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Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump
Within the concentric circles of Trump’s regime lies an unseen culture of occultists, power-seekers, and mind-magicians whose influence is on the rise. In this unparalleled account, historian Gary Lachman examines the influence of occult and esoteric philosophy on the unexpected rise of the alt-right.
Did positive thinking and mental science help put Donald Trump in the White House? And are there any other hidden powers of the mind and thought at work in today’s world politics? In Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, historian and cultural critic Gary Lachman takes a close look at the various magical and esoteric ideas that are impacting political events across the globe. From New Thought and Chaos Magick to the far-right esotericism of Julius Evola and the Traditionalists, Lachman follows a trail of mystic clues that involve, among others, Norman Vincent Peale, domineering gurus and demagogues, Ayn Rand, Pepe the Frog, Rene Schwaller de Lubicz, synarchy, the Alt-Right, meme magic, and Vladimir Putin and his postmodern Rasputin. Come take a drop down the rabbit hole of occult politics in the twenty-first century and find out the post-truths and alternative facts surrounding the 45th President of the United States with one of the leading writers on esotericism and its influence on modern culture.
Did positive thinking and mental science help put Donald Trump in the White House? And are there any other hidden powers of the mind and thought at work in today’s world politics? In Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, historian and cultural critic Gary Lachman takes a close look at the various magical and esoteric ideas that are impacting political events across the globe. From New Thought and Chaos Magick to the far-right esotericism of Julius Evola and the Traditionalists, Lachman follows a trail of mystic clues that involve, among others, Norman Vincent Peale, domineering gurus and demagogues, Ayn Rand, Pepe the Frog, Rene Schwaller de Lubicz, synarchy, the Alt-Right, meme magic, and Vladimir Putin and his postmodern Rasputin. Come take a drop down the rabbit hole of occult politics in the twenty-first century and find out the post-truths and alternative facts surrounding the 45th President of the United States with one of the leading writers on esotericism and its influence on modern culture.
214 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2018
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About the author
Gary Lachman
65 books445 followersGary Lachman is an American writer and musician. Lachman is best known to readers of mysticism and the occult from the numerous articles and books he has published.
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May 31, 2018
Having become a fan of Gary Lachman’s work a few years ago, I’ve known that he’s had Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump in the works for some time. The time between his announcement of the project and his report that he’d sent the manuscript to the publisher was some months ago, so it’s been a long wait. As time passed my anticipation grew, and upon receiving the book I had to wonder whether the reality would match the level of my anticipation. The answer, I’m happy to report, is a resounding “Yes!”
I’d learned that Lachman would be exploring the complex of ideas that surround Putin’s regime in Russia, a daunting task given Russia’s cultural heritage that’s as tangled and enigmatic as a great Russian novel. Lachman delivers on this end of the story, but to my delight, he also shines his light upon the American side of this time of political turmoil. His consideration of American-as-apple-pie New Thought and its relation to Trump provides a valuable contribution to our understanding. How does one start with a train of thought that can claim greats like Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James—two of the most significant and encouraging of American thinkers—and arrive at Donald Trump?
Also, Lachman provides readers with a new lens through which we can better perceive the Trump phenomena. I’d initially perceived Trump as a clown in the mold of Silviu Berlusconi (Italy’s former PM)—a wealthy philanderer out to massage his own ego and line his pockets while his boorish behavior and grandiose promises distract voters long enough to pick their pockets (which seems all too acceptable in Italy). Later, I came to see Trump as a full-scale demagogue, precisely the type of candidate that political thinkers from Plato to the American Founders (Hamilton and Madison in particular) warned us about and against whom the Founders designed the Constitution. (This blog post addresses both of the first two of my Trump images.)Later, in part as a reaction to Scott Adams’s “Trump is a master persuader and can do no wrong” refrain (my initial response that I now find inadequate). I came to see Trump as a master salesman, a huckster in the classic American mold of hucksters. Only he didn’t sell land in Florida or shares in the Brooklyn Bridge; instead, he sold worthless educational certificates from Trump University and stiffed contractors and investors. A friend of mine captured Trump’s essence by describing him as “a man of low cunning.” More recently, and to use a more contemporary vocabulary, both Max Boot and Tim Egan (and undoubtedly others) have described Trump as a grifter. (Slate has an interesting piece that distinguishes a “grifter” from a “grafter,” but we needn’t quibble.) But while all of these characterizations hold validity, they’re not completely satisfying. While money is a VERY BIG THING for Trump (as it is, less ostentatiously, for Putin, who’s now probably richer than Trump), money alone doesn’t provide a satisfactory explanation for the Trump phenomena. Something more, something deeper is at play, and here’s where Lachman has provided us with a more revealing lens. Drawing on the writings of Colin Wilson that deal with “rogue messiahs” (gurus) and “Right Men” (those who cannot admit errors or flaws), Lachman establishes a strong connection between “gurus” and “demagogues.” When reflecting on the traits of gurus gone bad--most prove human, all too human--and demagogues like Trump or Putin, one discovers very similar traits. Lachman follows this trail of traits to establish—for me at least—that Trump is not just not a normal politician (compromise, give-and-take, follows established norms), but a guru-demagogue in about every conceivable way. He's intolerant of criticism, lacks friends, prefers mass audiences of adulating fans, holds a simplistic worldview of “us versus them,” and so on. This trope of the bad guru fits as well as any . . . Well, except for one more perspective that Lachman provides us.
A more far-fetched, but most intriguing perspective, is to consider Trump a “tulpa,” (or ‘telly-tulpa”), a thought-form, an apparition (albeit one with some material reality) created by mental processes. Lachman draws the idea of a tulpa from Tibetan and magical lore. Whatever the empirical validity of such an entity, as a metaphor, it fits. From this, I can conjure a great opening for a piece about Trump: “A specter is haunting America, the specter of Donald Trump.” Catchy, don’t you think? Just keep in mind that this specter is not a friendly genie that will do our bidding and fulfill our wishes, but an evil jinn who seeks to entice us into our own imprisonment.
Lachman is a thorough, reliable guide through the under-explored and labyrinthian ways of experiencing the world that lie outside of the modern mainstream. Lachman has developed a solid reputation for exploring these less traveled by-ways, and this work proves no exception. And I must mention that Lachman approximates an ideal teacher. He informs his reader about ideas, events, and persons with a very light, unobtrusive touch. One must read carefully to get a sense of where his preferences and perspectives lie. He tosses off comments and asides that provide clues, but he’s never ponderous or pedantic. Only at the end of the book, as on the last day of class, does Lachman pull back the curtain and provide a direct statement of his perspective about what he’s shared. His peroration merits careful contemplation:
Exactly what guidelines we impose on our imaginations is, of course, a serious question . . . . But the very power involved suggests we should proceed with caution, as anyone of any seriousness would; only children play with matches. This does not mean timidly, but with care and an awareness of the responsibility involved. The future perhaps is not only in our hands, but in our minds, and the reality that awaits us in the time ahead may be germinating there now. Let us hope that when it arrives we will be equal to it and that it will bring clearer skies and brighter stars on the horizon.
Lachman, Gary. Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump (p. 192). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
As usual, I find myself mostly agreeing or at least sympathetic with Lachman's arguments, even about points where I’m more skeptical—or perhaps to say cautious—about conclusions and connections. All the points in his case merit careful consideration and invite us to a more in-depth exploration of the issues raised.
For me, a book that promotes—even demands—further explorations of its subjects merits the highest valuation, and this book meets this criterion. I could go on at great length sharing and then riffing on the many issues that Lachman’s book raises: the nature of persuasion; the relation between thoughts, beliefs, actions, and reality; the role of ideas in the material world of politics; the thinning barrier between appearance and reality (or simulacra and simulation); the distinction between “imagination” and “fancy” (or “creativity); critiques of modernity and alternatives to modernity; the illusions and deceptions of postmodernism; the potential for civilizational disruption; and (in my words), why the human herd is so spooked that we have stampeded toward a cliff.
I’ll save exploration of these issues for later blogs, but suffice it to say, I highly recommend reading this book to better understand and investigate the uncertain times in which we now live.
My original blogpost with links: http://sngthoughts.blogspot.com/2018/...
I’d learned that Lachman would be exploring the complex of ideas that surround Putin’s regime in Russia, a daunting task given Russia’s cultural heritage that’s as tangled and enigmatic as a great Russian novel. Lachman delivers on this end of the story, but to my delight, he also shines his light upon the American side of this time of political turmoil. His consideration of American-as-apple-pie New Thought and its relation to Trump provides a valuable contribution to our understanding. How does one start with a train of thought that can claim greats like Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James—two of the most significant and encouraging of American thinkers—and arrive at Donald Trump?
Also, Lachman provides readers with a new lens through which we can better perceive the Trump phenomena. I’d initially perceived Trump as a clown in the mold of Silviu Berlusconi (Italy’s former PM)—a wealthy philanderer out to massage his own ego and line his pockets while his boorish behavior and grandiose promises distract voters long enough to pick their pockets (which seems all too acceptable in Italy). Later, I came to see Trump as a full-scale demagogue, precisely the type of candidate that political thinkers from Plato to the American Founders (Hamilton and Madison in particular) warned us about and against whom the Founders designed the Constitution. (This blog post addresses both of the first two of my Trump images.)Later, in part as a reaction to Scott Adams’s “Trump is a master persuader and can do no wrong” refrain (my initial response that I now find inadequate). I came to see Trump as a master salesman, a huckster in the classic American mold of hucksters. Only he didn’t sell land in Florida or shares in the Brooklyn Bridge; instead, he sold worthless educational certificates from Trump University and stiffed contractors and investors. A friend of mine captured Trump’s essence by describing him as “a man of low cunning.” More recently, and to use a more contemporary vocabulary, both Max Boot and Tim Egan (and undoubtedly others) have described Trump as a grifter. (Slate has an interesting piece that distinguishes a “grifter” from a “grafter,” but we needn’t quibble.) But while all of these characterizations hold validity, they’re not completely satisfying. While money is a VERY BIG THING for Trump (as it is, less ostentatiously, for Putin, who’s now probably richer than Trump), money alone doesn’t provide a satisfactory explanation for the Trump phenomena. Something more, something deeper is at play, and here’s where Lachman has provided us with a more revealing lens. Drawing on the writings of Colin Wilson that deal with “rogue messiahs” (gurus) and “Right Men” (those who cannot admit errors or flaws), Lachman establishes a strong connection between “gurus” and “demagogues.” When reflecting on the traits of gurus gone bad--most prove human, all too human--and demagogues like Trump or Putin, one discovers very similar traits. Lachman follows this trail of traits to establish—for me at least—that Trump is not just not a normal politician (compromise, give-and-take, follows established norms), but a guru-demagogue in about every conceivable way. He's intolerant of criticism, lacks friends, prefers mass audiences of adulating fans, holds a simplistic worldview of “us versus them,” and so on. This trope of the bad guru fits as well as any . . . Well, except for one more perspective that Lachman provides us.
