Restoring paradise : Western esotericism, literature, art, and consciousness /
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| Author / Creator: | Versluis, Arthur, 1959- |
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| Imprint: | Albany : State University of New York Press, ©2004. |
| Description: | 1 online resource (xi, 174 pages) : illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | SUNY series in Western esoteric traditions SUNY series in Western esoteric traditions. |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | E-Resource Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11140229 |
| Summary: | Focusing on how spiritual initiation takes place in Western esoteric religious, literary, and artistic traditions from antiquity to the present, Restoring Paradise provides an introduction to Western esotericism, including early modern esoteric movements like alchemy, Christian theosophy, and Rosicrucianism. The author argues that European and American literature and art often entail a written transmission of spiritual knowledge in which writing itself works to transmute consciousness, to generate, provoke, or convey spiritual awakening. He focuses on several important figures whose work has not received the attention it deserves, including American writer and Imagist poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and British painter Cecil Collins, among others. While Arthur Versluis presents a new way of understanding Western esotericism in a contemporary light, above all he has crafted a book about knowing, and about how we come to know, and what "knowing" by way of literature and language actually means. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xi, 174 pages) : illustrations |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-174) and index. |
| ISBN: | 1423739531 9781423739531 9780791461396 0791461394 9780791484852 0791484858 |