Hermes Explains: Thirty Questions about Western Esotericism 9789048542857

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Hermes Explains

Hermes Explains Thirty Questions about Western Esotericism

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam

Edited by Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Peter J. Forshaw and Marco Pasi

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Trismegistus, painting in the choir vault of St. Walburgis church, Zutphen, the Netherlands (ca. 1500). (Photo: Dick Osseman.) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 020 5 e-isbn 978 90 4854 285 7 doi 10.5117/9789463720205 nur 720 © W.J. Hanegraaff, P.J. Forshaw, M. Pasi and each author for their own article / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Introduction: 9 Thirty red pills from Hermes Trismegistus

Aren’t we living in a disenchanted world?

13

Esotericism, that’s for white folks, right?

21

Egil Asprem

Justine M. Bakker

Surely modern art is not occult? It is modern! 29 Tessel M. Bauduin

Is it true that secret societies are trying to control the world?

39

Numbers are meant for counting, right?

47

Henrik Bogdan

Jean-Pierre Brach

Wasn’t Hermes a prophet of Christianity who lived long before Christ? 54 Roelof van den Broek

Weren’t early Christians up against a gnostic religion?

61

There’s not much room for women in esotericism, right?

70

The imagination… You mean fantasy, right?

80

Weren’t medieval monks afraid of demons?

88

What does popular fiction have to do with the occult?

95

Dylan M. Burns

Allison P. Coudert

Antoine Faivre

Claire Fanger

Christine Ferguson

Isn’t alchemy a spiritual tradition?

105

Music? What does that have to do with esotericism?

113

Why all that satanist stuff in heavy metal?

120

Religion can’t be a joke, right?

127

Isn’t esotericism irrational?

137

Rejected knowledge…

145

Peter J. Forshaw

Joscelyn Godwin

Kennet Granholm

J. Christian Greer

Olav Hammer

So you mean that esotericists are the losers of history? Wouter J. Hanegraaff

The kind of stuff Madonna talks about – that’s not real kabbala, is it? 153 Boaz Huss

Shouldn’t evil cults that worship satan be illegal?

161

Is occultism a product of capitalism?

168

Can superhero comics really transmit esoteric knowledge?

177

Are kabbalistic meditations all about ecstasy?

184

Isn’t India the home of spiritual wisdom?

191

Massimo Introvigne

Andreas B. Kilcher

Jeffrey J. Kripal

John MacMurphy

Mriganka Mukhopadhyay

If people believe in magic, isn’t that just because they aren’t educated? 198 Bernd-Christian Otto

But what does esotericism have to do with sex?

207

Is there such a thing as Islamic esotericism?

216

Doesn’t occultism lead straight to fascism?

225

A man who never died, angels falling from the sky…

232

Is there any room for women in Jewish kabbalah?

243

Surely born-again Christianity has nothing to do with occult stuff like alchemy?

252

Marco Pasi

Mark Sedgwick

Julian Strube

What is that Enoch stuff all about? György E. Szönyi

Elliot R. Wolfson

Mike A. Zuber

Bibliography 261 Contributors to this volume

305

Index of Persons

309

Index of Subjects

317

Introduction: Thirty red pills from Hermes Trismegistus Ten years ago the Centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (HHP) of the University of Amsterdam celebrated its first decennial anniversary by publishing a memorial volume. Paying playful homage to the legendary Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, who stands at the origin and symbolic centre of the field of research nowadays known as “Western esotericism,” it was titled Hermes in the Academy.1 Hermes had finally arrived! Never before, at any university worldwide, had there been a teaching program and a research group devoted specifically to the large and enormously complicated field of interrelated historical currents in Western culture known by such terms as hermetism, gnosticism, neoplatonic theurgy, astrology, alchemy, natural magic, kabbalah, rosicrucianism, Christian theosophy, illuminism, occultism, spiritualism, traditionalism, neopaganism, new age, and contemporary occulture.2 Since the beginning of this century, scholars in the humanities have become used to an unprecedented flood of scholarly literature in these domains, and this makes it easy to forget how innovative and controversial it still was for academics to study such topics seriously at the time when HHP was created in 1999. With hindsight it is evident that the Amsterdam Centre came exactly at the right moment. Riding a new wave of scholarship that had been gathering energy since the early 1990s, HHP was able to assume a leading position in establishing new paradigms for the study of Western esotericism in the academy and stimulating its professional development on an international scale. During the twenty years of its existence, new teaching programs have developed at various universities in Europe and the United States; a European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) was established in 2005 and keeps generating new semi-autonomous networks focusing on specific regions and themes;3 alternating with its American counterpart, 1 Hanegraaff and Pijnenburg, Hermes in the Academy (now available as a free download through HHP’s website www.amsterdamhermetica.nl). 2 For these historical currents and an overview of the field as a whole, see Hanegraaff, Western Esotericism. 3 See www.esswe.org. The ESSWE is now linked to semi-independent networks of Central and Eastern European, Israeli, Irish, Italian, and Scandinavian scholars that organise activities of their own; likewise there are thematic ESSWE networks focusing on esotericism in antiquity, contemporary esotericism, Islam and esotericism, and politics and esotericism.

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Hermes Expl ains

the Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE), the ESSWE has already organised seven international biannual conferences, of which the latest one (Amsterdam 2019) coincides with the twenty-year anniversary of HHP and the publication of this volume;4 two peer-reviewed academic journals have been running successfully since 2001 and 2013 respectively;5 various major academic publishers now have their own monograph series in the study of Western esotericism;6 and more generally, it is simply no longer possible for any scholar today to keep up with all the literature, all the conferences, and all the other academic initiatives that are devoted to this field and the various aspects of it. It is therefore safe to conclude that the battle for academic legitimacy has been won, or at the very least that the Rubicon has been crossed. Nevertheless, while Hermes may have arrived, he still has a lot of explaining to do – hence the title of this second anniversary volume. Every specialist of Western esotericism knows from personal experience how difficult it can be to explain in casual or professional conversations with interested outsiders (friends, family members, colleagues, journalists) what the field is all about and why it is important. At almost every step, beginning with the very term “esotericism” itself, one has to count with deeply ingrained assumptions, misconceptions, and prejudices. Much of the elementary background knowledge that scholars of esotericism take for granted is by no means obvious to non-specialists and needs to be explained over and over again. This is why we have decided for the present volume to take thirty such typical “journalistic” questions as our point of departure. Some of them sound quite serious while others have a ring of naivety about them, but they 4 Conferences so far: ESSWE1 “Constructing Tradition: Means and Myths of Transmission in Western Esotericism,” Tübingen 2007 (conference volume: Kilcher, Constructing Tradition); ESSWE2 “Capitals of European Esotericism and Transcultural Dialogue,” Strasbourg 2009 (conference volume: Brach, Choné and Maillard, Capitales de l’ésotérisme européen); ESSWE3 “Lux in Tenebris: The Visual and the Symbolic in Western Esotericism,” Szeged 2011 (conference volume: Forshaw, Lux in Tenebris); ESSWE4 “Western Esotericism and Health,” Gothenburg 2013 (conference volume: Henrik Bogdan, forthcoming); ESSWE5 “Western Esotericism and the East,” Riga 2015 (conference volume: Birgit Menzel and Anita Stasulane, forthcoming); ESSWE6 “Western Esotericism and Deviance,” Erfurt 2017 (conference volume: Bernd-Christian Otto and Marco Pasi, forthcoming); ESSWE7 “Western Esotericism and Consciousness,” Amsterdam 2019. 5 Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (Brill, 2001-present), edited by Peter J. Forshaw; Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism (correspondencesjournal.com; 2013-present), edited by Allan Johnson, Aren Roukema and Jimmy Elwing. 6 Notably the “Aries Book Series: Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism” (Brill, 25 volumes, 2006-present), edited by Marco Pasi; “Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism” (Oxford University Press, 6 vols., 2017-present), edited by Henrik Bogdan. See also the much older “SUNY Series in Western Esotericism” (State University of New York Press), edited by David Appelbaum.

Introduc tion:

11

all provide scholars with an opportunity to take a deep breath and respond with some variation on “well… actually… it might be a bit different than you think, perhaps a bit more complicated too…” Explaining things that are less than perfectly understood is, of course, the quintessential task of the teacher. One could do worse than doing so under the auspices of Hermes Trismegistus, the ancient model teacher of esotericism par excellence who was once believed to have invented entire academic disciplines, such as arithmetic, geometry, or astronomy – not to mention the art of writing itself. Readers of this volume will discover quickly that, paradoxical as it may sound, studying esotericism means much more than just studying esotericism. What makes this field so exciting is not just the fact that it broadens our horizons by introducing us to strange and unfamiliar ideas or traditions or practices – although that is certainly part of its appeal. Even more important are its deep implications for the humanities as a whole, deriving from the fact that (to put it mildly) these materials have not been integrated very well in standard textbook narratives about Western culture and its various dimensions, whether in the history of religion, philosophy, science, or the arts. This, of course, is the reason why journalists and the general public keep asking the kinds of questions that are central to the volume you are holding in your hands: none of us learns about these things at school! Studying esotericism means being introduced to new materials and new ideas from new theoretical perspectives that ultimately force us to rethink all the most central themes of “Western culture” (including even that very concept) in the broadest sense of the word. The attentive reader will discover that this is no exaggeration. The effect of being introduced to Western esotericism can be somewhat similar to that of swallowing the famous “red pill” in the blockbuster movie The Matrix, which happened to be released in the very year when HHP was created: to put it in a nutshell, one wakes up to the fact that the dominant grand narratives on which we rely for making sense of our world cannot be trusted at face value. Formulated in the movie’s neo-gnostic language, many foundational stories that structure our taken-for-granted assumptions about the world turn out to be little more than elaborate mental illusions or delusions that prevent us from questioning the claims of dominant discourses and perceiving the realities of our world at a deeper level of complexity.7 Of course, to question widely accepted truths rather than just accept them at face value is what the 7 See the concept of fictional “imagined orders” central to human culture and civilisation, as described in Yuval Harari’s best-selling Sapiens (ch. 6). See also Hanegraaff, “Reconstructing ‘Religion’”; and idem “Religion and the Historical Imagination.”

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Hermes Expl ains

search for knowledge is and should be all about, whether in the academy or anywhere else. In short, dear reader, you are kindly invited to swallow thirty red pills… While you may find some more potent than others, and none is exactly the same, each single one is a portal to new worlds of knowledge that might challenge much of what you hold to be true. We hope you will enjoy the experience! As HHP gets ready to move into its third decade, and the study of esotericism continues to expand and develop in ever new directions, it is appropriate to look back and give thanks to those who made it all possible. Readers of our first anniversary volume can learn from it how Hermes arrived in the academy in 1999, thanks to the initiative and the efforts of a small but dedicated group of people around Rosalie Basten, who came up with the idea of founding an academic chair for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents and made its realisation possible.8 In her own words, one little stone thrown in a pond will produce a ripple effect that is potentially unlimited; and it is true that today, twenty years after that first plunge, the circles still keep extending further into the world and into the future. Without mentioning any further persons specifically by name – for one would not know where to begin or where to end –, as staff members of HHP we want to express our deep gratitude both to the founders of the program and to all members of the ever-expanding community of scholars who have made the study of Western esotericism into a continuing adventure. The Editors

8 For the history of the creation of HHP, and the people involved in it, see van den Broek, “Birth of a Chair.”



Aren’t we living in a disenchanted world? Egil Asprem

It may be easiest to begin with a common assumption: that being modern means being rational. The modern person has a scientific mindset, a pragmatic attitude, and trusts technology to solve our every problem. “Rationality,” in this common view, is the antithesis of being superstitious, believing in magic and spirits, or relying on quackery and pseudoscience. Rational moderns have left all that behind. Let’s take a closer look at those assumptions. That modern civilisation is a disenchanted one can seem intuitive. If we look at our major institutions, evidence of it is not hard to find. The guiding principles of economic life are efficiency, productivity, and profit. Healthcare and medicine are, for the most part, held to strict scientific standards of evidence. The legal system is built on a presumption of innocence according to which a prosecutor must make rational arguments based on evidence, credible testimony, and sound interpretation of law. In everyday life, we trust our engineers to create better smartphones, safer cars, and more efficient public transportation through advances in technology. Faced with global crises such as climate change, most of us now rely on the evidence of scientists and hope that new technologies can give us cleaner and more efficient sources of energy. In short, rational principles are key to how modern society is structured. There is little room for petitioning the spirits or consulting horoscopes to solve society’s challenges. No doubt: modern society is built primarily on science and technology rather than “magic,” broadly conceived. Nevertheless, something crucial is missing from this description: namely, the individuals who inhabit modern societies. Polls consistently show that a significant share of the population (usually around 40-50%) in putatively modern, post-industrial societies such as the United States or the United Kingdom, believe in “supernatural” phenomena such as ghosts and haunted houses, or “occult” powers such as telepathy and clairvoyance.1 In popular culture, filmmakers, TV scriptwriters, and authors of bestselling fiction cater to a huge audience hungry for storylines with occult themes – so much so that some speak of a “popular 1

See e.g. Asprem, “Psychic Enchantments”; Josephson-Storm, Myth of Disenchantment, 22-34.

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Egil Asprem

occulture” at the heart of modern society.2 Books that teach you how to attain success through positive thinking or “the law of attraction,” such as Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (2006), become international bestsellers. It seems that the modern attitude to enchantments is one of fascination rather than outright rejection. How can we explain this two-sided picture, and what does it really tell us about the modern world and its inhabitants? The idea that modernity is characterised by the disenchantment of the world is associated with the theories of German sociologist and economic historian Max Weber (1864–1920). In a lecture to students at the University of Munich in 1917, as Germany was exhausted by war, Weber proclaimed that disenchantment was “the fate of our times.”3 The understanding that magic, mystery, and sacrality were vanishing from a world increasingly dominated by industry, technology, and expanding bureaucracies was not new: it resonated with deep-seated stereotypes that can be traced back at least to the early Romantic movement and had found powerful expressions in the works of Novalis, Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Schiller and others. For Weber, however, disenchantment was more than a poetic expression of the Zeitgeist. It was a historical phenomenon with specific consequences for how we live our lives. What did disenchantment mean for Weber? Above all it was a shift in mentality. Reflecting on the impact of science and technology on people’s everyday lives, Weber saw that modern people do not necessarily have more knowledge about their world than inhabitants of simpler societies do of theirs. Precisely because of the increasing reliance on rational technology and bureaucratic organisational structures, modern people usually have no clue at all about how the things they rely on every day really work. We can trust our smartphones to show us around a new city without any knowledge of electronics, GPS satellites, or coding, and we can trust money to buy us coffee without knowing the intricacies of global economics. What is distinctive, according to Weber, is that moderns expect the world they inhabit to be in principle understandable. If one so wishes, one can learn how satellites work, or why money sometimes buys more coffee and sometimes less. This means that, to modern people, there are no “mysterious, incalculable powers” in the world: anything can in principle be explained rationally. This, Weber held, is the key difference from living in an “enchanted” world, where ancestral spirits protect the tribe from misfortune and capricious gods must be placated through sacrifice. 2 3

E.g. Partridge, “Occulture Is Ordinary.” Weber, ”Wissenschaft als Beruf.”

Aren’ t we living in a disenchanted world?

15

There are many facets to the process of rationalisation that, as Weber saw it, led to the disenchantment of the world. The increasing prominence of technological and scientific solutions in economic life, and rational principles of association in organisations and government, were but the latest and most important part in a story that ran much deeper in history. It had started, in fact, as a theological process. With the invention of monotheism in the ancient world came pressures to conceive of divinity in radically transcendent, otherworldly terms – together with a suspicion of any “mysterious, incalculable powers” capable of causing changes in the world in response to incantations, charms, or spells. The anti-magical polemic of Jewish and Christian authorities, along with the broader shift away from temple-based sacrifice to an internal “care of the self” turned the emphasis of religion away from external powers in nature towards individual moral conduct. While it has been common to view this shift as inherent to the “Abrahamic” monotheisms, the end of sacrifice arguably started with philosophy, and especially with Platonism.4 However this may be, it intensified in Northern Europe in the sixteenth century with the Protestant Reformation, which saw an increased scepticism towards rituals and “pagan” survivals on the whole, fuelling renewed sanctions and prosecutions against “magic.”5 In this sense, the disenchantment narrative that Weber suggested has close links with the polemical history that led to the formation of esotericism as a category of “rejected knowledge.”6 To Weber, however, the explicit attacks on “magic” and paganism were not as important as the change in conduct that Protestantism inculcated: what mattered was that people increasingly thought that salvation was something between God and the individual, linked to the following of rules of pious behaviour. The result was an “inner-worldly asceticism,” in which the emphasis is on methodical conduct in everyday life – a shift in mentality that Weber famously connected to the emergence of modern capitalism in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; English 1930). When we talk about living in a “disenchanted world,” then, we are talking about a mentality and a pattern of behaviour. What are people’s assumptions about the world, and what actions do they prefer to take when confronted with a problem? The key assumptions of a disenchanted world, as Weber saw

4 See e.g. Stroumsa, End of Sacrifice. 5 See e.g. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic. 6 Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy.

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it, can be divided into three areas, all having to do with the strict separation between God and the world: 1) Humans can in principle explain and control the world. This is the task of empirical science and technology. 2) Humans cannot know deeper aspects of reality. Metaphysics is beyond the empirical, and only an act of (unverifiable) revelation can grant insight into it. 3) Humans cannot extract any knowledge about how to live their lives from studying nature. Values and morality are provided by religions and philosophies, but since they cannot be validated empirically they are ultimately a matter of individual choice.

This has profound implications for the place of religion in society, but also for the domain of esotericism and magic. The separation of facts from values, as well as the separation of metaphysics from empirical knowledge, means that religions are tolerated to the extent that they do not interfere with the domains of science and technology. Vice versa, science goes bad when it presumes to speak of values and ultimate causes. “Magic” becomes intolerable – along with all religions that stress some form of immanence – because it breaks the neat divide between a rational, explicable world and a wholly transcendent realm of meaning and metaphysics. The problem for a historian of religion is that this very period of disenchantment – the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – is characterised by a tremendous interest in precisely the sort of ideas that blend religion and science, facts and values. This is the period when spiritualism and modern occultism take shape, and spread rapidly around the globe. It is the time when educated middle- and upper-class people join the Theosophical Society en masse, and even scholars and scientists find spiritualist phenomena fascinating and serious enough to investigate with the empirical methods of “psychical research” – the beginnings of the discipline now known as parapsychology. If we follow the disenchantment narrative, we must explain these phenomena as irrational and illegitimate deviations from the main line of modernity. Indeed, Weber himself dismissed those scientists of his day who found God in nature as “big children,” and saw nothing but “humbug and self-deceit” in the new eclectic spirituality gaining popularity among middle-class people.7 Seeing that the big children in question include key

7

See discussion in Asprem, Problem of Disenchantment, 32-39.

Aren’ t we living in a disenchanted world?

17

contributors to the science and culture of modernity, even several Nobel laureates, this seems unsatisfactory. So what are the alternatives? One alternative is that disenchantment never happened. This is what Jason Josephson-Storm argues in his book The Myth of Disenchantment (2017). According to him, disenchantment is a myth in two different senses. It is a myth in the colloquial sense that it didn’t happen. People still believe in all manner of supernatural, occult, and magical phenomena, even though they may no longer be referring to exactly the same phenomena as before. However, it is also a myth in the sense of a grand narrative that modern people, and especially academics and scientists, have built their identity around. The idea that we have gotten rid of magic and superstition is a core element in the stories we tell about who we are, where we came from, and how we are different from the people of the past (the “dark middle ages”) and people in other parts of the world (“primitives”). We sense this grand narrative in triumphalist histories of the Scientific Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the progressive political movement toward democracy and prosperity. The myth of disenchantment works as what Josephson-Storm calls a regulative ideal. It offers a normative view of what we moderns ought to believe and, especially, what is to be expected of a modern scientific discipline. The latter is important because Josephson-Storm sees disenchantment as a foundation myth for the new human sciences that emerged during the nineteenth century. By proclaiming that magic was an anachronistic thing of the past, and that its retired concepts were now becoming objects of study for disciplines such as anthropology, folkloristics, sociology, or history of religion, these disciplines reinforced the myth of disenchantment while boosting their own claim to “modern” scientific status. In short, the new human sciences associated a rational disavowal of anything occult with “proper science.” At the same time, as Josephson-Storm painstakingly demonstrates, pioneering scholars developed their public statements from often deep personal fascination with the occult currents of the nineteenth century. While I agree that disenchantment has functioned as a grand narrative, and hence a foundation myth of modernity, I think it is too simplistic to dismiss it as a myth in the sense of something false.8 When Weber suggested that the rationalisation of society has consequences for how people think and act, and that these consequences make themselves felt in the realm of religion and spirituality, he was on to something important. The question 8

See my detailed review of Josephson-Storm’s thesis in Asprem, “Occult Disenchanters.”

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is what these consequences really were, and more fundamentally, how we should think about them. The statement that rationalisation has rendered the world disenchanted is also too simple an answer. In my book The Problem of Disenchantment, I have suggested a different approach. Rather than viewing disenchantment as a process that produces disenchanted minds, we should view it as a problem faced by modern subjects. The rapid spread of technical education and philosophical attitudes along Kantian lines produced pressures among those receiving formal education to conform to a disenchanted world picture. They were taught that matter is devoid of meaning and the world a giant mechanism, and these views were increasingly experienced in politics and in everyday life through technologisation and the pursuit of pragmatic efficiency. Now, as long as these views are thoroughly internalised and seem plausible to individuals, there is no problem. The trouble is that this world picture violates deep-seated intuitions about agency, values, and causation that, even among the most highly educated, make it tempting to resist and formulate alternative worldviews.9 While humanity is a cognitively flexible species, it remains the case that our psychological foundations evolved to survive a very different environment from the one we now inhabit. Viewing living things as machines does not come easy for us; thinking about ourselves and those we love in the same mechanistic terms much less so. In fact, we naturally tend to err on the side of attributing more rather than less life, mind, and agency to phenomena we encounter in the world. This is true even for trained scientists. To the extent that religious attitudes tend to revolve around mysterious agents such as gods, spirits, or ancestors, this means that “religion is natural and science is not.”10 When we look at disenchantment as a problem to which people can respond in various ways rather than as a mentality that is simply taken for granted, we can acknowledge both 1) that rationalisation did happen and did produce cultural pressures on how people view the world, and 2) that the wide variety of “enchanted” positions that were developed in response are integral to modernity rather than irrational deviations from it. Moreover, since the problem of disenchantment is a predominantly cultural one, we should expect that it is first and foremost those with some education and the luxury to ponder “big questions” that will be bothered by it. For this reason, it is not surprising that the academic world has generated some of the most influential frameworks for new spiritualities in the twentieth century. 9 See also Asprem, “Disenchantment of Problems.” 10 McCauley, Why Religion Is Natural.

Aren’ t we living in a disenchanted world?

19

In The Problem of Disenchantment, I call these frameworks “new natural theologies,” and identify five different schools that emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century. The best-known today is probably the field known as “quantum mysticism.” Contemporary spirituality is flush with references to the “mysteries” of quantum mechanics, which are often seen as supporting the idea that mind creates matter, or that the natural world displays counterintuitive properties such as that a particle can be in two places at once. That non-scientists would co-opt what they take to be scientific fact for their own purposes is not surprising; the point here, however, is that these sorts of “overblown” speculations about the spiritual implications of quantum physics did not start with New Age hippies, but with the first generation of quantum physicists. People like Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976), Niels Bohr (1885–1962), and Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) all flirted with broad worldview implications of their scientific work, breaking explicitly with the “disenchanted” dictum not to conflate facts with values, or keeping science apart from metaphysics. Many other enchanted ideas were developed by academics. Vitalism is a recurrent case: the view that life is not reducible to “matter,” but instead propelled by some other, mysterious and largely incalculable force was suggested by turn-of-the-century biologists such as Hans Driesch (who spoke of “entelechy”) and popular philosophers such as Henri Bergson (who popularised the term élan vital). Such ideas have proved popular among those who value both science and spirituality. Moreover, the notion of an irreducible life force has frequently been connected to psychic powers and spiritualist phenomena, creating a link between heterodox biology and heterodox religion. The “psychic enchantments” associated with parapsychology and so-called psychical research have historically been closely linked with vitalism, but also with quantum mysticism. The collaboration between Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) and Wolfgang Pauli resulted, among other things, in a perceived link between microphysics and psychic phenomena. Another founding figure of quantum mechanics, Pascual Jordan (1902–1980), connected physics with parapsychology, a vitalistic view of organisms, and an “organicist” right-wing view of politics and society. In recent years, connections between vitalistic biology and psychic phenomena have been spearheaded by Rupert Sheldrake (b. 1942), a Cambridge-trained biologist turned best-selling author of spiritual non-fiction. Sheldrake illustrates another aspect of this field of speculation: while it springs from the sciences, it rarely fails to develop a polemic against what it sees as “dogmatic” and “reductionist” tendencies in the same natural

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sciences.11 It would thus be easy or even tempting to dismiss this tendency as anti-scientific. Doing so would require us to ignore the fact that the discourse created by these authors is itself a product of the modern sciences, articulated by PhDs and working scientists who often, though certainly not always, stay true to what they consider proper scientific values of free inquiry, theoretical speculation, and empirical explorations of elusive phenomena. It seems more convincing, then, to view the new natural theologians as individuals struggling with the problem of disenchantment, choosing to respond to it by challenging the current scientific world-picture rather than abandoning their deeply seated intuitive understandings of life and nature. In that sense, the new scientific enchantments are integral parts of modernity.

11 For instance Sheldrake, Science Delusion.



Esotericism, that’s for white folks, right? Justine M. Bakker

Newcomers to the study of Western esotericism may be forgiven for thinking that esotericism is indeed just “for white folks.” The vast majority of scholarship in the field of Western esotericism has consistently overlooked black esoteric figures, movements, and currents, despite the fact that African Americans have been among the most innovative and influential practitioners in the history of esoteric thought. Consider, for instance, the following case. Bronzeville (Chicago), 1951. Dissatisfied with the “Black Church,” yet determined to improve the spiritual and material lives of their fellow African Americans in one of North America’s most segregated cities, two men, Sonny Blount (1914-1993) and Alton Abraham (1927-1999), deeply immerse themselves in esoteric thought. “it is because the negro has not sought the wisdom that will free him that he is still in chains,” reads one of the notes that their newfound secret society, Thmei Research, distributed.1 Reading everything from Emanuel Swedenborg to Mary Baker Eddy, and from Rudolf Steiner to George Gurdjieff, Blount and Abraham would, as Paul Youngquist put it, “cobble together an intellectual countertradition for the South Side, a forgotten legacy of wisdom to invigorate a people caged without a key.”2 To be sure, the two men were certainly not alone in their pursuit of transformative and liberating esoteric knowledge to conjure new religious and racial identities that would transcend the destructive and violent forces of white supremacy. Around the same time, we find African American visionaries, mystics and religious leaders in Chicago, New York, Detroit and Philadelphia who turn to New Thought, Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, voodoo and conjure3 in their quest for alternative sources of spiritual wisdom. So much so, in fact, that we may speak of the existence of a “black esoteric milieu,” a coherent but differentiated sphere of esoteric texts, ideas, practices, 1 Corbett, Wisdom of Sun Ra, 77. Also quoted in Sites, “Radical Culture,” 695. These pamphlets were often written in capitals. 2 Youngquist, Pure Solar World, 33, 37. 3 The term conjure (often used interchangeably with the term hoodoo) is used to describe certain “magical” or supernatural practices – such as the use of charms, rituals and poisons, and divination – which are used for a variety of purposes, among which healing and harming, and control and protection. See for more information, in particular, Yvonne Chireau’s Black Magic.

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people and movements that provided the impetus for the development of a range of unique and distinctively African American forms of esotericism.4 Indeed, none of those who operated in the black esoteric milieu simply repackaged or mimicked already existing esoteric ideas, texts and practices. On the contrary, they consciously and deliberately adopted, adapted, synthesised and created a range of esoteric ideas that they blended with Islam, Christianity, Judaism and black political thought to fashion unique, inventive and innovate esoteric “religio-racial” narratives and identities.5 For some, such as Blount and Abraham, esoteric texts provided a muchneeded alternative to Christianity in general, and the “Black Church” in particular, which by the early decades of the twentieth century had entered a phase of de-radicalisation and relative quietism.6 In Godfrey Higgins’s Anacalypsis (1836), a nineteenth-century book that also provided inspiration for Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophy, they found, for instance, evidence for the existence of an ancient, prehistoric, and universal religion.7 Other esoteric texts, in turn, conjured Egypt as a source of wisdom that not only predated the Abrahamic religions, but was also seen as more “authoritative.”8 Convinced of the transformative potential of their newfound knowledge, Abraham and Blount distributed their creative and productive bricolage – a novel combination of esoteric wisdom and black nationalism that Youngquist terms “political theosophy”9 – on the streets of Bronzeville through leaflets, although Blount also had another vehicle to transmit his visionary wisdom: music. Indeed, Sunny Blount would soon become Sun Ra, the legendary poet and jazz musician whose very name is a nod to the Egyptian God of the Sun. For others, esoteric ideas helped to fashion and sharpen ideas about the inherently divine nature of African Americans, which challenged prevalent notions of supposed black inferiority. Father Divine (also known as Reverend M.J. Divine, ca. 1876-1965), an early twentieth-century black religious leader 4 I developed this thesis in an unpublished conference paper in relation to Colin Campbell’s “cultic milieu” (see Campbell, “Cultic Milieu”). Please also see the work of Susan Palmer and Travis L. Gosa, who, each in their own way, considered aspects of black culture and/or religion in relation to the “cultic milieu” (Palmer, Nuwaubian Nation; Gosa, “Counterknowledge, Racial Paranoia”). 5 I borrow the term “religio-racial” from Judith Weisenfeld’s New World A-Coming, in which she introduces the nomenclature to convey that for the Nation of Islam, Peace Mission Movement, Moorish Science Temple of America and Ethiopian Hebrew congregations, race and religion were interdependent, such that a focus on either obscures their complexities. 6 Wilmore, Black Religion, 163-195. 7 Sites, “Radical Culture,” 697. 8 Youngquist, Pure Solar World, 34. 9 Ibid., 37.

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was, for instance, inspired by New Thought when he claimed to be “God in a body” and encouraged his followers to strive for divine status.10 Father George Willie Hurley (1884-1943), who would establish the Universal Hagar’s Spiritual Church in Detroit in 1923, also made use of a New Thought (and Theosophical) inspired text that circulated in the black esoteric milieu when he declared himself the God of the Aquarian Age.11 The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Christ of the Piscean Age, published in 1908 by Levi Dowling (1844-1911), purports to tell the history of Jesus’s travels to India, Egypt, and Tibet prior to his ministry in Galilee. Dowling’s text made its way to various New Age groups by the end of the twentieth century, but was, well before those days, already appealing to Hurley, who created his own version of the mystical Jesus. The Aquarian Gospel also served as inspiration for Noble Drew Ali (1886-1929), who used it as reference for his Holy Koran. This text (which also modelled itself on the Rosicrucian text Unto Thee I Grant), although published in 1927, remains the foundational text for his Moorish Science Temple of America. Similar to Hurley, Ali used Dowling’s book to compose a new narrative that would predestine him as the Christ-figure.12 What is important, here, is not only that both Hurley and Ali drew inspiration from the same esoteric text, but also that they utilised it to create new religious and esoteric narratives about divinity that were uniquely tailored for and appealing to black Americans. For yet others, the black esoteric milieu served as a foundation for establishing a discourse of secrecy, concealment and revelation – the same dialectic that we find so often in esoteric movements.13 After Fard Muhammad (?-after 1934), the founder of the Nation of Islam (NOI), mysteriously disappeared in 1934, each of the two consecutive leaders claimed to have access to secret and concealed knowledge about the history, present, and future of black and white America (or, “the knowledge of God, Self, and Enemy”). Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975), in maintaining that Fard Muhammad was Allah and that Elijah Muhammad himself would be his last messenger, could claim to have received knowledge from Allah through a direct teacher-disciple relationship. Louis Farrakhan (b. 1933), in turn, received secret divine knowledge in the form of a scroll with divine cursive writing that was implanted in his head in 1985 during a profound religious experience in which he was carried up in the Mother Wheel (the NOI’s 10 For more on the relationship between New Thought and Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, see Watts, God, Harlem, USA; and, in particular, Griffith, “Body Salvation.” 11 Baer, Black Spiritual Movement, 92-93. 12 Easterling, “Moorish Science Temple,” 127-141; Nance, “Mystery of the Moorish Science Temple,” 127-133. 13 Von Stuckrad, Locations of Knowledge. For von Stuckrad, this dialectic is central to esotericism.

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UFO). Confirming the continued significance of this scroll, as well as its secret nature, Farrakhan noted in 2006 that, when “the scroll came down … something was being written in me, so that even right now, although I’m not a great student of the Bible and the Qur’an, but I stand and speak and the Bible comes up. The Qur’an comes up. Things come up. They come out of me in a fantastic order.”14 Together, Muhammad and Farrakhan unveiled a set of secret teachings that re-envisioned black humanity and provided followers the means to wrestle with and make sense of the destructive and violent realities of white supremacy.15 Given the NOI’s claim to things secret and concealed, it is perhaps no wonder that even Sun Ra consulted their teachings in his own quest for knowledge. And yet, while the esoteric interests of Sun Ra, Muhammad, Farrakhan, Father Divine, Ali and Hurley are certainly recognised and at times investigated – to a greater and lesser extent – by those who study them,16 the idea that esotericism pertains mostly to white folks was, until very recently, taken for granted in the field of Western esotericism. That is to say, for the first twenty years after Antoine Faivre published his famous definition of esotericism in 1992 – effectively inaugurating the study of Western esotericism as a legitimate and necessary field of study – this assumption remained mostly unchallenged. Consider, for instance, Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s introductory textbook, published as recently as 2013, which argues that “participants in the ‘cultic milieu’ of post-war esotericism have always been, and still remain, overwhelmingly white.”17 In a later article, Hanegraaff acknowledged that this claim was misinformed, and credited the important and ground-breaking work of Stephen Finley, Margarita Simon Guillory and Hugh R. Page, Jr. for correcting his previous assumptions.18 This edited volume, Esotericism in the African American Religious Experience (2015), introduces the reader to a wide variety of esoteric currents, movements, and ideas in African American 14 Muhammad, Closing the Gap, 118-119. 15 I discuss the dialectic of secrecy, concealment and revelation in my MA dissertation, “On the Knowledge of Self and Others”; for additional sources on secrecy in the NOI, see also my article with the same title: Bakker, “On the Knowledge of Self and Others,” 138-151; Finley, “Hidden Away,” 259-280; idem, “From Mistress to Mother,” 49-62; idem, “Mathematical Theology,” 123-137. 16 Consider, in particular, Curtis, “Debating the Origins”; Dorman, “Hidden Transcripts”; Easterling, “Moorish Science Temple”; Griffith, “Body Salvation”; Martin, Beyond Christianity; Nance, “Mystery of the Moorish Science Temple”; Redd, “Astro-Black Mythology”; and the publications of Stephen Finley cited throughout this essay. It is important to note that these scholars, in considering the esoteric nature of individual people and movements, often turned to scholarship in the field of Western esotericism. 17 Hanegraaff, Western Esotericism, 133. 18 Hanegraaff, “Globalization of Esotericism,” 7 note 22.

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religion.19 If anything, the book demonstrates for the field – once and for all – that African American esotericisms vibrate all over the United States, and have done so since the days of enslavement in the form of, for instance, voodoo, conjure and root work. Perhaps most significantly, Finley, Guillory and Page proposed a new field, Africana Esoteric Studies – related to, but under no circumstances to be subsumed as part of, the field of Western esotericism.20 Reading Esotericism in the African American Religious Experience, one cannot help but wonder: why did it take so long? How is it possible that the first volume on black esotericisms saw the light as late as 2015, a little less than twenty years after the academic study of esotericism had begun in earnest in Amsterdam? The (initial) lack of research on black esotericisms can be understood in a variety of ways. We should consider, for instance, that scholars in the field of Western esotericism, perhaps not sufficiently trained in African American history and religion or unqualified to address race and race relations in the United States, may simply have felt they did not possess the academic tools to explore black esotericisms. Indeed, European scholarship was and is overrepresented in this field, which also allows us to consider a second possible explanation: scholars may simply have been unaware of the existence of the NOI, overlooked the influence and importance of Thmei Research when listening to Sun Ra’s oeuvre, or were ill-equipped to trace – as Jon Woodson has done so expertly21 – the influence of Gurdjieff on writers of the Harlem Renaissance. However, it is important to note that such unawareness is neither neutral nor accidental: as scholars of Western esotericism have been and continue to be predominantly white (and male), their hegemony has – if unconsciously so – empowered and allowed them to turn a blind eye. Privilege may never be used as an excuse to ignore, on a structural level, a range of esoteric beliefs and practices – my own whiteness does demand, however, that I approach African American forms of esotericism with a heightened sense of self-reflexivity and mindfulness of the historical disenfranchisement of black academics as well as the ways in which white scholarship has contributed to racist discourse. Moreover, while these explanations may be sufficient as it pertains to individual scholars, they do not accurately reflect a much more pernicious, much more systemic problem in the field, which begins with the adjective 19 In addition to the out-of-this-world jazz of Sun Ra, the book includes, for instance, a chapter that explores the elaborate magical system of nineteenth-century sex magician Paschal Beverly Randolph and one that focuses on the “120,” a coded and largely secret set of lessons distributed among black youth in New York who are part of the Five Percenters (Redd, “Astro-Black Mythology,” 227-235; Finley, “Paschal Beverly Randolph,” 37-51; Gray, “Show and Prove,” 177-197). 20 Finley, Guillory and Page, “Introduction,” 12-13. 21 Woodson, “Harlem Renaissance,” 102-122.

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Western in its very name, Western esotericism.22 I am not the first to challenge the adjective. As Marco Pasi has convincingly argued, it was important for Antoine Faivre to include the adjective “Western” “to avoid universalist concepts of esotericism”23 when he established the field; but numerous scholars have since questioned its validity and usefulness. Kennet Granholm points out that the adjective Western is too vague and ambiguous, if only because it can refer to both geographical and cultural space, and concludes “we should forgo the use of it in the central role it has in the field today.”24 More recently, Egil Asprem proposed a cross-cultural comparative study of esotericism on a global, rather than merely Western scale.25 When we consider the lack of research on African American forms of esotericism, an additional interpretation of the problem of Western arises: it is a racialised category that, historically, has functioned as a “metalanguage for white.”26 On a structural level, the dehumanisation and subjugation of black people in particular, but also of other racial minorities such as Native Americans and Latinx people, has excluded them from what is generally considered as “the West,” modernity, or America(n), as these concepts have been constructed around what Sylvester Johnson calls “a core of white subjectivity.”27 Put slightly differently: Western signifies whiteness, and thus not only refers to a particular geographical realm or culture, but also to a race. Therefore, the adjective “Western” in Western esotericism has obfuscated the study of the esotericisms of people of colour by default – including those who live and practise in what geographically and/or culturally would or could be seen as part of “the West” – because what the 22 I developed this thesis in an unpublished conference paper. Please also see my MA dissertation, “On the Knowledge,” for a more elaborate discussion of the problem of “Western.” For an additional critique of the field from the vantage point of the study of black esotericism, see: Finley, Guillory and Page, “Conclusion.” 23 Pasi, “Oriental Kabbalah.” 24 Granholm, “Locating the West.” 25 Asprem, “Beyond the West.” Cf. Hanegraaff, “Globalization of Esotericism.” Hanegraaff, while acknowledging the problems that the adjective inevitably produces, suggests that grounding the field in historical empiricism would allow for the use of the adjective Western since the field is concerned with the study of products of Western culture. Hanegraaff, then, argues that there is a methodological reason for keeping the adjective, while acknowledging that, on the level of mere theory, the concept is potentially problematic. However, this approach does not, it seems to me, resolve the problems raised by Granholm – what is “Western culture”? Where do we find it? – but the present essay is more concerned with a different issue. 26 Johnson, “Proper Religion,” 160, 164. While Johnson’s argument is specif ically about the concept of “American” I think it not a stretch to extend it to “Western.” See also: Bakker (MA thesis), “On the Knowledge,” 131; Finley, Guillory and Page, “Introduction,” 5. 27 Johnson, “Proper Religion,” 160.

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field of (Western) esotericism considers as products of “Western culture” are predominantly the products of white subjectivities. We find evidence for this admittedly strong claim when we, in perusing the Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, the standard reference work in the field, or the various introductory textbooks on Western esotericism, are forced to conclude that they largely overlook black esotericisms.28 Of course, I do not want to suggest that African American forms of esotericism are not (also) Western, although Africana esotericisms, as proposed by Finley, Page, and Guillory, is certainly a better rubric for study; rather, my point is that the use of the adjective, precisely because the historical usages of the term signify whiteness, conceals the esotericisms of racial minorities. Indeed, in its current usage the adjective does not only preclude the study of black esotericisms (the primary focus of this essay) but also obfuscates the study of Latinx and Native American forms of esotericism. Lest the reader want to provide a counter argument that relates to Asian religions – for the significance and influence of Asian religions has been studied extensively in the field – I would like to point out that here, too, whiteness has remained central. What has been studied, first and foremost, is the reception of Eastern esoteric influences in and on white movements and currents in Europe and the United States and not, for instance, Theosophy in India.29 But the situation is certainly improving. An edited volume on secrecy and concealment in Western esoteric traditions published in 2013 contains a chapter on the NOI and one on African American spiritualists (by Finley and Guillory, respectively); Michael Muhammad Knight’s Magic in Islam engages magic in what I have termed the “black esoteric milieu”; Stephen Finley contributed an essay on African American supernatural traditions to Jeffrey Kripal’s handbook Super Religion; and Mitch Horowitz’s more popular Occult America discusses conjure, among other forms of black esotericism.30 Moreover, a forthcoming Dictionary of Contemporary Esotericism (edited by Egil Asprem) includes entries on the NOI and Five Percenters, as well as a 28 While the textbooks (von Stuckrad, Western Esotericism; Versluis, Magic and Mysticism; Goodrick-Clarke, Western Esoteric Traditions; Faivre, Western Esotericism; and Hanegraaff, Western Esotericism) ignore black esotericisms altogether, the Dictionary does include an entry on Paschal Beverly Randolph. Partridge’s otherwise comprehensive Re-Enchantment of the West also lacks a discussion of alternative spiritualities in black religion. 29 That said, Mriganka Mukhopadhyay, a PhD student at the Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam, is currently working on a thesis on the Theosophical Movement in Bengal. 30 Cf. note 3, above. Finley, “Hidden Away”; Guillory, “Conscious Concealment”; Finley, “The Supernatural in African American Religious Experience”; Knight, Magic in Islam; Horowitz, Occult America.

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more elaborate essay on esotericism and race. Most promising about this last initiative is that it does not attempt to subsume black esotericisms under the rubric of “Western esotericism” (note that the problematic adjective is not included in the title) but that the editor, rather, seems to acknowledge its problematic nature and thinks the category anew. In this context, the recent omission of the adjective Western in the title of Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism seems equally promising.31 It is my hope that such rethinking and reconceptualising will open the door to a much more systematic and sustained study of black esotericisms. While the twenty chapters in Esotericism in the Black Religious Experience introduced many novel, complex, and influential esotericisms (for movements such as the NOI and Five Percenters are not minor religious movements but, in particular when we consider their impact on American culture, enormously significant) we are still only looking at the tip of an iceberg. This brings me to my final question: “so what”? Why should the field of (Western) esotericism be concerned with the study of black esotericisms? Of course, a comprehensive study of black esotericisms produces a more complete picture of esotericism in “the West” and allows us to do necessary comparative work. But just as significant, it provokes a set of important themes, challenges, and questions. Take, for instance, the often-explored rubric of “altered states of consciousness.” Considering possession in the work of, say, Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) and Ishmael Reed (b. 1938), or the visionary experiences of Louis Farrakhan, would not only expand the “canon” of profound instances of “altered states of consciousness,” but also could provide an opportunity to ask more critical questions of the concept itself. For instance, in what way does the field of Western esotericism employ consciousness as a normative category that largely obscures how this very term is historically, socially, and culturally contingent?32 Questions such as these would not only encourage scholars to answer the question that inaugurated this essay with a loud and firm “no,” but could quite possibly also propel the field forward in new and exciting directions. 31 For this online open-access journal, see www.correspondencesjournal.com. 32 The point I want to make here is that a term such as “consciousness” is never neutral or objective. That is, the category of “consciousness” as used in the field of Western esotericism does not simply or only signify a certain normative mental state – let alone one that is universal, or easily identifiable and/or distinguished from a diversion of this “normal” state – but has emerged in a specific historical, cultural, and social context. The study of black esotericisms may help us to shed light on this context and make some of the more hidden or obscure contingencies explicit. I want to thank Tim Grieve-Carlson and Adrienne Rooney for helping me think through this issue.



Surely modern art is not occult? It is modern! Tessel M. Bauduin

Without a doubt there are strong strains of esotericism and occultism in modern Western art (ca. 1860–1970). For instance, one often hears of the Theosophical and Anthroposophical affiliation of famous De Stijl artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), who described his art style, Neoplasticism, as “theosophical”.1 The occult interests and sources of other well-known abstract innovators such as Kazimir Malevich (1897-1935), Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and František Kupka (1871-1957) have been researched too, as has the widespread persistence of occult thought at the Bauhaus. 2 The presence of occult themes in the ideas or works of avant-garde movements, such as Futurism and Surrealism, has also been charted, at least partially.3 Indeed, while certainly not every modern artist evinced a serious interest in Spiritualism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, modern ceremonial magic or other occult currents, the proportion of those who did among those artists generally qualified as more radical and avant-garde is remarkably high. If we look just at the formative avant-garde and modernist trends in European art in the first half of the twentieth century, and in particular at those canonised styles and (white male) artists we have come to associate with formal innovation and abstraction as well as with modernism in the arts overall, it is clear that understanding modern(ist) art as entirely separate from occultism is untenable. Indeed, it has been untenable at least since the path-breaking exhibition The Spiritual in Art (1986). Since then, several exhibitions and studies have added to the overall picture that, in the Global North, modern art, and as a part of that “the aesthetic experiments … that we call modernism,” drew significantly on the “discourses of the occult dominant during [this] period.”4

1 Huussen and Paasschen-Louwerse, Jacoba van Heemskerck, 178; Bax, Web der schepping. 2 Henderson, Fourth Dimension; Morehead and Otto, “Representation”; Otto, “Image”; Ringbom, Sounding Cosmos; idem, “Art in ‘The Epoch’”; Tuchman, Spiritual in Art; Wagner, Bauhaus; Welsh, “Sacred Geometry.” 3 Bauduin, Surrealism; Celant, “Futurism”; Henderson, “Editor’s Introduction”; idem, “Italian Futurism”; Hjartarson, Visionen; Loers, Okkultismus. 4 Wilson, Modernism, 1; Fauchereau and Pijaudier, L’Europe; Loisy and Lampe, Traces du Sacré.

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Occultism and modernism are deeply intertwined, as several scholars have argued.5 In grossly simplified terms, both arose in response to, on the one hand, modernity and the cultural anxiety of being modern, and on the other, the heritage of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. The latter forced a confrontation with paradigms such as mind-body dualism, rationalism, the secularisation thesis, and a positivist understanding of history and civilisation, among other things. Modern art faced with modernity gave rise to modernism. Esotericism confronted with modernity developed into what is here called occultism. Nonetheless, during the twentieth century, the very anxiety over what it means to be modern (and what should therefore be rejected as “non-modern”), in combination with the implication of occult thought in fascism, led to a perception of occultism as “irrational” and “regressive.”6 Thus, it was turned into the perfect foil for a modernity that built its self-perception on the dominant tropes of rationality and secularisation. Within the disciplines of art history and art criticism, the prevailing narrative of modern art used to be based on a formalist view that matured during modernism – and is deeply modernist itself – and which discarded the socio-cultural context of art. Formalist art history canonised the position that, from Impressionism onwards, modern art had left any and all religion behind – including esotericism. Aesthetics had become a fully autonomous field. This is a narrative that champions formalism, positivism, rationalism and secularization in the arts. Recent scholarship has divested itself of theses tropes and shown that the interest of modern(ist) artists for occultism should neither be underplayed, nor understood as an atavistic turn towards premodern “irrational” survivals. Not only is occultism a modern phenomenon, but as its ideas circulated widely, it was also quite common – even ordinary. Occulture permeated general culture, including the field of modern(ist) art.7 For scholars, curators and art lovers, therefore, “analysing the role of occultism should be just as self-evident as discussing other ideas or theories that shaped notions of cultural and aesthetic 5 Bauduin and Johnsson, “Introduction,” 4-6; Owen, Place of Enchantment; Treitel, Science for the Soul. A seminal study is Surette, Birth of Modernism. 6 One famous spokesperson of this view is Adorno, “Theses against Occultism” (see also Kilcher’s contribution to this volume). The formative (positive) role of enchantment and magic in modernity and modern culture has been outlined by During, Modern Enchantments; Nelson, Secret Life of Puppets; and Warner, Phantasmagoria, among others. 7 Partridge, “Occulture is Ordinary”; idem, Re-Enchantment. For an essential reorientation of “occulture” as applicable to modernity, and as a methodological tool for modern art history, see Kokkinen, “Occulture.”

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modernity in the early twentieth century” as well as in the late-nineteenth century.8 The roots of the avant-gardes in art lie squarely in Symbolism, the nineteenth-century movement that departed from realism and naturalism to search for “a universal visual language that … would turn away from the [outer] appearance of things to signify the essence of things”: a way to integrate in art inner truth and sentiment, preferably communicated as directly as possible.9 The roots of occultism lie in this period too, during what has sometimes been called “the Occult Revival.” This was but one of many revivals that characterise this period and resonated in the arts, next to, for instance, Catholic and evangelical revivals, and medievalism, leading to a revitalisation of Christian art, the neo-Gothic in architecture, as well as artists’ collectives such as the Pre-Raphaelites, whose art had a distinctly (Christianity-based) mystical component, as can also be found later among the Flemish expressionists. In general terms, the roots of the spirituality of modern art – as of modernism generally – lie in Romanticism.10 The revivals opened the door for ideas about a synthesis of the arts, syncretism, and the Gesamtkunstwerk: the total or comprehensive art work that incorporates different (ideally all) forms/media of art, usually in combination with mythical, mystical and spiritual notions. The operas of Richard Wagner (1813-1883) are a well-known example. Synaesthetic ideas, such as the hearing of colours or seeing of sounds, impacted the visual arts deeply, well into the twentieth century. One driving force behind these developments was a deep dissatisfaction with contemporary industrialized society that many artists and intellectuals professed to, as they found the modern worldview ethically and spiritually impoverished and alienating. In their search for existential meaning, artists turned to alternative ways of knowing, metaphysics, and subjective experience, casting their eye upon transcendental, mystical, and occult trends as well as idealism and utopianism (in addition to dimensions that will not be discussed here, such as revivalism, exoticism, “primitivism,” radical politics, etc.). How should we read the interaction of modern art with occultism, including spiritualism? As I have noted elsewhere, the occult interests 8 Hjartarson, “Ghosts,” 139. 9 Morehead and Otto, “Representation,” 157. 10 As shown in Traces du Sacré and L’Europe des Esprits, but also already argued by Rosenblum, Modern Painting, which is among the first studies in post-modern scholarship to recognise the religious (be it called “spiritual,” “mystical” or “occult”) in modern art, together with those of Ringbom and Welsh.

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and practices of modern artists varied considerably between individuals, groups and movements ranging … from the briefest and most incidental references to a single source, on the one hand, to active membership of occult organisations and full commitment to occult beliefs on the other. Most artists occupied a position somewhere in between these two poles.11

This is borne out by current scholarship, which offers case studies of individuals in relation to occultism, as well as to religion,12 but increasingly also turns to highlighting the mediating role of individual agents and the networks penetrated by occult thought. Examples of the latter are the French art exhibitions known as the Salons de la Rose+Croix (1892-1897). Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918), instigator of these Salons, propagated a particular mixture of Catholic revivalism, Rosicrucianism and occultism. More than two hundred artists participated in the Salons, including Symbolists from Les XX in Brussels. Some of them were deeply involved in occultism, such as Jean Delville (1867-1953); others weren’t at all, but valued the opportunity to exhibit their work. Others again, such as Dutch Symbolist Jan Toorop (1858-1928), whose art of the time is filled with mystical and mythical motifs, had indeed taken a turn towards mysticism and subscribed to a spiritual renewal of and through the arts, although not necessarily to occultism per se.13 Toorop’s The New Generation (1892) (colour plate 1), with Catholic undertones but a tiny Buddha statue in the right upper corner too, was exhibited at the first Rose+Croix Salon.14 The Salons provided a platform for many art works that fit a general occultural atmosphere, as it were, rather than conveying occult knowledge or creating esoteric effects, which seems in any case to have been only a minor concern in occult-inflected modern art. The pervasive presence of occultism in modern culture made for occult-curious audiences, a trove of occult motifs, and opportunities for artists either way. Artists and their audiences were both familiar with the discourse of occultism and interacted with its rhetoric and social practices, without necessarily subscribing to occult doctrines. An illustrative case is that of American-British artist James Whistler (1834-1903), in particular the creation 11 Bauduin, “Occult,” 430. 12 For instance Silverman, Van Gogh. 13 Chaitow, Redemption; Clerbois, “In search of”; Cole, Jean Delville; Greene, Mystical Symbolism; Imanse and Steen, “Achtergronden,” 26-28; Pincus-Witten, Salons. 14 Greene, Mystical Symbolism, 96-97.

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and reception of his “white” and “black” paintings. As Jonathan Shirland has shown, spiritualist aesthetics seem to have informed the style as well as iconographical and technical aspects of Whistler’s painting. In his Black Portraits the artist applied thin layers of oil-paints to the canvas, often with very little tonal variation, only to (partially) rub them off and apply new layers, achieving almost translucent glazes and providing those portrayed with a distinctly spectral look, as the sitters seem to slowly materialise out of their indistinct surroundings (colour plate 2). Moreover, and importantly, the reaction of Whistler’s audience to his portraits was also filtered through Spiritualism. Viewers and critics described them in spiritualist terms: the figures are “spirits” and “phantoms,” “half-materialized ghosts at a … séance.”15 The subject or iconography of a work of art need not be overtly spiritualist or occult, and an artist need not explicitly relate it to Spiritualism, in order for it to be registered by viewers as spiritualist or otherwise occult. Artists in turn may play with their audience’s occulture-informed expectations – as Whistler probably did – and create an atmosphere of occultism in their work and/or around their (public) persona. Now, Whistler attended spiritualist séances throughout his career,16 but then as well as today, a (known) presence or absence of occult activity on the part of an artist is hardly a prerequisite for a viewer’s response to art being filtered through an occult frame of reference. The tendency towards mysticism and inner experiences as a route to knowledge, to which many modern artists across Europe subscribed, prompted both soul-searching and deep, often rather eclectic, immersion in occult sources. The importance of Symbolism and Decadence as a hotbed for occultism-informed syncretistic thought in modernism is obvious. In 1892, Péladan had proclaimed the artist to be a “priest” and “magician,” and the self-perception of artists as prophets or visionaries who had the task of ushering in a new world persisted, particularly in circles of artists involved in Theosophy, well into the interbellum.17 A sizeable portion of occult-inflected modern(ist) art works can be seen in this light as catalysts of a new kind of reality. That is not to say that they are necessarily representational in a naturalist sense of the term; rather, they were indices of a higher reality and their intended effect was to reshape (current) reality.18 Formally, they often gravitated towards abstraction. Kandinsky’s work is a well-known if 15 Shirland, “Enigmas,” 81-87. 16 Ibid., 76-77. 17 Imanse and Steen, “Achtergronden,” 32. 18 Wilson, Modernism, 14, 16.

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slightly overdetermined example of this. Less famous (as of yet) but just as interesting is Swedish modern artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), in whose extremely inventive and original oeuvre figuration and abstraction, higher truth and spiritual reality, art and science meet in fascinating ways.19 Further study of modernism and modern art in connection with occultism would do well to pursue subjects that are still insufficiently studied, and should not limit its focus only to painting. Dutch expressionist Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876-1923), for example, turned as a mature artist to stainedglass windows. A committed Anthroposophist by this time, she had initially joined the Theosophical Society out of a yearning for societal change and renewal as well as a strong religious drive. Her radical spirit led to avantgarde formal innovation as well as to sustained spiritual-epistemological study and an embrace of Anthroposophy.20 The stained-glass windows that van Heemskerck started designing by the end of the 1910s are inspired by Anthroposophical ideas concerning colour (going back to Goethe), light mysticism, and utopian studies on the transformation of the world through art and architecture, or an idealist Gesamtkunstwerk. Composition (1920) (colour plate 3), a coloured-glass mosaic, depicts the apocalyptic battle of the archangel Michael (on the left) with the dragon of Revelations 12:1-12. The lectures that Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) gave about the angel and the so-called “Michael impulse” (the connection of intelligence with spirituality) formed a background to this mosaic, which was meant to inspire mankind in its battle against materialism. The artist combined her preferences for a particular style, form and colour with her view of glass art as the perfect Gesamtkunstwerk-medium.21 The oeuvre of van Heemskerck is impressive, and far from being a source of “embarrassment,”22 attention to the role of occult ideas in this (and potentially any) artist’s sourcing, outlook, network and/or practice allows us to better position the work(s) of art in question. It also does not detract from appreciation on formal grounds per se. Interestingly, the Anthroposophical Society has long disregarded van Heemskerck’s work, although it is by all accounts deeply inspired by Anthroposophy.23 Its formal innovations were concurrent with avant-garde developments of the time and this may well be the crux of the matter. The preferred aesthetics of many occult groups were representational forms and 19 Bauduin, “Science and Occultism”; see also Althaus et al., World Receivers. 20 Huussen and Paasschen-Louwerse, Jacoba van Heemskerck, 198. 21 Huussen and Paasschen-Louwerse, Jacoba van Heemskerck, 153, 161-162. 22 Silver apparently still experiences the old modernist fear when confronted with occultinflected avant-garde art: Silver, “Afterlife.” 23 Huussen and Paasschen-Louwerse, Jacoba van Heemskerck, 199.

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styles, such as Art Nouveau and Jugendstil. Thus, while the Theosophical and Anthroposophical Society, for instance, counted among its members several artists who have since then been canonised as “abstract pioneers,” Early Abstract Expressionism or Neoplasticism were hardly ever their preferred cup of tea – which, if anything, points to the prevailing didactic function of art within occultism. Further research is needed here, as only Anthroposophical art has been an object of sustained study to date.24 Fruitful interaction between the visual arts and esotericism is hardly something new to modernity. Indeed, Western esotericism can boast a long tradition of esoteric illustration, encompassing images that served to communicate and inform (for instance didactic and explanatory devices), generate knowledge (revelatory or initiatory images), or function as religious or magical objects in themselves (talismans or icons), among others. Without detracting from the high quality of some of them, the majority are not so much autonomous works of art as we understand art today (although we can still view and exhibit them as such) as they are intersemiotic translations, or illustrations: they provide a translation from one frame of meaning to another.25 A modern subset of esoteric visual culture is mediumistic art: visual works produced by mediums (not practising as artists outside the mediumistic context). Broadly speaking, their intersemiotic character sets them apart from art made by modern(ist) artists in context with occultism. The interaction of the occult and aesthetic fields that took place during modernity led to an abundance of drawings, paintings, sculpture and even architecture produced by mediums. These were regularly made under guidance of spirits or other entities and/or depicted occult elements that the medium had perceived clairvoyantly. In certain cases the spirit was a deceased artist who was posthumously producing new work, as it were, through the medium. The hand of Dutch medium Hendrik Mansveld (1874-1957), for instance, was apparently used by many (deceased) nineteenth-century painters well-known in the Netherlands, such as Jacob Maris and Hendrik Willem Mesdag, but also by French artists such as Auguste Rodin. Indeed, up to one hundred and twenty spirits contested over Mansveld’s hand, or so a contemporary spiritualist publication reports.26 The main draw of 24 Kries, Rudolf Steiner; Fäth and Voda, Aenigma. 25 I have borrowed the concept of intersemiotic translation from the discipline of book studies; see Pereira, “Book Illustration.” As with book illustration, the best examples transcend their translation function to stand on their own as new semiotic departure points. 26 Boekhoven, “Nederlandsch schilder medium,” 124, 126.

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mediumistic works such as Mansveld’s, and indeed their key feature, was their alienated production.27 They were discussed, reproduced, exhibited and collected because they functioned as evidence of the possibility of occult communication, and are more or less documentary in character. The innovative character of mediumistic art lies occasionally in their formal or aesthetic aspects, but predominantly in their claims to authorless creation or authorial displacement. This clearly resonated with one of modernism’s main motifs: a thorough destabilising of authorship and the locus of creative genius, which induced many to attend séances or experiment with dissociation, automatism and altered authorship themselves. We should therefore note that the interchanges between the discourses of art and occultism were mutual. Occultism, and spiritualism in particular, produced a rich visual culture, the central theme of which is an aesthetics of the invisible. Visual material such as spirit photography, mediumistic art, thought-transference pictures, psychic inkblots, etc. was ubiquitous in modern culture.28 A rich interchange occurred between occult visual culture and Symbolism – with spiritualists finding inspiration in “ghostly” or “spiritual” modern art as much as symbolists drawing upon Spiritualism29 – but modernist artists found their way to it too. An abundance of spectral motifs and haunted aesthetics can be found in much avant-garde art, and film and photography in particular. As Benedikt Hjartarson has recently demonstrated, an analysis of an avant-garde film such as Vormittagsspuk (Ghosts before Breakfast, 1928) by Hans Richter (1888-1976) that is sensitive to its motifs borrowed from occulture’s visual repertoire, opens up new ways of seeing and analysing this film. Contextualised by spiritualism’s culturally pervasive visual language of the invisible, Vormittagsspuk’s shots (see image on next page) of floating hands, bowler hats and teacups, people disappearing into lampposts, and four men sitting at a table with their hands in a particular position (as in a séance) while their hats fly overhead evoke scenes of haunting at the very least, and demonstrate the film’s rootedness in contemporary occultural aesthetics.30 The impact of this visual culture of the invisible upon modern art is still to be completely charted. A promising avenue of research is periodical 27 See also Marco Pasi on creative dissociation and alienated agency: Pasi, “Hilma af Klint,” 113-16. 28 Chéroux, Perfect Medium; Fauchereau and Pijaudier, L’Europe; Gunning, “To Scan”; Otto, “Image,” 320-322. 29 Keshavjee, “L’Art Inconscient”; idem, “Science”; Nead, Haunted Gallery. 30 Hjartarson, “Ghosts,” 142-145, 157-161. The f ilm can be watched online: https://vimeo. com/34809672 (accessed 12 July, 2018).

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Fig. 1: Hans Richter, Vormittagsspuk (Ghosts before Breakfast), 1928. Film still. Black and white film, ca. 9 mins. © Estate Hans Richter (photo: author).

studies.31 Periodicals were the go-to option for occult-curious audiences even as they were occultism’s communicative platform par excellence, discussing, presenting and visually illustrating the newest occult, spiritualist, parapsychological and related insights and undertakings. A similarly underexplored area concerns exhibition history, in particular the small-scale shows organised by branches of the Theosophical Society, spiritualist associations, etc., which showcased mediumistic work but often also included work by occult-curious artists. Methodological reorientations such as discourse analysis are pointing the way towards an integrated view of modern art. Artists were thinking about art, but also about nature, mysticism, intuition, spontaneity, anarchism, world peace, four-dimensional mathematics and a host of other themes. The field of art extended into those of science, politics, religion and, indeed, occultism. A more rounded view of the development of modern art and modernism in the arts is achieved by accounting for such discursive interaction wherever relevant; and while several useful typologies for studying modern

31 Morrison, “Periodical Culture.”

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(or contemporary) art in relation to occultism have been proposed,32 there is room for expansion there too. Presently, studies (and exhibitions) of modernism, the avant-garde and modern art are still haunted by the discourse of a “disenchanted modernity” that is yet to be fully dispelled. The definitive study of the occult in modern art – if such an encyclopaedic undertaking could ever be successfully accomplished – remains to be written.

32 E.g. Bauduin and Johnsson, “Introduction,” 16-17; Kokkinen, “Occulture”; Pasi, “Coming Forth.”



Is it true that secret societies are trying to control the world? Henrik Bogdan

A few months ago, as I picked up my youngest daughter from school – she was nine at the time – she asked “Dad, do the Illuminati exist, for real?” She was obviously worried about them, so I tried to calm her down, explaining that it was only a myth or a story with very little connection to reality. She was silent for a moment, and then exclaimed, “Oh, you mean like a conspiracy theory!” The scholar in me was intrigued. Illuminati? Conspiracy theories? Where did she hear about things like that? As we continued our walk home, she explained that “everybody” in school was talking about it, and that many of her friends were terrified of the Illuminati. “So, what are the Illuminati?” I asked. “They are a secret club that rules the world … Have you seen the American dollar bill?!” I had indeed. “And a conspiracy theory,” I continued, “what’s that, then?” “Well, it’s like a story or theory about something which is not true.” The point of this anecdote is not to show how credulous Swedish school kids might be. Rather, it nicely illustrates just how long-lived and widespread polemical narratives of Western esotericism actually are. Whilst the specific fear of the Illuminati goes back to the aftermath of the French Revolution, it is intrinsically connected to a grand mnemohistorical narrative of esoteric organisations having a secret political agenda with the ultimate goal of controlling the world. As we shall see, this grand narrative was shaped during the eighteenth century, but precursors or earlier versions can be found throughout the history of Western culture. In particular, it was with the emergence of the Order of Freemasons during the first half of the eighteenth century that the fear of institutionalised forms of esotericism developed into one of the more prominent tropes of what we might call the Grand Polemical Narrative of Western culture, or Western esotericism as rejected knowledge.1 The polemics against “secret societies” are thus in many ways illustrative of general processes of identity-formation, marginalisation, and the creation of an “Other.” What sets this particular strand of polemical narratives apart, however, is that the fear of secret societies has been (and continues to be) one of the most dangerous narratives in the history of 1

See e.g., Hanegraaff, “Forbidden Knowledge”; “The Birth of Esotericism.”

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Western esotericism – if not the most dangerous one. While online attacks on celebrities such as Beyonce, Madonna and Katie Perry, or politicians such as George W. Bush as suspected members of the Illuminati might be dismissed as innocent jokes, the fact is that secret societies such as Freemasonry have been condemned not only by the Church(es), but also by totalitarian, fascist, Nazi, and communist regimes, leading to large-scale persecutions of their members. Furthermore, since at least the end of the nineteenth century, the political condemnation has been entwined with anti-Semitic polemics.2 The merging of anti-Semitism with polemics against secret societies came to the fore in the infamous but highly influential fabricated text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (first published in Russia in 1903), which “exposed” an alleged Jewish-Masonic conspiracy to take over the world. However, the goal of the present essay is not to dismiss the belief that secret societies are trying to control the world as yet another conspiracy theory (along with claims that the attacks on 9/11 were an inside job, that the 1969 moon landing was faked, that chemtrails are evidence that the government is spraying some kind of chemical to control the population, or that “lizard people” are running the world). Instead, I would like to discuss some implications that the question “Is it true that secret societies are trying to control the world?” has for the study of Western esotericism. In addition, I shall provide a brief historical outline of how this particular polemical discourse emerged during the eighteenth century. The institutionalisation of Western esotericism in the eighteenth century can be seen as one of the main dividing characteristics by which we can distinguish pre-modern from modern forms of esotericism. Pre-modern forms of esotericism were, to all intents and purposes, limited affairs in the sense that they concerned small groups of intellectuals. By contrast, the eighteenth century witnessed the spread and development of esoteric (often trans-national) organisations that drew its members from a wide range of professions, denominations and political camps. This “democratisation of the occult” continued throughout the nineteenth century, when leading organisations such as Freemasonry began to admit women and non-Christians. Esoteric organisations such as Freemasonry are frequently referred to as “secret societies,” implying that they are characterised by a ritualistic use of secrecy, and this has led scholars to investigate the secrecy encountered in such groups from theoretical perspectives.3 For instance, based on a study of American Freemasonry, Hugh B. Urban has argued that secrecy 2 See the recent important study by Kreis, Quis ut Deus? 3 On Freemasonry, see Bogdan and Snoek, Handbook of Freemasonry; Péter, British Freemasonry; Önnerfors, Freemasonry. It should be noted that not all forms of Freemasonry are

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and the masonic hierarchical initiations were not just means of acquiring status, but more importantly, that layers of secrecy also served to re-code and legitimate that status.4 In this context it is helpful to view the use of secrecy in Freemasonry, along the lines of Pierre Bourdieu, as “symbolic capital,” a term which refers to the resources that confer honour, status, or recognition to an individual within a specific cultural setting. From a sociological perspective, the specific function of secrecy can then be understood as intimately connected to questions of power, legitimacy and authority. Other scholars, such as Jan Snoek, have analysed the use of secrecy in this type of organisation in relation to gnosis or experiential knowledge.5 According to this approach, the experience of undergoing a masonic ritual of initiation is often interpreted as the secret of Freemasonry itself and, furthermore, it is claimed to be difficult or impossible to communicate that experience to people who have not gone through the same ritual. Only those who have shared the experience, or gnosis, of a particular ritual are able to access the secret. However, the use of secrecy can also be a cause for suspicion and fear, as shown by the condemnation of Freemasonry by the Church from the 1730s onwards – something to which we shall return further on in this chapter. However, the fear or suspicion of secret societies is not only based on the use of secrecy. A second recurrent theme in the polemics against esoteric organisations is that the teachings they are transmitting to their members are anti-social or incompatible with the Christian faith. Allegations concerning the incompatibility with Christianity often centre on the supposed pagan origins of Freemasonry, an assumption which masons themselves helped foster through their claim of having been founded in ancient times. The supposed antiquity of Freemasonry is stressed already in the first constitutions of the Order of Freemasons, published in 1723. The first half of Anderson’s Constitution, as this text is commonly referred to, consists of a history of Freemasonry that starts with Adam and is then traced through the Old Testament, antiquity, and the Middle Ages, reaching all the way to the eighteenth century. In this historical overview, Freemasonry is identified as the art and practice of geometry and architecture, and described as an unbroken, perennial tradition transmitted from generation to generation. The idea that Freemasonry was esoteric. For a discussion on Freemasonry and Western esotericism, see Bogdan, “Freemasonry and Western esotericism.” 4 Urban, “Adornment of Silence,” 1-27. See also von Stuckrad, “Secrecy as Social Capital,” 239-252, and the classic article by Simmel, “Sociology of Secrecy,” 441-498. 5 Snoek “Allusive Method,” 39.

