Esoteric Doctrines Research Articles

Transforming Lives and Businesses

This article explores the aspirational marketing modalities promoted by “spiritual marketing coaches” (SMC) that target freelancers in the well-being and yoga sector. It focuses on the narratives of success applied in what is essentially a “marketing of marketing,” analysing the semiotic qualities, functions, and implications of these promotional strategies. Specifically, it investigates how SMCs engage in meaning-making and religion-making through aspirational narrations while using inbound marketing to promote the use of the same. I argue that “spiritual marketing” incorporates a semiotic shift towards language and narrations commonly used in contemporary spirituality. This has introduced modalities that combine marketing tools with spiritual and esoteric doctrines via algorithmic processes, the spiritual exercise of bringing forward a business idea with purpose, and inner transformation for the sake of signalling authenticity. Promoting the esoteric paradigm that thought controls matter, “spiritual marketing” inadvertently relies on the appeasement of online marketing algorithms to attract more clients.

“Want to know more of yr/ grand-dad?”: Ezra Pound, Gabriele Rossetti and Olivia Rossetti Agresti, when Literature meets Esotericism

This article addresses a forgotten aspect of the history of ideas, namely the fact that one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, Ezra Pound, was influenced by Dantean esotericism and the medieval esoteric doctrine of love proposed in the nineteenth century by Gabriele Rossetti. It aims to show the relations between literature and esotericism, in the wake of a dialogue between the Middle Ages and the twentieth century. The study of this unexplored horizon of research is presented here through the epistolary exchange between Pound and Gabriele Rossetti’s granddaughter, Olivia Rossetti Agresti.

Leo Strausso sugrįžimas prie užmiršto rašymo meno

The aim of this article is to reconstruct Leo Strauss’ project of a return to the forgotten art of writing and to demonstrate its relation to his attempts to find alternatives to historicist positions. By emphasizing the insoluble conflict between the political community and philosophical life medieval philosophers opened up the possibility of a novel understanding of the premodern philosophical tradition. This new perspective is based on the assumption that philosophers of the past attempted to avoid persecution and wanted to protect their societies from the potentially destructive effects of philosophical radicalism, which is why the presentation of their doctrines was formed by the distinction between esoteric and exoteric doctrines. The forgetfulness of the technique of careful writing began with the implementation of liberal political principles and was furthered by the triumph of historicist assumptions. Strauss’ return to classical political philosophy is inseparable from his polemics with historicist positions that negate the fundamental assumptions of this tradition. By emphasizing the distinction between esoteric and exoteric elements of philosophical texts Strauss introduces a technique of interpretation which is based on attempts to distinguish between elements that have a transhistorical meaning and are found in the esoteric doctrine, from the exoteric teaching, which has always been accommodated to the dogmas and prejudices of concrete society. The attempt to reconstruct the transhistorical elements of doctrines is inseparable from the goal of returning to the natural consciousness that is to be found in the tradition of ancient political philosophy.

Fight and Contemplation. The Towianists amid the European Revolutions of 1848

The aim of the article is to show the European diffusion of an esoteric doctrine that originated in Lithuania in the nineteenth century and its circulation during the European uprisings of 1848. The article focuses on a case study of heterodox Catholic thought promoted by Andrzej Towiański. Towianism was diffused in Central and Eastern Europe and consolidated its presence in Western and Southern Europe. The Towianists acted to influence politics and participated in several key historical events of the nineteenth century. Using archival sources, the article investigates the relationship between Romantic nationalism and esotericism, its transnational nature, and its contribution to a turning point in European history.

Knowledge Transfer of Bodily Practices Between China and India in the Mediaeval World

The “family resemblance” between the Chinese therapeutic exercises known as daoyin (lit. “guiding and pulling”), and the Indian breathing and physical movement practices later known as haṭhayoga is marked, and would appear to be the result of the transfer of knowledge and culture, in parallel with merchandise, along the Silk Roads and sea routes. China possessed a rich tradition of yangsheng self-cultivation teachings on breathing, sexual techniques and therapeutic exercises from the 3rd century BCE onwards. The complexities of haṭhayoga were not, however, laid bare until the 11th century CE when it was described in the Amṛtasiddhi, the earliest extant haṭhayoga text. Daoyin reached its zenith during the Sui dynasty (581–618 CE), while later on various esoteric doctrines known as neidan (“inner alchemy”) became prominent. These became the major source for those hoping to achieve longevity and immortality and they preceded haṭhayoga by about two centuries. Neidan may well have formed the link between the Chinese and Indian approaches, since they have much in common including advocating bodily inversion, specific non-sexual practices and breath control, as well as the use of the alchemical language.

