The Occult Sciences - A Compendium of Transcendental Doctrine and Experiment

Arthur Edward Waite

Description

This extensive guide to all things occult deals with magical practices, spiritualism, mesmerism, theosophy, necromancy, and much more.

First published in 1923, The Occult Sciences is written by scholarly mystic and poet, A. E. Waite. The prolific writer published many works on occult subjects and co-created the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. His vast knowledge of the occult is evident in this informative volume, and he touches on many topics including crystal-gazing and alchemy.

This reference guide’s contents include:

- Magic: Definitions

- White Magic: The Evocation of Angels

- White Magic: The Evocation of the Spirits of The Elements

- Black Magic: The Evocation of Demons

- Necromancy: The Evocation of the Souls of the Dead

- Secret Sciences in Connection With Magic

- Alchemy

- The Elixir of Life

- Crystallomancy

- The Composition of Talisman

1.Introduction

2. Part I Magical Practices

3. Part II Secret Sciences in Connection with Magic

4. Part III Professors of Magical Art

5. Part IV Modern Phenomena

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Occultism
• Spirituality

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 14 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528767941
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE
OCCULT SCIENCES
A COMPENDIUM OF TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE AND EXPERIMENT
EMBRACING
AN ACCOUNT OF MAGICAL PRACTICES; OF SECRET SCIENCES IN CONNECTION WITH MAGIC; OF THE PROFESSORS OF MAGICAL ARTS; AND OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM, MESMERISM AND THEOSOPHY
BY
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE
Copyright © 2018 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Arthur Edward Waite
Arthur Edward Waite was born on the 2nd of October, 1857 in America.
After the death of his father, Waite and his mother returned to her native England, where he was raised in North London, attending St. Charles' College from the age of thirteen. Waite left school to become a clerk, but also wrote verse in his spare time. The death of his sister, Frederika Waite, in 1874 soon attracted him into psychical research. At 21, he began to read regularly in the Library of the British Museum, studying many branches of esotericism.
Waite was a scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. As his biographer, R.A. Gilbert described him, "Waite's name has survived because he was the first to attempt a systematic study of the history of western occultism - viewed as a spiritual tradition rather than as aspects of protoscience or as the pathology of religion."
Waite was a prolific author with many of his works being well received in academic circles. He wrote occult texts on subjects including divination, esotericism, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry and ceremonial magic, Kabbalism, and alchemy. Waite also translated and reissued several important mystical and alchemical works. His works on the Holy Grail, influenced by his friendship with Arthur Machen, were particularly notable. A number of his volumes remain in print: The Book of Ceremonial Magic , The Holy Kabbalah , A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry , and his edited translation of Eliphas Levi's Transcendental Magic , its Doctrine and Ritual .
Waite is best known as the co-creator of the popular and widely used Rider-Waite Tarot deck and author of its companion volume, The Key to the Tarot , republished in expanded form the following year, 1911, as The Pictorial Key to the Tarot , a guide to Tarot reading . The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot was notable for being one of the first tarot decks to illustrate all 78 cards fully. Golden Dawn member Pamela Colman Smith illustrated the cards for Waite, and the deck was first published in 1909. It remains in publication today.
Other works by Waite are in circulation, many published after his death. They include I nner and Outer Order Initiations of the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn , (2005) The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross: Being Records of the House of the Holy Spirit in its Inward and Outward History , (1924), Israfel: Letters, Visions and (1886), A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry (Ars Magna Latomorum) and of Cognate Instituted Mysteries: Their Rites, Literature, and History (1994), Theories As to the Authorship of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes (2005), The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail: Its Legends and Symbolism Considered in Their Affinity with Certain Mysteries of Initiation and Other Traces of a Secret Tradition in Christian Times (2002).
When Waite was almost 30, he married Ada Lakeman and they had one daughter, Sybil. Some time after Ada’s death in 1924, Waite married Mary Broadbent Schofield. He spent most of his life in or near London, connected to various publishing houses, and editing a magazine, The Unknown World.
Waite passed away on the 19th May, 1942.
PREFACE.
THE subject of occultism, by which we mean those sciences, called transcendental and magical, a knowledge of which has been transmitted and accumulated in secret, or is contained in books that have an inner or secret meaning, has been very fully dealt with during recent years by various students of eminence. But the works of these well-equipped investigators are, in most instances, unsuited to an elementary reader, and they are all somewhat expensive. It has remained for the results of their studies to be condensed into a portable volume, which shall conduct the inquirer into the vestibule of each branch of “the occult sciences,” and place within his reach the proper means of prosecuting his researches further in any desired direction. It is such an unpretending but useful task which we have set ourselves to perform in the present volume, which embraces, as we would claim, in a compressed and digested form, the whole scope of occult knowledge, expressed in the language of a learner.
We have sought as far as possible to distinguish between theory and practice, between facts which it is possible to ascertain and explanations over which views may diverge. We have checked our individual judgments and modified our individual opinions not only by the best authorities in the literature of the several subjects treated, but by the collaboration of many living writers who are specialists in distinct branches of esoteric science. In this respect the book may be accepted as the result of a collective endeavour rather than of an unaided effort, and it will be received with an increased confidence on this ground.
CONTENTS.

