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Das Zeitalter Des Irrationalen: Politik, Kultur Und Okkultismus Im 20. Jahrhundert
The bizarre, pathetic doings of spiritual artists, vegetarians, mediums, astrologers, and magicians intertwine with the lives of Richard Wagner, Baden Powell, Major Douglas, G.K. Chester¬ton, C.G. Jung, and other surprising notables. But there is a sinister side to this absorbing saga of folk dancing, health foods, and rejection of capitalist rationality: search for purity of 'blood' as well as purity of bowels, allied with the conviction that all unwelcome features of modern life are consummations of a malignant conspiracy.
In this meticulously-researched history of occultism since 1918, James Webb examines the 'Illuminated Politics' which saw its greatest triumph in the Hitler regime. After Hitler, occultism continued to pervade art and literature, and ex¬pressed itself in such movements as the Beatniks, Hippies, Situationists, and Anti-psychiatry.
In this meticulously-researched history of occultism since 1918, James Webb examines the 'Illuminated Politics' which saw its greatest triumph in the Hitler regime. After Hitler, occultism continued to pervade art and literature, and ex¬pressed itself in such movements as the Beatniks, Hippies, Situationists, and Anti-psychiatry.
608 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1976
3 people are currently reading
252 people want to read
About the author
James Webb
15 books9 followersJames Webb, from Perthshire, Scotland, was schooled at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a ghost-writer, television producer-trainee, and schoolmaster before turning fulltime to writing in 1969. He specializes in all aspects of the irrational, especially in Celtic areas. He is a member of the American Society for Psychical Research, and has contributed to Man, Myth and Magic, and The Encyclopaedia of the Unexplained.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 14, 2022
So after searching for quite some time, I finally got my hands on the two books by this author that are held in such high regard and praised as basically being a goldmine of info and insights for anyone tackling the subject. I will speak bluntly: these kinds of books are a prime example of that narrow-minded academic imbecility that results in failure to see beyond the point of one's nose. I will give you three examples that speak for themselves:
1) The author dismisses as ludicrous the notion that freemasonry is deeply associated with jewry. Which means he didn't even bother to peruse through the vary basic masonic literature whose
all-time cheerleaders such as Mackey, Hall and Pike openly admitted that freemasonry is literally built on kabbala and influenced by Judaism;
2) He spends whooping 61 pages trying to figure out who's behind the infamous Protocols of Zion (on few occasions he somewhat seriously considers attributing the authorship to Glinka! (which is kinda funny actualy)). He repeats what has been said for the most part even before his time on this topic. For someone who concentrates on facts at face value and nothing else, he can't even get those facts straight. For instance, he doesn't seem to be aware that the Montenegrin sisters were the sole disseminators of the initial Protocols propaganda inside the tsarist court (not excluding
certain high society echelons). And, of course, he never even heard of The Secrets of the Elders of Bourg-Fontaine published roughly ~120 years prior and which follow the same pattern as Protocols but promote a different enemy.
3) Imagine talking about Thule-Gesellschaft in quite some detail in relation to certain developments within the Nazi movement without ever mentioning Vril. Not even a single time. That's all you need to know about the scope of this "research" and author's competence in general.
It boggles the mind how can one make an honest inquiry without ever questioning the subject itself. These are the kind of people who are too intelligent and/or prudent to even bother considering entertaining the idea that maybe things are not the way they seem to be because they already know that it is preposterous; they storm the truth and capture it by force.
So, all in all the author could have easily received his Ph.D. had he so desired and be able to join a plentiful club of other such short-sighted ignoramuses like himself.
The only two things that are worth the attention in this book is something that is easily glanced over if unaware of who's calling the shots. On page 298 we can see why Steiner was dismissed by Worker's Party: because of "<..> a papal directive forbidding Catholics to have anything to do with Theosophy or Anthroposophy". And on p.302 "According to Joseph Greiner, Hitler had cultivated in Vienna a combined veneration for Rome and the swastika<..>". Everything else is just that - mere details and musings of someone who knows everything about nothing.
