Announcements | Heterodoxology

Buy a book on werewolves and help Malört Förlag

The Werewolf in Swedish Folklore published by Malört Förlag (photo: Per Faxneld)

Malört Förlag (“Wormwood Publishing”) is a unique and delightful little Swedish publishing house “specializing in texts about the fantastic, the numinous and the aberrant”. Being in the trade of craft books, their editions are made to last for generations – and as if that does not already mark their releases from most books published these days, each new release also come with its own soundtrack. Thus you can read the first Swedish translation of Jacques Cazotte’s 1772 occult novel Le Diable Amoureux (The Devil in Love) while listening to tracks such as “I’m in Love With the Devil” (Tiger Lillies), “Mistress of Deceit” (Jarboe), and “Love in the Devil’s Tongue” (Stone Breath). While Malört has so far been focusing on publications in Swedish, they do plan to expand to the English speaking market soon.

That is, if they are able to continue.

(more…)

Published in:

on October 3, 2012 at 11:00 am Comments (4)
Tags: craft books, Ella Odstedt, folklore, Jacques Cazotte, Jarboe, Le Diable Amoureux, Malört Förlag, occult fiction, Per Faxneld, Stone Breath, The Devil in Love, Tiger Lillies, Timo Ketola, Varulven i svensk folktradition, Werewolf Songs, werewolves

Digitized sources for the history of German parapsychology

German occult, spiritualist and parapsychological journals now digitized and available online.

The history of parapsychology has been one of my research interests in recent years. It is not so long ago that I reviewed Heather Wolffram’s recent book on German parapsychology, Stepchildren of Science, and noted that it breaks new ground in providing access to little-explored German sources – in English. Much of the source material for German parapsychology is indeed very hard to access outside of Germany. In my own research, I have been able to draw on a good collection of psychical research literature at the Amsterdam University Library, much of which was collected by a students society for psychical research active in Amsterdam in the early 20th century. Even this collection is weak on German sources, however. The same is true for the digital collections available through Archive.org – a great resource for anglophone sources, but less so for other languages. In my case, I had to spend a couple of days at the IGPP’s collections in Freiburg to finish the parts of my research that dealt with German parapsychology.

(more…)

Published in:

on October 1, 2012 at 4:30 pm Comments (1)
Tags: Carlos Alvarado, critical occultism, Eberhard Bauer, Heather Wolffram, IGPP, Psychische Studien, Sphinx, Stepchildren of Science, Zeitschrift für kritischen Okkultismus, Zentralblatt für Okkultismus

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.

(more…)

Published in:

on September 29, 2012 at 6:48 pm Comments (2)
Tags: Alin Suciu, coptic, Creative Reading, Hugo Lundhaug, John Marco Allegro, presentism, psychedelics, Rebekah Higgitt, teleskopos, Testament of Jesus' Wife, The Guardian, The H Word, The Immanent Frame, The Sacred Mushroon and the Cross, Timothy Fitzgerald, Vanessa Heggie

Launching ContERN with a Google group and a Call for Papers

As announced previously, a new network has been created with the aim of placing the field of contemporary esotericism clearly on the agenda of academic research: the Contemporary Esotericism Research Network, or ContERN for short (no connection with the Third International, we promise…). It is affiliated with the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), and everyone who participate in our activities is encouraged to become a member of that organisation (which can be done by applying online here).

There is currently a Google group which will work as a mailing list and discussion forum for the network (click here to sign up), and also a Facebook group for easy communication.

As the description on the Google group reads:

(more…)

Published in:

on September 26, 2012 at 3:44 pm Comments (1)
Tags: complementary and, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), conspiracy theory, Contemporary Esotericism, ContERN, ESSWE4

Contemporary Esotericism round-up and other news

It’s been a long time away from blogging, but for good reason I assure you. While in the middle of moving house I have been finishing my dissertation, a good 600+ pages that will be sent off to committee members on Friday. Now more work awaits in following up on a recent event in Stockholm: as announced many times on this blog, the 1st International Conference on Contemporary Esotericism was held at Stockholm University on August 27-29.

