Dante and Rosicrucianism
The same reproach of insufficiency that we have leveled against Rosetti and Aroux can also be addressed to Eliphas Lévi, who, while asserting a relationship to the ancient mysteries, nonetheless saw above all a political-or, rather, politico-religious-application that in our view is only of secondary importance. Lévi also frequently makes the mistake of assuming that properly initiatic organisations are directly engaged in outer activities. Here, in fact, is what the author says in his History of Magic: "There have been many commentaries and studies on Dante's work, but nobody, as far as we know, has pointed out its true character. The writings of the great Ghibelline are a declaration of war on the Papacy through the daring revelation of the mysteries. Dante's epic is Johannite [39] and gnostic; there is a bold application of the diagrams and numbers of the Kabbalah to Christian dogmas, and a secret negation of all that is uncompromising in these dogmas. His
journey through the supernatural worlds effects an initiation into the mysteries of Eleusis and Thebes. It is Virgil who guides and protects him in the circles of the new Tartarus, as though Virgil, the sensitive and melancholic prophet of the destinies of the son of Pollio, were in the eyes of the Florentine poet the illegitimate but real father of the Christian epic. Thanks to the pagan genius of Virgil, Dante escapes from the abyss at whose brink he had read a sentence of despair; he escapes by putting his bead in place of his feet and his feet in place of his bead (that is to say by taking the opposite view to dogma), and reascends to the light by making use of the devil himself as a monstrous ladder: he escapes the terrible by means of terror; the horrible by means of horror. Hell, it seems, is an impasse only for those who cannot turn round and wriggle out. Dante rubs the devil the wrong way, if this common expression be permitted, and is set free by his audacity. This is already Protestantism surpassed, and the poet of Rome's enemies has already foreseen Faust rising to Heaven on the head of the vanquished Mephistopheles." [40]
In reality, the desire to 'reveal the mysteries', assuming such a thing were possible (which it is not, for there is no real mystery that is not inexpressible), as also the method adopted of taking 'the opposite view to dogma'-or of consciously reversing the meaning and value of symbols-would not betoken a very high initiation. Fortunately, we for our part do not see any evidence of this in Dante, whose esoterism is on the contrary shrouded by a veil rather difficult to pierce, while at the same time resting on strictly traditional foundations. To make him a precursor of Protestantism, and perhaps also of the Revolution, simply because he was an adversary of the Papacy on political grounds, is to fail entirely to appreciate his thought or to understand anything of the spirit of his time.
There is still something else that seems to us hardly tenable: the belief that Dante was a 'kabbalist' in the true sense of the word. We are all the more inclined to be wary here, as we know only too well how some of our contemporaries readily delude themselves on this subject, thinking they will find elements of the Kabbalah wherever there is any kind of esoterism. Have we not seen a Masonic writer solemnly assert that the Kabbalah and Chivalry are one and the same thing, and (lacking even elementary linguistic knowledge) that the two words have a common origin? [41] In view of such improbabilities, one will understand the necessity to exercise caution, and not satisfy oneself with some vague parallels in order to make such and so into a Kabbalist. Now the Kabbalah is essentially the Hebrew tradition [42], and we have no proof whatsoever that a Jewish influence was exerted directly on Dante. [43] What has given rise to such a belief is only the use he makes of the science of numbers; but even if this science does really exist in the Hebrew Kabbalah, and holds a place in it of the utmost importance, it is
nonetheless also found elsewhere. Will one also claim under the same pretext that Pythagoras was a Kabbalist? [44] As we have already stated, it is rather more to Pythagorism than to the Kabbalah that one could link Dante in this respect; for Dante very likely knew, and above all from Judaism, what Christianity had preserved from this source in its own doctrine.
"Let us also point out," Eliphas Lévi goes on to say, "that Dante's Hell is only a negative Purgatory. Let us explain: his Purgatory seems to have formed itself in his Hell as in a mould; it is the cover-or 'stopper'-of the bottomless pit, and one can understand that, in scaling Paradise, the Florentine Titan would like to dispatch Purgatory into Hell with a single kick." This is true in a sense, since the Mount of Purgatory was formed in the southern hemisphere out of material spewed from the heart of the earth when the abyss was dug by the fall of Lucifer; yet Hell has nine circles-an inverted reflection of the nine heavens-whereas Purgatory has only seven: the symmetry is therefore not correct in all respects.
