French occultist and alchemist who promoted hyperchemistry (French: hyperchimie), a discipline combining metaphysics with operative chemistry. He taught hylozoism (French: hylozoïsme), a monistic doctrine according to which matter, soul, life and energy are one; all in nature evolving and transforming itself unceasingly. François Jollivet-Castelot was also deeply influenced by the work of Charles Fourier and Christian communism.
Jollivet-Castelot was founder and president of the Société alchimique de France, founder and director of the magazines L’Hyperchimie (from August 1896 to April 1900), which became L’Hyperchimie – Rosa Alchemica, Rosa Alchemica, Les Nouveaux Horizons de la Science et de la Pensée, and finally La Rose + Croix, until his death in 1937. He participated in the Martinist reviews L’Initiation, Le Voile d’Isis, and frequented the Occultist circles of Paris during the Belle Époque, associating with Papus, Stanislas de Guaita, and Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre. He exchanged correspondence with the Swedish writer August Strindberg who became his disciple during his stay in Paris in 1895. These letters were published in 1912 under the title Bréviaire alchimique.
In 1904 he created the journal Horizons de la science et de la pensée, in which he developed his idea of “rational socialism”, a kind of liberal Christianity. In 1920 he published Le Destin, ou les Fils d’Hermès, roman ésotérique, an autobiographical novel in which, by the yardstick of the devastation of the Great War, he gave an account of his inner journey, his esoteric research, and his encounters with the Occultist personalities of his time.
Influenced by the work of Charles Fourier, Jollivet-Castelot in 1920 joined the French section of the Communist International, SFIC, the future French Communist Party, and published several works: L’Idée communiste (1922), Le Communisme spiritualiste (1925), and Jésus et le Communisme (1926), expressing his faith in an ideal of spiritualist communism. This spiritualism and its anarchizing ideas quickly caused him to be excluded from the SFIC.
In December 1925, François Jollivet-Castelot claimed to have managed to make gold from silver. He always asked that his work be verified by the highest scientific authorities of the time. Yet, despite his friendship with Marcellin Berthelot, his requests were always denied.
He died in Bourganeuf on 22 April 1937 in a car accident, aged 62.
Link to Wikipedia biography (French)