Esoteric Coffeehouse

First of all, it’s been a while since I had the time to post here. Ever since I started the full-time PhD, research has naturally taken precedence to my other interests. But, the Esoteric Coffeehouse blog has never been fully out of the picture and I’ve been thinking of ways to resuscitate it. Given my reduced amount of time available, I have decided that I will have to sacrifice some of the quantity of information that I can provide in this blog. Instead, the ‘new’ version of the Esoteric Coffeehouse will run shorter posts, perhaps with some pointers where to read further on some information. I also tend to make it more informal by providing more of my own thoughts and experiences on studying esotericism. Well, we’ll see how it goes.  

I’ve been looking at light and vision theories for the past week. As it turns out, up to the modern period there existed two main competing models: the ‘intromission’ and ‘extramission’ theory. The intromission is similar to the way we understand vision today: as light ‘entering’ our eyes and projecting the shape of perceived things within. This theory was supported mainly by Aristotelian and atomistic philosophers and was made an official part of science by Johannes Kepler. The extramission theory, on the other hand, was favoured by Pythagoras, Plato, Euclid, Galen and the Neoplatonists. According to it, the eyes ‘emit’ light, throwing ‘arrows’ that reflect one’s emotional state. Interestingly, this theory fits very well with the popular beliefs in the evil eye or love at first sight. In both cases, the onlooker projects his/her feelings of hate or love. The light emanation is imprinted within the soul of the person looked at.

Today, the triumph of science and its wholehearted adoption of the intromission theory has rendered the idea that eyes can project light obsolete. This is in fact ironic, since early mathematicians and physicists tended to support the extramission perspective, using Euclidean geometry to show how light projects outside the eye. However, interest in psychological phenomena has been challenging the official scientific perspective. The reality of the sense of being stared at from behind or through CCTV has been proven through empirical research by Rupert Sheldrake and others. Sheldrake is currently making the argument that the intromission theory should be revised. It would be interesting to think about the consequences of the idea that eyes may send forth rays of light and how that might affect our understanding of the ’superstitions’ of popular magic.

If you want to read more, Rupert Sheldrake’s articles are available on the web here and here. I also recommend David C. Lindberg’s scholarly studies, particularly Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler (1981), a preview of which can be found on Google Books.

This is a short announcement that the first of the Rosicrucian Manifestos, the Fama Fraternitatis, is available for download in the new ‘Downloads‘ page. This is a new modern English rendering I have prepared based on the 1652 Thomas Vaughan original. The modern English does not necessarily make it less obscure though :).

I have tried to keep the modern English version in line with Vaughan’s intentions. Still, if you plan to write a scholarly paper or anything like that, please use the Vaughan original. Also, please acknowledge source if you use this one publicly.

At the foundation of Christian Kabbalah stands one man: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the original enfant terrible of the European Renaissance. At the tender age of 23, in 1486, Pico wrote and sent to the Pope 900 Theses of theology and philosophy which he proposed to debate with anyone that wished to do so. To these he attached an introductory Oration on the Dignity of Man, which has become a classical statement of the Renaissance worldview. It is regrettable that today he is mostly remembered for this statement of human dignity rather than his other groundbreaking work.

Unfortunately for Pico, church officials were not in a mood for a debate with the young and dashing count, and instead proceeded to analyse the 900 Theses against the Catholic dogma. They found 13 propositions suspicious of heresy, and out of these, one in particular: “There is no science that assures us of the divinity of Christ than magic and the Cabala”. Pico agreed to retract the condemned theses, but later he published an Apology which pretty much re-affirmed all his ideas. This, of course, set the Pope on fire, and Pico had to flee to France to avoid imprisonment. After many other adventures, Pico settled back in Florence, where he died at only 31 years of age, apparently poisoned by a member of the famous house of Medici.

Pico has been called the disciple and pupil of the philosopher Marsilio Ficino. They shared an interest in Neoplatonic, Hermetic philosophy and magic, but Pico didn’t think those were enough. He was attracted to the mysterious art of the Kabbalah, whom Hebrew scholars were talking to him about.

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Until recently, the field of Western Esotericism, like other academic fields, has had an “Iron Curtain” of its own, staying away from Eastern Europe or Russia. In many ways, this omission was not intentional, but resulted from the lack of access to documents trapped on the other side of the Wall. It was then salutary that at this ESSWE conference in Strasbourg (of which you can read more in my previous post) there were presentations on the esotericism of Russia, the Czech Republic and Romania. In many ways, Eastern European countries are an unearthed treasure-trove that demands recovery.

