This March, Pope Leo hosted a private meeting for several priests from the International Association of Exorcists. Their goal was to lobby the Roman Pontiff into increasing the number of trained exorcists available to every Catholic diocese. The world, they said, was witnessing an unprecedented rise in “occultism, esotericism, and Satanism.” The current exorcists on hand were insufficient to respond to the increasing number of “people seriously disturbed by the extraordinary action of the devil as a result of frequenting occult sects.” Two years prior, Pope Francis had publicly warned that “our secularized world is teeming with magicians, occultism, spiritism, astrologers and satanic sects.”
The supernatural, it would appear, is on the move, and popes and priests aren’t the only ones who have noticed. In 2018, Pew published a report claiming that practitioners of Wicca and neopaganism had begun to outnumber mainline Presbyterians in America. In 2021, Pew claimed that roughly 33 percent of American Christians believe in reincarnation. By 2025, it was estimated that 30 percent of all Americans, Christians or otherwise, were practicing astrology, tarot, or other forms of divination, and that 62 percent believed in one or more New Age ideas, be it psychics, crystals, spiritual energies, “positive thinking,” or the “law of attraction.” Popular religiosity appears to be shifting, and it’s not hard to see where it is headed.
How did this happen? The answer might surprise you. How the Western world thinks about religion, particularly the occult, has been changing for centuries, and what we are seeing today is only the most recent manifestation of a tectonic shift in the Western imagination. The rise of contemporary occultism was set into motion almost one hundred and fifty years ago by a network of revolutionary mystics who set out to reshape the world. They were more successful than almost anyone could have imagined.
In 1875, a Russian adventurer named Helena Blavatasky and her freemason associate, Henry Steel Olcott, hosted a coterie of ghost-hunters, kabbalists, and amateur Egyptologists for an evening of friendly conversation. After discussions that ranged from the long-lost wisdom of the pre-Christian world to the scientific foundations of psychic powers, the associates formed what would become the most influential occult organization in human history: the Theosophical Society.
The Theosophical Society served as the nexus of a cultural eruption aimed squarely at the religious and scientific foundations of Western civilization. Theosophists and their fellow travellers capitalized on the disorienting world of the late-nineteenth century—a world of trains and telegraphs, rapid industrialization, and the heights of European imperialism—and set about reconciling every conceivable antithesis of fin de siècle life: religion and science, East and West, the modern and the pre-modern. Blavatsky’s occult revival blended scientific rhetoric with Hermeticism and the Kabbalah, and added liberal doses of Hinduism and Buddhism. It invited its adherents to step into a realm of alchemy, magic, and astrology; a world of enchantment that chafes against limitations of any kind. In the world of the occult, borders prove porous, heaven is immanent, and power is only a bargain away.
“Power is only a bargain away.”
Scholars often describe occultism as drawing from the “waste basket” of ideas discarded by theological, philosophical, and scientific orthodoxies as these disciplines advanced from the early modern to modern eras. Yet, this wastebasket is never emptied. Instead, what falls in begins to ferment, and in 1875, what had been growing there burst into the mainstream. The occult phenomenon that followed was dominated by four organizations: the Theosophical Society, the Anthroposophical Society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Ordo Templi Orientis. But Blavatsky and her Theosophy stand apart.
Theosophy played a pivotal role in making the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism popular topics of Western interest. The astral world, the akashic records, reincarnation, chakras, and deference to Indian gurus were all served up by theosophists and readily digested by audiences eager for novelty and exoticism. Blavatsky, of course, denied that she had any ideas of her own, and claimed to be in communication with unseen Indian masters or mahatmas who had chosen her to be their herald in the modern world. Significantly, Blavatsky and her followers were not just street-corner mystics and mediums—they claimed to have a spiritual mandate to overthrow the intellectual and religious foundations of the modern world. They were revolutionaries, and they fused their spiritual aspirations with anti-colonial activism and socialist rhetoric, promising a universal brotherhood of mankind and a transcendent, post-Christian future. The results were far-reaching.
The New Age movement, the popularity of reincarnation and “spiritual evolution,” the belief in “mind over matter”—all of this is downstream from the Theosophical Society and associated movements. Theosophy also informed how millions of Americans think about religion. The transformations of popular piety and church attendance in the late twentieth century didn’t just reflect the spread of secular materialist views. How Americans looked at religion was also transformed by a host of popular figures who championed religious universalism and personal transformation over traditional religious structures, many of them influenced by Theosophy.
The literature scholar Joseph Campbell did more than anyone to popularize comparative religion and mythology in the twentieth century. Campbell’s most iconic work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, promoted his notion of the “monomyth” or “hero’s journey,” which he argued was the underlying pattern of major religious narratives. The clear implication was that Christianity was just one more iteration of the monomyth—something Theosophy had taught since its inception.
“Christianity was just one more iteration of the monomyth.”
One of Campbell’s formative influences was the leading theosophist Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom he met in the 1920s on a steamship crossing the Atlantic. Krishnamurti taught Campbell that “truth is a pathless land” and that all religious particularities and dogmatic structures were ephemeral; he encouraged him to study Indian religions. Campbell responded by dedicating his life to studying religion, with a particular attraction to Hinduism. Campbell’s writings would serve as primary source material for George Lucas while writing Star Wars.
The popular writer Aldous Huxley was similarly influenced by Theosophy. While most famous today for his dystopian novel Brave New World, in the mid-twentieth century, Huxley was equally known for his experiments with LSD and the pursuit of a religion-less spirituality. His 1945 work, The Perennial Philosophy, argued that all world religions pointed to a singular, universal divine reality, and that humans could contact this reality through mystical experiences. This is Theosophy in a nutshell. Huxley had learned about it nearly thirty years earlier, while teaching at Eton College in England. In 1917, Huxley wrote to his father about his long discussions on Theosophy. Huxley wasn’t impressed with the more esoteric aspects of the movement, but as to its primary principle that all religions were expressions of the same divine truth, he thought that Theosophy “seems a good enough religion,” and claimed that “a little judicious Theosophy seems on the whole an excellent thing.”
Christmas Humphreys, the leading British Buddhist of the twentieth century, similarly began his spiritual quest in Theosophy. Humphreys was a successful barrister and noted judge at the Old Bailey in London, but it was not life as a jurist that would make him famous. While a teenager, Humphreys’s older brother died, leading him to explore spirituality as an answer to life’s great mysteries. As a university student, Humphreys joined the Cambridge Theosophical Lodge. With its blend of Eastern mysticism and scientific rhetoric, Theosophy seemed to him more rational than faith-oriented and dogmatic Christianity. In 1924, Humphrey chartered the London Buddhist Lodge of the Theosophical Society, but in 1926 he broke away from Theosophy and renamed the lodge the Buddhist Society. Humphreys and his society would become the most influential sources for the popularization of Buddhism in Britain. Today, he is remembered as a founder of Western Buddhism.
In America, one of Humphrey’s students played a similar role. Alan Watts served as the secretary for the Buddhist Society when he was only sixteen. Initially drawn to Eastern mysticism through a love of Chinese art, Watts was set on a spiritual path by Humphreys, later claiming that the godfather of British Buddhism “gave me an education which no money could possibly buy.” In 1951, Watts moved to California and worked as a lecturer and popular radio host, pontificating to rapt audiences on the wonders of Buddhism, Taoism, and Vedanta. In 1957, he published The Way of Zen which introduced generations of Americans to Zen Buddhism and the ability to achieve personal transformation without the anchors of faith and church. Watts’ books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and have never been out of print.
Together, Campbell, Huxley, Humphreys, and Watts contributed to a paradigm shift that moved spirituality out from the pews and into the world of the free-flowing and the feel-good. They were a formative influence on the counterculture movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The hippies were more than just long hair, flower power, and groovy music: They were consciously engaged in a cultural revolution aimed at surpassing traditional religion, coercive government structures, and the limitations of everyday consciousness; they believed in communitarianism, natural living, and blended Eastern spirituality with a penchant for astrology.
