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Parasite: A Philosophical Exploration /
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Parasite presents the ethico-biological problem of parasitism in a metaphorical and artistic fashion. In this book, philosophers explore the film using sources such as the ancient satirist Lucian's De Parasito, Nietzsche's "the vengeance of the weak," Dostoyevsky's "Underground," or Marxism, among others.
Parasite is a philosophically interesting film because it presents the ethico-biological problem of parasitism in a metaphorical and artistic fashion. Michel Serres, in his book called The Parasite , holds that parasites are not in fact useless, but that they establish communications between different spheres and are thus able to transform large-scale organisms. Parasites import coincidences, activate defence systems, and establish new links with the host. In this book, philosophers explore the film from various angles: using the ancient satirist Lucian's De Parasito , Nietzsche's concept of "the vengeance of the weak," Dostoyevsky's "underground," Marxism, and many more.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004521513
9789004515628
The religious aspects of war in the ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome /
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The Religious Aspect of Warfare in the Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome is a volume dedicated to investigating the relationship between religion and war in antiquity in minute detail. The nineteen chapters are divided into three groups: the ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome. They are presented in turn and all possible aspects of warfare and its religious connections are investigated. The contributors focus on the theology of war, the role of priests in warfare, natural phenomena as signs for military activity, cruelty, piety, the divinity of humans in specific martial cases, rituals of war, iconographical representations and symbols of war, and even the archaeology of war. As editor Krzysztof Ulanowski invited both well-known specialists such as Robert Parker, Nicholas Sekunda, and Pietro Mander to contribute, as well as many young, talented scholars with fresh ideas. From this polyphony of voices, perspectives and opinions emerges a diverse, but coherent, representation of the complex relationship between religion and war in antiquity.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
9789004324763 :
1566-2055 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Theosophy and the Study of Religion /
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Since its emergence in the nineteenth century, the Theosophical Society has wielded enormous influence across diverse fields, none more so than the study of religion. This volume explores this legacy in North America, Europe, and India, demonstrating its impact on the conceptualization of "religion" and its influence on methods of comparison. Unveiling overlooked entanglements, the volume challenges standard narratives in the history of religious studies and interrogates the deliberate neglect of theosophy's influence in the "secular" academy. In doing so, the work confronts lingering ghosts, urging a reappraisal that enriches the study of religion and offers prescriptions for its future.
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1 online resource (326 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004694163
Esotericism and narrative : the occult fiction of Charles Williams /
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Esotericism and Narrative: The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams situates the life and fiction of the Inkling Charles Williams in the network of modern occultism, with special focus on his initiatory experiences in A.E. Waite's Fellowship of the Rosy Cross . Aren Roukema evaluates fictional projections of magic, kabbalah, alchemy and ritual experience in Williams's seven novels of supernatural fantasy. From this specific analysis, he develops more broadly applicable approaches to the serious expression of religious experience in fiction. Roukema shows that esoteric knowledge has frequently been blurred into fiction because of its inherent narrativity and adaptability, particularly by authors already attracted to the syncretism, multivalence and lived fantasy of the modern occult experience.
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1 online resource (318 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004369115 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Francis Mercury van Helmont's "Sketch of Christian Kabbalism" /
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Sheila A. Spector's translation of the Sketch of Christian Kabbalism, by Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614-98), is the first English version of the foundational seventeenth-century treatise appended to Knorr von Rosenroth's compendium, the Kabbala Denudata. After a survey of the historical context in general, Jewish and Christian Kabbalah in particular, and a brief biography of van Helmont, Spector's introduction explains how the author adapted the original Jewish myth for Christian purposes. The bilingual text contains a facsimile of the original Latin on one side, facing the English translation on the other, with Van Helmont's footnotes supplemented by the translator's endnotes. The edition is essential for scholars, though of interest to the general reader as well.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004227248 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Aurora (Morgen Röte im auffgang, 1612) and Ein gründlicher Bericht or A fundamental report (Mysterium Pansophicum, 1620) /
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Jacob Boehme's Aurora (Morgen Röte im auffgang, 1612) exercised a vast open or underground influence on popular and mystical religion, poetry, and philosophy from Germany to England to Russia. This beautiful and highly original work containing elements of alchemical, esoteric, and anticlerical thought is a portal to the cultural, scientific, and theological currents on the eve of the Thirty Years' War. Its author heralded the new heliocentrism, opposed intolerance and religious conflict, and entertained an ecstatic vision of order reconciled with freedom. This first modern English translation places the translated text opposite an edition of the German manuscript from the author's own hand. Also included is the brief, influential Fundamental Report (Gründlicher Bericht, 1620) in a critical edition and translation. An extensive commentary that cites documents of the time offers access to the sources of Boehme's themes and concepts.
