversation about religion and for going to the
exorcisms with me when Bob Larson came to town. Kirt Wilson pro-
vided keen insights regarding the magickal texts of Aleister Crow-
ley, which he encouraged me to study in his class on close textual
xii / acknowledgments
criticism. Edward Schiappa provided invaluable feedback and advice
about the theoretical issues of this study, and I thank him, in particu-
lar, for helping me to navigate the work of Burke and Rorty (as well
as the strange terrain of professorship). Mary Vavrus carefully vetted
chapter 7 and spent many afternoons with me in discussion. Ron
Greene taught me to be suspicious of the textual magus. In sum, the
faculty at the University of Minnesota have been incredibly helpful
and supportive during my research.
My friends at Minnesota and elsewhere were also important to the
completion of this study. Angela Ray has been like a sister to me, and
she continues to teach me what being a scholar is by example. We
shared many lengthy discussions about the ideas our work shares in
common, and on numerous occasions she provided a shoulder to cry
on. David Beard has also been a model friend and scholar, and I thank
him for all the conversations we had about the ideas in this book,
and those we continue to have as the years ®y by. Chani Marchiselli
read a number of chapters and offered sharp insights. Aric Putnam
and Kristen Brown also provided excellent feedback about key chap-
ters. Mirko Hall and Christopher Swift have listened patiently at the
end of a phone as I rambled on endlessly about the occult. Ricca
Ducharme also endured an untold number of discussions about this
book; her patience and kindness be¤t the Buddha.
I am blessed to have had such supportive and humane colleagues
while a member of the Department of Communication Studies at
Louisiana State University. I thank Loretta Pecchinoi, Laura Sells,
Tracy Stephenson, and Trish Suchy, in particular, for their encourage-
ment, friendship, and support while I was completing the book, and
my colleagues in English, Jim Catano and Michelle Massé, for their
cheer and welcome embrace. Dan Grano taught me the virtue of So-
cratic ignorance, which appears here as its double, humility. I forced
Shaun Treat to listen to me read chapters aloud while road-tripping,
and I thank him for his feedback, patience, and friendship. Lisa Flan-
negan, Roger Pippin, Danielle Sears, Stephen Shapiro, Gretchen Stein,
David Terry, and the revolving membership of the “Front Porch Ac-
tion Group” were crucial to my sanity as a scholar, and the periodic
evenings with our friend Jim Beam provided ample motivation to
write all day.
Many people associated with the occultic objects of study were in-
strumental to this book’s completion. Hymenaeus Beta, Craig Berry,
and Marcus Jungkurth of the Ordo Templi Orientis provided good
conversation and helped to locate images of Aleister Crowley. Mem-
bers from the Minneapolis chapter of that organization, the “Leaping
 acknowledgments / xiii
Laughter Oasis,” commented on early drafts and invited me to par-
ticipate in the Gnostic Mass, an unforgettable experience. John Algeo
of the Theosophical Society of America helped me to secure images of
Blavatsky and provided excellent feedback on chapter 3, correcting a
number of errors and misjudgments. Peter Gilmore of the Church of
Satan also was very helpful and corrected a number of misperceptions
about his organization in good humor, and Michael Aquino of the
Temple of Set cheerfully provided access to documents not available
to the general public. Joseph Aloysius Becker of Think¤lm provided
me with a copy of his “Mysteries of the Unknown” television com-
mercial, which he produced for Time/Life Books.
Finally, I thank my parents, Dan and Jane Gunn, for their love and
support and for being the kind of parents who encouraged me to go
to art school when I insisted on going to law school. Without their
encouragement and guidance, this book could not have been written.
Quod tacitum velis esse, nemini dixeris.
Si tibi ipsi non imperasti,
quomondo ab aliss silentium speras?
—Seneca (attributed), Proverbs 16

The practice of magic consists in making what is not

understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner.
—Carl Jung
Introduction

Many of us have had the experience of picking up a volume in the local

bookstore, reading the ¤rst few pages, and ¤nding ourselves utterly
mysti¤ed. Despite the title or the promotional blurbs on the cover, the
more one reads this book, the more the words seem to become resis-
tant in their recalcitrant materiality. Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass
Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century is about
this experience. It is also about the ways in which individuals use lan-
guage (and the ways in which language uses individuals) to harbor
secrets, creating groups of insiders and outsiders. Consider what some
readers may have experienced if, instead of this paragraph, Modern
Occult Rhetoric began with an epigraph from two celebrated French
thinkers and then proceeded to suggest, in tortuous jargon, that these
thinkers were secretly students of Freemasonry and the Jewish tradi-
tion of mysticism known as the Kabbalah . . .
 Desiring-machines are binary machines, obeying a binary law or
set of rules governing associations: one machine is always coupled
with another. . . . This is because there is always a ®ow-producing
machine, another machine connected to it that interrupts or
draws off part of this ®ow (the breast—the mouth). . . . Desire
causes the current to ®ow, itself ®ows in turn, and breaks the
®ows. . . . Amniotic ®uid spilling out of the sac and kidney
stones; ®owing hair, a ®ow of spittle, a ®ow of sperm, shit, or
urine that are produced by partial objects . . .
—Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari1

Speaking in terms of the right-hand path, readers familiar with the

work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari will immediately acknowl-
edge that the un-doing, schizo-phronesis of desiring production and
its rippling effects in the worldly, ever-widening, rhizomatic onto-
theology of thinking/being was originally mapped by Spinoza. To rec-
ognize the ®ows of desire enabling and disabling a litany of couplings
and splits and the many, enercological ®ows and dams between the
conatus and anima—indeed, the fecal gift and the undead eidola—is
to celebrate the in¤nite attributes of “The One.” Yet right-handed
readers may not immediately realize that the geometrico-mathematical
paradox of the syzygy (e.g., the rank-¤ve syzygy expressed as Σijkδlm −
Σ
jklδim + Σkliδjm − Σlδkm = 0)—at base the notion that reality repre-
sents itself in the illusion of a dualistic ¤nitude, which is fundamental
to most immanent ontologies and which is belied by the unrepresent-
ability of libidinal ®ows—derives from that ancient art of Jewish mys-
ticism, the Kabbalah.2
Speaking in terms of the left-hand path, readers familiar with the
goetic arts, the amite arts of Gematria, Notariqon, Temura, and the
dogma of the Thrice Great Hermes (Hermeticism)3 will be familiar
with the unfortunate philosophical inversion of the cogito (“Some-
thing thinks, therefore something exists to think thought”), the mac-
daddy syzygy of the in¤nite attribute of thought frequently laid at the
unwashed feet of Descartes, which is under attack by Deleuze and
Guattari. The liberatory possibilities of the Hebrew Kabbalah or the
Greek Qabalah can be understood precisely in terms of their dual-
aspect theory of divinity, namely, that the mental and physical are
distinct emanations of the Godhead. The monistic foundation of the
occult tradition, in this sense, can be located in the Hebrew Yod or the
Greek Tau, both marks of the eternal rendered in the English letter
“G”: When The One hailed Moses on the mount, He bellowed in
xviii / introduction
terrifying speech, “I am that I am,” which is the ¤rst axiom of occult
philosophy, “being is being.”4 Yet the student of the occult may not
immediately recognize that the schizoid-subject-as-desiring-machine
is actually cipher for each transitive node on the Tree of Life, each
coupling of ®ows a world or sphere revealed by Plato in the ninth
chapter of the Republic: Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiah.
Finally, both students of Continental and occult philosophy may
not recognize that the binary initially forged by Francis Bacon (prin-
cipally to keep his head intact), which forever led the scientist and the
magician to the independent, institutional pieties re®ected in the Doc-
trine of Twofold Truth (the language of Deity and the language of His
Creation),5 has well served the monis- and monastically minded intel-
lectual since the establishment of the Great Blue Lodge in the eigh-
teenth century. As is well known, the secrets of Freemasonry are trans-
mitted, as Deity to Moses, in the presencing ®ows of speech, the union
of the conatus and the animus, the threshold of Truth. The cherished
letter “G” central to the emblem of Freemasonry (usually centered
inside a square and compass) thus yokes the occultist and philoso-
pher of immanence under the noses of the unenlightened masses and
betokens a secret shared among only a select few: God is Geometry,
and one comes to increasingly deeper understandings of Being only in
and by degrees.
This book, then, is potentially earth shattering, or better, sphere map-
ping, when the reader fully understands my purpose: to reveal the secret
that “constitutes the fatal Science of Good and Evil,” as Eliphas Lévi
once put it, in successive degrees of allegorical correspondence.6 The
secret of all occult traditions is, in fact, that Lucifer is an emanation of
Deity, the “light bearer” that makes possible the rhizomatic ef®uence of
desire and knowledge only through worshipful adherence to a false
“Master,” a revelation perhaps most aptly disclosed by Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra in terms of the “transvaluation” of all values for the stu-
dent of philosophy,7 and by Aleister Crowley in terms of the power of
human sacri¤ce (typically a male baby) for the student of the occult.8 In
short, this book attempts to explain what it means to worship the Devil,
particularly in terms of linguistic practice, as well as chronicle the his-
tory of our servitude to Satan in the worldwide Order of Freemasonry.

The Secret of the Book

To begin again: if the patient reader has read the last four paragraphs
without throwing this book across the room, then he or she may be
 introduction / xix
relieved to learn that the preceding prose was intentionally tortuous,
designed to demonstrate formally the primary object of scrutiny in
Modern Occult Rhetoric. As I hinted, this book is about the object of
strange, mysterious, or dif¤cult language, including the reasons or
forces behind its invention, the experience of reading, interpreting,
and reacting to it, and the ways in which it can get the better of us. It
is my hope that by the end of this book the reader can easily take apart
the preceding rumination on ontological dualism (the notion that
mental stuff, res cogitans, and bodily stuff, res extensa, are radically
distinct), particularly in terms of its rhetorical, or suasive, function:
this hodgepodge of esoteric terms and academic jargon is designed to
discriminate among those who can read it and those who cannot.
When writing the example ruse, I wanted the aesthetic form of the
prose to re®ect the content or argument: the dif¤cult language of phi-
losophy is akin to the dif¤cult language of the occult tradition; both
traditions simultaneously obscure the truths their vocabularies seek to
deploy, and both utilize dif¤cult language to create readerships. In
short, the content domains of philosophy and the occult share a com-
mon logic of discrimination. Their prose, like mine, is designed to
delight and to encourage the reader who is “in the know” and to an-
noy, discourage, or perhaps even intrigue the reader who is not.
Put in more familiar, biblical terms, Modern Occult Rhetoric con-
cerns the contemporary equivalent of the shibboleth, a term for the
famous speech-password in the book of Judges (12:1–15). Insofar as
the King James Bible is the principal source of spiritual secrets in U.S.
Freemasonry (a central “Landmark” of the Craft), then the story of
warring Semitic tribes certainly can be read as an occult allegory for
keeping and telling secrets: the Ephraimites and the Gileadites are
warring, and the latter defeats the former. The Gileadites fashion
a blockade to catch ®eeing Ephraimites and establish a password to
let their friends through. Each escapee is asked to pronounce the
word “shibboleth,” ancient Hebrew for “ear of corn.” In the dialect
of the Gileadites the word was pronounced with a “sh,” while the
Ephraimites pronounced it with a “s.” Apparently, thousands of folks
said the latter and got into some pretty deep “sit” yammering on
about corn on the cob.
The concept of the shibboleth underscores the ways in which ci-
pher links human expression to real bodies in space, with real conse-
quences. One literally and ¤guratively could lose one’s head when
not paying enough attention to form, the most important, relational
meaning of the secret. As a “speech act” or an utterance that does
xx / introduction
things to and for people,9 the shibboleth also helps to explain the re-
lationships among the four major concepts or categories of the present
study: rhetoric, religion and theological form, the occult, and the oc-
cultic.

