Cosmotheism is a term for several political or religious concepts.
One conception refers to the idea that the entire universe (kosmos) is God (theos). [1] It is thus similar to pantheism and the idea of the anima mundi (world-soul). The term was coined by Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1721–1794) in 1782 to refer to the Stoic worship of the cosmos or mundus as a Supreme Being. [1] Jan Assmann ascribed the doctrine to ancient Egyptian theology as well as various Greek philosophies. According to Assmann, "Malesherbes could not have found a better term for what seems to be the common denominator of Egyptian religion, Alexandrinian (Neoplatonic, Stoic, Hermetic) philosophy, and Spinozism, including the medieval traditions such as alchemy and the Kabbalah that have served as intermediaries." [1] Assmann also sees cosmotheistic ideas in the German Romanticism of figures like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. [1]
The term is separately associated with William Luther Pierce, an American white nationalist political activist who founded the National Alliance. His cosmotheist ideology espoused that evolution was on an upward path to oneness with God; Pierce said that whites had a "divine spark" that set them on the best path for this syncretic belief. [2]
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