Introduction: The Visual and the Symbolic

in Western Esotericism

Peter J. Forshaw

The past decades have seen increasing interest from art, cultural and intellec-
tual historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and critical theorists in “visual
culture”.1 A wide variety of publications have appeared, providing overviews of
particular epochs,2 or focusing on specific themes, for instance, visual cultures
of science, religion, medicine, and madness.3 This is increasingly the case, too,
in scholarly studies of Western Esotericism, encompassing currents of thought
that over the centuries – from antiquity to the present day – have amassed
their own extremely rich and impressive treasury of visual materials.4
On its most literal level what is visual, of course, means our immediate ac-
cess to the external world, vision as sense perception, as one of the five physi-
cal senses, conveying the images of nature – the mundus sensibilis, sensualis
or naturalis – through the eyes to the store-house of the imagination. From
there, though, esoteric thought travels to the mundus imaginabilis and mundus
intellectualis of early modern neoplatonic and hermetic thinkers like Marsilio
Ficino (1433–1499) and Robert Fludd (1574–1637), to the mundus imaginalis of
Henry Corbin (1903–1978) in the twentieth century.5
Profoundly connected with the mundus imaginabilis, the powers of the
imagination and images, of course, is the realm of magia, with insightful

1 See, for example, the essays in Jenks (ed.), Visual Culture.

2 Gertsman and Stevenson (eds.), Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture (2012); Cardarelli, An-
derson, and Richards (eds.), Art and Identity: Visual Culture, Politics and Religion in the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance (2012); Kromm and Benforado Bakewell (eds.), A History of Visual
Culture: Western Civilization from the 18th to the 21st century (2010).
3 Pauwels (ed.) Visual Cultures of Science (2006); Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual
Culture in Theory and Practice (2005); Serlin (ed.), Imagining Illness: Public Health and Vi-
sual Culture (2010); Kromm, The Art of Frenzy: Public Madness in the Visual Culture of Europe,
1500–1850 (2003).
4 Hanegraaff, Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed, 146; Von Stuckrad, Locations of
Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 163 ‘Image Acts and Visual Culture’; Pasi,
‘Coming Forth by Night. Contemporary Art and the Occult’; Bauduin, Surrealism and the Oc-
cult; Bauduin and Kokkinen (eds.), Aries Special issue on Occulture.
5 Corbin, Mundus imaginalis. For references to the earlier work of Fludd, see Schmidt Bigge-
mann, ‘Robert Fludds Theatrum memoriae’.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004334953_002

2 Forshaw

work now being done on its visual culture. This is particularly the case with
­current research on the imagines magicae or talismans in manuscripts like
the necromantic Picatrix, Libro de las Formas et de las Ymágenes, and Libro de
Astromagia, all produced in the thirteenth-century scriptorium of Alfonso x,
El Sabio, King of Castile, Léon, and Galicia (1221–1284).6 Excellent work has
been done on the critical reception of such texts in medieval works like the
Speculum astronomiae – Mirror of Astronomy (1255–1260), which divided the
“Science of Images” (Scientia Imaginum) into 3 kinds (abominable, detestable,
and acceptable).7 Despite their condemnation, some of these medieval texts,
such as the Picatrix, Almandal of Solomon and Liber sacer sive iuratus ­Honorii –
The Holy or Sworn Book of Honorius, nevertheless attracted the attention of
later Renaissance and early modern practitioners, notable examples being the
Florentine philosopher Ficino, the German “magical abbot” Johannes Trithe-
mius (1483–1506) and the Elizabethan magus, John Dee (1527–1608).8 Scholars
of modern Western Esotericism will be well aware of the interest such mate-
rial had for members of occult organisations like the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn.9
As is evident in such early modern works as the Bolognese scholar Acchi-
le Bocchi’s (1488–1562) Symbolicae Questiones - Books of Symbolic Questions
(1555), the term “symbol” (Greek symbolon, symbolos and Latin symbolum)
has no simple definition. Derived from the Greek verb symballein, “to join or
bring together,” it can signify ‘an object (a Greek token), a verbal construct
(such as motto, fable, and riddle), a visual image (the hieroglyph), or a mixed
verbal/visual formula (such as emblem and impresa).’10 Famous examples
from antiquity embrace both the verbal Pythagorean aurea dicta and symbola
collected by Ficino in the fifteenth century and the geometric and arithmologi-
cal symbolism of Pythagoras’s Tetraktys, which, at the time when Jewish Kab-
balah was being introduced to the Christian West, became assimilated into the

