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Uncertain Places: Essays on Occult and Outsider Experiences
An exploration of our extraordinary shift away from materialism toward renewal of the numinous, mysterious, and uncertain
• Examines topics that evoke widespread misunderstanding, including the real history of secret societies, the wisdom of the Satanic, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, out-of-body experience, and the contemporary war on witches
• Looks at the influence of the founding lights of modern occultism, including mystic Neville Goddard, occult scholar Manly P. Hall, and surrealist filmmaker David Lynch, and debunks famous pseudo-skeptics such as the Amazing Randi
• Explores magickal practices, including Anarchic Magick, mind metaphysics, the Law of Attraction, and Ouija boards, and upends hallowed spiritual concepts like forgiveness
All of us today dwell in uncertain places--realities in which thoughts make things happen, ESP is provable by the scientific methods once used to debunk it, UFOs are mainstream, and magick no longer requires rite and ritual but is as near as your own mind.
Today’s leading voice of esotericism and the occult, Mitch Horowitz explores topics that evoke widespread misunderstanding, including the real history of secret societies, the wisdom of the Satanic, the relevance of Gnosticism, and the slender but authentic connection between today’s spiritual culture and antiquity, including in areas of Hermeticism, deity worship, out-of-body experience, and magick. He demonstrates the occult roots of wide-ranging facets of modern culture, including politics, abstract art, mind-body healing, self-help, and breakthrough scientific fields such as quantum physics and neuroplasticity. He looks at the influence of the founding lights of modern occultism, including mystic Neville Goddard, occult scholar Manly P. Hall, and surrealist filmmaker David Lynch, and provides a magnificent take-down of famous debunkers and pseudo-skeptics such as the Amazing Randi. He explores magickal practices, including Anarchic Magick, mind metaphysics, the Law of Attraction, and the history of Ouija boards and questions time-honored spiritual values like forgiveness. Mitch also examines the contemporary war on witches around the world and what it is like to be blacklisted.
Offering a thought-provoking investigation of the spiritual, the occult, the magickal, and the extra-physical, Mitch lays the groundwork for readers to continue their own journeys into these esoteric streams of consciousness.
• Examines topics that evoke widespread misunderstanding, including the real history of secret societies, the wisdom of the Satanic, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, out-of-body experience, and the contemporary war on witches
• Looks at the influence of the founding lights of modern occultism, including mystic Neville Goddard, occult scholar Manly P. Hall, and surrealist filmmaker David Lynch, and debunks famous pseudo-skeptics such as the Amazing Randi
• Explores magickal practices, including Anarchic Magick, mind metaphysics, the Law of Attraction, and Ouija boards, and upends hallowed spiritual concepts like forgiveness
All of us today dwell in uncertain places--realities in which thoughts make things happen, ESP is provable by the scientific methods once used to debunk it, UFOs are mainstream, and magick no longer requires rite and ritual but is as near as your own mind.
Today’s leading voice of esotericism and the occult, Mitch Horowitz explores topics that evoke widespread misunderstanding, including the real history of secret societies, the wisdom of the Satanic, the relevance of Gnosticism, and the slender but authentic connection between today’s spiritual culture and antiquity, including in areas of Hermeticism, deity worship, out-of-body experience, and magick. He demonstrates the occult roots of wide-ranging facets of modern culture, including politics, abstract art, mind-body healing, self-help, and breakthrough scientific fields such as quantum physics and neuroplasticity. He looks at the influence of the founding lights of modern occultism, including mystic Neville Goddard, occult scholar Manly P. Hall, and surrealist filmmaker David Lynch, and provides a magnificent take-down of famous debunkers and pseudo-skeptics such as the Amazing Randi. He explores magickal practices, including Anarchic Magick, mind metaphysics, the Law of Attraction, and the history of Ouija boards and questions time-honored spiritual values like forgiveness. Mitch also examines the contemporary war on witches around the world and what it is like to be blacklisted.
Offering a thought-provoking investigation of the spiritual, the occult, the magickal, and the extra-physical, Mitch lays the groundwork for readers to continue their own journeys into these esoteric streams of consciousness.
