| Here is a short outline of "The Occult Underground," based on the table of
contents:
Introduction: The Flight From Reason
This contains the thesis statement and defintions of "private" terms I have
outlined above. It also contains hedges. Webb knows full well, for
instance, that the "Age of Reason" had weird ideas and superstitions, and
the "Age of the Irrational" had plenty of logic and scientolatry.
Chapter 1: The Necromancers
This describes the origins of mediumship and interest in spiritualism,
including Spiritualism proper and the career of the famous/notorious Fox
sisters; the Swedenborg Church; and the Society of Psychical Research.
Chapter 2: Babel
This describes the interest, attractions, repulsions, and confusions in the
West that resulted from exposure to Hinduism, Buddhism, and other high
religions of the East. It examines the considerable role of oriental
thought in western occultism; the origins of Baha'i; and the Parliament of
Religions at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, where the interest and
confusion were particularly evident.
Chapter 3: The Masters and the Messiah
This is concerned with the origins of Theosophy, a major force in 19th- and
20th-century occultism. It gives a delightful precis of the colorful (to
say the least) career of Mme. H. P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy,
and of other Theosophical notables, such as Annie Besant (successor to
Blavatsky), Rev. C. W. Leadbeater (famous for observations of auras and
"thought-forms"), Rudolf Steiner (one-time Theosophist and founder of the
rival sect of Anthroposophy), and Krishnamurti (an Indian chosen as a child
by Besant as the incarnation of Maitreya, the next Buddha, which position
he later publically renounced).
Chapter 4: The Lord's Anointed
This chapter describes the interactions between Christianity and occultism
-- other than simple emnity. This includes the millenialist groups like
the Millerites and their successors, Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah's
Witnesses; the Mormons; the Christian Scientists; a small Counter-
Reformation Part II in extremist Anglo-Catholic circles; and the
vision-laden, conspiracy-hunting, semi-Catholic sect of the French
Vintrasians. Much of the American activity started up in the "burned-over
region," an area of upper New York state once famous for traveling
revivalists. Please note that most of these Christian "occultisms" do not
entail spell-casting or seances. This illustrates Webb's wider use of the
term "occult" as "rejected knowledge" -- in this case, rejected revelations
or doctrines.
Chapter 5: Visions of Heaven and Hell
This chapter describes the role of occultism in the artistic community,
focusing on "Bohemia" in late 19th-century Paris. This is a particularly
juicy chapter, full of colorful characters. Webb divides the artists,
particularly the authors, into two camps -- aesthetes and _poetes_maudites_
("accursed poets," their own phrase). Both reacted against the naturalism
of Established art. Aesthetes searched for an ideal beauty beyond the
limits of nature. _Poetes_maudites_ sought to plumb the depths of
experience in their search for wisdom, and I do mean depths. (They
produced scandalous novels about depravity, like "La Bas" by the Abbe
Boullan.) One of the leading aesthetes was Josephin Peladan, who
proclaimed himself "Sar Merodach," and a sort of archbishop of an order of
Catholic mage-artists (founded by himself). Accursed poets include J. K.
Huysmans and (I think) Baudelaire.
Chapter 6: Secret Traditions
This chapter is much more generally historical than the rest of the book.
It examines the ancient sources that contributed to "the Tradition," by
which Webb means the body of lore that occultists largely draw on. These
include Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Hermetism, and the mystery religions.
While not wanting to push the idea too far, Webb assigns Plato as the
patron saint of the occultists, versus Aristotle as the patron saint of the
Establishment intelligensia. Stirring up and confusing this semi-coherent
body of ancient lore is a large dollop of rejected science that started
accumulating back in the 18th century.
Chapter 7: An Anatomy of Souls
This chapter examines the opening moves of the occultic revival in the 19th
century. It seems to start with the partition of Poland and the scattering
of Polish refugees all over Europe. Some of these refugees appear to have
been occultists, and brought the Traditions (as outlined in the previous
chapter) to France, where French occultists had been subsisting on
Mesmerism and second-hand Hinduism. The chapter also describes the career
of Eliphas Levi, a founding father of modern occultism.
