Colin Wilson's 'Occult Trilogy': A Guide for Students (4 page)

j.
London: Granada, 1979, 795 p., paper.

k.
as:
O Oculto
.
Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Francisco Alves Editora, 1981, 2v., vol.
1: 273 p., vol.
2: 248 p., paper.
Translated by Aldo Bocchini Netto.
[Portuguese]

l.
as:
Das Okkulte
.
Berlin: Marz, 1982,?
p., cloth (?).
[German]

m.
as:
Okaruto
.
Tokyo: Shinchosha, n.d., 2 v., cloth (?).
Translated by Yasuo Nakamura.
[Japanese]

n.
as:
Het Occulte
.
Deventer: Ankh-Hermes, n.d., 335 p., cloth (?).
Translated by Margot Bakker.
[Dutch]

o.
as:
L’Occulte
.
Lausanne: Ex Libris, n.d., 427 p., cloth (?).
Translated by Robert Genin.
[French]

p.
as: “Magic—the Science of the Future
(The Occult)
” in
The Essential Colin Wilson
.
London: Harrap, 1985, cloth, p.
108-129.
A reprint of a section from this volume.

q.
[Japanese edition] Tokyo: Hirakawa Shuppan Ltd., 1985, 643 p., cloth.
[ISBN: 4-89203-101-1]

r.
as:
The Occult: a history
.
New York: Barnes & Noble, 1995, 603 p., cloth.

s.
as:
The Occult: the ultimate book for those who would walk with the Gods
.
London: Watkins Publishing, 2003, [xli, 753 p.] xli, 795 p., paper.
[Includes a new 4-page Introduction by Wilson]

t.
as:
Ocultismul
.
Bucharest: Pro Editura si Tipografie, n.d., 663 p., paper.
Translated by Laura Chivu.
ISBN: 978-973-145-074-2.
[Romanian]

u.
as:
Das Okkulte
.
Köln: Parkland Verlag, 2004, 858 p., cloth.
Trans.
By Helma Schleif & Nils Thomas Lindquist.
[German]

Dedication: “For Robert Graves.”

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface: Faculty X.
Introduction.
“Unseen forces”; The need for an occult revival; The attitude of science; Cybernetics: the intelligent universe; Wilson’s change of attitude towards occultism.

PART ONE: A Survey of the Subject.
Chapter One: Magic—the Science of the Future.
P.D.
Ouspensky and “infinitely remote horizons”; Homing instinct; Dowsing; Synchronicity; Precognition; Telepathy; Evil eye; John Cowper Powys’ spectre; Faculty X; Arnold Toynbee’s experience.
Chapter Two: The Dark Side of the Moon.
The dominant 5%; Robert Graves and
The White Goddess
; Man’s “lunar powers”; Hypertension;
I Ching
; Taoism and Zen.
Chapter Three: The Poet as Occultist.
Louis Singer and paranormal phenomena; A.
L.
Rowse’s telepathy; W.B.
Yeats’ theory of symbols; Yeats and
A Vision
; The tarot.

PART TWO: A History of Magic.
Chapter One: The Evolution of Man.
H.G.
Wells and evolution; Life—accidental or purposive?; J.B.
Rhine’s PK tests; Peak experiences; Contemplative objectivity; Failure of psychedelic drugs; Use of sex; The superconscious.
Chapter Two: The Magic of Primitive Man.
Shamanism; The dawn of magic; Man becomes a city-dweller; The rise of his sexual obsession;
The Epic of Gilgamesh
; Atlantis; Egyptian religion and magic.
Chapter Three: Adepts and Initiates.
Thaumaturgy; “Positive consciousness”; Ancient Greece; The Essenes; Orphism and the worship of Dionysus; Pythagoras; Apollonius of Tyana; Dowsing.
Chapter Four: The World of the Kabbalists.
Gnosticism;
The Kabbalah
; Simon Magus; Early Christianity; Joseph of Copertino, the flying monk; Possessed nuns; Benvenuto Cellini; Dionysius the Areopagite; Albertus Magnus; Cornelius Agrippa; Paracelsus; Alchemy; Astrology; Nostradamus and his prediction of the French Revolution.
Chapter Five: Adepts and Impostors.
John Dee; Emanuel Swedenborg; Anton Mesmer; Casanova; Cagliostro; The Count of Saint-Germain.
Chapter Six: The Nineteenth Century—magic and romanticism.
Saint-Martin; Eliphaz Levi; The Fox sisters; Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society; W.B.
Yeats, Mathers, and the Order of the Golden Dawn.
Chapter Seven: The Beast Himself.
Crowley’s childhood; His sexual obsession; Magic; Marriage; The abbey of Theleme; His death.
Chapter Eight: Two Russian Mages.
Gregory Rasputin; His thaumaturgie powers; Success at court; Enemies; His Murder; Georges Gurdjieff; His childhood; Travels; His basic ideas; “disciples,” particularly P.D.
Ouspensky and J.G.
Bennett; Subud.

