From the Renaissance to the Modern Age
Routledge, 2001
Back cover:
“This is a truly excellent book. The scholarship is sound and the subject timely, and the style is clear and approachable. The material is well-chosen, well-presented and the argument is convincing.”
Juliette Wood, University of Wales, Cardiff
“This study is extraordinarily learned…accurate in its account of the occult tradition in Western civilization, and it adduces substantial evidence to support its claim that occultism is a significant presence in many aspects of the modern world.”
John Mebane, University of Alabama
Against the widely held view that occult spiritualities are marginal to Western culture, Spirituality and the Occult argues that the esoteric tradition has played a major role in European intellecutal and cultural history. Among the disciplines in which B. J. Gibbons indentifies the influence and continued presence of esoteric mystical movements are:
– medicine
– science
– philosophy
– Freudian and Jungian psychology
– radical political movements
– imaginative literature.
Showing that the esoteric tradition is an unfairly neglected area in Western culture and that much of what we take to be ‘modern’ derives, at least in part, from this tradition, Spirituality and the Occult casts a perspective on intellectual and cultural history in the West that is fresh, intriguing and persuasive.
Blurbs from the Amazon page:
“Spirituality and the Occult is a valuable work of interest to historians, specialists in religious studies, and those interested in the history of ideas…”
Vivianne Crowley, Journal of Contemporary Religion
“… a compelling and evocative picture of the world we have lost…The book is a study in contrasts and as such offers one of the most uncompromising depictions of present-day secularisation to appear in a scholarly work. The Death of Christian Britain is a fine and provoking work, one to excite both admiration and dissent.”
David Voas, Journal of Contemporary Religion
“…this succinct, but rich and wide-ranging work…opens up many new important pathways.’
The Scientific and Medical Network
About the Author (from the Amazon page):
Brian Gibbons is a lecturer in literature and cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University. His main research interests are occult spiritualities andd seventeenth-century English Radicalism. He is the author of Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenism and its Development in England (1998).
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Author: Jan Olof Bengtsson
Spirituality - Arts & Humanities - Europe View all posts by Jan Olof Bengtsson
Jan Olof Bengtsson 