This volume is the first milestone of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)-funded Center for Advanced Studies in Social Science and Humanities (CAS-E). It presents unprecedented comparative and interdisciplinary research by renowned and emerging scholars, as well as pioneering conceptual frameworks on contemporary and historically-informed esoteric practices from a global perspective. Offering grounded analysis and conceptual frameworks, this collection illuminates the political, economic, cultural, material, embodied, ritual, and symbolic contextual meanings of the pragmatic and experiential aspects of these practices, as well as identifies a range of sources of change, agents, and material evidence that embody them.
