HIDDEN SOURCES: Western Esoteric Influence on the Arts

Update on the Second annual CCWE one day conference.

Date: Saturday, 11th October 2008, 9.30am – 5.00pm
Venue: The Unitarian Church building, Emanuel Road, Cambridge, Emmanuel Road, CB1 1JW
The influence of Western Esotericism in Literature, Music and Esoteric Geometry is examined by the following presenters:

MALCOLM GUITE’S KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Western Esotericism and the Arts.

This address will trace the hidden course and some of the sources of the stream of “esoteric” thought and imagery which flows, so often unnoticed through western arts, and in particular will look at literature. The line of esoteric insight and understanding which passes through Boehme to Swedenborg, to Blake and from Blake through to Yeats and so into the “mainstream” of high modernist literature is well known. Less well known is the way renaissance revivals of hermetic learning pass down through Milton, to later poets and especially Coleridge, who was familiar in the original languages of almost the entire Corpus Hermeticum and was also reading and critiquing the German mystical writers and Swedenborg. Indeed it was through Swedenborgian circles that the meeting between Coleridge and Blake was arranged, a hugely significant event which is completely ignored by mainstream literary history. I will suggest in this paper that there is a line to be traced from Coleridge to many “mainstream” nineteenth and and twentieth century writers.

Perhaps the most unlikely literary group to be formed and informed by esoterica, the Oxford Inklings, the group of creative Christian apologists centred around CS Lewis which included Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield. He will show that the works of this latter group depend very strongly for their shape and meaning on astrological structure and also on a mysticism of primal sound and harmony. Specifically we will look at how esoteric tradition from the Order of the Golden Dawn passes through Charles Williams to Lewis, whilst at the same time Owen Barfield, a devotee of Rudolph Stiener, is able to persuade Lewis, through the thought of Coleridge, of the creative and truth-bearing powers of imagination.

We will explore the way in which Tolkien’s concept of mytho-poeia affects both his own and Lewis’ writings and finally at the way in which these many themes are harmoniously linked in Tolkien’s work especially the Silmarillion, whose initial images of creation can be traced back via Georgio’s mystical “Harmonia Mundi” to the earliest orphic traditions. At present the Inklings are pigeonholed as “conservative Christians” and often used as blunt weapons in the conflicts between conservative Christianity and both secularism on the one hand .and non Christian spirituality on the other. My contention is that the rediscovery and defence of Christian mysticism in the works of these writers involves a recovery of just those esoteric and mystical elements which could make Christianity a harmonious participant in our contemporary spiritual awakening and not, as some would have it, a fearful forbidder.

MALCOLM GUITE was born in Nigeria and raised in Africa and Canada, Malcolm Guite is a poet and singer-songwriter living in Cambridge, where he also works as a priest and academic. He has published two collections of poetry; Saying the Names 2002 and The Magic Apple Tree 2004 and has also published poems in Radix, The Mars Hill Review, Crux, Second Spring and the Ambler. He has played in rock’n’ roll band The Crocodiles, trad jazz outfit Ecu-Jazz, and is currently front man for Cambridge rockers Mystery Train. He has collaborated with Kevin Flanagan on jazz-poetry and also the oratorio The Ten Thousand Things for which he wrote the libretto. His CD The Green Man is out on Cambridge Riffs and iTunes. www.malcolmguite.com

Some Publications:
What Do Christians Believe? Granta 2006, (Dutch Edition 2007, Greek Edition 2007, American Edition 2008), part of Granta’s new series on different faith-systems: What Do We Believe?.

In preparation for Ashgate: Faith Hope and Poetry to be published in their series Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts.

‘Poetry, Playfulness and Truth…’ a chapter on the theology of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest in Faithful Performances; Enacting Christian Tradition ed. Trevor Hart and Stephen Guthrie Ashgate 2007.

Contributions on Numbers and Exodus in Reflections for Daily Prayer; Lent to Pentecost Church House Publishing 2008.

Six poems in Live Simply Canterbury Press 2008

His poems have been published in Radix, Second Spring, Mars Hill Review, Crux, Poetry on the Lake and The Ambler.

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In the field of music we are fortunate to have with us Laurence Wuidar (F.N.R.S.)Docteur en musicologie de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles

Claudio Monteverdi

ESOTERIC TRADITION WITHIN16th and 17th CENTURIES MUSICAL CIRCLES

It is well know that esotericism may be a starting point for musical compositions, such as the works composed for the Masonic loges. It is also well know that esotericism may be the secret key to decipher a musical score, such as the too famous Bach-numerology topic. It is much less known that a lot of composers and musicians were also alchemists, astrologers or magicians.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse various esoteric activities of some sixteenth and seventeenth century composers and musicians, mainly in Italy, where the Inquisition was forever prone to censure them. The esoteric expression of a humanistic encyclopaedism reveals how the figure of the composer was not imaginable per se. Thus we distort history by regarding them only as composers or musical theoreticians. Only by breaking down the wall between the disciplines can we reconstitute the visage of musicians, such as Claudio Monteverdi, Lodovico Zacconi, Pier Francesco Valentini, Theodato Osio or Guido Trasuntino. The interest and the activities (teachings, writings and experiments) of these musicians for the sciences and arts, such as astrology or alchemy, tell us how their knowledge was a multidiscipline one. It also tells us how the musical process of composition has, in fact, synergies with such arts and sciences. That is ‘quintessentially’ true if we look at the enigmatic canons, the hidden message they veil to the profane and reveal to the initiated, as well as the manner they were resolved after a process of ora, labora & invenies (to quote the motto we find in the Mutus liber, in the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae of Heinrich Khunrath and in many other enigmatic canons). The composers were the custodians of secret rules, whether astrological, musical or alchemical, they taught to a small number of disciples. Thus their musical activities can not be completely understood if we are not first aware of their esoteric activities.

