Western Esotericism: a Guide for the Perplexed by Hanegraaff Wouter J.;

Author:Hanegraaff, Wouter J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2019-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Practice

Religion is much more than belief. It is not just about holding certain worldviews, asserting to specific doctrinal propositions, or making claims about the true nature of reality. To a very large extent, religion is something that one does. People pray, go to church, meditate, take confession, light candles, listen to sermons, sing psalms or hymns, partake of the eucharist, practice penitence, study scripture, fight against unbelievers, celebrate religious holidays, go on pilgrimages, and so on and so forth. Doing certain things, and refusing to do certain other things, belongs to the very essence of what it means to be religious – regardless of whether one is very clear in one’s own mind about the exact nature of one’s beliefs, or one’s reasons for holding them. Since esotericism is an integral part of religion in Western culture – while participating in domains such as philosophy and science as well – no overview can be complete unless it pays attention to its practical dimensions next to its worldviews and ways of gaining knowledge. What do people involved in esotericism actually do? Perhaps no other aspect of the field is so difficult to study and understand, for a whole number of reasons.

•First, there is the problem of sources. Because beliefs and convictions are usually written down at some point, information about them is transmitted to posterity much more easily and with more precision than information about practices. There is often no great need to describe religious practices in detail: in most cases, religious practitioners learn by oral instruction, daily experience or observation and imitation of ‘how things are done’, and have little need of written reminders about what everybody already knows. As a result, we are usually better informed about religious or esoteric beliefs than about practices.

•Second, there is the problem of verbal description. Practices are inherently more difficult to describe than theories or doctrines. Even a simple ritual act is overdetermined with countless details that impinge on all the senses simultaneously, and hence even simple ceremonial procedures that are easily learned by observation and imitation are very difficult to capture in words. As a result, even if we have sources about esoteric practices, they tend to be incomplete.

•Third, there is the problem of (crypto)Protestant bias. Classical approaches to the study of religion have been heavily influenced by Protestant assumptions, including an implicit polemics against Roman Catholicism as crypto-‘pagan’ practice,1 resulting in a structural over-emphasis on doctrine and belief and a corresponding lack of attention to ritual and other forms of practice.2 As a result, most scholars concentrate on the history of esoteric ideas or the study of esoteric discourse, while giving only scant attention to esoteric practice: even when they are studying contemporary currents first-hand, they often still tend to avoid engaging the relevant practices directly.

•Finally, there is the problem of method. Even if the importance of practice is acknowledged in principle, it is not easy to decide on appropriate methodologies for studying it. Anthropologists have built up much experience

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