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Religion
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Discourse theory trumps discourse theory: Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy
Bernd-Christian Otto
a

Institute for Religious Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany Published online: 05 Apr 2013.

To cite this article: Bernd-Christian Otto (2013): Discourse theory trumps discourse theory: Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy , Religion, 43:2, 231-240 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2013.767610

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Religion, 2013 Vol. 43, No. 2, 231240, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2013.767610

Discourse theory trumps discourse theory: Wouter Hanegraaff s Esotericism and the Academy

Bernd-Christian Otto*
Institute for Religious Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany ABSTRACT This review article argues that Wouter Hanegraaff s Esotericism and the Academy is deeply inuenced by a methodological cluster usually referred to as discourse theory. That the author is not willing to classify his own approach as such is explained with recourse to his dispute with Kocku von Stuckrad, who, according to Hanegraaff, would embody discourse theory, whereas Hanegraaff would embody history. A comparison of Hanegraaff s Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and von Stuckrads Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities (Leiden: Brill, 2010) reveals that this is a misleading classication and that Hanegraaff s study comes closer to what discourse theory is all about. As a consequence, Esotericism and the Academy is the very rst study on Western esotericism that offers a convincing justication of this particular label as an overarching discursive category. KEY WORDS Western esotericism; European history of religions; discourse theory; Wouter J. Hanegraaff; Kocku von Stuckrad

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Wouter Hanegraaff s Esotericism and the Academy is, no doubt, a masterpiece. It is the culmination of many years of research into Western esotericism by an outstanding scholar who has shaped the eld in the last two decades and, not least by means of this monograph, advanced it onto new levels of theoretical, methodological, and historical reection. Let me just mention a few characteristics that make this book a landmark study: (1) Hanegraaff impresses with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of a plethora of authors, currents, and historical details reaching into the very last footnote. (A testimony of this is the 67-page bibliography.) Reading this book is a truly educational experience, even if one is already familiar with the eld. Not least through the consistent and persuasive structure of his overall narrative (and methodology), Hanegraaff s interpretation of many authors and currents signicantly exceeds the current state of research. What is more, the book not only contributes to a profound understanding of the emergence and complexity of the eld of Western esotericism, but it also yields new insights into many other elds of research such as the history of science, the history of philosophy, the European history of religions, the history of
*Email: bernd.otto@uni-erfurt.de
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B.-C. Otto Renaissance, of Enlightenment, of Romanticism, and, last but not least, the Study of Religions. Academic books very seldom cover so many diverse areas in such an erudite, sophisticated manner. The wide timespan of Hanegraaff s (extremely dense) narrative reects the interdisciplinary shape of the study of Western esotericism in an exemplary manner. Due to the outstanding synthetic skills of the author and the incredible scope of reading, Hanegraaff manages to systematically transcend disciplinary boundaries. What is more, due to his uent reading of (among other languages) Dutch, English, German, French, and Italian and the inclusion of the most recent literature in these languages, the author also manages to overcome the subtle voids between various national academic discourses. Hanegraaff likewise transcends the boundaries between academic and preor non-academic literature, thereby not only demonstrating the interrelatedness of these textual corpora but also contributing to understanding the emergence and inherent problems of the very eld of study of which he is one of the main protagonists. Hanegraaff s convincing distinction between two different approaches that have shaped the perception of Western esotericism thus far namely, of different variants of the polemical approach on the one hand (such as anti-apologetic or enlightenment narratives) and the religionist approach on the other calls for a fundamental revision of the entire eld. Hanegraaff is right to note that only the rejection of both these (innately ahistorical) approaches renders it possible to investigate thoughts and currents associated with Western esotericism in a methodologically sound, unbiased, and indeed historical manner. With this theoretical restructuring, Hanegraaff brings the study of Western esotericism to terms with state-of-the-art methodology in Religious and Cultural Studies, thereby advancing its academic acceptance and plausibility. One can only wish that not only the usual suspects, but also outsiders of the eld (such as historians of science, historians of philosophy or, why not, theologians) will lay their hand on this outstanding monograph. Hanegraaff s exhaustive analysis of the various discursive elds and strategies that have led to the emergence of categories of rejected knowledge in Western history offers the rst convincing legitimization for using an overall category that covers all these sub-discourses and -topics: Western esotericism. Even though Hanegraaff himself appears to be cautious while putting the label to use,1 he presents overwhelming evidence for the interconnectedness of Western discourses about Plato, Hermes, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, or Orpheus, about the Chaldeans, Templars, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, or Theosophers, about magia naturalis, alchemy, astrology, mesmerism, occultism, or parapsychology from the 15th to the 21st centuries, be they from polemical or religionist perspectives. Hanegraaff s fascinating synopsis of the entire eld in all its complexity and diversity yields the conclusion that there is a meta-structure that holds all these seemingly disparate strings together. In this respect, Hanegraaff is right to note that a list of semantic essentials of Western esotericism ( la Faivre) cannot be the

(2)

(3)

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1 See for example Hanegraaff 2012: 254: Modernization is therefore the key to understanding the emergence of Western esotericism (or whatever alternative term one might prefer).

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adequate way to conceptualize this meta-structure (as they magically turn the most disparate materials into species of esotericism, 3602); but as his nal discussion of what his book is all about remains somewhat vague (What is it, really, that we have been talking about? A denite answer is perhaps neither possible nor desirable, 367), one gets the impression that Hanegraaff does not fully realize the impact and far-reaching implications of his own methodological approach. With respect to the latter observation, I will argue here that this may be due to Hanegraaff s own (unjustied) resentments towards a methodological cluster usually referred to as discourse theory a methodological cluster that, as we will see, forms the very basis of his study. Before recollecting some evidence for this hypothesis (that Hanegraaff is a discourse theorist par excellence, even without acknowledging it), let us try to understand his resentments rst. Apparently, they seem to be derived from a dispute with a colleague, namely Kocku von Stuckrad, who has recently published his own revised perspective on the Study of Western esotericism in a book entitled Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities (2010). If one compares the two works (Locations of Knowledge and Esotericism and the Academy) one notes many similarities, but also witnesses a seemingly fundamental controversy over the way to conceptualize and investigate Western esotericism. In his Locations of Knowledge, Kocku von Stuckrad appears to cut the umbilical cord to his own afliation with the Amsterdam Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (where he was Assistant Professor from 2003 to 2009) by rejecting the idea that Western esotericism is an objectively identiable tradition or coherent system of thought and doctrine that can be studied as a separate topic (2010: xi). After criticizing various former approaches, among them Hanegraaff s (2010: 4554), von Stuckrad concludes that only a discourse-theoretical agenda allows for a proper conceptualization and investigation of the authors and currents in question. Accordingly, instead of perpetuating the label Western esotericism, von Stuckrad proposes a (slight) terminological shift, claiming that esoteric discourse is a useful term for addressing structural elements of European culture in historical perspective (2010: 45). This novel phrasing (esoteric discourse) would help to embed the authors and currents in question within the larger framework of the Two-Fold pluralism (2010: 18 ff.) that would characterize the European history of religions in general (see on the latter concept also Kippenberg, Rpke and von Stuckrad 2009). Furthermore, it would shift ones attention to the interdependence of historical discourses (including esoteric ones) and, in particular, to the polemical and often arbitrary construction of religious identities in Western cultural history. From this point of view, von Stuckrad criticizes Hanegraaff s reception of Assmanns concept of mnemohistory due to its potentially ctional, ahistorical implications (2010: 51 ff.) and argues that discourse analysis [...] would provide a useful referential framework for Hanegraaff s position (2010: 52). Interestingly, while returning the re to von Stuckrad in one of the nal chapters of Esotericism and the Academy (362367), Hanegraaff uses almost identical words.3
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Here and in the following all unreferenced page numbers refer to Hanegraaff 2012. See Hanegraaff 2012: 362: His [von Stuckrads] theoretical and methodological apparatus comes at a price; and 364: Von Stuckrads agenda for the study of religion in Europe is ambitious and interesting,

