‘Cosmique Revue: Context and Background. Rough Essay.

Introduction:

In 1902, Louis Themanlys (1874-1943), an artist and writer in Paris, later friend to the Mother
(Mirra Alfassa) and her brother Matteo Alfassa, published ‘Les Ames Vivantes’, a text in which
he laid out basic principles of contemporary art for fellow artists and colleagues. Here, he
wrote of the hidden power of ‘ideals’, ‘archetypes’, and ‘symbols’ in manifesting the
extraordinary in physical forms of ‘life’ and ‘nature’ and of their indivisibility:

‘Copying the Ideal is not abandoning nature, on the contrary, it penetrates to the
soul…All art is idealistic (and)… also symbolic. We want to see a novelty in a necessity,
a particular in a universal, an instance in an unconsciously guiding law… Here, as
elsewhere, one goes back to origins in an abstract or concrete form to see the same
truth shining forth’. (1)

Themanlys’ views on the integral quality of ‘ideal’ or ‘spiritual’ and ‘natural’ expressed in art
were at once new and exciting – they opened possibilities for a spiritual depth of field in the
physical world of form and appealed to him as an artist. In fact, Themanlys was not alone in his
views – the Paris of his time was burgeoning with new art salons and bohemian circles where
interest in spirituality and the arts melded and merged to break with old forms and schools.
‘Salon des Independants’ and ‘Salon d’ Automne’, ‘La Palette’, were only a few of hundreds
where artists and writers gathered to share exploratory trends and ideas.

Among his friends were Matteo Alfassa (1876-1942) and Mirra Alfassa ‘the ‘Mother’ (1878-
1973), from a family of wealthy bankers, who explored the mileux of arts and esoteric
spiritual circles that vitalized Paris at this time. Mirra and her partner, Henri Morisset (1870-
1956), were also artists interested in bringing new life and spirit to the forms they had
learned at the ‘Beaux-Arts des Paris’. Neither the religious institutions of the time nor the arts
seemed truly alive or particularly meaningful – they lacked a unity of the physical and natural
world and the spiritual and seemed able to focus only on one or the other. Above all, there
seemed very limited scope for freedom of individual aspirations beyond the everyday
thereby closing off any quest for an incarnate spirituality of being.

In 1904, Louis Themanlys came upon a copy of ‘Cosmique Revue’ in a bookshop near Librairie
 Chacornac, Quai St. Michel, in the Quartier Latin and on reading its contents, he found these
resonated strongly with his personal views on the unity of art, idealism, and life in nature. It
appeared that the mysterious author of ‘Cosmique Revue’ articles, Max Theon (1850-1927),
was somehow anchored in spiritual and occult traditions from far earlier times and spoke of a
‘Cosmic Tradition’ going back to Chaldonian and Egyptian times in the East and in India.
Theon claimed that his writings were attempts to restore a forgotten knowledge system that
was pertinent to modern times and to bring new life.

COSMIQUE REVUE AND THEMES :

Themanlys began to follow the publications, writing to Max Theon (1848-1927), leader of
Cosmique Revue, in Tlemescen, Algeria where he lived with Madam Theon (1839-1908) or
Alma and Una. Soon, he was holding discussions in his home in Passe, Paris, on articles in
Cosmique Revue with his fellow artists and musicians. The informal forums ranged from
explorations of individual freedom in the pursuit of self-transformation and evolution, new
ways of looking at traditional ideas of ‘God’ as ‘Creator’ and a conceivable integrality of the
physical world and spirit.

According to Theon’s early articles in the ‘Cosmique Revue’, if one revisioned ideas of ‘Unity’
or ‘Oneness’ across ancient cultures in Chaldea, India, Egypt, China, the ‘divine’ was then
once somehow experienced in occult ways – accessible through initiatory practices and also
recognized as innate in each individual and profoundly subjective rather than an external
‘Object’ of contemplation. Individuals as initiates were once free to aspire towards their
infinite perfectibility in an open-ended cosmos, comprised of spheres or gradations of being
to be experienced on subtle levels rather than remain prisoners of learned habits or of
societal constrictions. The power of such transformation in aspirants in their journeys to
hidden realities lay within each person to claim fully for themselves and limited here only by
degrees of will or personal desires for change. (2)

For Theon, the goal of earlier initiation cults in ancient times had been based on:

"the supremacy and infinity of a causeless Cause and the restitution of the earth to humanity,
whose inheritance and home it is, by divine order. (3)
 And further:

All gradations of humanity can find happiness and well-being only in

what contributes to their natural satisfaction, or, in other words, in
what responds to their own state of evolution. This is natural law.
… the essential thing is to educate the various gradations of
humanity according to the power of reception and response of each
gradation, so that it is capable of ascending the ladder of collective
humanity. (4)

Furthermore, he claimed that the movement associated with Cosmique Revue would :

demonstrate to the ‘‘psycho-intellectual’’ human being the true object and aim of life
and the extent to which human capacities can be developed, to show that human
beings are of divine origin and that their mission is to manifest the divinity inherent in
them, to raise and spiritualize collective and undeveloped humanity, to restore the
primordial lost tradition, to unite science and theology, and to and to prove that
through evolution, human beings can regain their state of complete immortality.(5)

These were far-reaching claims but expressed with an uncanny confidence. Max Theon and his
partner, Alma Theon, claimed to express such ideas not from any abstract ideology but from occult
initiatic practices and experiences based on living spiritual traditions from far earlier times. They also
claimed to be restoring for the modern world this ancient set of knowledge-systems which had always
existed and only needed to be rediscovered (6).

Above all, they upheld the possibility for each individual here in modern times to develop in all their
faculties according to their inclination and capacity. One had only to have intelligence and ‘pathotic’
sensitivity – a sense of love, empathy and ‘flexibility’ – hence the appeal to ‘Psycho Intellectual’
beings, that is, those gifted with impulses such as these.

In an early issue of Cosmique Revue, he noted:

 Life in all manifestations is not as it is, but as we make it. It is
by intelligence alone that we constitute society with its morals and
its vices…. Natural law is the only one to which humanity is subject,
whether willingly or against its will. We know that Life, in all its degrees and densities
which are infinite, seeks to manifest itself. (3)

And further:

It's human nature to look for what you don't have. For many,
This means a God without form or passion; for others, it is an absolute ideal; for us,
it is "What can be". For this "might be," we look to humanity,
the tabernacle in which the Divinity manifests. It is through
man and man alone that the ‘One’ beyond form can take form. (4)

Mother’s Early Involvement with ‘Cosmique Revue’:

Ideas like these - a potentiality in all individuals to manifest and to incarnate an invisible divine
within themselves in concrete and embodied form - were compelling for many in the circles of Paris
and especially to Mirra Alfassa (1878-1972), the ‘Mother’, who was often at meetings where these
themes were discussed and exchanged. She had graduated in art from ‘Academie Julian’ and had a
studio that she shared with Henri Morisset (1870-1956), her painter husband. Morisset joined her at
the gatherings at Passe. She recalled years later with Sat Prem and Sujata Nahar that she felt drawn to
teachings of Cosmique Revue almost instantly:

‘My body has never asked for fun or well-being or anything else. 'That's life,' it said, 'and you just
have to take it as it is, that's all.' So that's why when I first met someone who told me it could be
otherwise — I was already past twenty —I said, 'Oh, really? Is that so?'" Mother laughed. "And
then when he (Louis Themanlys) told me all about Théon's teachings and the 'Cosmic Life' and
about the inner God and a new world that would be a world of beauty and, at least, of peace and
light . . . well, I rushed into it headlong." After a moment she went on, "But even at the time I was
told: 'It depends upon YOU alone, not upon circumstances —above all, don't blame circumstances.
You must find it in yourself, the transformative element is within you. And you can do that
wherever you are, even in a cell at the bottom of a hole.' The groundwork was already done, you
see, since the body never asked for anything." ( Sujata’s Chronicles)
A few months later, she clarified further:

"You know … the 'Cosmic' had quite an interesting action in my life. I was completely against 'God.'
The European notion of God was utterly repulsive to me." She added picturesquely, "You see, the
idea of God sitting placidly in his heaven, then creating the world, and next looking pleasurably at
it, and later telling you, 'How well done it is!' 'Oh,' I said, 'I won't have that monster! And naturally,
at the same time, that prevented me from having any experience. But with the 'Cosmic Teaching'
about the inner god — Théon's key idea was this: the inner god (Mother touched her breast), the
one who is inside each of us… (Page-27)