A more far-fetched, but most intriguing perspective, is to consider Trump a “tulpa,” (or ‘telly-tulpa”), a thought-form, an apparition (albeit one with some material reality) created by mental processes. Lachman draws the idea of a tulpa from Tibetan and magical lore. Whatever the empirical validity of such an entity, as a metaphor, it fits. From this, I can conjure a great opening for a piece about Trump: “A specter is haunting America, the specter of Donald Trump.” Catchy, don’t you think? Just keep in mind that this specter is not a friendly genie that will do our bidding and fulfill our wishes, but an evil jinn who seeks to entice us into our own imprisonment.
Lachman is a thorough, reliable guide through the under-explored and labyrinthian ways of experiencing the world that lie outside of the modern mainstream. Lachman has developed a solid reputation for exploring these less traveled by-ways, and this work proves no exception. And I must mention that Lachman approximates an ideal teacher. He informs his reader about ideas, events, and persons with a very light, unobtrusive touch. One must read carefully to get a sense of where his preferences and perspectives lie. He tosses off comments and asides that provide clues, but he’s never ponderous or pedantic. Only at the end of the book, as on the last day of class, does Lachman pull back the curtain and provide a direct statement of his perspective about what he’s shared. His peroration merits careful contemplation:
Exactly what guidelines we impose on our imaginations is, of course, a serious question . . . . But the very power involved suggests we should proceed with caution, as anyone of any seriousness would; only children play with matches. This does not mean timidly, but with care and an awareness of the responsibility involved. The future perhaps is not only in our hands, but in our minds, and the reality that awaits us in the time ahead may be germinating there now. Let us hope that when it arrives we will be equal to it and that it will bring clearer skies and brighter stars on the horizon.
Lachman, Gary. Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump (p. 192). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
As usual, I find myself mostly agreeing or at least sympathetic with Lachman's arguments, even about points where I’m more skeptical—or perhaps to say cautious—about conclusions and connections. All the points in his case merit careful consideration and invite us to a more in-depth exploration of the issues raised.
For me, a book that promotes—even demands—further explorations of its subjects merits the highest valuation, and this book meets this criterion. I could go on at great length sharing and then riffing on the many issues that Lachman’s book raises: the nature of persuasion; the relation between thoughts, beliefs, actions, and reality; the role of ideas in the material world of politics; the thinning barrier between appearance and reality (or simulacra and simulation); the distinction between “imagination” and “fancy” (or “creativity); critiques of modernity and alternatives to modernity; the illusions and deceptions of postmodernism; the potential for civilizational disruption; and (in my words), why the human herd is so spooked that we have stampeded toward a cliff.
I’ll save exploration of these issues for later blogs, but suffice it to say, I highly recommend reading this book to better understand and investigate the uncertain times in which we now live.
My original blogpost with links: http://sngthoughts.blogspot.com/2018/...
July 20, 2018
A longtime fan of the subjects Gary Lachman writes about and of his way of writing about those chosen topics (the occult, imagination, mysticism) and people (Steiner, Jung. Crowley), I jumped to buy and inhale Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump on first noticing its availability. Since I am writing this review in July 2018, five days after Trump’s controversial “summit” with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, I had to wonder how it would stand up to the currently evolving reality-tv drama that Trump was staging in daily dizzying installments. Could Lachman possibly insert something cogent into the helter-skelter fray between warring sides willing to spare no insult but brook no rational conversation?
While Lachman never suggests that he has all the answers to the mind-numbing enigma of the 2016 election and administration that resulted from it (in the interest of full disclosure and to avoid pretending that the winner of that election did not matter to me, I am an independent who never dreamed that Donald Trump would win), Dark Star Rising is filled with “food for thought” that parties on both sides might digest with benefit.
While it might not endear him further to the Christian fundamentalists who had to endorse him for lack of a better choice, Trump holds himself to be a devotee of “positive thinking,” proclaiming that he is the “greatest student” of the man who wrote the book, The Power of Positive Thinking: Reverend Norman Vincent Peale. Thus, contrary to a frequent criticism, he is not an unbeliever; he unconditionally believes in himself. And in addition to Dr. Peale, he is the good company of a whole sequence of spiritual teachers, mostly American, and often grouped together as New Thought.
On the other hand and despite his old-dufferisms, Trump “seems to be something of a ‘natural’ chaos magician…like New Thought, chaos magick (the “k” a nod to Aleister Crowley) is interested in results, in ‘making things happen.’ It pursues ‘visible results by which the magician demonstrates to himself that he can do things which, a short while ago, never entered his mind as possibilities.” This description rang more bells for me about Trump’s modus operandi than the millions of words spewed about him since he came down the Trump Tower elevators and announced his candidacy for POTUS.
But a POTUS has to be elected with votes garnered fair or foul; and Lachman forwards an unflattering opinion of those who ushered Trump into the White House: “The desire Hitler and Mussolini met in millions of people was a simple one: to be free of the burden of giving meaning to their lives themselves, of fulfilling their hunger for ‘struggle and self-sacrifice,’ for some greater purpose than the satisfaction of their own appetites, through their own efforts. This is a temptation we all face at some time.”
“The great leader,” Lachman describes such populist dictators, “is antinomian, that is, not held back by the rules and not responsible to anyone but himself. He is beyond good and evil, and logic too, or at least is the author of their definition. It is this presumed infallibility that gives him his power over a flock or a nation.” If this shoe fits Trump, and Lachman makes a plausible case for it, our democracy is in clear and present danger.
While this book will provide further philosophical and even spiritual arguments to those already opposed to Trump, it could prove to be an eye- and mind-opener to those “true believers” who hold him infallible no matter what. Now, to get them to read it….
While Lachman never suggests that he has all the answers to the mind-numbing enigma of the 2016 election and administration that resulted from it (in the interest of full disclosure and to avoid pretending that the winner of that election did not matter to me, I am an independent who never dreamed that Donald Trump would win), Dark Star Rising is filled with “food for thought” that parties on both sides might digest with benefit.
While it might not endear him further to the Christian fundamentalists who had to endorse him for lack of a better choice, Trump holds himself to be a devotee of “positive thinking,” proclaiming that he is the “greatest student” of the man who wrote the book, The Power of Positive Thinking: Reverend Norman Vincent Peale. Thus, contrary to a frequent criticism, he is not an unbeliever; he unconditionally believes in himself. And in addition to Dr. Peale, he is the good company of a whole sequence of spiritual teachers, mostly American, and often grouped together as New Thought.
On the other hand and despite his old-dufferisms, Trump “seems to be something of a ‘natural’ chaos magician…like New Thought, chaos magick (the “k” a nod to Aleister Crowley) is interested in results, in ‘making things happen.’ It pursues ‘visible results by which the magician demonstrates to himself that he can do things which, a short while ago, never entered his mind as possibilities.” This description rang more bells for me about Trump’s modus operandi than the millions of words spewed about him since he came down the Trump Tower elevators and announced his candidacy for POTUS.
But a POTUS has to be elected with votes garnered fair or foul; and Lachman forwards an unflattering opinion of those who ushered Trump into the White House: “The desire Hitler and Mussolini met in millions of people was a simple one: to be free of the burden of giving meaning to their lives themselves, of fulfilling their hunger for ‘struggle and self-sacrifice,’ for some greater purpose than the satisfaction of their own appetites, through their own efforts. This is a temptation we all face at some time.”
“The great leader,” Lachman describes such populist dictators, “is antinomian, that is, not held back by the rules and not responsible to anyone but himself. He is beyond good and evil, and logic too, or at least is the author of their definition. It is this presumed infallibility that gives him his power over a flock or a nation.” If this shoe fits Trump, and Lachman makes a plausible case for it, our democracy is in clear and present danger.
While this book will provide further philosophical and even spiritual arguments to those already opposed to Trump, it could prove to be an eye- and mind-opener to those “true believers” who hold him infallible no matter what. Now, to get them to read it….
July 12, 2018
DARK STAR RISING offers useful background info on Steve Bannon and some of Putin's puppet masters, but it goes vague when it attacks postmodernism, chaos magick and other occult and philosophical ideas that Lachman dislikes and thinks have had a negative social influence. Lachman builds straw men, saying the message of postmodernism is "anything goes" without quoting a single philosopher aligned with it (beyond mentioning Debord and Baudrillard.) His idea that Pepe the frog became embodied with literal supernatural powers that enabled Trump to win office is provocative, but it ignores the evidence the book itself provides for the power of memes (in a non-"magickal" way) and the way Trump was able to market himself to voters based on his background as a reality TV star. The most informed material in the book goes into the historical roots of the alt-right in America and similar movements in Russia, but in the end Lachman refuses to say anything about how we can get out of this predicament except that we need to abandon the idea of "do what thou wilt" and put the equivalent of hate speech laws on the imagination, especially when flirting with the paranormal and occult. How exactly one does this is something he leaves totally open. He also dislikes "identity politics," without using that term, because he thinks they lead to tribalism without offering any other suggestions on how minorities can fight for our rights. Much weaker than Lachman's earlier POLITICS AND THE OCCULT.
