Robert Amadou
Robert Amadou (16 February 1924 – 14 March 2006) was a French writer who played an important role in the diffusion of parapsychology in France and especially in the study of esotericism (Freemasonry, Martinism, Sufism, etc).
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Biography
Robert Amadou was born in Bois-Colombes. As a teenager, he was fascinated by astrology, while following the teaching of the Jesuits. He frequented Paul Le Cour (the founder of the magazine Atlantis), Robert Ambelain (self-taught, scholar, specialist in occultism, arch-practitioner expert according to Amadou himself, who recognized him as his only "Master"), René Alleau and Eugène Canseliet (specialists in alchemy).
Father of three children, married several times, he was the first husband of the writer Françoise Mallet-Joris with whom he had a child, Daniel. In 1957, he married the Norwegian Anne-Lise Nilsen (divorced 1964), later an important professor of French at the University of Oslo, where their daughter Christine Amadou is a professor of the history of ideas, and in 1968 he married Katharine Christiansen for the fifth time.
He was buried in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery on March 22, 2006, after the liturgy of the deceased which was celebrated in the Syriac Orthodox church of Antioch Sainte Marie Mère de Dieu of Montfermeil.
He was invited to the International Metapsychic Institute in 1951 to give a conference on the theme "Occultism and Metapsychology". From that year on, he actively collaborated in the activities of the IMI, in particular in the Revue Métapsychique, of which he became the editor-in-chief. But differences of opinion soon pushed him to leave the Institute.
In 1954, he published with Denoël his book La parapsychologie, a thick volume (370 pages) which outlines the history of research in parapsychology in North America and presents to the French public, among other recent works, the research of Joseph Rhine's Laboratory of Parapsychology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Amadou then defined parapsychology "in the strict sense" and "in the broad sense":
"In the broadest sense, parapsychology is the discipline that strives to explain phenomena that are apparently aberrant in relation to science, either by fraud, illusion, or by the exercise of a "classical" or new psychological function. Strictly speaking, parapsychology is the highlighting and experimental study of psychic functions not yet incorporated into the system of scientific psychology, with a view to their incorporation into this system, which is then enlarged and completed".[1]
Robert Amadou was — in chronological order — a member of the Syriac Catholic Church (after 1937), Superior Unknown-Initiator and member of the Supreme Council of the Martinist Order, with the name of "Ignifer" (September 1942), a Freemason of the Rite of Memphis-Misraim (June 1943, by Robert Ambelain), initiated into the Kabbalistic Order of the Rosicrucian (1944, by Robert Ambelain), Élu Cohen among the Martinezists, bishop according to the tradition of the Universal Gnostic Church of Jules Doinel (1944, by Henri Meslin), bishop of the Catholic Gnostic Church of Jean Bricaud (January 28, 1945, by Victor Blanchard), priest of the Syriac Orthodox Church (January 1945), member of a Sufi brotherhood, Scottish Master at the French National Grand Lodge Opera (March 1966), Grand Professed in 1969,[2] rectified and affiliated in 1980 to the lodge In Labore Virtus in Zurich (Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina), received Master of Saint Andrew in the Rectified Scottish Rite in 1980, then Knight Benefactor of the Holy City with the name of "Eques ab Aegypto" in 1982 (Independent Grand Priory of Helvetia).[3]
He was also a member of the Thebes Group, along with Rémi Boyer, Triantaphyllos Kotzamanis, Gérard Kloppel, Jean-Pierre Giudicelli de Cressac Bachelerie, Massimo Introvigne, Christian Bouchet, Paolo Fogagnolo, Jean-Marie d'Ansembourg and others.
From the early 1960s, Robert Amadou abandoned the field of parapsychology to devote himself to more spiritual interests. He became interested in Sufism and published works on various aspects of esotericism.
His ambivalence between, on the one hand, the defense of a demanding and properly scientific parapsychology and, on the other hand, his spiritual path (he was said to be a "martinist", he was also a doctor of theology), was reproached to him by some authors, in particular by Robert Imbert-Nergal in his book Les sciences occultes ne sont pas des sciences (1959).
Robert Amadou died in Paris.
Works
- Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin et le martinisme. Introduction à l'étude de la vie, de l'Ordre et de la doctrine du Philosophe Inconnu (1946)
- L'Occultisme, esquisse d’un monde vivant (1950)
- Anthologie littéraire de l'occultisme (1950; with Robert Kanters)
- Éloge de la lâcheté (1951)
- Raymond Lulle et l’alchimie (1953)
- La Poudre de sympathie, un chapitre de la médecine magnétique (1953)
- "La science et le paranormal - 1er colloque international de parapsychologie", Revue Métapsychique (1954)
- La parapsychologie (1954)
- La Parapsychologie et le colloque de Royaumont (1956)
- Les Grands Médiums (1957)
- La Télépahie (1958)
- C.A.E. Moberly & E.F. Jourdain, Les Fantômes du Trianon (1959; introduction)
- Trésor martiniste (1969)
- Franz Anton Mesmer, Le Magnétisme animal (1971; editor)
- Le Feu du Soleil, Entretien sur l'Alchimie avec Eugène Canseliet (1978)
- Occident, Orient, parcours d’une tradition (1987)
- Illuminisme et contre-illuminisme au XVIIIe siècle (1989)
- Le soufisme même (1991)