304 pages, Paperback
Published November 8, 2022
27 people are currently reading
89 people want to read
About the author
Mitch Horowitz
259 books228 followersMITCH HOROWITZ is the editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin and the author OCCULT AMERICA: THE SECRET HISTORY OF HOW MYSTICISM SHAPED OUR NATION (Bantam, Sept '09), which has been called "a fascinating book" by Ken Burns and "extraordinary" by Deepak Chopra. Visit him online at www.MitchHorowitz.com
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 9, 2025
Excellent chapter on the occult roots of abstract art. other chapters are individual essays or fragments edited out of the author's other works.
Horowitz is a plain-spoken and feeling liberal, something notable in a field normally reserved for self-published oddballs and conspiracists.
Horowitz is a plain-spoken and feeling liberal, something notable in a field normally reserved for self-published oddballs and conspiracists.
January 1, 2023
I always enjoy every book I read from Horowitz. This book is full of Horowitz's inviting writing style that is brimming with his good-natured wit and intelligence. This is a great collection of essays that circles around his favorite topics: the paranormal, New Thought, Gnotsim-Hermetism, and values he finds useful in Satanism. Some aspects of this book reminded me a bit of Colin Wilson and Robert Anton Wilson, which for me is a plus.
March 13, 2023
This review originally appeared on The Magical Buffet website on 03/13/2023.
There are a lot of places you can find an occult author’s work: websites, magazines, in person or online lectures, etc. Perhaps why I’ve noticed an increase in essay collections in the category, and I am not complaining. Today we’re discussing “Uncertain Places: Essays on Occult & Experiences” by Mitch Horowitz.
Horowitz is well known in occult circles and having all these assorted writings conveniently gathered is an excellent read. “Uncertain Places” offers a unique perspective on many subjects ranging from secret societies, the nature of Satanism, a legendary obituary for the late James Randi, an interview with David Lynch, new thought, and more. Horowitz is an eloquent and persuasive writer and you can’t help finishing “Uncertain Places” with a deeper understanding of the author himself. However, what I find appealing about even his strongest opinion essays is the feeling that you wouldn’t be harshly judged by Horowitz for disagreeing, as long as you could explain why.
The necessity of reading “Uncertain Places” depends on who you are and what you want to get from Horowitz. If you’re a fan of the author, like myself, this is required reading. If you like shorter, easier to digest, essays on these topics, then again, it is required reading. But, if you’re more interested in Horowitz, the new thought explorer, this book is good, but if you haven’t read “The Miracle Club”, I’d start there. Want more occult secret societies? Definitely opt for “Occult America.”
I guess the real takeaway from my review of “Uncertain Places” that Mitch Horowitz himself is required reading, regardless of which book of his you opt to read.
There are a lot of places you can find an occult author’s work: websites, magazines, in person or online lectures, etc. Perhaps why I’ve noticed an increase in essay collections in the category, and I am not complaining. Today we’re discussing “Uncertain Places: Essays on Occult & Experiences” by Mitch Horowitz.
Horowitz is well known in occult circles and having all these assorted writings conveniently gathered is an excellent read. “Uncertain Places” offers a unique perspective on many subjects ranging from secret societies, the nature of Satanism, a legendary obituary for the late James Randi, an interview with David Lynch, new thought, and more. Horowitz is an eloquent and persuasive writer and you can’t help finishing “Uncertain Places” with a deeper understanding of the author himself. However, what I find appealing about even his strongest opinion essays is the feeling that you wouldn’t be harshly judged by Horowitz for disagreeing, as long as you could explain why.
The necessity of reading “Uncertain Places” depends on who you are and what you want to get from Horowitz. If you’re a fan of the author, like myself, this is required reading. If you like shorter, easier to digest, essays on these topics, then again, it is required reading. But, if you’re more interested in Horowitz, the new thought explorer, this book is good, but if you haven’t read “The Miracle Club”, I’d start there. Want more occult secret societies? Definitely opt for “Occult America.”
