History of Occultism

Roots

The history of occultism begins with the history of man. The oldest form of occult knowledge or "hidden belief" appears in the form of nature-based sympathetic magic. Sympathetic magick is the belief that like affects like. The most common use of sympathetic magick is the creation of a likeness, a doll. Anything done to this doll affects the person or animal for whom the doll is fashioned. Small wooden dolls, apparently used for this purpose have been found in the caves of Cro-Magnon Man. This dates known origin prior to 10,000 C.E.

The Shaman

Primitive peoples began the belief that there were forces of nature untapped by man. In Melanesia, the force is called mana, in Mexico and Central America it is called nagual; in Peru it is called huaca; among the North American Indians it is called orenda. Some African tribes call the force ngai and some Australian tribes call it boolya. There are nuances of meaning but the term is roughly translated as "spirit-force" and the Shaman was the one individual in each gathering or tribe best suited to understand and operate this force.

The Great Mother Religions

The Great Mother was the personification of the procreative powers of nature. It was some time into the history of mankind before the sex act was associated with childbirth. Women were thought to be the receptacles of the Great Mother's Gift and because the gift of life was bestowed upon them, they were held in both awe and fear. Nature, the Great Mother, was recognized as the deliverer of life and death, thus the worship of nature is the most ancient of beliefs.

Cults of Bulls, Sheep, and Goats

When people began to domesticate animals they could finally see that the male had a part in childbearing. This newfound knowledge appeared in ritual and the cults of bull, sheep, and goat emerged. In essence the worship of nature, primarily in the Great Mother religions, became complete with the worship of the male. Worship of the Phallus was common, as was the worship of animals for both their procreative abilities and their life sustaining value.

The Megaliths

Whether as burial sites or temples to the forces of nature, the enormous stone tributes began to appear. Stonehenge is the most famous but megaliths have been found the world over. Besides the staggering effort demanded by such constructions, this is also the time when the oldest known symbols of magick were carved into stone. Those oldest of all symbols are the circle, spiral and the coil. Add to this concentric circles (circles within circles) and you have both the mandala and the maze.

The Oracles

Ancient Greece emerges and the priests and prophets of various oracles are the only important religious figures. The oracles were the sites of the first Greek Temples and the most well-known oracles were at Delphi, Eleusis, Dodona, and Epidaurus. At Delphi the oracle spoke through a priestess called the Pythia, named after the sacred snake, the python. Snakes were very much a part of the earlier Great Mother religions so it is suggested that the oracle was either a branch of or continuation of this primal belief.

Mesopotamia: Divination and Magic

Over four thousand years before Christ, the priests and priestesses of ancient Mesopotamia held many beliefs that became central to occultism. One of these was the idea that learning the name of an entity gave one control over that entity. The use of drugs to contact the spirits was well established, as was the use of wax dolls to harm one's enemies. Incense, holy water, and amulets were used. Primary was the belief in divination, or foretelling the future, and the divination method most important to later occultism was the reading of the stars. The practice of Astrology had begun.

Mesopotamia: Temple Sex/Sacred Sex

At certain times of the year sacred festivals were held. These usually coincided with events in the agricultural year with the main festival held in the spring. The high point of this fertility festival was the sacred marriage between the king and the high priestess of the temple. Their copulation was carried out with great solemnity, according to strict form. They symbolized mankind's unity with nature and at the same time represented the land and all its people. An orgy may have followed. It is also likely that the "convents" of the early Mesopotamians were actually sacred brothels and that the main function of all priestesses was to ensure fertility of the land through copulation. Primary was the Temple of Ishtar, Ishtar being another form of the Great Mother goddess, whose worship survived from Paleolithic times.

Egypt: Divination and Magic

Like the ancient Mesopotamians the Egyptians believed in the "power of the name" -- the idea that one could gain power over an entity by learning its correct name. The "right word" or "word of power" was the link between the human and the divine. The Egyptian concept of the gods approximated the most primitive belief in a spirit-force that pervades all things and in daily life the symbols of the gods were invested not only with spiritual meaning but with direct magical powers, a high form of sympathetic magick.

Ancient Egyptians also believed in the power of dreams and many temple priests were highly skilled interpreters. The dream world was thought as valid and as real as the world of waking consciousness.

The Soul Defined

Egyptians believed in life after death and in the existence of the soul. Each Egyptian had three "souls," or inner spirit forces. The ka was a vital force that was created at the person's birth and survived after the death of the body. The ba was a bird-shaped spirit that inhabited each person and was set free at death. The akh-soul is what we would think of as a person's aura or ghost. These beliefs predate 2600 B.C. and all these concepts are embodied in our modern conception of the human soul.

The Magi

Zarathustra was born about 580 B.C.E. in Medea (northern Iran). He is historically credited with creating the concept of punishment after death, the "Hell" concept embraced by both Christian and Islamic systems, yet Zarathustra's priests, known as the Magi, were a precedent to occult practice rather than mainstream religion. A Magi rite was more akin to Shamanism with rites centering around fire worship and the drinking of an hallucinogenic drug called haoma, which they claimed allowed them to unite with the divine. Within the Magi there were three major grades through which an initiate had to pass: apprenticeship, mastership, and perfect mastership. This practice of graded levels in occult study exists today, a full 2400 years later.

Hermes Trismegistus: The Wisdom of Egypt

Hermes Trismegistus was not a historical person. The name is Greek for "Thrice-Great Hermes", Hermes being the Greek name for Thoth, the god of wisdom of the ancient Egyptians. Thoth was the inspirer of a great many writings of which only a small portion remain today. Traditionally, there were 42 books divided into six subject areas: priestly education, temple ritual, geography, astrology, hymns to the gods, and medical knowledge. In addition, the name Hermes Trismegistus was used on later theosophical writings that are largely Greek in content.

Hermetic writings have been much maligned as an attempt to pervert the Christian faith but the writings of Hermes Trismegistus predate Christianity. Instead of Christianity influencing the Hermetic writings it becomes historically evident that Hermetic writings influenced Christianity. Some scholars even posit that Moses drew his concept of the One God from the ancient worship of Thoth.

Page II-beginning with Pythagoras

Note: This extensive chronology of occult evolution is taken from the work of Louis Stewart, primarily from his book Life Forces.

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