PART THREE: Man’s Latent Powers.
Chapter One: Witchcraft and Lycanthropy.
Origins of European witchcraft; Catharism; The spread of the witch-craze; Exorcism of nuns; Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder general; Why the witchcraft craze died out; The rise of the novel; Valéry Briussov’s
The Fiery Angel
; Vampirism and lycanthropy: their sexual basis; The case of Sally
Beauchamp; Cases of vampirism; The witchcraft revival.
Chapter Two: The Realm of the Spirits.
Daniel Dunglas Home; C.G.
Jung and the unconscious; Aldous Huxley and J.B.
Rhine; Founding of the Society for Psychical Research; Harry Price; Poltergeists; Spontaneous combustion; Ted Serios; Reincarnation; Arthur Guirdham; UFOs; The Tunguska explosion; Jack Schwarz.
Chapter Three: Glimpses.
The “vital force” and animal magnetism; Reichenbach’s “odic force”; Wilhelm Reich; Precognition; J.B.
Priestley; J.W.
Dunne; Eternal recurrence; Experiences of mystical consciousness; The seventh degree of concentration; The pineal eye; Serotonin, the Faculty X hormone; Development of life on Earth; The need for challenge and crisis.
“Man’s future lies in the cultivation of Faculty X.”
Bibliography.
Index.

COMMENTS:

Wilson’s most important work since the Outsider Cycle.
Faculty X, “the latent power that human beings possess to reach beyond the present,” is the thread that links together this massive peregrination of the occult.
Viewed simply as a reference source for its subject, it rates alongside some of the classics in the field.
But
The Occult
goes further than merely presenting supernatural “evidence.”
Part Three, Chapter Three, “Glimpses,” points the way to a new stage in the evolution of mankind, presented with Wilson’s usual optimism and zeal.

The latest Watkins paperback has a new 4-page Introduction by Wilson in which he describes how the success of the book pushed him back onto the bestseller lists after an absence of 15 years, adding: “The English paperback came out in a large, grass-green volume, with some nonsensical quote about it being ‘a book for those who would walk with the gods.’”
Interestingly, this new edition uses that quote as its sub-title!

The cloth editions contain a set of black-and-white plates between pages 304-305.

SECONDARY SOURCES AND REVIEWS:

