{"title":"Initiation into Philosophy","authors":"Simone Kotva","doi":"10.1163/15700593-tat00012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-tat00012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Maine de Biran (1766–1824) was one of the most influential philosophers in France during the nineteenth century, being the principal inspiration for French spiritualism and French reflexive philosophy. He was also a significant Freemason. This article offers a translation of Biran’s two surviving Freemasonry Speeches, delivered c. 1810, and an introduction to Biran’s Freemasonry from the perspective of his philosophical work. The introduction gives a timeline of Biran’s Freemasonry and an overview of the text of the Speeches. It then considers some principal themes in francophone Freemasonic culture of the Restoration, especially the practice of ritualized introspection, before moving onto compare, briefly, the content of the Speeches to the main philosophical essay by Biran with which the Speeches is contemporaneous. Based on this evidence, the introduction makes suggestions regarding the role played by Freemasonry in the development of French spiritualism, and indicates trajectories for future research.","PeriodicalId":41783,"journal":{"name":"Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism","volume":"28 32","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41330491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Die orientalische Wende der Theosophischen Gesellschaft: Eine Untersuchung der theosophischen Lehrentwicklungen in der Zeit zwischen den Hauptwerken Alfred Percy Sinnetts , by Ulrich Harlass","authors":"Yves Mühlematter","doi":"10.1163/15700593-tat00007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-tat00007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41783,"journal":{"name":"Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46620035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘He thinks he is inspired, and he is mad’","authors":"P. Sobkowiak","doi":"10.1163/15700593-tat00003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-tat00003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 During the last decades of the eighteenth century, knowledge about Siberia inspired Catherine II to create the main character of one of her comedies, The Siberian Shaman. Taking Foucault’s dispositif-concept as its theoretical premise, the present paper discusses the historical context in which The Siberian Shaman was written, deconstructs the identity of the comedy’s main character, and explores the socio-political purposes for which the comedy was written. By utilising the perspective of entangled history of religions and the methodology of historical discourse analysis, this paper shows that the comedy’s alleged “shamanic” content and “anti-shamanic” purpose cannot be taken for granted. Rather, the discourse in The Siberian Shaman should be read as Catherine II’s own engagement with the themes of unreason and madness within the philosophical, socio-political and religious context of the period.","PeriodicalId":41783,"journal":{"name":"Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48437196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Un Coniglio nel Turbante: Intrattenimento e inganno nella scienza arabo-islamica , by Lucia Raggetti","authors":"Vanessa da Silva Baptista","doi":"10.1163/15700593-02301010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-02301010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41783,"journal":{"name":"Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45999304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Esotericism in Romanian Religious History","authors":"I. Băncilă","doi":"10.1163/15700593-02301003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-02301003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 As an expression of the complex global religious entanglements, esoteric knowledge did appeal also to Eastern Europe, in Romania being particularly imprinted by the local religious discourses and practices characteristic to Orthodox Christianity. This paper attempts to briefly sketch the indigenization of esoteric “currents” such as alchemy, spiritualism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Traditionalism etc. in Romania. Apart from these historical formations, various aspects of the contemporary occulture in Romania are also considered, especially the Orthodox occulture.","PeriodicalId":41783,"journal":{"name":"Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism","volume":"51 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41264902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/15700593-02301000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-02301000","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41783,"journal":{"name":"Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135599738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Polaire Brotherhood (La Fraternité polaire) in Belgrade","authors":"Nemanja Radulović","doi":"10.1163/15700593-02301005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-02301005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The Polaire Brotherhood (La Fraternité polaire) was an occult society active in interwar Paris. Some of the important names of the French occult scene of the period were among its members. According to the reports in the bulletin of the society, there was also a branch operating in Belgrade in the 1930s. However, this has not previously been confirmed. Archive materials used for this paper attest to the existence of the Belgrade group for the first time. Its most important figure was Ksenija Atanasijević (1894–1981), a prominent philosopher. Therefore, attention is also paid to her involvement with Theosophy and co-masonry and the place of esotericism in her work. The activity of the group reminded of the Theosophical—it included meetings, lectures and meditations. They were also familiar with The Oracle of Astral Force (the Fraternité’s key method). The existence of a branch of the French brotherhood in this period can be understood in the context of the French-Serbian cultural relations. This interest in the “alternative” helps us get a better understanding of the history of Serbian intellectuals.","PeriodicalId":41783,"journal":{"name":"Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48758399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Study of Western Esotericism in East-Central Europe—With a Focus on the Last Decades","authors":"G. Szönyi","doi":"10.1163/15700593-02301001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-02301001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Since the early 2000s the study of (Western) esotericism has gone through a great development, partly boosted by the establishment of ESSWE in 2005. In East-Central Europe an upsurge in interest started with the changing of the communist regimes in 1989–1991 and scholars became liberated to enhance their studies in fields previously at best tolerated in those countries. Scholars from our region not only joined ESSWE but even organized a network under its aegis, CEENASWE, the Central and Eastern European Network for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism. The present collection of articles intends to provide a panorama of the wide-ranging research, focusing on the past few decades in a geographical order, moving from the north to the south. This article, while serving as a general introduction to the special issue, reviews Poland, Czechia and Hungary in particular, in a form that recalls Jürgen Habermas’s famous term, a Forschungsbericht.","PeriodicalId":41783,"journal":{"name":"Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43960508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the Universal Brotherhood to the Lodge of Soldiers","authors":"K. Hess","doi":"10.1163/15700593-02301006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-02301006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The article analyses the idea of service in Theosophy, and the initiatives directly related to the theme in the Theosophical structures. The main focus are three organizations active in Poland: Theosophical Association of Service, League of Service (operating as the league of the Theosophical Order of Service), and the Order of the Brothers of Service, and their connections to the international initiatives. The analyses of archival sources show, on the one hand, how Polish Theosophists were influenced by local political and historical context of newly regained national independence, and on the other how leading Theosophists, especially George S. Arundale influenced the Polish discourse about national identity in the Theosophical context. It also shows how various ideas of service crystalized as military service during the Second World War and lead to establishing the Polish speaking lodge in London.","PeriodicalId":41783,"journal":{"name":"Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47214219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Recent Academic Research on Esotericism in the Balkans","authors":"Noel Putnik","doi":"10.1163/15700593-02301002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-02301002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this paper I offer a concise analysis of contemporary scholarship on esotericism in the countries of former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. After a brief historical contextualization, I examine the development and principal features of this scholarship over the last three decades. My main argument is that, due to various historical reasons, there is a stark discrepancy between the abundant presence of esoteric ideas and practices in these countries and the extent of specialized scholarship dealing with them. I also suggest that there is an uneven development of esotericism studies across the region, but that these studies are gradually finding their place in South Slavic academia.","PeriodicalId":41783,"journal":{"name":"Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46217303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}