Coome, Christopher (Postdoctoral Fellow, Postdoctoral Fellow, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University)

The Foundations of Re-Enchantment: Freemasonry, Theosophy, and the Occult Revival - Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism Coome, Christopher (Postdoctoral Fellow, Postdoctoral Fellow, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University)

In Foundations of Re-Enchantment, Christopher Coome tells an immersive and compelling story of the remarkable emergence of occult orginzations at the turn of the 19th century. He chronicles how major occult sodalities grew like ripples: the Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn, the Anthroposophical Society, and the Ordo Templi Orientis. These were some of the most delightfully bizarre, magnetic, and intellectually pyrotechnic individuals of the 19th century, and their antics, both intellectual and personal, make for some of the most engaging moments in the development of contemporary spirituality.