For those who don’t know, since the 1990s, there’s been a movement within academic circles to rediscover and systematize the history of what is broadly referred to as the “Western esoteric tradition,” which includes everything from the ancient mystery cults of the Mediterranean region to modern fraternities. There are esoteric threads within every religion and many that are either not religious or not connected to any mainstream religion.
Kocku von Stuckrad comes out of the Amsterdam wing of that group of historians, which was the first and still best-known example. He is an academic first and foremost, so don’t expect this to be a non-fiction version of The Da Vinci Code with lots of wild speculation about what secret societies got up to and who is secretly in control of what. This is the real history of secret societies, mystical orders and quasi-religious orders, well-documented and meticulously cited.
It’s also a short book with a very mainstream, approachable style, which is rare among historians’ published works. Though her conclusions have been somewhat unseated since their publication, I liken his style and approachability to Frances Yates, and almost as generally consumable as Joseph Campbell. But his greatest skill, IMHO, is the ability to present all of these ideas utterly dispassionately, without either promoting mystical ideas as true or setting out to debunk their claims. He just lays it out as a pattern of influential thinkers and organizations through history.
If you want to know more about how the ideas of Persian Philosophers, Spanish Jews and French knights influenced the Scientific Revolution and why figures like Bruno, Crowley and Dee come up in conversations with an undertone that suggests there was more to them than just popular peddlers of mystical claims, then this is the book for you.
by Tyler_Zoro