I have been plowing my way recently through a number of occult/esoteric books which posit the existence of an essentially monolithic "Western Inner Tradition", which is meant to stand in some sort of balance and/or opposition to the "Eastern Inner Tradition". Inasmuch as this notion rankles my sense of the futility of reducing complex spiritual behaviors to simplistic jargon, I feel somehow compelled to address this topic.
The "Western Inner Tradition" (or "Western Mystery Tradition") is generally held by these writers to be so broad as to encompass the Passion of Christ, the Qabalah, the Delphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, Atlantean teachings, the doctrines of Pythagoras, and the "Matter of Britain"--that complex of tales evolving out of Celtic lore into the stories of Arthur, Merlin, and the Holy Grail. This list clearly is ambitious and far-reaching. There are areas of clear commonality: much of European religious and occult lore focuses on the notion of the "Divine King" (or "Year King" or "Sacred King", etc.), who is mortal, yet inextricably linked to the health of the land and the people and who undergoes willing sacrifice to ensure future prosperity. This resonates from the life of Jesus to the tale of the Fisher King. This (often) annual ritual intertwines with the seasonal mysteries of the Goddess (either tripartite or conceived as mother and daughter), from Inanna on down, who descends to the Underworld and subsequently returns.
If there is an over-arching thread to the "Westen Tradition" which distinguishes it from the Eastern, it is perhaps that of the Divine made material, as opposed to Eastern disciplines dedicated to transcending the material to reach the Divine. Eastern discipline, in such traditions as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoist alchemy, often seeks to transform the imperfect world of the senses to the higher realms of perfection and/or immortality. The Western magical traditions (in an extremely loose sense) draw down the essential power of the transcendental realms to work in manifest nature. Much of Wiccan belief coelesces around the divinity to be found in the sensory world and in journeys to other, equally sensate, realms, both before and after death.
This is all clearly a vast oversimplification, of course--of exactly the kind I generally detest. It also neglects some interesting commonalities between East and West (Maiden/Mother/Crone vs. Brahma/Krishna/Shiva, for example). However, the notion of complementarity between the material world seeking the Divine and the Divine finding form in the material world strikes me a being a useful one.
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