public religions and their secrets, secret religions and...

Amsterdam School of Historical

Studies

Annual NGG Conference

27 & 28 October 2016

University of Amsterdam

Religious Studies

Public Religions and Their

Secrets,

Secret Religions and Their

Publics

Book of Abstracts

Book of Abstracts NGG conference 2016

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Plenary Speakers

The Secret and the Sacred in Ancient Egypt

Prof. dr. Jan Assmann, Konstanz

In Ancient Egypt, "secret" (shetau) and "sacred" (djeser) were

almost synonyms. Cult and ritual were surrounded by strictest

secrecy. The temples were closed to everybody except the

priest(s) on duty. On religious feasts, however, the doors of the

temple opened wide and the deity appeared on his/her

processional barge in public, traversing the streets of the town

and being acclaimed and followed by huge jubilating crowds. This

stark contrast between strictest secrecy and widest publicity finds

its expression in temple architecture and many other cultural

forms. The same structure may without any doubt apply to great

many other ancient civilizations but it was the Egyptian model

that mostly attracted the attention of Greek and Latin authors and

was thus transmitted to the West, were Ancient Egypt became to

be seen as the prototype of a "religio duplex", having both a public,

exoteric, and a secret, esoteric side. In the 18th century, this idea

of the "Egyptian Mysteries" became the model of secret societies

such as the Illuminists, who practiced Enlightenment in the shelter

of their lodges while at the same time trying to realize some of

their ideas in their often high-ranking official positions. Mozart's

and Schikaneder's Zauberflöte translates this masonic principle in

form of an "opera duplex" with an exoteric side of fairy tale with

popular music and an esoteric side with sacral music (the three

trombones) , announcing the "mysteries of Isis" into whose secret

wisdom the protagonists, Tamino and Pamina, are initiated.


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Professor Jan Assmann taught Egyptology at Heidelberg University from 1992 till 2003 and has been Honorary Professor of Cultural and Religious Studies at Constance University since 2005. His wide ranging work explored ancient Egyptian religion, literature and history, cultural theory and memory, the reception of Egypt in Europe and historical anthropology. He has taught as visiting professor in Paris, Jerusalem and several American universities including Rice, Yale and Chicago. His books in English include Moses the Egyptian (1997), The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (2002), Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (2006) and The Price of Monotheism (2009).1

1 Source: http://torch.ox.ac.uk/jan-assmann


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Handling Religious Secrets in Modern Society. Ahmadiyya

Mission in Interwar Europe

dr. Gerdien Jonker, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen –

Nürnberg

It is a distinct mark of pre-modern societies that access to

knowledge was limited to a few. Decisions of the king for instance

were kept secret from the people he governed. Knowledge of the

divine was in the hands of a few religious experts who let others in

on the secret only when they obeyed a complicated system of

which even the rules were secret. Secrecy was consecutive in the

shaping of societal segments, which in their turn gave access to

limited knowledge. Once in possession of such knowledge, the

bearer should under no circumstance made his possession public.

Complex or modern societies allow all members access to all

knowledge. At the same time, they base on the division of labour

and are highly specialized. As a result, the place of religion is

changing in different directions. Scholars have signalled the

privatisation of religion but also the many claims to truth that

resist rationalisation and the division of labour.

In my contribution, I will address the coming into being of

Ahmadiyya mission on the threshold of the modern age.

Contemplating British missionaries who harshly criticised the

Muslim religious tradition, the founder proposed not only to

renew religious experience but also to make it accessible to all.

Claiming that God still spoke to his followers, he offered himself as

a medium: a prophet in the shadow of The Prophet.


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From his legacy, followers fashioned two different Ahmadiyya

movements dedicated to the worldwide mission of revitalizing

Islam and making it fit for the modern age. One advertised

transparency and forms of individual religion, while the other

claimed obeisance to the leader and group experience. In the

interwar period, the first message resonated with European

moderns especially. My example traces the life of the Ahmadiyya

missionary Azeez Mirza who married the Jewish convert to Islam

Lisa Oettinger. A very cosmopolitan couple, the contradictions

they faced map out the pathway of secrecy in the modern age.

dr. Gerdien Jonker is a scholar in the History and Ethnography of Religion. She studied History of Religion, Cuneiform and Hebrew in Amsterdam and Paris and obtained her Ph.D. with The topography of remembrance: The dead, tradition and collective memory in Mesopotamia (Leiden: EJ Brill, 1995). Taking this experience as a point of departure, she conducted a range of research projects on the history and collective memory of Muslim organizations in Europe. Her latest book publication addresses The Ahmadiyya Quest for Religious Reform. Missionizing Europe 1900 – 1965 (Leiden: EJ Brill, 2016). In the coming years, she will continue to study the Ahmadiyya with a focus on pathways and motivations of Jewish converts to Islam. Whereas the German Council of Pure Research (DFG) supports the research, the Erlangen Centre of Islam and Law in Europe (EZIRE) at Erlangen University continues to serve as her affiliation.


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Thursday 27 October Session 1 – Authority and power

Thursday 27 October | VOC Hall | 14.30-16.00

Chair: Gerard Wiegers

Tim Rudbøg – University of Copenhagen

The function of secrecy in antiquity: between power and didactics

Secrecy has been an important aspect of many religions since ancient

times. Several approaches have been used to analyse its meaning and

function across a number of historical contexts. George Simmel’s seminal

studies especially pointed to identity construction, social unity and

power as the primary function of secrecy; a relevant perspective that has

been explored in further details by several scholars more recently such

as Hans Klippenberg and Guy Stroumsa. Drawing on examples from

Greek mystery cults such as the Orphics and the Eleusinian mysteries

and religio-philosophical schools such as the Pythagorean and that of

Plato, I will in this paper seek to demonstrate how power and knowledge

were related and that in addition to secrecy as power there was also an

often-overlooked dimension to the practice of secrecy in antiquity that

equally served a didactic function or secrecy as didactics. It will be

discussed how the religious pattern of the mystery cults, relating rituals,

holiness, vision and secrecy, was connected to the initiatory system of

the Pythagoreans and the dialectics and ‘unwritten doctrines’ of Plato

with reflections on how and why knowledge and religious vision were

withheld from the public sphere by degrees of secrecy.


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Christian Lange – Utrecht University

Secrecy destroyed? Territory, body and honour in Muslim legal

conceptualizations of privacy

As an (allegedly) all-encompassing system, does Sharia destroy privacy,

by regulating everything? Is Sharia, therefore, fundamentally incapable of

distinguishing private from public, and vice-versa? Is there, in other

words, no place for secrecy in Islamic law? In this contribution, I seek to

shed light on three dimensions of classical Muslim jurisprudence on the

issue of privacy: a territorial and bodily dimension, as well as a

dimension related to shame and honor. This serves to complicate, and on

occasion to subvert, the common cliche that Sharia is a totalitarian way of

life.

The key concept around which Muslim legal discussions revolve in this

area, and which connects the dimensions of territory, body, and honour,

is sitr, “the act of covering oneself/others”. (The Western concept of

“privacy” does not seem to have an exact equivalent in Islamic legal

parlance, a phenomenon that prohibits monothetic comparison.) The

Muslim legal discourse on the inviolability (hurma) of private space is

but one example that shows how Muslim jurists conceived of the concept,

and of how variegated and dynamic Muslim legal doctrine has been in

general. Ideas about the legal inviolability of the body are likewise a rich

field of investigation. Lastly, in this paper I suggest that honour (sharaf,

‘ird) should be analyzed as a part of continuous spectrum of privacy-

related concerns in Islamic law. Based on the analysis of a number of

classical works of Muslims (particularly Hanafi) works of jurisprudence, I

argue that sitr is a legal concept that not only denotes an obligation, but

should be understood in terms of a right.


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Michael Ebstein – Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hidden Saints, Manifest Lords: Secrecy and Authority in Classical Islamic

Mysticism

As in other religious traditions, in Islam too secrecy plays a significant

role. The most obvious example of secrecy in Islam is the Shīʿī taqiyya

(prudence, concealment of true beliefs, or dissimulation), a mechanism

designed to protect the Shīʿī believers from their Sunnī rivals. However,

taqiyya has another function, namely, to safeguard the secrets of the Shīʿī

faith from the uninitiated. As I have tried to show in previous

publications of mine, there are significant links between the esoteric

aspect of the Shīʿī taqiyya and secrecy in Sunnī mysticism.

In both the Shīʿī tradition and Sunnī mysticism, one may detect a tension

between the need to protect the Divine secrets and keep them hidden, on

the one hand, and the desire to expose and divulge them, on the other.

This tension, in fact, is likewise characteristic of other, non-Islamic

esoteric and mystical traditions. In the Shīʿa and in Sunnī mysticism, the

tension referred to here bears on the role of the walī (“Godʼs friend”) in

society and on his religious-political authority: under what

circumstances can, or rather: should the walī expose his high status and

election by God, in order to assume his office of mediator between the

Creator and created beings, of Godʼs vicegerent on earth (khalīfa)? In my

lecture I will elaborate on this tension, explain its roots and history in

classical Islamic mysticism, and review relevant approaches to this issue

in both the Shīʿī and Sunnī mystical traditions.


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Session 2 – Western Esotericism, New Religious Movements and

Secrecy (1)

Thursday 27 October | F0.21 | 14.30-16.00

Chair: Marco Pasi

Wouter Hanegraaff – University of Amsterdam

The Secret of Secrets: entheogenic practice in 19th-century Occultism

The occultist movement developed after ca. 1850 from older traditions of

Mesmerism and Spiritualism that had been flourishing particularly in

Germany and France, but also in England and the United States of

America. Occultists took inspiration from a flood of popular literature

about traditional forms of “rejected knowledge” but were not satisfied

with mere antiquarian book learning about ancient traditions of magic

and the occult. Taking inspiration from Mesmerist practices of healing

and somnambulic trance induction, as well as Spiritualist procedures for

contacting the spirits of the dead, occultists were experimenting with

radical techniques for altering and expanding the normal range of human

consciousness so as to gain knowledge of the invisible dimensions of

reality. Among other things, this led to a fascination with the properties

of “narcotic” plants and substances such as haschisch, opium, belladonna,

or nitrous oxide. Although the role that such substances played in

occultism is well documented in the primary sources, it has received very

little attention in the extensive scholarly literature, thus making it into

one of the best-kept secrets of the occult. In this paper I will provide an

introductory overview of what we know about entheogenic practice in

19th century occultism and discuss its importance for understanding

what this movement was all about.


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Malgorzata Alicja Dulska – Jagiellonian University

Secrets of the Prophet. Debates about Towianski and Circle or God’s

Cause in the 19th and 20th Centuries in Poland

The religious community called the Circle of God’s Cause has left a

significant mark on the history of Poland. Towianists, so-called from the

name of their leader, began their activities in 1841 and in Polish

historiography they are usually portrayed as an ominous sect. Their

ideas and activities were the subject of fierce disputes, especially at the

end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

Andrzej Towiański is considered to be a controversial character to this

day. He was called a genius and prophet by some and a charlatan by the

others. There is even a saying "for a Pole is difficult to speak about

Towianski without shame". Regardless of this assessment, Towianski’s

figure is seen as mysterious and his life and work hide a great deal of

secrets. This secrecy might be the reason why Towianski was thought to

have possessed demonic powers and used them to influence a few Polish

prominent poets, such as Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the image of the Towianski’s religious

community in Polish literature at the end of the 19th and the first half of

the 20th century. The source material will include literary and

philosophical texts, as well as books and articles created in esoteric

millieu in Poland. The mainstream view of the Towianists will be

presented: not only the critics of their thought as such, but also the image

of the group as a secret society, supressed under the power of the mad

prophet. The Towianist’s own vision will be presented as well, including

the role of “secrecy” in their philosophy.


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Georgia van Raalte

Dion Fortune’s Correspondence Course and the Limits of Public

Esotericism

In the 1930s English Occultist Dion Fortune began to offer a

correspondence course through which anyone, independent of social

standing or personal circumstance, could learn about the history of

magic and its modern-day practical applications. Taking her cue from the

work of Aleister Crowley and Israel Regardie, Fortune believed that it

was time for esotericism to be available for all.

The course could be followed by a person anywhere in Britain, or even

overseas. At a certain point in their training, however, if the acolyte

wished to progress further, then he or she was required to come to

Fortune’s temple-home in London, to live with the other members of the

Society of the Inner Light. While Fortune wished for esotericism to be

freed from the bounds of secrecy that had been propagated by the

Golden Dawn tradition, she simultaneously understood that the ‘hidden’

nature of the esoteric world was essential to its power – and to the health

of its practitioners. While basic training in meditation could be taught

from afar, Fortune believed that due to the potent psychological effects of

magical work, the higher levels of magical practice should only be taught

one-to-one. Further, Fortune believed that even if psychological harm

was avoided, power that was operated outside of the proper context

could result in disaster in one’s social life – particularly in the case of

sexual magic. Finally, Fortune believed that the publication of magical

phrases, and their repetition and abuse by the un-initiated, would result

in the loss of the potency of these phrases; while desiring openness, she

recognised that over-sharing esotericism would result only in its

destruction.

The work of Fortune and her society offers an interesting example of an

attempt to make esoteric spirituality public, and the ultimate failure of

this endeavour. Divorced even from the problems of politics and


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publicity, Fortune’s work shows that secrecy is a necessary part of

practical esotericism, and that it is for this reason that esoteric

spirituality is necessarily consigned to the edges of society.


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Session 3 – Secrecy or hidden assumptions in a secular context

Thursday 27 October | VOC Hall | 16.30-18.00

Chair: Markus Altena-Davidsen

Ulrike Popp-Baier – University of Amsterdam

Hidden assumptions religious and nonreligious people live by

In recent decades conceptual debates about religion, spirituality,

nonreligion and irreligion challenged different efforts to distinguish

between the religious and the secular. In addition, individualization

theorists stressed the increasing diversification of religious orientations

and asked for shared ideas and life views actors might bring to the

religious realm. The question arises whether the usual categories related

to the religious field are still sensitive enough to capture and distinguish

individual orientations to life which are significant in the context of

modern societies. A preliminary exploration of this question has been

related to a research project about personal religiousness. The main

research question in this still ongoing project is: What types of

religiousness are discernable among well-educated young adults in the

Netherlands ? Until now 22 biographical-narrative interviews have been

conducted with Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, people affiliated with the

so-called holistic milieu, people with no religious affiliation and with

atheists. The interview partners have been between 20 and 30 years old,

either born in the Netherlands or in the Netherlands for most of their

lives. A comparative thematic coding analysis of the interview transkripts

revealed a.o. a just-world belief (Lerner, 1980), shared by a majority of

the interviewees. Most of the interviewees did articulate a kind of belief

in a “what comes around, goes around” principle or a just-world belief

connected to an immanent or ultimate justice reasoning in this life or in

an ulimate justice in an afterlife. Whereas some researchers understand

this belief as a cultural master narrative (e.g., Barreiro, 2013), cognitive

scientists argue that an intuition of immanent justice stems from our

evolved sense of fairness (Baumard & Chevalier, 2012). As Lerner and


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colleagues have argued, belief in a just world seems to figure at a

subconscious level, as a configuration of hidden assumptions people are

not aware of (e.g., Montada & Lerner, 1998), so that perhaps even a slight

interest in religious traditions might enable people to articulate these

preconscious intuitions connected to social reciprocity, some kind of

supernatural intervention or karma.

Claire Wanless – PhD student, Open University (UK)

Secularization and the transmission of individualized religion in Hebden

Bridge

Individualized or postmodern religion, that prioritizes subjective

experience and places ultimate authority with the individual, has

increased in prevalence over recent decades. However secularization

theory views individualized religion as a secularizing phenomenon, due

to its inherent structural instability. It is claimed that religious

frameworks that locate authority with the individual cannot inspire

commitment, create consensus or cohesion, or motivate evangelization.

They are thus rendered unable to transmit their ideas, values and

practices over time, or to have significance impact on wider culture or

society. However this view assumes that effectively functioning religion

requires a top-down, hierarchical organizational structure in which

members are passive and obedient recipients of objective knowledge

rather than being its active and dynamic co-creators. This presentation

will report on the initial stages of an ethnographic investigation into the

association and transmission of individualized religion (especially

neoPagan and New Age) around the former mill town of Hebden Bridge

in West Yorkshire. I argue that instead of hierarchical structures, these

forms adopt unplanned and undirected rhizomatic networks, which both

result from and enable their culture of radical personal autonomy.

Instead of transmitting themselves along objectivist lines, they do so in

social constructivist ways, for example through the creation of


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spontaneously generated communities of practice. In this way, they are

better able to transmit themselves both within and between generations.

The presentation will conclude by considering the implications of such a

model for the existence and negotiation of boundaries of practice and

discourse between the public and the private sphere.

