Western esotericism

Routledge

2016

168 p.

9781134957279

Cover; Half Title; Title; Copyright; Contents; Foreword; Preface; 1. INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS ESOTERICISM?; Some Scholarly Views; Religious Pluralism and the 'Esoteric Field of Discourse'; 2. ESOTERICISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD; Philosophical Religion, Religious Philosophy; Hermetism: The Founding of a Tradition; What is 'Gnosis'?; Transmission into the Middle Ages; 3. THE KABBALAH: UNDERSTANDING THE HIDDEN IN THE REVEALED; Prehistory: Hekhalot Mysticism and Esoteric Biblical Exegesis; The Classical Kabbalah: From Southern France to Israel; 4. THE RENAISSANCE: RE-INVENTING THE ANCIENT WORLD. Esotericism in the Middle AgesThe Birth of Modern Esotericism; 5. ESOTERICISM IN THE CONFESSIONAL AGE; The Mysteries of Nature: Magia naturalis; Kabbalah and Occult Philosophy; Complex Identities; Apocalypticism, Alchemy and Natural Science in Protestantism; 6. ESOTERICISM, ENLIGHTENMENT AND SCIENCE; The Battle for the Spiritual World; Natural Science in the Nineteenth Century; 7. INSTITUTIONALISED ESOTERICISM: SECRET SOCIETIES; Rosicrucians or In the Beginning was a Fiction; Freemasons or The Power of Mystery; Magical Orders or Egypt in England. 8. PIONEER OF MODERN ESOTERICISM: THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETYHelena Petrovna Blavatsky: The Sphinx of the West; Ascended Masters and Mundane Squabbles; 9. ESOTERICISM AND MODERNITY; Modernity and its Discontents; And the 'New Age'?; Bibliography; Index

Английский