Chapter 8: The Spiritual in Politics
This follows closely on the theme of the previous chapter. The occultist
accompaniment to liberal protests over the treatment of Poland went on amid
grandiose political fevering about Poland being a "Christ-nation" crucified
for the sins of other nations, and the second coming of Napoleon. Others
put up France up as the "Christ-nation," crucified at Waterloo. Seers
claimed that Louis XVII had not died as a child in the Terror, but (rather
like Anastasia and Elvis) was still around; pretenders, of course, were
plentiful and colorful. More immediately interesting, Webb claims that the
Irish sense of national identity was *created* by W. B. Yeats, James Morgan
Pryse, and other poetic occultists. He compares this to a less successful
attempt to promote Scottish home rule.
Chapter 9: The Two Realities
In this summing-up chapter, Webb points out the natural affinity occultism
has for other anti-Establishment and revolutionary movements. One such
companion is that flavor of nationalism that sees the Nation as a
metaphysical being greater and realer than the individuals in its
population. Another natural ally is any ideology held with the force of
a religion. The common denominator to all such things is an idealist
temper, subordinating the material world to an immaterial scheme, whether
that scheme be magical, biological, or social. This is a theme he will
enlarge on in the next book.
Earl Wajenberg
|
| I have finally finished re-reading the second volume of James Webb's social
history of the occult. Here is a short outline of "The Occult
Establishment," based on the table of contents and the abstracts at the head
of each chapter:
Introduction: The Struggle for the Irrational
Abstract: The Flight from Reason -- The Occult as Rejected Knowledge --
Secular Religions -- The First World War and the Failure of Rationalism --
The Occult and "Illuminated Politics" -- The Consistency of the Irrational
In this chapter, Webb once more defines his own uses of terms such as
"reason" (conventional wisdom and concensus reality), "occult"
(unconventional wisdom) and "illuminated politics" (politics influenced or
motivated by occult theories). He remarks that, while the occult movements
of the 19th century were predominantly religious, those of the 20th are
predominantly ethical and social.
Chapter 1: Ginungagapp [The primal void in Norse mythology.]
Abstract: A Neurasthenic Society -- Occultism in the Twenties --
Irrationalist Currents in Central Europe -- The Progressive Underground and
Occultism -- The Occultism of Prague and Vienna -- The Munich Cosmics --
Communes and Colonies -- Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy
This chapter surveys the social situation in Europe just after World War I,
which Webb sees as "without form and void" in many ways, confused and
lacking in direction. Occult and social-reform movements begin to overlap
in membership, and in their ideas. Post-war German occultism was "invaded"
and dominated by the Parisian Symbolists and the English Theosophists. The
chapter gives capsule histories of several occult societies and utopian
movements, including the O.T.O. and the ominous beginnings of racial
mysticism. It includes the occult-related careers of interesting figures
such as Gustav Meyrink, Freidrich Eckstein, and Rudolf Steiner.
Chapter 2: Eden's Folk
Abstract: The Disease of Civilization -- The English Youth Movements --
Back to the Land -- The Merrie England of the Guilds -- Christian Utopias
-- The Youth Movements and Social Relevance -- Social Credit -- The
Illuminates and Facism -- The Illuminates and Anti-Semitism
This chapter focuses particularly on the social and utopian movements that
flourished between the world wars. Many were British; most are now
extinct. They were typically anti-materialist (in most senses of
"materialism") and anti-individualistic. The Boy Scouts originated as one
of the English Youth Movements, but not a very occult one; however, less
conventional alternatives also arose, like the "Kibbo-Kift." Many of these
youth-movements had religious elements; some put their young members
through a recapitulation of human history, from stone age to civilization;
some had eugenic themes; many were elitist in one way or another. They
quarreled and schismed a great deal. They interlaced with the romantic
agrarian movements that sought the supposed "good old days" of small
self-sufficient pre-industrial villages; these included assorted craft
guilds inspired by William Morris. The Christian utopians included notable
writers such as Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra
Pound. "Social Credit" was a scheme whereby people were to be recompensed
by the government for the utility of the jobs to the nation, if this was
not properly represented by the market. (E.g. sewage workers would get a
big "social credit" bonus because their job is so necessary.) The occult
connection to all this is more an overlap of membership than of ideas.
Chapter 3: Wise Men from the East
Abstract: Slav Mysticism and the West -- The Russian Religious Revival --
Symbolism and Decadence -- The Occult Revival in Russia -- Magicians at
Court -- The Emigration of the Mystics -- Slav Gurus in Western Europe --
Their Association with the Underground -- Types of Russian Illuminated
Politics
This chapter describes the occult scene in tsarist Russia. The Russian
religious revival included bizarre sects and schisms of the Orthodox
Church: Raskolniki, Stranniki, Khlysty, and Skoptsy. It details the career
of Mme. Blavatsky and later Theosophists in Russia, and their schismatics,
the Anthroposophists. It sketches the careers of Soloviev, M. Philippe,
Rasputin, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Keyserling, and Lutoslawski. Many of these
folk and their followers fled west when the Revolution came. Webb attributes
Russian occultists with popularizing the notions of the world as organism,
imminent apocalypse, and the hatred of materialism.
Chapter 4: The Conspiracy against the World
Abstract: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion -- The Occult, anti-Semitism
and Conspiracy Theories -- The Theosophical Society and the Plots of Jews
and Jesuits -- The "Secret of the Jews" and its Occult Sources -- The
Protocols and the Rival Gurus -- The Illuminated Nature of Russian
anti-Semitism -- The Supernatural and the Myth of the Ipatyev House --
Illuminated anti-Semitism comes West
This and the following chapter are the darkest in the book. The Protocols
are a document forged around the time of the Dreyfus scandal, purporting to
be a "leak" from the files of an world-wide Jewish conspiracy. There were
and are many different conspiracy theories, but Jews are one of their
favorite targets (along with Masons and Jesuits), because they are
simultaneously ethnic but international, arousing suspicion in some ardent
nationalists. Conspiracy theorists overlap a lot with occultists because,
according to Webb, both spheres of interest invite fanaticism and a binary,
black/white mode of judgement; also, both conspiratism and occultism are,
in Webb's view, responses to insecurity. However, sometimes the connection
is inverted; many conspiratists are fervent ex-occultic ANTI-occultists.
This chapter examines the weird career of Yulianna Glinka, Theosophist and
amateur spy. It also touches on Mme. Blavatsky, her theories on the
evolutions of races, and her "Jesuit conspiracy", and the Theosophical
anti-Semitic book "The Hebrew Talisman." In Russia, all this connected to
the Orthodox Church and the tsar's court, where different occultic lobbies
accused one another of Zionism.
Chapter 5: The Magi of the North
Abstract: The Underground in Power -- "voelkisch" Occultism -- The Mystic
Dietrich Eckart -- The Spirituality of Gottfried Feder -- Alfred Rosenberg
and Russian anti-Semitism -- Rudolf von Sebottendorff and the Thule Bund --
Adolf Hitler and "voelkisch" Occultism -- The Ludendorffs and the
Conspiracy Theory -- The Fate of the Mystics after the Machtergreifung --
Rosenberg's Aryan Atlantis -- Himmler's Occult Fantasies -- The Deutsches
Ahnenerbe -- Hitler and Hoerbiger -- Other Realities and the Divine
Sanction
"Nazi Germany present the unique spectacle of the partial transformation of
the Underground of rejected knowledge into an Establishment." That is the
first sentence and theme of this chapter. The "voelkisch" (or "folkish")
occultism mentioned in the abstract deals with the general idea that whole
peoples have racial or national spirits beyond (and, in a facist view, more
important than) their individual ones. The chapter describes Adolf Lanz
and his "Ariosophy," an Aryan edition of Theosophy. Eckart receives a
biographical sketch -- a gnostic ex-monk who hated Jews and Anthroposoph-
ists. Other interesting characters are Baron Reichenbach with his theory
of "historionomy" and Hanns Hoerbiger, who preached that the moon and all
planets but Earth were made of ice and the stars of hot metal. All these
people and ideas form part of the fabric from which Hitler wove his horrid
tapestry.
But please note that Webb specifically denies that Hitler and the other
leading Nazis were primarily occultists, though they clearly had occultic
interests. It is also worth noting that ONLY those occultists who contributed
to the Nazi fabric were tolerated -- e.g. Hoerbiger with his cosmic ice. All
the others -- Theosophists, Anthroposophists, even Ariosophists, plus
Spiritualists, astrologers, and all the others -- were rounded up along with
Jews, gays, Christian Scientists, and Jehovah's Witnesses, and sent to the
camps.
REVIEWER'S NOTE: Webb does not remark on it, but I think one of the
striking changes in occultism since World War Two is the shift *away* from
"voelkisch" theories and to extremely individualist or universalist ones.
