Mystical Trends

The nineteenth century saw, on one hand, the zenith of the science-based positivist and materialist trends, and the promulgation of mystical movements or the resurrection of historical movements on the other. For example, Helena Petrovna Blatavasky, born in the Ukraine in 1831, established the Theosophical Society together with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge. Theosophy means the Wisdom of God and Divine Knowledge. The society had three purposes:

1. To enable universal brotherhood;

2. To study religion, philosophy, and science;

3. To study the laws of nature and to develop the divine powers hidden in man.

One of the important esoteric movements that originated in the West was Hermeticism. Although Hermeticism first originated in ancient Egypt, it was resurrected in the West in the seventeenth century. Having developed alongside Masonry in the eighteenth century and acting as a guiding force in its symbolic rituals, Hermeticism made quite an impact on the formation of effective esoteric movements like Theosophy, the Golden Dawn Hermetic Order, Martinism, on the revival of occultism, and on twentieth century paganism. It is possible to detect the hermetic legacy in some of the works of C.G.Jung, one of the leading figures in psychiatry. Jung’s ideas deal with topics like alchemic symbolism, god-like archetypes, and the hidden aspects of the psyche.

George Ivanonitch Gurdijeff (born in 1886 in Alexandropol, Armenia) claimed that there was a fourth path besides Hermeticism, Western esoterism based on alchemy, and Hindu esoterism based on Yoga, Vedanta, etc. Concepts like “awareness,” “knowing oneself,” and “studying into oneself” are brought to the fore in his system. To Gurdijeff, human beings are in a dreamlike state, and they have to perform certain activities in order to wake up. In order to change the course of the mind and to stimulate different states of consciousness, several special movements and dances were to be performed, as well as it being necessary to attend philosophical and psychological seminars.

Besides alchemy and Hermeticism in western occultism and esoterism, sorcery, works that contain magic spells, depictions of genies and devils, astrology, and especially the Cabbalism of the middle ages were primary elements. It is possible to see the influences of such in the works of occulists like Paraselsus and Agrippa, who preceded Blatavasky and Gurdijeff. For example, Eliphas Levi Zahed (b. 1810), the French occultist who was a contemporary of those mentioned above, was interested in astrology, magic, Hermeticism, and Cabbalism all at the same time.

It is hard to say that these modern mystical movements, all of which can be called occultism, whatever their claims are, conflict with the science that started progressing with the Renaissance, at least from the perspective of their goals. As mentioned above, the basis and aim of the Renaissance and the sciences that followed were to make human beings into gods in their own right and to gain for humans essential power. These new mystical movements also shared the goal that science had failed to realize; however, in order to achieve this goal, they offered some methods that dated back to ancient times. Everything else aside, at the very core of these movements lay the same materialism and repudiative humanism that isolates humans from their true spiritual side.