************** ESOTERICISM, ART and IMAGINATION *************

Conference Schedule

Thursday June 8
 
6-7:30 Reception
7:30-8:30 Elliot Wolfson: (An)Iconic Representation of Divine Embodiment: The Role of 
Imagination in Medieval Kabbalistic Esotericism
 
Friday June 9
 
Opening Remarks 9 a.m.
9:10 – 10:40
Esotericism in Visual Art and Image
Moderator: Allison Coudert
 
Kerry Koitzsch: The Imaginative Landscape of Alchemy: References to Esoteric Art in Atwood’s “Suggestive Inquiry”
 
Giovanna Costantini: The Tarot in Early Modern Art 
 
Arthur Versluis: The Visionary Art of Cecil Collins
 
9:10-10:40 

Issues in Pre-modern Esotericism

Moderator: Christopher Lehrich

Laurence Wuidar: Music and Astrology in 16th and 17th century Europe

Gustav-Adolf Schoener: The 'Great Flood' of 1524 - The First Mass-media Event in European History

Geoffrey McVey: Sophistry, Sorcery, and Classical views of Imagination: 
Historical Background for the Study of Esotericism
 
11 – 12:30
Sources and Renewals in Contemporary Esotericism

Moderator: Gordon Melton

 
Andrei A. Znamenski: From Native Americana to European Pagan Folklore: Toward Changing Intellectual Sources of Modern Western Shamanism

Amy Hale: Reigning with Swords of Meteoric Iron: Archangel Michael in Contemporary British Esoteric Culture

René Dybdal Pedersen: A Theosophical Renascence?

11-12:30

Esoteric Theatres

Moderator: Alfred Vitale 

Melinda Weinstein: Theatre and Initiation: Dionysian Mysteries and Euripides’ Bacchae

Eric Wilson: Esoteric Cinema

Lance Gharavi: Hex and the City: Texts for Occult Performance in Late Capitalism

2-3:30

Esoteric Photographs
Moderator: Geoffrey McVey
 

Chris Webster: Photography - Bastard of Science or Esoteric Art?

Cathy Gutierrez: A Mirror with a Memory: Spirit Photography as Anti-Art

 
2-3:30
Esotericism and the Role of Women

Moderator: Melinda Weinstein

 
Allison P. Coudert: Angel in the House or Idol of Perversity: Women in 19th Century Esotericism 
 
Brandi Heacock: Victoria Woodhull: Politics, Sex, and Spirits
 
John Richards: The Granny Women of Appalachia: Midwives, Healers, or Witches?

4-5:30

Poetry, Fiction and Esoteric Self-Construction
Moderator: Lee Irwin
 
Kimberly D. Guy: Henry Vaughan’s Transmutation of the Soul 
 
George M. Young: Esoteric Imagery in the Poems of Vladimir Solovyov 
 
Claire Fanger: Mirror, Mask and Anti-self: Forces of Literary Creation in Dion 
Fortune and WB Yeats

4-5:30

Esoteric Metaphysics of Imagination
Moderator: Allison Coudert
 
Melanie Ohlenbach: The Importance of Imagination: Philipp Otto Runge’s ideal of True Art 
 
Glenn Alexander Magee: “Knowing In Terms of Togetherness:” D.H. Lawrence and Alchemy
 
Gregory R. Johnson: Kant’s Swedenborgian Imagination
 

Banquet at 7:30

Saturday June 10
 
9-10:30
Modelling Esoteric Spiritualities
Moderator: John Richards
 
Olga Louchakova: Esotericism of the Heart in Sufism and Hesychasm: Ibn-Arabi’s Interpretor of Desires and The Ladder of Divine Graces of Theophanis 
 
Lee Irwin: Esoteric Paradigms and Participatory Spirituality in the Teachings of Mikhaël Aïvanhov
 

Carol Matthews: Gnosis of the Flesh II: ‘Prophetic Exegesis,’ and Temporal Alchemy in J.J. Hurtak’s Pistis Sophia.

 
 
9-10:30
Theurgy and Christian Cabbalah
Moderator: Christopher Lehrich
 
Shya Young: Theurgy as the Path to Salvation in Johannes Reuchlin’s De Arte Cabalistica

Ted Hand: Pseudo-Dionysius and the Christian Kabbalah

11-12:30

Alchemy

Moderator: Melinda Weinstein

Kyle A. Fraser: Gnostic Baptism and Celestial Ascent in Graeco-Egyptian Alchemy

M.E. Warlick: Philosophic Mercury: Evolution of the Alchemical Feminine

Konstantin Burmistrov: Kabbalah, Alchemy, and Kabbalistic Alchemy: the case of “Aesh Mezaref”

11-12:30

Esotericism and Orthodoxy
Moderator: Arthur Versluis
R. Joseph Hoffman: The Opposition of Julian the "Apostate" to Christian Factionalism
 
Leigh Penman: Jakob Böhme (1575-1624) and the ‘Chiliastic Underground’ in the Holy Roman Empire, 1610-1630 

Robert Collis: Esotericism and the Russian Orthodox Church during the Reign of Peter the Great (1689-1725)

2-3:30

Esoteric Architectures
Moderator: Arthur Versluis
 
Alan Solomon: ‘A great attachment to curious and uncommon books’: Unearthing the Esoteric Interests of the Early 19th century Architect Ithiel Town
 
Anthony Thorley: Is Lansdown Crescent a Masonic Zodiac?: Astrological Symbolism in a Georgian Bath Building Scheme
 

Joscelyn Godwin: L’Architecture Naturelle by Petrus Talemarianus

2-3:30

Esoteric Figures and Movements: 19^th and Early 20^th Centuries

Moderator: John Richards

Gerald Leek: Albert Pike: Concepts of Deity in Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma: Theology and the Esoteric Tradition in Scottish Rite Freemasonry

Mary Walker: “Dr.” William R. Price, an American itinerant hypnotist active at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Siobhan Houston: Occultism vs. Mysticism? The Liberal Catholic Church and Krishnamurti, 1927-1929

 
4-5:30
Importing the East into Western Esotericism
Moderator: Alfred Vitale 
 
Marsha Keith Schuchard: William Blake, George Cumberland, and the Visionary Art of Exotic Erotica

Gordan Djurdjevic: The Great Beast as a Tantric Hero: The Role of Tantra in Aleister Crowley’s Magick

 
Ann Gleig: Transcending the Ego, Retaining the Self: Negotiating Cultural Identity 
In Contemporary Esotericism

4-5:30

Esoteric Gardens 
Moderator: Christopher Lehrich
 
Patrizia Granziera: Enlightenment and Freemasonry in 18th Century Venice: The Hermeticism of Querini’s Garden at Altichiero
 
Sarah W. Whedon: Advent Garden and the Waldorf Imagination
 

Saturday, 7:30 pm ASE Open Meeting

Sunday June 11

9-10:30

Novels and the Occult

Moderator: Claire Fanger

Victoria Nelson: Faux Catholic: A Gothic Subgenre from Monk Lewis to Dan Brown

Amanda Boyd: Yoga and the Grotesque Greenhouse: Reading Gustav Meyrink’s Occultist “Die Pflanzen des Dr. Cinderella”

 
9-10:30
Esotericisms Modern and Postmodern
Moderator: Gordon Melton
 
Alfred Vitale: Hidden Everywhere: Critical Marginality and the Modern Occult Aesthetic
 
Daniel Levine: Strange Bedfellows: Laying the Foundations for Conversations between Luce Irigaray and Aleister Crowley
 
Purdom Lindblad: The World in Flames: The Esoteric Worldview of Aum Shinrikyo
 
 
 
 
11-12:45
Methodological Problems in Esoteric Studies
Moderator: Claire Fanger
 
Christopher I. Lehrich: Magic: Comparison, Classification, and Difference
 
Richard Smoley: Academe and Esotericism: The Problem of Authority
 
Response to papers followed by open discussion/ Conference Closes