This article analyzes the tradition of using the category of "gnosis" in studies of Western esotericism. The origins of the understanding of "gnosis" as a special form of spiritual experience is related to non-traditional religiosity connected with the works of the members of the Eranos circle (H-C. Puech, G. Quispel, H. Corbin). Because of Corbin, the category of "gnosis" appeared in A. Faivre's concept of Western esotericism as a form of thought. At the same time, among American researchers gnosis became a central category in the description of Western esotericism. A. Versluis defines gnosis as experience of spiritual initiation into some higher reality, which lies in the foundations of the so-called "Western esoteric tradition". G. A. Magee in his synthetic approach to the study of esotericism brings the esotericism and mysticism to a common basis, which is gnosis, in turn, defined as the "direct perception of the absolute truth". In his latest works W. Hanegraaff, one of the leading scholars in the field, offers the category of "gnosis" as a tool for a "Copernican revolution" in the study of esotericism.
Keywords: religious studies, Western esotericism, gnosis, mysticism, Eranos, A. Faivre, W. Hanegraaff.
TWENTY years ago, Michael Allen Williams published Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling the Dubious Category.
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He expressed a number of serious doubts about the heuristic nature of "Gnosticism" as a category, suggesting that it should be abandoned in religious studies. 1 Later, Williams ' opinion was joined by other authors who shared and expanded his thesis.2 It is interesting that, despite the widespread criticism of the term "Gnosticism", in recent years there has been considerable interest in the use of the synonymous category "gnosis"in the field of Western esotericism research3. This interest is so broad that it has brought together ideologically and methodologically diverse groups of researchers. In this article, we would like to reconstruct the history of the use of the category "gnosis" in the study of Western esotericism4 abroad 5.
1. Williams, M.A. (1996) "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
2. See, for example, King, K. L. (2003) What is Gnosticism? Cambridge: Harvard University Press; Aland, B. (2009) Was ist Gnosis? Studien zumfruhen Christentum, zu Marcion und zur kaiserzeitlichen Philosophie. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck.
3. Synonymous use of these concepts is common in the research literature, see, for example, Kurt, R. (1977) Die Gnosis: Wesen und Geschichte einer spdtantiken Religion. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang.
4. It is worth noting that the category "gnosis" as applied to Western esotericism had two stories: the first - "positive", where gnosis was considered as an experimental dimension of esotericism, the second -" negative", in which it was associated with irrationalism and right-wing political movements, in our study we will not consider this second meaning, since it is marginal to the current state of research. For more on its history, see Hakl, H. T. (2013) Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Brisol: Equinox.
5. Let us explain that in Russia, since the 1990s, there has been a separate field of consideration of gnosis in the context of studies of Western esotericism. Its origins are the annual conferences "Russia and Gnosis", which began in 1993 and continue to this day, and its development is the conferences of the Association of Esotericism and Mysticism Researchers (AIEM, since 2007). In this article, we do not plan to refer to the Russian experience primarily for two reasons: the legacy of these conferences is quite extensive and deserves separate consideration; in many respects, Russian discussions on the topic are derived from foreign discussions and cannot be considered out of their context. In 1993, there was Antoine Fevre, whose concept accordingly became the starting point of these discussions (See Fevre A. 500 years of esotericism: A new area of interdisciplinary research within the Academy / / 500 years of Gnosticism in Russia. Moscow: VGBIL, 1994. p. 7_13). Vadim Zhdanov's report made at the fourth AIEM conference in Dnepropetrovsk also played a significant role in introducing Western issues into the Russian context (see Zhdanov V. V.). Secret or explicit? Gnosis and esotericism: the problem of definitions / / Mystiko-esoteric movements in theory and practice. Collection of materials Chet-
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"Gnostics of all countries-unite"
In order to understand the history and place of the concept of "gnosis" in modern research, it is necessary to return to its origins, originating in the Eranos circle conferences - the starting point in the study of Western esotericism6. Recall that the Eranos circle was a unique community of scientists united by their interests in the study of non-traditional and exotic religiosity for the West, who gathered every summer on the shore of Lago Maggiore in Italy at the villa of the organizer of the meetings of the patron Olga Frebe-Koptein from 1932 to 1982.
