SPIRITUALISM AND OCCULTISM

phenomena which are multiplying at the present hour, such as those relating to intuition, telepathy, prophetic dreams, and the transformations of matter under the influence of that force emanating from man called "psychic." Faced with these difficulties, sincere researchers have come to demand something more than insults, denials, or the summoning of "coincidences" or "hallucinations"—excuses which merely hide a poorly concealed spite.

Many of these researchers have turned to that ancient philosophy of the Patriarchs, of the Egyptian initiators of Moses, of the Gnostics and the Christian Illuminati, of the Alchemists and the Rosicrucians. This philosophy has never wavered in its teachings throughout the centuries. Today, it explains the facts of spiritualism The 19th-century movement focused on communication with spirits. and deep hypnosis as easily as it explained, during the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, the relationships between the Kha and the Khou—the physical body and the luminous body—in their action upon the Baï, the intelligent Spirit. The author uses these terms to describe the Egyptian concept of the multi-layered soul: the Ka (vital essence), the Khu (shining spirit), and the Ba (personality/soul). This philosophy is currently known by the name of occultism, and it is its way of viewing spiritualism that we must summarize to the best of our ability in the following pages.

But one thing terrifies us: it is a treatise, or rather an exposition of philosophy, that we are led to undertake, and we are a very poor philosopher, as shrewd critics will not fail to point out.

Medical studies, as they are understood at the present time, produce rare clinicians, vague anatomists, and a few physiologists, but no philosophers in the high sense of the word.

We shall not speak of the lycée The French secondary school system. which makes aspiring graduates undergo a few months of the history of philosophy, variegated with childish metaphysics; like everything the lycée does, it must be redone later if one wishes to derive any real benefit from it.