CALL FOR PAPERS

ART, ESOTERICISM AND THE ECOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

Association for Art History Annual Conference

9 – 11 April 2025

York

Session Abstract

When the art, visual culture, and creative practices of the ecological imagination are informed by esotericism, they reveal rejected knowledge and recover enchanted relationships. In recent years scholarship has expanded significantly in the fields of art and ecology, and art and esotericism, but intersections between all three categories remain underexplored.

Egil Asprem and Kennet Granholm have noted one of the analytically most powerful capabilities of the concept of the esoteric is its ability to shine light on the ‘betwixt and between’ and phenomena that transgress seemingly impermeable borders. Esoteric thinking resists boundaries, linearities of time and progress, and conformity to anthropocentrism. Esotericism has long held the imagination as an important faculty to transcend the mundane and the human, the everyday and the present. Similarly, environmental philosophers have evoked the imagination to negotiate and conceive, simulate and project increasingly complex world systems. As Diana Villanueva-Romero, Lorraine Kerslake and Carmen Flys-Junquera have demonstrated, artworks promote environmental awareness through the exercise of imaginative processes, paving the way for encounters of affective knowledge between us and ‘other’ - the ‘more-than-human’. With the creative potential and possibilities of these mutual imaginative forces - both esoteric and ecological - artists explore alternative entanglements with the natural and supernatural, visualising the interconnectivity and reciprocity between planes, scales and beings.

What are the visual manifestations and wider implications of the ecological imagination when it unites with esotericism? How are alternative entanglements conceived, envisioned and given form? This session invites papers to investigate the intersections of art, esotericism and ecology in their broadest sense, including transhistorical and global perspectives. In addition to academic papers, we welcome interdisciplinary approaches and other presentation formats from artists, ecologists and esoteric practitioners.

Session Convenors

Michelle Foot, University of Edinburgh, Michelle.Foot@ed.ac.uk

Natasha V. Moody, University of Plymouth / Research Network for the Study of Esoteric Practices, natashavmoody@gmail.com

To offer a paper:

Please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenors, details above.

Provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper (or alternative presentation format), your name and institutional affiliation (if any).

Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because the title is what appears online, in social media and in the digital programme.

Deadline for submissions: 1 November 2024

CALL FOR PAPERS

ESSWE10

The 10 th Biennial Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism

ESOTERICISM AND RATIONALITY

Vilnius University, Lithuania, June 26-28, 2025

To propose an abstract visit: www.esswe10.lt

The emergence of esotericism as an academic field has led scholars to reassess the simplistic ways in which it used to be treated by previous generations of historians, while questioning the cultural assumptions that informed traditional approaches to research. Central to this reassessment is the debate on rationality, which has traditionally positioned esotericism as in some way “irrational.” This conference will therefore be focused on exploring the complex relationship between esotericism and rationality.

The study of esotericism specifically raises questions about transcending the binary of rationality versus irrationality and questioning established academic norms. These problematics are intimately connected to key theoretical and methodological concerns and to historical, psychological, anthropological as well as multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the field. We hope to foster a comprehensive discussion about the various aspects and manifestations of rationality as they emerge within the multifaceted domain of esotericism, thus encouraging scholars from disciplines such as history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, cultural and art studies, philosophy, political science, education, and others to return to this foundational issue in the field.

Furthermore, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of ESSWE and the 10th ESSWE conference, we extend an invitation to not only reflect on the past research that the study of esotericism has undertaken but also to critically examine its evolution and the diverse methodological paths it has explored over the years. We invite papers that analyze the development of the study of esotericism, consider shifts in scholarly approaches, and explore how these changes have shaped our understanding of esotericism.

Building on the themes mentioned above, this year’s ESSWE conference invites participants to explore and discuss various aspects of esotericism and rationality in the broadest possible sense. Possible topics for discussion include, but are not limited to:

• Concepts and understandings of rationality in global and local, historical and contemporary contexts of esotericism;
• The relationship between rationality and irrationality;
• The disenchantment, secularization, and rationalization of the world;
• Methodological inquiries into the relationship between rationality and esotericism;
• Challenges researchers face in their attempts to explore rationalities in esotericism;
• Alternative and divergent rationalities, scientification, and legitimization strategies within esotericism;
• Text, body, movement, music, space, and other media that embody diverse rationalities;
• Intersections of concepts of rationality with gender, race, colonialism, and other concepts, processes, and issues;
• The development of the study of esotericism.

Organized by:

European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), Lithuanian Esotericism Study Group

(LESG) at Lithuanian Society for the Study of Religions (LSSR), Vilnius University (VU), Vytautas Magnus

University (VMU)

Organisational team:

Adas Diržys, Eglė Aleknaitė-Škarubskė, Milda Ališauskienė, Ina Kiseliova-El Marassy, Aušra Pažėraitė, Vytis

Silius, Deimantas Valančiūnas

Scientific committee:

Eglė Aleknaitė-Škarubskė, Henrik Bogdan, Adas Diržys, Aušra Pažėraitė, Manon Hedenborg White

Contacts for information: conference@seventips.lt, +370 682 28647

ESSWE10

The 10th Biennial Conference of the

European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism

ESOTERICISM AND RATIONALITY

Vilnius University, Lithuania, June 26-28, 2025

The emergence of esotericism as an academic field has led scholars to reassess the simplistic ways in which it used to be treated by previous generations of historians, while questioning the cultural assumptions that informed traditional approaches to research. Central to this reassessment is the debate on rationality, which has traditionally positioned esotericism as in some way “irrational.” This conference will therefore be focused on exploring the complex relationship between esotericism and rationality.

The study of esotericism specifically raises questions about transcending the binary of rationality versus irrationality and questioning established academic norms. These problematics are intimately connected to key theoretical and methodological concerns and to historical, psychological, anthropological as well as multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the field. We hope to foster a comprehensive discussion about the various aspects and manifestations of rationality as they emerge within the multifaceted domain of esotericism, thus encouraging scholars from disciplines such as history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, cultural and art studies, philosophy, political science, education, and others to return to this foundational issue in the field.

Furthermore, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of ESSWE and the 10th ESSWE conference, we extend an invitation to not only reflect on the past research that the study of esotericism has undertaken but also to critically examine its evolution and the diverse methodological paths it has explored over the years. We invite papers that analyze the development of the study of esotericism, consider shifts in scholarly approaches, and explore how these changes have shaped our understanding of esotericism.

The Call for Papers will be announced soon.

Organized by:

European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), Lithuanian Esotericism Study Group (LESG) at Lithuanian Society for the Study of Religions (LSSR), Vilnius University (VU), Vytautas Magnus University (VMU)

Organisational team:

Adas Diržys, Eglė Aleknaitė-Škarubskė, Milda Ališauskienė, Ina Kiseliova-El Marassy, Aušra Pažėraitė, Vytis Silius, Deimantas Valančiūnas

Scientific committee:

Eglė Aleknaitė-Škarubskė, Henrik Bogdan, Adas Diržys, Aušra Pažėraitė, Manon Hedenborg White

Mitrinović DIgital Library website: https://mitrinovic.unilib.rs/

The "Links to other resources" page is available here: https://esswe.org/page-18100

VLADIMIR STATE UIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION STUDIES

ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF ESOTERICISM AND MYSTICISM

(ASEM)

ХIV Conference with International Participation

Mystical and Esoteric movements in theory and practice:

Religious Practices and “Mystical Experience”

July, 2 – 4 2024

online & offline

Vladimir, Russia

First Information Letter

It would be hard to imagine esotericism and mysticism without their practical component. All mystical and esoteric movements have their practical side, be it ritual, self-suggestion or visualization. These practices may result in what is often called “mystical experience”, which determine the life of those who managed to obtain it. Besides, esoteric and/or mystical practices largely determine the tenets which regulate the life of the adepts.

How does theory and practice relate to each other in mysticism and esotericism? What is the difference between magical and mystical practices both in the West and in the East? Does practice constitute the core of esotericism? Is it possible to have esotericism with no practical side whatsoever? What are the consequences of the received “mystical experience”? Al these questions require rigorous study and its results are to be discussed at the present conference.

Participation in the colloquium may be of interest to anthropologists, literary scholars, philosophers, historians, scholars in the fields of culture and religion studies, psychologists, sociologists, and, of course, scholars of esotericism.

The range of topics to be discussed at the conference includes:

• relation of mystical and esoteric, mystical and magical practices;
• study of practical aspects of mystical and esoteric movements;
• practical side of the Eastern and Western mystical and esoteric movements, their similarities and differences;
• religious practices in modern esotericism;
• description of mystical experience and mystical practices in fiction and art;
• religious practices in modern mass culture;
• the influence of practices on the everyday life of the esotericists.

The working languages of the conference are Russian and English. Applications for participation in the conference as speakers (as well as round table organizers) are to be filled in online at https://aiem-asem.org/conferences prior to June, 1, 2024.

The fact of application does not guarantee its acceptance into the program of the conference. The organizing committee may request additional materials from the applicants in order to clarify the whereabouts of the application. The decision regarding each application will be made by the committee during the week following the deadline and will be sent to the applicants via e-mail.

Prior to the start of the conference a program will be sent to the participants with the names of the speakers and the abstracts of their presentations.

The participation fee is due for:

• ASEM members as speakers – 1000 rubles
• non-ASEM members as speakers – 2000 rubles
• ASEM members as listeners – 500 rubles
• non-ASEM members as listeners – 1000 rubles

The fee is not paid by the members of the organizing committee, the conference working group and the administration of Vladimir State University.

The listeners should specify in their applications their names, the form of their participation (online or offline), their place and country of residence, and their Zoom nickname in case of online participation.

Graduate and postgraduate students of Vladimir State University, as well as university staff may attend the conference free of charge.

In order to pay the fees the participants should contact the secretary of the organizing committee in advance before the conference via e-mail esoterra.asem@gmail.com.

The committee favors offline participation at the conference. The number of online participants will be limited and each application for online participation will be considered individually.

The materials presented at the conference will be published as a collective monograph indexed by Russian Science Citation Index. The articles limited to 25000 characters (including blank spaces and notes) will be received after the conference. The prospective authors will be informed about the due date. Participation in the conference as speaker is mandatory for the material to be published.

All travel expenses are to be covered by the participants or their donors.

The organizers may provide consultation in regard to accommodation in Vladimir.

All questions are to be sent to: esoterra.asem@gmail.com

The organizing committee: E. I. Arinin (grand PhD), S. V. Pakhomov

(PhD) – co-chairmen, A. S. Timoschuk (grand PhD), Dr. Prof. N. Radulović

(Beograd), S. A. Zubkov (PhD), D. D. Galtsin (PhD), E. L. Kuzmishin (PhD), S. S.

Petrukhin (secretary).

Conference working group: Yu. V. Sergievskaya, N. L. Mariani.

The address of the conference: Vladimir, Russia, ul. Gor’kogo, d. 87, aud.

211 – 1 (main building).

The e-mail address of the conference: esoterra.asem@gmail.com

This advanced summer programme provides a venue for enthusiasts of ‘othered knowledge’ to take a deep dive into the study of esotericism and the occult. Participants will gather at the University of Amsterdam and join experts at the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, the world’s leading institution for academic research and teaching in esotericism, to broaden their knowledge in a wide variety of topics.

Students will explore important movements in esotericism in the past, as well as how various traditions reverberate in the present. Making use of flexible yet rigorous scholarly frameworks, participants will encounter various traditions (from occultism and alchemy to gnosticism and psychedelic culture), diving into primary texts as well as film, music, and other forms of cultural expression.

Programme website: https://summerschool.uva.nl/content/summer-courses/visions-of-the-occult/visions-of-the-occult.html

Housing and scholarships available

Starts in: July | Duration: 3 weeks | Early admission deadline: 1 February 2024 | Regular admission deadline: 15 March 2024 | Questions? Email: summer-info-gsss@uva.nl

Graduate School of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Summer Programme 2024: 16 June - 28 June

The Psychedelic Universe:

Global Perspectives on Higher Consciousness 

This course provides an in-depth exploration of psychedelic consciousness across space, time, and culture. We start by exploring the use of psychoactive substances in the mystery cults of the ancient world, moving across indigenous societies and the major world religions into the postwar hippie culture and the later boom in ayahuasca tourism, finally culminating in today's “Psychedelic Renaissance”. Join our international community next summer!

Final deadline: 15 March

Apply here: https://summerschool.uva.nl/content/summer-courses/the-psychedelic-universe/the-psychedelic-universe.html

The power of images, diagrams of the beyond, and the dialectic of the visible and the invisible are key aspects of many esoteric currents worldwide. From visual art and moving images inflected with esoteric motifs, to aura and spirit photography or esotericists working with sigils, symbols and cosmograms, images are invested with powers of amplification, transformation, and divination, or used for mapping occult relations. Imagination is central to both esotericism and visual culture. As the faculty of producing images, whether inner or outer, in the mind or unleashed in the world, imagination does more than imitate the world: it transforms it.

Alchemical illustrations, Shingon mandalas, kabbalistic diagrams, I Ching hexagrams, and tarot cards have travelled from esoteric contexts to a broader global visual culture. This intermingling ranges from pop-occultural phenomena to avant-garde art, from TV series to underground film. The relationship is moreover often reciprocal, with said visual culture impacting esoteric practice, meaning that demarcations are far from clear-cut. Esoteric exercises bleed into the visual worlds of avant-garde or popular culture – and vice versa.

Wassily Kandinsky, Etsuko Ichihara, Emma Kunz, Hilma af Klint, Mariko Mori, and Leonora Carrington are but a few examples of figures who have produced visual creations for simultaneously esoteric-spiritual and artistic purposes. Kenneth Anger, Marjorie Cameron, Shinya Tsukamoto, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Jan Švankmajer invest their films with powers of ritual and transmutation. Movies and TV series like Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya depicting esoteric ninja powers have been produced both in Japan and elsewhere, impacting the actual global practice of ninjutsu. Rachel Pollack, Alan Moore, and Grant Morrison have used the visual medium of comics to conjure forth the otherworld, declaring themselves actual magicians and diviners.

In many, arguably most, of these contexts, the visual works complicate and deconstruct essentialist notions of “Eastern” and “Western” esotericism as separate phenomena. The conference will approach its topic broadly, and from an inter-disciplinary angle. Presentations on globally entangled dimensions of esotericism and visual culture are especially welcome (but not a mandatory perspective).

Please send a 200-word abstract, and academic affiliation, by April 4 to:

esotericism.and.visual.culture@gmail.com

Notification of acceptance or rejection will be given by mid-April.

The conference will be held at the University of Tokyo, Japan on 5–6 October 2024. The conference fee, not yet determined, will be modest. Presenters must cover their own travel and accommodation expenses.

Conference organizers:

Per Faxneld, Associate Professor, Study of Religions, Södertörn University.

Kristoffer Noheden, Research Fellow, Cinema Studies, Stockholm University.

In cooperation with The East Asian Network for the Academic Study of Esotericism

In conjunction with the SNASWE 1 conference, SNASWE hosts the first PhD-seminar for PhDs working on esotericism and/or occulture in or about the Nordic countries. The idea is for PhD candidates to share research, receive feedback and get to know each other. Participation consists of submitting a draft chapter or similar and give a 20 min presentation as well as reading the works of others to give feedback. The PhD seminar is Wednesday, 23 October 2024, at The University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

PhD candidates and their supervisors are urged to send Tim Rudbøg timrudboeg@hum.ku.dk Manon Hedenborg White manon.hedenborg-white@mau.se and Tiina Mahlamäki tituma@utu.fi an email Thursday 21 March 2024.

SNASWE 1

A Tide of Ghosts:

Esotericism and Art beyond Fact and Fiction

A two-day multidisciplinary conference exploring how the use of fictionings, in various entanglements of art, politics, and esotericism, bleeds into the real and how the two relate, if they ever are truly separate. To be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, 23-25 October, 2024.

A Tide of Ghosts explores the coastal areas of planetary occulture and esotericism where that which has been submerged rises again. The hallucinatory horizon, separating sea from sky, the ghosts from the living, is as thinly defined as the borders between imagination and reality. The tide simultaneously covers and reveals a topography where art, politics and the occult are entangled with not only the contemporary, the near future and the near past, but also with the future future and the past past. Esotericism, whether rejected or forgotten, returns as a tide of ghosts to claim its presence. Like coastlines, esotericism represents places of agency and potentialities, fields of possibilities challenging consensual reality, glimpsing what is to come through remnants of what has or could have been, sunken lands and forgotten cities, other ways of living and belonging.

This conference reports back from these shores and their points of contact with an outside. What happens if we switch aesthetic and occult terms for political ones or mix them up? If we treat fictions as if they were real? And what happens when the tide shifts? History has always been used and interpreted in various ways. An undertow of esoteric and occultural movements has pulled at the present to revitalise or re-enchant it since the Rosicrucian manifestos ignited a new mythology and the prisca theologia movement excavated an ancient wisdom that since has inspired dozens of groups and activities.

A jumbled assemblage of associations is Theosophy and the Golden Dawn in the late 19th century, but also symbolism, the suffragettes and mystical utopianism; the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift and the Green Shirts in the 1920s and 1930s but also surrealism and the spectre of communism; anarchism and hippies in the 1960s and 1970s but also the critical aquarianism of people like William S. Burroughs and Octavia Butler and groups like the Process Church and thee Temple of Psychick Youth flooding into music; or the spectrum from a decolonial, feminist witchcraft to a shamanic alt-Right to a revolutionary demonology in both the present and contemporary art; all attempts to break into destiny by learning to transform reality through its representations. In short, by using art, myths and fictions. In other words, by using magic(k) and the belief that reality can be shaped according to will. Waves of occulture bleed into reality to make themselves real.

Confirmed keynotes are Annebella Pollen, professor in Visual and Material Culture at the University of Brighton, and Egil Asprem, professor in the History of Religions at Stockholm University.

To collectively explore these lines of flight alongside our keynotes, we welcome proposals by everyone for a multidisciplinary conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark, 23-25 October, 2024; academics, independent scholars, practitioners, artists, and activists, and not only individual submissions but also collaborations, performances and what have we.

Please send an abstract of a maximum of 300 words or provide a rationale for your proposed activity to timrudboeg@hum.ku.dk and kasper.opstrup@hum.ku.dk by Thursday 21 March, 2024. You will receive a decision no later than 15 April. Links to visual or other visual aids may be included. Please use the subject line: Tide of Ghosts Conference proposal, and also include a short bio of no more than 200 words.

Presentations will be 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions.

The conference marks the first conference of the Scandinavian Network for the Academic Study of Western esotericism SNASWE). It is co-organized by the Novo Nordic funded research project Twisting the Fabric of Space: On the Art and Politics of the Hidden which has Kasper Opstrup as its PI and The Copenhagen Centre for the Study of Theosophy and Esotericism headed by Tim Rudbøg.

NB! In conjunction with the conference SNASWE hosts the first PhD-seminar for PhDs working on esotericism and/or occulture in or about the Nordic countries. The idea is for PhD candidates to share research, receive feedback and get to know each other. Participation consists of submitting a draft chapter or similar and give a 20 min presentation as well as reading the works of others to give feedback. The PhD seminar is Wednesday, 23 October, at UCPH.

PhD candidates and their supervisors are urged to send Tim Rudbøg timrudboeg@hum.ku.dk Manon Hedenborg White manon.hedenborg-white@mau.se and Tiina Mahlamäki tituma@utu.fi an email Thursday 21 March 2024.

Keywords for further inspiration:

Occulture (and its discontents)

Hauntology and pscyhogeography

Fictionings, the problem of fiction and non-fiction

Religionings, Heresies, Prophecies

Mystical Utopianism

Art, Politics and Esotericism

The magical renaissance

Counter-cultures, New Age and Cultures of Protest

Symbolism, surrealism, art and occultism

Occulture and the contemporary arts (art, literature, music, films, etc)

Occult revivals

Contemporary art and the re-appearance of occult and surrealist themes.

Millenarianism

The permanent decolonization of thought

Weird Studies

Atavism and worshipping the old gods (in a One-God-Universe)

Speculative evolution and the post-human

Fictions, facts and reality

Theoryfictions, hyperstitions and the CCRU

Chaos Magick, Theosophy, Golden Dawn, Crowley and related

Psychedelia, mind expansion and ecstasy

Rejected knowledge

William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Ithell Colquehoun, Genesis P-Orridge, Robert Anton Wilson, Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick, JG Ballard, Leonor Fini, Charles Fort, etc.

Speculative Fiction – the gothic, horror, science fiction, fantasy, the new weird – and its role as carriers of ideas and its roots in esoteric tradition

Games, TTRPGS, etc and their relation to the esoteric tradition… make-belief, if-so, world-building and so forth

Magick as another epistemology, expanded consciousness

Blurrings, Hauntings, Challenges to Consensual Reality

Folk Horror, folklore, myth and landscape

Reality shifting