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founded in antiquity – be it at the time of the construction of Solomon’s Temple or in pharaonic Egypt – continued to be propagated by both Freemasons and non-Masons well into the nineteenth century, and it was frequently claimed that the rituals of Freemasonry are the most ancient and consequently the most genuine rituals available to mankind. In fact, it was not until the late nineteenth century that this idea was challenged on historical-critical grounds in any serious sense. The notion that Freemasonry is the custodian and transmitter of a tradition reaching back to antiquity can be seen as a version of Renaissance speculations concerning a philosophia perennis (perennial philosophy), allegedly transmitted through a chain of initiates, including fictional and historical figures, such as Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Moses, Pythagoras and Plato. The invention of traditions is not unique to Western esotericism and Freemasonry, however, but can be seen as a common strategy to bolster the credibility of a wide range of movements.6 More specifically, the creation of a sacred tradition is tightly connected to claims of authority and legitimacy.7 By stressing that Freemasonry is an ancient institution, Freemasons are thus claiming to be the custodians and legitimate transmitters of an authentic tradition; that is, they remain true to the principles and traditions that have been handed down to them. The most important characteristic of Freemasonry, in its various forms, is the practice of rituals of initiation.8 Based on medieval ceremonies of accepting new members into the guilds of stonemasons, it was with the publication of Samuel Prichard’s highly influential Masonry Dissected (1730), that the rituals of Freemasonry reached their completion, in the sense that there were now three degrees: Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason.9 The first Papal ban of Freemasonry was pronounced eight years later by Pope Clement XII, through his Bull In eminenti apostolatus, followed by many reiterations by subsequent popes. The main argument for condemning Freemasonry was the use of secrecy and the swearing of oaths during rituals of initiation: Now it has come to Our ears, and common gossip has made clear, that certain Societies, Companies, Assemblies, Meetings, Congregations or Conventicles called in the popular tongue Liberi Muratori or Francs Massons 6 Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition. 7 Lewis and Hammer, Invention of Sacred Tradition. 8 Bogdan, Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation; Snoek, “Masonic Rituals of Initiation,” 321-327. 9 Snoek, “Evolution of the Hiramic Legend,” 11-53.

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or by other names according to the various languages, are spreading far and wide and daily growing in strength; and men of any Religion or sect, satisfied with the appearance of natural probity, are joined together, according to their laws and the statutes laid down for them, by a strict and unbreakable bond which obliges them, both by an oath upon the Holy Bible and by a host of grievous punishment, to an inviolable silence about all that they do in secret together. But it is in the nature of crime to betray itself and to show itself by its attendant clamor. Thus these aforesaid Societies or Conventicles have caused in the minds of the faithful the greatest suspicion, and all prudent and upright men have passed the same judgment on them as being depraved and perverted. For if they were not doing evil they would not have so great a hatred of the light. Indeed, this rumor has grown to such proportions that in several countries these societies have been forbidden by the civil authorities as being against the public security, and for some time past have appeared to be prudently eliminated.10

In addition to these ritualistic practices, the masons were also accused of heresy, and the officials of the church were charged “to pursue and punish them with condign penalties as being most suspect of heresy.” I consider it significant that the alleged “grievous punishment” afflicted upon Masons who broke their oaths of secrecy is stressed in the Bull; these punishments have been the source of many controversies from the early seventeenth century up to the present day. Not only have Masons themselves questioned these penalties, but critics from outside have done the same. For instance, there is a long-lasting theory that the “Jack the Ripper” murders resembled the disembowelment mentioned in masonic penalties, and that the Masons were somehow involved in the murders. These penalties can be found in some of the earliest masonic sources that we have, such as the Edinburgh House Register Ms., from 1696. In this text we find a brief and concise oath that binds the candidate to keep secret everything he learns during the ritual. Just prior to the taking of the oath, the candidate is told that he will be murdered if he does not keep the oath he is about to take. The penalty is given as follows: … under no less pain then haveing [sic] my tongue cut out under my chin and of being buried, within the flood mark where no man shall know, then he makes the sign again with drawing his hand under his chin alongst his throat which denotes that it be cut out in caise [sic] he break his word.11 10 http://www.papalencyclicals.net/clem12/c12inemengl.htm.[September 6, 2018] My emphasis. 11 Knoop, Jones and Hamer, Early Masonic Catechisms.

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Having one’s throat cut and one’s tongue pulled out is obviously a very painful way of dying. A more recent variant is the so-called Sicilian necktie allegedly used by the mafia, which refers to the act of slitting open the throat just above the Adam’s apple and pulling the person’s tongue through the hole, making it look like a little necktie.12 The victim will suffocate and die. The act of drawing the hand under the chin, mentioned in the text, is still being used today as the sign of an Entered Apprentice, in allusion to the penalty. Of course, the act of cutting out the tongue is symbolically appropriate as punishment for someone who has not been able to keep silent. Being buried by the sea implied that the person would not be buried on consecrated ground, and would therefore face eternal damnation. However, there soon appeared additions to the penalty. Having the throat cut and the tongue pulled out was apparently not enough. Something more had to be done! The Dumfries No. 4 Ms, from around 1710, added that the heart would be taken out alive, and the head would be chopped off. The threat of having one’s heart cut out was picked up by others as well, for instance in the printed exposure A Mason’s Confession, from around 1727. But again, having the throat cut, the tongue pulled out, and the heart removed, was still not enough. The Wilkinson Ms., from around 1727 added the penalty of having the body burnt to ashes. With the publication of Three Distinct Knocks (1760), the oaths and the corresponding penalties were finalised, as it were, and no significant changes were made to the oaths of the Craft degrees in the main masonic system until the 1980s. In the 1960s, British Masons began to question and discuss the relevance of these penalties: it was argued that they were not only puerile and offensive, but also that such penalties were incompatible with the civil, moral and religious duties of the Masons. On June 11, 1986, the United Grand Lodge of England resolved that “all references to physical penalties be omitted from the Obligations taken by Candidates in the three Degrees.” Although Freemasonry was charged with “being against the public safety” already in the 1738 Bull, the anti-social and revolutionary nature of Freemasonry was stressed increasingly in anti-Masonic polemics during the politically unstable final decades of the century. They culminated in the extremely popular works of Augustin Barruel’s Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797) and John Robinson’s Proofs of a Conspiracy (1798), 12 This alleged mode of execution is also referred to as the “Italian” or “Colombian” necktie in contemporary popular culture. Historically, this particularly gruesome form of murder was practised during the ten-year civil war in Colombia, La Violencia, from 1948-1958. See Kirk, More Terrible Than Death, 26.

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who both claimed that a masonic-inspired organisation, the Illuminati, had not only caused the French Revolution but continued to conspire against the European states.13 The popularity of these two books, and similar works that repeated the polemical narrative directed against secret societies (such as Seth Payson’s Proofs of the Real Existence, and Dangerous Tendency, Of Illuminism, 1802) led to widespread popular suspicion against secret societies and their hidden political agendas. In the USA, this trend culminated in the creation of an Anti-Masonic Party in 1828, which was actually the third major party to emerge in that country after the Democrats and the National Republicans. The party had its immediate origins in the so-called “Morgan affair,” with the disappearance in 1826 of the former Mason William Morgan (1774-ca. 1826) in upstate New York. Morgan had come to reject Freemasonry, and after he announced that he was going to publish the secret rituals of the organisation, he was arrested and eventually disappeared. Citing the violent penalties that were to be inflicted on brethren who broke their oaths of secrecy, anti-Masons were convinced that the Masons had killed Morgan and were trying to sabotage the legal investigation into the events. The “Morgan affair” dealt a serious blow to Freemasonry and other similar secret societies in the USA, and their membership decreased drastically. The Anti-Masonic Party saw Freemasonry as a threat to Republican principles such as liberty and the inalienable rights of individuals, and believed that masonic politicians and societal leaders were corrupt and dishonest. Although the party disappeared from the scene some ten years later, such polemics against secret societies became an integrated part of American culture, not least among the many Christian denominations throughout the United States. While it is easy to refute some of the more outlandish conspiracy theories about secret societies that are found not only in contemporary popular culture but also in several forms of radical politics14 (sorry, the Illuminati 13 The Bavarian Illuminaten or “Order of the Illuminati” was founded as a student league in 1776 by the philosopher and professor Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830). The organisation quickly developed into a politically influential masonic-like organisation which sought to promote a new morality based on rationality and the ideals of the Enlightenment. The aim was a reformation of the Ancien Régime rather than an open revolution – a reformation realised through education and the infiltration of government colleges and councils. Political intrigues caused internal conflict and public denouncement, and the organisation was banned in Bavaria in 1785, although the Illuminati survived for a few years outside of Bavaria. 14 Polemics against secret societies, such as Freemasonry, are not only to be found in far-right and far-left political milieus, but also in certain forms of radical Islam. An illustrative example of the latter is article 28 of the Hamas Covenant, issued 1988, in which Freemasonry and other similar organisations are accused of being Zionist agents.

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are not ruling the world!), it should be stressed that some of the allegations against organisations such as Freemasonry are actually based on facts. I have already discussed the Papal Bull In eminenti, where Masons are criticised for using secrecy, swearing oaths and threatening their members with violent penalties if they break these oaths. The problem is, however, that these facts are distorted and exaggerated for polemical purposes. The use of secrecy does not need to imply an anti-social agenda, nor does the swearing of an oath to obey the Master of the Chair imply that one is expected to disobey the political and religious authorities of one’s country. That having been said, it can be argued that Freemasonry in the eighteenth century did in fact aim at the transformation of society, a vision that it shared with many other contemporary forms of Western esotericism. As pointed out by Hanegraaff, the modernisation of esotericism is characterised (among other things) by doctrines of evolutionary development linked to notions of human improvement and progress.15 In the specific context of Freemasonry, this was envisioned as a moral and spiritual transmutation that would be facilitated through its initiatory system. The Entered Apprentice was symbolised by an unhewn stone (Rough Ashlar), which was perfected (Perfect Ashlar) in the subsequent degrees. Once enough Perfect Ashlars would exist, a new spiritual temple could be built – a new society based on the particular morality of Freemasonry would emerge.16 In this sense we may indeed speak of a political agenda, but it is far away from the claim that secret societies such as Freemasonry are trying to control the world.

15 Hanegraaff, Western Esotericism, 134. 16 Whilst a wide range of influential politicians have been Freemasons, the complex and vast topic of politics and Freemasonry falls beyond the scope of this short essay. The reader is referred to Bogdan and Snoek, Handbook of Freemasonry, part 4.



Numbers are meant for counting, right? Jean-Pierre Brach

Right. Unfortunately…! But what is counting, anyway? Surely, the word and the mental operations associated with it are not exclusively concerned with those maddening “problems” of leaking taps and the exact quantity of water they are liable to spill in a given amount of time; or with the number of miles it will take for a certain train to catch up with another one, taking into account their respective speed. As a matter of fact, counting, for our distant forebears, did not apply exclusively to items belonging to the physical world. To put it differently, calculus was not necessarily understood as an abstract but useful tool for the study of nature, devoted to the task of reckoning, distributing, or classifying the elements of reality, as we know it. The agency of numbers was in fact extended to questions pertaining to the immaterial layers of being as well, inasmuch as numerical entities were perceived as governing central concepts of cosmology, such as harmony, measure, balance or proportion, which could also apply outside the limits of physical reality proper.1 The question of knowing whether numbers actually exist separately on a plane of their own (mathematical “realism”), or whether they are no more than abstractions generated by the working of the human mind (“idealism”), is still being debated today among professional scientists and philosophers. Both stances, which the historical names of Plato (or Pythagoras2) and Aristotle (fifth-fourth cent. BCE) have respectively come to stand for, can be traced back to classical Antiquity. From that period onwards, until well into the seventeenth century at least, numbers have often been closely related to the qualitative aspects of both cosmic and human nature. This particular cultural attitude refers to a type of understanding of mathematics which imbues numbers with the capacity of signifying more than just the quantity they materially refer to. In this perspective, numbers are construed as manifesting effectively the invisible energies at work behind the veil of exterior reality, thus structuring and harmonising the 1 Hoyrup, In Measure, Number and Weight. 2 Riedweg, Pythagoras. The “realistic” status of Pythagorean number is actually disputed among specialists.

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physical world from inside (or from “above”). This view actually presupposes the idea (“neoplatonic,” in a very general way) of a multi-layered universe, in which numerical entities occupy a higher level of reality than the one corresponding to objects belonging to the ordinary physical plane. This doesn’t just entail an ontologically superior quality of being for numbers, it is also at the root of their supposed agency upon the material world. For it is to be remarked that mathematics, seen from this perspective, are not just endowed with certain ontological properties but with cognitive ones as well. Through a network of analogies and correspondences between the different planes, hierarchically distributed, which make up the universe from the divine sphere to stones or herbs,3 numbers supposedly exert their influence and action on all levels of creation. Simultaneously, they contribute to the shaping of physical reality and offer an intellectual and operative “ladder” by which to interpret and eventually manipulate the patterns which preside over the organisation of creation or of individual beings.4 A cogent question, at this point, would undoubtedly be: “So, this may look very satisfactory from a philosophical perspective, but it remains nonetheless very remote from practical reality, doesn’t it?” Well, according to this particular viewpoint, not at all, although it might well seem so to most of us nowadays! The fact that the agency of numbers actually depends on both their ontological and cognitive aspects has a double consequence. On the one hand, being immaterial, numerical entities are perceived almost as an equivalent of the “soul” of natural objects,5 or as “forms” in the generic sense of “essential principles” of reality. If so, this should allow us to understand and gain access to their inner essence and “life” – for according to this particular standpoint, nothing that exists is ever “inanimate.” On the other hand, numbers’ cognitive side is experienced as a powerful instrument, enabling man not only to assess reality – physical or otherwise – from the outside but, furthermore, to manipulate and transform its inner structure 3 Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being. 4 For instance, the importance of the first four numbers (or tetraktys) in the constitution of the basic musical intervals (here construed as the fundamental elements of cosmic proportions and harmony) mirrors the role of the quaternary in the fourfold cognitive faculties attributed to the (individual) soul-harmony by Philolaos and other Pythagoreans. As we shall see further, these features (and their practical applications) play an important role in linking the “philosophy of number” to esotericism as such. 5 “Number” and the “soul” certainly share many characteristics pertaining to components which occupy an intermediary position within the “Golden Chain,” that is the multi-layered, albeit continuous ontological structure of being.

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(and, eventually, its outward features) by operating on the relevant digits and computing them. Seen in this light, where “symbols” as such are not mere abstractions but constituents of nature, mathematics has a lot in common with magic. It is part and parcel of magical practice, whether considered under the rubric of “natural magic” or according to its ritual, angelic counterpart, which supposedly acts upon supernatural creatures (angels, demons) by way of the numerical value of the letters composing their names.6 To top it all, numbers are sometimes endowed, in this context, with a specific “virtue” of their own, that is a “force” or energy which works in accordance with the plane of existence on which they are being put to use,7 and by which they can actually exert their influence on reality, when triggered by the magician’s soul and imagination. Even though number may occasionally be qualified as “natural,” it is nevertheless considered as quite distinct, even from this perspective, from “number” as used in trading or accountancy, following a tradition which harks back to Plato himself.8 More than the direct expression of pure quantity, “natural number” is therefore number engaged in dimensionality, where quantity as such is viewed as the external garment of finer “forces,” which manifest themselves in or through the material world while in the process of producing, shaping and maintaining it. In this sense, “natural number” is probably more about proportion(s) and pattern(s) than about “numbering” in the usual, properly arithmetical sense of the word. Such tenets obviously depend on a strictly ontological (even theological) view of nature, in which the essence of creation is interpreted as being mostly spiritual and stemming from a divine origin, whose agency is reflected on the lower planes in mathematical harmonies inscribed within the fabric of the universe.9 This leads us to the fact that, within a worldview which considers all things as living beings and arranges them along a scale of perfection that links up all levels of creation from the divine Unity down to the humblest natural element, number not only occupies its specific rank and plane of existence, but is equally susceptible to many transpositions along the scala naturae (“ladder of nature”). Mathematical entities, therefore, enjoy a three-fold 6 Agrippa, De occulta philosophia (1533), II, 1-3, 249-254. 7 Either “rational,” “formal,” or “natural,” according to Agrippa (and to his main source of inspiration in this respect, G. Pico della Mirandola [1463-1494]). 8 Plato, Republic, 522c-531c. 9 Plato, Timaeus, 34c-36c.

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application in the realms of cosmology, ethics and theology, thus referring to the cosmic, human and divine orders of reality, respectively. The metaphysical Unity is mirrored in the arithmetical one, and the universal emanative process is reflected in the production of numerical entities from the One. “Now, isn’t this an outrageous over-interpretation of the concept of number?” Well, it goes without saying that the resources of analogy and the use of correspondences (should) have their limits.10 One cannot very well think of contradicting Aristotle, when he points out ironically that if there are, for instance, seven planets, seven metals and seven gates to the city of Thebes, this hardly tells us anything meaningful concerning either the nature of reality itself or the motives behind the supposed agency of the number 7.11 Aristotle denies number in general the quality of being a “formal cause” and, thus, the capacity to play any active role in cosmogony. For him, number is really no more than a mental abstraction, linked to the mere expression of quantity, understood in turn as an accidental feature of the “substance” which is, in principle, common to all terrestrial things. As such, it really serves no other purpose than to count objects of the same kind and group them together, for logical and/or practical means. While obviously dismissive of number symbolism as such, this philosophical stance has the great merit of reminding us of the importance of quantity, as regards the existence and purpose of numbers per se. Even if one accepts indulging in the pursuit of arithmology, the qualitative analogies linked to any given number can never be dissociated from its quantitative value, as shown in the example of the planets given above: no other digit than seven – their recognised number in classical and early modern science – could symbolically represent them and suggest the existence of significant correspondences (however moot these may now appear to us) with other natural compounds grouped under a septenary classification.12 Another very cogent query at this point could be: “And besides numbers, what about geometry?” Ever since Plato’s Timaeus, Western culture has been familiar with the tenet of the five existing regular polyhedra being in close correspondence to the four elements13 and “the All.”14 Even before Plato, it 10 Eco, The Limits of Interpretation, passim. 11 Aristotle, Metaphysics, XIV, 6. 12 All of them supposedly expressing the fact that 7 was held to be the main structural factor of life and nature, governing their overall organisation, in classical as well as in Semitic cultures. 13 Linked to each other, in turn, by a proportional means which Luca Pacioli (1445-1517), in 1509, called “Divine Proportion” (De divina proportione, f. 4 r°) on account of its supposed, divinely ordained intervention in cosmic architecture. 14 Plato, Timaeus, 55 c-d.

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seems that various features (sides, angles) of the elementary geometrical shapes were linked, in Pythagorean thought, with various deities.15 Given the obvious relationship between the first digits and the basic structure of the triangle, square, etc., this points again to the cosmo-theological interpretation of quantity as referring to the mathematical harmony underlying the cosmos, as well as to divine characteristics expressing the nature of the different gods. The fact that the same numerical and geometrical features actually find themselves applied on different planes of existence concurs with the basic tenet of the unicity (ontological continuity) of creation, as well as with the endowment of numbers with the capacity to lift the intellect from natural knowledge to the contemplation of the divine principles, which was a philosophical commonplace. “Now, seriously, do we have any real basis for the intellectual relevance of number symbolism?” Ugh! – I wish you hadn’t asked that one… The doctrinal justifications behind this anagogical and qualitative use of numbers and/or geometry are, unfortunately, very scarce in the available literature. There is of course little doubt that such explanations actually existed but, for some reason, they are almost never stated explicitly in classical times. Even Plato stops at a detailed description of the cosmogonic activity of the demiurge, who is crafting the World-Soul and organising it according to numerical proportions (rather than actual numbers). He does not elaborate on the philosophical motives behind this recourse to mathematical harmonies. Later Hellenistic texts are more in the nature of short aide-memoires limited to listing the principal significations of the first ten numbers and are devoid of any speculative developments. It is clear that treatises featuring a detailed rationale for the use of number symbolism did indeed exist (including a lost one by Nicomachus of Gerasa, second cent. BCE) but they were simply not handed down to us. “By the way, did Christian culture endorse the use of number symbolism?” Traditions that harked back to a type of “wisdom” certainly antedating the classical period, before being integrated within Greek philosophy, were given a new career, and new doctrinal foundations, with the advent of Christianity. While it is well-known that Christianity borrowed many tenets from classical philosophy, its task was also – mainly, perhaps – to offset “pagan wisdom” with the contents of the Revelation. Scripture, as the main source of Christian revelation, was held to be divinely inspired; therefore, any text featured in the Bible, including of course those with numerical occurrences, could not fail to mirror some amount of divine 15 Proclus, Commentary to the First Book of Euclid’s Elements, 173-174.

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truth. In this context, numbers were simply bound to have one or several core meanings, the supernal origin of which vouchsafed for their spiritual significance(s), alongside or above their ordinary, quantitative value. Not only were they considered to be pointing, of necessity, to different aspects of divine knowledge by their mere presence in Scripture, but their in-depth exegesis was, accordingly, a compulsory task for the interpreter and could not be ignored, as recognised early on by Ambrose, Augustine and other Church Fathers or theologians. From this period on, numbers were apprehended as metaphysical principles. They represented the “essences” of all creatures, present within the mind of the Godhead, therefore underlining not just their divine origin, but also their “intellectual” nature and their capacity to lay out a harmonious, living cosmos, in which everything was linked to everything else in “measure, number and weight.”16 If Christian arithmology does retain, for the most part, the threefold pagan application of number mentioned above,17 it is furthermore prone to interpret the three modes of quantity featured in the biblical sentence as the imprint or emblem of the Trinity within the structure of creation, thus harmonising Neoplatonic and Christian views on qualitative number. Not much later, by the fifth century, Boethius (477-524 CE)18 provided the West with one of the most classic and systematic exposés pertaining to the theological transposition of mathematics. In his treatise on arithmetics, number is principally exalted as an intermediary between theology and physics. Such views, as stated above, hint at some sort of isomorphism between the soul and numerical entities, in the sense that both supposedly serve as a powerful and indispensable link between the material and spiritual planes of reality. This intermediary role is here understood strictly in terms of “rungs” on the overlapping ontological and cognitive ladders of existence. It is only in a much later (early modern) phase of European history19 that it was overlaid with a specific “energy” of its own, supposedly accounting for its capacity to “animate” and shape material reality, as well as to combine itself with different forms of magical practice. If such views may appear not only rather strange, but even hardly coherent to us today, regardless of our personal take on the effective existence (or not) 16 Wisdom 11: 21. 17 That is, following the cosmological, ethical and theological perspectives. 18 Boethius, De arithmetica. 19 With authors such as Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Johann Trithemius (1462-1516), Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522), Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), and others.

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of mathematical entities as independent beings, we must remember that they were nevertheless perfectly consistent with the broadly Neoplatonic philosophical perspective to which they actually belong. Furthermore, number symbolism is part of a worldview which – although no longer shared by contemporary Western culture on account of its theological assumptions – was logically sound and was perceived to allow some valuable insights into the nature of reality. To establish as vivid a picture as possible of the beliefs and intellectual tendencies in a given context and time period is, of course, one of the main aspects of the task incumbent on the cultural historian. Number symbolism, it must be remembered, has been for centuries an important factor of our European outlook regarding the relations between theological and scientific discourses on nature.20 That we no longer look on numerical entities as autonomous intermediaries, endowed with a life and influence of their own and yielding access to the intimate essence of reality, does not mean that the idea of a qualitative side to mathematical knowledge is necessarily ludicrous. It first reflects an attempt to breach the gap between the divine origin of creation and its seemingly cruder physical characteristics. It is also an important part of an explanatory model of the universe, of its structure and organisation. Finally, it rationalises the relations between the hidden as well as the visible components of nature, the material and immaterial world(s), inasmuch as they exhibit the workings of divine initiative. We must therefore remember that the qualitative side of mathematics, far from being limited to a repertoire of trite analogies or to puerile pseudo-divinatory procedures (known today as “numerology”), was for a long time an integral part of a profound philosophical set of mainstream doctrines. Religious, scientific and aesthetic discourses were lastingly combined in an effort to formulate a “holistic” approach to reality in which numbers were considered living components of creation, instead of mere logical operators essentially instrumental in the definition of mathematical laws corseting the universe under the exclusive rule of discursive knowledge.

20 These discourses were, of course, not as far apart as they would become from the seventeenth century onwards.



Wasn’t Hermes a prophet of Christianity who lived long before Christ? Roelof van den Broek

The simple answer to this question is: “No, he wasn’t. Hermes never existed as a historical person and, for that reason, cannot possibly have been a prophet of Christianity.” The truth of this answer cannot be contested, but nevertheless it is too limited. The late antique and medieval view that Hermes had been a teacher of divine wisdom in Egypt’s remote past was incorrect, indeed. There is no place for him in the kind of history that deals with verifiable facts about a person’s life and death and the world he lived in, but if we look at him from the perspective of the history of ideas, then this mythical figure was, and for many people even still is, an inspiring teacher of a strong religious view of the world. Hermes never lived but is still very much alive. The belief that in pre-Christian Egypt Hermes had prophesied some typically Christian doctrines was in fact a rather late offshoot of a very complicated tradition, of which only a brief outline can be given here.1 The first centuries of our era saw the appearance of a great number of religiophilosophical writings that were attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. These are usually called the “philosophical Hermetica,” in contrast to another group of texts that also circulated under his name and dealt with magic, astrology and alchemy, the so-called “technical (or: practical) Hermetica.” The best-known treatises of the first group are the seventeen tractates of the Greek Corpus Hermeticum (henceforth CH) and the lengthy Latin Asclepius, but there are also many fragments of unknown books that are quoted by Greek and Latin authors. In the second half of the last century, new fragments and even complete previously unknown books came to light, of which the Coptic Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth Sphere and the Armenian Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius are the most important.2 There is nothing typically Christian in these writings. As a 1 Fowden, Egyptian Hermes; van den Broek, “Hermes Trismegistus I,” “Hermetism,” and “Hermetic Literature I.” 2 Greek and Latin texts: Nock and Festugière, Hermès Trismégiste. Coptic and Armenian texts: Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte. Both editions accompanied by French translations and notes.

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matter of fact, Hermetism was a characteristic product of the “Late Pagan Mind” (Fowden). It taught a holistic vision of the universe, based upon the idea of an indissoluble interrelationship between God, the cosmos and the human being. As will become evident in the course of this chapter, the core elements of Hermetic teaching and practice that were based on this view were irreconcilable with those of Christianity. Nevertheless, in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, there were Christians who recognised in the Hermetic writings some cherished views of their own.3 The primary inducement to read Christian ideas in these pagan books was the doctrine of God they professed. For apologetical reasons, the Christians liked to find ideas similar to their own in writings that were reputedly ancient, because this showed that Christianity was not new but had very ancient roots. The idea “what is new is not true and what is true is not new” was wide-spread among the thinking elite of the first centuries of our era. For that reason, Christians were keen to emphasise that many of their religious ideas were in accordance with those of inspired prophets of old, both Jewish and pagan, e.g. Moses, the Sibyls, and Hermes Trismegistus. To make this point, the Latin Christian writer Lactantius (beginning of the fourth century), wrote that Hermes had “said about God the Father everything and about the Son much which is contained in the divine secrets (i.e. the Holy Scriptures).”4 As we shall see, this is based on a misunderstanding of the Hermetic ideas about the divine being as a whole, but as far as the supreme God is concerned, Christians like Lactantius seem to have a point: Hermes assures the majesty of the most high and only God and designates him with the same names as we do, “Lord and Father.” And to prevent that anyone would try to know his name, he has said that God is “without name,” since he does not need a proper name, just because of his oneness. He says it himself in this way: “God is one, the One does not need a name because He-Who-Is is nameless.”5

Other modern annotated translations in English: Copenhaver, Hermetica (CH and Asclepius); Salaman et al., Way of Hermes (CH, Armenian Definitions, by Mahé). In German: Holzhausen, Corpus Hermeticum Deutsch (CH, Asclepius, Fragments, Coptic Discourse). In Italian: Ramelli, Corpus Hermeticum (CH, Asclepius, Fragments, Coptic Discourse). In Dutch: van den Broek and Quispel, Hermetische geschriften (all Greek, Latin, Coptic and Armenian texts). 3 Löw, Hermes Trismegistus; Moreschini, Hermes Christianus; Lucentini, “Hermetic Literature II.” 4 Lactantius, Divine Institutes IV, 27, 20. 5 Lactantius, Divine Institutes I, 6, 4.

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However, on closer inspection, this congruence of Hermetic and Christian ideas is simply due to the fact that both are heavily indebted to Greek philosophy, the Platonic views about the transcendence of the highest divine principle in particular. The claim that Hermes had also spoken about Christ as the Son of God, though, was built on very shaky grounds. Lactantius was the first to affirm that Hermes already knew of the second person of the Trinity. He quotes the Greek original of Asclepius 8, which states that the “Lord and Maker of all things … made the second God visible and sensible, … the first, single and unique one,” and as such the first God thought him “beautiful and completely filled with all good things, and he admired him and loved him entirely as his own child.”6 As a matter of fact, this text deals with the creation of the cosmos (see below), but from Lactantius onwards Christians continued to cite it as a testimony about the second person of the Trinity. This found its best-known expression in the beautiful marble floor mosaic of the Cathedral of Siena, made by Giovanni di Stefano in 1488 (colour plate 4). It shows “Hermes Mercurius Trimegistus contemporaneus Moysi,” as the subscription reads, at the centre together with two other persons, of which one certainly represents Egypt and the other most probably Moses. Hermes gives the script and laws to Egypt, while his left hand rests on a marble slab supported by two sphinxes, which reads: “God the Creator of all things made with him a visible God and made him the first and only one, in whom he rejoiced, and he very much loved his own son, who is called the Holy Word.” The expression “a second (God),” which sounded offensive to Christian ears, has been changed into “with him” (secum instead of secundum), and to make clear that this refers to the second person of the Trinity, the words “who is called the Holy Word” have been added. In the later Middle Ages, even Christian doctrines without any connection with Hermetic views were attributed to Hermes. A good example is offered by a fresco in the choir vault of the St. Walburgis church in Zutphen, the Netherlands, that was painted a few decades after the Siena mosaic, ca. 1500 (colour plate 57). Just like the floor in Siena, the vault is decorated with the images of pre-Christian prophets of Christianity: Sibyls and, inter alios, Hermes.8 They are identified by name, a banderol above their head contains their prophecy. At the discovery of the painting, in 1911, the name of Hermes was lost, but the accompanying text was generally attributed to 6 Lactantius, Divine Institutes IV, 6, 4. 7 Photograph made by D. Osseman in 2014; see also http://www.pbase.com/pijkkuiperi, sub Gelderland (accessed on 26 July 2018). 8 Dronke, Hermes and the Sibyls.

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the Egyptian sage, and for that reason the name was added at the restoration of the painting: “Trismegistus phs”.9 The text now reads: “The Monad has brought forth a Monad and reflects its ardour to itself.” One of the first to quote this maxim, in a slightly different form, was Alain de Lille (Alanus de Insulis, † 1203), who explained it as an expression of Augustine’s view of the Trinity: the Monads are the Father and the Son, and the ardour is the Holy Spirit as the love that moves between them.10 Alain ascribed the saying to “a philosopher,” but later writers were convinced that it came from Hermes Trismegistus, and it is this opinion that found its pictorial expression in the Zutphen St. Walburgis church. It marks the end of a long and complicated development, which, indeed, started long before the present era. The mythical figure of Hermes Trismegistus has its roots in the OldEgyptian pantheon. He developed out of the moon god Thot, who was considered the inventor of writing and counting, astronomy and magic, and the correct performance of religious practices, in short, the god of culture in all its variety.11 At an early stage, the Greeks must have identified their god Hermes with the Egyptian Thot, for already the historian Herodotus (ca. 450 BCE) takes this identification for granted.12 The reason may have been that both Thot and Hermes were considered messengers of the gods and psychopomps who guided the dead to the underworld. Hermes’ epithet “Trismegistus,” literally the “thrice-greatest,” also has an Egyptian background. In Egyptian, the superlative was expressed by repeating the positive two or three times: “great and great and great” means “greatest” or “very great.” However, in the Greek Raffia decree of 217 BCE, Thot-Hermes is called “the greatest (megistos) and the greatest (megistos),” which later on must have led to the term “Trismegistos.”13 Around the beginning of our era, there were people in the Egyptian-Greek milieu who began to take the Egyptian god Thot-Hermes as an inspired teacher of a specific kind of divine wisdom. Most probably, they formed small groups, in which the teachings of Hermes were discussed and certain 9 For a photograph taken during the restoration, still without the name, see my “Hermes and Christ,” 116. The restoration of the paintings is generally considered too radical. Moreover, it is very likely that the subscription originally was meant to be “Mercurius Hermes phs” (i.e. philosophus). The question of the identity of the prophets is rather complicated, because now there are two Hermeses; see my “Hermes and Christ,” 117-130, and “A Dutch painting.” 10 Alanus, Regulae caelestis iuris, III; Contra haereticos, III, 4. 11 Boylan, Thoth; Kurth, “Thot.” 12 Herodotus, Histories II, 67 and 138. 13 Daumas, “Le fonds égyptien”; Derchain-Urtel, Thot à travers ses épithètes; Quaegebeur, “Thot-Hermès.”

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religious practices were performed. Later on, similar groups may have come into existence in other parts of the Graeco-Roman world as well. There are, however, no external testimonies about their existence: all we know of them has to be deduced from their writings, which roughly date from the first three centuries of our era. These abundantly show that the people who wrote them were familiar with Greek philosophical ideas. In the first half of the twentieth century, the philosophical, mainly Platonic and Stoic, component of Hermetism was intensively studied by experts in Greek philosophy.14 Their main conclusion was that the basic ideas of the “philosophical” Hermetica were little more than a watered-down and religionised version of serious philosophical speculations. Moreover, the Hermetic reports about two types of Hermetic instruction (“general” and “detailed” discourses) and those about meals, hymns, prayers, and initiations were dismissed as literary devices meant to suggest the real existence of Hermetic communities. For some time, these views were almost generally accepted – at least by classicists, for Egyptologists had always maintained that there had been a distinct continuity of ideas from ancient Egypt to Greek Hermetism. The latter view is certainly valid for some specific Hermetic ideas (for instance, the idea of the androgynous self-generating supreme God),15 but it has proved very difficult to convincingly demonstrate that this also holds for the Hermetic world view in general. In the last decades of the last century, however, the idea that Hermetism was little more than a depraved form of philosophy lost its attraction. The turning point was the magisterial edition of the above-mentioned Coptic and Armenian texts by Jean-Pierre Mahé (1978, 1982). It became increasingly clear that Hermetism was primarily and even almost exclusively a religious movement, which only made use of popular philosophical concepts to express its ideas, and that there indeed had been (probably rather small) Hermetic communities in which religious practices were performed. Moreover, the distinction between the “technical” and “philosophical” Hermetica demonstrably turned out to be less strict and the Egyptian context more important than had been assumed before. These diverse aspects of Hermetism cannot be discussed properly within the scope of this article, but a few things must be highlighted. The abovementioned fundamental interrelationship between God, cosmos and man is based on the idea that the supreme God is the One, who contains everything 14 Festugière, in Nock and Festugière, Hermès Trismégiste; Festugière, La révélation; Scott, Hermetica, vols. II and III. 15 Zandee, “Androgyne Gott”; idem, “Der Hermetismus.”

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and produces everything. This is clearly expressed at the beginning of the Asclepius: “All things are part of the One, or the One is all things.” God is an androgynous, eternally creating being, “his essence is to be pregnant of all things and to produce them,”16 and: “If all things are parts of God, then everything is God. Therefore, in making all things, he makes himself.”17 God, cosmos and man may be inseparable, but they are clearly distinguishable: “God is within himself, the world is in God, and man in the world,”18 and “God, the Lord of eternity, is the first, the world is second, man is third.”19 The cosmos is called the “second God” and man the “third living being”: “And so the cosmos becomes the son of God and man the son of the cosmos, – a grandson of God, as it were.”20 God and the cosmos are immortal and indestructible, the material world is perishable because it is made from the lower parts of nature, which are the cause of evil and death. Only the human being has a twofold nature: mortal because of its material body and immortal because of its divine mind. This unique human condition was famously hailed by Hermes in a formula which became central to the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century: “For that reason, Asclepius, man is a great wonder (magnum miraculum est homo), a living being, to be worshipped and honoured.”21 Humans can only return to their divine origin if their immortal part, the mind, takes control over the passions of the body. An important means to achieve this is to contemplate the beautiful order of the cosmos, which inevitably leads to the conclusion that there must be a perfect creator. This idea had already been developed in Stoic philosophy and was to play an important role in later Christian theology, as the cosmological argument for the existence of God. For the Hermetist, though, this was not merely a case of logical thinking but a religious experience. It was the first step on the “Way of Hermes,” which could only be made if one’s thinking was enlightened by God.22 The next steps had to be performed within a Hermetic community. Writings such as CH XIII and the Coptic Discourse make abundantly clear that in these communities, the Hermetic views were taught and discussed, hymns sung and prayers sent up, vegetarian meals enjoyed, and ritual initiations

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

CH V 9. CH XVI 19. Arm. Def. 7: 5. Asclepius 10. CH X 14. Asclepius 6. CH V 2.

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in the Hermetic mystery performed.23 The Hermetic texts describe two kinds of initiation of which one leads to the experience of being united with the supreme God and the other to that of falling together with the universe (which makes no great difference, because the One is everything). The Coptic Discourse describes the moral and spiritual development of the Hermetist as an ascent through the seven planetary spheres, which finds its climax in the initiation proper, the experience of entering the eighth sphere (where the angels sing their silent songs of praise) and the ninth sphere (where the supreme God resides). The same experience is described in CH I, albeit in the form of a post mortem event: reduced to his most proper self, the initiate joins the singing powers of the eighth sphere and then they all ascend to the Father and merge in God: “This is the final good for those who have received knowledge: to become God.”24 The second kind of initiation is described as a rebirth in which the pupil is cleansed from evil and filled with good powers, resulting in an experience of cosmic omnipresence: “I no longer picture things with the sight of my eyes but with the mental energy that comes through the powers: I am in heaven, in earth, in water, in air; I am in animals, in plants, in the womb, before the womb, after the womb, everywhere.”25 These ideas are obviously difficult to reconcile with the basic doctrines of Christianity, especially the conviction of a deep divide between God and man. This also holds for the theory that human beings are able to make the statues of the gods alive and active by conjuring daimones into them.26 It was this view in particular that forced Augustine to a vigorous attack on Hermes Trismegistus, although he, too, had to admit that Hermes had said much “about the one true God, the creator of the world, that is in agreement with the truth.”27 In the Middle Ages, Augustine’s negative view was repeated by several authors,28 but as a whole the positive view of Lactantius prevailed. Hermes remained the ancient Egyptian sage who had prophesied some central doctrines of Christianity, and that even secured him a place in ecclesiastical iconography.29 23 Mahé, Hermès en Haute Égypte, I, 52-59, 146-155; idem, “L’hymne hermétique”; van den Broek, “Religious Practices”; Södergård, Hermetic Piety, 68-120, 203-240; van den Kerchove, La voie d’Hermès, 235-274, and passim. 24 CH I 25-26. 25 CH XIII 11. 26 Asclepius 37-38. 27 City of God VIII, 23-26. 28 Lucentini, “Hermetic Literature II,” 503-510. 29 For the iconography of Hermes in general, from the late Middle Ages to the twentieth century, see Faivre, Eternal Hermes, 17-180.



Weren’t early Christians up against a gnostic religion? Dylan M. Burns

Browsing through histories of the ancient Church and modern esotericism alike, one can indeed get the idea that the greatest foe of the first Christians was the “other seed” of the Gnostics, heretics among Christians who were corrupting (or enlivening, depending on whom you ask) the faith with alien elements. Scholarship today has more or less exploded this view, and while the definition of ancient “Gnosticism” and even the use of the term itself remain deeply controversial, most researchers agree that Gnosticism was inextricable from early Christian social milieus.1 In short, all our external witnesses regarding ancient individuals called gnōstikoi talk about them in a Christian context, all our surviving ancient manuscripts of Gnostic works appear to be products of Christian scribes, and all the theories regarding pre-Christian “Jewish” or “Pagan” Gnosticism have been debunked or rely on distant hypotheticals. Therefore, early Christians were not up against a “Gnostic religion,” because all our evidence about Gnosticism describes individuals related in some way to the emerging phenomenon of “Christianity” – itself an emergent, highly fluid phenomenon at the time. Yet the idea that the Gnostics were a sort of occult “counter-religion” to earliest “proto-orthodox” Christianity has proven extremely difficult to dislodge in our modern imaginations, above all in popular discourse. The myth of a “Gnostic religion” against which early Christians were opposed is old, and it played a decisive role in the popularisation of the first wave of scholarly research about Gnosticism. In order to understand where this popular view comes from, we ought to look to the modern receptionhistory of our ancient Gnostic sources, almost all of which are preserved in the late Egyptian language known as Coptic.2 The best-known of these is the Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in December 1945. Less understood and far more influential, however, are the reception and influence of our Coptic Gnostic sources available prior to the Nag Hammadi find, namely the 1 See e.g. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”; King, What is Gnosticism?; Brakke, The Gnostics. However, for a contrasting view, see DeConick, Gnostic New Age. 2 See also the forthcoming research project of Paul Linjamaa (Lund) on the reception of the Askew Codex, which will examine not only Mead but also other scholars of the period.

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Askew and Bruce Codices. If one examines the popularisation of German Coptological studies on these texts, as well as emergent scholarship on the Graeco-Egyptian magical corpus, it becomes easier to see why the notion of the “Gnostics” as a kind of counter-religion of universal, occult “Gnosis” took such a hold on modern imaginations: a hundred years ago, this was the story that was told not just by hifalutin scholarship, but by the people who translated that scholarship for the Anglophone public – people like G.R.S. Mead, resident scholar at the Theosophical Society in London. George Robert Stowe Mead (1863-1933) had studied Mathematics, Classics, and Oriental languages at Cambridge and Oxford before becoming first a schoolteacher and then, in 1889, the private secretary of the Society’s founder, Helena P. Blavatsky (1831-1891).3 He handled her correspondence, co-edited her periodical, Lucifer, edited many of Blavatsky’s articles, and served as General Secretary for Europe of the Theosophical Society. After Blavatsky’s death, he continued to co-edit Lucifer (with Annie Besant), amongst other publications. Mead strongly believed that the Theosophical movement should not only look to India for inspiration, when it already had on-hand the ancient Western traditions of Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Hermetism. He wrote many books on these topics, and in so doing, lent the Theosophical Society a Christianising colour, an effort in which he and Besant were in harmony.4 “Under Mead’s Western standard, Gnosticism is the ancient precursor of Theosophy, and Theosophy should become the Hermes of the modern age.”5 What Mead had in mind as “Gnosticism” started with the Askew Codex (British Library add. MS 5114), which was acquired by the British Museum in 1785. The Askew Codex contains one very long, difficult anthology, titled Pistis Sophia. An editio princeps – Coptic with Latin translation – was prepared by M.G. Schwartze; published after his death by J.H. Petermann in 1851. It was re-edited, with German translation, by the famed Coptologist Carl Schmidt (1868–1938), published initially in 1905 and reappearing in many subsequent editions. It contains several treatises that scholars would today dub “revelation dialogues” of the risen Jesus, revealing hidden wisdom to his disciples about cosmological and eschatological matters, particularly the reincarnation of the soul, and they are tedious reading indeed. The publication of Pistis Sophia a generation earlier naturally was of great interest to Mead, who threw himself into contemporary scholarship on what he liked 3 4 5

Here I summarise Godwin, “Mead.” Goodrick-Clarke, “Western Esoteric Traditions,” 295-297. Gnostic Quest, 9, quoted in Goodrick-Clarke, “Western Esoteric Traditions,” 297.

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to call “the Gnosis according to its friends.”6 Mead translated Schwartze’s Latin translation into English with reference to the French translation of Amélineau, publishing this work with an introduction in 1896, thus making the contents of the Askew Codex available for the first time to Anglophone readers without a command of foreign languages. He planned on authoring a commentary, but this never appeared. Mead followed German scholarship, and revised his thinking about the work significantly in light of tremendous advances on the text made by Carl Schmidt, whom I mentioned above.7 This revised introduction and translation was published in 1921. Mead’s views on ancient Gnosticism are most easily understood by looking to his great synthesis on the subject, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, first published in 1900 (second ed. 1906). Here, Mead conveniently summarises his ideas about Pistis Sophia, Schmidt, and the newly-published Bruce Codex (to be described shortly). For Mead, Pistis Sophia and the Bruce Codex are not mere Christian works; they are ancient Theosophy, teaching universal instruction that transcends Christianity – a Gnosis predicated on visionary experience. Mead believed the works contained in the Askew Codex to have been composed by Valentinus, the second-century Christian Platonist of great repute and heresiological infamy. Although this thesis is striking to scholars of Gnosticism today, Mead was simply following the mainstream opinion of his day, in this particular case that of the great Berlin church historian Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930).8 Yet Mead went beyond Harnack in regarding Valentinus and his fellow “Gnostic doctors” as universalists who could not believe that the Jews were the only nation in the past to whom God had revealed himself … Accordingly they used the traditional story of Jesus which had roused such mighty enthusiasm, as the framework into which they wove the “wisdom” of the great religions … They wove these ideas into the Christian tradition, and compiled gospels and apocalypses of that veiled and mysterious wisdom which had been guarded so carefully in the temples throughout the ages … They drew from the wisdom of Egypt, Chaldaea, Babylonia, Assyria, Phoenicia, Aethiopia, the books of Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato, of the magi and Zoroaster; and even 6 Mead, Fragments, 451. 7 Already in 1896 (Pistis Sophia) Mead showed himself to be familiar with the work of Schmidt, even if he relied on Petermann and Amélineau. However, by 1906 he hailed Schmidt as “by far the most competent authority in the field” (Fragments, 456). 8 Pistis Sophia, xxx, xxxiv; Mead, Fragments, 570-573.

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perhaps in some indirect way from those of the Brahmans. Their source of information was for the most part the Orient.9

In other words, Mead was not interested in the social location of the Gnostics among Christian communities, but in the “universal” religion he believed that they taught – a philosophy that transcended early Christianity. In Fragments, Mead summarises first Pistis Sophia, before presenting the contents of the Bruce Codex, even though he regards the latter as containing earlier works, because he wishes, “as far as possible, to place the contents of these Coptic translations roughly in such a sequence that the reader may be led from lower to higher grades of the Gnosis.”10 He also hews close to his Theosophical, perennialist line, as we see in his interpretation of a vague passage about the “accomplishment” of “three times” (of reincarnation) as describing the liberation of the soul from the cycle of rebirth into Nirvana. He adds that Nirvana “can be reached now and within,” he says, “by very holy men who can attain the highest degree of spiritual contemplation. Then shall the Gates of the Treasure of the Great Light be opened and the heights be crossed by the pilgrim.”11 This degree is referred to occasionally throughout his exegesis as “The Gnosis,” a conceptual category that refers to matters as diverse as the knowledge possessed by beings in heaven and the makeup of the heavenly world. For Mead, “Gnosis” encompasses even the binaries “of pitilessness and compassion; of destruction and everlasting increase; of beasts and creeping things, and metals, seas, and earth, clouds and rain, and so on working downwards from man into nature and upwards through all the supernal realms” – and that is on just one page.12 Indeed, whenever presented with a word for “knowledge” in the text – whether the Greek loanword gnōsis or the Egyptian sooun – Mead renders “Gnosis” indiscriminately. Now, Schmidt and Amélineau did much the same, and what they meant by it is something else that merits study. The point is that for Mead, “Gnosis” means “Theosophy” – but here he was reconfiguring a totalising category already used in the scholarship upon which he depended. Mead proceeds in his analysis to the Bruce Codex – MS Bruce 96, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Schmidt initially published his translation of it in 1892. “The Bruce Codex” is actually a misnomer, since it contains two manuscripts that 9 Pistis Sophia, xxiv; see also Mead, Fragments, 569-570. 10 Mead, Fragments, 458. 11 Ibid., 474. 12 Ibid., 480. See also ibid., 481, 520, etc.

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were brought together at Oxford as one. These two manuscripts contain two groups of texts. The first includes the Books of Jeu, a set of incantations accompanied by what appear to be sigils to be used to navigate the heavens by a soul undergoing post-mortem ascent. Mead focused on the second manuscript, containing an Untitled treatise which he – again, following Schmidt – designates as an apocalypse. While Schmidt never elaborated on what he meant by this, Mead was thinking of the Enochic literature. Elsewhere in Fragments, he refers to “Jewish Pseudepigrapha,”13 and in his introduction to Pistis Sophia, he had already drawn attention to the Ethiopic and Slavonic books of Enoch.14 He regarded non-canonical Jewish works to constitute – together with the first chapter of Ezekiel, the vision of the Merkavah – the “inner schools” of Judaism, “necessary” to “understand the nature of the studies and inner experience of the members of these mystic schools of Chassadim and their imitators.”15 Moreover, he says, these works provide “some very necessary outlines of the background of the Gnosis.”16 So, for Mead, the Untitled treatise is an “apocalypse, a series of visions of some subtle phase of the inner ordering and substance of things … written down, or taken down, at different times as the seer described the inner working of nature from different points of view.”17 The fragmentary nature of the Untitled treatise does not permit us much understanding of its frame narrative or genre, but it reads like a long, winding exposition of heavenly realities (a characteristic it shares with the Enochic material) which are, in good Gnostic fashion, abstract indeed. Yet Mead recognised the apocalyptic valence of a very interesting passage which seems to be the work of a scribal interpolator. I quote the passage here in the rendering of Violet MacDermot, who more or less translates Schmidt’s German, on which Mead relied: … Indeed, to speak of him [God] with a tongue of flesh, of the manner in which he exists, is an impossibility. For they are great ones who surpass the powers so that they hear through a concept and they follow him except they find a kinsman of their sin, one who can hear of the places from whence he came … The powers of all the great aeons have given homage to the power which is in Marsanes. They said: “Who is this who has seen these things before his face, that he has thus revealed concerning 13 Ibid., 85. 14 Pistis Sophia, xx. 15 Mead, Fragments, 94. On the development of the “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha” to which Mead referred, see Reed, “Modern Invention.” 16 Mead, Fragments, 94. 17 Ibid., 577; see also ibid., 552-553, 578.

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him?” Nikotheus spoke concerning him: he saw that he was that one. He said: “The Father exists, surpassing every perfection. He has revealed the invisible, triple-powered, perfect one.” Each of the perfect men saw him, they spoke of him, giving glory to him, each one in his own way.18

The “kinsman of the mysteries” is, in Mead’s eyes, “one who has learned the mystery, that is to say, has experienced these states of consciousness; and even then the Mystery of the Father cannot be expressed in its reality, as has been stated by even such advanced seers as Marsanes and Nicotheus, former seers of the Gnosis.”19 In other words, Mead is interested in mystical experience – also known as “gnosis” – and considers “apocalypses” to be accounts of these “gnostic” visions. Mead’s work attained a degree of popular success which endures to this day, thanks to many reprints of his books. Yet his association with the Theosophical Society impeded his scholarly contemporaries from taking him seriously, and he lashed out at his colleagues as having no experiential knowledge of religious matters.20 Walter Ewing Crum (1865-1944), England’s leading Coptologist of the day, reviewed Mead’s translations of Pistis Sophia in the journals. Crum corrected Mead’s occasional inaccuracies, but also had kind remarks.21 He noted Mead’s extreme dependence on Schmidt – as well as the importance of translating Schmidt’s achievements for the consumption of the British public.22 What I read between the lines is polite reticence. Indeed, entire pages of Fragments of a Faith Forgotten are simply translations from Schmidt’s German.23 Mead also operated independently of the then still-embryonic scholarship on the Graeco-Egyptian magical corpus, which brings me to an interesting side-story in the reception of Pistis Sophia. The Dutch scholar Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens (1793–1835) is today best known as the first director of the Museum van Oudheden in Leiden, but is also notable, for our purposes, for having ensured the purchase of some of the Theban magical papyri known today as “Greek Magical Papyri” (PGM). He transcribed and annotated two of the Leiden papyri, J 384 and 395 (PGM XII, XIII), but his premature death prevented him from publishing this work. Observing the use of voces magicae 18 Schmidt and MacDermot, Untitled, 235.5-23. 19 Mead, Fragments, 552-553. 20 See esp. ibid., 591-592. 21 Crum, “Coptic Studies,” 65. 22 Crum, “Review.” 23 See e.g. the discussion of the Achmim Codex (BG 8502) in Mead, Fragments, 579-588, which translates Schmidt’s prose in “Ein vorirenäisches,” 840-845.

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and vowel-spells in these texts, he supposed that they were products of the school of the second-century Valentinian thinker Marcus Magus, whose system involved speculation on the mystical properties of Greek letters (Ir. Haer. 1.14). Reuvens wrote before the Askew Codex was available to scholars. However, the British philologist and colonial administrator Charles Wycliffe Goodwin (1817-1878) published an edition of PGM V in 1852 – the year after Petermann’s publication of Pistis Sophia. Goodwin believed Reuvens was right to point to Gnostic evidence to understand the voces magicae of PGM V as well as the Leiden papyri, but posited instead “a much closer affinity … between them and the work recently published entitled ‘Pistis Sophia’,” since some of the magical names appearing in the Greek papyri were identical to those in Pistis Sophia.24 Observing the disparity of doctrine between PGM V and Pistis Sophia, Goodwin believed that the texts were not products of the same school; rather, the author of the Greek magical text was not a Gnostic, but “a priest of Isis or Serapis, addicted to that kind of theurgy, which Porphyry (of Tyre) … severely criticises.”25 Goodwin’s opinion on the matter notwithstanding, the Victorian expert on gems Charles William King, in his 1864 monograph The Gnostics and Their Remains, dubbed PGM V a “Gnostic” text anyway. Mead was familiar with the work of Goodwin and King; in his introduction to Pistis Sophia (1896), he states that he has read the Italian Egyptologist Francesco Rossi, who “has published a papyrus containing an invocation similar to those in the Pistis Sophia, but I have not been able to find this work.”26 Rossi’s “Gnostic Tractate” was published the same year – Crum even provided Mead the reference in one of his reviews – but, to the best of my knowledge, Mead never commented on it again.27 We might explain this through his remarks immediately following his mention of Rossi: “the above magical works, however, are more concerned with the superstitions of sorcery than with magic proper, and when attached to Gnosticism characterise its degradation in the hands of the superstitious and ignorant.”28 In other words, like Goodwin, Mead drew a distinction between a higher, mystical knowledge and base, magical superstition. However, for Mead the Theosophist, the terms are different: while Goodwin followed Porphyry in denigrating magic and theurgy, Mead espouses Gnosis and “magic proper” as the supreme way. 24 25 26 27 28

Brashear, “Greek Magical Papyri,” 3406; see also ibid., 3422. Quoted in ibid., 3406. Pistis Sophia, xx. For which see Meyer, Rossi’s; Crum, "Coptic Studies," 65. Pistis Sophia, xx.

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Mead had something of a spiritual disciple in the Reverend Alfred Amos Fletcher Lamplugh, vicar of St. John’s in Leeds, and aspiring occultist.29 He published in 1918 a lovely rendering of Amélineau’s French translation of the Untitled treatise in the Bruce Codex, but his inspiration and interpretation are entirely Mead's. Eric Crégheur, who has prepared a new critical edition of the Bruce Codex and who kindly guided me to Lamplugh’s work, tells me this is the earliest known full English translation of the Untitled treatise. Lamplugh follows Mead in every regard: calling the text an apocalypse; assigning authorship of the text to the schools of Basilides and Valentinus; speaking of a “Gnosis” that aims at deification via sacramental initiation under the tutelage of a master; and more.30 Most remarkable, though, is his imagined paraphrase of the “Gnostic” rejection of the Great Church: What you say is very good and true as far as it goes, but it is “Pistis,” not Gnosis; Faith, not Knowledge. You desire to be a changed man. Pistis will change you to a certain extent. I have nothing to say against it, but it will not change you in the radical way that Gnosis does … Philosophy of the kind you mention is excellent, and forms a base for Gnosis which is not contrary to reason, though it is above it. Gnosis is a rebirth by which you become a god, and then you will have no need to find out things by talking, and discursive reasoning … If you tie yourself down to logic, you will not know the real things, the “Things that are,” by getting inside of them. Your knowledge will be external, superficial.31

This epistemological triad of faith-reason-gnosis – corresponding to the categories of religion-philosophy-mysticism, or, if you please, “Christians, philosophers, and Gnostics” – is derivative of Mead as well.32 Largely thanks to Gilles Quispel (1916-2006), it became instrumental in Dutch scholarship, and one stumbles across it, in various formulations, even in recent publications from the Netherlands.33 The precise trajectory from antiquity through Schmidt and Mead, and further to scholarship today, demands detailed study. There remains a great deal of work to be done here, not only regarding the 29 For Lamplugh’s biography, see R.A. Gilbert’s preface in Lamplugh, Gnosis. 30 Lamplugh, Gnosis, 11-12. 31 Ibid., 13. 32 Clear, if less succinct, in Mead, Fragments, 29-32. It goes further back in turn to the “antiapologist” Jacob Thomasius (1665), on whom see Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 101-107. 33 Van den Broek, Gnostic Religion, 1-3; see also Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 376-377.

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Theosophical Society’s influence on popular notions of a Gnostic religion extrinsic to Christianity, but on the much larger world of popular magic and occultism, and the occult connotations of Gnosis. In other words, if we want to understand Gnosticism and modernity – however construed – we will have to study not just histories of Christianity, but histories of magic.



There’s not much room for women in esotericism, right? Allison P. Coudert

The recovery of women’s voices in religious history became a major focus of feminist scholarship from the mid-twentieth century onward, but it is only in the last decade that the participation of women in Western Esotericism has gained a similar level of interest. While women’s esoteric activities remain underexplored, there is enough evidence to answer the question above with a resounding “no, not right”! Whether self-consciously or surreptitiously, women made room for themselves in all kinds of non-traditional, heterodox, and heretical forms of religion, many of which fall under the rubric of Esotericism.1 Scholars dispute exactly what esotericism is and when it originated in the West. I rely here primarily on Antoine Faivre’s definition, which highlights the esoteric view of the cosmos as a holistic system emanating from a divine source, in which every existing thing is alive, potentially divine, and linked through a series of correspondences. Humans are imagined as microcosms mirroring the divine macrocosm and having power to perfect themselves and the universe, they can do this because they have the ability to obtain spiritual knowledge or “gnosis.”2 While many of the traditions subsumed under the concept Western esotericism originated in the ancient and medieval worlds (in both East and West), the focus of this essay is on the period following the Reformation. This was the time when esoteric forms of thought proliferated as a result of the fragmentation of Christianity, the spread of literacy, increased contact between Europeans and non-Europeans, and the changing nature of gender roles under the impact of urbanisation and industrialisation. Key aspects of esoteric thinking were particularly congenial to women because they contravened the gender assumptions permeating Judeo-Christian 1 More work has been done on Anglo-American women esotericists than on those in other parts of Europe, although this is changing. See Bogdan and Hammer, Western Esotericism in Scandinavia and a recent issue of Approaching Religions (Mahlamäki and Leskela-Karki eds.), largely devoted to Finnish female esotericists. One of the most significant developments is the inclusion of women of colour, although this is still in its initial stage. See Finley, Guillory and Page, Esotericism in African American Religious Experience. 2 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism.

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culture. Both state and traditional ecclesiastical institutions emphasised the physical and mental inferiority of women, denied or limited their access to education, and barred them from positions in church, state, and the professions on the grounds that their roles as wives and mothers restricted them to the private sphere. Most importantly, church and state joined hands in emphasising the fallen nature of humankind and the special culpability of women in this fall, which could only be exculpated by belief in a patriarchal, punitive God. These ideas did not, however, exist in many esoteric forms of knowledge. As scholars of new religions have pointed out, new religions emerge in tension with existing ones. Their adherents claim to have a truer understanding of the human and divine. This understanding unfolds in various ways, providing social space for experimentation in alternative theologies, gender roles, sexual relations, and leadership structures. Many women were attracted to esoteric beliefs that deemphasised or eliminated the masculine nature of God and tempered the doctrine of the Fall by claiming that all humans can attain salvation without the intercession of a male authority. Some forms of esotericism permitted women to exercise a “masculine temperament,” which was simply license to think, enquire, question, and explore issues in the company of like-minded men and women. Dorothea Hunter (1868-1958), a member of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn claimed enthusiastically, “the Order was my university.”3 The belief that the universe would eventually return to its primal perfection inspired an optimistic, progressive outlook that captivated many esotericists, convinced that a new millennial age was at hand.4 Women esotericists were notable for their participation in projects to improve human life and protect the natural world. This is not to claim that esotericism is by nature progressive or that women were only attracted to progressive forms.5 Esotericists belonged to the entire political spectrum, and there were many traditionalists on the matter of gender among them, male and female. For example, members of the Theosophical Society who stressed the concepts of “Universal Brotherhood” and “One Life” advocated by Annie Besant (1847-1933) might take these ideas to support equality, but they might also interpret them to justify the

3 Owen, Place of Enchantment, 90. 4 Harrison, Second Coming; Williamson, Apocalyse Then. 5 Traditionalist movements offered clearly def ined gender roles that proved attractive to many women confused by the complexity of the modern world.

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subordination of women in the nation and home.6 Some historians claim that a natural affinity exists between esoteric and fascist ideologies.7 Many esotericists also embraced eugenics, hardly seen as progressive today. But for the purposes of this essay, it is important to note that esotericism provided a crucial space for the articulation of unorthodox politics of all sorts, and this includes unorthodox gender politics.8 Other features of esotericism that appealed to some women were the denial that marriage and motherhood were their divinely appointed destinies and the rejection of an ordained male priesthood.9 Implicit in the latter was the notion that neither maleness nor education were sufficient to provide pathways to spiritual enlightenment. What counted was purity of mind, body, and soul, and this meant that women were just as likely as men, or even more so, to attain spiritual enlightenment. In The Feminization of American Culture (1977) Ann Douglas argued that between 1820 and 1875 an alliance developed between upper-class women and clergymen that produced a morally bankrupt, sentimental culture, which further reduced women’s already restricted roles. At the very time the American economy was becoming the most aggressively capitalist, cut-throat system in the world, “sweetness,” “sensibility,” and “suffering” were held up as model female qualities, all of which exemplified the saccharine ideology of “the Angel in the House,” an ideology that applied as much to middle- and upper-class European women as it did to American ones.10 Women, along with religion, were consequently marginalised. A sugar-coating of female do-goodism effectively removed women from the public arena, while at the same time masking the increasingly rampant racism, imperialism, class conflict, and sexism that emerged. What Douglas missed in her analysis was the connection between the feminisation of religion and the burgeoning of esotericism. As we now know, religion did not decline but proliferated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.11 Far from further marginalising women, the feminisation of religion allowed a crucial generation of women to find their voice both figuratively and literally. For the first time in history a sizable number of women began to speak out in public. Many of these were involved in Swedenborgianism, Shakerism, Spiritualism, Freemasonry, Theosophy, New 6 Dixon, Divine Feminine, 150. 7 On this topic, see Strube’s and Kilcher’s essays in this volume. 8 Palmer, “Women in New Religious Movements.” 9 Bednarowski, “Outside the Mainstream.” 10 Coventry Patmore’s long narrative poem, The Angel in the House, was f irst published in London in 1854 and in an expanded edition in 1862. 11 Sheehan, Enlightenment Bible.

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Thought, and a host of other esoteric movements. By taking the prevailing rhetoric of “the Angel in the House” literally, these women turned what Douglas saw as a defect into an asset, claiming that women’s innate spirituality and moral purity made it incumbent upon them to reform society. Thus the privatisation of religion described by Douglas paradoxically provided women with both the motivation to enter the public arena and access to it. In situations where religious authority is derived from direct spiritual contact and is not mediated through male-dominated religious institutions, women are able to exercise religious leadership.12 This explains the prominent role of women in early Christianity, the powerful influence of female mystics, and the role of women in religious sects during the English Civil War. It also accounts for the leadership roles of women in millennial groups from the eighteenth century onward.13 The emergence of female spiritual leaders caused conflict with established religious institutions because these women claimed their religious insights came from unmediated contact with the divine. This conviction allowed them to make a virtue out of their lack of worldliness and education. Joanna Southcott (1750-1847), the self-declared English prophetess with a following of tens of thousands, made this point in defense of her mission: “Shall I say I had the spirit of wisdom given me, when I never had any talents to boast of in my life, and was considered by all my worthy brothers and sisters the simplest of my father’s house?” She said exactly this, and people listened.14 Spiritualists took a similar approach, attributing the astonishing things that came out of their mouths to their spirit contacts.15 For example, speaking in a trance state about the text, “It is a shame for woman to speak in Church,” the American Spiritualist Lizzie Doten (1829-1913) exclaimed: “It is indeed a shame for woman to speak in the Church; and woman ought to be ashamed … of the Church. Let woman come out from the Church; and when she comes out the minister and all the congregation will go out with her.”16 Cora Hatch (1840-1923), noted for her blond ringlets and charming 12 These women had what Max Weber described as charismatic authority. While Weber didn’t discuss charisma specifically in relation to women, subsequent scholars have. See Wessinger, “Charismatic Leaders in New Religious Movements.” 13 Ruether and McLaughlin, Women of Spirit. Female mystics were powerful enough to be seen as a threat by Catholic authorities. See Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism; Elliot, Proving Woman; Thomas, “Women in the Civil War Sects.” 14 Hopkins, A Woman to Deliver Her People, xi. 15 On the contribution African-Americans made to the emergence of Spiritualism in the US, see Clark, “Spirit is Universal.” 16 Braude, Radical Spirits, 93.

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decolleté dresses, went even further. Channeling her spirits, she rejected established churches altogether in favour of an ecumenical humanism. With inner voices like these to guide them, women did all sorts of things they would not have done otherwise. They spoke in public, wrote books, went on lecture tours, and joined school and hospital boards, sanitary commissions, charitable organisations, and reform movements promoting such things as child and animal welfare, women’s rights, labour reforms, birth control, prisoner welfare, and urban renewal.17 Spiritualists were not the only ones to criticise the prevailing limits on women’s freedom, although they were among the most radical. In their History of Women’s Suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony recognised the important role Spiritualists played in the women’s movement: “The only religious sect in the world … that has recognised the equality of women is the Spiritualists.”18 The radicalism of Spiritualists was limited, however, by their insistence on their roles as mediums. This passivity was rejected by the Theosophical Society, which, although it grew out of Spiritualism, actively encouraged women to educate themselves, particularly about world religions and science, offering publications and lectures to guide their study.19 Women and women’s issues dominated the Theosophical Society in the last years of the nineteenth century.20 Joy Dixon claims that prominent feminists were “hundreds of times more likely to join the T[heosophical] S[ociety] than were members of the general population.”21 Some of these feminists had decidedly radical agendas. For example, Susan E. Gay assembled Mme Blavatsky’s teaching about reincarnation into a “Theosophical-Feminist Manifesto,” in which she claimed that souls journeyed through male and female bodies, gaining the noblest qualities of both sexes over time. “Spiritual equilibrium,” exemplified by Jesus, was the ideal. Thus, manly men and womanly women were the least developed of souls.22 Gay believed that if men realised they could find themselves reincarnated as women, they might think twice about the legitimacy of female subordination. Frances Swiney 17 Ibid., ch. 4. 18 Braude, Radical Spirits, 2. 19 This call for education had a profound effect on the Finnish Theosophist Vera Hejlt. When first introduced to Theosophy, she lamented her lack of education, calling herself a “blockhead.” But after ten years of study, she felt conf ident enough to relish her work as a teacher, social reformer, and member of parliament. See Kaartinen, “Vera Hejlt.” 20 Burfield, “Theosophy and Feminism.” 21 Dixon, Divine Feminine, 6. 22 Ibid., 158.

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(1847-1922), an English feminist and one-time Theosophist, claimed that all souls were essentially female, but they had to progress through an initial masculine state, which she describes as “the kindergarten of humanity.” Once this stage was completed, all babies would be born female.23 Esotericists were at the forefront of attacks on orthodox forms of Christianity as unnecessarily oppressive for women. In the second volume of Isis Unveiled,24 Mme Blavatsky claimed that Christianity was the chief opponent of free thought, and she provocatively traced its origins from debased forms of phallic worship. Esotericists from many different groups paved the way for less doctrinal and more egalitarian forms of belief that on many issues anticipated contemporary New Age movements. From an authoritarian, punitive parent, God was transformed into a loving Father and, in some cases, Mother. Sin, hell, and the Last Judgment were eliminated, while the human potential for transformation became the focus of attention. The ability of individuals to attain higher states of consciousness was the rationale behind the ascending grades of Freemasonry. While women were initially barred from Freemasonry, by the 1740s a number of mixed male and female lodges had been created in France and Germany. These paved the way for “Adoption Lodges,” into which women could be initiated but which remained subordinate to the male lodges that adopted them. While some scholars have declared Adoption freemasonry anti-feminist because women were subordinate, Margaret Jacob and Janet Burke make the important point that even in repressive institutions women still had agency to act independently of prevailing gender stereotypes. Behind the closed doors of the Adoption Lodges, women were sealed off from society in a way that allowed them to imagine different gender relationships. Jacob and Burke suggest it was this freeing of the imagination from conventional life that helps us understand why women (and men) would spend so much time and money to engage in rituals most people today find meaningless, if not ludicrous.25 Archival material that only became available after World War II demonstrates that mixed masonry allowed males and females to work together to promote women’s rights. Through their regular meetings, women grew in confidence, power, and awareness. They participated in masonic programs that schooled members in public service by giving speeches, living under constitutions, accepting majority rule, and learning to vote. The novelty of 23 Swiney, Awakening of Women. 24 Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, vol. 2, iv. 25 Jacob and Burke, “French Freemasonry, Women, and Feminist Scholarship,” 521.