The first scholar to introduce the category of gnosis into academic studies of Western esotericism through the circle of Eranos was the French religious scholar Henri Charles Puech, who first spoke at Eranos in 1936. For Pueche, gnosis was not just a theoretical system of the first centuries of Christianity; he saw it as a special type of spiritual practice that gives salvation. "What is gnosis if not awareness," Puesch wrote, " ... but awareness not of what is entirely dedicated to the search for salvation, but rather of what brings salvation... or, better yet, it is salvation, since it reveals it to man... the essence and reveals the knowledge of God and all things. " 7 In this case, the juxtaposition of knowledge dedicated to the search for salvation, knowledge that brings salvation, implies a dichotomy of external knowledge about something (for example, the study of dogmatic teachings) and knowledge by experience, familiarization with the mysterious life of religion, in other words, "gnosis". This practice was taken beyond the specific era, in fact describing a special type of spirituality that can be found at all times. It is this understanding of the term that began to be cultivated within the framework of Eranos. Another participant of the seminars, a friend and colleague of Puech's, Gilles Quispel, expressed it most fully in his work. Kispel turned gnosis into a " mythical projection
the latest AIEM conference. Saint Petersburg: Publishing House of the Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy, 2011, pp. 5-25).
6. For the place of Eranos in the history of esoteric studies, see Nosachev P. Otrechennoe znanie [Renounced knowledge]. The study of marginal religiosity in the XX and early XXI centuries. Moscow: PSTGU Publ., 2015, pp. 25-58.
7. Cited by Hakl, H. T. Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, pp. 105 - 106.
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the experience of self-knowledge (Selbsterfahrung)"8, an experience that underlies a series of alternative spiritual teachings that stretched from Hermeticism through the Cathars and medieval mystics to Goethe, Blake, and Jung. This idea of gnosis has found a wide response among the leading scientists of the circle, such as Jung 9, Scholem, and Korben. The latter even introduced a fashion among the club members to call themselves "Gnostics" 10. For Korben, gnosis was an actual experience of the spiritual dimension of the world, accessible only to a select few. Here is how he expressed this idea in one of his later articles::
Finally, it should be obvious to everyone why we associate the concept of gnosis with the fiery eyes. The view of gnosis is visionary, not theoretical; it is associated with the vision of prophets, heralds of the Invisible. To open the "fiery eyes" is to overcome all false and empty oppositions between belief and knowledge, between thinking and being, between knowledge and love, between the God of prophets and the God of philosophers.11
If we remove from this statement the prophetic pathos peculiar to Korben, it becomes clear that the participants of the Era-nos saw in gnosis a supra-historical category of spiritual experience of a special type, and it was this experience, in their opinion, that served as the condition for the emergence of the teachings of the entire spectrum of Western esotericism.
Thanks to this popularization, the category of gnosis passes into the works of esotericism researchers of the second half of the XX century. The role of an intermediary in this context was assumed by the same Henri
8. Quispel, G. (1951) Gnosis als Weltreligion, s. 17. Zurich: Origo. This central definition appears three times in the book, and is shown in italics in the original text. The term Selbsterfahrung directly refers to the Jungian category das Selbst, which denotes the highest fullness of the human being, in the Russian-language tradition translated as "Self".
9. In his work, Kispel himself consistently developed Jung's ideas, which led some researchers to conclude that gnosis in Kispel became nothing more than another name for the process of Jungian individuation. Подробнее см. Hanegraaff, W.J. (1998) "On the Construction of 'Esoteric Traditions'", in A. Faivre, W.J. Hanegraaff (eds) Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion, pp. 11 - 61. Leuven: Peeters.
10. Cm. Wasserstrom, S.M. (1999) Religion After Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos, p. 31. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
11. Cit. ex: Ibid.
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Corbin, who organized the department of "History of Christian Esotericism"at the Sorbonne in 1964. Later, in 1979, the post of head of the department was taken by Antoine Fevre, a friend and participant in Eranos ' late seminars. It was Fevre who first proposed the concept of understanding esotericism as a whole phenomenon, in which the category of gnosis played an important role.
Experience a spiritual transformation
Without setting out to analyze the entire theory of Fevre, which has already been considered more than once in the Russian literature, 12 we only recall that many years of experience in studying various esoteric teachings led him to the need to develop a single model that can describe all their diversity. This model was proposed by him in his work "The Key to Western Esotericism", in which six characteristics of the so-called"esoteric form of thought" were revealed.13 The French scientist attributed the principle of correspondence of some parts of the cosmos to others, the idea of living nature, the special role of imagination, and the experience of spiritual transformation or transmutation to its four obligatory features. It is the latter characteristic, which is responsible for the practical dimension of Western esotericism, that February associated with gnosis. "Gnosis" is defined by him as a special form of spiritual and intellectual activity that gives knowledge of a non-rational nature. In connection with esotericism, gnosis has two specific characteristics: on the one hand, it has a soteriological function, and on the other, it is something more than religious faith, since the knowledgeable (Gnostic) does not need faith anymore. From a meaningful point of view, Fevre sees gnosis as the practice of "interiorization"14 - entering into oneself and finding there the saving knowledge-experience that connects man and God. This practice is possible both for an individual and independently on the Internet.-
12. See, for example: Khalturin Yu. Esotericism and the worldview of Russian Freemasonry of the XVIII-XIX centuries: an attempt to define // State, religion, and Church in Russia and abroad. 2013. N 31 (4). pp. 87-112. The article not only analyzes the concept, but also provides a good illustration of it on the material of Russian Freemasonry.
