Table of Contents

Table of Contents - 6 PREFACE - 8 Part 1. History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents: Origins and Development - 10 The Birth of a Chair - 12 Ten Years of Studying and Teaching Western Esotericism - 18 Part 2. Glimpses of Research - 32 The Pagan Who Came from the East: George Gemistos Plethon and Platonic Orientalism - 34 Astrologia Hermetica: Astrology, Western Culture, and the Academy - 51 The Modernity of Occultism: Reflections on Some Crucial Aspects - 60 Mathematical Esotericism: Some Perspectives on Renaissance Arithmology - 76 Danish Esotericism in the 20th Century: The Case of Martinus - 92 Part 3. Studying Western Esotericism in Amsterdam - 104 On First Looking into the Halls of Hermeticism - 106 An Unlikely Love Affair: Plato, the Netherlands, and Life after Westotericism - 108 Heterology in Amsterdam: The Academy Takes the Other Out to Dinner - 110 The Copenhagen Connection - 112 If You Seek - 114 Part 4. Western Esotericism in International Perspective - 116 From “the Hermetic Tradition” to “Western Esotericism” - 118 From Paris to Amsterdam and Beyond: Origins and Development of a Collaboration - 124 Western Esotericism in the United Kingdom - 130 From Talk about Esotericism to Esotericism Research: Remarks on the Prehistory and Development of a Research Group - 136 Seven Epistemological Theses on Esotericism: Upon the Occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the Amsterdam Chair - 144 Hermes and his Students in Amsterdam - 150 CONTRIBUTORS - 158 REGISTER - 160

About the Author

Wouter J. Hanegraaff is Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam. Joyce Pijnenburg is a doctoral student at the University of Amsterdam and works at the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.