ESSWE home


    • 2025-10-21
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    After decades of decline, the Iraqi Yezidi community has experienced a veritable renaissance of seers since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Kocheks, or seers, are individuals who possess—or are possessed by—a delil, a spiritual guide from the batinî or the heavenly, “hidden” world. Acting through their delils, seers channel esoteric knowledge. They offer moral exhortations, provide divinations for everyday concerns, and deliver prophetic revelations. The activities of seers, as well as the discourse surrounding their “authenticity,” shed light not only on the shifting concerns of a community undergoing transformation, but also on power struggles within Yezidi society—reflecting internal rivalries over both spiritual and material resources. Occupying a grey zone between central and peripheral possession, Yezidi seers are regarded by some as upholders of traditional morality, while others see them as morally transgressive. Following a brief introduction to the institution of seers, their typical “career” trajectory, and their role in contemporary Yezidi life, this talk analyzes perceptions of seers through the lens of the tension between “routinized” and “acquired” charisma. It also explores how becoming a seer can function as a means of agency for those traditionally marginalized—commoners, the poor, and women, or various intersections thereof.

    • 2025-10-28
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    Picturing Aura offers a historical, anthropological, and philosophical study of modern efforts to visualize that hidden radiant force encompassing the living body known as our aura. This book chronicles the rise and global spread of modern instruments and techniques of picturing aura, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how its images are put to work in the diverse realms of psychical research, esotericism, art photography, popular culture, and the New Age alternative medical and spiritual marketplace. These sometimes complementary,

    sometimes conflicting histories – shaped by exchanges among professionals and amateurs, scientists and occultists, countercultural artists and entrepreneurs, metropolitans and hinterland figures – show how the aura operates as a boundary object: something ontologically plural and somehow serviceable to the varying tasks of making art, healing bodies, and mapping a hidden cosmos. My presentation will introduce a few of the book’s remarkable protagonists, technologies, and image migrations, while also reflecting on the very enterprise of picturing aura and the challenges it poses to settled assumptions about religion, science, and art.

     


    • 2025-11-04
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    Divinatory practices in Senegal and the Gambia are highly diverse and require diviners to manage different techniques and skills. Despite the diversity of practices, diviners apply technical notions that reflect both a common structure underlying these practices as well as an emic theory of divinatory praxis. This lecture focuses on several of these underlying notions and the question of how they can be translated into a theory of divination that bridges the seeming divide between emic and etic perspectives. By tracing emic-etic resonances in Mandinka divination, the lecture highlights the importance of paying particular attention to the often highly complex conceptual landscapes of esoteric ritual practices in Africa and beyond. In a second analytical move, the lecture interrogates the consequences of possible emic-etic resonances for the question of insider and outsider perspectives in the study of religious and ritual practices.

    • 2025-11-11
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    This lecture will focus on the tradition of ziyarat kaluu—sacred pilgrimages to holy places known as mazar—as practiced in Kyrgyzstan among followers of syncretic shamanistic and neo-shamanistic movements, as well as among the general population. These practices blend elements of folk Islam, Sufism, and pre-Islamic traditions such as shamanism, animism, and magic. The introductory part of the lecture will be devoted to the core concepts of the Kyrgyzchilik tradition (the spiritual heritage of the Kyrgyz), including key terms and characteristics associated with the roles of male shamans (bakshy), female shamans (byby), and mystic wanderers (dubana). The speaker will then present photographs and video footage from his fieldwork, conducted since 2011, and will focus in particular on the Ata-Beyit memorial in the Chui region—the burial site of victims of Stalin’s repressions. In recent years, this site has become a space for neo-shamanic and spiritual practices. The lecture will explore the connections between ritual practice, the visions of mediums from the Talas region, historical memory, and current political realities. To analyze the pilgrimage tradition, the speaker draws on the concepts of liminality and collective memory, presenting ziyarat kaluu as a key mechanism for preserving oral history and transmitting knowledge through ritual performance.

     


    • 2025-11-18
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    For three thousand years, China’s five sacred mountains have sparked debates about their purposes, histories, and even locations. Today, they attract thousands of visitors daily—some seeking personal insight or fulfilling family traditions, others ticking off a “bucket list.” I’ve spent 1,200 days doing fieldwork on and around the mountains and far more time studying inscriptions, texts, religious treatises, and artwork linked to them. My research aims to explain a distinct approach to sacred mountain study. At its center is ethnography, which unites diverse themes across disciplines. This study goes beyond literary analysis. It attempts to build what I call “the ethnography of a concept.” Like storytelling, mountain travel traditionally follows a cosmologically prescribed order. Yet in Chinese cosmology—especially yin-yang and five-phase theory—the five mountains form a unified system. The tension between treating the mountains as distinct versus unified is not just semantic. Centuries of imperial practice reveal its depth. Ethnography offers a way to explore, if not resolve, these tensions. Its descriptive detail allows links between disciplines and offers insights into how a longstanding tradition connects the high and the low, the near and far—for all who have climbed these peaks across time.

    • 2025-11-25
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    Numbers hold significant meaning in many cultures. This presentation outlines the traditional Minangkabau healing system and explores the role that numbers play within it. The Minangkabau are one of the largest matrilineal societies in the world. Surprisingly, however, their traditional healing practices have received little scholarly attention. Some areas of research have highlighted the central role of numbers in Indonesian culture—for example, the 4–5 scheme of the Leiden School of Structuralism, or the adat (customary law) framework emphasized by local scholars. Other researchers have noted that the numbers three and four carry particular cultural significance within Minangkabau society. This presentation examines that claim, focusing on its implications in the context of traditional medicine. The Minangkabau healing system incorporates elements of both folk religion and Islamic belief. One notable intersection of these traditions is found in the use of the four medicinal plants known as Tawa nan ampek, which are employed across all local healing traditions. Additional examples further demonstrate how the numbers three and four play a central role in Minangkabau medical practices. For instance, the treatment of 'supernatural' illnesses may require more intensive forms of intervention. Typically, there are three levels of treatment for such disorders. Throughout the presentation, various examples will illustrate how traditional Minangkabau medicine is deeply rooted in local philosophy—and how numerology shapes its methods and meanings.

     


    • 2025-12-02
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    Since its origins, Buddhism has maintained that certain individuals can develop extraordinary mental abilities (abhijñā)—described as higher knowledge or psychic powers arising through meditative practice. These include psychic powers (ṛddhi), mind-reading or telepathy, recollection of past lives, and clairvoyance (perceiving karmic destinies). How do Buddhist practitioners and philosophers, both historical and contemporary, explain the existence of these powers? Indian Yogācāra philosophers such as Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, along with their Tibetan and East Asian successors, endorsed a transindividual “consciousness-only” view (citta-mātra, vijñapti-mātra). This school holds that what we experience as external reality—including its apparent boundaries and limitations—is actually a projection of consciousness itself. While consciousness ordinarily creates subject-object duality, advanced practitioners can recognize and transcend these constructed limitations. This presentation explores how the Yogācāra perspective differs from contemporary Western debates on “panpsychism”—the philosophical thesis that consciousness or some form of mentality is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality, present at all levels of physical organization. Also addressed are current discussions concerning “extended minds” and the possibility that consciousness operates beyond individual brains. Finally, I examine how these philosophical views relate to the Western concept of “esotericism” and what insights a comparison of these perspectives might offer for discussions of alternative rationalities.

    • 2025-12-09
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    Jacques Vallée's ufology career charts a unique path from scientific inquiry to a speculative, esoteric framework. Prompted by a 1950s UFO sighting and Aimé Michel's influence, Vallée initially approached the phenomenon scientifically. His work in the 1960s adopted an empirical, data-driven perspective, framing UFOs within astronomy and computer science. By the late 1960s, Vallée shifted to comparative folklore, finding parallels between entity encounters (e.g., fairies) and modern UFO reports. The 1970s saw his framework expand to paranormal and psychical research, hypothesizing an unidentified intelligence manifesting in culturally contingent forms. His "control system" theory suggested that these manifestations regulate human perception and access, operating cognitively and culturally. This lecture traces Vallée's intellectual evolution, contextualizing his work historically and disciplinarily. It examines how his synthesis of scientific methodology, comparative mythology, and speculative

    metaphysics may be interpreted as a form of modern esotericism, challenging conventional science-occult demarcations. It will also address the epistemological tensions in Vallée's oeuvre: for example, the interplay between empirical investigation and interpretive speculation. Finally, the lecture considers Vallée's relevance to contemporary UFO/UAP studies, which increasingly embrace interdisciplinary, non-positivist approaches to the subject. By examining Vallée as scientist and esoteric thinker, we offer a critical perspective on the negotiation between rational inquiry and visionary speculation in the study of anomalous phenomena.


