Seeing Isis, Saving Humanity : Mysticisms Old and New in Early xxth-Century History and Philosophy of Religion

After WWI, many of the pioneering representatives of the academic study of religion took stock of past accomplishments and expressed hopes for the future of their discipline. Two such scholars were Franz Cumont and Alfred Loisy. Using newly discovered correspondence material, this paper tries to make sense of a complex and enigmatic episode in their correspondence of late 1919. At the center of the epistolary dispute was the question as to whether or not the initiation in the mystery cult of Isis entailed a mystical visio of the goddess. By studying Loisy’s peculiar conception of mysticism (ancient and modern) and the subtle divergences between their comparative methods, this paper aims to illustrate the intricate intertwinement between the studied past, the lived present, and the imagined future.