Western Esotericism

Western esotericism is a field of study that examines philosophies and practices, often of a spiritual nature, that have been rejected from common knowledge. These groups of philosophical disciplines and religions were often banned by the Christian Church or ostracized by academia, pushing members to practice in secret. Nonetheless, these movements have contributed to generally accepted studies like natural science, psychology, and astronomy. Today, we'll take an overview of the different practices related to this field and what makes them important and fascinating. Let's begin.

Thank you for tuning in to an episode of Merwin's Philosophy, where I explore the connection between spirituality and psychology and how that coincides with social issues we face today. Now here's the show.

Welcome to another episode. The last one we talked about was on Hellenistic Astrology and that would fall under the umbrella called Western Esotericism, which we'll be talking about today. Now most of this episode will focus on a book called Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed by Wouter J. Hanegraaff. And I'll just go ahead and say that, despite the subtitle, it was still a very complex book to read. I felt like I was trying to learn calculus without understanding algebra first. You're going to need to do some outside research to understand his points and maybe read it a couple of more times to really understand the book. But once you get the basic understanding of what he's talking about, the book proves very useful in trying to explain this very complex topic.

And I do believe Hanegraaff did his best. When it comes to macro level topics like politics, economics, and even religion and philosophy, it's very complex to understand the first time around, unless you have some kind of background or experience in those topics. This is why I present myself more as a student and explorer of these topics rather than an expert. This podcast is a way for me to document that journey.

So, like I said, despite this book being very complex, he does break it down in several ways. He gives us a brief trajectory of the different philosophies and doctrines that we place under this field, and then he spends several chapters listing out the similarities and differences of these different spiritualities and how society has reacted to them throughout history. And as we'll see, society has swung from ostracizing to embracing and exploring these occult teachings. This really started in the Renaissance period and has progressed over time into the modern age where now we can see these topics being openly discussed on social media platforms such as TikTok and even YouTube.

So as usual, I'm going to break this episode into three parts. The first part we'll look at a brief overview of the related disciplines. Part two, we'll look at the similarities and differences. And then, part three we'll examine society's reactions and why these are considered occult and esoteric in contrast to the more exoteric religions that we hear of today.

[03:01] Part 1: Brief Overview

So, let's jump into part one. Western Esotericism is the study of philosophical and spiritual teachings that have been rejected by society either because they were banned by the church or ostracized, such as by the academic elite. The word esoteric means hidden and it kind of refers to the occult. It's knowledge that's only supposed to be known within the organizations that practice it or that inner circle. Exoteric would be knowledge for the outside world. So think public education or religious teaching spread through missionaries.

Now, the western part of the title refers to how these have impacted the western side of the world, which we considered western Europe and later on America. I have a video linked in my show notes and in the description from the YouTube channel, Useful Charts, and it's called Western Esotericism Family Tree, and it gives a much easier to understand lineage of how all of these practices kind of branch together under this umbrella and apart from each other. If you read Hanegraaff's book, you will be a little bit confused without that preliminary information.

But there are four practices that lead to the concept of Western Esotericism, and these four are called Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, and Neoplatonism. And they all deserve their own future episodes, but I will mention them in this episode. There's also Eastern religions that have influenced this category as well. We'll refer to those in passing as we look at the other disciplines one by one , but they have been adapted by the West and have influenced our understanding of this field and the related spiritualities that we lump underneath this field.

So let's start with the first big one, Hermeticism. This emerged during the Hellenistic Greece period between 200 and 300 BC and is based on writings attributed to the sage Hermes Trismegistus, which is an amalgamation of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek god Hermes. I did mention him in the last episode on Hellenistic Astrology. And much of Hermeticism includes aspects of astrology, alchemy, and theurgy, which we call today magic. Its main purpose was to attain some type of divine wisdom so the soul could reach salvation. It saw the physical realm as a place of exile. And so the main goal was to attain this divine wisdom so you could reach paradise or salvation. And it influenced many esoteric practices after it, which we will see, including the ones that are listed in this list. And like most ancient esoterica, this particular one fell out of practice after the fall of Rome, and it regained significance again during the Renaissance period

Now the next one is Gnosticism And that came about around the first century A. D. during the Roman Empire. It was an early form of Christianity and it emphasized the concept of Gnosis. And this is a Greek word that means knowledge, awareness. And it refers to a sense of spiritual knowledge of a divine or god based on personal experiences. This is different than what we see in modern religions, which place more emphasis on institutionalized teachings such as those taught by a pastor or the head of a church. And this, like Hermeticism, saw the material world as a place of exile, but it went further and saw it as a place of evil. And the only way to find salvation was through obtaining this Gnosis, or hidden spiritual knowledge. Now, over time, it became banned by the Orthodox Church for heresy and because they had different beliefs on the concept of God.