P.S. before anyone resolves to accuse me of anti-catholic bias, riddle me this and answer me true: it is a well known fact that marxism/bolshevism/communism was mainly comprised of and led by the freemasonic shriner jews (hell, even Stalin's real last name Djugashvili means son of a jew). It's also well known that one of the very first things the bolsheviks did after having seized power is to make anti-semitism a capital offence. So why then Lenin personally invited the jesuits back to Russia in 1922 after Alexander I expelled them "forever"? Mind you, the Company of Jesus have always been open about their strong anti-masonic and anti-jewish sentiments (at the very least, only outwardly). It's only a ripple in the ocean but it's an important question to ask for anyone who comes from the "freemasons/illuminati control everything" and "Hitler was right" backgrounds.
1) The author dismisses as ludicrous the notion that freemasonry is deeply associated with jewry. Which means he didn't even bother to peruse through the vary basic masonic literature whose
all-time cheerleaders such as Mackey, Hall and Pike openly admitted that freemasonry is literally built on kabbala and influenced by Judaism;
2) He spends whooping 61 pages trying to figure out who's behind the infamous Protocols of Zion (on few occasions he somewhat seriously considers attributing the authorship to Glinka! (which is kinda funny actualy)). He repeats what has been said for the most part even before his time on this topic. For someone who concentrates on facts at face value and nothing else, he can't even get those facts straight. For instance, he doesn't seem to be aware that the Montenegrin sisters were the sole disseminators of the initial Protocols propaganda inside the tsarist court (not excluding
certain high society echelons). And, of course, he never even heard of The Secrets of the Elders of Bourg-Fontaine published roughly ~120 years prior and which follow the same pattern as Protocols but promote a different enemy.
3) Imagine talking about Thule-Gesellschaft in quite some detail in relation to certain developments within the Nazi movement without ever mentioning Vril. Not even a single time. That's all you need to know about the scope of this "research" and author's competence in general.
It boggles the mind how can one make an honest inquiry without ever questioning the subject itself. These are the kind of people who are too intelligent and/or prudent to even bother considering entertaining the idea that maybe things are not the way they seem to be because they already know that it is preposterous; they storm the truth and capture it by force.
So, all in all the author could have easily received his Ph.D. had he so desired and be able to join a plentiful club of other such short-sighted ignoramuses like himself.
The only two things that are worth the attention in this book is something that is easily glanced over if unaware of who's calling the shots. On page 298 we can see why Steiner was dismissed by Worker's Party: because of "<..> a papal directive forbidding Catholics to have anything to do with Theosophy or Anthroposophy". And on p.302 "According to Joseph Greiner, Hitler had cultivated in Vienna a combined veneration for Rome and the swastika<..>". Everything else is just that - mere details and musings of someone who knows everything about nothing.
P.S. before anyone resolves to accuse me of anti-catholic bias, riddle me this and answer me true: it is a well known fact that marxism/bolshevism/communism was mainly comprised of and led by the freemasonic shriner jews (hell, even Stalin's real last name Djugashvili means son of a jew). It's also well known that one of the very first things the bolsheviks did after having seized power is to make anti-semitism a capital offence. So why then Lenin personally invited the jesuits back to Russia in 1922 after Alexander I expelled them "forever"? Mind you, the Company of Jesus have always been open about their strong anti-masonic and anti-jewish sentiments (at the very least, only outwardly). It's only a ripple in the ocean but it's an important question to ask for anyone who comes from the "freemasons/illuminati control everything" and "Hitler was right" backgrounds.
August 16, 2019
This was the main book that got me out of the Monastary. Like Gurdjieff, I had spent 6 months with a Syrian Eastern Orthodox Enclave as an Acolyte Monk. It was there I was reading this work one evening and had a sudden contemplation: “There is a whole, counter-culture, revolution ever going on out in the broad world through the centuries that few ever know about but all whom I have loved have participated in furthering (and knew all about). What am I doing here?” And with that I left. [There was also the reason that I ever seek a place to have more sacred time of my own to recover lost archaic history and write and be creative and, ironically, you get very little free time even in a monastary (this d%#n world!)].
