This special issue is the third collection resulting from a collaborative research project on the Euro-American esoteric appropriation of East Asia. As we have previously argued (Pokorny and Winter 2024b; 2024d), Euro-American esoteric imageries of East Asia have been crucial to the larger “Western” reception process of East Asian religions and spiritualities.1 Whereas the role of South Asian religions and Islam in esoteric mindscapes has attracted scholarly attention for many years, scholarship on East Asia remained a desideratum that we began to address with Appropriating the Dao: The Euro-American Esoteric Reception of China (Pokorny and Winter 2024a) and the special issue “Euro-American Esoteric Readings of East Asia” (Pokorny and Winter 2024c).
Admittedly, the influence of East Asian religious and mythological notions on the Western esoteric current is dwarfed by that of South Asian, let alone Judeo-Christian ones. However, in many cases, as the previous collections show (including the contributions to this present special issue), certain figures, texts, and concepts had and still have their place – be it Lǎozǐ
Whereas our Appropriating the Dao: The Euro-American Esoteric Reception of China opened up this new area in a systematic way,2 “Euro-American Esoteric Readings of East Asia” added to the groundwork. The aim of the present special issue is to fill in some of the remaining blatant lacunae, and in particular to further probe into the martial arts discourse in its Euro-American (esoteric) reception. The latter is explored by three contributions: (1) Per Faxneld’s “‘A Link with the Subtle Worlds’: Negotiating Spirituality in Bujinkan Budō Taijutsu (Ninjutsu),” (2) Justin B. Stein’s “Religion, Ki, and Aikido: From Pre-war Japan to the Post-war United States,” and (3) Tao Thykier Makeeff’s “Dantians and Dragons: Paracorporeality and the Euro-American Reception of Chinese Martial Arts Spiritualities.” The other five contributions in this special issue examine important themes, texts, and figures in the Euro-American esoteric reception of China in particular: (1) Franz Winter shows how four eminent French esoteric writers – Éliphas Lévi (1810–1875), Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1842–1909), Eugène Albert Puyou de Pouvourville (1861–1939), and René Guénon (1886–1951) – integrated the Chinese cultural hero Fúxī into their esoteric historiographies; (2) Lukas K. Pokorny expounds in detail on one of the earliest annotated Dàodéjīng translations by the hand of the German Theosophist Franz Hartmann (1838–1912); (3) Olav Hammer and Karen Swartz-Hammer discuss the place of China in Anthroposophy, examining Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) and several of his followers; (4) Davide Marino first traces East Asia in the French occultist journals La Voie (The Path) and La Gnose (Gnosis); and subsequently (5) elaborates on the two Dàodéjīng translations by the famous Italian esotericist Julius Evola (1898–1974).
References
Faxneld, Per. 2021. “Martial Arts Spirituality in Sweden: The Occult Connection.” In Lukas Pokorny and Franz Winter, eds., The Occult Nineteenth Century: Roots, Developments, and Impact on the Modern World. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 221–243.
Faxneld, Per. 2024. “Crouching Secularity, Hidden Religion: Some Reflections on Studying East Asian Martial Arts in Europe.” In Laurence Cox, Ugo Dessì, and Lukas K. Pokorny, eds., East Asian Religiosities in the European Union: Globalisation, Migration, and Hybridity. Paderborn: Brill Schöningh, pp. 395–414.
Makeeff, Tao Thykier. 2024. “Be Water My Friend: Esotericism, Martial Arts and Entangled Histories.” In Lukas K. Pokorny and Franz Winter, eds., Appropriating the Dao: The Euro-American Esoteric Reception of China. London and New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 201–221.
Nilsson, Johan. 2024. “Manipulating the Sticks: Reconstructing Aleister Crowley’s Use of Yijing Divination.” In Ive Brissman, Paul Linjamaa, and Tao Thykier Makeeff, eds., Handbook of Rituals in Contemporary Studies of Religion: Exploring Ritual Creativity in the Footsteps of Anne-Christine Hornborg. Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 135–147.
Pokorny, Lukas K. and Franz Winter (eds.). 2024a. Appropriating the Dao: The Euro- American Esoteric Reception of China. London and New York: Bloomsbury.
Pokorny, Lukas K. and Franz Winter. 2024b. “China in the Euro-American Esoteric Imagination: Contouring a Lacuna.” In Lukas K. Pokorny and Franz Winter, eds., Appropriating the Dao: The Euro-American Esoteric Reception of China. London and New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 1–14.
Pokorny, Lukas K. and Franz Winter (eds.). 2024c. “Euro-American Esoteric Readings of East Asia.” NVMEN: International Review for the History of Religions, 71 (1).
Pokorny, Lukas K. and Franz Winter. 2024d. “Euro-American Esoteric Readings of East Asia: Introductory Remarks.” NVMEN: International Review for the History of Religions, 71 (1), pp. 1–8.
“Euro-American” is understood as a “qualifier that is intended to geographically delimit the globally entangled esoteric discourse. That is, the contributions in this [collection] predominantly refer to sources that were crafted (however globally intertwined the production processes may have been) by individuals who lived or (originally) resided in precisely this geographical context (i.e. Europe and North America). Moreover, the writings of these individuals were primarily addressed to and/or received by a likewise European/North American audience. Of course, many of these sources circulated globally and found interested audiences around the world. The use of the term ‘Western’ in this [collection] has to be understood in the same vein as an admittedly vague geographical limitation and not as a (cultural) essentialist category” (Pokorny and Winter 2024b: 9; original emphasis). Similarly, “esotericism” is understood as “an umbrella notion comprising largely nonhegemonic teachings and currents with shared structural features, foremostly centering on the idea that higher or special (practical) knowledge distilled from a discourse deemed secretive can be (incrementally) utilized by its practitioners to salvific or otherwise self-cultivational ends, thereby uncovering ulterior dynamics of life, nature, and/or the cosmos at large” (Pokorny and Winter 2024d: 3).
Earlier case studies are mentioned in Pokorny and Winter 2024b; 2024d. A notable recent article is Nilsson 2024.