My presentation focused on the town of Sibiu (also called Hermannstadt or Nagyszeben) in Transylvania, a historical province of Romania. Sibiu was named in 2007 as one of the two European capitals of culture, and Sibians are still very proud of this honour, the first one bestowed to an Eastern European city. Sibiu is by many standards a peculiar place, as it was for almost a millennium inhabited mainly by ethnic Germans, locally called “Saxons”, in a province dominated by a Romanian majority and a Hungarian minority. The Germans came here around 1100s, invited by the Hungarian kings to protect the border of Transylvania from Tartar and later Turkish raiders. The Germans occupied a land they called “Siebenburgen” (the seven cities) out of which Sibiu was the most important and best fortified. It was so well fortified that the Pope once praised it for being one of the foremost bastions of Christianity, successfully withstanding Moslem attacks. In 1526, however, Hungary fell to the Turks, and Transylvania (together with Sibiu) became a vassal of the Turks. This was not as bad as it sounded, because the principality was virtually independent, paying a formal tribute to the Ottoman Empire. Hence, when the Austrian Empire tried to take over Transylvania in the 1600s, there was strong local resistance. Eventually, the Austrians did occupy the principality, which became part of the Empire until 1918. Since then, Transylvania (and Sibiu) was part of Romania. However, after 1945, most Germans began to leave the country, with the result that now there are only 3% of them left in Sibiu (albeit the mayor of the town is a German).

From my investigations, Sibiu appears to have a rich esoteric background, focused particularly on alchemy and freemasonry. The key alchemist figure here was Melchior Cibinensis, a mysterious author which composed a famous alchemical work in the 1500s called “the Alchemical Process in the form of a Mass”. This was an audacious piece that made an analogy between alchemy and the Catholic Mass. In the 20th century, Carl Jung used this work to describe his theory of the correspondence between the lapis philosophorum and Christ.

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I have just returned from the 2nd ESSWE European Western Esotericism conference in Strasbourg, France. It was organized between 2nd and 4th of July by the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) in partnership with MISHA (Maison Interuniversitaire des Sciences de l’Homme d’Alsace) at the University of Strasbourg. The conference included plenary presentations by major esoteric scholars, including: Carlos Gilly, Andreas Kilcher, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Kocku von Stuckrad, Mark Sedgwick, Christine Maillard, and Joscelyn Godwin. Other major participants included Wouter Hanegraaff, president of ESSWE, Antoine Faivre, former chair at the Sorbonne, and Jean-Pierre Brach, current History of esotericism chair at Sorbonne. Outside of these sonorous names, MA, PhD students, lecturers and independent scholars have contributed their papers to this event.

The theme of the conference was “Capitals of European Esotericism and Transcultural Dialogue”. Thus, we learned about the impact of the legendary count of St Germain’s visit in the Hague (Caroline de Westenholz); the freemasonic lodges of Halle, Germany (Renko Geffarth & Markus Meumann); the reasons of Nuremberg’s prohibition of alchemy in the Renaissance (Hereward Tilton); the esoteric scene of the 1960’s – 1980s London (Christopher McIntosh); the image of Prague in Meyrink, Kafka and Kubin (Cecile Wolff and Amanda Boyd); the Jerusalem Kabbalists reaction to Christian Kabbalists (Judith Weiss); New York state spiritualities (Joscelyn Godwin); Giordano Bruno’s influence in Germany (Joyce Pijnenburg); Corfu esotericism (Sasha Chaitow); esoteric traditions of Glastonbury (Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke); cyberspace esotericism (John Crow); the topography of Russian esotericism (Konstantin Burmistrov) or the alchemical and freemasonic traditions of Sibiu, Romania (yours truly). In addition to these presentations, a secondary theme referred to imaginary spaces and landscapes: Stuckrad talked about escapism in Hermann Hesse and Mircea Eliade, Clare Goodrick-Clarke about the mundus imaginalis of Wessex, Maillard about Jung’s initiatory journeys, Aurelie Chone about Shambala and Agarthi in Tibet, Sara Thejls on Atlantis and the community of Damanhur. There were a lot more presentations that should deserve mention, including an intriguing discussion about the “West” in Western esotericism.

I should end this short report by mentioning briefly the wonderful times the participants had at the conference. We had the opportunity of meeting old friends and discovering new ones. We sat down, drank esoteric beer and shared inciting debates on Kabbala, alchemy and Second Life. We shared contacts and established new meeting points at future conferences. When we finally departed, we did so enriched and inspired by this unique Strasbourg experience, ready to explore newly discovered themes and subjects of esotericism.