Albert de Pouvourville’s Occultisme Colonial

Abstract

Albert de Pouvourville (1862–1939), better known by his nom de plume Matgioi, was one of the most noticeable characters of the nineteenth-century French occult milieu. In addition to his prominence in fin-de-siècle occult Paris, de Pouvourville also served as a soldier in Indochina, and after the end of his military career he continued to play an important role in French colonialism. This article aims to describe both de Pouvourville’s occultist and colonialist production and argues that they should be understood as two parts of a coherent intellectual trajectory, characterized by two fundamental elements of de Pouvourville’s worldview: “elitism” and “colonial Darwinism.” From gender and race to initiation and opium consumption, de Pouvourville’s “discourse on the Far East” is a form of “colonial occultism”: a peculiar mix of imperialist hegemonic aspirations and spiritual thirst for “the wisdom of the East.”