A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult by Gary Lachman Read Free Book Online Page A

secret societies and obliging oriental ladies. As Potocki's single masterpiece, The Saragossa Manuscript alone would be sufficient evidence of its author's eccentricities. Yet Potocki's own life, as well as that of his great work, have a history far stranger than most fiction.

    Born in one of Poland's wealthiest aristocratic families, by the end of his life, Potocki had become something of a superman. A famed traveller, ethnologist, linguist and fantasist, Potocki combined Enlightenment rationalism with a Romantic appetite for the strange and uncanny. His many accomplishments include an ethnographic excursion to Mongolia (following journeys to Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey and Morocco), the first balloon flight over Warsaw, fluency in eight languages (including the secret patois of the Circassian nobleman), opening the first free reading room in Poland, a period of service with the Knights of Malta (including a sea battle against the Barbary pirates), and a quest for the original manuscript of the Arabian Nights. In between all of this, Potocki found time to devote himself to writing, as well as to a profound study of occultism. He also found himself embroiled in the mystical political intrigues that made Europe in the days before the Revolution a warren of secret societies and esoteric enclaves.
    Among the many cities to which Cagliostro brought his Egyptian Rite was Warsaw, where he opened a lodge in 1780. By this time, a powerful splinter group had emerged within the Masonic fold. On 1 May 1776, Adam Weishaupt, a professor of canonical law at Ingoldstat University in Bavaria, gave birth to his brainchild: the Illuminati. Drunk with the elixir of Enlightenment rationalism, Weishaupt had a vision of a free, egalitarian Europe, rid of the tyranny of the monarchies and the Church. To achieve his end, Weishaupt inaugurated a secret society. He then became a Freemason, in order to appropriate the lodges' vast network of contacts and hierarchies. His disciples quickly infiltrated most other lodges, which were already filled with members of various other secret secret societies. (The situation resembles somewhat the plot of Chesterton's The Man Who was Thursday) Cagliostro, it is believed, was an early convert to Weishaupt's cause, and it is possible that at least some of the activity of his Egyptian Rite initiations included drawing in potential new followers. It's possible that Potocki was initiated into Cagliostro's Warsaw lodge: it's clear at any rate that he was a Mason. If so, and if Cagliostro was sifting his initiates for new recruits, then Potocki was certainly the kind of man he would target.

    Two factors suggest this indeed may have been the case. One is Potocki's passion for anything Islamic. Like William Beckford, - an early reading of the Arabian Nights proved decisive; Potocki spoke fluent Arabic, and after his visit to Constantinople, the Count often dressed in burnous and fez. This is significant, not only in the general sense of `the East' as a metaphor of mystery and exoticism, but in the more specific sense that, among the many eminent figures that Weishaupt claimed were initiates in the Illuminati, Mohammed figures largely. The fact that the prophet himself was a member of Weishaupt's society would certainly have piqued the young Count's interest.
    Stronger evidence for a connection between Potocki and the Illuminati however is The Saragossa Manuscript itself. Throughout his life Potocki advocated an inconsistent array of political beliefs; but in the atmosphere of preRevolutionary Paris, like many others, he more than likely shared in the hope that a new Golden Age was about to dawn. An activist by nature, participation in a society dedicated to help bring this along would have appealed to him. Secret knowledge and scenes and motifs of initiation run through The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. One of its central figures, the Great Sheikh of the Gomelez family, is the head of a gigantic scheme that in many ways