Restoring Paradise

You Have 0 Item(s) In Cart |

My Account |

Order Status |

Check Out |

Restoring Paradise
Western Esotericism, Literature, Art, and Consciousness

Click on image to enlarge

Arthur Versluis - Author

SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions

Price: $35.00
Hardcover - 174 pages

Release Date: May 2004

ISBN10: 0-7914-6139-4
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-6139-6

Price: $35.00
Electronic - 174 pages

Release Date: February 2012

ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-8485-2

Available as a Google eBook, for other eReaders and tablet devices, Click below...

	Google eBook^New!

Summary

Explores European and American esoteric traditions as reflected in literature and in art.

Focusing on how spiritual initiation takes place in Western esoteric religious, literary, and artistic traditions from antiquity to the present, Restoring Paradise provides an introduction to Western esotericism, including early modern esoteric movements like alchemy, Christian theosophy, and Rosicrucianism. The author argues that European and American literature and art often entail a written transmission of spiritual knowledge in which writing itself works to transmute consciousness, to generate, provoke, or convey spiritual awakening. He focuses on several important figures whose work has not received the attention it deserves, including American writer and Imagist poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and British painter Cecil Collins, among others. While Arthur Versluis presents a new way of understanding Western esotericism in a contemporary light, above all he has crafted a book about knowing, and about how we come to know, and what "knowing" by way of literature and language actually means.

"This is a courageous attempt to forge a connection between esoteric literature, as defined in relatively conventional academic terms, and modern literature and art—and thereby a connection between esoteric traditions and the modern mind." — Jacob Needleman, author of The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders

Arthur Versluis is Professor of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University and the author of many books, including Wisdom's Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition, also published by SUNY Press. He is also the editor of the journal Esoterica.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Initiatory Transmission and the Imagination

What is Esoteric?
Initiatory Transmission and Western Esotericism
The Esoteric Imagination

1. Origins

Alchemy of the Word
The Field of the Imagination
The Red Thread of Gnosis
Conclusions

2. Historical Currents

Divine Service: Chivalry and the Troubadours
Books within Books: Jewish Kabbalism
The Transfiguration of Earth: Alchemical Literature
The Divine Science: Theosophic, Pansophic, Rosicrucian, and Masonic Literature

3. Modern Implications

Prospero's Wand: Modern Esoteric Literature
The Western Esoteric Traditions and Consciousness
Literature, Art, and Consciousness

Notes

Index

Related Subjects

Art
Esoterocism and Gnosticism
Literary History
Theosophy

42527/(JFB/LDS/AV)