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I've been meaning to write this one for quite a while now, so here goes. It has to do with the amazing tools available online for scholarly research. For instance, try this search for "occult revival" on Google Books. Do you have any idea how long a search like that used to take when the only tools were paper-based card catalogs in physical libraries? Not to knock libraries, but the answer could be literally: a lifetime.
Note that "occult revival" is not just some random pairing of words. The phrase is a term of art in studies of 19th century intellectual history. I didn't know this a year ago -- even though I'd probably come across the phrase many times in my reading. The way I learned this what you might call "specialized language" was through some really dumb software on Amazon that looks for what the company calls SIPs: statistically improbable phrases.
I should explain that by "really dumb," I don't mean bad. SIPs are incredibly useful. As I said, they're how I learned that "occult revival" was a phrase in common use among certain scholars -- and critically, that those scholars had written books I would very likely want to read. What I mean by dumb is that the software doesn't know squat about occultism, revived or otherwise, or anything whatsoever about the 19th century.
The first clue to how SIPs work lies in the word "statistically." We're not talking some sort of AI here (not, at any rate, the sort that used to make insupportable claims to "natural language understanding"). Instead, these are mindless number crunching algorithms, and in this case the "numbers" they crunch are digital representations of words. What they look for is something computational linguists call co-occurrence.
The second clue lies in the fact that certain words co-occur all the time. Think of clichés. Here's a handful grabbed off a page cleverly titled Clichés: Avoid Them Like The Plague.
- ballpark figure
- calm before the storm
- dead as a doornail
- fear and loathing [thanks Hunter!]
- it was a dark and stormy night [thanks Bulwer!]
Clichés are statistically probable phrases. Which is why they don't convey much. I'll spare you a long digression here on the information theory of entropy, but trust me, it's germane. Now, if you had some way to do it -- say a huge corpus of text data and a super-slick co-occurrence algorithm or two -- you could identify such nearly meaningless phrases "simply" by tallying how many times they... um... occurred. And here's the dumb-but-good part: you could do this without needing clue one about meaning.
Happily for us, giant text corpuses and slick search algorithms are just the sorts of things that companies like Google and Amazon happen to have lying about. And if you can identify clichés, you can also identify non-clichés -- call them Statistically Improbable Phrases.
As it turns out, the phrase "occult revival" doesn't occur anywhere near as frequently as, say, "Hot enough for you?" or "Have a nice day!" But it does occur. And it recurs in certain types of books -- often enough to be statistically significant. In fact, this recurrence defines, in some dimension, what this class of books is "about." More precisely, the algorithm creates that class on the fly. And when you see a part of that class laid out, as below, a lightbulb can go off. It did for me.
This is called -- get ready for a rare technical term here -- learning.
No, not machine learning. Human learning. As in, you come away from the experience with more understanding than you had going in. And as I said at the start of this, it could take a lifetime to acquire this sort of knowledge using pre-digital research methods. Yeah, yeah, maybe that sort of hard work would make us more deeply knowledgeable, but look: some of us are born amateurs and dilettantes (see my discussion in Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices) and we don't have enough lifetimes to waste getting PhDs in all the specialized areas we might want to know something about. Do we? No, we do not. And besides, universities cost too damn much and they're full of arrogant motherjumpers who think they know it all, when the truth is, very damn few know even half of it.
Uh... please to forgive the little rant there. Call it my postmodern manifesto. But perhaps this has all been a bit too abstract. Here, let's have an example. I yanked the following off Amazon and tinkered a bit with the URLs, all of which now should work (they do in my browser, anyway; got Firefox?). Be sure to experiment a bit with the extra cool pull-down references (right after the little arrowheads).
"occult revival" appears in these books:
Learn more about Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs)
 20 references in
Gurdjieff; The Key Concepts (Routledge Key Guides)
by
S. WELLBELOVED
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| 1. |
from Front Matter:
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| "... narcotics Nature/Great Nature/the Common Mother negative emotions New Work New Work terminology `nitrogen' nonentity/nothingness/nullity number/numerology obedience observation see SELF-OBSERVATION obyvatel occult/occult revival Octaves, Law of see LAW OF OCTAVES; LAW OF SEVEN oral tradition/oral transmission ..." |
| 2. |
from Front Matter:
|
| "... Interest in the East arose not only from the empire-building aspirations of both Russia and Britain, but also from the occult revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The subject matter of Gurdjieff's autobiographical writings reflects these interests. The mythology ..." |
| 3. |
from Front Matter:
|
| "... around 1905, prepared Gurdjieff well for his arrival in pre-Revolutionary Russia, where Moscow and St Petersburg were centres of the occult revival. Gurdjieff arrived in Russia in about 1912, and began to form and teach his first groups of pupils in these ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 7:
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| "... The fire, which fuses all the powders in the retort, is conscience (Search: 40-3, 156; see also bodies; friction; occult/ occult revival). There is a special chemistry of alchemy that functions as the Law of Three. All substances function as conductors of ..." |
| 5. |
on Page 18:
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| "... it, and as he acts upon it he will act upon the man (Views, 1918: 211-12; see also magic/magician; occult/ occult revival). Physical and astral elements mix together to make a third substance, which forms an atmosphere around a man. Just as ..." |
| 6. |
on Page 69:
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| "... to imagine that he did not also know of these Western sources. (See also Wellbeloved 2001a, 2001b; laws: an overview; occult/occult revival). A prayer practice, newly termed `Kything', that aims for a spiritual entering into another person for the purpose of establishing ..." |
| 7. |
on Page 84:
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| "... GOOD AND EVIL through the occult revival of the late nineteenth century. Webb (1980: 524-5) suggests Anna Kingsford's `esoteric Christianity', a mix of alchemy and Gnosticism, as ..." |
| 8. |
on Page 89:
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| "... distant from God, who may be contacted only through a series of intermediaries (Voices: 159, 200, 164, 171-4; see also occult/occult revival). Further reading For the group as part of Sufi teaching, see Bennett 1976: 218-19; for an account of the Rope ..." |
| 9. |
on Page 95:
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| "... many references to hermetically sealed places and things in Tales, which can be read as indirect references to Hermeticism (see occult/occult revival). The three main branches of Hermeticism are alchemy, astrology and magic (see Taylor 2001: 231-2). Further reading For Russian Hermeticism, ..." |
| 10. |
on Page 102:
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| "... of which has its own memory and one of which can only be reached through hypnotism (Crabtree 1993). See also: occult/occult revival; New Work Further reading For Mesmerism in relation to Spiritualism and to Christian Science, see Webb 1971b; for Gurdjieff as ..." |
| 11. |
on Page 122:
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| "... known planets of antiquity, derived from Pythagoras, occurs in Western European occultism, especially during the Renaissance and the late nineteenth-century occult revival. Some of these probable sources for Gurdjieff's Laws of Seven and Three are explored by Webb (1980: 499-542). Blavatsky's eternal ..." |
| 12. |
on Page 159:
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| "... OCCULT/OCCULT REVIVAL also the `Objective Way' - the `Way' of people in life (see ways/ fourth way). The obyvatel is defined as ..." |
| 13. |
on Page 160:
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| "... (Voices: 24, 29, 165). See also: love; telepathy; vampirism Further reading For the political, social and economic instability underlying the occult revival in Russia and France, see Webb 1971a, 1971b, 1976. For the occult in Russia, see Rosenthal 1997 and Young 1979; ..." |
| 14. |
on Page 161:
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| "... ORAL TRADITION, TURKIC another (Search: 201; see also occult/occult revival; secrecy/ silence). Gurdjieff writes that he collected oral information about hypnotism (Herald: 20). He also refers to the oral story-telling ..." |
| 15. |
on Page 165:
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| "... establishment values may lead to revolutionary underground movements , but can also result in adherence to underground occult groups (see occult/occult revival). Although his motives may have been different, the methods Gurdjieff used to teach his cosmological and psychological ideas have parallels ..." |
| 16. |
on Page 167:
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| "... exercise, pupils can pray to their ideal to help them guard what they have obtained (Voices: 186, 280). See also: occult/occult revival; stairway PREJUDICES Man has two kinds of prejudices: those of the essence and those of the personality (Views, 1924: 240). ..." |
| 17. |
on Page 168:
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| "... three. Contemporary man's chief failing is described in terms of missing psychic factors (see astrology; Herald of Coming Good; occult/ occult revival). There are strong links between the occult, psychology and psychoanalysis (see Webb 1976 for Freud's early connections with the occult). ..." |
