So I finished Versluis’ The Esoteric Origins of The American Renaissance. I’m a long way from synthesizing it and I find myself experiencing mixed reactions. It is an academic book. Its style of prose, its pursuit of detail and evidence, all mark its genre and of course this is not a bad thing but it does effect the way the subject comes across the page.  I mean my experience of magic as it is practiced, of alchemy and the secretly borne passionate intensity of alchemists has led me to associate these topics and practices with drama and the excitement of a piece of art newly born. And the book doesn’t carry this sense. Also, to be fair, it is a survey book; one that is necessary given the state of academic research into this topic, but surveys are by necessity books that cannot deeply grapple with the implications of a subject let alone practice the art of literature as the words are laid down – the literary art which must always take you deep somewhere.  And of course, this stuff is something I already had some familiarity with, so perhaps it is unfair of me to have expected more. In fact it is unfair, but still, I did.

The final chapter of the text has the same title of the book, and here there is some attempt to draw to the reader’s attention the implications of the history he has outlined. Essentially, he is showing that the basic belief structures of Western esotericism, “chiefly couched in terms of profound correspondences between humanity, nature, and the divine” came to be expressed in the cultural forms that arose in response to the pressures of industrialization.  He is clear to remark upon the practical emphasis of Western esoteric traditions and the later pick-and-choose attitude taken by the authors he chooses to represent the American Renaissance. Versluis is quite right when he says (talking about alchemy in this case) “it represents…a particular discipline that the individual seeks to understand and practice properly: the individual exists in relation to the particular tradition he practices.” This is how the practice was to those who came before the Renaissance. After this more traditional phase, as his middle chapters show very clearly, the authors felt free to disengage esoteric detail from the tradition out of which it originally came. As a consequence these authors created something new, yet based on the basic belief structures which gave rise to practices like magic, gnosticisim and alchemy.

The very last paragraph of the book mentions his Western Esotericism, Literature and Consciousness “which argues that the Western esoteric traditions, including alchemy, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, and theosophy, all emerge out of and reflect what we may call a gnosis of the written word.” Oh yes.  This is most definitely true.  This idea that the word is magic, that has obvious long-term links in Western magical traditions. I mean even god did that kind of magic. This idea mixed with the notion of the individual, the critical subject, and the role of the object with respect to the subject, these together go a long way to explain the basic mind orientation of the Western person. Versluis’ book is an important study, no doubt about that. Understanding ourselves better, our history, our conceptual origins, these things can only advance our facility with our future.

So what did I expect?  I’m not sure yet.  I’m still thinking about the book as a whole and specifically the claims he makes about Dickinson (and the implications of those claims.)  It’s very likely that I will buy the book (have a library copy right now) and I have already ordered his Western Esotericism, Literature and Consciousness. So clearly I find value in the data he has worked so hard to give us. I guess I just keep reading and hope that out of somewhere, the little gold nugget of understanding will precipitate out.