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Basically, Hanegraaff rejects von Stuckrads claim that only discourse theory can solve the riddles endemic in the concept of Western esotericism: The problem lies in an exclusivist and reductionist subtext that automatically devalues contents and ideas in favor of structures, makes history subservient to theory, and ends up promoting discursive approaches as the only valid methodology in the study of religion, esoteric or otherwise (365). Hanegraaff seems to identify von Stuckrads approach as a discourse theoretical one and his own as a historical one when he claims that discursive and historical approaches construct their objects of research in very different ways (365). Accordingly, Hanegraaff portrays discourse theory as a rather destructive tool that stands in the way of true historical research. When applying the method, he claims, it is not just the term esotericism that vanishes as a useful concept, but much of the historical material will vanish as well! (365).4 Finally, Hanegraaff maintains that history trumps theory (as if the two would exclude each other) and that good historians shouldnt allow philosophy to paralyze them (366). Given these statements, one is not surprised to see Hanegraaff bashing Foucault in various instances (see 190, n. 143; 366, n. 413). Now what are we to make of this dispute? As a matter of fact, if we compare the two books against the backdrop of discourse theory, we come up with a surprising discovery: while Kocku von Stuckrad somewhat undermines his own discoursetheoretical agenda by adhering to the notions of secrecy and perfect knowledge (2010: 5464) and rather neglects the issue of power (a core concern of discourse theory) by shedding little light on the powerful antagonists of esoteric discourse throughout Western history (see my critique in Otto 2012), Hanegraaff s Esotericism and the Academy could quite rightly (and contrary to the author s own perception) be interpreted as a materialization of von Stuckrads discourse-theoretical agenda. Hanegraaff s monograph systematically implements an observation only alluded to by von Stuckrad: that basic genres of esoteric discourse such as the disciplines of astrology, alchemy, and magic, [...] have been distanced away by what I call the processes of disjunction since the 18th century and thereby functioned as a signicant Other of post-Enlightenment Western identities (von Stuckrad 2010: 200). While von Stuckrad lacks a systematic elaboration of this phenomenon in his Locations of Knowledge, Hanegraaff s Esotericism and the Academy not only offers overwhelming evidence for these processes of disjunction, but also falsies von Stuckrads claim that they started only in the 18th century.5 To the contrary, Hanegraaff traces back polemics against the ancient-wisdom narrative to the early 1500s (when, for example, the very nephew of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, attempted to destroy what his uncle had built,6 by means of his Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium) and convincingly
but it comes at a price. Compare with von Stuckrad 2010: 53: [Hanegraaff s] falling back on Assmanns conceptualization of monotheistic and cosmotheistic mnemohistory comes with a price. 4 In this respect, Hanegraaff s claim that if what von Stuckrad calls esoteric discourse were to take the place of what others call Western esotericism, far too many of the historical materials that have barely begun to return to the academic agenda would once again vanish from sight or lose much of their content, depth, and complexity (367), is certainly unjustied. One wonders how Hanegraaff would explain that the material has not vanished from the 240 dense pages of von Stuckrads study; in contrast, the latter indeed contributes to understanding the content, depth, and complexity of numerous esoteric currents. 5 See also von Stuckrad 2010: 54: What can be dubbed the process of distancing is a discursive event that took place during the past 200300 years. 6 Hanegraaff 2012: 80, with reference to Schmitt 1965: 312.

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unveils the complex discursive interconnections between these early polemics against Platonism and various later polemics against offshoots such as magia naturalis, alchemy, or the occult sciences (164207). Taking these observations into account, Hanegraaff s study could indeed be understood as a genuine discourse analysis of power relations in regard to the eld of Western esotericism, of the latter s construction as the respective other of both European religions (mostly Christianity) and science and, nally, of afrmative counter-reactions by people who at some point started identifying themselves with these various forms of rejected knowledge. It is also important to note that von Stuckrads Locations of Knowledge mainly discusses emic sources traditionally associated with Western esotericism (albeit, however, widening the eld), whereas Hanegraaff s Esotericism and the Academy puts much more emphasis on the discursive opponents of esoteric currents, to the extent of even neglecting important emic protagonists (note, for example, the almost total absence of Madame Blavatsky in Hanegraaff s narrative). It may overshoot the argument a bit but there seem to be grains of truth in considering, at least while comparing these two books, whether Hanegraaff comes closer to what discourse theory is all about. Now how is this possible? One may ascribe this unexpected discovery to the dynamics of academic disputes which themselves sometimes imply processes of othering, and, thereby, of identity formation, for example by negotiating methodology. Be this as it may, the fact that Hanegraaff s Esotericism and the Academy epitomizes, at least in my opinion, much of von Stuckrads discourse-theoretical agenda, can only be explained by the fact that Hanegraaff indeed adopted (apparently without realizing) a vast variety of discourse-theoretical arguments (maybe even from von Stuckrad himself). To illustrate Hanegraaff s discourse-theoretical approach, let us start with some basic observations: (1) Hanegraaff uses the very term discourse extensively throughout the entire book (there are many more instances than the four referred to in the index on page 463), thereby not following an everyday understanding of the term (in the sense of mere dialogue). In contrast, and in line with Foucault, Hanegraaff seems to employ discourse as a sum of statements (i.e., mostly texts, in our case) that (to some extent) form a coherent terminological and argumentative structure and thus give sense to any single statement formulated by an individual author (a book is like a node within a network; see Foucault 1972: 23). In line with this approach, Hanegraaff often assigns individual authors to supraindividual (i.e., discursive) powers and strategies of which these individual authors may not be aware.7 For example, Hanegraaff seems to suggest discursive dynamics that lead almost teleologically to discursive counter-reactions (i.e., statements) when he argues that the Enlightenment construction of polemical waste-basketed categories of the Other of science and rationality (254) urged subsequent authors to identify
7

