Spirituality and the Occult

Against the widely-held view that occult spiritualities are marginal to Western culture, this text argues that the esoteric tradition has played a major role in European intellectual and cultural history. Among the disciplines in which Brian Gibbons identifies the influence and continued presence of esoteric mystical movements are: medicine; science; philosophy; Freudian and Jungian psychology; radical political movements; and imaginative literature. Showing that the esoteric tradition is an unfairly neglected area in Western culture and that much of what we take to be "modern" derives, at least in part from this tradition, the book aims to cast a fresh perspective on intellectual and cultural history in the West.

'Spirituality and the Occult is a valuable work of interest to historians, specialists in religious studies, and those interested in the history of ideas ...' - Vivianne Crowley, Journal of Contemporary Religion'... a compelling and evocative picture of the world we have lost ... The book is a study in contrasts and as such offers one of the most uncompromising depictions of present-day secularisation to appear in a scholarly work. The Death of Christian Britain is a fine and provoking work, one to excite both admiration and dissent.' - David Voas, Journal of Contemporary Religion' ... this succint, but rich and wide-ranging work ... opens up many new important pathways.' - The Scientific and Medical Network

Brian Gibbons is a lecturer in literature and cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University. His main research interests are occult spiritualities andd seventeenth-century English Radicalism. He is the author of Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenism and its Development in England (1998).