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The Imagination… You Mean Fantasy, Right?
- Edited by Marco Pasi, Peter Forshaw, Wouter Hanegraaff
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- Book:
- Hermes Explains
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 24 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 02 July 2019, pp 80-87
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Summary
“Imagination” is a tricky word … It lends itself to a variety of meanings, and in fact it is not synonymous with “fantasy.” So in what sense are we to understand it? A pejorative interpretation all too easily comes to mind, as in Blaise Pascal's (1623-1662) famous statement. He calls it
that deceitful part in man, that mistress of error and falsity, all the more deceptive as she is not always so; for she would be an infallible rule of truth, if she were an infallible rule of falsehood. But being most generally false, she gives no sign of her nature, impressing the same character on the true and the false.
If the term “imagination” is preceded by the adjective “creative,” it loses that negative ring. Indeed, poets, authors of fiction, and artists are nothing if not people endowed with a certain amount of imagination. There is no dearth of theories and studies investigating the variety and the nature of that faculty, but I do not intend to dwell thereon (bibliographies are a-plenty – it is just a matter of browsing around on the internet).
Given the orientation of this anniversary volume, I will focus on “creative imagination” as understood within some sectors of the so-called modern Western esoteric currents. In that context, the notion can be approached in a way that is not all too vague, albeit not deprived of some complexity. Sometimes called vis imaginativa or “magical imagination,” it can be intransitive. In this case, imagination acts within the mind of the imagining subject, providing, for instance, visions or forms of superior knowledge; it may act upon the body, which undergoes a transformation in the process. But it can also be transitive. In this case, the action of imagination is exercised on objects (be they material, natural, or spiritual) that are exterior to the subject. Finally, it can also be both intransitive and transitive at the same time. Be that as it may, let us look at a few classical examples taken from the referential corpus of modern Western esoteric currents.
Let me begin with a typology I already had occasion to present elsewhere, that of the esoteric current called Christian Theosophy, thereby trying to bring out what seems to me to be its three characteristics.
12 - Renaissance Hermetism
- from III - THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERNITY
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- By Antoine Faivre, Modern and Contemporary Europe
- Edited by Glenn Alexander Magee, Long Island University, New York
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism
- Published online:
- 05 May 2016
- Print publication:
- 18 April 2016, pp 133-142
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Hermetism: A Definition
“Hermetism” (adjective: “hermetic”) has two complementary meanings. First, it designates the works known as the Hermetica, written in Greek at the dawn of our era in the region of Alexandria. The term “Alexandrian Hermetism” is often used to refer to these works, which deal with matters such as cosmology, spiritual illumination, and theurgy. A collection dating from the second and third centuries CE, dubbed the Corpus Hermeticum (henceforth CH) at the beginning of the Renaissance, stands out within this body of works. It is composed of seventeen short treatises, which were oftentimes to be edited along with the Asclepius, and the fragments attributed to Stobaeus. Their “author” or inspirer is the legendary figure Hermes Trismegistus, or Hermes the “thrice great,” associated in many different (and conflicting) mythical genealogies with the Egyptian Thoth and the Greek Hermes.
In the expression “Neo-Alexandrian Hermetism,” however, Hermetism refers to the various works, adaptations, and commentaries that stand in the philosophical or religious wake of the Hermetica, particularly of the CH, in the Middle Ages but principally from the Renaissance until the present day. The term “Hermeticism,” which is vague, is frequently used as a synonym for esotericism and also for alchemy.
Rediscovery and First Publication of the CH at the Dawn of the Renaissance
In the Middle Ages, there had been no dearth of literature following in the tradition of the Hermetica and/or inspired by the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, but the CH itself had been lost since around the fifth century (save for the Asclepius, originally known in Greek as Logos Teleios, which survived in an ancient Latin translation only). Around the year 1460, a monk named Leonardo da Pistoia discovered fourteen treatises of the CH in Macedonia. These had been gathered together in the eleventh century, and it was in this form that the Byzantine Platonist Psellus had known them. Pistoia brought the treatises to the ruler of Florence, Cosimo de’ Medici the Elder, who had entrusted Marsilio Ficino with the creation of a Platonic Academy. Cosimo and Ficino had intended to have the available writings of Plato translated into Latin; however, when they learned of these fourteen treatises (CH I–XIV), Cosimo insisted that Ficino temporarily set aside his Latin translation of Plato and work on the hermetic texts instead.
From Paris to Amsterdam and Beyond: Origins and Development of a Collaboration
- Wouter Hanegraaff, Joyce Pijnenburg
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- Book:
- Hermes in the Academy
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2021
- Print publication:
- 21 August 2009, pp 123-128
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Sometimes events retroactively exert an influence on things that have contributed to their coming about. Thus, the center for “History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents,” the foundation of which was part of an ongoing process of institutionalization, has left its mark on its antecedents. Among these is a French institute that belongs to the proto-history and history of the center whose tenth anniversary we are celebrating.
One reason for the ideological and political tensions that France experienced since the beginning of the Third Republic was the controversy over what is known as laïcité. The Parliament resolved this question partially by passing a Law on the Separation of the Churches and the State in 1905. A measure that preceded this law was the establishment – realized in 1886 – of a Department of Religious Studies (“Section des Sciences Religieuses”) within the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, in addition to the already existing Departments (“Sections”) devoted to various disciplines. The foundation of this Department was part of an effort at phasing out the Church's monopoly on education concerning the “religious.” The Department was, and still is, secular (laïque), that is, non-confessional (non-“religionist”), just like all other organizations for education or research in the public sector.
At the time of its foundation, the Department of Religious Studies comprised hardly ten chairs, called Directions d’Étude. Having gradually incorporated domains such as the history of Christian mysticism and late antique gnosis, and having opened itself to ethnology and sociology as well, it has 61 chairs at present. Hence, the number of specializations concerning the various faits religieux (facts of religion), as we call them, have multiplied. Until 1964, such initiatives merely followed general tendencies in previous French as well as international research, and were, therefore, not really innovative. In that year, however, the department assigned to one of the Directions d’Études, whose chair was now vacant, a new title which no other official institution – whether in France or abroad – had ever listed in its programs: “History of Christian Esotericism.”
Although the majority of colleagues who were asked to pronounce on the title voted in its favor, this does not mean that they had engaged in an actual debate about the meaning that should be ascribed to it.
Pour une approche figurative de l'alchimie
- Antoine Faivre
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- Journal:
- Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales / Volume 26 / Issue 3-4 / August 1971
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 May 2018, pp. 841-853
- Print publication:
- August 1971
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Rien n'est plus difficile que de commencer un travail. Les alchimistes le savent bien, qui s'attaquent à l'Œuvre par excellence, mot dont le genre masculin et féminin suggère déjà une polarité constructive. Les réflexions qui suivent partent de cette constatation banale : le secret, dont les Adeptes ont presque toujours entouré la matière première avec laquelle ils disent se mettre à l'ouvrage, enveloppe une réalité moins matérielle que spirituelle, il voile une technique d'illumination. Aussi ne décrirai-je point ce qui se passe — ou devrait se passer — dans un creuset, dans un athanor, mais ce qui semble avoir lieu dans l'imaginaire, ou plutôt l'imaginai, au sens que deux des philosophes les plus intéressants de notre temps ont donné à ces termes.