Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the "easternization" of French esotericism analyzing two different publications of the Parisian "occult milieu" which, originally, were supposed to have a Gnostic orientation: La Voie and La Gnose.

Paper long abstract:

This paper follows a group of occultists who, starting in the very early 1900s, left the Martinist Order and sought to create an alternative space to that dominated by Papus (born Gérard Encausse 1865-1916). The group in analysis gravitated around two consecutive editorial initiatives, the journals La Voie and La Gnose.

Both these publications were chosen as the house organ of a neo-Gnostic organization (L'Église gnostique de France led by Léonce Fabre des Essarts (1848-1917)), and they were both directed by "Gnostic Bishops", respectively "Tau Simon" (Albert de Pouvourville 1861-1939) and "Tau Paligenius" (René Guénon 1886-1951). However, contrary to what one might expect, neither La Voie nor (even more surprisingly, considering its title!) La Gnose gave predominance to Gnosticism. Instead, an analysis of the articles published in these journals reveals that their contributors favoured other, more "Oriental", forms of religion. If de Pouvourville and La Voie gave special attention to Daoism, Guénon moved his La Gnose from "Official Organ of the Universal Gnostic Church" to "Monthly Journal Devoted to the Study of Esoteric Sciences" (especially Sufism).

Although a "microhistory", the evolution of the Gnostic group around La Voie and La Gnose reveals the "Easternization of the West" beautifully described by Colin Campbell. With all their claims of being alternative to the mainstream of their time, French occultists were going exactly where everyone else in the West was going, "Eastwards".