The investigator who seeks to develop exact and careful conception of realities in a realm as temperamental as the occult faces from the beginning unsuspected difficulties. Every defining term as well as every accepted teaching and doctrine is variously interpreted by the different groups of students. Here is a field in which the most sincere teachers are swept into narrow prejudice by the sheer fire of their enthusiasm and so seem universally to emphasize their differences one from the other when they could as well build upon a meeting ground of common understanding.

Occultism, occult science, and occult philosophy in modern usage loosely refer to all forms of mysticism or magic and to all esoteric or theosophical philosophy and research. With metaphysics which is used in an equally broad but less particular sense, they are the general terms for the field. Theosophy is seldom employed except when capitalized in reference to a particular group of societies.

This lack of generally accepted authority demands in critical analysis a preliminary examination and outline of premises. What is occult philosophy? Is it a science? Philosophy itself is not faith nor dogma but rather search and aspiration for wisdom and knowledge. Science rests upon the accumulation and verification of facts, and this is a process which induces wisdom and creates knowledge. Philosophy may properly be considered a department of science. Yet, the term "occult science" sometimes applied to modern metaphysics is hardly proper in the present state of superphysical teaching under claim of authority and revelation especially when belief in the revelation as well as acceptance of the authority must be yielded by the investigator without that intellectual reservation which marks the scientist.