“For a long time we could not hope to prove to a critic that the Symbolists were not Rosicrucians; we were told that the Rosicrucians declared themselves Symbolists, that Péladan was almost the same thing as Paul Adam. We had to explain that there were symbols and symbols: religious symbols, Rosicrucian symbols, Symbolist symbols, and a variety of symbols for each Symbolist. The bewildered critic would recoil and go away repeating: The Symbolists are occultists.”

Gustave Kahn, 1902