This page groups practices by the year their recorded history begins. Wikipedia notes that "the term 'cult' first appeared in English in 1617," even though the underlying Latin concept is far older. Browsing by start year lets a visitor see how far back a practice's documented use in its own language reaches.
Facts
Origins
Whose Classification This IsWestern esotericism as a single field is a twentieth-century scholarly construction: Antoine Faivre's typology of four intrinsic characteristics gave it a working definition, and Wouter Hanegraaff's later history reads the category as a container assembled by centuries of polemical exclusion. It is historians' frame, not a name the traditions gave themselves. 4 Overview
What Defines This GroupingPractices belonging to traditions of concealed or graded knowledge - Hermetic and Kabbalistic ceremonial magic, initiatic orders, internal and external alchemy, tantric sexual yoga. The atlas describes the category and the existence of its practices from published scholarship; material a living order or lineage transmits only under initiation is recorded as existing and is not reproduced. 2 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseTantric sexual practice entered Western esoteric orders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through Randolph, Reuss and Crowley, in forms their Indian and Tibetan sources do not recognise. The atlas records the Western practice and the Indic practice as distinct and presents neither as the other. 3 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryUsed, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 2 Learn More
The esoteric practices
This group holds esoteric practices, the inner or hidden disciplines of the mystical and occult traditions, transmitted to initiates and aimed at spiritual transformation, subtle physiology or contact with hidden powers. These practices are typically taught within a lineage and guarded from the uninitiated.
The browser will find esoteric practices from various traditions. The entries describe each practice's technique and aim, noting the tradition and lineage in which it is transmitted.
20th century BCE
Filter Results1 entry
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture
Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Cambridge University Press, 2012
3. Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism
Hugh B. Urban, University of California Press, 2006
4. Access to Western Esotericism
Antoine Faivre, State University of New York Press, 1994
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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