The Enlightenment myth of the New Age as the other reason is subject to revision.
By Lorenzo Ravagli
The history of the West is the story of a perpetual struggle against an imaginary enemy. This story can be traced back to the reasoning of monotheism. Judaism and Christianity displaced paganism, the Catholic Church, Gnosticism, later, the magic, Protestantism, the "paganism" in Catholicism, the elucidation of the occult. In all these repressions esoteric knowledge (spiritual wisdom) was suppressed. The esoteric research appears today to clarify the information about themselves and thereby consistently leading to the end. She raises the repressed into consciousness again, exempt the West final of ideological totalitarianism. Thus the New Age researcher Wouter J. Hanegraaff, in an essay from the year 2005.
knowledge published in his 2005 essay, "Forbidden: Anti-Esoteric Polemics and Academic Research" represents Wouter J. Hanegraaff argues that the so-called Western esotericism is the historical product of a polemical discourse, to Beginning of monotheism can be traced. In the course of this discourse, today's western culture average constructed their own identity and does so to this day. This construction of identity takes place in that we tell ourselves and other stories about who, what and how we want to be themselves. Today's scientific esoteric research is so far a challenge to the academic establishment, so is the self-understanding of Western culture, as it is precisely these stories in question, undermine, and forces us to recognize who are what and how we really are. The deeper reason for the rejection of the academic establishment against the esoteric research is an instinctive resistance to the collapse of the certainties that mediate these traditional tales.
Each polemical discourse is based on the feeling of a threat. It assumes that the threat is relatively unclear. It requires an object, an audience and simplifications. Simplification is the main instrument of the polemical discourse that aims to design a completely "other" and to objectify this. The "Other" of the polemical discourse is always imaginary and can make as an imaginary size so as better services for the construction of their own imaginary identities. The other is as the absolute evil represented, while the party represents the polemicist is the absolutely best. Such an exclusion of the imagination is based on the polemical discourse that has for many centuries led to what is known as Western esotericism and allows these esoteric appear today as an isolated field of possible research while she was in fact an integral part of Western culture and is.
Of the two strategies of exclusion that have been applied in the course of Western history against the other, the ban and the Ridikülisierung is now only the latter remained, although in the present trends are again to resort to stricter means of the ban. (One study in this context, the strategy of the anti-cult and anti-cult movements, achieved through influence on parliaments and governments to ban the allegedly dangerous to society "others"). But the Ridikülisierung is merely the remnant of a much more militant form of the polemic that made use of earlier governmental power in order to exclude the "other" to prohibit and destroy.
The great polemical narrative
The great polemical narrative of the West against the New Age developed over several stages. First came the "Mosaic distinction" (Jan Assmann), which was based on the grounds of monotheism. Monotheism constructed his own identity to be the true religion, "against which he polemically constructed" paganism, polytheism and idolatry. In monotheism, the true religion of the one invisible God, by definition, challenges the false worship of false gods. The construction of the "pagan others" was the first step on the way to the formation of Western identity. But despite the exclusion discourse against paganism remained the ideas and traditions important components of Christianity, to the development of the West exerted a significant influence, which can be seen from the history of Neo-Platonism, the Aristotelianism, Hermeticism or the variety of "pagan" practices that are still not vanished from everyday life. Since the "paganism today," a lively part of Western culture has remained and become an integral part of the history of Christianity, this integral paganism was pushed into an imaginary space in which it could be fought constantly as the "other" and had to. Only by continuing controversy, the "Western" identity was under changing historical conditions ever reproduce again.
The construction of the Gnosis
In first centuries of the history of Christianity designed this against the heresy that was imagined in the form of Gnosticism. Gnosis or Gnosticism is an artificial construct that was created by a polemical discourse that was so successful that until the second half of the 20th Century, the majority of scholars to the actual historical existence of Gnosticism believed existed, but only as an imaginary size. Gnosticism is a dubious idea that should be created a false perception of history and its use is best avoided. The polemic against heretics in the early centuries of Christianity to the 20th Century set in, what the academic Research on the Gnosis understand. Gnosticism was the wrong religion, religious error and was denounced as dangerous and immoral because it promoted individualism. Your reference to the limits of philosophy and the individual experience access to the divine could be re-interpreted as a plea for the irrational.
proves, on closer inspection, the so-called Gnostic movement, or religion as a non-existent. Instead one finds in the Roman Empire in the era of Hellenism, a diffuse and complex type of religiosity that aspired to knowledge (gnosis) and saving esoteric knowledge. She ignored orthodox boundaries and could both paganism, Judaism, Christianity and subsequently in Islam appeared occurred.
The construction of the magic
behaves similar with the construction of magic as the "other" of orthodox Christianity. Already the Greek magic was a diffuse, pejorative term that referred regarded as illegitimate religious practices. The early Christians adopted this socially inclusive term, and reduced him to the "traffic with demons," the false gods of paganism. From the perspective of antiheidnischen against religion was magic for the dominion of the enemy of mankind. The religious wrong has become a danger to society. This had to counter attack of evil to be protected. The assumption that there is a movement of evil demons was the basis of the polemic against the Magic, which has now been assigned a variety of divinatory practices of semantic technologies on the invocation of angels or souls of the dead, to the knowledge of witches, etc. Once again, hides the fact that all of these practices has been denounced as a lawless, dangerous, immoral and wrong, only the historical truth that they were for centuries an integral part of living Christianity. As in the case of Gnosticism are the categories of the polemicist was later adopted by academics and have the interpretation of the history of Christianity and Western culture distorted.
