Before one can enter intelligently into an understanding of Cosmic Symbolism, which underlies all occult science, it is necessary that he should have some well-defined conception of the meaning and purpose of Occultism. Otherwise he will occupy the position of one who moves in the dark, a slave to formularies and dogmas, following blindly where others lead and without any definite idea as to his destination. Misconceptions regarding Occultism are very prevalent and are found to affect the thought of many who in their own walks are exceedingly learned. Occultism is a broad and comprehensive system of thought; a synthetic philosophy aiming at self-realization, and as much concerned in the practical development of the psychical and spiritual powers latent in man as in the study of those wider cosmical laws which hitherto have escaped scientific observation, but which are found to afford a ready explanation of man’s embodied existence, and the wide and varied range of his faculties, aptitudes and individual characteristics. If Occultism were merely a speculative system of thought regarding the hidden things of Nature, it could never find practical demonstration. If the occult were merely the “hidden,” then Röntgen rays, wireless telegraphy and metabolism would have been facts of Occultism at quite a recent date. In the first case it is confidently affirmed that Occultism, so far from being speculative, is capable of instant demonstration; and in the second case it anticipated the discoveries of Science by analogous psychical processes involved in the exercise of clairvoyance, psychometry, telepathy and hypnotism. Occultism is not indeed mainly concerned in the domain of physics, but rather in those immaterial forces which are at the back of all material forms, of those universal laws which find their reflection in the constitution and development of man and the cosmos to which he is immediately related.