Chapter 6: The Hermetic Academy
Abstract: The Discovery of the Unconscious -- Freud and the Occultists --
The Status of Hypnotism -- The Eccentricities of Wilhelm Fliess --
Psychoanalysis and Psychical research -- Freud as Secularizer of the Occult
-- The Occult Experiences of Jung -- Basilides the Gnostic -- The Analysis
of Kristine Mann-- The Eranos Conferences -- J. W. Hauer and the Nordic
Faith Movement -- Spiritual Progress and Education -- The Occult and the
New Educational Fellowship
This chapter, on a much happier theme, discusses the influence of "rejected
knowledge" on the academic establishment. As the abstract shows, it deals
almost wholly with psychology, but Webb credits Einstein's relativity
theories with shaking the old Establishment world view enough to soften up
the academic establishment. Webb remarks on the love/hate attitude of
occultists toward science -- on the one hand, the Establishment rival that
has rejected them, on the other, the "in-crowd" they often seek to join.
The chapter examines Freud's early and late interests in psychical research
and, in the middle, his very careful distancing of himself and his
psychoanalytic theories from anything occult, in order to gain scientific
respectability. Jung, on the other hand, accepted psychic phenomena as a
matter of course, which was part of the wedge driven between him and Freud.
Jung's occult connections are many and complex.
Chapter 7: The Great Liberation
Abstract: Liberation and Society -- Modern Art and the Occult revival --
America imports Bohemia -- Drugs and the Occult -- Timothy Leary and Ken
Kesey -- Underground Occultism -- Haight-Ashbury and the Hippies -- New
Forms of Illuminated Politics -- Reich, Marcuse, and Metaphysica Liberation
-- R. D. Laing and the Dialectics of Liberation
This chapter, as the abstract shows, brings us nearly up to the present and
deals with the '60s and '70s. This phase brought the gnostic theme of
liberation from the world into "illuminated politics." Originally, this
was escape from matter; politically, it became escape from the
Establishment or the non-visionary, non-hallucinogenic state of
consciousness. The occult is linked to modern art by the quasi-sacred role
given the artist, who leads the viewer beyond the mundane. The drugs
mentioned in the abstract are, of course, mind-altering, starting with
ether in the 19th century, but principally discussing LSD. The new forms of
illuminated politics are not only in the issues but in the methods --
be-ins, happenings, protests, and myth-based media-manipulation. This trip
down memory lane include Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts, Reich's "orgone," the
Yippies, and Leary's sacramental views on LSD.
Chapter 8: A Grammar of Unreason
Abstract: Rationalists and Irrationalists -- The Private Worlds of
Occultists and Illuminated Politicians -- Writers and Readers of Fantastic
Literature -- The Nature of Imaginary Worlds -- Their Connections with the
Occult -- Flying Saucers -- The Search for Otherness and the Creative
Imagination -- Conclusion
This chapter is an odd blend of summary statement and brief survey of
fantastic literature for the period. Webb sees three massive crises of
confidence in the history of the West: one in the centuries around the
life of Christ, another in the Renaissance/Reformation period, and the
current one, starting in the 19th century. The middle crisis ended by
producing the conventions he has been calling "Reason" -- a concentration
of attention and technique on the problems of everyday survival and
convenience; it is sucessful but insufficient to human needs.
To me, the most interesting part of the chapter is his exploration of the
overlap between occultism and fantastic literature. He notes the use of
occult themes in fantasy and SF, and their more historical overlap in the
origins of UFOlogy and Scientology. Though why Webb picks on fantastic
literature to plumb the nature of occult psychology (rather than any of the
other places it crops up) I do not understand.
He ends the book by noting the common urge to find "otherness" in both
occult efforts and fantastic art -- to discover it, or to invent or feign
it. Both spring from the creative urge, which is both necessary and
perilous.
"They have been ringing in the age of Aquarius since the last century. It
may never come, but it is essential to keep ringing; for without that
distant angelus life would be a sad and dreary place. The hope for
something better, something different; the prodding, nudging, shoving force
that irritates man to change by inducing visions of a reality other than
that of the present: this might -- in the imagination of this writer at
least -- be the explanation of all art, all religion, all philosophy.
... This is no place to pronounce on the personal quests of the
occultists. The impression remains that most become trapped in their
private worlds and produce sadly little evidence of the power of
imagination. There are too many attempts to destroy reason rather than
extend it. ... Unreason exists to be made reasonable, and reason to be
extended by the discovery of possibilities initially outside its
comprehension."
Earl Wajenberg
|