H.E.R.M.E.S.’ Library Presents

An Exibition

From Spiritism to Occultism

'Under Construction'

 

This exhibition is about the emergence of 'occultism' as a new current in the English speaking world during the 19th century.

'Occultism' can, as a historical phenomenon, be regarded as a reaction to both materialistic aspects of modernity and the sensations of spiritualism and spiritism. Below you will find some of the first books published as part of the current 'occultism' from the holdings of H.E.R.M.E.S.' Library.

Some usefull information related to this exibition:

• For a brief description of the word 'Occultism' click here

• For a short article on H. P. Blavatsky's (1831-1891) understanding of the term 'Occultism' click here

• For a short introduction to the 'Occult Revival' click here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book # 01.

Title: Art Magic; or, Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super-undane Spiritism.

A Treatise in three parts and twenty-three sections: Descriptive of Art Magic, Spiritism, The Diffrent orderes od spirits in the Universe known to be related to, or in communication with Man: Together with directions for invoking, Controlling, and Disharging Spirits, and the uses and abuses, dangers and possibilities of Magical Art.

Published for the Author: At New York, America. 1876.

First Edition.

'Oh, how long! how wistfully, and yet in what agonizing yearning for light---light upon the mystery of self-knowledge, light upon the problems of who am I? what am I? whose am I? whence do I come? and whither am I bound?--has the I AM of mortal existence waited! Can the answer ever be rendered? If so, it must come from the realm of true knowledge, the esoteric innermost, from whence and to which the exoteric is but a temporary pilgrim! Those who have stood face to face with this esoteric sunbeam, who have beheld it vanishing behind the clouds of matter for the span of a mortal term of existence, but emerging again into the clear noon-day radiance of a day which knows no night, a firmament whose unbounded vistas enshroud no mysteries, a realm of being limited only by the capacity of finite perception---such an one surely has the right to say, I know, and such an one writes and alleges HE WILL Reveal the order of Divine wisdom as manifest in human existence, and declared by the souls who have lived and struggled behind the veil, broken their way by the sword of death through its misty envelopment, and finally attained to that breadth of vision where cause and effect cohere like pearls on the unbroken thread of destiny, where past and future lie outstretched in boundless panoramas of a never beginning, never ending present.'

14-15

 

103 - magic and spiritism

 

Book # 02.

Title: Ghost Land or Researches into the Mysteries of Occultism, Illustrated in a Series of Auutobiographical Sketches

Translated and Edited: By Emma Hardinge Britten

Published for the Editor: At Boston, America. 1876.

First Edition.

 

'That those persons who call themselves "spiritual teachers" and claim to be "interpreters and exponents" of the spiritual philosophy (?) have not all the truth -- nay, not even a tithe of the experience necessary to qualify them for the office they have assumed -- becomes more and more painfully evident to the earnest student into spiritual mysteries the more he compares the immensity of the realms to be traversed with the shallow pretences at explanation put forth by the self-elected spiritual teachers of this generation.

By those great authorities occultism is assumed to be a word invented by a few individuals, whose chief aim is to destroy Spiritualism and substitute "black magic" in its place, whilst occultists are renegades, who would "roll back the car of progress" (a favorite expression, by the way, of those who deny the right of any one to progress beyond their own standard of knowledge) and presume to add to the sublime philosophy enunciated through the table-tipping and trance-speaking media for "sirits of the seventh sphere," the antiquated stuff of Oriental cabalists, Chaldean astrologists, Hindoo, Egyptian, and Persian magi, Greek philosophers, Arabian alchemists, and mediæval Rosicrucian mystics. Of course all these are mere ignoramuses, who for thousands of years have been blundering through the mysteries of occult science, which the aforesaid table-tipping and seventh-sphere-inspiring spirits instantly sweep away with the knock-down argument of "What I don't know isn't true; and what I can not explain has no existence."' p. 6