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4.5 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
53 of 53 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Important but imperfect
30 Aug 2003
By Christopher I. Lehrich
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This is certainly Faivre's most useful book for a broad knowledge of esotericism. It's really not a book, actually, but a series of articles and an annotated bibliography, but it holds together well and is readable just as it is. The translation is solid--it's the work of Joscelyn Godwin, a student of Faivre's, whose works are also very useful.
The nice thing about Faivre is that he takes the subject-matter seriously, which isn't exactly usual, and he goes into some depth about the 18th and 19th century thinkers he's interested in (von Baader, notably). For an introduction to a somewhat lost period, i.e. Enlightenment occultism, you could hardly do better than Faivre. He was until recently a professor at the Sorbonne, and has founded a whole little school of scholarship on esotericism (Hanegraaf and Godwin leap to mind).
On the down side, Faivre is a weak phenomenologist, and this leads him occasionally into dubious categorical divisions that distort the material. To put it more simply, the distinctions he makes among esotericism, mysticism, and occultism are problematic, and lead him to cut off from view a lot of interesting figures. The reason, I think, is that he believes that a certain sort of syncretic esoteric viewpoint is the best hope for a spiritual revival of western humanity, and so he focuses on the thinkers he thinks best support that goal.
The very best thing here is his annotated bibliography. It's not perfect, to be sure, and now a bit dated, but there is nothing like it since Albert Caillet, who's so encyclopedic as to be unhelpful to a beginner (he's also very dated, of course). If you're serious about learning something about the occult in later European history, you need to read through this bibliography and take Faivre's advice.
I don't think this is a book that a serious student should be without. At the same time, I would advise a little caution with his glib definitional and methodological pronouncements.
The nice thing about Faivre is that he takes the subject-matter seriously, which isn't exactly usual, and he goes into some depth about the 18th and 19th century thinkers he's interested in (von Baader, notably). For an introduction to a somewhat lost period, i.e. Enlightenment occultism, you could hardly do better than Faivre. He was until recently a professor at the Sorbonne, and has founded a whole little school of scholarship on esotericism (Hanegraaf and Godwin leap to mind).
On the down side, Faivre is a weak phenomenologist, and this leads him occasionally into dubious categorical divisions that distort the material. To put it more simply, the distinctions he makes among esotericism, mysticism, and occultism are problematic, and lead him to cut off from view a lot of interesting figures. The reason, I think, is that he believes that a certain sort of syncretic esoteric viewpoint is the best hope for a spiritual revival of western humanity, and so he focuses on the thinkers he thinks best support that goal.
The very best thing here is his annotated bibliography. It's not perfect, to be sure, and now a bit dated, but there is nothing like it since Albert Caillet, who's so encyclopedic as to be unhelpful to a beginner (he's also very dated, of course). If you're serious about learning something about the occult in later European history, you need to read through this bibliography and take Faivre's advice.
I don't think this is a book that a serious student should be without. At the same time, I would advise a little caution with his glib definitional and methodological pronouncements.
62 of 63 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Access can be tough
13 Jun 2000
By Mark Stavish, The Institute for Hermetic Studies
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
"Access to Western Esotericism" by Antoine Faivre is a dense book, yet it is that very density that makes it a cornerstone for research into Western estotericism. Not for the beginner, "Access" is written by one of the world's leading academic authorities on western mystical and occult movements from the Renaissance to the present. Carrying the information of an encyclopedia and written like a Ph.D. thesis, "Access" contains in 369 pages an entire synopsis of 1,000 years of Western European spiritual development. Beginning with the Alexandrian Period, the reader is taken through the development of the various esoteric currents of Rosicrucianism, Alchemy, Qabala, Hermeticism, and Christian Qabala. Then, in the second half of "Access" the reader is introduced to the key figures, works, and movements in esotericism. A great deal of the book is concerned with defining key terms, such as 'esotericism', 'gnosis', 'theosophy', and 'occultism'. As stated, it is a dense book written by a brilliant man, it is not easy reading, but it is well worth reading if you take your esotericism seriously. Faivre is Professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Religious Studies Section, Sorbonne, Paris. He holds the chair of "History of Esoteric and Mystical Currents in Modern and Contemporary Europe."
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