If the hippies sound a bit theosophical, that is no accident. The values and lifestyles of the hippies can be traced to the German Lebensreform—or life reform—movement, a wide-ranging cultural upheaval of the nineteenth century focused on naturalism, alternative medicine, and often, running naked through the woods. In Germany, Theosophy became deeply intertwined with Lebensreform, and this entanglement served as the incentive for a theosophical commune in the idyllic mountain town of Ascona, Switzerland. In Ascona, we can see the entire hippie movement in microcosm: a theosophical retreat where members practiced vegetarianism, smoked hashish, embraced naturalism, and often went without footwear. Many of these German life-reformers and theosophists moved to California and brought their ideas with them.
Back in Europe, German occultism had an even broader influence. Whether it was the dizzying high of being a newly unified empire or the disorientation of rapid industrialization, occultism in Germany was widespread, provocative, and dangerously serious. One of the most significant occultists to emerge was the Austrian-born Rudolf Steiner. A leading scholar of Goethe and a passionate neo-Romantic, Steiner was deeply suspicious of the rising materialism and skepticism of the European intelligentsia. In 1902, he was appointed the General Secretary of the German Theosophical Society and began advertising himself as a clairvoyant. However, Steiner attempted to translate Blavatsky’s occult precedents into more discernably Western currents. Unlike other theosophists, Steiner was convinced that it was the West, not the East, that was destined to lead the world to a new spiritual future. And within the West, it was Germany that was to play the leading role.
Steiner broke from the Theosophical Society in 1912 and created his own movement, Anthroposophy, and positioned himself as the prophet of a distinctly Teutonic-European spiritual renaissance. As tensions built before the outbreak of war in 1914, Steiner emerged as a patriotic supporter of the German cause. He framed the war as a major step in the spiritual evolution of the world and the ascension of Germany to its rightful place as the leader of the West. He was also the spiritual advisor to General Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff. Like Steiner, von Moltke believed that the war was an act of providence destined to lead Germany to its rightful place on the world stage. Accordingly, von Moltke was a key figure in the escalation of the conflict, eschewing political options in favor of military action. Unfortunately, it was also von Moltke who was in charge of the German army in the opening months of the war, and who chose to invade France through Belgium, triggering Britain’s entry into the war. Instead of landing a knockout blow, France and Germany settled into trench warfare. This ended any hopes of a quick German victory and set Europe on course for four years of civilization-ending carnage.
“War was an act of providence.”
Beyond his potential entanglements in geopolitics, one aspect that would separate Steiner’s Anthroposophy from its theosophical parent was its emphasis on practical pursuits. Whereas Theosophy focused primarily on contemplative mysticism, under Steiner’s leadership, German anthroposophists began a program of applying his clairvoyant insights to medicine, agriculture, and education. The unifying theme in all these applications was the conviction that contemporary, industrial, and regimented ways of producing everything from foodstuffs to children had severed reality from its natural cosmic rhythms.
In medicine, Steiner’s ideas became fellow travellers alongside homeopathy, emphasizing holistic medicine and natural remedies. The popular medical and cosmetics company, Weleda, is inspired by anthroposophical practices. In agriculture, Steiner pioneered biodynamics, a mystical-organic method that uses alchemical fertilizers and tries to harness the energies of the solstices. The method is particularly popular with vintners, and you can probably find biodynamic products in your local wine store. Steiner’s fears about modern industrial and chemical practices prefigured the contemporary organic agricultural movement, whose founders were inspired by his ideas. In education, Steiner pioneered Waldorf schools, a global network of private schools that practice a unique pedagogy based on his vision of human and adolescent development. Another pioneer of alternative education, Maria Montessori, lived for almost ten years at the Theosophical Headquarters at Adyar, India.
