Simon Ganneau

Simon Ganneau[lower-alpha 1] (born circa 1805 in Lormes, died 14 March 1851 in Paris) was a French socialist, feminist, sculptor, and mystic.[1][2][3][4]

From one of Ganneau's brochures, an illustration of the androgyne Evadam, formed by the marriage of Mary-Eve and Christ-Adam.
Simon Ganneau, le Mapah
Contemporary caricature (1846) by Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville, preaching in front of a relief of masculine (sword, pipe) and feminine (corset, distaff) symbols.
Borncirca 1805
Lormes, France
Died14 March 1851
Paris, France
NationalityFrench
Ganneau, drawn in 1883 (after his death) by contemporary cartoonist Charles-Joseph Traviès de Villers, in front of a poster depicting the five phases of the world he preached would occur.

Like several other socialists of his time, Ganneau treated Christianity as a call for social reform.[3] He was influenced by Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin and Saint-Simonian philosophy,[2] particularly in viewing God as an androgynous or bisexual.[5] Ganneau's writings treat androgyny not only as a move towards religious salvation, the final stage of humanity, but also as embodying the socialist concept on unity and balance in the world.[2]

Adopting the title of the Mapah, a combination of mater and pater or maman and papa ("mother" and "father"), Ganneau presented himself as an androgynous prophet (with a beard and a woman's cloak)[6] of a new religion called "Evadaism" (French: Evadaïsme) based on his ideas for "a redefined humanity, Evadam" (from Eve-Adam) and for a new era of female emancipation, gender equality and social justice.[1][2][3][7] (According to Éliphas Lévi, Ganneau also claimed to be the reincarnation of Louis XVII, and his wife claimed to be the reincarnation of Marie Antoinette.)[6][8]

A former phrenologist, and a sculptor, he spread his ideas via pamphlets and plaster figurines, "of strange appearance, without doubt symbolically bisexual", both called "plasters".[2][3] His garret studio apartment on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris functioned in the late 1830s as a salon for discussing his ideas, and he influenced many of the socialists and feminists of his time, including Alexandre Dumas, Alphonse Esquiros, Flora Tristan and Éliphas Lévi (Abbé Constant).[2][3][9] Ganneau contributed to Tristan's 1844 collection The Worker's Union,[3] as well as to an 1848 paper titled La Montagne de la Fraternité.[2]

Ganneau had a wife[6] and child, who was five when Ganneau died in 1851, whom Théophile Gautier took under his wing: the Orientalist and archaeologist Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau.[4][10][11]

References
Notes
  1. Also spelled Gannot or Gannau by some contemporaries, but always Ganneau by his closest followers.[1]
Citations
  1. Julian Strube, Sozialismus, Katholizismus und Okkultismus im Frankreich des 9. Jahrhunderts: Die Genealogie der Schriften von Eliphas Lévi (2016), page 256
  2. Naomi Judith Andrews, Socialism's Muse: Gender in the Intellectual Landscape of French Romantic Socialism (2006), pages 40-41, 95, 102
  3. Susan Grogan, Flora Tristan: Life Stories (2002), pages 193-194
  4. Charles Nauroy (ed.), Le Curieux (1888), volume 2, page 239
  5. Sara E. Melzer, Leslie W. Rabine, Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution (1992), page 284
  6. Gary Lachman, Revolutionaries of the Soul' (2014), page 43
  7. Francis Bertin, Esotérisme et socialisme (1995), page 53
  8. Éliphas Lévi, Histoire de la magie (Paris, Germer Baillière, 1860), pp. 519-525
  9. Stéphane Michaud, Flora Tristan - La Paria et son rêve (Paris, Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2003), p. 110
  10. André Dupont-Sommer, "Un dépisteur de fraudes archéologiques : Charles Clermont-Ganneau (1846-1923), membre de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres", Comptes-rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, April 1974, pp. 591-592
  11. Gustave Vapereau, Dictionnaire universel des contemporains, 5th edition (Paris, Hachette, 1880), p. 444

Further reading
  • "Nouvelles ecclésiastiques", L'Ami de la religion, no. 2994, 17 July 1838; Baptême, Mariage (Paris, de Pollet, Soupe et Guillois, 1838)
  • "Mort du créateur d'une religion nouvelle", A. Bonnetty, Annales de philosophie chrétienne, 4th series, (Paris, 1852), p. 164
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