Magic and Mysticism

I choose to define esotericism primarily in terms of gnosis because gnosis, of whatever kind, is precisely what is esoteric within esotericism. Esotericism describes the historical phenomena to be studied; gnosis describes that which is esoteric, hidden, protected, and transmitted within these historical phenomena. Without hidden (or semihidden) knowledge to be transmitted in one fashion or another, one does not have esotericism. Alchemy, astrology, various kinds of magical traditions, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, Jewish or Christian visionary or apophatic gnosis—under the rubric of Western esotericism are a whole range of disparate phenomena connected primarily by one thing: that to enter into the particular arcane discipline is to come to realize for oneself secret knowledge about the cosmos and its transcendence. This secret or hidden knowledge is not a product of reason alone, but of gnosis—it is held to derive from a suprarational source.

As we look over Western esotericism from antiquity to the present, we can discern one characteristic that emerges as central throughout the entire period: gnosis. The word gnosis here refers to assertions of direct spiritual insight into the nature of the cosmos and of oneself, and thus may be taken as having both a cosmological and a metaphysical import. Indeed, one may speak of these as two fundamental but related kinds of gnosis: under the heading of cosmological gnosis we may list such traditions as astrology and the various forms of -mancies such as geomancy, cartomancy, and so forth, as well as numeric, geometric, and alphabetic traditions of correspondences and analogical interpretations, traditions of natural magic based on these correspondences, and so forth.

is rather difficult to outline Gurdjieff’s teachings as a whole, not least because he himself was not exactly systematic as a teacher, but also because he was something of a trickster and raconteur who was entirely capable of salting truth with what we may charitably call jokes. But at heart is the idea, common to many esoteric traditions, that humanity is for the most part “asleep” and needs to be awakened. This awakening of others is best encouraged by someone who himself is already “awake,” and Gurdjieff and his disciples certainly saw him as having precisely that function of awakening. He is notorious for his confrontational style, for his ordering disciples to do humiliating or painful work, for his sometimes apparently erratic behavior—in short, for his playing the role of the peremptory and all-knowing guru. He did leave a real legacy in the West, no doubt of that, one with a powerful impact on the arts, not only in the dances supervised by Jeanne de Salzmann, his official successor, but also in popular music and the other fine arts.34 Yet Gurdjieff’s influence often remains hidden, for the groups he inspired do not operate publicly—they remain, in the strictest sense of the word, esoteric. One lesser-known example of Gurdjieff’s influence is to be found in Taliesin, the school of architecture founded by Frank Lloyd Wright—whose third wife, Olgivanna, had been a dancer at Gurdjieff’s school in Paris. Gurdjieff himself visited Wright at Taliesin in 1934.35