Spirituality and the Occult: From the Renaissance to the Modern Age

The term 'occult', even for those who can see beyond the stock image of unspeakable rituals and meaningless chants, is still associated in many people's minds with a marginalised and largely discredited tradition. Even where it is seen as a sophisticated philosophy with deep insights into the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, its role in Western thought is usually perceived as peripheral at best, and as having had a negligible influence on the construction of the great arch of modern intellectual and cultural history that spans the past few centuries. In this succinct, but rich and wide-ranging work, B.J. Gibbons sets out to demolish this latter prejudice. Focusing on key movements in medicine, science, philosophy, psychotherapy, politics and literature, Spirituality and the Occult argues that occultism has had a significant influence on much of what is taken to be 'modern', and has made significant contributions to the development of many branches of modern European culture from the Renaissance onwards. This is especially interesting in view of the typical construction of the 'modern' as essentially an age of reason and of the progressive refutation of ancient 'superstitions'. The identity of the 'occult' is manifold and protean, hardly adding up to a coherent movement or tradition. Nevertheless in the face of what critics have often perceived as little more than a haphazard eclecticism, the author believes that a set of core ideas can be recognised in a variety of ancient cultural strands and influences, including Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and Cabalism. And the at heart of these diverse traditions lies the philosophia perennis, the prisca theologia, with its focus on the fundamentally spiritual nature and goals of the universe, and the crucial role of the human within this soteriological picture. The pre-modern connection was, of course, with Christianity itself. While it is true that in many respects the formulation of Christian teaching was carried out as an explicit riposte to pagan occultism, the latter played an important role in the development of orthodox teaching and institutionalised ritual. Moreover, the occultist traditions themselves were shaped and reshaped in their encounter with Christianity until at the end of the Middle ages esoteric teachings had been absorbed into Christian mentalities, both popular and intellectual, and represented a partly hidden yet powerful force within Christian culture. Part of the importance of the influence of occultism in relation to Christianity in the early modern period lay in its emphasis on the close interrelationship between, even the identity of, matter and spirit. Gibbons argues that the profound revolution in our attitudes towards nature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was in part the result of the growing confidence of esotericists who insisted that, while nature may be fallen and corrupt, it represented the habitation of the spirit, and a realm in which man, the microcosm that reflected the macrocosm, could feel at home and sense his role as a co-creator with God. The idea of the redemption of nature in which man himself participated, is a theme, commencing with such thinkers such as Paracelsus and Bacon, which helped to alter perceptions of the natural world and the human body, as well as helping to construct new paradigms in medicine and natural philosophy. As far as the latter is concerned, the author is eager to give his support the well-known view of Frances Yates that, not only were the boundaries of science and magic far from clearly drawn in early modern Europe, but Renaissance hermeticism must be counted as a key influence on the rise of modern science. Here as elsewhere, Gibbon is concerned to demonstrate the error of projecting a positivist-materialist conception onto early modern history. While natural magic, as a way of manipulating nature and reaffirming its prelapsian excellence, is linked historically with the emergence of the scientific/Enlightenment mentality, the counter-Enlightenment movement known as 'Romanticism' was also steeped in ideas from a similar esotericist source. The influence of 'illuminists' such as Swedenborg and Boehme, and the interest of prominent Romantics in the esoteric traditions, with Blake and Coleridge as obvious examples, is well-known. What is less well observed is the way in which the key philosophies of Hegel and Schelling, with their emphasis on the transformation of the natural world and human culture into Absolute Spirit, and on the method of the dialectical encounter of opposites, are shaped in part by occult philosophies. Also well documented are the deep affinities between Jung and the esoteric traditions, mediated in part by the Romantics themselves. Jung's analytical psychology, Gibbon argues, could well be viewed as a secularisation of the occult philosophy, and by extension as a basis for a secularised spirituality. What is more contentious is a claim for a similar vector of influence on Freud. Gibbon is agreeably circumspect on this, but draws attention to Freud's theory of the interpretation of dreams as having remarkable affinities with aspects of the Jewish Cabala, and to his fascination, via his friend Fliess, with numerology. According to the author, occultism survives into the contemporary world as a largely bourgeois phenomenon, a somewhat élitist manifestation of the modern tendency to challenge the existing order, a form of cultural protest against the very conditions and attitudes of bourgeois society itself. More could have been said, in my view, about its role in the formulation of a post-materialist paradigm, making connections with contemporary concerns in ecology and the search for a post-Christian spiritual way. But that is a small reservation concerning a study which opens up many new important pathways.