The reconstruction of paganism
Ironically, the Catholic Church was taken just as paganism, which had to exclude from the tried, when Protestantism arose, and construct the Catholicism as the continued existence paganism in Christianity began. Now, saw the role of Protestantism in the true religion and Catholicism was declared to be the wrong one. In Protestantism was added to distinguish between faith and works. Salvation comes by faith alone, works, rituals are irrelevant. The influence of Protestantism on the understanding of religion in modern times can not be overestimated. Only during the 20th Century began the religious studies to overcome the obsession with Protestant beliefs, to theoretical lessons, and started again recognize that practices such as rituals, ceremonies and so on become an integral and central part of religious life are. "The rejection of Protestantism of" symbol, myth and ritual has led to a narrowing of the religion and its understanding. Excluding these dimensions of religious life, however, neither the historical reality of Christianity nor any other religion to be understood.
For the most polemical narrative of Protestantism was at two elements: he encouraged the exclusion of the pagan, Gnostic and magical, which began just flow back into the Renaissance back strong in Christianity (Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Ludovico Lazarelli) and he narrowed the understanding of religion in teaching, speaking and writing. Forms of religious life, lay their emphasis on practices were degraded so again: this is particularly true of the so-called paganism, which was again the dominant theme, as it was in the colonial empires in new form in appearance. In its fight against Protestantism pictures and works of his self-image as anti-magic, and antimythische antiritualistische strengthened against religion in general. The backlash against this rigorous Purism was inevitable: it came out even in Protestantism, which generated some of the most important trends of the history of Western esotericism: the work of Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme, the manifestos of the Rosicrucians, and finally the Christian theosophy. The Christian theosophy after the Reformation was a child of Protestantism. Against this internal enemy, the Protestant church has taken action and added to other marginalized the Christianized paganism of Neo-Platonism and Hermeticism, Christian Kabbalah, the Paracelsism, Rosicrucianism, Christian theosophy - and in the 20th Century anthroposophy added. This story is to understand why some of the sharpest Polemics against anthroposophy today are carried forward from a Protestant perspective, which has an intrinsic structural relationship with the atheist left.
The construction of the occult
In the century of the Enlightenment finally continued exclusion of the Protestant discourse as a polemic against the "occult." There was the mythical conflict between science and superstition, reason and unreason is not at the beginning of the Enlightenment. The early Enlightenment saw themselves on the side of truth, the real matter of course, religion. Leading representatives of the Royal Society insisted on the possibility of witchcraft and the meaning of demonic Impacts on nature. Kepler was a practicing astrologer, Newton and Boyle were alchemists - and devout Christians - the so-called occult sciences were an integral part of the "scientific revolution". The rejection of occult sciences can not be declared a distinguishing feature of the scientific revolution in modern times. The discourse of enlightenment, in the course of the 19 Century, developed the historical development of extremely simplistic, and reason against the irrational, the science against superstition playing off coincided with his arguments back to all the patterns that foreshadowed those of the monotheistic and Christian polemicists already were. From the standpoint of the progress of science, the Pagan now appeared as the primitives, which are at a junior level of development remained. The concept of the fetishism of replacing the idolatry. The consciousness of the primitive fetishist could allegedly not between the physical image and the term to distinguish the former symbolized and the practice of primitive magic was based on the alleged confusion of imaginary correspondence with mechanical causal effects.
The other was the imaginary "other of reason" (Hartmut and Gernot Böhme). As such it exerted an immeasurable influence on the history of science and Western culture. The Ideologues of the Enlightenment defined their own identity in the 19th marginalized century by a polemical discourse that it offered itself as entirely rational, and all forms of superstition as totally irrational and absurd. Not only the dogmas of the church were now in the reservoirs of the irrational, but also the entire hermetic and even the occult. This "irrational" has been ridiculed, but the accusations of immorality and danger were not far away. This is especially true for a number of modernist discourse that fascism and National Socialism as the enemy and return of the Gnostic as the fatal consequence of "Destruction of reason" (Lukacs, Voegelin, Adorno) consider that connects vague but persistent with the "occult."
is nothing esoteric, so Hanegraaf conclusion that is not designed for some reason by someone as esoteric. That Western esotericism, that is an essential, inseparable part of Western culture and its history, has been almost completely ignored by the academic research, can ultimately only be explained psychologically. Because Western culture has emerged in a polemical narrative to its foundation it has to displace a substantial part of this foundation and when to declare non-existent. The recognition this suppressed history of the recognition of a shadow is the same. The recognition of the shadow shattered self-image, based on the displacement of the shadow. Tremendous psychological (psychosocial) energies are spent to produce this fragile image of a perfectly rational and transparent, pure self. The recognition that the repressed shadow is an integral part of this self-destructs, this self-image and cut the inflation of reason any foundation. If the western culture from the great polemical narrative emerge that would not look the same as before, the ground beneath our feet would disappear and threaten the apparent chaos. The scientific New Age Research is the role of a therapist, the vereinseitigte Western culture can lead back to their entirety, by giving us aware of doing what we have left everything behind, marginalized and suppressed, in order to become what we are today.
From Hanegraaff has recently appeared: Swedenborg Oetinger Kant: Three Perspectives on the Secrets of Heaven
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