Theoretical and Practical Occultism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Confusing Words Series · 10 pages

Between theoretical occultism or Theosophy and practical occultism or occult science there is an abyss — that is the claim, and most of the file is the warning that follows from it. The study of theoretical occultism is called harmless and may do good; practical occultism, being the science of good and evil, is fraught with perils and pitfalls.

The specific danger named is not failure but misdirection: the student of the occult arts who is not intellectually or ethically fit will be unable to tell the Right Path from the Left, and will bring unexpected woes and sorrows on himself and his family without ever suspecting where they come from. Only absolute unity, physical and metaphysical, is said to give safe passage to the other shore. The sharpest passage concerns what happens after a pledge is taken: whoever indulges, having pledged himself to occultism, in the gratification of a worldly love or lust must feel an almost immediate result — that of being irresistibly dragged from the impersonal divine state down to the lower plane of matter. An addendum carries a further response by Blavatsky, and the file closes with suggested and further reading.

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