Traité méthodique de science occulte

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243 PARIS. Traité méthodique de Science Occulte [Methodical Treatise on Occult Science] — Prefatory letter by Ad. Franck. Paris, Carré, 1891, very thick large in-8 volume, paperback.

150 fr.

Very rare work, illustrated with plates and figures in the text. — It is a veritable encyclopedia of everything touching on the magical sciences: Kabbalah, theosophy, spiritism, alchemy, freemasonry, divinatory arts, etc. — The cover is a little worn.

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2016

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METHODICAL TREATISE

ON

OCCULT SCIENCE

PREFATORY LETTER

BY

AD. FRANCK

MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE

To reconcile the depth of the theories of antiquity with the results and the power of contemporary experimentation.

WITH 400 ENGRAVINGS AND TABLES — 2 PROTOTYPE PLATES OUTSIDE THE TEXT FOLLOWED BY A GLOSSARY OF OCCULT SCIENCE AND AN ALPHABETICAL DICTIONARY OF ALL THE TERMS AND ALL THE AUTHORS CITED

N

•V

PARIS

GEORGES CARRÉ, PUBLISHER

. 3 8, R ur S AI Nf T-A X I) R É-I» K — ARTS. 3 S

! 80 I

METHODICAL TREATISE

ON

OCCULT SCIENCE

PARIS.

PRINTING HOUSE P. MOUILLOT, QUAI VOLTAIRE. — 44902.

METHODICAL TREATISE

ON

OCCULT SCIENCE

BY

PAPUS

DIRECTOR OF L'INITIATION

PRESIDENT OF THE INDEPENDENT GROUP FOR ESOTERIC STUDIES
OFFICER OF THE ACADEMY

PREFATORY LETTER

BY

MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE

PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE AGAINST ATHEISM

PARIS

GEORGES CARRÉ, PUBLISHER

58, RUE SAINT-ANDRÉ-DES-ARTS, 58

1891

s

ELIPHAS LEVI

THE GREAT FRENCH OCCULTIST on his deathbed

To Monsieur PAPUS, director of L'Initiation.

Author of the Methodical Treatise on Occult Science.

PREFACE

Sir,

Before delivering your Methodical Treatise on Occult Science to the public, you were good enough to submit it to my judgment, asking me to tell you what I think of the general spirit of this book and of that of your other works known to me, in the event that your opinions did not seem to me contrary to the idea I hold of the conditions and requirements of philosophical science in the present state of human thought.

I have no reason to refuse the satisfaction of your wish, provided you allow me to fix with precision the limits and the intention within which it pleases me to grant it to you.

I do not believe in the existence of an occult science

VI

distinct in essence from ordinary science, exempt from the conditions imposed upon the latter, and which should nonetheless be regarded as the origin, the source, and the permanent basis of all our knowledge. This idea, though it found numerous partisans in the past and still counts many in the present, is absolutely irrational, that is to say, unscientific. It is a pure idol whose cult belongs to fabulous times.

But if, under the name of occult science, you mean to speak of the first efforts and the first discoveries of science, of those discoveries which rest on analogy rather than on reasoning and analysis, which were prompted by man's intuition of the universal order of nature and by the resemblance of the laws of the universe to those of his own thought, I grant you complete agreement. These laws, of which we speak, being always the same, were suspected and, if one may put it so, claimed before being demonstrated. Then tradition took hold of them and transmitted them from century to century in its own name. It is thus that the highest antiquity possessed true notions of physics, of astronomy, of natural history, of agriculture, of metallurgy, of mathematics, of architecture, even of chemistry and of medicine. It is thus, a memorable example among all, that the Pythagoreans recognized the rotation of the earth and the other planets, not around the sun, but around a central fire.

vii

All the laws of thought, like all the laws of nature, exist at once, some in thought, others in the universe, but more or less developed, more or less clear, and always united, always mingled with one another in proportion to the knowledge of which they are the object.