Scholars agree that the imagination is central to esoteric practice. While the esoteric vis imaginativa is usually attributed to the influx of Neoplatonism in the Italian Renaissance, this article argues that many of its key properties were already in place in medieval scholasticism. Two aspects of the history of the imagination are discussed. First, it is argued that esoteric practice is rooted in a broader kataphatic trend within Christian spirituality that explodes in the popular devotion literature of the later Middle Ages. By looking at the role of Bonaventure’s “cognitive theology” in the popularization of gospel meditations and kataphatic devotional prayer, it is argued that there is a direct link between the scholastic reconsideration of theimaginative faculty and the development of esoteric practices inspired by Christian devotional literature. Secondly, it is argued that the Aristotelian inner sense tradition of the scholastics left a lasting impression on later esoteric conceptualizations of the imaginative faculty. Examples suggesting evidence for both these two claims are discussed. The article proposes to view esoteric practices as an integral part of a broader kataphatic stream in European religious history, separated out by a set of disjunctive strategies rooted in the policing of “orthopraxy” by ecclesiastical authorities.
Review article of Henrik Bogdan and Olav Hammer (eds.), Western Esotericism in Scandinavia (Leiden: Brill, 2016. 698 + xviii pages).
The imagination is central to esoteric practices, but so far scholars have shown little interest in exploring cognitive theories of how the imagination works. The only exception is Tanya Luhrmann's interpretive drift theory and related research on mental imagery cultivation, which has been used to explain the subjective persuasiveness of modern ritual magic. This article draws on recent work in the neuroscience of perception in order to develop a general theory of kataphatic (that is, imagery based) practice that goes beyond the interpretive drift theory. Mental imagery is intimately linked with perception. Drawing on "predictive coding" theory, the article argues that kataphatic practices exploit the probabilistic, expectation-based way that the brain processes sensory information and creates models (perceptions) of the world. This view throws light on a wide range of features of kataphatic practices, from their contemplative and cognitive aspects, to their social organization and demographic make-up, to their pageantry and material culture. By connecting readily observable features of kataphatic practice to specific neurocognitive mechanisms related to perceptual learning and cognitive processing of mental imagery, the predictive coding paradigm also creates opportunities for combining historical research with experimental approaches in the study of religion. I illustrate how this framework may enrich the study of Western esotericism in particular by applying it to the paradigmatic case of " astral travel" as it has developed from the Golden Dawn tradition of ritual magic, especially in the work of Aleister Crowley.
The idea that esotericism is a form of “rejected knowledge” is back in vogue. This idea was also central to the so-called sociology of the occult of the 1970s, a research program that esotericism scholars have largely dismissed. Through a reassessment of this literature I argue that much of the criticism leveled at it missed the mark, and that mining it for theoretical resources can help us refine the field’s own undertheorized rejected knowledge narrative. In particular, the sociology of the occult offers useful tools for theorizing the historicity, substance, social significance, and social organization of esotericism as rejected knowledge.
This is Richard Noakes’s long-awaited monograph on the relationship between the physical sciences and psychical research in Britain. Focusing largely on the 1870s to the 1930s, the work is the result of several stints of postdoctoral research in the history and philosophy of science conducted at the Universities of Cambridge, Leeds, Sheffield and Exeter. Those who have followed Noakes’s journal publications over the past twenty years will find themselves in familiar territory. Four of the book’s six chapters are partially based on previously published articles, completed with additional research and presented as part of a comprehensive overview.
The notion that esotericism is a form of rejected knowledge has come back in style since the publication of Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s Esotericism and the Academy in 2012. The association of esotericism with heterodoxy, deviance, opposition, and marginalization is itself old news: it has been a standard trope in insider discourses at least since the nineteenth century, and has also featured in earlier scholarly approaches to the field. In its strictest formulation, the new rejected knowledge model differs from these earlier approaches in important ways. Its central claim is that the historiographical category of “esotericism” emerged from heresiological writings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which for the first time imagined a diverse set of “heterodoxies” that we now associate with the category as “related currents.” However, I will argue that the new rejected knowledge model also comes in an inflated version, in which the distinction between the historiographic concept (“esotericism”) and its subject matter becomes blurred. The strict version represents an important contribution to the conceptual history of “esotericism.” The inflated version, by contrast, introduces a host of problems that range from how groups and individuals are represented, to how we analyze and explain the data, to how esotericism is legitimized as a relevant field of study in the academy.
