Rider Haggard and the Imperial Occult: Hermetic Discourse and Romantic Contiguity

Half Title 2 Series Information 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 8 Foreword 12 Preface 15 Acknowledgements 17 Introduction 18 1 Methodological Reflections and Considerations 18 1.1 Hermeneutics and Historicism: Appropriation 18 1.2 Nachleben, Mnemohistory and Reception 20 1.3 Narratology and Intertextuality 21 1.4 Methodological Agnosticism and Empirico-Criticism 22 2 Critical and Theoretical Framework 25 2.1 Narratives of Religious Legitimisation 25 2.2 Intellectual Currents 26 2.3 Principal Ideas 26 3 Prolegomena 26 3.1 A New Trajectory 26 3.2 Haggard’s Theological Mise-en-Scène 31 3.3 The Theological Overture to Imperial Occultism; Anglican Scholasticism: Essays and Reviews (1860) and the Anti-essayist Responsa 39 3.4 Religious Dynamics under Imperialism 47 3.5 East Is East? The Imperial Occult and the East– West Dichotomy 50 3.6 Hermetic Discourse 52 3.7 Of Orchids and Ostriches: Biographical Notes and Preliminary Critique 61 3.8 Haggard’s Language Skills 69 3.9 New Imperialism, New Journalism and New Romance 71 3.10 The Fin-de-siècle Occult Milieu 75 3.11 Research Questions 76 Part 1 The Veil of Isis: Christian Egyptosophy and Victorian Egyptology 78 Introduction to Part 1 80 Chapter 1 Atenism 84 1 Moses and Akhenaten 84 2 Amarnamania 90 Chapter 2 Original Monotheism: Exoteric and Esoteric Religion 94 1 Wallis Budge, Christian Egyptosophist and Psychic Gramophone Needle 94 Chapter 3 Osiride Christology and Ancient Egyptian Psychology 100 1 The Passion of Osiris 100 2 The Ka of Rider Haggard: Ancient Egyptian Psychology 104 Chapter 4 Uroborus and Uraeus: Cyclical and Linear Time 115 Chapter 5 Mnemohistory and Metageography of Egypt 124 1 Moses and the Route of the Exodus 126 Chapter 6 An Archaeology of the Imaginal 130 1 Artefactual Fictions 130 Part 2 Isis Veiled: Romanticism and the New Romance 136 Introduction to Part 2 138 Chapter 7 The One God and Hidden Nature 147 1 Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ 147 Chapter 8 The Initiates of Sais 155 1 The Visions of Harmachis: Initiation, Anacalypsis and Gnosis 155 2 Kataphasis 156 3 Apophasis 159 4 Initiatic Death and Katabasis 159 5 Anacalypsis, Gnosis and Palingenesis 160 Chapter 9 The Ayesha Mythos and the Alchemical She 163 1 The Genesis of She 163 2 Ayesha and Kallikrates: Old Flames Never Die? 171 3 The Alchemical She 172 4 Érōs and Agápē: The Swedenborgian Androgyne 178 5 The Ayesha Mythos: Love, Sex and Death 182 6 The Ayesha Letters 190 Chapter 10 Romance and the Providential Aesthetic 197 1 Haggard’s ‘Fatalism’ 198 Chapter 11 The Sublime and the Numinous 205 1 The Chiaroscuro of the Sublime 205 2 Landscape and Geopiety 211 Chapter 12 The Noetic Organ of Imagination 215 1 ‘Empire of the Imagination’? On the Death of an Old Trope 216 2 The Imagination and Reason: Coleridge, Milton, and Kant 218 3 A Theology of the Imagination 221 4 Bulwer-Lytton, Blavatsky and Haggard: A Triangle of Art 222 5 The Occult Lore of Zanoni, Dawn and She: Natural Supernaturalism 226 Part 3 Isis Unveiled: Theosophy from Theosophia Antiqua to Religious Pluralism 230 Introduction to Part 3 232 Chapter 13 Graven Images: Victorian Constructions of Buddhism 235 1 Doctrinal Approximations and Hybridity 239 2 Patristic Theories of Soul Origin 245 3 Divide et Impera? Comparison and Dialogue 247 4 Buddha and Christ 250 5 Haggard’s Logos Theology: Friedrich Max Müller and Religionswissenschaft 252 Chapter 14 Egyptian Hermes in England 255 Chapter 15 Occult Science 261 1 Experiments of Youth: Spiritualism or Spiritism? 261 2 Theosophical Allusions 264 3 Haggard’s Reception of Theosophy 265 4 Monads 266 5 Devachan 266 6 Mahatmas 267 7 Psychometry and the Clairvoyant Imagination 269 8 Reincarnation and Cyclical Ascendant Metempsychosis: The Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial 271 9 Paulinism in Blavatsky and Haggard 273 10 The Theosophical Reception of Haggard 275 11 Contemporary Dialogues: The Aporia of Science and Religion – ‘Have We Lived on Earth Before? Shall We Live on Earth Again?’ 281 Chapter 16 Reincarnation and Related Concepts 294 1 Figura and Typos: Figural Phenomenal Prophecy, Pauline Typology and Hermeneutics 297 2 Sympathie and Innate Affinities 304 Chapter 17 The Cartography of the Lost World 306 1 Empire of Religion: Victorian Anthropology and the Rise of Comparative Religious Studies 306 2 Andrew Lang, Psycho-folklorist 308 3 uNkulunkulu and Inkosazana-y-Zulu: Haggard on Zulu Spirituality 313 4 Bishop Colenso’s Mission 323 5 Phoenician Zimbabwe and Biblical Ophir 326 6 Haggard and Atlantis: Theosophical Esoteric Ethnology 331 Chapter 18 The Truth of the Metaphysical Novel 335 1 Bulwer-Lytton and Rider Haggard on Fiction 335 2 Myth with Footnotes 340 3 Biblical Narratives and the Metaphysical Novel 343 Conclusions 346 Appendices 360 Appendix 1 Letter to E. Coleman Rashleigh, 3 January 1920 362 Appendix 2 Letter to Miss Kaye-Smith, 7 November 1921 365 Bibliography 372 Archival Materials 372 Published Material 374 Primary Sources 374 Secondary Sources 384 Index 400 In Rider Haggard and the Imperial Occult , Simon Magus offers the first academic monograph on the world of occult thought which lies behind and beneath the fictional writing of H. Rider Haggard. It engages with a broad scope of religious, philosophical and anthropological ideas. Many of these were involved in debates within the controversies of the Anglican Church, which occurred in the face of Darwinism, and the criticism of the Bible. The book follows three main intellectual currents involved in the promulgation of these ideas, namely the reception of ancient Egypt, the resurgence of Romanticism and the ideas of the Theosophical Society, all couched within the context of Empire "This book critically examines the literary oeuvre of H. Rider Haggard, placing it in the nineteenth- century occult milieu in which he wrote, and from which he took ideas which remained with him into the first decades of the twentieth century. Building upon earlier trajectories of Haggard studies, notably postcolonialist, psychoanalytic, and feminist platforms, it critiques and nuances these whilst taking a novel approach in elucidating the religio- philosophical and esoteric ideas which are prolific in his work"-- Provided by publisher