At this point in our survey of the magical history of America, we’ve reached the period that can fairly be called the golden age of American occultism. It’s a little difficult to date the leading edge of that period, but 1890 will do as well as any. The end of the golden age is a…
Tag: america
In Search of Immortality
The explosive growth of interest in occultism that followed the rise of the Theosophical Society in the late nineteenth century set many currents of thought and practice in motion, and some of those were stranger than others. The one we’ll be exploring in this month’s adventure in America’s magical history is one of the strangest,…
Toward the Breaking Point
The great changes, the changes that matter, don’t always announce themselves with the blare of amplified voices or the distant thunder of cannons and bombs. As often as not they take place quietly, moving unnoticed through the crawlspaces of society, and it takes an attentive ear to subtle cues and whispers in the night to…
The Legacy of Luxor
Late last year, before veering off on several necessary tangents, we brought the story of American occultism up to the point when the Theosophical Society was hitting its stride. Now that we can return to the story, let’s circle back to the same point in history. Lodges of the T.S., as it was usually called…
The Flight From Thinking
For more than a year now I’ve been devoting a post or two each month to the magical history of the United States, and I’d meant to proceed this week to another of those. In the unfolding story we’ve been following together, after all, we’ve reached the dawn of the golden age of American occultism,…
Rice and Beans in the Outer Darkness
Psychotherapists figured out a long time ago that a roundabout approach is necessary if you want to tease out the origins of any serious psychological problem. You won’t get there by any direct approach, since the defensive maneuvers the patient uses to keep from thinking about the real source of his problems will keep you…
A Useful Kind of Madness
Like the last two installments in this blog’s discussion of the magical history of America, which you can read here and here, this post will discuss one of the factors that helped make the golden age of American occultism the astonishingly weird and creative period that it was. That said, the theme of this latest…
Strange Days Dawning
Late in 2019 I wrote a series of posts entitled “Dancers at the End of Time,” sketching out certain weird and deeply troubling shifts in the collective consciousness of our time; you can read them here, here, and here, if you like. They got about as much attention as my posts here generally do, and…
A Gathering of Long Lost Friends
Regular readers will be aware that many of last year’s posts on this blog were devoted to what we might call the history of American magic, or perhaps the magical history of America—the part of the history of the United States that deals with the rise, flourishing, and (most recently) neglect and collective erasure of…
Knock and Give the Password
Over the the course of the last year we’ve explored quite a bit of the magical history of America, from colonial times up to the coming of Theosophy and the dawn of the golden age of American occultism. Before we go deeper into that golden age in all its weirdness and wonder, it’s time to…