Paganism and Its Renewal by Thomas Molnar
Thomas Molnar
Paganism and Its Renewal
W ilhelm Schmidt’s (b. 1868) twelve vol-
ume Origin of the Idea of God argued, among
other things, that monotheism was the uni-
versally accepted concept at the beginning
of mankind. Schmidt claimed that mono-
theism later degenerated into local and frag-
mented polytheism and its varieties. Many
scholars have argued since the publication
of this work that this unitary view is not
valid, and that, on the contrary, the “origi-
nal religion” was animism, idolatry, or the
feeling of awe before natural phenomena
(the mana with its feeling of the tremen-
dum). Few, however, would venture to say
that some kind of religion was not at all
times present in man’s soul and in human
communities. In fact, the appearance of
New Age and other sects in the very midst
of our technologically arrogant times sug-
gests that there is a fundamental need (de-
scribed by Eliade, C.G. Jung, even Joseph
Campbell) for the restoration of an equilib-
rium between material conditions and the
vogue of ideologies on the one hand, and
the aspirations of the soul, of inner man, on
the other.
A certain erosion of institutionalized
Western religions, a process of some three
centuries, indicates not that “God is dead”
in the Nietzscheian or Heideggerian sense,
but that, perhaps temporarily, or perhaps
for a long period, the monotheistic religions
28 THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Fall 1995
have suffered from an eclipse, yielding to
the perennial temptations of paganism that
I tried to identify and outline in a book
published in 1987 (by Eerdmans, The Pagan
Temptation). At the time of a religious
eclipse, with its wide cultural and other
consequences, there usually emerge many
speculative currents in conflict. This con-
flict obscures the issues, including the victo-
rious current of a still future moment. Who
in the third century A.D. could have known
that Christianity would soon be established
as a state religion, over against the compet-
ing systems, faiths, and philosophies—
which were then in turmoil—like Stoicism,
the worship of Isis, of the sun Mithra,
Manicheism, and others? Thus it is impera-
tive that we first clarify the term paganism,
so as better to appreciate its branches and,
facing them, the significance of monothe-
ism.
The controversy between monotheism (ex-
cepting for now the Trinitarian aspect of
Christianity) and paganism is shaped in the
following way. For countless centuries, pa-
gan thinkers maintained that the “world-
all” (universe, cosmos, the visible and invis-
Thomas Molnar teaches philosophy at the Univer-
sity of Budapest. His recent books are The Emerging
Atlantic Culture and L’Hégémonie libérale. Several of
his works have appeared in Hungarian.

ible) is one totality that is its own origin and
which evolved according to its own poten-
tiality. It is regarded generally as the prod-
uct of nature and its gods. All its movements
are self-motored, although the lesser agents,
men, for example, depend on higher forces
called gods, spirits, and other mysteries of
self-existence. Outside the universe there is
nothing. The world-all is spherical, con-
taining and determining every part of itself,
by definition. This is the ultimate argument
of the “neo-pagans.” And like their pre-
Socratic models, they find it a scandalous
thesis that there might be an extra-universal
agent not only directing the universe, but
having created it as well.
It follows from the pagan premise that
this solely existing All is sacred in its entirety
and in its parts, although from a monothe-
istic viewpoint one cannot comprehend
What or Who has sacralized this cosmos.
Does the latter produce and sacralize itself?
In the name and for the sake of what
(whom)? At any rate, the World (cosmos)
becomes sacred, self-explicating, and di-
vine. It and its manifestations must be wor-
shipped, and no essential separation or
dividedness in it can be tolerated. In con-
trast, the monotheistic view conceives of the
world as separated from its creator who is
the only God, distinct from His creation,
and who created it out of overflowing gen-
erosity, sustaining it and providing for it.
Thus, while the monotheistic God could
have not created the world since he is abso-
lutely free, the same cannot be said of the
pagan gods who are parts of the world and
are active in the world by necessity. It fol-
lows that God created man with free will like
His own, whereas in the pagan view the
human being has no free will, no basic re-
sponsibility for his acts which are essentially
determined. In Greek epic poems and trag-
edies responsibility is borne by gods and
goddesses for any significant human action,
although by the fifth century Antigone in
THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Fall 1995
Paganism and Its Renewal by Thomas Molnar
Sophocles’s play assumes a free moral con-
sciousness; the separation of the world and
God made there an early appearance.
What we have here abbreviated is the
crucial distinction of two worldviews, two
philosophical dramas, two conflicting con-
cepts of man, destiny, and history; of fate
and freedom. Yet the temptation remains
for monotheistic man to shed his moral
responsibility and to reassume the pagan
worldview as the more realistic of the two.
He also tries to broach a rapprochement
between the two conceptions. Why not, he
asks, imagine a supreme being who is not
part of the world, but is at least part of the
human soul, giving it guidance? Or a su-
preme being who gave creation an initial
push, but entrusted the rest of its unraveling
to some mechanism such as evolution,
maturation, spiritualization, cultural refine-
ment, or, indeed, a Marxian class-struggle?
These attempts at harmonization are off-
target because they invariably end up el-
evating man to a divine status: gradually the
self or the mechanism absorbs the in-dwell-
ing God. The consequence of this attempt at
harmonization is that it often ends up being
yet another pagan form, since the world
now no longer depends on the creator and
sustaining God. Instead, it depends on man.
He becomes a creator of himself, decides
what moral injunction to assign to himself
and society, and brings about the autonomy
of the self in all fields of endeavor—in law,
ethics, and technology. (The best example
today is bio-technology run wild.)
The one pagan creed present throughout
Western Christian history is hermetism. It
displays most features that correspond to
our initial “pagan model” outlined above:
the ontological one-ness of the cosmos, the
ever-increasing power of man, and his self-
sacralization (the essence of idolatry). In
addition, hermetism has common features
with the Gnosis, but it is much more popu-
29
Paganism and Its Renewal by Thomas Molnar
lar and not so obviously elitist. Its discourse
accommodates the scientific endeavor, and
is applicable to political doctrine. In
America, hermetism has taken a backseat
behind gnosticism, in large part due to the
influence of such scholars as Eric Voegelin
and Hans Jonas, because gnosticism claimed
to explain the derailment of democracy more
credibly to conservatives. Yet, the multiple
manifestations of the hermetic teaching are
better attuned to the phenomena of the
present state of Western culture, showing a
persistent influence that spans thousands of
years of history. It should be re-emphasized,
however, that paganism forms a block—the
basic thesis of which is, as we said, the unity
of all things and the self-fueled power they
possess. In short, hermetism is more at-
tuned to our Faustian civilization.
What is hermetism? The name is well-
chosen. Hermes is the messenger and me-
diator of the gods, he is mobile and playful,
always suspected of misdemeanors, of hold-
ing secrets, even of fooling the gods them-
selves; he is the dissolvant of mythology.
Hermes is also, among his many roles and
masks, the guardian angel of tradesmen, of
wheelers-dealers, of inconstancy and quick
reactions. Our hermetism has as its figure-
head Hermes Trismegistes, the “thrice-great.”
He may have appeared as a leader and guide
in the late Hellenistic age, already bearer of
many titles and reputations taken from
Greek mythology, Egyptian lore, and
Phoenician practices. We encounter Hermes
and hermetism as a collective word for a
secret doctrine (“hermetically closed,” we
say of secret things), for immemorially trans-
mitted traditions that are centered on magic
manipulations.
In time (but time-sequence may be a
false guide here), Hermes Trismegistes ap-
pears more Egyptian than Greek, located at
some point of fusion of two or more doctri-
nal lines. The legend speaks of Hermes
Trismegistes as the collector and spokes-
30 THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Fall 1995
man of Egyptian pre-historical wisdom of
which Moses himself was but a recipient,
and which goes back to the building of the
pyramids, themselves embodiments of di-
vine secrets. The core of the secret, as Hermes
explains it in a letter to his son, Tot, is the
unity of all things—this contradicts cre-
ation—and their division into a
macrocosmic and a microcosmic world, the
two in interaction. The “secret” was really
an immemorial way of reassuring humans
that while they depend on gods and other
cosmic forces, they are in turn empowered
to influence the latter, becoming thereby
masters, to some extent, of their own desti-
nies. In what respect? The varieties of
hermetism answered the question: astrology
was a way of reading the motions of heav-
enly bodies, and thus helped men to chart
their future; alchemy was a way of accelerat-
ing the chemical reactions in minerals,
thereby bringing closer the decisive epoch
of world maturity; necromancy helped cal-
culate the death of people—in view of in-
heritance, the death of hated rulers, etc. As
we see, much of hermetism was pure magic
and consisted of the manipulation of forces
we would call today pre-scientific or pseudo-
scientific. But it also went beyond immedi-
ate and practical objectives since it inter-
preted signs, placed its confidence in charms,
talismans, divine names, and influences.