| 18. |
on Page 203:
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| "... one point, all points will feel it. `Picture how what happens in one place happens everywhere' (Voices: 206-7). See also: occult/occult revival TERROR OF THE SITUATION, THE In Chapter 26 of Tales, Beelzebub tells of the teaching of Ashiata Shiemash, a Messenger ..." |
| 19. |
on Page 206:
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| "... of the internalised myth of the Fall. Both Blavatsky and Gurdjieff actively invited disparagement as charlatan gurus. See also: hypnosis/hypnotism; occult/occult revival Further reading On Theosophy, see Blavatsky (1988 [1888]); Ashish and Prem (1969); Ashish (1970); Carlson (1993); Washington (1993); Goodwyn (1994); ..." |
| 20. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... The Modern Origins and Development of a Western Spiritual Psychology. Rockport: Element, 1993. McIntosh, Christopher, Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival. London: Rider, 1975. Metz, Barbara and Burchill, John, The Enneagram and Prayer. Denville: Dimension, 1987. Meyer, Marvin (trans.), Gospel of ..." |
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| 1. |
on Page 29:
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| "... Joseph II and Leopold II, were credited to Illuminati agents dealing out aqua toffana. Later on, as writers in the occult revival of the late nineteenth century borrowed these conspiracy theories for their own purposes, aqua toffana put in an appearance in ..." |
| 2. |
on Page 34:
|
| "... Middle Ages, which included arithmolop, in ordinary arithmetic m the same way that it fused astrology and astronomy. The Renaissance occult revival drew heavily on ancient arithmological works and on medieval developments of the tradition, and Renaissance tests of arithinology-most of which ..." |
| 3. |
on Page 45:
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| "... underworld of cunning folk, occult secret societies, and magical lodges. SEE CUNNING MAN/WOMAN; LODGE, MAGICAL. With the beginning of the occult revival of the late nineteenth century, astrology was among the first occult sciences to begin the climb back into wider publicity. ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 94:
|
| "... church predictably classified them all as demonic, and until the Renaissance the whole tradition was relatively secret. During the Renaissance occult revival, attitudes toward the old ceremonial magic of the grirnorres varied widely. Some of the important Renaissance magi rejected the medieval ..." |
| 5. |
on Page 95:
|
| "... times and has survived m some folk cultures until modern times, but has received essentially no attention by the modern occult revival. SEE DIVINATION. ceroscopy. SEE CEROMANCY. Ceugant. In Druidry, one of the three circles of existence, the transcendant realm which can ..." |
| 6. |
on Page 126:
|
| "... magical image associated with it, and these were much used in magical practice during the Renaissance. Later, in the nineteenth-century occult revival, the decans were associated with the Minor Arcana of the tarot. Two different attributions are still in use-that of Papus ..." |
| 7. |
on Page 224:
|
| "... was much used by a variety of magical societies, the actual teachings of classical Hermeticism received little attention. The nineteenth-century occult revival saw the reprinting of the Corpus Hermeticum and other ancient Hermetic documents, but for the most part the Hermetic teachings ..." |
| 8. |
on Page 279:
|
| "... the second half of the nineteenth century, and was influenced both by the first wave and by the great European occult revival of the time. Lodges of the second wave varied widely in how much material they drew from Masonry; many did ..." |
| 9. |
on Page 306:
|
| "... interwoven with the occult scene of the late eighteenth century, and whose discoveries played a central role in launching the occult revival of the nineteenth century. He was born in the small village of Iznang in southern Germany in 1734, and attended ..." |
| 10. |
on Page 326:
|
| "... of Luxor and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn-also had much to do with the development of the nineteenth-century occult revival, which had been launched to France by the magician and scholar Eliphas Lévi in 1845. SEE GOLDEN DAWN, HERMETIC ORDER ..." |
| 11. |
on Page 402:
|
| "... Catholic reaction. The Thirty Years War, which broke out in the afterniath of Friedrich's failed gamble, effectively ended the German occult revival of the period, and whatever might have been behind the Rosicrucian manifestoes seems to have gone into hiding or out ..." |
| 12. |
on Page 468:
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| "... SEE ETTEILA. Despite all these previous contributions, it was Eliplias Lévi (Alphonse Louis Constant, 1810-1875), the architect of the nineteenth-century occult revival, who ensured that the tarot would become one of the core elements of modern occultism. He did this by noticing ..." |
| 13. |
on Page 482:
|
| "... produced the greatest of the later theosophers, Franz yon Baader (1765-1841). It also played an important part inn sparking the occult revival of the late nineteenth century. The scale and popular impact of that revival, however, quickly overshadowed the theosophmc tradition, and ..." |
| 14. |
on Page 516:
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| "... up a career as a mesnneric healer. In 1887 he met Stanislaus de Guaira, the leading figure in the French occult revival of the time, and became his personal secretary and close friend. SEE GUAITA, STANISLAUS DE. Involvement with Guaira brought hint ..." |
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| 1. |
on Page 24:
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| "... in alchemical, Hermetic and Cabalist circles. Whereas many writers tended to use the concept as a metaphor, with the Renaissance occult revival there was a move to a more literal understanding-64 The restoration of nature in occult thought was seen as a ..." |
