title: New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions)
author:  Wouter J. Hanegraaff 
description: There will be no book like this for some time to come. It should be on the reading list of any student of religion and brings into the foreground a needed agenda for those in the humanities and social sciences, and will be valued by all those who appreciate fine, clear writing. I wish I had written it myself.  Antoine Faivre, cole Pratique des Hautes tudes, Sorbonne<br><br>Finally, someone has mastered the vast literature of, and reality which is the New Age movement, and produced a comprehensive and authoritative survey of its major themes and most important leaders. Hanegraaffs effort should immediately become the foundation upon which future research of the movement will be constructed.  J. Gordon Melton, Institute for the Study of American Religion, Santa Barbara<br><br>This is the best critical study of New Age thinking hitherto available. An outstanding achievement.  Garry W. Trompf, School of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney
zlib_text: Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way: Giving Voice to
  Further Alterity in the Study of Western Esotericism
  David Pecotic
  Introduction
  The last half of the twentieth century saw the gradual but steady
  burgeoning of work on the various permutations of what Francis Yates,
  as the most famous exemplar of this development, called 'the Hermetic
  tradition' or what others have almost as influentially classed with the set
  of 'alternative religions' of the West, under the general rubric of the
  humanities, Le., scholarship governed by rules of ratiocination, or
  dependence upon data that can be shared, evidence that can be evaluated,
  and judgments that can be assessed by others.! This drift away from
  starkly apologetic and polemic treatments of such religious traditions has
  lead to an appreciation of their contributions to the making of
  modemity.2 Recently this trajectory has culminated in a new generation
  G. Lease, 'What are the Humanities and Why do they Matter? The Case of Religion
  and the Public Life',