June 20, 2018
The Trump phenomenon since he got elected appears to be a "singularity" . That is an event after which nothing is ever the same. Completely changing the rules of engagement in American domestic and foreign relations. Probably changing them for the whole world. What is behind the phenomenon though? Hardly a critical mass of "deplorables"i.e. those who tune into Infowats somehow got the numbers to rewrite the game rules. Who were what Lenin called the "movers of the movers" that drove Trump across the line to victory? New Thought and Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale and his protoges have been part of the executive and political class since the days of Thatcher & Reagan. Remember Francis Wheen's How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World? What this book tells us now is that a darker or more apocalyptic form of New Thought is informing a new vanguard and that is Chaos Magic. Outlining at breakneck pace developments in a somewhat sinister fringe who are now hegemonic in the corridors of the Whitehouse and Kremlin, like Steve Bannon to Alexander Dugin and their readings of Perrenialist/Esoteric authors like Rene Guenon and Julius Evola, their use of "meme magic" to trigger public opinion this or that way and replacing the New World Order with a multi-polar New Cold War which may even lead to an Apocalyptic confrontation . A thrilling, gripping and ftightening read!
January 4, 2020
Whether you believe in Magic or the occult, lots of other people do. They think they can dabble with mysterious forces and turn thinking into being. The president is one such person, a proponent of “positive thinking.” His alt-right followers swear that their meme magick made the Trump presidency a reality. The author takes a sober, but open-minded look at the world through a lens that scientists and more rational people reject. However you feel about this hoodoo, its roots start at the birth of mankind and still grow today. They are part of the foundation that holds up our collective history. It’s a weird science, more a curious anthropology, but never less than fascinating.
June 21, 2019
La stella nera è una grande mappa della propaganda populista dove ogni punto si lega a un altro tramite uno spesso filo di occultismo e potenza di immaginario. Dall’ascesa di Donald Trump, per condurci attraverso un rimescolamento delle varie correnti occulte che hanno attraversato i secoli fino a Vladimir Putin. Dalle radici del New thought, il cui meccanismo “trasformare i sogni in realtà” sembra aver portato alla vittoria il candidato statunitense, fino al Tradizionalismo con la sua rivolta contro il mondo moderno.
Aggiungo: La stella nera, non è un libro complottista, anzi, è il libro con cui i complottisti vengono smascherati.
https://onlyapapermoonweb.wordpress.c...
Aggiungo: La stella nera, non è un libro complottista, anzi, è il libro con cui i complottisti vengono smascherati.
https://onlyapapermoonweb.wordpress.c...
May 10, 2021
SO INTERESTING.
Read
June 8, 2018In order for a ballpoint pen to come into existence someone first has to imagine it. Then draw an engineering diagram, get financing, sign a contract with a wire spring manufacturer, mold the plastic parts, and manufacture the ink delivery system. Then get it to market, blah blah blah. Yes, thoughts are things and the imagination creates and ultimately brings things into reality. Magic. But, a lot more people think up automatic dog feeders or mechanical garage door openers than actually get products on the store shelves.
Trump may have come about by meme magic or it could have been a lot of cheating, an elaborate psycho propaganda campaign, media manipulation and maybe even ballot tampering. It wouldn't be the first time an election was rigged, even an American presidential campaign; remember Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004. Trump won three key swing states by a combined 70,000 votes. That many people can fit in a high school football stadium. He did not win the popular vote. Millions of votes were suppressed.
If "The Secret" is thinking something then it will come to be, how is it that nothing I ever pray for comes to be? When I have an important meeting sometimes I dream up multiple alternative scenarios as to how it might go. If I imagine ten possible outcomes it will never be any of those. The only power I have it seems is to ensure the elimination of ways my life could go by thinking them up. But then given that some people have charisma therefore on the opposite end of the scale must exist anti-charisma I am one who can say "hello" and everybody will disagree with me, so.
Gary's book's value comes from his amazing research on the up to date history of New Age pop spirituality, post soviet angst, alt-right xenophobia, and the relentless antisemitism at the heart of world conflict as always. Occasionally Lachman injects a tiny bit of his own opinion, mostly to caution against the dangers of dark magic.
Like many thinking people I too am attempting to develop a rational understanding of Trump and am not without existential fears. Gary and I were both born ten years after Hiroshima and perhaps the most amazing thing about this period of human history is that we've lasted as long as we have without destroying ourselves with nuclear weapons. The world's collective zeitgeist is 100% universally accepted to be a Thunderdome post annihilation hellscape. We sapiens are not the descendants of wise reflective people who built idealic pastoral communes, we carry the blood of the marauding bandits who burn down such villages and rape their daughters. When I look at Trump I immediately remember that Hitler was just a few years ago.
Call it black magic or like me blame it on the hate addled racist easily and eagerly manipulable masses. For the less than 49% of us able to bypass the hypothalmic fight or flight fear response and engage the cerebral cortex, the challenge Trump represents is immensely serious. Now thanks to this book its not just Russian oligarchs and mobsters I need to worry about but Eurasian ideologues.
Trump may have come about by meme magic or it could have been a lot of cheating, an elaborate psycho propaganda campaign, media manipulation and maybe even ballot tampering. It wouldn't be the first time an election was rigged, even an American presidential campaign; remember Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004. Trump won three key swing states by a combined 70,000 votes. That many people can fit in a high school football stadium. He did not win the popular vote. Millions of votes were suppressed.
If "The Secret" is thinking something then it will come to be, how is it that nothing I ever pray for comes to be? When I have an important meeting sometimes I dream up multiple alternative scenarios as to how it might go. If I imagine ten possible outcomes it will never be any of those. The only power I have it seems is to ensure the elimination of ways my life could go by thinking them up. But then given that some people have charisma therefore on the opposite end of the scale must exist anti-charisma I am one who can say "hello" and everybody will disagree with me, so.
Gary's book's value comes from his amazing research on the up to date history of New Age pop spirituality, post soviet angst, alt-right xenophobia, and the relentless antisemitism at the heart of world conflict as always. Occasionally Lachman injects a tiny bit of his own opinion, mostly to caution against the dangers of dark magic.
Like many thinking people I too am attempting to develop a rational understanding of Trump and am not without existential fears. Gary and I were both born ten years after Hiroshima and perhaps the most amazing thing about this period of human history is that we've lasted as long as we have without destroying ourselves with nuclear weapons. The world's collective zeitgeist is 100% universally accepted to be a Thunderdome post annihilation hellscape. We sapiens are not the descendants of wise reflective people who built idealic pastoral communes, we carry the blood of the marauding bandits who burn down such villages and rape their daughters. When I look at Trump I immediately remember that Hitler was just a few years ago.
Call it black magic or like me blame it on the hate addled racist easily and eagerly manipulable masses. For the less than 49% of us able to bypass the hypothalmic fight or flight fear response and engage the cerebral cortex, the challenge Trump represents is immensely serious. Now thanks to this book its not just Russian oligarchs and mobsters I need to worry about but Eurasian ideologues.
May 3, 2023
Lachlan presents a fascinating exploration of Trump’s magicke and his own quest to prove the mind’s influence over matter, but it goes down a research rabbit hole in the second half losing focus on seemingly never ending occultists and magical thinkers.
April 1, 2023
Former Blondie drummer and current occult aficionado Gary Lachman‘s Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump was a rather facile take on understanding the dark underbellies of the far-right in comparison with some of the other works discussing similar topics I’ve read recently.
I was curious to learn more and gain further insight into the more esoteric occult beliefs behind the so called “alt right” but like most works I’ve read on such other conspiratorial or paranormal topics, Lachman relies mostly on vague coincidence to reach most of his conclusions. While there was some interesting discussion of the idea how the mind and imagination can affect reality, from New Thought, the brand of positive thinking and “prosperity gospel” that Trump has adhered to, to the idea that “meme magic” could have had an effect on the 2020 election, with none other than Richard Spencer announcing “we willed Donald Trump into office, we made this dream our reality,” it can be all too convenient to blame dark forces on the rise of authoritarian regimes. As Lachman described it, the "chaos magicians” of the alt-right are harnessing postmodernist “relativism” to create their own reality (why does postmodernism always end up the culprit of why things are bad in the modern world?).
As a skeptic, I find so much of this kind of stuff fascinating but, aside from perhaps an interesting account describing the worldviews of those who find themselves attracted to such beliefs, there are more useful works to explore these topics, I feel, including Alexandra Minna Stern’s Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate, Alexander Reid Ross’ Against the Fascist Creep, and in particular, Dale Beran’s It Came From Something Awful. The use of the frame of “magic” (or should I say “magick?”) trappings to describe phenomena from irony (when does a joke become real?) to the nature of reality kind of detracts from discussing the very real ideas that have come to dominate our contemporary society.
One of the threads running through Dark Star Rising, for instance, was the role that the internet and the weird, absurd way it kind of exploded into the “mainstream” mundane world in the 2010s as though a portal to some other world of chaos magic had been opened. But, I feel that it is much more concrete than that.
As much as people say that the internet is virtual, it is a vital part of the everyday world for many people and, as a major facet of today’s information media, is bound to have an effect on how people see the world. As has been seen, some aspects of internet culture exacerbate this drift into misinformation and feelings that the world is wrong.
I discuss other works analyzing the current rise of fascist ideology, particularly in the US, in part 3 of my series Against Fascism at Harris' Tome Corner.
I was curious to learn more and gain further insight into the more esoteric occult beliefs behind the so called “alt right” but like most works I’ve read on such other conspiratorial or paranormal topics, Lachman relies mostly on vague coincidence to reach most of his conclusions. While there was some interesting discussion of the idea how the mind and imagination can affect reality, from New Thought, the brand of positive thinking and “prosperity gospel” that Trump has adhered to, to the idea that “meme magic” could have had an effect on the 2020 election, with none other than Richard Spencer announcing “we willed Donald Trump into office, we made this dream our reality,” it can be all too convenient to blame dark forces on the rise of authoritarian regimes. As Lachman described it, the "chaos magicians” of the alt-right are harnessing postmodernist “relativism” to create their own reality (why does postmodernism always end up the culprit of why things are bad in the modern world?).
As a skeptic, I find so much of this kind of stuff fascinating but, aside from perhaps an interesting account describing the worldviews of those who find themselves attracted to such beliefs, there are more useful works to explore these topics, I feel, including Alexandra Minna Stern’s Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate, Alexander Reid Ross’ Against the Fascist Creep, and in particular, Dale Beran’s It Came From Something Awful. The use of the frame of “magic” (or should I say “magick?”) trappings to describe phenomena from irony (when does a joke become real?) to the nature of reality kind of detracts from discussing the very real ideas that have come to dominate our contemporary society.