| 2. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... History of Magic, trans. A. E. Waite, paperback edn (London, 1986), p. 358; Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London, 1972), p. 150. 89 Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians (1896), trans. A. P. Morton, paperback edn (London, 1994), ..." |
| 3. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... ch. 2. 123 Martin, Orthodox Heresy, p. 21. 124 O'Keefe, Stolen Lightning, passim. 125 McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival, p. 152. 126 James Hall, A History of Ideas and Images in Italian Art (London, 1983), pp. 261-6; Edgar Wind, ..." |
| 4. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... pp. 202-4. 154 J. K. Huysmans, Ld-Bas (Down There), ed. Robert Irwin (Sawtry, 1986); McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival, ch. 6; Francis King and Isabel Sutherland, The Rebirth of Magic (London, 1982), ch. 5. 155 On magic and fantasy ..." |
| 5. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... O'Keefe, Stolen Lightning. The Social Theory of Magic (Oxford, 1982), p. 559. 122 Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London, 1972), p. 158. 123 Cherry Gilchrist, The Elements of Alchemy (Shaftesbury, 1991), pp. 123-5. 124 Fritjof Capra, The Tao ..." |
| 6. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... vol. 1, p. 161. 163 Cited in Stafford, Body Criticism, pp. 285-6. 164 Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London, 1972), p. 60. ..." |
| 7. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... edn (Notre Dame, 1975), p. 32. 83 Ibid., p. 201. 84 Cited in Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London, 1972), p. 149. ..." |
| 8. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... letter to Dodwell, in Walton (ed.), Notes and Materials, p. 199. 94 Cited in McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival, p. 149. 95 William Blake, `Milton', in Complete Writings, p. 522. 96 Blake, 'A Vision of the Last Judgement', in ..." |
| 9. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... 10 ff. 133 Blake, `Jerusalem', in Complete Writings, pp. 623, 675. 134 Cited in McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival, pp. 78-9. 135 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, 14th edn (London, 1942), p. 68. 136 Cited in James, The Varieties of Religious ..." |
| 10. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... 184 Notes 80 Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London, 1972), pp. 46-7. 81 Viatte, Les Sources occultes du romantisme, vol. 2, pp. 175-7. 82 Papus, The Tarot of ..." |
| 11. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... (Chicago, 1986), p. 6. 118 Hugo, Les Misérables, vol. 2, pp. 836, 839. 119 McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival, ch. 8. 120 Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, p. 79. 121 Washington, Madame Blavatsky's Baboon, ch. 7. 122 [Moses de ..." |
| 12. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... Ferber, The Social Vision of William Blake (Princeton, NJ, 1985), pp. 213-21. 159 McIntosh, Eliphas I Zvi and the French Occult Revival, p. 151. 160 Marjorie Reeves, Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future (London, 1976). 161 Jane Lead, The Wonders of ..." |
| 13. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... A Documentary History of a Magical Order, 1887-1923 (London, 1972), p. 50. 8 On modem occultism, see Marcello Truzzi, `The Occult Revival as Popular Culture ', The Sociological Quarterly, 13 (Winter, 1972), pp. 16-36; Martin Marty, `The Occult Establishment', Social Research, 37, ..." |
| 14. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... 31 Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London, 1972); McIntosh, The Rosicrucians. 32 Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas "vi and the French Occult Revival (London, 1972), p. 20. 33 Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion (New York, 1954), pp. 79 ff. 34 Ernst Cassirer, ..." |
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| 1. |
from Front Matter:
|
| "... case that this quite natural state of affairs has led to a partial view of history; that to ignore the occult revival of the 19th century is to ignore a large slice of modern intellectual ..." |
| 2. |
from Front Matter:
|
| "... view of history and society which I believe is new. But this book is neither a complete history of the occult revival nor an attempt to compile anintellectual history of the last century and a half. Both would be superhuman tasks. It ..." |
| 3. |
from Front Matter:
|
| "... 12 The Occult Underground attempt to show how the occult revival can be used as a key to a crisis which we still have not resolved, and how the occult relates ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 17:
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| "... London." We should not be surprised to discover further minority movements combining in this fashion during the course of the occult revival. Elliotson, however, was the holder of a Chair: this could not be said of the majority of those in America ..." |
| 5. |
on Page 28:
|
| "... if other members of his profession had possessed a little more of Huxley's testiness, the Spiritualist movement in particular-and the occult revival as a whole-would have lost much of its initial impulse. In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded. In ..." |
| 6. |
on Page 120:
|
| "... he had seen her astral body detach itself gradually from the coffin and float away.-" Such beliefs demonstrate that the occult revival could often go hand in hand with Christian convictions, although admittedly both Aelred and Ignatius are extreme examples. More orthodox ..." |
| 7. |
on Page 123:
|
| "... show the implicit tendencies of a romantic approach to religion. Such developments are so inextricably mingled with those of the occult revival that it is not possible to tell the two apart. "It is forbidden to read this preface, under penalty of ..." |
| 8. |
on Page 146:
|
| "... next chapter we shall discuss just what this term implies. The concern of what follows is to show that the "Occult Revival" of 19th-century Paris was closely bound up with the more artistic or literary levels of ..." |
| 9. |
on Page 158:
|
| "... manifestation of Oscar Wilde (though he also had his moments of vertigo by the Abyss) preceded by Joséphin Peladan. The occult revival in Paris had begun much earlier than the eighties and the nineties of the century. But from the point of ..." |
| 10. |
on Page 159:
|
| "... introduced him to the textbooks of his particular brand of occultism." Thus two of the most significant figures in the occult revival were brought together. It is worth noting that although both have become known as occultists, they originally made their name ..." |
| 11. |
on Page 178:
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| "... Michelet, Les compagnons de la hiérophanie (Paris, n.d. ), pp. 24-5. Michelet's account is invaluable as a source for the Occult revival in 19th-century France; a short analysis written in his old age by one of the most clear-headed participants in the ..." |
| 12. |
on Page 340:
|
| "... growth of Nationalisms and Socialisms took place at the same time and in response to the same causes as the Occult Revival. Personal responsibility could be drowned in the primal sea of communal obligation. But there is a far greater similarity between ..." |
| 13. |
on Page 346:
|
| "... socialism, and in particular attempts actually to realize some such aspirations on this earth, are an integral part of the Occult Revival--and, more broadly, of that questing for the direction society was to take occasioned by the crisis of consciousness. The important ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
on Page 10:
|
| "... history religion, and art impelled its quest for direct experience and lost innocence . In the late nineteenth century. the occult revival and the bohemian underground of Paris, Vienna; and Zurich provided the unique inix that allowed the surrealists to question rationalism ..." |
| 2. |
on Page 16:
|
| "... origins of human thought, resulting in a persistent cultural Darwinism that continues to determine the interpretation of primitive art. The occult revival in Vienna. Paris, and the New England ..." |
| 3. |
on Page 47:
|
| "... archetypes, the primal patterns of psychical images in the "collective unconscious ." Jung's writings in particular were influenced by the occult revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His research for his doctoral dissertation at this time focused on a ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 103:
|
| "... how Romanticism, occultism, and the search for origins are connected. The concept of sign stems from the heritage of the occult revival of the late nineteenth century with its formulations built on Swedenborg's system of "correspondences" between the natural and supernatural worlds. ..." |
| 5. |
on Page 104:
|
| "... 104 Surrealism and the Sacred ated into the system of correspondences. In the occult revival of the late nineteenth century, the idea of sign was employed by figures as diverse as Freud. Madame Blavatsky, and ..." |
| 6. |
on Page 118:
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| "... 118 Sterrealisni and the Sacred motivations grew in the bohemian milieu and occult revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-a culture fascinated by the irrational, the uncanny, and the supernatural. As we ..." |
| 7. |
on Page 125:
|
| "... art world, proved a parallel influence to that of Freud in the development of surrealism. Occultism and Psychoanalysis During the occult revival in late nineteenth-century Vienna, Freud shared his interests with occultists who, like him, sought the invisible reality behind the visible ..." |
| 8. |
on Page 128:
|
| "... the Sacred psychoanalysis as a science within the medical establishment. Even so. Freud was as much a part of the occult revival of the late nineteenth century as lie was against it. He was fascinated by parapsychological phenomena such as prophecy. telepathy, ..." |
| 9. |
on Page 138:
|
| "... 138 Surrealism and the Sacred FIGURE 7.8 Freud's Study with Rugs, 1890s books and antiquities are material manifestations of the occult revival in Vienna. Persian carpets formed a rich meditative backdrop, opening the flat expanse of wall to patterns that created an ..." |
| 10. |
on Page 144:
|
| "... Freud and the Occult 143 In the occult revival in late nineteenth-century Vienna, Freud's ideas form one element within a broader context that includes alternative religions, parapsychology , and ..." |
| 11. |
on Page 201:
|
| "... references to challenge the dominant Catholic religion in France. This struggle between pagan and Christian elements appeared in the nineteenth-century occult revival, which opposed the hegemony of reason and bourgeois morality. Previously, the iconographic language of the Middle Ages with its images ..." |
| 12. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... Collected Papers. Vol. IV (London : Hogarth Press, 1956), pp. 158-62. A discussion of Freud within the context of the occult revival of the late nineteenth century is found in Webb. The Occult Establishment , pp. 345-416. 26. Webb, The Occult Establishment, ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
on Page 19:
|
| "... Britain and America.' 1 Spiritualism was a vitally important component of what has subsequently come to be called the nineteenth-century occult revival, a broad pan-European and American movement loosely dedicated to a variety of unorthodox spiritual beliefs that can loosely be termed ..." |
| 2. |
on Page 26:
|
