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== Reception ==
== Reception ==
In the Paris of the Second Empire Éliphas Lévi was a well known person. In the beginning a rather casual interest, his pursuit of esoteric matters later earned him a singular knowledge, almost tailor-made for a society that could no longer believe in the solacements from the church, yet neither in those science would offer. Although the political revolutions which had been turning the French society literally upside down for six decades finally found a temporary slowdown under Napoléon III, neither his imperialistic foreign policy nor the pomp of his self-stagings could resolve the deeply rooted feeling of uncertainty. People sensed something had been lost, and albeit only a small minority actually wanted to turn back the clock there was a widespread, diffuse longing - for a modern past, for a "like back then, but today". Esotericism appeared to offer a solution of this dilemma. By applying methods and forms of representation of the natural sciences on conceptions of the supernatural a connection between these two seemingly emerged, and the ''occult sciences'' took shape.