“Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels”: Western Esotericism, Yoga, and the Discourse of Authenticity
New Approaches to the Study of Esotericism December 3, 2020 Keith E. Cantú
Hardly anyone would doubt that history is full of charlatans. However, the situation becomes much trickier when dichotomies like “real” vs. “fake,” “genuine” vs. “fraudulent,” or “authentic” vs. “inauthentic” become applied not just to individuals or institutions but wholesale to entire objects of study, such as musical genres, regional cuisines, or in our case modern occultists who have...