The political orientation and participation of esoteric groups and movements remain under-researched and restricted by many stereotypes. There is an oversimplifying tendency to classify all esoteric groups as extreme right-wing and proto-fascist or, by contrast, as counter-cultural, left-wing, anti-authoritarian, and progressive. An equally persistent stereotype, often expressed by insiders, is...
My paper maps the most important representatives of the occult and esoteric currents in twentieth century Hungary. Their works and tes- timonies encompass the genesis of modern esotericism in Hungary, but their careers also demonstrate the catastrophic watershed caused by fascism and the Second World War, only to be continued (however mostly secretly) during the communist era. The paper first...