India, the holy land of the theosophical movement, was also affected by Blavatsky’s followers. In the late nineteenth century, after centuries of colonial interference, India was a far cry from the confident nation of today. In 1889, a young Indian law student named Mohandas Gandhi was devouring English literature, full of doubts about Indian civilization, and enthralled by all that the West had to offer. It was also there that he fell in with theosophists who encouraged him to read the Bhagavad Gita and Blavatsky’s works. The young Gandhi had internalized the polemics of the Christian missionaries who roamed India, but these readings led him back to his ancestral faith. Gandhi would of course play the pivotal role in liberating India from British rule. Yet even before the formal awakening of Hindu nationalism, theosophists were active in India, building schools and battling missionaries to keep Hindus from converting to Christianity. A theosophist named Annie Besant was the first female president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.
The impact of theosophical occultism may seem relatively benign so far. But some of the twentieth century’s most dangerous minds were also inspired by Blavatsky and the movement she founded. Nazis and hippies, it turns out, were not as far apart as one might think. The Lebensreform movement and the theosophical community at Ascona—with their new ideas about naturalism and holism—were as influential in the development of fascism as they were in the California counterculture.
The Thule Society was the most influential of several early twentieth-century fusions of Theosophy and racial mysticism, functioning as part occult order, part Aryan supremacy think tank. It was created in part by Rudolf von Sebettendorf, a freemason, occultist, and student of Guido von List, another theosophy-influenced neopagan and racial mystic. Its doctrines blended theosophical occultism and racial theories into a mystical cult of Aryanism or “Ariosophy.” With its emphasis on the wisdom of pre-Christian and Indian religions, Theosophy provided a handy kit of spiritual idioms for romantic German nationalists eager to cobble together new religious movements centered on the exceptionality of Aryans. Proto-fascists in Austria and Germany welded together an entire cosmology based on antisemitism, Aryanism, Wotanism, runes, and a twisted expression of Theosophy. While there were other organizations in the racial-occult milieu, the Thule Society stands apart. Beyond simple spiritual concerns, the Thule Society believed that the restoration of Germany required public action. In 1918, the society purchased a newspaper, the Münchener Beobachter, and used it as the primary organ of their movement. But this wasn’t enough. The following year, in 1919, two members of the society, Karl Harrer and Anton Drexler, who had been active in extremist nationalist circles, came together to produce a new political party: the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP). That same year, an unknown corporal named Adolf Hitler joined the party. Encouraged by Hitler’s growing influence, in 1920 the DAP rebranded itself as the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP).
The Nazi Party had just been born, and its womb was a volatile mix of racism, antisemitism, and the occult impulses of Theosophy. While Hitler himself never joined the Thule Society, leading Nazis such as Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Dietrich Eckhart, Hans Frank, and Julius Lehmann were active members. By August 1919, the Thule Society’s newspaper, the Münchener Beobachter, had changed its name to the Völkischer Beobachter—the primary newspaper of the Nazi Party.
By the time the Nazis came to power, Rudolf Steiner had already led most German theosophists into Anthroposophy, but the Theosophical Society persisted in its own right. Dr. J. M. Verweyen, a scholar from Bonn, led a revival of the Theosophical Society in Germany in the 1920’s and publicly spoke on what he saw as the fundamental compatibility of National Socialism and Theosophy. But Hitler, unlike many of his leading henchmen, had no interest in occultism, and once in power, he clamped down on Weimar occultism. Dr. Verweyen died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
“Inmates were cruelly forced to labor in biodynamic plantations.”
Steiner, for his part, died in 1925, leaving his movement without its captain to navigate the rise of the Nazis. Unsurprisingly, like much of German civil society, many anthroposophists accorded themselves to the Nazi movement, and leading Nazis like Heinrich Himmler were interested in the practical applications of anthroposophical occultism. Throughout Nazi occupied eastern Europe, and surrounding concentration camps like Dachau, inmates were cruelly forced to labor in biodynamic plantations—the earthy organicism of anthroposophical agriculture appealing to the Nazi fantasy of Blut und Boden and its vision of a natural, wholesome Volk. Both Steiner and Blavatsky, it must be said, would have been appalled.
