In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, technology and spirituality formed uncanny alliances in countless manifestations of automatism. From Victorian mediums to the psychiatrists who studied them, from the Fordist assembly line to the Hollywood studios that adopted its practices, from Surrealism on the left to Futurism and Vorticism on the right, the unpredictable paths of automatic practice and ideology present a means by which to explore both the utopian and dystopian possibilities of technological and cultural innovation. Focusing on the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Butler Yeats, Alan Ramon Clinton argues that, given the wide-reaching influence of automatism, as much can be learned from these writers' means of production as from their finished products. At a time when criticism has grown polarized between political and aesthetic approaches to high modernism, this book provocatively develops its own automatic procedures to explore the works of these writers as fields rich in potential choices, some more spectral than others.

Belief in spirits, demons and the occult was commonplace in the early modern period, as was the view that these forces could be used to manipulate nature and produce new knowledge. In this groundbreaking study, Mary Floyd-Wilson explores these beliefs in relation to women and scientific knowledge, arguing that the early modern English understood their emotions and behavior to be influenced by hidden sympathies and antipathies in the natural world. Focusing on Twelfth Night, Arden of Faversham, A Warning for Fair Women, All's Well That Ends Well, The Changeling and The Duchess of Malfi, she demonstrates how these plays stage questions about whether women have privileged access to nature's secrets and whether their bodies possess hidden occult qualities. Discussing the relationship between scientific discourse and the occult, she goes on to argue that as experiential evidence gained scientific ground, women's presumed intimacy with nature's secrets was either diminished or demonized.

This eBook has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. This edition uncovers the fundamental unity from which everything springs and shows the Occult side of Nature that has never been approached by the Science of modern civilization. Isis Unveiled The Secret Doctrine The Key to Theosophy The Voice of the Silence Studies in Occultism From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan Nightmare Tales

The fifteenth to eighteenth centuries was a period of witchcraft prosecutions throughout Europe and modern scholars have now devoted a huge amount of research to these episodes. This volume will attempt to bring this work together by summarising the history of the trials in a new way - according to the types of legal systems involved. Other topics covered will be the continued practical use made of magic, the elaboration of demonological theories about witchcraft and magic, and the further development of scientific interests in natural magic through the 'Neoplatonic' and 'Hermetic' period.Amongst the topics included here are Superstition and Belief in high and popular culture, the place of Medicine, Witchcraft survivals in art and literature, and the survival of Persecution.>

In recent years what has come to be called the 'New Mechanism' has emerged as a framework for thinking about the philosophical assumptions underlying many areas of science, especially in sciences such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology. This book offers a fresh look at the role of mechanisms, by situating novel analyses of central philosophical issues related to mechanisms within a rich historical perspective of the concept of mechanism as well as detailed case studies of biological mechanisms (such as apoptosis). It develops a new position, Methodological Mechanism, according to which mechanisms are to be viewed as causal pathways that are theoretically described and are underpinned by networks of difference-making relations. In contrast to metaphysically inflated accounts, this study characterises mechanism as a concept-in-use in science that is deflationary and metaphysically neutral, but still methodologically useful and central to scientific practice.

This volume presents students and scholars with a comprehensive overview of the fascinating world of the occult. It explores the history of Western occultism, from ancient and medieval sources via the Renaissance, right up to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and contemporary occultism. Written by a distinguished team of contributors, the essays consider key figures, beliefs and practices as well as popular culture.

