Quest Magazine

The Esoteric Origins of The American Renaissance

By Arthur Versluis
New York; Oxford University Press, 2001. Hardback, vi + 234 pages.

Arthur Versluis considers Western esotericism the most important new field of religious and interdisciplinary scholarship. In this groundbreaking work, he is the first to study the presence of Western esotericism in North America and its influences on the major writers of the nineteenth-century American Renaissance.

The term "Western esotericism'' includes herbalism, astrology, folk magic, and the several forms of divination that seventeenth-and eighteenth-century European colonists brought with them to help discern their uncertain future in a new world. English and German settlers, especially, integrated practical esotericism into their daily lives. By the time of the nineteenth century, these esoteric currents were disappearing. The rise of the sciences, technology, and industrialization in the early nineteenth century presented a cosmology that separated and objectified, whereas the esoteric traditions worked with the deeper connections between "humanity, nature, and the divine."

The elimination of esotericism from American daily life, however, was not complete. Our of sight did not" mean our of mind. Indeed, the writers of the American Renaissance were responsible for "the transference of esoteric traditions from daily life into literary consciousness." In this volume, Versluis analyzes esoteric themes in the work of writers like Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Alcott, Emerson, Fuller, Whitman, and Dickinson-writers who limited their contact with esoterica to the available literature, but did not practice.

Versluis suggests several reasons why previous studies have almost completely ignored the influence of esotericism on these writers. First, academia assesses esotericism as superstition. Second, the study of esoteric traditions is transdisciplinary, cutting across many disciplines, with ramifications beyond any single one, making it difficult to find a home in academia. Third, critics claimed that nineteenth-century American literature belonged on a level with Shakespeare, though discounting the bard's own references to magic and esoterica. In the wilderness of unexamined primary sources, Versluis searches for specific esoteric connections between a given writer and the writer’s works. His analysis and scholarship are as fascinating as a treasure hunt.

Versluis closes with two interesting suggestions. First, that the work of these writers with esoterica influenced them to adopt an open tolerance for truth in every tradition. This led to the Transcendentalist thesis that a universal human religion is inherent in all the world religions. Second, their work probably prepared the way for the later emergence of semisecret lodges in American cities and the practice of astrology and alchemy from the last century until today.

-DAVID R. BISHOP

January/February 2003

Jung: A Journey of Transformation

By Vivianne Crowley
Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, Quest, 1999. Hardcover, 160 pages

Carl Gustav Jung emphasized a crucial psychotherapeutic process he called transformation. "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light," Jung insisted, "but by making the darkness conscious." His career penetrated the shadows of the unconscious mind and illuminated everyday experience. His work encourages genuine spirituality, increases an appreciation of the world's mythologies, and explains how metaphors and dreams provide healing. Crowley's book assists readers in comprehending Jung's principal concepts and techniques. The author, a licensed psychologist trained and practicing in the Jungian tradition, organizes Jung's theories systematically and employs colorful charts that simplify without distorting his central concepts. This book is especially suited as an introduction to Jung and his philosophy.

-DANIEL ROSS CHANDLER

January/February 2003

Alchemical Psychology: Old Recipes for Living in a New World

By Thom F. Cavalii
New York: Jeremy R. Tarcher/Putnam, 2002. Paperback, 365 pages.

Thom Cavalli's new book provides a very readable introduction for the nonspecialist to the Jungian approach to alchemy- sometimes called the Great Work. Here, alchemy is the quest for the transformation of the "lead" of our unconscious lives into the "gold" of greater consciousness and psychological integration. The book is written in an entertaining style and includes helpful chart's and pictures; with plenty of space, for notes. The attractive presentation is unfortunately marred by a number of small errors - for example, Albertus Magnus has become Albertus Magus, and Wittgenstein might be surprised to find himself listed as a physicist.

In a welcome move, Cavalli acknowledges that alchemy also has legitimate physical laboratory applications and higher spiritual aspects, but that explicitly psychological readings of the Work only made their appearance in the last hundred years. However, I was disappointed that he did not give more than a passing nod to nonpsychological approaches to alchemy, leaving his psychotherapeutic approach to stand alone, at least as far as this book is concerned.

As Cavalli himself states, the psyche is only one level of our being. One of the strengths of the alchemical tradition is its ability to describe and catalyze transformation on all levels-elemental, physical, psychological, and spiritual. Cavalli's readers might want to broaden their search by investigating laboratory alchemy (e.g., the courses written by Jean Dubois for the Philosophers of Nature), alchemical magic (e.g., David Goddard, The Tower of Alchemy; Gareth Knight, Experience of the Inner Worlds and The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend), and spiritual alchemy (e.g., the sacramental alchemy of Paul Blighton, The Philosophy of Sacramental Initiation and The Book of Alchemy).

Cavalli's practical exercises and clear language will insure that his book is a valuable help to seekers. Nonetheless, we know our soul only in living experience and in union with our body and our spirit, and the wise operator will not neglect these aspects of being in the alchemical Work. After all, "what is below is like that which is above, and what is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracle of the one thing."

--JOHN PLUMMER

March/April 2003

The Spirituality of Success: Getting Rich with Integrity

By Vincent M. Roazzi
Dallas: Brown Books, 2002. Paperback, xvi + 244 pages.

A tradition found in the West and elsewhere around the world values holy poverty. And that is a good tradition, but it is not the only approach to spirituality and economics. Saint Paul is often misquoted as having said, "Money is the root of all evil." What he actually wrote (I Timothy 6.10) is "The love of money is the root of all evil." And that's an important distinction. Things have no moral value in themselves-but only in how we relate to them.

Contemporary world culture is capitalist in orientation, and capitalism values capital, income, and business success. But those things need to be related to in ways that make them spirituality-friendly, and that means treating them as means to a morally good end, not as ends in themselves. One of the steps on the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path is "right means of livelihood," a step that all of us need to be mindful of, whatever economic activities we engage in.

This book by a member of the Theosophical Society focuses on spiritually appropriate means to achieve economic success, but the purpose of that success is not neglected. And that purpose must always arise from the recognition, in the words of one of the great teachers, that "it is 'Humanity' which is the great Orphan, ... and it" is the duty of every man [and woman] who is capable of an unselfish impulse to do something, however little, for its welfare." Or as Roazzi writes in his preface, "After all, your success will not be for you alone to enjoy, nor does anybody become successful by themselves." The true key to personal success is impersonal altruism.

-JOHN CROWE

March/April 2003