Next emerged Neoplatonism in the 3rd century during the Roman Empire again. And this was a reaction to Gnosticism founded by the Greek philosopher Plotinus. Now he taught that the physical world was not all bad, but instead it was hidden from the divine truth known as the One. And the goal was to move from the darkness, which would be the physical world, towards the light, which would be the spiritual world, or this idea again of Gnosis. Now it was similar to Platonism, which is the teachings of the Greek philosopher Plato. And some historians and philosophers argue that this is simply another era of Plato's teachings and not an actual separate category. We'll look more into that in a later episode, but that's just based on my preliminary research trying to figure out what the difference is. Now, the Christian and Arab conquests, which contributed to the fall of Rome, also pushed these teachings out of the mainstream until the Renaissance movement embraced them again.

And last but not least, we have the Kabbalah. And this emerged around the 12th century in southeastern Europe, so think Spain and the surrounding areas. And it's a form of Jewish mysticism, which goes back further in time and is similar to Hermeticism, which includes esoteric practices for obtaining divine knowledge. It's a little bit more than just theoretical. It actually included actual practices, just like Hermeticism. And it's considered part of the Torah, which is the Hebrew Bible. Now, over time and during the Renaissance period, it became detached from Jewish traditions. And now, there are both Jewish and non-Jewish Kabbalah. I don't think it ever fell out of popularity, but this is what I found. I think it just split into Jewish versus non-Jewish Kabbalah. And it had a big influence on the practices that we see today. So it's in this list.

Now, as you can see, and as with most esoteric and even religious beliefs, the practices are focused on obtaining some type of divine and spiritual knowledge, or that word Gnosis again. I believe that pondering beyond the concrete, pondering the spiritual and metaphysical world, seems to be part of a human experience, and it's a way to explain the abstract components, like why are we here? Why are we alive? This seems to be uniquely human to me. And that brings us to part two.

[09:11] Part 2: Similarities and Differences

We like to rewrite history in a way that aligns with our beliefs, our ideals, and preconceived notions, regardless of the actual facts that may refute it. Now, hopefully before you're listening to this podcast, I have already posted a blog post that goes into the anti science movement. This kind of connects with that. This is the reason why we have conspiracy theories and misinformation readily spread around.

Now, Hanengraff calls this mnemohistory, but I simply call it History vs Memory. People may do this to make sense of events or information that may be disturbing or hard to believe. And in the sense of Western Esotericism, it was a way to discuss whose take on religion and spirituality would be the dominant one. In my understanding, it seemed to be about power and control.

Now the main way this was done was through apologetic and polemic ways. One defends the beliefs from doubters and other cast non believers as the one in the wrong. So let's talk about apologetic first. This is the reasoning that is used to defend your beliefs against doubters. Early Christians argued that all knowledge, spiritual and philosophical, which used to be one and the same, all derived from ancient Hebrew, including ancient Greek philosophy. They made connections to their religion in the teachings of the Greek philosopher Plato, who I mentioned earlier. Now, this isn't true. Christianity was pretty new relative to ancient Greek culture, which came before it. Platonism, and later Neoplatonism, influenced Christianity, not the other way around, as early Christians argued, but the connection helped persuade people at the time.

Now, during the Renaissance period around the 1400s, the printing press was invented. And more of the classical works, like Plato's teachings, were becoming more available. They were becoming translated and spread around to the public. And this had the effect of strengthening the argument that Christianity was the source of all divine knowledge.

In fact, part of that argument was that it was a sign from God, the Christian God, that these works were being more readily available, and that in order to reach spiritual salvation, you needed to follow the Christian faith. In other words, it was almost like it was God's will that all of these teachings were becoming more available to strengthen the argument that Christianity was the source of all divine knowledge. And now that it's becoming more available, you better get on the bandwagon if you want to save your soul, basically.

Now, another way that Christianity became the dominant religion over time was the polemic reasoning, which was to denounce all other religions and spiritual beliefs. And I would argue that this had a stronger impact than the apologetic route. They denounced most pagan beliefs as heresy, including Gnosticism, which again was a different belief related to the Christian God.

Then the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s pushed this movement even further. This was basically a split within the Christian faith from the Catholic Church. And the Protestants was even more polemic against paganism than the Catholic Church was. To give more context, there were certain pagan beliefs that the Christian Church accepted, or the Catholic Church, excuse me. But the Protestants were even more hardliners and said no.

