The ContERN website is slowly becoming active. Today we have published the first papers of the cyberproceedings from the Contemporary Esotericism conference in Stockholm this August. The first four papers to appear include two on Freemasonry and initiatic societies (J. Scott Kenney and Aslak Rostad), one on methodological issues in the study of contemporary Satanism (Jesper Aa. Petersen), and one on occulture in Brazilian pop music (Francisco Santos Silva). All of them should offer a lot of food for thought, so I suggest you go check them out: Is fraternalism a form of “moral elitism”? How do Masons experience the influence of joining the craft on the direction of their lives? How are we to draw boundaries between different types of “Satanism“? And what does Aleister Crowley have to do with Brazilian pop music of the 1970s? Read and find out.
Cornelius Agrippa and Renaissance feminism at the BPH blog
H. C. Agrippa – occult, sceptical, and feminist philosopher of the Renaissance.
The BPH/Ritman Library’s blog has an article-length post up by my good friend and colleague Joyce Pijnenburg, on the Renaissance humanist and “occult philosopher” Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and his lesser known treatise on the nobility of women. I remember being fascinated by this work when I first “discovered” Agrippa in my late teens – back then it was an eye-opener for me to find that the man who had been embraced by modern occultists as “their” intellectual patron, primarily for his Three books of occult philosophy (and the spuriously attributed Fourth book), had also produced works of sceptical philosophy (De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum et artium), as well as a work that might classify as “Renaissance proto-feminism”. Agrippa is certainly more interesting than he’s often made into.
Joyce takes a closer look at this little-explored Renaissance feminist current, and transposes it with certain contemporary issues discussed by Slavoj Žižek (whom, I must confess, I generally see as a stand-up comedian rather than a philosopher – some sharp observations, much hyperbole, and a lot of hilarity). The article is entitled “Does woman exist? Agrippa von Nettesheim and Slavoy Žižek on Women and (their) Presence”. As an additional teaser before you go and read the whole thing, here’s the abstract:
ContERN with its own website and blog
Heterodoxology has functioned as an unofficial outlet for ContERN news lately; for those who are not primarily interested in news about this obscure network, I apologize. Now, however, I can announce that the Contemporary Esotericism Research Network has finally gotten its own website and blog, which you can check out here. It’s relatively simple for now, but has the essential information about the fledgling network in a concise form. The blog section of the website will now work as a channel for announcing news (I might occasionally re-post here, too). The link section has references to important scholarly associations and societies, departments, and journals that are of relevance for the study of contemporary esotericism. These are obviously flexible lists, and will be modified as we go. Other pages will also be added to the website in the future, with new features and content, so stay tuned!
News in the Blogroll
I don’t often make structural changes and clean-ups at Heterodoxology. One of the results is that the blogroll is not always up to date. I won’t claim that it is now either, but at least I have made an attempt to update it ever so slightly. You will now find a basic classification of blog categories (not quite happy with it, but it’ll have to do for now): history of science, religious studies, esoterica/pagan, skeptical, and academic miscellany.
The Religious Studies Project – and a podcast on fiction-based religion
I have been meaning to post on an excellent new initiative that kicked off in January: The Religious Studies Project (RSP). It is rapidly becoming the best (and only?) webportal for the academic study of religion in Europe, sponsored by the British Association for the Study of Religion. (The Americans have things like Religion Dispatches, and a good number of related blogs – including by the legendary Peter Berger). I’ll let RSP introduce themselves:
News in the blog roll
When I got around to buy the heterodoxology.com domain earlier this year, the idea was to start some renovations of the site. Now, finally, one small step: updating the blog roll. Some inactive old blogs have been removed, and a few new, heterodoxologically relevant ones have been added.
First, the additions: Invocatio is a fairly frequently updated and well informed blog (mostly) about Western esotericism. It is run by Sarah Veale in Toronto, and well worth checking out, among other things for its weekly “Myseria Misc. Maxima” installments. Religion Dispatches is perhaps the leading blog/online magazine for research on religion and contemporary debates about religion, and should have been added long ago. To keep up to date on what happens in the modern pagan communities as well as the occulture surrounding it, Jason Pritzl-Waters’ The Wild Hunt is a must-read. For all lovers of dusty old books I have added the bibliophile blog 8vO. Finally, to satisfy a twin appetite for science fiction and historiography, Mark Novak’s wonderful Paleofuture blog is now available in the blog roll. It is a great resource for exploring the history of futures past.
Out goes a few blogs that have become inactive (Grimoires, Heteropraxis, Knokkelklang, Dodologist, SNASWE Blog), or turned out to be heterodoxologically less relevant (The Necromancer). More additions are likely to follow.
This blog post by Egil Asprem was first published on Heterodoxology. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
New BPH support blog
Wouter J. Hanegraaff, professor and coordinator of the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents program at the University of Amsterdam has created a new blog specifically for the situation at the Ritman Library. The first post contains a list of academics who have signed the petition (I posted something similar yesterday) This will likely be the place to follow the situation as it continues to unfold.
Follow it at The Ritman Library Must Be Preserved. Spread the word.
Lots of history of science blogging
It’s been a little quiet here as the new semester starts, with plenty of tasks to fulfill. While the heterodoxologist makes time for his next post, I suggest you visit Entertaining Research. That’s where this month’s issue of Giant’s Shoulders is at – the monthly History of Science Blog Carnival. There is really a lot to check out from there this time. (Heterodoxology is represented with this post on some papers received for last semester’s class on esotericism and science). Enjoy!
Heterodoxology 