Max Theon’s insistence on the presence of ‘Inner divinity’ in each living person and of an evolutionary
impulse or ‘force’ to manifest this in real life – here and now - proved indeed fascinating to the Mother.
She also resonated with notions of a personal and free choice to evolve rather than presence of any
external influence or force. Transformation was really about self-transformation. She further recognized
that she had what Theon called the ‘psycho intellectual’ capacities and sensitivity from her childhood years
and there were early experiences that she had set aside without having possibilities to understand them.
She saw that this was not simply a matter for intellectuals and the elite - of intellectual or analytical
prowess - but also of inherent ‘pathotic’ tendencies – that is to say, an empathy, sympathy, and love –
which animated and inclined a person from within towards evolution and change.

In the words of Theon:

Intelligence is not personal, it only fulfills a role: to manifest

anyhow, and anytime. But when this intelligence is pathotized, then it
becomes individualized and must act for the betterment of this human
form, which is humanity, or in other words, Life or God incarnate. (6)

In fact, for Theon, there was no absolute difference between ‘Life’ incarnate and the ‘Absolute’ or
‘Causeless Cause’ – the hidden divine (7). Perfect ‘unity’ lay within physical and manifest forms and the
invisible source. Precisely because such a unity was inbuilt, human perfectibility was not only possible but
unavoidable as fate. It helped when an aspiring individual was infused with will and desire for self-
transformation. He writes :

The so-called will must be equated with desire. There is no will

without desire, and when desire is sufficiently awakened, it draws
intelligence which takes the form of mentality into our density, and
from there arises what we call will. (8)
 Desire can do wonderful things, because it is only through innate
desire that we can unite in affinity with things…The waters differ from
affinity in that, while the waters find a level and a fixed limit and are
subject to fixed laws, affinity or ‘ pathotism’ knows no level,
recognizes no fixed law, because its unfathomable
source is Formless, and hence infinite. (9)

The Mother’s actual involvement with Cosmique Revue has been a matter for some discussion. She did
acknowledge to Sat Prem in conversations that she was more active in the practical arrangements of
Cosmique Revue publications between 1905 and 1907 – overseeing proofs, editing, translating, and even
working with local publishers in Paris. Madame Theon’s channeled texts – ‘Cosmique Tradition’ – required
all her skills as translator and editor (10) . However, it went far deeper than such services and led to actual
experiences on an occult and spirit level. She shared with Sat Prem and Sujata Nahar:

Théon's key idea was this: the inner god (Mother touched her breast), the one who is inside
each of us —"brrf!" She made a gesture as if walls crumbled. "The experience was stunning.
I am very grateful to him for it. That was the means; by following his instructions and seeking
within my being, behind the solar plexus, I found. I found it, I had an experience ... an absolutely
convincing experience. "I had this experience before I came here. I had the experience before
coming, before knowing Sri Aurobindo. So it was as though three-fourths of the work were done....
I didn't have the mental knowledge—my mental knowledge was nothing remarkable —
but it's not necessary to the experience. If you are sincere, you get the experience
without thinking —you DON'T need to think. But you have to be sincere." (11)

The ‘Cosmic Tradition’ and Mother:

The ‘Cosmique Tradition’ (1904-1906) was a particularly complex set of texts outlining a series of
emanations and spheres that emerged from a ‘Causeless Cause’ and led to increasingly dense forms on the
material levels of existence as created planes. These texts were said to have been envisioned in trance by
Madame Theon as a process of graded manifestation downward towards the world of forms. Theon
claimed that spiritual initiates could in fact plunge into this dynamic process of cosmic emanation through
a concentrated impulse and move into more subtle planes of existence.

The Mother describes her own experience in this regard as follows:

 "The divisions and subdivisions of the being were described down to the minutest detail and with
such perfect precision! I know, because I did the experience again, I did it on my own, without any
preconceived ideas, the very same: going out of one body after the other, one body after the other,
and so on twelve times, and my experience — apart from certain quite negligible differences,
doubtless due to differences in the receiving brain —was exactly the same."(12)

The Mother’s spiritual breakthrough was the first of many that would follow in time. In 1905, she met
Max Theon and his wife Alma in Paris for the first time. In July 1906, she travelled to Tlemescen with Henri
Morisset to visit Max Theon and Alma. During this visit, the Mother apprenticed with both Max Theon and
with Alma on developing her psychic abilities and leaving her physical body to explore other realms and
dimensions. She noticed that Alma seemed especially open to psychic realms and possessed abilities like’
telekenesis’ in the most natural way. Life in their home was filled with the extraordinary in the everyday.
According to ‘Sujata’s Chronicles’, she is said to have told Max Theon on arrival: ‘My psychic being governs
me. I am afraid of nothing”. 13.