The Shibboleth of Rhetoric

The performative aspect of the shibboleth underscores why “rhetoric”

appears in the title of this book for a number of reasons. The ¤rst is
that “rhetoric” is itself a dif¤cult term when one recognizes that there
is a distinction between “rhetoric” in the popular imaginary and
“rhetoric” in the academy. The Ephraimites, today’s mass-media spin
doctors and politicians, would have us believe that rhetoric is “empty
speech” or (dare I say it?) “bulls(h)it,” a kind of language use that is
purely formal and devoid of content. Yet the Gileadites, or academics
who study “rhetoric” and the “rhetorical tradition,” wish that the
popular media tribes would recognize the term in a very different
sense, namely, that rhetoric denotes the serious study of persuasive
speaking and writing, which began in ancient Greece in fourth- and
¤fth-century b.c.e.10 Among rhetoricians, the way in which rheto-
ric gets de¤ned has changed dramatically since that time, yet most
of us would agree that when a political pundit accuses a public leader
of producing “mere rhetoric,” he or she does not know the proper
password.
The second reason why “rhetoric” appears in the title is because
this book is a rhetorical analysis and criticism, meaning that its pri-
mary task is to analyze the dif¤cult language of secrecy as a suasive
phenomenon. For my purposes I will de¤ne “rhetoric” as the study
of how representations (linguistic or otherwise) consciously and un-
consciously in®uence people to do or believe things they would not
otherwise ordinarily do or believe. This de¤nition means that repre-
sentation as such is the central, suasive dimension of human drama,
the song of the opera of social being.
In light of the example of the shibboleth, the kind of language-
doing or rhetoric I am concerned with here is strange or dif¤cult lan-
guage about secrets. The claims I make in Modern Occult Rhetoric,
however, go much further than that of providing a history and gram-
mar of the discourse of secrecy. First, I will demonstrate in a number
of case studies that dif¤cult language is used to divide and unite read-
ers and that it therefore participates in numerous circuits of power
(authorial, authoritative, and otherwise). This element of social dis-
crimination and authority is the core of the discourse of secrecy. Sec-
 introduction / xxi
ond, I suggest that people cannot help but play the game of secrecy,
even in our contemporary age of abject publicity—of webcams, work-
place monitoring, and “reality television”11—because language and
its use easily lend themselves to mystery. Below I discuss each element
in terms of “the occultic” and the “rhetoric of religion,” respectively.

The Rhetoric of Religion

In the widest sense, the present study can be understood as an exami-

nation of the rhetoric of religion, and principally in terms of what I
call “theological form.” Theological form refers to the recurrent cul-
tural patterns of transcendence that are locatable in human writing
and speaking. “Transcendence” is the idea of “moving across or
through” and is frequently opposed to “immanence,” which means
“inside” or “in the here and now.” Secular thought and its representa-
tion are often described as “immanent,” and religious thought and
rhetoric are described as “transcendent.”
The element that usually types a given discourse as transcendent is
the presence (or rather, the impossible absence) of ineffability. The
word “ineffability” is a shibboleth of sorts: by de¤nition, the ineffable
is that which “cannot be expressed or described in language.” It
also refers to that which is “too great for words,” that which “tran-
scends expression,” as well as the “unspeakable, unutterable, and
inexpressible.”12 Hence transcendent rhetoric often seeks to commu-
nicate something—a spiritual truth, for example—that is beyond rep-
resentation. For this reason, Kenneth Burke has argued that the rheto-
ric of religion is inherently paradoxical. In his last major book, The
Rhetoric of Religion, Burke notes that “the supernatural is by de¤ni-
tion the realm of the ‘ineffable.’ And language by de¤nition is not
suited to the expression of the ‘ineffable.’ So our words for the . . .
supernatural or ‘ineffable’ . . . are necessarily borrowed from our
words for the sorts of things we can talk about literally . . . (the world
of everyday experience).”13 Burke’s observations about the rhetoric of
religion implicate a central, productive ambivalence of theological
form: transcendent truths are ineffable, but people invest a lot of time
and energy into trying to represent ineffability. In the broadest sense,
then, religious rhetoric seems to embody a con®ict between represen-
tation and ineffability. “Theological form” is my shorthand for this
con®ict.
I part ways with Burke, however, by arguing that theological form
is not limited to supernaturalism. Rather, one of the minor claims I
forward in this study (most directly in chapter 2) is that our experi-
xxii / introduction
ence of the world—what we see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and feel—is
fundamentally ineffable. This is a fairly noncontroversial claim in
philosophical circles, but it is one that rhetoricians sometimes tacitly
reject because we tend to be obsessed with rhetoric as an instrument
of discovery and social change.14 I take it as an axiom that our words
for things—not only spiritual truths but also simple, everyday en-
counters with, say, a dirty hairbrush, a pet’s accident on the new car-
pet, or a tasty, buttered ear of corn—always fail to communicate the
sensory manifold of human experience.
The key to understanding the link between dif¤cult language and
social discrimination is to recognize that, on some level, strange vo-
cabularies are created to better approximate the ineffability of both
mundane and spiritual experience. For Burke, the argument for study-
ing rhetoric that is widely recognized as religious—that which typi-
cally involves the theological form of transcendence about, toward, or
into some supernatural ineffability—is that it helps us to see better
how rhetoric works in a more general, “natural” sense. Making a
similar gambit, I turn to the more general, mundane category of “the
occultic” and to the body of supernaturalist discourse from which it
is derived, the occult.

The Occultic and the Occult

Modern Occult Rhetoric undertakes an exploration of secret dis-

course by focusing on what I term “the occultic,” a unique version of
theological form. The occultic is my “cool, new term” or neologis-
tic substitute for the shibboleth, which too narrowly connotes face-
to-face speech. The term “occultic” is derived from the Latin root
occultus, which means “secret,” and which is the past participle of
occulere, “to conceal.” I wish to distinguish the category of the “oc-
cultic” from that of the “occult” and “occultism” because the latter
no longer exist as terms for a coherent tradition.
The occult should be understood as the study of secrets and the
practice of mysticism and magic, comprising a centuries-long dialogue
between occultists and their detractors about metaphysical secrets,
the role of the imagination in apprehending such secrets, and who has
the authority to keep and reveal them. Most of the case studies in this
book examine texts that fall clearly within this de¤nition. By the
end of the book, however, I argue that the sense of the occult as com-
prising a “tradition” died at the end of the twentieth century; in post-
modernity, the age of surveillance and publicity, there can be no co-
herent tradition of secrecy.
 introduction / xxiii
The decline of occultism as a coherent discourse is immediately
discernible when one thinks about its contemporary expression. At
the beginning of the twentieth century, occultism was clearly associ-
ated with the study of secret knowledge by elites. Today the contexts
in which the term “occult” is used are so varied that it is dif¤cult to
mention the term in any precise sense without ample quali¤cation.
The occult can refer to everything from comic books and horror ¤lms
to rock music motifs and vague “moods” or states of mind.15 Al-
though there is an occult tradition—a historical content obsessed
with books, spells, and secrets—this has been eclipsed by the form of
its rhetoric, which concerns a logic of secrecy, interpretation, and dis-
crimination. Unlike the occult discourse of the early twentieth cen-
tury, contemporary occult discourse is dominated by image and form.
Traditional horror ¤lms, for example, are not occult, but they always
seem to involve a secret (a hidden monster that suddenly appears, a
murderous alter ego, a hidden door or portal to another world, and
so on), the ability of the protagonist to uncover the secret or vanquish
it, and an array of highly evocative images (of darkness, of blood,
perhaps an extreme close-up shot of nice, pointy fangs). A horror ¤lm
as such is not concerned with the channeling of preternatural power
to effect change by means of spells (traditional occultism), but think-
ing about occultism generically, as the occultic, helps one to under-
stand why, for example, some individuals erroneously claim that all
horror movies are “occult.” One fundamentalist Christian commen-
tator, for instance, describes the “ghost story” of the 2000 ¤lm What
Lies Beneath in ways that extend the occult to a supersensory experi-
ence of dread: “Paramount in this story line [of the ¤lm] is Claire’s
interaction with demonic powers. The occult presence in this story
line is what causes the element of terror.”16 The commentator laments
that the imagined sense of an “occult presence . . . alas, is the the-
matic focus of most thrillers.”17 Clearly, as a social form the occult can
denote a multitude of objects that have nothing to do, necessarily,
with the secret knowledge and practice of magic and mysticism.
Although one of the goals of Modern Occult Rhetoric is to charac-
terize the occultic as a distinctive mode of rhetoric, readers expecting
a direct or de¤nitive de¤nition of the term are likely to be disap-
pointed. To understand something as “rhetorical” is to understand it
as negotiable, as a contingent and protean object that can only be
discerned partially and indirectly through case studies. Of course, de-
¤ning the occult at the turn of the twentieth century is a much easier
task than de¤ning the occultic today. In the midst of the now, I’m
arguing that what people term the “occult” is best described as the
xxiv / introduction
occultic, a form that articulates an inchoate system of beliefs, images,
attitudes, and texts together that, nevertheless, recon¤gures from in-
dividual to group; its meaning is wholly dependent on expert and
popular perceptions held in dialectical tension without resolution.
Conceptually, we can understand “the occult” as one end of a tempo-
ral continuum and “the occultic” as the other. As the category shifts
and changes over the course of the twentieth century, so do the num-
ber of occultic discourses continue to multiply.
Insofar as the occult has died and been resurrected as something
else, then, I’m suggesting that this something else is “the occultic,” a
brand of contemporary discourse that retains a number of elements of
the occult tradition. I have already discussed two of these elements:
¤rst, occultic discourse discriminates among groups or kinds of people
with strange or dif¤cult language; and second, its strange or dif¤cult
language is designed to better apprehend or understand something
that is, at base, incommunicable. As the book proceeds, I will con-
tinue to build on these two elements.
Although the occultic is a contemporary theological form, it is not
necessarily—as I suggested with the rhetoric of religion—supernaturalist.
For example, I began this introduction with reference to the philo-
sophical writings of Deleuze and Guattari. As many folks who have
tried to read Anti-Oedipus or A Thousand Plateaus would agree, the
authors’ principal technique of materialist psychiatry, “schizoanaly-
sis,” is anything but straightforward, designed as it is to upset and
subvert binary thinking and the philosophical categories of transcen-
dence. My intent here is not to ridicule their language but rather to
suggest that their philosophical rhetoric is occultic in terms of, ¤rst,
its having created a dedicated group of followers who have become
absorbed in the argot of “D & G,” and second, its explicit claim to a
better way of understanding the world—indeed, for understanding
the enterprise of philosophy itself. The irony of characterizing a phi-
losophy of immanence as “occultic” is that it shows how its vehicle
of expression, its rhetoric, is a transcendent phenomenon. Another
axiom I rely on throughout this book is that rhetoric as such is a tran-
scendent thing, regardless of the immanent ends to which it is put.18
Understanding the occultic in this general way begins to unravel the
tidy distinction between “real science” and the “occult” that was in-
troduced during the Enlightenment. This is not to say that there is no
distinction between science and the occult tradition but rather that
the rhetoric of each is often experienced by the “outsider” as occultic.
One of my favorite examples of the mysterious religiosity of a seem-
 introduction / xxv
ingly atheistic “science” is the rhetoric of psychoanalysis, especially
Freud’s. Psychoanalysis comprises an academic literature that requires
years of study to properly understand its fundamental axioms and
analytic techniques. Its “Master,” perhaps tired of the accusations of
his detractors, revised a number of lectures he originally delivered be-
tween 1915 and 1917 to include a discussion of “dreams and occult-
ism,” as well as the following apologetic remarks:

