The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction. By NICHOLAS GOODRICK-CLARKE.

Abstract

In this book, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Professor of Western Esotericism at the University of Exeter, offers a historical introduction to Western esoteric traditions which ranges from the ancient Hellenistic sources through the Renaissance to the present day. Following an introduction which discusses the historiography of esotericism, the work is made up of 12 chapters which cover a wide range of practitioners and thinkers—including Paracelsus, Jakob Boehme, Emmanuel Swedenborg, Helena Blavatsky, Carl Gustav Jung, and many more—and an impressive span of movements—including alchemy, Rosicrucianism, theosophy, freemasonry, mesmerism, and spiritualism. It will be apparent that such a project can offer no more than a superficial treatment of any of these persons and themes. The scope of the work and the complexity of the subject matter probably make it inevitable that the book will to some extent present a catalogue of manifestations of esoteric ideas. Goodrick-Clarke takes as his definition of the esoteric the six fundamental characteristics deduced by Antoine Faivre: correspondences or analogies between different levels of being; the cosmos as a living, hierarchical, animated being; the imagination as an ‘organ of the soul’ receiving knowledge through intermediaries such as angels or hypostases; the expectation that knowledge will bring about fundamental change or transmutation; the assertion of concordances between different traditions pointing to a prisca theologia; and the use of rituals of initiation and transmission of knowledge. It will be immediately apparent that there are some overlaps between this definition and orthodox theological thought, in particular mysticism and natural theology. Goodrick-Clarke suggests that mysticism generally seeks direct knowledge of God rather than knowledge through intermediaries (p. 11). The rejection of esoteric traditions by orthodox theologians and later by definers and defenders of rational science such as the Royal Society is identified as one of the factors which drove esoteric thought underground. However, his definition of esotericism leads him to identify German Pietism as ‘receptive to esotericism’ and the source of esoteric influences on Goethe (p. 104), a claim which would almost certainly horrify most Pietists themselves. This illustrates one of the weaknesses of Goodrick-Clarke’s account for the theologian: his failure to engage more explicitly with the complexity of asserting theological orthodoxy, particularly at the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Goodrick-Clarke seems often to be working with a somewhat narrow understanding of ‘orthodox’ Christianity. This is unfortunate, for his account of the spread of esoteric ideas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries indicates clearly the complexity of defining ‘proper’ approaches to the natural world in a period in which new ideas were burgeoning and orthodoxy was shifting and changing.