The science fiction encyclopedia lists a number of popular authors who fictionalized 19th century western esoteric concepts (mainly theosophy, anthroposophy, and rosicrucian):
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/theosophyConan Doyle certainly comes to mind although his spiritualism was a later development. As well as the whole circle of theosophs.
But perhaps a more fruitful and useful though much more laborious approach would be a unified look at the reflection of occultism in British literature of the period (which was indeed permeated with occult motives) without drawing the artificial distinction of "writers-occultists" per se. That would help avoid unnecessary debates about who was a "true" occultist and who was not -- such as the case of Sax Rohmer who seems to have been spreading rumors about his involvement with occult orders as means to boost his sales and influence yet was very deliberately using occult motives in his work. After all the real issue at hand seems to me not the few isolated cases of writers who were or were not more or less practicing occultists but literature in its role of a mirror and a vehicle for the spread of occult ideas.
The list of authors suggested above already suggests that popular literature (detective, adventure, SF etc.) is of tremendous importance in this respect. Bleiler's supernatural fiction guide would be a great help for some of the more obscure titled.
On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 6:34 AM, Robert Mathiesen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Blake has been claimed as an occultist and/or a druid for quite a long time now, and it's possible that some part of those claims comes down via oral tradition from people who knew him well when he was alive. He died in 1827, so there were still people alive through much of the 19th century who had become friends with Blake in his old age when they were still young. Not everything gets passed on in written form.
A century is not all that large a gap for living memories to span at one jump or two. Here's an illustrative example, though it has nothing to do with either Blake or occultism.
In the 1980s I became quite friendly with a very elderly librarian and bibliographer, Margaret Bingham Stillwell, who had been born in 1887, and who, when she was a young woman, had been employed as librarian by a then elderly book collector, Rush Christopher Hawkins (1831-1920). Col. Hawkins could be a garrulous old man, when the mood hit him, and then he would tell her stories from his boyhood in Vermont, including stories he had heard as a boy from the old men who had fought in the French and Indian Wars (which ended in 1763). If I had thought to ask her to tell me one of those stories, I would now carry a purely oral tradition of some event that happened more than 250 years ago, and I would have received that tradition from the men who lived it through *no more than two intermediaries*.
The point is simply that accurate personal knowledge of Blake's view on some matter, nowhere documented in writing, could *easily* have been preserved in living memory for as much as a half-century and longer, and in reliable oral tradition for a much greater span of time than a half-century.
Robert Mathiesen
On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Ted Hand <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
What does it mean to call Blake an occultist? Obviously he was interested in Swedenborg and Paracelsus,renaissancemagic.blogspot.com <http://renaissancemagic.blogspot.com>
famous esoteric figures if not "occultists" themselves. He clearly wrote poems that were esoteric allegories.
But I'm not sure if I see how we get from Blake's esoteric leanings to full blown "occultism."
I've recently been looking at the use of alchemy in Frankenstein and wondering what it indicates about
esoteric interests in writers of this period. Perhaps the influence of Goethe had something to do with it?
best,
Ted Hand
Colleagues,
I write with a question. I am thinking about British writers and occultism. Some of you know me or my work. I have written a book on W. B. Yeats and occultism and have a book forthcoming on Yeats, Blackwood, Machen, and Fortune and the Golden Dawn. Now I am thinking about writers who were (or may have been, or are reputed to have been) occultists of some sort and were writers in the first two-thirds of the 19th century before the Golden Dawn was established. So far I have Blake (questionable, but Yeats claims it, so it should be looked at), Dante Gabrielle Rosetti , and Bulwer-Lytton. Does anybody out there have any thoughts on others I might include in my study? And Leigh Blackmore, if you are out there, your work is invaluable. I agree with you that Bram Stoker is not among the group. I’m asking about writers who would consciously be reading about occultism and maybe practicing it. The Golden Dawn didn’t exist yet, so it is not the thing. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this query, and thanks in advance for any thoughts.
In gratitude for this list and all the awesome scholars on it who allow me not to be working in a vacuum,
Susan
Susan Johnston Graf, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
Penn State Mont Alto,
Mont Alto, PA 17237