New Antiquities; Transformations of Ancient Religion in the New Age and Beyond; Dylan Burns; Almut-Barbara Renger

Edited by

Dylan Michael Burns [+–]

Freie Universität Berlin

Dylan M. Burns is a research associate at the Egyptological Seminar, Freie Universität Berlin. Co-chair of the Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism program unit at the Society of Biblical Literature, he is the author of Apocalypse of the Alien God: Platonism and the Exile of Sethian Gnosticism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), and collaborative editor of Gnosticism, Platonism, and the Late Ancient World: Essays in Honour of John D. Turner (Brill, 2013). Since 2013, he has served as project manager for the digital lexicography project Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic.

Almut-Barbara Renger [+–]

Freie Universität Berlin

Almut-Barbara Renger is Professor of Ancient Religion and Culture and Their Reception History at the Institute for the Scientific Study of Religion at Freie Universität Berlin since 2008, and Associate Fellow in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University since 2011. After earning a M.A. from Freie Universität Berlin involving several years of studies at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Stanford University, she obtained a Ph.D. from Heidelberg University in 2001, and completed her habilitation at Frankfurt University in 2009. Her research concentrates on the reception of Greco-Roman antiquity, diverse aspects of cultural and religious theory, dynamics in the history of religions between Asia, Europe and America, and the relationship of religion and literature.

Drawing from the disciplines of religious studies, archaeology, history, philology, and anthropology, New Antiquities explores a diversity of cultic and geographic milieus, ranging from Goddess Spirituality to Neo-Gnosticism, from rural Oregon to the former Yugoslavia. As a survey of the reception of ancient religious works, figures, and ideas in later twentieth-century and contemporary alternative religious practice, New Antiquities will interest classicists, Egyptologists, and historians of religion of many stripes, particularly those focused on modern Theosophy, Gnosticism, Neopaganism, New Religious Movements, Magick, and Occulture. The book is written in a lively and engaging style that will appeal to professional scholars and advanced undergraduates as well as lay scholars.

Preliminaries

Acknowledgements [+–] vii

Dylan Michael Burns,Almut-Barbara Renger FREE

Freie Universität Berlin

Just as we speak of “dead” languages, we say that religions “die out.” Yet sometimes, people try to revive them, today more than ever. New Antiquities addresses this phenomenon through critical examination of how individuals and groups appeal to, reconceptualize, and reinvent the religious world of the ancient Mediterranean as they attempt to legitimize developments in contemporary religious culture and associated activity. Drawing from the disciplines of religious studies, archaeology, history, philology, and anthropology, New Antiquities explores a diversity of cultic and geographic milieus, ranging from Goddess Spirituality to Neo-Gnosticism, from rural Oregon to the former Yugoslavia. As a survey of the reception of ancient religious works, figures, and ideas in later twentieth-century and contemporary alternative religious practice, New Antiquities will interest classicists, Egyptologists, and historians of religion of many stripes, particularly those focused on modern Theosophy, Gnosticism, Neopaganism, New Religious Movements, Magick, and Occulture. The book is written in a lively and engaging style that will appeal to professional scholars and advanced undergraduates as well as lay scholars.

Introduction: What are New Antiquities? [+–] 1-13

Dylan Michael Burns,Almut-Barbara Renger £17.50

Freie Universität Berlin

The myriad and potent effects of Mediterranean antiquity in a diversity of cultural and social contexts constitutes a field of research which for some decades has been known as ‘(Classical) reception studies.’ The present volume, which contains the fruits of the 2014 workshop “New Antiquities” (see below), departs from this scholarly enterprise in examining what we have called “Transformations of Ancient Religion.”

‘From Aphrodite to Kuan Yin’ – ‘The Tao of Venus’ and its Modern Genealogy: Invoking Ancient Goddesses in Cos(met)ic Acupuncture [+–] 14-49

Almut-Barbara Renger £17.50

Freie Universität Berlin

A recent development of the commercialization of New Age religiosity is the combination of ancient Asian traditions with elements of European history—even ancient mythography—and modern psychotherapy, on the assumption, increasingly prevalent since 1800, of a common origin of all religions. The original Asian methods and their religious and philosophical contexts are reinterpreted to make them compatible with the cognitive habits and needs of modern Western recipients, particularly as regards the contemporary ideal of beauty and youth.

Ancient Goddesses for Modern Times or New Goddesses from Ancient Times? [+–] 50-75

Meret Fehlmann £17.50

University of Zürich

Meret Fehlmann is employed at the University of Zürich, where she studied Folklore (Popular Culture Studies), European Folk Literature (Popular Literature and Media), and German Literature and wrote a doctoral thesis on matriarchy, Die Rede vom Matriarchat. Zur Gebrauchsgeschichte eines Arguments (Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2011). Her research and teaching interests cover matriarchy, spirituality, prehistoric fiction, popular literature, and children’s literature. She is co-editor of the open-access journal kids+media (http://www.kids-media.uzh.ch), and since 2013 has been review editor for the journal Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde.