6 See García Avilés, ‘La cultura visual de la magia en la época de Alfonso x’; Boudet, Caioz-
zo, & Weill-Parot (eds.), Images et Magie; Weill-Parot, Les “images astrologiques” au Moyen
Âge et à la Renaissance.
7 Burnett, ‘Talismans: Magic as Science? Necromancy among the Seven Liberal Arts’, 3;
Láng, Unlocked Books, 29; Zambelli, The Speculum Astronomiae and its Enigma, 241ff.
8 For recent publications on early modern visual culture and aspects of esotericism see,
for example, Zika, Exorcising Our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft, and Visual Culture in Early
Modern Europe; McCall, Roberts, and Fiorenza (eds.), Visual Cultures of Secrecy in Early
Modern Europe.
9 See Bogdan, Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation.
10 See Watson, Achille Bocchi and the Emblem Book as Symbolic Form, 96–98.
Introduction 3

­ eo-Pythagorean “Symbolic Theology” of Christian Kabbalah, promulgated by

n
the German humanist Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522).11
A particularly prolific source of symbolic images can be found in the al-
chemical archive, which developed a new genre of alchemical images from the
thirteenth century, one of the earliest examples being Constantine of Pisa’s
Book of the Secrets of Alchemy (c. 1257).12 Combinations of visual and verbal im-
agery became so popular in these treatises that by the early fifteenth century
there were whole series of alchemical symbols, with images of dragons, lions,
ravens, peacocks, androgynes, and hermaphrodites in manuscript works like
Das Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit and the Aurora Consurgens, leading to the
first series from the printing press, the most famous being the Rosarium Philos-
ophorum (1550).13 Another well-known early publication of alchemical images,
the Pretiosa Margarita Philosophica (1546) came from the same Aldine Press
that issued Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), arguably
the most beautiful instance of a Renaissance work inspired by the humanist
enthusiasm for hieroglyphics. The sixteenth-century popularity of emblemata
and hieroglyphica,14 provided the impetus for the flowering of alchemical em-
blem books in the early seventeenth century, most impressively in the works of
Michael Maier (1568–1622), author of a multitude of works, including the Sym-
bola aureae mensae duodecim nationum (1617) and the Atalanta fugiens (1618),
with its ambitious combination of 50 images, texts and musical fugues.15 Some
alchemical works are indeed almost totally visual, the best-known cases being
the scrolls originally attributed to the fifteenth-century English canon George
Ripley (c.1415–1490) and the later Mutus Liber or Silent Book (1677). This ma-
terial generated a veritable publishing industry of authors devoted to explor-
ing and decoding alchemical symbolism, including Antoine Joseph Pernety’s

11 On number symbolism, see Jean-Pierre Brach’s entry in Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of

Gnosis and Western Esotericism, and Brach, La symbolique des nombres. On Kabbalah as
Symbolic Theology, see Moshe Idel’s reflections in Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism,
13–19. For two influential essays on esoteric and occult symbolism, albeit from extremely
different perspectives, see Ernst Gombrich, ‘Icones symbolicae: Philosophies of Symbol-
ism and their Bearing on Art’ and Brian Vickers, ‘Analogy versus Identity: The Rejection of
Occult Symbolism, 1580–1680’.
12 Constantine of Pisa, The Book of the Secrets of Alchemy.
13 See Obrist, Les Débuts de l’Imagerie Alchimique (XIVe–XVe siècles); Gabriele, Alchimia e
Iconologia; Junker, Das „Buch der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit“.
14 See Dieckmann, Hieroglyphics: The History of a Literary Symbol; Bath, Speaking Pictures:
English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture.
15 On Maier, see Tilton, The Quest for the Phoenix; de Jong, Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens:
Sources of an Alchemical Book of Emblems.
4 Forshaw

