By far the most comprehensive reference work in Western esoteri-cism, and the logical starting point for reliable information and bibliographical references, is the Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, edited by Wouter J. Hanegraaff in collaboration with Antoine Faivre, Roelof van den Broek and Jean-Pierre Brach (Brill:
Leiden/Boston 2005; also available online). Since 2001, Brill also publishes the most important academic journal in the field, Aries:
Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (www.brill.nl/aries;
see also its predecessor, ARIES first series, published by La Table d’Emeraude in Paris from 1985 until 1999) and since 2006 there is a companion monograph series called the ‘Aries Book Series’ (www.
brill.nl/publications/aries-book-series). Another monograph series with a similar focus is called ‘Gnostica: Texts and Interpretations’
and is published by Equinox (www.equinoxpub.com). A mine of information is the French journal Politica Hermetica (L’Age d’Homme: Lausanne), published since 1987; and finally there is the online journal Esoterica (www.esoteric.msu.edu).
Several of the available textbook introductions to Western esotericism are dated or unreliable, and none of them is without its problems (for a critical overview, see Wouter J. Hanegraaff,
‘Textbooks and Introductions to Western Esotericism’, Religion 43 [2013]). Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s The Western Esoteric Traditions (Oxford University Press: Oxford/New York 2008) is strongest for the period from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, and mostly reliable as a source of factual information. Readers should be aware of a religionist subtext that implicitly minimizes the importance of historical context, change and innovation in order to present ‘the Western esoteric traditions’ as one single, enduring worldview or spiritual per-spective, defined by ‘intrinsic philosophical and religious char-acteristics’ and ultimately grounded, according to the author, in
‘spirit and spirituality as an independent ontological reality’ (o.c., 4, 12–13). Antoine Faivre’s Western Esotericism (SUNY Press:
Albany 2010) is written by the foremost scholar of his genera-tion, and factually quite reliable. Disadvantages are its extreme brevity and the less-than-satisfactory quality of the English trans-lation (the French original, titled L’ésotérisme [4th edn, Presses Universitaires de France: Paris 2006] should remain the first choice for readers who can read the language). Most striking about Faivre’s overview is his emphasis on esotericism as a form of ‘imaginary’ (imaginaire) that relies primarily on mythical and symbolical forms of expression; and in line with this emphasis, he gives generous attention to how esotericism appears in litera-ture and the arts. Reflecting an unusual level of erudition, he manages (in spite of the book’s brevity) to mention quite some lesser-known figures and references, and this makes his introduc-tion a useful resource for readers who want to throw a glance beyond the obvious ‘big names’.
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Apart from introductory textbooks, general works devoted to Western esotericism are very rare. Pierre Riffard’s early L’ésotérisme (Robert Laffont: Paris 1990) is intelligent and erudite, but based upon an extreme form of religionism that makes it incompatible with current approaches. Antoine Faivre’s two volumes of col-lected articles, Access to Western Esotericism and Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition (SUNY Press: Albany 1994 and 2000), contain general discussions of method and theory, detailed analyses of selected figures and topics (with a strong emphasis on Christian theosophy and Illuminism) and, last but not least, detailed biblio-graphical guides for research. Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s Esotericism and the Academy (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2012) is a history of how ‘Western esotericism’ has been imagined and conceptualized in intellectual discourse from the Renaissance to the present, and lays the theoretical groundwork for the perspec-tive on esotericism that is basic to this ‘Guide for the Perplexed’.
Some chronological overviews of Western esotericism are avail-able in the form of multi-author volumes. The two chief exam-ples are Modern Esoteric Spirituality (eds Antoine Faivre &
Jacob Needleman; Crossroad: New York 1992) and Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times (eds Roelof van den Broek & Wouter J. Hanegraaff; SUNY Press: Albany 1998).
An extraordinary collection of scholarship in three languages (English, French, German) is the large Festschrift for Antoine Faivre, Ésotérisme, Gnoses & Imaginaire symbolique (eds Richard Caron, Joscelyn Godwin, Wouter J. Hanegraaff & Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron; Peeters: Louvain 2001).
The rapid development of research on Western esotericism in recent years is documented by a series of thematic volumes that con-tain a wealth of scholarship on many different themes and aspects.
Notable examples are Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and its Others (eds Olav Hammer & Kocku von Stuckrad; Brill:
Leiden/Boston 2007); Esotericism, Art, and Imagination (eds Arthur Versluis, Lee Irwin, John Richards & Melinda Weinstein;
Michigan State University Press: East Lansing 2008); Esotericism, Religion, and Nature (eds Arthur Versluis, Claire Fanger, Lee Irwin & Melinda Phillips; North American Academic Press:
East Lansing 2009); Constructing Tradition: Means and Myths of Transmission in Western Esotericism (ed. Andreas B. Kilcher;
Brill: Leiden/Boston 2010); Die Enzyklopädik der Esoterik (eds
Andreas B. Kilcher & Philipp Theisohn; Wilhelm Fink: Munich 2010); and Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism (eds Wouter J. Hanegraaff & Jeffrey J.
Kripal; Fordham University Press: New York 2011).
Finally, some useful bibliographies are available. Those in Faivre’s two monographs of 1994 and 2000 are strongly recom-mended. A virtually inexhaustible source of titles on ‘the occult’ up to the beginning of the twentieth century can be found in Albert L. Caillet, Manuel bibliographique des sciences psychiques ou occultes, 3 vols, Lucien Dorbon: Paris 1912. A useful short guide through the labyrinth, up to 1970, is Robert Galbreath, ‘The History of Modern Occultism: A Bibliographical Survey’, Journal of Popular Culture 5 (1971), 726–54.