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RR 2017/034 The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism Edited by Glenn Alexander Magee Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2016 xl + 474 pp. ISBN 978 0 521 50983 1 (print) ; ISBN 978 1 316 68003 2 (e-book) £89.99 $150 (print); £120 (e-book)
Growing modern participation in forms of generic spirituality has encouraged widespread interest in divine insight and illumination. Sociologists and theologians have noted the impact of this cultural change on the popular imagination, as well as on traditional faith claims and allegiances. In parallel with this, there has been growth in forms of investigative and interpretative scholarship into Western mysticism and the esoteric. This has a clear and strong historical and historiographic side, as many of the strands and themes extend back beyond the Middle Ages to ancient times.
It has also been a field where academic and populist approaches have been mixed up in glorious confusion, one including scholarly work on the Kabbalah and mystics such as Boehme and Gurdjieff, Hildegard of Bingen and Sufism, Jung and the "via negativa" (where we strive to unself the self to come close to what we regard as the divine), gematria and the hidden mystery of numbers, mesmerism and healing, Paraselsian alchemical transformation and astrology. Because this area of research and practice, intellectual inquiry and popular credulity is so fluid and controversial, critical approaches in themselves attract skepticism and sometimes scorn. For these and other reasons, the editor of the excellent handbook, Glenn Magee (Long Island University), alerts readers to...