Rider Haggard and the Imperial Occult Hermetic Discourse and Romantic Contiguity (Aries Book, 31)

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. Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Contents Foreword Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Methodological Reflections and Considerations 1.1 Hermeneutics and Historicism: Appropriation 1.2 Nachleben, Mnemohistory and Reception 1.3 Narratology and Intertextuality 1.4 Methodological Agnosticism and Empirico-Criticism 2 Critical and Theoretical Framework 2.1 Narratives of Religious Legitimisation 2.2 Intellectual Currents 2.3 Principal Ideas 3 Prolegomena 3.1 A New Trajectory 3.2 Haggard’s Theological Mise-en-Scène 3.3 The Theological Overture to Imperial Occultism; Anglican Scholasticism: Essays and Reviews (1860) and the Anti-essayist Responsa 3.4 Religious Dynamics under Imperialism 3.5 East Is East? The Imperial Occult and the East– West Dichotomy 3.6 Hermetic Discourse 3.7 Of Orchids and Ostriches: Biographical Notes and Preliminary Critique 3.8 Haggard’s Language Skills 3.9 New Imperialism, New Journalism and New Romance 3.10 The Fin-de-siècle Occult Milieu 3.11 Research Questions Part 1 The Veil of Isis: Christian Egyptosophy and Victorian Egyptology Introduction to Part 1 Chapter 1 Atenism 1 Moses and Akhenaten 2 Amarnamania Chapter 2 Original Monotheism: Exoteric and Esoteric Religion 1 Wallis Budge, Christian Egyptosophist and Psychic Gramophone Needle Chapter 3 Osiride Christology and Ancient Egyptian Psychology 1 The Passion of Osiris 2 The Ka of Rider Haggard: Ancient Egyptian Psychology Chapter 4 Uroborus and Uraeus: Cyclical and Linear Time Chapter 5 Mnemohistory and Metageography of Egypt 1 Moses and the Route of the Exodus Chapter 6 An Archaeology of the Imaginal 1 Artefactual Fictions Part 2 Isis Veiled: Romanticism and the New Romance Introduction to Part 2 Chapter 7 The One God and Hidden Nature 1 Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ Chapter 8 The Initiates of Sais 1 The Visions of Harmachis: Initiation, Anacalypsis and Gnosis 2 Kataphasis 3 Apophasis 4 Initiatic Death and Katabasis 5 Anacalypsis, Gnosis and Palingenesis Chapter 9 The Ayesha Mythos and the Alchemical She 1 The Genesis of She 2 Ayesha and Kallikrates: Old Flames Never Die? 3 The Alchemical She 4 Érōs and Agápē: The Swedenborgian Androgyne 5 The Ayesha Mythos: Love, Sex and Death 6 The Ayesha Letters Chapter 10 Romance and the Providential Aesthetic 1 Haggard’s ‘Fatalism’ Chapter 11 The Sublime and the Numinous 1 The Chiaroscuro of the Sublime 2 Landscape and Geopiety Chapter 12 The Noetic Organ of Imagination 1 ‘Empire of the Imagination’? On the Death of an Old Trope 2 The Imagination and Reason: Coleridge, Milton, and Kant 3 A Theology of the Imagination 4 Bulwer-Lytton, Blavatsky and Haggard: A Triangle of Art 5 The Occult Lore of Zanoni, Dawn and She: Natural Supernaturalism Part 3 Isis Unveiled: Theosophy from Theosophia Antiqua to Religious Pluralism Introduction to Part 3 Chapter 13 Graven Images: Victorian Constructions of Buddhism 1 Doctrinal Approximations and Hybridity 2 Patristic Theories of Soul Origin 3 Divide et Impera? Comparison and Dialogue 4 Buddha and Christ 5 Haggard’s Logos Theology: Friedrich Max Müller and Religionswissenschaft Chapter 14 Egyptian Hermes in England Chapter 15 Occult Science 1 Experiments of Youth: Spiritualism or Spiritism? 2 Theosophical Allusions 3 Haggard’s Reception of Theosophy 4 Monads 5 Devachan 6 Mahatmas 7 Psychometry and the Clairvoyant Imagination 8 Reincarnation and Cyclical Ascendant Metempsychosis: The Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial 9 Paulinism in Blavatsky and Haggard 10 The Theosophical Reception of Haggard 11 Contemporary Dialogues: The Aporia of Science and Religion – ‘Have We Lived on Earth Before? Shall We Live on Earth Again?’ Chapter 16 Reincarnation and Related Concepts 1 Figura and Typos: Figural Phenomenal Prophecy, Pauline Typology and Hermeneutics 2 Sympathie and Innate Affinities Chapter 17 The Cartography of the Lost World 1 Empire of Religion: Victorian Anthropology and the Rise of Comparative Religious Studies 2 Andrew Lang, Psycho-folklorist 3 uNkulunkulu and Inkosazana-y-Zulu: Haggard on Zulu Spirituality 4 Bishop Colenso’s Mission 5 Phoenician Zimbabwe and Biblical Ophir 6 Haggard and Atlantis: Theosophical Esoteric Ethnology Chapter 18 The Truth of the Metaphysical Novel 1 Bulwer-Lytton and Rider Haggard on Fiction 2 Myth with Footnotes 3 Biblical Narratives and the Metaphysical Novel Conclusions Appendices Appendix 1 Letter to E. Coleman Rashleigh, 3 January 1920 Appendix 2 Letter to Miss Kaye-Smith, 7 November 1921 Bibliography Archival Materials Published Material Primary Sources Secondary Sources Index "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