Occult knowledges pdf

Author S. MacGregor Mathers, a founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, presents his exegesis in a clear and scholarly style. A magical grimoire of sigils and rituals for summoning and mastering spirits, The Key of Solomon the King is the most famous, or infamous, of all magick books.

It has influenced everything from the revival of magick and the Western Mystery Traditions tarot, alchemy, astrology, etc. A modern Hermetic tract, it has been widely influential in twentieth- and twenty-first-century New Age circles. Materials presented in the book are a blend of ancient Middle Eastern elements, with allusions to the writings of H.

Lovecraft and Aleister Crowley. Much of the book is a collection of magic rituals and conjurations. Many incantations and seals are described. In his influential work The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Agrippa combined magic, astrology, Qabbalah, theurgy, medecine, and the occult properties of plants, rocks, and metals. This work was an important factor in the spread of the idea of occult sciences. Some consider this to be the best book on magic available.

The system of magic found here originated in Egypt from a magician who was known as Abramelin the Mage. It became the main source in the work of Aleister Crowley, who based many of his magical concepts and rituals on it. Artephius is a writer to whom a number of alchemical texts are ascribed. Although the roots of the texts are unclear and the identity of their author obscure, at least some of them are Arabic in origin. He claimed to having discovered the alchemical elixir that made it possible to prolong life.

In this book Manly P. This writing attributed to Hermes Tristmegistus is the record of a conversation between the goddess Isis and her son Horus, that explains the traditional belief that the Egyptian Gods came from the heavens, being sent to Earth by the Father of all to bring about civilization.

Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Sign up to join the Infinite Roots Coven and get access to all exclusive content while keeping Spells8 ad-free! Printable Spells and Rituals. Albertus Magnus Egyptian Secrets.

The Black Books of Elverum Practical handbooks for daily concerns like stopping a toothache, retrieving stolen goods, and protecting livestock.

Black Books of Elverum. Grimorium Verum PDF. The Veil of Isis or the Mysteries of the Druids. Pow-Wows; or, Long Lost Friend. The Book of Ceremonial Magic. The Book of Forbidden Knowledge This work is one of a number of manuscripts crafted towards the end of the s well into the s containing material related to all aspects of the occult; mesmerism, ceremonial magic, the black arts, talismans, and more.

The Book of Forbidden Knowledge. The Cambridge Book of Magic. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes is a compact and cryptic Hermetic text. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes. The Grand Grimoire. The Kabbalah Unveiled Author S. The people behind these experiences can be more or less anonymous and unknown to the reader and they work as rhetorical examples of experiences.

Another can be to make the narratives work as frameworks and thereby relate them to events that have taken place, as well as function constitutively by shaping the expectations and experiences of the readers. Questions one can ask regarding revealed insights as a discursive strategy is then: How are the recipients of this reviled knowledge portrayed in the texts, who are they?

What are the sources behind the messages and how are they described? Hammer brings up Theosophy as a prime example of this claim where the privileged spokespersons present themselves as the sole legitimate conduits of ancient wisdom. But there are other positions where there is claimed that nearly everyone can gain these insights and rise to an exalted position. Hammer claims that this is especially true to much of the New Age literature where, at least in theory, everyone is ultimately their own guru.

These narratives are often told in second person since they aim at giving the individual tools and rules of how to gain these insights. For example, earlier in pre-modern cultures the mediators were often said to be possessed by spirits or gods, as being in trance, ecstasy or doing a shamanic flight, or as mediumship or prophecy. Today we often label the same kind of experiences and contacts as channeling.

If, in theory, everything that rings true to the readers and adherents is true, how do the spokespersons keep their authority? Also, who decides how an experience should be interpreted? Older esoteric traditions, such as theosophy 90 and anthroposophy, were to a large extent based on the experience of a privileged few and an eventual acceptance of individual experiences and interpretations was often viewed as potentially threatening and that there was a risk of undermining the hierarchy through which knowledge was transmitted.

Only within the latest generations of esoteric movements has the notion of individual experiences been given a more 87 Hammer , pp. Hammer , p. History and context 3. Vodou is a syncretic religious system mainly practiced in Haiti and it arose when Western- and central-African slaves were brought to Haiti with the slave trade mainly during the 17th and 18th century.

Some of the main beliefs and 91 Hammer , pp. The creator god, called Bondye, is remote and uninvolved, while the spirits are immediate and which you serve with rituals often incorporating music, dancing, sacrifices and possessions. What from the beginning seems to have been a strategy for the slaves to hide their religious practices by incorporating elements from the French Catholic Church soon came to be an integrated part of Vodou and Afro- American religions in general.

