The Scientification of Religion: An Historical Study of Discursive Change, 1800–2000 9781614513490, 9781614516262, 9781614516781

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Kocku von Stuckrad The Scientification of Religion

Kocku von Stuckrad

The Scientification of Religion

An Historical Study of Discursive Change, 1800–2000

DE GRUYTER

ISBN 978-1-61451-626-2 e-ISBN 978-1-61451-349-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2014 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin Cover art: Watercolor “Hochland von Ceylon” by Ernst Haeckel Ernst-Haeckel-Haus, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

On the long journey doubts were often my companions. I’ve always admired those reporters who can descend on an area, talk to key people, ask key questions, take samplings of opinions, and then set down an orderly report very like a road map. I envy this technique and at the same time do not trust it as a mirror of reality. I feel that there are too many realities. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style. […] And in this report I do not fool myself into thinking I am dealing with constants. John Steinbeck

Preface On 1 May 2010, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an essay in which I presented the main argument of my inaugural lecture for the chair of the study of religion, which had been delivered at the University of Groningen on 16 March 2010. The editors of Trouw chose the title “De schepping in vier letters” (“Creation in Four Letters”), because I argued that the metaphor of the four letters constituting the DNA ‘code’ was taken (unknowingly, to be sure) from a long intellectual tradition in Europe, both in philosophy of nature and Kabbalah; by ‘decoding,’ ‘reading,’ and ‘writing’ DNA, the so-called ‘life sciences’ partake in a discourse that is inseparably tied to religious, metaphysical, and esoteric approaches to nature and the cosmos. Thus, the marriage between religion and science may not be a happy one, but the widespread idea that they were divorced sometime in the eighteenth century seems to be untenable. The readers’ responses to this article were mostly critical. A certain Henk Timmerman from Oegstgeest was outraged and wrote in a letter to the editors on 3 May that if four consonants that “simply indicate chemical entities” are seen as ‘language,’ many other things can be made into ‘language,’ too. More interesting, though, was his response to my remark that it is common in contemporary Europe to “ridicule religious, metaphysical, astrological, homeopathic, or other approaches that are seen as completely irrational.” “What a strange list of terms,” Mr. Timmerman wrote. “Yes, of course, homeopathy, metaphysical approaches, and astrology do not have any scientific value; these are anachronisms that often lead to fraud. But religion? Does religion belong in that list? As a (natural) scientist and a Christian I defy the thoughts of the scholar of religion, von Stuckrad.” I doubt that Mr. Timmerman will read this book. He may be interested to hear that his irritation is indicative of a complex cultural debate, in which the borders between religion and science on the one hand, and between science and ‘pseudo-science’ on the other, are constantly renegotiated. What makes the ‘pseudosciences’ particularly interesting is the fact that they challenge the rational truthclaims of the secular sciences. In their long cultural history, disciplines such as astrology, alchemy, and even magic subscribed in large part to standards of rationality and philosophy of nature; they formulated theories about nature and the cosmos and thus have often been seen as competitors with ‘modern science,’ a concept that was introduced only in the nineteenth century. To be sure, the competition between various cultures of knowledge and the polemics that go with it is not as new as the ‘modern age.’ But the specific constellation in which astronomy is disjunctively separated from astrology, chemistry from al-

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chemy, and science from magic is a European phenomenon of the past three hundred years. Polemics are always an indication of a problem. The problem with the ‘pseudo-sciences’ is that it has not always been easy to identify the exact difference between discarded and accepted forms of knowledge. What is more, these marginalized forms of knowledge continued to be attractive as an alternative to what was perceived as reductionist knowledge of nature in the sciences. This led to an intricate entanglement of various discourses in the large field of religion, science, and public culture. In the genealogy of the current situation, the institutionalization of knowledge about religion and science in a spectrum of new disciplines around 1900 (from religious studies to Indology and anthropology to psychology and theoretical physics) played an important role. These secular disciplines became the major experts when it comes to what we know about religion, science, and culture. And their representatives engaged in a lively debate not only with one another but also with a non-academic audience that was eager to absorb this knowledge. The Scientification of Religion attempts to disentangle this complex knot of discourse strands. In a way, it is a follow-up to my Locations of Knowledge (2010), because I am interested here in the further historical development of the discursive constellations I described in that study with regard to the European situation between 1400 and 1700. But this volume also picks up data and considerations I engaged in my book on contemporary shamanism in Europe and North America (Schamanismus und Esoterik, 2003). Finally, the present book is an attempt to apply, as consistently as possible, the discursive approaches to the study of religious and cultural history that I have been working on during the past years. My object of study is not religion or science as a phenomenon that can be defined and then submitted to scholarly analysis; my object of study is the discursive construction of religion and science, i. e., the various meanings that are attributed to religion and science in cultural communication and practice. The meanings that are attributed to these—and related—terms change over time, and it is the advantage of discursive analyses to make these changes visible in their historical contexts. My analysis follows the changing combinations of discourses that have been operative in our understanding of religion and science since the end of the eighteenth century. I untie the discursive knots that I find in the data and follow their strands in changing constellations up to the end of the twentieth century. This leads me to conclusions and ‘groupings’ (Foucault) of discourse strands that are difficult to match with the simplistic narratives still dominating the debate about religion in secular Europe today. Particularly when it comes to the officially discarded knowledge systems of astrology, alchemy, metaphysics, and magic,

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we can see that many elements of their discursive systems have been prolonged in secular (and thus accepted) forms of knowledge. The first part of this book reconstructs the changes in these discursive constellations. The second part describes the normative discursive power of academic constructions of knowledge about religion; focusing on several influential academics from both the humanities and the natural sciences, I argue that secular discourses have not only changed the understanding of what religion is, but that they have also produced new forms of religious practice. Taken together, these two levels of analysis form the basis of what I call the scientification of religion, i. e., the transformation and perpetuation of religious discourses as a result of their entanglement with secular academic discourses. Although my analysis addresses the discursive changes between roughly 1800 and 2000 (with occasional excursions into earlier periods when it seems necessary to explain the prehistory of certain discourses), the most important period for this study turns out to be the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. My regional focus is Germany and Great Britain, with occasional excursions to other parts of Europe and to the United States of America. In this period, the developments that characterize German and British academic culture had decisive influence on other parts of the world, which makes such a focus reasonable, even though the results of my study should of course not be uncritically extrapolated and generalized. Scientification of religion means that the borders between religion and science are constantly renegotiated in cultural processes. The concept challenges overly simplistic binary constructions, not only between religion and science, but also between etic and emic, professional and amateur, academic and vernacular, as well as between center and periphery. All of these binaries are united in discursive communities that stabilize attributions of meaning to the world around us in mutual dependence. The major part of this book was written between January and August 2013 during a research stay at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt. It would not have been possible to work through all the material necessary for this research without the excellent support I received in Erfurt. I want to thank all of the other fellows, students, and administrative staff, and particularly Jörg Rüpke, for a stimulating and most pleasant stay. I thank the University of Groningen for granting me eight months of sabbatical leave to finish this project. For a few chapters, I made use of material that was published before. Chapter 1 is a revised version of “Discursive Study of Religion: Approaches, Definitions, Implications,” originally published in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (25/1 [2013]: 5 – 25). For Chapter 8, I made use of “‘The Only Game in Town?’ Or: Contested Masters in Modern Western Sha-

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manism,” from Meister und Schüler in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Von Religionen der Antike bis zur modernen Esoterik (edited by Almut-Barbara Renger, 363 – 382; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012). I thank the presses for permission to use these publications in the present book. From the many colleagues who helped me formulate the ideas presented in this book, I want to thank especially Egil Asprem (whose forthcoming book will be a major contribution to the debate about scientification of religion), Ulrike Brunotte, Marjo Buitelaar, Alexandra Grieser, Jay Johnston, Hans G. Kippenberg, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, Kim Knibbe, Jeffrey J. Kripal, Yme Kuiper, BerndChristian Otto, Almut-Barbara Renger, Lautaro Roig-Lanzillotta, Dave Vliegenthart, Laura J. Vollmer, Erin Wilson, and Frans Wijsen. Thanks to the referees for their diligent and constructive critique, and to De Gruyter for accepting the manuscript for publication and for the excellent handling of the editorial process. I especially thank Alissa Jones Nelson, who invited me to submit the proposal and supported me in the long process from idea to manuscript. Her professionalism, knowledge, wisdom, grace, and humor have had a decisive influence on me and on my work. I will bow down to her on Sunday and salute her when her birthday comes. Groningen, 20 January 2014

Kocku von Stuckrad

Contents 

Religion and Science in Discursive Perspective 1 3 The Discursive Construction of Knowledge 5 Historical Analysis of Discourse 10 Discursive Study of Religion: Concepts and Definitions 11 Basic Concepts for Discourse Analysis 13 Consequences for a Discursive Study of Religion 15 Methodological Implications 15 Determining the Research Question 16 Selecting Data and Building a Corpus Choosing the Most Suitable Method to Analyze the Data Sets 19 Beyond Binaries: An Outline of the Argument

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Part One: Discarded Knowledge and Its New Legitimacy in Secular Discourse 23 

From Polemical Disjunction to New Integration: The Science of the 25 Stars 25 The Differentiation of Branches of Knowledge 27 The Responses of the Astrologers Polemical Disjunctions and their Complexities in the Eighteenth 33 Century Astrological Semantics in the Secret Societies of the Eighteenth 36 Century The Perpetuation of astrology in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Li38 terature and Philosophy 38 Astrology in Goethe’s Time Aestheticization and Psychologization of Astral Powers in the Romantic 43 Period 47 Re-Enchantment of the Cosmos around 1900 49 The Marriage of Secular Psychology and Astrology: Carl Gustav Jung The Dialogue between Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung and Its 52 Impact



Alchemical Quests in Modern Garb 56 58 Alchemy as the ‘Occult Other’ vitalism: A Ménage-a-Trois of Life, Spirit, and Matter

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Contents

Rearrangements in the Twentieth Century

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

Darwinism Turned into Religion: Monism 76 77 Ernst Haeckel: From Darwinism to Pantheistic Monism 80 Wilhelm Ostwald: Entanglements Personified Discursive Implications: Holistic Thinking between new age science, Na87 ture-Based Spirituality, and a New Philosophy of Nature 88 Fritjof Capra 89 Ilya Prigogine 91 Gregory Bateson 92 Rupert Sheldrake 92 David Bohm



Merging Occultism, Philosophy, Science, and the Academic Study of Reli94 gion: The Theosophical Society 94 Helena P. Blavatsky as a Discursive Hub 98 Unveiling the Hidden Knowledge of Isis 103 Secret Doctrines and Synthetic Discourse 107 Wars of Succession 110 The German Knot: Rudolf Steiner

Part Two: Academics as Religious Pioneers 

113

The Trouble with Europe: Academic Orientalism and New Mystical 115 Religions Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, and Dynamics of Jewish Self117 Orientalization 118 Martin Buber: In Search of the Eastern Urjudentum Gershom Scholem: ‘Jewish Mysticism’ as an Antidote to 122 ‘Europe’ Rudolf Otto and Gerardus van der Leeuw: Oriental Wisdom and the Ultimate 124 Access to the Sacred 125 Rudolf Otto 126 Gerardus van der Leeuw 129 Gender, Eroticism, and the Unveiling of an Orientalized Salome 132 Discursive Materializations: Globalized Sufism and Kabbalah 134 Kabbalistic Entanglements in the Life Sciences

Contents

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In Search of the Great Goddess: How Academic Theories Generated 139 Paganism and Witchcraft 140 Matriarchy as an Historical Myth: Johann Jakob Bachofen 144 Archaeologists and Classicists Discover the Great Goddess Charles G. Leland and Robert Graves: Popularizing the Idea of the 146 Goddess 146 Charles Godfrey Leland 149 Robert Graves Discursive Materializations in (the Study of) Paganism and 152 Esotericism



Normatizing Shamanism: Academic Teachers as Religious Experts 162 Mircea Eliade: Scholar and Novelist of Shamanism Shamanic and Academic Authorities: The Routinization of Charisma 167 Carlos Castaneda 169 Joan Halifax 170 Michael Harner 173 Authority Contested

Conclusion: The Scientification of Religion Bibliography Index

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159 166

1 Religion and Science in Discursive Perspective This book engages in a debate that cuts deep into contemporary European values and self-images. How can we adequately describe the place of religion in European societies after the long process of what is usually referred to as ‘secularization’? In the following chapters, I want to convince you that discursive analyses are particularly suitable in finding answers to this question. They also provide a solution to critical issues in the study of religion more generally. Because the academic study of religion is itself part of the process of what I will describe as scientification of religion, it is helpful to look at the scholarly construction of religion and its discursive entanglements with other cultural systems and academic disciplines; such an approach also contributes to the process of self-reflection that our discipline needs at the beginning of the twenty-first century. For some time now, the academic study of religion has experienced fundamental challenges. Although established as an independent discipline at European universities more than one hundred years ago, the academic study of religion is still wrestling with severe problems of identity and legitimization. The reasons for this challenging situation are partly related to developments in the academic landscape that have influenced many ‘small disciplines’ in the second half of the twentieth century; but they are also related to the fact that religion has played a very special role in the scientific, political, and cultural debates of the past two hundred and fifty years. Unlike ‘law,’ ‘health,’ ‘economy,’ and other concepts that appear more innocent at first glance, the concept of ‘religion’ is charged with difficulties that have thrown its study into contestation. The study of religion is particularly challenged in regard to its link to theology and thus to confessional or experiential approaches to religion, its link to colonial agendas that imposed a Eurocentric view on ‘non-Western’ cultures, as well as the tendencies in influential parts of the discipline to essentialize religion as something sui generis. One of the most important theoretical and methodological questions today is whether the discipline can respond to these fundamental challenges in a way that takes these critiques seriously and is able to transform the study of religion into an academic discipline that operates within a rigorous and self-reflective interpretational framework. Given the ubiquitous presence of religion in the global cultural worlds of the twenty-first century, there should be no doubt that we need experts who are trained to scrutinize the history and present appearance of religion in a sound academic way.¹

 There is a parallel with the discipline of philosophy here. Let me invoke Richard Rorty’s famous remark of 1979: “Professions can survive the paradigms which gave them birth. In any

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I argue that the notion of ‘discourse’ is of particular value if we are to establish such a self-reflective academic discipline. Although basic considerations about a discursive study of religion were made already in the 1980s (Kippenberg 1983; Lincoln 1989; see also Kippenberg 1992 and Lincoln 2005 [1996]), these suggestions have not been picked up in a more general way as an attempt to build a serious referential framework for a (self‐)critical study of religion. Recently, we have witnessed a rich discussion in neighboring disciplines, mainly in sociology and historiography, about the usefulness of discursive analysis. German and French scholars, in particular, have readdressed the theories of discourse, which were developed by Michel Foucault and others a generation earlier, and made them fruitful for the study of cultural phenomena in the twenty-first century. The academic study of religion has only sporadically taken notice of these new approaches to the study of discourse that break down the boundaries between academic disciplines—and even between the humanities and the natural sciences—in a most productive and promising way. More recent publications show that there is a growing interest in discourse theory, including its application to the study of religion, though most contributions still base themselves on linguistic and textual analyses of discourse.² Systematically applying discursive approaches is an important contribution to a discussion that is specific to the academic study of religion. It helps to resolve some of the conceptual problems in the field, as mentioned above, and tries to provide a coherent analytical framework for an academic study of religion that is capable of countering the theoretical challenges the discipline has to face. Two directions of scholarly thinking, both reaching back to the first half of the twentieth century, are of special—and underestimated—importance for a new understanding of discursive approaches. For one, the contributions from the sociology of knowledge should be more seriously incorporated in our theoretical framework; furthermore, the historical analysis of discourse is something that scholars of religion need if they want to retain their strong basis in historical research. In case, the need for teachers who have read the great dead philosophers is quite enough to insure that there will be philosophy departments as long as there are universities” (Rorty 1979, 393).  English contributions include van Dijk 1985; Potter 1996; Torfing 1999; Phillips and Hardy 2002; Jørgensen and Phillips 2002; Fairclough 2003; Wodak and Meyer 2010. On discursive approaches in the study of religion see Murphy 2000; Moberg 2009; Taira 2010 (without defining his concepts); Wuthnow 2011 (unfortunately, despite the title, the author does not conceptualize discourse at all). See now also Hjelm 2011 who follows Fairclough’s definition of discourse as “a way of speaking that does not simply reflect or represent things ‘out there,’ but ‘constructs’ or ‘constitutes’ them” (Hjelm 2011, 135, referring to Fairclough 1992, 3; Hjelm’s explanation under “Key concepts” remains a bit vague [Hjelm 2011, 149]). Hjelm consciously chooses a linguistically oriented approach to discourse. For a more historically oriented approach see von Stuckrad 2003a and 2010b.

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the following, I will introduce these lines of thought that are closely related to discussions in sociology and historiography. I will then clarify the most important terms that constitute a discursive study of religion and will suggest a definition of religious discourse as a clearly demarcated object of study. Discursive study of religion provides a research perspective rather than a single method to study religion. Nevertheless, this perspective has implications for the concrete scholarly work of designing a research project, putting together a corpus of data, and interpreting this data with the use of appropriate methods. I will explain this research strategy with reference to the themes that the present book engages.

The Discursive Construction of Knowledge One problem of the notion of ‘discourse’ is the fact that the term is used in many, and often conflicting, ways. It has further added to the confusion that many scholars do not clearly define what they mean when they use the term ‘discourse.’ This is not the place to provide an overview of the many different usages of the term since the nineteenth century (for such an overview see Keller 2011a, 97– 177; Keller 2011b, 13– 58; see also Landwehr 2009, 60 – 90). Rather, I want to highlight the crucial contributions that come from the sociology of knowledge and from historiographical approaches. Although they acknowledge the importance of language in the study of discourse, both approaches move beyond classical linguistic analysis (in the field of social linguistics ‘discourse’ refers to the more minute and specific patterns of speech in the everyday sense) and include the materiality of discursive structures. This is of particular importance for the study of religion. Since the 1960s, ‘knowledge’ has been an important dimension in sociological and discursive theory. This is true for the influential contributions of Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, and Alfred Schütz on the social construction of reality and knowledge (particularly Berger and Luckmann 1966; Schütz and Luckmann 1979 – 1984; applied to the study of religion and media in the overview of Krüger 2012, 11– 162), but also for Michel Foucault’s interest in the structures that produce shared knowledge in a given societal and historical situation. Foucault put particular emphasis on the power-structures that distinguish approved from non-approved knowledge (Foucault 1980), a focus that puts his work in a Marxist line of interpretation that is still visible in some recent, post-socialist or post-Marxist approaches to discourse theory, such as those of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, who emphasize the primacy of politics and the importance to solve urgent problems of our time. Jacob Torfing builds on this approach when he defines a discourse “as a relational totality of signifying sequences that determine the identity of the social elements, but never succeed in totalizing and ex-

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hausting the play of meaning” (1999, 87). Sociologists of knowledge still include the dimension of power and the importance of politics in their analysis, but not necessarily as the main and determining dimension of discursive practice or as expression of the need to radically reform plural democracies (in the way Laclau and Mouffe would have it; see Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 24– 59; Honneth and Saar 2002; on the reception of Laclau and Mouffe in German-speaking sociology see Stäheli 1995). Combining ideas about the social construction of reality with Foucault’s understanding of discourse, this approach argues that everything we perceive, experience, and feel, but also the way we act, is structurally intertwined with socially constructed forms of approved and objectified knowledge (I summarize Keller 2011b, 58– 59; see also Landwehr 2009, 91– 93). We do not have an unmediated access to the world an sich, even though the ‘robustness’ of its material quality limits the spectrum of interpretation. Knowledge of the world is not a neutral understanding but the cultural response to symbolic systems that are provided by the social environment. These symbolic systems are typically produced, legitimized, communicated, and transformed as discourses. Discourse analysis, from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, aims at reconstructing the processes of social construction, objectification, communication, and legitimization of meaning structures. What is regarded as legitimate knowledge in a given society is generated on the level of institutions, organizations, or collective actors. There is a close parallel between this approach to the social organization of knowledge and the poststructuralist positions that have reshaped postcolonial and gender studies since the 1980s.³ If you allow me an excursus into gender studies, reference must be made to Joan Wallach Scott, who already in 1988 criticized the binary construction of the sex-gender division and insisted on an examination of that binary opposition itself (1988, 40). That brings her to a redefinition of ‘gender’: “My definition of gender has two parts and several subsets. They are interrelated but must be analytically distinct. The core of the definition rests on an integral connection between two propositions: gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power” (ibid., 42). The close links between sociologies of knowledge and poststructuralist understandings of gender become fully visible when we look at Barbara Hey’s variation of Scott’s definition of gender, now using the German word Geschlecht

 See also Mills 2004, 69 – 115. An influential thinker in this field of research is Edward Said. As Alissa Jones Nelson aptly points out, “Said sees no opportunity for objective knowledge of other social worlds. […] Knowledge is, in fact, a matter of hermeneutics” (2012, 21).

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(translatable as both sex and gender) as an analytical category that transgresses the binary construction of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’: Geschlecht is knowledge of the societal relations between women and men and as such never absolute or persistent, but always dependent on context; it is controversial and an instrument of, as well as a result of, power relations. Knowledge as a way to order the world is inseparable from societal organization. Consequently, Geschlecht is the societal organization of gender differences [Geschlechterdifferenz]. But this does neither mean that it mirrors constant, natural differences nor that it enforces them. Rather, Geschlecht provides different meanings for these distinctions in historical, cultural, and social regard. Viewed from this perspective, the “sex/gender” distinction is misplaced (Hey 1994, 19 – 20; unless noted otherwise, all translations of quotations are mine).

We can learn a lot from Hey’s definition of Geschlecht when it comes to the study of religion. But at this point, let me emphasize that the notion of knowledge here does not refer to an objective truth of the world⁴ but to the social communication, attribution, and legitimization of what is accepted in a given society as knowledge. This knowledge can be explicit, but also implicit or tacit. An example of tacit knowledge would be the societal consensus in Europe that “democracy is better than dictatorship,” that “magic does not work,” or that “astrology is not scientific.” Implicit or tacit knowledge is, generally, not tested or challenged (or even thematized) by agents in a given society; what is more, such knowledge can change significantly from one society to another and from one historical period to another. That is why historical analysis of discourse addresses not only the explicitly available forms of knowledge (for instance, in the natural sciences) but particularly the ‘self-evident knowledge,’ the truth that is not formalized but generally accepted (see Busse 1987, 40 – 41). This brings us to the historical dimension of discourse analysis.

Historical Analysis of Discourse Throughout his work, Michel Foucault was interested in the genealogy, or ‘archaeology,’ of discursive structures, which naturally implies an historical dimension in his analysis of discourse (Bieder 1998; Bublitz 1999; see Busse, Hermanns, and Teubert 1994). Therefore, it is astonishing that Foucauldian approaches have only rarely been adopted in the study of religion, arguably a discipline that has

 This constructionist concept of ‘truth’ goes back to Friedrich Nietzsche.

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a strong historiographical focus.⁵ One reason for this may be that the notion of ‘history of religion’ is to a large extent associated with Eliadean phenomenology of religion (as a critique see McCutcheon 1997), which led to a general disregard of the category ‘history’ in the study of religion, particularly in the United States (see Kippenberg 2001; von Stuckrad 2003b; see also Lincoln 2005 [1996]). I will address Mircea Eliade’s impact on twentieth-century attributions of meaning to ‘religion’ repeatedly in this book. The so-called linguistic turn (programmatically Rorty 1967) has had far-reaching impact on all fields of cultural research. That our knowledge of the world is constituted in language and linguistic structures and that the scholar is also an author whose narrative account does not provide a privileged access to truth was famously argued for historiography by Hayden White (1973) and for anthropology by Clifford Geertz (1988). To be sure, large parts of historical scholarship, including scholars of religion, shunned the consequences of this reflective critique (see Vann 1998). Even today, “sources are still read as ‘documents’ of a past reality—perhaps they are read better, more diligently and critically, but nevertheless as medium with sufficient transparency” (Sarasin 2003, 32). That historical meaning is generated in communicative processes is only insufficiently acknowledged (examples of this acknowledgment include Koselleck 2004 [1979] and Rüsen 1997). Even fewer scholars include the category of ‘discourse’ in their historical analysis or make the argument that historical meaning is not ‘reconstructed’ from the ‘facts’ and ‘sources’ in a hermeneutical process of understanding (Verstehen) but discursively generated. This is exactly what Michel Foucault wanted to show in his critical reflection on our presupposition that historical truth is attainable in our accounts of it. Since Foucault, “discourse analysis can be understood as the attempt of scrutinizing the formal conditions that steer the production of meaning” (Sarasin 2003, 33; similarly Stäheli 2000, 73). In close reference to Foucault’s work and in conversation with structuralist approaches, several forms of discourse analysis have emerged (Maingueneau 1991, 15, distinguishes seven for the French academic discussion; see also Bublitz et al. 1999; Bublitz 2003; Mills 2004, 1– 25), some of them closer to linguistic and textual analyses than others. What they have in common is the argument that there is no ‘thing’ in the world that determines what is being said but that the meanings of things are generated by the chain of signifiers that the speaker is introducing.  Talal Asad is a notable exception to this rule; see Asad 1993 and 2003. See also Masuzawa 2007 as an analysis of the history of the discourse on ‘world religions’; for ancient history see Albinus 1997; Larmour, Miller, and Platter 1998; van den Heever 2006; methodologically Paul Allen Miller 1999.

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The thing that is meant, the referent, is as referent of a certain linguistic sign not prior to language; rather, it is the system of signs that ultimately creates it as social reality from the “chaotic variety” [chaotische Mannigfaltigkeit] (Kant) of all possible things in the world: “It is the world of words that generates the world of things” [Jacques Lacan]. Something else is fundamental for discourse analysis: This is not about the abstruse question whether there is more than texts; it is about how the non-linguistic things gain their meaning. No discourse, no grid of classification, however familiar it may appear, has ever been derived ‘from the things themselves’; it is the other way round and discourse and classification generate the order of things. […] Even though practices, gestures, and objects are themselves no longer constituted in language, they are relevant in the social world only because meaning has been discursively attributed to them (Sarasin 2003, 36; see also Busse 1987, 23; on the related concept of ‘empty signifier’ see Laclau 1994).

Or, in Achim Landwehr’s apt remark, “at the bottom [Grund] of realities and discourses there is no other fundament than their own historicity. Hence, the shortest possible definition of the function of discourses must be: discourses generate realities” (2009, 92). We can understand the working of discursive structures only if we know their genealogy and formation. And only through comparison—in diachronic or synchronic perspective—we can see the historicity and even singularity of discourses (see also Scott 2007, 8). There are no discourses that emerge ‘naturally’ or that are dictated by the working of some abstract reality; historical and comparative analysis of how social communicational structures attribute meaning to the world and organize explicit and implicit knowledge is the basis of discursive approaches. Discourses typically lead to a “shortage of possible notions [Verknappung von Aussagemöglichkeiten] (we cannot say everything at all times)” (Landwehr 2009, 92). Thus, the historicity of knowledge should not be misunderstood as arbitrariness. What a group of people in a given situation regards as accepted knowledge is by no means arbitrary; it is the result of discursive formations that critical scholarship can reconstruct and interpret. This is even true for knowledge that is legitimized by empirical methods in the ‘exact sciences’ and thus based on what is seen as ‘hard facts.’ Reconstructing the conditions of knowledge in the natural sciences is the goal of historical epistemology, a division within the history of science that is closely related to discursive approaches. The historicity of knowledge in the natural sciences was famously discussed by Ludwik Fleck (Fleck 1935). Edmund Husserl, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, and others have contributed to this debate and helped us to understand that it is not ‘nature’ that formulates natural laws but that ‘facts’ are produced in communicative and social processes (overview in Rheinberger 2006, 21– 72; see also Ashmore 1989; Ashmore, Myers and Potter

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1995; Latour 2010). Under the label of ‘discursive constructionism,’ Jonathan Potter and Alexa Hepburn summarize what is at stake here: Discursive constructionism (DC) is most distinctive in its foregrounding of the epistemic position of both the researcher and what is researched (texts or conversations). It studies a world of descriptions, claims, reports, allegations, and assertions as parts of human practices, and it works to keep these as the central topic of research rather than trying to move beyond them to the objects or events that seem to be the topic of such discourse. It is radically constructionist in that it is skeptical of any guarantee beyond local and contingent texts, claims, arguments, demonstrations, exercises of logic, procedures of empiricism, and so on. In this sense it can be described as antifoundationalist and poststructuralist. It takes seriously the work in rhetoric and the sociology of scientific knowledge that highlights the contingent, normative, and constructive work that goes into, say, logical demonstrations, mathematical proofs, or experimental replications (Potter and Hepburn 2008, 275).

In a similar vein, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, former director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and one of the most influential authors in the field, defines “the concept of epistemology, with reference to the French usage of the term, as the reflection on the historical conditions under which, and the means with which things are made into objects that start up the process of scientific inquiry [Prozess der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisgewinnung] and that keep this process going” (Rheinberger 2007, 11, italics original). Rheinberger exemplifies this with the history and epistemology of experimentation in the life sciences. One collaborative research project, on “A Cultural History of Heredity,” aims at “studying the juridical, medical, cultural, technical, and scientific practices and procedures in which knowledge of heredity became materially entrenched in different ways and by which it unfolded its often unprecedented effects over a period of several centuries” (Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2007, ix). These discourses generate “epistemic spaces” in which shared knowledge is established and legitimized.⁶ Put into the language of discourse theory, we can say that the practices and procedures in the natural sciences are a materialization of a discourse on, in this  See Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2007, 3 – 34; Rheinberger, Hagner, and Wahrig-Schmidt 1997. Rheinberger uses the term “infra-experimentality” to indicate the close links between things and acquired knowledge: “Infra-experimentality seeks to understand the game of producing knowledge effects under the hands of the experimenter, in the under-world beneath him. It seeks to grasp and expose those moments—chains of events—in which matter is made to mean and scientific meaning is made to matter. If we looked for a word that could convey the corresponding methodical effort, the choice would be ‘subduction.’ It deals with the interface between the agents of knowing and the objects of their desire” (Rheinberger 2011, 337, italics original). As an example of planetary theory as historical epistemology, see Schütte 2008, with the methodological explanation by Carrier 2008.

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case, heredity. The discursive materializations, in their turn, stabilize and legitimize the discursive assumptions that have made them possible. By so doing, discursive structures steer the attribution of meaning to things and establish shared assumptions about accepted and unaccepted knowledge. The example makes clear that discourse analysis breaks down the borders between the natural sciences and the social or cultural sciences. Despite their different methodologies to produce accepted knowledge, the natural sciences are no less discursively structured and thus socially steered than the humanities. As will be demonstrated in this book, discursive approaches help us to overcome the conceptual boundaries between the natural sciences and the humanities in our attempt to understand the communal production of ‘academic knowledge.’ It will also become clear that academic producers of meaning form a discourse community with non-academic authors. Consequently, discourse analysis argues that our knowledge is not about ‘the world out there’ (even if the existence of ‘a world out there’ is not denied) and that we should adopt a relativist rather than a realist position in the philosophical debate that is linked to these epistemological and ontological issues. The relativist position has led to many, often highly polemical objections. Derek Edwards, Malcolm Ashmore, and Jonathan Potter call the most prominent rejection the “Death and Furniture” response: ‘Death’ and ‘Furniture’ are emblems for two very common (predictable, even) objections to relativism. When relativists talk about the social construction of reality, truth, cognition, scientific knowledge, technical capacity, social structure and so on, their realist opponents sooner or later start hitting the furniture, invoking the Holocaust, talking about rocks, guns, killings, human misery, tables and chairs. The force of these objections is to introduce a bottom line, a bedrock of reality that places limits on what may be treated as epistemologically constructed or deconstructible. There are two related kinds of moves: Furniture (tables, rocks, stones, etc.—the reality that cannot be denied) and Death (misery, genocide, poverty, power—the reality that should not be denied) (Edwards, Ashmore, and Potter 1995, 26, emphasis original; see also Potter and Hepburn 2008, 287– 288; Nikander 2008, 413; more generally Parker 1998).

What is at stake is not “a lack of concern with that which may exist beyond discourse” (Benavides 2010, 210, as a critique of my position) but an acknowledgment of the difference between something that simply happens (often without being reported) and something that is made into a fact or event by discursive and communicative procedures. As Antonio Gramsci reminds us, without an inventory that organizes our knowledge about ourselves and our history, understanding is impossible. “The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, with-

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out leaving an inventory. Such an inventory must therefore be made at the outset” (quoted from Forgacs 1988, 326).

Discursive Study of Religion: Concepts and Definitions I have explained so far how recent discussions in the sociology of knowledge and the historical analysis of discourse have provided important new interpretational tools that make use of Foucauldian and poststructuralist approaches, at the same time adjusting them to their own needs and research interests. Now I turn to the question of how we can apply these considerations to the study of religion. I argue that a discursive study of religion is the most convincing form of analysis, if we want to avoid the traps and challenges that have confronted the study of religion during the twentieth century. Before I discuss the most important concepts and definitions, it is necessary to point out that discourse analysis is not itself a method. Sometimes harking back to Ludwik Fleck’s notion of Denkstil (“thought style,” see Fleck 1935), many theorists of discourse agree that discourse analysis is a research perspective or research style that applies a spectrum of possible methods in order to answer its guiding research question.⁷ This is in contrast to those approaches that focus on linguistic analysis or what Norman Fairclough calls “textually oriented discourse analysis.”⁸ Within the more historically oriented discourse theory that I am advocating here, and which leans more heavily on Michel Foucault’s work, the methods that are considered useful can range from philological methods to quantitative and qualitative methods, content analysis, etc. (for the study of religion, see the overview in Engler and Stausberg 2011). However, even if discourse analysis is not a specific method, it follows certain steps and rules that have proven useful in concrete analytical work. As I will explain below, these steps consist of the demarcation of the discourse under scrutiny, the collection of relevant data, and the decision of which method would be most productive

 See Sarasin 2003, 8 and 30; Bührmann and Schneider 2008, 16; Nikander 2008, 414 (“Specifying DA [=Discourse Analysis] as a method in any traditional way is difficult, if not impossible. Instead, DA is often described as a methodology or as a theoretical perspective rather than a method”); Landwehr 2009, 100; Keller 2011b, 9.  See Fairclough 1992, 37– 61. If scholars choose the linguistic and textual orientation, it may be easier to talk of a ‘method,’ but it also means to limit the applicability of discourse theory. Examples for such an understanding of discourse analysis are Schiffrin 1994; Schiffrin, Tannen, and Hamilton 2001; Renkema 2009; Hjelm 2011 (this may be a reason why his chapter is included in the section “Methods” of the Handbook).

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in collecting and interpreting the data. I will explain these steps with direct reference to the argument and material of the present book.

Basic Concepts for Discourse Analysis Let me now clarify the terms that are most relevant for our purpose here. Making use of the recent discussion that I have outlined above, I define ‘discourses’ as follows: Discourses are communicative structures that organize knowledge in a given community; they establish, stabilize, and legitimize systems of meaning and provide collectively shared orders of knowledge in an institutionalized social ensemble. Statements, utterances, and opinions about a specific topic, systematically organized and repeatedly observable, form a discourse. Hence, the concept of discourse refers to “the regularity of fields of statements, which regulate what can be thought, said, and done” (Stäheli 2000, 73). When it comes to the link between several discourses, we can conceptualize these as “intertextual and interdiscursive relationships between utterances, texts, genres and discourses, as well as extra-linguistic social/sociological variables, the history of an organization or institution, and situational frames” (Reisigl and Wodak 2010, 90). Consequently, ‘discourse analysis’ addresses the relationship among communicational practices and the (re)production of systems of meaning, or orders of knowledge, the social agents that are involved, the rules, resources, and material conditions that underlie these processes, as well as their impact on social collectives (similarly Keller 2011b, 8). ‘Historical discourse analysis’ explores the development of discourses in changing sociopolitical and historical settings, thus providing means to reconstruct the genealogy of a discourse. In addition to these fundamental terms, it is useful to introduce the concept of ‘dispositive,’ a term which was coined by Michel Foucault (le dispositif, often translated as ‘device,’ ‘deployment,’ or ‘apparatus’), but which recently has been defined more clearly in scholarly discussions. The concept moves beyond the analysis of discursive practices to include non-discursive practices and materializations,⁹ tacit and implicit knowledge, as well as the relationship between these dimensions of social action. A dispositive is here understood as the material, practical, social, cognitive, or normative ‘infrastructure’ in which a discourse develops. This can include governmental decisions and laws, new technologies and

 On the notoriously difficult distinction between the discursive and the non-discursive see Torfing 1999, 90 – 91.

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media, museums, educational programs, television, or the healthcare system. Dispositive analysis examines how “assignments of meaning create reality” (Jäger and Meier 2010, 39; as a detailed introduction see Bührmann and Schneider 2008). The distinction between discourses and dispositives becomes clear when we consider examples. Television, the Internet, a governmental decision, and an institution such as the Nobel Prize are not ‘discourses’ in themselves (discourses on what?), but they provide the communicative infrastructures in which attribution of meaning becomes operative. That is why historical discourse analysis has to include these dimensions of communicative structure. Discourses develop within cultural processes and dispositives. They form around specific topics, but many discourses also contain ‘strands’ from other discourses. For instance, the statement “The preamble of the future constitution of the European Union should refer to Christianity as Europe’s religious and philosophical roots” is linked to several discourses, particularly discourses on European identity, on constitutional law, on religion, on Christianity, and on philosophy. What we see here is that several discourses can be entangled and form a ‘discursive knot’ (Jäger and Meier 2010, 47). The notion of discursive knots reminds us of the fact that the borders of a discourse are flexible and dependent on scholarly definition, which means that discourses do not exist ‘out there.’ They have no ontological status other than being analytical categories that the analyst of cultural processes constructs to serve her or his interpretative goal. This is entirely in line with Michel Foucault’s understanding. What I do in this book, namely looking at re-entanglements of discursive knots in historical perspective, resembles Foucault’s program of deconstructing and reconstructing analytical frameworks: The […] purpose of such a description of the facts of discourse is that by freeing them of all the groupings that purport to be natural, immediate, universal unities, one is able to describe other unities, but this time by means of a group of controlled decisions. Providing one defines the conditions clearly, it might be legitimate to constitute, on the basis of correctly described relations, discursive groups that are not arbitrary, and yet remain invisible. […] [I]t is not therefore an interpretation of the facts of the statement that might reveal [the relations], but the analysis of their coexistence, their succession, their mutual functioning, their reciprocal determination, and their independent or correlative transformations (Foucault 2010 [1972], 29).

My project is Foucauldian in its analytical strategy as well. When I ‘disentangle’ and reconstruct discursive knots that have been tied around the concepts of ‘religion’ and ‘science,’ I suggest new ‘unities’: I […] will do no more than this: of course, I shall take as my starting-point whatever unities are already given (such as psychopathology, medicine, or political economy); but I shall

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make use of them just long enough to ask myself what unities they form; by what right they can claim a field that specifies them in space and a continuity that individualizes them in time; according to what laws they are formed; against the background of which discursive events they stand out; and whether they are not, in their accepted and quasi-institutional individuality, ultimately the surface effect of more firmly grounded unities. I shall accept the groupings that history suggests only to subject them at once to interrogation; to break them up and then to see whether they can be legitimately reformed; or whether other groupings should be made; to replace them in a more general space which, while dissipating their apparent familiarity, makes it possible to construct a theory of them (ibid., 26).

Consequences for a Discursive Study of Religion In a discursive framework of analysis, it does not make any theoretical difference whether we study religion, politics, technology, cars, animals, music, masculinity, or any other topic of social and symbolic communication that is linked to an identifiable discourse. But for the study of religion as a specialized area of research, discursive approaches have implications that need to be made explicit. To begin with, religion completely loses its status of being something sui generis. Rather, discursive approaches study the very claim that “religion is sui generis” as part of a discourse on religion that has formed under identifiable historical circumstances and that has materialized in university institutions and scholarly programs, in turn stabilizing and legitimizing the attributed meaning of religion as sui generis. ¹⁰ We can historicize the discourse on sui generis religion; what is more, we can scrutinize the dispositives and discursive knots, which characterize this discourse and maintain the construction of meaning, until at some point in the historical development other discourses determine the socially communicated knowledge about religion. Discursive approaches provide a solution to another problem as well. It is no longer necessary—in fact, it would be counterproductive—to apply a generic definition of religion (see also von Stuckrad 2010b, 165 – 167). Definitions of religion are statements and utterances that attribute meaning to things and that provide orders of knowledge. As contributions to a discourse on religion, these definitions are objects of discursive analysis rather than its tools. Regarding the term ‘religion’ as an empty signifier that can be activated with definitions, meanings, and communicational practices does not compromise the

 As a valuable attempt to provide a discursive analysis of ‘sui generis religion’ see McCutcheon 1997. However, McCutcheon remains ambivalent in his use of the concept of ‘discourse’ and does not clearly distinguish it from, e. g., ‘ideological strategies.’

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clarity of the object nor the scholarly rigor of the study of religion. It only moves the obligation to define our objects from the level of communicational practices to the level of discursive reflection. I make this distinction visible in a change of typeface: ‘religion’ refers to contributions to a discourse on religion, while ‘religion’ refers to the discourse itself.¹¹ After this clarification, we can go a step further and define religion simply as follows: religion is the societal organization of knowledge about religion. In the same vein, science would be defined as the societal organization of knowledge about science. The definitions of ‘discourse analysis’ and ‘historical discourse analysis,’ as given above, pertain to the discursive study of religion as well, only that now the analysis is directed to the discourse on religion (i. e., to religion), the dispositives that serve as the infrastructure of religion, and possible entanglements with other discourses.¹² religion produces meanings and orders of knowledge that materialize in concrete practices and institutions; these orders interact with non-discursive practices and dispositives such as the organization of higher education or the appearance of new media and technology. Moreover, as a discursive constellation religion is entangled with other discursive constellations, which could be defined as law, science, spirituality, magic, health, economy, heredity, or any other discourse that may be of interest for scholarly analysis. Dispositives and discursive knots are subject to change, which means that religion is fully historicized and open to intercultural comparison.

 For the fact that scholars of religion are also agents in the field of religion and that discourse analysis produces discourses on discourses, see von Stuckrad 2010b. As Achim Landwehr notes, this is by no means a disadvantage of discourse analysis “but the consequential application of its research premises” (2009, 98). On the discursive impact on the scholar of religion see also Bruce Lincoln’s tenth thesis: “Understanding the system of ideology that operates in one’s own society is made difficult by two factors: (i) one’s consciousness is itself a product of that system, and (ii) the system’s very success renders its operations invisible, since one is so consistently immersed in and bombarded by its products that one comes to mistake them (and the apparatus through which they are produced and disseminated) for nothing other than ‘nature’” (2005 [1996], 9). It should be noted that Lincoln’s use of ‘discourse’ is broader than Foucault’s; for Lincoln, discourse refers to a wide array of phenomena such as myth, ritual, and classification.  This resonates with Lincoln’s third thesis on method: “To practice history of religions in a fashion consistent with the discipline’s claim of title is to insist on discussing the temporal, contextual, situated, interested, human, and material dimensions of those discourses, practices, and institutions that characteristically represent themselves as eternal, transcendent, spiritual, and divine” (2005 [1996], 8).

Methodological Implications

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Methodological Implications As noted above, we should not consider the study of discourse itself to be a method. Rather, as a research perspective, or research style, the study of discourse is an interpretative endeavor and thus a hermeneutical strategy to scrutinize the organization of knowledge in a given societal and historical situation (Keller 2005; Keller 2011a, 76 – 78). Nevertheless, despite the openness to apply various methodological tools and the flexibility to adjust these tools to the research question that is at stake in a given project, there are a few basic considerations and implications that arise when one decides to engage a discursive research perspective. We can differentiate three important steps in designing and carrying out an historical discourse analysis. I will briefly explain them, using examples from the analysis of religion and science.¹³ This will also serve as an introduction to the main argument of the present book.

Determining the Research Question In principle, all research is intrinsically bound to a discursive construction of meaning and the organization of knowledge. It is therefore a characteristic of discursive perspectives that they can lead to a better understanding of complex dynamics in the generation of approved knowledge—whether the research in question is itself explicitly discursive or not. But even if everything can be studied from a discursive perspective, not all research is itself a discursive analysis. Discursive studies have concrete research questions that may differ from research questions as they are typically framed in historical, philological, anthropological, or sociological perspectives. Historical discourse analysis is interested in the processes of communicational generation, legitimization, and negotiation of meaning systems. When we look at the discursive field of religion and science, countless research questions are possible. In an arbitrary selection, and limiting our focus to European contexts, we can pose the following general questions that can be framed discursively: (a) “What are the structures that regulate public opinion about astrology as op-

 Detailed discussions of how to do a concrete discourse analysis in the way that I am advocating it here can be found in Bührmann and Schneider 2008, 75 – 149; Landwehr 2009, 91– 131; Reisigl and Wodak 2010, 93 – 120; Keller 2011b, 65 – 117; Keller and Truschkat 2011; Keller and Truschkat 2012. The manuals for concrete research methods in Critical Discourse Analysis that can be found elsewhere are too much focused on linguistic and textual analysis and thus less appropriate for my understanding of historical discourse and dispositive analysis.

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posed to astronomy in Europe?” (b) “Why is shamanism so attractive to many people in Europe and North America?” (c) “How can we explain the rise of psychological interpretations and their link to metaphysical and religious ideas in the twenthieth century?” (d) “What is the role of religion in the field of natural sciences today?” To be sure, these are general questions that have to be broken down into more concrete sets of subquestions, but the examples should make clear what kind of questions we typically ask in a discursive analytical framework, and which questions will be addressed in the subsequent chapters of this book. We can translate these questions into discursive language and design a project that reconstructs the discursive entanglements of religion on the one hand and astrology, shamanism, psychology, and science on the other. All these discourses lead to further discourse strands that characterize the respective entangled discourse. After a thorough screening of the available data (see the next passage), it turns out that in the case of shamanism, these further discourse strands include healing, soul, nature, therapy, and consciousness. It depends on our research focus whether we will need to include all of these discourse strands or only a selection of them.

Selecting Data and Building a Corpus When we have formulated a research question and possible sets of subquestions that concretize what we are interested in, the next step is the selection of the data that is most suitable for finding an answer to our question. It is important to note here that a sound discursive study has to start with a substantial reading of the material under consideration, in the broadest possible sense. That contributions to a discourse must be “repeatedly observable” is a relevant detail in my definition of ‘discourse.’ This also means that the establishment of a discourse for further analysis can be reasonably combined with methods of Grounded Theory. For instance, to find the basis for my construction of the discourses of science and religion, I had a close look at a large number of texts in which ‘science’ and ‘religion’ are used; subsequently, I noted down the other concepts that were repeatedly used as entangled discourse strands in these documents; this led to what can be called groupings of entangled discourse strands, such as soul, vitalism, monism, power, energy, etc. Put differently, a discursive study is a hermeneutical circle that starts with a broad reading of the most various documents, proceeds with heuristic groupings of discourse strands, and refines the construction of these groupings by revisiting the material and including more documents; this circular refinement can be repeated until the understand-

Methodological Implications

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ing of the respective discourse and its historical development will be good enough to be put into a thesis that is clearly based on relevant material. Since discursive approaches are not limited to textual sources, data can be found in all forms of communication that are operative in the attribution of meaning. With regard to the research questions formulated above, possible data sets would include (but are not limited to): (a) books about astrology and astronomy, media and newspaper coverage, Internet discussions, official statements about astrology in governmental documents or scientific organizations (research organizations, Nobel Prize documents, etc.); (b) books on shamanism (often popularizing academic theories), workshop programs, Internet forums, interviews with shamanic practitioners; (c) academic as well as popular publications in the field of psychology, academic correspondence and ego-documents, governmental documents that regulate the psychological and therapeutic market; (d) books on contemporary science, presentation of research results in the media and on the Internet, museum exhibitions. In order to address the genealogy of the discourses under scrutiny, it is important to add an historical dimension to the research outline as well. My analyses in this book are clearly focused on the genealogy and thus the formation of the discursive entanglements that are derived from the overall research questions. In addition to concrete sets of data, the research should also include an analysis of dispositives that serve as the ‘infrastructure’ of the discourse under scrutiny: for the present study I looked at new technologies and media (electricity, television, Internet); the history of associations and scholarly organizations (such as the Theosophical Society, the German Monist League, and new book series for a lay audience); governmental rules (for instance with regard to the juridical and tax status of shamanic, astrological, or pagan practitioners); the funding of scientific research; programs in teaching and research at universities; etc. The lists of possible—or even necessary—sets of data make it clear that a full-blown discursive analysis requires a lot of time and resources. The selection of data and the building of a research corpus will thus be dependent on possible constraints and practicalities. Individual projects can be part of a larger research program or even consider themselves simply as a contribution to an overall analysis of a discourse. It is methodologically acceptable to design an exemplary study that highlights one aspect of a discourse.¹⁴ What is more, within a larger

 Exemplary research here means that the study meets all three conditions of an exemplum: “First, that the exemplum has been well and fully understood. This requires a mastery of both the relevant primary material and the history and tradition of its interpretation. Second, that the exemplum be displayed in the service of some important theory, some paradigm, some fundamental question, some central element in the academic imagination of religion. Third, that

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research program it may be necessary to set up small projects first that make relevant data available for further discursive analysis (such as the critical edition of a text or a social-scientific survey).

Choosing the Most Suitable Method to Analyze the Data Sets As noted above, the methods that are applied in a discursive analysis can vary, depending on the most suitable way to interpret the research corpus. Typically, a discursive study of religion makes a selection of the following research methods: content analysis, conversation analysis, media analysis, participant observation, textual interpretation, surveys and interviews, and historical methods (see Engler and Stausberg 2011). For the research I needed to prepare the present book, I applied a combination of historical methods, content analysis, and textual interpretation. The generation and interpretation of data is not a goal in itself. It serves the overall question that is formulated within a discursive referential framework. Consequently, the data is used and interpreted with reference to the organization of knowledge in a given setting as well as to the attribution of meaning to things and events. It is fully acknowledged that the research results are themselves elements of the discourse under scrutiny; hence, they do not represent the ‘truth’ about the issue at stake but provide insight into the mechanisms, historical dimensions, and implications of the construction of meaning in a discourse community. Although the main argument of this book is based on an extensive reading of documents, which gives me enough confidence about the relevance of the material under consideration, it would be presumptuous to claim that my (re)construction of the processes of changing entanglements of science and religion during the past two-hundred years is the concluding result of an analysis that would include many more sources than one author can possibly manage. If readers regard this book as a ‘pilot study’ of the scientification of religion and test my hypothesis against a rereading of the same material or against other contributions to the discursive knots under consideration, the goal of this book would be accomplished.

there be some method for explicitly relating the exemplum to the theory, paradigm, or question and some method for evaluating each in terms of the other” (Smith 1982, xi–xii).

Beyond Binaries: An Outline of the Argument

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Beyond Binaries: An Outline of the Argument Often, analyses of the processes that I engage in this book operate within a binary pattern, juxtaposing religion and science, professional and amateur, or modern and pre-modern. Discursive approaches are skeptical of these binary constructions. In a way, discursive approaches are themselves discursive materializations of questions that have been raised with reference to binary models of interpretation, such as true and false, insider and outsider, or culture and nature. The twentieth century has seen a fundamental break with these binaries, and the new cultural studies have taken up the challenges that came with the break. Self-consciously presented as “a new paradigm in cultural studies,” the notion of the third has recently gained influence as a new way to think beyond the binaries and to include the ‘in-between’ as significant characteristic of contemporary culture. Albrecht Koschorke, one of the leading thinkers in this field, explains that the third (das Dritte) as a way of thinking was developed in the twentieth century and cannot be ignored anymore. Here, the exceptional state is made permanent as it were. When in the encounter of two parties none of the two sides can assert a hegemonic claim—a claim that brings back the Other into the Own, viewing the opposite as derivate of a higher-level order that is identical with the own—then a new grammar of cultural and epistemological negotiation is needed, which traditional means cannot achieve (2010, 13, emphasis original).

Indeed, the intellectual discussions in various disciplines throughout the twentieth century have made unmistakably clear that notions of ‘hybridity’ or the ‘third space’ (Bhabha 2004, 53 – 56; see Bhabha 1990) not only represent a critique of binary constructions but also a new vocabulary that is needed to understand processes of cultural transformation (see also de Certeau 2010 as discursive considerations on the ‘Other’). Thinking in triads, in which the third is not the synthesis of one of the opposites, is a red thread that runs through many disciplinary contexts, from philosophy to anthropology to sociology to the study of religion, and even to economy and law (Eßlinger et al. 2010, 35 – 149, see 316 – 322 for a list of relevant literature; see also Breger and Döring 1998). Gender studies and (post)colonial studies are heavily influenced by these theories. In a recent research program, scholars have identified new ‘figures’ (or, rather, figurations) of the third that have left their pariah position and have become central analytical instruments, among them the messenger, the cyborg, the parasite, the laughing third, the trickster, and the rival (Eßlinger et al. 2010, 153 – 315). In the context of the present book, the ‘amateur’ would also qualify as a third that is not adequately described as the overcoming of either

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professional or ‘pseudo’ knowledge. We may even reposition the ‘intellectual’ in new triadic constellations of twentieth-century culture. Discursive approaches can provide the vocabulary we need for the new grammar of cultural and epistemological negotiation that Koschorke calls for.¹⁵ Legitimization, de-legitimization, construction, and reconstruction of knowledge in changing entanglements of discourse strands form the basic structure of this epistemological negotiation. The following chapters will develop and test such a vocabulary with regard to the question of whether we can come to a better understanding of the complex relationship between religious and secular discourses in Europe. I will reconstruct the genealogy of distinctions between religion and the secular, but I will do so by focusing on subfields in which these distinctions become clearly visible. Legitimization and de-legitimization of knowledge are particularly relevant for the histories of astrology, alchemy, and magic. Often lumped together under the rubric of ‘occult sciences,’ these systems of knowledge have played a special role in European imagination at least since the fifteenth century (see Zika 2003; Hanegraaff 2012; on the concept of ‘occult sciences’ see my introduction to Chapter 3 below). One reason for their ambivalent status as knowledge systems may be the fact that they subscribe to rational philosophies of nature and that they formulate theories about nature; thus, they are perceived as competitors to what has become ‘scientific’ knowledge after 1800. In the previous section I already described the relevant steps that structure the discursive analysis in this book. Based on this approach, Part One addresses the discursive constellations in which the ‘occult’ sciences, but also naturebased philosophies in general, have gained their meaning during the past centuries. Chapter 2 reconstructs the genealogy of discourses on astrology as a controversial system of knowledge that lost ‘scientific’ legitimacy and at the same time was re-entangled in scientific discourses after the nineteenth century. Chapter 3 does the same with alchemy, arguing that vitalism and related philosophies of nature are relevant discursive entanglements that lent new legitimacy to alchemy in the twentieth century. The same is true for a pantheistic monism (Chapter 4) that was modeled by natural scientists at the beginning of the twentieth century, thus propagating a veneration of nature that was fully compatible

 When I talk of “vocabulary” I follow Richard Rorty’s understanding of the importance of finding new vocabularies in order to express new analyses: “On the view of philosophy which I am offering, philosophers should not be asked for arguments against, for example, the correspondence theory of truth or the idea of ‘intrinsic nature of reality.’ The trouble with arguments against the use of a familiar and time-honoured vocabulary is that they are expected to be phrased in that very vocabulary” (Rorty 1989, 8 – 9).

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with a scientific worldview. Chapter 5 gives credit to the Theosophical Society, which served as an important link between academic and non-academic interpretations of science and religion, with a special interest in ‘occult’ or esoteric forms of knowledge. Part Two looks at concrete examples of academic experts whose writings had a considerable impact on the attribution of meaning to religion. I address them as “religious pioneers” of the twentieth century, not because they all intended to found new religions, but because they lent scientific authority to new religious interpretations and religious practices. In other words, these scholars were catalysts of religious change and the emergence of new religious communities in the twentieth century. Chapter 6 contextualizes the work of Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Rudolf Otto, and Gerardus van der Leeuw in their intellectual environments and describes the concrete impact these scholars had on subsequent understandings of ‘mysticism’ and ‘religion.’ Chapter 7 analyzes the academic construction of the ‘Great Goddess’ and her veneration in European history, which had a clear impact on religious practice in twentieth-century witchcraft and nature-based spirituality. Chapter 8 is devoted to scholarly constructions of shamanism and how they were turned into religious practice in the second half of the twentieth century. The concluding chapter aggregates the historical material and links the analysis to recent discussions about secularism, secularization, the secular, and modernization. I will argue that if we talk of ‘scientification of religion’ as a discursive constellation we will be able to overcome the binaries that distort many interpretations of the place of religion in contemporary Europe.

Part One: Discarded Knowledge and Its New Legitimacy in Secular Discourse

2 From Polemical Disjunction to New Integration: The Science of the Stars That “astrology is not scientific” is tacit knowledge in Europe today. People usually do not know anything about astrology, but they can be sure that the overwhelming majority of the population shares this assumption; further inquiry into astrology is superfluous. Tacit knowledge also means that if people act against this unquestioned assumption, they arouse suspicion. At the same time, astrological practice is a significant cultural phenomenon in European countries, albeit usually not related to ‘science’ but to psychology, spirituality, and the search for meaning. How can we explain this constellation? The differentiation between astrology and astronomy as two different cultures of knowledge is a very recent one; in the wake of this recent change, new meanings were attributed to astrology as a psychological and metaphysical discipline. If we want to reconstruct the genealogy of the current situation, we will have to go back into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is in this period that the unity of the ‘science of the stars’ fell apart into astronomy—as the only representative of ‘science’—and astrology. But this period also generated attributions of meaning that continued to be dominant in twentieth-century discourse on astrology. That is why I will also present in this chapter contributions to the discourse on astrology that predate the rise of secularism, as long as these are relevant for our understanding of the present situation. Looking at the various overlapping discourses makes it clear that the history of ‘modernization’ is by no means a linear one, and that the complexities of the ‘boundary-work’ that shaped current identities are to be taken seriously in our historical analysis.

