When: 1st semester, block 1-2

Instructor: Dr. Wouter J. Hanegraaff

Language of instruction: English

Course description:
This course provides a “big history” overview of the main currents of Western intellectual and cultural history from Antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on how intimately religion and spirituality have always been interwoven with philosophy, the natural sciences, and the arts, and with due attention to political and social context. At the same time, the module problematizes the hegemonic agendas and implicit ideological assumptions that have driven traditional historical narratives of Western culture. It does so by giving systematic attention to a range of so-called “esoteric” currents, ideas, practices, and organizations that have tended to be rejected, suppressed, marginalized, or discredited in traditional academic scholarship; and furthermore it calls attention to other key dimensions that have tended to be marginalized or excluded in more traditional ethnocentric understandings of what “the West” was supposed to be all about (notably the Middle East and northern Africa, the Byzantine empire, and the Islamic world). By giving equal attention to normative ideas of “Western Culture” and to various types of “Counterculture” against which it has been defining its own identity, the module both describes and questions the “grand narratives” that have dominated academic understandings of Europe and the West. Against this background, special attention wil go to the basic polemical and apologetic discourses that inform current intellectual as well as public debates about religion and spirituality, and their relation to modernity.

View the study guides:

Secrets of the West 1: Culture and Counterculture before Modernity

Secrets of the West 2: Culture and Counterculture before Modernity

When: 2nd semester, block 1

Instructor: Dr. Peter J. Forshaw

Language of instruction: English

Course description:
On the basis of primary sources and secondary literature, this module examines the history of Western esotericism during the Renaissance and Early Modern Period. Each class will focus on a founder or chief exponent of important Western esoteric currents such as Christian Cabala, Paracelsianism, Rosicrucianism and Christian theosophy, including such famous names as Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Kircher and Dee. Our close reading of primary source material will be set in the context of contemporaneous social, religious and intellectual developments. Students will be introduced to some central themes in the study of Western esotericism, including Renaissance typologies of magic, astrology, cabala, alchemy’s quest for the elixir, philosophers’ stone and transmutation, all with a consideration of their relation to early modern science and religion.

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Study guide 2023-2024

When: 2nd semester, block 2

Instructor: Dr. Marco Pasi

Language of instruction: English

Course description: This module offers a broad chronological overview of the history of modern Western esotericism (from the middle of the 18th century up to our days), focusing on its main trends, movements, and authors. This will include an analysis of currents and phenomena such as Illuminism and the birth of Mesmerism, romanticism, spiritualism, occultism, traditionalism, and the New Age. Both primary sources and secondary literature will be used as reading material. The main focus of the course is on the processes that have led to important transformations in esoteric discourses after the Enlightenment. Both continuities and ruptures with previous esoteric thought will be assessed. A visit to the library of the Theosophical Society in Amsterdam will be organised towards the end of the course.

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Study Guide 2023 – 2024

When: 1st semester, block 2
Instructor: Dr. L. Saif
Language of instruction: English

This course is an introduction to medieval esoteric thought, focusing on the period between the ninth and thirteenth century. Geographically, we traverse the “Islamic World” and Latin Europe, looking at the esoteric currents, mystics, and philosophers whose influential works promoted and developed ideas on union with the Divine, the occult sciences (magic, astrology, divination, alchemy) attainment of hidden knowledge of nature, the cosmos and scripture. The course highlights intellectual and socio-political contexts that had an impact on the ways these ideas were fostered such as the assimilation of ancient knowledge, the development of Sufism, translation movements in the Islamic world and Europe, and medieval Christian mystical philosophy.

Students will become familiar with major medieval esoteric thought, focusing on the period between the ninth and thirteenth century. They will be able to trace the major influences of Islamic esoteric ideas and practices on medieval Latin European esoteric currents, mystics, and philosophers whose influential works promoted and developed ideas on union with the Divine, the occult sciences (magic, astrology, divination, alchemy) attainment of hidden knowledge of nature, the cosmos and scripture.

Study  guide 2023-2024