Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Paganism
Professor Wouter J. Hanegraaff is a founding figure of Western Esotericism studies in Europe, having held the post of first President of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (2005-2013) and being made professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents (at Amsterdam University). His mapping of Western Esotericism as the field of academic studies includes the notion of “Pagan” as the key component which came to shape the range of phenomena that field comprises. The present report focuses of three Hanegraaff’s texts – a monograph “New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought” (1996), which includes a section on Neo-Paganism, a programmatic article “The Trouble with Images: Anti-Image Polemics and Western Esotericism” (published in Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and Its Others, 2007) and “Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture” (2012), which summarizes his view on how Western Esotericism was born and what it generally constitutes. The author of the report seeks to trace how notions of Pagan/Paganism develop in these texts and the role these notions play in Hanegraaff’s thought concerning Western Esotericism.
“New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought” (1996)
This monograph was the first comprehensive study of a range of religious and parareligious phenomena that Hanegraaff called New Age sensu lato, as well as an in-depth study of New Age sensu stricto – that is, a group of related systems, techniques and groups which self-identify as New Age. A chapter in Part I (“Orientation: Major Trends in New Age Religion”) is dedicated to discussion of Neopaganism as a phenomenon of New Age sensu lato. Hanegraaff pays special attention to Wicca and related currents, as they bear more resemblance to what he is studying in the first place – Western Esotericism and its 20th century offshoots.
The definition of Neopaganism runs as follows: “As a general term, "neopaganism" covers all those modern movements which are, firstly, based on the conviction that what Christianity has traditionally denounced as idolatry and superstition actually represents/ represented a profound and meaningful religious worldview and, secondly, that a religious practice based on this worldview can and should be revitalized in our modern world” (77). The very fact that modern Pagans call themselves Pagans is, according to Hanegraaff, “a polemical thrust towards institutionalized Christianity” (77). Hanegraaff notes, that post-II World War Neopaganism is a new phenomenon in comparison with its pre-war counterparts in Germany, Northern Europe and elsewhere. According to the Introduction to Hanegraaf’s study, I think, he consigns this Neopaganism under his New Age umbrella because it is:
- “rooted in the counterculture of the sixties” (10);
- a Western European phenomenon (12)
- based rather on “cultic millieu” than a “sect” or church structure (14-16)
These criteria limit Hanegraaff’s handling of Neopaganism to phenomena which now form only a part of the field of Pagan Studies, but such usage of the term is justified by the aims of his study. Hanegraaff’s Neopaganism here may be roughly compared to Michael Strmiska’s “syncretist” Paganism, which contrasts with “Ethnic” or “Reconstructionist” Paganism – the divisions now widely accepted by Pagans and Heathens themselves.
Further in his book Hanegraaff cites leaders of Wiccan, Goddess centered and nature-oriented groups when discussing such issues of New Age spirituality as the divinity of self, reincarnation, spirituality of ecology, holistic worldview and historiosophy. “…it can be said”, writes Hanegraaff, “that the special character of contemporary neopaganism in relation to neopaganism in general is precisely its use of New Age concepts, while its special position within the New Age movement derives from the fact that the specifically neopagan perspective…is not particularly prominent in the rest of the New Age” (79).
So, for Hanegraaff, the significance of Neopaganism is that it is oriented towards legacy of the past, somewhat nostalgically, while “the rest of New Age” is more oriented towards the future or present. While Neopaganism is culturally specific in that it seeks to legitimize itself through an appeal to non-Christian and pre-Christian cultural contents, other strands of New Age may turn to different cultural contexts, including those of Christianity.
Nest, Hanegraaff deals with the concept of magic which is so important in Neopaganism. Hanegraaff quotes a theory of magic by Dutch scholar Jan Van Baal, which sees magic, first of all, not as a means of getting some “technical results”, but rather as a practice that is centered on experiencing mystery. According to Van Baal, “It permits people to live not in a cold world of cause and effect but in a world which, for all its faults, is one of which one may expect anything. ... It is a world full of intimacy and, for all its terrors, it is nevertheless familiar and dependable too. The mystery of such a world is not only threatening, but also full of promise. Anyone who knows that mystery and is a party to the weird words that express and influence it holds the key to all kinds of possibilities” (83).
“We can conclude”, says Hanegraaff, “that neopaganism may legitimately be regarded as a religious movement based on magic in the sense of a certain ritual practice…which expresses a comprehensive worldview... However, it should be added immediately that neopaganism is a special case of magic in at least one crucial respect. Neopagan magic is different from traditional magic in that the magical worldview is purposely adopted as a reaction to the "disenchanted" world of modern western society. It is not just the case that the characteristics which enable neopaganism to be identified as "magic" can be discerned analytically from a comparison with the "scientific" worldview; rather, neopaganism is based on a conscious rejection of that worldview. There is a certain irony in the fact that the scientific study of religion—with its frequent descriptions of magic as opposed to science—has itself significantly contributed to this phenomenon. By confirming the popular view that magic is the natural alternative for the modern western worldview, scholarship has made itself into a powerful factor in the very emergence and persistence of neopaganism as a new religious movement”. (84)
So, Neopaganism, as well as New Age sensu lato, is a counter-cultural practice based on questioning basic assumptions of a secular world and those grand religious narratives which dominate this world. It is important, that for both great Neopagan traditions which are of special interest for Hanegraaff, certain historiographical models have a spiritual value. In case of Wicca it is the narrative of the “Old Religion”, which according to “Murray thesis” survived as a “witch cult”, and in case of women’s spirituality or Goddess movement, it is the “Golden Age of matriarchy”. Both are portrayed as polemical opposites to “Christian” or “patriarchal” world of today, and both traditions seek to bring back the values which are associated with their favoured historiographical models. Thus, they are both nostalgic and futuristic, and the latter place them among other variants of New Age, which are centered on the expected advent of a better, more spiritual “age of the world”.
Hanegraaff wrote his “New Age Religion and Western Culture” in the 1990-s when Modern Paganism was undergoing dramatic changes. His book saw the light right before Ronald Hutton’s “The Triumph of the Moon” (1999), which seriously undermined the significance of factual “witch-cult” along Murray’s and Gardner’s lines as a means of legitimating Wicca, among its followers. Another book which deconstructed the claims of a single Goddess worship in a remote “matriarchy” was “The Faces of the Goddess” by Lotte Motz (1997), where Motz suggested that while ancient Goddess worship along feminist lines cannot be proved as a historical fact, modern spirituality of the Goddess deserved respect as a legitimate spiritual path of modernity. Scholarly endevours, such as these two, were accepted by a large number of Wiccans and Goddess-worshippers as valid myth-busting insights into the story of their own respective traditions, which didn’t serve to deconstruct, but rather to appreciate them. It turned out that in spite of “a conscious rejection” of “the “scientific” worldview”, a significant number of Modern Pagans chose instead to integrate at least some of its results into their own history.
