"After Rudolf Steiner's death, she remained filled with the great impulses of the Christmas Foundation Meeting--impulses, hopes, also anxieties on behalf of mankind, which he had shared with her in many an intimate conversation" --George Adams on Ita Wegman Following the death of Rudolf Steiner in 1925, Ita Wegman--one of his closest esoteric students--began to publish regular letters to the members of the Anthroposophical Society. As Steiner's had done, her letters were appended with "leading thoughts" (guiding principles). Esoteric Studies collects many of those "letters to friends," along with various articles, reports, and addresses by Ita Wegman on subjects such as the Christmas Foundation Conference, the Goetheanum building, and the festival of Michaelmas. Featuring an informative foreword by Crispian Villeneuve and a commemorative study by George Adams, this book provides a fine introduction to the work of Ita Wegman, as well as a rousing call for courage and wakefulness in the spirit of the Archangel Michael "May all those who have the strength and courage, not only to bring the Michael-thought to manifestation in their souls but to make it living in their deeds, become true servants of Michael and bring about his victory, and thus lead mankind over the great crisis with which it is now confronted." --Ita Wegman

The historiographers of religious studies have written the history of this discipline primarily as a rationalization of ideological, most prominently theological and phenomenological ideas: first through the establishment of comparative, philological and sociological methods and secondly through the demand for intentional neutrality. This interpretation caused important roots in occult-esoteric traditions to be repressed. This process of “purification” (Latour) is not to be equated with the origin of the academic studies. De facto, the elimination of idealistic theories took time and only happened later. One example concerning the early entanglement is Tibetology, where many researchers and respected chair holders were influenced by theosophical ideas or were even members of the Theosophical Society. Similarly, the emergence of comparatistics cannot be understood without taking into account perennialist ideas of esoteric provenance, which hold that all religions have a common origin. In this perspective, it is not only the history of religious studies which must be revisited, but also the partial shaping of religious studies by these traditions, insofar as it saw itself as a counter-model to occult ideas.

These papers examine how occult and esoteric themes appear in visual and verbal media, connecting to intellectual history, literature, the arts, present day pop culture, and religious practices. The topics range from the witchcraft motives in the love poetry of the 15th-century Humanist poet, Conrad Celtis; through the activities of Polish and Russian theosophists; Croatian, Greek, Polish painters of the spiritual; the philosophy of wine by the Hungarian esoteric philosopher Béla Hamvas; to contemporary Serbian magic and neo-shamanism. Two studies touch upon the influence of Freemasonry and the Kabbalah in Western esotericism, and, although these are not specifically Central European topics, they provide parallel perspectives to what the other papers of the collection are investigating.

An examination of Trithemius's "magical theology," which argued for the compatibility of magic and Christian doctrines, and its influence during the Renaissance and Reformation.

A historical and interpretive study of three aspects of Western esotericism from the Renaissance to the twentieth century.