I guess the real takeaway from my review of “Uncertain Places” that Mitch Horowitz himself is required reading, regardless of which book of his you opt to read.
April 15, 2023
Mitch is honest, straightforward, intelligent, well-researched, lucid, and he writes about interesting things. He's probably the best writer on any sort of law of attraction or occult topic I've ever read.
The problem is, this honesty reveals that there's not really that much to be said. I've read a few of these sorts of books now and it seems to me they largely boil down to "Thoughts affect the world, so think positively! Here's an unverifiable anecdote about someone I know who got good results from that." They can be inspiring but there's not a whole lot of consensus data on the topic, when you look at the whole New Thought movement as soberly as Mitch does, beyond those two hyper-compressed paraphrased sentences. I suppose modern authors add in something about the small but consistent statistical results of parapsychology experiments, but Dean Radin is your best source for that IMO, not New Thought authors. And, to be fair, you can also write about the *history* of New Thought, but that usually shows the main figures in it didn't lead the most enviable lives all the time, and is fairly irrelevant if what you want is to know how to transform your own life. Mitch speculates a bit about parallel universes full of variants on us making choices that affect us, which is interesting, but obviously not very empirically grounded. I feel like I've heard all he and his heroes have to say and I've only listened to a tiny fraction of his catalogue. Even in this collection you'll hear a few of the same things repeated, to say nothing of how much repetition there is between this and Daydream Believer.
He's also said he's a Satanist, in the "spiritual" sense of actually seeking a relationship with a real being, rather than the Anton LaVey sense of being another form of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. I think either there's no there there, as Mitch acknowledges may be the case, but otherwise ... surely any folktale from any culture in the world would tell you that aligning yourself with the supernatural forces behind self-will, rebellion, personal power, etc in order to get famous is a bad idea. Can anyone think of one story where that didn't go full-monkey's-paw on the wisher in the end?
The problem is, this honesty reveals that there's not really that much to be said. I've read a few of these sorts of books now and it seems to me they largely boil down to "Thoughts affect the world, so think positively! Here's an unverifiable anecdote about someone I know who got good results from that." They can be inspiring but there's not a whole lot of consensus data on the topic, when you look at the whole New Thought movement as soberly as Mitch does, beyond those two hyper-compressed paraphrased sentences. I suppose modern authors add in something about the small but consistent statistical results of parapsychology experiments, but Dean Radin is your best source for that IMO, not New Thought authors. And, to be fair, you can also write about the *history* of New Thought, but that usually shows the main figures in it didn't lead the most enviable lives all the time, and is fairly irrelevant if what you want is to know how to transform your own life. Mitch speculates a bit about parallel universes full of variants on us making choices that affect us, which is interesting, but obviously not very empirically grounded. I feel like I've heard all he and his heroes have to say and I've only listened to a tiny fraction of his catalogue. Even in this collection you'll hear a few of the same things repeated, to say nothing of how much repetition there is between this and Daydream Believer.
He's also said he's a Satanist, in the "spiritual" sense of actually seeking a relationship with a real being, rather than the Anton LaVey sense of being another form of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. I think either there's no there there, as Mitch acknowledges may be the case, but otherwise ... surely any folktale from any culture in the world would tell you that aligning yourself with the supernatural forces behind self-will, rebellion, personal power, etc in order to get famous is a bad idea. Can anyone think of one story where that didn't go full-monkey's-paw on the wisher in the end?
January 17, 2024
As I note elsewhere (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World), I first became aware of Mitch Horowitz through his book Occult America, which I read back in 2012. I recently learned about Uncertain Places, and remembering the mental state into which his previous book had dropped me, knew that I would have to read it.
For those unaware of Horowitz, he’s an historian of the occult and an unashamed New Ager. He’s a bold and articulate thinker who’s not really afraid of the challenges bold and articulate thinkers often face. This book will take you in some strange directions. “Occult” means “hidden.” Secret societies hide thing deliberately, but the occult in general rejects materialism as the only paradigm of knowing. This book consists of previously published essays on occult topics brought together in one place.
