# Esoteric Comix and their Unsettled and Unsettling Wisdom May 20, 2024 [ Francesco Piraino ](/people/francesco-piraino) *Edited by* [*Aaron Michael Ullrey*](/people/aaron-michael-ullrey "Aaron Michael Ullrey"). *The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting CSWR scholars and their research.* Comix are a central part of popular culture, circulating as cheap-to-produce comic books, refined graphic novels, and big-budget movies. Traditional book sales and their readership are declining, but comic book sales and readership are increasing. Comic books are considered avant-garde art that inspires dedicated museum exhibitions, curated art installations, magazines articles, and scholarly studies. At the same time, comic books are changing. Non-mainstream works often called comix are pushing the genre by incorporating esoteric themes and lore. While comic book narratives once were spandex soap operas about superhero conflicts and rivalries, comix are transforming that medium into an unexpected wisdom literature. Comix should not be considered exploitative, unsophisticated, or childish, which is what prior generations dismissively concluded about comic books. Current authors of comix express, explore, and experiment with esotericism, unsettled and unsettling knowledge. Readers, I hypothesize, are inspired to meditate upon and even practice the esotericism mediated by the comix they read and re-read. ![Image from Comix Book](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/hds_cswr/files/image.pirainoarticle.89.crop_.jpg) Important artists embed existential quests addressing life, death, sex, gender, class, race, politics, and religion. They explore doubt and suffering, narrativize revelations and cosmologies, depict mysteries of life and death, all-the-while drawing on esotericism to shape works addressing spiritual, mystical, and magical themes. Noteworthy authors of esoteric comix include Alan Moore - *Promethea*, Neil Gaiman - *Sandman*, David B. - *Epileptic*, Hugo Pratt - *Corte Sconta detta Arcana*, Nilsen Anders - *Big Questions*, and Lynda Barry - *One! Hundred! Demons!* Sociologists pejoratively interpret the esoteric cultural turn in comic books as a banalization, commodification, or secularization of religions. Religious Studies scholars, on the other hand, document and trace rich thematic chains of esoteric symbols and doctrines across mediums. My current research project titled “Religion and Comics: New Forms of Mediation of Religion ” traces authors’ esoteric inspirations and readers’ receptions of esoteric themes in comix. Author-artists like Hugo Pratt, David B., and Alan Moore deploy esoteric narratives, symbols, and doctrines as an avowed part of their spiritual and artistic quests; such contents are not simply entertaining narrative devices. Departing from prior dismissive artistic representations of esotericism such as William Somerset Maugham’s *The Magician* that mocked the esoteric author Aleister Crowley, these artists compose comics as a way to live esotericism; some, such as Moore, even take up Crowley as a positive character in their narratives. Scholarly definitions of esotericism do not sufficiently grasp the way these authors of comix understand, experience, and write about esotericism. Some scholars describe esotericism in terms of knowledge (ideas, doctrines, and authorities) that has been rejected or superseded by institutional religions and sciences. Other scholars highlight esotericism’s discursive dimensions, stressing its absolute, hidden, and secret character that implies sectarian and elitist politics in which absolute knowledge is possessed only by a spiritual elite that considers itself entitled to superior religious and political roles. ![Ink Image from Comix Book](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/hds_cswr/files/pirainoimage.93.crop_.jpg) Authors of comix, I argue, deploy esotericism as unsettled knowledge that is anti-dogmatic and syncretic, revealing moral and religious doubts, blurring boundaries between reality and fiction. Unlike esoteric teachers, these artists are not interested in acquiring religious authority, veracity, or tradition; their esoteric wisdom emerges in experience itself, in the capacity to perform the truth rather than possess the truth. For them, experience is authority. This esotericism is available to anyone who can afford to purchase the comix. Esotericism’s unsettled knowledge questions, challenges, and even mocks religions, but it should not be considered secular or dogmatic. It displays doubt, and it expresses authors’ endless research into and interrogation of the mysteries and secrets of life and culture. Antihero characters are tormented by uncertainties about what is right and what is wrong, about what is real and what is not real. Characters, though, never lecture the reader nor explain how readers ought to live; they provoke and challenge readers by revealing potent ambiguities and not settling the contradictions inherent in society and in metaphysics. Alan Moore’s *Watchmen* or Neil Gaiman’s *Sandman* are key examples. Unsettled knowledge seeks transcendence. Unsettled knowledge explores humankind, societies, and politics. Unsettled knowledge explores the unconscious, aiming for transformation. I hypothesize that unsettled knowledge is also unsettling knowledge, for it unsettles readers. The boundless worlds in esoteric comix are spaces for dazzling, wondrous, metaphysical, and psychological explorations that challenge readers’ assumptions about reality. Comix are a perfect medium for multidimensional reading, mixing images with words and voids, demanding a certain degree of participation from readers. Esoteric comics resolve neither the unsettled nor the unsettling. Esoteric practitioners generally aspire to be unsettled and to engage the unsettling; they are a perfect audience. My project is the first empirical research study on audiences’ reception of esoteric comix, attempting to unravel the manners in which these comix are understood, perceived, and used by readers, all the while considering audiences’ emotional, existential, and religious practices and *experiences.* See also:- [ Art ](/topic-tags/art) - [ Religion Across the Disciplines ](/topic-tags/religion-across-disciplines) - [ Researcher Reflections ](/topic-tags/researcher-reflection) - [ Transcendence and Transformation ](/programming-threads/transcendence-and-transformation)