Esoteric Coffeehouse

Last time I have shown how the modern vampire story may have originated in Godwin’s St Leon and its offshoots. Today I want to further investigate how the novel of St Leon itself may have drawn on the legends primarily associated with the figure of the Count of St. Germain. First I will say a few things about St. Germain himself, then explore the possible link between his figure and the literary St Leon.  Finally I will draw conclusions as to the influence St. Germain’s legend may have had on the birth of the Vampire Count Dracula.

The 1700s were a time full of gentlemen of mysterious, eccentric and ambiguous character. Of the more renowned ones we remember Count Cagliostro, founder of an Egyptian rite in Freemasonry, Casanova, another famous Freemason and Rosicrucian, and the Count of St Germain.

The Count of St Germain is now mostly remembered as a protégé of Louis XV of France in the decades prior to the French Revolution. Yet apart from the memoirs of some nobles of the time, not much else is known about him. The origins or nationality of the Count are obscure, despite endless speculations since his appearance at the Versailles court until today. Many – including some scholars – believe he was a prince from Transylvania called Ragotzy (1, 2). What is certain is that St Germain customarily changed his name, a fact he admitted of himself (3).

As far as memoirs of him recall, Count of St Germain was the epitome of the “Renaissance man”, speaking at least five languages fluently and without any accent, playing several instruments perfectly, knowledgeable in all the sciences, particularly chemistry and medicine, composing music, painting and writing (4). Pieces of his music are still extant in the British Museum, and his reputation as a talented composer is now being re-evaluated (5). He appeared to be very rich, wearing diamonds and carelessly giving them about, without anyone knowing the source of his wealth. He was reputed as a great alchemist, transforming iron into gold in the presence of nobles (6). His gift of prophecy was claimed particularly by the Countess d’Adhemar, a close friend of the ill-fated Marie Antoinette; he was said to prophesize the French Revolution, the French queen’s death, as well as the future fate of France (7).

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These days if you turn on National Geographic or the Discovery channel you can be sure to run into a program that talks about ancient Egypt and the Pyramids. It is fairly obvious that Pharaonic Egypt continues to exercise a profound fascination on people’s minds. Modern folk are not exception, but the rule, for almost every period in history was mesmerized by the mystery of ancient Egypt. Starting with the Greeks, continuing with the Romans, Islamic culture, the Renaissance down to the present, Egypt continues to embody the mystery of the beginnings of civilization. For most people, the legacy of Egypt is a dead culture buried deep within the sands of the Valley of Kings: but for many of those studying or practicing Hermeticism, it is still very much alive. Today, it is becoming more and more likely that at least part of the ancient Egyptian heritage passed through the figure of the god Thoth to an offshoot of him, Hermes Trismegistus, and then on to the modern times.

Ancient Egyptian religion is still shrouded in mystery, despite the translations of the hieroglyphs. Today we associate this religion mostly with the cult of Osiris and Isis, as well as the sun-god Re. However, it now appears that the god Thoth was an equally, or eventually more important god than these.

I must confess that I have encountered problems trying to unearth the mysterious figure of Thoth. There’s hardly anything up-to-date written about him: my main sources had to remain at the level of 1922’s classic by P. Boylan (1) and a 1973 book by J.C. Bleeker (2), none of which cover the late antique transformation of Thoth into Hermes Trismegistus. For Hermes and Hermes Trismegistus there is quite an enlightening book written by the founder of Western Esotericism research, A. Faivre (3). Yet in the end the information on Thoth is sadly disjointed, not updated and fragmentary, as if destined to perpetuate the myth and mystique of this shadowy god!

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During the Renaissance, scholars were convinced that the surviving Hermetic fragments – notably the Corpus Hermeticum and the Emerald Tablet – originated in ancient Egypt. They believed that the Hermetic manuscripts were authored by a sage called Hermes Trismegistus, who was contemporary to the Biblical Moses and the great Pharaonic civilization. The Renaissance thinkers hence regarded with reverence the Corpus, and brilliant scholars like Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno and others sought to unveil the perennial wisdom contained in the Hermetic writings. A veritable revolution of ideas and letters was unleashed, with a flourishing of alchemy, magic, astrology and kabbalistic practices.

However, in 1614, a French classical scholar named Isaac Casaubon destroyed the magic of Hermes Trismegistus. He maintained, upon careful analysis of the Corpus Hermeticum, that the writings were not originating from ancient Egypt but from the 200-400 AD Greek circles, and that Hermes Trismegistus, far than being a contemporary of Moses, was rather a contemporary of the late Roman emperors. Undeniably, there are elements in the Corpus Hermeticum that mirror late antique Greek philosophy.

Casaubon’s deconstructive analysis may have dealt a deadly blow to the Renaissance belief in the antiquity of Hermetic writings, but it did not stop esoteric groups and thinkers from regarding them highly. Nevertheless, academic scholars avoided the analysis of the Corpus Hermeticum until the middle of the 20^th century.

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