So this book though, it basically turns your whole world upside down and shows how near everything of interest in the past 400 years has not been created by the new “noble, materialist, reductionist, aristotelian, modern, industrial revolution of scientists and progressives” as you were lead to think in school but rather by a small coterie of occultic mystics the former has piecemeal ripped every single thing off from and inverted to mere lower monied and base uses or political gaffs to gain power through.
One sees all one thought was culture and politic is esoteric fall-out, but the regurgitated heap pile we sit on that originated from a more conscious, imaginative and spiritual esoteric core of people aware of each other and a more important inner world down through the ages.
Just like Radiohead’s song that explores whether that very important individual exposing things commited suicide or was “suicided” (Harrowdown Hill - the latter is implied); it would be great some day if someone explored into whether this author was suicided too, as I suspect, for revealing too much.
One can read all about him online if you can still find Rodney Collins’ sister-in-law Joyce Collin-Smith and her memoirs she put up about her life, which included a long friendship with Webb and her time as secretary to the Maharishi introducing the Beatles to the latter (and we know what followed after, East and West globally for a short time were finally united in peace and love on earth in a way that may never happen again).
This book will depress you as it disillusions you but will illuminate you too: emotionally, noetically and historically. I highly recommend it.
My favourite quote from it is when he quotes Ouspensky on the whole reason for the recent World Wars as being not because of man’s flight into the irrational but precisely because man became too formatory and flew too deeply into the hyper-rational and lost their spirit of active imagination. So a dead vaccuum was created in society, a lacking that leaves a restlessness which has to be filled by violence. As Gandhi said, “a nation without spirtuality is like the carcass of a dead dog on the side of the road, lifeless and waiting to be eaten.”
Radiohead’s song “Life in a Glass House” is all about that. We see this phenomena occur in families, they get bored then restless then start terrible fights and break up and never see it was cause they stopped being creative and inspired and seeking deeper truths inside and listening to the one in them listening in. But we don’t think this ever happens amidst all of humanity too. It entirely does making them ass end backwards in how they were supposed to be receiving planetary influences stepped down into them to be creative and enlightened with; instead they become destructive when they stop believing in the greater noumenal realms that truly are within us and which fantasy and illuminated politics just scratches the surface of (but which this book shows so much of).
So this book though, it basically turns your whole world upside down and shows how near everything of interest in the past 400 years has not been created by the new “noble, materialist, reductionist, aristotelian, modern, industrial revolution of scientists and progressives” as you were lead to think in school but rather by a small coterie of occultic mystics the former has piecemeal ripped every single thing off from and inverted to mere lower monied and base uses or political gaffs to gain power through.
One sees all one thought was culture and politic is esoteric fall-out, but the regurgitated heap pile we sit on that originated from a more conscious, imaginative and spiritual esoteric core of people aware of each other and a more important inner world down through the ages.
Just like Radiohead’s song that explores whether that very important individual exposing things commited suicide or was “suicided” (Harrowdown Hill - the latter is implied); it would be great some day if someone explored into whether this author was suicided too, as I suspect, for revealing too much.
One can read all about him online if you can still find Rodney Collins’ sister-in-law Joyce Collin-Smith and her memoirs she put up about her life, which included a long friendship with Webb and her time as secretary to the Maharishi introducing the Beatles to the latter (and we know what followed after, East and West globally for a short time were finally united in peace and love on earth in a way that may never happen again).
This book will depress you as it disillusions you but will illuminate you too: emotionally, noetically and historically. I highly recommend it.
My favourite quote from it is when he quotes Ouspensky on the whole reason for the recent World Wars as being not because of man’s flight into the irrational but precisely because man became too formatory and flew too deeply into the hyper-rational and lost their spirit of active imagination. So a dead vaccuum was created in society, a lacking that leaves a restlessness which has to be filled by violence. As Gandhi said, “a nation without spirtuality is like the carcass of a dead dog on the side of the road, lifeless and waiting to be eaten.”
