Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Anti-Materialism and the Return to Nature in a Commercial Economy (original) (raw)
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Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 2023
Recent years have seen a surge in scholarly monographs and edited volumes on the occult and broader esoteric topics, a clear indication of both growing interest in the field and expanding recognition of the continuing role these currents play in shaping modern societies and cultures around the world. Despite the relative newness of the academic study of Western esotericism, which is conventionally believed to have entered mainstream academic discourse with Antoine Faivre's (1934-2021) groundbreaking work L'ésotérisme (1992), the field has achieved impressive theoretical and methodological sophistication in the span of a mere four decades. The present volume, The Occult Nineteenth Century: Roots, Developments, and Impact on the Modern World, is an excellent example of the theoretical depth, interdisciplinary breadth, and topical variety characteristic of the field today, bringing together some of the biggest names and most innovative thinkers in the field of esoteric studies. The editors of the volume, Lukas Pokorny and Franz Winter, have accomplished a formidable task, masterfully combining seventeen chapters by well-established and up-and-coming scholars of esotericism into a multifaceted yet coherent collection celebrating the pioneering work of Karl Baier, Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Vienna. Unfortunately, two groundbreaking works by Baier, often referenced by the contributors, Yoga auf dem Weg nach Westen. Beiträge zur Rezeptionsgeschichte (1998) (Yoga on the Way to the West. Contributions to the History of Reception) and Meditation und Moderne: Zur Genese eines Kernbereichs moderner Spiritualität in der Wechselwirkung zwischen Westeuropa, Nordamerika und Asien (2008) (Meditation and Modernity: On the Genesis of a Core Area of Modern Spirituality in the Interaction between Western Europe, North America, and Asia) are yet to be translated into English. It is beyond doubt that this volume will be of great interest both to scholars of alternative spiritualities and to a wider audience of non-specialists who want to gain a broader understanding of various occult movements and their
The Problem of Disenchantment: Scientific Naturalism and Esoteric Discourse, 1900-1939
2014
The Problem of Disenchantment offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the intellectual history of science, religion, and “the occult” in the early 20th century. By developing a new approach to Max Weber’s famous idea of a “disenchantment of the world”, and drawing on an impressively diverse set of sources, Egil Asprem opens up a broad field of inquiry that connects the histories of science, religion, philosophy, and Western esotericism. Parapsychology, occultism, and the modern natural sciences are usually viewed as distinct cultural phenomena with highly variable intellectual credentials. In spite of this view, Asprem demonstrates that all three have met with similar intellectual problems related to the intelligibility of nature, the relation of facts to values, and the dynamic of immanence and transcendence, and solved them in comparable terms.
Science as an Assimilation of the 19th Century Spiritualism into Society
Kültür araştırmaları dergisi, 2021
Spiritualists in the 19 th century have endeavored to prove their assessments by using science itself which tried to debunk their field's phenomena. The most principal claims of spiritualism have been the possibility of communicating with spirits through the agency of mediums and visioning a close person who has been in the moment of dying or far away. Scientific studies have not only been used to prove these assessments but to create new concepts and perceptions about psychic experiences. The aim of this article is to determine that spiritualists have assimilated themselves into society by using science apart from being denounced as superstitious. Hereby, what spiritualists have suggested in terms of science will be documented within a historical process and the terms which they have coined will be examined. It will be clarified that the people who have evaluated these phenomena consisted of scientists, scholars and literary figures. SPR (The Society for Psychical Research), which was completely formed by scientists and scholars, investigated the mediums and put them under multiple psychical experiments. These researches were published in their anthology named as Phantasms of The Living and their periodicals named as "The Proceedings". The terms which were coined in order to scientificate spiritualism have been "psychic force", "telepathy", "hallucination" and "ectoplasm". It will be concluded that these terms have enabled to categorize the assessments of spiritualism which were communicating and visioning spirits, and also accommodated the psychic researchers and mediums to express themselves subjectively by assimilation into society.