A gentler expression of reactionary occultism was found in the person of René Guénon, the founder of Traditionalism. In the opening decade of the twentieth century, Guénon was deeply involved in the occult movement in France, dabbling in gnosticism, freemasonry, and Theosophy. But he failed to find what he was looking for. Theosophy appeared to him to be an inauthentic mishmash of Eastern and Western religions. Instead, Guénon came to believe that true gnosis and esoteric truths could only be found through participation in traditional religions like Catholicism, Hinduism, or Islam. Far from abandoning what he found appealing in the occult milieu, he postulated a universal esoteric core to all major world religions that could be pursued by a gnostic elect for mystical transformation. This universal core and the pursuit of it, Guénon termed “Tradition.”
Guénon published many books, two of which would stand out as particularly influential: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927) and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times (1945). In these books, Guénon outlined what he saw as the failure of the modern, Western world and the importance of hierarchy, religion, and tradition. For Guénon and later traditionalists, the modern world is the age of Kali Yuga, the Hindu dark ages at the end of a cosmic cycle marked by chaos and collapse. Ultimately, Guénon’s despair for the modern West led him to convert from Catholicism to Sufi Islam.
“Guénon’s despair for the modern West led him to convert.”
From the early twentieth century to today, Guénon’s writings on comparative religion, symbolism, and the critique of modernity have inspired countless scholars and activists, and his works remain a lightning rod for individuals opposed to what they see as the barren materialism and vapid culture of the modern world. Political activists such as MAGA architect Steve Bannon, Aleksander Dugin—the guru of Russian Traditionalism and Eurasianism—and Ali Shariati—an Iranian intellectual and the “ideologue of the Iranian Revolution”—found inspiration in his anti-modernism and political formulations.
Another student of Guénon was Julius Evola, a minor Sicilian aristocrat and artist, who dabbled in poetry, Dadaism, and Futurism as a young man. After serving in the First World War, Evola suffered a spiritual crisis that led him to Nietzscheanism, Buddhism, and then to occultism and René Guénon. In Rome in the 1920’s, Evola became an associate of Arturo Reghini, a neopagan, freemason, and occultist who advocated for the return of Roman paganism and introduced Evola to Guénon. Evola and Reghini—along with a leading Italian anthroposophist, Giovanni Colassa—founded the Ur Group, a nexus of Italian Traditionalism where members practiced ceremonial magic in pursuit of transcendence. Both Evola and Reghini enthusiastically supported the rise of Italian Fascism.
Under Mussolini’s regime, Evola became a leading fascist mystic and philosopher, his emphasis on power, hierarchy, and authority meshing easily with the values then ascendant in Italy. Evola had a personal relationship with Mussolini and leading members of the Nazi SS and wrote repeatedly on the spiritual foundations of racism, or the racial foundations of spirituality. His works were widely circulated among the Fascist and Nazi elite. Like Guénon, Evola believed that modernity constituted a dark age—the Kali Yuga—and that “spiritual aristocrats” were needed to lead the world out of the quagmire of democracy, egalitarianism, and decadence.
While he wrote abundantly on alchemy, Tantra, and occultism, Evola’s most significant works—while inseparable from his occult and traditionalist ideas—were political and philosophical. These included Pagan Imperialism (1928), Revolt Against the Modern World (1934), Men Among the Ruins (1953), and Ride the Tiger (1961). As a leading fascist intellectual who survived the war, Evola and his writings helped to midwife radical right-wing movements across the Western world. Today, his works are staples on the far right and proliferate across online message boards—fawned over by everyone from genuine fascists to young men eager for something provocative. And just like his master Guénon, Evola and his works exerted an influence on Steve Bannon and Aleksandr Dugin.
The other great apostle of occultism is Aleister Crowley—the “wickedest man in the world,” the “Great Beast,” the modern world’s first professional troll. Aleister, born Edward Alexander Crowley, was raised as a polite child in the closed and conservative confines of the Plymouth Brethren, a fundamentalist and evangelical sect. From his initial upbringing, where he was terrified of the Rapture leaving him behind, Crowley would grow to embrace a unique form of occult hedonism and single-handedly serve as one of the major wellsprings of contemporary Satanism and neopaganism.
Crowley received his occult education in an organization called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was a society created by three freemasons who styled themselves Rosicrucians and wanted to practice ceremonial magic. Inspired by Blavatsky’s Theosophy, the founders of the Golden Dawn set about creating what would become the most influential magical society in history. The Golden Dawn blended the mythos of the Rosicrucians with medieval grimoires, Tarot cards, alchemical motifs and Kabbalism into an enduring synthesis. Famous members included W. B. Yeats, Constance Wilde—the wife of Oscar Wilde—Mina Bergson—sister to the French philosopher, Henri Bergson—Annie Horniman, who pioneered the Irish Theater movement, and of course, Aleister Crowley. Two other members, less well-known today, were Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, authors of Gothic and supernatural fiction who would prove influential in the genesis of fantasy literature.
When the egos that had crafted the Golden Dawn began to collide and the order collapsed in on itself, Crowley was sent into the occult wilderness. During a trip to Egypt, he claimed to have encountered a discarnate spirit named Aiwass and became convinced that he had been chosen by the “gods” to be the herald of a new religion called Thelema—the Greek word for “will.” The maxim of this new religious movement was accordingly: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” Crowley would join and eventually commandeer an occult order from Germany known as the Ordo Templi Orientis—which had a penchant for sexual mysticism—and transform it into the vehicle for his Thelema.
Unlike many of the middle- and upper-class mystics who made up the occult movement, Crowley revelled in overt displays of transgression, violating every Victorian piety he could get his hands on. He referred to himself as the “Great Beast 666,” wrote garish poems about sex and bestiality, and used bodily fluids in certain of his ceremonies. To Crowley, Christendom and Western normativity were nothing but a bad joke and an arbitrary set of rules, and he set about embodying the “transgressive deviance” that he believed was the only true route to virtue. For Crowley, sex and occultism offered the best path to individual autonomy.
Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca was a student of Crowley, and Anton LaVey, the founder of contemporary Satanism and the Church of Satan, devoured Crowley’s writings. The Beatles put Crowley on the cover of their Sgt. Pepper’s album and Jimmy Page, the founder of Led Zeppelin, was a devoted follower and collector of Crowley memorabilia. David Bowie, Ozzy Osbourne, and Marilyn Manson were all likewise familiar with Crowley and influenced by him to one degree or another. Such is the legacy of the world’s most infamous magician.
From contemporary attitudes to sex and religion to organic produce and Rock and Roll, it is an open question whether the occult revival really ended. What we can say is that something changed. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, just as Western science, scholarship and imperialism were reaching previously unimaginable heights, just as Darwinism, Marxism, and scientific materialism were emerging as defining trends on the intellectual scene, something burst forth from the waste basket of esotericism and occultism. Nourished on a Romantic yearning for the dreamy harmony of a pre-Christian and pre-modern world, this creature from the deep traveled on the same trains and telegraphs that transported modernity to the far corners of the globe. Everything it touched was changed.
The occult movement—the movement of Blavatsky and Crowley, of Evola and Guénon—reshaped our memories of the past and the horizons upon which we paint our futures. If we may give Blavatsky her due, we can say in Buddhist terms that Blavatsky turned the Wheel of Dharma; she inaugurated a new age.
“Blavatsky turned the Wheel of Dharma.”
As influential as many other occultists have been, Blavatsky was the most important. Her disdain for Christianity and reverence for pagan antiquity; her preference for all things Eastern over Western; her aspirations and superstitions—all of it proved influential on everything from avant-garde artists and Hippies to Nazis and Traditionalists. From the New Age section at Barnes & Noble to your expensive glass of biodynamic wine; to the rise of fascism and contemporary populism; from our religious marketplace to how we paint and play music—all of it has been affected by a cultural turning set in motion by Helena Blavatsky.
As the Western world abandons its historic faith traditions, it isn’t becoming atheist, but agnostic, and it is within the vague milieu of agnosticism that these occult ideas travel. With the intellectual and spiritual coherence offered by religion fading, we may find that people turn to the wastebasket of occultism and its mysterious depths for answers the churches used to provide. Of one thing we can be sure, as the world braces for crises on every front, people will be looking for answers.