A concrete example of this syncretism is that many of the Vodoun spirits often are believed to be the same as the Catholic saints. For example, a local derivation of Haitian Vodou known as New Orleans Vodou has been dated to the late eighteenth century or earlier. However, to use the word gnosis as a synonym for higher knowledge or spiritual insight seems to the most common use of the term in S. As mentioned earlier there is hardly any academic research, in its strict sense, on the current but there are however some interviews with Bertiaux conducted by Nevill Drury, John Fleming and Bjarne Salling Pedersen as well as a very short biography written by David Beth.

As of course this could be the case for any article or interview. The interview by Nevill Drury was published in his book The Occult Experience and Drury was a well-known researcher and publisher on modern Western magic and he received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Newcastle in This is probably the closest we can get any to academic research on Bertiaux or Voudon Gnosis.

The interview by John Fleming was published in Neighboordhood News in and I have not been able to find any information about the author. However, all the interviews are reproduced on the Fulgur website, which is the Broek van den , p.

He early on felt attracted to the esoteric and spiritual parts of religions but started his career in a more orthodox fashion, namely in the Anglican Church, where he, after being educated by Jesuit fathers at Seattle University, graduating in philosophy and attending an Anglican seminary, was ordained a deacon.

In Pasqually left for San Domingo where he was actively engaged with his order until his death in in Port-au-Prince. After his death most temples, which were around a dozen, fell into decline but at least two of them in France were active until the revolutionary epoch. The history of this movement is then only known in fragments, but by the end of the 18th century, a branch of the Martinist tradition had been established in Haiti.

However, in Haiti the Martinist tradition tended to blend with vodou and after a silent period, Martinism revived in Haiti in the s. Jean-Maine who is supposed to have initiated him into the secrets of Voudon Gnosis. What the tradition looked like in Haiti before Bertiaux made it famous in the West is not documented and the current, one can say, is like an umbrella for various groups headed and founded by Bertiaux and later by his students and that have worked, functioned and aimed differently but all with roots in the Voudon Gnostic tradition.

As mentioned, the system is also very complex and consists of parts taken from multiple and diverse currents and religions. Marco Pasi brings up the O. He states that O. He states that they both were previously Haitian based secret occult, or Gnostic occult societies and that even though they are most often referred to as together they are technically separate organizations and should be viewed more like sister- organizations.

The O. He claims that if one study the system of O. The Voudon Gnostic Workbook is thus the main public teaching tool of L. G: This group has been formed specifically to conduct individual experimental and progressive research into the vast field we understand as Esoteric Voudon or Voudon Gnosis.

A great need was felt for a very select, intimate and focused magical vehicle for experienced adepts and students within the Voudon Gnostic Continuum. This led to the creation of the Beth , p. He further states that it is the task of a successor to develop the work of his predecessor which is the principle behind the idea of a spiritual lineage. However, he differs this kind of gnosis from the one of ancient Gnosticism and states that they are not escapists or dualists like the ancient Gnostics but sees the body and senses as means to achieve gradual enlightenment.

The subsections are my own divisions developed from what I have found in my research and analysis, but of course they also relate to what Hammer discusses under the three strategies respectively.

The claim that the knowledge which is being transmitted within the S. He also claims that the sexual magic system they apply is the most complex and elaborate than most, if not all, other systems that exist.

This is also made clear when he states that students within the society are getting help from mentors and guides that are humans as well as non-humans, within their society. Here, one of course has to bear in mind that claims like this could be meant to be interpreted in a mythical rather than literally sense. There is however no claims that the group itself should be ancient, but instead, as Beth claimed, the structures are regarded as new and unique but simultaneously rooted in ancient and primordial gnosis.

Instead they are claiming that this path is only for a selected few. G by showing what they are not. Furthermore, there is also a strong critique against the modern society, especially in the West.

Beth writes: However, the powers and strength of the soul have been gradually decreasing in the course of historical time, in the West faster than anywhere else.

Modern Western culture, especially since the Age of Enlightenment, only recognizes as valid two forms of knowledge: the abstract, conceptual and the concrete, sensory […] According to our cultural ignorance it is imaginary and accordingly it cannot be real. Being able to find the Divine in everything around us, that existence can be perceived as the image of God, signifies a way of perceiving which depends on a psycho-spiritual power which has more or less degenerated or been altogether lost in modern humans.

Supposedly, all the psychic energy that has been generated by Christians throughout the times is being stored in an astral reservoir, which Beth , p. Beth writes that Bertiaux uses this principal, to draw upon power and energy from different traditions, also in relation to for example Hinduism and Shinto, and thus opens up a broad and effective magical universe. Here we can see how different systems are incorporated into the system of Voudon Gnosis to, in a sense, get maximum benefit.