I am not a New Age adept, but like Horowitz I believe keeping an open mind is absolutely essential. As someone who’s been through a doctoral program, I also have healthy skepticism. And there’s even an essay in here on that very topic. Not for the gullible, but also not for those who’ve already made up their minds, this book is great for challenging often unspoken assumptions.
For those unaware of Horowitz, he’s an historian of the occult and an unashamed New Ager. He’s a bold and articulate thinker who’s not really afraid of the challenges bold and articulate thinkers often face. This book will take you in some strange directions. “Occult” means “hidden.” Secret societies hide thing deliberately, but the occult in general rejects materialism as the only paradigm of knowing. This book consists of previously published essays on occult topics brought together in one place.
I am not a New Age adept, but like Horowitz I believe keeping an open mind is absolutely essential. As someone who’s been through a doctoral program, I also have healthy skepticism. And there’s even an essay in here on that very topic. Not for the gullible, but also not for those who’ve already made up their minds, this book is great for challenging often unspoken assumptions.
February 4, 2023
A collection of essays on the occult. Some good points made about connection of the occult to certain possible science related topics such as: placebo studies and quantum mechanics. There is a way through strong material realism offered here.
Now, by the author's own admission, it isn't necessary to take either new age or the occult whole hog; the important thing is to allow for the possibility of reframing what can be known and ways of knowing it.
There is a piece on being skeptical and bringing scientific rigour to some of these more edge cases. This is in the effort of taking about the amazing Randi who was a particular kind of skeptic. It is important to be skeptical but also to allow for investigating what would constitute proof. Imagine if we had cut off the investigation into quantum mechanics years ago when Schrodinger came up with the whole cat to show that we need to take up a radical position in order to believe in it.
Horowitz offers some compelling arguments on how and why to stay open to the possibilities of mind affecting reality. I appreciate the stance. I don't know how much I believe or what is possible but I do believe that this is a better place to be rather than nothing of that stuff can be true.
Now, by the author's own admission, it isn't necessary to take either new age or the occult whole hog; the important thing is to allow for the possibility of reframing what can be known and ways of knowing it.
There is a piece on being skeptical and bringing scientific rigour to some of these more edge cases. This is in the effort of taking about the amazing Randi who was a particular kind of skeptic. It is important to be skeptical but also to allow for investigating what would constitute proof. Imagine if we had cut off the investigation into quantum mechanics years ago when Schrodinger came up with the whole cat to show that we need to take up a radical position in order to believe in it.
Horowitz offers some compelling arguments on how and why to stay open to the possibilities of mind affecting reality. I appreciate the stance. I don't know how much I believe or what is possible but I do believe that this is a better place to be rather than nothing of that stuff can be true.
November 26, 2022
Mitch is a national treasure. No other occult author is so thorough in their research. Such a depth of research is often accompanied by dry writing. This is not the case with Mitch's prosaic, convincing style. This is a compilation of essays written by Horowitz. Some are historical, some biographical, others autobiographical. Like Jack Parsons, Mitch Horowitz is an explorer, a rebel, and unafraid of the unknown and the unknowable.
January 4, 2023
Time with Mitch Horwich is time well spent! Lots of excellent ideas in this collection of shorter essays. Overall, I’ve experienced most, if not all of these in some form or another previously so it felt a little bit redundant, but I still enjoy going through them and enjoyed the fresh presentation.
September 17, 2023
A lot of really interesting essays in here. There’s a greta personal touch that often is lacking from these kinds of books.
October 1, 2025
Mitch at his best, cannot recommend this writer enough, every book is incredibly thorough, educational, and entertaining.
November 13, 2022
Deeply profound and you can’t go wrong with Mitch. By far one of my new favorite books. The work is honest and deeply thought out.
August 2, 2025
Meandering and fluffy - “Mum, Mum, look - I know this and I read that and I heard this”!
Anecdotes masquerading as facts, brief book summaries (read wiki entries) masquerading as academic research.
A very shallow read substituting insight with enthusiasm.
Anecdotes masquerading as facts, brief book summaries (read wiki entries) masquerading as academic research.
A very shallow read substituting insight with enthusiasm.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews