139: Wouter Hanegraaff – Rejected Knowledge, Idolatry, and Colonialism

About this episode

Dr. John W. Price converses with Dr. Wouter J. Hanegraaff about esotericism, its historical exclusions, and the cultural implications of anti-idolatry.

In this episode of The Sacred Speaks, Dr. John W. Price returns to a conversation with Dr. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, professor at the University of Amsterdam and one of the foremost scholars of Western esotericism. Their first conversation opened into the history of Hermetic spirituality. This one goes further. Hanegraaff's new book, Esotericism in Western Culture: Counter-Normativity and Rejected Knowledge, reframes the entire question: esotericism is not a tradition to be catalogued. It is what the West threw out. Hanegraaff has spent decades mapping the archive of what official Western culture could not contain, magic, alchemy, gnosis, visionary experience, and asking what those exclusions reveal about the culture that made them. The conversation opens, perhaps unexpectedly, with music. Hanegraaff describes how early encounters with sound became his first experience of altered states and shaped his life's work. The scholarly and the experiential are not separate for him. They never were. The episode builds toward his concept of the "Greater West," a geographical, cultural, and historical frame encompassing the Mediterranean basin, the Middle East and North Africa, and the global…

People in this episode

Host: John W. Price

Guest: Wouter J. Hanegraaff

Topics covered

• esotericism
• Western culture
• idolatry
• colonialism
• Hermetic spirituality
• altered states
• anti-idolatry

Keywords

• esotericism
• Western culture
• idolatry
• colonialism
• Hermetic spirituality
• magic
• alchemy
• gnosis
• visionary experience

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Amsterdam

Books & works: Esotericism in Western Culture: Counter-Normativity and Rejected Knowledge

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