Frankincense Fragrances and Winged Serpents in Etruria: Notes on a Tarquinian Sarcophagus

Abstract A sarcophagus found in Tarquinia at the end of the 19th century discloses an original iconography featuring infernal scenes with banqueters, Turms, Vanth, and winged snakes. One interpretation proposed in the 1990s was that this monument bears witness to esoteric doctrines of Greek origin in Etruria, in particular Orphism and Pythagoreanism. However, this proposal is not satisfactory and needs to be reconsidered. It seems more likely that this sarcophagus refers to the world of perfumes and, potentially, to the well-known anecdote of the flying snakes guarding the frankincense trees. This new interpretation sheds further light on the role of scents in Etruria, particularly in the world of the dead.

Zinā and Gender (In)Equality in Ismāʿīlī Druze Law

Abstract In the 5th/11th century in Cairo, Imam Ḥamza, the founder of the Druze faith, abrogated the entire substantive laws, including the Islamic one. And yet, four centuries later, Druze jurists in the mountainous regions of Syria developed their own legal doctrine. This essay explores the evolution of Druzism from an esoteric doctrine according to the Ismāʿīlī vision to a madhhab (doctrinal school of law) using the prism of gender (in)equality. Through a close reading of the Imam’s epistles in the Ḥikma (i.e., the Druze canon of scripture) and Druze law treatises from the 9th/15th century, I show how premodern Druze jurists were influenced particularly by Shāfiʿī and Mālikī law. Although they remained faithful to the strict gender equality articulated in their sacred book, Druze jurists established a gender hierarchy in marriage and permitted wife beating based on Q 4:34. They however expounded an original doctrine of zinā (adultery): despite their construction of femininity as inferior and irrational, and their assumption of women’s intellectual deficiency, Druze jurists considered nonconsensual marriage as well as nonconsensual sex in marriage to be crimes of zinā. I argue that Druze jurists developed rules that enforced sexual equality but simultaneously conformed to their patriarchal vision of society to maintain the social cohesion of their religious community, clans, and extended families, all of which provided local networks for informal conflict resolution.

Immortal animals, subtle bodies, or separated souls: the afterlife in Leibniz, Wolff, and their followers

ABSTRACT In eighteenth-century post-Leibnizian German philosophy, the debate on immortality did not concern only the fate of the soul after death but also the fate of the body. Leibniz had famously maintained that no animal ever dies, for the soul is never entirely deprived of its living body. In spite of Bilfinger’s almost isolated defense, this doctrine never became dominant, even among Leibniz’s followers. Christian Wolff, long considered a mere popularizer of Leibniz’s philosophy, departed from this account of immortality and replaced it with the traditional Platonic model, based on the survival of separated souls. After reconstructing Leibniz’s, Wolff’s, and Bilfinger’s positions, this paper considers how the debate evolved within the so-called Wolffian school during the 1730s and 1740s. Both partisans and detractors of separated souls diverged from Leibniz on a crucial point: namely, they argued that another key Leibnizian doctrine, pre-established harmony, entails that the soul need not be forever united to its body. Furthermore, the cases of Johann Heinrich Winckler, Johann Gustav Reinbeck, Israel Gottlieb Canz, and even Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten show that the post-Leibnizian detractors of separated souls drew, in fact, more inspiration from the neo-Platonic and esoteric doctrine of the subtle body than from Leibniz’s original immortalism.

BOOK REVIEW Sverre Molland. Safe Migration and the Politics of Brokered Safety in Southeast Asia. New York: Routledge, 2022.