The Differentiation of Branches of Knowledge In the second half of the seventeenth century an increasingly critical attitude toward traditional astrology could be seen in many parts of Europe. There are several reasons for this situation, and considerable regional differences also strengthen the impression that a generalizable explanation for this development is hard to justify. The Thirty Years’ War (1618 – 1648), in which denominational conflicts and arguments between countries, princes, imperial cities, and the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II ended in bloodbaths, had enormous consequences for European culture. A great proportion of the population was killed, and the provinces were devastated and impoverished. This triggered apocalyptic, mes-

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sianic, and astrological expectations. The bitter conflict between the Christian denominations also had a direct influence on astrology, particularly in regard to permitted practices in learned circles. In responses to the Reformation, the Catholic Church increased its pressure on science and philosophy considerably. Many universities were run by Jesuits or Dominicans who vehemently opposed the rising Platonism and instead spread a new scholastic philosophy. The Spanish Jesuit Suarez had revised Aristotelian teachings, which were now taught in this form at leading universities, including Oxford, Paris, Padua, and Cologne. Due to this development, astrology was crushed between the fronts. On one side there were the new scholastic traditionalists, who opposed Copernicus’ system and continued to stick to an Aristotelian model that assumed the separation of the sublunar and the heavenly worlds and constructed a dimension of ‘first movement’ (Primum Mobile) beyond the planetary spheres, which was not empirically provable (the example of the University of Louvain is discussed in detail in vanden Broecke 2003). This model was, however, a sticky wicket, for on the other hand, discoveries were being made annually that were simply incompatible with the model (on the instrumental role of early modern astronomy in establishing a mathematical scientific method see also Schütte 2008). Moreover, traditional astrology was being criticized, from the point of view of mechanisticmathematical natural philosophy, because it still worked with qualitative principles that defied any empirical explanation and were based on unprovable assumptions. Astrology found itself in trouble under the primacy of the new teaching, which related to purely quantitative and perceptible matter. What we are seeing here can best be described as a differentiation of branches of knowledge (on this process see also Schmidt-Biggemann 1996). Any astrological tradition, which in the sense of an occulta philosophia had been a fixed part of the academic sciences since the Renaissance, was gradually phased out of the scientific discourse (and the corresponding dispositives). At the universities astrology no longer had any opportunity to develop and subsequently moved into other cultural areas—in private study, in a simplified popular form, in art, and in literature. Only a few people heeded Kepler’s advice, that as long as astrology limited itself consistently to the symbolic interpretation of heavenly events and left the physical explanation of the subject to others, it could cope with the new paradigm (Rosen 1984; Field 1987; von Stuckrad 2007, 255 – 259; on the complex history of the Copernican system and its controversy, with the amazing example of Athanasius Kircher, see Siebert 2006). Instead, many astrologers stuck to the traditional view of the world and made themselves laughingstocks. In the long term, though, and effectively only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, astrology was consistently distinguished from astronomy; qualitative-interpretative astrology lost its status as a scientific discipline over

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against the new quantitative-mechanistic astronomy, but it established itself, at the same time, as a psychological discipline outside the universities. Before looking at these discursive changes in more detail, it is important to consider the varied responses by astrologers themselves.

The Responses of the Astrologers The shocks to astrological self-understanding, which arose, on the one hand, with the questioning of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic model of the cosmos and, on the other, with the establishment of the mechanistic-quantitative method, can be shown clearly in the biographies and works of the astrologers of the seventeenth century. The reactions to the challenge of Copernicus’ model took very different courses in individual countries, to the extent that rough generalizations should be avoided. However, it is basically true that the conflict between Aristotelianism—more accurately, new scholasticism—and the new quantitative-mechanistic thinking was where the ways separated. Those astrologers who fought against Copernicus’ view of the world and continued to seek agreement with the Christian interpretation increasingly found themselves losing ground in arguments, whereas those who followed a path of mystical Platonism, foreseen by Kepler, or who simply did not bother with heliocentric astronomy, created the basis for the continued existence of astrological systems within the new worldview. Let us have a brief look at the most important astrologers of the second half of the seventeenth century, some of whom wrote very extensive works. We begin with Italy where, despite church bans, various astrological treatises and predictions still managed to appear, including the popular Almanaco perpetuo by Benincasa, which was extended to 700 pages in 1655 by the astronomer Ansaleoni. Even in Rome, between 1672 and 1684 a series of forecasts was published, which shows the sometimes inconsistent handling of astrology by the church. Most astrologers who were working at this time were accepted because they tried to defend the Aristotelian-based scholastic system against the attacks of scholars advocating the Copernican system. The best-known of them was P. Placido de Titis (1603 – 1668). This scholar, who came from an Umbrian aristocratic family, at twenty-one entered the Olivetan Order, a branch of the Benedictine order with its headquarters in Siena. Later he became a lecturer in mathematics and physics at the University of Padua and professor at the Milanese University of Pavia. Placidus, as he is still called today, wrote a great number of works on astrology in which he set out the compatibility of scientific astrology with Christian belief. He reacted in particular to the criticism of his countryman Pico della Mirandola by trying to eliminate any ‘qualitative’ branch of astrology.

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He considered the zodiacal signs, houses, aspects, and all the other factors to be physically real elements that must be derived from natural principles. These principles were mediated by light, which meant a direct influence of astrological factors and not a simple qualitative correspondence. Instead of geometric divisions and their Platonic-mystical charge, in Kepler’s sense, Placidus insisted on the Aristotelian physical-causal interpretation of astral effects. In his main work, Physiomathematica sive coelestis philosophia (“Physiomathematics or the Philosophy of the Sky”), which was first published under a pseudonym in 1650 and then posthumously in an improved version in 1675 in Milan, Placidus turned against the purely geometrically derived systems of houses and direction methods, such as those by Campanus and Regiomontanus. Following Ptolemy, he claimed—since the light represented the real influence—a division of houses by two temporal hours, i. e., by the proportional division of the movement of the heavenly points from one to the next cusp.¹ Cardano and Magini had already taught this method, and for purely geometric reasons, something the author did not mention. Placidus’ teaching on the division of houses soon became widespread; even today his method is the most used worldwide. Its strong influence can be put down not only to the Physiomathematica but mostly to the widely read tables Tabulae primi mobilis, which contained the principles of his teaching in seventy theses, expanded by house tables for reference, as well as instructions for calculation and thirty sample horoscopes. Most Italian astrologers argued that in astrology real causal influences are at stake, which in the Aristotelian theory ultimately stemmed from the Primum Mobile beyond the spheres. This reassured them of the Church’s acceptance. Mention should be made here of A. Francesco Bonatti from Padua, Antonio Tattoni from Terni, and P. Giambattista Riccioli, whose extensive Almagestum novum followed Ptolemy. Riccioli formulated a sharp criticism of Copernicus and Galileo and published an astrological historical reflection listing all the so-called great conjunctions from 3980 BCE to 2358 CE. The works of Placidus and his colleagues were published with the Church’s permission, but in 1688 the curia changed its mind and put all astrological books on the index of prohibited books (including those by Placidus). The ban was made stricter in 1709, and this led to the center of astrological practice moving from Italy to England and the Netherlands. A reason for this disdain for astrology may have been the well-known astronomer Giovanni Montanari, who published a prognosticon in

 “Cum vero domus dispertitæ per binas temporales horas, sint partes proportionales quartarum, sit vt secundum influxum æquales sint omnes ad inuicem, etiam si quantitate extensionis, nimiru Arcus, sint inæquales in Hemisphærijs” (Placidus 1675, 189).

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1676 in Bologna, which was continued until 1686; the accurate predictions in it brought him recognition everywhere. In 1685, however, Montanari admitted in another publication that he came to his previous prognostications entirely arbitrarily in order to prove that one can get just as many hits by chance as one can with ‘learned’ astrology. That was quite a blow for the astrological community. There was also strong resistance against the new worldview in France, but there were reputable advocates, too. The discussion in the Parisian Collège de France can be seen as paradigmatic, and the positions taken there bounced directly off each other. On one side stood Jean-Baptiste Morin de Villefranche (1583 – 1656), who was introduced to astrology later in life through his friendship with the Scottish alchemist and astrologer William Davison (1593 – 1669), and who, after his appointment as professor of mathematics at the Collège de France in 1630, soon rose to become the most famous astrologer of his time. Morin was highly respected by the queens of France, Sweden, and Poland, as well as by the cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin; he was the court astrologer to Louis XIII and, in this function, attended the birth of Louis XIV in 1638. Although he published numerous works in which he discussed Copernicus and Placidus critically, Morin’s fame is based on his 26-volume life’s work, the Astrologia gallica, written in Latin (and, therefore, broadly received only after later translations), which he worked on for thirty years. The master did not live to see its publication in The Hague (1661), financed by Queen Marie Louise of Poland, who was one of his former clients. This enormous work consists of over 800 pages, 39 tables, and 80 sample horoscopes and is suggested by the author to be a complete encyclopedia of astrology as it is practiced in the style of Francesco Giuntini, known as Junctinus (1522 – 1590?). I cannot here go into the many innovative techniques and highly complex rules for interpretation that Morin developed (books are available in French and English; for the revivalist reception in France and Germany see Selva 1897; see also Schwickert and Weiß 1925, vol. 2). Nevertheless, one should bear in mind that Morin also saw the Primum Mobile as the central physical cause of all events, located beyond the planetary spheres. From there the astral powers radiate down and influence the sublunar world that, for its part, is made up of four original qualities. The zodiac is strongly linked to the Primum Mobile; the tragedy of Morin is that with the collapse of this Aristotelian system, his conclusions also lost their power of persuasion. This weak point was an invitation to his adversaries at the Collège de France, in particular its provost, the physicist and mathematician Peter Gassendi (1592– 1655). Gassendi refuted the Aristotelian idea of a first space that is filled with power and set against it an Epicurean-mechanistic model that saw God as the first cause of all events. The bodies of the atoms move around in an empty space and through this movement produce earthly events. So Gassendi followed

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Copernicus’ worldview but with the toned-down compromise of Tycho Brahe—the sun still revolved around the earth as the center, but the five planets revolved around the sun—since this did not seem to contradict the Bible. That was also the opinion of his friend Marinus Mersenne (1588 – 1648), who worked closely with Descartes, Hobbes, and the astrologer Campanella. In his work Quaestiones celeberrimae in genesin, which was published in 1623, he developed a mystical Platonic position similar to Kepler’s, to whom he later explicitly referred (Harmonie universelle, 1636). Despite these attempts to adapt astrology to the new worldview, astrology managed to acquire the reputation in France, as it had in Italy, of being old-fashioned and unscientific. In 1666, the founder of the French academy, Minister J. B. Colbert, personally acted against astrology in that he strictly forbade the members of his academy to study this science. The discursive changes became fully apparent in the figure of King Louis XIV: while Morin was allowed to interpret his birth horoscope, on 31 July 1682 the king extended the ban on astrological calendars and almanacs, which had been in force in several provinces already, so that it now covered the whole of France. Astrology was finally excluded from the learned discourse in France. History proceeded very differently in England. Even though the universities—both those that followed the empiricists and those that followed the Cambridge Platonists—rejected astrology as a serious discipline, and a few scholars occupied themselves with it only in secret, this did not lead to the disappearance of astrology from public discourse. On the contrary: in no other European country was there such a wide engagement with astrology outside the universities as in England (see Curry 1989). We will see that this continued interest would essentially contribute to astrology being re-adopted in other parts of Europe toward the end of the nineteenth century. A large number of so-called professionals practiced horoscope interpretation and published political-economic forecasts. They were always in danger of falling victim to the law issued by James I in 1603 against magicians, fortunetellers, and astrologers. However, the law only made punishable such behavior that transgressed “the boundaries of allowed astrology,” or that took place with intent to defraud. And since the client who felt himself defrauded had to come before the courts her- or himself, which was embarrassing enough for most people, this law was not totally effective. Furthermore, due to political upheavals, official censorship was completely abolished in 1641, and consequently a big market for astrological literature suddenly became visible—Curry speaks here of the “halcyon days” of English astrology (1989, 19 – 22). Before 1640 there were no newspapers with astrological content, but by 1645 there were several hundred; while in 1640 there were only 22 new astrological publications to register, in 1642 there

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were suddenly 1,966; in the following decades there were, on average, three pamphlets published every day (Curry 1989, 19). Even the most famous of all professionals, William Lilly (1602– 1681), often called the ‘true father of British astrology,’ was taken to court repeatedly; but he, too, profited from the boom in astrology after 1641 (on Lilly’s biography see Parker 1975). Lilly came from a simple background. He had to give up Latin school in 1620 because his father was arrested for being in debt, and he got by in London as an errand-boy and servant. However, he was fortunate; after the death of his master, he married the rich widow and managed to increase his new wealth considerably by speculating on property. When he was thirty, he became interested in astrology; the first results of his interest in mundane astrological techniques were the political almanacs published under his pseudonym, “Merlinus anglicus,” in 1644 and 1645. For this work he found himself before the courts but, because of his clever defense, was not punished. Lilly, who was outstanding at Latin and thus could read all the available literature on the subject, completely dedicated his life to astrology and contributed to the development of the seventeenth century as ‘the golden century of astrology’ in England. He fostered contact with many specialists, including Sir Elias Ashmole (1617– 1692), with whom he soon became close friends (Curry 1989, 35 – 40). Lilly also dedicated his autobiography to the founder of the famous Ashmolean museum. His autobiography appeared, under the title Mr. William Lilly’s History of his Life and Times, in 1715, and revealed such interesting details as a treasure hunt in Westminster Abbey. However, Lilly’s main work was Christian Astrology, modestly Treated of in three Books, which was published in London in 1647 and reprinted in 1659. The work, which consists of nearly 900 pages, introduces in its first part the principles of astrology with the use of many tables; the second part is a very detailed description of horary astrology with dozens of sample horoscopes from the author’s own praxis; in the third part, the author deals with birth horoscopes. There is a bibliography appended that contains astrological works (all in Lilly’s library) and an index. Lilly raised so-called horary astrology (or ‘interrogation,’ the analysis and prediction of a sequence of events in hours) to a high art, and the following generations—including such astrologers as W.J. Simmonite and “Zadkiel” in the nineteenth century—still more or less copied from his works. Lilly’s fame is not only based on his virtuoso mastery of horary astrology but also on his predictions. King Charles I consulted him on more than one occasion, but he did not take to heart Lilly’s advice that he should leave London immediately and thus was executed in London, at Cromwell’s instigation, on 30 January 1649. Another of his predictions made even greater waves: in 1651, Lilly published the work Monarchy or No Monarchy in England, in which he predicted a catastrophe for London. When the plague broke out

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in 1665 and the capital fell prey to the Great Fire of London in the following year, 1666, Lilly was summoned before the commission investigating the fire and asked about his prediction. He explained that he had not known the exact time in advance, but presented himself as convinced that the fire must have happened through natural causes. The commission left it at that. After the master’s death, Lilly’s adopted son and pupil, Henry Coley, took over responsibility for the almanacs. This genre maintained its popularity in England into the nineteenth century (for a detailed overview see Capp 1979). It can be regarded as a dispositive that significantly stabilized the astrological attribution of meaning in public discourse in Britain. In addition to Lilly and Coley, who wrote two sophisticated manuals—Clavis astrologiae (London 1669) and Clavis astrologiae elimata (London 1676)—there were other productive astrologers at the time. John Gadbury (1627– 1704) should be mentioned. At first he was a friend and pupil of Lilly’s, but eventually he turned away from his successful teacher and opened a ‘counter school.’ This led to London’s astrologers having to decide to which camp they wanted to belong. Even after Lilly’s death, the argument went on and culminated in the publication of John Partridge’s polemical work Nebulo Anglicanus, or the First Part of the Black Life of John Gadbury (London 1693). John Partridge (1644– 1715) was also the first English astrologer to spread the system of the calculation of intermediate houses according to Placidus (Lilly knew of the new system but continued to work with Regiomontanus’ system). In two quite technical English books—Opus reformatum (London 1693) and Defectio geniturarum (London 1697)—he described in detail why the new technique should be preferred over the old ones. Moreover, Partridge wrote a very successful series of almanacs, which from 1680 on appeared under the title Merlinus Liberatus. They were continued until 1783 under his publisher’s pseudonym “Merlinus redivivus.” It was not made easy for Partridge, though. Not only did he always have courts to deal with, he also had to leave England for a while under the rule of King James II until King William III reinstated him. In the public debate, another episode augured badly for him: under the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff, Jonathan Swift published a satirical almanac for the year 1708, in which he prophesized Partridge’s “infallible death” at 23.00 hours on 29 March 1709. Subsequently, Swift made things even worse by publishing the letter “The Accomplishment of the First of Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions,” in which he announced the death of Partridge as well as his admission of failure, a description of the funeral, and the text of the inscription on the gravestone. He added, “Weep all you customers that use/His pills, his almanacks, or shoes.” Partridge was, of course, not amused, especially as this joke cost him a lot of money to prove to the confused public that he was still alive. But the episode offers a glimpse into the climate and the public role astrology had in England at that time.

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Satire is an important discursive strategy that delegitimizes the truth-claims of adversaries. But Swift’s calculated attempt at diverting the English from their “gullibility” with his satires did not work. In 1697 the doctor and astrologer Francis Moore (c. 1657– 1715) received a license from King William III to publish a “loyal” almanac, which first appeared as Francis Moore’s Vox Stellarum or a loyal almanac for the year 1697 and continued publication until World War II. Moore’s Almanac became the model for the many and very successful series of astrological forecasts of the nineteenth century. Despite a growing negative attitude toward it, even respected astronomers continued to practice astrology. A good example of this is John Flamsteed (1646 – 1719), the founder of the Greenwich Observatory and the first ‘Royal Astronomer.’ The horoscope for the laying of the foundation stone of the Observatory—on 10 August 1675 (according to the Julian calendar) at 15.14—was drawn up by Flamsteed personally and kept carefully in the records. The paper with the horoscope on it also carries the comment: Risum teneatis amici (“Hold back your laughter, friends”). The identity of the person who added the comment remains a mystery to this day. Many suppose this was a joke directed at Flamsteed, but it is more likely that Flamsteed wrote it himself in order to express his inclination toward astrology without having to own up to it in public. Flamsteed was a scientist well versed in all the astrological techniques (Oestmann 2002; cf. Hunter 1987).

Polemical Disjunctions and their Complexities in the Eighteenth Century At the beginning of the eighteenth century, astrology had truly and thoroughly lost its reputation in scholarly circles in Europe. In the course of the efforts that are generally described as ‘the Enlightenment,’ the rejection gained further momentum and led to the final elimination of astrology from the canon of subjects taught at universities. An astrology that adhered to the Aristotelian-based scholarly model or that did not incorporate the new rational-scientific criteria could simply no longer be taken seriously. What at first was still regarded as acceptable was the examination of the influence of the stars on the weather and on the human body; however, after 1750, even these questions, together with astrology in general, were classified as superstition. When King Frederick the Great wanted to ban astrological forecasts from the house calendars, he failed only due to protests from the farmers, who did not want to give up this form of weather forecasting. Empress Maria Theresa was less prepared to compromise on this point and, in 1756, she banned all astrological fortunetelling and “superstitious conjecturing” in calendars. More important than the ban on annual forecasts

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was the suppression of ephemerides, which are the most important tools for practicing astrologers. The older tables were no longer published, and after 1710 no new lists came out. This was a major discursive shift, and without the dispositive of ephemerides practical astrology was brought to its knees. Enlightenment discourse constructed astrology from then on as ‘pseudo-science’ or as superstition. When at the end of the eighteenth century Johann Christoph Adelung published his influential Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheit (“History of Human Folly,” in 7 volumes), astrology was also on trial. Adelung used Lucas Gauricus as his example and consigned the astrologer’s alleged competence to the derision of the eighteenth century. He explained that Gauricus was known as a mathematician, but that this meant in fact that he was an astrologer. We can see how the discursive entanglement of mathematics and astrology became a polemical comparison in this work. According to Adelung, in the Renaissance the astrologer had followers only because “there were lots of fools in his time who believed in [astrology]; hence it is no surprise that Gauricus became famous through a few unsubstantiated prophecies that vaguely became true, but which simplemindedness exaggerated after the fact.”² A similar picture is given by one of the most important documents of the Enlightenment, the Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts, et des métiers (17 volumes, 1751– 1765) published by Denis Diderot and others. The article ‘Astrology’ (vol. I, 780 – 783) distinguished between astrologie naturelle and astrologie judiciaire. The article accepted more or less the ‘natural’ variety, such as the connection between the planets and the weather, but regarded horoscopic astrology as superstition with which, according to the authors, “in previous centuries we ourselves were infected” (p. 781). For the French followers of the Enlightenment around Diderot and Voltaire, astrology was almost a delusionary science, which had been invented by priests in order to put the population under the yoke. The freedom of reason from the power claims of religious doctrines inevitably led to freedom from astrological despotism. The condemnation of astrology was a confirmation of the time’s own enlightened progress. If we want to understand the nuances of this polemic, it is helpful to include scholarly discussion about esotericism and Hermeticism as an important component of European cultural discourse (von Stuckrad 2010a; Hanegraaff 2012). Despite the polemical character of the discourse on astrology, making a distinction

 “Allein unter der Mathematik muß man vornehmlich die Astrologie verstehen, denn die war eigentlich seine Brotwissenschaft, und da es zu seiner Zeit eine Menge Thoren gab, welche an dieselbe glaubten, so ist es kein Wunder, daß Gauricus durch einige auf Schrauben gesetzte Weissagungen, welche von ungefär eintrafen, und nach geschehener Sache von der lieben Einfalt vergrößert wurden, berühmt ward” (Adelung 1785 – 1789, vol. 2, 256).

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between reasonable science and unreasonable esotericism is far from accurate, given the mutual penetration of these discursive fields. This did not begin in the eighteenth century; as Erich Meuthen pointed out in his work on the fifteenth century, the reception of antiquity in the Renaissance embraced “to a large extent specifically not the ‘enlightened’ sides of ancient paganism but the […] dark, secretive, and mythical sides” (1996, 183). A similar dynamic can also be seen in the discourses of the eighteenth century, a point which has been emphasized by many historians for some time. Increasingly, scholars recognize that talk of the dark as ‘the other of reason,’ which is often contrasted with the ‘torch of Enlightenment’ and the light of understanding, springs from a rhetoric of enlightened self-confirmation. One of the first to follow this through consistently was the Germanist Rolf-Christian Zimmermann. Starting from the observation that the popular religious philosophy of the early Enlightenment tried to direct Jacob Böhme’s Hermeticism “onto the path of reason” (Zimmermann 1969, 129), Zimmermann developed the term “reasonable Hermeticism” (vernünftige Hermetik) to describe the intellectual streams from which Goethe and others derived their insights (1969, 128 – 171). Historians argued similarly: already in 1959, Reinhart Koselleck noted that the secret (‘Arkanum’) of the Freemason lodges in the time of absolutism had the function of protecting the new, self-assured citizens from the state. In this way the secret societies also contributed to the creation of democratic structures such as the critics of the followers of the Enlightenment: “From the start Enlightenment and secret appear as historical twins” (1973 [1959], 49). However, criticism—the battle cry of the eighteenth century—developed its own dialectic dynamic, in that it undermined the basis on which it was founded (Koselleck 1973 [1959], 103). Recent research into esotericism sees in this dynamic a general structural element of Enlightenment discourse, in which the fascination with the dark and irrational, as well as its resolution in the light of understanding, represents a crucial point (Neugebauer-Wölk 1999 and 2008; Trepp and Lehmann 2001; von Stuckrad 2012; see also Neugebauer-Wölk, Geffarth, and Meumann 2012; Classen 2011). It shows that the glorification of enlightenment and knowledge as it was practiced by many intellectuals in the eighteenth century in fact did not link up primarily with Descartes’ models of reason or Kant’s limits of reason, but rather to Renaissance authors’ search for the ‘Light of Truth.’ Through the linking of esotericism and enlightenment we can see the entanglement of discourses of reason with discourses of higher knowledge, perfect knowledge, and a truth that transcended simple understanding for those who participated in it. In this discourse, the whole person was to be included in enlightenment processes, leading to a rebirth of humanity. This thinking could then be applied to political and cultural contexts as well.

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The linking of enlightened discourses with the deification of reason during the Renaissance occurred most clearly within the secret societies of the eighteenth century.

Astrological Semantics in the Secret Societies of the Eighteenth Century The study of esoteric discourses includes more than the history of ideas; it looks at the manifestations and materializations of these ideas in concrete social worlds. From this perspective, the circle of the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, and other secret societies can be described as a new dispositive or as a form of institutionalized esotericism in which Enlightenment and citizenship entered into a specific relationship (Neugebauer-Wölk 1999). This was the place where enlightened intellectuals such as Leibniz, Herder, and Goethe discussed their politico-philosophical ideals and extended rationality in the sense of ‘reasonable Hermeticism’ into an esoteric search for perfect knowledge. In many aspects these secret societies adhered to the agenda of the Platonic academies of the Renaissance. While the origins of Freemasonry lie in the High Middle Ages and the oldest constitutional manuscripts date from the middle of the fifteenth century, these groups first entered the public domain in the seventeenth century as individual lodges joined together into larger associations and tried to put their systems in order. That is why the founding of the Great Lodge in London, in 1717, is often regarded as the actual beginning of Freemasonry. In parallel fashion, the Rosicrucians became more and more noticeable. In their manifestos Fama Fraternitatis (1614) and Confessio (1615/1616), these circles introduced the legendary Christian Rosenkreutz as an adept who had read the ‘Book of the World’ (liber mundi) and had been initiated into the tradition of Hermes and the Tabula Smaragdina. Moreover, the legends around the opening of his grave, in 1604, are similar to the discovery of ancient writings in the tomb of Hermes Trismegistus. This was how modern Hermeticism was linked to religious and political demands, which increasingly found resonance in the enlightened circles of the eighteenth century. With reference to the historical significance of astrology, it is worth noting that within these groupings a symbolism was developed which was influenced by astrological elements. The initiation systems followed astrological semantics—similarly to some ancient mysteries—and the initiations were carried out with reference to pockets of tradition that are known from Hermetic-esoteric and Neoplatonic cosmology. However, this cosmology had been widely psychologized in the wake of the scientific debate of the seventeenth century, so that it became more acceptable to enlightened thinkers. For instance, in the ‘Ancient

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and Accepted Rite,’ known simply as the ‘Scottish Rite’ of Freemasonry, the seven planets represented the seven Cherubim: Michael was Saturn, Gabriel was Jupiter, Uriel was Mars, Chamaliel was Venus, Raphael was Mercury, Tsaphiel was the moon, and Zerachiel was the sun. The adept, on his spiritual path, had to know and to integrate the spiritual and ethical principles represented by the corresponding divinities and angels; in the rituals, these divinities were also performed and represented. In ‘Egyptian Masonry’ this could take the following form: the walls of the room in which the ‘magician from Memphis’ observed his rituals—the sanctuary— decorated with red damask on which likenesses of Saturn, Osiris, Isis, Horus, and Harpocrates were fastened. The room would be illuminated by fifteen candles, which were arranged on the compass points. The altar stood in the east. Of Saturn, dressed in black and visible over the entrance, it was said he was the father of the gods grown out of a tree trunk, and the symbol of original matter. Osiris, in yellow and painted on the wall in the south, was the symbol of the hidden fire of the sun, kingly son of Saturn, husband of Isis, and father of Horus. Isis, portrayed in white and symbolizing moisture, nature, and earth (moon), was the eldest daughter of Saturn, and as queen she was sister and wife of Osiris. Hermes (Mercury or Thot) was her minister. Finally, in the east was Horus, as god of reason, holding the figures of fortune and death in his hands. To the left was the representation of Harpocrates, the brother of Horus and god of silence. On the right side of his chest, Saturn wore the sign of the sun, and on the left, that of the moon; in front of him he held the scepter of Mercury, which separated light and darkness. In the middle of the sanctuary stood a coffin between two palm trees, and at the head there was a tamarind branch, and over that the sign of Mercury. In front of the coffin there lay a rug similarly covered in symbols. Basically, the performance served to outwardly display and to allow the adepts to experience physically what takes place internally—an initiation into new levels of consciousness, into knowledge processes that might help them on their way to higher reason. Astrological and alchemistic semantics are integrated into an overall cosmic-religious system, which no longer has anything to do with birth horoscopes or mundane astrology; but it was particularly suitable for understanding the elements of astrological interpretation as psychic powers. Works that come out of this context—such as Georg Welling’s Opus mago-cabbalisticum et theosophicum (1735, reprinted 1760 and 1785) or the work Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer aus dem 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (“Secret Figures of the Rosicrucians in the 16th and 17th Centuries”) (1789)—consistently describe astrology as an Urwissenschaft, or ‘original science.’ Not at all interested in arguments about helio- or geocentric cosmological systems, this discourse

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links cosmic symbolism to psychic dispositions. In doing so, this discourse ultimately forms the basis of the ‘higher knowledge’ of the Enlightenment.

The Perpetuation of ASTROLOGY in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature and Philosophy By the end of the eighteenth century, astrology had more or less disappeared from scientific debate. Empirical natural science was in the throes of developing itself into the leading discipline and eventually, in the nineteenth century, gained the upper hand. This, however, is only one part of the equation. What we also see is a critical response to the rationalization of cosmos and life that generated new meanings with regard to astrology. Romantic philosophy of nature conceptualized a holistic integration of the ‘living’ even in science. This was one of the reasons why astrological discourse was transmitted even in secular frameworks, albeit with different meaning structures. Another reason was a new enthusiasm for ancient Greece. The difference basically consisted in the fact that now the stars, similar to the masonic practices mentioned above, were aestheticized and psychologized, that is, they were understood as symbolic representations of universal powers that influenced the inner human being as well as the holistically conceived universe. What that meant can best be understood with reference to the philosophy of nature between 1780 and 1850.

Astrology in Goethe’s Time On the 28th of August, 1749, at mid-day, as the clock struck twelve, I came into the world, at Frankfort-on-the-Maine. My horoscope was propitious; the sun stood in the sign of the Virgin, and had culminated for the day; Jupiter and Venus looked on with a friendly eye, and Mercury not adversely; while Saturn and Mars kept themselves indifferent; the Moon alone, just full, exerted her reflex power, all the more as she had then reached her planetary hour. She opposed herself, therefore, to my birth, which could not be accomplished until this hour was passed. These good aspects, which the astrologers managed subsequently to reckon very auspicious for me, may have been the causes of my preservation, for, through the unskillfulness of the midwife, I came into the world as dead, and only after a great many difficulties was enabled to see the light. The event, which had put our household into sore straits, turned to the advantage of my fellow-citizens, inasmuch as my grandfather, the Schultheiss, John Wolfgang Textor, was induced by it to make provision for a man-midwife (Geburts-

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helfer), and to introduce or revive the tuition of midwives, which may have done some good to those who were born after me.³

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe begins his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit (Goethe 1811– 1814) with these words. Starting with a description of his birth horoscope puts him in a tradition that began in intellectual circles at the latest with Girolamo Cardano (see von Stuckrad 2005a), and what he wrote shows a positive attitude toward astrological interpretation. The gentle irony, evident in the second paragraph, makes it clear that Goethe, like many of his contemporaries, did not rely on the interpretation of astrologers but rather dealt playfully and creatively with astrology. As noted before, Goethe was well versed in the esoteric, Hermetic tradition of Europe from his youth. The esoteric branches of alchemy, magia naturalis, and astrology are referred to explicitly in many places in his works, for instance in Märchen, in the fragment Die Geheimnisse, in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, and, obviously, in Faust, the work which occupied the second half of his life. His “Orphische Urworte,” which to this day continue to influence the self-understanding of astrologers, became famous for their expression of the connection between determinism and creative freedom in a particularly successful way: As stood the sun to the salute of planets Upon the day that gave you to the earth, You grew forthwith, and prospered, in your growing Heeded the law presiding at your birth. Sibyls and prophets told it: You must be None but yourself, from self you cannot flee. No time there is, no power, can decompose The minted form that lives and living grows.⁴

 English translation quoted from The Auto-Biography of Goethe. Truth and Poetry: From My Life, ed. by Parke Godwin. 2 vols., New York: John Wiley 1849, vol. 1, 1.  Translation by Christopher Middleton, see http://taimur.org/goethe/selected-poems-of-goethe/ (accessed 23 July 2013). The original runs: Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen, Die Sonne stand zum Gruße der Planeten, Bist alsobald und fort und fort gediehen Nach dem Gesetz, wonach du angetreten. So mußt du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen, So sagten schon Sibyllen, so Propheten; Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstückelt Geprägte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt.

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Goethe was not only a poet but also an intellectual who participated in almost all areas of science, politics, and art. His scientific efforts are to be seen in the context of what German language referred to as Naturforschung, i. e., research into nature that did not recognize a strict distinction between empirical natural science and speculative Naturphilosophie. Like Schelling and other philosophers, Goethe was interested in das Weltganze, or ‘the whole of the world.’ This was a living intellectual principle, perceptible and scientifically accessible in material reality but not at all reduced to that. The context of this position is the critical reflection on the scientific transformation that started with Copernicus, Newton, and others, which many began to see as a ‘dissouling’ or ‘disenchantment’ of the cosmos. At the end of the eighteenth century, people were looking for alternatives to this conception and found them—again—in ancient Greece. When Goethe exclaimed, “Everyone should be a Greek in his own way! But a Greek he should be” (“Jeder sei auf seine Art ein Grieche! Aber er sei’s.” Goethe 1960 ff, vol. 20, 232), he was expressing the position of many of his contemporaries, who saw ancient Greece as a formative experience, which held all kinds of golden alternatives for the present; Greece was past, it is true, but could be revived. In addition to pure rational science, something else was found to be guilty of the miseries of the present, namely Jewish and Christian monotheisms, which had deprived the cheerful Greek culture of power and, with it, had created a bourgeoisie and a society that was hostile to real experience. Goethe’s friend, Friedrich Schiller, directly attacked Christian monotheism and started a great controversy with his poem “Die Götter Griechenlands” (“The Gods of Greece”): Whilst the smiling earth ye governed still, And with rapture’s soft and guiding hand Led the happy nations at your will, Beauteous beings from the fable-land! […] There, where now, as we’re by sages told, Whirls on high a soulless fiery ball, Helios guided then his car of gold, In his silent majesty, o’er all. […] Beauteous world, where art thou gone? O, thou, Nature’s blooming youth, return once more! Ah, but in song’s fairy region now Lives thy fabled trace so dear of yore! Cold and perished, sorrow now the plains, Not one godhead greets my longing sight;

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Ah, the shadow only now remains Of yon living image bright!⁵

In contrast to the ‘soulless fiery ball’ of a Copernicus, here was the sun god, Helios, as a mythical countermeasure that could restore the lost unity of humankind with the cosmos. As a result of the restoration of the ancient world of the gods, astrology also gained a new literary respect since it seemed, at least in its scholarly philosophical form, to be a model of the living cosmos that portrayed the dynamics of freedom and necessity, of history and religion. How Schiller processed these dynamics can be inferred from Wallenstein, whose horoscope, since Kepler’s famous interpretation, had repeatedly been the topic of public debate. Schiller was generally skeptical about astrology and asked Goethe and his friend from Jena, Christian Gottfried Körner, to tell him how a philosophically reflective astrology could be

 “The Gods of Greece,” translation by E.A. Bowring, quoted from http://www.bartleby.com/ 270/9/2.html (accessed 25 January 2013). The original, according to the first publication in Der Teutsche Merkur, March 1788, 250 – 260 (facsimile at http://www.uni-due.de/lyriktheorie/scans/ 1788_schiller.pdf, accessed 25 January 2013) runs as follows: Da ihr noch die schöne Welt regiertet, an der Freude leichtem Gängelband glücklichere Menschenalter führtet, schöne Wesen aus dem Fabelland! […] Wo jezt nur, wie unsre Weisen sagen, seelenlos ein Feuerball sich dreht, lenkte damals seinen goldnen Wagen Helios in stiller Majestät. […] Schöne Welt, wo bist du? – Kehre wieder, holdes Blüthenalter der Natur! Ach! nur in dem Feenland der Lieder lebt noch deine goldne Spur. Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde, keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blik, Ach! von jenem lebenwarmen Bilde blieb nur das Gerippe mir zurück. Alle jene Blüthen sind gefallen von des Nordes winterlichem Wehn. Einen zu bereichern, unter allen, mußte diese Götterwelt vergehn. Traurig such ich an dem Sternenbogen, dich, Selene, find ich dort nicht mehr; Durch die Wälder ruf ich, durch die Wogen, ach! sie wiederhallen leer!

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possible and whether his understanding of astrology was correct (see Schielicke 2007, 66– 70). Schiller revived the ancient art of astrological interpretation in the character of the astrologer Seni. However, a new opinion of the role of astrology, which was to catch on in the nineteenth century, was also evident in Wallenstein, for instance in the figure of Max Piccolomini. Although Seni still represented the strong power of fate perceptible in the stars, it was the critical position of enlightened intellectuals which now took the foreground. Astrology was no longer science but rather playful art and religion, which claimed its cultural place as the sign language of the living and ensouled universe, accessible to the loving heart. Schiller’s example was still received positively in the nineteenth century because it provided a discursive entanglement of science and astrology that fit understandings of German Geisteswissenschaft. The term Geisteswissenschaft emerged in 1849 as a translation of moral science, but it had a meaning that is not rendered correctly in the usual English translation of humanities or the French sciences humaines (Rüegg 2004, 417). The meaning of Geisteswissenschaft is linked to the fact that the term itself is a new discursive entanglement of spirit/ mind (Geist) and science (Wissenschaft). Regarding astrology, an example of a positive evaluation along these lines is Robert Billwiller’s 1877 lecture “On Astrology.” Billwiller, who was the director of the Swiss Meteorological Station in Zurich, opened his lecture with the apology that on the occasion of the 59th anniversary of the foundation of the Natural Scientific Association (Naturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft) he would speak about astrology: While following the kind invitation, which brought me today to this place, with thankful appreciation, I start with the confession that my topic does not really intend to expand the knowledge of positive results in the field of the natural sciences, but rather to illuminate the cultural historical relevance of a phenomenon, which to call by the name ‘science’ in our days is rightly seen as a profanation, but which for thousands of years has been regarded as the most desirable knowledge, and a knowledge that was without doubt the topic of many of the best thinkers.⁶

 “Indem ich der freundlichen Einladung, die mich heute an diesen Platz gerufen, in dankbarer Anerkennung dieses Wohlwollens Folge leiste, beginne ich mit dem Geständniss, dass mein Thema nicht in erster Linie eine Erweiterung der Kenntnisse an positiven Ergebnissen auf dem Gebiete der Naturwissenschaft anstrebt, sondern vielmehr den Zweck hat, die culturhistorische Bedeutung eines Gegenstandes zu beleuchten, welchem den Namen Wissenschaft zu geben in unsern Tagen mit Recht als Profanation erscheint, der aber doch Jahrtausende hindurch als das begehrteste alles Wissenswerthem galt und an dem sich unstreitig auch viele der besten Köpfe geübt haben” (Billwiller 1878, 3).

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While this constellation of science and astrology entirely follows the new understanding, Billwiller reminds the audience that astrology is called “the mother of astronomy” (1878, 5) and thus belongs to the historical and cultural heritage of today’s sciences. Instead of blaming ourselves for “this great historical form of superstition” (ibid., 32), we should rather be proud of the way the human spirit has freed itself from the imprisonment of earlier periods. “This self-liberation should also be a reconciliation with the past” (ibid., 32). And this is exactly where Schiller comes into play. Billwiller ended his lecture with a quote from “The Gods of Greece,” and he introduced that quote as follows: What can liberate us from the urge of the earthly is the conscious elevation of the spirit above imperfect reality into the realm of poetry and the ideal, into the realm of complete perfectness, the most sublime symbol of which forever remains the starry sky. In the realm of the ideal we want to give the old gods and the old religion a friendly welcome, and thus we can conclude with the deeply profound words of Schiller.⁷

Aestheticization and Psychologization of Astral Powers in the Romantic Period The astheticization and psychologization of the astral powers became an element in art and natural research in the Romantic period, in which people were searching for a whole and non-reducible explanation of the cosmos. Starting from Schelling’s (1775 – 1854) natural philosophy, which itself is linked to esoteric traditions, not a few philosophers of German Romanticism tried to reestablish astrology as a metaphysical science. In his 1802 “General overview of the current state of the German literature,” August Wilhelm Schlegel complained that, in the wake of the Enlightenment, people thought in categories of quantity and usefulness and had lost a sense of the miraculous. It is worth quoting this passage at length. Schlegel complains that the mathematical forms of explanation have killed everything, and the mathematical physicists, who want to explain everything with a simple calculus, have themselves become machines of their own machine. As long as we stick to masses and distances and mechanical forms of impact, I cannot see anything elevating or nourishing for the heart in astronomy. In the same way as one could call Kepler the last great astrologer, astronomy has to become

 “Was uns vom Drang des Irdischen befreien kann, das ist die bewusste Erhebung des Geistes über die unvollkommene Wirklichkeit in das Reich der Dichtung und des Ideals, in das Reich aller Vollkommenheiten, dessen erhabenstes Symbol ewig der gestirnte Himmel bleibt. Im Reiche des Ideals wollen wir sie wieder freundlich willkommen heissen, die alten Götter und den alten Glauben, und so können wir denn mit den tief bedeutungsvollen Worten Schillers schliessen” (Billwiller 1878, 33).

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astrology again. We do not want to only count the stars, measure them, and follow their paths with our telescopes; rather, we long to know the meaning of all this. Astrology, due to its presumptuous claim of being a science, which it could not assert, is sunk in contempt; however, contempt of its practice cannot discredit the idea of astrology, which is based on everlasting truths. The dynamic influence of the stars, that they are animated by intelligences, and that they as a kind of subdivinities exert their creative power on the spheres below them—these are doubtlessly much higher forms of ideas than if we think of them as dead, mechanically reacting masses. […] The planetary influence on metals and some other discarded astrological ideas are brought up again by more thorough physics.⁸

In this passage, all of the discourse strands are put together, trying to turn back the clock and re-introduce the ‘soul’ into science, astrology into astronomy, and dynamism into physics. Again, Kepler is the ultimate personification of this ideal state that has been lost in the wake of the changes in scientific method and philosophy. Consequently, Schlegel also pointed out that “astrology is an indispensible idea for poetry” (1994 [1802], 56), thus linking the discourse to the emerging Romantic blending of art and science. He did the same with physics and magic, arguing that what astrology is for poetry, magic is for physics. What do we mean with this word [magic]? The mind’s direct rule over matter, which leads to wondrous, incomprehensible effects. Magic is also brought into disrepute by the bad sorcerers. But for us, nature should become magical again, i. e., in all bodily things we should only see signs, codes of spiritual intentions; we must regard all natural effects as if they were caused by a word of higher spirits, by secret magic spells; only then will we be initi-

 “Auf ähnliche Art haben die mathematischen Erklärungsarten alles ertötet, und die mathematischen Physiker, die alles durch den bloßen Kalkül ausmachen wollen, sind wiederum Maschinen dieser ihrer Maschine geworden. Solange man bei Massen und Entfernungen und mechanischen Wirkungsarten stehenbleibt, kann ich nichts sonderlich Erhebendes und das Gemüt Nährendes in der Astronomie finden. In dem Sinne, wie man Keplern den letzten großen Astrologen nennen kann, muß die Astronomie wieder zur Astrologie werden. Wir wollen nicht bloß die Gestirne zählen und messen und ihrem Laufe mit den Ferngläsern folgen, sondern die Bedeutung von dem allen begehren wir zu wissen. Die Astrologie ist durch anmaßliche Wissenschaftlichkeit, wobei sie sich nicht behaupten konnte, in Verachtung geraten; allein durch die Art der Ausübung kann die Idee derselben nicht herabgewürdigt werden, welcher unvergängliche Wahrheiten zum Grunde liegen. Die dynamische Einwirkung der Gestirne, daß sie von Intelligenzen beseelt seien und gleichsam als Untergottheiten über die ihnen unterworfnen Sphären Schöpferkraft ausüben: dies sind unstreitig weit höhere Vorstellungsarten, als wenn man sie sich wie tote, mechanisch regierte Massen denkt. […] Die Beziehung der Planeten auf die Metalle und so manche verworfne Vorstellungsarten der Astrologie werden durch gründlichere Physik wieder emporgebracht” (Schlegel 1994 [1802], 55 – 56, emphasis original).

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ated into the mysteries, as far as our limitation allows for that, and only then will we develop at least a vague idea of the endlessly renewing creation of the universe from nothing.⁹

We can clearly see here how the discourses of astrology and astronomy on the one hand and magic and physics on the other are interconnected in an overall polemical discourse of ‘spirit and philosophy of nature’ versus ‘rational science.’ The same line of argumentation is also dominant in the work of Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772– 1801), who talked of the qualitative significance of numbers and called astronomy the ‘true metaphysics’ and ‘right astrology.’ Following the work of Franz Anton Mesmer—whose dissertation carried the characteristic title De influxu astrorum in corpore humano (“The Influence of the Stars on the Human Body”)—numerous scholars of nature, including the poet Justinus Kerner, tried to find in the whole universe and in matter an original principle that was also present in astrology. Philosophers like Gustav Theodor Fechner came up with speculative thoughts on endowing the planets with souls and on the part that the ever-reincarnated human soul plays in the divine world soul (Erdbeer 2010, 335 – 506). All of these options were alternatives to those scientific paradigms that start from the primacy of pure reason and the mechanistic rationalization of the cosmos. This re-evaluation of astrology based on natural philosophy as ‘metaphysical astronomy’ is easily distinguishable from the practical interpretative art of casting horoscopes as it was practiced in England. As the quotes from Schlegel make clear, practical astrology was criticized even by those scholars who otherwise lamented the disappearance of the mind from science. On the continent in the nineteenth century, there were few people who had the confidence to come out into the open with serious astrological works in the ‘classical’ and practical sense. One exception was the ‘prophet and astrologer’ J. K. Vogt from Munich. He is supposed to have forecast the fall of Sebastopol and the downfall of Napoleon III and to have shot himself in 1860 when a lottery win he had calculated did not materialize. More important than Vogt was Professor Johann W. Pfaff (1774– 1835) from Erlangen, who, in a work called Astrologie

 “Ebenso wie die Astrologie fordert die Poesie von der Physik die Magie. Was verstehen wir unter diesem Worte? Unmittelbare Herrschaft des Geistes über die Materie zu wunderbaren, unbegreiflichen Wirkungen. Die Magie ist ebenfalls durch die schlechten Zauberer in Mißkredit gekommen. Die Natur soll uns aber wieder magisch werden, d. h., wir sollen in allen körperlichen Dingen nur Zeichen, Chiffren geistiger Intentionen erblicken; alle Naturwirkungen müssen uns wie durch höheres Geisterwort, durch geheimnisvolle Zaubersprüche hervorgerufen erscheinen, nur so werden wir in die Mysterien eingeweiht, soweit unsre Beschränktheit das erlaubt, und lernen die unaufhörlich sich erneuernde Schöpfung des Universums aus Nichts wenigstens ahnden” (Schlegel 1994 [1802], 56 – 57, emphasis original).

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(1816), talked of astrology attempting to come home “into the circle of must-belearned sciences” and of it necessarily being successful in that attempt since its traditions are honorable and true. In 1822 and 1823, Pfaff, in collaboration with his university colleague G.H. Schubert, published Astrologische Taschenbücher, which contained a complete German translation of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos and several essays on great conjunctions, the Star of Bethlehem, and other traditional themes. Pfaff was also of the opinion that a singular spiritual principle flows through the universe, of which everything is part. This he detailed in his collection of essays Der Mensch und die Sterne: Fragmente zur Geschichte der Weltseele (1834) (“The Human Being and the Stars: Fragments on the History of the World Soul”). However, with the exception of these attempts at the restoration of astrology in scholarly circles, nineteenth-century astrology constituted a socially despised entity. Although some practicing astrologers still carried on with their activities, in the public perception and in the universities they could in no way make their influence felt. The discursive differentiation between mythological astrology and scientific astronomy had come to a conclusion, which can also be seen in the change of dispositives that characterizes the period. When we look at the historiography of scientific instruments, which links the history of objects to the history of experience, it is remarkable that “the 19th century is the century when instruments were first considered to be explicitly ‘scientific’” (Staubermann 2007, 10). Focusing on astro-photometric instruments, Staubermann demonstrates “how an instrument became scientific and how instruments contributed to the making of a new scientific discipline” (2007, 10). When the experiential implementation of new instruments created a dispositive that legitimated astronomy as ‘science’ in the nineteenth century, the same occurred for astronomical observatories. In the first half of the eighteenth century, there were only some 30 observatories worldwide; around 1850 this number had increased significantly, but there were still only 80 or 90 observatories worldwide (Schielicke 2008, 10). That is why observatories such as that at the University of Jena were influential elements in the changing entanglements of astrology and science. Interestingly enough, even in the Romantic period some non-polemical links between astronomy and astrology were visible, for instance in the fact that Goethe, an advocate of astrology, was instrumental in establishing the Jena observatory, thus preparing the prosperous career of Carl Zeiß in Jena (Schielicke 2008, 10, 65, 73 – 76, 97– 99); it is also indicative of a more nuanced discursive constellation that the search for supernatural causes of astronomical phenomena and alternatives to the Copernican system were still discussed at the time (Schielicke 2008, 53 – 54).

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Re-Enchantment of the Cosmos around 1900 Particularly in Germany, the critical responses to rationalism and reductionism found numerous expressions in the period between 1870 and 1930. The examples of Schiller and Goethe but also of Kepler and others who combined strict science with a ‘sense of the numinous’ (Schleiermacher) were conjured up repeatedly in the German discourse of the time. I already mentioned Robert Billwiller above. Almost fifty years later, Robert Henseling followed the same direction in reconfiguring the discourse strands of science and astrology. In his popular book on “The Genesis and the Essence of Astrology,” the historical content of which he basically took from standard works available at the time (Boll 1918 and Gundel 1922), Henseling clearly formulated what he saw as the main problems of the period. While science advanced triumphantly and left behind all superstition and imprisonment of the human being, the spiritual deficit of this triumph was painfully felt. It is worth quoting the last passages of his essay in full: The ‘knowledge,’ once not separated from ‘opinion,’ subordinate to the power of belief, has been following its own path more and more frenetically for two millennia; care for religion here, knowledge there—they became more and more alienated from each other. The experience of an ‘ultimate meaning of the world,’ as it still warmly radiates in the works of Kepler, or as Kant devoutly confessed it in the “Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens,” modern exact research consciously and strictly keeps at a distance. And perhaps with good natural reasons until now: the past centuries accumulated entirely too many experiences that were in need of purely logical treatment. But today the gulf between understanding of facts and sensual experience has become entirely too large. Parts we can control, but the spiritual ties are missing. Thus again we feel twice as deeply, full of longing, that the human being only in the totality, from which humanity stems and to which it will return, can really find its spiritual roots. This search of our fermenting time lets all mysticism proliferate and lets many people go astray again back to the astrological doctrine of the harmony of the world. However, bigger and brighter than in any other period, the experience of the all-unity will be revealed to future religion. […] It depends on the form and power of our own inwardness, what the world means to us and how deeply we can find delight in it. Angelus Silesius will prove right: “I myself have to be the sun; I have to paint the colorless ocean of the whole godhead with my own rays.”¹⁰

 “Das ‘Wissen’, einst ungeschieden vom ‘Meinen’, dann der Macht des Glaubens untertan, geht seit zwei Jahrtausenden immer ungebändigter auf selbstgebahnten Wegen; die Pflege des Glaubens hier, des Wissens dort wurden einander fremd und fremder. Das Erlebnis eines ‘Weltsinnes’, wie es noch die Werke eines Kepler warm durchstrahlt und wie es Kant in der ‘Naturgeschichte des Himmels’ gläubig bekennt, hält sich die moderne exakte Forschung bewußt und strenge fern. Bisher wohl mit natürlichem Recht: die vergangenen Jahrhunderte häuften allzu viele Erfahrungen, die zunächst der rein logischen Bewältigung bedarf. Aber heute

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Statements like these are clear examples of what Max Weber—not by chance a contemporary of Henseling and exposed to the same intellectual climate— would call the dialectic of disenchantment and re-enchantment. But discursive analysis makes clear how this process is done concretely: it ultimately takes the form of a re-entanglement of the discourse strands of knowledge, science, astrology, and the spiritual (“Geist”). Robert Henseling was instrumental in popularizing this reconfiguration of knowledge. In his Umstrittenes Weltbild: Astrologie, Welteislehre, Um Erdgestalt und Weltmitte (“Controversial Conception of the World: Astrology, World Ice Theory, On the Form of the Earth and the Center of the World”), with a motto by Kepler, he again argued for a holistic interpretation of astrology and criticized the world ice theory as unscientific (see Erdbeer 2010, 585 – 586; see also Erdbeer’s table 31 with astrological aesthetics linked to popularizing versions of the cosmic ice theory; cf. Wessely 2008). His book was published in 1939 and was good for no less than five reprints the same year. Given this discursive impact, it is not surprising to find this blend of astrology, philosophy, and psychology also in other publications of that period. One may think, for instance, of the paleontologist Edgar Dacqué (1878 – 1945) and his speculation about the animistic character of the cosmos. “Nature, the entire cosmos, has in itself living meaning, an animate essence; it has soul; nowhere can we see anything dead.” With an implicit reference to Goethe, he noted that “the streaming of all of nature is not a formless flowing, even less a mechanistic collision; rather, these are powers that push to formation in animated liveliness [zur Gestaltung drängen in seelenhafter Lebendigkeit]” (Dacqué 1944 [1949], 147). This is what made “the astrological symbol” (Dacqué 1944 [1949], 147– 166) a powerful metaphor for the animated cosmos. German intellectuals around 1900 returned to Kepler as “one of the greatest and deepest thinkers of Germany” (Zöllner 1886, 5), as well as to Goethe, Schiller, and the Romantics in their search for a reconfiguration of the science of the stars that would do justice both to scientific empiricism and spiritual quests. As I ist die Kluft zwischen dem Tatsachenerkennen und dem Sinnerleben allzu groß geworden. Teile haben wir in der Hand, am geistigen Bande fehlt’s. So fühlen wir denn wieder doppelt tief und voller Sehnsucht, daß der Mensch nur in der Totalität, aus der er kommt und zu der er heimgehen wird, geistig wahrhaft zu wurzeln vermag. Dies Suchen der gärenden Zeit macht alle Mystik wuchern und läßt auch manchen sich zur astrologischen Lehre der Weltharmonie zurückverirren. Größer aber und lichter als irgend einer vergangenen Zeit wird sich künftigem Glauben das Erlebnis der All-Einheit erschließen. […] Von Art und Kraft der eigenen Innerlichkeit hängt ab, was uns die Welt bedeutet und wie tief sie uns zu beglücken vermag. Angelus Silesius wird recht behalten: ‘Ich selbst muß Sonne sein; ich muß mit meinen Strahlen Das farbenlose Meer der ganzen Gottheit malen’” (Henseling 1924, 92, emphasis original).

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have described elsewhere, this led to a renaissance of astrology in Germany, including new techniques and the formation of astrological associations at the beginning of the twentieth century. The center of learned astrology was slowly moving from Great Britain (Curry 1992) to the continent and the United States, but particularly to Germany during that period (von Stuckrad 2007, 287– 336). What can be called the ‘spiritualization’ of astrology was mainly fostered by two important historical developments. The first was the foundation of the Theosophical Society in 1875, which marked a central turning point in preparation for the discursive reconfiguration of religion, science, and esotericism in the twentieth century. I will deal with these implications in Chapter 5 below (on Theosophical astrology see the overview in von Stuckrad 2007, 301– 309; on Alan Leo see Curry 1992, 122– 159). The second development, which was discursively linked to Theosophical movements, was the implementation of psychology as an academic discipline on European universities, which further enhanced the process of scientification of religion. When it comes to astrology, this is best exemplified in the work of Carl Gustav Jung.

The Marriage of Secular Psychology and Astrology: Carl Gustav Jung The attempt to link astrological symbols to psychological dispositions is perhaps as old as the discipline of astrology itself. Intensive psychological studies have been part of astrological research at least since the Renaissance (on Girolamo Cardano see Grafton 1999; von Stuckrad 2007, 227– 232), but the establishment of psychology as an academic discipline was an important change in dispositives that attributed new meanings to astrology and its relation to scientific research. The empirical, medical paradigm was transferred to the study of the soul, which added a new dimension to philosophical, literary, and artistic discussions of the ‘cosmic soul,’ the ‘world soul,’ and similar concepts that were prominent in Germany beginning in the early modern period (Vassányi 2011). Sigmund Freud played an important role in this process with his quite mechanistic model of human drives and instinctual structure. Important recent studies have demonstrated that the impact of occultist and Theosophical speculation, as well as Romantic fascination with the hidden powers of the human mind, were instrumental in the formation of psychology as an academic discipline (Treitel 2004; Böhm, Jaeger, and Krex 2009; Gibbons 2001, 103 – 144; Erdbeer 2010, passim). Theories of rays and electricity were discursively entangled with research into psychic powers (Hahn and Schüttpelz 2009; on art see Bauduin 2012).

