Introduction
In the early 1990s, Western ésotérisme started as an academic subject within the realm of history. With the advent of the 21th century, other than the great bibliographic wealth of research, our field was develop in two facets: a solid specialized journals emerged (Esotérica Journal -1999-2008; Aries Journal –2º epoch–, since 2001; Correspondences Journal –since 2013– and Revista de Historia Melancolía –since 2016); and three large networks of specialists (the North American Association for the Study of Esotericism-ASE, since 2002; the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism-ESSWE, since 2005; and, since 2011, our Latin American Centro de Estudios sobre el Esoterismo Occidental de la UNASUR–CEEO/UNASUR).1
Now, whether the methodological question was worked on with substantive progress by eminent scholars as we shall see, it deserves to be debated further.
Therefore, even though between 1999 and 2003, at the beginning of our research on the history of esotericism in Argentina from its diffusion from Europe2 we approached this subject3 (our discipline was then novel in North America and Europe and unknown to Latin American scholars); two decades later we find it pertinent to point out methodological preventions that every specialist should observe within the realm of this academic subject.
Cultural History of Western Esotericism in Latin America. Academic background of our field: from Warburg-Yates to Faivre-Hanegraaff.
The French historian Antoine Faivre (1934), as well as being the founder, is one of the great scholars in our field. But it is fair to go back further into the beginning of the 20th century and remember the historians who contributed to the precedents of what we now call the history of Western esotericism4.
Art historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929) with his famous lecture in Rome (1912) on the astrological frescoes of Ferrara's Palazzo Schifanoia, was among the first to address a problem hitherto marginal among his colleagues of that time: the history of magic and Renaissance astrology5 [1]. This German researcher also supported these studies academically, founding an Institute in Hamburg where he gathered his disciples, whom were, amongst others: Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001), Fritz Saxl (1890-1948), Raymond Klibansky (1905-2005); Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), Edgar Wind (1900-1971) and Daniel P. Walker (1914-1985). When Warburg died, they published their works6, moved the institute to London7 and addressed the subject of nachleben der Antike in the Renaissance.
In that intellectual and institutional atmosphere, where the history of magic was beginning to be glimpsed as one of the topics of research (thanks to the production of D. P. Walker8 [3]), in 1937, an unknown Englishwoman interested in studying Giordano Bruno broached the subject9. In the following almost five decades, she became the most important Warburgian historian of magic in modern Europe: Frances Yates (1899-1981)10 [2].
With her Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition11, she placed herself at the centre of the debates on what was then called the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century12, her originality being to associate "Renaissance magic" with "revolution"13.
It would be arduous to review the production which, with solid evidence, demolished the Thesis Yates of a Hermetic Tradition to its foundations based on the nachleben of the magic of the ancient Hermes Trismegistus in the Renaissance –which is not even our subject here14. But, regarding Argentina, the warburgian school diffuser was the Argentinian philologist and classicist Héctor Ciocchini (1922-2005) –who visited the Warburg assiduously in the 1960’s15; and the promoter of the academic studies on the cultural history of magic was the Argentinian historian José E. Burucúa (1946) –his disciple, who, between the mid 1980’s and 2004, was chair of Modern History at the University of Buenos Aires and taught the characteristics of the “magic in early-modern Europe”, addressing an aspect of this subject in a specific section of his –at present unavoidable– Lambs and Elephants16.
Burucúa, who translated that Warburg lecture in 1992,17 exalted Warburg as the "...founder of all scientific studies... on the cultural and cognitive meaning of magic in European civilization..."18. And we agree.
Although the two most important intellectuals interested in the history of magic pertaining to the generation of scholars after Warburg were the German historian and folklorist Will E. Peuckert (1895-1969) and the North-american science historian Lynn Thorndike (1882-1965)19, the relative academic isolation in which they carried out their research made it impossible for them to disseminate their contributions (Peuckert remained unknown outside of Germany and Thorndike's meticulous studies were known when they became an authority quoted by Yates). However, the institutionalization of the Warburg and its circle of scholars, helped to give continuity, between 30´ and 80´ of last century, to the academic studies on the “history of magic”.
Thus, it is between those times of hegemony of the Warburg school and the current consolidation of our field that we situate the founding historical milestone of Faivre.
Yates passed away in 198120. But only two years earlier, in 1979, Faivre was awarded the Histoire des courants esotériques dans l'Europe moderne et contemporaine at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes -Sorbonne21 (when the Histoire de l'esotérisme chrétien, which had been in the hands of historian Francois Secret since 1965, was suppressed)22. Faivre remained at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes until 2002, where he was succeeded by French historian Jean-Pierre Brach (1956)23 [5] [7].
The particularity of this chair at the Sorbonne was –and is– its committement to the teaching and research of a specific subject within history: Western esotericism.
Invited by his fellow French historians Pierre Nora (1931) and Jacques Le Goff (1924-2014) to write about his innovative proposal, Faivre published three successive books in 1986, 1992 –where he specified his idea and method– and 1994.24 Western esotericism ranged from the 15th-16th centuries to the present (although its roots could be traced back to the Greco-Roman world) and was made up of a set of currents which, without prejudice to the historical nuances, were linked to magic, astrology, Christian Kabbalah, alchemy, hermetic tradition, Rosicrucian movements, 18th century theosophists, occultism, Freemasonry, 19th century theosophy, Gnosticism and anthroposophy. In their "way of thinking", they shared four elements that made them have an air de famille: a representation based on the intimate analogical linkage of all parts of a cosmos that was represented as interdependent and living, where the principles of correspondence and living nature operated, applicable from the attempt by esotericists to link the world with the hereafter; the practice of mediation and imagination in the relationship man/universe; and seeking the experience of transmutation (transformation) of the world (plus two elements not necessarily present): the erudite practice of finding a concordance between diverse religions and the initiatory transmission of knowledge25.
Since the mid-1990s, Faivre has been specifying the limits of his approach under the heat of understandable critiques (although they deserve more elaboration and, therefore, we will not enter here)26 [4] [6].
But, as the Dutch historian Wouter Hanegraaff (1961) points out –who, at the Universiteit van Amsterdam in 1999 founded the chair Geschiedenis van de hermetische filosofie en verwante stromingen ("History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents", second after the one created at the Sorbonne) and who was President of the ESSWE (2005-2013)– specialists have gone beyond the Yates Thesis.27
Within this framework (post-yatesian and faivrano), dozens of specialists accumulated a large bibliographic wealth, contributing to the development of a discipline that, in 1998, was considered newborn28. If the publication of the Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (nowadays a must)29 was a great advance; as far as Argentina is concerned, since 2007 we have been giving uninterrupted seminars –undergraduate and postgraduate– on the "History of Western Esotericism in Modern Europe" at the University of Buenos Aires, we have founded the Centro de Estudios sobre el Esoterismo Occidental (2011) and the Revista de Historia Melancolía (2016), and published articles and books30.
In synthesis, the Warburgian concept of magic, the pioneering institutionalization of studies at the Warburg Institute and the subsequent boom of academic research promoted by the Yates Thesis, as well as the great historiographic renovation around Western esotericism promoted above all by Faivre, Hanegraaff and Brach from their university chairs31, have brought us here. The Association for the Study of Esotericism, the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism and the Centro de Estudios sobre el Esoterismo Occidental de la UNASUR (as well as our activity in –and from– the University of Buenos Aires), are heirs of the hard work carried out by last century’s generations of scholars.
Cultural history of Western esotericism in Latin America: methodological precautions (from Faivre - Hanegraaff to Pasi - Asprem).
There is historical documentary evidence that demonstrates the very early dissemination to America –from Europe and by crossing the Ocean– of treaties and books whose practices and representations were linked to our subject. Here are two examples of this.
In a record of the books that the Sevillian Luis de Padilla sent from Spain to the Indies in 1603, we read:
…154r: Porta, fisionomia y de yerbas… 159r: los secretos de Leonardo Fierabante.… 8 rs., marsilio ficino de triplici vita,… 163r:… 12 rs, la practica medicinal de paracelso en latin…, 164r: poligrafia de juan tritemio… 165v: Theofastri Paraselsi Medicini compendium,… Juanes Piçi cabalistarum dosmata…32
Texts by (or attributed to) alchemists Leonardo Fioravanti (1517-1588), Giovanni Battista della Porta (1515-1635) and Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim –Paracelsus– (1493-1541), the magicians Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516) and the Christian cabalist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) were exponents of what we call "western esotericism".
