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Hermes Explains:

Thirty Questions about Western Esotericism

edited with Peter J. Forshaw and Marco Pasi

 

Amsterdam University Press 2019. 320 pp.

ISBN: 978-94-6372-020-5 

E-ISBN: 978-90-4854-285-7

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This volume was published on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam.

Few fields of academic research are surrounded by so many misunderstandings and misconceptions as the study of Western esotericism. For twenty years now, the Centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (University of Amsterdam) has been at the forefront of international scholarship in this domain. This anniversary volume seeks to make the modern study of Western esotericism known beyond specialist circles, while addressing a range of misconceptions, biases, and prejudices that still tend to surround it. Thirty major scholars in the field respond to questions about a wide range of unfamiliar ideas, traditions, practices, problems, and personalities that are central to this area of research. By challenging many taken-for-granted assumptions about religion, science, philosophy, and the arts, this volume demonstrates why the academic study of esotericism leads us to reconsider much that we thought we knew about the story of Western culture.

Contributions by Egil Asprem, Justine M. Bakker, Tessel M. Bauduin, Henrik Bogdan, Jean-Pierre Brach, Roelof van den Broek, Dylan M. Burns, Allison P. Coudert, Antoine Faivre, Claire Fanger, Christine Ferguson, Peter J. Forshaw, Joscelyn Godwin, Kennet Granholm, J. Christian Greer, Olav Hammer, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Boaz Huss, Massimo Introvigne, Andreas B. Kilcher, Jeffrey J. Kripal, John MacMurphy, Mriganka Mukhopadhyay, Bernd-Christian Otto, Marco Pasi, Mark Sedgwick, Julian Strube, György E. Szönyi, Elliot R. Wolfson, and Mike A. Zuber.

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