The Amsterdam Chair in History of Hermetic Philosophy (1999)

In 1999 the University of Amsterdam created a chair for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, the second academic chair in the world devoted to Western esotericism and the first outside France. Its first holder was the Dutch historian of religion Wouter J. Hanegraaff. Around the chair grew a research centre and degree programmes that trained much of the field's next generation and made Amsterdam, alongside Paris, its main institutional home.

Background: from Paris to Amsterdam§

Until the late 1990s academic research on Western esotericism had a single institutional base, the chair at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, created in 1965 for François Secret and held from 1979 by Antoine Faivre; its history is told in our article on the EPHE chair. Elsewhere, specialists worked on alchemy, Rosicrucianism or Renaissance magic within departments of history, literature or philosophy, often without describing their subject as esotericism at all.

During the 1990s a group of scholars in Europe and North America began to argue that the field needed its own place in the university. Faivre's definition of esotericism as a form of thought, published in 1992 and summarised in our article on Faivre's six characteristics, gave them a common framework. Sessions at the congresses of the International Association for the History of Religions, notably in Mexico City in 1995, brought together historians who would later form the core of the field. What was lacking was a chair in a large research university with the capacity to offer degrees.

The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica and the founding of the chair§

Amsterdam had an unusual resource: the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, a private library of Hermetic, alchemical, Rosicrucian and mystical books and manuscripts assembled by the businessman Joost R. Ritman and opened to researchers in the 1980s. Its collection, especially rich in early printed Hermetica, Rosicrucian literature and the works of Jacob Boehme, made the city an obvious place for research in the field.

The chair was created in 1999 with support from sources connected to the library, an arrangement that allowed the University of Amsterdam to establish a post it would not otherwise have funded. Over the following years the university assumed responsibility for the chair and its staff, so that the programme survived changes in private sponsorship. The title chosen, "History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents", deliberately echoed the library's name while making clear that the subject was broader than the Hermetic writings alone.

Wouter Hanegraaff, the first professor§

Wouter J. Hanegraaff, born in 1961, had studied at the University of Utrecht and made his name with New Age Religion and Western Culture (1996), based on his doctoral thesis. The book argued that the New Age movement was not an exotic import but a secularised continuation of Western esoteric currents, reinterpreted through modern science, psychology and evolutionary thought. It became a standard work in the study of contemporary religion.

At Amsterdam Hanegraaff combined the historical, source-based approach associated with Faivre with the methods of the academic study of religion. He insisted on what he called an empirical approach, setting aside the "religionist" assumption that esoteric texts reveal a perennial truth, which had shaped the Eranos tradition. His later books, including Esotericism and the Academy (2012), which redefined the field as the study of "rejected knowledge", are discussed in our article on Esotericism and the Academy.

The Center and its programmes§

Around the chair the university established the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, usually abbreviated as HHP. Its staff came to include, among others, the historian of modern occultism Marco Pasi and the historian of Renaissance and early modern esotericism Peter J. Forshaw, while visiting scholars and doctoral students came from many countries.

The centre's teaching was its most distinctive feature. For the first time students could take a full sequence of university courses in Western esotericism, from introductory surveys to specialised seminars on Renaissance magic, alchemy, Christian theosophy, modern occultism and contemporary spirituality. A master's programme, taught in English, attracted students from across Europe and beyond, and many of its graduates went on to doctoral research and academic posts. The curriculum stressed reading primary sources in context and situating esoteric currents within the general history of religion, philosophy and science.

Research and publications§

Amsterdam quickly became a centre of publication as well as teaching. Hanegraaff edited the relaunched journal Aries from 2001, as described in our article on the Aries journal. Together with Antoine Faivre, Roelof van den Broek and Jean-Pierre Brach, he edited the two-volume Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (2005), the field's first large reference work, with entries by many specialists.

The centre also hosted conferences and supported the founding in 2005 of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. Its researchers published on subjects as varied as Renaissance Hermeticism, Paracelsian medicine, the reception of Kabbalah, Aleister Crowley and Thelema, modern magic, and the place of esotericism in the history of science. In 2019 the University of Amsterdam hosted the society's seventh biennial conference.

Hanegraaff's own research continued to move between periods. After the programmatic Esotericism and the Academy he published Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed (2013), a short textbook widely used in teaching, and Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination (2022), a study of the late antique Hermetic writings as records of religious experience rather than as philosophy alone. The range of these books, from the Corpus Hermeticum to the New Age, reflects the scope that the Amsterdam chair claimed for the field as a whole.

Significance of the Amsterdam chair§

The Amsterdam chair transformed the scale of the field. Paris had created a tradition of erudite research; Amsterdam added a structure for training students in large numbers and a strong voice in the international study of religion. The combination proved decisive. Other centres followed in the next decade, among them the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism founded by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in 2005 and programmes in North America and Scandinavia, and the field acquired its own society, journals and textbooks.

The chair also changed how esotericism is perceived in the wider academy. By presenting it as a normal subject of historical inquiry, neither occult revelation nor intellectual embarrassment, Amsterdam scholars made it possible for historians of science, art and literature to take esoteric sources seriously. Our guide to historians and scholars places the chair among the other institutions of the field.

Frequently asked questions§

When was the Amsterdam chair in Hermetic philosophy created?§

The University of Amsterdam created the chair for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents in 1999. It was the second academic chair dedicated to Western esotericism, after the Paris EPHE post.

Who held the Amsterdam chair?§

Its first professor was Wouter J. Hanegraaff, a Dutch historian of religion known for New Age Religion and Western Culture (1996) and Esotericism and the Academy (2012).

What is the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica?§

It is the private library of Hermetic, alchemical, Rosicrucian and mystical books assembled in Amsterdam by Joost R. Ritman. Its collection and the support connected with it helped make the founding of the chair possible.

Can you study Western esotericism at the University of Amsterdam?§

The university has offered courses and a master's programme in Western esotericism through its Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents. Programme names and structures change, so current details should be checked with the university.

Sources and further reading§

• New Age Religion and Western Culture — Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 1996
• Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism — Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 2005
• Esotericism and the Academy — Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 2012
• Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed — Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 2013
• Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination — Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 2022
• Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion — Antoine Faivre and Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 1998