According to the Greek interpretation ‘esotericists’ refers to people who were able to understand and recognise the relations between various doctrines. Thus, they became insiders, they owned the knowledge of the arcane.
Today, esotericism has an extremely broad meaning. Virtually all the teachings and doctrines, especially since the spread of New Age philosophies, do not fit into prevailing teachings and current scientific theories. There is a war, still going on today, between the followers of esotericism and exoteric (non-esoteric) teachings. This war is meaningless because knowledge is knowledge, regardless the source of that knowledge.
Finding our place in the Universe is hard enough and adding more endless and meaningless fighting to it is not worthwhile (see the related scene in ‘The Life of Brian’)! On one hand the argument between esoteric and exoteric followers is understandable since the age of Pisces is followed by the age of Aquarius, and the age of Pisces is just as old as Jesus. This fight is nothing more than attacking a taboo, that was rather strengthened during the last two thousand years. This topic is deeply discussed, flavoured with lots of irony, in ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ film made in 2009, and – much to the delight of lovers of reading - in the ‘Celestine Prophecy’ series with noble simplicity and light discussions. Of course we can find much deeper examples, for instance the book by Marlo Morgan, ‘Mutant Message Down Under’, that is sometimes hard to ‘digest’ for even an esoteric reader.
Esotericism, or the abovementioned ‘inside knowledge’ is not so secret anymore, and that is an interesting paradox as it was many years ago. We are sure to find at least one person near or around us who has radically different thinking concerning the world, its events and indeed the entire universe.
Recently the ‘eso’ finds its place with the ‘exo’ as well.