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

Occultists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries turned to entheogens as a way to bridge the conflict between science and religion, using them to produce experimentally verifiable religious experience. The article traces this rhetoric back to 16th-century theological controversies about witches' ointments and peyote. Analyzing the works of Louis Alphonse Cahagnet and Aleister Crowley, it shows that both considered entheogens scientific tools for studying religion, but differed in interpretation: Cahagnet saw reproducible visions as proof of an objective spirit world, while Crowley, influenced by psychology, focused on subjective religious experience and higher states of consciousness. This shift reflects how occult authors adapted scientific rhetoric of their era.

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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.