Chapter Ten. Conclusion

Addressing discursive structures in historical perspective allows for a more nuanced analysis and interpretation of the past and the present. From such a perspective, historical imagination is the complex interplay of several dimensions and practices. The emergence of a research field of Western esotericism can itself be interpreted as a discursive event that is linked to the change of episteme that influenced European discourses after the Second World War and the 1960s. The author focuses on the term occult sciences is a misleading category that artificially links disciplines that are in fact very diverse and historically complex. Astrology is only one location of knowledge that engaged in this book. The search for perfect knowledge in language, in experience, in art, or in the natural sciences has been an important dimension of European culture from late antiquity onward.Keywords: European culture; occult sciences; Western esotericism

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