Kabbalah
The classical Jewish theosophical mystical tradition that emerges in twelfth-century Provence and reaches its systematic synthesis in the thirteenth-century Castilian Zohar and the sixteenth-century Lurianic school of Safed.
Provence, Catalonia, Castile, Safed, Eastern Europe · 12th century -- present
Hasidism
The eighteenth-century revival of Jewish mysticism that internalizes Lurianic Kabbalah into popular contemplative practice, organized around the figure of the tzaddik and the doctrine of devekut.
Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Belarus), later worldwide · mid-18th century -- present
Akbarian Sufism
The metaphysical Sufi school descending from Ibn Arabi (al-Shaykh al-Akbar, "the greatest master"), centered on the doctrine of wahdat al-wujud and the elaborated science of the divine names.
Andalusia, Damascus, Anatolia, Persia, the Indian subcontinent · late 12th century -- present
Illuminationist (Ishraqi)
The Persian Sufi-philosophical school founded by Suhrawardi (1154-1191), centered on the metaphysics of light (hikmat al-ishraq) as the structural grammar of being and knowing.
Persia, the broader Persianate world · late 12th century -- present
Ismaili Esotericism
The Shi'i intellectual tradition of esoteric exegesis (ta'wil) developed within Ismaili thought, in which the inner meaning (batin) of revelation is accessible only through the authoritative interpretation of the living Imam.
Fatimid Egypt, Yemen, Persia, the Indian subcontinent, contemporary diaspora · late 9th century -- present
Christian Apophatic Theology
The Christian tradition of negative theology — approaching the divine by negating all predicates — that descends from Pseudo-Dionysius through the Rhineland mystics, the Cloud of Unknowing, and the Carmelite school.
Mediterranean, Western Europe, Byzantium · c. 500 CE -- present
Hesychasm
The Eastern Orthodox contemplative tradition centered on the prayer of the heart (the Jesus Prayer) and the theology of divine essence and energies systematized by Gregory Palamas.
Sinai, Mount Athos, Byzantium, Russia, the broader Orthodox world · c. 500 CE -- present
Hermetic and Late-Antique Theurgy
The late-antique Greco-Egyptian philosophical-religious corpus centered on the Corpus Hermeticum, paired with the theurgic Neoplatonism of Iamblichus and Proclus.
Egypt, Greek Mediterranean, Syria · c. 100 BCE -- 600 CE
Renaissance Magia
The early-modern revival of Hermetic, Neoplatonist, and Kabbalistic sources in Italian Renaissance philosophy, organized around the doctrine of sympathetic correspondence and the synthesis of Christian Kabbalah.
Italy, France, the Holy Roman Empire, England · c. 1450 -- 1650 CE