SPIRITISM AND OCCULTISM
Occultism is also quite recent, perhaps even a little more recent than spiritism. The term seems to have been first used by Alphonse-Louis Constant, better known under the pseudonym Éliphas Lévi, and it seems likely that he coined it. If the word is new, it is because what it designates is also new. Prior to this there were 'occult sciences', which were occult to varying degrees, and of greater or lesser importance. Magic was one of these sciences, and not the whole of them, as some moderns have claimed; [1] and similarly for alchemy, astrology, and many others besides. But there was never an effort to unite all of them into a single body of doctrine, which would essentially imply the dominance of occultism. In fact, this so-called body of doctrine is formed of quite disparate elements. Lévi wished to consolidate it with the Hebrew Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and magic; but those coming after him preferred to give occultism quite another character. Lévi's works, though much less profound than has been claimed, exercised nevertheless a wide influence: they inspired the most diverse chefs d'écoles, such as Madame Blavatsky, foundress of the Theosophical Society, particularly at the time when she published Isis Unveiled, and also the American Masonic writer Albert Pike, as well as the English neoRosicrucians. Moreover, the Theosophists continued to use the word occultism to designate their own doctrine, which can in fact be regarded as a special variety of occultism; after all, there is nothing to hinder one from using the word as a generic name for several
schools, each of which has its own particular set of conceptions, though this is not the way it is more commonly understood. Lévi died in 1875 , the very year of the founding of the Theosophical Society. In France, some years passed during which there was scarcely any question of occultism; but in 1887 Dr Gérard Encausse, using the name Papus, took up the term again and attempted to group around himself all those with similar tendencies. It was especially from 1890 , when he separated from the Theosophical Society, that he claimed a monopoly on the word occultism for the benefit of his school. Such was the genesis of French occultism. It is sometimes said that in the end this occultism was only 'Papusism', and this is true in more than one respect, for a large number of its theories are in fact only the product of individual fantasy. Quite simply, it was motivated by the desire to oppose to the false 'Eastern tradition' of the Theosophists a no less imaginary 'Western tradition'. There is no need to lay out here a history of occultism or to expound the whole of its doctrines, but before speaking of its connection with spiritism and of what distinguishes it from the latter, these summary explanations seemed indispensable in order that none might be surprised when we classify occultism among 'neo-spiritualist' ideas.
Like the Theosophists, the occultists are generally full of disdain for the spiritists; this is understandable up to a point, for Theosophy and occultism at least have a superficial appearance of intellectuality lacking among spiritists, and they can address the spiritists from a slightly superior level. Thus we see Papus, alluding to the fact that Allan Kardec had once been a school teacher, refer to spiritism as 'primary school philosophy', [2] and this is how he assessed spiritist circles:
Recruiting but few believers from scientific circles, this doctrine has been cheapened by the quantity of its adherents coming from the middle classes and especially from the masses. Its 'study groups', each one more 'scientific' than the last, are formed of persons who are always very honest, always of great good faithformer officials, small business people or their employees, whose
scientific and especially philosophic instruction leaves much to be desired. School teachers are the 'luminaries' in these groups. [3]
This mediocrity is in fact very striking; but was Papus, who so sharply criticizes the deficiencies in selection among the adherents of spiritism, always exempt from all reproach in this respect regarding his own school? We will have said enough on this question when we note that his role was precisely that of a popularizer. This attitude, quite different from that of Éliphas Lévi, is quite incompatible with pretensions to esoterism, and there is a contradiction here that we will not try to explain. What is in any case certain is that occultism has no more in common with a true, serious, and profound esoterism than does Theosophy. One can have no idea of these things if one allows oneself to be seduced by the vain mirage of a supposed 'initiatic science' that is in reality only a superficial erudition at second or third hand. This contradiction does not exist in spiritism, which rejects absolutely all esoterism, and whose eminently democratic character accords perfectly with a great need for propaganda. This is a more logical attitude than that of the occultists, but the criticisms of the latter against the spiritists are nonetheless well taken, and we shall refer to them on occasion.
We will not return to thecdotes criticisms directed toward spiritism by the leaders of Theosophy, many of whom passed through the school, because we have already quoted numerous excerpts. [4] The criticisms of the French occultists are generally framed in more moderate terms. At first there were lively attacks in both directions. The spiritists were particularly offended at being characterized as 'profane' by people including some of their former 'brothers'. But subsequently one could note conciliatory tendencies, especially on the part of the occultists, whose 'eclecticism' predisposed them to rather regrettable concessions. The first result of this was a gathering in Paris, starting in 1889, of an 'International Spiritist and Spiritualist Congress' where all the schools were represented. Naturally, this did not make the dissension and rivalries
disappear, but little by little the occultists gave more and more room in their rather incoherent 'syncretism' for spiritist theoriesalthough vainly enough, for the spiritists never consented to regard the occultists as 'true believers', although there were individual exceptions. While this move was taking place, occultism became more and more 'popularly' oriented, and its groups, more open now than at their beginnings, welcomed those who did not cease being spiritists upon entering. These latter perhaps represented an elite in spiritism, although a very relative elite to be sure, and the level of the occultists' circles sank lower and lower; perhaps some day we will describe this reverse 'evolution'. In connection with Theosophy we have already spoken of those who adhered simultaneously to schools whose theories were contradictory, but who were hardly bothered because they were above all sentimentalists. We will add that in all these groups the feminine element predominated, and that in occultism many were interested only in the study of the 'divinatory arts', which gives a fair measure of their intellectual capacities.
Before going further we should explain something we noted at the outset: among the spiritists there are many individuals and small isolated groups, while the occultists are almost always attached to some more or less well-established organization calling its members 'initiates' of something or other, or giving them the illusion of being such. Spiritists have no such initiation and want nothing to do with anything even remotely resembling it, for one of the characteristics of their movement is to be open to all without exception and to preclude any kind of hierarchy. Some of their adversaries are entirely wrong to speak of a 'spiritist initiation', which does not exist (and it must be added, moreover, that the word 'initiation' has been abused from many quarters). Occultists, on the contrary, claim attachment to a tradition, wrongly to be sure, but they nevertheless make the claim; this is why they feel the need of an appropriate organization by which their teachings can be regularly transmitted. And if an occultist breaks with such an organization it is frequently in order to start another and to become in turn a chef d'école. Actually, occultists deceive themselves when they believe that the transmission of traditional knowledge must be
accomplished by an organization taking the form of a 'society', taking this word in its modern sense, and their schools are only a caricature of truly initiatic schools. To illustrate the lack of seriousness of so-called occultist initiation, it suffices, without going into other considerations, to mention their current practice of 'initiation by correspondence'. Under these conditions it is not so very difficult to become an 'initiate', for it is a mere formality without value or significance, although an attempt is at least made to safeguard certain appearances. So that no one may misunderstand our intentions, we must add in this connection that we reproach the occultists most of all for representing themselves as something they are not. Our attitude in this respect is very different from that of most of their other adversaries, and in a way it is even the reverse of these. University professors, for example, hold it against the occultists that they want to exceed the narrow limits within which they, themselves, enclose their concepts; but the occultists' error is that they do not effectively go beyond these limits, except on certain particular points where they have only appropriated earlier ideas, although without understanding them very well. For the other side, then, occultism goes or wishes to go too far; for us, on the contrary, it does not go far enough; and in addition, intentionally or not, it deceives its members as to the character and quality of the teachings it provides them. The others remain on this side; we place ourselves beyond, with this consequence: according to occultists, university professors and official scholars are simple the 'profane', just as are the spiritists-and we will not contradict them; but in our view, the occultists, too, are only 'profane', and no one who knows what traditional doctrines really are can think otherwise.
Having said all this, we can return now to the relationships between occultism and spiritism; and we must specify that in what follows it is exclusively a question of Papus' occultism, which, as we have seen, is very different from that of Eliphas Lévi. In fact Lévi was emphatically anti-spiritist, and what is more he never believed in reincarnation; he sometimes pretended that he considered himself Rabelais reincarnate, but this was only a pleasantry. On this point we have the testimony of someone who knew him personally and who, himself a reincarnationist, can in no way be suspected of
partiality. Now, the theory of reincarnation is one of the notions that occultism as well as Theosophy borrowed from spiritism (for there were such borrowings), both of these schools clearly having come under the influence of spiritism, which predated them, and this in spite of the contempt with which they regard it. As for reincarnation, the thing is quite clear: we have recounted elsewhere how Madame Blavatsky took this idea from the French spiritists and transplanted it into Anglo-Saxon circles. Papus and some of the earliest adherents of his school had started out in Theosophy, and almost all the others came directly from spiritism. There is thus no need to look further. On less fundamental points, we have already seen an example of spiritist influence in the primary importance accorded by occultism to the role of mediums for the production of certain phenomena. Another can be found in the idea of the 'astral body', which has some of the peculiarities of the 'perispirit' but with this difference, that after a greater or lesser time following death the spirit is supposed to abandon the 'astral body', in the same way that it had abandoned the physical body, whereas the 'perispirit' is supposed to persist indefinitely and accompany the spirit in all its reincarnations. Still another example is what the occultists call the 'troubled state', that is to say an unconscious state in which the spirit finds itself plunged immediately after death. Papus writes that
during the first moments of this separation the spirit is not aware of its new state; it is troubled, it does not believe itself to be dead, and it is only progressively, often after several days or even several months, that it becomes conscious of its new state. [5]
This is no more than a plain statement of spiritist theory, but elsewhere Papus takes up the theory again on his own, specifying that 'the troubled state extends from the beginning of the death agony until the liberation of the spirit and the disappearance of the shells, [6] that is, of the most inferior elements of the 'astral body'. The spiritists speak constantly of men who for several years have remained unaware that they were dead, retaining all the preoccupations of
their terrestrial existence, and imagining themselves still to be accomplishing their habitual actions, some among them even giving themselves the bizarre mission of 'enlightening the spirits' in this regard. Eugène Nus [7] and other authors had recounted stories of this kind long before Papus, so that the source from which he drew his idea of the 'troubled state' is not in doubt. It is worth mentioning the consequences attributed to actions effected through the series of successive existences-what the Theosophists call 'karma'. As to the improbability of their accounts of these things, the occultists and spiritists are in competition with each other, and we will return to this when we speak of reincarnation. There, too, the spiritists can claim priority. Investigating further, we would find many more similarities which can only be explained by borrowings from spiritism, to which occultism owes much more than it admits. It is true that the sum of what it owes is not particularly good, but what is most important is to see how and in what measure occultists admit the fundamental hypothesis of spiritism, that is to say communication with the dead.
One of occultism's most visible concerns is to make its theories 'scientific' in the modern sense. When one does not admit-often with good reason-the competence of ordinary scholars in regard to certain kinds of questions, it would perhaps be more logical if one did not imitate their methods or appear to be inspired by their way of thinking; but we are merely stating a fact. It should be noted that medical doctors, from whom the greater number of 'psychists' are recruited (of whom we shall speak in due course), have also contributed their share to occultism, upon which their mental habits, derived from their education and professional activity, have exerted a manifest influence.
This explains the enormous place occupied by what we may call 'psycho-physiological' theories, especially in Papus' writings. Thenceforth the role of experimentation also had to be considerable, so that in order to present a scientific front, or one reputed to be such, the occultists had to turn their attention principally to phenomena, which genuine initiatic schools have always treated as
quite negligible; and let us add that this did not suffice to bring occultism the favor or even the sympathy of official scientists. Moreover, the attraction of phenomena was not only felt by those animated by 'scientific' preoccupations; there are those who cultivate phenomena with entirely different intentions, but with no less ardor; for it is this side of occultism which, along with the 'divinatory arts', is of almost sole interest to a great part of their public, among whom must naturally be included all those who are spiritists to one degree or another. As this last segment expanded, the 'scientific' rigor which had been proclaimed from the beginning was progressively relaxed. But independently of this deviation, the experimental and 'phenomenalist' character of occultism predisposed it to maintain relations with spiritism, which, though not always agreeable and courteous, were nevertheless compromising. What bears repeating is not that occultism admitted the reality of the phenomena, which we do not contest, nor even that they made a special study of them (and we will return to this apropos of 'psychism'), but rather that they accorded this study of phenomena an excessive importance given their claims of a more intellectual order, and above all that they believed it necessary to partially admit the spiritist explanation, only seeking to reduce the number of cases to which it would apply. 'Occultism,' said Papus,
admits as absolutely real all the phenomena of spiritism; however, it considerably limits the influence of the spirits in the production of these phenomena, and attributes them to a host of other influences acting in the invisible world. [8]
It goes without saying that the spiritists protested as energetically against this restriction as they did against the assertion that
the human being is split up into several entities after death, and that which communicates itself is not the entire being but debris of the being, an astral shell.
