The social and political disturbances evident in America today reflect a deeper intellectual unbalance. The ideological schisms that so divide us reflect fractures written into the advent of modernity itself, most notably the split between religion and science. Esotericism has been described as a "third wave" of culture, one that offers integration rather than polarization of the mind and the heart.

This inaugural course in the Esotericism and the American Spirit series aims to recollect and elaborate the esoteric currents that fed into both the political founding of the nation, and the American Renaissance that marked its cultural independence.

We will plot a course touching on outstanding developments of the 15th through the 20th centuries, concentrating on select formative moments and texts of early modernity (Ficino and Pico's Italian Renaissance; 16th-17th century Rosicrucianism; church and state in Roger William's colonial America; the Age of Reason and revolutionary era; European Romanticism, and Emersonian Transcendentalism) before concluding with attention to two thought streams (depth psychology and anthroposophy) that represent western esotericism's most influential contemporary heirs.

The course functions both as a historical survey of leading movements and personalities and an introduction to the chief themes—the perennial questions—that define esotericism in the West, preparing the ground for more intensive explorations of esotericism in and of the American Spirit.