A Short Overview of Currents

The most important currents of Western esotericism are the following:

• Gnosticism and Hermetism are characteristic products of the culture of Hellenism in late Antiquity. Most of the gnostics believed that the material cosmos was a kind of prison, created to prevent the soul from returning to his divine source. The hermetists (whose name derives from their mythical semi-divine founding father, the “thrice-great” Hermes) were more positive about the cosmos, but like the gnostics they believed that human beings could find their way back to God by means of an intuitive mystical gnosis.
• Astrology, Magic, and Alchemy (the so-called “Occult Sciences”) largely belong to the early history of science, which was not yet strictly separated from religion. In many way they have provided theoretical frameworks for the development of western esoteric worldviews. The same is true of the philosophical currents of Neoplatonism since late Antiquity.
• A collection of fundamental hermetic texts (the Corpus Hermeticum) was rediscovered in the second half of the 15th century, and translated into Latin by the neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino. This resulted in a widespread revival known as Renaissance Hermetism, which has exerted a tremendous cultural influence from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries.
• Since the Middle Ages, a variety of esoteric or mystical traditions developed in the context of Judaism. They are generally known as kabbalah (lit. "tradition"), and have become a major factor in the history of Western esotericism up to the present day
• Likewise since the second half of the 15th century, Jewish mystical and non-mystical traditions were added to the new hermetic/neoplatonic philosophies, resulting in a phenomenon known as Christian Kabbalah.
• The 16th-century physician Paracelsus developed a highly original philosophy of nature with strong alchemical elements, resulting in a tradition of mystically-oriented medicine and chemistry that became important to the scientific revolution as well as to a variety of new religious movements.
• For example, paracelsianism is of central importance to the Rosicrucian Manifestoes that appeared in the early 17th century. The manifestoes are at origin of the esoteric tradition of Rosicrucianism, which has produced many offshoots from the 18th to the 20th century.
• The Silezian cobbler Jacob Böhme produced a mystical philosophy of nature, from which emerged a tradition known as Christian Theosophy. Christian theosophical traditions are among the important esoteric influences on the worldview of German Romanticism.
• The 18th-century phenomenon of Freemasonry created an important context for the development of new esoteric currents, such as Illuminism. Many aspects of masonic ritual came to be adopted by later esoteric currents.
• The confrontation of western esotericism with the new science and rational philosophies produced a new phenomenon referred to as Occultism. Among the pioneers in this regard were the 18th-century scientist and visionary Emanuel Swedenborg and the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer.
• Occultism came into its own during the 19th century, producing a great number of new religious movements and trends. Among the more important are the popular fashion of Spiritualism, the Theosophical Society and its many offshoots, and a plethora of movements focused on the practice of Occultist Magic.
• All these trends continued into the 20th centuries, producing novel currents on the way, such as Anthroposophy and Traditionalism. Although the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung preferred to present his theories as empirical science, they are in fact grounded in a western esoteric worldview.
• The tradition of Jung and his followers is one among the many esoteric currents that fed into the Cultic Milieu of esoterically-interested consumers after World War II. The resulting culture of a highly commercialized pop-esotericism has become known as New Age.