Down There: A History of Satanism

Huysmans made contact with Berthe Courrière, thanks to her lover, the writer Remy de Gourmont. Berthe believed in black magic and beguiled J.K. with tales of her paranormal experiences. Huysmans also had a brief and bizarre affair with another Lady of the Occult, Henriette Maillat. Both she and Berthe were the models for Hyacinthe Chantelouve, the heroine “down there”. Huysmans contacted, among others, a founding member of the modern French Order of the Rosy Cross, Stanislas de Guaïta; a self-proclaimed descendant of the Chaldean Magi, Sâr Joséphin Péladan; an expert on alchemy, Michel de Lézinier; the renegade priest and exquisitely evil Joseph-Antoine Boullan, no stranger of prisons, who regarded all forms of sexual intercourse as acts of worship and who was accused of having slain his own child, conceived by a nun, on the altar, after a Black Mass. Boullan provided Huysmans with all sorts of documentation on the black arts in 19th century France.

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“Down There” is the account of Durtal’s – or Huysmans’ – research, and their discovery: that Satanism is alive and kicking in 19th century France, just as it was in the medieval times. It’s a strong spiritual force, creating real phenomena one can observe and document. The subject matter of “Down There” may be abhorrent, as art – through the power of words – it is highly original, since the categories of fiction and nonfiction, reality, dreams and imagination are called into question.

The novel received a good press, but had some unpleasant consequences for its author: there were some violent attacks launched, calling the originality into question (of course it was not “original”, since J.K. had previously “lived” the plot!) and Henriette Maillat recognized in the letters of Hyacinthe Chantelouve – who had Durtal admitted to a Black Mass – the letters she had written to Huysmans. Fortunately for him, at the ministery where he was still working, J.K. had some connections with the Sûreté (the French secret police) and when Maillat discovered that detectives were asking questions about her, she disappeared from J.K.’s life.

And then there were the Rosicrucians, disturbed at J.K.’s close contacts with Boullan and his high-priestess Julie Thibault. It was the start of a Black Arts War, with magicians casting spells upon each other and Huysmans narrowly escaping a deadly duel. For years afterward, J.K. felt that he was a victim of evil magic. So from time to time he could be found huddled inside a chalk circle scrawled upon the floor to ward off hellish vibrations.

Finally, at the Black Mass J.K. attended himself, or at least at the orgiastic ritual narrated in “Down There”, he claimed to have seen a Belgian priest, who became the prototype of the diabolic Canon Docre. Of course his friend and ally Joseph-Antoine Boullan had nothing to do with it, the authorities better had a look at the life and times of abbé Louis Van Haecke. This resulted into a highly controversial issue, for Louis Van Haecke was the well respected chaplain of the famous Chapel of the Holy Blood in Bruges…

Read also:

The Black Mass, as described by J.K. Huysmans in “Down There/The Damned”

The Satanist Chaplain of the Holy Blood Chapel in Bruges

Black Magic in Nineteenth Century France

To Be Continued Here:

• Rennes-le-Château and the Holy Blood of Bruges
• The Holy Blood of Bruges, a New Jerusalem
• The Holy Sepulchre of Bruges-la-Morte