Esotérisme Chrétien

Esotericism currently suffers a tarnished image and this mishmash word has almost become pejorative. Indeed, a westerner who is now interested by that may be exposed to three "cyclone eyes" powerful, vampirics and antagonists. On one hand he has to face dogmas from established churches, on the other hand he has to tries to fertilize the cast-iron secular and horizontal screed, which shaped our academies, and besides, he has to float over the giant, parodic and consumerist tidal wave (pleonasm made on purpose), called "personal development" which corrupted our bookshops and the internet.

In his lecture, Wouter J. Hanegraaff gives attention to the somewhat neglected history of mesmerism in German Romantic culture, and more specifically to its impact on the historiography of Western esotericism. The central figure in his story is Joseph Ennemoser and his works.
In the context of German Romanticism, mesmerism developed into a direction that was strongly different from what we find in other countries such as France or England.

The two words "esotericism" and "radical right-wing" have many common things: both are counter-cultures and its followers reject, in a comparable way (and not analog), society. Both gather under a same vocable very heterogeneous sensibilities.  Both aim at certain form of elitism, verticality: in aristocracy, monarchy or in mystic.
For about thirty years, these two meanings, which have always been out of the major public opinion, have been excluded the same way, more and more fed and almost ordinary.

The word esotericism, even though it dates back to 1828, covers very old notions,   Since the 15th century, intellectuals: humanists philosophers, Rabbis, ecclesiastics, reacting to a teaching more and more academic of theology, by the discovery of neoplatonicians and of the Corpus Hermeticum, tried to establish a Philosophia Perennis: a medium universal line between radical Aristotelean philosophy and a scholastic theology.

What are the origins of Christianism? What is the Johannine tradition? These are the questions Jean Pataut tries to answer in his opus on John the Baptist and John the Evangelist.
In this 67-minutes interview, Jérôme Durand talks about this subject going deeper on major theoretical points which show the exegesis of mysteries in Johannine writings, through initiatory revelation, diverse initiatory degrees, the state of Glory, the "Son of resurrection" and the Logos.

In this interview filmed at the Librairie de l'Inconnu in Paris, Jean-Marc Font draws the important parts of his different « anthology” texts of western esotericism, from antiquity to our days.

Primitive Revelation according to Pierre Gordon  A 47-minute talk retracing the steps of Pierre Gordon, French Christian Esotericist of the  20thcentury, and his ideas on the origins of ‘The true civilisation’, the point when man stopped focusing solely on surface appearances and realised for the first time that the visible world veiled an ocean of infinite light.

In this presentation, André Vandamme talks about the origins of Christianism, before the Council of Nicaea (325); he analyses the alteration of Jesus’ teachings, done by the Emperor Constantine, Judaeo-Christians, and the institutionalized churches. Based on the Gospel of Mathew, he shows the Hellenic influences, from far east and Judaism, which formed different exegesis of life and Jesus’ teachings, redefining what is religious and spiritual “belief”.