The Occult by Colin Wilson: Faculty X and the History of Magic

By the Thalira Research Team

Last updated: April 2026

What Is The Occult by Colin Wilson?

The Occult: A History, published in 1971 by Random House, is Colin Wilson's attempt to survey the entire history of occult thought and paranormal phenomena in a single volume. At roughly 600 pages, the book covers an extraordinary range of material: primitive magic, ancient Egyptian religion, Greek mysteries, medieval alchemy, Renaissance Hermeticism, mesmerism, spiritualism, Theosophy, ceremonial magic, and the teachings of twentieth-century figures like Gurdjieff, Crowley, and Steiner.

But Wilson is not merely cataloguing curiosities. The book has a thesis, and that thesis is what elevates it above the dozens of occult encyclopedias that preceded it. Wilson argues that all of these phenomena, however diverse they appear, point toward a single truth about human consciousness: we possess a faculty, which he calls Faculty X, that gives us access to dimensions of reality that ordinary awareness excludes. The history of the occult is, in Wilson's reading, the history of humanity's attempts to understand and develop this faculty.

The book arrived at a cultural moment perfectly suited to receive it. In 1971, the counterculture's interest in altered states of consciousness was at its peak. Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan had appeared three years earlier. Interest in Eastern mysticism, psychedelics, and the paranormal was widespread. Wilson, who had been writing about consciousness and human potential since his debut The Outsider in 1956, found a massive audience ready for a serious philosophical treatment of occult phenomena.

Joyce Carol Oates, reviewing the book, called it "one of those rich, strange, perplexing, infinitely surprising works that repay many readings." The Robesonian described it as "vast and extremely well researched." It became an international bestseller and remains in print more than fifty years later, a evidence of the durability of Wilson's philosophical framework rather than to the specific paranormal claims the book discusses.

Faculty X: The Central Thesis

The first half of The Occult is, in effect, an extended philosophical essay introducing what Wilson calls Faculty X. He defines it as "that latent power that human beings possess to reach beyond the present." Faculty X is "the key to all poetic and mystical experience; when it awakens, life suddenly takes on a new, poignant quality."

What does this mean in practical terms? Wilson gives a simple example. Think of a place you know well but have not visited in years, perhaps a childhood home, a holiday destination, or a city you once lived in. Normally, when you think of this place, you get a vague, abstract idea of it: you know it exists, you can recall some details, but the memory feels thin and colourless compared to the original experience.

Now imagine a moment when, unexpectedly, the memory of that place comes flooding back with full vividness. You can smell the air, feel the temperature, see the light exactly as it was. For a moment, the past is as real and present as the room you are sitting in. That sudden rush of vivid, total recall is Faculty X in action.

Marcel Proust described exactly this experience in his famous passage about the madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea. Wilson argues that Proust's involuntary memory and Maslow's peak experiences are both manifestations of the same faculty. The difference is that Proust's experience was passive and involuntary, while Wilson believes Faculty X can be activated deliberately through sustained intentional effort.

This has enormous implications. If Faculty X is real and developable, then the ordinary state of consciousness in which most people spend their lives is not the ceiling but the floor of human awareness. The mystics, poets, and occultists who report expanded states of consciousness are not deluded; they have simply activated a capacity that lies dormant in everyone. The entire history of the occult and esoteric traditions becomes, in this reading, a record of attempts to understand and systematically develop Faculty X.

From The Outsider to The Occult

To understand The Occult, it helps to know where Wilson was coming from. His first book, The Outsider (1956), made him famous overnight at the age of 24. Published by Victor Gollancz, it examined a recurring figure in literature and life: the individual who feels alienated from conventional society because of a heightened sensitivity that ordinary people do not share.

Wilson's "outsiders" included Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, T.E. Lawrence, Van Gogh, Hermann Hesse, William Blake, and various others who could not fit comfortably into the world because they perceived more of reality than the people around them. The outsider's suffering comes not from seeing too little but from seeing too much, and being unable either to express what they see or to make others understand it.

The Outsider was a sensation, but Wilson's subsequent books received increasingly hostile reviews from the literary establishment. Undeterred, Wilson continued developing his philosophical project through a series of works on existentialism, psychology, criminology, and consciousness. By the late 1960s, he had arrived at the conclusion that the occult tradition contained some of the most significant evidence for the expansion of consciousness that his philosophy predicted.

The Occult was the result. It is not a departure from Wilson's philosophical project but its logical extension. The outsiders of literature become the occultists and mystics of history, individuals whose Faculty X operated at a higher level than normal, giving them access to dimensions of reality that ordinary consciousness screens out. Wilson's shift from literature to the paranormal was not a change of subject but a deepening of the same inquiry.

Wilson's New Existentialism

Wilson called his philosophical position "the new existentialism" to distinguish it from the pessimistic existentialism of Sartre and Camus. Where Sartre concluded that "existence precedes essence" and that human life has no inherent meaning, Wilson argued that meaning is real, abundant, and accessible, but requires an effort of consciousness to perceive.

The problem, as Wilson saw it, is that human consciousness operates in a narrow beam, like a torch in a dark room. In ordinary states, this beam illuminates only a small portion of reality: the immediate present, practical concerns, routine tasks. But consciousness can widen its beam. In peak experiences, in moments of intense creativity or love, in mystical states, the beam widens and we suddenly perceive the richness and meaning that were there all along but hidden by our habitual narrowness of attention.

This is not wishful thinking, Wilson argued, but a matter of phenomenological observation. Everyone has had the experience of a grey, meaningless day suddenly becoming vivid and exciting because of some stimulus: good news, a piece of music, an unexpected encounter. The meaning was not added by the stimulus; it was already there but obscured by the narrowness of habitual consciousness. The stimulus simply widened the beam.

Traditional existentialists treated this narrowness as the human condition and meaning as an illusion. Wilson treated it as a bad habit that can be overcome. Faculty X is the name he gave to the capacity that overcomes it. The occult tradition, properly understood, is a collection of techniques and discoveries related to the development of this capacity. This philosophical framework gives The Occult its intellectual seriousness and distinguishes it from the hundreds of supernatural potboilers published in the same era.

A History of Magic: From Shamanism to the Modern Era

Part Two of The Occult, titled "A History of Magic," traces the development of occult thought from its earliest manifestations to the twentieth century. Wilson begins with what he calls "the Ladder of Selves," his model of the evolution of human consciousness from primitive magical thinking through various stages of intellectual and spiritual development.

The earliest stage is shamanism, which Wilson treats not as primitive superstition but as humanity's first systematic attempt to access altered states of consciousness. The shaman's drumming, fasting, dancing, and use of psychoactive plants were techniques for widening the beam of awareness, for activating Faculty X in cultures that had no philosophical framework to describe what they were doing.

From shamanism, Wilson moves through the magical traditions of ancient Egypt and Babylon, the mystery schools of Greece, the Gnostic movements of late antiquity, and the Hermetic revival of the Renaissance. Each period is treated as a chapter in humanity's developing understanding of consciousness and its possibilities. The alchemists were not merely trying to turn lead into gold; they were trying to transform the leaden quality of ordinary consciousness into the gold of expanded awareness.

Wilson gives particular attention to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when mesmerism, spiritualism, and Theosophy brought occult ideas into the mainstream of Western culture. Franz Mesmer's discovery of "animal magnetism" opened the door to hypnosis and, eventually, to Freud's unconscious. The spiritualist movement, whatever the fraudulence of many of its practitioners, raised serious questions about the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the physical body. Blavatsky's Theosophy attempted to create a systematic framework for understanding the full range of human spiritual experience.

Throughout this historical survey, Wilson maintains his central argument: these movements, however flawed, represent genuine attempts to develop and understand Faculty X. The fact that charlatans and self-deceivers were involved does not invalidate the underlying impulse any more than the existence of bad scientists invalidates the scientific method.

Key Figures in Wilson's Occult History

Wilson's gift as a writer is his ability to bring historical figures to life as individuals rather than treating them as abstract representatives of movements. Several portraits in The Occult are particularly memorable.

Paracelsus (1493-1541) appears as a brilliant, quarrelsome, hard-drinking physician who rejected the medical orthodoxy of his day in favour of direct observation and experiment. Wilson sees Paracelsus as an early example of Faculty X in action: his medical intuitions, often startlingly accurate, came from a capacity to perceive the patient's condition directly rather than through the filter of Galenic theory.

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) is presented as one of the most impressive cases in the history of the occult. A distinguished scientist and engineer who turned to visionary mysticism in his mid-fifties, Swedenborg claimed to travel in the spiritual world and converse with angels and departed spirits. Wilson is fascinated by the fact that Swedenborg's psychic powers were demonstrably real in several well-documented cases, including his clairvoyant knowledge of a fire in Stockholm while he was 300 miles away.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) receives an extensive and characteristically balanced treatment. Wilson neither demonizes Crowley nor accepts his self-mythology uncritically. He acknowledges Crowley's genuine magical attainments while noting that Crowley's egotism and self-destructiveness prevented him from developing Faculty X to its full potential. Crowley knew how to access expanded states of consciousness but could not sustain them because he could not overcome his own personality.