See on this Foucault 1972: 2829: It is [...] to be able to grasp other forms of regularity, other types of relations. Relations between statements (even if the author is unaware of them; even if the statements do not have the same author; even if the authors were unaware of each other s existence); relations between groups of statements thus established (even if these groups do not concern the same, or even adjacent, elds; even if they do not possess the same formal level; even if they are not the locus of assignable exchanges); relations between statements and groups of statements and events of a quite different kind (technical, economic, social, political).

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with these categories and engage in afrmative, religionist interpretations (every new development comes at a price, and therefore evokes a reaction, 254). (2) As already mentioned, Hanegraaff strongly focuses on the topic of power, on processes of exclusion and othering and, thereby, on the formation of identities (see 254 ff.; 374 ff.) and he even does this in a much more systematic manner than von Stuckrad in his Locations of Knowledge. Power and polemics are commonplaces in discourse theory and form, according to some interpreters8 (and the later Foucault himself 9), the methodological core of the latter. In fact, compared to all those works on esoteric topics published in the last decades, Hanegraaff s Esotericism and the Academy appears as the very rst volume that systematically addresses the overall issue of power ingrained in the (discursive) eld of Western esotericism, thereby outlining its inherent structure and problematics in a much more elaborate way than has been done thus far (especially by taking both polemical and religionist narratives into account). When Hanegraaff writes that history should trump theory (366), he overlooks that his own narrative is the very outcome of theory, namely, of his systematic adoption and deployment of numerous discourse-theoretical methologems. (3) In this respect, Hanegraaff s frequent assertion that European discourses on Western esotericism produced the very phenomena that they claimed to merely describe is worth indexing. That discourses produce their objects is one of the essential postulations of Foucauldian discourse analysis and one is stunned by the fact that Hanegraaff uses formulations very similar to Foucaults original phrasing.10 Hanegraaff s interpretation of a large number of authors in Esotericism and the Academy indeed shows his de-essentializing, constructivistic approach that nally leads to the claim that Western esotericism is an imaginative construct in the minds of intellectuals and the wider public, not a straight-forward historical reality out there (377). Accordingly, Hanegraaff reveals the plurality and haziness of historical semantics and thereby reconstructs multiple histories of various singular concepts associated with Western esotericism such as magic: the term could mean very different things to different parties, and each
See for example Hall 2001. See for example Foucault 1977: 27: There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a eld of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time, power relations; see also Foucault 1980: 131: Truth isnt outside power [...] Each society has its regime of truth, its general politics of truth; that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true, the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned [...] the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true. 10 See 376377, where Hanegraaff speaks of the remarkable discursive power of mnemohistorical constructs, which largely create the phenomena that they claim to describe while suppressing or distorting any evidence that would undermine the clarity of this evidence; if we understand Hanegraaff s mnemohistorical constructs simply as semantic patterns inherent in a discourse, we can easily align his words with Foucaults description of the formation of objects: I would like to show that discourses, in the form in which they can be heard or read, are not, as one might expect, a mere intersection of things and words: an obscure web of things, and a manifest, visible, coloured chain of words; [... this] reveals a quite different task [...] that consists of not or no longer treating discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak (Foucault 1972: 4849).
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participant in the discourse had a wide choice of connotations to highlight or play down at will, according to his particular religious, scientic or philosophical agenda (177). Note (apart from the appearance of the term discourse) the rationale that lies behind this statement: throughout the respective chapter, Hanegraaff does no more (and no less) than entirely dismantle magic as a scholarly category, thereby giving credit to the (as a matter of fact, discourse-theoretical!) agenda of deconstructionism.11 (4) Hanegraaff s critique of both polemical and religionist perspectives on Western esotericism actually leaves him few other possibilities than employing a de-essentializing, i.e., necessarily discourse-theoretical agenda that results in the de- and re-construction of the entire discursive eld. In this respect, Hanegraaff s critique of former scholarly ways to conceptualize Western esotericism (especially in chapter 4) can likewise be interpreted in the framework of discourse theory. Other scholars (such as von Stuckrad) have submitted the insight that scholarly discourse is fundamentally intertwined with its objects of research (the more so in historical disciplines) and that this interrelatedness demands a high level of self-reection (including continuous reection upon and sometimes condemnation of ones taxonomies), as a crucial step while employing discourse theory in religious studies (see von Stuckrad 2013).12 As already mentioned, Hanegraaff s adoption of all these discourse-theoretical arguments culminates in the stunning postulation that Western esotericism is itself a discursive product. Let me pick up an argument here: I think that by falling back onto Jacob Thomasius Schediasma historicum as a potential model for a non-polemical, non-religionist, and non-eclectic study of Western esotericism in the nal chapter of the book (370 ff.), Hanegraaff does not fully realize (or even undermines) the implications of his own discursive agenda (maybe because he is not aware of it; while comparing his work with Olav Hammer s (2001) Claiming Knowledge, though, Hanegraaff readily admits that discursive strategies pervade all chapters of Esotericism and the Academy: 361). In fact, the semantic antagonism that Hanegraaff derives from Thomasius narrative (creatio ex nihilo versus cosmotheism) is not consistently applicable to all of the complex discursive eld that he has described throughout the book. Instead of retaining such semantic notions (the problems of which Hanegraaff has demonstrated while discussing the work of Antoine Faivre: 339355), I would propose that Western esotericism is a proper label for the discourses covered by the book precisely because it emerged from these discourses as an overarching label throughout 20th-century scholarship. In other words, Hanegraaff s meticulous analysis of European discourses about rejected knowledge since the 15th century has revealed the interrelatedness of these numerous discourses in such a convincing manner, that one cannot help but realize that an overarching category for these discourses is indeed justied and that Western esotericism may even appear as a good solution here (partly because it is already established and recognized in the Academy).

