Introduction: Occultism in a Global Context

Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 2007

At the heart of Christopher Lehrich's The Occult Mind several theses are articulated: that the works of certain occult thinkers are in need of reassessment in light of their intellectual proximity to contemporary theoretical debates, that the "problem of occult analogy" may be seen to haunt the structural anthropology of Lévi-Strauss and its heirs, and that the question of "magic" is in need of urgent theoretical rehabilitation given the foregoing propositions. Each of these notions is pursued in order to explicate a more general problem for historians: Is it possible to overcome the distinction between historical and morphological methodologies in regard to the study of "esoteric" texts? At several points Lehrich posits that the solution to this methodological problem "would require a spell" and it is only at the end of the book that one realizes that that is precisely what he has done -The Occult Mind appears as nothing less than a twenty-first-century grimoire, a book of incantatory power for anyone interested in the tradition of Western esotericism and its recent academic legitimation.

Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal (4 volume reprint series with Routledge), 2015

The first volume of Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal is concerned with how people have interpreted experiences of a religious, occult, or paranormal nature, and the approaches that scholars employ in order to study such phenomena, which are often elusive and difficult to locate in the various frameworks that people accept as ‘reality’. Wouter Hanegraaff has noted that, "[i]n studying religion, scholars are dependent on believers expressing their awareness of a meta-empirical reality in empirically perceptible ways (words, images, behaviour etc.) but, qua scholars, they do not themselves have direct access to the meta-empirical … [M]ethodological agnosticism is the only proper attitude" (1995: 101). Yet many scholars involved in the study of esotericism and paranormal experiences are themselves ‘insiders’ to one or other tradition or practice, a phenomenon that has bedevilled the academic study of religion, in which a significant number of scholars have been theologically motivated. So, as Hugh Urban has asked, how do ‘outsiders’ study secret or restricted traditions, and does the intimate and closed nature of the teacher-pupil relationship result in the conundrum that ‘if one “knows,” one cannot speak; and if one speaks, one must not really “know” ‘ (Urban 1998: 210)? An unsolved question is, ‘Must the study of all non-normative experience involve the scholar as participant?’ Another important underlying issue concerns the connections between the three terms, ‘religion’, the ‘occult’, and the ‘paranormal’; how closely are they related? It is possible to situate them on a continuum, with religion at one end, signifying official, sanctioned non-normative experiences, the occult (which simply means ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’ and is the Latin-derived equivalent of the Greek-derived term ‘esoteric’) in the middle, and the radically de-institutionalised, individual and ‘unofficial’ experiences of the paranormal at the other end? Antoine Faivre, an early and influential scholar of Western Esotericism, posited a six-point definition of esotericism: 1) ‘[s]ymbolic and real correspondences … are said to exist among all parts of the universe, both seen and unseen’ (1994: 10); 2) Nature is experienced as alive and pulsating with energy; 3) the use of imagination to identify and utilise mediations between the material and spiritual worlds; 4) the transmutation of the individual initiate of esoteric wisdom, from a lower to a higher state; 5) the use of concordance, where attempts are made to ‘establish common denominators between two different traditions or even more, among all traditions’ (1994: 14); and 6) the transmission of esoteric knowledge directly from teacher to pupil. This model has been questioned, but it marks the occult and esoteric out as distinct from both organised religion (such as Roman Catholicism) and deregulated spiritualities (such as the ‘New Age’).

Alchemy "Sorcery has been called Magic: but Magic is Wisdom, and there is no wisdom in Sorcery" PARACELSUS. The Occultist is one who intelligently and continuously applies himself to the understanding of the hidden forces in nature and to the laws of the interior world, to the end that he may consciously cooperate with nature and the spiritual intelligences in the production of effects of service to himself and to his fellow-beings. This entails upon him a close study of the mystery and power of sound, number, colour, form; the psychological laws underlying all expression of faculty; the laws of sympathy and antipathy; the law of vibration; of spiritual and natural affinity; the law of periodicity, of cosmic energy, planetary action; occult correspondences, etc. To these labours he must bring a natural gift of understanding, an unusual degree of patience and devotion, and a keen perception of natural facts. The Medium, or natural sensitive, is one who holds himself in negative relations to the interior worlds, and submits himself to the operation of influences proceeding from things and persons, as well as to that of discarnate intelligences. The medium cultivates an unusual degree of responsiveness to environment and to the emanations (atomic, magnetic or psychic) and suggestions of other persons. The phenomena developed by this process of mediumism include automatism (temporary loss of control over the motor nerves), as in the phenomena of involuntary speech and automatic writing; hypercesthesia, as in the function of clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychometry, etc.; trance, with its attendant phenomena of unconscious cerebration, obsession, and a variety of physical effects of a supernormal character. In its highest manifestation, following upon the "crucifying of the flesh," the subjugation of the passions, and a process of intense religious aspiration, mediumism is frequently followed by spiritual revelation and spontaneous prophecy. "But this sort cometh not but by fasting and prayer."

ARIES, 2017

2014

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 2016

Perusing the rise of occultism and nontraditional religions in the United States

2021

The first and primary thesis of this book is that religious studies have little-known and sometimes repressed origins which lie in the field of esotericism. The second thesis, which stems directly from this idea, holds that esotericism is an intrinsic part of hegemonic cultures and not a separate, small, “secret”, or “occult” field of minority groups. These two themes run through all the essays in this volume. By adopting this perspective, we aim to shed new light on the history of the academic discipline of religious studies and esotericism. In the historiographical narratives on the history of religious studies this dimension is usually completely absent, even if the connections to other disciplines emerging in the 19 century (e.g. ethnology, cultural anthropology, geography of religion) are addressed or if the connection with ideological patterns of interpretation, e.g. evolutionary doctrines, which also play a central role in occultism, is present. One can read a lot about acade...