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women interacting with men in an institutional setting strengthened the bonds of fraternity, and with that came ideas of equality and liberty. By 1780 many of the French female lodges had been transformed from male to female run organisations. As a result, pejorative references to women were removed from initiation rituals. Women’s lodges also added degrees with suggestive titles such as Amazonnerie Anglaise, in which women discussed and rejected their subordination to males. They explored the means employed by men to assert their dominance and concluded that women’s lack of education in the sciences and politics as well as their lack of military prowess were major factors. Anglo-American esotericists agreed, but without a call to arms. These ideas had tangible effects on improving the standards of women’s education, particularly in the sciences.26 While there were some Adoption Lodges in Britain, for the most part Freemasonry excluded women. This was one reason for the attraction of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which, while not officially masonic, was founded by masons. This order embraced women as equals, allowing women positions of leadership as in the case of Mina MacGregor Mathers, Florence Farr, and Annie Horniman. For members of the Golden Dawn progress was both personal and social. Members believed in the coming of a new age, and in addition to the hours spent mastering esoteric knowledge to achieve higher levels of awareness, they engaged in social welfare projects, many of which promoted women’s rights.27 As we have seen, esotericists considered themselves potentially divine. This view of the self as the ultimate source of knowledge harked back to the Platonic and Neoplatonic doctrine of the microcosm and the macrocosm, according to which understanding one’s own mind was tantamount to comprehending the cosmic mind. Esotericists followed mystics in considering dreams and visions pathways to illumination. Both genders were taught visualisation techniques and magical rituals to achieve higher states of consciousness, one more example of the gender inclusiveness of some esoteric institutions as compared to traditional universities and academies. As Moina MacGregor Mathers said, speaking for both male and female members of The Golden Dawn: “It must be our object then, to become that Perfect Man.”28 26 Burke, “Through Friendship to Feminism”; Hobsbawm, “Fraternity”; Allen, “Freemason Feminists”; Dayton, “Freemasonry and Suffrage.” 27 Owen, Place of Enchantment, ch. 1; Bogdan, “Women and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.” 28 Owen, Place of Enchantment, 77.

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This psychological turn mirrored aspects of the Romantic obsession with the self but it was also aligned with contemporary scientific studies of hypnotism, psychology, and parapsychology.29 Investigations of the nature of human consciousness, memory, experience, and sensation are a key feature of modernity.30 The same preoccupation with the nature of the self was central in esoteric currents in art and literature, beginning with Gothic novels and picking up steam with Symbolism, Surrealism, Dadaism and other artistic movements associated with Modernism. The neoclassical ideal that great artists are those trained to abstract beautiful forms from imperfect nature was superseded by an aesthetic that returned to the Platonic idea that only by turning inward and relying upon the vision of the inner eye could one discern the spiritual dimensions behind appearances. The image of closed eyes, the most famous of which appears in Odilon Redon’s painting “Yeux clos” (1890), became something of a Symbolist cliché.31 The emphasis on the imagination as the source of creative energy allowed women excluded from universities and art academies to assert their legitimacy as artists and writers in esoteric circles. This may seem something of a paradox because male Symbolists, for example, pointedly denigrated women and excluded females from their artistic ranks. Nonetheless, as Patricia Matthews has demonstrated, Camille Claudel, Elisabeth Sourel, Jean Jaquemin, and Suzanne Valadon embraced the symbolist aesthetic.32 Owen sums up the appeal this turning inward had for both males and females: Ultimately occultists sought in the infinite realms of human consciousness an alternative source and repository of self-understanding and spiritual purpose. In effect, and in a distinctively modern strategic move, the occult taught modern men and women how to create new spiritualized meanings “out of the resources of the self.” As Florence Farr expressed it: “I stood naked in a bleak and dark eternity and filled it with my exultation.” This was the modern enchanted self.33

The power of the mind to create reality was the central conviction of the New Thought movement.34 Just as God created the universe through pure 29 Owen, Place of Enchantment, 114. 30 Ibid., 115. 31 Leeman, “Yeux clos”; Wittlich, “Closed eyes.” 32 Matthews, Passionate Discontent. 33 Owen, Place of Enchantment, 147. 34 The New Thought movement was extremely diverse. The main denominations were Unity School of Christianity, Christian Science, Divine Science, Science of Mind, Mind Cure, and

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thought, individuals shaped their realities by thinking. Negative thoughts could materialise into negative situations, while spiritual thoughts formed a positive reality. Thoughts were powerful and could be transferred from one person to another. These ideas appeared to have solid scientific backing: contemporary psychical research gave credence to the ability of thought to influence health as well as the thinking and behaviour of others, while early twentieth-century quantum mechanics demonstrated that scientific observers influenced the phenomena they observed. Many liberal and radical Protestant ministers joined with suffrage activists, investigative journalists, social purity leaders, and proponents of Christian Socialism in accepting the New Thought conviction that meditation, hypnotism, and telepathy would bring about a new era in the development of the human race and society. While middle-class white women were the majority of New Thought authors, healers, and teachers, as well as patients and congregants, Marcus Garvey and Father Divine (George Baker) created black versions of New Thought that attracted both men and women, and, in Father Divine’s case, whites as well.35 During the 1960s and 70s, the emphasis on positive thinking joined with various strands of esotericism to create a counter-culture whose adherents saw themselves as engaged in a spiritual revolution that would lead to the millennial Age of Aquarius. The emergence of neo-Paganism, especially Wicca, was embraced by the second wave of feminists, most notably Starhawk. Wiccans enthusiastically adopted the designation of “witch,” defining themselves as independent agents in control of their own destinies. These developments led to the Goddess movement. The same reversal occurred with the figure of the vampire, who has become a positive and Christ-like and even female figure.36 Esoteric forms of thought are now an integral part of Western culture, although mostly on a superficial and commercial level.37 But a proliferation of New Religious Movements (NRMs) has emerged that demands more than token allegiance. Like their predecessors, NRMs provide laboratories for social and sexual experimentation. Scholars have divided new religions into two basic categories: the neopatriarchal (e.g., the Lubavitch, the Aryan Nations, Mormon Fundamentalists) and the feminist, which reject marriage and Religious Science, all of which stem from the nineteenth-century teaching of Phineas P. Quimby. See Meyer, The Positive Thinkers; Braden, Spirits in Rebellion; Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom. 35 Hall, Marcus Mosiah Garvey; Griffith, “Body Salvation.” 36 Nelson, Gothicka. 37 Granholm, ”Ritual Black Metal.”

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childbearing (The Raelians, Rajneesh, Dianic Wiccans, Brahma Kumaris).38 The situation is, however, more complex. When we look at NRMs, they are often constructed out of a mix of traditional and futuristic ideas. While there is a resurgence of repressive patriarchal religions, the sheer complexity and richness of women’s experiences in these new religions demands an assessment of each group, if not each female member. In considering the connection between women and esotericism, it is evident that currents of esoteric thought have helped to improve the position of women. Spiritualists, Theosophists, and adherents of New Thought joined in supporting female suffrage and the right of women to their own property; they claimed sexual rights for women, especially “voluntary motherhood” and birth control, and they were focused on health issues involving diet and dress and the welfare of working women.39 Ann Braude discusses the frank and open analysis of marriage among Spiritualists. They campaigned against the factors that made “The Body and Soul Destroying Marriage Institution,” broaching such sensitive issues as the relations between husbands and wives, parents and children, and sexual intercourse both inside and outside of marriage. They argued that women needed jobs and money so they could marry for love and not merely for support.40 Annie Besant joined the Theosophical Society and became eventually its head after a career in championing women’s rights and birth control. The access of women to higher education, particularly in the sciences, was also endorsed by esotericists. Many of these activities have led to increasing gender equality, especially for middle- and upper-class women. Much more, however, remains to be done.

38 Melton and Moore, Cult Experience; Palmer, “Women in New Religious Movements”; Bårdsen Tøllefsen and Giudice, Female Leaders in New Religious Movements; Carroll et al., Women of the Cloth; Palmer, Moon Sisters, Krishna Mothers, Rajneesh Lovers. 39 Fryer, Birth Controllers. 40 See Braude, Radical Spirits, 118ff.



The imagination… You mean fantasy, right? Antoine Faivre

“Imagination” is a tricky word … It lends itself to a variety of meanings, and in fact it is not synonymous with “fantasy.” So in what sense are we to understand it? A pejorative interpretation all too easily comes to mind, as in Blaise Pascal’s (1623-1662) famous statement. He calls it that deceitful part in man, that mistress of error and falsity, all the more deceptive as she is not always so; for she would be an infallible rule of truth, if she were an infallible rule of falsehood. But being most generally false, she gives no sign of her nature, impressing the same character on the true and the false.1

If the term “imagination” is preceded by the adjective “creative,” it loses that negative ring. Indeed, poets, authors of fiction, and artists are nothing if not people endowed with a certain amount of imagination. There is no dearth of theories and studies investigating the variety and the nature of that faculty, but I do not intend to dwell thereon (bibliographies are a-plenty – it is just a matter of browsing around on the internet). Given the orientation of this anniversary volume, I will focus on “creative imagination” as understood within some sectors of the so-called modern Western esoteric currents. In that context, the notion can be approached in a way that is not all too vague, albeit not deprived of some complexity. Sometimes called vis imaginativa or “magical imagination,” it can be intransitive. In this case, imagination acts within the mind of the imagining subject, providing, for instance, visions or forms of superior knowledge; it may act upon the body, which undergoes a transformation in the process. But it can also be transitive. In this case, the action of imagination is exercised on objects (be they material, natural, or spiritual) that are exterior to the subject. Finally, it can also be both intransitive and transitive at the same time. Be that as it may, let us look at a few classical examples taken from the referential corpus of modern Western esoteric currents.

1 Pascal, Pensées, 193-195.

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Let me begin with a typology I already had occasion to present elsewhere,2 that of the esoteric current called Christian Theosophy, thereby trying to bring out what seems to me to be its three characteristics. Of course this is just a typological construct, but we need to delineate the topic in order to know what we are talking about. With this in mind, I would single out three characteristics. The first one is what might be called the God/Man/Nature Triangle. Here we are dealing with a kind of speculation (a “speculative mysticism,” as some historians of religion would have it) bearing simultaneously on God (the nature of God, the intra-divine processes, the emanations of His Light, etc.); on Nature considered under her eternal, “intellectual,” material aspects; and on the Human Being (his/her origin, place within the universe, role in the workings of cosmic salvation). This first characteristic focuses on the complex and dramatic relationships between the three parts of the “triangle” and Holy Scripture. Secondly, there is the paramount importance placed on myth within theosophical narratives. The Books of Holy Scripture that have received most commentary are Genesis, Ezekiel, Wisdom, and the Book of Revelation; and within these, Sophia, the angels, the primeval androgyne, and the successive Falls (of Lucifer, of Adam/Eve, of Nature herself) are among the privileged themes – in fact, themes that regular theologians tend to rationalise or pass over in silence. Thirdly and finally, there is the belief in the possibility of a direct access to higher levels of reality. The underlying assumption here is that human beings possess a generally dormant but always potential faculty to directly connect with or “plug into” such levels: this faculty is imagination in the most creative (“magical”) sense of the word.3 Once achieved, such contact permits us to explore all or many levels of reality, assures a kind of co-penetration of the divine and the human, and enables our spirit to “fix” itself in a body of light (which means to effectuate a “second birth”4). As one can see, the theosophical experience proper, in contrast to the mystical experience stricto sensu, tends not so much to achieve a union with a divine entity as to acquire a kind of illuminative and redeeming knowledge (a “gnosis,” in one of the meanings of that term). Theosophical illumination 2 Faivre, “Theosophical Current,” 3-48. 3 The German term Einbildungskraft, still commonly used for “imagination” (next to Vorstellungsvermögen, the ability to represent something in one’s mind) etymologically suggests the idea of entering, as it were, into images and “impress” them onto matter, thereby (re)creating a universe replete with concrete meanings (until the sevententh century, Bild meant not only “image,” but also “body”). 4 See the contribution by Zuber in this volume.

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may happen with a jolt, or by gradual stages. At this juncture, I would suggest to reflect upon a meaningful German term that sometimes serves to designate this specific form of creative imagination: die Zentralschau. It means a vision that radiates from its “centre,” as it were, in such a way that the multiple correspondences operating on the various levels of reality become revealed to the mind of the person who has that experience. Let me now give a classical example of Zentralschau as a theosophical foundational experience. It is that of the Silesian shoemaker Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), as described by his friend and biographer Abraham von Francken­ berg (1593-1652). One day in 1610, At a sudden glimpse of a pewter vessel, [Boehme] was seized by the Divine Light, and introduced with his sidereal spirit to the innermost ground or centre of secret Nature … Ever more clearly he felt the sight he had received, so that through the signatures, lineaments and colours that were shown he could gaze, as it were, into the heart and innermost nature of all creatures.5

In his first book, Aurora (1610), Boehme himself gives a precise account of his experience.6 As in Franckenberg’s description, it shows us in a nutshell what the Zentralschau is all about. After having been graced with this experience, Boehme set about writing many books. In the first place Aurora itself, which triggered the theosophical current proper, with a rich literature represented by authors such as John Pordage (1608-1681), Jane Leade (1623-1704), Johann 5 “[Er wurde] vom Göttlichen Licht ergriffen und mit seinem gestirnten Seelengeiste durch einen jählichen Anblick eines zinnernen Gefässes … zu dem innersten Grunde oder centro der geheimen Natur eingeführet; [er hat … ] solchen empfangenen Blick je länger je mehr klarer empfunden, [so dass] er vermittelst der angebildeten Signaturen oder Figuren, Lineamenten und Farben, allen Geschöpfen gleichsam in das Herz und die innerste Natur [hat] hineinsehen können” (Franckenberg, De vita et scriptis Jacob Boehmes § 2, quoted by Koyré, Philosophie de Jacob Boehme, 19). 6 Boehme writes in Aurora : “But as I, in my determination, stormed hard against God and against all the gates of hell …, after several attempts, finally my spirit has broken through the gates of hell and all the way into the innermost birth of the Godhead, and was received there with love, the way a groom receives his dear bride. / But this triumph of the spirit I cannot express by the written or spoken word; indeed it cannot be compared with anything but with the birth of life in the midst of death, and with the resurrection of the dead. / In this light, my spirit has right away seen through everything, and in all creatures, even in herbs and grass, it has seen God: who he is, how he is, and what his will is. And right away, in this light, my will has grown with a great desire to describe the essence of God” (Aurora, chapter 19, translated by Hanegraaff in his “Jacob Böhme and Christian Theosophy,” 121).

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Heinrich Gichtel (1638-1710), Pierre Poiret (1646-1719), Louis-Claude de SaintMartin (1743-1803), Franz von Baader (1765-1841), and many others. Now, besides the three characteristics mentioned above, what about the main tenets with which theosophical discourses and conversations are laden? First, I would say that perhaps more than anyone before him, Boehme gave the creative imagination an ontological foundation. As a queen of the mental faculties, she appears primarily as an attribute of God, whereas the creative imagination of created beings is only its secondary reflection, concrete and real as it may be in its nature and effects. “God cannot think without engendering his image,” wrote Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin.7 In terms of mythical figures, Boehme and so many theosophers in his wake assign to the Sophia of the wisdom books a privileged role in the scenario. She is the eye, the mirror, that the unfathomable Origin (the Ungrund) “imagines” in order to introduce itself into it, to take form by means of the images that she, this living mirror, sends back to it. Thus a mundus imaginalis came into existence, that is, the universe situated between God and the visible world, a universe inhabited by spiritual entities. The expression is originally used in the context of Islamic theosophies (see notably the works of Henry Corbin, 1903-1978). However, in the mundus imaginalis of Christian Theosophy – much more than in the Islamic one – a strong emphasis is put (with some exceptions, such as Emanuel Swedenborg, 1688-1772), on an active reciprocity between the above (the mundus imaginalis) and the below (Man, and the created world), and therefore an emphasis is put on the importance of the notion of incarnation. Now consider the consequence of this. Man’s creative imagination has a model, that of God, whose imagination incarnates itself in forms and figures. Man was conceived in God’s image, and since God Himself has imagination, and human beings have something of the divine, they epitomise the whole of creation and are not devoid of magical power. Adam was destined to become His image, in order for God to establish His dwelling in him and manifest His wonders through him. The French author Pierre Poiret (16461719) wrote in 1687: God wanted to see Himself (or to see His material portraits) in a way exterior to and outside Himself. This divine will has given birth not only to the existence of matter, to its movement, and to its order and varieties of conduct; but also to the imaginative faculty [= la faculté imaginative] in Man, inasmuch as God wanted Man as His image to represent Him … 7

“Dieu ne peut penser sans engendrer son image” (Saint-Martin, Ecce Homo, 18).

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This thought I have elsewhere called the Imagination of God, which is also the Creatrix of the world.8

The usual persuasion of these theosophers is that before the Fall, Adam’s imagination coincided with desire (Begierde), but this unity was destroyed when he “imagined” his desire in a gross form. Thus, the original Fall was nothing more than a perversion of desire by the imagination. Therefore, one can see what our real vocation is all about – it is very demanding indeed. We must direct ourselves in imagination to the Father, in order to be fertilised by Him, and thereby to re-engender Divinity in a creative manner. This process is fostered by the existence – an idea also present in spiritual alchemy – of a luminous substance dwelling within us. Our eye is a kind of physical concretisation thereof, and is always potentially reactivable by the exercise of our will/imagination. Indeed, alchemy – understood as a worldview, an ongoing spiritual process – is congenial to Boehme’s theosophy and to that of those who followed in his wake.9 As could be expected, theosophical literature lent itself to inspiring a rich iconography. It flourished mostly in the period of the Baroque and the neo-Baroque. The great series of pictures by Michael Andreae (ca. 1628-1720), as illustrations to the “complete” edition of Boehme’s works edited by Johann Georg Gichtel (1638-1710) in 1682,10 triggered a great deal of similar pictures. Directly inspired by the same edition is the splendid plate designed by the Swiss Niklaus Tscheer (1671-1748),11 (colour plate 6). Andreas Freher’s (1649-1728) Paradoxa emblemata, written and drawn around 1720, also had an important reception. These images were used and partly reproduced by William Law (1686-1761).12 Now, a question springs to our mind: how did the theosophically oriented people of these centuries read, understand, and “experience” these 8 Poiret, L’Oeconomie, vol. II, 587ff. 9 In his excellent article “Jacob Böhme and Christian Theosophy,” which might serve as one of the best introductions to this author, Hanegraaff writes notably that we are dealing here with a model “very different from the largely Platonic models of esotericism most typical for the Roman Catholic context, with their emphasis on a venerable Tradition known as prisca theologia /philosophia perennis. Boehme’s worldview is not Platonic but essentially alchemical, focusing on arduous processes of transmutation, a struggle ‘from darkness to light,’ rather than on celebrating the beauty of a harmonious and hierarchical universe” (Hanegraaff, “Jacob Böhme and Christian Theosophy,” 120; see also idem, Western Esotericism, 73-85). 10 See, for example, the reproduction of all of them in Klossowski de Rola, The Golden Game. 11 It is the frontispice of his book of 1718 (titled “Introduction to The True and Thorough Knowledge of the Great Secret of Godliness,” see Tscheer, Einleitung). 12 On the history of these series of illustrations, see Faivre, “Visual Art in Christian Theosophy.”

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“imagination triggering” artistic supports based upon texts that were already more figurative than abstract in character? We have reason to assume that such pictures were aimed at making the beholder commune with the Zentralschau originally experienced by a theosopher, or at least with the “knowledge” reaped by epigones who might not have been graced with a Zentralschau themselves but nonetheless set themselves up as successors. So what about creative imagination outside the pale of Christian theosophy proper, but still within the broad scope of modern Western esoteric currents? As I mentioned at the outset, the idea that our imagination may work magical effects upon our body or exterior objects is widespread. It is understood here as a kind of plastic mediator. Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), who is often quoted in that context, wrote: How very clear it is, that a pregnant woman’s desire impresses the mark of the object of her desire upon the tender foetus. How varied, and how unlike theirs, are the gestures and the faces that parents give their children, because of the different things that they may picture strongly in their minds during the act of coitus … How often have people with malevolent intentions done harm, through spells and charms, to men, to animals, and even to plants … Through its feelings alone, the soul commands the elements, bringing winds onto a peaceful sky, calling forth rain from the clouds, and restoring calm and good weather once again.13

In the wake of Ficino, the ineluctable Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) comes to mind, the author of what is perhaps the most characteristic work of Renaissance magical literature, De occulta philosophia (1533). While following Ficino, he set forth the imagination as an example of magical activation and placed it in a cosmological framework, conferring on it an ontological dignity. He recognised in it the potential to influence the health of others, for good or evil, through the intermediary of the stars. Later in the century, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), in De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione (1591), propounded a theory of the imagination conceived of as the principal instrument of magical and religious processes. In so doing, and in a manner not very unlike that of Giulio Camillo (1480-1544; see L’idea del teatro, 1550), he transformed the art of memory (which had been mostly a rational mnemonic technique that made use of images, as in Thomas Aquinas) into a religious and magical one. It was a matter of training the 13 Ficino, Theologia Platonica, Book XIII, chap. 1 and IV. Latin text quoted in Pomponazzi, Opera Omnia, 284ff. (see also ibid., 298ff).

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imagination to make it into an instrument allowing the acquisition of magical, even divine powers. Probably most readers will expect to see in this short roll-call another unescapable German, Paracelsus (1493-1541). Indeed, he took the role of the imagination further than Ficino, Bruno or Agrippa in terms of vis imaginativa. One finds in him this often quoted sentence: “What then is the imagination, if not a sun in man?”14 The soul (Gemüth), faith and imagination represent the three great human faculties. The soul is a centre of plastic power capable of forming a body. If our imagination were strong enough, we could even change our appearance as easily as we do the expression on our face. To conceive is to engender, so that every concept is at least potentially organic. Hence the need, for Paracelsus, to distinguish the false imagination from the true (vera) or authentic one. The false, or extravagant imagination – fantasia – offers but a pale reflection of visible things, instead of enabling us to encounter the power of unfathomable Nature. It is the seed of madness; it lacks the anchoring that binds together imagination and authentic magic, as it lacks the rooting of the image in our “sidereal” being – as a plant has to be rooted in its appropriate soil. Here, Paracelsus meets up with Boehme: for him it is not a matter of creating original images, because these could only be mere fantasia, images not rooted in the very nature of being. Jumping to a more recent period, let me mention, within the occultist current, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), who authored, among many other works, her influential Isis Unveiled (1877). Here we read: From whatever aspect we view and question matter, the world-old philosophy that it was vivif ied and fructif ied by the eternal idea, or imagination – the abstract outlining and preparing the model for the concrete form – is unavoidable … As the creator, breaking up the chaotic mass of dead, inactive matter, shaped it into form, so man, if he know his powers, could, to a degree, do the same.15

Blavatsky did not fail to add that an earlier author, Catherine Crowe (18031876), whom she praises, had presented a similar view in her book The Night-Side of Nature (1848). This latter had enjoyed a wide circulation, notably by borrowing from previous authors on the subject of imagination. In this 14 “Nun was ist die Imagination anderst als ein Sonn im Menschen?” (Paracelsus, Sämtliche Werke, XIV, 310, chapter “De virtute imaginativa”). 15 Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, 396.

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respect it did not escape the attention of Charles Baudelaire, who went as far as quoting the passage in which she writes: By imagination, I do not simply mean to convey the common notion implied in that much-abused word, which is only fancy, but the constructive imagination, which is a much higher function, and which, inasmuch as man is made in the likeness of God, bears a distant relation to that sublime power by which the Creator projects, creates, and upholds, his universe.16

To the almost inevitable allusion to the “signatures of the foetus”17 mentioned by Ficino in the quotation above, Crowe adds that if a mother’s mind can thus act on another organism, there is no reason why the minds of the saints or that of Anna Catharina Emmerich (1774-1824) could not act on their own.18 “Even by the force of imagination, human beings can injure other things; yea, even to the slaying of a man.”19 So much about creative imagination. Strolling further through the literature devoted to creative imagination would bring us many further surprises, all the more since it extends over a few centuries. The topic has many riches in store to quench our curiosity.

16 Crowe, Night-Side of Nature, 182. Quoted by Baudelaire in the original English and in French translation, in “Le gouvernement de l’imagination” (1859), 623-624. 17 Stories about women transmitting to their children physical marks of the fancies they had had while carrying them in their wombs are a-plenty, from the Renaissance well into the eighteenth century. See Faivre, “Vis imaginativa,” 171-219. 18 Crowe, Night-Side of Nature, 435. 19 Ibid., 449.



Weren’t medieval monks afraid of demons? Claire Fanger

In fact it was only sensible for monks to exercise due caution around demons, but that didn’t mean a monk would necessarily flee from demons at the first sign of trouble either. After all, it had been known from the time of the earliest monks in Egypt that anyone aspiring to extreme holiness was likely to be singled out for demonic temptation; in this sense demonic assaults were a normal and expected hazard of the monastic profession. Later medieval monks and nuns, indeed anyone who aspired to live abstemiously, maintain chastity, and pray regularly tended to have more frequent and worse experiences of demons than ordinary householders. Of course they developed more ways of managing demonic behaviour too. Thus, despite the dangers, with due diligence and appropriate safety precautions, attempted demonic attacks could be reduced from something potentially deadly to the level of a dangerous nuisance for most monks most of the time.1 Stories about demons abounded in many medieval monastic readings, and these stories helped monks and nuns to prepare themselves for the kinds of behaviours and activities of demons that we see in first person accounts of visionary experiences. The word “visionary” belies the fact that the demons often did what seemed to be quite physical things, moving objects and people, causing bodily pain and suffering, leaving visible marks. Demons might strike, whip or suffocate the holy man or woman. They might lift and carry individuals around, threatening to drop them from a height (colour plate 7). They could take the form of beasts including dragons, snakes and toads, black dogs, monstrous horses and other frightening or disgusting creatures, their animal forms also capable of bruising, biting, or strangling the hapless religious aspirant. Even without taking on palpable forms, they did emotional damage by tempting holy men and women to deadly sins of lechery, gluttony, pride, and despair. Many of the behaviours just mentioned are reflected in the archetypal catalogue of demonic temptations in the life of St Anthony of Egypt, a

1 For a brief but useful overview of the history of demons in relation to monasticism, see Ruys, Demons in the Middle Ages, chapters 1 and 2.

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desert-dwelling ascetic from the early fourth century,2 but his characterisations left a lasting imprint on the monastic literature. Similar tales of real demons are reflected in biographies and visionary accounts right through the later Middle Ages. The twelfth-century monk from Liège, Rupert of Deutz (ca. 1075/80-ca. 1129, reports demonic torments in several of his visions, ranging from the merely annoying (when demons poke him irreverently in the ribs) to the terrifying (when he is attacked by a troop of demons from whom the Holy Spirit has to rescue him).3 A fourteenth-century French monk, John of Morigny, describes many demonic visions including one of a giant demon whose shadow covers half the sky, and another in which demons in the guise of Franciscans threaten to pour boiling lead down his throat if he does not worship them.4 More assaults are documented in the record of the visions of Ermine de Reims, a late fourteenth-century widow who attempted a career as a holy woman after the death of her husband. Ermine’s demons are imaginatively extreme in their torments: they tempt her with viscerally repugnant physical contact; they force her to witness sexual scenes; they hang her upside down to embarrass her when her skirt falls over her head; they take the form of huge toads that she finds crawling about in her bed. They also attack in the form of serpents; indeed one tries to strangle and suffocate her, sticking its head in her mouth and blocking her nose. Demons also carry her up onto the roof and throw her off. As they forced her through the window they hit her head so hard on the frame that, as her confessor noted, the marks could still be seen by everyone later.5 Perhaps worst of all, demons could take advantage of the monk’s very desire for closeness to God by impersonating angels, saints, the Virgin Mary, and even Christ himself. In the case of Ermine, her visionary account features demonic impersonations of the saints Augustine, Nicholas, Mary Magdalene, and her special patron Paul the Simple; she proved adept at

2 The Life of Anthony was important for its transmission of information about demonic behaviour. For an English translation see Athanasius, The Life of Anthony. 3 For a synopsis of Rupert’s visions see the literary biography by van Engen, Rupert of Deutz, 48-55. 4 John of Morigny, Book of Visions. For a giant demon, see 175-177; for boiling lead, 180. 5 As usual for women, who were less likely than men to be literate, Ermine’s story is told through a confessor, Jean le Graveur. See Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Ermine de Reims. A partial translation of the text is found in the appendix. Incidents with demons are contextualised in chapter 4. For sexual scenes, see 108, 113; for hanging upside down, 111; toads, 118; suffocation by serpents, 120; pushing off roof, 124.

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discerning these false saints, which surely encouraged her confessor to believe in the basic goodness of her aspirations and holiness of her life.6 Since those aiming at monastic profession were aware that they might be singled out for demonic assault, they had to be prepared. Religious professionals saw themselves as soldiers in the service of God, their lifestyle conceived as a manner of fighting beside the saints and angels to combat God’s adversaries. Their preparations most importantly had to include ways of recognising demons when they appeared in angelic guise. As well, they needed procedures for exposing and expelling them. Protocols for discerning and driving out demons were pioneered early by St Anthony of Egypt (251-356), who suggested that you could know the presence of demons by your fear of them; the presence of real angels and saints is witnessed by your own feelings of joy and stability.7 These were long taken as useful guidelines. If you were pretty sure demons were in action, invoking the saints, God or Mary, might work both to expose demons and banish them. Other procedures routinely used by monks included singing psalms, making the sign of the cross, or addressing the demon with some holy water, a saintly relic, or other consecrated object. In cases where you suspected a demonic impersonation, spitting on an apparition would often reveal its true character. Once Ermine spat on an apparition of her dead husband to reveal it as a demon; another time she uncovered demons in the guise of angels by spitting on them.8 John of Morigny once spat in the face of the Virgin to be sure that she was not a demon in disguise. But, according to his account, she was no demon and did not vanish: luckily, she didn’t get upset and rather said “John, you’ve done well and not badly.”9 It is unsurprising that the Virgin Mary herself would uphold what all pastoral counsellors said about the importance of checking for demonic agents even under a holy appearance. Since a demon would most likely have been angry or disturbed at such an insult, for John, the identification of the apparition as a true vision of the Virgin was effectively secured by her calm patience. The monks’ sense of demons as independent entities would have taken form under the influence of such ongoing interactions both experienced and reported by colleagues. Medieval monks contributed their experientially derived information to the growing oral and written body of knowledge about 6 For these saintly impersonations, see Ermine de Reims, chapter 5, especially 136-143. 7 Athanasius, Life of Anthony, 59. 8 Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Ermine de Reims, apparition of dead husband, 105; demons in angelic guise 163-64. 9 This is an untranslated part of the Old Compilation text; original language account may be found at OC III.25.a in the Latin edition, John of Morigny, Flowers of Heavenly Teaching.

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discernment and control of spirits, sharing with others what they learned from their own visions. John of Morigny evidently experienced false apparitions of the Virgin often enough that he came up with specific guidelines for distinguishing the real Mother of God from a demon in disguise: the devil, he wrote, cannot appear in a Church alone; he will always be accompanied by the Virgin or an angel. When he appears in the guise of the Virgin, it will usually be in an unclean place, a ditch or tavern, and not in broad daylight. The most telling sign that the apparent Virgin is not what she appears to be is that before leaving she will tempt you to a sin, often lechery. He advises readers to be attuned to the suggestions of the Holy Spirit in the presence of all apparitions.10 Some demonic behaviours, such as possession, were more difficult to deal with, requiring more elaborate protocols and stronger holy power. Any monks and nuns who were at all renowned for their holiness might be asked to work on difficult cases of possession, or deal with demons who could not be expelled by normal means (colour plate 8). We can see how this worked ritually and socially in the case of one exorcism requested of the respected twelfth-century nun Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). One day she received a letter from Abbot Gedolph of Brauweiler about a case of possession he could not resolve himself: All of us, together with the people, tried in many ways for at least three months to free this woman and, as a consequence of our sins, we did not succeed. … Then one day that demon finally disclosed to us, as a result of an exorcism, that the possessed woman could be freed through the power of your vision and the largess of divine revelation … May your holiness pass on to us in some small way everything that God presents to you in this matter or reveals in visions.11

Hildegard’s reply began by assuring Gedolph that she spoke only what God dictated, and then she gave some information about the demon in question: There are various kinds of evil spirits. The demon about which you ask has the peculiarity of adjusting to the corrupt habits of human beings … and bothers very little about the cross of the Lord, the relics of the Saints, and similar things … Therefore his expulsion is more difficult than that

10 John of Morigny, Book of Visions, 204-205. 11 Unlike many medieval women, Hildegard could read and write. The letter from Gedolph is transcribed in Gottfried et al., Life of the Holy Hildegard, 86-87.

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of other demons. He can be banished only through fasting, mortification, prayers, alms, and through the command of God himself.12

The letter went on to detail the procedure of an elaborate exorcistic ritual performed by priests who had prepared themselves through fasting and prayer. The exorcism did work, but only for a short time, and the demon soon returned. Eventually the possessed woman was brought to see Hildegard in person. After receiving her, the nuns fasted and prayed from the Feast of the Purification (or Candlemas, in early February) until Holy Saturday (i.e. for about two months). While staying with them in the convent, the demon ranted and sputtered bits of information about holy things – the power of the sacraments, the evil of the Cathar heresy – which Hildegard permitted so long as the things he said were (in Hildegard’s estimation) true. Overall the demon’s conversation among them had the effect of strengthening everyone’s faith. On Holy Saturday, as the priest was blessing the water, the demon began to act out, causing his possessed victim to tremble, shake, and stamp her feet; he ultimately departed, as demons often did, “with excrement, through the shameful parts of the body.”13 Thereafter the woman was freed from her possession forever. The reputation of monks for banishing demons is closely allied to their reputation for necromancy, or raising and binding demons for divinatory and other purposes. As Richard Kieckhefer has noted, “Judicial and anecdotal evidence suggests that explicitly demonic magic, called ‘nigromancy’ or ‘necromancy,’ was largely the domain of priests, perhaps especially those without full-time parish employment, as well as ordained monks with some education and esoteric interests, university students and others who had been received into minor orders.”14 Monasteries often had good libraries, and monks and nuns – who were more likely to be literate and well-educated than the lay populations around them – were major consumers of written texts of all kinds, including esoteric ones. Recent research has uncovered lots of interesting material about esoterically interested monks, such as the French Benedictine John of Morigny, whose work has already been mentioned in connection with demonic apparitions.15 Such interests have been documented as well in the case 12 Hildegard’s response transcribed in Gottfried et al., Life of the Holy Hildegard, 88-91, quoted portion 88. 13 Gottfried et al., Life of the Holy Hildegard, 94. 14 Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 4. 15 On John’s esoteric interests, see Fanger, Rewriting Magic.

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of the Benedictine monks of St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, and a fascinating collection of magic texts formerly in their holdings is still partly extant.16 Though the library of the monks of St Augustine’s did not contain actual texts of necromancy, many of the magic texts they were interested in elided with the aims of necromancy, in having less than salubrious goals, or encouraging commerce with spirits.17 Some works described strange experiments for creating artificial life forms and monsters; others described a cosmos in which spirit conjuring was a permissible part of God’s plan.18 The fact that there were no books of actual necromancy recorded as belonging to the library does not mean individual monks were not reading and copying them. In fact John of Morigny confesses to copying a necromantic text in his early days at university; he also went through a phase when he evidently became so interested in raising demons that, in addition to practising from existing texts, he even wrote his own “new necromancy.”19 Maybe this is where the idea of monks fearing demons begins to seem perverse: why would you seek to raise demons if you had experienced their presence and it scared the crap out of you? Probably the monastic profession conferred some sense of habituation to demonic presences, perhaps going along with an interest in testing the limits of your control over them. Monks (and nuns too, as can be seen if you look at Hildegard’s creative exorcism) already had a good deal of ritual expertise in demonic control. The primary techniques of necromantic operations were variations of those in use for exorcism, with a few new fillips and sometimes a broader idea of the number and nature of spirits.20 But even Hildegard acknowledged that “there are different kinds of evil spirits,” and as we have seen, the long course of her successful exorcism involved quite a bit of conversation with the inhabiting demon. People listened to the demon when it said things Hildegard judged to be “true,” or when it confirmed Christian truths about God. While the demon was not summoned by them to give information, their commerce with it seemed to have the effect of strengthening the nuns’ faith overall. If demons were awful, they also carried messages from a world of immortal spirits; as such they deserved respect. For these reasons their knowledge 16 On these magical monks see Page, Magic in the Cloister; Klaassen, Transformations of Magic, 51-113. 17 On such elisions see Klaassen, Transformations of Magic, especially chapter 5, 115ff. 18 Page, Magic in the Cloister; see chapter 3 for monstrous creatures, chapter 5 for fellowship with spirits. 19 John of Morigny, Book of Visions. For copying a necromantic text, see 173; for “new necromancy,” 186. 20 For more on exorcism and its relation to necromancy, see Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 144ff.

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might be sought out from time to time by those who had the means (and the chutzpah) to do it. We know that monks used necromancy, and procedures are still available for having dominion over spirits;21 however, hardly anyone recommended these procedures, least of all their users. John of Morigny worried gravely about the consequences of his necromancy both divinely and humanly: would he be damned? And, perhaps more seriously, if other monks knew about his necromancy, would it cast doubt on his real visions of the Virgin?22 Other hazards of necromancy spread through cautionary tales. From these it is clear that monks and nuns have more power against demons; secular priests have some; but laity who mess with demons are at great risk. One story circulating in a twelfth-century collection recounts the adventure of a knight named Henry who did not believe in demons. He consulted a necromancer-cleric named Philip, asking to be shown some real demons, if in fact they existed. Philip yielded to his request only reluctantly, drawing the magic circle with dire warnings to Henry about not extending any body parts outside the circle and not promising anything to the devil. Soon, Henry saw and heard terrifying apparitions; a huge demon loomed over him, and when Henry refused him a gift, rushed upon him. Crying out, Henry extended his arm, but before the diabolic figure could snatch him from the circle, Philip stepped up and banished the apparition. From that hour, Henry emended his life.23 Obviously conversations with demons are one thing for trained professionals, quite another for the average person, mired in the world, lacking in ritual expertise. Curiosity is dangerous, and the need for due caution around spirits is a recurrent motif in all tales about necromancy. The message for readers should be clear: don’t try this at home.

21 See Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, for a sampling. 22 John of Morigny, Book of Visions. For a divine warning against necromancy and worries over hiding his books from his colleagues, see 186-188. 23 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogue, Vol. 1, Dist. 5, Chapter II. For another story with a similar moral about belief in demons, see Dist. I, Chapter. XXXIII.



What does popular fiction have to do with the occult? Christine Ferguson

From the outset, any connection between popular fiction and occultism might seem oxymoronic. After all, if occultism is supposed to be about secrecy and arcane knowledge, what could it possibly have to do with a brashly commercial form of literature which is thoroughly at home in the marketplace, seeks to gain as many readers as possible, and values entertainment more than instruction? Nonetheless, to take the case of Britain alone,1 occult topics have been fixtures of the popular fiction landscape since the eighteenth-century birth of the Gothic onwards, featuring in the alchemical, Rosicrucian, and Satanic subplots of novels like Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). When, nearly a century later, the cumbersome and costly triple-decker novel finally made way for the sleek and affordable single volume format that has since become the industry standard, occult novels like George Du Maurier’s Trilby (1894) and Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan (1895) topped the newly-constituted best seller lists. In today’s increasingly globalised and e-based fiction market, the allure of the occult seems only to have grown, as demonstrated by the remarkable success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon novels.2 Why has occultism so frequently and successfully been co-opted within mainstream literary genres such as the thriller, the romance, the school story, and the horror novel? What new understanding of the development and cultural impact of Western esotericism might we gain by focusing on these texts, rather than just on non-fictional works of occult philosophy which typically have far smaller audiences and lack the dynamic of suspenseful plotting? Although genre fiction might sometimes strike us as sensational, ersatz, or even scurrilous in its approach to esotericism, it urgently requires 1 As a scholar of Victorian and Edwardian British literature, I shall largely draw my examples from this geographical context, although many of the patterns and developments I observe can also be documented more widely across the West. 2 See Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997-2005); and Brown, Angels and demons, Da Vinci Code, Lost Symbol, Inferno, Origin.

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our attention if we are to understand how occult ideas have been transmitted, commercialised, and given meaning by and for the public. Within the academy, however, this attention has not been immediately forthcoming. Far more focus has been directed towards the occult dimensions of modernist and avant garde literary movements, some, if by no means all, of which were premised on an explicit rejection of mass culture.3 The earliest studies of literary occult modernism started appearing in the midtwentieth century,4 initiating a thriving critical industry which has expanded dramatically since the nineteen-nineties, as evidenced by book-length studies by Leon Surette, Timothy Materer, Roger Luckhurst, Helen Sword, Suzanne Hobson, Leigh Wilson, Edmund Lingan, John Bramble, Caroline Maclean, and Matte Robinson, to name just a few. We must view with some scepticism, then, the recent claim that “in scholarship the relationship between occultism … and modernist literature, art, and cinema … has been either dismissed as inconsequential or insufficiently explored.”5 On the contrary, the literary dimensions of occultism have been taken very seriously indeed within modernist studies, under whose aegis they have hitherto almost exclusively been examined.6 Studies of occultural popular fiction have been far slower in coming, although the important recent work of Jeffrey J. Kripal, Andrew McCann, and Susan Johnston Graf has helped to redress this lag. How might we account for this critical hesitation, or even reluctance, to examine popular fictional representations of occultism? There are many potential explanations, foremost of which might be a scholarly squeamishness about bringing together two subjects that have until relatively recently been considered unworthy of serious academic study: esotericism and popular fiction. As Wouter Hanegraaff has argued, esotericism has long been defined as an obsolete form of knowledge on whose rejection “our very identity as intellectuals or academics depends”;7 indeed, it has only been through the creation of dedicated programmes and institutes such as the University of Amsterdam’s Centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents that the academic study of esotericism has come to 3 For more on the complex – sometimes oppositional, sometimes collaborative – relationship between modernism and mass culture, see Huyssen, After the Great Divide; Cooper, “Modernism.” 4 See for example Senior, Way Down and Out; Clark, “Metaphors for Poetry”; Mills, Yeats and the Occult. 5 Bauduin and Johnsson, “Conceptualizing Occult Modernism,” 3. 6 Notable exceptions to this critical prioritisation of occult modernism include Wolff, Strange Stories and Roberts, Gothic Immortals. 7 Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 3.

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seem not only respectable, but culturally valuable, and even necessary. The same may be said of popular fiction, which, until the nineteen-sixties disciplinary advent of Cultural Studies, was systematically excluded from university literary curricula as the abject other to what Ken Gelder describes as “Literature” with a capital L.8 Indeed, in his insightful analysis of the prejudices which have driven this exclusion, Gelder indicts a stereotypical version of the popular fiction reader which has much in common with mainstream perceptions of the esoteric seeker: namely, that she is naïve, deluded, or indiscriminating. “It is commonplace,” he writes, to imagine the reader of popular fiction as uncritical, someone who actually comes to believe in the remote worlds he or she reads about and even (in, say, genres like fantasy and romance or some historical popular fiction) inhabits them or replicates then … But the role of the reader of Literature … is to disenchant the text, to disbelieve … popular fiction is usually credited with the opposite function: it enchants its readers, which is another way of saying that it distracts them.9

Gelder’s deployment of the language of enchantment shows how the stigma around esotericism can and has been extrapolated into other fields; readers of popular fiction, he suggests, have often been accused of a kind of magical thinking which prevents them from thinking accurately and realistically about their place in the world. Such is certainly the charge that Marxist critics Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer notoriously laid against all expressions of the “culture industry” in their highly influential The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944; English trans. 1972), one that Adorno would hone specifically towards practices such as astrology, fortune-telling, and spiritualism in his later works Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life (1951; English trans 1974) and “The Stars Down to Earth” (1957). As scholars increasingly challenge such hostile perceptions by revealing the critical sophistication, impact, and creativity of esotericism and popular fiction alike, the time is right for a critical reappraisal of the connections between these areas of imaginative endeavour. What can we gain from a new form of literary occultural studies which combines expertise in both the emergence of esoteric currents and in the development of popular literary genres and markets? Such a methodology promises to correct previous approaches to occult fiction which have either 8 Gelder, Popular Fiction, 1. 9 Ibid, 38.

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minimised its literary texture or miscast its complex relationship to historical expressions of esotericism. We see an example of the latter tendency in Fred Botting’s recent assessment of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni (1842) in his formidable genre survey Gothic (2014). Gothic studies might seem like the natural disciplinary home for research on occult fiction, and it is indeed within its precincts that popular occult novels such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) or Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby (1967) have received the most critical attention. But this literary sub-field’s critical preoccupation with fear, horror, and transgression does not form an easy fit with what Marco Pasi deems the largely “positive epistemology” of Western esotericism,10 nor does its propensity, noted by Alexandra Warwick, to reduce all forms of haunting to metaphoric stand-ins for more mundane processes of psychological deterioration or repression.11 Botting’s analysis reveals some of these problems when it describes Zanoni as a novel about “a hero schooled in occult reading, experimenting in ancient black arts in a search for the elixir vitae of the alchemists.”12 First of all, we might start with the inaccuracies – the Chaldean Zanoni is already adept in alchemy, and has long held the elixir of life which has allowed him to retain a youthful appearance for millennia. Second, there is the mischaracterisation of Zanoni’s occult sciences as “black arts” – on the contrary, and as the numerous nineteenth-century occult believers and movements inspired by the novel would later affirm,13 Zanoni is the practitioner of a higher and spiritually elevated “supreme science” which, if practised correctly, would allow mankind to “rank at last amongst the nearest ministrants and agents gathered round the Throne of Thrones.”14 Needing to subsume Zanoni within a Gothic tradition of deviance and terror, Botting conflates heterodoxy with diablerie. Yet Zanoni’s occultism is celestial rather than satanic, aiming not to estrange man from God, but to unite the two. That it struggles to do so has less to do with its fundamentally dark nature than with the materialist and violent climate of revolutionary France. For occult readers, the novel furnished not simply – or even at all – an opportunity for a quick scare through encounter with a past always already marked as primitive and deviant, but an invitation to embrace the higher spiritual truths of a lost Golden age. 10 Pasi, “Arthur Machen’s Panic Fears,” 74. 11 Warwick, “Feel Gothicky.” 12 Botting, Gothic, 117. 13 See Franklin, “Evolution of Occult Spirituality” on the significant and catalysing impact of Zanoni on the late nineteenth-century occult revival. 14 Bulwer-Lytton, Zanoni, 247, 147.

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Popular fiction, as the example of Zanoni demonstrates, is not simply an outlet for dread or anxiety; it has also acted as an important vehicle through which to share, promote, and rebrand spiritually heterodox beliefs hitherto associated with deviance and danger. That modern occultists themselves have always been aware of this positive potential is evident in their own prolific but often neglected, authorship of genre fiction. Among the many nineteenth- and twentieth-century occultists who attempted to crack the popular fiction market, we find Emma Hardinge Britten, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Mabel Collins, A.E. Waite, Charles Leadbeater, Franz Hartmann,15 John William Brodie-Innes, Aleister Crowley, and Dion Fortune.16 The fiction these figures produced may never have been “popular” in terms of sales, but it clearly aimed to reach wide audiences through its mode of publication – often in serial format within inexpensive periodicals – and its choice of genres, ranging from the oriental romance to the ghost story, the fairy tale, the nascent science fiction novel, and the detective plot. Novels such as Mabel Collins’s The Blossom and the Fruit: A Tale of Love and Magic (1888) and Franz Hartmann’s The Talking Image of Urur (1890) made their debut in monthly instalments within the pages of the Theosophical magazine Lucifer,17 where they aimed to pump up sales for future issues through their – admittedly not always successful – attempts to generate narrative suspense. Later occultists like Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley would exploit the popularity of fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, himself the creation of the spiritualist believer Arthur Conan Doyle, to produce their own recurring occult sleuths Dr Taverner and Simon Iff, 15 A German occultist who wrote extensively if not exclusively in his native language, Hartmann appears to have composed many of his fin-de-siècle fictions in English. The earliest serialisations and publications of works such as The Talking Image of Urur and An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians are not identified as translations, and there is no record of their previous publication in German. 16 Also important in this context, although beyond this essay’s purview, are the American writers Paschal Beverly Randolph and H.P. Lovecraft. Randolph, an occultist, sex magician, and healer, authored the Zanoni-esque The Wonderful Story of Ravalette; Lovecraft, although his own personal investment in occultism remains moot, has had an enormous influence on twentieth-century occult practitioners. See Deveney, Paschal Beverly Randolph; Engle, “Cults of Lovecraft.” 17 Both novels were serialised in the London Theosophical journal Lucifer before being published in single volume form. Fascinatingly, Collins’s novel would undergo a series of sub-title and authorial changes across its serialisation in Lucifer – from “A Tale of Love and Magic” to “The True Story of a Magician,” and from “By Mabel Collins” to “By Mabel Collins and _____” – before receiving its final single volume designation of The Blossom and the Fruit: A True Story of a Black Magician, by Mabel Collins and –. These changes suggest, among other things, an ongoing debate about how best to market Collins’s tale of reincarnation and feminine magical identity.

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who solved crimes by uncovering their esoteric catalysts.18 Such examples show that occultists, far from being hostile to the mass market, were keen to embrace literary commercialisation and diverse audiences. Popular fiction, they recognised, could be both ally and stimulus. Accordingly, an 1887 article in Lucifer urged its seeker-readers to consult contemporary best-seller lists for inspiration, arguing that there they might find ample proof of secular materialism’s failure to capture the hearts of the public. Lauding the success of recent “mystic and theosophic” novels such as Marie Corelli’s A Romance of Two Worlds (1886), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and H. Rider Haggard’s She (1887), the piece reaches the glowingly ad populum conclusion that “Literature is the public heart and pulse. Beside the glaring fact that were there no demand there would be no supply, current literature is produced only to please, and is therefore evidently the mirror which faithfully reflects the state of the public mind.”19 Yet popular literature need not simply be a passive reflection of enduring public opinion towards esotericism; it might also, as occultists and antioccultists alike have recognised, be its active producer. The evangelical backlash against the Harry Potter novels, for example, has been driven by the suspicion that vulnerable readers – in this case, children – are being deliberately enticed towards a religiously heterodox, even demonic, worldview in the off-guard hours of their leisure.20 While Rowling has rejected such charges with vehemence, other writers of occult-themed fiction, particularly those publicly associated with Theosophical and Ufological currents, have eagerly embraced the propagandistic potential of popular fiction, sometimes to the detriment of its aesthetic quality. In the eighteen-eighties, writers like “Rita” (pseudonym of English writer Eliza Margaret Humphreys) and Franz Hartmann worked a bait-and-switch routine on their buyers, luring them in with sensational titles such as The Mystery of a Turkish Bath (1888) and An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians (1887); rather than racy story-telling, however, such texts actually deliver lectures on occult doctrine spoken by one-dimensional characters in a state of largely plotless inertia. Readers seeking the titularly-promised mystery and adventure in either of these works will find themselves sorely disappointed; unsurprisingly, neither title 18 See Fortune, Secrets of Doctor Taverner; Crowley, Simon Iff Stories. 19 Anonymous, “The Sign of the Times,” 84. 20 For an example of such evangelical condemnation, see Abanes, Harry Potter and the Bible. For scholarship on the Christian critiques of the Potter books, see Ellis, Lucifer Ascending; Jones, “Threat to Imagination.”

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sold well. Far more successfully, the American pulp fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard used his science fiction stories, in combination with an excellent business model and marketing strategy, to spawn one of the twentieth century’s most powerful new religious movements: Scientology. Rita, Hartmann, and Hubbard all wrote from a professed position of sincere belief in an esoteric or new religious worldview,21 and/or with the overt aim of audience conversion. Yet occult audiences have not always required such sincere conviction from the popular novels they champion and co-opt. In 1932, for example, the American Theosophist James Taylor published a guide titled Occult Novel as Theosophical Propaganda, which lists titles that Theosophists might recommend for purchase in their local public libraries. There, the works would, Taylor hoped, subtly open the public consciousness to occultism in the same way as had Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) to abolitionism.22 While some of the novels he selects for endorsement are indeed by openly-identified occult or spiritualist believers, many are not; he lists also publications by vehement anti-spiritualists such as Charles Dickens, whose A Christmas Carol (1843) gets a mention, and H.G. Wells, three of whose titles make the cut – The Time Machine (1895), Tales of the Unexpected (1922), and The Dream (1924). What mattered to Taylor was not authorial intention or doctrinal consistency, but rather the imaginative sympathy which such works might inspire. “Experience has shown that if an individual can be persuaded to read a few occult novels,” he writes, “many prejudices will disappear, new and larger conceptions of man and the universe will arise in the reader’s mind and the way will be opened for the real study of theosophical books.”23 As Taylor’s pamphlet suggests, occultists have long recognised propaganda as a crucial, perhaps even primary, function of popular fiction, but this is by no means the only use they have found in the medium. Indeed, our understanding of occult fiction will remain severely impoverished if we relegate it to the role of ideologically-crude content delivery vehicle, designed to impose unquestioning assent rather than debate or aesthetic play. Early British Theosophists in particular knew that the fiction about their movement needed to do far more than just teach; it also had to 21 The key word here is of course “professed”; we have no means of knowing whether their actual beliefs – which are ultimately indeterminable – were in line with their published works. As such, we need to proceed with caution when distinguishing between “believing” and “non-believing” authors of occult fiction. While such distinctions can sometimes prove strategically useful, they remain necessarily tenuous. 22 Taylor, Occult Novels, 2. 23 Ibid., 3.

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be entertaining and imaginatively stimulating. Thus, during their coeditorship of Lucifer, Theosophists Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Mabel Collins regularly published reviews which criticised new occult fictions for being spiritually worthy but dull. Of the anonymously-authored reincarnation novel The Twin Soul (1887), one such review remarks damningly, “it begins well, goes on from bad to worse, promises much, holds nothing, and ends nowhere, seeming to be written not as a work of f iction, but simply to ventilate the author’s ideas.”24 By contrast, Blavatsky’s own short gothic f iction, compiled posthumously in Nightmare Tales (1892), is lively, sensational, and happy to jettison explanations of occult theory when they impede the dynamics of her plotting.25 Annie Besant’s foreword to the collection celebrates rather than chastises this breeziness of approach, hailing Blavatsky as “a vivid, graphic writer, gifted with brilliant imagination” who “th[rew] off” these stories in “her lighter moments.”26 The implicit argument here is that occultism has an entertainment as well as spiritual value – and that these two forms of value might be inextricably linked. Furthermore, it asserts the specif ically popular nature of this aesthetic function, one associated with ease and entertainment rather than difficulty and work. Beyond the purposes of proselytisation and entertainment, popular fiction and the occult collaborate in other ways as well. One of these is canon formation, whereby occult thinkers identify certain critically acclaimed and/or enduringly popular works of literature as encoded vessels of esoteric wisdom; in doing so, they claim the attendant cultural capital of such texts for their own mystical worldviews. The most accomplished example of this technique is Arthur Machen’s Hieroglyphics (1902), a remarkable work of esoteric literary criticism which positions novels such as Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers (first published as The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, 1836-1837) and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) as contemporary repositories of the ancient mystery rites, their secrets hidden in plain view.27 Occultists have also employed popular fiction for the purposes of internal debate and self-critique, adopting the conventions of the gothic tale (Mabel Collins’s anonymously-published Morial the Mahatma, 1891), the Near 24 Anonymous, “Twin Soul,” 397. 25 This is particularly evident in “The Cave of Echoes,” a gothic shocker which rejects the complex cosmological schema of reincarnation proposed in The Secret Doctrine (1888) to have a recently-killed man return promptly to earth to exact revenge on his murderer. 26 Besant, “Foreword.” 27 For more on this work, see Ferguson, “Reading with the Occultists.”

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Eastern romance (Laurence Oliphant’s Masollam: A Problem of the Period, 1886), and the comic picaresque (Franz Hartmann’s The Talking Image of Urur, 1890) to condemn false gurus and rival esoteric groups, and to probe their own previous beliefs. Finally, and by no means mutually exclusively from these previous applications, occultists have produced popular fiction as a form of spiritual practice, in which the text’s (often channelled) mode of production has as much, if not more, esoteric import than its contents. Joan Grant’s historical romance Winged Pharaoh (1937) is a particularly notable example of this phenomenon, describing the life and exploits of the apocryphal Ancient Egyptian female pharaoh Sekhet-a-Ra that Grant claimed to have received through the psychical technique of far memory. Books like Grant’s succeed precisely because they can accommodate a wide range of reader positions and desires: they appeal to the genre fan who seeks only an adventure story set against an exotic backdrop, offer evidence of reincarnation for the occult believer, and provide a testing ground or target for the sceptic as she takes the temperature of her surrounding literary and religious climate. This brief survey reveals not only that modern occultists have always produced, used, and championed popular fiction, but also that they recognise in it a complexity that elitist literary critics have denied. In their hands, it is rarely just a tool of distraction or crude ideological imposition; rather, popular fiction becomes a site in which pleasure, spiritual development, genre experimentation, and critique combine, and the agendas of competing audiences might overlap. Much more work on the fascinating confluence between popular fiction and occultism remains to be done, and I hope that some of this essay’s readers will take it up. At present, the genre fiction of the West’s most prominent occult and New Age pioneers, including Aleister Crowley, Mabel Collins, L. Ron Hubbard, and Kenneth Grant, remains almost completely neglected by literary critics; so too does the vast body of serialised fiction – not to mention poetry – that appeared in the spiritualist and occult periodicals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We also require a much better sense of how occult ideas and tropes have proliferated through and helped to spawn new popular literary genres: excellent recent initiatives in this direction include James Machin’s Weird Fiction in Britain 1880-1939 (2018) and Aren Roukema’s research on the interface between occultism and British fantasy and science fiction.28 As further work gets underway, I urge us to retain an expansive and flexible understanding of occult fiction, one that rejects any prematurely-narrow definition that might reduce our 28 See Roukema, “Naturalists in Ghost Land” (2018).

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prospective corpus in a procrustean fashion. While my own research focuses particularly on the popular literary narratives produced by self-identified occultists, such identification need not be an exclusive or privileged criterion in a working definition of occult fiction. At present, it is far less important that scholars produce an exact typology of the popular occult novel – must it be written by a bona fide believer? or reach a certain sales threshold? to what extent is representational accuracy important? – than that we expand the parameters of this new field, and invite more people into it. The territory is ripe for exploration, and can accommodate a rich variety of approaches.



Isn’t alchemy a spiritual tradition? Peter J. Forshaw

Well, kind of, depending on how you define “spiritual” and the particular type of alchemy you’re talking about. The new historiography of alchemy prefers to speak of quite a wide variety of alchemies, rather than one generalised notion, and “spiritual alchemy” is a pretty contentious subject. In the antique environs of third-century BCE Hellenistic Egypt, we first find a concern with decidedly material procedures: the imitation of pearls and the colouring of metals to look like gold, by means of a “spiritual” tincture, leading eventually to early attempts at Chrysopoeia (Gold-Making), the transmutation of base metals, like lead, into that most precious substance, gold. Greek traditions were adopted and transformed by the Persians and Arabs, from the eighth century CE, where we find the Sufi Jabir ibn Hayyan (fl. ca. 721-ca. 815), for example, promoting his Sulphur-Mercury theory of the composition of the Philosophers’ Stone and the idea of the production of an elixir capable of both curing human diseases and transforming lesser metals into gold. From the same period we have the earliest version (in Arabic) of what is arguably the most famous text of alchemy, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, a short work that has been interpreted in a multitude of ways, as concerning gold-making, curing human sickness, personal transformation, and so on and so forth. There is an undeniable interest in spirits in the work of the Persian polymath Rhazes (865-925) whose Kitab al-Asrar (Book of Secrets) explicitly discusses four “spirits,” but these are volatile substances, including Mercury, Sal ammoniac, Arsenic, Sulphur and have nothing to do with the “spiritual” development of the alchemist. However, a representative of alchemy as an inner science of spiritual transformation can be found in a work by the Andalusian scholar and mystic Ibn ʿArabi (1165-1240), a chapter of the Kitâb Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Book of the Meccan Revelations), titled “On the knowledge of the alchemy of happiness and of its secret truths.” Ibn ʿArabi makes no claims to manual laboratory experience, but is aware of the theories of fellow Sufi Jabir and claims that alchemy is a science natural, spiritual and divine.1 When alchemical texts first began to be translated from Arabic into Latin in twelfth-century Europe, the Christian West came to learn about Greek and Arab laboratory practice. The first known translation, in 1144, De 1

Ibn ‘Arabi, L’alchimie du bonheur parfait.

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compositione alchimie (On the Composition of Alchemy), a work attributed to the Christian monk Morienus, is presented as “a book divine and completely filled with divinity.”2 This can of course be understood as the claim that the book was divinely inspired, while sticking to material goals. There is, however, some ambiguity, for in the midst of what certainly sounds like laboratory practice, we find such enigmatic statements as, “Truly, this matter is that created by God which is firmly captive within you yourself, inseparable from you, wherever you be, and any creature of God deprived of it will die.”3 In the Christian Middle Ages we begin to see the interpenetration of alchemy and religion, in particular in the use of the story of Christ as an exemplum for the various processes of the Great Work, in which the preparation of the alchemical elixir is seen as analogous to the conception, nativity, passion, and resurrection of Christ.4 While this could not really be argued to indicate any form of “spiritual” development, it is an example of what has come to be called Theo-Alchemy, an approach that related religious material (and considerations) to laboratory practice. The English Franciscan Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-1294) advocated the use of alchemy as a way of resisting and surviving the assault of the Antichrist.5 In the following century, another Franciscan, John of Rupescissa (ca. 1310-1366) wrote the Liber de Consideratione quintae essentiae omnium rerum (Book on the Consideration of the Quintessence of All Things, 1351-1352), in which he described the distillation of quintessences, including the preparation of alcohol distilled from wine, to produce the paradoxical aqua ardens or “burning water” of the alchemists.6 Rupescissa’s religious opinions about the goals of alchemy are recorded in the Liber Lucis (Book of Light, ca. 1350), where he claims that the Philosophers’ Stone will be of great benefit to the Roman Church during the time of the Antichrist.7 The gold and silver produced by alchemy will help attenuate the poverty of the elect of God, the Spiritual Franciscans, and provide them with the material means to fight against their adversary (who will also, incidentally, make use of his own malign alchemy).8 In the fifteenth century yet another Franciscan friar, Frater Ulmannus, composed Das Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit (Book of the Holy Trinity), which discusses 2 Morienus, De compositione alchimie, vol. 2, 4; Stavenhagen, Testament of Alchemy, 28. 3 Stavenhagen, Testament of Alchemy, 27. For a reading of this as spiritual, see Gabrovsky, Chaucer the Alchemist, 73. 4 Principe and Newman, “Some Problems,” 400. 5 Obrist, Les débuts de l’imagerie alchimique, 135-137. 6 DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time, 70. 7 Obrist, Les débuts de l’imagerie alchimique, 139. See also Principe, Secrets of Alchemy, 64. 8 Obrist, Les débuts de l’imagerie alchimique, 138-139.

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laboratory alchemy in a heady mixture of imperial German politics and Marian theology, including images of Christ as an alchemical eagle and Lucifer (with his mother!) as an alchemical hermaphrodite, symbols respectively of correct and misguided laboratory practice, with some consideration of the moral nature of the practitioner thrown in for good measure. If this all sounds rather disappointing for anyone hoping for more lofty dimensions to alchemy, we also occasionally find expressions of a belief in a supernatural form. In his Pretiosa margarita novella (New Pearl of Great Price, 1330), the Italian physician Petrus Bonus of Ferrara introduced this new perspective by claiming that alchemy was natural, supernatural, and divine. He went so far as to claim that a knowledge of the generation of the Philosophers’ Stone had provided pagan philosophers knowledge (and even observable proof) of Christian doctrines.9 This notion of a supernatural alchemy came to prominence in the early modern works of figures like Heinrich Khunrath (1560-1605), Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), and Robert Boyle (1627-1691). While all three were deeply interested in physico-chemistry, they intimated that in addition to its more material concerns with transmutation or healing, some products of the laboratory, such as supernatural “magical” and “angelical” stones, produced by adept philosophers, could help in understanding the language of animals, banishing evil spirits, and communicating with angels.10 This supernatural dimension appears in a different way in the manuscripts of English astrologer, alchemist, and physician Simon Forman (1552-1611), whose plans for laboratory practice included casting astrological charts in order to check for the malign presence of evil spirits or beneficial aid of angels.11 Some of the expanded claims about the properties of the Philosophers’ Stone were undoubtedly due to the influence of the rebellious, revolutionary Swiss Chymist Theophrastus Paracelsus of Hohenheim (1493-1541). Although some had already begun to consider alchemy’s investigation of matter useful for medical purposes in medieval Arabic texts, this came to the fore in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe when Paracelsus horrified the conservative, deeply classical, academic medical community by promoting two kinds of medical alchemy, Chymiatria and Spagyria, advocating, for instance, the use of homeopathic doses of poisonous mineral and metallic spirits for the treatment of what were held to be incurable corporeal 9 Bonus, Pretiosa margarita novella (1546), 38r. Obrist, Les débuts de l’imagerie alchimique, 253. See also Crisciani, “Conception of Alchemy.” 10 Boyle discusses this, for example, in his Dialogue on the Converse with Angels Aided by the Philosophers’ Stone. See Principe, Aspiring Adept, 311-312. See also Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, B2v. 11 Kassell, “‘Food of Angels’,” 354.

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diseases (e.g., leprosy, syphilis, gout) as well as what he termed ”spiritual diseases” (mania, epilepsy, lunacy).12 In his idiosyncratic way, Paracelsus also encouraged the combination of astrology and magic with alchemy. In his genuine and pseudo-epigraphic works we find an enthusiasm for practical laboratory alchemy, with a focus on the distillation of arcana for treatment of human illness, alongside works discussing elemental beings, man’s ethereal body, and contact with spirits. All of these alchemies, to one extent or another, would claim to be concerned with spirit, but few exponents, however pious, would consider themselves practitioners of a specifically spiritual alchemy. Nowadays, most people do not really have these kinds of spirits or notions of “spiritual” in mind when they think of spiritual alchemy. A quick browse on the shelves of occult and esoteric bookstores instead discovers books about alchemy as a process of self-purification, of spiritual exaltation and self-transformation, “as an inherently spiritual exercise which elevates the practitioner by some esoteric illumination.”13 Those familiar, for instance, with the internal and external alchemy of Chinese Taoism, may suspect that Western alchemy is, or includes, an “art of internal meditation or illumination” as much as “an external manipulation of apparatus and chemicals.”14 For some there is a consideration of “the role of the will and the mind of the spiritually purified adept in manipulating the matter of the physical world.”15 Others go still further and claim that “real” alchemy has nothing at all to do with the material laboratory but with the spiritual enlightenment or development of the practitioner. As inspiring as such ideas of self-perfection or transfiguration may be, it must be exasperating to hear from a historian that there is not much clear evidence of such beliefs in the early history of alchemy. One of the earliest overt signs of double (or multiple) readings of alchemy, implying that it was concerned not only with the purification or transmutation of matter in the laboratory but was being considered as a practice of self-transformation, appears in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century in the Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom, 1595/1609) of the German theosopher Heinrich Khunrath of Leipzig. Khunrath explicitly promoted physico-chemical experiment in the laboratory, with an interest in the properties of matter, metallic transmutation, and Paracelsian chemical medicine; but he was unusual in 12 Forshaw, “Morbo spirituali,” 293. 13 Principe and Newman, “Some Problems,” 398. 14 A slight modification of Principe and Newman, “Some Problems,” 388. 15 Morrisson, Modern Alchemy, 66.

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his insistence on the absolutely necessary combination of alchemy, magic and cabala.16 From this highly original standpoint he spoke of the purgation of his body, spirit and soul in alchemical terms, connecting this with his novel alchemo-theological declaration that the Philosophers’ Stone is the filius macrocosmi (Son of the World), working in harmony with Christ as the filius microcosmi (Son of Man). Khunrath described a threefold Stone (Macrocosmic, Microcosmic, and Divine). The first of these apparently accomplished many of the feats of medieval alchemy (transmutation of metals, creating precious stones from pebbles, producing a perpetuallyburning water for use in ever-burning lamps). The second Stone is far more medicinal, with physical and psychological benefits for the human being, purging and preserving the body, conferring long life, driving away evil spirits and melancholy, exalting the memory, and so forth. The third, Divine Stone is “the Formula of our Spiritual and corporeal Regeneration,” and “the living Image of the mystery of the indivisible union of the Divine Sacrosanct Trinity.”17 The medical metaphor of regeneration and rejuvenation was already a prominent motif, for example, in the Book of the Holy Trinity.18 Here, in the context of Khunrath’s theo-alchemy, regeneration stands at times for the physical regeneration of the glorified body of the pious Christian adept,19 at times for the heavenly body of the homo spiritualis within us, or the spiritual rebirth of the individual believer through the Holy Spirit.20 Like Ashmole and Boyle after him, Khunrath claims a supernatural, revelatory dimension to the Divine Stone, which is described as the “Urim and Thummim by which Thrice Great YHVH Cabalistically gives an answer, speaks and utters his sayings about great and hidden things, to the Theo-Sopher.”21 From close reading of the Clavis philosophiae et alchimiae Fluddanae (Key of Fluddean Philosophy and Alchemy, 1633) of the English Hermetic philosopher Robert Fludd (1574-1637), who was familiar with Khunrath’s work, Hereward Tilton has discovered possibly the first use of the phrases “spiritual alchemy” (Alchymia spiritualis) and “spiritual alchemist” (Alchymista spiritualis) in an early modern esoteric context.22 They appear in a 16 Forshaw, “Cabala Chymica,” 383. 17 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 205. 18 According to Obrist, Les débuts de l’imagerie alchimique, 131. 19 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), I, 19; II, 38. 20 Dorn, Dictionarium, 16. 21 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum (1609), II, 204. 22 For an early reference in English, but with the sense that it is spirits who are the alchemists, see Meric Casaubon, True & Faithful Relation (1659), Preface, sigs. [E4]r-v: “it is not improbable that divers secrets of it came to the knowledge of man by the Revelation of Spirits … not only

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passage where Fludd is defending himself against the attacks of the energetic promoter of Mechanical Philosophy, the Minim priest Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), friend of René Descartes: “Thus the impious and unrighteous man, glorified by this spiritual alchemy (Alchymia spirituali), is elevated from the darkness into the light sphere of piety and righteousness.”23 Such a man is not a “spurious” alchymist, but one “mystic and true,” who “by effect of this kind of Alchemy, that is the truly Theo-philosophical Stone, can reach the height of immortality.”24 Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) is, like Khunrath and Fludd, deeply committed to a pious Christian theosophy or cultivation of divine wisdom. While Khunrath’s theosophy included an interest in the transmutation of matter as part of God’s creation, Boehme was far more intent on the transformation or spiritual rebirth and salvation of man. Partly inspired by theo-alchemical literature, in works like the Aurora (1612), Boehme promulgated ideas that were to be of great influence in the following centuries with those who were eventually to promote a radical separation between alchemy and chemistry.25 Let us leapfrog from the seventeenth century, over the Enlightenment, into the nineteenth century, which was witness to a host of spiritualists, theosophists, and occultists fascinated by the transformative potential of spiritual alchemy. Here let one example suffice. Inspired by both Khunrath and Boehme, in her Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery (1850), the Mesmerist Mary Anne Atwood (1817-1910) argues that “Man … is the true laboratory of the Hermetic art; his life the subject, the grand distillatory, the thing distilling and the thing distilled, and Self-Knowledge … at the root of all Alchemical tradition.”26 She enthuses about a “universal art of vital chemistry, which by fermenting the human spirit, purifies, and finally dissolving it, opens the elementary germ into new life and consciousness.”27 Alchemy is no less than a “Divine Chemistry,” concerned with “the transmutation of Life.”28 Rather than being an exclusively spiritual form of alchemy – if by that is meant a focus on the human spirit (or soul) – Atwood’s work seems to suggest a practice that is also an attempt to spiritualise the body.

