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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISM:A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SURVEY

By ROBERT GALBREATH

The following essay is intended as an introductory and highly selectiveguide to the scholarly and better popular literature on the history of Westernoccultism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Widespread acceptance ofthe occult tapered off sharply by the end of the seventeenth century among theeducated, but it did not cease altogether and may have remained more or lessconstant among peasants. Within a hundred years the Romantic revival ofNeoplatonism, Medieval German mysticism, and astrology, the introduction o fAsian and especially Indian esotericism, and the sudden enthusiasm for secretsocieties, Mesmerism, and Swedenborgianism marked the beginnings of themodern recrudescence of the occult. From the late eighteenth century until thepresent, in varying degrees of popularity, faddishness, and intellectual respect-ability, the occult has remained a nearly ubiquitous factor in Western culturallife. For example, Martin Ebons T h e y K n e w t h e U n k n o w n (World, 1971) doc-uments the role of the occult in the lives and writings of Kant, Schopenhauer,Shelley, Lincoln, Victor Hugo, the Brownings, Mark Twain, William James,Strindberg, A. R. Wallace, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edison, William McDougall,Freud, Jung, Yeats, Alexis Carrel, Maeterlinck, Mackenzie King, Thomas Mann,Gilbert Murray, Aldous Huxley, Upton Sinclair, and C. J. Ducasse.

The enthusiasm with which the occult is currently being greeted, regard-less of motive, is beginning to stimulate more scholars into examining its claims,history, and impact. Yet those who plunge into the occult currents of the past


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISM 727199two hundred years may easily lose their bearings. The major bibliographies, forexample, mostly date from before the First World War; more recent bibliographiestend to specialize in a single occult field, such as alchemy or witchcraft, and tolimit themselves to the medieval and early modern periods. Bibliographical prob-lems are complicated further by the fact that the more prominent exponents ofoccult systems from Swedenborg to Annie Besant have been unusually prolificauthors, the extreme hopefully having been reached with the 340 volumes ofthe complete German edition of Rudolf Steiners works. These writings areoften published in a confusing array of editions, many of them ephemeral, un-authorized, or incomplete. Unfortunately, there are few author bibliographies,even of an amateur nature, with which one can thread such mazes with confi-dence.

Secondary sources, of course, outnumber the writings of occultists, andthe problems are multiplied accordingly. Scholarly books and articles tend t oreflect rather specialized interests and methods; for this reason, they often failto come to the attention of specialists in other fields who might profit fromthem. Journals of history, literature, philosophy, psychology, parapsychology,sociology, anthropology, folklore, popular culture, the history of religions, andthe history of science, among others, are all apt to contain materials of value.Only A m b i x , the excellent journal of the Society for the History of Alchemyand Early Chemistry, and the parapsychology journals, such asJournal of Para-psych ology , Journal of the Soc iety f o r Psychical Research (London), andJour-nal of the American So ciety fo r Psychical Research, can be considered to be al-most wholly devoted to the occult. But the former rarely contains articles per-taining to the period after the seventeenth century, while the latter are scientificjournals which carry only a few articles of historical or sociological interest. TheJournal of Transpersonal Psyc ho log y, which is concerned with the psychologicaland therapeutic implications of mysticism, occultism, ecstasy, and peak-experi-ences, and the Jungian Journal of Analyt ical Psych ology, occasionally publishhistorical contributions.

The bulk of popular literature is almost too vast to handle in anything butquantitative terms. Douglas G. Ellson, for example, in his Book Publication inPsychical Research and Spiritualism in Wartime, Journal of Abnormal andSocial Psychology, 37 (July 1942), 388-392, counted a total of 12 16 Americanand English titles in these two categories for the fifty-year period 1891-1940.(He discovered that the peak was reached in both countries during the 1916-1920 period, but that there was no agreement between the tastes of the twocountries for other five-year periods). For the current occult boom, MarcelloTruzzi, The Occult Revival as Popular Culture: Some Random Observationson the Old and Nouveau Witch, Sociological Quartedy (forthcoming, 1972) ,reports that Paperbound Books in Prin t for June 1968 lists 169 occult titles butthat by the October 1969 issue the total had increased to 519. I can add thatthe July 1971 edition records an incredible 874. Equally indicative of the oc-cult revival is the report by R. A. McConnell and Tron McConnell, Occult Booksat the University of Pittsburgh, Journal of the Am erican S ociety f o r PsychicalResearch, 65 (July 1971) and more briefly in R. A. McConnel1,ESPCurriculum


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7281100 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUREGuide (*Simon & Schuster, 1971), pp. 83-94,hat the not untypical Universityof Pittsburgh Book Center ordered 4038 copies of 454 different hardcover andpaperback occult titles from August 1969 to July 1970, with the most popularcategories being Tales (true and fictional), Astrology, Other Prediction, BlackMagic (and witchcraft), and Noted Psychics.bibliographical essay. It is confined to Western occultism-almost exclusivelyAmerican, English, French, and German-from the late eighteenth century tothe present, with emphasis upon English-language historical studies of a scholarlynature. By occultism, I do not mean the whole of the occult but only thatportion of it which can be called metaphysical occultism or spiritual occult-ism. This distinction, as I argued in my paper, Modern Occultism: A Themat-ic Analysis, at the Popular Culture Association 1971 meeting, is based on ob-servable or claimed differences in terms of psychic experiences, spiritual devel-opment, self-image, and behavior. Thus, spiritual occultism, as represented byTheosophy, Rudolf Steiner, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and a ritualistic-magicalwing (various Rosicrucian organizations, the Hermetic Order of the GoldenDawn, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune), denies that it is a religion as Satanismand some forms of modern witchcraft claim to be. Spiritual occultists state thatit is possible to acquire personal, empirical knowledge of that which can only betaken on faith in religion or demonstrated through deductive reasoning in philos-ophy. Further, this knowledge, arrived at in full consciousness through the useof spiritual disciplines, is said to reveal mans place in the spiritual plan of theuniverse and to reconcile the debilitating conflict between science and religion.The goal of occultism, therefore, is the complete spiritualization of man and thecosmos, and the attainment of a condition of unity. The spiritual occultists alsoexpress grave doubts concerning mysticism (too emotional), Spiritualism (toomaterialistic, as is parapsychology, and too reliant on unconscious trances), andoccult sciences such as most forms of magic and divination (improper use ofspiritual powers and morally degrading). The emphasis of this bibliography isaccordingly on metaphysical occultism, with relatively less treatment accordedto Spiritualism, parapsychology (its historical development only), and the occultsciences, with mysticism and witchcraft omitted altogether, the latter of coursetreated fully in Professor Nugents essay in this supplement.Reference Works; (3)General Histories of Magic and Occultism; (4) ccultSciences and Themes; (5) ccultism from Romanticism to the Present; (6) Con-clusions. The place of publication for English-language books, unless otherwisespecified, is New York. Exceptions: University Books are published in NewHyde Park, New York; Doubleday in Garden City, New York; Quest paperbacksin Wheaton, Illinois, by the Theosophical Publishing House; publishers whosenames indicate the city of publication, e.g., the University of Chicago Press.Place of publication for French-language books, unless noted otherwise, is Paris.Paperback editions of English-language publications are marked with an asterisk(*); all French publications are paperbound. For modern reprint editions ofnineteenth century books, only the date of the original edition is given, e.g.,

Faced with these figures, I have placed certain restrictions on the present

The following essay is divided into six sections: (1) Bibliographies; (2)


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TH E HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISM 729/101(1884;Detroit: Gale, 1966). Publishers names are cited in short form andmany subtitles have been omitted.

I. BibliographiesAlbert L. Caillet, Manuel bibliographique des sciences psychiques ouoccultes (3vols., Lucien Dorbon, 1913, reissued 1964) is indispensable on nine-

teenth-century publications, both reprints and original editions, on all aspectsof the occult, including Hermetism, Cabalism, astrology, sorcery, Mesmerism,magic, Masonry, and various curiosities and aberrations. There are occa-sional short biographical sketches of some authors, and the major French figuresin nineteenthcentury occultism-Eliphas Livi, Stanislas de Guaita, Papus-arewell represented. Twentieth century bibliographies of a general nature are allmarkedly inferior to Caillet. A. E. Abbot, A Guide to Oc cult Bo oks and SacredWritings of the Age s (London: *Emerson Press, 1963) is a 64-page pamphletwhich claims to contain some 1200 author entries and 1600 book entries ar-ranged by topic. Useful as it is, it rarely cites both publisher and date for books,and its Anthroposophical bias is apparent. Manly P. Hals Great Books on Reli-gion and Esoteric Philosoph y (Los Angeles: *Philosophical Research Society,1966) is a slightly larger compilation (85 pages) by another occultist. Its use-fulness is impaired by the authors lengthy reflections and tiresome discourseson the art of book-collecting. It is not without interest, however, and it doescontain references to occult fiction, but its primary value lies in its list of theauthors own writings. Hereward Carringtons The Occult Readers Guide,Fate, 4 (May-June 1951), 54-61, is not essential as a bibliography, but the author-a noted psychical researcher-offers a useful typology of occultism.

One of the most promising bibliographical ventures in the occult fieldfailed after three years for lack o f funds. David Techters A Bibliography andIndex of Psychic Research and Related To pics fo r the Yea r 1962, . . . 1963,. . . 1964 (3 vols.; Chicago: *Privately printed, 1963-1965)catalogues allEnglish-language books, articles, reviews, and reports, both scientific and popular,which were published within a single calendar year. Items are lis ted in full byauthor and briefly indexed by subject. Price Guid e to the Occult and RelatedSubjects, compiled by K. M. Hyre and Eli Goodman (Los Angeles: ReferenceGuides, 1967), is an alphabetically-by-author listing of 8243 used books, manyof them multiple copies or variant editions, drawn from the catalogues of thirty-nine dealers. It is the single largest source of titles for the nineteenth and twen-tieth centuries, bu t as it is limited t o used books (for which it gives place anddate of publication, condition, and price), there can be n o pretense of compre-hensiveness, the compilers claims notwithstanding. Of more immediate use, al-though now difficult to obtain , is Catalog 80 0ccultissued by *SamuelWeiser, Inc., of New York in 1966. This was apparently the last comprehensivecatalogue issued by the firm; monthly flyers are now sent out instead. It lists2373 separate works, classified by subject and author; bibliographical data in-clude everything essential except publishers.

