through one lineage, modern occultism inherited its attitude to blending science and religion from pre-Marxist socialism

This is fascinating to me.

One thing that I've been rolling around in my head is the frequency with which contemporary cults invoke a need to reunify science and religion. There is an actual weight to that idea, but I wonder what it is that makes it such an effective selling point--and with a throughline to the early nineteenth century, at that!