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Frank Albo is a researcher and teacher from the University of Winnipeg, in Manitoba, Canada, who is well known for his discoveries and writings about the Manitoba Legislature. His research has led to the findings and interpretations of numerous occult/masonic symbols and figures inside the Manitoba Legislative Building. He is curently engaged in doctoral research at Cambridge University.

He introduces us to the Vesica Piscis

THE VESICA PISCIS: THE UNSEATING OF EUCLID,
AND THE RE-APOTHEOIS OF GEOMETRY IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN</strong

This paper posits that the sudden appearance of vesica piscis in the nineteenth century was due to the advent of non-Euclidean geometry. Non-Euclidean geometry threatened traditional views of geometric truth and it was met with vehement resistance from English Freemasons who endorse a geometric theology resting on the infallibility of Euclid. Masonic pundits championed the re-apotheosis of geometry which they indelibly linked to the vesica piscis and its formulation in medieval architecture. Their theories influenced nineteenth century ideas of harmony and proportion promulgated by British architects C.R. Cockerell and F.B. Bond.

1. The Vesica Piscis - Dürer’s brainchild
The term vesica piscis, derives from the Latin translation of Dürer’s practical manual of geometric theory, Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt (1525).

2. Frederick Bligh Bond (1864-1945) – necromancer of GlastonburyBond was an architect, Freemason, and numerologist who claimed that the vesica piscis was latent in the plan of Lady Chapel in Glastonbury. His theories of architecture were influenced by Cockerell.

3. Charles Robert Cockerell (1788-1863) – evangelist of the vesica piscis. The nineteenth century professor of architecture responsible for vivifying the popular mystique of the vesica piscis as a formula of exemplary proportion handed down from the Freemasons.

4. Thomas Kerrich (1748-1863) – evangelist of the vesica piscesKerrich argued that the visica piscis had informed the proportions of nineteen churches. His studies published I a popular antiquarian journal impacted Cockerell’s theories of medieval design.

5. Cockerell’s Rules of Design – from Freemasonry to Cesariano
Cockerell presents his tripartite rules of design for ideal beauty and proportions in architecture, which he credits to the Vitruvian commentator, Cesare Cesariano, and the medieval Freemasons.

6. The Unseating of Euclid – nineteenth century innovation of non-Euclidean geometry
The emergence of non-Euclidean geometry in the nineteenth century challenged the universality of Euclid and spawned a proliferation of Masonic texts on the sacrality of the vesica piscis.

7. Re-apotheosis of Geometry in Victorian Britain – Freemasonry’s geometric theology
The Masonic idea that geometry is an exclusive and secret science handed down by God to Euclid and the architect of Solomon’s Temple. In Freemasonry, geometry is a touchstone of divine power.

8. Cockerell’s unwitting legacy – the vesica piscis and the Church of Scientology
From the geometric mysteries of the vesica piscis sparked off by Cockerell’s studies of medieval proportions to an aerial signpost marking the sacred writings of the Church of Scientology.

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Full programme will be posted in a later update.
For enquiries contact: Dr Sophia Wellbeloved: sophia@gurdjieff-books.net

TEXTUAL EXAMPLES OF NUMBER SYMBOLISM 16th - 18th CENTURIES

This paper was given by Kathryn LaFevers Evans
at ASE 3rd International Conference, “Esotericism, Religion, and Nature”
May 29 - June 1, 2008
College of Charleston, South Carolina

L’École Abstraite: Coincidentia Oppositorum as a Dialectic of Love:16th-18th Centuries

Textual examples of number symbolism document the propagation into Early Modern esotericism of a key concept: coincidence of opposites as a dialectic of love. The architecture of this fortification or Palace of Divine Love represents in physical geometric form the spiritual ideas of l’école abstraite, the abstract school of thought. The key texts compared herein—Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’ De Magia naturali, François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, Jacob Boehme’s The ‘Key’, and Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman—demonstrate the inheritance of this subfield of esotericism, l’école abstraite.

Lefèvre (1455-1536) synthesized mythological, philosophical, theological and scientific theories and practices into a wholly-interpenetrating, esoteric worldview utilizing coincidentia oppositorum, termed such by the fifteenth-century cardinal, Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). Particularly Book II of Lefèvre’s unpublished treatise On Natural Magic is exemplary of Early Modern esotericism’s inheritance of l’école abstraite, the abstract school of thought.

Kent Emery Jr. asserts that Lefèvre’s teachings contributed to the evolution of l’ecole abstraite, an indigenous French school of spirituality the influence of which reached to the philosophy of Hegel. Emery traces the tradition from John Scotus Erigena (800-877) to Ramon Lull (AmicAmat 1276-83) to Nicholas of Cusa, and emphasizes that Lefèvre reinforced teachings of mystic Church Fathers such as St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) and the Victorines, which were then later legitimized by Lefèvre’s students Josse Clichtove (1472-1543) and Charles de Bovelles (1479-1553), then by the Capuchin Benet of Canfield (1562-1611), then Laurent de Paris (1563-1631) who spoke of le palais de l’amour divin. Regarding Benet of Canfield, and his contemporary Laurent de Paris, Emery says, “For both, the principle of the coincidence of opposites is central” (Emery online, dates mine). In De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 4, Lefèvre himself claims a more ancient lineage for this tradition of numerical ascension along the chains to Idea:

Quam Mercurius, quam Zÿmoxchis, quam Zoroaster, denique divinus Plato,
posteaque eam Egiptios magos concesserat, tantopere desiderabant [. . .].Which Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, which Zalmoxis, which Zoroaster, and
thereupon the divine Plato, and after he had departed the Egyptian magicians, of such measure were longing for [. . .]. (Evans II:58, f. 202)

Francois Rabelais

Categorized most specifically, I find that Book II embodies Christian Kabbalah, which is encompassed by the overarching abstract school of thought, later coined l’école abstraite by Benet of Canfield. The network during Lefèvre’s time of those now labeled Christian Kabbalists, included his compatriot François Rabelais (1483-1553). He is suggested to have used Lefèvre as the model for his satirized good theologian Hippothadée in The Third Book of Gargantua and Pantagruel (Œuvres Complètès L’Intégrale, Index des Personnages 998, “Hippothadée”). Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), a seventeenth-century self-identified receiver of God’s Will, in turn transmits l’école abstraite in The ‘Key’ through describing the physical architecture representing spiritual experiences. The primal architecture of this fortress or Palace of Divine Love is the binary juxtaposition of Above and below, married in a love-triangle or Trinitarian love-nexus generated out of that binary. Never tiring of the basic physical joke of satirically inverting sublime intimacies, Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), in Tristram Shandy, reenacts the key concept of coincidence of opposites as a dialectic of love through satirized incarnations of the binary, enacting a divine comedy to the very end of his voluminous text.

Where, in Lefèvre’s and Boehme’s texts we receive sublimely mythopoetic incarnations of divine love, through Rabelais and Sterne we receive a sacrifice of that dearest experience, yet offered in such a way as to effect the healing purpose of satirical learned wit. Each in their own way, these thinkers propagate an esoteric, wholly-interpenetrating worldview where all are in love, all are saved.

In the title of De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 10, Lefèvre employs the umbrella term, “Priscae velatae Theologiae” or “Ancient veils of Theology” (Evans II:80, f. 213). Throughout Book II, Lefèvre unveils mythology, theology, and philosophy to reveal a theory, practice and experience of number as Idea. He reveals how the limit of the metaphorical imagery in disciplines is duality, the binary coincidence of opposites, symbolized by the number 2. The Magic in Lefèvre’s number mysticism is based on human experience of numerical ascension from man to God, achieved through the number 3. Renaissance esotericists conceived of this prisca theologia as embodied in the Trinity through the Spirit of Christ. Theirs was a wholly-interpenetrating vision of universal Holy Spirit beyond dualistic boundaries, demonstrated in the topic of Lefèvre’s Book II, which he calls “Pythagorean philosophy”, and which he equates to “Cabala” and prophetic teachings (Evans Ch. 1 II:50, f. 198; Ch. 14 II:89-90, f. 217-218v). The Magic ternary or number 3 is identified in Chapter 1 as the Venusian love-nexus: “Venereum amorem, et inferioris potentiae appetitusque nexum . . . Venus is love, and love-nexus of the inferior power and longing . . .” (Evans II:51, f. 199v). In Chapter 3, Lefèvre details planetary effects on the earthly resulting from similars’ affinity to similars through the “benignity” of archetypes who embody this coincidence of opposites as a dialectic of love:

And Jupiter along with Venus, celestial love-nexus of benevolence, sound in unison their approach reciprocally nearest to benignity, as of all magical accordances, through their path benignity is sanctioned. And in truth not only the celestial to the celestial accord, but also the celestial to the earthly. [. . .] The influence consequently of the eighth circle, and also of the Moon, earth feels the greatest. Of Saturn and Mercury water, of Jove and Venus air, of Mars and Sun fire. And this agreed upon proportionate admixture of theirs, Empedocles of the Pythagoreans, who merely rightly inferred by conjecture, that matter is saved by concordant discord, by a love-relationship truly interior . (Evans Ch. 3 II:56-57, f. 201-202v)

This sexualized, though clearly metaphorical coincidence of opposites in ritual theological couples Lefèvre adopts as the primal mythopoetic scaffolding for De Magia naturali, describing that mythologized genesis of creation as “the mitigation of re-creation,” and justifying its use with the explanation “such that minds more easily understand” (Evans Ch. 7 II:67, f. 207v). Lefèvre delineates the inferior terrestrial numbers of the body and the Superior celestial numbers of the soul, forming the first binary relationship: “[. . .] primus ergo binarius.” “[. . .] the first [number] is therefore the binary .” This binary, the primal exilic metaphor of the Fall, he mythologizes as androgynous unity in the term “mons binarii,” “the mountain of the binary,” synonymous with the axis mundi or World Pillar. All other numbers emmanate from 2. (Evans Ch. 7 II:68-9, f. 207-208v)

