Dark Muse does not exactly cover a history of the occult as that would go back to the beginnings of mankind. Rather what proceeds is how the occult and occult ideas influenced some of the great artistic minds of Europe. Occult ideas have always influenced the way certain writers write. Sometimes it effects the plot of their story, other times the author is putting forward an occult idea. Occult means hidden. There are different time periods or occult periods and they are in order they are enlightenment occultism , romantic occultism, satanic occultism , fin de siecle occultism and modern occultism.
During the enlightenment period when it seemed that science and rationalism have completely overcame magic and superstition one could find street vendors selling book on the Kaballah , alchemy and astronomy. Indeed it could be argued that these occult arts were treated like a science and subject to many experiments. Swedenborg was one such individual. Before some mind bending dreams shattered his picture of reality he was a hardcore scientist who accomplished a lot. But a prophetic dream changed all that and he became a cartographer of the inner dimensions .
The period of Romantic Occultism. If something is Romantic it is often times seen as imaginative or unrealistic. Romantics saw the imagination as the central source of existence, the fundamental creative power, and the most god–like of human faculties. One writer that evinced this quality was Goethe, the German poet. His work Faust , which was based on a real personage, dealt with pacts being made with the devil. There have been earlier telling if Faust but it is the Goethe version that stand out.
The next period is Satanic Occultism . Now Satanism is kind of a recent development and only a very minor branch of the occult. Satan is really only mentioned extensively in the book of Job. Later on the Christians would matnify his position and make him real Important. Further on in Christian history dissident groups would be accuse of being in league with the devil. Gnostic held the view that the devil or an evil god created the world we live in and the god of light who created the universe wanted to rescue us. There were earlier embodiments of a dark principle. Ahriman, in Zoroastrianism the enemy of Ahura Mazda, is a kind of prototype Devil. Indeed to embrace the devil is to embrace rebellion. Charles Baudelaire would be an example of this. He was a poet born to a rich man and he lived a decadent life. Good food, lots of unsanctioned sex dresses well etc. his writing were filled with decadence as well along with many elements that would be found in a horror story.
The Fin De Siecle period of occultism would nite the bringing about of new age ideas along with a preoccupation of a mythologized past. Notions of prehistoric lost civilizations and evolutionary supermen shared the same intellectual space as a profound rediscovery of magic and a dizzying preoccupation with higher dimensions. Madame Blavatsky would be part of this movement. Having starting Theosophy there were legends of super developed humans in underground civilization which are lead by ascended beings.
The last period is Modern Occultism treats everything in the art as a symbol for something spiritual. “In all the poets of the modern tradition, poetry is a system of symbols and analogies parallel to that of the hermetic sciences.” Fernando Peso was a Portuguese’s poet recently rediscovered . He has done some major translations of some really well known work. Pessoa work was found posthumously in a trunk with scattered bits of poetry. He was known for writing in Heteronyms, literally assuming a different identify when writing his works. It was as though he were a different person doing he writing. These non acquaintances had their own identify, history and biograph. Pessoa was in a word obsessed with defracturing the personality and dissolving identity.
The last half of the book contains written passages by various authors. Crowley’s Hym to. Pan is included along with some works by Baudelaire, Poe and Rimbaud just to name a few. There were many popular authors who were influenced by the occult. Read up and find out more about them.
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