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1 online resource (XI, 838 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004225688 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Initiating women in Freemasonry : the adoption rite /
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Freemasonry is generally regarded a male phenomenon. Yet, both before 1723 and since 1744, women were initiated as well. This book is about the rituals, used for the initiation of women in the Adoption Lodges, since the middle of the 18th century. It describes their contents, roots and creation before reviewing and conceptualising their development in the past three centuries. It analyses the different families of rituals within the Adoption Rite, and gives an overview of specific developments, showing how the rituals were adapted to their changing contexts. Apart from its relevance for the history of Freemasonry in general and the Adoption Rite in particular, the book also writes a hitherto unknown chapter of women's history. Of particular interest for the history of feminism is the chapter about the 20th century, which could only be written now that the documents concerning it, which had been moved to Moscow in 1945, had been returned in 2000.
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1 online resource (xvii, 550 pages, [32] pages of plates) : illustrations (some color) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004219342 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality /
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Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality offers an incisive analysis of the full range of Huxley's spiritual interests, spanning both mysticism (neo-Vedanta, Taoism, Mahayana and Zen Buddhism) and Western esotericism (mesmerism, spiritualism, the paranormal). Jake Poller examines how Huxley's shifting spiritual convictions influenced his fiction, such as his depiction of the body and sex, and reveals how Huxley's use of psychedelic substances affected his spiritual convictions, resulting in a Tantric turn in his work. Poller demonstrates how Huxley's vision of a new alternative spirituality in Island , in which the Palanese select their beliefs from different religious traditions, anticipates the New Age spiritual supermarket and traces the profound influence of Huxley's ideas on the spiritual seekers of the twentieth century and beyond.
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1 online resource :
9789004406902
Hidden intercourse : eros and sexuality in the history of Western esotericism /
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From rumours about gnostic orgies in antiquity to the explicit erotic symbolism of alchemical texts, from the subtly coded eroticism of medieval kabbalah to the sexual magic practiced by contemporary occultists and countercultural translations of Asian Tantra, the history of Western esotericism is rich in references to the domains of eros and sexuality. This volume, which brings together an impressive array of top-level specialists, is the first to analyze the eroticism of the esoteric without sensationalism or cheap generalizations, but on the basis of expert scholarship and attention to textual and historical detail. While there are few other domains where the imagination may so easily run wild, the various contributions seek to distinguish fact from fiction--only to find that historical realities are sometimes even stranger than the fantasies. In doing so, they reveal the outlines of a largely unknown history spanning more than twenty centuries.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047443582 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Petrine instauration : religion, esotericism and science at the court of Peter the Great, 1689-1725 /
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The reign of Peter the Great (1672-1725) was marked by an unprecedented wave of reform in Russia. This book provides an innovative reappraisal of the Petrine Age, in which hitherto neglected aspects of the tsar's transformation of his country are studied. More specifically, the reforms enacted by the tsar are assessed in light of the religious notion of instauration - a belief in the restoration of Adamic knowledge in the last age - and a historical and cultural analysis of the impact of Western esotericism at the Russian court. This book will appeal to scholars of Russian history and religion, as well as being of wider interest to those studying Western esotericism in Early Modern and eighteenth-century Europe.
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1 online resource (xx, 583 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [551]-575) and index. :
9789004224391 :
1871-1405 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Women's agency and rituals in mixed and female Masonic orders /
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Women have been structurally part of the masonic enterprise from at least the middle of the 18th century. Yet, little is known about the ways in which they themselves obtained and exercised power to influence the systems they were involved in, in order to adapt them to be more appropriate to their needs. This volume intends to concentrate on two aspects: Women's agency (i.e. the power women gained and exercised in this context) and rituals (i.e. the role of men and women in changing and shaping the rituals women work with). These two aspects are closely related, since it requires some agency to realise changes in existing rituals.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047425861 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Messias Puer: Christian Knorr von Rosenroth's Lost Exegesis of Kabbalistic Christianity : Editio princeps plena with Translation and Introduction /
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Previously considered irretrievably lost, the discovery of the only manuscript of the Messias Puer composed by Knorr von Rosenroth, the leading exponent of Christian Kabbalah in the seventeenth century, gives us an important insight into the evolution of his thought and specific vision of the relations between Jews and Christians. Moreover, the subtle intertwining of both Kabbalah and the emerging biblical criticism at work in this partial commentary on the New Testament Gospels sheds new light on the largely unexplored role of Esotericism during the Modern Era in the construction of the future study of religion. This book includes a critical edition of the original manuscript and an annotated translation.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004443426
9789004426481
Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541) : essential theoretical writings /
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The daunting writings of Paracelsus-the second largest 16th-century body of writings in German after Luther's-contributed to medicine, natural science, alchemy, philosophy, theology, and esoteric tradition. This volume provides a critical edition of essential writings from the authoritative 1589 Huser Paracelsus alongside new English translations and commentary on the sources and context of the full corpus. The Essential Theoretical Writings incorporate topics ranging from metaphyics, cosmology, faith, religious conflict, magic, gender, and education, to the processes of nature, disease and medication, female and male sufferings, and cures of body and soul. Properly contextualized, these treatises yield rich extracts of Renaissance and Reformation culture, soundings of 16th-century life, and keys to an influential but poorly understood early modern intellectual tradition.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047423416 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Satanism : a social history /
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A 17th-century French haberdasher invented the Black Mass. An 18th-century English Cabinet Minister administered the Eucharist to a baboon. High-ranking Catholic authorities in the 19th century believed that Satan appeared in Masonic lodges in the shape of a crocodile and played the piano there. A well-known scientist from the 20th century established a cult of the Antichrist and exploded in a laboratory experiment. Three Italian girls in 2000 sacrificed a nun to the Devil. A Black Metal band honored Satan in Krakow, Poland, in 2004 by exhibiting on stage 120 decapitated sheep heads. Some of these stories, as absurd as they might sound, were real. Others, which might appear to be equally well reported, are false. But even false stories have generated real societal reactions. For the first time, Massimo Introvigne proposes a general social history of Satanism and anti-Satanism, from the French Court of Louis XIV to the Satanic scares of the late 20th century, satanic themes in Black Metal music, the Church of Satan, and beyond.
