Secret Doctrine Vol. III - Esoterica (1893) - Page 9

⚠The page contains a Table of Contents printed in a very faint, light blue-grey ink, which has been overlaid with two clear quotes printed in black. Some portions of the background text are partially obscured by the black text.

Introductory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
One Key to All Sacred Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Assumptions have to be proven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Spirit of Plato's Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Self-Contradiction of the Critic . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Regarding what you hear others say—those who persuade the masses that the soul, once freed from the body, neither suffers evil nor possesses consciousness—I know that you are better grounded in the doctrines we received from our ancestors and in the sacred mysteries original: "orgies," referring to the ritual celebrations or "orgia" of the Greek mysteries of Dionysus than to believe them. For the mystic symbols are well known to us who belong to the Brotherhood.
— PLUTARCH.

Preliminary Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

The problem of life is man. Magic, or rather Wisdom, is the evolved knowledge of the powers of man’s interior being. These forces are divine emanations, just as intuition is the perception of their origin, and initiation is our formal introduction into that knowledge. . . . We begin with instinct; the end is omniscience term: all-knowingness.
— A. WILDER.

Occultism must win the Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Black Magic at work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Black Magic and Hypnotism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
The Philosophy stands on its own Merits . . . . . . . . . . 19

SECTION II.

Modern Criticism and the Ancients . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
All Honor to Genuine Scientists . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
What is a Myth? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Chaldean Oracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

SECTION III.

The Origin of Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
The Books of Hermes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
What is the Origin of Magic? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Pherecydes of Syros A Greek thinker from the 6th century BCE, often cited as one of the first to teach the immortality of the soul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Late Mathematical and Anthropomorphic term: attributing human characteristics to non-human things, such as gods or abstract forces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37