Dr. Dee, but others also who had part of that precious Power brought unto them by Spirits, and expected great matters of it, were all cheated and gull’d … by those Spiritual Chymists.” 23 Tilton, “Alchymia Archetypica,” 194. 24 Fludd, Clavis philosophiae (1633), 75-76. 25 For more on Boehme’s theosophical alchemy, see Mike Zuber’s essay in this volume. 26 Atwood, Suggestive Inquiry (1850), 153. 27 Ibid., Appendix. Table Talk and Memorabilia of Mary Anne Atwood (5) 28 Ibid., (20).

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The idea of spiritual alchemy flourishes in a particularly vigorous way in the realm of psychology. The Viennese psychoanalyst and Freemason Herbert Silberer (1882-1923), who moved in the circle of Freud, was one of the first to write of the psychological insights he discovered in alchemical material, when he declared in Probleme der Mystik und ihrer Symbolik (Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism, 1914) that “Alchemy is the separation of the impure from a purer substance. This is quite as true of the chemical as of the spiritual alchemy.”29 Nowadays, the best known proponents of an alchemy of self-transmutation or transformation are found among the followers of the Swiss psychiatrist and analytical psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Following an initial encounter with a translation of the Chinese Taoist classic of inner alchemy, The Secret of the Golden Flower (1929), Jung was to become fascinated with what he chose to call “Philosophical Alchemy,” and reflected extensively on, for example, Zosimos of Panopolis’s alchemical dream visions of a fiery spirit and the torture and sacrifice of a brazen and then a leaden man, of the writings of Khunrath, and most notably those of Paracelsus, whom he considered not only a pioneer of chemical medicine but also of psychology and psychotherapy.30 Jung’s ideas on the relevance of alchemical symbolism to psychology were developed in three main works: Psychology and Alchemy (1953), Alchemical Studies (1967), and Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy (1970). The foremost student of Jung, Marie Louise von Franz (1915-1998), contributed to the notion of extraverted and introverted traditions of alchemy in Alchemical Active Imagination (1997), with technologists and laboratory practitioners like Rhazes being extraverted, while representatives of the introverted approach included Zosimos.31 Both Jung and Von Franz found inspiration and support for their ideas in works of the Flemish Paracelsian alchemist Gérard Dorn (ca. 1530-1584), who draws parallels between the alchemical opus and the moral-intellectual transformation of man. There is the implication that any success in the transmutation of base metals into gold was dependent upon a corresponding inward transmutation of the alchemical operator’s soul into spiritual gold: “you will never make the one thing that you seek from other things, unless you first of all make one thing of yourself.”32 In De Philosophia meditativa 29 Silberer, Hidden Symbolism, 169. 30 Jung, Alchemical Studies, 189. 31 Von Franz, Alchemical Active Imagination, Chapter 1. 32 Dorn, De Philosophia meditativa, 417.

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(On Meditative Philosophy), and De Philosophia chemica ad meditativam comparata (On Chemical Philosophy compared to Meditative Philosophy), Dorn provides material that encourages a spiritual or psychological interpretation of the alchemical goal: “If man knows how to transmute things in the greater world … how much more shall he know how to do in the microcosm, that is, in himself, what he is able to do outside himself, if he but know that the greatest treasure of man dwells in man, and not outside him.”33 While Jung preferred to speak of “philosophical alchemy,” his successors tend to write of either “spiritual alchemy,”34 a “psychological alchemy” of “states of mind, catharsis, sublimation, purification and the attainment of unity and equilibrium,”35 or “alchemical psychology.”36 Although many of his followers downplay the laboratory aspect of alchemy, Jung does bear it in mind, as in this distinction he himself makes between alchemy and psychology: Both disciplines, it is true, are aiming at a “spiritual” goal: the alchemist undertakes to produce a new, volatile (hence aerial or “spiritual”) entity endowed with corpus, anima, et spiritus, where corpus is naturally understood as a “subtle” body or “breath” body; the analyst tries to bring about a certain attitude or frame of mind, a certain “spirit” therefore.37

So, in conclusion, while it is relatively easy to find references to spirits and substances in spiritual form in alchemical literature, the vast majority of alchemical records, at least in Western alchemy, are resoundingly “unspiritual,” in the sense intended in works of nineteenth-century mesmerists and theosophists or twentieth-century psychologists. True, there are rare, tantalising early modern references to such things as “Archetypal Alchemy,” “Alchimia Mystica,” and “Archymagia”; plus the seventeenth-century heyday of “Emblematic Alchemy,” that coincided with an efflorescence of “MythoAlchemy” (the notion that ancient Egyptian and Greek myths concealed the secrets of laboratory work),38 but far more common are the more worldly pursuits of producing gold and preparing chemical medicine. 33 Dorn, Speculativa philosophia, 274. 34 See, for example, Raff, Jung and the Alchemical Imagination, Chapter 5. Despite the fact, as Hanegraaff has pointed out (Esotericism and the Academy, 290-291), that Jung himself considers “purely ‘spiritual’ alchemy a degenerate phenomenon.” 35 Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 5:V, 2. 36 Cavalli, Alchemical Psychology. 37 Jung, Psychology of the Transference, 116. 38 See Forshaw, “Michael Maier and Mythoalchemy.”



Music? What does that have to do with esotericism? Joscelyn Godwin

Once upon a time, it had everything to do with it, because “music” meant a lot more than it does today. The ancients knew of musica mundana, the music of the cosmos; musica humana, the music of the human entity; and musica instrumentalis, music as sung and played. This implies some resemblance or connection between the cosmic system, the human being, and those activities, and that “music” is a common factor that runs through all three. Such thinking rests on the doctrine of correspondences, epitomised by the Emerald Tablet’s dictum concerning the likeness of things above to things below, and vice versa. In this essay we shall work our way up the hierarchy, beginning with the most familiar type of music. Musica Instrumentalis comprises music as composed, improvised, sung, played, and heard: the only sort acknowledged today and ostensibly of merely human creation, though widespread traditions attribute its origin to some higher power such as the Muses, Gandharvas and Apsaras, angels, the Holy Spirit, or even the Devil. There is some justification for this, for the composer or improviser may feel inspired or possessed by an external intelligence and transported to altered states of consciousness. Poets have had similar experiences. Such cases resemble mediumistic and trance communications, not least in that they are no guarantee of the quality of the result. The Western tradition is unique among the world’s musics in developing polyphony and harmony, and consequently emphasising composition over improvisation. Polyphony sometimes occurs in folk musics, but was deliberately cultivated in the medieval church, hence by a literate minority well versed in classical theory and the arts of the Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. Composing with multiple voices depended as much on quasi-mathematical skill as on aesthetic judgment. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while philosophers were developing schemes of universal correspondence, composers such as John Dunstable, Johannes Ockeghem, and Jacob Obrecht incorporated arithmology and symbolic proportions in their sacred music. This was literally esoteric, in the sense that such encodings are only perceptible from the inside, by the rare singer or analyst able to detect them, if not a secret reserved for the composer alone.

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Music that deliberately carries esoteric ideas is rare during the Baroque, Classic, and even Romantic periods. The arithmology used by Johann Sebastian Bach is a special case. Beside its use as a compositional aid, its motivation seems to have been theological or self-referential, rather than esoteric. Freemasonic symbolism in works by the Viennese classical composers is not so much esoteric as imbued with the principles of the Enlightenment, through musical representations of darkness yielding to light. Examples are Mozart’s Magic Flute, Haydn’s Creation, and Beethoven’s Fidelio. As for Richard Wagner’s reputed esoteric knowledge and intentions, any creative artist who uses the materials of myth invites multiple interpretations, of which the esoteric is but one. The situation changes with the onset of musical modernism, coinciding with the occult revival and the influence of Theosophy. Then we have Alexander Scriabin, planning a multimedia “Mystery” that would usher in a new age; Claude Debussy, with his secret arithmology based on the Golden Section; Erik Satie, composing for Sar Péladan’s Rose+Croix movement; Gustav Mahler, with his syncretic inspirations from Christianity, Nietzsche, and eventually Taoism (The Song of the Earth); Arnold Schoenberg, influenced by Theosophy and Swedenborg (Die Jakobsleiter); Gustav Holst, by astrology (The Planets), Gnosticism (The Hymn of Jesus), and Indian philosophy (Savitri); early Stravinsky, collaborating with the Theosophical painter Nicholas Roerich (The Rite of Spring) and setting Konstantin Balmont (The King of the Stars); and a host of lesser-known composers. So much for esoteric intentions. What of the effect of music on the listener? This can range from the unconscious influence of background music to inducing meditation, trance states, and visionary experiences. In the late 1960s it became fashionable in both classical and popular music to allude to astrology, alchemy, ceremonial magic, Eastern wisdom, Gnosticism, Satanism, witchcraft, etc., and the trend has never quite died out. This drew mass attention to realms banished from respectable debate. The popularisation of mind-altering drugs simultaneously opened a generation to a more intense experience of music. All this was part of the New Age phenomenon: a reflection of esoteric traditions and practices leading in one direction to parody and travesty, in the other to a potential gateway to serious engagement. One great monument to this movement is Karlheinz Stockhausen’s seven-opera cycle Licht (1977-2003), the culmination of a lifelong dedication to spiritualising the musical experience. Whether that monument will stand the test of time, as Wagner’s has, only posterity will know. Another is the work of John Cage: not so much his compositions as his principle

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that “music” includes not only noise but also silence, and that composition is no better at organising it than chance. Ideally, and perhaps for Cage himself, this led to a stillness and openness of mind from which the ego is absent, thus able to accept any sound or event with equanimity. What he certainly achieved was to arouse interest in Zen Buddhism, from which he derived this attitude, and a devastating effect on the arts, turning an esoteric spiritual discipline into the pseudo-esoteric doctrine that anything is as good as anything else. The second traditional category, Musica Humana, analyses the human being as a microcosm reflecting the greater cosmic order. Its body parts from head to toe are ruled by the twelve signs of the zodiac, its seven internal organs by the planets, and its four humours correspond to the elements. It also harbours a subtle element called spiritus or vital spirit, and a soul which, as the Platonists maintain, is harmonically composed. Musica Humana attempts to put this concept into practice. The Pythagoreans first formulated the idea that different musical modes have specific effects on body and soul. One of their anecdotes tells of a Tauromenian youth who, inflamed by a “Phrygian song,” was intending to burn down his mistress’s house. Pythagoras told the musician to change the mode to a sober “spondaic song,” which instantly restored the youth to his senses.1 Similar ideas existed in the Islamic world, whose music theory was likewise derived from Greek sources. In the tenth-century encyclopaedia of the Brethren of Purity, the four strings of the lute were assigned to the four elements and the four humours of Galenic medicine, which blamed illness on imbalance of the humours. Playing on one of the strings was supposed to strengthen the relevant humour and restore equilibrium.2 In the fifteenth century, Marsilio Ficino recreated the Orphic tradition of singing hymns to the planetary gods in order to draw down beneficent influences. The vital ingredient in the process was the spiritus, imagined as a kind of rarefied air linking body and soul. It receives musical vibrations from the air and transmits them to the soul, which responds accordingly.3 Some courts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried to replicate such effects on a large scale through staged performances of music, poetry, dance, and theatre: in effect, magical rituals with the intention of collective and political harmony.4 1 Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, 25. 2 Epistle on Music of the Ikwān al-Ṣāfa’, 43. 3 Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, 18. 4 Yates, French Academies, 273-274.

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The theoretical basis of Musica Humana collapsed with the Scientific Revolution, but its practice survived as music therapy.5 New theories were devised to explain its efficacy, such as Franz Anton Mesmer’s system of planetary influences acting via a “universal magnetic fluid.” In his sessions, the spooky sounds of the glass harmonica would help to direct the fluid and induce a healing crisis in the patients. This suited the Romantic idea that music is primarily a language of the emotions. Nevertheless, it remains an enigma that the mathematical patterns from which music is made should translate into this language. The materialist consensus grants music no inherent meaning beyond a certain resonance with body rhythms, most obviously in marches and dances. Supposedly, it is only social and cultural conditioning that attaches significance to harmonic and melodic gestures, as it does to the phonemes of language. In support of this is the common inability to respond to types of music foreign to one’s own culture, race, age group, or social environment. However, one branch of music therapy today, finding this a constricting attitude, draws on the ideas of Carl Gustav Jung, Hans Kayser, Rudolf Steiner, and other representatives of the esoteric revival, as well as on the findings of ethnomusicologists. Jung’s psychology suggests that one reason for music’s power is that the archetypes speak to us through it.6 Kayser’s holistic approach to harmony ranges from high metaphysics to physiology and the laws of growth.7 Steiner’s lectures on music describe its origin in higher worlds, of which it gives us a foretaste, and explain how the perception of intervals has changed through human evolution.8 These teachings have their exoteric result in the strong musical emphasis of the Steinerian Waldorf schools. Turning now to the Harmony of the Spheres, we enter a rarefied realm that may seem to have nothing to do with “real” music but is really at the heart of the matter. At a time when the cosmic model was a cluster of concentric spheres surrounding the earth, those spheres were believed to make literal harmony. Pythagoras’s school planted the idea firmly in the Greek philosophical mind. Plato’s Myth of Er depicted it as eight Sirens standing on the spheres and each sounding her own tone.9 The question of what this harmony might be engaged the Neoplatonists, the Western Middle Ages, and the early modern cosmologists up to Robert Fludd and Johann Kepler. 5 See Godwin, “Metaphysics of Music Therapy.” 6 For a rare example of the Jungian approach to music, see Donington, Opera and Its Symbols. 7 See Kayser, Textbook of Harmonics. 8 Steiner, Inner Nature of Music. 9 Plato, Republic 617b.

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After the Scientific Revolution it survived only as a poetic conceit, until its revival by modern occultists and neo-Pythagoreans. Back to Pythagoras: what was it about music that made it seem so important? It was that our perception of harmony corresponds to the simple numbers of the arithmetical series. Two strings in the ratio 2:1 sound an octave; 3:2, a perfect fifth; 4:3, a perfect fourth. These numbers comprise the tetraktys, the sacred symbol of the Pythagoreans. Translating it into the tones bounded by an octave10 yields a musical tetraktys of 12:9:8:6 (all multiples or powers of 2 or 3). On a string of length 12 units tuned notionally to D, it gives the tones D G A D’. These form the matrix of the scale system upon which, according to Timaeus the Pythagorean, the World Soul created the cosmos.11 It is interesting that in today’s Standard Model of Elementary Particles, the spin and charge of the particles are expressed solely through combinations of 1, 2, and 3. You might say that in hearing the octave and the fifth, we are perceiving the ratios at the very basis of physical reality. Monophonic music such as Gregorian chant can be sung effectively in “Pythagorean tuning,” using only the intervals defined by the Tetraktys. This tuning exaggerates the difference between tones and semitones and consequently highlights the different modes and the emotional affects claimed for them. Yet polyphonic or chordal music needs the next prime number, 5, to make triads from the major third (5:4) and minor third (6:5). There were metaphysical objections to this departure from the Pythagorean matrix, for did not Plato say that “one should be cautious in adopting a new kind of poetry or music, for this endangers the whole [political] system”?12 Around 1300, Walter Odington (incidentally an alchemist) had to argue for acceptance of the thirds as consonances, against the dogma that the only consonances are those produced by the numbers up to 4. Matters have gone much further with today’s equal temperament, in which no interval but the octave is tuned to a rational number. Some esoterically-minded musicologists deplore this, as depriving music of any possibility of moving the soul as it is meant to do.13 Yet esoterically-minded composers such as Scriabin and Schoenberg embraced equal temperament as essential for their innovative harmonic systems. 10 Harmonic arithmetic reduces all tones through octave transposition to the space of a single octave; thus the prime number 2 and its powers are irrelevant. This allies harmonic theory to geometry, in which proportion is constant irrespective of size. 11 Plato, Timaeus 35b-36b. 12 Plato, Republic 424c. 13 For instance Daniélou, Music and the Power of Sound.

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Studying the mathematical basis of music and its correspondence in the heavenly motions required all four disciplines of the Quadrivium. Although the ancient Greeks claimed to have invented everything, recent researches have shown that this integrative study long predated the classical world.14 Centuries earlier, the Babylonians had based temporal and spatial measures on the prime numbers 2, 3, and 5. Hence the division of the year into 12 months, of day and night into 12 hours each, of the circle into 360 degrees (23 x 32 x 5) and each degree or hour into 3600 seconds (24 x 32 x 52). The precession of the equinoxes at the rate of 1 degree in 72 years gave the cyclic number 25,920 (26 x 34 x 5). Multiplying this by 500 (22 x 53) gives 12,960,000: Plato’s enigmatic number of “better or worse begettings.”15 The ancient Hindus also shared this game of prime and harmonic numbers (examples being the numbers in the Rig Veda), as did the Chinese. The Zeng Carillon of bronze bells, dated circa 500 BCE, has its three “keynote” bells tuned to 64, 128, and 256 Hertz.16 It seems too good to be true, but makes sense if the Chinese adopted the Babylonian sexagesimal division of the day (hence fixing the duration of the second) and divided it by powers of two. Measurement of 64 vibrations per second could have been ingeniously achieved by counting the beats between closely-tuned bells or strings. The numbers in the Hebrew scriptures also bear witness to an obsessive search for the perfect tuning system. We know that Greek names were “rigged” to yield significant numbers through their alphabetic equivalents (e.g. the word T.E.T.R.A.K.T.Y.S, whose letters add neatly to 1234). Hebrew names also incorporate a musical Kabbalah. For example, the name of Adam (Aleph Daleth Mem) sums to 1+4+40, which is either 45 (32 x 5) or, if taken as 1440 (25 x 32 x 5) is the limiting number for a chromatic scale in Just intonation.17 Only one note is missing: the tritone, which in a D scale would be G♯ or A♭. And there was the crunch. Just as the ancient geometers struggled to find a rational expression for π (pi), usually settling for the close approximation of 22/7, so they wrestled with the equal division of the 2:1 octave, which is the irrational fraction √2 (1.41421…). Perhaps significantly, the name of Eve provides a very close approximation to the missing note,18 14 See the pioneering works of de Santillana and von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill; McClain, Myth of Invariance; Critchlow, Time Stands Still; Heath, Harmonic Origins of the World. 15 Plato, Republic 546a-d. 16 McClain, “Bronze Chime Bells.” 17 D’-720 C♯ -768 C-810 B-864 B♭-900 A-960 G-1080 F♯ -1152 F-1200 E-1280 E♭-1350 D-1440. See Heath, Harmonic Origins, 55-57. 18 Eve (Chet Vav He) sums to 19. The 19th harmonic makes an interval with the fundamental which, taken twice, comes within 99.7% of the tritone, because 192/28 = 1.410156…

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while adding Eve’s 19 to Adam’s 45 gives 64 (26): hence the first couple is “attuned” to the fundamental tone. This approach to sacred texts may be disconcerting to some, and is certainly hard to absorb without some grounding in music theory, but that is what one must expect in esoteric studies. We are only just beginning to grasp the magnitude of ancient quadrivial theory, which has lain like the Sphinx buried in the sand, its excavation blocked by the assumption that prehistoric people were motivated only by religion and superstition. On the contrary, the motivation of their elites seems to have been akin to that of modern physicists: to discern the mathematical reality at the basis of existence. Musical theory held a special place in this quest because harmonic ratios, unlike quantitative measurements, are invariant at every level and also under reciprocation (2/1:1 = 1:1/2), so that the infinitely large is mirrored in the infinitely small. In the end it seems that despite these many connections, music and esotericism are no longer a natural marriage. To become expert in any path of music – composer, performer, theorist, historian, even listener – demands innate talent and lifelong dedication. The same can be said of any esoteric path such as alchemy (operative or spiritual), astrology, ceremonial magic, theosophy, Kabbalah (Jewish or Christian), or the imported disciplines of yoga, Sufism, Buddhism (Theravada, Vajrayana, Zen), etc. The positive conclusion is that music is a world in itself, comprising both exoteric and esoteric dimensions, and offering as valid and fruitful a path as most of those just mentioned.



Why all that satanist stuff in heavy metal? Kennet Granholm

The answer is actually very short, simple, and straightforward: in fact there isn’t all that much Satanist stuff in heavy metal, although it may seem so to the casual observer. But since such an answer is hardly satisfying, and would make for a very short chapter, let’s modify the question a bit: “Why all that Satan stuff in heavy metal?” Now we’re getting somewhere. While outright “Satanist stuff” is not exactly prominent in Heavy Metal overall, there is no denying that Heavy Metal is deeply infused with references to Satan, demons, and occult lore of all sorts. However, those references take on many different forms, ranging from the overtly Satanic or occult by professedly occult and/or Satanic bands to the anti-Satanic and anti-occult by Christian metal bands, with most instances being far from either end of the spectrum. Nonetheless, Heavy Metal is often regarded as inherently Satanic. There is no lack of materials on Youtube that decry the purported Satanic or occult nature of other genres of popular music, but in that case the focus is commonly on specific major artists. When it comes to Heavy Metal, it is more often indiscriminately denounced as a whole: meaning everyone and everything that can be in the least bit associated with Heavy Metal – artists, fans, and scenic institutions alike, with no regard for the diversity of its myriad subgenres.1 This has been the case pretty much since the genre emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s; but its precursors, blues and rock, were likewise condemned as the Devil’s music and faced very similar accusations of engaging with the immoral, the Satanic, and the occult earlier in the twentieth century. For example, a supposed Faustian pact with the Devil has been posited both as an explanation for the extraordinary talent of legendary blues artist Robert Johnson (1911-1938) and as the cause of his untimely death.2 While the accusations are greatly exaggerated, and many 1 Even when individual artists are singled out, such as in the lawsuits against Ozzy Osbourne in the 1980s (Wilkening, “History”) and Judas Priest’s Rob Hallford in 1990 (Grow, “Judas Priest’s Subliminal Message Trial”), it can be argued that they act as stand-ins for Heavy Metal as a whole. 2 Spencer, Blues and Evil, xiii.

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are clearly born from the sordid imaginations of various moral crusaders, not all of them can be outright dismissed, and artists and fans cannot be held entirely blameless for the sinister reputation of Heavy Metal. No other musical genre is as steeped in references to the Devil and the occult as blues, rock, and Heavy Metal, in ascending order. While the stories of Johnson’s Faustian pact are largely based on completely upended interpretations of “Crossroads Blues” (which, contrary to what many believe, does not deal with a musician making a pact with the Devil at a crossroads or, for that matter, with the Devil in any way or form), the blues legend was indeed fascinated by the supernatural and such songs as “Hellhound on my Trail” or “Me and the Devil Blues” certainly did not help to dispel any tall tales. As for Heavy Metal: Black Sabbath, often identified as the first Heavy Metal band proper, flirted with Satanic and dark occult themes by means of its very name, and did not steer away from them in its lyrics or image either. On his debut solo album, Blizzard of Ozz (1980), lead singer Ozzy Osbourne continued in the same vein with the song “Mr. Crowley” – referring to infamous occultist and magician Aleister Crowley. Led Zeppelin, another contender for the title of the very first Heavy Metal band, similarly invoked Crowley in several of its songs – guitar player Jimmy Page having been fascinated by the self-professed “Great Beast 666” from an early age, to such an extent that he even purchased Crowley’s old Boleskine House on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland.3 The trend continued with later bands, as exemplified by the single “Runnin’ with the Devil” from Van Halen’s debut album Van Halen (1978), AC/DC’s album (and title track) Highway to Hell (1979), Iron Maiden’s album (and title track) Number of the Beast (1982), and even Glam Metal band Mötley Crüe’s album (and title track) Shout at the Devil (1983)4 – not to mention Christian metal band Stryper’s album (and title track) To Hell with the Devil (1986).5 With the possible exception of Jimmy Page, none of these bands or artists were interested in the philosophical dimensions of the occult, nor were they invested in its practice. Each album/track also exemplifies different ways of engaging with similar subject matter, demonstrating the large diversity in expression mentioned earlier. Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil” tells 3 The website http://fusionanomaly.net/aleistercrowley.html (accessed October 16, 2009) lists several of the Crowley-influences on Led Zeppelin, as well as other details relating to Jimmy Page’s interest in Crowley. 4 Allegedly, the album was originally to be titled Shout with the Devil, but due to bass player Nikki Sixx’s negative occult experiences the title was changed (Lee et al., Dirt, 88). 5 To Hell with the Devil was the first Christian metal album to achieve platinum status, and remained the best-selling Christian metal album until 2001.

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the story of a person who is out of step with conventional society and leads a lawless, ultimately destructive life. Similarly, AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” is also about living outside societal conventions, this time in a voluntarily chosen hard-partying and damn-the-consequences rock star lifestyle.6 Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” is basically a horror story, involving a person who, almost in a state of disbelief, remembers some kind of Satanic, demonic, or pagan ritual and sacrifice that he may or may not have witnessed. Mötley Crüe’s “Shout at the Devil” describes an entity or force, presumably the Devil, through a number of discomforting and enticing allegories. Finally, as could be expected, Stryper’s “To Hell with the Devil” is a straightforward disparaging denouncement of the Devil. The unseasoned listener may not so easily distinguish between the many different uses to which the same subject is put, nor will he always realise that the bulk of those uses are allegorical. Particularly with artists and fans alike appearing in heavily applied makeup, with long hair, leather, chains, and spikes, Heavy Metal appears to be not just unconventional to the outsider, but probably defiant and possibly even antagonistic as well. It is not hard to understand why Heavy Metal, regardless of subgenre, is so often identified as the Devil’s Music, deemed unsuitable for polite society, why it is blamed for corrupting and harming youth, and why various attempts have been made to curb and censor all and every expression of it. Not that these attempts have been particularly effective – quite the opposite, in fact, as they have firmly cemented the rebellious and transgressive essence of the genre, thus undoubtedly helping to popularise it among youngsters. Today, Heavy Metal, particularly in its more extreme subgenres, exists and thrives in distinctive yet universally recognisable local and national scenes all over the world, which together constitute one of the few truly global music scenes. The question remains: why are Satan, demons, and occult subject matter so prominent in Heavy Metal across the board? To answer that question we have to look at the very foundations of Heavy Metal and gain an understanding of the workings of its internal mechanisms. Sociologist of music Simon Frith’s analytical distinction between Rock and Pop music is very useful here. Frith makes clear that he does not approach these two as musical genres, that is to say: with an interest in how the genre in question sounds, basic descriptions of aspects such as rhythmic foundations, key instruments and 6 Singer Bon Scott (1946-1980) was, of course, describing his own life, his own self-destructive “Highway to Hell,” which ended less than a year after the release of the album with Scott dying of what was deemed acute alcohol poisoning.

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their utilisation, melodic conventions, song structure and so forth, and lyrical themes and conventions. Additional elements in a conventional approach focused on musical genre would include, for instance, conventions in the creation, projection, and maintenance of image; avenues, strategies, and approaches to representing artists, or target audience(s); routines for when, where, and how to engage with fans; demeanour and conduct when doing so; conduits for dissemination, and so forth. A basic description of modern pop music could, for example, mention quantisised dance-oriented, kick drum-centric rhythmic structures, very uniform song lengths with little deviance from the 3-minute mark, standardised song structures revolving around repetition of verses and chorus, the prominence of synthesisers in lieu of more traditional instruments, and fairly simple but easily memorisable and recallable vocal melodies, as well as lyrics that are commonly not outright explicit while revolving around love, sex, and romantic relationships. By contrast, a basic description of rock music might note a tendency to stick to the convention of acoustic drums, an electric bass, and one or two electric guitars, a rhythmic foundation in a steady 4/4 back beat with a good musical groove, the influence of the blues it originally derived from still strongly present, the inclusion of guitar solos, song structures commonly based on alternation between verses and chorus (though deviations are not uncommon), lyrics dealing with love, sex, and romantic relationships but often in a more explicit fashion than Pop lyrics, as well as commentaries on social and cultural matters, often in an air of rebelliousness. In Frith’s analytical distinction, however, all such musical and stylistic elements are disregarded, and the focus is instead on core discursive strategies – particularly, in this case, those that define Rock. According to Frith, Rock revolves essentially around the quest for authenticity and artistic integrity. Pop music is projected as its antithesis, as it is perceived to be devoid of any substantial artistic aspirations and instead focused on maximizing profit and commercial appeal.7 Rather than being defined through its own virtues and merits, Rock gains content and meaning through inimically contrasting itself with its perceived opposite, defining itself as the polar opposite of what it perceives Pop music to be. “Deep and profound” in mirror image of the perceived “superficiality” of Pop; artistically “authentic and incorruptible” in contrast to the perceived “avarice and unscrupulousness” of its counterpart. Rock presents itself as free, independent, and rebelliously defiant, in contrast to its Other, Pop, which vacuously bows down in compliance at the feet of the mass-producers of homogenised entertainment commodities and sentries of 7

Frith, “Pop Music,” 94-96.

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the suffocating mainstream societal norms and mores that are its masters. In the words of Keir Keightley, rock is based on a “rejection of those aspects of mass-distributed music which are believed to be soft, safe or trivial.”8 Of course, the mantle of rebelliousness and authenticity is fragile, and so the proponents of Rock music are involved in a constant struggle to preserve it. They need to achieve and sustain a level of popularity sufficiently large to keep them economically viable, but not so large that mainstream acceptance will damage their claims at authenticity and artistic integrity. This is why Rock music keeps ceaselessly generating new and different subgenres, ones that are almost without exception louder, angrier, more antagonistic, and extreme than what came before. As older expressions and subgenres become more accepted by the “mainstream,” as they invariably do, they lose their potency and capability to shock and offend. Therefore new modes and methods of rebellious expression are needed, so that artistic integrity and authenticity can be reclaimed. Seen from this perspective, Heavy Metal represents a development within the evolution of Rock music that is particularly explicit in its use of controversial topics and themes, which keep getting ever more transgressive, dark, and discordant with each successive segmentation within itself. Of course it is not all about image, genre conventions, and primal rebelliousness – some artists (and fans) exhibit deeper and more profound philosophical or metaphysical inclinations, infusing their artistry with occult and/or Satanic significance and meaning, in some cases even construing some or all stages and aspects of the creative and performative process as numinous practices and expressions. This is most clearly evident in Extreme Metal, particularly the Black Metal scene. British band Venom provided the name for this subgenre with their 1982 album and song Black Metal, with “first wave” or proto-Black Metal bands such as Bathory, Hellhammer, and Mercyful Fate being considerably more overtly Satanic in both image and lyrical content than previous Heavy Metal bands. For the most part, the Satanism of such proto-Black Metal bands was purely performative, with little philosophical or religious foundation. An exception was Mercyful Fate, whose vocalist King Diamond was a professed Satanist, who even arranged a meeting with Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey in 1988. Diamond used the band to express his occult and Satanic ideas, even including a sonic Satanic pact in the form of the song “The Oath” (on the 1984 album Don’t Break the Oath). It was largely with the Norwegian “second wave of Black Metal” in the early 1990s that it began to emerge as a cohesive genre with a clear self-identity, 8

Keightley, “Reconsidering Rock,” 109.

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and its engagement with the occult began to assume more serious and sustained forms. Early Norwegian Black Metal was more Heathen than Satanic,9 however, with the Satanic self-identification gaining dominance primarily through mass media applying the label to the genre and unwittingly providing a “script” that “second wave” Black Metal musicians and fans could follow.10 Although the “second wave” was more consistently religious than its predecessor, it was not until the early 2000s that the Black Metal scene coalesced with the occult milieu to such a degree that a “Ritual Black Metal” scene emerged that drew from and contributed to both.11 Ritual Black Metal has its own particular identity and institutions, as well as pronounced and clearly focused connections and engagements with the occult milieu and with various esoteric orders, while simultaneously being connected to the larger Extreme Metal scene. Scene members frequently connect their artistic activities to ritual magical practices. Live performances are commonly referred to as “rituals”, and the occult aspects are often given prominence in interviews.12 There is considerable musical diversity in the scene, with bands such as Watain representing more conventionally stylistic Black Metal, while bands such as The Devil’s Blood and Jess and the Ancient Ones draw heavily on psychedelic rock and early 1970s Heavy Metal, and yet others such as Saturnalia Temple are characterised as Doom and Metal. In conclusion: while there certainly are Heavy Metal bands that project an overtly Satanic image, and even some that can be directly linked to occult philosophies, practices, and groups, they are the exception rather than the rule. Exemplifying the discursive core of Rock music as categorised by Simon Frith, the prominence of transgressive subject matter and portrayals in Heavy Metal represents a natural progression in the evolving pursuit of rebelliousness, authenticity, and artistic integrity that distinguishes Rock music. Even in the face of secularisation, Satanic subject matter holds sufficient power to cause outrage, with the Devil epitomising freedom and independence in rebellion, and a refusal to submit to older generations, to established society, and to mainstream norms and values. Nowhere is 9 See Granholm, “‘Sons of Northern Darkness’.” Early Norwegian Black Metal can be characterised as “Heathen” due to the common rhetoric of “longing for a long-lost pre-Christian past,” with numerous references to Old Norse myth, religion, and culture. 10 Torstein Grude’s documentary f ilm Satan rir media (Satan Rides the Media) shows how mass media portrayals, validated by dubious “cult experts,” impacted the Black Metal scene. As a result, the number of Church burnings increased from about one per year in the early 1990s to fifty in total between 1992 and 1996. 11 See Granholm, “Ritual Black Metal.” 12 See e.g. Mühlman, “Saturnalia Temple”; Malmén, “Ofermod.”

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this more perfectly expressed than in the chorus of Mercyful Fate’s “Black Funeral” (from the 1983 album Melissa) where the decree to “All hail Satan!” is responded to enthusiastically with a “Yes Hail Satan!” in singer King Diamond’s distinctive shrieking falsetto.13

13 Colour plate 9, live gig by Saturnalia Temple in 2016, is an illustration with this article.



Religion can’t be a joke, right? J. Christian Greer

Laughter has a history all its own. In spite of the prominence of humour across the evolution of our species, though, it is among the least scrutinised spheres of human experience.1 As Mikhail Bakhtin showed, clowns and fools, like jokes and hoaxes, are dismissed by scholars as either “purely negative satire” or else as “recreational drollery deprived of philosophical content.”2 In short, humour is not taken seriously. A more complex picture of laughter can be gleaned from the study of post-War American esotericism, and in particular the psychedelic church movement. The extraordinarily rich theology of laughter produced by these outlaw religious fellowships is the subject of this essay. Dawning in the early 1960s, the ideology of “psychedelicism,” as I call it, was established by a handful of fellowships united in the belief that cannabis, as well as other vision-inducing substances, unlocked the highest spiritual potential of humanity.3 According to these groups, psychedelics (including LSD, DMT, and mescaline) were not mere drugs, but “sacraments” that worked much in the same way as meditation, yoga, and prayer – albeit far more expediently. In the words of Art Kleps, hailed by Timothy Leary as the Martin Luther of psychedelicism, “[a]cid is not easier than traditional methods, it’s just faster, and sneakier.”4 Not all psychedelic fellowships styled themselves after churches, however. Psychedelicism took on a variety of institutional forms, such as secret brotherhoods,5 experimental therapy centres,6 and anarchist conspiracies.7 Some groups that refused to 1 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 4. 2 Ibid, 12. 3 Derived from the psychical discourse of “consciousness expansion,” psychedelicism suggests a heterogeneous entanglement of esoteric theories and practices, which underwent reformulation and adaptation in the decades subsequent to its debut in The Doors of Perception (1954) by Aldous Huxley. Neither wholly religious nor scientific, psychedelicist doctrines emerged as a highly volatile response to the “problem of disenchantment,” Egil Asprem’s term for the sociohistorical process by which modern intellectuals in the West struggled with the persistence of “magic” despite the alleged success of secularization. See Asprem, Problem of Disenchantment, passim; and his essay in this volume. 4 Kleps, Boo Hoo Bible, 19. 5 Schou, Orange Sunshine. 6 Kripal, Esalen, 112-134. 7 Greer, “Discordianism,” forthcoming.

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describe themselves with words like “religion” or “church” did so because they understood the transcendental flash of divine illumination induced by psychedelics to be too sacrosanct to put into words.8 For groups like the Merry Pranksters, the trappings of religion seemed positively outdated. Amidst this reverential approach to drugs, humour took on a metaphysical significance. According to the foremost psychedelicist, Timothy Leary, “the entire consciousness movement was dedicated to a playful rather than serious approach: … [T]he essence of consciousness change is humor and gentle satire. It actually gets quite theological.”9 The theological tradition of psychedelicist humour reached its climax with the Discordian Society, an anarchistic fellowship formed in the mid-1970s, which “disguised” its teachings as an intricate jest. In the words of its principal spokesperson, Robert Anton Wilson, “many people consider Discordianism as a complicated joke disguised as a new religion. I prefer to consider it a new religion disguised as a complicated joke.”10 That is, Discordianism was neither just a joke, nor a religion, but a higher synthesis created out of both. The fundamental element of psychedelicism is the dissolution of boundaries, especially the border between sacred and profane. In what follows, I shall survey the esoteric theologies of laughter that animated the psychedelic church movement.11 This account of sacred humour begins with the post-secular bohemianism of the 1950s Beat Generation and ultimately concludes with the Church of the SubGenius, a revivalist psychedelic sect that flourished in the 1980s and 1990s. Altogether, the enchanted mode of laughter underlying this marginal current in American religious history reflected a new consciousness oriented in utopian togetherness, rather than the joyless atomisation of modern life. In the opening lines of Howl (1956), Allen Ginsberg identified the “angelheaded hipster” as the paragon of authentic religious seeking. Published a year later, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) placed this archetype for “hip” spirituality centre stage. His visionary travelogue concluded with an alternative image of the angelheaded hipster: “the HOLY GOOF.”12 The holy goof was not some foolhardy ignoramus; rather, this highly sensitive soul embodied an improvisational form of piety unbound by the restrictive values of bourgeois society. This figure had risen above the dogmatic solemnity 8 Davis, High Weirdness, 156. 9 Leary, Pranks, 75. 10 Versluis, American Gurus, 130; Wilson, Coincidance, 203. 11 For an alternative analysis of the ludic religious sensibility of the psychedelic church movement, see Davis, High Weirdness, 156-160. 12 Kerouac, On the Road, 183.

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of organised religion, and, in Kerouac’s words, embodied “the tremendous energy of a new kind of American saint.”13 Kerouac modelled his concept of saintliness on the “Zen lunatic,” a special class of spiritual master that populates the annals of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. The Zen lunatics used shocking and seemingly sacrilegious behaviour (termed upaya, or “expedient means”) to jolt their pupils into satori, the momentary state in which the mind is liberated from its attachment to ego. At the moment of illumination, students were often depicted as laughing in Zen narratives. According to Conrad Hyers, laughter was self-consciously deployed in Zen as “an expression of enlightenment, liberation, and inner harmony.”14 Elaborating on this theology of laughter, Kerouac and his close-knit circle of “Dharma Bums” devised their own heterodox school of Buddhist philosophy, “Beat Zen.” Stimulated more by amphetamine and marijuana than meditation, Beat Zen was a distinctly New World reinvention of Buddhism and Daoism.15 For all of its innovations, though, it retained the assumption that the mind is naturally enlightened and needs only to be returned to its perfected state. The Zen model of salvation underlies not only the improvisational piety of the holy goof, but every psychedelic theology of laugher that would follow after it. These later forms of upaya, however, varied considerably. The Zen masters of the past employed techniques such as the koan to trigger satori. The Dharma Bums, on the other hand, embraced the mirthful play of the spontaneous mind as the most expedient means of dissolving the conditioned repression of natural thoughts, feelings, and desires. Joy, then, was the royal road for lifting up a spiritually fallen humanity. Kerouac’s famed “rucksack revolution” speech from The Dharma Bums (1958) offers what is perhaps the clearest testament to the apocalyptic power of goofing: I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution, thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ’em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.16 13 Lardas, Bop Apocalypse, 84. 14 Hyers, “Humor in Zen,” 270. 15 Wilson, Personal Interview. 16 Kerouac, Dharma Bums, 74.

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In this prophecy, the author envisioned an entire generation of holy fools enlightening all living creatures through improvisational piety. It would be hard to find a more apt description of the Flower Power movement of the late-1960s, then still years away. Kerouac coined the term “holy goof” in honour of his friend, Neal Cassady. This consummate Beat saint was canonised first as the “secret hero” of Howl, and then as the iconic Dean Moriarty in On the Road.17 The life of Cassady draws a direct line from the ludic religious sensibilities of the Beats to the psychedelic church movement. After having served as the muse for Kerouac and Ginsberg, Cassady migrated to California, where he fell in with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, the paradigmatic holy fools of the Love Generation. As the pilot of their auto-motive commune, the Pranksters’ day-glo bus Further, this angelheaded hipster translated holy goofing into Kesey’s “merry” brand of psychedelicism. The coalescence of the Pranksters’ doctrines was the subject of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). The central conceit of his vivid portrait of early West Coast psychedelicism is the “kairos,” a Greek term signifying the experiential flash of supreme understanding out of which religions emerge. The kairos had descended to earth in the form of lysergic acid diethylamide, which the Pranksters combined with their own brand of improvisational piety to dissolve the boundaries of the self into a higher transcendental unity.18 Whereas the Dharma Bums were content to cultivate enlightenment amongst their own tight-knit circle, the Pranksters were compelled by the kairos to “tootle the multitudes” in the form of pranks.19 The Merry Pranksters’ improvisational cultural interventions represented a breakthrough in the theology of sacred laughter. To be sure, their pranks are not to be confused with mean-spirited hijinks. Rather, they were loosely structured forms of productive play designed to dissolve psycho-social boundaries for dozens, if not hundreds of people at the same time. Their most famous stunts consisted of a series of approximately twenty public gatherings hosted by the Pranksters along the West Coast between 1965-1968, collectively known as the Acid Tests. Legal in California until 1966, LSD was readily supplied in cups of “electric kool-aid” to those who attended these experiments in multi-media, interactive theatre. The vernacular culture of psychedelicism so prominently displayed in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco (and later stereotyped in the media as the “hippie” movement) 17 Ginsberg, Howl, 3. 18 Shipley, Psychedelic Mysticism, passim. 19 Wolfe, Electric Kool-Aid, 99.

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was born out of these attempts at the mass dissolution of conditioned behaviour. As Wolfe pointed out, the Pranksters’ pious merriment generated an eruption of spiritual jubilation that birthed the era of Flower Power. Not all psychedelicist doctrines were merry. On the East Coast, Timothy Leary fostered a psychedelicist culture dominated by the trappings of organised religion. Promulgating a solemn theology focused on death and rebirth, Leary’s fellowship, “The League of Spiritual Discovery,” worked to legitimate the use of psychedelics in the court of public opinion by producing serious-minded journals,20 liturgical manuals,21 and catechisms.22 They also legally incorporated as a church, and issued literature encouraging all other psychedelicist groups to do the same.23 Anchored between these two distinctive psychedelicist cultures was Art Kleps’ Neo-American Church, a dissenting religious body that was equal parts sacramental, improvisational, and belligerent. Kleps earned himself a reputation as the “Martin Luther” of psychedelicism due to his uncompromising demand for reform, both within and outside the psychedelic movement (see Fig. 1). The kairos generated by the sacrament convinced him that institutionalised religions were irredeemably fraudulent. Accordingly, the Neo-American catechisms lambasted co-religionists for their “phony attempts to make psychedelia look like just one more swindle that can be blended into all the other swindles.”24 The time had come, he proclaimed, for psychedelicists to “develop our own forms, our own language, and our own standards, as every genuine religious novelty has done in the past.”25 The natural language of psychedelicism, Kleps insisted, was humour. Heavily influenced by Beat Zen, he argued that only “[m]assive doses of absurdity” would prevent their authentic religion from degenerating into “the usual collection of dead-letter laws.”26 Kleps’ insistence on emphasising the ludic spirit of psychedelicism won him widespread approval among psychedelicists (or “heads”); however, it ultimately served as the undoing of his church. Though there was a handful of Neo-American fellowships that held regular services, Neo-American affiliation primarily functioned as a strategic means of legal protection. Psychedelicists joined the church as a pro-active 20 The Psychedelic Review (ed. Metzner), 1963-1971. 21 Leary, Alpert and Metzner, Psychedelic Experience. 22 Leary, Psychedelic Prayers. 23 Ibid, Start your Own Religion, passim; Lander, “Legalize Spiritual Discovery,” 176. 24 Kleps, Boo Hoo Bible, 24 25 Ibid, 24. 26 Ibid, 3.

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Fig. 1: The seal of the church features a Three-Eyed Toad above is a banner that reads: Victory Over Horseshit! Defying the gentle image associated with the hippie, this pugnacious slogan reflected the church’s insistence that the psychedelic experience alone was genuinely transcendent, and that all other forms of religious belief were elaborate scams, or “horseshit”. (Joan Kelps)

measure, so that if they were busted they could take refuge in the freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Kleps’ church demanded the right to use psychedelics sacramentally, and cited the legal precedent handed down in The People vs. Woody, 1964, which recognised the Native American Church’s right to use peyote ceremonially. Taking it upon themselves to decide what types of beliefs constitute genuinely religious sentiments, the courts dismissed the Neo-American Church as nothing more than a calculated charade that justified drug-taking.27 The courts were right, of course, but for the wrong reasons. True, the church was artifice; however, instead of being mere parody, Kleps’ fellowship exploited traditional religious forms as an expedient means of protecting a force greater than religion itself. In sum, the church structure was yet another form of upaya. Instead of arguing their case in the courts, the most militant psychedelicists fought for their rights in the streets. The late 1960s saw an escalation of 27 Newman, “What is a Church?”

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the war in Vietnam, a spate of ghetto uprisings, as well as an intensification in the legal persecution of psychedelicists. All of this transformed the mirthful inflection of the Prankster’s laughter into “Flower Power,” or what I call psychedelic militancy. Leading the way was “The Youth International Party,” or Yippies! (the exclamation point included in the name was intended to express the joyful exuberance that animated this group).28 The brainchild of Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Nancy Kurshan, and Paul Krassner, this exuberant band of self-styled “Groucho Marxists” advanced a ludic program of non-violent cultural revolution that utilised the mocking laughter of the crowd to demean the totemic symbols of the established social order. The Yippies! wielded guerrilla theatre, hoaxes, and pranks as weapons against the nerve centres of government control. In the words of Joseph Urgo, “Yippie laughter … was aimed at awakening the unconscious ‘establishment’ figures with whom they clashed.”29 With their eyes firmly set on converting the opposition, this band of acid communists staged a series of high-profile farces that collapsed the distinction between sacred and profane.30 Arguably, their most successful prank was the “Exorcism of the Pentagon” on October 27, 1967. The intermingling of sacred and profane that day can be distilled into a single snapshot: picture the acclaimed Thelemite filmmaker Kenneth Anger underneath a flatbed truck performing an occult ritual involving Tarot cards, while the Fugs front-man Ed Sanders, standing on top of the flatbed, led ten thousand of his brothers and sisters in an ancient Hittite incantation (crafted with the help of the arch-bohemian Harry Smith) with the refrain “Out Demons Out.”31 The fact that the assembled hippie warriors were costumed as witches, warlocks, and wizards made this scene all the more mind-blowing. Their exorcism succeeded in winning over three members of the military police, who allegedly dropped their weapons and joined the chanting, thereby proving that the optimism of Flower Power was not totally naïve.32 Of all the psychedelic churches, the Discordian Society devised the most elaborate theology of laughter (see Fig. 2). Founded by Gregory Hill and Kerry Thornley in the late 1950s, this sect venerated Eris, the goddess of chaos, as their patron deity. Chaos, in their view, was not violent lawlessness; rather, it was the 28 Jezer, Abbie Hoffman, 123; Hoffman, Revolution For the Hell of It, 81. 29 Urgo, “Comedic Impulses,” 88. 30 Farber, Chicago 68, 3-55. 31 Recordings of Sanders’ chanting have been preserved on The Fugs’ Tenderness Junction, (1968). 32 Katzman, “In the Life on Bald Mountain,” 3. The Pentagon ritual was the first of numerous other exorcisms performed by the Yippies!; see Sanders, Fug You, 300-301.

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Fig. 2: Taken out of the 4th edition of the Principia Discordia (1970), this page lays out the implications of humor for occultism. According to this Discordia holy book, the source of true metaphysical power arises in the balance between seriousness and humor, which the occult tradition of the last three thousand years has failed to recognize.

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ontological substratum of pure potentiality innocent of all distinctions and boundaries, much in the fashion of the ancient Dao. By the mid-1970s, chaos had become the emblem of psychedelicism and its theology of sacred laughter. Discordianism was divided into two tendencies. First there was the Erisian school of Ho Chi Zen (the alter-ego of Kerry Thornley) and Camden Benares (b. John Overton), who elaborated a “second wave” of Beat Zen that was explicitly anarchist. The other, more prominent branch, associated with Robert Anton Wilson, operated as a clandestine counterintelligence agency. The principal touchstone for this branch was Operation Mindfuck, or OM, a de-centralised campaign of non-violent guerrilla warfare consisting of hit-and-run psychic attacks that were intended to provoke internal realisations leading to the dissolution of habitual mental patterns. Their upaya consisted of “mindfucking” people into illumination. OM originated as a response to the Garrison Investigation of 1967, during which Thornley was fingered as a co-conspirator in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Furthermore, the District Attorney of New Orleans, Jim Garrison, also accused Thornley's Discordian fellowship of being a front for the CIA.33 After Thornley learned that Garrison’s investigation team believed in the existence of the Illuminati, he called upon his small group of co-religionists to inundate the D.A.’s office with bizarre and imposing communiqués signed by the Bavarian Illuminati. To substantiate this hoax, they planted articles concerning the Illuminati in mainstream media outlets, as well as in the underground press.34 The Discordians declared victory after articles about the Illuminati started to appear with ever-greater frequency. Assessing this aspect of OM, Robert Anton Wilson reflected that “[w]e did not regard this as a hoax or prank in the ordinary sense. We still considered it guerrilla ontology.”35 The Discordian school of psychedelicism was guerrilla insofar as it was organised as a clandestine web of independent cadres (known as “cabals”), and ontological in that it subverted the reductionist conceptual schemes that define reality. The Discordians represented the Flower Power branch of “Armed Love,” the violent Left-Wing anti-imperialistic resistance that would terrorise the US government throughout the 1970s. In the early 1980s, the Discordians’ militant esprit was taken up by The Church of the SubGenius, a mail-order religion operating out of Dallas, Texas. Established in 1980, The Church of the SubGenius offered itself as a self-consciously absurdist cult based on the evidently bogus prophecies of 33 Gorightly, Prankster, 90-110. 34 Ibid, Historia Discordia, 24. 35 Wilson, The Illuminati Papers, 2.

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J.R. “Bob” Dobbs. The apocalyptic beliefs of the church parodied doomsday cults, while its emphatic preachers modelled their personas after Christian televangelists. During the mid-1980s, every manner of prankster, hoaxer, and “bold surrealist” gravitated to the Church.36 Transformed into a hub for underground networking, this fellowship allied itself with avant-garde vandals like Negativland, the Cacophony Society, Neoism, and the Billboard Liberation Front. Vandalism, in the name of “Bob,” was conceived not merely as “pranks,” but an enchanted mode of opposition that demanded an end to the entire social order. According to the Church’s co-founder, Rev. Ivan Stang, [p]ranks are part of it; but when hundreds or even thousands of creative billboard defacings are carried out all over the world for almost 10 years, all fitting into one unified theme, can these any longer be called “pranks?” “Crimes against normality” might be more fitting[.]37

According to Stang, the Church’s performative constructs demonstrated a totalising refutation of societal norms. Harkening back to Kleps’ inflexible faith in the authenticity of psychedelic humour, the Church adopted the motto: “fuck’em if they can’t take a joke.”38 The psychedelic theology of laughter can be summarised as follows: “nothing is true unless it makes you laugh, but you don’t really understand it until it makes you cry.”39 First appearing in the Discordian magnum opus Illuminatus! (1975), this theological adage suggests that enlightenment begins when the mind is liberated from the conditioned attachment to self. From the enlightened perspective, all of the sound and fury of the world appears as a comical farce devoid of meaning. However, detachment is the pre-requisite for compassion: the sacred laughter of the psychedelicist is consummated in the realisation that life entails a perpetual cycle of pain and suffering. Motivated to alleviate the pain of others, the holy goof employs jest, satire, and slapstick to lead his brothers and sisters out of the delusion of ego, into a new, jubilant way of life.

36 37 38 39

Greer, “SubGenius,” (forthcoming). Stang, “The Church of the Subgenius(Tm).” Book of the SubGenius, 34 Wilson and Shea, Illuminatus!, 299.



Isn’t esotericism irrational? Olav Hammer

Esotericists have, among many other things, conjured spirits, received messages from disincarnate beings, cast spells, interpreted horoscopes, and healed people by manipulating invisible “energies” that purportedly flow through the body.1 For at least some outside observers, this plethora of beliefs and practices is so outlandish that they have been led to wonder, in the words of sceptic Michael Shermer, why people believe “weird things.”2 The study of religions has developed a range of answers – cognitive, sociological, and historical – to the question of why people believe in the things they do. The issue of whether any of those beliefs are, to borrow Shermer’s term, weird or irrational is another matter entirely. Many people seem to find the purported irrationality of others to be a pressing issue: a vast literature exists in which entire fields of human activity are denounced as profoundly deluded. One fundamental problem with a sizeable part of that literature and its reactions to questions such as “is magic/channelling/astrology/healing irrational” is that the answers are often based upon little more than a subjective comparison between one’s own cherished beliefs and those of others. It can, for instance, be deemed quite unremarkable to believe in the Trinity or the resurrection of Christ, while it is seen as irrational, weird, or even stupid to assume that the movements of the planets have anything to do with our character and destiny, or that reincarnation in a new body awaits us after death. For various reasons, not least in order to avoid the taint of being associated with this particular form of subjective mud-slinging, historians of religion have claimed that they either cannot or should not pass judgment on the behaviours and ideas of the people they study. This reluctance has deep historical roots: the founding father of the academic study of religion, Max Müller, defined the fledgling field as the value-free investigation of religious phenomena.3 Besides using the words “rational” and “irrational” as subjectively wielded epithets, there are many cases where it seems appropriate to use the terms in some gut-level, pre-theoretical sense. If your long-term goal in life is to 1 I wish to thank Karen Swartz for assistance with improving the style and readability of this essay. 2 Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things. 3 Müller, Introduction, 6.

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preserve your physical well-being, you will be more likely to achieve your goal by eating healthy food, refraining from smoking, and getting enough exercise than by casting spells against disease-bearing demons. Most people would therefore conclude that changing one’s diet and lifestyle is the more rational course of action. The difficulties arise when one attempts to formalise this intuition. Here, our own discipline largely fails us. It is symptomatic that the second edition of the fifteen-volume Encyclopedia of Religion has no entry for either “rational” or “irrational.” For a better-informed discussion of the topic at hand, one needs to turn to other academic fields. The social sciences provide us with a long-standing discussion of what the concept of rationality may mean. The classic discussion of rationality goes back to a dichotomy articulated by Max Weber, who distinguished between Zweckrationalität (instrumental rationality) and Wertrationalität (value rationality).4 The former involves taking steps towards attaining a predetermined goal, whatever that goal may be. The latter is based upon the belief that there are some goals, often of an ethical, aesthetic, or religious kind, that are intrinsically worth striving for. In the remainder of this essay, rationality will imply instrumental rationality, which would appear to be closest to the everyday use of the word. According to the classical model of how instrumental rationality is achieved, people will act in ways that help them meet their goals based upon information that is available to them. If several paths lead to the desired goal, they will weigh the costs and benefits of the various options and select the most rational alternative based upon this assessment. A rather extreme version of this model, the concept of the homo economicus or rational economic man, has been a mainstay of many schools of economics. People are, according to this view, intent on furthering their own material interests, for instance, to amass wealth, and they do so by optimally processing all information necessary to reach that goal. The classic model, especially in its economic guise, appears singularly unhelpful in answering the question “Isn’t esotericism irrational?” Firstly, many esoteric currents propose non-empirical and thus non-testable propositions and suggest patterns of behaviour that offer few if any instrumental goals whose rationality can be assessed.5 What does one make of the goal to understand the structure of the godhead or reintegrate with the divine? How would one even formulate the costs and benefits of various alternative paths to such a goal or decide if any of these paths lead one closer to it? For 4 Weber, Economy and Society, 24-25. 5 On the non-empirical nature of Western esotericism, see Hanegraaff, “Empirical Method.”

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currents with intangible rewards such as these, even posing the question of rationality or lack thereof seems to be a fundamental error. Secondly, there are other goals than instrumental ones that interest in an esoteric current can further. Participation in a minority religious group – such as a magical, theosophical, or pagan group – can be expressive of one’s identity as a “spiritual” person, as a seeker, or as a person who lives in a position of relative opposition to the social mainstream. It can be emotionally satisfying, and it can provide a feeling of belonging as well as a sense of meaning. Religion in general has such functions and cannot be reduced to pathways towards achieving clearly defined, empirically observable goals. Having said that, some currents of Western esotericism do present the prospect of attaining specifiable goals. Astrology and tarot reading are divinatory rituals that promise that competent practitioners will obtain otherwise hidden knowledge. Modes of healing from mesmerism to Anthroposophical medicine are presented as pathways toward improved health. The elaborate mythologies of Theosophy and its historical offshoots are claimed to be objective statements about such empirically verifiable matters as the distant human past. Many currents – mesmerist, spiritualist, or magical – promise that practitioners will ultimately develop abilities that other people lack. Mind reading, clairvoyance, or the ability to shape reality in conformity with one’s will can be among these goals. If practitioners of such currents were perfectly rational in the sense of the classic model, they would first envisage a goal, e.g., perfect health. They would then consider alternative ways of achieving that goal, a long list that could include options such as doing nothing and waiting for the body to recover on its own from any ailments, consulting a medical doctor, or seeking the help of a healer who claims to be able to balance one’s energies. A careful weighing of the pros and cons of the various alternatives would finally convince them to choose one of these approaches. This, of course, is hardly a realistic picture of how such fundamental decisions are made. Even in these cases, classic models of rationality appear to be academic constructions bearing little resemblance to actual life. The fact that beliefs are formed and decisions are made on grounds that are quite unrelated to the way of thinking of the fabled homo economicus has led to the emergence in recent decades of a more realistic model of human thinking: bounded rationality. This approach emphasises that we have signif icant limitations in our ability to process information. Our evolutionary history has provided us with brains that operate under characteristic cognitive weaknesses and that are easily swayed by social influences. It is possible to counteract these limitations and approach classic

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forms of rationality, but this requires significant socialisation, training, and advantageous circumstances. One of the key figures in the development of the concept of bounded rationality, Daniel Kahneman, proposes that we have two fundamentally different ways of processing information. One has the advantage of operating quickly and with little conscious effort, but is easily influenced by these weaknesses; the other is much slower, takes considerable effort, and involves deliberate reasoning.6 A reasonably complete inventory of cognitive weaknesses and how they mesh with various forms of esotericism would be very extensive, but for the present purposes a few examples will suffice. The first mechanism in our brief sample is the clustering illusion.7 Human beings assume that there are significant patterns in events and may, for instance, see a causal relationship between events that co-occur. Our ability to see patterns and draw causal conclusions is crucial: without it, we would not be able to understand our environment and make rational decisions. If we see a dog with bared teeth snarling at us, we may draw the conclusion that this is an aggressive animal, and a rational response can be to retreat. The term clustering illusion signifies that our ability to detect such correlations is not particularly well calibrated: we tend to see connections even when there presumably are none. Western esotericism abounds in examples where the clustering illusion may interfere with our ability to detect real correlations. Divination hinges on correlating symbols in a ritual setting (the elements of a horoscope, the cards of a tarot deck) with events in real life. Healing is centred on the correlation between an action (mesmerist passes, Anthroposophical remedies, prayer) and a later state (symptom relief, a cure). Magic is based upon the correlation between a ritual (spells, the use of magical objects) and an outcome (a change in one’s circumstances). In all of these cases, the clustering illusion can reinforce belief in divination, healing, or magic, even when this belief is baseless. Congruence bias affects the way we go about judging whether a hypothesis is correct or not: we will devise a simple test that already at the outset is likely to confirm the hypothesis.8 The benefits experienced from healing can be tested by visiting the healer once more. The validity of the diviner’s craft can be confirmed by rummaging through one’s memory for further matches between past experiences and the diviner’s narrative. Other hypotheses that might explain healing or divination are not even countenanced. 6 Kahneman, Thinking. 7 Gilovich, How We Know. 8 Baron, Thinking and Deciding, 171-177.

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The method of scanning one’s past experiences points at the next cognitive weakness: the limits of memory. Contrary to a widespread belief, memory does not function as a faithful archive of past experiences, but reconstructs the past in a rather selective and creative fashion. Cases where there seemed to be a clear correlation between a divinatory, healing, or magical ritual on the one hand, and a match in the external world on the other, are remembered clearly, whereas mismatches are forgotten. Such selective recall can convert a rather messy picture of an astrologer’s limited success at interpreting one’s chart into a narrative of the superiority of celestial divination. A social component of this list of cognitive weaknesses involves suggestibility. Expectations of what will take place in a healing session influence what we shall actually experience. Charismatic healers who can convince their clients that they will be healed will have better rates of success than their more lacklustre colleagues. All of the limits on rationality discussed so far impact the way our firsthand impressions are formed. Much of what we believe is, of course, not the result of any such impressions but is simply a case of accepting what we are told. Again, it needs to be emphasised that this is not a specific characteristic of esotericism or even of religious thinking more generally. Most propositions that we believe to be true are unquestioningly accepted because the source of information inspires us with conf idence. I base my conviction that light travels through vacuum at a speed of roughly 300,000 km/s on the belief that the physics texts that I have consulted for this piece of information are correct. The Anthroposophist who accepts that there are normally invisible astral and etheric bodies besides the physical one is just as convinced that Rudolf Steiner reported a fact observable in a suprasensible dimension. This sample of cognitive biases and social influences only constitutes a very small part of a potentially very long list. Clearly, the quick and rather effortless kind of thinking and decision-making that we can consider to be our natural, everyday mode of cognition is not very conducive to instrumental rationality. What kind of deliberate thinking can counteract these weaknesses? Two examples will show that at least some fundamental mechanisms of deliberate thinking and decision-making are in fact quite easy to grasp in principle but are difficult to deploy in practice. The fact that we so readily depart from these mechanisms illustrates yet another basic insight of research into bounded rationality: we do not merely resort to error-prone heuristics and shortcuts when we are confronted by complex cognitive challenges. Even quite basic tasks are handled in ways that fall far short of the ideals of classical instrumental rationality.

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The first example concerns a fundamental way in which our beliefs more generally are formed and revised. Inductive reasoning, the steady accumulation of evidence, makes us accept solid generalisations about regularities in the world around us. When we assess the believability and rationality of a new claim, we usually do so against the backdrop of those generalisations. To continue with the domain of complementary and alternative medicine, consider the following propositions: (1) A double espresso will, because of its high caffeine content, affect the physiology of the person drinking it much more than will a single sip of a very weak filter coffee. (2) A person who is highly inebriated after ingesting a bottle of wine will not become sober if one gives him or her more alcohol to drink. (3) A remedy prescribed by a practitioner of homeopathy becomes more potent the less of the active substance there is in the remedy and will alleviate the same symptoms in a sick person as it produces in a healthy individual. Propositions 1 and 2 seem completely self-evident to most people. Our accumulated inductive experience has made us certain that the more one ingests of any physiologically active substance, the more intense the effects will be. The more poison that enters the body, the worse the symptoms will be. It is also an utterly everyday experience that issues and problems do not get better if we resort to the aggravating factors that provoked the problems in the first place. Alcohol does not induce sobriety. Homeopathic medicine builds upon two principles, summarised in Proposition 3, that fly in the face of all of our accumulated experience. Let us assume that a patient has seen a homeopath for anxiety and has been given silver nitrate in a concentration that is so weak that few molecules of the original substance are left in the remedy. After a short time, the patient notices how the anxious feelings dissipate, and a cure seems to have been brought about. Natural cognition can lead from the single, apparently confirming case to a wholesale acceptance of homeopathy as a valid method. Deliberate cognition should, however, make us question this conclusion. How much should we allow a single experience to budge solidly supported regularities? How carefully should we rule out such effects as suggestion or the spontaneous amelioration of the patient from a condition that is known to vary considerably in severity over time, despite the treatment given, or even when there is no treatment at all? Homeopaths, and the many people that consult them, are hardly to be considered “irrational.” They merely follow a very common cognitive shortcut that goes from subjective

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experience to general rule. Deliberate thinking involves the insight that subjective validation is a very uncertain foundation on which to base our beliefs. Our second example follows up on the conclusion of the first. If subjective validation is so fraught with error, how might deliberate thinking help us to assess how well a method of healing works? This is a general issue for any method of healing, not only homeopathy, and in the domain of Western esotericism concerns practices as diverse as the mesmerist practice of “magnetic passes,” the use of Anthroposophical remedies, or reiki healing. How do we separate the specific effect of any such method from the many sources of “noise” that complicate the decision-making process? The noise can be due to social factors. Could the charismatic healer and the many expectations inherent in subjecting ourselves to the healing ritual have triggered a placebo response? Perhaps the pain was transitory and would have subsided anyway. There are two potential courses of action and two potential outcomes: (1) a person presenting a certain symptom undergoes the treatment, or does not, and subsequently (2) is cured or not. In order to assess a treatment such as homeopathy, all four scenarios need to be considered:

Received homeopathic remedy Did not receive remedy

Outcome positive

Outcome negative

A C

B D

Suppose that we have a group of anxious people and that we have given them diluted silver nitrate. After a day, there are three times as many nonanxious patients as anxious ones, in other words A/B = 3. This would seem to support the homeopathic method. But what happens if we look at those anxious patients who received a placebo? If there are three times as many non-anxious people as anxious ones also in this group, or C/D = 3, then prescribing ordinary tap water or sugar pills works just as well as prescribing a homeopathic remedy. Only if A/B is significantly higher than C/D is there any reason to suspect that diluted silver nitrate really has any effect. Not only that: in order to rule out suggestion and expectations, the whole procedure of giving “real” or sham homeopathic remedies needs to be made completely opaque to the patients. Ultimately, a treatment will be effective if it lives up to the standards of randomised double-blind testing. The complexity of this process (despite its simplicity in principle), compared to the natural heuristic of trying a treatment and intuiting what the result

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was, goes a long way towards explaining why alternative medicine is so hard to debunk. The concept of rationality has its background in a pre-theoretical feeling that some forms of thinking and making decisions function rather badly. The social sciences have converted this basic hunch into a sophisticated research program that attempts to uncover the social factors and cognitive limitations that affect us all because we are members of the species Homo sapiens and have brains whose bounded rationality is the result of a long evolutionary history. The question asked in the title of this chapter, “Isn’t esotericism irrational?”, can finally be answered. It is just as irrational or, rather, boundedly rational as any other product of natural thinking. It may not live up to the demands of formalised, deliberate thinking, but few domains of human activity do that. In this sense, Western esotericism is a completely ordinary aspect of culture and not “special” in any way.



Rejected knowledge… So you mean that esotericists are the losers of history? Wouter J. Hanegraaff

That’s a very loaded question, so I’ll try to unpack it carefully. First of all, it is important to see that the study of Western esotericism involves much more than studying “esotericists.” Today it is not so hard to find groups or individuals who understand the terminology as a marker of identity, meaning that they would accept or even actively embrace it as a label for who they are and what they stand for. Whether implicitly or explicitly, such esoteric identities always involve some element of defiance in the face of negative mainstream perceptions, and often they are backed up by some kind of historical narrative about hidden or secret or discredited wisdom. Rather than being direct and explicit (“I’m an esotericist”), they may well be indirect and implicit, for instance when modern practitioners who do not self-identify as such still think of themselves as part of the great chain of ancient or perennial wisdom referred to as “the esoteric tradition.” Such affirmations of an esoteric identity almost always reflect the idea that “esotericists” and their beliefs have been treated unfairly by the cultural mainstream, have lost the battle for legitimacy, and have been suppressed or marginalised by the powers of the establishment. Self-identified esotericists of course do not see themselves as “losers,” but if they are asked, most of them will readily concede that the traditions or modes of thinking and practice that they value have become victims of a historiography written by the “winners.” They know that they are on the wrong side of the hegemonic discourses or dominant grand narratives of Western culture. This use of “esotericism” as an identity marker is relatively recent. The very term emerged during the second half of the eighteenth century1 and is evidently part of the identity politics of that period. The perspectives and worldviews that we nowadays associate with “modern science” and “Enlightenment” were winning the battle against their opponents and assuming a position of hegemony in public discourse. To clearly establish their identity – to explain who they were and what they stood for – the advocates of Enlightenment needed to juxtapose themselves as sharply as possible against their polemical “others”: religious bigotry, priestly deceit, 1

Neugebauer-Wölk, “Esoteriker und die Esoterik”; eadem, “Historische Esoterikforschung.”

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blind credulity, belief in magic, irrational delusion, superstitious practices, and so on. In short, to identify oneself with “the Light of Reason” meant rejecting “the Darkness of Superstition,” and in any such juxtaposition there is never much room for complexity or nuance. The inevitable result was that all those beliefs and practices that Enlightenment thinkers were dumping into the wastebasket of “rejected knowledge” tended to be reified and essentialised in the human imagination as something to which you could actually belong: henceforth it was easy to think of them as part of one single, more or less coherent anti-Enlightenment counter-tradition grounded in specific doctrinal assumptions incompatible with science and rationality.2 If “esotericism” as an identity marker emerged in the eighteenth century, so that it became possible for people to think of themselves (and eventually, of others) as “esotericists,” then clearly it cannot have existed before that period. For instance, the Platonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) is generally seen as a central figure in the history of Western esotericism, because his translations of ancient Platonic and Hermetic writings and his studies of topics such as astral magic became foundational for the later development of that field. Nevertheless, although Ficino is certainly of great importance to what we now see as the study of Western esotericism, it would be misleading to describe him as an “esotericist.” The difference lies precisely in the concept of identity: Ficino would have described himself as a devout Christian and a lover of Plato and the Platonic tradition, but would certainly not have defined himself as the adherent of an alternative and potentially heretical tradition independent from and possibly even opposed to Christianity. The difference may be subtle, but is important. It could be illustrated by drawing a comparison with another field of study: the history of sexuality and gender politics. It so happens that the same Ficino felt attracted to men rather than women, as can clearly be seen from his writings, and this has earned him a place in the history of homoeroticism and homosexuality.3 Nevertheless, it would make no sense to conclude that “Ficino was gay,” for his sexual orientation played no part in how he defined his own identity (who he was or what he stood for). In the same way, although Ficino is a central figure in the study of Western esotericism as understood today, this still does not make him an esotericist. If “Western esotericism” is not to be understood in terms of identity politics (that is, as referring to some previously neglected tradition of “esotericists” 2 On this general process, see Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy. 3 On Ficino’s homoeroticism and its relevance to his synthesis of the Platonic tradition, De amore, see Hanegraaff, “Under the Mantle of Love.”

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and their beliefs or practices), then how is it understood in modern scholarly research? A large part of the answer is that the study of esotericism has established itself as a respected field of modern academic research precisely insofar as it has succeeded in distancing itself from a primary focus on esoteric identities! Roughly before the beginning of the 1990s, scholars of esotericism were inspired almost exclusively by covert or open agendas of either promoting esotericism or warning their readers about its dangers. The modern study of Western esotericism is based on a paradigm shift in this regard, as more and more scholars began shifting their emphasis from a primary focus on esoteric identities towards impartial empirical and historical methodologies focused on exact description, interpretation, and contextualization of the ideas and traditions reflected in previously neglected corpora of primary sources. The point was to better understand the development and significance of “esotericism” as an important dimension of Western culture, rather than taking position in favour or against it. As regards the trend of pro-esoteric identity politics in academia, during the twentieth century it coalesced around a group of high-profile scholars linked to the famous Eranos circle, whose perspective is often referred to as “religionism” today. Contrary to common misperceptions, this term should not be understood as a pejorative label,4 but as a technical term for an important academic approach to the study of religion. Among the most famous representatives are Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), and Henry Corbin (1903-1978). As intellectual heirs of German Idealism (especially Schelling) and other movements critical of Enlightenment rationalism (notably Traditionalism), they were deeply concerned about the effects of modernisation, secularisation, and disenchantment.5 Convinced that the Western world was in a state of moral and existential crisis, they were looking for sources and traditions that could inspire a movement of spiritual renewal so as to restore a sense of deeper meaning to human existence. They found it in archaic religion, comparative mythology, universal or “archetypal” symbols, and last but not least, the neglected “esoteric” dimensions of the Abrahamic religions.6 Linked to initiatives such as the French Université Saint Jean de Jérusalem 4 Hanegraaff, “Esotericism and Criticism.” 5 Hakl, Eranos; Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 277-314. For the foundational Eranos figure Carl Gustav Jung and his concern with the “crisis of modern consciousness,” see Hanegraaff, “Great War of the Soul.” 6 See Hakl, Eranos. For an analysis of Eranos religionism and its crucial importance to the study of Western in the twentieth century, see Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 277-314, 334-355.

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(USJJ) and many similar ventures along the lines of Eranos religionism, scholars saw it as their task to promote “esoteric” perspectives as an antidote to the negative and destructive forces of modernisation. In the words of Henry Corbin, his USJJ was founded “to confront the evil [that consists in] the total confusion in the spirits, souls, and hearts, a confusion resulting from the disaster of the secular institutions of the West.”7 As for anti-esoteric identity politics in academia, its most evident examples came from more or less Marxist-oriented intellectual perspectives linked to the “critical theory” of the Frankfurt School. One of its founding fathers, Georg Lukács (1885-1971), sought to explain the disaster of Fascism and National Socialism as resulting from the “destruction of reason” by a long line of thinkers, from the philosophy of Schelling to the racist theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain.8 Other foundational intellectuals such as Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) and Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) were thinking in terms of a complex dialectics rather than a simple opposition between Enlightenment rationalism and its “non-rational” counterparts (magic, mythology, superstition, the occult); but they, too, saw the latter as somehow tainted with fascist and anti-semitic agendas or sympathies.9 From the pioneering historian of occultism James Webb (1946-1980)10 to the influential semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco (1932-2016),11 not to mention popular bestsellers such as Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s Morning of the Magicians (1960) and their many offshoots,12 such assumptions and associations became widespread among academics and intellectuals who kept warning their readers against the moral and political dangers of esotericism and the occult.13 7 Corbin, “L’Université Saint-Jean de Jérusalem,” 8; see Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 343. 8 Lukács, Zerstörung der Vernunft. 9 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment; and cf. Adorno’s famous “Theses against Occultism.” See also the contribution by Kilcher in this volume. 10 Webb’s invaluable volumes are grounded in a narrative that sees occultism as a “flight from reason” (Occult Underground) and a “struggle for the irrational” (Occult Establishment), congenial to a “Counter-Enlightenment” tradition that receives the main part of the blame for fascism, National-Socialism, and antisemitism. 11 See notably Eco, “Ur-Fascism.” 12 Pauwels and Bergier’s Le Matin des Magiciens is responsible for more or less single-handedly introducing a sensationalist genre of “Nazi occultism” that has been taken seriously even by many academics. 13 For a particularly extreme example, see Zinser, Esoterik; and critical discussion in Hanegraaff, “Textbooks and Introductions,” 193-195. For a cogent critique of the Frankfurt School approach, see Fisher, “Fascist Scholars, Fascist Scholarship.”

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By the early 1990s, it was widely taken for granted in academic contexts that if you were writing about esotericism or the occult at all, inevitably you would be positioned somewhere towards the poles on a scale between advocates and opponents. Claims that esotericism could or should be studied from a “middle” position of scholarly impartiality, objectivity, or neutrality were still widely encountered with suspicion, as covert attempts by advocates of unreason to gain academic legitimacy for silly, questionable, subversive, or potentially dangerous ideas and traditions. Mainstream academic suspicions of this kind were clearly grounded in the standard polemical Enlightenment approach to these ideas and traditions as “rejected knowledge” that should not be given any further attention but should rather be dumped as trash in the wastebasket of academic research, to be ignored and hopefully forgotten forever. Let’s call this perspective “Enlightenment 1.” The dominance of such “no-platforming” attitudes began to be challenged successfully during the 1990s, by a new generation of scholars who insisted on a very different interpretation of the Enlightenment agenda: respect for empirical evidence no matter where it may lead, rejection of ideological prejudice of any kind, unrestricted freedom of inquiry, openness to all perspectives, and confidence in the emancipatory power of critical discussion and argumentation. From such a point of view, which we might call “Enlightenment 2,” it was (and is) considered axiomatic that no historical sources and no intellectual or religious traditions should be excluded from scholarly research. The goal should be promoting knowledge and understanding rather than any agenda of power or political hegemony. Interestingly, this breakthrough of empirical research in the study of Western esotericism during the 1990s was greatly facilitated by the growing trend of academic “incredulity toward metanarratives” that is characteristic of the “Postmodern Condition.”14 As scholars became aware of how pervasively the hegemonic grand narratives of Western culture have structured and determined even our most basic assumptions concerning knowledge, truth, and power, the natural result was a new openness towards learning about the forgotten or suppressed perspectives of the “losers” in those metanarratives. It is of course well known that most attention in that regard has gone to the traditional exclusion and marginalisation of women, black people and other people of colour, various alternative or non-dominant genders and sexualities, and the victims of Western colonisation worldwide. Esotericism has not been widely recognised as belonging in this series, but in fact it clearly does belong there – after all, the most fundamental grand 14 Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, xxiv.

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narratives of Western culture have been constructed on the very basis of “Othering” and rejecting precisely everything that is studied under the “esotericism” label today! Just think about it: the story of monotheism is one of victory over ancient “paganism” and “idolatry”; traditional church histories are full of battles against “superstitious heresies” or “demonic magic”; the standard story of the Reformation tells us how Protestants were fighting the very same opponents (although in a more extreme and radical register, now with Catholicism itself framed as “pagan, magical, idolatrous and superstitious”); the story of modern science narrates its triumph over “occult pseudo-scientific superstitions” such as astrology or alchemy; the story of the Enlightenment celebrates its victory over “irrational superstition”; and hegemonic success stories of colonial and imperial expansion have been trying hard to idealise Western culture as the bringer of civilisation to unenlightened cultures still dominated by “primitive magic” and “superstitious beliefs.”15 In short, if postmodern scholarship rejects the grand narratives of Western culture (including “Enlightenment 1”) and highlights the perspectives of the marginalised and suppressed, one might have expected it to embrace esotericism with great enthusiasm as a major new field of inquiry. But that is not what happened. Although the study of Western esotericism has clearly profited from the new “postmodern” openness towards studying non-dominant traditions (or, if one prefers, towards the “losers” of the traditional grand narratives), our field has not become a central concern in such popular domains as cultural studies or critical theory. It is worth asking ourselves why. One reason may be simply the fact that academics are human beings whose natural tendency is to focus on dimensions of Western culture with which they can personally identify. Female academics may be attracted by women’s history, black academics by the history of racial prejudice, and so on; but few academics would see themselves as “esotericists” – or if they do, would like to admit it – and so it does not become a central point of attention for them. This brings us immediately to a second reason: nothing less than the pervasive power of that same Western “anti-esoteric” discourse, which is far more dominant and pervasive than most academics realise. Like those fish who wonder “what the hell is water?,”16 even radical critics of Western hegemonic narratives tend to be unaware that this discourse even exists, let alone how it structures their very own assumptions about acceptable and non-acceptable (rejected or discredited) forms of knowledge or methods of 15 Hanegraaff, “Globalization”; idem, “Religion and the Historical Imagination.” 16 Wallace, This is Water, 3-4.

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inquiry. In short, esotericism is the blind spot par excellence among those radical theorists who are so eager to deconstruct “Western culture.” And then there is a third and final point: the strong tendency, in such domains as cultural studies, to start top-down from “Theory” and allow its premises to determine one’s further course of research and even one’s very choice of sources. If esotericism has no place in your theories to begin with (for the reasons just mentioned), you will see no reason to study historical source materials that could potentially enlighten you about its nature and relevance; or even more seriously, your theoretical framework may overwhelm your reading of such materials and determine your interpretations in advance. As a result, the sources will become subservient to your theories, and you may end up hearing only reflections of your own voice.17 For all these reasons I advocate an “Enlightenment 2” approach to the study of Western esotericism that proceeds empirically and historically, not top-down but bottom-up. This means that the starting point consists, quite simply, in carefully studying an enormous record of sources and materials that have remained unexplored because they used to be rejected as misguided, unimportant, dangerous, or irrelevant from the ideological perspectives of “Enlightenment 1” (as well as its ideological predecessors and successors). Research of this kind is best done with a minimum of theoretical baggage, at least at the outset, because the prime objective consists in listening to what the sources have to tell us instead of imposing our own ideas on them.18 It means travelling to strange and unfamiliar times and places, entering cultural and mental worlds that may be very different from our own and may be governed by implicit or explicit rules and assumptions that would never have occurred to ourselves. Research of this kind requires a certain humility, a willingness to bracket our own certainties and listen to the voices of Others. Its necessary presupposition is that we are not fatally enclosed in our own identity bubbles but are able to reach out and communicate across the boundaries of history and culture, so as to learn seeing the world through the eyes of other human beings who may be very different from us and can therefore teach us things we did not know. To study esotericism from such a perspective means celebrating diversity and curiosity. I am convinced that if we “reject the rejection of rejected knowledge” and begin accepting its traditions and ideas as perfectly normal and legitimate dimensions of Western culture (regardless of how we may personally evaluate esoteric beliefs or truth-claims in any given case, which 17 One good example of this, in my opinion, would be Ramey, Hermetic Deleuze. 18 Hanegraaff, “Teaching Experiential Dimensions,” 167.

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is an entirely different matter), this will allow us to begin writing new and better grand narratives on “Enlightenment 2” foundations. They will surely describe how many vital and fascinating ideas or traditions lost the battle for legitimacy and found themselves rejected, suppressed, and distorted; and it will show that the true course of Western culture has been infinitely more diverse and complicated than streamlined mainstream narratives would like us to believe. However, contrary to the dreams of identity politics in academia, the point of such new narratives is not to facilitate some paradigm shift that will reverse the course of history so that the “losers” may finally come out on top and the “winners” will lose. Ultimately, the true losers are only those who pursue narrow hegemonic agendas of power and domination for their own group while rejecting the open and never-ending human search for knowledge and understanding. Nobody wins unless everybody wins.



The kind of stuff Madonna talks about – that’s not real kabbala, is it? Boaz Huss

In the mid-1990s, following other pop stars and celebrities, Madonna (Madonna Louise Ciccone, b. 1958) started to study at the Kabbalah Center, the largest contemporary Kabbalistic movement. The Kabbalah Center was established in the late 1960s by Philip Berg (1927-2013) and some other followers of the teaching of Yehuda Ashlag (1885-1954). Ashlag, who was born in Warsaw, Poland, and immigrated to Palestine in 1922, developed an innovative doctrine of modern Kabbalah (which he termed “altruistic communism”) that integrated concepts and theories of sixteenth-century Lurianic Kabbalah with modern, socialist ideas. According to Ashlag’s Kabbalah, the divine creator is an infinite, altruistic will to bestow on others, while created beings are essentially an egoistic will to receive. Human beings, born with the will to receive, may change their nature into a will to bestow, and thus overcome their egoism and become divine. Such a transformation, according to Ashlag, can only be achieved in a communist community, in which every person is able to give to others, while his own needs are taken care of by his companions. The way to reach the perfect society and the perfection of the individual is, according to Ashlag, the dissemination of Kabbalah. Philip Berg, who was born to a Jewish Orthodox family in the United States, studied Kabbalah with two of Ashlag’s disciples, Yehuda Brandwein (1903-1969) and Levi Krakovski (1891-1966). Berg developed and reinterpreted the teaching of Ashlag in the spirit of the American culture of the later twentieth century. He downplayed the socialist ideas of Ashlag, added doctrines and rituals taken from other Kabbalistic schools, and integrated them with New Age concepts and practices. Developing the universalistic stance of Ashlag’s Kabbalah, he opened the Kabbalah Center to non-Jews too. Gradually, the Kabbalah Center became the largest contemporary Kabbalistic movement.1 Madonna, the most famous disciple of the Kabbalah Center, integrated Kabbalistic themes and ideas in her songs, performances, video-clips, and children’s books. Her song and video-clip “Die Another Day” (2002), which 1 Myers, Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest.

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were produced as a promo for the James Bond film of the same title, presented Ashlag’s ideas (as interpreted in the Kabbalah Center) concerning the overcoming of one’s ego and the conquering of suffering and death through the power of the divine name of 72 letters. Madonna’s performance of her song “Like a Prayer,” in her 2004 Re-Invention World Tour, was accompanied by the screening of Kabbalistic images and Hebrew letters, taken from a manuscript of a book by the thirteenth-century Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia. Kabbalistic terms and ideas appear in her children’s book, The English Roses, published in 2003. Her choice of the Hebrew name Esther was based on Berg’s Kabbalistic interpretation of the book of Esther.2 The media, Jewish rabbis, Kabbalists and academic scholars of Jewish studies have ridiculed and disparaged Madonna’s interest in Kabbalah. Madonna and the Kabbalah Center have repeatedly been denounced as charlatans, and their doctrines and practices as a fake form of Kabbalah.3 Thus, for instance, Orthodox Rabbi Isaac Schochet said in an interview about the Kabbalah Center: “It’s phony; it’s manipulative, it has no spirituality whatsoever. It’s not related to the authentic Kabbalah.”4 The prominent scholar of Kabbalah from the Hebrew University Prof. Joseph Dan referred to Berg and the Kabbalah Center as examples of the inauthenticity of contemporary Kabbalah: A distressing example of this phenomenon is the vast enterprise of “Kabbalistic” publications initiated and directed by “Kabbalist Rav Berg.” Originally he based his teachings on the work of one of the last authentic Kabbalists of the twentieth century, Rabbi Ashlag … It was heartbreaking to observe how this authentic enterprise deteriorated into a New Age mishmash of nonsense.5

The accusation that the Kabbalah studied and practised by Madonna and her mentors at the Kabbalah Center is fake raises interesting questions. What is real, authentic Kabbalah? What are the criteria to distinguish between genuine and non-genuine forms of Kabbalah, and who has the authority to establish such criteria? In order to give an answer to these questions, I would like to offer a short survey of the history of the term Kabbalah and its various applications. 2 Huss, “All you Need is LAV.” 3 Huss, “Kabbalah and the Politics of Inauthenticity.” 4 https://bustedhalo.com/features/kosher-kabbalah (accessed August 26th, 2018). 5 Dan, Heart and the Fountain, 285.

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Kabbalah is a common word in Hebrew. It is derived from the verb stem K.B.L, which means to receive. The word can refer to the act of receiving or to what has been received (in modern Hebrew the word refers to “receipt,” as well as the front desk at hotels, etc.,) and hence can mean “tradition.” In the Talmud, the word was used to designate the Old Testament texts other than the Pentateuch, and in post Talmudic literature it was also used to denote the oral law, as well as other traditions. During the Middle Ages, it was sometimes used to refer to traditions that concerned themselves with the esoteric names of God.6 Since the early thirteenth century, the term Kabbalah, or the wisdom of Kabbalah (hochmat ha-kabbalah), became gradually a common term to describe doctrines and practices related to descriptions of the divine realm as a structure of ten powers or attributes, called sefirot. It was also used to describe ideas and practices related to the impact of human behaviour, especially prayer and performance of the Jewish precepts, on the divine realm. People who were regarded as experts in these topics were described as Kabbalists (mekubalim). Thus, in the early fourteenth century, Rabbi Meir ben Meir Ibn Sahula explained the meaning of Kabbalah: the path taken by those who, in our generation and in the preceding generations, for two hundred years, are called kabbalists, and they call the science of the ten sefirot and some of the reasons for the commandments by the name Kabbalah.7

Other topics relating to the emanation of the sefirot from the transcendent Infinite (En-Sof), to the sub-divine realms, to the human soul and its divine origin and to reincarnation, were also perceived as parts of Kabbalah. The term Kabbalah was only one term used to refer to such doctrines. Other terms, such as the “secrets of the Torah” (sitrei torah), secret wisdom (hochmat ha-nistar), or the way of truth (derekh ha-emet) were also used. The term Kabbalah also continued to be used with reference to other teachings and practices.8 In the thirteenth century it was used to refer to hermeneutics based on the combination, permutation, and numerical value of letters (gematria, notarikon and temura). Knowledge concerning the use of the power of divine names was referred to as the Kabbalah of the (Divine) Names (kabbalat ha-Shemot). In later periods, use of the divine names and 6 Scholem, Kabbalah, 6-7. 7 I follow the translation of Scholem, Origins of Kabbalah, 38. 8 Idel, “Meaning of the Term ‘Kabbalah’.”

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the preparation of amulets was designated Practical Kabbalah (kabbalah ma`asit). The term Prophetic Kabbalah (kabbalah nevuit), as well as the Kabbalah of Names, was used to refer to teaching of the late thirteenth-century itinerant scholar Abraham Abulafia (1240-1291/2). Abulafia’s prophetic Kabbalah was not concerned with the structure of the divine realm and human impact on it. Rather, it aimed to achieve prophecy through a union between the human and the divine intellect, by means of various techniques that involved the recitation of divine names and letter combinations. From the thirteenth century onwards, various schools of Kabbalah developed in Jewish communities in the Iberian Peninsula. These schools differed considerably from each other in their doctrines, as well as in their stance towards the dissemination of Kabbalistic teaching. They included a circle of Kabbalists who were active in Gerona, the school of Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (Nahmanides, 1194-1270) and his disciples in Barcelona, the school of Abraham Abulafia and Prophetic Kabbalah mentioned above, and several Kabbalists who were active in Castile. It was probably in Castile, during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, that the different units of the Zohar were written. This was to become the central text of most Kabbalistic schools. In a later period, many other schools or trends of Kabbalah developed. Thus Kabbalists who were active in Italy, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, developed Kabbalistic teachings that were shaped in the context of Renaissance culture, and differed considerably from those of the Kabbalists in Spain. In the sixteenth century, new forms of Kabbalistic teaching were developed in Safed, in the upper Galilee. These included the teachings of Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570) as well as those of the school or Isaac Luria (1534-1572), known as the Ari. Luria’s innovative teachings, which were based to a large degree on his interpretation of the Zohar, were accepted by all later Jewish Kabbalistic schools. From the sixteenth century on, many other schools and forms of Kabbalah emerged. Kabbalistic theories and practices were developed by followers of Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676), by Hassidic rabbis, and by their opponents (mitnagdim), the followers of Elija ben Solomon Zalman, the Vilna Gaon (1720-1796). New and innovative Kabbalistic teachings and practices were formed in the early modern and modern periods. These include those of the Italian Kabbalist Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (Ramhal, 1707-1746) and the Yemenite Kabbalist Shalom Shar`abi (1720-1777), who was active in the Jerusalem Yeshiva Beth El, and whose Kabbalistic texts and prayer practices became highly influential amongst Kabbalists in the Middle East. By the twentieth century, these innovators included the socialist Kabbalist mentioned above, Yehuda Ashlag.

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From the late fifteenth century, some Christian scholars and theologians took an interest in Kabbalah. Prominent figures such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-1689) and many others, translated Jewish Kabbalistic texts into Latin and developed Christian doctrines based on Kabbalistic concepts, ideas, and methods of interpretation. Christian Kabbalists regarded Kabbalah as an ancient doctrine that contained Christological ideas, and which could be used to convince Jews of the truths of Christianity. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new forms of Kabbalah were developed in non-Jewish occult and esoteric circles. The Occult Kabbalah, which was based to a large extent on Christian Kabbalah, regarded Kabbalah as a perennial, universal, magical, and mystical form of knowledge. From the late twentieth century on, many new forms of Jewish and non-Jewish Kabbalah appeared. Some of the Jewish neo-Kabbalistic movements, such as the Kabbalah Center and Bnei Baruch, offered New Age adaptations of the Kabbalah of Yehuda Ashlag. They developed exoteric, universalistic Kabbalistic doctrines and practices, which they declared were open to Jews and non-Jews alike. It should also be mentioned that since the nineteenth century, scholars have studied Kabbalah from historical and philological perspectives. Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), who established the modern academic school of Kabbalah studies, interpreted Kabbalah as a form of Jewish mysticism and researched Kabbalah from a Jewish national perspective. The studies of Scholem and his followers (especially Moshe Idel, b. 1948) had a strong impact on the contemporary understanding and practice of Kabbalah. The numerous forms and schools of Kabbalah that have appeared since the Middle Ages represent a large variety of different teaching and practices. There are several themes and concepts that are common to many forms of Kabbalah: the sefirot, the Divine infinite (En-Sof ), the divine origin of the human soul, reincarnation, the power of divine names, and more. Most Kabbalistic groups venerate common texts, such as the Sefer Yezira and the Zohar, and most Jewish forms of Kabbalah accept the authority of Lurianic Kabbalah. Yet, it is difficult to find any denominators that are common to all the different doctrines and practices designated by the term “Kabbalah.” Many of the different Kabbalistic schools and movements were hostile to each other. Kabbalists rejected, disparaged and denied the authenticity of other forms of Kabbalah. Thus, for instance, Abraham Abulafia criticised the sefirotic Kabbalah, and compared the theory of the ten sefirot to Christian Trinitarianism.9 Shlomo Ibn Aderet (Rashba, 1235-1310), a prominent disciple 9 Jellinek, Auswahl Kabbalistischer Mystik, 19.

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of Nachmanides and a follower of the sefirotic Kabbalah, described Abulafia as a scoundrel, who enticed many people with his lies and caused much damage “with his many invented and false ideas, which resembles high wisdom to the fool.”10 In the early modern period, the followers of Isaac Luria’s teachings presented the Kabbalah of Moshe Cordovero as an inferior form that related only to the lower strata of the divine world.11 Kabbalists suspected of Sabbateanism (including the seventeenth-century Kabbalist Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto) were rejected and banned by the opponents of Sabbateanism. The early twentieth-century Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag was very critical of the Kabbalists of Yeshivat Beth-El of his time, and accused them of superficial study of Kabbalistic texts. Jewish Kabbalists opposed the study of Kabbalah by non-Jews, and some Occult Kabbalists disparaged Jewish Kabbalah as a distortion and degeneration of the original, universal Kabbalah. It is interesting to note that modern academic scholars have also disparaged and denied the authenticity of some forms of Kabbalah. Gershom Scholem considered the contemporary Jewish Kabbalah of his time to be decayed and degenerated, and disparaged non-Jewish occultists as charlatans and pseudo-Kabbalists.12 Contemporary Kabbalah scholars deny the authenticity of neo-Kabbalistic movements, especially the Kabbalah Centre, as well as contemporary Israeli Kabbalists of North African and Middle-Eastern descent.13 Different Kabbalists and Kabbalistic schools rejected other forms of Kabbalah because they assumed that their own Kabbalistic teachings and practices were true and effective, while the Kabbalistic doctrines and rituals of other schools were inferior or false. Various Kabbalists, both Jewish and non-Jewish, assumed they possessed true and authoritative theoretical and practical knowledge, which they received through tradition, revelation, or correct interpretation of authoritative sources. They denied the authority, the truth and the efficacy of the doctrines and practices of other schools of Kabbalah, and did not accept them as representing true, authoritative Kabbalah. As I have already mentioned, some academic scholars of Kabbalah also rejected the authenticity of certain forms of Kabbalah. The distinction scholars made between authentic and pseudo-Kabbalah was not dependent on the truth or falseness of the Kabbalists’ teaching (academic scholars 10 Zelnik, Rashba Responsa, no. 548. 11 Huss, Zohar, 181-182. 12 Burmistrov, “Gershom Scholem und das Okkulte,” 23-34; Huss, “‘Authorized Guardians’,” 92-94. 13 Ibid., 95-101.

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usually claim that they are not interested in the truth-value of the religious and theological teaching they study) but, rather, on their definition of what Kabbalah is. As most modern scholars define Kabbalah as a form of “Jewish mysticism,” many scholars of Jewish mysticism reject the authenticity of non-Jewish Kabbalists and of modern forms of Kabbalah, which they do not perceive to be genuinely “mystical.” Gershom Scholem denied the authenticity of occult, non-Jewish Kabbalists because he claimed that their writings did not contain even an inkling of what characterises “the religious historical phenomenon of Jewish Kabbalah.”14 As mentioned above, he also disapproved of the contemporary Jewish Kabbalah of his time, and considered it decayed and degenerated. Scholem refused to recognise contemporary Kabbalah as a significant expression of Jewish mysticism because he assumed that mysticism ceased to be a significant phenomenon in the modern world: “It is clear that in recent generations there have been no awakenings of individuals leading to new forms of mystical teachings or to significant movements in public life. This applies equally well to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.”15 Contemporary scholars, who accept the definition of Kabbalah as Jewish mysticism, use the same criteria to deny the authenticity of the Kabbalah of Madonna and the Kabbalah Center as well as of other neo-Kabbalistic movements. Contemporary Jewish studies scholar Allen Nadler, for instance, denied the mystical authenticity and the integrity of the Judaism of contemporary Kabbalists, whom he describes as “mystical charlatans who are peddling a deeply distorted version of Judaism’s most profound spiritual teachings to rich and famous Jews and non-Jews, from rock singers to Hollywood stars.”16 Nadler, who regards the Kabbalah Center as the worst of these “mystical charlatans,” uses sarcastic quotation marks to emphasise that the Kabbalah Center does not convey real “Jewish mysticism”: “The most dangerous of these trendy purveyors of ‘Jewish mysticism’ is the Kabbalah Learning Centre, an organization whose goal is to transform Kabbalah from esoteric theosophical teachings into a vehicle for New Age healing.”17 The criteria used by Kabbalah practitioners, as well as by scholars of Kabbalah, to distinguish between real and false forms are based on metahistorical, theological, and ideological assumptions. Can Kabbalah be defined only on the basis of its historical manifestations, without any theological 14 Scholem, Explication and Implication, 319. 15 Scholem, On the Possibility, 6. 16 Nadler, “Review of Moshe Idel,” 176. 17 Ibid.

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or ideological presuppositions? As Wouter Hanegraaff has asserted, from a strictly historical point of view there are no criteria to distinguish between true and false forms of Kabbalah.18 Any criteria used to distinguish genuine forms of Kabbalah from pseudo-Kabbalah will necessarily be based on presuppositions concerning the true essence of Kabbalah, and not on historical observation. Historians can research the different teachings and practices designated by the term Kabbalah and the ways these teaching were transmitted, interpreted and appropriated. They can study how different schools of Kabbalah aspired for legitimacy, and the claims Kabbalists used in order to establish the truth and validity of their teaching. Yet, historians do not have the means, or the authority, to determine the truth or authenticity of the teaching of the different schools of Kabbalah. So is the kind of stuff Madonna talks about real Kabbalah? From a historical, scholarly point of view, it is as real as any other form of Kabbalah people believe in and practise. For a historian, the interesting question is not whether Madonna’s Kabbalah is genuine. The intriguing questions are how Madonna and her mentors understand Kabbalah, and how they reinterpret previous Kabbalistic teaching. What are the characteristics of the new and innovative forms of Kabbalah they create and practise, and why have they become so popular? Similarly, it is interesting to study the controversies surrounding Madonna and the Kabbalah Center, and to raise questions about the reasons for the rejection and disparagement of Madonna’s Kabbalah. Answers to these questions can offer new understanding of the ways Kabbalah is interpreted, recreated, and contested in contemporary culture by modern practitioners as well as by academic scholars.

18 Hanegraaff , “Beginnings of Occultist Kabbalah,” 108-109.

Plate 1: Jan Toorop, De nieuwe generatie (The New Generation), 1892. Oil on canvas, 121.4 x 132.4 cm. Collection Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

Plate 2: James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Black, No. 5 (Lady Meux), 1881. Oil on canvas, 194.3 x 130.2 cm. Collection Honolulu Museum of Arts.

Plate 3: Jacoba van Heemskerck van Beest, Compositie (Composition), 1920. Stained-glass mosaic, 81.5 x 123.5 cm. Collection Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag.

Plate 4: Hermes, “Contemporary of Moses”. Floor mosaic in Cathedral of Siena, Italy, by Giovanni di Stefano (1488). (Photo: Wikimedia Commons).

Plate 5: Trismegistus philosophus, painting in the choir vault of St. Walburgis church, Zutphen, the Netherlands (ca. 1500). (Photo: Dick Osseman.)

Plate 6: Frontispice of Niklaus Tscheer’s Einleitung Zum Wahren und gründlichen Erkänntnis Des grossen Geheimnisses der Gottseligkeit (Amsterdam, 1718). (Original from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Digitized by Internet Archive.)

Plate 7: St Guthlac is carried aloft and whipped by demons. British Library, Harley Roll Y.6, Roundel 7. (Photo © The British Library Board)

Plate 8: Guthlac healing a demoniac. British Library, Harley Roll Y.6, Roundel 10. (Photo © The British Library Board)

Plate 9: Live gig by Saturnalia Temple, 2016. (Photo: A Thousand Lost Civilizations)

Plate 10: Statue of Baphomet, The Satanic Temple, Salem, Massachusetts. Courtesy of The Satanic Temple, Salem, Massachusetts.

Plate 11: Photo: Jeffrey J. Kripal.

Plate 12: A Scene during which incense is burned. An Image from The Great Book of Magical Art (1914). This is one among the many images in which India was stereotyped in the Western imagination. (L.W. de Laurence, The Great Book of Magical Art, Hindu Magic and East Indian Occultism, The de Laurence Company: Chicago 1902.)

Plate 13: Fourteenth-century Arabic text of the Cyranides of Hermes Trismegistus. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license granted by the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

Plate 14: Alexander and Aristotle in a Latin translation of the Sirr al-asrār from 1327. Reproduced by kind permission of the British Library.

Plate 15: The title page of Khamit Kush’s Enoch the Ethiopian (2000). Reproduced from copy of G. Szönyi.

Plate 16: 1682 frontispiece of Boehme’s Von der newen Wiedergebuhrt. © Embassy of the Free Mind (Amsterdam), Collection Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica.



Shouldn’t evil cults that worship satan be illegal? Massimo Introvigne

On July 14, 2018, with my colleagues Joe Laycock and Richard Noll, I participated in Salem, Massachusetts, in a debate with the founder of the Satanic Temple, Lucien Greaves, about the notion of “cults.” The Satanic Temple is a humanist organisation devoted to the defence of rationality and science, using Satan as a signifier of both, and hailing him as a symbol of the fight against obscurantism and superstition. The Temple has produced a huge statue of the “Baphomet" (colour plate 10), based on a famous image created by French nineteenth-century occultist author, Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse Louis Constant, 1810–1875).1 Wherever in the United States there is a statue of Jesus or another Christian symbol on public grounds, the Temple and its skilled lawyers descend and ask, in the name of equal rights for different religious world-views, to place their Baphomet next to the Christian statue. More often than not, their lawsuits result in the judges deciding that the Christian symbol should be removed in furtherance of the principle of separation between Church and State, which is what the Temple really wanted in the first place. As I mentioned tongue-in-cheek in the debate, the Temple is worse than a Satanic cult: it is a cult of lawyers. Much more seriously, however, Greaves disagreed with the scholars, who cautioned against using the word “cult.” Unlike the Satanic Temple, he insisted, which is a force for reason and science, irrationalist, authoritarian religious or esoteric organisations are indeed “dangerous cults.” My travels bring me to unusual places. In 2017, I was invited, with other Western scholars, to two seminars in China organised by the Chinese Anti-Xie-Jiao Association, which has a direct connection with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to discuss the notion of xie jiao. “Evil cults” is the translation of xie jiao in official English-language Chinese documents, but most Chinese-speaking scholars agree that the translation is wrong. The term xie jiao was introduced in China to designate “unorthodox teachings” 1 Lévi was not a Satanist, but he did argue that the image of the Baphomet, which the Knights Templar had been accused of worshipping, might be associated with Lucifer or Satan. See Introvigne, Satanism, 105-109; Strube, “The ‘Baphomet’.” On the Baphomet and the Knights Templar, see Partner, Murdered Magicians, 137-144.

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in the Ming era, centuries before controversies about “cults” erupted in the West.2 The Emperor “decided on the basis of his own judgement”3 which religions and movements should be banned as xie jiao, and the judgement was often primarily political. The same logic is at work in China today. The Criminal Code, CCP resolutions, and decisions by the People’s Supreme Court mention the need to combat xie jiao, but definitions are either lacking or unclear, as they mention groups spreading “superstitious fallacies” or “harming their followers.” For all practical purposes, the movements banned and persecuted in China as xie jiao are those included by the regime in its periodically updated list of xie jiao.4 The notion of “cult” in the West is no less problematic than xie jiao in China. Criminologists, following the father of their discipline, Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), define a “cult” as a religious group that committed or would probably commit serious crimes.5 Before Lombroso died in 1909, however, sociologists had started using the category of “cult” with meanings different from criminologists. Within sociology, a tradition evolved from Max Weber (1864-1920) and Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), although the second was not a sociologist but a church historian using sociological tools.6 The tradition went through various stages of development. For these scholars, and their successors, “cults” were not heterodox, let alone criminal, religious groups, but religions in an early stage of their development, regarded as marginal by, and critical of, society at large, and not, or not yet, fully organised.7 The overlapping activities of criminologists and sociologists created a confusion that is not completely resolved to this day. “Cult,” based on the criminological tradition, became generally understood as a word charged with strong negative connotations, while sociologists used it in a value-free meaning. Deciding what group was really a “cult” became difficult. This situation went from bad to worse with the “cult wars” of the 1970s and 1980s, when a societal reaction developed against the success in the West of new religious movements that were either imported from Asia or domestic. Parents and the media did not understand why youths might be willing 2 Goossaert and Palmer, Religious Question, 27-29. 3 Ibid., 27. 4 Irons, “List,” 41-42. 5 Lombroso, Pazzi, 95-99. 6 Weber, “Protestantische Ethik”; Weber, “Kirchen und Sekten”; Troeltsch, Soziallehren. 7 Richardson, “Conceptualization of Cult”; idem, “From Cult to Sect”; idem, “Definitions of Cult”; Dillon and Richardson, “‘Cult’ Concept.”

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to sacrifice their careers in order to spend their lives in exotic religious organisations, and the modern anti-cult movement was born.8 A handful of psychologists imported from Cold War American propaganda against Communism the notion of “brainwashing,” arguing that these youths did not join the groups voluntarily but were manipulated through mysterious mind control techniques. “Cults” were defined as groups using “brainwashing,” yet another evolution of the criminological definition – but one making reference, rather than to actual crimes such as violence or sexual abuse, to a hypothetical crime (brainwashing) whose very existence was disputed.9 In fact, sociologists and other scholars reacted against the “brainwashing” theories, claiming that they were pseudo-scientif ic tools used to deny religious liberty to unpopular groups labelled as “cults.” The argument, they claimed, was circular. We know that certain groups are “cults” because they use “brainwashing,” and we know that they use “brainwashing” because, rather than persuading young people to embrace “reasonable” spiritual teachings, they spread bizarre forms of belief, i.e. they are “cults.”10 A good deal of name-calling went on between the vast majority of the academic specialists of new religious movements and anti-cultists during the so called “cult wars.”11 Finally, in 1990, in the case U.S. v. Fishman, a federal court in California concluded that “brainwashing” was not a scientific concept and that testimony about “cults” based on the brainwashing theory was not admissible in American courts of law.12 Fishman was the beginning of the end for the American anti-cult movement’s social relevance.13 The notion of “brainwashing” was still defended by a tiny minority of scholars and inspired some laws, in France and elsewhere, but they soon proved difficult to enforce.14 Another consequence of the cult wars was that the majority of academic scholars decided not to use the word “cult,” because of its heavy judgmental and criminological implications, replacing it with “new religious movements.” The new label evolved from Japanese and Korean concepts of “new religions,” common in Asia since the 1930s and later applied 8 Shape and Bromley, Vigilantes; Bromley and Shupe, Strange Gods; Shupe and Bromley, Anti-Cult Movements. 9 Anthony and Introvigne, Lavage de cerveau. 10 Kilbourne and Richardson, “Psychotherapy and New Religions”; Kilbourne and Richardson, “Cultphobia”; Richardson, “Sociology and New Religious Movements.” 11 Introvigne, “Advocacy,” 303-319; Gallagher, “Cult Wars.” 12 U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, “Opinion.” 13 Richardson, “‘Brainwashing’ as Forensic Evidence”; Richardson, “‘Brainwashing’ and Mental Health.” 14 Anthony and Introvigne, Lavage de cerveau.

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to Western movements by Jacob Needleman,15 but was defined and widely adopted thanks to the efforts of Eileen Barker.16 When I explained to my Chinese hosts that the word “cult” had been abandoned by most Western scholars, their first reaction was, “But surely, at least Satanism is a cult?” Later, not without difficulties, I managed to interview members of groups labelled in China as xie jiao, and discussed with them the uses and abuses of terms such as xie jiao or “cult.” Curiously, their reaction was the same as that of the Chinese authorities: “We are not an evil cult, but we believe there are evil cults, such as Satanism.” As mentioned above, even some Satanists would call other Satanists “members of a cult.” Anti-cultists often accuse scholars of new religious movements of being “cult apologists,” for which all “cults” are inoffensive. This was never the case, as these scholars always acknowledged that some religious movements, both outside and inside mainline religious traditions, created real “social problems,” and advocated and committed very real crimes such as terrorism, homicide, rape, and child abuse, not to be confused with the imaginary crime of brainwashing.17 Based inter alia on seminars I myself have helped organise since 1999, where scholars of new religious movements interacted with FBI senior agents,18 I proposed to introduce a “new” category, “criminal religious movements” (CRM). It was not entirely new, as it used selectively elements from the criminological tradition. It avoids the word “cult” and tries to disentangle the category from both the folk psychology of brainwashing and the politics of labelling unpopular groups as “cults,” and from theology. I define a criminal religious movement as a religious movement that either, or both, advocates or consistently engages as a group in major violent or criminal activities, including terrorism, homicide, physical violence against members, dissidents, or opponents, rape, sexual abuse of minors, or major economic crimes.19 The definition insists on well-defined crimes, punished by existing laws of general application and not by new laws created for the specific purpose of acting against the so called “cults.” As such, it focuses, for example, on physical violence rather than on elusive notions of psychological violence, on beating or murdering opponents in this life rather than on 15 Needleman, New Religions. 16 Barker, Making of a Moonie. 17 Barker, “Cult.” 18 Barkun, “Project Megiddo,” 103. 19 Introvigne, “Xie Jiao,” 25.

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threatening them with the flames of Hell in the next, and so on. I agree, however, that inciting violence is part of violence, and that certain forms of hate speech implicitly or explicitly incite or advocate violence. Should “cults that worship Satan be illegal”? The question should be more technically rephrased as, “Are Satanist movements CRMs?” But the question is in itself dangerous, as it calls for generalisations. We can also ask, “Are Buddhist movements CRMs?”, and mention Aum Shinri-kyo, the group responsible for the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo Subway in 1995, as an example of a Buddhist CRM. Although Aum Shinri-kyo was endorsed by the Dalai Lama and other authorities of Buddhism as a mainline Buddhist group,20 its wrongdoings certainly do not support the conclusion that other, or most, Buddhist groups are CRMs. Are there CRMs among Satanists? Without doubt. Some of the groups often mentioned as examples of criminal Satanic movements were not Satanist, including the “Family” of Charles Manson (1934-2017)21 – but others were. There are final decisions in Italy sentencing to heavy jail terms the leaders and members of the Beasts of Satan, a Satanist movement that evolved from a Death Metal band and committed at least four homicides between 1999 and 2004.22 Circles around a handful of Scandinavian Black Metal bands burned Christian churches and perpetrated several homicides, although whether they can be classified as “Satanist movements” is a matter for debate.23 And the jury is still out about what can well be the largest Satanist movement in the twentieth century, the Order of Nine Angles. Certainly some of its texts incite to violence and even homicide, although whether the texts were ever acted upon is unclear.24 Obviously, most of these groups fit the definition of CRM. When the fact that crimes were committed is ascertained by a court of law after a fair trial, it is certainly justified and commendable to punish the perpetrators, and even to ban movements whose criminal activity is systematic. There is, however, a possible misunderstanding. Satanist CRMs should be banned because they are CRMs, not because they are Satanist. New (and old) religious movements worship a great variety of gods and entities. Worshiping Satan or Lucifer should not be illegal per se. Some Christian critics object that, if one worships Satan, the Prince of Evil, it is at least very likely that in 20 Reader, Violence, 68. 21 Introvigne, Satanism, 338-346. 22 Ibid., 545-548. 23 Ibid., 580-585. 24 Ibid., 357-364.

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Fig. 1: Lucien Greaves, founder an leader of The Satanic Temple. Courtesy of The Satanic Temple, Salem, Massachusetts.

the end evil acts will be committed. But this is indeed a misunderstanding. Only very few Black Metal bands (and some bands of Death Metal, a different musical sub-genre) profess what they call “anti-cosmic” Satanism, i.e. they worship Satan as the god of evil, or, in the words of Norwegian musician Varg Vikernes, “worship death, evil, and all darkness.”25 One of the most “pure” examples of anti-cosmic Satanism was The Misanthropic Luciferian Order (MLO), as it existed at the time when the Swedish Death Metal band Dissection, founded by Jon Nödtveidt (1975-2006), served as its musical branch. Both Vikernes and Nödtveidt ended up in jail, the Norwegian for burning historical wooden churches in Norway and killing a fellow musician, and the Swede after he and MLO (presumed) founder, Amir Koshnood-Sharis (“Vlad”), killed a randomly selected gay man in 1997 in Göteborg. Later, Nödtveidt committed a not unexpected ritualistic suicide in 2006 – if you hate the entire universe, you should presumably hate yourself as well – and MLO was reorganised as the Temple of the Black Light, still celebrating darkness but distancing itself from the previous criminal activities and suicides.26 These incidents demonstrate that “anti-cosmic”

25 Patterson, Black Metal, 121-122. 26 Introvigne, Satanism, 508–512.

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Satanism may indeed generate criminal behaviour. But it is very rare, and often remains a merely aesthetic attitude. The overwhelming majority of Satanists worship Satan, but do not worship evil, because they do not regard Satan as evil. They believe that sacred history, as most of history, has been written by the winners, i.e. the partisans of the biblical God. The latter portrayed Satan as the villain, while in fact he was the hero, the liberator who tried to bring freedom and knowledge to humans suffering under the yoke of the biblical God, who kept them under submission and prevented humanity from fully enjoying rationality, life on this Earth, and pleasure (including sexuality).27 Since (most) Satanists do not worship evil, they are not more likely than members of other religious groups to commit evil or criminal acts. Statistics do support this conclusion. Ultimately, the whole question of “cults,” or xie jiao, or “extremist groups” (the label recently used in Russia in order to persecute and “liquidate” religious minorities such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Scientology), revolves around the distinction between belief and behaviour. Nobody should be persecuted, and no group should be banned for its beliefs, no matter how “strange” or “disgusting” they may appear to others, or to the majority. Criminal behaviour is not protected by religious liberty statutes and should be prosecuted, impartial to the perpetrator’s personal beliefs. Satanist belief is not a crime. Some Satanist groups (just as some Christian or Buddhist groups) commit crimes. These should be prosecuted because they are crimes, not because they are committed by Satanists.

27 See also Faxneld, Satanic Feminism.



Is occultism a product of capitalism? Andreas B. Kilcher

Historians of esotericism keep being asked to define “esotericism.” Not infrequently, this request is made against a negative background of scepticism about the topic itself and the very project of studying it. However, to expect a definition of “esotericism” is in fact problematic, and defending one even more so. To request a universal definition of “esotericism” that transcends its historical manifestations is asking too much: there is no such thing as an essence, a systematics, or a normative meaning of esotericism. It is only in the nineteenth century that the concept was established as a generic term for extra-canonical forms of religion and knowledge, from gnosis and magic to Theosophy and New Age. Essentially, there are only two ways of using the concept: a historical and a pragmatic one. A historical approach means investigating the formation and transformation of the term, its application and interpretation, from a perspective of Begriffsgeschichte (the history of concepts). A pragmatic approach means that, on such a basis, one can use the concept of esotericism in a scholarly way, provided that it is not understood – like the similar concept of “mysticism” – as an a priori or an essentialist one. It is simply a pragmatic, heuristic, historiographic tool. As such – and only as such – can it be useful and appropriate. Both apologetics for “esotericism” and their counterparts, polemics, are even more problematic from a scholarly perspective. As a matter of principle, scholarly practice approaches its topic from a critical, analytical, distanced, “objective” stance. Apologetics and polemics, by contrast, relate to it from a deliberately subjective and tendentious perspective. Scholarship cannot take such a normative approach but is concerned with non-ideological, unbiased observation, description, and analysis. Therefore, it is not a matter of defending esotericism or its “secret knowledge,” but only of studying it historically and without prejudice. Apologetics and polemics have no place in scholarly practice, yet they themselves may become the object of scholarly analysis. And in fact, the polemics against esotericism has a long history, from premodern theological and ecclesiastical perspectives that framed it as heretical artes prohibitae (prohibited arts) to its categorisation as “superstition” in the Enlightenment.1 In more recent periods too, and right up to the present, esotericism is seen 1

Cf. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, chapters 2-3.

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from various perspectives as a controversial, tricky, precarious topic, and even the very possibility of studying it is sometimes called into question. Given this situation, there is only one thing the historian of esotericism can do: he can analyse these polemical reservations themselves, highlight their premises and implications, and point out misunderstandings. In short, he can practise an anatomy of criticism.2 Among the most fundamental, demanding, and influential critiques of esotericism in more recent times are Theodor W. Adorno’s Thesen gegen den Okkultismus (“Theses against Occultism”). They were published in 1951 in his volume Minima Moralia, a collection of critical “Reflections from Damaged Life,” formulated against the background of the Holocaust. In sharply pointed wording over just a small number of pages, Adorno presents a fundamental and polemical critique of modern esotericism, that is to say, of the occultism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Both the critical acuity and intellectual shrewdness of these theses and the fact that they have kept being quoted make it impossible to ignore them. In the great majority of cases, however, they have been referenced without precise familiarity with Adorno’s argumentation, and most quotations limit themselves to just a few formulations, notably that of occultism as die Metaphysik der dummen Kerle (the metaphysics of dunces). Adorno’s Anti-Theses pose an excellent challenge to anyone who wants to assume the task of defining and defending esotericism in the face of polemical reductionism. In what follows, however, my concern is not to defend this shrewdly slandered topic of occultism but to provide a critical anatomy of Adorno’s Anti-Theses, an anatomy of his critique. It is about contextualising these brilliantly presented arguments and their assumptions in some detail, and analysing their implications and consequences. Adorno’s Theses against Occultism are part of the large project of Critical Theory: the analysis of bourgeois capitalist society. Its method, developed among others by Max Horkheimer since the 1920s, consisted in exposing the ideology as well as the economic and political conditions of power that are typical of capitalism. On the basis of Marxism and psychoanalysis, it presented a pathology of “late capitalist society” and its mechanisms of instrumental-rational management, as well as its consequences for the individual. Writing from their American exile during the 1940s, the thinkers of Critical Theory used such explanatory perspectives to explain Fascism in particular. With its ideology based on racism and antisemitism, Fascism was 2 The anatomical approach goes back to Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, which refers in turn to Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy.

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consistently interpreted as both an excess of late capitalism and a symptom of its decline: as the totalitarian triumph of instrumental rationality, the conversion of Enlightenment into Myth, the move from rationalism to irrationalism, and the “reversion of enlightened civilization to barbarism in reality.”3 The basic text is Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectics of Enlightenment, 1947), which had first appeared under the title Philosophische Fragmente (Philosophical Fragments) in a private printing of the Institut für Sozialforschung in Los Angeles in 1944. Adorno’s Minima Moralia were likewise written from the American exile, between 1944 and 1947, right after his work on the Dialectics of Enlightenment. They are a kind of continuation of the “philosophical fragments” in the form of aphorisms: a style that, for Adorno, stood in explicit opposition to the “totalitarian” form of the system. Das Ganze ist das Unwahre (“The Whole is the Untrue”):4 this programmatic thesis, both formal and substantial, was directed not just philosophically against Hegel, but against all kinds of totalitarianism. The fragmentary style of the Theses – 153 prose fragments all in all – was a formal equivalent to Adorno’s recognition that in the face of the “capitalist form of life” that had triumphed in the Holocaust, and of the alienation and objectification of human beings, it had become impossible to live in moral truth: Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im Falschen (“There is no right life in the false one”),5 thus Adorno’s famous formulation for the “damaged life.” The Theses against Occultism are part of this analysis of how an Enlightenment left to its own devices ends up destroying itself. In this context, Adorno understood modern occultism as an epiphenomenon of late capitalism. What was at stake was therefore not so much a paradigm of religion or science, but essentially an intellectual deformation in the political and economic context of capitalist society. The managerial world of late capitalism reveals its irrational face by no means only in occultism. Rather, the basic thesis of a reversal of Enlightenment into irrationalism is already a general red thread in the Dialectics of Enlightenment. It manifests itself especially in its close neighbour, antisemitism, with obviously precarious implications for occultism. Therefore, it is no coincidence that if occultism appears already in the Dialectics of Enlightenment, it is precisely in connection with the paranoid disposition of antisemitism. “Paranoia,” we read there, with reference to Sigmund Freud’s writings of cultural criticism, “is the symptom 3 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, 6 (Dialectics, xix). 4 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 29. 5 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 18.

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of the half-educated. For such people, all words become a system of delusion, an attempt … violently to give meaning to [the] world.”6 Next to antisemitism, this same paranoia is also believed to be typical of those ways of thinking that Horkheimer and Adorno, in their Dialectics of Enlightenment, refer to as “the obscurantist systems.” With this they mean precisely what Adorno, soon after in his Minima Moralia, discusses under the heading of “occultism.” Beginning with a notable analogy between these modern “systems” and the medieval “devil mythology,” in the Dialectics of Enlightenment we read the following: The obscurantist systems of today bring about what the devil myth of the official religion enabled people to do in the Middle Ages: to imbue the outside world with an arbitrary meaning, which the lone paranoic now constructs according to a private schema shared by no one, and which only for that reason appears actually mad. Relief is provided by the dire conventicles and panaceas which put on scientific airs while cutting off thought: theosophy, numerology, naturopathy, eurhythmy, teetotalism, Yoga, and countless other sects, competing and interchangeable, all with academies, hierarchies and specialist jargon, the fetishized officialese of science and religion.7

According to Adorno, occultist groups and “systems” violently impose meaning on the meaningless bourgeois capitalistic world. It is this “paranoid” imposition of meaning that makes it structurally analogous to antisemitism as the leading ideology of Fascism. Only this background makes it possible to understand Adorno’s close association of occultism with Fascism in his Minima Moralia. This conclusion is all the more fundamental in view of the fact that Adorno was by no means concerned with specifically far right nationalist and fascist esoteric groups such as Ariosophy, the Order of the New Temple, or the Thule Society.8 Instead, his ambition was to make a global statement about occultism as a phenomenon of late capitalist society as a whole. Like Fascism, everything that was covered by this label appeared to him as both the product and the culmination of capitalist objectification and delusion. To understand this argumentation more precisely, and to evaluate its basic assumptions and implications, we need to take a closer look at Adorno’s nine theses against occultism. 6 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, 205 (Dialectics, 161). 7 Ibid., 205-206 (162). 8 On these groups, see Goodrick-Clarke, Occult Roots.

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The first thesis diagnoses occultism as a regression of civilisation back into mythology. This thesis follows particularly clearly from the Dialectics of Enlightenment, of which the first chapter interprets the hypertrophic rationalism of late capitalism as a reversal of the Enlightenment back into mythical totality and dominion: “The more completely the machinery of thought subjugates existence, the more blindly it is satisfied with reproducing it. Enlightenment thereby regresses to the Mythology it has never been able to escape.”9 In contrast with the original, however, this is a new, economic-technocratic mythology that does not animate what is dead but, on the contrary, objectifies all that is living: “Animism had endowed things with souls; industrialism makes souls into things.”10 Adorno and Horkheimer are positive about the first mythology of antiquity, which they describe as an intimate connection with nature as opposed to the objectifying perspective of the Enlightenment. They refer to magic as an example: “Magic like science is concerned with ends, but it pursues them through mimesis, not through an increasing distance from the object.”11 The “Myth of the Twentieth Century and its irrationality,” however, as Adorno writes with reference to Alfred Rosenberg’s theological-political work of National-Socialist historiosophy, degenerates into “rational administration in the hands of the utterly enlightened as they steer society toward barbarism.”12 The first thesis took up this central argument of the Dialectics of Enlightenment. Occultism is the “decomposition” of monotheism “in a second mythology”: “Spirit is dissociated into spirits.”13 The next thesis specifies that this “second mythology” is “more untrue than the first.” It has not come from an original and direct experience of the world, like the mythology of the ancient world for which the cosmos was animated. The “second mythology” of occultism is a regressive, antimodernist affect directed against the Enlightenment, but with the means of a rationality that has been degraded into instrumental reason (Zweckrationalität). This anti-modernism of occultism is therefore inherently self-contradictory: as “rationally exploited reaction to rationalized society,” and as the denial of “the alienation of which it is itself proof and product.”14 Occultism in the era of late capitalism is Janus-faced. On the one hand, it is a reaction against the disappearance of meaning and 9 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, 33 (Dialectics, 20). 10 Ibid., 34 (21). The wordplay of the German original is untranslatable: “Der Animismus hatte die Sache beseelt, der Industrialismus versachlicht die Seelen.” 11 Ibid., 17 (7). 12 Ibid., 26 (15). 13 Adorno, Thesis I (for all translations, see Adorno, Stars Down to Earth). 14 Adorno, Thesis II.

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reification: “If, to the living, objective reality seems deaf as never before, they try to elicit meaning from it by saying abracadabra.”15 On the other hand, it amplifies the process of reification and alienation by objectifying the soul and the afterlife: “Division of labour and reification are taken to the extreme: body and soul severed in a kind of perennial vivisection.”16 In this manner, the soul becomes “a cheap imitation of that from which it had achieved a false emancipation,”17 and the “spirit” is “reified.” In Adorno’s diagnosis, the Enlightenment has, so to speak, fallen ill out of self-hate: by means of occultism, the Enlightenment turns against itself by scientifying and commercialising mythology. According to Adorno’s analysis, this scientification is an integral part of the rationalistic renewal of the irrational in occultism. The scientific claims and appearance of occultism, Adorno writes in his 8th thesis, go hand in hand with the objectification of the spirit. Science is, so to speak, both theatre and staging of a tendency that is ultimately directed against science itself. Through seemingly scientific procedures, as in spiritualist seances and occultist experiments, reason is dazzled rather than confirmed, and finally eliminated: Their procedure is to be strictly scientific: the greater the humbug, the more meticulously the experiment is prepared. The self importance of scientific checks is taken ad absurdum where there is nothing to check. The same rationalistic and empiricist apparatus that threw the spirits out is being used to reimpose them on those who no longer trust their own reason.18

From all this it becomes clear that Adorno understands occultism not so much as a religious phenomenon, but rather as pertaining to economy, technology, and politics. It turns out to be a genuine phenomenon of modern capitalist society, which is characterised primarily by the fact that it transforms the products of labour into commodities: everything can be bought and sold. Surprising as it may seem at first sight, this transformation of products into commodities goes together with the occultist re-mythologisation of the world. We are dealing with a quasi-occult process: the transformation of things into commodities means that they are formally turned into 15 Adorno, Thesis IV. 16 Adorno, Thesis VII. 17 Ibid. 18 Adorno, Thesis VIII.

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ghosts. This (admittedly metaphorical) transformation of commodities into the undead of a disenchanted world is the central economic event of the bourgeois-capitalist world: the production of commodities through the reification of labour. In this process, the primary, tangible utility value (Gebrauchswert) of things is transformed into an intangible exchange value (Tauschwert). In this process of abstraction, labour is finally turned into capital. It is precisely this ghostly life of commodities that Adorno refers to as its “fetishistic nature,” and which he perceives literally in occultism: “The occultist draws the ultimate conclusion from the fetish-character of commodities: menacingly objectified labor assails him on all sides from demonically grimacing objects.”19 With this, Adorno refers to the well-known fetish chapter in Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Here Marx, too, describes the commodity form that is based on the principle of exchange value as “ghostly.” “At first sight” Marx writes, “a commodity seems to be something self-evident and trivial. But its analysis shows that it is something very complicated, full of metaphysical subtleties and theological moods.”20 Cut loose from their use, as commodities, things in capitalist society are endowed with what seems like a magical life of their own, they turn into a modern fetish: “Here the products of the human mind seem like autonomous figures, endowed with a life of their own, mutually connected among themselves and with human beings … This I call the fetishism that attaches to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities.”21 Now Adorno applies Marx’s image of the commodity fetish to occultism: occultism is the assimilation of “magical thinking” to genuinely “late capitalist forms,” so we read in the third thesis.22 The economic interpretation of occultism finally leads to a political one. For, according to Adorno, the ghostly commodity-things of capitalist society radiate an elementary hypnotic horror that forms the foundation of totalitarianism: “The hypnotic power exerted by things occult resembles totalitarian terror.”23 The seemingly harmless little magical spell of the occultists, i.e. the “phenomena” of the spiritualists and occultists, stands in analogy to the great magical spell of capitalist management: “The horoscope corresponds to the official directives to the nations, and number-mysticism is preparation for administrative statistics and cartel prices.”24 19 Thesis II. 20 Marx, Kapital, vol. 4, 46. 21 Ibid., 48. 22 Adorno, Thesis III. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid.

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The fifth thesis further works out these political implications of occultism. Numerology, Adorno argues, is linked not just to cartels but to the totalitarian form of management itself. Here Adorno expands Critical Theory’s theory of fascism, according to which totalitarianism and antisemitism have their foundations in capitalism, by adding occultism to it. His point of departure is the element of delusion. The “lazy magic” exerted by commodity fetishism is systematised in occultism: The power of occultism, as of Fascism, to which it is connected by thought patterns of the ilk of anti-Semitism, is not only pathic. Rather, it lies in the fact that … consciousness famished for truth imagines it is grasping a dimly present knowledge diligently denied to it by official progress in all its forms. It is the knowledge that society, by virtually excluding the possibility of spontaneous change, is gravitating towards total catastrophe.25

The subject that is hypnotically bamboozled in this manner is therefore the opposite of the enlightened, critically thinking individual. Occultism is a “symptom of the regression in consciousness.”26 Hence, the subject of occultism is simply “stupid” and “mentally handicapped” (schwachsinnig) as formulated in the sixth thesis: “Occultism is the metaphysic of dunces” (literally der dummen Kerle: “the stupid guys”). With an allusion to Karl Friedrich Zöllner and his theory of the fourth dimension,27 Adorno concludes: This lazy magic is nothing other than the lazy existence it lights up. … Facts which differ from what is the case only by not being facts are trumped up as a fourth dimension. Their nonbeing alone is their qualitas occulta. They provide simpletons with a worldview.28

As the above anatomy shows, rather than being a critique of occultism as such, Adorno’s prominent Theses against Occultism are a discussion of the “late capitalism” that he believes to be at the root of Fascism. First and foremost, his polemical statements against occultism are concerned with the fatal connection between capitalism and totalitarianism. Therefore, the fact that Adorno placed occultism precisely in this context has consequences primarily for our understanding of capitalism and Fascism, and 25 26 27 28

Adorno, Thesis V. Adorno, Thesis I. See Zöllner, Vierte Dimension und Okkultismus. Adorno, Thesis VI (translation slightly adapted).

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only secondarily for that of occultism. As regards the former, what is really under discussion here is an elementary and threatening irrationalism, all the more dangerous because it results from a perversion of reason itself and therefore possesses an instrumental and amoral rationality all of its own. The critic Adorno exposes this “lazy magic” of capitalism by showing that its manner of functioning is analogous to that of occultism and is entangled with it. As for occultism, this means that its claim to being some genuine form of religion or knowledge is merely delusionary. In actual fact, it belongs to the sinister ideology of capitalism, of which it is shown to be an epiphenomenon. This hidden connection of capitalism, too, the critic Adorno seeks to expose. Adorno’s double exposure – of capitalism as grounded in irrationalism, on the one hand, and of occultism as an epiphenomenon of capitalism, on the other – is the example par excellence of an interpretation of esotericism that is strongly “situated” both historically and theoretically. While it does not teach historians of esotericism anything about their object of research, it is relevant for the history of its discursive interpretation – or more precisely, for the history of anti-esoteric polemics. Within that history, Adorno’s interpretation is unique because it manages largely without theological arguments and shifts the perspective to social, economic, and political aspects instead. Regarding the idea of a close association between esotericism and Fascism that became widespread after 1945, his theses became the decisive reference. However, they were subsequently reduced primarily to this association alone, while the dimension of capitalism that was actually central for Adorno hardly played any role anymore. This is of decisive importance, for today the ideological nature of his thesis about a capitalist foundation of occultism is too blatant to still be convincing. By contrast, the close connection he establishes between esotericism and fascism via irrationality still seems to have some degree of plausibility and therefore is repeatedly referred to; and on this basis one might join Adorno’s insistence on Enlightenment and critique. Yet, as the present analysis makes clear, this is also part of a polemical discourse and cannot bring us any further when it comes to the historiographical study of the historical manifestations of “esotericism” and its various claims to knowledge. Translated from the German by Wouter J. Hanegraaff



Can superhero comics really transmit esoteric knowledge? Jeffrey J. Kripal

I may be well placed to answer that question, for my home study resembles a UFO crash site. Take a look (colour plate 11). My desk purports to be an old aluminium airplane wing (it’s not). I sit in an “aviator chair” to read. A “propeller” above me functions as a chrome ceiling fan (it actually is a ceiling fan). Basically, I sit and think in what looks like a dismembered plane from the WW II and early Cold War era – the actual origin of the UFO phenomenon and all of its subsequent American extraterrestrial invasion (read: Cold War) mythologies. Superheroes, particularly a life-size mercurial statue of the Silver Surfer, that pop-cosmic transformation of Hermes (on a silly Californian surfboard), and traditional religious iconography populate the room further, significantly confusing any attempt to place it (or me) in a particular mythological register, either “classical” or “contemporary,” either “East” or “West,” either “high” or “low.” That is all intentional in this particular physical space that is also a kind of extended mind – my own. The same is true of my off ice at the university.1 Undergraduate and graduate students, faculty colleagues, administrators, and visitors have all walked into this space and expressed something between delight, awe, and query. It is a scene of beautiful excess. A few thousand books line the walls and stack totteringly high on the floor, each a different colour, each encoding a lifetime of human experience and thought in some form. The question always comes fairly quickly from the visitor, and it is always the same question: “Have you really read all of these books?” My answer is always the same: “A library is a sign of desire, not of accomplishment.” I am smiling as I say it. My visitors giggle in return. Or in relief. I think they are happy to hear that I have not read all of those books. Amidst all of those books that I hope to read dwell any number of superheroes and teasing pop-cultural images. A bust of Spider-Man, with those hypnotising alien eyes, gazes down from above me, to stare into the eyes of whoever has just sat down. Just to the visitor’s right, the X-Men villain (or hero) Magneto – himself modelled on the history of animal magnetism, 1 For cinematic portrayals of both the home study and university office, see the films of Brad Abraham and Scott Jones in the bibliography.

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Mesmerism, and the electromagnetic effects of paranormal events –seems to rise up out of the desk in a manner that clearly recalls, for the historian of religions anyway, any number of medieval or early modern paintings of the resurrected Christ. To the visitor’s left, on the other side of the desk, a flying saucer has “crashed” amidst a small collection of recently published books (which I am trying to tempt my graduate students to read). The little aliens are distraught. One sits on the edge of the statue, wondering what the heck they are going to do now (I don’t know how to help them, so I don’t). Carefully placed at eye-level on one of the bookshelves, a bumpersticker invokes the classic near-death experience phenomenology, with a reflexive twist: “The light at the end of the tunnel may be you.” I happen to believe that. At the back of the office, a large poster, which I bought in the saucer-soaked American Southwest, mimics and mocks the famous poster from “The X-Files,” the paranormal-paranoid television series of the 1990s. The original poster, featuring the fuzzy outline of a classic flying saucer hovering over an equally vague landscape, reads “I want to believe” (the phrase, as Diana Walsh Pasulka has observed, already encodes the classic double epistemology of belief and doubt of the modern paranormal).2 My own poster reads: “I want to leave.” Well, I certainly don’t want to believe. Or maybe I do. But I don’t. And yet I know that these crazy things happen. And that paradoxical epistemology that Pasulka has astutely pointed out, that “maybe I do but don’t but might” is the central point that I want to make here about comics and graphic novels and why these particular genres, in at least a few very special artists and authors and their ready readers, have become one of the privileged mediums of expressing esoteric experiences, ideas, and practices in the contemporary scene. By “comics” (a truly awful if not actually stupid expression), I mean mostly superhero stories, but also all of the pulp fiction, science fiction, and parapsychology behind and around them and, now, their billion-dollar cinematic visionary displays that migrate so effortlessly around the world. Really, comic books as esoteric literature? It is not as crazy as it sounds. Actually, it makes more than a little sense, and for a number of reasons. First, the historical fact is that what we have come to call “comic books” emerged out of the shadowy and mixed underworlds of 1940s American pulp fiction, early science fiction, newspaper “funnies,” physical culture, body-building, and circus performance, soft-porn, and children’s literature. As such a dubious and inappropriate mix makes more than clear, they have 2 Pasulka, American Cosmic, 99.

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always been a form of “rejected knowledge,” or better, a “rejected genre.”3 It is hard to imagine now before the superhero film industry and its many famous actors and actresses, but the superhero comics of the 1960s and 1970s, when I read them as a kid with such relish, were anything but established and respected. Quite the contrary, they were “trash literature,” sold mostly in drugstores on cheap rotating wire racks, not so far from the pornographic magazines, which were generally kept under the counter and handed over in brown paper bags (or so I am told). And that was well after the 1950s, when they were morally condemned, politically threatened, heavily self-censored, and sometimes even literally burned. Second, it is not just the case that the genre itself was once rejected or barely respectable. It is that the stories themselves, to this day, are often all about rejected forms of human being. The “mutant” story-line of the X-Men mythology is perhaps the iconic example of this central motif, but there are in fact numerous such story-lines involving figures that are social outcastes, literal aliens (Superman), racial others (Black Panther), or anomalous in some other way. Such mutant patterns, moreover, only became more and more sophisticated as the decades ticked by and as the social concerns morphed into gendered, economic, political, religious, and sexual otherness.4 The “comics” have long been queer. Third, there is something about the form or structure of the comic book itself that seems especially effective at transmitting alternative, anomalous, or esoteric forms of possibility to its readers and viewers. As many commentators have observed, the genre is really a double hit of text and art, word and image. There is a mysterious “something” here that engages “both sides” of the brain, to employ an over-used, too simple, but nevertheless very helpful metaphor. Whatever it is, then, that these illustrated mythical texts are communicating is not, and has never been, entirely rational, linguistic, or even, I dare say, conscious. We might speak of a possible transmission here. I would, anyway. Fourth, there is the manner in which the superhero is often modelled explicitly or implicitly on the gods of world mythology and folklore, the saints and miracles of Christian hagiography, various esoteric, occult, or magickal motifs, or the categories of modern parapsychology.5 The Greek figure of Herakles or Hercules, and the Greek gods in general, appear to be 3 Western esotericism as “rejected knowledge,” of course, has been advanced most fully by Wouter Hanegraaff, in Esotericism and the Academy. 4 Fawaz, New Mutants. 5 Knowles, Our Gods Wear Spandex.

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especially influential, but Jewish, Christian, and now New Age influences are also literally everywhere. So are figures like Aleister Crowley and the UFOs. For example, the central figure of Superman has been insightfully read as both a mythology of the Jewish immigrant or “alien” in America trying, and succeeding, to embody the “American way” (all that red, white, and blue) and as a Christ figure that must leave his home planet and “descend” into this world as an incarnate suffering saviour. The Nietzschean transmission is just as important and obvious, at least in the most recent revisionings of the Man of Tomorrow by authors like Grant Morrison. All three readings are fair and accurate ones. In a different vein, the manner in which a series like the X-Men has picked up, adopted, and exaggerated categories, words, and ideas from the British psychical research tradition (hence Prof. Xavier is a “super-telepath”), the American parapsychological tradition (particularly J.B. Rhine’s celebrated laboratory at Duke University), and the American secret spying or “remote viewing” subculture is especially interesting, and especially obvious.6 In yet another vein, the New Age and magical trajectories are often explicit, even as the writers often engage the rationalist critique around the same. As an excellent example, consider the scene “Open Your Eye” in the blockbuster film “Doctor Strange” (2016). The movie is based on a 1960s Marvel character whose aesthetic presentation in the original countercultural series was deeply informed by the psychedelic art and rock-posters of the time. The recent cinematic scene begins with the central protagonist, an arrogant surgeon named Stephen Strange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), who finds himself in a generic (probably Nepalese) Buddhist monastery, where he picks up a book to find a typical painting of the subtle body system of Buddhist and Hindu yoga. Strange (his name will come back to haunt him) begins mocking this pseudoscientific nonsense as the stuff of the “New Age gift-shop.” He is a surgeon, after all, and he knows that there are no such “chakras” in the body. Stupid. Enter the Ancient One, a Celtic female mystic played by Tilda Swinton (it was an ethnically Tibetan male mystic in the original comic). She responds to Strange’s modernist rationalism by simply striking him in the chest and thereby pushing his “astral body” out of his physical body to send him travelling through a mind-bending journey into the “astral plane.” The Theosophical expression is used but also now refigured in the film into a more contemporary hyperdimensional “multiverse.” When Strange returns, now metaphysically traumatised and enlightened, the Ancient One asks 6 Kripal, Mutants and Mystics, ch. 4.

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him mockingly: “Have you seen that before in the gift-shop?” The medical materialism and postmodern irony of the surgeon are no more. His response to the Ancient One is as emphatic as it is sincere: “Teach me!” The fictional scene is not fictional. A very similar scenario, it turns out, has played out innumerable times in the actual lives and visions of the authors and artists who have created these “fictions.” And here, in their “true fictions” or “myths,” we come to what I take to be the central reason that this particular genre has become such a rich site of the esoteric: many of the most accomplished authors and artists who created these art-forms have themselves known dramatic and life-changing altered states of consciousness, which they then attempt to encode, camouflage, or openly express in their art. Hence the potential transmission. Hence the occasional initiatory reading experience. I am thinking of authors like the prolific comic book writer Doug Moench, who has incorporated various paranormal, Fortean, and esoteric ideas directly into his story-lines and has himself experienced paranormal effects while writing.7 To take just one example, both the computer scientist Jacques Vallée (himself deeply immersed in esoteric literature, particularly within the Rosicrucian lineage) and Jung’s collective unconscious appear side by side on a single page in Moench’s “Ego-Spawn” story for Fantastic Four #228 (March 1981). By incorporating such ideas, Moench was, astonishingly, teaching adolescents something of the subtleties of both Jung’s depth psychology and Vallée’s pioneering readings of the UFO as a kind of conscious plasma. There is also the Scottish rock-star turned comic book writer Grant Morrison, who, in his autobiography Supergods, has written beautifully of the mystical origins of his creative gifts, including a series of extraordinary events in Nepal that involved hyperdimensional “presences” of “meta-material “ or “flowing liquid chrome.” The same scene could have easily been placed in the “Doctor Strange” scene recounted above, and, of course, would have been seen as purely “fictional.”8 Particularly iconic within the comic book world is the British writer Alan Moore (b. 1953), a self-described ceremonial magician who, among other similar feats, has encoded his own kabbalistic and mystic-erotic convictions in books like Promethea and recently published a large novel inspired partly by William Blake’s Jerusalem. If I may offer a side-note, William Blake’s illuminated poems are some of the strongest historical precedents of the modern esoteric comic book. 7 “Fortean” is an adjective used to describe any strange or inexplicable phenomena associated, actually or in the imagination, with the American writer Charles Fort (1874-1932), who popularised and theorised what we now call the paranormal. 8 Morrison, Supergods, 279-281.

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His exaggerated human figures even look like cinematic superheroes, and many of his ideas about the Divine Imagination would fit seamlessly into the secret convictions of the authors and artists. One can also find the same patterns in the artists, particularly the most celebrated ones. I am thinking of legendary comic book artists like Jack Kirby, who created much of the Marvel Universe with Stan Lee and who was obsessed with paranormal, esoteric, and ufological ideas and expressed these in comic book series like The Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, and Miracle Man. I am also thinking of Barry Windsor-Smith, who has written a two-volume masterwork about his own metaphysical awakening, multipleyear precognitions, and cosmic visions of immense time-loops, all of which (again) are every bit as fantastic as Stephen Strange’s “fictional” trip through the hyperdimensional astral plane.9 I think it is significant that each of these authors and artists links his creativity to his anomalous experiences, if often in complicated ways. I think it is equally significant that each has chosen to express the revelatory experience through a kind of gnostic art, and not through rational argument or traditional religious belief. This, I would suggest, is another reason these art-forms have become a privileged site of the esoteric: because esoterically inclined readers and practitioners know perfectly well that these are fictional characters and fictional narratives, and yet they also know that particular authors and artists are using them to express, encode, and celebrate actual forms of their own personal gnosis. By “gnosis,” I mean a form of knowing the cosmos and our place (or non-place) in it that is not purely cognitive, scientific, or rational (but may well have features of all three epistemological structures), and that does not require belief in some past system or cosmology as necessary or even advisable. In these particular authors and artists, then, what we have is a kind of gnostic art or supermodern mythmaking, which knows that it is art and myth but that also knows that it knows. Such a paradoxical form of art might want to believe in this or that god, in this ancient alien or that conspiracy theory, but it really does not, not at least in any literal or settled way. And yet it knows and expresses its own knowing in mythical or narrative ways, that is, through gods, aliens, and conspiracy theories. It is finally this kind of looping reflexivity and playful experimentation that render the modern superhero comic an especially effective means of transmission and transformation of esoteric ideas and teachings. Or so I want to suggest here.

9 Kripal, Mutants and Mystics.

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In his recent work on the dysfunctions and exaggerations of the present academic obsession with “absence” and the near total erasure of “real presence,” Robert Orsi writes, among many other things, of comic books and Catholic children. At one point, he notes why the Catholic censors were so concerned about the omnipresence of the comic book in the American Catholic home in the 1950s and why some American parochial schools even sponsored bonfires to burn comics by the boxes. Such book-burnings, Orsi suggests, were staged not because the comic books were so foreign or so impossible, but because they were so similar to the devotional and miraculous worlds that Catholicism had been teaching, sculpting, painting, celebrating, and memorialising for centuries. Educated in the lives of the saints, their endless miracle stories, and the wildly popular Marian apparitions of the modern world (which often appeared to small children), Catholic children possessed what Orsi calls “a kind of internal comic book of the supernatural in which they were characters, too.”10 I think this is exactly right. I think Orsi’s potent little phrase also gets to the very heart of the double question at hand: why the comic book has become a privileged site of esoteric experience, expression, and practice, and why it has always been rejected as such. I would only add or emphasise that such comparisons do not just reveal how similar the fantastic worlds of the lowly comic book and traditional religion actually are. Such comparisons can also suggest the “fictional” nature of all traditional religions, at least religious worlds interpreted literally. This is where esoteric modes of interpretation and reading come in, of course. We are back to the beginning.

10 Orsi, History and Presence, 155.



Are kabbalistic meditations all about ecstasy? John MacMurphy

In order for us to understand this question better, we must first ascertain the different streams within Kabbalah itself. While tradition contends that Kabbalah was first transmitted to Moses on Mount Sinai,1 Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), the father of the modern academic study of Jewish mysticism, based on historical evidence, describes Kabbalah as a phenomenon that emerges around the twelfth-thirteenth centuries in Europe as it was only until this late period that we see the doctrine of the sefirot take shape and people start referring to themselves as “kabbalists,” i.e. those who have “received” esoteric teachings.2 Scholem identif ied three streams within Kabbalah. The f irst is the theosophical school sometimes referred to as Kabbalah iyunit or speculative Kabbalah where practitioners emphasise the study of text and theurgical operations. The second current is the meditative group sometimes credited as ecstatic or prophetic Kabbalah. This trend is championed by Abraham Abulafia (1239-ca.1291), the founder of ecstatic Kabbalah, who emphasised the use of shemot or divine names in his intense mind-altering meditations. The third category is the school of kabbalistic magic, also known as Kabbalah ma’asit or practical Kabbalah, where practitioners utilised objects, texts and incantations in order to produce magical effects. While these three classifications are by no means mutually exclusive, they serve as a useful frame of reference for scholars and researchers.3 With regard to Jewish meditations,4 it would be tempting to simply revert to Abulafia – being a representative of the meditative school – and label 1 While earlier figures such as Adam, Enoch and Abraham were also recipients of revelatory lore, in the Babylonian Talmud, one of the most celebrated works in Jewish literature, it is stated that “Moses received the Torah from Sinai,” see Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), 1:1. The term “received” (kibel) is from the same root as “Kabbalah” – hence the idea that the transmission of esoteric knowledge occurred in addition to the exoteric Torah. 2 For Scholem’s seminal work that charts all of the main currents in Jewish mysticism including Kabbalah, see Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. For his main work on Kabbalah, see idem, Kabbalah. 3 MacMurphy, “Between Ecstatic Theosophy, Magic and Alchemy.” 4 For an excellent academic breakdown of Jewish meditations see Persico, Jewish Meditative Tradition. In addition, Arye Kaplan, popular writer and kabbalist, has written three books

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all such activities as having an ecstatic dimension. After all, Abulafia’s techniques include not only yoga-like praxis such as postures, breath control, and body movements, but also written, pronounced and visualised letter permutation exercises which, if successful, are designed to induce ecstasy.5 Nevertheless, Abulafia and his followers did not have a monopoly on the practice of meditation. This is quite self-evident since, throughout the ages, meditative operations such as the daily Jewish prayers were practised by Jewish rabbis and kabbalists alike. In addition, Abulaf ia’s works were banned by the Jewish authority and thus their influence was quite limited.6 Most important for our present concerns, in the sixteenth century we see the emergence of one of the most influential kabbalistic schools known as Lurianic Kabbalah, founded by Isaac Luria (1534-1572) who ascended to the small city of Safed in northern Israel around the year 1570. During his short two-year tenure, he managed to revolutionise kabbalistic thought and practice. While Luria did not write much himself, most of his teachings were preserved by his students – in particular, Chayim Vital (1542-1620), one of Luria’s most prominent disciples.7 In the Lurianic oeuvre, there are two primary classes of meditation that Vital recounts. The first are the kavanot, or intentions, where the practitioner infuses specific activities such as prayer with contemplation of the divine realm.8 The adept must be intimately familiar with the anatomy and physiology of the divine structure in order to effectuate the desired outcome. The principle behind this practice is that each operation “below” has a metaphysical impact “above.” By meditating on this effect, the practitioner amplifies the power of the action. In addition, the kavanot can also be used to spiritualise normal everyday actions. For example, in Shaar ha-Kavanot

about meditation. Although readers are advised caution (Kaplan’s works contain ahistorical assumptions and some misleading stipulations), I feel that his abilities to elucidate complicated concepts into simple accessible language allow his audience to gain an excellent foundation. See Kaplan, Jewish Meditation; idem, Meditation and Kabbalah; idem, Meditation and the Bible. 5 Moshe Idel, one of the foremost contemporary authorities in the academic study of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah, has published three main works about Abulafia based on his PhD dissertation, see Idel, Mystical Experience; idem, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah; idem, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics. 6 In my RMA thesis I pose the argument that this ban was a product of mistaken identity, see MacMurphy, “Abraham Abulafia and the Academy.” 7 For an excellent overview of the Lurianic School, see Fine, Physician of the Soul. 8 For an introduction to the topic of kavanot, see Kallus, “Theurgy of Prayer”; Safrai, “Daily Prayer Intentions.”

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(The Gate of Intentions),9 one of the primary volumes in the Lurianic corpus, we get a description of how the kabbalists should set their intention as they put on articles of clothing, including footwear. As the explanation goes, while the right pillar of the Tree of Life configuration is the paternal side, representing wisdom and divine grace, the left side of the structure depicts the maternal aspect with its nurturing, protective attributes. Since clothing, by design, protects the body, the adepts conjure up their intention and focus on the safeguarding qualities of the supernal mother, the partzuf,10 or divine face, at the top of the left pillar of the sefirot system which also surrounds and protects the lower spiritual framework of the tree.11 As we can see, with the kavanot, even the most mundane procedures can become spiritual exercises. The second type of operations are known as the yichudim (unifications) meditations.12 Despite their prominence, not much has been written about them in the academy.13 These practices can be quite complex, encompassing different semantic, non-semantic and even Pythagorean computations – all integrated within the contemplation of the meditator. In their most basic form, the unification meditations can consist of taking two divine names and dovetailing their letters together – thus unifying the two names as one. For example, one of the most common unifications is created by alternating the letters of the Tetragrammaton (yhvh – ‫ )יהוה‬and the name Adonai (adny – ‫ )אדני‬which produces yahdvnhy (‫)יאהדונהי‬. It should be mentioned that this basic letter configuration was prevalent even before Luria. Apart from Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Splendour), one of the most influential kabbalistic corpuses and Luria’s main inspiration for his system, we see a fascinating use of it in the writings of Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570), the father of Cordoverian Kabbalah and the kabbalistic authority in Safed prior to Luria. In Tefilah le-Moshe (Prayer of Moses), Cordovero elaborates on the meditative sexual practices of the kabbalists. In this application, the male practitioner embodies the divine masculine represented by the 9 The Kavanot meditations can be found throughout the Lurianic corpus – especially Shaar ha-Kavanot (Gate of Intentions). An earlier rendition of this work, edited by Efraim Panchiri, one of Vital’s students in Damascus, was also published under the title: Sefer Ha-Kavanot Ha-Yashan (The Old Book of Intentions). 10 In the Lurianic doctrine, the partzuf, or its plural, partzufim, are the new sefirot configuration after the famous breaking of the vessels (shvirat ha-kelim) incident. 11 Vital, Shaar ha-Kavanot (Gate of Intentions), 12-16. 12 Most of these meditations are located in two main works: Shaar Ruach ha-Kodesh (Gate of the Holy Spirit) and Shaar ha-Yichudim (Gate of Unifications). 13 For an introduction to the subject of Yichudim, see Fine, “Contemplative Practice of Yichudim”; idem, “Techniques of Mystical Meditation.”

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Tetragrammaton while his female counterpart identifies with the feminine metaphysical principle known as the Shekhinah (divine dwelling) which is represented by the name Adonai. Thus, during the love-making ritual the practitioners are transfigured and through the dovetailed combination of the divine names, the actions “below” produce a unification between the metaphysical masculine and feminine principles in the divine realm “above.”14 However, Luria took the yichudim to a whole other level. His meditations entail not merely combining names, but the contemplations also include mathematical computations. Jewish numerical exegesis known as gematria contends that each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a number value which means that words and sentences have a non-semantic mathematical representation. While the kabbalists used gematria to find hidden connections between words and phrases, Luria’s methods involved breaking down divine names into different spellings and, in some cases, in the variant orthography, the letters themselves are spelled out as words. For example, the letter yod (‫ )י‬which has the value of ten can be spelled as yod, vav, dalet (‫ – )יוד‬which, in turn, would give us the sum of twenty. This technique allowed each letter to have endless numerical representations. The value of the holy names would be tallied up during the meditation and then be equated, or “unified,” with the contemplated phrase or word. Usually the contemplation would involve a prayer or a biblical phrase. However, focus was also placed on isolated words. For example, a person who is fasting can focus his attention on the word ta’anit (fasting) which, through some intricate calculations is equated with a derivative spelling of the name Elohim.15 As we can see, this process allows for the realisation of a specific divine essence within the contemplated word. The flexibility of these meditations allowed them to be used in a wide array of applications. While they were naturally appropriated to be used in the daily general Jewish worship, they were also utilised in specif ic kabbalistic practices such as the prostrations on the graves of Jewish saints where the unification feature of the meditation helped facilitate the communion between the practitioner and the deceased sage.16 As we can see, with respect to specific objectives, we could say that while some yichudim, as they were introduced in the Lurianic system, were used for the purpose 14 Cordovero, Tefilah le-Moshe (Prayer of Moses), 212a-215a. For a partial English translation, see Mopsik, Sex of the Soul, 140-144. 15 Vital, Shaar Ruach ha-Kodesh (Gate of the Holy Spirit), 69-75. 16 For more information about this practice, see Lichtenstein, “Prostration at the Graves of the Righteous.”

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of inducing ecstatic states, other aims such as purification of the soul and its repair were also popular. In addition, in Sefer ha-Peulot (The Book of Actions),17 one of Vital’s most enigmatic works where he preserved his medicinal, magical and alchemical recipes, Vital recounts formulas for magical operations utilising both kavanot and yichudim.18 This exemplifies the fact that while these two types of meditations are unique, there are by no means mutually exclusive. Moving beyond the sixteenth century and into modernity, we see the continuous impact of the Lurianic school as every kabbalistic trend that came after it was influenced either in whole or in part by its doctrines and practices. One of the most important figures to promote the Lurianic meditations was Rabbi Shalom Sharabi (1720-1777), also known by the acronym of his name – the Rashash. Sharabi was the head of the famous Beit El Yeshiva in Jerusalem. His famous prayer book, still prominently used today, known as Siddur ha-Rashash (The Prayer Book of the Rashash), is laden with the Lurianic kavanot and yichudim as they relate to daily Jewish and kabbalistic praxis.19 However, we also see instances of these types of meditations in a less conventional setting as in the case of Nachman of Breslev (1772-1810),20 the great-grandson of the founder of the Chasidim movement Israel Ben Eliezer (1698-1760), also known as the Baal Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name), or the acronym of his name – Besht.21 Nachman’s method is known for supporting a simple pious attitude over complicated meditative procedures. However, apart from his famous hitbodedut (isolation)22 meditation where the practitioner has a one-on-one conversation with God, we do actually see him using some yichudim formulas in his enigmatic Pidyon Nephesh ritual.23 This practice, which exists in many forms amongst the kabbalists, 17 This work, which is known by many titles, has been recently published under two separate formats, see Sefer ha-Peulot (The Book of Actions) and Ta’alumot Chochmah (Mysteries of Wisdom). For secondary sources about this work, see Bos, “Hayim Vital’s ‘Practical Kabbalah and Alchemy’”; Buchman, “Rabbi Hayyim Vital’s Notebook”; Buchman and Amar, Practical Medicine of Rabbi Hayyim Vital. 18 For an excellent example of how multiple methods were utilised in a single operation, see Vital, Sefer ha-Peulot (The Book of Actions), 75-76, 148; Vital, Ta’alumot Chochmah (Mysteries of Wisdom), 27a, 52b. 19 On Shalom Sharabi and his influence, see Giller, Shalom Shar’abi and the Kabbalists of Beit El. 20 On Nachman of Breslev, see Mark, Mysticism and Madness. 21 On the Chasidim movement and its practices, see Idel, Hasidim; Kallus, Pillar of Prayer; Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism; Jacobs, Hasidic Prayer. 22 For more information on the concept of hitbodedut, see Idel, “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Jewish Philosophy”; idem, “Hitbodedut as Concentration in Ecstatic Kabbalah.” 23 Nachman of Breslev, Likutey Moharan (Collected Teachings of Our Teacher, Rabbi Nachman), I:180, II:3.

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translates as “the redemption of the soul” and is designed to cleanse the spirit and repair the damage caused to it by one’s transgressions. We see another unconventional use of the yichudim in the works of Yehudah Moshe Fatiyah (1859-1942).24 In Ruchot Mesaprot (Narrating Spirits), Fatiyah recounts his own case studies of his encounters with spirit possession and disembodied souls. By using the yichudim methods and other techniques, Fatiyah not only exorcises entities from the individuals but also helps to heal said spectres – elevating them spiritually in the afterlife. In addition to helping countless entities, including none-other than the infamous Shabtai Tzvi (1626-1676), the self-proclaimed mystical messiah,25 Fatiyah also interviews these spirits, who provide a fascinating glimpse into the realm of the afterlife and the soul’s journey after death.26 Lurianic praxis is still quite prominent today. However, it should be mentioned that there are a myriad of other meditative practices available. For examples, apart from the aforementioned Breslev’s hitbodedut practice, we also have the hitbonenut (observing) method made popular by Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812), the leader of the Chabad movement, a technique whereby through self-observation one can eradicate the ego.27 Another example is the hashkata (quietening) meditation by Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (1889-1943), also known as the Admor of Piaseczno28 – the famed Polish Chasidic Rabbi who practised kabbalah in the Warsaw ghetto during the holocaust – where the adepts observe their thoughts until they reach a state of silence, at which point a biblical verse or a phrase is recited, designed to induce the state of prophecy. Shapira’s methods show similarity to eastern practices and have even been compared to the system of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1872-1949), one of the most prominent figures in the field of Western Esotericism.29 Much like the Lurianic practices, these methods include ecstasy, in whole or in part, as their objective. However, we also have newer forms of 24 Fatiyah’s (‫ )פתייא‬name has many permutations such as Fetayah or Ptayah. 25 On Shabtai Tzvi, see Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi. 26 Fatiyah, Ruchot Mesaprot (Narrating Spirits). 27 For Chabad’s theory and practice, see Elior, Paradoxical Ascent to God. 28 The title of “Admor” refers to a chief or grand rabbi in the Chasidic community. It is an acronym which literally translates as “our master, teacher, and rabbi.” For more information on Shapira and his techniques, see Polen, Holy Fire; Leshem, “Between Messianism and Prophecy”; Reiser, “Historicism and/or Phenomenology”; idem, Imagery Techniques; idem, “Fly Like Angels”; idem, “‘To Rend the Entire Veil’.” On the concept of hitbodedut as it relates to Shapira, see Leshem, “Pouring Out Your Heart.” 29 On the connection between Shapira and Gurdjieff, see Ofir, “Quietening (Hashkata) and Inspiration.” On Gurdjieff, see Webb, Harmonious Circle.

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meditation where an ecstatic state is not a primary aim. For example, the Kabbalah Centre’s “scanning” practice, where the adepts scan with their eyes the Aramaic text of the Zohar. The idea behind this application is that the person exposes themselves to the hidden resonance of the Hebrew letters – regardless of whether the person understands their semantic meaning. The effect is designed to arouse the divine spark within.30 There are also the practices of Merkaz Nofach,31 a kabbalistic learning centre in Israel where practitioners utilise magical meditative techniques of divine and angelic names with sigils from the famous Renaissance grimoire Clavicula Salomonis,32 also known as Mafteach Shlomo (The Key of Solomon). The main practice involves placing one’s hands on the sigil itself while conjuring in the mind’s eye the divine and angelic names associated with said image. The desired effects which include conditions such as wealth, health and protection, vary depending on the symbol being utilised.33 Returning to the original question posed at the beginning of this essay, we see that the simple answer to this inquiry is: no, ecstasy is not the exclusive goal of kabbalistic meditations. In fact, we see that their practices come in a wide variety of different flavors. Thus, whether the practitioners wish to simply amplify the effects of day-to-day Jewish practice, purify their soul or indeed pursue the highly sought-after ecstatic or prophetic states, there is certainly no shortage of methods at their disposal.

30 For the Kabbalah centre’s weekly scanning schedule which correlates distinct Zohar sections with specific zodiacal signs, months and weeks, see The Kabbalah Centre, “Kabbalah Centre: Zohar Scanning Chart.” 31 Merkaz Nofach was founded by Moshe Elroi Alon and is based out of Ashdod, Israel. In addition to traditional Kabbalah, the center also provides teachings on Jewish Reiki, Theta Healing and other new age practices. 32 Mathers, Greater Key of Solomon. 33 The sigils that are utilised by Merkaz Nofach are modified slightly from the original symbols presented in Clavicula Salomonis – all non-Hebraic content (such as Latin lettering) has been redacted, see Alon, Chotam Shlomo ha-Melech (The Seal of King Solomon).



Isn’t India the home of spiritual wisdom? Mriganka Mukhopadhyay

To answer that question, let me begin with a quotation. It comes from an American stage magician, Claude Alexander, and was published in 1924: The Orient has always been looked upon as the Great Fount of Inner Knowledge; and as the original Home of the Mysteries … In the Orient of today, however, the Ancient Wisdom is still treasured, and the Secret Doctrines are still taught – but by the few, and to the few. In certain carefully guarded circles, among the sages and seers of the Orient, one who knows how to give “the right knock” will be admitted to fellowship, and will be given the teaching to which he is entitled by reason of his attainment along certain lines.1

Writing his tract on Hindu magic at the height of his popularity in 1924, Alexander identified India as the land of ancient occult knowledge. He felt that the Vedas were the original sources of esoteric teachings. He argued that by practising oriental magic one could master clairvoyance and telepathic power. In making such claims, he was just a later addition to the long list of Western Orientalists and occultists who had already perceived India as the land of ancient sages, the home of age-old spiritual wisdom.2 Alexander’s works were preceded by Friedrich Schlegel’s Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, 1808), Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia (1879), Friedrich Max Müller’s The Sacred Books of the East (1879), and of course H.P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine (1888), among others. This understanding of India as the storehouse of spiritual wisdom is a modern phenomenon – and yet the matter is not straightforward or easy. Are we dealing with nothing but a stereotypical Romantic view typical of modern Western society, or is there more at stake? In fact, the question cannot be answered by a simple “yes” or “no.” To get a clearer picture, we 1 Alexander, Oriental Wisdom, 20-21. 2 In fact, Alexander quotes from several nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers and orientalist scholars as testimonies to validate his viewpoint. Ibid. p.23-26.

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have to understand how this image of India as a land of spiritual knowledge developed. I will focus on two major points: firstly, why India’s image as a spiritual and enchanted land is a picture of the imagination, and secondly, how India became a site of contestation between two different streams of thought. I will pay particular attention to the case of the Theosophical Society and its romanticisation of India. In 1784, soon after the English East India Company established its rule in Bengal, Sir William Jones founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. The purpose of this institution was to develop an understanding of the Orient and its culture. The establishment of the Society is often considered the starting point of Positive Orientalism.3 It was also the beginning of modern Indological and philological research.4 With the development of a Romantic picture of the Orient, Oriental religions – particularly Hinduism and Buddhism – began to receive attention in the West. For the Western world, this meant a sudden discovery of India and its spiritualintellectual world to which Raymond Schwab has referred as the “Oriental Renaissance.”5 The concept of the “mystic East” or the “magic East” was a product of this nineteenth-century Positive Orientalism. Richard King has suggested that, in fact, the notion of mystical Hinduism was invented multiple times in the light of different ideologies and intellectual currents.6 (Colour plate 12.) Therefore, modern Western intellectual trends have had a considerable impact on the cultural encounter between Orient and Occident and the ensuing process of mutual idealisation of West and East. For, as a matter of fact, processes of positive “othering” were going on not just in the Western world but in India as well. Both geographical-cultural spaces began developing an exotic image of the other: thus the educated middle class of India came to consider the West as “scientific, enlightened, modern, rational and progressive,”7 whereas the Western socio-intellectual world began to look at India as “spiritual, mystical, magical, enchanted” and as the ancient land of Oriental wisdom. As part of this process, Orientalists and occultists both created an image of India that they considered “ideal,” and that the Western world should admire and follow. As some scholars have suggested, 3 For this concept, see Kopf, British Orientalism. 4 Halbfass, India and Europe, 3, 45, 62. 5 Schwab, Oriental Renaissance. 6 King, Orientalism and Religion, 2. 7 Needless to say, the picture that the Indian bourgeoisie drew about the West was part of the self-reflection of the Western world.

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this was an imagined India,8 for in fact the Indian intellectual world was by no means just about magic and ancient wisdom. What might be called its “spirituality” was only one of the many facets of the diverse heterogeneous cultural space that is South Asia. This image of a “mystic East” was therefore a Western construct. In 1875, the Theosophical Society was founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) and Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907), together with a few others. Originating in the intellectual climate of the Western world discussed above, this occultist group likewise started painting a Romantic picture of India. The nascent organisation finally set up its headquarters in Adyar, in Southern India, thus becoming the first major representative of Western occultism on the Indian subcontinent. With the arrival of the Theosophical Society, a unique form of Orientalism arose, which created an innovative framework for the imagination of spiritual and mystical India. In their re-imagination of the Orient, the Theosophists focused on the idea of an interconnectedness between East and West, with an emphasis on the comparative study of religion. Christopher Partridge has referred to this as “Theosophical Orientalism.”9 Blavatsky and her followers were curious to discover “a hidden knowledge” in the “Oriental realm of wisdom and spirituality.”10 Madame Blavatsky was inspired by Romantic Orientalism and claimed to have access to the secret and sacred knowledge of the East revealed by the Theosophical Masters. She argued that Buddhism was the wisest of all religions and “Brahmanism” the truest and most mystical form of Hinduism.11 For Blavatsky, this mystical Brahmanism was more “esoteric,” as opposed to the “exoteric” phenomenon of popular Hinduism. This distinction is significant because it is among the major factors that made the Theosophical Society’s Orientalism unique in comparison with other forms of Romantic Orientalism. This integration of esotericism with Orientalism contained in itself the imagination of an occult India which, as the Theosophists claimed, remained hidden from the mainstream enlightened world. In short, Blavatsky imagined an occult India that was the cradle of ageless wisdom beyond any kind of merely intellectual understanding. This imagination of Oriental wisdom and spirituality continued even in the works of her followers from both Europe and India, notably in British Theosophist A.P. 8 Embree, Imagining India; Inden, Imagining India. 9 Partridge, “Lost Horizon,” 309-334. 10 Ibid., 310. 11 Ibid.

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Sinnett’s famous book Esoteric Buddhism (1883) and in Bengali Theosophist Mohini Chatterji’s spiritual teachings regarding Vedanta philosophy.12 This imagination of India from the Theosophical perspective followed an interesting historical trajectory. The ethnocentric Orientalist imagination of the early Theosophical Society13 has older roots in Europe that go back to Platonic Orientalism. The latter concept can be defined as the idea that there was a pre-Platonic spiritual wisdom which had supposedly come to Greece from the Orient.14 In this narrative, the Orient was represented by ancient Persia, Egypt, Hebrew culture and sometimes even India. This Oriental wisdom had a positive image in antiquity: the general assumption in late antiquity was that any religion that is true should be old, and that the source of such true wisdom was to be found somewhere in the Oriental world. However, with the emergence of Protestantism in early modern Europe, Platonism came to be widely rejected and was often labelled “pagan,” “superstitious,” and evil. Thus the original positive image of the Orient was replaced by a negative one. The Orient came to be associated with pagan magic and idolatry. Enlightenment thinkers developed their image of the Orient along similar lines. The East was seen as “irrational” as opposed to the “scientific” West. Thus Enlightenment Europe went on to perceive India, and the Orient in general, as a cultural space that was on the “other” side of Reason. As Protestant ideology and Enlightenment rationality became more and more dominant in Western culture, any other currents that were opposed to it came to be seen as contrary to the values of Western society. However, as Romantic thinkers were critical of the Enlightenment, they naturally developed a sympathy towards the Oriental “others.” Together with Platonic Orientalism, they revived its positive image of the Orient and once again began thinking of it as the beautiful land of ancient wisdom that they longed to rediscover. Therefore, this entire movement of intellectual history has evolved over several centuries around the tension between the Western “self” and its “other.” This tension was largely defined by the politics of rejection versus acceptance of Eastern wisdom by the West. Disliked by Enlightenment thinkers but celebrated by Romantics, the imaginary of an “Oriental Wisdom” therefore had a significant impact on Western culture. Eventually, various forms of “rejected knowledge” that are nowadays studied under the label of Western esotericism would become allies of the non-Western civilisations that Western culture perceived as 12 Mukhopadhyay, “Mohini.” 13 Hanegraaff, “Western Esotericism and the Orient,” 1-2. 14 Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 12-17.

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its other par excellence, that is, of the Orient. In other words, we are dealing with a history of representations: two different “others” (“the Orient” and “Western esotericism”) came to collaborate in fighting their battles against the hegemonic Occidental culture and intellectual approaches that were based on an Enlightenment and Protestant ethos. In this sense, the Theosophical Society became the heir of Platonic Orientalism, while Indian society – along with its philosophical and spiritual traditions – came to represent “the othered” civilisation that the Western world perceived through its Christian Orientalist gaze. The bottom line here is that the exoticism and mystical characteristics that were projected onto India had already been present in Western society for a long time. European civilisation had long been aware of what would eventually come to be described as “mysticism” and spiritual wisdom, but had rejected it in favour of rationalism and science. What happened may perhaps be explained by the metaphor of a house and a locked room. Suppose that a child has grown up in a big house where it has a favourite, beautifully decorated and painted room. However, one day its parents lock that room, as it no longer matches the decoration of the rest of the house. The key of the room is lost, so the child can no longer enter the room and gradually forgets about it. Having grown up, he discovers another house with a similar beautiful room which he now starts claiming as his own. In this analogy, the “beautiful room in the older house” is Platonic mysticism; the “large house of the parents” is mainstream Western culture and its guardians; the “new home” is India; and the “grown-up child” is the Theosophical Society. The Theosophical Society was searching for the so-called ancient wisdom that was lost in the Western world and believed to rediscover it in India. The history of Western civilisation could be seen as the scene of an ideological battle between two forms of knowledge. From the mid-nineteenth century on, India became an important site of contestation between these two knowledge forms: acceptable rational and scientific knowledge as understood from Enlightenment perspectives, and its rejected “mystical” counterpart. While the colonial government represented the former, the Theosophical Society became a representative of the latter. But how is it that these colonial state authorities became flag-bearers of Western mainstream intellectual culture from the second quarter of the nineteenth century on? Was this not the same government that had established the Asiatic Society of Bengal and had been promoting Romantic Orientalism just a few decades earlier? The answer is that the colonial state in India had evolved with time. In 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay – a Whig politician and senior bureaucrat in the colonial Indian government – produced his famous Minute on

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Indian Education that replaced Persian with English as the official language of India. This event is considered a watershed in the history of Orientalism in India as it gradually put an end to the patronisation of Indian languages and cultures by the government. As David Kopf has shown, Macaulayism marked the defeat of the Romantic Orientalists within the government authorities in India.15 Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education was intended to promote the Westernisation of the native elites through the introduction of English education. The emphasis now came to lie on an epistemic system legitimised by Western rationality. The document clearly mentioned that “the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences”16 should be the priority of the government in India. This was a clear indication that the promotion of Oriental culture was no longer on the agenda of the government. Quite obviously, this signalled a process of othering Indian spirituality and “Hindu mysticism” as contrary to Western science. As a result, after the second half of the nineteenth century, the original positive Orientalist worldview was transmitted through alternative channels of non-state agencies such as the Theosophical Society and the native elites of India. It is interesting to note how the notion of “knowledge” became an issue for ideological conflict. It became more pronounced when the Theosophical Society mentioned that its object was to diffuse a “knowledge of the laws which govern the universe.”17 Against this background, the colonial state wanted to transmit a knowledge of Western sciences and logic while the Theosophical Society tried to transmit a very different type of knowledge concerning natural/non-material “spiritual” laws. This made India a site of contest between two apparently opposing epistemic systems. In this context, the Theosophical Society was claiming that the hidden mystical knowledge was indigenous to Indian spirituality, and India should therefore be considered the home of ancient wisdom. We can say that the contest between the two worldviews was in fact a Eurocentric ideological battle, but India became a chief geographical/ cultural site for this conflict. In a way, the result was that India and Europe became entangled in a common transcultural context. All this should not be misunderstood as suggesting that India was always a disenchanted, non-spiritual cultural world and it was only Western occultists who converted it into a spiritual space. Rather, the argument is that spirituality was just one of the many aspects of Indian cultural life. 15 Kopf, British Orientalism, 236-252. 16 Macaulay, Speeches, 345. 17 Jinarajadasa, The Golden Book.

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Nevertheless, with the arrival of Orientalist worldviews, spirituality began to eclipse the remaining facets of the Indian socio-cultural world and became largely synonymous with the image of India as an exotic land of ancient wisdom and hidden mysteries of nature. As a matter of fact, the Indian bourgeoisie found this image very congenial to their own purposes. Theosophical Orientalism prioritised spirituality over materiality, and this allowed India to perceive itself as superior to the West. The image of an exotic, spiritual India became a useful cultural tool for the native elites, who came to actively encourage the positive Orientalist discourse in the nineteenth century. David Kopf opines that this is ultimately how the seeds of Indian nationalism were sown.18 Quite naturally, the native intelligentsia became allies of the Theosophical Society in their common quest of promoting Oriental spirituality and mysticism. This led a large number of Indian members to join the Theosophical Society between the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century. Indian Theosophists brought in their own understanding of Indian philosophical traditions, which included Vedantic non-dualism, Tantric esotericism, and several Yogic practices, among others. These traditional Oriental currents became integrated into Western occultism as well, thus giving rise to a history of esotericism in which East and West were increasingly entangled. As a result, Western esotericism did not remain within the physical boundaries of the Euro-American intellectual world and became a globalised phenomenon.19 It is worth emphasising once again that this globalisation of esotericism emerged in the context of colonialism and Orientalism. Therefore any discussion of modern Western esotericism is incomplete unless it takes into account Indian spirituality and the society and culture of colonial India. Within the broader academic study of Western esotericism, India has emerged as a prominent focus in the investigation of the history of modern occultism. It is, therefore, important for the study of Western esotericism to develop a closer understanding of mysticism and spirituality in India and the engagement of Western agencies on the Indian subcontinent. An entangled history of esotericism will help us deconstruct the notion of India as the “home” of spiritual wisdom. 18 Kopf, British Orientalism, 255-272. 19 The idea of the globalisation of (Western) esotericism started gaining ground with the essay of Kennet Granholm, “Locating the West.” The discussion has been enriched in recent years in several publications by Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Egil Asprem, and Michael Bergunder, among others.



If people believe in magic, isn’t that just because they aren’t educated? Bernd-Christian Otto

Googling “only idiots believe in magic” on July 16, 2018, one of the first hits is a conversation on uk.answers.yahoo.com. At some time in the year 2012, the following request was posted on this online forum: “There is a lot of fake websites that teach you fake magic. I know people who practice real light and dark magic. It’s real but I’m afraid to ask them to teach me. They follow the moon’s phases for rituals, sacrifices, spells. Im just wondering is there a real website that teaches you real magic like I just described.”1 Ten people took the time to respond to this query but for our present purposes we will confine ourselves to just the first three, each of whom offered a very different argument. The first replied: “There is real magic, but it derives its power from Satan, not God … The Bible is very clear magic is real, and those who deny it deny it because they themselves are spiritually dead … They deny anything supernatural because they deny God.” The second: “The ‘real’ part has been distilled out of magic over the centuries into the various branches of what we now call science. The real part of alchemy for example has been distilled out into chemistry. The real part of witchcraft (greek: pharmacea, mainly the herbology side of witchcraft) has been distilled out into pharmacology. The real part of astrology has been distilled out into astronomy.” The third: “It’s all f*cking fake, dude. Only idiots believe in magic. Why do I say that? Uhhhh, because there’s no evidence the spells, potions or any of that bullshit works. It doesn’t work. You could cast a sh*t ton of spells on me and do you know what will happen? Wowfuckingnothing.” If we were not all intuitively familiar with such response to the notion of “magic,” we might wonder why no one is answering the actual question itself. Why is it that not even one interlocutor recommends ritual scripts that do, in fact, teach “real magic”2 and that are available for free on the internet (see, for instance, www.magicalrecipesonline.com) or can be purchased via online markets such as amazon.com (see there, for instance, the recent 1 Anonymous, “Real magic?” The spelling in all quotations is taken verbatim from the original. 2 “Real magic” is understood here as something that “really” exists, as opposed to stage magic (illusionism, entertainment) or fantasy magic (belletristic, fiction). The formulation “real magic” has only recently been picked up by Dean Radin in his new book Real Magic.

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bestseller Modern Magick by Donald Michael Kraig)? Why do the interlocutors, instead, call into question the validity of “magic” by pointing to its alleged anti-religiousness (response 1), its alleged distillation into modern science (response 2), and its alleged idiocy (response 3)? I shall try to explain the failure of this conversation in four steps. First, I shall give a brief history of the stereotypes that have been attached to “magic” ever since it was first conceptualised. As we shall see, an intimate coupling of “magic” with mal-education, superstition, heresy, and idiocy goes back to the historical roots of the concept. Second, I shall discuss what these stereotypes have to do with rituals. Third, I shall inquire into what they have to do with the human mind. And finally, I will address the title of this chapter by pointing to some implications of “real magic” from a modern practitioner’s perspective. Yet, as I shall not be able to discuss the potential essence of “real magic” myself, I shall follow in the footsteps of Ann Taves3 and use the formulation “X deemed ‘magic’” throughout this article (whereby “X” may stand for ideas, rituals, things, etc.). In other words, my approach is, as in most of my previous works, based on conceptual and discourse history: I am not concerned with what magic really is, but with what it is considered to be. Let us begin with the first step. I would suggest that the interlocutors in that online discussion were, consciously or not, driven by certain deeprooted negative stereotypes that have always been attached to the concept of “magic.” From a historical perspective, these stereotypes boil down to three ideas: “Magic” has long been considered, and often still is, to be (1) anti-religious, (2) inefficacious, and/or (3) anti-social or immoral. The first accusation relates to the alleged opposition between “magic” and “religion” (from a Christian perspective it is, thus, often considered to be “heretical” or “blasphemous”); the second relates to the alleged opposition between “magic” and “science” (or, in simpler terms, to conventional assumptions about physical causation); and the third to the allegedly devastating societal impact of “magic.”4 Let us have a brief look at how these stereotypes emerged. The birth of the term “magic” seems to have occurred in ancient Greece around the year 500 BCE. At that time, the term mágos emerged as the Greek equivalent of the old Persian self-appellation magu(š) that was used by a high-ranking Persian priest caste of the Achaemenid empire. In Herodotus’ account of these Persian mágoi (in his Histories, see principally books I, III 3 I am inspired by her coinage “experiences deemed religious” (Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered, 22f.). 4 Bellingradt and Otto, Magical Manuscripts, 48.

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and VII), we already encounter two of the aforementioned stereotypes, namely anti-religiousness5 and inefficacy.6 Within one or two generations, the Greek designation for a Persian priest (the mágos) led to the formation of an abstract Greek noun, “magic,” (mageía) which came to denote what “magicians” do. Thereby “magic” was detached from its Persian origins, but the stereotypes that were naturally ascribed to the “practices of the enemies”7 – blasphemy, inefficacy – prevailed. Plato, among others, added the third aforementioned stereotype, namely the idea that “magic” is inevitably anti-social and immoral.8 Ever since the emergence of the concept of “magic” in classical Greece, these three stereotypes have shaped Western discourses about the subject, thus resulting in what I have called the “discourse of exclusion”: an interreligious and transcultural tradition of long duration based on polemical perspectives, attacks, and devaluations of “magicians” and their practices. All three stereotypes can be found in both separate and intertwined forms in Greek, Roman, Jewish, Christian and Islamic culture, as well as throughout the philosophical and scientific literature of the past two and a half thousand years.9 Whilst the anti-religious stereotype dominated in the premodern usage of the concept of “magic,” a shift of focus during the European Enlightenment placed the emphasis instead on the stereotype of inefficaciousness. The charge of blasphemy (a crime against God) turned, as it were, into a charge of delusion (a crime against reason). Thereby the inefficaciousness stereotype was strongly aligned with the notions of irrationality (believing in the inefficacious) and fraud (not believing in the inefficacious but deceiving others who do). The Enlightenment narrative that those who believe in “magic” are uneducated and thus prone to irrational and deluded (or eventually delusive) behaviour had a lasting influence on the scholarly discourse, for instance in early theorists such as Edward B. Tylor or James G. Frazer. Two things are crucial to note here. Firstly, like other polemical invectives, “magic”/”magician” can be used to label all sorts of people, independent 5 For instance, Herodotus’ claims that the mágoi performed human sacrif ice, which was considered “barbaric” by the Greeks (and thus anti-religious, referring to the Greek concept of asébeia): see Herodotus, Histories, book VII, 113f. 6 In Herodotus’ account, all the dream divinations performed by the mágoi fail: see ibid., e.g., book I, 120f, and VII, 39f. 7 Graf, Magic in the Ancient World, 29. 8 Plato, e.g. Politeia 364a-364c and Laws 909a-c. See further Otto, Magie, 169-178. 9 See for a broad overview Otto, Magie, chapters 6-8; for a concise summary Otto, “Magic and Religious Individualization,” 44-46.

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of their actual beliefs and practices. This is one aspect of how stereotypes function: they suppress difference and highlight similarities that may not really be there. Secondly, those who were stigmatised by the term “magic” have seldom been asked for their opinion. As with other stereotypes, those attached to “magic” tend to exaggerate, misunderstand, under- or overemphasise, or grossly misrepresent what they are supposed to characterise. In the case of “magic,” the negative stereotypes attached to it, as well as the social and legislative power of the “discourse of exclusion,” led to the devaluation, persecution and execution of a large number of people who neither considered themselves to have engaged in any practices deemed “magic” nor were given any chance to defend themselves against the charge (the historical climax of this trend can be found during the early modern witch persecutions). This polemical “misuse” of the concept is one of the reasons that some modern scholars have called for the term to be abandoned in academic discourse.10 I will not go so far in the present essay, but we should certainly keep in mind the fact that the stereotypes attached to “magic” may be misleading. We should also, in an ideal world, ask the practitioners themselves what they think they are doing. But first we have to ponder what these stereotypes have to do with rituals and the mind. All three stereotypes outlined above are strongly related to the notion of ritual. For the sake of simplicity, let us understand “ritual” here as a form of repetitive behaviour, often following pre-defined scripts, whose purpose or goal goes beyond the mere re-enactment of a pre-defined script. In other words, there is a (chrono-) logical gap between the ritual performance, or action, and its intention or envisaged outcome: rituals are “causally opaque (i.e. the actions are not connected to their purported result)”.11 Most of those who have polemicised against “magic” over the past two and a half millennia had rituals of this sort in mind, so that the aforementioned stereotypes came to be attached to certain types, logics, or mechanics of rituals. In polemics that draw on and feed the anti-religious stereotype, we often find the idea that “magic” works through the ritual instrumentalisation of illegitimate spiritual beings (such as demons) or other forces that are deemed illegitimate – see the comments of the second responder in the examples with which we started –, and such rites have also often been thought to reverse the logic of religious rites (as in the case of the illustrious “black mass”). In polemics that work with the inefficaciousness stereotype, it is often argued that rituals deemed “magical” are based on weird combinations of seemingly powerless 10 For instance Styers, “Magic and the Play of Power,” 258. 11 Sørensen, “Magic reconsidered,” 235.

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ingredients or actions, which cannot, either solely or in combination, produce any of the effects envisaged by their practitioners. Even if such rituals are based on elaborate principles (e.g., similarity, contagion, correspondences, numerology, astrology, to name just a few potential suspects), these principles are themselves considered powerless, pointless or delusive. Finally, in polemics that work with the stereotype of anti-sociality or immorality, we often find the objection that the rites work by morally unacceptable means, for instance through human or even child sacrifice, or that the negative energy evoked by the ritual ultimately falls back onto its arouser. Again, we can note two important points here. First, we should recognise the fact that all of us perform rituals all the time, and that rituals deemed “magical” often do not differ to any great extent from other sorts of rituals, including those belonging to established religious traditions. In fact, rituals deemed “religious” and rituals deemed “magical” share a large pool of common ideas, techniques and performative elements, and it has therefore been impossible to plausibly distinguish between “magic” and “religion” by means of definitions. Arguing that believers in “magic” are uneducated or even idiots therefore carries the price that the same harsh judgment ought to be cast upon well-educated people who pray (utter powerful words) or take part in the Mass (the transformation of bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ). While this consequence will clearly be unacceptable to some who consider themselves practitioners of “religion” but not “magic,” it seems likely that it is just such a perspective that underlies the view of the third interlocutor in our initial examples. For him, rituals might appear to be powerless per se, whereby he seems to adopt a widespread (post-) Enlightenment perspective towards the efficacy of rituals. From such a “secular” perspective, rituals may accomplish such things as changing our societal status (for instance, during a wedding procedure) but they may certainly not cause “real” changes in the physical world. Yet the belief in things or ideas deemed “magic,” including outer-worldly effects of rituals, is more persistent than one might expect and is embraced by a large number of well-educated individuals, even in modern Western, and to a certain degree “secularised,” societies. It seems so deeply ingrained in human culture – and the human mind – that it apparently survived even the alleged “disenchantment” of the world (Entzauberung der Welt).12 The mind is the domain of psychologists, who have traditionally spoken rather negatively about “magic.” Sigmund Freud set the tone in his Totem and 12 On this narrative, see now Josephson, Myth of Disenchantment; and Asprem’s essay in this volume.

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Taboo (1913), in which he argued that “magicians” are driven by a narcissistic belief in the “omnipotence of thought,” going on to compare their practices with children’s hallucinations or the compulsive behaviour of neurotics.13 Even in recent research, the belief in certain types of ritual efficacy is often compared to psychopathological behaviour.14 Yet, the tendency to confuse “the core attributes of mental, physical, and biological entities and processes … with each other”15 – a tendency which is often called “magical thinking” in the psychological literature –, is in fact an inevitable stage of human psychological development. Children between the age of two and seven, in particular, are said to instinctively believe that their thoughts, acts, feelings, and fantasies may influence real-world events (especially when experiencing the unexpected death of a relative).16 It is only during the course of growing up that this tendency to assume causal relationships between mental and physical realities fades away. However, “magical thinking” of this sort, or at least an inclination towards it, sometimes survives in adult minds, for instance through processes of “accidental conditioning,” by reference to which psychologists such as Stuart Vyse explain the ongoing belief in mojos, omens or astrology.17 Some scholars have argued that such “magical thinking,” as well as the ritual practices eventually derived therefrom, may have had evolutionary advantages in that it strengthened societal bonds, regulated emotions, or yielded higher levels of fitness when dealing with threats.18 Apparently, the human mind is structured in a way that lends itself to certain types of “magical thinking.” This phenomenon is neither psychopathological nor related to one’s degree of education or to distinct personality traits. This is even more obvious when we look at the attractiveness and cultural persistence of rituals. Jesper Sørensen has demonstrated that rituals tap into basic processes of the human mind, most importantly conceptual integration (understanding one thing in terms of another).19 Yet ritual is, at the same time, a non-ordinary type of behaviour that leads to a “disconnection of normal processing” through goal demotion (the ritual goal becomes less important than its exact performance) and de-symbolisation (meaning is taken out of the actions, words and things

13 Freud, Totem and Taboo. 14 For instance Boyer and Liénard, “Ritual behaviour.” 15 Lindeman and Aarnio, “Superstitious, Magical, and Paranormal Beliefs,” 734. 16 Webb, “Child and Death”. 17 Vyse, Believing in Magic. 18 Markle, “Magic that Binds Us.” 19 Sørensen, Cognitive Theory of Magic, 63f.

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employed in the ritual).20 Both processes can lead to an overload of the working memory and states of extraordinary awareness, whereby they heighten the motivation to (re-) enact the ritual and prompt the practitioner’s likeliness to believe in its efficacy. In other words, the human mind is not only inclined towards assuming unusual causal relationships (“magical thinking”)21 which may or may not be accepted by mainstream culture, but also towards believing in the benefits of ritualisation and, thus, in ritual efficacy. Let us finally reflect on these matters from a potential practitioner's perspective. During the mid-1890s, James George Frazer sat in his armchair in Cambridge and worked on the second edition of his classic study of “magic” The Golden Bough. Less than one hundred kilometres away from his office, a pseudo-Rosicrucian fraternity called The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which had acquired a few hundred followers at that time, regularly performed complex initiation rituals deemed “magic” in the Freemason’s Hall in London. Apparently, a vivid discourse among well-educated individuals sympathetic towards ideas and rituals deemed “magic” was flourishing in the Western world at least from the late nineteenth century onwards, in full view of the scholarly community, and yet undetected by it. Most members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (as of other fraternities dedicated to “magic” that were founded from the late nineteenth century onwards, and which mount into the hundreds today) were well-educated and often also quite wealthy. Nevertheless, they somehow managed to shake off the aforementioned anti-magical stereotypes that were entrenched in their respective milieus and cultures. For them, “magic” was never (entirely) bad, nor dumb, nor immoral. Unfortunately, there is no room here to discuss “Western learned magic” at greater length, beyond saying that it stretches from late antiquity down to the present day.22 What is important for our discussion here is the recognition that there have long been, and still are, intelligent Westerners who believe(d) in the validity of certain ideas and theories and the efficacy of certain rites deemed “magic.” Today, many practitioners have university degrees, a few have earned PhDs, and some have even acquired hybrid identities by becoming so-called “practitioner-scholars.”23 So, what about these? In her ground-breaking study Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft (1989), anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann summarises her fieldwork experiences 20 21 22 23

Sørensen, “Magic reconsidered,” 235f. This formulation relates, of course, also to all kinds of “religious thinking.” Otto, “Historicizing ‘Western Learned Magic’.” See for a few examples Lycourinos, “Grimoires.”

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among some fifty Western (mostly British) practitioners during the early 1980s. In an attempt to explain these experiences, she coined the term “interpretive drift.”24 According to Luhrmann, “believing in magic” is not a decision but rather a gradual process, driven by the influence of social peers, new (ritual) practices, the repetition of these practices, the adoption of new ideas (deemed “magical”) and their succinct application to reality, the interpretation of events according to these ideas, the search for more such events, and the ignoring of events which do not fit into the new model. Thereby, people gradually (slowly and unconsciously) “drift” into the belief that “magic” is “real” or efficacious, inspired by experiences of evidence or ritual “success.” Once the belief is accepted as valid, they will try to defend it against counter-evidence in order to avoid cognitive dissonances. The “interpretive drift” narrative influenced the scholarly discussion of modern Western “magic” but, even though it does sound plausible, it mirrors the fact that Luhrmann remained an outsider to the field. In other words, even if she claims to have undergone the “interpretive drift” herself,25 she nonetheless remained detached from the process and continued to consider the practice of rites deemed “magic” among modern well-educated Westerners to be unaccountable and thus worthy of a second-order explanation that differs from the perspective of the practitioners. Her explanatory model hence “shifts the source of efficacy elsewhere, away from the ritual experiment and into the mind of the experimenter,”26 as Philip Swift points out. This argumentative manoeuvre in a way still reflects the traditional academic habitus of superiority when it comes to “magic.” So, finally, what would a contemporary practitioner say to all this? There are many thousand contemporary practitioners of “magic” (or “Magick,” as most tend to call it nowadays), who adopt a large variety of practices, theories and explanations, so we can only choose one out of many potential perspectives.27 For the sake of argument, I will present a modern (or rather postmodern) “Chaos magick” perspective.28 Two characteristics of “Chaos magick” are particularly important for the matter discussed here: (1) Chaos magicians do not simply believe in “magic,” but instead adopt a pragmatic, open-ended, results-oriented, and frequently agnostic attitude, for instance by keeping ritual diaries that should record any “data pertaining 24 Luhrmann, Persuasions, esp. 307-315. 25 Ibid., 318-21. 26 Swift, “Divinity and Experiment,” 169. 27 See on some of these Mayer, Arkane Welten, ch. 3, esp. 139-143. 28 See in much greater detail Otto, “Illuminates of Thanateros.”

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to both positive and negative results.”29 (2) Chaos magicians adopt a similarly pragmatic attitude towards the issue of “belief”: The question “Do you know, that there may be no Ultimate Truth?” figures on the title page of the main teaching document of the Illuminates of Thanateros, the main fraternity within this current.30 Peter Carroll, one of its leading figures argued accordingly that an “implication of the principle of relativity of belief is that all beliefs are considered to be arbitrary and contingent.”31 Hence, “Chaos magick” practitioners see beliefs as ritual tools which should be adapted to the respective situation and interchanged when necessary. Instead of being (subconsciously) controlled by their belief (say, in “magic”), “Chaos magick” practitioners strive to (consciously) control a range of different beliefs.32 What can we learn from this? If we want to take modern practitioners seriously and understand their on-going belief in the efficacy of certain rites deemed “magic,” we cannot, I believe, continue to portray them as naïve self-deluding persons. In fact, in a more recent interview study Gerhard Mayer has demonstrated that modern practitioners are well aware of the verif ication problem and actually engage in very nuanced methods of evaluating their practices.33 “Chaos magick” practitioners are a good case in point here due to their high level of ritual creativity and theoretical reflection. Instead of merely “believing in magic,” they use their capacity to “believe” primarily as a ritual instrument. In stark contrast to the third interlocutor in our starting example, they are open-ended and resultsoriented when it comes to interpreting the “success” of their practices. By acknowledging the possibility of the “reality” of multiple realities and the “truth” of multiple truths, they even seem to be intellectually more flexible (at least in a postmodern sense) than scholars who try to explain seemingly outdated beliefs in the twenty-first century. We may of course still question their sympathetic stance towards the outer-worldly efficacy of rituals. Yet the latter surely does not point to a lack of education – to once more allude to the title of this article – but, rather, to a desire to re-enchant the world, a desire for ritual self-empowerment in the sight of what seem to be uncontrollable and arbitrary surroundings, and, not least, a desire to transform life into a mysterious (or even fantastic) adventure where everything is – or might – be possible. 29 Duggan, “Chaos Magick,” 407-408. 30 Council of the Magi, Secrets. 31 Carroll, “Magic of Chaos.” 32 Such as “paganism, monotheism, atheism, nihilism, chaoism, superstition”: Carroll, Liber Null, 73-77. 33 See particularly Mayer, Arkane Welten, 193-201.



But what does esotericism have to do with sex? Marco Pasi

Quite a few things, in fact. Sex has always been an important component of Western esotericism, even if not necessarily the most conspicuous one.1 But what do we mean by it? Sex is, of course, a very generic term, which can refer to different aspects in what is a broad area of human experience. First of all, it can relate to the concept of “eros” as a universal law of attraction (which usually implies also the opposite balancing force of repulsion). Starting especially with Plato, love understood in this general sense has often been perceived as a key factor not only in human relations, but also in the structure of the universe as a whole. In this sense, the universe is believed to function according to the same basic principles of attraction and repulsion that regulate human life, even if they are applied to a loftier level of reality. It is easy to find developments of this basic idea in important authors of the Renaissance, such as Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), for whom the erotic principles of attraction, the occult powers of magic, and the dynamic structure of the universe, are all part of a single continuum.2 Similarly, the myth of the primordial androgyne, which in Western culture also has its roots partly in Plato and partly in the Biblical narration of Genesis, would be used to explain the origin of erotic attraction between men and women and the polarised nature of sexuality and even of the universe as a whole.3 Another important aspect is the use of sexual symbolism in esoteric literature and visual culture. This may or may not imply a sexualised vision of the universe as I have just described. To give just one example, alchemical literature is replete with images that have an erotic connotation, such as the union of female and male principles represented by an androgynous figure or the depiction of actual sexual intercourse. These images can be 1 Essential reading for the relationship of Western esotericism and sexuality is the collection of essays edited by Hanegraaff and Kripal, Hidden Intercourse. Also useful for its broad, general scope is Versluis, Secret History. 2 See Hanegraaff, “Under the Mantle of Love.” 3 On the concept of androgyny in Western esotericism see Faivre and Tristan, L’Androgyne; and Faivre, L’Androgyne dans la littérature. About the notion of the androgyne in Kabbalah, see Eliot R. Wolfson’s essay in the present volume.

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interpreted as referring to particular aspects of alchemical practice (for instance, the combination of chemical elements or metals).4 A third aspect of the presence of sex in Western esotericism concerns not so much sex as a subject, but rather as an object. This is relevant particularly, but not exclusively, in the context of forms of popular magic that claim to offer remedies to all problems related to the erotic sphere, such as unrequited loves, difficult pregnancies, or insufficient sexual potency.5 In the first two cases, sex is used as a framework of reference in order to explain or illustrate aspects of reality, but this does not necessarily imply the actual use of sexual intercourse as a meaningful esoteric practice. In the third case, on the other hand, the presence of sex in a magical context is certainly more embodied and physical than in the first two, but this presence usually concerns more the intended goal of the magical practice, rather than its means, and this goal is quite specifically related to bodily functions rather than spiritual progress. In order to see the development of an explicit, self-conscious, formalised use of sexual acts in an esoteric context in the West, we have to wait until the mid-nineteenth century. So we get to the fourth aspect of the relationship between Western esotericism and sex, usually referred to as “sexual magic.” It is on this one that I am going to focus especially here.6 In fact, this development has been one of the most remarkable innovations of modern Western esotericism, and has a number of implications that it is crucial to discuss when addressing the general question asked in the title of this essay. First of all, we may ask ourselves why sex should get mixed with esoteric or magical practices in the first place. One easy answer might be that sex relates to a deep aspect of human existence, based on the universal impulse of reproduction, and that it would have been strange if esotericism, with its holistic approach to reality, would not include it sooner or later as a part of its experiential dimension. But there are probably also other aspects that should be taken into account. Sexual orgasm appears to be one of the easiest, most immediate ways of obtaining an intense altered state of consciousness, one that is potentially available to anyone without the use of exotic drugs or complicated bodily techniques. As is the case with other forms of alteration of consciousness, depending also on the social and 4 See Principe, “Revealing Analogies.” 5 For a useful overview of what is notoriously a very broad subject, see Alexandrian, La magie sexuelle, chs. 1 and 7. 6 The only comprehensive scholarly study of sexual magic is Urban, Magia Sexualis, to which we could add the already mentioned, but less scholarly, Alexandrian, La magie sexuelle. Important essays on the subject can also be found in Hanegraaff and Kripal, Hidden Intercourse.

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cultural context, this peak experience can be perceived to have religious, mystical, or magical connotations.7 If this is so, then one might ask why the use of sexual intercourse for magical or esoteric purposes was not much more common before the nineteenth century. The answer is quite obvious, and has to do with the strict policing of sexual behaviour in a traditional, mainstream Christian context. Sex has usually been understood here to be exclusively functional to reproduction, and frowned upon when practised outside the tight boundaries of this function. Therefore, it would have been difficult to even conceive of sexual practices for religious or magical purposes in a Christian context. When considering the fact that a new interest in sex emerged in esoteric movements during the second half of the nineteenth century, one should take various factors into account. On the one hand, it is interesting to note that this new development started out in the Victorian period, during which all expressions of sexuality were subjected to heavy censorship and social control; not so much by religious institutions, as may have been the case in earlier historical periods, but by a generalised feeling of public decency that was widespread also in secular institutions. We know that Michel Foucault, in his History of Sexuality, has famously criticised a simplistic, stereotypical image of sexual repression, which he called the “repressive hypothesis.”8 But it remains true that for many people who had a direct experience of it, the subjective feeling of living in a period that had a negative obsession about sexuality was very real, and could become even more vivid when some of these persons lived long enough to see the end of it and then, with hindsight, compared it to the more relaxed atmosphere of the post-WWI period. Many examples could be given. Here, for instance, is what the famous Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) remembered, in his World of Yesterday (1942), about the attitude towards sexuality that was predominant in his youth: Our century … looked upon sexuality as an anarchical and therefore disturbing element, which had no place in its ethics and which was not allowed to see the light of day, because every form of extra-marital love was in opposition to middle-class “decency.” … School and church, salon and courts, newspapers and books, modes and manners, in principle avoided every mention of the problem, and even science, whose real

7 For a cultural history of orgasm in the West, see Muchembled, L’Orgasme et l’ Occident. 8 Foucault, History of Sexuality, pt. 1 and 2.

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task would have been to approach all problems impartially, shamefully subscribed to the naturalia sunt turpia.9

It is certainly noteworthy that the emergence of sexual magic took place in a historical context where sexuality was so severely repressed and censored by mainstream culture, both in its religious and secular spheres. We might therefore see it as a form of antinomianism, as if a radicalisation of an antisex attitude from the top down would have produced, or at least stimulated, a reaction of sexual curiosity and experimentation from the bottom up, similar for instance to pornography or libertinism. But this probably is only one aspect of the story. Another aspect is the deep cultural change that begins to take place during the second half of the nineteenth century, and which becomes particularly evident in the early years of the twentieth century. As a result of processes of social transformation often subsumed under the generic label of secularisation, it is the whole relationship that people have with their body that begins to change.10 The body becomes the focus of renewed, positive attention, with the underlying idea that a good life implies its sustained cultivation and care. It is in fact in this period that we see the emergence of sport as a regular practice, not just as a pastime, but also as a way to keep one’s body healthy and fit. Fashion also changes, making it easier to expose the body to fresh air and sunlight, and an interest in naturism, vegetarianism, and physical activity in natural environments (all practices that in the German-speaking countries were part of the so-called Lebensreform movement) begins to make itself visible. Persons who shared these new concerns about bodily health often had an interest in alternative spirituality and esoteric ideas as well, as was the case in the early years of the twentieth century in the famous community of Monte Verità, close to Ascona, Switzerland, and in countless others in Europe, North America, and elsewhere. But what is sexual magic? Most forms of it are based on the idea that certain bodily fluids (understood as being not purely physical, but also with “subtle” or “spiritual” qualities) possess a particular power, and that this power can be manipulated and made effective through the use of sex as a catalyst. This is supposed to happen during sexual intercourse, in 9 Zweig, World of Yesterday, 62. Zweig’s poignant recollections can be compared to the virulent, uncompromising indictment of Victorian morality put forward by the occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) in the preface to his anti-Christian poetic drama The World’s Tragedy. 10 For a broad, comprehensive perspective on the changing attitudes towards the body in that period, see Corbin, Courtine and Vigarello, Histoire du corps, esp. vol. 2, pt. 2 and 3; and vol. 3, pt. 2.

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combination with particular bodily and/or mental techniques. According to certain doctrines of sexual magic, the bodily fluids that result from intercourse, or from other forms of sexual activity (e.g., masturbation), can be transmuted into “medicines” or “elixirs” that possess the power to heal, rejuvenate, or make people immortal and godlike. Various scholars have suggested that there might be cases of sexual magic in Europe before the nineteenth century, for instance with important figures for the history of Western esotericism such as Giordano Bruno, Cagliostro (ps. of Giuseppe Balsamo, 1743-1795), or William Blake (1757-1827).11 However, the evidence for a full-blown theoretical and practical system of sexual magic before the mid-nineteenth century is rather thin. The first author who clearly developed such a system was the American spiritualist and early occultist Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875). It would be impossible here to summarise the history of sexual magic in all its stages and developments, not only due to lack of space, but also because large portions of this story have not been properly investigated by scholars yet. At this moment, a comprehensive historical overview of the magical use of sex in modern Western esotericism is still lacking.12 What I would like to do here instead is reflect on a number of aspects that I consider significant, particularly from a cultural and social point of view. To begin with, from the broader perspective of the history of religions, sex has often been used to characterise and stigmatise groups of people that, for one reason or another, were considered to be threatening or dangerous. Sexual practices perceived as abnormal or illicit (such as orgiastic rites, sodomy, bestiality, or the supposed intercourse with demons and other non-human beings) were attributed to these communities and were thought to be a major component of their anti-social behaviour. When one has a look at the groups that were historically targeted with such accusations in Europe, one realises that this has been a recurring phenomenon in different cultural and geographical contexts.13 We find it in fact in relation to various religious groups, such as the Dionysiacs, some Gnostic sects, the Bogomils, the Cathars, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and the 11 Ioan P. Couliano draws a suggestive comparison of Bruno’s theories on magic with Tantra in his Eros and Magic, 99-101. On Cagliostro and the possible sexual aspects of his tradition of Egyptian Freemasonry, see Introvigne, “Arcana Arcanorum.” On Blake, see Schuchard, Why Mrs. Blake Cried. 12 The already mentioned Urban, Magia Sexualis, is what comes closest to such an overview, but focuses mostly on the Anglo-American side of it, going less deep into sources from other linguistic areas (e.g., German, French, Italian). 13 For a general overview see Culianu and Hakl, “Sexuality.”