Among specialized bibliographies, both S. R. Morgan, Index to Psychic


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7301102 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUREScience (Swarthmore, Pa.: Privately printed, 1950), and George Zorab, Bibliog-raphy of Parapsychology (Parapsychology Foundation, 1957) are by now toodated to be reliable guides to the current state of the science. Zorab, however,lists titles on bibliography, history, and the relationship of parapsychology tophilosophy, psychology, religious experience, and ethnology which retain value.Morgan provides a detailed classification of somatic and spiritual types of psiphenomena which are keyed to a bibliography of 513 items. Harry Prices cat-alogue of his own collection describes itself: Short-Title Catalogue of Works onPsychical Research, Spiritualism, Magic, Psychology, Legerdemain and OtherMethods ofDeception, Charlatanism, Witchcraft and Technical Works for theScientific Investigation ofAlleged Abnormal Phenomena (London: *Proceedingsof the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, Vol. 1;Pt. 2, April 1929) andShort-Title Catalogue of the Research Library . . .Supplement (Bulletin 1,*University of London Council for Psychical Investigation, 1935). Together thetwo catalogues list some 10,000 titles by author, but a very large proportion isconcerned with conjuring and legerdemain.

A model bibliography in every respect is Lynn E. Catoes thorough UFOsand Related Subjects: An Annotated Bibliography (Washington: *GovernmentPrinting Office, 1969), which classifies, annotates, and indexes more than 1600items. The relationship of Ufology to hollow earth theory, Atlantis, the NewAge, Fortean phenomena, and other occult topics is fully covered by Miss Catoe.David E. Smiths Millenarian Scholarship in America, American Quarterly, 17(Fall 1965), 535-549, explores another current of thought which is often relatedto occultism. On a much larger and richer scale, Weston La Barre, Materials fora History of Studies of Crisis Cults: A Bibliographic Essay, Current Anthropol-ogy, 1 2 (February 1971) , 3-44, with appended critiques by other scholars, tracesthe scholarly treatment of crisis cults-also known as chiliasm, revitalization move-ments, millenialism, messianic movements-not only as they are found in primi-tive and pre-industrial societies but also in European history and the modernUnited States.

There is no source for bibliographical information in the occult field whichis complete, nor perhaps can there ever be. The best source currently availableis, in my opinion, the book review section edited by David Techter for Fate mag-azine. Techters own columns are always informative and often insightful; thereviews contributed by others (of whom I am one) are frequently critical in tone.In the twelve issues for 1971, Techter reviewed 34 books and discussed 19 dif-ferent periodicals, organizations, and meetings; a further 6 3 books were reviewedby other persons; and there were brief notes on 42 books judged to be of lesssignificance.

11. Reference WorksThe Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings (13vols.,

1908-1926, reissued 1955) remains the standard work in its field and one whichis well worth consulting on all aspects of the occult and mysticism. G. R. S.Meads article on Occultism is still the best short statement of the technical


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISMmeaning of the term. R. R. Maretts Magic (Introductory) is a convenientsurvey of conflicting anthropological theories. It is followed by fifteen special-ized articles, totalling nearly 60 pages, on magic in specific national traditionsfrom Arabian to Vedic. The occult field does not have its Hastings, but there isthe ambitious Man, Myth G Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Super-natural, ed. Richard Cavendish (24 vols.; Marshall Cavendish, 1970- ), with adistinguished editorial board consisting of C. A. Burland, Glyn Daniel, E. R.Dodds, Mircea Eliade, William Sargant, John Symonds, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky,and R. C. Zaehner. In addition to the editors, the contributors also includeNorman Cohn, Kathleen Raine, E l k Howe, Kenneth Grant, S. G. F. Brandon,and J. C. Baroja. Although on the whole the quality of the articles is good, itis not as high as these names would lead one to expect. Some articles are notsigned and others are without bibliographies. Nevertheless, such articles asE l k Howes on Astrology, Zwi Werblowskys on the Cabala, and Richard H.Robinsons on Buddhism are models of compression. The illustrations arenumerous, usually apt, occasionally garish. Unfortunately, the American pub-lisher has run into difficulties and only three volumes were available by the au-tumn of 1971. The English edition was published serially in more than a hun-dred magazine-size issues.

Single-volume encyclopedias of distinction number precisely two. LewisSpence, An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (London: Routledge, 1920; UniversityBooks,1960) is an intelligent and reasonably thorough compendium of 2500entries from the pen of one of the most prolific English occult scholars. Fewarticles have bibliographies, however, and the whole work calls for revision.Nandor Fodors Encyclopaedia of Psychic Sciences (London: Arthurs Press, 1934;rev. ed., University Books, 1966) is more specifically addressed to Spiritualismand psychical research. It is particularly valuable in its treatment of organizationsand journals, even to the point of listing the complete contents of certain periodi-cals. Fodor may be usefully supplemented with the Biographical Dictionary ofParapsychology, ed. Helene Pleasants (Garret t Publications/Helix Press, 1964);a number of occultists, prophets, and clairvoyants are included, with bibliogra-phies and addresses.Together Cavendish, Spence, Fodor, and Pleasants supply a considerablebody of information. Among more specialized reference works, th e followingare of value: H. P. Blavatksy, A Theosophical Glossary (London: TheosophicalPublishing Society, 18 92 ; numerous reprints); Norman Blunsdon, A PopularDictionary of Spiritualism (*Citadel, 1963);J. A. S. Collin de Plancy, Diction-naire infernal (2 vols., 1818),from which a trivial selection has been translatedby Wade Baskin as Dictionary of Demonology (Philosophical Library, 1965);Gustav Davidsons delightful A Dictionary of Angels (Free Press, 1967); FrankGaynor, ed., Dictionary ofMysticism (Philosophical Library, 19 53 ); and ArthurEdward Waite, A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry (2 vols., rev. ed., n.d.; Uni-versity Books, 1970).

Practicing occultists often publish compendia of occult lore and techniqueswhich normally contain more information than do the brief encyclopedia entriesThe earliest such compendium for our period is Francis Barrett, The Magus, or

73 1 lo3


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7321104 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUR ECelestial Intelligencer; Being a Co m plete Sy ste m of Occult Philosophy (2 vols.,18 01 ; reprinted in one volume w ith an important introduction by Tim othy&Arch Sm ith, University B ooks, 19 67 ). Barrett was prom inent in the R om anticrevival of magjc an d on e of the first to exten d the po pularity of Cabalism to awider audience; his influe ntia l bo ok is replete with details on natural magic, tal-ismans, alchem y, numerology, magnetism, w itchcraft, C abalism, angelology, anddemonology. Sepharial (Walter R. Old, a former Theosophist) , A Manual ofOccultism (London: Rider, 1910 ) is now difficult to obtain ; Zolar (Bruce King),The Encyclopedia of Ancient and Forbidden Knowledge (Los Angeles: Nash,1970) is th e mo st recent addit ion to this tradition. In 1 9 7 2 University B ookswill pub lish A rth ur Ed w ard Waites Com plete Manual of O ccult D ioination ( 2vols., reprin ting pseud onym ous works of 188 9 and 1 912 ) . Walter B. and LitzkaR. Gibson have written an explicitly simplified and m odernized intr od ucti on inThe Co m plete Illustrated Book of the Psychic Sciences (Doubleday, 1966 ;*Pocket Books, 19 68 ). Sepa rate chapters describe the basic proced ures, princi-ples of interpreta tion, and in some cases more than anyo ne could wish to knowabou t Astrology, Carto m ancy , Colorology ,Dice Divination, Dom ino Divination,Dreams, Gra pholo gy, Molesophy (mo les), Num erology, P almistry, Phrenology,Physiognomy, R adiesthesia (divining rods, pend ulum s, etc.), Sup erstitions,Tasseography (tea cup reading), Te lep ath y, an d Yoga. A fascinating initial chap-ter guides on e through mo re outm od ed forms of divination. My favorite isPhy llorhod om ancy , which judges th e success of ventures from the soun d of rosepetals being slapped against th e palm of th e han d.Waites The Occult Sciences (18 91 ; Londo n: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, n.d.(1923) ; Dut ton , 19 23 ) ; and Richard Cavendishs Th e Black Art s (Putnam, 1967;*Capricorn, 19 68 ). Waite examines the principles underlying black an d whitemagic, the co mp osition of talismans, th e divining rod, and the Cabala, as well asthe claims of mystics, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Mesmerism, Spiritualism, andThe osop hy. Cavendish has a goo d initial chap ter on th e principles of magic.Sub seque nt chapte rs outline th e essentials of num erolog y, the Cabala, alchemy,astrology, r itual magic, and witchcraft an d S atanism, with some a tten tion beinggiven t o historical development as well. Th e bibliography while no t large is useful.Finally, a tten tion must be called to The Aquarian Guide to O ccu lt, M ystical,Religious, Magical Lo nd on and A ro un d, ed. Francoise Strachan (Lon don: *Aquar-ian Press, 1970),which lists and describes some 345 groups, teachers, institutions,publishers, boo kstores, and m agazines, mostly in th e L ond on area , with co m-plete addresses. Brief articles on various occult societies, am ong the m th e DruidOrder and th e G olden Daw n, and examples of talismans an d magic spells con-clude this fascinating volume.

More critical analyses of the occult ar ts can be found in A rthur Edw ard

111. General H istories o f Magic a nd O ccultismLynn Thorndikes A History of Magic and Experimen tal Science ( 8 vols.;Columbia, 19 23 -19 58 ), the only large-scale history of m agic, is an exhaustiveaccou nt, a store hous e of bibliographical an d biographical detail, which stresses


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THE HISTORY OF MOD ERN OCCULTISMthe often stimulating impact of magic on the rise of experimental science. Thebasic impulse behind both disciplines, Thorndike contends, is the desire to manip-ulate nature. Thorndike ends his account with the seventeenth century victoryof modern science, but it is essential reading for the background of modernoccultism. Unfortunately, Thorndike does very little with the analysis of ideas.His earlier work, The Place of Magic in the Intellectual H istor y o f Euro pe (*Co-lumbia, 1905), is somewhat more analytical, but in spite of its promising title,it is almost wholly confined to the period of Late Antiquity.

Of short histories there is no end. Those which were published during thefirst half of the nineteenth century mostly fell under the twin spells of Mesmer-ism and positivism, explaining or reducing magical and psychical phenomena tothe operations of animal magnetism. See, for example, J. C. Colquhoun, A nH istory of Magic, W itchcraft, and An im d Magnetism (2 vols.; London: Long-man, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1851),and Joseph Ennemoser, The H istoryo f Ma g i c , trans. from the German ed. (1843) by William Howitt (2 vols.; 1854;University Books, 1970). Ennemoser emphasizes that his book is entirelyoccupied with those mesmeric appearances which formerly were called magical,and now magnetic. As a history, it extends past the Middle Ages only sketchilyto deal with Boehme and Swedenborg. Mary Howitt has added to the Englishedition some 150 pages of documented cases of apparitions, vampirism, secondsight, and witchcraft. Strictly speaking, Eusgbe Salverte, The Philosophy ofMagic, Prodigies, and A pp are nt M iracles, trans. Anthony Todd Thomson (2 vols.;Harper, 1847), is not a history, but it adopts an historical viewpoint nonethelesswhich echoes some of the more extreme contentions of the French Enlighten-ment:. Magical effects were created by priests on the basis of their highly devel-oped but secret scientific knowledge to maintain control over the populace.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, two French histories were pub-lished which are still in print today in English translations. Eliphas LZvi (pseu-donym of the Abbg Alphonse Louis Constant) published his Histoire de la magiein 1860;Arthur Edward Waite translated it as The History of Magic (London:Rider, 1913;numerous reprints, most recently *Rider and *Samuel Weiser, 1969).Waites analytical preface traces L6vis strange shift in loyalties from an earlierbelief in the reality of the magical arts to his utter condemnation of all suchpractices in this book. L6vi does believe, however, that magic as the science ofachieving equilibrium (as distinct from the practice of rites) may ultimately leadto the reconciliation of science and religion. Gvishistory is frequently unre-liable, but it has been influential and it is still useful as a guide to the numerousFrench occult groups of the time. Paul Christian (pseudonym of ChritienPitois), Histoire de la magie, appeared in 1870;the English edition, under thegeneral editorship of Ross Nichols, was published as The H istory and Practice ofMagic (2 vols.; London: Forge Press, 1952;Citadel, 1963, in both one-volumeand two-volume eds.; *Citadel, 1969). The original French text has been some-what abridged, revised, and augmented with new material by Lewis Spence,Gerald Yorke, and other authorities, and a biography of Christian by the editor.The new material is of value, but the book is not well integrated; each occult artis treated separately, with some duplication of historical material, and the principles

7331105


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7341106 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUREof organization are not always apparent.

Most brief twentieth-century histories are marred by amateurishness andunfamiliarity with scholarly procedures. Of the better ones, the best by far isKurt Seligmann, The History ofMagic (Pantheon, 1948; also published as TheMirror of Magic; reprinted as Magic, Supernaturalism, and Religion, *UniversalLibrary, 1968). This is a detailed and thoughtful survey from Mesopotamia tothe eighteenth century which wisely foregoes any forays into Asian practices.The section on alchemy, a particularly difficult subject, is handled very ably.The bibliography and index are serviceable, and the text is illustrated with 255pictures selected by the author, a Surrealist painter. Other worthwhile shorttreatments are C. A. Burlands intelligent, sympathetic, and usefully illustratedThe Magical Arts: A Short History (Horizon, 1966), by a former member of theBritish Museum staff; L. de GCrin-Ricard,Histoire de loccultisme (Payot, 1947) ,from Mesopotamia to the present, with brief bibliographies; and W. B. Crow,A History ofMugic, Witchcraft and Occultism (London: Aquarian Press, 1968;No. Hollywood, Calif.: *Wilshire, 1971), overly ambitious and conceptually con-fused but packed with detail including dates for nearly all persons discussed.(London: Rider, 1960) and Jkrbme-Antoine Rony, A History ofMagic, trans.Bernard Denvir (Walker, 1962; *Tower, 1971) analyze the principles of magic.Ronys very brief volume also considers the relationship of magic to religion,science, and art, while Bouissons, over 300 pages in length, is rich in illustrativedetails and offers a comparative viewpoint. Robert Somerlott, (Here,Mr. Split-foot: An Informal Exploration into Modern Occultism (Viking, 1971) managesto be informal without being sensationalistic; it is informative but covers onlySpiritualism, psychical research, and prophecy. Spirits, Stars and Spells: TheProfits andPeri2s ofMagic, by L.Sprague de Camp and Catherine C. de Camp(Canaveral, 1966) traces its subject from prehistory to the present in a debunkingand frequently irritating manner; its details are not always accurate, but there isan excellent bibliography.

Both Maurice Bouisson, Magic: Its Rites and History, trans. G. Almayrac

IV. Occult Sciences and ThemesOf the occult sciences, only magic and alchemy have been treated exten-

sively by scholars. The magic of preliterate peoples has been of particular concernto anthropologists, who since the days of Tylor and Frazer have debated themerits of the term, the existence of the phenomenon, and its function in relationto religion, cultural and intellectual evolution, social cohesion, and technology.A general summary of the debate, with a not very persuasive interpretation ofmagic as a world view, is given by Murray and Rosalie Wax, The Notion ofMagic, Current Anthropology, 4 (December 1963) , 495-518 , with appendedcritiques by other scholars. More recently, see Dorothy Hammond, Magic: AProblem in Semantics, American Anthropologist, 7 2 (December 1970 ), 1349-1356 . On Western magic, two excellent studies by E.M. Butler should be con-sulted. Ritual Magic (Cambridge, 1949; *Noonday, 1959; *Newcastle, 1971)traces the ceremonial element in magic from ancient times through Medieval


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISMgimoires and Faustian adepts to Barretts The Magus and nineteenth-centurySatanism. Butler contends that the Faustus story was a mutation of the figureof the magician with his diabolical pact in to the persona of the lost soul aspiringto power and forbidden knowledge. Her earlier The M y t h of the M a p s (Cam-bridge and Mamillan, 1948) places the Faust figure within the tradition of themagus, from its likely origins in seasonal rituals and resurrected gods to Zoro-aster and Christ, Merlin and Faust, Mme. Blavatsky and Rasputin.in two bibliographical surveys by Allen G. Debus: The Significance of theHistory of Early Chemistry, Cahiers dHistoire M on di de , 9 (1965) , 39-58, andhis introduction to the reprint edition of Elias Ashmole, Theatrum Chem icumBritannicum (1652) (Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1967), pp. dv-xlix. Thebest introductory history of alchemy is, in my opinion, F. Sherwood TaylorsThe Alchemists (Henry Schuman, 1949; *Collier, 1962) , which is written by anexpert who, like Debus, ends his account in the early modern period. MirceaEliades The Forge and the C rucible, trans. Stephen Corrin, (Harper, 1962), andthe bibliographical supplement, The Forge and the Crucible: A Postscript,History of Religions, 8 (August 1968), 74-88 (reprinted as an appendix t o the*Harper Torchbook edition of the book, 1971), do specifically relate the uniuersimaginaire of alchemy to modern thought and also to folklore, the developmentof metal-working, and initiation in early civilizations. Ronald D. Gray, Goethethe Alchemist (Cambridge, 1952) indicates something of alchemical thoughtfrom the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century. The influence of al-chemy on the thought of C. G. Jung, who more than anyone else has been re-sponsible for the academic respectability of the subject, is carefully examinedby the Jungian Aniela Jaffg, From the Life and Work of C . G . u n g , trans. R. F.C. Hull (*Harper Colophon, 1971) and by the historian of science Walter Pagel,Jungs Views on Alchemy,Isis, 39, Pt. 1-2 (1948), 44-48.present is P. I. H. Naylor, Astrology: An Historical Examination (London:Robert Maxwell, 1967). See also Lynn Thorndike, The Place of Astrology inthe History of Science,Isis, 46 (1955), 273-278. There are many scholarlyworks on the astrology of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and seventeenth cen-tury, but until recently there was nothing of substance on the modern period.Now there is Ellic Howes authoritative Astrolo gy: A Recent History Includingthe Untold StoTy o f I t s Ro le in World WarII (Walker, 1968) , originally publishedin England as UraniasChildren: The Strange World of the Astrologers (London:William Kimber, 1967) . The first half is a compact history of British, German,and French astrology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the second halffocuses on K Ernst Krafft, long erroneously assumed to be Hiders personalastrologer. Ake V. Strom, Scandinavian Belief in Fate: A Comparison betweenPre-Christian and Post-Christian Times, in Helmer Ringgren, ed., Fatalistic Be-liefs in R eligion, Folklore, and Literature (Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis,11;Stockholm: *Almqvist & Wiksell, 1967), 63-88, with references t o Germanscholarship on astrological history, uses belief in astrology as a form of modernfatalism and finds that fatalism, although of different kinds, played a greater

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Alchemical scholarship can be followed through the pages of A m b i x and

A brief but reliable history of Western astrology from ancient times to the


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7361108 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUR Erole in both pre-Christian Norse religion and the secular twentieth century thanin Christian times.

Christopher Butler, Number Symbolism (Barnes & Noble, 1970) xaminesthe development of number symbolism and aspects of numerology with particu-lar reference t o literature. On the general history of prophecy, two popularworks are of interest: H. J. Forman, The Story of Prophecy (Farrar & Rine-hart, 1936) nd Justine Glass, They Foresaw the Future: The Sto r y of F u f -filled Prophecy (Putnam, 1969; Berkley, 1970). Martin Ebons Prophecy inOur Time (New American Library and *Signet Mystic, 1968), ntelligently dis-cusses the subject from a broad perspective, giving consideration to Edgar Cayceand Jeane Dixon, Freud and Jung, precognition and futurology; there is a goodbibliography.

Modern occultism draws upon a multitude of themes and doctrines fromboth Western and Eastern civilizations. The influence of India, Egypt, Tibet,China, and Japan are omitted here, however, as the bibliography is too large tobe covered in a short essay; it is also difficult to distinguish purely occult in-fluences from the East in contrast to religious and mystical ones. Gnosticism,Hermetism, Cabalism, and lost Biblical gospels, however, cannot be omitted.Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion (2nd rev. ed.; Boston: *Beacon, 1963) s areliable introduction t o the profound difficulties of characterizing Gnosticism.Jonas surveys sources, teachings, history, and symbolism, and also considersGnosticisms connections with modern thought. Cabalism has been the subjectof many publications by Gershom Scholem; see in particular hisMajor Trendsin Jewish Mysticism (3rd rev. ed.; Schocken, 1954, *1961). Scholem himself isthe subject of one chapter in Herbert Weiners 9% Mystics: The Kabbafa Today(Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969; Collier, 1971). The stories behind TheAquarian Gospel ofJesus the Christ, Oahspe, and other lost Gospels andnew Bibles, some of them hoaxes, others created through automatic writing,are told by the Biblical scholar Edgar J . Goodspeed,Modern Apocrypha (Boston:Beacon, 1956). The Hermetic doctrines ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, theGreek name for the Egyptian scribe deity Thoth, are traced superbly in FrancesA . Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (University of ChicagoPress, 1964; Vintage, 1969). Dr. Yates follows the story past Brunos deathinto the seventeenth century when the Hermetic writings were first authorita-tively dated as post-Christian.

The question of historical tradition is an important one for modern occult-ists who frequently write on the evolution of man and the cosmos through earliercycles and forgotten civilizations. Atlantis plays a role in these works. See L.Sprague de Camp, Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, andLiterature (Gnome Press, 1954; ev. ed., *Dover, 1970),which again is causticand debunking in tone, especially in dealing with the occultists. It contains amassive bibliography. On occult theories of time, there is J. B. Priestleys popu-lar work, Man and Time (London: Aldus, 1964; Dell, 1968),which devotesconsiderable space to precognition and dreams, Dunnes theory of the serialuniverse, and an entire chapter to The Esoteric School of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky,Maurice Nicoll, and J. G. Bennett.


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISMThe historian Gerald J. Gruman has published A History ofldeas aboutthe Prolongation of Life: The Evolution ofProlongevity H ypotheses to 1800(*Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 56, Pt. 9, December

1966). The idea is explored in the myths of Methuselah and the Fountain ofYouth, Taoism, alchemy, and Enlightenment advocates of progress. A volumeon the period since 1800 is promised. More generally, see Jacques Choron, Deathand Western Thought (*Collier, 1963). John Passmore, The Per fectability ofMan (Scribner, 1970) is a massive history of sacred and secular ideas in the West,including Joachimite hopes of a Third Kingdom, teachings of the Neoplatonistsand mystics, and the current new mysticism. Part of the lat ter chapter waspublished as Paradise Now: The Logic of the New Mysticism, Encounter , 35(November 1970), 3-21; whether what he discusses qualifies as mysticism ishighly debatable.Walker, Reincarnation: A S t u d y of Forgotten Truth (1888;rev. ed., Pasadena,Calif.: Theosophical University Press, 1923; University Books, 1965) is by anardent Theosophist who argues vigorously in favor of the concept and traces itthrough ancient, Oriental, and Western civilizations. Popular works of distinctioninclude Gina Cerminara, Many Mansions (William Sloane, 1950; *Signet Mystic,1967), based on the Edgar Cayce readings, and Susy Smith, Reincarnation fo rthe Millions (Los Angeles: Sherbourne, 1967; *Dell, 1969),which surveysvarious teachings on the subject, including Mme. Blavatsky, Swedenborg, andM a n Kardec. The Zeitschrift f i r Religions-und Geistesgeschichte, 9:2 (1957)is entirely devoted to reincarnation, with articles on its role in Biblical andearly Christian tradition, Sri Aurobindo, Islam, Anthroposophy ,parapsychology,and (by Ernst Benz) in the philosophy and literature of German Classicism andRomanticism. Probably of greater significance are three outstanding anthologies.The oldest is Eva Martin, The Ring of Return (London: Philip Allan, n.d. (1927);University Books, 1963), which takes a strict view of reincarnation as pre-exist-ence on earth. She has arranged her texts in chronological chapters from ancienttimes to 1927, but the dates of individual selections are not given and the bibliog-raphical data are incomplete. Joseph Head and S.L. Cranston together haveedited two excellent anthologies, Reincam ation, A n Eust-West Antholog y (JulianPress, 1961; *Quest, 1968) and Reincarnation in World Th ough t Uulian Press,1967). Both take texts from all periods and cultures, including opinions pro andcon, and interpret reincarnation very broadly. Of the two, the second is prefer-able as being larger, reprinting the more significant selections from the former,and providing more complete bibliographical information.

On the occult constitution of man, which has a bearing on reincarnation,there are two works for earlier periods. G. R. S. Mead, The Doctrine of the SubtleBody in Western Tradition (London: John M. Watkins, 1919, 1967; *Quest,1967) is a short study by the former Theosophical scholar who presents thespirit-body and radiant-body concepts of Late Platonic thinkers and Christiannotions regarding the resurrection-body . For the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies there is now Ernst Wilhelm Kammerer, DQSLeib -Seele-G is t Problem beiParucelsus un d einigen A uto re n d es 17. Jahrhunderts (Kosmosophie, 111; Wies-

7371109

Reincarnation has so far received little attention from scholars. E. D.


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7381110 JOURNAL O F POPULAR CULTUREbaden: *Franz Steiner, 1971) , a thoroughly documented analysis of the three-fold distinction between body, soul, and spirit which is also basic t o the twentieth-century occultist Rudolf Steiner.

The concept of initiation and rebirth, central to both mysticism andoccultism, is explored with insight and vast learning by Mircea Eliade, Birth andRebirth: The Religious Meanings of Initiation in Human Culture, trans. WillardR. Trask (Harper, 1958),reprinted as Rites and Symbols oflnit iation: TheMysteries of Birth and Rebirth (*Harper Torchbooks, 1965); see also his Initia-tion in the Modern World, in his The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion(University of Chicago Press, 1969), 112-126. The general literature on secretsocieties (see La Barres crisis cults bibliography for specific studies) is by con-trast extremely superficial. Arkon Daraul, A History of Secret Societies (Citadel,1962; *Pocket Books, 1969) is indifferently researched and oddly organized;Charles W. Heckethorn, The Secret Societies of All Ages (2 vols., rev. ed., 1897;University Books, 1965)is seriously outdated; Secret Societies, ed. NormanMacKenzie (London: Aldus, 196 7; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968 ; *Collier,1971), discusses only three groups of occult interest: the Mysteries, Rosicru-cianism, and Freemasonry. Arthur Edward Waite, The Brotherhood of the RosyCross (London: Rider, 192 4; University Books, 1961) is still the only compre-hensive scholarly history in English. It is indispensable for its analysis of symbol-ism and ritual (Waites forte), and it is helpful on matters of organizational historyand twentieth century developments. If utterly fails, however, to consider itssubject contextually. By contrast, a model study is Klaus Epsteins The Genesisof German Conseruatism (Princeton, 1966) , ch. 2, Masons, Illuminati, andRosicrucians, which places these organizations fully into the religious and polit-ical contexts of late eighteenth century Germany and indicates their politicalorientations. Epsteins notes and bibliography constitute the most useful guideto German scholarship on Masonry and Rosicrucianism. On the Masons, Hein-rich Schneider, Quest fo r Mysteries: The Masonic Background for Literature inEighteenth-Century Germany (Ithaca: Cornell, 1947) , should be consulted forits details and bibliography. Schneider attempts to assess the role of Masonicsocieties in the drift from the Enlightenment but fails to arrive at any significantconclusions or to take the social context sufficiently into account.A final class of thematic studies is concerned with the relationship betweenoccultism and literature. Whether in fact the occult has had a greater appeal toliterary figures than t o other artists and thinkers is not yet established, nor is thenature o f that appeal. Is it an aesthetic concern with the literary possibilities ofrelatively unexplored symbol-systems, a matter of personal belief, an expressionof disorientation, o r some combination of these and other factors? Whatever theanswer literary studies of the occult interests of modern writers are plentiful; thesewill be listed in the appropriate chronological sections of Part V below. Surveysand general explorations of the theme, which qualify for comment here, varywildly in quality and reliability. DCsiree Hirst, Hidden Riches: TraditionalSymbolism from the Renaissance to Blake (Barnes & Noble, 19 64), which hasbeen well-received on the whole, and Constantin Bila, La croyance ic la magie auX V I I I e sihcle en France dans les contes, romans et trait& (J .Gamber, 1925),


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISMmostly fall before our period. A work of considerable insight for both Frenchand German Romantic literature is Gwendolyn Bays, The Orphic Vision: SeerPoets f ro m N ovd is to R imbaud (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964).The first half is a general study, the second focuses on Rimbaud. The occultbearings on the concept of poet as priest-seer is clearly demonstrated by Profes-sor Bays. The writings of Denis Saurat are more idiosyncratic. Both Literatureand the Occ ult Tra dition: Studies in Philosophical Po etr y, trans. Dorothy Bol-ton (D id Press, 1930; ort Washington, N. Y.: Kennikat Press, 1966) nd Godso f t h e P e op le (London: John Westhouse, 1947) eflect the mind o f a true be-liever and should be used with caution. The former work is the more general,with several essays on philosophical poetry, another on Spenser, and one onOccultism and Literature which considers Mme. Blavatsky, Cabalism, andHermetism. The second volume concentrates on several aspects of the themeof reintegration as found especially in Spenser, Milton, Blake, and Hugo. Aspecial issue ofpaperson Language and L iterature, 4 Fall 1968)was devotedto The Arts and Esoteric Lore, with essays on Horace Wdpole, Blake, Cole-ridge, Kaflca, and Hofmannsthal, among others. In several, however, the connec-tion with esoteric lore is not apparent.The Way Down and Out: The Occ ult in Sym bol ist Literature (Ithaca: Cornell,1959;Greenwood Press, 1968), wildly inaccurate work in its first five chapterswhich purport t o trace the history of occultism. Nor is it very reliable-especiallyin its quotation and translation of French texts-in the succeeding chapters onoccultism and the symbol; Blake and Hugo; N e r d , Baudelaire, and Rimbaud;Huysmans, Villiers, and Mallarm:; Yeats; and Eliot. It is hardly surprising thatsuch excesses have prompted an at times violent reaction from hostile critics.Harold Bloom, Myth, Vision, Allegory, Yale Review , 54 (Autumn 1964), 143-149, review essay, denies that there is any occultism in Blake at all, asserts thatYeats was a delighted charlatan who at least half-believed his own charlatanry,and professes to find no value in books by Desiree Hirst, Kathleen Raine, andothers (Senior is not mentioned), and only a little in The Orphic Vision. A morebalanced assessment in the form of a review of Kathleen Raines DefendingAn cient Springs (Oxford, 1968) s Unreasonable Gods, Tim es Literary Supple-m e n t , No. 3,463 July 11, 1968), 717-719, hich probes the whole question ofsurrogate religions and new myths in relation to Miss Raines own methods andvalues.

