¹ W. H. Auden, Paul Bunyan: An Operetta in Two Acts and a Prologue (Op. 17; set to music by Benjamin Britten; rev. ed.; London: Faber and Faber, 1988), “Bunyan’s Greeting,” I, 1.

² Wouter Hanegraaff, Esotercism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), cited in Simon Cox, The Subtle Body: A Genealogy (Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) 174.

³ Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle (ed. Jonathan Barnes; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984) 1429 (De Anima I.5 409a 34), cited in Cox, The Subtle Body, 7.

⁴ Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon (9th ed. with revised supplement; Oxford: Clarendon, 1996) 1039–40, 1104–5, 1039.

⁵ Probably, originally, “woven fine,” and from sub (“under”) + tēla (“a web”), from texere (“to weave”).

⁶ Heraclitus, D. A15 (trans. William Harris), cited in Cox, The Subtle Body, 7. Charles H. Kahn’s translation reads, “The soul is an exhalation; it is different from the body, and always flowing.” See The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary (ed. and trans. Charles H. Kahn; Cambridge University Press, 1987) 79.

⁷ See John F. Finamore, Iamblichus and the Theory of the Vehicle of the Soul (American Classical Studies 14; Chico, CA: Scholars, 1985); more recently, Crystal Addey, “In the Light of the Sphere: The ‘Vehicle of the Soul’ and Subtle-Body Practices in Neoplatonism,” in Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West: Between Mind and Body (ed. Geoffrey Samuel and Jay Johnston; London: Routledge, 2013) 149–67.

⁸ The Chaldean Oracles are a set of poems whose origins are unknown, but which appeared in the 3rd cent., often attributed to a certain Julian “the Theurgist” and his father Julian “the Chaldean.” The original poems are lost, but fragments have survived in quotations from neoplatonic commentators, who regarded them as inspired wisdom. See The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation, and Commentary (trans. Ruth Majercik; Leiden: Brill, 1989).

⁹ Anne Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (trans. and ed. Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse; Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

¹⁰ Ibid., 41, cited in Cox, The Subtle Body, 54.

¹¹ Ibid., 50, cited in Cox, The Subtle Body, 55.

¹² See Christian Hengstermann, “Pre-existence and Universal Salvation: The Origenian Renaissance in Early Modern Cambridge,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (2017) 971–89; Sarah Hutton, “Origen and Anne Conway,” in Autonomie und Menschenwürde: Origenes in der Philosophie der Neuzeit (ed. Alfons Fürst and Christian Hengstermann; Münster: Aschendorff, 2012) 221–34; E.S. Kempson, “Anne Conway’s Exemplary Engagement with Origenist Thought,” Modern Theology 38 (2022) 389–418.

¹³ De Princpiis 2.6.6, in Origen: On First Principles (ed. and trans. John Behr; 2 vols.; OECT; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) 2:210–12 (text), 2:211–13 (trans): “omnibus suis poris omnibusque uenis ignem recipiens et tota ignis effecta, si neque ignis ab ea cesset aliquando neque ipsa ab igne separetur.”

¹⁴ Prin 2.8.3, in Origen: On First Principles (ed. Behr) 2:228–32 (text), 2:229–33 (trans). For more on this etymology, see Charles M. Stang, “Origen’s Theology of Fire and the Early Monks of Egypt,” Modern Theology 38 (April 2022) 338–62, especially 343.

¹⁵ I have explored Origen’s theology of fire and his substance monism in a couple of articles: Charles M. Stang, “Flesh and Fire: Incarnation and Deification in Origen of Alexandria,” Adamantius: Annuario di Letteratura Cristiana Antica e di Studi Giudeoellenistici 25 (2020) 123–32; the former also published in “Suddenly, Christ”: Studies in Jewish and Christian Mysticism in Honor of Alexander Golitzin (ed. Andrew Orlov; Vigiliae Christianae Supplements; Leiden: Brill, 2020) 128–43; Charles M. Stang, “All Flesh Must Once Again Become Fire: Origen’s Untamed Thinking,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin (Autumn/Winter 2017) 6–9.

¹⁶ Max Müller, The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1919) 105, cited in Cox, The Subtle Body, 84.

¹⁷ Robin Cohen, “Creolization and Cultural Globalization: The Soft Sounds of Fugitive Power,” Globlizations 4:3 (1994) 369–84, cited in Cox, The Subtle Body, 109.

¹⁸ On Besant and Krishnamurti, see Isaac Lubelsky, Celestial India: Madame Blavatsky and the Birth of Indian Nationalism (Oakville, CT: Equinox Press, 2012).

¹⁹ Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994) 41, cited in Cox, The Subtle Body, 157.

²⁰ See Jeffery J. Kripal, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

²¹ Cox, The Subtle Body, 209: “call to mind the important first letter of this genealogy’s subtitle, that is, the infinitely fertile indefinite article, ‘a.’ This is indeed one, singular, inevitably idiosyncratic rendering of the genealogy of this most magnetic and persistent of concepts.” One place to look for other traditions’ theorizations of the subtle body is Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West: Between Mind and Body (ed. Geoffrey Samuel and Jay Johnston; Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy; London: Routledge, 2013). See also Anya Foxen and Christa Kuberry, Is This Yoga? Concepts, Histories, and the Complexities of Modern Practice (New Work: Routledge, 2021), esp, 39–70.

²² Although Cox does mention in a footnote Henry Corbin’s treatment of the subtle body in the Shi’ite tradition in his book, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shi’ite Iran (trans. Nancy Pearson; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977) 90–105, cited in Cox, The Subtle Body, 210 n. 5.

²³ On the distinction between “supernatural” and “super natural,” see Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained (New York, NY: Penguin, 2016) 1–20. On early Egyptian monks’ super natural embodiment, see Charles M. Stang, “Origen’s Theology of Fire and the Early Monks of Egypt,” Modern Theology 38 (2022) 338–62, in a special issue of Modern Theology edited by Pui Him Ip on “Rethinking Origen of Alexandria.”

²⁴ Michael Murphy, The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature (New York, NY; Penguin, 1992).

²⁵ Dale C. Allison, Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History, (London: T&T Clark, 2020).

²⁶ Francis V. Tiso, Rainbow Body and Resurrection: Spiritual Attainment, the Dissolution of the Material Body, and the Case of Khenpo A Chö (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2016).

²⁷ David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). See also, Gregory A. Smith, “How Thin is a Demon?” Journal of Early Christian Studies 16 (2008) 479–512.

²⁸ Glenn Peers, Subtle Bodies: Representing Angels in Byzantium (Transformation of the Classical Heritage; Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2001).

²⁹ Kripal continues, “We are close to what Henry Corbin called the imaginal realm, where spirit becomes body and body becomes spirit” (cited in Cox, The Subtle Body, ix). For Corbin’s theory of the imaginal, a realm and faculty between the sensory and the intellectual, see his “Mundus Imaginalis, or The Imaginary and the Imaginal,” in Henry Corbin, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam (trans. Leonard Fox; Swedenborg Studies; West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1995) 1–33.

³⁰ See Graham Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World (London: Hurst & Co., 2005) xi: “animists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship to others. Animism is lived out in various ways that are all about learning to act respectfully (carefully and constructively) towards and among other persons.” See also The Handbook of Contemporary Animism (ed. Graham Harvey; Durham: Acumen, 2013). Cox is also borrowing from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics (ed. and trans Peter Skafish; Minneapolis, MN: Univocal, 2014).

³¹ See Jeffrey J. Kripal, Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).