The history of esotericism, not the history of mystery
The currents
The history of esotericism as history: dates, editions, trials, schisms. Each study states what is documented, what is merely asserted by the parties concerned and what is local legend — including the legends a current tells about itself.
The Fourth Way
Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and the idea that a human being sleeps while believing themselves awake. With the distinction, which almost nobody makes, between the two enneagrams.
☉Theosophy
Out of a New York flat in 1875 comes the vocabulary the West still uses for karma, aura and reincarnation. And a fraud case that has never quite closed.
☽Anthroposophy
A Goethe scholar who begins describing spiritual worlds, a schism that takes eighty per cent of German theosophy with it, and sixteen sentences counted by the movement itself.
♄Scaligero and Italian anthroposophy
The leading Italian anthroposophist wrote about a hundred racist articles between 1931 and 1943 and never retracted them. With the exact particulars — and the most repeated accusation against him, which is false.
☿Jung and esotericism
Sixteen years writing a book he never published, a library of alchemical treatises, and the vocabulary the West still uses for symbols and coincidences. With the 1934 page that cannot be skipped.
♂Julius Evola
A Dadaist who stops painting at twenty-four, writes about the Grail and tantra for forty years, signs books on race and does not retract. With two accusations constantly made against him that are false.
☯Taoism
It is not «a philosophy and not a religion», it does not begin with an old man on a buffalo, and the black-and-white symbol is more recent than people think. With the dates archaeology has changed.
✠Archeosophy
A Pisan who writes on tantric yoga at thirty, climbs Mount Athos at forty-two, comes back from Palestine a Christian and in 1968 founds a school in Rome that still exists. With the dates in order.
☼The Ur Group
A Roman journal without bylines, shut down in two years by a quarrel that ended before a judge. And the 1955 book almost everyone cites believing they are citing the journal.
◉The anting-anting
Filipino amulets: one specimen dated 1884, a doctrine that can be read, and a conspicuously Catholic repertoire. Plus the question everyone asks — did the great eskrima masters really carry them?