Occult Chemistry, Instrumentation, and the Theosophical Science of Direct Perception

Occult Chemistry, Instrumentation, and the Theosophical Science of Direct Perception 

One theme in this cacophony emerged from Theosophists who attempted to propound an occult chemistry. (More about Theosophy below.) Such a science was an effort, much like that of the Alchemical Society, to seek a material science that could bridge the apparent divide between mechanistic science and spirituality. Occult 

As the new atomic science, through ever more sophisticated detectors, opened a realm that could not be directly perceived by the physical senses, occult chemistry offered an alternative, a mode of scientific experimentation that could attempt to claim legitimacy through its scientific writing, charts, and visual illustrations of data while it also connected the human psyche to the subatomic world through a direct form of perception—that is, clairvoyance. (Theosophists argued that clairvoyance was indeed a sense faculty.) The conception of alchemy that supported such a vision was the spiritual alchemy we 

In the early years of Theosophy during Blavatsky s lifetime, the modem science that most occupied the movement was, without doubt, the theory of evolution rather than Victorian discoveries in physics and chemistry.4 While Blavatksy in Isis Unveiled and Secret Doctrine grappled in a limited way with modem physics and chemistry, she engaged much more fully with the work of alchemists, especially that of Paracelsus. Her defense of alchemical transmutation was based not upon contemporary science—though she asked of transmutation, Is the idea so absurd as to be totally unworthy of consideration in this age of chemical discovery (Isis 1 503)—but rather upon the exalted reputation of medieval and early modem scientists and alchemists who claimed to have witnessed transmutation (1 503-504). Moreover, the major events that launched modem particle physics—the discoveries of X-rays, the electron, radiation, radium, and radioactive decay—all occurred after Blavatsky died in 1891. 

If Blavatsky meant to make Theosophy a science whose ultimate goal was spiritual wisdom, her methods of scientific engagement were beginning to show their limitations within a few years after her death. Her oracular style in 

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