PREFACE

teaching that societies, like individuals, commit suicide. By demonstrating to us the triumph of the Idea, its sovereignty and its evolution in the history of humanity, you have, my dear friend, rendered a service to our cause for which it owes you eternal gratitude.

In our collective work, I personally had the great honor of being delegated to the practical realization, and to battle with word and pen (sometimes also with the sword) for the success of our ideas. You know, my dear friend, how—in moments of despair, when overwhelmed by slanders and sarcasm, accused of acting as a dilettante greedy for large sums of money when my meager fees and royalties were actually funding our publications—you know how precious your friendship and that of our comrade Julien Lejay Julien Lejay (1854-1899) was a prominent French occultist and collaborator in the Martinist movement were to me; how, after our meetings over there, in contact with your knowledge and your example, I would return more ardent for the struggle and more stubborn in the daily combat.

Today, the desired success has come to crown our efforts, and those who follow the intellectual evolution of the younger generation know how evident the reaction against materialism The philosophical belief that nothing exists except matter and its movements has become. But timid minds fear the words occultism The study of hidden spiritual wisdom, esotericism Knowledge intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized interest, and magic. After having been the initiators of the movement, we have become "dangerous" to the people who will be in power tomorrow, and there are those who would very much like to use our ideas while changing these "nasty" words.

Among the many small rival schools—whose existence is as necessary to the development of an intellectual movement as the multiplication of embryonic cells is to the development of a physical body—many are worthy of serious interest and all deserve respect. We will personally only protest against those men who claim to lead intellects, which have evolved through contemporary science, back into the fold of a dying clericalism Excessive adherence to or political power of the clergy/church.