Building Religions 31: Esotericism

I've written a few things here before about the Western magical traditions that often provide a foundation for the magical systems of fantasy settings. I am about to do so again, although this time from a different perspective. The study of Western esotericism (which I'll define below) has emerged over the past few decades as an academic discipline in its own right. Although its focus tends to be on modern (post-mediaeval) texts, those texts often look back to the past for inspiration and legitimation, making a consideration of esotericism useful for anyone interested in this particular strand of Western thought. What I plan to provide here is a brief survey of the subject, with the hope that it can clarify some ideas and introduce readers to others for the first time.

Antoine Faivre, one of the pioneering authors in the field, offers a six-part definition of esotericism. The first four parts, he claims, are intrinsic—for a form of thought to be called esoteric, it must include them. The last two are secondary—not vital to the definition, but frequently found in combination with the others. None of these characteristics are exclusive to esoteric traditions, so discovering a few of them in other modes of thought isn't necessarily a sign that you're dealing with a form of esotericism. The six characteristics are:

Correspondence: The belief that there is a hidden relationship between elements of the perceived world that can be interpreted by someone with the proper key. This is the belief behind "as above, so below," the mapping of constellations onto the human body, the magical properties of gems, and so on. It can also be, Faivre suggests, a way of reading historical or religious texts that allows the esoteric practitioner to divine hidden patterns in the unfolding of events.

Living Nature: The belief that the cosmos is, however much it may be seen as being constituted of separate parts, better understood as a single organism. The Neoplatonic and Stoic notion of the anima mundi, the world-soul, is an example of this. In magical practice, it would be the assumption behind the mechanism by which corresponding phenomena can affect each other at a distance: by manipulating one "cell" of the cosmic body, the magician can influence those linked to it.

Imagination and Mediations: Building on the first two characteristics, imagination becomes the tool with which the practitioner recognizes and perceives hidden connections. Images mediate between the visible world and the invisible, and the esotericist focuses attention on those images as a means of bridging the distance. In some cases, this could mean the use of symbolic implements (Tarot cards, mandalas, ritual tools) to further one's practice; in others, it could mean interiorizing those symbols in the imagination itself so as to build an inner magical landscape.

Transmutation: The experience of transformation, whether of the self or the world. Through an understanding of occult significance (correspondences, living Nature) and the cultivation of imagination, the practitioner intends to achieve gnosis and a new relationship with the world.

Concordance: The belief that multiple historical traditions communicate some eternal message, and that the study of these traditions may illuminate that message. Forms of esotericism that look back to the (real or imaginary) literature of Egypt or India, to Druids or Tibetan lamas, all partake in this belief to some extent. Practitioners may read other traditions as flawed or degenerate versions of their own, allowing them to acknowledge both a shared vision of the world and the superiority of their own insights.

Transmission: The emphasis on authentic chains of transmission of esoteric knowledge, whether in the form of initiation into a closed group or the preservation of secrets. Knowledge that is openly available, or that an independent practitioner has worked out on her own, may not be considered as being as valuable as that which comes through the proper channels. This characteristic can, in some cases, be connected with that of concordance, insofar as a tradition may claim to have been founded in the distant past by pointing to similar "corrupted" practices found elsewhere.

So what can you do with all of this as a worldbuilder? If you're working on a setting that includes magical traditions influenced or inspired by Western modes of thought, then Faivre's definition offers a nice template from which to build your ideas. It gives a general worldview, a mechanism for magic to work, an ultimate goal for mages to pursue, and establishes some questions to ask about the tradition's relationship to other practices.

On the other hand, if you're working on a setting that you don't want to have the same historical influences, and you find that you've included some of these elements, you may pause to ask yourself why you assumed that would be. One of the critiques of the definition is that it really only applies to a narrow range of esoteric thought—that produced in Europe from roughly the 16th to 19th centuries—so if you're expanding it, you need to be aware that it brings with it ideas that could be foreign to the rest of your world.