Edgar Allan Poe in the 19th Century Esoteric Milieu with Thea Wirsching

While many people today think of Poe as a morbid writer of spooky stories, scholar Thea Wirsching will make the case that Poe was a follower of the Hermetic philosophy. These ideas appear in Poe’s late text, Eureka, a cosmology which argues that all matter is animated by Spirit. However, Poe’s fascination with Hermeticism and NeoPlatonism appears throughout his early fiction as well, and so Wirsching will draw connections between these ancient philosophies and Poe’s 19th century invocation of them, in practices like mesmerism, astrology, Spiritualism, and metempsychosis. Ultimately, Poe had far more in common with the idealism of the Transcendentalists than is commonly thought, and he deserves to be recognized for the sophistication of his esoteric philosophy.

This talk was held in celebration of Edgar Allan Poe’s 213th birthday on January 17th, 2022.

Thea Wirsching is a scholar, Evolutionary astrologer, and Mom, and serves clients via her counseling business, “The Pluto Babe.” Her PhD dissertation, Occult Americans: Invisible Culture and the Literary Imagination, explored the connection between America’s gothic literature and the nation’s esoteric history. Many of these ideas appear in her literary Tarot deck, the American Renaissance Tarot (2021).

Illustrations from the American Renaissance Tarot by Celeste Pille