Western Esotericism

A Concise History

Antoine Faivre, Christine Rhone

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781438433790
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Widely received in France, this brief, comprehensive introduction to Western esotericism by the founder of the field is at last available in English. A historical and pedagogical guide, the book is written primarily for students and novices. In clear, precise language, author Antoine Faivre provides an overview of Western esoteric currents since late antiquity. The bulk of the book is laid out chronologically, from ancient and medieval sources (Alexandrian hermetism, gnosticism, neoplatonism), through the Renaissance up to the present time. Its coverage includes spiritual alchemy, Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, Christian theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Illuminism, 'mystical' Free-Masonry, the Occultist current, Theosophical and Anthroposophical Societies, the Traditionalist School, and 'esotericism' in contemporary initiatic societies and in New Religious Movements. Faivre explores how these currents are connected, and refers to where they appear in art and literature. The book concludes with an annotated bibliography, which makes it an essential resource for beginners and scholars alike.

1

Ancient and Medieval Sources of the Modern Western Esoteric Currents

I. The First Eleven Centuries

1. Alexandrian Hermetism

Scattered works, partly lost, written in Greek in the region of Alexandria, constitute a heterogeneous mass known as the Hermetica. Composed over several centuries at the dawn of our era, these treatises deal with astrology, alchemy, the philosophy of Nature, cosmology, and theurgy. A collection dating from the second and third centuries stands out within this body of works, the Corpus Hermeticum (CH). It brings together seventeen short treatises. Also part of that body are the Asclepius and the “Fragments” attributed to Stobaeus. Their author or legendary inspirer is Hermes Trismegistus, the “thrice great,” whom many mythical and contradictory genealogies associate with the name Thoth and the Greek Hermes. He would have lived in the time of Moses, and the Egyptians would have been indebted to him for their laws and their knowledge. The Middle Ages did not know the CH, rediscovered at the Renaissance, but only the Asclepius (in its Latin translation).

Despite the speculative aspect of the CH, we should not seek a unified doctrine in it. As we move from one treatise to the next, we find contradictions and discrepancies, because they are the work of different authors. The most famous treatise is the Poimandres, or Pimander, always published as the first in the series of those comprising the CH. It develops a cosmogony and an anthropology on a mode of illumination and revelation. Among the prominent themes are those of the fall and the reintegration, and of memory in its relationships with a form of “magical” imagination.

The CH itself does not treat alchemy strictly speaking. It seems that, unknown to Pharaonic Egypt, it developed as an extension of Hermeticist astrology, in particular starting from the notion of sympathy linking each planet to its corresponding metal (until about the second century B.C., alchemy remained a technique associated with the practice of goldsmithing). With Bolos of Mendes, in the second century B.C., it took a philosophical turn and sometimes presented itself in a light of revelation—as a “revealed” science. Zozimus of Panapolis (third or early fourth century), of whom twenty-eight treatises have been preserved, developed a visionary alchemy, followed in this by Synesius (fourth century), Olympiodorus (sixth century), and Stephanos of Alexandria (seventh century) in whom alchemy is also considered a spiritual exercise.

2. Other Non-Christian Currents

To Alexandrian Hermetism, four other non-Christian currents are added, important in the genesis of modern esotericism. These currents are, to begin with, the neo-Pythagoreanism of the two first centuries of our era; it would never cease to reappear subsequently under different forms of arithmosophy. Then we have Stoicism, which extended over nearly two centuries, one aspect of which bears on the universe understood as an organic totality guaranteeing harmony between terrestrial and celestial matters. Third, we have Neoplatonism that, from Plotinus (205–270) to the fifth century, taught methods that permit gaining access to a supersensible reality, constructing or describing this reality in its structure. Porphyry (273–305), Iamblichus (On the Egyptian Mysteries, toward 300), and Proclus (412–486) appear among the most visible Neoplatonists in later esoteric literature. In the fifth or the sixth century, a cosmological text of a few pages was drawn up, Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Creation), a prefiguration of what would be the medieval Kabbalah proper (it contains notably the first-known introduction of the famous so-called Tree of the Sephiroth).

Added to this was an intense intellectual activity in the Arab world, connected with the rapid expansion of Islam. The Arabic Epistles of the “Sincere Brethern” (ninth century) contain many speculations of a cosmological nature. Starting in this same century, Neoplatonic texts and the Hermetica were translated into Arabic. They gave rise to the appearance of original works (Theology of Aristotle, ninth century; Picatrix [tenth century], an encyclopedia of magical knowledge partly of Greek origin; Turba Philosophorum [Assembly of the Philosophers], a compilation of discourses on alchemy; “Book of the Secrets of Creation,” ca. 825, which contains the first version of the famous text of the Emerald Tablet).

3. In Christian Thought of the First Eleven Centuries

Was there a “Christian esotericism” understood as a more or less secret set of teachings delivered by Jesus to his disciples, and was this teaching of an essentially Jewish type: These are questions still debated. In his Stromateis (“Miscellanies”), Clement of Alexandria (160–215), whose Hellenistic Christianity is tinged with Jewish mysticism, emphasized the importance of gnosis understood as “knowledge” that supports and transcends faith. Origen (185–254) advocated a constant effort of interpretation, on several levels, of the texts of the Holy Scriptures in order to pass from faith to this gnosis.

