The Revival of Esoteric and Neo-Pagan Thought
The religious philosophies we turn to next combine many of the ideas and behaviors sociologists commonly refer to as “esoteric.” In fact, what all of these alternative communities share is the belief that a superior kind of spiritual knowledge—known in antiquity as gnosis (Greek, “knowledge”)—is available to everyone in the modem world, often due to the presence of enlightened intermediaries in our midst.
Once one is possession of such knowledge, the world we presently call “real” appears very different—whether enhanced or diminished- depending on how “world affirming” or “world denying” one’s experience of a greater reality turns out to be. The belief that the world of common, everyday perception is only a fragment (or a shadowy reflection) of something much more real is a recurrent insight of most of the world’s religions. Nevertheless, the conviction that direct knowledge of that greater reality is a guarded secret that only a few initiates can grasp is the core presumption behind all forms of esoteric thought in the West.Although the origins of this secretive worldview may be traced back to the Middle Ages, most new religious communities that engage in some form of metaphysical speculation have been influenced by two visionary figures of the early modem period: Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) and Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Readers of Boehme’s book Aurora (1612) leam of a parallel world, perfect and eternal, into which each human being is destined to be reborn, but only after that individual’s spiritual nature has been realized. Readers of Swedenborg’s On Heaven and Hell (1758), however, learn of the passing of successive ages, with the fifth and final age set aside for the realization of the Second Coming of Christ. With the advent of this new age, Swedenborg taught, it will be possible to converse with angels and to raise all human relationships to a higher level. Both Boehme and Swedenborg were convinced that we are surrounded by supernal intelligences, and both were equally certain that the coming age would see a lifting of the veil that presently obscures our view of a spiritual reality. Echoes of these beliefs can be found in movements that have been influenced by what we have called New Age thought.