13. Faivre, А. (1994) Access to Western Esotericism, p. 4. NY: State University of New York Press.
14. Ibid., p. 20.
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both for the student who receives knowledge-experience from books, and for the student under the guidance of a mentor. Formally, this practice is expressed in the cultivation of the"active imagination "15, which connects the adept with the" imaginary world", which is actually another reality accessible to the active imagination as an organ created for its cognition. In many ways, gnosis is considered here as a phenomenon similar to mysticism. However, "while the Gnostic seeks primarily initiatory and saving knowledge, the mystic does not ... It seeks, first of all, to connect with its God..."16. Theosophy is a special type of gnosis, which is not so much focused on the salvation of man, but rather provides knowledge about the hidden principles of the existence of the world and the nature of God, His relationship to humanity, etc. In other words, theosophy can be compared to theology as a system of knowledge, with the important difference that it is based on gnosis. "Theosophists are the only authors inspired by sacred books, not theologians... those who have the task of explaining theosophy. " 17 Thus, in a narrow sense, theosophy is the discovery of the truths of theology, and in a broad sense, it tells about the foundations of the whole world. On the other hand, theosophists are engaged in a kind of hermeneutics, but it is based on the principle of the same "active imagination". In theosophy, in contrast to mysticism, symbols play a significant role, because through them the fullness of being is revealed.
Thus, gnosis according to February forms the experimental core of Western esotericism. This view suggests an essentialist approach to the interpretation of religious phenomena, which later drew criticism from many researchers of Western esotericism in the 90s and 2000s. The theory of unshakable characteristics of the Genre was generally rejected by most of the scientific community, which switched to post-structuralist approaches that correspond to modern trends in the humanities and social sciences. In this case, only the category of gnosis, in contrast to all the main characteristics of esotericism.,
15. Ibid., p. 21. Here and further, imagination must be understood not in the sense of fantasy, but in the sense of the sphere connecting man with the higher other world.
16. Ibid., p. 23.
17. Ibid., p. 27.
18. For more information on the theory of esotericism as a form of thought and on the four basic characteristics that define this form, one of which was "gnosis", see: Faivre, A. Access to Western Esotericism, pp. 10-15.
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It was able to continue its existence as a heuristically significant one, gaining the greatest popularity among American researchers.
Gnosis and specifics of the "Esoteric tradition": an American approach
It is worth noting that the American tradition of studying Western esotericism has a close connection with the tradition of the Eranos circle, so it is not so surprising that the understanding of gnosis as an experimental dimension of esotericism is inherent in a number of leading American scientists. The most significant example is the work of Arthur Versluis.
Despite the variety of strategies for interpreting the concept of "esotericism", Versluis offers a simple scheme that raises the term to its original meaning. The entire "Western esoteric tradition"19, according to Versluis, has two basic components: gnosis or gnostic insight, that is, knowledge of hidden or invisible worlds; and esotericism, meaning that this hidden knowledge is either prescribed for a relatively small group of people, or limited to understanding due to its complexity and subtlety 20.
Gnosis is considered here as an experience of spiritual communion with another higher reality. Knowledge is thus understood as the experiential experience of what is being known. Experience gives knowledge, and knowledge is experience. Versluis emphasizes in many of his works that it is very difficult for a modern person, a pupil of a technocratic rationalistic culture, to even come close to understanding the meaning of gnosis 21, which is why scientists are not inclined to take it into account. This statement is in line with the ideas of Korben and the entire Eranos circle. Gnosis, according to Versluis, is the essential core of the "esoteric tradition"; everything else (Kabbalah, alchemy, theosophy, etc.) is only a form of spiritual development.-
19. Versluis, A. (2004) Restoring Paradise: Western Esotericism, Literature, and Consciousness, p. 12. NY: New York University press.
20. См. Versluis, A. (2007) Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism, p. 2. Lanham: Rowman Littlefield.
21. The juxtaposition of modern rationalism and the Gnostic view of the world is a favorite technique of Versluis, see for example: Versluis, A. Restoring Paradise: Western Esotericism, Literature, and Consciousness, p. 2.
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we are manifestations of this core. Consequently, Versluis not only identifies basic features as a Genre, but also asserts their absoluteness for the entire "Western esoteric tradition"postulated by him22.
