I am looking for any short-form content creators on TikTok or Instagram who academically engage with esotericism. I already spend a huge portion of my time reading, watching, and listening to long-form content. But I feel like I want to immerse myself even more when I am relaxing by scrolling through TikTok or Instagram. If there are any really good accounts or pages you good folks think are worth checking out. Let me know! Thanks in advance.

Hi there. I am a PhD student writing about philosophy and esotericism. I am also a musician-singer and have taken on the mildly ridiculous yet visionary project of transforming philosophy into music. Here I have for you a musical exposition of the Presocratic philosopher-mage Empedocles’ connection to alchemy, Neoplatonism and mystery cults, primarily inspired by a couple of (500+ page) books by Peter Kingsley, namely Reality and Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic although I drew upon other sources as well. The philosophy of Empedocles is profoundly enmeshed with mystery cult traditions, and offered a wellspring of inspiration for alchemy, hermeticism, and Neoplatonism which absorbed his ideas and interpreted them in new ways. In Empedocles you will find an origin for classic Neoplatonic and alchemical ideas, tropes, and motifs. The narrative is told from the perspective of Empedocles, often as he is speaking to his disciple Pausanias. Whilst you may not understand all the nuances initially, a fuller explanation is provided at the end. It’s very much experimental, and features hand-drawn animations by me, so let me know what you think in the comments, and I hope you enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz_wX1pEDcM

I'm getting ready to read The Rosicrucian Enlightenment by Frances Yates, and I am wondering if there are some scholarly general critiques of this work (or any of her others, for that matter).

I'll be reading for my own entertainment and would like to know some general problems with the work, her scholarship, what resources and methods she followed in her research, that sort of thing. I think the abstracts of papers would probably get me through.

Any critiques about her other work would also be helpful. I read Art of Memory years ago and probably inadvertently recounted some tall tales to my friends at the time.

I hope this question is appropriate to this sub; it's a bit tagential to esotericism per se, but it seems to touch on topics that would come up in scholarly studies.

I was recently reading Eric Purdue's translation of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and I've been curious about the first sentence of Trithemius' letter of response to Agrippa. In Purdue's translation, it reads: "We examined your work...which you delivered by this messenger."

The wording "this messenger" has me wondering about 16th century German message exchange in general, and the guy who carried the manuscript between Agrippa and Trithemius in particular. Was this the same guy or maybe it was the same messenger service? If the same guy, did he have to put himself up at an inn on his own thaler? If so, how long did it take Trithemius to read the manuscript while the guy waited? Or maybe the wording is just a convention of the day or a translation choice on Purdue's part. Things like that.

I assume the actual person or persons are lost to history, but I'm curious about the general way Three Books traveled back and forth between the two friends.

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I have the James Charlesworth Old Testament books but I want to get good versions of the New Testament Apocrypha that is meant for critical study, and I can't really tell from looking at them which books are more true to the source material rather than being interpreted with an agenda.Thank You(also I am not talking about the Gnostic texts - I already have good sources for those)

What are some good books/ articles that have a central focus on Gnostic philosophy (in a theological context) as opposed to elements of Gnostic mythos/mysticism? The way I understand "philosophical theology" here is kind of like Christian scholasticism or alternatively the Islamicate kalam tradition. In other words, a systematic exposition of theology in a truly 'philosophical' manner.