| "... Overwhelming anxiety and disillusionment brought about by a rapidly changing social order have been offered as the explanation for the occult revival of the post-185os, and remains the mainstay of attempts to understand the engagement with occultism at the fin de siècle.29 ..." |
| 3. |
on Page 27:
|
| "... Similarly, Janet Oppenheim's authoritative The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, í85o-1914 sets up the discussion of the occult revival in terms of a singular "response to the Victorian crisis of faith." An extended chronology and treatment of Theosophy notwithstanding ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 38:
|
| "... occultists, abhorred what they saw as the gross materialism of the age. Their critique of materialism was central to the occult revival and invariably meant resistance to the intellectual dominance of an aggressive scientism, which refused to accept the reality of things ..." |
| 5. |
on Page 51:
|
| "... CHAPTER TWO Magicians of the New Dawn At the secret heart of the late-Victorian occult revival lay the revitalized practice of ritual magic as taught to an initiated elect in the foremost Magical Order of the ..." |
| 6. |
on Page 235:
|
| "... Nicoll in 1953- while the ideas they espoused were revised and found a completely new audience during the next great occult revival of the ig6os and 1970s. The renewed appeal of the Work requires little translation. Both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky were influenced ..." |
| 7. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... situates a wealth of invaluable material on nineteenth-century occultism within this explanatory paradigm. Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London: Rider and Company, 1972), 12-13, places similar emphasis on occultism as a response to social and political crisis. More ..." |
| 8. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... mysticism and occultism. 86. From an article published in L'Initiation. June 18go; cited in McIntosh, Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival, 171. McIntosh (171-76) provides an account of the late nineteenth-century Cabalistic wars in France. For a brief relevant account of ..." |
| 9. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... 84. For fin-de-siècle French magic/occultism, which was much less "respectable" in tone, see Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London: Rider and Company , 1972) and Robert Pincus-Witten, Occult Symbolism in France: Joséphin Péladan and the Salons de la ..." |
| 10. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... and James McFarlane. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976. Reprint, Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, igg1. McIntosh, Christopher. Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival. London: Rider and Company, 1972. - . The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason: Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
on Page 43:
|
| "... that Cazotte assured Malesherbes he would live to see, as Christopher McIntosh makes clear in Eliphas Levi and The French Occult Revival, by 1792, a number of `cults of reason' had sprung up in revolutionary France, the aim of which was to ..." |
| 2. |
on Page 100:
|
| "... work Zanoni (1842), and the occialt science-fiction tale The Coming Race (1871). Both would become central texts of the modern occult revival. Bulwer-Lytton was one of those embarrassingly versatile Victorians, combining a successful career as a politician, with a prodigious literary output, ..." |
| 3. |
on Page 103:
|
| "... is Bulwer-Lytton, and not Levi, as it is usually understood , who was the key figure behind the influential French occult revival of the late 19th century, a development that led directly to what we know as occultism today. Whatever the case, ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 109:
|
| "... three quarters of The Magus is plagiarized. The information is accurate, if stolen, but Barrett's book did not start an occult revival because, for all its scholarly apparatus, it is a dull read. Levi is never dull. His pages may be riddled ..." |
| 5. |
on Page 150:
|
| "... that pursued him, and confessed to having practised black magic. 15 Quoted in Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival (London: Rider, 1972) p. 178. Baldick, p. 138. 16 Quoted in Rémy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity, tr. Francis ..." |
| 6. |
on Page 153:
|
| "... on some of the results of this influence. Probably the most immediate name to come to mind associated with the occult revival of the late 19th century is W.B. Yeats. Yeats was drawn to the occult early on and was a member ..." |
| 7. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... O. V. de Lubicz Milosz, Christopher Bamford, ed. (West Stockbridge: Lindisfarne Press, 1985) McIntosh, Christopher, Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival (London-: Rider, 1972) Moskvitin, Jurij, An Essay on the Origin of Thought (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1974) Nerval, Gérard de,Journey ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
on Page 3:
|
| "... Lully; the writings of the German illuminists, Goethe, Novalis, and Achim von Arnim; the writings of Eliphas Lévi; and the occult revival that occurred in Paris in the late nineteenth century . In the early 1920s, the surrealists began by experimenting with ..." |
| 2. |
on Page 4:
|
| "... all to be influential, not only upon surrealist literature, but painting, too. These poetic theories were heavily influenced by the occult revival, so it is useful to examine them as a secondary influence upon surrealism as well as for the fact that ..." |
| 3. |
on Page 11:
|
| "... the apex of the symbolist movement. Symbolism flourished in the last two decades of the nineteenth century during a huge occult revival in Paris. Symbolism was an art and literary movement that created a cult of rarefied poetic beauty. It was elitist ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 18:
|
