3 papers in the library · 15 citations · publishing 2019-2025
Open Secrets September 4, 2025 Christine J. Ferguson
Abstract This chapter examines the significance of the new journalism both for the dissemination of new religious and esoteric beliefs, and for the textual poetics and visionary techniques of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century occultism. Through the work of W. T. Stead, Hannen Swaffer, Arthur Machen, and Charles Fort we trace the emergence of “journoccultism,” a mode which describes...
Aries August 3, 2021 Christine J. Ferguson 2 citations
Abstract Over the last decade, esotericism studies has witnessed a distinct literary turn, as more and more of the field’s primarily religious studies-based researchers have recognized the value, and indeed, centrality, of imaginative literature to the transmission of occult and new religious ideas. Although welcome, this impetus has sometimes taken an anti-aesthetic shape, reducing the texts...
November 11, 2019 Christine J. Ferguson 13 citations
This chapter examines the historical rise, spiritual stakes, and literary impact of esoteric movements and new religions across the Victorian era. Encouraged rather than suppressed by secularization, syncretic belief systems such as Modern Spiritualism and Theosophy allowed spiritual seekers to forge newly personalized, and often wildly exotic, relationships with the numinous world; they also...