Age of Steam & Fire: Henry P. H. Bromwell's Newspaper

 

Henry P. H. Bromwell was an exhaustingly ambitious individual. He is best known for his Masonic tome Restorations of Masonic Geometry and Symbolry, published posthumously in 1905, but he also wrote an extensive amount of poetry, addresses, orations, and essays — both Masonic and political — and he even created his own Masonic rite, Free and Accepted Architect. Yet one curious byline that gets a mention on his Wikipedia page that appears to have gotten absolutely no attention is that he ran a newspaper called Age of Steam. Here I will endeavor to provide the greatest amount of information on this newspaper as is known.

According to Bromwell's daughter, Henrietta, her father purchased the Fayette Yeoman sometime after 1850.[1] This was a local newspaper in Bromwell's town of residence, Vandalia, Illinois. It appears he simply acquired their printing press to start a new newspaper, however Henrietta implies that he procured the entire entity of the Fayette Yeoman and simply changed its name, thus also implying he acquired its subscribers list and its files, et al. She explains the start of this newspaper differently in her entry on her father in her publication of the Bromwell family genealogy, namely that The Age of Steam was his father's, her grandfather's newspaper and Henry P. H. Bromwell assisted him with this newspaper.[2] The most detailed description of how this newspaper came to be is described by Henrietta in the preface to her transcription of the 1852 list of subscribers to The Age of Steam, in which she details its history based on what she knew about the paper. I will thus transcribe her preface to the subscriber list, as the only copy of this document is in the Denver Public Library, and not exactly readily available:

In the year 1852, Vandalia, the old State Capital of the twenties and thirties, always conservative, very much afraid of change, had not ceased to argue of the destruction of business to be expected from the coming of the rail roads, human life was also considered to be in jeopardy.

Engines were feared more than we now dread the air ships. A rival paper, in a nearby town, came out with a sneer at the title of "The Age of Steam", so that my father, in his next issue (to the delight of his friends) raised the name to "The Age of Steam and Fire", which title the paper bore, until in 1856 he sold it to Tevis Greathouse.

I have copies this list of subscribers to Vol. 1, from two small record books in the beautiful handwriting of my grandfather Henry Broughton Bromwell, who, in 1854 assisted in re-organizing Temperance Lodge No. 16, in Vandalia, masonry having lapsed when the Capital was removed to Springfield.

He was the first Secretary of this reorganized body of Masons, and Dr McCurdy was Worshipful Master. His handwriting can probably be seen in the old records of the Lodge. He was a Baltimorean, a Quaker by birth, and of fine education, but so quiet and unselfish, that other usually appropriated his honors.

He managed the paper a good deal, doing all the clerical work, but most of the editorials were by his son my father, who had always a brilliant wit, and with whom many persons were wise enough to avoid a tilt.

Greathouse sold the paper, and with it went the Files. At last, on the night of March 4th, one year after Lincoln took his seat as President, the office with all its contents was burned. Its patriot owners being away in the war, nothing was saved.

If any copies of "The Age of Steam" exist, they must be in the treasure chests of some of these old subscribers in the list I have copied.

I hope they may come to light, and that I may some time see them, for every move is as good as a fire, and we have moved several times, and I have none of my own.

Elizabeth Henrietta Bromwell
646 Williams Parkway, Denver Colorado.
September 25th 1927 [3]

So here we can see that the paper was originally called The Age of Steam and that it would change name to Age of Steam & Fire, because a another newspaper nearby bore a title that mocked The Age of Steam, and so Bromwell responded by adding & Fire to the title. Again, Henrietta implies that it was her grandfather's newspaper and that her father simply helped out with it. It was definitely a short-lived paper, that it must have gone inactive for a number of years, and eventually was totally destroyed by a fire, and because she and her father moved from Illinois to Colorado, even moved a couple of times to different houses in Denver, any copies her father may have kept were lost.

Henrietta, as valuable as her descriptions about the newspaper are, she clearly does not know a lot about it, so she constantly has to piece bits of information about it together years later, and none of her descriptions are consistent. We still do not know much about it. She transcribes the list of subscribers in hopes someone kept the papers, but we live in the modern age, and libraries are much more connected. Three libraries today have the 1852 volume of The Age of Steam, and two have the 1853 volume of The Age of Steam & Fire, and a few other libraries have a few copies of various issues of these in miscellaneous collections of Illinois newspapers. At this time, I have not found a full collection, and interlibrary loan has not let me view microfilms of any full collections. I will have to travel to Illinois and visit a few libraries to potentially examine any full collections. What I have been able to examine is one collection of miscellaneous Illinois newspapers on microfilm, which includes a few copies of the Fayette Yeoman, The Age of Steam, and The Age of Steam & Fire (reel no. 327 from the University of Illinois at Urbana Campaign — this reel was largely composed of newspapers from Fayette County, especially Vandalia). I was actually the first person to ever view this microfilm reel, as the seal was still on the reel, hence why I am certain almost no one has ever really explored this newspaper. This is what I can gather from the few specimens of these papers from this microfilm reel.

The Fayette Yeoman ran until at the latest May 10, 1851 (Vol. 2, No. 29), in which James Kennaday was the sole editor and proprietor. It would appear that Kennaday was the primary driver behind changing the name of the paper sometime in 1852. The only specimens I could view of The Age of Steam was April 30, 1853 (Vol. 1, No. 48), in which Kennaday and Henry P. H. Bromwell were joint editors and proprietors, and it was published weekly on Saturdays. It is possible that Henry Broughton Bromwell worked with the paper in 1852, and possibly even in 1853, but he is not mentioned in connection with this paper in either of the two issues of this paper that I was able to view. Henry Broughton appears to have only been a cleric, not an editor, as Henrietta indicates on the title page of her transcript. Sometime between May 7, 1853 (Vol. 1 No. 49) and August 16, 1853, the paper added & Fire to its name. As of the latter date (Vol. 2 No. 4), Bromwell became the sole editor and proprietor of the paper, and it changed its weekly publication day to Tuesdays. The three issues of The Age of Steam & Fire I was able to examine were the one already mentioned, along with August 23, 1853 (Vol. 2, No. 5) and September 6, 1853 (Vol. 2 No. 6). I find no records that this newspaper ran past 1853. As Henrietta indicates, the paper was sold to Tevis Greathouse in 1856, but I did not see any newspapers on the microfilm collection I viewed in which Tevis Greathouse was the editor or proprietor of. So I am not certain he did anything with the paper or press after his acquisition of it.

Note, I have not seen any specimens of The Age of Steam in 1852, so it is possible Henry Broughton was connected to the paper then, and possibly this is why he only kept records for 1852, and then he severed his connection with the paper when his son, Henry P. H., took over the paper entirely in 1853. Further, note that this paper went through an actual name change in 1853, as it maintained the same volume and issue numbers when & Fire was added to the paper's name, continuing the volume and issue numbers of its previous name. The front page title would be updated, but on subsequent pages maintained to read "The Age of Steam," indicating Bromwell did not want to pay to update this custom header.

Obviously my research on this paper is incomplete. Some day in the future I will be able to afford to travel to Illinois to view full collections in person, of whatever copies they actually have preserved.

But from what we can discern about this paper is that it was indeed originally the Fayette Yeoman, which was run by James Kennaday, but he would rebrand it as The Age of Steam sometime between mid-1851 to early 1852, with Bromwell joining the team, and by August 1853 Bromwell would acquire the entirety of the paper and added & Fire to its name as a responsive sneer at another paper. Bromwell neglected the paper in the years after 1853 and sold it in 1856.

Let's be real, this is not unusual for Bromwell. He was highly ambitious, and as a result, he neglected ambitious projects he started, and then lost interest in them, or just did not have the energy to maintain them. I write about this extensively in my article on him and the failure of his rite of Free and Accepted Architects in Philalethes (Vol. 74, No. 3, pp. 144-154, 173).

The paper's contents seem to us today as archaic and insignificant; mostly news about the railroad, land deals, new companies, et cetera. The reality is that it was actually a really progressive tabloid. Somewhere I read it being described as an "abolitionist" paper. Certainly Bromwell was an abolitionist, but I don't think I would call it that. He was certainly a radical. When he served as a Representative to Illinois in the US House, he was what we would come to call a "Radical Republican." I have read his political speeches in the Congressional Globe, and he was a hard radical in Reconstruction, frequently waiving the proverbial "red shirt" (i.e. citing the Union dead from the Civil War, or invoking the death of Lincoln), and calling for harsh punishments for the rebelling States before their representatives be readmitted into Congress, and such.

Further note that Illinois was still viewed as the frontier of the time. Bromwell reminiscences on the days when Illinois was the frontier back when he was a boy, sometimes in political speeches or elsewhere. Henrietta is correct in that Illinois was still very conservative in those days, and with the events of Bleeding Kansas and the approaching Civil War, tensions were high in Vandalia. An intellectual like Bromwell with abolitionist sentiments, as well as women's suffrage and technological advancements, it should not surprise anyone that his old press would be burned in 1861. Such indicates that Greathouse probably continued publishing tabloids, but I am uncertain which, but they must have been of a progressive leaning nature.

I would hope that once I can view some more complete collections of this paper we may have a better idea of who Bromwell was in these years. Perhaps we may find poetry of his that were only published in this paper and were lost by time his daughter publishes all his poetry posthumously. Perhaps we'll find some interesting editorials that illustrate key aspects of his character and sentiments. But at this time, I simply wanted to layout everything I know about this newspaper, as it appears it has never received a treatment whatsoever.

Notes:
[1] Bromwell, H. P. H. "Lines," On Buena Vista's Field, introductory remark by Henrietta Bromwell. 1918. Pg. 27.
[2] Bromwell, Henrietta. The Bromwell Genealogy. 1910. Pg. 52.
[3] Bromwell, Henrietta. "Preface," The Age of Steam: Subscribers List, Vandalia, Illinois, 1852. Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, G977.3 R737h.

Necromancy in the Forest of Marly: Acéphale, Dead Gods, and Bataille

 

Necromancer conjuring Astaroth under gallows
Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros.

Anno 1057. Noli me tangere.
Wellcome MS1766, c. 1776, folio 29r

Recently while researching about Acéphale, the secret society formed by Georges Bataille, I found a curious reference to an occult ritual that occurred in the 14th century. In Alastair Brotchie's The Sacred Conspiracy (Atlas Press, 2017), in discussing where Acéphale held their meetings, Brotchie mentions very briefly: "Here [Montjoie], according to the Chronicle of the Monks of Saint-Denis, the Duke of Burgundy instructed an apostate priest, a knight, a squire and valet to undertake rituals involving the invocation of the demons Herman and Astramon and the corpse of a thief strung up on a gibbet. These rites were intended to 'hasten the death of the king'..." (pg. 57). That was enough to get my attention.

Further, it does appear that Bataille was familiar with this historical occult ritual at Montjoie, as such appears to be the intended reference being made in his letter, intended as an inner circular only for the members of Acéphale, dated October 2, 1937: "It seems that for a long time a curse has afflicted this tower, and being abandoned it was used for certain necromantic practices directed against the royal person himself [King Charles VI]."

There is a lot to unpack here, so let us start with the location: Montjoie. This is an old castle, today a mere ruin buried in the Forest of Marly outside of Paris, that is believed to be the castle of Clovis I, the first king of the Franks. A brief walk away from from this ruin, almost a straight shot down one of the avenues in the forest, one will arrive at a site that is believed to be where Acéphale held many of their rituals, around the base of a dying oak tree that had been struck by lightning. This tree is located at an intersection of avenues, the intersection being called Étoile de Joyenval ("Star of Jupiter"), however Bataille would rename it on his map to Étoile Mourante ("Dying Star"). These intersections are called "stars" because they are where several avenues intersect at different angles, and therefore on a map they look like stars, however it is nonetheless quite poetic.

It is called Étoile de Joyenval because of its proximity to the Abbey de Joyenval, which in turn gets its name from the nearby ruin of Montjoie, which is believed to come from the Latin Mons Jovis ("Mount of Jupiter"). Bataille would associate the name, as many French people have done, with the old French battle cry "Montjoie [Saint Denis!]" However, the Acephalean reverence of this battle (bataille) cry was more an homage to Gilles de Rais, the infamous serial murderer of the 15th century. Gilles de Rais, like Bataille, once started out as very pious and then became incredibly wicked and dabbled in the occult.

At the Étoile de Joyenval there was once an old dying oak tree, which was decaying from a lightning strike that occurred some decades before Bataille came to the site. The oak is sacred to Jupiter (according to Agrippa in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book 1, Chapter 26). Jupiter, remember is, not only the chief god of the Greek pantheon, but also the god of lightning. That this oak tree, sacred to the god of lightning, was struck by lightning has a certain poetic irony, and thus was a perfect emblem for Acéphale to conduct their rites. It represented the dead or dying god, and formed a central focus for the secret society. It is similar to the crucifix (the dying god) or the tauroctony (the god slaughtering an animal) as a central image to a religion. And a part of me cannot help but also think of Nietzsche's example of "lightning strike" in Genealogy of Morals... for no reason... it just makes me think of this.

Jupiter, we should remember, is one of the dead gods of the ancient world. Well, his Greek counterpart is dead: Zeus. Though Euhemerus's Sacred History (3rd century BCE) is lost today, surviving only in fragments and quotes in other texts, Euhemerus does nonetheless describe Zeus as a former king of Crete, and as a mortal king, he eventually died and somewhere on Crete is his tomb. Now, Euhemerus is oftentimes regarded as a sort of rationalist philosopher, so he rationalizes that gods are really just mighty persons of long ago, such as a king, that still holds veneration today.

And this is not unfounded, or at least not unusual. The idea of the dead king and the dead god as sympathetic images is a central theme in James Frazer's The Golden Bough, which Bataille was very familiar with. In fact, the whole notion of killing kings and killing gods is central to Acéphale, ακέφαλος "Headless." Bataille apparently wanted to kickoff his new Dionysian secret society with a human sacrifice, but no one wanted to be the executioner — albeit, this is a bit of a myth about the society, as none of the internal papers or correspondences within the society ever mention an actual human sacrifice. Bataille also wanted to make January 21st a day of celebration for Acéphale, as that was the date of King Louis XVI's beheading. I have also written previously on the possible link between Bataille and the Headless Rite of the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM V.96-172), as well as the magical image of a headless entity (PGM III.170) that may have been known to Bataille, as this image was in the Bibliotheque Nationale's possession when Bataille worked there.

We could spend a lot of time on Acéphale as a secret society and its components, and all its philosophical conceptions, but in that case, I recommend Brotchie's The Sacred Conspiracy. Let us return to Montjoie and the necromancers there.

This story of necromancers at Montjoie comes to us from Michel Pintoin, the chronicler of the Valois Kings, as he chronicles the life of Charles VI, thus much of what he writes comes from official documents and reports. While the book is called Chronicle of the Monks... it really was only one monk compiling this material. It seems reasonable that Bataille had perused this text, and this could likely be where he obtained the knowledge of this occult ritual in the 14th century, especially given his predilection for reading about wars (Chronicles largely concerns the Hundred Years War).

The following is a digest of the section of Chronique du religieux de saint-Denys, Volume 3 (pg. 752-762) that describes this necromantic ritual, and is based on my rather rusty Latin skills. I am not going to provide a translation, as my Latin is not that good — it is just good enough to muddle through. The 1841 text has the Latin and French translation on alternating pages. And since my French is worse than my Latin, I am only relying on the Latin.

Pintoin tells how the Duke of Burgundy (Philip II the Bold) had sought to hasten the king's death, as the king was already ill. So the Duke solicits the assistance (likely paying for his services) of a priest to conduct a magical ritual that will quicken the king's death. This is not that bizarre, i.e. that of priests and monks engaging in occult practices. This was common in the early modern period, and actually the vast majority of magical grimoires survive to us today because they were written by priests, clerics, and monks. This is was Richard Kieckhefer calls the "clerical necromantic underground" (see Kieckhefer's Magic in the Middle Ages).

The priest solicits the help of a knight, his squire, and a servant. The priest, knight, squire, and valet are given a sword and ring, very likely provided by the Duke. They then go to Montjoie (arcem montis Gaudii) to have the privacy to conduct this ritual. This is also not unusual, as we find in numerous grimoires instructions to go to a place where there will be no prying eyes, some place hidden or private. A ruined castle in the forest is perfect. We see something similar in the autobiography of Benevenuto Cellini (sculptor, smith, renowned for his bronze sculpture Perseus with the head of Medusa), in which in 1535 he participates in a necromantic ritual in the ruins of the Roman Colosseum. When you think about it, the Colosseum is actually a great place to conduct a ritual in the 16th century, as the Roman Forum was open, ruined, and no one would be there, especially at night, and in the case of the ritual Cellini participates in, "legions" of spirits are called, and they fill up the whole amphitheater... such would be difficult in one's small apartment.

Just before sunrise, the priest makes his preparations on a hill adjacent to the ruins. He constructs a circle of a certain size (circulum fecit de calibe), makes some invocations, and two demons appear to him in the form of men. This is compatible with many grimoires, in which if the spirits appear in hideous and monstrous forms, the magician will command that they appear in a pleasing form or in the form of human likeness. The demons that appear to the priest are called Herman and Astramon. Likely these are corruptions of Hermes and Astaroth or some other variation of their names. A pact appears to be made (ipsis honore divino), which is according to "the art [of magic]" (ut ars postulat). Then the knight, squire, and servant are to be "handed over" to the demons to be instructed in how to proceed and to be consecrated. This part is a little odd. Customarily, in nearly all magical rituals, the magician and their helpers will remain within the circle. The circle protects them from any harm the spirits may inflict upon them. Why would anyone leave the circle? Like ever? (Mind you, my Latin is rusty). Some magical rites have a complex of circles and paths between, and some only have one circle for everyone to remain in. Some have a triangle or other bounded area for the spirits to appear within, as another means of protection. However, only one circle is described here, so perhaps some variation of the Liber Juratus is being conducted, or perhaps the priest has already developed a relationship with Herman and Astramon, and thus has a very simple procedure to call them. Suffice to say, in some manner, the knight, squire, and valet were presented separately from the priest to the demons for instructions.

The knight, the squire, and the valet are interesting here, though totally appropriate. It is about this time period that we see the introduction of swords into magical rituals. This is in part because of the heightened monetary status of knights who could now afford to hire magicians or purchase a grimoire from a literate person, like clerics. And, as a result, they wanted their swords incorporated into the rituals. The squire is also appropriate, as squires were usually young, usually no more than eighteen years of age, and children have often been noted as being better able to see spirits than adults. We actually see something like this in Cellini's autobiography, wherein the second time they conduct the magical rite, they bring one of the shop boys from Cellini's studio, a lad of about twelve years and a virgin. The servant or valet is likely an assistant or pupil of the priest himself, likely being trained by him in magical arts (the clerical necromantic underground), and was there to ensure the knight and squire followed procedure and they got the results they hoped to obtain.

That the knight, squire, and valet are being "consecrated" by the demons is not that unusual. I have known magicians that will leave outside the circle an item they want the spirits to bless, so after having called the spirits and they arrive, they ask for whatever they called them for, and then ask that they touch and bless whatever item they left for the spirits. Though it is not advised that anyone ever leave the circle and physically engage with the spirits, mostly for their own safety, such is known to have been done, albeit it rare.

The knight, squire, and valet having returned from the demons with instructions, another pact is made (ad votum), possibly something like a license to depart — i.e. the demons are permitted to leave, their pact having been fulfilled, and ordered to be ready to come back when called — or it is simply that all this was done in accordance with the pact made when the demons first appeared (again, my Latin sucks). According to the demons' instructions, they obtained the body of a thief who had been executed in a gibbet. This was a common means of executing criminals, especially thieves. Basically the criminal is either hung by the neck until dead or placed in a hanging cage and left to die by exposure. A gibbet in particular is intended to leave the corpse rotting as a warning to others. Because of the stench, these executions were held far away from town, which meant these were prime targets for magicians to secretly obtain body parts or whole corpses for magical rituals. This has long been a practice in magic. Pieces of a body from one who died a horrible death are believed to possess immense power. Consider for a moment the remains of martyrs, in which their relics are believed to possess sacred powers. It is like that, except these bodies were more accessible to the public.

Necromancer with a torch and dagger in a circle, with an assistant removing hair from the corpse on the gallows
Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae...

Wellcome MS1766, c. 1776, folio 14r

Having a corpse, they placed the ring into the thief's mouth for a period of time (likely some duration of occult significance), then they cut the body open from anus to breast. Then the ring and sword were returned to the Duke, because now they are endowed with certain occult virtues. All of this tracks with traditional practices. The Duke needs some means of obtaining consecrated items to hasten the king's death. So a priest helps him. The priest cannot participate, as mutilation of a corpse would be a sin, and a violation of his own sanctity. So he solicits a knight and his squire to help, and the demons teach them how to do it. Now that they are instructed and sanctified by the demons, they consecrate the ring by placing it in the mouth of the executed thief, then they consecrate the sword by cutting open a body. Now these items have all the occult virtues they need for malefic magic. That these items have touched a corpse, an executed criminal, is reminiscent of magical procedures, such as those detailed in Necromancy in the Medici Library (translated by Brian Johnson), such as pricking a corpse with a needle, then using the same needle to prick a woman as part of an erotic binding spell. 

The ring itself is curious, as it appears to have already been used for magical purposes by the Duke of Burgundy. The Duke admits that his ring was received by a cleric for venereal purposes, and that he is a servant of Venus (velud dee Veneris obsequiosum servitorem). The ring itself, while worn, needs only to touch a woman for her to become enchanted and grow lustful for the wearer.

The priest continues by writing some "diabolical names" (likely voces magicae or untranslatable magical names of power) above the thief while still on the gibbet (likely on the cantilever supporting the body). He writes these names with a "spatula" (some kind of engraving or inscribing tool) in the thief's own blood — indicating that the corpse is still quite fresh. The Duke himself appears to have kept some part of this thief's corpse, perhaps the blood itself, in an amulet of sorts upon his person, worn under his shirt.

There is a mentioning of the King's brother stabbing him, the King, with a sword. It would be odd to do this ritual to hasten the king's death, as any regular ole sword would have done the trick. Stabbing someone to death isn't magical. Perhaps it is less magical and more practical, for if the sword had been used to cut open a rotten corpse, then the bacteria on the sword would spread to the king — perhaps similar to the needle pricking spell in MS Plut. 89 sup. 38, which would prevent the woman from desiring another man... because its difficult to lust for anyone when you're fighting an infection. Of course, this all rather silly, because if you are going to stab someone with a sword, it doesn't really matter if it could infect them, as the sword is probably just going to do that anyway. Once more, my Latin is rough and I could be missing something here. But it is worth noting that the Duke had also admitted to producing poisonous potions (pociones venenosas).