And here, Ladies and Gentlemen, I feel that I must make a pause
to take breath—which you too will welcome as a relief—and,
before I go on, to apologize to you. My intention is to give you
some addenda to the introductory lectures on psycho-analysis
which I began ¤fteen years ago, and I am obliged to behave as
though you as well as I had in the interval done nothing but
practice psycho-analysis. I know that assumption is out of place;
but I am helpless. I cannot do otherwise. This is no doubt related
to the fact that it is so hard to give anyone who is not himself a
psycho-analyst an insight into psycho-analysis. You can believe
me when I tell you that we do not enjoy giving an impression of
being members of a secret society and of practicing a mystical
science. Yet we have been obliged to recognize and express as our
conviction that no one has a right to join a discussion of psycho-
analysis who has not had particular experiences which can only
be obtained by being analysed oneself.19

The occultic logic of discrimination here is as obvious as Freud’s self-

denial. Clearly someone has the impression that psychoanalysis is oc-
cultic, and clearly someone takes pleasure in that impression!
The exemplar of psychoanalysis demonstrates that once we start
thinking more broadly about the occult in terms of the occultic, we
begin to see a discursive form that involves much more than heavy-
metal music, black-clad young adults sacri¤cing household pets, or
Ouija board communiqués from Uncle Earl. Although “dark” cul-
tural myths mark the most conspicuous ways in which people think
about the messy term “occult,” the form of its discourse is ubiquitous.
Nevertheless, to understand the many contemporary manifestations
of the occultic, as well as to better ®esh out the category, it important
and useful to examine the historical roots of the occultic in the occult
tradition. Only after examining how the traditional occult text was
invented, expressed, and interpreted do we begin to appreciate how
widespread the occultic has become as a contemporary rhetorical form.
xxvi / introduction
Focus of Analysis and Outline of Study

One way to understand the occultic is in terms of the variety of ways

in which the term “occult” is used. To explain this contemporary va-
riety, Modern Occult Rhetoric proceeds historically, beginning in the
late nineteenth century, when the term had a more de¤nite meaning
and discernible coherence, and ending with the late twentieth century,
when that meaning exploded and the coherence was lost. The focus of
analysis in each chapter is homologous to this trajectory: I begin by
analyzing discrete texts, move to an examination of the relations be-
tween multiple texts (“intertextuality”), and end with a kind of gene-
alogy of occult imagery. In short, Modern Occult Rhetoric moves
from the object of the occult toward the occultic. By approaching a
diffuse body of discourse in this way, I hope to provide a historical
account of a hitherto ignored body of discourse as well as an argu-
ment for its contemporary relevance.
Insofar as I proceed chronologically, what, then, is the story I tell
about the occult? Con¤ned to the historical tradition and focused par-
ticularly on modernity, I describe occultism as the ¤rst drama of reli-
gious secrecy in the twentieth century. Before there were alien abduc-
tions, crop circles, and secret governmental plots to forge a New
World Order,20 there were newspaper and tabloid articles claiming
that charismatic leaders, possibly in league with Satan, were mesmer-
izing the weak-willed and revealing powerful secrets to an elite cabal.
The ¤rst part of this book, titled “Esoterica” to refer to the inner,
textual, and historical dimensions of occultism, begins this story by
detailing the historical origin narrative of the occult tradition, ®eshing
out its static features in the late nineteenth century. In chapter 1, I
answer the dif¤cult question “What is the occult?” by ¤rst providing
a brief origin narrative of the occult tradition (what students of the
occult typically say about its history) and then by examining a number
of exemplars to describe the common, generic themes and features of
modern occult texts. In chapter 2 the generic features of occultism are
embellished with a theory of invention. I argue that modern occultism
is a theological form premised on a principled contradiction rooted in
the paradoxes of language. Although I term the mode of invention
particular to occultism an “occult poetics,” I also argue that such a
poetics is observable in contemporary occultic discourse that many
deem to be atheistic or agnostic, such as the disagreements over theo-
retical jargon in the academy.
After outlining the generic features of modern occultism and ex-
plaining its inventional poetics, I turn in chapter 3 to the ¤rst case
 introduction / xxvii
study, the strange and dif¤cult writings of one of the most popular oc-
cultists in the United States, H. P. Blavatsky. By examining the dialec-
tical interplay of Blavatsky’s writings and the newspaper texts about
them, the relationships among secrecy, authority, and imagination
central to occult rhetoric are brought into relief. The analysis of the
invention of occult rhetoric is then complemented with an examina-
tion of occult modes of interpretation in chapter 4, “On Textual Oc-
cultism,” which examines Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law to
demonstrate how occultists forward a mode of immanent hermeneu-
tics that is mirrored in the criticism of the New Critics and similar
schools of close textual reading.
Having detailed occult rhetoric as a conceptual triad of historical
tradition, generic form, and modes of invention and interpretation, I
undertake in the second part of the book, “Exoterica,” a demonstra-
tion of the undoing and fragmentation of the occult tradition in the
twentieth century. Whereas at the turn of the twentieth century oc-
cultism seemed to cohere as a discrete cultural practice with a long
and rich historical legacy, at the end of that century the discourse was
reduced to an aesthetic form, the occultic. I demonstrate the begin-
ning of this unraveling with the second case study, an examination of
Crowley’s attempts to establish himself as an occult authority in
popular consciousness. Chapter 5 examines the many challenges that
religious ¤gures like Crowley face when attempting to establish au-
thority over ineffable secrets in an environment saturated with mass
media. Chapter 6 further develops this line of analysis by showing
how the cipher and ironic blinds in Crowley’s texts, when taken up in
the ¤eld of mass-media reportage, undermine authority and expose
the constructedness of subjectivity. Together, chapters 5 and 6 demon-
strate how a central element of the occult tradition, namely the impor-
tant role of an masterful keeper of secrets, was destroyed by modern
paradoxes of publicity, paradoxes that also help to expose the illusion
of autonomy.
The fall and eventual ridicule of Crowley in the popular press also
betokens a turning point in the history of occult rhetoric in relation to
class representation. Whereas occultism was initially the province of
a wealthy elite, in the mid-twentieth century the teachings of the oc-
cult tradition were democratized in ways that satis¤ed lower-class
curiosity and hatred about the wealthy, so much so that occultism
eventually became associated with the lower and middle classes. Chap-
ters 7 and 8 demonstrate how Satanism, which emerged with the re-
portage about Crowley and eventually crystallized into a coherent be-
lief system in the 1960s, can be read as a measure of the democratizing
xxviii / introduction
effects of the mass media. The demysti¤cation of occult secrets, how-
ever, did not dilute the power of occult form, particularly in terms of
the discriminating logic of inclusion and exclusion central to the oc-
cultic. The so-called Satanic panic of the late 1980s and early 1990s,
for example, is fueled by the excluded disempowered—both those
who claim to have supernatural powers (usually young white men)
and those who claim to suffer from such powers (usually young and
middle-aged white women).
Finally, chapter 7 is the hinge point of the book, capturing a mo-
ment when modernity begins to realize itself in the deconstructing
movement of ®oating signi¤ers or what I term “visual topoi.” In ad-
dition to providing a glimpse of U.S. class representations in the
1970s and 1980s, this chapter demonstrates how the commodi¤ca-
tion of occultism loosed traditional occult content from form, en-
abling its fragmentation into a multitude of objects, from generic
horror-¤lm plots to the black-clad fashions of “gothic” youth. Titled
“Prime-Time Satanism: Stock Footage and the Death of Modern Oc-
cultism,” chapter 7 describes the birth of the occultic by mapping a
number of visual tropes created by Anton LaVey, the father of the ¤rst
Satanic church and federally recognized Satanic “religion” in the
United States. This cartography provides an explanation for the trans-
formation of occult content from something concerning authority
and secrecy to something imaginative and aesthetic. In the concluding
chapter, “The Allegory of The Ninth Gate,” I observe that the process
begun with media portrayals of Satanism is complete. There I argue
that Roman Polanski’s ¤lm concerning Satanists ¤ghting over an im-
portant occult book should be read as an allegory for the demise of
modern occultism as such—and the persistence of the occultic in al-
ternate social institutions.
In sum, then, Modern Occult Rhetoric broadens the more tradi-
tional understanding of the centuries-long discourse of secrecy by
treating modern occultism as the historical origin of the contempo-
rary occultic, a rhetorical phenomenon or discourse inextricably tied
to language and symbol that is no longer con¤ned to a history of magi-
cal ritual and practice. Modern Occult Rhetoric provides a rhetorical
account of the occultic as a ubiquitous theological form, suggesting a
way for contending with a popular social phenomenon that is cur-
rently dif¤cult to capture and, consequently, rarely discussed in schol-
arly literature.21
Despite my claims about the widespread appearance of the occultic,
readers will recognize that most of the texts I analyze are situated
within the occult tradition. Because I am interested in introducing this
 introduction / xxix
tradition and detailing the reasons for its demise in the twentieth cen-
tury (particularly as a result of mass-media technologies), I have lim-
ited myself to traditional occult texts. Periodically, however, I will re-
mind the reader that I am also writing about what people like me do
for a living. Readers seeking a sustained commentary on the academic
enterprise will not have trouble ¤nding it here; however, I deliberately
withhold most of my explicit judgments about our particular lodge
until the very end. In keeping with the occult tradition, I have suc-
cumbed to the habit of allegory in order to appeal to, and perhaps to
exclude, a number of audiences.
Finally, I should mention that the exigency for broadening how we
think about the occult—and by extension its many obsessions, such
as cherished books, secret formulas, and authorial power—is, of
course, the radical way in which human communication was trans-
formed in the twentieth century. The decentering of speech and text
in our society of surveillance and publicity heralds the death of the
Great Magus as much as it does the Great Orator. I suggest that these
deaths are one and the same, representing a transformation from the
age of modern occultism to the postmodern occultic. What great ¤g-
ure, then, have the magus and orator been resurrected into? Read on,
and perhaps I will whisper her name.
I
Esoterica
1
What Is the Occult?
Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of an-
cient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all
initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of
Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and
on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in
the monstrous or marvelous paintings which interpret to the
faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic
emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies prac-
ticed at reception by all secret societies, there are found indica-
tions of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere
carefully concealed.
—Eliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic1

