Olav Hammer

Handbook of the Theosophical Current

Few religious currents have been as influential as the Theosophical. Yet few currents have been so under-researched, and the Brill Handbook of the Theosophical Current thus represents pioneering research. A first section surveys the main people and events involved in the Theosophical Society from its inception to today, and outlines the Theosophical worldview. A second, substantial section covers most significant religions to emerge in the wake of the Theosophical Society - Anthroposophy, the Point Loma community, the I AM religious activity, the Summit Lighthouse Movement, the New Age, theosophical UFO religions, and numerous others. Finally, the interaction of the Theosophical current with contemporary culture - including gender relations, art, popular fiction, historiography, and science - are discussed at length.

Deconstructing ‘Western esotericism’: on Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy

This paper discusses a number of consequences that – although not always intended by the author – can be drawn from the radically historicist approach adopted by Wouter J. Hanegraaff in his monograph Esotericism and the Academy. These consequences are the atomization of ‘esotericism’ into a disparate range of ideas, practices, and currents with few if any shared elements; a better approximation to contemporary anthropological views of culture and cultural innovation; a focus on polemical strategies rather than substantive contents and a concomitant possibility of cross-cultural comparison; a reluctance to engage with theories of broader scope; and a vacillation between seeing ‘esotericism’ as merely a waste-basket category and attempting nonetheless to salvage a minimal substantive definition.

Rudolf Steiner and Theosophy

The first part of this chapter is structured to reflect three chronologically overlapping stages in the development of Steiners ideas. The chapter begins with a sketch of Rudolf Steiners - quite un-Theosophical - intellectual interests. It discusses the period from Steiners affiliation with the Theosophical Society (TS) until his disaffiliation ten years later. The second part of the chapter is concerned with some of the elements of Steiners writings that clearly display an affinity with Theosophical concepts. The chapter discusses Steiners panorama of cosmic evolution, in which various vast epochs succeed each other, and in which mythological continents such as Lemuria and Atlantis play an important part. It examines his anthropology, and discusses about the role of karma and reincarnation in human life. The chapter presents radical reinterpretation of the Christ of traditional Christian churches, and discusses the issues concerning religious innovation that are illustrated by the case of Anthroposophy. Keywords:anthroposophy; Atlantis; karma; Lemuria; reincarnation; Rudolf Steiner; theosophical society (TS)

Major controversies involving new religious movements

INTRODUCTION New religious movements (NRMs), although relatively small in absolute numbers of participants, have been controversial almost from when they began attracting public attention in the late 1960s in America. Controversy developed in many nations, sometimes in somewhat different ways, over how to manage and exert social control over the NRMs that were attracting some of the “brightest and best” youth in many societies. Controversies followed the NRMs as they spread around the Western world and into other nations, including former Soviet-dominated countries. Controversy derived from the competition with dominant religions in many nations, and particularly the fact that young people from middle and upper classes were drawn to the NRMs. Recruitment of these youth sometimes resulted in schisms within families, contributing to the politicization of the NRM phenomenon. Controversies often centered on recruitment methods, fueling the “brainwashing” debate, with claims that some extremely powerful, heretofore unknown psychological techniques were being used to attract young people. The pseudo-scientific concept “brainwashing” was debunked by most scholars studying NRMs but not among the general public and some political and religious leaders. “Brainwashing” became a basis for public policy in a number of nations. Another controversy involved how NRMs raised and used funds. Efforts to exert social and legal control over NRM efforts to support themselves were made with some success in a number of societies. However, these efforts encountered difficulties in nations such as the United States, as a result of legal protections afforded fundraising activities of religious groups.

Late Modern Shamanism: Central Texts and Issues

Shamans and their seances exert a striking fascination for people in the Western world. Thousands of articles and books—both academic and popular—have been written about the subject. The words shaman and shamanism no longer belong merely to the professional jargon of scholars of religion and anthropologists, but have become part of everyday language. Shamanism has even, as few other religious phenomena, inspired people in modern times to create their own innovative versions. There is a wide variety of neoshamanic rituals that one accesses through books and via courses of various lengths and costs. The experiential nature of much neoshamanism is apparent from such recent titles as Serge Kahili King’s Urban Shaman (1990), Alberto Villoldo’s Shaman, Healer, Sage: How to Heal Yourself with the Energy Medicine of the Americas (2000), Tony Samara’s Shaman’s Wisdom: Reclaim Your Lost Connection with the Universe (2012), and Sandra Ingerman’s The Shaman’s Toolkit: Ancient Tools for Shaping the Life and World You Want to Live In (2013). For readers of such volumes, it is clear that shamanism is not an exotic practice found among various indigenous peoples, but practices that can be sampled by anybody willing to buy a book and try out the methods found there.