­ ictionnaire Mytho-Hermétique (1758), Albert Poisson’s Théories et symboles des

D
alchimistes (1891), Eugène Canseliet’s Alchimie: Etudes diverses de symbolisme
hermétique (1964), and Fulcanelli’s Le mystère des cathédrales et l’interprétation
des symboles ésotériques du Grand OEuvre (1926). Those interested in the his-
tory of psychology will doubtless be aware of the resurgence of interest in al-
chemical symbolism stimulated by the investigations and theorisations of the
psychoanalyst Herbert Silberer (1882–1923) and the psychiatrist Carl Gustav
Jung (1875–1961).16
Lux in Tenebris is a collection of eighteen original and critical interdisci-
plinary essays that address the visual and symbolic in Western Esotericism,
covering such themes as alchemy, magic, divination, kabbalah, angels, occult
philosophy, Platonism, Rosicrucianism, and Theosophy. The title Lux in Ten-
ebris, originally used for the esswe conference in Szeged that was the initial
impetus behind this collection, has been retained because of the way in which
the apostle John’s famous phrase ‘Lux in tenebris lucet’ (John 1:5 ‘And the light
shineth in darkness’) connects with these essays, with Light as a sign of divine
incarnation in the darkness of human existence, as the most appropriate met-
aphor for the visual depiction of that incarnation of divine Word into mortal
flesh, of Logos into Eidos. As such, Saint John’s Gospel is ‘a story about transition
from medium to medium, the story of the transition from one way of represen-
tation to another and a discussion about various modes of absorption, their
nature, and the faith in them.’17 John’s metaphor undoubtedly inspired esoteric
thinkers, for we find his phrase in the titles of several early modern works at-
tributed, for instance, to the Franciscan philosopher Ramon Lull (1235–1315),
to the theosophical magus and alchemist, Heinrich Khunrath (1560–1605), and
in the collection of prophetic visions edited and published in Amsterdam in
1657 by the Czech pansophist Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670).18 Related to
all of these is an understanding of John’s phrase in the link between light and
knowledge, when voir becomes savoir, the dawn of understanding, the flash of
inspiration.19 Finally, in the modern world the light shining in darkness is an
apt metaphor for cinema, a medium discussed in one essay in this collection.20

16 Silberer, Probleme der Mystik und ihrer Symbolik/Hidden Symboism of Alchemy and the
Occult Arts. On Jung and alchemy, see Psychologie und Alchemie (1944; Psychology and
Alchemy 1953), Mysterium Coniunctionis (German edition 1955–56; English 1963) and Al-
chemical Studies (1967).
17 Bram, The Ambassadors of Death, 157–158.
18 [Ps.] Lull, Lux in tenebris lucens Raymundi Lullii (1682); Khunrath, Lux in Tenebris (1614);
Comenius (ed.), Lux in Tenebris, hoc est Prophetiae Donum (1657).
19 Jenks, ‘The Centrality of the Eye in Western Culture: An Introduction’, 4.
20 Verdone and Berghaus, ‘Vita futurista and Early Futurist Cinema’, 421.
Introduction 5

The essays in the collection deal in various ways with esoteric visions, often
in that liminal space where naturalistic vision transforms into esoteric vision.
For some this means the expression of an occult, emblematic worldview that
sees a system of symbolic correspondences linking the heavens above to hu-
man beings, animals, plants, minerals, and metals below; theories of relations
between macrocosm, mesocosm and microcosm; the ancient notion of a symbo-
los or symbolon as a celestial sign portending some future event; or revelatory
images received from on high or from within, of the varied inner worlds of
esotericism, the visions and visualisations of visionaries, the seeings of scryers
and seers, with all their personal, private, shared, initiatory, didactic, polemi-
cal, synoptic, revelatory, devotional, sacramental, meditational, and magical
uses. The contributors come from an archipelago of scholarly domains: from
theology, religious studies, and comparative religion, departments of philoso-
phy, the various Histories of Ideas, Philosophy, Religions, Art, and Music, and
of course of Western esotericism; some are established figures in their fields,
others are new researchers making their mark; all have their own unique per-
spectives and original interpretations on their chosen themes, some with a fo-
cus on specific significant figures in the history of Western Esotericism, others
with an interest in a particular theme.
The essays have been arranged chronologically and the volume is divided
into two sections:

Part 1, focussing on the Middle Ages and Early Modernity, begins with the
Spanish kabbalist Joseph Gikatilla (c.1248–c.1305), and includes the fif-
teenth-century Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Giulio
Camillo (1480–1544) and his famous Memory Theatre, the occult phi-
losopher Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), the Teutonic Theoso-
pher, Jacob Böhme (1575–1624), the French religious visionary Paul Yvon
(c.1570–1646), and the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772),
plus papers on the famous Rosicrucian work, The Chemical Wedding
(1616), imagery in Weigelianism, Rosicrucian and Christian Theosophy,
and on celestial divination in Russia.
Part 2 turns to Modernity and Postmodernity, with essays on spe-
cific esoteric thinkers: the French occultist René Schwaller de Lubicz
­(1887–1961) and the Italian esotericist Julius Evola (1898–1974), as well as
the relation between esoteric thought and creative process, in literature,
art, and cinema, represented here by the British artist and author Ithell
Colquhoun (1906–1988), the French neo-impressionist William Degouve
de Nuncques (1867–1935), Russian painter and sculptor Grisha Bruskin
(b. 1945), and Brazilian artist Stephan Doitschinoff (b. 1977), as well as in
6 Forshaw

the Luciferian engravings in Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novel El Club Dumas

(1993), and the film that was based on it, The Ninth Gate (Roman Polanski,
1999). The volume concludes with a longue-durée essay on esoteric theo-
ries of colour, from medieval heraldry, through alchemical colour symbol-
ism, to the ideas of Goethe, Newton, through the colour theories of the
theosophists Annie Besant (1847–1933) and Charles Webster Leadbeater
(1854–1934), right up to the paintings of H.K. Challoner (1894–1987) and
Ethelwynne M. Quail.

Part 1: Middle Ages and Early Modernity

Elke Morlok opens this volume of essays with a comparison of the approach to
symbol in the writings of one of the most important kabbalists in the Middle
Ages, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla (c. 1248–c.1305), to Neoplatonic parallels found
in the thought of Proclus, Iamblichus and others. Gikatilla’s combination of
both Neoplatonic and Pythagorean ideas on symbols created a unique syn-
thesis in medieval kabbalah with a decisive influence on Western esoterici-
sism up to modern theories on language and philosphy. The function of the
symbol in the hermeneutic triangle is analysed in both in its visual and its
acoustic aspects. Morlok concludes her essay with a look at important devel-
opments in the Christian tradition as presented in the works of Origen and
Pseudo-Dionysius.
Michael Allen’s contribution concerns another important figure in the his-
tory of Western esotericism, indeed one intimately familiar with Pythagorean
and Neoplatonic thought, the influential Renaissance philosopher Marsilio
Ficino (1433–1499). In an essay that explores some of the salient, often hereti-
cal implications of Platonic theories of illumination in the writings of Ficino,
Allen takes as his starting point the sine qua non for any discussion of visuality,
the appearance of light, in this case that originating from the divine command
in the third verse of Genesis “Let there be light” – a light before the creation of
the lights of the firmament in the fourteenth verse – a light especially signifi-
cant for the Renaissance Platonists, as it had earlier been for Augustine and for
other Genesis commentators. It prompted them to look beyond the blinding
sunlight (the splendor) of the great myth of the cave in Plato’s Republic to con-
template the trans-solar lux, the light that was inextricably linked to the mys-
terious notion of the divine “glory” that appears in the Bible and that invested
Christ at his Transfiguration as it had invested Moses on Sinai.
In the following chapter Lina Bolzoni introduces another Italian thinker, Gi-
ulio Camillo (c.1480–1544), one of the most famous men of his time, glorified
Introduction 7

as divine by many; viewed with suspicion as a mere charlatan by others. He

traveled the length and breadth of Italy and France in search of patrons willing
to finance the Faustian dream of his life – the realization of a universal mem-
ory theatre in which one might store, and re-activate at will, all the knowledge
contained in a universal mind. Camillo’s theatre represented the realization of
a complex synthesis of different philosophical and religious traditions, includ-
ing Hermeticism and Kabbalah, was conceived in such a way as to guarantee
its mystical powers and effective functioning, and was invested with a secret,
semi-divine dimension that permitted the actuation of the three arts of meta-
morphosis: eloquence (which acts on words), alchemy (which acts on things),
and deification (which acts on the soul of man).
Noel Putnik’s contribution considers the idea of ascension, the very core
of Camillo’s German contemporary, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s (1486–1535)
main goal proclaimed in his De occulta philosophia (1533) – the restoration of
magic as a particular religious system. This idea, taken either with its magical
or spiritual connotations, implies a personal transformation, an ontological
shift of one’s position in the so-called Great Chain of Being, during one’s life-
time and through one’s own efforts. The conceptual framework of such an idea
is based on a complex set of Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and Kabbalistic notions
of the macrocosmic universe as a hierarchically structured living being, orga-
nized according to different levels of emanation and governed by the laws of
correspondences, all reflected in the microcosmic structure of man. Although
Agrippa’s vision of his magician’s universe implies a great deal of what is often
termed geometria sacra, De occulta philosophia contains practically no visual
representations of such a pivotal concept. Putnik’s chapter examines various
ways that Agrippa constructs and represents the Renaissance image of the uni-
verse in his famous occult compendium through verbal devices alone, with a
logocentrism that determines the very nature of his magical theory.
The next chapter engages with the theosophy of one of Agrippa’s compatri-
ots, the “Teutonic Philosopher” Jacob Böhme (1575–1624). Following on from
Putnik’s examination of Agrippa’s logocentrism, Joshua Gentzke considers
new hermeneutical strategies being developed within a growing body of schol-
arship that treats the role of the senses in the production of knowledge. Such
scholarship calls for an “embodied” approach to the humanities that emphasiz-
es the complex relationship between culture, history, and sensory experience.
Gentzke adopts this orientation in relation to the work of the German mystic,
Jacob Böhme (1575–1624). It has often been claimed that Böhme’s thought is
deficient in terms of clarity and philosophical sophistication. However, if the
experiential and nonpropositional aims of the author are taken seriously, his
work appears in a new light. Approaching Böhme’s work as an amalgam of
8 Forshaw

