The Foundations of Re-Enchantment: Freemasonry, Theosophy, and the Occult Revival

In 1875, in a small apartment in New York City, a handful of freemasons and spiritualists met in secret. After hours spent debating advances in science and the spiritual mysteries of the Orient, the assembled guests settled on an idea. What the 19th century needed most, they concluded, was an institution dedicated to exploring the untamed borderlands between scientific and religious thought. Two weeks later, the Theosophical Society was born, inspiring a trans-continental occult revival that fundamentally transformed the religious margins of Western society.

The movement that followed was an explosive mix of creativity, spiritual longing, and pseudo-scientific mischief. Piggybacking on the idealist zeal of the fin de siècle, major occult sodalities grew like ripples: the Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn, a magical order created by Rev. A. F. A Woodford, William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Mathers; the Anthroposophical Society, created by the Austrian clairvoyant, Rudolf Steiner; and the Ordo Templi Orientis, an institution most famous for its association with Aleister Crowley. These were some of the most delightfully bizarre, magnetic, and intellectually pyrotechnic individuals of the 19th century, and their antics, both intellectual and personal, make for some of the most engaging moments in the development of contemporary spirituality.

However, behind all these societies there was another organization: Freemasonry. Seemingly hidden behind the glare of the occult revival, Freemasonry provided many of the variables of fin de siäcle occultism: syncretism, initiation, hidden superiors, and reverence for ancient mystery cults. From Helena Blavatsky to Aleister Crowley, each of the leading occultists stated their supreme debt to the Masons and their mysteries. In The Foundations of Re-Enchantment, Christopher Coome tells an immersive and compelling story of this remarkable emergence of occult organizations at the turn of the 19th century.

Christopher Coome is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University. Since receiving his Ph.D. from Queen’s University, he has designed and taught courses on Freemasonry, Western esotericism, and Mysticism.