Published with license by Brill Schöningh | doi:10.30965/25217038-01501014 © Davide Marino, 2024 | ISSN: 2521-7038 ( online) This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies (2024) 1–28 brill.com/veas The Path to Gnosis: a Microhistory Davide Marino | ORCID: 0000-0003-3803-986X Research Fellow, Department of Religious Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Davidemarino@link.cuhk.edu.hk Received 2 December 2023 | Accepted 28 February 2024 | Published online 12 July 2024 Abstract This article provides an in-depth study of two occultist journals published in France at the turn of the twentieth century, namely, La Voie and La Gnose. Although ultimately commercially unsuccessful, both journals proved to be very important in the devel- opment of the influential esotericist René Guénon (1886–1951). Through a detailed analysis of all issues, it is shown how both journals initiated their publication as house organs of a neo-Gnostic organisation (the Gnostic Church of France), but soon moved to “Eastern” themes such as East Asian religions or Islam. In conclusion, it is argued that the history of these two journals is evidence of the “logic of bricolage” employed by occultists in their quest for religious meaning in the age of European Colonialism. Keywords Western Esotericism – La Gnose – La Voie – René Guénon – occultism 1 Introduction This article explores the evolution of two publications of the Parisian occult milieu: La Voie (The Path) and its successor La Gnose (Gnosis). As we will see in the following sections, both were largely two unsuccessful enterprises. Unlike other contemporary (and competing) journals, such as L’Initiation (Initiation) or Le Voile d’Isis (The Veil of Isis), which achieved a fairly large circulation for