2021
(Live recorded presentation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xWsQzJ-nep4) Since its inception, scholars in the field of Western esotericism have counted the Theosophical Society among its subjects of study (Faivre 1994). Given the fact that there are several competing ways of conceptualizing esotericism today, the question of whether and/or how the Theosophical Society fits within the category has no easy answer. This paper will consider whether and how the Theosophical Society can be conceived of as an esoteric group from several standpoints in regards to different understandings of esotericism. Drawing on recent debates within the field of (Western) esotericism, as well as studies on until recently neglected aspects of the Theosophical Society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (such as its function as a global society, debates and differences within the organization as well as focus on individuals who have not made it into the standard canon of Theosophical history, such as G.R.S. Mead), I aim to give a nuanced and complex account of how we can best conceive of the Theosophical Society today prior to and after the passing of H.P. Blavatsky.
Correspondences, 2022
Scholars from a number of fields have illustrated the role and relevance of occultism on essentially all aspects of modernity, including its cultural, colonial, political, and religious landscapes. The project of modernity partly involved the development of various academic societies, fields of research, and disciplines. Several scholars have traced and analyzed how the processes of demarcation and the boundary-work between the emerging categories of "religion" and "science" played out during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with some works highlighting the role of occultism and esotericism in creating those very categories. 1 Seeking to further uncover connections between esotericism and modernity, Yves Mühlematter and Helmut Zander's (eds) Occult Roots of Religious Studies, which brings into focus the nascent study of religion during modernity, is quite timely. The book constitutes volume four of De Gruyter's Okkulte Moderne, a book series that explores the relationships between "non-hegemonic" and "hegemonic" strands of knowledge and helps to establish a solid center for esotericism research in the Germanic world. 2 Occult Roots of Religious Studies is the series's first Englishlanguage (and thus internationally geared) title, and the editors have solicited chapters from a mixture of recognized esotericism scholars such as Boaz Huss, Julian Strube, Jens Schlieter, Daniel Cyranka, and additional researchers focusing on a broad range of subjects, including museology (Sabine Böhme), folklore studies (Marco Frenschkowski), and "neo-Hinduism" (Léo Bernard). The volume under review is based on the international conference "Birth of the Science of Religion: Out of the Spirit of Occultism," held at the University
Esotericism Emergent: The Beginning of the Study of Esotericism in the Academy
It has taken a long time for esotericism to be recognized as a valid, legitimate field of scholarly research. Although the perception of the phenomenon from a historical point of view dates back at least to the seventeenth century, for a long time a polarized, biased attitude, split between supporters and detractors, prevailed. There was clearly something about esotericism that made it a difficult subject to handle within an academic context. Theologians often perceived it as a dangerous threat to true, pure religion, while Enlightenment thinkers saw it as a typical form of superstitious behavior that had to be cast away so that the new age of rationality and science could kick in. Some esotericists, especially starting with the nineteenth century, began to develop a certain critical distance that allowed them to be interested in the historical dimension of the tradition they claimed to represent. Their work, however, even when it may have deserved attention, remained limited and, even then, obscure and uncredited in a scholarly context. With the twentieth century interest in subjects that were not part of either mainstream religious traditions or Western rationality began to increase. After the Second World War, this trend was further boosted by movements developing in society at large, such as the counterculture of the 1960s. Alternative forms of religion and spirituality, new religious movements, and nonconformist intellectual traditions attracted scholars more and more and prompted the creation of new institutional academic space for them. In this context, the study of Western esotericism emerged as a distinct scholarly field, especially after the early 1990s. Since then, a large scholarly community has grown that is now organized through various international networks and associations. If the study of esotericism was long impeded by the limitations that Western culture had imposed on itself, its growing institutionalization attests to the depth of the changes that have occurred in Western culture since the early 1990s.
Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, 2008
Among spiritual developments that overlap with Spiritualities of Life and are of growing interest is that of esotericism. This article examines the changing relationship between esotericism and Christianity from the nineteenth century. Under the impact of secularisation, this relationship changed from one in which esotericists identified themselves as Christians and made use of Christian symbolism and terminology to one in which many esotericists, influenced by secular modes of thinking and eventually free to express themselves as they saw fit, sought to expound their philosophy and beliefs in 'scientific' language. The historical study of Western esotericism would be greatly enriched by sociological studies; and sociological studies of New Age spirituality, neo-paganism, contemporary magic, New Religious Movements, and so forth, would be greatly enriched by making use of the insights gained in the historical study of Western esotericism.