One of the threads running through Dark Star Rising, for instance, was the role that the internet and the weird, absurd way it kind of exploded into the “mainstream” mundane world in the 2010s as though a portal to some other world of chaos magic had been opened. But, I feel that it is much more concrete than that.
As much as people say that the internet is virtual, it is a vital part of the everyday world for many people and, as a major facet of today’s information media, is bound to have an effect on how people see the world. As has been seen, some aspects of internet culture exacerbate this drift into misinformation and feelings that the world is wrong.
I discuss other works analyzing the current rise of fascist ideology, particularly in the US, in part 3 of my series Against Fascism at Harris' Tome Corner.
September 27, 2021
C'è un mondo confuso là fuori, e lo è di proposito
Interessantissimo. Come tutto ciò che ci aiuta a comprendere questi nostri tempi così poco lineari, dove non sono più le ideologie a confrontarsi direttamente nel proporre modelli di sviluppo ottimali per un futuro migliore, ma si manifestano invece sistemi di potere più o meno oscuri che utilizzano ogni mezzo per prendere il sopravvento. Demagogia e propaganda, come in ogni dittatura, e poi ora fake news, meme, chaos. Ogni mezzo è lecito, ogni incoerenza ammessa, ogni colpo basso quasi un punto d'orgoglio.
Ma se il mezzo è libero ad ogni interpretazione creativa, il fine è invece più chiaro. Prendere quel potere che le forze progressiste vorrebbero affidato al popolo e gestirlo invece a favore di una élite ristretta, più o meno aristocratica. Una élite che basa il suo diritto al potere su teorie antiche, suprematismi di classe o di razza o di cultura, il mondo di terra contro il mondo del mare, Eurasia contro Oceania come raccontava Orwell, tradizionalismo contro progressismo, esclusione contro inclusione, la guerra contro la pace.
L'analisi di Lachman è sorprendente e parte da lontano, passa per le guerre mondiali e per le dittature manipolatrici che seguirono, da Mussolini e Hitler fino ai giorni nostri con Trump e Putin. Attraverso movimenti pseudo-filosofici e artistici, e attraverso i personaggi che ne svilupparono le idee, dal tradizionalismo di Guénon e Evola che cercarono di orientare i fascismi sino al 'New thought' di Bannon per Trump e le radici asiatiche sostenute da Surkov e Dugin che ispirano la nuova Russia di Putin, molto ben raccontata.
Viaggio fantastico quello di Lachman e molto preoccupante, oggi che viviamo un momento storico in cui questo disegno oscurantista sembra prendere il sopravvento su altre forze, quelle più democratiche e progressiste che molti di noi rappresentano e difendono con la vita di ogni giorno. Anche se Trump dopo la pubblicazione del libro è stato disinnescato, ha acquistato invece forza la sponda russa, impegnata nei fatti, dalla Crimea all'Ucraina a portare avanti questa visione, questo scontro perenne tra bene e male.
Un libro interessante e assolutamente illuminante, dunque. Il postmodernismo che viviamo è oggetto nuovo e oscuro, senza regole e riferimenti, e per chi come noi ha vissuto nell'ideologia è difficile da capire. Lachman ci aiuta, anche se la sua formazione esoterica se non proprio occulta lo porta a leggere i fatti a volte in modo meno convincente. Essendo io un uomo di scienza, a volte ho fatto fatica. Ma anche se io non credo alla 'magia', resta il fatto che altri tra gli uomini di potere forse ci credono. E tanto basta per non trascurarla.
Interessantissimo. Come tutto ciò che ci aiuta a comprendere questi nostri tempi così poco lineari, dove non sono più le ideologie a confrontarsi direttamente nel proporre modelli di sviluppo ottimali per un futuro migliore, ma si manifestano invece sistemi di potere più o meno oscuri che utilizzano ogni mezzo per prendere il sopravvento. Demagogia e propaganda, come in ogni dittatura, e poi ora fake news, meme, chaos. Ogni mezzo è lecito, ogni incoerenza ammessa, ogni colpo basso quasi un punto d'orgoglio.
Ma se il mezzo è libero ad ogni interpretazione creativa, il fine è invece più chiaro. Prendere quel potere che le forze progressiste vorrebbero affidato al popolo e gestirlo invece a favore di una élite ristretta, più o meno aristocratica. Una élite che basa il suo diritto al potere su teorie antiche, suprematismi di classe o di razza o di cultura, il mondo di terra contro il mondo del mare, Eurasia contro Oceania come raccontava Orwell, tradizionalismo contro progressismo, esclusione contro inclusione, la guerra contro la pace.
L'analisi di Lachman è sorprendente e parte da lontano, passa per le guerre mondiali e per le dittature manipolatrici che seguirono, da Mussolini e Hitler fino ai giorni nostri con Trump e Putin. Attraverso movimenti pseudo-filosofici e artistici, e attraverso i personaggi che ne svilupparono le idee, dal tradizionalismo di Guénon e Evola che cercarono di orientare i fascismi sino al 'New thought' di Bannon per Trump e le radici asiatiche sostenute da Surkov e Dugin che ispirano la nuova Russia di Putin, molto ben raccontata.
Viaggio fantastico quello di Lachman e molto preoccupante, oggi che viviamo un momento storico in cui questo disegno oscurantista sembra prendere il sopravvento su altre forze, quelle più democratiche e progressiste che molti di noi rappresentano e difendono con la vita di ogni giorno. Anche se Trump dopo la pubblicazione del libro è stato disinnescato, ha acquistato invece forza la sponda russa, impegnata nei fatti, dalla Crimea all'Ucraina a portare avanti questa visione, questo scontro perenne tra bene e male.
Un libro interessante e assolutamente illuminante, dunque. Il postmodernismo che viviamo è oggetto nuovo e oscuro, senza regole e riferimenti, e per chi come noi ha vissuto nell'ideologia è difficile da capire. Lachman ci aiuta, anche se la sua formazione esoterica se non proprio occulta lo porta a leggere i fatti a volte in modo meno convincente. Essendo io un uomo di scienza, a volte ho fatto fatica. Ma anche se io non credo alla 'magia', resta il fatto che altri tra gli uomini di potere forse ci credono. E tanto basta per non trascurarla.
April 4, 2019
What is the secret to Trumps success and his presidential victory? He seems to bumble through his presidency without a plan or clue and yet he still manages to come out on top. Is it collusion with the Russians? Or perhaps it is his untold millions or is it a pact with the devil? The title does suggest something sinister.
The real secret lies in positive thinking. As Robert Spencer, the leader of an alt right group, proclaimed that we willed Trump into power. This sounds magical to me. Trump was a follower of Vincent Normal Peale, a minister who believed in the power of thinking positive. Vincent Norman Peale had a plan of action that stated “Picturize it, prayerize it, actualize it.” If the mind can conceive it then the mind can achieve it.
This incredible book details the history of new thought or positive thinking, going back to when it was used for health. Now it is being used to generate wealth or achieve ambitions. Trump approaches his job with a controlled neurosis and not much of a game plan to tie him down. Rigidity in his mind detracts from success.
In terms of getting elected several Magick terms are discussed. Egregires or group mind mascot is a being or way of thinking created from the energy of human thought. Pepe the frog is an example . He was used to get trump elected. It carried an idea from mind to mind. Pepe the frog could be an egregore. On the net lol was usd to mean laugh out loud. Well in the gaming world typing lol translated to Kek. Somehow this kek got attached to Pepe the frog. Kek was also an Egyptian deity, a frog deity.
Chaos magic comes into play over in Russia. Alexander Dugin himself appears to be a chaos magician, he wears the chaos star. Like Trump this guy is a post modern thinker where in the truth and reality are negotiable. He is also a traditionalist meaning that he believes that in the beginning there a divine revelation or period and since then things have digressed. He is using chaos magic techniques to restore Russia to a Eurasian super power. There is a conflict with the west it is over supremacy. It could also turn into an occult war.
This fascinating book opened for me an internal doorway. I plan to read this author’s book and some that have been recommended or mentioned. The imagination is everything.
The real secret lies in positive thinking. As Robert Spencer, the leader of an alt right group, proclaimed that we willed Trump into power. This sounds magical to me. Trump was a follower of Vincent Normal Peale, a minister who believed in the power of thinking positive. Vincent Norman Peale had a plan of action that stated “Picturize it, prayerize it, actualize it.” If the mind can conceive it then the mind can achieve it.
This incredible book details the history of new thought or positive thinking, going back to when it was used for health. Now it is being used to generate wealth or achieve ambitions. Trump approaches his job with a controlled neurosis and not much of a game plan to tie him down. Rigidity in his mind detracts from success.
In terms of getting elected several Magick terms are discussed. Egregires or group mind mascot is a being or way of thinking created from the energy of human thought. Pepe the frog is an example . He was used to get trump elected. It carried an idea from mind to mind. Pepe the frog could be an egregore. On the net lol was usd to mean laugh out loud. Well in the gaming world typing lol translated to Kek. Somehow this kek got attached to Pepe the frog. Kek was also an Egyptian deity, a frog deity.
Chaos magic comes into play over in Russia. Alexander Dugin himself appears to be a chaos magician, he wears the chaos star. Like Trump this guy is a post modern thinker where in the truth and reality are negotiable. He is also a traditionalist meaning that he believes that in the beginning there a divine revelation or period and since then things have digressed. He is using chaos magic techniques to restore Russia to a Eurasian super power. There is a conflict with the west it is over supremacy. It could also turn into an occult war.
This fascinating book opened for me an internal doorway. I plan to read this author’s book and some that have been recommended or mentioned. The imagination is everything.
March 8, 2019
Viviamo in tempi del cazzo, lo sappiamo. Gary Lachman, con La Stella Nera, se possibile, li rende ancora di più del cazzo, a un livello metafisico. Perché La Stella Nera può essere letto in due modi - e, oh, funziona in entrambi gli aspetti: come saggio sulle filosofie che muovono Trump, Putin e amici, ma anche come saggio metafisico sulle forze che muovono, e sono mosse, da Trump, Putin e amici.
