Western Esotericism

This concludes a two-part paper that discusses three major aspects of modern Western esotericism: esotericism as a form of thought, esotericism as gnosis, and esotericism as discourse. Freemasonry is seen as a significant and influential aspect of esoteric traditions in reviews of writings by scholars of modern Western Esotericism.

This study provides a balanced account of the events that led to the separation of the American Section (headed by William Q. Judge) of the Theosophical Society in 1895 from their international Headquarters in Adyar, India (with Henry S. Olcott as President). William Q. Judge was the General Secretary of the American Section and one of the Society's original founders (along with Henry S. Olcott and Helena P. Blavatsky and others).  After the death of Helena P. Blavatsky in 1891, Judge was accused of forging letters from the Masters associated with the Society by Olcott and Annie Besant (who had joined the Society in May 1889).
The Preface to book published September 2016.
This book is available on eBay, or you can email the publisher at [email protected].

Dowsing is a customary means of finding hidden things – especially water and minerals – and is found across northern Europe and the Americas. It recently became the subject of some controversy after a scientist revealed that 10 out of the 12 British water companies stated on Twitter that they used the practice, despite a lack of scientific evidence for its efficacy. In this article, the author analyzes the contours of this controversy in order to identify underlying cultural attitudes towards knowledge and the landscape it reveals. He concludes by sounding two notes of caution regarding the critical posture adopted by scientists who are rushing to condemn this customary practice, stressing the importance of understanding the nature of dowsing as a cultural form regardless of its efficacy and the need for scientists to be mindful of their own biases and preconceptions.

Scopo di queste pagine è fissare alcune premesse generali per una rilettura storica globale della psicosintesi. Per farlo è necessario adottare uno sguardo multifocale, in grado di evocare il contesto immediato e remoto dell’opera di Assagioli. La premessa è che la psicosintesi è spesso oggetto di malintesi e non detti, ascrivibili in buona parte al métissage operato dal pensiero di Assagioli, un pensiero sorretto da molte fonti e irradiante in varie direzioni. Assagioli era, come noto, un poliglotta e un attraversatore di mondi; alcuni di questi territori sono ancora poco mappati, storicamente compresi, e su di essi gravano preconcetti che non consentono di cogliere né l’originalità della psicosintesi, né tutta la portata della sua “funzione storica”. Qui vorrei provare a sondare alcune dimensioni di questa complessità. Per farlo seguirò il filo rosso delle psicotecniche di Assagioli, le cui origini sono (curiosamente) in parte poco note.

Pirofilo, un grande Adepto dei nostri tempi Difficile, se non impossibile, lasciare testimonianza adeguata di Pirofilo. Si potrebbero riempire pagine di parole nel tentativo di farlo. Ma sarebbe comunque riduttivo. Ad intraprendere il lungo viaggio nel solco della Tradizione sono pochi. Di questi pochi, pochissimi riescono ad arrivare fino a trovarsi di fronte all'abisso insondabile. Per giungere sino a quel punto occorre aver compiuto la Grande Opera di trasmutazione, aver separato lo spesso dal sottile, separato ciò che è sparso. Di quei pochissimi che sono arrivati fino a quel punto, solo agli Eletti è dato di attraversarlo, senza più ausili ne strumenti. Giunti dall'altra parte, coloro che raggiungono l'Illuminazione sono sostanzialmente vincolati al Dovere del Silenzio. Il che non gli ha mai impedito di essere sempre pronto e disponibili a seguire benevolmente gli altri ricercatori, gli altri Viandanti e Cavalieri che hanno intrapreso la Via. L'insegnamento maieutico, rigoroso e mai dogmatico, lo ha sempre offerto a chiunque lo chiedesse. Potremmo dilungarci a descrivere le sue rare doti intellettuali, la finezza sofisticata di una mente lucida, vigile, acuta come un laser e al contempo di spaziare a 360 gradi sempre oltre l'orizzonte. Ma resteremmo limitati sul piano profano. L'essere riconosciuto come Adepto Illuminato implica la trascendenza della profanità, ma addentrarsi nelle dimensioni siderali, oltre i vincoli ed il dominio della dualità profana non è possibile con le parole. La dove Pirofilo era di casa solo il Silenzio. Silenzio sempre indicato come obiettivo supremo del cammino. Resta la testimonianza, viva e vitale, di coloro che hanno avuto il privilegio di essergli vicini, che hanno avuto modo di sperimentare direttamente l'essenza pulsante della Luce che emanava. Unico ed irripetibile, di vari ordini di grandezza superiore a tutti i personaggi più o meno noti del nostro tempo. Spesso incompreso, generava sistematicamente un profondo rispetto, altrettanto spesso misto al disagio che scaturiva dalla purezza cristallina delle ispirazioni che mettevano a nudo inconfessabili ipocrisie ed ignavie. Dire che vive potrebbe apparire banale e di circostanza, ma non è così: per molti di noise siamo come siamo, se si è riusciti a progredire nel percorsola comunione con Pirofilo è un fatto indelebile. Per coloro che non hanno avuto la possibilità di conoscerlo, un piccolo frammento da una delle sue Opere, testimonianza ed eredità per il prossimo millennio.

PROLOGUE of this paper is an extreme detail analysis of Chartres Cathedral's the symbolism embedded into the three Rose Windows. The whole purpose of this paper is to illustrate how Ezekiel's Merkabah is symbolized by the North and South Rose Windows. This analysis will demonstrate the pivotal esoteric teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. The history of Chartres will be discussed along with some of its sculpture. This is the second paper in a three part series on the analysis of Ezekiel's Merkabah. Part-One of the series will be on Ezekiel's Merkabah in the first chapter of Genesis and Part Three will be on Ezekiel's Merkabah laid out symbolically in the Sistine Chapel. Part-Two of the series is published first; because, I was well into writing it and; because, I had already written a paper on Ezekiel's Merkabah in the first chapter of Genesis; however, that second version has to be revised to incorporate other interpretations of the texts of the first chapter of Genesis in order for the initiate to envisage the symbolism laid out in Chartres Cathedral and the Sistine Chapel.

More than any other object of historical and anthropological study, Islamicate occult science cuts to the quick of what it means to be modern, to be Western, to be scientific. Yet nowhere else are 19th-century colonialist metaphysics and materialist cosmology more firmly entrenched. The piecemeal, truncated study of “Magic in Islam” to date has thus of-ten been pursued in service of either scientistic or religionist agendas, whereby magic can only ever be failed science or apolitical religion, and Islam can never be the West; Islamic Magic as simply Western and often imperial Science-and-Religion is thereby utterly disappeared from historiographical purview. And even those Islamicist historians of science and historians of religion who eschew ideology in favor of rigorously empirical philology, the majority, have tended to favor outsider, polemical discourses over insider, practitioner ones, and “classical” sources over “postclassical,” resulting in bizarre historiographical distortions and the disenchanting sanitization of Islamicate societies past and present. This manifesto therefore proposes a way out of this dire epistemological and ethical bind. To re-store Islamic Magic to its rightful place in Western intellectual and cultural history, especially history of science, we must take far more seriously the panpsychist cosmology on which it is predicated, and realize that our own reflexive materialism commits us willynilly to a colonialist agenda that is, ironically, both antireligious and antiscientific.

The 2nd Global African Indigenous and Derived Religions Conference provided a platform for scholars of African Indigenous Religions and African-derived religions to critically appraise the status, nature and role of global African Indigenous and Derived Religions, bringing together academics, practitioners and 'activists' in civil society, from Africa and the Afro-American diaspora with special emphasis on Brazil, as one of the major countries of African culture. This aimed to provide a forum for trans-Atlantic exchange, also in the southern hemisphere, which is very neccesary. The conference encouraged research and explored avenues for the documentation and preservation of African indigenous and derived religions, both as a matter of intrinsic value as with regard to their lasting influence on Christianity, Islam and on Esotericism in the 'West'. The special importance of the study of Africa Indigenous Religion - in the forms it has developed in Africa and in the Americas - for the affirmation and further development of African and Afro-Descendant identities, in terms of politics of identity in many fields has been recognized.

The paper is an attempt to answer a question about what might have prompted Mircea Eliade, who never considered himself an expert on shamanism and tribal peoples, to write his classic Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. It is suggested that for Eliade with his mindset, which was heavily affected by the philosophy of traditionalism, it was a logical step to enter the field of shamanism studies. An intellectual and cultural movement in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s with numerous links to esotericism, traditionalism fostered quests for "archaic" roots and an authentic primal tradition. The paper also discusses how humanities and social science scholars responded to his book and how Eliade's vision of shamanism as a cross-cultural primal religion inspired numerous spiritual seekers in the West in the 1960s and the 1970s.

Переводчик с фр. / translator from fr.

Ленен Л. Божественная каббала. — СПб.: Издательство «Академия исследования культуры», 2019. — 288 с. — (Серия Code Grimoire). ISBN 978-5-94396-218-9

«Божественная каббала» — это неизвестная до недавнего времени работа французского оккультного автора Лазара Ленена. По сути, она является продолжением и дополнением его книги «Каббалистическая наука», которая была высоко оценена как оккультными авторами прошлого, так и настоящего времени. В книге описаны семьдесят два ангела Великого Имени Бога, Шемхамфораш, вместе с методами их призывания для получения ответов на вопросы, личными ангельскими печатями и молитвами.
В книге представлен критический текст этой работы, выполненный на основании двух английских и одной французской рукописей, копии оригинальных страниц самого красивого из этих манускриптов, различные сравнительные и критические таблицы, комментарии. На русском языке издается впервые.

An in-depth scholarly analysis of the June 24, 1734, "Dissertation upon Masonry," the oldest surviving American Masonic speech, and the third oldest in the world. Critical commentary includes intertextual relationships and an analysis of the types of esotericism mentioned in the document.

ТОЛЬКО ОЗНАКОМИТЕЛЬНЫЙ ФРАГМЕНТ, электронная версия не распространяется.

Роджер Бэкон: алхимия, астрология, магия и медицина (сборник) / М. М. Пэттисон Мьюр, Г. С. Редгроув, Л. Торндайк, Э. Т. Уитингтон, Г. У. Л. Хайм / Пер. с англ. и лат., коммент. Ю. Ф. Родиченкова ; предисл. Б. К. Двинянинова, Ю. Ф. Родиченкова ; послесл. С. А. Панина ; под общ. ред. Б. К. Двинянинова. — СПб.: Издательство «Академия исследований культуры», 2021. — 240 с.: ил. — (Серия Librarium Aureum. Opus Minus). ISBN 978–5-94396–224–0 Уменьшенный формат, тв. обложка, тираж 300 экз.

Роджер Бэкон (ок. 1214 — ок. 1292) — английский философ и естествоиспытатель, монах-францисканец, профессор богословия, автор трактатов по алхимии. В сборник включены ранее не переводившиеся на русский язык работы известных и мало известных авторов конца XIX века начала XX века о Роджере Бэконе. В начале небольшая книга Герберта Стенли Редгроува «Роджер Бэкон. Отец экспериментальной науки и средневекового оккультизма» дает представление об экспериментах и эзотерическом наследии философа. Статья М. М. Пэттисона Мьюра «Роджер Бэкон: его отношение к алхимии и химии» более подробно раскрывает алхимический аспект его творчества. Далее следуют две одноименные, но различные в подходах работы — «Роджер Бэкон и порох», посвященные экспериментам с порохом, подполковника Г. У. Л Хайма и религиоведа Линна Торндайка. В заключение в статье «Роджер Бэкон и медицина» Э. Т. Уитингтон. раскрывает исторические особенности медицины XIII века и подробно останавливается на медицинских трактатах Р. Бэкона. Перевод снабжен предисловием и послесловием. Книга будет интересна широкому кругу читателей, а также культурологам, историкам философии, историкам науки, в частности химии и медицины, эзотериологам и всем интересующимся западной эзотерической традицией и корнями формирования экспериментальной науки.

