Bøger i Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism serien

The Armenian-born mystic, philosopher, and spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff (c.1866-1949) is an enigmatic figure, the subject of a great deal of interest and speculation, but not easily fitting into any of the common categories of "esoteric," "occult," or "New Age." Scholars have for the most part passed over in silence the contemplative exercises presented in Gurdjieff's writings. Although Gurdjieff had intended them to be confidential, some of the most importantexercises were published posthumously in 1950 and in 1975. Arguing that an understanding of these exercises is necessary to fully appreciate Gurdjieff's contribution to modern esotericism, Joseph Azize offers the first complete study of the exercises and their theoretical foundation.

What is it Like to be Dead? offers the first full account of the modern genealogy of "near-death experiences," focusing on the functions of these experiences in the religious field of Western modernity. Emerging as autobiographical narratives, they were used in Christian, esoteric, and spiritist-occult traditions as substantial proof for the survival of death, or the claim that the soul is able to leave the body. Now widely disseminated, they serve functionsranging from reassurance that religious experience is still possible to evidence for the transcultural validity of afterlife beliefs.

Ebenezer Sibly was a quack doctor, plagiarist, and masonic ritualist in late eighteenth-century London; his brother Manoah was a respectable accountant and pastor who ministered to his congregation without pay for fifty years. Drawing on such sources as ratebooks and pollbooks, personal letters and published sermons, burial registers and horoscopes, Susan Sommers has woven together an engaging microhistory that offers useful revisions to existing scholarly accountsof brothers Ebenezer and Manoah, while locating the entire Sibly family in the esoteric byways of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Children of Lucifer tells the history of Satanism, from its earliest conception as polemical construct by the Christian Church to its eventual metamorphosis into an actual practiced religion.

What do Scientologists themselves have to say about Scientology? Based on six years of interviews, fieldwork, and research conducted among members of the Church of Scientology, this groundbreaking work examines features of the new religion's history, theology, and praxis in ways that move discussion beyond apostate-driven and expose accounts.

In Recycled Lives, Julie Chajes explores the rebirth doctrines of the controversial occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), matriarch of Theosophy. Examining her teachings in detail, Chajes places them in the context of multiple dimensions of nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural life.

In the conventional dichotomy of chaste, pure Madonna and libidinous whore, the former has usually been viewed as the ideal form of femininity. However, there is a modern religious movement in which the negative stereotype of the harlot is inverted and exalted. The Eloquent Blood focuses on the changing construction of femininity and feminine sexuality in interpretations of the goddess Babalon. A central deity in Thelema, the religion founded by thenotorious British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), Babalon is based on Crowley''s favorable reinterpretation of the biblical Whore of Babylon, and is associated with liberated female sexuality and the spiritual ideal of passionate union with existence.Analyzing historical and contemporary written sources, qualitative interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork in the Anglo-American esoteric milieu, the study traces interpretations of Babalon from the works of Crowley and some of his key disciples—including the rocket scientist John "Jack" Whiteside Parsons, and the enigmatic British occultist Kenneth Grant—until the present. From the 1990s onwards, this study shows, female and LGBTQ esotericists have challenged historical interpretations ofBabalon, drawing on feminist and queer thought and conceptualizing femininity in new ways. Tracing the trajectory of a particular gendered symbol from the fin-de-siècle until today, Manon Hedenborg White explores the changing role of women in Western esotericism, and shows how evolving constructions of gender have shaped the development of esotericism. Combining research on historical and contemporary Western esotericism with feminist and queer theory, the book sheds new light on the ways in which esoteric movements and systems of thought have developed over time in relation topolitical movements.

This is the first English-language work devoted to the Avignon Society, which ranks as one of the most remarkable and influential initiatic societies in Europe between 1779 and 1807. Influenced by the burgeoning strand of illuminist high-degree freemasonry, the Avignon Society, nevertheless, developed a unique culture that incorporated strands of Western esotericism within a millenarian framework.

The essays in Imagining the East explore how Theosophists during the formative period imagined the religions and cultures of the East. The authors examine the relationship of such representations to orientalism, the history of ideas, politics, and culture at large and discuss how these esoteric or theosophical representations mirrored conditions and values current in nineteenth-century mainstream intellectual culture. The essays also look at how the earlyTheosophical Society's representations of the East differed from mainstream 'orientalism' and how the Theosophical Society's mission in India was distinct from that of British colonialism and Christian missionaries.

The notion of woman as the Devil's accomplice is prominent throughout Christian history and was used to legitimize the subordination of wives and daughters. In the nineteenth century, rebellious females performed counter-readings of this misogynist tradition and Lucifer was reconceptualized as a feminist liberator. Per Faxneld shows how this surprising Satanic feminism was expressed in a wide range of nineteenth-century texts and artistic productions.

How does the soul relate to the body? Through the ages, innumerable religious and intellectual movements have proposed answers to this question. Many have gravitated to the notion of the "subtle body," positing some sort of subtle entity that is neither soul nor body, but some mixture of the two. Simon Cox traces the history of this idea from the late Roman Empire to the present day, touching on how philosophers, wizards, scholars, occultists, psychologists, andmystics have engaged with the idea over the past two thousand years.This study is an intellectual history of the subtle body concept from its origins in late antiquity through the Renaissance into the Euro-American counterculture of the 1960''s and 70''s. It begins with a prehistory of the idea, rooted as it is in third-century Neoplatonism. It then proceeds to the signifier "subtle body" in its earliest English uses amongst the Cambridge Platonists. After that, it looks forward to those Orientalist fathers of Indology, who, in their earliest translations ofSanskrit philosophy relied heavily on the Cambridge Platonist lexicon, and thereby brought Indian philosophy into what had hitherto been a distinctly platonic discourse. At this point, the story takes a little reflexive stroll into the source of the author''s own interest in this strange concept, lookingat Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical import, expression, and popularization of the concept. Cox then zeroes in on Aleister Crowley, focusing on the subtle body in fin de siècle occultism. Finally, he turns to Carl Jung, his colleague Frederic Spiegelberg, and the popularization of the idea of the subtle body in the Euro-American counterculture. This book is for anyone interested in yogic, somatic, or energetic practices, and will be very useful to scholars and area specialists who relyon this term in dealing with Hindu, Daoist, and Buddhist texts.