Before there was the high magic of the western esoteric tradition, there was good old pre-western magic. Daniel Ogden, a specialist in all things magical in antiquity, leads us through the labyrinth of magical practice in the Græco-Roman world.
The idea of a soul, a unified centre of consciousness, arises at a specific time and in specific places which we can locate historically. But what if this was not an invention, but a discovery of what had always been there? Dr Robert Bolton discussed the a priori reasons which might lead one to know that the soul is real.
The idea of an inner self, a soul, arises more or less simultaneously in Greece and India in the sixth century BCE. Why? Richard Seaford has a theory.
Kocku von Stuckrad, Professor of Religious Studies at the Universiteit van Groningen, reflects on the methodological issues involved in the study of (what is called) western esotericism, and on the academic field devoted to it in the larger academic context.
Professor Wouter Hanegraaff expands on the history of Renaissance Hermetism and gives an insider account of the history of the modern academic study of western esotericism.
Professor Wouter J. Hanegraaff, head of the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam, on researching western esotericism, the history of the field, and ‘rejecting the rejection of rejected knowledge’.
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