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Khlysty.14 To these movements, which had real historical existence, we could also add movements that were largely the product of the imagination of the people who intended to persecute them, such as the witches during the so called “witch-craze” of the early modern period. In spite of all the significant differences between these groups, one pattern stands out, and it is precisely the accusation by their adversaries that they engage, among other things, in illicit sexual practices. From a historical point of view, in most cases it is unclear to what extent the sexual practices described in these accusations were real, rather than a mere fantastic projection by their adversaries. Nonetheless, whatever the actual reality of said practices, they produced a sulphurous reputation that stuck to these movements and became part of their image even long after they had ceased to exist. This is the reason why, when sexual magic made its appearance, some of its protagonists felt the need to reactivate what they thought was the continuing legacy of some of these groups. It is no wonder, therefore, to see practices of sexual magic making their appearance in occultist groups that would call themselves “Gnostic,” “Templar,” or “Rosicrucian.” This phenomenon would fit into a narrative that saw these groups as parts of a long countercultural tradition of the West, where true hidden wisdom related to sexuality would have been concealed. A second point is that sexual magic is often seen as a European white male affair that is supposed to have emerged in the context of early twentiethcentury occultism. Some of the early protagonists of this story, such as the German Theodor Reuss (1855-1923), the English Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), and the Italian Giuliano Kremmerz (pseud. of Ciro Formisano, 1861-1930) were in fact all European male occultists. However, a closer look yields a much more complex picture, which places the beginnings of sexual magic in North America further back in the 1860s and 1870s, through the pioneering work of a person of colour, the aforementioned P.B. Randolph. It also shows the crucial role of spiritualism and of women in these very early stages, with figures such as the American spiritualist and feminist agitator Victoria Claflin 14 Most of these movements were accused of improper or eccentric sexual behaviour by their adversaries. In the case of the Rosicrucians, the association was made particularly in one famous text, Le Comte de Gabalis (1670) by Henri de Montfaucon de Villars (1638-1673). The text had a large fortune among later esotericists and influenced the occultist milieus in which sexual magic emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century. There is enough evidence to believe that the author actually intended to write a parody of the occult sciences and their practitioners, rather than unveil their secrets, as many later esotericists believed. For a modern edition of the text, with a lengthy introduction by Didier Kahn that contextualises it historically, see Montfaucon de Villars, Le Comte de Gabalis.

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Woodhull (1838-1927), the Anglo-Spanish spiritualist and early theosophist Maria Mariátegui Sinclair, also known as Lady Caithness (1830-1895), and the American esotericist and sexual activist Ida Craddock (1857-1902).15 From what we know, Woodhull and Caithness were not practising forms of sexual magic themselves, but in their works one can find the theoretical premises for such practices: namely, a positive appreciation of the body – especially the female body – as a tool for spiritual and magical experiences, and of sexual intercourse as a perfectly natural and enjoyable aspect of human life, irrespective of marriage and reproduction. This fact makes us perceive an interesting nuance into the almost universal anti-materialist attitude of spiritualists and occultists alike, because their openness towards the use of sex for spiritual or magical purposes is also based on a positive vision of the material world as a whole. In fact, when describing the anti-materialism of occultists and spiritualists one may be tempted to forget that it was not so much the material world as such that they were rejecting, but rather the idea of an unbridgeable divide between that world and the spiritual one, or the idea that all reality could be reduced to matter. A good example of this can be found in how two other occultists, Anna B. Kingsford (1846-1888) and Edward Maitland (1824-1897), compared the Hermetic tradition (as they understood it) to Christianity. For them, the Hermetic tradition displayed a much healthier attitude towards the human body and more generally towards nature as a whole: The Hermetic system is distinguished from other schools of mysticism by its freedom from their gloomy and churlish manner of regarding nature, and their contempt and loathing for the body and its functions as inherently impure and vile; and so far from repudiating the relations of the sexes, it exalts them as symbolising the loftiest divine mysteries, and enjoins their exercise as a duty, the fulfilment of which, in some at least of his incarnations, is essential to the full perfectionment and initiation of the individual.16

A question that could be asked now is: why is it that the earliest traces of sexual magic are to be found in the United States and that American authors 15 There are several biographies of Woodhull, but none of them discusses her connection to the early development of sexual magic, which will be the focus of a forthcoming study of mine. On Lady Caithness, see Pasi, “Exégèse et sexualité.” On Craddock, see Schmidt, Heaven’s Bride; and Chappell, Sexual Outlaw. 16 Maitland, “Hermetic System,” xvii. It is interesting to note that Kingsford and Maitland were also close friends and collaborators of Lady Caithness.

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played such an important role at its beginning? The answer seems easy enough, and has to do with the fact that social and religious experimentation was much easier in the United States than in Europe. Due to the vastness of the territory – large portions of which were not controlled by a pervasive central administration – and the religious diversity which had always characterised the country since the time of the earliest European settlers, it was certainly possible to engage in alternative practices and ideas in the United States with relatively less fear of persecution or stigmatisation. For the same reason, it is in the United States that one can observe, in the same period or slightly earlier, the emergence of new religious movements engaging in alternative or non-mainstream sexual practices, such as the Mormons, the Shakers, or the Oneida community.17 A further point is what I would define as the “heterogenesis of ends” of modern Western esotericism. By this I mean that, in analysing modern Western esotericism, one soon realises that its cultural and social relevance may go beyond the explicit intentions of the esotericists themselves. It is in fact possible to see in this context the formation of progressive discourses and practices that anticipate later developments in mainstream culture, independently of whether the esotericists who proposed them had a conscious progressive agenda. This notion of an esoteric heterogenesis of ends relates closely to the problem of the “modernity of occultism,” which I have discussed elsewhere.18 I have suggested some explanations as to why such progressive elements could find a convenient breeding ground in modern Western esotericism. Sexuality is one of the aspects where this phenomenon manifests itself most clearly. In the literature related to sexual magic in the second half of the nineteenth century we find, for instance, discussions about reproduction, birth-control, free love, and female orgasm for which there was no significant room – at least in such progressive terms – in other social contexts at the time. Authors such as Randolph, Woodhull, Caithness and Craddock include these discussions in their publications, and in so doing they open up new perspectives about human sexuality. The importance attributed to female orgasm, together with practical instructions for men as to how they can help their partners to reach it, is a particularly interesting example, as it candidly tackles a subject that had not received so much attention yet even in the emerging sexological literature of the time.19 17 See Forster, Religion and Sexuality. 18 See Pasi, “The Modernity of Occultism.” 19 On the early history of sexology, or scientia sexualis, see Bullough, Science in the Bedroom; and Sigusch, Geschichte der Sexualwissenschaft.

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The rationale for these discourses was spiritual, esoteric and magical in its original context – and that is why these authors have been mostly neglected by historians of sexuality – but its social and cultural significance becomes evident today to us, who look at this material with other eyes than those of the esotericists themselves. It is because of the difference of perspectives between the historians that we are today and the esotericists who lived then that we can interpret the progressive potential of their literature as a case of heterogenesis of ends. These are some of the aspects that make the presence of sex in Western esotericism so important and worthy of further investigation. Far more could be added, such as the influence of Eastern traditions or the problem of gender roles in esoteric sexuality, but I shall have to save them for a future discussion.



Is there such a thing as Islamic esotericism? Mark Sedgwick

The term “Western esotericism” seems to exclude Islam, as the West and Islam are often taken as binary opposites, and as some scholars have suggested that Western esotericism is so Western that it is essentially distinct from non-Western phenomena.1 Others have argued that while Western and non-Western esotericism may be hard to distinguish in structural terms at a theoretical level, it is still necessary to treat Western esotericism separately from a methodological perspective, as this allows scholars to situate it historically.2 Both these views imply that there should be a distinctly “Islamic” esotericism. In fact, however, Islamic esotericism has so much in common with Western esotericism that it is wrong to treat Islamic and Western esotericism as distinct entities. They are theoretically and historically situated together. Islamic conceptions of esotericism have historically been close to Western ones, partly because they have common origins, and partly because there have been transfers between Islamic and Western esotericism over the centuries, transfers which continue today. Islamic esotericism differs from Western esotericism in its sociology, however, since while Western esotericism has usually been marginal and controversial, arguably a form of “rejected knowledge,”3 Islamic esotericism has mostly been close to the mainstream, though sometimes also controversial. Placing the terms “Islamic” and “Western” in opposition to each other is popular and sometimes useful, but is also problematic, if only because it compares a religious term with a geographical term – and an imprecise geographical term at that, since Athens, which most people would place in the West, is 2,500 kilometres to the east of Morocco. Both terms, however, also indicate civilisations, and in religious terms the Western civilisation is now generally understood as Judeo-Christian. The term “Islamic,” then, may be placed in opposition to “Judeo-Christian,” and if we think in terms of associated civilisations rather than of bodies of orthodox doctrine, we may distinguish civilisationally Islamic esotericism from civilisationally 1 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 6. 2 Hanegraaff, ”Globalization of Esotericism,” 81-82. 3 Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy.

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Judeo-Christian esotericism, especially during the many centuries when the Atlantic end of the Eurasian landmass was divided into distinct Islamic and Christian spheres, one using Arabic as its common intellectual language, and the other using Latin or Greek. One complication, however, is that until very recently Jews lived in both Islamic and Christian societies, and so can hardly be assigned exclusively to the West. There is thus a Judeo-Islamic civilisation as well as a JudeoChristian one. For the sake of simplicity, however, this essay will ignore both Jewish civilisation and Greek-based (and Slavonic-based) Orthodox Christian civilisation. It will understand “Islamic” as denoting Arabic-based Islamic civilisation, and “Western” as denoting Latin-based Christian civilisation.4 The term “esotericism” also presents problems, partly because there is inevitably some dispute among scholars about its precise meaning,5 and partly because it may denote both the study of the esoteric and the manipulation of the esoteric. Esotericism, then, may be about knowledge, or it may be about practice. The term “esoteric” is commonly paired with “exoteric,” and precisely this pair exists in Arabic, between the bāṭin and the ẓāhir.6 The adjective bāṭinī may almost always be translated as “esoteric,” and ẓāhirī as “exoteric.” In Islam, the esoteric (bāṭin) includes the esoteric meaning of texts that have a more obvious, exoteric, ẓāhirī meaning, and there are exclusively bāṭinī texts, as well. The esoteric also includes the unseen (ghayb), and the Islamic unseen contains much what the Western unseen does, including angels (malāk, plural malāʾika), demons ( jinnī, plural jinn), and the future. Knowledge of the esoteric, then, may allow manipulation of the esoteric. Some varieties of manipulation are understood as legitimate, while some are understood as illegitimate, and labelled siḥr, magic. That Islamic civilisation has the same esoteric/exoteric distinction as Western civilisation, and that the Islamic unseen contains much the same as the Western unseen, is in part because Islam is, like Christianity and Judaism, an Abrahamic religion. All the Abrahamic religions have much the same scheme of a creator god, an immortal human soul, a day of judgment, heaven and hell, angels and demons. Sometimes even the same words are used: the Arabic malāk (angel) matches the Hebrew mal’akh, and the 4 Both of these civilisations also used other languages, but Arabic remained the pre-eminent language of scholarship even when Persian was used for literary purposes, and Latin remained a central reference even when printing in vernacular languages had become common. 5 Von Stuckrad, “Esotericism Disputed.” 6 Sedgwick, “Is there an Islamic Esotericism?”

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Arabic rūḥ (soul) matches the Hebrew ruaḥ. The overarching theological framework inhabited by Islamic esotericism and Western esotericism (and Jewish esotericism), then, is essentially the same. Beyond this, Islamic and Western philosophy both draw on Greek and Hellenistic philosophy.7 More research is still needed into the relationship between Hellenistic philosophy and Western esotericism, but many key ideas that have been associated with Western esotericism, for example by Antoine Faivre,8 are also Neoplatonic. As Wouter J. Hanegraaff has shown, the “Hermetic renaissance” or “Hermetic revival” in fifteenth-century Florence, which is often seen as the point of origin of modern Western esotericism, was in fact much more of a Platonic renaissance.9 Before this renaissance, key Platonic works such as the Enneads of Plotinus (203-270 CE) were better known (in Arabic translation) in the Muslim world than in the West.10 This was because, while Latin Europe suffered multiple waves of conquests and centuries of chaos after the collapse of the Roman empire, the Arab conquest of the former Egyptian and Syrian provinces of that empire was much less destructive, and the knowledge of the Late Antique world remained relatively intact there. Arabic philosophy was thus in many ways a continuation of late Hellenistic philosophy. It was also often esoteric. It emphasised such concepts as emanation (the idea that creation proceeds from an uncaused One), hypostases (levels of emanation intermediate between the One and humanity, identifiable with celestial spheres) including active and universal intellects and intelligences, and the “divine spark” or sirr (secret) in the human soul. This philosophy formed the basis of the theology of the Sufis, the quasi-monastic ascetics who became specialists in Islamic esotericism.11 Philosophy was not the only Late Antique art to be developed by scholars working mostly in Arabic as well as by the West. Other sciences, including mathematics (from sources including Euclid and Archimedes), medicine (from sources including Galen), astronomy and astrology (from sources including Ptolemy), arithmology and the science of letters (`ilm al-ḥurūf ), and alchemy (from various sources) were translated, studied, and developed in the Muslim world. Stories of Hermes (Hirmis in Arabic) also circulated, and texts attributed to him proliferated (colour plate 13). Trismegistus 7 Marenbon, “Introduction,” 1-2. 8 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 10-15. 9 Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 41-53; idem, “How Hermetic,” 179-209. 10 Endress, “Circle of al-Kindi,” 43-76. 11 There is some dispute about this, but see Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 40-47.

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became al-muthallath bi ’l-ḥikma, threefold in wisdom. He was said to have hidden ancient texts from before the Flood, which were then recovered by Apollonius (Balīnūs in Arabic), passed on to Aristotle, and then given by him to Alexander the Great. Another account has Apollonius meeting Hermes in person, and receiving from him a book and a tablet of emerald.12 The extent to which astrology, arithmology, and alchemy are esoteric arts or occult sciences may be disputed, but a good case can be made for including them in the category of the esoteric. The story of the transmission of hidden texts from before the Flood is certainly esoteric, as it is an early version of what would become the central narrative of Western perennialism, itself a major part of Western esotericism. Islamic esotericism, then, shares common origins with Western esotericism, in both the basic framework of Abrahamic religion and in the body of Late Antique philosophy, astrology, arithmology, and alchemy. That Islamic esotericism has a lot in common with Western esotericism is also a result of transfers between Islamic and Western esotericism over the centuries. Initially, the direction of transfer was from Islamic to Western esotericism; more recently, there have also been transfers in the opposite direction. First, the Arabic al-kīmiyāʾ gave rise to the Latin alchimia (hence alchemy). Then the French ésotérisme gave rise to the Turkish ezoterizm. The earliest transfers were from Islamic to Western esotericism, as part of the general transfer of Arab philosophy and science into Europe between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, when Europe finally began to recover from the chaos that had followed on the collapse of the Roman Empire. What was transferred was often of largely Hellenistic origin, developed by centuries of Arab scholarship. Arabic manuscripts were translated into Latin, and the Latin translations were eagerly read across the West.13 At first, Western enthusiasm for Arab knowledge was somewhat indiscriminate, as it took time for Western scholars to process and understand what they had found. Ultimately, Western scholars collected and used Greek manuscripts of the great Greek philosophers, and Hellenistic and Arab works sank into obscurity. This process, however, took several centuries, and Arab knowledge was still respected in the West in the sixteenth century. The most popular works in Europe were by the great Arab philosophers whose names, in Latinised versions, became universally known, notably Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, 980-1037 CE) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198 CE), who were important not only for scholastic philosophy but also for such 12 Van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes. 13 Marenbon, Later Medieval Philosophy, 50-65.

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esoteric mystics as Meister Eckhart (1280-1328 CE).14 Texts on medicine, mathematics, astronomy and astrology were also extremely popular. The works of the astronomer-astrologer Albumasar (Abū Maʿshar Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad, 787-886 CE) and the alchemist and numerologist Geber (Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, 721-815 CE) were widely read.15 Among the magical and alchemical texts translated during this period was one that reproduced the Emerald Tablet (Tabula Smaragdina in Latin) thought by the Arabs to have been given to Apollonius by Hermes. This was the Sirr al-asrār (The Secret of Secrets), understood to be a collection of letters from Aristotle to Alexander, which was translated into Latin in about 1120 and then again in 1232 as the Secretum secretorum (The Secret of Secrets) (colour plate 14). It achieved great popularity, in Latin and in further translations into vernacular European languages, and was foundational for European alchemy. A comparable work that had an enormous impact in Europe was Ghāyat al-ḥakīm (The Goal of the Sage), a collection on astral magic translated into Latin as the Picatrix (possibly a corruption of the name Hippocrates) in the 1250s.16 Many other less famous texts were also translated into Latin, giving the Western esotericism of the time a solid Islamic base – “Islamic” being, as before, used in civilisational rather than in religious terms. There was a lull in transmission of Islamic to Western esotericism during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries then saw a new interest in alternative understandings of religion in Europe, and this led some to look towards Islam. The influential British scholar Sir William Jones (1746-1794) proposed a transmission of perennial religious truth through a series of intermediaries that included Sufis in the Islamic world,17 and another British scholar, James Graham, identified this perennial religious truth as “esoteric,”18 following a new understanding of the esoteric-exoteric pair developed in the work of John Toland (1670-1722), a British follower of Spinoza (1632-1677).19 This understanding was followed in the nineteenth century by another British scholar, Charles William King (1818-1888),20 whose work on what he called 14 Flasch, Meister Eckhart. 15 Lemay, Abū Maʿshar; the “pseudo-Geber” was perhaps more important than the real Geber, but the real Geber was also significant. 16 Saif, Arabic Influences, 36-45. 17 Jones, “Dissertation on the Persians,” 197-204. 18 Graham, “Treatise,” 89-119. 19 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 98-100. 20 King, Gnostics, 184-85.

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“Gnosticism” (but which in many ways resembles later esotericism) was used by Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891), the eclectic founder of the Theosophical Society.21 The Theosophical Society had great influence on the development of modern Western esotericism, and emphasised Hinduism and Buddhism rather than Islam as the chief non-Western sources of its “secret doctrine.” Islamic esotericism was thus initially somewhat neglected, at least relative to Hindu and Buddhist esotericism, despite Blavatsky’s use of King. Islamic esotericism was, however, of greater interest to French esotericists, initially as a result of the work of Ivan Aguéli (1869-1917), a Swedish-French painter and convert to Islam who in 1910 drew the work of the great esoteric Sufi Ibn ʿArabī (1165-1240) to the attention of the readers of a French esoteric journal, La Gnose,22 and to the attention of an important French esotericist, René Guénon (1886-1951). Guénon’s work was the basis of one of the most important Western esoteric movements of the twentieth century, Traditionalism, for which “tradition” denotes perennial esoteric truth. Although Guénon wrote mostly about Hinduism, he moved to Cairo and adopted the practice of esoteric Sufism within the context of exoteric Islam, and recommended Islamic esotericism to many of his followers. There thus arose a distinctly Islamic form of Western esotericism, Islamic because its followers generally followed Sufi and Islamic practice, and esoteric because they subscribed to Guénon’s perennialist understandings.23 Guénon’s Traditionalism is the most important later transfer from Islamic into Western esotericism, but not the only one. George Gurdjieff (1866?1949), another major twentieth-century esotericist who gave rise to a large movement, gave the Sufis as one of his major sources, even though he in fact seems to have known little of Islamic esotericism. This inspired some of his followers to study Islamic esotericism, however, resulting in further transfers, most notably in the work of Idries Shah (1924-1996), a British writer whose work drew on the Islamic esoteric tradition and was very widely read in many countries during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s.24 As well as these recent transfers from Islamic to Western esotericism, there have been recent transfers from Western to Islamic esotericism. Masonic lodges were established in the Muslim world during the nineteenth century, but their political significance was greater than their esoteric significance.25 21 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 145. 22 Aguéli, Ecrits pour La Gnose. 23 Sedgwick, Against the Modern World. 24 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 208-219. 25 Dumont, “Freemasonry in Turkey”; Wissa, “Freemasonry in Egypt.”

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Fig. 1: Italian Sufi followers of the work of René Guénon. © Francesco Piraino 2017.

Branches of such Western esoteric organisations as the Theosophical Society attracted relatively few Muslims in most parts of the Muslim world, but the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) was something of an exception,26 and Western esotericism may be an important ingredient in later Indonesian Kebatinan.27 Although research is still very limited, some individual writers who drew on Western esotericism have been identified elsewhere in the Muslim world. One of the most influential later agents for the transfer of Western esoteric ideas into the Muslim world has been Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933), an Iranian philosopher who joined a group following the ideas of Guénon while studying in the US during the 1950s. Nasr’s works completed the Islamisation of Traditionalism, and have been widely read especially in Iran and Turkey, even though Nasr himself was obliged to move to the US by the Iranian revolution, which he had opposed.28 Increasingly, rather than transferring between Western and Islamic civilisations, Western and Islamic esotericism have begun to combine as 26 De Tollenaere, “Theosophical Society.” 27 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 197. 28 Sedgwick, Against the Modern World, 155-159, 169

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a result of globalisation. Nasr, for example, is read both in the West and in the Muslim world, and is hard to classify as either Western (as an Iranian Muslim) or Islamic (as someone who spent most of his career teaching at George Washington University in the US). Kebatinan, the Indonesian movement that shows the influence of the Theosophical Society, produced Subud, a global movement that at one point absorbed many British followers of Gurdjieff.29 During the 2010s, one best-seller in the Arab world was The Forty Rules of Love, a novel by the Turkish author Elif Shafak that combined Sufi, New Age and Western esoteric perspectives.30 In these cases, there is a single global esoteric sphere, not an Islamic or a Western one. Although Islamic and Western esotericism have much in common, they also differ in one important respect. Western esotericism has generally been marginal and controversial, to the extent that some have even proposed understanding it in terms of rejected knowledge, or at least in terms of its position as separate from and often in conflict with the religious mainstream.31 Islamic esotericism, in contrast, has only sometimes been controversial, and until very recently was never marginal. This is partly because the unseen, including angels and demons, has not been relegated by Muslims to the realm of the symbolic, as has happened in some varieties of Western Christianity. Much that would now be classed as esoteric in the West remains part of mainstream Islamic belief. It is also because the authority structures of Islam differ from those of the Catholic Church, so that there is no one person or body that can rule on what is and what is not acceptable doctrine or practice. Individual religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ) have from time to time condemned esoteric philosophy, Sufi theology, astrology, or alchemy, but such condemnations have not usually attracted widespread support.32 Only since the reform of Islam by modernising states that started in the late nineteenth century has there been any degree of consensus against “superstitious” and “backwards” views and practices, leading to attempts to exclude the esoteric from the public mainstream on rational and scientific grounds. Simultaneously, the puritan ʿulamā of Saudi Arabia and their followers have condemned many esoteric views and practices, presenting their own views as “true Islam,” but in fact these views are specific to one particular, and unusual, group.

29 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 197-200. 30 Sedgwick, “Eclectic Sufism.” 31 Neugebauer-Wölk, “Esoterik und Christentum.” 32 Melvin-Koushki, “De-orienting the Study of Islamicate Occultism.”

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Islamic esotericism, then, is not so different from Western esotericism. The two esotericisms share common origins in the framework given by Abrahamic religions, and in their common inheritance from Late Antique philosophy and other sciences. During the eleventh to fifteenth centuries, Western esotericism drew many ideas and practices from Islamic esotericism, from the esoteric mysticism of Meister Eckhart to the Emerald Tablet of the alchemists. Again during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, individual Western esotericists drew on Islamic esotericism, while Islamic esotericists also drew on Western esotericism, until finally the two varieties of esotericism merged into the global esotericism of Nasr, Subud, and Elif Shafak. It is wrong, then, to treat Western and Islamic esotericism as distinct entities. There have been distinct Christian and Islamic spheres, so there is a Western esotericism and an Islamic esotericism, but they are theoretically and historically situated together.



Doesn’t occultism lead straight to fascism? Julian Strube

Today, many people associate occultism with far-right politics, Fascism, and National Socialism. From a historical viewpoint, however, the relationship between occultism and politics is far more complex. Although a range of important studies have shown that this is the case, a distorted and historically ill-informed image persists even in present-day academic scholarship. To a large extent, this is due to the depiction of links between the Nazis and esotericism in popular culture, ranging from books, music, comics, and video games to Hollywood blockbuster movies. Some of these media were very influential in coining certain clichés about “Nazi occultism” and related subjects. These popular artefacts can be regarded as sedimentations of two general developments since the end of World War II.1 On the one hand, a genre of sensationalist literature has evolved especially since the 1960s, which developed many of the topoi that determine present-day popular culture: the alleged black magical rituals of the Nazis, their “occult” ideology, their adherence to Satanism, their hunt for the Holy Grail, their origin in secret societies, and so on. Two of the most famous representatives of this genre are Le matin des magiciens (The Morning of the Magicians) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, published in 1960 and selling millions of copies, and the slightley less successful yet influential Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft, published in 1972. Its ambivalent fetishisation of National Socialism notwithstanding, this genre is usually hostile towards the Nazis. The other development, in contrast, can be classified as a kind of “esoteric neo-Nazism.” Since the 1950s, former Nazis and their sympathisers were coming to terms with the downfall of the Third Reich by combining older esoteric and recent New Age notions with Nazi revivalist ambitions.2 Instrumental in this process was a Viennese group surrounding Wilhelm Landig (1909-1997), Rudolf Mund (1920-1985), and Erich Halik (1926-1995). Landig and Mund had been members of the Waffen-SS and focused, among others, on the ideas of the Italian esotericist and fascist sympathiser Julius Evola (1898-1974) as well as on the Atlantis theories of Herman Wirth (1885-1981), 1 2

For an overview, see Strube, “Nazism.” For a comprehensive yet sometimes problematic study, see Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun.

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who had been a founding member of the SS Ahnenerbe in 1935 and would publish in Landig’s Volkstum Verlag after the war. While this demonstrates certain historical continuities, the fantastical ideas of the Vienna group were largely detached from facts. It was claimed that the SS had constructed advanced aircraft, flying saucers or Flugscheiben, which an “esoteric SS” had used after the defeat of Nazi Germany to escape to subterranean bases under the North and South Poles. From there they allegedly continue their esoteric struggle against the Semitic “forces of darkness.” Their superior technology, which was responsible for the recent UFO sightings, was powered by the occult “Vril” force and operated under the sign of the “Black Sun,” which bore a deeper esoteric significance.3 In this way, Landig and his collaborators came up with an eschatological narrative in which the failure of National Socialism was but one episode in an esoteric struggle whose final battle was yet to come. Despite the bizarre character of these ideas – or perhaps because of it –, this esoteric neo-Nazism became very successful within an international network of former and neo-Nazis. These included authors such as the GreekFrench author Savitri Devi (ps. of Maximiani Portas, 1905-1982), who tried to combine Hindu nationalist and National Socialist ideologies and claimed that Hitler had been the avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu; or the Chilean diplomat Miguel Serrano (1917-2009), who proclaimed an “esoteric Hitlerism.” Influenced by the ideas of the Landig group, among others, they elaborated the notion of the Black Sun and “Thule,” an esoteric centre in the North that supposedly was the origin of the Hyperborean/Atlantean/Aryan race.4 Some of these ideas resurfaced in the sensationalist genre of literature mentioned above, but it was not until the 1990s that a younger generation of authors would popularise them on a large scale.5 Largely thanks to the new medium of the internet, a group called Tempelhofgesellschaft (Temple Court Society), which had formed in the 1980s and had close contacts to the Landig circle, further elaborated these ideas and linked the concept of the Black Sun to an ornament in Wewelsburg castle, which Heinrich Himmler had planned to expand into an SS educational centre.6 Despite this a-historical connection, this sun-wheel symbol is now one of the most widely spread identity markers among far-right actors across the globe, 3 About the notion of Vril, see Strube, Vril. 4 This is closely linked to the “Polar Myth” discussed in Godwin, Arktos. 5 See Strube, “Erfindung”; Kingsepp, “Macht.” 6 For more about Wewelsburg, see John-Stucke and Siepe (eds.), Mythos Wewelsburg; and Siepe, “Rolle der Wewelsburg.”

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Fig. 1: The Wewelsburg ornament that was later identified with the “Black Sun.”

stretching from the US-American alt-right via Western European neo-fascists to Ukrainian and Russian extremists.7 It has also become a firm part of popular culture, featuring in major video games such as Wolfenstein, or in the satiric movie Iron Sky. Given that these associations largely determine present-day perceptions of the relationship between occultism and politics, it is no wonder that one might raise the question whether occultism leads straight to fascism. For those who would subscribe to this assumption, it will be surprising to learn that modern occultism emerged in a socialist, radical left-wing context in the nineteenth century.8 The Frenchman Eliphas Lévi (ps. of Alphonse-Louis Constant, 1810-1875), who is regarded as the founder of modern occultism 7 8

Strube, “Esoterik und Rechtsextremismus.” Strube, “Socialist Religion,” and in detail, Strube, Sozialismus.

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and remains one of the most influential esoteric authors, was known as one of the most radical socialists in the 1840s. Later scholars assumed that his propagation of occultism went hand in hand with a political U-turn and a rejection of socialism. This is due to common misconceptions about both the history of socialism and of occultism. Early socialists, such as the SaintSimonians and Fourierists who were influential in France from the 1820s until the 1840s,9 were not only explicitly religious but also highly interested in esotericism.10 In fact, all French historiographies trace socialism back to a heretical tradition that today would be regarded as part of the history of esotericism.11 Not surprisingly, the writings of the radical “abbé Constant” reflected those tendencies in the 1840s and laid the foundation of what he would later call “occultism.” There were numerous different, highly heterogeneous socialisms around in the first half of the nineteenth century, and it was only in the beginning of the twentieth that Marxist strands would gain the upper hand and retrospectively rewrite the history of socialism as a secularising process towards historical materialism. Their predecessors, in contrast, regarded religion as the necessary foundation of society and the antidote to individualism or egoism, the semantical counterpart of “socialism.” Striving for a “synthesis” of religion, science, and philosophy, they propagated progress, human unity regardless of class (and often race), and the emancipation of women. The religion of the churches, however, was usually denounced as corrupted by power and greed, while the “true religion” of humanity had to be liberated from oppression. Against this background, socialists were fascinated by a vast range of esoteric authors, including the writings of theosophers,12 illuminists, mystics, Rosicrucians, magicians, alchemists, or visionaries such as Emanuel Swedenborg. The establishment of a kind of avant-garde of initiates to elevate this wisdom into the sphere of politics was a central socialist idea at that time, and it would later appear at the core of Lévi’s occultism.13 The “Romantic Socialisms”14 of the July Monarchy socialists and 9 Especially between the years 1830 until 1848, during the so-called July Monarchy. 10 Strube, “Socialism and Esotericism”; cf. Laurant, “Esotérisme et socialisme.” Still a useful resource, and a major source for James Webb’s later writings, is Viatte, Victor Hugo. 11 Strube, “Revolution, Illuminismus und Theosophie.” 12 This term was used to describe thinkers such as Jacob Boehme and should not be confused with the members of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1875. 13 For a condensed discussion of the underlying historical narrative, see Strube, “Baphomet.” 14 The scholarship on French Romanticism is too vast to be referred to here, although it is essential for this topic. Classics include Viatte, Sources Occultes; Bénichou, Les temps des prophètes; and Bowman, Le Christ des barricades.

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their European counterparts, such as Robert Owen (1771–1858), were later overshadowed by Marxism, but they continued to be inherently intertwined with occultism, Spiritualism (to which Owen himself became an adherent), or Theosophy. In fact, it can be argued that Spiritualism and occultism emerged directly within socialist, radical reformist milieus, who survived the demise of their political influence largely through these new religious movements.15 The occultism of Eliphas Lévi is thus not an isolated case but thoroughly representative of a broader historical development. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, when Spiritualist or occultist groups and organisations formed – such as the Theosophical Society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Ordre Martiniste, or the Ordo Templi Orientis –, socialist ideas were an essential component of these milieus.16 Radical socialist, anarchist, or feminist ideas were commonplace among members of Spiritualist societies and occultist orders, and some of the most prominent esotericists, such as Annie Besant (1847–1933), elected in 1907 as president of the Theosophical Society, had a socialist past or continued to be politically active in left-wing contexts. It would be misleading, however, to regard occultism as a generally leftwing, liberal, or progressive field. Its heterogeneity makes any generalisation impossible. Right-wing tendencies in the form of racism, anti-Semitism, or nationalism surged especially at the beginning of the twentieth century. This was a reflection of broader tendencies within European culture and politics, from which occultism – and this is the crucial point here – was not isolated. Quite the contrary, the many shades of occultism formed a prominent and integral part of avant-garde culture across Europe, and it is not surprising that they continued to influence especially the most radical political tendencies of its time. Racism, antisemitism, and related sentiments had always been commonplace across the left side of the political spectrum, too, but they were especially radicalised within the identity politics of rightwing movements. At this point, we simply lack the research to understand the historical development of politics within these contexts, their obvious relevance notwithstanding. This especially applies to a comparative perspective that takes into account the different national contexts, particularly in the period after World War I. In the light of present-day perceptions of “Nazi occultism,” it is important to shed more light on the context of National Socialism. In the 15 For a case study, see Cyranka, “Religious Revolutionaries.” 16 For instance, Braude, Radical Spirits; Edelman, Voyantes, guérisseuses et visionnaires; Dixon, Divine Feminine; or Hedenborg White, “Eloquent Blood.”

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German-speaking countries, esoteric ideas were widespread within völkisch movements and related contexts such as the Lebensreform (Life-Reform) since the end of the nineteenth century.17 Certainly, the most extreme and prominent example of a far-right esoteric movement is Ariosophy, which was a combination of Theosophy, among other esoteric traditions (including Kabbalah!), and völkisch thought. Its best-known representatives are Guido “von” List (1848-1919), who propagated an explicitly “Germanic” strand of Ariosophy, and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels (i.e. Adolf Josef Lanz, 1874-1954), the founder of the “Christian” Ordo Novi Templi. Ariosophical circles anticipated some of the ideas that would later play a central role in National Socialist ideology, and there is no doubt that the völkisch milieu, including its esoteric outgrowths like Ariosophy, formed a decisive part of the context of emergence of Nazism. However, as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke put it, Ariosophy was “a symptom rather than an influence in the way that it anticipated Nazism.”18 It was reflective of historical tendencies beyond the sphere of esotericism that paved the way for the success of the Nazis. It is telling that there has been no comprehensive study of Ariosophy since Goodrick-Clarke’s work, which was published in 1985. Much of the historical landscape that is relevant to a better understanding of early National Socialism and esotericism is still unknown. Despite the public fascination with the subject, there seems to be little interest in doing serious and competent research on it.19 Even important examples such as the Thule Society, which is in the focus of both sensationalist and esoteric neo-Nazi literature, are still under-researched. We do know, however, that the Thule Society hardly was the “occult order” and direct predecessor of the National Socialist party as it is still depicted even in some academic works.20 One of the most insightful contributions to this area is Peter Staudenmaier’s case study of Anthroposophy, which has demonstrated the ambiguous role of Anthroposophists in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. According to Staudenmaier, the links between esotericism and National Socialism were “ordinary, not esoteric. They can be explained not through the deviance of occultism but through its familiarity, its participation in and influence by

17 See, for instance, Puschner, Völkisch-religiöse Bewegung. A closer look at these contexts often reveals a much more complicated relationship with National Socialism than is often assumed. The same might be said about placing them on the political spectrum between left and right. 18 Goodrick-Clarke, Occult Roots, 202. 19 Among the noteworthy exceptions, see Treitel, Science. 20 For sometimes problematic yet informative studies of the Thule Society, see Rose, ThuleGesellschaft; and Gilbhard, Thule-Gesellschaft.

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central cultural currents of the era.”21 Such nuanced observations are the exception even among serious recent studies that continue to reproduce ill-informed clichés on the basis of a deeply problematic treatment of sources and secondary literature.22 In addition to this lack of scholarship on the entanglement of esotericism and fascism or National Socialism, there is a general disinterest in the history of the left side of the political spectrum. Our knowledge of this milieu, which had been thriving in the decades around 1900, is especially limited in the German context, firstly due to the focus on “Nazi occultism,” and secondly, as a consequence of the far-reaching eradication of political opponents in the Third Reich. There is, however, valuable scholarship on Russia and the Soviet Union demonstrating the relevance of esotericism in Communism.23 Certainly, occultism cannot simply be placed on one side of the political spectrum but has a much more complex history than is often assumed. One of the main reasons for the popular and historiographical success of “Nazi occultism” appears to be the explanation of the National Socialist crimes as the intrusion of “the occult” into German culture. The nationalism, racism, and antisemitism that formed the basis of Nazi ideology can thus be denounced as the Other of European culture, a deviance from its “proper civilisation.” It might be comforting to take the guest membership of a future Nazi leader in the Thule Society as evidence of the “occult” character of National Socialism, rather than think, for instance, about the role of the Christian Churches in Nazi Germany. It might be intriguing to highlight the fact that Hitler once read a book about magic rather than think about the influences on his thinking in more complex and perhaps uncomforting ways. However, this does not help to understand the emergence and success of National Socialism. Quite the contrary, it distorts our understanding of European history and “modernity” itself, of which occultism formed an integral, if ambiguous, part.24 This is especially relevant in the light of present-day developments that more than ever require us to provide nuanced, well-informed historical scholarship and not rely on “fake sources” and clichés that, essentially, are a reproduction of sensationalist and neoNazi narratives of the post-war era.

21 Staudenmaier, Between Occultism and Nazism, 327. Also see Staudenmaier, “Esoteric Alternatives.” 22 See, for instance, Kurlander, Hitler’s Monsters; and see Strube, Review of Kurlander. 23 For instance, Rosenthal, Occult; and Menzel et al., New Age of Russia. 24 Cf. the discussion in Pasi, “Modernity.”



A man who never died, angels falling from the sky… What is that Enoch stuff all about? György E. Szönyi

In 2000 a strange book was published in New York, titled Enoch the Ethiopian: The Lost Prophet of the Bible. It claimed that Enoch was “greater than Abraham, holier than Moses.” It also offered “a major key to the African origins of Hebrewism, Judaism, and Christianity.” While the scholarly argumentation of this book is very thin, it was well received in the New Age African-American community, and the hip-hop site Zulunation enthusiastically recommended it to its members (colour plate 15). Who was this Prophet Enoch, and how did he get “lost”? I stumbled upon the Enoch question ten years ago and have been fascinated by its cultural history ever since. A monograph on Enoch is in the making and slowly coming to its completion. Before focusing on Enoch, I had spent many years studying the fortunes of Dr. John Dee (1527-1609), Renaissance mathematician, “magus” of Queen Elizabeth I, mystical philosopher, and conjuror of angels. His career was rather curious: he started as a hopeful natural scientist but ended as an esotericist avant la lettre who, with the help of “scryers,” tried to contact angels in order to learn the prelapsarian Adamic language. He thought that the lingua adamica would enable him even to directly contact the Creator.1 In a private diary note, Dee penned the following appeal to God: I have read in thy bokes & records, how Enoch enjoyed thy favour and conversation: and also that to Abraham, and sundry other, thy good Angels were sent, by thy disposition to instruct them, informe them, help them, yea in wordly and domesticall affaires, yea, and sometimes to satisfy theyr desyres, doutes & questions of thy Secrets. And furdermore considering the Shew stone which the high preists did use, by thy owne ordering.2 1 See Szönyi, John Dee’s Occultism. 2 Dee, John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery, 58. This edition is the transcript of Dee’s “spiritual diaries,” that is, his angelic conversations with the help of a “scryer” and a “shewstone.” The original manuscripts are London, BL, MSS Sloane 3188, 3677.

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As this quotation shows, it was Dee’s ambition to acquire superhuman knowledge. As his role model he chose Enoch, about whom he could read in the Bible: “Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: … And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him” (Gen. 5:21-25). Even the Qu’ran has something to say about Enoch, who is named Idris there: “And [remember] Isma’il [Ishmael], and Idris [Enoch] and Dhul-Kifl [Isaiah], all were from among As-Sabirin [the Patient Ones, etc.]. And We admitted them to Our Mercy. Verily, they were of the righteous” (Qur’an 21:85-86). In the New Testament, Saint Jude’s letter mentions something very important: “Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints. To execute judgement upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them …” (Jude 14-15). The latter quotation suggests that Enoch had a book of prophesies which might contain great and fearful wisdom. No such text was known in the sixteenth century, but John Dee was fortunate enough to have insider information about the Patriarch. In 1550 the young scholar was in Paris, where he gave an acclaimed lecture at the Collège de France on Euclid’s geometry. He stayed on to the next year and in 1551 met a kindred spirit. Guillaume Postel (1510-1581) was also a mathematician, had great interest in what we might now refer to as esotericism and, as an accomplished orientalist, had studied a number of exotic languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic. Earlier Postel had had a brief encounter with the Jesuit order and stayed in Rome, where he met an Ethiopian priest who related to him the full story of Enoch as canonised in the Bible of his own church. Postel could not read the text itself, which did not belong to the biblical canon (today it is counted among the “pseudepigrapha”), but it was easy for him to summarise to the eagerly listening Dee what he had learnt from the Ethiopian. He also spoke about the Book of Enoch in many of his own publications of which Dee became a collector and reader.3 After centuries of speculation, during which scholars had been searching for The Book of Enoch in vain, only in the late eighteenth century did it finally arrive in Europe. James Bruce, a Scottish explorer of Africa who was looking for the source of the Nile, acquired two copies of the Ethiopian Bible.4 He presented one of them to the University of Oxford, where the noted 3 On Postel’s books in Dee’s library see the index of Roberts and Watson, John Dee’s Library Catalogue, 224. Dee’s marginalia in Postel’s publications are briefly discussed by Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy, 209, 222; and Håkansson, Seeing the Word, 217-218. 4 Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile. References to the Book of Enoch can be found in volume 1, 472-508.

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Orientalist Richard Laurence went on to prepare an English translation and a critical edition of The Book of Enoch.5 The first edition of the original text, written in Ge’ez, the ancient language of Ethiopia and Eritrea, was prepared by the German Orientalist August Dillman in 1851; and since the early twentieth century, a series of scholarly editions have been published in succession, based on extensive philological research.6 However, the textology of Enoch is very complicated, because there exist several “Books of Enoch,” written in different ancient languages and also with diverging narratives. In the present state of scholarship, which is still by no means definitive, we see the history of the Books of Enoch as follows.7 The thirty-two opening chapters of the Ethiopian text, referred to as 1Enoch, are known as the “Book of the Watchers.” Here we read how two hundred rebel angels, under the leadership of Shemihazah and Asael, descended to earth. They fell in love with the Daughters of Men and sired children with them, who became terrible, destructive giants, called the Nephilim. In the meantime, they also taught the humans all sorts of dangerous sciences: magic, metallurgy, warfare, even female cosmetics! God’s anger and his decision to send the Flood occurred in response to their transgressions.8 While the book of Genesis does not mention Enoch in connection with this episode, 1Enoch claims that the rebel angels pleaded with the Patriarch, asking him to intervene on their behalf in front of the Lord. He did so, but God rejected the appeal. This was the occasion when Enoch was first transported to heaven and was told about the coming Deluge, so that he could warn his offspring, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah. The rest of 1Enoch tells the story of Enoch’s second journey to heaven, and his education about the secrets of nature and the cosmos. It also contains dark prophecies concerning the fate of the godless rich and powerful tyrants. Scholars discovered to their surprise that the story of the Watchers and most other parts of the book were originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic during the Second Temple period, and large fragments of it survived among the Dead Sea Scrolls. At some point during the first or second century CE, the Book of Enoch was translated into Greek, and the whole story of the Watchers has survived in that language as part of the Chronographia of the Byzantine 5 Laurence, Book of Enoch. 6 The wider contexts of Enoch-literature were established by Robert Henry Charles, whose four editions were published between 1893 and 1917. See also Boccacini, Enoch and Qumran Origins, 2ff. 7 For a similar, somewhat more detailed summary see Szönyi, “Myth and Magic.” 8 See the new, authoritative, annotated edition and translation by Nickelsburg, 1Enoch; and a full-text new translation (without annotations) by Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1Enoch.

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chronographer George Syncellus (d. after 810).9 From this, yet another translation was made into Ge’ez, the language of the Christian Church of Ethiopia, where the book was accepted as part of the Old Testament canon. So this is what we know as 1Enoch today.10 At some point the Greek text was further developed and translated into Old Church Slavonic. It survived among the sacred texts of the Orthodox Christian Church as 2Enoch.11 Furthermore, some time between the fourth and the sixth centuries and influenced by early Jewish Merkabah mysticism, yet another Hebrew book was created in which (as summarised by Gershom Scholem) the visions of Enoch become accounts given to Rabbi Ishmael who in a trance visits the heavenly palaces. The Patriarch Enoch relates “his own metamorphosis into the angel Metatron, when his flesh was transformed into ‘fiery torches’.”12 The original title of this treatise was Sefer Hekhalot (the Book of Palaces), and it does indeed belong to the genre of “Hekhalot Literature,” known for its descriptions of the heavenly halls through which the visionary adept must travel in order to appear before the throne of divine glory. This particular book later became baptised by its modern editors as 3Enoch.13 The most important difference between the three Books of Enoch is that the Slavonic version (2Enoch) introduces Metatron as the new transfigured manifestation of Enoch, while the Hebrew 3Enoch further elaborates on Metatron and frames Enoch’s angelic “translation” by the dream-narrative of Rabbi Ishmael. It is noteworthy that none of these three texts was widely known during the European Middle Ages and the early modern period. After long debates among the Church Fathers, 1Enoch was not accepted as canonic by the Roman Catholic church, and was finally forgotten for a very long time.14 2Enoch was used only in the Orthodox Slavic community, and 3Enoch was known only to Hebrew mystics. The figure of Enoch, however, remained intriguing even on the basis of the canonised Biblical text as an example of translatio (deification of man) and especially after he and Eliah were identified with the witnesses who measure the Temple in St. John’s “Revelations” (11:3).

9 First humanist edition: Scaliger, Thesaurus. Modern English edition: Syncellus, Chronography. 10 Commonly available critical edition by Isaac, “1 (Ethiopic Apocalypse of) Enoch.” 11 Commonly available critical edition by Andersen, “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch.” 12 Scholem, Major Trends, 52. 13 First critical edition: Odeberg, Hebrew Book of Enoch. Modern English critical edition: Alexander, “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch.” On the relationship between 2Enoch and 3Enoch, see Orlov, Enoch-Metatron Tradition. 14 The whole early reception is presented by VanderKam, Enoch.

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Enoch became even more fascinating when the speculations of the ninthcentury Arabic astrologer and scholar Abu Ma’shar reached Europe in the twelfth century. According to Abu Ma’shar, there had been three Hermeses. One had lived before the Flood and was identical with Enoch, known as Idris by the Muslims. The second had lived among the Chaldaeans and had founded Babylon after the Flood. The third had also lived after the Flood and was a famous physician and scientist among the Egyptians, also known as Hermes Trismegistus. The three figures soon blended in the European imagination, and during the later Middle Ages a mythical Enoch cum or alias Hermes Trismegistus was believed to have been a great magus, founder of mathematics, astrology and alchemy.15 During the Renaissance we see a fervent search for the magical-mystical writings of Enoch. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) was fascinated by Metatron – he was one of the first gentiles who had access to Hebrew kabbalistic mysteries. Scholars from Guillaume Postel to Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) were searching for the Enochian language, which they identified with the language of angels also used by Adam in Paradise. John Dee even developed a system of angel magic to acquire this powerful tool directly from supernatural beings. It is important to see that the figure and the myth of Enoch were used by Jews, Arabs, and Christians all around Europe and the Mediterranean, and this common cultural heritage could provide fuel for unorthodox and non-hegemonic ideas as well as mystical-magical dreams for the members of all three communities. Enoch held special appeal to Christian magicians and cabalists because he had enjoyed direct contact with God, which meant that he had experienced a state of supernatural exaltatio. According to the legends, he was also knowledgeable in magic and received direct instructions about the secrets of nature as well as about the cosmic and angelic realms. As a venerated character from the Old Testament, he legitimised – at least from the perspective of boldly heterodox thinkers – those magical practices that had been so much debated by Christians and had often been condemned as heretical and illicit. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we see Enoch appear in various contexts. For instance, he was mentioned as a role model for pious pastors: many funeral sermons compared his dignity to that of deceased priests or ministers. Radical protestants also sought illumination by evoking the patriarch, for instance Jane Lead (1624-1704, follower of the magicallyminded radical Quaker, John Pordage), who in 1694 published her Enochian

15 See Szönyi, “Reincarnations of Enoch.”

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Walks with God found out by a Spiritual Traveller.16 But Enoch could be used in scientific contexts too. For example, Anton Maria Schyrlaeus Rheita, a Central-European Capuchin monk and astronomer who further developed Kepler’s telescope, wrote an intriguing book titled Oculus Enoch et Eliae (Amsterdam, 1645). Here he argued that the new telescopes could show even more wonders to the curious eyes than the visions supernaturally revealed to Enoch and Elia.17 On the other hand, Athanasius Kircher (in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus, Rome 1652) claimed that the Enochian language was the mother tongue of humankind; and as late as 1728, Henry Bell asserted in his art-historical monograph An Historicall Essay on the Original of Painting that the inventor of painting was probably Enoch. By the late nineteenth century, the discovery of the three Books of Enoch accelerated both scholarly research and the popular imagination. The Romantics found inspiration in the story of the Watchers about the fateful love and union of angels and the daughters of men.18 In 1823, Lord Byron wrote a drama, Heaven and Earth: A Mystery, in which he treated the love of angels and women based on Genesis, chapter 6. A few months earlier, in the same year, Thomas Moore (Byron’s friend and biographer, and a popular Romantic poet and song writer) published a series of poems, The Loves of Angels. He prefixed to it a scholarly introduction in which he pinpointed the Book of Enoch as a source of inspiration, no doubt informed by Laurence’s edition. This collection was illustrated by the contemporary painter Robert Westall. His soft Biedermeier pictures stand in stark contrast with those of John Flaxman, a leading sculptor of the period, who likewise drafted a series of powerful pencil drawings representing the love between angels and the daughters of men. From this period, arguably most interesting is William Blake’s interpretation of Enoch. Early in his career he represented Enoch with his family (1780s), and then as the inventor of all the arts (1807, see Fig. 1). In his final years (the mid-1820s), undoubtedly fascinated by the publication of 1Enoch, he sketched a few very bold illustrations to the Book of the Watchers, showing the intercourse of the angels with the “daughters” and the appearance of the fearsome Nephilim.19 Most explicit is the sketch that represents a “daughter” flanked by two overtly priapic Watchers while the woman touches an impressive, radiating phallos (see Fig. 2). 16 On Pordage and Lead, see Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 136-160. 17 On Rheita see Westfall, in the Galileo Project. 18 I have detailed this excitement in Szönyi, “Promiscuous Angels.” 19 Next to my paper mentioned in the previous note, see Schuchard, “Why Mrs. Blake Cried”; Rowland, “Blake, Enoch, and Emerging Biblical Criticism.”

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Fig. 1: William Blake, Enoch and the Arts. 1806-1807. British Museum. Modified lithograph, impression 1A. Reproduced from Robert N. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake. A Catalogue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), fig. 30.

This sexual interest of Blake might prefigure the emergence of “The Beast,” Aleister Crowley, who in the early twentieth century recycled John Dee’s Enochian magic and combined it with sexual divination. Crowley’s “Enochian magick” is widely practised even today in the circles of the Ordo Templi Orientis and (as Egil Asprem has shown) discussed on the internet.20 The fascination with Enoch continues from the twentieth century up to today. Here I can only mention a few interesting examples, ranging from religious enthusiasm to literary, and even filmic representations.21 Apart from the story of the rebel angels, the Book of Enoch actually focused on the apocalyptic prophecies of the Patriarch. In his footsteps, we find enthusiasts who claimed to be reincarnations of Enoch and preached frightening admonitions to humankind. The list begins with Lodovico Lazzarelli and Giovanni da Correggio in fifteenth-century Italy and later includes Edward Kenealy (1819-1880), a lawyer and notorious political demagogue who from ancient texts fabricated an extraordinary esoteric religion of his own (he believed he was the twelfth messenger of God, part of a lineage that included Adam, 20 See Asprem, Arguing with Angels, 85-103. 21 On the modern cultural history of Enoch, see Szönyi, “Enoch: The Modern Apocalyptic Hero.”

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Fig. 2: William Blake, Two Watchers Descending to a Daughter of Men. 1820s. US National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald collection, pencil, inscribed. Reproduced from G.R. Bentley, “A Jewel in an Ethiop’s Ear,” in: Robert N. Essick and Donald Pearce (eds.), Blake in His Time (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), fig. 141.

Enoch, Jesus Christ, and Ghengis Khan). And the catalogue by no means ends with the infamous Russian writer and mystic Dmitri Merezhkovsky (1865-1941), who associated Enoch’s teachings with the mythology of the lost continent Atlantis (1929) and used this idea to prophesise about an upcoming destructive great war. His loud apocalypticism was echoed by a new generation of “traditionalist” thinkers in the years before World War II: Leopold Ziegler (1881-1958), René Guénon (1886-1951), Julius Evola (1898-1974)

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and others. These “traditionalists” had a counterpart in Hungary: Béla Hamvas (1897-1968), who during the war years translated and published the Book of Enoch in Hungarian. It is interesting to note that Hamvas’ apocalyptic esotericism grew into a cult during the communist period and he is still very influential as an inspiration for contemporary counter-cultural trends in Hungary. Apart from the abounding scholarly literature, one of the most fruitful domains to look for Enoch in our contemporary culture is the internet. This does not mean, however, that the Patriarch would not prominently feature in established and non-digital cultural representations such as literary fiction, painting, even film. Today’s interest seems to swing back toward the fascination of the Middle Ages, namely the transfiguration of Enoch and his glorification as the mighty angel Metatron. But one should not be surprised to find these modern representations permeated with (post) modern irony, scepticism, and transgression either. Alton Gansky, a Baptist pastor who is known in the United States as a writer of “Christian suspense fiction,” published a novel titled Enoch in 2008. On the cover one reads: “He lived long ago. He never died, now the most powerful woman in the world is trying to own him …” The book introduces a series of wondrous events in contemporary America, all associated with a wandering traveller who calls himself Henick. He becomes more and more famous, until a wicked and greedy televangelist woman kidnaps the prophet and wants to use him for her own purposes. In this page-turning thriller, Henick has the same role as Enoch in the traditional sources: he is the messenger of God who forewarns mankind about the rising anger of the Lord, goaded by their wickedness, which provokes his punishment. Enoch-Metatron has a contrarious role in Philip Pullman’s awardwinning trilogy His Dark Materials (1995-2000). This complicated saga takes place in parallel worlds that are f illed with various supernatural species, with the underlying paradox that the work, which ultimately seems to seek a purified human faith, is written by a sworn atheist. Here Enoch – in his transfigured identity as the angel Metatron – appears to be the usurper of the power of the Authority, that is of God, who himself had established his dominion by usurpation. Metatron is a true manipulator who has fully integrated himself among the angelic orders and pushed himself into a leading position. Pullman’s His Dark Materials is not only a masterly plotted narrative with unforgettable characters, it also outlines an intriguing theological and philosophical system within the framework of a created possible world consisting of multiple utopias and dystopias.

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Metatron is the chief villain in the novels, so the author completely subverts his positive, prophetic character as established in the book of Genesis and the apocrypha. Things are different with the extravagant cult-film director Kevin Smith. Religion and esotericism strongly feature in his controversial 1999 film Dogma, where Metatron appears as a kind of director of events who impersonates the Voice of God. The film quite ingeniously tightropes between Hollywood glamour (Ben Affleck, Salma Hayek) and independent cinema, dark comedy, and apocalyptic prophecy, making a serious appeal for true religiousness and outrageous heterodoxy. While the film provoked much discussion, ranging from cultic admiration to hate mail, Smith in many interviews refused to be seen as a profane blasphemer. Instead, or so he claimed, he had intended to present a personal statement of faith in his own way, by using hip dialogue and sharp observations on pop culture, religion and bodily functions. In any case, his film is a thought-provoking case that reveals connections between Enoch’s New Age revival (such as Margaret Barker’s reform theology)22 and contemporary apocalypticism. Last but not least, it is worth bearing in mind that various episodes in the Book(s) of Enoch have inspired visual artists over the centuries. It seems that the mystical experience of transfiguration is once again a source of fascination. In a Facebook search for “Metatron.” a host of them appears, from the angelic and archangelic to a tattoo artist. On such pages one finds examples of images, following the venerable tradition of early modern illuminative cosmograms, or plays with light like those in the stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral. Their messages, however, are not apocalyptic ones of doom; rather the gentle therapies of the New Age. Behold, yet another transformation of the Patriarch!23 By way of conclusion, let me return to my own interest in Western esotericism and Enoch in particular. Throughout my scholarly career I have been trying to understand the prevalence and ceaseless popularity of esotericism as it bridges worldviews and societies from the premodern to the postmodern. Until a few decades ago, historians believed that esotericism might have been an integral part of the early modern world picture, but then disappeared with the scientific revolution from the seventeenth century onward. In reality, as of the eighteenth century, we see a great revival of esoteric ideas and occult practices emerging as a counter-culture 22 Barker, The Lost Prophet. 23 See for example: https://www.facebook.com/SacredLightActivations/; and https://www. facebook.com/metatrontattooart/ (both accessed: 2018-09-20).

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that expresses deep dissatisfaction with the Enlightenment project and its exclusive emphasis on rationalism. Understanding the Enoch phenomenon more precisely may lead us also to better understand the relevance of the occult in the post-Enlightenment world. At the same time, studying the various cultural representations of Enoch contributes to our understanding of the inspiring force of Biblical mythology in literature and the arts.



Is there any room for women in Jewish kabbalah? Elliot R. Wolfson

Given the well-known penchant in the Jewish tradition to reply to a question with another question, I would respond to this question with the question, “What do we mean by Jewish kabbalah?” If the answer to that query is to be guided by historical precedent, then the answer is resoundingly negative. With virtually no exceptions, the circles of production and consumption of kabbalistic ideas and practices, whether through oral or written transmission, have been restricted to men with varying degrees of rabbinic learning. Attention is certainly paid to Jewish women in the teachings promulgated by kabbalists, and scholars can creatively extrapolate what the Jewish mystics thought about their mothers, daughters, and wives, but from a socio-cultural perspective there was no place for them in the exclusively male fraternities. If, however, the answer to the question about the role of women in Jewish kabbalah is about possibilities in the present and in the future engendered thereby, then the answer is surely positive. In a measure, this shift is part of the more active participation of women in the various denominations of Judaism with the notable exception of the ultraorthodox communities. To be sure, the catalyst for this increased egalitarianism can be explained without reference to the kabbalah; however, this major change in the sociological fabric of Jewish faith is congruent with the messianic potential of the kabbalistic assumption that in the ultimate unity to be achieved at the endtime, the indifference of infinity – the source whence all beings emerge and whither they return – there is neither male nor female. In this state, gender polarity is neutralised: there is neither male nor female because male and female are accorded equal status and not because the one is contained in the other. Turning to the question of historical precedent, it must be said, as many scholars have noted, that one of the distinguishing features of the medieval kabbalah was the emphasis placed on the use of gender to characterise both the nature of the divine and the relationship of the human to the divine. The engendering myth undergirding the kabbalistic ruminations on gender construction is derived from the accounts of the creation of man and woman in the first two chapters of Genesis – stemming respectively from the Priestly and the Yahwist strata. The two narratives offer seemingly disparate perspectives. The first account relates that God created Adam

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as male and female concurrently, which has been interpreted through the centuries as an affirmation of the androgynous status of the primordial human being. By contrast, the second chapter recounts that man was created first and then woman was created from his side or rib (ṣela), an ontological dependency instantiated linguistically in the fact that woman is called ishshah, the feminine form derived from the masculine ish. With good reason, contemporary feminist readers have argued that the first account has greater egalitarian potential than the second. For the medieval Jewish exegete, however, this strategy was not viable given the presumption regarding the underlying unity of the biblical text. The kabbalists were no exception to this rule and thus, in spite of their attending to the feminine dimension of the divine, the attribute of judgment, which counterbalances the masculine attribute of mercy, they interpreted the description of woman being fashioned from man in the second chapter of Genesis as a midrashic explication of the androgynous nature of primal Adam implied in the first chapter. I will cite a critical passage from the Zohar, the main repository of kabbalistic lore that began to circulate in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Spain, which has been invoked by several scholars in support of the contention that medieval kabbalists, as opposed to the encratic tendency of other forms of mystical piety, including especially in the history of Christianity, celebrated heterosexuality as the means to bring about the rectification of the schism within the divine, which corresponds to the exilic state of the Jewish people in the world: R. Simeon said: Supernal mysteries were revealed in these two verses [Genesis 5:1-2]. “Male and female he created them,” to teach about the supernal glory, the mystery of faith, for out of this mystery Adam was created. … “Male and female he created them.” From here [we learn that] any image in which there is not found male and female is not a supernal image as is appropriate, and this has been established in the mystery of our Mishnah. Come and see: in any place where male and female are not found as one, the blessed holy One does not place his dwelling there, and blessings are not found except in a place where male and female are found,1 as it is written “He blessed them and called them Adam in the day he created them.” It is not written “He blessed him and called his name Adam,” for even the name Adam is not invoked except when male and female are one.2 1 2

Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 62b. Zohar 1:55b.

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The divine image (ṣelem elohim) with which the human being was created is interpreted in light of the gender binary, an interpretation that accords not only with the literal sense of the scriptural text but one that was hinted at in at least two rabbinic pericopes that surely influenced the kabbalists; the first, attributed to R. Jeremiah ben Eleazar, maintained that God created Adam as an androgyne, and the second, attributed to R. Samuel ben Naḥman, that God created Adam two-faced. Whatever the differences between the two explanations, they both proffer a somatic and specifically gendered understanding of the divine image.3 Building on this midrashic sensibility, the author of the aforecited zoharic text emphasises that the polarity of masculine and feminine in the pleroma of divine emanations is alluded to in the statement ascribed to Simeon ben Yoḥai that the verses from the fifth chapter of Genesis, which basically reiterate the Priestly account of the first chapter, instruct us about the “supernal glory” and the “mystery of faith.” Just as the earthly Adam was fashioned in the image that is male and female, so the image above of which the human image is but an image. 4 Moreover, it is incumbent on each Jewish male to be conjoined to a female, so that the image below will be complete. If a man is not paired with a woman, there is no appropriate vessel to receive the blessings from the supernal image. Prima facie, the text might support the view that kabbalists operated with a theory that accords equal value to both genders, since heterosexual union is affirmed as necessary to merit the divine effluence; indeed, the very name Adam is invoked only when masculine and feminine are united. However, to adopt such a position fails to take into account the dynamics of gender construction underlying the kabbalistic symbolism. Androgyny, and the nature of the heterosexual union implied thereby, cannot be grasped by simply repeating the literal words espoused in the primary sources and listing each reference to the female who supplements the male.5 Even in the aforecited passage, if one is attuned to the subtle nuances of the gender politics, as it were, one can detect the androcentrism at play: the male must couple with the female to complete his own image by having 3 Genesis Rabbah 8:1 (Theodor and Albeck, ed., 55). See Aaron, “Imagery,” esp. 8-10; Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 31-46, 78-83, 231-235; idem, “On the History,” 3-12. On the somatic understanding of the divine image in rabbinic literature, see references cited in Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 23 nt 57; Goshen-Gottstein, “Body as Image of God,” esp. 178-183; Aaron, “Shedding Light”; Lorberbaum, Image of God. 4 Zohar 3:10b. 5 This is the case with the presentation of the kabbalistic discussions of the motif of the androgyne in Idel, Kabbalah and Eros, 94-103; idem, “Androgyny and Equality”; idem, “Ascensions, Gender and Pillars,” esp. 104-105 and 107-108.

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the space –sometimes demarcated on the basis of rabbinic precedent as the house – in which to extend and overflow, characteristics that are troped as decidedly masculine in the kabbalistic axiology. By so doing, he becomes himself a container to receive the divine efflux issuing from the dwelling of the Shekhinah, and consequently, the female above is masculinised and the male below feminised.6 That women yearn erotically for men and men reciprocally for women goes without saying; from that standpoint heterosexuality is understood dynamically as a mutual commingling of opposites: the female can become male and the male female, a process that I have referred to as the crossing of gender boundaries.7 However, this crossing is not ambivalent in the kabbalistic symbolism; there is fluidity but there is no ambiguity: the female that overflows is masculinised, and the male that delimits is feminised. The flexibility of gender transformation, therefore, only attests to the rigidity of the kabbalistic valorisation of gender roles: the will to bestow – viewed through the lens of the heteroerotic male fantasy – necessitates a vessel to contain the seminal discharge. The female thus functions, as Judith Butler puts it in her analysis of Luce Irigaray, as the “inscriptional space of that phallogocentrism, the specular surface which receives the marks of a masculine signifying act only to give back a (false) reflection and guarantee of phallogocentric self-sufficiency, without making any contribution of its own.”8 The key to comprehending the symbol of the androgyne in the kabbalistic material is to discern the manner in which the scriptural narratives are read. As I have documented in detail elsewhere, the position adopted in the first chapter of Genesis that Adam was created male and female was read by kabbalists through the prism of the description of woman being created out of man in the second chapter of Genesis.9 Hence, the construction of woman from man should be understood as the severing of the original androgyne depicted in the first chapter. The sawing apart of the androgyne is what brought about the gender polarity, the masculine symbolised as the front and the feminine as the back.10 Conversely, the reunification of male and female signifies the restoration of the female to the male and the reconstitution of the male androgyne, the state of androgyneity in which the gender dimorphism is overcome. 6 On the feminisation of the masculine, see Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 329-332. 7 Wolfson, Circle in the Square, 79-121. 8 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 39 (emphasis in original). 9 See the extended discussions of the symbol of the androgyne in Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 67-77, 142-189. 10 Zohar 2:55a.

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The arrayment or rectification (tiqqun) of Adam is dependent on Eve because had Eve not been separated from Adam there would not have been the possibility of coitus and the procreative extension of the chain of existence to constitute what Charles Mopsik aptly called the body of engenderment.11 Accordingly, it is correct to say that Adam was not perfected until Eve was perfected.12 The original androgyne – the male that comprises the masculine in the front and the feminine in the back – is imperfect until there is a division of the sexes that facilitates the face-to-face union. Nevertheless, the purpose of the heterosexual bonding is the restoration of the female to the male whence she was taken, a hyperliteral reading of the verse “Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).13 The “one flesh” (basar eḥad), as the contextual sense intimates, signifies the retrieval of the state before the woman was severed from the man, the state that I surmise displays a uniform “gender” as opposed to the dual “sex” that ensues from the split of the androgyne. With this split there emerged the patriarchal hierarchy. The deferential rank accorded the female is made explicit in the following zoharic passage: Come and see: when a woman is conjoined to her husband, she is called by the name of her husband, man (ish) and woman (ishshah), righteous one (ṣaddiq) and righteousness (ṣedeq). … “Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh” – everything to draw her in love and to be conjoined to her.14

If one reads the last sentence out of context, it can be upheld as evidence for the romantic celebration of sexual impartiality. However, if one reads in context, then it is evident that the goal of sexual desire from the male’s point of view is to restore the part of him that was amputated. This is the meaning of the comment that when the woman is conjoined to her husband, she is called by his name. It does not say that, reciprocally, the husband is called by her name. Although it is reasonable to presume that sexual union alters the male as much as the female, the passage gives voice to the belief that coitus ontologically, and not just functionally, is a masculinisation of the female – they will be one flesh.15 11 Mopsik, “Body of Engenderment.” 12 Zohar 2:231a. 13 For discussion of various kabbalistic commentaries on this verse, see Mopsik, Sex of the Soul, 115-127. 14 Zohar 1:49a-b. 15 Wolfson, Circle in the Square, 92-98; idem, Language, Eros, Being, 147-149.

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This is not to deny that central to the kabbalistic worldview is the assumption that the male is refined by being conjoined to the female and the female by being conjoined to the male, that the left is contained in the right and the right in the left. Simply put, as kabbalists are wont to say, just as there is no day without night, so there is no night without day.16 To cite one exemplary passage from the zoharic corpus that extols this reciprocity: This is the praise of the supernal faith, to know that the “Lord is God” (Deuteronomy 4:35), the male is perfected through the female, and the one is contained in the other, the male is built through the female, and this is the perfect unity, and there is no perfection but in male and female as one.17

Contrary to the account of the second chapter of Genesis wherein the woman is said to have been constructed from the man – an ontological assumption substantiated philologically by the derivation of ishshah from ish (Genesis 2:23) – this passage emphasises that the male is built from the female. The intent of this formulation, however, is not to reverse the supremacy of the male according to the scriptural account, but rather to emphasise that the male, too, is made whole through the female, an idea already alluded to in the mandate that a man should leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife so that they become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). The anthropological assumption reflects the theosophical mystery of the supernal faith: YHWH, the masculine potency of mercy, is Elohim, the feminine potency of judgment. 16 Zohar 1:46a; 246b; 2:161b; 3:93b, 134b (Idra Rabba). For parallel language, see Moses de León, Shushan Edut (Scholem, ed.), 335: “The Written Torah is the general [kelal] and the Oral Torah is the particular [peraṭ]. However, this is not without that, and that is not without this; the general needs the particular and the particular needs the general. And the secret is there is no day without night or night without day.” And see the comment in the fragment of the untitled work by Moses de León preserved in MS Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cod. Hebr. 47, fol. 340a: “The secret of the truth is the Written Torah and the Oral Torah contained one within the other [kalul zeh ba-zeh], and everything is one matter and a proper secret for one who understands.” These passages, and many others that could have been cited, emphasise the correlative nature of the polarities of night and day, the general and the particular, and by extension, male and female. It is reasonable to presume, therefore, as many scholars have, that the kabbalah promotes the idea that divine unity is dependent on the pairing of the two poles of the gender dimorphism. However, as I have argued in many studies, this emphasis marks the first stage of the reparation of the split of the male androgyne. The ultimate purpose of the heteroerotic coupling is to pacify judgment by loving kindness, and hence the second stage entails the containment of the feminine left in the masculine right. 17 Zohar Ḥadash (Margaliot, ed.), 90c.

