Eastern esotericism
Eastern esotericism is a term used by some scholars that loosely encompasses religious beliefs and practices of the Eastern world said to be "esoteric", secret, or occult. Its demarcation as a field, however, is difficult, as it varies depending on the boundaries of geographical and cultural notions of Western and Eastern and the definition of esotericism, with some scholars arguing it cannot be a concept beyond Western esotericism, while others propose a globalizing perspective. Still, it has been employed by scholars who recognize the category, used to denote comparable secret studies and practices, mainly in traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, and also in other systems, ethnic religions, and syncretisms.
Concept demarcation
Marco Pasi points out that the Western concept of esotericism emerged not in an academic context, but due to religionism in the 19th century, when the controversial distinction between Eastern and Western esotericism was first made. Initially, this dichotomy emerged in the 1880s: according to Julian Strube, French occultists accepted the authenticity of what they called "l'ésotérisme occidental" while rejecting the "false Eastern esotericism" of the Theosophical Society. There was also in 1890 a conflict within the Theosophical Society itself between William Quan Judge, who advocated for Western occultism, and Annie Besant, who advocated for the Eastern variant. According to Pasi: "It is therefore primarily as a reaction to an idea of "Eastern esotericism" that the idea of "Western esotericism" could develop." However, according to Strube, this is not enough to define these signifiers, as a complex network of exchanges occurred between various Eastern and Western cultures, and borders changed historically, politically, and ideologically. Therefore he defends the conceptualization of global esotericism. Different understandings of esotericism were produced globally, mainly through exchanges throughout the 19th century. Thus, scholars of religion often use the term "esoteric" to categorize practices that reserve "certain kinds of salvific knowledge for a selected elite of initiated disciples," according to Wouter Hanegraaff's description.Depending on the definitions, most Western esotericism could be considered Eastern. Western esotericism has been deeply influenced by non-Western traditions, and vice versa, especially in contemporary times. This categorization into two hemispheres was of more internal importance to the rhetoric of esoteric movements than to academic discourse.
For example, in Neoplatonism, and then again from the Renaissance on, an exoticism was associated with the origin of the major teachings, as of the origin of Platonic philosophy in Ancient Egypt or of ancient knowledge to the "Chaldaic mysteries," the mystical and occult representing "Eastern wisdom". Thus, Iamblichus, for example, referred to the Chaldean Oracles as transmitting "ancient Assyrian doctrines," and Plethon attributed their origin to Zoroaster. Such a concept in the Western imagination has been called "Platonic Orientalism" by scholars.
The perspective can also vary according to the occultists' agenda, one example being Italian neo-pagan esoteric movements in the 20th century that, inspired by the "traditionalist Roman school", considered Christianity a "degeneration from the East" that would have nothing in common with the Western esoteric tradition, which they considered paganism. The esoteric "rhetoric of a hidden truth" also hinged on the exotic, forming in the imagination a "mystical East," and when Egypt ceased to be attractive in its exoticism, the pole of the "mystical East" shifted to India and beyond, as the "true abode of ancient wisdom."
Academically, it has come to be considered in some more recent studies of esotericism, such as those of Gordan Djurdjevic and Henrik Bogdan, that there are close equivalents of Western esotericism in Asian cultures, suggesting an Indian, Chinese, or Far Eastern "esotericism" in general. A large part of esotericism scholars argues that it is preferable to analyze it in a transcultural and globalized way, according to each nationality or cultural region, focusing on the interactions of the concept in a more specific local or cross-cultural way beyond "Western" and "Eastern", or also relatively and openly. With this, the differences of each system are taken into account, despite some similarities in matters of the occult and the possibility of a secrecy system, as in secret knowledge, elitism, theories about spirit and matter, a supposed universal knowledge, and hierarchical rites of passage.