Содержание

Б. К. Двинянинов, Ю. Ф. Родиченков.
Вместо предисловия переводчика ...................................... 5
Роджер Бэкон о секретах алхимии и магии ............................... 9
Роджер Бэкон и «Зеркало алхимии» .......................................... 13
Пророчества Роджера Бэкона о перспективах науки.................. 17

Г. С. Редгроув. Роджер Бэкон. Отец экспериментальной
науки и средневекового оккультизма.................................. 21
Заметка о портрете Роджера Бэкона ................................... 23
Глава I. Формирование взглядов Роджера Бэкона ............. 25
Глава II. Плоды обучения Роджера Бэкона......................... 37
Глава III. Астрология ........................................................... 49
Глава IV. Алхимия............................................................... 57
Глава V. Медицина............................................................... 67
Глава VI. Магия и открытие пороха.................................... 75

М. М. Пэттисон Мьюр. Роджер Бэкон: его отношение
к алхимии и химии............................................................... 85

Г. У. Л. Хайм. Роджер Бэкон и порох ....................................... 139
Cap. IX. De modo faciendi ovum philosophorum ................ 148
Cap. X. De codem, sed alio modo......................................... 152
Cap. XI. De eodem, tamen alio modo................................... 158

Л. Торндайк. Роджер Бэкон и порох ........................................ 167

Э. Т. Уитингтон. Роджер Бэкон и медицина............................ 175
Медицина тринадцатого века .............................................. 177
Медицинские трактаты Роджера Бэкона............................. 196

С. А. Панин. Роджер Бэкон и его историческое значение ....... 217

Библиография .............................................................................. 231

Contained within the twenty-two picture cards of the Visconti-Sforza Tarot is a sacred open secret. 2 The Major Arcana is a visual representation of an ancient mnemonic system the formation of which is the central operation of the seminal Kabbalistic text the Sefer Yetzirah.
The paper was presented at the 22nd Annual Conference of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies on Saturday, February 6th, 2016.

For the past forty years shamanism has drawn increasing attention among the general public and academics. There is an enormous literature on shamanism, but no one has tried to understand why and how Western intellectual and popular culture became so fascinated with the topic. Behind fictional and non-fictional works on shamanism, Andrei A. Znamenski uncovers an exciting story that mirrors changing Western attitudes toward the primitive. The Beauty of the Primitive explores how shamanism, an obscure word introduced by the eighteenth-century German explorers of Siberia, entered Western humanities and social sciences, and has now become a powerful idiom used by nature and pagan communities to situate their spiritual quests and anti-modernity sentiments. The major characters of The Beauty of the Primitive are past and present Western scholars, writers, explorers, and spiritual seekers with a variety of views on shamanism. Moving from Enlightenment and Romantic writers and Russian exile ethnographers to the anthropology of Franz Boas to Mircea Eliade and Carlos Castaneda, Znamenski details how the shamanism idiom was gradually transplanted from Siberia to the Native American scene and beyond. He also looks into the circumstances that prompted scholars and writers at first to marginalize shamanism as a mental disorder and then to recast it as high spiritual wisdom in the 1960s and the 1970s. Linking the growing interest in shamanism to the rise of anti-modernism in Western culture and intellectual life, Znamenski examines the role that anthropology, psychology, environmentalism, and Native Americana have played in the emergence of neo-shamanism. He discusses the sources that inspire Western neo-shamans and seeks to explain why lately many of these spiritual seekers have increasingly moved away from non-Western tradition to European folklore. A work of intellectual discovery, The Beauty of the Primitive shows how scholars, writers, and spiritual seekers shape their writings and experiences to suit contemporary cultural, ideological, and spiritual needs. With its interdisciplinary approach and engaging style, it promises to be the definitive account of this neglected strand of intellectual history.