The concepts of the West are the allegories of the East, and the truths of the Elect. Behind the veil of terrestrial phenomena, the Occultist sees in the Elemental Forces of Nature secondary Causes which are, in themselves, the effects of primary Causes produced and guided unerringly by Divine Intelligences. The idea of anything in Nature being inorganic or dead is materially fallacious, and is utterly rejected by Esoteric Philosophy. When matter appears inert, it is the most active. A stone block is motionless and impenetrable to all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, its particles are in ceaseless eternal vibration which is so rapid that, to the physical eye, the stone seems devoid of motion. Substance is the pre-cosmic substratum of matter, undifferentiated yet interrelated with Ideation, supersensuous but atomic, informed by the Divine Breath of its form. Substance does not mean matter in metaphysics. It is boundless Æther, formless and supernal, the ultimate essence of matter in Space and noumenon of evanescent matter on Earth. Ether is physical and infernal. Kosmos is Eternal Noetic Motion Unmanifested, the Great Breath of One Element. Father-Æther is the source and cause of All Cosmic Forces, which are differentiated aspects of Cosmic Substance, generated by substantial yet super-sensuous Powers. Our Cosmos is ruled by Creative and Intelligent Occult Forces: they are emanations of conscious living entities, acting behind the veil of matter. The forces we know of are but the phenomenal manifestations of realities we know nothing about, but which were known by the ancients. The truths of today are the falsehoods of yesterday. Conceit and prejudice strangle every truth. As only truth can dispel error, Truth should be the sole aim of Science and Justice. It is true that pure Force is nothing in the world of physics; but it is the All in the domain of metaphysics. Inertia is the Greatest of Occult Forces. A flying cannon ball moves only from its own inherent Force of Inertia. Eternal Vibration is the spiritual term for Motion Unmanifested, unconscious, innate, noumenal. It is the “Great Breath” of the One Eternal Element. Vortical Motion is the material term for Motion Manifested, conscious, external, phenomenal. Whatever may be the future name given to the Force of Inertia by scientists, to maintain that that Force does not reside in the atoms but only in the “space between them,” is not true. To the mind of an Occultist it is like saying that water does not reside in the drops of which the ocean is composed, but only in the space between those drops. The Atom belongs wholly to the domain of metaphysics. It is an entified abstraction and has nought to do with physics, strictly speaking, as it can never be brought to the test of retort or balance. Avogadro’s law holds the same place in chemistry as the law of gravitation does in astronomy. Occultists see in gravity only Sympathy and Antipathy, or Attraction and Repulsion, caused by physical polarity on our terrestrial plane, and by spiritual causes beyond our illusive earth. Matter, to the Occultist and to those men of Science who care too much for truth and too little for their vanity to dogmatise, is that totality of existences in the Kosmos, which falls within any of the planes of possible perception. If Scientists could fathom the ultimate nature of these Forces, they would have first to admit their substantial nature, however supersensuous. Science merely traces the sequence of phenomena on a plane of effects, illusory projections from the region that Occultism has long since penetrated. Light and heat, sound and cohesion, are the ghosts or shadows of matter in motion. However, there is no fundamental difference between light and heat, each is merely a metamorphosis of the other. Heat is light in complete repose. Light is heat in rapid motion. When light is combined with a body, it becomes heat; but when thrown off from that body, heat reverts to light. Occult Science may err in particulars but it can never become guilty of a mistake in questions of Universal Laws, simply because Divine Science was born on higher planes, and was brought on Earth by Beings who were far wiser than man will ever be. Occult Science may be less well-informed as to the behaviour of compound elements in various cases of physical correlations: still, it is immeasurably higher in its knowledge of the ultimate occult states of matter, and of the true nature of matter, than all the Academies of Science of our day may possess. Occult Science does not regard either electricity, or any of the forces supposedly generated by it, as matter in any of the states known to physical Science. None of these “forces,” so-called, are either solids, gases, or fluids. An Occultist would even object to electricity being called a fluid, as it is an effect and not the cause. But its noumenon, he would say, is a conscious cause. The force, which materialism considers as the cause of the diversity that surrounds us, is in sober reality only an effect, i.e., a result of that diversity. In other words, the cause of any force is not matter, but motion itself. And thus the great dogma, “no force without matter and no matter without force,” is dethroned and loses the solemn significance with which materialism has tried to invest it. If nature abhors vacuum, what is atom? To admit the divisibility of the atom, amounts to an admission of an infinite divisibility of substance, which is equivalent to reducing substance to nothingness. If the Universe is composed of atoms, then those atoms must be elastic. Absolutely non-elastic atoms could never exhibit a single one of those numerous phenomena that are attributed to their correlations. Without any elasticity the atoms could not manifest their energy, and the substance of the materialists would remain weeded of every force. Materialism is now enmeshed in a fatal circle of its own making. If the blind inertia of physical Science is replaced by the Intelligent Active Powers behind the veil of illusive matter, motion and inertia become subservient to those Powers. Acceptance of the infinite divisibility of the atom opens limitless horizons to Substance, informed by the Divine Breath of its Soul in every possible state of tenuity, states still undreamt of even by the most spiritually disposed chemists and physicists. But alas, the insanities of materialism and pessimism are incurable. The most Science can do is to assume the attitude of agnosticism. But to do this, requires a boundless love of truth and the surrender of the prestige of infallibility, which the men of Science have acquired among the flippant masses. Dualistic and anthropomorphic may be the philosophy of Vishisht Advaita, when compared with the non-duality of Advaita, it is yet supremely higher in logic and philosophy than the cosmogenesis exalted by Christianity and Science, its great opponents.