At the same time, Modern Paganism was becoming much more open and more integrated in the cultures of Western nations than before. Moreover, Modern Paganism, since 1990s has been becoming more diverse, and certain issues, which were considered central to its practice, were more and more often questioned or negotiated by Pagans and Heathens themselves. Recent debates about “Wiccanate priviledge”, “hard polytheism” and ecology, show that it is extremely difficult to make broad statements concerning the “nature of Paganism”, be it “magic” or anything else.
However, it was not the study of Neopaganism which interested Hanegraaff the most, but the study of Western Esotericism, and Modern Paganism became an issue for him only insofar it stood in some relation to Western Esotericism. Next we shall see how the (mnemo)historical concept paganism gained even more importance in Hanegraaff’s mapping the field of Western Esotericism.
“The Trouble with Images: Anti-Image Polemics and Western Esotericism” in: Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and Its Others. (2007)
Now we jump a period in time of 11 years, which in Hanegraaff’s career were filled with a prolific work in the field of Western Esotericism studies and dozens of publications on related topics. We focus on an article “The Trouble with Images: Anti-Image Polemics and Western Esotericism” (2007).
Hanegraaff’s article is published in a collection devoted to mapping Western Esotericism within Western Culture from the Renaissance until now. Other distinguished scholars contributed to this collection, among which I am proud to find a Russian Konstantin Burmistrov, an expert on Kabbalah.
Hanegraaff’s critique is aimed against two ways of defining Western Esotericism: the “Yates thesis”, which sees all things esoteric or occult as springing from a single cultural tradition, that is, Hermeticism of late antiquity, which was developed in the Renaissance; and the “Faivre thesis”, which sees Esotericism as a “form of thought” which can theoretically be used as an etic category in cross-cultural research.
Instead, Hanegraaff proposes a new way of looking at Western Esotericism. Hanegraaff claims that there exists a “Grand Polemical Narrative” in Western thought, which since early modern period questioned and rejected different traditions and practices as contrary to reason or detrimental to well-being of humans and the ordered society.
Hanegraaff argues that this Grand Polemical Narrative has formed
“a domain in the collective imagination that contained everything we nowadays associate with the field of “western esotericism”. This is where modernity vaguely but consistently locates a variety of “pagan superstitions” and their continuation in Christian contexts; heresies like Gnosticism; occult sciences like astrology, alchemy, and magic; the mystical speculations of theosophical and kabbalistic hermeneutics; the “enthusiasm” of irrational sects; and various real or imagined “hidden traditions” or secret societies inspired by and connected with such ideas. Moreover, after the eighteen century this entire domain of the “other” came to be interpreted in a positive sense as well, by various groups and individuals who…defined their own identity by inventing a “magical”, “occultist” or “esoteric” tradition as alternative to their “other”: what they perceived as the mainstream traditions of the establishment, such as the churches, rational philosophy, and materialistic science. The perception of western esotericism as a “tradition” is, I submit, essentially based upon these nineteen-century esoteric appropriations of the Enlightenment “occult””.
This domain only could be fashioned into a single broad field, because the abovementioned phenomena “together…represent the reservoir of what modernity rejects” (110).
Therefore, “The mission of the study of western esotericism…is to analyze and deconstruct the various strategies of exclusion and “othering” basic to the Grand Polemical Narrative, seek to correct the historical pictures of western culture that were built on it, and attempt to replace them by others that more adequately reflect the historical evidence and are less dependent on hegemonic claims and ideologies” (111).
There are two questions arising from this perspective: 1. what is the Grand Polemical Narrative and where we can locate it? 2. why were these practices and disciplines “othered”? In his article Hanegraaff suggests an answer to the 2nd question. The first one, I think, he answered in his 2012 monograph “Esotericism and the Academy”.
Hanegraaff deals with the recurrent concern for idolatry which appeared now and then in Western thought since the times of early Christianity. The advent of biblical monotheism, he argues, was also the advent of a new multi-level approach in religion and culture, to reality and what lied beyond – he expresses this new vision in a phrase: “God is an alien”. “The One God is pitted against many gods of the pagans, his invisibility against their visibility as statues and images, and his omnipresence and limitlessness against the fact that they are tied to and limited to specific bodily forms and locations. In short: God cannot be imagined by the limited human mind and any attempt to imagine him – to make him fit some human image – is therefore fundamentally misguided” (114). The “other” of monotheism, though, is not polytheism but rather “cosmotheism” – an attempt to do just that: imagine God as permeating the world, veiling himself with it and the same time revealing himself through it, by “thousand images” (115, the term and definition is by German Egyptologist Jan Assmann). “Very interestingly, however”, says Hanegraaff, “by becoming the normative basis for religion in western culture, this alien God has been “domesticated” and has paradoxically come to be imagined as belonging “on our side”; and although radical alterity is precisely not characteristic of the pagan gods, they are the ones who have come to be imagined as the demonic “others” par excellence” (116-117). The conflict between monotheism and cosmotheism is thus a “deep structure of the history of religion in the west” (117). But Hanegraaff strongly warns against a simplistic identification of Western Esotericism with cosmotheism and all its opponents – with monotheism, as to do so would be exactly to fall prey to “Grand Polemical Narrative”: “Pro-esoteric versions may tell us how the light of esoteric truth has managed to survive through the ages, against the dark forces of ignorance and oppression, or how the “religion of the world” always makes its comeback in spite of the sinister asceticism and world-denial of the established priesthood, and so on. Anti-esoteric versions may tell us how true religion has always been threatened by the demonic and heretical temptations of paganism and idolatry, or narrate the gradual triumph of rationality and science over occult and irrational superstitions, and so on. The crucial weakness of all such narratives is that they fail to critically differentiate between mnemohistory and historiography, that is to say: between how “paganism” and all that it implies has been imagined (mnemohistorically) within the context of anti-pagan polemics, and how it has actually functioned (historically) in the history of western thought” (118-119). The vivid example is Platonism and Neo-Platonism, which in different contexts could serve both the anti cause of anti-image and monotheistic agenda, or inspire Neo-Pagan and esoteric movements. “…in actual history we do not find any simple distinction between a cosmotheistic esotericism and a monotheistic exotericism. What we find instead is an extremely complex pattern of cultural and religious interactions based upon a “deep structure” of conflict between the dynamics of two mutually exclusive systems: monotheism and cosmotheism… The logicl incompatibility of the two systems has led to an endless series of creative attempts to overcome it” (120).
