Subtle Body: A Genealogy (Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism)

Cover
The Subtle Body
Copyright
Contents
Foreword by Jeffrey J. Kripal
Acknowledgments
		Introduction: Restoring the Body of Light
	Resurrecting an Old Idea
	Morphologies of the Subtle Body
1. Vehicles of the Soul from Plato  to Philoponus
	Porphyry’s Compounded Vehicle
	The Divine Iamblichus
	Platonism in Theory and Practice
	Proclus: The Great Systematizer
	Damascius: The Last Scholarch
	John Philoponus and the Incredible Myth
2. The Body of Light in Renaissance England
	Subtle Bodies, Descartes, and Hobbes
	Ralph Cudworth’s Vehicles of the Soul
	Plastic Nature as Ontological Mediator
	Henry More’s Cosmology
	The Philosophical Romance of Joseph Glanvill
	Anne Conway’s Spiritual Monism
	Cambridge Kabbalah
	Arguing with Machines
3. Oriental Origins
	Chevalier de Ramsay
	Henry Thomas Colebrooke
	The Sheaths of Vedānta
	Beyond Colebrooke
	Müller’s Six Systems of Indian Philosophy
	Kuden: Day of the Samurai
4. The Wisdom of the Mahatmas
	Tibetological Foundations
	Helena Blavatsky and the Tibetan Mahatmas
	Subtle Embodiment in Isis Unveiled
	Subtle Bodies in The Secret Doctrine
	The Creolization of the Subtle Body
	Tibet beyond Blavatsky
	Kuden: The Secret Body of the Ninja
5. Theosophical Gnosis and Astral Hermeneutics
	Blavatsky’s Astral Bodies
	Annie Besant’s Esoteric Christianity
	Leadbeater’s Christian Gnosis
	G. R. S. Mead, the Subtle Body, and the Esoteric Tradition
	Gnostic Bodies Unleashed
6. Crowley, the Orient, and the Occult
	From Theosophy to Crowley-​Anity
	The Magus and the Orient
	Crowley’s Ontology?
	The Subtle Body in Practice
	From Creole to Hybrid
	Kuden: The Daoist Alchemical Body
7. The Alchemical Body of Carl Jung
	From Mead to Jung
	The Secret of the Golden Flower
	Subtle Bodies: Top-​Down or Ground-​Up?
	The Yogas of India and Tibet
	Nietzsche, Snake, and Eagle
	Subtle Body and Eschaton
	Kuden: The Tibetan Vajra Body
8. From Eranos to Esalen
	The Religion of No-​Religion
	Stanford Counterculture
	Out of Esalen
		Conclusion: What Is the Subtle Body?
	Radical Somatic Mutability
	Last Thoughts on the Subtle Body
Bibliography
Index