| "... I8 SURREALISM & THE OCCULT of idiosyncratic and distorted forms and neologisms. Jarry derived many ideas and imagery from the occult revival of his time, usually to attack the absurdity of religion. The Prolegomenas of Haldernablou is based upon the story of ..." |
| 5. |
on Page 132:
|
| "... surrealism was the twentieth-century development of a nineteenth century tradition in art and poetry that was heavily indebted to the occult revival of that period. In its themes and content, surrealism is linked to the romantic/ symbolist lineage, and not as much ..." |
| 6. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1977. MacDonald, Craig. Solari-z-ations. Glasgow University: Unpublished Thesis, 1990. McIntosh, Christopher. Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival. London: Rider, 1972. Mezei, Arpad. "Liberty of Language" in Surréalisme en 1947 (exhibition catalog). Paris: Galerie Maeght, 1947. Parinaud, André. ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
on Page 65:
|
| "... been-criticized from many perspectives. However, more significant than the rationalistic views, like, for instance, the one that sees in the occult revival a form of "pop" religion, is the radical rejection by the foremost representative of modern esotericism, René Guénon. Guénon, born ..." |
| 2. |
on Page 66:
|
| "... that he definitely rejects the general optimism and hope in a personal and cosmic renovatio which seem to characterize the occult revival. Already in his books Orient et Occident and La Crise du monde moderne, published in 1924 and 1927, Guénon proclaimed ..." |
| 3. |
on Page 68:
|
| "... the different occult traditions. The underground vogue of Hesse 's Journey to the East (1951) in the fifties anticipated the occult revival of the late sixties. But who will interpret for us the amazing success of Rosemary's Baby and 20011 1 am ..." |
| 4. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... the Sociology of Religion of Occult Behavior in the Youth Culture," Youth and Society 2 (1970). 131-40; Marcello Truzzi, "The Occult Revival as Popular Culture: Some Random Observations on the Old and Nouveau Witch," Sociological Quarterly 13 (winter. 1972): 16-36 (with a ..." |
| 5. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... Miracle, p. 87. See also Milbourne Christopher, ESP, Seers and Psychics (New York, 1970), pp. 101 ff.; Marcello Truzzi, "The Occult Revival as Popular Culture," pp. 19 ff.; Edward A. Tiryakian, "Toward the Sociology of Esoteric Culture," pp 494 ff.; Martin Marty, ..." |
| 6. |
from Back Matter:
|
| "... in this country" (Heenan, in Edward F Heenan, ed , Mystery, Magi(, and Miracle, p 88) See also Truzzi, "The Occult Revival," pp 23 ff., Many, "The Occult Establishment," pp 215 ff , Edward F Heenan, "Which Witch? Some Personal and Sociological ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
on Page 29:
|
| "... consciousness. In the eighteenth century, elements of Freemasonry, particularly Masonic ritual structure, were firmly imbedded into the Hermetic path. The occult revival of the nineteenth century, spearheaded by men such as Eliphas Levi, brought an increased interest in the Hermetic Tradition. When ..." |
| 2. |
on Page 37:
|
| "... the Hermetic Tradition in particular. This interest was seen in England and especially in France. By the mid-1850s, the French occult revival was well underway. The movement was spearheaded by individuals such as former Catholic clergyman and prolific author Alphonse Louis Constant, ..." |
| 3. |
on Page 38:
|
| "... CHAPTER TWO Another individual who had a significant influence on the occult revival of the nineteenth century was Frederick Hockley (1808-1885), a Spiritualist, Freemason, and Rosicrucian whose experiments with spirit communications and clairvoyance ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 40:
|
| "... (HPB) was described as a flamboyant, outrageous, and attractive personality, and one of the most influential figures of the nineteenth-century occult revival. Theosophy means "divine wisdom"-from theos, "god," and sophia, "wisdom." The objective of the Theosophical Society was to establish the idea ..." |
| 5. |
on Page 183:
|
| "... of the British parliament, endeavored to adapt the traditions of astrology to the new scientific reality. Astrology flourished as the occult revival of the nineteenth century captivated the minds of many educated Europeans who were seeking new, more vibrant forms of spiritual ..." |
| 6. |
on Page 195:
|
| "... the patriarchs, all historical traditions of primeval times, are enclosed in this hieroglyphical book of Thoth, Enoch or Cadmus.33 The occult revival of the nineteenth century promoted serious study of the tarot and its Qabalistic associations. Occultists and magicians began to view ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
on Page 21:
|
| "... forge new roles for themselves, particularly in the realm of religion. Among these women were many important figures of the occult revival, including Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-91) and Annie Besant (1847-1933) of the Theosophical Society, and Anna Kingsford (1846-88), who estab- lished ..." |
| 2. |
on Page 29:
|
| "... start of the First World War, the stage was set for the emergence of Wicca and Paganism out of the occult revival: magic and ritual were being practised systematically, large amounts of knowledge and information had been gathered and translated, women held ..." |
| 3. |
on Page 32:
|
| "... ritualistic, nature venerating, polytheistic, magical and religious system, operating within a predominantly western framework like that which emerged during the occult revival from the 1880s onwards. It arose from the cultural impulses of the fin de siècle, but it is largely undisputed ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 44:
|
| "... from the magical and philosophical societies of the fin de siècle. In addition, we have indicated the forerunners of the occult revival in the Western Esoteric Tradition. The history of Wicca and Paganism thus has a long trajectory back in time, for ..." |
