Published in the periodical "The Occult Review"
Vol. I, No. 1, January 1905
There are certain conventional terms which, on the one hand, do not accurately represent the construction placed upon them along a given line, but that construction has been accepted so long and so generally that the defect in the application may be regarded as partially effaced; and, on the other hand, there are also conventional terms between which a distinction has come into existence, although it is not justified by their primary significance. As regards the first class, the very general use of the term "occult movement" may be taken as an example. It is inexact after two manners: in involves at once too much and too little – too much, because it has served to represent a good deal that is not at all of the occult order; and too little, because a slight change in the point of view would bring within the range of its meaning many things which nobody who now uses it would think of including therein. The doings of more than one great secret political organisation might, in the full sense of the words, require to be classed as part of the occult movement, though no one will need to be informed that the latter is not political; while certain events which have occurred and are occurring in the open day, and have all along challenged the verdict of public opinion, cannot strictly be included in occultism, as they betray none of its external characteristics. I refer to the phenomena of animal magnetism, hypnotism, spiritualism and all that which is included in the field of psychical research. In respect of the second class, a very clear differentiation now exists between the terms " occult" and "mystic," and it is one also which it is necessary to recognise, though, fundamentally speaking, the two words are identical, differing only in the fact that one of them is of Latin and the other of Greek origin By the occultist we have come to understand the disciple of one or all of the secret sciences; the student, that is to say, of alchemy, astrology, the forms and methods of divination, and of the mysteries which used to be included under the generic description of magic. The mystic is, at the first attempt, perhaps more difficult to describe, except in the terminology of some particular school of thought; he has no concern as such with the study of the secret sciences; he does not work on materials or investigate forces which exist outside himself; but he endeavours, by a certain training and the application of a defined rule of life to reestablish correspondence with the divine nature from which, in his belief, he originated, and to which his return is only a question of time, or what is commonly understood as evolution. The distinction between the occultist and the mystic, however much the representative of physical science at the present day might be disposed to resent the imputation, is therefore, loosely speaking, and at least from one point of view, the distinction between the man of science and the man of introspection. The statement, as we shall see, is not exhaustive, and it is not indeed descriptive. It may be said more fully, in the words of the late Edward Maitland, that the occultist is concerned with "transcendental physics, and is of the intellectual, belonging to science," while the mystic "deals with transcendental metaphysics, and is of the spiritual, belonging to religion." Expressed in modern terms, this is really the doctrine of Plotinus, which recognises "the subsistence of another intellect, different from that which reasons, and which is denominated rational." Thus, on the one hand, there are the phenomena of the transcendental produced on the external plane, capable of verification and analysis, up to a certain point; and, on the other, there is the transcendental life. "That which is without corresponds with that which is within," says the most famous Hermetic maxim; indeed the connection suggested is almost that of the circumference with the centre ; and if there is a secret of the soul expressed by the term mysticism, the phenomena of the soul manifesting on the external plane must be regarded as important; but these are the domain of occultism. The importance must, of course, differ as the phenomena fall into higher and lower; the divinations of geomancy carry an appearance of triviality, while the design of ceremonial magic to establish communication with higher orders of extra-mundane intelligence wears a momentous aspect; but both are the exercise of seership, and this gift, as a testimony of the soul and her powers, is never trivial.
Assuming therefore a relationship subsisting between occult practice and the transcendental life of the soul, it seems worth while to contrast for a moment the work of the mystic with that of the disciple of occult science, so as to realise as accurately as possible the points of correspondence and distinction between Ruysbroeck, St. John of the Cross and Saint Martin, as types of the mystic school, and Arnoldus de Villanova and Martines de Pasqually, as representing the school of occult science. The examples of such a contrast must naturally be sought in the past, because, although occult science is pursued at the present day, and by some ardently, it can scarcely be said to have votaries like those who were of old. The inquiry belongs also to the past in respect of the mystic, for, to speak plainly, the saint belongs to the past. So far as the life of the outside world is concerned, there is little opportunity amidst mundane distractions for the whole-hearted labours of the other centuries. The desire of the house is indeed among us, but the zeal of it is scarcely here, not, at least, in the sense of the past.
The distinction in question is more than that which is made between the man of action and the man of reflection; it is not that which we have come to regard as differentiating the man of science from the philosopher. There are many instances of synthetic occult philosophers – among them Cornelius Agrippa and Robert Fludd – who neither divined nor evoked – who were not alchemists, astrologers or theurgists – but rather interpreters and harmonisers; and yet these men were not mystics in the proper sense of the term. Nor is the distinction quite that which constitutes the essential difference between the saint and the specialist, though the occult student of the past was in most cases a specialist who was faithful to his particular branch. The activity and the strenuousness of the life was often greater with the mystic than in the case of the man who was dedicated to some particular division of occult knowledge, though alchemist and astrologer were both laborious men – men whose patience imbued them with something of the spirit which governs modern scientific research. The ground of the contrast is in the purpose which actuated the two schools of experience. The crucible in which metals are transmuted, on the assumption of alchemy, is still a crucible and the converted metal is still a metal; so also the astrologer may trace the occult and imponderable influences of the stars, but the stars are material bodies. The practical work of the mystic concerned, on the contrary, the soul's union with God, for, to state it briefly, this, and this only, is the end of mysticism. It is no study of psychic forces, nor, except incidentally, is it the story of the soul and her development, such as would be involved in the doctrine of reincarnation. It is essentially a religious experiment and is the one ultimate and real experiment designed by true religion. It is for this reason that in citing examples of mystics, I have chosen two men who were eminent for sanctity in the annals of the Christian Church, for we are concerned only with the West; while the third, though technically out of sympathy, essentially belonged to the Church. I must not, therefore, shrink from saying that the alternative name of the mystic is that of the saint when he has attained the end of his experiment. There are also other terms by which we may describe the occultist, but they refer to the science which he followed.
