Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age (Numen Book Series, 90) [Paperback]

Olav Hammer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2003 | ISBN-10: 900413638X | ISBN-13: 978-9004136380

This volume deals with the transformation of religious creativity in the late modern West. Its point of departure is a set of esoteric beliefs, from Theosophy to the New Age. It shows how these traditions have adapted to the cultural givens of each successive epoch. The claims of each movement have been buttressed by drawing on various structural characteristics of late modernity. The advance of science has resulted in attempts to claim scientific status for religious beliefs. Globalization has given rise to massive loans from other cultures, but also to various strategies to radically reinterpret foreign elements. Individualism has led to an increasing reliance on experience as a source of legitimacy. The analytical tools applied to understanding religious modernization shed light on changes that are fundamentally reshaping many religious traditions. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'"Hammer has done a great service with his careful analysis of an understudied phenomenon in contemporary religion: the New Age. This book is a treasure of research into the roots and development of modern esotericismoffers new insightstrong book, which certainly deserves a place in the stacks of academic libraries.'
T.A. Forsthoefel, "Choice, 2001.

About the Author

Olav Hammer, Ph.D. (2000) in History of Religions, Lund (Sweden), is Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. He has published extensively, mainly in Swedish, on the New Age and on contemporary Western esotericism.

Product Details

• Paperback: 550 pages
• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub (September 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 900413638X
• ISBN-13: 978-9004136380
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,367,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pivotal Examination of New Age Claims, October 11, 2004

By 

D. Merrel "soulsurfer" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age (Studies in the History of Religions) (Hardcover)

This book has the potential to empty American public libraries of half of their holdings. If you believe that the key to a better world is through "feeling good," as Wayne Dyer claimed in his PBS Special, then this book is for you. If you believe that modern reincarnation, reiki, feng shui, aromatherapy, and chakras are based on ancient wisdoms of trial and error research, this book is for you. If you believe that the energy of the body is based on science, this book is for you. If you believe that quantum physics unquestionably supports mind science theories that the world is nothing more than an energy field, this book is for you. This book will hit you hard, but it will present you with facts about your spirituality that must be addressed if your movement is to survive.

The New Age Movement is one that is largely ignorant of its own tradition. Hammer presents a cross-section of its history and its primary experiential basis for knowledge which provides a semblance of congruity to a very diverse and flamboyant body.

Depending on your viewpoint, the New Age is either an opening or a closing of the eyes. This book will help you decide with striking revelations regarding the histories of beliefs that shape the movement.

This is a book to be celebrated, and a book to commission many likeminded studies. The book should be regarded as a genesis. Let the research begin. The esoteric tradition of our age has made too many unanswered claims.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Epistemology of Esoteric Belief., March 17, 2004

By 

New Age of Barbarism "zosimos" (EVROPA.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age (Studies in the History of Religions) (Hardcover)

_Claiming Knowledge_ by Olav Hammer is an examination of some of the esoteric developments within belief systems within the West ranging from Theosophy (of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, for example) to New Age belief systems. The book includes a vast array of material from various beliefs which have arisen in a post-Enlightenment West which increasingly experiences the pressures of globalization and decline, c.f. Spengler. Much of the esoteric material presented within this book consists of belief systems which offer a reaction to modernity (either by looking directly back to a distant past or a vanished culture or civilization, attempting to import systems of knowledge from distant cultures, in particular the East, or by attempting to merge ancient belief with modern day science and rationalism). Olav Hammer's book is full of details about these various belief systems and offers much of comparison and contrast between the unique systems ranging from the Theosophy of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky carried on by Annie Bessant, Charles Webster Leadbeater, and Alice Bailey, the Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, the psychoanalysis and depth psychology of Carl Gustav Jung (with precursors in mesmerism), the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) of Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the experiences of occultist and psychic Edgar Cayce, various attempts to merge science with the occult through spiritism and the opposition of spiritism and "skepticism" (of the various skeptical societies, for example), attempts to merge modern day Darwinian evolution with esoteric belief, and attempts to merge modern day physics and cosmology (in particular Quantum Mechanics, but also the Theory of Relativity) with various esoteric beliefs, New Age philosophies ranging from those of _The Aquarian Conspiracy_ of Marilyn Ferguson to _The Celestine Prophecy_ of James Redfield, and various New Age beliefs about crystals, auras, chakras, and personal growth and transformation through healing. Much of what is presented here falls into categories. For example, often lost civilizations and distant cultures are used as sources of tradition for constructed esoteric and New Age belief systems. These include lost civilizations such as those of the legendary Atlantis or ancient Egypt and Tibet, as well as distant cultures such as those of the Orient or even the Native Americans, Aztecs, or Mayans. Also, various forms of healing are discussed frequently within the book. These include methods often excluded from the mainstream Western medical community. A particular case is that of the Indian medical doctor Deepak Chopra who offers a system of New Age healing and healthy mindedness. In many ways, much of these methods of healing can be related to the discussion of the "Religion of Healthy Mindedness" found in some of William James' works (in particular see _The Varieties of Religious Experiences_). In an attempt to re-enchant science, which is believed to be fallen from the Naturphilosophie of the 18th century to pure materialism and rationalism, many have opted to incorporate occult philosophies as well as vitalism into physics or biology. In particular, the author makes an interesting discussion of the Quantum Theory, relating the standard, but inferior, Copenhagen interpretation of the collapse of the wavefunction to some of the alternatives. At the far extreme opposed to the Copenhagen interpretation stand such ultra-idealists as Fritjof Capra and Gary Zukav (arguing that reality is in fact consciously constructed, often surpassing the idealism even of such early proponents as Bishop Berkeley and incorporating Oriental and Eastern mysticism into their interpretation). Much of New Age belief hinges on the idea of a coming Aquarian Age and an end to the Age of Pisces (perhaps, the Age of Pisces, that of the fish, is indeed the age of Christ - Christ of course being symbolized as the fish by the earliest Christians in the catacombs, c.f. _Hamlet's Mill_ by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechand.) In many ways, the New Age movement is similar to that of the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, with an emphasis on individual experience. Thus, the author will provide several case studies including details of healing practices, Jungian psychotherapy, past lives therapy, and reincarnation as useful interludes emphasizing individual experience. Within medicine the school of Anton Mesmer is important for its role in the discovery of the unconscious, later formulated explicitly by Eduard von Hartmann, a disciple of Schopenhauer. There is much more contained in this book from what has been laid out here, and the book offers a complete bibliography including many of the different movements which have played a unique role in shaping modern day esoteric belief systems. The author contrasts etic and emic historiography, demonstrating how what the particular belief system offers as its own history or traces as its own tradition may not always hold up under the rigorous standards of scholarship from within the academy. Still, I believe that much that is present here is indeed uniquely valueable for any student of religious beliefs, alternative beliefs, hidden or lost knowledge, or with a general interest in the esoteric, the occult, or the modern day New Age.

For an alternative perspective on the New Age movement, written from a somewhat reactionary point of view, with basis in the Traditionalist school of Rene Guenon and Frithjof Schuon consult the work _The System of Antichrist_ by Charles Upton.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Claiming Knowledge, November 10, 2009

By 

javafusion - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age (Studies in the History of Religions) (Hardcover)

The present study is not intended as a catalogue of the opinions of the various Esoteric positions. To discuss general or theoretical aspects of the Modern Esoteric Tradition without entering into the empirical specifics leaves the reader in a fog of abstractions; referring exhaustively to a vast corpus of source texts entails the risk of constructing a under-theorized descriptive study. In order to strike a balance between the descriptive and analytic goals of this study, the author resorted to using case studies from the consulted sources as exemplars. These particular cases are subjected to a symptomatic reading, a mode of interpretation that uses empirical data to highlight a broader point. Although the narrow focus and the chosen approach are, as in any other case, a compromise, at least it has the double advantage of extendability and falsifiability.