THE VISIONARY MICROSCOPE. ENTHEOGENS AS A “SCIENTIFIC” TOOL IN THE THOUGHT OF OCCULTISTS OF THE LATE 19TH - EARLY 20TH CENTURIES

Summary

Entheogens were popular among occultists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as tools for achieving verifiable religious experiences amidst the conflict between science and religion. The paper explores their role in occult theories, historical theological controversies, and the works of Louis Alphonse Cahagnet and Aleister Crowley. While both viewed entheogens as scientific instruments for exploring religious phenomena, Cahagnet saw them as evidence of an objective spiritual world, whereas Crowley focused on subjective religious experiences.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The article discusses the reasons for the wide popularity of entheogens among representatives of occultism of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, and the role they played in their theories and practices. It is hypothesized that the appeal of occult authors to entheogens should be considered in the light of the conflict between science and religion, which sought to overcome the representatives of occultism. Entheogens in their theories served primarily as means of achieving experimentally verifiable religious experience, thus presenting themselves as instruments of scientific approach to religious phenomena. The first part of the paper takes up theoretical issues in the study of the occult, and its place in the history of the study of Western esotericism. The second part examines a series of theological controversies that developed in the 16th century around witches’ ointments in Europe, and peyote in the New World. According to the author, it was in these controversies that the type of rhetoric inherited by the occultists of the 19th century was formed. The third part of the article is devoted to analyzing the works of Louis Alphonse Cahagnet and Aleister Crowley, in which entheogens are considered as scientific means of obtaining evidence for the existence of religious phenomena. While the idea of using entheogens as scientific tools for the study of religion unites the works of Crowley and Cahagnet, there are a number of significant differences between them, primarily due to the development of psychology. If for Cahagnet the visions experienced under the influence of entheogens, provided that they can be reproduced, confirm the objective existence of the world of spirits and immaterial reality, Crowley’s interpretation of entheogenic experience takes place in a more psychologized way, referring primarily to the fact of religious experience and higher states of consciousness. The latter reflects the inclusion of occult authors in the current scientific rhetoric of their time, where the reference to entheogens, and the way they are treated as scientific means of verifying religious phenomena, is constantly reinterpreted through the lens of changes in modern science.