Table Of ContentInitiating the Millennium
OXFORD STUDIES IN WESTERN ESOTERICISM
Series Editor
Henrik Bogdan, University of Gothenburg
Editorial Board
Egil Asprem, Christine Ferguson, Jeffrey Kripal,
University of Stockholm University of Stirling Rice University
Jean- Pierre Brach, Peter Forshaw, James R. Lewis,
École Pratique des University of Amsterdam University of Tromsø
Hautes Études Olav Hammer, Jesper Aa. Petersen,
Dylan Burns, University of Southern Norwegian University of
Freie Universität Berlin Denmark Science and Technology
Carole Cusack, Wouter Hanegraaff, Michael Stausberg,
University of Sydney University of Amsterdam University of Bergen
Gordan Djurdjevic, Ronald Hutton,
Simon Fraser University University of Bristol
CHILDREN OF LUCIFER
The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism
Ruben van Luijk
SATANIC FEMINISM
Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth- Century Culture
Per Faxneld
THE SIBLYS OF LONDON
A Family on the Esoteric Fringes of Gregorian England
Susan Sommers
WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE DEAD?
Near- Death Experiences, Christianity, and the Occult
Jens Schlieter
AMONG THE SCIENTOLOGISTS
History, Theology, and Praxis
Donald A. Westbrook
RECYCLED LIVES
A History of Reincarnation in Blavatsky’s Theosophy
Julie Chajes
THE ELOQUENT BLOOD
The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism
Manon Hedenborg- White
GURDJIEFF
Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises
Joseph Azize
INITIATING THE MILLENNIUM
The Avignon Society and Illuminism in Europe
Robert Collis and Natalie Bayer
i j
Initiating the Millennium
The Avignon Society and Illuminism
in Europe
Robert Collis
Natalie Bayer
i j
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
ISBN 978– 0– 19– 090337– 4
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Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
To George and Teddy, our rays of illumination,
and to the memory of Gennadii Iur’evich Magakov.
i
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1. In the Beginning Was the (Holy) Word: The Foundation of the Initiatic Society and Its
Early Years in Berlin, Rheinsberg, and Podolia, 1779– 1784 14
2. In Search of Guidance: Grabianka, Swedenborgians, and the Prophecies of Samuel Best
in London, 1785– 1786 37
3. The Era of the Seven Brothers in Avignon, 1783– 1790 61
4. A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing? The Rise and Fall of Ottavio Cappelli in Rome,
1789– 1800 110
5. Trials, Tribulations, and Transformation: The Illuminés d’Avignon in Revolutionary
France, 1791– 1802 135
6. Light from the North: The New Israel Society Revived in the Russian Empire,
1802– 1807 156
7. The Legacy of the New Israel Society: The Pleshcheeva Circle, 1807– 1830s 192
8. The Prophetess Madame Bouche and the Triune of Emperor Alexander, A. N. Golitsyn,
and R. A. Koshelev, 1810– 1822 206
Conclusion 226
Appendix 229
Select Bibliography 235
Index 241
vii
Acknowledgements
i
The topic of this study is pan- European in scope, and we were fortunate enough to
receive considerable help in the preparation of this work across Europe (and beyond).
This good fortune, moreover, came about without any prior consultations with oracular
authorities in Iowa (or elsewhere). The support we received was thus based on a gen-
erosity of spirit rather than any spirit of generosity. In Russia, we were greatly assisted
by Iurii Kondakov, who helped us secure a second batch of crucial documents from the
Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg. We are also grateful to Iurii Khalturin
and Andrei Serkov. In Sweden, we were kindly aided by Ulf Åsén, the archivist of the
Swedish Order of Freemasons in Stockholm. Kjell Lekeby also gave up his time to tran-
scribe the shoddy handwriting of Gustaf Reuterholm, for which we are very grateful. We
would also like to thank Henrik Bogdan for giving us the chance to write this book, and
Andreas Önnerfors for first fostering our interest in the Illuminés d’Avignon in Sheffield.
It has been a great pleasure and privilege to correspond with Antoine Faivre in France
for a number of years. We benefitted enormously from his unrivalled knowledge of the
field, not only in commenting on drafts of our chapters, but also in directing us to invalu-
able source material in various archives scattered throughout Europe. We would also like
to thank Pierre- Yves Beaurepaire and Thierry Zarcone for sharing both archival material
and their own work, as well as Michel Chazottes in Avignon. We would also like to thank
Simon Perrotin for his help in translating some suitably cryptic letters and prophecies by
Madame Bouche.
We were also fortunate to receive a tremendous amount of help from scholars in
the United States. First, we are truly indebted to the generosity of Clorinda Donato of
ix
x i Acknowledgements
California State University, who translated several extremely difficult letters and notes
written in Italian by Ottavio Cappelli. Without her aid, we would have been deprived of
an invaluable source for our work. We are also grateful to Alexander Martin for sharing
his collection of material related to Barbara von Krüdener, and to the late Jane Williams-
Hogan for providing information on the Swedenborgians. At various points through-
out this project, we also obtained valuable nuggets of information from Marsha Keith
Schuchard. Thanks also to Kris Mogle, Head of Interlibrary Loans at Drake University,
for always promptly supplying us with the rather obscure texts we regularly required.
Thanks, too, to Christine Elizabeth Jacobson, Assistant Curator of Modern Books and
Manuscripts at Houghton Library, Harvard University, who kindly supplied us with
details about an alchemical manuscript housed at her institution. We would also like
to thank Kaley Wresch, for her assistance in preparing the final draft of the manuscript;
Kenneth Loiselle; and Cynthia Read, for her help throughout. We are both extremely
lucky to have wonderful colleagues at the Department of History at Drake University
and are especially grateful to the chair, Karen Leroux, for her support.
In England, Katariina Nara- Zanotti aided us in the translation of some French man-
uscripts, and at various points we were generously helped by Susan Snell and Martin
Cherry, librarians at the Museum of Freemasonry in London. We would also like to
thank the following scholars for their help: Reinhard Markner in Innsbruck, Jan Snoek
in Heidelberg, Peter Forshaw and Wouter Hanegraaff in Amsterdam, and Peter Lineham
in Palmerston North in New Zealand. Thanks are also due to Karin Borgkvist of the
Riksarkivet in Stockholm, Jac Piepenbrock of the Prince Fredrik Masonic Centre in The
Hague, and Paola Ferraris of the Archivio di Stato di Roma for ensuring that we had
access to important source material. We would also like to acknowledge the support of
the University of Sheffield, the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, and Drake
University over the past seven years. This project was made possible by a generous grant
from the Center for the Humanities and the College of Arts and Sciences at Drake. The
Leverhulme Trust also provided us with a substantial travel grant that facilitated a great
deal of our archival research in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 2012.
Last, but certainly not least, we have received the unwavering support of our families,
in both practical and emotional ways. Svetlana Magakova spent countless evenings tran-
scribing Russian texts, when she was not looking after her grandchildren. Graham Collis
undertook a research trip to the British Library, which was of great help, and also did his
fair share of looking after the grandkids. Christina Collis has been an enormous support
during the entire project and put in a wonderfully helpful stint with her grandchildren
when we were in the final stages of writing the manuscript. Thanks also to Liz Collis,
Katya Sotnikova, and Sergei Sotnikov for their love and support.
