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Vie Mysterieuse, La.
Magie. Astrologie. Cartomancie. Chiromancie. Graphologie. Spiritisme. Magnetisme / Journal Populaire Illustre des Sciences Psychiques et Occultes. Etude des Forces Inconnues dans toutes leurs manifestations: Magnetisme, Hypnose, Telepathie, Science Astrale, Suggestion, Spiritisme, Psychologie, Mediumisme, Clairvoyance, Occultisme, Religion, Philosophie.
1909—1914 Bimonthly
Paris, France.
Language: French.
Editor: Papus and Professor Donato; Maurice de Rusnak; Fernand Girod, secretary. Succeeds: Echo du Mystere
Corporate author: Societe internationale de recherches psychiques
1/1, January 1909-1914. 16-24 pp., 5 francs (6 abroad).

"Prof. Donato" founded this journal and edited it with Papus (Gerard Encausse). The two had earlier collaborated in Almanach de la Chance (1905-1910). "Donato" was the stage name used by the Belgian Alfred Edouard, "Baron" d'Hont/Dhont (1845-1900) in his performances as a hypnotist and magnetizer in the 1870s and 1880s, and in an earlier journal Revue Internationale du Magnetisme/Le Magnetisme (1886). He was quite a famous figure and was responsible for exciting Charcot's interest in the possibilities of hypnotism. He was born in 1845, and—unfortunately for his having played a hand in this journal—died in Paris in 1900. The identity of the Donato who started this journal and had earlier collaborated with Papus in Almanach de la Chance is the subject of considerable debate. He may have been Leonard Chaumont (1848/1858?-1927), another stage magnetist — a careful researcher has discovered copies of Vie Mysterieuse in a dossier of Donato II's stage memorabilia. Donato, the editor of this journal, clearly intended to be confused with the earlier Donato and even took up his pen in the journal in 1913 to deny his own death, offering to respond to correspondents who wrote to the journal about the question. "Prof. Dicksonn," in his La Verite sur le Spiritisme (1917), p. 112, who contributed to this journal and had been a close friend of Donato I, admitted his uncertainty about the identity of Donato II but expressed his doubts that the original Donato would communicate from the beyond to amuse the readers of the journal. Papus assisted Donato (II) as an editor of this journal in its early days as he had earlier in Almanach de la Chance and clearly knew Donato I since in 1911 he contributed a preface to Donato I's Cours pratique d'hypnotime, de magnetisme, et de suggestion. The mystery remains unsolved.

The journal listed among its "principal collaborators" a who's who of the major and minor figures of the French fin-de-siecle occult world and the epigoni in the years before World War I: Papus, Hector Durville, Comte de Larmandie, Ely Star, Jules Lermina, Favius de Champville, Gabriel Delanne, Ernest Bosc, et al.— many of whom figured also in Papus's Societe Internationale de Recherches Psychiques, founded in 1908. It was a well-illustrated popular exposition of the occult arts listed in the subtitle, with short articles on magic, astrology, scrying, famous mediums, will cultivation, personal magnetism, photographing human rays and spirits, amulets, and regularly carried short occult novelettes ("Earthmen on Venus," "The Call of the Phantom," etc.). Noted in the exchanges of Mysteria, April 1913 and in World's Advance Thought the same year. BNF; BM Lyon; BL; University of Texas; Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag.

Many of these issues courtesy of Brandon Hodge and The Mysterious Planchette.

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