Introduction

Notes Introduction 1. On māyā as fiction, see Spivak (2001: 134 and passim). 2. On this point, see Rennie (1996: 17–25). 3. For a thematic and historical overview of the Western esoteric currents, see, inter alia, Faivre (1996), von Stuckrad (2005), and Goodrick-Clarke (2008). 4. The literature on Tantra and Yoga is extensive, but excellent overviews con- taining both relevant scholarly discussion and translations of the representa- tive original texts are White (ed.) (2000) and White (ed.) (2012). 5. “Tantra is an esoteric culture” (Kripal, 1998: 28); it is associated with “eroti- cism, alchemy, and magic” ( Brooks, 1990: 5). “The magic lore . is almost universally present in Tantric literature” (Goudriaan, 1979: 23). “Tantra is esoteric” (Padoux, 2011: 123, n.1). “[T]antric yoga inevitably opened the way to an alchemical continuation. The ‘diamond body’ of the Vajrayānist, the siddha-deha of the Hatha yogins is not unlike the ‘body of glory’ of the Western alchemists” (Eliade, 1969: 274). “Tantra is understood to connote a body of esoteric knowledge capable of generating awesome supernatural powers and even physical immortality . To call an image or ritual ‘Tantric’ suggests that it is charged with ambivalent occult energy or that it offers a secret shortcut to esoteric knowledge and powers” (Lutgendorf, 2001: 272). Many more examples could be cited. 6. “Western magic and oriental yoga have a common origin” (Hymenaeus Beta, in Crowley, 1997: xxiv). “[T]he Western tradition, in no way conflicts with . the Eastern Tradition” (Fortune, 2000: 86). “[The] differences [between East and West] appear only upon the surface of the two traditions and not at the Heart, where all is One and the Same” (Grant, 2006: 48). “It is just as valid an etymology to say that yoga in the Yogini is just another name for magick in all its wonderful pagan style” (Morgan, 2008a: 98). 7. Urban is quoting White (2000: 5). 8. See the chapter on “The Cult of Ecstasy: Meldings of East and West in a New Age of Tantra,” in Urban (2003c: 203–63). 9. “The mandate to examine other cultures on their own terms, facilitated by the political connections afforded by imperial power, resulted in the accre- tion of a vast quantity of data which both challenged Christian belief and 144 NOTES presented a range of religious alternatives which came to be defined as the occult” (Verter, 1997: 30). 10. “Perhaps the most important development for the history of modern occultism was the invention of the general periodical” (Verter, 1997: 102). “Modern occultism was a creation of the mass media. What had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a relatively limited enterprise stemming from traditions deeply established in the West became over the course of the nineteenth century a sprawling melange of esoteric practices and philosophies deliberately borrowed from a domesticated but still exoticized Orient. The shift was insti- gated and propelled by the organs of print communication” (Verter, 1997: 276). 11. “Occultism was the pursuit of those who sought an alternative to common faith that was not only more exclusive, but also more intellectual, more artistic, more Bohemian” (Verter, 1997: 222). “It is not surprising then that esoteric ritualism should become the spiritual option of choice for so many Bohemians. Whether in the form of hermetic philosophy or High Church Catholicism, mystical religion represented if nothing else a departure from what they labeled the domestic piety of the bourgeoisie and the strident evangelicalism of the masses” (Verter, 1997: 225). 12. “Over the course of the nineteenth century, a new occult paradigm arose and spread to capture the imaginations of millions of people throughout North America and Western Europe. It was a patchwork creed, combining yoga, Kabbalah, Egyptian mythology, Greek paganism, Renaissance alchemy, and mystical Buddhism with popular divinatory practices such as astrology, numerology and dream interpretation” (Verter, 1997: 1). 13. See also Bevir (1994) and in particular his argument that the founder of The- osophy, H. P. Blavatsky, “modified the occult tradition in one more crucial aspect. She made India the source of the ancient wisdom” (756). 14. For an overview of the literature on the subject, with an argument that prob- lematizes the very notions of “East” and “West,” written from the perspective of esoteric studies, see Granholm (2013). 15. On the notion of the ideal object as a potential tool in the history of ideas, see Couliano (1991), Couliano (1992, in particular pp. 1–22), and Marvell (2007); see also Chapter 3. 16. “It is . due to ingrained ideological biases—ultimately grounded in the biblical and theological rejection of paganism as idolatry—rather than for scholarly reasons that this entire domain was severely neglected by academic research until far into the 20th century” (Hanegraaff, 2006: ix). 