I NTRODUCTION
PART I .
MAGICAL PRACTICES.
M AGIC : D EFINITIONS
W HITE M AGIC : T HE E VOCATION OF A NGELS
W HITE M AGIC : T HE E VOCATION OF THE S PIRITS OF THE E LEMENTS
B LACK M AGIC : T HE E VOCATION OF D EMONS
N ECROMANCY : T HE E VOCATION OF THE S OULS OF THE D EAD
PART II .
SECRET SCIENCES IN CONNECTION WITH MAGIC.
A LCHEMY
T HE E LIXIR OF L IFE
C RYSTALLOMANCY
T HE C OMPOSITION OF T ALISMANS
D IVINATION
T HE D IVINING R OD
A STROLOGY
K ABBALISM
PART III .
PROFESSORS OF MAGICAL ART.
T HE M YSTICS
T HE R OSICRUCIANS
T HE F REEMASONS
PART IV .
MODERN PHENOMENA.
M ESMERISM
M ODERN S PIRITUALISM
T HEOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION.
THE claims of Hermetic philosophy to the consideration of serious thinkers in the nineteenth century are not to be confounded with those merely of an exalted intellectual system, or of a sublime and legitimate aspiration. These may, indeed, be urged in behalf of it with the force of unadulterated truthfulness, but not as the principal point. What the philosophy which is indiscriminately called transcendental, Hermetic, Rosicrucian, mystical, and esoteric or occult, submits in its revived form to the scrutator of life and her problems as a sufficing and rational cause for its resuscitation, and as an adequate ground for its recognition, is tersely this:—That it comprises an actual, positive, and realisable knowledge concerning the worlds which we denominate invisible, because they transcend the imperfect and rudimentary faculties of a partially developed humanity, and concerning the latent potentialities which constitute, by the fact of their latency, what is termed the interior man. In more strictly philosophical language, the Hermetic science is a method of transcending the phenomenal world, and attaining to the reality which is behind phenomena. At a time when many leaders of thought have substantially abandoned all belief in the existence of intelligence outside of the visible universe, it is almost superfluous to say that the mere claim of the mystics has an irresistible magnetic attraction for those who are conscious that deep down in the heart of every man there exists the hunger after the supernatural.
The mode of transcending the phenomenal world, as taught by the mystics, consists, and to some extent exclusively, of a form of intellectual ascension or development, which is equivalent to a conscious application of selective evolutionary laws by man himself to man. Those latent faculties which are identified as Psychic Force pass, under this training, into objective life; they become the instruments of communication with the unseen world, and the modes of subsistence which are therein. In other words, the conscious evolution of the individual has germinated a new sense by which he is enabled to appreciate what is inappreciable by the grosser senses.
The powers of the interior man, and the possibility of communication with the unseen, are the subject of historical magic, which is filled with thaumaturgic accounts of experiments with these forces, and of the results of this communication. Whether these alleged occurrences are to be accepted as substantiated facts is not the question on which the enlightened mystic desires to insist. The evidence which supports them may be, and is, important; it may be, and is, overwhelming; but it is not upon the wonders of the Past only that the Hermetic claim is sought to be established, or demands recognition, in the Present. Whatever be the evidential value for the success of the psychic experiments conducted by the investigators of old, they may at least be said to constitute a sufficient ground for a new series of scientific inquiries on the part of those persons who are devoting their intelligence and their energy to the solution of the grand mysteries of existence. Otherwise, the transcendental philosophy would be simply the revival of an archaic faith, and would be wholly unadapted to the necessities of to-day. It should be remembered, however, when speaking of scientific inquiry, that the reference is not confined to the professed scientists of the period, but to all who are capable of exact observation, and can appreciate the momentous character of the issues involved.
The standpoint indeed is this: the successful experiments of the past are capable of repetition in the present, and it is open to those who doubt it to be convinced by individual experience. In one of his most mystical utterances, Christ is recorded to have said that there are those who are eunuchs from th