Antoine Faivre

Antoine Faivre (5 June 1934 – 19 December 2021) was a French scholar of Western esotericism. Until his retirement, he held a chair in the École Pratique des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne, University Professor of Germanic studies at the University of Haute-Normandie, director of the Cahiers del Hermétisme and of Bibliothèque de l'hermétisme, and was with Wouter Hanegraaff and Roland Edighoffer, the editor of the journal Aries.

Thought

Antoine Faivre affirmed occultism, gnosticism and hermeticism share a set of common characteristics that include the faith in the existence of secret and syncretistic concordances -both symbolic and real- between the "macrocosm and the microcosm, the seen and the unseen, and indeed all that is". Those doctrines believe in alchemic transmutation and on an initiatric transmission of knowledge from a master to his pupil.

Personal life and death

Faivre died on 19 December 2021 at the age of 87.

Partial bibliography

• Toison d'or et alchimie, Milan, Archè, 1990. English Transl. Golden Fleece and Alchemy, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1993, reprint 1995.
• Philosophie de la nature (physique sacrée et théosophie, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles), Paris, Albin Michel, 1996 (Prix de philosophie Louis Liard, de l'Académie des Sciences morales et politiques).
• The Eternal Hermes (From Greek God to Alchemical Magus), Grand Rapids, Phanes Press, 1996.
• Accès de l'ésotérisme occidental, Paris, Gallimard (" Bibliothèque des sciences humaines"), vol. I, 1986, 2nd ed., 1996, vol. II, 1996. English Transl. vol. I : Access to Western Esotericism, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1994, vol. II : Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, Studies in Western Esotericism, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2000.
• L'ésotérisme, Paris, PUF, 1992, 3e éd., 2003

External links

• Official website