The life of the mystic was then in a peculiar sense the life of sanctity. It was not, of course, his exclusive vocation; if we are to accept the occult sciences at their own valuation, more than one of them exacted, and that not merely by implication, something more than the God-fearing, clean-living spirit, which is so desirable even in the ordinary business man. He who was in search of transmutation was counselled, in the first instance, to convert himself, and the device on the wall of his laboratory was Labora but also Ora. The astrologer, who calculated the influences of the stars on man, was taught that, in the last resource, there was a law of grace by which the stars were ruled. Even the conventional magician, he who called and controlled spirits, knew that the first condition of success in his curious art was to be superior to the weakness of the inconstant creatures whose dwelling is amidst the flux of the elements.
I have said that, in most cases, the occult student was, after his manner, a specialist – he was devoted to his particular branch. Deep down in the heart of the alchemist there may have been frequently the belief that certain times and seasons were more favourable than others for his work, and that the concealed materials which he thought of symbolically as the Sun and Moon, as Mercury, Venus or Mars, were not wholly independent of star and planet in the sky; and hence no doubt he knew enough of elementary astrology to avoid afflicted aspects and malign influences. But, outside this, the alchemist was not an astrologer, and to be wise in the lore of the stars was an ambition that was sufficient for one life, without meddling in the experiments of alchemy. On the other hand, the mystic, in common with all the members of his community, having only one object in view, and one method of pursuing it – by the inward way of contemplation – had nothing to differentiate and could not therefore specialise.
Again, occult science justifies itself as the transmission of a secret knowledge from the past, and the books which represent the several branches of this knowledge bear upon them the outward marks that they are among the modes of this transmission, without which it is certain that there would be no secret sciences. The occult student was, therefore, an initiate in the conventional sense of the term – he was taught, even in astrology. There were schools of kabalism, schools of alchemy, schools of magic, in which the mystery of certain knowledge was imparted from adept to neophyte, from master to pupil. It is over this question of corporate union that we have at once an analogy and a distinction between the mystic and the occultist. The former, as we find him in the West, may in a sense be called an initiate because he was trained in the rule of the Church; but the historical traces of secret association for mystic objects during the Christian centuries are very slight, whereas the traces of occult association are exceedingly strong. The mysteries of pre-Christian times were no doubt schools of mystic experience. Plato and Plotinus were assuredly mystics who were initiated in these schools. Unfortunately the nature of this experience has come down to us, for the most part, in a fragmentary and veiled manner. But, outside exoteric writings, it has in my belief come down, and it is possible to reconstruct it, at least intellectually and speculatively, for it is embedded in the symbolic modes of advancement practised by certain secret societies which now exist among us. A transmission of mystic knowledge has therefore taken place from the past, but the evidence is of an exceedingly complex nature and cannot be explained here. Nor is it necessary to our purpose, for western mysticism is almost exclusively the gift of the Church to the West, and the experiment of Christian mysticism, without any veils or evasions, is written at large in the literature of the Church. It may call to be re-expressed for our present requirements in less restricted language, but there is not really any need to go further. "The Ascent of Mount Carmel," "The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage," and "The Castle of the Inward Man," contain the root-matter of the whole process. I have also found it well and exhaustively described in obscure little French books which might appear at first sight to be simply devotional manuals for the use of schools and seminaries. I have found it in books equally obscure which a few decades ago would have been termed Protestant. There is the same independent unanimity of experience and purpose through all which the alchemists have claimed for their own literature, and I have no personal doubt that the true mystics of all times and countries constitute an unincorporated fellowship communicating continually together in the higher consciousness. They do not differ essentially in the East or the West, in Plotinis or in Gratry.
In its elementary presentation, the life of the mystic consists primarily in the detachment of the will from its normal condition of immersion in material things and in its redirection towards the goodwill which abides at the centre. This centre, according to the mystics, is everywhere and is hence, in a certain sense, to be found in all; but it is sought most readily, by contemplation, as at the centre of the man himself, and this is the quest and finding of the soul. If there is not an open door – an entrance to the closed palace – within us, we are never likely to find it without us. The rest of the experiences are those of the life of sanctity leading to such a ground of divine union as is possible to humanity in this life.
In the distinction – analogical, as already said – which I have here sought to establish, there lies the true way to study the lives of the mystics and of those who graduated in the schools of occult science. The object of that study, and of all commentary arising out of such lives, is to lead those, and there are thousands, who are so constituted as to desire the light of mysticism, to an intellectual realisation of that light. The life of the mystic belongs to the divine degree, and it would be difficult to say that it is attainable in the life of the world; but some of its joys and consolations – as indeed its trials and searchings – are not outside our daily ways. Apart from all the heroisms, and in the outer courts only of the greater ecstasies, there are many who would set their face towards Jerusalem if their feet were put upon the way – and would thus turn again home.