Hermetism made use of allegories and sym-
bols, and believed that some objects repre-
sented other objects, so that the possession
of certain objects or the knowledge of cer-
tain incantations meant power over other-
wise unsolvable mysteries.
All this is not mere magic in the vulgar
sense. The notion of a live cosmos is ex-
tremely sophisticated, and it is also instru-
mental in the satisfaction of people’s need
for a meaningful world-all in which they
occupy a given space and time slot. How-
ever, it is not altogether positive because the
same people are aware of their dependence

on occult powers so as to be ready to propi-
tiate them and resort to counter-powers.
Indeed, the history of paganism is one of
efforts to fend off evil forces in individual
and community life. In Rome, for example,
the necromancers enjoyed a lucrative trade
from people wanting to harm others in
order to inherit from them. At one time, the
Senate passed laws punishing necroman-
cers for predicting the emperor’s death, and
thereby bringing on him evil forces. When
hermetism was revived during the Renais-
sance (indeed, it had never disappeared in
Hermes Trismegistes
spite of Church legislation and punishment),
all its branches were again practiced, with
the interested approval of people in power.
More than that, the unrevealed, secret core
of religion was also brought into play be-
cause it offered previously hidden explana-
tions for religious problems. The vogue of
bringing hermetism to bear upon religious
mysteries became so widespread that it
would be impossible to list the whole range
of “secret teachings” contained, for example,
THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Fall 1995
Paganism and Its Renewal by Thomas Molnar
in the Hebrew Cabala, in neo-Platonism
and neo-Pythagorism, even in humanism.
Since our times are again in the process of
rehabilitating these doctrines, it is worth
while to mention a few illustrations from
two or three centuries of the Renaissance.
There were those who experimented with
magic ways, not without adding other ele-
ments, too, in a kind of syncretistic effort. In
spite of the Church’s opposition, many
people of both high and low rank practiced
magic, since in the pre-scientific age the
desire to change the world’s course was as
intense as it is nowadays. Alchemy was a
lucrative business (for example, the astrono-
mer Kepler, in Prague), as was the use of
talismans, relics, even urbanism—the latter
credited with building cities where extraor-
dinary deeds would be performed. To many
of these practices no stigma was attached
because the doctrine of correspondences
and coincidences was part of the widespread,
popular belief. Italian architects (see Eugenio
Garin for details, and even the writings of
the architect Alberti) devised cityscapes in
order to influence the inhabitants’ moods
and thoughts. The Dominican monk,
Campanella, proceeded in his prison cell to
recreate the cosmos, with sun, moon and
earth, showing their interactions and ma-
nipulability by man. The Venetian musi-
cologist, Giorgio Georgi, used the musica
mundana (imitating the “music of the
spheres”) of Pythagoras and reproduced it
with instruments. Giordano Bruno wrote
about the many worlds and the anima mundi
whose forces were signs of cosmic harmony.
It was hoped that through these means a
more perfect religion would be formulated,
and thereby a more habitable society. Again,
the undergirding belief was a living cosmos
and the magical use of its operative powers.
The ultimate objective was the spiritualiza-
tion—and for Christian hermetists the
Christianification—of matter. This en-
deavor led often to efforts in the contrary
31
Paganism and Its Renewal by Thomas Molnar
direction: the endowment of the spirit with
materiality.
Needless to say, the refashioned world
was also based on the general determinism
allegedly ruling the universe. Hence, power
over nature required the removal of god
from mentalities. Indeed, this was the ambi-
tion of the first mechanistic philosophers
like Bacon and especially Descartes. They
did not use magic but rather its more effi-
cient replacement, science, which in their
and their admirers’ estimation was not very
far removed from the possibility of a still
enigmatic manipulation. Just as the appro-
priately uttered magic word (no longer the
Logos) was incantatory and efficacious, so
was the scientific experiment. The celestial
forces could be collected and put into ser-
vice, and so could buildings that contained
specially prepared blueprints with sacred
numbers and proportions.
In short, in a world readied for miracu-
lous and drastic transformations, hermetism
meant that man could take destiny in his
own hands and manipulate things almost at
will. God the miracle-maker and provider
became expendable; or, in the eyes of still
believing savants and magicians, he was
modified as a Great Mechanic, mysterious
but already calculable with his scientifically
programmed mysteries. It was only a matter
of time and further elaboration of the
Method before God would be limited to the
area of morality. At any rate, God’s role in
the theist conception, namely that he is an
external creator of the universe and its forces
and energies, was changed into that of an
agent who functions inside the universe,
according not to his will but to the scientific
laws inherent to the universe. Worshipping
such a god amounted to the worship of the
world itself with its immanent and autono-
mous powers: the starting point of pagan-
ism.
One might conjecture that the new, scien-
32 THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Fall 1995
tific mentality put an end to the periodic
vogue of hermetism. Yet it seems that the
latter is a forma mentis that reoccurs at each
time of crisis, when rationality suffers an
eclipse or when transcendental religion no
longer inspires people with belief in an in-
telligent God. After all, at the popular level,
religion acts through sets of symbols: sacred
objects, saints in heaven, significant acts,
God’s sacramental powers and presence,
and the force of prayer. When a given civi-
lization weakens such religious components,
it seems natural to switch to others, ready-
made and culturally consecrated by the past.
The educated classes also respond favorably
to varieties of hermetic teaching, and adopt
symbols as well as acts where the pre- or the
non-Christian elements prevail. Thus, in
the seventeenth century Rosicrucianism
became fashionable (Descartes may have
been a sympathizer): the symbol itself em-
bodies the rose, an old symbol of centrality
and of the sun, and the crux, transmitted
from Christianity. The two in combination
were regarded as more potent than singly.
They heralded the coming of a new world,
with new configurations. Freemasonry fol-
lowed in the next century—an elaborate
system of a quasi-church or sect, allegedly
originating in Egypt and reproducing the
symbols of the Great Tradition: the all-
seeing pyramid containing the Wisdom, the
masonic implements, the strict hierarchy,
the ritual, the initiation at various (thirty-
three) levels, and the secrecy.
Instead of vanishing with the progress of
sciences, freemasonry has acquired a pres-
tige rivaling that of the Christian churches.
Noted scientists and public figures belong
to it, and it is rumored that even Catholic
bishops have been initiated. Opportunism?
Perhaps. But would this not be a sign of the
Masons’ power and influence in the mod-
ern world?
Beneath these manifestations of
hermetism the fundamental theses have not

changed. The search continues for a final
explanation of the secret of the universe and
the universal secret, the grand panacea for
ills and suffering, for completeness, and for
perfection. Add to this that science has
strongly contributed in our time to dilute
and discredit belief in a God outside the
world-all. The cause of phenomena, we are
told, including the cause of the universe, is
a haphazard combination. The cause of
progress, it is said, is due to the human mind
with its experimental method. At any rate,
the powers that be are inside the universe;
engendered and ordered by immanent
mechanisms half-discovered, and half-im-
posed by man’s measuring intelligence.
More than that, since measuring is also
unreliable, there are no discoverable causes,
only self-constructed grammars within which
things may make sense by the sheer ar-
rangement of words in a coherent but tem-
porary meaning; but there are no ultimate
explanations, man is alone and naked, the
universe is his illusion.
Modern pagans thus argue that the tradi-
tion of immemorial wisdom possessed de-
cisive advantages over transcendental reli-
gion. The culminating argument in its favor
is that monotheism is guilty of depriving the
cosmos of its sacred character as sole exis-
tent. Monotheism points to a God who
claims all the sacredness for himself, thus
letting the rich and multiple sacred be de-
prived of its status. Neo-paganism, on the
other hand, offers a universe in which na-
ture and its many objects, persons, loca-
tions, time-spans, and events used to be
venerated as sacred. This presents the hu-
man being with a wide variety of choices
according to artistic, ethnic, and religious
representations, none of them imposed on
the others, none of them having the ambi-
tion of creating a universal order. The ir-
ruption of the One-God in the harmonious
pagan worldview abolished the manifesta-
tions of the sacred, leaving man nakedly
THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Fall 1995
Paganism and Its Renewal by Thomas Molnar
profane; leaving to God all the power, the
glory, and the (questionable) salvation. Fur-
thermore, monotheism resulted in a war of
all against everybody since a race started for
the genuine discipleship of the One-God,
instead of the previous harmony when ev-
ery organic community possessed, and was
possessed by, its own pantheon. These wars
of religion—particularly ferocious under
the aegis of Christianity, Judaism, and Is-
lam, but less so in pagan civilizations—were
conducted for the good graces of the “true
God,” whether on Mt. Sinai, on the
Golgotha, or in Mecca. Subsequently, the
clergies of these divided and divisive creeds
and dogmas became increasingly involved
in worldly affairs. When they became ex-
hausted through their doctrinal conflicts
and crusades, the clergies and hierarchies
had recourse to mundane ideologies born
out of their own dogmas which pursued the
never-ending wars on a profane level but
basically under religious control.
In short, according to the neo-pagans,
the modern world—wretched product of
monotheistic intolerance—suffers from
ideological clashes engendered by desperate
credal authorities that do not hesitate to use
vulgar and profane formulas in their en-
deavors to secure for themselves purely secu-
lar gains over their similarly minded oppo-
nents. The terminology, however, has re-
mained quasi-religious, dogmatic, and suf-
fused with a hatred of the infidel and the
heretic. If paganism were to be restored,
writes Sigrid Hunke in Europe’s True Reli-
gion, in its genuine multiplicity of the sa-
cred, a civilization ignorant of the wars of
religion—wars for the approval of a hypo-
thetical mono-theos—would arise. There
would arise a celtic pantheon, a Christian
mysticism of the god-as-self, an Islamic
creed, adoptions of Buddha, of Tao, of pre-
Columbian worship, etc.,—without a one-
world creed with its center in Rome, in
Moscow, or in Washington. The principal
33
Paganism and Its Renewal by Thomas Molnar
enemy is the Christian God, who, by ab-
sorbing the totality of the sacred, sets man
against man, tribe against tribe. Feminism
thus also enjoys neo-pagan favor since it
will split away from the male-God, forming
new sects worshipping the female symbol,
the moon, in sui generis rituals of a savage
character like the Bacchanalia in ancient
Greece. It is thus quite significant that Czech
president Vaclav Havel, known for his
commonsensical views, recently called Eu-
ropeans to begin worshipping Gaia, the god-
dess of Earth in mythology, as a return, he
said, to genuine culture. Radical feminists
in America chant the same slogan.
I n opposing the neo-pagans, one does not
understand in what way religious or ideo-
logical peace would be restored through the
plurality of worships and sects. Neo-pagans
blame Christianity for spreading and im-
posing a universalist faith, one that seems
now to have internally collapsed, for fight-
ing their wars with the help of substitute
creeds such as Marxism, liberal capitalism,
and ersatz-religions. Paganism claims to be
tolerant; it would thrive on well-founded
differences, traditions, and ethnic identi-
ties.
This is, of course, a utopian view. The
world cannot “return” to any one of its
earlier moments, and monotheism, in spite
of its present eclipse, is not likely to abolish
itself. Nor would paganism be plural and
tolerant, small sects and creeds fight among
themselves as viciously as large conglomer-
ates. And the Christian (as well as Judaic and
Moslem) tradition is at least as rooted after
three thousand years as the pagan one which
attracts, after all, only small intellectual
groups.
To this, the neo-pagan answer is that in
their worldview time is not unilinear—the
origin of our concept of salvation, later
secularized as progress—but cyclical, so that
the turning of the eternal wheel of timeless
34 THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Fall 1995
time would present again, and yet again,
past worlds and worldviews as valid. This,
however, is a double-edged concept, since
the “wheel of existence” or the Hindu Great
Year would restore also the collapsed mono-
theistic religion.
Neo-pagans are right in that we have
entered an age of sects, the break-up of great
religious traditions. God seems to have with-
drawn, and, as the neo-pagan Heidegger
held, “we are waiting for new gods.” The
New Age, the Moonies, and other creeds are
dynamized by the recrudescence of my-
thologies and magic, and, theologically
speaking, they attempt, in Voegelin’s words,
to “immanentize the eschaton.” Indeed, why
would a “silenced” God insist on his old
status as a creator, while various slogans are
formulated and circulated among human
beings in view of new world orders and an
autonomous mankind?
