Phileas Walder

A Swiss Lutheran minister who became an occultist and Spiritualist, and a friend of French occultist Éliphas Lévi. In the anti-clerical hoax of Léo Taxil (Gabriel Jogand-Pagès), Walder and Miss Sophia Walder were represented as associates of Freemason Albert Pike in the rites of devil worship in Charleston, South Carolina. In reality, Walder was an earnest Freemason and mystic.