Within the domain of Western esotericism the boundaries between religion, philosophy and science are often extremely fluid and permeable, and this is true particularly for the period before the eighteenth century. When the academic disciplines devoted to these fields of research began to establish themselves in their modern forms, during and after the period of the Enlightenment, they had
to define and demarcate their own identities much more sharply than before. Partly they did so by drawing boundaries against one another, and partly by drawing a general boundary against the
‘Other’ that they shared in common, whether it was referred to as ‘heresy’, ‘superstition’, ‘the occult’ or any other similar term of opprobrium. While theologians, philosophers and scientists have usually (although not always, of course) been willing to accept one another’s academic legitimacy as long as each kept in their own domain, they have been quite united in their condemnation of this latter category as being beyond the pale of respectable study.
This process of exclusion has led to alarming levels of academic ignorance about major developments in the history of religion, phi-losophy and science, and hence to seriously impoverished views of those domains. In all three fields, the core problem is that their histories have been written on the basis of normative distinctions between ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ religion, philosophy and sci-ence. In the case of religion, this has led to multiple histories of Christianity dominated by, and written from the perspective of, the established churches and their doctrinal theologies; in the case of philosophy, it has led to higly selective overviews, some of which suggest, or even state explicitly, that there is not much ‘real’ phi-losophy before the time of Descartes; and in the case of science, it has led to historiographies grounded in profoundly anachronistic distinctions between real and ‘pseudo’ science.1 In all cases, the pattern is that historians have tended to focus on what they consid-ered interesting and important, not on the full complexity of what one actually finds in the historical records. One could say that in their explorations of the garden of history, they have been thinking like gardeners intent on cultivating their own flowers and plants while silently removing the weeds as much as possible.
If we further pursue that metaphor, the ‘new historiographies’
that have been developing particularly since the 1990s, and of which the study of Western esotericism is a part, look at that same garden of history from the perspective of the biologist: what they see is a complex biosystem that deserves attention in its own right.
Considered as biological organisms, the weeds or the mushrooms of history are of no less interest or importance than the cultivated plants or flowers. It must be emphasized that from a scientific point of view, the perspectives of the gardener and the biologist represent not just personal opinions: the former is simply incorrect. Whether
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or not one likes to acknowledge the fact, anybody who cares to take a good look at the garden of history will see that it has always been a fertile breeding-ground for organisms of all kinds. Attempts at cultivation have never been all too successful, and undoubtedly will never be. The illusion that this is otherwise can only be main-tained by a deliberate decision to ignore those parts of the evidence that are not congenial to one’s own preferences.
Students in the fields of religion, philosophy and science must therefore make up their minds about whether they want to be gar-deners or biologists. If they prefer the former, then the study of Western esotericism is not for them. But if they choose the latter, then they must train their awareness and their sensitivity about how strongly, and with how much subtlety, the existing disciplines and their standard programmes of education still tend to confirm the biases of the gardener. The dominant patterns of discourse are changing only slowly, and some deeply ingrained assumptions vanish only with the change of generations. In the meantime, stu-dents in religion, philosophy and science are well advised to look at standard textbooks and academic programmes with a healthy dose of suspicion: they should ask themselves continously what those authoritative conveyors of information might not be telling them.
In case this advice sounds subversive of academic authority, it is. In line with Immanuel Kant’s famous motto of Enlightenment, sapere aude (dare to think!),2 the essence of the academic enterprise is to never believe blindly what one is being told, but have the courage to investigate it critically and independently.
With respect to the study of religion, philosophy and science, there is no need here to go into further detail about the directions into which students might want to look: these should already be evident from the previous chapters. Most of the central figures that were discussed in Chapter Two have been condemned to a kind of liminal state halfway between philosophy and religion, and can be studied fruitfully from both perspectives (preferably both at the same time). With respect to the history of science, the central rel-evance of magia naturalis, alchemy and astrology should by now be obvious; and here too, the boundaries with religion and philoso-phy are permeable and fluid. For all these cases, some initial bib-liographical advice will be given in the next chapter. It should be emphasized that, next to the limited number of famous ‘big names’
in all these fields, almost limitless amounts of unexplored materials
by lesser figures are waiting in libraries and archives for somebody to take an interest in them. Sometimes such research can lead to unexpected new discoveries that provide us with surprising new perspectives on what we already knew, or thought we knew. But what those new horizons will be, we obviously will not know until the research is done first.