Esotericism, Mysticism and the Politics of Transcendence in Modern Asia

In this seminal edited collection, scholars from different fields critically examine histories of esotericism, mysticism and occultism in modern Asia, understood here as the period roughly stretching from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century, paving eventually the way for the so-called ‘New Age’.

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This invaluable anthology examines histories of esotericism, mysticism and occultism in modern Asia, understood here as the period roughly stretching from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century, and paving eventually the way for the so-called ‘New Age’. The idea of ‘histories’, in plural, has to do with the complexities of their lineages, the many pathways through which their affinities, encounters and entanglements flowed and/or developed during the period under review. The contributors hail from different disciplines –history, literature, religious studies and philosophy, for instance –and, in what accounts for a cutting edge of the book, provide truly multidisciplinary insights on the subject in one single volume. Their select case studies illuminate key aspects of contemporaneous socio-religious processes. They explicate how aspects of mysticism, esotericism and occultism were closely tied to wider socio-political and intellectual processes of the period that were at once transregional, even global, and frequently transcultural and/or cosmopolitan in character. Postgraduate students, research scholars and academics in general working in the fields of religious studies and/or Asian religions in modern times will find this collection to be of great interest.