Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity - Hardcover

Hanegraaff, Wouter J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1009123068 ISBN 13: 9781009123068

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2022

Synopsis

In Egypt during the first centuries CE, men and women would meet discreetly in their homes, in temple sanctuaries, or insolitary places to learn a powerful practice of spiritual liberation. They thought of themselves as followers of Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary master of ancient wisdom. While many of their writings are lost, those that survived have been interpreted primarily as philosophical treatises about theological topics. Wouter J. Hanegraaff challenges this dominant narrative by demonstrating that Hermetic literature was concerned with experiential practices intended for healing the soul from mental delusion. The Way of Hermes involved radical alterations of consciousness in which practitioners claimed to perceive the true nature of reality behind the hallucinatory veil of appearances. Hanegraaff explores how practitioners went through a training regime that involved luminous visions, exorcism, spiritual rebirth, cosmic consciousness, and union with the divine beauty of universal goodness and truth to attain the salvational knowledge known as gnôsis.

About this title

About the Author

Wouter J. Hanegraaff is Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of six monographs, including New Age Religion and Western Culture (1996) and Esotericism and the Academy (2012), and editor of eight collective works, including the Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (2005).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009123068
• ISBN 13: 9781009123068
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400