Dave Vliegenthart – PhD student, University of Groningen

Modern Western Gurus and their Secular Religions

Since the nineteenth-century, new religions or emergent traditions, have

increasingly mixed religious and secular methods and theories from

eastern and western traditions, to provide “spiritual seekers” with new

alternative answers to conventional existential questions. Both in

America and Europe, peaking after WWI—which, for many, spelled the

bankruptcy of modern western culture—there was a fast rising interest

in western esoteric and eastern ideologies. A similar pattern emerged in

the wake of WWII, when America and later Europe became a breeding

ground for “secular religions,” as Edward Bailey but also Wouter

Hanegraaff and Kocku von Stuckrad have characterized them. Most of

these secular religions are fringe groups founded by a charismatic figure

who claims to have had a mystical experience that transcends the

intellect. Because of their widespread anti-intellectualism, historian of

religion James Webb once described the emergence of such figures and

their ideologies as a collective “flight from reason.” The problem is that

many of these—higher educated, well-informed—modern western gurus

would build an intellectual frame around their anti-intellectual claim,

drawing on a wide range of methods and theories from eastern and

western traditions, to translate their “irrational” religious experience

into a “rational” secular vocabulary. Using the life and teaching of

unknown American philosopher-sage Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1887-

1985) and his Assembly of Man, I will argue that a rapid rise (in

awareness) of “proximate others” in the public domain—similar teachers


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with similar movements based on similar claims—during the first (1920-

1940) and second (1960-1980) New Age, increasingly forced the

founders of the emerging secular religions to intellectualize their anti-

intellectual claims, to create and sustain what they believed to be their

own unique idea(l)s, into what I will call “reasoned flights beyond

reason.”


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Session 4 – Public and private rituals in contemporary societies

Thursday 27 October | F0.21 | 16.30-18.00

Chair: Richard van Leeuwen

William Arfman – Tilburg University

Public Ritual and its Backstage Secrets

The atrocities associated with what has become known as the European

refugee crisis have been receiving a lot of public attention recently. This

was not always the case. Especially before the Lampedusa migrant

shipwreck of 2013, which cost the lives of over 360 individuals, the crisis

generally remained hidden from the public eye. In the Netherlands, one

of the earliest initiatives to increase public awareness of those dying on

the borders of Fortress Europe was a religious project, consisting of an

ecumenical All Souls’ Day service intended to commemorate refugee

deaths.

The commemoration is highly public in nature: it takes place yearly on

the quay of one Amsterdam’s famous canals, right in front of one of its

major museums. Due to taking place in the public domain and due to

being well advertised, the commemoration is also actively reflected upon

by others (both offline and online). These reflections show how this

ritual event functions as a type of social arena within which important

cultural categorizations are not only constructed, but contested as well.

What performance theory teaches us, however, is that public religious

events like this have a backstage to them as well. This is where the

organizers come together before, during and after event. Where they

select speakers, discuss songs and decide upon ritual gestures. In other

words, where they ritualize. As with any performance, this backstage is

generally kept hidden. When a ritual gesture is included in the event, the

decision-making process that led to its selection is not included. On the

contrary, for the ritual to “work”, that is to say for it to be efficacious, the

gesture in question should come across as self-evident.


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This paper discusses what happens when something does not go

completely as planned. When plans change and the audience gets a

glimpse of what is going on backstage. It will be argued that it is at this

point that we stand to learn the most about what purpose, both public

and hidden, the event actually serves.

Rachael Shillitoe – University of Worcester (UK)

Reimagining Prayer in Collective Worship

As part of a wider Leverhulme Trust-funded project, this research

focuses on collective worship as experienced by primary school children.

Collective worship has been a compulsory feature of maintained schools

in England and Wales since the 1944 Education Act. This legal

requirement has caused decades of confusion and controversy, with

many questioning its educational suitability and appropriateness within

an increasingly diverse society (Hull, 1975; Cheetham, 2000). With

organisations and policymakers calling for collective worship to be

abolished in schools, coupled with the wider place of religion in schools

coming under increasing media and political scrutiny, attention to this

under researched topic is timely. Drawing on theoretical approaches

from the sociology of childhood, this paper will focus on the perspectives

of children, whose experiences are often hidden and marginalised from

such discussions.

Relying heavily on adult-generated conceptualisations of religion, much

of the discussion on collective worship fails to understand everyday

school life and the experiences of children (Clarke and Woodhead, 2015).

Using ethnographic research from a range of primary schools which

foregrounds the agency of children, this paper will highlight the various

ways children reimagine and negotiate boundaries, such as

religion/secular in collective worship. Although much has been written

on understanding or challenging the category of religion, there is still a


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dearth of research that presents how these adult-generated categories

influence the worlds of children (Asad, 1993; Fitzgerald, 2000; De Vries,

2008). This research will draw attention to the range of strategies used

by schools during collective worship and the tactics that are then

developed by pupils during this part of the school day (De Certeau,

1984). In this paper I will draw particularly on the use of prayer in

collective worship and children’s experiences of this. Through avoiding

simplistic moralising lines and binaries, I will demonstrate the need to

challenge some of the adult-centric assumptions which dominate this

discourse and reveal how children’s own experiences do not always fit so

neatly into the analytical categories constructed by adults.

Holly Burgess – University of Amsterdam

Paper: A Clandestine Account of the Native American Church: Privacy

and Preservation of the Peyote Custom

Native American religious rituals have traditionally used the entheogen

‘peyote’ as an activator for religious insights and a spiritual facilitator.

Due to federal laws that controlled the use of drugs and hallucinogenic

substances over the past century, this practice has been threatened. The

NAC (Native American Church which advocates for the use of ‘spiritual

substances’, namely peyote) was created in order to circumvent this

issue in 1918. They contended that the constitutional right for freedom of

religion included their peyote practice, so as a result of the American

Indian Religious Freedom Act, Native Americans of proven ancestry can

practice this form of their religion freely within official Indian

organizations in all fifty states. For non-Indians, however, it is another

story. Non-Indians can only safely practice peyote in bona fide religious

rituals in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, and Colorado. The

phenomenon of peyote use in religious rituals is multifaceted, and here I

will focus on the junction of three contentious subjects which have


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shaped the face of peyote in recent history – the legal, the racial, and the

religious.

This lecture will highlight just how the publicized face of peyote practice

has evolved over the years, adapting to abide by not just the legal rules

and regulations that are so well known but also other relevant issues the

practitioners are confronted with amongst other tribes and

organizations.


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Friday 28 October

Session 5 – Responding to challenges in contemporary society

Friday 28 October | VOC Hall | 10.30-12.30

Chair: Nanouschka Wamelink

Margreet van Es – Utrecht University

Muslims Condemning Violent Extremism: The Multiple Challenges of

Representing the “Silent Majority” (2001-2016)

As a result of the increasing number of terrorist attacks in Europe and in

the rest of the world, there is growing public debate whether the “silent

majority” of peaceful European Muslims should publicly condemn violent

extremism. In this paper, I explore how this debate has developed in the

Netherlands since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Discourse-Historical

Analysis is applied to a large collection of newspaper articles that have

been collected through the database LexisNexis. I particularly focus on

the mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion that are at play in this

debate, and on accusations made against Muslims of having a hidden

agenda.

It is often argued that the majority of Dutch Muslims remains too silent

and does not condemn violent extremism strongly enough. However, my

research results indicate that virtually all Islamic organizations in the

Netherlands have repeatedly disavowed violent extremism – despite that

many Muslims indicate that they do not want to be held accountable for

crimes that they do not have anything to do with. The organizations have

been particularly vocal after the murder of Theo van Gogh in 2004 and in

the wake of the recent terrorist attacks by IS (Daesh). In most cases,

essentialist representations of Islam as inherently violent provoked

competing essentialisms of Islam as a peaceful religion.


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Nevertheless, the fact that many prominent Muslims and Islamic

organizations have condemned terrorism is seldom recognized in public

debate. Whenever it is acknowledged, doubts are expressed about how

representative these organizations are for the overall Muslim population.

Moreover, Muslims have repeatedly been accused of openly condemning

terrorism while secretly supporting extremist groups. How have these

accusations affected the various ways in which Muslims present

themselves and their religion in the public sphere?

Suzanne Roggeveen – PhD student, University of Amsterdam

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Tensions between Jews and Muslims in

Amsterdam?

In this paper the public events related to the conflict between Israel and

the Palestinians, which are often seen as a problem between Jews and

Muslims will be discussed. These public events include the pro-Israel and

pro-Gaza protests in the summer of 2014 and a plan that the local

government of Amsterdam presented in 2015 regarding town twinning

with Tel Aviv and Ramallah. These events were often described as

problems between Jews and Muslims, however, fieldwork shows that

these tensions were more complex and included a diverse range of

different actors. Moreover, Jews and Muslims privately expressed that

they did not want to pick a side, did not want to get involved, did not

know much about the conflict or did not support one of the parties, but

had other views on the issue. In this paper the goal is threefold. Firstly, it

will provide more insight in the involvement of Jews and Muslims in the

public events surrounding the conflicts between Israel and the

Palestinians. Secondly, it describes how both the public usage of symbols,

flags and concepts and the multiple realities lying beneath this image are

influencing the relations between Jews, Muslims and other actors that

are involved in the public events. Finally, it will critique the binary

division between public and private and argues for ‘multiple publics’.


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Christiane Koenigstedt – University of Leipzig

The problem of “secrecy” of collective actors in contemporary secular

societies: the French case and beyond

In relation to religions as public actors, “secrecy” often has a negative,

suspicion stimulation notion seemingly opposed to the demand for – and

right to – individual religio-spiritual privacy in the meaning of the secular

principles of a religiously neutral public sphere and the “freedom of

thought”. As well opposing Habermas and often criticised claim that the

“public sphere” is equally accessible for all, I will argue that “secrecy” of

religious groups, alleged or true, on the level of political participation

easily becomes an issue of trust in a shared political minimum consensus

between the participants in a public discussion. This, if absent, may easily

lead complimentarily to mistrust, speculations and the exclusion of

groups as legitimate others from the public arena of negotiation, long

before substantial disagreements between secular and religious

positions (e.g. like within debates around the male circumcision) have

had a chance to be at all located.

In this paper, I will first present some theoretical and comparative

remarks on “secrecy”and “religion” in different nation states. Secondly,

though especially the former is unlikely the best example of religious

actors in the public, I will mainly draw on societally accepted and not

accepted religious groups in France and Germany and how each cases are

dealt with. Doing so, I seek to isolate the circumstances and factors of

societal and political trust and distrust and thus acceptance as public

actors.


[26]

Caroline Vander Stichele – University of Amsterdam

“A Buddhist is coming here to convert people”: Catholic responses to

Yoga in Flanders

This paper focuses on Catholic responses to the emergence of the first

yoga schools in Flanders in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth

century. The paper consists of three parts. First, a brief sketch is given of

the changes that affected the dominant role of the Catholic Church as a

public religion in Flanders during the sixties. In the second part, the

emergence of the first yoga schools is situated against that background.

The third part of the paper is based on life story interviews with the

founders of these schools and focuses on Catholic responses to these

schools and their founders. I will show that these responses were far

from univocal as the title of this paper may seem to suggest. While some

did indeed regard ‘the yogi’ as an intruder, others were more open to

explore what yoga had to offer, even in secret.


[27]

Session 6 - Religious minorities

Friday 28 Ocotber | F0.21 | 10.30-12.30

Chair: Ulrike Popp-Baier

Ab de Jong - Leiden University

Spiritual elite knowledge among modern Middle Eastern religious

minorities

“Secrecy” is routinely ascribed to the non-Muslim, non-Jewish, non-

Christian religious minorities of the Middle East (Druze, Alawis, Yezidis,

Yaresan, Mandaeans, Zoroastrians), who are often said to shun outsiders

and to keep the content of their religions hidden from all. More modern

appreciations by fieldworkers and journalists have tended to focus on

the fact that members of these communities do not (really) know

anything about their religion, and therefore do not really believe much.

These are partly classical Orientalist tropes, and partly local accusations

that have caused (and continue to cause) unspeakable suffering to these

communities. A closer look at each of these groups reveals that it is based

in a fundamental misunderstanding of the structure of these

communities, which cultivate and locate knowledge of the tradition in a

small group of specialists, who are maintained by the wider community

and allow the community as a whole to lead fairly secular lives. This

paper will address this fundamental structure, with due attention to the

different ways in which it has been maintained in these various religious

traditions.kreinath

Jens Kreinath – Wichita State University

Alawite politics of religious secrecy: in/visible dynamics of dissimulation

and concealment among a religious minority in Hatay, Turkey

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the Arab Alawites, also known as

Nusayris, came to be known as one of the most secretive religious

communities of the Middle East. Originating in the 9th century, Alawites

maintain traditions that they do not disclose to outsiders still today;


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however, scholars of religion have attempted to decipher or decode the

secrets of their doctrines and practices and to identify their sources.

