Two Gifts from Ivan Aguéli: Sufi, Anarchist, Theosophist, Painter
From Bitter Winter, A magazine on religious liberty and human rights, by Massimo Introvigne
A museum in Sala and a book on his magazine “Il Convito” help understanding the different aspects of the extraordinary career of the Swedish artist.
This year, I received two gifts from a character I had been interested in for decades, Swedish painter Ivan Aguéli (1869–1917). First, I was finally able to visit the Aguéli Museum in his birthplace, Sala, Sweden. Sala is located some 130 kilometers from Stockholm, and the museum is open only four days per week. It is a small museum but still essential for understanding Aguéli as an artist.
In fact, there is a different perception of Aguéli in Sweden and elsewhere. In Sweden, he is primarily known as a painter, and one who eludes classification in a specific current, and honored as such. Abroad, his artistic production is less known than his role in the history of the spread of Sufism in the West, esotericism, and anarchism. In fact, a closer look at the Egyptian landscapes may open a window on Aguéli’s spirituality. But you have to look at them twice.
The second gift came by the mail. It was the book by Paul-André Claudel “Un journal « italo-islamique » à la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale : Il Convito / النادي [al-Nâdî] (Le Caire, 1904-1912)” (Alexandria: Centre d’Études Alexandrines, 2022). The book is a jewel and confirms that there is no substitute for the printed paper. The elegant composition of text and illustrations would never be the same on Kindle.
The museum in Sala introduces the artist but does not reveal the important role of Aguéli as a cultural strategist who tried to create a friendship between a part of the Western culture and Islam. This is the subject matter of Claudel’s book, organized around the magazine “Il Convito,” published in Italian, Arabic, and sometimes Ottoman Turkish in Cairo between 1904 and 1907, with two further issues in 1910 and 1912 by Aguéli and Italian medical doctor, scholar, and intelligence agent Enrico Insabato (1878–1963).
Claudel’s tour de force succeeds in showing the idiosyncratic nature of the magazine. There is little doubt that Insabato, under his hat (one of many, though) as an Italian spy, produced the magazine to persuade Muslims that, unlike Britain and France, the secular Italy of the early 20th century was a friend of Islam. Engaged in an ideological and political conflict with the Vatican, Italy did not support Catholic or Protestant missionaries either.
However, the continuous dialogue and cooperation between Insabato and Aguéli produced a magazine unlike the many others published by Europeans in Egypt. The latter often praised reformist and modernized Islam. On the contrary, Aguéli was a Sufi and “Il Convito” praised a traditional Islam resisting modernization and criticized the reformists.
It also maintained that traditional Islam needed a caliphate, which led the magazine to a pro-Ottoman position that finally led to its undoing. When Italy attacked the Ottoman Empire in 1911 to add Libya to its colonies the contradiction between the pro-Italian and pro-Turkish attitudes of “Il Convito” exploded. The Young Turks revolution of 1908 had already changed a landscape where Türkiye could be perceived as the representative of a traditional Islam opposing modernity.
Of course, Aguéli the Muslim convert and Sufi is well-known as the man who introduced René Guénon (1886–1951) to Sufism, although on how extensively the latter was influenced by the Swedish painter (perhaps more than he cared to admit) opinions differ.
Claudel’s book also offers some curious clues about Aguéli’s relationships with esoteric milieus. Given what “Il Convito” was and its connections with the Italian intelligence, it may look strange to find there Theosophical references and an obituary of Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), co-founder of the Theosophical Society. But the references are less strange if we consider that Aguéli was a member of the Theosophical Society himself.
As many in Swedish esoteric milieus and beyond, he was also influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Claudel adds some interesting details, including the close relationship in Cairo between Aguéli and Eugène Dupré (1882–1944), in fact so close that they shared for a while the same apartment. Dupré co-founded the Egyptian branch of the Martinist Order and another esoteric society, the Ordre du Lys et de l’Aigle. Claudel also mentions Dupré’s claim that Aguéli was “a very close friend” of Charles Grolleau (1867–1940), another Martinist and disciple of Papus (Gérard Encausse, 1865–1916). Grolleau later converted to Catholicism and, via an introduction by Guénon, participated in the initiatives in Paray-le-Monial of iconographer Louis Charbonneau-Lassay (1871–1946) promoting the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Here, Claudel’s book needs to be read together with another essential text on Aguéli I already reviewed in “Bitter Winter”: “Anarchist, Artist, Sufi: The Politics, Painting, and Esotericism of Ivan Aguéli” (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), a collection of fourteen essays and of some key texts by Aguéli, edited by Mark Sedgwick. The collection includes decisive chapters by Per Faxneld on Aguéli and esotericism and by Sedgwick himself on the Swedish painter and Guénon (and a contribution by Claudel too).
The most puzzling question is how Aguéli could have been at the same time a Muslim Sufi, a member or associate of different Western esoteric organizations, and an anarchist. Insabato had been an anarchist too, but at least from a certain date on he was more a spy on anarchists circles on behalf of the Italian intelligence service. Claiming that Aguéli moved from anarchism to Sufism and esotericism would not solve the problem. He remained an anarchist, although in his later years a less active and outspoken one, until his mysterious death near Barcelona in 1917, hit by a train.
In fact, Aguéli was not the only anarchist who claimed that anarchism was atheistic as it rejected the religions that sided with the rich and the powerful, such as 19th-century Christianity, but Islam was a religion of the oppressed and an entirely different matter.
Here, a comparison may be proposed with Tuscan anarchist Leda Rafanelli (1880–1971). While many know her only as the lover of pre-Fascist Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), Rafanelli was at the same time an anarchist, a self-styled Muslim (if an idiosyncratic one), and a professional Tarot reader who cultivated a number of esoteric interests. Comparing her to Aguéli would do for another interesting book and would confirm that anarchy and esoteric spirituality were not necessarily incompatible.