For Christian Kabbalists, the exilic Fall from One to 2 is expressed mythologically in the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and in Jesus’ birth as the Son of God. The final Christian salvation from exile is expressed sacrificially through Jesus’ crucifixion when he becomes Christ, the Spirit that unites God and man, completing ascension to the Trinity. Likewise, Natural Magic resolves exile through number symbolism incarnate in mythological beings. Lefèvre employs the descending and ascending chains of the numerical, celestial and angelic spheres, on which man ascends to the divine. In Chapter 10, he claims that the numbers to the mystery of the magi (magicians) and the numbers to the mystery of the prophets are the same, that this “ancient veil of theology” is in concordance with Christian theology, and that Judaic Kabbalah is not unworthy (Evans II:80, f. 213; Ch. 14 II:89, f. 217). Eugene F. Rice explains how Lefèvre relates God’s delight in the number 3, and associates the triangle with the Trinity: “From the triangle all things come; it is the beginning, middle and end. [. . .] It inspires love of justice and equity, for the equilateral triangle is the figure of aequalitas” (“The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples” 24)

Echoing Lefèvre, what the triangle symbolizes to Boehme is described thus: “Nothing and All; Alpha and Omega, the Eternal Beginning and the Eternal End; the Trinity Unmanifest” (The ‘Key’ 56).
I saw the Being of all Beings, the Ground and the Abyss, also the birth of the Holy Trinity, the origin and the first state of the world and of all creatures. I saw in myself the three worlds—the Divine or angelic world; the dark world, the original of Nature; and the external world, as a substance spoken forth out of the two spiritual worlds . . . In my inward man I saw it well, as in a great deep; for I saw right through as into a chaos where everything lay wrapped, but I could not unfold it. Yet from time to time it opened itself within me like a growing plant. […] The work is none of mine; I am but the Lord’s instrument, with which He does what He wills. (74)

Adam’s fall is symbolized as a divorce from Sophia into two triangles, which move again towards complete union, towards “the most significant Character in all the Universe” [the hexagram] (74).
Boehme describes the Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion in Divine Marriage:

[…] the Children of Adam [. . .] are Images of GOD […] Wherefore also they are distinguished from the Angels by this peculiar Character [hexagram symbol] which is not contrived by human Speculation, but is written in the Book of Nature by the Finger of God; for it points directly, not only at the Creation of this third Principle in six Days; but also at fallen and divorced Adam’s Reunion with the Divine Virgin SOPHIA. (80)

Laurence Sterne

The importance of mathematically generated symbols—such as the triangle and the hexagram—to esoteric thought is readily communicated through satire, since the satiric genre embodies the foundation from which to generate such symbols from Ideas: the comic juxtapositions and reversals of High and low. Satirists’ construction of the coincidence of opposites centers the Holy Spirit itself as the battleground between High and low, and thus the rightful territory of satire. The Ideas and forms of number symbolism have also long been ensconced in military allegory by its practioners, whether seriously or satirically, Ephraim Chamber’s Cyclopedia cites this fact in the definition of fortification: “Some Authors go back to the Beginning of the World, for the Author and Origin of Military Architecture. According to them, GOD himself was the first Engeneer; and Paradice, or the Garden of Eden, the first Forteresse” (“Fortification” 79 U of Wisc online). Under the obsessive manipulations of Sterne’s military character Uncle Toby, the precious hexagram form is satirically distorted into a hexagon fortification, as Sterne would have seen Chamber’s “Fortification” just so illustrated.
D. W. Jefferson has pointed to the direct influence on Sterne’s Tristram Shandy of Urquhart and Motteux’s first English translation of Rabelais’ third book (Jefferson 150). Turning to The Third Book then, Neopythagoreanism, Neoplatonism and Christian Kabbalah are foundational throughout in such teachings as the significance of numbers. That significance is demonstrated through Panurge’s satirical defense of debtors:

Debts: A thing most precious and dainty, of great Use and Antiquity. Debts, (I say) surmounting the number of Syllables which may result from the Combinations of all the Consonants, with each of the Vowels heretofore projected, reckoned and calculated by the Noble Xenocrates. To judge of the perfection of Debtors by the Numerosity of their Creditors, is the readiest way for entring into the Mysteries of Practical Arithmetick. (310)

“Practical” here connotes the esoteric technique, or practice of number symbolism and numerical ascension. Reversing the mechanics of that cosmic hierarchy, Rabelais contends that Debt is the essential divine relationship rather than Love; Debt sets the universe in motion, not Love. The religious reversal is then amplified as Rabelais throws sex, and then war, into the equation. Panurge abstractly ponders the passion in his own nuptial coupling and what he concludes is the reason for the saying, “the Debt of Marriage” (Rabelais 317). Linking that chain next to a military allegory, Panurge denigrates second marriages to widows of war (320-21). Enter Sterne’s character Uncle Toby and the apparent impotence of a passionate desire, in the end, towards the Widow Wadman. Uncle Toby is obsessively practicing on his military Hobby-Horse in the central battleground of Holy Spirit. What endears this esoteric military allegory to us is that this interior territory, this love-relationship truly interior, embodies the touchstone of sacrifice. Therein is Uncle Toby’s double victory of sacrificing both passion and divine love, as demonstrated in the construction of his drawbridge:
“It turned it seems upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in the middle, one half of which turning to one side of the fosse, and the other to the other; the advantage of which was this, that by dividing the weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it impowered my uncle Toby to raise it up or let it down with the end of his crutch, and with one hand, which, as his garrison was weak, was as much as he could well spare—but the disadvantages of such a construction were insurmountable;—for by this means, he would say, I leave one half of my bridge in my enemy’s possession—and pray of what use is the other?” (Jefferson 21)

At the end of the story, after “THE INVOCATION” of Cervantes and his “mystic mantle,” I interpret that Sterne’s character Tristram recommends we sacrifice both divine love and human passion or debt:
[…] there must be ups and downs, or how the duce whould we get into vallies where Nature spreads so many tables of entertainment. […] for heaven’s and for your own sake, pay it—pay it with both hands open […]. (Sterne 571-72)

Hence, in a triangle of aequalitas, Uncle Toby’s Hobby-Horse drawbridge leverages both the camps of God and man in a spiritually redemptive sacrifice, thus securing victory. Melvyn New provides a clue to this conclusion in the Editor’s Introduction, where he describes the nature of Sterne’s sermons: “Above all, he denies the possibility of happiness or morality without religion, and asserts again and again the Providential design of the world […] from the first Adam’s fall to the second Adam’s (Christ’s) redemptive sacrifice” (xli). So I conclude that when satirists in the tradition of learned wit invert sublime intimacies through sexual and military allegory, neither an embrace nor an offense is intended, but rather complete surrender to Divine Will in love.

The telltale binary clue to Sterne’s propagation of the abstract school of thought is sounded loudly at the story’s end, where Tristram’s father’s “Bull,” lent for animal husbandry purposes to their servant, reappears. It is then that Sterne likens human progeny to such two-horned beasts as satyrs. So not only is the binary number 2 allegorized in the love-nexus between Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman, but that same dialectic of love has borne the beastly fruit of Tristram, instead of the Holy Trinity. His father Walter embodies the coincidence of opposites in that the name Walter can be traced through its manifestations as Bon Gaultier, Merry Walter, Robin Goodfellow, Puck or Pooka, and thus back to the two-horned pagan god Bucca or Boucca (“Puck Through the Ages” online; “The Boucca Society” online). By all counts, the binary Walter should have spawned the Thrice-Blessed Trismegistus as planned. Fortunately for lovers of satirical learned wit, the mere mortal Tristram was born, and along with him this “Cock and Bull” tale for our instruction and delight.

Works Cited
Boehme, Jacob. The ‘Key’ of Jacob Boehme. Trans. William Law. Illus. D.A. Freher. Intro. Adam McLean. Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1991.
Emery, Kent Jr. “Mysticism and the Coincidence of Opposites in
Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France.” Journal of the History of Ideas. (ABC-CLIO) 1984, vol. 45(1). 22 Jan. 2003. 3-23. JSTOR, (San Marcos, Calif.).
“Fortification.” University of Wisconsin. 20 February 2008.
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/HistSciTech/HistSciTech-idx?type=turn&entity=HistSciTech000900240826.
“Fortification Plate.” University of Wisconsin. 20 February 2008.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/HistSciTech/EFacs//Cyclopaedia/Cyclopaedia01/XL/0795.jpg.
Jefferson, D. W. “Tristram Shandy and the Tradition of Learned Wit.” Laurence Sterne: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views. Ed. John Traugott. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. 148-167.
“Puck Through the Ages.” BoldOutlaw. 20 February 2008.
http://www.boldoutlaw.com/puckrobin/puckages.html
Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Tr. Sir Thomas Urquhart and Pierre Le Motteux. Intro. Terence Cave. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
—. Œuvres Complètès. L’Intégrale. Ed. Guy Demerson. Paris: Seuil, 1973.
Reuchlin, Johannes. On the Art of the Kabbalah: De Arte Cabalistica. Trans. Martin and Sarah Goodman. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1994.

Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Ed. Melvyn New and Joan New. London: Penguin, 2003.
“The Boucca Society.” Pagan Heart. 20 February 2008.
http://www.pagan-heart.co.uk/worldmoots/newzealandmoots.html

CONFERENCE: NEW EXPRESSIONS OF SPIRITUALITY, SZEGED HUNGAR, NOVEMBER 2008

SZEGED HUNGARY

New Expressions of Spirituality
Conference and workshop in Szeged, Hungary, 7-8 November 2008

Focusing on new approaches to the study of the variety of religions in contemporary society and personal experiences of spirituality. We particularly welcome case studies and field research on recent phenomena. Presentations at the conference will be considered by the editors for publication in a special issue of the Journal of ASANAS.

Topics
The conference explores themes related, but not limited to, the following:
- Personalised religion, bricolage beliefs
- New Age/Alternative Spirituality, Esotericism, mysticism
- Paganism and Neo-Paganism
- Alternative expressions of major religions
- Popular culture, indigenous religions
- Civil Religion - hidden structures of faith in societies
- Devotion and Media – icons in politics, pop culture and sports
- Virtual Communities

Workshops
There are two options to participate on the event. First, on the conference a limited number of papers will be presented. Due to time restrictions, just a few lectures will be selected for presentation.
Another special opportunity of the event are the workshops. We invited some of the most renowned scholars of these fields (like Marion Bowman, Graham Harvey, Daren Kemp, Steven Sutcliffe) to hold workshops focusing on the methodology of doing research, and on the interpretation of findings. Attendance at the workshops is limited and active participation is encouraged (by short presentation of research topics and issues).

