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El ocultismo en la política: Historia secreta de la búsqueda del poder
Ocultismo en la política es un libro:
...Para descubrir que Estados Unidos fue una nación que diseñaron los masones, y que el peso de sus cimientos se deja sentir incluso en la Era Trump.
...Para saber en qué medida las ideas de artistas y literatos como Swedemborg, Steiner, Blavatsky, Bulwer-Lytton, Roerich o Jung han determinado las políticas de grandes líderes mundiales.
...Para tener en cuenta cómo rosacruces, illuminati, templarios, magos y alquimistas han influido en países y sus tomas de decisiones.
...Para comprender cómo influyeron las creencias en lo sobrenatural en movimientos de izquierdas y de derechas, desde el siglo XIX hasta hoy.
...Para recordar que detrás de Hitler se movieron ideas surgidas de un esoterismo rancio y ancestral.
...Para sorprenderse con la creencia en el «Rey del Mundo», una utopía que algunos creen que persiguen movimientos como la UE.
...Para descubrir que Estados Unidos fue una nación que diseñaron los masones, y que el peso de sus cimientos se deja sentir incluso en la Era Trump.
...Para saber en qué medida las ideas de artistas y literatos como Swedemborg, Steiner, Blavatsky, Bulwer-Lytton, Roerich o Jung han determinado las políticas de grandes líderes mundiales.
...Para tener en cuenta cómo rosacruces, illuminati, templarios, magos y alquimistas han influido en países y sus tomas de decisiones.
...Para comprender cómo influyeron las creencias en lo sobrenatural en movimientos de izquierdas y de derechas, desde el siglo XIX hasta hoy.
...Para recordar que detrás de Hitler se movieron ideas surgidas de un esoterismo rancio y ancestral.
...Para sorprenderse con la creencia en el «Rey del Mundo», una utopía que algunos creen que persiguen movimientos como la UE.
351 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2008
30 people are currently reading
394 people want to read
About the author
Gary Lachman
65 books453 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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December 31, 2008
Gary Lachman has carved himself a niche as popular historian of counter-culture. In his 'Turn Off Your Mind', a critical view of Sixties counter-culture, he was not afraid to remind us of the dark and even silly side of the Age of Aquarius. His general stance is liberal, steering a fine line between genuine sympathy for the search for meaning in the irrational and an urbane anxiety about where the irrational may lead once it leaves the commune and enters the wider culture.
In his books, Lachman has placed counter cultural thinking in a much wider historical context. We can now see it as a more normal response to the world than we have assumed. He has, with perhaps only very occasional slips into credulity, set the gold standard for sympathetic yet critical rational description of these cultures. And he has brought the conclusions of a wide range of more academic investigators and thinkers to a much wider audience.
'Politics & The Occult' looks at those who believe in 'occult' forces at work in society and who then seek to act on society in accordance with them. Lachman has decided wisely not to look into secret societies. There are many other interesting books on such societies and on the mythology of secret government. We recommend David V. Barrett's fair minded (perhaps excessively so) 'A Brief History of Secret Societies' which we reviewed in Oracle magazine earlier this year (2008).
Some very serious academic historians have been looking into the history of the occult as a cultural phenomenon in recent years, notably the incomparable Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. They have been uncovering more and more about specific groups at nodal points of history and society who have held occult views. Awareness of these movements has been limited by one great truth of history - the winners write it. The pragmatic and materialist view of history, indeed of existence as a whole, is always the winner because it works.
This is not to say that there are not major triumphs by irrationalist or half-rationalist movements - the triumph of Christianity was that of one mystery religion over many, Communism had many occult aspects in organisation and belief system despite its avowed scientific materialism. Yet most occult interventions in politics are literally against reason, attempts to mould reality through will or in accordance with some dream-state, even if it is shared by many others.
Lachman owes a big debt to other writers and acknowledges that debt throughout. He has clearly read deeply in the occultist tradition himself - whether Swedenborg, Guenon or Evola. But the total picture he gives has to be a little unsatisfactory to the reader through no fault of Lachman's. A narrative of a nation may have discontinuities (we may call them 'revolutions') but there is still a continuous recorded tale - history is 'one damn thing after another'.
With occultists there is rarely a proven connection between one set of occult interventions and another. This either looks like the same phenomenon of resistance to the prevailing current repeating itself in a parody of the 'eternal return' or history degenerates into one of those stories where every occult intervention is linked to its predecessor until the whole process becomes a conspiracy theory in which the Hidden Masters can be traced back to the dawn of time.
Lachman's book implies something different (though he does not state this) - a series of genuine occult interventions waxing and waning during key periods in history, rather marginal in most cases but occasionally, like Zelig in the Woody Allen film of that time, appearing at key points in history as more or less important bit-players.
Are there links between one intervention and another? Sometimes, sometimes not? What provides the link is not a 'Hidden Master' or a secret society but the literature that is left behind by one generation to be rediscovered and used by another. Let us take just three stories ...
* There is the Rosicrucian experience which appears to be a reformation within the Reformation. It represented an ideological faction that attempted (much like modern neo-conservatives) to bend pragmatic politicians to idealist ends. They may have persuaded the Elector of the Palatinate to undertake a pre-emptive strike against the Vatican and the Habsburgs that was doomed to fail on fundamentals.
* There is the obscure Masonic experience that was not merely linked to the Jacobite cause (this time oddly in the Catholic cause) but resulted in the association of continental Masonic activity with conspiratorial dissidence. This would lead, amongst other things, to the destruction of 'working class' hero Cagliostro and widespread fear and loathing of the Illuminati as well as the now-proven if exaggerated Masonic link to the founding of the USA.
* There is the antinomianism of the Moravian Brethren and of Swedenborg which, within the general Christian rhetoric of the day, anticipated the sexual revolution.
Yet these are all only minor parts of a much bigger story. The Rosicrucians were only an incident in the struggles between the Habsburgs and their enemies. The Jacobites were soon marginalised, most Masons were thoroughly respectable and Masonic influence was influential in the form the American Revolution took but it did not cause it. As for sexuality, matters got more rather than less repressed in the hundred and fifty years after Blake.
If we see the occult as a back drop to revolt by those excluded and passionate for change, then we see a shift somewhere between the blood-letting of the French Revolution and the pessimism about the world of the second half of the Nineteenth Century. One symbolic figure might be the socialist Alphone Louis Constant who became Eliphas Levy as he discovered magic and made his own disillusioned turn to the right.
Before this time, occultists had represented light and liberation - typical figures would be William Blake or Cagliostro who gave free health treatment to the poor. Something happened at that turn. Occultists became not merely conservative but reactionary. Jews increasingly became a problem whereas, before, they were allies in the general emancipation.
Lachman has pushed his agenda too far to ensure that he can refer to Campbell (in passing), Jung and Eliade in this context. None of these were truly occultists but Guenon's traditionalism, the Martinists and Synarchists (no, these are not a myth) and Evola are more than on the boundary of the occult. The most interesting figure - at the polar opposite of enlightened humanist reformers like the Rosicrucian Andreae - is indoubtedly Julius Evola. You can taste Lachman's grudging respect for the most intelligent and dangerous thinker of the European radical Right.
But perhaps it is not Constant-Levy but the manipulative social-psychopath Weisshaupt who is the key figure in the turn. The scare about the Illuminati, capable of over-turning all things for a dream, not only affected the dynasts of Europe but, as modernisation and industrialisation took hold, it scared the living daylights of the educated middle class. Revolt against the feudal and the clerical, the natural mode of political discourse for intelligent minor aristocrats and rising middle class intellectuals, suddenly became a defence of their status as priestly class against the collective.
Over and over again, the common denominator in occult political action is an attempted seizure of influence or power by a small group of the educated from people perceived to be less bright than they are. This is the arrogance of the frustrated middle. We have a political syndrome here. Lachman's book gives us the raw material and references for further research
Exceptions do not contradict the thrust of my argument. The harum-scarum Theosophist movement with its passionate interest in anti-imperialism and the 'progressive' counter-cultural movements of Steiner, Ouspensky and others (where basic decency overwhelmed the tight-arsed neurosis of the pessimists) took place in relatively free, open and fluid societies. The latter thinkers would make their way West as Europe closed up into various forms of authoritarianism.
Today we have two competing 'occultisms' - a liberal individualist, almost anarchist, dissent against the 'Man' (the machinery of government and commerce) and a traditionalist and anti-Western tribal approach, based on struggle, that owes a great deal not just to Evola but to Benoist and, latterly, Southgate. Both claim paganism but these two models of the political universe could not be more different. I am sorry that Lachman does not go more deeply into this.
I have only one major disagreement with Lachman's analysis. I think he has got it very wrong on where the 'next threat' comes from. He thinks that the 'occultist' Christian Right represents the greatest coming threat to civilised values. The threat may rather come from the undergrowth of Europe as the economic recession bites. It is a Continent divided within itself, caught between a friend it does not like (USA) and an enemy it needs (Russia). It contains the seeds of nationalism and regionalist revolt in every corner. Racism remains a hidden reality in most parts, certainly compared to the United Kingdom, and populism is on the rise. There is a race against time by the New Right to establish its agenda before migrants become a bloc vote.
How this will play out over the coming years is impossible to predict but it is a safe bet that, in a Europe where Berlusconi is modelling himself on Evola's 'uomo differenziato', the next 'occult' strike will be from a revived Right because only the revived Right has the appropriate cadre or elite mentality and sense of a reality greater than the one the rest of us live in. And only the Radical Right wants to insert the world of Spirit into the very heart of practical politics.
In his books, Lachman has placed counter cultural thinking in a much wider historical context. We can now see it as a more normal response to the world than we have assumed. He has, with perhaps only very occasional slips into credulity, set the gold standard for sympathetic yet critical rational description of these cultures. And he has brought the conclusions of a wide range of more academic investigators and thinkers to a much wider audience.
'Politics & The Occult' looks at those who believe in 'occult' forces at work in society and who then seek to act on society in accordance with them. Lachman has decided wisely not to look into secret societies. There are many other interesting books on such societies and on the mythology of secret government. We recommend David V. Barrett's fair minded (perhaps excessively so) 'A Brief History of Secret Societies' which we reviewed in Oracle magazine earlier this year (2008).
Some very serious academic historians have been looking into the history of the occult as a cultural phenomenon in recent years, notably the incomparable Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. They have been uncovering more and more about specific groups at nodal points of history and society who have held occult views. Awareness of these movements has been limited by one great truth of history - the winners write it. The pragmatic and materialist view of history, indeed of existence as a whole, is always the winner because it works.
This is not to say that there are not major triumphs by irrationalist or half-rationalist movements - the triumph of Christianity was that of one mystery religion over many, Communism had many occult aspects in organisation and belief system despite its avowed scientific materialism. Yet most occult interventions in politics are literally against reason, attempts to mould reality through will or in accordance with some dream-state, even if it is shared by many others.
Lachman owes a big debt to other writers and acknowledges that debt throughout. He has clearly read deeply in the occultist tradition himself - whether Swedenborg, Guenon or Evola. But the total picture he gives has to be a little unsatisfactory to the reader through no fault of Lachman's. A narrative of a nation may have discontinuities (we may call them 'revolutions') but there is still a continuous recorded tale - history is 'one damn thing after another'.
With occultists there is rarely a proven connection between one set of occult interventions and another. This either looks like the same phenomenon of resistance to the prevailing current repeating itself in a parody of the 'eternal return' or history degenerates into one of those stories where every occult intervention is linked to its predecessor until the whole process becomes a conspiracy theory in which the Hidden Masters can be traced back to the dawn of time.
Lachman's book implies something different (though he does not state this) - a series of genuine occult interventions waxing and waning during key periods in history, rather marginal in most cases but occasionally, like Zelig in the Woody Allen film of that time, appearing at key points in history as more or less important bit-players.
Are there links between one intervention and another? Sometimes, sometimes not? What provides the link is not a 'Hidden Master' or a secret society but the literature that is left behind by one generation to be rediscovered and used by another. Let us take just three stories ...
* There is the Rosicrucian experience which appears to be a reformation within the Reformation. It represented an ideological faction that attempted (much like modern neo-conservatives) to bend pragmatic politicians to idealist ends. They may have persuaded the Elector of the Palatinate to undertake a pre-emptive strike against the Vatican and the Habsburgs that was doomed to fail on fundamentals.
* There is the obscure Masonic experience that was not merely linked to the Jacobite cause (this time oddly in the Catholic cause) but resulted in the association of continental Masonic activity with conspiratorial dissidence. This would lead, amongst other things, to the destruction of 'working class' hero Cagliostro and widespread fear and loathing of the Illuminati as well as the now-proven if exaggerated Masonic link to the founding of the USA.
* There is the antinomianism of the Moravian Brethren and of Swedenborg which, within the general Christian rhetoric of the day, anticipated the sexual revolution.
Yet these are all only minor parts of a much bigger story. The Rosicrucians were only an incident in the struggles between the Habsburgs and their enemies. The Jacobites were soon marginalised, most Masons were thoroughly respectable and Masonic influence was influential in the form the American Revolution took but it did not cause it. As for sexuality, matters got more rather than less repressed in the hundred and fifty years after Blake.
If we see the occult as a back drop to revolt by those excluded and passionate for change, then we see a shift somewhere between the blood-letting of the French Revolution and the pessimism about the world of the second half of the Nineteenth Century. One symbolic figure might be the socialist Alphone Louis Constant who became Eliphas Levy as he discovered magic and made his own disillusioned turn to the right.
Before this time, occultists had represented light and liberation - typical figures would be William Blake or Cagliostro who gave free health treatment to the poor. Something happened at that turn. Occultists became not merely conservative but reactionary. Jews increasingly became a problem whereas, before, they were allies in the general emancipation.
Lachman has pushed his agenda too far to ensure that he can refer to Campbell (in passing), Jung and Eliade in this context. None of these were truly occultists but Guenon's traditionalism, the Martinists and Synarchists (no, these are not a myth) and Evola are more than on the boundary of the occult. The most interesting figure - at the polar opposite of enlightened humanist reformers like the Rosicrucian Andreae - is indoubtedly Julius Evola. You can taste Lachman's grudging respect for the most intelligent and dangerous thinker of the European radical Right.
But perhaps it is not Constant-Levy but the manipulative social-psychopath Weisshaupt who is the key figure in the turn. The scare about the Illuminati, capable of over-turning all things for a dream, not only affected the dynasts of Europe but, as modernisation and industrialisation took hold, it scared the living daylights of the educated middle class. Revolt against the feudal and the clerical, the natural mode of political discourse for intelligent minor aristocrats and rising middle class intellectuals, suddenly became a defence of their status as priestly class against the collective.
Over and over again, the common denominator in occult political action is an attempted seizure of influence or power by a small group of the educated from people perceived to be less bright than they are. This is the arrogance of the frustrated middle. We have a political syndrome here. Lachman's book gives us the raw material and references for further research
Exceptions do not contradict the thrust of my argument. The harum-scarum Theosophist movement with its passionate interest in anti-imperialism and the 'progressive' counter-cultural movements of Steiner, Ouspensky and others (where basic decency overwhelmed the tight-arsed neurosis of the pessimists) took place in relatively free, open and fluid societies. The latter thinkers would make their way West as Europe closed up into various forms of authoritarianism.
Today we have two competing 'occultisms' - a liberal individualist, almost anarchist, dissent against the 'Man' (the machinery of government and commerce) and a traditionalist and anti-Western tribal approach, based on struggle, that owes a great deal not just to Evola but to Benoist and, latterly, Southgate. Both claim paganism but these two models of the political universe could not be more different. I am sorry that Lachman does not go more deeply into this.
I have only one major disagreement with Lachman's analysis. I think he has got it very wrong on where the 'next threat' comes from. He thinks that the 'occultist' Christian Right represents the greatest coming threat to civilised values. The threat may rather come from the undergrowth of Europe as the economic recession bites. It is a Continent divided within itself, caught between a friend it does not like (USA) and an enemy it needs (Russia). It contains the seeds of nationalism and regionalist revolt in every corner. Racism remains a hidden reality in most parts, certainly compared to the United Kingdom, and populism is on the rise. There is a race against time by the New Right to establish its agenda before migrants become a bloc vote.
