Joséphin Péladan: Occultism, Catholicism, and Science in the Fin de Siècle

In 1892, Roman Catholic art critic and novelist Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918) inaugurated a series of artistic salons sponsored by his occult Ordre de la Rose+Croix. The salons and Péladan's Rosicrucian revival were one part of his larger campaign to combat what he saw as the degeneration of French society under the influence of secularism and its supporting philosophy of scientific materialism. In "L'Art ochlocratique," the culminating work of the series "L'Occulte catholique," which codified the guiding principles for the aesthetic and social reforms that were Péladan's goal, he made the link between contemporary modes of painting and the materialism of Renan.