In 1631, the young John Winthrop Jr. (1606-1676) –who became the first governor of Connecticut and later joined the Royal Society33 – immigrated to the English colonial territories in North America. Interested in alchemy, he brought with him from England his magnificent library (which in the succeeding years became hundreds of volumes)34. Among these we not only find –again– texts by Fioravanti35 and Porta36, but also, by the astrologer Gerolamo Cardano (1501-1576)37, the magicians John Dee (1527-1609?)38 and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535)39 and seventeenth-century authors: Johann Andreas (1586-1654)40, Michael Maier (1568-1622)41, and Elias Ashmole (1617-1692).42
We have already pointed out that, from a geographical point of view, it is clear that "western esotericism" includes Europe, North America and, in its own right, the regions that make up what we call Latin America today43. But, from a historical perspective, this documentary evidence allows us to observe the gradual diffusion of European esotericism towards American societies since the beginning of the colonial period (a process that continued in the following centuries, even during the period of independence)44. At this point, recalling the pertinent observations of our Italian colleague Marco Pasi (1968) on the two ways in which to approach our subject historically (as a particular phenomenon of a specific period –which then spreads; or as a manifestation of an aspect of human behavior which is observed in diverse cultures within a broad temporal and geographical spectrum)45; we think that inthe practices and representations of the original populations of America before 1492 cannot be approached with Faivre's academic construct46.
Therefore, the "History of esotericism in America" and, in that framework, the "History of esotericism in Latin America", are delineated as the specific academic subject of the "History of Western esotericism".47
But what are the methodological preventions when we approach this subject?
In his founding texts, Faivre strictly defended the historical approach to sources. He specified that if Western esotericism was an academic object of research, it was so on condition of observing a strict secular attitude and a rigorous empirical method, circumscribing the inquiry to the development of human actions in history: that “methodological agnosticism”, without wondering about supposed subjects related to the méta-empirique was fundamental48, the specialists having to: 1) taxatively separate the studies on esotericism from the esoteric praxis; 2), not to integrate into their analyses metaphysical questions that cannot be verified49.
The one who took up the methodological contributions since the mid-1990s was the aforementioned Hanegraaff with three landmark texts.
In 1995, he stressed that, without prejudice to personal beliefs (or in their absence), of the "specialists in so far as they are specialists" of our area, the existence -or non-existence- of sacred, metaphysical or divine realities is beyond any empirical observation. Thus, studies should be limited to what can be historically verified (through the description, the analysis or explanation of esoteric beliefs, without assessing whether they are correct or wrong, real or not)50. In 1998, he emphasized that the Faivre´s proposal was strictly a “scholarly construct” to avoid pro or anti esoteric visions; a perspective that, solidly grounded in empirical research, differed from the approaches that sought to include sources as a vehicle to express their own spiritual beliefs or supposed meta-historical truths51.In 1999, he specifically pointed out that our academic subject is not a "history of religion" –in the sense of the search for the sacred, since the latter is not supported by transhistorical categories52.
Now, after those seminal contributions, in an article –published in two parts in 2002 and 2003– and in his book –of 2007–, the North American Arthur Versluis (1959) of Michigan State University and founder and the President of the afore mentioned ASE, he proposed a methodology defined as "sympathetic empiricism".
Based on the knowledge that historiographic practice and the accumulation of historical information were not sufficient to understand the nature of "thought, traditions, and above all, esoteric experiences", he proposed alternating etic approaches (based on the standards of scientific objectivity and the historical method) with emic approaches (anchored in "some degree of imaginative participation, from within"). This "sympathetic empiricism" then consisted of "going and going back" to the object of study, with the aim of avoiding both "reductionist ignorance" and "antiesoteric hostility" (which, he claimed, underlay the narrowly etic approaches) as well as the "apologetic" stance (which inevitably arose in the strictly emic perspective). He stressed that this was the position between historiographic objectivation and phenomenological subjectivation, since, in order to understand esotericism "completely", the scholar had to analyze historical sources and experience by himself (“undergo oneself”) the esoteric experiences described in the texts. With that experience, one had to enter "those other dimensions of consciousness" that the mere erudite study of sources could not address.53.
Since 2012 Hanegraaff's meticulous replicas of that method have emerged. He qualified as “occultist scholarship” the methodological proposal that combines personal beliefs with the historical approach to the sources, since it raises a priori the existence of "two parallel planes of reality" and assumes that the meaning of the term esotericism refers to an inner spiritual dimension hidden under exoteric traditions (thus placing itself between "esoteric religiosity" and "historical research")54. He critically reviewed the production of Carl Jung (1875-1961) and the referents of the "Circle of Éranos" (1933-1988)55 [8], labeling their methds of "religionism", in the sense that their ultimate objectives (not always explicit) were to explore historical sources in search of what was presumed to be eternal and universal56. He observed that they were presented as historical approaches, but the reference of the beliefs studied was not inscribed within the domain of human culture and society, but in the direct and immediate personal experience of the Divine57. He especially criticized Eliade, Corbin and Sholem (who dealt with the magical and the hidden in some of his texts), to emphasize that, behind their historiographic projects, underlying a normative one, whose aim was to demonstrate that myth and mysticism were better than legalism and the doctrines of exoteric Jewish and Islamic religions58. He emphasized that these normative judgments could not be based on historical evidence, since, in the sources, the historian does not discover any truth, but conflicting discourses on such truths. Therefore, when the scholar abandoned "methodological agnosticism" and adopted a position in favor of one of these discourses, it started from a philosophical or theological a priori59, which implied an essentialist position (a belief, not a fact of history), replacing the historical approach with a metaphysical one. The study of esotericism thus became a crypto-theological activity that felt free to pass the limit of history in pursuit of a "superior knowledge" that would hide in the deep levels of the supposed reality60. But since this metaphysical "truth" can never be found in history, it will never be discovered by the "historian as historian"61.
In 2013, Hanegraaff linked Versluis62 to that controversial method and, in 2016, emphasized that "religionism and historicism" were "in deep conflict”:
…religionism assigns only secondary importance to precisely those kinds of questions that are most central to the work of historians, such as how or why specific currents, ideas, or practices that we nowadays categorize as “esotericism” have emerged as new formations out of specific historical factors and backgrounds, or how they have developed or were transformed under ever-changing historical and social contexts and circumstances. Instead of focusing on creativity and innovation, religionism seeks to demonstrate the enduring presence, regardless of context, of one and the same universal worldview or spiritual reality … In sharp contrast, a historicist perspective does not start from any presumed metaphysical reality “up there” but from the enormous variety of historical sources and observable realities that are empirically present in the world “down here.” Because its focus is on the unique and specific, its interest lies with studying processes of transformation and creative innovation in continuous historical and social flux… Religionism means that scholars are guided by assumptions that are ultimately grounded not in scholarly methds but in personal beliefs, experiences, hopes, or aspirations about the existence of an ultimate spiritual reality that remains forever true and valid regardless of historical change. By contrast, historicism means that one makes no assumptions at all about the existence or nonexistence of an ultimate spiritual reality, but simply concentrates on what one can know for certain: its focus is on the unquestionable empirical presence, in time and space, of a whole range of currents, practices, and ideas that (for historical and ideological reasons that might well be questioned) have been categorized and set apart by labels such as “esotericism,” “the occult,” and so on.63
Now, despite Faivre and Hanegraaff's contributions, some scholars still propose controversial research methds. This is the case of the vice-president of the ASE (and Director of the Department of Religious Studies of the College of Charleston –United States) Lee Irwin (1944?-). In 2017, He proposed to address:
…‘metaphysical’ contents… or thought worlds that references a variety of modes of knowing. Such knowing privileges mind (or perhaps consciousness) and includes intuition, extrasensory perceptions, altered states, and nonordinary experiences that reveal the correspondent links between material and spiritual worlds…64
And, to that end, he proposed searching for "evidence" in “fields of research, as well as a growing body of ethnographic and therapeutic accounts” that he affirmed “strongly supports a historical trajectory”65 [9].
He had already formulated this method before:
The panpsychic perspective on nature as ensouled reflects innumerable morphologies whose contributions to the whole of esotericism only enrich and deepen the potential “convergence of paradigms” that so often contributes to the multilayered nature of esoteric studies.66 … As scholars, we can demonstrate that “esotericism” … reflects the creative expression of human freedom in search of insight and spiritual development. As a field of study, esotericism has no boundaries by either discipline or methodology; in a global context, we have the freedom to consciously explore the morphologies of esotericism within whatever discipline best motivates our research or practice. Panpsychism simply reflects one such key idea; it articulates, in a rudimentary way, cross currents from philosophy, religion, ecology, biology, physics, alchemy, hermeticism, astrology, and magic. In the words of ecological philosopher Henryk Skolimowski, “connectedness and wholeness are essential features for reading the book of nature in a new way.” This applies, I believe, to the study of esotericism as well67.