Ok, andiamo per gradi, proprio come Lachman che, soltanto gradualmente ci introduce e ci fa sprofondare in un abisso di angoscia e oscurità.
Trump ha dichiarato diverse volte che la sua filosofia di vita si rifa a quella del Reverendo Peale del pensiero positivo. Ora, senza rifare tutta la genealogia di questo pensiero - ok, un attimo: lo dico perché una delle cose più affascinanti del libro di Lachman è che nessuna visione, nessuna filosofia, nessuna teoria è buttata là a sé stante, ma è sempre ricondotta, ricostruita nelle proprie radici e nelle proprie diramazioni. Ma, oh d'altronde è normale: nessuna idea, nessuna teoria nasce dal nulla, tutto ha delle radici. E comprendere l'adesso significa studiare quello che è stato e come è stato. Per esempio, il pensiero positivo è una versione del new thought, che a sua volta discende dal Trascendentalismo di Emerson e Thoreau, che si erano basati sul Romanticismo di Coleridge, che doveva molto all'idealismo di Kant e Rosseau, che riflettevano su idee di Ermete Trimegisto e siamo al IV secolo d.C. Comunque. Dicevo. Trump e il Pensiero Positivo. L'idea alla base del Pensiero Positivo è che Pregando, Visualizzando, Realizzando ciò che si pensa, l'obiettivo che si ha in mente, potrà essere realizzato. Che è una delle idee alla base di infiniti corsi di self-help. Ora, una simile visione della realtà significa che il pensiero influisce sulla realtà, che la determina. Che la muta. Che se si è abbastanza forti psichicamente si può mutarla, si può influenzarla.
Andiamo un pochino oltre. Possiamo rintracciare questa stessa idea all'interno di una frangia piuttosto estrema di supporter di Trump. In particolare, Bannon e 4chan. Ora, accanto all'idea del Pensiero Positivo, si può rintracciare una branca esoterica, chiamata Chaos Magick (anche qua, Lachman dedica enorme spazio alla sua evoluzione). La Chaos Magick afferma che è possibile ottenere ciò che si vuole, attraverso dei rituali non codificati, basati, fondamentalmente, sul fatto che funzionino. Lachman descrive tutto il fermento attorno a Trump su 4chan come un enorme, sconvolgente, rituale di Chaos Magick, o meglio, Meme Magick, dove attraverso la diffusione del meme di Pepe, si sarebbero compiuti dei rituali di evocazione della vittoria di Trump. Tra l'altro, su 4chan si ricollegò Pepe, Trump e l'antico Dio egizio Kek.
Le cose, come se non bastasse, iniziano a farsi veramente buie con Steve Bannon. Bannon, braccio destro di Trump, è forse il suo ideologo. Le radici ideologiche di Bannon possono essere ricondotte a Julius Evola, e, in particolare, alle sue idee tradizionaliste e dell'uomo assoluto. L'uomo assoluto, detto velocemente, è quello capace di pregare, visualizzare, realizzare. Che quindi, possiamo ricollegare a Trump. Il tradizionalismo, d'altra parte - un'idea che dal Rinascimento passa per Guénon e l'esoterismo francese di inizio '900 - è l'idea che ci sia stata un'epoca d'oro per il mondo, ma che poi sia calata l'ignoranza e lo scientismo. Che, quindi, il compito dell'Uomo Assoluto sia quello di riportare l'umanità al suo vero splendore, alla sua vera forza spirituale. Che coincide, ovviamente, con una società fondamentalmente autoritaria, ultra-classista, fondamentalmente patriarcale e utra-reazionaria. Insomma, per capirci, Evola accusava il fascismo di essere poco fascista.
Prima di rendere le cose veramente veramente inquietanti con la Russia, che la Russia, comunque, rende sempre tutto veramente veramente inquietante, quello che emerge fin qui è uno scenario piuttosto fosco. Se, infatti, finora Trump è stato visto come uno scemo, un re folle, guidato dai suoi istinti mezzi senili, un errore della Storia, la descrizione fatta da Lachman risulta inquietante perché mostra come, in realtà, Trump non sia soltanto follia, ma una follia ideologicamente precisa. Non sto parlando tanto delle forze esoteriche, quanto proprio di ideologia autoritaria che sta alla sua base. Forza del pensiero o meno. Arrivati a questo punto, quindi, La Stella Nera che sta sorgendo assume l'aspetto minaccioso di un autoritarismo malcelato.
Ma andiamo in Russia. La Russia appare quasi una specie di specchio futuro della nostra realtà. In seguito al crollo dell'URSS, era l'anarchia. Putin è riuscito a imporsi come uomo forte. Come guida. Ed è riuscito a riplasmare una sua realtà. Una realtà in cui è il Cremlino stesso a creare i suoi oppositori, a dirgli cosa dire e cosa fare. Il Cremlino è al contempo a e b. Il progetto russo, però, non si ferma qua. Dugin - quello che è Bannon per Trump - professa una specie di culto millenarista, con l'idea che dalle ceneri del crollo della società occidentale, sorgerà l'Eurasia, ovvero una civiltà russa che va da Est fino a Dublino. Una società sorprendentemente simile a quella descritta da Bannon, in aperta opposizione a quella contemporanea, rea di essere debole, molle, egualitaria. Bannon e Dugin, quindi, professano una specie di fascismo illuminato. Una meraviglia, insomma.
Sotto quest'ottica, tutto il discorso delle ingerenze russe nelle elezioni americane acquista tutta un'altra profondità. Infatti, La stella nera, rimanendo su un piano fondamentalmente materialista, trattando le idee di Bannon e Dugin come appunto idee, ipotizza una specie di convergenza ideologica fra imperi - voluta o non voluta - verso un fascismo illuminato, come una specie di fiume carsico che ha viaggiato in profondità per secoli e che, finalmente, ora, in questo periodo storico, ha trovato modo di emergere e, se continua così, spazzare via tutto.
Ma, come dicevo, esistono due modi di leggere La stella nera. Questo è uno. L'altro, se possibile, è ancora più disturbante: "Se è vero che siamo entrati in un'era segnata dall'assottigliarsi delle barriere tra interiore ed esteriore, cosa significa tutto ciò? Sarei ben contento di ritenerle delle assurdità e che le spiegazioni sociali, economiche e razionali - come l'ingerenza russa - illuminassero alla perfezione le ragioni dell'elezioni di Trump. Questa conclusione sarebbe preferibile. Ma dopo tutto quello che ho letto per scrivere questo libro, devo ammettere che non sarebbe soddisfacente. Ho provato sulla mia pelle che la divisione tra mente e mondo non è sempre così netta". Se, quindi, le idee riescono veramente a plasmare la realtà; e le idee che si stanno affermando sono quelle di 4chan e dell'Eurasia - e la sua versione atlantica della sinarchia - allora, allora, mi sa che la notte sta veramente un botto buia.
Ok, andiamo per gradi, proprio come Lachman che, soltanto gradualmente ci introduce e ci fa sprofondare in un abisso di angoscia e oscurità.
Trump ha dichiarato diverse volte che la sua filosofia di vita si rifa a quella del Reverendo Peale del pensiero positivo. Ora, senza rifare tutta la genealogia di questo pensiero - ok, un attimo: lo dico perché una delle cose più affascinanti del libro di Lachman è che nessuna visione, nessuna filosofia, nessuna teoria è buttata là a sé stante, ma è sempre ricondotta, ricostruita nelle proprie radici e nelle proprie diramazioni. Ma, oh d'altronde è normale: nessuna idea, nessuna teoria nasce dal nulla, tutto ha delle radici. E comprendere l'adesso significa studiare quello che è stato e come è stato. Per esempio, il pensiero positivo è una versione del new thought, che a sua volta discende dal Trascendentalismo di Emerson e Thoreau, che si erano basati sul Romanticismo di Coleridge, che doveva molto all'idealismo di Kant e Rosseau, che riflettevano su idee di Ermete Trimegisto e siamo al IV secolo d.C. Comunque. Dicevo. Trump e il Pensiero Positivo. L'idea alla base del Pensiero Positivo è che Pregando, Visualizzando, Realizzando ciò che si pensa, l'obiettivo che si ha in mente, potrà essere realizzato. Che è una delle idee alla base di infiniti corsi di self-help. Ora, una simile visione della realtà significa che il pensiero influisce sulla realtà, che la determina. Che la muta. Che se si è abbastanza forti psichicamente si può mutarla, si può influenzarla.
Andiamo un pochino oltre. Possiamo rintracciare questa stessa idea all'interno di una frangia piuttosto estrema di supporter di Trump. In particolare, Bannon e 4chan. Ora, accanto all'idea del Pensiero Positivo, si può rintracciare una branca esoterica, chiamata Chaos Magick (anche qua, Lachman dedica enorme spazio alla sua evoluzione). La Chaos Magick afferma che è possibile ottenere ciò che si vuole, attraverso dei rituali non codificati, basati, fondamentalmente, sul fatto che funzionino. Lachman descrive tutto il fermento attorno a Trump su 4chan come un enorme, sconvolgente, rituale di Chaos Magick, o meglio, Meme Magick, dove attraverso la diffusione del meme di Pepe, si sarebbero compiuti dei rituali di evocazione della vittoria di Trump. Tra l'altro, su 4chan si ricollegò Pepe, Trump e l'antico Dio egizio Kek.
Le cose, come se non bastasse, iniziano a farsi veramente buie con Steve Bannon. Bannon, braccio destro di Trump, è forse il suo ideologo. Le radici ideologiche di Bannon possono essere ricondotte a Julius Evola, e, in particolare, alle sue idee tradizionaliste e dell'uomo assoluto. L'uomo assoluto, detto velocemente, è quello capace di pregare, visualizzare, realizzare. Che quindi, possiamo ricollegare a Trump. Il tradizionalismo, d'altra parte - un'idea che dal Rinascimento passa per Guénon e l'esoterismo francese di inizio '900 - è l'idea che ci sia stata un'epoca d'oro per il mondo, ma che poi sia calata l'ignoranza e lo scientismo. Che, quindi, il compito dell'Uomo Assoluto sia quello di riportare l'umanità al suo vero splendore, alla sua vera forza spirituale. Che coincide, ovviamente, con una società fondamentalmente autoritaria, ultra-classista, fondamentalmente patriarcale e utra-reazionaria. Insomma, per capirci, Evola accusava il fascismo di essere poco fascista.
