Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Western Esoteric Traditions

A Historical Introduction

Oxford University Press, 2008

Amazon.com

Baksida:

“Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s introduction to the Western esoteric traditions shows the sure hand of an accomplished scholar at his peak. Everything is here, from ancient Alexandria to the present day, with the main schools and personalities, continuities and changes, all clearly drawn. This book has something for everyone. For the beginner, it is an authoritative introduction; for the expert, everything is put surely and clearly in its proper place, and perplexing gaps are filled. Goodrick-Clarke shows quite what the present day is heir to, and how. We see, for example, who Paracelsus and the Rusicrucians once mattered and still do matter – even if the Rosicrucians never really existed. After one reads The Western Esoteric Traditions, nothing will ever again seem quite the same.”

Mark Sedgwick, author of Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century

“In a field so often blighted by dubious claims and speculations, it is a pleasure to find a scholarly guide as responsible and experienced as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, who leads the reader so expertly through the worlds of the occult, magical and esoteric.”

Philip Jenkins, author of Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History

“The cumulative result of decades of serious research is that Western esotericism has finally been recognized as a significant field of study. This new maturity is reflected in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s concise, accessible survey of Western esotericism. Goodrick-Clarke’s volume should prove especially useful as a textbook, both for graduate and undergraduate courses.”

James R. Lewis, editor of The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements and author of Legitimating New Religions

Fram- och bakflapp:

Western esotericism has now emerged as an academic study in its own right, combining spirituality with an empirical observation of the natural world while also relating the humanity to the universe through a harmonious celestial order. This introduction to the Western esoteric traditions offers a concise overview of their historical development.

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke explores these traditions, from their roots in Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism, and Gnosticism in the early Christian era up to their reverberations in today’s scientific paradigms. While the study of Western esotericism is usually confined to the history of ideas, Goodrick-Clarke examines the phenomenon much more broadly. He demonstrates that, far from being a strictly intellectual movement, the spread of esotericism owes a great deal to geopolitics and globalization. In Hellenistic culture, for example, the empire of Alexander the Great, which stretched across Egypt and Western Asia to provinces in India, facilitated a mixing of Eastern and Western cultures. As the Greeks absorbed ideas from Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia, they gave rise to the first esoteric movements.

From the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, post-Reformation spirituality found expression in theosophy, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. Similarly, in the modern era, dissatisfaction with the hegemony of science in Western culture and a lack of faith in traditional Christianity led thinkers like Madame Blavatsky to look East for spiritual inspiration. Goodrick-Clarke further examines Modern esoteric thought in the light of new scientific and medical paradigms along with the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. This book traces the complete history of these movements and is the definitive account of Western esotericism.

Om författaren

JOB:s kommentar:

Alla dessa bristfälliga riktningar och rörelser som, tröttsamt, blev vad de blev, blev så ofullkomliga, skeva och ofta felaktiga som de blev, till helt övervägande del p.g.a. det oavlåtliga trycket från den i stor utsträckning av den världsliga makten som ordningsinstrument etablerade exoabrahamitiska ortodoxins literalistiska dogmatik med dess i andliga och sofiska termer otolkbara myter.

Att bara hela tiden hålla denna enda avgörande omständighet i minnet vid deras studium. Den förutan skulle antingen de österländska traditionerna ha spridits i västerlandet redan under antiken (såsom var på väg att ske), eller motsvarande insikter och praktiker där nåtts fram till dem förutan.

“Global Gazafication”

Att förstå hur atlantsystemet (“väst”, NATO, EU, högern, Zelenskyjjuntan, Tidöjuntan, SD o.s.v.) är på väg att utvecklas.

Intervju av Andrew Napolitano med världens idag främste journalist. Se även hans förra intervju med denne med utgångspunkt i mordet på Charlie Kirk, den utförligare på Dialogue Works, och naturligtvis allt annat om detta på The Grayzone (nättidskriften, YouTube, X) och Blumenthals egen X-profil.

Givetvis är detta inte en konservativ utveckling i någon som helst positiv mening. Ett nytt systemskifte är nödvändigt. Men det finns ingen alternativ höger som erbjuder ett sådant.

Adi Da Samraj: Transcendental Realism

The Image-Art of Egoless Coincidence with Reality Itself

The Dawn Horse Press, 2010 expanded edition (2008)

Amazon.com

Back Cover:

Right and true art egolessly Coincides with Reality (Itself), Truth (Itself), and The Beautiful (Itself).

Adi Da Samraj

It is a rare artist who can convey, convincingly, the sense of being face to face with the source of being. Adi Da can clearly live in the depths without succumbing to their pressure, bringing back pearls of art to prove it.

Donald Kuspit

Critic, Professor of Art History and Philosophy, State University of New York at Stony Brook

I believe that art should always be a surprise. It must create, even in the critic, not emotion, but a sense of insecurity. When one views Adi Da’s art, it is easy to see “pop art”, “op art”, all the possible linguistic, ethnological, and iconographic references but, in the end, the final work is always a surprise. With Adi Da’s work, I did not simply find myself in front of a new personal iconographic universe but rather in front of images that returned me to an experience of “epiphany”.

Achille Bonito Oliva

Critic, Historian, past Director of the Venice Biennale

That Adi Da challenges our culture to return art to its original, sacred purpose without merely recreating a long lost past makes Transcendental Realism a significant work, not only for artists but anyone who senses the limitations of contemporary culture and strives to create a more vivid way of being.

Celia Rabinovitch

Professor, School of Art, University of Manitoba, Author, Surrealism and the Sacred

[Adi Da’s] pursuit of the spiritual paths found in early abstraction, from Kandinsky to Mondrian, and [his] translation of that pursuit into the digital age, restore a transcendental spirituality to the materialism of the machine aesthetic.

Peter Weibel, Director, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe

Alan Watts

Watts har för mig alltid s.a.s. funnits med, ända sedan slutet av 70-talet, representerad av några få böcker, men på något sätt bara i bakgrunden, även om jag alltid varit medveten om hans stora generella och principiella betydelse. Troligen har jag inte gjort den full rättvisa. Men det beror sannolikt på att jag uppfattat honom som alltför ensidigt zen-inriktad.