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"Occultists & mystics of all ages" by Ralph Shirley is a collection of biographical essays written in the early 20th century. It examines the lives, legends, and philosophies of notable figures associated with occultism and mysticism, weighing primary sources against later myth and religious polemic to distinguish history from fable. The volume ranges from Apollonius of Tyana and Plotinus to Michael Scot, Paracelsus, Emanuel Swedenborg, Count Cagliostro, and Anna Kingsford. The opening of this volume lists its seven subjects and then launches into extended portraits. First comes Apollonius of Tyana, where the author sifts Philostratus and Damis against Christian polemics (Hierocles versus Eusebius), recounting emblematic episodes—reviving a Roman bride, foreknowing imperial events, and advising emperors—while stressing his Pythagorean asceticism, travels (including India), and teaching on reincarnation. Next, Plotinus is set in the Alexandrian milieu, his life (Ammonius Saccas, Rome,

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The difficulty of treating of such a subject as the life and activities
of the Philosopher of Tyana lies in the fact that the story of
Apollonius’s career has been overlaid with legends of the miraculous on
the one hand, and distorted by religious prejudices on the other; while
the only authoritative account of this great religious reformer is
marred by the glaring deficiencies of the writer for the task which he
had in hand, and his inability to appreciate the life-work of the
subject of his biography. Indeed he fills many pages with literary
padding of the worst kind, while he fails to give us over and over again
the very facts which it is of value and importance for us to know.
Philostratus, the author of this life, was one of the literary coterie
that gathered round the presiding genius of the Empress Julia Domna, the
wife of Septimus Severus and mother of Caracalla. Julia Domna was a
generous patroness of art and literature, and her husband Severus was
devoted to the study of occult science. Gibbon, in his usual sceptical
vein, observes that “he was passionately addicted to the vain studies of
magic and divination, deeply versed in the interpretation of dreams and
omens, and perfectly acquainted with the science of judicial astrology.”
The Empress, who was a daughter of the Priest of the Sun at Emesa in
Syria, was an enthusiastic bibliophile and had collected, among her
other literary treasures, the note-books of Damis, the companion and
fellow traveller of Apollonius. These note-books or tablets contained
the records of his journeys and other details concerning the life of
Apollonius, who was as great a hero to Damis as ever Johnson was to
Boswell. If these notes were as full of detail as Philostratus asserts,
one can only regret that the biographer did not turn t

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