How this will play out over the coming years is impossible to predict but it is a safe bet that, in a Europe where Berlusconi is modelling himself on Evola's 'uomo differenziato', the next 'occult' strike will be from a revived Right because only the revived Right has the appropriate cadre or elite mentality and sense of a reality greater than the one the rest of us live in. And only the Radical Right wants to insert the world of Spirit into the very heart of practical politics.
July 31, 2024
Una gran sorpresa este libro de Lachman (de quien quiero leer todos sus libros de ahora en adelante). De manera sumamente clara explica cómo el ocultismo en sus distintas variantes se ha relacionado con el arte y la política (obviamente aparece la Revolución francesa, la independencia de Estados Unidos, el fascismo italiano y el nazismo) y ha influido en la toma de decisiones basado en su mayoría en un conservadurismo que implica "volver a las raíces" sin que quede muy claro a qué se refiere de manera explícita. Todo el análisis a la obra e influencia de Papus, Crowley, Guenon, Evola, Jung y Eliade es muy interesante (sus vínculos con los nacionalismos y el nazismo) y sirve para ordenar a los autores y su influencia en momentos históricos como la Primera y Segunda Guerra Mundial, además de revisar su bibliografía. Muy recomendable.
September 9, 2009
Esoteric historian Gary Lachman has pieced together a comprehensive survey of the modern intertwining of the occult and the political in his latest book, Politics and the Occult.
Lachman begins his recounting of occult political influence by recounting the mysteries of the Rosicrucians and the many with influence over kings, queens and monarchical society that identified with Rosicrucian ideas. When the pamphlets from the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross hit Germany in 1614, it began the modern concept of the secret society, a group that may be in or outside of the nation’s government aiming to have political influence and espousing illuminated politics. Illuminated politics being a political approach that has a religious complexion and obeys a transcendental scale of values.
Perhaps the most historically notorious connections between the occult and politics are through the legacy of the Masons. The primary vitriol against the Freemasons being inspired by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion published in Russia in 1905 which has since been debunked but remains the fuel for many right wing hate groups to this day. Linking the Freemasons to the Jews and communism, the Protocols inspired people from Hitler to American Conspiracy Theorist James Shelby Downard. Perhaps the most obvious links between the Freemasons and political systems are through their symbolisms in the Great Seal of the United States and on the US currency. But more subtle links between the US and Freemasonry may have existed, Lachman discusses that many European Freemasons saw the concepts of brotherhood, tolerance and the rights of man becoming real, Freemasonic generals chose to take special care that the US became independent from Britain.
The occult groups most feared and invoked by conspiracy theorists like William Cooper (who is responsible for much of the conspiracy theory mindset of the last 20 years), focus on a coming New World Order enacted through the political influence of a swath of secret societies but none more responsible than the Illuminati. The Illuminati were founded in Germany on May 1st, 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a law professor who aimed to accelerate the adoption of Enlightenment ideals like science and atheism. What made the society strange were the means to its end, the use of occultism, religious belief and hierarchy to reach these goals. Weishaupt networked this group through various Masonic lodges in Europe aiming to remove princes and nations from the face of the earth so that, “the human race should attain its highest perfection, the capacity to judge itself.” Eventually the society collapsed after Masonic lodges distanced themselves from Weishaupt’s aims after Bavaria made all secret societies illegal in 1784.
I found the most fascinating part of the book to be the discussion of 19th-century occultist Saint-Yves d’Alveydre. After claiming to partake in astral travel to learn the secrets of Agartha, a secret city at the center of the earth, Saint Yves developed the concept of synarchy, the opposite of anarchy, the establishment of complete and total government, a government that functioned like the human body that divided its people to function like the human body. Saint-Yves’ visions were detailed in his published work but were immediately retracted after their publication. He kept one copy and the printer secretly held another. Why he destroyed them we may never know. Speculation may lead you to think that he revealed a secret world before the inhabitants wanted him to.
Growing from the concept of synarchy came Rudolph Steiner’s Threefoldness, the idea that since human bodies are composed of feeling, thinking and willing. Feeling being the breathing, circulation and heartbeat; Willing consisting of the metabolism and the limbs; Thinking being the head and nerve communications. The goal being the production of free individuals that were in a society supporting spiritual growth.
When most think occult politics, they think the overblown claims of Nazi Occultism and the Thule Society. To name a few, stories of Nazi mystic and dark rituals inspired the video game series Castle Wolfenstein and the comic book hero Hellboy. Some claims go so far to say that the entire Hitler led atrocities were undertaken to produce mass blood sacrifices that would open portals to other dark dimensions, dimensions which UFOs and the grey aliens emerged from. Lachman debunks these fantastical claims by laying down the actual (and much less colorful) history of the Thule society. The most surprising dark revelation for me had nothing to do with Nazi’s, it was that shamanistic scholar Eliade was connected with political violence in his home country of Romania.
Lachman closes the book with some of his own thoughts on “illuminated politics” in the current years. His concerns about American Fascism are not overblown or misplaced. When the majority of a country is expecting a rapture or deliverance from above, its desires could be easily manipulated by overzealous demagogues. With an economic downturn in the US looking more prolonged by the day, most signs of recovery ignore the masses of unemployed. When a society is desperate it may look to any alternative that combines religion with political solutions. The far-right is continually laughable but has gained eerie power as exemplified by the recent resignation of Obama’s Green Jobs Adviser Van Jones and the backlash against Obama’s school address. Combine these concerns with Jacques Vallée’s warnings of a UFO cult becoming a major religion and the next 20 years could be very interesting.
So now, I’m excited to read more about the occult influences on society and specifically on the United States… which is timely because after reading Mitch Horowitz’s essay on Ouija I discovered he just wrote a book on the Occult in America! Hooray!
Lachman begins his recounting of occult political influence by recounting the mysteries of the Rosicrucians and the many with influence over kings, queens and monarchical society that identified with Rosicrucian ideas. When the pamphlets from the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross hit Germany in 1614, it began the modern concept of the secret society, a group that may be in or outside of the nation’s government aiming to have political influence and espousing illuminated politics. Illuminated politics being a political approach that has a religious complexion and obeys a transcendental scale of values.
Perhaps the most historically notorious connections between the occult and politics are through the legacy of the Masons. The primary vitriol against the Freemasons being inspired by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion published in Russia in 1905 which has since been debunked but remains the fuel for many right wing hate groups to this day. Linking the Freemasons to the Jews and communism, the Protocols inspired people from Hitler to American Conspiracy Theorist James Shelby Downard. Perhaps the most obvious links between the Freemasons and political systems are through their symbolisms in the Great Seal of the United States and on the US currency. But more subtle links between the US and Freemasonry may have existed, Lachman discusses that many European Freemasons saw the concepts of brotherhood, tolerance and the rights of man becoming real, Freemasonic generals chose to take special care that the US became independent from Britain.
The occult groups most feared and invoked by conspiracy theorists like William Cooper (who is responsible for much of the conspiracy theory mindset of the last 20 years), focus on a coming New World Order enacted through the political influence of a swath of secret societies but none more responsible than the Illuminati. The Illuminati were founded in Germany on May 1st, 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a law professor who aimed to accelerate the adoption of Enlightenment ideals like science and atheism. What made the society strange were the means to its end, the use of occultism, religious belief and hierarchy to reach these goals. Weishaupt networked this group through various Masonic lodges in Europe aiming to remove princes and nations from the face of the earth so that, “the human race should attain its highest perfection, the capacity to judge itself.” Eventually the society collapsed after Masonic lodges distanced themselves from Weishaupt’s aims after Bavaria made all secret societies illegal in 1784.
