Napoleon’s Sorcerers

"This is a quirky book. I was surprised at how much material Spieth had managed to dig up about a very obscure subject, a secret society called The Sacred Order of Sophisians, which had connections to Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign as well as the world of the boulevard theatres. During Napoleon’s rule, Freemasonic circles in France invented rituals that allegedly first took place in the temple structures of ancient Egypt. So what Spieth is doing in his book is looking at the cultural environment and intellectual background of one such pseudo-Egyptian secret society. The Sophisians were founded by a playwright, Cuvelier de Trie, but for a number of years the society’s membership was dominated by veterans of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. And in a time where censorship was still going strong it became a safe place for them to talk about what had happened in Egypt, and what was happening, during and after Napoleon’s rise to power, which seemed to betray Republican ideals. This study is based on previously unpublished archival materials relating to the Sophisians, including the group’s so-called Golden Book at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. A richly illuminated manuscript envisioned by Marie-Nicolas Ponce-Camus, a student of Jacques-Louis David, the Golden Book features underground mazes, cave settings, pyramids and temple structures as theatrical settings."