No:12 (2020)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://gupea-staging.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/80635

Western Esotericism and Literature

Browse

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Playing With Esotericism. Frank Heller’s Novel Andarna och Furustolpe (The Spirits and Furustolpe) and His Short Stories on Séances
    (LIR. journal, 2020) Hedman, Dag
    Frank Heller (pen name of Ph.D. Gunnar Serner, 1886–1947) published suspense fiction from 1913 to 1947, mostly adventure stories, but also some in the crime genre and some science fiction. He had a keen eye for the potential of esotericism in connection with this kind of story. His first and foremost endeavour into this field is the »from-rags-to-riches«-novel Andarna och Furustolpe (1920), written in Venice (the author was evading the Swedish police since 1912, due to several successful bank frauds involving forged signatures of wealthy patrons). In Andarna och Furustolpe the war-profiteer Wenzel Furustolpe learns how to manoeuvre successfully in business by the deceased skipper Teelemainen, who communicates with him through different devices. In his esoteric short stories, like »Hades’ renässans« (1930) and »Spökguldet« (1932), Heller typically exploits séances, which are invariably fakes, and during which the point is to steal jewels or other valuable objects in the darkness of the room, or to hide messages or objects.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    From Chorazin to Carcosa. Fiction-Based Esotericism in the Black Pilgrimage of Jack Parsons and Cameron
    (LIR. journal, 2020) Hedenborg White, Manon
    Rocketeer, poet, and polyamorous proto-feminist, Jack Parsons (1914-1952) is one of the earliest and most legendary followers of Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) and his religion Thelema in America. A precocious only child and avid sci-fi reader, Parsons made vital contributions to the American space programme, and was briefly regarded by Crowley as a potential successor. However, Parsons’ romantic side, keen imagination, and tendency to be seduced by literary fiction was a source of friction between the two men. Parsons drew freely on gothic horror as well as pulp and sci-fi literature in articulating his personal magical universe. In 1946, he undertook the ‘Babalon Working’: a series of magical operations aimed at manifesting the goddess Babalon on earth as a sort of Thelemic messiah. This paper will explore the importance of literature for Parsons’ magical worldview and experimentation, focusing on three key works: Crowley’s Moonchild, Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think, and M.R. James’ short story »Count Magnus«.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Gustav Meyrink’s The Golem. A Sensationalist Shlock Novel or an Esoteric Vision of the World?
    (LIR. journal, 2020) Wistrand, Sten
    Gustav Meyrink lived in a time when the interest in spiritism, theo sophy and occult phenomena was widespread. He joined about every esoteric society available, attended séances, ex pe rimented with diets and drugs, and practiced alchemy and yoga. But he also, in a way, was a sceptic. In some circles, he still has a reputation as a man with deep insights in the true nature of being and has even been seen as a man with prophetic gifts. Controversial in his lifetime, his reputation as an author is still disputable. Jorge Luis Borges praised his works, while Ernst Pawel, in his Kafka-biography, dismisses The Golem as »a shlock novel«. In The Golem Meyrink transforms the Prague legends of Rabbi Loew’s creature of clay into a book of esoteric wisdom putting into play Kabbalistic and alchemist thinking, tarot cards and metempsychosis. The novel also has been both referred to, and rejected, as a story of horror or Gothic fiction, and described as purely fantastic. I would like to discriminate between effect and function and maintain that Meyrink takes advantage of Gothic effects in order to convey his spiritual vision of the world. That aside, it is reasonable to argue that his foremost interest, as an author of fiction, was to tell us a good and interesting story. For that reason you might also question if his references to esoteric traditions are to be taken wholly seriously or rather are to be seen as motifs in the hands of a quite self-indulgent novelist.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Esoteric Encounters. The Queen of Sheba in Solomon’s Temple
    (LIR. journal, 2020) Önnerfors, Andreas
    How do literary motifs migrate and translate into esoteric imagination? What is their mutual interdependence? The case discussed in this article, an episode in the half-fictitious, half-documentary Voyage en Orient (1851) by French protosurrealist author Gérard de Nerval (1808–1855) provides us with an example where such an adaptation has taken place over the course of one and a half century. Furthermore, Nerval incorporates the Queen of Sheba (henceforward Balkis) into one of the foundational myths of freemasonry, which prompts another, albeit larger question of role of female characters in literary esoteric imagination. The ritual centerpiece of the third or master’s degree in freemasonry is crafted around the biblical account of the construction of Solomon’s temple with an apocryphal extension, the ‘Hiramic legend’, treating the murder of the temple architect Hiram. Whereas from the late 1720s and onwards the ritual narrative does not feature any female protagonists at all, Nerval introduces Balkis as a central and fundamentally plot-changing character. In this article, I will introduce Nerval’s version of the Hiramic legend, present a likely explanation how it migrated to the writings of anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) and discuss Balkis’ role as a ‘female principle’ introduced in the hyper-masculine ritual narrative of freemasonry. My reading of the literary sources is informed by both genealogical and comparative approaches by which I trace the elements of the Hiramic mythology from its eighteenth-century origins to their transformation at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. A necessary limitation of this project at this stage is to omit context in favor of content. Whereas the interplay between these two levels of understanding certainly would merit deeper analysis, I will in this piece only discuss the suggestion of French historian Hivert-Messeca: that Nerval’s adapted masonic mythology aimed at to create an inclusive and secularized spirituality for the age of modernity.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Editorial - Introduction
    (LIR. journal, 2020) Bogdan, Henrik