Further details of this ritual at Montjoie are absent, but there is enough here to gather that this is not some "elaborated theory of witchcraft," but appears to be a legitimate account of a ritual that occurred, even if the chronicler did not fully understand the material or details thereof. There is enough information here that allows us to conclude that this appears to be a legitimate ritual for conjuring spirits to obtain a certain objective through secret means.

These things were all of immense fascination to Bataille: secrecy, secret rituals, executions, corpses, killing the king, religious taboos, et al, and the fact that they took place at a site of immense importance to him: Mount Jupiter, near a dying oak tree... Bataille certainly absorbed all of this, likely with great excitement and enthusiasm. Who wouldn't? especially when you find a place with a history that fits so well into a mythology you have created for a new religion after the death of God.

Now, I should stress that Bataille was not that interested in magic. He addresses magic very briefly in Eroticism, and then says, "I don't really care about any of this. Go read Mauss." Acéphale was active from 1936 to 1939, while Eroticism was published in 1957. Perhaps Bataille's fascination with the occult was a fleeting preoccupation of his youth. When World War II breaks out, Bataille retreats. He produces more introspective works like Guilty, Inner Experience, and The Impossible, works focused on inner sovereignty, self-elation, et cetera. And Mauss's General Theory of Magic is more of an anthropological analysis of magic as social construct within societies, mostly by examining "primitive" cultures, much like Frazer's Golden Bough. It is not concerned with whether these practices are real or effective, but only looks at them as a social construct.

This is limiting, as someone who does have a variety of occult practices, who lives in a deeply haunted house, who has and still does engage with spirits... a sociological approach ends up being disappointing. Like the study of religious experiences, it is only focused on the social and individual values of these practices, as opposed to a certain reality that is difficult to quantify and qualify. It dismisses a huge aspect of what magic is and what it holds for those who practice it.

Bataille it appears was more interested in the taboo aspect of the occult, rather than actually practicing it. Patrick Waldberg would write about his initiation into Acéphale, which was included in the internal documents of the society. He describes having undergone a vow of silence at Bataille's apartment, and the next night being initiated in a ceremony around the dead tree. Out of the forest came robed figures with torches. Bataille himself burned sulfur as an incense (a very Saturnine incense, such as that specified in the Heptameron and Agrippa's Three Books), and Bataille would cut Waldberg's arm with a ceremonial dagger and draw blood — the dagger itself looked identical to that held by the acephalic being drawn by André Masson. This all seems more like the elaborated theory of witchcraft than any real practice. In part, it appears slightly Masonic — and it has been noted by Brotchie that Acéphale had some quasi-Masonic aspects — and in part is like something from Huysmans's Là-Bas. The rituals seem more like larping or cosplay than based on any practical existing occult tradition, being conducted symbolically as an act of transgression more than anything real or practically taboo. When I read Waldberg's description of his initiation, I am less enthused than in reading Bataille's descriptions of the tree and getting lost in the woods looking for Montjoie and his philosophical principles. The actual rituals appear to be a parody ("everything is purely parodic," The Big Toe) than a practical transgression. Such an opinion has been expressed by others, such as Justin Murphy (he specifically calls Bataille's bizarre rituals "larping"). And don't get me wrong, Bataille was transgressive. If we are to believe him (and we probably never should believe him), he masturbated in front of his mother's corpse in a room he had an orgy in years prior, jerking it while his pregnant wife was asleep in the next room... yeah. His ideas and much about his life are transgressive, but Acéphale simply is not quite that.

What I find so interesting here is that we have, basically, a larping group, a bunch of overzealous theorists that get carried away with trying to appear transgressive, but with some very powerful symbolism behind their choice of locale to conduct rituals — contrast this with an actual transgression, in which in the 14th century a priest was hired by a nobleman to conduct a magical rite, obtain what is needed from some demons, and use this to help hasten the death of the dying king. It is simply fascinating to look at a real transgression contrasted with an appearance of transgressing.

(A special thanks goes to Daniel Harms for helping me figure out where to find these images from the Wellcome Collection based on a really vague description I gave of them.)