Category: Esotericism

  • G.I. Gurdjieff on Esoteric Christianity and the Slavery of the Masses

    G.I. Gurdjieff on Esoteric Christianity and the Slavery of the Masses

    Peter D. Ouspensky, a Russian philosopher and student of Armenian mystic, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff around 1870 recounts a conversation he had with him in his book, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (1949). In one account, Peter D. Ouspensky asks Gurdjieff: “Why if ancient knowledge is preserved, why aren’t such men…

  • Limitations of Christian Cabalists and Bible Challenge Authority of Western Esotericism

    Limitations of Christian Cabalists and Bible Challenge Authority of Western Esotericism

    Does the limitations of Kabbalah and the Christian Bible in the Studies of Esotericism blind Western Philosophers? Helena P. Blavatsky challenged the esotericists of her time, who saw in the Bible, the final authority, even in the area of esoteric study. “And now it has come to this: The student interested in the Secret Sciences…

  • Goetia and Witchcraft: Origin of the “Witch” and Magic

    Goetia and Witchcraft: Origin of the “Witch” and Magic

    The term “Witch” in old Anglo-Saxon glossaries is tied to wicce, meaning “pythoness, divinatricem.” As in this, and in early forms, it referred to specific kinds of magical craft. In the Laws of Ælfred (c.890), wicce is seen as the craft of women — “wise (skilled) women in the art of magic”; and in the old German, wiccan…