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- Convenor:
-
Tim Rudboeg
(University of Copenhagen)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Delta room
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 6 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Vilnius
Short Abstract:
Technologies of the self and modern esotericism
Long Abstract:
Groups and individuals associated with esotericism and other forms of modern spirituality often emphasize self-transformation as central to their beliefs and practices. Individual agency and the ability to transform oneself willingly in ways that might be different from societal expectations and mainstream understandings of identity, life, creativity, and meaning is, however, a theme that still demands more attention when it comes to modern and contemporary esotericism. Michel Foucault pointed to the idea of 'technologies of the self' being the study of ways by which individuals form and transform themselves towards a desired goal. As individuals use a number of tools and mechanical technologies towards facilitating such transformations, new forms of ideas, systems and creative understandings emerge. This panel will study a number of cases of how individuals particularly associated with modern esotericism have understood and transformed themselves by means of certain technologies. This includes ascetic ideals and practices in the early Theosophical society based on new methods derived from Raja Yoga; ritual practices and technologies in a contemporary Golden Dawn oriented society and the occultural application of musical instruments and electronic synthesizer technology in modern music as extensions of self-transformation. The intention is to map out particular instances of technologies of the self and discuss how the aims and means of self-transformation have been connected with creative uses of a number of old and new technologies. In addition to this theme, this SNASWE panel also displays some of the ongoing research on esotericism in current Nordic scholarship.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 6 September, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
The paper explores ascetic technologies within the raja yoga-pedagogy of the Swedish Theosophical Society (Point Loma) during the first decades of the 20th century.
Paper long abstract:
During the first years of the 20th century adherents of the Theosophical Society (Point Loma) developed a system of pedagogy which they called raja yoga. Only tangentially connected to historical yoga-traditions, raja yoga was presented as a way of teaching that would reform contemporary forms of education and serve as an antidote to the social ills of the period. Raja yoga-education combined traditional subjects like math and history with a heavy focus on arts, crafts and exercise. Raja yoga also emphasized ascetic practices presented as a strategy for controlling or destroying the lower self, which was understand as the source of each individuals’ selfish desires and bodily passions. The paper focuses on the Swedish reception of raja yoga and how the ascetic aspects of the system was conceived and sometimes practiced by members of the Theosophical Society in early 20th century Sweden.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how ritual magic works as a "technology of the self" in Sodalitas Rosae Crucis (S.R.C), an initiatory society in Sweden, where ritual magic is used as a means to gradually attain a spiritual transmutation of the self.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores how ritual magic works as a "technology of the self," delineated by Michel Foucault as "an exercise of the self on the self by which one attempts to develop and transform oneself, and to attain to a certain mode of being" (1988), grounded in the author’s three years of fieldwork as an initiate in Sodalitas Rosae Crucis (S.R.C), an initiatory society in Sweden, where ritual magic is used as a means to gradually attain a spiritual transmutation of the self. Sustained by anthropology and in dialogue with theories of social learning, this paper develops Foucault's concept into a viable analytical framework for grasping esoteric technologies within initiatory communities of practice.
Paper short abstract:
How new electronic musical technologies were used as technologies of the self in contemporary Esotericism
Paper long abstract:
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate through an analysis of a number of relevant cases, including early electronic music, krautrock, avant-garde, industrial and techno how innovative electronic musical technologies emerging in the 1960s and 1970s from an early point prompted new developments in esotericism and spirituality and equally became technologies of the self for a number of new occultural movements. The moog synthesiser along with other electronic technologies literally became more than musical elements. Such technologies fused with individual agency were integrated as ways and means by which 'the true self', 'expanded consciousness' and 'the occult' could be discovered, expressed, and constructed though associated practices, including ritual, meditation and dance. The paper argues that the rise of electronic musical technologies coupled with technologies of the self has led to innovative transformations of esotericism and spirituality the past 50 years and that such transformations, which overstep traditional boundaries and fields–flooding into the arts—need to be taken more fully into account in order to gain a better picture of historical transformations of contemporary esotericism.