Heterodoxology

Meet the editors of Correspondences

Editors in chief

Chances are you have seen the new open access journal Correspondences, which publishes peer-reviewed research on esotericism (if you haven’t, check out the first issue here). In case you were wondering who’s behind this initiative and what compelled them to start this journal, Ethan Doyle White of Albion Calling has published an interview with the two editors, Jimmy Elwing and Aren Roukema. The accompanying rock star image leaves little doubt that the editors and the journal are part of the emerging “next generation”, defining “Esotericism 3.0”. Read about how they got involved with the academic study of esotericism, what kind of research they’re into, and their views on open access publishing and the way forward.

The interviewer also had an article published in the first issue of Correspondences, focusing on witchcraft and Luciferianism. Oh, and while the deadline for the second issue has just passed, I’m sure Aren and Jimmy would appreciate new submissions!

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on August 25, 2013 at 12:50 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: Albion Calling, Aren Roukema, Correspondences, Esotericism 3.0, Ethan Doyle White, Jimmy Elwing, open access

Relocation

The Greenhouse at night.

This weekend I have relocated to my old home town, Trondheim. In the coming few months I’m going to fill an associate professor position, temporarily, due to a set of complicated circumstances that I’ll not go into here. Having left the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents in Amsterdam behind, I’ll now be found at the newly restructured Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). My office and all teaching happens at campus Dragvoll, which looks pretty much like a giant greenhouse, in a rural and woodlands area on the outskirts of town. Certainly a change of scenery from Amsterdam’s overcrowded streets!

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on August 4, 2013 at 12:51 pm Comments (1)
Tags: Contemporary Esotericism, cults, disenchantment, Dragvoll, neoshamanism, NTNU, Religious Studies, Scientology, sects, secularisation, UFO-religion

Up for review: Discernment of Spirits, Soviet New Age, and Magic

I’ve received three books for review over the last few weeks, making for a hectic book review phase (I’m not gonna mention the ones I’m already late with). They are three fascinating collections, dealing with very diverse material. Here’s a quick preview.

Angels of Light? (2012)

Clare Copeland and Jan Machielsen’s Angels of Light? (Brill, 2012) is a collection of essays dealing with that delicious problem of Christian theology and practice: how to discern real sanctity from demonic trickery? If an angel appears in all its splendour – whether in a dream, a vision, or in front of your bare eyes – how do you know that it is not the devil masquerading to lure the devout to the dark side? This, in a nutshell, is the problem of discernment. It has had consequences not only on the abstract level of theological philosophizing, but also on the social level. Above all during the tumultuous reformation era, when new reformers led to the emergence of new sects with new creeds, new leaders, and new lines of authority. The devout had to fear not only false angels, but false prophets as well. From the blurb:

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on July 29, 2013 at 9:25 am Leave a Comment
Tags: Agrippa, Angels of Light?, Augustine, Bernd-Christian Otto, Bernice Rosenthal, Birgit Menzel, Blavatsky, Catholicism, Clare Copeland, cognitive theory of magic, Correspondences, cosmism, Defining Magic, discernment, Frazer, Jan Machielsen, Jesper Sørensen, Malinowski, Michael Hagemeister, Michael Stausberg, Plato, Preternature, Protestantism, Reformation, Science Fiction, shamanism, Soviet, The New Age of Russia

Webportal for the academic study of esotericism

The Amsterdam Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy has a new website.

Last month, the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (HHP) in Amsterdam released their new website. Regular readers of Heterodoxology are likely to have seen this already, but in case you missed it in the middle of the summer, here is a reminder.

The reason why this is newsworthy is that the new website aims to be a lot more than simply the web-presence of one particular institution for higher education. It has a number of other functions, that are useful for the broader academic community that the HHP is part of. It gives relatively elaborate information on the HHP study programs (the MA and the BA), and lists the current research projects undertaken by HHP staff. The agenda on the website is still rather slim, but the intention is that it will fill up with not only activities in Amsterdam (courses, lectures, openings), but other events of relevance to the broader community of esotericism researchers as well.

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on July 27, 2013 at 10:26 am Leave a Comment
Tags: Amsterdam, Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, esotericism web-resources, HHP, HistEso

ESSWE4 round-up – reviews and impressions from across the esosphere

Attendees are starting to get some distance from the ESSWE4 conference in Gothenburg now, and a number of reviews and impressions have appeared on blogs during the last week. Below you’ll find a round-up of pieces written from different perspectives. My own two cents you’ll find here.

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on July 9, 2013 at 10:41 am Comments (2)
Tags: blogging, ESSWE4, Invocatio, Mike Zuber, Order of the Temple of Starlight, Praeludia Microcosmica, Ritman Library Blog, Sarah Veale

A fresh take on “magic” on the Societas Magica blog

Bodies, brains, magic, culture.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s new uses.

Some time ago I mentioned that Societas Magica were going to launch a blog. Well, that happened soon after, and I did not pay attention. So, quite overdue, here is the link to this new and valuable addition to the esoteric-et-cetera blog community.

So far there is only one post, but it is also a very good one that sets a high standard: “Ritual Magic and Conjured Bodies: A Philosophy and Methodology” by Damon Lycourinos. I was impressed with Damon’s paper at ESSWE4, on the use of Merleau-Ponty and embodiment theory in the analysis of contemporary ritual magical practice. In his first blog post at Societas Magica, Damon continues this exploration and offers, I think, some very valuable and stimulating reflections on how to theorise magical practice.

In particular, I couldn’t agree more with his complaint that talk about the body and embodiment in “postmodern” theorising has in fact not taken the body seriously at all – and that this could be remedied by returning to the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty:

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on July 6, 2013 at 1:42 pm Comments (5)
Tags: Ann Taves, cognitive science of religion, constructionism, Damon Lycourinos, discourse theory, Edward Slingerland, embodiment, Manuel Vásquez, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, naturalism, phenomenology, Societas Magica

The biggest esotericism conference yet – ESSWE4 and the schizophrenic life of academics

A few days ago I returned from Gothenburg, Sweden, after the fourth international conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (or #ESSWE4 for those following the tagboard). It was slightly larger than the three previous conferences (in Tübingen, Strasbourg, and Szeged); more than 90 papers were presented, there were discussion panels, keynotes, and night-time events. The conference was spread out over four days, and it needed every minute of the daily 9-hour schedule.

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on July 5, 2013 at 10:25 am Comments (5)
Tags: Allison Coudert, Aren Roukema, conference life, Damon Lycourinos, Dylan Burns, Elizabeth Lowry, ESSWE, ESSWE4, Jimmy Elwing, Johan Nilsson, Matt Twigg, Per Faxneld, Sandra Rudman, Sarah Veale, schizophrenia, Shawn Gray, transhumanism

Getting ready for ESSWE4: interdisciplinary panels, international networking, magickal musick – and the transhuman apocalypse

ESSWE4: Gothenburg, Sweden, June 26-29, 2013.

I’m only doing one conference this summer season, but that is already turning out to be a massively busy and exciting event. Now that the final program is available, and the book of abstracts can be downloaded, the ESSWE4 conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, stands out as everything that an international conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism should be: strongly interdisciplinary (the inclusion of historians of science and medicine is particularly noticeable, and a greater number of sociologists and anthropologists is also a highly welcome development), with a rich and varied program that includes panel sessions, discussion groups, roundtables, and keynotes. There is also a dinner in the Masonic Hall and a final esoteric concert event: Genesis P-Orridge and Carl Abrahamsson (known in the esoteric world as editor of The Fenris Wolf) perform live with their act, White Stains. P-Orridge and Abrahamsson will even appear in a half-hour discussion group at the conference itself on the final day, entitled “Music and Esotericism from the Inside Out”.

Browse the program on the website to find out more.

In addition to that, you should check what people are saying about the event in social media on this Tagboard (join the conversation with the tag #ESSWE4). This promises to be the first ESSWE conference with live twitter feeds to follow, so do check that out and contribute if you are going! (I hear there will be free wifi available, so no need to worry about insane roaming charges) .

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on June 23, 2013 at 10:48 am Comments (2)
Tags: Carl Abrahamsson, CEEO-UNASUR, ContERN, eschatology, ESSWE, ESSWE4, European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, Francis Fukuyama, Genesis P-Orridge, Google, Gothenburg, INASWE, nanobots, NSEA, Ray Kurzweil, Silicon Valley, Singularity, SNASWE, Tagboard, The Fenris Wolf, transhumanism, White Stains

Alchemy on the Amstel: a visit to the Ritman Library

I recently came across the great blog The Medicine Chest by historian of medicine Marieke Hendiksen at Leiden. She recently ran a review of the “Alchemy on the Amstel” exhibition that is still running at the Ritman Library (Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica). Worth checking out – as is the rest of the blog! (discovered via Mike Zuber’s Praeludia Microcosmica).

Marieke Hendriksen

In September last year, I heard of the Amsterdam Ritman Library or Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica for the first time. I had been wanting to see the exhibition ‘Alchemy on the Amstel‘ (until 20 September 2013) ever since, and last week I finally got a chance. On a sunny afternoon I cycled to the library, hidden away in a side street of the Prinsengracht, a stone’s throw from the Westerchurch.

In stark contrast to the hustle and bustle outside, just metres away from the throngs of tourists queuing for the Anne Frank house, the Ritman Library is an oasis of silence. Founded by the Amsterdam businessman and maecenas Joost R. Ritman (1941), the library holds a unique collection of hermetic books and manuscripts with a focus on the Christian tradition. The collection covers areas as diverse as alchemy, Rosicrucian works and Gnostics, from the Middle Ages to the present…

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on June 22, 2013 at 7:22 pm Leave a Comment

Open-access publishing and Western esotericism: Greeting Correspondences Vol. 1.1

The first issue of a new peer-reviewed journal for the study of Western esotericism has just been released. There aren’t too many of those around to begin with, so Correspondences is (as announced previously) a welcome newcomer to a small field. The first issue already shows much promise with four articles covering a broad span, even breaking some new ground (read them here). But what makes this journal a particularly important newcomer is that it is entirely open-access. Everything is published openly online (after editorial selection, peer review, copy-editing and typesetting, of course), and shared through social media under a Creative Commons license. Without compromising anything on the side of peer-review (a broad editorial board has helped the editors-in-chief find competent reviewers), and with typesetting that completely matches what the paywall-protected publishers typically can muster (let’s face it: it was never anything too fancy to begin with), the result is fully fledged, quality-approved academic articles that are completely free, open to everyone, and published without the often considerable lag of subscription journals.

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