Application
On-line application deadline for lectures and workshops: 15 July 2008 Early bird registration until: 1 July 2008

Online application and conference official website: www.reuropa.org/spirit2008

For further information please contact Csongor Sárközy:
sarkozy@rel.u-szeged.hu, +36 62 546384

3rd ANNUAL CONFERENCE: ALTERNATIVE EXPRESSIONS OF THE NUMINOUS

The Esoteric Studies Research and Teaching Group
in conjunction with the
School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics
at the
University of Queensland

presents the 3rd Annual Alternative Expressions of the Numinous Conference

Date: Friday 15 – Sunday 17 August 2008
Venue: School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland,
St Lucia Campus, Brisbane, Australia

Conference Chairs:
Dr Helen Farley
Julie Washington, and
Håkan Sandgren

Conference Website:
http://www.uq.edu.au/hprc/index.html?page=64294&pid=0

Keynote Speakers
Doug Ezzy – ‘Religion as the Etiquette of Relationships’

Douglas Ezzy’s research is driven by a fascination with how people make meaningful and dignified lives. His most recent research is an international study of teenage Witchcraft with Helen Berger (West Chester University). It examines the interconnections of teenage spirituality, the mass media, and nature religion. He is particularly interested to supervise sociology postgraduates studying contemporary spirituality. He has published six books: Teenage Witches (with Helen Berger), Researching Paganisms (with Graham Harvey and Jenny Blain), Qualitative Research Methods (with Pranee Rice), Qualitative Analysis, Narrating Unemployment and Practising the Witch’s Craft, along with numerous articles.

Nevill Drury – ‘Black Magic, White Magic and the Cosmology of Rosaleen Norton’

Nevill Drury has recently submitted his PhD dissertation on ‘Rosaleen Norton’s Contribution to the Western Esoteric Tradition’ to the University of Newcastle. His most recent publications include The New Age: the History of a Movement (Thames & Hudson, London and New York 2004), Magic and Witchcraft: from Shamanism to the Technopagans (Thames & Hudson, London and New York 2003) and The History of Magic in the Modern Age (Constable, London 2000). He also co-authored Fire and Shadow: Spirituality in Contemporary Australian Art (HarperCollins, Melbourne 1999).

Call for Papers:
Abstracts (250 words) are invited for, but not limited to, the following strands:

Esotericism
Mysticism
Alternative expressions of major religions
Religions of re-enchantment
Popular culture religions
Indigenous religions
Paganism and Neo-Paganism
New Religious Movements
Personalised religion
Alternative methodologies

Papers are also invited for a session to run in Second Life, to be run in parallel with the real life sessions.

Deadlines
Abstracts: Monday 30 June 2008

For more information contact:
Helen Farley
Conference Co-Chair
School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics
St Lucia Q 4072
Australia
Ph: + 617 3365 6324 (Outside Australia)
07 3365 6324
Fax: +617 3365 1968 (Outside Australia)
07 3365 1968

Email: h.farley@uq.edu.au

Dr Helen Farley
Lecturer
Room E330 Forgan Smith Building
School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics
University of Queensland Q 4072
Australia

Ph: 617 3365 6324
Mob: 617 401 878 880
Email: h.farley@uq.edu.au

ESOTERICISM CALENDAR FOR ENGLAND

Lee Irwin of Charleston College South Carolina kindly sent us this calender of events in England.

ESOTERIC CONFERENCE & OCCULT BOOK FAIR
Sat. 28th. June 2008 10.30am - 6.00pm
Assembly Rooms, Ludlow, Shropshire, UK.

Speakers:
Tracy Thursfield: Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival
Robin Cousins: The Travels of John Dee (illustrated)
Julia Phillips: Madeline Montalban
Ken Rees: The Regency
Alan Richardson: W.G. Gray

Plus esoteric bookfair with specialist booksellers. Midian will be
there with an extensive selection from stock including new titles and
rare books.

Tickets £15.00 payable to Verdelet @ P.O. Box 82, Craven Arms,
Shropshire, SY7 8JW

——————

COLOURS OF CHAOS
Saturday 6th September 2008
Day session 1100 - 1800
Evening session 1900 - 2200

A day of seminars featuring cutting-edge thinking from pioneers in the
field of magickal practice, followed by an evening of rituals
demonstrating Chaos Magick in action:

Duncan Barford
White Hair and Brown Pants: When Magic Turns Paranormal
Alan Chapman
Magic with a K: How to Spell Correctly
Mary Hoptroff
Codes to the Heart of Power: a Shamanic Perspective
The Kite
The Colours of Wealth Magic
Dave Lee
YourSelves: The Grimoire of Selfhood, part 2
Susan Leybourne
Sex, Magick, and Getting What You Want
Peter Mastin
Life Sculpting
Soror Res
The Noosphere, the Biosphere and the Chaosphere: When Worlds Collide
Julian Vayne
Two Worlds and In-Between: the Changing Concepts & Use of Space in
Modern Magick
Plus Special Guests…

Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
(nearest tube: Holborn)

Tickets £23 daytime, £10 evening, £30 day + eve

Online ticket sales (subject to booking fee) at www.accessallareas.org
Direct ticket link:
http://www.onlinestall.com/cgi-bin/stall2.pl?act=ep&id=3491
Tickets by phone (subject to booking fee) 020 7267 6148
Snail-mail tickets available - just send a cheque in favour of P.
Mastin to
BM8482, London WC1N 3XX, UK