תיקון שבתי צבי / יונתן מאיר. ההרצאה מבקשת להציג תמונה מורכבת ביחס לשבתי צבי, מכתיבתו הקבלית של נתן העזתי על המשיח הנפוּל, דרך ניסיונות תיקון נשמתו בידי הבעש"ט, ועד לשילובו בנרטיב הלאומי בידי זלמן שז"ר וחוקרים שבאו אחריו. יהא זה ניסיון למשוך קו במחשבה ובהיסטוריוגרפיה היהודית העומד מנגד לתפיסת הצרה בדבר "משיח שקר"

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a 19th century English society engaged in the creation of a systematic form of western esotericism. Its founders created a synthesis of previous strands of esotericism and spiritual thought that had existed in Europe. One aspect of this synthesis was the creation of a new vision of the soul. This soul went beyond a simple mixing of elements from earlier traditions and provided an integral portion of the spiritual vision that gave an overall purpose to the spiritual practices of the Golden Dawn. A discussion of the nature and structure of this soul, its key influences, and unique aspects gives clarity to some of the spiritual goals and vision of the Golden Dawn as a system of spiritual practice. This demonstrates a system of thought unique to the end of the nineteenth century that places it with other spiritual traditions of the world.

A Great Age, a Manvantara or world period covers 432,000,000 solar years. During a Great Age, there are seven root-races. Each root–race has seven sub-races. Each sub-race is composed of innumerable tribes and offshoots.

By Francois Boulanger

The pseudo-Aristotelian Hermetica (hereafter PsAH) are a group of texts surviving in Arabic that claim to record conversations between Aristotle and Alexander the Great. In these conversations, Aristotle instructs Alexander about the cosmos, the comingto-be of everything in it, and astral magic-more precisely, talismanry, rituals for attracting the spiritual and planetary forces of the cosmos, the creation of amulets, and extensive astrological rules. The purpose of the instruction is to support Alexander's military career and personal life. Aristotle claims to have received this knowledge from Hermes Trismegistus. There are very few studies dedicated to these fascinating and influential texts; therefore, this article offers a preliminary study of the PsAH that introduces the texts and their contexts systematically.

Despite the centrality of the concept of God in Christian theology and Western philosophy for over two millennia, little attention has been given the concept of God in twentieth-century occultism in general, and in the writings of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) in particular.

In the Information Age, keeping secrets has become increasingly problematic, as both elected officiates and clandestine groups the world over, demonstrate on an almost daily basis. Yet mystery schools, secret societies and occult practices lose none of their popularity; indeed, arguably occulture has enjoyed somewhat of a revival. As the line between private and public life continues to blur, how do such groups, which have long held concealment at the very heart of both their identity and functionality, navigate the sharing culture of the World Wide Web? Within the discourse of Western Esoteric Studies, we frequently find that members of the occult community are oath-bound, even on pain of death and destruction, not to reveal that which Google will instantly share. This chapter will pay particular attention to the rise of the esoteric group Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn (OSOGD), founded in 2002 by Sam Webster, and to Thelema, the philosophy/religion of renowned twentieth century occultist Aleister Crowley. His particular blend of 'Scientific Illuminism' provided Webster with a perfect philosophical underpinning, along with principles from within the open-source software movement, to inform the manifesto of the OSOGD, an online and new Aeonic approach to the old esoteric traditions. Has the time come for the 'occult' to become the 'open' and might the revealing of all secrets be a method of maintaining the mysteries?

A discussion of how G.R.S. Mead shaped 20th-century Anglophone discourse about Gnosticism decades prior to the Nag Hammadi discovery, through his interpretation of the Askew and Bruce Codices, and his popularization of the work of Berlin Coptologist Carl Schmidt. Thanks in part to Mead, the reception-history of the Askew and Bruce Codices goes straight through histories of esotericism, occultism, and magic in the twentieth century.

