Rockwell Religious Studies Symposium and Burkitt Public Lecture

Kyle Morrow Room, Fondren Library, Rice University April 15-18, 2010
In Western religious traditions, God is conventionally conceived to be a humanlike creator, king or ruler enthroned in heaven. But what about the God of the unconventional Western traditions, or the God of the mystics, gnostics and sages?Like almost everything else in these esoteric traditions, God is hidden, secreted away. Sometimes God shows up in another universe beyond our world. Other times God is cloaked behind veils in celestial palaces or within a body of blinding light. Often God is understood to be utterly transcendent, utterly beyond us, while also immediately immanent, immediately within us. This symposium, the inaugural event of the Department of Religious Studies new program on Gnosticism, Esotericism and Mysticism (GEM) offers academic reflections on these secreted traditions about God, from the ancient world to the modern period.

Speakers
BURKITT PUBLIC LECTURE April 15, 7:309 p.m.
Kocku von Stuckrad, University of Groningen

April 16, 8:30 a.m.5 p.m.

David Cook, Rice University

Marcia Brennan, Rice University

Kelley Coblentz Bautch, University of St. Edwards

The Vision of God in Muslim Dreams

Anne Klein, Rice University

Revealed by the Prophets, Obscured by the Scriptures: God in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies
Andrei Orlov, Marquette University

The Modern Museum and Mystical Houston

April 18, 8:3011 a.m.

The Transcendent, the Mysterious and the Hidden in Tibet: A Buddhist Logos
April 17, 8:30 a.m.3 p.m.

Jonathan Garb, Hebrew University

The Esoteric Quest and Western Culture

Adoil Outside the Cosmos: God Before and After Creation in Enochic Tradition
David Porreca, University of Waterloo

Shamanism and the Hidden History of the Modern Kabbalah

William B. Parsons, Rice University

Jeffrey J. Kripal, Rice University

ROCKWELL SYMPOSIUM April 1518

April 15, 35 p.m.

April D. DeConick, Rice University

How Hidden is God? Revelation and Pedagogy in Ancient and Medieval Hermetic Writings
Bernard McGinn, University of Chicago

On the Mothman, God, and Other Monsters: John A. Keel and the Superspectrum of the Occult
Stephen C. Finley, Louisiana State University

Contours of an Emerging Psychoanalytic Spirituality: Prospects and Problems

Gregory Kaplan, Rice University

What is hiding in the Gospel of John? Reconceptualizing Johannine Origins and the Roots of Gnosticism
John Turner, University of Nebraska

The Hidden God and the Hidden Self in Christian Mysticism

Claire Fanger, Rice University

Hidden Away: Esotericism and Gnosticism in Elijah Muhammads Nation of Islam

Shira Lander, Rice University

How (Not) to Immanentize the Eschaton and Other Problems for Hans Jonas and Eric Voegelin
John Stroup, Rice University

From Hidden to Revealed in Sethian Revelation, Ritual and Protology

Gods Occulted Body: Divine Involucra in Bernard Sylvestris and Alan of Lille

Scholarship on Ancient Palestinian Helios Mosaics: Hiding the Revealed God

The Multidimensional Physics of History and the Problem of Transtheistic God-Language as Cultural Critique in the Popular and Learned Works of Joseph P. Farrell

Religious Studies Humanities Research Center