Esoteric Coffeehouse

Since I am currently researching on the topic of early Rosicrucianism, I have taken a closer look at the Rosicrucian Manifestos: Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio. My reading of the documents made me decide to provide a modern English version, as the 1652 version is slightly hard to read. While the Chymical Wedding benefited from such a modern English updating, the Manifestos didn’t. I will soon publish my version under a new envisioned section of the website called Downloads.

It is important to know that, although lumped together as the ‘Manifestos’, the Fama and Confessio were not published simultaneously. The Fama was published in Kassel, Germany in 1614 as an appendix to a section of a Italian work by Trajano Boccalini. It was republished, together with the Confessio, in 1615. Hence, the Fama can be considered as the more original and important of the two treatises (in fact, the Confessio constantly refers to the Fama as authority).

To make things easier, I have set what I consider to be the main ideas of the Manifestos in a numbered list below.

1. Secret Medieval Tradition from the East. The works affirm that the Rosy Cross society was established in the 1300s by a legendary friar called Christian Rosenkreutz. He was supposed to have traveled widely in the Eastern lands and to have acquired secret knowledge from Islamic initiates. It was a peculiar aspect of Rosicrucian belief that secret knowledge could be obtained from Moslem thinkers in the Middle East. Needless to say, at the time, many anti-Rosicrucian writers attacked them for upholding non-Christian beliefs. Yet, as shown below, the Rosicrucian manifestos portray a mystical and ardent form of Christianity. Nevertheless, the composers of the Fama and Confessio must have been aware of the historical truth that esoteric knowledge came through the intermediation of Islam.

2. Paracelsianism. The Manifestos refer to Theophrastus Paracelsus as an important precursor of the Rosicrucian revelation; however, they say, he did not belong to the Rosicrucian lineage. Paracelsian language and ideas pervade both Fama and Confessio: they talk about universal medicine, the religious value of knowledge, the inferior nature of gold-making and other ideas traceable to Paracelsian followers. The Paracelsians, it must be remembered, were interested in medical alchemy rather than gold-making and often disparaged the latter as an inferior pursuit. They were also fervent knowledge-seekers, both in nature and in the Bible.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

Welcome to my Esoteric Coffeehouse – I am your host, Jo, and I invite you to take a look around my place and then have a sit in a comfortable couch, sip on a virtual coffee (or perhaps a spiced chai) and engage in a real discussion on esoteric topics.

First, it is perhaps desirable to clarify the term “esoteric” in our conversation. To be sure, there are numerous academic definitions of what is meant by the term “esoteric”, which I will expand in a future post. However, we are not here to engage in a purely academic discussion, but a friendly exchange on a topic broadly defined as ‘esoteric’. Surely, as it happens with every interaction, the definition we will use for ‘esoteric’ is bound to evolve.

To begin with, I will propose to start with a fairly large perspective of ‘esoteric’ as ‘a spiritual vision of what lies beneath the ordinary’. I believe that the esoteric is actually about an attempt of ‘seeing’ beyond the surface, hence challenging common perceptions. In this, ‘esotericism’ is a meeting between the intellect and the spirit; moreover, it is generally associated with a practice or technique that allows someone to delve into the vision. In this framework, I envisage such wide-range topics as:

• Alchemy
• Magic
• Hermeticism
• Rosicrucianism
• Alternative medicine
• Astrology
• Neoplatonism
• Scientific views
• Philosophy
• Mysticism
• Freemasonry
• Sufi practices
• Movies and books with esoteric theme
• Art & music
• Mythology
• Folklore
• Esoteric or esoterically-related thinkers
• Academic esotericism
• Esoteric lifestyle
  

What I am basically proposing through this blog is to incite in-depth, substantial and thoughtful discussion on esoteric themes.

(more…)