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The extreme pole of occult interpretation was reached in John Seniors

V. Occultism from Romanticism to the Presentin the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. The nearest equivalent happens to con-cern the earliest period in our survey, the Romantic. Auguste Viatte, Les sourcesoccul tes du romantisme: Illuminisme-Thbsophieosophie I 770-1820 (2 vols., Champion,1928, eissued 1965) s restricted primarily to France and to the relationship ofilluminism and theosophy to the origins of literary Romanticism. The occultismof the 1770-1 00 pre-Romantic period (Martinism, Swedenborgianism, secretsocieties, magnetism, Lavater, Cagliostro, Saint-Martin) is seen as a reaction

There are no comprehensive histories of occultism for any significant period


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7401112 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUREagainst the dessicating spirit of Enlightenment rationalism in the form of a re-vitalization of such traditional themes as millenarianism, interior Christianity,metempsychosis, spirits of the dead, and an emanationist theory of creation.The occultism of the Empire generation of 1800-1820 de Maistre, Mme. deStakl and her circle, Fabre dOlivet, Mme. de Kriidener, Ballanche, et al.) repre-sents a reworking of these themes into personal visions-often of political orreligious restoration-which as aesthetic creations inspired authors such as Nodierand Sinancourt. Nothing comparable to Viattes study exists in English. Abrief survey which overlaps with Viattes but approaches the subject from a dif-ferent perspective is in D. G. Charltons Secular Religions in France 1815-1870(Oxford, 1963).

A rather extensive literature is accumulating about the figures of Sweden-borg, Mesmer, Cagliostro, and Saint-Martin, the renovators of eighteenth-centuryoccultism. On Swedenborg the best work in English is now Inge Jonsson, EmanuelSwedenborg, trans. Catherine Djurkou (Twayne, 1971), n admirable expositionand analysis from the viewpoint of the history of ideas by a non-Swedenborgian.The authors annotated bibliography gives detailed guidance to the Swedish, Ger-man, French, and English secondary sources and to English translations of Sweden-borgs writings. Among specialized works, Ernst Benz, Swedenborg in Deutsch-land (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1947) hould be mentioned for its de-tailed account of Swedenborgs impact on Kant. For many years, w. R. H. Trow-bridge, Cagliostro: The Splendour and Misery ofa Master of Magic (Dutton, 1910)was the standard work; now, however, there is Francois Ribadeau Dumas, Cag-liostro, trans. Elisabeth Abbot (Orion Press, 1967). The most recent work ofsubstance on Saint-Martin is Robert Amadou, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin etle Martinisme (Editions du Griffon dor, 1946). In English, there are two booksby Arthur Edward Waite which should be consulted: the lengthy The Life ofLouis Claude de Sain t-Martin, the Unknown Philosopher (London: Philip Wellby,1901), eprinted as The UnknownPhilosopher (Blauvelt, N. Y . : *Rudolf SteinerPublications, 1970), nd the brief account Saint-Martin the French Mystic andthe Story of Modern Martinism (London: Rider, 1922).

Mesmer has been written about most recently by D. M. Walmsley, AntonMesmer (London: Robert Hale, 1967). Walmsleys documented biography deniesthat Mesmer was in any sense a charlatan; the author is a doctor. Robert Darn-tons groundbreakingMesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1968: *Schocken, 1970) s a study in the popularculture of the 1780s.Darnton contends that Mesmer was ranked in public opin-ion of the decade almost o n a level with Turgot, Franklin, and Cagliostro as oneof the most talked about individuals. Darnton demonstrates that Mesmersstaunchest defenders saw a scientific cosmology in his theories. A few evenviewed it as a means of combatting establishment scientific and literary bodies,and derived from it a radical political theory by which virtue and vice werelinked to the mechanism of the universe. In his final chapter, From Mesmerto Hugo, Darnton goes over some of the same ground as Viatte and indicatesin his fashion how Mesmerism worked in the transition from the Enlightenment


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISM 741/113to Romanticism. Two lesser figures who appear in Viatte have also been studiedin the last few years. Antoine Faivre, Kirchberger e t lilluminisme d u XVIZIesi&le (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966) is a full treatment of the illuministwhose correspondence with Saint-Martin is a major source for the period. HoeneW ronski: h e h ilo so ph ie de la crgation, ed. Philippe dArcy (Editions Seghers,1970), is an anthology and brief study of the French-Polish occult philosopher.German Romantic occultism can best be studied through the writings ofErnst Benz. In addition to the book on Swedenborg and the article on reincar-nation, his Die Mystik in der Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, in hisSch elling Werden und W irken seines De nken s (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1955),7-27, is particularly noteworthy for indicating the essential connections betweenmysticism and German idealism. It surveys five sources of mystical influence onthe idealists: the Medieval German mystics, Boehme and his rediscoverers (es-pecially Saint-Martin), Naturphilosophie (the occultist Paracelsus), Swedenborg,and Indian mysticism. Recently Benz has published Les sources m ystiques de faphiloso phie rom antique allemande (J. Vrin, 1968) which incorporates some ofthe earlier essay and adds detailed studies of the Cabala and Saint-Martin; thenotes are valuable bibliographical sources.mostly has to be gleaned from previously cited thematic studies, the introductionto Barretts The M agus, works on individual authors, and histories of hypnotismand Spiritualism, to be cited below. Peter L. Thorslev, Jr., The Byronic Hero:Types and Prototypes (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962) is agood introduction to the Gothic villain, Satan, Faust, and other symbolic Ro-mantic personages whose relationship to the occult is obvious. Thorslev doesnot limit himself to English literature, nor does Mario Praz, The Romantic Agon y,trans. Angus Davidson (2nd ed.; London and New York: Oxford, 1951; *Merid-ian, 1956;*Galaxy, 1970),whose second chapter, The Metamorphoses of Satan,is informative.

ForAmerica the first fifty pages of J. Stillson Judah, The History andPhilosophy of the Metaphysical Mo vem ents in Am erica (Philadelphia: Westmin-ster, 1967) deal with the impact of Swedenborg, European occultism, Trans-cendentalism, and the seer of Poughkeepsie, Andrew Jackson Davis, on thedevelopment of essentially post-Romantic currents of Spiritualism, Theosophy,and New Thought. The profusion of cults and utopian experiments in the periodbefore the Civil War is described in Alice Felt Tylers classic Freedoms Ferment(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1944; *Harper Torchbooks, 1962);for further references, see Smiths bibliographical article on millenarianism.On the whole, scholarship on Romantic occultism has concentrated onindividual literary figures. The following works are representative; GeoffroyAtkinson, Les idees de Balzac d a ph s La com edie humaine (5 vols.; Genthe:Droz, 1949-1950),a composite of extracts arranged by topic, with Sciencesoccultes in vol. 3; Henri Evans, Louis Lam bert e t laphi losophie d e Bakac(JoseCorti, 1951);Jean Pommier, La myst ique de Baudelaire (1932; Genhe:Slatkine Reprints, 1967); Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tra dition (2 vols.; Princeton1968);Enid Starkie, Petrus Bore1 the Lycanthrope (Norfolk, Conn.: New Direc-

Information on English Romantic occultism (as distinct from mysticism)


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742/114 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUR Etions, 1954),brings out the interest in Satanism among French writers of the1830s;Katharine H. Porter, Spiritualism in the Browning Circle (Lawrence:University of Kansas Press, 1958);S. B. Liljegren, Bulwer-Lyttons Novels andIsis Unveiled (Lund, Sweden: Carl Blom, 1957),suggests that Mme. BlavatskysIsis Unveiled shows considerable indebtedness t o this authors occult novels;Antoine Faivre, Eckartshausen e t la Thtosophie Chietienne (C. Klincksieck,1969),good also for the general background of illuminism and alchemy; KennethWalter Cameron, Young Emersons Transcendental Vision (Hartford, Conn.:Transcendental Books, 1971);Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, The Teaching of CharlesFourier (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), thefirst study to do justice to the occult themes in the utopian socialists writings;Ronald D. Gray, Goethe the Alchemist (cited earlier); Alice Raphael, Goetheand the Philosophers Stone (Helix Press/Garrett Publications, 1965);DenisSaurat, Victor Hugo e t Les dieux du peuple (La Colombe, 1948), tw o studies inone, the first devoted to Hugo as an occult thinker, the latter the French text ofthe previously mentioned Gods of the People; Auguste Viatte, Victor Hugo e tles illumines de son temps (Montreal: Les Editions de lArbre, 1942), outlinesin its first 100 pages the general occult milieu of the 1840s and the 1850s;Hein-rich Straumann,Justinus Kerner und der Okkultismus in der deutschen Romantik(Horgen-Z&ich and Leipzig: Verlag der Munsterpresse, 1928);Jean Richer,Gerard de N e r d e t les doctrines isotiriques (Editions du Griffon &or, 1947);Barton Levi St. Armand, Poes Sober Mystification: The Uses of Alchemy inThe Gold-Bug, Poe Studies, 4 (June 1971), 1-7;Coleman 0 .Parsons, Witch-craft and Demonology in Scotts Fiction (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1964);Louis Guinet, De la Franc-maconnerie mystique au sacerdoce: ou la vie roman-tique de Friedrich-Ludwig-Zacharias Werner ( I 768-1823) (Caen: Universite deCaen, 1964).marked by the gradual replacement of Mesmerism by Spiritualism. Mesmerismwas at first popularly associated more with psychic phenomena (frequently re-ported in the early literature on hypnotic trances) than with therapeutic utility.Only when psi became the stock in trade of Spiritualistic mediums did Mesmer-ism tend more in the direction of hypnosis as a form of medical therapy. Abnor-mal Hypnotic Phenomena: A Survey of Nineteenthcentury Cases,ed. Eric J.Di ngwdl(4 vols.; London: J . & A. Churchill, 1967-1968;Barnes & Noble, 1968),exhaustively traces this development within specific national contexts, Volume1 on France, Volume 2 on Belgium and The Netherlands, Germany, and Scandi-navia, Volume 3 Russia and Poland, Italy, and Spain, Portugal, and Latin America,and Volume 4 United States and Great Britain. Mental healing or mind cure con-tinued long after Mesmerism peaked in popularity. An excellent older historyis Frank Podmore, From Mesmer to Christian Science: A Short History ofMentalHealing (University Books, 1963), originally published as Mesmerism and ChristianScience (London: Methuen; Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs, 1909). Judahs volumeon the metaphysical movements treats a number of such groups, including NewThought, Unity, Religious Science, and Christian Science, as does Charles S.Braden, These Also Believe: A Survey of Modern American Cults and Minority

The major path from Romantic occultism to that of the mid-century is


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISMReligious Mov em ents (Macmdlan, 1949); both also discuss Spiritualism andTheosophy. In addition, Braden has written Spirits in Re belli on : The Rise andDevelopment of New Thought (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press,1963) in which he examines the global impact of New Thought. Supplementingthese volumes is Donald Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: A St ud y of the Ameri-can Qu est fo r H ealth, Wealth and Personal Po w er fio m M ary Baker Eddy toNorm an Vincent Peale (Doubleday, 1965; *Anchor, 1966).

Although the story has been told many times. no single account of thehistory of Spiritualism is entirely satisfactory. Slater Brown, The Heyda y ofSpiritualism (Hawthorn, 1970), the most recent effort, is a clearly written ac-count for the general reader, with a useful bibliography. Brown treats the pre-1848 background in detail, bu t confines his account of Spiritualism per se tonineteenth-century America. Geoffrey K. Nelson, Spiritualism and Society(Schocken, 1969) is an uneven effort to combine sociology and history. It con-tains an unoriginal history of early American Spiritualism, a more valuable his-tory of the less familiar British Spiritualism to the present, and a sociologicalanalysis which becomes bogged down in church-sect dichotomies and uncleardiscussions of anomie and charisma. It fails t o shed much light on the absenceof traditional religious structure in the movement, but its statistical tables andbibliography are important sources. Emma Hardinge (Britten),Modern Ameri-can Spiritualism (1870;University Books, 1970), an early history and one ofthe most detailed, is written by a confirmed Spiritualist who was not abovetampering with her sources. Frank Podmores Mediums o f the 1 9th Century(2 vols.; University Books,1963), first published as M odern Spiritualism: AHistory and a Criticism (London: Methuen, 1902), remains the most compre-hensive treatment for the past century, with attention afforded American,English, French, and German developments. The author shows a notable reluc-tance t o accept the validity of mediumistic phenomena. Earl Wesley Fornell,The Unhappy Medium: Spiritualism and the Life ofM argar et F o x (Austin:University of Texas Press, 1964), is a brief documented biography of the woman,who with her sister was the focus (or source) of the Hydesville rappings in 1848which sparked the rise of American Spiritualism. There appears to be no sub-stantial work on Allan Kardec, the founder of French Spiritualism (or Spiritism),who combined it with reincarnationist teachings; the resulting mixture was laterassimilated by Cao-Dakm in Indochina and has become a dominant form ofBrazilian Spiritualism. A brief account of Kardec is contained in Yvonne Castel-Ian, Le spiritisme (Que-sais-je No. 641; Presses Universitaires de France, 1959).originated in England as a means for assessing the genuineness of Spiritualisticphenomena. An admirable history of The Founders o f Psychical Research hasbeen written by Alan Gauld (Schocken, 1968). Henry Sidgwick, F. W. H. Myers,and Edmund Gurney are examined within the context of materialism, skepticism,and religious longings of the Victorian age. Many of these same pioneers havecome under attack within the last decade for credulity, unreliable reporting, andeven collusion in fraud. Some of the attacks seem open to the same charges, andthe controversy has been a bitter one. Fo r a sample, see Trevor H. Halls attack,

7431115

Psychical research as an organized movement of scholars and scientists


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7441116 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUREThe Spiritualists: f i e Story of Sir William Crookes and Florence Cook (London:Duckworth, 1962) and the defense by R. G. Medhurst and K. M. Goldney,William Crookes and the Physical Phenomena of Mediumship, Proceedings ofthe Societyfor Psychid Research, 54 (March 1964), 25-157. ExtrusensoryPerception after Sixty Years by J. G. Pratt, J. B. Rhine, M. Burke Smith, andCharles E. Stuart (Boston: Bruce Humphries, 1940, 1966) contains a review ofESP experimental investigations from 1882 to 1940. A brief, up-to-date surveyis Louisa E. Rhine, The Establishment of Basic Concepts and Terminology inParapsychology, Journal of Parapsychology, 35 (March 1971), 34-56.

The formation of the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875 markeda rebirth of occultism in the technical sense of the term. Although the Societyattracted many articulate members, some of them Fabians and members ofParliament, scholars have paid little attention to it. One exception is Alvin BoydKuhn, Theosophy: A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom (Henry Holt, 1930),a non-Theosophical history which underlines those elements which are mostclosely connected to the American religious experience, a difficult task sincethere is nothing distinctively American about Theosophy except its birthplace.It is nevertheless a fairminded and reliable guide to nineteenth-century Theo-sophical history and doctrine. Josephine Ransoms A Short History of the Theo-sophical Society (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1938)can be recommended as a Theosophical history which takes the story to 1937.Judahs treatment of Theosophy in his volume on the metaphysical movementsis not on a par with his other chapters or with Bradens in These Also Believe,but it is still notable for its information on two Theosophical offshoots, AliceA. Baileys Arcane School and the Astara Foundation.

Biographies of Mme. Blavatsky, the founder of modern Theosophy, aremostly by non-Theosophists and hostile. Of these, the most readily accessibleis Gertrude Marvin Williams,Priestess of the Occult (Knopf, 1946), reprinted asMadame Blavatsky: Priestess of the Occult (*Lancer, n.d. (1970) ). The Hall ofMagic Mirrors: A Portrait of Madame Blavatsky, by Victor A. Endersby (CarltonPress, 1969), is so far the only non-Theosophical defense of her. From the Theo-sophical side, Personal Memoirs of H. P.Bkzvatsky, comp. Mary K. Neff (London:Hutchinson, 1937;Dutton, 1937; *Quest, 1967), constructs an autobiographyfrom H. P. B.s various writings and the memoirs of others. Virginia Hanson hasedited H. P. Bluvatsky and the Secret Doctrine: Commentaries on Her Contribu-tions to World Thought (Quest, 1971), a collection of eighteen brief evaluationsof The Secret Doctrine by Christmas Humphreys, F. L. Kunz, and other prominentTheosophists, several of them scientists. The second decisive personality in Theo-sophical history was Annie Besant, free-thinker, womens rights advocate, Fabiansocialist, and supporter of Indian Home Rule. Theodore Besterman, himself anerstwhile Theosophist, compiled A Bibliography of Annie Besant (London: TheTheosophical Society in England, 1924),which lists only her book publicationsthrough 1923. Besterman also wrote a biography, Mrs. Annie Besant: A ModemProphet (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1934). Gertrude Marvin Wil-liams The Passionate Pilgrim (Coward-McCann, 1931) is not reliable. The stan-dard biography is Arthur H. Nethercot, The First Five Lives ofAnnie Besant and


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISM 7451117The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant (University of Chicago Press, 1960-1963),an enormously detailed portrait of her complex personality and numerous activi-ties on almost a day-to-day basis; it is less satisfactory as an analysis of her ideas.Both H. P. B. and Annie Besant are depicted in Warren Sylvester Smiths TheLondon Heretics 1870-1914 London: Constable, 1967; Dodd, Mead, 1968)which surveys both non-Christians (secularists, positivists, Freethinkers, Spirit-ualists, Theosophists) and new Christians (Christian Socialists, Catholic Mod-ernists, Quakers, Unitarians, etc.).latter half of the nineteenth century. Eliphas Uvi, whose writings were instru-mental to the magic revivals in both France and England, is the subject of PaulChacornac, Eliphas Lbvi: R&ovateur de Ioccultisrne en France (I 81 0-1875)(Chacornac Freres, 1926), a partial analysis at best but the only work of sub-stance. Arthur Edward Waites forty-page biographical and critical introductionto his The Mysteries ofMagic: A Digest of the Writingsof Eliphas Levi (2nded.; London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1897) is instructive. That the magicrevival, Cabalism, and alchemy were beginning to be felt in the late 1860s and1870s is demonstrated by Enid Starkies portrait of Rimbauds intellectual de-velopment: Arthur Rimbaud (new ed.; Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1961).By the 1880s Cabalistic, Rosicrucian, Gnostic, and magical societies were beingorganized in Paris and some provincial cities. The memoirs of the poet Victor-Emile Michelet capture the mood of the times through brief vignettes of theoccult luminaries Stanislas de Guaita, Papus, and S%r osCphin Peladan: Lescompagnons de la hikrophanie: Souvenirs du mouvement hermgtiste ii la finduX I X e skcle (Dorbon, 1937). A more general picture is developed in Richard E.Knowles biography, Vic tor-Emile Michelet: Po3te 6soterique u. Vrin, 1954),while Jules Bois, Lespetites religions des Paris (nouv. 5d.; Ernest Flammarion,1894?) , s a fascinating catalogue of Swedenborgians, Buddhists, Theosophists,Satanists, Essenes, Luciferians, Gnostics, and adherents of cults devoted toHumanity, Light, and Isis. A. J. L. Bussts lengthy and heavily documentedessay, The Image of the Androgyne in the Nineteenth Century, in RomanticMythologies, ed. Ian Fletcher (Barnes & Noble, 1967), 1-95, is extremely help-ful on French occultism of the Romantic and decadent periods. See also PrazsThe Romantic Agony.was the incredible magic duel (1887-1893) between the AbbS Boullan-who wasobserved at one point by the novelist Huysmans-and his opponents de Guaita,Peladan, and Albert Jounet. James Laver, The First Decadent: Being the StrangeLife ofJ .K . Huysmans (Citadel, 1955) gives rather a fuller account of the dueland the background of French Satanism than does Robert Baldicks otherwisesuperior biography, The Life ofJ .-K. uysmans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955).The American edition of Lavers volume, it should be mentioned, omits the gen-eral bibliography of more than 100 items from the English edition (London:Faber, 1954). Another brief account is in Richard Griffiths, Le mythe dusatanisme au dix-neuvi$me s&cle, in Entretiens sur lhomme et le diabk (Parisand The Hague: Mouton, 1965), 225-233. Equally notorious were the fraudu-