Yet, certain distinctions ought to be made.
Paganism is not homogeneous. The glory of
Greek philosophy is that it began with pre-
mises of immanentism (the fundamental
thesis of what we called the paganworldview)
and concluded with visions of monotheistic
approaches. Pythagoras, Parmenides, and
Plato adumbrated transcendence, although
not even their distant heir, Plotinus, was
able to break out of the conceptual edifice
they had built. Certain intuitions were lack-
ing. The main pagan thesis about a self-
sufficient cosmos held them captive—ironi-
cally, in Plato’s cave—thus the world of
nature had to be understood as an emana-
tion from the Intellect (Nous), then reab-
sorbed by it. The conception is at least as
sophisticated as our modern “Big Bang.”
The idea of creation had to irrupt into Greek
speculation in order to confer to man a full
value to phenomena and creaturely inde-
pendence. This concept did not liquidate
philosophy as the neo-pagans pretend. In-
stead, it opened it up to a new cosmology, to
history, and to a new and enriched compre-

hension of man.
W e mentioned at the beginning the rela-
tionship between our subject, hermetism,
and gnosticism, but focused on the first as
the lesser known of the two, with blurred
contours. Hermeticism is also more popu-
lar than the “elitist” Gnosis, but less accu-
rately assigned an origin in time. Its ancient
lifespan reaches from the third century B.C.
to the third century A.D., during which the
hermetic texts paralleled the gnostic ones,
placing the accent on the esoteric and the
occult. The hermetic salvation, A.J.
Festugiere writes, was similar to the gnostic
drama: the adept strives to know himself,
that is to realize the Light or divine spark in
his intimate being, while he rejects the de-
testable material parts. Tot asks in one of the
hermetic texts: Why did God not grant the
Intellect (Light) to all people equally? To
which his father, Hermes, replies that God
preferred to make this gift as a reward to the
sincerely striving souls alone.
This central teaching is present in the
whole history of hermetism. The Renais-
sance “magicians,” among whom Frances
A. Yates places G. Bruno and many others,
resort to the hidden wisdom of the elect who
will use verbal alchemy in order to formu-
late the post-Christian doctrine. The mod-
ern magicians, among whom there are many
fashionable intellectuals and ideologues,
writers and academics, choose sociology,
technology, and psycho-therapy to lift the
supposedly ignorant plebeians to the level
of soul-engineers, social technicians, and
technological experts. Let us point out again
that their enterprise is demiurgic, not just in
view of changes but of transformations of
man himself: his mind, body, genes, basic
attitudes to others, orientations, and con-
THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Fall 1995
Paganism and Its Renewal by Thomas Molnar
cepts of what is human, natural, and tradi-
tional. From academic groups to business
meetings, from kindergarten classes to fam-
ily counseling, from new definitions of fam-
ily and “parenting” to cloning and other
bio-genetic approaches—the implementa-
tion of imposed mutation becomes magi-
cal. The sects add to our recognition of
hermetic practices: the individual is men-
tally (for example through drugs) trans-
ported to another world where he will feel
superior; in communion with another, ex-
alted world and superior to his fellow-men
left behind. In the other world the god of
religions may also be a component of the
new creed, but only by playing a part in a
pantheistic ensemble, that is, by a reduction
in status. Thus everybody may join, but the
erasure of distinctions and rational judg-
ment is precisely the factor that radically
lowers the resisting capacity of prospective
members. The magicians then move in—
they were called viri novi (renewed men,
twice-born, elect, etc.) 2000 years ago—to
teach the “true doctrine,” usually a carica-
ture of monotheistic religion and with just
enough “spirituality” to put to sleep any
suspicion. This spirituality is most ambigu-
ous because it does not observe the balance
between body and soul—our normal con-
dition—but insists on “raising our con-
sciousness” and abolishing our sense per-
ception and natural sensuality for the ben-
efit of absolute immateriality. In other
words, just as alchemy is supposed to accel-
erate the virtues inherent in minerals in
view of a supernatural maturation, so this
mental alchemy is supposed to produce a
super-mankind. But this is no longer a com-
munity of wisemen: it is a group of magical
manipulators aspiring at naked power over
the rest.
35