Occult Literacy: Reading Esoteric Texts Without Getting Lost

Traditional spiritual texts—scripture, sacred poetry, metaphysical treatises—were written in a language modern readers no longer speak. Not Sanskrit, Arabic, or Greek, though learning these helps immensely, but the language of symbol, correspondence, and multiple simultaneous meanings. The contemporary mind, trained by literalist fundamentalism on one side and materialist skepticism on the other, approaches these texts …