"His Heaven is made up of a series of kabbalistic circles divided by a cross like Ezekiel's pentacle; at the center of this cross blooms a rose, and we see here the symbol of the Rosicrucians appearing for the first time, publicly revealed and almost categorically explained." At about the same time moreover this very symbol also appeared-though perhaps not so clearly-in another famous poetic work, The Romance of the Rose. Eliphas Lévi thinks that "The Romance of the Rose and The Divine Comedy are opposite forms [it would be more correct to say complementary] of the same work: initiation into independence of the spirit while satirizing all contemporary institu-
tions; and formular allegorizing of the great secrets of the Rosicrucian Society" (which, in truth, did not yet bear this name, and which-we repeat-was never, but for some more or less deviant branches later, a 'society' constituted with all the outer forms that this word implies). In any case, 'independence of the spirit', or, to put it better, intellectual independence, was not so exceptional a thing in the Middle Ages as the moderns usually imagine, and the monks themselves made no bones about expressing their frank criticisms, as can be found manifested even in cathedral statuary. In all this there is nothing truly esoteric: the two works in question contain something far more profound.
Eliphas Lévi goes on: "These important manifestations of occultism coincide with the time of the fall of the Templars, since Jean de Meung or Clopinel, contemporary to Dante's old age, flourished at the court of Philip the Fair. This is a profound book that pretends to be trifling [45]; it is a revelation as scholarly as that of Apuleius on the mysteries of occultism. The rose of Flamel, that of Jean de Meung, and that of Dante, are born of the same bush." [46]
On this citation we have only one reservation to make: that the word 'occultism', invented by Eliphas Lévi himself, is hardly suitable to designate what pre-dated him, especially when one reflects on the course of contemporary occultism, which, in claiming to devote itself to the restoration of esoterism, has succeeded only in becoming a crude counterfeit-for its leaders have never been in possession of its true principles, or of any genuine initiation. Eliphas Lévi would no doubt be the first to disown his would-be successors, to whom he was certainly very much superior intellectually; nonetheless he was far from being as profound as he wished to appear, and was mistaken in viewing everything through the mentality of an 1848 revolutionary. If we have spent some time discussing his opinions, it is because we know how great his influence has been, even upon those who scarcely understood him, and we think it best to set the limits within which his ability can be acknowledged: his greatest shortcoming-and that of his time-was to put social preoccupations in the foreground and to mix them indiscriminately with everything. In Dante's day one certainly had a better understanding of how to assign to each thing its proper place within the universal hierarchy.
What is of particular interest in this for the history of esoteric doctrines is the reference to the fact that several important manifestations of these doctrines coincided (give or take a few years) with the destruction of the Order of the Temple: there is an unquestionable connection between these events, although it is rather difficult to determine it precisely. In the early years of the XIVth century, and doubtless already in the course of the preceding century, there was therefore, in France as well as in Italy, a secret tradition ('occult' if one likes, but not 'occultist'), the very one that was to bear the name of Rosicrucianism. The denomination Fraternitas Rose-Crucis appears for the first time in 1374, or, according to some (notably Michael Maier), in 1413; and the legend of Cbristian Rosenkreuz, the supposed founder whose name and life are purely symbolic, was perhaps fully formed only in the XVIth century; but we have just seen that the Rosicrucian symbol is certainly much earlier.
This esoteric doctrine, whatever name one may wish to assign it (if it is necessary to do so at all) prior to its appearance as Rosicrucianism in the strict sense of the word, presented some characteristics that ally it with what is generally called Hermeticism. The history of the Hermetic tradition is intimately connected with that of the Orders of Chivalry, and was preserved at the time in question by initiatic organisations such as the Fede Santa and the Fedeli d'Amore, as also by the Massenie of the Holy Grail. Of the latter the historian Henri Martin says [47], with regard precisely to the tales of chivalry, which remain to this day among the great literary manifestations of esoterism in the Middle Ages: "The legend of the Grail reaches its final and splendid transfiguration in Titurel, under the influence of ideas that Wolfram [48] appears to have taken from France, and particularly from the Templars in the south of France. It is no longer in the British Isles but in Gaul, on the borders of Spain, that the Grail is kept. A hero named Titurel founds a temple in order to deposit the holy Vessel there, and it is the prophet Merlin who directs this mysterious construction-Merlin, whom Joseph of Arimathea had himself initiated into the plan of the pre-eminent Temple, the Temple of Solomon. [49] Here the Knigbtbood of the Grail becomes the Massenie, i.e. an ascetic Freemasonry, whose members called themselves Templists; and we can understand in this context the intention to link to a common center-rep-
resented by this ideal Temple-the Order of the Templars and the numerous fraternities of builders who were at that time renewing the architecture of the Middle Ages. We catch a glimpse here of many openings to what could be called the underground history of those times, something far more complex than is generally believed... What is rather curious, and can hardly be doubted, is that modern Freemasonry goes back step by step to the Massenie of the Holy Grail. [50]
It would perhaps be unwise though to adopt too exclusively the opinion just expressed, because the ties of modern Masonry with earlier organisations are themselves also extremely complex; nonetheless it is useful to take them into account, for one can see here at least an indication of one of the actual origins of Masonry. All this can help us understand, at least to a certain extent, the means by which esoteric doctrines were transmitted throughout the Middle Ages, as well as the obscure filiation of initiatic organisations during this period when they truly were secret in the full sense of the word.