Masonic Authors' Guild International

A European Entrancement: Animal Magnetism among the Russian Nobility . . . : An Interview with Prof. ROB COLLIS

Enjoy the First Seven Minutes of this Eleventh Episode of THE WIDE MASONIC WORLD - Join hosts Robert Cooper and Mark Tabbert for a in-depth conversation with Prof. Rob Collis, Ph.D.. He is an Assistant Professor of History at Drake University, Des Moines. Prof. Collis teaches European and global history, specializing in Russian history (particularly in the eighteenth century) and the history of Western esotericism. He also teaches a course on world history since 1750 and a Cold War Through Film class that examines movies from the 1940s to the 1980s from both sides of the Iron Curtain. Since 2023, Collis has also been supervising students in their Capstone research papers on European history. On 18 August 1784, Ivan Sergeevich Bariatinskii, the Russian ambassador to France, wrote a report to Empress Catherine II, on her orders, about Franz Anton Mesmer and animal magnetism.1 The ambassador’s despatch was written a mere seven days after the presentation of a report to King Louis XVI by a specially-appointed Royal Commission composed of five scientists of the French Academy of Sciences (Benjamin Franklin, Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, Jean d’Arcet and Michel- Joseph Majault). These five eminent figures signed their names to a report that largely dismissed the purported curative powers touted by Mesmer. . . . . the brief dalliance with forms of animal magnetism in 1786 foreshadowed (as did early expressions of romanticism) the more sustained challenge to Enlightenment ideals that occurred in the post-Napoleonic era in the Russian Empire and Europe as a whole: a spiritual curiosity and anxiety that emboldened individuals to seek unorthodox and personal channels to the divine; a heightened sense of the unexplored potential of the realm of the unconscious within the human mind; and a willingness to embrace unconventional methods of healing that drew on older theories of occult philosophy. An understanding of this initial, albeit fleeting, attraction to animal magnetism among the Russian nobility in the 1780s provides an essential grounding for further studies that can examine the resurgence of interest in the varied forms of animal magnetism in the decades after 1815, which has yet to receive in-depth scholarly attention.

A European Entrancement: Animal Magnetism among the Russian Nobility in France and St Petersburg, 1784–1787 - SHORT

. . . . the brief dalliance with forms of animal magnetism in 1786 foreshadowed (as did early expressions of romanticism) the more sustained challenge to Enlightenment ideals that occurred in the post-Napoleonic era in the Russian Empire and Europe as a whole: a spiritual curiosity and anxiety that emboldened individuals to seek unorthodox and personal channels to the divine; a heightened sense of the unexplored potential of the realm of the unconscious within the human mind; and a willingness to embrace unconventional methods of healing that drew on older theories of occult philosophy. An understanding of this initial, albeit fleeting, attraction to animal magnetism among the Russian nobility in the 1780s provides an essential grounding for further studies that can examine the resurgence of interest in the varied forms of animal magnetism in the decades after 1815, which has yet to receive in-depth scholarly attention. ROBERT COLLIS, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of History at Drake University, Des Moines. He teaches European and global history, specializing in Russian history (particularly in the eighteenth century) and the history of Western esotericism. He also teaches a course on world history since 1750 and a Cold War Through Film class that examines movies from the 1940s to the 1980s from both sides of the Iron Curtain. Since 2023, Collis has also been supervising students in their Capstone research papers on European history.

The Dialectic of Representation: Black Freemasonry, the Black Public, and Black Historiography: An Interview with Prof. CHERNOH SESAY, Jr. - SHORT

Enjoy the first Eight Minutes of the Tenth Episode of THE WIDE MASONIC WORLD - Join hosts Robert Cooper and Mark Tabbert for a in-depth conversation with Prof. Chernoh M. Sesay Jr., Ph.D.. He is a Professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University, Chicago. The investment of African American Freemasonry in abolition, respectability, and literacy reflected an anxious intersection between dissent and incorporation. Furthermore, although the first black lodge represented a small and self-selected group, black Masonic thought described black identity in the broadest descriptive and discursive terms. In seeming paradox, the desire of black Freemasons to be respectable also reflected their demand for recognition as a function of abolitionism and historiographical revision. In consequence, the earliest African American lodge of Freemasons labored to occupy two opposing positions simultaneously, that of a counter-public and that of a universal public. This essay examines this tension to argue that the same traits that made black Freemasonry unique and novel- its narrow self-selection, its abolitionist origins, and its arguments in print- also structured its conscious drive to represent African Americans in debates about freedom, racial equality, and Masonic history. Published in The Journal of African American Studies, September 2013, Vol. 17, No. 3 (September2013), pp. 380-398 Assoc. Prof. Chernoh M. Sesay, Jr., Ph.D. is an historian of the Black Atlantic and of colonial North American and antebellum United States history whose research focuses on the intersection of religion, black political thought, identity, and community formation. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Black Boston and the Making of African-American Freemasonry: Leadership, Religion, and Community in Early America. In this study, the early development of black Freemasonry, from its founder, Prince Hall, to its prominent antebellum member, David Walker, becomes a prism through which to consider various relationships between religion, gender, community, and interracial and black politics. He is also exploring how different forms of nineteenth and twentieth-century African American historicism were comprised of aligned and competing theological and secular concerns. He has published a book chapter in addition to articles in the New England Quarterly, the Journal of African American Studies, and the Forum for European Contributions to African American Studies. In addition to book reviews written for the Massachusetts Historical Review, H-Net Law, the Journal of the Early Republic, and the Journal of American History, Dr. Sesay has also written for Black Perspectives, the scholarly blog of the African American Intellectual History Society.

