Masters of esotericism
Lives and ideas of the figures who shaped the history of Western esotericism.
Anna Kingsford and the Hermetic Society: an esoteric Christianity
Anna Kingsford, Victorian physician and mystic: her Paris degree, the fight against vivisection, The Perfect Way, Theosophy and the Hermetic Society.
Annie Besant: from freethought to leading the Theosophical Society
Annie Besant between social reform and Theosophy: the 1877 trial, the matchgirls' strike, Blavatsky, the presidency at Adyar, Krishnamurti and India.
Arthur Edward Waite: the mystic scholar behind the Rider deck
Arthur Edward Waite between scholarship and mysticism: Lévi translations, the Golden Dawn, his Rosy Cross order and his deck with Pamela Colman Smith.
Athanasius Kircher: the Jesuit of hieroglyphs and hidden worlds
Athanasius Kircher, seventeenth-century Jesuit: his Coptic studies, the Oedipus Aegyptiacus, the obelisks of Rome, Vesuvius and the Collegio Romano museum.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Zanoni, the Dweller on the Threshold and vril
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Victorian novelist and politician: Zanoni and the Dweller on the Threshold, A Strange Story, The Coming Race and the vril myth.
Court de Gébelin and Etteilla: how the tarot became Egyptian
Court de Gébelin and Etteilla in the eighteenth century: Le Monde primitif, the Book of Thoth thesis and the first tarot deck designed for divination.
Dion Fortune: The Mystical Qabalah and the Society of the Inner Light
Dion Fortune, British occultist: her psychological training, the Golden Dawn, the Society of the Inner Light, The Mystical Qabalah and her esoteric novels.
Elias Ashmole: alchemy, astrology and an early Masonic initiation
Elias Ashmole, English antiquary: his Masonic initiation of 1646, the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, the Royal Society and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Franz Anton Mesmer and animal magnetism: the story of a fluid
Franz Anton Mesmer and animal magnetism: from Vienna to Paris, the baquet, the royal commission of 1784 and his legacy in somnambulism and esotericism.
George Gemistos Plethon: the philosopher of Mystras who brought Plato
Gemistos Plethon, Byzantine philosopher of Mystras: the Council of Florence, Plato, the Chaldean Oracles, the burned Laws and his tomb in Rimini.
Gerolamo Cardano: physician, mathematician and Renaissance astrologer
Gerolamo Cardano between science and astrology: the Ars magna and cubic equations, De subtilitate, famous horoscopes, his arrest and his autobiography.
Giambattista Della Porta and the Magia naturalis
Giambattista Della Porta, Neapolitan scholar and writer: the Magia naturalis, the Academy of Secrets, physiognomy, optics and his ties with the Lincei.
Guillaume Postel: orientalist, Kabbalist and prophet of concord
Guillaume Postel, sixteenth-century French orientalist: travels to the East, Kabbalistic translations, Mother Joanna of Venice and his dream of concord.
Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way: the story of an unclassifiable teacher
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff: his Caucasian origins, meeting Ouspensky, the Institute at Fontainebleau, the Movements, the enneagram and Beelzebub's Tales.
Jakob Böhme, the mystic shoemaker of Görlitz
Jakob Böhme, German shoemaker and mystic: the Aurora, his clash with the pastor of Görlitz, the Ungrund, the seven source-spirits and his legacy to Hegel.
Johannes Reuchlin: the humanist who defended Jewish books
Johannes Reuchlin, German humanist: meeting Pico, the De verbo mirifico, the De arte cabalistica and his battle against the destruction of Jewish books.
Julius Evola: tradition, magic and politics in a critical reading
Julius Evola in the history of ideas: from Dadaism to the Ur Group, his works on Tradition, his writings on race and the critical verdict of historians.
MacGregor Mathers: the translator who shaped the Golden Dawn
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers: founding the Golden Dawn, translating the Kabbala denudata, the Key of Solomon and Abramelin, and the crisis of 1900.
Nostradamus: the physician of Salon between almanacs and Prophecies
Who Nostradamus really was: Montpellier, the plague, the almanacs, the Prophecies of 1555, Catherine de' Medici and readings made in hindsight.
Papus: Gérard Encausse and Belle Époque occultism
Life and works of Papus, the physician Gérard Encausse: Martinism, the review L'Initiation, the Tarot of the Bohemians and his role in French occultism.
Ramon Llull and the Ars magna: a machine for thinking the divine
Ramon Llull, philosopher and mystic of Majorca: his conversion, the Ars magna with its figures and combinatory wheels, his missions and the pseudo-Llull.
René Guénon: from Parisian occultism to the critique of modernity
René Guénon, father of Traditionalism: his years among occultists, his works on Vedanta and symbolism, his critique of modernity and his life in Cairo.
Robert Fludd: physician, Rosicrucian apologist, macrocosm philosopher
Robert Fludd between medicine and Mosaic philosophy: his defence of the Rosicrucians, the illustrated Utriusque cosmi historia and his clashes with Kepler.
Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy: from Goethe to the Goetheanum
Rudolf Steiner between Goethe, Theosophy and anthroposophy: his main works, the Goetheanum at Dornach, Waldorf schools and the criticism of his thought.
Tommaso Campanella: the City of the Sun, prison and the stars
Tommaso Campanella, Calabrian friar: the 1599 plot, his long years in prison, the City of the Sun, astral rites with Urban VIII and his exile in Paris.