From an early point in time monotheism claimed that true reality may be contacted only through a radical break with what is seen and perceived with senses, and for that reason, philosophical rationalism has frequently “joined forces” with monotheism. “Pagans” are stereotypically imagined as engaged in “irrational” rites, and monotheists as having a “rational” faith. Image in this context is dangerous for the “rational” and monotheistic mind, just because it is semiotically ambiguous – it is not a plain sign with a fixed meaning, that simply conveys a clear rational concept to others, but is always a mystery, because even after one “secret meaning” of it had been explained, there still remains the mystery of how this meaning relates to the image itself. There is always a danger to “lose clarity” and thus digress from rationalistic mode of understanding reality, when dealing with images. At the same time, if one just claimed (as did Renaissance Neo-Platonists) that the semiotic “residue”, which the image possess, is indicative of the “higher truth”, which cannot be grasped by reason, but only through contemplation, then the image became a priviledged way of obtaining knowledge, while conventional signs used in reading and writing were only inferior, lower means preparing the soul for the contemplation of images.
But maybe the central “trouble with images” is that “they may somehow be animated” (127). The instinctive feeling that an image of somebody or something is not a symbol, but an actual presence of what it represents (or hints at, as in aniconic representations) is in itself enough to cause anxiety among those who wish to abstain from idolatry – to the point of wishing to destroy images in order to get rid of the temptation they cause. The distinctive feature of “pagan idolatry” is the animation of objects – from Augustine’s famous passage condemning Hermetic Asclepius for his approval of animating Egyptian idols to Edward Tylor with his rage against the irrationality of the “savage” whose religion is “animism”, and who talks to the “inanimate world”, which cannot and shouldn’t be talked to. In this respect the “occult”, the “magical” and “pagan” totally overlapped as “other” in the sight of anti-idolatry partisans: while amulets and talismans, “charged” with powers of angelic or demonic forces, or even of the Names of God were condemned as just another sort of “idols”, the same charges were made against Christian use of icons and statues by Protestant reformers.
Hanegraaff writes in conclusion: “If I am correct that the category “western esotericism” is at bottom an imaginal construct, developed by the Grand Polemical Narrative of western culture as the “other” against which it defines its own ideal identity; if, furthermore, monotheism and rationalism are accepted as the major pillars of this identity; and if, finally, both are characterized by the trouble they have with images; then it may not be too far-fetched to see a positive secondary response to the power of images [that is, decide that we “should…use their power to our advantage” – DG] as a major characteristic of western esotericism” (131). The reasons for placing this or that phenomenon in this realm of “other” could vary, but the underlying favor towards images remained the same in all such phenomena. No doubt, though Hanegraaff doesn’t state it, his categorization in fact mirrors polemical accusations of all things “occult”, “magical”, “superstitious” or “esoteric”, that they in fact constitute “paganism”, that is a “false” religion worshipping “the creation” rather than the “Creator”.
So, “paganism” is central to Hanegraaff’s Western Esotericism as such. It is a “battling concept” devised by opponents of images and cosmotheism (in any disguise, even Christian) for “othering” undesirable elements of culture. The story of how it came to form the fiels of Western Esotericism, Hanegraaff sketches in his 2012 monograph.
“Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture” (2012)
The story Hanegraaff tells in “Esotericism and the Academy” is exactly the story of othering and construction: as certain cultural phenomena were first embraced and developed, and then rejected by intellectual elites of the western world from 15th to 20th century, a new field of Western Esotericism came into being. It is both a field of academic study (and in that capacity in interest Hanegraaff the most) and a partially self-conscious field of pursuit “out there”.
The story begins, predictably, in XVth century Italy, where Renaissance humanists started to translate and comment on a corpus of ancient literature, which, as they thought, contained prisca theologia – an exposition of perennial religious truth which corroborated Christian doctrine, but at the same time legitimized some elements of imagined Pagan worship, including magic, different sorts of astrology, theurgy and a limited reverence for pagan gods, now understood as aspects of nature. Corpus Heremeticum, Orphic hymns, Chaldean Oracles and writings of Plato and Neo-Platonists were of a special significance in this “Ancient Wisdom Narrative”. While most of the proponents of this Narrative self-identified as Christians, one of their inspirers, who is largely responsible for bringing Classical learning to the West was George Gemistus Plethon, who wrote treatises arguing for the return to a sort of reformed Hellenic polytheism. Though Hanegraaff doesn’t make a big deal of it, Pletho is actually the starting point both for his “historiography of Western Esotericism” and modern Paganism, or Neo-Paganism:
“…one might say that with Plethon, the pagan cat was out of the bag. His case shows that once the basic textual sources of the platonic tradition became available to a Christian culture where the need for religious reform was widely felt, paganism became a religious option in theory at least” (39).
Moreover, focus on pagan literature also defined the obsession of Esotericism by secrecy and hidden message: “Such concerns were already implied by the very concept that Christian truths lay concealed under the surface of ancient pagan myths and philosophies, but could be uncovered by means of allegorical or symbolical exegesis”, though they were energized with Pico introducing Kabbala to the “ancient wisdom narrative” (66).
Hanegraaf then quotes the famous fragment from Mutianus Rufus, first sorted out as significant by Wilhelm Diltey and found in Vivianne Crowley (as a passage legitimizing duotheism of Wicca):
“There is one God and one Goddess. But as there are many divinities [numina] there are likewise many names [nomina]: Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses, Christus, Luna, Ceres, Proserpina, Tellus, Maria. But take care not to say that out loud. Such things must be kept hidden in silence like the mysteries of the Eleusinian goddesses”.
and comments: “Reading such a passage, one realizes that the Pandora’s box of paganism was now wide open” (68).
Considering the role of Renaissance “Platonic Orientalism” as basis of Western Esotericism, Hanegraaff emphasizes that “Western esotericism is ultimately grounded in a historiographical concept, rather than in a common philosophical or religious worldview, a specific approach to knowledge, or a “form of thought””. (73) This historiography comprises such pre-Classical authorities as Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus, which are (naturally, as traditions attributed to them are late antique constructs) viewed through the eyes of Pagan Greeks, and Pagan Classics itself as the main referential body of prisca theologia.
If re-imagined “pious” paganism of the ancients as prisca theologia was essential for the apologetic narrative of Renaissance which gave rise to Western esotericism, the anti-pagan polemics was crucial in the formation of the antagonist narrative. The Christian “anti-apologetic” reaction of the 17th century wished to cast into the “sea of oblivion” such phenomena as Platonism, Kabbala, Hermeticism, alchemy, astrology, divination and magic, problematic both for Christian orthodoxy and that strand of scientific rationalism which backed it. Hanegraaff shows that the center of rationalist polemics which led to the “othering” of these phenomena lay in the circles of German Lutheran writers of late 17th – mid 18th century (Daniel Ehregott Cohlberg, Jacob Thomasius, Friedrich Christoph Buecher, August Heumann, Jacob Brueckner), who sought to cleanse Christianity of pagan survivals and heretic accretions which were seen as threatening it. It was the Evangelical fight against “the so-called “Platonism of the Fathers”” which “had been slumbering in Christian theology from its very beginning, almost like a kind of latent disease” (94), which “must be counted among the most important factors in the historical process leading towards “modernization”” (95). It was crucial for establishing historical criticism as a method to approach the past, and to construe the rational Christian “we” as opposite to irrational Pagan/Platonic “other”, which became the repository of all error and damnation. This other was usually based on some basic philosophical or metaphysical flaw: an inability to imagine a creatio ex nihilo, and therefore, the heresy of eternity of the world (J. Thomasius, 105); a belief in “spirit of the world” and inner illumination (D. Cohlberg, 111 – 112); emanationism (F. Buecher, 115). Further into the Enlightenment, this polemical “other” was not only deconstructed as false philosophy, but also ridiculed (A. Heumann, 132 – 133) and became totally identified with the polemical realm of “superstition”. The Enlightenment “eclectic method” of writing history of philosophy “changed the rules of the game entirely: it denied any established tradition the right to decide what was and what was not to be considered “philosophy” in the first place, and handed that authority over to the human faculty of rational judgment. Strongly amplified by two centuries of Protestant opposition against the Roman Catholic claim of representing “the” only universal tradition of wisdom, Enlightenment historiography specifically targeted the ancient wisdom narrative and everything that had come to be associated with it, such as the appeal to ancient oriental paganisms and initiatory schools, divinatory systems, demonologies, the kabbalah, the “occult mysteries” claimed by symbolic theology, and the “enthusiastic philosophy” known as theosophy” (136). Interestingly, even Jewish Kabbala (145) came to be understood as paganism, from its close association, in its adopted Christian form with “ancient wisdom narrative”.
Hanegraaff emphasizes that
“As a result of the radical anti-apologetic separation between revelation and reason, late seventeenth-century historiography found itself left with a very large domain of currents and ideas that belonged to neither of the two camps, because they were characterized precisely by syncretic mixtures between the two. Essentially, this third domain represented the continuation of pagan religion concealed as Christianity. With philosophy it shared its pagan foundations, but it differed from philosophy in not being based on reason. With Christianity it shared its religious nature, but it differed from Christianity in that it was false religion, not based on Revelation. In short, it was the non-rational “natural religion” of humanity. It is in this late seventeenth-century, Protestant, anti-apologetic concept of pagan religion concealed as Christianity that we find both the historical origin and the theoretical core of our current concept of “Western esotericism” as a specific domain of research…the very nature of their theoretical concept implied that its representatives were the negative counterpart of both reason and faith, and therefore could not claim to remain a legitimate part of the history of either.” (147)
So this Crypto-Paganism, which was shown in its dependence on non-biblical sources, was the flesh and bone of the future Western Esotericism.
In the end of the book, Hanegraaff asks, whether Western Esotericism exists “out there” or is just a “social construct reflective of more fundamental discursive processes” (368), and, answering it takes the middle ground. Western Esotericism did appear as a product of “othering” a number of phenomena of western culture, but they were “othered” for a reason. And that reason was paganism. The historical fact beyond the polemics around Esotericism is that “an intellectual culture grounded in biblical monotheism and Greek rationality was forced to come to terms with paganism” (369). Then Hanegraaff reiterates what he had already said 5 years before in “Trouble with Images” about cosmotheism. Another “deep structure” of western thought that shaped Western Esotericism, Hanegraaff argues, is gnosis – a direct experiencial knowledge through exstatic states of mind (which in “Trouble with Images” he links especially with contempltation of images) (372). And while “cosmotheism and gnosis” provide only theoretical limits of Western Esotericism as a field of historical research and do not point to a special tradition of “cosmotheism and gnosis” out there, they can explain a variety of phenomena within different cultural contexts. The history of “othering” started from an attempt to “encompass” a pagan other within an ancient wisdom narrative; anti-apologists of the 17th century on the contrary, “orientalized” this narrative in their quest to rid Christianity of pagan contamination; as “other” it became an “alternative option” in the Enlightenment, and the Romantic reaction against Enlightenment saw a massive interest in esotericism as “night side of nature”. Later voices in favour of “re-enchanting the world”, including those of Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade, turned Esotericism “into a positive category that enabled a variety of “inventions of esoteric tradition” during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (374). These developments, “are grounded in the dynamics of monotheistic religion and the appeal to faith and reason: in a few words, cosmotheism and gnosis emerge as alternatives because the divine is held to be separate from the world and inaccessible to human knowledge” (377) – thus, paganism qua constituting part of Esotericism is a fact of mnemohistory of monotheism, and not the historical reality “out there”.
Conclusions
Hanegraaff’s cosmotheism and gnosis, will be, perhaps, be easily recognized by many Modern Pagan theologians as “immanence” and “magic”. Indeed, I believe that Hanegraaff’s mapping of Western Esotericism can tell us as much about the development of those trends, which produced Modern Paganism in the last 150 years.
“Paganism” of which Hanegraaff writes is both a mnemohoistorical and historiographical unit. On one hand, it is a polemical construct created by Christian zealots, eager to purge Christianity of error and heresy, which were seen as sprouting from pagan, non-revelatory “natural religion” of the gentiles. In this sense, it doesn’t exist apart from the zealot discourse and those discourses that accepted their mnemohistorical perspective. Some of these are, remarkably, discourses of certain strands of Neo-Paganism, notably 19th century Druidry with its heavy borrowings from polemical literature (Edward “Celtic” Davies being the iconic example), which “reconstructed” paganism with an object of condemning it, or 20th century Wicca which modeled itself along the polemical narratives of witch hunt. It is especially important that a number of groups which figure in Enlightenment “history of folly”, such as Magi, Egyptian priests, Greek and Roman mystery cults, Gnostics, Cathars and Templars became incorporated into many “sacred histories” of 20th century Pagan traditions, which strongly ties them with mnemohistory of Western Esotericism. However, their mnemohistory also goes other directions, beyond the historiographic traditions associated with “ancient wisdom narrative”, into “paganism” of different sort, discovered in 19 – 20th centuries.
On the other hand, Hanegraaff’s paganism is also a historiographical reality out there. It is those practices, beliefs, presuppositions, approaches and texts that were deliberately or indeliberately adopted by self-professed Christians from their “gentile” environment and thus preserved for future generations and even developed. The quest of Modern Pagans, especially of Reconstructionist denominations, for “things pagan” in the past, and yearning for “pagan authenticity” in case of western culture is very problematic due to the very spectacles through which “paganism” is seen – spectacles borrowed from the Chruch Fathers and Christian apologists. The drive to find out an unblemished paganism “under Christian disguise” is the trait of the Grand Polemical Narrative with its naturalizing zeal.
Whether we view Modern Paganism as just another variant of Western Esotericism, or existing wholly apart of it, or partially belonging to it, we can’t deny, that it was formed much in the same way as Western Esotericism was, if Hanegraaff is right. Though “Modern Paganism” is a field with boundaries as mobile as those of “Western Esotericism”, their histories and mnemohistories are largely much the same – from that point in time, when Plethon, the “first Neo-Pagan” landed in Florence to take part in the Oecumenical Synod and bring Platonism to Italy.
“New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought” (1996)
This monograph was the first comprehensive study of a range of religious and parareligious phenomena that Hanegraaff called New Age sensu lato, as well as an in-depth study of New Age sensu stricto – that is, a group of related systems, techniques and groups which self-identify as New Age. A chapter in Part I (“Orientation: Major Trends in New Age Religion”) is dedicated to discussion of Neopaganism as a phenomenon of New Age sensu lato. Hanegraaff pays special attention to Wicca and related currents, as they bear more resemblance to what he is studying in the first place – Western Esotericism and its 20th century offshoots.
The definition of Neopaganism runs as follows: “As a general term, "neopaganism" covers all those modern movements which are, firstly, based on the conviction that what Christianity has traditionally denounced as idolatry and superstition actually represents/ represented a profound and meaningful religious worldview and, secondly, that a religious practice based on this worldview can and should be revitalized in our modern world” (77). The very fact that modern Pagans call themselves Pagans is, according to Hanegraaff, “a polemical thrust towards institutionalized Christianity” (77). Hanegraaff notes, that post-II World War Neopaganism is a new phenomenon in comparison with its pre-war counterparts in Germany, Northern Europe and elsewhere. According to the Introduction to Hanegraaf’s study, I think, he consigns this Neopaganism under his New Age umbrella because it is:
- “rooted in the counterculture of the sixties” (10);
- a Western European phenomenon (12)
- based rather on “cultic millieu” than a “sect” or church structure (14-16)
These criteria limit Hanegraaff’s handling of Neopaganism to phenomena which now form only a part of the field of Pagan Studies, but such usage of the term is justified by the aims of his study. Hanegraaff’s Neopaganism here may be roughly compared to Michael Strmiska’s “syncretist” Paganism, which contrasts with “Ethnic” or “Reconstructionist” Paganism – the divisions now widely accepted by Pagans and Heathens themselves.
Further in his book Hanegraaff cites leaders of Wiccan, Goddess centered and nature-oriented groups when discussing such issues of New Age spirituality as the divinity of self, reincarnation, spirituality of ecology, holistic worldview and historiosophy. “…it can be said”, writes Hanegraaff, “that the special character of contemporary neopaganism in relation to neopaganism in general is precisely its use of New Age concepts, while its special position within the New Age movement derives from the fact that the specifically neopagan perspective…is not particularly prominent in the rest of the New Age” (79).
So, for Hanegraaff, the significance of Neopaganism is that it is oriented towards legacy of the past, somewhat nostalgically, while “the rest of New Age” is more oriented towards the future or present. While Neopaganism is culturally specific in that it seeks to legitimize itself through an appeal to non-Christian and pre-Christian cultural contents, other strands of New Age may turn to different cultural contexts, including those of Christianity.
Nest, Hanegraaff deals with the concept of magic which is so important in Neopaganism. Hanegraaff quotes a theory of magic by Dutch scholar Jan Van Baal, which sees magic, first of all, not as a means of getting some “technical results”, but rather as a practice that is centered on experiencing mystery. According to Van Baal, “It permits people to live not in a cold world of cause and effect but in a world which, for all its faults, is one of which one may expect anything. ... It is a world full of intimacy and, for all its terrors, it is nevertheless familiar and dependable too. The mystery of such a world is not only threatening, but also full of promise. Anyone who knows that mystery and is a party to the weird words that express and influence it holds the key to all kinds of possibilities” (83).
“We can conclude”, says Hanegraaff, “that neopaganism may legitimately be regarded as a religious movement based on magic in the sense of a certain ritual practice…which expresses a comprehensive worldview... However, it should be added immediately that neopaganism is a special case of magic in at least one crucial respect. Neopagan magic is different from traditional magic in that the magical worldview is purposely adopted as a reaction to the "disenchanted" world of modern western society. It is not just the case that the characteristics which enable neopaganism to be identified as "magic" can be discerned analytically from a comparison with the "scientific" worldview; rather, neopaganism is based on a conscious rejection of that worldview. There is a certain irony in the fact that the scientific study of religion—with its frequent descriptions of magic as opposed to science—has itself significantly contributed to this phenomenon. By confirming the popular view that magic is the natural alternative for the modern western worldview, scholarship has made itself into a powerful factor in the very emergence and persistence of neopaganism as a new religious movement”. (84)
So, Neopaganism, as well as New Age sensu lato, is a counter-cultural practice based on questioning basic assumptions of a secular world and those grand religious narratives which dominate this world. It is important, that for both great Neopagan traditions which are of special interest for Hanegraaff, certain historiographical models have a spiritual value. In case of Wicca it is the narrative of the “Old Religion”, which according to “Murray thesis” survived as a “witch cult”, and in case of women’s spirituality or Goddess movement, it is the “Golden Age of matriarchy”. Both are portrayed as polemical opposites to “Christian” or “patriarchal” world of today, and both traditions seek to bring back the values which are associated with their favoured historiographical models. Thus, they are both nostalgic and futuristic, and the latter place them among other variants of New Age, which are centered on the expected advent of a better, more spiritual “age of the world”.
Hanegraaff wrote his “New Age Religion and Western Culture” in the 1990-s when Modern Paganism was undergoing dramatic changes. His book saw the light right before Ronald Hutton’s “The Triumph of the Moon” (1999), which seriously undermined the significance of factual “witch-cult” along Murray’s and Gardner’s lines as a means of legitimating Wicca, among its followers. Another book which deconstructed the claims of a single Goddess worship in a remote “matriarchy” was “The Faces of the Goddess” by Lotte Motz (1997), where Motz suggested that while ancient Goddess worship along feminist lines cannot be proved as a historical fact, modern spirituality of the Goddess deserved respect as a legitimate spiritual path of modernity. Scholarly endevours, such as these two, were accepted by a large number of Wiccans and Goddess-worshippers as valid myth-busting insights into the story of their own respective traditions, which didn’t serve to deconstruct, but rather to appreciate them. It turned out that in spite of “a conscious rejection” of “the “scientific” worldview”, a significant number of Modern Pagans chose instead to integrate at least some of its results into their own history.
At the same time, Modern Paganism was becoming much more open and more integrated in the cultures of Western nations than before. Moreover, Modern Paganism, since 1990s has been becoming more diverse, and certain issues, which were considered central to its practice, were more and more often questioned or negotiated by Pagans and Heathens themselves. Recent debates about “Wiccanate priviledge”, “hard polytheism” and ecology, show that it is extremely difficult to make broad statements concerning the “nature of Paganism”, be it “magic” or anything else.