Magic and fortune-telling have been standard elements in stereotypes about Europe's Romani minorities since the fifteenth century. These stereotypes produced two mutually contradictory images of the Roma: That they possess real occult powers, and that they are frauds. Both images were perpetuated by nineteenth-century 'gypsylorist' scholarship, which construed 'the gypsies' as Europe's internal Orientals. This article demonstrates that the most influential gypsylorist author on magic, the folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903), sought to harmonize the two images through a new theory of magical efficacy - building on established work in folklore as well as his own life-long engagement with esotericism.Leland's alignment with occultism is a textbook example of the entanglements of esotericism and scholarship in the period. Seeing occultism as a constitutive context for gypsylorist speculation on 'gypsy magic' sheds new light on the history of Romani studies and helps explain the perpetuation of anti-gypsy stereotypes in alternative spirituality.
The election of the 45th president of the United States set in motion a hidden war in the world of the occult. From the meme-filled underworld of alt-right-dominated imageboards to a widely publicized “binding spell” against Trump and his supporters, the social and ideological divides ripping the American social fabric apart are mirrored by witches, magicians, and other esotericists fighting each other with magical means. This article identifies key currents and developments and attempts to make sense of the wider phenomenon of why and how the occult becomes a political resource. The focus is on the alt-right’s emerging online esoteric religion, the increasingly enchanted notion of “meme magic,” and the open confrontation between different magical paradigms that has ensued since Trump’s election in 2016. It brings attention to the competing views of magical efficacy that have emerged as material and political stakes increase, and theorizes the religionizing tendency of segments of the alt-right online as a partly spontaneous and partially deliberate attempt to create “collective effervescence” and galvanize a movement around a charismatic authority. Special focus is given to the ways in which the politicized magic of both the left and the right produce “affect networks” that motivate political behaviors through the mobilization of (mostly aversive) emotions.
At the center of this article stands a striking but poorly understood artefact held at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm (NM.0159389): A piece of bovine leg bone carved in the likeness of a human skull. Traditionally described as an “idol,” the artefact belongs to a bundle of “witchcraft tools” (trolltyg) that have been attributed to the legendary witch, “Captain Elin,” loosely built on the historical person Elin Eriksdotter from Mofikerud, who was tried in a late witch trial in Näs, Värmland, in 1720. Scholars have long known that the attribution of the skull figure and most of the other items to Elin is false. In this article, we first describe how the association with “Captain Elin” arose, shedding new light on the creation of the legend and its association with the “witchcraft tools.” Secondly, we present new archival evidence that suggests an entirely different context for the bone artefact, namely in the encounters between Romani people and the majority population at the end of the Swedish Great Power era. We discuss the significance of this new context for the cultural memory of magic and witchcraft in Sweden, and for our understanding of the Romani minority’s place in early-modern society.
Western esotericism is intimately linked with conspiracy theories. On the one hand, conspiracy theories often focus on alleged “secret societies” such as the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, or the Freemasons, sometimes thought to possess superhuman powers. On the other, contemporary esoteric currents often spin their own conspiratorial narratives involving reductionist science, materialistic medicine, and corrupt repressive politicians, acting in concert to keep the true esoteric knowledge of divine origins and human potential from a population starved of spiritual truth. How might we explain these relationships? This article proposes a model that combines historical, sociological, and psychological factors, arguing that the relationship is intrinsic. Historically, “esotericism” is a product of mnemohistorical processes where “hidden lineages” from ancient times to the present play a crucial role, both for adherents identifying with such secret traditions and opponents attributing unwanted developments to secret cabals; socially, esotericism is organized along the lines of the loosely structured and culturally deviant “cultic milieu”; psychologically and cognitively, the cultic milieu produces selection pressures that favour certain personality traits and cognitive styles associated with increased conspiracism as well as paranormal beliefs and attributions, and produce forms of “motivated reasoning” that make conspiracy theories about “the establishment” – and competing esoteric groups – appealing.
