The Shadow of God

“The Shadow of God,” highlights a crucially important dialectical movement. It shows how a putative opposition between religion and science, combined with fears of despiritualization and mourning for the death of God, motivated the rise of spiritualism and occult movements, and contributed to the birth of religious studies as a discipline. Looking at Edward Burnett Tylor, Friedrich Max Müller, Éliphas Lévi, and Helena Blavatsky, it demonstrates how scholars, spiritualists, and magicians not only moved in common social circles, but also shared an engagement with spirits, mysticism, and “Oriental” mysteries. The chapter maps out the messy intermediate terrain between two spheres that considered themselves to be different and were sometimes opposed, but nevertheless exhibited the same basic habits of thought—including a myth of lost magic.

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Dialectic · Literature · MAGIC (telescope) · Mysticism · Mythology · Occult · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Shadow (psychology) · Spiritualism · Theology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious studies · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices