Western Esotericism: A Brief History of Secret Knowledge

177 Pages·2006·7.55 MB·English

by  Kocku von Stuckrad

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UK: Equiuox Publishing Ltd., Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies St., London SWll 2JW
USA: DBBC, 28 Main Street, Oakville, CT 06779
www.cquinoxpub.com
Plrst published 2005
<D Kocku von Stuckrad 2005
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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 1845530330 (hardback)
1845530349 (paperback)
Typeset by Forthcoming Publications Ltd
www.forthcomingpublications.com
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham
CONTENTS
Foreword by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke Vll
Preface Xl
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS ESOTERICISM?
Some Scholarly Views 2
Religious Pluralism and the 'Esoteric Ficld of Discourse' 6
CHAPTER 2
ESOTERICISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 12
Philosophical Religion, Religious Philosophy 12
Hermetism: The Founding of a Tradition 18
What is 'Gnosis'? 23
Transmission into the Middle Ages 26
CHAPTER 3
THE KABBALAH: UNDERSTANDING THE HIDDEN
IN THE REVEALED 31
Prehistory: Hekhalot Mysticism and Esoteric Biblical Exegesis 31
The Classical Kabbalah: From Southern France to Israel 35
CHAPTER 4
THE RENAISSANCE: RE-INVENTING THE ANCIENT WORLD 44
Esotericism in the Middle Ages 45
The Birth of Modern Esotericism 49
CHAPTER 5
ESOTERICISM IN THE CONFESSIONAL AGE 62
The Mysteries of Nature: Magia naturalis 62
Kabbalah and Occult Philosophy 70
Complex Identities 81
Apocalypticism, Alchemy and Natural Science in Protestantism 94
vi WESTERN ESOTERICISM
CHAPTER 6
ESOTERICISM, ENLIGHTENMENT AND SCIENCE 99
The Battle for the Spiritual World 100
Natural Science in the Nineteenth Century 104
CHAPTER 7
INSTITUTIONALISED ESOTERICISM: SECRET SOCIETIES 113
Rosicrucians or In the Beginning was a Fiction 113
Freemasons or The Power of Mystery 116
Magical Orders or Egypt in England 118
CHAPTER 8
PIONEER OF MODERN ESOTERICISM:
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 122
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky: The Sphinx of the West 122
Ascended Masters and Mundane Squabbles 128
CHAPTER 9
ESOTERIClSM AND MODERNITY 133
Modernity and its Discontents 133
And the 'New Age'? 140
Bibliography 147
Index 162
FOREWORD
It gives me pleasure to introduce Kocku von Stuckrad's admirable survey of the
Western esoteric traditions to the English-speaking world. As his own preface indi
cates, the time has come for a wider understanding of Western esotericism that
transcends the medley of apparently unrelated and often suspect subjects on the
shelves of esoteric bookstores. In the period from the 1950s to the early 1970s,
such topics were typically grouped as 'occult', many of them graduating to 'New
Age' interest by the early 1980s. But these tags conceal a more interesting and
profound story ofc ultural transmission that involves Western self-understanding
and philosophy.
Already between the two World Wars scholars were discovering a rich heritage
of Neo-Platonic and Hermetic thought and practice in the West. A few examples
will suffice to demonstrate the vigour and breadth of this enterprise, which sourced
from the margins ofa cademic and cultural discourse in order to illuminate pivotal
linkages in European cultural history. Just as the Latin West had once assimilated
Arab science, Jewish mysticism and Greek philosophy in response to geopolitical
changes in the medieval and Renaissance periods, so the renewed persecution of
the Jews in Central Europe in the 1930s led to the eventual translation ofA by War
burg's famous library from Hamburg to the University of London. A succession of
brilliant scholars, German-Jewish and then British, including Edgar Wind, Ernst
Cassirer, Frances Yates and D.P. Walker pioneered a history of ideas that bridged
the Classical and European worlds, while embracing astrology, alchemy, magic,
and their range of impact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Other scholars also travelled to academic margins across cultural borders. Just as
the nineteenth-century esotericists Helena Blavatsky and George Ivanovitch
Gurdjieff sought an ancient wisdom in the East, so scholars of spiritual traditions
returned with unexpected riches throwing light on forgotten East-West exchanges
and shared traditions. Trained at the Sorbonne, Henry Corbin spent many years in
Turkey and Iran assimilating the esoteric imaginaries of Sufi and Persian spiritu
ality and his findings inspired another generation of Arabic scholars, whose work
on Islamic mysticism has entered Western academic discourse. As the holder oft he
Sorbo nne chair in mystical currents, Fran~ois Secret unveiled the intricacies of
Christian Kabbalah from the fifteenth century onwards, while his successor,
vIII WESTERN ESOTERICISM
Antoine Faivre, developed the parameters of a formalised discipline t()llowing his
pioneering works on theosophy, illuminism and the philosophy of nature.
As an emergent subject, not unlike 'science' in the seventeenth century, much
of this work was also undertaken during the twentieth century in a non-university
environment in professional societies and publishing programmes. Following a
long tradition of British private scholarship, the Quest Society pioneered
comparative religious studies in London during the 1920s, anticipating the notable
Eranos Conferences in Switzerland attended by Carl Gustav Jung, Henry Corbin,
Mircea Eliade, Gershom Scholem, Karl Kerenyi and D.T. Suzuki in the 1950s. In
the 19705 and 19805 a circle of private scholars, including Ellie Howe, James
Webb, Robert Gilbert, Leslie Price, Christopher McIntosh and myself, developed
studies in the nineteenth-century occult revival, many ofw hich found publishers
and ultimately an academic readership. There were fruitful overlaps with other
scholars in America, variously devoted to Platonism and Pythagoreanism, the
history of the Theosophical Society, American Transcendentalism and German
Romanticism. Joscelyn Godwin contributed studies of sixteenth-century pan so
phists and musical philosophy, Arthur Versluis wrote on theosophy, and Allison
Coudert (notably a Warburg emigre) examined the impact of Kabbalah on seven
teenth-century philosophy and mathematics. Joost Ritman's Bibliotheca Philo so
phica Hermetica was established in Amsterdam as a major collection and research
centre. Publishers such as John Watkins, Donald Weiser, Jay Kinney, Christopher
Bamford, Richard Grossinger, Ehud Sperling and Adam McLean provided an
extended platform for scholarship that began to enter academic discourse in
Britain, America and continental Europe during the 1990s.
Naming but a handful of individuals who toiled in the vineyard of Western
esotericism is intended only to show the longer gestation and scope of these studies
thus saved from the cul-de-sac of obscurantism and occultism. Western esoteri
cism is now a dynamic and growing subject at several universities across the world
with professorial chairs at Paris, Amsterdam and Exeter, and faculty teaching
students in the subject from Australia to Japan, from California to Scandinavia,
from Italy to Russia.
Alfred North Whitehead, the philosopher of science, once noted, 'we are all
footnotes to Plato', and Dr von Stuckrad's book shows indeed the breadth of this
Platonic spirituality in the West, together with its Christian, Jewish and Muslim
variants and imports. As a historian of astrology, he is well placed to observe the
exchanges of the East and West in European history of religion and culture. As
regards analysis, he advances a model based on ideas of fields, discourses, identity
and communication, tradition and modernity, which participates in the latest dis
cussions of Hans G. Kippenberg and Burkhard Gladigow in Germany, the contri
butions of historians and sociologists of religion and the empirical studies of
comparative religion.
His analysis of esotericism not only offers a fresh view of the European Ren
aissance as a dialogue with other faiths, but also shows how the blooming of
FOREWORD Ix
l'sotericislIl coincided with the confessional differentiation of Christianity between
1450 and 1750, He thereby concludes, rather fashionably, that religious pluralism
has been the norm in Europe since antiquity, not just in modernity, Even ifIslam
was not present in Western Europe, it featured in its literature and theological
positions, both in common fields of discourse and as an organisation if difference,
'rehearsed again and again in councils, confessional writings, constitutions, social
groups, political orders and legal systems'. Pluralism also is apparent in the inter
f<:rence between religion, politics, philosophy and science.
The study of Western esotericism draws on philosophy, religious studies and
history. In this concise work we have a new analytical perspective that also dis
closes the cultural variety and historical interplay of ideas, seemingly marginal and
I(xgotten, which have always lain at the heart of scientific and religious debates in
the West.
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
Chair of Western Esotericism
University of Exeter

