The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction - Hardcover

Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195320999 ISBN 13: 9780195320992

Publisher: OUP USA, 2008

Synopsis

Western esotericism has now emerged as an academic study in its own right, combining spirituality with an empirical observation of the natural world while also relating the humanity to the universe through a harmonious celestial order. This introduction to the Western esoteric traditions offers a concise overview of their historical development.

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke explores these traditions, from their roots in Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism, and Gnosticism in the early Christian era up to their reverberations in today's scientific paradigms. While the study of Western esotericism is usually confined to the history of ideas, Goodrick-Clarke examines the phenomenon much more broadly. He demonstrates that, far from being a strictly intellectual movement, the spread of esotericism owes a great deal to geopolitics and globalization. In Hellenistic culture, for example, the empire of Alexander the Great, which stretched across Egypt and Western Asia to provinces in India, facilitated a mixing of Eastern and Western cultures. As the Greeks absorbed ideas from Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia, they gave rise to the first esoteric movements.

From the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, post-Reformation spirituality found expression in theosophy, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. Similarly, in the modern era, dissatisfaction with the hegemony of science in Western culture and a lack of faith in traditional Christianity led thinkers like Madame Blavatsky to look East for spiritual inspiration. Goodrick-Clarke further examines Modern esoteric thought the light of new scientific and medical paradigms along with the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. This book traces the complete history of these movements and is the definitive account of Western esotericism.

About this title

Review:

a useful introduction to a wide range of esoteric traditions and an important reminder that orthodoxy is not the only story. (Charlotte Methuen. The Journal of Theological Studies)

In his ground-breaking work Professor Goodrcik-Clarke summarizes a huge amount of research into esoteric literature across more than two millennia (Christopher Moody. Theology)

About the Author:

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke is Professor of Western Esotericism at the University of Exeter, and Director of its Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO).

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0195320999
• ISBN 13: 9780195320992
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296