Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses

by Amy Hale (Editor)

Overview

This book is the first collection to feature histories of women in Western Esotericism while also highlighting women’s scholarship. In addition to providing a critical examination of important and under researched figures in the history of Western Esotericism, these fifteen essays also contribute to current debates in the study of esotericism about the very nature of the field itself. The chapters are divided into four thematic sections that address current topics in the study of esotericism: race and othering, femininity, power and leadership and embodiment. This collection not only adds important voices to the story of Western Esotericism, it hopes to change the way the story is told.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030768911
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	01/22/2022
Series:	Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities
Edition description:	1st ed. 2021
Pages:	401
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Amy Hale is an anthropologist and folklorist specializing in contemporary esoteric history, art and culture. Co-edited collections include New Directions in Celtic Studies, and The Journal of the Academic Study of Magic 5. She has written widely on surrealist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, and is the author of the Colquhoun biography Genius of the Fern Loved Gully.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Mrs. Rosa Frances Swiney: Imperial Feminism and Eugenics in Theosophical Evolutionist Thought.- Chapter 3: The Myth of Pamela Colman Smith's Blackness: Ethnic Impersonation in the Modern Esoteric Milieu.- Chapter 4: “Eastern Methods”/“Western Bodies”: Dion Fortune’s Shifting Positions on Yoga, 1929 -1940.- Chapter 5: The Devil Wears Pink: The Representation and Role of Woman in the Occultism of Maria de Naglowska.- Chapter 6: The Power of Beauty: Eleanor Kirk’s Feminine Esotericism.- Chapter 7: Painterly Desire: Ithell Colquhoun’s Other-than-Human Art.- Chapter 8: Doreen Valiente: Unmotherly Mother of Modern Witchcraft.- Chapter 9: The Crucible of Modernity: Florence Farr & the Esoteric Woman.- Chapter 10: Madeline Montalban: Magus of the Morning Star.- Chapter 11: ‘The Seeker’ – Frieda Harris’s Quest for Esoteric Fulfillment.- Chapter 12: George Yeats: Amanuensis to Inner Plane Spirits.- Chapter13: “Telling the World’s Fortune”: Eileen Garrett, Psychic Medium and Pioneer Parapsychologist.- Chapter 14: How to Make a Magician: Kabbalah, Psychotherapy and the Mechanics of Syncretism in Colette Aboulker-Muscat’s Waking Dreamwork.- Chapter 15: Dion Fortune and the Temples of the Numinous.- Chapter 16: True Knowledge of God Obscured in Mind and Body: Hildegard of Bingen’s Medical and Religious Understanding of Adam’s Fall.

Editorial Reviews

This volume provides a good starting point for wider explorations that could include a more intersectional approach that considers how gender intersects with aspects such as class, race, or sexuality, as well as an investigation of the role of women in non-Western esoteric traditions and the evolving and changing nature of esotericism in the modern world. The volume’s comprehensive view of the history and diversity of esotericism is a welcome contribution to the current body of works in the field.” (Lulie El-Ashry, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 49 (2), June, 2023)

From the Publisher