Esoteric modernism

According to Tom Hodd, “scholars have grossly ignored any relation the Modernists held to pagan religions, and in some instances, have blatantly denied the existence of a ‘secret tradition’ in Modernist literature” (Hodd 2010). This essay examines the incorporation of that secret tradition of esotericism—Spiritualism, Theosophy, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, and Alchemy—into the lit-erary texts of Harlem Renaissance writers. And it argues that the esoteric teachers G.I. Gurdjieff and his New York agent A.R. Orage were directly respon-sible for the infusion of occultism into a new form of black writing. Hodd fur-ther comments that “occult scholarship is highly specialized and demands considerable foreknowledge from its readers (perhaps this is part of the reason why occult scholarship has remained on the periphery of Modernist criticism)” (Hodd 2010, 115)The Harlem Renaissance as Esotericism: Black Oragean Modernism In: Esotericism in African American Religious Experience Author: Jon Woodson Type: Chapter Pages: 102–122 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004283428_008 https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004283428/B9789004283428-s008.xml