The Protestant Occult

As always, my Pub Theology outlines are intended as very general overviews and introductions to a given topic, in order to spark further conversation. They are far from exhaustive. For an infinitely worthier treatment, the book to read is John Dee and the Empire of Angels by Jason Louv.

Enochian Matrix, by suicideemoji

  

PROTESTANT OCCULTISM & RENAISSANCE MAGIC

A Pub Theology Halloween Special

"The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters." 

—Antonio Gramsci

The End of the World

If the Middle Ages were known for the great mediaeval synthesis, the Reformation and Renaissance were characterized by disruption. The moveable-type printing press democratized information. Luther challenged the central authority of the Magisterium. The Age of Exploration opened up both the Old World and the New. And astronomical discoveries revised our model of the cosmos and humanity’s place within it.

God and Country

Rulers both Catholic and Protestant sought to maintain their power between the Scylla of the Papacy and the Charybdis of the Reformers. Few crowned heads wanted to relinquish authority so wholly unto Rome, but fundamentalists had a knack for chaos and regicide. Nations sought a third way, a spiritual tradition beholden to neither extreme. And they found this in the occult.

Old Is New Again

Hermeticism and Neoplatonism were classical, quasi-religious philosophies absorbed by Christian schools of thought and kept alive in mediaeval universities. Here the learned could seek a direct connection to God—mysticism—without granting excessive weight to either papal infallibility or scriptural inerrancy. The chain of being, theurgy, alchemy, and the language of correspondence (as above, so below) promised access to the divine. It simply took knowledge, gnosis, to climb our mental way back up and into God.

Scientific Inquiry

This was a very Protestant approach to magic. The cry of the Reformers was “ad fontes,” and the Renaissance picked up this refrain. As Luther used Scripture to argue against the Pope and even Ecumenical Councils, so occultists sought authority older than Scripture: a perennial philosophy or prisca theologia. Court alchemists applied empiricism to the spiritual realm: an ethic of “mess around and find out.” As the telescope unlocked the heavens, so would the scrying glass twist open the hidden worlds of spirit.

E Pluribus Unum

Protestant occultists drew on Jewish sources as well, namely Kabbalah, gematria, and the Testament of Solomon. Kabbalah unveils the Sephirot of the Tree of Life: descending emanations of the divine, which may be mentally reascended to an Edenic state. Gematria treated Hebrew as a heavenly language, full of coded meaning. But what if Hebrew were an echo of the angels’ tongue? Could words, numbers, and symbols be a sort of computer code to all of reality, defining spiritual as well as physical laws?

John Dee

Dee was an Elizabethan polymath, scientist, alchemist, and occultist, one of the last men who could feasibly learn all that there was to know at the time. He was also a part-time spy, going by the code-name 007. Dee utilized pagan and Jewish works of mysticism and magic to attempt to contact angels in scrying sessions. Working with mediums, he transcribed remarkably complex works of angelic language, later known as Enochian.

One Ring to Rule Them All

Building on ever more complicated rituals and magical sigils, Dee attempted to unlock the secrets of the cosmos, to open his mind directly to the many manifestations of God. In so doing, he spoke of a new angelic religion that would not only unite a fractured Christianity but also convert the Muslims and Jews: one world faith under one world empire, be it the British monarch or Holy Roman Emperor. Despite failures, betrayals, demonic deceptions, and political miscalculations, he altered the arc of history.

The Rosy Cross

Dee’s work inspired Rosicrucian movements in Europe, dedicated to ancient wisdom, scientific discovery, and spiritual experimentation. While Rosicrucianism had no central structure, and sort of “memed” itself into existence, it returned to England as the very real Royal Society (a hotbed of brilliant occult-minded scientists) as well as the Freemasonic Lodge, dedicated to the democratization of education. These laid the twin technological and ideological foundations of the British Empire, which ruled the world.

Satanists for Christ

These utopian movements motivated the American and French Revolutions, as well as those of 1848. They hoped to catalyze the Second Coming, baking the Apocalypse into the American psyche. Occult movements led by the likes of Aleister Crowley embraced Antichrist as a necessary role in the return of Jesus at the End of Days. In so doing, they sought to tear down every moral and sexual taboo in society. In this they were wildly successful. US pop culture reflects Thelema far more than Christianity.

Post-Christian Occult

The complex Enochian workings of modern occult societies, such as Golden Dawn or Ordo Templi Orientis, remain broadly inaccessible. As with the esoteric traditions of the East, the Western occult requires discipline, sacrifice, suffering, and great risk, with madness looming over the unprepared practitioner. But their ethos of transgression, ancient (if often manufactured) pre-Christian spirituality, practical magic, à la carte paganism, and rejection of the Church as a historical force have gone mainstream.

An Obsidian Reflection

Seeking Apocalypse, synthesizing Jewish and pagan wisdom, and yearning for a direct connection to God all make the Western occult movement oddly and undeniably Christian. This is an aspect of the Reformation and Enlightenment we often overlook.