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In 1929, René Guénon"s countrywoman, Louise Eugénie Alexandrine Marie David (later Alexandra David-Néel), published a book on Buddhism based mainly on her travels in South Asia and particularly her trek to the "forbidden city" of Lhasa—the capital of Tibet—and her encounters with Tibetan magic and religion along the way.¹ Unlike Guénon, she was a hugely popular figure in France in the years before World War II, due among other things to an unquenchable thirst for public acknowledgement that had already manifested itself in an early career as an opera singer. Her popularity was undoubtedly also due to a far more engaging style than Guénon"s. Unlike Gué non, David-Néel wrote accounts of Asian religion that were accessible to a general public eager for stories of the exotic East. And the appeal of these stories was significantly enhanced by a colorful personality, at least as it was packaged for a public who came to know her as a free-spirited and independent woman and feminist; a vociferous critic both of bourgeois pretension and of Catholicism and the Catholic church (her father"s family were Huguenots); a hashish-smoking disciple of a mysterious Indian guru; a member of an anarchist circle founded by a former Paris communard; a practitioner of tantric sex; and an intrepid and fearless explorer who was able to outwit both colonial authorities and Chinese nationalists bent on blocking her access to Tibet.²

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-56795-6_4

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