Primitive man believed the world was full of unseen forces: the orenda(spirit force) of the American Indians, the Imaca of the ancientPeruvians. The Age of Reason said that these forces had only everexisted in mans imagination only reason could show man the truth aboutthe universe. The trouble was that man became a thinking pygmy, and theworld of the rationalists was a daylight place in which boredom,trivialitv and ordinariness were ultimate truths.But the maintrouble with human beings is their tendency to become trapped in thetriviality of everydayness (to borrow Heideggers phrase), in thesuffocating world of their personal preoccupations. And every time theydo this, they forget the immense world of broader significance thatstretches around them. And since man needs a sense of meaning to releasehis hidden energies, this forgetfulness pushes him deeper intodepression and boredom, the sense that nothing is worth the effort.The Occult is in three parts. In the first, Wilson argues theconnection between creativity and psychic sensitivity, the tapping ofthe subconscious mind for the forces that are normally inaccessible toconsciousness. The second part is a history of mages and adepts--amongthem Nostradamus, Dr. John Dee, Cagliostro, Anton Mesmer, AleisterCrowley, Gurdjieff--set in their historical background. The third partconcerns witchcraft, werewolves and vampirism, the history ofspiritualism, the problem of ghosts and poltergeists. The last chapter,"Glimpses," takes up the metaphysical questions that arise out ofoccultism, as well as the problem of time, and gives concludingstatements on the nature of man's latent powers.--From publisherdescription.