Bernd‐christian Otto
Biographic Data
| ID | 3998129 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bernd‐christian Otto |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bernd‐christian |
| FAMILY NAME | Otto |
| SIGNATURE | OTTO B C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Introduction
This special issue presents and discusses a translated, slightly revised and curtailed version of a research proposal that led, in 2022, to the foundation of the Center for Advanced Studies ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’ at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg ( CAS-E ). This introduction provides a brief organizational overview of this research center and summarizes its potential contrib…
Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective
This text provides a translated, revised and curtailed version of the original research proposal that led to the foundation of the Center for Advanced Studies ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’ at Friedrich- AlexanderUniversität Erlangen-Nürnberg ( CAS-E ). The text discusses the pitfalls of the notion of ‘esotericism’ and provides a working definition of ‘esoteric practices.’ CAS-E ’s praxeological turn …
(Re)defining Esotericism from a CAS-E Perspective
Introduction
The introduction to this special issue outlines the concept of Western learned magic and suggests to analyse it as an entangled tradition, thus calling for an interdisciplinary, transcultural and transreligious perspective on its history. A working heuristic of seven different types of entanglement in the history of Western learned magic is proposed, whereas special emphasis is placed on processes of ritual hybridisation. Entangled rituals are on…
Conjuring Planetary Spirits in the Twenty-First Century
This article illustrates textual-ritual entanglements in Western learned magic across almost two millennia through an analysis of Frater Acher’s Arbatel experience. Frater Acher is a contemporary practitioner of ‘magic(k)’ who, between 2010 and 2013, performed a series of conjurations of six planetary spirits inspired by an early modern manual of learned magic named *Arbatel*. Frater Acher combined the Arbatel with ritual techniques from numerous…
Magic and Witchery in the Modern West
Magic and Witchery in the Modern West: Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of “The Triumph of the Moon,” edited by Shai Feraro and Ethan Doyle White. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 259pp. ePDF $79.99, ISBN-13: 9783030155490; Pb. $99.99, ISBN-13: 9783030155513; Hb. $139.99, ISBN-13: 9783030155483
Magic
The term “magic” is characterized by a complex etymology and by a multifaceted semantic field. Throughout western history, discourses on magic have typically performed one of two social functions: ostracization and othering on the one hand, and fascination and self‐identification on the other. While powerful anti‐magical discourses set the dominant social, political, and legal attitudes toward magic for millennia, at least from late antiquity onw…
Religiöse Individualisierung – und De-Individualisierung
Afterword
How can practices generate, accelerate, or undermine the institutionalisation -or conventionalisation (see the Introduction to Part 2 of this publication) -of religious individualisation? This question, which we initially posed to our authors and which also underlies the first sub-section of this part of the publication, has three conceptual components -'practices', 'institutionalisation', and 'religious individualisation' -, each of which are as…
Introduction
The Illuminates of Thanateros and the institutionalisation of religious individualisation
General introduction
The work of the research group 'Religious individualisation in historical perspective', which began in 2008 at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Study at the University of Erfurt (Germany), has finally come to an end. The research group (or 'Kollegforschergruppe' in German) was generously funded by the German Science Foundation ('Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft', DFG) and was intellectually embedded in the vibrant and rigorous…
Historicising ‘Western Learned Magic’
This programmatic paper conceptualises a research topic that has emerged in academic research over the past decades—‘Western learned magic’—and provides a theoretical foundation for its historicisation to come. Even though a large amount of specialised findings on this topic have been brought forward in recent years, a diachronic and cross-cultural overview of the history of ‘Western learned magic’ that reconstructs possible red threads through t…
Defining Magic
General Introduction Part I: Historical Sources Introduction 1. Alcibades I and Laws, Plato 2. Historia Naturalis, Pliny the Elder 3. Enneads, Plotinus 4. City of God and On Christian Doctrine, Augustine of Hippo 5. Etymologiae, Isidore of Seville 6. Suda, Anonymous 7. Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas 8. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Agrippa of Nettesheim 9. Encyclopedie, Denis Diderot 10. Theosophical Glossary, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Part…
Discourse theory trumps discourse theory
This review article argues that Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy is deeply influenced by a methodological cluster usually referred to as 'discourse theory.' That the author is not willing to classify his own approach as such is explained with recourse to his dispute with Kocku von Stuckrad, who, according to Hanegraaff, would embody discourse theory, whereas Hanegraaff would embody history. A comparison of Hanegraaff's Esotericism …
Towards Historicizing “Magic” in Antiquity
Even though the concept of “magic” has suffered severe criticism in academic discourse, the category continues to be used in many disciplines. During the last two decades, classicists in particular have engaged in a lively discussion over “magic” and have produced an impressive amount of written output. Given the impossibility of defining “magic” in a consistent and widely accepted manner, one cannot help but wonder what these scholars are actual…
Conjuring Planetary Spirits in the Twenty-First Century
This article illustrates textual-ritual entanglements in Western learned magic across almost two millennia through an analysis of Frater Acher’s Arbatel experience. Frater Acher is a contemporary practitioner of ‘magic(k)’ who, between 2010 and 2013, performed a series of conjurations of six planetary spirits inspired by an early modern manual of learned magic named *Arbatel*. Frater Acher combined the Arbatel with ritual techniques from numerous…
Towards Historicizing “Magic” in Antiquity