1.  Adams, Phoebe.
Atlantic
229 (Jan., 1972): 96.

2.  Bendau, p.
52-53.

3.  Bergström—mentioned throughout.

4.  
Book Review Digest
(Annual 1972): 1400.

5.  
Booklist
68 (Feb.
15, 1972): 470.

6.  
Books & Bookmen
20 (Jan., 1975): 81.

7.  Brogan, Diarmuid.
Yorkshire Post
(Oct.
9, 1971): nk.

8.  Byatt, A.S.
Times
(Oct.
21, 1971): 12.

9.  Celebration: Chapter 20.

10.  
Choice
9 (Apr., 1972): 200.

11.  Clare, John.
“Colin Wilson Tackles ‘Faculty X,’ So Fateful for Man,” in
Times
(Oct.
20, 1971): 4.

12.  Dossor: Chapter 6.

13.  
Economist
241 (Oct.
6, 1971): R22.

14.  Galbreath, R.
American Society of Psychical Research Journal
69 (Jan., 1975): 84-91.

15.  
Guardian Weekly
105 (Dec.
16, 1971): 22.

16.  
Kirkus Reviews
39 (Sept.
1, 1971): 1005.

17.  
Life
71 (Dec.
31, 1971): 25.

18.  Lima, Robert.
Saturday Review of Literature
55 (Jan.
15, 1972): 48.

19.  Needleman, Jacob.
Commonweal
96 (Apr.
21, 1973): 173.

20.  Oates, Joyce Carol.
American Poetry Review 2
(Jan./Feb., 1973): 8-9.

21.  
Observer
(Oct.
17, 1971): 33.

22.  
Publishers Weekly
200 (Sept.
27, 1971): 64.

23.  
Publishers Weekly
203 (Jan.
8, 1973): 66.

24.  Rees, Gorownwy.
“Gurus Galore.”
Encounter
39 (Aug., 1972): 56-58.

25.  Blish, James “Eclectic Occultism” in
Spectator
227 (Nov.
6, 1971): 654.

26.  Stanford, Derek.
Scotsman
(Oct.
9, 1971): nk.

27.  Parrinder, E.
Geoffrey “What we need is Faculty X” in
Times Literary Supplement
(Nov.
26, 1971): 1471.

28.  Walton, Alan Hull.
“Wilson’s Occult.”
Books & Bookmen
17 (Dec, 1971): 50-51.
(Reprinted Celebration, Chapter 20.)

29.  Weigel, p.
124-126.

30.  West, R.H.
Review of Politics
37 (Oct., 1975): 547-556.

31.  Payne, Paddy.
“An Eye to the Future” (Nov.
13, 1971): 10.

32.  Stanley:
Literary Encyclopedia
http://www.litencyc.com
/

Book 2:
Mysteries: an investigation into the occult, the paranormal and the supernatural

Mysteries
, with its long sub-title, the second book in Wilson’s ‘Occult Trilogy’ (commencing with
The Occult
(1971) and concluding with
Beyond the Occult
(1988)), was published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton in September 1978 and by G.P.
Putnam’s Sons in the US shortly afterwards.
The Occult
, a book of over 600 pages, Wilson’s first commissioned work, was so successful that the publishers requested a sequel.
He responded with a book of even greater length which, like its predecessor, was divided into three parts preceded by an Introduction.

This Introduction, ‘The Ladder of Selves’, contains some important insights and, indeed, was included by Wilson in
The Essential Colin Wilson
(London: Harrap, 1985) and also re-issued as an e-book
The Ladder of Selves
and
The Search for Power Consciousness
(Berkeley, CA: Maurice Bassett) in 2002.
It commences with Wilson recounting a series of ‘panic attacks’ that he suffered in the mid-1970s and the steps he took to overcome them, providing yet another example of Wilson’s use of personal experience to elucidate his ideas:

‘The panic …was caused by a lower level of my being, an incompetent and childish ‘me’.
As long as I identified with this ‘me’, I was in danger.
But the rising tension could always be countered by
waking myself up fully
and calling upon a more purposive ‘me’.
It was like a schoolmistress walking into a room of squabbling children and clapping her hands.
The chaos would subside instantly….’
(28)*

Accessing this higher self can give us the means of controlling the dozens of ‘I’s’ scattered inside us, at various levels, like a
ladder.
“All forms of purposive activity evoke a higher ‘I’” (28), writes Wilson, and can aid our ascent:

“But reflecting on this image, it struck me that the ladder …is shaped like a triangle, so that the higher rungs are shorter than the lower ones.
When I move up the ladder, I experience a sense of concentration and control.
When I move down—through depression or fatigue—my being seems to become diffused …and I begin to feel at the mercy of the world around me.”
(36)

Wilson uses this theory to ‘explain’ certain occult phenomena and to attack the problem of absurdity or meaninglessness:

The world around us seethes with endless activity, and this normally strikes us as quite reasonable.
But there are certain moments of fatigue or depression when this meaning seems to crack under us….
According to the ladder-of-selves theory, this is precisely what one would expect in a state of low inner-pressure.
But it is
not
an inescapable part of the human condition….
In moments of intensity, of excitement, of creativity, I move up the ladder and instantly become aware that the meaninglessness was an illusion….”
(44)