A Preliminary Genealogy of Yoga in Italy: Between Religion and Contemporary Spirituality
Religions June 27, 2023 Matteo di Placido, Stefania Palmisano
Yoga in twenty-first-century Italy is neither entirely new nor a clear alternative to established religions, but instead shares overlapping boundaries with Catholicism, contemporary spiritualities, and Western esoteric traditions such as theosophy and anthroposophy. Drawing on a discursive study of religion approach, the authors construct a preliminary genealogy of yoga in Italy that reveals its premodern, esoteric, and theosophical roots. They question the novelty often attributed to contemporary spiritualities and show how yoga's positioning within the Italian religious field involves porous and overlapping concepts. The article reflects on the limits of sociocultural theorizing for interpreting the spiritual and religious field.