What are the Occult Sciences?
The science of the secrets of nature—physical and psychic, mental and spiritual; called Hermetic and Esoteric Sciences.
In the West, the Kabbalah may be named; in the East, mysticism, magic, and Yoga philosophy, which latter is often referred
to by the Chelas in India as the seventh “Darshana” (school of philosophy), there being only six Darshanas in India known
to the world of the profane. These sciences are, and have been for ages, hidden from the vulgar for the very good reason
that they would never be appreciated by the selfish educated classes, nor understood by the uneducated; whilst the former
might misuse them for their own profit, and thus turn the divine science into black magic. It is often brought forward as
an accusation against the Esoteric philosophy and the Kabbalah that their literature is full of “a barbarous and
meaningless jargon” unintelligible to the ordinary mind.
But do not exact Sciences—medicine, physiology, chemistry,and the rest—do the same? Do not official Scientists equally veil their facts and discoveries with a newly coined and
most barbarous Græco-Latin terminology? As justly remarked by our late brother, Kenneth Mackenzie—“To juggle thus with
words, when the facts are so simple, is the art of the Scientists of the present time, in striking contrast to those of
the XVIIth century, who called spades spades, and not ‘agricultural implementsʼ.” Moreover, whilst their facts would be
as simple and as comprehensible if rendered in ordinary language, the facts of Occult Science are of so abstruse a nature,
that in most cases no words exist in European languages to express them; in addition to which our “jargon” is a double
necessity—(a) for the purpose of describing clearly these facts to him who is versed in the Occult terminology; and (b)
to conceal them from the profane.
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