Esotericism for Everyone is the second in an exciting new series of interviews with prolific French religious philosopher and metaphysician Bruno Bérard, whose work Angelico Press introduced to anglophone readers in 2018 with the publication of A Metaphysics of the Christian Mystery: An Introduction to the Work of Jean Borella. The first volume in the current series, Metaphysics for Everyone, was published in 2024. Further volumes will include Theology for Everyone, Jean Borella for Everyone, and Wolfgang Smith for Everyone (the pivotal contemporary thinkers Jean Borella and Wolfgang Smith are also authors featured by Angelico).
Esotericism has been with us for millennia. When the term was coined in the 19th century, all esoteric approaches-movements delving into the mysteries of life, the world, and God-were brought together under a single term. At that time the "twin sisters" of esotericism and occultism underwent a kind of paroxysm, which until recently cast a shadow over the true meaning of esotericism. It was especially René Guénon (featured in this book) who in the early 20th century worked to distinguish these two.
Over the last few decades, a great deal of academic work has been done on all forms of esotericism, from ancestral megalithism to modern philosophical gnosticism. But this historicist approach needs to be complemented by assessments and value judgments, and we need to know from what point of view these judgments are being made. Bruno Bérard's interlocutor, Aldo La Fata, whose intimacy with Catholicism is neither occult nor excessively overt, offers the immense advantage of the kind of point of view sought for here. We will forget history then-"historicist history" at any rate-as well as esotericism as such, and instead seek through these conversations to perceive the presence of the esoteric hidden within the world and in the human heart.
