Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories

Francesco Piraino is Postdoctoral Scholar at Ca’ Foscari University, Italy, and the Director of the Centre of Comparative Studies of Spiritualties and Civilisations at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, Italy. Marco Pasi is Associate Professor in the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is a founding member of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE). Egil Asprem is Professor in the History of Religions, with a focus on esotericism, new religious movements, alternative spiritualities, and the cognitive science of religion, at Stockholm University, Sweden. He is editor-in-chief of Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism.

1. Introduction: Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories Part I: Reading History with New (Conspiracist) Lenses 2. The Bacchanalian Conspiracy: From the Paranoid Style to Conspirituality 3. Magic, Money, Ink, and Blood: Mediating the Social Body in the Case of Simon of Trent 4. Anti-Masonic Conspiracy Theories and Universal Religion: From the French Revolution to the New World Order 5. Conceptualising Secret Societies and Conspiracy Theories in Imperial Japan: From Countering Socialism to Rescuing Jewish Refugees Part II: Connecting New Phenomena with Old Trends 6. Esoteric Nationalism and Conspiracism in WWI 7. ‘Going to the Ends of the Earth to Unmask Conspiracy’: Radical Scepticism in the Modern Gnostic Narratives of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum 8. ‘Toxic Positivity’: From New Thought to Donald Trump 9. Conspiracy Theory, Altered States and Alternative Community: Conspiracy Beliefs in a Sample of Nordic Yoga-Practitioners 10. Conspiracy Theories in Africa: A Continuum of Narratives about Evil Agents 11. When Conspiracy Meets Faith: Making Sense of Tragic Events in Bucharest, Romania 12. Jesuit Fathers, Maronites, Muslim ‘Ulamā’ and Islamists: The Role of Religious Institutions and Organisations in the Spread of the Judeo-Masonic Conspiracy Myth in the Middle East 13. The Eurasia Network: Riding the Conspiracist Tiger in Contemporary Italy 14. Qvangelicalism: QAnon as a Hyper-Real Religion