The Subtle Body

A Genealogy

Inbunden, Engelska, 2022

AvSimon Cox

1 449 kr

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How does the soul relate to the body? Through the ages, innumerable religious and intellectual movements have proposed answers to this question. Many have gravitated to the notion of the "subtle body," positing some sort of subtle entity that is neither soul nor body, but some mixture of the two. Simon Cox traces the history of this idea from the late Roman Empire to the present day, touching on how philosophers, wizards, scholars, occultists, psychologists, and mystics have engaged with the idea over the past two thousand years.This study is an intellectual history of the subtle body concept from its origins in late antiquity through the Renaissance into the Euro-American counterculture of the 1960's and 70's. It begins with a prehistory of the idea, rooted as it is in third-century Neoplatonism. It then proceeds to the signifier "subtle body" in its earliest English uses amongst the Cambridge Platonists. After that, it looks forward to those Orientalist fathers of Indology, who, in their earliest translations of Sanskrit philosophy relied heavily on the Cambridge Platonist lexicon, and thereby brought Indian philosophy into what had hitherto been a distinctly platonic discourse. At this point, the story takes a little reflexive stroll into the source of the author's own interest in this strange concept, looking at Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical import, expression, and popularization of the concept. Cox then zeroes in on Aleister Crowley, focusing on the subtle body in fin de siÃ¨cle occultism. Finally, he turns to Carl Jung, his colleague Frederic Spiegelberg, and the popularization of the idea of the subtle body in the Euro-American counterculture. This book is for anyone interested in yogic, somatic, or energetic practices, and will be very useful to scholars and area specialists who rely on this term in dealing with Hindu, Daoist, and Buddhist texts.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2022-08-16
Mått164 x 239 x 26 mm
Vikt499 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieOxford Studies in Western Esotericism
Antal sidor244
FörlagOUP USA
ISBN9780197581032

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Introduction: Restoring the Body of Light 1. Resurrecting an Old Idea2. Morphologies of the Subtle Body Chapter One: Vehicles of the Soul from Plato to Philoponus 1. Porphyry's Compounded Vehicle2. The Divine Iamblichus3. Platonism in Theory and Practice4. Proclus: The Great Systematizer5. Damascius: The Last Scholarch6. John Philoponus and the Incredible Myth Chapter Two: The Body of Light in Renaissance England 1. Subtle Bodies, Descartes, and Hobbes2. Ralph Cudworth's Vehicles of the Soul3. Plastick Nature as Ontological Mediator4. Henry More's Cosmology5. The Philosophical Romance of Joseph Glanvill6. Anne Conway's Spiritual Monism7. Cambridge Kabbalah8. Arguing with Machines Chapter Three: Oriental Origins 1. Chevalier de Ramsay and Chinese Orientalism2. Henry Thomas Colebrooke3. The Sheaths of Vedanta4. Beyond Colebrooke5. Max Müller's Six Systems Kuden: Day of the Samurai Chapter Four: The Wisdom of the Mahatmas 1. Tibetological Foundations2. Helena Blavatsky and the Tibetan Mahatmas3. Subtle Embodiment in Isis Unveiled4. Subtle Bodies in The Secret Doctrine5. The Creolization of the Subtle Body6. Tibet Beyond Blavatsky Kuden: The Secret Body of the Ninja Chapter Five: Theosophical Gnosis and Astral Hermeneutics 1. Blavatsky's Astral Bodies2. Annie Besant's Esoteric Christianity3. Leadbeater's Christian Gnosis4. G.R.S. Mead, the Subtle Body, and the Esoteric Tradition5. Gnostic Bodies Unleashed Chapter Six: Crowley, Orient, and Occult 1. From Theosophy to Crowleyanity2. The Magus and the Orient3. Crowley's Ontology?4. The Subtle Body in Practice5. From Creole to Hybrid Kuden: The Daoist Alchemical Body Chapter Seven: The Alchemical Body of Carl Jung 1. From Mead to Jung2. The Secret of the Golden Flower3. Subtle Bodies Top-Down or Ground-Up?4. The Yogas of India and Tibet5. Nietzsche, Snake, and Eagle6. Subtle Body and Eschaton Kuden: The Tibetan Vajra Body Chapter Eight: From Eranos to Esalen 1. The Religion of No-Religion2. Stanford Counterculture3. Out of Esalen Conclusion: What is the Subtle Body? 1. Radical Somatic Mutability2. Last Thoughts on the Subtle Body Bibliography

Finally—a book that tracks the idea of a subtle body within Western history. Cox starts from early Greek formulations of a subtle body through its renaissance renditions up through the especially fruitful period of modernity, with the West's extensive borrowing from Indian traditions, to offer a history of how we acquired that ubiquitous phantasm of the new-age subtle body. With his own story interspersed, Cox's delightful history captivates throughout.