I found the most fascinating part of the book to be the discussion of 19th-century occultist Saint-Yves d’Alveydre. After claiming to partake in astral travel to learn the secrets of Agartha, a secret city at the center of the earth, Saint Yves developed the concept of synarchy, the opposite of anarchy, the establishment of complete and total government, a government that functioned like the human body that divided its people to function like the human body. Saint-Yves’ visions were detailed in his published work but were immediately retracted after their publication. He kept one copy and the printer secretly held another. Why he destroyed them we may never know. Speculation may lead you to think that he revealed a secret world before the inhabitants wanted him to.
Growing from the concept of synarchy came Rudolph Steiner’s Threefoldness, the idea that since human bodies are composed of feeling, thinking and willing. Feeling being the breathing, circulation and heartbeat; Willing consisting of the metabolism and the limbs; Thinking being the head and nerve communications. The goal being the production of free individuals that were in a society supporting spiritual growth.
When most think occult politics, they think the overblown claims of Nazi Occultism and the Thule Society. To name a few, stories of Nazi mystic and dark rituals inspired the video game series Castle Wolfenstein and the comic book hero Hellboy. Some claims go so far to say that the entire Hitler led atrocities were undertaken to produce mass blood sacrifices that would open portals to other dark dimensions, dimensions which UFOs and the grey aliens emerged from. Lachman debunks these fantastical claims by laying down the actual (and much less colorful) history of the Thule society. The most surprising dark revelation for me had nothing to do with Nazi’s, it was that shamanistic scholar Eliade was connected with political violence in his home country of Romania.
Lachman closes the book with some of his own thoughts on “illuminated politics” in the current years. His concerns about American Fascism are not overblown or misplaced. When the majority of a country is expecting a rapture or deliverance from above, its desires could be easily manipulated by overzealous demagogues. With an economic downturn in the US looking more prolonged by the day, most signs of recovery ignore the masses of unemployed. When a society is desperate it may look to any alternative that combines religion with political solutions. The far-right is continually laughable but has gained eerie power as exemplified by the recent resignation of Obama’s Green Jobs Adviser Van Jones and the backlash against Obama’s school address. Combine these concerns with Jacques Vallée’s warnings of a UFO cult becoming a major religion and the next 20 years could be very interesting.
So now, I’m excited to read more about the occult influences on society and specifically on the United States… which is timely because after reading Mitch Horowitz’s essay on Ouija I discovered he just wrote a book on the Occult in America! Hooray!
October 13, 2019
I liked this book a lot, though not as much as Turn Off Your Mind, perhaps because some of the background history for that fine volume is repeated here. Also, the early chapters are a recitation of the history of esoteric traditions based on Rosicrucianism, Templar lore, and other oft told tales. Lachman's treatment of this familiar material though is first-rate and the chapters do frame the evolution of occult movements that he describes later in the book. Though this is not the first work I've read about the astonishing impact of Theosophy on the end of the colonial era in India, it's the best. One of my favorite books on occult history is James Webb's The Occult Establishment and, in the introductory chapter here, Lachman sets out his case that Webb may have overstated his thesis -- that the "flight from reason" of the fin de siècle bred the monsters of Fascism -- but the actual unfolding of Lachman's ideas pretty much shores up Webb's point, though it also underscores the bleed between radical left and right politics we're still dealing with today. The concluding chapter, on the serious threat of well-organized fundamentalist Christianity, the ongoing evolution of my generation's flight from reason, echoes way too much other evidence and should disturb the sleep of anyone who doesn't want to wake up in a Bible Camp someday.
March 13, 2017
Before I get to this book, please indulge me while I engage in a couple of brief tangents that I will tie into the book review in due course. First, I hear people say something to the effect that “people shouldn’t bring religion into politics,” or “in America, our Constitution says we should keep religion and politics separate.” I find these statements well-intentioned and understandable, but nevertheless absurd. Religion and politics have been conjoined since humans conceived of each, and they have been intimate since the dawn of civilization (agriculture and cities). One can argue that as a part of the modern project these concerns should be separated, and in some measure, they address different domains. But they are overlapping Venn diagrams, each claiming a common territory. Religion, broadly conceived, is the stuff of ultimate concerns: how we relate to those powers greater than us (e.g., God, gods, Nature, the Dharma, the Tao, etc.) and how we relate to each other (morality broadly conceived). Politics often addresses the mundane: “Where should we put this road?” and “How much should we levy for taxes this year?” (I was a city attorney for three decades.) In short, the “who gets what, when, and how” of Harold Laswell. But politics also addresses fundamental issues of life and death, such as definitions and punishments for murder, the legality of abortion, declarations of war—the big issues. In short, politics entails both the sacred and the profane; it involves the ethical and the practical. Thus, I can’t imagine keeping religion and politics separate. It’s impossible. On the other hand, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ..” In other words, what it requires is the separation of church and state, the respective institutions of religion and politics. The First Amendment prohibits the state from interfering in religious belief and practice, regardless of whether conducted within an institutional framework (church, synagogue, mosque, temple, etc.) or arising from the beliefs and practices of any one person. This constitutionally mandated separation of government from religion provides an essential safeguard for the individual, and it protects both religious institutions and government. Entanglements of church and state create problems for churches and states.
My next digression involves some post-election communications about Trump and Clinton. In short, one person with whom I had some contact argued that Trump deserved to win over Clinton because Clinton was in cahoots (my term, not his) with “the Illuminati,” such as George Soros. What? I, in my Enlightenment bubble, thought that such nonsense was something that I’d encounter only among the truly wigged-out. Not so. There isn’t a bubble out there; there are more bubbles than we can begin to count. I prefer mine (and I hope that it doesn’t create too distorting a lens), but we need to pop some of these others.
Having allowed myself these two digressions, let me turn to this book and explain why I found my digressions fitting in the circumstances. Gary Lachman’s Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen (2008) is about the intersection of religion (or spirituality, if you prefer a wider net) and politics. However, instead of the usual roster of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, he’s writing about those who inhabit the fringes of those religions and some who draw upon entirely different creeds. If Lachman had shared any jokes in this book, they wouldn’t have set up with a “priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar,” but “a magician, an adept, and a charlatan walk into a bar.” But unlike the mainstream set-up, where perhaps a Roman collar and a yarmulke would help us distinguish who is who among the mainstream three, among the three occult figures, you couldn’t know who is who from any first glimpse. (N.B. Don’t take this analogy too far; we can’t necessarily tell who is a charlatan in the occult group and only by process of elimination can we identify the minister in the first. Protestants can be so nondescript in public.) The occult has its roots in many of the mainstream traditions, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic, in addition to other traditions (Gnosticism, Hermeticism, etc.), but by definition, the occult remains out of site and the esoteric reserved for the few. Lachman argues that the occult traditions became more secretive with the advent of the modern world when science and materialism (Newton’s interests notwithstanding) became the dominant ideology. With this tidal shift in culture, concerns about the soul, mind, and consciousness became suspect and began to migrate underground. Thus, the shadow side of religion becomes, even more, a matter of fear and fascination.
The list of occult groups identified and discussed by Lachman is impressive. From early modern times, we get the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, and the Illuminati. All of these groups clothed themselves in secrecy, which, in addition to practical concerns about repression by ruling authorities, makes each organization more attractive to members (exclusiveness) and more fascinating to outsiders. Also, one can’t help but note that these groups seem to be populated by the elite, not simply (or even primarily) the aristocracy, but the educated elite as well. For instance, both Descartes and Leibniz are associated with the Rosicrucians. (An aside: isn’t Leibniz one of the most brilliant minds of all time?) The elite membership in these organizations certainly enhanced both their prestige and popular resentment of against them.
But how influential—or even powerful—were these early modern occult groups? In the end, the pyramid with the eye on the dollar bill and George Washington’s well-known Freemasonry membership notwithstanding, these groups were not that influential. If you want to gauge the thoughts and beliefs that guided the American Revolution and Founding, you’d do better to study Locke, the Scottish Enlightenment, Montesquieu, the Atlantic Republican tradition, and the English Whig tradition than Freemasonry. Add the political economy of slavery (as sadly one must), and you have a strong sense of the thinking behind America’s political origins. Occult organizations also had their fingerprints on the French Revolution, on both the Right and the Left (the time in which these terms emerged), but no group (occult or not) was in control completely or for long until Napolean put an end to the chaos. The ideas behind sea-change of the French Revolution have more to do with Voltaire and the philosophes and their arch-critic Rousseau than any occult dogma or action.
