The Mystical Life of Franz Kafka: Theosophy, Cabala, and the Modern Spiritual Revival

by June Leavitt

In a long-overlooked diary entry, Franz Kafka admitted to suffering from ''bouts of clairvoyance.'' These bouts of clairvoyance can be seen in his writing, in moments when the solid basis of human cognition totters, the dissolution of matter seems imminent, and objects are jarringly severed from physical referents. June O. Leavitt offers a fascinating examination of the mystical in Kafka's life and writings, showing that Kafka's understanding of the occult was not only a product of his own clairvoyant experiences but of the age in which he lived.

Kafka lived during the modern Spiritual Revival, a powerful movement which resisted materialism, rejected the adulation of science and Darwin, and idealized clairvoyant modes of consciousness. Kafka's contemporaries - such theosophical ideologues as Madame H.P. Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and Dr. Rudolph Steiner - encouraged the counterculture to seek the true, spiritual essence of reality by inducing out-of-body experiences and producing visions of higher disembodied beings through meditative techniques. Leaders of the Spiritual Revival also called for the adoption of certain lifestyles, such as vegetarianism, in order to help transform consciousness and return humanity to its divine nature.

Interweaving the occult discourse on clairvoyance, the divine nature of animal life, vegetarianism, the spiritual sources of dreams, and the eternal nature of the soul with Kafka's dream-chronicles, animal narratives, diaries, letters, and stories, Leavitt takes the reader on a journey through the texts of a great psychic writer and the fascinating epoch of the Spiritual Revival.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 18, 2011

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although Leavitt's study is a bit biased on the Jewish Kabbala side, all the same it becomes quite clear that she is on to something of fundamental significance.... something, I might add - that is ever so critical for mankind to once again become acquainted with: the spiritual heavens that surround the earth and mankind's relation to the angels, arch-angels, seraphim and other beings within the hierarchies.

Beginning with the odd "ghost/apparition" that spoke jestingly to Kafka, Leavitt takes us on an exploration of what generally is swept under the rug. Great job!

pl.

[Sam Seshadri · Rating 4 out of 5]

"On Kafka's first day at Jungborn, he proclaimed that nudism expressed "wonderful freedom" despite his choosing to remain in his swimming trunks (Diares 477). By the second day there, he was already nicknamed "the man in his swimming trunks".

"For him, everything was interwoven with cosmis cause and effect, even the most everyday things." (K. Diamant)