#tantra #daoism #buddhism

I am excited to have a discussion about studying, researching and learning esotericism employing a global historical perspective.

Come over during the live event to participate to the discussion and ask your questions in chat or watch it on demand and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Either way, it’s all academic fun!

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Read his publications here https://univie.academia.edu/JulianStrube

Julian Strube is Assistant Professor in Religious Studies at the University of Vienna. He works from a global historical perspective on the relationship between religion and politics, as well as on debates about the meaning of religion, science, and philosophy since the eighteenth century. His current research focuses on the relationship between orientalist studies, religion, and nationalism; the question of religious comparativism; and exchanges between Bengali intellectuals and their non-Indian interlocutors, especially with regard to reform, tradition, and modernity. In his third monograph, Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity (Oxford University Press 2022), he operationalizes the approach of global religious history. This is also the subject of several forthcoming special issues and articles, and was the subject of a special issue on “Global Religious History” co-edited with Giovanni Maltese for Method & Theory in the Study of Religion (2021). Strube previously co-edited Theosophy across Boundaries with Hans-Martin Krämer (SUNY 2020), followed by New Approaches to the Study of Esotericism (Brill 2021), co-edited with Egil Asprem. His first monograph (Vril, Brill 2013) examined the relationship between alternative religious movements, National Socialism, völkisch movements, and contemporary far-right extremism. His PhD thesis on Socialism, Catholicism, and Occultism in Nineteenth-Century France was published in 2016 with De Gruyter.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JulianStrube

RECOMMENDED READING

Global Tantra https://amzn.to/3IWT82Z

REFERENCES

Strube, Julian. “The Emergence of ‘Esoteric’ as a Comparative Category: Towards a Decentered Historiography.” Implicit Religion 24, no. 3–4 (2023). (out soon)

Strube, Julian. “Daoism and Kung Fu as Occult Sciences: Historical Comparisons between Chinese Practices and Mesmerism.” In Appropriating the Dao: The Euro-American Esoteric Reception of East Asian Thought, edited by Lukas Pokorny and Franz Winter. London/New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming.

Strube, Julian. “Religious Comparativism, Esotericism, and the Global Occult: A Methodological Outline.” part of an upcoming special issue on “Global Religious History: Perspectives for Religious Comparativism” (forthcoming).

00:00:00 Introduction & Support Angela’s Symposium

00:01:00 Julian Strube

00:02:40 A new global approach to studying Esotericism

00:27:31 Can Esotericism be studied outside Western traditions?

00:31:01 Is the term Western Esotericism still useful?

00:38:52 How Indian theology affected Theosophy & vice versa

00:40:33 Ancient Wisdom and Indo-European Languages

00:52:37 How Theosophy affected the Western view of the East

01:03:01 Are the teachings secret and/or heretical?

01:05:11 Tantric practices and antinomianism

01:10:02 Complexity in scholarship

01:13:24 Tantra and the Left Hand Path

01:19:18 The role of mesmerism

01:27:09 Julian Strube’s contact details

01:30:03 Support Angela’s Symposium

Published on March 6, 2023