This means that, like Proclus, the magician must be able to be at home in all temples and in all churches. The syncretism within S. When writing about the Christ-myth Beth also states that they equate Christ with Damballah and Leghba, being two of the most important Lwa. Here Damballah is also related to Odin and Leghba to Loki. He writes that his many years spent there influenced him profoundly on a spiritual and magical level and that he there was initiated by a lineage of African sorcerers in what is called the Cult of Juju Rouge as well as being influenced by other indigenous sorcery as well.

He states that he has now in the S. What has being highlighted in this section is the syncretism within S. We have seen how such diverge aspects as the figure of Christ, Norse deities, Voudon spirits, Tantric Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, indigenous African sorcery and knowledge supposedly originated from Atlantis-Hyperborea are all taken, disembedded, from their original contexts and becoming situated, re-embedded, in this highly syncretistic society that is S.

As we saw, modernity is seen as keeping the primal man in bondage and making him loose his spiritual powers and on several places in Voudon Gnosis Beth emphasizes that their teachings, practices and knowledge is not to be interpreted in a rational sense, in the usual sense of the word. In the introduction he states that it cannot be the rational judgemental mind that receives the book, but that it is the soul that must be its main receiver.

The essence of our Esoteric Logic is connected to a deep level of elemental manifestation. It is non-verbal and deeply Plutonian in its rawness. There are no mathematical proofs to support this, but we are talking about a Gnostic science, knowing. There is also a use of scientific terminology to a certain extent. Obviously, the word energy can be found throughout all of the books, if one is to interpret that as scientific terminology, which Hammer does.

The word can be found in in different contexts, for example: magical energy, spiritual energy, esoteric primordial energy, mind-energy, dynamic processes of energy and so on. These can also be used in different contexts, such as: magical powers, fields of power, powers of the soul, magical force field, spiritual force, sexual radioactivity, positive and negative vibrations and so on.

He and other adepts have and had great intellectual training and thus were able to incorporate highly abstract and theoretical systems of philosophy and thought into the occult and Gnostic framework of their Voudon Gnostic Orders.

Beth states that the uniting of the two poles of the abstract and elaborate philosophical systems and the primitive and sexual energy gave birth to a new Ordnung. Beth also claims that Bertiaux is the first in the English-speaking world to point out Klages esoteric significance in general and for Voudon Gnosis in particular. Other philosophers that are mentioned in Voudon Gnosis are for example Max Scheler , Jung and Nietzsche who Bertiaux claims has influenced Beth and Beth himself refers to Meister Eckhart and Jung who he claims have hinted at an esoteric Christianity.

If we are to apply the different positions that Hammer accounts for, namely the god of the gaps, the conflict, the two worlds and the scientistic, one could say that S. Hammer claimed that the use of the scientistic approach seem to be the most common one invoked by esoteric groups, a claim that can not be said to be true regarding S. On the contrary, natural science and the rational and logical legacy after the Enlightenment are most often rejected and thus presented as a Negative Other.

In other words, S. Neither I have found anything that indicates them positioning themselves against any other scientific discipline. Hammer furthermore claims that there is a common tendency to adopt en exclusivist and elitist view of Western intellectual development - to view science, technology and rationalist philosophies as a part of a dynamic modernity whereas folk religion and occult and esoteric currents are viewed as stagnant survivals of magical thinking or reflexes of pre-scientific speculation.

A child of both worlds and a student of the mysteries you are a chosen one of the spirits in perilous times. As Hammer claims, the main purpose for first person narratives is that they should convince the reader that the writer, the spokesperson, are Beth , p.

Cited from Beth , p. Who can argue with someone over authority and interpretations who claims to have been chosen by spirits? The authority gained by this story gets even more weight when he writes that it is the first time he puts this gnosis, which earlier has been an exclusively oral tradition, in writing for the first time.

When he read Voudon Gnosis many years later he thoroughly enjoyed it and started reading The Voudon Gnostic Workbook again. As Hammer states, these often consists of ritual instructions and explanations of how to access these revelations and in the Appendix II in Voudon Gnosis Beth presents just this. Beth as well as the other members of course makes numerous of references to Bertiaux, but these are working as background narratives when they outline the system and beliefs of S. Beth writes in Voudon Gnosis that he and Bertiaux always teach that the work within Esoteric Voudon is always very individualistic and that S.

Beth also claims that the tools to achieve this as well as the truths which reign in this universe are universal. All other candidates will be refused because we cannot go against the will of the Lwa. In this sense, S. Cited from Williams , p. This of course also relates to the question of authority in a sense, but whereas the previous subsection focused on authority and positioning within S. Beth emphasis in several passages the need to be initiated if one wants to get the deeper meaning, knowledge and experience of S.

