Download or read book Esotericism Religion and Nature written by Arthur Versluis and published by North American Academic. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking collection, leading scholars in this emerging field explore how nature can be understood in a wide range of esoteric religious contexts. Included here are articles on subjects ranging from alchemy and panpsychism to music, Appalachian folk magic, and new religions. Esotericism, Religion, and Nature illuminates the way that nature is understood by figures and in traditions that historically have not always been recognized or well understood. Taken together, these articles shed new light on the connections between humanity, nature, and religion. Authors include Joscelyn Godwin, Wouter Hanegraaff, Lee Irwin, Richard Smoley, Arthur Versluis, M. E. Warlick, and many others. The second in a series of volumes on Western esotericism, this book emerged from international academic conferences held by the Association for the Study of Esotericism (www.aseweb.org). Edited by Arthur Versluis, Claire Fanger, Lee Irwin, and Melinda Phillips
Download or read book The Problem of Disenchantment written by Egil Asprem and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Max Weber famously characterized the ongoing process of intellectualization and rationalization that separates the natural world from the divine (by excluding magic and value from the realm of science, and reason and fact from the realm of religion) as the "disenchantment of the world." Egil Asprem argues for a conceptual shift in how we view this key narrative of modernity. Instead of a sociohistorical process of disenchantment that produces increasingly rational minds, Asprem maintains that the continued presence of "magic" and "enchantment" in people's everyday experience of the world created an intellectual problem for those few who were socialized to believe that nature should contain no such incalculable mysteries. Drawing on a wide range of early twentieth-century primary sources from theoretical physics, occultism, embryology, radioactivity, psychical research, and other fields, Asprem casts the intellectual life of high modernity as a synchronic struggle across conspicuously different fields that shared surprisingly similar intellectual problems about value, meaning, and the limits of knowledge.
Download or read book Religion and the Order of Nature written by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1996 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The most comprehensive and intelligent treatment of [religious ecology]....Nasr is one of the major intellects of our day."--Huston Smith, University of California, Berkeley.
Download or read book Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion written by International Association for the History of Religions. Congress and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 1998 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is based upon papers read during the innovative section "Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion" organized at the 17th International Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) in Mexico City, August 5-12, 1995. The section was created in order to fill a long-standing hiatus in the academic study of religions: whereas phenomena such as gnosticism and hermetism in antiquity, and even the occult sciences of that period, have long been recognized as subjects worthy of serious investigation, the history of similar and related phenomena in more recent periods has hardly received the same measure of scholarly attention and recognition. The present volume is devoted to the academic emancipation of these areas as constituting a legitimate domain of research, which may be referred to by the generic label "western esotericism". Preceded by an introductory essay on the birth of this new discipline in the study of religion, the volume provides a sample of current research in the field and devotes special attention to some central methodological questions.
Download or read book New Age Religion and Western Culture written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-09-24 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a spectacular rise of the New Age movement and an ever-increasing interest in its beliefs and manifestations. This fascinating work presents the first-ever comprehensive analysis of New Age Religion and its historical backgrounds, thus providing the reader with a means of orientation in the bewildering variety of the movement. Making extensive use of primary sources, the author thematically analyses New Age beliefs from the perspective of the study of religions. While looking at the historical backgrounds of the movement, he convincingly argues that its foundations were laid by so-called western esoteric traditions during the Renaissance. Hanegraaff finally shows how the modern New Age movement emerged from the increasing secularization of those esoteric traditions during the 19th century. This ground-breaking publication is compulsive reading for all those involved or interested in the New Age movement.
Download or read book Western Esotericism A Guide for the Perplexed written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western esotericism has been a pervasive presence in Western culture from late antiquity to the present day, but until recently it was largely ignored by scholars and surrounded by misconceptions and prejudice. This accessible guide provides readers with the basic knowledge and tools that will allow them to find their way in this bewildering but fascinating field. What is it that unites phenomena as diverse as ancient gnosticism and hermetism, the "occult sciences" of astrology, alchemy, and magic, rosicrucianism, as well as Christian theosophy, occultism, spiritualism, and the contemporary New Age spiritualities? What can the study of them teach us about our common cultural and intellectual heritage, and what is it that makes them relevant to contemporary concerns? How do we distinguish reliable historical knowledge from legends and fictions about esoteric traditions? These and many other questions are answered clearly and succinctly, so that the reader can find his way into the labyrinth of Western esotericism and out of it again.
Download or read book Magic and Mysticism written by Arthur Versluis and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides overview, from antiquity onwards, on various Western religious esoteric movements. This book includes topics such as: alchemy, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy and more.
Download or read book Western Esotericism written by Kocku von Stuckrad and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Esotericism is the search for an absolute but hidden knowledge accessed through mystical vision, the mediation of higher beings, or personal experience. In Western cultural history esoteric approaches to religion have often been in conflict with - and suffered at the hands of - more established forms of religious belief and practice. 'Western Esotericism' presents a very broad and engaging history of the people and ideas which have shaped occult history from antiquity to today. Throughout the history of esotericism the dynamic of concealment and revelation has characterized the search for secret knowledge. Pursued both publically and privately, esotericism has come to influence more mainstream religious practice and culture and has significantly shaped our understanding of modernity. Today, esotericism continues to be practised by a range of both established and new religious movements. 'Western Esotericism' presents the essential guide to one of the most fascinating, provocative, and sustained of religious traditions.
Download or read book Wisdom s Children written by Arthur Versluis and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1999-10-14 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an in-depth introduction to the Christian theosophic tradition that began with Jacob Bo¬hme, bringing us into a startling new world of Christian experiential spirituality that is the Christian equivalent of Sufism and Kabbalism.
