A blog review of Contemporary Esotericism
Watch out for the next generation of esotericism scholars! We’re already here; and, according to Wouter J. Hanegraaff, the volume on Contemporary Esotericism that appeared on Equinox earlier this year, edited by Kennet Granholm and myself, is the shape of things to come. We hope he’s right, of course.
The 20 chapters of that volume covered much ground, but, as Wouter comments:
“it is easy to imagine a sequel covering many additional angles or dimensions, for instance the presence of esotericism or the occult in rock, metal, or avant-garde music, in comics, in role playing or video gaming, in movies, in art, in novels (from high literature to pulp fiction) or poetry, or in popular psychology. The potential seems even more overwhelming if one considers how many new religious movements are grounded in esoteric worldviews, or thinks of additional disciplinary perspectives such as media studies, ritual studies, black studies, cognitive psychology, etcetera.”
We couldn’t agree more. The volume was always meant as a means to open up a field of research and inspire new work. It is therefore very pleasing to see that our enthusiasm about the possibilities is shared by one of the leading voices in the field. Hopefully we’ll soon see new work addressing some of the topics mentioned above.
Heterodoxology 
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