The Revival of Eastern Occult Philosophy

Alexander Wilder, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 41 pages

*Forty-one pages, the largest file in this batch*, and a composite: Professor Alexander Wilder's essay on the Eclectic Theosophical School, a section on Hermetic philosophy, the piece on the Rosicrucians which is also held separately in this section, and Blavatsky's own statement at the end. Wilder is described on its title page as Vice-President of the Theosophical Society, and he appears throughout this library as a translator and editor.

Its subtitle states the definition it works from: eastern occult philosophy is the science of effects known by their causes, and of causes known by their effects. Wilder's opening essay on the Eclectic Theosophical School is the historical part — the Alexandrian tradition of Ammonius Saccas from which the word theosophy itself descends, and which the modern movement claimed as its ancestor. The middle section is technical and turns on a single figure: the hexagon with the central point is called the key to Hermetic philosophy or alchemy, and is worked out through the three alchemic agents and a conclusion. The section on the Brethren of the Rosy Cross follows, arguing that the old order no longer exists. Blavatsky closes the file under the heading that the Wisdom-Religion, or archaic theosophy, is the highest spiritual philosophy, and the diagram Theosophia: Fountain, Perspectives, Practice — held separately as a single sheet in this section — is reproduced at that point, which makes this file the natural place to meet it in context. A page of suggested reading closes.

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