Comment by gtsnexp
21 hours ago
This is revolutionary. In my youth, I traveled through old libraries in Germany, collecting microfilm of Paracelsus’s works. Online availability could reshape the study of the early history of chemistry, metallurgy, and physics.
“Occult philosophy” is just the lens medieval societies used to make sense of the natural world.
Sounds fascinating.
Did you do that full time? What did you get out of it?
Not full-time. I mostly switched around school, weekends, and library trips. I hadn’t really stopped to ask what I “got” from it until your question—so thanks for this! At the time it wasn’t about extracting any value; it was the adventure of exploration and the hope of recovering something “lost.” I didn’t find anything hidden. In hindsight, the real payoff was realizing there isn’t a secret doctrine behind it all: what we call “occult philosophy” looks like early natural philosophy—people trying to model nature with the tools and knowledge they had. Same impulse as good science today, just different instruments and corpus.
I studied a little bit of occultism, but wasn't as dedicated as you must have been. I also wondered about whether there was something there worth finding. I couldn't find anything but "captivating fantasy". Some RPGs are very much like Occult texts, such as Mage (White Wolf) and Ars Magica. These were literally based on the occult tradition.
I wonder if the occult authors would today be releasing their texts on drivethrurpg.com!