Even though the concept of “magic” has suffered severe criticism in academic discourse, the category continues to be used in many disciplines. During the last two decades, classicists in particular have engaged in a lively discussion over “magic” and have produced an impressive amount of written output. Given the impossibility of defining “magic” in a consistent and widely accepted manner, one cannot help but wonder what these scholars are actual…
Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective
This text provides a translated, revised and curtailed version of the original research proposal that led to the foundation of the Center for Advanced Studies ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’ at Friedrich- AlexanderUniversität Erlangen-Nürnberg ( CAS-E ). The text discusses the pitfalls of the notion of ‘esotericism’ and provides a working definition of ‘esoteric practices.’ CAS-E ’s praxeological turn …
Discourse theory trumps discourse theory
This review article argues that Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy is deeply influenced by a methodological cluster usually referred to as 'discourse theory.' That the author is not willing to classify his own approach as such is explained with recourse to his dispute with Kocku von Stuckrad, who, according to Hanegraaff, would embody discourse theory, whereas Hanegraaff would embody history. A comparison of Hanegraaff's Esotericism …
Towards Historicizing “Magic” in Antiquity
Even though the concept of “magic” has suffered severe criticism in academic discourse, the category continues to be used in many disciplines. During the last two decades, classicists in particular have engaged in a lively discussion over “magic” and have produced an impressive amount of written output. Given the impossibility of defining “magic” in a consistent and widely accepted manner, one cannot help but wonder what these scholars are actual…
Defining Magic
General Introduction Part I: Historical Sources Introduction 1. Alcibades I and Laws, Plato 2. Historia Naturalis, Pliny the Elder 3. Enneads, Plotinus 4. City of God and On Christian Doctrine, Augustine of Hippo 5. Etymologiae, Isidore of Seville 6. Suda, Anonymous 7. Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas 8. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Agrippa of Nettesheim 9. Encyclopedie, Denis Diderot 10. Theosophical Glossary, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Part…
Historicising ‘Western Learned Magic’
This programmatic paper conceptualises a research topic that has emerged in academic research over the past decades—‘Western learned magic’—and provides a theoretical foundation for its historicisation to come. Even though a large amount of specialised findings on this topic have been brought forward in recent years, a diachronic and cross-cultural overview of the history of ‘Western learned magic’ that reconstructs possible red threads through t…
Afterword
How can practices generate, accelerate, or undermine the institutionalisation -or conventionalisation (see the Introduction to Part 2 of this publication) -of religious individualisation? This question, which we initially posed to our authors and which also underlies the first sub-section of this part of the publication, has three conceptual components -'practices', 'institutionalisation', and 'religious individualisation' -, each of which are as…
Introduction
The Illuminates of Thanateros and the institutionalisation of religious individualisation
General introduction
The work of the research group 'Religious individualisation in historical perspective', which began in 2008 at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Study at the University of Erfurt (Germany), has finally come to an end. The research group (or 'Kollegforschergruppe' in German) was generously funded by the German Science Foundation ('Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft', DFG) and was intellectually embedded in the vibrant and rigorous…
Religiöse Individualisierung – und De-Individualisierung
Magic and Witchery in the Modern West
Magic and Witchery in the Modern West: Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of “The Triumph of the Moon,” edited by Shai Feraro and Ethan Doyle White. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 259pp. ePDF $79.99, ISBN-13: 9783030155490; Pb. $99.99, ISBN-13: 9783030155513; Hb. $139.99, ISBN-13: 9783030155483
Magic
The term “magic” is characterized by a complex etymology and by a multifaceted semantic field. Throughout western history, discourses on magic have typically performed one of two social functions: ostracization and othering on the one hand, and fascination and self‐identification on the other. While powerful anti‐magical discourses set the dominant social, political, and legal attitudes toward magic for millennia, at least from late antiquity onw…
Introduction
The introduction to this special issue outlines the concept of Western learned magic and suggests to analyse it as an entangled tradition, thus calling for an interdisciplinary, transcultural and transreligious perspective on its history. A working heuristic of seven different types of entanglement in the history of Western learned magic is proposed, whereas special emphasis is placed on processes of ritual hybridisation. Entangled rituals are on…
Conjuring Planetary Spirits in the Twenty-First Century
This article illustrates textual-ritual entanglements in Western learned magic across almost two millennia through an analysis of Frater Acher’s Arbatel experience. Frater Acher is a contemporary practitioner of ‘magic(k)’ who, between 2010 and 2013, performed a series of conjurations of six planetary spirits inspired by an early modern manual of learned magic named *Arbatel*. Frater Acher combined the Arbatel with ritual techniques from numerous…
(Re)defining Esotericism from a CAS-E Perspective
Introduction
This special issue presents and discusses a translated, slightly revised and curtailed version of a research proposal that led, in 2022, to the foundation of the Center for Advanced Studies ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’ at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg ( CAS-E ). This introduction provides a brief organizational overview of this research center and summarizes its potential contrib…
Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective
This text provides a translated, revised and curtailed version of the original research proposal that led to the foundation of the Center for Advanced Studies ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’ at Friedrich- AlexanderUniversität Erlangen-Nürnberg ( CAS-E ). The text discusses the pitfalls of the notion of ‘esotericism’ and provides a working definition of ‘esoteric practices.’ CAS-E ’s praxeological turn …
Sociology (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices (6 works) · Astronomy (5 works) · History (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (4 works)