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But for astrology in particular (less so for academic psychology), the works of Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961) were of paramount importance. It was Jung who combined religion, psychology, philosophy, and astrology in a way that has influenced astrological discourse until the present day. His depth psychology is still authoritative for practical astrology to an astonishing degree, given the professional critique with which Jung’s theory was confronted and which has more or less excluded him from accepted knowledge in the field of academic psychology. One result of the primacy of symbolic and psychological interpretation—particularly in continental Europe—is the fact that contemporary astrologers focus on inner processes of the human soul rather than making prognostications about future events. Individual psychological astrology is thus the most important branch in contemporary astrological practice, much more relevant than interrogations or mundane astrology. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, Jung extensively exchanged his ideas with Theosophists and other representatives of occult and esoteric discourse (Noll 1994; Hakl 2001, 81– 92 and 121– 156; Hanegraaff 2012, 277– 295). He integrated esoteric concepts into his psychology and was particularly interested in the transfers between the individual psyche and collective, or transpersonal, dimensions that he described with reference to European cultural history. His importance for esoteric discourse in the twentieth century lies in the religious charging of the soul, which sacralized the psychological and at the same time psychologized the sacred. The idea of the ‘unconscious’ had already been discussed by Carl Gustav Carus in the Romantic period (on Carus’ contribution to esoteric discourse see Erdbeer 2010, 167– 255), but it gained full academic acceptance only through the works of Freud and particularly Jung. Jung’s concept of the ‘collective unconscious’ refers to a universal symbolic system that is available to the individual psyche and becomes visible in dreams or myths. With such a dehistoricization of spiritual processes, myths, and dreams, Jung was part of a larger discourse that was characterized by the search for ultimate essences in religion and philosophy. This discourse materialized, e.g., in the Eranos meetings in which Jung took part (Wasserstrom 1999; Hakl 2001), but also in theories of religion that were developed against the background of two World Wars (von Stuckrad 2010c). To systematize the timeless symbols, Jung developed the doctrine of ‘archetypes,’ universal forms of cultural and religious ideas that, according to Jung, have retained their continuity until the present day. One example is the archetype that is linked to the female and that reveals qualities such as passivity, reception, and emotions. Discursively speaking, the concept of archetypes—in this case, the anima as the female part of the male soul—stabilized and legitimized gendered knowledge about what is the ultimate and timeless female principle. We will see in Chapter 7 how this attribution of meaning even succeeded in cre-

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ating new religious identities. As for astrology, the doctrine of the archetypes proved successful as well. Most contemporary astrologers conceptualize the twelve signs of the zodiac and the planetary powers as cosmic ‘principles’ that manifest in the human psyche. Most commonly, the moon became the receiving female principle, the sun became the active male principle, Mars became the dynamically aggressive principle, and so forth. Jung himself supported this reading of his theory, and his own esoteric interests were also combined with a study of astrology. Following the publication of Theosophical works on astrology in 1910, Jung wrote in a letter to Sigmund Freud: My evenings are very much occupied by astrology. I calculate horoscopes in order to trace the psychological truthfulness. Up to now [there have been] some remarkable things that you certainly would find unbelievable. For one lady, the calculation of the planets showed a certain character profile with some details of destiny; however, this did not belong to her but to her mother, for whom the character profile fitted like a glove. The lady is suffering from an extraordinary mother complex. I have to say that by all means we may discover in astrology someday a significant portion of knowledge about ways of foreboding, which happened to be seen in the heavens. It seems, for instance, that the zodiacal signs are character images, i.e., libido symbols, which picture the respective typical libido characteristics.¹¹

On 8 December 1928, Jung wrote to L. Oswald that astrology, “like Theosophy etc., tries to satisfy an irrational urge for knowledge, which however leads to a wrong path” (Jung 1981, 81). Nevertheless, with Tübingen University professors embracing astrology and with Cardiff University offering a course about astrology the year before, astrology “is standing in front of the doors of our universities” (ibid.). Astrology, according to Jung, is not “pure superstition” but contains, like Theosophy, some relevant psychological insights. “As a matter of fact, astrology has nothing to do with the stars; it is the 5,000-year-old psychology of the ancient times and the Middle Ages” (Jung 1981, 82; see also Jung’s letter to B. Baur from 29 January 1934 [Jung 1981, 181], in which he explains the precession of the equinoxes and concludes that “time is a stream of events, filled with qualities”).

 “Meine Abende sind sehr in Anspruch genommen durch die Astrologie. Ich mache Horoskopberechnungen, um dem psychologischen Wahrheitsgehalt auf die Spur zu kommen. Bis jetzt einige bemerkenswerte Dinge, die Ihnen gewiß unglaublich erscheinen werden. Bei einer Dame ergab sich durch die Berechnung der Gestirnstellungen ein ganz bestimmtes Charakterbild mit einigen detaillierten Schicksalen, das aber nicht ihr zugehörte, sondern ihrer Mutter; dort aber saß die Charakteristik wie angegossen. Die Dame leidet an einem außerordentlichen Mutterkomplex. Ich muß sagen, daß in der Astrologie eines Tages sehr wohl ein gutes Stück Wissens von Ahnungswegen, das an den Himmel geraten ist, entdeckt werden könnte. Es scheint z. B., daß die Tierkreisbilder Charakterbilder sind, d. h. Libidosymbole, welche die jeweiligen typischen Libidoeigenschaften schildern” (Letter to Sigmund Freud, 12 June 1911, in Jung 1981, 45).

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Jung’s relevance for contemporary astrology can hardly be overestimated. After 1945, psychological astrology became the major branch of astrological theory and practice. But for the process of scientification of religion, he was influential in another way, too.

The Dialogue between Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung and Its Impact Jung’s strong interest in the intersections between psychology, philosophy, religion, and science brought him repeatedly into contact with natural scientists of his time. With the rise of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, which questioned the deterministic paradigm of the physical theories prevalent since the time of Isaac Newton, many philosophical and scientific interpretations of new models were discussed. In fact, Thomas Arzt may have been right when he wrote that even at the end of the twentieth century the implications of the new paradigm have not yet been fully understood and appreciated (Arzt, Hippius-Gräfin Dürckheim, and Dollinger 1992, 14). Among the most distinguished physicists of the twentieth century, Wolfgang Pauli (1900 – 1958), winner of the Nobel Prize in 1945, deserves special attention, because his thinking on the interface of the natural sciences, philosophy, and psychology very much stimulated later generations (see especially Pauli 1994). Astonishingly enough, his work is not as appreciated as that of his colleagues, Einstein, Heisenberg, or Bohr. It is especially in discussions about holism and the religious dimensions of science that Pauli has been rediscovered (Laurikainen 1988; Laurikainen and Montonen 1993). For Pauli, metaphysical dimensions were an integral element of physics itself. In a letter to Markus Fierz in 1952, Pauli wrote that the non-determinacy of this singular experiment was a return of the anima mundi (‘world soul’), which had been forced away in the seventeenth century (see also Pauli in Jung and Pauli 1952, 115). This notion already hints at the dialogue Pauli had with Carl Gustav Jung (Atmanspacher 2012; Tagliagambe and Malinconico 2011; Miller 2009; Sparks 2007; Gieser 2005; Atmanspacher, Primas, and Wertenschlag-Birkhäuser 1995; for a translation of the Pauli-Jung letters see Meier 2001). Besides the alchemical connotations of modern science, it was the concept Jung called ‘synchronicity’ that was a major topic of their conversations. It became part of a book they published together in 1952. Naturerklärung und Psyche (“The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche”) contains Jung’s essay “Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge” (“Synchronicity: An A-causal Connecting Principle”) and Pauli’s treatise on “Der Einfluß archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung naturwissenschaftlicher Ideen bei Kepler” (translated as “The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler”). Again, we see how Kepler’s understanding

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is influential in the reconfiguration of discourses on astrology and science, this time by a leading representative of twentieth-century physics. This discursive connection remains valid even if it is important to remember that “the real subject of Pauli’s article was not primarily Kepler as a historical figure but rather Kepler as an illustration of the problematic relationship between the observer and what is observed” (Westman 1984, 177, emphasis original). Roughly speaking, Jung regarded the phenomenon of synchronicity as an “analogously interpreted coincidence [sinngemäße Koinzidenz]” or an “a-causal parallelism” (Jung and Pauli 1952, 9, 26, 31). Hence synchronicity is the simultaneous occurrence of two events that are connected by meaning, not by causality. These few catchwords already reveal the close link between Jung’s vocabulary and the Hermetic doctrine of “as above, so below,” which is one of the fundamental ideas of the science of the stars. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Jung in this essay also addressed astrology (Jung and Pauli 1952, 44– 69). Wolfgang Pauli never appreciated Jung’s use of the theory of synchronicity as a legitimization of astrology, but he was interested in the far-reaching implications of quantum mechanics on the concept of nature. This theory refutes the Newtonian paradigm of determinism, causality, and objectivity. Pauli pointed out that the observer played a significant role in every experiment; empirically discernible reality is dependent on the observer’s place and subjective condition. Thus, the freedom of the observing person implies that the human psyche cannot be separated from the physical image of the world. In his 1952 essay, Pauli used alchemy as an example of a system that acknowledges this connection (Jung and Pauli 1952, 166; I will come back to this in the next chapter). Pauli was radical in his conclusions and argued that there is no objective reality. Instead, reality consists of rational and irrational elements. Not everything, therefore, can be explained with rational theories. Pauli proved that the physical world is not fully determined and not even necessarily built on causal relations with his famous “Pauli Principle,” which says that the distribution of an atom’s electrons, i.e., their mutual exclusion, is always a-causal. From here it is but one step to the ‘chaos theory’ that was discussed controversially in subsequent physical theory. In addition to the Pauli Principle, brief mention must be made of the socalled EPR-Correlations (named after the “Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox”). In an influential paper in 1935, Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen claimed that the whole formalism of quantum mechanics, in addition to what they called a “Reality Criterion,” implies that quantum mechanics cannot be complete. They speculated on the existence of some elements of reality that are not described by quantum mechanics. There must be a more complete description of physical reality involving some hidden variables that can characterize the state of affairs

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in the world in more detail than the quantum mechanical state. This conclusion leads to paradoxical results, as László E. Szabó explains: As Bell proved in 1964, under some further but quite plausible assumptions, this conclusion that there are hidden variables implies that, in some spin-correlation experiments, the measured quantum mechanical probabilities should satisfy particular inequalities (Belltype inequalities). The paradox consists in the fact that quantum probabilities do not satisfy these inequalities. And this paradoxical fact has been confirmed by several laboratory experiments since the 1970s. Some researchers have interpreted this result as showing that quantum mechanics is telling us nature is non-local, that is, that particles can affect each other across great distances in a time too brief for the effect to have been due to ordinary causal interaction. Others object to this interpretation, and the problem is still open and hotly debated among both physicists and philosophers. It has motivated a wide range of research from the most fundamental quantum mechanical experiments through foundations of probability theory to the theory of stochastic causality as well as the metaphysics of free will (2008).

Steven Weinberg, another Nobel Prize winner, argued that an instantaneous change of wave-function in the entire universe is at stake here (1992, 81). And the physicist Nick Herbert claimed that the deeper reality of the world is maintained in an invisible quantum relation, the omnipresent influence being unmediated and direct (Herbert 1987). Not surprisingly, these interpretations have been enthusiastically picked up by astrologers (see also Kaiser 2011, 68 – 69). The Pauli-Jung dialogue and the related discussion legitimated the conviction that matter and mind are by no means separate domains. Put differently: it is in this dialogue that the discourse strands of science, mind, matter, and astrology where re-entangled. One of the most important popularizers of this thinking is F. David Peat (b. 1938), who in many publications has contributed to the popularization of theoretical issues of quantum mechanics and modern science. His thinking is very much influenced by David Bohm (see Bohm and Peat 1987) but also reveals the imprint of Prigogine’s and Sheldrake’s holistic theories (on whom see Chapter 4 below). Most recognized is his metaphysical expansion of the concept of synchronicity, which makes use of the indeterminacy and simultaneity of phenomena as described in quantum mechanics. Peat, for his part, did not restrict himself to the holistic implications of synchronicity but elaborated a full-blown spiritual and metaphysical view of nature and reality, which is both imaginative and speculative (Briggs and Peat 1984; Peat 1987). As a result, Peat expects a coming transformation of humanity and society that will lead to a new integration of matter and mind, of nature and the human being. Another, though much less influential, thinker of ‘astrological quantum discourse’ is Theodor Landscheidt (1927– 2004). In 1994 he argued:

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Thus, the astrological premise of the cosmos as a holistic fabric, connecting all subsystems that are part of it, is not only compatible with modern natural science, but even proven by it. […] The basic astrological assumption that the cosmos is an organic process that connects all microcosmic and macrocosmic sub-processes into one unit, [proves to be] a progressive concept (1994, 28; emphasis original).

Landscheidt’s book, the title of which combines ‘science’ and ‘astrology,’ is a good example of a late twentieth-century configuration of these discourse strands. However, his position is discursively much less influential than contributions by more popular authors, who argue that quantum mechanics should be combined with the theory of relativity or that string theory would be a candidate to answer the open questions that modern physics presents. David Deutsch, for instance, a fellow of the Royal Society in London and physicist at the University of Oxford, recently claimed that the world is a ‘multiverse,’ in which time can no longer be conceptualized as space-time but rather as a quantum concept, and in which time-journeys and many other fascinating things are principally possible (Deutsch 1997; Deutsch 2012; see also Greene 2003). David Deutsch is a good bridge to the next chapter, and I will come back to him, because he refers to ‘alchemy’ in order to make his point. If we broaden our perspective and look at the genealogy of today’s theories of mind and matter, my research confirms what David Kaiser argued recently: “Many ideas that now occupy the core of quantum information science once found their home amid an anything-goes counterculture frenzy, a mishmash of spoon-bending psychics, Eastern mysticism, LSD trips, CIA spooks chasing mind-reading dreams, and comparable ‘Age of Aquarius’ enthusiasms” (2011, xiii). Instead of a “mishmash,” however, I would call these creative processes the re-entanglement of discourse strands.

3 Alchemical Quests in Modern Garb We have seen so far that astrology, or ‘the science of the stars,’ applied hermeneutical methods that interacted explicitly with the field of rational interpretations of nature, a domain that has been claimed by ‘modern’ science since the nineteenth century. Although astrological knowledge had been discarded in this discursive entanglement, the ‘ingredients’ of the relevant discursive knots were tied together again in new constellations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Astrology was both a competitor with ‘secular science’ and a representative of scientific thinking that was interested in an inclusive, qualitative view of nature. This is the main reason why astrology could maintain its discursive influence in the twentieth century. In this chapter, I will focus on related developments in the field of alchemy. Astrology, magic (on which see Otto 2011), and alchemy have long been discussed under the rubric of ‘occult sciences.’ This very term indicates the discursive entanglement of science and something that is not regarded as scientific, or at least is seen as a qualification of the noun that changes its connotation significantly. The discourse of occultism or occult philosophy is a configuration that combines cultures of knowledge that were no longer regarded as legitimate in the emerging episteme of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Since then, European discourses distinguished legitimate from illegitimate knowledge in different ways than these had previously been distinguished, framing the debate polemically in terms of ‘science’ versus ‘pseudo-science’ (Rupnow et al. 2008) and ‘rationality’ versus ‘superstition.’ These terms, which became instruments of analysis in subsequent academic disciplines, reflect the socio-professional identities and conceptual perspectives of ‘modern’ people who view themselves as progressive, rational, and enlightened, against which the ‘Other’ was constructed as a necessary counterpart. Systems of knowledge that had been mainstream for centuries found themselves, often unexpectedly, labeled as ‘pseudo-science.’ “A prominent example of this shift is ‘scientific’ esotericism, which in fact originated only through this shift of limits of normality” (Zander 2008, 77). The discourses of inclusion and exclusion that accompany processes of modern identity formation have thus affected the way scholars have described the status of astrology, magic, and alchemy in European cultural history. The term ‘occult science’ originated in the sixteenth century (Secret 1988), along with notions of occulta philosophia. ‘Occult,’ in this context, refers to hidden or secret powers that inform a substantial part of the disciplines lumped together under the rubric ‘occult sciences’—notably astrology, alchemy, and (natural) magic (Wayne Shumaker [1972] adds witchcraft to this mélange). Twentieth-cen-

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tury scholars adopted such a configuration as their analytical concept, indicating a ‘unity’ of these various disciplines. While Keith Thomas (1971, 631– 632) believed that astrology formed the basis of the occult sciences—and that consequently the ‘decline’ of astrology would inevitably lead to the decline of magic and alchemy—Brian Vickers (1988, 265) encouraged this tendency by arguing that “[t]here are sufficient internal resemblances among astrology, alchemy, numerology, iatromathematics, and natural magic for one to be able to describe the occult sciences as forming a unified system.” All ‘occult sciences’ share a common “mentality,” or “mental habit” (1988, 266), that is clearly distinguished from a rational ‘scientific’ mentality. For Vickers, science as “open” and “progressive” is distinguished from the occult as having a “closed system” designed “to ignore criticism” (Vickers 1984, 39, endorsing the position of Charles Schmitt). This evaluation was also an expression of Vickers’ highly critical reaction against Frances A. Yates’ famous thesis (1964) that the Hermetic tradition had a decisive impact on the scientific revolution (Linden 2007, x). Even though a critique of Yates’ exaggerated conclusions is necessary, the distinction proposed by Vickers and others is problematic for several reasons. First, although these disciplines overlap in varied and complex ways, they each have distinct histories with quite different and complex, diverging and mutually interacting trajectories. “Even during the heyday of Renaissance neoplatonism, astrology and alchemy lived independent lives, despite the vast inkwells devoted to the rhetorical embellishment of occult philosophy” (Newman and Grafton 2001, 26; see the whole passage pp. 18 – 27). In fact, it was the more recent discourse that entangled these systems of knowledge and produced the understanding that they belong together. Second, in the case of astrology there are other systems of knowledge and practices that had direct and longstanding links to that discipline, notably, mathematics, philosophy of nature, ethics, medicine, historiography, theology, and politics (von Stuckrad 2010a, 115 – 134). Configuring astrology with the other ‘occult sciences’ tends strongly to distort our understanding of its relationship with these other (and to many scholars more legitimate) areas of knowledge. Third, the analytical notion of ‘hidden powers’ continues to remain important within the ‘legitimate sciences’ from the ‘scientific revolution’ to the present. Wouter J. Hanegraaff concludes: [I]n a context that insisted on science as a public and demonstrable rather than secret and mysterious knowledge, the very notion of “science” came to be seen as incompatible ex principio with anything called “occult”. As a result, any usage of the term “occult science(s)” henceforth implied a conscious and intentional polemic against mainstream or establishment science. Such polemics are typical of occultism in all its forms (Hanegraaff 2005, 887; see also Hutchison 1982).

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Indeed, as we have seen in the previous chapter, relating astrology closely to magic or other ‘occult sciences’ is a quite modern configuration, reflecting a process of identity formation through strategies of distancing. But we will also see that the discursive entanglements create a much more complex dynamic than the simplifying talk of ‘polemics’ suggests.

Alchemy as the ‘Occult Other’ What about alchemy as a discipline that is linked to discourses of science and religion? In general, we can posit a similar development as with astrology, or, in Bruce T. Moran’s words, here is where lines separating the rational and the absurd get a little fuzzy, and also where the well-defined intellectual image of science gets a bit scuffed up by rubbing against the texture of real life. […] Alchemy, although motivated by assumptions about nature not shared by many today, still occasioned an intense practical involvement with minerals, metals, and the making of medicines. […] So, rather than cutting away the scientific lean from the presumed pseudoscientific fat when carving up natural knowledge in the ‘early modern’ world, we should try to understand how both fat and lean worked together to support intellectual life and to promote the process of discovery (2005, 1– 2).

Consequently, it took a long time to distinguish between the ‘old’ alchemy and the ‘new’ chemistry, and this was achieved—more or less, as we will see—only in the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, we encounter only a few scholars who tried to write an unbiased history of alchemy; Karl Christoph Schmieder is one of them, and it comes as no surprise that his book (Schmieder 1832), comprising more than 600 pages, was republished as a ‘classic’ in 1997 by the biologist Wolfgang Roller in his Esoterischer Verlag Wolfgang Roller, along with an invitation to the reader to report any practical alchemical work to Roller himself. But in general, at the end of the eighteenth century the domain of alchemy was restricted to gold making or transmutational alchemy (alchemia transmutatoria or “chrysopoeia” in technical parlance). “Indeed, for most writers and thinkers of the eighteenth century, alchemy was synonymous with gold making and fraud. […] These Enlightenment writers drew heavily on metaphors of light and darkness to describe the dawning of chemistry out of the misty obscurity of the medieval delusion of alchemy” (Principe and Newman 2001, 386). This disjunctive strategy has led to a problematic historiographical framework of analysis that ultimately distorted the many links between empirical research into nature and metaphysical interpretations that both had been the characteristics of

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so-called “alchemy” before it was ‘pushed away’ in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One may think of Brian Vickers’ remark that “some of the occult sciences—alchemy and astrology, for example—made a partial use of observational techniques, but the results were then subordinated to some preformed interpretative model, often magical or mystical, which was neither derived from reality nor testable by it” (1988, 266). As I will make clear in what follows, things became even more complicated—and discursively entangled—when psychological interpretations focused on “transformational alchemy;” Carl Gustav Jung is the most influential author here, but Mircea Eliade also had his share in this reconfiguration. In a parallel development of astrological and alchemical discourse, the negative understanding of the term was positively charged by these scholars as a metaphor of spiritual development—the disjunction turned into a positive earmark. Recent scholarship has critically revisited our knowledge of alchemy and the emergence of contemporary chemistry in the context of the history of science and religion. In fact, “[r]evisionary interpretations of works of persons who previously were not readily admitted to have had alchemical interests are some of the proudest achievements of scholarship of the last few decades” (Linden 2007, xi). This also changed the attribution of meaning to the emergence of ‘scientific chemistry,’ further legitimated in dispositive changes through the launching of new scholarly journals—“the best journals appear to welcome alchemical and Hermetic submissions for publication consideration, as long as they fit the journal’s criteria and are of high quality. This was not always the case!” (Linden 2007, xii) Being part of this revisionist movement in the history of science, Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman attempt to overcome the dichotomy between religious or pseudo-scientific alchemy on the one hand and empiric-scientific chemistry on the other. They (re‐)introduced the term “chymistry” to refer to a scholarly engagement of the natural world that was not yet ‘dichotomized’ by post-Enlightenment discourse (Newman and Principe 1998) or embraced in a positive way by psychological and esoteric readings of the twentieth century. From a discursive point of view, such a distinction makes perfect sense. chymistry can be regarded as a discourse that includes various and quite different subfields. Besides scholars who were entirely focused on processes within the natural world (natura naturata), there were others who saw the natural world as revelation of and interacting with transcendent levels of reality and subsequently searched for the power behind these processes (natura naturans). Leading alchemists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries applied both scientificempirical strategies and metaphysical ones, such as communicating with angels and superior beings or directly addressing the divine. Notable examples are John Dee (Clucas 2006; von Stuckrad 2010a, 146 – 155) and Robert Boyle (Principe

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1998; Newman and Principe 2002). William R. Newman has recently demonstrated that it was not the newly established dominance of physics and mathematics that led to the scientific change of paradigm in the seventeenth century but rather the experiments of early modern “chymists” who elaborated medieval corpuscular theory (Newman 2006; see particularly pp. 1– 20 on “The Problematic Position of Alchemy in the Scientific Revolution”). In general, recent research has made it clear that the lines demarcating chemistry from alchemy, and ‘real science’ from ‘pseudo-science,’ are much fuzzier than had long been assumed. The issue is not only that chymists of the seventeenth century helped develop new scientific paradigms; the polemical discussion about the differentiation between good science and bad science itself is much older than has often been assumed (as, e. g., in McKnight 1992; see the editor’s introduction on p. vii). Over against this assumption, Ute Frietsch points out that “certain forms of alchemy already in the early modern period were evaluated as ‘pseudo.’ In the context of Paracelsian medical alchemy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the buzzword ‘pseudo’ was put forward in various combinations” (2008, 51– 52; see also Moran 2005, 67– 98). The seventeenth-century debate about Paracelsian medical alchemy, denoted by Libavius and others as ‘chymiatry,’ created the model that served to disavow competing forms of knowledge using the Latin term pseudo-scientia. Even Galileo’s laws of falling bodies were in 1645 attacked as pseudo-scientia. “Thus, in the 1640s, the new alchemical medical doctrine and the new physics found themselves stigmatized with the same ‘pseudo’-label” (Frietsch 2008, 54; see also Schmitt-Biggemann 1996, 497). Institutional developments mirror this complex discursive configuration: Paracelsian medicine was introduced in several European university curricula around 1600, for instance at the Universities of Montpellier, Valencia, or Wittenberg. But the real shock for Libavius and other critics came when the University of Marburg in 1609, at the instigation of the German prince Moritz of Hesse-Kassel, hired Johannes Hartmann as professor of chymiatria. Hartmann “embraced divine mysteries and used a magical symbol as his personal letter seal. This was the shocking part of Hartmann’s appointment. A Paracelsian was going to teach chymia with the university. […] Regardless of the ridicule, Hartmann’s instruction in the art of chymiatry (chemical medicine) was one of the earliest examples of laboratory-based chemical teaching within a university curriculum” (Moran 2005, 108). In general, when it comes to ‘pseudo-science,’ Roger Cooter notes that the “eighteenth century had understood quackery as blatant fraud (especially in relation to medicine) but lacked a developed concept of pseudo-science. For the stuff of belief (religion) and the stuff of experiment and analysis (science or natural philosophy) had not yet undergone their rhetorical separation and ranking”

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(2003, 683). Cooter draws the only feasible conclusion: “From the history of phrenology and other such pseudo-sciences, it is clear there is more to be lost than gained historically by seeking retrospectively to draw sharp distinctions between the ‘real’ and the ‘pseudo’ in science” (2003, 684). As a consequence of this conceptual thicket, I will avoid the terms ‘alchemy’ and ‘chemistry’ as generic analytical concepts, and rather will look at their respective configurations in scientific, philosophical, and religious discourse (for similar suggestions, see Cooter 2003). If we disassemble the discourse strands that constitute alchemy (or chymistry) and do the same with chemistry, we will be able to see the transformations of meaning that have taken place since the eighteenth century. We can then also identify at which point certain elements of this discourse have adopted new meanings and in which form they perhaps have been continued in contemporary science. In this regard, the turn of the nineteenth century was an important break. One of the major shifts in the evaluation of alchemy was the move away from its understanding of the nature of matter. While alchemy had been linked to the idea that the elements can be reduced to a proto hyle—prima materia or primary matter—now chemists held that the smallest particles were atoms (Keller 1983, 9 – 10). John Dalton set the new tone in his New System of Chemical Philosophy, which was published in two parts between 1808 and 1810. Interestingly enough, the work originated from “Lectures on Natural Philosophy” at the Royal Institution in London. “The author has ever since been occasionally urged by several of his philosophical friends to lose no time in communicating the results of his enquiries to the public, alledging [sic], that the interests in science, and his own reputation, might suffer by delay” (1808/1810, v–vi). Dalton still referred to his scholarship as “natural philosophy,” and throughout his book he spoke of “philosophical chemists,” “philosophers,” “experimental philosophy” (already in the title), etc. At the same time, it is characteristic that the terms ‘alchemy,’ ‘chymistry,’ ‘transmutation,’ ‘god,’ and related concepts were completely absent in Dalton’s work. The new configurations were ‘atom,’ ‘elementary bodies,’ and the material basis of ‘chemical science’ (see, e. g., page 474). Not surprisingly, then, Dalton dedicated the second part to Humphry Davy and William Henry “as a testimony to their distinguished merit in the promotion of chemical science.” Dalton also introduced the genre of chemical tables: “Nothing of the kind has been published to my knowledge; yet, such tables appear to me so necessary to the practice of chemical enquiries, that I have wondered how the science could be so long cultivated without them” (496). This new aesthetic device changed the way the ‘systematization’ of chemical knowledge was (and still is) legitimized. Like tables of historical epochs (on which see Steiner 2008), this dispositive stabilized the new order of knowledge.

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The author points out in his introduction to the second part that it took him so long to write the almost 600 pages because he decided to rely as little as possible on other chemists’ work and instead to use his own experiments to test the new theories. In order “to convey a knowledge of chemical facts and experience,” he begins with the most simple elements, subsequently looking at the combination of two and then three simple elements. “By elementary principles, or simple bodies,” Dalton explains, “we mean such as have not been decomposed, but are found to enter into combination with other bodies. We do not know that any one of the bodies denominated elementary, is absolutely indecomposable; but it ought to be called simple, till it can be analyzed” (1808/ 1810, 221– 222). The new ideas about the nature of matter and the new vocabulary that found expression in works such as Dalton’s—with a total lack of terms that had been related to alchemy, while retaining the link between science and philosophy—paved the way for the new understanding of alchemy as the ‘other’ of scientific chemistry. It was the same period that saw the general introduction of the English terms pseudo-science and pseudo-scientist. After William Whewell had coined the term scientist in 1840 (see Ross 1962; Yeo 1993), the term pseudo-science gained in popularity and was used to critique, e. g., Samuel Hahnemann’s homeopathy or Gustave Le Bon’s mass psychology (Hagner 2008, 24). But most scientists, like Dalton, simply neglected the older vocabulary, and it was the job of nineteenth-century historians to make the shift visible in explicit wordings. When Heinrich Wilhelm Schaefer in 1887 defined alchemy as “the art of transforming ignoble metal into silver and particularly into gold” (1887, 1), he expressed the now-common understanding of alchemy as something distinct from modern science. For these authors, alchemy only continues to be interesting from an historical point of view, for those who want to understand the psychology of human folly and the achievements of contemporary science. Alchemy is of rich interest to the scholar in various regards. We may want to study it from a psychological perspective, which offers particularly good insight into how, based on a few facts, which were observed inaccurately, using a few unclear words behind which one suspected mysterious content that people thought they usefully interpreted, there developed a huge network of false doctrines; these doctrines occupied the human mind for over a millennium and, in combination with mystical ideas, held it captive entirely. We may also discuss from a practical point of view the value of the chemical processes that alchemy applied to reach its goal; in doing so—by reviewing from the perspective of scientific chemistry the importance of the existing theoretical ideas and the results that alchemists

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achieved as a preliminary stage of contemporary chemistry—we also contribute to the history of this science itself.¹²

In Schaefer’s account, representative of the understanding of alchemy in his time (other examples would include Kopp 1886 and von Lippmann 1919, who repeatedly referred to Kopp), this discipline is historically distinct from science, although maybe in some parts a forerunner of modern scientific chemistry and physics. Schaefer is at pains to identify the Egyptian-Greek Hermes Trismegistus as the imagined origin of alchemical thinking (1887, 2– 12), which also links alchemy to its superstitious sister, astrology (p. 11). Terms that belong to the field of religion, mysticism, and metaphysics, combined with discourse strands such as ‘fraud,’ ‘trick,’ ‘superstition,’ or ‘credulity,’ legitimized the ‘modern’ contempt of alchemy as a counter-concept of modern science. Yet, although Schaefer noted that in the nineteenth century no serious alchemical practice could be observed anymore (1887, 33 – 34), he reminded his readers of one structural parallel of modern chemistry with alchemical endeavors, because the chemical search for the smallest atoms offered the possibility to recombine elementary particles and thus create new metals. As an example of this ‘transmutational quest,’ he referred to the British physicist Norman Lockyer who, eight years earlier, had thought that he had transformed copper into calcium and nickel into cobalt with the use of electricity (1887, 34). Sir Norman Lockyer’s spectroscopic studies of stars and his hypothesis that the chemical elements were compound bodies, which he explained in a lecture on 12 December 1878 at the Royal Society, had a mixed reception and were considered very controversial; it is characteristic of the discursive configuration of the day that Lockyer was ridiculed as an “alchemist” by the popular press and some colleagues (Brock 1985, 189). But Lockyer’s studies are also an indication

 “Die Alchemie bietet dem Forscher in mannigfacher Hinsicht reiches Interesse. Man kann sie vom rein psychologischen Standpunkte aus betrachten wollen und findet grade hier besondere Gelegenheit zu erkennen, wie aus wenigen Thatsachen, die man ungenau beobachtete, aus wenigen unklaren Worten, hinter denen man geheimnisvollen Inhalt vermutete, welchen man wertvoll herauszudeuten glaubte, sich ein umfangreiches Gewebe von Irrlehren entwickelte, welche den menschlichen Geist weit länger als ein Jahrtausend beschäftigten und durch Hinzunahme mystischer Vorstellungen vollständig gefangen hielten. Man kann andererseits aus praktischen Rücksichten den Wert der chemischen Prozesse erörtern, durch welche die Alchemie ihr Ziel zu erreichen hoffte, und gewinnt dabei, indem man vom Standpunkte der wissenschaftlichen Chemie aus die Bedeutung der auftretenden theoretischen Ansichten prüft und die gewonnenen Resultate der Alchemisten als Vorstufen für die heutige Chemie ansieht, zugleich einen Beitrag zur Geschichte dieser Wissenschaft selbst” (Schaefer 1887, 1).

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that the neat distinction between alchemy and chemistry was not always easy to maintain in the light of emerging theories of the nature of matter.

VITALISM:

A Ménage-a-Trois of Life, Spirit, and Matter

The discursive reconfiguration that has taken place since the eighteenth century can also be framed as a conflict between Aristotelian philosophical tradition and Greek atomic, corpuscular philosophy. The new development dramatically challenged the Aristotelian interpretation of material change that was common until the seventeenth century, explaining alterations of chemical properties or substances by the addition or subtraction of ‘forms.’ As mentioned above, underlying these processes was a speculative substrate of matter, called the proto hyle or prima materia, that remained unchanged throughout the process. Linked to the forms or qualities of wet, dry, hot, and cold, the proto hyle produced the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, which in turn could be mixed to generate the material substances that the chemists examined. Over against this Aristotelian theory, the Greek corpuscular philosophy gained influence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, speculating about atoms being the smallest units of material substances, which may or may not be understood as unsplittable. However, as William H. Brock aptly remarks, although enlivened by Boyle, Newton and their successors with gravitational force, chemical affinity and electrical properties, the earlier corpuscular philosophy or atomic theory was of little use to chemists until it was married to the modern doctrine of elements by John Dalton at the beginning of the nineteenth century. […] Dalton abandoned at a stroke the age-old belief of philosophers in the simplicity of matter—that there was a unique, homogeneous primary matter (1985, vii–viii).

For many, however, giving up the idea of a simple and unifying principle that underlies the processes of nature was too high a price to pay for scientific progress (cf. also the detailed discussion in Asprem 2013, Chapters 4 and 5). One of these was William Prout (1785 – 1850), who in 1816 put forward his hypothesis that all of the elements and their constituent atoms were in fact compounds of one basic homogeneous material. He coined the term protyle for this speculative basis, which he then identified with hydrogen, the lightest known element. Prout became known for a second hypothesis as well, namely the idea that if we accept that expression of the atomic weight of hydrogen as a unity, the relative atomic weights of all the known elements are whole numbers. Consequently, hydrogen came to be regarded as the primary matter from which all of the elements were composed. What was subsequently discussed as “Prout’s hypothesis” had

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an influence on nineteenth- and twentieth-century theories of matter that should not be underestimated. William H. Brock, who wrote a fascinating account of this hypothesis, following its reception all the way into the second half of the twentieth century, points out that “[a]s a tantalizing and attractive simplifying view of matter it was to be a continuous source of inspiration to chemists and physicists until the work of F W Aston on isotopes in the 1920s” (1985, viii). Relevant to our analysis here is also the fact that the protyle became a favorite topic in Theosophical and occult discourse at the end of the nineteenth century. For instance, Wynn W. Westcott, a founding figure of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and a noted authority on alchemy, in 1893 published a pamphlet under his Golden Dawn pseudonym “Sapere Aude” on The Science of Alchymy: Spiritual and Material. He argued that alchemy “must be regarded as a science uniting ancient chemistry with a religious basis” (1893, 4). But while he, like Heinrich Wilhelm Schaefer and others, drew the historical line from ancient and medieval alchemy to modern chemistry (1893, 5), he did not support the triumphant self-esteem of modern chemists. “No modern science has shown more intolerance towards its ancestors than the chemistry of our era has shown to the discoveries of those Egyptian, Arabian and Mediæval sages who were the founders of chemistry in the dim and distant past” (1893, 8). In his attempt to reconcile alchemy with the most modern chemical findings, Westcott referred to Prout’s protyle as evidence of the unified quality of matter, or the prima materia of the alchemists. He found support from the leading chemist Sir William Crookes. In history books of modern science, it is usually not mentioned that Crookes also was a member of the Theosophical Society and secretly a Golden Dawn initiate (see Morrisson 2007, 39 – 40). By the end of the nineteenth century, Theosophists and scientists, partly in collaboration, developed a new entanglement of discourse strands. Indeed, as Morrisson points out: When scientists such as Crookes and Lodge, and Theosophists such as Besant and Leadbeater, melded physics with spiritual and psychic forces via theories of the ether (and the additional particles that Theosophy added to the equation), they were lending scientific credibility to spiritual ideas. Paradoxically, in their critique of scientific materialism, they asserted a mechanical theory of spirituality. Theosophy thus required a form of vitalism to counterbalance the mechanistic tendencies of its physics (2007, 83).

Along the same line of argumentation, what I call vitalism here is a collection of discourse strands that are linked to the historical tradition of vitalism but not limited to it. When it comes to historical vitalism—a movement with many different branches in different countries—we can identify as a common denominator the critical attitude toward Newtonian mechanics, which is complemented by the

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idea of a ‘life force’ that explains the nature of living things. In this general form, “[v]italism seems to belong to the very origins of alchemy” (Dobbs 1992, 58). Already part of scientific discourse in the eighteenth century (Rey 2000; Reill 2005; on the Scottish Enlightenment, see Packham 2012), the search for the vital powers of nature in the nineteenth century was linked to the concept of natura naturans (as in Schelling’s philosophy of nature), to ‘animal magnetism’ (as in Franz Anton Mesmer’s theories and experiments), and later to the concept of ‘ether.’ It is the entanglement of these strands that constitute the discursive knot of vitalism. The form of scientific and philosophical vitalism that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century took on features from various new disciplines. Hans Driesch (1867– 1941), the German biologist noted for his early experimental work in embryology and one of the first to perform the cloning of an animal in the 1880s, is certainly the best-known representative of what he himself called neo-vitalism (Driesch 1922, 167). In various publications he positioned himself against materialistic philosophies of science, particularly Darwinism. And he made explicit what we see many times in the present study—the emergence of psychology as an integrating factor between religion, philosophy, and science: “As is well known,” writes Driesch, “the problem of vitalism is expanded considerably when we include in it the question of the relations between the ‘inner life’ [‘Seelenleben’] and nature.” Against this background, Driesch is surprised that psychologists do not really engage the issue: “almost nobody has seen the close relation between the body/mind problem and vitalism as such in its actual sharpness; indeed, it is strange that not even physiologists such as Pflüger and Goltz have seen the close link that is operative here” (1922, 157). It is through psychology that Driesch also endorsed the work of another famous vitalist—Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941; see Burwick and Douglass 2010). Both scholars fought against mechanistic and ‘finalistic’ philosophies of science, even though their conclusions differed in some ways (Driesch 1922, 178 – 180). Driesch was convinced of the relevance of occultism and psychology for the emergence of a new understanding of science, and he used the label ‘para’ for these sciences without the pejorative charging that this label assumes in other contexts. Now at last a field seems to become “science” on which as yet only casuistic statements were made, more guessing than knowing: the field of parapsychology and paraphysics, i. e., those fields that are unfortunately still called “occultism” [Okkultismus], even though, it seems to me, not much is still “occult” [verborgen] here. […] We state it frankly: Paraphysics is our hope when it comes to biology, just as parapsychology [Parapsychik] is our hope when it comes to psychology. Together, however, they express our hope when it comes to a well-founded metaphysics and “worldview” [“Weltanschauung”] (1922, 208 and 209, emphasis original).

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Statements like these make it clear how closely this discourse is linked to the discourse of monism, which I will discuss in the next chapter. Even if we should keep in mind that Driesch’s notion of entelechy was ultimately a dualistic concept, which makes the discursive knot more complex, we can see the link between those discourses in what Monika Fick calls the “sensualization of the spiritual” (Versinnlichung des Geistigen) and the “spiritualization of the physical” (Beseelung des Physischen); at the end of her study of fin de siècle literature, in which Gustav Theodor Fechner and other Romantic authors were positively received and linked to spiritualism as a “biology of the beyond,” she draws the conclusion that we can even speak of (literary) “modernity as a monistic movement” (Fick 1993, 354– 365). It is noteworthy in this regard that Fechner had decisive influence on Sigmund Freud and on psychoanalysis in general. “A large part of the theoretical framework of psychoanalysis would hardly have come into being without the speculations of the man whom Freud called the great Fechner” (Ellenberger 1970, 218). In a parallel dynamic, “vitalism has powerfully inflected the literary sensibility of the last two centuries, and these cultural effects were empowered by the residual prestige vitalism enjoyed from its discursive apprenticeship in the scientific academy. The transition of vitalism from science, to a scientific ideology, to a social ideology shows this complex historical dynamic in action” (Clarke 1996, 28). To be sure, in order to clearly see these discursive links we need to broaden our perspective from historical monism and vitalism to monism and vitalism; we can then see how influential this discourse indeed was in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. William Prout can also be addressed as a vitalist, since he argued that living systems also contained ‘vital principles.’ With this thesis, Prout was part of a heated debate among chemists of his generation (Brock 1985, 70 – 80), long before occultists and Theosophists jumped on the bandwagon and both spiritualized the ‘life force’ and ‘scientificized’ spirituality. Hence, there are different forms of vitalist theory, and it is important to remember that chemists like Prout were deploying the language of vitalism in order to explain the behaviour of organised living systems rather than of the organic substances which could be extracted from them. The distinction is crucial, for whereas an organised body like a cat, or a tree, or a stomach in vivo, is living and vital, an organic body like sugar, or urea, or even albumin, which is a constituent of these bodies, is as lifeless as a mass of zinc oxide (Brock 1985, 74).

But despite these differences, the contribution of Prout and his chemical colleagues introduced the relevant terms to vitalism that prepared the discursive changes. When we look at German Romanticism, we encounter many more driving forces of this discursive change. In critical conversation with German ideal-

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ism and particularly with Schelling’s philosophy of nature, Romantic concepts of nature and matter were picking up vitalist ideas and reconfiguring them with spiritual overtones. This can already be seen in Goethe’s understanding of science, which Jeremy Naydler aptly summarizes: “If we allow intuitive thinking, feeling and imagination a place in our scientific method, then—providing these are deployed in conjunction with exact observation and clear thought, and providing they are trained as thoroughly as our powers of observation and thinking—then a much fuller and more complete experience of nature will become possible” (Naydler 1996, 115; on Goethe’s pantheistic philosophy of nature see Naydler 1996, 110 – 114). An example from Romanticism is Carl Gustav Carus, the influential scholar, physician, and painter. In his Zwölf Briefe über das Erdleben (“Twelve Letters on the Life of the Earth,” 1841), and then in his main work Natur und Idee oder das Werdende und sein Gesetz (“Nature and Idea, or: The Becoming and Its Law,” 1861), Carus attempted to overcome the materialist tendencies of contemporary science that alienated the human being from nature. That is the reason why he—although not embracing the practice of table-turning—could interpret the spiritualist séances of his time as one of the most important chapters of physiology and a desideratum of scholarly research. In this endeavor, he did not stand alone. What all mechanistic, magnetic, electric, vitalist, psychological, and physiological attempts of interpretation that were propagated in the journalistic debate had in common was the claim of an extended concept of knowledge in the natural sciences. Underlying this was the central attempt to (re)unite the natural sciences with philosophical thinking. In relation with this claim, we see the attempt to criticize the dominant natural-scientific discipline, mechanical physics, for its exclusivity, and at the same time to complement it spiritually (Bohley 2008, 111).

Carus was an early representative of this development. He contributed to the discussion by aestheticizing and psychologizing philosophical as well as scientific concepts of nature in a discourse of Empfindsamkeit (“sensitivity”). As Robert Matthias Erdbeer demonstrated (2010, 167– 255), these works were a major contribution to a discursive change that prepared what the author calls “the esoteric modern.” However, when Erdbeer describes these contributions judgmentally as “strategic dilettantism” (see the title of his chapter, and passim), he strips such discourses of their scientific legitimacy and thus adopts uncritically the dichotomizing structure that he is analyzing. That people like Carus were active both as scientists and authors of popular works not only marks their discursive impact (Erdbeer 2010, 170); it also reminds us of the fact that the world of scientists and that of a popular audience are not so far apart as labels like ‘dilettantism’ and ‘amateurism’ vis-à-vis ‘exact science’ seem to suggest.

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In this regard, the situation in England was not fundamentally different. People from various backgrounds responded to the Victorian crisis of faith and reassembled discourses of vitalism and others (on this topic see also the material presented in Renk 2012, even though her analysis is unfortunately too uncritical). Critique of scientific naturalism was one of the driving forces behind these activities, as Frank Miller Turner (1974) demonstrated. Henry Sidgwick and James Ward, both Cambridge philosophers; Alfred Russel Wallace and George John Romanes, both scientists; Frederic W. H. Myers, the poet, classicist, and founding figure of the Society for Psychical Research; and Samuel Butler, the novelist—they were all united in their quest to link emotion and religion to scientific endeavors. In his introduction to Phantasms of the Living, Myers put it thus: [J]ust as the old orthodoxy of religion was too narrow to contain men’s knowledge, so now the new orthodoxy of materialistic science is too narrow to contain their feelings and aspirations; and consequently […] just as the fabric of religious orthodoxy used to be strained in order to admit the discoveries of geology or astronomy, so now also the obvious deductions of materialistic science are strained or overpassed in order to give sanction to feelings and aspirations which it is found impossible to ignore (1886, 1; quoted from Turner 1974, 2).

What in German discourse was called Empfindsamkeit, or sensitivity, in British discourse was discussed as “feelings” and “aspirations” and was linked to “religion.” Another term that we encounter in this discursive knot is “spiritual.” Turner correctly notes that the “word spiritual is one of the most difficult and important terms in late nineteenth-century thought” (1974, 3), and he refers to Harald Victor Routh, who already in 1937 gave a precise definition of its meaning for the nineteenth century: It implies, in the first place, that the speaker has cultivated a system of principles, an edifice of ideas, an ideology, which gives shape and direction to his plexus and nexus of thought. This framework, partly inherited, is cherished because it is congenial to the individual’s aspirations; it helps him contemplate humanity as a force capable of growth even to perfection; it suggests forms in which his own vitality can find imaginative self-expression. […] But in any case this comforting religion or philosophy, this reassuring theory of existence is the soil in which the spirit germinates (Routh 1937, 4).

Routh remarked that the problem with the terms ‘spirit’ and ‘spiritual’ is that all people use them but “[n]one of them has explained what he means by the expression, but all use it as frequently and consistently as if they had privately agreed on its significance” (Routh 1937, 4). Indeed, this could have been written at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The same is true for his comparison of spirituality and religion:

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Such an explanation does not exclude the idea of religion, but it does exclude the specially doctrinal and pneumatological associations which once adhered to the word. In this secular, nineteenth-century sense, “spirit” might rise to the lips of any humanist (an agnostic, or a pagan, no less than a saint) and would connote an impulse towards intellectual or imaginative creativeness; not necessarily to the writing of poetry or the painting of pictures; but to the identification of one’s best self with the best things (1937, 4).

We see here the emergence of a new discourse of spirituality that became highly influential in the 1960s and remains so today. For the discourse of religion and science as well, this reconfiguration of discourse strands is informative. Without dismissing science and progress as something useless, the new configuration embraced science and linked it to aspirations, emotions, imagination, self-expression, and vitality. The last term also makes clear why these discourse strands belong to the knot of vitalism.

Rearrangements in the Twentieth Century If we want to understand the ambivalent role that alchemical discourse played in the twentieth century—wavering between rejection and fascination—again we will have to include psychology in our analysis. And again, it is the intellectual relationship between Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung that is particularly indicative of the discursive reconfiguration of alchemy between psychology and modern science. This conversation had a lot of impact: “Jung ultimately set the terms of a psychological interpretation of alchemy for much of the rest of the century” (Morrisson 2007, 190). Jung was interested in alchemy early on, after he had encountered this field through the works of Herbert Silberer in 1914; but his fascination with alchemy fully blossomed only later, at the end of the 1920s, when he started to link the mandala symbolism to alchemical motives (Ellenberger 1970, 719 – 723; Gieser 2005, 198 – 200; Miller 2009, 47– 50; see Jung 1980, 118 – 260). Jung presented a lecture at the Eranos meeting, published in the Eranos-Jahrbuch 1936 under the title “Die Erlösungsvorstellungen in der Alchemie” (“The Redemption Motives in Alchemy”). This lecture was integrated, although in a completely new form, as one part of Jung’s monograph Psychologie und Alchemie (“Psychology and Alchemy”), which was first published in 1944, but of which a second edition was already necessary in 1952, much to the astonishment of the author (see his 1951 preface to the second edition in Jung 1980). Jung was interested in alchemy particularly because he was struck by the apparent similarity between alchemical symbolism and the dreams of modern individuals. In a fairly eclectic way, Jung immersed himself seriously in the history of alchemical literature and ideas, which led him to the construction of alchemy

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as a tradition that is mainly interested in psychological and spiritual dimensions (Jung 1980, 282– 331). According to Jung, alchemical symbolism is concerned with an evolutionary process that strives to attain its highest form. The ‘maturing’ of the metals can be compared to the ‘individuation’ of the human psyche in its passing through various stages of purification. The Philosopher’s Stone was essentially the psychological process of individuation (McLynn 1996, 428 – 432). The ‘Great Work’ (opus) is the combination of conflicting forces into a new and unified harmony. “The basis of the opus is the materia prima, which is one of the most famous secrets of alchemy,” Jung noted (1980, 364, emphasis added; see the entire chapter on prima materia in Jung 1980, 364– 394). Jung described the prima materia as a universal category that is characterized by ubiquity: “we can have it always and everywhere; i. e., the projection can take place all the time and everywhere” (Jung 1980, 371). The speculation about a primary matter that underlies physical and spiritual processes is a reconfiguration of discourse strands that belong to the fields of science and psychology. The “procedure of disintegration and reconstruction has its equivalent in purely experimental science and also in therapeutic work” (Gieser 2005, 200). And this is where Wolfgang Pauli enters the stage. Pauli encountered alchemy as a powerful symbolism in his own dreams, and he discussed the theory of alchemy and its implication with Jung in his own analysis and also in extended conversation that we know of from their letters (see the very good analysis in Gieser 2005, 198 – 211). Pauli thought that there must be a ‘fine structure’ (a recurring motif in his dreams) and a ‘neutral language’ underlying the principles of both physics and psychology (see also Jung’s approval of the term “neutral language” in Jung and Pauli 1952, 99). In his essay “Science and Western Thought” he asked whether modern science would now “be able to realise, on a higher plane, alchemy’s old dream of a psycho-physical unity, by the creation of a unified conceptual foundation for the scientific comprehension of the physical as well as the psychical” (Pauli 1994, 146). Pauli referred to Kepler as an antagonist of Fludd, Goethe’s “Faust” as an antagonist of Newton, as well as to Jung and the traditions of Hermeticism and Rosicrucianism (ibid.). In this short question, which Pauli regarded as “vital for contemporary science” (ibid.), the discursive combination of ‘psyche/psychology,’ ‘physics,’ ‘science,’ and ‘alchemy’ materializes in a nutshell. What is more, Pauli’s unified language is nothing other than the ‘language of nature’ that is known from European intellectual history (Gieser 2005, 207, with reference to Pauli’s letter to Fierz, dating 21 August 1948). Suzanne Gieser’s conclusion is to the point: Pauli’s vision is a unified worldview, in which the gap between psychological and physical worlds is suspended, just as the gap between the chemical and the physical has been sus-

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pended at the atomic level. The idea is that the closer one gets to the core of things, to their intrinsic structure, the more the differences perceived on the everyday macro level are suspended. Here we recognize again the positivistic wish to create a unitary science. The important difference is, however, that Pauli did not want to see a reductionist model, in which everything can be reduced to an existing science, like logic or physics. He sought rather a wholly new scientific approach which does not disregard the unique character of the individual sciences, but which attempts to find certain common denominators—a deep level based on the belief in certain universal structural elements which reveal themselves in all areas of experience (2005, 208).

It is no surprise that this reconfiguration of psychology and physics in a quest for universal patterns of the cosmos was also of high interest to representatives of occultist or magical discourse. An influential example is Israel Regardie (1907– 1985), who had a solid knowledge of Jungian psychoanalysis, which he combined with his immersion in Golden Dawn and Enochian magic traditions. In 1937, Regardie published his The Philosopher’s Stone: A Modern Comparative Approach to Alchemy from the Psychological and Magical Points of View, followed by a major publication entitled The Middle Pillar: The Balance between Mind and Magic (1938). The author claimed that there is an intrinsic relation between ritual magic and psychology, which finds expression in the alchemical work and the Philosopher’s Stone, “a symbol for spiritual illumination and expanded consciousness” (quoted from Morrisson 2007, 191). He even recommended that psychotherapists should use the Lesser Banishing Ritual and the Middle Pillar exercise from the Golden Dawn in their sessions (Morrisson 2007, 191). This interpretation is not far from Eliade’s construction of alchemy. Only a few years after Regardie, Eliade published The Forge and the Crucible (French original appeared in 1956). In his foreword he leaves no doubt about his real interests: Wherever possible, the historic-cultural context of the various metallurgical complexes has been taken into account; but my main concern has been to pierce through to the mental world which lies behind them. Mineral substances shared in the sacredness attaching to the Earth-Mother. […] To collaborate in the work of Nature, to help her to produce at an ever-increasing tempo, to change the modalities of matter—here, in our view, lies one of the key sources of alchemical ideology. […] what the smelter, smith and alchemist have in common is that all three lay claim to a particular magico-religious experience in their relations with matter; this experience is their monopoly and its secret is transmitted through the initiatory rites of their trades. All three work on a Matter which they hold to be at once alive and sacred, and in their labours they pursue the transformation of matter, its perfection and its transmutation (Eliade 1978a, 8 – 9).

All of the ingredients of the new discursive constellation are clearly visible here; Eliade, the professor of religion, lends authority to the combination of religion,

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science, nature, magic, experience, mother earth, vitalism, transmutation, and alchemy. Eliade’s book is not without academic bloopers, such as using the “distillation of sperm” as a link between spiritual alchemy, biology, and what today is known as ‘cognitive science of religion’: But cinnabar can also be made inside the human body, mainly by means of the distillation of sperm. “The Taoist, imitating animals and vegetables, hangs himself upside down, causing the essence of his sperm to flow up to his brain.” The tan-t’ien, the ‘famous fields of cinnabar’, are to be found in the most secret recesses of the brain and belly: there it is that the embryo of immortality is alchemically prepared (Eliade 1978a, 117; as source of the quote Eliade gives Rolf Stein, Jardins en miniature d’Extrême-Orient, p. 86).

In his preface to the 1978 Phoenix Edition, Eliade expressed his thanks to historians of science who received his book favorably, among them A.G. Debus, J. Needham, and W.-E. Peuckert (Eliade 1978a, 16). And indeed, the spiritual interpretation of alchemy was still en vogue in academic literature of the 1980s (see Hoheisel 1986 as an example). Another materialization of this discursive knot can be mentioned here—the merging of occultist and psychological interpretations with new age and psychedelic discourses.¹³ From Helena P. Blavatsky to Arthur Machen and Alan Watts, psychedelic experiences with drugs have repeatedly been linked to interpretations of alchemical processes (Morrisson 2007, 191– 193; see also Hanegraaff 2013), and ‘psychedelic alchemy’ is a recurring keyword on the Internet today. Mark S. Morrisson notes: Alchemy is no longer the central trope for discussing and understanding nuclear physics and radiochemistry that it was through the 1930s, but its connection to atomic science persisted across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first in occult alchemy circles. Its move into the realms of psychoanalysis and brain chemistry suggests that its ability to destabilize boundaries between religion and science—and even between the sciences—remains alive and well (Morrisson 2007, 193).

This is only partly true, however. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, alchemy still resonates in the work of physicists and philosophers. One prominent example is David Deutsch, mentioned already in the last chapter. Deutsch pioneered the field of quantum computation by formulating a description for a quantum Turing machine as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run  I do not regard “New Age” or “New Age religion” as a useful analytical category (see von Stuckrad 2005b, 140). In this book, I either refer to it as the discourse on New Age, which certainly had a lot of impact (indicated as new age), or as a scholarly construct, the dubious character of which I indicate as ‘New Age.’

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on a quantum computer. But more importantly for us, he is one of the leading intellectuals who are interested in the links between quantum mechanics and philosophy. Being an advocate of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, Deutsch writes about the general implications of this theory, including time travel (Deutsch 1997, 289 – 320) and other things that appear counter-intuitive but are in accordance with the theories discussed by physicists today. In The Beginning of Infinity, the author seeks to find the basis of progress in human development. He describes this progress in very optimistic ways and argues that from all fields of science and philosophy we learn that, although progress has no necessary end, it does have a necessary condition for it to take off and to thrive. Each of the beginnings is ‘the beginning of infinity’ as viewed from the perspective of that field. Many seem, superficially, to be unconnected. But they are all facets of a single attribute of reality, which I call the beginning of infinity (Deutsch 2012, viii, emphasis original).

