-
2 Occult Wisdoms, Astral Bodies, and Human Fluids
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
In September 1889, as many as forty thousand participants came to Paris for the first meeting of the Congrès spirite et spiritualiste international. Although united in their belief in the authenticity of mediumistic phenomena, those who partook in the proceedings adhered to no set explanation about them. At the congress, Allan Kardec’s followers were confronted with a diverse array of theories and doctrines on the manifestations of séances. The world of French spiritism was widening to include new phenomena and competing discourses. The British and American spiritualists present at the meeting accepted the reality of spirit communications but did not necessarily adhere to Kardec’s doctrine. As for the delegates who identified themselves as occultists, they diverged from French spiritists in more significant ways. Theirs was a different set of interests. They even refused to accept the spiritists’ most fundamental tenet: the role of spirits at a séance. In their view, mediums and participants were causing the phenomena, not supernatural beings. For occultists, the importance of the manifestations of séances lay, not in the hope of proving the immortality of the soul, but in the support they could bring to ancient revelations and to uncovering long-forgotten human abilities . Spiritists were not necessarily opposed to such teachings. For most of the 1880s, the Revue spirite had been trading Kardec’s automatic writings and Leymarie’s physical productions for a more occultist orientation. Throughout the decade, the French occultist revival had been gaining strength. By 1889, the prominence occultists were given at the spiritist congress left no doubt as to the position they had attained in unorthodox scientific circles in France. French occultism was never a unified movement. Unlike spiritism, which was c h a p t e r t w o Occult Wisdoms, Astral Bodies, and Human Fluids ji o c c u l t w i s d o m s , a s t r a l b o d i e s , a n d h u m a n f l u i d s 35 centered on a single doctrine, it developed around a series of more or less successful leaders and journals. There were many schools of occultism, some associated with kabbalism, others with various hermetical traditions of the Renaissance, and yet others with various so-called lost traditions of the East. No matter what their particular brand of occultism, however, all the occultist schools shared in the same method of teaching and the same general objective. Occultist knowledge was always esoteric knowledge. It was to remain hidden from the general public and to be revealed only to a select few through a series of initiations and rituals. Nineteenth-century occultism was also understood to be much more than a cry for the return to ancient wisdom and forgotten ways of knowing. Its supporters hoped that it would bring about the dawn of a new science. What occultists meant by science, however, had little to do with the methods and questions pursued in universities, research establishments, and learned academies around the country. They used the word loosely, playing on the prestige and the authority of a field, while rejecting most of its content and approaches. They saw themselves as working toward a new conception of science, one that would incorporate and indeed give prominence to ancient knowledge and esoteric research methods. Observation and experimentation would still have their place in such a science, but they would be given a supporting role, subordinate to wisdom and revelations. Some occultists had a scientific background, mostly in medicine. They hoped to uncover supposedly lost knowledge embodied in ancient alchemical, astrological, magical, and esoteric traditions and to reconcile those traditions with the modern corpus of the physical and physiological sciences. Even for them, however, the concept of an occult science remained fluid and malleable. Like others in occultist circles, they believed that authority lay first and foremost in the sacred revelations of the ancients and only later in observation and experimentation. Although never a significant group in terms of the number of its adherents, occultism had a profound impact on the fine arts, music, and literature of the late nineteenth century. Its influence was evident in a number of artistic currents, most notably the decadent and aesthetic movements.1 Occultists denied the importance of rationality, preferring instead to focus on sensations and instinct. They were fascinated by symbolism and saw hidden signs and secret meanings everywhere . In...