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occultic, a form that articulates an inchoate system of beliefs, images, attitudes, and texts together that, nevertheless, recon¤gures from individual to group; its meaning is wholly dependent on expert and popular perceptions held in dialectical tension without resolution. Conceptually, we can understand “the occult” as one end of a temporal continuum and “the occultic” as the other. As the category shifts and changes over the course of the twentieth century, so do the number of occultic discourses continue to multiply. Insofar as the occult has died and been resurrected as something else, then, I’m suggesting that this something else is “the occultic,” a brand of contemporary discourse that retains a number of elements of the occult tradition. I have already discussed two of these elements:¤rst, occultic discourse discriminates among groups or kinds of people with strange or dif¤cult language; and second, its strange or dif¤cult language is designed to better apprehend or understand something that is, at base, incommunicable. As the book proceeds, I will continue to build on these two elements. Although the occultic is a contemporary theological form, it is not necessarily—as I suggested withtherhetoric of religion—supernaturalist. For example, I began this introduction with reference to the philosophical writings of Deleuze and Guattari. As many folks who have tried to read Anti-Oedipus or A Thousand Plateaus would agree, the authors’ principal technique of materialist psychiatry, “schizoanalysis ,” is anything but straightforward, designed as it is to upset and subvert binary thinking and the philosophical categories of transcendence . My intent here is not to ridicule their language but rather to suggest that their philosophical rhetoric is occultic in terms of, ¤rst, its having created a dedicated group of followers who have become absorbed in the argot of “D & G,” and second, its explicit claim to a better way of understanding the world—indeed, for understanding the enterprise of philosophy itself. The irony of characterizing a philosophy of immanence as “occultic” is that it shows how its vehicle of expression, its rhetoric, is a transcendent phenomenon. Another axiom I rely on throughout this book is that rhetoric as such is a transcendent thing, regardless of the immanent ends to which it is put.18 Understanding the occultic in this general way begins to unravel the tidy distinction between “real science” and the “occult” that was introduced during the Enlightenment. This is not to say that there is no distinction between science and the occult tradition but rather that the rhetoric of each is often experienced by the “outsider” as occultic. One of my favorite examples of the mysterious religiosity of a seemxxiv / introduction ingly atheistic “science” is the rhetoric of psychoanalysis, especially Freud’s. Psychoanalysis comprises an academic literature that requires years of study to properly understand its fundamental axioms and analytic techniques. Its “Master,” perhaps tired of the accusations of his detractors, revised a number of lectures he originally delivered between 1915 and 1917 to include a discussion of “dreams and occultism ,” as well as the following apologetic remarks: And here, Ladies and Gentlemen, I feel that I must make a pause to take breath—which you too will welcome as a relief—and, before I go on, to apologize to you. My intention is to give you some addenda to the introductory lectures on psycho-analysis which I began ¤fteen years ago, and I am obliged to behave as though you as well as I had in the interval done nothing but practice psycho-analysis. I know that assumption is out of place; but I am helpless. I cannot do otherwise. This is no doubt related to the fact that it is so hard to give anyone who is not himself a psycho-analyst an insight into psycho-analysis. You can believe me when I tell you that we do not enjoy giving an impression of being members of a secret society and of practicing a mystical science. Yet we have been obliged to recognize and express as our conviction that no one has a right to join a discussion of psychoanalysis who has not had particular experiences which can only be obtained by being analysed oneself.19 The occultic logic of discrimination here is as obvious as Freud’s selfdenial . Clearly someone has the impression that psychoanalysis is occultic , and clearly someone takes pleasure in that impression! The exemplar of psychoanalysis demonstrates that once we start thinking more broadly about the occult in terms of the occultic, we begin to see...

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