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9858_173 | "Practice of Concordance": The first of Faivre's secondary characteristics of esotericism was the |
9858_174 | belief—held by many esotericists, such as those in the Traditionalist School—that there is a |
9858_175 | fundamental unifying principle or root from which all world religions and spiritual practices |
9858_176 | emerge. The common esoteric principle is that attaining this unifying principle can bring the |
9858_177 | world's different belief systems together in unity. |
9858_178 | "Transmission": Faivre's second secondary characteristic was the emphasis on the transmission of |
9858_179 | esoteric teachings and secrets from a master to their disciple, through a process of initiation. |
9858_180 | Faivre's form of categorisation has been endorsed by scholars like Goodrick-Clarke, and by 2007 |
9858_181 | Bogdan could note that Faivre's had become "the standard definition" of Western esotericism in use |
9858_182 | among scholars. However, in 2013 the scholar Kennet Granholm stated only that Faivre's definition |
9858_183 | had been "the dominating paradigm for a long while" and that it "still exerts influence among |
9858_184 | scholars outside the study of Western esotericism". The advantage of Faivre's system is that it |
9858_185 | facilitates comparing varying esoteric traditions "with one another in a systematic fashion." |
9858_186 | However, many scholars have criticised Faivre's theory, pointing out various weaknesses. Hanegraaff |
9858_187 | claimed that Faivre's approach entailed "reasoning by prototype" in that it relied upon already |
9858_188 | having a "best example" of what Western esotericism should look like, against which other phenomena |
9858_189 | then had to be compared. The scholar of esotericism Kocku von Stuckrad (born 1966) noted that |
9858_190 | Faivre's taxonomy was based on his own areas of specialism—Renaissance Hermeticism, Christian |
9858_191 | Kabbalah, and Protestant Theosophy—and that it was thus not based on a wider understanding of |
9858_192 | esotericism as it has existed throughout history, from the ancient world to the contemporary |
9858_193 | period. Accordingly, Von Stuckrad suggested that it was a good typology for understanding |
9858_194 | "Christian esotericism in the early modern period" but lacked utility beyond that. |
9858_195 | Esotericism as claims to higher knowledge |
9858_196 | As an alternative to Faivre's framework, Kocku von Stuckrad developed his own variant, though he |
9858_197 | argued that this did not represent a "definition" but rather "a framework of analysis" for |
9858_198 | scholarly usage. He stated that "on the most general level of analysis", esotericism represented |
9858_199 | "the claim of higher knowledge", a claim to possessing "wisdom that is superior to other |
9858_200 | interpretations of cosmos and history" that serves as a "master key for answering all questions of |
9858_201 | humankind." Accordingly, he believed that esoteric groups placed a great emphasis on secrecy, not |
9858_202 | because they were inherently rooted in elite groups but because the idea of concealed secrets that |
9858_203 | can be revealed was central to their discourse. Examining the means of accessing higher knowledge, |
9858_204 | he highlighted two themes that he believed could be found within esotericism, that of mediation |
9858_205 | through contact with non-human entities, and individual experience. Accordingly, for Von Stuckrad, |
9858_206 | esotericism could be best understood as "a structural element of Western culture" rather than as a |
9858_207 | selection of different schools of thought. |
9858_208 | Western esotericism as "rejected knowledge" |
9858_209 | Hanegraaff proposed an additional definition that "Western esotericism" is a category that |
9858_210 | represents "the academy's dustbin of rejected knowledge." In this respect, it contains all of the |
9858_211 | theories and world views rejected by the mainstream intellectual community because they do not |
9858_212 | accord with "normative conceptions of religion, rationality and science." His approach is rooted |
9858_213 | within the field of the history of ideas, and stresses the role of change and transformation over |
9858_214 | time. |
9858_215 | Goodrick-Clarke was critical of this approach, believing that it relegated Western esotericism to |
9858_216 | the position of "a casualty of positivist and materialist perspectives in the nineteenth-century" |
9858_217 | and thus reinforces the idea that Western esoteric traditions were of little historical importance. |
9858_218 | Bogdan similarly expressed concern regarding Hanegraaff's definition, believing that it made the |
9858_219 | category of Western esotericism "all inclusive" and thus analytically useless. |
9858_220 | History
Late Antiquity |
9858_221 | The origins of Western esotericism are in the Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean, then part of the |
9858_222 | Roman Empire, during Late Antiquity. This was a milieu that mixed religious and intellectual |
9858_223 | traditions from Greece, Egypt, the Levant, Babylon, and Persia—in which globalisation, |
