{"id":12660,"date":"2022-01-25T10:28:36","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T17:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12660"},"modified":"2022-01-25T10:28:36","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T17:28:36","slug":"egil-asprem-and-giovanna-parmigiani-on-esotericism-studies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12660","title":{"rendered":"Egil Asprem and Giovanna Parmigiani on Esotericism Studies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/goS-1OrzOrA?start=170\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Here is a webinar on \u201cThe Truth Shall Set Whom Free? A Conversation on Esoteric Knowledge, Alternative Spirituality, and Conspiracy Theories,&#8221; with Egil Asprem and Giovanna Parmigiani.<\/p>\n<p>If, like me, you would sometimes rather read than listen,<a href=\"https:\/\/cswr.hds.harvard.edu\/news\/knowledge-spirituality-conspiracy\/2021\/12\/8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> there is a transcript.<\/a> For instance, here are some Egil&#8217;s opening remarks:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>EGIL ASPREM: Yeah, sure. We can try. I mean it&#8217;s the million dollar question, what is this esotericism, actually. Because esotericism is a lot of different things. But one thing that it is a category, an umbrella term, more or less, that scholars use to talk about various, you could say, alternative religious, spiritual, philosophical currents. Pretty much the things that, I think, you referred to in your introduction of the series actually [? write ?] things that occur that are hard to classify in terms of the way that we look at religion and science today.<\/p>\n<p>So they seem to clash with our understandings of institutionalized Christianity, for example, and science, natural science. So falling between these tiers. So in that sense, of course, they have a lot to do with knowledge, in the sense that there is often a focus on special ways of attaining knowledge, that&#8217;s central in it. Some people talk about the dynamic of the hidden and the revealed as being central to it, which can also go back to the origins of the term, actually.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.su.se\/english\/profiles\/easpr-1.285371\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Egil Asprem is a professor of history of religion<\/a> at Stockholm University. while<a href=\"https:\/\/hds.harvard.edu\/people\/giovanna-parmigiani\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Giovana Parmigiani is a lecturer on religion and culltural anthropology<\/a> at the Harvard Divinity School.<\/p>\n<p>Both of the speakers have published in<em> The Pomegranate. <\/em>Asprem&#8217;s articles include &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/journal.equinoxpub.com\/POM\/article\/view\/2883\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Heathens Up North: Politics, Polemics, and Contemporary Norse Paganism in Norway<\/a>&#8221; 10, no. 1 (2008) 41\u201369, and several others. Parmigiani&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/journal.equinoxpub.com\/POM\/article\/view\/14139\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Spiritual Pizzica: A Southern Italian Perspective on Contemporary Paganism<\/a>&#8221; 21, no. 1 (2019):53\u201375, is turning into a book now in final editing, <em>The Spider Dance: Tradition, Time, and Healing in Southern Italy, <\/em>which Equinox will be publishing later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a webinar on \u201cThe Truth Shall Set Whom Free? A Conversation on Esoteric Knowledge, Alternative Spirituality, and Conspiracy Theories,&#8221; with Egil Asprem and Giovanna Parmigiani. If, like me, you would sometimes rather read than listen, there is a transcript. For instance, here are some Egil&#8217;s opening remarks: EGIL ASPREM: Yeah, sure. We can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,89,4],"class_list":["post-12660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-esotericism","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3ic","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6090,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6090","url_meta":{"origin":12660,"position":0},"title":"Conferences of Interest to Scholars of Paganism and Esotericism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6\u00a0 The 6th Israeli Conference for the Study of Contemporary Religion and Spirituality (PDF) includes some Pagan-friendly themes. \u00b6 The Association for the Study of Esotericism will meet in June at Colgate University in upstate New York.\u00a0 Egil Asprem has more to say about that one. \u00b6 The Conference on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2948,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2948","url_meta":{"origin":12660,"position":1},"title":"On the Norwegian &#8216;Esoterrorist&#8217;","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Egil Asprem, a Norwegian scholar of esotericism and contemporary Paganism (he has published in The Pomegranate on Norse Paganism and Kabbalah) has a blog post up: \"Counterjidhadist Templar Terrorism,\" on Anders Behring Breivik's use of Western esoteric language and symbols. Worth reading. It is as if an ideological critique of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"esotericism\"","block_context":{"text":"esotericism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=esotericism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11953,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11953","url_meta":{"origin":12660,"position":2},"title":"New Collection on Western Esotericism, Downloadable","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Quick, while it's free, you can download New Approaches to the Study of Esotericism, edited by Egil Asprem (he has published in The Pomegranate) and Julian Strube. The blurb: This volume offers new approaches to some of the biggest persistent challenges in the study of esotericism and beyond. Commonly understood\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"esotericism\"","block_context":{"text":"esotericism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=esotericism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/coverimage-199x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6099,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6099","url_meta":{"origin":12660,"position":3},"title":"Doggerland, a Professor of Esotericism, and the Passing of a Priestess of Isis","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 15, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 That\u00a0 Doggerland existed is not news (do you expect breaking archeology news in the Daily Mail?) but here are some cool images of this lost land. I am still waiting for someone to create an authentic Pagan tradition based there. \u00b6 Ethan Doyle White interviews a Norwegian scholar of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4416,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4416","url_meta":{"origin":12660,"position":4},"title":"Currents in Esoteric Studies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The current newsletter of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism is available for download. In it, some of the members discuss their current doctoral work. It is always interesting to see how new scholars are formulating just exactly what \"esoteric studies\" covers. Like Pagan studies \u2014 there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8023,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8023","url_meta":{"origin":12660,"position":5},"title":"Being an &#8220;Oxbridge Scholar&#8221;","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday's mail brought my contributor's copy of The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, to which I contributed an article on contemporary Paganism. There ought to be a long German compound word for \"fear of looking at something you wrote several years ago.\" The back cover of this hefty\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0521509831","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12660"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12669,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12660\/revisions\/12669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}