Occult East Asia

Euro-American Perspectives

Volume Editors: and
This book examines key actors and themes in the Euro-American esoteric reception history of East Asia. It traces how Western occultists and esotericists have engaged with East Asia, appropriating textual icons such as the Daodejing and Yijing, or figures such as Fuxi, Laozi, and Confucius into their perennialist cosmos. The resulting amalgam of globally negotiated tropes, or “Occult East Asia,” has co-shaped the imagery and appreciation of East Asia in a range of discourses that extend far beyond alternative religious circles.

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Lukas K. Pokorny is professor and chair of religious studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. Large parts of his current research focus on East Asian religions, millenarianism, new religious movements, esotericism, and religions in Austria.
Franz Winter is professor and chair of religious studies at the University of Graz, Austria. His research interests cover the history of religious and cultural contacts between Asia and Europe, Asian religious history, as well as religion and the media.
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introducing Occult East Asia
 Lukas K. Pokorny and Franz Winter

1 Esotericism between Europe and East Asia: How the “Esoteric Distinction” Became a Structure in Cross-Cultural Interpretation
 Julian Strube
2 Introducing “the Heavenly Empire of China” (le Céleste Empire de la Chine) China versus India in the Quest for an Ancient Model Society in Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre

 Franz Winter

3 The Ascended Confucius: Images of the Chinese Master in the Euro-American Esoteric Discourse
 Lukas K. Pokorny

4 An Alternative View on Chinese Cultural and Religious History: Esoteric Readings of the Mythical Figure of Fuxi
 Franz Winter

5 “The Way, the Truth, and the Light”: Franz Hartmann’s Daodejing

 Lukas K. Pokorny
6 Albert de Pouvourville’s Occultisme Colonial
 Davide Marino

7 China in the Anthroposophical Imaginary
 Olav Hammer and Karen Swartz-Hammer

8 The Path to Gnosis: A Microhistory
 Davide Marino

9 “If the Kingdom be Ruled According to the Tao”: Politics as “Eastern Wisdom” in Aleister Crowley’s Reception of the Daodejing
 Johan Nilsson

10 The Tao of Julius Evola
 Davide Marino

Index
University libraries, specialists (scholars and students), practitioners; religious studies, East Asian studies, reception studies, cultural studies, study of esotericism.
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