The ninth ESSWE conference for European scholars of the Study of Esotericism, which lasted three days, is now behind us. With everything still fresh in my mind, it is good to recap what I have experienced, seen and heard.
Although I’m not much of a networker, nevertheless, the best thing about the conference is the people. I enjoyed the encounters, meeting old friends and getting to know new researchers who share my interest in the exciting world of esotericism and its research.
This year’s theme was practise. Distinguished scholar in the history of science, Lawrence M. Principe held inspiring keynote lecture on the practice of medieval alchemy in the texts of John of Rupescissa (c. 1310–c. 1370), and showed that concrete things, experiments and practices help us to understand activities in the past, texts written in the past and the people who wrote them.
Imagination is a necessary and indispensable tool for studying the past – and for studying the ’other’ in general – but it is not quite enough: also concreteness, actions, experiences, and empathizing (where action and imagination merge) are necessary.
The study of lived esotericism, past or present, requires the researcher to empathize (”walk in the shoes of those they research”) and to throw themself, sometimes even to the limit or beyond. One has to ask advice from the I Ching, the Tarot cards or the oracle, one has to meditate or perform rituals. The answers can be surprising, confusing and even frightening. Scholar of esotericism may encounter something that goes beyond the limits of understanding, even something that could be called supernatural. One must accept what one does not understand, and go towards it. This approach was emphasised by Cavan McLaughling, who has organised the Trans-states conferences, and also by us, years ago, in a planned project, Co-imagined knowledge, which never got any funding. We discussed a lot about silent or tacit knowledge, which academics do not share publicly, even tough they use it for instance in creative academic writing or while constructing theoretical assumptions or hypothesis.
In her keynote lecture Linda Woodhead discussed on fortune-telling and divination. She also said that she herself had visited a fortune teller and medium. Many of us scholars, have done the same or similar things. It doesn’t make us worse or less reliable researchers, on the contrary. Research is done according to the rules of science. If something is revealed at the border between waking and dreaming, in hypnagogic state, it must be received with gratitude, but then the interpretation or insight must be supported by the data or literature. Reflection and positioning, criticality and the hermeneutics of doubt must always be kept at hand.
Imagination is a concept (and method) of great importance in esoteric research. Reference is often made to the pioneering research of anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann. Imagination is not ”just” imagination, just fantasy, but a faculty of mind one needs both in studying and in practicing esotericism. This theme was discussed, for instance, in the paper of Stephanie Shea. She is studying the concept of other-kin, Other-than-human-online communities. Many of her informants had created an innerworld, mundus imaginalis, different form of reality.
Expanding field
Esoteric research is expanding. This year’s ESSWE conference is the biggest ever, over 250 participant – [edit: or that’s what I was told, apparently ESSWE7 in Amsterdam was even bigger]. This was only my second ESSWE (so far), but in Finland I have attended (and partly organised) esoteric conferences in Turku (2007 and 2019) and Edges of Freemasonry conferences in Tampere (2012 and 2019). I have also been attending EASR conferences for years, and there esotericism has been in their own streams or as individual papers (such as my own papers). The esoteric field is growing, because new researchers from different disciplines and young researchers are entering the field all the time. I myself have three new graduate students starting this year, who concentrate in the Study of Esotericism. They will hopefully participate in the next ESSWE conference. And before that – hopefully – in the planned joint meetings and seminars of the Nordic esoteric graduate students.
But as the field of esoteric studies expands, at the same time the fields of research multiply. All the researches share (perhaps) some common understanding of the conceptualisation and history of esoteric studies, but who have more in common with researchers in their own field. Most of the older researchers have a history or background in established disciplines such as Study of Religion, Art History, Historical Studies or Literary Studies. They (we) have only become researchers in the field of esotericism later.
New generations of scholars may have been oriented towards esotericism from the beginning, as some of my own students and postgraduates have been. For me, in the Study of Religion, it has always been natural to be interested in both gender and Literary Studies. That is why the closest of all special areas or streams is ESOGEN, a network in the Study of Esotericism dedicated to the study of gender and sexuality. I have participate in their sessions, meetings and seminars. And I am enormously pleased that this week a new network ESOLIT has been set up, bringing together researchers who study esotericism and literature. I look forward to future meetings and events.
Debate on concepts
Although the field of esoteric studies is now some thirty years old, the debate on concepts is still going strong. And so it should be. During this conference, for example, the relationship between, say, esotericism, new spiritualities, and vernacular – and, in my own research, the so-called field of fringe knowledge and the new age – were discussed.
There was also an important discussion on the concept of whiteness. It is linked to discussions on Eurocentrism, orientalism, and post-colonialism, which have been going on for decades in different disciplines. Now it is part of the Study of Esotericism as well. It is important to keep in mind, how the discipline carries within it (often invisible) background assumptions of Eurocentrism, Christianity and whiteness (and male gender). The critical gaze must therefore be directed at oneself and at how one uses different concepts: who we are inviting to read our research and who we are treating as ”others”, and what kinds of hidden background assumptions our own researchers contain.
Nostetaan teksti pöydälle 