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Liber XV · History & Scholarship

Liber XV · History & Scholarship · Chapter III: Historians & Scholars

Aries Journal: The Flagship Journal of Esotericism Studies

Aries, the journal founded by Antoine Faivre and Roland Edighoffer in 1983 and relaunched by Brill in 2001 as the Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism

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Aries is the leading academic journal for the study of Western esotericism. It was founded in Paris in 1983 by Antoine Faivre and Roland Edighoffer as a modest bulletin of research and reviews, and in 2001 it was relaunched by the Leiden publisher Brill as Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, under the editorship of Wouter Hanegraaff. It later became the journal of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism and remains the field's main peer-reviewed venue.

Origins in Paris, 1983§

By the early 1980s the study of esotericism had a home in Paris but almost no infrastructure. Antoine Faivre had held the chair of esoteric and mystical currents at the École Pratique des Hautes Études since 1979, continuing the work of François Secret, whose appointment is described in our article on the EPHE chair. Scholars working on Christian theosophy, Rosicrucianism, alchemy or Christian Kabbalah were scattered across departments of literature, history, philosophy and theology. They had no shared journal and few ways of learning what colleagues elsewhere were publishing.

In 1983 Faivre and Roland Edighoffer set out to fill that gap. Edighoffer, like Faivre a specialist in German literature, taught at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and was the leading French authority on the Rosicrucian manifestos and on Johann Valentin Andreae, the probable author of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. The journal they launched took the name Aries, the ram, the first sign of the zodiac and an apt emblem for a new beginning.

The first series: a bulletin for a scattered field§

The original Aries was not a glossy academic journal in the modern sense. It appeared irregularly and was devoted largely to information: bibliographies of new publications, reviews of books and editions, reports on conferences and research, and short articles. Its aim was practical, to let a small and dispersed community of specialists know what was being done in their field across Europe and North America.

That modest format reflected the state of the discipline. In the 1980s, publishing on esotericism in a mainstream historical journal could still raise eyebrows, and many of the best studies appeared in small presses, specialised series or the publications of esoteric organisations themselves. A journal that gathered and assessed this scattered literature helped to define what serious scholarship on the subject looked like. Faivre's own insistence on bibliographical rigour, on knowing the sources before theorising about them, is visible throughout the first series.

The first Aries continued through the 1980s and 1990s. During those years the field around it changed. Faivre's definition of esotericism as a form of thought, set out in 1992 and explained in our article on Faivre's six characteristics, gave scholars a common vocabulary; Brian Copenhaver's Hermetica appeared the same year; and in 1999 the University of Amsterdam created a chair for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents.

The Brill relaunch of 2001§

The decisive change came in 2001, when the Dutch academic publisher Brill relaunched the journal as Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism. The new series was edited by Wouter Hanegraaff, who had taken up the Amsterdam chair two years earlier, with an international editorial board that included Faivre.

The relaunch transformed the journal in several ways:

  • Peer review and regularity. Aries became a fully refereed journal appearing twice a year, meeting the standards by which universities judge academic publication.
  • Language. While open to contributions in several European languages, the new series published mainly in English, making French, German and Italian research accessible to a wider readership.
  • Scope. The journal defined its field broadly, from late antique Hermeticism and Gnosticism to contemporary occultism and New Age religion, and welcomed approaches from history, religious studies, art history, philosophy and the history of science.
  • Method. Following Faivre and Hanegraaff, it treated esotericism as a historical subject to be studied empirically, without either promoting or debunking the beliefs involved.

The timing mattered. A peer-reviewed journal with a respected publisher gave young scholars a place to publish work that would count towards academic careers, and it signalled to other disciplines that esotericism had become a legitimate area of research.

Aries, ESSWE and the Aries Book Series§

When the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism was founded in 2005, Aries became associated with it as the society's journal; members receive it as part of their membership. Our article on ESSWE describes the society and its biennial conferences.

Alongside the journal, Brill established the Aries Book Series, a monograph series for texts and studies in Western esotericism. It publishes revised doctoral dissertations, editions of primary sources and collective volumes, including selected proceedings of ESSWE conferences. Together, journal and series became the principal publishing outlet of the field, complemented by other ventures such as the open-access journal Correspondences, launched in 2013.

What Aries publishes§

A typical volume of Aries combines long research articles with review essays and book reviews. Over the years it has published studies on Renaissance magic and Christian Kabbalah, alchemy and early modern science, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, Swedenborg and Mesmer, nineteenth-century occultism, Theosophy, modern Paganism and contemporary spirituality. It has also hosted many of the field's methodological debates: on how to define esotericism, on whether "Western" is a meaningful qualifier, on the place of esotericism in the history of religions, and on the relation between scholars and practitioners.

Thematic issues, often guest-edited, have explored topics such as esotericism and gender, esotericism and art, or esoteric currents in particular countries. Because the journal is the field's main venue, its contents offer a fair index of what specialists consider important at any given time.

The significance of Aries for the field§

The history of Aries is in miniature the history of esotericism studies itself. It began as the newsletter of a small Paris circle gathered around a single chair; it became, within two decades, an international peer-reviewed journal tied to a learned society, university chairs and graduate programmes. Its two founders represented the philological, source-based tradition of French scholarship on Christian theosophy and Rosicrucianism; its second editor brought the comparative perspective of the academic study of religion.

The journal has also changed with its field. Early volumes of the new series were dominated by the Renaissance and early modern currents that Faivre had studied; later volumes give far more space to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to non-European contexts, to sociology and to the reception of esoteric ideas in popular culture. Debates first aired in its pages, about whether the label "Western" should be kept, or how far esotericism overlaps with magic and mysticism, have shaped textbooks and university courses.

For readers outside the academy, Aries is also a useful guide. Its reviews assess new editions of grimoires, alchemical texts and occult classics, and its articles often correct popular myths about the antiquity or continuity of esoteric traditions. Our guide to historians and scholars of esotericism places the journal among the other institutions of the field.

Frequently asked questions§

Who founded the journal Aries?§

Aries was founded in 1983 by Antoine Faivre and Roland Edighoffer, two French scholars of German literature. Faivre held the Paris EPHE chair of esoteric currents; Edighoffer was a specialist in the Rosicrucian manifestos.

When did Brill relaunch Aries?§

Brill relaunched the journal in 2001 as Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, a peer-reviewed journal appearing twice yearly, with Wouter Hanegraaff of the University of Amsterdam as editor.

Is Aries connected to ESSWE?§

Yes. Since the founding of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism in 2005, Aries has served as the society's journal, and members receive it as part of their membership.

What is the Aries Book Series?§

It is a Brill monograph series of texts and studies in Western esotericism, publishing dissertations, source editions and collective volumes. It is the main book series of the academic field.

Sources and further reading§