
The above is a diagram of the history of the "occult conspiracy" by
Robert Anton Wilson. The diagram is from his
Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati, p.188; (
Wikipedia page), a condensed and "nonfiction" review of his
Illuminati Trilogy. Ignoring sci fi and New Age references to the Dogon Sirius contact (I read the book and I never believed it), it gives a pretty good generic overview of the development of the Western occult tradition. I remember being very influenced by this diagram (in a similar way that I was influenced by the early Ken Wilber; these "big picture" representations always grab me). A few corrections should however be made. There should be an arrow going from Tantra to the Ordo Templi Orientis, as Karl Kellner (the German industrialist and esotericist who founded the OTO) incorporated Hindu Tantric ideas, and no doubt other themes as well. But on the other hand the connection between Sufism and Gurdjieff is tenuous as best, as Arvan Harvat has shown; see
Gurdjieff and Work, and instead Gurdjieff's sources would be a mix of contemporary occult, Theosophical, Rosicrucian, ideas (I am also intrigued by the parallel with Max Theon's cosmic philosophy; both represent examples of "hylic pluralism" (Poortman) or "cosmic materialism"), along with Buddhism, Tantra. and I would add Samkhya (the original Cosmic Materialism).
For an alternative diagram, but with stronger emphasis on Kabbalah, see Colin Low's
The Big Picture
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