Wouter Hanegraaff

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Wouter J. Hanegraaff (b. 1961) is a Dutch professor of comparative religion.

He originally studied classical guitar at the Municipal Conservatory at Zwolle from 1982 to 1987, and cultural history at the University of Utrecht from 1986 to 1990.

From 1992 to 1996 he was a Research Fellow at the department for Study of Religions at the University of Utrecht. His dissertation New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought was published by Brill in 1996. Two years later it was taken up by SUNY Press. This work constitutes one of the first non-polemical academic reviews of the New Age movement, presenting an analysis on the basis of its important texts. It covers important authors, themes, aspects of New Age belief, and finally looks at the New Age in the context of traditional Western esotericism. It has helped pave the way for a number of further studies that have appeared in various journals, concerning the New Age phenomenon.

From 1996 to 1999 Hanegraaff held a postdoctoral fellowship from the Dutch Association for Scientific Research, during which time he spent a period working in Paris.

In 1999 he became professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam. From 2002 to 2006 he has been president of the Dutch Society for the Study of Religion, and, since 2005, president of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism

In his addition to his book on the New Age, Hanegraaff has co-written or edited a number of books on comparative or historical religious studies, as well as being editor of a number of projects. With Antoine Faivre and Roland Edighoffer he is editor of Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism. He is member of the editorial board of the journals Religion, Numen, and Esoterica, and on the advisory board of Journal of Contemporary Religion and Nova Religio.

[edit] Partial bibliography

W. J. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Brill, Leiden 1996, State University of New York Press, Albany 1998.
----- and R.M. Bouthoorn Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447-1500): The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, 2005.