Rider Haggard and the Imperial Occult

Dr Simon Magus is a psychiatrist practising in London. He studied Medicine at what is now the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. He holds an MA and PhD in Western Esotericism from the University of Exeter.

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroduction1 Methodological Reflections and Considerations1.1 Hermeneutics and Historicism: Appropriation1.2 Nachleben, Mnemohistory and Reception1.3 Narratology and Intertextuality1.4 Methodological Agnosticism and Empirico-Criticism2 Critical and Theoretical Framework2.1 The Narratives of Religious Legitimisation are as Follows:2.2 Intellectual Currents2.3 Principal Ideas.3 Prolegomena3.1 A New Trajectory3.2 Haggard’s Theological Discourse3.3 The Theological Overture to Imperial Occultism; Anglican Scholasticism: Essays and Reviews (1860) and the Anti-Essayist Responsa3.4 Religious Dynamics under Imperialism3.5 East is East? The Imperial Occult and the East-West Discourse3.6 Hermetic Discourse3.7 Of Orchids and Ostriches: Biographical Notes and Preliminary Critique3.8 Haggard’s Language Skills3.9 New Imperialism, New Journalism and New Romance3.10 The Fin-de-Siècle Occult Milieu3.11 Research QuestionsPART 1The Veil of Isis: Christian Egyptosophy and Victorian Egyptology1 Introduction to Part 11 Atenism1 Moses and Akhenaten2 Amarnamania2 Original MonotheismExoteric and Esoteric Religion1 Wallis Budge, Christian Egyptosophist and Psychic Gramophone Needle3 Osiride Christology and Ancient Egyptian Psychology1 The Passion of Osiris2 The Ka of Rider Haggard: Ancient Egyptian Psychology4 Uroborus and UraeusCyclical and Linear Time5 Mnemohistory and Metageography of Egypt1 Moses and the Route of the Exodus6 An Archaeology of the Imaginal1 Artefactual FictionsPART 2Isis Veiled: Romanticism and the New Romance1 Introduction to Part 27 The One God and Hidden Nature1 Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ.8 The Initiates of Sais1 The Visions of Harmachis: Initiation, Anacalypsis and Gnosis2 Kataphasis3 Apophasis4 Initiatic Death and Katabasis5 Anacalypsis, Gnosis and Palingenesis9 The Ayesha Mythos and the Alchemical She1 The Genesis of She2 Ayesha and Kallikrates: Old Flames Never Die?3 The Alchemical She4 Érōs and Agápē: The Swedenborgian Androgyne5 The Ayesha Mythos: Love, Sex and Death6 The Ayesha Letters7 (Curtain Fall for an Interval of Two Thousand Years).10 Romance and the Providential Aesthetic1 Haggard’s ‘Fatalism’11 The Sublime and the Numinous1 The Chiaroscuro of the Sublime2 Landscape and Geopiety12 The Noetic Organ of Imagination1 ‘Empire of the Imagination’? On the Death of an Old Trope.2 The Imagination and Reason: Coleridge, Milton, and Kant3 A Theology of the Imagination4 Bulwer-Lytton, Blavatsky and Haggard: A Triangle of Art5 The Occult lore of Zanoni, Dawn and She: Natural SupernaturalismPART 3Isis Unveiled: Theosophy: From Theosophia Antiqua to Religious Pluralism1 Introduction to Part 313 Graven ImagesVictorian Constructions of Buddhism1 Doctrinal Approximations and Hybridity2 Patristic Theories of Soul Origin3 Divide et Impera? Comparison and Dialogue4 Buddha and Christ5 Haggard’s Logos Theology: Friedrich Max Müller and Religionswissenschaft14 Egyptian Hermes in England15 Occult Science1 Experiments of Youth: Spiritualism or Spiritism?2 Theosophical Allusions3 Haggard’s Reception of Theosophy4 Monads5 Devachan6 Mahatmas7 Psychometry and the Clairvoyant Imagination8 Reincarnation and Cyclical Ascendant Metempsychosis: The Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial9 Paulinism in Blavatsky and Haggard10 The Theosophical Reception of Haggard11 Contemporary Dialogues: The Aporia of Science and Religion: ‘Have We Lived on Earth before? Shall We Live on Earth Again?’16 Reincarnation and Related Concepts1 Figura and Typos: Figural Phenomenal Prophecy, Pauline Typology and Hermeneutics2 Sympathie and Innate Affinities17 The Cartography of the Lost World1 Empire of Religion: Victorian Anthropology and the Rise of Comparative Religious Studies2 Andrew Lang, Psycho-Folklorist3 uNkulunkulu and Inkosazana-y-Zulu: Haggard on Zulu Spirituality4 Bishop Colenso’s Mission5 Phoenician Zimbabwe and Biblical Ophir6 Haggard and Atlantis: Theosophical Esoteric Ethnology18 The Truth of the Metaphysical Novel1 Bulwer-Lytton and Rider Haggard on Fiction2 Myth with Footnotes3 Biblical Narratives and the Metaphysical NovelConclusionsAppendicesAppendix 1 Letter to E. Coleman Rashleigh, 3 January 1920.Appendix 2 Letter to Miss Kaye – Smith, 7 November 1921.BibliographyIndex