Abellio raymond

1953 · 86611 — France: Cercle D'Etude Metaphysiques 1953-1955. Archival Materials. A collection of privately printed/reproduced booklets and newsletters issued by the Cercle D'Etudes Metaphysiques between 1954-1955. 27 pieces in total. All components typewritten and mimeo'd on multicolored paper. Some light wear and toning in places to the staple bound pieces all very good or better.<br /> <br /> Comprising:<br /> <br /> 1. Dialectique De L'Initiation: Premiere Partie Fasicules I-VI; Deuxieme Partie Fasicules I-IV; Troisième Partie Fasicules I-III.<br /> 2. Circulaire Janvier 1955 single orange mimeo'd paper sheet printed recto only<br /> 3. Lettre Circulaire No. I-IV staple-bound reproduced on irregularly sized and colored paper sheets. 9pp. <br /> 4. Travaux des Membres; La Constitution de L'Objective Selon La Critique de Kant et Selon La Phenomenologie de Husserl.par Jean Largeault. 16pp. staple-bound. Dated 15 Mars 1955.<br /> 5. Cercle D'Etudes Metaphysiques "Journal Interieur" Nos. 1-8 with the final issue dated Juin-Septembre 1955 being a double issue. <br /> <br /> The very privately printed and distributed output of the short-lived and incendiary "Cercle D'Etudes Metaphysiques" formed in 1953 by the self-styled visionary Raymond Abiello actually a pseudonym of the eclectic and confounding Georges Soulès.<br /> <br /> Soulès was born in Toulouse in 1907 studied at the local Polytechnique and in his early 20's discovered and joined the post-1929 crash youth movement known as "X-Crise" a technocratically inclined group who believed that classical liberalism had failed as a means of socio-economic control and should be replaced with strict economic planning. Members included Soulès Louis Vallon Jules Moch and Alfred Sauvy.<br /> <br /> Their theories and reconstructivist drive have been directly linked to the creation of the collaborationist Vichy government in France during WW2. Sauvy in particular rose to post-war prominence as the Head of the Institute for Demographic Studies the INED and is remembered as the man who coined and popularized the term "Third World" in application to developing non-white nations. Abellio/Soules was among the numerous Vichy/Nazi sympathizers who went into exile in Switzerland to avoid imprisonment.<br /> <br /> Inspired by Gurdjieff the I-Ching Gnostic Mysticism Qabbalism Jungian theory Biblical Gematria early Surrealists and all points in between Abiello formed the Cercle D'Etudes Metaphysiques in 1953 with fellow travellers Jean Largeault and Bernard Noel both of whom feature heavily in the "Journal Interieur" contributing articles and manifestos on diverse subjects such as "Kafka and the Terrible Father" and "The Problem of Homosexuality" in tandem with the openly gay Raymond De Becker's "L'Homosexuel et la Magna Mater". <br /> <br /> Other contributors or collaborators included Jean Cocteau; Irene Tateossian; Raymond De Becker the Belgian journalist and writer who espoused the idea of "Intellectual Collaboration" during the war and edited the Nazi sanctioned newspaper "Le Soir"; Henry Lhong a rather incendiary figure in the Toulouse art scene of the 1950's who founded the aggressively disruptive L'Atelier Gallery and created the "Art Presente" shows in direct conflict with Toulouse's more traditionalist "Art Occitans" and "Artistes Méridionaux" events; Olivier de Carfort who made contributions to the avant-garde journal "Bizarre" alongside Jean Paulhan Eugene Ionesco Rene Magritte and others<br /> <br /> Abellio's C.E.M. seems to have been the industrious loom for a number of interconnecting threads; avant-garde artistic sensibilities crypto-fascist societal reform homosexuality and esoteric and occult researches for the furtherance not necessarily of mankind in general but certainly for those who were found strong and intellectual enough to handle the rigours of enlightenment. Jungian Psychoanalysis is woven in alongside Huserlian philosophy the symbolic incomprehensibility of surrealism knotted in with the arcane complexities of Eastern transcendentalism all laid across a ground preoccupied with one shared belief among all the other whirling beliefs; that art and intellectual thought if not western society in general was in the midst of what Cercle member Henri Lhong described as "La crise metaphysique du siecle" the idea that 20th century humanity had lost its way and must seek deep in the metaphysical and esoteric realm to find it again.<br /> <br /> A dense and as far as can be ascertained substantially complete collection of the main elements of the Cercle's internal publications; necessarily only printed for a small number of members and comprising a combination of newsletter manifesto and conceptual primer of their inner workings. No trace can be found in commerce a couple of references in the art world where the C.E.M. intersected with the mainstream avant-garde and no holdings in institutional libraries except for one 1954 issue of the Journal in the National Library of France. Cercle D'Etude Metaphysiques unknown