Simon Ganneau

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. 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) of a new religion called "Evadaism" (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. 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. 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). Ganneau contributed to Tristan's 1844 collection The Worker's Union, as well as to an 1848 paper titled La Montagne de la Fraternité. Ganneau had a wife 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.

• Name — Simon Ganneau, le Mapah • Born — circa 1805 • Birthplace — Lormes, France • Died — 14 March 1851 • Place of death — Paris, France • Relatives — Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau (son) • Illustration — 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.