Luz Astral.
Espiritismo-Ciencia oculta-Esoterismo Electro-Homeopatia.
AOR
1895--1901? Semimonthly
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Language: Spanish.
1/1, November 1895.
$4.00 a year in Buenos Aires, $6.00 elsewhere; 12 pp. Originally published without dates or volume/issue numbers.

This was an anonymous journal, with articles appearing only over pseudonyms like Dr. Amauta, Hiram Abbi, Huilka, Ignoto, etc., but the prime mover behind the journal was Dr. Amauta, who was Henri Girgois, a Frenchman who had been in South America since the early 1870s. He was a scholar of sorts and wrote L'occulte chez les aborigènes de l'Amerique du Sud (Paris: Chamuel editeur, 1897), which tried to unravel the secret, occult beliefs and practices of native Americans. He was also an energetic member of Papus's Ordre Martiniste, in which he was a Sovereign Delegate General for South America of the Supreme Council, a doctor en Kabbale of the Universite libre des Hautes etudes, and member of the Union Idealiste Universelle. He worked to spread Martinism through the continent and there were 16 centers by the turn of the century. This journal, without explicitly acknowledging the fact, was the organ of South American Martinists and also of something called the "Illuminati-Germaniae," an unknown group whose name graced every issue, and which, presumably, is not the same as the group of that name of which, conspiratorially, the Skull and Crossbones society at Yale University is said to be the 322nd lodge.

The journal freely gave space to Kardecist spiritism, the Martinist Order, Masonry and Gnosis and to "spiritualism," the blanket term under which French occultism of the period cloaked its ativities. It carried articles on talismans, Kabbalah, practical occultism, astral vision, experiences of haunting, "Exterionization of Sensibility," magic, Leo Taxil, "Practical Occultism," "Modern Alchemists," "Occult Forces," symbolism, telepathy, "telepsiquia" and the like, some of those written by Amauta having already appeared in Papus's L'Initiation. It serialized for years "For A Neophyte" on the benefits and duties of the young Mason and Martinist. Most notably, the journal (and Amauta particularly) wrote regularly on the frauds and crimes of "El Magnetizador Santini, Conde de Das," "el falso teosofo de la India, Sarak-Pacha, de triste memoria." These in turn led to the exposure and expulsion of Sarak from Chile and Peru.

Listed in Notes and Queries, January 1900, and in Edouard Blitz's Social Science and Freemasonry, 1896, as one of the official organs of Papus's Union Idealiste Universelle. Noted in Revue Spirite, 1899 and January 1, 1904, and in Voile d’Isis 1896.

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