9858_224 | urbanisation, and multiculturalism were bringing about socio-cultural change. |
9858_225 | One component of this was Hermetism, an Egyptian Hellenistic school of thought that takes its name |
9858_226 | from the legendary Egyptian wise man, Hermes Trismegistus. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, a number |
9858_227 | of texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus appeared, including the Corpus Hermeticum, Asclepius, |
9858_228 | and The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth. Some still debate whether Hermetism was a purely |
9858_229 | literary phenomenon or had communities of practitioners who acted on these ideas, but it has been |
9858_230 | established that these texts discuss the true nature of God, emphasising that humans must transcend |
9858_231 | rational thought and worldly desires to find salvation and be reborn into a spiritual body of |
9858_232 | immaterial light, thereby achieving spiritual unity with divinity. |
9858_233 | Another tradition of esoteric thought in Late Antiquity was Gnosticism. Various Gnostic sects |
9858_234 | existed, and they broadly believed that the divine light had been imprisoned within the material |
9858_235 | world by a malevolent entity known as the Demiurge, who was served by demonic helpers, the Archons. |
9858_236 | It was the Gnostic belief that people, who were imbued with the divine light, should seek to attain |
9858_237 | gnosis and thus escape from the world of matter and rejoin the divine source. |
9858_238 | A third form of esotericism in Late Antiquity was Neoplatonism, a school of thought influenced by |
9858_239 | the ideas of the philosopher Plato. Advocated by such figures as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, |
9858_240 | and Proclus, Neoplatonism held that the human soul had fallen from its divine origins into the |
9858_241 | material world, but that it could progress, through a number of hierarchical spheres of being, to |
9858_242 | return to its divine origins once more. The later Neoplatonists performed theurgy, a ritual |
9858_243 | practice attested in such sources as the Chaldean Oracles. Scholars are still unsure of precisely |
9858_244 | what theurgy involved, but know it involved a practice designed to make gods appear, who could then |
9858_245 | raise the theurgist's mind to the reality of the divine. |
9858_246 | Middle Ages |
9858_247 | After the fall of Rome, alchemy and philosophy and other aspects of the tradition were largely |
9858_248 | preserved in the Arab and Near Eastern world and reintroduced into Western Europe by Jews and by |
9858_249 | the cultural contact between Christians and Muslims in Sicily and southern Italy. The 12th century |
9858_250 | saw the development of the Kabbalah in southern Italy and medieval Spain. |
9858_251 | The medieval period also saw the publication of grimoires, which offered often elaborate formulas |
9858_252 | for theurgy and thaumaturgy. Many of the grimoires seem to have kabbalistic influence. Figures in |
9858_253 | alchemy from this period seem to also have authored or used grimoires. |
9858_254 | Renaissance and Early Modern period |
9858_255 | During the Renaissance, a number of European thinkers began to synthesize "pagan" (that is, not |
9858_256 | Christian) philosophies, which were then being made available through Arabic translations, with |
9858_257 | Christian thought and the Jewish kabbalah. The earliest of these individuals was the Byzantine |
9858_258 | philosopher Plethon (1355/60–1452?), who argued that the Chaldean Oracles represented an example of |
9858_259 | a superior religion of ancient humanity that had been passed down by the Platonists. |
9858_260 | Plethon's ideas interested the ruler of Florence, Cosimo de Medici, who employed Florentine thinker |
9858_261 | Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) to translate Plato's works into Latin. Ficino went on to translate and |
9858_262 | publish the works of various Platonic figures, arguing that their philosophies were compatible with |
9858_263 | Christianity, and allowing for the emergence of a wider movement in Renaissance Platonism, or |
9858_264 | Platonic Orientalism. Ficino also translated part of the Corpus Hermeticum, though the rest was |
9858_265 | translated by his contemporary, Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447–1500). |
9858_266 | Another core figure in this intellectual milieu was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), who |
9858_267 | achieved notability in 1486 by inviting scholars from across Europe to come and debate with him 900 |
9858_268 | theses that he had written. Pico della Mirandola argued that all of these philosophies reflected a |
9858_269 | grand universal wisdom. However, Pope Innocent VIII condemned these ideas, criticising him for |
9858_270 | attempting to mix pagan and Jewish ideas with Christianity. |
9858_271 | Pico della Mirandola's increased interest in Jewish kabbalah led to his development of a distinct |
9858_272 | form of Christian Kabbalah. His work was built on by the German Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) who |
Subsets and Splits