Message from Prof. Wouter J. Hanegraaff

Message to the participants in the Lusófona Conference on Western Esotericism

Dear participants,

It is with feelings of the greatest regret that I have been forced to cancel my participation in the Lusófona Conference on Western Esotericism. I want to emphasize that I consider it a great honour and privilege to have been invited by the organizers to give two public lectures at this very special event, and personally I had been eagerly looking forward to the occasion. However, serious personal circumstances that are wholly beyond my control, and could not have been predicted beforehand, have confronted me with a clear case of force majeure in this case – I simply had no other choice than to withdraw my participation.

Fortunately my colleague Peter Forshaw has been willing to step in for me at short notice, and come to Lisbon as representative of our Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam. Peter is an excellent scholar, and an impressive and charismatic speaker as well, as you will soon find out. I certainly could not have found a better replacement.

The study of esotericism has been developing very fast over the last two decades, especially after the founding of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) in 2005, and it is good to see that interest in this field is now growing in Portugal as well. I hope that the Lusófona Conference will prove to be just the first step that will be followed by more, and of course I will be more than happy to come to Lisbon if a new opportunity arises. Let me add that it would be great if some (or many) of you could come to the next conference of the ESSWE, which will take place in Erfurt, Germany, in 2017.

In any case, all I can do for now is wish you a very successful conference. I hope we will soon have a chance to meet, in Portugal or elsewhere.

With all best wishes,
Wouter J. Hanegraaff