France was the center for magical and Satanic activities throughout the

Undoubtedly the most famous episode in French occultism a t the time


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7461118 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTURElent expos& by Leb Taxil and his associates of Palladian Freemasonry, a sup-posedly Satanist or Luciferian branch which purportedly was the secret direc-torate behind the entire Masonic movement. Taxil played upon both antisemit-ism and the bitter Catholic-Masonic animosities of the day to achieve wide pub-licity. Arthur Edward Waite, Devil-Worship in France; or, The Question ofLucifer (London: George Redway, 1896) demonstrated fraud even before Taxilconfessed it a year later; for a subsequent account see Waites article on Pal-ladian Freemasonry in his New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry. Eugen Weber,ed., Satan fianc-macon: La mystification de Lgo Taxi1 (Julliard, 1964) is a con-venient anthology of the literature engendered by the controversy.

On individual occultists, Andre/ Billy, Strmislas de Guaita (Mercure deFrance, 1971) is the most recent work on that figure. Renk-Georges Aubrun,P6ladun (Sansot, 1904) can also be mentioned. For Papus (Gkrard Encausse),there is a work by his son, Philippe Encausse, Sciences occultes ou 25 unniesdoccultisme occidental. Papus: Sa vie, son oeuvre (Editions OCIA, 1949). Onliterary figures other than Rimbaud and Huysmans, there are A. W. Raitt, Vil-liers de lls2e Adam et le mouvement symboliste (JoskCorti, 1965), which has achapter on occultism, and Thomas A. Williams,Mdlarmd and the Language ofMysticism (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1970), which deals briefly withalchemy and Cabalism.

An excellent description of British occultism and spiritual interests as of1912, complete with hopes for new consciousness and spiritual evolution, maybe found in G. R. S. Meads essay, The Rising Psychic Tide, The Quest, 3(April 1912), reprinted in his Quests Old and New (London: G. Bell, 1913),226-247. The English magic revival is competently treated by Francis King,Ritual Magic in England: 1887 to the Present Day (London: Neville Spearman,1970), misleadingly retitled for the American edition The Rites of Modern OccultMagic (Macmillan, 1971). Kings history, which is not without its moments oftongue-in-cheek humor, looks back to earlier Rosicrucian organizations andLgvis influence, but the real story begins with the founding of the HermeticOrder of the Golden Dawn in 1887 to which Yeats, Aleister Crowley, and Waiteall belonged. King follows the vicissitudes and schisms of the Order and ex-amines subsequent organizations founded by Crowley,Dion Fortune, and othersright up to the 1960s. The most important rituals and teachings of the GoldenDawn were published by Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn (4 vols., Chicago:Aries Press, 1937-1940; 2nd ed., 2 vols., St. Paul, Minn.: Lleweflyn, 1970). R.G. Torrens, The Golden Dawn: Its Inner Teachings (London: Neville Spearman,1970) is an elementary exposition of portions of Regardies material, togetherwith some new information and numerous errors. Virginia Moores excellentThe Unicorn: William Butler Yeats Search for Redity (Macmillan, 1954) ex-amines Yeats passionate interest in the occult and also supplied detailed informa-tion on the Golden Dawn.

Arthur Edward Waite is a key figure in English occultism, and his auto-biography Shadows of Life and Thought (London: Selwyn and Blount, 1938)is consequently of importance. A detailed bibliography of his incredibly volumi-nous output is being compiled in England by R. A. Gilbert and Kevin Tingay,


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISMwith publication perhaps two years off. In the meantime, my own ArthurEdward Waite, Christian Mystic and Occult Scholar: A Chronological Bibliog-raphy, Bulle tin o f s ib l iog rap hy (forthcoming, 1972) will serve as a guide t o hismore than seventy books. Arthur Machen was Waites closest friend for morethan forty years, a relationship which is recorded in Aidan Reynolds and WilliamCharlton, Arthur Machen: A Short Acc oun t ofH is Life and Work (Philadelphia:Dufour, 1964). Aleister Crowley, who was originally inspired by Waite, hasusually been presented as a monster o f depravity, the self-proclaimed GreatBeast of the Apocalypse. John Symonds, Crowleys literary executor, is for themost part of this view in his biography, The G reat Beast (London: Rider, 1951).Charles Richard Cammell, who also knew Crowley, attempted to be more judiciousin his Aleister Cro wle y, the Man, the Mage, the P oe t (London: Richards Press,1951;University Books, 1962),with a Crowley bibliography by Edward NoelFitzgerald. Israel Regardie, once Crowleys private secretary and later the but tof his scorn and animosity, has developed the most persuasive interpretation todate-based in part on the authors practice of Reichian therapy-in The Eye inthe Triangle: An Interpretation of A le is te r Crow ley (St . Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn,1970). Regardie openly examines Crowleys enormous faults of character, butalso underlines his real gifts as a poet and ritualist, a major mystic, and a prophetof the new consciousness. One of Crowleys disciples is the subject of a rathersuperficial biography: Jean Overton Fuller, The Magical Dilemm a of VictorNeuburg (London: W. H. Allen, 1965).War are briefly surveyed in Emil Bock (an Anthroposophist), Ru dolf Steiner:Studien zu seinem Lebensgang und Lebenswerk (Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geist-esleben, 1961),chapter 8. There are some comments of interest in Paul Tillich,The Religious Situation (German, 1926), trans. H. Richard Niebuhr (Henry Holt,1932; *Meridian, 1956). George L. Mosse, The Mystical Origins of NationalSocialism,Journal o f t h e Hi s to ry o f l d e a s , 22 (January-March 1961), 81-96,explores the contex t of extremist ideologues and occultists of the turn of thecentury as an influence or source for Nazi theories. Mosses discussion of ex-tremists such as Guido von List, Alfred Schuler, and Eugen Diederichs is of in-terest and his bibliography is invaluable; but when he turns to certain Theosoph-ical groups, his analysis is less reliable. He fails to take into account the rathermarginal relationship of his groups to mainstream Theosophy, and he frequentlymisrepresents Mme. Blavatskys ideas and consistently misspells her name.

Fortunately, there were healthier tendencies in German occultism, especiallyin the work of Count Hermann Keyserling and Rudolf Steiner, who both achievedconsiderable success before the War and after as well. The postwar context issurveyed by Karl Marbe, Die okkultistische Bewegung in der Gegenwart,PreussischeJahrb;icher, 197 (July 1924), 47-60, which centers on psychical re-search, and Adolf Faut, Rom antik od er Reform ation? Eine W ertung der religiosenK ri f te d er Gegenwart (Gotha: Leopold Klotz, 1925),which numbers Spiritualism,Christian Science, Bahai, Indian religions (their European adherents), Theosophy,and Anthroposophy among contemporary ersatz religions and syncretisms.Whether Keyserling was technically an occultist is debatable, b ut his School of

7471119

Occult developments in German-speaking Europe before the First World


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7481120 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUREWisdom in Darmstadt became known as a center of spiritual teaching. GeorgeE. Cooper, Jr., is currently writing a dissertation on Keyserling at the Universityof Michigan. Older accounts include Maurice Boucher, Laphilosophie de Her-mann Keyserling (Rieder, 1927),Mercedes Gallagher de Parks, Introduction toKeyserling (London: Jonathan Cape, 1934), nd Rom Landau, God Is My Ad-venture: A Book on Modern Mystics, Masters and Teachers (London: IvorNicholson and Watson, 1935; aber, 1941; Unwin, 1964).

Landau also includes a sympathetic portrait of Steiner, certainly the mostprolific and perhaps the most intellectually demanding of all modern occultists.The indispensable guide to the 340 volumes of the collected German edition ofhis works is Rudolf Steiner: Das literarischen und khnstlerische Werk. Einebibliographische Uebersicht (Dornach, Switzerland: Verlag der Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, 1961). Full information on all separate editions is alsoincluded, with complete contents, and a chronological list of his 6000 ectureswith cross-references to their published texts. An incomplete and rather care-lessly compiled bibliography of English translations is Paul Marshall Allen, TheWritings and Lectures of Rudolf Steiner: A Chronological Bibliography (WhittierBooks, 1956). The best introduction to Steiner is Johannes Hemleben, RudolfSteiner in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Hamburg: *Rowohlt, 1963),while Emil Bocks book, listed above, presents the results of detailed investiga-tions into Steiners early development. In English, A. P. Shepherd, A Scientistof the Invisible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1954) s a clear introductionwhich can be usefully supplemented by A. C. Harwood, ed., The Faithfirl Thinker:Centenary Essays on the Work and Thought of Rudolf Steiner, 1861-1925 (Lon-don: Hodder & Stoughton, 1961). Hans Pusch, A Guide to a Basic Study ofRudolf Steiners Anthroposophy (*Rudolf Steiner Library, 1966) s an extremelyhelpful annotated bibliographical guide to four central aspects of Steiners teach-ings. With the exception of Landau, all these works-and there are scores more,especially in German-are by Anthroposophists. The fullest non-Anthroposoph-ical appraisal is my own unpublished doctoral dissertation, Spiritual Science inan Age of Materialism: Rudolf Steiner and Occultism (University of Michigan,1970),which also contains a lengthy history of nineteenth-century German oc-cultism. See also my Traditional and Modern Elements in the Occultism ofRudolf Steiner,Journal of Popular Culture,3 Winter 1969), 51-467.