Even most recent attempts to reconstruct Alawite doctrines and

practices fail to address the question of secrecy. The objective is to

demonstrate how Alawites use a politics of religious secrecy to seclude

religious secrets and to provide zones of contact and interact with

members of other different religious communities. By utilizing

anthropological research on secrecy, the paper scrutinizes how the

politics of religious secrecy is exercised by the Alawite community in

Hatay, the southernmost province of Turkey. It aims to study how

Alawites continue to use secrecy as a strategy to protect their identity,

even though they are aware that the content of some of their secrets

might already be known outside of their community. By using a relational

concept of secrecy, this paper accounts for the various contexts in which

secrets are communicated and helps identify how the politics of secrecy

informs the ways in which Alawites interact with members inside and

outside their community. The notion of secrecy is expanded to include

how their politics of secrecy serve as a means to establish religious

contact and to shape their interaction with members of other

communities. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part outlines

the theoretical parameters of a general notion of secrecy before notions

of secrecy in Islam are refined in light of the Alawite distinction of the

visible and invisible. The second part gives an ethnographic account of

how Alawites in Hatay utilize the politics of secrecy to conceal their

religious identity while at the same time negotiating their identity by

entering the public sphere. The focus is placed on the ways in which

Alawites perform their politics of secrecy and interact directly or

indirectly with other communities.


[29]

Genji Yasuhira – PhD student, Kyoto University (guest researcher at

Utrecht University)

Delimitations of the “Public” and the Limit of Toleration: Trials against

Catholics in the Mid-17th Century Utrecht

In the early modern multiconfessional society, among which the Dutch

Republic is regarded as a typical case, confessional coexistence was not a

desirable ideal but a reluctant reality. Religious diversity was seen at the

time as a major threat to political stability. To counter this threat,

political authorities excluded religious dissenters from the public sphere,

who, in the case of the Dutch Republic, were comprised of non-Reformed

believers including a large number of Catholics. They were denied access

to public office and public worship. How did Catholics in the Dutch

Republic, who had possessed full citizenship before the introduction of

the Protestantism, respond to this situation?

To answer this question, this paper attempts to reveal Catholics’

perception of the “public”, which appeared in negotiations at the time of

conflict. Whereas previous studies on the confessional coexistence in the

Dutch Republic have employed the “public/private” dichotomy and

focused on the private sphere or the liminal middle sphere, this paper

addresses the actual discourses of the early modern people, focusing

especially on their use of the term “public” (in Dutch, publiek, openbaar

and gemeen) and the derivative forms. As a case study, this paper

investigates trials against Catholics in Utrecht in the middle of the 17th

century, with special attention on the trials against Catholic priests

including the apostolic vicar Philippus Rovenius from 1639 to 1640.

In the trials Catholics were accused of the infringement on the “public

order” and the conspiracy with the “public enemy” both of which were

regarded as behaviour above the limit of the toleration as connivance.

Catholics tried to deny these blames and even maintained that they were

eligible for “public practice of faith”, resorting to the status of citizen. The

analysis delivered in this paper deduces that the early modern people


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were interested not in the protection of the “privacy” but in the

delimitation of the “public”. This conclusion casts doubt on the

“public/private” dichotomy in the early modern Dutch history.

Gerard Wiegers – University of Amsterdam

Forced Conversion and Religious Secrecy in the Medieval and Early

Modern Muslim West

Modern day images about Muslims in the Western World as “a

Trojan horse” and accusations of secrecy, double standards (for

example the alleged widespread use of ‘taqiyya’ as an instrument

in achieving world domination in the case of Muslims in the West)

have a long history. This paper examines the historical

connections between such accusations and fears and the waves of

forced conversions and expulsions of minorities in Medieval and

Early Modern Europe and the Muslim West. I will focus on Jews

and Muslims as minority groups, and discuss the religious

responses to forced conversions by members of these groups on

the one hand, and responses by religious scholars who lived

elsewhere on the other. I will in particular discuss a fatwā by a

mufti from Fez (Morocco), Ibn Abi Jum’a, for Muslims who had

been forced to convert under duress and its influence among

Muslims and non Muslims. In it, he gave precise instructions with

regard to those concerned about how to act and behave in

situations in which their life was at stake.


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Session 7 – Western Esotericism, New Religious Movements and

Secrecy (2)

Friday 28 October | VOC Hall | 13.30-1500

Chair: Wouter Hanegraaff

Léon van Gulik – PhD student, Tilburg University

Mysteries, Oaths and Ritual Hygiene: on Challenges of Secrecy in a New

Religious Movement

Drawing on a theoretical sample from my fieldwork on religious

creativity, I will offer a psychological perspective on the issue of secrecy

in contemporary initiatory Wicca. Secrecy is understood here to exist in

those relationships where a supposed inequality of knowledge is actively

maintained by managing access to the surplus of that knowledge.

When such knowledge is considered esoteric, and can only be disclosed

after dedicated study or carefully observing specific techniques of

enquiry, how-to information typically will be claimed by the group, and

thus sealed off from non-adepts. Just like there is no direct way to the

knowledge, a route to the techniques of uncovering the knowledge

becomes regulated through initiations and oaths. As I will show, what

results is a dual secret: on the one hand, the way to the knowledge

becomes a body of hidden information, whereas on the other hand, the

knowledge itself becomes an experience—a mystery. The scarcity of both

these practical and experiential aspects of secrecy turns them into social

capital and will render them more valuable.

