Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism written by Glenn Alexander Magee and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-18 with total page 820 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mysticism and esotericism are two intimately related strands of the Western tradition. Despite their close connections, however, scholars tend to treat them separately. Whereas the study of Western mysticism enjoys a long and established history, Western esotericism is a young field. The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism examines both of these traditions together. The volume demonstrates that the roots of esotericism almost always lead back to mystical traditions, while the work of mystics was bound up with esoteric or occult preoccupations. It also shows why mysticism and esotericism must be examined together if either is to be understood fully. Including contributions by leading scholars, this volume features essays on such topics as alchemy, astrology, magic, Neoplatonism, Kabbalism, Renaissance Hermetism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, numerology, Christian theosophy, spiritualism, and much more. This Handbook serves as both a capstone of contemporary scholarship and a cornerstone of future research.
Download or read book Western Mysticism written by Cuthbert Butler and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 Mysticism written by Butler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renewed interest in the spiritual, with an increasing number of people today wishing to incorporate the contemplative in their active lives, prompts the reissue of this classic work, a doctrine that is at once elevated and practical. The writings are meant to be studied from three distinct points of view: religious philosophy, material for the study of those states between mind and body such as ecstasy and trance, and for the sake of their mysticism. Drawn from the writings and teachings of Saint Augustine, Saint Gregory and Saint Bernard, the writings form a coordinated body of doctrine with what three great teachers of mystical theology in the Western Church have written concerning their own religious experience and the theories they based on it. In addition, the book discusses such important topics as speculative contemplation, what mysticism is, the characteristics of Western mysticism, the practical, and the contrasts between the contemplative and active lives. No student of mysticism can possibly afford to neglect a volume so full of valuable suggestions and real insight into spiritual conditions.
Download or read book Western Mysticism written by Cuthbert Butler and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 Secret History of Western Sexual Mysticism written by Arthur Versluis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-03-25 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to reveal the history of Western sexual mysticism • Reveals the secret sexual practices that have been used since ancient Greece to achieve mystical union with God • Details the sects and individuals who transmitted the radical sexual practices that orthodox Christianity never completely silenced • Distinguishes between sexual magic and sexual mysticism Beginning with the ancient Greek Mystery traditions, Gnosticism, and the practices in early Christianity, Arthur Versluis uncovers the secret line of Western sexual mysticism that, like the Tantra of the East, seeks transcendence or union with God through sexual practices. Throughout antiquity, and right into the present day, sexuality has played an important, if largely hidden, role in religious traditions and practices. This includes not only Christian but also kabbalistic and hermetic alchemical currents of sexual mysticism, many discussed together here for the first time. In the Mystery tradition of hieros gamos (sacred marriage) and the Gnostic tradition of spiritual marriage, we see the possibility of divine union in which sexual union is the principal sign or symbol. Key to these practices is the inner or archetypal union of above and below, the intermingling of the revelatory divine world with the mundane earthly one. Versluis shows that these secret currents of sexual mysticism helped fuel the rise of the troubadours and their erotic doctrine, the esoteric teachings of Jacob Böhme in the late 16th century, the 19th-century utopian communities of John Humphrey Noyes and Thomas Lake Harris, the free love movement of the 20th century, and the modern writings of Denis de Rougemont and Alan Watts.
Download or read book Mystical Consciousness written by Louis Roy, O.P. and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a philosophical account of ordinary consciousness as a step toward understanding mystical consciousness. Presupposing a living interaction between meditation and thinking, the work draws on Western and Japanese thinkers to develop a philosophy of religion that is friendly to the experience of meditators and that can explore such themes as emptiness, nothingness, and the self. Western thinkers considered include Plotinus, Eckhart, Schleiermacher, Heidegger, Brentano, Husserl, Sartre, and Lonergan; and Japanese thinkers referenced include Nishitani, Hisamatsu, and Suzuki. All employed centering prayer, Zen, or other forms of mental concentration. Particular emphasis is placed on the work of twentieth-century Catholic philosopher Bernard Lonergan, whose writings on consciousness can inform an understanding of mysticism.
Download or read book Western Mysticism written by Dom Cuthbert Butler and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-04-19 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extracts from the writings of three of Western Christianity's most revered teachers of mystical theology express what they themselves wrote and thought about their mysticism.
Download or read book On Becoming God Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self written by Ben Morgan and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do we have to conceive of ourselves as isolated individuals, inevitably distanced from other people and from whatever we might mean when we use the word God? On Becoming God offers an innovative approach to the history of the modern Western self by looking at human identity as something people do together rather than on their own. Ben Morgan argues that the shared practices of human identity can be understood as ways of managing and keeping at bay the impulses and experiences associated with the word God. The "self" is a way of doing things, or of not doing things, with "God." The book draws on phenomenology (Heidegger), gender studies (Beauvoir, Butler) and contemporary neuroscience to present a new approach to the history of modern identity. It surveys existing approaches to modern selfhood (Foucault, Charles Taylor) and proposes an alternative account by investigating late medieval mysticism, in particular texts written in Germany by Meister Eckhart and others in the same milieu. Reactions to the condemnation of Meister Eckhart's teaching for heresy in 1329 offer a microcosm of the circumstances in which something like the modern self arises as people change their behavior toward others, toward themselves, and toward what they call "God." The book makes Meister Eckhart and his contemporaries appear as our contemporaries by changing the assumptions with which we approach our own identity. To make this change requires a revision of current vocabularies for approaching ourselves, and in particular the vocabulary and habits inherited from psychoanalysis. The book finishes by exploring the parallel between late medieval confessors and their spiritual charges, and late-nineteenth-century psychoanalysts and their patients. The result is a renewed vision of the Freud's project of finding a vocabulary for acknowledging and nurturing our everyday commitments to others and to our spiritual longings.
Download or read book Mysticism East and West written by Rudolf Otto and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Christian Mysticism East and West written by Maria Jaoudi and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores themes of transformation, wholeness, and healing as presented by both Eastern and Western mystics, and how their ideas parallel the global insights found in Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, and Buddhism.
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.
Download or read book Mysticism written by Denise Lardner Carmody and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1996 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defining the mystical experience in terms of a direct encounter with ultimate reality, an examination of the mystical experience as it has been found in six major world religions illuminates the lives and beliefs of each tradition's outstanding mystics. UP.
Download or read book Western Mysticism Second Edition with Afterthoughts written by Cuthbert Butler and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2001-09-18 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lamps of Western Mysticism written by Arthur Edward Waite and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Western Esotericism A Guide for the Perplexed written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 225 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.