Henrik Bodgan and Gordan Djurdjevic consider "Eastern esotericism" to be present alongside Western elements of Aleister Crowley's magick system, and Djurdjevic recognizes the spread of the study of Eastern esotericism as an important legacy of Crowley. Jeffrey J. Kripal uses the term "Asian esotericism" in his study of Tantra, and Olga Saraogi advocates the possibility of an "asiacentric" analysis of esotericism. Georgiana Hedesan and Tim Hudbøg consider that "Western" and "Eastern" can be used as relative designations, but that they are limiting, with specific localities such as European, Indian, and African being preferred.
Others, like Helmut Zander, say that it is not because there is a well-defined technical concept of "Western esotericism" that there must exist an "Eastern esotericism", "Northern esotericism", or "Southern esotericism". There are proposals for a category open to "global esotericism" or "open esotericism," considering that rigid definitions of esotericism do not apply to all cultures and at all times. Thus, Zander writes, for example, as Jan Assmann theorizes, that it is part of the history of Western religion since antiquity; a tension that is reflected in the semantics of public versus private, open versus secret; but proposes that defining "secret" as a possibility rather than a requirement may allow consideration of esotericism in other non-Western traditions. It is not because a system originates in a Western context and is assimilated by colonized cultures that it remains Western, according to scholars such as Egil Asprem, Julian Strube, Keith Cantú, and Liana Saif, who argue for the autonomy of the local agency in creating innovations on the material.
Antoine Faivre and Wouter Hanegraaff defined esotericism as a specifically Western phenomenon, intending to overcome the religionist paradigm of an "esoteric core" common to all religions or a perennial universalist truth. The term "Western" served to delimit esotericism not as a transhistorical essence of all religion, but highlighting it as a set particular to a historical current. Thus, in this sense, Asprem indicates that the term is as much opposed to "universal esotericism" as to geographically localized esotericisms: "The term is opposed not so much to "Eastern" esotericism as to universal esotericism." Hanegraaff writes that the creation of a category of "Oriental esotericism" would have to be different from Faivre's inaugural definition: "It follows that if one were to conceive of an "Oriental esotericism", that would necessarily be something else." Karl Baier writes that the current comparative study of religions has more refined techniques and does not necessarily adopt a religionist agenda and that then the use of the comparative category "esotericism" is not precluded. According to Baier, the Faivre/Hanegraaff paradigm excludes any non-European agency, as if non-Western cultures could not actively contribute to or develop esotericism: "Yet research on modern yoga and in other fields of cross-cultural interactions between Near and Middle Eastern, South Asian and East Asian cultures, as well as African cultures and European or American esoteric currents, reveal globally entangled developments." Julian Strube also believes that esotericism was formed in a globally interwoven way and that Hanegraaff's current conceptual perspective repeats religionism and excludes non-Western developmental contexts.
According to Hanegraaff, Carl Jung was a major contributor in spreading the cross-cultural study of esotericism in a more global perspective, analyzing the Western occult tradition and seeking parallels with Eastern systems. He perceived two mentalities, a more rational conscious one and an unconscious one, and claimed that in studying thoughts of Western and Eastern cultures he found the same shared substratum of the collective unconscious, which could be studied historically, but which, according to Hanegraaff, corresponds to the reservoir of traditionally "rejected knowledge."
According to Marco Pasi, "if esotericism is not a universal phenomenon, but is specifically rooted in and limited to Western culture, then it should not be necessary to label it as 'Western'. The moment it is labeled as 'Western', it also becomes possible to assume that there are other 'non-Western' forms of esotericism." There is criticism, however, of the misapplication of esotericism to other contexts, such as that it has been used in religionist assumptions and has overflowed into other generalizing Western categories about non-Western cultures, such as shamanism. For instance, studies such as Marcel Griaule's have been criticized for inducing the creation of mystifications considered "esoteric" in a non-Western context: that of the African religion of the Dogon, in what he called "la parole claire" - the deepest level of secret knowledge. There are nuances to the analysis: the esoteric stems from notions of secrecy, although not every dimension of secrecy refers to the esoteric, such as shameful matters, and not every secret is initiatory. Apter suggests, in turn, that secret knowledge is not necessarily fixed in certain cultures, such as the esoteric of the Yoruba and Dogon, and is perhaps always fluid and changeable according to contexts. As for the East, European perspectives on religion have been influenced by trends in Orientalism, which in turn have influenced the attribution of esotericism into "esoteric Orientalism," often demeaning Eastern religious beliefs and practices as superstitious or irrational.
