Breton's celebration of Flora Tristan does not make him an advocate of women's rights. He celebrated Tristan as a heterodox socialist thinker who wrote poetically, even almost automatically on occasion, and who happened to be a woman. The case for occultism is the same. Mentioning Swedenborg's or Paracelsus’ name does not make Breton a Swedenborgian, Paracelsian or an occultist. At most, it makes him a romantic, as it is invariably in that context that such luminaries are mentioned. Breton was not an occult adept and his movement was not a celebration of occultism. In my view, Breton was very adept at reading about, referring to and appropriating concepts from. His movement was a celebration of Romanticism and Symbolism, including its occult elements and traces of earlier esotericism. Selected occult thought, ideas and famous occultists, alchemists and magicians, are celebrated as heterodox and interesting in Bretonian Surrealism. The symbolical and poetical language (both verbal and visual) associated with alchemy, magic, and occultism clearly added to their appeal. The very fact that the revered precursors were influenced by certain occult and esoteric concepts made it inevitable that Breton would turn to such things too. Occultism functions as the antidote to the thought of Breton's time, and I would even put it on par with tribal masks, children's drawings, Smith's invented languages, ‘primitive’ mythologies, fairytales and Fourier's harmonious passions: as far as Bretonian Surrealism is concerned, it is other, heterodox, from a cultural past, and marginal.

In the 1920s, the concepts of automatism and artistic clairvoyance were defined in Bretonian Surrealism. Mediums proved instrumental in this regard, proving that allowing one's unconscious free rein could lead to inventive poetic and artistic products, generated automatically. Being in an automatic state could be paramount to becoming a seer. Discarding the possibilities of communication with the dead or outside agents, as well as actually seeing the future or being otherwise clairvoyant, the surrealists interpreted any and all actions by mediums, as well as those of madmen and women, as automatic and, therefore, inspirational. After all, Surrealism was defined as ‘pure psychic automatism.’