The subtitle of this book is Explanations that Transform the World. The discourse strand of ‘transformation’ is not by chance woven into the author’s narrative. Deutsch explicitly links his project to the alchemical quest, though in a modernized form. He explains that the stars shine because they are powered by the nuclear energy that is released by transmutation, i.e., the conversion of one chemical element (mainly hydrogen) into another (mainly helium). There are some forms of transmutation that happen on earth, such as the decay of radioactive elements. Scientifically demonstrated for radioactivity only in 1901, the concept of transmutation, however, “was ancient. Alchemists had dreamed for centuries of transmuting ‘base metals’, such as iron or lead, into gold. They never came close to understanding what it would take to achieve that, so they never did so. But scientists in the twentieth century did” (Deutsch 2012, 1). With his narrative of a general transformation of the entire world and the quest for complete understanding of the human being, Deutsch participates in the “Dreams of a Final Theory” (Weinberg 1992), but he also stands in a long tradition of esoteric discourse—from the Further Reformation of the seventeenth century (von Stuckrad 2010a, 178 – 179) to the ‘New Age movement’ speculating about the breakthrough of human consciousness— that has been reactivated by contemporary scientists. Deutsch is very critical about the limits of reductionist approaches in physics and the natural sciences, but he is as critical of their opposite, i. e., holism (Deutsch 1997, 20 – 21). Perhaps this is what makes his contribution to alchemy typical of the twenty-first century. With an awareness of the limits of science, he nonetheless retains an ideology of progress and perfect knowledge. The universal laws are adopted and integrated into physical laws in the nascent ‘Theory of Everything.’ He argues that “if we understand knowledge and adaptation as

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structure which extends across large numbers of universes, then we expect the principles of epistemology and evolution to be expressed directly as laws about the structure of the multiverse. That is, they are physical laws, but at an emergent level” (Deutsch 1997, 345, emphasis original). Weaving together epistemology and physics—or ‘knowledge’ and ‘transmutation’—in a Fabric of Reality (the title of his 1997 book), he reassembles the discourse strands of alchemy in a creative way. For instance, he links the natural conditions “to create an openended stream of explanatory knowledge” (Deutsch 2012, 60) to the laws of physics, since “many of the necessary transformations require energy: something must power conjectures and scientific experiments and all those manufacturing processes” (Deutsch 2012, 61, emphasis original)—‘energy’ here is the concept as it is used in theoretical physics, but at the same time it is a general metaphor of ‘powering’ the progress of knowledge accumulation in the evolution of the multiverse. As we will see in the next chapter, the term ‘energy’ plays a significant role in monistic discourse as well.

4 Darwinism Turned into Religion: Monism Using Max Weber’s terminology, one might describe the Romantic philosophy of nature as a dialogue with the processes of rationalization and disenchantment of the cosmos. The underlying attempt to ‘re-enchant’ the world continued to influence nature-oriented religious currents in the twentieth century. Although such a philosophy of nature came under increasing pressure owing to industrialization and the advance of new natural sciences, holistic, monistic, vitalist, and pantheistic ideas were current in the first half of the twentieth century as an ‘antidote’ to the mechanistic view of nature. Even scientists such as Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel, later celebrated as protagonists of sober empirical science, can be cited as examples here. Harold Victor Routh noted this fact already in 1937 (1937, 278– 293). In his fundamental work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), Darwin set a view of nature brimming with life and fertility against the Jewish and Christian doctrine of creation. As Hans G. Kippenberg says, “Darwin’s travel valise helps us understand this metaphor” (Kippenberg 2002, 33). Darwin took Lyell’s Principle of Geology and, more importantly, Milton’s Paradise Lost in his luggage on his world voyages. Milton’s account of creation as an act of voluptuous love and fecundation brought Darwin to the idea of natura naturans. Although Darwin did not imagine nature as a huge sacred organism, as did many Romantics, he combined a religious sense of wonder towards the abundance of nature with scientific empiricism. His notion that there was grandeur in the evolutionary view of life was embraced by many other scientists and philosophers; it has influenced discourse on nature up to the present day, particularly in the United States (Taylor 2010, 6, 142– 143, 158, 177, 200, 206, 222). A similar case is Darwin’s contemporary Ernst Commer, professor of philosophy at St. Edward’s College in Liverpool. On the one hand, Commer strongly opposed Romantic philosophy and argued that the world did not have a unified substance and thus was not an individual in itself. Consequently, the notion of a world soul was complete nonsense, and the idea of the world as a unified whole was philosophically entirely unfounded. However, it seems in contradiction to this position that Commer stuck to a monistic interpretation in saying that the visible world is a unity and that it is the task of the philosophy of nature to understand the transcendent spirituality of the world. Commer concluded his System of Philosophy with the notion that a further treatment of the “life of the pure mind” cannot be done in a philosophical work. It must be enough to describe the concept of life with regard to materialized phenomena, “stopping at the threshold of the higher spiritual world, more assuming than knowing, and accepting our knowledge as a

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narrow and poor not-knowing.” Only the painstaking conclusions of our investigations will sometime make us similar to the “pure mind.”¹⁴

Ernst Haeckel: From Darwinism to Pantheistic Monism Charles Darwin and Ernst Commer exemplify the ambivalent attitude of many academics toward religion and science in the second half of the nineteenth century. They partook in a similar discourse as Ernst Haeckel (1834– 1919; see the biographical accounts in Keitel-Holz 1984 and Di Gregorio 2005), who offers perhaps the strongest evidence for the entanglement of religious and scientific discourse strands around 1900. Being one of the earliest proponents of Darwinian theory in Germany, already in 1866—in his Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (“General Morphology of Organisms”)—he explicitly stated that the human being evolved from apes, just as these have evolved from lower animals, a statement that Darwin had shunned in his On the Origin of Species. In his “General Morphology,” Haeckel also introduced the term “ecology” into academic and popular language, namely as the science that studies reciprocal relationships between organisms and their environment (Haeckel 1866, vol. 2, 235 – 236; see Stauffer 1957; Höxtermann 2001; Jacobsen 2005, 103 – 106; Lenz and Mueller 2006). Over against alternative names that were discussed in the nineteenth century to designate the new field of inquiry—from Carl von Linné’s “oeconomia naturae” to “ethology,” “bionomy,” or “chorology”—the term “ecology” had already gained the upper hand around 1900 (Schurig and Nothacker 2001). Over his long career, Haeckel popularized Darwinian theory and combined it with a religious devotion to nature. Particularly influential was Die Welträthsel, published in 1899 and translated into English as The Riddle of the Universe one year later. The German edition sold more than 250,000 copies within six years. No doubt, Haeckel’s concept of monism, presented as a connecting link between religion and science, struck the right chord around 1900 (Jacobsen 2005, 91– 212; on its influence on subsequent Nazi ideology see Gasman 1998). Haeckel made it clear in his preface that he wants to overcome the regrettable separation between pure empiricism and metaphysical speculation prevail-

 “Es genügt, den Begriff des Lebens sowohl nach seinem Princip wie nach seiner Bethätigung durch die drei Stufen des vegetativen, sensitiven und intellectuellen Lebens zu verfolgen, um an der Schwelle einer höheren geistigen Welt mehr ahnend als wissend stehen zu bleiben und unser Wissen selbst gleichsam als ein enges und armes Nichtwissen zu erkennen. Je weiter wir aber durch mühsame Folgerung in unserer Erkenntniss fortschreiten, desto ähnlicher werden wir dem reinen Geiste, der mühelos seiner Erkenntniss geniesst” (Commer 1884, 258).

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ing in German universities. Only the reunion of both disciplines would be worthy of the term “philosophy of nature.” Haeckel conceded that the doctrine of evolution is the major achievement of the nineteenth century, but he thought Darwin should be seen alongside Jean Lamarck and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as a trio of “brilliant philosophers of nature, three stars of the greatest magnitude among all other men of our century” (Haeckel 1903, 8; see also p. 14 and passim). Haeckel later would add Baruch Spinoza to his pantheon, as Spinoza cogently developed pantheistic thought, juxtaposing it with ‘Judeo-Christian’ anthropomorphism. Haeckel saw the hypostatization of the human being as the center of the universe as the crucial problem facing contemporary philosophy and religion, a position that surpassed Darwin. The human being should not be regarded as “the premeditated goal of organic creation nor as a creature similar to God” (1903, 11), but as an organic component of the entire universe. He concluded: “Our pure monism is not identical with theoretical materialism, which negates the mind and dissolves the world in a sum of dead atoms; nor is it identical with theoretical spiritualism (now called Energetics by Ostwald), which negates matter and regards the world simply as a spatially ordered group of energies or immaterial powers of nature” (1903, 14, emphasis original). Such a monism excludes the existence of anthropomorphic deities, and Haeckel never tired of polemicizing against monotheistic religions and even against polytheistic ones, since they contradict monism. His monism led him to a pantheism, which he conceived, contrary to the evolutionary models of comparative religion of his generation, as the overcoming of monotheistic religions rather than their archaic predecessor. Pantheism is the product of a “civilized human being’s refined observation of nature,” in contrast to theism, “whose crudest forms were already evident among primitive peoples more than ten thousand years ago” (1903, 116). Like many natural scientists since his time, Ernst Haeckel found the divine in nature (Gladigow 1986, 1989, Taylor 2010, 155 – 157). Far from personifying nature, he sought the solution to the “world riddles” in the mystical unity of spirit and matter, which reveals itself in strict laws but without the evolutionary goal of perfecting the human being. Creation always remains incomplete, because organic nature, like inorganic nature, is characterized only by “a constant flow of development” (Haeckel 1903, 107). Here Haeckel echoes the supreme principle described by Schelling, which would find later votaries in the philosophy of life. In his last book, Kristallseelen (“Crystal Souls”), published two years before his death, Haeckel sought to make this more concrete by combining crystallography and psychology. Haeckel admired Goethe as a model sensitive natural scientist—three quotations formed the book’s epigraph. Referring to Goethe, Haeckel

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regarded the year 1904 to be a crucial turning point of science, because that year saw the publication of studies that realized Goethe’s prophetic program: The artificial boundaries previously erected between inorganic and organic nature, between death and life, between natural sciences and the humanities fell at a single blow. All substance possesses life, inorganic as well as organic; all things are animated, crystals as well as organisms. The ancient conviction of the inner, unified linkage of all events, of the unlimited dominion of generally valid laws of nature reasserts itself as an unshakeable truth (1917, viii, emphasis original).

But Haeckel went even further in his religious conception and constructs a causal relation between science, art, and religion. In Die Welträthsel there is a section entitled “Monistic Churches” in which the author explicitly states: The modern human being who possesses science, art, and thus also religion,¹⁵ has no need of a particular church, no narrow, enclosed space. For everywhere in open nature where his gaze falls upon the infinite universe or a part of it, he finds the harsh “battle for existence” but also “the true, the beautiful, and the good.” Everywhere he finds his “church” in magnificent nature itself (1903, 138, emphasis original).

With such utterances Haeckel enters the same field of discourse as had been mapped out by German Romanticism (Jacobsen 2005, 9 – 89) and American transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson, albeit coming from a different direction (Obuchowski 2005). As this quotation shows, Haeckel is not only an example of the entanglement of discourses on religion and science, but also of the reconfiguration of this discursive knot with art. Haeckel saw the power of creation active in nature, which also links him to vitalism; from his first monograph on the aesthetics of radiolars (1862) until his death, Haeckel was fascinated by what he used to call the “absolute beauty of nature” (see Di Gregorio 2005, 515 – 519); he regarded nature in general, and animals in particular, as artists; for him, nature even has a sense of art that had evolved to full consciousness in the human being. Since 1899, Haeckel had published several volumes on “Art Forms of Nature” (Kunstformen der Natur; see, e.g., Haeckel 1904) that significantly impacted the understanding of art in Germany around 1900 (Kockerbeck 1989; on literature and psychology see Fick 1993). Not surprisingly, then, in Die Natur als Künstlerin (“Nature as Artist,” a sort of Festschrift, published with a print run of 30,000  This is an implicit reference to Goethe’s formulation: “Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt, hat auch Religion. Wer jene beiden nicht besitzt, der habe Religion” (“Those who have science and art, also have religion; those who don’t have them, should have religion;” see also the monistic interpretation in Ostwald 1911, 32).

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one year before his eightieth birthday), a photograph of Haeckel is accompanied by Schiller’s poetic words: “Only through the morning gate of beauty / you entered the land of cognition” (“Nur durch das Morgentor des Schönen / Drangst du in der Erkenntnis Land”; Haeckel 1913, 7). In addition to artistic representations of plants and crystals, Haeckel used the dispositive of painting when he wanted to express the beauty of nature. During his travels he produced many watercolors; one of them was chosen as the cover painting for the present book because it aestheticizes the programmatic blending of nature and science in Haeckel’s thinking.

Wilhelm Ostwald: Entanglements Personified We have already seen that Ernst Haeckel differentiated his own philosophy from the “theoretical spiritualism” or “energetics” of Wilhelm Ostwald (1853 – 1932), because the latter negated matter and looked only at the spiritual or energetic dimensions of the world and reality (see Braune 2009, 51– 68). From a vitalist perspective, Hans Driesch had also criticized Ostwald’s energetics and later called this the best part of his 1904 book Naturbegriffe und Natururteile (Driesch 1922, 182). These differences notwithstanding, both Haeckel and Ostwald where united in their attempt to establish monism as the new bridge between religion and science, between Geisteswissenschaft and Naturwissenschaft. Ostwald was instrumental in the popularization of monism at the beginning of the twentieth century (Daser 1980; Hakfoort 1992; Bächli and Petrus 2003; Braune 2009; Lenz and Mueller 2012). In 1911 he was elected president of the Deutscher Monistenbund (German Monist League, founded under the influence of Haeckel in 1906), a position that he combined with his many other activities, from scientific research (he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1909) to political activism in the peace movement of Berta von Suttner, to being a passionate amateur painter himself. His ideas about color theory—which he, like Goethe before him, considered the most important achievement of his life—influenced artists such as (the young) Paul Klee and members of the Dutch artist group De Stijl, including Piet Mondrian (Gage 1993, 247– 260). His published work comprises more than forty thousand pages. As a representative of the monistic movement he propagated social Darwinism, euthanasia, and eugenics, and after the lost war in 1917 he linked his monism to a revanchist German nationalism. Wilhelm Ostwald is a prime example of the entanglement of scientific and religious discourses. While his biography seamlessly combines various societal and cultural fields, his work explicitly contributes to the discourses of science, religion, vitalism, alchemy, philosophy, psychology, and art. When we add

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to this mélange the materialization of these discourses in dispositives such as the Nobel Prize, Monistenbund, and political programs, we can rightly say that Ostwald is one of the personifications of the discursive entanglements that this book is addressing. Let us have a closer look at some of his monistic writings. In 1910, Ostwald published a collection of his work for a broad audience under the title Die Forderung des Tages (“The Requirement of the Day”). In eight parts, the book provides an overview of his understanding of science, culture, and religion, dealing explicitly with “General Energetics” (Energetik), “Methodology,” “Psychology and Biography,” “General Problems of Culture,” “The International Auxiliary Language,” and “The Educational System.” As a red thread throughout the almost 600 pages of text, Ostwald criticized the mechanistic and materialist scientific understanding of his time, and he strove for a monistic overcoming of the dualism of matter and mind, in which the terms Kraft (“power”), Arbeit (“work”), and Energie (“energy”) take on meanings that can be applied in various fields, from empirical science to psychology and art (on the context and reception see Lenz 2012). He referred to Julius Robert Mayer and his 1842 “Bemerkungen über die Kräfte der unbelebten Natur” (“Observations regarding the powers of inanimate nature”). Ostwald noted that Mayer, who was a ship’s doctor and lay physicist, had put forward his theory too early to be accepted by his contemporaries, and that only with the “modern terminology” of Energetik could the truth of his ideas become fully visible (Ostwald 1910, 19 – 22, 28 – 29; see also Ostwald 1911, 82– 85). “It is the characteristic of modern energetics to have overcome this dualism and to have introduced ‘energy’ as the most general generic term. All phenomena are reduced to properties and relations of energy, and ‘matter’ in particular—if such a term is useful in the first place—must be defined on an energetic basis” (Ostwald 1910, 22). This is exactly what Haeckel disapproved. In his essay “Moderne Mystik” (“Modern mysticism,” 1907), Ostwald presented an understanding of mysticism as a phenomenon that always comes to the fore in transitional phases of cultural development, when people have lost the security of the old paradigm and have not yet gained the new one. Now we are in the midst of the period of scientific mysticism. People try to revive Paracelsus in Germany, Svedenborg is studied in England by a society founded under his name, and in his homeland they prepare a new edition of his works. In France they announced the bankruptcy of science a few years ago, and in front of me I have the French edition of the English alchemist and astrologer Robert Fludd (1574– 1637) as the first volume of a Bibliothèque des sciences maudites (Paris: H. Darogon 1907). And to include modern authors, the Swede Strindberg has tried to add to his fame as social-aesthetic writer that of a mystical physico-chemist, albeit as yet without having made the impression on scientists that was intended (even though probably not expected). And in order not to forget the direct connection with

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the early nineteenth-century philosophy of nature, which essentially was mysticism, people have now begun to write new commentaries on Schelling, the leader of the former movement, and to publish his work as the leader of the new movement (1910, 87).

But this, of course, would only be a transitional phase prior to the real marriage of science and philosophy under the umbrella of energetics and monism. As part of this transition, the concept of ‘energy’ can easily be applied to psychological phenomena (see also Daser 1980, 39 – 188). Here, Ostwald enters the same field of discourse that we have encountered already, which is an entanglement of occult and scientific discourse strands (see again Oppenheim 1985; Crabtree 1993; Treitel 2004). “The energetic approach to psychological phenomena,” Ostwald explained, “is a particularly striking example of the characteristic of energetics, mentioned above, to unconsciously and almost against their will infiltrate assumptions of presumably fully unrelated areas as a principle of explanation” (1910, 211). The monistic interpretation of energy led Ostwald to a critique of religion that resembles his understanding of mysticism. Ironically, however, he used for this critique a dispositive that is most directly linked to religion—the Sunday sermon. In a book entitled Monistische Sonntagspredigten (“Monistic Sunday Sermons”), the monistic preacher gave words of exhortation and encouragement to his followers. In short chapters, Ostwald mused about “[w]hy [we are] monists,” “[h]ow evil came into the world,” “[r]eligion and science,” “[t]he energetic imperative,” “[t]he development of God,” “[p]rayer,” and other themes. In the “Fourth Sermon: Religion and Science,” Ostwald provided a textbook example of the optimistic belief in scientific progress that would overcome all forms of religious superstition. About the general relationship between religion and science, he noted: “The more our culture declines, the more cherished religion proves to be; the more our culture rises, the more religion will take a backseat and will be substituted by science. Will religion become completely dispensable some day?” (1911, 30). Later, he answered this question in the affirmative, but without a clear prognosis: “Hence, it is to be expected historically that one social class after the other will rise from the sea of religious ideas and will form a fruitful land for humanity. That religion will slowly become dispensable is therefore a process that develops in steps, and it is not yet clear when this process will have reached all of humankind” (1911, 32). In a parallel argument, Ostwald envisaged a ‘religion after religion’ (to borrow the apt formulation of Wasserstrom 1999) in the new form of a monistic understanding of god. Looking at the entire development of the concept of god, we can conclude that now we can ultimately leave behind the dualism of the past four centuries or so, and approach a mon-

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ism. However, the earlier religious monism must be substituted today with a scientific monism. This is not the old monism that is organized on an animistic, anthropomorphic, or priestly foundation, but a new monism based on the highest cognitive performances that our brain, which is far more developed than in earlier stages, enables us to achieve (Ostwald 1911, 199, emphasis original).

What we see here is a creative re-entanglement of religion, science, and evolutionary biology (even the current fashion to return to biological, evolutionary explanations in the ‘cognitive science of religion’ is prefigured in Ostwald’s discursive blending). Like Haeckel and other scientists of his generation,¹⁶ Ostwald chose the genre of popularizing books to convey his religious message to a broad audience, and the discursive impact of this genre was significantly higher than his scientific writings.¹⁷ What is more, writing for a popular audience made the entanglement of seemingly disparate discourses much easier. We should not misinterpret this as a ‘less scientific’ or ‘pseudo-scientific’ amateurism, but as a change of dispositive that multiplied the discursive reconfiguration of religion and science at the beginning of the twentieth century and legitimated new meanings that were shared by a large audience in Germany. This confirms the arguments that Peter J. Bowler made for the British book market: The early twentieth century was a period in which there were major developments within both the publishing industry and the scientific community. Publishers thought that there was a major revival of interest in science by ordinary readers. Mass-circulation newspapers and the advent of photography transformed the way science (like many other topics) could be presented to the public. The expansion of secondary education created a market for literature aimed at those seeking to improve themselves by home study or by taking evening classes. Yet the scientific community had by this time become fully professionalized—and there is a widespread belief that one consequence of professionalization was a reluctance to engage with the general public (2009, 1– 2).

As Bowler makes convincingly clear, however, this is a misconception, and “British scientists played an active role in satisfying the increased demand for information about what they were doing” (2009, 2). The same is true for Germany, where this process was enhanced by the fact that between 1906 and 1914 many natural scientists joined the Monistenbund and related associations (Domschke 2012; see also the contributions in Steinbach and Gerber 2005, 239 – 398).  On the “neo-Romantic monist mysticism” and the “religion for the people” of Bruno Wille and Wilhelm Bölsche see Jacobsen 2005, 231– 328; see also Nöthlich et al. 2005.  On the reception of these theories in science fiction and other literature see Clarke 2001, on energetics pp. 140 – 141.

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One such dispositive was the series Zellenbücherei (“Cell Library”) that was published by Dürr & Weber in Leipzig. The press advertised its series with the slogan “The Cell Library does without dry theory and profound scholarly wisdom. It is a cultural, aesthetical, and economical-political collection that gains its materials from everyday life and presents knowledge and benefit, happiness and instruction, in a cheerful, often humorous way, in a chatty and narrative tone.”¹⁸ This, the advertisement added, was particularly necessary in a period that experienced dramatic educational damage due to war and revolution, particularly in Germany. In a discursive framework of analysis, it becomes clear how discursive structures direct the emergence of new dispositives, and how in turn the attribution of meaning is stabilized by dispositive changes. Wilhelm Ostwald actively participated in this discourse. The first volume of the Zellenbücherei was Ostwald’s Das große Elixier: Die Wissenschaftslehre (“The great elixir: Scientific epistemology”), published with a print run of 5,000. For twenty marks excluding tax, readers could also buy a numbered “luxury edition,” printed on hand-made paper, with a hand-colored cover, and with the author’s signature (see the last page of Ostwald 1920). The cover of the standard edition aestheticized the book’s content, depicting a bottle of alchemical elixir against a background pattern of a cell structure. Many times in this book, the author linked religion to science, alchemy to chemistry, and magic to cognition. He described “[t]he scientist as magician” (“Der Forscher als Zauberer”; Ostwald 1920, 6– 7) and referred to the alchemical dream as a positive foundation of modern science. Among the first dreams that inspired the beginning of scientific-technological thinking, the great elixir plays a very significant role. The search for the Philosopher’s Stone or the tincture that was able to turn base metals into gold and to give eternal health to the human body was a major source of chemistry, this science that reveals not less than in other sciences how much of these dreams can be made real, and in fact have become true. The great elixir has not fully been found today, but we know large parts of it. […] All these realizations of old dreams of humankind have been achieved on one single path. This path is called science. ¹⁹

 “Die Zellenbücherei verzichtet auf graue Theorie und tiefgründige Gelehrtenweisheit. Sie ist eine kulturelle, schöngeistige und wirtschaftlich-politische Sammlung, die ihre Stoffe aus dem täglichen Leben schöpft und in fröhlicher, oft humorvoller Weise, in Plauder- und Erzählerton Wissen und Nutz, Freude und Belehrung bietet” (quoted from the advertisement in Ostwald 1920, 89).  “Unter den ersten Träumen, welche das beginnende wissenschaftlich-technische Denken erfüllten, spielt das große Elixier eine sehr hervorragende Rolle. Das Suchen nach dem Stein der Weisen oder der Tinktur, die aus unedlen Metallen Gold zu machen und dem menschlichen Körper dauernde Gesundheit zu verleihen vermochte, ist eine Hauptquelle der Chemie gewesen, dieser Wissenschaft, in der sich nicht weniger deutlich wie in anderen darstellt, wieviel von solchen Träumen erreichbar ist, da es tatsächlich erreicht worden ist. Das große Elixier ist heute

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After having explained to his readers that such an elixir is particularly necessary for the German people after the lost war—and for the preparation of using Germany’s scientific superiority against its enemies—Ostwald gave a popular version of his understanding of a unified system of the natural and human sciences. On the foundation of what he called the Ordnungswissenschaften (“systematic sciences”), he described a pyramidal structure, consisting of Arbeitswissenschaften (“sciences of work/energy”), Lebenswissenschaften (“life sciences”), and Gesellschaftswissenschaften (“social sciences”). It is necessary to go through all these sciences in exactly this order, otherwise “the so-called Geisteswissenschaften” will continue doing “useless work” and “paper science” (1920, 87, with diagram of the pyramid of scientific epistemology). Ernst Haeckel and Wilhelm Ostwald were not the only academics who were actively involved in public debate. In Germany between 1900 and 1930, there emerged a whole movement of scientists, philosophers, and lay authors who speculated about the spiritual dimensions of nature. This movement was to some extent part of what is referred to as Kulturkampf, i.e., a nationalistic insistence on German cultural heritage vis-à-vis French rationalism. Three examples stand for many others: in 1920, August Messer (1867– 1937), professor of philosophy in Gießen, published articles on “Nature and Spirit” (Messer 1920), popularized in order to be read “in philosophical coffee morning circles, work groups, adult education centers, and the like,” as the preface tells us. In the same year, the medical practitioner Franz Kleinschrod (1860 – 1934) dared to write an essay on “The Problem of Life and the Positive Principle in Time and Space; and Einstein’s Principle of Relativity in Space and Time: A Principal Study, at the Same Time a New Way to Solve the Problem of Life” (Kleinschrod 1920). Kleinschrod’s earlier attempt to scientifically prove naturopathy was even translated into English (Kleinschrod 1910). Finally, let me mention once more the paleontologist Edgar Dacqué who in 1926 published a book with the intriguing title “Nature and Soul: A Contribution to the Magical World Doctrine” (Dacqué 1926; see Mildenberger 2009). In 1944, Dacqué collected revised versions of articles under the title “From the Depth of Nature;” the book could not be published before 1949 because of the dramatic situation at the end of World War II. Dacqué referred to these calamities in his preface and linked this to his decision to include more chapters on religion than on natural sciences. “It cannot be stressed enough,” he wrote, “that worldview and religion are two separate spheres of the general human life, but also the personal life

zwar noch nicht restlos, aber doch zu einem sehr großen Teile gefunden. […] Alle diese Verwirklichungen alter Menschheitsträume sind auf einem einzigen Wege gewonnen worden. Dieser Weg heißt Wissenschaft” (Ostwald 1920, 7– 8, emphasis original).

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and experience; too many people today think that true religion can be substituted with worldview” (Dacqué 1944 [1949], 7). Contributions like these have only rarely been looked at by historians, although they had decisive influence on how Germans of the Weimar Republic and later periods conceptualized nature, science, and culture. These contributions to the discourse on nature and science stabilized frameworks of meaning that informed religious movements and environmental policy after 1960 (both in the Green Party and conservative milieus; on the background see Engels 2006; Bemmann 2012, 453 – 470). Hence, the discourse on monism comprised more than the contributions of representatives of the Monistenbund (see also Jacobsen 2005, 329 – 365 on “monist musings” in the twentieth century). An important link between various discourse strands was, again, the occultist and Theosophical movement of the time. When Demeter Georgievitz Weitzer (1873 – 1949)—who defined himself as an occultist (Surya 1923, 6) and used the pseudonym G.W. Surya—published a 1920 lecture in Munich as the first contribution to his Sammlung Geistiger Monismus (“Collection of Spiritual Monism”), he linked monistic philosophy to occultism, magic, mysticism, Oriental fascinations, and German nationalism. The lecture started with the following statements: We are living in an extraordinarily difficult, serious, and critical time. Every day confirms this anew. What we experience, indeed what humanity will experience with a thousand pains, is a global turning point as is not often seen in thousands of years. In the sea of flames of the World War there began the downfall of all spiritual and material pseudo-values, of all hyper- and pseudo-culture. And if it now looks as if the evil, the low, and the profane have fully gained power, in fact we should regard this downfall, this shifting of human society, this re-evaluation of all values, as a great purification in which in every individual human soul, but also in entire nations the gold is separated from the slag.²⁰

As we have seen in C.G. Jung’s psychology, the alchemical process of purification and transmutation is applied here to the individual soul, but also to the national identity of Germany after the lost war. Surya continued on this path in subse-

 “Wir leben in einer außerordentlich schweren, ernsten und kritischen Zeit. Jeder Tag bestätigt uns dies aufs Neue. Was wir erleben, ja was die ganze Menschheit noch unter tausend Schmerzen erleben wird, ist eine Weltwende, wie solche sich in Jahrtausenden nur selten wiederholt. Mit dem Flammenmeere des Weltkrieges begann der Zusammenbruch aller geistigen und materiellen Scheinwerte, aller Über- und Scheinkultur. Und wenn es auch augenblicklich so aussieht, als ob das Böse, Niedrige und Gemeine erst recht zur Herrschaft gelangt ist, so ist dieser Zusammenbruch, diese Umschichtung der menschlichen Gesellschaft, diese Umwertung aller Werte nur als eine große Läuterung aufzufassen, durch welche in jeder einzelnen Menschenseele, sowie in ganzen Nationen das Gold von der Schlacke geschieden wird” (Surya 1923, 11).

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quent publications in the Sammlung Geistiger Monismus. Volume 3 was devoted to “The supernatural and the World War” (Das Übersinnliche und der Weltkrieg, 1921), and in other works Surya addressed “occult astrophysics” or the “triumph of alchemy.” His “occult-scientific novel” Moderne Rosenkreuzer (“Modern Rosicrucians”) went through eight editions, including a Volksausgabe (“popular edition”) in 1930.

Discursive Implications: Holistic Thinking between NEW AGE SCIENCE, Nature-Based Spirituality, and a New Philosophy of Nature As I said, the concept of “ecology” came into use through Ernst Haeckel’s work Generelle Morphologie der Organismen. In Weimar Germany, and still after World War II, ecology remained a discursive field that was characterized by scientific, hermeneutic, moral, and political forces, a constellation that Thomas Potthast (2001) calls “epistemic-moral hybrids.” If one recalls Haeckel’s convictions with regard to philosophy and religion of nature, links are apparent between the debates of deep ecology and such religious overlays in scientific research. They express in philosophical terms the result of a ritualized experience of nature in a spiritual respect. There is a recurrent overlap of deep ecological philosophy with spiritual concerns, which naturally accords with the self-understanding of leading deep ecologists. This is not just a matter of knowing about the interconnectedness of all levels of being, but also its experience and sensual communication. This has implications for the argument, as Dieter Birnbacher critically observed: “In the philosophical writings of deep ecology, the discursive and argumentative element is largely sidelined by expressive and poetical formulations. Reverence for nature is no longer only described but invoked and visualized. Just as in the Romantic philosophy of nature, philosophy itself is assimilated into the intended process of a holistic, that is, no longer exclusively rational realization of the individual self” (Preface in Birnbacher 1997, 9). Theory and practice are thus two sides of the same coin; accordingly, most deep ecology publications contain not only theoretical discussions, but also invocations, meditations, and spiritual exercises (Seed et al. 1988). Veneration of nature as a consequence of ecological and biological thinking is widespread in Europe and North America today. Indeed, with Bron Taylor we can even argue that nature-based spirituality is a form of religion that is spreading significantly on a global scale (Taylor 2010). The discursive constellations that I describe in this book are the most important roots of contemporary nature spirituality. And again, intellectuals who inhabit the third space between ‘sci-

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ence’ and ‘religion’ have been instrumental in establishing new meanings that are attributed to nature, ecology, religion, and science. The field that these intellectuals inhabit is often called ‘New Age science’ (Hanegraaff 1996, 62– 76), but such a label is problematic. It participates in a discourse of separating ‘real science’ from ‘pseudo-science’ and ‘professional’ knowledge about nature from ‘amateur knowledge.’ Interestingly enough, many of the authors writing in the field of new age science had been distinguished scholars in their disciplines before they turned to theories that lack the approval of the majority of their peers; it is this social aspect, rather than the empirical status of their adopted theories, that allows scientists to transmutate into pseudo-scientists (cf. also Restivo 1983). In the following passage, I will give a brief overview of the most important representatives of this discursive field.

Fritjof Capra Theoretical physicist Fritjof Capra (b. 1939) is one of the most influential protagonists of new age science. His Tao of Physics (1975) made issues of global environmental crises and the requirement for ‘new thinking’ in science and society known to a wider public. The book has gone through 43 editions in 23 languages. In it, Capra dwelled on the parallels between quantum mechanics and east Asian mysticism—a parallelism that became almost canonical in this discursive knot. Furthermore, he referred to physicist Geoffrey Chew and his so-called ‘bootstrap philosophy,’ which appears to be very similar to Leibniz’ ‘monadology.’ Using the concept of self-organized individual entities, Capra developed a philosophy of nature that comprises both science and the humanities, leading from theory to action, from fundamental laws to dynamic events, and from separateness to mutual connectedness. In the following years, Capra was heavily influenced by the systems theory of Gregory Bateson, and he adjusted his former concept accordingly. In The Turning Point (1982) it was no longer the bootstrap philosophy or the model of quantum mechanics that grounded his argument, but the holistic and ecological ‘systems view’ of reality, which he presented as the common denominator of both modern science and ancient mysticism. According to Capra, “Western” society is in need of a new paradigm, because the old mechanistic Newtonian and Cartesian paradigm has led modern society to an alienation from, if not a total destruction of, nature. This old paradigm is in a state of decline and the global crises are reaching their culminating point. At the same time the new holistic paradigm is emerging rapidly, bringing forth a society that is ‘holistic,’ open to spiritual dimensions of life, and healthy for all its members. The juxtaposition

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of those two paradigms serves as a universal key to interpret almost every part of contemporary culture. Generally speaking, Capra’s books are an easily accessible compilation of two authors’ more complicated ideas, namely Ilya Prigogine’s and Gregory Bateson’s (see below). While Capra interprets their thinking in great detail (and sometimes eclectically), he omits references to the ‘founders’ of systems theory, such as Ervin Laszlo. This is also true for his most recent major book The Web of Life (1997). Here, he establishes what he calls the ‘Capra-synthesis,’ consisting of his former contributions and an additional application of H. Maturana and F. Varela’s so-called ‘Santiago Theory,’ which Capra describes as a parallelism of learning and living, of knowledge and creativity. He also includes concepts of deep ecology and sustainability. Capra’s impact on new age, on environmentalism, and recently also on the counter-movement against uncontrolled globalization has been decisive. Actively supporting political and economic efforts to arrive at a ‘holistic’ and sustainable culture, he is the founder and president of the Elmwood Institute and the Center for Ecoliteracy (founded in 1995) in Berkeley, California, an ecological think tank dedicated to fostering new concepts and values for a sustainable future. Furthermore, he is a lecturer at the influential Schumacher College in Darlington, Devon (United Kingdom), an international center for ecological studies. His course titles include “Life, Mind and Society” (2002), in which he attempts to integrate deep ecological concerns into a general systems theory of culture.

Ilya Prigogine Ilya Prigogine (1917– 2003), a Belgian scientist of Russian descent, contributed considerably to the contemporary discourse on physics, nature, religion, and the humanities. Although Prigogine, who won the Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work on the thermodynamics of nonequilibrium systems, writes in a very sophisticated scientific style, his books gained enormous influence in a wider context of nature spirituality and philosophy. The starting point to understand Prigogine’s theory is his new reading of thermodynamics. Newtonian dynamics is purely mechanical and treats time as reversible, while classical thermodynamics talks of an ‘arrow of time’ that moves toward increased entropy and loss of energy. Prigogine refuted both models and proposed his theory of ‘dissipative structures.’ Dynamic and open systems that are far from equilibrium (such as organic systems), he argued, bring forth new orders of higher complexity. In so doing, they do not follow universal laws, but develop according to their own system’s dynamics. And what is more,

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such open systems advance in constant exchange with the environment (dissipation) and are able to repair themselves on their evolutionary path (this process is totally different and much more complex than Darwin’s paradigm had suggested). Prigogine’s well-received discovery was the birth of a new discipline: synergetics. Although living organisms are the most obvious examples of this—in contrast to apparently ‘closed systems’ such as clockwork—Prigogine, like other adherents to systems theories, maintained that dissipative structures can also be found in human artifacts that show a considerable capacity for self-organization. Consequently, he applied this model to social systems and human interaction. In this view, the human place is within nature, since human culture is a subsystem with countless interrelations to neighboring systems. Hence, humanity’s role is neither domination nor stewardship, but involvement and empathy (Prigogine and Stengers 1984; Prigogine 1997). It is important to note that dissipative structures do not necessarily tend to gain a state of increased structure; they just reach higher orders of instability and fluctuation. Indeed, similar to other philosophies (for instance, Schelling or Bergson), it is the becoming and not the being that is essential for Prigogine’s theory (Prigogine 1980). Therefore, he was critical of belief in cosmic harmony or eternal laws and looked at the universe as always endangered, fragile, and uncertain. This attitude brought Prigogine into opposition with both scientists who strive for a ‘Grand Unified Theory’ (Steven W. Hawking, for instance, whom Prigogine sees as clinging to the old paradigm of ‘being’) and with teleological models prominent in ‘New Age’ milieus. There is no ‘telos,’ Prigogine argued; instead of being a simple consequence of the present, the future must be addressed as a lively process with a whole spectrum of possibilities. The theory of dissipative structures and the interdependence of natural and social subsystems—hence, the entanglement of mind and matter in self-organizing systems—leads to the assumption that small systems are able to influence the overall structure of nature and the universe. Humanity and even the individual are no longer passive objects but acknowledge their responsibility and power to influence the whole system. This in particular has attracted ‘New Age’ thinkers who at the same time played down the more disconcerting features of Prigogine’s theory, like his refutation of teleological or causal assumptions, which goes along with his notion of contingency and the possibility of failure. As a consequence, Prigogine has gained a selective reception by authors such as Erich Jantsch, Fritjof Capra, David Bohm, and Marilyn Ferguson, all of them bringing into his theory a more mystical and teleological understanding.

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Gregory Bateson The work of Gregory Bateson (1904 – 1980), anthropologist, psychiatrist, biologist, sociologist, and philosopher, is a highly original and thought-provoking contribution to the interface of a number of different academic disciplines. While psychologists use his concept of ‘double-bind’ (a kind of communicative entanglement of two persons), authors who are linked to new age and naturebased spirituality refer to his philosophical and ecological concepts as testimony for their own thoughts. The latter is due to Bateson’s time at the Human Potential Center Esalen in the last years of his life (Kripal 2007, 306 – 308). Bateson himself never accepted his being associated with the New Age movement. As far as the discourses on nature and religion are concerned, Bateson’s most important ideas can be seen in his concept of mind and substance, which is part of a larger systems theory (Bateson 1979, 2000). Making use of C.G. Jung’s notion of the two worlds, pleroma and creatura, Bateson argued that the former is the realm of undifferentiated causal relations, whereas the latter views the same phenomena in a contextual way that makes visible the differences. The creatura is analogous to ‘mind.’ It is the world, seen from a certain perspective. If mind in general is characterized as such, the question arises: what does its relation to individual ‘minds’ look like? At this point, Bateson introduced a cybernetic model. The individual ‘me’ is not limited to body or sensual perceptions, but must be addressed as a subsystem of the encompassing mind system. It is a unity set up by an analysis of the circumstances and not explainable by intrinsic characteristics. Furthermore, the individual mind’s unity is identical with the unity of evolutionary survival; it cannot be separated from the surrounding life-systems. This perhaps is the most radical consequence, because it puts the relation between humanity and nature in a context of mutual dependence. When ‘mind’ is immanent to the ecological system, human thought and action have decisive impact on the whole of nature. Conversely, humanity is totally dependent on nature and its own survival is linked to the survival of nature. Therefore, Bateson advised a fundamental new orientation in several disciplines: ecology and psychology have to acknowledge that the human mind transgresses the borders of its body and is present in ideas and artifacts that can even survive the physical death of a person (Bateson talked of the ‘ecology of ideas’). Theology, likewise, has to overcome the dichotomy of transcendent versus immanent deities and can approach the human being as part of the gods, who need the human mind just as the human being needs the gods (Bateson and Bateson 1987). In sum, Bateson called for a shift of paradigm, because otherwise the human being will be extinct within a short span of time. It is this claim that made Ba-

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teson an influential thinker in contemporary nature discourse, environmentalism, and religion.

Rupert Sheldrake Biologist Rupert Sheldrake (b. 1942) has become another famous author of new age science since he proposed his controversial theory of ‘morphogenetic fields’ in the early 1980s (Sheldrake 1981). The ‘hypothesis of formative causation’ postulates the existence of invisible organizing fields that are able to transmit information to seemingly independent parts of reality, for instance to the genes of other members of the species on another continent. This is made possible by what Sheldrake terms ‘morphic resonance’ (Sheldrake 1988). Although his theory has been refuted by the majority of empirical scientists, a set of independent experiments show it to be at least not improbable. Like Wolfgang Pauli’s doctrine of ‘synchronicity,’ the concept of morphogenetic fields is able to explain phenomena that seem to be mysterious to traditional physics and biology. If the theory’s propositions were accepted, the consequences would totally change our view of nature and the cosmos. Therefore, Sheldrake elaborated a vitalist, holistic theory that is empirical at the start and purely metaphysical in its implications (Sheldrake 1990). In the end, the universe for Sheldrake is a conscious and creative power, which brings forth morphogenetic fields. All single, yet resonating, entities take part in this cosmic ‘dance’ of creativity, including the human mind. As can easily be imagined, this proposition enthralled environmentalists and theorists of ecological concerns. First, it provides an explanation for the mutual dependence of all levels of nature; second, it places the human in a cosmos of encompassing energy and the vitality of cosmic intelligence; third, it appreciates all forms of life—humans, animals, and plants—as equally intelligent and therefore as carrying intrinsic value. All three conclusions are crucial elements of deep ecology as well as of the discursive knot that we have encountered many times in the present book.

David Bohm Also in the 1980s, acclaimed physicist David Bohm (1917– 1992) presented the socalled ‘holographic paradigm,’ which was the result of thirty years’ research into quantum mechanics and its philosophical implications. While his early work focused on the strictly scientific aspects of quantum mechanics—although from the beginning he refused to separate science and philosophy—Bohm’s perspec-

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tive changed when he met the Indian thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1961, after the latter’s separation from the Theosophical Society. Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicit Order (1980), although presented as a ‘work in progress,’ became influential in modern philosophy of nature and the debates on holism. In this book, Bohm presented a theory that describes the phenomenal world as the ‘unfolding’ of a more fundamental ‘implicit’ order. This implicit order is characterized by an unbroken dynamic wholeness—a ‘holomovement’—that comprises both matter and consciousness. In later publications, Bohm expanded his theory, describing a hierarchy of orders beyond the ‘implicate’ (the super-implicate order, the generative order, etc.) and presented a theory of ‘soma-significance,’ which intends to reconcile the domains of matter and meaning. As can easily be recognized, his later thought carries strong metaphysical and mystical connotations (Bohm and Hiley 1993). This led to a kind of alienation from the ‘traditional’ physicists and, simultaneously, to a broad appreciation in a philosophical, theological, and esoteric field of discourse. It is important to note that his theories are in fact deterministic and thus in opposition to other strands of ‘quantum mysticism’ that focus on a-causality and indeterminacy. While Bohm did not engage in direct political or environmental activities, his influence is nevertheless important because he provided those endeavors with a theoretical holistic framework that can easily be attached to environmental concerns (see also Forstner 2008). I conclude my overview at this point. It should have become clear by now that the discursive entanglement of monism, vitalism, science, philosophy, and religion has been a significant contribution to intellectual discourse of the twentieth century and beyond. We are not dealing with a marginal movement here. The discursive knot under consideration is one of the most important reasons for the steady growth of concerns about nature in Europe as well as of religious options that seek an alternative to traditional monotheistic interpretations.

5 Merging Occultism, Philosophy, Science, and the Academic Study of Religion: The Theosophical Society In previous chapters I have repeatedly referred to the crucial role of Theosophists in the discursive reconfiguration of religion and science at the end of the nineteenth century. Now it is time to address this influence more directly and identify the discursive contribution of Theosophical authors. Indeed, many scholars of religion regard the year 1875 as the birth of modern esotericism (see, most recently, Hammer and Rothstein 2013). That year witnessed the foundation of the Theosophical Society, without whose influence twentieth-century esotericism would have looked very differently. There are several reasons why the Theosophical Society, and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831– 1891) in particular, were the most important recurrent stimulus of esoteric discourses into the twentieth century. First, the modern esoteric traditions were mustered and repackaged in Blavatsky’s writings. Second, Blavatsky assimilated Asian doctrines in a Romantic view of the ‘Orient,’ whereby the purest form of ‘ancient wisdom’ was rumored to lie in India and Tibet. Third, Blavatsky’s charismatic personality ensured her writings’ widespread acknowledgment as a revelation. Fourth, Blavatsky’s ‘Esoteric School’ became the model for many other initiatory societies and magical orders in the Rosicrucian and Masonic tradition. Last, the Theosophical Society offers an outstanding example of the mixture of religious and scientific thought in contemporary societies, as the Theosophists had a lively dialogue with leading philologists and scholars of religion and so popularized academic theories and knowledge. It is this last dynamic that renders the Theosophical Society a crucial element of the present study. In my analysis, I will combine an historical description of the early phase of the Theosophical Society with a study of Helena P. Blavatsky’s use of academic theories and her reconfiguration of discourse strands that are important for the analyses of this book.

Helena P. Blavatsky as a Discursive Hub So many rumors and myths have gathered around the biography of Helena P. Blavatsky—or HPB, as she liked to be called—that a description of her character and life very much depends on the individual viewpoint (see Meade 1980; Campbell 1980; Godwin 1994, 277– 331; Cranston 1994 [biased but useful as a collection of sources]; Goodrick-Clarke 2004). She was born on 12 August 1831 as Helena Petrovna von Hahn in Ekaterinoslav in the Ukraine and spent her childhood

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surrounded by Russian nobility. Her father, Peter A. von Hahn, was descended from a noble German family and served in the army, while her mother, Helena A. de Fadeyev (von Hahn), achieved renown as a novelist but died young, so Blavatsky grew up with her aristocratic maternal grandparents. In 1849 she married the vice-governor of Erevan, Nikifor Blavatsky, but their union was unhappy and brief. She soon left her husband and embarked on an adventurous life of travels that are still not fully documented. She visited Turkey, Greece, Egypt, and France, arriving in London in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition. According to her own account, it was in Hyde Park that Blavatsky met her ‘Master,’ whom she had known in her dreams since childhood. He came toward her in the company of an Indian delegation. Later she wrote to A.P. Sinnet, “[I] saw Master in my visions ever since my childhood. In the year of the first Nepaul Embassy (when?) saw and recognised him. Saw him twice. Once he came out of the crowd, then He ordered me to meet Him in Hyde Park. I cannot, I must not speak of this. I would not publish it for the world” (Barker 1999 [1926], 150 – 151). Henceforth, Blavatsky claimed to live in continuous contact with these ‘Masters.’ Who they exactly were is not easy to establish, even within the Theosophical Society. Sometimes they are simply distinguished individuals who can materialize and incarnate at various places; sometimes they are subtle forces of energy that only assume corporeal form in order to appear visible to humans. The first model was Blavatsky’s choice (see also Johnson 1994), for she described her teachers as Indian gurus, namely Mahatma Morya—known as “Master M”—born in the Punjab, and Mahatma Koot Hoomi (“Master KH”), from Kashmir. The Theosophist of October 1907 printed Blavatsky’s following account: There is beyond the Himalayas a nucleus of Adepts, of various nationalities, and the Teshu [Panchen] Lama knows them, and they act together, and some of them are with him and yet remain unknown in their true character even to the average lamas—who are ignorant fools mostly. My Master and KH and several others I know personally are there, coming and going, and they are all in communication with Adepts in Egypt and Syria, and even Europe (quoted in Cranston 1994, 83).

The idea of a ‘White Brotherhood,’ long current in Europe, merges here with mystical notions of the ‘Orient.’ The notion of a mysterious community of sages has recurred in esoteric discourse ever since Plato’s ‘philosopher-kings’ gave rise to utopias with an ideal and sometimes transcendent government. The Renaissance conceived of a succession of distinguished world teachers bearing the prisca theologia, an idea further elaborated by the Rosicrucians as a secret society. This tradition was now supplemented by European fantasies concerning ‘sages of the Orient,’ the Mahatmas (‘Great Souls’) who, either from the mythical paradise of Shambala or from spheres beyond the material world, mysteriously directed

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the destinies of human beings. I will come back to this idea, which was taken up by others at the end of the nineteenth century. After the first contact with her Master, Blavatsky led an extremely turbulent life, which led her on journeys to Canada, Mexico, Latin America, the West Indies, Ceylon, and India. In 1854 she allegedly crossed the Rocky Mountains with settlers in covered wagons. Many biographers accept her account of journeys to India, Kashmir, Russia, the Caucasus, France, Germany, Egypt, and Italy, but her alleged visit to Tibet, where she claimed to study secret documents in Lamaist monasteries, is not confirmed by scholarship. Whatever one’s view, these extensive journeys to mythically charged places in the history of humankind represent an important instrument for the legitimization of esoteric knowledge (Hammer 2001). Even if Blavatsky had undertaken only half of these journeys, it would have been a clear indication of her extraordinary character and her driving ambition to abandon bourgeois mores and to achieve an education and self-emancipation denied to most women of her generation. Her whole life was a provocation to the guardians of Victorian etiquette. Blavatsky’s public career really began in 1872 with her attempt to found a magical club or a société spirite in Cairo and her arrival in New York in 1873. By this time Blavatsky was already an experienced medium, and she soon made contact with the spiritualist scene, increasingly popular in America since the 1850s. The development of American spiritualism is usually reckoned to date from the events that occurred at Hydesville, New York, in 1847. Soon after John D. Fox, his wife, and six children had moved into their new house in Hydesville, they began to hear mysterious rapping sounds. These raps were attributed to the ghost of a murdered peddler, whose body had been buried in the cellar of the house. Two of the daughters, Margaret and Kate, developed a form of communication with the ghost, and more importantly, they discovered the commercial success of such conversations with spirits. The novelty spread like wildfire in the United States, and the Fox sisters became national celebrities who could charge for their performances. Other ‘mediums’ lost no time in jumping on the bandwagon. By 1855 two million Americans were said to be convinced of the truth of the observed phenomena, which were now reported from many farms. Research groups were founded in order to study the matter scientifically, and the famous Society for Psychical Research, which became even better known for its clash with Madame Blavatsky, owed its origin to these inquiries. Many of the alleged spirit communications were unmasked as hoaxes, and when Margaret Fox, some forty years after the Hydesville incident, publicly confessed that she and her sister had staged the whole affair, the movement suffered a severe blow (Jenkins 2000, 39 – 41).

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Of course, ‘spiritualism’ did not begin with the events at Hydesville. The only novelty in these circumstances was their becoming an object of public debate (Godwin 1993, 187– 204). Communication with ‘ascended beings’—whether the souls of the deceased or with other spirits—has a long history, in which the mysticism of Emanuel Swedenborg is an important chapter. But spiritualism was significant for the history of American religion, as it influenced many Christian denominations and led to a series of new religions. Under the name of Allen Kardec, Hyppolyte Leon Denizard Rivail (1804 – 1869), well versed in magnetism, Mesmerism, and esoteric traditions, founded an important new religion, after a ‘Druid spirit source’ had revealed messages to him. His work, Le livre des esprits (“The Book of Spirits,” 1857), became a fundamental text of the colorful spiritualist movement, which according to conservative estimates today numbers over one hundred million followers worldwide, the majority living in Latin America. Spiritualism was also an important factor for religious seekers outside the institutional churches, which Robert C. Fuller calls “the emergence of unchurched America” (Fuller 2001, 38 – 44). What is more, in conjunction with Mesmerism and animal magnetism, it had a strong impact on the emergence of psychology as an academic discipline (Ellenberger 1970, 53 – 102). Blavatsky was in any case very interested in the spiritualist debates of her time. In October 1874 she met Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832– 1907), who was at that moment publishing a series of newspaper articles on spiritualist phenomena taking place at a farm in Vermont. For all their differences of personality, a close relationship developed between Blavatsky and her ‘Theosophical twin.’ Olcott was a lawyer with a flourishing practice specializing in commercial law, and had earlier undertaken the public inquiry into the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He had long been interested in esoteric subjects and was close to the Freemasons. He became Blavatsky’s principal partner and was chiefly responsible for organizing what would become the Theosophical Society. On 9 March 1875, Colonel Olcott received a mysterious letter, written in golden ink and addressed to the “Neophytos Olcott.” The sender identified himself as a certain “Tuitit Bey, Grand Master of the mystical Brotherhood of Luxor.” Further letters followed from the ‘Masters,’ in which Olcott was summoned to publish various articles in a New York newspaper about occultism and similar topics. Later he was encouraged to concern himself with Blavatsky and her public influence. In May 1875, Olcott founded the Miracle Club, without knowing that a group of that name already existed in London. Blavatsky was probably not a member of this club, but wrote in her scrapbook in July 1875: “Orders received from India direct to establish a philosophic-religious Society & choose a name for it—also to choose Olcott” (quoted from Cranston 1994, 143). This commission was shortly fulfilled, for at a lecture by the architect and engineer George H. Felt on “The lost

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canon of proportion of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans,” held on 7 September 1875 in Blavatsky’s apartment before an audience of seventeen persons, Olcott had the idea of founding a new society. At successive meetings Olcott was elected president, and after some leafing through a dictionary it was decided to call it the Theosophical Society. The goals of the organization were later defined as follows: (1) to form the nucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color; (2) to study ancient and modern religions, philosophies, and sciences; and (3) to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and psychical powers latent in humankind. These very goals demonstrate that the Theosophical Society bridged esotericism, the comparative study of religion, and the heritage of the Enlightenment.

Unveiling the Hidden Knowledge of Isis Shortly after the foundation of the Theosophical Society, Blavatsky, now sharing an apartment with Olcott, began working feverishly on her first major book. Many myths of doubtful truth have gathered around the composition of Isis Unveiled. Frequently, dozens of pages of good English in a neat hand, as if written by a spirit, were discovered in the morning on her writing desk. Olcott claimed that the work was entirely written in the ‘astral light’ and that the Mahatmas rather than Blavatsky were its real authors. On the one hand, we have no reason to doubt that Blavatsky possessed mediumistic powers, which could have played a certain role in the creation of her major works. Blavatsky’s account that she almost daily felt the presence of her Master, who was within her body and communicated knowledge otherwise inaccessible to her, describes a widespread phenomenon known today as channeling. On the other hand, and more importantly, there is almost nothing in Isis Unveiled that could not have been gathered from contemporary literature. Critics of the Theosophical Society who were close to the Society for Psychical Research took much trouble to prove that Blavatsky’s works offered gleanings from about a hundred books, which were mostly available in Olcott’s library (Coleman 1895). One might thereby suppose that Olcott also had a share in the composition of the extensive works of his ‘Theosophical twin.’ From a discursive point of view, we can say that Blavatsky’s work is a quite ingenious example of plagiarism, in which the author entangled all relevant discourse strands that make up the knot of science, religion, and occultism. That is probably the reason why the criticism did not harm the book’s success or its discursive impact. The first edition of Isis Unveiled: A Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and

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Modern Science and Theology (1877), with a print run of one thousand, had sold out within ten days, and some 500,000 copies have been sold up to the present day. For the purpose of this study, it is particularly interesting to have a closer look at the discursive re-entanglement that Blavatsky achieved in her writing. She—and the Theosophical Society in general—is certainly not the founder of these discourses, but she played a significant role in the multiplication of discursive constellations that had influence in the twentieth century and are still in place today. Isis Unveiled collects the knowledge of the nineteenth century and assembles it in a way that intends to demonstrate the anti-materialist truth of eternal ‘Eastern’ wisdom. Even the book’s title was anticipated by others. It was none other than Carl Gustav Carus who wrote in his Zwölf Briefe über das Erdleben (1841): To be sure, when after learning about Oersted’s discovery I understood this view of the magnetic life of the earth, it felt as if I suddenly got much closer to the secret of this whole planetary being.—Hence, if this particular view as yet has not been your own, I hope that its realization will now be a welcome enrichment of your inner vision and thinking.—Indeed, we can hardly enjoy a higher and purer pleasure than when one veil after the other is stripped off the deeply covered image of Isis, and we thus learn to increasingly perceive ourselves as being part of a general divine life.²¹

Carus here refers to Hans Christian Ørsted (1777– 1851), the Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields, which was an important step in the development of electromagnetism. Ørsted influenced post-Kantian philosophy and nineteenth-century interpretation of science. Blavatsky was familiar with this research and interpreted it in a similar fashion as Carus, but her undertone is less Romantically inspired and less eroticized, and much more polemical in its anti-Christian and anti-materialist attack.

 “Gewiß, als mir damals durch das Studium der Oerstedschen Entedeckung diese Ansicht vom magnetischen Leben der Erde aufging, was es mir, als wäre ich mit einem Male dem Geheimnis dieses ganzen planetarischen Daseins um ein großes Teil nähergekommen.—Ist daher Dir gerade diese Betrachtungsweise bisher noch nicht eigen gewesen, so hoffe ich, daß nun auch Dir deren Aufnahme eine erfreuliche Bereicherung des innern Schauens und Denkens sein werde.—Können wir doch überhaupt kaum einer höhern und reinern Freude genießen, als indem ein Schleier nach dem andern von dem tiefverhüllten Isisbilde sich löst und wir somit mehr und mehr im Innern eines allgemeinen göttlichen Lebens uns fühlen lernen” (Carus 1926 [1841], 241, emphasis original). German Romanticism is not mentioned in Coleman 1895 as a source of inspiration for Blavatsky.