Marginal to the more or less official Christianity that both represent, Gnosticism is a vast current that takes different forms. Their common theme is deliverance from evil through the destruction of our universe and the elevation of our soul toward the celestial spheres. Unlike Basilides and Valentinus, other Gnostics of the second century, like Marcion, taught a dualist conception (Evil is ontologically equal to Good) of humankind and the world. We find it again in another form in the so-called Manichaean current issued from Mani (second century). A metaphysical pessimism marks the thinking—very rich, all permeated with a luxuriant imaginaire—of Gnosticism, which was a source of Bulgarian Bogomilism in the tenth century and hence of Catharism. In the following period, three names stand out. First is Pseudo-Dionysius (Dionysius Aeropagita), whose three main works (Mystical Theology, Divine Names, and Celestial Hierarchy), written in Greek in the sixth century and partly inspired by the ideas of Proclus, are devoted to angelology and would remain a standard reference on the subject. Second is Maximus the Confessor who, one century later, explained the works of Pseudo-Dionysius. And third, in the ninth century, is the Irish monk Johannes Scottus Eriugena, author of the Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature). The latter is one of the most important intellectual constructions of the Middle Ages, which would ensure the transmission of a sort of “dynamized” Platonism in many ways close to the Jewish Kabbalah soon to flourish in Spain (section III, 1).

II. In Medieval Thought

1. Aspects of Theology

The twelfth century discovered Nature in a light of analogy. Only recently accessible to the West, Arabian knowledge favored this orientation. In the School of Chartres, especially in Bernardus Silvestris (De mundi universitate, 1147) and William of Conches (toward 1080–1145), there was still no hiatus between metaphysical principles and cosmology. The period saw the birth of the masterpiece of Alain de Lille (1128–1203), De planctu naturae; the dazzling and we could say prototheosophical illustrated texts of Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), particularly her Scivias. Appearing also were the Clavis Physicae and the Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis (Honoré d'Autun), besides many other similar creations.

If, in this Romanesque period, correspondences, symbolic imagination, Nature and ways of spiritual transformation occupy an important place, the Franciscan spirit that emerged in the thirteenth century came, by its love of Nature, to reinforce this tendency. The School of Oxford contributed much to it (the theology of light in Robert Grosseteste, alchemy and astrology in Roger Bacon [see section II, 3], etc.), as well as the work of the Italian Saint Bonaventure (1217–1274) whose theological work develops a theory of the “coincidence of opposites” prefiguring that of Nicholas of Cusa (section II, 2).

When, toward 1300, the penetration of Arabic texts into Latinity was practically completed, we witness the triumph of Latin Averroism in Christian theology—that is to say, of the thought of the Arab Averroes (1126–1198), interpreter of Aristotle—to the detriment of the influence of the Persian Avicenna (980–1037). Whence, a form of rationality appeared in theology, which would deeply mark Western minds. Thus, the Christian and Islamic twelfth century increasingly “theologized” the Aristotelian “secondary causes” (especially cosmology) in a metaphysical direction, which would render problematic the relationship between metaphysical principles and Nature. This problematization would favor, in the Renaissance, the emergence of the esoteric currents proper (cf. Introduction, section II).

2. “Sums” and Universal Syntheses

Many summae are compendia of marvels and observations about the “powers” operant in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. They adumbrate the philosophia occulta of the Renaissance (this is the case, e.g., of the Speculum naturale of Vincent of Beauvais, 1245, or the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, ca. 1230). However, there also are “sums” appearing as systems of thought, as grand philosophical syntheses. Not all of them are part of this tendency, as for example, that of Thomas Aquinas.

The work of the Calabrian abbot Joachim da Fiore (ca. 1135–1202), who distinguishes three great periods of Universal History (the reign of the Father, that of the Son, and that—yet to come—of the Holy Spirit), would enjoy a considerable vogue in modern times, in particular by the use that philosophers of History would make of it. Let us cite further the Ars Magna of Raymundus Lullus (Ramon Llull, toward 1232/3–1310; section II, 3): a combinatory “art” with universal pretentions, marked by medieval Neoplatonism such as Johannes Scottus Eriugena had transmitted it (section I,3). At the end of the Middle Ages, Nicholas of Cusa heralded the Hermetism of the Renaissance through his idea of a fundamental unity of the religions (De pace fidei, 1453) and put forth a world system, a theory of “opposites” in which the infinitely great coincides with the infinitely small—a “total” science, encompassing astrology as well.