11 I may add that I have followed a very similar approach while tracing back the conceptual history of magic and indeed subsumed it under the label discourse theory (see Otto 2011, esp. 15 ff.). 12 See on this point also the articles of the forthcoming Religion issue on discourse theory, especially Moberg 2013 and his reections upon rst-level and second-level discourse-analytic approaches.

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Of course, as a discursive term, Western esotericism would not refer to any intrinsic characteristics any more, but rather to the entire discursive eld that Hanegraaff has outlined and analyzed so impressively in the present monograph.13 In this respect, Hanegraaff has convincingly demonstrated that the label should also cover its own Other, namely all those polemical narratives described in detail in Esotericism and the Academy as these have signicantly contributed to the eld and the emergence of Western esotericism as a scholarly category. In fact, while employing Western esotericism as a discursive term, both polemical and religionist approaches become superuous for scholarship, as they themselves now form the object of study (and this is precisely what Hanegraaff has done in the book). Finally, as a discursive term, Western esotericism has no xed nor nal shape because both academic and non-academic discourses move on and thereby form new objects of research and scholarly reection; this, of course, also implies the necessity of continuously reecting upon and revising scholarly narratives on the subject. The latter comment may nally lead me to utter some critical remarks (I restrict myself to a few general observations). As a writer, Hanegraaff is an elegant, pervasive, and very structured performer but he sometimes tends to employ overly strong narratives. In this respect, he seems to follow the (understandable) desire to create a coherent historiographical narrative, thereby sometimes squeezing single authors into large-scale discursive developments. At times, one wonders whether these authors were really that representative, really exerted such a fundamental impact on the later debate, or whether they were really the pioneers of some argument (as in the case of the anti-apologist Jacob Thomasius, or the heresiologist Ehregott Daniel Colberg; see also a formulation like it [magia naturalis] had become well established by the end of the 14th [century], thereby referring to only one author, namely William de Auvergne: 173). Hanegraaff s tendency to create strong narratives also becomes apparent in his nal attempt to homogenize the complex discursive eld of Western esotericism by means of a few basic principles (derived from Thomasius), namely, the beliefs that the world was co-eternal with God and that human beings could attain direct experiential knowledge (gnosis) of their own divine nature (370). Precisely because Hanegraaff abandons his discursive approach here (I think, in favor of a strong narrative), his argument becomes vulnerable: rst, his conclusive statement the logical incompatibility of monotheism and cosmotheism has led to an endless series of creative attempts to resolve it (371) is certainly too vague and imprecise to explain the complex disputes about magia naturalis, alchemy, or somnambulism (to name only these) that he has so formidably described in the previous chapters. Second, one wonders whether there have not always been cosmotheistic or mystic currents and arguments within mainstream religious discourses (for example in medieval Christianity or Judaism), here being mostly detached from any pagan inuences or revivals (if this observation happens to be correct, their later rejection can probably not be ascribed to some inherent conceptual opposition to monotheism). It is also to be doubted whether paganism, as claimed by Hanegraaff in the nal chapter, is really an overarching point of