Radiohead’s song “Life in a Glass House” is all about that. We see this phenomena occur in families, they get bored then restless then start terrible fights and break up and never see it was cause they stopped being creative and inspired and seeking deeper truths inside and listening to the one in them listening in. But we don’t think this ever happens amidst all of humanity too. It entirely does making them ass end backwards in how they were supposed to be receiving planetary influences stepped down into them to be creative and enlightened with; instead they become destructive when they stop believing in the greater noumenal realms that truly are within us and which fantasy and illuminated politics just scratches the surface of (but which this book shows so much of).
December 13, 2009
A surprisingly serious look at the Occult and its influence on politics, science, art, and various other movements. Author James Webb proves that it is not that strange that famous and groundbreaking individuals have dabbled in the Occult, as it takes a person with a different type of worldview to change the world. Nazi Occult influence Lanz von Liebenfels had various patents to his own inventions while at the same time he believed that apes were degenerate and mongrelized men. Jack Parsons was an American rocket propulsion researcher as well as a leading member of the Occult organization the OTO. The influence of the Occult on psychoanalysis is also discussed in depth in "The Occult Establishment." The Occult influences (as well as background differences) of Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung provide insight into why the two men eventually went different ways. "The Occult Establishment" is a serious and scholarly researched look at the Occult. If you're a fan of the work of Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke and think Trevor Ravenscroft "Spear of Destiny" is a piece of sensationalized pseudo-history filth, "The Occult Establishment" is the book for you. I will be sure to read Webb's prior book "The Occult Underground."
April 24, 2016
The second volume of Webb's epic history of unreason is every bit as good as the first ...and considerably longer. Building on the foundation of The Occult Underground, this book traces the influence of 19th Century occult movements, especially Theosophy, into the 20th Century. In Webb's thesis, the "underground" systems of belief emerge into daylight, reaching their awful pinnacle in fascism, especially in Germany. Note that this is by means the simplistic linkage found in many books about the occult roots of the Third Reich. Webb separates myth from actuality with great care.
Other fascinating topics include the influence of occult beliefs on psychiatry: Freud was a member of both the British and American Societies for Psychic Research and some of Jung's earliest work on the unconscious involved a two-year study of a trance medium. There's also a great account of the Russian occult diaspora following the Bolshevik revolution and a good, if cursory chapter on the 1960s, LSD, and Eastern mysticism in the US, though this ground has been better covered by other writers.
As in his first book, Webb's style takes a little adjustment...he is extremely discursive and prone to mixing opinions and facts so that one might easily mistake one for the other, but the sheer volume of information here, the astonishing connections documented make this book absolutely essential for anyone trying to understand the influence of irrational thought on society, art, and politics in the first 2/3 of the 20th Century.
Other fascinating topics include the influence of occult beliefs on psychiatry: Freud was a member of both the British and American Societies for Psychic Research and some of Jung's earliest work on the unconscious involved a two-year study of a trance medium. There's also a great account of the Russian occult diaspora following the Bolshevik revolution and a good, if cursory chapter on the 1960s, LSD, and Eastern mysticism in the US, though this ground has been better covered by other writers.
As in his first book, Webb's style takes a little adjustment...he is extremely discursive and prone to mixing opinions and facts so that one might easily mistake one for the other, but the sheer volume of information here, the astonishing connections documented make this book absolutely essential for anyone trying to understand the influence of irrational thought on society, art, and politics in the first 2/3 of the 20th Century.
Want to read
June 15, 2008Looks like this could be a fascinating book to read. Have had a cursory read of the chapter 'Eden's Folk' which sheds fascinating light on the political and esoteric impulses behind the Scouts, Kibbu Kift Kindred (Woodcraft Folk) and the first modern folk revival in the late 19C, and the continuing crisis of modern civilisation precipitated by the industrial revolution.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews