SPIRITUALISM AND OCCULTISM

of Raymond Lully Ramon Llull (1232–1315), a Majorcan philosopher known for his "Great Art," a mechanical system of logic using rotating paper discs to combine concepts., which had governed Minds for nearly three centuries—a remarkable feat for a philosophical system coupled with a mechanical instrument of reasoning.

Breaking away from the experimental foundation possessed by the hermeticists and the alchemists, the theologians drowned the human Spirit under floods of a metaphysics as hollow as it was pretentious. Today, one only finds this metaphysics in all its "grandeur" at the Seminary, where it distances the minds of future priests from the actual observation of the laws of Nature.

If Descartes was more of a false Pythagorean A follower of Pythagoras; here implying one who uses mathematics and numbers to understand the universe, though the author suggests Descartes lacked true esoteric initiation. than an initiate when he undertook to bring philosophy back to the study of facts—by exalting the method derived from experience in place of the metaphysical axiom—he at least attempted to save the brain by pulling it out of the theological rut. The works of the Abbé de Villars, and especially his dissertations delivered by the Count of Gabalis A reference to the 1670 satirical novel "Comte de Gabalis," which revealed (and mocked) Rosicrucian secrets regarding elemental spirits., show with what distrust the Rosicrucians A secret brotherhood of mystics and alchemists claiming ancient wisdom. of that era studied the philosophical revolution attempted by Descartes.

One must, therefore, first of all, not confuse the Spiritualism of contemporary occultists with these purely metaphysical ideas. While occultists may, by adopting the habits of mystics, state affirmations that seem foolish or highly hypothetical to their contemporaries, these affirmations will at least be supported by the study of a fact, from which deductions will be drawn via the analogical method The principle of "as above, so below," where patterns in the microcosm (man) reflect the macrocosm (universe).. For example, what could be stranger to an astronomer than to hear it said that the stars are organized beings possessing their own intelligence and physiological faculties? Yet that is an affirmation of the occultists, deduced by analogy from the attentive observation of astronomical and meteorological facts.

If one cannot place occult philosophy The study of hidden laws of nature and the inner powers of humanity. within the section of pure idealism, because of its tendencies...