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These guerilla-skirmishes between the champions of the clergy and the materialistic Academy of Science, prove abundantly how little the latter has done toward uprooting blind fanaticism from the minds of even very educated persons. Evidently science has neither completely conquered nor muzzled theology. She will master her only on that day when she will condescend to see in the spiritual phenomenon something besides mere hallucination and charlatanry. But how can she do it without investigating it thoroughly? Let us suppose that before the time when electro-magnetism was publicly acknowledged, the Copenhagen Professor Oersted, its discoverer, had been suffering from an attack of what we call psychophobia, or pneumatophobia. He notices that the wire along which a voltaic current is passing shows a tendency to turn the magnetic needle from its natural position to one perpendicular to the direction of the current. Suppose, moreover, that the professor had heard much of certain superstitious people who used that kind of magnetized needles to converse with unseen intelligences. That they received signals and even held correct conversations with them by means of the tippings of such a needle, and that in consequence he suddenly felt a scientific horror and disgust for such an ignorant belief, and refused, point-blank, to have anything to do with such a needle. What would have been the result? Electro-magnetism might not have been discovered till now, and our experimentalists would have been the principal losers thereby (Blavatsky 2006 [1877], vol. 1, 92, emphasis original).

This is a typical example of how Blavatsky presents her reading of the history of religion, science, and culture. Later in her narrative, she states that electromagnetism, “the so-called discovery of Professor Oersted, had been used by Paracelsus three centuries before” (2006 [1877], vol. 1, 146, emphasis original). Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Johannes Kepler (“the forerunner of Newton in many great truths,” 2006 [1877], vol. 1, 185), Robert Fludd, Cagliostro, Eliphas Lévi, and other well-known persons in what is presented by Blavatsky and other occultists as an anti-clerical tradition, are the major authorities when it comes to the legitimization of ‘genuine science,’ astrology, alchemy, Kabbalah, and Hermetic philosophy (see, e. g., Blavatsky 2006 [1877], vol. 1, xl). The discourse strands of alchemy, vitalism, and astrology are omnipresent in Isis Unveiled (on kabbalah see Huss 2010, 184– 187 and Chapter 6 below). A few examples stand for an abundance of others. As regards alchemy and chemistry, Blavatsky notes: The Rosicrucians of the middle ages, such as Robertus de Fluctibus (Robert Fludd), Paracelsus, Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes), Van Helmont, and others, were all alchemists, who sought for the hidden spirit in every inorganic matter. Some people—nay, the great majority—have accused alchemists of charlatanry and false pretending. Surely such men as Roger Bacon, Agrippa, Henry Kunrath, and the Arabian Geber (the first to introduce into Europe some of the secrets of chemistry), can hardly be treated as impostors—least of all as fools. Scientists who are reforming the science of physics upon the basis of the atomic theory of Demokritus, as restated by John Dalton, conveniently forget that Demokritus, of Abdera, was an alchemist, and that the mind that was capable of penetrating so far into

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the secret operations of nature in one direction must have had good reasons to study and become a Hermetic philosopher (vol. 1, xxxii–xxxiii).

Blavatsky directly refers to the polemical disjunction that accompanied the emergence of modern chemistry through the works of Dalton and others. “To bridge over the narrow gulf which now separates the new chemistry from old alchemy, is little, if any harder than what they have done in going from dualism to the law of Avogadro” (vol. 1, 145, emphasis original, with link to Paracelsus). This non-dualism is also a discursive link to monism. When we look at vitalism, we find passages such as the following ones. The unprofitableness of modern scientific research is evinced in the fact that while we have a name for the most trivial particle of mineral, plant, animal, and man, the wisest of our teachers are unable to tell us anything definite about the vital force which produces the changes in these several kingdoms. It is necessary to seek further for corroboration of this statement than the works of our highest scientific authorities themselves (vol. 1, 212). Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation of the Supreme, and Light is Life, says the evangelist. Both are electricity—the life-principle, the anima mundi, pervading the universe, the electric vivifier of all things. Light is the great Protean magician, and under the Divine Will of the architect, its multifarious, omnipotent waves gave birth to every form as well as to every living being. From its swelling, electric bosom, springs matter and spirit. Within its beams lie the beginnings of all physical and chemical action, and of all cosmic and spiritual phenomena; it vitalizes and disorganizes; it gives life and produces death, and from its primordial point gradually emerged into existence the myriads of worlds, visible and invisible celestial bodies (vol. 1, 231, emphasis original). It has been the speculation of men of science from time immemorial what this vital force or life-principle is. To our mind the “secret doctrine” alone is able to furnish the clew. Exact science recognizes only five powers in nature—one molar, and four molecular; kabalists, seven; and in these two additional ones is enwrapped the whole mystery of life. One of these is immortal spirit, whose reflection is connected by invisible links even with inorganic matter; the other, we leave to every one to discover for himself (vol. 1, 419, emphasis original; see also vol. 2, 540).

Finally, there are long passages and dozens of references to astrology, in which the author links astrological doctrine and tradition to the other esoteric lines of thought. Blavatsky also includes the new discipline of psychology in her conceptualization of astrology: Astrology is to exact astronomy what psychology is to exact physiology. In astrology and psychology one has to step beyond the visible world of matter, and enter into the domain of transcendent spirit. It is the old struggle between the Platonic and Aristotelean schools, and it is not in our century of Sadducean skepticism that the former will prevail over the latter (vol. 1, 232, spelling original).

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As references, the author invokes the heroes of what is constructed as esoteric tradition, but also contemporary authors such as Johann W. Pfaff and his Astrologie (1816; see Chapter 2 above; see Blavatsky 2006 [1877], vol. 1, 45– 46). Indeed, it is of crucial importance for the discursive impact of Blavatsky’s work that she not only polemically attacked what she thought was a wrong understanding of science, but that she actively engaged the academic discourse of her time, entirely in line with the goals of the Theosophical Society. Quotes and counter-quotes abound in Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, and the author demonstrates an acquaintance with the discussions in the natural sciences, Indology, and history. The Indologist Friedrich Max Müller is one of the major references when it comes to Blavatsky’s construction of an ancient Indian (Aryan) wisdom tradition. John Dalton was mentioned earlier. A third example is Thomas Wright: As a commentary on this, the modern historian remarks: “This may be taken as a sort of exemplification of the class of exhibitions which were probably the result of a superior knowledge of natural sciences.” No one ever doubted that it was the result of precisely such a knowledge, and the hermetists, magicians, astrologers and alchemists never claimed anything else. It certainly was not their fault that the ignorant masses, under the influence of an unscrupulous and fanatic clergy, should have attributed all such works to the agency of the devil (vol. 1, 58, emphasis original, with a reference in a footnote without page number to Wright’s Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, i. e., Wright 1855).

Mark S. Morrisson correctly remarked that much of the success of the Theosophical movement “stemmed from Blavatsky’s imaginative synthesis of Western occultism and Eastern religions, especially Buddhism, and her efforts to situate the new religion as essentially an ancient science” (Morrisson 2007, 70, emphasis original). In its formal appearance, Blavatsky’s work is a mixture of genres that combines elements of academic argumentation (with footnotes being an aesthetic device that adds to authority), philosophical essay, and religious polemics. Undoubtedly, this combination has added to the discursive impact of her writings. After the publication of Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky travelled to India and settled in Bombay, where the Theosophical Society enjoyed an extremely positive response. Its construction of an ‘Oriental spirituality’ as the ‘ancient wisdom’ of humankind significantly contributed to the strengthening of an anti-colonial identity in India (on the link between the academic study of religion, Orientalism, and Indian politics see King 2011; Lubelsky 2012, 1– 76). In 1882, the headquarters of the Society were moved to Adyar, near Madras. The wave of sympathy embracing the Theosophists in India and Ceylon had strong political implications. One may cite the example of S. Radhakrishnan, the philosopher and president of India, who stated:

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When, with all kinds of political failures and economic breakdowns we (Indians) were suspecting the values and vitality of our culture, when everything round about us and secular education happened to discredit the value of Indian culture, the Theosophical Movement rendered great service by vindicating those values and ideas. The influence of the Theosophical Movement on general Indian society is incalculable (quoted in Cranston 1994, 192).

The most prominent example of this influence is Mahatma Gandhi, who became acquainted with the Theosophical Society during his law studies in London in 1889. In his autobiography he describes how, like many other intellectuals of his time, he first gained access to his own culture through his encounter with the Theosophical Society. For the first time he read the Bhagavad Gita, which later became a central reference point in his philosophy and politics (Cranston 1994, 194– 195; cf. now the much more academic analysis in Lubelsky 2012, 270 – 284). During their time in India the Theosophists would also experience serious setbacks. There were increasing accusations of fraud, whereby the Mahatma letters were alleged to be forgeries, and Blavatsky was supposed to have supplemented her ‘mediumistic powers’ with all sorts of tricks, which led to a loss of prestige for the Theosophical Society in Europe and North America. Space does not permit a detailed account here of how the relationship between Blavatsky and Olcott deteriorated. More important is Blavatsky’s major work, which she wrote as if possessed in the last years of her life.

Secret Doctrines and Synthetic Discourse Following her return to Europe, Blavatsky published The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy in the autumn of 1888. The first volume was entitled “Cosmogenesis,” the second “Anthropogenesis,” while the third volume, “Esotericism,” was published posthumously in 1897 (with its authenticity being controversially discussed by Theosophists up to the present day). Here Blavatsky elaborated the foundations of her complex Theosophical theory of the creation of the human being, the structure of the universe, and the ancient truth of all the religions, derived from a single common source. She referred particularly to notions drawn from Hindu and Buddhist religions, which she fashioned into the embodiment of the (Aryan) religion. Quotes from and references to academic experts such as Friedrich Max Müller abound throughout the work and lend it an aura of scientific authority. In the preface to the first edition, the author, who refers to herself rather as the “writer,” explains that these two volumes (with the third being “entirely ready, and the fourth almost so”) were initially planned as an extended version

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of Isis Unveiled. “It was, however, soon found that the explanations which could be added to those already put before the world in the last-named and other works dealing with esoteric science, were such as to require a different method of treatment” (Blavatsky 2013 [1888], vol. 1, vii, emphasis added). As to esoteric discourse, it is noteworthy that Blavatsky points out that [t]hese truths are in no sense put forward as a revelation; nor does the author claim the position of a revealer of mystic lore, now made public for the first time in the world’s history. For what is contained in this work is to be found scattered throughout thousands of volumes embodying the scriptures of the great Asiatic and early European religions, hidden under glyph and symbol, and hitherto left unnoticed because of this veil (2013 [1888], vol. 1, vii).

Blavatsky claims instead that she is presenting the translation of an ancient document of Asian occult literature, which she alone has been allowed to read. Originally transmitted only orally as the “Book of Dzyan” but “hinted at in the almost countless volumes of Brahminical, Chinese and Tibetan temple-literature” (Blavatsky 2013 [1888], vol. 1, xxiii), the original text, written in an unknown language, is in the safekeeping of initiated adepts in ‘the East.’ Subsequently, many philologists felt challenged to investigate the oracular language of the Book of Dzyan, but apart from an echo of Sanskrit and other languages they could give no definite explanation. If one cannot accept the Theosophical view, one would have to say that the “Stanzas” within The Secret Doctrine are an extremely creative production of their ingenious author. As a document in the history of twentieth-century religion, the significance of The Secret Doctrine can scarcely be overstated. On the one hand, this work simultaneously summarizes and popularizes the basic assumptions of major esoteric currents; on the other hand, it introduces the trend toward ‘Eastern spirituality,’ which is still very influential in today’s esoteric scene. As before in Isis Unveiled, we can observe a highly creative configuration of the discourses of science, religion, philosophy, astrology, alchemy, occultism, and vitalism. Sometimes all of the strands come together in a single passage, such as in her discussion of the “solar theory:” This “mystery,” or the origin of the LIFE ESSENCE, Occultism locates in the same centre as the nucleus of prima materia (for they are one) of our Solar system. […] Thus, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our system, of which the Sun is the heart—the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body—during the manvantaric solar period, or life; the Sun contracting as rhythmically at every return of it, as the human heart does. Only, instead of performing the round in a second or so, it takes the solar blood ten of its years, and a whole year to pass through its auricles and ventricles before it washes the lungs and passes thence to the great veins and arteries of the system.

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This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the number of solar spots increases,* which is due to the contraction of the Solar HEART. The universe (our world in this case) breathes, just as man and every living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth; and as our globe itself breathes every twenty-four hours. The dark region is not due “to the absorption exerted by the vapours issuing from the bosom of the sun and interposed between the observer and the photosphere,” as Father Secchi would have it (“Le Soleil” II., 184), nor are the spots formed “by the matter (heated gaseous matter) which the irruption projects upon the solar disc” (ibid). It is similar to the regular and healthy pulsation of the heart, as the life fluid passes through its hollow muscles (2013 [1888], vol. 1, 540 – 541).

The asterisk refers to a footnote saying: Not only does it not deny the occurrence, though attributing it to a wrong cause, as always, each theory contradicting every other, (see the theories of Secchi, of Faye, and of Young), the spots depending on the superficial accumulation of vapours cooler than the photosphere (?), etc., etc., but we have men of science who astrologize upon the spots. Professor Jevons attributes all the great periodical commercial crises to the influence of the Sun spots every eleventh cyclic year. (See his “Investigations into Currency and Finance.”) This is worthy of praise and encouragement surely (vol. 1, 541).

Let me refer here to Blavatsky’s article “Kosmic Mind” in Lucifer, which clearly expresses what is at stake for our analysis. Now to lay at rest once for all in the minds of Theosophists this vexed question, we intend to prove that modern science, owing to physiology, is itself on the eve of discovering that consciousness is universal—thus justifying Edison’s “dreams.” But before we do this, we mean also to show that though many a man of science is soaked through and through with such belief, very few are brave enough to openly admit it, as the late Dr. Pirogoff of St. Petersburg has done in his posthumous Memoirs. Indeed that great surgeon and pathologist raised by their publication quite a howl of indignation among his colleagues. How then? the public asked: He, Dr. Pirogoff, whom we regarded as almost the embodiment of European learning, believing in the superstitions of crazy alchemists? He, who in the words of a contemporary:— was the very incarnation of exact science and methods of thought; who had dissected hundreds and thousands of human organs, making himself as acquainted with all the mysteries of surgery and anatomy as we are with our familiar furniture; the savant for whom physiology had no secrets and who, above all men was one to whom Voltaire might have ironically asked whether he had not found immortal soul between the bladder and the blind gut, —that same Pirogoff is found after his death devoting whole chapters in his literary Will to the scientific demonstration … (Novoye Vremya of 1887) —of what? Why, of the existence in every organism of a distinct “VITAL FORCE” independent of any physical or chemical process. Like Liebig he accepted the derided and tabooed homogeneity of nature—a Life Principle—that persecuted and hapless teleology,

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or the science of the final causes of things, which is as philosophical as it is unscientific, if we have to believe imperial and royal academies (Blavatsky 2013 [1887– 1891]).

In other passages in The Secret Doctrine we see Blavatsky adding even more discourse strands to her already complex knot. In her musings on “Ancient and Modern Prophecies,” she adds paganism and Asian religion to the mélange and makes sure to use this in her sideswipe at modern materialist science. But with the pagans, with whom, as Coleridge has it—“… Time, cyclical time, was their abstraction of the Deity …” that “Deity” manifesting co-ordinately with, and only through Karma, and being that KARMA-NEMESIS itself, the cycles meant something more than a mere succession of events, or a periodical space of time of more or less prolonged duration. For they were generally marked with recurrences of a more varied and intellectual character than are exhibited in the periodical return of seasons or of certain constellations. Modern wisdom is satisfied with astronomical computations and prophecies based on unerring mathematical laws. Ancient Wisdom added to the cold shell of astronomy the vivifying elements of its soul and spirit—ASTROLOGY. And, as the sidereal motions do regulate and determine other events on Earth—besides potatoes and the periodical disease of that useful vegetable—(a statement which, not being amenable to scientific explanation, is merely derided, while accepted) —those events have to be allowed to find themselves predetermined by even simple astronomical computations. Believers in astrology will understand our meaning, sceptics will laugh at the belief and mock the idea. Thus they shut their eyes, ostrich-like, to their own fate … (Blavatsky 2013 [1888], vol. 1, 645).

Blavatsky’s ability to weave together all of these diverse discourse strands into one historical narrative and to lend it authority in different directions with her mixing of genres—most prominently academic argument, philosophical musings, religious polemics, and presumed contact with the astral plane—are doubtless the main reasons for the success of her writing. Whether we call this fraud, chutzpa, or genius is beside the point. What is important is the discursive impact that this construction exerted on subsequent readings of religious history and esoteric claims of knowledge. Blavatsky’s final years were marked by conflict, and even after her death the Theosophical Society was riven by disputes over succession. Moreover, the ‘ascended Masters’ were by no means free of such earthbound emotions. The “Mahatma letters,” which were sent beginning in 1880 to leading members of the Society, chiefly A.P. Sinnett and A.O. Hume, reflected the ‘only too human.’ The Masters complain about a lack of paper, take sideswipes at other rival Masters, deprecate human weakness, and evince a misogyny that seems astonishing given Blavatsky’s prominent role. For instance, Sinnett received a letter that ridiculed Blavatsky as the “‘gifted editor’ of the Theosophist, who has been off her

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head since the accusation. Verily woman—is a dreadful calamity in this fifth race!” (Barker 2013 [1923], Letter No. 93). After her move to London in 1887, Blavatsky’s activities demonstrate the increasing tension between individual wings of the Theosophical Society, but also between herself and Olcott. She was still busy writing in her final years. In 1889 she published The Key to Theosophy and The Voice of Silence (for which the Dalai Lama wrote a warm acknowledgment in 1993), but much of her energy was directed toward securing her own position. The power struggle between Olcott and Blavatsky was initially defused by Blavatsky founding her own Esoteric Section (or Esoteric School) in England, whose members were chiefly drawn from the previously formed Blavatsky Lodge, while Olcott was responsible for the affairs of the Indian Section (Adyar). The Esoteric School effectively acted as an inner circle of Blavatsky’s closest male and female followers, and its teachings, initiations, and courses of instruction remained largely secret. By re-founding a British Section, Blavatsky claimed yet more authority for herself, which Olcott, as president of the Society, would no longer tolerate. Blavatsky therefore declared her own British lodges independent of Adyar in 1890, simultaneously claiming to represent all of Europe. The break was thereby complete and would continue to influence the later history of the Theosophical Society, after Blavatsky passed away on 8 May 1891.

Wars of Succession After Blavatsky’s death the Theosophical Society continued to be led by Olcott and other disputants. At this time Annie Besant (1847– 1933) came to the fore. Besant had first joined the Society after writing a review of The Secret Doctrine. Her discovery of this book marked the close of a painful time in her life, when the quest for religious fulfillment had led her to break away from her marriage to an Anglican clergyman. Parallels with the life of Blavatsky will be evident. Besant strengthened the orientation toward India during the whole period of her leadership of the Society, which led to further schisms (on Steiner see below; on the response from the Toronto Theosophical Society see McCann 2012, 135 – 136). In 1917, Besant was elected president of the Indian National Congress. This parliament was instrumental in leading India to independence under the guidance of Mahatma Gandhi (see the detailed analysis in Lubelsky 2012, 190 – 284). Katherine Tingley (1847– 1929) pursued a very different agenda by placing practical and social interests at the heart of her teachings. Supported by W.Q. Judge, a co-founder of the Theosophical Society, Tingley sought to give this movement an institutional basis by founding her own center in 1897 in Pasadena near Los Angeles. Its guiding principle was the foundation of a new global society with

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new educational systems, new forms of horticulture, and provision for theater and the arts. Many ideas of the later ‘New Age movement,’ especially in their political aspects, are borrowed from Tingley’s brand of Theosophy. The Pasadena center still publishes the magazine Sunrise, and according to its own report there are almost fifty centers with approximately one hundred groups worldwide. Joy Dixon remarked about the change within the Theosophical Society: In the 1890s a new variant of eastern mysticism, the East as the locus of a manly and rational spirituality, became a key element in the scientific spirituality of the Theosophical Society in England. This scientific spirituality was used to authorize a particular kind of spiritual authority and spiritual experience. Scientific spirituality was modeled on the academic study of religions: techniques developed within the emerging sciences of anthropology and the comparative study of religions (especially through philology) were redeployed in the service of a more “modern” spirituality (2001, 42– 43).

The gendered configuration of discourses of mysticism and Orientalism is of crucial importance, and in Chapter 6 I will come back to this in more detail. However, one may doubt whether there really was a significant change from Blavatsky to her followers in this regard. Dixon’s argument that after Blavatsky’s death the Theosophical Society in England became something like “a self-consciously ‘gentlemanly’ variant of theosophy, which emphasized above all theosophy’s rational, scholarly, and scientific character” (Dixon 2001, 41), may also be attributed to the Society’s crisis of reputation rather than to a fundamental break with “Theosophy’s esoteric side—letters from the Masters, precipitations and materializations, initiations and Masonic rites” (ibid.). In 1903, when Rudolf Steiner tried to counter the critique that Theosophy was a ‘female philosophy,’ noting that this could be changed and that in critical Germany Theosophy could be turned into a male philosophy, “he dramatically underestimated the emancipated Theosophical women” (Zander 2011, 167). Another aspect of ‘scientific spirituality’ is at stake here. We have seen above that Blavatsky herself was keen to present Theosophy as an ancient science. To understand the changes in Theosophical discourse, it is also important to keep in mind that major discoveries in the natural sciences were made after Blavatsky’s death. In Morrisson’s words: “If Blavatsky meant to make Theosophy a science whose ultimate goal was spiritual wisdom, her methods of scientific engagement were beginning to show their limitations within a few years after her death” (2007, 70). That is why around 1900, “the Theosophical journals augmented the work of sanitizing Blavatsky’s doctrines. They acted as clearinghouses for information about the latest scientific discoveries gleaned from newspapers, scientific journals, and current science books” (ibid., 71).

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At this point, yet another schism should be mentioned, which became particularly important in the United States because of its strong Christian bent. Born into a Christian fundamentalist milieu, Alice Ann Bailey (1880 – 1949) joined the Theosophical Society in 1915 but was expelled in 1923 on account of her Christian creed, whereupon she founded the “Arcane School,” which is still internationally active today. The objective of Arcane School Theosophy, which only admits adults according to strict criteria, is the recognition of the individual balance of karma. At the heart of its teachings lies the “Great Invocation,” a sort of mantra or magical formula, which should be recited as often as possible by the adepts. This serves to restore cosmic harmony and prepare for the Second Coming of Christ. Like Blavatsky before her, Bailey also claimed that her writings had been written by an ‘ascended Master’ (in her case the Tibetan Dhwal Khul) and only received by her. Bailey also practiced a form of astrology mystically influenced by Theosophy. She published a five-volume work under the title A Treatise on the Seven Rays, whose third volume, Esoteric Astrology, was devoted entirely to this mystical astrology. Even if there are few readers who have worked right through this extensive and often impenetrable book, the influence of esoteric astrology was immense. The work has the authority of revelation for many spiritually minded astrologers, and it is still available in esoteric bookshops today. The impact of Bailey’s Arcane School upon esoteric discourse in the second half of the twentieth century can be deduced from the fact that it maintains centers in New York, London, Geneva, and Buenos Aires. A leaflet entitled “What Is an Esoteric School?” published around 1998 by the Lucis Trust in Geneva reads as follows: “Today there exists no esoteric school which prepares individuals for initiation. Those that claim this are deceiving the public. One can teach followers in an academic sense, but by contrast initiation is always an individual goal, which each person can reach only by contact with the world of spiritual being” (p. 12, quoted from the German edition). An esoteric school comes into existence, the leaflet continues, as “advanced disciples” recognize their task in the world. The life of the disciple thereby becomes “magnetic, radiant, and dynamic, whereby he attracts and gathers those whom he can help. He thereby becomes the living center of a vital organism, but not the leader of an organization” (ibid., emphasis original). In ‘New Age’ jargon such disciples are frequently called “light workers.” This reflects the notion that the world will be transformed into light by a group of elect persons playing a key role. A final schism from the parent Adyar movement should be mentioned here. The United Lodge of Theosophists, founded in 1919 by Robert Crosby (1849 – 1919) as a reaction to the disputes between the various Theosophical splinter groups, is still active today. The United Lodge attempts to avoid any kind of per-

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sonality cult and the tendency toward bureaucracy; there is no membership, and lectures and publications are largely anonymous. One might describe this as the ‘anarchistic section’ of the Theosophical Society. There is a whole range of further groups close to the Theosophical Society, but as institutionalized associations they have little significance. Today the total membership of the Adyar Society is estimated at 40,000, the Pasadena Society deriving from Tingley at 2,000, and the United Lodge at 1,000 persons worldwide.

The German Knot: Rudolf Steiner The history of the Theosophical Society clearly shows an increasing Orientalization of esoteric discourse at the beginning of the twentieth century. While the first generation of Theosophists, with Helena P. Blavatsky at its center, was still closely connected to the ideas of Romantic science, philosophy, and historiography, engaging in an embittered fight against materialism and reductionism, Blavatsky’s successors opened up Theosophy to a more spiritual reading of religious history, with a strong focus on Buddhist and Hindu traditions. These new orientations of major parts of the Theosophical Society led to internal schisms and a differentiation of various forms of Theosophy (Godwin 1994, 363– 379). For the development of this discursive knot in western Europe, the work of Rudolf Steiner (1861– 1925) is of special importance. More than other representatives of Theosophy, Steiner remained tied to German Romanticism and nineteenth-century philosophy, and it is through his construction of esotericism that this discursive knot was transmitted into German culture in the twentieth century (on the details of Theosophical societies in the German-speaking countries see Zander 2007, 75– 432). In his biography of Rudolf Steiner, Helmut Zander correctly notes that the tension between materialism and idealism, between matter and mind, is a red thread that runs through Steiner’s entire life. It can even be seen in the contradictory information that he gave about the day of his birth; in his autobiography he noted that he was born on 27 February 1861, whereas he otherwise also gave 25 February as his date of birth. “The gap of two days is a key to Steiner’s autobiography, indeed to his whole life. 27 February is Steiner’s baptismal day. Real life, we can interpret Steiner’s credo, does not start with the biological birth but with baptism, which makes the human into a spiritual being” (Zander 2011, 13). The turn to Christianity, however, was a later development in Steiner’s work. Until the turn of the century, Steiner’s philosophical, scientific, and religious identity had been determined by his fascination with Goethe, Nietzsche, and Haeckel (Zander 2007, 435 – 542). When he was only twenty-one, Steiner was invited to work as an editor of Goethe’s natural scientific work in the new edition

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of that giant’s Collected Works. In combination with German Romanticism and the intellectual tradition of nineteenth-century Vienna, the scientific and philosophical impact of Goethe’s thinking is clearly visible in Steiner’s formative period and beyond (Raub 1964; Zander 2011, 43 – 60). Steiner tried to turn his reception of Goethe’s thinking into a philosophical dissertation that ultimately became his Die Philosophie der Freiheit (“The philosophy of freedom,” 1893, officially 1894). During this period, Steiner was heavily influenced by the philosophy of Max Stirner and particularly Friedrich Nietzsche (Zander 2011, 83 – 100; cf. the detailed critique in Traub 2011). His love for Goethe and his critique of major parts of contemporary science and philosophy brought Steiner into contact with Ernst Haeckel in 1892. Haeckel’s evolutionary thinking was a major influence on Steiner. “Again and again, behind Steiner’s Theosophical anthropology and cosmology we discern the grand master of popular evolutionary theory, Professor Ernst Haeckel” (Zander 2011, 96; see also Zander 2007, 881– 886). A representative example of this discursive knot is Steiner’s Aus der AkashaChronik (a collection of contributions published between 1904 and 1908), in which he joined the group of intellectuals who wanted to combine the natural sciences and the human sciences into one large Geisteswissenschaft. However, he was to add esoteric knowledge from the astral plane, which clearly transgressed the ideas of Haeckel and others. Nowhere do the results of the human sciences [Geisteswissenschaft] contradict the factual research [Tatsachenforschung] of the natural sciences. In all cases in which one looks unbiased at the relationship between the two, something very different reveals itself for our period. It turns out that this factual research is heading toward the goal of bringing itself in the not-too-distant future into full harmony with what the spiritual research [Geistesforschung] for certain areas must conclude from its supernatural sources (“Vorurteile aus vermeintlicher Wissenschaft,” in Steiner 1986 [1904– 1908], emphasis original).

Steiner is turning the argument of ‘pseudo-science’ around and criticizes those systems of knowledge that do not open themselves to the existence of spiritual and supernatural dimensions of reality as “alleged science” (“vermeintliche Wissenschaft”). After some earlier contact with the Theosophical milieu, in 1902 Steiner joined the Theosophical Society and became, together with his soon-to-be wife Marie von Sivers, the first General Secretary of the Theosophical Society in Germany. Steiner was also a member of the Esoteric Section, founded by Blavatsky, and led its German branch. His later claim that he was the first to establish such a section is clearly false. Indeed, his account of events is strongly slanted to suggest that his ‘Theosophical phase’ had no impact on his formation of ideas, which led him to found the Anthroposophical Society in 1913. However, if one

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examines his lectures prior to 1910, the close relationship between their contents and the writings of Blavatsky are apparent. The borrowing of the magazine title Luzifer (“Light Bringer”), from Blavatsky’s London journal founded in September 1887, demonstrates Steiner’s proximity to Theosophy. Even in this case, Steiner advertised the idea as his own. Nevertheless, Steiner subsequently developed his own particular combination of discourse strands. The Theosophical idea of initiated adepts that line up in a long historical tradition was part of Anthroposophical thinking too. Steiner took this from Blavatsky, but also from Edouard Schuré (1841– 1929). In his book Les grands initiés (1889, translated into English as The Great Initiates), Schuré presented a tradition that replaced Persia with India, as might be expected at this time, giving the lineage Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and Jesus. The German edition of The Great Initiates, with a foreword by Rudolf Steiner, appeared in its twentieth edition in 1992. Schuré was friendly with Rudolf Steiner and his wife Marie Steiner-von Sivers, who not only translated the book from French into German, but also produced Schuré’s mystery-dramas on the stage (Zander 2007, 1019 – 1028; Zander 2011, 155 – 156, 291– 300). Helmut Zander notes that “the historical value of Schuré’s drama is of secondary importance. More important is that he used the medium of archaizing [antikisierend] drama to take a stand in the problems of self-positioning of alternative-religious dissenters around 1900” (Zander 2007, 1027). Steiner’s involvement in the philosophical and intellectual debates of Germany, however, represented an important difference between his interests and the BritishIndian brand of Theosophy. In the course of time he found himself at odds with the Theosophical emphasis on ‘Oriental wisdom-teachings.’ He opposed this with his own Christian worldview, which interpreted the development of human history as the product of so-called “Christ impulses,” a scheme that combined the doctrine of successive world-teachers with the Christian mystical tradition. But whether in the Theosophical form or in the garb of Anthroposophical “Christ impulses,” the idea of a transcendent world of sages who safeguard the memory of ancient wisdom has cardinal importance for twentieth-century esoteric discourse. This discourse reappears, for instance, in the many ‘channeled’ messages of those entities, which make their knowledge available to select individuals. In sum, there can be no doubt that the specific constellation of discourse strands that representatives of Theosophy and Anthroposophy provided to various milieus was instrumental in establishing new meanings of religion and science in the twentieth century. It is of relevance for the present study that the same discursive knots reappear in academic writings of the same period, thus stabilizing and further legitimizing the underlying attributions of meaning. To these academics I will turn in the next chapters.

Part Two: Academics as Religious Pioneers

6 The Trouble with Europe: Academic Orientalism and New Mystical Religions So far, I have discussed the discursive entanglement of scientific and religious attributions of meaning, with a special focus on the success of seemingly marginalized forms of knowledge. Alchemy, astrology, magic, and mysticism were gaining new legitimacy in their combination with popularized psychology and science at the beginning of the twentieth century. They were stigmatized as ‘the Other’ of reason, but at the same time they provided a non-materialistic antidote to developments in European culture which were perceived as dangerous. As a result, these forms of knowledge could lose their status as ‘the Other’ and could be integrated in complex constellations of discourse and identity—again, the binary construction of Other and Own would give a distorted impression of the negotiations that underlie these processes. In this chapter I will go back to the turn of the twentieth century again, but I will analyze the discourses with a different lens. If we want to understand the formation of new religious meanings and practices in that period, it is necessary to have a closer look at aspects of nationalism, gender, and Orientalism. Around 1900, the tension between the Romantic idealization and the colonial disparagement of an Orientalized Other shaped individual and national identities and became a vehicle of self-fashioning for women, Jews, and European intellectuals. “At a time when Europe was being divided along ethnic lines, rearranging itself evermore into political entities according to hitherto unacknowledged criteria such as history, language, culture, and ethnicity, the Orient or East became an important point of reference as an ultimate Elsewhere” (Peleg 2005, 3). Social groups in Europe negotiated their identities often in the ‘third space’ between diverse binary poles, and what they created was not a simple ‘synthesis’ but a new constellation of discourses that enjoyed a sustainable existence in the twentieth century. It was particularly the figure of the Jew, described by Klaus Holz as “the third of the nations” (Holz 2010; see also Peleg 2005, 5), that assumed new meanings in the discursive entanglement with gender constructions, Orientalism, and the emerging nation-states (see also Boyarin and Boyarin 1997; Parfitt 2005; Beller and Leerssen 2007, 202– 208 [uncritically filing “Jews” in the list of “Images of Nations Surveyed”]). Four intellectuals stand at the center of my analysis. While Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem represent what can be called the self-Orientalization of European Jews in that period, Rudolf Otto and Gerardus van der Leeuw contributed to the glorification of Oriental wisdom as an antidote to European ‘modernity.’ All four are closely connected with discourse communities that we have encoun-

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tered already—from the Theosophical Society to the Eranos conferences—and all of them were instrumental in the popularization of academic knowledge about religion and mysticism, leading to new forms of religious practice in the second half of the twentieth century. But there is more to it. In going back to the beginning of the twentieth century, we can reconstruct the origins of Orientalist and Occidentalist discourses as they are operative in Europe today. Issues of Muslim veiling, Jewish and Muslim rituals of male circumcision, and right-wing accusations of Muslim homophobia have aroused much debate (Duding 2011; for the Netherlands see Mepschen et al. 2010; for the genealogy of French discourse on controlling female Arab sexuality in colonial fantasies see Scott 2007, 54– 61). These discussions draw on colonial stereotypes, a phenomenon that has been termed ‘neo-Orientalism’ (Dietze 2009). Gender and sexuality play a pivotal role in nationalist discourses that combine anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic stereotypes. These become manifest in the resilience of the motif of an ‘inner Orient’ that depicted Jews as a ‘degenerated Asian race’ (particularly in Germany, see Rohde 2005; Pollock 1993), but also produced the icon of the ‘beautiful Jewess’ (Gilman 1993) and the idea that male circumcision is the ‘feminization’ of Jews (Anidjar 1997; Geller 2007; Davison 2010, 36 and 86) and Muslims. Research into the differences between and the interchangeability of the Muslim and the Jew in European pre-Holocaust imagination has only just begun (Kalmar and Penslar 2005; Døving 2010; exhibition Les juifs dans l’orientalisme, Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Paris 2012). Current “politics of the veil” (Scott 2007) are a European obsession, which carries the traces of an enduring religious and cultural tradition of ‘unveiling’ the female body as a metaphor for ‘unveiling’ a hidden ‘body of knowledge,’ which links the discourse of gender and nationalism to esoteric discourses. Present neo-Orientalist discourses in Europe are dominated by the motif of the (un) veiled female body as an iconic focal point for the construction of sameness and otherness. In the Netherlands, for instance, we may think of Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s 2004 film Submission, with its voyeuristic gaze at an (un)veiled woman whose naked body is inscribed with suras from the Qur’an; comic strips in the daily paper De Volkskrant that polemically sexualize the ‘burqa bodies’ of Muslim women; and Adelheid Roosen’s play Veiled Monologues (premiered in the Netherlands in 2001, subsequently performed in other European countries, the Middle East, and before the Dutch Parliament and national convention of the Dutch law enforcement agencies). “The study of political discourse,” writes Joan W. Scott in her excellent analysis of the politics of headscarf controversies in France, “is best undertaken through close readings of arguments advanced in their specific political and historical contexts. Without history we aren’t able to grasp the implications of the

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ideas being advanced; we don’t hear the resonances of words; we don’t see all of the symbols contained—for example—in a piece of cloth that serves as a veil” (Scott 2007, 8). So, let us turn to the origin of this discourse.

Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, and Dynamics of Jewish Self-Orientalization When Abraham Geiger, Immanuel Wolf, Leopold Zunz, and other representatives of the newly established Wissenschaft des Judentums in the first half of the nineteenth century presented the academic study of Judaism as an instrument of emancipation for German Jews, the subsequent debate among Jewish intellectuals in Europe was dominated by issues of Jewish identity. Discourses of nationalism, ‘Germanness,’ gender, Orientalism, but also mysticism and Gnosticism were combined in an effort to determine what it means to be Jewish and whether Judaism can be, and should be, assimilated to European culture. The professionalization of knowledge about Jewish history went hand in hand with the establishment of historical scholarship and Protestant theology at German universities, with close ideological links to German colonial fantasies. In a critique of Edward Said’s (1979) neglect of the German contribution to colonial discourse, Susanne Zantop pointed out that it was precisely the lack of actual colonialism that created a pervasive desire for colonial possessions and a sense of entitlement to such possessions in the minds of many Germans. Since a colonial discourse could develop without being challenged by colonized subjects or without being tested in a real colonial setting, it established itself not so much as ‘intellectual authority’ (Said) over distant terrains, rather than as mythological authority over the collective imagination (1997, 7).

The Jews and the so-called ‘Jewish question’ were vehicles of mythologized colonialism in Germany, and Jewish emancipation could assume the function of an ‘internal colonization’ (Hess 1998). To be sure, this was not a uniquely German phenomenon; one may think of the United States when, after the end of slavery, colonial imagination was looking for a new colonized Other; Ireland would also be an example, with its unique combination of Orientalism, nationalism, and occultism (Lennon 2004; Nally 2010, 146 – 148, and 223 – 227 on Yeats’ anti-Semitism). But in Germany a special constellation developed in which the ‘Jewish question’ was linked to anti-Semitism and the search for national identity after 1871 (Geller 2011; Davis 2012; Rash 2012). Jewish historians and Christian (mainly Protestant) theologians were actively involved in this debate, constructing a historical narrative that served their respec-

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tive identities. Jewish scholarship in that period was an attempt to subversively create a ‘third space’ for Jews in nineteenth-century Germany. “The Wissenschaft des Judentums did not want the study of Judaism merely to be added to the curriculum, but wanted to radically revise that curriculum, in an effort to resist and even overthrow the standard portrayal of Western history” (Heschel 1999, 63; see also p. 64). In this third space, the debate about Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, and mystical, ecstatic, and Kabbalistic forms of Jewish tradition became highly fruitful. “Gnosticism, a seemingly remote and obscure religious phenomenon of late antiquity, became another disputed topic in Jewish scholarship where present interests and conceptions often overshadowed the research into the past” (Brenner 1999, 46). While Heinrich Graetz regarded Gnosticism as a dangerous element alien to ‘real’ Judaism, Moriz Friedländer stressed the Jewish origins of Gnosticism, and—as we will see later in more detail—Gershom Scholem saw the integration of Gnosticism in ancient Judaism as an important stepping stone to what he believed to be the only ‘true’ Judaism (see Brenner 1999; cf. Krech 2002, 286 – 292, who does not mention the Jewish context). In the course of the nineteenth century, Jewish scholars became increasingly interested in east European Jewish traditions, and many authors stylized shtetl Jewry as a more authentic form of Judaism than what could be found in the western parts of Europe. Around 1900, a fin de siècle Orientalist discourse was manifest in the writings of Franz Kafka, Alfred Döblin, Joseph Roth, Lion Feuchtwanger, Arnold Zweig, and others (Gilman 1979; Aschheim 1982; Mendes-Flohr 1991; Brenner 1996; Levesque 1998). These widely read publications had a decisive discursive impact. But their authors also communicated with scholars and historians of religion, thereby further engaging in a discursive formation that idealized the eastern Jew, or Ostjuden, as an antidote to ‘sanitized rational’ forms of Judaism in the west. One example is the communication between Arnold Zweig (1887– 1968) and Martin Buber (1878 – 1965).

Martin Buber: In Search of the Eastern Urjudentum In 1918 Zweig was stationed in a German Press Division in Lithuania, where for the first time he personally experienced east European Jewry. To Martin Buber he announced that he was going to write an account of eastern Jews as representatives of pure and authentic Judaism (Isenberg 2005, 94). The result was Zweig’s Das ostjüdische Antlitz (“The face of east European Jewry,” 1920), published with lithographs by Hermann Struck (who was stationed with Zweig in Lithuania) that underscored the aesthetic representation of east European Jews. It is worth quoting one passage from this publication at length:

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Yes, prayer is still loud in the East. In each hour of praying, bit by bit, the embers from the charge toward the height of the Lord are kindled. And for superficial and Western eyes and ears, this leaves an embarrassing and tasteless impression: these relentless voices, these jolting figures, these foreign articulated, wailing, groaning melodies that storm together in a wild, screaming chorus and that resonate like the rush of a distant surge, like the shouting of a wild mass, even outside the building’s walls. Yet anyone who has been able to experience an Islamic mosque during prayer would recognize the oriental in the Jew. The rhythm that moves the body there is more despiritualized, less personal, more structured by order; it has left its mark on the more objective part of prayer. With the Jew, it remained more subjective, more formed by the drive of prayer and out of the individual soul of the worshiper according to the force of the hour. But this, too, exists in the Orient: put briefly, the praying eastern Jew in his most extreme rapture is more closely related to the dervish than to any kind of modern Jew. That form of prayer—the self-absorption, the opening of oneself silently, in the Western gesture, to receiving heavenly peace—is exactly the opposite of the praying eastern Jew’s essence, motorized, dynamically driven like an arrow shot from a bow (Zweig 1922, 46– 47; translation quoted from Isenberg 2005, 101).

Indeed, to “pray like an eastern Jew, as Zweig would have it, is to pray like a dervish” (Isenberg 2005, 103). Martin Buber fully embraced this interpretation. Already in 1909, he had published his collection of “ecstatic confessions,” mystical documents ranging from ancient Gnosticism and Platonism to Hinduism, Sufism, Christian medieval mysticism (with a clear focus on female mystics), and mystical documents from the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, including evidence from ecstatics who could count as mentally ill (Buber 1923 [1909]). As the bibliographical references make clear, Buber here summarized the academically accepted knowledge of his generation regarding these mystical traditions (ibid., 196 – 200). In his introduction to the highly diverse documents, Buber tried to establish a common pattern of the ecstatic form of being in the world, an experiential form of myth: “But is myth a phantasm? Isn’t it a revelation of the final reality of being? Isn’t the experience of the ecstatic a synonym for the original experience of the World Spirit? Aren’t both an experience? We listen into ourselves—and we don’t know which rushing sea we are listening to.”¹ Buber’s interest in Hasidic mysticism was not historical or scholarly. This led to criticism, most famously by Gershom Scholem. “But Buber had an agenda that was different from that of the historian of Jewish mysticism. The Hasidic legend, he explained, is a category of meaning anchored in transformative religious values or qualities, and as such it promotes an ethos of action. The historical-phi-

 “Aber ist der Mythus ein Phantasma? Ist er nicht eine Offenbarung der letzten Wirklichkeit des Seins? Ist nicht das Erlebnis des Ekstatikers ein Sinnbild des Urerlebnisses des Weltgeistes? Ist nicht beides ein Erlebnis? Wir horchen in uns hinein—und wissen nicht, welches Meeres Rauschen wir hören” (ibid., 22).

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lological method, he contended, brackets off questions of meaning” (Urban 2008, 1; see also Koren 2010, 31– 183). In this period of his life, Buber propagated experiential mysticism as an antidote to the loss of spiritual qualities, which was due to the rise of bourgeois civilization, positivism, and empiricism (MendesFlohr 1978, 55 – 110; Davidowicz 1995, 22– 57, 89 – 103). Buber was clearly inspired by Nietzsche’s philosophy (Roemer 2010). In a draft of his dissertation, he described Jakob Böhme’s mysticism in Nietzschean terms of the Dionysian: God and nature are one for him, just as soul and body, or, rather, as energy and organism […] What we call God is the idea of life in action. — — — But because the unity of all power is only revealed in the work of the powers of nature […] the world is not a being but a becoming. […] Reality itself, however, is new every day, and every morning it offers itself anew to our forming hands. […] Hence, we are not the slaves of the world but its lovers.²

Buber wove together the discourse strands that we have identified as the main ingredients of the transformation of religion and science—vitalism, monism, energy, power (Kraft), biology, soul, nature (natura naturans)—and linked them to his understanding of experiential mysticism. In his conceptualization it was the essence of Judaism that carried in it the full realization of this mystical completion of the human being. As he explained in his Reden über das Judentum (“Speeches about Judaism”), original, essential Judaism was characterized by the ideas of ‘unity,’ ‘deed’ (Tat), and ‘future.’ This Urjudentum was also Oriental Judaism. In his speech “Das Judentum und die Menschheit,” Buber praised Asia as the origin of this spirit: Because this is the primordial process [Urprozeß] of the Jew, the primordial process that the great Jews, in whom the deepest Judaism became alive, in their personal life have demonstrated with the profound power of Asian ingenuity: the unification of the soul. Great Asia was the living model for the Occident, the Asia of boundlessness and sacred unity, the Asia of Laotse and Buddha, which is also the Asia of Moses and the Isaiahs, of John, Jesus, and Paul. The search for unity ignites the Jew’s creative power.³

 “Gott und Natur sind ihm eins, wie Seele und Körper, oder vielmehr wie Energie und Organismus … Was wir Gott nennen, ist die wirkende Lebensidee. — — — Weil aber die Einheit aller Kraft nur durch das Wirken der Kräfte in der Natur offenbar wird, … darum ist die Welt kein Sein, sondern ein Werden. … Die Wirklichkeit selbst aber ist neu an jedem Tag und an jedem Morgen bietet sie sich aufs Neue unseren gestaltenden Händen dar. … So sind wir nicht die Sklaven, sondern die Geliebten unserer Welt” (handwritten manuscript among Buber’s notes on his dissertation; quoted from Mendes-Flohr 1978, 67).  “Denn das ist der Urprozeß des Juden, der Urprozeß, den die großen Juden, in denen das tiefste Judentum lebendig wurde, an ihrem persönlichen Leben mit der ganzen Gewalt asiatischer Genialität zur Erscheinung gebracht haben: das Einswerden der Seele. Das große Asien lebte sich in ihnen dem Okzident vor, das Asien der Schrankenlosigkeit und der heiligen Einheit,

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Consequently, Buber regarded everything creative in Christianity as fundamentally Jewish, and everything that was not Jewish in Christianity as fundamentally uncreative. A ‘dialogue’ between Christianity and Judaism is therefore futile (“Die Erneuerung des Judentums,” Buber 1919, 85). In its pure, original form, Judaism “was the Orient’s apostle for humanity [der Apostel des Orients vor der Menschheit]; it was the Orient’s apostle because from its experience of inner rupture and the redemption from it Judaism received the power and the passion to teach humankind what was necessary” (“Das Judentum und die Menschheit,” Buber 1919, 56). In “Die Erneuerung des Judentums” he claimed: “This must legitimately be regarded as the fundamental difference between Orient and Occident: for the Oriental it is deed, for the Occidental it is belief that provides the decisive link between the human being and God. This difference has taken shape in the Jew in a most significant way” (Buber 1919, 79). With his presentation of Oriental Judaism as the essential teacher of humanity, Buber participated in an Orientalist discourse as it crystallized around the writings of Helena P. Blavatsky and other Theosophists, but in contrast to the at times anti-Jewish attitudes in their writings, Buber glorified an Asian Jewish tradition. Although he regarded Judaism as a ‘nation,’ the unity of which was based on blood (Buber 1919, 14– 22, describing “blood as the deepest level of power in the soul” [“das Blut als die tiefste Machtschicht der Seele”], p. 22), Oriental Judaism could serve as a model for all human beings. “In the great process of Judaism everyone partakes who achieves the unity of his soul, who internally chooses the pure over the impure, the free over the not free, the fruitful over the fruitless, everyone who drives the hagglers out of his temple.” This ideal type is what Buber called the Urjude in contrast to the Galuthjude (i. e., the Jew living in the diaspora). “Urjude I call the person who becomes conscious of the great power of the original Judaism [der großen Kräfte des Urjudentums] and who opts for it, for its activation, for its working [Werkwerden]” (“Das Judentum und die Menschheit,” Buber 1919, 52– 53). It is remarkable that Buber here opens the theoretical opportunity for non-Jews to participate in the essentialized idea of the Urjudentum. Exactly this interpretation gained currency in the course of the twentieth century, when the Jewish Kabbalistic tradition was increasingly globalized and extended beyond the confines of the Jewish community.

das Asien Laotses und Buddhas, welches das Asien des Moses und der Jesaiasse, des Johannes, des Jesus und des Paulus ist. Am Streben nach Einheit entzünden sich im Juden die schöpferischen Kräfte” (Buber 1919, 48).

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Gershom Scholem: ‘Jewish Mysticism’ as an Antidote to ‘Europe’ Not unlike Arnold Zweig, Martin Buber had created a third space by negotiating Jewishness in critical distinction from western European spiritual identity. In this endeavor, Buber can even be compared to the historians of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, despite their different ideological agendas. When I now turn to Gershom Scholem (1897– 1982), the same dynamic of ‘boundary-work’ will become visible. Scholem, however, propagated a spiritualized form of Zionism as the most suitable response to the failed emancipation and assimilation of Jews in Europe. Kabbalah, Gnosticism, and esotericism—which he used vaguely and interchangeably (see Yamauchi 1973, 14 and 150)—became the main categories for Scholem to construct a “counter-history” (Biale 1979), which we, again, can describe as a third space for German Jews in the twentieth century. His personal political agenda led him to a furious critique of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. In highly polemical words he denigrated Geiger, Zunz, and Steinschneider as “demonic figures” who “rape the facts” and sap Judaism of any authenticity for the sake of their “hypocrite,” even “satanic” ideology (see the references in Heschel 1999, 67– 68; see also Davidowicz 1995, 1– 21). As Susannah Heschel demonstrated, Scholem’s evaluation of the Wissenschaft des Judentums was “based on a misunderstanding of both its political motivations and its intellectual accomplishments” (1999, 68). This does not mean that the Wissenschaft des Judentums “requires a eulogy, but Scholem’s ignominious characterization of it […] must be given its burial” (ibid., 85). In Scholem’s work a fundamental tension is operative. On the one hand, he harshly refuted any attempt—in the context of Wissenschaft des Judentums or elsewhere—to describe an ‘essence’ of Judaism that would be an a-historical category outside of serious scholarship; on the other hand, he wanted to integrate ‘marginalized’ traditions such as Gnosticism and Kabbalah into normative rabbinical Judaism. The idea that Kabbalah represented the inner aspect of the Jewish religion was not new. Franz Molitor (1779 – 1861) had made this point earlier, arguing that Kabbalah used to be a part of normative Judaism until the rationalism of Maimonides and Josef Karo excluded mysticism from Jewish religion (Mertens 2007, 67– 132). Scholem read Molitor in 1915 and was deeply impressed by Molitor’s presentation of Kabbalah as the “lost original wisdom of humanity” (Davidowicz 1995, 72– 73). As Harold Bloom noted, “Scholem desired Kabbalah to be wholly Gnostic and yet wholly Jewish, which resulted in his shrewdly desperate insistence that Gnosticism was essentially Jewish in its origin” (Bloom 1987, 215; see Brenner 1999, 54– 59; Lazier 2002 and 2008; on the anti-Jewish context of this discussion in the light of Ferdinand Christian Baur’s nineteenth-century construction of Gnosticism see O’Regan 2001, 84– 85 with note 134 on p.

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264). Scholem’s dilemma was that his Gnostically inspired Zionism constructed Judaism in just as essentialist a way as did the scholars whom he abhorred. His Zionist inclination was early on linked to an Occidentalist discourse.⁴ As a young man, Scholem noted in his diaries: If you look deep below the surface, you’ll see that all truly valuable people are in one way or another sunk into the inescapable abyss of misery. They live among others, cut off from the Teaching and Tradition. To change this would be the first and most essential task to be accomplished among men. In its deepest strata, Zionism shall bring Tikkun to our lives (Scholem 2007, 213). Zionism is a movement within the Torah. Zionism can only be grounded within the world of the Teaching. Zion is the collective loneliness of all people, and hence the source for the messianic community of men and of ‘mankind’. Zionism makes just one claim: that the final center of man’s loneliness is the place where all men can meet together, and there can be no other such gathering place. All of us can succeed in restoring a connection to the Teaching through this loneliness, a connection we lost after we sold ourselves to Europe. The community of men requires everyone to be given an identical foundation. This foundation has two names: Silence and Revelation. […] Tradition is the only absolute object of mysticism. […] The only organization Zionism has—which is identical with the truth—is the unification of all those who possess the truth. What is commonly called the ‘Zionist organization’ has nothing in common with Zionism as a spiritual entity (Scholem 2007, 217– 219, emphasis added).

Scholem’s third space was constructed around the concepts of exile and loneliness, in German Verlorenheit (‘state of being lost’). This experience is linked to a nihilism that Scholem, like Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, took from a reading of Nietzsche (Roemer 2010): “I glide ever more beautifully into the arms of nihilism […] I believe, I must admit, I believe in nothing, in nothing more at all. No longer in God, world, parents, family, friends—girlfriends!—and all the ideological and material things that go with them” (quoted in Lazier 2002, 39 – 40). When Scholem found a new homeland in spiritual Zionism, which would restore the authentic Gnostic Judaism, this ideal was constructed as an alternative to ‘Europe.’ Interestingly enough, Scholem himself was aware of the dilemma into which this brought him. On 4 January 1916 he noted in his diary: By the way, it seems—does it only seem so or is it really the case?—to be a paradox that I, being a complete and unchanged enemy of Europe [Europafeind] and follower of the new Orient, which will bear on its strong wave also the new Juda, for the time being must be content with making the move [to Palestine] precisely as the teacher of European science [Wissenschaft] (Scholem 1995, vol. 1, 226).

 This was also an element of political Zionism, as in Erwin Rosenberger’s and Theodor Herzl’s idealization of the “prototype of a handsome Oriental” in 1896, on which see Peleg 2005, 7.

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Hence, with Klaus Samuel Davidowicz we can call Scholem’s Zionism a “utopian retreat” into the history of the Jews as a whole, compared to Buber’s Zionism as a “gaze into his own person in order to dig up the ‘other’ tradition” (Davidowicz 1995, 67; see also Aschheim 2001, 9 – 40 [“Gershom Scholem and the Creation of Jewish Self-Certitude”]). Later in his life, after being disillusioned with political Zionism, Scholem still clung to a ‘nihilistic theology’ that paradoxically argued for a total absence of God, who nevertheless was the ultimate horizon of human existence. He found this expressed not only in Kabbalistic texts but also in literary ones, particularly in Kafka (Moses 1999, 157). Again, as we saw in Buber, access to the absolute ground of Jewish existence is an awareness of the existential crisis of the human being, which also means that the Jewish mystical tradition can be a teacher for all humankind. Kabbalah provided the most sophisticated response to the drama of the conditio humana, and while Jews with their Gnostic spirituality—received from outside Europe and cherished as the heart of their teaching—were the guardians of tradition, their wisdom could be opened up for the benefit of others. ‘Jewish Mysticism’ (note the capital “M”) became the key to solve the plight of ‘modernity.’ This construction of Jewish history left its mark on subsequent practices of Kabbalah, but it also inspired intellectuals who came after Scholem. For instance, it is by no means clear whether David Biale in his 1979 “Epilogue” only summarized Scholem’s view, or whether Biale was actually presenting his own views: The failure of the secular sciences of Marxism and psychoanalysis may itself be a sign of the hidden dialectic of the divine. Only now, in full awareness of the crisis of secularism, can the potential in tradition be unearthed from under the debris of centuries. The study of esoteric Jewish mysticism is perhaps the best preparation for the contemporary search for the religious spark that is now so well hidden. By presenting Jewish mysticism in a modern and accessible idiom while preserving the archaic and foreign intonation of its voice, Scholem has put us in touch with forces at once alien and yet paradoxically familiar (Biale 1979, 211).

Rudolf Otto and Gerardus van der Leeuw: Oriental Wisdom and the Ultimate Access to the Sacred As we can see from the material presented so far, Gnostic, mystical, and esoteric discourses gained new momentum around 1900. Volkhard Krech noted in his analysis of academic theorizing about religion between 1871 and 1933 that the concept of ‘mysticism,’ prominent since the seventeenth century, was now extended in two directions: “For one, it had become customary to apply the terminology related to western antiquity and its early modern continuation to other religions as well. […]

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In addition, a religious-historical and terminological link was established with the ancient mystery religions” (Krech 2002, 259; see his whole chapter, 259 – 285; see also Kippenberg 2002). It is certainly true that the mystery religions of the ancient Mediterranean played a significant role in theoretical reflections around 1900 (I will come back to this context in the next chapter). But to argue that the terminology that scholars used to describe ancient religions was transferred to non-European religions is a simplification of the discursive processes. The analysis of Orientalist and Occidentalist dynamics makes it clear that the attribution of meaning to non-European religious phenomena could also be the starting point—Orientalist constructions of ‘eastern’ mysticism could be applied to ancient religious phenomena in an attempt to construct ‘eastern’ origins of, for instance, shamanic roots of Dionysian cults (see von Stuckrad 2003c, 106 – 116). A triadic interpretation of these constructions and their attempts to create third spaces between east and west, or ancient and modern, better serves our goals here. Non-European mysticism as an ideal for Jewish third spaces was only one form that this discourse could take on. Another form became manifest in the scholarly movement that is usually referred to as the phenomenology of religion. I will deal with Mircea Eliade, one of the leading protagonists of this movement, in Chapter 8. At this point in my argument, two other scholars are of major importance—Rudolf Otto and Gerardus van der Leeuw.