3. Hermetism, Astrology, and Alchemy

Many were the works of magic, like the Picatrix (of Arabian origin, as we have seen [section II, 2], which became the object of Latin translations and of adaptations) or those belonging to Ars notoria, the art of invoking angels. The CH was lost until the Renaissance, but the Asclepius was available in a Latin version and other texts circulated in Alexandrian Hermetist milieux. One of the most widely known, the Liber XXIV philosophorum, dates from the twelfth century, while the names Roger of Hereford and John of Sevilla were prominent in astrology. However, this system of knowledge was not essential in a world still imbued with the divine: Dante placed two of the great astrologers of the thirteenth century in his hell: Michael Scot and Guido Bonatti. At the beginning of the fourteenth, Ramon Llull (section II, 2) made an important place for astrology in his Ars Magna, as did Peter of Abano in his Conciliator (1303). Cecco d'Ascoli (1269–1327), another famous astrologer, was burnt at the stake in Florence. Pierre d'Ailly (1350–1420) wanted to elevate astrology to the level of a “natural theology” supposed to illustrate its complex relationships with Christian knowledge and thought.

As for alchemy, it practically did not reappear in Europe before the twelfth century; Islam reintroduced it there through the intermediary of Spain. The end of the thirteenth saw two alchemical texts circulating in Latin, from which much inspiration would subsequently be drawn: the Turba Philosophorum, of Arabian origin, which has ancient alchemists in dialogue; the Summa, a body of writings attributed to the Arabian Geber; and the speculations of Roger Bacon (Opus tertium, 1267). The Aurora consurgens is attributed by legend to Thomas Aquinas. Let us cite further the works attributed to the Catalan Arnau de Vilanova (ca. 1235–1311), in particular his Rosarium Philosophorum.

Alchemical literature then began to proliferate rapidly, remaining abundant until at least the seventeenth century. It was notably represented by many treatises attributed to Ramon Llull starting in the fourteenth century, and which are not by him; by John Dastin, Petrus Bonus (Pretiosa inargarita novella, ca. 1330), and Nicolas Flamel (1330–1417). With Flamel are associated legends that continue to cause much ink to flow. George Ripley then followed (The Compound of Alchemy, 1470; Medulla alchimiae, 1476) and Bernardus Trevisanus (1406–1490). As in the late Hellenistic period, certain forms of alchemy, in the Middle Ages, already give the impression of unfolding on two planes: operative and spiritual.

III. Initiatic Quests and Arts

1. Jewish Kabbalah

The influence of the Kabbalah in the Latin world would be considerable from the Renaissance onwards (chapter II, section I, 2). Succeeding the Sepher Yetsirah (section I, 2), a compilation of Kabbalistic materials made in Provence in the twelfth century comes to constitute the first exposition of the Kabbalah properly speaking, the Bahir, which orientates the latter in the double direction of a gnosis of Eastern origin and of a form of Neoplatonism. Numbers and letters of the Old Testament are there the object of a hermeneutics capable of procuring knowledge of the relationships between the world and God, according to an interpretative method that suggests seeing in each word and letter of the Torah a meaning with multiple ramifications. Kabbalistic literature was then enriched with what would remain its fundamental book, the Sepher ha-Zohar (“Book of Splendor”), appearing in Spain shortly after 1275. Compilation probably due to Moses of Leon, it represents the summit of Jewish Kabbalah, that is to say, of a speculative mysticism applied to the knowledge and to the description of the mysterious works of God. The Zohar considerably extended the Talmudic dimension relative to the tasks or rites for developing a divinocosmic mythology from which Renaissance thought would profit. Finally, the great mystic Abraham Abulafia (1240–1291), born in Saragossa, taught a meditation technique of an initiatic and symbolic nature that also included physical exercises.

2. Chivalry and Initiatic Societies

The art of the church builders was transmitted in lodges to which modern Freemasonry would often claim to be the heir. Obligations, or “duties,” of the masons constitute the Old Charges, of which the texts that have come down to us (the Regius, toward 1390, and the Cooke, toward 1410) discuss geometry as a script of God that arose simultaneously with the origins of the world.

Also initiatic is chivalry in some of its aspects—to which Templar sites, such as Tomar, in Portugal, seem to bear testimony. However, we must take care not to confuse history and fiction; the destruction of the Order of the Temple in 1312 gave rise to a Templar myth that does not correspond to the facts, just as the Crusade led against the Albigensians in 1207 gave rise to all sorts of legends concerning their alleged “esotericism.” In reality, the latter is found much less in these Orders or these movements properly speaking than in the inspired discourses of which they were subsequently the subject, especially starting in the Enlightenment. Thus, the symbols of the Order of the Golden Fleece founded in 1429 by Philip the Good would serve to revive the myth of Jason in the Western imaginaire, notably in alchemical literature and, from the second half of the eighteenth century onward, in certain Higher Grades of Freemasonry (chapter III, section III, 1, 2). Let us cite finally the Brethren of the Free Spirit (of Amalric of Bene, also called Amalric of Chartres), starting about 1206; and especially the Friends of God gathered around the layperson Rulman Merswin (1307–1382) in their Alsatian cloister called the Green Island.

3. The Arts

In the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, churches and cathedrals deploy a visionary theology full of theophanies and metamorphoses. Their symbolism rests on a subtle knowledge of the relationships uniting God, humankind, and the universe. However, let us not attribute to the...