both theory and practice, Gentzke first explicates his theorization of the re-
lationship between body, image, and imagination; then explores the way in
which the notion of “image” (Bild) is both textually and visually performed in
Böhme’s imaginary, highlighting the “aesthetic” and “kinaesthetic” dimensions
of his theosophy. In closing, he argues that Böhme’s work is neither simply
primitive philosophy nor purely speculative mysticism, but rather, performa-
tive and prescriptive in nature: an attempt to provide the reader with the “raw
materials” needed to imaginatively fashion a virtual body that brings the world
of the text to life.
Thomas Willard’s chapter begins with the consideration of images that ap-
peared during Böhme’s lifetime in one of the most famous Rosicrucian pub-
lications, Johann Valentin Andreae’s (1586–1654) Chymische Hochzeit. Willard
suggests that these simple illustrations added verisimilitude when the anony-
mously submitted manuscript was published in 1616. Rather than give a skilled
artisan’s images of scenes in the allegorical story, some showed spatial relations
in rough diagrams made up of lines, circles, and letters. Others showed mes-
sages written in a secret alphabet and decoded in the text itself – presumably
the “magic writing” mentioned in the Confessio Fraternitatis of 1615. The
printed book purported to reproduce the bulk of a manuscript that the edi-
tor and annotator had seen in its entirety. In addition to fostering the story of
Christian Rosencreutz, the illustrations force readers to think of related im-
ages in the text – the fountain of Mercury, the crypt of Venus, and the tower of
Olympus among others. They indeed suggest that the whole story of a chemi-
cal wedding in the year 1459 is a puzzle, in which C. R. is both the narrator and
the model puzzle-solver. Not the least of his puzzles is the Hieroglyphic Monad
of John Dee (1527–1608/9), affixed to the wedding invitation. It serves as a re-
minder that the wedding is an astrological as well as alchemical event and has
political as well as personal implications.
Theodor Harmsen’s contribution discusses the important part played in
the reception history of Valentin Weigel’s (1533–1588) mystical thought within
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Christian theosophy by the imagery in
Weigelian, Rosicrucian and Böhmist mystical theologies and theosophies. Vi-
sualization of theosophical ideas developed especially in the context of book
production although symbolic images were also devised as visual explications
of complex ideas and not just as illustrations for frontispieces: Weigel, and Ja-
cob Böhme after him, conceived of their own symbols, which were picked up,
cited and developed by their followers and sympathizers in books and manu-
scripts. Astrological, magical-kabbalist and alchemical elements were adapted
and/or combined in order to create more complex images that were related
to textual bases in works composed by or attributed to Paracelsus, Weigel,
Introduction 9

