Leon Surette > Quotes

“Occultism, then, can reasonably be regarded as metaphysical speculation — speculation about the nature of ultimate reality and of our relation to it. Typically nontheistic and monistic, it is also typically mystical. All...assume the possibility of direct contact between living human beings and ultimate reality, the noumenal, the transcendent, or the divine. Contact with ultimate reality can be achieved either through a spontaneous mystical revelation or through some ritual initiation such as those of the mysteries at Eleusis. The possibility of illumination through initiation distinguishes the occult from mysticism and connects it to secret societies such as Masonry. (13)”
― Leon Surette, The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult