Occultism and Spiritualism

[photo]graphable, mental suggestion, and psychometry, after an initial period of absolute denial, of violent revolt with the invocation of madness, hallucination, fraud, and human stupidity, one must yield to the evidence. These are facts which become all the more certain as mechanical recording devices are perfected and replace the fragility of human senses; and the brute force of the fact is sovereign for the experimenter who has no position to defend, even against the truth. It is then also that independent researchers return to occult philosophy.

Thus, it has often been written that occultism flourishes in times of political or philosophical turmoil.

It is indeed through occultism that the pagan philosophers transitioned to nascent Christianity in Alexandria; it is occultism that occupied Rome during the invasion of the Barbarians, as it occupied Byzantium during the Muslim deluge; it is occultism again which, through Raymond Lully, brought the burgeoning University back to classical philosophy; and it is, closer to us, the occult which, through Mesmer, Cagliostro, Martinez de Pasqually, and Saint-Martin, occupied minds during the Revolution and inspired the philosophy of the secret societies of the illuminati in every era.

A singular career is that pursued through the ages by this occultist tradition, which remains standing in the midst of invasions, revolutions, and catastrophes, and which, when the thread of human thought seems cut, suddenly comes to reconnect the chain by revitalizing once more its old enemy: Philosophy.

It must indeed be admitted that philosophy, no more than theology, has never been kind to occultists.

This "system" which is reborn when it is thought buried under a victorious syllogism, this "mysticism" which attracts by its strange charm minds of the caliber...