Western Esotericism Family Tree

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CREDITS:
Chart & Narration by Matt Baker
Animation by Syawish Rehman
Audio editing by Ali Shahwaiz

[UsefulCharts]

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[TheEsotericaChannel]

Thanks for the shout-out, Dr. Baker! Would love to work on something together at some point.

[Jack-]

Learning that the word “mesmerize” comes from a person is mind-blowing

[rattuna]

One major influence missing is Carl Jung. Jungian psychology has had a HUGE impact on esotericism in the west. Concepts like the shadow, the animus and anima, dream divination, the collective unconscious, and archetypes have been popularized or created by Jung and his work is extremely influential.

[drangelapuca]

Thank you so much for the mention, Matt. It would be lovely to collaborate with you. 🥰🙏

[elkhamlichi]

UsefulCharts has uploaded, time to stop everything I'm doing

[MultiWeb]

Many foreigners don't know it, but Brazil is an extremely spiritual country and I'm not talking only about Christianity, but there are many esoteric groups. Spiritism is one of the largest religions in Brazil, even though it started in France, and it's quite amazing

[johnkrneta]

Wow. Matt, you have outdone yourself!
What vast research, succinctly tied together, and well laid-out.
I especially like the blue streaming borders that guides our eyes to the box being discussed.

[cyclonicleo]

Its great to finally have some structure to these movements. Cheers!

[roanokebeilschmidt]

Heck yeah, Hellenic Reconstruction represented! It's interesting that you contrast Reconstruction with Eclecticism; in many Reconstructionist spaces (at least Norse and Hellenism, not sure about Celtic), there's usually a greater focus on contrasting Recon with Revivalism, which is a spectrum that moves from trying to replicate an ancient religion exactly to making more and more concessions to try to modernize it, which sometimes involves bringing in practices from the traditions you've labelled as eclectic, though not always. A lot of Reconstructionists might push back on being grouped with traditions like Wicca under Neo-Paganism. While some of us call ourselves Pagans (though many prefer just polytheist or reconstructionist), within our communities, we usually use Neo-Paganism specifically to mean those eclectic traditions like Wicca that we think of as an out-group, never for ourselves. Overall, it's just an interesting look at how language is used academically vs by adherents.

Also, I'm so sorry for the amount of flak you're going to get for (correctly, imo) including the LDS Church on this chart.

Thank you for making this chart! It's awesome, and I love it!

[tommy-erhh]

Something else to consider: slave religions. here is an incomplete list:
- Haiti Vodou/Voudoux - from the Creole French "Vaudoux"
- related but different is Louisiana voodoo
- another variation is USA hoodoo ("conjure")

- Cuban Santeria/Regla de Ocha,  Regla Lucumí, or Lucumí
- Jamaican Obeah, or Obayi and
- related Jamaican Myalism

In Brasil there seems to be four distinct movements,
-Candomble of Bahia and the northeast
-Spiritism of Rio (i am not sure if it is the same mentioned in this video or not)
-Umbanda in the urban centers not influenced by Bahia
-Quimbanda a form of black magic that is practiced clandestinely everywhere.

i think there are more i have not run across

[romad]

Makes "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius" by The Fifth Dimension understandable.

[choninja]

Not talking about the historical wizard duel that Alister Crowley was involved in is a glaring omission

[Jack]

Perfect channel reccomendations for this topic. Two excellent and scholarly creators making content on this field

[keetaya]

Thanks for this one. I hope we could soon see an Eastern Esotericism chart as well. It'd be weird if you can explain Witchdoctoring practices in Sri Lanka 😶

Also, for folks who like to delve in to these different esoteric groups in an academtic setting, suggest to see courses produced by "The Great Courses" taught by Professor Richard Spence - Secrets of the Occult is one of my absoulte favorites. He is actually an expert on Aliester Crawly.

[nataliekelly]

Yes yes yes, been waiting for this one, thank you!

[kristinwright]

Super interesting to see how all these esoteric orders interrelate. My dad was a Master Mason and a Grand Master so you can imagine how my upbringing went. Yep, lodge rat. I had a real love for ritual of the Masonic style but I didn't want to become Eastern Star or Nile. I instead had the bright idea of converting to Mormonism which I thought was an esoteric religion. Boy was I wrong. I rather realized it when I went for my endowments and found the ritual to be a watered down and rather culty programming version of Freemasonry, complete with some rather familiar looking grips and signs. I left after four years and forgot about any kind of esoteric work, moving instead into various forms of neoPaganism. I did get into solo study of the Hermetic Qabala. Finally I stumbled on a group of ceremonial magicians and realized I had finally found my home. After 25 years I still work the Western Magical path and find it fulfilling.

[Loasdrums]

I feel like New Age deserves it's own chart with all of the influences it pulls from.

[traviswadezinn]

Good job - there's more to do, numerous Kabbalahist schools, Christian Esoteric and Mystical currents, Esoteric Islam, Christian Hermeticism. We have other inheritors of the Rosicrucian Enlightenment also, such as the Moravian Church. Good job.

[orkoarko]

This is fantastic! Thanks for your input and work!