17. See, for example, “One Star in Sight,” in Crowley (1997: 486–98). Chapter 1 1. Mary Douglas (1966: 122) argues: “All margins are dangerous. Any structure of ideas is vulnerable at its margins.” She locates the symbolic center of NoteS 145 this notion in the structure of the human body, with the orifices represent- ing the most vulnerable points due to their function, which necessitates the contact at the place of margin between the self and the other. This chapter is a revised and enlarged version of the paper originally read at the Quinquennial World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (Toronto, August 15–21, 2010). 2. The following statement exemplifies Faivre’s position (1994: 6): “In the Far East and in other cultural terrains, esotericism does not even have its own status, while in the West it does. To be perfectly clear, it would be difficult to understand what a ‘universal esotericism’ might be.” Note, however, that the argument of my proposal does not invoke the concept of universal esotericism, but rather suggests the existence of regional and denominational varieties of esotericism. 3. In other words, esotericism is to a large degree an etic, rather than an emic category. It merits mentioning that the noun “esotericism” first occurs in German as Esoteriker in 1792 (see Neugebauer-Wölk, 2010) and in French, as l’ésotérisme, only as late as 1828. See, for example, Stuckrad (2005: 2). 4. “In India it is not possible to speak of esotericism in the true sense of the word, because there is no doctrinal dualism of exoteric and esoteric; it can only be a matter of natural esotericism, in the sense that each goes more or less deeply into the doctrine and more or less far according to the measure of his abilities, since there are, for certain individualities, limitations which are inherent in their own nature, and which it is impossible to overcome” Guénon (2007: 9). 5. A useful overview of Western representations of the “marvels of the East”— and especially India—in classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, focusing on the notions of “monsters,” is Wittkower (1942). 6. Manly P. Hall similarly writes: “Under the name of Prester John, Parsifal, the last of the Grail Kings, carried the Holy Cup with him into India and it disap- peared forever from the Western world” (2003: 309). 7. A seminal work on the Western “discovery” of India and the East is Schwab (1984). 8. On Vivekananda and what she calls Neo-Vedāntic occultism, see De Michelis (2004: 91–126 and passim). In particular, she considers that in his Raja Yoga, “Vievakananda’s worldview takes the final leap from Neo-Vedāntic esotericism to Neo-Vedāntic occultism” (De Michelis, 2004: 125). 9. For the role of secrecy in (what I call) Indian and Western esotericism viewed from a comparative perspective, see Urban (1997) and Urban (2003b). 10. Kulārnava Tantra, III, 4: “vedaśāstrapurānāni prakāśyāni kuleśvari / śaivaśāktāgamāh sarve rahasyāh parikīrttitāh.” Similarly, but more harshly, the doctrines of the Vedas, Śāstras, and Purānas are compared to a cour- tesan, who is exposed to the public gaze, while the Tantric doctrines (here specified as śāmbhavī vidyā) are to be kept hidden like a woman of a good 146 NOTES family: “vedaśāstrapurānāni spastāni ganikā iva /iyantu śāmbhavī vidyā guptā kulavadhūriva” (Kulārnava Tantra, XI, 85). This statement is also echoed in the fifteenth-century Hathayogapradīpikā, 4, 35: “vedaśāstrapurānāni sāmānyaganikā iva / ekaiva śāmbhavī mudrā guptā kulavadhūriva.” In the aptly titled Gupta-sādhana Tantra (Tantra of the secret practice), Śiva tells Pārvatī that the great knowledge concerning the methods of the Kaulas (i.e., left-handed practitioners of Tantra) needs to be hidden, just as she would hide her own sexual organ (“pragoptavyam mahādevi svayoniriva pārvati”). That their teachings need to be kept secret is a constant injunction in tantric texts. 11. It should be clear that I am not criticizing Burchett’s approach as such, but am simply adopting a different strategy. 12. Cf. also Ashis Nandy’s critical remarks on the subject of the colonial privileging of history over myth: “History here is seen as the reality, the myth being a flawed, irrational fairy tale produced by ‘unconscious’ history, meant for savages and children. The core of such a concept of time— produced in the West for the first time after the demise of medi- evalism—consists in the emphasis on causes rather than on structures (on ‘why’ rather than ‘what’), on progress and evolution as opposed to self-realization-in-being, and on the rationality of adjustment to historical reality (pragmatics) and of change through constant dramatic action (rather than on the rationality of a fundamentally critical attitude towards earlier interpretations and change through only critical interventions and new interpretations)” (2009: 60). 13. Edgerton acknowledges his relying on the essay by E. Washburn Hopkins (1901), who in his elucidation of the role of Yoga in the Mahābhārata wrote that “The exercise of Yoga imparts magical powers” (336) and that “The ordi- nary saint or ascetic of the epic is acquainted only with Yoga as a means to the attainment of magical powers” (337).

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