Oddcast episode
January 8, 2025
Charles Stang and Jason Josephson-Storm on Theosophy and the Study of Religions
In our episode introducing Madame Blavatsky with Marina Alexandrova she mentioned that HPB and the early Theosophical movement more generally were instrumental in forming the modern discipline which travels under names like the History of Religions, Religious Studies, Comparative Religions, and so on. In this episode we put that intriguing notion to the test in a detailed way, speaking with historians of religions Charles Stang and Jason Josephson-Storm on precisely this topic. A conference held at Harvard on ‘Theosophy and the Study of Religion’ led to a number of interesting papers being presented, these papers led to a book (Brill, 2024, cited in full below), and the book led to this interview.
The writing-out-of-history of the Theosophical Society remains (despite much excellent research emerging at the moment) one of the great cultural occlusions or acts of forgetting of the twentieth century. The forgetting of the Society’s central role in the foundation of the scientific study of religion means that this episode tells what will be, for many people, a secret history of the field of religious studies.
Interview Bios:
Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm is a historian and philosopher of the Human Sciences. He is currently Professor of Religion and Chair of Science & Technology Studies at Williams College. Storm received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, his MA from Harvard, and has held visiting positions at Princeton, l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient, and Universität Leipzig in Germany. He is the author of award-winning The Invention of Religion in Japan (2012), The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity and the Birth of the Human Sciences (2017), as well as Metamodernism: The Future of Theory (2021), all published by University of Chicago Press.
Charles M. Stang is Professor of Early Christian Thought at Harvard Divinity School. His interests include: the development of asceticism, monasticism, and mysticism in Christianity; ancient philosophy, especially Neoplatonism; the Syriac Christian tradition, especially the spread of the East Syrian tradition along the Silk Road; other philosophical and religious movements of the ancient Mediterranean, including Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Manichaeism; and modern continental philosophy and theology, especially as they intersect with the study of religion.
Works Cited in this Episode:
The Centre for the Study of World Religions at Harvard (pictured above in all its modernist glory) has a website.
Talal Asad. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 1993.
Robert S. Ellwood. Theosophy: A Modern Expression of the Wisdom of the Ages. Quest Books, Wheaton, IL, 1986.
Idem. The Politics of Myth: A Study of C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell. SUNY Press, Albany, NY, 1999.
Stephen C. Finley. The Afro-Theosophics of Robert T. Browne: Race, Theory, and Method in the Study of Religion. In Charles M. Stang and Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, editors, Theosophy and the Study of Religion, pages 174-95. Brill, Leiden, 2024.
Bruce Lincoln. Secrets, Lies, and Consequences: A Great Scholar’s Hidden Past and his Protégé’s Unsolved Murder. The University Press, Oxford, 2024.
Friedrich Max Müller. Theosophy, or, Psychological Religion. Longmans, New York, 1893.
Jonathan Z. Smith. Map Is Not Territory. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL/London, 1993. Smith’s critique of the History of Religions as a Protestant project can be found in two places: Jonathan Z. Smith. Imagining Religion: from Babylon to Jonestown. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1982, and Idem. On Teaching Religion. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2013.
Charles M. Stang and Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, editors. Theosophy and the Study of Religion. Number 34 in Aries Book Series. Brill, Leiden/Boston, MA, 2024.
Charles M. Stang. The Smoldering Superhuman. Harvard Divinity Bulletin, 52 (1 & 2):60-66, 2024.
Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm. Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2021.
Julian Strube. Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity. The University Press, Oxford, 2022.
Max Weber. Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften. 1917.
Recommended Reading:
SHWEP Oddcast Stang and Storm Recommended Reading
Themes
Annie Besant, Arthur Edward Waite, D.T. Suzuki, Eranos, Esoteric Christianity, Gershom Scholem, Helena Blavatsky, Henry Corbin, Hermetism, J.R.S. Mead, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Martinism, Max Müller, Mircea Eliade, New Age, Perennialism, Rudolph Steiner, Sun Ra, Theosophical Society, Western Esotericism
Albert Hand
January 9, 2025
I resonated a lot with the stuff about how “destructive” critical scholarship has been in the study of religion. I was raised on stuff like Campbell and Eliade (along with punk rock Gnosticism via PKD) and quite dismayed to learn when I got to grad school that everything I knew was wrong. Was sort of too late to unlearn everything in time, and without a solid grounding in the various contexts one needs I ended up developing a pretty destructive attitude that I mistook for being critical. Was quite relieved when my old LiveJournal pal Dylan Burns assured me that there were in fact people who called themselves gnostics, and despite the devastating dismantling of M.A. Williams one is still allowed to study the material. The concept of the scholar practitioner is still a major haunt for me as well. I was astonished at a recent Societas Magica conference when while discussing methodologies a scholar made the claim that conjuring a demon would not be an appropriate in class activity. Clearly we still have a long way to go in rehabilitating the seriousness of esoteric studies.
Earl Fontainelle
January 9, 2025
Albert,
I feel you in a general way, but are you saying that you think conjuring a demon in class WOULD be appropriate? Because I don’t follow you: either demons aren’t real and/or conjuring them doesn’t do anything, in which case, what’s the point of the exercise, or they are real, in which case what a fucking disastrous History of Magic 101 class that would be. Surely someone who supported the “seriousness of esoteric studies” would be the last person to recommend demon-summoning in a class full of undergraduates with no experience. Or am I missing something?
Albert Hand
January 10, 2025
It’s interesting how intuitions can differ. I would think that it would be a useful exercise whether demons are real or not, to gain practical knowledge of the ritual. After all, we do things like meditation exercises in class when everybody knows that mindfulness isn’t real!
Earl Fontainelle
January 10, 2025
Yes, I think our intuitions do differ here. If demons are real, and in any way like their reputation would indicate, then the analogy I’d pick wouldn’t be meditation exercises, it would be more like gaining practical knowledge of electricity by the experiment of touching a high-voltage line. Do you see what I mean? Sure, you will get a serious education of the existence of electricity, but also death. If one believes in actual demons, one avoids them, or at least doesn’t try actively to attract their attention.
Now , maybe they’re real in some way but actually harmless or actually good-natured or so on. In that case, go for it. But then they aren’t ‘demons’, really, they’re something else.
Albert Hand
January 10, 2025
I mean, didn’t the grimoire authors who developed these demon conjuring rituals have a different attitude towards attracting their attention? I’m trying to be value agnostic here…