Rational/irrational
Webb’s book, which I am going through, raises some important issues, and the beginning part on the ‘flight from reason’ is crucial, and yet we already see that occult issues are not intrinsically irrational. It is just that man as he is is a total fool on these questions, almost impotent, and beyond the capacity learn.
In any case, the irrationality of the occult does not gainsay its existence, as we have seen here.
We have to read between the lines to suspect some hidden success stories (Gurdjieff for one drops some hints) and in general the reality of an occult background to religions like Christianity, et al.
The ‘struggle of the magicians’ was among other things Gurdjieff’s Christian response to the Blavatskian occult.
In any case, the secular strategy to denounce the occult can backfire: the typical student of scientism and/or the new atheism is a figure deprived of any possibility of real knowledge, programmed (as are Christians) to react violently at any references to the occult.
New Man, New Age, New Socialism 