Prima di rendere le cose veramente veramente inquietanti con la Russia, che la Russia, comunque, rende sempre tutto veramente veramente inquietante, quello che emerge fin qui è uno scenario piuttosto fosco. Se, infatti, finora Trump è stato visto come uno scemo, un re folle, guidato dai suoi istinti mezzi senili, un errore della Storia, la descrizione fatta da Lachman risulta inquietante perché mostra come, in realtà, Trump non sia soltanto follia, ma una follia ideologicamente precisa. Non sto parlando tanto delle forze esoteriche, quanto proprio di ideologia autoritaria che sta alla sua base. Forza del pensiero o meno. Arrivati a questo punto, quindi, La Stella Nera che sta sorgendo assume l'aspetto minaccioso di un autoritarismo malcelato.
Ma andiamo in Russia. La Russia appare quasi una specie di specchio futuro della nostra realtà. In seguito al crollo dell'URSS, era l'anarchia. Putin è riuscito a imporsi come uomo forte. Come guida. Ed è riuscito a riplasmare una sua realtà. Una realtà in cui è il Cremlino stesso a creare i suoi oppositori, a dirgli cosa dire e cosa fare. Il Cremlino è al contempo a e b. Il progetto russo, però, non si ferma qua. Dugin - quello che è Bannon per Trump - professa una specie di culto millenarista, con l'idea che dalle ceneri del crollo della società occidentale, sorgerà l'Eurasia, ovvero una civiltà russa che va da Est fino a Dublino. Una società sorprendentemente simile a quella descritta da Bannon, in aperta opposizione a quella contemporanea, rea di essere debole, molle, egualitaria. Bannon e Dugin, quindi, professano una specie di fascismo illuminato. Una meraviglia, insomma.
Sotto quest'ottica, tutto il discorso delle ingerenze russe nelle elezioni americane acquista tutta un'altra profondità. Infatti, La stella nera, rimanendo su un piano fondamentalmente materialista, trattando le idee di Bannon e Dugin come appunto idee, ipotizza una specie di convergenza ideologica fra imperi - voluta o non voluta - verso un fascismo illuminato, come una specie di fiume carsico che ha viaggiato in profondità per secoli e che, finalmente, ora, in questo periodo storico, ha trovato modo di emergere e, se continua così, spazzare via tutto.
Ma, come dicevo, esistono due modi di leggere La stella nera. Questo è uno. L'altro, se possibile, è ancora più disturbante: "Se è vero che siamo entrati in un'era segnata dall'assottigliarsi delle barriere tra interiore ed esteriore, cosa significa tutto ciò? Sarei ben contento di ritenerle delle assurdità e che le spiegazioni sociali, economiche e razionali - come l'ingerenza russa - illuminassero alla perfezione le ragioni dell'elezioni di Trump. Questa conclusione sarebbe preferibile. Ma dopo tutto quello che ho letto per scrivere questo libro, devo ammettere che non sarebbe soddisfacente. Ho provato sulla mia pelle che la divisione tra mente e mondo non è sempre così netta". Se, quindi, le idee riescono veramente a plasmare la realtà; e le idee che si stanno affermando sono quelle di 4chan e dell'Eurasia - e la sua versione atlantica della sinarchia - allora, allora, mi sa che la notte sta veramente un botto buia.
July 23, 2025
In Dark Star Rising, Gary Lachman explains the direct links between Donald Trump, the alt-right, and the fake-reality, non-linear warfare spearheaded by Russian figures like Surkov, Putin, and Dugin - all fascist reality-distorters. Lachman begins with a convincing and somewhat thorough examination of Trump's connections with New Thought Positive Thinking guru Norman Peale. These influences have guided Trump to becoming a 'Right Man' – an individual so self-assured of their proven ability to steamroll other people's will with their own that they are, within their own reality tunnel, incapable of being at fault. In this way, Trump has tapped into the heart of Chaos Magick. Through sigilization, hyper-confidence, and probability-attuning techniques, he can peddle his grift and convince others of its validity, much like a true conman or illusionist. Steve Bannon, Trump's once chief strategist, is presented as a literary disciple of the esoterically inclined (and exceptionally xenophobic, anti-globalist) Julius Evola. What follows in the book are many pages detailing various occultic attempts at synarchy and esoteric fascism from the late 19th century through to the present day.
If Trump did not have his orange face and distinctive hair, he might not be such an appropriate conduit for a malevolent thoughtform (egregore). Ever seen Hitler without his mustache? He looks like some guy. But beyond contrived aesthetics for memorability, Hitler's ability to become a 'will of the people,' to act as an antenna for their untapped wills, as opposed to using outright ritual, made him a natural medium for such an egregore. This same mechanism, Lachman suggests, is at work with Trump, exacerbated through the use of the internet (which I see as a digital scrying tool and manifestation of the collective (un)conscious, tampered with by riggers and frauds). Trump's ascension has been charged through the ritualistic propagation of memes, intended to bring about the societal, reality-altering desires of the 'web-magicians' who create and share them.
We end the book (and this brief abridgement) with a meditation on the difference between 'imagination' and 'fancy.' Lachman argues that postmodernism is hallmarked by the latter, as we re-arrange pre-imagined ideas into bricolages of fandom and self-expression. He suggests - and apparently wrote a book I intend to read on this very subject - that imagination is not mere fantasy or escapism but a process of manifesting the unreal. This is something I feel quite intuitively, to the point I doubt how many people truly perceive imagination so reductively, and not as the 'blueprint liminal zone of creativity and planning' he suggests they fail to see it for. Or maybe I overestimate people.
All in all: a good book! I still feel as if it's missing a large piece of the puzzle - a piece I'm recognizing only people of my age or specific understanding might be able to supply one day. GamerGate is given a passing mention, and there's not a single remark on video games. Both of these are absolutely crucial to understanding Bannon and Trump's influence on the youth of the 21st century, let alone the phenomenon of Wojacks. There is more work to be done, and more books to be written...
(I recommend the documentary Feels Good Man for anybody disappointed in the lack of Pepe discussion.)
If Trump did not have his orange face and distinctive hair, he might not be such an appropriate conduit for a malevolent thoughtform (egregore). Ever seen Hitler without his mustache? He looks like some guy. But beyond contrived aesthetics for memorability, Hitler's ability to become a 'will of the people,' to act as an antenna for their untapped wills, as opposed to using outright ritual, made him a natural medium for such an egregore. This same mechanism, Lachman suggests, is at work with Trump, exacerbated through the use of the internet (which I see as a digital scrying tool and manifestation of the collective (un)conscious, tampered with by riggers and frauds). Trump's ascension has been charged through the ritualistic propagation of memes, intended to bring about the societal, reality-altering desires of the 'web-magicians' who create and share them.
We end the book (and this brief abridgement) with a meditation on the difference between 'imagination' and 'fancy.' Lachman argues that postmodernism is hallmarked by the latter, as we re-arrange pre-imagined ideas into bricolages of fandom and self-expression. He suggests - and apparently wrote a book I intend to read on this very subject - that imagination is not mere fantasy or escapism but a process of manifesting the unreal. This is something I feel quite intuitively, to the point I doubt how many people truly perceive imagination so reductively, and not as the 'blueprint liminal zone of creativity and planning' he suggests they fail to see it for. Or maybe I overestimate people.
All in all: a good book! I still feel as if it's missing a large piece of the puzzle - a piece I'm recognizing only people of my age or specific understanding might be able to supply one day. GamerGate is given a passing mention, and there's not a single remark on video games. Both of these are absolutely crucial to understanding Bannon and Trump's influence on the youth of the 21st century, let alone the phenomenon of Wojacks. There is more work to be done, and more books to be written...
(I recommend the documentary Feels Good Man for anybody disappointed in the lack of Pepe discussion.)
March 9, 2021
Una carrellata di organizzazioni, vicende e personaggi inquietanti, e preoccupanti.
Come Alt-right, Pepe the Frog e il New Thought,
Tutte figure sinistre e, scusate il termine banale, cattive.
Da Richard Spencer a Aleksandr Dugin, Vladislav Surkov, Julius Evola, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon
Come Alt-right, Pepe the Frog e il New Thought,
Tutte figure sinistre e, scusate il termine banale, cattive.
Da Richard Spencer a Aleksandr Dugin, Vladislav Surkov, Julius Evola, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon
January 27, 2020
Saggio più utile che completo, più interessante che bello.
E' un'ipotesi fondata sui riferimenti culturali, sui segni dalla cronaca politica, di un flusso sotterraneo di saperi magici/motivazionali/autorealizzanti sfruttato dalla Destra occidentale post-conservatrice.
Meme, guerra asimmetrica, gestione del Chaos, evocazioni, magick e occultismo retorico.
Una chicca.
E' un'ipotesi fondata sui riferimenti culturali, sui segni dalla cronaca politica, di un flusso sotterraneo di saperi magici/motivazionali/autorealizzanti sfruttato dalla Destra occidentale post-conservatrice.
Meme, guerra asimmetrica, gestione del Chaos, evocazioni, magick e occultismo retorico.
Una chicca.
November 25, 2018
Trump and New Thought and Chaos Magick and Russian Synarchy messing with a fragile reality.
Read
June 19, 2018 I wholeheartedly recommend this book. While I knew some of the history regarding New Though thanks to Mitch Horowitz the Russian section was all new to me. Meticulously researched with a very calm and readable presentation, the book is nonetheless terrifying.
October 6, 2019
This is a history of esoteric ideas that have come to apparent fruition during the Age of Trump. Author Gary Lachman looks at the men and ideas that informed the belief systems of Donald Trump; his chief advisor during his campaign, Steven Bannon, and the Alt-Right. He also looks at Russia's Vladimir Putin (whom Trump apparently admires) and the esoteric ideas that are held by his chief advisers.