In fact, she learned that she herself was capable of manifesting her mind in the material realm and psychic
powers came to her in time:

It (‘Cosmic Tradition) was the account of Madame Théon's experiences in exteriorization.

She had learned to do what Theon taught me also —to speak while you are in the seventh
heaven: the body goes on speaking, rather slowly, in a low voice, but it works quite well.
She would speak and a friend of hers, another English woman who was their secretary
—I think she knew shorthand —would note it all down as she went along… (13)

The ‘Cosmic Tradition’ describes a complex process of emanation from a ‘Causeless Cause’ which leads to
ever denser and material realms through a series of projections while revealing the inner ‘light’ enshrined
in these. This ‘light’ is from the origin of life itself and it works to liberate and enlighten from within, as it
were. The process of ascent and descent through emanations is possible in the physical body if one were
trained in astral travel.

The Mother described astral projection through levels of being in these terms to Sat Prem and Sujata:
 Madame Theon had this experience, and it is she who, not actually taught me, but gave me the
indication of how it was to be done. She would go out of her body and become conscious in the
vital world — there were many intermediary states too, if one cared to explore them. After the
vital came the mental ; you consciously went out of the vital body, left it behind —you could see it
—and entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into . . . And in like
manner she successively left twelve different bodies, one after the other. She would leave one
body and enter the consciousness of the new plane she was in —she was extremely 'formed,' you
see, individualized and organized, I mean — then fully experience the surroundings and all that
was there, and describe it. And so on twelve times." 14

‘Corps Glorieux’ – ‘Body of Light’ :

In discussions with Madame Theon and Max Theon, Mother learned some occult mysteries of the future
form of the human physical body – the present was by no means considered the final end of evolutionary
process. Very akin to Vedic texts that speak of luminous and divinized forms, Theon believed in a ‘world of
Truth which must incarnate on this earth and create a new world’. (15) She shared with Sat Prem and
Sujata:

They even picked up the old phrase from the Gospels, 'New heavens and a new earth.' "Because
Theon also knew about it. He knew and called it 'the new world,' I think, or 'the new creation upon
the earth and the glorified body.' But anyway, he knew the Supramental existence —he had had
the revelation of it and that's what he announced. He also said that it would be reached THROUGH
the discovery of the inner Divine ; and that that would lead to the 'thing.' For him, as I told you the
other day, the 'thing' had a greater density —it seems to be a correct experience. Well, for my part,
I made investigations and saw the earth's history in innumerable visions about which I spoke a lot
with Sri Aurobindo. (16)

She then elaborated further:

This question about the nature of the Supramental body was answered by Theon. He was in France
at that time and he said the Supramental body would be a 'body of light — corps glorieux.'(17)

The inner light of spirit would exteriorize and become incarnated as a ‘light being’ replacing the human
physical form of death.
Mother’s Understanding Reaches Beyond Max Theon:

In July 1907, Mother returned to Tlemscen to continue her psychic work with the Theons. She came alone
without Henri Morisset . This time she was determined to reach further into the ascent and descent of
spheres described in the ‘Cosmique Tradition’ texts. The events that unfolded that summer would bring
her apprenticeship to an end and she would return no more.

She acknowledged to Sat Prem that with each astral projection into other realms, she realized how
dangerous and risky it was. The ‘silver cord’ of life that hung between a physical body left behind in a
cataleptic state could by no means be severed or there would be no return back. She said:

(It was) a perilous work, moreover. It was the body's lifeenergy that went out —everything,
everything went out, just as when you die. Besides, that's how I came to experience death. (18)

During one session, the Mother had ascended from plane to plane of existence and she reached a place
where she could see a mandala with an inscription on it – a ‘mantra’. This was in fact a ‘mantra of life’:

Theon made me find the Mantra of Life, the mantra that gives life. And he wanted me to give it to
him, he wanted to possess it — the thing was formidable! It was preserved in a place." Not
physical, of course. "It was the mantra that gives life —it can make anyone return to life, but that's
only a small part of its power. This mantra was shut away, sealed, with my name on it in Sanskrit. I
didn't know Sanskrit at that time, but he did. When he led me to that place, I told him, 'There is a
sort of design, it must be Sanskrit.' I could recognize the characters as Sanskrit. So he told me to
reproduce what I was seeing. I reproduced it. And it was my name, Mirra, written in Sanskrit. It
was meant for me, and none but I could open it. He told me — we were doing this when I was in a
catalyptic state — 'Open it and tell me what is there.' Then something in me KNEW at once, and I
said, 'No.' And I didn't read it." (19)

There came an altercation of power between the Mother and Max Theon and he cut her silver cord of life
suspending her into death. She was able to convince him to reconnect the cord and returned back to her
physical body but with great difficulty. This event revealed to her that she had her own destiny beyond the
movement of ‘Cosmique Revue’ – much as she admired it and the Theons. Later, when she met Sri
Aurobindo in person in Pondicherry in 1912, she realized that her path lay surely with him.
There were many positive lessons she had learned in the Cosmique movement and these would endure to
the end of her days. However, they had to be placed in new light of the yoga that came to be formulated in
years to come in partnership with Sri Aurobindo.

MAX THEON’S BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH (1850-1927:

The man who came to found the movement known as ‘Cosmique Revue’ remains still shrouded in
mystery almost a century after his death. It seems he and Madame Theon shunned public light while
they were alive and kept their identities secret. They had different aliases – Max Theon, for instance,
was an assumed name. He was also known as ‘Aia Aziz’ (the Beloved).

He was almost certainly born in Warsaw Poland as Eliezer Mordechai Bimstein. His father was a
Jewish Rabbi and well versed in the Kabbala, or the mystic path of Judaism. He had Austrian
citizenship but moved to London in 1872. Almost immediately he became involved in occult circles
and explored the ‘Hermetic Tradition’ of earlier times that came from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and India in
the form of science of ‘alchemy’ during the early Renaissance in Europe.

In 1884, he became the ‘Grand Master’ of the exterior circle of the ‘Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor’
which was powerful in England in the last decades of the nineteenth century. His colleagues at this
time were Peter Davidson (1837-1915) and John Walsh – both from Scotland. Together with Theon,
this brotherhood developed a secret society based on hermetic doctrines of life eternal, self-
transformation as alchemy, and the infinite perfectibility of human beings.

The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor claimed to be guardians of the innermost secrets of Freemasonry
that had been lost to the orthodox and conventional schools of Masonic knowledge. They aspired to
advance the spiritual development of humanity and to cultivate occult powers of its members through
a system of graded initiations. (20. Godwin, Chaney and Deveney 1995)

In London, Max Theon met his future wife, Mary Ware (1839-1908) at a cultural event and the two
recognized a common passion for spirituality. They were married soon after in 1885 and moved to
France finally settling in Tlemscen in Algeria in 1887. Here, they began a rich association as founders of
the ‘Cosmique Revue’ – a publication through which they shared ideas of ancient wisdom traditions
that were vital to modern times and to – they felt – the future of humanity.
In Tlemscen, Madame Theon channeled a rich body of writings in states of trance. They found
audience with many across Europe – but especially in Paris. In January 1901, Max Theon released the
‘Cosmique Revue’ which claimed that it was a ‘restitution of the original tradition’ and published by a
‘group of unknown and sincere students”. On the frontispiece of the first issue was a mandala of a
lotus contained within a six-pointed hexagram which became an emblem of the movement. The
Mother, many years later adapted this symbol in the ashrama in Pondicherry. Theon did claim that
the lotus symbol was taken from ancient Indian texts and the surrounding yantra was of universal
quality.

The first editor of ‘Cosmique Revue’ publications was Francois Charles Barlet (1838-1921) but he later
resigned from this job and Max Theon took over under the pseudonym ‘Aia Aziz’. In 1904, Louis
Themanlys became involved with ‘Cosmique Revue’ and by 1906 had assumed editorship. He would
remain with Max Theon and ‘Cosmique Revue’ after Madame Theon’s death in Jersey in 1908.

Following Madame Theon’s death in 1908, Max Theon became increasingly reclusive and resigned
from ‘Cosmique Revue’ – effectively ending its life. He died heartbroken, it seems, from grief of his
wife’s demise in 1927.