INTRODUCTION

Occult Science the study of hidden or esoteric knowledge. This summary has no other purpose than to serve as an introduction to the excellent Ritual by Eliphas Lévi, which is generally criticized for not being practical enough, simply for lack of understanding.

The first part of our work, theory, shows the application of the theories of Pythagoras and Plato—resumed by Fabre d'Olivet and distorted by all subsequent translators—to contemporary psychology.

The second part, realization, studies the possible manifestation of human faculties under the influence of various reactions coming from the outside. There is here an essay on the "hygiene of the intellectual," which summarizes one of the most personal parts of our research. Furthermore, our chapter on astrology already touches upon the purely technical portion of magic.

With adaptation, one enters directly into the purely traditional teaching. It is on this point that our experiments focus, and it is to bring these facts to light that we still require several years. For lack of time, we have been forced to stick to documents emanating from manuscripts and grimoires books of magical spells and invocations, and we harbor no illusions about the strange effect that the reading of certain of these teachings will have on the mind of a contemporary person accustomed to positivist denying metaphysical or spiritual inquiry in favor of purely observable, empirical data theories. Conversely, the documents provided in this chapter may be of great assistance to the independent researcher and will spare them great expenditures of time and money.

However, since we are treating a highly personal subject, we ask the reader's permission to go further and introduce the personality of Papus, whose name is taken from the physician, the daimon a tutelary spirit or divine intermediary of the first hour of the Nuctemeron of Apollonius of Tyana. One will thus know who one is dealing with, and one will be able to close this book immediately or throw it into the fire as the case may be.