Donald Trump was inspired by Norman Vincent Peale, both the man and his works (he wrote "The Power of Positive Thinking"). Peale was an important mentor to Trump, and his take on the spiritual philosophy known as New Thought was a big inspiration to Trump. It's unknown if Trump embraced any other sort of esoteric thinking but people around him did. Lachman does a fine job of summarizing exactly what New Thought is, and also Chaos Magic, which many members of the Alt-Right are fans of. He traces how these ideas originated, how these ideas were used and abused, and how they have been used in this era for political ends.
Does any of this stuff work? In this materialist age, most people would be likely to scoff at the idea that "thoughts become things" or that a frog meme could have influenced an election. Maybe, maybe not. The point is, there are plenty of people who do believe that chaos magic and various forms of positive thinking do work and take action according to these esoteric beliefs.
Have we entered a period of Postmoderism that has completely changed the political landscape forever, due to the actions of Trump, Putin, and their cohort of advisers? Has the occult played a part in all this? Lachman tends to think so and doesn't think the world is any better for it. I'm not sure this will be the case, although I suspect Trump might end up being more than just a blip in our country's history. But this story is far from over and it's a fascinating one, even though living through it is like surviving one major car crash after another. Read this book, do some thinking, and pay attention. The jury is still out on how the story will end.
Donald Trump was inspired by Norman Vincent Peale, both the man and his works (he wrote "The Power of Positive Thinking"). Peale was an important mentor to Trump, and his take on the spiritual philosophy known as New Thought was a big inspiration to Trump. It's unknown if Trump embraced any other sort of esoteric thinking but people around him did. Lachman does a fine job of summarizing exactly what New Thought is, and also Chaos Magic, which many members of the Alt-Right are fans of. He traces how these ideas originated, how these ideas were used and abused, and how they have been used in this era for political ends.
Does any of this stuff work? In this materialist age, most people would be likely to scoff at the idea that "thoughts become things" or that a frog meme could have influenced an election. Maybe, maybe not. The point is, there are plenty of people who do believe that chaos magic and various forms of positive thinking do work and take action according to these esoteric beliefs.
Have we entered a period of Postmoderism that has completely changed the political landscape forever, due to the actions of Trump, Putin, and their cohort of advisers? Has the occult played a part in all this? Lachman tends to think so and doesn't think the world is any better for it. I'm not sure this will be the case, although I suspect Trump might end up being more than just a blip in our country's history. But this story is far from over and it's a fascinating one, even though living through it is like surviving one major car crash after another. Read this book, do some thinking, and pay attention. The jury is still out on how the story will end.
March 7, 2023
Oh, boy...
I am no believer in magic(k) or the occult, but one does not have to be to find this an interesting, well-researched, entertaining, and informative work.
Even though I am a non-believer, there's a strong case to be made that others in powerful positions do believe, or at least know how to maximize symbolism for their own ends.
More than spells and summonings, this book focuses on the “Power of Positive Thinking” (popularized by Norman Vincent Peale) and its myriad offshoots. Basically, many people in leadership roles today (Donald Trump and the AltRight get most of the focus) subscribe to the notion that they can visualize outcomes into being. Whatever they can conceive and believe they will achieve, or at least their thinking goes. Needless to say, this can lead to a lot of problems stemming from an entirely selfish, self-centered world view. Beholden to none, these individuals and institutions can deliberately stir up chaos, which has its own form of belief system attached.
The author does a good job at weaving popular modern symbols into this notion of Chaos Magick, from Michael Moorcock’s Symbol of Chaos (a favorite of Russia’s Aleksandr Dugin) to Pepe the Frog (favorite of Richard Spencer, the AltRight, and Donald Trump). It’s quite a creative filter to view the modern world.
Again, I don’t believe that any of these things have or aid supernatural powers, but I do believe in the Placebo Effect. If these people believe these things are real, they are real to them.
That’s a problem for the rest of us.
I am no believer in magic(k) or the occult, but one does not have to be to find this an interesting, well-researched, entertaining, and informative work.
Even though I am a non-believer, there's a strong case to be made that others in powerful positions do believe, or at least know how to maximize symbolism for their own ends.
More than spells and summonings, this book focuses on the “Power of Positive Thinking” (popularized by Norman Vincent Peale) and its myriad offshoots. Basically, many people in leadership roles today (Donald Trump and the AltRight get most of the focus) subscribe to the notion that they can visualize outcomes into being. Whatever they can conceive and believe they will achieve, or at least their thinking goes. Needless to say, this can lead to a lot of problems stemming from an entirely selfish, self-centered world view. Beholden to none, these individuals and institutions can deliberately stir up chaos, which has its own form of belief system attached.
The author does a good job at weaving popular modern symbols into this notion of Chaos Magick, from Michael Moorcock’s Symbol of Chaos (a favorite of Russia’s Aleksandr Dugin) to Pepe the Frog (favorite of Richard Spencer, the AltRight, and Donald Trump). It’s quite a creative filter to view the modern world.
Again, I don’t believe that any of these things have or aid supernatural powers, but I do believe in the Placebo Effect. If these people believe these things are real, they are real to them.
That’s a problem for the rest of us.
July 1, 2025
Another one of these breezy occulture potboilers, this time with a "post-truth" twist. All the "magick" described in this book is merely low magic that might as well be more simply described as "manipulation". An example of which is, funnily enough, Robert Anton Wilson using the word "reality tunnel" to describe the simple concept of a worldview, a process similar to this kind of usage of magic. Magic has a much deeper meaning than that but one wouldn't know from reading this book. This book makes no effort to explain the inner workings of hypersigils and is instead content with running through a laundry list of references and biographical tidbits. The result is muddled: Spare's sigilwork is cheerily associated with New Thought principles of Norman Vincent Peale, all a part of a generalized rubric of post-truth postmodernism. The presence of "thought can change reality" is not by itself as revolutionary and specific as the author seems to insist it is: this is called propaganda, manipulation. Is this the same thing as magic, now that magic has been defined this way? Maybe, but that's only a fine bit of word magic! To connect it to a concept of magick without delving into the science of hypersigils technically seems needlessly obfuscatory.
This is not to say the phenomenon isn't there but it all goes a bit beyond what this book has to offer. Basically, internet works as a "ritual chamber" isolated from mundane reality where people can call up any type of energy with relative freedom. They do this by posting it with an embedded image. Then they're at a rally or they're gooning or in a similar intense situation and they chance upon this image without the original text. Now the image is a charged sign that carries over the original semantic content while bypassing the rationalisation process that can easily thwart action via over-thinking or worry. This is a truly magical process that is not inherently manipulative, nor does it preclude the use of reason: indeed, the big question is, you have a total freedom to activate any type of content, so what type of content should you activate? The problem is that the internet can be used large interest groups and algorithms to distort this process to their ends by shifting the narrative of especially anonymous forums to the direction they wish. This part seems to be just propaganda which is even characterised by thwarting others' ability to use the medium as a magical channel.
This process has always been known but one could say that the movie theatre was a real watershed moment where people were literally shoved into a dark ritual chamber with moving pictures mixed with words for purposes of evocation, without them however having any say about it because "it's just a movie". This books treats of right wing irony from the well-known angle of get out of jail free card but there's also a sense in which irony actually acts against any conscious practice of magic that would render you invulnerable to manipulations. It allows people to be passively affected while denying the consequences so that they can never be actively taken up as tools of personal transformation: instead, there accumulates a mass of obscure gut feelings that are mistaken for the voice of soul, God, blood, or whatever. This explains how irony goes together with extremely serious forms of sentiment, even if it appears confusing at first. But again, this is just being manipulated: it's what your parents, teachers, friends and lovers do and have done throughout history.
The relation of hypersigils to egregores is an interesting one and it comes up in the book. The idea of a runaway thought-form gaining independent life is not so absurd as it seems. Life, after all, is defined by things like homeostasis, growth, reproduction, all of which might be found in a meme after it crosses over from "hmm, it might be interesting to post this" to being automatically associated with the the discourse of its environment. In a way, egregore is the opposite of sigilwork as propounded by Spare and Temple of Set: instead of loading the sign and getting possessed by it via the method of forgetting the original claims, it is the words and the sentences now which call back to mind the sign, or the meme, as if the sign or meme itself were the point instead of the intent underlying its use. Vague "occulture" as seen in metal culture et al. is perfect for this type of process: it is also reminiscent of Kenneth Grant's idea of conceptually retreating down the Tree of Life wiht a process emulating a reverse Kundalini by associating it to different animals after having understood its structure: pure sign as opposed to the pure content. I'm tempted to classify this process described in "Cults of the Shadow(surely poorly remembered and explained by me) as "egregore-working" as opposed to "sigilworking". This might be why Tunnels of Set sigils are more figurative and silly(indeed, proto-memey) than the usually abstract sigils you may encounter.
Egregore working may seem absurd but given that it is increasingly our reality, maybe it is not the case. While sigilworking moves from an act of creativity to it suppression and from that to its eventual activation from suppression so it can be embodied without the impediment of falsely self-sufficient over-thinking consciousness, egregore-working might go the same pathways but with the assignations of the World of Horrors, which means the order is: Chaos-Understanding-Being-Order instead of Creation-Death-Birth-Re-Creation. Normally Creation touches Chaos in loading the sigil with words of power but now it is from the direction of Chaos that the act of Creation is touched ie. the sign loads up the words, from which is born Understanding Touching Death: not the sigilwork absorption of words of the power to the unconscious but the absorption of signs/correlates of understanding that replaces your own inspiration with fetishistic self-replication. Then we move to Birth touched by Being and not vice versa: meaning its not a reminiscence of the suppressed word from the loaded sign, but rather the replaced words coming out in presence of the animal image; and finally, not re-creation touching order by achieving through embodiment of the unconsciously achieved magical will, but Order touching Re-creation by turning the achieved creativity to execution of the dictates of the sign, the words nearing ever more towards the abstract sign.