Rasputin (1869-1916) is treated as a case study in raw psychic power combined with moral weakness. Wilson argues that Rasputin's healing abilities were genuine (his power to stop the bleeding of the hemophiliac Tsarevich Alexei is well documented) but that his inability to discipline his own appetites ultimately destroyed him.

Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and the Work

Of all the figures in The Occult, Wilson gives the most sustained and sympathetic attention to George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c. 1866-1949) and his student P.D. Ouspensky (1878-1947). This is because Gurdjieff's teachings align most closely with Wilson's own philosophical framework.

Gurdjieff's central teaching is that human beings live in a state of "waking sleep," a mechanical state in which they react to stimuli automatically without genuine awareness. Most of what people call consciousness is actually mechanical response. True consciousness, the state of being genuinely present and aware, occurs only in rare flashes and cannot be sustained without deliberate effort.

Gurdjieff's technique of "self-remembering," the practice of being simultaneously aware of what one is doing and of oneself doing it, is essentially a method for activating Faculty X. When self-remembering succeeds, the world suddenly becomes vivid, meaningful, and alive. Colours become brighter, sounds become richer, the present moment expands to include dimensions of meaning normally excluded by habitual inattention.

Wilson sees Gurdjieff as the most important figure in the modern occult tradition because Gurdjieff understood that the problem of consciousness is not metaphysical but practical. The question is not whether expanded states exist (they obviously do) but how to achieve them reliably and sustainably. Gurdjieff's "Work," his system of self-development through physical exercises, meditation, intentional suffering, and group interaction, is the most systematic attempt Wilson knows to solve this practical problem.

Ouspensky's contribution, in Wilson's reading, was to translate Gurdjieff's sometimes obscure teachings into clear, systematic prose. Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous remains the best single account of Gurdjieff's ideas, and Wilson draws heavily on it in constructing his own philosophical framework.

Peak Experiences and Maslow's Influence

Wilson's concept of Faculty X owes a significant debt to the work of Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist who developed the concepts of self-actualization and peak experiences. Maslow and Wilson corresponded from 1963 until Maslow's death in 1970, and their dialogue shaped both thinkers' understanding of expanded states of consciousness.

Maslow's research on "self-actualizing" individuals led him to identify a class of experiences he called "peak experiences": moments of intense happiness, clarity, and meaning in which the individual feels perfectly aligned with life. These experiences share many characteristics with mystical states: a sense of unity, a perception of meaning in all things, a feeling of transcending the ordinary self.

Maslow was convinced that peak experiences were natural and healthy, not pathological, and that they occurred most frequently in psychologically healthy individuals. This aligned with Wilson's philosophical project. But Maslow believed peak experiences were essentially spontaneous, that they could not be deliberately induced. Wilson disagreed strongly.

Wilson argued that peak experiences are triggered by a specific mental act: a widening of the beam of consciousness that he called "intentionality." The term comes from phenomenology (Husserl), where it refers to the directedness of consciousness toward its objects. Wilson uses it to mean something slightly different: the active, intentional effort to perceive more of reality than habitual consciousness allows.

This disagreement is central to The Occult. If peak experiences can be induced, then the entire occult tradition can be understood as a collection of techniques for inducing them. If they cannot, then the occult tradition is merely a record of random fortunate accidents. Wilson's position, obviously, is the former, and The Occult is his attempt to demonstrate it through historical evidence.

Man's Latent Powers: Psychic Phenomena

Part Three of The Occult, "Man's Latent Powers," turns from history to specific types of paranormal phenomena. Wilson covers mediumship, dowsing, precognition, telepathy, psychokinesis, out-of-body experiences, the realm of spirits, and the question of life after death.

Wilson's treatment of these phenomena is neither credulous nor dismissive. He examines the evidence for each type of phenomenon with philosophical seriousness, acknowledging that fraud and self-deception are common while arguing that the residue of apparently genuine cases is too large to ignore. His approach is closer to William James's pragmatic openness than to either the believer's uncritical acceptance or the sceptic's reflexive dismissal.