Now it's important to note that not all Protestants and Catholics were hardliners against pagan thought and history. Like I said, some embraced certain elements and past philosophies into their religion. But overall, the majority's thoughts won out and pushed most of the past spiritual and philosophical beliefs out of Western society. Yet, this mixing of pagan beliefs into certain forms of Christianity did begin the field of Western esotericism as we study today.

Now that's the religious part. Now we move into the more academic component into the Enlightenment period. The Enlightenment era was roughly between the late 1600s to the early 1800s, which is after the Renaissance period. Thinkers and philosophers of this time started to distance themselves from Christianity in favor of more rational thoughts and reasoning. They also included seeing paganism and esoteric beliefs as superstition, which is a belief that still holds today.

Now, the Romantic thinkers, or people who were still holding on to the Romantic era of thought, they argued that the Enlightened thinkers were too harsh and cold, trying to shut out the human elements of emotion and imagination. And while I personally agree with what I've read so far, the unfortunate thing was the Romantic thinkers overemphasized the mystical and esoteric elements, leading more to an enchanted view that was more detached from grounded reality, which furthered the divide from the Enlightened thinkers.

Now this attitude did resolve over time as society began to embrace both human emotions and rational thinking, and it led to the field of psychology, which developed around the 20th century. And in 1960, or around that time, Western Esotericism became a field of study and it gained a lot more traction in the 1990s. So, this is a relatively new field of study and only a few colleges around the world, I believe, actually teach it or only teach certain disciplines related to it.

Now, the similarities so far that we've discussed is how these pagan beliefs became rejected from society and religion and therefore became esoteric, but also how, like Christianity, there was a concern with trying to find a sense of the divine truth and understand the mysteries of life.

A third way is how all of these were practiced. And I see a comparison between these esoteric religions and how they're practiced and the exoteric religions like Christianity. Now, in the book, Hanegraaff lists eight ways in which these esoteric traditions were practiced, and I would like to go over them and explain more of the similarity that I have witnessed because I was raised Christian, so I actually saw some of this.

So the first one is control, and these are practices where one tries to gain power or influence over their reality, such as using talismans and amulets as personal protections. Christians may wear a cross for the same reason and believe in the power of prayer to change their circumstances.

The second way is knowledge, which is practices where one tries to gain information, like divination practices where one tries to gain information about the future, such as tarot and astrology. Christians may read the Bible or rely on a preacher's interpretations of events to also gain a deeper sense of knowledge.

Then we have amplification, which is practices that enhances one's abilities, like visualization and healing. In the book, Hanegraaff used an example of astral magic to which my understanding, is practices that attune to the energy of astrological phenomena and try to harness some kind of power in beneficial ways. It corresponds to intense visualization, sort of the way intense belief and visualization may be used in Christianity through prayer. So there's a similarity.

The fourth one is healing, which is practices that induce a sort of healing effect. Think Reiki or other esoteric alternative healing practices for the body and spirit. Essential oils are used for the same way, relying on personal experience and a little bit of pseudoscience. Now many legends in Christianity talk about spontaneous healing via hands and chanting.

So the fifth way is progress. And this is practices that help the person advance on some type of spiritual path. Now, in a Christian Catholic context, this may look like going from a priest to a cardinal or even the pope. Freemasonry is an esoteric organization that also uses a sense of hierarchy and progression within their practices.

The sixth way is contact, and this allows users to contact other supernatural or metaphysical beings such as angels, demons, or even spirits of the dead. This, in an esoteric sense, may look like the channeling work of mediums who allow people to speak to their deceased loved ones. And in pop culture, we've seen a Christian priest or preacher do exorcism as a way to cast out demonic spirits from someone believed to be possessed. That could be an example of contact.

And similar to contact, number seven is unity. And these are practices used to achieve some kind of unity with God or a higher being, like some kind of fusion of human and supernatural. In my exorcism example, the one being possessed would be seen as unity with a demonic spirit. And I did run across the Christian thought of being one with Christ, which seems to have a similar aspect about it.

And last but not least, you have pleasure, which is these practices that are simply done as pleasurable rituals. There's a sense of community and camaraderie that practitioners may find through these rituals and ceremonies. Both exoteric and esoteric societies have this element.

Now basically, this whole part that I went through is a quick summary of the chapter 7 within Hanegraaff's book. And some scholars try to explain all of the esoteric practices as emanating from one central idea of spirituality and the search for divine truth, instead of seeing them as a multitude of different practices. There's a reason they're called esoteric, and it's because they've been hidden from public knowledge. We're more aware of mainstream religion like Christianity than we are esoteric rituals.

Now, he mentioned how being faced with cold, hard facts in history can make people question their beliefs. It can lead people to developing a nihilistic view of life, as if nothing matters, and it's just full of events that happened randomly, and especially since much of history does conflict with popular religious and spiritual beliefs. We can't predict certain tragedies such as natural disasters and car accidents and death. We can trace certain causes such as weather patterns and risky behaviors, but we can't predict with certainty who will be affected on what day.

And it's uncertainties like this that make people turn to spirituality in order to cope and gain some sense of a positive outlook on life. But my personal opinion is that we need to find a way to merge this need for a purpose in life and for understanding with the cold hard facts that we have. There's still a lot of uncertainties that science and just rational thinking can't quite come up with. And so I believe that spirituality can help with cope with the negative aspects of life, and it can help with gaining the positive aspects such as beauty and community. We just have to find a way to merge those two and not let one take over the other. Because like I said, there are some spiritual thoughts that override rational thinking or will try to rewrite history as we've discussed before. And that brings us to the last part, which is societal reactions.

[20:45] Part 3: Societal Reactions

Now this last part is basically my summary of chapter 7 within his book, which Hanegraaff lists five ways that society has transformed throughout time in the way it pertains to Western esotericism. So here's my summary of those seven ways.

Number one, we all have a personal way in which we believe the world functions. Some take a more spiritual approach, others a more scientific one. I believe that we need both because there's plenty of things science cannot explain. This does risk anti science and pseudo scientific beliefs becoming more popular, but I don't think it's fair to ignore human emotion and our propensity to share stories and beliefs in order to build community with each other, since humans are social. This push and pull is just part of the human experience and the way society functions.

Number two. The Christian Church began losing its power and control around the 18th century, which led more people to discover other religions and philosophies. That kind of goes to part 1, in which we were allowed to embrace the diverse ways in which we believe the world functions and not told strictly through the idea of a religious lens.

Number three. Ideas about divine evolution and spiritual progress became diverse, as I just alluded to. Ideas such as reincarnation and others derived from eastern philosophy became entertained and developed away from the Christian lens.

Number four, development of psychology broke apart the idea of God and humankind being one and the same. Psychology taught that the human mind and soul operated on its own. Spirituality and psychology began to divert from one another. I actually have an old episode that kind of looks at spirituality versus psychology. Now, admittedly, I feel like there's some things missing in that episode because this was before I started this dive into Western Esotericism and kind of a more mature lens of what I was trying to talk about. But I think some things in there still stand and I think it still is a good episode, all things considered.

But that brings us to number five. Religious freedom allows people to embrace their own version of spirituality and philosophical beliefs without the fear of persecution, at least here in the West. We do have this thing called separation of church and state, which is a modern version of this. It allows us to not be beholden by whatever the church says. And allow this religious freedom, which I would argue is currently being challenged today. But that is a whole, that's more related to politics and that's beyond the scope of this podcast.

Now, all of these five major ways of transformations have led to a pagan revival. You can find almost any esoteric belief from astrology to witchcraft being discussed on social media. And that brings me to my conclusion.

[23:42] Conclusion

Western esotericism is just a modern umbrella for spiritual and philosophical practices that were shunned due to religious persecution and societal ridicule. Just like with mainstream religion, these Esoteric ones represent diverse ways of thinking about the uncertainties of human experience, which does include the spiritual and emotional. While these are fascinating practices to study, it's important to remember the cultural and historical context in which these practices were developed. This gives a deeper understanding of them and keeps us from being overly enchanted by them, such as the Romantic thinkers or overly critical as we've seen early Christians do.

Now Hanegraaff's book is dense and complex and I honestly just scratched the surface. There are many details I glossed over and left out and because I wanted to give a general overview of both the book and a framework to think about Western Esotericism, since it encapsulates what I plan on talking about in the future.

Now I would encourage you to get the book if you would like to learn more about the finer details I left out. I most likely will talk about the related disciplines in other episodes because they definitely deserve their other episodes. I'll do a few more episodes on Hellenistic Astrology because I wasn't quite done with that subject as well. So stay tuned.

Thank you for listening to this episode. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to leave me a comment and subscribe for more. For those of you listening through a podcast app, make sure you subscribe and leave me a review. Click the link in the show notes or head on over to merwinmccrady. com to leave me a comment there. Thank you so much and I'll see you in the next one.