Our Occult Ancestors
Times book reviewer Michael Burleigh looks at a new book by David S Katz that tries to encapsulate the history of occult knowledge from the ancient Greeks to the rapture-ready fundamentalists. The book, titled “The Occult Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Present Day” ties the bulk of occult teaching with Neo-Platonist philosophers and early Christian Gnostics.
“A neo-Platonist magus, or adept, could detect the hidden (or occult) properties in seemingly prosaic plants or animals, so as to redirect the “energy” in the heart of a lion to foster human fortitude; the elite Gnostics employed mystical contemplation to free the divine spark left in some people by the Higher God, while the majority made do with the botched bodies created by an evil lesser deity. However, since the occult resembles a Russian doll, it was soon believed that Plato himself was but a conduit for a more venerable wisdom. This hailed from Egypt, which, until the relatively modern fascination with India, was regarded as the repository of truths hidden in pyramids and hieroglyphs. This belief is called Hermeticism ? after the mythical Hermes Trismegistus.”
I find it strange that the author ends the book with the “dispensationalist” fundamentalists as the modern heirs of the occult – and not say modern Pagans or current “Generation Hex” magic(k)al practitioners.
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