Rudolf Otto When it comes to discursive impact, the work of the Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto (1869 – 1937) is of special importance. His contributions to a comparative study of religion influenced not only academic theories but also public understanding of religion and mysticism. Being part of a larger academic transition from functionalism to existentialism (Krech 2002, 60 – 83), Otto used Friedrich Schleiermacher’s nineteenth-century Romantic understanding of religion and adapted it to the demands of his own generation. In 1917, when World War I was reaching its final phase, he published his famous Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen. The book went through 30 editions before 1936 and is still reprinted with thousands of copies; translations into many languages made it known to an international audience. Otto’s book, “due to its enormous spread, managed not only to influence the zeitgeist […] it also concretely determined the hypotheses and methodological consideration of almost the entire study of religion during the Weimar period” (Flasche 1982, 267; see also Gooch 2000, 1– 8, 104– 159). Central to Otto’s analysis of the ‘sacred’ is the concept of the ‘numinous’ as a pre-rational expe-

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rience of infinity (see also his collection of essays published in 1923). ‘Religion’ as a category sui generis refers to the ultimate experience of the sacred that reveals itself to the human being in what Otto called mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans. With such a configuration, Otto certainly touched a nerve in his generation. Otto’s contribution to European Orientalist discourses becomes visible in depictions such as the following: The desire for and the experience of ‘salvation’ is also typical of Islam, not only as a mere ‘hope’ (namely for the pleasures in paradise); rather, the most important aspect of Islam is Islam itself, the loyalty to Allah, which is not only devotion of the will but also the desired and intended state of being ‘full of Allah’; this state is a ‘salvation’ that is owned and enjoyed as a kind of drunkenness, and in its progression it can almost become a mystical frenzy of bliss.⁵

In 1926 Otto published his attempt to systematically compare ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ mysticism. The book was based on the Haskell Lectures that the author had delivered at Oberlin College in Ohio in the year 1924, when Rudolf Otto was already a well-known academic author on mysticism outside the German-speaking world. In this work, Otto focused on the German mystic Meister Eckhart, the Indian mystic Śankara, the Greek philosopher Plotinus, and several mystics from the Buddhist Mahāyāna tradition. These persons were mainly used to exemplify the categories that Otto had outlined earlier in Das Heilige and his 1923 book on the numinous (see the preface in Otto 1979 [1926], viii–ix).

Gerardus van der Leeuw Rudolf Otto’s thinking influenced many other academics in Europe. For our concerns here, Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890 – 1950) presents a particularly interesting example of this influence. Van der Leeuw studied theology at the University of Leiden (1908 – 1913), with a focus on Egyptology, before he continued his studies in 1913 – 1914 in Berlin and Göttingen. His 1916 doctoral dissertation in Leiden was devoted to the gods of ancient Egypt. After service for the Reformed Church

 “‘Heils’-Verlangen und -Erlebnis ist auch der Islam und dieses nicht nur ‘in Hoffnung’, nämlich auf die Lust des Paradieses: vielmehr das Wichtigste im Islam ist eben der Islam selber, die Ergebenheit an Allah die nicht nur Willenshingabe ist sondern zugleich die gewünschte und erstrebte Allah-Erfülltheit ist und als solche ein ‘Heil’, das wie eine Art Trunkenheit besessen und genossen werden und in ihrer Steigerung geradezu zum mystischen Seligkeits-Rausch werden kann” (2004 [1917], 193).

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in the Netherlands (1916 – 1918), in 1918 he was appointed Professor of “Geschiedenis van de godsdiensten in ’t algemeen en de Geschiedenis van de leer aangaande God” (“History of religions in general and the history of theology”) in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Groningen; after 1945, the chair was renamed as “Phenomenology of Religion.” Van der Leeuw was instrumental not only for the phenomenology of religion in Europe; his work also comprised political and cultural activities (Hofstee 1997; Waardenburg 1978, 187– 192). He served as Minister of Education, Arts, and Sciences in the first Dutch cabinet after World War I (1945 – 1946) and was instrumental in the foundation of the Dutch Association for the Study of Religion (Nederlands Genootschap voor Godsdienstgeschiedenis) in 1947. In the last year of his life, the International Association for the History of Religion was founded at the Seventh International Congress of the History of Religions in Amsterdam. He was also the president of the Dutch Bach Society, the Groningen Orchestra Society, and other cultural organizations. He played the organ and was active as a singer as well; as Minister of Education, Arts, and Sciences he actively supported Dutch artists. We can justifiably conclude that his work had a decisive discursive impact on the attribution of meaning regarding religion in the Netherlands and abroad. For our concerns here, it is also of relevance that van der Leeuw participated in the 1948, 1949, and 1950 Eranos meetings at Ascona. The breadth of his scholarly and cultural interests is reflected in the books that he published during his long career. Important stepping stones were Inleiding tot de godsdienstgeschiedenis (“Introduction to the history of religions,” 1924); Mystiek (“Mysticism,” 1924); La structure de la mentalité primitive (“The structure of primitive mentality,” 1928); Phänomenologie der Religion (“Phenomenology of religion,” 1933); Inleiding tot de Theologie (“Introduction to theology,” 1935); Uren met Novalis (“Hours with Novalis,” 1943); De godsdienst van het oude Aegypte (“The religion of ancient Egypt,” 1944); Wegen en grenzen: Een studie over de verhouding van religie en kunst (“Roads and boundaries: A study of the relation between religion and art,” 1932, third edition 1955). Phenomenology of religion was a broad and diverse movement in the twentieth-century study of religion. As a reception of Romantic aestheticization of religion as experience (Friedrich Schleiermacher), scholars interpreted the phenomena as the results of the working of a transcendent Sacred, or Holy, that manifests itself in the history of religion. Despite their different approaches, these scholars were united in their critique of reductionist approaches in sociology or empiricism and in their assumption that ‘religion’ is a category sui generis. While van der Leeuw agreed with the basic ideas of this interpretation, his theoretical insights were much more nuanced than those of other phenomenologists, particularly those of Rudolf Otto. Van der Leeuw reflected critically on

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the place of theology in the study of religion, and he clearly differentiated between the role of the scholar and the role of the theologian. In his understanding, phenomenology is not a form of theology. The phenomenologist first and foremost studies the action of people; even if a ‘power’ drives the phenomena, scholars study the acts of religious people, not the ‘power’ (see James 1995, 203 – 263; Waardenburg 1978, 222– 241). Van der Leeuw conceptualized religion as part of cultural processes. In particular, it was religion as an aesthetically communicated phenomenon that found his interest. That is why he looked in detail at the media in which religion is transmitted and made accessible. Highly relevant for the discursive analysis of this book, van der Leeuw was a representative of his generation’s huge fascination with mysticism, Romanticism, ecstatic forms of religion, and art (an aspect that is neglected in James 1995). In his book on mysticism, he again invoked Goethe as a culmination of scholarly understanding of religion and mysticism: “There is a sort of international and interconfessional theory of mysticism, an own interpretation of the mystical process, which Goethe, in succession of Plato and Plotinus, formulated in a classical way” (van der Leeuw 1924, 4; on Goethe as the thinker who “said practically everything that has been said in the 19th and 20th centuries in more or less clear opposition to Christianity,” see van der Leeuw 1959, 164). As a public intellectual, van der Leeuw often mixed the genres of his writing and made it clear that his scholarship was also an answer to the pressing issues of his time. His fascination with dance, eroticism, and mysticism was clearly linked to his diagnosis of ‘modernity.’ In Wegen en grenzen he mentioned the fact that “in Germany around 1700 it was customary that on the occasion of a doctoral graduation in theology the dean and the professors would perform a dance around the new Doctor Theologiae. Is it by chance that it was theology that applied the dance as a ritual? The dance that in essence is a ritus?” And he adds: “For us the graduation dance seems a little bit strange. But this is only because we have almost completely lost dancing as an element of civilization” (1955, 34, emphasis original). For van der Leeuw, however, dance was the oldest human language with which to express and contact the divine. This could take on an Orientalized and eroticized form, as in van der Leeuw’s adoration of the Californian dancer Isadora Duncan (1877– 1927), who made a career in Europe dancing in Wagner’s Tannhäuser in Bayreuth and in other well-known productions. She reflected on her art in her autobiography My Life, published in 1927. This is what van der Leeuw had to say about her: In this context let me mention again with reverence the name of her who has revealed to us the grandeur of dance for the first time again: ISADORA DUNCAN. She has already had a

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number of excellent successors, but she was the beginning. Only if dance fully regains its honor as art, if the possibility of universal expression that it offers is demonstrated by pure examples, only then will it again be a manifestation of the Sacred (1955, 78).

In the original Dutch version of his study of religion and art, an appendix with 26 pages of photographs and illustrations was added to the text. This important element of van der Leeuw’s book was left out of the German edition Vom Heiligen in der Kunst. It was particularly Duncan’s Grecian-inspired pose and her signature Grecian tunic that found approval with the Dutch professor. He probably saw in her what he described elsewhere, with reference to Rudolf Otto, as “the sacramental as the opposite pole of the technical” (van der Leeuw 1959, 151). Sacramental sexuality in general and sexual intercourse in particular were endangered by the processes of technological modernity, a danger “that threatens the entire modern life” (ibid.). But van der Leeuw also abhorred “the PlatonicChristian idea, paralyzed in prudery, of the sexual act as the sin.” He goes on: Luckily, the modern world looks at the sexual in a more relaxed way, and this in particular gives us hope that our times will rediscover the sacramental. Today this is easier than in the Victorian age, when—according to Punch—it was an unresolved question whether women had legs, and when the sexual was an issue that people kept silent or smiled to themselves about (ibid., emphasis original).

Van der Leeuw described bodily movement as the “most elementary performance in life, and it is apparent that no sacramental action is thinkable without movement. Movement is even more important for the sacrament than the word” (1959, 162). And again, he mentioned dance as “the oldest of all arts” (ibid.) that with its fixed and structured rhythm—here van der Leeuw subsumed procession under the category of dance—connects the human being with the Sacred.

Gender, Eroticism, and the Unveiling of an Orientalized Salome We have seen already that the metaphor of ‘unveiling esoteric secrets’ was a significant thread of Theosophical writing. But the metaphor itself was older, with Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbalah denudata (“Kabbalah Unveiled,” 1684) being a very influential predecessor of Blavatsky’s writings. The Kabbalah denudata provided a blueprint for the Christian reception of Jewish ‘mysticism’ in Europe. Christian interpretation attributed the notion of unveiling to the ‘female’ quality of this Jewish mystical ‘body of knowledge.’ Exposing and unveiling Oriental wisdom was a metaphor of appropriation and domination, which became a widespread theme in aesthetic representations of unveiling female beauty as

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“the naked truth” in racist discourse around 1900 (Frietsch 2012). In 1887, the occultist Samuel Liddel MacGregor Mathers translated the Kabbalah denudata as Kabbalah Unveiled (see Kilcher 2006). The neo-Orientalist discourse, mentioned above, which is visible in contemporary European societies, is a late expression of this dynamic. But to understand the discursive knot in its complexity, we will have to add to the setting the self-Orientalization of Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals, the construction of national identities, as well as the academic fascination with religious and erotic dance. All these aspects crystallized around the biblical figure of Salome. Around 1900, Salome was the most famous (un)veiled woman in Europe. The biblical figure of this Jewish princess represented an imaginary Muslim or ‘inner’ Jewish Orient. It was linked to the history of women’s emancipation, which ultimately shaped the figure of the ‘New Woman.’ In visual arts, music, literature, and popular culture her veil-dance unleashed a veritable ‘Salomania.’ Salome played an important role in European Orientalist, anti-Semitic, and aesthetic discourses (Koritz 1994; Walkowitz 2003; Brunotte 2012). Salome and her lethal dance can be seen as a focal point of the ambivalence of the Orientalist stereotype of the (un)veiled woman that connected the Jewish with the Oriental Other. Interestingly enough, Salome was received differently in various European countries. In France and the Netherlands, she was embodied by the Dutch and presumed Jewish dancer Mata Hari, representing the seductive Oriental femme fatale; in Great Britain, Salome personified the Oriental transgender icon of crime and perversion; in Germany, she dominated anti-Semitic discourse as the dangerous schöne Jüdin. Besides the odalisque and the desired Oriental male, the figure of the belle Juive loomed large in nineteenth-century Orientalism (Ludewig 2008; Fournier 2012). Around 1900, an ‘Asian-Oriental’ stereotype became dominant and merged with that of the femme fatale. This figure became a homosexualized ‘third sex’ through the discursive conflation of Oscar Wilde and Salome (Gilman 1993). Like Flaubert and Huysmans before him, Wilde depicted Salome not only as a femme fatale, but also as “a mystic, the sister of Salammbô, a Sainte Thérèse who worships the moon” (Koritz 1994, 78; see also Dierkes-Thrun 2011, 42). Chiming in with leading esoteric and mystical notions of his time, Wilde connected Salome’s veil to the veil that covered the holy of holies in the Jewish temple, and her dance to Ishtar’s descent into the underworld (Ziolkowski 2008; Brunotte 2012, 104). This resonates with Georges Bataille’s philosophical and pornographic novella Madame Edwarda (published under a pseudonym in 1937). “Both writers put forward a vision of erotic transgression and physical obscenity as a kind of secular ecstasy […] it is a secular modernist transformation of the religious ecstasy of the Christian mystics” (Dierkes-Thrun 2011, 50; see also 54

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with use of Rudolf Otto’s vocabulary, though unacknowledged). Depicted as a sister of the Dionysian Maenads, Salome even experienced a pagan revival in the academic study of religion (Harrison 1916 – 1917; Brunotte 2013). Judith R. Walkowitz has shown that Salome’s (un)veiled dance was a way of expressing cosmopolitanism and sexual independence for women of the generation. Maud Allan (who was inspired by Isadora Duncan; see Dierkes-Thrun 2011, 83 – 124), Mata Hari, Sarah Bernhardt, and other international stars were self-actualizing, speaking subjects and agents (Walkowitz 2003; McPherson 1999). This agency could even integrate academic forms of knowledge, thus resonating with the theories of dance and mysticism that we have encountered above. Maud Allan, for instance, was reported to have assumed her seductive grace in a cosmopolitan way, since she “learned the ‘poetry of motion’ in Berlin” and had “studied old Greek and Assyrian manuscripts and tablets” to include “ancient dance lore” in her performance (New York World 1908, quoted from Walkowitz 2003, 337). There is a clear link between these gendered understandings of Salome as a non-European Jewish princess and positive constructions of Islamic alternatives to ‘Europe.’ In the milieu that Mark Sedgwick defines as ‘neo-Sufism’⁶ this is clearly attested, for instance by the journalist and writer Isabelle Eberhardt, who joined the Qadiriyya tariqa in Algeria in 1899 or 1900. It resonates with the Orientalist/Occidentalist discourse of Isadora Duncan and Maud Allan that Eberhardt “not only retained her cultural connections with Europe, but also continued her distinctly un-Islamic lifestyle—dressing in male clothes, consuming hashish and alcohol, and practicing ‘free love’. Islam was clearly not her only path, which distinguishes her from earlier European Sufis” (Sedgwick 2008, 184; see also Sedgwick 2004, 63 – 65). Sedgwick’s analysis of neo-Sufism leaves no doubt that this movement is a discursive entanglement of esotericism, orientalism, occidentalism, art, philosophy, and religion. Thus, what Sedgwick calls ‘postmodern religious pluralism’ (2008, 185 – 190) I rather would frame as a discursive entanglement that is the result of ‘Europe’ and ‘modernity’ having become doubtful categories. This entanglement is perhaps not more pluralistic than earlier constructions of meaning, but differently so.

 “‘Neo-Sufism’ may be defined as any form of Sufism that differs significantly from ‘regular Sufism’ the standard models found in the Islamic world, especially when the differences result from factors extraneous to the Islamic world. Neo-Sufis are generally born into religions other than Islam, but this need not be the case” (Sedgwick 2008, 183).

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Discursive Materializations: Globalized Sufism and Kabbalah It is indicative of the re-entanglement of discourse strands that most of the representatives of ‘neo-Sufism’ or ‘Sufistical’ milieus (Sedgwick 2008, 190) are directly or indirectly dependent on Helena P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society; that they construct a positive Orientalist notion of Islam as the origin of esoteric wisdom; that they use this as an antidote to what they regard as problematic in ‘modern Europe;’ that they are affiliated to (often avant-garde) movements in art and literature; and, finally, that they propagate Sufism as an individual path to spiritual self-realization independent from a more traditional concept of ‘God.’ All of these characteristics can be found to a significant degree in the work of Isabelle Eberhardt, Ivan Aguéli, Etienne Dinet, Idries Shah, Inayat Khan, Frithjof Schuon, Rudolf von Sebottendorff, Georges Gurdjieff, and Meher Baba (on all these figures see Sedgwick 2004 and 2008). Sedgwick concludes: As an aspect of today’s globalised Islam, neo-Sufism is not statistically significant. Its roots in European modernity, however, make it more important than numbers alone would. As more and more European Muslims, of whatever origin, enter the social classes to which inter-war neo-Sufism appealed, neo-Sufism may prove to be one possible future direction for the development of European Islam (2008, 215).

Indeed, the discursive blending of the religious, esoteric, and Orientalist/Occidentalist stereotypes created a third space that has been inhabited by many people in Europe after World War II. Gurdjieff and Schuon still have a considerable amount of followers and their books are widely read. Idries Shah (1924– 1996) had even more impact. A personal friend of Gerald Gardner and Robert Graves (who will return in the next chapter) and inspiration to the celebrated German author and Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, Shah became a major representative of esoteric Islam in Europe. His Oriental Magic (1956) communicated the entanglement of the discourse strands discussed above to a wide audience. We also see institutionalizations and the establishment of new dispositives that stabilize the related attributions of meaning. In 1965, Shah founded the Society for Understanding Fundamental Ideas (SUFI), later renamed the Institute for Cultural Research (ICR). The ICR, according to its website, is “an educational charity which aims to stimulate study, debate, education and research into all aspects of human thought, behaviour and culture” (http://www.i-c-r.org.uk/, accessed 26 April 2013). It is not by chance that this mission statement is reminiscent of the motto of the Theosophical Society, as is the case with the Society for Sufi Studies (SSS), another dispositive introduced by Shah. When we turn our focus to the discursive impact of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, the picture is very similar. To begin with, the Theosophical Society’s

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influence blurred the differences between Kabbalah and Sufism. Already at the end of the nineteenth century, A.D. Ezekiel (whose full name was Abraham David Salman Hai Ezekiel) called the Theosophical Society “the Sufi Society from America.” Having a Jewish Baghdadi family background and being a member of the Theosophical Society most likely since 1882, Ezekiel published a translation of the Idra Zuta (translated into English as The Lesser Holy Assembly) in 1887, the same year that Samuel Liddel MacGregor Mathers published his translation of the same text from the Kabbalah Denudata (see Huss 2010). The blurring of borders between different ‘wisdom traditions’ remained a characteristic of religious history in Europe and North America also in the twentieth century. And despite the fact that influential scholars—most prominently Gershom Scholem and Moshe Idel—were convinced that nineteenth-century Hasidism was the last expression of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah (see the critique in Huss 2005), there emerged a broad and diverse movement of new forms of Kabbalistic spirituality and practice in the second half of the twentieth century. Again, dispositives legitimated these new interpretations of Kabbalah, particularly the Kabbalah Centre (founded in 1969) and Bnei Baruch (founded in 1991). It is only recently that these forms of Kabbalah have been taken seriously by scholars of religion (see Myers 2007; Huss, Pasi, and von Stuckrad 2010). Jody Myers (2011) identified a number of “pathways to the revival of Kabbalah” that partly correspond with the discursive reconfigurations that I have elaborated so far. Although her analysis focuses on North American fields of discourse, and hence the “American Metaphysical Religion” (Albanese 2007) figures more prominently than in Europe, it is true that the influence of the Theosophical Society and the impact of academic scholarship itself are of crucial importance. Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1954) was (and still is) widely read. Already in the 1960s, Jewish artists and poets in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area utilized academic constructions of Kabbalah; they took the symbols and Hebrew letter combinations for their artwork directly from Scholem’s book (Myers 2011, 179). The argument that “Kabbalah could be used to provide a Jewish option” for non-theistic alternatives to traditional readings of the cosmos (Myers 2011, 181) can also be turned around; as we have seen, already in Buber’s and Scholem’s writings there was an option present to open up the Jewish tradition to a nonJewish audience as a universal wisdom tradition and metaphysical interpretation of the conditio humana. This interpretation could easily be linked to the search for universal wisdom in Theosophy and Traditionalism. Finally, Myers is right when she points out that Kabbalists from the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries

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believed that Kabbalah provided an accurate guide to the operations of the universe, and [that] this belief has reappeared in the modern era as the conviction that Kabbalah contains within it the most advanced scientific knowledge and is the authoritative guide to the mysteries of the universe. This is not simple biblical fundamentalism or the explicit rejection of science; on the contrary, it is an expression of the desire to equate one’s faith with science (Myers 2011, 184).

On the basis of my analysis in the present book, it is by no means accidental that today’s Kabbalists refer to Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious and the soul’s archetypes as a scientific proof of Kabbalah (Myers 2011, 185), or that Kabbalah is seen as a forerunner of modern science. These modern phenomena are clear indications of the scientification of religion that has been operative since the nineteenth century.

Kabbalistic Entanglements in the Life Sciences The discursive constellations that have been responsible for the growth of interest in Kabbalah, however, have even more impact. When we look at the influence of the so-called ‘life sciences’ in the twentieth century, we can see the growing influence of a paradigm of ‘life,’ in which ecology, biology, and genetics play a decisive role. The influence of these disciplines is so strong that it exerts its impact on various other domains of modern societies. Metaphors of coding and decoding have captured the imagination of a wide public—from the Bible Code to the Da Vinci Code—and are also part and parcel of genetic language. That DNA chromosomes are to be described as a ‘code’ is not self-evident. Among the first scholars who used this metaphor for the smallest units of human life was the famous mathematician Erwin Schrödinger. In a 1927 lecture he said: It is these chromosomes, or probably only an axial skeleton fibre of what we actually see under the microscope as the chromosome, that contain in some kind of code-script the entire pattern of the individual’s future development and of its functioning in the mature state. Every complete set of chromosomes contains the full code […] (Schrödinger 1944, 20).

When Marshall Nirenberg and Heinrich Matthaei at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (USA) succeeded in explaining the correlation between the bases of the nucleic acid and the amino acids in proteins—a problem known as the ‘problem of molecular coding’—this scientific breakthrough very soon entered the fields of literature and public discourse.

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It is not coincidental that these developments set in at the same time in which the discourse strands of vitalism, energy, alchemy, nature, kabbalah, religion, and science were significantly re-entangled. In the context of the modern life sciences, including the deciphering of the human genome, we can see the blending of this discourse with an approach that employed literary tools of reading and writing in the Book of Nature (Kay 1999; Brandt 2004; on the genealogy of this discourse see von Stuckrad 2010a, 89 – 113). Metaphors of coding and decoding have entered the public debate in regard to the progress of the life sciences and the possibilities of creating life in the future. We should not forget here that—as has been shown by Philipp Sarasin, who builds on Ludwik Fleck’s sociology of knowledge—scientific metaphors are not ‘just metaphors’ but clear indications of how a society structures what it regards as reality (Sarasin 2003, 191– 230; see also the classic study by Lakoff and Johnson 2003). Let me illustrate this discursive impact with two scientific incidents that reached a wide audience after the turn of the twenty-first century. On 26 June 2000, the White House organized a news conference to celebrate the finalization of the first phase of the Human Genome Project that resulted in the deciphering of the entire structure of the human genome. The speakers at this conference included the US President at the time, Bill Clinton; the head of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis S. Collins; and Dr. J. Craig Venter, head of Celera Genomics, a company that also participated in the race to decipher the human genome. The then British Prime Minister Tony Blair participated via satellite. Bill Clinton addressed the scientific breakthrough as follows: Today’s announcement represents more than just an epoch-making triumph of science and reason. After all, when Galileo discovered he could use the tools of mathematics and mechanics to understand the motion of celestial bodies, he felt, in the words of one eminent researcher, that he had learned the language in which God created the universe.—Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift (Anonymous 2000).

Clinton was aware of the transgressive potential of the Human Genome Project vis-à-vis theologically defined borders. Learning the language of God means that we can also write it. So he warned his audience: The third horizon that lies before us is one that science cannot approach alone. It is the horizon that represents the ethical, moral and spiritual dimension of the power we now possess. We must not shrink from exploring that far frontier of science. But as we consider how to use new discoveries, we must also not retreat from our oldest and most cherished human values (ibid.).

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Francis S. Collins was also very much aware of the transgressive potential of his endeavor. In his speech at the same conference, he addressed this potential right away: “Alexander Pope wrote: ‘Know then, thyself. Presume not God to scan. The proper study of mankind is man.’ What more powerful form of study of mankind [sic] could there be than to read our own instruction book?” (ibid.) It may be questioned whether Alexander Pope’s prescription is a solution to the transgressive danger that Collins intended to avoid, but it clearly shows his concerns. Collins then proclaimed, “Today we celebrate the revelation of the first draft of the human book of life.” But again, he felt the need to put forward an ethical disclaimer: “It is humbling for me and awe-inspiring to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God. What a profound responsibility it is to do this work. Historians will consider this a turning point” (ibid.). I now come to a more recent event in the history of science. This event is closely related to J. Craig Venter, who is a representative of the field of ‘synthetic biology.’ As we have seen already, Venter was involved with the Human Genome Project, though in a competitive research group. After 2000, Venter took his career in various directions. Using 100 million US-dollars from Celera and other stock holdings, he started a non-profit organization, the J. Craig Venter Science Foundation. This organization freed him to do any kind of science he wanted without obligation to an academic review panel or other constraints. In 2002, the foundation launched the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockville, Maryland. In May 2010, Venter’s team succeeded in creating, for the first time, a fully synthetic new cell; in other words, a new life form. In The New York Times we read: At a press conference Thursday, Dr. Venter described the converted cell as ‘the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer. ‘This is a philosophical advance as much as a technical advance,’ he said, suggesting that the ‘synthetic cell’ raised new questions about the nature of life. […] ‘It’s very powerful to be able to reconstruct and own every letter in a genome because that means you can put in different genes,’ said Gerald Joyce, a biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. In response to the scientific report, President Obama asked the White House bioethics commission on Thursday to complete a study of the issues raised by synthetic biology within six months and report back to him on its findings. He said the new development raised ‘genuine concerns,’ though he did not specify them further (Wade 2010).

The discursive entanglements of religion, science, creation, and coding have even more dimensions in this event. When they synthesized their cell, Venter and his team introduced several distinctive markers into its genome. All of them were found in the synthetic cell when it was sequenced. These markers do not make

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any proteins, but they contain the names of 46 scientists that were involved with the project, as well as several quotations written out in a secret code. The markers also contain the key to the code. It is necessary to crack the code in order to read the messages. But Venter provided some hints as to the content of these quotations: “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life,” which is taken from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; “See things not as they are but as they might be,” which comes from American Prometheus, a biography of nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer; and the famous words by physicist Richard Feynman: “What I cannot build I cannot understand” (Callaway 2010). These examples from contemporary life sciences and synthetic biology are clear evidence of the scientification of religion; they reveal how scientific knowledge is aesthetically represented and communicated; and they take place in a public sphere that includes political actors, scientists, and a large audience that is interested in popularized forms of scientific claims. These truth claims transgress the borders of scientific thinking in immanent and empirically testable models. They stand in the line of esoteric quests to unlock the ultimate secrets of the cosmos and to reveal the hidden meaning of human history. In their quest, J. Craig Venter and Francis S. Collins have embarked on the same journey as Stephen W. Hawking, celebrated physicist and successful author of many works of popularized science. Hawking also transgresses the borders of science and takes on the role of religious expert and esoteric teacher: Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we have come from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in (Hawking 1988, 15).

The discursive impact of books such as A Brief History of Time lies in the blending of the discourses of science, religion, quest, understanding, and cosmos. With his search for a “Grand Unified Theory,” Hawking also partakes in the discourse of monism that has dominated much of early twentieth-century intellectual debate (see Asprem 2013, Chapter 6, for a detailed analysis of this earlier discourse, particularly the contributions by James Jeans and Arthur Eddington, who attributed philosophical and religious signficance to cosmology and wrote about it in popular publications). Later, Hawking adds human existence to this discursive knot, making his claims even more metaphysical: “A complete, consistent, unified theory is only the first step: our goal is a complete understanding of the events around us, and of our own existence” (ibid., 187).

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It seems we have come a long way from German Jewish intellectual circles, from scholars of religion theorizing about the mystic East and the Sacred, to representatives of the life sciences and contemporary physics. Indeed, the journey from academic Orientalism to monistic discourses in physics almost a hundred years later may appear as a tour de force when framed in conventional groupings of historical events and narratives. However, the reconstruction of discursive links is an historical exercise that leads to new and sometimes unexpected “unities” (Foucault). These unities have the potential to tell us more about the role of religion in twentieth-century Europe than the more conventional unities and narratives.

7 In Search of the Great Goddess: How Academic Theories Generated Paganism and Witchcraft In his influential History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Ronald Hutton remarked that pagan witchcraft is the “only new religion that England has given the world” (Hutton 1999, vii). With regard to the process of the scientification of religion, we may add that the godmothers and godfathers of this new religion were academics. Indeed, goddess spirituality and the emergence of many different forms of pagan religious practices in the twentieth century would have been impossible without the impact of academic theories and concepts that described the role of the female in the history of religions. At the end of the nineteenth century, we can speak of a complex discursive knot that consisted of contributions from historians of religion, anthropologists, classicists, artists, and writers. Enthusiastic appropriation of the classical ideals of Greek culture—migrating from Germany to England in the nineteenth century—became a positive identity marker for women writers in Victorian England (Hurst 2006; Fiske 2008), but also for historians, anthropologists, and philosophers (Schlesier 1994). We have seen already that this discursive change went hand in hand with a new focus on experience and self-expression. In theater, we can observe a parallel development in the transit from the text-model to the performance-model, which fostered integration of feasts, rituals, or ‘events’ in performative arts (FischerLichte 2002). The establishment of “comparative anthropology” at Cambridge University was a discursive materialization and the introduction of a new dispositive that lent legitimacy to the new theories of religion, ritual, and experiential art, with a clear link to colonial transfers of knowledge. The attribution of new meanings to religion and ritual was, as Catherine M. Bell remarked, coded in self-reflective responses to European ‘modernity,’ because “historically, the whole issue of ritual arose as a discrete phenomenon to the eyes of social observers in that period in which ‘reason’ and the scientific pursuit of knowledge were defining a particular hegemony in Western intellectual life” (Bell 1992, 6). Similarly to the other themes that I engage in this book, witchcraft and paganism constitute a discursive knot in which theory and practice go seamlessly together. Academic attributions of meaning were both results and carriers of discourse, which renders the binary understanding of ‘expert’ and ‘amateur,’ of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider,’ obsolete again. These demarcations are themselves produced in discursive negotiations. It is the third space that is much more interesting for our understanding of historical development. This third space was provided and inhabited by academics and practitioners alike.

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Matriarchy as an Historical Myth: Johann Jakob Bachofen According to a persistent prejudice about the nineteenth century, the idea of evolution was evidence of an unbroken belief in the progress of civilization. This false assumption can still be found today, although already in 1936 Margret T. Hodgen had shown that evolutionism emerged in a “period of doubt” (Hodgen 1936, 9 – 35). She based her argument on the fact, still underrated today, that Edward Burnett Tylor, arguably one of the strongest representatives of evolutionism, had particular interest in the “survival” of earlier stages of civilization. In 1966, John W. Burrow picked up this thread. In contrast to the evolutionism of the eighteenth century, which indeed was characterized by an unshakable belief in the law of progress, the nineteenth century revealed a self-reflective and broken attitude toward progress; the existence of the non-rational as an integral part of progressive civilization was clearly recognized by the intellectual discourse of the period (1966, 2). This insight is helpful if we want to understand Johann Jakob Bachofen’s construction of a development from matriarchy to patriarchy and the huge impact that this construction had on subsequent generations (see the excellent and thorough analysis of Davies 2010). Or, as Lionell Gossman notes in his study of “unseasonable ideas” in nineteenth-century Basle in general, and regarding Bachofen, Jacob Burckhardt, and Friedrich Nietzsche in particular: As we read Burckhardt and Bachofen, we find ourselves having to review some of our most tenaciously held beliefs. Our belief in progress, for instance—seemingly inextinguishable, until quite recently at least, despite the terrible experiences of the twentieth century. Challenging that belief, Bachofen and Burckhardt urge us to take a more detached view of the past and to evaluate calmly the characteristics of different ages, cultures, and political systems (2000, 10).

Bachofen (1815 – 1887), a well-situated jurist from Basle, was convinced that the current patriarchal order was preceded by a matriarchal one. Strangely enough, he came to this thesis through the examination of the symbolism of ancient tombs. Fascinated by the newly discovered wall paintings in a columbarium of the Villa Pamfili in Rome—which he visited in 1842—Bachofen had the idea that these tomb paintings were evidence of the oldest cult of humankind, and he believed it was his duty to decipher these cults. A good example of his way of academic reasoning is the interpretation he gave to the picture of Ocnus the rope plaiter. Ocnus, being punished by pursuing futile works in the underworld, appears in the funerary images as being free and relaxed (Bachofen 1984, 53 – 74). Originally, the penitent and his rope-plaiting represented the working of the natural powers, while the accompanying donkey that eats up the rope

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stood for the inherent destructive principle. The Roman tomb paintings, wrote Bachofen, turned this symbol of an “unwept creation” into an image of salvation, thus expressing liberation from the meaningless cycle of nature. In his description of a culture dominated by material understandings of natural symbols Bachofen followed Plutarch, who claimed that the creating male principle was giving form, while the receiving female principle was the material for this form (Gossman 2000, 171– 200). Bachofen’s study, published as Das Mutterrecht, with its enigmatic subtitle Eine Untersuchung über die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur (1861; “Maternal law: A study of gynaecocracy in the ancient world with reference to its religious and juridical nature”), was based on a ridiculously small foundation of evidence from ancient sources (Wesel 1980)—Herodotus’ report on the Lycians from Asia Minor and Aeschylus’ Oresteia. His main argument, entirely lacking evidence, was that ancient mother goddesses represented a matriarchal juridical system. Herodotus (1.173) tells us that the Lycians transmitted the right of citizenship and property through the line from mother to daughter (matrilinearity), rather than from father to son (patrilinearity). Anthropologists conceded that Bachofen was right that this was a unique order of social structure; however, such an order only very rarely led to the formation of local female communities, and never to the formation of a matriarchal system (gynaecocracy in Greek). In most cases, these women lived in the social communities of their husbands and were governed by male rule (Kippenberg 1984, xxv–xxxvi). Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Bachofen’s second witness, tells the story of Clytemnestra who, together with her lover Aegisthus, kills her husband Agamemnon after his return from Troy. Their son Orestes, sent abroad by Clytemnestra, returns as an adult to take revenge for the murder of his father. Together with his sister Electra, he kills his mother and her lover. Subsequently, the Erinyes haunt and torture him in his flight until he is taken to Athens to stand trial for killing his mother. The issue in court was whether the son was more closely linked to the father or to the mother. Only because Athena, who chaired the sitting, voted for Orestes, he was finally released. For Bachofen, this result demonstrated the victory of paternal law over maternal law in ancient Attica, which brought the previous age of matriarchy to an end (Wesel 1980, 58 – 59). Although Bachofen’s work was immediately criticized for its methodological shortcomings and eccentric claims, it exerted an enormous influence. This impact was often more indirect than direct, especially because Bachofen was regularly used without being explicitly quoted. The major reason for Bachofen’s success may be that his culture-critical interpretation struck a right chord in the nineteenth century, such as in the following sentences:

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Into the life of these [gynaecocratic] peoples the conflict between the positive setting of rules and the natural order of things, in which all great revolutions have their origins, did not intrude. The human being was not yet put outside of this harmony, which rules all material life on earth. The law that these humans follow is not exclusively human, but a general law of the entire creation. Law presents itself as an expression of physical life (Bachofen 1975, 252).

In his interpretation, Bachofen is in line with the British evolutionists. They, too, were convinced that the early stages of human evolution were not simply assimilated into higher stages, but that they re-asserted themselves. Another similarity is Bachofen’s implicit evaluation of progress; natural symbols and maternal law express human relations with nature that rational, ‘male,’ nature-controlling progress can suppress but not eliminate. Ancient myth had become the mirror of the repressed features of Bachofen’s own time. Bachofen coded the matriarchal culture of antiquity in the discourse of the day. In the assumed freedom from despotism he saw the ideal of a future juridical order (Bachofen 1984, 228 – 229). Just as symbol and concept are dependent on each other, matriarchal and patriarchal systems need each other as a correcting force. Freedom from despotism—this characteristic of maternal law—will and should be re-established at the end of juridical progress. Bachofen’s thinking follows the same logic as in the case of the natural symbols: just as the natural symbol remains present, even if it is interpreted differently, the maternal law claims its influence. History does not obey dialectics. The defeated retains its honor (Bäumler 1965, 337). This is reminiscent of the talk of ‘the third’ in cultural studies, but Bachofen did not make that step 150 years ago. For him, it was selfevident that the female had to be defeated by the male. By projecting his own generation’s ‘battle of the sexes’ onto the early stages of human evolution, he codified the antagonism between male and female (Wagner-Hasel 1992, 295 – 373; Lanwerd 1993, 72– 109; Borgeaud 1999). Bachofen’s historical imagination exerted unexpected influence. Even Marxist theoreticians were taken with it, although of course Bachofen was not at all interested in political work for women’s rights. But Friedrich Engels celebrated him in his 1884 essay Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats (“The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State”) as the discoverer of pre-bourgeois family structures. “The history of the family dates to 1861, the publication of Bachofen’s ‘Mutterrecht,’” Engels wrote (Engels 1970 [1884], 12); but he was critical about Bachofen deducing the family orders from religion rather than from real-life conditions (ibid., 40; see Davies 2010, 64– 66). The assumption of Friedrich Engels and other Marxists that we can speak of a universal matriarchy was still influential in the thinking of Walter Benjamin and the Frank-

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furt School (Dörr 2007, 142; see his entire chapter on “Myth and the Dialectic of Enlightenment,” 104– 184; Davies 2010, 49 – 106 and 397– 414). The link to the Frankfurt School already indicates that Bachofen’s full impact became visible in the first decades of the twentieth century among German intellectuals. The circle of the Munich Kosmiker played a significant role in this (Dörr 2007, passim; Davies 2010, 163 – 216). For one of them, Ludwig Klages, Bachofen was the discoverer of a primordial state of consciousness (Klages 1930, 238). The “rationally thinking ‘bearer of world history’” was preceded by “a humankind that was thinking in symbols […] whose entire worldviews, including all manners and concepts of law, were totally different from those of the historical human being” (Klages 1937, 177– 178). With this interpretation Klages served an anti-Intellectualism that surrendered Bachofen to national-socialist ideology (Davies 2010, 351– 388). Bachofen was of particular importance for the newly established discipline of psychology (Davies 2010, 217– 242). “The influences of Bachofen’s ideas reached psychiatric circles through various channels, and his influence on dynamic psychiatry has been immense” (Ellenberger 1970, 222). There are many striking parallels between Freud and Bachofen, while Alfred Adler was influenced by Bachofen indirectly (Ellenberger 1970, 222– 223). Carl Gustav Jung used Bachofen’s work directly, for instance in his perhaps most important early work Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (1912, translated as Symbols of Transformation), which also marked his break with Sigmund Freud; but he did not make his dependence on Bachofen explicit in this book (Davies 2010, 240 – 242). Jung’s “teaching is filled with concepts that may at least partly be ascribed to Bachofen’s influence, such as those of the Anima and Animus, the ‘old wise man,’ and the ‘magna mater’” (Ellenberger 1970, 223). We can assume that Jung knew Bachofen’s theory through his acquaintance with the Munich Kosmiker and his connection to Basle (Noll 1994, 169 – 176; on Jung’s Basle connection see Gossman 2000, 53). Jung was part of what Georg Dörr calls a “Basle mythology;” this consisted of Bachofen, Nietzsche, some members of the Kosmiker group, and also the classical philologist Karl Kerényi. In 1945, Kerényi published the essay “Bachofen und die Zukunft des Humanismus—mit einem Intermezzo über Nietzsche und Ariadne” (“Bachofen and the future of humanism—with an intermezzo on Nietzsche and Ariadne”), in which he not only constructed a “male Nietzsche” and a “female Bachofen,” but also the ideal of a “new Bachofen” who would integrate the female and the male. This ideal future scholar, Kerényi proclaimed, was Carl Gustav Jung (see Dörr 2007, 46 – 48). The future humanist “will give his reverence not only to Apollo [i.e. Nietzsche] and Dionysus [i.e. Bachofen], but also to Asclepius [i.e. Jung]” (Kerényi 1945, 39, quoted from Dörr 2007, 47).

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Interestingly enough, Jung projected Bachofen’s historical construction onto the realm of the human soul, using Ernst Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation. As we saw above, Haeckel attempted to combine the ideas of Lamarck and Goethe with Darwin’s evolutionary model. He came up with a ‘biogenetic law’—held as untenable today—that he formulated simply as ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.’ Ontogeny is the growth (size change) and development (shape change) of an individual organism; phylogeny is the evolutionary history of a species. Haeckel, and Jung with him, thought that the development of advanced species passes through stages represented by adult organisms of more primitive species. For Jung, the great religious-historical process of maternal law being overcome by paternal law finds its repetition in the conflict between the powers of the (male) animus and the (female) anima (on this theory see Ellenberger 1970, 708– 710). In Jung’s work, it is easy to see how religious-historical data are turned into unchangeable symbols inside the human psyche. As ‘archetypes’ they are fully detached from historical contexts; in this thinking, Jung was on the same line as Eliade and other scholars of the Eranos circle. What we see in this process is a psychologization of the sacred and the sacralization of the psyche. The conceptualization of the female divine was (and is) a mirror of social conditions and discourses of the day.

Archaeologists and Classicists Discover the Great Goddess The theory of matriarchy did not originate with Bachofen. It had already been presented by the Jesuit scholar Joseph François Lafitau (1681– 1746), who spent five years among the Iroquois, where he heard from Father Julien Garnier about the matriarchal customs of the Algonquin, Huron, and Iroquois. Lafitau compared this system with that of the Lycians and other ancient civilizations and concluded that gynaecocracy was a widespread phenomenon in the ancient Mediterranean and Asia Minor (see Ellenberger 1970, 219). But the first to put forward the thesis of an all-encompassing primordial mother goddess was Eduard Gerhard (1795 – 1865; see Hutton 1999, 35 – 36). In a lecture at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin, he argued in 1849 that “not only for Dia-Dione, Eileithyia and Theia, Themis and Artemis, Tyche and Praxidike, Chryse and Basileia, but also for Demeter and Cora, Aphrodite and Hestia, Hera and Athena” it can reasonably be argued that in all these goddesses we must recognize the changing names and attributes of one and the same Hellenized earth- and creation goddess, equivalent to Gaia; this Gaia is conceptualized not only as fermenting primordial matter, linked to Uranus, but mythically as Chronos’ wife,

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conceptually a mother goddess of the Olympian world order, who works together with Zeus, juxtaposed to the concept of Urania as a Gaia Olympia. […] In all these goddesses we can see the concept of a world order that precedes the Olympian powers, a concept of a goddess of fate to whom, as Homer tells us, even Zeus had to pay respect (Gerhard 1851, 463).

Gerhard’s idea of a matriarchal monotheism was later picked up by other scholars, including the classicist Jane E. Harrison (1850 – 1928), who acknowledged that “[t]he fundamental unity of all the Greek goddesses was, I think, first observed by Gerhard” (Harrison 1991 [1903], 263 note 1; see Brunotte 2013, 132– 133). In her new study of the life and work of Harrison, Ulrike Brunotte points out that Harrison’s ‘discovery’ of a pre-Greek religion of the goddess—which was connected to Asia Minor, Africa, the ‘Orient,’ and ‘primitive religion’—was part of a larger discourse around 1900 (Brunotte 2013, 127; see also Schlesier 1994, 177– 183). It is particularly in the chapter “The Making of a Goddess” in her Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903) that Harrison developed the thesis of a primordial veneration of the goddess that was destroyed by gender wars and the subjugation of autochthonous religions by patriarchal tribes that intruded on the Peloponnese from the North (Brunotte 2013, 128 – 134). Harrison’s contribution to this discourse was distinctive: It is Harrison’s unique accomplishment that she was the first scholar to analyze in detail the often violent process of the ‘making of a goddess,’ reported in myths and visual evidence, from the local mother cults to the patriarchal Olympus. This critical and feminist approach had deep impact on the artistic and literary avant-garde of her time. With some delay, it also gained significance for a study of religion that took gender seriously as an epistemological category. However, an essentialization of female origins in archetypes, as well as the neopagan conjuration of the female sex’s assumed healing quality and its close links to nature, are only rarely found in the work of Jane E. Harrison (Brunotte 2013, 132).

The discourse that Harrison responded to was determined by James G. Frazer and later particularly by archaeologists. Sir Arthur Evans’ excavations on Knossos were a revelation for many English scholars, including Harrison. Evans concluded that the entire island of Crete must have venerated a Great Goddess; this goddess, as he pointed out later, was identical with all other goddesses and even with the Mother of God (Evans 1921– 1935, vol. 1, 45 – 52). In 1903, Sir Edmund Chambers claimed that pre-historical Europe knew a Great Earth Mother and venerated her in two aspects of ‘creatrix’ and goddess of destruction. This goddess later became known under many different names (Chambers 1903, vol. 1, 264). As recently as 1989, the Lithuanian-American archeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921– 1994) clung to this narrative in her book Language of the Goddess, the academic authority of which influenced many practitioners in pagan and feminist

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milieus (Gimbutas 2001 [1989]). The story of archaeological construction of the Mother Goddess is well known and fundamentally critiqued by recent scholarship (see particularly Röder, Hummel, and Kunz 2001). The same is true for the discussion in Egyptology. Here it was Margaret Murray (1863 – 1963) who in her book The Witch Cult in Western Europe (1921) sketched the powerful image of a continuous European paganism that centered on the Goddess (Hutton 1999, 194– 201).

Charles G. Leland and Robert Graves: Popularizing the Idea of the Goddess Thanks to archaeologists and historians of religion, the idea that people in Europe, especially women, had been followers of the Great Goddess throughout the centuries was extremely popular in the period around 1900. In addition to the academic discussion that had already had an impact on the formation of historical understanding, we also find a number of authors writing for a broad audience and thus popularizing the idea of the Great Goddess. Although they were acquainted with major parts of the academic debate, these authors mixed the genres of communication and blended academic argument with poetry, personal accounts, and novelistic writing. In doing so, they reached many more readers and thus stabilized the attribution of historical meaning to a higher extent than academic writing alone could have done. For our purposes here, Charles Godfrey Leland (1824– 1903) and Robert Graves (1895 – 1985) are of special importance.

Charles Godfrey Leland Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Charles G. Leland enjoyed an academic education in the United States and attended college at Princeton University. He studied languages and soon became known as a poet and author of humoristic literature. For his later career, it is also significant that at an early stage he was already interested in Hermetic philosophy and Platonism as well as in contemporary literature (Rabelais, Villon, German Romanticism). Leland continued his studies in Europe, first in Heidelberg and Munich, then in 1848 at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he also got involved in the revolution that year. Back in the United States, he started a career in journalism, with some success. He returned to Europe in 1869, where he travelled widely and ultimately settled in London. During these travels he studied the ‘Gypsies’ and got particularly interested in folklore, ethnography, and magic. In 1888, Leland became president of the English Gypsy-Lore Society.

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It was this interest that also determined his contribution to the discourse on the Great Goddess. In 1899, four years before he died, Leland published Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, which has remained a classic in its own right until today. Although most scholars and practitioners agree that it is doubtful whether Leland ever met the persons he introduces in Aradia (see Hutton 1999, 148), the narrative of the coven of witches performing the rituals and liturgies of the ancient goddess Diana in nineteenth-century Northern Italy was persuasive and fascinating for many readers. The information provided in Aradia was based on a manuscript that Leland received from a woman called Maddalena (Leland 1899, 101). In his preface, Leland pictured the implications of ‘modernization’ in a humoristic way: “[…] both priest and wizard are vanishing now with incredible rapidity—it has even struck a French writer that a Franciscan in a railway carriage is a strange anomaly—and a few more years of newspapers and bicycles (Heaven knows what it will be when flying-machines appear!) will probably cause an evanishment of all” (Leland 1899, vi–vii). He then presents his main argument about the persistence of the old in the new: However, they die slowly, and even yet there are old people in the Romagna of the North who know the Etruscan names of the Twelve Gods, and invocations to Bacchus, Jupiter, and Venus, Mercury, and the Lares or ancestral spirits, and in the cities are women who prepare strange amulets, over which they mutter spells, all known in the old Roman time, and who can astonish even the learned by their legends of Latin gods, mingled with lore which may be found in Cato or Theocritus. With one of these I became intimately acquainted in 1886, and have ever since employed her specially to collect among her sisters of the hidden spell in many places all the traditions of the olden time known to them. It is true that I have drawn from other sources, but this woman by long practice has perfectly learned what few understand, or just what I want, and how to extract it from those of her kind (Leland 1899, vii).

The text presents the main theological ideas of the worship of Diana as it is practiced by these women in Italy. Leland made links to ancient sources and provided additional information as to how these rituals and magic spells can be used by uninitiated readers of his time (see, e. g., Leland 1899, 43). In the appendix, he presented the historical construction that served as a template for subsequent witches. The Christian repression of alternatives resulted in a vast development of rebels, outcasts, and all the discontented, who adopted witchcraft or sorcery for a religion, and wizards as their priests. They had secret meetings in desert places, among old ruins accursed by priests as the haunt of evil spirits or ancient heathen gods, or in the mountains. To this day the dweller in Italy may often find secluded spots environed by ancient chestnut forests, rocks, and walls, which suggest fit places for the Sabbat, and are sometimes still believed by tradition to be such (Leland 1899, 106, emphasis original).

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Leland announced in the appendix to Aradia that this publication would only be a small part of a larger collection of ancient religious practices that are still part of northern Italian culture. This larger collection would also contain his 1892 publication Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition (Leland 1899, 109). For the discourse on gender, the goddess, witchcraft, and the history of religion, it is fruitful to have a look at this voluminous book as well. Representative of many other lines in Leland’s narrative, let me quote what the author takes from the report of the Bavarian collector of folklore, Friedrich Panzer (1794– 1854): Witches on earth sometimes pay visits to this Magonia, or Cloud City land, but they run a risk of being caught or killed in the storms of their own raising. Thus Friedrich Panzer tells us in his Bavarian Tales, that during the first half of the last century there was such a tremendous tempest, with hail, in Forchheim in Upper Franconia, that the people feared lest the whole town should be destroyed. Then the Franciscan brothers met in their cloister garden, when, just as the first blessing was pronounced, lo! a beautiful woman, stark-naked, was thrown headlong from a passing thunderstorm on the grass in their midst; and the holy brothers, greatly amazed at this, doubtless to them, utterly novel sight [sic], drew near, when they recognized in her who had indeed dropped in on them so suddenly, the wife of the town miller, a woman long suspected of witchcraft (Leland 2002 [1892], 216).

Apparently, Leland tells us, the Franciscan monks were so impressed by the beauty of this proie inattendue (“unexpected prey”) that they saved her from being burned at the stake (ibid.). The male gaze at the naked witch is a metaphor of control and domination. It resonates with the discursive mechanisms that we have encountered earlier, from the ‘unveiling of the truth’ of the feminine to the fascination with ecstatic forms of religion. Leland, for his part, was inspired by the manifestation of old forms of religion in contemporary society. So from old days these hardened stories live as if trenched in ice, like mammoths in Siberia, to the world unknown till some discoverer reveals them, and then there is marveling here and there that such things could have been so long frozen up. So into time old time returns again, and the ancient medals, thus disinterred, are all the more beautiful for their rust. And it went deeply to my heart that after I had read the story of Magonia, and thought it was a tale utterly dead on earth and embalmed in a chronicle, to find a sorceress in whose faith it lives. It was as if an Egyptian mummy, revived, had suddenly spoken to me, and told me a tale of Thebes, or declared that Cloud-Cuckoo land was a reality which he had known […] (Leland 2002 [1892], 217, emphasis original).

When Kegan Paul, a respected academic press, reprinted Leland’s work in 2002 in “The Kegan Paul Library of Arcana,” no mention was made of the fact that the book was first published in 1892. Rather than contextualizing the publication, the cover text presents Leland’s ‘findings’ as a document of historical evidence and accurate information about contemporary religious practice. “The Etruscans

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are one of history’s great mysteries,” we are told, and they “were more concerned with religious matters than any other nation. They were adept at magic and it is known that Etruscan books of spells were common among the Romans, but they have not survived.” It says a lot about the discursive impact of academic publications on religious practice when the cover text continues: “Recorded over many years at a time when many of these secret beliefs and practices were beginning to pass away, this remarkable volume deals with ancient gods, spirits, witches, incantations, prophecy, medicine, spells and amulets, giving full descriptions, illustrations and instructions for practice.” Theoretical academic and practical approaches to religion constitute a common field of discourse on which the borders between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are constantly negotiated. This impression is confirmed by the discursive knot that Google generates on the basis of its algorithm. A search for “Charles Leland” on 9 May 2013 resulted in the additional information by Google that “People also searched for Gerald Gardner, Margaret Murray, Doreen Valiente, Raven Grimassi, and Ronald Hutton.”

Robert Graves Born in Wimbledon seventy-one years after Leland was born in Philadelphia, Robert Graves is another example of the creative blending of academic and poetic work in the construction of twentieth-century goddess veneration. His mother was a great-niece of the German historian Leopold von Ranke, and Robert Graves was enrolled in school under the name Robert von Ranke Graves, which he also used in German editions of his work. Several times in his early life Graves went through severe illnesses, one of them being the result of a war wound during World War I, in which he served as soldier of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He became known as a war poet. However, while these existential crises certainly had influence on his oeuvre, it is his later career that is of special interest to our concerns here. Graves established himself as a writer of poetry and historical novels—I, Claudius (1934) and the sequel Claudius the God and his Wife Messalina (1934) became his economically most successful publications—and after 1945 he focused on what he would subsequently describe as the “historical grammar of poetic myth,” which is the apt subtitle of his influential The White Goddess, first published in 1948. Graves was then living with his second wife Beryl Hodge in a small village in the Majorca mountains, a detail that he explicitly mentioned as part of his creative work (on how he came to write The White Goddess, see the author’s “Postscript 1960” in Graves 1981

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[1948], 488 – 492; on Graves’ biography see Seymour 1995 and King 2008; on his work see Quinn 1999 and Mounic 2012). The White Goddess is a discursive knot in itself (Vickery 1972; Lanwerd 1993, 18 – 70; Seymour 1995, 306 – 318; Firla 2003; King 2008, 139 – 149; Mounic 2012, 53 – 78). In this book, Graves creatively wove together the discourse strands of religion, myth, nature, goddess veneration, matriarchy, poetry, philosophy, history, sexuality, rationality, magic, mysticism, science, europe, and the west. This intricate knot is described from ever-changing perspectives in all 26 chapters of the book, culminating in “The Return of the Goddess” (chapter 26). In his foreword, the author leaves no doubt about his program and the main argument: My thesis is that the language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honour of the Moon-goddess, or Muse, some of them dating from the Old Stone Age, and that this remains the language of true poetry—‘true’ in the nostalgic modern sense of ‘the unimprovable original, not a synthetic substitute’. The language was tampered with in late Minoan times when invaders from Central Asia began to substitute patrilinear for matrilinear institutions and remodel or falsify the myths to justify the social changes. Then came the early Greek philosophers who were strongly opposed to magical poetry as threatening their new religion of logic, and under their influence a rational poetic language (now called the Classical) was elaborated in honour or their patron Apollo and imposed on the world as the last word in spiritual illumination: a view that has prevailed practically ever since in European schools and universities, where myths are now studied only as quaint relics of the nursery age of mankind (1981 [1948], 9 – 10).

Despite the devastating influence of Greek rational philosophy, Graves tells us, the ancient language survived purely enough in the secret Mystery-cults of Eleusis, Corinth, Samothrace and elsewhere; and when these were suppressed by the early Christian Emperors it was still taught in the poetic colleges of Ireland and Wales, and in the witch-covens of Western Europe. As a popular religious tradition it all but flickered out at the close of the seventeenth century: and though poetry of a magical quality is still occasionally written, even in industrialized Europe, this always results from an inspired, almost pathological, reversion to the original language—a wild Pentecostal ‘speaking with tongues’—rather than from a conscientious study of its grammar and vocabulary (ibid., 12).