In the 1920sKrishnamurti and Gurdjieff were two new stars in the occultfirmament. Krishnamurti is today a mystic, not an occultist; bu t his early train-ing at the hands of the Theosophists was decidedly occultist. This episode in hiscareer, ending with his renunciation of occultism and Theosophy in 1929, s toldsympathetically but not altogether accurately by Landau. Lady Emily Lutyens,Candles in the Sun (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1957),who served as Krishna-murtis teacher during much of this time and who followed him out of Theosophy,presents an affectionate and insightful view. Gurdjieff remains an enigma; hisprotean and very trying personality is amply revealed in the memoirs of FritzPeters, J. G. Bennett, and many others. His teachings can be followed in P. D.Ouspenskys writings, especially I n Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of anUnknown Teaching (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1949; Harvest, n.d.). Kenneth


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISM 7491121Walkers A Study of Gurdjieffs Teaching (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957, *1965;*Award, n.d.) is less technical. Two of Gurdjieffs British disciples have beenstudied: Philip Mairet, A. R. Orage: A Memoir (new ed.; University Books, 1966),with a major new introduction by the author which considers Orages occultismin greater detail, and Beryl Pogson, Maurice Nicolf: A Portrait (London: VincentStuart, 1961; homas Nelson, 1961). Two fairminded but critical appraisals ofGurdjieff are Yahya Abdullah, New Lamps for Old, Hibbert Journaf,55 (Oc-tober 1966), 49-56, nd C. E. Bechofer, The Forest Philosphers, Century,108 (n.s. 86) May 1924), 6-78.Landaus chapters o n Gurdjieff and Ouspenskyare not sympathetic.tague Summers, and James Hewat McKenzie. Fort is an occultist only in thesense that the occult may be said to include the unsolved mysteries of nature.Fort was an indefatigable collector of reports of bizarre phenomena and formu-lator of unorthodox hypotheses which he published in four collections, theearliest The Book of the Damned (1919).Fort has been examined in a sensibleand insightful biography by Damon Knight, Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unex-plained (Doubleday, 1970). Montague Summers, in addition to his work onRestoration drama and the Gothic novel, was best known for his histories ofwitchcraft, vampirism, and lycanthropy, and for his staunch support of theChurchs persecution of witches. His life is as strange as his writings; what littleis known with some certainty may be found in the intelligent biography byJoseph Jerome (pseudonym of Fr. Brocard Sewell), Montague Summers: AMemoir (London: Cecil and Amelia Woolf, 1965),with a bibliographical check-list by Timothy d h c h Smith, who has also published a fullscale work, A Bibliog-raphy of the Works ofMontague Summers (London: Nicholas Vane; UniversityBooks, 1964). McKenzie, a prominent Spiritualist, was the founder of the Collegeof Psychic Studies which trained many mediums. See Muriel Hankey,JamesHewat McKenzie: Pioneer of Psychicaf Research. A Personal Memoir (London:Aquarian Press, 1963).

Surveys of occult and spiritual groups were popular during the interwaryears, as they are today. Landaus God Is My Adventure, which also discussesStefan George, Bo Yin Ra, Meher Baba, the evangelist-healer George Jeffreys,and Dr. Frank Buchman (Moral Rearmament), in addition to Steiner, Keyserling,Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff, and Ouspenskp went through fourteen printings withthree different publishers. Cyril Scotts A n OutfineofModem Occultism (enl.ed.; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950) irst published in 1935 and stillpopular, is a sound textbook on occult movements and themes written by anoccultist-composer. Mariane Kohler, A fkcofede fa sagesse (Le Table Ronde,1961) s the record of a personal quest in which the author samples Moral Re-armament, Unity, I Am, Quakerism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Vedanta,Gurdjieff, and Krishnamurti. Marcus Bach has published a small library of per-sonal investigations of such movements, each volume written with a light touch.Among his surveys are They Have Found a Faith (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,1946), n Spiritualism, Psychiana, Unity, and five other groups; Faith and M yFriends (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1951), n Swedenborgians, Vedantists,

Other figures of prominence in interwar occultism are Charles Fort, Mon-


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7501122 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUREPenitentes, and three others; and Spiritual Breakthroughs for Our Time (Double-day, 1965), retitled Miracles Do Happen for the reprint edition (*Waymark, 1968),a hasty glance at spiritual healing, glossolalia, Yoga, Zen, reincarnation andkarma, psychedelics, and Spiritualism. On the extreme fringes of the occult, H.T. Dohrman, California Cult: The Story of Mankind United (Boston: Beacon,1958), should be mentioned as a study of a popular Depression cult which hadoccult overtones. Everyone is bound to be offended by something in MartinGardners Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (rev. ed.; *Dover, 1957),an entertaining, informative, and often infuriating collection of modern varietiesof pseudoscience, many of them occult ( Atlantis, flying saucers, pyramidology,graphology, dowsing, ESP, Dianetics, health and food fads, and much else).Gardner is remarkably hard- or thick-headed, depending on ones own views.influential on modern writers and intellectuals. Franklin L. Baumer, Religionand the Rise of Scepticism (Harcourt , Brace, 1960; *Harbinger, n.d.) astutelyanalyzes the spiritual situation in which these belief-systems have been able t otake root and describes the growing tendency of intellectuals toward a non-dogmatic, universalistic, and inner-directed form of religion. For a broad surveyof the appeal of the occult to modern thinkers and writers, see Martin EbonsThey Knew the Unknown, the first title mentioned in this essay. Representativeliterary studies are Miguel Serrano, C. G.Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Recordof Two Friendships, trans. Frank MacShane (Schocken, 1966; *%hocken, n.d.);Theodore Ziolkowski, The Novels of Hermann Hesse (Princeton, 1966; *Prince-ton, n.d.); Charles M. Holmes, Aldous Huxley and the Way to Reality (Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press, 1970); Laura Archera Huxley, This TimelessMoment: A Personal View of Aldous Huxky (Farrar, Straus& Giroux, 1968;*Ballantine, 1971); William York Tindall, James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradi-tion,Journd of the History of Ideas, 15 (January 1954), 23-39;William YorkTindall, D. H . Lawrence and Susun His Cow (Columbia, 1939);W. D. Halls,Maurice Maeterlinck: A Study ofHis Life and Thought (New York: Oxford,1960);August Strindberg, Inferno, Alone and Other Writings, trans. and ed.Evert Sprinchorn (*Anchor, 1968), in which the introduction examines Strind-bergs infatuation with Swedenborg and alchemy and gives references to Swedishscholarship; and on the most noted literary occultist, William Butler Yeats:Virginia Moore, The Unicorn, cited earlier; Morton Irving Seiden, William ButlerYeats: The Poet as a Mythmaker 1865-1939 (East Lansing: Michigan StateUniversity Press, 1962);and Helen Hennessy Vendler, Yeatss Vision and theLater Plays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1963), the latter two works with refer-ence to A Vision.

Rather less has been done to consider the role of occultism in art, psychol-ogy, nd other disciplines, with the clear exception of Jungian psychology. How-ever, Sixten Ringbom, Art in The Epoch of the Great Spiritual: Occult Ele-ments in the Early Theory of Abstract Painting, Journal of the Warburg andCourtauld Institutes, 29 (1966), 386-418, and Peter Lloyd Joness review essayof new books on the Bauhaus, New York Review of Books, 13 (January 1,1970),26-30, indicate that the possibilities are vast: Klee, Kandinsky, and the early

The occult, mysticism, and Oriental philosophies have been extraordinarily


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THE HISTORY OF MODERN OCCULTISMBauhaus all felt the influence of Theosophy and Anthrosophy to a marked de-gree. In psychology, Nandor Fodors posthumous Freud, Jung, and O ccuftism(University Books, 1971) has just been published, but too late for critical evalua-tion here. Several works on Jung have already been cited. David Bakan arguesin Sigmund Freud and the Jew ish Mystical Tra dition (Princeton: Van Nostrand,1958; *%hocken, 1965) tha t Freuds thought shows clear parallels to Cabalism,Hassidism, and Jewish messianism, al l of which pervaded the cultural atmospherein which Freud developed his ideas. In the preface to the paperback edition,Bakan is able to offer new and rather convincing evidence that Freud did morethan assimilate a cultural atmosphere; it appears now that he owned a numberof books on Jewish mysticism and the occult, including an edition of the Zohar.

analyses and reflections to have appeared in any significant quantity. Some ofthe writings which are available, moreover, concern witchcraft more specificallyand are therefore more fittingly discussed in Professor Nugents bibliographicalessay. In a broad sense, present-day occultism is quite obviously a part of theyouth culture and anti-technology (but not necessarily anti-scientific) sentiment.Theodore Roszaks The M aking of a C ounter Culture (Doubleday and *Anchor,1969) is consequently pertinent here not only as an often discerning analysis ofyouth culture, but in its advocacy of a shamanistic mode of comprehension orconsciousness, it is a symptomatic document as well. Rasa Gustaitis, TurningOn (Macmdlan, 1969; *Signet, 1970) is a personal report on the quest for newconsciousness, of which occultism is a part. Among her topics are Gestalt therapy,sensory awareness, Zen, psychedelics, Transcendental Meditation, and biofeed-back training. Sara Davidson, The Rush for Instant Salvation, Harpers, 243(July 1971), 40-54,s another reporters look at the various spiritual disciplineswhich young Americans are currently using to achieve enlightenment. For acollection of varied responses to the most famous prognosis of evolutionary con-sciousness in our time, see Philip Nobile, ed., The Con I11Controversy: TheCritics Look at The Greening ofAm eric a (*Pocket Books, 1971). In general,the popularity of occultism is also connected with the rise of the human poten-tials movement in psychology and therapy. A useful guide to this current butone which is not always accurate in details is Severin Petersons A Catalog of theWays People G row (*Ballantine, 1 97 1) , an A-to-Z inventory of forty-two systemsfrom Akido and the Alexander Technique to Yoga and Zen, with Astrology,Dreams, ESP, Hasidism, Mysticism, Shamanism, and Tarot all featured. Each isillustrated through excerpts from basic manuals. Bibliographical information andaddresses are plentifully supplied. A concluding classified directory adds in-formation on dozens of other methods.

Of all books published to date on todays spiritual revolution, JacobNeedlemans The N ew Religions (Doubleday, 1970 ; *Pocket Books, forthcoming,1972) is clearly superior, a brilliant, probing analysis of th e challenges t o religion,philosophy, a

survey occult galbreath

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