According to Versluis, gnosis itself is heterogeneous, it distinguishes two types: cosmological and metaphysical. The metaphysical approach is defined as "penetration into the Divine"23 and in turn is also divided into two paths: visionary (corresponding to the via positiva of Dionysius the Areopagite) and connecting (corresponding to the via negativa). "...the visionary approach goes through images, ... the connecting approach, on the contrary, avoids all images"24. Consequently, visionary gnosis generates a variety of poetic and artistic representations of the inner experience of the visionary, the source of which is the world of imagination. These representations convey the unique knowledge of the Divine that the visionary receives in his gnosis. This type of gnosis prevailed in cultures that left a lot of visual and mythological information (according to Versluis, Greco-Roman and Egyptian)25. The gnosis of union, also called "mystical marriage," 26 leads to a direct fusion of the visionary and the object of his spiritual efforts, a fusion in which the boundaries between object and subject are blurred.
Cosmological gnosis, by its very position, is intended to carry certain knowledge about the foundations of the universe and is defined by Versluis as "knowledge of the hidden laws of the cosmos"27. It reveals the deep foundations of the world and is reflected in such teachings as alchemy, astrology, chiro-and geomancy, and the like. American researcher under-
22. Note that Versluis himself criticized certain provisions of the Fevre methodology (see for example: Versluis A. What is esotericism? Gosudarstvo, religiya, tserkva v Rossii i za rubezhom [State, Religion, Church in Russia and Abroad]. 2013. N31(4). pp. 11-35), but, separating from the concept of the French scientist in words, he ideologically became its successor, bringing Fevre's essentialism to a new level.
23. Versluis, A. Restoring Paradise: Western Esotericism, Literature, and Consciousness, p. 27.
24. Ibid.
25. Versluis, A. Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism, p. 11.
26. Versluis, A. Restoring Paradise: Western Esotericism, Literature, and Consciousness, p.31.
27. Ibid., p. 27.
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He points out that the proposed division of gnosis is to a certain extent conditional and all its diversity is reduced to one principle of experiential knowledge of the Higher.
Metaphysical and cosmological gnosis have different forms of manifestation and functioning, therefore, according to Versluis, they can be compared with magic and mysticism. Magic is based on knowledge about the world and the experience of influencing the world, therefore, it can be considered as one of the forms of cosmological gnosis. While mysticism, on the contrary, is not a form of activity in the world, but a means of escape from the world, aimed at changing the mystic and leading to the knowledge of the Deity. Mysticism is thus nothing more than a synonym for metaphysical gnosis. This distinction helps to avoid the problems associated with the frequent intersection of magic and mysticism in the history of esotericism. Summing up the review, we note that Versluis defines all the basic concepts that are more or less related to the study of esotericism, correlating and raising them directly to the problem of gnosis.
Today, Versluis ' works most representatively express the tendency to emphasize the special role of gnosis among American researchers of Western esotericism. But Versluis is not alone, along with his work, it is worth dwelling on the works of Glenn Alexander Magee, a researcher of Western esotericism and a specialist in classical German philosophy, who also builds his reasoning around the category under consideration. Even in his early writings on the links between Hegel's philosophy and Western esotericism, Magee repeatedly emphasized the importance of gnosis as a special experience that reveals higher knowledge, 28 emphasizing that this experience is the basis of Western esotericism, which he initially referred to as the "Hermetic tradition".29 But until recently, Magee did not develop a unified system of interpretation of Western esotericism, until he was faced with the task of compiling and editing the Cambridge collection, devoted both to Western esotericism and mysticism, a kind of "summa moderna".-
28. Here, for example, is how Magee applies the category of gnosis to the Hegelian system: "Hegel believes that we rise above nature and become masters of our own destiny through the deep gnosis contained in his system." (Magee, G.A. (2001) Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, p. 14. Ithaca and London: Cornel] University Press).
29. Magee, G. (2001) Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, p. 12.
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research positions " 30 topics. This complex task required a theoretical framework in the form of introductory remarks, in which Magee's theory was finalized, which he called the "synthetic approach" 31, which claims to simultaneously combine two trends in the study of esotericism: the post-structuralism-inspired modern European experience 32 and the Eranos-based American one. First of all, he combines mysticism and esotericism, claiming that "the roots of esoteric currents almost always lead us to mystical traditions."33 Magee defines the essence of mysticism as gnosis, which, in turn, is nothing more than "direct perception of absolute truth."34 All mysticism, both Eastern and Western, is rooted in the "transcendent source of being,"35 which transcends categorical oppositions and transcends all forms of expression. It is a special type of knowledge of this source, unspeakable in words or concepts, that is communicated, according to Magee, by mystics in their writings. The main characteristics of such an experience are its fundamental difference from the entire human experience of cognition of the sensory world, the feeling of penetration into the essence of things, the intuition that everything is a unity. All these features emphasize the fundamental difference between gnosis and all types of modern knowledge, because "the greatest sin committed by esotericism... - a statement about access to "another reality", which in principle cannot be achieved using the empirical methods of modern science " 36.
