Lumiere, La.
Revelation [et Experiimentations] du Nouveau Spiritualisme, Organe des Spiritualistes Independants / Revelations du Nouveau Spiritualisme, Organe des Spiritualistes Independants,Revue Mensuelle du Nouveau Spiritualisme et des Science qui s'y Rattachent
Sciences, Arts, Litterature, Morale
1882--1909
Monthly, semimonthly
Paris-Auteuil, France.
Language: French.
Editor: Mme Lucie Grange (with her guides Melchissedec, Jeanne d'Arc, and Salem-Hermes).
Corporate author: Organe des spiritualistes independants
N. 1, March 15, 1882-n. 334 January, 1909.
5-7 francs a year (and then free of charge in 1889), 16 pp.

Lucie Grange (born Lucie-Ann Poujoulas, 1838-1909) was a universal reformer, visionary, spiritualist medium, psychic, prophet, poet, scryer, and a disciple of the strange prophet Pierre-Michel-Elie Vintras (1807-1875), about whom she wrote Le Prophete de Tilly (1897) under the pseudonym "Hab" which graced the cover of the journal. Grange had strong millennarian elements and claimed that she had been initiated and designated "The Light" or "Hab" / Habimelah" by her spirit guide Salem-Hermes to announce the coming of the androgynous New Eve who would return mankind to its primordial state. The goal was the "true soul-religion: It is the fusion of the hearts of humanity into the heart of God by Universal Spiritual Unity. From one end of the world to the other, across immeasurable space, in the bosom of prolific nature, souls, bathed in the Divine Magnetism, will vibrate with other souls, so all will be strengthened and made happy. . . . Hail! all hail! to the Empire of the Invisible, whose reign has now begun!" The journal rested on the proposition of the "Universal Communion of Souls in Divine Love" (illustrated by the symbol on the cover of a burning heart surmounted by the sun). It proposed "to attain the elevated spiritual goal of the Communion of souls in divine love to reach the harmony of hearts, convinced that the destinies of humanity were not limited to the material world." Grange's enthusiastic beliefs led to strong views about her and the journal: "On the subject of Mme Lucie Grange opinions are very divided among occultists. Many regarded her as hallucinating while others affirmed that she was really obtaining visible results and that she was not crazy." Papus, in his "Presses neo-spiritualistes," 1896, rather sharply said that "extravagance would perhaps be banished from the spiritualist milieu if La Lumiere did not exist. But it does." The vagaries he described were the journal's claim to be edited by Melchissedec, Joan of Arc and "Salem-Hermes," Lucie's guides. Grange stood apart in the morass of French spiritism in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the journal is a breath of fresh air in the morass of orthodox spiritist productions.

From her youth, Grange had been a visionary, conversing while awake or in trance, with "Salem" (later Hermes) and Jeanne d'Arc, and in 1875 had become convinced of the wonders of spiritualism. She had participated in the typical variety of literary, socialist and reform movements of the time, contributing under a numerous pseudonyms to a variety of minor literary, hygienic, musical and reform journals. Her husband, Adolphe (1833-April 1886) was an archeologist, antiquarian and former librarian in Dijon and then a printer, who was an ardent Freemason and socialist and who had been active in the army of the Commune. On her biography see her "Souvenirs et Impressions d'un Mediums" that ran in the journal 1883-1883; Mme Innes, "Lucie Grange," Banner of Light 98/21 (January 13, 1906): 5; and Nicole Edelman, "Lucie Grange: Prophete ou messie?" Hermetica, n. 20, 2006, 60-72.

Grange expressed great respect for Allan Kardec and saw him as a prophet in the line of Moses and Jesus and firmly believed in reincarnation, but saw her journal as something new, a new step in the spiritualization of the world. Its scope was to be "from primordial occultism to Hermeticism, from Rose-Croix to the Kabbale, from alchemy to astrology. A unique doctrine has been transmitted, that of invisible intelligences acting variously on man and all created things. The doctrine of spiritualism, as you shall see, is certainly nothing new." The journal labeled itself as expositor of a "Revelation du Nouveau Spiritualisme" or of "Spiritualisme Moderne" -- for which terms the orthodox Kardecists reproached her as a defector -- but Grange refused to place her journal within the confines of "spiritism." "While we are united in heart and mind with the disciples of Allan Kardec, we are nonetheless independent. We are subservient to no person; we are not slaves of any coterie; and we dedicate ourselves to strive to defy all prejudices and to consider all things as a whole, leaving aside petty peculiarities. Lumiere would be unworthy of its title if it were not above controversies and envy. The truth which we seek is in the light, and the light embrace everything and is one of the conditions for progress, which is not thwarted." Despite this avowed aversion to controversy and her all-embracing universalism, however, Grange was not slow to take up the cudgels to wage war when it suited her principles: Her guides Michel and Jeanne d'Arc viciously attacked the black magicians of France in the in the 1890s ("Guerre a la magie noire!" November 1892) and the year before the journal had derided Abbe Boullan (to whom, however, she gave space in the journal to respond). She scoffed at Papus's snide attacks on her sanity, attacked the healer Zouave Jacob, accused Abbe Roca and Marie Sinclair, Duchess of Pomar of appropriating her revelations in their journal L'Etoile, and excoriated the Belgian Theosophist and occultist Jean Delville of "plagiarism" when he had the effrontery in 1899 to call his new journal by the same name as hers.

She and her husband, Adolphe (1833-1886), started the journal in 1882 with few illusions. They had been warned: "You are embracing poverty. You will have to work hard and be repaid with abuse. 'Go for the money first.'" They did not heed that advice: "La Lumiere is not a business or a speculation. It has been created by the spirits who have conferred its direction on a woman of good will. The legion of spirits which protects this publication pursue a philanthropic goal of establishing a New Revelation. A permanent subscription has been started to aid the propaganda of the journal . . . and with the aid of God a great Alliance for human happiness will be the result of the united efforts of all the allies of [the journal]." The journal was successful enough to survive until 1909 and to do away with a subscription price in 1889, depending instead on financial contributions. It was run on a shoestring, without the panoply of secretaries, editors and managers of most similar journals of the time, and its list of contributors was bulked out by pseudonyms: Lucie writing as "Hab" and "Victor Flamen" and Adolphe as "Jean Darcy," "Matharel," and others. The spirit of Adolphe continued to contribute to the journal after his death in 1886. Besides the revelations of Grange's guides, the journal published several novelettes and a play, articles on superstitions and the importance of experimental science in combating them, levitation, astrology, displacement of the axis mundi, "communications by astral force," the Reign of Women, "Zancig et la transmission de la Pensee," the Davenport Brothers, Jesse Shepard, catalepsy, Helene Smith's paintings, lengthy revelations from Hermes, as well as excellent review of books and articles from around the spiritualist world. It carried contributions by Rene Callie, who played a prominent role in the journal in its first years before going on to edit L'Anti-Materialiste and L'Etoile, August Vande Kerkhove (later known as "S.U. Zanne," 1838-1923), P. Christian (fils), Jules Bois, et al. BNF.