­Khunrath, Böhme and Franckenberg. The visual symbol appeared increas-

ingly independent of the text or texts it had originally accompanied. A strong
representative of this trend is the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer, a com-
pendium of theosophical imagery published in Altona in 1785–1788, which is
here discussed in relation to authentic and pseudo-Weigelian works (or Wei-
gelians). Harmsen analyses a selection of images and traces their reception in
Weigelian, Böhmist and Radical Pietist settings, with the argument that these
images were given a new context in the manuscript and printed versions of the
Geheime Figuren.
The following chapter by Carsten Wilke introduces readers to the mathema-
tician and religious visionary Paul Yvon, lord of Laleu (c.1570–1646). A Calvin-
ist merchant and magistrate of La Rochelle, Yvon claimed to have discovered,
by a divine revelation he experienced in 1614, the squaring of the circle and
a new Judeo-Christian religion based on scientific intuition. He dedicated a
large number of printed pamphlets to his mathematical theorems and, having
moved to Paris after his conversion to Catholicism in 1628, insistently tried to
convince Marin Mersenne, René Descartes and other contemporaries of their
veracity. Taking a close look at complex geometric diagrams that appear as il-
lustrations in some Yvon’s publications, Wilke discusses possible coherence
between geometrical proof and Kabbalistic myth. These copper-plate engrav-
ings contain short formula in Hebrew and a few figurative symbols, among
which the snake, the sun, and the vagina are particularly recurrent, alluding
to cosmological and Christological mysteries of which Yvon believed himself
to be the prophet. Wilke wrily argues that Yvon’s main historic interest resides
in his pushing to the extreme the fascination with Jewish esotericism that
characterized the early stages of the scientific revolution and that earned him
among his contemporaries the reputation of being not only a madman, but
also a Judaizer.
The following two chapters move forward in time to the eighteenth-century
works of the Swedish scientist, philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg
(1688–1772). In the first essay, Susanna Åkerman investigates the possible influ-
ence of Kabbalah on his thought, given a certain phenomenological similarity
in the two cosmologies. She points to the shared notions of upper (celestial
and spiritual) and lower (natural) worlds; an influx from the celestial world
into the lower worlds; the presence of spirits and angels; emphasis on the Old
Testament text and its inner dimension; and suggests that the Sephirotic tree
of Kabbalah, taken as Adam Kadmon, is similar to Swedenborg’s postulation
of the Grand human forming the heavens in communities of souls. Although
it has recently been argued that Swedenborg as a rationalist gained these spe-
cific ideas from contemporaries, such as the German cosmologist Andreas
10 Forshaw

­Rüdiger’s Physica divina, recta via (1716), she draws the reader’s attention to the
existence of a small dissertation in the Swedenborg Library in Gröndal, Stock-
holm, with the signature “Emanuel Svedberg” on its title plate. This is the Dis-
sertatio historico-philologico de sapientia Salomonis (Uppsala, 1705) by David
Lundius (1657–1729), Hebraist at Uppsala University, treating of the wisdom of
Solomon, in which Kabbalist ideas are discussed in broad terms. Apparently,
Swedenborg acquired it as a young student in Uppsala. Guided by this work,
Åkerman’s chapter explores similarities between Swedenborg’s writings and
the Kabbalah.
In the following chapter Francesca Maria Crasta and Laura Follesa discuss
Swedenborg’s De cultu et amore Dei (1745). In this work, which is complex from
both a philosophical and a linguistic standpoint, metaphors and allegories,
which draw on both classical and modern literary traditions, are combined
with symbolic structures which, by contrast, have a mystical or esoteric na-
ture. Swedenborg’s work thus presents an extraordinary opportunity to assess
the double functionality of symbols, metaphors and metonymies in a philo-
sophical and theological context. As Inge Jonsson has pointed out (Drama of
Creation, 2004), these images have a poetical and a literary dimension. How-
ever, within Swedenborg’s text, they acquire a richer meaning, which recalls
Neoplatonic, hermetic and cabalistic sources. The primordial or cosmic egg,
the “edenic state” or state of nature and the Tree of Life are all symbolic repre-
sentations that strongly characterize Swedenborg’s thought and that refer to
the tradition of Western esotericism. Crasta and Follesa argue that these sym-
bols play not only a heuristic role but can also be used in a pedagogical sense to
explain the most distant past of both the earth and man, a past that cannot be
scientifically proved, but only represented by means of topoi and the mythical
forms produced by the collective imaginary of mankind. Their chapter argues
that Swedenborg’s symbolic images are not simply visual representations of
the past, but have an esoteric and visionary dimension that goes far beyond the
boundaries of traditional iconography.
In the final chapter of the medieval and early modern part of the volume,
Robert Collis provides the first in-depth analysis of the richly illustrated
Tobol’sk Chronicle, or A Record of Astronomical Phenomena of Various Ages,
which was compiled in the Siberian city between 1695 and 1734. The chronicle
not only incorporates a fascinating record of comets, meteors, eclipses and
out-of-the-ordinary weather witnessed above Tobol’sk itself, but also draws
on older Russian chronicles in order to interpret and document the effects
of such phenomena on Muscovy and its near neighbours since the reign of
Ivan iv (1530–1584). In this sense, the chronicle served to incorporate Tobol’sk
(and Siberia as a whole) within the geographical and spiritual parameters of
Introduction 11

the ­Russian Orthodox Empire. Moreover, the compiler(s) of the chronicle also
cited Biblical precedents, as well as Flavius Josephus and Dionysius the Areop-
agite, in order to frame the work as a whole firmly within the realm of Christian
providentialism. In other words it sought to provide a comprehensive discourse
that portrays all phenomena in relation to a single, omnipotent God, who uses
a “language” of signs in order to speak to humanity through extraordinary
occurrences. With brief introductory sections on Christian providentialism
and celestial divination in European and Russian history, Collis’s chapter
moves on to examine the text and accompanying illustrations contained with-
in the Tobol’sk Chronicle, thereby providing an in-depth analysis of the work
and an assessment of early modern Russian attitudes towards celestial
divination.