However, it was not the study of Neopaganism which interested Hanegraaff the most, but the study of Western Esotericism, and Modern Paganism became an issue for him only insofar it stood in some relation to Western Esotericism. Next we shall see how the (mnemo)historical concept paganism gained even more importance in Hanegraaff’s mapping the field of Western Esotericism.
“The Trouble with Images: Anti-Image Polemics and Western Esotericism” in: Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and Its Others. (2007)
Now we jump a period in time of 11 years, which in Hanegraaff’s career were filled with a prolific work in the field of Western Esotericism studies and dozens of publications on related topics. We focus on an article “The Trouble with Images: Anti-Image Polemics and Western Esotericism” (2007).
Hanegraaff’s article is published in a collection devoted to mapping Western Esotericism within Western Culture from the Renaissance until now. Other distinguished scholars contributed to this collection, among which I am proud to find a Russian Konstantin Burmistrov, an expert on Kabbalah.
Hanegraaff’s critique is aimed against two ways of defining Western Esotericism: the “Yates thesis”, which sees all things esoteric or occult as springing from a single cultural tradition, that is, Hermeticism of late antiquity, which was developed in the Renaissance; and the “Faivre thesis”, which sees Esotericism as a “form of thought” which can theoretically be used as an etic category in cross-cultural research.
Instead, Hanegraaff proposes a new way of looking at Western Esotericism. Hanegraaff claims that there exists a “Grand Polemical Narrative” in Western thought, which since early modern period questioned and rejected different traditions and practices as contrary to reason or detrimental to well-being of humans and the ordered society.
Hanegraaff argues that this Grand Polemical Narrative has formed
“a domain in the collective imagination that contained everything we nowadays associate with the field of “western esotericism”. This is where modernity vaguely but consistently locates a variety of “pagan superstitions” and their continuation in Christian contexts; heresies like Gnosticism; occult sciences like astrology, alchemy, and magic; the mystical speculations of theosophical and kabbalistic hermeneutics; the “enthusiasm” of irrational sects; and various real or imagined “hidden traditions” or secret societies inspired by and connected with such ideas. Moreover, after the eighteen century this entire domain of the “other” came to be interpreted in a positive sense as well, by various groups and individuals who…defined their own identity by inventing a “magical”, “occultist” or “esoteric” tradition as alternative to their “other”: what they perceived as the mainstream traditions of the establishment, such as the churches, rational philosophy, and materialistic science. The perception of western esotericism as a “tradition” is, I submit, essentially based upon these nineteen-century esoteric appropriations of the Enlightenment “occult””.
This domain only could be fashioned into a single broad field, because the abovementioned phenomena “together…represent the reservoir of what modernity rejects” (110).
Therefore, “The mission of the study of western esotericism…is to analyze and deconstruct the various strategies of exclusion and “othering” basic to the Grand Polemical Narrative, seek to correct the historical pictures of western culture that were built on it, and attempt to replace them by others that more adequately reflect the historical evidence and are less dependent on hegemonic claims and ideologies” (111).
There are two questions arising from this perspective: 1. what is the Grand Polemical Narrative and where we can locate it? 2. why were these practices and disciplines “othered”? In his article Hanegraaff suggests an answer to the 2nd question. The first one, I think, he answered in his 2012 monograph “Esotericism and the Academy”.
Hanegraaff deals with the recurrent concern for idolatry which appeared now and then in Western thought since the times of early Christianity. The advent of biblical monotheism, he argues, was also the advent of a new multi-level approach in religion and culture, to reality and what lied beyond – he expresses this new vision in a phrase: “God is an alien”. “The One God is pitted against many gods of the pagans, his invisibility against their visibility as statues and images, and his omnipresence and limitlessness against the fact that they are tied to and limited to specific bodily forms and locations. In short: God cannot be imagined by the limited human mind and any attempt to imagine him – to make him fit some human image – is therefore fundamentally misguided” (114). The “other” of monotheism, though, is not polytheism but rather “cosmotheism” – an attempt to do just that: imagine God as permeating the world, veiling himself with it and the same time revealing himself through it, by “thousand images” (115, the term and definition is by German Egyptologist Jan Assmann). “Very interestingly, however”, says Hanegraaff, “by becoming the normative basis for religion in western culture, this alien God has been “domesticated” and has paradoxically come to be imagined as belonging “on our side”; and although radical alterity is precisely not characteristic of the pagan gods, they are the ones who have come to be imagined as the demonic “others” par excellence” (116-117). The conflict between monotheism and cosmotheism is thus a “deep structure of the history of religion in the west” (117). But Hanegraaff strongly warns against a simplistic identification of Western Esotericism with cosmotheism and all its opponents – with monotheism, as to do so would be exactly to fall prey to “Grand Polemical Narrative”: “Pro-esoteric versions may tell us how the light of esoteric truth has managed to survive through the ages, against the dark forces of ignorance and oppression, or how the “religion of the world” always makes its comeback in spite of the sinister asceticism and world-denial of the established priesthood, and so on. Anti-esoteric versions may tell us how true religion has always been threatened by the demonic and heretical temptations of paganism and idolatry, or narrate the gradual triumph of rationality and science over occult and irrational superstitions, and so on. The crucial weakness of all such narratives is that they fail to critically differentiate between mnemohistory and historiography, that is to say: between how “paganism” and all that it implies has been imagined (mnemohistorically) within the context of anti-pagan polemics, and how it has actually functioned (historically) in the history of western thought” (118-119). The vivid example is Platonism and Neo-Platonism, which in different contexts could serve both the anti cause of anti-image and monotheistic agenda, or inspire Neo-Pagan and esoteric movements. “…in actual history we do not find any simple distinction between a cosmotheistic esotericism and a monotheistic exotericism. What we find instead is an extremely complex pattern of cultural and religious interactions based upon a “deep structure” of conflict between the dynamics of two mutually exclusive systems: monotheism and cosmotheism… The logicl incompatibility of the two systems has led to an endless series of creative attempts to overcome it” (120).
From an early point in time monotheism claimed that true reality may be contacted only through a radical break with what is seen and perceived with senses, and for that reason, philosophical rationalism has frequently “joined forces” with monotheism. “Pagans” are stereotypically imagined as engaged in “irrational” rites, and monotheists as having a “rational” faith. Image in this context is dangerous for the “rational” and monotheistic mind, just because it is semiotically ambiguous – it is not a plain sign with a fixed meaning, that simply conveys a clear rational concept to others, but is always a mystery, because even after one “secret meaning” of it had been explained, there still remains the mystery of how this meaning relates to the image itself. There is always a danger to “lose clarity” and thus digress from rationalistic mode of understanding reality, when dealing with images. At the same time, if one just claimed (as did Renaissance Neo-Platonists) that the semiotic “residue”, which the image possess, is indicative of the “higher truth”, which cannot be grasped by reason, but only through contemplation, then the image became a priviledged way of obtaining knowledge, while conventional signs used in reading and writing were only inferior, lower means preparing the soul for the contemplation of images.
But maybe the central “trouble with images” is that “they may somehow be animated” (127). The instinctive feeling that an image of somebody or something is not a symbol, but an actual presence of what it represents (or hints at, as in aniconic representations) is in itself enough to cause anxiety among those who wish to abstain from idolatry – to the point of wishing to destroy images in order to get rid of the temptation they cause. The distinctive feature of “pagan idolatry” is the animation of objects – from Augustine’s famous passage condemning Hermetic Asclepius for his approval of animating Egyptian idols to Edward Tylor with his rage against the irrationality of the “savage” whose religion is “animism”, and who talks to the “inanimate world”, which cannot and shouldn’t be talked to. In this respect the “occult”, the “magical” and “pagan” totally overlapped as “other” in the sight of anti-idolatry partisans: while amulets and talismans, “charged” with powers of angelic or demonic forces, or even of the Names of God were condemned as just another sort of “idols”, the same charges were made against Christian use of icons and statues by Protestant reformers.
Hanegraaff writes in conclusion: “If I am correct that the category “western esotericism” is at bottom an imaginal construct, developed by the Grand Polemical Narrative of western culture as the “other” against which it defines its own ideal identity; if, furthermore, monotheism and rationalism are accepted as the major pillars of this identity; and if, finally, both are characterized by the trouble they have with images; then it may not be too far-fetched to see a positive secondary response to the power of images [that is, decide that we “should…use their power to our advantage” – DG] as a major characteristic of western esotericism” (131). The reasons for placing this or that phenomenon in this realm of “other” could vary, but the underlying favor towards images remained the same in all such phenomena. No doubt, though Hanegraaff doesn’t state it, his categorization in fact mirrors polemical accusations of all things “occult”, “magical”, “superstitious” or “esoteric”, that they in fact constitute “paganism”, that is a “false” religion worshipping “the creation” rather than the “Creator”.
So, “paganism” is central to Hanegraaff’s Western Esotericism as such. It is a “battling concept” devised by opponents of images and cosmotheism (in any disguise, even Christian) for “othering” undesirable elements of culture. The story of how it came to form the fiels of Western Esotericism, Hanegraaff sketches in his 2012 monograph.
“Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture” (2012)
The story Hanegraaff tells in “Esotericism and the Academy” is exactly the story of othering and construction: as certain cultural phenomena were first embraced and developed, and then rejected by intellectual elites of the western world from 15th to 20th century, a new field of Western Esotericism came into being. It is both a field of academic study (and in that capacity in interest Hanegraaff the most) and a partially self-conscious field of pursuit “out there”.
The story begins, predictably, in XVth century Italy, where Renaissance humanists started to translate and comment on a corpus of ancient literature, which, as they thought, contained prisca theologia – an exposition of perennial religious truth which corroborated Christian doctrine, but at the same time legitimized some elements of imagined Pagan worship, including magic, different sorts of astrology, theurgy and a limited reverence for pagan gods, now understood as aspects of nature. Corpus Heremeticum, Orphic hymns, Chaldean Oracles and writings of Plato and Neo-Platonists were of a special significance in this “Ancient Wisdom Narrative”. While most of the proponents of this Narrative self-identified as Christians, one of their inspirers, who is largely responsible for bringing Classical learning to the West was George Gemistus Plethon, who wrote treatises arguing for the return to a sort of reformed Hellenic polytheism. Though Hanegraaff doesn’t make a big deal of it, Pletho is actually the starting point both for his “historiography of Western Esotericism” and modern Paganism, or Neo-Paganism:
“…one might say that with Plethon, the pagan cat was out of the bag. His case shows that once the basic textual sources of the platonic tradition became available to a Christian culture where the need for religious reform was widely felt, paganism became a religious option in theory at least” (39).
Moreover, focus on pagan literature also defined the obsession of Esotericism by secrecy and hidden message: “Such concerns were already implied by the very concept that Christian truths lay concealed under the surface of ancient pagan myths and philosophies, but could be uncovered by means of allegorical or symbolical exegesis”, though they were energized with Pico introducing Kabbala to the “ancient wisdom narrative” (66).
Hanegraaf then quotes the famous fragment from Mutianus Rufus, first sorted out as significant by Wilhelm Diltey and found in Vivianne Crowley (as a passage legitimizing duotheism of Wicca):
“There is one God and one Goddess. But as there are many divinities [numina] there are likewise many names [nomina]: Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses, Christus, Luna, Ceres, Proserpina, Tellus, Maria. But take care not to say that out loud. Such things must be kept hidden in silence like the mysteries of the Eleusinian goddesses”.
and comments: “Reading such a passage, one realizes that the Pandora’s box of paganism was now wide open” (68).
Considering the role of Renaissance “Platonic Orientalism” as basis of Western Esotericism, Hanegraaff emphasizes that “Western esotericism is ultimately grounded in a historiographical concept, rather than in a common philosophical or religious worldview, a specific approach to knowledge, or a “form of thought””. (73) This historiography comprises such pre-Classical authorities as Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus, which are (naturally, as traditions attributed to them are late antique constructs) viewed through the eyes of Pagan Greeks, and Pagan Classics itself as the main referential body of prisca theologia.