In 2016, he presented his Lecture "Cartographies of Soul in NDE.: Challenges to Esotericism"68, where he pointed out his “increasing interest in the intersection of paranormal research, transpersonal theory, and esoteric studies liberated from a strictly historical framework”, proposing to "expand" the approach from history towards "contemporary disciplines" ("medicine, parapsychology, literary genres, philosophy, semantics, transpersonal studies, anthropology and comparative religions") and rely on theories of “mind” and “consciousness”, “post-Darwinian biology” (which linked the "paranormal") and “contemporary physics”, in order to access human "potentialities" (their "capacity for transformation and spiritual enlightenment").69
Irwin's personal (intimate) itinerary (and his longing for "spiritual growth" or "knowledge" along with a parallel intellectual approach to native North American religions, Asian and Siberian shamanism, Daoism, Islamic Sufism, and Gnostic or hermetic groups), are not to be criticized. But, in the academic world, historians critically and collectively produce knowledge about the past, based on a method of precise analysis that consists of rigorous, serious and thorough reading of the preserved documentary sources. And this historical knowledge, thus obtained, generally clashes with individual beliefs, personal opinion or faith: our Norwegian colleage Egil Asprem (1984) pointed out recently -and correctly- that, even, the conflict can come to deal with the same historical facts70.
Conclusions
To research the cultural history of esotericism (Western, American or Latin American), we have our own approach, precisions and methodological suggestions developed by Faivre, Hanegraaff, Pasi and Asprem, and dissent tout court with Versluis and Irwin.
During the first decade of the 21st century, we emphasize that the discourse of the historians of esotericism must respect their object. This implies that they should not articulate statements with disqualifications such as those traditionally used by folklorists ("superstition" or "ignorance"); or to echo the psychological-psychiatric discourse which, in certain cases, places the magical and the esoteric among the psychological characteristics inherent to man's thought (inhibiting the possibility of explaining cultural changes in time or in chronologically contemporary socio-cultural systems) and, at worst, directly pathologizes it (of course, it is unthinkable to explain the esoteric in terms of demonologization or demonization, in the same way certain militant discourses from the Christian Churches have been doing for centuries). But, on the other hand, scholars cannot –nor should they– seek to understand or explain their subject in terms of efficacy or truth. Historians must not be esotericists in the exercise of their profession and their research, since esotericism is their academic subject of study, not their dogma of faith71.
Now, within the framework of the debates indicated here, we consider that displacing (or extending or complementing) the interest of historians from the method of analysis of primary sources and understanding esotericism as historical-cultural phenomena constructed from an academic object, to the exploration of an esoteric-phenomenological experience (of the “personal”, the “spiritual”, the “psychic”, the “natural”, the “cosmic”, etc.), is an error that generates, at least, two immediate consequences: 1) it implies assuming an aprioristic, essentialist and dogmatic position in the reading of the documents to go in search of a (supposed) transhistorical or metaphysical truth or reality or a (supposed) superior (or "interior" or "deep") knowledge of reality or of man or nature or the universe (unverifiable topics in the primary sources from which history is nourished and which constitute the raw material of historiographic practice); 2) also it inexorably leads scholars to confuse who they are with their subject of study, thus becoming an esoteric.
Independently of the existence (or not) of their personal beliefs, both in the discourse and in the historiographic praxis on our academic subject, historians must base their method on, strictly, reading sources analytically, elaborating discourses that allow for a later collective critical discussion among scholars in order to contribute to the general knowledge and the development of our field. Therefore, it must move away from any non-academic speculative contamination and be built on a permanent elucidation –in the sense of thinking what one does and knowing what one thinks– of one's own professional activity. This critical and constant self-reflection will allow the elaboration of knowledge without losing the thoroughness that this passionate object of history demands.
Within the academic world, in synthesis:
1. We are historians and our reference point for study is only the past.
2. Our method is to read preserved documentary sources72 [10] in order to achieve a rigorous and serious understanding, description, analysis and explanation of the enormous complexities of the universe of practices, representations, texts and agents related to the history of esotericism as it was shaped as an academic object –without losing sight of its links with other dimensions of history (economy, politics, society, culture, religion, etc.), attending to its transformations in time and avoiding arbitrary generalizations73.
3. We are not esotericists and our study reference is not "truth", nor "nature" or human "mind and consciousness" or "cosmos".
4. Nor do we integrate our method with "personal experiences" to explore (supposed) "phenomenologies" of the "esoteric" in search of (conjectured) "truths" (or “realities” or “essences”), be they natural, psychic, trans-historical (or a-historical), cosmic, metaphysical, theological or spiritual.
Scholars who seek to travel these (presumed) paths will have merged with their object of study, thus ceasing to be historians of esotericism to become esotericists themselves. At that very moment, their discourses (written or oral) will constitute our new primary sources with which historians will eventually be able to study the edges of the history of contemporary esotericism.