TOWARDS A HISTORY OF THE INTERRELATIONS OF MARXISM AND ESOTERICISM

The book takes a detailed look at the rise of freemasonry in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and examines the strange ambivalence of Marx and Engels' attitude to freemasonry and related secret societies such as the carbonari. The work argues that the secret organisation of communist cells in fact owed a great deal to the earlier conspiratorial milieu of freemasonry and also finds considerable overlaps in their ideological orientations. The work attempts to chart a course which is neither anti-masonry nor pro-masonry, nor anti-Marxism nor pro-Marxism, and instead it is an early essay in transpersonal history, which seeks to uncover the deeper patterns behind history from both a spiritual and scientific perspective alike. The author is Director of the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy.