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CONTENTS  
 
Foreword by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke                                          Vll  
Preface                                                                        Xl  
 
CHAPTER  I  
    INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS  ESOTERICISM?  
       Some Scholarly Views                                                     2  
       Religious Pluralism and the  'Esoteric Ficld ofDiscourse'                6  
 
CHAPTER 2  
    ESOTERICISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD                                           12  
       Philosophical Religion, Religious Philosophy                            12  
       Hermetism: The Founding ofa Tradition                                   18  
       What is 'Gnosis'?                                                       23  
       Transmission into the Middle Ages                                       26  
 
CHAPTER 3  
    THE KABBALAH: UNDERSTANDING THE HIDDEN  
    IN THE REVEALED                                                           31  
       Prehistory:  Hekhalot Mysticism and Esoteric Biblical Exegesis          31  
       The Classical Kabbalah:  From Southern France to Israel                 35  
 
CHAPTER 4  
    THE RENAISSANCE: RE-INVENTING THE ANCIENT WORLD                            44  
       Esotericism in the Middle Ages                                          45  
       The Birth ofModern Esotericism                                          49  
 
CHAPTER 5  
    ESOTERICISM IN THE CONFESSIONAL AGE                                        62  
       The Mysteries ofNature: Magia  naturalis                                62  
       Kabbalah and Occult Philosophy                                          70  
       Complex Identities                                                      81  
       Apocalypticism, Alchemy and Natural  Science in Protestantism           94  
vi                           WESTERN   ESOTERICISM  
 
CHAPTER 6  
    ESOTERICISM, ENLIGHTENMENT AND SCIENCE                                   99  
       The Battle for the  Spiritual World                                   100  
       Natural  Science in the Nineteenth Century                            104  
 
CHAPTER 7  
    INSTITUTIONALISED ESOTERICISM: SECRET SOCIETIES                          113  
       Rosicrucians or In the Beginning was a Fiction                        113  
       Freemasons or The Power ofMystery                                     116  
       Magical Orders or Egypt in England                                    118  
 
CHAPTER 8  
    PIONEER OF MODERN ESOTERICISM:  
    THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY                                                 122  
       Helena Petrovna Blavatsky: The Sphinx ofthe West                      122  
       Ascended Masters and Mundane  Squabbles                               128  
 
CHAPTER 9  
    ESOTERIClSM AND MODERNITY                                                133  
       Modernity and its Discontents                                         133  
       And the 'New Age'?                                                    140  
 
Bibliography                                                                 147  
Index                                                                        162  |