Download or read book Esotericism and the Academy written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-19 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The neglected history of how intellectuals since the Renaissance have approached ideas of the occult which challenged biblical religion.
Download or read book Essays on Women in Western Esotericism written by Amy Hale and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-21 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first collection to feature histories of women in Western Esotericism while also highlighting women’s scholarship. In addition to providing a critical examination of important and under researched figures in the history of Western Esotericism, these fifteen essays also contribute to current debates in the study of esotericism about the very nature of the field itself. The chapters are divided into four thematic sections that address current topics in the study of esotericism: race and othering, femininity, power and leadership and embodiment. This collection not only adds important voices to the story of Western Esotericism, it hopes to change the way the story is told.
Download or read book Esotericism Art and Imagination written by Arthur Versluis and published by . This book was released on 2016-09 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, c2008.
Download or read book Esotericism in African American Religious Experience written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Esotericism in African American Religious Experience: “There is a Mystery” ..., Stephen C. Finley, Margarita Simon Guillory, and Hugh R. Page, Jr. assemble twenty groundbreaking essays that provide a rationale and parameters for Africana Esoteric Studies (AES): a new trans-disciplinary enterprise focused on the investigation of esoteric lore and practices in Africa and the African Diaspora. The goals of this new field — while akin to those of Religious Studies, Africana Studies, and Western Esoteric Studies — are focused on the impulses that give rise to Africana Esoteric Traditions (AETs) and the ways in which they can be understood as loci where issues such as race, ethnicity, and identity are engaged; and in which identity, embodiment, resistance, and meaning are negotiated.
Download or read book Western Esotericism written by Nicholas Goodricke-Clarke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Esotericism is the search for an absolute but hidden knowledge accessed through mystical vision, the mediation of higher beings, or personal experience. In Western cultural history esoteric approaches to religion have often been in conflict with - and suffered at the hands of - more established forms of religious belief and practice. 'Western Esotericism' presents a very broad and engaging history of the people and ideas which have shaped occult history from antiquity to today. Throughout the history of esotericism the dynamic of concealment and revelation has characterized the search for secret knowledge. Pursued both publically and privately, esotericism has come to influence more mainstream religious practice and culture and has significantly shaped our understanding of modernity. Today, esotericism continues to be practised by a range of both established and new religious movements. 'Western Esotericism' presents the essential guide to one of the most fascinating, provocative, and sustained of religious traditions.
Download or read book The Return of the Perennial Philosophy written by John Holman and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligent and perceptive, this examination of the universal truths inherent in all cultures and religions is a powerful, scholarly analysis of Western esotericism’s deepest teachings. John Holman contends that the perennial philosophy is not only at the heart of all world religions, but also of all major schools of thought and writings by the great thinkers and philosophers—no matter how diverse the presentation of their perceived truths. In an accessible way, Holman sheds light on a number of esoteric topics including: The Absolute and the One, the Great Chain of Being, the Philosopher’s Stone, the Seven Spirits, the evolution of consciousness and the Eternal Now—paying particular attention to the subject of time. This thought-provoking book helps us to develop a better understanding of the nature of reality and our potential for transcendence—and revolutionizes the debate on the perennial philosophy.
Download or read book Western Esotericism written by Antoine Faivre and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-10-06 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely received in France, this brief, comprehensive introduction to Western esotericism by the founder of the field is at last available in English. A historical and pedagogical guide, the book is written primarily for students and novices. In clear, precise language, author Antoine Faivre provides an overview of Western esoteric currents since late antiquity. The bulk of the book is laid out chronologically, from ancient and medieval sources (Alexandrian hermetism, gnosticism, neoplatonism), through the Renaissance up to the present time. Its coverage includes spiritual alchemy, Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, Christian theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Illuminism, 'mystical' Free-Masonry, the Occultist current, Theosophical and Anthroposophical Societies, the Traditionalist School, and 'esotericism' in contemporary initiatic societies and in New Religious Movements. Faivre explores how these currents are connected, and refers to where they appear in art and literature. The book concludes with an annotated bibliography, which makes it an essential resource for beginners and scholars alike.
Download or read book The Western Esoteric Traditions written by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western esotericism has now emerged as an academic study in its own right, combining spirituality with an empirical observation of the natural world while also relating the humanity to the universe through a harmonious celestial order. This introduction to the Western esoteric traditions offers a concise overview of their historical development. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke explores these traditions, from their roots in Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism, and Gnosticism in the early Christian era up to their reverberations in today's scientific paradigms. While the study of Western esotericism is usually confined to the history of ideas, Goodrick-Clarke examines the phenomenon much more broadly. He demonstrates that, far from being a strictly intellectual movement, the spread of esotericism owes a great deal to geopolitics and globalization. In Hellenistic culture, for example, the empire of Alexander the Great, which stretched across Egypt and Western Asia to provinces in India, facilitated a mixing of Eastern and Western cultures. As the Greeks absorbed ideas from Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia, they gave rise to the first esoteric movements. From the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, post-Reformation spirituality found expression in theosophy, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. Similarly, in the modern era, dissatisfaction with the hegemony of science in Western culture and a lack of faith in traditional Christianity led thinkers like Madame Blavatsky to look East for spiritual inspiration. Goodrick-Clarke further examines Modern esoteric thought in the light of new scientific and medical paradigms along with the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. This book traces the complete history of these movements and is the definitive account of Western esotericism.
