Not all the protagonists of the history of esotericism were magicians, mystics or founders of orders. Some exerted their influence above all through literature, creating images and words that others then took literally. Edward Bulwer-Lytton is the most emblematic case: a hugely successful novelist and Victorian politician whose "occult" novels gave modern esotericism expressions such as the Dweller on the Threshold and vril.
A successful writer
Edward George Earle Bulwer was born in London in 1803 into a landed family; he later added his mother's surname, Lytton. He studied at Cambridge and began writing early. The novel Pelham (1828) made him famous, and in the following years he published a long series of works that made him one of the most widely read authors of his day.
Some of his phrases have entered common English usage. Paul Clifford (1830) opens with the words "It was a dark and stormy night", which became proverbial as an example of an overwrought opening; the play Richelieu (1839) contains the line "the pen is mightier than the sword". His best-known historical novel is The Last Days of Pompeii (1834).
He was also a politician: a Member of Parliament for many years, he was Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1858-1859 and in 1866 was created Baron Lytton. His private life was marked by an unhappy marriage and a bitterly contested separation.
Zanoni, the Rosicrucian novel
In 1842 Bulwer-Lytton published Zanoni, the novel that tied him for ever to the history of esotericism. The story is set between Naples and Paris during the Terror, at the end of the eighteenth century. Its protagonists are two adepts of a most ancient brotherhood, of Chaldean origin, who have attained an extremely long life:
- Mejnour, the detached sage, who has renounced every passion for pure knowledge;
- Zanoni, who instead falls in love with a young singer, Viola, and for love's sake accepts the loss of his powers and his immortality.
Beside them is Glyndon, a young Englishman who longs to be initiated but lacks the necessary purity. When, disobeying his instructions, he tries to force the adept's secrets, he meets a terrifying presence: the Dweller on the Threshold, the being that bars the way to anyone who tries to cross the boundaries of the invisible world without being ready.
The novel is a reflection on the price of knowledge and on the relationship between wisdom and love. The image of the Dweller was taken up by later occultism, from Theosophy to Rudolf Steiner, who made it a concept of his own doctrine of initiation.
The other occult works
Bulwer-Lytton returned to these themes several times:
| Work | Year | Content |
|---|---|---|
| The Haunted and the Haunters | 1859 | A tale of a haunted house in which the terror is produced by the will of an ancient magician |
| A Strange Story | 1862 | A novel on the conflict between a materialist doctor and a mysterious man seeking the elixir of life |
| The Coming Race | 1871 | A utopian novel about an underground civilisation |
In The Coming Race an American engineer discovers a people living in the depths of the Earth, the Vril-ya, who have achieved a peaceful society thanks to vril, a universal energy able to heal, destroy and move things. The book is a satire on the evolutionary theories and social utopias of the time rather than an esoteric manifesto.
Bulwer-Lytton and the occultists
Bulwer-Lytton had a sincere interest in mesmerism, spiritualism, astrology and magic, and knew several occultists of the period. During his stay in London in 1854 Éliphas Lévi moved in his circle. The Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia named him as its patron, without any evidence of his real participation in the society's activities. There is no proof that he ever belonged to an initiatory brotherhood.
The vril myth
Bulwer-Lytton's most curious legacy concerns vril. By the end of the nineteenth century the word was so popular that it gave its name to a British meat extract, Bovril. In the twentieth century, by contrast, the myth arose of a supposed German "Vril Society", secret and linked to Nazi occultism. Historians have shown that this society, in the form recounted by many sensationalist books from the 1960s onwards, is largely an invention. It is an instructive example of how a literary fiction can turn into a legend presented as history.
In short
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) was a hugely successful novelist and a Victorian politician.
- In Zanoni (1842) he created the figure of the Dweller on the Threshold, taken up by later occultism.
- The Coming Race (1871) introduced vril, the imaginary energy of an underground civilisation.
- The supposed twentieth-century "Vril Society" is largely a modern legend.