Thus begins Magus Eliphas Lévi’s in®uential 1856 treatise on tran-

scendental magic, which recounts in evocative language the ubiqui-
tous precept of the whole of occultism: the occult concerns secrets.
Although the Frenchman claimed to be a devout Catholic (he even
studied for the priesthood in his youth under the not-so-secret name
Alphonse Louis Constant),2 his liberal views, his inability to maintain
a vow of chastity, and his interest in the secrets of magic eventually led
to his expulsion from seminary. After he left the Roman Catholic
Church, Lévi supported himself by writing books about secrets and by
soliciting a number of well-heeled secret-keepers, anxious to secure
his con¤dence—and livelihood.
In many ways Lévi’s writings on magic mark the beginning of
“modern occultism,” a moment in the occult tradition that is charac-
terized by a popular interest enabled by media technologies of mass
production, as well as a general withering of the in®uence of religious
prohibitions against the practice and study of magic. Many scholars
of the occult locate the nineteenth-century revival of popular interest
in magic and mysticism with the publication of Lévi’s occult books,
such as The Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, The History of Magic,
and The Key of Great Mysteries.3 What was signi¤cant about these
books, and what many a curious reader undoubtedly found attractive,
was Lévi’s vivid writing style. As Elizabeth Butler notes, Lévi’s books
“belong more truly to literature than to the science of the occult,” for
his poetic talents helped him to transform relatively dry books on the
4 / chapter 1

Fig. 1. Eliphas Lévi (1810–

1875). Reprinted from The
Secret Tradition in Freemasonry,
by Eliphas Lévi, vol. 1 (London:
Rebman Limited, 1911), plate
facing p. 300.

subject “into something both radiant and sinister, satanic and sub-
lime,” converting descriptions of ritual into something akin to a “sen-
sational novel.”4 Whereas Lévi’s lesser-known predecessor Francis
Barrett describes the study of the Kabbalah as merely the opening of
“many and the chiefest mysteries and secrets of ceremonial magic,”5
Lévi describes the art of the Kabbalist as that which concerns the
most “astonishing formulae” in the service of “The Mother of God,”
within whom the Kabbalist realizes “all that is divine in the dreams
of innocence, all that is adorable in the sacred enthusiasm of every
maternal heart.”6 Whereas the father of Renaissance Hermeticism,
Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, describes astral travel as
a product of “vehement imagination, or speculation altogether ab-
stracted from the body,”7 Lévi describes the phenomenon as the de-
tachment of the “astral body by which our soul communicates with
our organs,” which is achieved dramatically by commanding “the ma-
terial body [to] ‘Sleep!’ and . . . the sidereal body [to] ‘Dream!’ There-
upon,” continues Lévi, “the aspect of the visible things changes, as in
hashish-visions.”8
 what is the occult? / 5

Fig. 2. Lévi’s illustration of the “Sabbatic Goat.”

Reprinted from Transcendental Magic, trans.
A. E. Waite (London: Rider and Company,
1896), 186.

Given Lévi’s creative and literary talents, it is not surprising that the
imagination plays an important role in his descriptions of the conduct
of transcendental magic. The imagination, Lévi says, “is only the
soul’s inherent faculty of assimilating . . . images and re®ections con-
tained in the living light.” Yet it is an extremely important capacity
for the adept, whose imagination is “diaphanous, whilst that of the
crowd is opaque.” It is through the imagination that visionary magi-
cians “place themselves in communication with all worlds” or dimen-
sions of reality. The imagination is a place within which “demons and
spirits can be beheld really and in truth.”9 Like Barrett, from whom
Lévi took many ideas (and, by extension, Agrippa, whom Barrett pla-
giarized), Lévi emphasizes the importance of imagining magical sym-
bols in the creation and use of talismans and sigils (circles that contain
magical formulae), as well as the signi¤cant role mental images play
in divination and necromancy. Lévi was fond of sprinkling his books
with numerous illustrations and magically “charged” symbols. In
fact, the imagined deity Lévi created to reside over the magical arts,
the Sabbatic Goat, has long eclipsed Lévi’s fame as the magus who
invented it (see ¤g. 2).
Lévi’s ®orid style and imaginative embellishments are the bane of
many students of occultism, however, for it is commonly argued that
his style was a romantic handicap and contributed to distortions of
ritual and doctrine. A number of commentators argue that many of
the rituals that Lévi “revealed” in his writings contained new elements
not to be found in the ancient grimoires (spell books) on which he
claimed they were based. For example, Lévi’s English translator and
popularizer, Arthur Edward Waite, says that “as a philosophical sur-
vey” Lévi’s The History of Magic “is admirable” and an example of
6 / chapter 1
“literary excellence . . . but it swarms with historical inaccuracies.”
Although it is an accomplished work, Waite insists, it was in no way
an “erudite performance, nor do I think that the writer ever concerned
himself with any real reading of the authority whom he cites.”10
Worse, Waite argues that many of Lévi’s rituals would offend one
of the most celebrated magicians in occult history, the mythic King
Solomon, who would “turn in his grave” if he read Lévi’s books!11
“Whilst keeping some of the more questionable paraphernalia to wit-
ness against the rituals,” writes Waite, Lévi “has added much more
gruesome ones, and inverted the solemn religious puri¤cations, both
spiritual and material, into diabolical parodies.”12 As is the case with
any artist, writer, or scholar who elevates cherished subcultural forms
to a space of widespread recognition—that is, as is the case with any
popularizer—charges of treachery, distortion, disloyalty, inauthen-
ticity, or inaccuracy are inevitable. “Levi’s books do not inspire con¤-
dence,” argues Colin Wilson, a novelist and student of occultism, “for
what he is claiming is, unfortunately a lie.” His genius consisted of a
“highly romantic imagination,” continues Wilson, “and little else.”13
Whether or not one agrees with Wilson’s assessment of Lévi’s genius,
his characterization of the writer as a imaginative romantic—and
therefore a dubious authority—re®ects a common tension in occult
works. The legitimacy of an occultist’s authority to proclaim super-
natural truths or to reveal centuries-old secrets is always questioned
by would-be occult-Luthers, staking out their own territory of magi-
cal expertise and making their own astral stakes. From this van-
tage the history of occult discourse is a centuries-long battle of self-
proclaimed magi over the best secrets.
The criticisms of Lévi’s writings have a lot to do with the suspicion
that he was trying to secure fame, perhaps even turn a buck, by sensa-
tionalizing occultism and thus distorting the “true” art. During the
time Lévi was writing, many of the practices that were considered
occult, such as fortune-telling, astrology, spiritualism, and demon-
ology, were sources of entertainment for the literate public. Today this
condition is most certainly the case, as scholarly or “learned” versions
of occultism are increasingly obscured by the entertaining and imagi-
nary aspects of the tradition. Lévi’s Sabbatic Goat, for example, makes
frequent appearances on book covers, ¤lm posters, record albums,
and news programs, while the book from which it is taken is far from
a best-seller.14 In just about every city in the United States one can ¤nd
an expert in palmistry by looking for that familiar large, outstretched
neon hand in a storefront window. While occultism during Lévi’s time
concerned fetishized books of secrets, today it denotes a large reser-
 what is the occult? / 7
voir of cultural imagery and language (often in Latinate form for
good effect) that is plumbed for horror movie ¤lm plots and television
dramas about benevolent soothsayers. Darker variations of contem-
porary occultism speak to the conjuring of demons at heavy-metal
concerts or devil-worshiping youth sacri¤cing small animals on tomb-
stones. Compared to occultism in the nineteenth century, contempo-
rary occultism seems to re®ect a collective imagination unbound: it
comprises countless images, texts, ¤lms, even sounds, moving about
in a swirling mass. What was once Lévi’s imaginary and entertaining
art of secret knowledge has become a diffuse body of representations
that mean different things to different people, depending on the me-
dium and the social or historical context.
So how, then, do we understand occultism as a whole? As I sug-
gested in the introduction, we can split occultism into two separate
categories. The larger, overarching category, the occultic, refers to a
theological form that underlies a larger reservoir of texts, images,
symbols, myths, and so on. The original expression of the occultic
was the occult, the smaller category, which is represented by Lévi’s
work. Brie®y, the conceptual hierarchy I set before the reader in the
introduction is as follows: the rhetoric of religion concerns the mis-
match between language and an ineffable referent. Any discourse that
features this mismatch betokens a “theological form.” One kind of
theological form is the occultic, which manifests itself in any dis-
course that, ¤rst, discriminates among groups of people on the basis
of dif¤cult or strange representation, and second, suggests that its rep-
resentational strategies are better routes to some incommunicable hu-
man experience or more primal reality. By understanding the occult as
one of many expressions of the more abstract category of the occultic,
we can stabilize the occultic as a social form that is composed of the
repetition of relatively stable features. To make the task of describing
the occultic easier, however, for most of this study I focus on one side
of the continuum, the occult side, since it is much easier to discern.
Once we are able to contend with the speci¤city of the historical oc-
cult, it will then be easier to see what elements are retained as the
category balloons into the occultic at the end of the twentieth century.
Below, I describe the speci¤city of the traditional occult in two
ways. First, we can characterize the occult as a historically contextu-
alized discourse inclusive of a story of its origin. Like the story of
Islam, the Wankel rotary engine, or the introduction of corn to the
early “American” diet, people have tended to discuss occultism as an
object of historical evolution. Whether or not the story is truthful or
fanciful is irrelevant, because I am concerned with the way scholars
8 / chapter 1
and occultists tend to describe the occult as something that distin-
guishes it from other discourses—that is, with its rhetoric, not its
truth.15 Second, occult rhetoric can be characterized as a genre, an
expression of form, which has a particular pattern that is repeated in
multiple occult texts (not the whole, but the bulk). So far I have iso-
lated dif¤cult language as a key “generic” feature of occult content,
but I have yet to describe how this content is organized or advanced
formally in texts. In order to establish a baseline understanding of the
historical occult that can been built on and problematized in succeed-
ing chapters, it is helpful at this point to characterize the speci¤city of
the occult in these two ways.

The Traditional Origin Narrative of the Occult

The “traditional origin narrative” of the occult refers to the common

story occult historians and practitioners tend to tell about its ori-
gins.16 I use the term “origin narrative” rather than “history” quite
deliberately for two reasons. First, the origin narrative often told by
occultists is fanciful and often inaccurate according to even the most
relative of documentary standards. Second, although the cursory nar-
rative I provide below is easily documented, the fact remains that
any history is shot through with contemporary schemes of coherence.
As Ludwig Wittgenstein observed of notions of progressive history,
when “we think of the world’s future, we always mean the destination
it will reach if it keeps going in the direction we can see it going
now; it does not occur to us that its path is not a straight line but a
curve, constantly changing direction.”17 In other words, history as it
is commonly conceived consists of an imposition of pattern only dis-
cernible in retrospect, and wed to a common, Hegelian notion of his-
torical progress, the pattern can too easily overwhelm contingency.
Acknowledging the contingency of historical narratives with “origin
narrative” emphasizes the rhetorically adaptive function of historiog-
raphy.18
However hypocritical the move, Waite’s attacks on Lévi’s history of
occultism testify to the general untrustworthiness of occult origin
narratives. In part, the inaccuracies and ¤ctions of the occult tradition
are a consequence of the marginalization of occult practice, which has
effectively shielded occult scholarship from academic proprieties and
standards of accuracy and ¤delity. What is important about a general
understanding of the history of occultism is not, then, its accuracy or
¤delity to past fact. Rather, the origin narrative told by scholars and
students of the occult is simply an important part of its speci¤city as
 what is the occult? / 9
a discourse. This origin narrative of occultism is a crucial part of the
meaning of occultism in particular because it provides an explanation
for the widespread characterization of the occult as being opposed to
science on the one hand and to religion on the other.
In general, the occult as the study of secrets and the practice of
magic and mysticism has moved through four periods of history,
breaking the surface of popular consciousness in times of general
prosperity and retreating from popular notice during times of hard-
ship or widespread misfortune: the medieval era, the Renaissance, the
Reformation and Enlightenment, and modernity. As a secret prac-
tice, occultism cohered as a distinct discourse during the decline of
the Holy Roman Empire, existing largely underground because its
practices were illegal. By the arrival of the Renaissance in Europe,
however, the occult emerged as natural science and was celebrated by
a number of respected humanist intellectuals. It was forced under-
ground again, however, during the Reformation and the ascent of me-
chanical, physicalist philosophy, which reached its peak in the En-
lightenment period. Finally, the occult resurfaced again in the mid- to
late nineteenth century, ¤rst in France and later in English-speaking
countries, as a mysterious and entertaining curiosity for the literate
public.19
The Medieval Era
Most occult origin narratives begin with a de¤nition of terms, often
from an authoritative and fetishized source like the Oxford English
Dictionary, which de¤nes the occult as that which is “hidden (from
sight)” or that which is concealed. Because of the Western tradition of
associating knowledge with light (e.g., as evinced in the term “en-
lightenment”), it makes sense that the older, ocular term was eventu-
ally used to describe medieval sciences that were thought to disclose
the hidden secrets of nature, namely, alchemy and astrology. But “oc-
cultism” can also be said to involve secrets in the sense that many of
the practices assembled under its name were forbidden by authorities
and had to take place “in secret.” The occult as the secret study of
secrets, then, did not exist until there was a need for secrecy. For this
reason many origin narratives found in encyclopedias and similar in-
troductory sources are misleading because they begin with the prac-
tice of magic in general, erroneously locating origins in practices like
shamanism.
Of course, the idea of magic as the use of supernatural forces to do
something secular has been around since antiquity, but magic did not
become occult, at least in the Western world, until the Romans adopted
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 The intimation of the Prince’s desire for a separation was
conveyed to the Princess of Wales by Lady Cholmondeley. Her
Royal Highness made only two remarks—first, that her husband’s
desire should be conveyed to her directly from himself in writing; and
that, if a separation were now insisted on, the former intimacy should
never under any circumstances be resumed.
If his Royal Highness had acceded to all his consort’s wishes
with the alacrity with which he fulfilled this one in particular, there
would have been more happiness at their hearth. In his letter to her
he said: ‘Our inclinations are not in our power, nor should either of us
be answerable to the other, because nature has not made us
suitable to each other. Tranquillity and comfortable society are,
however, in our power; let our intercourse, therefore, be restricted to
that.’ It is what Froissart might call ‘sadly amusing’ to find him
offering tranquillity when he was predisposed to persecute, and
recommending that their intercourse should take the character of a
‘comfortable society,’ when he was about to turn her out of her
home, and without any greater fault laid to her charge than that she
had outlived his liking. With regard to the Princess’s expressed
determination that, if there were a separation now, it must be ‘once
and for ever,’ he agreed to it with alacrity; ‘even in the event,’ he
said, ‘of any accident happening to my daughter, which I trust
Providence in its mercy will avert, I will not infringe the terms of the
restriction by proposing, at any period, a connection of a more
particular nature.’
Her Royal Highness, in her reply, acknowledged that his conduct
during the year of their married life saved her from being surprised
by the communication addressed to her. She does not complain,
desires it only to be publicly understood that the arrangement is not
of her seeking, and that ‘the honour of it belongs to you alone;’ and
appeals to the King, as her protector, whose approbation, if he can
award as much to her conduct, would in some degree console her. ‘I
retain,’ she thus concludes, ‘every sentiment of gratitude for the
situation in which I find myself enabled, as Princess of Wales, by
your means, to surrender myself unconstrainedly to the exercise of a
virtue dear to my heart—I mean charity. It will be my duty, also, to be
influenced by another motive—desire to give an example of patience
and resignation under every trial.’
In October 1804 Mr. George Rose entered in his diary that the
Princess of Wales had recently said to Mr. George Villiers: ‘I cannot
say I positively hate the Prince of Wales, but I certainly have a
positive horror of him.’ ‘They lived,’ adds Mr. Rose of the ill-matched
pair, ‘in different houses, dined at different hours, and were never
alone together. The Princess said: “Nothing shall shake the
determination I have taken to live in no other way than the state of
separation we are now in.”’
Exactly after a year’s experience of married life the luckless pair
finally separated. The Princess’s allowance was at first fixed at
20,000l. per annum, but after some undignified haggling on both
sides touching money, the Princess declined the allowance proposed
and, throwing herself on the generosity of the Prince, rendered him
liable for any debts she might possibly contract. ‘It was settled that
the Princess should retain her apartments at Carlton House, with
free access to her child, who had a nursery establishment of her
own, under the superintendence of Lady Elgin. This lady did not live
in Carlton House, but was in attendance on the child at meals,
ordered everything, and was the medium of communication between
her parents respecting her. The Princess Caroline, naturally fond of
children, doted on the baby; the Prince cared little about her, though
he jealously asserted his authority, and was always on the watch to
restrain interference on the part of the mother. In the summer of
1797, a sub-governess was appointed to reside in Carlton House,
and act under the orders of Lady Elgin. The office was confided to
Miss Hayman, who seems by her correspondence to have been a
warm-hearted, devoted person. The Princess took a great fancy to
her, and drew her into an intimacy which the Prince probably
8
disapproved, for he dismissed her at the end of three months.’ With
a few ladies the Princess subsequently retired to a small residence
at Charlton, near Woolwich; but on being appointed Ranger of
Greenwich Park she removed to Montague House, on Blackheath,
where she had the care of her daughter, was very frequently visited
by the King, and never on any occasion by her Majesty. At this
period her income was settled. It was partly derived from the Prince,
who contributed to her, as ‘Princess of Wales,’ 12,000l. per annum.
The exchequer supplied another 5,000l.; the droits of the admiralty
added occasionally a few pecuniary grants; and altogether her
revenue amounted to about the same which she had previously
declined to accept. With it she appeared content, lived quietly,
cultivated her garden, looked after the poor, taught or superintended
the teaching of several poor children, and, without a court, had a
very pleasant society about her, with whom, however, she was
alternately mirthful and melancholy.
If her residence at Blackheath was in many respects a sad one,
it was not without its sunny side. There were joyous parties there
occasionally, and the friends of the Princess, in spite of their sorrows
and indignation, contrived, with their illustrious protégée, to pass a
merry time of it between the lulls of the storm. The merriest hours
there were those passed in playing at blind-man’s buff, where the
Princess herself, that grave judge, Sir William Scott, and that equally
grave senator, George Canning, were the sprightliest at the game.
The company the Princess received there included some of the
foremost people, for rank and for intellect, from all quarters of the
world. Here is one of several entries relating to this subject, taken
from William Windham’s Diary, October the 20th, 1805:—‘Dined at
Princess’s: present Monsieur the Comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles
X.), Duc de Berri, Prince de Condé, Duc de Bourbon, M. de Rulhière,
Count de Escars, Lady Sheffield, Miss Cholmondeley, Mr. W. Lock,
and Mr. J. Angerstein. When the Prince left, the Princess made a
sign for us to stay, when a small supper was brought, which kept us
till twelve.’ The petits soupers were hilarious and unceremonious.
The Princess of Wales had not been long a resident at Montague
House before her daughter, the Princess Charlotte, was removed to
a mansion in the vicinity, where, under the superintendence of Lady
Elgin, her early education was commenced with favourable
auspices. It may, however, be questioned whether that be a proper
term to apply in a case where a mother is deprived of the right to
superintend the education of her own child. But it must be allowed
that, though the Princess of Wales had a little taste, about the same
amount of knowledge, and could stick natural flowers on ground
glass so as to deceive the most minutely examining or the most
courtly of Germans, she was as little capable of being governess to
her own daughter as her mother had of being instructress to the
Princess Caroline. The interviews between the latter and the
Princess Charlotte now occurred but once a-week; and, under the
circumstances, that was as frequent as interviews could be
permitted. The little Princess, meanwhile, did not fare badly, nor did
she lack wit, or lose opportunity of showing it. She delighted Dr.
Porteus, Bishop of London, who, during a visit, had told her that
when she repaired, as was intended, to Southend, for sea-bathing,
she would then be in his diocese, by at once going down on her
knees and asking his blessing.
Her poor mother was always as ready to make friends, but she
wanted judgment to balance her tenderness. She never had such
cause to repent at leisure for overhastiness of action as when she
made the acquaintance of Sir John and Lady Douglas. The former
was an officer lately returned from Egypt; the latter was the mother
of an infant whose reported beauty inspired the Princess with a
desire to see it. Without any previous intimation to Lady Douglas,
with whom she was totally unacquainted, the Princess, one winter
morning, the snow lying deep upon the ground, crossed the heath,
‘in a lilac-satin pelisse, primrose-coloured half-boots, and a small
lilac travelling-cap, furred with sable,’ and presented herself at the
gate of Lady Douglas’s house. She was invited to enter, under the
supposition that she wished to rest. She did not see the infant; but
there was an old Lady Stuart there, quite as childish, and of her the
lady in attendance upon the Princess (during the hour the visit
lasted) made some ‘fun;’ the same old lady ‘being a singular
character, and talking all kind of nonsense.’
It was in all respects an evil hour when this acquaintance was
first formed. It ripened, for a time, into intimacy; and when the mutual
intercourse was at its highest, in 1802, the Princess, who had a
strong inclination to patronise infants, and had several placed out at
nurse, at her charge, in a house upon the heath, ‘took a liking’ for the
infant son of a poor couple named Austin. The boy was born in
Brownlow-street Lying-in Hospital, and Mrs. Austin was his mother.
These two important facts were established beyond all doubt. Why
the Princess should have resolved to take personal charge of so
young an infant, only a few months old, defies conjecture. It may,
perhaps, be accounted for by the fact that she knew she was
narrowly watched by enemies who felt an interest in accomplishing
her ruin, and she was elated with the idea of mystifying them by the
presence of an infant at Montague House.
However this may have been, the intercourse with the
Douglases continued with some degree of warmth on both sides. It
was ultimately broken off by the Princess, who had been warned to
be on her guard against Lady Douglas, as a dangerous and not very
irreproachable character; and thereon the Princess of Wales
declined to receive any more visits from her. The baronet and his
lady, with Sir Sidney Smith, a very intimate friend of both parties, so
incessantly besieged the Princess for some explanation of her
conduct that she at length called into her council her brother-in-law,
the Duke of Kent.
The Duke consented to see Sir Sidney Smith upon the subject,
and from him his Royal Highness learned that Sir John was not so
much aggrieved at the refusal of the Princess to receive Lady
Douglas as he was at an anonymous letter accompanying a coarse
drawing representing Sir Sidney and Lady Douglas, which had been
forwarded to him, and of which he believed the Princess to be the
author.
The Duke of Kent was a little too credulous, but he did not act
unwisely. Apparently afraid that there was ground for the charge
implied by Sir John, he was still more fearful of the effect the
knowledge of it would have upon the King, then in a highly nervous
condition, and he was more than all afraid of the evil consequences
it might have, if divulged, of exasperating the existing fierce quarrel
between the Prince of Wales and the King, whose visit to the
Princess excited the utmost wrath in the bosom of the Prince. Taking
all these circumstances into consideration, he succeeded in advising
the parties to ‘let the matter drop.’ Sir John consented to do so if he
were left unmolested. It must be added that Lord Cholmondeley, who
was perfectly acquainted with the Princess’s handwriting,
pronounced the letter as certainly not having been written by her. Of
the drawing he could form no opinion, except one not at all flattering
to the artist.
It was not likely that the matter would rest as the Duke of Kent
desired. Sir John himself was not as quiescent as he had promised
to be, and the details already mentioned came to the ears of the
Duke of Sussex. The latter considered it his duty to make report
thereof to the Prince of Wales, and the heir-apparent, of course,
called upon Lady Douglas for a statement. His request was complied
with, and a deposition was taken down from the lady’s own lips. It is
a document of too great length to be inserted here, but its chief
points may be stated. It professed great admiration of the Prince of
Wales, and the exact reverse of his consort. It detailed the
circumstances of the origin of the acquaintance between the
Princess and Lady Douglas, and of the latter becoming one of the
ladies-in-waiting to the former. The Princess was described as
coarse in character, loose in conversation, and impure in action.
Circumstances were detailed of her alleged intrigues, of her attempt
to corrupt the virtue of Lady Douglas herself, of trying to seduce her
into the commission of very serious sin, and of her laughing at her
for not yielding to the seduction.
The lady went on to describe the common talk of the Princess as
being such as to disgust the men, and to cause mothers to send
away their daughters if the latter happened to be listeners. The
Queen was said to be the especial object of the ridicule of the
Princess, and she hinted at an improper intercourse existing
between her Majesty and Mr. Addington! The whole royal family, it
was further alleged, were the objects of her satire; but all the
statements in the deposition fade into nothing before one respecting
the Princess, in which the latter is represented as confessing to Lady
Douglas that she was about to become a mother, laughing heartily at
the confession itself, hinting that it would not be difficult to fix the
paternity on the Prince, and ending by declaring that the matter
would be settled satisfactorily by making the world believe that she
had adopted an infant belonging to some other person. The
deponent then says that she saw the Princess a short time previous
to her alleged adoption of the child (subsequently proved to be the
son of the Austins); that then her condition of health was not to be
mistaken; and that some time subsequently she saw the child and
Princess together, and that the latter laughingly acknowledged it to
be her own. The immediately succeeding details will not bear telling;
and this is the less necessary as they are excessively improbable,
and were proved to be untrue. They are followed by others regarding
the coolness which sprung up between the Princess and lady, with
consequent squabbles, and final separation at the end of 1803. In
conclusion, we hear of the return of the Douglases from Devonshire,
the refusal of the Princess to receive her former lady-in-waiting, the
receipt of the anonymous letters and drawings, the appeal to the
Duke of Kent, the temporary suspension of hostilities, and lastly, the
communication made to the Duke of Sussex, which the latter
conveyed to the Prince of Wales, and which was followed by the
deposition of which I have endeavoured, however imperfectly, to
furnish a resumé that may be comprehended without giving offence.
Those who are acquainted with the original document will allow that
this is no very easy task.
Upon this statement, made in 1805, a commission was formed,
under which various witnesses were examined. On the 11th of
January 1806, William Cole, page to the Princess (a discarded
servant), averred that he had been dismissed by the Princess of
Wales, for no worse offence than looking indignant at conduct
between his mistress and Sir Sidney Smith which shocked him, the
page. He described various immoral proceedings as having gone on
during his residence, that he had heard of worse after his departure
from other servants, particularly from Fanny Lloyd, who had kindly
informed him of the very improper conduct of her Royal Highness
and Captain Manby of the Royal Navy, during the sojourn of the
Princess at Southend, in the year 1804; and Cole added that he
himself had witnessed conduct as infamous between the Princess
and ‘Lawrence the painter’ as early as 1801.
Another witness, Bidgood, who, after being in the service of the
Prince of Wales near a quarter of a century, was transferred to that
of the Princess in 1798, went further than his predecessors. The
least offensive part of his deposition was that in which he swore that
he had seen Captain Manby kiss the Princess, who was in tears at
his leaving. This witness spoke to alleged facts equally startling
respecting her Royal Highness and Captain Hood. The depositions
of the female servants were even more strong in their coarseness
and weight of testimony against the Princess. All these persons, it
must be remembered, were appointed to serve her, she herself
having had no voice in the selection. When they became witnesses
against her she was not allowed to know the nature of their
evidence.
It was in consequence of their allegations having been submitted
to his Majesty that the King issued his warrant in May 1806 to Lords
Erskine, Grenville, Spencer, and Ellenborough, whereby they were
directed to inquire into the truth or falsehood of these allegations and
report accordingly.
The witnesses were all examined on oath; and it is due to Sir
John Douglas to say that he seemed to wish to make of his evidence
a simple account of hearsay communications from his wife. He knew
nothing of what had taken place between his wife and the Princess
but what the former had told him of long after the period of its
occurrence. He swore, however, to having been convinced that the
Princess was about to become a mother. The depositions of most of
these witnesses varied considerably from those previously made by
them, and fresh witnesses, called to prove the case against the
Princess, did more harm than good to their own side. Others, who
were servants of the Princess, distinctly denied that the allegations
made against her were true. The proof that young Austin was simply
an adopted child was complete. The commissioners were
unanimous on this point, and therewith was established the
falsehood of the depositions made by the Douglases with respect to
it. The commissioners, however, did not feel so certain upon the
other items of evidence; and they gave it as their opinion, not that
the Princess should be held innocent until she could be proved
guilty, but that the allegations should be credited until they could be
satisfactorily disproved!
 Never was accused woman more hardly used than the Princess
in this matter. For a long time she knew nothing of the nature of the
evidence tendered against her, and every obstacle was put in her
way to rendering the satisfactory answer, wanting which the
commissioners, though they acquitted her of high treason, thought
she must be held quasi convicted of immorality. She was equal,
however, to every difficulty, and she did not lack assistance. Mr.
Perceval wrote, in her name, a memorial to the King, which is a
masterpiece of ability, so searchingly does it sift the evidence, crush
what was unfavourable to her, point out where she had a triumph,
even without a witness, indignantly deny the charges laid against
her, and which she had not hitherto been permitted to disprove, and
touchingly appeal to her only protector, the King himself, for a
continuance of his favour to one not unworthy of that for which she
so ardently petitions. The memorial would almost occupy this volume
entirely; it is only possible, therefore, thus to describe and refer to it.
A passage or two from the conclusion will give, however, some idea
of its spirit:—
‘In happier days of my life, before my spirit had been yet at all
lowered by my misfortunes, I should have been disposed to have
met such a charge with the contempt which, I trust by this time, your
Majesty thinks due to it. I should have been disposed to have defied
my enemies to the utmost, and to have scorned to answer to
anything but a legal charge before a competent tribunal. But in my
present misfortunes such force of mind is gone. I ought, perhaps, so
far to be thankful to them for their wholesome lessons of humility. I
have therefore entered into this long detail to endeavour to remove
at the first possible opportunity any unfavourable impressions, to
rescue myself from the dangers which the continuance of these
suspicions might occasion, and to preserve to me your Majesty’s
good opinion, in whose kindness, hitherto, I have found infinite
consolation, and to whose justice, under all circumstances, I can
confidently appeal.’
The memorial, however, would have been of very little worth but
for the depositions by which it was accompanied. These were sworn
to, not by discarded servants, but by men of character—men, that is,
of reputation. Thus Captain Manby, on oath, replies to the allegation
of Bidgood that he had seen the Captain kiss the Princess of Wales:
—‘It is a vile and wicked invention, wholly and absolutely false; it is
impossible that he could ever have seen any such thing, as I never
upon any occasion, or in any situation, had the presumption to salute
her Royal Highness in any such manner, or to take any such liberty
as to offer any such insult to her person.’ To Bidgood’s allegation that
the Captain’s frequent sleeping in the house was a subject of
constant conversation with the servants, Captain Manby again
declares upon oath that he never in his life slept in any house
anywhere that had ever been occupied by her Royal Highness.
‘Never,’ he adds, ‘did anything pass between her Royal Highness
and myself that I should be in any degree unwilling that all the world
should have seen.’
This was conclusive; the deposition of Lawrence, the great artist,
was not less crushing. In answer to a strongly-worded deposition of
Cole, the page, Lawrence declares on oath that during the time he
was painting the portrait of the Princess at Montague House he
never was alone with her but upon one occasion, and then simply to
answer a question put to him at a moment he was about to retire
with the rest of the company. Like Captain Manby, he solemnly
swears that nothing ever passed between her Royal Highness and
himself which he would have the least objection that all the world
should see and hear.
One of the female servants had accused Mr. Edmondes, the
surgeon to her Royal Highness’s household, of having
acknowledged circumstances touching the Princess which, if true,
would have proved her to have been the very basest of women. Mr.
Edmondes was said to have made this statement to a menial
servant, after having bled her Royal Highness. That gentleman,
however, denied on oath that he had ever made such a statement as
the one in question; and perhaps the animus of the inquisitors was
betrayed, on the reiterated denial of Mr. Edmondes, by a remark to
him of Lord Moira. ‘Lord Moira,’ says the surgeon, ‘with his hands
behind him, his head over his shoulder, his eye directed towards me,
with a sort of smile, observed, “that he could not help thinking there
must be something in the servant’s deposition,” as if he did not give
perfect credence to what I said.’
Mr. Mills, another medical man attached to the Princess’s
household, and also accused by a female servant of having
intimated, in 1802, that her Royal Highness was in a fair way of
becoming a mother, proved that he had not been in the house since
1801, and declared the accusation to be a most infamous falsehood.
Finally, two of the menservants at Montague House swore to having
seen Lady Douglas and Bidgood in communication with each other,
that is, meeting and conversing together—a short time previous to
the commission of inquiry being opened.
With respect to the alleged familiarities said to have taken place
between the Princess and Sir Sidney Smith, the Princess herself
remarks upon them, in the memorial addressed by her to the King, to
the effect that ‘if his visiting frequently at Montague House, both with
Sir John and Lady Douglas, and without them; at luncheon, dinner,
and supper; and staying with the rest of the company till twelve or
one o’clock, or even later; if these were some of the facts which must
give occasion to unfavourable interpretations, they were facts which
she could never contradict, for they were perfectly true.’ She further
admits that Sir Sidney had paid her morning visits, and that they had
frequently on such occasions been alone. ‘But,’ said the memorial, ‘if
suffering a man to be so alone is evidence of guilt from whence the
commissioners can draw any unfavourable inference, I must leave
them to draw it, for I cannot deny that it has happened frequently, not
only with Sir Sidney Smith, but with many others—gentlemen who
have visited me—tradesmen who have come for orders—masters
whom I have had to instruct me in painting, music, and English—that
I have received them without any one being by. I never had any idea
that it was wrong thus to receive men of a morning. There can have
been nothing immoral in the thing itself, and I have understood that it
was quite usual for ladies of rank and character to receive the visits
of gentlemen in the morning, though they might be themselves alone
at the time. But if this is thought improper in England, I hope every
candid mind will make allowance for the different notions which my
foreign education and habits may have given me.’
 Nine weeks elapsed since the Princess had addressed the
above memorial and depositions to the King, and still no reply
reached her, except an intimation through the Lord Chancellor that
his Majesty had read the documents in question, and had ordered
them to be submitted to the commissioners. She complained, justly
enough, at being left nine weeks without knowledge as to what
judgment the commissioners had formed of the report drawn up in
reply to their sentence, which acquitted her of gross guilt, yet left her
under the weight of an accusation of having acted in a manner
unbecoming her high station, or, indeed, unbecoming a woman in
any station. From such delay, she said, the world began to infer her
guilt, in total ignorance, as they were, of the real state of the facts. ‘I
feel myself,’ she then said, ‘sinking in the estimation of your
Majesty’s subjects, as well as what remains to me of my own family,
into (a state intolerable to a mind conscious of its own purity and
innocence) a state in which my honour appears at least equivocal,
and my virtue is suspected. From this state I humbly entreat your
Majesty to perceive that I can have no hope of being restored until
either your Majesty’s favourable opinion shall be graciously notified
to the world, by receiving me again into the royal presence, or until
the false disclosures of the facts shall expose the malice of my
accusers, and do away every possible ground for unfavourable
inference and conjecture.’
The Princess then alluded to the fact that the occasion of
assembling the royal family and the King’s subjects ‘in dutiful and
happy commemoration of her Majesty’s birthday’ was then at hand;
and she intimated that if the commissioners were prevented from
presenting their final report before that time, and that consequently,
at such a period, she should be without any knowledge of the King’s
pleasure, the world would inevitably conclude that her answers to the
charges must have proved altogether unsatisfactory, and the really
infamous charges would be accounted of as too true.
Some months longer, notwithstanding this urgent appeal, was
the Princess kept in suspense. There seemed a determination
existing somewhere that, if her accusers could not prove her guilt,
she should at least not be permitted to substantiate her innocence.
At length, on the 25th of January 1807, the King having referred the
entire matter, with her Royal Highness’s letters, to the cabinet
ministers, the latter delivered themselves of their lengthily gestated
resolution.
The ministers modestly declared themselves an incompetent
tribunal to pronounce judicially a verdict of guilty or not guilty upon
any person, of whatever rank. Their office was, indeed, more that of
grand jurymen called upon to pronounce whether a charge is based
upon such grounds, however slight, as to justify further proceedings
against the person accused. They acquitted the Princess by their
judgment that further proceedings were not called for, but, having
been requested by the King to counsel him as to the reply he should
render to his daughter-in-law, the nature of such counsel may be
seen in the royal answer to the Princess’s memorial. The King
exculpated her from the most infamous portion of the charge brought
against her by Lady Douglas, and declared that no further legal
proceedings would be taken except with a view of punishing that
appalling slanderer. Of the other allegations stated in the preliminary
examinations, the King declared that none of them would be
considered as legally or conclusively established. But, said the King,
and severely imperative as was this sovereign but, it was not
uncalled for—‘In these examinations, and even in the answer drawn
in the name of the Princess by her legal advisers, there have
appeared circumstances of conduct on the part of the Princess
which his Majesty never could regard but with serious concern. The
elevated rank which the Princess holds in this country, and the
relation in which she stands to his Majesty and the royal family, must
always deeply involve both the interests of the state and the
personal feelings of his Majesty in the propriety and correctness of
her conduct. And his Majesty cannot, therefore, forbear to express,
in the conclusion of the business, his desire and expectation that, in
future, such a conduct may be observed by the Princess as may fully
justify those marks of paternal regard and affection which the King
always wishes to show to every part of the royal family.’
There is no doubt that this admonition was seriously called for.
The conduct of the Princess had been that of an indiscreet, rash,
and over-bold woman. At the court of the two preceding Georges
such conduct would only have been called lively; but the example of
Charlotte had put an end to such vivacity. The Queen Caroline of the
former reign had, in her conversations with Sir Robert Walpole
especially, gone far beyond the gaiety of the dialogues maintained
by the Princess Caroline and Sir Sidney Smith under George III. But
the Princess was as yet ‘without blemish,’ only in the degree that
Queen Caroline was. She was not delicately minded, and was
defiant of the Court-world when she had been cast out from it
unjustly. The two Carolines were wronged in much the same degree,
but the husband of the one respected the virtue of the wife whom he
insulted; the husband of the other had no respect for either virtue or
wife; nay, he would have been glad to prove that there had been a
divorce between the two. He had failed to do so, and the King’s
intimation to the Princess that ‘his Majesty was convinced that it was
no longer necessary for him to decline receiving the Princess into the
royal presence,’ while it was the triumphant justification of the wife,
was the unqualified condemnation of the husband, beneath whose
roof the slander was first uttered by Sir John Douglas to the Duke of
Sussex. And so ended the ‘delicate investigation.’ A history of it was
actually printed, but the copies were bought up and suppressed. A
writer in ‘Notes and Queries’ (No. 128, 1852), says:—
‘Several years ago I was present when the sum of 500l. was
paid for a copy of “The Delicate Investigation” by an officer high in
the service of the then government.—H. B.’
The husband of Caroline was at this time suffering from a double
anguish. He was snubbed by his political friends, and he was what is
called deeply in love with Lady Hertford. The ‘passion’ for this lady
was contracted during some negotiations with her family, entered
upon for the purpose of placing Miss Seymour (a niece of Lady
Hertford’s) under the care of Mrs. Fitzherbert. When this passion
was in progress the Prince aimed at bringing it to a successful issue
by the strangest of love-processes. He was accustomed, if not
actually ill, to make himself so, in order that he might appear
interesting, and have a claim upon the compassion of the ‘fair,’ who
might otherwise have proved obdurate. With this end in view he
would submit to be bled several times in the night, and by several
operators, when in fact ‘there was so little necessity for it that
different surgeons were introduced for the purpose unknown to each
9
other, lest they should object to so unusual a loss of blood.’ It was
reported that, after the rupture with his second wife, the Prince
sought to renew his intimacy with his first, but that Mrs. Fitzherbert
would not consent till a brief arrived from Rome assuring her, in
answer to a statement of her case expressly laid before the Court,
that the wishes of the Prince were quite legitimate. This is intended
to imply that the Papal Court actually looked upon a marriage
ceremony performed by a Protestant minister, and uniting a Roman
Catholic with a Protestant, as a valid ceremony! The assurance was
enough for the lady. The old intimacy was renewed, and inaugurated
by a public breakfast, at her own house, to all the fashionable world,
with the Prince at the head of it! The ‘next eight years’ of her
connections with the Prince she described as supremely happy
years. They were extremely poor, she said, but ‘as merry as
crickets,’ and ‘joyously proud, on once returning to Brighton from
London, that they could not raise 5l. between them.’ So runs this
Idyll.
If he was ridiculous in this, he was criminal in other respects.
The pretty child, Miss Seymour, was placed with Mrs. Fitzherbert,
and the Prince became greatly attached to her. The guardians of the
young lady, rightly or wrongly, thought that a person in the position
which Mrs. Fitzherbert occupied was not exactly a fitting guide for a
motherless girl. The law was had recourse to in order to obtain the
removal of the latter, and ultimately the matter was brought before
the supreme tribunal of the peers. It is a well-known fact that when
this was the case the Prince, in whose heart there had been lit up a
flame of genuine affection warmer than anything he had ever felt for
his own daughter, became alarmed at the idea of losing Miss
Seymour. He therefore actually stooped to canvass for the votes of
peers in this, a purely judicial question, which they were called upon
to decide according to law and their consciences. An heir-apparent
to a throne, and so engaged, presented no edifying spectacle. And it
must be remembered that at the time he was thus suborning
witnesses (for to canvass the vote of a judicial peer was subornation
of those whose office it was to enforce the due administration of the
law) he had set his small affections upon a child, and was living in
open disregard of the seventh commandment, and of that portion of
the tenth which relates to our neighbour’s wife. He was accusing,
through suborned testimony, his own wife of crimes and sentiments
of a similar nature, and with no better result than to make patent his
own infamy, and to establish nothing worse than thoughtless
indiscretion on the part of the consort whom he had abandoned.
The Princess, who was still suffering from debility consequent
upon an attack of measles, was naturally elated at the result of the
protracted inquiry, and respectfully requested to be permitted to
‘throw herself at his Majesty’s feet on the following Monday.’ The
monarch reminded her of her debility, bade her take patience, and
promised to name a day for receiving her, when he was assured of
her being fully restored to health. She waited patiently for the
expression of the King’s pleasure upon the matter, and was
preparing once more for the enjoyment of again being received by
him, when all her hopes were suddenly annihilated by an intimation
from the King that—the Prince of Wales having stated that he was
not satisfied with the result of the late inquiry—the Prince had placed
the matter in the hands of his legal advisers, and had requested his
Majesty to refrain from taking further steps in the business for the
present; the King consequently ‘considered it incumbent on him to
defer naming a day to the Princess of Wales until the further result of
the Prince’s intention shall have been made known to him.’ This note
was dated ‘Windsor Castle, the 10th of February, 1807.’ From that
day the Princess looked upon her husband as assuming the office of
public accuser against her. The Blackheath plot had failed, and the
Prince was now appealing against the decision of judges to whose
arbitrament he had committed the responsible duty of examination
and sentence. What he required was a judgment unfavourable to his
wife; not having succeeded, he sought for another tribunal, and
virtually requested the monarch and the nation to hold his consort
guilty until he might have the luck or leisure to prove her to be so.
Had she been twice the imprudent woman she was, such conduct as
this on the part of the Prince was sure to make a popular favourite of
the Princess.
The courage of the latter rose, however, as persecution waxed
hotter; and the advisers who now stood by her, of whom Mr.
Perceval was the chief, were doubly stimulated by political as well as
personal feelings. The Princess continued to address vigorous
appeals to the King, whose intellect was beginning to be too weak to
comprehend, and his eyesight too feeble for him to be able to read
them. Their cry was still for justice; they claimed for her a public
reception at court, and apartments in some one of the royal palaces,
as more befitting her condition. Intimation, too, was made that if the
justice demanded were not awarded her, a full detail of the whole
affair, taken from the view held of it by the advisers of the Princess,
would be forthwith published. It is said that the menace touched
even Queen Charlotte herself, who had a dread of ‘The Book,’ as it
was emphatically called, upon which Mr. Perceval was known to be
busily engaged, and which it was feared he was about to publish.
But the temporary triumph of the Princess was at hand. In March
1807 the Grenville administration, the members of which were
known to be favourites with the Queen and enemies of the Princess
of Wales, retired from office, and within a month the new ministry
advised the King that the complete innocence of the Princess had
been established, and that it would be well for him to receive her at
court in a manner suitable to her rank and station. The ministers
present at the meeting of council when this advice was rendered
were Lord Chancellor Eldon, Lord President Camden, Lord Privy
Seal Westmoreland, the Duke of Portland, the Earl of Chatham, the
Earl of Bathurst, Viscount Castlereagh, Lord Mulgrave, Mr. Canning,
and Lord Hawkesbury.
In May 1807 the Princess was accordingly received at court, at a
drawing-room held by Queen Charlotte. The latter illustrious lady
exhibited no demeanour by which it could be construed that she was
happy to see her daughter-in-law. The utmost honour paid her was a
cold and rigid courtesy. The Queen was again ‘civil, but stiff.’ The
nobility and gentry present were more expansive in the warmth of
their welcome. From them the Princess received a homage of
apparently cordial respect. Sir Jonah Barrington, in his ‘Personal
Sketches of his own Times,’ gives a rather different description of the
scene, at which he was present. From this account we collect that
the Princess, leaning on the arm of the Duke of Cumberland,
appeared in deep mourning—for her father. She ‘tottered’ up to the
Queen, as if fearing a repulsive welcome. The reception of her was
‘kind’ on the Queen’s part, ‘and a paroxysm of spirits seemed to
succeed, and mark a strange contrast to the manner of her entry. I
thought it was too sudden and too decisive. She spoke much and
loud, and rather bold. Her circle was crowded, the presentations
numerous, but on the whole she lost ground in my estimation.’
On the occasion of the King’s birthday on the following month the
Princess again repaired to court. The welcome resembled that which
she had received at her last visit, but there was an incident at this
which rendered it more interesting, at all events to lookers-on. It was
at this drawing-room that the Prince and Princess of Wales
encountered each other for the last time. They met in the very centre
of the apartment—they bowed, stood face to face for a moment,
exchanged a few words which no one heard, and then passed on;
he, stately as an iceberg, and as cold—she, with a smile, half
mirthful, half melancholy, as though she rejoiced that she was there
in spite of him, and yet regretted that her visit was not under happier
auspices. The triumph, however, was complete as far as it went, for
she assuredly was present that day contrary to the inclination of both
her husband and her mother-in-law.
There was one being upon earth whom this Princess
unreservedly loved, and of whom she was deprived this year—her
father, the Duke of Brunswick. He had been but an indifferent
husband and father, but his wife did not complain, and his daughter
Caroline feared and adored him.
The father of the Princess of Wales, at the age of seventy-one,
perished on the fatal field of Jena, on that day on which Prussia was
made to pay the penalty of mingled treachery and imbecility. It had
been her policy, throughout the troubles of the time, to save herself
at any other nation’s cost. Such a policy caused her to fall into the
ruin which overcame her at Jena, without securing the sympathy
even of those nations which then fought against the then common
enemy. In this battle the father of Caroline had done his utmost to
win victory for Prussia, but in vain, and he lost his own life in the
attempt. His ability and courage were all cast away. He had with him
in the camp a very unseemly companion, in the person of a French
actress, who was the friend of his aide-de-camp, Montjoy. This
officer was close to him when, in the midst of his staff, and at a
distance altogether from where the battle was raging, the old Duke
was shot by a man on foot, ‘who presented his carabine so close
that the ball went in under the left eye (the Duke was on horseback)
and came out above the right, quite through the upper part of the
nose.’ It is Lord Malmesbury who suggests, without pretending to
assert, that ‘Montjoy’s brother, the Grand Veneur to Prince Max, the
pretended King of Bavaria, and who was with Bonaparte, knew
exactly where the Duke of Brunswick was to be found, and by a
connivance with Montjoy produced the event.’
After the death of the Duke, the Duchess became a fugitive, for
the Duchy of Brunswick was in the possession of the French. And
accordingly the poor Augusta, at whose birth in St. James’s Palace
there had been such scant ceremony and excess of commotion,
came now in her old age, and after an absence of forty years, to ask
a home at the hearth of the brother who loved her, as she used to
say equivocally, as warmly as he could love anything, and of the
sister-in-law who, as the poor Duchess knew, regarded her with
some dislike, and who was met with the same amount and quality of
affection on the part of Augusta of Brunswick.
She had, however, little cause to complain, as far as these
relatives were concerned. They received her cordially; and, though
they gave her no home in the palace in which she was born, they
helped her to an humbler home elsewhere, and occasionally lent it
cheerfulness by paying her a visit. In the meantime the widowed
mother sat at the hearth of her deserted daughter, and though
neither of them had sufficient depth of sentiment to bring her
affliction touchingly home to the other, each was sufficiently stricken
by severity of real sorrow to render her eloquent upon her own
misery, if not attentive to the twice-told tale of her companion.
 Meanwhile, there was pressure of another sort upon the
Princess—a pressure of debt, incurred principally by the uncertainty
with which she had hitherto been supplied with pecuniary means,
and also the want of a controlling treasurer to give warning when
expenditure was exceeding probable income. Prudent people find
such an officer in themselves; but then the Princess was not a
prudent person, and among the things she least understood was the
management or the worth of money. She was, however, in 1809, in
so embarrassed a situation as to render an application to the King’s
ministers necessary, when it was found that her debts exceeded
50,000l. A final arrangement was then come to. The Prince and
Princess signed a deed of separation. The former consented to pay
the debts to the amount of 49,000l. on condition of being held non-
responsible for any future liabilities incurred by his consort. Her fixed
income was settled at 22,000l. per annum, under the control of a
treasurer, who was to discharge the remaining liabilities out of the
present year’s income, and to guard against any other occurring in
years to come, if he could.
As wide a separation as possible was made between mother
and child. They were happy Saturday afternoons that the Princess
Charlotte was allowed to spend at Blackheath, where she met the
Hon. Miss Wellesley (afterwards Countess of Westmoreland) and
other children, and partook of childish delights. Under her
grandmother the Queen, at Windsor, she was stiffly disciplined.
Once expressing a wish to be allowed to go and say ‘good-bye’ to a
young friend who was about to leave England, Queen Charlotte
remarked ‘it was contrary to princely dignity to seek after any one.’
Some young girls who had been allowed to come to Windsor, and
were the companions of the Princess for an occasional day, were not
allowed to grow into familiarity or intimacy. The old Queen’s sour
notice of them to her grand-daughter was: ‘I cannot taste these
young ladies!’ In this cruel way were all the warm sympathies of a
warm-hearted child set at naught.
The relations into which the Prince entered with Lady Hertford,
while the question of the guardianship of Miss Seymour was
pending, led to the ascendency of that lady, and brought to a final
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