Moreover, there is a considerable literature on the subject to be found in quarters where one would least expect it - in accounts of folk-lore and ethnology, in the State Records of witch-trials, and even under the guise of fiction.
These independent records, by people in no way interested in psychic phenomena, confirm the statements made by those who have experienced occult attacks.
On the other hand, we have to distinguish very carefully between psychic experience and subjective hallucination; we have to be sure that the person who complains of a psychic assault is not hearing the reverberation of his own dissociated complexes.
The differential diagnosis between hysteria, insanity and psychic attack is an exceedingly delicate and difficult operation, for so frequently a case is not clear-cut, more than one element being present; a severe psychic attack causing a mental breakdown, and a mental breakdown laying its victim open to invasion from the Unseen.
All these factors have to be borne in mind when investigating an alleged occult attack, and it shall be my task in these pages not only to indicate the methods of occult defence, but also to show the methods of differential diagnosis.
It is very necessary, with so much occult knowledge about, that people should know an occult attack when they see it.
These things are much more common than is generally realised.
The recent tragedy in Iona gives point to this assertion.
No occultist is under any illusion as to that death being from natural causes.
In my own experience I have known of similar deaths.
In my novel, The Secrets of Dr.
Taverner, there were presented, under the guise of fiction, a number of cases illustrative of the hypotheses of occult science.
Some of these stories were built up to show the operation of the invisible forces; others were drawn from actual cases; and some of these were written down rather than written up in order to render them readable by the general public.
So much first-hand experience, confirmed by independent evidence, should not go unregarded, especially since rational explanations are difficult to find save in terms of the occult hypotheses.
It may be possible to explain away each individual case mentioned in these pages by alleging hallucination, fraud, hysteria, or plain lying, but it is not possible to explain the sum-total of them in this way.
There cannot be so much smoke without some fire.
It is not possible that the prestige of the magician in antiquity and the dread of the witch in the Middle Ages could have arisen without some basis in experience.
The vapourings of the wise woman would be no more heeded than those of the village idiot if no painful consequences had ever been found to follow upon them.
Fear was the motive of these persecutions, and fear founded upon bitter experience; for it was not officialdom which incited the witch-burnings, but whole country-sides that rose up for a lynching.
The universal horror of the witch must have some cause behind it.
The labyrinthine windings of the Left-hand Path are as extensive as they are devious; but while exposing them in something, at any rate, of their horror, I still maintain that the Right-hand Path of initiation and occult knowledge is a way to the loftiest mystical experiences and a means of lifting the burden of human suffering.
Not every student of this knowledge necessarily abuses it; there are many, nay, the great majority, who hold it selflessly in trust for mankind, using it to heal and bless and redeem that which is lost.
It may well be asked, If this knowledge can be so disastrously abused, why should its veil ever be lifted?
What answer is made to this question is a matter of temperament.
Some will maintain that knowledge of whatever kind cannot be without its value.
Other may say we had better let sleeping dogs lie.
The trouble is, however, that sleeping dogs have an unfortunate knack of waking up spontaneously.
The ritual admission of an individual into esoteric knowledge or a sacred order through a formal rite of passage — testing, ordeal, or ceremony — marking a definite before/after threshold in the initiate's status and access. Distinct from hidden_sayings (the doctrine being concealed, not the rite of admission to it) and esoteric_lineage (the historical chain of transmission across generations, not a single individual's admission).
The text explicitly references the 'Right-hand Path of initiation' as a means to mystical experiences and knowledge.
The state of a person being controlled or inhabited by an external spirit or entity — the entity as subject acting through the person's body, rather than merely troubling them from without. Distinct from haunting (a discarnate soul or place-bound presence that interferes without necessarily entering and controlling a living body) and from spirit_conjuration (an operator deliberately commanding a spirit's appearance, the reverse relation — here the spirit is uninvited and in control, not summoned and subordinated).
The text mentions 'invasion from the Unseen' causing mental breakdown, which aligns with the concept of external entities inhabiting or controlling a person.
The doctrine and practice of one person deliberately inflicting harm on another through trained will, mind-power, or occult technique alone, without physical contact — producing exhaustion, illness, breakdown, or death in the victim; recognised cross-culturally as witchcraft, hexing, or the evil eye, and treated in Western esotericism as a genuine occult hazard requiring diagnosis and defence rather than dismissed as superstition. Distinct from magical_will (the general doctrine that trained volition has causal power, of which this is one malevolent application) and from spirit_conjuration (which subordinates an already-existing summoned spirit, rather than directing the operator's own power at a person).
The passage is centrally concerned with validating the reality of psychic assaults, distinguishing them from mental illness, and discussing methods of defence against them.