30. Magee, G.A. (2016) "Editor's Introduction", in G.A. Magee (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, p. XV. NY: Cambridge University Press.
31. Ibid., p. XXIII.
32. On the post-structuralist approach to the study of esotericism, see Nosachev P. G. " I checked harmony with algebra...": religious studies, esotericism and discourse in the works of Koku von Stukrad. 2017. N 1. pp. 80-89.
33. Magee, G.A. "Editor's Introduction", p. XV.
34. Ibid., p. XVI.
35. Ibid., p. XVII.
36. Ibid., p. XXV. It is worth noting that the basis of Magee's theory of Western esotericism is the idea of the opposite of esotericism to the worldview of a modern person. According to him, the essence of the Enlightenment is not that it constructed esotericism (as it is claimed in the works of Hanegraaff and Stukrad), but that by contrast it highlighted the specifics of this type of worldview.
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Speaking about the connection of mysticism and esotericism with gnosis, Magee notes that "mysticism is gnosis; esotericism is techne, ... this techne is based on gnosis"37. At the same time, one should not simplify the picture by saying that esotericism has no theoretical dimension, on the contrary, it contains both practice and theory, but of a special kind. Any esoteric theory, according to Magee, is rooted in a deep, experienced belief in the unity of all things, and this belief is gnosis. All esoteric practices do not lead to a certain experience, in fact they are already based on a general foreknowledge (you could call it faith, but Magee assigns faith a place only in religion), which is gnosis. Thus, both the esoteric and mystical worldviews are necessary products of gnosis. In turn, gnosis always requires some kind of reflexive and practical expression, hence the variety of esoteric theories and systems of mystical actions.
If for American researchers the use of the category of gnosis is part of a certain tradition, then modern European researchers of esotericism, 38 who deliberately distanced themselves from the approach of the circle of Eranos, 39 did not refer to this category as heuristically significant until recently, when in the works of the leading European researcher of the topic, Wouter Hanegraaff, this category actually gained central importance.
Copernican revolution in the study of esotericism
Since the mid-1990s, a common trend in European studies of Western esotericism has been a post-structuralist critique of narratives and the archaeology of Western esotericism.-
37. Magee, G.A. "Editor's Introduction", p. XXX.
38. By modern European researchers, we mean a certain direction in the study of esotericism that developed after the 80s, dissociated itself from the heritage of Eranos and mainly focused on modern post-structuralist philosophical theories, the most complete exponents of which are now V. Hanegraaff and K. von Stuckrad. For more information, see Nosachev P. Renounced knowledge. The study of marginal religiosity in the XX and early XXI centuries. Moscow: PSTSU Publ., 2015.
39. There are many examples of such distancing; perhaps the most consistent scientist of this kind can be considered K. von Stuckrad, see, for example, Stuckrad, von K. (2010) Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities. Leiden: Brill.
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research projects designed to demonstrate the construction of most of the old scientific biases against Western esotericism. These biases can be roughly divided into two types: reductionist criticism, which considers esotericism a set of empty superstitions, and religionist empathy, which sees in all the variety of esoteric teachings a single core to which one can join. Wouter Hanegraaff made an uncompromising critique of both these positions in his 1996 program article, and his critique of religionism is particularly important here, 40 since it is precisely its features that are discernible in the works of Fevre and Versluis.41 According to Hanegraaff, " Religionism... it would be correct to criticize not for claiming more than it can prove, but for blurring the line between empirical and non-empirical knowledge by erroneously attributing scientific value to the latter... Empirical research cannot accept any axiomatic belief about the ultimate nature of reality. " 42 This attitude to essentialism in descriptions of esotericism was central to Hanegraaff for almost twenty years and was fully reflected in his seminal work Esotericism in Academia, where he demonstrated how the category of "Western esotericism" was first constructed within the framework of Christian apologetic discourse, and then inherited by the enlightenment discourse of Modern Times and from it modern scientific research. It would seem that in the constructed category it makes no sense to look for any basis and, therefore, the problem we are analyzing
40. The term "religionism", common among modern Western historians of religious studies, characterizes a broad trend among religious scholars of the first half of the XX century, who recognized the irreducibility of religious phenomena to the products of human activity, this trend asserts the reality of the center of religious life (the one that R. Otto called numinous), describes the possibility of some connection with this center and emphasizes the impossibility of to understand the essence of religion with the help of standardized tools of modern science. These tendencies were most fully expressed by the Eranos circle, but the same trend includes both classical phenomenology of religion and forms of integral traditionalism in religious studies.