Since the thirteenth century, longstanding connections between tariqa (Sufi Orders) and Malay Sultanates brought new Islamic knowledge and practices which were fused with local traditions. The coming of Islam also brought the nobat musical ensemble and religious-related musical practices. From the court of Pasai, North Sumatera, the ensemble later spread to other parts of the Malay world and was still played in the succeeding Aceh sultanate in the early seventeenth century. Evidence for this exists in the court manual, Adat Aceh, which details the use of music in royal religious processions and the practice zikir by the Sultan and his subjects. The Sufi spiritual performativity continued in the 1980s at the court of Perak with the introduction of the Naqshbandi Haqqani tariqa, where certain devotional-musical practices such as zikir, qasida, and mawlid were occasionally performed. However, the nobat was not used in these Sufi practices but replaced by percussion-based musical ensembles. Both these Naqshbandi Sufi tariqa were theologically contested, and their esoteric doctrines were considered blasphemous by those with religious power. This article examines the parallel existence of two Malay sultanates in different times, their connections to branches of Sufi tariqa, musical practices and the contestations that ensued.

SUFISM, SPIRITUAL PERFORMATIVITY AND THEOLOGICAL CONTESTATIONS: PARALLELISMS OF THE ACEH AND PERAK SULTANATES ACROSS THE CENTURIES

Since the thirteenth century, longstanding connections between tariqa (Sufi Orders) and Malay Sultanates brought new Islamic knowledge and practices which were fused with local traditions. The coming of Islam also brought the nobat musical ensemble and religious-related musical practices. From the court of Pasai, North Sumatera, the ensemble later spread to other parts of the Malay world and was still played in the succeeding Aceh sultanate in the early seventeenth century. Evidence for this exists in the court manual, Adat Aceh, which details the use of music in royal religious processions and the practice zikir by the Sultan and his subjects. The Sufi spiritual performativity continued in the 1980s at the court of Perak with the introduction of the Naqshbandi Haqqani tariqa, where certain devotional-musical practices such as zikir, qasida, and mawlid were occasionally performed. However, the nobat was not used in these Sufi practices but replaced by percussion-based musical ensembles. Both these Naqshbandi Sufi tariqa were theologically contested, and their esoteric doctrines were considered blasphemous by those with religious power. This article examines the parallel existence of two Malay sultanates in different times, their connections to branches of Sufi tariqa, musical practices and the contestations that ensued.

Garbhopanishad an Optimal Doctrine over the Embryo: A Literature Research

The Garbha Upanishad, commonly called as the Garbhopanishad as well as meaning "Esoteric Doctrine of the Embryo," is among the smaller Upanishads, accounting for 17 out of 108 Hindu Upanishad manuscripts in a modern collections. It is a Sanskrit Upanishad that some academics identify with the Krishna Yajurveda, while others associate it with the Atharvaveda. It is among the 35 Samanya Upanishads (generic Upanishads). The book is attributed to sage Pippalada in the Upanishad's last verse, although the text's chronology and author are unknown, as well as the surviving copies are damaged, inconsistent, as well as fragmentary. The Garbha Upanishad is a work that explains medical as well as anatomical issues, as well as the concept of the genesis or growth of the human fetus and body after birth. The Upanishad's concluding verse credits the text's authorship to sage Pippalada, but the text's chronology and authorship are unknown, and the existing copies are damaged, inconsistent, as well as fragmentary.

A Brutal Examination: Russian Military Capability in Light of the Ukraine War

Russian armed forces’ lacklustre performance in Ukraine has surprised military analysts. Shortcomings have included breakdowns in logistics, poor equipment and morale, abysmal communications, and muddled command and control, as well as a weak showing by the Russian Aerospace Forces, air defence, and cruise and ballistic missiles. Chief among the contributing factors are wishful political thinking, overreliance on esoteric doctrine and endemic corruption. War, however, brutally exposes peacetime cheating. Consequently, estimates of Russian military capabilities – in particular, for large-formation combined-arms operations, logistics, air defence and intangibles such as morale – need to be carefully reassessed. Earlier analyses of a Russia–NATO conflict appear to have overstated the challenge of defending Europe. Looking ahead, the conventional threat from Russia seems less daunting than previously thought, and the country faces a formidable task in repairing depleted capabilities. That said, President Vladimir Putin’s appetite for risk is greater than anticipated.

Schleiermacher’s Plato. By Julia A. Lamm

Friedrich Schleiermacher is known today primarily as a theologian and a philosopher of religion. He was also, however, a consummate student of Plato’s philosophy. His translation of (almost) the entire corpus of Plato’s dialogues into German was the first ever attempt of this kind and has been the most influential one to date. Moreover, he inaugurated within Plato studies principles of interpretation that have since been widely accepted as normative. Notably, Schleiermacher insisted that Plato’s authentic philosophy had to be reconstructed from his dialogues and not, as taken for granted by many earlier scholars, from a putative, esoteric doctrine transmitted orally only to his students. Henceforth, the study of Plato’s philosophy became largely coextensive with the interpretation of his dialogues as historical texts. Thus, while many of Schleiermacher’s specific interpretative decisions were inevitably discarded in the process, the programme of research he enunciated remained foundational for subsequent Plato studies. Even now few accounts of the history of Platonic scholarship fail to refer to Schleiermacher’s work as a watershed moment in the emergence of the discipline.

Sky God: Remaking the Heavens and Divinity in the Nineteenth-Century United States

ABSTRACTIn the early nineteenth century, the “cosmological revolution” reached Americans with no special education or astronomical expertise. New ideas about the scale and nature of the cosmos, some of which had been gestating among elites for centuries, forced ordinary people to reevaluate traditional associations between higher places, higher beings, and higher meaning. As the old “heavens” became more like the modern “space”—larger, emptier, less morally alive—God and his kingdom became more abstract. This trend often mattered to people in ways that esoteric doctrine did not. It divided Americans. A placeless God and “state of being” afterlife found readier acceptance among educated people accustomed to thinking in abstract, immaterial terms and pursuing abstract, immaterial goods. Among nonintellectuals, the new heavens caused unsettling debates between people, and within them, about the locality and reality of higher things. Well before better-remembered disputes over Darwinism and geology, these cosmological debates opened foundational divisions in popular ideas, as some laypeople reluctantly accommodated the new heavens while others turned to defiant cosmic conservatism. On balance, Americans moved toward reformed conceptions of God and heaven, rebuilding divinity in the image of the new cosmos.

The transformation of the wrathful deity Mahākāla into the god of happiness and good luck Daikokuten in Japanese Buddhism.

The transformation of the wrathful deity Mahākāla into the god of happiness and fortune Daikokuten in Japanese Buddhism. This study is devoted to the process of the transformation of the wrathful Hindu deity Mahākāla into the god of happiness and fortune Daikokuten in Japanese Buddhism. While in Hinduism and Vajrayāna Buddhism, Mahākāla was a wrathful deity, performing the functions of the Dharma protector, then as a result of the transference of this deity to the Japanese culture, his functions changed. The earliest examples of this process have been already marked in China, from where they later went to Japan. In the paper are traced the description of Mahākāla in the Japanese Buddhist textual tradition in the most notable Japanese text “Daikokutenjin-ho 大黒天神法” (“The Law of the Great Black God”), his iconography and the transformation in local folklore. The formation of Mahākāla iconography in Japan was influenced by a process of the Shintō-Buddhist syncretism, which combined the esoteric doctrines of the Tendai school, traditional Japanese Shintō mythology, Buddhist cosmology and related elements of Hinduism. All these trends are also well traced in Japanese folklore. As a sequence, we could come to conclusion that the process of transformation of the wrathful Hindu deity Mahākāla into one of the Japanese gods of happiness Daikokuten was influenced by the desire to rid Mahākāla of his original destructive deadly attributes, since they were not combined with the original Japanese Shintō tradition, referring to death and its manifestations as an impurity.

Christus verus Luciferus, Demon est Deus Inversus

This article focuses on a Spiritism board, Yhteyslauta, designed in the mid-1970s by occultist neo-Nazi Pekka Siitoin. The board represents an unexplored occult subchapter of Finnish gaming culture and exhibits the Finnish esoteric tradition. In addition to analysing Yhteyslauta’s game-like elements, the article explores the board’s themes and imagery, and situates these components in the context of Siitoin’s vernacular esoteric doctrine and cosmogony.

