By Wouter J. Hanegraaff
Western esotericism has been a pervasive presence in Western tradition from overdue antiquity to the current day, yet till lately it used to be mostly missed via students and surrounded through misconceptions and prejudice. This obtainable consultant presents readers with the elemental wisdom and instruments that would let them locate their method during this bewildering yet attention-grabbing box.
What is it that unites phenomena as various as old gnosticism and hermetism, the "occult sciences" of astrology, alchemy, and magic, rosicrucianism, in addition to Christian theosophy, occultism, spiritualism, and the modern New Age spiritualities? What can the learn of them educate us approximately our universal cultural and highbrow historical past, and what's it that makes them proper to modern issues? How can we distinguish trustworthy old wisdom from legends and fictions approximately esoteric traditions? those and plenty of different questions are replied basically and succinctly, in order that the reader can locate his means into the labyrinth of Western esotericism and out of it again.
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Extra resources for Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides for the Perplexed)
For ladies and Freemasonry, see Jan A. M. Snoek, starting up ladies in Freemasonry (Brill: Leiden/Boston 2012). For an research of the ritual size with regards to other kinds of esotericism, see Henrik Bogdan, Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation (SUNY Press: Albany 2007). For Freemasonry in the United States, see Steven C. Bullock, progressive Brotherhood (University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill & London 1996). Marsha Keith Schuchard’s large Restoring the Temple of imaginative and prescient: Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart tradition (Brill: Leiden/Boston 2002) relies on broad examine yet over-speculative: see the exhange with Andrew Prescott in Aries 4:2 (2004), 171–227. there's an incredible quantity of literature on Freemasonry by means of Freemasons: see specifically the journals Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (accessible throughout the Quatuor Coronati inn No. 2076, www. quatuorcoronati. com) and Renaissance Traditionnelle: Revue d’études maçonniques et symboliques (www. renaissancetraditionnelle. org). Illuminism in this very important subject, just about all the literature is in French (the exception, David Allen Harvey’s past Enlightenment: Occultism and Politics in smooth France [Northern Illinois SOURCES AND assets a hundred seventy five college Press: DeKalb 2005] is sadly spinoff and whole of mistakes and omissions). The crucial and virtually inexhaustible vintage during this area is Auguste Viatte, Les resources occultes du Romantisme, 2 vols (1928; repr. Honoré Champion: Paris 1979). one other ordinary reference is René le Forestier, l. a. FrancMaçonnerie Templière et Occultiste aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, 2 vols. (repr. l. a. desk d’Émeraude: Paris 1987) and los angeles FrancMaçonnerie occultiste au XVIIIe siècle & l’Ordre des Élus Coens (repr. los angeles desk d’Émeraude: Paris 1987). at the imperative character of Willermoz, see the wonderful research by means of Alice Joly, Un mystique Lyonnais et les secrets and techniques de l. a. Franc-Maçonnerie (1938; Télètes: Paris n. d. ). for contemporary scholarship, see the various writings of Antoine Faivre; and for an encyclopaedic review, see Karl R. H. Frick, Die Erleuchteten (Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt: Graz 1973). at the wider context of French Romanticism, see Arthur McCalla, A Romantic Historiosophy (Brill: Leiden/Boston/ Cologne 1998). The modernist occult common works at the relation among esotericism and the Enlightenment, Monika Neugebauer-Wölk has performed pioneering paintings in Germany: see her edited volumes titled Aufklärung und Esoterik (Felix Meiner: Hamburg 1999; Max Niemeyer: Tübingen 2008). this type of study remains to be almost unknown in anglophone scholarship, even with an occasional book resembling The SuperEnlightenment (ed. Dan Edelstein; Voltaire starting place: Oxford 2010), which exhibits a few wisdom of the significance of the subject yet now not adequate familiarity with the correct scholarship in French and German. As for the 19th and early 20th centuries, James Webb’s classics The Occult Underground and The Occult institution (Open court docket: l. a. Salle, IL 1974, 1976) stay very worthy as introductions.