A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult Read Online Free PDF

August Strindberg and O.V. Milosz were among his readers. Perhaps A.E. Waite provides the best description of the Unknown Philosopher:

    The Unknown Philosopher ... was a man of many friends, of strong attachments ... Saint-Martin is almost the only mystic who was also in his way a politician, with a scheme for the reconstruction of society; an amateur in music; an apprentice in poetry; a connoisseur in belles lettres; a critic of his contemporaries; an observer of his times; a physician of souls truly, but in that capacity with his finger always on the pulse of the world.
    Karl Von Eckharthausen
    Karl Von Eckharthausen, who, with Saint-Martin and Kirchberger, Baron de Liebistorf, carried on one of the most detailed and enlightening occult correspondences of the time, is little known or read today. Aside from students of European mysticism and Christian theosophy, the group among whom Eckharthausen receives passing interest are the readers of the notorious Aleister Crowley, the most celebrated - if that is the correct word - magician of the 20th century. It was in fact Eckharthausen's book The Cloud upon the Sanctuary that set Crowley off on his colourful, if morally ambiguous career. Crowley first came across the notion of a hidden community of spiritual adepts from reading A.E. Waite's Book of Black Magic and Pacts; in it, Waite refers obscurely to such a secret society. Crowley wrote to Waite, asking for more information. Waite suggested reading Eckharthausen. Crowley did. In his `autohagiography', The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast remarks that:
    The Cloud upon the Sanctuary told me of a secret community of saints in possession of every spiritual grace, of the keys to the treasure of nature, and of moral emancipation such that there was no intolerance or unkindness ... their one passion was to bring mankind into the sphere of their own sublimity ... I was absorbed in The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, reading it again and again, without being put off by the pharisaical, priggish and pithe- cantropoid notes of its translator ...

    What Eckharthausen himself might have thought of this endorsement is unknown, but one assumes he wouldn't have cherished the idea that as `satanic' a figure as Crowley was inspired by his devotional tract. What attracted Crowley was the idea of a secret, hidden Church, a congregation of the elect, an inner circle of adepts, devoted to the noble cause of truth. The idea appealed to Crowley's taste for mysteries, as well as his own penchant for elitism, a sensibility shared by many occultists. Crowley himself would soon join the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; kicked out of that, he became head of another occult organization, the O.T.O., or Order Templi Orientis, then started one of his own, the Argentinum Astrum, or Silver Star. Crowley was not the only occult thinker moved by such a notion. Madame Blavatsky spoke of the Hidden Masters, secure in their Himalayan stronghold, steering man in his spiritual evolution. Ever since the Rosicrucians in the 17th century, the notion of some hidden brotherhood, devoted to mankind's spiritual growth, has been a key theme of occultist thought. In the secret society ridden 18th century, Eckharthausen's tract hit a very responsive nerve. And like the Rosicrucian myth, whether such a hidden brotherhood really existed or not was unimportant: people interested in its existence acted as if it did.
    Eckharthausen's brotherhood, however, differed from the Rosicrucians in one respect. Where the authors of the Fama Fraternitas and other Rosicrucian tracts spoke of their brotherhood as an actual body, made up of definite members, as any other kind of society would be, Eckharthausen makes clear that his hidden Church is not some inner circle of, say, the exterior Catholic Church, or some society like the Freemasons. It is much more a community of like-minded souls, an idea found in Swedenborg and in 20th century occultists like RD. Ouspensky, who, in his