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Dictionary Gnosis of Western & Esotericism Dictionary Gnosis of Western & Esotericism EDITED BY Wouter J. Hanegraaff IN COLLABORATION WITH Antoine Faivre Roelof van den Broek Jean-Pierre Brach B R I L L LEIDEN • BOSTON Published under the auspices of the Chair of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam. For all information, including Bachelor and Master program: www.amsterdamhermetica.com Copperplate front cover: Jacob Böhme, Alle theosophische wercken. Amsterdam 1682 reproduced with kind permission of Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15231 1 ISBN-10: 9004152318 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. 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PRINTEDINTHENETHERLANDS CONTENTS Introduction ...................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgments .............................................................................................. xv List of Contributors .......................................................................................... xvii List of Entries .................................................................................................... xxiii Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism .................................................. 1 Index of Groups and Organizations .................................................................. 1187 Index of Persons ................................................................................................ 1193 INTRODUCTION Under the general heading “Gnosis and Western Esotericism”, this Dictionary brings together a great range of historical currents and personalities that have flourished in Western culture and society over a period of roughly two millennia, from Late Antiquity to the present. By doing so, it intends not only to provide a comprehensive reference work, but also to question certain ingrained assumptions about the history of Western religion and culture, and promote new agendas and analytical frameworks for research in these domains. What is at stake in such a shift of perspective can best be illustrated by taking a short look at the main terminological conventions that have traditionally been dominant. The term Gnosticism was originally a pejorative term, coined in the 17th century by the Cambridge Platonist Henry More. In adopting it as a purportedly neutral scholarly category, historians also largely took over the assumption that there had actually existed a distinct religious system which could be called Gnosticism, and which could be clearly defined in opposition to the early Christian church. In recent decades it has become increasingly clear, however, that any such reification of “Gnosticism” is untenable1 and leads to historical simplications; the idea of a clear-cut opposition of Christianity versus Gnosticism in fact reflects heresiological strategies by means of which certain factions and their spokesmen sought (successfully, as it turned out) to cement their own identity as “true” Christians by construing a negative other: the adherents of “the Gnosis falsely so called”, demonized as the enemies of the true faith. It is historically more accurate, however, to see the latter, who often adhered to mythological gnostic systems, as repre- sentatives of a much broader and variegated movement or type of religiosity ‘character- ized by a strong emphasis on esoteric knowledge (gnosis) as the only means of salvation, which implied the return to one’s divine origin’.2 To this much broader movement of Gnosis in Late Antiquity belonged not only “Gnosticism”, but also, in their own ways, Christians such as Clement of Alexandria and, notably, the currents that inspired the Hermetic literature. In the domain of Hermetism, too, scholarly research has long been influenced by artificial black-and-white distinctions based upon normative agendas. The great pioneers of this field, Walter Scott and André-Jean Festugière, sharply opposed a “learned” or “philosophical” Hermetism against a “popular” hermetism: the worldviews belonging to the former category deserved the respect of serious scholars, but although the “occult” and “superstitious” practices belonging to the latter (nowadays referred to more neutrally as “technical” hermetica) also needed to be studied, they were referred to with contempt as no more than ‘masses of rubbish’.3 A no less important bias concerned the almost exclusive focus of scholars like Festugière on the Greek and philosophical dimensions of the Hermetic literature, at the expense of their Egyptian backgrounds – an emphasis that echoes long- standing perceptions of Egypt as the homeland of paganism and idolatry pitted against Greece as the origin of Reason and Enlightenment. Progress in the study of Hermetism in more recent decades has essentially consisted in correcting these biases on the basis of careful philological and source-critical research. The central importance of Egyptian religion for understanding the Hermetic literature is now no longer in any doubt; and it has become clear that the “philosophical” and “technical” Hermetica are in fact products of one and the same pagan intellectual milieu in Graeco-Roman Egypt, and must therefore be seen as closely connected.4 1 See notably Michael Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996; and the entry “Gnosticism I” in this Dictionary. 