In Order to Maintain Itself, It Had to Go “Underground”

We know that with the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century—a development clearly linked to the temperament of the left brain—the esoteric tradition lost much of its prestige and that, in order to maintain itself, it had to go “underground” and become, as it remains today, a kind of “counterculture.

Gary Lachman
The Secret Teachers of the Western World