The case of Daniel Dunglas Home, the nineteenth-century medium who was never caught in fraud despite decades of investigation, receives extended treatment. Wilson notes that Home's phenomena (levitation, handling of fire without injury, elongation of his body) were witnessed by credible observers under conditions that made fraud extremely difficult. Wilson does not claim that Home's phenomena prove the existence of spirits; he argues that they demonstrate the existence of powers of consciousness that conventional science has not yet explained.

Dowsing receives a particularly interesting treatment because it is one area where the evidence for a genuine paranormal faculty is strongest. Dowsers have been used successfully by mining companies, water utilities, and military organizations. The mechanism by which dowsing works is unknown, but its practical effectiveness has been demonstrated repeatedly. Wilson sees dowsing as a clear example of Faculty X: an ability to perceive information that is beyond the reach of the ordinary senses, operating through a mechanism that science has not yet identified.

Wilson's discussion of precognition raises the most difficult philosophical questions. If genuine foreknowledge of future events occurs (and Wilson argues that the evidence suggests it does), then our ordinary understanding of time as a one-way flow from past to future must be incomplete. Wilson connects this to J.W. Dunne's An Experiment with Time and to the philosophical implications of relativity theory, suggesting that consciousness may not be bound by time in the way that physical objects are.

Critical Reception and Legacy

The Occult divided opinion sharply on publication and continues to do so. Its admirers regard it as one of the most important books of the twentieth century on the subject of consciousness. Its critics regard it as a brilliant writer's descent into credulity.

Joyce Carol Oates's review was enthusiastic, calling the book an "excellent idea" executed with "rich, strange, perplexing" brilliance. She noted that it "repays many readings." The Washington Post described Wilson's treatment of esoteric ideas as marked by "even-handed intellectual studiousness."

Science writer Martin Gardner was perhaps the book's most articulate critic. Gardner saw Wilson as an intelligent writer who was "duped by paranormal claims." He argued that Wilson "bought it all. With unparalleled egotism and scientific ignorance he believed almost everything he read about the paranormal, no matter how outrageous."

Gardner's critique has force, but it also misses Wilson's point. Wilson was not primarily interested in whether specific paranormal events occurred as reported. He was interested in what the entire body of paranormal evidence, taken as a whole, suggests about the possibilities of human consciousness. Even if half the cases Wilson discusses are fraudulent or mistaken, the remaining evidence still points toward capacities of mind that conventional science has not adequately addressed.

The Occult spawned two sequels: Mysteries (1978) and Beyond the Occult (1988), in which Wilson continued to develop his ideas about Faculty X and human consciousness. Together, these three books form a trilogy that represents Wilson's most sustained engagement with the paranormal.

The book's lasting influence has been primarily in the field of consciousness studies and esoteric philosophy rather than in mainstream science. It helped legitimize the serious philosophical study of paranormal phenomena at a time when most academic philosophers regarded the subject as beneath their attention. And it introduced the concept of Faculty X into the vocabulary of consciousness research, where it continues to influence thinkers interested in the upper limits of human awareness.

Reading Wilson Today

Reading The Occult more than fifty years after its publication, several aspects stand out. Wilson's writing is energetic, confident, and endlessly readable. He has the rare gift of making complex philosophical ideas accessible without dumbing them down. His biographical portraits are vivid and memorable. And his central thesis, that human consciousness has untapped potential that can be deliberately developed, remains as provocative and relevant as it was in 1971.

At the same time, Wilson's credulity about specific paranormal claims has not aged well. Some of the cases he treats as strong evidence have since been exposed as fraud or explained by conventional means. His treatment of Crowley, while more balanced than most, still gives Crowley more credit than many scholars of Western esotericism would now allow.

But these are criticisms of detail, not of framework. Wilson's philosophical framework, the idea that consciousness has untapped potential, that peak experiences point toward real possibilities, that the occult tradition represents humanity's attempts to develop these possibilities, remains powerful and suggestive. It connects to contemporary research on meditation, flow states, and the neuroscience of optimal experience in ways that Wilson could not have anticipated.

For readers coming to Wilson for the first time, The Occult is probably the best starting point. It contains the fullest statement of his philosophical position, the most extensive historical survey, and the most compelling case for Faculty X. It is a book that changes how you think about the possibilities of your own mind, and that is, in the end, exactly what Wilson intended.

The Hermetic tradition that Wilson draws on throughout The Occult shares his conviction that consciousness is the key to understanding reality. For a comprehensive introduction to the Western esoteric tradition that Wilson spent his life exploring, the Hermetic Synthesis course provides a structured path through these ideas and practices.

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