Such assets notwithstanding, secrecy is as an ever receding horizon. The

concealed information becomes available over time, either through

accidental discovery, betrayal, or even socially sanctioned disclosure,

while new information will be transformed into new hidden content. To

illustrate these points, I will give a descriptive account of the various etic


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narratives of secrecy, successively relating the topic to mythistory, oath

keeping, magical practice, and mysteries.

Then, in the second part of my presentation, I will move from the

manifest level to the latent level of these narratives, and offer an

explanation and interpretation of the functions and effects of secrecy that

remain unacknowledged by the practitioners themselves. I will show

secrecy in Wicca to serve three implicit sociological or psychological

roles: maintenance of ownership, maintenance of appeal and

maintenance of association. The last can be understood as ritual hygiene

and be shown to be the functional opposite of secrecy.

In my conclusion I will briefly touch upon two negative implications of

the Wiccan institutionalization of secrecy: the misrepresentation of

knowledge to outsiders and stalled religious development.

Joanna Malita – PhD student, Jagiellonian University in Krakow

Why so secret? The issue of initiation and oath of secrecy in British

Traditional Wicca

Wicca, the contemporary Pagan religion, in its most traditional version

might be seen as exceptionally secretive. The oath of secrecy, taken by

initiated witches, is thought to be crucial. The reasons for introducing the

oath are complex: it is a part of broader mystery tradition, but also a

reference to the times of witchhunt. The oath covers not only the actual

content of handed-down tradition, but also the privacy of the coven (the

gathering of the witches) and its members. To put it simply, whatever

happens in the circle, stays in the circle, including the course of the ritual,

who was there and what he/she did. As for the actual content, many

things are officially kept secret from the non-initiates – for example, only

after being initiated and accepted in the coven a witch can learn the

names of Wiccan deities and copy the Book of Shadows, a sort of witches’


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handbook. One could argue that in fact a great deal of secrets has already

been revealed (in some publications and on the net), yet many believers

still value the importance of the oath and would not discuss any secret

matters with non-initiated people. In my interviews with Polish

traditional Wiccans variations of the phrase “Well, I cannot tell you that,

because you’re not initiated” have occurred quite often.

In the paper I will present the process of initiation in British Traditional

Witchcraft, BTW – i.e. in those witchcraft traditions which date back to

Alex Sanders or Gerald Gardner (and, consequently, the New Forest

coven) – along with its role and importance in the religion itself. The

issue of the oath of secrecy, which is taken during the rite of initiation

will also be examined. I refer to the writings of the prominent witches,

including Gardner himself, Doreen Valiente and the Farrars, as well as to

my on-going research among Polish traditional Wiccans (semi-structured

interviews and observational study).

Marco Pasi – University of Amsterdam

The problem of secrecy in Western esotericism

The study of Western esotericism has developed considerably over the

last twenty years, but there are quite a few aspects of this field that still

require theoretical problematization and discussion. One of these is

surely the relationship between esotericism and secrecy. At first sight, on

the basis of the etymology of the word “esotericism”, the relationship

would appear to be certain and unproblematic. In so far as “esotericism”

is related to anything that is “interior”, one would expect it to be also

related to what is “reserved”, “hidden”, and therefore also “secret”. But

things are not so simple. In an essay published in 1999, the well-known

scholar of Western esotericism Antoine Faivre wrote the following:

“However interesting or relevant they might be in the context of modern


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esoteric currents, concealment and secrecy have meanings so varied that

they are inadequate to specifically describe a unified form of thought

common to these currents”. For Faivre, therefore, secrecy was not an

essential aspect of Western esotericism, and in fact, when he presented

his extremely influential definition of the field, he purposefully omitted

secrecy from the main characteristics of Western esotericism (i.e.,

correspondences, creative imagination, living nature, and

transmutation). One of the reasons for belittling a connection that would

seem so intuitive, lies in the fact that the discourses of esotericism have

always tried their best to reach out to their publics, creating a seemingly

contradiction between a rhetoric of secrecy and an actual public

dissemination of esoteric knowledge. As a consequence of what looked

like an evidently ironic contradiction, scholars of Western esotericism

have tended, with a few exceptions (such as the American scholar Hugh

Urban), to downplay the role of secrecy in Western esotericism, or at

least to show little interest in it. Yet, also in view of the importance that

the issue of secrecy still plays in our contemporary, postmodern societies

(see for instance the interesting discussions generated by the WikiLeaks

affair), it is perhaps time to return to this problem and try to look at it

from a fresh perspective. This paper will therefore try to disentangle

some of the conceptual knots connected to this issue. In particular, it will

suggest that one way of salvaging the relevance of secrecy in the context

of Western esotericism is to make a distinction between the “rhetoric of

secrecy” and the “practice of secrecy”. This distinction will hopefully

make it clearer to what extent and in which sense secrecy plays a

significant role in the context of Western esotericism.


[35]

Session 8 - Secrecy and/in Scriptures

Friday 28 October | F0.21 | 13.30-15.00

Chair: Caroline Vander Stichele

Avriel Bar-Levav – Open University of Israel

Printing the Zohar and the Canonization of Secrets in Jewish Culture

The printing of the Zohar in Italy in 1558 marks a distinctive moment in

the introduction of Jewish esoteric lore into the public sphere. The

printing press opened the gate to the canonization of this as the third

most important Jewish canonical work, after the Bible and the Talmud.

The transition was not a smooth one: some major rabbis resisted the

revelation and circulation of old secrets. However, their stance was not

accepted. In my paper I examine this process in a new context – that of

the Jewish library awareness. I propose to view the printing of the Zohar

within the framework of the new paths for structuring Jewish knowledge

that evolved in the early modern period.

Mattias Brand – PhD student, Leiden University

Secrecy and Concealment as Strategy? Manichaean Communities and

Texts in the later Roman Empire

What social reality lay behind the discourse of secrecy and revelation in

the Manichaean community? What was kept secret and for whom?

References to ‘mystery’ abound in the Coptic Manichaean sources and

the biography of Mani continuously speaks about the ‘revelation’ of

heavenly ‘secrets’. These texts primarily communicate the exceptional

status and knowledge of insiders, thus emphasizing the unveiling of

mysteries instead of their concealment.


