Volume 2.2 (original) (raw)

Western Esotericism in a Brave New World

Delivered at the American Academy of Religion Conference, San Francisco 2011. The entrance of Western Esotericism into academe and the development of related disciplines such as Pagan Studies hold wider implications on a number of levels. The popularity of these subjects, whether in academia or popular culture, is far more than just some fad. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the modern rediscovery of these subjects, their new-found respectability and the increased availability of both academic and good quality mass market literature have burgeoned in response to a growing social need for alternatives to tried, tested, and failed approaches to critical social questions. Within the history of Western Esoteric currents, and the worldviews belonging to them, are embedded models and ideas that we can learn from and which can offer practicable and pragmatic ways in which to counter the social, moral and existential crisis that we are all experiencing, whether from the eye of the storm or the sidelines. When they are so inclined, scholars in particular, have a duty to communicate, disseminate and discuss these models and their potential applications. The potential applications are infinite, from sustainable development to sustainable economies, and now more then ever, the world – not just the classroom – are in need of new models and ideas. For something like this to be considered on a practical scale, it has to start with awareness and dialogue. Scholars who have the privilege of understanding how these concepts work, need to leave their ivory towers and talk both to their more positivist colleagues, and their ‘objects’ of study. Practitioners need to root philosophical and enchanted ideals in modern reality. It is esotericism that can provide a common vocabulary and vision; from there on, we need fruitful dialogue. In this paper I will outline some of the main reasons for which we feel that both the methodological question, as well as that of the role of this area of study, must be constantly re-examined, and I will also attempt to propose potential ways of doing so.

The occult mind: magic in theory and practice

Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 2007

At the heart of Christopher Lehrich's The Occult Mind several theses are articulated: that the works of certain occult thinkers are in need of reassessment in light of their intellectual proximity to contemporary theoretical debates, that the "problem of occult analogy" may be seen to haunt the structural anthropology of Lévi-Strauss and its heirs, and that the question of "magic" is in need of urgent theoretical rehabilitation given the foregoing propositions. Each of these notions is pursued in order to explicate a more general problem for historians: Is it possible to overcome the distinction between historical and morphological methodologies in regard to the study of "esoteric" texts? At several points Lehrich posits that the solution to this methodological problem "would require a spell" and it is only at the end of the book that one realizes that that is precisely what he has done -The Occult Mind appears as nothing less than a twenty-first-century grimoire, a book of incantatory power for anyone interested in the tradition of Western esotericism and its recent academic legitimation.