PREFACE
Almost everyone understands something by the concept 'esotericism', which, often
linked with the 'New Age', has become an emotive word in the media and public
over the past two decades. Likewise, both advocates and opponents of esotericism
appear to have succumbed to the fascination of the 'occult' supposedly lying
hidden in the background. An objective discussion of the subject is accordingly as
necessary as it is difficult.
The last fifteen years have witnessed the emergence of a new field of academic
research devoted to Western esotericism. Although the subjects usually seen as
belonging to the field of esotericism had been studied intensively beforehand, the
umbrella concept of esotericism has helped sufficiently to combine these various
approaches and to demonstrate the important role of esoteric elements in the
history ofW estern culture. Over against this very encouraging development it has
to be noted, however, that academic research has not yet established a consensus
on what is actually understood by 'esotericism' and what methodology is best
suited for studying this phenomenon. This book is an attempt to take up the most
recent academic research into Western esotericism and combine it with considera
tions relating to the characteristics of a European history ofr eligion. Three suppo
sitions are essential for this approach: First, from antiquity on, Western culture has
been characterized by a religious pluralism that fostered identities by constructing
an opposing 'other'; second, critical reflection on and negotiation of religious truth
claims have been influenced by interaction between different cultural systems
(such as religion, science, art, literature, politics, law, economics etc.); and finally,
competing ways ofa ttaining knowledge of the world provide a key to understand
ing the role of esotericism in Western discourse.
Given the highly controversial status of esotericism in popular and academic
perception, some theoretical introduction to this study was indispensable. In the
historical description of esoteric ism (Chapters 2-9) I have then focused on such
examples, which clearly illustrate the role of 'perfect knowledge' in Western cul
tural history from ancient times to the present. This account is therefore neither
complete nor to be read as a continuous history. Instead it offers an interpretation
of esotericism within various aspects of European culture.
By speaking of Western esotericism, boundaries are already set upon the subject. I
do not doubt that large parts ofw hat I understand by esoteric ism can also be found
xII WESTERN ESOTERICISM
ill other cultures, and that a transcultural and comparative approach can be most
valuable for our understanding of esotericism. Nevertheless, I derive my account
from European and American culture and therefore wish to apply my findings to
this field only.
While working on this book, many colleagues have assisted me greatly with
their critical observations. I would like to express special thanks to Christoph
Bochinger, Dylan Burns, Allison P. Coudert, Antoine Faivre, Steve A. Farmer,
Olav Hammer, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Andreas B. Kilcher, Hans G. Kippenberg,
Monika Neugebauer-Walk, Lawrence M. Principe, Matthew D. Rogers, Michael
Stausberg and Steven M. Wasserstrom. Naturally I am alone responsible for any
errors in the book. I am very grateful to the staff of the Bibliotheca Philosophica
Hermetica, Amsterdam, for the procurement of literature and the preparation of
illustrative material.
Kocku von Stuckrad
Amsterdam, March 2005