Western Esotericism - Year-long Introductory Course (scholarly/ academic)

This year-long course, meeting online monthly, explores esoteric traditions to give a well-rounded sense of their content; it teaches their historical developments and key ideas and their place within the broader background of conventional history. Dr Sasha Chaitow starts in the turbulent Hellenistic period, when  “acceptable” and “occult” thought were first distinguished from one another. Here too, were the roots of esoteric traditions in neoplatonism, hermeticism, and gnosticism. These three very different, but related worldviews, were reconstituted during the Renaissance, when elements borrowed from kabbalah, alchemy and other sources were merged with older currents of thought. This marked the birth of “the Western Esoteric Traditions.” The common objective of these movements was to raise human consciousness and self-awareness towards a reintegration with the divine, through human will and individual spiritual development. Interaction with developments in science, politics, and religiocultural events shaped these traditions as much as their counterparts. The course…