The intersection of the occult and the political continued into the 19th century. At the level of individuals and events, adherents to occult organizations and beliefs have a role, but in the more encompassing mix of culture and political beliefs, their effect is hard to discern. The ideas of Marx and Mill and mainstream religions and philosophies are the most influential. Of course, many small sectarian groups, both political and occult (and sometimes overlapping) populate history since the French Revolution. Zionists and anti-Semitic schemers, utopian socialists and free-love advocates, syndicalists and social welfare groups—experimenters (good and ill) of all types abound as society goes through continued upheavals. As Lachman notes, inquiries into the spiritual, the non-material, and consciousness preceded modernity (and are as old as human culture), but in times of great change and turbulence, these concerns become acuter and more widespread. And beginning in the late 18th century, the turmoil of politics, the wildfires of revolution, the conflagration of wars, imperialism and colonialism, along with changes in technology and culture, vastly increased the total wealth of Western nations and altered the composition of society while dramatically changing the culture. This level of change was—is—unprecedented in human history. But in contrast to the headlong changes in our lived environment, changes in shared consciousness, particularly at the deeper individual levels, seems to move at a much slower pace, taking the course of epochs, not months and years. Thus, to any extent that the occult or esoteric beliefs and practices might have had an effect would, by definition, be limited to an elite and could only disburse slowly through society. By contrast, changes in some religious practices can spread like wildfire through society, for instance, the changes of the Protestant Reformation and the Great Awakening, to provide just two examples. Thus, whatever legitimate hopes initiates might hold in times of great change, the odds are against any significant influence—not to mention control—over events. Thus, for all of the aspiration, the influence of the occult and esoteric remains limited.
But despite the limited influence, the role of occult and esoteric thinkers remains intriguing. Within periods that I’m acquainted with, the footprints bear following. Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists were proponents of Indian independence at the beginning in the late 19th century. In Romania, the great scholar of religion, Mircea Eliade, had sympathies with Romanian fascist and nationalist groups through the Second World War. Finally, at present, the president’s aide Stephen Bannon cites Julius Evola (along with Lenin) as an intellectual mentor. Evola was an Italian esoteric thinker and critic of modernity who promoted Italian fascism. Thus, while esoteric and occult thinkers certainly have not guided events nor have they been at the forefront of the intellectual currents shaping modern life, neither have their beliefs and personages been negligible. And contemplate this: you may conclude that Stephen Bannon is not the president and that his beliefs, no matter how seemingly fringe or outrageous, are of little consequence. But understand that the man he serves is marked by an extreme intellectual vacuity, and the contents of the House of Horrors that fill Bannon’s mind will undoubtedly—have undoubtedly—streamed in to fill that vacuum.
Before I conclude my review, I need to admit something. I feel a bit guilty about reviewing this book. The guilt comes from the fact that while reading it—and other books and articles by Lachman—I find myself mumbling “hum-hum," making an electronic note of a “yes” to a passage, and generally finding that his comments—never intrusive and or heavy-handed—reflect many of my beliefs and conclusions. I enjoyed this book, like the others, because he channels and expresses so many of my thoughts and perceptions. It’s reassuring the find someone who shares many of your viewpoints, but it may take the edge off of my criticism. If so, so be it; you’re forewarned.
To illustrate this point, let me quote from his conclusion, where, as in the Introduction, Lachman allows himself to comment more extensively. In the “Last Words” he writes:
Clearly, for anyone who thinks life should be about something more than reality TV, celebrity gossip, and having the “F” word misspelled on your clothes, the secular Western world leaves much to be desired. I include myself in this group. Like many people, I find much about the modern world unappealing. It's for this reason that I find critics of it like Julius Evola and René Guénon [both “Traditionalists”] and others of their sensibilities disturbing—not because of Evola's obvious fascist sympathies or Guénon's elitist ethos, but because many of their criticisms hit the mark. Unless a more moderate rethinking of modernity comes up with something soon, the more extreme alternatives offered by Guénon and others like him will seem attractive. Notwithstanding Evola's repellent racist views, it's not surprising that some of his readers appreciated his belief that the only thing left was to “blow up” everything. Thankfully, the majority take this as a metaphor, and I'd bet that many of us feel something similar at times, although, again thankfully, we have the presence of mind not to succumb to this “purifying” release. To want to knock everything down and start anew has been a part of the human psyche for ages, probably from the beginning. It's a form of metaphysical impatience, and most spiritual practices are aimed at learning how to curb it. But no society or nation can practice Zen or any other discipline; only people can. So it's up to us to refrain from indulging in the delightful and stimulating exercise of smashing everything up.
Lachman, Gary. Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen (p. 232). Quest Books. Kindle Edition.
While I’m not well enough acquainted with either Evola or Guenon to endorse their critiques of modernity, I appreciate the sentiment. (See my review of William Ophuls’s book Requiem for Modern Politics and my review of Ian McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary--also a Lachman favorite--for examples.) But as someone who’s trying to figure out how he can call himself a “Burkean revolutionary” (I’m still working out how I can transform this from a blatant oxymoron into a revealing paradox), I share Lachman’s appreciation of the critique and his desire not to destroy the world in order to perfect it. I didn’t think Donald Trump would be elected president because I didn’t believe enough American were willing to (even metaphorically) “blow up the system,” which Trump is attempting to do.
I also share Lachman’s conception of politics and political thinking:
Politics deals with the possible, not the ideal; it inhabits the messy world of becoming, not the stable world of being. Ideas from the world of being can inform the politics of becoming, but they cannot take its place, which means that as long as the world is the world, there will always be change. Attempts to force some ideal, whether it be right or left, into existence will fail, or success will come at such a cost that failure would have been preferable. While watching the collapse of his beloved Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, P. D. Ouspensky had deep insight into what he called “the impossibility of violence,” “the uselessness of violent means to attain no matter what.” “I saw with undoubted clarity,” Ouspensky wrote, “that violent means and methods in anything whatever would unfailingly produce negative results, that is to say, results opposed to those aims for which they were applied.” This, Ouspensky said, wasn't an ethical insight but a practical one. Violence simply doesn't work. History, I think, bears Ouspensky out. If humankind and society are going to become “better,” it's not going to happen overnight. As the I Ching counsels, “Perseverance furthers.” And that, as I say, takes patience.
Lachman continues:
Given that the political world isn't an ideal one, if I was asked which I preferred, the modern world—which allows for shopping malls, dumbed-down culture, and consumer consciousness—or a variant of the spiritual authoritarian theocracies encountered in this book, I'd have to come down on the side of modernity. With Leszek Kolakowski, I'm conservative because I believe that there is much to conserve and that the new is not always better than the old. But with Ernst Bloch I'm a radical, because I believe in the promise of the new, the potential for something that doesn't yet exist to arrive. The challenge, of course, is how to combine the two until we find the Goldilocks-like state of having things “just right.”
Id.
To all of the above, I say “Amen.” Lachman is not only a knowledgeable guide in the field of the occult, the esoteric, and of consciousness studies, but he also proves himself a responsible thinker in the quotidian world of politics. To borrow from the candidates, “I approve this message.”
One final point. In a year-end blog post, in addition to announcing a new book scheduled for publication this spring about the imagination (including more on Owen Barfield), Lachman announced the receipt of a new commission. He reports:
I’ve also just received a commission from my US publisher, Tarcher Penguin, now Tarcher Perigee, for Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump. The book will look at the influence ‘mental science’ and ‘positive thinking’ has had on Trump’s rise to power, and will explore the links between the new ‘alt.right’ movement within the political far right and the political philosophy of the Italian esotericist Julius Evola. I will also look at the influence Alexandr Dugin, a radical political theorist influenced by Evola, ‘chaos magick’ and Martin Heidegger, has on the Russian President Vladimir Putin. In different ways both Trump and Putin seek to destabilize the west and reshape the political and economic map of Europe. With this in mind I will look at the possible connection – if any – between the European Union and a strange political philosophy that began in the late nineteenth century and according to some reports had a hidden but effective influence on European politics. This is what is known as Synarchy, the complete opposite of anarchy. Anarchy means no government; Synarchy means total government. I write about Synarchy in Politics and the Occult and Dark Star Rising will pick up my account of the occult influence on modern politics from where I left it in 2008.
