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As the PhD candidate in question, I would have to agree that it is rambling - but I hope you wait to read my actual dissertation before judging my scholarly output as a whole!

I should also add that I have no connection to the O.T.O. or any similar group (and speaking frankly, I find all such contemporary occult groups to be faintly silly). But I do think their intellectual genealogy is super interesting.

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It's a great subject, which I think is why I was so disappointed in the article. I was looking forward to a few thousand words on the odd modern history of alchemy and its continuing allure, but I really feel you tried to pour a quart into a pint pot here. I would be delighted to read a scholarly dissertation on this or a tangentially related topic.

My dissertation is actually about the origins of the drug trade, but I think you'd be interested in the journalist George Pendle's Parsons biography, Strange Angel, which I think does a great job of teasing out what alchemy meant for 1940s practitioners: http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Angel-Otherworldly-Scientist-W...

I also touch on the topic a bit (albeit from the perspective of the history of medicine) in the Aeon article that I link to further down in the comments, although that's also aimed at more of a popular audience. Another person who you might find interesting is Pamela H. Smith of Columbia University, who's actually recreating an early modern alchemical lab there as we speak.

Thanks, I will look into Pamela Smith's work - I was already familiar with George Parsons, and in fact there was an interesting thread on here about that a few weeks ago.

Your dissertation sounds just as interesting, I'd like to read it when it's done. I'm going to read your Perspecties article on it this evening.