This study positions Paracelsian alchemy, medicine and medical physiology within the apocalyptic discourse of the Protestant Reformation. Specific attention is paid to alchemical illustrations of ritual sacrifice, death and resurrection.

In 1914 a remarkable poetic work appeared in Sydney, Australia, written in the form of a Symbolist livre compose by one of Stephane Mallarme's earliest admirers, Christopher Brennan. The book, simply titled Poems, shows that Brennan was exploring pressing religious issues of his time. He melded Western esoteric currents such as alchemy and Rosicrucianism with Romantic literature and philosophy and French Symbolist theory. This book argues that the focus of Poems is the notion of a higher self. It is the first major study of Brennan's work in this broad religious,...

This volume explores the history, the hierarchical structure, and the secret teachings of the 18th-Century secret order of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz on the basis of original documents, thereby applying recent and innovative concepts of the Study of Western Esotericism.

F. M van Helmont's Alphabet of Nature was one of many books published about language in the early modern period. The "language debate," as it has come to be called, was a topic of compelling interest to major figures such as Reuchlin, Rabelais, Paracelsus, Agrippa, Postel, Boehme, Kircher, Hobbes, Descartes, Comenius, Spinoza, Locke, Boyle, Newton, and Leibniz. At issue were profound questions about whether language is natural or artificial, ordained by God or created by man. The answers given entailed a web of consequences that could lead to arrest, imprisonment, even execution. It is...

From rumours about gnostic orgies in antiquity to the explicit erotic symbolism of alchemical texts, from the subtly coded eroticism of medieval kabbalah to the sexual magic practiced by contemporary occultists and countercultural translations of Asian Tantra, the history of Western esotericism is rich in references to the domains of eros and sexuality. This volume, which brings together an impressive array of top-level specialists, is the first to analyze the eroticism of the esoteric without sensationalism or cheap generalizations, but on the basis of expert scholarship and attention to...

Women have been structurally part of the masonic enterprise from at least the middle of the 18th century. Yet, little is known about the ways in which they themselves obtained and exercised power to influence the systems they were involved in, in order to adapt them to be more appropriate to their needs. This volume intends to concentrate on two aspects: Women's agency (i.e. the power women gained and exercised in this context) and rituals (i.e. the role of men and women in changing and shaping the rituals women work with). These two aspects are closely related, since it requires some agency...

In its historical development from late antiquity to the present, western esotericism has repeatedly been the issue of polemical discourse. This volume engages the polemical structures that underlie both the identities within and the controversy about esoteric currents in European history. From Jewish and Christian kabbalah through heretical discourse and interconfessional polemics in early modernity to the legitimization of esoteric identity in modern culture, the 12 chapters, accompanied by an editors' introduction, provide a cornucopia of relevant cases that are interpreted in a framework...

This collection of essays analyzes the relationships that exist between esotericism and music from Antiquity to the 20th century, investigating ways in which magic, astrology, alchemy, divination, and cabbala interact with music. The volume seeks to dissolve artificial barriers between the history of art, music, science, and intellectual history by establishing an interdisciplinary dialogue about music as viewed against a specific cultural background. The synthesis of scientific and historical contexts with respect to music, explored here on a large scale for the first time, opens up a wealth...

The persistence of kabbalistic groups in the twentieth century has largely been ignored or underestimated by scholars of religion. Only recently have scholars began to turn their attention to the many-facetted roles that kabbalistic doctrines and schools have played in nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture. Often, and necessarily, this new interest and openness went along with a contextualization and re-valuation of earlier scholarly approaches to kabbalah. This volume brings together leading representatives of this ongoing debate in order to break new ground for a better understanding...

The question of constructing tradition, concepts of origin, and memory as well as techniques and practices of knowledge transmission, are central for cultures in general. In esotericism, however, such questions and techniques play an outstanding role and are widely reflected upon, in its literature. Esoteric paradigms not only understand themselves in elaborated mytho-poetical narratives as bearers of "older," "hidden," "higher" knowledge. They also claim their knowledge to be of a particular origin. And they claim this knowledge has been transmitted by particular (esoteric) means, media and...