A few years before the beginning of the Second World War, the rapprochement between socialism and western esotericism  would  be  outlined  in  France.  This  effort,  produced around the Collège de Sociologie as a reaction to Fascism, aimed to reactivate ideas and efforts that can be traced back to the French Revolution. The resulting meta-narrative,  constructed  by  various  intellectuals  around  Georges  Bataille,  including  Walter  Benjamin  and Pierre Klossowski, sought to establish its origins in Valentianism and, later, in Roman theology. The aim was to create an intellectual alternative to Marxism through the  ideas  of  Fourier,  Blanqui,  Sade,  and  Nietzsche  inventing  a  construct  that  would  decisively  influence Post-structuralism in the 1960s.KEYWORDSPALAVRAS-CHAVEMarxismo; História da historiografia; Walter BenjaminMarxism; History of Historiography; Walter BenjaminRenato Amado Peixotohttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-2342-4215

Short chapter contribution to exhibition catalogue for  *California Dreams: San Francisco, ein Porträt",  the first exhibition of its kind in Europe about the eponymous city, debuting at the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, 12 September 2019--12 January 2020.

Theurgy of the Word: On the Early Avant-garde Manifesto and Notions of Magic in Russian Futurism and Symbolism

The publication of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s founding manifesto of Italian Futurism in 1909 marked the beginning of an extensive publication of such texts all over Europe, as poets and artists responded to the new genre in different ways. The programmatic writings of the Russian avant-garde present one of the most interesting examples of the critical response to Marinetti’s activities. This accounts not least for the writings of the Cubo-Futurists, who emphasized that the regeneration of modern culture needed to have its origin in the autonomous sphere of the aesthetic. The movement’s writings are symptomatic of the transformation of the manifesto into an autonomous and artistic linguistic medium, meant to generate a profound spiritual revolution, in the project of the historical avant-garde. The texts are furthermore a clear example of the continuity in the process leading from Symbolism to the European avant-garde, as can clearly be seen from the important role that modern occultism and not least the notion of theurgy played in the new aesthetics.

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Af goðkynngi orðsins. Um yfirlýsingar evrópsku framúrstefnunnar og galdratrú í rússneskum fútúrisma og symbólisma

Útgáfa stofnunaryfirlýsingar ítalska fútúrismans eftir Filippo Tommaso Marinetti árið 1909 hratt af stað bylgju slíkra texta víðsvegar um Evrópu, þar sem skáld og listamenn brugðust við hinni nýju bókmenntagrein með ólíkum hætti. Yfirlýsingar rússnesku framúrstefnunnar eru eitt forvitnilegasta dæmið um gagnrýnin viðbrögð við skrifum Marinettis og á það ekki síst við um skrif kúbó-fútúristanna, sem lögðu áherslu á að endurnýjun menningarinnar þyrfti að eiga uppruna sinn í sjálfstæðu rými skáldskaparins. Textar hreyfingarinnar eru lýsandi dæmi um hvernig yfirlýsingin verður að sjálfstæðum og listrænum textamiðli í starfsemi sögulegu framúrstefnunnar, sem ætlað er að knýja fram andlega byltingu. Textarnir eru jafnframt skýrt dæmi um samfelluna sem greina má í færslunni frá symbólisma til framúrstefnu í evrópskri menningu, eins og glögglega kemur í ljós þegar sjónum er beint að hlutverki nútímadulspeki og einkum hugmyndarinnar um goðkynngi í hinni nýju fagurfræði.

Robert Falcon Scott was a unique and interesting individual who, as a Royal Navy officer and Antarctic explorer, died attempting to be the first man to reach the South Pole. A great deal of information has been written about Scott, his life and expeditions, some of it quite controversial. This essay will give an outline of his life, career and untimely death, including, an attempt to outline some of the subjective reasons for his intense, rather complex characteristics and psychological make-up. Early Life Robert Falcon Scott was born June 6 1868 in Plymouth, England. He was the 3 rd child and elder son of six children born to John Edward and Hannah Scott. (His parents and family called him 'Con'). His father was a brewer, Churchwarden and magistrate. Although he displayed occasional quick outbursts of temper, John was apparently an easy-going father with plenty of patience. His quick temper was a personality trait that Scott inherited. One of John Scott's brothers was a naval surgeon. Robert Falcon Scott's mother was the daughter of William Cumming of Plymouth, a Lloyd's Surveyor, Commissioner of Pilotage, Commissioner for the Catwater Improvement, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Suffice it to say, this family was highly respected, conservative and quite well-to-do. With naval and military traditions on both sides of the family, at the age of 12 Scott was sent to the naval cadet College, HMS Britannia. He was a shy, delicate boy. His time there was unpleasant, being repeatedly beaten on a regular basis and often finishing near the bottom of his class.