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The identity – and not merely the unity – of the two names signals the repair of the schism in and through which the gender polarity prevailed. The matter is expressed in miscellaneous ways by the zoharic authorship including in this reworking of the rabbinic myth explaining the shift from the parity of the sun and the moon to the latter diminishing itself vis-à-vis the former,18 a myth that is anchored exegetically in the shift in Genesis 1:16 from the expression “two great lights” (shenei ha-me’orot ha-gedolim) to the “great light” (ha-ma’or ha-gadol) that ruled by day and the “smaller light” (ha-ma’or ha-qaṭon) that ruled by night: The two great lights – initially in one bond [be-ḥibbura ḥada], and this mystery is the complete name as one, YHWH Elohim, even though it was not revealed but in a concealed manner [de-lo ihu be-itgalya ella be-oraḥ satim].19

Originally, sun and moon – symbolic ciphers for the masculine Tif’eret and the feminine Malkhut – were united and as a consequence they were of equal stature, or in the precise language of the text, “at first they dwelled as one in balance” (yatvei ka-ḥada be-shiqqula). Subsequently, sun and moon were separated and the latter’s light was lessened, which is interpreted zoharically in a more radical fashion as the moon having no light at all except what it receives from the sun (leit lah nehora bar mi-shimsha) in the same way that “a woman is enhanced only when she is united with her husband” (leit itteta be-ribbuya bar be-va‘alah ka-ḥada).20 I imagine no unbiased reader would deny the androcentrism implied in this statement. But does the original state of balance signify equality of gender? Admittedly, the male potency to overflow cannot be actualised without the female capacity to receive, and in this respect a positive role in the creative process is accorded to the feminine, but surely the impartial reader will acknowledge that, in the final analysis, this is a facet of the phallomorphic prejudice. The point is made succinctly in a passage from a relatively neglected kabbalist, Judah Canpanton, the disciple of Yom Ṭov Ishbili, the Riṭba: The reason for “This time is bone of my bones” (Genesis 2:23), that is, like the first time, when they were androgynous [du parṣufin], the truth 18 Babylonian Talmud, Ḥullin 60b. 19 Zohar 1:20a. 20 Ibid.

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of the essence was unified [hayah amittat ha-eṣem aḥat]. The two were equal [shawim] in will and stature, and when they were separated, the creator placed a part of his bones and one limb from his limbs [to create the female counterpart] so that she would listen to him, and he would rule over her and she would be inclined to whatever he wishes. All this happened to Adam on account of Eve just as what occurred to the sun was on account of the grievance of the moon with regard to the sun.21

Leaving aside the patently androcentric implication of conferring a subservient status to the woman on account of the separation from the state of androgyny, a separation that was caused by her in the same manner that the lessening of the lunar light was caused by the moon complaining about the parallel status of the sun, a careful reading of the description of that originary state indicates that the androgyne entailed one essence, that is, one gender, which later bifurcated into two sexuated beings. As Canpanton put it elsewhere: It may be inferred from what the verse says “This time is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23) that this was not the case the first time. … For since there was in Adam a limb from his limbs prepared for the woman to come to be from him, and she was created from him, it follows that they were created in their perfection, for it was not necessary for the woman to be made from something new but rather from what was already made.22

The assertion that male and female were primordially equal does not entail a difference of identity but rather an identity of difference because the woman is still depicted as being comprised in the one essence (or bone) of the man. To say, therefore, that there is no difference between man and woman does not necessarily imply an egalitarianism that would erase all gender disparity. It signifies rather that the differentiation did not yet occur, a differentiation that is the ontological justification for the ancillary status of the female.

21 Judah Canpanton, Leqaḥ Ṭov, MS Oxford, Bodleian 1642, fol. 18b. Concerning this figure, see Golomb, Judah ben Solomon Campanton; Scholem, Kabbalah, 66-67; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 261; Roth, “Qabbalah,” 545 and 549. 22 Judah Canpanton, Arba’ah Qinyanim (Blau, ed.), 22. I have also consulted MS Cambridge, Trinity College 120, fol. 23b and MS JTSA 2532, fol. 20a.

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Is there a possibility within the tradition to undermine this phallocentrism and to open a space in which we could imagine a woman kabbalist? As I noted at the outset, redemption for the kabbalists consists of attaining a state of consciousness – or perhaps metaconsciousness – that entails incorporation of all differentiation in the indifferent oneness that is ascribed to Ein Sof or to Keter, the divine nothingness marked by the paradoxical coincidence of opposites such that night is day, left is right, white is black, Jew is non-Jew, male is female. Within the collapse of difference, which is characteristic of this indifference, there is no longer any meaningful distinction between antinomies, and hence no ontological basis to preserve the alterity of the feminine vis-à-vis the masculine or that of the masculine vis-à-vis the feminine. To enter this “matrixial borderspace,” the “im-pure zone of neither day nor night, of both light and darkness,”23 what is required is not only an apophasis of gender, a resignification of the phallic law of desire, but an apophasis of the apophasis, a venturing beyond to the precipice, the chasm of the excluded middle, where opposites are identical in the opposition of their identity.24 While it is not at all clear to me that such an ideal can be implemented sociologically without dispelling the very path that leads to it, this may very well be the most daring implication of the messianic potential of the kabbalah: man and woman would be truly equal in the indifference of infinity where there is neither male nor female. Gender neutrality is not secured by the affirmation of dual sexuality, but by the overcoming of the phallocentric system of signification that invariably engenders the potential for otherness as feminine. The delineation of the female as the site of alterity problematises the hegemony of the masculine, and thus essentialising the feminine as the inessential, the essence that defies essentialisation, has been a necessary step along the way of critical thinking. The apophasis of apophasis, however, demands taking the next step toward an unadulterated alterity, which would preclude not only the reduction of the other to the same but the reduction of the same to the other. This othering of otherness can take root within that borderspace where there is no other because there is nothing but the other that in the absence of the same is not marked as the presence of the other. In taking that step, we commence to trespass the sign of both patriarchy and matriarchy, and in such a world, we can well imagine a female kabbalist complementing a male kabbalist.

23 Ettinger, Matrixial Borderspace, 109. 24 See the nuanced discussion in Keller, “Apophasis of Gender.”



Surely born-again Christianity has nothing to do with occult stuff like alchemy?1 Mike A. Zuber

Nowadays, some Evangelical and Pentecostal strands of Christianity define themselves by emphasising a specific moment at which believers die to their old ways and enter a new life. They describe this conversion experience as their spiritual rebirth and subsequently identify as “bornagain Christians.” While much ink has been spilt on born-again politics in the United States,2 the historical origins of this notion of rebirth have received much less attention. Obviously, most born-again Christians today like to distance themselves from occult stuff and generally do not talk much about alchemy. Yet around 1600, when the goals of alchemy were among the loftiest aspirations pursued by investigators of nature, the transmutation of base metals like lead into noble, pure ones such as gold provided powerful metaphors to illustrate the transformation of carnal, wicked, and dying sinners into spiritual, redeemed, and glorified believers. Due to the changing fortunes of alchemy after the Enlightenment, we should not expect to trace a continuous stream of sources on the alchemy of spiritual rebirth, yet some of the most influential devotional writers of old developed such notions as they elaborated upon the born-again experience. After discussing two key Bible passages, I shall argue that spiritual rebirth became something distinct in the aftermath of the Reformation only. Following W.R. Ward’s Early Evangelicalism (2006), I hold that the distant intellectual ancestors of Billy Graham (1918-2018) and his How to Be Born Again (1977) were found in clandestine networks of alchemists, Paracelsians, Rosicrucians, and theosophers around 1600. They responded to what church historians have called a “crisis of piety,” a deep rift between academic theology and lay devotion.3 As German mysticism and 1 Douglas H. Shantz and Philip Lockley both read earlier versions of this essay and provided valuable feedback. 2 E.g. Miller, The Age of Evangelicalism. 3 Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 6-23.

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alchemical Paracelsianism combined in underground circles, the art of the philosophers’ stone played an important role for the development of spiritual rebirth as a distinct doctrine. The most famous representatives of these milieus, Johann Arndt (1555-1621) and Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), communicated their alchemical insights on the new birth to the later movements of Pietism, Methodism, and ultimately modern Evangelicalism.4 It appears that born-again Christianity is the unlikely twin of spiritual alchemy.5 On the face of it, the Bible would be the most obvious source from which born-again Christianity derives its defining feature. According to John’s Gospel, Jesus Christ himself used the phrase “born again” in his conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”6 Taking this very literally, Nicodemus was puzzled but Jesus insisted that he “should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again’.” He also used the phrase “born of the Spirit,” which gave rise to the notion of spiritual rebirth.7 The Nicodemus passage is indeed an important source for born-again Christians, yet throughout the much longer and wider history of Christianity it was most commonly interpreted as referring to baptismal rebirth rather than spiritual rebirth. According to this view, baptism coincides with, brings about, or symbolises spiritual rebirth.8 This happened because another verse coloured the interpretation of the passage. According to the Pauline Epistle to Titus, salvation was attained through Christ’s mercy and “the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”9 Unlike Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, this phrase clearly referred to baptism, and many church fathers consequently interpreted John’s “born of water and the Spirit” in parallel to the verse from the Epistle to Titus. The dominant understanding of rebirth throughout the Christian tradition views it as something intimately linked to baptism, and the practice of infant baptism further corroborates this link. This makes baptismal rebirth very different from the conversion experience of born-again 4 Shantz, “Pietist Notions”; Hindmarsh, The Spirit, 109-115. 5 Zuber, Spiritual Alchemy. On alchemy generally, see Peter J. Forshaw’s contribution to the present volume. 6 John 3:3 (New International Version). This translation is favoured by Evangelicals, though other ones, most notably the historically influential King James Version, also use the phrase “born again” here. 7 John 3: 7-8. 8 Metzger and Coogan, Companion, 73-74, 645, 793. 9 Titus 3: 5.

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Evangelicals. The latter is not necessarily accompanied by baptism, which may follow (much) later or not at all. In fact, throughout his representative rebirth manual, Graham never once talks about baptism.10 Of course, in the dominant understanding, there is no conflict between baptismal and spiritual rebirth: they simply go together, albeit in mysterious ways. Among born-again Christians, this close association or even identification of baptism and rebirth has given way to a sharp distinction between the two. During the century of the Reformation, there were two momentous developments that led to a dissociation of baptism and rebirth. First, with their emphasis on believer’s baptism, the Anabaptists no longer accepted that rebirth accompanied infant baptism. Instead, they highlighted an adult’s conscious decision of faith as a crucial requirement for baptism and rebirth, even as the two remained closely linked. Second, spiritualist theologians such as Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489/90-1561) privileged the spirit over the letter, the invisible church over the visible, and consequently viewed external rituals as irrelevant. This led Schwenckfeld as well as others to contrast baptism and spiritual rebirth.11 Whether someone had been baptised as an infant or an adult, the mere ritual was meaningless without spiritual rebirth. A purely interiorised notion of rebirth, unaccompanied by ritual, thus became the structural equivalent for the doctrine of baptism among spiritualists. By distinguishing between the ritual of baptism and spiritual rebirth while privileging the latter, born-again Christianity is heir to spiritualist theologies that developed throughout the Reformation era. One representative spiritualist was Valentin Weigel (1533-1588), who lived quietly as a pastor in the small Saxon town of Zschopau.12 Posthumously, among orthodox Lutheran polemicists throughout the seventeenth century, his name became synonymous with spiritualism, enthusiasm, and heresy.13 In a treatise on conversion written in 1570, Weigel polemically denounced as mistaken the common interpretation of rebirth as ritual baptism based on Titus 3: 5. Instead, he stressed the importance of Christ’s words to Nicodemus in John’s Gospel, which did not speak of “water baptism,” but of “the inward, spiritual, new birth.” The outward ritual of baptism is “but an outward sign and cannot redeem 10 Gritsch, Born Againism, 92, 110. 11 Williams, Radical Reformation, 300-319; Furcha, “Key Concepts.” 12 Weeks, Valentin Weigel. 13 Wollgast, Philosophie, 522-534.

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anyone.” Only “the new birth, or inward baptism (that is, faith), saves.”14 Apart from the disregard for the baptismal rite, the identif ication of spiritual rebirth as faith is actually quite close to the understanding of Martin Luther.15 Weigel himself was “without interest in medicine or alchemy.”16 However, he prepared the ground for the next generation of writers who explicitly linked alchemy and rebirth. This development already began during his later life, when the pastor of Zschopau studied the writings of the medical iconoclast Paracelsus (1493-1541) while ministering to his congregation with his deacon Benedict Biedermann (c. 1545-1621) and cantor Christoph Weickhart (fl. 1584-1604), who was himself a Paracelsian.17 Whilst metallurgical analogies for spiritual purif ication are already found in the Bible, the earliest discussions explicitly linking spiritual rebirth and transmutational alchemy seem to date from the final years of the sixteenth century. A well-known example is a letter by Johann Arndt.18 He wrote it to the lawyer Erasmus Wolfart (fl. 1596-1609), who was a close friend of Heinrich Khunrath (1560-1605), the alchemist famous for his illustrated Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom (1595).19 Arndt most likely wrote this letter on Christmas Day 1599, and it subsequently circulated in manuscript copies until its print publication in 1670. As he repeatedly referred to Khunrath’s writings throughout his letter, the alchemist appears to have inspired Arndt to explore the analogy between alchemy and rebirth. Indeed, Khunrath described the “regenerated and more than perfect stone” as “the pattern of our spiritual and corporeal regeneration.”20 The term regeneratio was the considerably less tangible, more abstract Latin equivalent of rebirth and accordingly translated into German in a footnote. Similarly, The Mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, as Arndt’s letter came to be known, claimed that the philosophers’ stone was “a mirror of creation, regeneration, and sanctification.”21 Although Arndt also described 14 Weigel, Neue Edition, vol. 1, 15-30, on 21, 26, 27. 15 Spijker, “Wedergeboorte,” 166-167. 16 Weeks, Valentin Weigel, 75. 17 Wollgast, Philosophie, 511-512; Pfefferl, “Weigel und Paracelsus”; idem, “Christoph Weickhart.” 18 Illg, Ein anderer Mensch werden, 106-127; Geyer, Verborgene Weisheit, vol. 3, 374-380; Repo, “Astrologische Alchemie,” 67-68; Neumann, Natura sagax, 229-230 (cf. 163-178). 19 On Khunrath, see e.g. Forshaw, “Alchemy in the Amphitheatre,” and his forthcoming monograph. 20 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum, 204, 205. 21 Arndt, Mysterium, 32.

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rebirth as leading to freedom from astrological determinism, he established the analogy between alchemy and rebirth in so many words: “Consider the regeneration of the metals. In this manner, all natural humans have to be reborn, that is, tinged, renovated, purified, clarified by a heavenly spirit more and more, day by day.”22 Combining his Aristotelian education and familiarity with alchemy, Arndt further compared the acquisition of “Christ’s body and blood” with a transmutation: “just as the tincture provides a new essence, not just a new quality,” so the born-again believer is “a new creature essentially.”23 Although the believer outwardly and accidentally still looked human, inwardly and essentially he had truly been born again in Christ. Thus, this “divine alchemy,” as a contemporary source called it, accomplished the transmutation of the old, sinful, dying Adam into the new, redeemed, resurrected Christ.24 A few years later, when Arndt wrote his popularly accessible Four Books on True Christianity (1605-1610), the chapters on the new birth were less obviously indebted to alchemy but the author’s familiarity with the subject was reflected throughout.25 The former student of Paracelsian medicine who would soon embark on an impressive ecclesiastical career was engulfed by scandal when critics accused him of plagiarising Paracelsus and Weigel.26 Arndt weathered the storm, and his monumental work went on to become one of the most successful bestsellers of devotional literature, reprinted and translated many times throughout the centuries to come. Through his True Christianity, Arndt communicated his understanding of rebirth, inspired by Paracelsianism, alchemy, and astrology, to many later readers. Arndt’s later success notwithstanding, two obscure writings wrongly attributed to Valentin Weigel also played an important role among the alchemical sources of spiritual rebirth. “Azoth and Fire” and “Towards the Dialogue on Death” likely predated Arndt’s 1599 letter to Wolfart and presented even more elaborate discussions of spiritual rebirth in alchemical terms. “Azoth and Fire,” the older of the two texts, was not published in print until 1702. Five extant manuscripts predate the f irst edition and indicate that the combination of its subject matter and brevity made it 22 Arndt, Mysterium, 34-35. 23 Arndt, Mysterium, 35. 24 Zuber, Spiritual Alchemy, 40, 69-71. 25 Geyer, “Verschmelzung.” 26 Neumann, Natura sagax, 155-163, 200-233. On Arndt’s education and Paracelsianism, see Schneider, Der fremde Arndt, 83-155.

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quite popular throughout the seventeenth century.27 Indeed, “Azoth and Fire” conveniently made up for the genuine Weigel’s disinterest regarding alchemy. Beyond familiar tropes of alchemical literature, such as the analogy between Christ and the philosophers’ stone, “Azoth and Fire” established extensive parallels between transmutation and spiritual rebirth. PseudoWeigel held that death had to precede new life: “Just like Christ does not bring anyone to life or salvation without the cross and death, so gold cannot be, nor become, the tincture or stone without death in the mercurial water.” The author insisted that “rebirth is necessary, we have to be born again out of spirit and water; the same goes for the stone.”28 Through statements such as this, pseudo-Weigel extended the lapis-Christus analogy to include the believer. This was possible on the basis of the believer’s mystical identification with Christ and the notion of Christus in nobis, that is, “Christ within us.” The innovative combination of emphasising rebirth and describing it with recourse to alchemy renders the pseudo-Weigelian “Azoth and Fire” a crucial text for the alchemical origins of born-again Christianity. Presented as an addition to Weigel’s genuine Dialogue on Christianity (1584; 1st ed. 1614), “Towards the Dialogue on Death” is the second relevant pseudo-Weigelian text. “But alchemy,” one of the interlocutors said, “I esteem highly, for it is a gift of the Most High and teaches the new birth so that one can see it with one’s own eyes.”29 A manuscript predating the first edition contains a considerably longer version of the text, and here the author highlighted the importance of rebirth like the real Weigel: “True and permanent life comes from resurrection, regeneration, and rebirth. [The Gospel of] John in the third chapter: ‘Unless someone is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God’.”30 Through the mystical identification of the believer with Christ in death and resurrection, the believer could be born again. Alchemy provided the model for this process. Two among the known early readers of pseudo-Weigelian alchemy are the Torgau astrologer and millenarian Paul Nagel (d. after 1624) and the Nuremberg alchemist Johann Siebmacher (fl. 1607-1621), the author of the famous Water-Stone of the Wise (1607; 1st ed. 1619). Like pseudo-Weigel, Siebmacher held that the “chymical work” paralleled the “theological work of spiritual renewal and heavenly rebirth,” although he reverted to a 27 Zuber, Spiritual Alchemy, 58. The term “azoth” is a corruption of the Arabic word for mercury. 28 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Allerheiligen 3, 400. 29 Pseudo-Weigel, “Ad dialogum de Morte,” 100. 30 Schleswig, Landesarchiv Schleswig-Holstein: Abt. 7, Nr. 2059: 3, fol. 1v.

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largely baptismal understanding of rebirth.31 The Water-Stone is commonly viewed as an important source for Boehme’s views on alchemy. However, the theosopher’s familiarity with the treatise is only documented for the last few months of his life, when most of his treatises had already been written.32 In contrast, Nagel was a member of the same network as Boehme, copied his works in manuscript, disseminated them in Saxony, and was the first to publish anything written by him in print.33 The astrologer included “Azoth and Fire” in his manuscript of alchemical excerpts and made extensive use of it in various later works. Specifically, he described Jesus Christ as the “supernatural, heavenly, and divine” azoth: “In this our azoth lies hidden the treasure of reflorescence, regeneration, or rebirth, through which everything becomes green again, flourishes, and is rejuvenated or reborn.”34 The theosopher of Görlitz was notoriously reluctant to reveal his sources, yet it is very likely that, even if he had not read works of pseudo-Weigelian alchemy himself, he had at least second-hand knowledge of its basic ideas through associates such as Nagel. Boehme was thus in a position to draw on the writings of Weigel, pseudoWeigel, and Arndt regarding spiritual rebirth.35 Conceding that Weigel had written “quite beautifully of the new birth and the unity of humanity through Christ with us,” Boehme prided himself on having surpassed him in a letter dated 10 May 1621: “I described it [rebirth] more clearly in my writings.”36 In a widely shared understanding that resonates with the German mystics of the Middle Ages and beyond, Boehme viewed spiritual rebirth as the birth of Christ within the soul. In his f irst work, known as Aurora (1612; 1st ed. 1634), this understanding is not yet very clear or dominant. However, in his later works, in what sometimes appears like impenetrable jargon, the theosopher of Görlitz often explained this bornagain experience in terms of alchemy. Due to the linkage of Christ, rebirth, and alchemy, Boehme explicitly wrote of both Christ and rebirth as the philosophers’ stone as early as 1619. “Whoever places his will … in Christ is born again in Christ … This 31 Siebmacher, Wasserstein, 111. 32 Zuber, “Jacob Böhme and Alchemy.” 33 Penman, “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”; idem, “Repulsive Blasphemies”; idem, “Boehme’s Intellectual Networks.” 34 München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Cgm 4416. 9, fols. 149r, 148v. 35 Böhme knew Arndt’s True Christianity; Rusterholz, “Liber Naturae und Liber Scripturae,” 145. 36 Boehme, Theosophische Send-Schreiben, 149.

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is the noble, invaluable stone lapis philosophorum, which tinges nature and births a new son within the old.”37 The wisdom of King Solomon derived from his rebirth through Christ, “the noble stone, which he had in his heart.”38 In contrast to Solomon and other born-again believers, the unregenerate (Christians in name only) failed to recognise this and were unable to welcome Christ into their hearts: for them, “the noble stone, the new rebirth in Christ Jesus,” remained “entirely locked” away and powerless.39 Alternatively, Boehme construed rebirth as the restoration of the divine likeness in fallen humanity. As such, it was the remedy for the Fall and its consequences and entailed the restitution of the prelapsarian state. If anything, this understanding was even more amenable to alchemy, and the theosopher’s tendency of describing rebirth in alchemical language peaked in 1622. During that year he finished the famous Signatura Rerum (1st ed. 1635) and then wrote the less widely known Apology Concerning the Perfection of Man (1st ed. 1676). In the latter work, Boehme described the Fall as an undesirable reverse transmutation from gold to lead. Consequently, “the divine tingeing and transmutation through the new birth” was needed to restore humanity to the image and likeness of God.40 Signatura Rerum portrayed the Incarnation of Christ – from his conception in the virgin’s womb to Ascension and Pentecost – as God’s alchemical work towards the preparation of an elixir that would transmute human beings: a “heavenly” or “divine tincture” towards the “transmutation of the soul.”41 Christ’s alchemical work of salvation thus became the basis for the alchemy of the new birth. Afterwards, due to popular demand, Boehme summarised his views on the subject in On the New Rebirth (1622; 1st ed. 1628). In comparison to Signatura and the Apology, alchemical terminology was less important, giving way to the theosopher’s desire to make himself understood in simpler terms. The short treatise was subsequently included in the second and all later editions of his devotional bestseller The Way to Christ (1st ed. 1624). This ensured that his views became widely disseminated and highly influential. Alchemy had played its part in helping Boehme develop his doctrine of rebirth, and many of his later readers – whether Christians, occultists, or both at once – reaffirmed the connection (colour plate 16). 37 Wrocław, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka: Ms. Akc. 1975/271, fol. 72r. 38 Ms. Akc. 1975/271, fol. 77r/v. 39 Boehme, Werke, 583. 40 Boehme, “Apologia,” 163; see also 124. 41 Boehme, Werke, 597, 702; idem, Von Christi Testamenten, revised version, fol. E6r.

260 Mike A. Zuber

So, we have seen that occult stuff like alchemy had a whole lot to do with the early stirrings of born-again Christianity around 1600. Would born-again Christianity have developed without the ferment of alchemy? As Douglas H. Shantz suggests, this is a question that cannot be answered conclusively.42 My sense is that the biblical proof-texts and spiritualist theology could well have led to very similar long-term developments even without alchemy. However, counter-factual and alternative histories aside, alchemy did play a crucial role during the pivotal period around 1600, marked by the crisis of piety. In the underground networks through which alchemists, Paracelsians, Rosicrucians, theosophers, and spiritualists shared their dissatisfaction with a Lutheran theology they perceived as increasingly rigid and stale, alchemy served as a powerful catalyst that both augmented spiritual rebirth and accelerated its maturation as a distinctive doctrine.

42 Shantz, “Pietist Notions,” 41.

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304 

Hermes Expl ains

Discography AC/DC. Highway to Hell. Atlantic Records 1979. Bathory. Bathory. Black Mark 1984. Iron Maiden. Number of the Beast. EMI 1982. Jess and the Ancient Ones. Jess and the Ancient Ones. Svart Records 2012. Jess and the Ancient Ones. Astral Sabbat. Svart Records 2013. Johnson, Robert. Robert Johnson: The Centennial Collection. Sony Legacy 2011. Mercyful Fate. Melissa. Roadrunner Records 1983. Mercyful Fate. Don’t Break the Oath. Roadrunner Records 1984. Mötley Crüe. Shout at the Devil. Elektra Records 1983. Ozzy Osbourne. Blizzard of Ozz. Jet Records 1980. Saturnalia Temple. UR. PsycheDOOMelic 2008. Saturnalia Temple. Aion of Drakon. PsycheDOOMelic 2011. Saturnalia Temple. To the Other. Listenable Records 2015. Stryper. To Hell with the Devil. Enigma Records 1986. The Devil’s Blood. The Thousandfold Epicentre. Metal Blade Records 2011. Van Halen. Van Halen. Warner Bros 1978. Venom. Black Metal. Neat Records 1982. Watain. Sworn to the Dark. Season of Mist 2007. Watain. Lawless Darkness. Season of Mist 2010.

Filmography Abrahams, Brad, “Love & Saucers: The Far Out World of David Huggins” (2017). Jones, Scott, “Supernature: Esalen and the Human Potential” (2018).



Contributors to this volume

Egil Asprem is Associate Professor in the History of Religions at Stockholm University, Sweden. He earned his PhD at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents in 2013. Justine Bakker is a PhD candidate specializing in African American Religion at Rice University, Houston, U.S.A. She earned her MA in Religious Studies with a specialization in Western esotericism at the University of Amsterdam in 2013. Tessel M. Bauduin is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Modern & Contemporary Art History at the University of Amsterdam. She earned her PhD at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents in 2012. Henrik Bogdan is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Göteborg, Sweden. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents in 2002 and is currently General Secretary of the ESSWE. Jean-Pierre Brach is Professor of History of Esoteric Currents in Modern and Contemporary Europe at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne), Paris, France. He was Associate Professor in History of Western Esotericism (early modern period) at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents from 2000 to 2002. Roelof van den Broek is emeritus Professor of History of Christianity at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. He played a decisive role in establishing the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents in 1999. Dylan M. Burns is Project Manager of the Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic project at the Free University, Berlin, Germany. He earned his MA at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents in 2004 and his PhD at Yale University in 2011. Allison P. Coudert is Professor of Religious Studies (Paul A. and Marie Castelfranco Chair) at the University of California at Davis, U.S.A.

306 

Hermes Expl ains

Antoine Faivre is emeritus Professor of History of Esoteric and Mystical Currents in Modern and Contemporary Europe at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne), Paris, France. Claire Fanger is Associate Professor in Religious Studies, specializing in Medieval Christianity, at Rice University, Houston, U.S.A. Christine Ferguson is Professor of English at the University of Stirling, United Kingdom. Peter J. Forshaw is Associate Professor in History of Western Esotericism (early modern period) at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents. Joscelyn Godwin is emeritus Professor of Music at Colgate University, Hamilton, U.S.A. Kennet Granholm was Assistant Professor in History of Religion at Stockholm University from 2010 to 2015 and Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents from 2007 to 2008. Christian J. Greer earned an MA at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, where he worked as a PhD candidate from 2012 to 2017 and is currently completing his dissertation. Olav Hammer is Professor of History of Relgions at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. He was Associate Professor in History of Western Esotericism (modern period) at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents from 2001 to 2003. Wouter J. Hanegraaff is Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam, and was President of the ESSWE from 2005 to 2013. Boas Huss is Professor of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel, and Vice President of the ESSWE. Massimo Introvigne is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on new Religions (CESNUR), Turin, Italy.

Contributors to this volume

307

Andreas B. Kilcher is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the ETH, Zürich, Switzerland, and President of the ESSWE. Jeffrey J. Kripal is J. Newton Rayzor Professor in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, Houston, U.S.A. John MacMurphy is a PhD candidate at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents. He earned his Research MA in Religious Studies with a specialization in Western esotericism at the University of Amsterdam in 2015. Mriganka Mukhopadhyay is a PhD candidate at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents. Bernd-Christian Otto was a Fellow at the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt, Germany until 2018 and is currently a Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg at the University of Bochum. Marco Pasi is Associate Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (modern period) at the University of Amsterdam. Mark Sedgwick is Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. Julian Strube is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Study of Religion at the University of Heidelberg. He studied at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents from 2009 and 2010 and worked there as a temporary Associate Professor from 2016 to 2017. György E. Szönyi is Professor of English at the University of Szeged, and Professor of Intellectual History at the Central European University, Budapest (Hungary). Elliot R. Wolfson is Professor of Jewish Studies (Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair) at the University of California at Davis, U.S.A. Mike A. Zuber is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Queensland, Australia. He earned his PhD at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents in 2017.



Index of Persons

Aarnio, Kia 203 Aaron, David H. 245 Abanes, Richard 100 Abraham, Alton 21-22 Abraham, Brad 177 Abū Maʿshar Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad, see: Albumasar Abulafia, Abraham 154, 156-158, 184-185 Admor of Piaseczno, see: Shapira, Kalonymus Kalman Adorno, Theodor W. 30, 97, 148, 169-176 Affleck, Ben 241 Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius 49, 52, 85-86 Aguéli, Ivan 221 Alain de Lille 57 Albeck, Chanoch 245 Albumasar 220, 236 Alexander the Great 219 Alexander, Claude 191 Alexander, P. 235 Alexandrian 208 Ali, Noble Drew 23-24 Allen, James Smith 76 Alon, Moshe Elroi 190 Alpert, Richard 131 Althaus, Karin 34 Amar, Zohar 188 Ambrose 52 Amélineau, E. 63-64 Andersen, F.I. 235 Andreae, Michael 84 Anger, Kenneth 133 Anthony of Egypt, St 88-90 Anthony, Dick 163 Anthony, Susan B. 74 Apollonius, see: Balīnūs Appelbaum, David 10 Aquinas, Thomas 85 Archimedes 218 Aristotle 47, 50, 219-220 Arndt, Johann 253, 255-256, 258 Arnold, Edwin 191 Ashlag, Yehuda 153-154, 156-158 Ashmole, Elias 107, 109 Asprem, Egil 13, 16-18, 26-27, 127, 197, 202, 238 Athanasius 89-90 Atwood, Mary Anne 110 Augustine, Aurelius 52, 57, 60, 89 Averroes 219 Avicenna 219 Baader, Franz von 83 Baal Shem Tov 188 Bach, Johann Sebastian 114 Bacon, Roger 106

Baer, Hans A. 23 Bakhtin, Mikhail 127 Bakker, Justine 26 Balīnūs 219-220 Balmont, Konstantin 114 Bårdsen Tøllefsen, Inga 79 Barker, Eileen 164 Barker, Margaret 241 Barkun, Michael 164 Baron, Jonathan 140 Barruel, Augustin 44 Basilides 68 Basten, Rosalie 12 Baudelaire, Charles 87 Bauduin, Tessel M. 29-30, 32, 34, 38, 96 Bednarowski, Mary Farrell 72 Beethoven, Ludwig van 114 Bell, Henry 237 Bellingradt, Daniel 199 Benares, Camden 135 Bénichou, Paul 228 Berg, Philip 153-154 Berg, Rav 154 Bergier, Jacques 148, 225 Bergson, Henri 19 Bergunder, Michael 197 Besant, Annie 62, 71, 79, 102, 229 Besht, see: Baal Shem Tov Beyonce 40 Biedermann, Benedict 255 Bladel, Kevin van 219 Blake, William 181, 211, 237-238 Blavatsky, Helena P. 22, 62, 74-75, 86, 99, 102, 191, 193, 221 Blount, Sonny, see: Sun Ra Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate 89-90 Boccacini, Gabriele 234 Boehme, Jacob 82-84, 86, 110, 228, 253, 258-259 Boekhoven, J.J. van 35 Boethius 52 Bogdan, Henrik 10, 40, 42, 70, 76 Bohr, Niels 19 Bos, Gerrit 188 Botting, Fred 98 Bourdieu, Pierre 41 Bowman, Frank Paul 228 Boyarin, Daniel 245 Boyer, Pascal 203 Boylan, P. 57 Boyle, Robert 107, 109 Brach, Jean-Pierre 10 Braden, Charles S. 77 Brakke, David 61 Bramble, John 96

310  Brandwein, Yehuda 153 Brashear, William 67 Braude, Ann 73-74, 79, 229 Britten, Emma Hardinge 99 Brodie-Innes, John William 99 Broek, Roelof van den 12, 54, 60, 68 Bromley, David G. 163 Brown, Dan 95 Bruce, James 233 Bruno, Giordano 85, 207, 211 Buchman, Yael 188 Bullough, Vern L. 214 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward 98 Burfield, Diana 74 Burke, Janet 75-76 Burmistrov, Konstantin 158 Burton, Robert 169 Bush, George W. 40 Butler, Judith 246 Byrne, Rhonda 14 Byron, Lord 237 Caesarius of Heisterbach 94 Cage, John 114-115 Cagliostro, Alessandro 211 Caithness, Lady 213-214 Camillo, Giulio 85 Campbell, Colin 22 Canpanton, Judah 249-250 Carlson, Tim Grieve 28 Carroll, Jackson W. 79 Carroll, Peter J. 206 Casaubon, Meric 109 Cassady, Neal 130 Cavalli, Thom F. 112 Celant, Germano 29 Chaitow, Sasha 32 Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 148 Chappell, Vere 213 Charles, Robert Henry 234 Chatterji, Mohini 194 Chéroux, Clément 36 Chireau, Yvonne 21 Choné, Aurélie 10 Ciccone, Madonna Louise, see: Madonna Clark, David R. 96 Clark, Mary Ann 73 Claudel, Camille 77 Clement XII, Pope 42 Clerbois, Sébastien 32 Clulee, Nicholas H. 233 Cole, Brendan 32 Collins, Mabel 99, 102-103 Coogan, Michael D. 253 Cooper, John Xiros 96 Copenhaver, Brian P. 54 Corbett, John 21 Corbin, Alain 210 Corbin, Henry 147-148

Hermes Expl ains

Cordovero, Moshe 156, 158, 186-187 Corelli, Marie 95, 100 Correggio, Giovanni da 238 Couliano, Ioan P. 211 Courtine, Jean-Jacques 210 Craddock, Ira 213-214 Crégheur, Eric 68 Crisciani, Chiara 107 Critchlow, Keith 118 Crowe, Catherine 86-87 Crowley, Aleister 99-100, 103, 121, 180, 210, 212, 238 Crum, Walter Ewing 66-67 Culianu, Ioan P. 211 Cumberbatch, Benedict 180 Curtis, Edward E. 24 Cyranka, Daniel 229 Dan, Joseph 154 Daniélou, Alain 117 Daumas, François 57 Davis, Erik 128 Dayton, Ann Pilcher 76 Debussy, Claude 114 Dechend, Hertha von 118 DeConick, April 61 Dee, John 109, 232-233, 236, 238 Delville, Jean 32 Derchain-Urtel, Maria-Theresia 57 Descartes, René 110 Deveney, John Patrick 99 Devi, Savitri 226 DeVun, Leah 106 Diamond, King 124, 126 Dickens, Charles 101-102 Dillman, August 234 Dillon, Jane 162 Divine, J.J. 22, 78 Dixon, Joy 72, 74, 229 Donington, Robert 116 Dorman, Jacob S. 24 Dorn, Gérard 109, 111-112 Doten, Lizzie 73 Douglas, Ann 72-73 Dowling, Levi 23 Doyle, Arthur Conan 99 Driesch, Hans 19 Dronke, P. 56 Duggan, Colin 206 Dumont, Paul 221 Dunstable, John 113 During, Simon 30 Easterling, Paul H.L. 23-24 Eckhart, Meister 220, 224 Eco, Umberto 50, 148 Eddy, Mary Baker 21 Edelman, Nicole 229 Eliade, Mircea 147

Index of Persons

Elior, Rachel 189 Elizabeth I 232 Elliot, Dyan 73 Ellis, Bill 100 Elwing, Jimmy 10 Embree, Ainslie T. 193 Emmerich, Anna Catharina 87 Endress, Gerhard 218 Engen, John van 89 Engle, John 99 Ermine of Reims 89-90 Ettinger, Bracha L. 251 Euclid 218 Evola, Julius 225, 239 Faivre, Antoine 24, 26-27, 60, 70, 81, 84, 87, 207, 216, 218 Fanger, Claire 92 Farber, David 133 Farr, Florence 76-77 Farrakhan, Louis 23-24, 28 Fäth, Reinhold Johann 35 Father Divine, see: Divine, J.J. Fatiyah, Yehudad Moshe 189 Fauchereau, Serge 29, 36 Fawaz, Ramzi 179 Faxneld, Per 167 Ferguson, Christine 102 Festugière, André-Jean 54, 58 Ficino, Marsilio 52, 85-87, 115, 146, 207 Fine, Lawrence 185-186 Finley, Stephen 24-27, 70 Fisher, Elaine 148 Flasch, Kurt 220 Flaxman, John 237 Fludd, Robert 109-110, 116 Forman, Simon 107 Formisano, Ciro, see: Kremmerz, Giuliano Forshaw, Peter J. 10, 108-109, 112, 253, 255 Forster, Lawrence 214 Fort, Charles 181 Fortune, Dion 99-100 Foucault, Michel 209 Fowden, Garth 54-55 Franckenberg, Abraham von 82 Franklin, J. Jeffrey 98 Franz, Marie Louise von 111 Frazer, James G. 200, 204 Freher, Andreas 84 Freud, Sigmund 111, 170, 202-203 Frith, Simon 122-123, 125 Frye, Northrop 169 Fryer, Peter 79 Furcha, E.J. 254 Gabrovsky, Alexander N. 106 Galen 218 Gallagher, Eugene V. 163 Gansky, Alton 240

311 Garvey, Marcus 78 Gay, Susan E. 74 Geber 105, 220 Gedolph of Brauweiler 91 Gelder, Ken 97 Geyer, Hermann 255, 256 Ghengis Khan 239 Gichtel, Johann Heinrich 83-84 Gilbert, R.A. 68 Gilbhard, Hermann 230 Giller, Pinchas 188 Gilovich, Thomas 140 Ginsberg, Allen 128, 130 Giudice, Christian 79 Godwin, Joscelyn 62, 116, 226 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 34 Golomb, Elhanan H. 250 Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas 27, 62, 171, 225, 230 Goodwin, Charles Wycliffe 67 Goossaert, Vincent 162 Gorightly, Adam 135 Gosa, Travis L. 22 Goshen-Gottstein, Alon 245 Gottfried 92 Graf, Fritz 200 Graham, Billy 252, 254 Graham, James 220 Granholm, Kennet 26, 78, 125, 197 Grant, Joan 103 Grant, Kenneth 103 Gray, Biko Mandela 25 Greaves, Lucien 161 Greene, Vivien 32 Greer, J. Christian 127, 136 Griffith, R. Marie 23-24, 78 Gritsch, Eric W. 254 Grow, Kory 120 Grude, Torstein 125 Guénon, René 221-222, 239 Guillory, Margarita Simon 24-27, 70 Gunning, Tom 36 Gurdjieff, George Ivanovich 21, 25, 189, 221, 223 Håkansson, Håkan 233 Hakl, Hans Thomas 147, 211 Halbfass, Wilhelm 192 Halik, Erich 225 Hall, Robert 78 Hallford, Rob 120 Hamer, D. 43 Hammer, Olav 42, 70 Hamvas, Béla 240 Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 9, 11, 15, 24, 26-27, 39, 46, 68, 82, 84, 96, 112, 138, 145-148, 150-151, 160, 168, 176, 179, 194, 197, 207-208, 216, 218 Harari, Yuval Noah 11 Harnack, Adolf von 63 Harrison, J.F.C. 71

312  Hartmann, Franz 99-101, 103 Hatch, Cora 73 Haydn, Joseph 114 Hayek, Salma 241 Heath, Richard 118 Hedenborg White, Manon 229 Heemskerck, Jacoba van 34 Hegel, G.W.F. 170 Heisenberg, Werner 19 Hejlt, Vera 74 Henderson, Linda Dalrymple 29 Herodotus 57, 199-200 Higgins, Godfrey 22 Hildegard of Bingen 91-93 Hill, Gregory 133 Himmler, Heinrich 226 Hindmarsh, D. Bruce 253 Hippocrates 220 Hitler, Adolf 226 Hjartarson, Benedikt 29, 31, 36 Hobsbawm, Eric 42, 76 Hobson, Suzanne 96 Hoffman, Abbie 133 Hoffman, Anita 133 Hölderlin, Friedrich 14 Holst, Gustav 114 Holzhausen, Jens 54 Hopkins, James K. 73 Horkheimer, Max 97, 148, 169-172 Horniman, Annie 76 Horowitz, Mitch 27 Hoyrup, Jens 47 Hubbard, L. Ron 101, 103 Humphreys, Eliza Margaret 100 Hunter, Dorothea 71 Hurley, George Willie 23-24 Hurston, Zora Neale 28 Huss, Boaz 154, 158 Huussen, A.H. 29, 34 Huxley, Aldous 127 Huyssen, Andreas 96 Hyers, Conrad 129 Iamblichus 115 Ibn Rushd, see: Averroes Ibn Sahula, Meir ben Meir 155 Ibn Sīnā, see: Avicenna Ibn ʿArabi 105, 221 Idel, Moshe 155, 157, 185, 188, 250 Idris 233, 236 Illg, Thomas 255 Imanse, Geurt 32-33 Inden, Ronald 193 Introvigne, Massimo 161, 163-166, 211 Irigaray, Luce 246 Irons, Edward A. 162 Isaac, E. 235 Ishbili, Yom Ṭov 249 Ishmael, Rabbi 235 Israel Ben Eliezer 188

Hermes Expl ains

Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, see: Geber Jacob, Margaret 75 Jacobs, Louis 188 Jantzen, GraceM. 73 Jaquemin, Jean 77 Jellinek, Adolph 157 Jeremiah ben Eleazar 245 Jezer, Marty 133 Jinarajadasa, Curuppumullage 196 John of Morigny 89-94 Johnson, Allan 10 Johnson, Robert 120-121 Johnson, Sylvester A. 26 Johnsson, Henrik 30, 38, 96 Johnston Graf, Susan 96 John-Stucke, Kirsten 226 Jones, G.P. 43, Jones, Marnie 100 Jones, Scott 177 Jones, William 192, 220 Jordan, Pascual 19 Josephson-Storm, Jason A. 13, 17, 202 Jung, Carl Gustav 19, 111-112, 116, 147, 181 Kaartinen, Margo 74 Kahneman, Daniel 140 Kallus, Menachem 185, 188 Kandinsky, Wassily 29, 33 Kaplan, Arye 184 Kassell, Lauren 107 Katzman, Allen 133 Kayser, Hans 116 Keightley, Keir 124 Keller, Catherine 251 Kenealy, Edward 238 Kepler, Johann 116 Kerchove, Anna Van den 60 Kerouac, Jack 128-130 Kesey, Ken 130 Keshavjee, Serena 36 Khunrath, Heinrich 107-111, 255 Kieckhefer, Richard 92-94 Kilbourne, Brock K. 163 Kilcher, Andreas 10, 30, 72, 148, 168 King, Charles William 67, 220 King, Karen 61 King, Richard 192 Kingsepp, Eva 226 Kingsford, Anna B. 213 Kirby, Jack 182 Kircher, Athanasius 236-237 Kirk, Robin 44 Klaassen, Frank 93 Kleps, Art 127, 131-132, 136 Klint, Hilma af 34 Klossowski de Rola, Stanislas 84 Knight, Michael Muhammad 27 Knoop, D. 43 Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian 157 Knowles, Chris 179

313

Index of Persons

Kokkinen, Nina 30, 38 Kopf, David 192, 196-197 Koshnood-Sharis, Amir 166 Koyré, Alexandre 82 Kraig, Donald Michael 199 Krakovski, Levi 153 Krassner, Paul 133 Kreis, Emmanuel 40 Kremmerz, Giuliano 212 Kries, Mateo 35 Kripal, Jeffrey J. 27, 96, 127, 180, 182, 207-208 Kupka, Frantisek 29 Kurlander, Eric 231 Kurshan, Nancy 133 Lactantius 55-56, 60 Lampe, Angela 29 Lamplugh, Alfred Amos Fletcher 68 Lander, D.R. 131 Landig, Wilhelm 225-226 Lanz von Liebenfels, Jörg 230 Lardas, John 129 Laurant, Jean-Pierre 228 Laurence, Richard 234 LaVey, Anton 124 Law, William 84 Laycock, Joe 161 Lazzarelli, Lodovico 238 Lead, Jane 82, 236-237 Leadbeater, Charles W. 99 Leary, Timothy 127-128, 131 Lee, Tommy 121 Lee, Stan 182 Leeman, Fred 77 Lemay, Richard Joseph 220 Leshem, Zvi 189 Leskela-Karki, Maarit 70 Lévi, Eliphas 161, 227-229 Levin, Ira 98 Lewis, James R. 42 Lewis, Matthew 95 Lichtenstein, Yechezkel Shraga 187 Liénard, Pierre 203 Lindeman, Marjaana 203 Lingan, Edmund 96 Linjamaa, Paul 61 List, Guido von 230 Lockley, Philip 252 Loers, Veit 29 Loisy, Jean de 29 Lombroso, Cesare 162 Lorberbaum, Yair 245 Lovecraft, H.P. 99 Lovejoy, Arthur O. 48 Löw, A. 55 Lucentini, Paolo 55, 60 Luckhurst, Roger 96 Luhrmann, Tanya M. 204-205 Lukács, Georg 148 Luria, Isaac 156, 158, 185-187

Luther, Martin 255 Luzzatto, Moshe Hayyim 156, 158 Lycourinos, Damon Z. 204 Lyotard, Jean-François 149 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 195-196 MacDermot, Violet 65-66 MacGregor Mathers, Monia 76 MacGregor Mathers, S. Liddell 190 Machen, Arthur 102 Machin, James 103 Maclean, Caroline 96 MacMurphy, John 184-185 Madonna 40, 153-154, 159-160 Mahé, Jean-Pierre 54, 58 Mahlamaki, Tina 70 Mahler, Gustav 114 Maillard, Christine 10 Maitland, Edward 213 Malevich, Kazimir 29 Malmén, Joel 125 Manson, Charles 165 Mansveld, Hendrik 35-36 Marcus Magus 67 Marenbon, John 218-219 Maris, Jacob 35 Mark, Zvi 188 Markle, D. Thomas 203 Marsanes 65-66 Martin, Darnise C. 24 Marx, Karl 174 Materer, Timothy 96 Matthews, Patricia 77 Maturin, Charles 95 Maurier, George Du 95 Mayer, Gerhard 205-206 McCann, Andrew 96 McCauley, Robert 18 McClain, Ernest G. 118 McLaughlin, Eleanor 73 Mead, G.R.S. 62 Melton, J. Gordon 79 Melvin-Koushki, Matt 223 Menzel, Birgit 10, 231 Merezhkovsky, Dmitri 239 Mersenne, Marin 110 Mesdag, Hendrik Willem 35 Mesmer, Franz Anton 116 Metzger, Bruce M. 253 Metzner, Ralph 131 Meyer, Donald 67-77 Miller, Steven P. 252 Mills, George Harper 96 Moench, Doug 181 Mondrian, Piet 29 Montfaucon de Villars, Henri de 212 Moore, Alan 181 Moore, Robert I. 79 Moore, Thomas 237 Mopsik, Charles 187, 247

314  Morehead, Allison 29, 31 Moreschini, Claudio 55 Morgan, William 45 Moriarty, Dean 130 Morienus 106 Morrison, Grant 180, 181 Morrison, Mark S. 37, 108 Moses de León 248 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 114 Muchembled, Robert 209 Muhammad, Elijah 23-24 Muhammad, Fard 23 Muhammad, Jabril 24 Mühlman, Wolf-Rüdiger 125 Mukhopadhyay, Mriganka 27, 194 Müller, Friedrich Max 137, 191 Mund, Rudolf 225 Myers, Jody 153 Nachman of Breslev 188-189 Nachman, Moses ben 156 Nachmanides, see: Nahman, Moses ben Nadler, Allen 159 Nagel, Paul 257-258 Nance, Susan 23-24 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein 222-224 Needham, Joseph 112 Needleman, Jacob 164 Nelson, Victoria 30, 78 Neugebauer-Wölk, Monika 145, 223 Neumann, Hanns-Peter 255-256 Newman Joel S. 132 Newman, William R. 106, 108 Nickelsburg, George W.E. 234 Nicomachus of Gerasa 51 Nicotheus 66 Nietzsche, Friedrich 114 Nock, Arthur Darby 54, 58 Nödtveidt, Jon 166 Noll, Richard 161 Novalis 14 Obrecht, Jacob 113 Obrist, Barbara 106-107, 109 Ockeghem, Johannes 113 Odeberg, Hugo 235 Odington, Walter 117 Ofir, Natan 189 Olcott, Henry Steel 193 Oliphant, Laurence 103 Önnerfors, Andreas 40 Orlov, Andrei A. 235 Orsi, Robert 183 Osbourne, Ozzy 120-121 Osseman, D. 56 Otto, Elizabeth 29, 31, 36 Otto, Bernd Christian 10, 199-200, 204-205 Overton, John 135 Owen, Alex 30, 71, 76-77 Owen, Robert 229

Hermes Expl ains

Paasschen-Louwerse, J.E.A. van 29, 34 Pacioli, Luca 50, 52 Page, Hugh R. 24-27, 70 Page, Jimmy 121 Page, Sophie 93 Palmer, David A. 162 Palmer, Susan 22, 72, 79 Panchiri, Efraim 186 Partner, Peter 161 Partridge, Christopher 14, 27, 30, 193 Pascal, Blaise 80 Pasi, Marco 10, 26, 36, 38, 98, 213-214, 231 Pasulka, Diana Walsh 178 Patmore, Coventry 72 Patterson, Dayal 166 Pauli, Wolfgang 19 Pauwels, Louis 148, 225 Payson, Seth 45 Péladan, Joséphin 32-33, 114 Penman, Leigh 258 Pereira, Nilce M. 35 Perry, Katie 40 Persico, Tomer 184 Péter, Róbert 40 Petermann, J.H. 62, 63, 67 Petrus Bonus 107 Pfefferl, Horst 255 Philolaos 48 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 49, 52, 157, 236 Pijaudier, Joëlle 29, 36 Pijnenburg, Joyce 9 Pincus-Witten, Robert 32 Plato 42, 47, 49-51, 63, 116-118, 146, 200, 207 Plotinus 218 Poiret, Pierre 83-84 Polen, Nehemia 189 Pomponazzi, Pietro 85 Pop 122-123 Pordage, John 82, 236-237 Porphyry 67 Portas, Maximiani, see: Devi, Savitri Postel, Guillaume 233, 236 Prichard, Samuel 42 Principe, Lawrence M. 106-108, 208 Proclus 51 Ptolemy 218 Pullman, Philip 240 Puschner, Uwe 230 Pythagoras 42, 47, 63, 115-117 Quaegebeur, Jan 57 Quimby, Phineas P. 77 Quispel, Gilles 54, 68 Radin, Dean 198 Raff, Jeffrey 112 Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree 79 Ramelli, Ilaria 54 Ramey, Joshua 151 Randolph, Paschal Beverly 25, 27, 99, 211-212, 214

Index of Persons

Ranger, Terence 42 Rashash, see: Sharabi, Shalom Ravenscroft, Trevor 225 Raymond, Joad 237 Reader, Ian 165 Redd, Marques 24-25 Redon, Odilon 77 Reed, Annette Yoshiko 65 Reed, Ishmael 28 Reiser, Daniel 189 Repo, Matti 255 Reuchlin, Johannes 52, 157 Reuss, Theodor 212 Reuvens, Caspar Jacob Christiaan 66-67 Rhazes 105, 111 Rhine, J.B. 180 Richardson, James T. 162-163 Richter, Hans 36 Rider Haggard, H. 100 Riedweg, Christoph 47 Ringbom, Sixten 29, 31 Roberts, Julian 233 Roberts, Marie Mulvey 96, Robinson, John 44 Robinson, Robinson 96 Rodin, Auguste 35 Roerich, Nicholas 114 Rooney, Adrienne 28 Rose, Detlev 230 Rosenberg, Alfred 172 Rosenblum, Robert 31 Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer 231 Rossi, Francesco 67 Roth, Norman 250 Roukema, Aren 10, 103 Rowland, Christopher 237 Rowling, J.K. 95, 100 Rubin, Jerry 133 Ruether, Rosemary R. 73 Rupert of Deutz 89 Rupescissa, John of 106 Rusterholz, Sibylle 258 Ruys, Juanita 88 Safrai, Uri 185 Saif, Lianna 220 Saint-Martin, Louis-Claude de 83 Salaman, Clement 54 Samuel ben Naḥman 245 Sanders, Ed 133 Santillana, Giorgio 118 Satie, Erik 114 Satter, Beryl 77 Scaliger, Joseph Justus 235 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von 147-148 Schiller, Friedrich 14 Schlegel, Friedrich 191 Schmidt, Carl 62-66, 68 Schmidt, Leigh Erich 213

315 Schneider, Hans 256 Schochet, Isaac 154 Schoenberg, Arnold 114, 117 Scholem, Gershom 147, 155, 157-159, 184, 189, 235, 248, 250 Schou, Nicholas 127 Schuchard, Marsha K. 211, 237 Schwab, Raymond 192 Schwartze, M.G. 62-63 Schwenckfeld, Caspar 254 Schyrlaeus Rheita, Anton Maria 237 Scott, Bon 122 Scott, Walter 58 Scriabin, Alexander 114, 117 Sedgwick, Mark 217-218, 220-223 Senior, John 96 Serrano, Miguel 226 Shafak, Elif 223-224 Shah, Idries 221 Shantz, Douglas H. 252-253, 260 Shapira, Kalonymus Kalman 189 Sharabi, Shalom 156, 188 Shea, Robert 136 Sheehan, Jonathan 72 Sheldrake, Rupert 19-20 Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft 95 Shermer, Michael 137 Shipley, Morgan 130 Shirland, Jonathan 33 Shlomo Ibn Aderet 157 Shupe, Anson D. 163 Siebmacher, Johann 257-258 Siepe, Daniela 226 Sigusch, Volkmar 214 Silberer, Herbert 111 Silver, Kenneth E. 34 Silverman, Debora 32 Simeon ben Yoḥai 245 Simmel, George 41 Sinclair, Maria Mariátegui, see: Caithness, Lady Sinnett, A.P. 194 Sites, William 21-22 Sixx, Nikki 121 Smith, Harry 133 Smith, Kevin 241 Snoek, Jan A.M. 40-42 Södergård, J.P. 60 Sørensen, Jesper 201, 203-204 Sourel, Elisabeth 77 Southcott, Joanna 73 Spencer, Jon Michael 120 Spijker, Willem van ‘t 255 Stang, Ivan 136 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady 74 Starhawk 78 Stasulane, Anita 10 Staudenmaier, Peter 230-231 Stavenhagen, Lee 106 Steen, John 32-33 Stefano, Giovanni di 56

316  Steiner, Rudolf 21, 34, 116, 141 Stevenson, Robert Louis 100 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 114 Stoker, Bram 98 Stravinsky, Igor 114 Stroumsa, Guy 15 Strube, Julian 72, 161, 225-228, 231 Stuckrad, Kocku von 23, 27, 41, 217 Styers, Randall 201 Sun Ra 24-25 Surette, Leon 30, 96 Swartz, Karen 137 Swedenborg, Emanuel 21, 83, 114, 228 Swift, Philip 205 Swiney, Frances 74-75 Swinton, Tilda 180 Sword, Helen 96 Syncellus, Georgius 235 Szönyi, György E. 232, 234, 236-238 Taves, Ann 199 Taylor, James 101 Theodor, Julius 245 Thomas, Keith 15, 73 Thomasius, Jacob 68 Thornley, Kerry 133, 135 Tilton, Hereward 109-110 Toland, John 220 Tollenaere, Herman de 222 Toorop, Jan 32 Treitel, Corinna 30, 230 Tristan, Frédérick 207 Troeltsch, Ernst 162 Tscheer, Niklaus 84 Tuchman, Barbara 29 Twain, Mark 102 Tylor, Edward B. 200 Tzvi, Shabtai 189 Uffenheimer, Rivka Schatz 188 Ulmannus, Frater 106 Urban, Hugh B. 40-41, 208, 211 Urgo, Joseph 133 Valadon, Suzanne 77 Valentinus 63, 68 Vallée, Jacques 181 VanderKam, James C. 234-235 Versluis, Arthur 27, 128, 207 Viatte, Auguste 228 Vigarello, Georges 210 Vikernes, Varg 166 Vital, Chayim 185-188 Voda, David 35 Vyse, Stuart A. 203

Hermes Expl ains

Wagner, Richard 29, 31, 114 Waite, A.E. 99 Walker, D.P. 115 Wallace, David Foster 150 Ward, W.R. 252 Warner, Marina 30 Warwick, Alexandra 98 Watson, Andrew G. 233 Watts, Jill 23 Webb, James 148, 189, 228 Webb, Nancy Boyd 203 Weber, Max 14-15, 17, 73, 138, 162 Weeks, Andrew 254-255 Weickhart, Christoph 255 Weigel, Valentin 254-258 Weisenfeld, Judith 22 Weishaupt, Adam 45 Wells, H.G. 101 Welsh, Robert P. 29, 31 Wessinger, Catherine 73 Westall, Robert 237 Whistler, James 32-33 Wilkening, Matthew 120 Williams, Michael 61 Williams, George Huntston 254 Williamson, Arthur 71 Wilmore, Gayraud S. 22 Wilson, Leigh 29, 33, 96 Wilson, Robert Anton 128, 135-136 Windsor-Smith, Barry 182 Wirth, Herman 225 Wissa, Karim 221 Wittlich, Peter 77 Wolfart, Erasmus 255-256 Wolfe, Tom 130-131 Wolff, Robert Lee 96 Wolfson, Elliot R. 207, 245-247 Wollgast, Siegfried 254-255 Woodhull, Victoria Claflin 213-214 Woodson, Jon 25 Yates, Frances A. 115 Youngquist, Paul 21-22 Zalman of Liadi, Shneur 189 Zalman, Elija ben Solomon 156 Zandee, Jan 58 Zelnik, Aharon 158 Zevi, Sabbatai 156 Ziegler, Leopold 239 Zinser, Hartmut 148 Zöllner, Karl Friedrich 175 Zosimos 111 Zuber, Mike A. 81, 110, 253, 256-258 Zweig, Stefan 209-210



Index of Subjects

Abstract Expressionism 35 Abstract art 33-34 AC/DC 121-122 Achmim Codex 66 Adam 244-247, 250, 256 Adoption Lodges 75-76 Africana Esoteric Studies 25, 27 Aquarius, Age of 78 Ahnenerbe 226 Alchemy 105-112, 150, 207, 218-219, 223, 252, 256-257 Altered states of consciousness, see: Consciousness, Alterations of Alt-right 227 Anabaptists 254 Anderson’s Constitution 41 Androgyny 81, 207, 244-250 Anthroposophy 29, 34-35, 141, 143, 230 Anti-cult movement 163-164 Anti-Masonic Party 45 Antisemitism 40, 148, 169-171, 175, 229, 231 Aquarian Age 23, 78 Arabic philosophy 218-219 Ariosophy 171, 230 Arithmology 47-53, 113-114, 218-219 Art Nouveau 35 Aryan Nations 78 Asclepius 54, 56, 59-60 Asiatic Society of Bengal 192, 195 Askew Codex 61-63, 67 Astral plane 180, 182 Astrology 97, 139, 150, 202-203, 218-220, 223, 256 Atlantis 225, 239 Aum Shinri-kyo 165 Baphomet 161 Baptism 253-254 Bathory 124 Bāṭin 217 Bauhaus 29 Beasts of Satan 165 Beat Generation 128 Beat Zen 129, 131, 135 Billboard Liberation Front 136 Black Church 21-22 Black esoteric milieu 21-28 Black mass 201 Black Metal 78, 124-125, 165-166 Black Sabbath 121 Black Sun 225-226 Bnei Baruch 157 Bogomilism 211 Books of Jeu 65 Born-again Christianity 252-260

Bounded Rationality 139-141, 144 Brahma Kumaris 79 Brainwashing 163-164 Brethren of Purity 115 Bruce Codex 62-64, 68 Cacophony Society 136 Capitalism 15, 168-176 Catharism 92, 211 Chabad movement 189 Chaos 133, 135 Chaos magick 205-206 Christian Kabbalah 157 Christian Science 77 Christian Theosophy 81-85, 252, 260 Chrysopoeia 105 Church of Satan 124 Church of the SubGenius 128, 135 Clavicula Salomonis 190 Clustering illusion 140 Comics 177-183, 225 Commodities 173-174 Communism 40, 231 Congruence bias 140 Conjure 21, 25, 27 Consciousness 28, 66, 75-76, 113, 181, 208 Conspiracy theories 39-46, 182 Constant, Alphonse-Louis, see: Lévi, Eliphas Corpus Hermeticum 54 Correspondences 48, 50, 113 Creative imagination, see: Imagination Criminal Religious Movements 164-165 Critical Theory 150, 169, 175 Cult wars 162-163 Cults 99, 136, 161-165, 167 Cultural studies 150-151 Dadaism 77 Dead Sea Scrolls 234 Death Metal 165-166 Decadence 33 Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius 54 Demons 88-94, 120, 122, 211, 217, 223 Devil, see: Satan Devil’s Blood (band) 125 Discordianism 127-128, 133, 135-136 Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth Sphere 54 Disenchantment 13-20, 38, 147, 202 Dissection (band) 166 Divination 21, 140-141, 202, 238 Divine Science 77 Dumfries No. 4 Ms 44

318  Ecstasy 189-190 Ecstatic kabbalah 184 Edinburgh House Register Ms. 43 Emerald Tablet 105, 113, 220, 224 Enlightenment 17, 30, 145-146, 149-152, 170, 172-173, 176 Enoch 65, 232-242 Eranos 147-148 Eros 207 Esotericism / Esotericists 145-146, 150, 168-169 Evangelicalism 31, 100, 252-254 Eve 247, 250 Extreme Metal 124-125 Fantasy 80 Fascism 30, 40, 72, 148, 169, 171, 175-176, 225-231 Fetishism 174-175 Fiction, Popular, see: Popular fiction Five Percenters 25, 27-28 Formalist art history 30 Forteanism 181 Frankfurt School 148 Freemasonry 39-42, 44-46, 72, 75-76, 114, 211, 221 Fugs 133 Futurism 29 Gematria 155, 187 Gender 70-72, 146, 243, 245-246, 249-251 German Idealism 147 Ghāyat al-ḥakīm, see: Picatrix Gnosis 41, 61-69, 70, 81, 168, 182 Gnosticism 61-69, 182, 211-212, 221 Goddess movement 78 Gothic 77, 95, 102 Greek Magical Papyri 66-67 Hashkata meditation 189 Heavy Metal 120-126 Hellhammer (band) 124 Hermes Trismegistus 9, 11, 42, 54-60, 105, 177, 218-220, 236 Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn 71, 76, 204, 229 Hermetica, see: Hermes Trismegistus Hitbodedut 188-189 Ho Chi Zen 135 Holocaust 170 Homeopathy 142-143 Homoeroticism / homosexuality 146 Humour 127-136 Identity 17, 39, 145-148, 151-152, 229 Idolatry 150 Illuminaten 45 Illuminati 39-40, 45, 135 Imagination 77, 80-87, 182 India 191-197

Hermes Expl ains

Incarnation 83, 180, 255, 259 Initiation 41-42, 58-60, 68, 76, 204, 213 Instrumental Rationality 138, 170, 162 Interpretive drift 205 Iron Maiden 121, 122 Irrationality 137-144, 170, 172, 176, 200 Islamic Esotericism 216-224 Jess and the Ancient Ones (band) 125 Jesus Christ 23, 62-63, 74, 239, 253, 258-259 Judas Priest 120 Jugendstil 35 Kabbalah 153-160, 184-190, 243-251 Kabbalah Centre 153-154, 157-160, 190 Kavanot 185-186, 188 Khlysty 212 Knights Templar 161, 211 Laughter 127-136 League of Spiritual Discovery 131 Led Zeppelin 121 Lévi, Eliphas 161, 227-229 Lurianic Kabbalah 153, 157 Macaulayism 196 Mafteach Shlomo 190 Magic 13, 15-17, 27, 49, 97, 140, 148, 150, 172, 174, 198-206 Marxism 148, 169, 174, 228-229 Mathematics 47-49, 53 Matrix, The (Movie) 11 Meditation 184-190 Mediumism 35-36 Mercyful Fate (band) 124, 126 Merkabah 65, 235 Merkaz Nofach 190 Merry Pranksters 128, 130, 133 Mesmerism 112, 116, 139-140, 143, 178 Metatron 235-236, 240-241 Mind Cure 77 Misanthropic Luciferian Order 166 Modern Art 29-38 Modernism 29-31, 33-34, 36-38, 96, 114, 172 Modernity 14, 16-18, 20, 26, 30-31, 35, 46, 69, 77 Monotheism 15, 150 Monte Verità 210 Moorish Science Temple of America 22-23 Mormonism 78, 214 Moses 42, 55-56, 184, 186-187, 232 Mother Wheel 23 Mötley Crüe 121-122 Music 113-119 Mysticism 159, 168, 195 Mythology 172-173 Nag Hammadi Library 61 Nation of Islam 22-23, 25 National Socialism 40, 148, 225-226, 229-231

319

Index of Subjec ts

Nazi occultism 148, 225, 229, 231 Neo-Nazism, Esoteric 225-226 Near-death experience 178 Necromancy 92-94 Negativland 136 Neo-American Church 131 Neoism 136 Neoplasticism 29, 35 New Age 23, 75, 114, 153-154, 157, 159, 180, 223, 241 New Thought 21, 23, 73, 77-79 Number Symbolism, see: Arithmology Numerology 53, 171, 175, 202 Occultism 16, 29-33, 35-38, 95-96, 169-176, 225-231 Occulture 14, 30, 33, 36 Oneida community 214 Operation Mindfuck 135 Order of Nine Angles 165 Ordo Novi Templi 171, 230 Ordo Templi Orientis 229, 238 Ordre Martiniste 229 Orient 191-192, 195 Orientalism 193, 196-197 Orpheus 42, 63 Paracelsianism 252-253, 256, 260 Paracelsus 86, 107, 111, 255-256 Parapsychology 16, 19, 178-179 Peace Mission Movement 22-23 Phallogocentrism 246 Philosophia perennis 42, 84 Picatrix 220 Pistis Sophia 62-67 Platonic Orientalism 194-195 Polemics 15, 19, 39-41, 44-46, 145, 149, 168-169, 175-176, 200-202, 254 Popular fiction 95-104 Positive Orientalism 192, 196-197 Positive thinking 14, 78 Possession 28, 91 Practical Kabbalah 156, 184 Pre-Raphaelites 31 Prophetic Kabbalah 156, 184 Protocols of the Elders of Zion 40 Psychedelic church movement 127-128, 130 Psychedelicism 127-128, 130-131, 135 Psychedelics 114, 127-128, 131-132, 180, 208 Psychical research 16, 19, 78, 180 Pythagoreanism 48, 51, 115, 117 Quantum mysticism 19, 78 Race / racism 25-26, 28, 72, 169, 229, 231 Raelians 79 Rationality 13, 15, 17-18, 30, 137-144, 146, 161, 167, 172 (see also: Bounded Rationality, Instrumental Rationality)

Rebirth 81, 109, 253-255, 257 Reformation 15, 17 Reincarnation 62, 64, 74, 99, 102-103, 137, 155, 157 Rejected knowledge 15, 39, 145-146, 149, 151, 179, 194, 216, 223 Religionism 147-148 Religious Science 77 Ritual 201-203, 206 Ritual Black Metal 125 Rock 122-124 Romantic Orientalism 193, 195 Romanticism 31, 228 Root Work 25 Rosicrucianism 21, 32, 99-100, 211-212, 228, 252, 260 Sabbateanism 158 Satan 120-126, 161, 165-167 Satanic Temple 161 Satanism 120, 124, 161, 164-167 Saturnalia Temple 125 Science of Mind 77 Scientology 101, 167 Secrecy 23-24, 27, 40-43, 45-46, 95 Secret Societies 39-46 Secretum secretorum 220 Sefer Yezira 157 Sefirot 155, 157, 184, 186 Sex 146, 167, 207-215 Sexual magic 208, 210-214 Shakers 214 Shekhinah 187, 246 Sibyls 55-56 Socialism 78, 153, 156, 227-229 Sophia 81, 83 Speculative Kabbalah 184 Spirits 13-14, 18, 33, 35, 74, 91, 93-94, 105, 107-109, 112, 137, 148, 172-173, 189 Spiritual alchemy 84, 105-112, 253 Spiritualism 16, 29, 31, 33, 36, 73-74, 79, 97, 212, 229 Stryper (band) 121-122 Subud 223-224 Sufism 218, 220-221, 223 Superheroes 177-183 Surrealism 29, 77 Swedenborgianism 72 Symbolism 31, 33, 36, 77 Tabula Smaragdina, see: Emerald Tablet Tantra 211 Tarot 139-140 Tempelhofgesellschaft 226 Temple of the Black Light 166 Tetraktys 48, 117 Theo-Alchemy 106

320  Theosophy / Theosophical Society 16, 21-22, 27, 29, 33-35, 37, 62, 66, 69, 71-72, 74, 79, 114, 139, 171, 192-197, 221-223, 228-229 Thmei Research 21, 25 Thot 57 Three Distinct Knocks 44 Thule Society 171, 226, 230-231 Tiqqun 247 Totalitarianism 40, 170, 174-175 Traditionalism 147, 221-222 UFOs 177, 180-181, 226 Unity School of Christianity 77 Universal Hagar’s Spiritual Church 23 Université Saint Jean de Jérusalem 147 Untitled treatise 65, 68 Van Halen 121 Venom (band) 124 Vis imaginativa 80, 86

Hermes Expl ains

Vitalism 19 Voodoo 21, 25 Watain (band) 125 Western learned magic 204 Wicca 78-79 Women 40, 70-79, 87, 89, 149-150, 221, 228, 237, 243-251 Xie jiao 161-162, 164, 167 Yeshivat Beth-El 158 Yichudim 186-189 Yippies! 133 Ẓāhir 217 Zentralschau 82, 85 Zohar 156-157, 186, 190, 244 Zoroaster 42, 63