Part 2: Modernity and Postmodernity

The second part of this volume, that dealing with modernity, opens with Györ-
gy Szönyi’s chapter on changing perceptions of the prophet Enoch. The discov-
ery of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch in the late eighteenth century by the Scottish
traveller, James Bruce (1730–1794), and its publication in English by Richard
Laurence in 1821 rekindled the interest in the biblical forefather. In Victorian
England one finds a whole range of reflections on Enoch from theological
tracts, philological speculations, through literary works, to esoteric visions and
occult references. Notable examples are Madame Blavatsky’s and John Mason
Neale’s Enochian references, Edward Vaughan Kenealy’s Enoch, the Messenger
of God, and LeRoy Hooker’s 1898 esoteric novel, Enoch the Philistine. Szonyi’s
chapter surveys these various cultural representations, with an eye on Aleister
Crowley’s Enochian magic, through which he aimed to revolutionize occult
practices in the early twentieth century.
Aaron Cheak’s contribution discusses the life and work of the Alsatian
artist, alchemist, Egyptologist, Neopythagorean, and philosopher René ‘Aor’
Schwaller de Lubicz (1887–1961). His life’s work encompassed a surprisingly
diverse spectrum of activity, from the creation of alchemically stained glass
to the archaeology, architectonics and symbolic analysis of Egyptian temples.
Cheak argues that, taken in its entirety, the esotericism of de Lubicz is noth-
ing less than a science of consciousness and it is within this framework that
he situates Schwaller’s approach to symbolism. This chapter focuses on three
interrelated ideas in Schwaller’s œuvre: (1) the concept of symbolique, in which
the phenomenal cosmos is perceived as a reaction to metaphysical processes;
(2) the basis of this idea in the alchemical theory of sulphur, mercury and salt;
12 Forshaw

and (3) Schwaller’s conception of the alchemical stone as a ‘juncture of tran-

scendence and concretion’.
The following chapter, Thomas Hakl’s essay on symbology in the works of
the Italian philosopher and esotericist Julius Evola (1898–1974), aims to show
that for Evola symbols are genuine “windows” into transcendent reality in the
Platonic sense. As such symbols constitute a link to this reality. One can be
transformed by their use and thus they can constitute a path of spiritual devel-
opment. For Evola these symbols are not man-made but part of an ancient and
forgotten traditional wisdom, one with the aim of deificatio, of becoming god,
a notion found in the works of figures like Meister Eckhart, with parallels in
earlier treatises like the Corpus Hermeticum. Evola learnt these ideas among
others from the Italian Renaissance hermeticist Cesare della Riviera, whose
main work Il mondo magico degli Heroi (1605) Evola edited and commented on.
These hermetic ideas of Evola greatly influenced the Romanian philosopher
and historian of religion Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) and found the approval
of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). Evola’s significance ex-
tends beyond the theoretical, however, for he used the powers of these sym-
bols in the magical ur Group over which he presided in the years 1927–1929.
Victoria Ferentinou’s contribution considers the association between art
and spirituality, in particular its re-emergence at the end of the nineteenth and
the beginning of the twentieth centuries during the occult revival, which had
a considerable impact on modernist artists from the symbolists to the surreal-
ists. Ferentinou’s case study is the British-born Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988),
a surrealist painter, writer and poet but also a practising occultist. Colquhoun
studied esoteric philosophy and joined occult sects that thrived in Great Brit-
ain in the twentieth century. Her probing of esotericism involved diverse
currents, including alchemy, astrology, the Kabbalah, Gnosticism, magic, the
Tarot, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Neoplatonism, Christian mysticism and
Celtic lore. Ferentinou’s chapter focuses on the influence that alchemical sym-
bolism exerted upon Colquhoun’s artistic production, identifying several of her
sources from her private collection of esoteric books. It particularly explores
the notion of the conjunction of opposites in the personal artistic language
formulated by Colquhoun, laying emphasis on the various manifestations of
the concept in paintings and writings from the 1940s and 1950s. Colquhoun
experimented with the polyvalent and cryptic lexicon of alchemy but also in-
vented her own iconography, relying upon the correlation between occultism
and psychology in vogue at the time. This chapter considers Colquhoun’s ar-
cane and psychological research alongside her work, providing an insight into
her perspective on the alchemical quest primarily as a spiritual practice.
Introduction 13