——————

THELEMIC SYMPOSIUM
Saturday 4th October 2008
12:00pm till 1:00am
The Canal Club, Ulfgar Road, Wolvercote, Oxford, England, OX2 8AZ
Tickets £20

There is to be a reunion/revival of the old annual O.G.D.O.S.
International Thelemic Symposium this autumn. Tickets are £20 each, in
cash over the counter at The Inner Bookshop if you are nearby otherwise
email thelemic-symposium@dowhatthouwilt.com to reserve them, where we
will contact you with regards payment and postage.
There will be no guest list or concessions. The event will consist of
speakers to start with from 12noon till 7pm.
The speakers in no particular order are:

Lon Milo DuQuette - Topic TBA
Constance DuQuette - Topic TBA
Mike Magee - The 5 senses in A.M.O.O.K.O.S. and Tantrik Traditions
Charlotte Rodgers - Taboo & Blood Rites (A Talk with Slideshow Pictures)
Jake Stratton-Kent - Goetic Magick
Melissa Harrington - Thelema & The Feminine Part II
David Beth - Topic TBA

After a break there will then be a fully staged Gnostic Mass to all who
want to take part. It will be performed by the E.G.C. ordained Priest
and Priestess of York. The Eucharist will be administered to all who
take part. During the Mass it will be musically accompanied by Sharon
Krauss and Guests. This will continue after the Mass too with a Live
Musickal performance. After that there will be DJs till 1:00am when a
short bout of thank you speeches will round of the evening.

——————

A CELEBRATION OF THE GODDESS WITH OLIVIA ROBERTSON
Includes illustrated talks, performance, interactive presentations and
ceremony, plus Attunement - Enchanting the Sacred Space, followed by
Magical Journey impromptu ritual drama.
Saturday price £20.

Saturday includes:
Gaia’s Revenge led by Cressida Pryor and the Mad Moll Mummers and
Mayers. Olivia’s niece offers a short play that grapples with those
issues that affect us all - global warming and the shopping mall…
Which Goddess Lives Near You? Interactive session led by author,
singer, songwriter and Priestess Caitlin Matthews. Includes song and
oracle work.
Is She Local? with Caroline Wise. Following Caitlin’s theme, we discuss
identifying and communicating with your local Goddess, God, guardian
and genius loci. Includes magical exercises and divination.
The Goddess and the Stars. Andrew Collins unveils dramatic new
discoveries showing a link between the oldest known artistic
representations of the Goddess, the evolution of human spirituality,
and the constellation that spans the Great Rift in the Milky Way.
Honouring the Goddess of the Groves. Priestess and Artist Sheila Broun
invites you to join in making a shrine to Nemetona, connecting us to
the ancient forests.
Who’s That Girl? Lynn Picknett, author of ‘Mary Magdalene,
Christianity’s Hidden Goddess’ shines a light on Mary Magdalene and
looks at her Isian and London connections.
Isis is You Sis (Variation). Performance from Xanthe Gresham. Be
amazed! “Xanthe Gresham speaks like a woman spitting jewels.”

Other presenters to be confirmed.

Updates: http://lotuspharia.freeyellow.com/thecircleofisis/id411.htm
Tickets: credit card sales or to collect in person: Treadwells
Bookshop, 34 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 7PB.
Telephone: 020 7240 8906
By cheque: payable to Starfire Publishing, BCM Starfire, London WC1N
3XX, please enclose your address.
A donation will be made to The Friend’s of Bride’s Mound.

Sunday 6th July - Meeting the Goddess
Optional walk in the City to discover the site of the Roman Temple of
Isis and her sisters, with guided meditations and a chance to make your
own links and discoveries.
This will only be open to those attending on the Saturday.
Sunday price £5

SHAUNA DOYLE DE BRUN: Confirmed Conference Paper

HERMAN HESSE (1877-1962)

LITERARY FIGURES AND ESOTERICISM: HERMAN HESSE

Hermann Hesse´s book, Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game), is a literary representation of a life seeking to discover one’s innermost being and the path to self- realization; in other words, Gnosis. The Glass Bead Game in essence relates the autobiographical culmination of Hesse´s own inner search for Gnosis while incorporating and invoking prior esoteric teachings and practices. With especial reference to the following quotations from the book.

“How far back the historian wishes to place the origins and antecedents of the Glass Bead Game is, ultimately, a matter of his personal choice. For like every great idea it has no real beginning; rather, it has always been, at least the idea of it. We find it foreshadowed, as a dim anticipation and hope, in a good many earlier ages. There are hints of it in Pythagoras, for example, and then among Hellenistic Gnostic circles in the late period of classical civilization. We find it equally among the ancient Chinese, then again at the several pinnacles of Arabic-Moorish culture; and the path of its prehistory leads on through Scholasticism and Humanism to the academies of mathematicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and on to the Romantic philosophies and the runes of Novalis´s hallucinatory visions. This same eternal idea, which for us has been embodied in the Glass Bead Game, has underlain every movement of the Mind toward the ideal goal of a universitas litterarum, every Platonic academy, every league of an intellectual elite, every rapprochement between the exact and the more liberal disciplines, every effort toward reconciliation between science and art or science and religion.”
Page 7.

