Western esotericism, also 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. These ideas and currents are united since they are largely distinct both from orthodox Judeo-Christian religion and Enlightenment rationalism. It has influenced various forms of Western philosophy, mysticism, religion, pseudoscience, art, literature, and music.

The idea of grouping a wide range of Western traditions and philosophies together under the term esotericism developed in Europe during the late 17th century. Various academics have debated various definitions of Western esotericism. One view adopts a definition from certain esotericist schools of thought themselves, treating "esotericism" as a perennial hidden  inner tradition. A second perspective sees esotericism as a category of movements that embrace an "enchanted" worldview in the face of increasing disenchantment. A third views Western esotericism as encompassing all of Western culture's "rejected knowledge" that is accepted neither by the scientific establishment nor orthodox religious authorities.

The earliest traditions that later analysis labelled as forms of Western esotericism emerged in the Eastern Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, where Hermeticism, Gnosticism and Neoplatonism developed as schools of thought distinct from what became mainstream Christianity. Renaissance Europe saw increasing interest in many of these older ideas, with various intellectuals combining pagan philosophies with the Kabbalah and Christian philosophy, resulting in the emergence of esoteric movements like Christian Kabbalah and Christian theosophy. The 17th century saw the development of initiatory societies professing esoteric knowledge such as Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, while the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century led to the development of new forms of esoteric thought. The 19th century saw the emergence of new trends of esoteric thought now known as occultism. Prominent groups in this century included the Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Also important in this connection is Martinus Thomsen's "spiritual science". Modern Paganism developed within occultism and includes religious movements such as Wicca. Esoteric ideas permeated the counterculture of the 1960s and later cultural tendencies, which led to the New Age phenomenon in the 1970s.

The idea that these varying movements could be categorised together under the rubric of "Western esotericism" developed in the late 18th 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 20th century, pioneered by scholars like Frances Yates and Antoine Faivre.

Etymology
The concept of the "esoteric" originated in the 2nd century
with the coining of the Ancient Greek adjective esôterikós ("belonging to an inner circle"); the earliest known example of the word appeared in a satire authored by Lucian of Samosata ( 125 – after 180).

In the 15th and 16th centuries, differentiations in Latin between exotericus and esotericus (along with internus and externus) were common in the scholar discourse on ancient philosophy. The categories of doctrina vulgaris and doctrina arcana are found among Cambridge Platonists. Perhaps for the first time in English, Thomas Stanley, between 1655–1660, would refer to the Pythagorean exoterick and esoterick. John Toland in 1720 would state that the so-called nowadays "esoteric distinction" was a universal phenomenon, present in both the West and the East. As for the noun "esotericism", probably the first mention in German of Esoterismus appeared in a 1779 work by Johann Georg Hamann, and the use of Esoterik in 1790 by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn. But the word esoterisch had already existed at least since 1731-1736, as found in the works of Johann Jakob Brucker; this author rejected everything that is characterized today as an "esoteric corpus". In this 18th century context, these terms referred to Pythagoreanism or Neoplatonic theurgy, but the concept was particularly sedimentated by two streams of discourses: speculations about the influences of the Egyptians on ancient philosophy and religion, and their associations with Masonic discourses and other secret societies, who claimed to keep such ancient secrets until the Enlightenment; and the emergence of orientalist academic studies, which since the 17th century identified the presence of mysteries, secrets or esoteric "ancient wisdom" in Persian, Arab, Indian and Far Eastern texts and practices (see also Early Western reception of Eastern esotericism)

The noun "esotericism", in its French form "ésotérisme", first appeared in 1828 in the work by Protestant historian of gnosticism  (1791–1864), Histoire critique du gnosticisme (3 vols.).
The term "esotericism" thus came into use in the wake of the Age of Enlightenment and of its critique of  institutionalised religion, during which alternative religious groups such as the Rosicrucians began to disassociate themselves from the dominant Christianity in Western Europe. During the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars increasingly saw the term "esotericism" as meaning something distinct from Christianity—as a subculture at odds with the Christian mainstream from at least the time of the Renaissance. After being introduced by  (1791–1864) in French, the occultist and ceremonial magician Eliphas Lévi (1810–1875) popularized the term in the 1850s. Lévi also introduced the term l'occultisme, a notion that he developed against the background of contemporary  socialist and  Catholic discourses. "Esotericism" and "occultism" were often employed as synonyms until later scholars distinguished the concepts.

Conceptual development

The concept of "Western esotericism" represents a modern scholarly construct rather than a pre-existing, self-defined tradition of thought. In the late 17th century, several European Christian thinkers presented the argument that one could categorise certain traditions of Western philosophy and thought together, thus establishing the category now labelled "Western esotericism". The first to do so,  (1659–1698), a German Lutheran theologian, wrote Platonisch-Hermetisches Christianity (1690–91). A hostile critic of various currents of Western thought that had emerged since the Renaissance—among them Paracelsianism, Weigelianism, and Christian theosophy—in his book he labelled all of these traditions under the category of "Platonic–Hermetic Christianity", portraying them as heretical to what he saw as "true" Christianity. Despite his hostile attitude toward these traditions of thought, Colberg became the first to connect these disparate philosophies and to study them under one rubric, also recognising that these ideas linked back to earlier philosophies from late antiquity.

In 18th-century Europe, during the Age of Enlightenment, these esoteric traditions came to be regularly categorised under the labels of "superstition", "magic", and "the occult" – terms often used interchangeably. The modern academy, then in the process of developing, consistently rejected and ignored topics coming under "the occult", thus leaving research into them largely to enthusiasts outside of academia. Indeed, according to historian of esotericism Wouter J. Hanegraaff (born 1961), rejection of "occult" topics was seen as a "crucial identity marker" for any intellectuals seeking to affiliate themselves with the academy.

Scholars established this category in the late 18th century after identifying "structural similarities" between "the ideas and world views of a wide variety of thinkers and movements" that, previously, had not been in the same analytical grouping. According to the scholar of esotericism Wouter J. Hanegraaff, the term provided a "useful generic label" for "a large and complicated group of historical phenomena that had long been perceived as sharing an air de famille."

Various academics have emphasised that esotericism is a phenomenon unique to the Western world. As Faivre stated, an "empirical perspective" would hold that "esotericism is a Western notion." As scholars such as Faivre and Hanegraaff have pointed out, there is no comparable category of "Eastern" or "Oriental" esotericism. The emphasis on Western esotericism was nevertheless primarily devised to distinguish the field from a universal esotericism. Hanegraaff has characterised these as "recognisable world views and approaches to knowledge that have played an important though always controversial role in the history of Western culture". Historian of religion Henrik Bogdan asserted that Western esotericism constituted "a third pillar of Western culture" alongside "doctrinal faith and rationality", being deemed heretical by the former and irrational by the latter. 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. Given these influences and the imprecise nature of the term "Western", the scholar of esotericism Kennet Granholm has argued that academics should cease referring to "Western esotericism" altogether, instead simply favouring "esotericism" as a descriptor of this phenomenon. Egil Asprem has endorsed this approach.

Definition

The historian of esotericism Antoine Faivre noted that "never a precise term, [esotericism] has begun to overflow its boundaries on all sides", with both Faivre and Karen-Claire Voss stating that Western esotericism consists of "a vast spectrum of authors, trends, works of philosophy, religion, art, literature, and music".
Scholars broadly agree on which currents of thought fall within a category of esotericism—ranging from ancient Gnosticism and Hermeticism through to Rosicrucianism and the Kabbalah and on to more recent phenomenon such as the New Age movement. Nevertheless, esotericism itself remains a controversial term, with scholars specialising in the subject disagreeing as to how best to define it.

As a universal secret inner tradition

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 ('exoteric') religious institutions and dogmatic systems of established religions." This approach views Western esotericism as just one variant of a worldwide esotericism at the heart of all world religions and cultures, reflecting a hidden esoteric reality. This use is closest to the original meaning of the word in late antiquity, where it applied to secret spiritual teachings that were reserved for a specific elite and hidden from the masses. This definition was popularised in the published work of 19th-century esotericists like A.E. Waite, who sought to combine their own mystical beliefs with a historical interpretation of esotericism. It subsequently became a popular approach within several esoteric movements, most notably Martinism and Traditionalism.

This definition, originally developed by esotericists themselves, became popular among French academics during the 1980s, exerting a strong influence over the scholars Mircea Eliade, Henry Corbin, and the early work of Faivre. Within the academic field of religious studies, those who study different religions in search of an inner universal dimension to them all are termed "religionists". Such religionist ideas also exerted an influence on more recent scholars like Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke and Arthur Versluis.
Versluis for instance defined "Western esotericism" as "inner or hidden spiritual knowledge transmitted through Western European historical currents that in turn feed into North American and other non-European settings". He 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".

There are various problems with this model for understanding Western esotericism. The most significant is that it rests upon the conviction that there really is a "universal, hidden, esoteric dimension of reality" that objectively exists. The existence of this universal inner tradition has not been discovered through scientific or scholarly enquiry; this had led some to claim that it does not exist, though Hanegraaff thought it better to adopt a view based in methodological agnosticism by stating that "we simply do not know – and cannot know" if it exists or not. He 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. Hanegraaff pointed out that an approach that seeks a common inner hidden core of all esoteric currents masks that such groups often differ greatly, being rooted in their own historical and social contexts and expressing mutually exclusive ideas and agendas. A third issue was that many of those currents widely recognised as esoteric never concealed their teachings, and in the 20th century came to permeate popular culture, thus problematizing the claim that esotericism could be defined by its hidden and secretive nature. He noted that when scholars adopt this definition, it shows that they subscribe to the religious doctrines espoused by the very groups they are studying.

As an enchanted world view

Another approach to Western esotericism treats it as a world view that embraces "enchantment" in contrast to world views influenced by post-Cartesian, post-Newtonian, and positivist science that sought to "dis-enchant" the world. That approach understands 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. It stands as a radical alternative to the disenchanted world views that have dominated Western culture since the scientific revolution, and must therefore always be at odds with secular culture.

An early exponent of this definition was the historian of Renaissance thought Frances Yates in her discussions of a Hermetic Tradition, which she saw as an "enchanted" alternative to established religion and rationalistic science. The primary exponent of this view was Faivre, who published a series of criteria for how to define "Western esotericism" in 1992. Faivre claimed that 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 esotericism. He listed these characteristics as follows:

 "Correspondences": This is the idea that there are both real and symbolic correspondences existing between all things within the universe. As examples for this, Faivre pointed to the esoteric concept of the macrocosm and microcosm, often presented as the dictum of "as above, so below", as well as the astrological idea that the actions of the planets have a direct corresponding influence on the behaviour of human beings.
 "Living Nature": Faivre argued that all esotericists envision the natural universe as being imbued with its own life force, and that as such they understand it as being "complex, plural, hierarchical".
 "Imagination and Mediations": Faivre believed that all esotericists place great emphasis on both the human imagination, and mediations—"such as rituals, symbolic images, mandalas, intermediary spirits"—and mantras as tools that provide access to worlds and levels of reality existing between the material world and the divine.
 "Experience of Transmutation": Faivre's fourth intrinsic characteristic of esotericism was the emphasis that esotericists place on fundamentally transforming themselves through their practice, for instance through the spiritual transformation that is alleged to accompany the attainment of gnosis.
 "Practice of Concordance": The first of Faivre's secondary characteristics of esotericism was the belief—held by many esotericists, such as those in the Traditionalist School—that there is a fundamental unifying principle or root from which all world religions and spiritual practices emerge. The common esoteric principle is that attaining this unifying principle can bring the world's different belief systems together in unity.
 "Transmission": Faivre's second secondary characteristic was the emphasis on the transmission of esoteric teachings and secrets from a master to their disciple, through a process of initiation.

Faivre's form of categorisation has been endorsed by scholars like Goodrick-Clarke, and by 2007 Bogdan could note that Faivre's had become "the standard definition" of Western esotericism in use among scholars. In 2013 the scholar Kennet Granholm stated only that Faivre's definition had been "the dominating paradigm for a long while" and that it "still exerts influence among scholars outside the study of Western esotericism". The advantage of Faivre's system is that it facilitates comparing varying esoteric traditions "with one another in a systematic fashion." Other scholars criticised his theory, pointing out various weaknesses. 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 esotericism Kocku von Stuckrad (born 1966) 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 esotericism as it has existed throughout history, from the ancient world to the contemporary period. Accordingly, Von Stuckrad suggested that it was a good typology for understanding "Christian esotericism in the early modern period" but lacked utility beyond that.

As higher knowledge

As an alternative to Faivre's framework, Kocku von Stuckrad developed his own variant, though he argued that this did not represent a "definition" but rather "a framework of analysis" for scholarly usage. He 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." Accordingly, he believed that esoteric groups placed a great emphasis on secrecy, not because they were inherently rooted in elite groups but because the idea of concealed secrets that can be revealed was central to their discourse. Examining the means of accessing higher knowledge, he highlighted two themes that he believed could be found within esotericism, that of mediation through contact with non-human entities, and individual experience. Accordingly, for Von Stuckrad, esotericism could be best understood as "a structural element of Western culture" rather than as a selection of different schools of thought.

As rejected knowledge
Hanegraaff proposed an additional definition that "Western esotericism" is a category that represents "the academy's dustbin of rejected knowledge." In this respect, it contains all of the theories and world views rejected by the mainstream intellectual community because they do not accord with "normative conceptions of religion, rationality and science." His approach is rooted within the field of the history of ideas, and stresses the role of change and transformation over time.

Goodrick-Clarke was critical of this approach, believing that it relegated Western esotericism to the position of "a casualty of positivist and materialist perspectives in the nineteenth-century" and thus reinforces the idea that Western esoteric traditions were of little historical importance. Bogdan similarly expressed concern regarding Hanegraaff's definition, believing that it made the category of Western esotericism "all inclusive" and thus analytically useless.

History

Late Antiquity

The origins of Western esotericism are in the Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean, then part of the Roman Empire, during Late Antiquity. This was a milieu that mixed religious and intellectual traditions from Greece, Egypt, the Levant, Babylon, and Persia—in which globalisation, urbanisation, and multiculturalism were bringing about socio-cultural change.

One component of this was Hermeticism, an Egyptian Hellenistic school of thought that takes its name from the legendary Egyptian wise man, Hermes Trismegistus. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, a number of texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus appeared, including the Corpus Hermeticum, Asclepius, and The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth. Some still debate whether Hermeticism was a purely literary phenomenon or had communities of practitioners who acted on these ideas, but it has been established that these texts discuss the true nature of God, emphasising that humans must transcend rational thought and worldly desires to find salvation and be reborn into a spiritual body of immaterial light, thereby achieving spiritual unity with divinity.

Another tradition of esoteric thought in Late Antiquity was Gnosticism. Various Gnostic sects existed, and they broadly believed that the divine light had been imprisoned within the material world by a malevolent entity known as the Demiurge, who was served by demonic helpers, the Archons. It was the Gnostic belief that people, who were imbued with the divine light, should seek to attain gnosis and thus escape from the world of matter and rejoin the divine source.

A third form of esotericism in Late Antiquity was Neoplatonism, a school of thought influenced by the ideas of the philosopher Plato. Advocated by such figures as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus, Neoplatonism held that the human soul had fallen from its divine origins into the material world, but that it could progress, through a number of hierarchical spheres of being, to return to its divine origins once more. The later Neoplatonists performed theurgy, a ritual practice attested in such sources as the Chaldean Oracles. Scholars are still unsure of precisely what theurgy involved, but know it involved a practice designed to make gods appear, who could then raise the theurgist's mind to the reality of the divine.

Middle Ages
After the fall of Rome, alchemy and philosophy and other aspects of the tradition were largely preserved in the Arab and Near Eastern world and reintroduced into Western Europe by Jews and by the cultural contact between Christians and Muslims in Sicily and southern Italy. The 12th century saw the development of the Kabbalah in southern Italy and medieval Spain.

The medieval period also saw the publication of grimoires, which offered often elaborate formulas for theurgy and thaumaturgy. Many of the grimoires seem to have kabbalistic influence. Figures in alchemy from this period seem to also have authored or used grimoires. Medieval sects deemed heretical such as the Waldensians were thought to have utilized esoteric concepts.

Renaissance and Early Modern period
During the Renaissance, a number of European thinkers began to synthesize "pagan" (that is, not Christian) philosophies, which were then being made available through Arabic translations, with Christian thought and the Jewish kabbalah. The earliest of these individuals was the Byzantine philosopher Plethon (1355/60–1452?), who argued that the Chaldean Oracles represented an example of a superior religion of ancient humanity that had been passed down by the Platonists.

Plethon's ideas interested the ruler of Florence, Cosimo de Medici, who employed Florentine thinker Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) to translate Plato's works into Latin. Ficino went on to translate and publish the works of various Platonic figures, arguing that their philosophies were compatible with Christianity, and allowing for the emergence of a wider movement in Renaissance Platonism, or Platonic Orientalism. Ficino also translated part of the Corpus Hermeticum, though the rest was translated by his contemporary, Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447–1500).

Another core figure in this intellectual milieu was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), who achieved notability in 1486 by inviting scholars from across Europe to come and debate with him 900 theses that he had written. Pico della Mirandola argued that all of these philosophies reflected a grand universal wisdom. Pope Innocent VIII condemned these ideas, criticising him for attempting to mix pagan and Jewish ideas with Christianity.

Pico della Mirandola's increased interest in Jewish kabbalah led to his development of a distinct form of Christian Kabbalah. His work was built on by the German Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) who authored an influential text on the subject, De Arte Cabbalistica. Christian Kabbalah was expanded in the work of the German Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535/36), who used it as a framework to explore the philosophical and scientific traditions of Antiquity in his work De occulta philosophia libri tres. The work of Agrippa and other esoteric philosophers had been based in a pre-Copernican worldview, but following the arguments of Copernicus, a more accurate understanding of the cosmos was established. Copernicus' theories were adopted into esoteric strains of thought by Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), whose ideas were deemed heresy by the Roman Catholic Church, which eventually publicly executed him.

A distinct strain of esoteric thought developed in Germany, where it became known as Naturphilosophie. Though influenced by traditions from Late Antiquity and medieval Kabbalah, it only acknowledged two main sources of authority: Biblical scripture and the natural world. The primary exponent of this approach was Paracelsus (1493/94–1541), who took inspiration from alchemy and folk magic to argue against the mainstream medical establishment of his time—which, as in Antiquity, still based its approach on the ideas of the second-century physician and philosopher, Galen, a Greek in the Roman Empire. Instead, Paracelsus urged doctors to learn medicine through an observation of the natural world, though in later work he also began to focus on overtly religious questions. His work gained significant support in both areas over the following centuries.

One of those influenced by Paracelsus was the German cobbler Jacob Böhme (1575–1624), who sparked the Christian theosophy movement through his attempts to solve the problem of evil. Böhme argued that God had been created out of an unfathomable mystery, the Ungrund, and that God himself was composed of a wrathful core, surrounded by the forces of light and love. Though condemned by Germany's Lutheran authorities, Böhme's ideas spread and formed the basis for a number of small religious communities, such as Johann Georg Gichtel's Angelic Brethren in Amsterdam, and John Pordage and Jane Leade's Philadelphian Society in England.

From 1614 to 1616, the three Rosicrucian Manifestos were published in Germany. These texts purported to represent a secret, initiatory brotherhood founded centuries before by a German adept named Christian Rosenkreutz. There is no evidence that Rosenkreutz was a genuine historical figure, nor that a Rosicrucian Order had ever existed before then. Instead, the manifestos are likely literary creations of Lutheran theologian Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654). They interested the public, so several people described themselves as "Rosicrucian", claiming access to secret esoteric knowledge.

A real initiatory brotherhood was established in late 16th-century Scotland through the transformation of Medieval stonemason guilds to include non-craftsmen: Freemasonry. Soon spreading into other parts of Europe, in England it largely rejected its esoteric character and embraced humanism and rationalism, while in France it embraced new esoteric concepts, particularly those from Christian theosophy.

18th, 19th and early 20th centuries

The Age of Enlightenment witnessed a process of increasing secularisation of European governments and an embrace of modern science and rationality within intellectual circles. In turn, a "modernist occult" emerged that reflected varied ways esoteric thinkers came to terms with these developments. One of the esotericists of this period was the Swedish naturalist Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), who attempted to reconcile science and religion after experiencing a vision of Jesus Christ. His 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. Following his death, followers founded the Swedenborgian New Church—though his writings influenced a wider array of esoteric philosophies. Another major figure within the esoteric movement of this period was the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1814), who developed the theory of Animal Magnetism, which later became known more commonly as Mesmerism. Mesmer claimed that a universal life force permeated everything, including the human body, and that illnesses were caused by a disturbance or block in this force's flow; he developed techniques he claimed cleansed such blockages and restored the patient to full health. One of Mesmer's followers, the Marquis de Puységur, discovered that mesmeric treatment could induce a state of somnumbulic trance in which they claimed to enter visionary states and communicate with spirit beings.

These somnambulic trance-states heavily influenced the esoteric religion of Spiritualism, which emerged in the United States in the 1840s and spread throughout North America and Europe. Spiritualism was based on the concept that individuals could communicate with spirits of the deceased during séances. Most forms of Spiritualism had little theoretical depth, being largely practical affairs—but full theological worldviews based on the movement were articulated by Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910) and Allan Kardec (1804–1869). Scientific interest in the claims of Spiritualism resulted in the development of the field of psychical research. Somnambulism also exerted a strong influence on the early disciplines of psychology and psychiatry; esoteric ideas pervade the work of many early figures in this field, most notably Carl Gustav Jung—though with the rise of psychoanalysis and behaviourism in the 20th century, these disciplines distanced themselves from esotericism. Also influenced by artificial somnambulism was the religion of New Thought, founded by the American mesmerist Phineas P. Quimby (1802–1866). It revolved around the concept of "mind over matter"—believing that illness and other negative conditions could be cured through the power of belief.

In Europe, a movement usually termed occultism emerged as various figures attempted to find a "third way" between Christianity and positivist science while building on the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance traditions of esoteric thought. In France, following the social upheaval of the 1789 Revolution, various figures emerged in this occultist milieu who were heavily influenced by traditional Catholicism, the most notable of whom were Éliphas Lévi (1810–1875) and Papus (1865–1916). Also significant was René Guénon (1886–1951), whose concern with tradition led him to develop an occult viewpoint termed Traditionalism; it espoused the idea of an original, universal tradition, and thus a rejection of modernity. His Traditionalist ideas strongly influenced later esotericists like Julius Evola (1898–1974) and Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998).

In the Anglophone world, the burgeoning occult movement owed more to Enlightenment libertines, and thus was more often of an anti-Christian bent that saw wisdom as emanating from the pre-Christian pagan religions of Europe. Various Spiritualist mediums came to be disillusioned with the esoteric thought available, and sought inspiration in pre-Swedenborgian currents, including Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–1899) and Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), the latter of whom called for the revival of the "occult science" of the ancients, which could be found in both the East and West. Authoring the influential Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), she co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. Subsequent leaders of the Society, namely Annie Besant (1847–1933) and Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) interpreted modern theosophy as a form of ecumenical esoteric Christianity, resulting in their proclamation of Indian Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) as world messiah. In rejection of this was the breakaway Anthroposophical Society founded by Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). Another form of esoteric Christianity is the spiritual science of the Danish mystic Martinus (1890-1981) who is popular in Scandinavia.

New esoteric understandings of magic also developed in the latter part of the 19th century. One of the pioneers of this was American Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875), who argued that sexual energy and psychoactive drugs could be used for magical purposes. In England, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—an initiatory order devoted to magic based on kabbalah—was founded in the latter years of the century. One of the members of that order was Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), who went on to proclaim the religion of Thelema and become a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis. Some of their contemporaries developed esoteric schools of thought that did not entail magic, namely the Greco-Armenian teacher George Gurdjieff (1866–1949) and his Russian pupil P.D. Ouspensky (1878–1947).

Emergent occult and esoteric systems found increasing popularity in the early 20th century, especially in Western Europe. Occult lodges and secret societies flowered among European intellectuals of this era who had largely abandoned traditional forms of Christianity. The spreading of secret teachings and magical practices found enthusiastic adherents in the chaos of Germany during the interwar years. Notable writers such as Guido von List spread neo-pagan, nationalist ideas, based on Wotanism and the Kabbalah. Many influential and wealthy Germans were drawn to secret societies such as the Thule Society. Thule Society activist Karl Harrer was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party, which later became the Nazi Party; some Nazi Party members like Alfred Rosenberg and Rudolf Hess were listed as "guests" of the Thule Society, as was Adolf Hitler's mentor Dietrich Eckart. After their rise to power, the Nazis persecuted occultists. While many Nazi Party leaders like Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were hostile to occultism, Heinrich Himmler used Karl Maria Wiligut as a clairvoyant "and was regularly consulting for help in setting up the symbolic and ceremonial aspects of the SS" but not for important political decisions. By 1939, Wiligut was "forcibly retired from the SS" due to being institutionalised for insanity. On the other hand, the German hermetic magic order Fraternitas Saturni was founded on Easter 1928 and it is one of the oldest continuously running magical groups in Germany. In 1936, the Fraternitas Saturni was prohibited by the Nazi regime. The leaders of the lodge emigrated to avoid imprisonment, but in the course of the war Eugen Grosche, one of their main leaders, was arrested for a year by the Nazi government. After World War II they reformed the Fraternitas Saturni.

Several religious scholars such as Hugh Urban and Donald Westbrook have classified Scientology as being a modern form of Western Esotericism.

Later 20th century

In the 1960s and 1970s, esotericism came to be increasingly associated with the growing counter-culture in the West, whose adherents understood themselves in participating in a spiritual revolution that marked the Age of Aquarius. By the 1980s, these currents of millenarian currents had come to be widely known as the New Age movement, and it became increasingly commercialised as business entrepreneurs exploited a growth in the spiritual market. Conversely, other forms of esoteric thought retained the anti-commercial and counter-cultural sentiment of the 1960s and 1970s, namely the techno-shamanic movement promoted by figures such as Terence McKenna and Daniel Pinchbeck, which built on the work of anthropologist Carlos Castaneda.

This trend was accompanied by the increased growth of modern Paganism, a movement initially dominated by Wicca, the religion propagated by Gerald Gardner. Wicca was adopted by members of the second-wave feminist movement, most notably Starhawk, and developing into the Goddess movement. Wicca also greatly influenced the development of Pagan neo-druidry and other forms of Celtic revivalism. In response to Wicca there has also appeared literature and groups who label themselves followers of traditional witchcraft in opposition to the growing visibility of Wicca and these claim older roots than the system proposed by Gerald Gardner. Other trends that emerged in western occultism in the later 20th century included satanism, as exposed by groups such as the Church of Satan and Temple of Set, as well as chaos magick through the Illuminates of Thanateros group.

Additionally, since the start of the 1990s, countries inside of the former Iron Curtain have undergone a radiative and varied religious revival, with a large number of occult and new religious movements gaining popularity. Gnostic revivalists, New Age organizations, and Scientology splinter groups have found their way into much of the former Soviet bloc since the cultural and political shift resulting from the dissolution of the USSR. In Hungary, a significant number of citizens (relative to the size of the country's population and compared to its neighbors) practice and/or adhere to new currents of Western Esotericism. In April 1997, the Fifth Esoteric Spiritual Forum was held for two days in the country and was attended at-capacity; In August of the same year, the International Shaman Expo began, being broadcast on live TV and ultimately taking place for 2 months wherein various neo-Shamanist, Millenarian, mystic, neo-Pagan, and even UFO religion congregations and figures were among the attendees.

Academic study

The 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 of pre-Christian and non-rational schools of thought on European society and culture was worthy of academic attention. One of the key centres for this was the Warburg Institute in London, where scholars like Frances Yates, Edgar Wind, Ernst Cassirer, and D. P. Walker began arguing that esoteric thought had had a greater effect on Renaissance culture than had been previously accepted. 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 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.

In 1965, at the instigation of the scholar Henry Corbin, École pratique des hautes études in the Sorbonne established the world's first academic post in the study of esotericism, with a chair in the History of Christian Esotericism. Its first holder was François Secret, a specialist in the Christian Kabbalah, though he had little interest in developing the wider study of esotericism as a field of research. In 1979 Faivre assumed Secret's chair at the Sorbonne, which was renamed the "History of Esoteric and Mystical Currents in Modern and Contemporary Europe". Faivre has since been cited as being responsible for developing the study of Western esotericism into a formalised field, with his 1992 work L'ésotérisme having been cited as marking "the beginning of the study of Western esotericism as an academic field of research". He remained in the chair until 2002, when he was succeeded by Jean-Pierre Brach.

Faivre noted two significant obstacles to establishing the field. One was an ingrained prejudice toward esotericism within academia, resulting in the widespread perception that the history of esotericism was not worthy of academic research. The other was esotericism's status as a trans-disciplinary field, the study of which did not fit clearly within any particular discipline. As Hanegraaff noted, Western esotericism had to be studied as a separate field to religion, philosophy, science, and the arts, because while it "participates in all these fields" it does not squarely fit into any of them. Elsewhere, he noted that there was "probably no other domain in the humanities that has been so seriously neglected" as Western esotericism.

In 1980, the U.S.-based Hermetic Academy was founded by Robert A. McDermott as an outlet for American scholars interested in Western esotericism. From 1986 to 1990 members of the Hermetic Academy participated in panels at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion under the rubric of the "Esotericism and Perennialism Group". By 1994, Faivre could comment that the academic study of Western esotericism had taken off in France, Italy, England, and the United States, but he lamented that it had not done so in Germany.

In 1999, the University of Amsterdam established a chair in the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, which was occupied by Hanegraaff, while in 2005 the University of Exeter created a chair in Western Esotericism, which was taken by Goodrick-Clarke, who headed the Exeter Center for the Study of Esotericism. Thus, by 2008 there were three dedicated university chairs in the subject, with Amsterdam and Exeter also offering master's degree programs in it. Several conferences on the subject were held at the quintennial meetings of the International Association for the History of Religions, while a peer-reviewed journal, Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism began publication in 2001. 2001 also saw the foundation of the North American Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE), with the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) being established shortly after.
Within a few years, Michael Bergunder expressed the view that it had become an established field within religious studies, with Asprem and Granholm observing that scholars within other sub-disciplines of religious studies had begun to take an interest in the work of scholars of esotericism.

Asprem and Granholm noted that the study of esotericism had been dominated by historians and thus lacked the perspective of social scientists examining contemporary forms of esotericism, a situation that they were attempting to correct through building links with scholars operating in Pagan studies and the study of new religious movements.
On the basis that "English culture and literature have been traditional strongholds of Western esotericism", in 2011 Pia Brînzeu and György Szönyi urged that English studies also have a role in this interdisciplinary field.

Emic and etic divisions
Emic and etic refer to two kinds of field research done and viewpoints obtained, emic, from within the social group (from the perspective of the subject) and etic, from outside (from the perspective of the observer). Wouter Hanegraaff follows a distinction between an emic and an etic approach to religious studies.

The emic approach is that of the alchemist or theosopher. The etic approach is that of the scholar as an historian, a researcher, with a critical view. An empirical study of esotericism needs "emic material and etic interpretation":

Arthur Versluis proposes approaching esotericism through an "imaginative participation":

Many scholars of esotericism have come to be regarded as respected intellectual authorities by practitioners of various esoteric traditions. Many esotericism scholars have sought to emphasise that 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. Thus, Asprem and Granholm noted that the use of the term "esotericism" among scholars "significantly contributes to the reification of the category for the general audience—despite the explicated contrary intentions of most scholars in the field."

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

Granholm noted that esoteric ideas and images appear in many aspects of Western popular media, citing such examples as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Avatar, Hellblazer, and His Dark Materials. Granholm has argued that there are problems with the field in that it draws a distinction between esotericism and non-esoteric elements of culture that draw upon esotericism. He 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.

Writers interested in occult themes have adopted three different strategies for dealing with the subject: those who are knowledgeable on the subject including attractive images of the occult and occultists in their work, those who disguise occultism within "a web of intertextuality", and those who oppose it and seek to deconstruct it.

See also

References

Footnotes

Sources

Further reading

 Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, Leiden: Brill, since 2001.
 Aries Book Series: Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism , Leiden: Brill, since 2006.
 Esoterica , East Lansing, Michigan State University (MSU). An online resource since 1999. I (1999) ; VIII (2006) ; IX (2007)

 Hanegraaff, Wouter J., "The Study of Western Esotericism: New Approaches to Christian and Secular Culture ", in Peter Antes, Armin W. Geertz and Randi R. Warne, New Approaches to the Study of Religion, vol. I: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches, Berlin / New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004.

 Kelley, James L., Anatomyzing Divinity: Studies in Science, Esotericism and Political Theology, Trine Day, 2011, .
 Martin, Pierre, Esoterische Symbolik heute – in Alltag. Sprache und Einweihung. Basel: Edition Oriflamme, 2010, illustrated .
 Martin, Pierre, Le Symbolisme Esotérique Actuel – au Quotidien, dans le Langage et pour l'Auto-initiation. Basel: Edition Oriflamme, 2011, illustrated

External links

An Esoteric Archive
Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE)
European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE)
University of Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO)
Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism
Esoterica academic journal
The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

Esotericism

Schools of thought
Paranormal

Western esotericism


Francesco Gessi (20 January 1588 – 1649) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Bologna.

Biography
Born to a noble family, his father noticed his attraction to the arts and placed him in the apprenticeship with Denys Calvaert. This did not last, since he apparently disturbed the other pupils. He was more successful under the tutelage of Guido Reni.

From there, he obtained commissions to fresco in Ravenna, Mantua, and also the Capella del Tesoro in the Naples Cathedral. Supposedly Guido Reni turned down the Neapolitan commission after being threatened by Belisario Corenzio and others. Gessi took up the work, but two of his pupils, Lorenzo Menini and Giovanni Battista Ruggieri, disappeared. Gessi ultimately desisted from attempting to complete the latter in the dangerously competitive art world of Naples.

Returning to Bologna, he began a campaign against his former patron, Reni, attempting to compete and dismissing Reni's achievements. He was able to establish a prolific studio in Bologna. His main collaborator from the studio of Reni was Giovanni Giacomo Sementi, and among his pupils were Giovanni Battista Ruggieri and his brother Ercolino Ruggiero, Giacomo Castellini, Francesco Correggio, and Giulio Trogli.

References

Sources

Biography.

1588 births
1649 deaths
People from the Province of Bologna
16th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
Painters from Bologna
Italian Baroque painters

Francesco Gessi


Adnan Menderes (; 1899 – 17 September 1961) was a Turkish politician who served as Prime Minister of Turkey between 1950 and 1960. He was one of the founders of the Democrat Party (DP) in 1946, the fourth legal opposition party of Turkey. He was tried and hanged under the military junta after the 1960 coup d'état, along with two other cabinet members, Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan. One of the accusations brought against him was of him ordering the Istanbul pogrom against citizens of Greek ethnicity. He was the last Turkish political leader to be executed after a military coup and is also one of the four political leaders of the Turkish Republic (along with Kemal Atatürk, Süleyman Demirel and Turgut Özal) to have had a mausoleum built in his honour.

Early life and career
Adnan Menderes was born in 1899 in Koçarlı, Aydın Province, as a son of a wealthy landowner of Crimean Tatar origin. After primary school, Menderes attended the American College in İzmir. He fought against the invading Greek army during the Turkish War of Independence and was awarded a medal of honour. He graduated from the Law School of Ankara University. In 1930, Adnan Menderes organized a branch of the short-lived Liberal Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) in Aydın. After the party dissolved itself, he was invited by Atatürk himself to join the ruling Republican People's Party and was selected by the party leaders as a deputy of Aydın in 1931. In 1945, he was expelled from the party with two other colleagues due to inner-party opposition to the nationalization policies of İsmet İnönü.

Rise to power

In June 1945, Menderes, together with Celâl Bayar, Fuat Köprülü and Refik Koraltan demanded more political and democratic freedom in their Motion with four signatures. The motion was not approved by any member of the Turkish parliament except for the four who brought the motion to parliament, and by September 1945, Menderes, Köprülü and Koraltan were all stripped of their membership of the CHP due to their opposition to the Turkish government. Bayar then resigned from parliament and later also the party. On 7 January 1946, the four formed the Democratic Party (DP) and in the 1946 elections Menderes was elected deputy of the Democratic Party representing Kütahya. When the DP won 52% of the votes in the first free elections in Turkish history on 14 May 1950 (in which votes were cast in secret and counted openly), Menderes became prime minister, and in 1955 he also assumed the duties of foreign minister. He later won two more free elections, one in 1954 and the other in 1957.

During the 10 years of his term as prime minister, the Turkish economy was growing at a rate of 9% per annum. He supported an eventual Military alliance with the Western Bloc and during his tenure, Turkey was admitted to the NATO in 1952. With the economic support of the United States via the Marshall Plan, agriculture was mechanized; and transport, energy, education, health care, insurance and banking progressed.

Other historical accounts highlight the economic crisis in the mid-1950s, during Menderes's term, which saw Turkey's economy contract (with an 11% GDP/capita decrease in 1954), as one of the reasons for the government's orchestration of the Istanbul pogrom against the Greek ethnic minority (see below).

Istanbul pogrom

In 1955, the Menderes government is believed to have orchestrated the Istanbul pogrom, which targeted the city's substantial Greek ethnic minority. In September 1955 a bomb exploded close to the Turkish consulate in Greece's second-largest city, Thessaloniki, also damaging the Atatürk Museum, site of Atatürk's birthplace. The damage to the house was minimal, with some broken windows. In retaliation, in Istanbul thousands of shops, houses, churches and even graves belonging to members of the ethnic Greek minority were destroyed within a few hours, over a dozen people were killed and many more injured.

The ongoing struggle between Turkey and Greece over control of Cyprus, and Cypriot intercommunal violence, formed part of the backdrop to the pogrom. The United Kingdom invited Turkey and Greece to a conference in London, which started on 26 August 1955. The day before the Tripartite London Conference (29 August – 7 September 1955) began, Menderes claimed that Greek Cypriots were planning a massacre of Turkish Cypriots. Seeing the opportunity to extricate Britain, Prime Minister Anthony Eden advised the Turkish delegates that they should be stern. Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu paid heed to Eden and launched a harsh opening salvo, stating that Turkey would reconsider its commitment to the Treaty of Lausanne unless Greece reconsidered its position on Cyprus. The Greek delegates, surprised by the harshness of the speech, blamed the British.

Deflecting domestic attention to Cyprus was politically convenient for the Menderes government, which was suffering from an ailing economy. Although a minority, the Greek population played a prominent role in the city's business life, making it a convenient scapegoat during the economic crisis in the mid-1950s. The DP responded first with inflationary policies, then when that failed, with authoritarianism and populism. DP's policies also introduced rural-urban mobility, which exposed some of the rural population to the lifestyles of the urban minorities. The three chief destinations were the largest three cities: Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir. Between 1945 and 1955, the population of Istanbul increased from 1 million to about 1.6 million. Many of these new residents found themselves in shanty towns (), and constituted a prime target for populist policies.

Finally, the conference fell apart on 6 September, the first day the subject of Cyprus would be broached at the conference, when news broke of the bombing in Thessaloniki.

The 1961 Yassıada trials after the 1960 coup d'état accused Menderes and Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu of planning the riots, finding that the supposed assault was in fact a provocation organised by the Menderes government, which planted the bomb in Thessaloniki and also bussed infuriated villagers from Anatolia into Istanbul with the aim of "punishing" Greeks. Menderes subsequently apologized and offered compensation to those affected.

Plane crash survival

On 17 February 1959, the Turkish Airlines aircraft Vickers Viscount Type 793, registration TC-SEV, carrying Adnan Menderes and a party of government officials on a flight from Istanbul to London Gatwick Airport crashed a few miles short of the runway, near Rusper, Sussex, in heavy fog and caught fire. Nine of the sixteen passengers and five of the eight crew lost their lives. Menderes, sitting in the back part of the plane, survived the accident almost uninjured and was hospitalized at the London Clinic 90 minutes after receiving first aid from Margaret Bailey, a local resident who rushed to the crash site.

He was on his way to sign the London Agreements on the Cyprus issue with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Greek Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis, which gave the three sides the right to intervene in Cyprus in case peace is broken by any of the parties.

Menderes signed the London Agreement on 19 February 1959 in the hospital. He returned home on 26 February 1959 and was welcomed by even his arch-rival İsmet İnönü and a large crowd.

Political style and beliefs

Menderes became quite famous for selling or distributing most of the estate he had inherited to small shareholders. He was more tolerant towards traditional lifestyles and different forms of practice of Islam than Atatürk and his party had been – he campaigned in the 1950 elections on the platform of legalizing the Arabic Islamic call to prayer (adhan), which had been banned in order to extirpate Arabic influences. He opened thousands of mosques across the country and as such, he was blamed by his political opponents for using religion as a tool for political gain. One of his first political moves was to exclude the pictures of İsmet İnönü on Turkish banknotes and stamps and instead put Atatürk pictures back, which were taken off when Inönü became president in 1938. Thanks to the public support and the legacy of Atatürk, it was a successful move, even if the Turkish law under the former president stated that the image of the president of the country would be placed on the banknotes (in this case Celal Bayar). In one of his speeches, he said that members of parliament could bring back the caliphate if they so desired.

While remaining pro-Western, he was more active than his predecessors in building relations with Muslim states. Menderes had a more liberal economic policy than earlier prime ministers, and allowed more private enterprise. In general, his economic policies of high agricultural spending, especially in infrastructure meant that the peasants of Turkey appreciated his premiership.

He was most intolerant towards criticism, so he instituted press censorship and had journalists arrested, as well as attempting to oppress the opposing political parties and take institutions such as universities under his control. Menderes who was well liked by the people in general and also had the support of the Army Chief of Staff General Cemal Gürsel who, in a personal patriotic memorandum, had advocated that Menderes should become the president of the republic to secure the national unity, became increasingly unpopular among the intellectuals, university students and a group of radical young officers in the military, who feared that Kemalist ideology was in danger.

The most important event that brought his fall from power was probably the establishment of Commission of Inquiries (Tahkikat Komisyonu). The commission, composed only of Democratic Party MPs and bestowed those MPs with the powers of public and military prosecutors along with the right to give a verdict. This was against the principle of separation of powers and gave the MPs the power to both prosecute and judge. Furthermore, the commission's verdicts could not be taken to the appeal courts.

Coup, trial, and execution
A military coup on 27 May 1960, organized by 37 "young officers", deposed the government, and Menderes was arrested along with Bayar and all the leading party members. They were charged with violating the constitution, and embezzling money from state funds, and ordering the Istanbul pogrom, in which dozens of Greeks were killed.

Menderes and other leading figures of the DP were put on trial by a military court on the island of Yassıada (see Yassıada trials). Along with Bayar and two former cabinet ministers, Menderes was sentenced to death. He delayed his execution with a suicide attempt by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Despite pleas for forgiveness by Head of State Cemal Gürsel and even from İsmet İnönü (in addition to similar pleas from several world leaders, including John F. Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth II), Menderes was executed by the junta at the gallows on the island of İmralı on 17 September 1961. The sentence of ex-President Bayar was commuted to imprisonment.

Two months later, İsmet İnönü formed a new government under military tutelage, in coalition and with the help of the newly emerging Justice Party (in Turkish: Adalet Partisi), after these two major parties among themselves took the majority of the votes in 1961 elections. Adalet Partisi, the successor of the heritage of Menderes, would win victories in later elections especially under the leadership of Süleyman Demirel.

Legacy
On 17 September 1990, the 29th anniversary of Menderes' execution, he was posthumously pardoned by the Turkish Parliament and his grave was moved to a mausoleum named after him in Istanbul.  Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan, who were the foreign affairs minister and finance minister, respectively in the last Menderes administration, and who were hanged with Menderes by the junta in 1961, were also posthumously cleared of any misconduct. Adnan Menderes University in Aydın and Adnan Menderes Airport in İzmir are named after him. Two high schools, Istanbul Bahcelievler Adnan Menderes Anadolu Lisesi and Aydın Adnan Menderes Anadolu Lisesi, also adopted his name. There are numerous city districts, boulevards and streets named after him by city councils in cities large and small, all across Turkey.

In 2006, Mehmet Feyyat, attorney general of Istanbul at the time, suggested that "İsmet İnönü and Cemal Gürsel placed phone calls to the prison's administration for Menderes' execution to be halted but the Communications Office of the junta cut the lines off".

In March 2023, a monument to Adnan Menderes was unveiled at the Akhmet Yassawi International Kazakh-Turkish University in Turkestan.

Film and television
 The last period of Menderes' life beginning with his 1959 aircraft crash survival until his execution was depicted in the television series Hatırla Sevgili ("") as background events.
 The period when Menderes was prime minister from 1950 to 1960 were depicted in the television series Ben Onu Çok Sevdim (""). Series which began broadcasting at Turkish national broadcaster ATV from September 2013 also focuses on the romance between Menderes and Turkish opera singer Ayhan Aydan. He was played by actor Mehmet Aslantuğ

See also
Adnan Menderes University
Adnan Menderes Airport

Notes and references

Cemal Gürsel supported him and wanted him to become the Republic's president

External links

Adnan Menderes Turkish Biography
"Adnan Menderes". Time

1899 births
1961 deaths
20th-century prime ministers of Turkey
Ankara University Faculty of Law alumni
Centre-right politics in Turkey
Democrat Party (Turkey, 1946–1961) politicians
Deputies of Istanbul
Deputies of Kütahya
Executed prime ministers
Filmed executions
Government ministers of Turkey
Heads of government who were later imprisoned
Istanbul pogrom
Leaders ousted by a coup
Liberal Republican Party (Turkey) politicians
Members of the 19th government of Turkey
Members of the 20th government of Turkey
Members of the 21st government of Turkey
Members of the 22nd government of Turkey
Members of the 23rd government of Turkey
Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Turkey
Ministers of National Defence of Turkey
People from Koçarlı
People who have received posthumous pardons
Politicians arrested in Turkey
Prime Ministers of Turkey
Republican People's Party (Turkey) politicians
Survivors of aviation accidents or incidents
Turkish anti-communists
Turkish military personnel of the Turkish War of Independence
Turkish people of Crimean Tatar descent
Turkish referees and umpires
Yassıada trials executions

Adnan Menderes


Albert Heijn (), often abbreviated to AH () and informally to Appie (), is the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands with a market share of 34.8% in 2020. It was founded in 1887, and has been part of Ahold Delhaize since 2016.

History
The chain was founded on 27 May 1887, when Albert Heijn bought a grocery store from his father Jan Heijn in Oostzaan. In the following years, Heijn opened other locations in several cities and in 1899, he opened a central warehouse in Zaandam.

From 1895, Heijn started roasting his own brand of coffee in a laundry room in his Oostzaan location and in 1910, several other self-produced items were added, including confectionery, cakes and pastry. Until 1913, these products were produced in an old town house in Zaandam, but the company built a professional factory on this spot in 1913.

In 1920, all enterprises were combined in the Maatschappij tot Exploitatie der Fabrieken en Handelszaken. Anton Jurgens, one of the founders of Unilever, took a 50% share within the new company. These shares were bought back by the family Heijn in 1927. On 29 April 1920, Albert Heijn transferred control of the company to his sons Gerrit Heijn and Jan Heijn, and his son-in-law Johan Hille. Albert Heijn stayed on as president of the board.

Albert Heijn Sr. benefited from the industrialization that brought prosperity through fixed wages for factory workers and a new group of rich people. Eating habits changed: less in quantity but more and other types of items. Due to the rise of manufacturers and prepackaged items, indigenous and exclusive products came within reach.

The chain went public in 1948, and underwent two major changes in the 1950s. The first change was in 1952, with the introduction of their first self-service store and the second change was in 1955, with the opening of their first supermarket.

The chain could become the largest within the Netherlands via several acquisitions. Notable (partial) acquisitions were Van Amerongen (1950), Simon de Wit (1972) and C1000 (2008 and parts in 2012).

Ahold NV was founded on August 27, 1973 and Albert Heijn became part of it. The new construction made it easier for Albert Heijn's new parent company to enter the foreign market. In October of the same year, Etos was acquired, a number of stores were converted into Albert Heijn and the rest continued as a drugstore within Ahold.

At the beginning of 2003, Albert Heijn saw its market share fall sharply: 22.8 percent against 24.7 percent a year earlier. In order to win back customers and leave the expensive image behind, Albert Heijn decided to start a large-scale price reduction in the same year. The chain permanently reduced the price of thousands of items every so often.

At the end of 2006, managing director Dick Boer announced that Albert Heijn would stop lowering prices. The price difference with the competitors was successfully reduced by many percent. The market share was almost 30 percent at the end of 2006.

In 2007, the company crossed the ocean with the opening of a franchise store in Curaçao, this shop remained open until 2016, when it was changed to a different brand. The company entered the Belgian market in 2011, with the opening of a store in Brasschaat. Despite the merger of Ahold and Delhaize, Albert Heijn and Delhaize both remained active in Belgium. Currently Albert Heijn has 60 stores. After Curaçao and Belgium the company entered the German market with their AH To Go formula. This venture ended in 2018.

Simon de Wit

Simon de Wit was a large family-owned chain of supermarkets in the Netherlands. The company was founded by Simon de Wit (1852–1934), who after his father's death in 1867 started a grocery store from his parental house in Wormerveer. In 1888 he opened the first branch in Amsterdam and by 1900 he ran stores at 30 different locations and owned a central warehouse in Zaandam.

In 1954 the opening of the 150th store was celebrated. In 1970, when Simon de Wit's grandson Simon was in charge, a fire destroyed the central warehouse in Zaandam. Soon after, Albert Heijn, which also originated in the Zaanstreek, showed interest in a takeover and in 1973 Simon de Wit merged with Albert Heijn, with all employees retaining their jobs. All remaining shops took on the name of the latter.

Formulas

Albert Heijn

This formula is most used throughout the Netherlands and Belgium and is their regular store format. Since 2018, the company began to roll out the concept Echt Vers (Really Fresh) in which the stores would be remodelled to offer 10–15% more fresh produce.

Albert Heijn also distinguishes itself by the steadily growing range of organic and ecological products, reducing the use of plastics and investing in sustainable construction and transport. The expansion of the sustainable range was brought under the umbrella brand "Puur & Eerlijk" in 2009, under the leadership of Dick Boer, with adjustments to stricter certification and change of packaging. The retail chain is also committed to reducing food waste.

AH To Go

In 1999, the chain developed a new formula for a convenience store on request of the Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the railway company would become a franchisee and opened the first store on Station Den Bosch. The formula got its current name in 2001, and specialises in products that customers need on their commute.

Since 2019, the company is testing a new version of the formule without staff and cash registers. The customer scans their debit card and cameras register the customer and the items that are picked, after the customer leaves the right amount is deducted from their account. The new concept and technology was tested in a mobile unit that has been placed at the headquarters of Ahold Delhaize and Schiphol.

AH XL
Since 2002, the company operates several hypermarkets with a larger variety of products in both food and non-food. Within the store there are also several chefs preparing take-away.

Albert Heijn Online
The company started testing delivery in 1999, with the Albert Heijn Thuisservice, which was renamed Albert.nl in 2001. Via this channel customers could purchase their groceries, but also products from sister-companies Etos and Gall & Gall. The Albert brand was discontinued in 2014, and the delivery service was integrated in the Albert Heijn brand.

Organisation and brand value
Since 1899, the chain is headquartered in Zaandam, their parent company is also located here. The chain operates six distribution centres in Nieuwegein, Geldermalsen, Zaandam, Tilburg, Pijnacker and Zwolle. In addition to an ever-growing impressive number of stores - both franchise and in-house - the chain also operates seven "Home Shop Centers" in Almere, Eindhoven, Rotterdam, De Meern, Amsterdam, Oosterhout and Bleiswijk.

The brand value of Albert Heijn was 866 million dollars in 2014, according to Trademark Office Interbrand. This put Albert Heijn in 26th place in the European brand values top 50.

Recent information about the brand value cannot be found publicly.

See also
 Ahold as one of the merging partners of Ahold Delhaize
 List of supermarket chains in the Netherlands
 List of hypermarkets in the Netherlands
 Albert Czech Republic

References

External links

Official website
Official Belgium

Ahold Delhaize
Convenience stores
Retail companies of the Netherlands
Supermarkets of the Netherlands
Retail companies established in 1887
1887 establishments
Companies established in 1887
Companies based in North Holland
Companies of the Netherlands
Dutch brands
Oostzaan
Dutch companies established in 1887
Supermarkets
Zaandam

Albert Heijn


St Grada & Holy Cross Church, Grade is the Church of England parish church of Grade with Ruan, Cornwall. The church is a Grade I listed building, having been added to the listed buildings register on 10 July 1957.

History
The parish was called St Cross in 1261, but by 1310 it was known as St Grada, Virgin. The font dates from the 13th century and the church contains a brass to James Eryssy and his wife, 1522.

Parts of the church, which is built in the Decorated style, are of thirteenth century origin and the tower dates from around 1400. The thirteenth and fourteenth century nave and chancel were rebuilt in 1862−63, incorporating some of the original structure to the designs  of the architect Edward William Godwin of Bristol. The construction is mainly of rubble stone, with some large blocks of granite and serpentine in the tower. There are separate slated, steeply-sloping roofs for the nave, chancel, vestry and porch. The unbuttressed tower is at the west end and has two stages. The font from the previous church was retained. The serpentine and Caen pulpit was the gift of the Lizard Serpentine Company. The lectern was the gift of Mr Cox, the agent of the company. The church was reopened for worship on 24 July 1863.

The funds for the rebuilding in 1862−63 ran out and it was not until 1882 that an organ chamber and vestry were built, according to the original plans of Godwin. The organ was built by Brewer and Co of Truro and the new organ was ″opened″ on 12 March 1885 when a recital was given by Mr G R Sinclair, the organist of Truro Cathedral. The specification of the organ can be found on the National Pipe Organ Register.

Parish status
The settlements of Grade, Ruan Major and Ruan Minor were united into a single civil parish called Grade-Ruan in 1934. The former parish church of Ruan Major is now in ruins. St Grada & Holy Cross is part of a group of parishes comprising:
 St Grada & Holy Cross Church, Grade
 St Wynwallow's Church, Landewednack
 St Rumon's Church, Ruan Minor
 St Mary's Church, Cadgwith

Gallery

References

Church of England church buildings in Cornwall
Grade I listed churches in Cornwall
Lizard Peninsula

St Grada and Holy Cross Church, Grade


Jiyuanitectum is an extinct genus of chroniosuchian tetrapod from the Late Permian Shangshihezi Formation of China. It is known from a single bony scute from Jiyuan in Henan province, ascribed to the type species Jiyuanitectum flatum in 2014. Plate-like scutes, which formed armor-like coverings on the backs of chroniosuchians, are the most commonly found chroniosuchian remains. They are also the most informative when it comes to distinguishing between species due to small variations in scute anatomy between different taxa. For example, a shallow groove along the midline of the scute is unique to Jiyuanitectum. The flatness of the scute is another unusual characteristic, giving it the species name flatum. Jiyuanitectum shares several features in common with the chroniosuchians Synesuchus and Bystrowiella, including the upper surface of the scute being covered in ridges that are mostly oriented perpendicular to the midline, and the absence of a bony projection on the front of the scute called the anteromedial articular processes, which is seen in other chroniosuchians. These features suggest that Jiyuanitectum belongs to the family Bystrowianidae. The narrowness of the scute suggests that it may be one of the most basal members of the group.

