31 Facts About Western esotericism

Western esotericism, known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to categorise a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society.

Idea that these varying movements could be categorised together under the rubric of "Western esotericism" developed in the late eighteenth century, but these esoteric currents were largely ignored as a subject of academic enquiry.

The academic study of Western esotericism only emerged in the late twentieth century, pioneered by scholars like Frances Yates and Antoine Faivre.

In short, 'Western esotericism' is a modern scholarly construct, not an autonomous tradition that already existed out there and merely needed to be discovered by historians.

Concept of "Western esotericism" represents a modern scholarly construct rather than a pre-existing, self-defined tradition of thought.

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Indeed, according to historian of esotericism Wouter J Hanegraaff was born on 1961, and rejection of "occult" topics was seen as a "crucial identity marker" for any intellectuals seeking to affiliate themselves with the academy.

The emphasis on Western esotericism was nevertheless primarily devised to distinguish the field from a universal esotericism.

Scholars nevertheless recognise that various non-Western traditions have exerted "a profound influence" over Western esotericism, citing the prominent example of the Theosophical Society's incorporation of Hindu and Buddhist concepts like reincarnation into its doctrines.

Scholars broadly agree on which currents of thought fall within a category of Western esotericism—ranging from ancient Gnosticism and Hermetism through to Rosicrucianism and the Kabbalah and on to more recent phenomenon such as the New Age movement.

Nevertheless, Western esotericism itself remains a controversial term, with scholars specialising in the subject disagreeing as to how best to define it.

Some scholars have used Western esotericism to refer to "inner traditions" concerned with a "universal spiritual dimension of reality, as opposed to the merely external religious institutions and dogmatic systems of established religions.

Western esotericism added that these Western esoteric currents all shared a core characteristic, "a claim to gnosis, or direct spiritual insight into cosmology or spiritual insight", and accordingly he suggested that these currents could be referred to as "Western gnostic" just as much as "Western esoteric".

Western esotericism noted that, even if such a true and absolute nature of reality really existed, it would only be accessible through "esoteric" spiritual practices, and could not be discovered or measured by the "exoteric" tools of scientific and scholarly enquiry.

That approach understands Western esotericism as comprising those world views that eschew a belief in instrumental causality and instead adopt a belief that all parts of the universe are interrelated without a need for causal chains.

Faivre claimed that Western esotericism was "identifiable by the presence of six fundamental characteristics or components", four of which were "intrinsic" and thus vital to defining something as being esoteric, while the other two were "secondary" and thus not necessarily present in every form of Western esotericism.

Hanegraaff claimed that Faivre's approach entailed "reasoning by prototype" in that it relied upon already having a "best example" of what Western esotericism should look like, against which other phenomena then had to be compared.

The scholar of Western esotericism Kocku von Stuckrad was born on 1966 and noted that Faivre's taxonomy was based on his own areas of specialism—Renaissance Hermeticism, Christian Kabbalah, and Protestant Theosophy—and that it was thus not based on a wider understanding of Western esotericism as it has existed throughout history, from the ancient world to the contemporary period.

Western esotericism stated that "on the most general level of analysis", esotericism represented "the claim of higher knowledge", a claim to possessing "wisdom that is superior to other interpretations of cosmos and history" that serves as a "master key for answering all questions of humankind.

Hanegraaff proposed an additional definition that "Western esotericism" is a category that represents "the academy's dustbin of rejected knowledge.

Origins of Western esotericism are in the Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean, then part of the Roman Empire, during Late Antiquity.

Western esotericism's work was built on by the German Johannes Reuchlin who authored an influential text on the subject, De Arte Cabbalistica.

Western esotericism's work gained significant support in both areas over the following centuries.

Western esotericism's writings focused on his visionary travels to heaven and hell and his communications with angels, claiming that the visible, materialist world parallels an invisible spiritual world, with correspondences between the two that do not reflect causal relations.

Academic study of Western esotericism was pioneered in the early 20th century by historians of the ancient world and the European Renaissance, who came to recognise that—even though previous scholarship had ignored it—the effect pre-Christian and non-rational schools of thought on European society and culture was worthy of academic attention.

The work of Yates in particular, most notably her 1964 book Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, has been cited as "an important starting-point for modern scholarship on Western esotericism", succeeding "at one fell swoop in bringing scholarship onto a new track" by bringing wider awareness of the effect that esoteric ideas had on modern science.

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Western esotericism remained in the chair until 2002, when he was succeeded by Jean-Pierre Brach.

The second was that Western esotericism is a trans-disciplinary field, the study of which did not fit clearly within any particular discipline.

Many scholars of Western esotericism have come to be regarded as respected intellectual authorities by practitioners of various esoteric traditions.

Many Western esotericism scholars have sought to emphasise that Western esotericism is not a single object, but practitioners who read this scholarship have begun to regard it and think of it as a singular object, with which they affiliate themselves.

In 2013, Asprem and Granholm highlighted that "contemporary Western esotericism is intimately, and increasingly, connected with popular culture and new media.

Western esotericism cites extreme metal as an example, noting that it is extremely difficult to differentiate between artists who were "properly occult" and those who superficially referenced occult themes and aesthetics.