Romanticism & Esoteric Tradition

Romanticism & Esoteric Tradition PDF Author: Paul Davies
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 9780940262881
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Spiritual quest is at the very heart of poetry, but in our materialistic climate as we begin the twenty-first century, this has been largely forgotten, even by those who claim to be experts in interpreting literature.How does the worldview common to the main esoteric traditions of East and West correspond to the aims of Romantic poets such as Shelley, Keats, Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth? In Romanticism and Esoteric Tradition, Paul Davies maintains that the intended meaning of the poetry and thinking of the Romantics can be understood only in the light of the spiritual teachings of those traditions.This is one of the few books that connects the creative nature of poetry to the core teachings of the esoteric tradition. It reveals the true meaning of several Romantic writers whose works have been trivialized by a culture that has marginalized the spiritual and bound itself only to material, historical, and social concerns.The author also shows that the Romantics were the first Western poets to imagine the relationship of the self to the environment as personal encounter. In this sense the Romantics recalled a long-held secret of the esoteric "human sciences" rather than inventing a new one.This book brings the deepest interests of the Romantics directly into contact with issues closest to present-day students of the spiritual traditions and holistic perspectives.

Romanticism & Esoteric Tradition

Romanticism & Esoteric Tradition PDF Author: Paul Davies
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 9780940262881
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book Here

Book Description
Spiritual quest is at the very heart of poetry, but in our materialistic climate as we begin the twenty-first century, this has been largely forgotten, even by those who claim to be experts in interpreting literature.How does the worldview common to the main esoteric traditions of East and West correspond to the aims of Romantic poets such as Shelley, Keats, Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth? In Romanticism and Esoteric Tradition, Paul Davies maintains that the intended meaning of the poetry and thinking of the Romantics can be understood only in the light of the spiritual teachings of those traditions.This is one of the few books that connects the creative nature of poetry to the core teachings of the esoteric tradition. It reveals the true meaning of several Romantic writers whose works have been trivialized by a culture that has marginalized the spiritual and bound itself only to material, historical, and social concerns.The author also shows that the Romantics were the first Western poets to imagine the relationship of the self to the environment as personal encounter. In this sense the Romantics recalled a long-held secret of the esoteric "human sciences" rather than inventing a new one.This book brings the deepest interests of the Romantics directly into contact with issues closest to present-day students of the spiritual traditions and holistic perspectives.

Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times

Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times PDF Author: R. van den Broek
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791436110
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
This volume introduces what has sometimes been called "the third component of western culture". It traces the historical development of those religious traditions which have rejected a world view based on the primacy of pure rationality or doctrinal faith, emphasizing instead the importance of inner enlightenment or gnosis: a revelatory experience which was typically believed to entail an encounter with one's true self as well as with the ground of being, God. The contributors to this book demonstrate this perspective as fundamental to a variety of interconnected traditions. In Antiquity, one finds the gnostics and hermetics; in the Middle Ages several Christian sects. The medieval Cathars can, to a certain extent, be considered part of the same tradition. Starting with the Italian humanist Renaissance, hermetic philosophy became of central importance to a new religious synthesis that can be referred to as Western Esotericism. The development of this tradition is described from Renaissance hermeticists and practitioners of spiritual alchemy to the emergence of Rosicrucianism and Christian theosophy in the seventeenth century, and from post-enlightenment aspects of Romanticism and occultism to the present-day New Age movement.

William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism

William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism PDF Author: Paul Cheshire
Publisher: Romantic Reconfigurations Stud
ISBN: 1786941201
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This first annotated edition of William Gilbert's enigmatic poem, The Hurricane: a Theosophical and Western Eclogue, with extended interpretative chapters informed by Gilbert's magical and astrological writings, shows how its dark materials fed the imaginations of his friends Coleridge, Wordsworth and Southey, in their formative years between 1795 and 1798.

Esoteric Tradition in Russian Romantic Literature

Esoteric Tradition in Russian Romantic Literature PDF Author: Lauren G. Leighton
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271041537
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
It deals extensively with Decembrism, the political conspiracy so known after its culmination in a failed attempt to overthrow the tsarist autocracy in December 1825. The Decembrist writers and other romantics influenced by Freemasonry, including Kondraty Ryleyev, Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, and Alexander Pushkin, were adept in the application of thaumaturgical skills to literature.

Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition

Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition PDF Author: Antoine Faivre
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791444351
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
A historical and interpretive study of three aspects of Western esotericism from the Renaissance to the twentieth century.

Access to Western Esotericism

Access to Western Esotericism PDF Author: Antoine Faivre
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438402236
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
This is the first systematic treatment of esotericism to appear in English. Here is also a historical survey, beginning with the Alexandrean Period, of the various esoteric currents such as Christian Kabbalah, Theosophy, Alchemy, Rosicrucianism, and Hermeticism. Common characteristics of these currents are the notion of universal interdependency and the experience of spiritual transformation. The author establishes a rigorous methodology; provides clarifying definitions of such key terms as "gnosis," "theosophy," "occultism," and "Hermeticism;" and offers analysis of contemporary esotericism based on three distinct pathways. The second half of the book presents a series of studies on several important figures, works, and movements in Western esotericism—studies devoted to some of the most characteristic and illuminating aspects that this form of thought has taken, such as theosophical speculations on androgyny, rosicrucian literature, and Masonic symbolism. The book is completed by a rich and selective Bibliography conceived as a means of orientation and a tool for research.

New Age Religion and Western Culture

New Age Religion and Western Culture PDF Author: Wouter J. Hanegraaff
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004378936
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
Recent years have seen a spectacular rise of the New Age movement and an ever-increasing interest in its beliefs and manifestations. This fascinating work presents the first-ever comprehensive analysis of New Age Religion and its historical backgrounds, thus providing the reader with a means of orientation in the bewildering variety of the movement. Making extensive use of primary sources, the author thematically analyses New Age beliefs from the perspective of the study of religions. While looking at the historical backgrounds of the movement, he convincingly argues that its foundations were laid by so-called western esoteric traditions during the Renaissance. Hanegraaff finally shows how the modern New Age movement emerged from the increasing secularization of those esoteric traditions during the 19th century. This ground-breaking publication is compulsive reading for all those involved or interested in the New Age movement.

A Romantic Historiosophy

A Romantic Historiosophy PDF Author: Arthur McCalla
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900424736X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
This intellectual history study locates the philosophy of history of Pierre-Simon Ballanche (1776-1847) within the intellectual, religious, and social life of Restoration and July Monarchy France, and argues for the recognition of Ballanche as an important contributor to that milieu. Its four parts blend the topical and evolutionary approaches, analyzing dominant themes as they are developed across Ballanche's works, and charts Ballanche's complex relation of dependence and independence to the various intellectual currents of the period. This study clarifies the thought of a notoriously obscure thinker, illuminates the intellectual history of early nineteenth-century France, and demonstrates how Ballanche's project for religio-social regeneration effected a crucial step in the historical-mindedness of the Romantic period.

Shadow of the Rose

Shadow of the Rose PDF Author: Charles Upton
Publisher: Sophia Perennis et Universalis
ISBN: 9781597310796
Category : Love
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Charles Upton: Human love has fallen on hard times; it has been "officially discredited." Even liberal humanitarianism is not what it used to be; how then can romantic love, which in its origins is essentially aristocratic (in Meister Eckhart's sense when he said "the soul is an aristocrat") find any place in today's world? The truth is, it cannot. The world is too small for it. The place of romantic love is nowhere in this world; its place is in the human soul, whose own proper place is in the eternal self-knowledge of God. Jennifer Doane Upton: The love of God is always secret. For most of us it is so secret that we are not even aware of it. All manifestations that appear around this love are false in a sense, and tend to mis-direct us. To look for the love of God itself within manifest conditions is always to go astray. We spend our time in the world being attracted to this and repulsed by that, and all the while we are blind to this one secret love.

The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance

The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance PDF Author: Arthur Versluis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195350049
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The term "Western esotericism" refers to a wide range of spiritual currents including alchemy, Hermeticism, Kabbala, Rosicrucianism, and Christian theosophy, as well as several practical forms of esotericism like cartomancy, geomancy, necromancy, alchemy, astrology, herbalism, and magic. The early presence of esotericism in North America has not been much studied, and even less so the indebtedness to esotericism of some major American literary figures. In this book, Arthur Versluis breaks new ground, showing that many writers of the so-called American Renaissance drew extensively on and were inspired by Western esoteric currents.