“In the symbols, ciphers, signatures, and abbreviations of the Game language an astronomical formula, the principles of form underlying an old sonata, an utterance of Confucius, and so on, were written down. A reader who chanced to be ignorant of the Glass Bead Game might imagine such a game pattern as rather similar to the pattern of a chess game, except that the significances of the pieces and the potentialities of their relationships to one another and their effect upon one another multiplied manyfold and an actual content must be ascribed to each piece, each constellation, each chess move, of which this move, configuration, and so on is a symbol.”
Page 110.

The Glass Bead Game

We re-enact with reverent attention
The universal chord, the masters´ harmony,
Evoking in unsullied communion
Minds and time of highest sanctity.

We draw upon the iconography
Whose mystery is able to contain
The boundlessness, the storm of all existence,
Give chaos form, and hold our lives in rein.

The pattern sings like crystal constellations,
And when we tell our beads, we serve the whole,
And cannot be dislodged or misdirected,
Held in the orbit of the Cosmic Soul.

(See The Poems of Knecht´s Student Years, Page 412)

Hesse, Hermann, Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game), (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1970).

Shauna Doyle de Brun is an MA student at the University of Exeter, Centre for the Study of Esotericism.

KABBALAH & CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUAL REVIVAL: Ben Gurion University, May 20-22, 2008

Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival: Historical, Sociological and Cultural Perspectives
Research Workshop of the Israel Science Foundation and the Goren-Goldstein Center for Jewish Thought
Ben Gurion University, May 20-22, 2008Conference Hall A (Ulam Knasim Aleph)

Tuesday, May 20th
9:30-10:00
Reception

1st session
10:00-11:30
Greetings
Prof. Rivka Carmi, President of Ben Gurion University
Prof. Hayim Kreisel, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Director of the Goldstein-Goren International Center for Jewish Thought
Boaz Huss, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev : Studying Contemporary Kabbalah - Achievements and Challenges
Philip Wexler, Hebrew University of Jerusalem : Toward a Social Psychology of Contemporary Spirituality

2nd session
11:45-13:15
Chair: Philip Wexler, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Jonathan Garb, Hebrew University of Jerusalem : The Spiritual-Mystical Renaissance in the Contemporary Haredi World
Michel Rosenthal, University of Haifa : “Are you willing to cover your head?” Notes on the spiritual economy of blessings at Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak’s lectures

3rd session
14:30-16:00
Chair: Elliot Wolfson, New York University.
Wouter Hanegraaff, University of Amsterdam : Kabbalah in Gnosis Magazine (1985-1999)
Graham Harvey, the Open University, UK : Paganism: negotiating between esotericism and animism

4th session
16:30-18:00
Chair: Graham Harvey, Open University, UK.
James R. Lewis, University of Wisconsin : The Science of Kabbalah
Chava Weissler, Lehigh University: Performing Kabbalah/“Kabbalah” in the Jewish Renewal Movement

Wednesday, May 21st
5th session
9:00-11:15
Chair: Jody Myers, California State University.
Marianna Ruah-Midbar, Zefat Academic College : Jewish Spirituality in the New Age – Emerging Jewish-Israeli Phenomena in the Junction with New Age Culture
Joseph Loss, Haifa University: Transforming Experiences in the practice of Buddha Dhamma (the Path of the Buddha) in Contemporary Israel
Adam Klin-Oron, Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Messages for the End: Eschatological Thought in 20th Century Channeling and its Israeli Varieties

6th session
11:45-13:15
Chair: Zeev Gris, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Zvi Mark, Bar-Ilan University : The Contemporary Renassaince of Breslov Hasidism—Ritual, Tikkun and Messianism
Jonatan Meir, Hebrew University of Jerusalem : The Revealed which Conceals: R. Shalom Sharabi’s Kabbalah, Esotericism and the Printing of Kabbalistic Books

7th session
14:30-16:00
Chair: Jim Lewis, University of Wisconsin.
Jody Myers, California State University : Kabbalah for the Gentiles: Diverse Souls and Universalism in Contemporary Kabbalah
Yaakov Ariel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill : From Habad Emissaries to Kabbalah Centers: New Jewish Religious Movements and the Revitalization of Judaism in the later decades of the Twentieth Century.

8th session
16:30-18:00
Chair: Yakov Ariel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Elliot R. Wolfson, New York University : Apocalyptic Transposition and the Status of the Non-Jew in Habad Mysticism
Yoram Bilu, Hebrew University of Jerusalem : Making the Absent Rabbi Present: Virtuality, Iconophilia, and Apparitions in Messianic Chabad

Dinner, Mateh Ba-Midbar

Thursday, May 22nd
9th session
9:30-11:00
Chair: Chava Weissler, Lehigh University.
Rachel Werczberger, Hebrew University of Jerusalem : Jewish Self-Healing - The Case of Jewish Spiritual Renewal in Israel
Shlomo Fischer, Tel Aviv University : Can New Individualist Spiritualism Also Coexist with Violence and Collective Commitments? New Spiritual Developments Among the Religious Zionist Community in Israel

10th session
11:30-13:00
Chair: Boaz Huss, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Omri Ruah-Midbar, Bar Ilan University : A Comparative Study of Current Spiritualities through three Musical Versions of ‘Im Nin’alu’
Tamar Katriel, University of Haifa : Precursors to contemporary New Age spirituality in Israeli cultural ethos

George Adie in his doorway