esotericism

esotericism, a category encompassing a diverse range of religious traditions that are typically included together because of their shared cultural marginality or their focus on imparting teachings to a select group. The concept emerged largely in 19th-century western Europe as a means of categorizing various traditions with a much longer history in European societies, including Hermetism, Kabbala, Rosicrucianism, ceremonial magic, alchemy, and astrology, although it has since also come to encompass more-modern traditions, such as Spiritualism, Theosophy, Wicca, and the New Age milieu.

Confusingly, there is no universally agreed definition of esotericism: different scholars use the term in different ways. One approach regards esotericism as a concept specific to Western society, treating it as a category for all the “rejected knowledge” accepted neither by mainstream religious authorities nor by dominant scientific paradigms in European and European-descended communities. Other approaches argue that esotericism should be defined by some intrinsic quality found within each esoteric tradition—namely, an emphasis on imparting spiritual teachings to an exclusive group—as opposed to exoteric teachings given to a wider population. These latter frameworks expand the label of esotericism to cover various religious traditions from across the world, such as Tantra, Sufism, and Zen Buddhism.

History

The term esotericism derives from the Greek word ἐσωτερικóς (esōterikós), based on the comparative form of εσω (esō), meaning “within.” Esōterikós was first recorded in a work by Lucian of Samosata from the 2nd century ce. From this word is derived the modern English adjective esoteric, denoting “something accessible, interesting, or intelligible only to a small group.” In these contexts it need not have religious connotations. The noun esotericism, encompassing a particular collection of religious traditions, is far younger; it arose largely in 19th-century western Europe, although as a concept it was built upon preexisting notions in European thought.

During the Renaissance, 15th-century Italian humanists such as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola developed an interest in several older schools of thought. Although they were Roman Catholics, they drew upon two non-Christian traditions of late antiquity: Hermetism, a selection of teachings linked to the legendary figure of Hermes-Trismegistus, and Neoplatonism, which encompassed varied adaptations of Plato’s original ideas, including the ritual practices of theurgy. In such cases as Pico’s, humanists were also influenced by Kabbala, a tradition focused on the 10 emanations of God that had originally developed among the Jewish communities of France and Iberia in the 12th and 13th centuries. By exploring such varied schools of thought, these Renaissance thinkers sought to identify an ancient and universal wisdom tradition that they believed to ultimately come from God. Unbeknownst to them, they also laid the early groundwork for the notion of esotericism.

Not everyone believed that this cluster of ostensibly non-Christian traditions was compatible with Christianity. In the late 17th century, German Protestant polemicists denounced these traditions and cited their ongoing influence as evidence for the “paganism” infecting the Roman Catholic Church. As well as condemning older currents, such as Hermetism and Kabbala, these polemicists attacked early modern thinkers and movements, such as Rosicrucianism, Paracelsus and the alchemists, and Jakob Böhme and his theosophers. For these Protestants, such traditions remained firmly outside the legitimate boundary of Christian religion. A disapproving attitude toward these ideas was also evident among Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century. Their concern was not that these traditions were incompatible with Christian teaching but rather that such belief systems failed to meet the standards of rationality that they deemed necessary for determining valid knowledge.

By the 19th century it had thus become apparent that there was a cluster of traditions that had been rejected by both the dominant religious and scientific authorities of western Europe. This cluster included not only the aforementioned late antique, medieval, and early modern traditions, but also such 18th- and 19th-century developments as Mesmerism, Spiritualism, and Theosophy. Lacking intellectual respectability in the academy, these traditions circulated as part of a countercultural milieu fueled by a wide range of publications and societies. Many of these groups, perhaps most famously the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, established in 1880s Britain, operated on the initiatory, multi-degree model popularized by Freemasonry.

Given that these traditions were often deemed to possess hidden teachings, they were commonly referred to as “esoteric” and “occult” (from the Latin occultus, meaning “hidden”). Meanwhile, it was amid German discussions about the Greek mathematician-philosopher Pythagoras that the terms Esoteriker (esotericist) and Esoterik (esotericism) first appeared, in 1770 and 1792 respectively. In French, the word l’ésotérisme first saw publication in 1828, initially to describe the beliefs of ancient Gnostic groups before being picked up as a self-designation by the likes of Éliphas Lévi, an influential ceremonial magician and Kabbalist writing largely in the 1850s and ’60s.

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From French the term migrated into English, where esotericism was first used in Esoteric Buddhism, an 1883 work by the British Theosophist A.D. Sinnett. As Sinnett’s title suggests, uses of the term in this period reflected a growing Western awareness of Asian religions alongside a belief in an ancient and universal tradition of spiritual wisdom underlying many of the world’s faiths. While Theosophists in particular saw much value in Asian traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, not all Europeans approved of this cross-cultural exchange. Various late 19th-century French writers, for instance, contrasted Asian traditions against their own ésotérisme occidental (“Western esotericism”).

In the 20th century this notion of a Western esotericism, or sometimes the Western mystery tradition(s), was adopted as an overarching self-designation by practitioners of many of the aforementioned movements. An alternative term, also emerging from the 19th century, was occultism, sometimes used synonymously with esotericism. Today the term occultism is more commonly reserved for a smaller grouping of esoteric traditions keen to adapt to the changes of modernity. Indeed, while some 20th-century traditions operating in this esoteric milieu, such as René Guénon’s Traditionalism, presented themselves as being resolutely anti-modern, there were others, most famously the New Age phenomenon, that adapted far more readily to an increasingly globalized, secularized, and science-oriented world.

Academic uses

During the 20th century various scholars, most notably the English historian Frances Yates, highlighted the importance of particular esoteric traditions for understanding European history. However, it was not until the 1990s and 2000s that the academic study of (Western) esotericism emerged as a distinct subfield within the study of religion, operating largely through the University of Amsterdam and new scholarly societies in Europe and North America. Although the subfield has initiated a boom in academic studies of esoteric traditions, it has nevertheless faced significant disagreement as to how best to define esotericism.

One approach to defining it, associated largely with the Dutch historian Wouter J. Hanegraaff, treats it as a historiographical concept. Hanegraaff has characterized esotericism as a category for the “rejected knowledge” of Western society, one that encompasses those traditions that have been opposed both by mainstream religious authorities and by dominant scientific paradigms and therefore relegated to a position of cultural marginality. This perspective treats Western esotericism and esotericism as synonyms and reserves these terms for traditions either established or heavily developed in Europe or among European colonial societies.

Alternative approaches to defining esotericism focus on internal, typological features within particular traditions themselves and often emphasize both the word’s etymological origins and the common meaning of the adjective esoteric. The American scholar Arthur Versluis, for instance, has argued that the term esotericism should be reserved for traditions that teach spiritual knowledge to a limited circle of followers. For different reasons, the German scholar of religion Kocku von Stuckrad has suggested that the term should be applied to groups that claim to provide access to “absolute knowledge”—for instance, through an initiatory event or direct communication with spirits. Unlike Hanegraaff’s approach, these definitions do not limit esotericism to European and European-descended communities; they can allow for the labeling of various Asian, African, Oceanic, and Native American traditions as esoteric.

Which definition is favored has repercussions for which traditions may be considered forms of esotericism and which may not. There are many schools of thought, from Tantra to ufology, that fall under one definition of esotericism but not another. The future direction of scholarship on esotericism will be determined by whether the historiographical or the typological framework for defining the term ultimately becomes dominant.