“Esotericism” is often linked with “tradition”. References to “hidden” or “perennial” traditions abound on the emic level, and often enough esotericism has itself been conceived of as constituting a “tradition” traceable through history. These two general tendencies hide a web of interrelated questions, which can be probed from the perspectives of sociology and history. In the present chapter, we chart some of the most important of these, aiming at a comprehensive overview of the problems surrounding the notion of “tradition” in the field of esotericism and pointing at ways to deal with them.

Our approach is therefore synthetic, and ploughs through several layers of discussions. First, we discuss briefly the vague and problematic uses to which the term tradition is often put. This brings us to a discussion of attempts to operationalize the term in the context of sociology. We generally find that a lack of historical awareness is detrimental to sociological uses of “tradition”/”traditional”, although the more nuanced notion of “detraditionalization” and attendant processes does have some promise. After pointing out shortcomings of these conceptualizations of tradition, we turn to a critical constructivist approach emphasizing the inventedness of traditions.