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Besides secrecy and revelation as theme in Manichaean texts, the social

structure of the Manichaean community could have facilitated different

levels of knowledge. The division between the elect and the catechumens,

their lay supporters, was a fundamental feature of Manichaean life. What

knowledge, if any, was kept back from the catechumens? Could this have

stimulated the accumulation of knowledge in the hands of their ascetic

holy men and women? Was secrecy and mystery, in other words, more

than a rhetorical framework to identify the ‘knowers’?

The relatively new material from the controlled archaeological

excavation in Kellis (Ismant el-Kharab, Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt) provides

insights into the social dynamics of Manichaeans in everyday life, raising

even more questions about concealment as strategy in their community.

In particular it leads us to reconsider the need for secrecy due to the

Roman persecutions under Diocletian and the Christian emperors. Was it

necessary to veil their beliefs and practices under the threat of the

Roman military presence in the Dakhleh Oasis or have we overestimated

the influence of legislation?

In this paper the language of secrecy will be examined with an eye on the

social strategies of Manichaean communities in the later Roman Empire.

It will address Stroumsa’s theses on increasing ‘sociological esotericism’

and weakening ‘objective secrets’ in late antique Christianity, in light of

the only socio-historical evidence for Manichaeans on the ground.

Yves Mühlematter – PhD student, Freiburg University

The “occult wisdom” in the “sacred texts of the Hindus”: translation as

unveiling the ‘Secret Doctrine”

Madame Blavatsky stated that “occult wisdom”, which was secretly

preserved by the “theosophical masters” and only revealed to the chosen

“chelas”, is to be found scattered in scriptures all around the world. The


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Theosophists therefore collected and translated ancient manuscripts

mainly in India where they moved in 1878 and established their

headquarters. In the process of translating and publishing the

theosophists made the “Secret Doctrine” accessible to the public.

My presentation will discuss two examples of “theosophical

translations”: a) the Bhagavad-Gita and b) the Upanishads. I will attempt

to show how the Theosophist interpreted these scriptures and what

influence their translations had in the public domain in India and Europe.

The effect of these translations through the Theosophical Society as

Channels is not yet broadly discussed. In my speech, I hope to shed some

light on the process of translation as a basic method of cultural encounter

in general as well as the theosophical encounter with India, in particular.

The theosophical encounter was eminently public given their

involvement in nationalist politics as well as shaping the Indian

educational systems in both of which “theosophical translations” were

utterly important.


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[39]

Participants

Arfman, William Tilburg University [email protected]

Assmann, Jan University of Konstanz [email protected]

Bakker, Freek Utrecht University [email protected]

Bar Levav, Avriel Open University of Israel [email protected]

Baumgartner, Christophe Utrecht University [email protected]

Berghuijs, Joantine VU University [email protected]

Bijlert, Victor Van VU University [email protected]

Borsje, Jacqueline University of Amsterdam [email protected]

Brand, Mattias Leiden University [email protected]

Burgess, Holly University of Amsterdam [email protected]

Davidsen, Markus Leiden University | NGG [email protected]

De Jong, Koenraad Leiden University [email protected]

Dulska, Malgorzata Alicja Jagiellonian University [email protected]

Ebstein, Michael The Hebrew University of Jerusalem [email protected]

Es, Margreet van Utrecht University [email protected]

Esdonk, Susanne van University of Amsterdam |NGG [email protected]

Foroutan, Kiyan Leiden University [email protected]

Goud, Johan Utrecht University [email protected]

Greuter, Marga University of Groningen [email protected]

Gulik, Léon van Tilburg University [email protected]

Hanegraaff, Wouter University of Amsterdam [email protected]

Hart, James Leiden University [email protected]

Honcoop, Nelleke University of Amsterdam [email protected]

Hooghordel, Gerda [email protected]

Jespers, Frans Radboud University [email protected]

Jironet, Karin [email protected]

Jong, Ab de Leiden University [email protected]


[40]

Jonker, Gerdien University of Erlangen [email protected]

Jens Kreinath Wichita State University, USA [email protected]

Küchler, Jana [email protected]

Christiaan Lange Utrecht University [email protected]

Malita, Joanna Jagiellonian University [email protected]

Marion, Anne van [email protected]

Minnema, Lourens VU University [email protected]

Mühlematter, Yves University of Freiburg [email protected]

Neven, Joris [email protected]

Oostveen, Dave VU University [email protected]

Ouboter-Kooij, Everarda [email protected]

Pasi, Marco University of Amsterdam [email protected]

Peereboom, Helene University of Amsterdam

Popp-Baier, Ulrike University of Amsterdam [email protected]

Raalte, Georgia Van Bournemouth University [email protected]

Roggeveen, Suzanne University of Amsterdam [email protected]

Rudbøg, Tim University of Copenhagen [email protected]

Schrijvers, Lieke Utrecht University [email protected]

Shillitoe, Rachael University of Worcester [email protected]

Spiertz, Harald Raboud University Nijmegen [email protected]

Stichele, Caroline Vander University of Amsterdam [email protected]

Sunier, Thijl VU University

[email protected]

Van der Gaag, Marie Leiden University [email protected]

Van der Woude, Pieter Utrecht University [email protected]

Van Rijn, Bas Leiden University [email protected]

Versteegh, Guido [email protected]

Visscher, Klaran University of Groningen [email protected]

Vliegenthart, Dave University of Groningen [email protected]


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Wamelink, Nanouschka University of Amsterdam [email protected]

Wanless, Claire Open University (UK) [email protected]

Wiegers, Gerard University of Amsterdam [email protected]

Wijnia, Lieke Tilburg University | NGG [email protected]

Wijsen, Frans Radboud University | NGG [email protected]

Williams, Corey Leiden University [email protected]

Yasuhira, Genji Kyoto University | Utrecht University [email protected]


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public religions and their secrets, secret religions and...

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