The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875-1947

308 Pages·2017·4.51 MB·English

by  Christine Ferguson

Frontispiece The World card from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck used with permission of U.S. Games
Systems, Inc., Stamford, CT USA. c. 1971 by U.S. Games Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875–1947
Between 1875 and 1947, a period bookended, respectively, by the founding of
the Theosophical Society and the death of notorious occultist celebrity Aleister
Crowley, Britain experienced an unparalleled efflorescence of engagement with
unusual occult schema and supernatural phenomena such as astral travel, ritual
magic, and reincarnationism. Reflecting the signal array of responses by authors,
artists, actors, impresarios and popular entertainers to questions of esoteric
spirituality and belief, this interdisciplinary collection demonstrates the
enormous interest in the occult during a time typically associated with the rise of
secularization and scientific innovation. The contributors describe how the
occult realm functions as a turbulent conceptual and affective space, shifting
between poles of faith and doubt, the sacrosanct and the profane, the endemic
and the exotic, the forensic and the fetishistic. Here, occultism emerges as a
practice and epistemology that decisively shapes the literary enterprises of
writers such as Dion Fortune and Arthur Machen, artists such as Pamela Colman
Smith, and revivalists such as Rolf Gardiner.
Christine C. Ferguson is Professor of English at the University of Stirling in
Scotland.
Andrew Radford is a lecturer in the School of Critical Studies at the University
of Glasgow in Scotland.
Among the Victorians and Modernists
Edited by Dennis Denisoff
This series publishes monographs and essay collections on literature, art, and
culture in the context of the diverse aesthetic, political, social, technological, and
scientific innovations that arose among the Victorians and Modernists. Viable
topics include, but are not limited to, artistic and cultural debates and
movements; influential figures and communities; and agitations and
developments regarding subjects such as animals, commodification, decadence,
degeneracy, democracy, desire, ecology, gender, nationalism, the paranormal,
performance, public art, sex, socialism, spiritualities, transnationalism, and the
urban. Studies that address continuities between the Victorians and Modernists
are welcome. Work on recent responses to the periods such as Neo-Victorian
novels, graphic novels, and film will also be considered.
1 Arthur O’Shaughnessy, A Pre-Raphaelite Poet in the British Museum
Jordan Kistler
2 Dialectics of Secrecy and Disclosure in Victorian Fiction
Leila May
3 Louise Jopling
Patricia de Montfort
4 Gender and the Intersubjective Sublime in Faulkner, Forster, Lawrence,
and Woolf
Erin K. Johns Speese
5 Victorian Sustainability in Literature and Culture
Edited by Wendy Parkins
6 The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875–1947
Edited by Christine Ferguson and Andrew Radford
The Occult Imagination in Britain,
1875–1947
Edited by
Christine Ferguson and Andrew Radford
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Christine Ferguson and Andrew Radford The right of Christine Ferguson and Andrew Radford to
be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
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recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data
CIP data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978-1-4724-8698-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-16832-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Notes on contributors
Introduction
CHRISTINE FERGUSON
Occulture beyond the metropole
1 Theosophy in Scotland: Oriental occultism and national identity
MICHAEL SHAW
2 The everyday occult on stage: The plays of Lord Dunsany
NICHOLAS DALY
3 “A very perfect form of discipline”: Rolf Gardiner, folk dance and
occult landscapes
CLARE BUTTON
Occulting the public sphere
4 “Under a glamour”: Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater and Neo-
Theosophy
JAKE POLLER
5 The Black Magic Bogeyman 1908–1935
NICK FREEMAN
6 Stemming the black tide of mud: Psychoanalysis and the occult
periodical
ELSA RICHARDSON
Women’s Occulture
7 Egyptosophy in the British Museum: Florence Farr, the Egyptian
Adept and the Ka
CAROLINE TULLY
8 Pamela Colman Smith, symbolism and spiritual synaesthesia
DENNIS DENISOFF
9 Anxieties of mystic influence: Dion Fortune’s The Winged Bull and
Aleister Crowley
ANDREW RADFORD
Art, fiction and occult intermediation
10 Naturalists in Ghost Land: Victorian occultism and science fiction
AREN ROUKEMA
11 Painting the masters in Britain: From Schmiechen to Scott
MASSIMO INTROVIGNE
12 “Beating on your heart”: Occultism and neo-romanticism in the fiction
of David Lindsay
STEVEN J. SUTCLIFFE
Bibliography
Index