The scute of Jiyuanitectum was found within a diverse Late Permian fossil assemblage in Jiyuan that includes abundant remains of the pareiasaur Shihtienfenia as well as fossils of two other chroniosuchian species: Bystrowiana sinica and Dromotectum largum. Therapsid remains are also known from the assemblage.

References

Chroniosuchians
Permian tetrapods of Asia
Fossil taxa described in 2014
Paleontology in Henan

Jiyuanitectum


Serpico is a 1973 Italian American biographical crime movie directed by Sidney Lumet and was based on the novel of the same name by Peter Maas. It stars Al Pacino, Tony Roberts, Jack Kehoe, Allan Rich, Biff McGuire, Joseph Bova, James Tolkan, Judd Hirsch, F. Murray Abraham and was distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was nominated for 2 Academy Awards in 1974.

Other websites

1970s biographical movies
1973 crime movies
American biographical movies
American crime movies
Italian biographical movies
Italian crime movies
Italian drama movies
Movies based on books
Paramount Pictures movies
Movies directed by Sidney Lumet
Movies about police officers
1970s English-language movies
Movies based on real life events
Movies set in New York City
Movies set in the 1960s
Movies set in the 1970s
Movies about whistleblowing

Serpico


Diogo de Contreiras was a Portuguese Mannerist painter, active between 1521 and 1562.  He has been identified as the painter referred to as the Master of Saint Quentin.  The identification of de Contreiras as the Master of Saint Quentin was determined by Martin Soria (1957) and later reinforced by Vítor Serrão.

Career
His first recorded works were decorations for the triumphal entry of King Manuel I and his wife Eleanor of Austria into Lisbon in 1521.  His work was part of 429 flags painted by Portuguese painters of the time (including Álvaro Pires, Diogo Gonçalo, Martins Fernandes and Fernão de Oliveira), paid for by the Lisbon Chamber of Commerce.

He worked on the Church of São Silvestre in Unhos, contributing two tableaus dedicated to St. Sylvester, showing scenes of his life, to the church altarpiece (made 1537-1538) and four panels with images of other saints (made 1560-1570).  The church has been declared a monument of public interest by the Portuguese government.  The scenes of St. Sylvester's life shown are St. Sylvester resurrecting a bull in Zambri and converting the Emperor Constantine.  The other panels, possibly originally made for a second altar or a sacristy, show St. Roque, St. Peter, St. Sebastian and St. Bras.

In 1539 de Contreiras painted the altarpiece of the church of Our Lady of Mercy in Ourém.  The altarpiece, whose manufacture took till 1541 and cost 80 thousand reais, is now lost.

Around the same time he also worked on the retable of the Convent of Santa Maria in Almoster.  Three panels of this retable exist in private collections.  They are a Resurrection, a panel of St. Vincent and a panel of St. Sylvester.

de Contreiras taught at the College of Art in the University of Coimbra from 1545 to 1549 and again from 1551 to 1555.

In 1546 he worked on the convent of São Bento de Castris in Évora, which is also a Portuguese national monument.  Several of his other works from the 1540s are now lost, and those that exist are religious works.

In 1551, he painted The Baptism of Christ in the church of St. Francisco in Alenquer.  In that year, he also held the role of the Examiner of Painters in Lisbon, alongside António de Espinhosa and António de Aguiar.

Between 1552 and 1554, he did further work on the convent of São Bento de Castris.  This work includes "the Preaching of Saint John the Baptist" which is now held in the Portuguese Museum of Ancient Art.  Contreiras received 30 thousand reais, distributed over three years, in wheat and money, for the work.

In 1553-1554 de Contreiras painted an altarpiece for the now lost Convent of Santa Clara in Santarem.

de Contreiras may also have painted the Last Supper, the Pentecost and the Holy Trinity in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit in the church of Matriz de Machico on Madeira.  However, the identification of de Contreiras as the painter of these works is disputed.  Also on the islands of Madeira, de Contreiras may have been the painter who produced the altarpiece in the Madre de Dios church in Caniço, which features St. James the Greater, John the Baptist, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Anthony, and the work in the belfry of the church of Matriz de São Brás, which features an Annunciation , St. Anthony , St. Benedict and St. Anthony, and, finally, The Miracle of St. Brás.  He also painted some panels in the Church of St. James the Lesser in Funchal.

In 1556, he painted the Triptych of the Conception, Birth and Childhood of the Virgin, also for the convent of São Bento de Castris.  This work is now found in the Museum of Sacred Art in Evora.  This work is among the last to have been identified as being by de Contreiras.  Other works, held in the Rilvas and Alpoim Galvão collections, and other private collections, show how important de Contreiras was to Portuguese painting in the 16th century.

The last reference to de Contreiras is that he was again examiner of Lisbon painters, this time with João Guterres and Gaspar Dias.

References

Mannerist painters
16th-century Portuguese painters
Portuguese male painters

Diogo de Contreiras


Giuseppe Antonio Caccioli (October 18, 1672 – July 20, 1740) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.

Biography
Giuseppe Antonio Caccioli was born in Bologna. When he was three, his father the painter Giovanni Battista Caccioli died, and from a very early age he was taught to paint by his tutors. He later apprenticed with the brothers Giuseppe and Antonio Rolli who at the time were painting the ceiling of San Paolo Maggiore church in Bologna. Caccioli had a natural predisposition for the art of painting.

He married Rosa Teresa Fontana with whom he had two boys. He died in Bologna at the age of 67 and was buried in Santa Maria Maggiore in Bologna.

Works

He painted Mario Scoto bringing back Pope Leo III to his Holy See in Rome and Galeazzo e Taddeo Marescotti freeing Annibale Bentivogli from the Rocca di Varano. Both can still be seen at Palazzo Marescotti Brazzetti in Bologna.

He painted the portrait of Cardinal Raniero elevated by Pope Lucius II.

After three years spent at the service of Prince Louis of Baden in Germany together with Pietro Francesco Farina, he returned to Bologna where he painted the facade of the Foro della Mercanzia, a chapel dell'arte de'falegnami, a chapel dell'arte de'notai and the facade over the altar of San Gabriello church.

After the death of Antonio Roli in 1695, he was chosen to paint the church of San Paolo. At first he depicted the four parts of the world in four corners, then he continued to paint the whole cupola, the choir and finally the two large lateral chapels. He then painted all the ovals in the sacristy with Life of St Joseph and on the outside a fresco of The Holy Family. He then painted the church of the orphans of San Bartolomeo di Reno with the Virgin of the Rain.

In Trento, he painted two naves of the Duomo of Trento, and upon his return to Bologna, using tempera the nave above the door of the Collegio del Ritiro delle Dame.

In 1713 he went to Florence where in the palace of the Senator Tempi he painted the ball room and various rooms. Back in Bologna on May 20, 1714, he painted all the ovals in the sacristy and the hall of the church of San Francesco. In 1721 he went to Asti to paint the church of San Martino.

He then returned to Bologna where he stayed.  Amongst his various works, he painted the rooms of the house of Giovagnoni, the oratory of the confraternity della Purità, a chapel of San Petronio, the altar in the church of Santi Stefano e Maurizi and a door of the oratory of the confraternity della Carità.

References

1672 births
1740 deaths
17th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
18th-century Italian painters
Painters from Bologna
Italian Baroque painters
18th-century Italian male artists

Giuseppe Antonio Caccioli