INTRODUCTION: THE OCCULT TODAY

By ROBERT GALBREATH

The idea of the adept and initiate in secret knowledge, the idea of the divine man or woman, of the god-inspired, or at any rate of the human with superhuman powers, is in the air, a noted observer of the psychic scene has written. In many directions, he continues, we may see . . . revivals of divination, seers and soothsayers and prophets, pythonesses, sibyls and prophetesses, tellers of dreams and of omens, mantics of every description and by every sort of contrivance; astrologists and even alchemists; professors of magical arts and ceremonies; cosmologists and revelationists; necromancy and communion with spirits; enthusiasm, trance and ecstasis. And with all this, as of old, keeping pace with religious unrest and loss of faith in traditional beliefs and blank denial of anything beyond the range of the physical, there is what looks very much like the bringing in of new gods and new saviours and new creeds, the blending of cults and syncretism ofreligions; societies and associations open and secret, for propagating or imparting new doctrines, new at any rate to their adherents though mostly old en0ugh.l The vocabulary is dated, the observations are not. This is not a description of the revolution of spirit in present-day America but of the rising psychic tide

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in the England of 1912. To the author, a former Theosophist and acclaimed occult scholar, G. R. S. Mead, this ferment signified an effort to extend consciousness, a groping toward the spiritual, the birthpangs of an imminent age of enquiry in which spiritual wisdom would reconcile the claims of science and religion to the satisfaction of the whole man. The ferment today is equally obvious. Some indicative publishing fgures (without repeating those cited in my bibliographical article later in this issue) include New Directions report that they had sold 1,500,000 copies of Hermann Hesses Siddhartha as of 1970.2 Fate magazine has maintained an average monthly paid circulation in excess of 100,000for the past five years.3 Doubledays occult Universe Book Club enrolled over 100,000 members in its first year-and~ what surely must have been a most unrepresentative a-half of ~ p e r a t i o n .In poll of 75 prisoners concerning their most enlightening reading, one of the largest categories of books mentioned was that of self-help, in which such mystical, occult, and self-development titles were named as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, P. D. Ouspenskys New Model of the Universe and In Search of the Miraculous, and Thomas Mertons N o Man Is an Island, at one extreme, and The Prophet, Psycho-Cybernetics, and The Power of Positive Thinking at another.5 Courses on parapsychology, meditation, and the occult are popular on many campuses and in leading urban centers.6 News items in Psychic, a glossy bimonthly which emulates Psychology Today, state (with how much justification is not clear) that there are 10,000 full-time and 175,000 part-time astrologers in this country, that some 1200 of the nations 1750 daily newspapers carry astrology columns, and that there are thought to be 60,000 professional necromancers in F r a n ~ e .Occult ~ activities are so rife in England that a recently published paperback guide to them records 345 separate groups, institutions, bookstores, publishers, periodicals, and professionals, primarily in the London area.8 Even Meads hopes are being echoed on all sides. The new occult floodtide is colored by the apocalyptic and millenialist mood which proclaims the dawning of Consciousness 111, of Paradise Now and Bliss Apocalypse, of the Age of Aquarius, the K d i Yuga, and 2001. These expectations, moreover, are linked to those of Meads day by the visions of a substantial body of twentieth-century philosophers of history-among them, Spengler and Sorokin, Toynbee and Teilhard, Berdyaev and Jaspers, neo-Marxists and neoevolutionists-which agree, in the words of an astonished commentator, that the next stage of history either must or is likely to entail a spiritualization of mankind and a movement away from the present absorption with power and instinctual e ~ i s t e n c e . A ~ part of the spiritualization process may be seen in the urgings of Lewis Mumford and Arthur Koestler, of Abraham Maslow and Sir Alister Hardy (and there are many more), that a humanized science be created which is res onsive to questions of value and meaning and to mans spiritual experiences. PO

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Whether contemporary occultisms involvement in this general search for new consciousness, human potentials, and cosmic rootedness is fleeting or profound, it should be viewed from an historical perspective, such as that afforded by Meads comments. Ours is not the first occult wave of the century, much less of Western civilization, nor is it likely to be the last. One should also keep in mind a sense of audience when considering the appeal of the occult. A serious concern with occult belief systems can very well reflect a fundamental questioning of accepted values and a largely healthy sense of urgency in seeking out viable alternatives. In this case, the occult becomes a symbol of unlimited possibilities, a means of stimulating a sense of wonder, awe, and mystery, a catalyst for scientific, aesthetic, or religious creativity, and not a set of beliefs to be accepted literally. On the other hand, there is a sufficiently large body of autobiographical materials by witches, prophets, clairvoyants, astrologers, and others t o indicate that literal belief does in fact underlie the occultism of many practitioners and their most devoted clients. Still others, it must be assumed, explore the occult for a variety of other reasons: simple curiosity, the thrill of the mysterious, a sense of whimsy and playfulness, an escape from frustration and anxiety. It would be extravagant and baseless, therefore, to conclude that with the current occult revival we are witnessing a wholesale abandonment of reason and a remystification of the world (to reverse Max Webers phrase). Reading a horoscope or buying an occult book need not mean anything beyond the simple desire for a diversion. Yet it seems equally foolish to agree with the historian Keith Thomas, in his otherwise groundbreaking Religion and the Decline of Magic, that astrology, witchcraft, magical healing, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts and fairies, are all now rightly disdained by intelligent persons.l Certainly such beliefs are not part of the value systems and world views we absorb through our cultural conditioning, and it is perhaps to this state of affairs that Thomas wishes to refer. Nevertheless, the occult in its myriad forms has proved to be of more than passing interest to an astonishingly large number of intelligent persons in this century alone, as several articles in this supplement demonstrate. As these comments suggest, our understanding of the occult, its nature, appeals, and functions, is still quite limited. There is no certainty whatsoever about the epistemological and ontological status of occult experiences. As cultural phenomena, the occult interests of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-the subject of this supplement-are probably less well understood because so often ignored or underestimated than those of earlier times and other civilizations. There is not even agreement on a definition of occult or occultism which is generally useful for scholarly purposes. In soliciting papers for this supplement, I deliberately adopted a very broad view of the occult which could encompass mysticism, metaphysical or

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spiritual occultism (such as Theosophy), the occult arts and sciences (magic, divination, characterology, healing), Spiritualism, parapsychology, witchcraft, Satanism, religious syncretism, and the unsolved mysteries of nature (UFOs, sea serpents). Since popular interest easily shifts from one area to another and the historical interaction between them is both commonplace and complex, each of these occult fields certainly warrents inclusion. That not all of them are in fact represented here is due not to editorial oversight but to the limitations of space and the availability of worthwhile contributions. The occult can be studied, of course, from various angles. The eight contributions which follow exhibit no less than four different approaches: sociological analysis, persona evaluation, historical-literary case study, and bibliographical. It should occasion n o surprise, therefore, that the authors conclusions are not always in agreement. On the level of sociological theory and analysis, Marcello Truzzi provides a multi-dimensional framework for understanding the occult in the broadest sense of the term. Truzzi asks the right questions, and his analysis of the authority of occult claims is particularly helpful. More controversial, I believe, is his contention that an anomaly paradigm is most likely the common denominator of all occult movements and activities. That the occult embodies anomalies in the form of knowledge claims which contradict generally accepted beliefs and established values, especially those of the educated classes, is surely true for the period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is not clear, however, that occult beliefs were anomalous in this sense during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.12 David Techters article on psi advocates a fourfold classification of occult traditions with which I am in essential agreement. Indeed, at the 1971 Popular Culture Association meeting, for which his paper and mine on Modern Occultism: A Thematic Analysis (not included here) were independently prepared, we were pleased to find how closely our analyses corresponded. Working from distinctions based on differences of goal and training which are often explicitly stated in occult literature, Techter divides the occult into spiritual unfoldment (mysticism), occultism, Spiritualism, and parapsychology. (A further distinction, I am convinced, can be made within occultism between metaphysical occultism and the practice of the occult arts which the former warns against.) He also provides us with an informed personal evaluation of the history of parapsychology and its prospects. Although interest in psi phenomena and certain of the occult sciences continues to increase, Techter believes that parapsychology and especially Spiritualism and occultism face rather bleak futures. The systems of Asian mysticism which Jacob Needleman calls the new religions are among the most formidable contenders for the position once occupied in the public imagination by Spiritualism and Theosophy. Needleman,

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who is the author of the excellent The New Religions (Doubleday, 1970) and editor of the Penguin Metaphysical Library, underscores the qualitative difference between popular enthusiasm for these systems and the urgent demands which any genuine path of spiritual development necessarily entails. But he also asks us to think about the implications of the contrasting quality of response which these spiritual disciplines elicit from the receptive young and their less sensitive elders. The next three contributions all deal with the spiritual heterodoxy of earlier generations by means of historical-literary case studies. Russell Goldfarb confronts the grande dame of modern metaphysical occultism, Madame Blavatsky, the inscrutable founder of Theosophy, and emerges with an able biographical sketch which also suggests something of the Theosophical impact on English and Irish literature. Benjamin Lee Whorf, the American pioneer of linguistics, also felt the influence of Theosophy on both his personal values and i s paper is further linguistic theories, as Peter Rollins reveals for the first time. H evidence of the need for a general assessment of the cultural role of occultism in modern times. Donald Thomas undertakes an analysis of the religious syncretism of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a key figure in the development of racial ideology. Although Chamberlain was not an occultist, his religious ideas illustrate how syncretisms (of which occultism is frequently said to be one) and private universes can be direct responses to urgent social problems. The final two papers are bibliographical. Donald Nugent examines recent work on witchcraft, ancient, medieval, early modern, and contemporary, while I survey historical and literary scholarship on the metaphysical occultism and, to a lesser degree, the occult sciences, Spiritualism, and Satanism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Together Nugent and I comment on nearly 450 publications and offer assessments of the current state of scholarship. Clearly, the fascination of the occult is beginning to exercise its spell on the academic mind.

NOTES

1G. R. S. Mead, The Rising Psychic Tide, in his Quests Old and New (London: G. Bell, 1913), pp. 246, 236; originally published in Meads journal, The Quest, 3 ( A p d 1912), 401-421. 21970: Some Surprises in Paperback Bestsellers, Publishers Weekly, 199 (February 8 , 1971), 38-41. Siddhartha was the bestselling title for New

JOURNAL O F POPULAR CULTURE Directions in 1968, 1969, and 1970. 3Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation, Fate, 20 (January 1967), 160 (108, 536); 21 (January 1968), 144 (116, 274); 22 (January 1969), 144 (114, 586); 2 3 (January 1970), 144 (113, 766); 24 (January 1971), 160 (111, 052); 25 (January 1972), 144 (106, 691). 4Marcia Seligson, Publishing Enters the Age of Aquarius, New York Times Book Review (September 28, 1969), 42. 5What Prisoners Are Reading, The American Scholar, 40 (Autumn 1971), 701-707. 6See, e.g., Robert W. Neubert, Parapsychology on the Nations Campuses, Psychic, 2 (July-August 1970), 9-14; Margaret A. Blair, Meditation in the San Francisco Bay Area: An Introductory Survey, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2 (1970), 61-70; and Eleanor Criswell, Experimental Yoga Psychology Course for College Students: A Progress Report, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2 (1970), 71-78. 7Respectively, Psychic, 1 (May-June 1970), 17; 2 (July-August 1970), 24; 2 (June 1971), 37. 8Francoise Strachan, ed., The Aquarian Guide to Occult, Mystical, Religious, Magical London and Around (London: Aquarian Press, 1970). 9Frank E. Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), p. 159. 10An example is Abraham H. Maslow, The Psychology ofscience: A Reconnaissance (New York: Harper & Row, 1966; Chicago: Gateway Editions paperback, 1969). 11Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline ofMagic (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1971), p. ix. 1 2 0 n this question, see ibid. A detailed assessment of Keith Thomass work and that of other historians who are applying anthropological, sociological, and psychological methods to the study of witchcraft may be found in Lawrence Stones review essay, The Disenchantment of the World, New York Review of Books, 17 (December 2, 1971), 17-25.
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