This is not to say the phenomenon isn't there but it all goes a bit beyond what this book has to offer. Basically, internet works as a "ritual chamber" isolated from mundane reality where people can call up any type of energy with relative freedom. They do this by posting it with an embedded image. Then they're at a rally or they're gooning or in a similar intense situation and they chance upon this image without the original text. Now the image is a charged sign that carries over the original semantic content while bypassing the rationalisation process that can easily thwart action via over-thinking or worry. This is a truly magical process that is not inherently manipulative, nor does it preclude the use of reason: indeed, the big question is, you have a total freedom to activate any type of content, so what type of content should you activate? The problem is that the internet can be used large interest groups and algorithms to distort this process to their ends by shifting the narrative of especially anonymous forums to the direction they wish. This part seems to be just propaganda which is even characterised by thwarting others' ability to use the medium as a magical channel.
This process has always been known but one could say that the movie theatre was a real watershed moment where people were literally shoved into a dark ritual chamber with moving pictures mixed with words for purposes of evocation, without them however having any say about it because "it's just a movie". This books treats of right wing irony from the well-known angle of get out of jail free card but there's also a sense in which irony actually acts against any conscious practice of magic that would render you invulnerable to manipulations. It allows people to be passively affected while denying the consequences so that they can never be actively taken up as tools of personal transformation: instead, there accumulates a mass of obscure gut feelings that are mistaken for the voice of soul, God, blood, or whatever. This explains how irony goes together with extremely serious forms of sentiment, even if it appears confusing at first. But again, this is just being manipulated: it's what your parents, teachers, friends and lovers do and have done throughout history.
The relation of hypersigils to egregores is an interesting one and it comes up in the book. The idea of a runaway thought-form gaining independent life is not so absurd as it seems. Life, after all, is defined by things like homeostasis, growth, reproduction, all of which might be found in a meme after it crosses over from "hmm, it might be interesting to post this" to being automatically associated with the the discourse of its environment. In a way, egregore is the opposite of sigilwork as propounded by Spare and Temple of Set: instead of loading the sign and getting possessed by it via the method of forgetting the original claims, it is the words and the sentences now which call back to mind the sign, or the meme, as if the sign or meme itself were the point instead of the intent underlying its use. Vague "occulture" as seen in metal culture et al. is perfect for this type of process: it is also reminiscent of Kenneth Grant's idea of conceptually retreating down the Tree of Life wiht a process emulating a reverse Kundalini by associating it to different animals after having understood its structure: pure sign as opposed to the pure content. I'm tempted to classify this process described in "Cults of the Shadow(surely poorly remembered and explained by me) as "egregore-working" as opposed to "sigilworking". This might be why Tunnels of Set sigils are more figurative and silly(indeed, proto-memey) than the usually abstract sigils you may encounter.
Egregore working may seem absurd but given that it is increasingly our reality, maybe it is not the case. While sigilworking moves from an act of creativity to it suppression and from that to its eventual activation from suppression so it can be embodied without the impediment of falsely self-sufficient over-thinking consciousness, egregore-working might go the same pathways but with the assignations of the World of Horrors, which means the order is: Chaos-Understanding-Being-Order instead of Creation-Death-Birth-Re-Creation. Normally Creation touches Chaos in loading the sigil with words of power but now it is from the direction of Chaos that the act of Creation is touched ie. the sign loads up the words, from which is born Understanding Touching Death: not the sigilwork absorption of words of the power to the unconscious but the absorption of signs/correlates of understanding that replaces your own inspiration with fetishistic self-replication. Then we move to Birth touched by Being and not vice versa: meaning its not a reminiscence of the suppressed word from the loaded sign, but rather the replaced words coming out in presence of the animal image; and finally, not re-creation touching order by achieving through embodiment of the unconsciously achieved magical will, but Order touching Re-creation by turning the achieved creativity to execution of the dictates of the sign, the words nearing ever more towards the abstract sign.
August 24, 2018
What is this but a stew of esoteric history mixed with some contemporary politics? It's a compelling read, I grant you, but it doesn't convince me that Trump's crew are masters of chaos magick, or even that chaos magick is a thing, per se.
What Lachman describes as "meme magick" seems like good ol' fashioned propaganda to me, a way of influencing the weaker minded to think as one would have them think.
That's not to say that these propagandists haven't studied thought control, and such scholarship naturally bends to the dark side. There is an underbelly here. I naturally resist the pseudo-sciences. But, apparently, some of us do not.
What Lachman describes as "meme magick" seems like good ol' fashioned propaganda to me, a way of influencing the weaker minded to think as one would have them think.
That's not to say that these propagandists haven't studied thought control, and such scholarship naturally bends to the dark side. There is an underbelly here. I naturally resist the pseudo-sciences. But, apparently, some of us do not.
Read
July 15, 2020Gary Lachman has the most insane ways of synthesizing ideas. He covers hundreds of years of philosophy and esoteric thought. And, he always turns me on to other people to read, and what they're writing about.
January 26, 2021
So many connections made here. Opened up new worlds to me. Super helpful. He is careful about normativity at the end, which I find helpful.
Would love to chat with others about this...
Would love to chat with others about this...
February 9, 2021
hocus pocus ma fascista (la mia base su queste cose è zero, quindi prendete le mie stelle per quelle che sono)
April 30, 2022
I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I wasn’t listening to it on audio. It was very boring in the middle.
I think the theory that our politicians (specifically Trump) is utilizing chaos magic is intriguing. There’s speculation amongst many occultists that politicians utilize magic, sigils, chaos theory, in their lives. I’m sure it’s possible since a lot of occultism is hidden in plain sight. In our video games, movie, quite a bit of pop culture has hidden occult themes all over and a lot of the world outside of occultism don’t know that.
I know politics are important but I have a hard time reading about politics and politicians for a long period of time. Which could be another reason I felt this books dragged on for me.
I did appreciate the last two chapters. I don’t think enough people really grasp that our egos really are running this shit show we call a life. Most of us don’t spend the time to separate ourselves from our ego and are ran by our egos our whole lives. We really are just egos bumping into each-other constantly. I also enjoyed hearing about the imagination, because our imaginations also can easily run our lives too.
I would probably down the road read this book but to be honest I don’t like giving Trump or Putin space in my brain.
If only we viewed things as less of we need a leader to follow and more of we are a community of people that need to be able to exist together and not get in each others ways.
I think the theory that our politicians (specifically Trump) is utilizing chaos magic is intriguing. There’s speculation amongst many occultists that politicians utilize magic, sigils, chaos theory, in their lives. I’m sure it’s possible since a lot of occultism is hidden in plain sight. In our video games, movie, quite a bit of pop culture has hidden occult themes all over and a lot of the world outside of occultism don’t know that.
I know politics are important but I have a hard time reading about politics and politicians for a long period of time. Which could be another reason I felt this books dragged on for me.
I did appreciate the last two chapters. I don’t think enough people really grasp that our egos really are running this shit show we call a life. Most of us don’t spend the time to separate ourselves from our ego and are ran by our egos our whole lives. We really are just egos bumping into each-other constantly. I also enjoyed hearing about the imagination, because our imaginations also can easily run our lives too.
I would probably down the road read this book but to be honest I don’t like giving Trump or Putin space in my brain.
If only we viewed things as less of we need a leader to follow and more of we are a community of people that need to be able to exist together and not get in each others ways.
August 6, 2019
I don't think it is fair for me to rate this book as I am not smart enough to have read it. But the dialogue box came up so I feel obligated. I love the first part of this book - the footnotes with the philosophers and various schools of thought/philosophies of living were fascinating to me and I underlined a million parts to google and research later. The parts discussing how the Positive Thought movement may have shaped the horrible person who is currently running the country was really really interesting. I felt like as the book when on it lost it's momentum and sort of diverged into like a very vague explanation of different figures in German and Russian politics and fascists and then never wrapped around back enough to the interesting things earlier in the book. Again - I am not smart enough to tell you if this book was really good - but I did finish it, which is something, but I did have to do it like homework by the end whereas, in the beginning, I was page-turning like it was a mystery novel. I recommend this book overall and I think it is 100% worth reading for all the research that leads to other ideas that the author touched on and he definitely put in a lot of hard work.
April 11, 2022
What is the nature of Freedom?
There are many themes in this book. Power, the nexus of the occult and politics, and a few others. There is a lot to think about here. For me, it comes down to: What is a Good Life and what does it mean to be free?
For many apparently, they would like an ordered hierarchy where everyone knows their place and society works when we don’t step out of ours. (What I read as the Putin / alt-right point of view).
Versus the Individual, who may choose their place in the world and define their rules where they like. And their choices must be supported by society. (Aka the liberal point of view)
The former view feels that we lost a lot by letting science guide our society and yearns for a time before it. At least before the peasants became aware of it.
I’m not convinced of the rightness of this cause, nor do I feel like I’d be able to have a discussion with an alt-right person that either had topics they recognized or to convince them to move closer to my point of view.
Since many of the characters mentioned in the book take all possible positions - shape shifting - maybe that’s the point.
There are many themes in this book. Power, the nexus of the occult and politics, and a few others. There is a lot to think about here. For me, it comes down to: What is a Good Life and what does it mean to be free?
For many apparently, they would like an ordered hierarchy where everyone knows their place and society works when we don’t step out of ours. (What I read as the Putin / alt-right point of view).
Versus the Individual, who may choose their place in the world and define their rules where they like. And their choices must be supported by society. (Aka the liberal point of view)
The former view feels that we lost a lot by letting science guide our society and yearns for a time before it. At least before the peasants became aware of it.
I’m not convinced of the rightness of this cause, nor do I feel like I’d be able to have a discussion with an alt-right person that either had topics they recognized or to convince them to move closer to my point of view.
Since many of the characters mentioned in the book take all possible positions - shape shifting - maybe that’s the point.
March 4, 2020
Magick as a concept is used loosely here, but the roots of some of the modern world's right wing upsurge certainly do tap into esoteric soil. Lachman takes us on a tour of neo-fascism in the US, Europe, and Asia and finds interesting connections between Russian "chaos magicians" and the darling little incels of the alt.right. There are some all-American, down home outre elements too like Norman Vincent Peale and his power of positive thinking. I had no idea Trump was raised in that particularly vile church but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The more of Lachman's books I read, the more impressed I am with his research and insight into the evolution of irrational thought and the linkages between obscure philosophers and social/political structures. And it's hard not to admire the idea of Trump as a tulpa manifest by the worst of our collective unconscious -- a reality TV spook made real. If that's the case, let's hope the haunting ends soon.
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