To borrow a term that I picked up from Lachman, I’m “chuffed” at this prospect. (I hope I’ve used that correctly.) I also hope that by the time of publication that it’s not as topical as it is at the moment, but I’m not banking on that. And even if we are so lucky, we’re going to be trying to discern what happened for some time, and Lachman is sure to provide fascinating insights into our unsettling course of events.
My next digression involves some post-election communications about Trump and Clinton. In short, one person with whom I had some contact argued that Trump deserved to win over Clinton because Clinton was in cahoots (my term, not his) with “the Illuminati,” such as George Soros. What? I, in my Enlightenment bubble, thought that such nonsense was something that I’d encounter only among the truly wigged-out. Not so. There isn’t a bubble out there; there are more bubbles than we can begin to count. I prefer mine (and I hope that it doesn’t create too distorting a lens), but we need to pop some of these others.
Having allowed myself these two digressions, let me turn to this book and explain why I found my digressions fitting in the circumstances. Gary Lachman’s Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen (2008) is about the intersection of religion (or spirituality, if you prefer a wider net) and politics. However, instead of the usual roster of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, he’s writing about those who inhabit the fringes of those religions and some who draw upon entirely different creeds. If Lachman had shared any jokes in this book, they wouldn’t have set up with a “priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar,” but “a magician, an adept, and a charlatan walk into a bar.” But unlike the mainstream set-up, where perhaps a Roman collar and a yarmulke would help us distinguish who is who among the mainstream three, among the three occult figures, you couldn’t know who is who from any first glimpse. (N.B. Don’t take this analogy too far; we can’t necessarily tell who is a charlatan in the occult group and only by process of elimination can we identify the minister in the first. Protestants can be so nondescript in public.) The occult has its roots in many of the mainstream traditions, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic, in addition to other traditions (Gnosticism, Hermeticism, etc.), but by definition, the occult remains out of site and the esoteric reserved for the few. Lachman argues that the occult traditions became more secretive with the advent of the modern world when science and materialism (Newton’s interests notwithstanding) became the dominant ideology. With this tidal shift in culture, concerns about the soul, mind, and consciousness became suspect and began to migrate underground. Thus, the shadow side of religion becomes, even more, a matter of fear and fascination.
The list of occult groups identified and discussed by Lachman is impressive. From early modern times, we get the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, and the Illuminati. All of these groups clothed themselves in secrecy, which, in addition to practical concerns about repression by ruling authorities, makes each organization more attractive to members (exclusiveness) and more fascinating to outsiders. Also, one can’t help but note that these groups seem to be populated by the elite, not simply (or even primarily) the aristocracy, but the educated elite as well. For instance, both Descartes and Leibniz are associated with the Rosicrucians. (An aside: isn’t Leibniz one of the most brilliant minds of all time?) The elite membership in these organizations certainly enhanced both their prestige and popular resentment of against them.
But how influential—or even powerful—were these early modern occult groups? In the end, the pyramid with the eye on the dollar bill and George Washington’s well-known Freemasonry membership notwithstanding, these groups were not that influential. If you want to gauge the thoughts and beliefs that guided the American Revolution and Founding, you’d do better to study Locke, the Scottish Enlightenment, Montesquieu, the Atlantic Republican tradition, and the English Whig tradition than Freemasonry. Add the political economy of slavery (as sadly one must), and you have a strong sense of the thinking behind America’s political origins. Occult organizations also had their fingerprints on the French Revolution, on both the Right and the Left (the time in which these terms emerged), but no group (occult or not) was in control completely or for long until Napolean put an end to the chaos. The ideas behind sea-change of the French Revolution have more to do with Voltaire and the philosophes and their arch-critic Rousseau than any occult dogma or action.
The intersection of the occult and the political continued into the 19th century. At the level of individuals and events, adherents to occult organizations and beliefs have a role, but in the more encompassing mix of culture and political beliefs, their effect is hard to discern. The ideas of Marx and Mill and mainstream religions and philosophies are the most influential. Of course, many small sectarian groups, both political and occult (and sometimes overlapping) populate history since the French Revolution. Zionists and anti-Semitic schemers, utopian socialists and free-love advocates, syndicalists and social welfare groups—experimenters (good and ill) of all types abound as society goes through continued upheavals. As Lachman notes, inquiries into the spiritual, the non-material, and consciousness preceded modernity (and are as old as human culture), but in times of great change and turbulence, these concerns become acuter and more widespread. And beginning in the late 18th century, the turmoil of politics, the wildfires of revolution, the conflagration of wars, imperialism and colonialism, along with changes in technology and culture, vastly increased the total wealth of Western nations and altered the composition of society while dramatically changing the culture. This level of change was—is—unprecedented in human history. But in contrast to the headlong changes in our lived environment, changes in shared consciousness, particularly at the deeper individual levels, seems to move at a much slower pace, taking the course of epochs, not months and years. Thus, to any extent that the occult or esoteric beliefs and practices might have had an effect would, by definition, be limited to an elite and could only disburse slowly through society. By contrast, changes in some religious practices can spread like wildfire through society, for instance, the changes of the Protestant Reformation and the Great Awakening, to provide just two examples. Thus, whatever legitimate hopes initiates might hold in times of great change, the odds are against any significant influence—not to mention control—over events. Thus, for all of the aspiration, the influence of the occult and esoteric remains limited.
But despite the limited influence, the role of occult and esoteric thinkers remains intriguing. Within periods that I’m acquainted with, the footprints bear following. Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists were proponents of Indian independence at the beginning in the late 19th century. In Romania, the great scholar of religion, Mircea Eliade, had sympathies with Romanian fascist and nationalist groups through the Second World War. Finally, at present, the president’s aide Stephen Bannon cites Julius Evola (along with Lenin) as an intellectual mentor. Evola was an Italian esoteric thinker and critic of modernity who promoted Italian fascism. Thus, while esoteric and occult thinkers certainly have not guided events nor have they been at the forefront of the intellectual currents shaping modern life, neither have their beliefs and personages been negligible. And contemplate this: you may conclude that Stephen Bannon is not the president and that his beliefs, no matter how seemingly fringe or outrageous, are of little consequence. But understand that the man he serves is marked by an extreme intellectual vacuity, and the contents of the House of Horrors that fill Bannon’s mind will undoubtedly—have undoubtedly—streamed in to fill that vacuum.
Before I conclude my review, I need to admit something. I feel a bit guilty about reviewing this book. The guilt comes from the fact that while reading it—and other books and articles by Lachman—I find myself mumbling “hum-hum," making an electronic note of a “yes” to a passage, and generally finding that his comments—never intrusive and or heavy-handed—reflect many of my beliefs and conclusions. I enjoyed this book, like the others, because he channels and expresses so many of my thoughts and perceptions. It’s reassuring the find someone who shares many of your viewpoints, but it may take the edge off of my criticism. If so, so be it; you’re forewarned.
To illustrate this point, let me quote from his conclusion, where, as in the Introduction, Lachman allows himself to comment more extensively. In the “Last Words” he writes:
Clearly, for anyone who thinks life should be about something more than reality TV, celebrity gossip, and having the “F” word misspelled on your clothes, the secular Western world leaves much to be desired. I include myself in this group. Like many people, I find much about the modern world unappealing. It's for this reason that I find critics of it like Julius Evola and René Guénon [both “Traditionalists”] and others of their sensibilities disturbing—not because of Evola's obvious fascist sympathies or Guénon's elitist ethos, but because many of their criticisms hit the mark. Unless a more moderate rethinking of modernity comes up with something soon, the more extreme alternatives offered by Guénon and others like him will seem attractive. Notwithstanding Evola's repellent racist views, it's not surprising that some of his readers appreciated his belief that the only thing left was to “blow up” everything. Thankfully, the majority take this as a metaphor, and I'd bet that many of us feel something similar at times, although, again thankfully, we have the presence of mind not to succumb to this “purifying” release. To want to knock everything down and start anew has been a part of the human psyche for ages, probably from the beginning. It's a form of metaphysical impatience, and most spiritual practices are aimed at learning how to curb it. But no society or nation can practice Zen or any other discipline; only people can. So it's up to us to refrain from indulging in the delightful and stimulating exercise of smashing everything up.
