Octagon – The Quest for Wholeness

„There once was a young man who left home in order to buy lots of books, and even as an old man he hadn‘t got any wiser and still dilligently kept buying them …“ … Volume two of the Octagon series includes outstanding – and in some measure ground-breaking – contributions from renowned English-speaking authors in the fields of esotericism and religious studies. Even though the authors are academically educated, this was not a prerequisite for participation. Nevertheless, one of the main concerns of this collection is intellectual diversity, as well as the courage to engage with potentially conflicting value judgements from other epochs, peoples and individuals. Numerous contributions therefore do not conform to what is commonly described as the mainstream. Some essays are even explicitly oriented against prevailing scholarly opinion. Indeed, difference can very often be creative, and truth may be conceived as a coincidentia oppositorum.

0. Introduction (H.T. Hakl): Octagon – The quest for wholeness mirrored in a library dedicated to religious studies, philosophy and esotericism in particular; 1. Hans Thomas Hakl: There once was a young man who left home in order to buy lots of books, and even as an old man hadn’t got any wiser and still diligently kept buying them … The History of a Library and the Personal Reflections of a Collector; 2. Wouter J. Hanegraaff: ‘Ad loca secretiora’: Rejected Knowledge and the Future of Libraries; 3. Hereward Tilton: The Urim and Thummim and the Origins of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz; 4. Peter J. Forshaw: Unexpected in the Octagon: Heinrich Khunrath’s Presentation Copy; 5. Henrik Bogdan: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the George E.H. Slater Collection; 6. Joscelyn Godwin: A Walk through the Speculative Music Section; 7. Christopher McIntosh: Searching for the Gods in the Octagon; 8. Aaron Cheak: The Alchemy of Desire – The Metaphysics of Eros in Renè Schwaller de Lubicz (A Study of Adam l‘homme rouge); 9. Konstantin Burmistrov: Kabbalah in the Doctrine of the Order of the Asiatic Brethren; 10. Roberto Fondi: The Holistic Factor in Biological Evolution; 11. Riccardo Bernardini: The Historiography of Eranos: An Homage to Hans Thomas Hakl; 12. Mac Linscott Ricketts: Glimpses into Eliade’s Religious Beliefs as Seen in his Portugal Journal; 13. Jeffrey Kripal: How I Came to the Study of Western Esotericism: And Why I Think It Is So Important; 14. Andraž Marchetti: Dharma; 15. Giuseppe Baroetto: The Illusion of Reincarnation; 16. Arthur Versluis: Parahistory and Madame Blavatsky’s Progeny; 17. Alexander Bruce: Arcana Arcanorum: From the Rituals of Egyptian Freemasonry to the Kremmerzian Corpus; 18. Alexandra Nagel: The Enigmatic Mentalist Wolf Messing; 19. Gregory Shaw: Archetypal Psychology, Dreamwork, and Neoplatonism; 20. Frank Julian Gelli: Julius Evola and I; 21. Christian Giudice: ‘For a Spiritual Understanding of Life’ – Arturo Reghini’ís Theosophical Years (1898–1907); 22. Todd Pratum: Dark Impressions – 35 Years Selling Books on the Occult;