41. In one of his studies, Hanegraaff directly characterizes Versluis 'research as" openly religionist "(Hanegraaff, W. J. (2011) " Kabbalah in Gnosis magazine (1985-1999)", in B. Huss (ed.) Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival, p. 258. Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press).
42. Hanegraaff, W.J. (1995) "Empirical Method in the Study of Esotericism", Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 7(2): 100.
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the theme should have nothing to do with Hanegraaff's work, but it doesn't.
Even in "Esotericism and the Academy" there are vague indications that the Amsterdam professor's work is taking on essentialist features, and the category of gnosis is becoming the key here.43 At the end of the book, Hanegraaff, considering the possibility of a systematic definition of esotericism in the history of his research, suggests that two characteristics can be distinguished in esotericism:: attraction to cosmotheism 44 and gnosis. Gnosis, according to Hanegraaf, is a logical consequence of the emanationist essence of cosmotheism and is understood by him as an experimental introduction to the highest level of being. Esoteric discourse is characterized not so much by "claiming higher or ideal knowledge, but rather by asserting that knowledge of absolute reality is possible and accessible to those who seek it." 45 Hanegraaff continued this line of reasoning, emphasizing the special importance of the category of "gnosis" for understanding Western esotericism, in his report delivered at the Path of Gnosis symposium in Moscow in April 2013. Later, such reasoning found its full disclosure in the book "Western Esotericism: A Guide for the confused"46, which claims to be a textbook and was reproduced in the chapter with the telling title "Gnosis", written by the scientist for the Cambridge guide to Western esotericism and mysticism, published in 201647.
Hanegraaff's contemporary reflections on this topic can be summarized as follows. In religious studies for many years now-
43. It is worth noting that this is not the first reference to "gnosis" in Hanegraaff's writings; while still studying at the university, he wrote a remarkable article (Hanegraaff, W. J. (1992) "A Dynamic Typological Approach to the Problem of 'Post-Gnostic' Gnosticism", Aries 16: 5 - 43), where he pointed out the importance of gnosis for esoteric studies, but in his subsequent works this topic was not continued until recently.
44. For more information about this concept, see Introduction to Assmann, J. (1997) Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. London: Harvard University Press.
45. Hanegraaff, W.J. (2012) Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture, p. 372. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
46. Hanegraaff, W.J. (2013) Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed, pp. 86 - 101. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
47. Hanegraaff, W.J. (2016) "Gnosis", in G.A. Magee (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, pp. 381 - 392. NY: Cambridge University Press.
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In recent years, there has been a tendency to over-rationalize, when religious teachings are reduced almost exclusively to the letter, while almost nothing is said about the experience of believers themselves, and it is experience that is the essence of religious life.48 In this regard, from a heuristic point of view, the category of gnosis has a great potential for studies of Western esotericism, since it is the only one that directly concerns its experimental dimension, but for its productive use it is necessary to break the tight connection of this term with historical Gnosticism. It is largely because of this connection that "gnosis" has not been widely recognized in religious studies, because since the heresiological controversy of early Christianity, there has been a tendency to stigmatize it, inherited by both the history of philosophy and religious studies. Only recently, in the research literature, has the category under consideration finally returned to its historically more correct meaning of " ecstatic ascent, ... direct perception, ... unity with the higher reality..."49. This understanding, according to Hanegraaff, is characteristic of the paradigmatic textCorpus Hermeticum and is inherent in all Western esotericism. In the Hermetic texts, the adept, when confronted with revelation, knows what he sees and hears, while at the same time he discovers that he belongs to the world of Light from which the revelation emanates.
To explain the meaning of gnosis in the history of thought, Hanegraaff builds a conditional scheme of three types of cognition. Knowledge of reality through reason is expressed in science and philosophy, knowledge is communicated through language, reproduced and confirmed in experiment. Faith, another type of knowledge, is also discursively communicated, but the belief in what is communicated depends entirely on the personal experience of each believer. The third type of cognition, gnosis, cannot be tested experimentally or even communicated discursively. At the same time, gnosis does not reject faith or reason, it only shows their limitations, claiming to bring the knower to the level of knowledge of truth lying above these categories. So bolshin-
48. Hanegraaff has repeatedly addressed this idea in his work, see Hanegraaff, W. J. (2003) "Dreams of theology", in Theology and Conversation: Towards a Relational Theology, pp. 709-733. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
49. Hanegraaff, W.J. "Gnosis", p. 391.
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most of the esoteric systems were easily combined with both scientific knowledge and religion, while differing from them. The rigid opposition between the three types of knowledge is the property of late modernity, when both science and religion began to deliberately isolate themselves from esotericism, and for esotericism, "gnosis, as a rule, began to be perceived as a" spiritual " alternative to misleading faith (considered as blind trust in authority and tradition) and reason (considered as conservative rationalism and tradition). reductionism)"50.
