The Modernity of Occultism: Reflections on Some Crucial Aspects

University of Amsterdam, Fall, 2014

The course focuses on different aspects of the historical evolution of western esotericism in the modern period, from the eighteenth century up to the present days. The aim is to follow both the internal development, understood from the specific perspective of the field, and the broader cultural context in which western esotericism has taken shape, in order to understand both the inside logics of esotericism and its responses to external social pressure. Every year a different theme is chosen that offers a unique entry point in this historical development. For this year, the subject will be modern western esotericism and politics. Esotericism has been often identified with right-wing or reactionary politics. Authors such as Theodor Adorno and Umberto Eco have argued that there is an essential link between esotericism and political movements of the 20 th century such as nazism and fascism. Esotericism is therefore supposed to be reactionary by nature. Is this idea tenable, or does it call for a more complex picture? Starting in the 1960s authors such as Frances Yates have argued that esoteric ideas may have played a role in the origins and the development of modern science. The connection between freemasonry and Enlightenment ideas in the 18th century, on the other hand, has been emphasized by a number of authors. During the 19 th century, movements such as spiritualism and occultism were more often identified with liberal, progressive, and generally left-wing ideas, than with conservatism. Finally, even in the 20 th century, it is not hard to find movements and authors associating esoteric concepts and practices with political ideas that are at the antipodes of the organicist, totalitarian vision of nazi-fascism. Indeed, as this course shall show, a number of highly influential esoteric movements are linked directly to the anarchist tradition. Finally, we shall investigate a number of esoteric currents that allege to represent a post-political form of politics. The course will focus on these problematic issues, and will try to highlight their complexity through the use of both primary sources and secondary literature.

Hermes Explains: Thirty Questions about Western Esotericism, 2019

Few fields of academic research are surrounded by so many misunderstandings and misconceptions as the study of Western esotericism. For twenty years now, the Centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (University of Amsterdam) has been at the forefront of international scholarship in this domain. This anniversary volume seeks to make the modern study of Western esotericism known beyond specialist circles, while addressing a range of misconceptions, biases, and prejudices that still tend to surround it. Thirty major scholars in the field respond to questions about a wide range of unfamiliar ideas, traditions, practices, problems, and personalities that are central to this area of research. By challenging many taken-for-granted assumptions about religion, science, philosophy, and the arts, this volume demonstrates why the academic study of esotericism leads us to reconsider much that we thought we knew about the story of Western culture.

It has taken a long time for esotericism to be recognized as a valid, legitimate field of scholarly research. Although the perception of the phenomenon from a historical point of view dates back at least to the seventeenth century, for a long time a polarized, biased attitude, split between supporters and detractors, prevailed. There was clearly something about esotericism that made it a difficult subject to handle within an academic context. Theologians often perceived it as a dangerous threat to true, pure religion, while Enlightenment thinkers saw it as a typical form of superstitious behavior that had to be cast away so that the new age of rationality and science could kick in. Some esotericists, especially starting with the nineteenth century, began to develop a certain critical distance that allowed them to be interested in the historical dimension of the tradition they claimed to represent. Their work, however, even when it may have deserved attention, remained limited and, even then, obscure and uncredited in a scholarly context. With the twentieth century interest in subjects that were not part of either mainstream religious traditions or Western rationality began to increase. After the Second World War, this trend was further boosted by movements developing in society at large, such as the counterculture of the 1960s. Alternative forms of religion and spirituality, new religious movements, and nonconformist intellectual traditions attracted scholars more and more and prompted the creation of new institutional academic space for them. In this context, the study of Western esotericism emerged as a distinct scholarly field, especially after the early 1990s. Since then, a large scholarly community has grown that is now organized through various international networks and associations. If the study of esotericism was long impeded by the limitations that Western culture had imposed on itself, its growing institutionalization attests to the depth of the changes that have occurred in Western culture since the early 1990s.

Contemporary Esotericism, edited by Egil Asprem and Kennet Granholm, New York: Routledge, 2013, ix + 448 pp. ISBN 978 1 908049 32 2, US$120.00 (hardback); ISBN 978 1 13 885611 0, US$49.95 (paperback), "Religion", 2015, vol. 45, iss 3. , 2015

2008

Editorial of theme issue of Approaching Religion: The history of modern Western Esotericism. You can find the journal here: journal.fi/ar

After starting with key characteristics and paradigms of magic, heresy and sorcery from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, thematic sessions will focus on representative figures in their historical contexts. They serve as case-studies for specific fields like magic, alchemy, astrology, theosophy and kabbalah or phenom-ena such as secret societies. Examples include Paracelsus and the radical Reformation, Jacob Boehme and the Thirty Years’ War, Simon Forman in Elizabethan London and Athanasius Kircher in Baroque Rome. Through the course of this survey, students will also be introduced to basic concepts and symbols, some of which continue to be used to this day. Each session will usually consist of an introductory lecture, student presentation and class discussion, though short excursions to library collections with relevant holdings on early modern esotericism (e.g. Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica) will also be part of the programme. In this way, students gradually develop their research interests and become familiar with the tools they need to write an academic paper.

Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, 2008

Among spiritual developments that overlap with Spiritualities of Life and are of growing interest is that of esotericism. This article examines the changing relationship between esotericism and Christianity from the nineteenth century. Under the impact of secularisation, this relationship changed from one in which esotericists identified themselves as Christians and made use of Christian symbolism and terminology to one in which many esotericists, influenced by secular modes of thinking and eventually free to express themselves as they saw fit, sought to expound their philosophy and beliefs in 'scientific' language. The historical study of Western esotericism would be greatly enriched by sociological studies; and sociological studies of New Age spirituality, neo-paganism, contemporary magic, New Religious Movements, and so forth, would be greatly enriched by making use of the insights gained in the historical study of Western esotericism.

2021

This volume offers new approaches to some of the biggest persistent challenges in the study of esotericism and beyond. Commonly understood as a particularly “Western” undertaking consisting of religious, philosophical, and ritual traditions that go back to Mediterranean antiquity, this book argues for a global approach that significantly expands the scope of esotericism and highlights its relevance for broader theoretical and methodological debates in the humanities and social sciences. The contributors offer critical interventions on aspects related to colonialism, race, gender and sexuality, economy, and marginality. Equipped with a substantial introduction and conclusion, the book offers textbook-style discussions of the state of research and makes concrete proposals for how esotericism can be rethought through broader engagement with neighboring fields.