This paper deals with the way the goddess(es) of ancient Crete and Greece are imagined and reappropriated in the feminist spirituality movement. It offers an overview over the different metamorphoses of these ancient goddesses in the twentieth century, and takes a closer look at the goddess-related work of Carol P. Christ.

The Artifice of Daidalos: Modern Minoica as Religious Focus in Contemporary Paganism [+–] 76-102

Caroline Jane Tully £17.50

University of Melbourne

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Caroline Tully is an archaeologist at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include religion and ritual in the Aegean Bronze Age, reception of the ancient world, and contemporary Paganisms. She is the author of The Cultic Life of Trees in the Prehistoric Aegean, Levant, Egypt and Cyprus (Peeters 2018) and many academic and popular articles.

This paper examines the representation of Minoan Crete within the feminist Goddess Movement, separatist, feminist, Dianic Witchcraft, and the male-only Minoan Brotherhood. Analysis and critique of the matriarchalist understanding of Minoan material culture by these groups demonstrates that it is interpreted in a highly ideological manner that has little to do with actual Minoan religion.

Transforming Deities: Modern Pagan Projects of Revival and Reinvention [+–] 103-126

Kathryn Rountree £17.50

Massey University

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Kathryn Rountree is Professor of Anthropology in the School of People, Environment and Planning at Massey University, Auckland. She is a social anthropologist with a background in archaeology. Her publications focus on contemporary Paganism in Malta and Europe more widely, Pagan engagements with archaeological discourses and ancient sites, and the relationship between religion and science. Recent books include the edited volumes Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe (2015), Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Modern Paganism (2016), and Archaeology of Spiritualities (with Christine Morris and Alan Peatfield, 2012).

This chapter examines a variety of ways in which deities from the ancient Mediterranean have been re-appropriated, re-interpreted, transformed, and invented for contemporary religious and socio-political purposes by local Pagan communities—especially in Greece, Italy, Iberia, and Malta—and by followers of the global Goddess spirituality movement.

Archaeology, Historicity and Homosexuality in the New Cultus of Antinous: Perceptions of the Past in a Contemporary Pagan Religion [+–] 127-148

Ethan Doyle White £17.50

University College London

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Ethan Doyle White has a PhD in medieval history and archaeology from University College London and has written extensively on modern Paganism and related forms of esotericism. His publications include Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Sussex Academic Press, 2016), Pagans: The Visual Culture of Pagan Myths, Legends and Rituals (Thames and Hudson, 2023), and The New Witches of the West: Tradition, Liberation, and Power (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

In the second century, the Roman Emperor Hadrian deified his male lover, Antinous, after the latter drowned in the Nile. Antinous’ worship was revived in the late twentieth century, primarily by gay men and other queer-identified individuals, with Antinous himself being recast as ‘the Gay God.’

Reading History with the Essenes of Elmira [+–] 149-174

Anne Kreps £17.50

University of Oregon

Anne Kreps is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon. She completed her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan in 2013. Her research interests include Judaism and Christianity in antiquity, heresiography, and the reception history of para-biblical traditions.

This paper studies a modern Essene movement based in the United States for its unusual merging of New Age practice with Christian fundamentalism with ancient history. By harkening back to the mystical religions of the ancient Mediterranean, these modern Essenes are able to engage in syncretistic practices while claiming to preserve the traditions of the ancient Essenes.

The Jungian Gnosticism of the Ecclesia Gnostica [+–] 175-198

Olav Hammer £17.50

University of Southern Denmark

Olav Hammer is Professor of the Study of Religions at the University of Southern Denmark. His main areas of research are new religious movements and other non-traditional religious currents in the post-Enlightenment West. His most recent publication is Western Esotericism in Scandinavia (Brill, forthcoming in April 2016; edited with Henrik Bogdan).

The present chapter examines the ways in which Stephan Hoeller, head of the Ecclesia Gnostica, has transformed a very diverse set of late antique currents, with doctrines phrased in a mythic language unfamiliar to most moderns and rituals only sketchily documented in the sources, into a form of lived religiosity relevant for contemporary audiences.

The Impact of Scholarship on Contemporary “Gnosticism(s)”: A Case Study on the Apostolic Johannite Church and Jeremy Puma [+–] 199-223

Matthew Dillon £17.50

DePauw University

After finishing his PhD in the History of Religions in America (Rice University, 2017) he accepted a position as post-doctoral researcher and assistant professor of Religious Studies at DePauw University. His areas of research and teaching include American religions, history of Christianity, comparative religions, theory and method, and gnostic studies/ western esotericism. He specializes in the reception and impact of ancient Gnostic/Christian apocrypha in America.

This article examines the impact of academic discourses on Neo-Gnosticism. The identities and ritual practices of Neo-Gnostics are constructed with reference to Gnostic Studies. Analysis of two case studies (the Apostolic Johannite Church and Jeremy Puma) shows how academic discourse legitimizes, challenges, or reforms Gnostic identity in the twenty-first century.