Esotericism, as a broad term in its ethical perspective, is a comparative category to worldviews or connected practices that are widespread in diverse cultures throughout history and around the world. However, in a second strict meaning, emically, it originates from strict historical currents in the interaction of different cultures, or as a Euro-American phenomenon, from Western esotericism.
However, it has become common to attribute Eastern esotericism to doctrines of Hinduism, as in the Tantras and Yoga; to branches of Buddhism found in India, China, Japan, Tibet, Korea, and Vietnam, calling it "esoteric Buddhism"; and to other non-sectarian practices, such as those of the Baul. One finds, for example, the analogical thinking system of external and internal correspondences in Indian rituals and theories comparable to statements of Western esoteric systems, as well as practices of magic, alchemy, and divination. Richard Kaczynski points out that while it is not his intention "to conflate Eastern Tantra and Western Magic, although I find it heuristically useful to refer to both as forms of esotericism," he employs the "second-order term that is applied by scholars to the subject under much more consistent scrutiny than it is used as a self-referential designation," with a reason for comparison just as Aleister Crowley did with regard to the similarities he saw between Eastern and Western traditions.
Cantú uses "Western" and "Eastern" for convenience, and writes that it is a notion that is implied from the division of "Western", yet vague: "My point is that postulating a Western esotericism also implies the postulation of an "Eastern esotericism," which even if not declared or not analyzed, creates a category that has no intrinsic existence apart from various disconnected movements, whether Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, or non-sectarian who could justifiably be said to be participating in a type of esotericism." He proposes a more neutral and global approach to esotericism, considering the local, native, and trans-local dimensions, in which a system becomes diffuse and varied in multiple places as it moves away from its point of origin. With the flow from trans-local to local, assimilation of Western concepts can occur from the internal agency of members of colonized communities. It cannot, therefore, be said that the system loses its authenticity, even though there has been an influence in a return pollination movement from Europe to Asia, with the appropriation of new esoteric categories, as in Yoga. Thus, it indicates the existence of two dimensions: "translocal esotericism" and "local esotericism," from which the affirmation of authenticity and inauthenticity is locally constructed.
In any case, manifestations of esotericism are the result of a dynamic bricolage of ideas, coming from diverse places, sources, and cultures, but also among the practice's own discursive communities. This makes categorizations inconsistent and boundaries shift on the part of the very agents who analyze the phenomenon. Examples that bring difficulty are the use of the occult in modern Japan, in new religious movements such as the Oomoto, or the doctrine of Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran - both situations being asserted to be emic esoteric innovations avowedly opposed to Western thought; or else the emergence of new emic demarcations of esotericism by Eastern scholars, as by Masaharu Anesaki.
Against the historicist paradigm of considering esotericism as a discursive strategy exclusive to the epistemology of the West, Egil Asprem defends in a typological approach the usefulness of comparing non-Western esotericisms to verify if esotericism is a transcultural category that may have emerged independently in several places:
Looking beyond the particular to see how similar "thought forms," secret organizations, or claims to higher knowledge operate in contexts beyond the West, may even help uncover selection pressures and environmental factors that can help explain the emergence of esotericism in the "West" and formulate more precise and theoretically refined definitions. What can the cognitive science of religion tell us about the generation and transmission of "thought forms" or "cognitive styles" considered unique to Western esotericism? Is there a dynamic of "convergent cultural evolution" that sheds light on the formation of "esoteric-type" groups, movements, discourses, experiences, or idea structures?