Politics and the Occult by Gary Lachman

“The larger the mass in movement, the stronger the effect of irrational impulses, the more powerfully the soul’s innermost currents begin to roar… the instinctive forces are reinforced under the influence of comrades striving for the the same good.” – Rudolf Bode

The occult and its societies have dropped away from accepted scientific method and society starting with the advent of Cartesian dualism and its influx throughout modern history signified by the Enlightenment, separating superstition and the spiritual from the material. Yet, while this occlusion of the spiritual grew there have been many behind the scenes of political movements that either secretly or openly engaged with the spirit world. 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!

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: history, occult, politics

As a student of esoteric thought and spiritual development, I’m interested in the members of our species that have achieved a particular state of enlightened knowledge, a direct contact with wisdom. Many claim to have visitations from spiritual beings or to have received revelation through direct mystical experience. Yet, a true read of their work will reveal the presence of wisdom.

While Gary Lachman’s A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult tackles many of the important writers that have made these claims, it still falls a bit short of the book I wish it was. And my disappointments aside, this is still an amazing work. Divided into two halves, the first is a series of essays on the specific eras of western esoteric development and the key players that defined it, the second half containing excerpts from important writings by the authors introduced in the first half. This volume is keenly focused on authors and writers, and Lachman admits in the beginning that an equal number of pages should be devoted to musicians and other fields.

Within A Dark Muse the esoteric enlightenment is broken into five eras: Enlightenment, Romantic, Satanic, Fin de siécle and Modernist, each highlighting Lachman’s penchant to expose under-appreciated contributors to western thought. If you want to find a reading list for the next year and a half, this is the book to pick up. I’ve discovered quite a few writings that I will explore in depth over the next few months. While the public believes that ‘the occult’ and ‘satanism’ are synonymous, a simple survey of the ideas in this book will reveal quite the opposite. Occult studies are truly a deeper look at the hidden wisdom present in many of the holy books, cultures and humans on the planet. Most of the authors featured by Lachman deal with esoteric Christianity, the nature of God, metaphysics and spiritual practice (my areas of interest). The chapter on Satanic Occultism, while the most shocking, is also the shortest, simply because there aren’t many writers along those lines. This is a grab bag and a good one at that. Read and find the teasers you’ll need to dive further into many deeper ideas.

Where the book fell short is in the failure to acknowledge some major influences of the 20th century in their own right. Rudolph Steiner, G.I. Gurdjieff, Israel Regardie, Manly P. Hall, the first two being mentioned and the last two entirely left out. Other important thinkers, such as Krishnamurti, while not being explicitly occult, was still the center of Blavatsky’s Theosophical movement and would deserve more than the brief mention he receives. However, omissions make sense, jamming this much into 380 pages requires at least a few to be left aside.

The reason for the focus on occult writers becomes apparently early on in the piece on Romanticism as Lachman states,

“It’s not surprising that the mage and the poet should be linked. Both used words in order to produce a desired effect, and as magic moved more and more away from the medieval sense of controlling angels and demons, and closer to the visionary powers of William Blake, the distinction between the two became one of mere terminology.”

Learning more about Swedenborg, Cazotte, Mesmer, Saint-Martin, Eckharthausen, Blake, Goethe, Balzac, Poe, Bulwer-Lytton, Blavatsky, Blackwood, Bucke, Ouspensky, Milosz and Lowry is an eye-opening experience. To think that most of the ideas being touted as new age or evolutionary have originated in these men is refreshing. A coming rapid evolution of the human race via 2012 or other catalyst? Bulwer-Lytton has already covered it. Ascending states of cosmic consciousness? Bucke has dissected it. Spiritual science? Goethe, Steiner, Ouspensky and many others have laid the framework. The excerpts section was filled with gems.

The essay included by Ouspensky included some of the most beautiful poetry I’ve seen to describe the human condition.

Some of the most cutting edge theories of modern physicists were hinted at (with a slightly more spiritual tone) by writers like Poe in the early 1800′s:

…there are gradations of matter of which man knows nothing; the grosser impelling the finer, the finer pervading the grosser. The atmosphere, for example, impels the electric principle, while the electric principle permeates the atmosphere. These gradation of matter increase in rarity or fineness, until we arrive at a matter unparticled-without particles-indivisible-one; and here the all of impulsion and permeation is modified. The ultimate or imparticled matter not only permeates all things, but impels all things; and thus is all things within itself, this matter is God. What men attempt to embody in the word “thought”, is this matter in motion.

Poe was also the first to state the reason why the sky is black and not saturated with the light of stars. An insightful man. And he also stated, “Positive pleasure is a mere idea. To be happy at any one point, we must have suffered in the same.”

Saint-Martin was filled with equally brilliant insights,

There is not a man in possession of his true self for whom the temporal universe is not a great allegory or fable with must manifest the truly divine pleasures… the overwhelming misfortune of man is not that his is ignorant of the existence of truth but that he misconstrues its nature…man is the visible expression of divinity…we have not the courage to work to justify [that we are the highest in the universe]… the learned describe nature, the wise explain it…as a proof that we are regenerated we must regenerate the world.

Wow. Powerful stuff.

The down side of A Dark Muse: I now have a reading list longer than I can ever hope to tackle.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: esoteric, history, occult, philosophy, spirituality