Napoleon filled the world with wonders, and in that world was himself the greatest wonder of all. The Empress Josephine, his wife, curious and credulous as a creole, passed from enchantments to enchantments. A glory of this kind had, as we are told, been promised her by an old gipsy woman, and the folk of the countryside still believe that she was herself the Emperor’s good genius. As a fact, she was a sweet and modest counsellor who would have saved him from many perils, had he always listened to her warnings, but he was impelled forward by fatality, or rather by providence, and that which was to befall him had been decreed beforehand. In a prophecy attributed to St. Césaire but signed Jean de Vatiguerro, and found in the Liber Mirabilis, a collection of predictions printed in 1524,342 there are the following astonishing sentences.
- 342 Liber Mirabilis: qui Prophetias: Revelationesque: nec non res mirandas: preteritas: presentes: et futuras aperte demonstrat, 1522. The work is in two parts, of which the first is in Latin and the second in French. p. 443
“The churches shall be defiled and profaned, and the public worship suspended. The eagle shall take flight over the world and overcome many nations. The greatest prince and most august sovereign in all the West shall be put to rout after a supernatural defeat. A most noble prince shall be sent into captivity by his enemies and shall mourn in thinking of those who were devoted to him. Before peace is restored to France, the same events shall be repeated again and again. The eagle shall be crowned with a triple diadem, shall return p. 444 victorious to his eyrie and shall leave it only to ascend into heaven.”
After predicting the spoliation of churches and the murder of priests, Nostradamus foretells the birth of an emperor in the vicinity of Italy and says that his reign will cost France a great outpouring of blood, while those who belong to him will betray him and charge him with the spilling of blood.
“An Emperor shall be born near Italy,
Who shall cost dear to the Empire:
They shall say, With what people he keepeth company!
He shall be found less a prince than a butcher.
From a simple soldier he shall come to have the supreme command,
From a short gown he shall come to the long one;
Valiant in arms, no worse man in the Church,
He shall vex the priests, as water doth a sponge.”343
- 343 I have used the seventeenth century English translation. The original says: En l’Eglise au plus pire, traiter les prêtres comme l’eau fait l’éponge. I do not quite see how Lévi’s explanation follows, but the point is not worth discussing. p. 444
This is to say that at the moment when the church experiences the greatest calamities, he will overwhelm the priests with benefits. In a collection of prophecies published in 1820, and of which we possess a copy, the following phrase occurs after a prediction concerning Napoleon I: “And the nephew will accomplish that which the uncle failed to do.” The celebrated Mlle. Lenormand had in her library a volume in boards with a parchment back, containing the Treatise of Olivarius on Prophecies, followed by ten manuscript pages, in which the reign of Napoleon and his downfall were announced formally. The seeress imparted the contents of this work to the Empress Josephine. Having mentioned Mlle. Lenormand, a few further words may be added about this singular woman; she was stout and extremely plain, emphatic in talk, ludicrous in style, but a waking somnambulist of conspicuous lucidity. She was the p. 445 fashionable seeress under the First Empire and the Restoration. There is nothing more wearisome than are her writings, but as a teller of fortunes by cards she was most successful.
Cartomancy, as restored in France by Etteilla, is literally the questioning of fate by signs agreed on beforehand. These in combination with numbers suggest oracles to the medium, who is biologised by staring at them. The signs are drawn by chance, after having shuffled them slowly; they are arranged according to Kabalistic numbers, and they respond invariably to the thoughts of those who question them, seriously and in good faith, for all of us carry a world of presentiments within us which any pretext will formulate. Susceptible and sensitive natures receive from us a magnetic shock which conveys to them the impression of our nervous state. The medium can then read our fears and hopes in ripples of water, forms of clouds, counters cast haphazard on the ground, in the marks made on a plate by the grouts of coffee, in the lottery of a card-game, or in the Tarot symbols.
As an erudite Kabalistic book, all combinations of which reveal the harmonies pre-existing between signs, letters and numbers, the practical value of the Tarot is truly and above all marvellous. But we cannot with impunity, by such means, extort from ourselves the secrets of our intimate communication with the universal light. The questioning of cards and Tarots is a literal evocation, which cannot be performed apart from danger and crime. By evocations we compel our astral body to appear before us; in divination we force it to speak. We provide a body for our chimæras by so doing, and we make a proximate reality of that future which will actually become ours when it is called up by power of the word and is embraced by faith. To acquire the habit of divination and of magnetic consultations is to make a compact with vertigo, and we have established already that vertigo is hell.
Mlle. Lenormand was infatuated with herself and with her art; she thought that the world could not go on without her and that she was necessary to the equilibrium of Europe. At the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the seeress made her appearance with all her properties, did business at all the customs, and pestered all the authorities, so that they were compelled in a sense to concern themselves with her; she was truly the fly on the wheel, and what a fly! On her return she published her impressions with a frontispiece representing herself surrounded by all the powers, who consulted her and trembled in her presence.344
- 344 Les Dernières Prophéties de Mlle. Lenormand appeared in 1843 and are joyful reading. She was born at Alençon in 1772 and died on June 25, 1843. p. 446
The great events which had just come to pass in the world turned all minds towards mysticism; a religious reaction began and the royalties constituting the Holy Alliance felt the need of attaching their united sceptres to the cross. The Emperor Alexander in particular believed that the hour was come for Holy Russia to convert the world to universal orthodoxy. The intriguing and turbulent sect of the Saviours of Louis XVII sought to profit by this tendency for the foundation of a new priesthood, and it succeeded in introducing one of its seeresses to the notice of the Russian Emperor. Madame Bouche was the name of this new Catherine Théot, but she was called Sister Salome by the sect.345 She spent eighteen months at the Imperial Court and had many secret conferences with Alexander, but he had more of pious imagination than true enthusiasm; he delighted in the marvellous and pretended that it amused him. It came about that his confidants in this class of interests presented him with another prophetess, and Sister Salome was forgotten. Her successor was Madame de Krudener, an amiable coquette full of piety and virtue, p. 447 who created but was not herself Valérie.346 It was, however, her ambition to pass as the heroine of her own book, and when one of her intimate friends pressed her to identify the hero, she mentioned an eminent personality of that period. “Ah then,” said her friend, “the catastrophe of your book is not in conformity with the facts, for the gentleman in question is not dead.” But Madame de Krudener replied, “Oh, my dear, he is little better than dead,” and the retort was her fortune. The influence of Madame de Krudener on the somewhat weak mind of Alexander was strong enough to concern his advisers; he was often shut up with her in prayer, but in the end she was lost by excess of zeal. One day the Emperor was taking leave of her when she threw herself before him, conjuring him not to go out and explaining how God had made known to her that he was in great danger, that there was a plot against his life, and that an assassin was concealed in the palace. The Emperor was alarmed and summoned the guards; a search followed, and some poor wretch was ultimately discovered with a dagger. In confusion he finished by confessing that he had been introduced by Madame de Krudener herself.347 Was it true, and had the lady played the part of Latude in the vicinity of Madame p. 448 de Pompadour? Was it false, and, secreted by the Emperor’s enemies, was the man’s mission—in the event of the murder failing—to destroy Madame de Krudener? Either way, the poor prophetess was lost, for the Emperor, in his shame at being regarded as a dupe, sent her about her business without hearing her, and she had reason to think herself fortunate in escaping so easily.
- 345 I have failed to verify the statement that this person had access to the Emperor Alexander. p. 446
- 346 It should be understood that Valérie appeared at Paris in 1803, when the writer was thirty-nine years old. Her acquaintance with the Russian Emperor was eleven years later, and it was during the intervening period that her spiritual development took place. She was no longer an amiable coquette, though the description may once have applied to her. There is no question that the portrait of Valérie was, and was intended to be, her own portrait. As to the identity of her hero, he was her husband’s secretary and there was no intimacy between them in the evil sense of the term, though she was not of unblemished reputation in other respects. p. 447
- 347 It was the Empress Elizabeth, wife of Alexander, who first brought Madame de Krudener to the notice of her husband. She shewed him some of her letters to draw him under religious influence. The King and mystic met, under singular circumstances, on June 4, 1815. Madame de Krudener was 13 years older than the Emperor, with pale, emaciated and drawn features. The story repeated by Éliphas Lévi, whencesoever it may come, is an execrable calumny. The acquaintance began at Würtemberg and continued during the Emperor’s residence in Paris, or till September 28, 1815. Those were the days which ended in the proclamation of the Holy Alliance, and Madame de Krudener’s part in that work is a matter of history. p. 447
The little church of Louis XVII did not conclude that it was beaten by the disgrace of Madame Bouche, while in that of Madame de Krudener it beheld a Divine punishment. The prophecies continued and were reinforced, as required, by miracles. In the reign of Louis XVIII they put forward a peasant of La Beauce, named Martin,348 who declared that he had seen an angel.
- 348 Thomas Ignatius Martin is said to have foretold the revolution of 1830, but the fact is dubious. In his interview with Louis XVIII he is said also to have told the French King that he was not the rightful occupant of the French throne, but this is more than dubious. The particular legitimacy which he supported was that of Naündorff. p. 448
From the description which he gave the angel in question was in the guise of a lackey belonging to some good family; he had a long surtout, cut very close at the waist and of a yellow colour; he was pale and thin, with a hat which was probably adorned with gold lace. The strange thing is that the seer managed to be taken seriously and obtained an interview with the king, furnishing one more instance of the resources in persistence and boldness. It is said that the king was astonished by revelations concerning his private life, in which there is nothing that is impossible or even of an extraordinary nature, now that the phenomena of magnetism are better authenticated and known. Moreover, Louis XVIII was sufficiently sceptical to be credulous. Doubt in the presence of existence and its p. 449 harmonies, scepticism in the face of the eternal mathematics and immutable laws of life, by which Divinity is manifested everywhere—this assuredly is the most imbecile of superstitions and the least excusable, as it is the most dangerous, of all credulities.