Studying the “Gnostic Bible”: Samael Aun Weor and the Pistis Sophia [+–] 224-253

Franz Winter £17.50

University of Graz

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Franz Winter is professor and chair at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Graz in Austria. His research interest includes, amongst other areas, the history of Western Esotericism, contemporary religion and spirituality culture, and new religious movements (in Europe, the United States, and Asia). A recent major publication is the Handbook of East Asian New Religious Movements, co-edited with Lukas Pokorny and published with Brill, which was awarded an accolade in the category Social Sciences at the International Convention of Asia Scholars in 2019.

In 1983, a book entitled El Pistis Sophia Develado (Pistis Sophia Unveiled) by the Colombian esoteric writer Samael Aun Weor, born Víctor Manuel Gómez Rodríguez (1917–1977), was published posthumously. It is considered a commentary to an important ancient Gnostic text, Pistis Sophia, that is read according to the Neo-Gnostic teachings of the author. This article provides insight into Weor’s specific approach to this text and the ‘Procrustean bed’ of interpretation he applied to it.

Binding Images: The Contemporary Use and Efficacy of Late Antique Ritual Sigils, Spirit-Beings, and Design Elements [+–] 254-274

Jay Johnston £17.50

University of Sydney

Jay Johnston is an interdisciplinary scholar (religion, art history,
philosophy, gender and cultural studies) who investigates ritual and its use in
identity formation, healing practice and cultural exchange. She is particularly
interested in Late Antiquity; pre-1400 Scottish and Norse cultures,
complementary and alternative medicine and its historical precedents, and
human-animal-environment relations. Her publications include Religion and
the Subtle Body in Asia and the West (ed. with G. Samuel; Routledge, 2013) and Stag and Stone: Religion, Archaeology and Esoteric Aesthetics (Equinox, forthcoming 2017).

This chapter investigates the legacy and ‘re-use’ of image and design elements from Late-Antique ritual texts in contemporary magical practice. Examples are drawn from ‘The Theban Magical Library’ and The Books of Jeu (Codex Brucianus). The analysis includes consideration of epistemology, concepts of embodiment, and relation between image and text.

(Neo-)Bogomil Legends: The Gnosticizing Bogomils of the Twentieth-Century Balkans [+–] 275-303

Dylan Michael Burns,Nemanja Radulovic £17.50

Freie Universität Berlin

University of Belgrade

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Nemanja Radulović is associate professor of folk literature at Faculty of Philology (University of Belgrade, Department of Serbian and South Slavic Literatures). In addition to folklore, he researches the influence of esotericism on Serbian literature and culture.

This contribution examines two modern, ‘Neo-Bogomil’ groups: the Universal White Brotherhood (Bulgaria), and the Balkan Bogomil Center (Croatia). Both of these groups claim not only the authority of Bogomilism but ancient ‘Gnosticism,’ articulating these dualist heresies in terms of Theosophy as well as South-Eastern European religious and ethnic-national identities formulated in the later nineteenth century.

End Matter

Index [+–] 304

Dylan Michael Burns,Almut-Barbara Renger FREE

Freie Universität Berlin

Reviews

A set of successful and engaging contributions.

There are two main approaches visible to the appropriation and use of antiquities: while some scholars feel the need to expose “archaeological fantasies” as “inaccurate” … others explicitly abstain from such historical evaluation since “all religions change over time”. Having both approaches included in one volume is a major strength, not least because it raises important questions regarding the status of historical research and academic historical knowledge in the discipline called history of religions.
Numen

This book should be recommended to scholars of Western esotericism and new religious movements who are interested in traditional historiography. It will open a new discussion within classical reception studies, which up to this moment have not explored religion or esotericism in a comprehensive way.
Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism

This lively and informative collection of essays offers readers instructive examples to explain the continuing appeal of ancient religious traditions, but only when transformed to align with modern sensibilities. The collection does more than this, however: it presents a compelling case for understanding all modern forms of spirituality as “new antiquities,” and this includes the many varieties of contemporary Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on. However authentic, original, and traditional they claim to be, all are forms of modern bricolage constructed to deal with the intellectual, spiritual, and metaphysical conundrums accompanying cultural change.
As Steven Engler points out, “all tradition is genuine and all tradition is invented” (2005). A statement like this, together with this book and others like it, makes the rise of modern fundamentalisms with their insistence on the literal interpretation of religious texts and their divine authorship all the more interesting as psychological defenses against the indeterminacy of modern life.
Nova Religio

Introduces so far little researched groups and currents and delivers new and very interesting details. The book can be recommended for researchers dealing with Neo- paganism, New Age, Western Esotericism, and receptions of the classical tradition.
Religious Studies Review

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Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

New Antiquities

Transformations of Ancient Religion in the New Age and Beyond

Dylan Michael Burns [+–]

Freie Universität Berlin

Almut-Barbara Renger [+–]

Freie Universität Berlin

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