The Occult. The term sends a chill down the spine -for some. This is the world of evil and mystery, where sinister magicians prowl the borders between the physical and ethereal. Where the subject causes real fear, it is sanitised for western feeling, and images of Harry Potter fill our heads. Yet in reality the Occult has been essential to the life we live today. Its birth: The Occult was actually born following the life of Christ. Up until this time, most religions had been pagan, and even the few non-pagan religions maintained a spiritual tradition of mysticism. Survivals of this are the Christian tradition of Gnosticism and the Jewish Cabala. Both employing ritual and meditation designed to enter a more spiritual world in order to understand and manipulate the physical world, they enshrine what was to become Occult. The death and Resurrection of Christ was, infact, a deeply Occult event. What Christ symbolised was that man could descend to a God-head, manipulate the physical world, and return. This was the essence of Gnosticism of the time. But in order for Christ to be different, unique, He had to become the only person who could do this. Hence, Gnosticism had to be wiped out - ruthlessly - and this natural Occult power branded as evil. This was the genesis of Occultism as evil. And it has remained so ever since - even though throughout Western intellectual life the Occult has been at the cutting edge of the knowledge systems and societies we have created. The hermetica: Other than Gnosticism and the Cabala, several other Occult sciences were to impede on western consciousness.
These included Astrology, Alchemy, and a system of knowledge known as the Hermetica. The Hermetica itself is an ancient treatise thought to have been written by the mythical magician Hermes Trismegistos. Most likely an amalgamation of the Egyptian god Thoth and Greek messenger of the gods, Hermes, the treatise is an identification of the existence of ‘prime matter' as the roots of the physical universe, and the work deals in the relationship and sympathy between man and the universe.
By Anthony North