Lachman, Gary. Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen (p. 232). Quest Books. Kindle Edition.
While I’m not well enough acquainted with either Evola or Guenon to endorse their critiques of modernity, I appreciate the sentiment. (See my review of William Ophuls’s book Requiem for Modern Politics and my review of Ian McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary--also a Lachman favorite--for examples.) But as someone who’s trying to figure out how he can call himself a “Burkean revolutionary” (I’m still working out how I can transform this from a blatant oxymoron into a revealing paradox), I share Lachman’s appreciation of the critique and his desire not to destroy the world in order to perfect it. I didn’t think Donald Trump would be elected president because I didn’t believe enough American were willing to (even metaphorically) “blow up the system,” which Trump is attempting to do.
I also share Lachman’s conception of politics and political thinking:
Politics deals with the possible, not the ideal; it inhabits the messy world of becoming, not the stable world of being. Ideas from the world of being can inform the politics of becoming, but they cannot take its place, which means that as long as the world is the world, there will always be change. Attempts to force some ideal, whether it be right or left, into existence will fail, or success will come at such a cost that failure would have been preferable. While watching the collapse of his beloved Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, P. D. Ouspensky had deep insight into what he called “the impossibility of violence,” “the uselessness of violent means to attain no matter what.” “I saw with undoubted clarity,” Ouspensky wrote, “that violent means and methods in anything whatever would unfailingly produce negative results, that is to say, results opposed to those aims for which they were applied.” This, Ouspensky said, wasn't an ethical insight but a practical one. Violence simply doesn't work. History, I think, bears Ouspensky out. If humankind and society are going to become “better,” it's not going to happen overnight. As the I Ching counsels, “Perseverance furthers.” And that, as I say, takes patience.
Lachman continues:
Given that the political world isn't an ideal one, if I was asked which I preferred, the modern world—which allows for shopping malls, dumbed-down culture, and consumer consciousness—or a variant of the spiritual authoritarian theocracies encountered in this book, I'd have to come down on the side of modernity. With Leszek Kolakowski, I'm conservative because I believe that there is much to conserve and that the new is not always better than the old. But with Ernst Bloch I'm a radical, because I believe in the promise of the new, the potential for something that doesn't yet exist to arrive. The challenge, of course, is how to combine the two until we find the Goldilocks-like state of having things “just right.”
Id.
To all of the above, I say “Amen.” Lachman is not only a knowledgeable guide in the field of the occult, the esoteric, and of consciousness studies, but he also proves himself a responsible thinker in the quotidian world of politics. To borrow from the candidates, “I approve this message.”
One final point. In a year-end blog post, in addition to announcing a new book scheduled for publication this spring about the imagination (including more on Owen Barfield), Lachman announced the receipt of a new commission. He reports:
I’ve also just received a commission from my US publisher, Tarcher Penguin, now Tarcher Perigee, for Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump. The book will look at the influence ‘mental science’ and ‘positive thinking’ has had on Trump’s rise to power, and will explore the links between the new ‘alt.right’ movement within the political far right and the political philosophy of the Italian esotericist Julius Evola. I will also look at the influence Alexandr Dugin, a radical political theorist influenced by Evola, ‘chaos magick’ and Martin Heidegger, has on the Russian President Vladimir Putin. In different ways both Trump and Putin seek to destabilize the west and reshape the political and economic map of Europe. With this in mind I will look at the possible connection – if any – between the European Union and a strange political philosophy that began in the late nineteenth century and according to some reports had a hidden but effective influence on European politics. This is what is known as Synarchy, the complete opposite of anarchy. Anarchy means no government; Synarchy means total government. I write about Synarchy in Politics and the Occult and Dark Star Rising will pick up my account of the occult influence on modern politics from where I left it in 2008.
To borrow a term that I picked up from Lachman, I’m “chuffed” at this prospect. (I hope I’ve used that correctly.) I also hope that by the time of publication that it’s not as topical as it is at the moment, but I’m not banking on that. And even if we are so lucky, we’re going to be trying to discern what happened for some time, and Lachman is sure to provide fascinating insights into our unsettling course of events.
July 22, 2014
Lachmann is well informed and this volume provides a fascinating account of the role men and women involved with the occult have played throughout European history from the time of the Renaissance to the present. That is its strength. Sadly, there are serious weaknesses as well.
The most general one is that while we get innumerable interesting accounts of different people, the ultimate result is so much focus on individual trees we get no real sense of how it all fits together.
A second problem is a very vague, and increasingly so as the book progresses, focus on what counts as "occult." By the time the book enters the modern era he discusses at some length groups which he also admits are not occult (like the Thule Society) while doing little to substantiate connections he claims are significant, like that between the Wandervogel and the Nazis or between Haeckel's pantheism, which ("Monism,") and the occult.
There is a third serious problem. I have read several of Lachman's books about the 60s, and his almost unrelieved negativity about the counter culture suggested to me then, and has been reinforced by reading this volume, that he had some powerful negative personal experiences that he now uses to paint that era with abroad brush. He seems unable or unwilling to present a balanced view of that time.
In "Politics and the Occult" he carries his animus backwards to people who were in many ways predecessors to the 60s: movements of young Germans up to the time of Hitler's rise. He works pretty hard at making connections between them and the Nazis, rarely mentioning how many opposed the Nazis once they became an issue, (the youth movement started in the late 19th century) or that the Nazis outlawed these groups as soon as they came to power. The issue is not that the currents he identified were not there, but they were hardly definitive and there were other very anti-Nazi currents. In other words, like the 60s in the US, it was a complex time and many important threads were completely antithetical to the Nazism that arose to power.
For example, I do not remember any mention by Lachman of how explicitly anti-feminist the Nazis were, or how strongly pro-feminist much (not all) of the German youth movement was. One can find vague references in the text, but no explicit recognition of a theme which was absolutely central to the Nazi message. This is a pretty fundamental weakness in his analysis.
As a jumping off place to study the role of the occult in modern history, Lachmann's book is fine- but the author's personal agenda, which is never made explicit, strongly colors how he presents his material. A good book on contemporary and recent politics and the occult needs badly to be written. Sadly this is not it.
The most general one is that while we get innumerable interesting accounts of different people, the ultimate result is so much focus on individual trees we get no real sense of how it all fits together.
A second problem is a very vague, and increasingly so as the book progresses, focus on what counts as "occult." By the time the book enters the modern era he discusses at some length groups which he also admits are not occult (like the Thule Society) while doing little to substantiate connections he claims are significant, like that between the Wandervogel and the Nazis or between Haeckel's pantheism, which ("Monism,") and the occult.
There is a third serious problem. I have read several of Lachman's books about the 60s, and his almost unrelieved negativity about the counter culture suggested to me then, and has been reinforced by reading this volume, that he had some powerful negative personal experiences that he now uses to paint that era with abroad brush. He seems unable or unwilling to present a balanced view of that time.
In "Politics and the Occult" he carries his animus backwards to people who were in many ways predecessors to the 60s: movements of young Germans up to the time of Hitler's rise. He works pretty hard at making connections between them and the Nazis, rarely mentioning how many opposed the Nazis once they became an issue, (the youth movement started in the late 19th century) or that the Nazis outlawed these groups as soon as they came to power. The issue is not that the currents he identified were not there, but they were hardly definitive and there were other very anti-Nazi currents. In other words, like the 60s in the US, it was a complex time and many important threads were completely antithetical to the Nazism that arose to power.
For example, I do not remember any mention by Lachman of how explicitly anti-feminist the Nazis were, or how strongly pro-feminist much (not all) of the German youth movement was. One can find vague references in the text, but no explicit recognition of a theme which was absolutely central to the Nazi message. This is a pretty fundamental weakness in his analysis.