What is the essence of gnosis according to Hanegraaff? If we turn to historical sources describing this form, the first thing we encounter is its ineffability, any statement about it has the character of an inadequate analogy. Thus, "to really understand what is being said, you need to go through such an experience yourself."51. Judging by the texts of esotericists, they all talk about some special type of consciousness, different from the ordinary one, which among modern researchers can be called "ecstasy", "trance", etc., but these terms themselves do not clarify much, besides, they are heavily burdened by the cultural background of their origin and development. with the associated associative series, the term "gnosis" has certain advantages in this regard. According to Hanegraaff, the best way to describe this experience is through the concept of altered states of consciousness, which is "key to understanding the common Western esotericist claim to 'higher knowledge'. " 52
As can be seen, in his recent works Hanegraaff does not give an exhaustive definition of gnosis, he emphasizes its place in the study of esotericism and describes possible prospects for its study. It can even be said that the future development of research in this area is directly linked to the appeal to the study of esoteric experience (gnosis) through the prism of con-
50. Hanegraaff, W.J. Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed, p. 93.
51. Ibid., p. 94. It is interesting to compare these words of Hanegraaff with his characterization of integral traditionalism, given 20 years ago, noting the impasse of the theories of traditionalists as representatives of religionism, he wrote: "Any critique of Perennialist beliefs leads to a dead end of 'dead-end logic': 'if you understand, you agree; if you disagree, obviously you don't understand '"(Hanegraaff, W. "Empirical method in the study of esotericism", p. 122)
52. Hanegraaff, W. Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed, p. 99.
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concepts of altered states of consciousness. He concludes one of his program works on the topic with the following statement: "of course, the implementation of this approach necessarily implies a kind of Copernican revolution in the study of Gnostic, Hermetic and esoteric forms of religion, since this will contribute to changing the position of the gnosis from the status of a minor planet to considering it as the Sun of the religious cosmos. This may seem radical, but it is exactly what this paper suggests. " 53 It is worth explaining why Hanegraaff writes here about the radical nature of turning to the study of esoteric experience. The fact is that the general mood of all European studies of esotericism after the 80s was based on a broad historical analysis, a tendency to consider religious and esoteric teachings derived from geographical and cultural-historical realities, without considering the possibility that some experience of representatives of esoteric teachings could somehow independently determine the content of these teachings. For a long time, experience was also considered to be derived from external conditions. Hanegraaff was one of the main advocates of such a historical-critical approach, and here for the first time he proposes to reconsider the attitude to personal religious experience, introducing it as an important factor in the study of esotericism, thus esotericism ceases to be only a field of textual, historical-critical research and opens up to a whole range of sciences that work to varying degrees with the phenomenon of religious experience.
Such a radical, at first glance, reorientation is quite understandable. First, as we have shown above, Hanegraaff has tended from his earliest writings towards an essentialist understanding of experience in esotericism. It can be said that neither constructivist nor historicist methodologies in the study of esotericism gave him a sufficiently complete understanding of why so many people chose such forms of spiritual life for themselves. In terms of meaning, the essentialist category of gnosis as a special experience became for him a kind of deus ex machina, with the help of which the puzzle of reconstructing the esoteric form of religiosity is completed. Secondly, we should not forget that such an open appeal to essentialist understanding did not occur in purely aka-
53. Hanegraaff, W.J. "Gnosis", p. 392.
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in the academic work "Esotericism and the Academy", and in the introduction to the study of esotericism designed for the general public. It is worth noting that it is the essentialist form of presentation of material that is the most lucid and clear way to present religious systems, and it is most easily perceived by an untrained reader.54 However, this method can also be used in various ways; in Hanegraaff's latest work, it took the form of categorical statements, whereas, for example, in one of the latest works of his American colleague Geoffrey Kraipl, devoted to an introduction to comparative religious studies, similar essentialist categories (religious experience, the Holy, etc.) are always given with explanations about their disputability for the scientific community 55.
Thus, we can conclude that the example of the history of the category of "gnosis" shows a change of milestones in the study of Western esotericism, which consists in the transition from historical and critical studies and post-structuralist denial of the independence of religious phenomena to the problems of religious experience as central to the understanding of esoteric teachings. Now we can seriously talk about the renaissance of "gnosis" as a category of religious studies, and, as a result, about a return to the essentialist understanding of the entire complex of esotericism, an understanding from which, from the beginning of the 60s, first in the sociology of the occult, and then in the works of representatives of the European community of researchers, they tried in every possible way to get away. This process is very revealing and can be explained in different ways. As Hanegraaff's case demonstrates, pure constructivism, which goes back to post-structuralist theories, is good for analyzing intellectual history, but bad when it comes to the history of religion.56 But, as you know, there is nothing new under the sun, and the modern fascination with the category of "gnosis" also has its obvious parallels. It is not for nothing that we started this text with the mention of-
54. In order not to multiply examples of this type, we will refer only to the rich tradition of the phenomenology of religion developed and continued in American religious studies after the 60s, the most striking illustrations of this approach will be the works of Mircea Eliade, which are extremely popular.