If re-imagined “pious” paganism of the ancients as prisca theologia was essential for the apologetic narrative of Renaissance which gave rise to Western esotericism, the anti-pagan polemics was crucial in the formation of the antagonist narrative. The Christian “anti-apologetic” reaction of the 17th century wished to cast into the “sea of oblivion” such phenomena as Platonism, Kabbala, Hermeticism, alchemy, astrology, divination and magic, problematic both for Christian orthodoxy and that strand of scientific rationalism which backed it. Hanegraaff shows that the center of rationalist polemics which led to the “othering” of these phenomena lay in the circles of German Lutheran writers of late 17th – mid 18th century (Daniel Ehregott Cohlberg, Jacob Thomasius, Friedrich Christoph Buecher, August Heumann, Jacob Brueckner), who sought to cleanse Christianity of pagan survivals and heretic accretions which were seen as threatening it. It was the Evangelical fight against “the so-called “Platonism of the Fathers”” which “had been slumbering in Christian theology from its very beginning, almost like a kind of latent disease” (94), which “must be counted among the most important factors in the historical process leading towards “modernization”” (95). It was crucial for establishing historical criticism as a method to approach the past, and to construe the rational Christian “we” as opposite to irrational Pagan/Platonic “other”, which became the repository of all error and damnation. This other was usually based on some basic philosophical or metaphysical flaw: an inability to imagine a creatio ex nihilo, and therefore, the heresy of eternity of the world (J. Thomasius, 105); a belief in “spirit of the world” and inner illumination (D. Cohlberg, 111 – 112); emanationism (F. Buecher, 115). Further into the Enlightenment, this polemical “other” was not only deconstructed as false philosophy, but also ridiculed (A. Heumann, 132 – 133) and became totally identified with the polemical realm of “superstition”. The Enlightenment “eclectic method” of writing history of philosophy “changed the rules of the game entirely: it denied any established tradition the right to decide what was and what was not to be considered “philosophy” in the first place, and handed that authority over to the human faculty of rational judgment. Strongly amplified by two centuries of Protestant opposition against the Roman Catholic claim of representing “the” only universal tradition of wisdom, Enlightenment historiography specifically targeted the ancient wisdom narrative and everything that had come to be associated with it, such as the appeal to ancient oriental paganisms and initiatory schools, divinatory systems, demonologies, the kabbalah, the “occult mysteries” claimed by symbolic theology, and the “enthusiastic philosophy” known as theosophy” (136). Interestingly, even Jewish Kabbala (145) came to be understood as paganism, from its close association, in its adopted Christian form with “ancient wisdom narrative”.
Hanegraaff emphasizes that
“As a result of the radical anti-apologetic separation between revelation and reason, late seventeenth-century historiography found itself left with a very large domain of currents and ideas that belonged to neither of the two camps, because they were characterized precisely by syncretic mixtures between the two. Essentially, this third domain represented the continuation of pagan religion concealed as Christianity. With philosophy it shared its pagan foundations, but it differed from philosophy in not being based on reason. With Christianity it shared its religious nature, but it differed from Christianity in that it was false religion, not based on Revelation. In short, it was the non-rational “natural religion” of humanity. It is in this late seventeenth-century, Protestant, anti-apologetic concept of pagan religion concealed as Christianity that we find both the historical origin and the theoretical core of our current concept of “Western esotericism” as a specific domain of research…the very nature of their theoretical concept implied that its representatives were the negative counterpart of both reason and faith, and therefore could not claim to remain a legitimate part of the history of either.” (147)
So this Crypto-Paganism, which was shown in its dependence on non-biblical sources, was the flesh and bone of the future Western Esotericism.
In the end of the book, Hanegraaff asks, whether Western Esotericism exists “out there” or is just a “social construct reflective of more fundamental discursive processes” (368), and, answering it takes the middle ground. Western Esotericism did appear as a product of “othering” a number of phenomena of western culture, but they were “othered” for a reason. And that reason was paganism. The historical fact beyond the polemics around Esotericism is that “an intellectual culture grounded in biblical monotheism and Greek rationality was forced to come to terms with paganism” (369). Then Hanegraaff reiterates what he had already said 5 years before in “Trouble with Images” about cosmotheism. Another “deep structure” of western thought that shaped Western Esotericism, Hanegraaff argues, is gnosis – a direct experiencial knowledge through exstatic states of mind (which in “Trouble with Images” he links especially with contempltation of images) (372). And while “cosmotheism and gnosis” provide only theoretical limits of Western Esotericism as a field of historical research and do not point to a special tradition of “cosmotheism and gnosis” out there, they can explain a variety of phenomena within different cultural contexts. The history of “othering” started from an attempt to “encompass” a pagan other within an ancient wisdom narrative; anti-apologists of the 17th century on the contrary, “orientalized” this narrative in their quest to rid Christianity of pagan contamination; as “other” it became an “alternative option” in the Enlightenment, and the Romantic reaction against Enlightenment saw a massive interest in esotericism as “night side of nature”. Later voices in favour of “re-enchanting the world”, including those of Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade, turned Esotericism “into a positive category that enabled a variety of “inventions of esoteric tradition” during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (374). These developments, “are grounded in the dynamics of monotheistic religion and the appeal to faith and reason: in a few words, cosmotheism and gnosis emerge as alternatives because the divine is held to be separate from the world and inaccessible to human knowledge” (377) – thus, paganism qua constituting part of Esotericism is a fact of mnemohistory of monotheism, and not the historical reality “out there”.
Conclusions
Hanegraaff’s cosmotheism and gnosis, will be, perhaps, be easily recognized by many Modern Pagan theologians as “immanence” and “magic”. Indeed, I believe that Hanegraaff’s mapping of Western Esotericism can tell us as much about the development of those trends, which produced Modern Paganism in the last 150 years.
“Paganism” of which Hanegraaff writes is both a mnemohoistorical and historiographical unit. On one hand, it is a polemical construct created by Christian zealots, eager to purge Christianity of error and heresy, which were seen as sprouting from pagan, non-revelatory “natural religion” of the gentiles. In this sense, it doesn’t exist apart from the zealot discourse and those discourses that accepted their mnemohistorical perspective. Some of these are, remarkably, discourses of certain strands of Neo-Paganism, notably 19th century Druidry with its heavy borrowings from polemical literature (Edward “Celtic” Davies being the iconic example), which “reconstructed” paganism with an object of condemning it, or 20th century Wicca which modeled itself along the polemical narratives of witch hunt. It is especially important that a number of groups which figure in Enlightenment “history of folly”, such as Magi, Egyptian priests, Greek and Roman mystery cults, Gnostics, Cathars and Templars became incorporated into many “sacred histories” of 20th century Pagan traditions, which strongly ties them with mnemohistory of Western Esotericism. However, their mnemohistory also goes other directions, beyond the historiographic traditions associated with “ancient wisdom narrative”, into “paganism” of different sort, discovered in 19 – 20th centuries.
On the other hand, Hanegraaff’s paganism is also a historiographical reality out there. It is those practices, beliefs, presuppositions, approaches and texts that were deliberately or indeliberately adopted by self-professed Christians from their “gentile” environment and thus preserved for future generations and even developed. The quest of Modern Pagans, especially of Reconstructionist denominations, for “things pagan” in the past, and yearning for “pagan authenticity” in case of western culture is very problematic due to the very spectacles through which “paganism” is seen – spectacles borrowed from the Chruch Fathers and Christian apologists. The drive to find out an unblemished paganism “under Christian disguise” is the trait of the Grand Polemical Narrative with its naturalizing zeal.
Whether we view Modern Paganism as just another variant of Western Esotericism, or existing wholly apart of it, or partially belonging to it, we can’t deny, that it was formed much in the same way as Western Esotericism was, if Hanegraaff is right. Though “Modern Paganism” is a field with boundaries as mobile as those of “Western Esotericism”, their histories and mnemohistories are largely much the same – from that point in time, when Plethon, the “first Neo-Pagan” landed in Florence to take part in the Oecumenical Synod and bring Platonism to Italy.
