Arcana Naturae is an annual journal published by Agorà & Co (Italy), that follows a double-blind peer review process. It deals with all “secret” disciplines, namely magic, astrology, alchemy, illusionism, divination, etc. In particular, the journal welcomes papers devoted to the historical study of fundamental notions of those disciplines, such as “secret”, “occult” or “wonder”. Arcana Naturae publishes original research contributions, as well as documented essays on specific points. The journal also publishes editions and critical commented translations, critical reviews, and book reviews ; the official working languages are French, English and Italian. Arcana Naturae is directed by Donato Verardi (University of London) assisted by Thibault Rioult (École Nationale Supérieure of Paris), with the support of the Association Francophone pour l'Étude Universitaire des Courants Ésotériques (FRÉSO).

New esotericism-related Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Kollegforschungsgruppe) at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany): call for applications

The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) has recently approved the foundation of a Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Kollegforschungsgruppe) on the topic ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’ at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. The Centre’s main goal is to compare the interpretation, rationalisation and legimitisation strategies of esoteric practices from a global perspective, and to carve out why they are successful in different cultural and regional contexts. A mid-term goal is the development of a cultural theory of esoteric practices, which seeks to explain their resilience, their typological similarities across a large number of cases, and their different, culture-bound evaluations. The research group adopts a heuristic working definition of ‘esoteric practices’, which includes a variety of aspects such as contingency management, specialisation, opaque efficacy as well as social dynamics of inclusion and exclusion.

DFG-funded Centres for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences are interdisciplinary research groups with an excellent international reputation. They have a funding period of four years, with the possibility of prolongation for a second funding period, and combine an international fellowship programme with local high-profile research, whereby a large number of leading experts have the possibility to convene and explore an innovative research topic over a long period of time. With a local staff of at least eight employees, and available funding for up to seven fellowships per year, the Centre will be one of the biggest esotericism-focused research projects in the world in the years to come.

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) is seeking to appoint a postdoctoral researcher for the scientific coordination of this research group. The salary is based on the German collective agreement for public servants (TVL), level E14 (100 %). The duration of the position is bound to the approved funding period of four years. The preferred starting date is 1 April 2022. One of the main requirements for the position is fieldwork experience with a focus on esoteric practices in African contexts.

More details on this call for applications can be found here:

https://www.jobs.fau.de/jobs/postdoctoral-researcher-m-w-d-tvl-e14-100-4-years-u99655455/

For further details about the position, please contact Dr. Bernd-Christian Otto: bernd.otto1@gmail.com

The 2021 Summer Newsletter (Vol.12/Summer) is out. Please download it from here: 

https://esswe.org/resources/pdf/newsletter/ESSWE-Newsletter-Vol-12-Summer-2021.pdf

Deadline October 31, 2021

Place: Tagungszentrum Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland

Organisation: Andreas Kilcher, Jonas Stähelin, Chloe Sugden; zgw@ethz.ch (ETH Zürich)

We invite applications for a PhD Workshop from January 20 – 23, 2022 in Ascona, Switzerland. Since the early twentieth century, Ascona has inspired and fostered a variety of alternative cultures of knowledge, art, and living, such as Monte Verità and the Eranos Circle.

This workshop is an interdisciplinary event that brings together graduate students from the fields of history of science and technology, anthropology, history of religions, and art history. The workshop seeks to explore scientific and aesthetic approaches to the occult through manifold lenses, working against familiar disenchantment narratives that scientific reasoning and Enlightenment worldviews alienated modernity from occult practices, the natural world and the divine. For this workshop, the terms "occultism" or "the occult" are viewed in an expanded manner, as an effort to produce and interrogate knowledge of “invisible” realities. Analyses of occultism are thus not restricted to religious traditions, practices and phenomena; they also concern the wider aesthetic and scientific formation and transformation of modernity.

Proposals by PhD students are encouraged to investigate the epistemic tensions and uncertainties arising from scientific and aesthetic explorations of such invisible realities. We also welcome extra- European, global perspectives, and approaches that consider occultism in relation to the gendered nature of scientific and artistic practices in previous centuries.

During the workshop, participants will have the chance to discuss these questions with renowned senior scholars. Excursions to Monte Verità and the Eranos Foundation will also be included in the workshop.

The following keynote speakers will be present:

Professor Christine Ferguson, Chair in English Studies, University of Stirling

Professor Beate Fricke, Chair of Pre- Modern Art History, Institute of Art History, University of Bern

Professor Yossef Schwartz, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual History, Tel Aviv University; currently Visiting Professor, LMU München

Application

Proposals (approx. 300 words) and CV must be submitted by October 31, 2021 to: zgw@ethz.ch. We will accept up to 20 proposals. Accommodation, including breakfast, lunch and coffee breaks will be financed. Participants must fund their own travel expenses to Ascona and dinners (resp. their universities). Please note that there is an option to apply for travel bursaries provided by ESSWE.

Please visit our website for further information.

Organized by:

ESSWE – The European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism
ZGW – Zentrum für Geschichte des Wissens (ETH / UZH)
Chair for Literature and Cultural Studies of ETH Zurich as
part of the SNSF project “Scientification and Aestheticization
of ‘Esotericism’ in the long 19th century”.

According to a long‐standing belief, exceptional life‐changing experiences are beyond the individual’s control—they ‘simply happen.’ However, individuals actively search for transformative experiences, inducing consciousness‐alterations through practices and reflecting critically on the long process as ‘experientialist philosophers.’ The conference will devote itself primarily to theoretical questions involving these intentional practices that result in actively induced experiential states. As such, the aim is to add to our understanding of intentional transformative experiences.

For a detailed schedule, please download the below PDF: 

intentional_transformative_experiences_flyer_.pdf

The East Asian cultural sphere has figured prominently in recent collections of research on new religious movements (e.g. Pokorny and Winter 2018, Clart, Ownby and Wang 2020), Theosophy (e.g. Rudbog and Sand 2020, Krämer and Strube 2020) and global therapeutic cultures (e.g. Nehring et al. 2020, Harrington 2008), while it continues to attract the attention of scholars working on civil society (e.g. Read and Pekkanen 2009) and self-help movements (e.g. Cliff et al. 2017, Palmer 2007).

But, although we are often aware of the complex entanglements between these seemingly separate areas of interest, we seldom have the opportunity to discuss such entanglements in and beyond East Asia.

At the same time, in the last twenty years, significant scholarship has been published in East Asia on this topic (recent books include Yoshinaga et al. 2019, Ichiyanagi 2020, Imura and Hamano 2021 in Japan, Zheng 2018, Zhang 2020 in China and Cheon Myeong-soo 2009, Park Seung-gil et al. 2019 in South Korea).

This conference aims to offer such a chance by inviting academic contributions to reflect on the intertwined relationship between spirituality, healthcare and social movements in East Asia from a trans-national/local/cultural perspective. As a time of unprecedented changes and accelerated global interactions, our focus lies on the period between the nineteenth to the twentieth-first centuries.

For more information please click here:

https://eanase.com/1st-eanase-conference/

RUSSIAN INSTITUTE OF THEATRE ARTS – GITIS,

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE

ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF ESOTERICISM AND MYSTICISM

12th international conference

Mystical and Esoteric Teachings in Theory and Practice:

Esotericism in Philosophy, Literature, and Art

February 3 – 5, 2022

Moscow

First Call for Papers

Esoteric doctrines existed throughout history, but they were especially prominent during the collapse of established and creation of new systems of spiritual values reflecting a desire to reform daily life, social structure, and paradigms of knowledge. Historical periods that were full of creativity were also marked by a turn to mysticism and esotericism.

Art is not limited by logic. It receives inspiration from many sources, including mysticism, magic, sacred rituals. European theater begins with a cult of Dionysus and Eleusinian Mysteries. Poetry is close to ancient hymns and spells. Music, dance, singing were parts of esoteric practices. Drawing developed in part because of a belief that images can affect animals. History of architecture is also full of unsolved mysteries. Literature incorporated sacred knowledge of Gnosticism, hermeticism, and other esoteric currents. Esotericism is present in esthetics of Romanticism, Modernism, and Postmodernism. In the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries cinema, TV, and the Internet became new mediums for esoteric ideas. Intersections between philosophy and esotericism are also deep and worth of exploration.

The goal of the conference is to explicate mystical and esoteric elements in literature and art, to reflect on previously neglected new aspects in the history of the “secret knowledge,” to discuss possible implications of the study of esotericism to art history and literary history, to analyze social and psychological reasons for the popularity of movies, TV-shows, and literature about witches, vampires, magicians, and so on.

We invite art historians, scholars interested in the history of literature, philosophers, historians, culturologists, specialists in religious studies, psychologists, sociologists, and scholars of esotericism.

Conference will take place in dual format (online and offline).

Suggested topics:

• intersections between languages of poetry and magic;
• alchemical and philosophical reflections in literature and art;
• Freemasonry in literature and art;
• esoteric metalanguage and traditions in literature and art;
• mysteries and the origins of theatre arts;
• magical codes of musical harmony;
• Theosophic and Anthroposophical influence in literature and art;
• historical transformations of esoteric art;
• mystical and esoteric images in contemporary art;
• philosophical analysis of esoteric tendencies in literature and art;
• postmodernism and occultism;
• esotericism in cinema and television.

Languages of the conference: Russian and English.

Applications should be sent to esoterra.asem@gmail.com. Deadline for participants from Russia is December 25, 2021. Deadline for international participants is November 30, 2021. An application should be filled in Russian and English for participants presenting in Russian and in English for participants presenting in English.

1. Full name
2. Degree
3. City and country
4. Affiliation
5. Position
6. E-mail
7. Do you need an official invitation?
8. Do you need a certificate of participation?
9. Do you need a projector?
10. Title
11. Summary
12. Language
13. A photo up to 2 Mb in size

An organizing committee will make a decision concerning an application in a week after its submission. The decision will be communicated to an applicant via e-mail. The organizing committee reserves a right to reject an application. Unfortunately, we cannot provide written reviews for applicants whose applications were rejected.

A program of the conference will be prepared and distributed by the beginning of the conference.

We are planning to publish a collection of conference papers. Participants can submit papers up to 25.000 characters before March 5, 2022. Author guidelines will be distributed after the conference among the speakers.

The organizing committee does not provide funding for conference participants.

If you have any questions, please, e-mail to esoterra.asem@gmail.com.

The conference will take place at Russian Institute of Theatre Arts – GITIS. Address: Moscow, Maly Kislovsky Lane, 6 (map: https://gitis.net/en/contacts/).

Organizing committee:

Dr. V. I. Krasikov (Russia, Moscow)

Dr. E. V. Shakhmatova (Russia, Moscow)

Dr. A. L. Yastrebov (Russia, Moscow)

Dr. S. V. Pakhomov (Russia, Saint Petersburg)

Dr. D. D. Galtsin (Russia, Saint Petersburg)

Dr. S. Panin (USA, Houston)

Dr. Prof. B. Menzel (Germany, Karlsruhe – Meinz)

Internationale Tagung des Forschungszentrums Gotha in Kooperation mit der Erhard-Weigel-Gesellschaft e.V.,organisiert von Martin Mulsow und Stefan Kratochwil

Der Jenaer Naturwissenschaftler und Universalgelehrte Erhard Weigel (1625-1699) ist als Metaphysiker und Lehrer von Leibniz bekannt, auch als Erfinder und Mathematiker. Bisher kaum erforscht ist hingegen seine Beschäftigung mit hermetischen und esoterischen Wissenschaften wie der Astrologie, der Alchemie oder der Iatromathematik. Welche Quellen benutzte Weigel dabei und welche Rolle spielte das intellektuelle Umfeld der Universität Jena? Wie ist Weigels „Pythagoreische Gesellschaft“ im Licht der esoterischen Wissenschaften zu verstehen? Die Tagung möchte solche Fragen beantworten und die Weigel-Forschung mit der Forschung zum „Western Esotericism“ zusammenführen.

Vorschläge für Referate werden mit Kurzexposé und CV bis zum 1.7. erbeten an

martin.mulsow@uni-erfurt.de

Edited by: Yves Mühlematter and Helmut Zander

The historiographers of religious studies have written the history of this discipline primarily as a rationalization of ideological, most prominently theological and phenomenological ideas: first through the establishment of comparative, philological and sociological methods and secondly through the demand for intentional neutrality. This interpretation caused important roots in occult-esoteric traditions to be repressed.

This process of “purification” (Latour) is not to be equated with the origin of the academic studies. De facto, the elimination of idealistic theories took time and only happened later. One example concerning the early entanglement is Tibetology, where many researchers and respected chair holders were influenced by theosophical ideas or were even members of the Theosophical Society. Similarly, the emergence of comparatistics cannot be understood without taking into account perennialist ideas of esoteric provenance, which hold that all religions have a common origin.

In this perspective, it is not only the history of religious studies which must be revisited, but also the partial shaping of religious studies by these traditions, insofar as it saw itself as a counter-model to occult ideas.

To download please visit the publisher's website:

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110664270/html

Aesthetic and Scientific Epistemologies of the Occult in the XIX Century

ETH Online Lecture Series, Spring 2021

We invite you to the Spring 2021 edition of our ongoing lecture series, as we continue our enquiry into aesthetic and scientific epistemologies of the occult during the long nineteenth century. On Tuesday evenings in May, through our second online series, we present approaches to the subject that combine methodologies drawn from art history, religious studies, media theory, anthropology and science studies. In our first lecture, anthropologist, Ehler Voss will take a look at the opposing views of two Californian magicians by relating them to nineteenth-century debates surrounding the credibility of magical practices. In the second lecture, with an approach similarly grounded in religious anthropology, Erin Yerby will investigate the role of the body as medium in the American Spiritualist tradition, which she contextualizes within broader Protestant-inflected iconoclastic tradition. In our third lecture, art historian, Victoria Ferentinou will explore the influence of esoteric discourses on artistic theory and practice of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her focus will be on the painting and theory of the Greek symbolist, Frixos Aristeus (1879-1951). Finally, in the fourth lecture, historian of religion, Marco Pasi will consider the presence of occult-related themes in the oeuvre of the late contemporary artist, Chiara Fumai (1978-2017).

Please register by mail at sekretariat@lit.gess.ethz.ch

Registration is mandatory for participants.

Event website: lit.ethz.ch/occultism

Program:

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Prof. Dr. Ehler Voss, University of Bremen

“Magic Tipping Points. On Deceptions and Detections.”

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Dr. Erin Yerby, Rice University

“The Body as Spectral Shape: Spiritualist Mediumship and Anglo-American Iconoclasm.”

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Prof. Dr. Victoria Ferentinou, University of Ioannina

“‘Colours are Things’: The Visionary Art of Frixos Aristeus.”

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Prof. Dr. Marco Pasi, University of Amsterdam

“‘Witchcraft with Capital W’: The Magical Art of Chiara Fumai.”

The lecture series is organized by Chloë Sugden, Jonas Stähelin and Andreas Kilcher as part of the SNSF project "Scientification and Aestheticization of 'Esotericism' in the long 19th century".