Esotericism Unit
Esotericism Unit AAR 2026 CFP
DIVINATION: QUERYING TIME ACCROSS SPACE
Divination is among the most ancient and widespread religious practices, but within many major religious traditions, divinatory practice is either prohibited outright or tightly controlled. This marginalization and prohibition of divination systems makes them an excellent subject for the methods of the study of esotericism. In keeping with the Presidential Theme for 2026, FUTURE/S, the Esotericism Unit invites papers exploring novel approaches to the study of divination in any tradition or context. The unit welcomes papers on any divination practice, and we especially welcome papers exploring the divination traditions from global context that are not often studied under the rubric of esotericism: global Indigenous traditions, like the Xooy tradition of the Serer people, divination systems from east Asia and south Asia, like the Jyotisha system of Vedic astrology, or African systems like Ifá. We encourage papers that explore both the cultural status (be they secret, public, regulated, prestigious, criminal, popular, countercultural, gendered, racialized, classed, etc.) and the materiality of the knowledge of the future/s that these systems offer.
1776 AND BEYOND: ESOTERICISM, REVOLUTION, NATIONALISM
In the Philadelphia novelist George Lippard’s 1848 esoteric novel Paul Ardenheim, the birth of George Washington and the founding of the United States were fictionalized as the result of a millennium-long conspiracy to usher in a new era of global peace by an esoteric order calling itself “the Congress of Brotherhood.” While Lippard’s novel was fiction, it has fueled widespread belief in the origin of the United States as the project of an esoteric secret society. The Esotericism Unit invites papers that explore esoteric knowledge and practice as a component of revolutionary and nationalist projects throughout history and today. This can include but is not limited to: papers examining esoteric ideas as sources of founding myths or national identity in political movements; esotericism itself as a countercultural or revolutionary modality (for example, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī’s use of Freemasonry as a base for anticolonial political activism, or Illuminism in the European Enlightenment and French Revolution); esoteric understandings of a nation’s (or a people’s) spiritual relationship with land or specific territory, and the role of esotericism in the emergent global right.
ESOTERICISM AND DRUGS: Co-Sponsored Session with the Religion and Drugs Unit
While drug use has been an important part of religious practice throughout human history, both religious and legal prohibitions have relegated many forms of religious drug use to the margins of religious culture. The Esotericism Unit and the Religion and Drugs Unit welcome papers on the relationship between esotericism and drugs, with both categories open to capacious interpretation.
The purpose of this unit is to promote, expand, and constructively critique the academic study of esotericism. “Esotericism” is now conventionally seen as an umbrella term covering a range of historical currents associated with notions of “hidden knowledge” that have been conceived of – by historical actors or by later scholars – as “alternative” to or “rejected” by established religious institutions in Europe and beyond. In this sense it typically includes a wide range of currents such as Gnosticism, Hermetism, and theurgy, occult sciences and ritual magical traditions, Paracelsism and Rosicrucianism, Mesmerism, spiritualism, and Theosophy, and various forms of “alternative” spirituality. The unit continues to supports new work on all aspects of such currents, from antiquity to the present day. However, it specifically encourages work that 1) challenges the cultural and geographic demarcations of the field by looking at esotericism in e.g. Islamic and Jewish contexts, colonial and post-colonial societies (e.g. India, South America, Africa, the Pacific); 2) seeks new ways to engage in cross-cultural comparisons of esoteric practices and discourses; and 3) explores innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to esotericism and interrogates key terms in the field (e.g. esotericism, gnosis, secrecy, initiation, marginality and rejectedness). By encouraging such work, the unit is committed to refining “esotericism” as a critical concept in the study of religion, and opening up and expanding the field through an engagement with other disciplines and theoretical perspectives.