Description
Book SynopsisIn Rider Haggard and the Imperial Occult, Simon Magus offers the first academic monograph on the world of occult thought which lies behind and beneath the fictional writing of H. Rider Haggard. It engages with a broad scope of religious, philosophical and anthropological ideas. Many of these were involved in debates within the controversies of the Anglican Church, which occurred in the face of Darwinism, and the criticism of the Bible. The book follows three main intellectual currents involved in the promulgation of these ideas, namely the reception of ancient Egypt, the resurgence of Romanticism and the ideas of the Theosophical Society, all couched within the context of Empire.
Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Methodological Reflections and Considerations 1.1 Hermeneutics and Historicism: Appropriation 1.2 Nachleben, Mnemohistory and Reception 1.3 Narratology and Intertextuality 1.4 Methodological Agnosticism and Empirico-Criticism 2 Critical and Theoretical Framework 2.1 The Narratives of Religious Legitimisation are as Follows: 2.2 Intellectual Currents 2.3 Principal Ideas. 3 Prolegomena 3.1 A New Trajectory 3.2 Haggard’s Theological Discourse 3.3 The Theological Overture to Imperial Occultism; Anglican Scholasticism: Essays and Reviews (1860) and the Anti-Essayist Responsa 3.4 Religious Dynamics under Imperialism 3.5 East is East? The Imperial Occult and the East-West Discourse 3.6 Hermetic Discourse 3.7 Of Orchids and Ostriches: Biographical Notes and Preliminary Critique 3.8 Haggard’s Language Skills 3.9 New Imperialism, New Journalism and New Romance 3.10 The Fin-de-Siècle Occult Milieu 3.11 Research Questions PART 1 The Veil of Isis: Christian Egyptosophy and Victorian Egyptology 1 Introduction to Part 1 1 Atenism 1 Moses and Akhenaten 2 Amarnamania 2 Original Monotheism Exoteric and Esoteric Religion 1 Wallis Budge, Christian Egyptosophist and Psychic Gramophone Needle 3 Osiride Christology and Ancient Egyptian Psychology 1 The Passion of Osiris 2 The Ka of Rider Haggard: Ancient Egyptian Psychology 4 Uroborus and Uraeus Cyclical and Linear Time 5 Mnemohistory and Metageography of Egypt 1 Moses and the Route of the Exodus 6 An Archaeology of the Imaginal 1 Artefactual Fictions PART 2 Isis Veiled: Romanticism and the New Romance 1 Introduction to Part 2 7 The One God and Hidden Nature 1 Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ. 8 The Initiates of Sais 1 The Visions of Harmachis: Initiation, Anacalypsis and Gnosis 2 Kataphasis 3 Apophasis 4 Initiatic Death and Katabasis 5 Anacalypsis, Gnosis and Palingenesis 9 The Ayesha Mythos and the Alchemical She 1 The Genesis of She 2 Ayesha and Kallikrates: Old Flames Never Die? 3 The Alchemical She 4 Érōs and Agápē: The Swedenborgian Androgyne 5 The Ayesha Mythos: Love, Sex and Death 6 The Ayesha Letters 7 (Curtain Fall for an Interval of Two Thousand Years). 10 Romance and the Providential Aesthetic 1 Haggard’s ‘Fatalism’ 11 The Sublime and the Numinous 1 The Chiaroscuro of the Sublime 2 Landscape and Geopiety 12 The Noetic Organ of Imagination 1 ‘Empire of the Imagination’? On the Death of an Old Trope. 2 The Imagination and Reason: Coleridge, Milton, and Kant 3 A Theology of the Imagination 4 Bulwer-Lytton, Blavatsky and Haggard: A Triangle of Art 5 The Occult lore of Zanoni, Dawn and She: Natural Supernaturalism PART 3 Isis Unveiled: Theosophy: From Theosophia Antiqua to Religious Pluralism 1 Introduction to Part 3 13 Graven Images Victorian Constructions of Buddhism 1 Doctrinal Approximations and Hybridity 2 Patristic Theories of Soul Origin 3 Divide et Impera? Comparison and Dialogue 4 Buddha and Christ 5 Haggard’s Logos Theology: Friedrich Max Müller and Religionswissenschaft 14 Egyptian Hermes in England 15 Occult Science 1 Experiments of Youth: Spiritualism or Spiritism? 2 Theosophical Allusions 3 Haggard’s Reception of Theosophy 4 Monads 5 Devachan 6 Mahatmas 7 Psychometry and the Clairvoyant Imagination 8 Reincarnation and Cyclical Ascendant Metempsychosis: The Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial 9 Paulinism in Blavatsky and Haggard 10 The Theosophical Reception of Haggard 11 Contemporary Dialogues: The Aporia of Science and Religion: ‘Have We Lived on Earth before? Shall We Live on Earth Again?’ 16 Reincarnation and Related Concepts 1 Figura and Typos: Figural Phenomenal Prophecy, Pauline Typology and Hermeneutics 2 Sympathie and Innate Affinities 17 The Cartography of the Lost World 1 Empire of Religion: Victorian Anthropology and the Rise of Comparative Religious Studies 2 Andrew Lang, Psycho-Folklorist 3 uNkulunkulu and Inkosazana-y-Zulu: Haggard on Zulu Spirituality 4 Bishop Colenso’s Mission 5 Phoenician Zimbabwe and Biblical Ophir 6 Haggard and Atlantis: Theosophical Esoteric Ethnology 18 The Truth of the Metaphysical Novel 1 Bulwer-Lytton and Rider Haggard on Fiction 2 Myth with Footnotes 3 Biblical Narratives and the Metaphysical Novel Conclusions Appendices Appendix 1 Letter to E. Coleman Rashleigh, 3 January 1920. Appendix 2 Letter to Miss Kaye – Smith, 7 November 1921. Bibliography Index