As a jumping off place to study the role of the occult in modern history, Lachmann's book is fine- but the author's personal agenda, which is never made explicit, strongly colors how he presents his material. A good book on contemporary and recent politics and the occult needs badly to be written. Sadly this is not it.
February 8, 2024
This book provides a comprehensive survey of the overlap between relatively recent European and American political history and the occult. Lachman explores the more familiar examples of the esoteric (think The Templars, The Rosicrucians and The Freemasons) and more niche spiritual leaders who drew from more academic philosophical tradition and/or thinking that borrowed from Hindu or Buddhist tradition. This book isn't outlining some sinister conspiracy (or set of conspiracies) underlying the recent political machine but instead is more of an examination of occult thought's impact on recent history.
While I appreciated the overview that Lachman provided and enjoyed learning about some groups that I had never heard of, I had trouble with this book. Lachman does not really provide a clear definition of what he considers to be the "occult," and it often felt like he inserted his own political biases or opinions into the source material rather than letting the vast and interesting stories he told speak for themselves. This made for a more haphazard and weak book that lacked synthesis. Finally, the epilogue at the end about the Christian right felt a bit out of touch and not aligned with the rest of the information in the book.
I thought this book was a great introduction to the obvious overlap of occult groups or occult thinking on some major historical and cultural events. I probably wouldn't recommend it though unless someone was just looking for a jumping-off point; it's too scattered.
While I appreciated the overview that Lachman provided and enjoyed learning about some groups that I had never heard of, I had trouble with this book. Lachman does not really provide a clear definition of what he considers to be the "occult," and it often felt like he inserted his own political biases or opinions into the source material rather than letting the vast and interesting stories he told speak for themselves. This made for a more haphazard and weak book that lacked synthesis. Finally, the epilogue at the end about the Christian right felt a bit out of touch and not aligned with the rest of the information in the book.
I thought this book was a great introduction to the obvious overlap of occult groups or occult thinking on some major historical and cultural events. I probably wouldn't recommend it though unless someone was just looking for a jumping-off point; it's too scattered.
August 12, 2018
Interesting book. I didn't rate it more highly because the early chapters deal with things that most people that are interested in secret societies and the occult already know: the Unholy Trinity of The Templars, The Rosicrucians and The Freemasons and the possible relationship(s) between them being a prime example. Early chapters read like a non-fiction version of "The daVinci Code" and Deborah Harkness' "Shadow of Night". However, once he gets past the French and American Revolutions, he gets into less familiar territory and some of the later figures, like Nicholas Roerich, were previously unknown to me. Although it covers a lot of the same ground as Goodrick-Clarke's "The Western Esoteric Tradition", it is a good overview of the overlap between politics and the paranormal.
April 19, 2021
this book is chock full of interesting information and has given me much to think about many of the authors and historical figures i know and admire. however, the authors weird policing of esoteric authors for fascist rhetoric, as well as his epilogue that in hindsight is just fully ridiculous and wrong (there is no "Christian right" that has any significant cultural power in the US and there never will be) make me question his judgment and conclusions.
April 22, 2020
Un excelente recorrido de la participación del ocultismo no sólo en las esferas políticas y revolucionarias sino también en el ámbito científico, filosófico y de la cultura popular. Muy bien narrado, contado y soportado.
July 31, 2020
Lachman provides a thorough overview of major occult traditions’ links to political ideologies and major political ideologies’ links to occult movements. His more centrist bias does shine through but overall he does a good job of analyzing the connections.
October 12, 2020
For such a fascinating subject... this book is so f%*king boring I couldn’t even get ONE of my brain cells to enjoy it. Maybe I’m completely illiterate when it comes to non fiction but there is a way to write that flows from the author’s pen straight into the soul of the reader and this is not it.
September 30, 2017
FYI, I got this when I was trying to DL LLachman's book about the 60s, occult and Rock'n'Roll.
June 28, 2018
Not quite as dense as Sex and Rockets (and about even with Lachman's Crowley biography, in terms of readability), this book nevertheless demonstrates both a breadth and depth of scholarship on occult history that's remarkable. It's not a casual read but one that might serve as a gateway to research into other works -- a starting point for looking up the details of individual movements that might catch your eye, connecting them together on a macro scale.
I always find Lachman's books to be a slog to read, simply because their prose is workmanlike rather than polished, but he always pulls his weight in terms of sheer subject-matter knowledge. In this case, he draws out a complex genealogy of occult-informed and occult-adjacent political thought -- a chain of influence from the gnostics to the rosicrucians to Evola to Left Behind -- and illuminates the various ways certain ideas twisted over time and the infighting between occult-influenced individuals and groups over the political significance of esoteric ideas.
Just as the personal is political, the metaphysical and religious is personal: one's worldview is a continuous landscape, and categories of convenience like "politics" and "religion" rarely adequately fit, only explaining things vaguely and only for large group whose differences can be ignored for polling purposes. Occult politics is about people who don't easily fit into these categories and who often themselves work to redefine how the general population looks at the world.
I always find Lachman's books to be a slog to read, simply because their prose is workmanlike rather than polished, but he always pulls his weight in terms of sheer subject-matter knowledge. In this case, he draws out a complex genealogy of occult-informed and occult-adjacent political thought -- a chain of influence from the gnostics to the rosicrucians to Evola to Left Behind -- and illuminates the various ways certain ideas twisted over time and the infighting between occult-influenced individuals and groups over the political significance of esoteric ideas.
Just as the personal is political, the metaphysical and religious is personal: one's worldview is a continuous landscape, and categories of convenience like "politics" and "religion" rarely adequately fit, only explaining things vaguely and only for large group whose differences can be ignored for polling purposes. Occult politics is about people who don't easily fit into these categories and who often themselves work to redefine how the general population looks at the world.
September 26, 2024
Um sobrevoo sobre a história do ocultismo e suas relações com a arte da política, tendo como impulso um estilo acessível e requintado. Gostaria que Lachman tivesse ainda mais fôlego e falasse de modo mais detido sobre a genealogia esotérica de cada um dos períodos históricos abordados, junto do saldo do que positivo e/ou monstruoso o pensamento de cada um dos mestres abordados pôde produzir. Uma boa inclusão, por exemplo, seria falar de Dion Fortune e seu relato do enfrentamento ao nazismo espiritual no clássico “The magical battle of Britain”; trata-se de um momento de militância esotérica cujo significado parece crescer em nossos dias. Outro acréscimo: o alinhamento de artistas do hip-hop com a gestão Obama trouxe à tona uma aproximação com Aleister Crowley que serviu de contraponto ao fundamentalismo cristão da América Branca – uma contracultura, a seu próprio modo. Esse movimento contribuiu para a renovação e crescente divulgação do misticismo, que passou a compor de forma marcante o caldo cultural do Ocidente a partir dos anos 2010. Resta esperar que o autor tome nota desses aspectos, quem sabe também desdobrando momentos de seu “Dark star rising: magick and power in the age of Trump”.
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August 5, 2011If you're looking for an occult conspiracy book then this is not what you are looking for. Instead, Lachman offers a work that examines the links between individuals interested in or engaged in occult societies (secret and otherwise) and their roles in politics. This covers everything from the French Revolution to the Left Behind series. The book is very well written, though sometimes it gets bogged down with too many characters.
November 27, 2015
Interesting but incredibly dense--I'll need to re-read this work to ensure I got everything out of it that I was supposed to. I disagree with the author's idea that the reason why "Harry Potter" and "The DaVinci Code" exist due to fundamental Christianity; most FC's find these works to be OF THE DEVIL (just ask them).
January 13, 2018
La verdad es que se me ha hecho un poco pesado leerlo y me he saltado páginas. Hay que prestarle mucha atención a esta lectura, si no lo lees muy concentrado enseguida te pierdes y no entiendes el lo relatado.
Si no eres una persona excesivamente fan de estos temas de ocultismo y exoterismo, y además no tienes grandes conocimientos en historia contemporánea no te lo recomiendo.
Si no eres una persona excesivamente fan de estos temas de ocultismo y exoterismo, y además no tienes grandes conocimientos en historia contemporánea no te lo recomiendo.
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