Saturday 23 April 2011

Reinventing the Renaissance Occult

Review of 'Reinventing the Renaissance Occult in Modern and Postmodern Culture' now available at http://jwmt.org/v2n20/reinventing.html
Five hundred years ago the occult – what we think of as ‘the occult’ – was taught in university and practised by many of the foremost personalities of the age. Still it was persecuted. Dangerous. Between the Church and the deep blue sea: Scylla and Charybdis. It was the high point of ‘the occult’ and also its low point. To some it promised to reveal the secrets of the universe, to others it automatically meant a pact with the Devil and damnation. Such contrasts have thrown long shadows that still play across the present.

Published in the Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition, No. 20, Vol. 2. Vernal Equinox 2011.