While the handbook as a whole establishes the study of conspiracy theory as an interdisciplinary subfield in the study of religion and transcends the usual geographic limits in studies of conspiracy beliefs, this afterword identifies key topics that should be developed further in future research. Mediatization, transnational flows, and glocalized uses of conspiracy theories are topics that continue current research trends, but there is also need for considering the role of specific religious organizations. The dynamic relationship between organized religion and state power, when conspiracism is disseminated from above, is another area that tends to be overlooked in current research. Some geographical and cultural areas are left all but untouched, with conspiracy thinking in non-literate societies a particularly glaring lacuna. A broadening of methodological approaches is also warranted. Gender, sexuality, and the body are central loci for both organized religion and conspiracy theories, but notably absent from existing research. Finally, the role that religion might play not only in the creation, spread and adoption of conspiracy beliefs, but also in in resistance against them deserves further attention.
This volume offers new approaches to some of the biggest persistent challenges in the study of esotericism and beyond. Commonly understood as a particularly “Western” undertaking consisting of religious, philosophical, and ritual traditions that go back to Mediterranean antiquity, this book argues for a global approach that significantly expands the scope of esotericism and highlights its relevance for broader theoretical and methodological debates in the humanities and social sciences.
The contributors offer critical interventions on aspects related to colonialism, race, gender and sexuality, economy, and marginality. Equipped with a substantial introduction and conclusion, the book offers textbook-style discussions of the state of research and makes concrete proposals for how esotericism can be rethought through broader engagement with neighboring fields.
In this article, we introduce the ContERN special issue on ethnographies of the esoteric. While the study of esotericism has been dominated by historical-philological scholarship, recent years have seen an increase in anthropological approaches to contemporary esotericism. We argue that this development provides the field not only with new tools, but also fresh perspectives on long-standing theoretical challenges. What are the implications of situating esotericism in particular ethnographic fieldsites? How does anthropological theory reflect on deep-rooted assumptions in the field? We address these questions using examples from the articles in the present special issue as well as other recent ethnographies of esoteric subject matter.
Conspiracy theory and religion are both contested categories. They are ’complex cultural concepts’ the use of which depends on the specific social formations making use of them. These constructions, all involving struggles over power, meaning, and signification, can both help and hinder interdisciplinary dialogue and multidisiplinary approaches. In this chapter we trace some of the building blocks that different academic disciplines bring to and make use of in their study of conspiracy theory to show the potential connections and delineate some of the conflicts. The chapter centres on the building blocks going into studying conspiracy theory as knowledge and as narrative, and goes on to highlight some of the potential ties to the study of religion.
Conspiracy theories are a ubiquitous feature of our times. The Handbook of Conspiracy Theories and Contemporary Religion is the first reference work to offer a comprehensive, transnational overview of this phenomenon along with in-depth discussions of how conspiracy theories relate to religion(s). Bringing together experts from a wide range of disciplines, from psychology and philosophy to political science and the history of religions, the book sets the standard for the interdisciplinary study of religion and conspiracy theories.
In this introduction to Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories, the editors explain the rationale for the book and introduce a set of definitions and methodological principles for the study of conspiracy theories and religion. In order to better understand both the continuities and discontinuities between old and new forms of conspiracy theories, especially as they connect with ‘religion’, ‘magic’, and ‘the occult’, the introduction advocates a historical and comparative approach operating in dialogue with disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, media studies, and psychology. It also provides a short introduction to the book’s chapters, which include cases spanning from the 2nd century BCE to the present day and locations as diverse as Zambia, Japan, Italy, and Norway.
Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories contributes to the study of conspiracy culture by analysing the religious and esoteric dimensions of conspiracy theories.
The book examines both historical and contemporary examples to explore transnational and transhistorical continuities between religious doctrines, eschatologies, and conspiracy theories. It draws on a broad range of disciplinary insights from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars. The book has a global focus and features case studies from North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
This book will be of great interest to researchers of conspiracy theories, esotericism, extremism, and religion
Conspiracy theory and religion are complex phenomena. The relationship between them varies. This chapter introduces some of these relations, highlighting conspiracy theory in, about, and as religion. Conspiracy theory as religion highlights conspiracy thinking as worldview – conspiracism – and the parallels and differences between religion and conspiracism in modes of thinking and organizing collective action. Conspiracy theory in religion highlights religions as organized collectives, the content of and the roles more specific conspiracy theories play in different regions for different groups. Conspiracy theory about religion highlights the varied uses of conspiracy theories in demonizing religious collectives.
In this final chapter, Ann Taves and Egil Asprem engage with the positions, critiques, and applications of the building block approach introduced by the other chapters. It addresses the most important challenges that have been raised, and makes further connections to works in anthropology and the cognitive science of religion. It ends with reflections on future directions in light of the responses from the other authors of the book.