A partir de trois concepts clefs ("secret", "occulte" et "merveille") envisagés sur une période définie (la Renaissance) le premier numéro d'Arcana Naturae (en cours d'impression) a permis d'établir la fécondité d'un champ de recherche, celui des sciences secrètes, et d'ouvrir sur elles divers points de vue. * Ce second numéro cherchera à approfondir certaines de ces pistes, en recentrant la focale sur un domaine plus précis : l'illusionnisme, ou autrement dit, la magie artificielle ou simulée. Inscrit dans l'immémoriale tradition des secrets, cet art de la fabrication de merveilles oscille entre deux pôles : la magie naturelle et la physique amusante, entre expérience magique et récréation ludique. L'illusionnisme met en jeu des connaissances expérimentales, de même que psychologiques ou encore techniques. C'est un savoir de l'esprit, du regard et de la main. A la Renaissance, par exemple, il intéresse tout autant le bateleur forain que le savant, le courtisan ou encore le théologien. Considéré depuis le XX e siècle, à tort, comme un divertissement puéril, le monde académique l'a généralement ignoré. Cependant, l'apparition du terme illusiographie, il y a quelques années, a permis d'attirer l'attention sur la légitimité épistémologique de cet objet singulier. Comme le montre le renouveau des études sur l'illusionnisme, cette discipline cristallise des enjeux épistémologiques forts, à la croisée-entre autres-de la sociologie, de l'ethnographie, de l'histoire des sciences et techniques, de l'art ou des spectacles. Mais ces études pionnières en appellent bien d'autres : le champ illusiographique reste encore à cartographier. Ainsi, Arcana Naturae souhaite contribuer à cette structuration en lui ouvrant un espace potentiel. Selon les termes de la profession de foi de la revue : Arcana Naturae « traite de l'ensemble des disciplines dites "secrètes", à savoir la magie, l'astrologie, l'alchimie, l'illusionnisme, la divination, etc., en explorant leur dimension conceptuelle et technique ainsi que leurs relations avec les débats religieux, philosophiques et scientifiques qui leur sont contemporains. La Revue a pour ambition d'aider à structurer une approche scientifique rigoureuse de ce savoir des marges. Elle cherche à frayer des voies nouvelles dans ce continent noir où se reflète la culture et la pensée de chaque époque. » Les articles chercheront à faire le point sur l'illusionnisme, envisagé dans ses différents aspects. Pour ce numéro thématique, Arcana Naturae n'impose pas de cadre géo-historique : les contributions pourront porter sur l'Antiquité, le Moyen-Âge, la Renaissance, l'Époque moderne et le XIX e siècle. L'"Occident" constituera par défaut le cadre des réflexions, mais des travaux pionniers concernant d'autres espaces géographiques (monde arabe, Asie, etc.) seraient plus que bienvenus. S'il est conseillé aux auteurs de s'appuyer sur un travail d'analyse historique critique et rigoureuse, mobilisant des exemples précis, ils devront également inscrire leur réflexion dans un cadre plus vaste qui cherchera à rendre sensible l'esprit de l'illusionnisme durant chacune de ces époques. A travers cet ensemble d'études, l'enjeu pour Arcana Naturae est de rendre sensible au lecteur "profane" les multiples enjeux et échos de cet art. En un mot : au-delà du simple divertissement, qu'est-ce qui se joue réellement dans l'illusionnisme ?