The White Goddess, consequently, is both an attempt to historically reconstruct this ‘grammar of true poetry’ and a manifesto to re-establish the veneration of the goddess and the ultimate function of poetry in modern, industrialized Europe: “The function of poetry is religious invocation of the Muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites” (ibid., 14). If this goal is to be achieved, modern Europe must radically break with Greek rational understand-

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ing of life and poetry. For Graves—who had read James G. Frazer, Jane E. Harrison, and the Cambridge anthropologists probably before 1917 (Vickery 1972, 10; on Frazer’s link to this discourse see also Lanwerd 1993, 112– 146)—the most severe damage to the true original forms of poetic life was caused by Socrates. It was Socrates who turned his back on the Moon-goddess and betrayed her poetic inspiration and sexual power—“what is called Platonic love, the philosopher’s escape from the power of the Goddess into intellectual homosexuality, was really Socratic love” (ibid., 11). Graves’ blending of mythology, sexuality, and goddess veneration is clearly related to Jung’s archetypal theory, even if Graves did not use Jung directly (Seymour 1995, 303; Mounic 2012, 49). This link is also what interested Ted Hughes in Graves’ writing; “read Graves through Jung,” Hughes wrote to Nick Gammage in 1995 (Gammage 1999, 150). Both authors shared what Gammage summarizes as follows: The biology of the White Goddess can be located in Graves’s exploration of the vigorous, irrational but supremely pure raw energy of both the external and internal world, which primitive man [sic] used mythic systems and their rituals to dramatize and control. What Graves dramatizes in the image of the White Goddess is the tension between two principal aspects of that life impulse—both the creative and destructive potential. These are the two key possibilities of human behavior and are functions of the organism’s most fundamental drives: to survive and to reproduce (Gammage 1999, 150).

When it comes to Graves’ scholarly networks, his long friendship with Raphael Patai (1910 – 1996) is also noteworthy. Patai devoted the third volume of his autobiography entirely to his friendship with Graves (Patai 1992, 10). In terms of the formation and development of the discourse of the Great Goddess, this collection of letters and Patai’s biographical statements are important documents. It proves the close relationship between Graves’ historical imagination and its application to issues of ancient Jewish history. Despite Graves’ focus on what he considered to be “Old European” tradition, both scholars agreed that the deepest strata of the Bible still provide hints regarding a veneration of the goddess in Jewish tradition as well (Patai 1992, 48). Patai put forward this argument in his The Hebrew Goddess (1967), which appeared in an enlarged third edition in 1990. Strongly criticized by many scholars, Patai’s historical construction of a matriarchal heritage of the biblical tradition nevertheless became an influential book for a broad audience and among practitioners of goddess devotion. For our analysis here it provides a significant link between the discourse strands that construct an ancient Greek and pan-European Great Goddess on the one hand, and the scholarly fascination with mystical Judaism on the other (on their communication on Kabbalah see, for example, Patai 1992, 355 – 366; as a collection of Hebrew myths that Patai and Graves co-published, see Graves and Patai 1983).

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But more is at stake in Graves’ discursive re-entanglement. Anticipating the self-understanding of twentieth-century pagans, Graves noted that it was Socrates’ problem that he was a “confirmed townsman” who in Plato’s Phaedrus admitted that “fields and trees will not teach me anything, but men do.” Graves’ response is radical: “The study of mythology, as I shall show, is based squarely on tree-lore and seasonal observation of life in the fields” (ibid., 11). The binary construction of (Greek) rationality versus mythological experiential knowledge—typically linked to the binaries of culture versus nature, or male versus female—has become a strong element of contemporary pagan discourse. Rather than deconstructing and criticizing binary constructions, these interpretations by academics and other authors legitimized the attributions of meaning to rationality and irrationality, or male and female. Contemporary pagan spirituality is still dependent on these stereotypical constructions of gender, even in its feminist branches.

Discursive Materializations in (the Study of) Paganism and Esotericism Graves’ influence on contemporary pagan discourse has been direct and indirect. One important reason for the impact of the historical construction that he and others propagated is the fact that academics accepted this narrative uncritically. For instance, in 1999 Dionysious Psilopoulos argued that “[t]he influence of the occult has been undervalued in Graves’s prose and poetry” (Psilopoulos 1999, 159). While it is correct to state the importance of reconstructing occultism’s influences on this line of thought—the present book is a contribution to that reconstruction—it is highly doubtful whether the existence of an age-old “esoteric-occult tradition” has been “proven” by scholars such as Richard Reitzenstein, Edwin Hatch, Gerald Massey, G.R.S. Mead, and Carl Gustav Jung (ibid.); from an historical point of view it is untenable to conclude with Psilopoulos that “we must acknowledge the existence of an uninterrupted esoteric-occult tradition through the ages, and we must give credence to occultists’ claim of an uninterrupted pre-Christian lineage” (ibid., 159 – 160). With this claim, the author moves far beyond Leon Surette’s argument that the roots of literary modernism are to be found in occult discourses (Surette 1993), and it is in this extension where the argument derails. Rather than being a proof of the continuous existence of the esoteric-occult tradition, Psilopoulos’ article is evidence of the discursive unity of academic theories and religious practice. This unity is stronger in the study of paganism and esotericism than in other fields of academic research (except perhaps Christian theology), which has to do with the history of these discourses themselves. Let us have a closer look at these entanglements.

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During the second half of the twentieth century, European and North American intellectuals became increasingly skeptical of the master narratives that seemed to legitimize the superiority of modern Europe and to link European values to a Christian cultural heritage (see Perkins 2004). They insisted on the ambivalence, multiplicity, and the social and religious plurality of European culture. This critique of a superior unity of ‘the West’ can only be understood if we take into account the discursive changes that I address in this book. People were looking for alternative models of interpreting European history, models that seemed more fit to explain the plurality and ambiguity of European values and identities. They turned to the seemingly marginalized parts of European culture and paid special attention to aspects of European identity that seemed to represent its ‘shadow.’ These scholars were looking for a new vocabulary with which to analyze European cultural history. One of the terms that has gained currency since the 1990s is the concept of ‘Western esotericism’ (see von Stuckrad 2010a, 43 – 64; Hanegraaff 2012, 334– 362). Although closely linked to older concepts that had been part of scholarly debate for a long time (mysticism, Gnosis, occultism, Hermeticism, etc.), the term ‘esotericism’ seemed to provide a basis for interpreting ‘Western’ culture that was more neutral—or even positive—with reference to the ambivalences, ‘undercurrents,’ and ‘margins’ of ‘the West.’ The attraction of this new vocabulary is part of a change of episteme—a changing agreement regarding what can be true about Europe and North America. If we want to understand the origins of such a discursive change, it seems that the influences of the American counter-culture of the 1960s and the ‘New Age movement’ are significant (see also Kaiser 2011). This remains true, even if it can be argued that the major elements of New Age discourse originate in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century religious and philosophical thought. The 1960s and 1970s can be seen as a cultural turntable that disseminated these ideas in a wider context. Many religious beliefs and practices that we witness in North America and western Europe today can be interpreted as popularized forms of new age. It is not surprising that scholarly instruments of analysis likewise reveal the influence of re-entanglement of discourse strands. The popularity of concepts such as ‘esotericism,’ ‘paganism,’ or ‘occultism’ are both the result and further stabilization of the new discursive knot. Ronald Hutton pointed out a similar dynamic when it comes to the inclusion and exclusion of Druids in contemporary pagan milieus; the history of the construction of Druidism since the sixteenth century is at the same time a history of cultural developments in Europe, with the imagination of the Victorian period determining the discourse even today (Hutton 2013, 36). The discursive changes that we see operative in culture and scholarship are visible in an application of analytical terms that are taken from the object level of anal-

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ysis. Emic terms—even those that used to have very strong evaluative connotations—can be turned into etic categories. In fact, this process deconstructs the very distinction between emic and etic. What makes these terms ‘etic’ is the simple fact that scholars use them; thus, calling something ‘etic’ is perhaps not more than a rhetorical device to give an emic term scholarly power and blessing. This dynamic can also work the other way round, with so-called etic concepts being turned into emic ones; examples include ‘paganism,’ ‘pantheism,’ ‘animism,’ and even ‘heathendom.’ The concept of the ‘Great Goddess’ is another case in point: is it an etic or an emic term? When did it change from being an etic term (i.e., used by scholars) to becoming an emic one as well (i.e., used by practitioners)? Or consider the term ‘synchronicity,’ discussed in Chapter 2 above. Is Jung’s use of it an etic or an emic one? And if astrologers take over the concept from Jung and Pauli, does it automatically change into an emic concept then? And does it make a difference if those astrologers are themselves versed in quantum physics or depth psychology? With these questions, I do not deny the analytical difference between ‘object language’ and ‘analytical language;’ but I doubt that the polarity of emic and etic clarifies this differentiation, as it tends to underestimate the fact that the very difference between emic and etic is constantly renegotiated and dependent on power relations and discursive constellations. Let me exemplify this process of adaptation with the concept of “altered states of consciousness” (ASC), which is taken directly from new age and the psychedelic counter-culture of the 1960s. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, a renowned scholar of ‘Western esotericism,’ recently introduced the concept of altered states of consciousness in order to analyze the Hermetic tractates of late antiquity. The concept seems so well known that the author does not even see the need to define it; he simply states that “[i]t is quite common for trance-like altered states to be loosely referred to as ‘sleep’” (2008, 142). Hanegraaff criticizes scholars of an earlier generation (particularly André-Jean Festugière) who rejected the possibility of having revelatory experiences during altered states of consciousness. In an all-inclusive comparison that resembles an Eliadean understanding of ‘shamanic ecstasy’ (which I will discuss in the next chapter), he notes that “the idea that ‘people cannot possibly have had such experiences’, and must therefore have invented them, reflects a peculiar blindness on Festugière’s part—quite on the contrary, people have such experiences so frequently that they have been reported through all periods of history and all over the world” (Hanegraaff 2008, 160; no proof is provided for this general claim). Another example of a popularized new age vocabulary is the following statement about the experiential dimensions of the Hermetic text: “Admittedly the difference is a very ambiguous one, and perhaps deliberately so, because the text keeps suggesting that the external cosmos paradoxically (or, if one wishes, ‘holographically’) exists inside the visionary’s own mind.” In a footnote Hane-

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graaff explains that “the association [of holography] with ‘New Age’ should not keep us from perceiving the applicability of this concept in a context such as the present one” (2008, 149, note 76). With statements like these Hanegraaff lends scholarly authority to the discursive knot of trance, mind, cosmos, new age, philosophy, hermeticism, gnosis, and experience; this knot overlaps in many ways with the entangled discourse strands that have been at work since the nineteenth century. What we see here is the academic stabilization of the attribution of meaning to certain experiences, or, more generally, the legitimization of knowledge claims in the dispositive of academic writing. Recently, Hanegraaff also introduced the term ‘entheogenic esotericism’ (2013), which is another example of the same dynamic; similar to Michael Harner (whom I will introduce in the next chapter), the positive attribution of religious meaning to the use of ayahuasca and other psychoactive plants is discursively stabilized in the genre of academic publication. In a discourse community that comprises practitioners and academic observers, as well as intertextual links to discourses that have been formed earlier, the strict differentiation between emic and etic turns out to be analytically useless. In a recent review article, Markus Altena Davidsen (2012) asked, “What is Wrong with Pagan Studies?” He argued that ‘pagan studies’ (which is the self-description of many scholars, programmatically contrasting ‘the academic study of paganism’) are dominated by the methodological principles of essentialism, exclusivism, loyalism, and supernaturalism, and he demonstrates that these principles promote normative constructions of ‘pure’ paganism, insider interpretations of the data, and theological speculations about gods, powers, and a special ‘magical consciousness.’ Much of what Davidsen argues also holds true when we look at publications in the field of ‘Western esotericism.’ There can be no doubt that essentialism, exclusivism, loyalism, and supernaturalism are methodological principles that we also encounter in esotericism research. Two examples by leading scholars in the field may suffice. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, in his introductory book on The Western Esoteric Traditions (2008), wrote: My own perspective on this debate is that definitions of ‘the esoteric’ in terms of discourse, social constructions, and legitimacy lack a hermeneutic interpretation of spirit and spirituality as an independent ontological reality. By seeking to define the esoteric in terms of human behavior and culture, it becomes a reflective cultural category rather than a philosophical or spiritual insight, which remains the essential component of any claims to real or absolute knowledge (2008, 12– 13).

Thus, Goodrick-Clarke loyally joins the ontological claims of primary sources in the field of esotericism, which becomes even more apparent when we read that

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“these perennial characteristics of the esoteric worldview suggest to me that this is an enduring tradition which, though subject to some degree of social legitimacy and cultural coloration, actually reflects an autonomous and essential aspect of the relationship between the mind and the cosmos” (ibid., 13). Hence, the professor of religion reinforces the legitimacy of a discursive entanglement that I have described as one of the most influential constellations in the European religious history of the twentieth century. He even adds the discourse strands of archetypal forms and energy to his essentialist attribution of meaning: “the historical evidence suggests that esotericism also involves a return to sources, to some archetypal forms of thought and energy which generate a fresh round of cultural and spiritual development. In this regard, esotericism is an essential element of renewal in the historical process” (ibid., 14). What critics may see as a lack of reflection on the methodological basis of academic research is likewise visible in the work of another leading exponent of the field, the musicologist Joscelyn Godwin. In an interview for the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism in 2011, he remarked: There will always be a tension between the academic study of Western esotericism and personal commitment to its paths and doctrines. A similar situation arose long ago, when Theology diversified into the Study of Religions, and scholars set barriers between their faith (if present) and their academic work. But esoteric studies [sic] are inherently different from any other academic discipline, even religion—they are, after all, esoteric. To pretend that they can and must be treated with strict objectivity leads to a kind of policing and exclusion for which I have never felt the need. I hope that our field can keep something of its eccentric and provocative nature, and not become a compliant cog in an increasingly legalistic machine (http://esswe.org/uploads/ESSWE_Newsletter_Spring_2011.pdf, accessed 1 August 2013).

This self-description of the academic field is a direct materialization of countercultural discourses. While Christian theology has gone through hundreds of years of pluralistic criticism and refinement, many pagans and esotericists (including those who are academics) construct their identity through narratives of exclusion and persecution. This can lead to unexpected revelations. When asked what were “the worst things about having this [Western esotericism] as your specialty,” Godwin responded: “Having to listen to papers or read articles and dissertations that accommodate it to current and fashionable academic trends. But this is my problem. If I was academically trained in philosophy, history, or the study of religions, or if I had bothered to read the authors sanctified by those trends, I might feel less bored and excluded” (ibid.). The result of this lack of theoretical reflection is what I call ‘methodological solipsism,’ which is a characteristic of many publications in the academic study of paganism and esotericism.

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One reason for methodological solipsism is the lack of common ground when it comes to disciplinary training. Scholars of esotericism often proudly present their field as interdisciplinary, and indeed, the interdisciplinary potential is one of the most attractive features of the study of esotericism. The problem is, however, that we have not yet arrived at an interdisciplinary study of esotericism; what we see, instead, is a multidisciplinary study of esoteric themes and topics. What is the difference? Interdisciplinarity means that the research results of one discipline are actively exposed to the criticism of another discipline, which leads to new insights and to the refinement of research questions and methods (see Kocka 1987; Joas and Kippenberg 2005). This also means that scholars will have to read and be interested in the approaches of other disciplines, not just accept them as being different. In contrast, multidisciplinarity is the peaceful coexistence of various, at times even conflicting, research methods and results; it is more like “I am OK, you are OK,” and there is no need to really bother about what others have to say. We can call this ‘the encounter group situation.’ Methodological solipsism can also be encountered in Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s work. Regarding his approach, he states clearly that “[t]he study of ‘Western esotericism’ should be firmly grounded, first and foremost, in a straightforward historiographical agenda: that of exploring the many blank spaces on our mental maps and filling them in with color and detail, so that they become integral parts of the wider landscape that we already knew, or thought we knew” (Hanegraaff 2012, 378). This approach is constructed as an antidote to what Hanegraaff calls ‘eclecticism,’ namely the ideological selection of historical data to confirm a polemical narrative of exclusion. But how should ‘anti-eclectical historiography’ look concretely? His book on Esotericism and the Academy does not give an indication of the methodology that underlies its analyses. As Hereward Tilton points out: Despite its debt to post-structuralist discourse analysis, at heart this work remains a neo-Lovejovian history of ideas so unwaveringly internalist in orientation that agency is ascribed to historiographical categories: variously “the Enlightenment” (pp. 141, 278, 373), “modern chemistry” (p. 212), “Protestantism” (p. 221) and “modernity” (p. 374) are said to “define their own identities” through the production of alterity. In this manner the history and historiography of esotericism are conflated and presented as free-floating superstructures, torn from their moorings in socio-economic tumult, cultural interchange, and the experiential wellsprings of doctrine in biography and esoteric praxis (2013, 491– 492, emphasis original).

Hanegraaff does not refer to the huge intellectual debate that is raging in historiography since the challenges of Hayden White, Michel Foucault, Reinhart Koselleck, and others, or to the new responses that scholars have formulated to cope with these challenges. A more serious engagement with this critical debate would lead to the realization that it is impossible to apply an anti-eclectical his-

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toriography; the questions, rather, are: What interests and circumstances drive the selection of historical data (including our own)? How is historical knowledge constructed in social communication? It is these questions that need to be included in serious historical research. Hanegraaff’s argument would be much stronger if he incorporated the methodological considerations of scholars who are reflecting on the social construction of knowledge. Poststructuralist approaches actually provide ammunition for a critical analysis of the complexities of European culture and its historiography (see also Otto 2013). Even if Hanegraaff, Godwin, and Goodrick-Clarke simply state that poststructuralist and discursive approaches cannot solve the problems of academic research “after the fact” (to use Clifford Geertz’ expression), then the challenges of older paradigms still hold and must be answered, instead of returning to an understanding of historiography and scientific truth that predates the important turns of the twentieth century. There are examples of scholars who are also critical of so-called ‘postmodern’ approaches but who actually take the challenges seriously and respond to them on a high level of reflection. One example is Geertz’s book After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist (1995), to which I will return in the next chapter. Another prominent example is the historian Carlo Ginzburg. In his recent book Threads and Traces: True, False, Fictive, Ginzburg notes: Against the tendency of postmodern skepticism to blur the borders between fictional and historical narrations, in the name of the constructive element they share, I proposed a view of the relation between the two as a competition for the representation of reality. But rather than trench warfare, I hypothesized a conflict made up of challenges and reciprocal, hybrid borrowings. If this was how things stood, one could not combat neoskepticism by going back to old certitudes. We have to learn from the enemy in order to oppose it more efficaciously (2012, 2).

If scholars of paganism and esotericism want to leave the niche into which the discursive entanglements of their study have brought them, they will have to join the theoretical discussion that is going on in historiography, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and the academic study of religion. In sum, and closing my brief methodological excursus, this chapter has shown the direct discursive impact of academic theorizing on religious practice; it has also shown the mutual dependence and ultimately the inseparability of academic and non-academic as well as emic and etic perspectives. Again, it makes sense to talk of discourse communities if we want to grasp the underlying processes. The next chapter will address another example of such a community, this time linked to shamanism.

8 Normatizing Shamanism: Academic Teachers as Religious Experts Shamanism has fascinated European and North American societies for the past four hundred years. Missionaries, traders, and travelers were the first who brought news from the large steppes of northern Eurasia to the west, along with stories describing exotic rituals. During the eighteenth century, there had already developed a more or less fixed image of ‘shamanism’ as a specific type of religion. For most enlighteners the shaman was a model for irrational behavior, and Catherine the Great even wrote a comedy entitled Der sibirische Schaman, ein Lustspiel (1786), in which she tried to ridicule shamanism and lead her subjects to a new age of enlightenment. But this was only one side of the coin, and the counter-reaction was soon to emerge. For quite a few European enlighteners—among them J.G. Herder, J.W. von Goethe, or V. Hugo—the shaman was a religious virtuoso, a reminder of those ancient ecstatics and artists who were able to transgress ordinary reality by means of music and poetry. The most prominent figure in this European imagination was Orpheus (on the formation of this shamanic discourse in Europe see von Stuckrad 2012; see also the more detailed treatment in von Stuckrad 2003c, 35 – 83; Znamenski 2007, 3 – 38). Roberte N. Hamayon labeled the three-step history of approaches to the shaman’s behavior during the past three hundred years ‘devilization,’ ‘medicalization,’ and ‘idealization’ (Hamayon 1998, 179 – 181). However, the discursive entanglements and re-entanglements that have led to the present situation are much more complex than this model suggests. It also neglects the fact that European attitudes toward shamanism have been ambivalent from the beginning. To reflect this ambivalence, Karl-Heinz Kohl’s notion of ‘refutation and desire’ is much more suitable for understanding the characteristics of European intellectual appropriation of shamanism. In several publications, Kohl defined this dialectic as the major pattern in the engagement of European culture with everything foreign and unknown, and subsequently also as the constituting dimension of the discipline of ethnology or cultural anthropology (Kohl 1987; see also Kohl 1981). Each era, writes Kohl, has “what we can call its own mark of obsession [Besessenheitsmerkmal]” (Kohl 1987, 3, emphasis original) that reveals the main topics in the encounter with ‘the Other’ in a given period. But while the “marks of obsession” may differ from one period to another, the dynamics of observation and interpretation of ‘the Other’ have remained the same. What European observers “perceived in the foreign civilization was essentially determined by the limited horizon of experience of their own civilization” (ibid., 4).

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Descriptions of shamanism always carried with them an element of fascination that became apparent when Eliade in 1951 put forth his new construction of the shaman as a trance specialist. Now shamanism appeared as a kind of anthropological constant, an ensemble of religious practices and doctrines that enabled certain socially discernible persons to interrelate with spiritual entities on behalf of their community. Eliade must be addressed as the major ‘turntable’ between nineteenth-century intellectual discourse and the popular appropriation of shamanism in the second half of the twentieth century (Noel 1997, 26 – 41; von Stuckrad 2003c, 123 – 135). The problems connected to definitions of shamanism are enormous, but they are not my primary concern here.⁷ What is important for my analysis is the reentanglement of discourse strands of shamanism, nature, psychology, and religion that went along with a new appreciation of shamanism. It was in the 1960s that the shamanic discourse in North America made a decisive step in a new direction when the ‘New Age movement’ discovered shamanism and made it a major reference tool for its worldview. Inspired by Eliade, Jung, and Joseph Campbell, the shaman became an indication of a new understanding of humanity’s relation to nature, of the human ability to access spiritual levels of reality, and of leading a respectful life toward the ‘sacred web of creation.’ Henceforth, shamanism was no longer regarded as a spiritual path limited only to ‘classical shamanic cultures.’ Instead, by substituting the European positivistic and mechanistic attitude toward reality and nature for a holistic or vitalist one, shamanism was considered available to everyone—even to those in urban contexts that are estranged from nature (von Stuckrad 2003c, 137– 174). The phenomenon was soon to become known in academic parlance as ‘neoshamanism’ or ‘modern Western shamanism,’ in more negative depictions also as ‘urban shamanism,’ ‘New Age shamanism,’ or even ‘plastic shamanism.’ Because of their biased tone, practitioners usually do not feel comfortable with these labels. As Annette Høst from the Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies argues, “modern Western shamanism” (or, for her part, even “modern European shamanism”) would be much more appropriate (Høst 2001). From a discourse-historical perspective we can go a step further and simply talk of a shamanic discourse that has a long genealogy in European and North American intellectual history. This discourse includes the scholarly biases and polemical refutation of ‘plastic shamanism,’ as well as the idealization of shamanism as

 A good survey of previous work is presented by Siikala and Hoppál 1992. For a critical evaluation see Taussig 1991 and Hutton 2001. See also the collection of important contributions in Znamenski 2004.

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a primordial technique for connecting to nature and the ‘sacred.’ Theoreticians, practitioners, supporters, and critics together constitute the discourse community on shamanism. Shamanic discourse in twentieth-century Europe and North America shows a number of characteristics that are particularly relevant for the concerns of this book. Starting with the seminal work of Carlos Castaneda, the popularization of academic knowledge became an important feature of the popularity of shamanism. Most major shamanic protagonists hold a degree in anthropology (in addition to Castaneda, this is also true for Michael Harner, Joan Halifax, Nevill Drury, Steven Foster, Jonathan Horwitz, Felicitas Goodman, and Gala Naumova); they try to combine their anthropological education with a spiritual practice outside academia. Furthermore, what can be called the ‘interference’ between academic research and religious practice entailed a transformation of ‘classical, indigenous shamanism’ (if there is such) when native people began to read ethnographic accounts and reacted to anthropological systematization. As a result, it “is no longer possible to make a watertight distinction between ‘traditional’ shamanistic societies (a mainstay of the old ethnographic literature and of comparative religion), and the new wave of neo-shamanist movements (still barely studied in depth). […] [T]he shamanic revival is now reappearing in the present of some of these remote tribes—only now these are neither remote nor tribal” (Vitebsky 1995, 184, emphasis original; see also Atkinson 1992, 322– 323). Finally, given their shared genealogy, it is not surprising to see many links between shamanic discourse and contemporary pagan discourse. Many features of Native American traditions or Celtic and North European religions, along with Wiccan chants and the rituals of natural magic, form the spiritual background of this new shamanic ritual practice. For instance, in her shamanic workshops Annette Høst includes divination and trance rituals adopted from northern European pagan tradition, such as Seidr (see Lindquist 1997, 122– 183; Høst 1997; cf. Pike 2001, 211). After these more general remarks, let us have a closer look at how academics attributed meaning to shamanism and how these meanings were discursively legitimized and turned into religious practice. This analysis has to start with Mircea Eliade.

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Mircea Eliade: Scholar and Novelist of Shamanism Eliade’s influence on the formation of modern understandings and practices of religion has already been discussed with relation to alchemy and the search for alternatives to European ‘modernity.’⁸ Let me here focus on a specific characteristic of Eliade’s oeuvre, which lies in its plurality of genres, comprising academic, literary, and biographical publications. Because the genres are intertwined they should not be studied separately. It was Eliade himself who noted that such an “oscillation between research of a scientific nature and literary imagination” had always been of crucial importance for him (from an essay from 1978, quoted from Carrasco and Swanberg 1985, 19). This oscillation partly originates in the very topic that can be seen as the center of gravity of Eliadean thinking—a metaphysical interpretation of history that often transgresses the boundaries of academic argumentation.⁹ Already in his short study Le mythe de l’éternel retour: archétypes et répétition (1949), on which he started to work in May 1945 when Europe faced the horrors of World War II, he argued for the generalization of archaic concepts of history. In the preface to the French edition that he wrote in 1952, he expressed his conviction that “it is justifiable to read in this depreciation of history (that is, of events without transhistorical models), and in this rejection of profane, continuous time, a certain metaphysical ‘valorization’ of human existence” (1965, ix). There can be no doubt that this is a reaction to the horrors of twentieth-century Europe that Eliade experienced directly. In his search for an escape from history into the illud tempus—described in Cosmos and History and other works—he joined the Eranos circle and corresponded in friendly terms with Carl Gustav Jung, Henry Corbin, and other intellectuals of his generation who were looking for “religion after religion” (Wasserstrom 1999). During the same years, Eliade also worked on his large study of shamanism, which was published in French in 1951. Mac Linscott Ricketts, a follower of Eliade and biographer of his Romanian years (see McCutcheon 1997, 83 – 84), pro-

 Of the multitudinous publications on Eliade, I only mention Dudley III 1977; Ellwood 1999, 79 – 126; Rennie 2001 and 2007; Allen 2002. On Eliade’s Romanian roots see Ricketts 1988; on the discussion about his fascist inclinations and involvements see Junginger 2008, particularly Part II.  This position is part of a larger development during the first decades of the twentieth century, usually discussed under the slogan of the ‘crisis of historicism.’ In addition to the links already established in previous chapters, particularly for the German context, mention should be made of Oexle 2007 (with Oexle’s long introductory chapter, pp. 11– 116) and Laube 2004; see also Raulff 1999.

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vides the information that Eliade postponed the writing of that book on 21 June 1949 to start working on a novel. The novel’s Romanian title Noaptea de Sânziene (“The Night of St. John”) alludes to this date (Ricketts 1982; see also Noel 1997, 30 – 38). The summer solstice was a turning point not only for the author but also for the protagonist of this long novel that was published in English as The Forbidden Forest. The plot that focuses on the main character Stefan begins on this date of the year 1936 and ends exactly twelve years later with Stefan’s ‘escape’ from history, when he and his lover Ileana are killed in a car accident. Between these dates the novel tells the story of a group of Romanian intellectuals trying to keep up the realm of truth and beauty within the chaos of World War II and its ugly destructive face. The narrative is not without Romanian nationalistic overtones that experienced fresh impetus between the World Wars. Stefan—writer, philosopher, and painter—has a characteristic gift to perceive the hidden dimensions of the ultimate truth behind the deceptive superficial world of history. The entire novel circulates around the themes of history and time, of imaginative spaces and mysterious synchronicities, and of predestination and fate. From the outset it is clear what is at stake for Stefan: “To escape from Time, to go out of Time. Look well around you. Signs come to you from all sides. Trust the signs. Follow them. …” (Eliade 1978b, 25). This time is plagued by persecution, war, and destruction; but beyond the outer history there is a cosmic time without limits. And for some people, like Anisie—saint, magician, and “emperor”—it is only the time of the planetary cycles and the phases of the sun and the moon that is important. He accepts no time other than cosmic time, and he especially rejects historic time; for example, the time during which parliamentary elections take place, or Hitler’s arming of Germany, or the Spanish Civil War. He has decided to take account only of the time in which cosmic events occur […]. He’s content to exhaust the significance of each of these phenomena, living thereby an uninterrupted revelation. […] For him Nature begins to become not only transparent but also a bearer of values. It’s not a case of a regression, let’s say, to the animal-like state of primitive man. He’s discovered in Nature not that absence of the Spirit that some of us seek, but the key to fundamental metaphysical revelations—the mystery of death and resurrection, of the passage from non-being to being (ibid., 69).

Eliade here constructs the same discursive knot as in his analysis of alchemy, discussed above. He again reassembles nature, religion, spirit, cosmos, and metaphysics, now combined with politics, historiography, the spiritual evolution of humanity, and—in the next quote—myth. In The Forbidden Forest, Anisie is the protagonist’s metaphysical teacher, giving him lectures about the essence of time and of history that will have an apocalyptic end for

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humanity in the near future. “Another war will follow this one, and then another, until nothing of all that has been will remain, not even the ruins!” (ibid., 313). But this, Anisie says, is only part of the truth. [F]or historic man, for that man who wants to be and declares himself to be exclusively a creator of history, the prospect of an almost total annihilation of his historic creations is undoubtedly catastrophic. But there exists another kind of humanity besides the humanity that creates history. There exists, for instance, the humanity that has inhabited the ahistoric paradises: the primitive world, if you wish, or the world of prehistoric times. This is the world that we encounter at the beginning of any cycle, the world which creates myths. It is a world for whom our human existence represents a specific mode of being in the universe, and as such it poses other problems and pursues a perfection different from that of modern man, who is obsessed by history (ibid., 313, emphasis original).

At this point it becomes clear that Anisie represents Eliade’s conviction that humanity has to transform into a new epoch and that such a transformation can happen only after a return to the mythical illud tempus. But maybe he also felt like Stefan, who held a somewhat softer position: “‘I too dream of escaping from time, from history, someday,’ Stefan had replied. ‘But not at the price of the catastrophe you forecast […]’” (ibid., 314). In The Forbidden Forest, Eliade introduced a concrete way to escape from historical time into mythical non-time. Even as a child, the clairvoyant Stefan knew of a secret chamber that initiates called Sambo. This room “was above us, somewhere overhead on the second floor” (ibid., 74). When Stefan dared to open the room he was struck by an experience of enlightenment. And just then, at that moment I understood what Sambo was. I understood that here on earth, near at hand and yet invisible, inaccessible to the uninitiated, a privileged space exists, a place like a paradise, one you could never forget in your whole life if you once had the good fortune to know it. Because in Sambo I felt I was no longer living as I had lived before. I lived differently in a continuous inexpressible happiness. I don’t know the source of this nameless bliss (ibid., 75).

In this timeless mythical room of sacred cheerfulness Stefan was no longer able to move his tongue; he did not feel any hunger or thirst, and he “lived, purely and simply, in paradise” (ibid.). As an adult Stefan reserved an additional secret room in his hotel where he could work as a painter. He created mystical pictures, drawn on the canvas but invisible to others, and it is by means of art that he again entered that ecstatic mystical state. “Painting, I had no past” (ibid., 58). In this secret place, time had a different quality. “When I returned home, sometimes very late at night, I seemed to be returning from a journey to a distant place. I seemed to have come from another city where the customs were different

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and where I met other kinds of people” (ibid.). This mode of time, Stefan added, felt more real to him than the time at home or at the Ministry. Clearly, Sambo is a literary adaptation of the topics of ascent of the soul, the contact with the ‘other world,’ the motif of the journey, and the function of art and ecstasy that Eliade engaged in his academic book on shamanism, which he was working on at the same time. What is more, the primacy of ascent, making the issue of descent to the underworld a secondary one in his understanding of shamanism, has a clear parallel in his shamanism study. As Daniel Noel puts it: “The escape from history sought by Stefan is an escape upward, reversing the ‘fall’ into history” (1997, 32, emphasis original). Noel continues: “[I]t is only the elevated spaces of the novel’s world that offer any hope of a way out of the history that so tormented Stefan, Ileana, Biris, Anisie, and the other characters—as it tormented their creator and his fellow Romanians in the period between 1936 and 1948” (1997, 34). The novel culminates dramatically with the death of the lovers Stefan and Ileana. The car accident was predetermined long before, but their love triumphs over death. Eliade let the novel end with the sentence: “He had known that this last moment, this moment without end, would suffice” (1978b, 596). Hence, the Orphic dimension of the triad of love, art, and death is a prominent element of The Forbidden Forest, as it was part and parcel of Eliade’s interpretation of shamanism. It is noteworthy that in his academic book on shamanism Eliade called Orpheus a “‘Great Shaman’: his healing art, his love for music and animals, his ‘charms,’ his power of divination. Even his character of ‘culture hero’ is not in contradiction to the best shamanic tradition.”¹⁰ After having reviewed a number of parallels in the ancient world—from Hermes Psychopompos to Er the Pamphylian—Eliade argued that [the] “situation of man” remains constant. […] The enormous gap that separates a shaman’s ecstasy from Plato’s contemplation, all the difference deepened by history and culture, changes nothing in this gaining consciousness of ultimate reality; it is through ecstasy that man fully realizes his situation in the world and his final destiny. We could almost speak of an archetype of “gaining existential consciousness,” present both in the ecstasy of a shaman or a primitive mystic and in the experience of Er the Pamphylian and of all the other visionaries of the ancient world, who, even here below, learned the fate of man beyond the grave (1972a, 394).

 Eliade 1972a, 391; see also Eliade 1972b, 34, where he addresses the “ecstatic experiences of Orpheus” that were “‘shamanic’ in type.”

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Anisie in The Forbidden Forest could not have summarized Eliade’s position more precisely. These sentences by far transgress the limits of historical or scholarly argument. They reflect Eliade’s existential questioning of the human condition after World War II. The Orphic myth was a blueprint for his presentation of shamanism as a technique that is most suitable even for modern humankind to renew its bond with the ultimate reality in illo tempore.

Shamanic and Academic Authorities: The Routinization of Charisma As noted, one of the remarkable aspects of shamanism in Europe and North America is the fact that the most influential actors in shamanic fields of discourse have an academic background. At one point in their career—usually through personal ‘encounters with the irrational’ (on which see Dürr 1985)—they switched from being academic experts to becoming religious experts, often combining both cultures of knowledge in their work and in the legitimization of their authority. Before I turn to Carlos Castaneda, Joan Halifax, and Michael Harner as my key examples, it is necessary to clarify the terms that I apply in this analysis. When it comes to legitimization and contestation of authority, it is most useful to combine the analytical tools developed by Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu. In fact, most theories of authority derive from Max Weber’s ‘tripartite classification’ that distinguishes “rational-legal,” “traditional,” and “charismatic” authority (see Renger forthcoming 2014). For our current purposes, the charismatic authority is most important (Riesebrodt 2001). As Weber points out, charismatic authority is based on the attribution of special qualities to an individual person, often a belief in the supernatural or intrinsic gifts of the charismatic leader. For Weber, charismatic authority “is resting on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of a person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him [sic]” (1968, 215). Since charisma is attributed by followers or by an audience, this kind of authority is not intrinsic to the charismatic leader but is rather the result of social communication. What is more, for the charismatic leader it is necessary to ‘routinize’ charismatic power in order to make the movement sustainable; this Veralltäglichung of charisma is typically achieved through institutionalization and bureaucratization. When we combine Weber’s understanding of authority and charisma with Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, we see that charismatic authority goes along with a high level of symbolic capital. This capital is negotiated and attributed in discursive fields. Bourdieu defines a field as a social arena within which struggles

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or maneuvers take place over specific resources and the access to them (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 97; Wacquant 1989, 39; Bourdieu 1990, 52– 65). The field, hence, is a structured system of social positions, occupied either by individuals or institutions, the nature of which defines the situation for their occupants. Put differently: the field is a space of action or struggle; the struggle is over forms of capital in the field. What is important is the fact that any individual or institution—a ‘player’ in the field—occupies a certain position in the various fields of their society, a position that is determined by the agent’s access to forms of capital. Each field, by virtue of its defining content, has a different logic and an axiomatic structure of necessity and relevance that is both the product and producer of the habitus that is specific and appropriate to the field. With these analytical tools, which can easily be combined with an analysis of discourse, let us now have a closer look at the authorities that strove for recognition in shamanic fields of discourse in late twentieth-century Europe and North America.

Carlos Castaneda Much has been written about Carlos Castaneda, also known as Carlos Arana (or Aranha). Questions regarding his biography are as difficult to answer as questions pertaining to the authenticity of his writings. During his study of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, between 1959 and 1973, Castaneda undertook several research trips to Mexico, where he said he met a Yaqui brucho, that is a ‘sorcerer,’ who would soon gain worldwide fame under the name of “Don Juan Matus.” Don Juan—according to unverified sources born in 1891 in Sonora, Mexico—became Castaneda’s teacher and introduced his apprentice during the following years (intermittently) to the secret wisdom of the Yaqui. Normally, the knowledge of these secrets was reserved for a nagual, a spiritual leader of a generation of sorcerers. In four books, Castaneda made his experiences with Don Juan known to a wide audience: The Teachings of Don Juan; A Separate Reality; Journey to Ixtlan; and Tales of Power. The Teachings of Don Juan was published by the University of California Press. Even more astonishing was that Journey to Ixtlan was accepted by the University of California, Los Angeles, as a doctoral thesis for anthropology, which soon led to some irritation in the academic world. Nobody except Castaneda—not even the members of the PhD committee—had ever seen “Don Juan,” and there were no photographs of him. Hence, many people concluded that Castaneda’s books were entirely fictitious or even fraudulent. Such suspicion was further fed by certain discrepancies in Castaneda’s narrative, which in-

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cluded elements that were difficult to trace in the Yaqui spiritual tradition. One scholar in particular, Richard de Mille, spent years on his attempt to prove the fictitious character of the Don Juan books (de Mille 1976 and 1980). This is not the place to engage in a discussion of the Castaneda controversy. More than thirty years after this debate, it is more interesting to see how Castaneda’s presentation of his methodology became more and more linked to relativistic positions in anthropology and to questions of scholarly objectivity in the ‘writing culture debate.’ Time and again, Castaneda insisted that there is no substantial difference between his ‘virtual informant’ Don Juan and the just-as-invisible informants of other ethnographers; or between his problem of translating sentences that originate from a different interpretation of reality into languages of the ‘Western’ world (cf. Silverman 1975). Compare, for instance, Clifford Geertz’s remarks about narrating the past “after the fact:” What we can construct, if we keep notes and survive, are hindsight accounts of the connectedness of things that seem to have happened: pieced-together patternings, after the fact. To state this mere observation about what actually takes place when someone tries to “make sense” out of something known about from assorted materials encountered while poking about in the accidental dramas of the common world is to bring on a train of worrying questions. What has become of objectivity? What assures us we have things right? Where has all the science gone? It may just be, however, that all understanding (and indeed, if distributive, bottom-up models of the brain are right, consciousness as such) trails life in just this way. Floundering through mere happenings and then concocting accounts of how they hang together is what knowledge and illusion alike consist in (1995, 2– 3).

Shortly before his death in 1998, Castaneda published The Active Side of Infinity as a final reflection on his life, teachings, and experiences. The title refers to the realm of the dead to which the Yaqui shamans gain access after having collected the memorabilia of their life journey. According to Castaneda, this land is called “The Active Side of Infinity.” Many statements in this book are reminiscent of Geertzian anthropological relativism, even though Castaneda did not bother to respect the methodological difference between imagination and invention (a difference that is essential for Clifford Geertz). The Active Side of Infinity was published by Harper Collins, which presented it on the cover as the ultimate Castaneda: “In this book written immediately before his death, anthropologist and shaman Carlos Castaneda gives us his most autobiographical and intimately revealing work ever, the fruit of a lifetime of experience and perhaps the most moving volume in his oeuvre.” It is generally noteworthy that later works of Castaneda, such as the 1984 publication The Fire From Within, have been presented in some editions as “novels” (see also Drury 1989, 87).

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Castaneda’s work assumes a monumental place in European and North American shamanic discourse. That his scholarly work is questionable has not diminished his reputation. It seems as if the habitus of scholarly knowledge— based on university education, fieldwork, and publishing with respected academic presses—is enough to confirm his symbolic capital and his authority in the field. We may even say that in the perception of his audience the fact that Castaneda overcame the limitations of scholarly methodology added another dimension to his oeuvre; it is seen as his investiture as a real charismatic leader.

Joan Halifax For studying the close link between anthropological research, personal experiences, and an attempt to describe shamanic worlds of knowledge in a way that transgresses cultural borders, the work of Joan Halifax (b. 1942) is particularly interesting. Halifax started her career with a study of anthropology and a research project under Alan Lomax at New York’s Columbia University in the 1960s. Subsequently, she spent some time at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, where she prepared for a research trip to the Dogon in Mali. Her experiences with the Dogon—a deep questioning of her life, new insights, illness, and healing—changed her life forever. “The world I had come from—New York, Miami, North Carolina—looked quite disordered as I sat in the quiet shadow of the cliffs above Banani, but I eventually realized that most of us have to return to the world from which we started” (Halifax 1994, xxiii). It is reports like these that significantly add to her symbolic capital and her authority in the field. Back in the United States, she worked at the University of Miami School of Medicine and moved on to the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center to work with Stanislav Grof on his LSD projects. About this phase she says: “My world had shifted radically when I left New York and Paris for Africa. From cross-cultural studies in archives to fieldwork in Africa and the Dogon’s great rite of passage, the Sigui, I switched from mind to body. My world was again to shift, this time from body to psyche, when I married the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof” (ibid., xxiv). But working on anthropology, shamanism, and transpersonal psychology was only the prelude for yet another shift in Halifax’s spiritual and academic journey. This happened when she met the Korean Zen master Dae Soen sa Mim, who introduced her to Buddhism. Subsequently, she intensified her study of Buddhism and worked for years with the Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. All these experiences she tried to combine in the spiritual center she founded in the late 1970s in Ojai, California.

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At Ojai, I tried to replicate the experience of intimacy with place that I had known with Ogobara, Don José, and other tribal peoples. I wanted to live as close to the Earth as possible. I also wanted to create a place where people from various cultures and traditions could meet together and exchange with one another in an environment that was sacred, friendly, and wild. Ojai was a refuge where shamanism and Buddhism interacted in an earthy way (ibid., xxvii).

The Ojai Foundation is still an important hub for shamanic activities in North America—a good example of the routinization of Halifax’s charismatic authority.¹¹ Halifax’s work on the interface of shamanism, nature-based spirituality, and Buddhism influenced the development of the shamanic milieus. Her volume on Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives (1991 [1979]) was one of the first scholarly volumes that intended to present the voice of shamans themselves. The fact that her career combines scholarship and personal spiritual experiences has enhanced Halifax’s reputation considerably.

Michael Harner Michael (James) Harner (b. 1929) is arguably among the most prominent authorities in the modern shamanic field. He became involved in the debate about the authenticity of the works of his friend, Carlos Castaneda. He was convinced that Castaneda’s work was “110 per cent valid since it conveys a deep truth, though his specific details [could] often be justifiably questioned” (quoted from de Mille 1980, 22). It is also said that “Harner personally offered assistance in helping Castaneda place his manuscript in the 1960s, after a notable New York publisher declined it” (Dury 1989, 86). In 1963, Harner earned his PhD in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked as a professor at Columbia, Yale, Berkeley, and at the New School for Social Research in New York. Between 1959 and 1961, he had led a research project on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History to study the Conibo Indians of the Peruvian Amazon basin. During this—and later—fieldwork, Harner was introduced to shamanic rituals involving the ‘entheogenic’ vine ayahuasca.

 The website reports that “Over the past year, The Ojai Foundation has played host to Joanna Macy, Malidoma Somé, Starhawk, Hector Aristizabal, Paul Cummins, the annual Gathering of Council Leaders, Gigi Coyle and the Beyond Boundaries pilgrimage and 80 other programs for individuals, schools, nonprofits, social service agencies, corporations and the community” (www.ojaifoundation.org/About-Us, accessed on 8 May 2011).

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Since his first ritual use of ayahuasca, Harner already had extraordinary visionary experiences that both confused and fascinated him; these experiences included visions of the Book of Revelation (see Harner 1980, 2– 7). He was eager to learn more about the world that he had entered, and so he asked “the most supernaturally knowledgeable of the Indians, a blind shaman who had made many excursions in the spirit world with the aid of the ayahuasca drink” (ibid., 7). When he told this blind shaman of the dragon-like creatures he had encountered—animals similar to great bats who said that they were the true masters of the world—the response was astonishing: He stared up toward me with his sightless eyes, and said with a grin, “Oh, they’re always saying that. But they are only the Masters of Outer Darkness.” He waved his hand casually toward the sky. I felt a chill along the lower part of my spine, for I had not yet told him that I had seen them, in my trance, coming from outer space. I was stunned. What I had experienced was already familiar to this barefoot, blind shaman. Known to him from his own explorations of the same hidden world into which I had ventured. From that moment on I decided to learn everything I could about shamanism. And there was something more that encouraged me in my new quest. After I recounted my entire experience, he told me that he did not know of anyone who had encountered and learned so much on their first ayahuasca journey. “You can surely be a master shaman,” he said (ibid., 7– 8).

These passages are indicative of the rhetoric of Harner’s books. With such a narrative, Harner not only proves that he was an anthropologist who really ‘was there’¹²—contrary to Castaneda, who was not able to provide evidence for his encounter with ‘real’ shamans—the author is also introduced as an authority for various shamanic traditions of the Americas, which he as an initiate—even as a potential ‘master shaman’—knows from ‘within.’ This knowledge he can bring to a ‘Western’ audience, thus serving as a bridge between ‘native tradition’ and ‘non-native modernity.’ With respect to authorization and legitimization of knowledge, this ‘initiation in two cultures’ is highly important. After extensive research both ‘in the field’ and through literature, Harner elaborated what he felt to be the cross-cultural common denominators of shamanism. These he referred to as core shamanism, which he describes as a spiritual technique instead of a religious concept. Employing rhythmic instruments— mostly a large frame drum or rattle—a slightly altered state of consciousness is induced (not necessarily a ‘trance’), which allows the practitioner to focus his or her attention on non-ordinary realities. In this state the shamanic practitioner journeys into the lower or upper worlds in order to meet spiritual entities

 See Geertz 1988, 1– 24 (chapter 1 entitled “Being There: Anthropology and the Scene of Writing”).

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such as power animals and spirit helpers. Submitting as an apprentice to the spirits, the shaman can then ask for help or advice in order to heal her-/himself, other people, animals, plants, or places. The relationship between shaman and spirits is further strengthened by ritual activities like dancing and singing, or through power objects that bring immaterial power into visible form. In 1979 a step toward institutionalization and routinization of core shamanism took place when Harner and others founded the Center for Shamanic Studies. Having resigned his professorship, Harner renamed this non-profit organization in 1987 as the Foundation for Shamanic Studies (FSS).¹³ Subsequently, a global network was established in order to secure the quality of the core shamanism techniques, to facilitate grassroots networking, and to distribute literature, music, and shamanic paraphernalia. The constitutional aims of the FSS are threefold: preservation of shamanic cultures and wisdom around the world; study of the original shamanic peoples and their traditions; and teaching shamanic knowledge for the benefit of our planet. This last objective has been especially controversial because the foundation offers scholarships to natives to regain their own shamanic heritage (“Urgent Tribal Assistance”). Critics regard this as a sincere act of colonial suppression, whereas natives who work as certified ‘counselors’ for the ‘Harner method’—like the Lakota Carol Proudfoot Edgar—embrace the FSS’s techniques as a cross-cultural shamanic tradition. With branches on most continents, the FSS has established the Harner method as a standard way of teaching shamanic practice. Several other groups have adopted it as a model. The foundation organizes workshops, and it also encourages participants to gather into drumming-groups, where the skills learned through the workshops are practiced and shared. It is time to sum up the discussion so far: I have presented Carlos Castaneda, Joan Halifax, and Michael Harner as examples of charismatic leadership in the first generation of shamanic practitioners in North America and Europe. Despite differences in their work, all three have been instrumental in processes of institutionalization of this spiritual practice; all three have succeeded in having their charisma routinized in foundations and group networks; and all three based their authority on claims of knowledge that combine academic teaching and personal initiation in ‘native’ contexts.¹⁴ In all three cases the charismatic authority

 See www.shamanism.org, with information, films, etc. (accessed 1 August 2013).  This is a feature that differs from the success of other shamanic authorities in the field. See, e. g., Lynn Andrews, who was initiated by the Canadian Cree Agnes Whistling Elk and wrote many books on her spiritual journey. I have described this narrative situation as “Learning from the Natives,” see von Stuckrad 2003c, 145 – 149; yet another narrative situation is “Speaks to the

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originates from a mixture of extraordinary biography—presented in an elaborate plot that convinces their audiences—and the attribution of extraordinary knowledge and skills by their supporters. In one case at least, we even come across Max Weber’s idea that followers attribute supernatural capacities to charismatic leaders. On the opening page of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies we read: “Shamans are often called ‘seers’ or ‘people who know’ in their tribal language because they are involved in a system of knowledge based on first hand experience. Shamanism is not a belief system. It’s based on personal experiments conducted to heal and to get information.” And then Michael Harner is quoted, presumably talking about himself: “People ask me, ‘How do you know if somebody’s a shaman?’ I say, ‘It’s simple. Do they journey to other worlds? And do they perform miracles?’” (Fehler! Hyperlink-Referenz ungültig. [accessed 1 August 2013]).

Authority Contested The modern shamanic field is no exception to the rule that struggles for recognition and social capital lead to contestation and competition with regard to authority and charisma. Processes of inclusion and exclusion, of normatization and the challenging thereof, of legitimization and delegitimization, or what Max Weber called “social closure” (soziale Schließung), are easily recognizable when we take a closer look at the shamanic scene. That the last decades have seen an increasing competition in the field certainly enhanced such processes. The Foundation for Shamanic Studies is a good example of the dynamics that are at stake here. As we have seen, since its inception in 1979 the FSS has established itself as a focal point for the shamanic scene, and the ‘Harner method’ has become a well-known label. The term “Shamanic Counseling” is protected by copyrights in the United States, as is the diploma “Certified Shamanic Counselor.” The FSS’s distinction between a basic course to learn the shamanic techniques and several advanced courses has been taken over by many shamanic groups in the United States and Europe, which illustrates the process of normatization that Harner initiated. In discursive terms, what we see here is the legitimization of knowledge and the attribution of meaning through publications and through dispositives such as the FSS.

West,” examples of which are Sun Bear, Harley Swift Deer, or Hyemeyohsts Storm; see von Stuckrad 2003c, 149 – 152. On Lynn Andrews see also Drury 1989, 87– 92.

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At the same time, leading figures in the field contest Harner’s authority, as can be gathered from the interviews that Loren Cruden conducted in preparation for her book Coyote’s Council Fire. Many respondents could not really relate to Cruden’s question, “Do you think that ‘core shamanism’ can replace or be a useful adjunct to cultural shamanism?” Grey Wolf, for instance, replied: “I am not sure what is meant by ‘core shamanism.’ For that matter, I am not sure what ‘shamanism’ is. I think of it as being in contact with the Oneness of All” (Cruden 1995, 32). And Brooke Medicine Eagle responded: “By core shamanism I assume you mean a generic shamanism, such has been practiced throughout the world and is viable and useful in all cultures today” (ibid., 50; finally, she answered in the affirmative). Only Sandra Ingerman, a leading representative of the FSS, frankly and self-consciously remarked that “[t]here is no cultural shamanism. Core shamanism is the only game in town” (ibid., 60). Harner’s authority has also been contested by some of his followers. With the growth of Harner’s workshops, fierce debates came up concerning the commercial aspect of his work. Critics from outside charge Harner with having appropriated native traditions for personal profit, while participants frequently express their disappointment about the workshops’ sterile or impersonal atmosphere. One reason for this may be that Harner conceptualizes shamanism as a mere ‘technique;’ others (particularly Harner’s former colleague Jonathan Horwitz from the Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies in Copenhagen) stress the animistic aspect and talk of shamanism as ‘sacred work.’ All aspects of this debate can be followed in the journal Spirit Talk. In the rubric “Workshop Reviews,” authors repeatedly criticize Michael Harner’s workshops, despite their appreciation of his overall efforts for the revival of shamanism. A participant in a course in London wrote: I went to this workshop excited to meet the man who both began the shamanic renaissance and who was my teacher’s teacher. I left feeling that I never met the man. I was disappointed by the impersonal nature of this workshop, which for many may have been a first experience of shamanism. The site and food were super and Michael Harner is undoubtedly an excellent teacher. But somehow I felt like a customer of a big business rather than someone learning a spiritual practice. I’m glad I went, but wouldn’t repeat the experience (Spirit Talk 3 [Spring/Summer 1997], 14 [page number after print-out of document www.users.dircon.co.uk/~snail/ST/ST3.htm; accessed on 17 June 2002]).

The mixture of great respect for the legendary founder of the shamanic revival movement and his missing ‘presence’ in an impersonal workshop context is typical of these course reports. Karen Kelly, editor of Spirit Talk and herself experienced in a number of spiritual workshops, presented a similar picture:

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Michael Harner is the man who is largely responsible for the re-birth of shamanism in the West. In summer 1997 he taught a Foundation for Shamanic Studies basic course to some seventy people in London. Michael is a larger than life figure—he has a[n] Indiana Jones feeling to him—and the depth of his experience of shamanism clearly shows. His anecdotes drawn from both his own practise and his anthropological field study were both funny and effective and his utter [sic] certainty was re-assuring. However it was also clear that Michael had taught he [sic] course many, many times and occasionally he seemed almost blasé in the way he held the circle. This particularly struck me when he was rattling the circle together—something I had previously experienced as a deeply sacred moment. With seventy people present, there was also almost no personal contact between the [sic] Michael and the course participants—something I really missed. However almost everyone seemed to be having a good time and there were some really miraculous journeys happening. For me though I felt something of the sacredness of this practise was missing. It’s clear for Harner that shamanism is a useful and interesting series of techniques, it is not clear to me whether it is more than that to him.¹⁵

In addition to a critique of the increased commercialization of Harner’s workshops,¹⁶ parts of his doctrines have been submitted to critical reflection as well. One example is the debate about the status of the Middle World, i. e., the ‘normal world’ we are living in. While Harner and the FSS used to argue that shamanic journeys into the Middle World—for instance, by walking through a wood in a shamanic state of consciousness, or by communicating with rivers, plants, or stones—can enrich shamanic practice, representatives of the FSS later warned against such journeys. The reason they gave was that the entities populating these spaces were less wise and compassionate. Such reasoning aroused much irritation among other practitioners. Annette Høst, who was asked about this many times during her own workshops, felt the need to clearly distance herself from Harner and the FSS. After acknowledging that “I consider Michael Harner my first ordinary reality, Middle World teacher in shamanism, and I will always be grateful for what I received from him” (Høst 2000, 19), Høst expressed her concern that Michael Harner’s personal opinion can become a firm dogma that subsequently prevents people from having

 Spirit Talk 8 (Winter/Spring 1999), 17 (page number after print-out of document www.users.dircon.co.uk/~snail/ST/ST8.htm, accessed on 17 June 2002). Kelly reported three other basic courses she went to, concluding that “working with Harner was interesting, if impersonal. For myself I’ve been working with Jonathan [Horwitz] for the last seven years which I guess reflects my own choice” (p. 18). See also Kelly’s interview with Horwitz, published under the title “Shamanism, Death and Life” online at www.shamanism.dk/Article-on-death-and-life.htm (accessed 22 May 2011).  For a similar critique, this time regarding Lone Wolf, a shaman “of Nordic descent,” see Taylor 1997, 193 – 195; see also Jocks 2000.

