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Sacred Correspondences
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Trained or authorised specialists

This page groups practices by who actually carries them out. Wikipedia notes that in the Catholic Church, cultus "is the technical term for Roman Catholic devotions or veneration extended to a particular saint," a practice of ordinary believers rather than clergy alone. Browsing this way lets a visitor separate a practice open to any adherent from one reserved for a specialist.

Facts
Directory
Category
Practices 1
Origins
Whose Classification This Is
Western 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 Grouping
Practices 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 Use
Tantric 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 Category
Used, 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.

Trained or authorised specialists
Filter Results15 entries

Assumption of the godform

Trained or authorised specialists

Channeling

Trained or authorised specialists

Divination

Trained or authorised specialists

Dream interpretation

Trained or authorised specialists

Extispicy, Liver Divination

Trained or authorised specialists

Heka (Egyptian Ritual Magic)

Trained or authorised specialists

Oral Transmission of Druidic Teaching

Trained or authorised specialists

Pillar of Mercy

Trained or authorised specialists

Pillar of Severity

Trained or authorised specialists

Rising on the planes

Trained or authorised specialists

Sigilization

Trained or authorised specialists

Spellcraft

Trained or authorised specialists

Spirit writing

Trained or authorised specialists

The Bornless Ritual

Trained or authorised specialists

Waidan (external alchemy)

Trained or authorised specialists
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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