The gates are being guarded by the spirit wardens and human protectors of the current, who operate in an esoteric symbiosis to admit only those loyal students capable of navigating these esoteric and nocturnal worlds.

See also p. Thus we apply the rule of quality above all else. The American professor in religious studies Hugh B. In this sense, secrecy is a discursive strategy that transforms a given piece of knowledge into a scarce and precious resource, a valuable commodity, the possession of which in turn bestows status, prestige, or symbolic capital on its owner. One may also just turn to Facebook for example to find most of the members Beth , p. As stated earlier, it is also claimed in Voudon Gnosis that anyone, even non-initiates, can use the rituals described as long as one has studied the book and applies its principles.

The first one is about him positioning himself against lower ranking members in S. The second one is about positioning the members of the whole group against non-members by claiming the exclusiveness of the group and the reserved and secret knowledge it possesses. One allegedly has to be called to the group and be meant to attain the gnosis they possess and this is clearly not for all.

We saw how other occult groups; the orthodox Abrahamic religions and the modern, Western society were all being portrayed as negative Others, something that S. We also saw the obvious syncretism in S. In the chapter on Rationality and Science we saw again how the modern Western world with the emphasis put on science and rationality is not highly regarded within S.

We also saw references to several well-known philosophers, most notably Ludwig Klages. G legitimize their claims to knowledge on scientific grounds. Hammer however also claimed that the strategy of rationality and science includes all positionings against rationality and science, weather by embracing or rejecting it, and he also stated that several positionings could exist in the same text — something that could be said to be true for S.

He also investigated New Age movements which often claims to possess knowledge and use practices that could be used by almost everyone and since these movements are popular primarily in the West they have to face and appeal to an audience that are to a large extent secularized and where the belief in modern science and rationality is strong. Of course, contemporary occultism exists in the same arena, but as this study has shown, within these movements there seem to be a not so strong longing to appeal to the large masses and claiming to be for all, as it is within New Age movements.

In the chapter on Experience we saw how some narratives were told in first person, and where Beth made numerous of references to his own understanding and experience of Voudon Gnosis. He described how he attended a ceremony in Africa where he allegedly received an oracle saying that he had been chosen by the spirits to act as a bridge between African and Western spirituality — a prime example of a narrative told to convince the reader that one is a true recipient of spiritual truths.

We also saw how narratives in second person, often aiming at providing tools and rules of how to gain insights for oneself, i. On the question of authority within S. However, it was also noted how important it is to acknowledge the vocation of the priesthood and it was made clear that there is an underlying hierarchy and privilege of interpretation within S.

We also saw how there is a form of elitist and exclusivist approach within S. These claims can fruitfully be seen through the statements of Hugh B. Urban and Kocku von Stuckrad who claim that the secrecy also can be viewed as a discursive strategy since this secret knowledge is transformed into a scarce and precious resource of which in turn bestows status, privilege and symbolic, social or cultural capital on its owner.

G regarding their stance outwards. To sum it up, it seems that the strategies proposed by Hammer also can be found in contemporary occultism, if one is to generalize the results from this thesis, although more research should be carried out on these questions before making too general conclusions.

My hope is that this thesis has brought some new perspectives on strategies of epistemology and on the contemporary occult scene. Due to the neglect of research on contemporary esotericism and especially on the Voudon Gnostic current there is a lot further questions to ask and new perspectives to add and it is my conviction, as stated in the introduction, that research needs to be done on these type of contemporary movements in order to get the full picture of our contemporary religious and esoteric landscape as well as modern society as a whole.

Bibliography 6. London: Fulgur Limited, , pp. The Voudon Gnostic Workbook. Beth, David. Scarlet Imprint, London: Fulgur Limited, Grote, Jessica. Moore, Vadge. Staley, Michael. Scarlet Imprint, , pp. Voorde, Ariock Van de. Williams, Craig. London: Fulgur Limited, a, pp. London: Fulgur Limited, b, pp. Contemporary Esotericism. Sheffield: Equinox pub. Bogdan, Henrik. Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation. Broek, Roelef van den. Leiden: Brill, , pp. Denscombe, Martyn. Lund: Studentlitteratur, Drury, Neville.

The Occult Experience. London: Robert Hale, Stockholm: Norstedts Juridik, Evans, Dave. Harpenden: Hidden Publishing, Faivre, Antoine. Access to Western Esotericism. Feldman, Christopher R. Accessed through: stedwards. Granholm, Kennet.