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Olav Hammer. Claiming Knowledge. Strategies

of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New
Age. Numen Book Series 90...

Article in Religion January 2005

DOI: 10.1016/j.religion.2005.01.009

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Alexandra Grieser Anne Koch

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Claiming Knowledge. Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age. BY OLAV
HAMMER. Leiden, Boston, Kln: Brill-Verlag (Numen Book Series XC), 2001. 547 S.
In: Religion 35 (2005) 59-61.

In his Ph.D.thesis Olav Hammer, now at the Institute for the History of Hermetic Philosophy
at the University of Amsterdam, pursues two aims: to elucidate the neglected western
esoteric tradition of the post-Enlightenment era from Helena Blavatsky until today and to
draw a picture of how the apparently premodern beliefs of esoteric positions gained their
plausibility under the conditions of the Enlightenment.
Hammer rejects the phenomenological approach to modern religiosity and analyses instead
discursive strategies. In opposition to a skeptical, theological or merely hermeneutical
approach he proposes an analytic method. He begins by reconstructing esoteric positions
from the emic point of view, then shifts to an etic viewpoint that allows him to describe
subtexts, metaphors, and the rise of new discursive fields. By whom, how and for what
purpose religious beliefs were disseminated is the focus of Hammers investigation of the
ambivalent relationship between esotericism and modernity. The role of religious virtuosi
and the construction of religious knowledge are descriptive categories. Unfortunately
Hammers notion of knowledge despite the suggestive title, is not discussed but only implied.
It stands in the line of Foucault, Bourdieu, and the sociology of knowledge and is influenced
by the reemergence of a rhetorical quest for persuasive patterns in religion. Through the
reading of the texts and in detailed case studies Hammer identifies three main strategies of
legitimizing knowledge: the construction or invention of a tradition, the appeal to science,
and the appeal to experience.
A helpful clarification of such concepts as discourse and globalization (chapter 2) is followed
by an introduction to esoteric textual sources (chapter 3). Hammer focuses on theosophical,
anthroposophical and New Age texts. The century of the Enlightenment in its radical
modernization is judged to have been a new epoch for the esoteric tradition as well. Its
selective modernization contains the new factors of the idea of progress, psychologization,
new foreign religions (such as the religion of Egypt and Hinduism) and global competition
between Christianity and science. Chapter 4 follows the first strategy of emically constructed
specific history. In rich detail Hammer outlines imaginative Others from Lemuria to Tibet.
The appeal to tradition in this movements is mostly a revision or adaptation of existing
traditions. What Hammer means by subtext becomes clear when he develops several
models of adaptation. They function by reduction (e.g. of the varieties of traditions), by
pattern recognition (e.g. universal symbols, spirituality as a common human heritage), by a
synonymization of key words in diverse religions, by the concept of timeless knowledge, etc.
Even when the sciences enter the scene as an actual Other (chapter 5) esotericism takes a
little bit of everything. It echoes modern science, criticizes it, and especially re-enchants it.
To be emphasized is Hammers thesis that the esoteric understanding of science radicalizes
the Romantic one. The metaphysical New Age reception of quantum physics offers the
missing link between neural and cosmic activities.
 Chapter 6, the Narratives of Experience, expresses the meta-discursive character of the
investigation in a distinct way: The crucial point cannot be a new version of Jamess Varieties
or a nave realism that takes reports of experiences as a representative model of reality. It is
the description of the discursive role of the narratives that Hammer is focusing on, in the
tradition of contextual readings and the criticism of ideology.
The term religious experience is acknowledged to be an element of the history of religion
and of the study of religion. At the same time it is rooted between the Enlightenment and
Romanticism, and its function is to define religion under new conditions (Schleiermacher), a
process that continues until today under the influence of democratization and de-
hierarchisation. Hammer demonstrates those changes by sketching out a typology of
narratives of experience and by investigating the function of certain genres and keywords.
He analyses biography and revelation, channeling and mysticism as patterns that shape
religious concepts and the contradictions they produce.
In the final case study, Reincarnation, Hammer highlights the interaction of the three
main strategies. Here he comes closer to the complexity of recent religious change than
before, and thereby he refers back to the standard of his introductory discussion of
postmodern religion and its conditions, e.g. reflexivity.
Although we learn that modern esotericism is more than a premodern survival, that it is
nurtured by the contexts of the western post-Enlightenment era and that it is a constitutive
element of modernity itself, the authors final conclusions make us ask why he rejects the
skeptical approach in the beginning. Modern esoteric tradition is equated with the
Romantic period a bit too one-dimensionally, and by calling it more or less reactionary,
Hammer neglects the dialectical effects of the Enlightenment about the Enlightenment.
Thereby his own many-sided analysis loses some of its complexitiy. For a general perspective
on modern esoteric phenomena one would like more aspects in addition to the text-
oriented approach, e.g., the dynamics of popularization, the development of cults and
religious practice or in the case of modern esotericism an analysis of the extremely
important discourse of psychology. Above all, it is astonishing that Hammer denotes
discursive strategies that are backed only by rhetorical evidence as ideological
maneuvers, and that he also outlines an apparently un-rhetorical and un-ideological
formal demonstration that could be subjected to independent confirmation (501) a
statement that reveals more about the authors claims about religious discursive strategies
than about their analysis.
That said, however, we eagerly await Hammers project, already announced, that will
consider why romantic religion produced works of art of a high aesthetic quality, whereas
contemporary esotericism produces only kitsch. After this demonstration of an innovative
perspective and the impressive discussion of materials one can only expect the Hammer will
treat us to further enlightening research in the cultural study of religion.

University of Munich Alexandra Grieser, Anne Koch

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