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1 online resource (xi, 655 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004244962 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
De tribus principiis, oder, Beschreibung der drey Principien göttliches Wesens : Of the three principles of divine being, 1619 /
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Jacob Boehme's Of the Three Principles of Divine Being, 1619, is vital for understanding his work as a whole, its relationship to its epoch, and its role in intellectual history. Reproduced here using the methods of critical edition, the original of the work and its adjacent translation, together with an extensive introduction and commentary, provide unprecedented access to this essential work of early modern thought and cast a fresh light on the revolutionary theological, philosophical, and scientific developments coinciding with the start of the Thirty Years' War. The 1730 edition is annotated with reference to the manuscript sources to clarify ambiguities so that the translation can interpret the text without refracting its meaning. This makes it possible to interpret Boehme's complex theories of the origin of the divine being and of nature, the human creature, and the female aspect of divinity.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004395275
Constructing tradition means and myths of transmission in Western esotericism /
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The question of constructing tradition, concepts of origin, and memory as well as techniques and practices of knowledge transmission, are central for cultures in general. In esotericism, however, such questions and techniques play an outstanding role and are widely reflected upon, in its literature. Esoteric paradigms not only understand themselves in elaborated mytho-poetical narratives as bearers of "older", "hidden", "higher" knowledge. They also claim their knowledge to be of a particular origin. And they claim this knowledge has been transmitted by particular (esoteric) means, media and groups. Consequently, esotericism not only involves the construction of its own tradition; it can even be understood as a specific form of tradition and transmission. The various studies of the present voume, which contains the papers of a conference held in Tübingen in July 2007, provide an overview of the most important concepts and ways of constructing tradition in esotericism.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004216372 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Kabbalistic circles in Jerusalem (1896-1948) /
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This book endeavors to fill a lacuna in the literature on early twentieth-century kabbalah, namely the lack of a comprehensive account of the traditional kabbalah seminaries (Yeshivot) in Jerusalem from 1896 to 1948 as well as the various manifestations of kabbalah within traditional Jewish society. The foundations that were laid in the early twentieth century also paved the way for the contemporary blossoming of kabbalah in many and manifold circles. In this sense, retracing the pertinent developments in Palestine at the outset of the twentieth century is imperative not only for repairing the distorted picture of the past, but for understanding the ongoing surge in kabbalah study.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004321649 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Kabbalah and modernity : interpretations, transformations, adaptations /
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The persistence of kabbalistic groups in the twentieth century has largely been ignored or underestimated by scholars of religion. Only recently have scholars began to turn their attention to the many-facetted roles that kabbalistic doctrines and schools have played in nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture. Often, and necessarily, this new interest and openness went along with a contextualization and re-valuation of earlier scholarly approaches to kabbalah. This volume brings together leading representatives of this ongoing debate in order to break new ground for a better understanding and conceptualization of the role of kabbalah in modern religious, intellectual, and political discourse.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004182875 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Between occultism and Nazism : anthroposophy and the politics of race in the fascist era /
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The relationship between Nazism and occultism has been an object of fascination and speculation for decades. Peter Staudenmaier's Between Occultism and Nazism provides a detailed historical examination centered on the anthroposophist movement founded by Rudolf Steiner. Its surprising findings reveal a remarkable level of Nazi support for Waldorf schools, biodynamic farming, and other anthroposophist initiatives, even as Nazi officials attempted to suppress occult tendencies. The book also includes an analysis of anthroposophist involvement in the racial policies of Fascist Italy. Based on extensive archival research, this study offers rich material on controversial questions about the nature of esoteric spirituality and alternative cultural ideals and their political resonance.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004270152 :
1871-1405 ;
Dark enlightenment : The Historical, sociological, and discursive contexts of contemporary esoteric magic /
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In Dark Enlightenment Kennet Granholm explores the historical, sociological, and discursive contexts of contemporary esoteric magic. The book is focused on the Sweden-originated Left-Hand Path magic order Dragon Rouge in particular, but through a detailed contextualizing examination of this case study it offers a broader visage of contemporary esotericism in general. The author takes cue from both the historiography of Western esotericism and the sociological study of new religions and religious change, aiming to provide a transdisciplinary framework for a comprehensive study of esotericism in late modernity.
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1 online resource (pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004274877 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.