2 See entry “Gnosticism I” in this Dictionary. 3 W. Scott (ed.), Hermetica, I, Oxford, 1924, 1. 4 See notably Jean-Pierre Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte(Bibliothèque Copte de Nag Hammadi, Section “Textes”, viii introduction In the context of Late Antiquity, and notably in Hellenistic Egypt, we are therefore dealing with a complex type of religiosity based on the pursuit of gnosis or salvific esoteric knowledge. This phenomenon cannot be reduced to either Gnosticism or Her- metism but includes both; and it may manifest itself in pagan, Christian, as well as Jewish contexts. Moreover, with respect neither to Late Antiquity nor to later periods is it possible to study the history of these currents in isolation from that of the so-called occult sciences. This fact adds considerable complexity to the domain covered in this Dic- tionary, since it implies a large overlap between theories and practices focused on “gnosis” and pertaining primarily to the domain of religion, and others pertaining more obviously to that of science. That much attention is given in the present reference work to astrology, alchemy and magia naturalis does not reflect any wish to recast these disci- plines as essentially religious currents focused primarily on gnosis and spiritual pursuits, or to deny their grounding in natural philosophy and science. On the contrary, the inten- tion is to highlight the complexity of the relations between science, natural philosophy, cosmology and religion in the period from Antiquity through the 17th and even 18th centuries, against the tendency of earlier generations to deny this complexity in the interest of simplifying “religion versus science” oppositions. Thus, for example, the attempt (associated with C.G. Jung and his school) to present alchemy as not a scientific but a spiritual pursuit is no less reductionistic than the tendency of positivist historiography to ignore religious dimensions of alchemical literature as irrelevant. This Dictionary seeks to highlight the importance of the natural sciences for the study of “Gnosis and Western Esotericism” as well as the relevance of the latter to the history of science and philosophy; for only by multi- and interdisciplinary research that is attentive to all the various dimensions of these complex domains will it be possible to correctly assess their importance in Western culture. Processes of acculturation by means of which a variety of originally “pagan” systems of ideas – such as e.g. those originating in hermetic, neoplatonic, and even aristotelian contexts – became integral parts of Christian culture during the Middle Ages and Renaissance are an obvious focus of interest for the study of “Gnosis and Western Esotericism”. Major examples during the Middle Ages are the reception of Hermetic literature by a range of Christian theologians,5 the strange phenomenon of ritual magic flourishing in the context of the medieval “clerical underworld”,6 and the revival of the “occult sciences” during the later Middle Ages as a result of a flood of translations from Arabic into Latin.7 These developments provided the indispensable foundation for what has been referred to as the Hermetic tradition of the Renaissance, starting with Marsilio Ficino’s epoch-making translation of the Corpus Hermeticum in 1463 (published in 1471, and with numerous reprints throughout the 16th century), in the context of his life-long project of recovering the supreme religious philosophy of the “divine Plato” and a long chain of prisci theologiwho were believed to have preceded him. Since Ficino saw Plato as a religious author and read him through neoplatonic lenses, his new Christian- platonic philosophy was bound to give a new legitimacy to late-antique theurgy and related occult practices, incorrectly but influentially attributed to ancient authorities like Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus. The resulting mixture of hermetic, neoplatonic and occult traditions (all, of course, integrated within a Christian framework) was further enriched by a heady infusion of Jewish traditions: the so-called Christian kabbalah, pio- neered by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Reuchlin and many other authors in 3 and 7), 2 vols., Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1978 and 1982; Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A His- torical Approach to the late Pagan Mind, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. 5 See entry “Hermetic Literature II” in this Dictionary. 6 The term was introduced in the standard textbook by Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989 (ch. 7). 7 Mention should be made here of the pioneering and still indispensable multi-volume work by Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols., New York: MacMillan & Columbia University Press, 1923-1958.