Western Esotericism

Western esotericism is the name modern scholars give to a broad current of 'rejected' or hidden knowledge running through Western culture — a family of traditions including Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonic theurgy, alchemy, astrology, magic, and the Christian Cabala, and flowing on into later Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and the modern occult revival.

For all their diversity, these traditions tend to share a worldview: a living, ensouled cosmos knit together by correspondences and sympathy; the promise of gnosis, a transformative knowledge that redeems; the idea of a hidden ancient wisdom; and disciplines of purification, ascent, and transmutation.

Its deepest taproot is the Platonism and Hermeticism of late antiquity, revived in the Renaissance by Ficino and Pico — which is why so many of its threads lead back into the texts of this library.