(more…)

Published in:

on September 26, 2012 at 10:55 am Comments (1)
Tags: 1st International Conference on Contemporary Esotericism, Contemporary Esotericism Research Network (ContERN), ContERN, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Sasha Chaitow, The Hermetic Order of the Temple of Starlight, The Occult Roots of Nazism

Hermetically Open – BPH 2.0

The Ritman library has risen from the ashes of the calamity of 2010. The new developments look very promising and should interest many international readers – particularly because of the initiative “Hermetically Opened”. With it, the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica is being proactive about joining the digital and connected age. It’s the next best thing to having the unique library of hermetic, alchemical, and rosicrucian literature in your own living room. Digitization projects are underway, there are plans for a Hermetic wiki, and not least, great plans for a webinar series where scholars of esotericism and Hermeticism will speak about particular topics. All of this is available to a global public online, and you can read all about it at the library’s new website.

The webinar series, named “Infinite Fire”, was officially launched last week, with a short talk by my colleague Dr. Peter Forshaw, a specialist in the history of alchemy. Future talks are being planned, to begin with by other experts present in Amsterdam (Wouter Hanegraaff and Marco Pasi). The idea is, however, to expand with time. So if you are a scholar working in an area related to the library’s collection, and you’re planning a trip to Amsterdam, I am sure that the BPH staff would love to hear from you. Perhaps you will do a brief interview or otherwise contribute to this collaborative, evolving “global hermetic circle”?

Peter talks about / devours some of his favourite books from the BPH collection below:

Very promising developments indeed. Do check it out.

Published in:

on September 8, 2012 at 6:17 pm Comments (3)
Tags: Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Hermetically Open, Peter Forshaw, Ritman Library

Contemporary Esotericism conference drawing close – full programme ready

The 1st International Conference on Contemporary Esotericism is drawing close. Kennet and I have been working hard the past two weeks on putting together a program schedule, editing the book of abstracts and collating other useful information. Those who are already registered for the conference will already have received the schedule by email. Now it is also available online at the conference website. Better yet, the complete book of abstracts can be found as a pdf here. I add a copy of the schedule below as well. If you want to find more about a particular paper, you can go to the book of abstract. And of course: If this looks tempting, you are still welcome to join the conference! Registration is open continuously online.

(more…)

Enoch/Dee debate (round-up)

Dan Harms’ review of my book led to a nice and I think quite enlightening discussion on the place of Enoch in Dee’s angel conversations, and some related questions. I was particularly pleased that Jim Davila, Professor of ancient Judaism at St. Andrew’s joined in with some details about Dee’s knowledge of Biblical sources on his PaleoJudaica blog.

I will not add anything new to the discussions at this point, but thought it could be handy for readers to have a chronologically ordered round-up of the posts and responses, which now in the end span four different blogs. So here goes:

(more…)

Published in:

on July 20, 2012 at 3:36 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: Ancient Judaism, Arguing with Angels, Book of Enoch, Enoch, Jim Davila, John Dee, PaleoJudaica

On Enoch reception and Dee reception

There has been some debate about aspects of my book the last couple of days, following Dan Harms’ review, and my own response. Sarah Veale joined in with a post over at Invocatio, and today Dan responded once more on his blog. The debate has revolved around the Enoch figure, and the role of this figure in understanding Dee’s angel conversations. I argued that too much importance has typically been attributed to the patriarch in accounts of the angel diaries, and that the term “Enochian magic” may itself be somewhat misleading in this regard. I still stand by this claim, but I must also guard against a misunderstanding that seems to creep up.

(more…)

Published in:

on July 18, 2012 at 4:58 pm Comments (5)
Tags: Book of Enoch, Dan Harms, Edward Kelley, Elias Ashmole, Enoch, Enochian magic, Golden Dawn, John Dee, language of Adam, Meric Casaubon, Necronomicon

Parapsychology in Germany – review of Heather Wolffram’s Stepchildren of Science (2009)

In 2009 a fat and promising book landed on my desk, fresh from the publisher. I had looked forward to it for a while, as the topic was highly relevant for my dissertation, and this was the first full-length academic study ever to look at it. It was furthermore written by an author whose articles on the same topic I had been following for a while, with great interest. The book was Heather Wolffram’s Stepchildren of Science: Psychical Research and Parapsychology in Germany, c. 1870-1939. I was going to write a book review for Aries, which I did. It only appeared this spring, however. Since it is already three years ago that the book was published, I think it is about time to share the review with a broader community. So please find the pre-publication version of the review below.