Elsewhere Papus adds that generally 'occult science is far too difficult to understand and far too complicated for the average reader of
spiritist books, [9] which does not exactly speak well of these readers. For our part, once the 'influence of the spirits' in these phenomena is admitted in some measure, we do not see what interest there is in limiting it, either in the number of cases in which it is manifested or as to the categories of spirits that can really be evoked. On this last point, here is what Papus has to say:
It seems incontestable that the souls of the beloved dead can be evoked and can appear in certain conditions. Taking this truth as starting-point, experimenters with a fertile imagination were not long in claiming that the souls of all the dead, ancient and modern, were subject to mental evocation. [10]
There is something really extraordinary in the way a kind of exception is made for the souls of the 'beloved dead', as if sentimental considerations were capable of bending natural laws! Either the evocation of the 'souls of the dead' is a possibility in the spiritist sense, or it is not. In the first case, it is arbitrary to claim to assign limits to this possibility, and perhaps it would be more normal simply to throw in one's lot with spiritism. Under such conditions it is in any case unseemly to reproach spiritism for sentimentality, to which it certainly owes the greater measure of its success; and one hardly has the right to make statements like the following:
Science should be true and not sentimental; but should it heed the argument that would have it that communication with the dead cannot be discussed simply because it is such a consoling idea? [11]
That is perfectly sound, but to be authorized to say so one must be free of all sentimentalism oneself, and this is not the case here. Fundamentally, there is only a difference of degree between spiritism and occultism; in the latter, the sentimental and pseudo-mystical tendencies have only been accentuated in the course of the rapid descent mentioned earlier. But from the earliest times, and without
leaving the question of communication with the dead, these tendencies were already sufficiently expressed in phrases such as this:
When a tearful mother sees her daughter clearly manifested before her; when an only daughter all alone on this earth sees her dead father appear to her and promise his help, there are eighty out of a hundred chances that these phenomena are produced by the 'spirits', the 'I' [moi] of the deceased. [12]
The reason these are privileged cases is, it seems, that
for a spirit, for the being itself to come and communicate, it is necessary that some kind of fluidic relationship exist between the evoker and the evoked.
It is therefore necessary to believe that sentiment must be something 'fluidic'. Are we not right to speak of 'materialism transposed'? Besides, all this business of 'fluids' comes from hypnotizers and spiritists. Here too, in its terminology as well as in its ideas, occultism has undergone the influence of these schools which it characterizes disdainfully as 'primary'.
On occasion the representatives of occultism have dropped their contemptuous attitude toward the spiritists, and the overtures they made in certain circumstances recall to a degree the address in which Annie Besant declared before the Spiritualist Alliance of London in 1898 that the two movements, 'spiritualist' and 'Theosophist', had the same origin. Occultists have gone even further in a sense, stating that their theories are not only akin to those of the spiritists, which is incontestable, but that fundamentally the two are identical with it. Papus said this in so many words in the conclusion of the report he presented to the 'Spiritist and Spiritualist Congress' of 1889:
It is easy to see that the theories of spiritism are the same as those of occultism, though less detailed. The scope of the spiritist teachings is consequently greater, as they can be understood by more people. The teachings, even theoretical ones, of occultism
are, by their very complexity, reserved for brains disciplined to all the difficulties of abstract conceptions. But fundamentally, it is an identical doctrine which the two great schools teach. [13]
There is some exaggeration here, and perhaps we can describe this attitude as 'political', without however imputing to the occultists intentions comparable to those of Mrs Besant. For the rest, the spiritists remained distrustful and made little response to these advances, fearing attempts to have them combine with other groups. However that may be, the eclecticism of French occultists is singularly wide and quite incompatible with their claim to possess a serious doctrine and to base themselves on a respectable tradition. Further, we will say that all schools having anything in common with spiritism thereby lose all right to present their theories as the expression of a true esoterism.
All the same, it would be a great mistake to confuse occultism with spiritism. If this confusion occurs among the ill-informed, the fault is due not only to their ignorance but, as we shall see, to the imprudence of the occultists themselves. Nevertheless, there is generally some antagonism between the two movements, asserted more vehemently by the spiritists, more discreetly by the occultists. But the occultists have called attention to some of the spiritists' extravagances (which does not keep them from committing some of their own on occasion), and this has been enough for them to run afoul of spiritist convictions and sensitivities. It can now be understood why we said that in order to be a spiritist it is necessary only to admit communication with the dead, in more or less exceptional cases. Additionally, the spiritists on no account wish to hear anything of the other elements which the occultists see as occurring in the phenomena (to which we shall return), unless perhaps there are some among them who are a little less narrow and less fanatic than the others, and who accept that sometimes there is an unconscious action on the part of the medium and those present. Finally, in occultism there are a multitude of theories to which nothing in spiritism corresponds. Whatever their real value, they at least bear
witness to less limited concerns, and in sum, the occultists have been somewhat less calumniated when with more or less sincerity they have tried to place the two schools on an equal footing. It is true, though, that in order to be superior to spiritism, a doctrine does not have to be very sound nor very lofty intellectually.