C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Joséphin Péladan (1859–1918)
Péladan, Joséphin (pā-lä-da
‘) [“The Sar”]. A French mystical writer; born at Lyons, 1859; died in 1918. He gave himself out to be a descendant of the last of the Babylonian kings, and as such took the name or title of “Sar,” and assumed a theatrical garb. He reinstituted the Templar Order of the Rosy Cross, of which he was grand master. For the “salon of the Rosy Cross” he prepared dramatic pieces, among them: ‘The Son of the Stars,’ a sort of Wagnerian-Chaldaic play in three acts (1892); and ‘Babylon,’ a tragedy in four acts (1893). His masterpiece is a romantic cyclus, ‘Latin Decadence,’ a mixture of astrology, mysticism, and esotericism. The first romance in the cyclus is ‘The Supreme Vice’ (1886); others are: ‘The Man-Woman’ (1890); ‘The Woman-Man’ (1891). He wrote also: ‘Æsthetic Decadence’ and ‘Ochlocratic Art’; ‘Introduction to History of Painting.’