Related Research Articles
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consider it a religious movement, its adherents typically see it as spiritual or as unifying Mind-Body-Spirit, and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Scholars often call it the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest it is better seen as a milieu or zeitgeist.
The occult is a category of esoteric or supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of organized religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving a 'hidden' or 'secret' agency, such as magic and mysticism. It can also refer to paranormal ideas such as extra-sensory perception and parapsychology.
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
Christian theosophy, also known as Boehmian theosophy and theosophy, refers to a range of positions within Christianity that focus on the attainment of direct, unmediated knowledge of the nature of divinity and the origin and purpose of the universe. They have been characterized as mystical philosophies. Theosophy is considered part of Western esotericism, which believes that hidden knowledge or wisdom from the ancient past offers a path to illumination and salvation.
Hermes Trismegistus is a legendary Hellenistic period figure that originated as a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. He is the purported author of the Hermetica, a widely diverse series of ancient and medieval pseudepigraphica that lay the basis of various philosophical systems known as Hermeticism.
Friedrich Christoph Oetinger was a German Lutheran theologian and theosopher.
Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to classify a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas and currents are united since they are largely distinct both from orthodox Judeo-Christian religion and Age of Enlightenment rationalism. It has influenced various forms of Western philosophy, mysticism, religion, pseudoscience, art, literature, and music.
Evocation is the act of evoking, calling upon, or summoning a spirit, demon, deity or other supernatural agents, in the Western mystery tradition. Conjuration also refers to a summoning, often by the use of a magical spell. The conjuration of the ghosts or spirits of the dead for the purpose of divination is called necromancy. Comparable practices exist in many religions and magical traditions and may employ the use of mind-altering substances with and without uttered word formulas.
James Charles Napier Webb was a Scottish historian and biographer. He was born in Edinburgh, and was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He is remembered primarily for his books The Harmonious Circle, The Occult Underground, and The Occult Establishment.
Wouter Jacobus Hanegraaff is professor of the History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He served as the first president of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) from 2005 to 2013.
Antoine Faivre was a French scholar of Western esotericism. He played a major role in the founding of the discipline as a scholarly field of study, and he was the first-ever person to be appointed to an academic chair in the discipline. Together with Roland Edighoffer he founded the predecessor to the journal Aries in 1983, which in 2001 was relaunched with Wouter Hanegraaff as its editor.
Olav Hammer is a Swedish professor emeritus at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense working in the field of history of religion.
Western Esotericism is an academic discipline of research, scholarship, and education that focuses on the history of Western esotericism.
The European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) is Europe's only scholarly society for the study of Western esotericism. Founded in 2002, the society promotes academic study of Western esotericism in its various manifestations from late antiquity to the present, and works to secure the future development of the field.
Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering the academic and historical study of Western esotericism. It is published by Brill Academic Publishers on behalf of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. From 2001 to 2010, the editor-in-chief was Wouter Hanegraaff. The current editor-in-chief is Egil Asprem. Two issues are published annually; in recent years the first one is a special issue, devoted to a specific theme proposed by a guest editor.
Arthur Versluis is a professor and Department Chair of Religious Studies in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University.
Theosophy is a religious and philosophical system established in the United States in the late 19th century. Founded primarily by Russian mystic and spiritualist Helena Blavatsky, and based largely on her writings, it draws heavily from both older European philosophies such as Gnosticism and Neoplatonism and Indian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Although many adherents maintain that Theosophy is not a religion, it is variably categorized by religious scholars as both a new religious movement and a form occultism from within Western esotericism.
Hans Thomas Hakl is an Austrian publisher, essayist and translator. He has used the signatures H. T. Hakl, H.T.H., or the pseudonym H. T. Hansen.
Modern paganism and New Age are eclectic new religious movements with similar decentralised structures but differences in their views of history, nature, and goals of the practitioner. Modern pagan movements, which often have roots in 18th- and 19th-century cultural movements, seek to revive or be influenced by historical pagan beliefs. New Age teachings emerged in the second half of the 20th century and are characterised by millenarian ideas about spiritual advancement. Since the counterculture of the 1960s, there has been interaction, mutual influence, and often confusion in the popular mind between the movements.
Eastern esotericism is a term used by some scholars that loosely encompasses religious beliefs and practices of the Eastern world said to be "esoteric", secret, or occult. Its demarcation as a field, however, is difficult, as it varies depending on the boundaries of geographical and cultural notions of Western and Eastern and the definition of esotericism, with some scholars arguing it cannot be a concept beyond Western esotericism, while others propose a globalizing perspective. Still, it has been employed by scholars who recognize the category, used to denote comparable secret studies and practices, mainly in traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, and also in other systems, ethnic religions, and syncretisms.
References
Citations
- ↑ rug.nl.
- 1 2 3 erg.su.se.
- ↑ Faivre 2006, pp. 205–214; Granholm 2012, pp. 624–625.
- ↑ Hanegraaff 2012, p. 362.
Sources
- Faivre, Antoine (2006). "Kocku von Stuckrad et la Notion D'Esoterisme". Aries (in French). 6 (2). doi:10.1163/157005906777811961.
- Granholm, Kennet (2012). "Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities. By Kocku von Stuckrad". Numen . 59 (5–6). doi:10.1163/15685276-12341245.
- Stockholm University. "Kocku von Stuckrad: Rejected Theory in the Study of Esotericism". erg.su.se. Retrieved 15 November 2020.
- University of Groningen. "prof. dr. C.K.M. (Kocku) von Stuckrad". rug.nl. Retrieved 15 November 2020.
- Hanegraaff, Wouter (2012). Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521196215.