In his chapter Jonathan Schorsch presents three case studies of the way
in which esoteric themes appear and become revised in the work of mod-
ern visual artists who make use of angels. The French neo-impressionist Wil-
liam Degouve de Nuncques’s (1867–1935) painting, Angels of the Night, offers
a brooding symbolist setting that I read as a narrative drawn from esoteric
motifs regarding human transformation between divinity and mortality. In
his paintings and sculptures, Russian painter and sculptor Grisha Bruskin (b.
1945) considers Jewish identity by means of kabbalistic themes, whose visual
strangeness and conceptual metaphysics he uses to open up possibilities both
spiritual and political within Soviet tyranny and post-Soviet western anomie
and ennui. The Brazilian artist Stephan Doitschinoff (b. 1977) wields alchemi-
cal graphics and ideas in his postmodern pop art, stimulating an imaginary of
hope, even inspiration, while challenging the ills of the contemporary west.
These artists and their angels serve as examples of the surprising persistence of
angels in modernity. A means of working through anxieties regarding the de-
stabilized boundaries between human and divine, human and animal, human
and machine, they have left official religious tradition behind, have become
gnostic, neo-kabbalistic ciphers for and of a humanity attempting to transcend
its limitations while yet reveling in them, have become totems and mentors
in varying pantheons of (post-)modern (imaginary) beings such as celebrities,
superheroes, creatures from fantasy novels and gaming worlds. They stand as
allusions to in-betweenness and uncertainty regarding the anti-metaphysical
progressivism of scientific modernity, communist and capitalist alike.
Continuing with the artistic, but this time in the realm of fiction and cin-
ematography, Per Faxneld’s chapter analyzes the function of esoteric sym-
bolism, specifically the imagery in a series of luciferian engravings, in Arturo
Pérez-Reverte’s novel El Club Dumas (1993), and the film that was based on it,
The Ninth Gate (Roman Polanski, 1999). Faxneld’s argument is that the frag-
mentation of the images in the novel, where it becomes impossible to reach
the “ur-images”, is something which comments on the postmodern condi-
tion and a perceived shattering of grand narratives and objective divine (or
diabolic) truths. Signs and symbols become unstable and polyphonic floating
signifiers. This renders the esoteric enlightenment, the single “true” meaning
of the symbols, impossible to reach. The novel’s protagonist, Lucas Corso, is
helped by Lucifer to accept this, and to realize it sets him free: the absence of
a limiting pre-scripted esoteric metanarrative enables him to create his own
narrative as he embraces the liberty that the postmodern condition brings.
Possibly with inspiration from Roland Barthes’ well-known 1968 essay ‘La mort
de l’auteur’, in Pérez-Reverte’s novel the metaphoric death of the “author”, and
14 Forshaw

the dissipation of his one true narrative, frees the “reader” of esoteric signs and
symbols, Corso, and lets him be reborn as a “creator god”. Polanski’s film, on the
other hand, retains the benevolent Lucifer (who takes the shape of a woman),
but here she instead acts as an initiator into a more classic esoteric enlighten-
ment, where the engravings are ultimately restored to their pristine condition
and their riddle solved, dispelling the threat of postmodern dissolution of the
symbolic.
The final chapter of this collection of essays, a longue durée piece by Josce-
lyn Godwin, concerns the history of color symbolism as an example of the im-
pact of science on esotericism. Before the Scientific Revolution, esoteric color
schemes followed the doctrine of correspondences (e.g., the seven heraldic
tinctures linked to the planets and subsequent schemes of Ficino, Paracelsus,
Jacob Böhme, Fludd, and Kircher) or drew on alchemical and biblical symbol-
ism. After 1700 most esotericists, whether or not they accepted Isaac Newton’s
spectrum, tried to harmonize their theories with scientific data and empirical
methods (e.g., Goethe, Runge, Wronski, French neo-Pythagoreans, Hermeti-
cists, and Theosophists). The early twentieth century saw a proliferation of
color theories on the borderline between esotericism and artistic practice, to-
gether with psychological and therapeutic applications (e.g., neo-Theosophy,
Golden Dawn, Kandinsky, Kupka, Steiner, and Itten). In contrast, Portal’s Des
couleurs symboliques (1857) influenced Guénon and other Traditionalists to re-
assert the simpler and more symbolic medieval and Islamic categories.

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