The Dialectic of Representation: Black Freemasonry, the Black Public, and Black Historiography, by Chernoh M. Sesay, Jr. Ph.D. - SHORT

The investment of African American Freemasonry in abolition, respectability, and literacy reflected an anxious intersection between dissent and incorporation. Furthermore, although the first black lodge represented a small and self-selected group, black Masonic thought described black identity in the broadest descriptive and discursive terms. In seeming paradox, the desire of black Freemasons to be respectable also reflected their demand for recognition as a function of abolitionism and historiographical revision. In consequence, the earliest African American lodge of Freemasons labored to occupy two opposing positions simultaneously, that of a counter-public and that of a universal public. This essay examines this tension to argue that the same traits that made black Freemasonry unique and novel- its narrow self-selection, its abolitionist origins, and its arguments in print- also structured its conscious drive to represent African Americans in debates about freedom, racial equality, and Masonic history. Published in The Journal of African American Studies, September 2013, Vol. 17, No. 3 (September2013), pp. 380-398 Assoc. Prof. Chernoh M. Sesay, Jr., Ph.D. is an historian of the Black Atlantic and of colonial North American and antebellum United States history whose research focuses on the intersection of religion, black political thought, identity, and community formation. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Black Boston and the Making of African-American Freemasonry: Leadership, Religion, and Community in Early America. In this study, the early development of black Freemasonry, from its founder, Prince Hall, to its prominent antebellum member, David Walker, becomes a prism through which to consider various relationships between religion, gender, community, and interracial and black politics. He is also exploring how different forms of nineteenth and twentieth-century African American historicism were comprised of aligned and competing theological and secular concerns. He has published a book chapter in addition to articles in the New England Quarterly, the Journal of African American Studies, and the Forum for European Contributions to African American Studies. In addition to book reviews written for the Massachusetts Historical Review, H-Net Law, the Journal of the Early Republic, and the Journal of American History, Dr. Sesay has also written for Black Perspectives, the scholarly blog of the African American Intellectual History Society.

Debates Surrounding the Organizations of the Grand Orient de France (1773-1789): An Interview with PIERRE MOLLIER

Enjoy the first Seven Minutes of this Ninth Episode of THE WIDE MASONIC WORLD - Join hosts Robert Cooper and Mark Tabbert for a in-depth conversation with internationally revered Masonic historian Pierre Mollier. He is the retire Director of Library, Museum and Archives of the Grand Orient of France. From its introduction in Paris around 1725 until the end of the 1760s, French Freemasonry would repeatedly endeavor to organize itself It first recognized the authority of a Grand Master for France in 1728, thereby freeing itself from English tutelage. In 1735, it endowed itself with statutes, establishing a Grand Lodge for the first time. However, this First Grand Lodge did not seem to hold much authority over the lodges of the Kingdom. At regular intervals June 24, 1745; July 4, 1755; May 19, 1760; and April 17, 1763- it would try to establish its supremacy by promulgating statutes. Each of these texts insists on the authority it claims to have over the lodges of the kingdom, but to little effect. Until the 1760s, the lodges existed in semi-independence. Older lodges established newer ones and each corresponded with various others, depending on the circumstances. The unity of French Freemasonry could only be found in the fact that all recognized the Grand Master. From 1743 to 1771, he would be a prominent figure in Louis XV's France, namely, the Count of Clermont, a prince du sang. However, the rule of Louis de Bourbon-Conde was only a symbolic patronage and relatively distant, as was the custom during the Ancien Regime; the Grand Master never intervened in the management of the Order. It was, however, in his name that, in 1761, the first real attempt was made to establish a central authority over the lodges. Pierre Mollier is a graduate of Sciences Po (Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris), he holds a master's degree in Religious Studies (École pratique des hautes études, section V, La Sorbonne).