LETTER OF INTRODUCTION.
FRIENDS,
I think presentation of OCCULT PHILOSOPHY within what I am doing ought to only be within a selective constraint, as it was meant to be introduced by those behind the last nineteenth-century effort, which was the high metaphysics and logic underlying ethics, morals, universalism and solidarity. Surely, there are types that will raise a cry the same as they did against the old woman at the attempt, but they have no say. These are exactly those that contributed to the sensationalist characteristic of this word “occultist,” as defining a practitioner of mediumship or the perverse sexual deviant of the antinomian-libertinian type. But that aside, even that word was not used by the revivalists of the Renaissance, for they equipped several terms besides just “occultus” to describe the hidden science. These “-isms” are, as you know, Enlightenment-era constructs. Anyway, the course can only be steered by good and honest persons who truly try or atleast live the life required, and many do not know that the study requires a manner of way one “leads the life.” Materialism won, and the multitude are even less prepared in an age of artificial intelligence successionism. They also might rather blame the rise of trans-humanism on OCCULTISM, which conflicts with the earlier historical record and will lead to the public’s ignorance.
When I say the word “Occult Philosophy” in this constraint, we are speaking a profoundly ethical teaching of humanity and it is very old, so I do not mean a kept-record of how many frogs I boiled for a magical recipe or some interest in the astral or astrological birth-charts. I myself came by way of this tradition as a youth through a side-way door, not through the American founders, which was classical Chinese philosophy. When I use the word “Occult Philosophy,” or “esotericism,” I mean a Humanities-esque presentation as elaborated to its fullest extent in the Carolingian Roots of Western Humanistic Tradition, and the moral, civic, artistic, iconographic and speculative Rosicrucian and Freemasonry of the old Academy. It is not an exclusion of the “natural magic,” but laying aside a neglected focus. The “A.B.C.’s,” i.e., the fundamentals, have not received a proper promulgation historically, and the present course demonstrates it.
The feature to care for in this is to recover and liberate the free power of logos (speech) in every genuine aspirant to Wisdom, e.g., through the rhetorical and philosophical speech called oratio, as Pico exemplified. So, the digital space is a medium, not the medium of correspondence and transmission. The orationes is a genre of formal, declamatory speech used to present an argument, defend a thesis, or celebrate an idea. It differs from the style of a strict theological treatise, or a sermon from the pulpit to a congregation. It is public discourse for transmitting ideas and can be adapted in our day by those that display calm prudence in their speech and glance to the heavens in the eyes of the people to convey the ideas. This cannot be neglected and must be discriminated from and observed closely against popular forms that have displaced the effort underlying several attempts in the prior centuries, which was to found its public transmission on a solid ethical, not passional and physiological foundation.
The term “occult world” encompasses all possible worlds and conditions. Simply, there exists in this world a Wisdom that indeed vanquishes and is superior to evil and bends all force to its centre. That evil is not an equal force to the centre, and that “centre is everywhere, with its circumference nowhere,” in every atom. The public has associated occultism purely with evil (cunning intelligence) and sexual perversity, treating evil as the height of the study of “the occult,” and no amount of switching in our language between ‘occultism’ and ‘esotericism’ may ever bring the subject respectability, or dissolve the record of fraud that accompanied our modern eras particularly since the seventeenth-century. The subject in the sense that was most intended of it by the old natural philosophers, is inseparable from ethics and moral regeneration of humanity. Every person is able to speak on “esoteric matters” in this day, diluting the field into either a plaything, a personal thing, or spiritual privatization in an individualist and market-driven economy.
The older humanist, Renaissance and Enlightenment networks have been greatly damaged that at this point are non-existent, and the associations of their revivalists went the same way, or do not exist in their original form. The individuals behind the last attempt, whoever they were, thought within a very particular different climate and world that has disappeared than our own as elaborated in The Mystery of Comte de Saint-Germain, and the 18ᵗʰ Century Networks that Shaped the Enlightenment, not as atomistic individuals. I think of the rise and popularity of the current pope. At the end of the day, the conversation in the end will come down once again to old contention between the Catholic Church and the republican tradition with its arguments against throne and altar. No one yet has considered the dialogue that a republican thinker would have with the Catholic Church. Giuseppe Mazzini’s case illustrated the tension, even enmity. It seems though, these two could and must be the strongest voice in the modern age against the anti-humanist, trans-humanist strand. The Catholic Church stands. The republican tradition and those old humanist networks of the Letters do not. The Church sees all as its children, and would argue, that the cause of the trans-humanist strand is partially to be blamed on schisms, Mazzini, the revolutions and radicalisms straying from the authority of the Church.
The Catholic Church however, in dialogue with the right students of these traditions, could not employ the argument to refute it, because the republican-humanist tradition is actually older than the Church and Christianity. Therefore, some new dialogue to double-tackle the present corruptions are required. This sits uneasy with those of the Poe-type of accusation.
It may surprise you to hold Pope Leo, our very own Chicago-native, as a model and exemplar of the truths of the Christian-humanist line. I only say that he cannot counter the necessary forces that have gained ground alone. This refers to the fact, that the humanist cause is not a race between the republican-humanist tradition or the social teaching of the Catholic Church that Pope Leo XIV expounds on. One of these is decapitated, and the other stands to speak before humanity. Yet the two are required, as they are both the strongest ancient voices against the modern corruptions, but remain two expressions, currents, or operations. There is nothing that can be done or should be done about Pope Leo making the voice of the papacy the strong humanistic voice of the times. Someone must do it. Others must rise and speak with him, but the ones who truly should do not, because they do not yet exist as a moment in history.
During the Renaissance, republicans, humanists and the Hermetic spheres had a network of correspondence (letters, treatises, translations) that crossed national boundaries. It set agendas for what was considered “wise” or “authentic” knowledge, much as the papacy set doctrinal priorities. It also distributed authoritative works through trusted intermediaries, similar to how papal letters were sent by curial channels; and included both public and private discourse, with some correspondence serving as spiritual or philosophical “encyclicals” for a select circle of thinkers. The Pope must not be made to seem the sole voice in this hour. In our time, the only people’s voices that are heard are the ones with power and “social media influence.” Thus, no humanistic truth can reign in such a society, and the one speaking the language with the most authority sits in the Cathedra Petri of Rome. Hence, even while the Pope speaks what should be spoken, even within his Catholic tradition, the field is tightly managed and controlled. The difference in the world order in our times from the Renaissance and Enlightenment, is that republics have withered everywhere. We should work to recover it in this form fully, including the genuine depths to Occult Philosophy, developing upon it as eclectics within the examples set over the periods, especially to develop a counterculture to the excesses of the modern technological age and transhumanism we are so accused of causing.
MAY WHAT IS NOBLE ENDURE AMONG US
YOURS
