Guénon's source for China: Matgioi

This blog has already mentioned Davide Marino’s PhD thesis on Eugène Albert Puyou de Pouvourville (1861–1939), his understanding of Taoism, and his influence on René Guénon (see here). A new article on Pouvourville has just been published, drawing on one part of this thesis. It is “Albert de Pouvourville’s Occultisme Colonial” (see here),  and is part of a special issue of Numen on “Euro-American Esoteric Readings of East Asia” that also includes an article by Julian Strube on “Esotericism between Europe and East Asia: How the ‘Esoteric Distinction’ Became a Structure in Cross-Cultural Interpretation” and another article by Franz Winter, “Introducing “the Heavenly Empire of China” (le Céleste Empire de la Chine): China versus India in the Quest for an Ancient Model Society in Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre.” 

The abstract runs: 

Albert de Pouvourville (1862–1939), better known by his nom de plume Matgioi, was one of the most noticeable characters of the nineteenth-century French occult milieu. In addition to his prominence in fin-de-siècle occult Paris, de Pouvourville also served as a soldier in Indochina, and after the end of his military career he continued to play an important role in French colonialism. This article aims to describe both de Pouvourville’s occultist and colonialist production and argues that they should be understood as two parts of a coherent intellectual trajectory, characterized by two fundamental elements of de Pouvourville’s worldview: “elitism” and “colonial Darwinism.” From gender and race to initiation and opium consumption, de Pouvourville’s “discourse on the Far East” is a form of “colonial occultism”: a peculiar mix of imperialist hegemonic aspirations and spiritual thirst for “the wisdom of the East.”