55. См. Kripal, J. (2014) Comparing Religions. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
56. Perhaps this is how one can describe the difference between the general idea of "Esotericism in the Academy" and "Guidebook...", books written by Hanegraaff one after the other.
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information about Williams ' work. The fact is that the modern use of the category "gnosis" as a universal characteristic of all esotericism of all epochs and types is very similar to the story with the extended use of the historically synonymous category "Gnosticism", which, in the words of the same Williams, "became the mark of Proteus, which lost any clear meaning for the general reading public" 57, since at the same time "meant too much and probably too little." 58 In his research, Williams offers several important criteria by which we can determine the heuristic of a particular term-construct 59. Their essence can be summarized as follows: the goal of any construct is to highlight a dark issue, indicate the right direction for further research, and turn a complex phenomenon into a simple and accessible description. Does the gnosis category meet these requirements? In our opinion, no. The essence of this category is completely unclear, the inclusion of all the experience of all esoteric groups and teachings within its framework blurs its boundaries, and mixing it with the equally dubious categories of "mysticism" 60 and "altered states of consciousness"61 turns research with its help into a kind of Rorschach test, where the scientist must use the free association method to determine why a particular movement belongs to esotericism. Of course, we can say that any scientific categorization is a kind of game that does not give much from a heuristic point of view, and all attempts to deconstruct concepts fit into the well-known trend of " desubstan-
57. Williams, M.A. "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, p. 3
58. Ibid., p. 4.
59. There is no doubt that" gnosis " in this sense is a research construct, since in the history of esotericism, only a few adepts themselves have used this term.
60. The very history of the field of mysticism research demonstrates that a sharp transition to a new level of problem-setting and question-solving occurred only when the very category of "mysticism" was questioned by representatives of the constructivist paradigm. (Подробнее см.: Katz, S. (ed.) (1978) Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press; Gellman, J. (2014) "Mysticism", in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 03.03.2014 [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mysticism/, accessed on 07.07.2017].
61. For a discussion of the AS category and its various ways of understanding it, see the proceedings of the St. Petersburg conferences "Psychotechnics and Altered States of Consciousness" held in 2012-2016. For more information, see http://aiem-asem.org/
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socialization", which became common after the 60s of the XX century, and this will be quite fair. It is also fair to accuse Williams of insufficient argumentation of the epistemological role of construct terms in scientific research. But we should not ignore the fact that the concept of gnosis in esoteric studies hides a very specific essentialist attitude, the acceptance or rejection of which entails a complete revision of the entire system of research, as the case of Hanegraaff well illustrates. Perhaps it is the vagueness and uncertainty of "gnosis" as a category that makes it so convenient for the cryptoessential methodology. In addition, once introduced into the study, it can become a kind of Pandora's box filled with various arbitrary interpretations of certain personal experiences, the significance, content and heuristics of which simply cannot be justified, which can easily turn scientific research into mythopoeia.
I would like to conclude our text with a warning from another researcher of Gnosticism and esotericism, Yoann Petru Culian, who humorously described the whole range of problems that arise when researchers widely use scientific categorization. These problems, in our opinion, will inevitably arise for researchers of Western esotericism if they return to the essentialist description, using the category extensively."gnosis":
I once believed that Gnosticism was an easily definable phenomenon that belonged to the history of religions in late antiquity. Of course, I was willing to accept the idea of various continuations of ancient gnosis, and even the idea of the spontaneous emergence of worldviews in which individual elements of Gnosticism would reappear at different times. However, I soon realized that I had been very naive. Not only was gnosis gnostic, but Catholic authors and neo-Platonists were Gnostic, the Reformation was gnostic, communism was gnostic, Nazism was gnostic; liberalism, existentialism, and psychoanalysis were also gnostic, modern biology was gnostic, Blake, Yeats, Kafka, Rilke, Proust, Joyce, Musil, Hesse, and Thomas Mann they were Gnostics. Moreover, I have learned from very reputable gnosis interpreters that science is gnostic and superstition is gnostic; power, counterforce, and lack of power are Gnostic; right-wingers are Gnostic and Gnostic people are Gnostic.-
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the left; Hegel is a Gnostic and Marx is a Gnostic; Freud is a Gnostic and Jung is a Gnostic; all things and their opposites are equally gnostic.62
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