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13

My interpretation of discursive terms may therefore come close to Hanegraaff s perception of Western Esotericism as a historiographical concept (italics Hanegraaff) on page 73.

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reference throughout the book (a red thread: 369). Maybe paganism must be seen rather as one of several polemical or religionist patterns that make up the complex discursive eld of Western esotericism. Hanegraaff s tendency to create strong narratives also shines out in his somewhat stereotypical opposition between we and they, for example when he describes our basic identity (378) as being fundamentally inuenced by othering concepts such as Western esotericism (see, e.g., 3 ff.; 254 ff.; 378 ff.). Now who is the addressee of these formulations? Do we really inherit the same identity or could one also adopt a more nuanced approach towards potential readers? The discourse itself may decide if these aspects of Hanegraaff s (otherwise entirely convincing) narrative are expedient or rather appear as small master narratives that tend to oversee the complexity of reality. Finally, I should make a critical remark on the historiographical and terminological scope of the study. Apparently, Hanegraaff s analysis of discourses about rejected knowledge begins with the early-modern reception (George Gemistos Plethon, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and others) of various ancient (mostly Platonic and Neoplatonic, but also kabbalistic) textual corpora. Thus, the discursive category of Western esotericism arises, according to Hanegraaff, by means of counter-reactions to these ancient-wisdom narratives and thereby seems to constitute a genuine, if not unique, aspect of early-modern and modern European history. However, taking Kocku von Stuckrads inclusion of medieval Jewish and Arabic sources into account (see von Stuckrad 2010, especially part two), and also my own study on the conceptual history of magic (which, both as a polemical and identicatory concept, already pervades ancient sources), one wonders about the peculiarities of early-modern and modern European discourses on rejected knowledge. Besides, the history of all major religions implies numerous processes of rejecting knowledge. It might be interesting to explore whether these are related to the processes described in Esotericism and the Academy. Thus, as far as I can see, future work would seek to complement Hanegraaff s outstanding monograph by further elaborating upon potential roots (or equivalents) of European processes of rejecting knowledge in related (e.g., preceding) historical/religious contexts (such as in Antiquity, or in Arabic and/or Jewish discourses), or even in non-European contexts (what about processes of rejecting and rehabilitating knowledge in Tibetan Buddhism?). The latter step would, of course, not only mean discarding Western, but also esotericism as an analytical category (we have seen that, as a discursive term, Western esotericism is bound to its early-modern and modern European history), thereby possibly contributing to advanced scholarly taxonomies for processes of postulating, rejecting, or rehabilitating different forms of knowledge. Wouter Hanegraaff has, with this very book, shown that these are processes that scholars of Western esotericism should be experts in; it would be worth a try promoting this expertise in the larger eld of Religious and Cultural Studies. Bernd-Christian Otto is postdoctoral researcher in Religious Studies at the University of Erfurt, where he coordinates a project on the historicization of religion and is part of the organization committee of the IAHR Quinquennial Congress 2015. His work on magic resulted in two recent book publications, Magie: Rezeptionsund diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit (Berlin: de

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Gruyter, 2011) and, together with Michael Stausberg (eds.), Dening Magic: A Reader (Shefeld: Equinox 2013). References
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Submitted: December 24, 2012 Accepted: January 3, 2013 Final les received: January 15, 2013