| 5. |
on Page 23:
|
| "... UK styles itself as a 6 modern-day, esoteric, mystery religion, adopting the structure of secret, magical societies inherited from the occult revival of the fin de siècle. Wicca thus creates and maintains extremely resilient bound- aries, operating through unstructured, changeable networks contain- ..." |
| 6. |
on Page 154:
|
| "... of witches from the ancient world were resurrected and reinterpreted in the art of the late-Victorian period, contemporaneous with the occult revival in Britain. Artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne .Jones, George Frederick Watts and Frederick Sandys sought to present ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
on Page 61:
|
| "... I bet you don't feel satisfied by it! It seems a denial of all the dreams and hopes of the occult revival; it makes magic sound so boring. 'That cannot be the truth about magic,' you say, 'because if we really were ..." |
| 2. |
on Page 126:
|
| "... cycle which runs at one quarter of the speed. Is there any evidence of this? Let us consider the recent occult revival; did it not last for about one generation? Now I know that the real occult revival is not totally dead, ..." |
| 3. |
on Page 127:
|
| "... the previous (late Victorian) generation of theatre posters reveal a craze for public scientific demonstrations, it suggests that the Edwardian occult revival could have been a reaction against late Victorian materialism; just as the hippy generation reacted against 50s materialism. And the ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 132:
|
| "... at length about a fleeting human cycle of merely 75 years duration. In view of our high expectations of the occult revival in 1970, does this mean I have made a mockery of the Age of Aquarius? If you believe that wearing ..." |
| 5. |
on Page 134:
|
| "... to be the Age of Science in these terms, how has it come to be associated so strongly with the occult revival? As when we considered the Personal and the Generational cycles I think the answer lies in the nested cycle that ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
from Front Matter:
|
| "... alchemy, and Kabbalah. Following the Reformation, this spiritual current later gave rise to theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry, while the modem occult revival extends from nineteenth-century spiritualism, H. P. Blavatsky's Theosophy, and ceremonial magical orders to Rudolf Steiner, C. G. Jung, and G. ..." |
| 2. |
from Front Matter:
|
| "... the Western esoteric tradition. The inclusion of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the Series reflects her major role in the nineteenth-century occult revival whose impulse has continued up to present times. As the author of key texts and the co-founder of the Theosophical ..." |
| 3. |
from Front Matter:
|
| "... 18 HELENA BLAVATSKY the single most important factor in the modem occult revival. It redirected the fashionable interest in spiritualism towards a coherent doctrine combining cosmology, modern anthropology, and the theory of evolution ..." |
| 4. |
on Page 91:
|
| "... also owed much to Eliphas Lévi (1810-1875), the historian and populariser of Western magic, whose works strongly influenced the modern occult revival in his native France, England, and Germany. In November 1875, she published in Gerry Brown's journal her translation of Lévi's ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
on Page 385:
|
| "... years before Samuel Beckett, Obermann sits waiting for Godot. This feeling of futility and boredom was the foundation of the occult revival. But what about the feeling that man possesses godlike powers - the feeling that is obviously based on reality, if ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
on Page 59:
|
| "... or occult investigations, opened a way into nationalism via "national tradition" (as Scott and others had shown long before)." The occult revival of the 18gos served as a creative outlet for Anglo- Irish intellectuals and artists - Brain Stoker's Dracula, for example, ..." |
|
| |
| 1. |
from Back Cover:
|
| "... of rare, long-out-of-print works, and was fundamental for many exploring the Western magic tradition at the dawn of the Victorian Occult Revival. The Magus is actually separated into three books combined in one volume. Book I covers: Natural Magic-the occult properties of ..." |
|
Search A9.com for "occult revival"
Before publishers start having heart attacks -- "look at all our stuff this guy is stealing!" -- let me hasten to say that, of the above list, I purchased all the titles you see pictured in the right column (I managed to resist Blast Your Way to Megabuck$ With My Secret Sex-Power Formula). And I purchased them, in many cases, because this search pulled them up.
Finally, this is why I buy from Amazon. I learn there. And I learn there in a way I never could at a walk-in Barnes & Noble store -- or even on their site. As to all the poor Mom & Pop bookstores Amazon has supposedly disenfranchised, give me a break. Amazon has given these stores (any of them that wants it) a global market reach they never could have developed on their own. My only gripe is that this has created a virtual market for used books, the prices of which, as a result, are floating -- some soaring -- ever higher. Bad news for me. Great news for Mom and Pop. And of course, for Jeff Bezos -- to whose laudable vision and maniacal anonymous coding teams this piece is gratefully dedicated. Even at today's <koff> elevated prices, Amazon is still way cheaper than a couple Ivy League sheepskins.
- NOTE: Amazon did not supply any of of the views expressed above. They are my own. Neither did they pay me anything for writing this. However, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that it's never too late. Amazon gift certificates made out to clocke@gmail.com always gladly accepted. <g>
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