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important experiences. Such a dogma is “the same doctrine the Church has preached to my ancestors for the last thousand years. It taught people to fear the spirits of Nature, to fear the night, to fear the unploughed land. It preached that all those nature spirits were actually bad, the devil’s companions, and best avoided.” Høst concluded: “I can’t use the foundation’s Middle World doctrine. It would stand between me and Life. I prefer to trust my own experience.”¹⁷ Trusting one’s own experience is a major doctrinal feature of contemporary European and North American shamanism—perhaps of contemporary paganism in general—that renders a simple master-pupil relation difficult or contested.¹⁸ Even Harner himself argues this way: […] I practice shamanism myself; not because I understand in OSC [Ordinary State of Consciousness] terms why it works, but simply because it does work. But don’t take my word for it: truly significant shamanic knowledge is experienced, and cannot be obtained from me or any other shaman. Shamanism is, after all, basically a strategy for personal learning and acting on that learning. I offer you a portion of that strategy and welcome you to the ancient shamanic adventure.¹⁹

Another aspect of contemporary shamanism that makes a simple relation between master and pupil complicated is the fact that, according to shamanic doctrine, people should only trust their power animals and spirit helpers—entities they encounter in a shamanic state of consciousness and who are described as real powers rather than projections of the psyche. The ‘Middle World teachers’ only provide the intellectual and technical means for shamanic practitioners to journey into the ‘other world’ and become the spirits’ apprentice (Horwitz 1999). With reference to our initial question, what can we conclude from these dynamics of legitimization and contestation of authority? First of all, the shamanic field of discourse that I have described in this chapter is dominated by doctrinal assumptions of individual self-realization and non-hierarchical social structures that are also prevalent in contemporary paganism, Wicca, and nature-based spiritualities. Whether such a doctrine represents social reality is of course debatable

 Ibid., 20. On Annette Høst’s contribution to this discourse see also the articles published on the website www.shamanism.dk (accessed 1 August 2013).  Space does not allow me to address this topic in detail, but it seems that the focus on personal experience is the result of a ‘Protestant’ cultural discourse, which explains why paganism, New Age doctrines, and shamanism are attractive to people raised in cultures dominated by such a mindset.  Harner 1980, xviii. Note that, despite this disclaimer, Harner here implicitly calls himself a “shaman;” other authorities in the field tend to be more modest, calling themselves “shamanic practitioners.”

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(see, for instance, Hammer 2010 for a critical reading of ‘New Age’ individualism). But the doctrine makes it more difficult for masters and authorities to establish themselves as charismatic leaders. In shamanism, charisma is particularly achieved by the symbolic capital of both academic and spiritual knowledge, legitimized in biographical narratives that are read widely among followers and pupils. We can also conclude that the most successful way of responding to the many refutations of and challenges to authority in a diverse field such as contemporary shamanism is the institutionalization of charisma and, in Weber’s terms, its Veralltäglichung. It is because Harner’s authority had been routinized that Sandra Ingerman can self-consciously call core shamanism “the only game in town” (Cruden 1995, 60; see above). This does not explain the attractiveness of this form of shamanism in toto, but it throws some light on the extraordinary success of institutions such as the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and the Ojai Foundation. In the end, and despite some peculiarities, the dynamics that structure and organize the religious scene do not differ much from what we know from other processes of contemporary group formation. When it comes to the analysis of shamanism in general, this chapter again has demonstrated the difficulty in distinguishing between emic and etic, because the academic and the practitioner form a discourse community in which all actors mutually inform and stimulate one another. What is more, contemporary shamanism in Europe and North America is a clear example of scientification of religion because shamanism as a religious practice would be impossible without the meaning that academics have attributed to this religious phenomenon. It is time to drive my argument home.

Conclusion: The Scientification of Religion The many themes that have been discussed throughout this book have as their common denominator the question of how we can come to a better understanding of religion in the secular environment of twentieth-century Europe. It can be argued that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, religion still presents huge challenges to European identities. José Casanova even speaks of “Europe’s fear of religion” (Casanova 2009; see Kippenberg 2008). Since the rise of secularism and the modern forms of empirical natural sciences in the late eighteenth century, many Europeans have seen themselves as rational, democratic, and tolerant inhabitants of ‘modernity.’ It was broadly expected that ‘scientific’ progress would undoubtedly lead to a decline of ‘religion.’ But this did not happen. religion has retained its individual and social influence and is still a major issue in politics and media today; clashes between religious claims and scientific or atheist counter-claims determine much of the current societal debate. Theories of secularization, developed during the “long 1960s” (Brown 2001), have dominated academic discussions for decades (see the overview in Swatos and Olson 2000). While from the outset critics have noted the ideological component of this theory (Lübbe 1965; Blumenberg 1974), it remained one of the most important interpretations of religion and ‘modernity’ (as a critique of the ideology of ‘modernity’ see Latour 1993 and 2010; see also Dressler and Mandair 2011). It is noteworthy that the concept of ‘secularism’ itself did not emerge in the eighteenth century; it was introduced later by the freethinker George Holyoake (1817– 1906). The ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’ may have been relevant concepts in themselves already in Enlightenment discourse. However, their rhetorical charging as ‘secularism,’ i. e., as an ideology that favors secularization and secular philosophies, is a subsequent development. This fact renders links between ‘Enlightenment’ and ‘secularism’ simplistic and problematic (see Roetz 2013, 9 – 10, with a critique of Charles Taylor’s notion of a “secular age”). The same can be said about the binary construction of ‘the secular’ versus ‘the religious.’ As Lucian Hölscher notes: Not until the middle of the nineteenth century was [this semantic dichotomy] established as a semantic pattern, and even then it was limited to a small part of the public discourse of religion, that is, the discourse of radicals on both sides of the religious spectrum: orthodox Christians on the one side, socialists and freethinkers on the other. In Germany it was only after World War One that the dichotomy of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’, i. e. the opportunity for institutions, people, mentalities to be either religious or secular, became popular with the wider public (2013, 36).

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Recently, a consensus has emerged among theorists of secularization that the variables that define this cultural process must be adjusted, though scholars draw different conclusions from this observation (see Berger 2012 and the various responses in Pollack 2013). In an attempt to rethink the dynamics of secularization, it has been noted that the ‘formations of the secular’ are directly linked to the ‘formations of the religious’ in processes of religious change (Asad 2003; see also Beckford and Walliss 2006; Taylor 2007; Modern 2011, 1– 47; Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and VanAntwerpen 2011). Given the enormous influence of secularization theories, and also of secularism as an ideological program, it is perhaps surprising how quickly “secular,” “secularism,” and “secularization” have recently come to be seen as highly unstable terms in academic discourse. Whether it is their etymological and discursive origins, their present definition, or their inseparability from dubious projects of modernity and “the West,” these categories have been called into question by an ever-expanding number of books, articles, and conferences (Fallers Sullivan, Yelle, and Taussig-Rubbo 2011, 1).

Rethinking the relation between the religious and the secular is an important starting point. Such a critique of dominant secularization theories, however, has not yet led to alternative models of interpretation with full currency in today’s academic debate. We have to conclude that it is still unclear what model of interpretation would come ‘after secularization.’ If we want to move beyond the secularization paradigm, it is useful to start with the observation that the very idea of secularization is more explanandum than explanans: the theory of secularization is itself an integral part of the formation of contemporary European identities. As the material studied in this book makes clear, secular discourses have not brought the end of religion; rather, they have established the religious in a new framework of meaning. The new faces of religion in contemporary European societies are co-produced by secular dynamics. Consequently, it is important to problematize and supersede the clearcut distinction between religion and the secular (see also Krech 2013 and Bangstad forthcoming 2014). Framed in an analysis of discursive changes, this approach helps to develop a more suitable theoretical grid for understanding the dynamics that have shaped ‘the religious’ in secular environments. If we change our object of study and look at the entanglements of religious and secular discourses that have produced new meanings and new realities in European societies, we will find a way out of the impasse of secularization theories. When it comes to cultural and political changes during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we now can describe these simply as reconfigurations of the religious and secular fields of discourse. It is in discursive re-entanglements and cultural negotiations of meaning that European societies generate the conceptu-

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al borders between the religious and the non-religious and between religion and science. Academics have played a significant role in this dynamic, a role that this book tries to understand. The discursive organization of knowledge about religion in secular environments is what I call the ‘scientification of religion.’ Theoretically, one could also talk of a ‘religionization of science,’ but the discursive entanglements of religion and science are historically inseperable from changes in dispositives and the emergence of ‘science’ in its new understanding. That is why I prefer to speak of scientification of religion to describe this process. My analysis has shown that the institutional establishment of new disciplines in the nineteenth century, such as anthropology, classics, Indology, Jewish studies, psychology, and the academic study of religion, led to a professionalization of knowledge about religion that in turn attributed new meanings to religion (as related approaches see Kippenberg 2002; Krech 2002; von Stuckrad 2003c, 279 – 284). This attribution of meaning resulted in the emergence of new religious identities and practices, such as paganism, new forms of shamanism, astrological practices, environmental activism, or new variants of Jewish mysticism. In a closely related dynamic—and often in direct correspondence with academics from the humanities—natural scientists adopted religious and metaphysical claims and integrated these in their work, resulting in a new discursive knot of religion and science—often combined with a reverence for nature—that gained much influence in the twentieth century. Thus, the discursive generation of new meanings and practices of religion in European societies before and after 1900 was closely tied to intellectual debates and the emergence of new institutionalized ways of organizing knowledge about religion. The transformation of discourses and dispositives that went along with these changes had its core in academic culture, but was by no means limited to these milieus. Indeed, we should abandon the analytical distinction between academic and non-academic knowledge, between ‘science’ and ‘pseudo-science,’ and between professional and amateur when we study the most important contributions to discourses of religion and science (Alissa Jones Nelson makes a similar case for the distinction between ‘academic’ and ‘vernacular’ as two rhetorically separated forms of knowledge; see Jones Nelson 2012, 1– 3). These distinctions are themselves the results of discursive re-entanglements, of ‘borderwork’ that determines what it means to be ‘modern’ and ‘European.’ Abandoning the distinctions as analytical categories does of course not mean neglecting their existence; quite the contrary: it means taking their existence and discursive power seriously, but without subscribing to the power of persuasion that is discursively attributed to them. In other words, we should not place ourselves “in-

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side these dubious unities in order to study their internal configuration or their secret contradictions” (Foucault 2010 [1972], 26). This argument is linked to a more fundamental observation. Throughout this book I have argued that binary constructions such as ‘religion’ and ‘science’—but also others such as ‘emic’ and ‘etic,’ ‘East’ and ‘West,’ and ‘science’ and ‘pseudoscience’—should be abandoned if we want to understand the dynamic structures in which these concepts have gained their meaning. Again, this does not mean that binary concepts are worthless in general terms; it only means that we should not trust their power of explanation and that we should critically investigate the realities that these binaries create rather than describe. If we leave behind binary constructions as analytical categories and look at them in their function of creating identities through the attribution of meaning, we will have to find a new vocabulary that seems to be more suitable to serve as an analytical instrument in our interpretation of historical processes. The vocabulary that comes with discursive analyses provides such an instrument. Talking of discourse strands, which can be entangled in manifold ways, enables us to see how binary constructions emerge in concrete historical settings, how they are supplemented with other discourse strands, and how they change their meaning and constellation over time. Similar to what Bruno Latour calls ‘networks’ (Latour 1993, 3), these discourses do not have a fixed center around which they are organized; they are a moving target of scholarly analysis, creating new centers in shifting alliances, dispositives, and discursive configurations. The discursive constellations that I have followed through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries clearly demonstrate the strong impact of religious discourses on contemporary societies in Europe. Breaking down religion and science into groups of discursive knots that ascribe new meanings to ‘religion’ and ‘science’ is a useful analytical step. Based on the historical sources presented in this study, we can identify the major discursive knots that have determined the place of religion in European culture in the last two hundred years. My analysis has a deconstructive and a constructive dimension. The deconstruction lies in the critical evaluation and contextualization of what is regarded as historical and academic knowledge. The constructive element is the re-evaluation of discourse strands that together form the cultural place of religion and science in contemporary Europe. This re-evaluation does not claim to present the only valid history of religion and science in Europe; not being an adherent of the representation model of truth, I do not follow an understanding of historiography as a discipline that strives to represent ‘reality.’ However, as scholars of religion we are fully accountable for our constructions of historical developments. It is a gross—though very common—misunderstanding when critics of discursive approaches argue that the analysis of discourse opens the door to ar-

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bitrary and ultimately meaningless scholarship. I hope this book has demonstrated that discourse analysis must be based on a screening of representative historical material and not on an arbitrary selection of a few sources that fit the preconceived ‘theory,’ and also that the power of discursive structures clearly limits the ways in which scholars can construct meaningful narratives that convince their discourse community. This is the opposite of ‘anything goes.’ Focusing on discourses rather than the realities they pretend to represent means being careful with the application of analytical categories such as ‘modernity,’ ‘Western esotericism,’ ‘secularization,’ or any other concept that is used in academic parlance to make sense of the world around us. These concepts gain their meaning only in discursive contexts, and it is in these contexts that we can see their ideological agenda.

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Index academic study of religion 1, 2, 102, 108, 131, 158, 180 academics / academy 1, 9, 21, 26, 30, 49, 67, 77, 85, 94, 102, 103, 106, 112, 116, 117, 119, 125, 126, 130, 131, 133, 138, 139, 140, 145, 146, 149, 152, 155, 156, 158, 161, 162, 165, 166, 167, 169, 172, 177, 180, 181 Academy of Science 100, 144 actors 4, 137, 166, 177 Adelung, Johann Christoph 34 Adler, Alfred 143 Adyar 102, 107, 109, 110 Aegisthus 141 aesthetics / aestheticization 38, 48, 61, 68, 79, 80, 84, 102, 118, 127, 128, 129, 130, 137 Agamemnon 141 ‘Age of Aquarius’ 55 Agrippa of Nettesheim 100 Aguéli, Ivan 132 Albanese, Catherine 133 Alchemy 20, 39, 53, 55, 56 – 75, 80, 84, 87, 100, 101, 104, 115, 135, 162, 163 – spiritual alchemy 73 Algonquin 144 Allah 126 Allan, Maud 131 almanacs 27, 30, 31, 32, 33 altered states of consciousness 154, 171 alterity 157 amateur 19, 68, 80, 83, 88, 139, 180 ‘American metaphysical religion’ 133 American Museum of Natural History 170 amulets 147, 149 anatomy 105 Andrews, Lynn 172, 173 angels 37, 59 Angelus Silesius 47, 48 ‘Anima / Animus’ 50, 143, 144 animal magnetism 66, 97 animals 13, 66, 73, 77, 79, 92, 101, 163, 165, 171, 172, 176 anima mundi see world soul

animism 44, 48, 79 anti-Islamism 116 antiquity 35, 36, 38, 40, 41, 42, 51, 65, 74, 79, 88, 94, 98, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 112, 118, 119, 124, 125, 126, 127, 131, 140, 141, 142, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 159, 165, 176 anti-Semitism 116, 117, 121, 122, 130 anthropology 6, 15, 19, 91, 108, 139, 141, 151, 158, 159, 161, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 175, 180 anthropomorphism 78, 83 Anthroposophical Society 111, 112 apocalyptic / apocalypticism 25, 163 Apollo 143, 150 Arcane School 109 archaeology (academic discipline) 145, 146 archaeology (of discursive structures) 5 ‘archetypes’ 50, 51, 52, 134, 144, 145, 151, 156, 162, 165 Aristizabal, Hector 170 Aristotelianism 26, 27, 28, 29, 33, 64, 101 art 26, 31, 40, 43, 44, 49, 79, 80, 81, 108, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 139, 145, 164, 165 Arzt, Thomas 62 Asad, Talal 6 ascent of the soul 165 Ashmole, Elias 31 Asclepius 143 aspects (in horoscopes) 28, 38 Ashmore, Malcolm 9 Aston, F.W. 65 ‘astral light’ 98 astral plane 106, 111 astrology 5, 15, 16, 17, 20, 25 – 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 63, 81, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 109, 115, 154, 180 astronomy 16, 17, 25, 26, 27, 33, 43, 44, 45, 46, 69, 101, 105, 106 atom 29, 53, 61, 63, 64, 72, 73, 78, 100 autobiography 31, 39, 103, 110, 128, 151, 168

212

Index

authority 21, 72, 102, 103, 106, 108, 109, 117, 145, 155, 166, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177 ayahuasca 155, 170, 171 Baba, Meher 132 Bacchus 147 Bachelard, Gaston 7 Bachofen, Johann Jakob 140 – 144, Bailey, Alice Ann 109 Bataille, Georges 130 Bateson, Gregory 88, 89, 91, 92 Baur, Ferdinand Christian 122 beauty 79, 80, 129, 135, 148, 163 ‘beautiful Jewess’ 116 belief 47, 60, 72, 90, 100, 106, 121, 134, 140, 149, 153, 166, 173 Bell, Catherine M. 139 Benjamin, Walter 142 Berger, Peter 3 Bergson, Henri 66, 90 Bernhardt, Sarah 131 Besant, Annie 65, 107 Bhagavad Gita 103 Biale, David 122, 124 Bible 30, 130, 134, 151 Bickerstaff, Isaac see Swift, Jonathan Billwiller, Robert 42, 43, 47 binaries 4, 5, 19, 21, 115, 139, 152, 178, 181 bioethics 136 bionomy 77 Blair, Tony 135 Blavatsky, Helena P. 73, 94 – 109, 110, 111, 112, 121, 129, 132 Blavatsky Lodge 107 blood 104, 121 Bnei Baruch 133 body 33, 67, 73, 84, 91, 98, 104, 116, 119, 120, 129, 169 body/mind problem 66 Bohley, Johanna 68 Bohm, David 54, 90, 92, 93 Böhme, Jacob 35, 120 Bölsche, Wilhelm 83 Bon, Gustave Le 62 Bonatti, A. Francesco 28 ‘book of life’ 136

Book of Nature 135 ‘bootstrap philosophy’ 88 Bourdieu, Pierre 166, 167 bourgeoisie 40, 96, 120, 142 Bowler, Peter J. 83 Boyle, Robert 59, 64 Brahe, Tycho 30 brain 73, 83, 168 Brenner, Michael 118 Brock, William H. 64, 65, 67 Brook Medicine Eagle 174 Bruno, Giordano 100 Brunotte, Ulrike 145 Buber, Martin 21, 115, 118 – 121, 122, 123, 124, 133 Buddhism 102, 103, 110, 120, 121, 126, 169, 170 Burckhardt, Jacob 140 bureaucratization 110, 166 burqa 116 Burrow, John W. 140 Butler, Samuel 69 Cagliostro, Alessandro 100 calendars 30, 33 Cambridge Platonists 30 Campanella 30 Campanus 28 Campbell, Joseph 160 Canguilhem, Georges 7 capital, symbolic 166, 169, 177 Capra, Fritjof 88, 89, 90 Cardano, Girolamo 28, 39, 49 Carus, Carl Gustav 50, 68, 99 Casanova, José 178 Castaneda, Carlos 161, 167 – 169, 170, 171, 172 Catherine II (the Great) 159 causality 28, 52, 53, 54, 79, 90, 91, 93 Celera Genomics 135, 136 Center for Ecoliteracy 89 Center for Shamanic Studies 172 Chambers, Edmund 145 channeling 98 chaos theory 53 charisma 94, 166, 169, 170, 172, 173, 177 Charles I, king of England 31

Index

chemistry 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 73, 80, 84, 100, 101, 157 Chew, Geoffrey 88 Christianity 12, 26, 27, 31, 40, 76, 78, 97, 109, 110, 112, 117, 119, 121, 128, 129, 130, 147, 150, 152, 153, 156, 178 chorology 77 ‘Christ impulses’ 112 Chronos 144 chrysopoeia 58 chymiatry 60 chymistry 59, 60, 61 circumcision (male) 116 Clarke, Bruce 67, 83 classification 7, 14, 166 Clinton, Bill 135 cloning 66 Clytemnestra 141 code / coding / de-coding 44, 134, 135, 136, 137 cognition 9, 11, 80, 83, 84 ‘cognitive science of religion’ 73, 83 Coley, Henry 32 ‘collective unconscious’ 50, 134 Collège de France 29 Collins, Francis S. 135, 136, 137 colonialism 1, 4, 19, 102, 115, 116, 117, 139, 172 color theory 80 Commer, Ernst 76, 77 commercialization 96, 97, 174, 175 communication 4, 5, 6, , 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 59, 61, 87, 95, 96, 97, 98, 128, 132, 137, 146, 158, 166, 175 Conibo 170 consciousness 9, 14, 16, 37, 72, 74, 79, 93, 105, 143, 154, 155, 165, 168, 171, 175, 176 content analysis 10, 18 contingency 8, 90 Copernicus, Nicolas 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 40, 41, 46 Corbin, Henry 162 ‘core shamanism’ 171, 172, 174, 177 corpuscular philosophy and science 60, 64 correspondence theory of truth 20 cosmology 36, 37, 111, 137

213

cosmopolitanism 131 cosmos 27, 38, 40, 41, 43, 45, 48, 55, 72, 76, 92, 133, 137, 154, 155, 156, 162, 163 counterculture 55, 156 Coyle, Gigi 170 creation 45, 76, 78, 79, 103, 136, 141, 142, 144, 160 Cree 172 Cromwell, Oliver 31 Crookes, William 65 Crosby, Robert 109 Cruden, Loren 174, 177 crystallography 78 crystals 78, 79, 80 cultural studies 19, 142, 158, 169 Cummins, Paul 170 cybernetics 91 Dacqué, Edgar 48, 85, 86 Dae Soen sa Mim 169 Dalai Lama 107 Dalton, John 61, 62, 64, 100, 101, 102 dance 92, 128, 129, 130, 131 Darwin, Charles 76, 77, 78, 144 Darwinism 66, 77, 80, 90 Davidsen, Markus Altena 155 Davison, William 29 Davy, Humphry 61 death 79, 91, 101, 163, 165, 175 Debus, Allen G. 73 Dee, John 59 deep ecology 87, 89, 92 depth psychology 50, 154 dervish 119 Descartes, René 30, 35 De Stijl 80 determinism 12, 39, 52, 53, 54, 93, 106, 165 Deutsch, David 55, 73, 74, 75 Deutscher Monistenbund (German Monist League) 17, 80, 81, 83, 86 devil 102, 176 Diana 147 Diderot, Denis 34 ‘dilettantism’ 68 Dinet, Etienne 132 Dionysian 120, 125, 131, 143 discourse 1 – 19 and passim

214

Index

discourse analysis 4 – 13, 15, 157, 182 discourse community 9, 18, 155, 161, 177, 182 discourse strands 16, 20, 44, 47, 48, 54, 55, 61, 63, 65, 70, 71, 74, 75, 77, 82, 86, 94, 98, 100, 106, 112, 120, 132, 135, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 160, 181 discursive constructionism 8 discursive entanglement 1, 16, 17, 20, 34, 42, 56, 58, 81, 93, 115, 131, 136, 156, 158, 159, 180 discursive knots 12, 13, 14, 18, 56, 66, 67, 69, 73, 79, 88, 92, 93, 110, 111, 112, 130, 137, 139, 149, 150, 153, 155, 163, 180, 181 discursive study of religion 2, 3, 10, 14, 18 disenchantment 40, 48, 76 dispositive 11 – 13, 14, 15, 17, 26, 32, 34, 36, 46, 49, 59, 61, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 132, 133, 139, 155, 173, 180, 181 dispositive analysis 12, 15, 17 divination 161, 165 divine 14, 45, 59, 60, 78, 99, 101, 124, 128, 135, 144 DNA 134 Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter 66 Döblin, Alfred 118 Dominicans 26 Dörr, Georg 143 dreams 50, 55, 70, 71, 74, 84, 95, 105, 164 Driesch, Hans 66, 67, 80 drugs 73 Druidism / Druids 97, 153 Drury, Nevill 161 Duncan, Isadora 128, 129, 131 dynamism 44 earth 30, 37, 40, 43, 48, 64, 68, 73, 74, 99, 105, 106, 142, 164, 170 Earth Mother 72, 144, 145 Eberhardt, Isabelle 131, 132 Eckhart, Meister 126 ecology 77, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 134 economy 1, 12, 14, 19, 30, 77, 84, 89, 103, 157 ecstasy 118, 119, 128, 130, 148, 154, 159, 164, 165

Eddington, Arthur 137 Edison, Thomas 105 education / education programs 12, 14, 81, 83, 84, 85, 96, 103, 108, 127, 132, 161, 169 Edwards, Derek 9 Egyptology 126, 146 Einstein, Albert 52, 53, 85 Einstein-Podolski-Rosen Paradox 53 Electra 141 electricity 17, 49, 63, 64, 68, 99, 101 electromagnetism 99, 100 element / elementary bodies 28, 61, 62, 63, 64, 74 Eleusis 150 Eliade, Mircea 6, 59, 72, 73, 125, 144, 154, 160, 161, 162 – 166, elixir 84, 85 Ellenberger, Henry F. 67, 143 emancipation of Jews 117, 122 Elmwood Institute 89 embryology 66 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 79 emic and etic 154, 155, 158, 177, 181 emotion 50, 69, 70 empathy 90 empiricism 7, 8, 26, 30, 38, 40, 48, 49, 53, 58, 59, 76, 77, 81, 88, 92, 120, 127, 137, 178 energetics 78, 80, 81, 82, 83 energy 16, 74, 75, 81, 82, 85, 89, 92, 95, 120, 135, 151, 156 Engels, Friedrich 142 English Gypsy-Lore Society 146 Enlightenment 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 43, 58, 59, 66, 98, 118, 143, 157, 159, 178 entelechy 67 ‘entheogenic’ plants 155, 170 entropy 89 environmental crisis 86, 88, 93 environmentalism 89, 92, 93, 180 ephemerides 34 Epicureanism 29 epistemology 7, 8, 9, 19, 20, 75, 84, 85, 145 Eranos conferences 50, 70, 116, 127, 144, 162 Erdbeer, Robert Matthias 68

Index

eroticism 128, 130 Erinyes 141 Er the Pamphylian 165 Esalen 91 esoteric 21, 36, 39, 43, 50, 51, 59, 68, 74, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 101, 102, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 116, 124, 129, 130, 132, 137, 152, 155, 156, 157 esotericism 34, 35, 36, 49, 56, 98, 103, 110, 122, 131, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158 – ‘Western esotericism’ 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 182 Esoteric Section / Esoteric School 94, 107, 109, 111 essentialism 1, 121, 123, 145, 155, 156 ether 65, 66 ethics 37, 57, 135, 136 ethnicity 115 ethnology 159; see also anthropology ethology 77 eugenics 80 European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism 156 euthanasia 80 Evans, Arthur 145 evolution 71, 75, 76, 78, 83, 90, 91, 111, 140, 142, 144, 163 ‘exact sciences’ 7, 68, 101, 105 exile 123 exclusion 56, 153, 156, 157, 173 existentialism 125 experience 1, 4, 37, 40, 46, 47, 62, 68, 72, 73, 86, 87, 108, 119, 120, 121, 126, 127, 139, 150, 152, 154, 155, 157, 159, 164, 165, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176 experiment / experimental 8, 52, 53, 54, 60, 61, 62, 66, 71, 75, 92, 100, 173 experts 1, 21, 103, 137, 139, 166 Ezekiel, A.D. (Abraham David Salman Hai Ezekiel) 133 facts 6, 7, 12, 62 fate 42, 106, 145, 163, 165 Fairclough, Norman 2, 10 Fallers Sullivan, Winnifred 179

215

fascination 35, 49, 70, 86, 128, 130, 148, 151, 159, 160 Fechner, Gustav Theodor 45, 67 Felt, George H. 97 feminism 145, 152 femme fatale 130 Ferguson, Marilyn 90 Festugière, André-Jean 154 Feuchtwanger, Lion 118 Feynman, Richard 137 Fick, Monika 67 fieldwork 169, 170 Flamsteed, John 33 Flasche, Rainer 125 Flaubert, Gustave 130 Fleck, Ludwik 7, 10, 135 Fludd, Robert 71, 81, 100 folklore 146, 148 fortunetelling 30, 33 Foster, Steven 161 Foucault, Michel 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 14, 138, 157, 181 Foundation for Shamanic Studies 172, 173, 174, 175, 177 four original qualities, theory of 29, 64 Fox, Margaret and Kate 96 Frankfurt School 143 fraud 30, 58, 60, 63, 103, 106, 167 Frazer, James G. 145, 151 Frederick the Great, king of Prussia 33 Freemasonry 35, 36, 37, 38, 94, 97, 108 freethinkers 178 free will 54 frenzy 126 Freud, Sigmund 49, 50, 51, 67, 143 Friedländer, Moritz 118 Frietsch, Ute 60 Fuller, Robert C. 97 Gadbury, John 32 Gaia 144, 145; see also Mother Earth Galileo 28, 60, 135 Gammage, Nick 151 Gandhi, Mahatma 103, 107 Gardner, Gerald 132, 149 Garnier, Julien 144 Gassendi, Peter 29

216

Index

Gauricus, Lucas 34 Geertz, Clifford 6, 158, 168 Geiger, Abraham 117, 122 Geisteswissenschaft 42, 80, 85, 111; see also humanities gender 4, 5, 50, 108, 115, 116, 117, 130, 131, 145, 148, 152 gender studies 4, 19 genealogy (discursive) 5, 7, 11, 17, 20, 25, 55, 116, 135, 160, 161 genes / genetics 92, 134, 135, 136, 144 geology 69, 76 Gerhard, Eduard 144, 145 Gieser, Suzanne 71, 72 Gimbutas, Marija 145, 146 Ginzburg, Carlo 158 Giuntini, Francesco see Junctinus globalization 89, 121, 132 Gnosticism 117, 118, 119, 122, 123, 124, 153, 155 God / gods 29, 37, 40, 41, 43, 47, 61, 78, 82, 91, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 132, 135, 136, 147, 149, 155 goddess 21, 139, 141, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154 goddess spirituality / goddess veneration 21, 139, 145, 149, 150, 151 Godwin, Joscelyn 156, 158 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 46, 47, 48, 68, 71, 78, 79, 80, 110, 111, 128, 144, 159 Gogh, Theo van 116 Goodman, Felicitas 161 Google 149 Gossman, Lionell 140 Gramsci, Antonio 9 ‘Grand Unified Theory’ 90, 137 Graves, Robert 132, 146, 149 – 152, great conjunctions 28, 46 Green Party 86 Greenwich Observatory 33 Grey Wolf 174 Grimassi, Raven 149 Grof, Stanislav 169 Grounded Theory 16 groupings (discursive) 12, 13, 16, 36, 138 Gurdjieff, Georges 132

guru

95

habitus 167, 169 Haeckel, Ernst 76, 77 – 80, 81, 83, 85, 87, 110, 111, 144 Halifax, Joan 161, 166, 169, 170, 172 Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 57, 154, 155, 157, 158 Hahnemann, Samuel 62 Harley Swift Dear 173 harmony (of the cosmos) 47, 71, 90, 109, 142 Harner, Michael 155, 161, 166, 170 – 173, 174, 175, 176, 177 ‘Harner method’ 172, 173 Harper Collins 168 Harpocrates 37 Harrison, Jane E. 145, 151 Hartmann, Johannes 60 Hasidism 119, 133 Haskalah 118 Hatch, Edwin 152 Hawking, Steven W. 90, 137 healing 16, 145, 165, 169 health 1, 14, 84, 88, 105, 134 healthcare system 12 heliocentric astronomy 27 Helios 40, 41 Helmont, Jan Baptist van 100 Henry, William 61 Henseling, Robert 47, 48 Hepburn, Alexa 8 Herbert, Nick 54 Herder, Johann Gottfried 36, 159 heredity 8, 9, 14 hermeneutical circle 16 hermeneutics 4, 6, 15, 56, 87, 155 Hermes Psychopompos 165 Hermes (Trismegistus) 36, 37, 63, 112 Hermeticism 34, 35, 36, 39, 53, 57, 59, 71, 100, 101, 146, 153, 154, 155 Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn 65 Herodotus 141 Herzl, Theodor 123 Heschel, Susannah 118, 122 Hey, Barbara 4, 5 Hinduism 103, 110, 119 Hirsi Ali, Ayaan 116

Index

historical discourse analysis 11, 12, 14, 15 historical epistemology 7, 8 historiography 2, 3, 6, 46, 57, 58, 110, 157, 158, 163, 181 Hjelm, Titus 2, 10 Hobbes, Thomas 30 Hodge, Beryl 149 Hodgen, Margret T. 140 holism 38, 48, 52, 54, 55, 74, 76, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 160 Holocaust 9, 116 ‘holography’ 154, 155 holy 127, 130 Holyoake, George 178 homosexuality 130, 151 horary astrology 31 horoscope / horoscopic astrology 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 41, 45, 51 Horus 37 Horwitz, Jonathan 161, 174, 175 Høst, Annette 160, 161, 175, 176 houses (in horoscopes) 28, 32 Hughes, Ted 151 Hugo, Victor 159 Human Genome Project 135, 136 humanities 2, 9, 42, 79, 88, 89, 180; see also Geisteswissenschaft Huron 144 Husserl, Edmund 7 Hutton, Ronald 139, 149, 153 Huysmans, Joris-Karl 130 hybridity 19, 87, 158 iatromathematics 57 idealism 110 ideology 14, 67, 69, 72, 74, 77, 122, 143, 178 illud tempus 162, 164, 166 Illuminati 36 Indian National Congress 107 individuation 71 industrialization 76, 150 infinity 74, 126, 168 Ingerman, Sandra 174, 177 initiation 36, 37, 65, 72, 94, 104, 107, 108, 109, 112, 164, 171, 172 insider and outsider 19, 139, 155

217

Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives 136 Institute for Cultural Research 132 institution / institutionalization 4, 11, 12, 13, 14, 36, 60, 97, 107, 110, 132, 150, 166, 167, 172, 177, 178, 180 instruments (scientific) 46 intellectual, the 20, 35, 36, 39, 40, 42, 48, 74, 87, 88, 103, 111, 115, 117, 124, 128, 130, 138, 140, 143, 153, 159, 162, 163 interdisciplinarity 157 interference 161 International Association for the History of Religion 127 Internet 12, 17, 73 interrogations (astrology) 13, 31, 50 Iroquois 144 irrationalism 35, 51, 53, 125, 151, 152, 159, 166 Ishtar 130 Isaiah 120 Isis 37, 99 Islam 126, 131, 132 isotopes 65 James I, king of England 30 James II, king of England 32 Jantsch, Erich 90 J. Craig Venter Science Foundation 136 Jeans, James 137 Jesuits 26, 144 Jesus 112, 120, 121 ‘Jewish question’ 117 Jones Nelson, Alissa 4, 180 journey of the soul 165, 171, 172, 173, 175, 176 Joyce, James 137 Judaism 40, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 151 Judge, William Q. 107 Junctinus (Francesco Giuntini) 29 Jung, Carl Gustav 49 – 52, 53, 54, 59, 70, 71, 72, 86, 91, 134, 143, 144, 151, 152, 154, 160, 162 Jupiter 37, 38, 147

218

Index

Kabbalah 100, 118, 121, 122, 124, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 151 Kabbalah Centre 133 Kafka, Franz 118, 124 Kaiser, David 55 Kant, Immanuel 7, 35, 47, 99 Kardec, Allen (Hyppolyte Leon Denizard Rivali) 97 karma 106, 109 Karo, Josef 122 Kelly, Karen 174, 175 Kepler, Johannes 26, 27, 28, 30, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 52, 53, 71, 100 Kerényi, Karl 143 Kerner, Justinus 45 Khan, Inayat 132 Kippenberg, Hans G. 76 Kircher, Athanasius 26 Klages, Ludwig 143 Klee, Paul 80 Kleinschrod, Franz 85 Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian 129 knowledge 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 21, 25, 26, 35, 36, 37, 38, 42, 47, 48, 50, 51, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 68, 69, 72, 74, 75, 76, 84, 88, 89, 94, 96, 98, 99, 102, 106, 111, 112, 115, 116, 117, 119, 129, 131, 134, 135, 137, 139, 152, 155, 158, 161, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 180, 181 – perfect knowledge 35, 36, 38, 74, 155 Kohl, Karl-Heinz 159 Körner, Christian Gottfried 41 Koschorke, Albrecht 19, 20 Koselleck, Reinhart 6, 35, 157 Kosmiker 143 Krech, Volkhard 124, 125 Krishna 112 Krishnamurti, Jiddu 93 Kulturkampf 85 Kunrath, Henry 100 Lacan, Jacques 7 Laclau, Ernesto 3, 4, 7 Lafitau, Joseph François 144 Lakota 172 Lamarck, Jean 78, 144

Landscheidt, Theodor 54, 55 Landwehr, Achim 7, 14 language 3, 6, 7, 8, 42, 71, 115, 128, 134, 135, 150, 154, 168 Laotse 120, 121 Laszlo, Ervin 89 law 1, 11, 12, 14, 19, 30, 39, 68, 88, 89, 90, 141, 142, 143, 144 Leadbeater, Charles 65 Leeuw, Gerardus van der 21, 115, 126 – 129, legitimization 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 20, 33, 50, 53, 61, 63, 69, 100, 112, 152, 153, 155, 161, 166, 171, 173, 176, 177 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 36, 88 Leland, Charles G. 146 – 149 Lessing, Doris 132 Lévi, Eliphas 100 Libavius, Andreas 60 libido 51, 143 Liebig, Justus von 105 life force 66, 67 life sciences 8, 85, 134, 135, 137, 138 light 28, 35, 37, 38, 58, 98, 101, 109, 112 ‘light workers’ 109 Lilly, William 31, 32 Lincoln, Abraham 97 Lincoln, Bruce 14 Linden, Stanton J. 59 linguistic analysis 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 15; see also text / textual analysis Linné, Carl von 77 literature 26, 67, 83, 98, 130, 132, 134, 146 Lockyer, Norman 63 Lomax, Alan 169 Lone Wolf 175 Louis XIII, king of France 29 Louis XIV, king of France 29, 30 LSD 55, 169 Luckmann, Thomas 3 Lyell, Charles 76 MacGregor Mathers, Samuel Liddel 130, 133 Machen, Arthus 73 machine 43, 73, 147 Macy, Joanna 170 Maenads 131 magia naturalis see natural magic

Index

magic 5, 14, 20, 30, 37, 44, 45, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 72, 73, 84, 85, 101, 102, 109, 115, 132, 146, 147, 149, 150, 155, 161, 163 magna mater 143 Mahatmas (in Theosophy) 95, 98, 103, 106 Maimonides 122 Maria Theresa, archduchess of Austria, queen of Hungary and Bohemia 33 Marie Louise, queen of Poland 29 Mars 37, 38, 51 Maryland Psychiatric Research Center 169 Massey, Gerald 152 Mata Hari 130, 131 mathematics 8, 26, 27, 28, 29, 34, 43, 44, 57, 60, 106, 134, 135 matriarchy 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 150, 151 matrilinearity 141, 150 matter 8, 26, 37, 44, 45, 54, 55, 61, 62, 64, 65, 68, 71, 72,78, 80, 81, 90, 93, 100, 101, 105, 110, 144 Matthaei, Heinrich 134 Maturana, Humberto 89 Mayer, Julius Robert 81 Mazarin, cardinal 29 Mead, George R.S. 152 meaning / meaning structures 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 25, 32, 38, 44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 59, 61, 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 112, 115, 119, 120, 125, 127, 131, 132, 137, 139, 146, 152, 155, 156, 161, 173, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182 mechanistic science / mechanistic models 26, 27, 29, 45, 48, 49, 65, 66, 68, 76, 81, 88, 160 media 3, 12, 14, 17, 18, 128, 178 medicine 12, 57, 58, 60, 149 mediumism 98, 103 Mercury 37, 38, 147 Mersenne, Marinus 30 Mesmer, Franz Anton 45, 66 Mesmerism 97 Messer, August 85 messianism 123 metals 44, 58, 62, 63, 71, 72, 74, 84 methodological solipsism 156, 157

219

Meuthen, Erich 35 microcosm and macrocosm 55 ‘Middle World’ 175, 176 Mille, Richard de 168 Milton, John 76 mind 42, 44, 45, 49, 54, 55, 62, 67, 72, 76, 77, 78, 81, 89, 90, 91, 92, 110, 155, 156, 169; see also body/mind problem minerals 58, 72, 101, 105 miracle / miraculous 43, 173, 175 Miracle Club 97 ‘modern’ 19, 56, 63, 68, 108, 132, 150, 180 modernization 21, 25, 147 ‘modernity’ 67, 115, 124, 128, 129, 131, 132, 139, 157, 162, 171, 178, 179, 182 Molitor, Franz 122 monadology 88 Mondrian, Piet 80 monism 16, 10, 67, 76 – 87, 93, 101, 120, 137 monotheism 40, 78, 93, 145 Montanari, Giovanni 28, 29 moon 37, 38, 51, 130, 163 moon goddess 150, 151 Moore, Francis 33 Moran, Bruce T. 58, 60 Moritz of Hesse-Kassel 60 morphogenetic fields 92 Morrisson, Mark S. 65, 70, 73, 102, 108 Moses 112, 120, 121 mosque 119 Mother Earth 73; see also Gaia mother goddess 141, 144 m 145, 146 Mouffe, Chantal 3, 4 Müller, Friedrich Max 102, 103 multiverse 55, 75 mundane astrology 31, 37, 50 Murray, Margaret 146, 149 muse 150 music 13, 130, 159, 165, 172 Myers, Frederic W.H. 7, 69 Myers, Jody 133, 134 mysteries 36, 45, 60, 112, 149; see also mysticism mystery religions 125, 150 mysterium fascinans 126 mysterium tremendum 126

220

Index

mysticism 21, 27, 28, 30, 47, 55, 59, 62, 63, 78, 81, 82, 83, 86, 88, 90, 93, 95, 97, 104, 108, 109, 112, 115 – 132, 133, 138, 150, 151, 153, 164, 165, 180 myth 14, 35, 41, 46, 50, 95, 96, 119, 142, 143, 144, 145, 149, 150, 151, 152, 162, 163, 164 nagual 167 Napoleon III 45 National Institutes of Health 134 National Socialism 143 Native American traditions 161 natural magic 39, 56, 57, 161 natural philosophy 26, 40, 43, 45, 60, 61 natural sciences 20, 42, 52, 68, 78, 83, 110, 180 natura naturans 59, 66, 76, 120 natura naturata 59 nature 7, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 37, 38, 40, 44, 45, 48, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 64, 66, 68, 71, 72, 73, 76 – 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87 – 93, 98, 101, 105, 120, 135, 141, 142, 145, 150, 152, 160, 161, 163, 170, 176, 180 – veneration of 20, 77, 87 nature-based spirituality 21, 87, 170, 176; see also nature, veneration of naturopathy 85 Naturphilosophie see natural philosophy Naturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (Natural Scientific Association) 42 Naumova, Gala 161 Naydler, Jeremy 68 Nederlands Genootschap voor Godsdienstgeschiedenis (Dutch Association for the History of Religion) 127 Needham, Joseph 73 neopaganism see paganism Neoplatonism 36, 57 ‘neo-shamanism’ 161 neo-Sufism 131, 132 neo-vitalism 66 ‘New Age’ 73, 74, 89, 90, 91, 108, 109, 153, 154, 155, 159, 160, 176, 177 ‘New Age science’ 88, 92 Newman, William R. 57, 58, 59, 60

New School for Social Research 170 newspapers 17, 30, 83, 97, 108 Newton, Isaac 40, 52, 53, 64, 65, 71, 88, 89, 100 Nietzsche, Friedrich 5, 110, 111, 120, 123, 140, 143 nihilism 123 Nirenberg, Marshall 134 Nobel Prize 12, 17, 52, 54, 80, 81, 89, 132 Noel, Daniel 165 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) 45 novel / novelists 69, 87, 95, 146, 149, 163, 165, 168 nuclear physics 73, 137 numerology 57 ‘numinous,’ the 47, 125, 126 Obama, Barack 136 objectivity 4, 5, 53, 156, 168 observatory (astronomical) 33, 46 occult 21, 50, 56, 57, 65, 66, 82, 104, 152 occulta philosophia see occult philosophy occultism 49, 56, 57, 66, 67, 72, 73, 86, 87, 97, 98, 100, 102, 104, 117, 130, 152, 153 occult philosophy 26, 57 ‘occult sciences’ 20, 56, 57, 58, 59 Ocnus 140 oeconomia naturae 77 Occidentalism 116, 120, 121, 123, 125, 131, 132 Ojai Foundation 169, 170, 177 Olcott, Henry Steel 97, 98, 103, 107 ‘Old Europe’ 151 ontology 9, 12, 155 Oppenheimer, Robert 137 Orestes 141 organic processes 55, 67, 78, 79, 89, 100 organisms 76, 77, 79, 87, 90, 105, 109, 120, 144, 151 Orientalism 102, 108, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 121, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 132, 138 Orpheus 112, 159, 165 Ørsted, Hans Christian 99, 100 Osiris 37 Ostjude 118 Ostwald, Wilhelm 78, 79, 80 – 85 Otto, Rudolf 21, 115, 125, 126, 127, 129, 131

Index

pagan / paganism 17, 35, 70, 106, 131, 139, 145, 146, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 161, 176, 180 ‘pagan studies’ 155, 156, 158 painting 68, 70, 80, 163, 164 pamphlets 31, 65 pantheism 20, 68, 76, 78, 154 Panzer, Friedrich 148 Paracelsianism 60 Paracelsus 81, 100, 101 ‘paraphysics’ 66 ‘parapsychology’ 66 Partridge, John 32 Patai, Raphael 151 patriarchy 140, 142, 145 patrilinearity 141, 150 Pauli, Wolfgang 52 – 54, 70, 71, 72, 92, 154 Pauli Principle 53 Peat, F. David 54 perennialism 156 performative arts 139 persecution 156, 163 Peuckert, Will-Erich 73 Pfaff, Johann W. 45, 46, 102 phenomenology of religion 6, 125, 127, 128 Philosopher’s Stone 71, 72, 84 photography 83 phrenology 61 physiology 66, 68, 101, 105 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 27 Pirogoff, Nikolay Ivanovich 105 Placidus (P. Placido de Titis) 27, 28, 29, 32 planetary spheres 26, 28, 29, 44 planets 30, 34, 37, 39, 44, 45, 51, 163 plants 80, 92, 155, 172, 175 Plato 95, 112, 128, 152, 165 Platonic academies 36 Platonic love 151 Platonism 26, 27, 28, 30, 101, 119, 129, 146 Plotinus 126, 128 pluralism 131, 156 poetry 40, 43, 44, 45, 69, 70, 87, 131, 133, 146, 149, 150, 151, 152, 169 polemics 9, 32, 34, 45, 46, 56, 57, 58, 60, 78, 99, 101, 102, 106, 116, 122, 157, 160 politics 1, 3, 4, 11, 12, 13, 30, 31, 35, 36, 40, 57, 80, 81, 84, 87, 89, 93, 102, 103, 108,

221

115, 116, 122, 123, 124, 127, 137, 140, 142, 163, 178, 179 polytheism 78 Pope, Alexander 136 popularization 17, 48, 54, 77, 80, 83, 85, 94, 104, 115, 116, 137, 146, 153, 154, 161 positivism 72, 120, 160 postcolonialism 4 poststructuralism 4, 8, 10, 158 Potter, Jonathan 8, 9 power (discursive) 3, 4, 5, 9, 135, 136, 154, 180, 182 power (physics, philosophy of nature, etc.) 16, 29, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 47, 48, 49, 51, 56, 57, 59, 66, 74, 75, 78, 79, 81, 92, 98, 101, 120, 121, 128, 140, 145, 155, 167, 172, 176 power animals 172, 176 prayer 82, 119 precession of the equinoxes 51 predestination 163 predictions (astrological) 27, 29, 31, 32 ‘pre-modern’ 19 Prigogine, Ilya 54, 89, 90 prima materia see primary matter primary matter 17, 61, 64, 71 ‘primitive religion’ 145 Primum Mobile 26, 28, 29 Principe, Lawrence M. 58, 59 prisca theologia 95 procession 129 professional 19, 20, 30, 31, 56, 88, 180 professionalization 83, 117, 180 prognostications (astrological) 28, 29, 50 progress 34, 56, 57, 64, 70, 74, 75, 82, 135, 140, 142, 178 proto hyle see primary matter protyle 64, 65 Proudfoot Edgar, Carol 172 Prout, William 64, 65, 67 ‘pseudo’ (knowledge, science, etc.) 20, 34, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 83, 86, 88, 111, 180, 181 Psilopoulos, Dionysious 152 psyche 50, 51, 53, 71, 144, 169, 176 psychedelic experiences 73, 154, 155 psychoanalysis 67, 72, 73, 124

222

Index

psychologization 36, 37, 38, 43, 50, 68, 144 psychology 16, 17, 25, 27, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 59, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 86, 91, 97, 101, 115, 143, 154, 160, 169, 180 psychopathology 12 purification 71, 86 Pythagoras 112 quackery 60 qualitative principles in science 26, 27, 28, 45, 56 quantum computation 73 quantum mechanics / quantum physics 52, 53, 54, 55, 73, 74, 88, 92, 93, 154 Qur’an 116 rabbinical Judaism 122 race 98, 107, 116 radiochemistry 73 Rama 122 Ranke, Leopold von 149 Ranke Graves, Robert von see Graves, Robert rationality 20, 33, 36, 40, 45, 47, 53, 56, 57, 58, 85, 87, 108, 118, 122, 125, 140, 142, 143, 150, 152, 166, 178 rationalization of the cosmos 38, 45, 76 realism 9 reason 34 35, 36, 37, 45, 115, 135, 139; see also rationality recapitulation, theory of 144 redemption 70, 121 reductionism 47, 72, 74, 110, 127 Reformation 26, 74 Regardie, Israel 72 Regiomontanus 28, 32 Reisigl, Martin 11 Reitzenstein, Richard 152 relativism 9, 168 religion passim – as sui generis 1, 13, 126, 127 – definition of 13, 14 religious studies see academic study of religion resurrection 163 revelation 59, 94, 104, 109, 119, 123, 136, 154, 163, 171

revolution 84, 142 146 Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg 8 rhetoric 8, 35, 57, 60, 154, 171, 178, 180 Riccioli, P. Giambattista 28 Richelieu, cardinal 29 ritual 14, 37, 72, 87, 116, 128, 139, 147, 151, 159, 161, 170, 171, 172 Roller, Wolfgang 58 Romanes, George John 69 Romanticism 38, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 67, 68, 76, 79, 83, 87, 94, 99, 110, 111, 115, 125, 127, 128, 146 Roosen, Adelheid 116 Rorty, Richard 1, 2, 20 Rosenberger, Erwin 123 Rosenkreutz, Christian 36 Rosicrucianism 36, 37, 71, 87, 94, 95, 100 Roth, Joseph 118 Routh, Harald Victor 69, 76 routinization 166, 170, 172, 177 Royal Institution London 61 Royal Society 55, 63 sacred 50, 72, 76, 120, 125, 126, 127, 129, 135, 138, 144, 160, 161, 164, 170, 174, 175 Said, Edward 4, 117 Salome 130, 131 Śankara 126 Sanskrit 104 Sapere Aude see Westcott, Wynn W. Sarasin, Philipp 6, 7, 135 satire 32, 33 Saturn 37, 38 Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies 160, 174 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 40, 43, 66, 68, 78, 82, 90 Schiller, Friedrich 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 80 Schlegel, August Wilhelm 43, 44, 45 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst 47, 125, 127 Schmieder, Karl Christoph 58 Schmitt, Charles 57 scholasticism 26, 27 Scholem, Gershom 21, 115, 118, 119, 122 – 124, 133

Index

Schrödinger, Erwin 134 Schumacher College 89 Schuon, Frithjof 132 Schuré, Edouard 112 Schütz, Alfred 3 science passim; see also exact sciences; natural sciences – definition of 14 scientific revolution 57, 60 scientification of religion 1, 18, 21, 49, 52, 134, 137, 139, 177, 180 Scott, Joan W. 4, 116, 117 Scripps Research Institute 136 Sebottendorff, Rudolf von 132 secrets / secrecy 30, 35, 36, 37, 44, 57, 71, 72, 96, 99, 100, 101, 105, 107, 129, 137, 147, 149, 150, 164, 167 secret societies 36, 95 secular, the 20, 21, 38, 56, 70, 103, 124, 130, 178, 179, 180 secularization 1, 21, 178, 179, 182 secularism 21, 25, 124, 178, 179 Sedgwick, Mark 131, 132 Seidr 161 sex 4, 5, 98, 130, 142, 145, 151 sexuality 116, 129, 131, 150 Shah, Idries 132 shamanism 16, 17, 21, 125, 154, 158, 159 – 178, 180 Shambala 95 Sheldrake, Rupert 54, 92 shtetl 118 Sidgwick, Henry 69 Sigui 169 Silberer, Herbert 70 Simmonite, W.J. 31 Sivers, Marie von 111, 112 Smith, Jonathan Z. 17, 18 social Darwinism 80 Society for Psychical Research 69, 96, 98 Society for Sufi Studies 132 Society for Understanding Fundamental Ideas 132 Socrates 151, 152 Somé, Malidoma 170

223

soul 16, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 76, 78, 85, 86, 95, 97, 105, 106, 119, 120, 121, 134, 144, 165 socialism 3, 178 sociology 2, 3, 8, 15, 19, 91, 127, 158, 166 sociology of knowledge 3, 4, 10, 135 spells 44, 147, 149 Spinoza, Baruch 78 ‘spirit helpers’ 172, 176 spirits 44, 96, 97, 147, 149, 172, 176 spiritualism 67, 68, 78, 80, 96, 97 spirituality 14, 21, 25, 65, 67, 69, 70, 76, 87, 89, 91, 102, 104, 108, 124, 133, 139, 152, 155, 170 Stäheli, Urs 11 Starhawk 170 Stirner, Max 111 Stone Age 150 Storm, Hyemeyohsts 173 string theory 55 Strindberg, August 81 Struck, Hermann 118 Sufism 119, 131, 132, 133 sun 30, 37, 38, 39, 41, 47, 51, 104, 105, 163 Sun Bear 173 sun spots 105 supernaturalism 46, 87, 111, 155, 166, 171, 173 ‘superstition’ 33, 34, 43, 47, 51, 56, 63, 82, 100, 105 Surette, Leon 152 Surya, G.W. see Weitzer, Demeter Georgievitz sustainability 89 Suttner, Berta von 80 Swedenborg, Emanuel 81, 97 Swift, Jonathan 32, 33 synthetic biology 136, 137 systems theory 88, 89, 90, 91 synchronicity 52, 53, 54, 92, 154, 163 synergetics 90 Szabó, Lásló E. 54 Tattoni, Antonio 28 Taussig-Rubbo, Mateo 179 Taylor, Bron 87 Taylor, Charles 178 technology 11, 13, 14, 17, 84, 129

224

Index

teleology 90, 105 telescope 44 television 12, 17 texts / textual analysis 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 139; see also linguistic analysis theater 108, 139 theology 1, 57, 91, 93, 99, 100, 117, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 135, 147, 152, 155, 156 ‘Theory of Everything’ 74; see also ‘Grand Unified Theory’ theory of relativity 52, 55, 85 Theosophical Society 17, 21, 49, 65, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 116, 132, 133 Theosophy 49, 50, 51, 65, 67, 86, 94 – 112, 121, 129, 133 thermodynamics 89 Thich Nhat Hanh 169 third, the 19, 115, 130, 142 third space 19, 87, 115, 118, 122, 123, 125, 132, 139 Thomas, Keith 57 Thoreau, Henry David 79 Thot 37 Tikkun 123 time travel 74 Tingley, Katherine 107, 108, 110 Torah 123 Torfing, Jacob 3 Toronto Theosophical Society 107 Traditionalism 26, 133 trance 154, 155, 160, 161, 171 transcendentalism 79 transmutation 58, 61, 63, 72, 73, 74, 75, 86 transmutational alchemy 58 triads 19, 20, 125 truth / truth claims 5, 6, 9, 18, 20, 33, 35, 44, 79, 99, 100, 103, 104, 123, 130, 137, 148, 158, 163, 164, 170, 181 Turner, Frank Miller 69 Tylor, Edward B. 140 unconscious, the 50, 134 United Lodge of Theosophists 109, 110 unities 12, 13, 57, 138, 145, 181

universe 38, 42, 45, 46, 54, 75, 77, 78, 79, 90, 92, 101, 103, 105, 134, 135, 137, 164; see also cosmos unveiling see veil / veiling Uranus 144 Urban, Martina 120 Valiente, Doreen 149 values 1, 86, 89, 92, 103, 119, 135, 153, 163 Vaughan, Thomas 100 veil / veiling 99, 104, 116, 117, 129, 130, 131, 148 Venter, J. Craig 135 – 137 Venus 37, 38, 147 Vickers, Brian 57, 59 Victorian period 69, 96, 129, 139, 153 Villefranche, Jean-Baptiste Morin de 29 vitalism 16, 20, 64 – 70, 73, 76, 79, 80, 92, 93, 100, 101, 104, 120, 135, 160 Vitebsky, Piers 161 Vogt, J.K. 45 Voltaire 34, 105 Wade, Nicholas 136 Walkowitz, Judith R. 131 Wallace, Alfred Russel 69 Wallenstein, Albrecht von 41 Ward, James 69 Watts, Alan 73 Weber, Max 48, 76, 166, 173, 177 Weinberg, Steven 54 Weitzer, Demeter Georgievitz 86 Welling, Georg 37 Westcott, Wynn W. 65 Whewell, William 62 Whistling Elk, Agnes 172 White, Hayden 6, 157 Wicca 161, 176 Wilde, Oscar 130 Wille, Bruno 83 William III, king of England 32, 33 Wissenschaft des Judentums 117, 118, 122 witchcraft 21, 56, 139, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150 Wodak, Ruth 11 Wolf, Immanuel 117 wonder 76, 135

Index

world ice theory 48 world soul 45, 46, 49, 52, 76 world spirit 119 Wright, Thomas 102 writing culture debate 168 Yaqui 167, 168 Yates, Frances A. 57 Yelle, Robert 179 Zadkiel 31

Zander, Helmut 56, 108, 110, 111, 112 Zantop, Susanne 117 Zeiß, Carl 46 Zeus 145 Zimmermann, Rolf-Christian 35 Zionism 122, 123, 124 zodiac / zodiacal signs 28, 29, 51 Zunz, Leopold 117, 122 Zweig, Arnold 118, 119, 122

225