Since its foundation in 2023, RENSEP has funded six research projects.
- The PhD project of Zheng Liu at CAS-E, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg studied the curriculum of a Chinese Yijing diviner. Zheng has published two blog posts about her project on the RENSEP platform, an introduction into her project, and a description of yijing techniques.
- Monika Hirmer’s Fieldwork Titled “Śrīvidyā Goes West: Continuities and transformations in cross-cultural encounters” explored how the Tantric tradition Śrīvidyā is practiced in a number of contemporary contexts.
- Led by chief scientist and psychologist Dr. Dean Radin from the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California (www.ions.org), RENSEP co-funded, together with the Bial Foundation, a ground-breaking experimental study into the efficacy of sigil magick, interpreted as mind-matter interaction on the level of quantum mechanics (see also https://noetic.org/blog/magickal-sigils-scientific-test/).
- RENSEP supported the research of PhD student Maria Pinal Villanueva on the Serbian esotericist Živorad Mihajlović Slavinski (1937-2022). Villanueva undertook archival research in the Kantonbibliothek in Trogen in Switzerland, where she studied hitherto unknown letter correspondences between Slavinski and other esotericists of the time such as Michel Bertiaux and Kenneth Grant.
- RENSEP’s ‘Art as Esoteric Practice’ stipend was, in collaboration with Prof Judith Noble from Plymouth Arts University, awarded to Natacha V. Moody and her art project “Ghosts of the Great North Wood: Alchemising Ecological Grief”, which led to the fabrication of genuine pieces of art for RENSEP which will be exhibited during the conference “The Aesthetics of Esoteric Practices: Materialities, Performances, Senses”.
- RENSEP awarded its ‘Tandem Paper Prize‘ to Dr Jeff Howard, senior lecture from Falmouth University in Cornwall, UK, and his co-author Steve Patterson. The idea of this prize was to support academic research that is co-authored by a scholar and a practitioner, thus heightening the quality of academic knowledge production through enhanced communication and co-authorship between esotericism scholars and esoteric practitioners. Their prize-winning research article “To Reveal the Hidden Kingdom of Eld: Andrew Chumbley, the Cultus Sabbati, and Imaginal Space in Cornwall” was published in RENSEP’s journal Praxis-Knowledge.