    • 2025-12-16
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    The deep connection between the Yijing and Chinese Medicine (CM) dates back to the historical origins of the Yijing. In the Shuogua (Explaining the Trigrams) commentary, trigrams are linked to specific body parts, and the hexagram and line texts reference the head, neck, arms, back, abdomen, and legs. Focusing on yin and yang transformations, the Yijing is foundational to understanding CM – both belonging to traditional Chinese knowledge systems. Historically, a dialectical relationship has existed between medical and divinatory explanation: accurate prognosis stems from precise diagnosis, ideally enabling prevention. From this shared basis, various methods integrating the Yijing into CM have developed and persist today. This leads to an intriguing question: why do CM and the Yijing remain vital and widely practiced despite a century of modernization and scientification in China? The introduction of Western Medicine (WM) triggered extensive discourse on how both systems might coexist. China has since developed a unique model: the “Integration of Western and Chinese Medicine.” Does this reflect official legitimization, or distinct rationalities? How do these rationalities interact? What does this mean for the Yijing’s role in CM?

    • 2026-01-13
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    The Canadian horse therapist Linda Tellington-Jones (*1937) has developed a psychically-informed method of animal healing known as TTouch, which was inspired by another holistic method developed by Israeli engineer—and later alternative movement therapist—Moshé Feldenkrais (1904–1984). In the mid-1980s, Tellington-Jones traveled extensively throughout the Soviet Union as a citizen-diplomat of the Western New Age movement, inspired by and collaborating with Human Potential activists from the Californian Esalen Institute. Intuition, understood as a divine manifestation, became her spiritual path to expanded consciousness and guided her healing work with humans and animals of all species. In the USSR, she established connections from Kiev to Lake Baikal in Siberia, where she found herself on an esoteric mission. She met and trained a wide range of practitioners—from veterinarians and jockeys at the Olympic Center Bitsa in Moscow to members of the semi-official club “Healthy Family,” a hub where many unconventional concepts and practices of holistic and psychic healing were thriving. As a practitioner of interspecies communication, she introduced the idea of the “animal ambassador” to Russia. The patented TTouch method continues to be practiced on animals and humans in Russia and around the world, and has recently gained a degree of legitimacy through collaboration with controversial American scientists such as Bruce Lipton and Gregg Braden.

    • 2026-01-20
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    G. I. Gurdjieff’s (c. 1877–1949) teaching, known as the Work or the Fourth Way, posits three centres in humans: the intellectual (associated with Gurdjieff’s writings as a teaching technique), the emotional or feeling (associated with the Gurdjieff–de Hartmann music as a teaching tool), and the sensory or bodily centre (associated with the Movements as a teaching method). The contemplative exercises that Gurdjieff taught later in life explicitly addressed esoteric transformation—namely, the development of the astral or kesdjan body—and reflect his Orthodox Christian background, in which the concept of theosis (humans participating in God’s divine nature and becoming like God) is prominent. This presentation addresses the centrality of the body and physical activity in the Work, arguing that bodily sensation—as experienced in the Movements and contemplative exercises (and in other self-transformative activities, including hard labour)—is the key site of spiritual development. It also emphasizes that self-observation and self-remembering—the mental, mindfulness-like state of awareness cultivated by Gurdjieff’s pupils—combine with the body in the Work to foster the growth of a soul.

    • 2026-01-27
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    The esoteric "religious" powers of figurative sculpture appear most vividly in iconoclastic acts of destruction taken against them. Such acts reveal an ambivalence in iconoclasts’ relationships with these artworks, a simultaneous attraction to their nearhuman quality, which allows sculptures to serve as ritual substitutes for live persons, as scapegoats, and a repulsion to them that motivates the attack. Paradoxically, iconoclastic attacks help to produce artworks as sacred—as incarnational, presence-bearing forms. To show this, I consider the case of the 1970 bombing of Rodin’s “Thinker” in Cleveland as an act of ritual sacrifice; a sculpture “killed” as though it were a condemned person. Instead of destroying it, though, the iconoclasts animated it. The cast of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Thinker now pulses with life in a way unlike any other version. Damaged by the blast, wrenched apart, its base a jagged plume, the Thinker’s ripped legs and hollowed torso open now to a distinct kind of nearhuman agency, as martyr.

    • 2026-02-03
    • 18:15 - 19:45
    • Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen, Germany and Zoom https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187

    With the broader interest in South Asian spiritual traditions, which has driven the proliferation of yoga studios, tantra festivals and workshops in Western contexts since the 1970s, Kuṇḍalinī has also become increasingly popular with Western practitioners. A female serpent energy, Kuṇḍalinī rests in Mulādhāra cakra, the energy knot located at the bottom of the spinal column, and underpins soteriological narratives among Western and South Asian practitioners alike: through her ascent, she unlocks the cakras along the spinal column and allows for divine energy to flow through the bodies of practitioners. When travelling from South Asian to Western contexts, Kuṇḍalinī encounters different epistemic-ontological configurations and interacts with context-specific cosmological backgrounds and notions of beingness—such as body, gender, humanness and divinity. Based on my anthropological fieldwork with tantric practitioners in South India and in Western contexts, in this talk I analyze Kuṇḍalinī from a cross-cultural comparative perspective. The experiences that South Asian and Western(ized) practitioners relay broadly suggest that, when Kuṇḍalinī operates within a mainly positivistic epistemic-ontological framework, she tends to manifest in rather striking and unsettling ways, whereas when she operates within epistemic-ontological contexts that are largely informed by Devī and her retinue, she is often experienced in more seamless and gentle ways. While the intense nature of Kuṇḍalinī awakenings among many Western(ized) practitioners may, at first, appear counterintuitive when compared to the smoother Kuṇḍalinī experiences shared by most South Asian practitioners, I propose that such discrepancies are not only organic but necessary when Kuṇḍalinī operates upon the distinct existential coordinates that practitioners present cross-culturally.

Past events

2025-10-14 Dr. Philine Lewek: ‘Esotericism’ and ‘Christianity’ within the New Right in Germany and Austria
2025-07-22 Dr. Jessica Albrecht: Buddhist Psychology as Esoteric Activism
2025-07-15 Dr. Oleg Yarosh: Spiritual Practices of Sufis in the West
2025-07-08 Dr. Lili DiPuppo: Sufi Practices and Knowledge through Surrender: Developing a New Knowledge Approach in and for Uncertain Times
2025-07-01 Prof. Dr. Birgit Meyer: Translating ‘Spirit'
2025-06-24 Asst. Prof. Sergio González Varela: Facing the Limits of the Extra-Cultural: Discovering “What You Cannot Learn” Through Pain, Body Transformation, and Performance in Afro-Brazilian Capoeira
2025-06-17 Dr. Eszter Spät: Divination through the “Written Word” in Yezidi Oral Tradition: ‘Bookish’ Techniques of Prognostication as Sources of Esoteric Knowledge
2025-06-10 Assoc. Prof. Davide Torri: Nepalese Ghost Stories from Sacred Texts to Social Media
2025-06-03 Prof. Stephan Palmié: Wittgenstein among the Santeros
2025-05-27 Dr. Marta Hanson: Knowing Hands: Thinking With the Mind in Hand in Chinese Medicine and Divination
2025-05-20 Prof. Deborah Kapchan: Face to Face with the Spirits: Paradox and the Anthropology of the Esoteric
2025-05-13 Assoc. Prof. M. Shobhana Xavier: Saintly Shrines and Ruptures of Temporalities: Sufi Pasts and Futures in Post-War Sri Lanka
2025-05-06 Sr. Associate Prof. Dr. Fredrik Gregorius: Dreams of an Enchanted Africa: Esoteric Images of African Diaspora Religions in the 19th and 20th Century
2025-04-29 Prof. Dr. Steven Engler: “Views of Healing among Brazilian Spiritists and Medical Professionals
2025-01-21 Prof. Sabina Magliocco (University of British Columbia): The Magical Resistance 2.0 - Meme Magic and the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election
2024-12-10 Prof. William Mazzarella (University of Chicago): Advertising as Integral Magic - An Afterlife
2024-11-26 Prof. Per Faxneld (Södertorn University, Stockholm): A Touch of Zen - Spirituality in Japanese Martial Arts in Sweden
2024-02-06 CAS-E Lecture Series: The Gorilla in the Room - The Right to Practice Animal Sacrifice Amidst Growing Animal Rights Activism by Prof. Danielle Boaz (University of North Carolina)
2024-01-30 CAS-E Lecture Series: Śrīvidyā Goes West - Continuities and Transformations in Cross-Cultural Encounters by Dr. Monika Hirmer (CAS-E fellow)
2024-01-23 CAS-E Lecture Series: Islamicate Magic in the Twelfth Century - Hermetic, Islamic, and Jewish Entanglements by Dr. Liana Saif (University of Amsterdam)
2024-01-16 CAS-E Lecture Series: Hybrid Pathways to Orthodoxy - Esoteric Practices in 'Sharia Compliant‘ Exorcism by Prof. Dr. Dominik Müller (FAU, CAS-E)
2024-01-09 CAS-E Lecture Series: Translation and the Study of Esotericism by Prof. Dr. Birgit Menzel (CAS-E)
2023-12-19 CAS-E Lecture Series: Magic as Social Mediation by Dr. Jesper Sørensen (Aarhus Universitet)
2023-12-12 CAS-E Lecture Series: The Shades of Emptiness - The Alchemical Teaching of the Master Wei Yao 魏堯 by Dr. Ilia Mozias (CAS-E fellow)
2023-12-05 CAS-E Lecture Series: Identity, Body and Emotion among Yoga and Meditation Practitioners in Brazil by Dr. Cecilia Bastos (CAS-E fellow)
2023-11-28 CAS-E Lecture Series: American Idols and West African Spirits - Bewitching Superstars in New York City by Dr. Jane Parish (Keele University)
2023-11-23 CAS-E Lecture Series: The Tangki, A Spirit Medium in Chinese Temples in Kelantan. Ethnographic Perspectives by Dr. Alexander Stark and Dr. Yohan Kurniawan (Universiti Malaysia Kelantan)
2023-11-21 CAS-E Lecture Series: Chased by Blessings - The Metaphysics of the Olfactory by Dr. James Michael Edmonds (Arizona State University)
2023-11-15 The Politics of Authenticity in Esoteric Practices - CAS-E 2023 International Conference (Waischenfeld, Germany)
2023-11-14 CAS-E Lecture Series: On the Possibility of Esoteric Practices in the Amerindian Andes - The Perspective of Witches and a Ritual Song to Heal and Dance by Dr. Juan Rivera (CAS-E fellow)
2023-11-07 CAS-E Lecture Series: The Aesthetic Assemblage of Hawaiian Hula Dance - A Framework for Researching Practices in Their Embodied Dimensions and Global Perspective by Dr. Lina Aschenbrenner (CAS-E)
2023-10-31 CAS-E Lecture Series: Family Constellation Therapy in the Context of Esotericism by Dr. Julia Gyimesi (CAS-E fellow)
2023-10-24 CAS-E Lecture Series: The Transmission of Yijing Knowledge and Divination Practices in Contemporary China by Zheng Liu (CAS-E)
2023-10-17 CAS-E Lecture Series: Alternative Rationalities and the Reinvention of Tradition - Vedic Science and the Agnihotra-Fire Ritual by Prof.Dr. Andreas Nehring (FAU, CAS-E)
2023-07-18 “The Status of Esoteric Practices in Present-Day Taiwan” by Prof. Michael Lackner
2023-07-11 “Hybrid Pathways to Orthodoxy: Esoteric Practices in 'Sharia-Compliant‘ Exorcism” by Prof. Dominik Müller
2023-07-04 “Activation and Subjectivation: A Photographic Essay on Transformational Rituals that ‘Do’” by Dr. Raquel Romberg
2023-06-27 “A Case Study of Xuantong Dashu 《玄通大书》– The Great Book of Mystery: a Comprehensive Encyclopedia of the Yi Fate” by Dr. Aleksandrs Simons (IKGF)
2021-10-23 International Workshop on the study of New Age in Russia
2021-10-08 The Theosophical Movement and Globalism Interconnections, Innovations, and Comparisons
2021-09-29 2021 Meeting of ENSIE: Islam and Esotericism—Societies, Politics, and Practices
2021-05-25 Prof. Dr. Marco Pasi, University of Amsterdam ‘“Witchcraft with Capital W”: The Magical Art of Chiara Fumai’
2021-05-20 Dr. Susan Jean Palmer: Children of Chiliasm - Concepts of the “Child” in Contemporary Spiritual Movements, Questions of Identity, Symbolism and Ownership. ESSWE Online Lecture Series 2021
2021-05-18 Prof. Dr. Victoria Ferentinou (University of Ioannina): "Colours are things" - the visionary art of Frixos Aristeus
2021-05-11 Dr. Erin Yerby (Rice University): The Body as Spectral Shape: Spiritualist Mediumship and Anglo-American Iconoclasm
2021-05-04 Prof. Dr. Ehler Voss (University of Bremen): Magic Tipping Points. On Deceptions and Detections
2021-04-16 ESOGEN Symposium: Esotericism, Gender, and Sexuality
2021-03-25 Dr. Korshi Dosoo: What are the Magical Papyri? ESSWE Online Lecture Series 2021
2020-12-03 ENSIE2 “Islamic Esotericism in Global Contexts”
2020-11-03 Aesthetic and Scientific Epistemologies of the Occult in the XIX Century - lecture series
2020-09-14 Online Conference: "For There I, Hayyim, was Living: R. Hayyim Vital and His World" - An Online Conference Commemorating the 400th Anniversary of his Death (1620-2020)
2019-07-02 Call for papers: ESSWE7 - 7th Biannual Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (University of Amsterdam, 2-4 July 2019)
2017-06-01 The Sixth International ESSWE Conference: Western Esotericism and deviance
2016-10-27 Public Religions and Their Secrets, Secret Religions and Their Publics
2016-07-07 Thesis Workshop: Magical Traditions and Medieval Religions of the Book
2016-05-27 THE SECOND CONFERENCE OF THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN NETWORK FOR THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF WESTERN ESOTERICISM
2016-03-24 Association For the Study of Esotericism and Mysticism, Eighth International Conference
2016-03-21 Call for Papers - Demon Things: Ancient Egyptian Manifestations of Liminal Entities
2015-11-21 Call for Papers: AAR - Western Esotericism Group
2015-10-22 Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference
2015-08-23 XXI World Congress of International Association for the History of Religions
2015-07-21 Magic and the Supernatural in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods
2015-07-10 Biennial London Chaucer Conference: Science, Magic and Technology
2015-07-06 Egyptian and Jewish Magic in Antiquity
2015-05-08 The Spirits as Artists: Spiritualism and the Visual Arts
2015-04-23 Marginal presences: unorthodox belief and practice, 1837-2014
2015-04-16 ESSWE5: Western Esotericism and the East
2015-03-19 The Marginalization of Astrology
2015-03-14 Interplay: Rethinking Music, Mathematics, and Alchemical Praxis in Michael Maier's Atalanta fugiens (1618)
2015-03-05 Magic and Intellectual History
2015-01-11 Exhibition: Rudolf Steiner - Alchemie van het alledaagse
2014-11-19 Um 1600 Konstellationen zwischen Schulmetaphysik, Konfessionalisierung und hermetischer Spekulation
2014-10-30 Art, Eros and Esotericism
2014-10-26 The Alchemist and the Royal Typographer: John Dee and Willem Sylvius
2014-10-24 SHAC Postgraduate Workshop: Geographies of Alchemy and Chemistry
2014-10-15 Latin Alchemical Literature of Czech Provenance
2014-10-09 Astrologie, divination et magie dans les cours (XIIe-XVIIe siècle)
2014-08-10 Art and Alchemy Exhibition: The Mystery of Transformation
2014-07-04 Jacob Boehme and His World
2014-07-04 Western Esotericism in Central and Eastern Europe - Over the Centuries
2014-06-28 The Marriage of Heaven and Earth: Images and Representations of the Sky in Sacred Space
2014-06-26 ‘Twice Upon a Time: Magic, Alchemy and the Transubstantiation of the Senses’
2014-06-26 New Antiquities: Transformations of the Past in the New Age and Beyond
2014-06-26 Revisiting Early Modern Prophecies (c.1500-c.1815)
2014-06-08 Scripted Forms of Magic Knowledge: Grimoires in the Matrix of Western Cultures
2014-05-11 EASR14: Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge
2014-05-10 ESSWE Thesis Workshop: 'Alterations of Consciousness'
2014-04-23 Scientiae 2014: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World
2014-04-05 Art and Alchemy Exhibition: The Mystery of Transformation
2014-03-27 Tracking Hermes/Mercury
2014-03-20 Call for Papers - The Common Denominator 2014: A Postgraduate Conference in British Cultural Studies
2014-03-14 Call for Papers - Visions of Enchantment: Occultism, Spirituality & Visual Culture
2013-12-16 Theosophical Appropriations: Kabbalah, Western Esotericism and the Transformation of Traditions
2013-11-23 Call for Papers - Western Esotericism Session at the American Academy of Religion Conference 2013
2013-11-16 Call for Papers: Altered Consciousness, 1918-1980
2013-10-24 "Lived Religion" - 2013 Annual Meeting of the Dutch Association for the Study of Religion (NGG)
2013-10-23 Call for Papers - Forms and Transformations of Pythagorean Knowledge: Askēsis – Religion – Science
2013-09-25 Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy and the Arts in the Modern World
2013-08-28 Call for Papers - Occult Geographies: (im)material agents and the geographical imagination
2013-07-19 Methodische Reflexionen zum Spannungsverhältnis zwischen magischem Text und Bild
2013-06-26 ESSWE 4: Western Esotericism and Health
2013-06-22 CFP Celestial Magic: Eleventh Annual Sophia Centre Conference
2013-06-14 Call for Papers: Second Sight and Prophecy
2013-06-13 Esoteric Quest for Ancient, Arabic and Medieval Sicily
2013-06-11 Masterclass - "Satanism": Between Myth and Reality
2013-05-09 CFP - Societas Magica Sessions, International Congress of Medieval Studies
2013-05-09 CFP - Technical Communication in the Middle Ages
2013-04-22 Call for Papers: Demons and Illness - Theory and Practice from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period
2013-04-18 Call for Papers- Scientiae 2013: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World
2013-04-13 Call for Papers - SYNTHESIS: Esotericism and the Sciences Conference
2013-04-11 Call for Papers: Celestial Bodies and their Orbit in Art
2013-04-05 Text, Context, and Non-Text: Grimoires and Ritual Magic in Culture, Literature, and Art
2013-04-04 CFP Art and Healing, 1300-1700
2013-04-04 CFP The Ironies of Alchemy in Early Modern English Literature
2013-03-27 Call for Papers about Tarot for the PCA/ACA Conference
2013-03-16 In the Beginning: Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry
2013-01-30 CFP 21st-Century Science: Health, Agency and Well-Being
2012-12-03 Charming Intentions: Occultism, Magic and the History of Art
2012-11-16 CFP - Mapping the Occult City: Exploring Magick and Esotericisim in the Urban Utopia
2012-10-29 Narrative Magic: Transformations Through Story-Telling
2012-10-26 Call for Papers: Jung in the Academy and Beyond
2012-10-25 Sixteenth Century Studies Conference 2012
2012-10-15 Call for Papers - Russia and Gnosis: The Fates of the Religious-Philosophical Searches of Nikolai Novikov and his Circle
2012-10-11 Virtue Ethics and Renaissance Neoplatonism - PhD Workshop
2012-10-05 Purgatio spiritus: Banishment and Purification of the Spirits in the Sixteenth Century
2012-09-21 Exploring the Extraordinary
2012-09-07 Call for Papers - Edges of Freemasonry
2012-08-27 Call for Papers - Contemporary Esotericism
2012-08-17 Call for Papers - Capturing Witches: Histories, Stories, Images 400 years after the Lancashire Witches
2012-07-27 Literature, Science and Medicine in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods
2012-07-23 CFP - 'Magic is Might 2012': An International Academic Conference Exploring the Cultural Influences of the Harry Potter Books and Films
2012-07-14 Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition Conference 2012
2012-07-12 Call for Papers - Esoteric Traditions in the Ancient and Modern World
2012-07-06 ESSWE Magic Thesis Workshop
2012-06-30 Dee Day: A Conference exploring the World of Dr. John Dee
2012-06-23 Call for Papers - Astrology in Time and Place: Cross-Cultural Questions in the History of Astrology
2012-06-14 Association for the Study of Esotericism Fourth Annual Conference
2012-06-09 An Esoteric Quest for Ancient Alexandria: Greco-Egyptian Birthplace of the Western Mind
2012-05-23 Fernando Pessoa and the Esoteric Experience
2012-05-23 The Materiality of Magic
2012-05-21 Kabbalah and Science in Modern Jewish Culture
2012-05-18 Body, Soul, Spirits and Supernatural Communication
2012-05-06 Sixteenth Century Studies Conference 2012
2012-04-20 Call for Papers - Science and the Occult: From Antiquity to the Early Modern Period
2012-04-13 From Alchemy to Chemistry
2012-04-11 Call for Papers - Tarot at the 2012 PCA/ACA Conference
2012-04-07 Call for Papers - Perspectives in American Freemasonry and Fraternalism
2012-03-22 2nd Annual INASWE Conference
2012-03-21 Mito y Magia en Grecia y Roma
2012-03-20 Call for Papers - The 4th Israeli Conference for the Study of Contemporary Spiritualities (ISCSC)
2012-03-06 Lecture, Charles Webster, 'Paracelsus: Chemistry and Revolution'
2012-01-26 The Demonic Seminar
2011-12-02 Demons and Devils in Early Modern Europe
2011-12-02 Russian Association for the Study of Esotericism and Mysticism, Fifth International Conference
2011-11-21 ESSWE and Aries Reception at the AAR (American Academy of Religion) Conference
2011-11-05 Hermetische Harmonie
2011-10-22 XIII CMRC Conference: Freemasonry and Empire
2011-10-22 EMPHASIS: Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination Seminar, 2011-2012
2011-10-13 Religion, Nature and Art
2011-09-22 Alchemy and Medicine from Antiquity to the Enlightenment
2011-09-15 Iconology: Neoplatonism and Art in the Renaissance
2011-07-25 Text & Image in Religious Cosmography: Reading Ilanot and Parallel Artifacts
2011-07-06 CFP ESSWE3: The Visual and the Symbolic in Western Esotericism
2011-05-12 Artificii Occulti: Knowledge and Discernment in the Artistic and Scientific Cultures of the Netherlands and the Spanish Habsburg World (16th-17th Centuries)
2011-05-06 Call for Papers - Daimonic Imagination: Uncanny Intelligence
2011-05-02 Knowledge to die for: Transmission of Prohibited and Esoteric Knowledge through Space and Time
2010-12-09 Call for Papers: Between Light and Darkness - International Symposium on Fin-de-siècle Symbolism
2010-10-09 Séminaire du GREMME: Programme 2010-2011
2010-05-05 ESSWE Thesis Workshop - Alchemy: Between Science and Religion
2010-05-01 The Rosicrucian Conference 2010: The Rosicrucian Tradition, Past, Present & Future
2010-04-29 Call for Papers: Science and Magic - Ways of Knowing in the Renaissance (Graduate Conference)
2010-04-27 Call for Papers: The Secret and the Manifest
2010-04-07 The Esoteric Crossroads: Intercultural Patterns in Early Modern Esotericism
2010-03-18 Hidden in Plain Sight: The Influence of Western Esoteric Movements on Modern Thought
2010-02-10 Call for Papers: Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Islamic and Jewish Mysticism Around the Time of Chrétien de Troyes
2010-01-19 Call for Papers 2: IAHR Quinquennial World Congress, "Religion: A Human Phenomenon" (Toronto)
2010-01-06 Call for Papers: IAHR Quinquennial World Congress, "Religion: A Human Phenomenon" (Toronto)
2009-10-30 Conference "Alternative Spiritualities, the New Age and New Religious Movements in Ireland"
2009-10-18 The 6th International Conference on "The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena"
2009-09-14 Esotericism Panel at EASR Conference Messina (Italy)
2009-07-23 Conference "Religion, Nature, and Progress"
2009-07-10 Conference "Konversion und Transformation des Wissens: Interreligiöser Austausch im vormodernen Europa"
2009-07-02 Second International Conference of the ESSWE in Strasburg
2009-05-22 Astrology: Magic, Divination and Destiny
2009-03-18 Conference "Unbegreifliche Zeiten: Wunder im 20. Jahrhundert"
2009-03-13 Conference: The Threat and Allure of the Magical in Literature, Language, Philosophy, History and the Arts
2008-11-13 Conference "From Ma'ashallah to Kepler"
2008-10-31 Annual Meeting of the AAR with sessions on Western Esotericism
2008-09-07 ESSWE at the EASR
2008-08-15 Third Annual Alternative Expressions of the Numinous Conference
2008-07-02 Conference "Trance-Medien und Neue Medien um 1900"
2008-05-31 Research Symposium for Postgraduate Students at the University of Kent
2008-05-29 ASE Third International Conference: "Nature, Religion, and Esotericism"
2008-04-14 Conference "Music and Esotericism"
2008-03-25 Workshop on "Emblems, Magic, and Hidden Knowledge"
2008-02-06 Conference on "Imagining Outer Space, 1900-2000"
2008-01-17 Second major international meeting of the ISSRNC: “The Re-Enchantment of Nature across Disciplines: Critical Intersections of Science, Ethics, and Metaphysics”
2007-11-18 Annual Meeting of the AAR with sessions on Western Esotericism
2007-11-03 Conference "Visions of Utopia: Masonic, Religious and Esoteric"
2007-10-29 Conference "Forms and Currents of Western Esotericism"
2007-10-05 Conference on 'Divination and Dialogue'
2007-09-15 Conference "An Esoteric Quest for The Golden Age of Andalusia"
2007-08-15 Conference "Western Esotericism" in Åbo, Finland
2007-07-20 Inaugural Conference of the ESSWE on "Constructing Tradition: Means and Myths of Transmission in Western Esotericism"
2007-07-13 Conference "Naturmagie und Deutungskunst"
2007-07-04 Conference "Kabbalah and Modernity"
2007-06-07 CESNUR Conference on "Globalization, Immigration, and Change in Religious Movements"
2007-05-25 International Conference on the History of Freemasonry
2007-03-11 Conference on "The Occult in 20th Century Russia"
2006-11-18 Annual Meeting of the AAR with sessions on Western Esotericism
2006-09-28 Conference "Die Enzyklopädik der Esoterik: Allwissenheitsmythen und universalwissenschaftliche Modelle in der Esoterik der Neuzeit"
2006-09-28 Conference "Symbolism in 18th-Century Gardens"
2006-09-20 The 6th EASR Conference/IAHR Special Conference: "Religious History of Europe and Asia"
2006-09-08 Conference "Astrology and the Body, 1100-1800"
2006-08-31 Conference "An Esoteric Quest in Central Europe: From Renaissance Bohemia to Goethe's Weimar"
2006-08-18 Conference "Alternative Expressions of the Numinous"
2006-07-03 Kabbalah Seminar in Jerusalem
2006-06-08 ASE conference: Esotericism, Art, and Imagination
2006-05-29 David Pingree Memorial Seminar: Empires and Exact Sciences in Pre-Modern Eurasia
2006-04-28 Conference on Astrology and Divination: Seeing With Different Eyes
2006-04-21 Conference "Witchcraft and Masculinities in the Early Modern World"
2006-04-06 Conference "Exploring Religion, Nature, and Culture"
2006-03-15 Conference "Esoterik in der Aufklärung: Rezeption - Integration - Konfrontation"
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