The Two Different Endings of Sefer haMiddot

The final chapter of Sefer haMiddot – a popular ethical work by an anonymous late medieval author, and called Orḥot Tzaddikim in its printed versions – is Sha‘ar Yir’at Shamayim. An early manuscript restores the original conclusion to this chapter, followed by an epitome called Simmanei Sefer haMiddot. This material was lost for well over five centuries. Sha‘ar Yir’at Shamayim asserts a dualism in which the soul animates the body like God animates the cosmos. The soul takes clear precedence over the body. To appreciate this dualism leads to fear of heaven, which is God’s greatest treasure. This chapter, devoted to a theological doctrine, is unique within Sefer haMiddot. Simmanei Sefer ha-Middot is a natural continuation of Sha‘ar Yir’at Shamayim. It also sharpens a global theme throughout the book, which places middot (ethics) alongside mitzvot (commandments) as constituting the exoteric will of God in its fullness. This substitutes ethics for the older esoteric doctrine of the Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, and is what makes the book distinct in medieval Jewish thought. The substitution of ethics for esoteric doctrine does not depend upon the final chapter’s doctrine of the soul, and the book thus ends in two different ways. An Appendix presents the full conclusion to Sefer haMiddot – Sha‘ar Yir’at Shamayim followed by Simmanei Sefer haMiddot – in a Hebrew text based upon a full synopsis of the manuscripts and in an annotated English translation.

Constructing Religious Authority: Creating Exclusion along the Matrix of Knowledge and Power in Pakistan

This article argues that in Pakistan, intra-Islamic differences and the contested field of Islamic identity politics affected and moulded the country’s integrated and overlapping religious identities into distinct and disparate categories at the micro level. The article discusses the process of formation of the jamaat of the Sufi-inspired silsila, the Naqshbandia Awaisia, by Major Ghulam Muhammad among the military and an urban middle-class constituency. It shows how the jamaat conceptualised and imbued Sufism with an exclusivist approach, positioning Sufism and Sharia within an Islamic discourse that categorically rejected the religion’s ritual and devotional aspects. This embroiled these mutually constitutive and intersecting dimensions, Sharia, esoteric Sufi doctrine and the devotional and ritual aspects in an ambivalent relationship. The exclusion of the devotional and ritual aspects became a boundary-setting label of difference between the ‘proper’ Muslim and the ‘other’ along a matrix of knowledge and power.

Plagues and Epidemics Caused by D(a)emons in Origen and Porphyry and Potential Interrelations

This essay will address how Origen, an early Christian writer, theologian, and pastor, referred to plagues, epidemics, and misfortunes, and how he construed these phenomena in his theology, literary works, and pastoral practice. A comparison with Porphyry will be offered, who likely drew part of his daemonology from Origen. Those responsible for plagues in both Origen’s philosophical theology and in Porphyry’s philosophy are δαίμονες (demons or fallen angels for Origen, daemons for Porphyry; Origen knew and referred to the two views). Porphyry’s attribution of his daemonology to “certain Platonists” who “divulged” these theories probably alludes to Origen and situates Origen within the Platonic school. I suspect that Porphyry was influenced by Origen’s demonology in general and possibly by On Daemons, if his. Porphyry’s terminology of “divulging” corresponds to that used in his anecdote about Origen who, notwithstanding the oath not to divulge Ammonius’ esoteric doctrines, nevertheless did so in On Daemons and The King Is the Only Creator. This indirectly confirms that Porphyry was speaking of the same Origen. Porphyry’s conviction that evil daemons are responsible for plagues, epidemics, and natural disasters is the same as Origen’s in Contra Celsum, which Porphyry knew. Origen was aware that spiritual plagues are worse than physical ones, that misfortunes mostly befall the just, and took over Jesus’ criticism of the ancient view of misfortunes as divine punishments for an individual or his parents or ancestors.

Artists as truth-seekers

This article focuses on the concept of the seeker and considers how the analytical tool of seekership, defined and developed in the sociology of religion, could be applied to the study of art and esotericism. The theoretical argument is made more tangible with the example of the Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931), whose life story, art and writings resonate with the concept of seekership. The ways in which Gallen-Kallela writes about his interest in esotericism and the dawn of the new age appear in a new light; as part of the processes of a spiritualisation of modern art and religiosity. In addition, the article points out that the concept of seekership can offer new possibilities more generally for the study of art and esotericism. Utilising the analytical tool of seekership may be especially helpful regarding those artists who did not subscribe to any esoteric movement or doctrine, but stressed a more individual relationship with the occulture of their time. It will also provide an opportunity to outline how the connections between art and esotericism have changed over different times and places.