Carole M. Cusack, The Study of Esotericism in the Antipodes By Carole Cusack

https://www.academia.edu/164814133/Carole_M_Cusack_The_Study_of_Esotericism_in_the_Antipodes?email_work_card=title This chapter covers both the history of esoteric groups and prominent individuals in Australia and to a lesser extent Aotearoa New Zealand, and the emergence of an academic subfield that studies these groups and topics both in the Antipodes and globally, while the researchers discussed are based in the southern hemisphere. Both Australia and New Zealand were settled by British colonists in the late eighteenth and the early-mid nineteenth centuries. Colonial governments were inextricably linked to (Protestant) Christianity, and missionaries sought to convert Indigenous peoples, eradicating one source of religious difference in the new territories. Yet, from the mid-nineteenth century a range of new religions challenged Christian hegemony. ...