Abstract

I. The attraction to the occult is a symptom of the retrogression of consciousness. Consciousness has lost the strength to think the absolute and to bear the conditional. Rather than conceptually determining both in terms of unity and difference, consciousness mixes them indiscriminately. The absolute becomes a fact, the conditional becomes unmediated being [wesenhaft]. Monotheism disintegrates into a second mythology. In a social psychological study in the U.S., a respondent said: “I believe in astrology, because I don't believe in God.” Moral reason [rechtsprechende Vernunft] which had raised itself to the idea of the one God seems to have rushed into His fall.