Spiritual quest is at the very heart of poetry, but in our materialistic climate as we begin the twenty-first century, this has been largely forgotten, even by those who claim to be experts in interpreting literature.How does the worldview common to the main esoteric traditions of East and West correspond to the aims of Romantic poets such as Shelley, Keats, Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth? In Romanticism and Esoteric Tradition, Paul Davies maintains that the intended meaning of the poetry and thinking of the Romantics can be understood only in the light of the spiritual teachings of those traditions.This is one of the few books that connects the creative nature of poetry to the core teachings of the esoteric tradition. It reveals the true meaning of several Romantic writers whose works have been trivialized by a culture that has marginalized the spiritual and bound itself only to material, historical, and social concerns.The author also shows that the Romantics were the first Western poets to imagine the relationship of the self to the environment as personal encounter. In this sense the Romantics recalled a long-held secret of the esoteric "human sciences" rather than inventing a new one.This book brings the deepest interests of the Romantics directly into contact with issues closest to present-day students of the spiritual traditions and holistic perspectives.

Spititual quest is at the very heart of poetry, but in the materialistic climate of the late twentieth century this has been almost forgotten, even by those claiming to be experts in interpreting literature. How does the worldview common to the main esoteric traditions of East and West correspond to the aims of such Romantic poets as Shelley, Keats, Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth? In Romanticism and Esoteric Tradition, Paul Davies maintains that only in the light of the spiritual teachings of these traditions can the poetry and thinking of the Romantics be understood as they intended. This is one of the first books to connect the creative nature of poetry to the core teachings of the esoteric tradition, and thereby to bring out the true meaning of several Romantic writers whose works have been trivialized by a culture that has marginalized the spiritual and tied itself to material, historical, and social issues. The author also shows that the Romantics were the first Western poets to imagine the relationship of the self to the environment as personal encounter. In this sense the Romantics were recalling a long-held secret of the esoteric "human sciences," not inventing a new one. This book brings the deepest interests of the Romantics directly into contact with issues closest to present-day students of the spiritual traditions and holistic perspectives.

It deals extensively with Decembrism, the political conspiracy so known after its culmination in a failed attempt to overthrow the tsarist autocracy in December 1825. The Decembrist writers and other romantics influenced by Freemasonry, including Kondraty Ryleyev, Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, and Alexander Pushkin, were adept in the application of thaumaturgical skills to literature.

This volume introduces what has sometimes been called "the third component of western culture". It traces the historical development of those religious traditions which have rejected a world view based on the primacy of pure rationality or doctrinal faith, emphasizing instead the importance of inner enlightenment or gnosis: a revelatory experience which was typically believed to entail an encounter with one's true self as well as with the ground of being, God. The contributors to this book demonstrate this perspective as fundamental to a variety of interconnected traditions. In Antiquity, one finds the gnostics and hermetics; in the Middle Ages several Christian sects. The medieval Cathars can, to a certain extent, be considered part of the same tradition. Starting with the Italian humanist Renaissance, hermetic philosophy became of central importance to a new religious synthesis that can be referred to as Western Esotericism. The development of this tradition is described from Renaissance hermeticists and practitioners of spiritual alchemy to the emergence of Rosicrucianism and Christian theosophy in the seventeenth century, and from post-enlightenment aspects of Romanticism and occultism to the present-day New Age movement.

This first annotated edition of William Gilbert's enigmatic poem, The Hurricane: a Theosophical and Western Eclogue, with extended interpretative chapters informed by Gilbert's magical and astrological writings, shows how its dark materials fed the imaginations of his friends Coleridge, Wordsworth and Southey, in their formative years between 1795 and 1798.

At the end of the eighteenth century, scientists for the first time demonstrated what medieval and renaissance alchemists had long suspected; ice is not lifeless but vital, a crystalline revelation of vigorous powers. Studied in esoteric and exoterical representations of frozen phenomena, several Romantic figures - including Coleridge and Poe, Percy and Mary Shelley, Emerson and Thoreau - challenged traditional notions of ice as waste and instead celebrated crystals, glaciers, and the poles as special disclosures of a holistic principle of being. The Spiritual History of Ice explores this ecology of frozen shapes in fascinating detail, revealing not only a neglected current of the Romantic age but also a secret history and psychology of ice.

Recent years have seen a spectacular rise of the New Age movement and an ever-increasing interest in its beliefs and manifestations. This fascinating work presents the first-ever comprehensive analysis of New Age Religion and its historical backgrounds, thus providing the reader with a means of orientation in the bewildering variety of the movement. Making extensive use of primary sources, the author thematically analyses New Age beliefs from the perspective of the study of religions. While looking at the historical backgrounds of the movement, he convincingly argues that its foundations were laid by so-called western esoteric traditions during the Renaissance. Hanegraaff finally shows how the modern New Age movement emerged from the increasing secularization of those esoteric traditions during the 19th century. This ground-breaking publication is compulsive reading for all those involved or interested in the New Age movement.