booknetsaWebster-secretSocietiesAndSubversiveMovements

Moreover, towards the end of the century it assumed in France a very tangible form in the series of mysterious
dramas known as the " Affaire des Poisons," of which the first act took place in 1666, when the celebrated
Marquis de Brinvillier embarked on her amazing career of crime in collaboration with her lover
Sainte-Croix. This extraordinary women, who for ten years made a hobby of trying the effects of various
slow poisons on her nearest relations, thereby causing the death of her father and brothers, might appear to
have been merely an isolated criminal of the abnormal type but for the sequel to her exploits in the epidemic
of poisoning which followed and during twenty years kept Paris in a state of terror. The investigation of the
police finally led to the discovery of a whole band of magicians and alchemists-" a vast ramification of malefactors
covering all France "-who specialized in the art of poisoning without fear of detection.
Concerning all these sorcerers, alchemists, compounders of magical powders and philtres, frightful rumours
circulated, " pacts with the devil were talked of, sacrifices of new-born babies, incantations, sacrilegious
Masses and other practices as disquieting as they were lugubrious."(44) Even the King's mistress, Madame
de Montespan, is said to have had recourse to black Masses in order to retain the royal favour through
the agency of the celebrated sorceress La Voisin, with whom she was later implicated in an accusation of
having attempted the life of the King.
All the extraordinary details of these events have recently been described in the book of Madame Latour,
where the intimate connexion between the poisoners and the magicians is shown. In the opinion of contemporaries,
these were not isolated individuals: Their methods were too certain, their execution of crime too
skilful and too easy for them not to have belonged, either directly or indirectly, to a whole organization of
criminals who prepared the way, and studied the method of giving to crime the appearance of illness, of
forming, in a word, a school.(45)
The author of the work here quoted draws an interesting parallel between this organization and the modern
traffic in cocaine, and goes on to describe the three degrees into which it was divided: firstly, the Heads,
cultivated and intelligent men, who understood chemistry, physics, and nearly all useful sciences, " invisible
counsellors but supreme, without whom the sorcerers would have been powerless "; secondly, the visible
magicians employing mysterious processes, complicated rites and terrifying ceremonies; and thirdly, the
crowd of nobles and plebeians who flocked to the doors of the sorcerers and filled their pockets in return for
magic potions, philtres, and, in certain cases, insidious poisons. Thus La Voisin must be placed in the
second category; " in spite of her luxury, her profits, and her fame," she " is only a subaltern agent in this
vast organization of criminals. She depends entirely for her great enterprises on the intellectual chiefs of the
corporation...."(46)
Who were these intellectual chiefs? The man who first initiated Madame de Brinvilliers' lover Sainte-
Croix into the art of poisoning was an Italian named Exili or Eggidi; but the real initiate from whom Eggidi
and another Italian poisoner had learnt their secrets is said to have been Glaser, variously described as a
German or a Swiss chemist, who followed the principles of Paracelsus and occupied the post of physician to
the King and the Duc d'Orléans.(47) This man, about whose history little is known, might thus have been a
kind of Rosicrucian. For since, as has been said, the intellectual chiefs from whom the poisoners derived
their inspiration were men versed in chemistry, in science, in physics, and the treatment of diseases, and
since, further, they included alchemists and people professing to be in possession of the Philosopher's Stone,
their resemblance with the Rosicrucians is at once apparent. Indeed, in turning back to the branches of magic
enumerated by the Rosicrucian Robert Fludd, we find not only Natural Magic, " that most occult and
secret department of physics by which the mystical properties of natural substances are extracted," but also
Venefic Magic, which " is familiar with potions, philtres, and with various preparations of poisons."
The art of poisoning was therefore known to the Rosicrucians and, although there is no reason to suppose
it was ever practised by the heads of the Fraternity, it is possible that the inspirers of the poisoners may
have been perverted Rosicrucians, that is to say, students of those portions of the Cabala relating to magic
both of the necromantic and venefic varieties, who turned the scientific knowledge which the Fraternity of
the Rosy Cross used for healing to a precisely opposite and deadly purpose. This would explain the fact that
contemporaries like the author of the Examination of the Unknown and Novel Cabala of the Brethren of the
Rose-Cross should identify these brethren with the magicians and believe them to be guilty of practices deriving
from the same sources as Rosicrucian knowledge-the Cabala of the Jews. Their modern admirers
would, of course, declare that they were the poles asunder, the difference being between white and black
magic. Huysmans, however, scoffs at this distinction and says the use of the term " white magic " was a
ruse of the Rose-Croix.
But of the real doctrines of the Rosicrucians no one can speak with certainty. The whole story of the
Fraternity is wrapped in mystery. Mystery was avowedly the essence of their system; their identity, their
Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I
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