Vestiges of a Philosophy : Matter, the Meta-Spiritual, and the Forgotten Bergson

Vestiges of a Philosophy: Matter, the Meta-Spiritual, and the Forgotten Bergson covers a fascinating yet little known moment in history. At the turn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson and his sister, Mina Bergson (also known as Moina Mathers), were both living in Paris and working on seemingly very different but nonetheless complementary and even correlated approaches to questions about the nature of matter, spirit, and their interaction. He was a leading professor within the French academy, soon to become the most renowned philosopher in Europe. She was his estranged sister, already celebrated in her own right as a feminist and occultist performing on theatre stages around Paris while also leading one of the most important occult societies of that era, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. One was a respectable if controversial intellectual, the other was a notorious mystic-artist who, together with her husband and fellow-occultist Samuel MacGregor Mathers, have been described as the "neo-pagan power couple" of the Belle Époque. Neither Henri nor Mina left any record of their feelings and attitudes towards the work of the other, but their views on time, mysticism, spirit, and art converge on many fronts, even as they emerged from very different forms of cultural practice. In Vestiges of a Philosophy , John Ó Maoilearca examines this convergence of ideas and uses the Bergsons' strange correlation to tackle contemporary themes in new materialist philosophy, as well as the relationship between mysticism and philosophy. Cover Series Vestiges of a Philosophy Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Prologue: A Reciprocity of Acceleration Strange Memory: An Introduction in Five Parts 1° =​ 10° Zelator Covariant One: Ordinary Mysticism, the Hyperbolic, and the Supernormal Two: Meet the Bergsons 10° =​ 1° Ipsissimus Covariant (Neophyte) Three: Hyper-​Ritual Four: “O My Bergson, You Are a Magician” Five: On Watery Logic, or Magical Thinking 2° =​ 9° Theoricus Covariant Six: Of the Survival of Images Seven: On the Meta-​Spiritual 4° =​ 7° Philosophus Covariant Eight: Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum: “Leave No Trace” 3° =​ 8° Practicus Covariant Nine: Spirit in the Materialist World Ten: Veridical Hallucinations and Circumstantial Evidence Epilogue: The Whole of the Moon Notes Bibliography Index In Vestiges of a Philosophy: Matter, the Meta-Spiritual, and the Forgotten Bergson, John O Maoilearca examines the seemingly very different but nonetheless complementary ideas of philosopher Henri Bergson and his occultist sister, Mina Bergson (aka Moina Mathers), to tackle contemporary themes in current materialist philosophy, memory studies, and the relationship between mysticism and philosophy.