Book Review: Modern Occultism by Mitch Horowitz
When I reëntered academia as a grad student more than a decade ago, I did it because I had a passion for my field and the ideas, artists, and histories therein. I’ve been fortunate that flame has never been smothered or, god forbid, extinguished. If anything, it’s grown into a conflagration–and, admittedly, it’s sometimes been unsustainable. I’m a scholar-teacher-maker. Usually in that order, but these days, it seems more equally distributed than in the past. And I’ve more-or-less let my convention and community organizing days drift away, at least for a little while. Because this is how I approach my profession, I was profoundly confused by the number of people I encountered in academia who either passively or actively discouraged and groused about studying what one loves. I didn’t get it. And, for the most part, I still don’t. I mean, sure, maintaining a critical distance is vitally important; the same for being aware of one’s own bullshit. I also get that burnout happens, and it’s important to keep some things close and sacred. But why light your lamp under a bushel basket? How can scholars, teachers, and cultural critics expect anyone to care about what they have to say if the examining scholar doesn’t? Because of that, I often find myself attracted to those writers and critics who demonstrate an awareness of their own investments, regardless of my own position in the discourse. I often find that the most meaningful dialectical moments are when something other than polite nodding and muffled harrumphs punctuate the conversation. I want to know that there’s a fire in their bellies. My search is active and ongoing; what animates thiers? In other words, and as part of my mutant ethos: give me something. Help me think. Help me feel. Help me question. Help me confirm and reaffirm. Help me think. Help me revise.
All of this brings me to my subject: Mitch Horwitz’s most recent work, Modern Occultism (Gildan Media, 2023). Mitch has a fire in his belly.
Horowitz is a PEN Award-winning historian and cultural critic of the occult and esoteric spiritual practices, and in relation to the preamble, he describes himself “as a critical but ‘believing historian’” who “participates in many of the movements” he examines and documents in Modern Occultism and other works (3). As he has before, Horowitz effortlessly navigates the space between believer and critic, presenting readers with a clear-eyed view of his subject matter, neither letting occultists off the hook nor treating them cynically. As Horowitz rightly notes, Modern Occultism is, then, situated comfortably within the ongoing tradition of religious histories and criticism (3). Social-media savvy readers might think of Biblical critics like Dan McClellan, an (to date) active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and a serious-minded scholar of language, the Bible, the ancient Near East, and the contemporary understanding and social constructions of each. Such scholars are, simply, common, and their communities or spiritual commitments have little to do with the quality of their work or its potential for social good. Where Horowitz distinguishes believing/practicing scholars from more institutional traditions is that he argues occultism and esotericism are more commonly sought after rather than born into as many major religions are (3). Regardless of whether one is born into a tradition or seeks it out, Horowitz’s position, and mine, is that what matters, rather, is the work. What was done, who did it, and to what effect was it done?
I first encountered Horowitz with 2009’s Occult America, which earned him his PEN distinction, and I cite that book heavily in Mysterious Travelers. Since reading Occult America, I’ve read most of Horowitz’s output, and it’s certainly been an aid in my searches of varying contexts. I think it’s important to adopt a Nietzschean model of discovery, adopting the “sacred Yes,” taking in everything one can, filtering it, and preserving what is useful and good for as long as it is useful and good. Without explicitly saying so, Horowitz invites this kind of intellectual approach in Modern Occultism, asking not that readers accept the contentions of his subjects as immutable truths but to recognize them as distinct threads in the tapestry of ideas that simultaneously respond to and make up the multi-dimensional cultural conditions of the past and present.
Horowitz makes good on this by suturing together a concise survey of occult thought beginning with the earliest applications of Hermeticism and guiding the reader through both evolutions and revolutions in esoteric thought, stepping away from the exoteric thinking of most institutional religious thought. Instead, he leans into the inner traditions and how the embrace (and sometimes exploitation) of those inward-facing experiences inform social action. It’s this function of Horowitz’s thinking that I find the most compelling, especially in his treatment of twentieth and twenty-first-century politics and the occult. Indeed, this is what first attracted me to Horowitz’s work, and Modern Occultism presents a view consistent with Horowitz’s long-held position: the right-wing application of occult and esoteric thought is typically over-stated, and their liberal and progressive functions are typically under-stated. For Horowitz, “esoteric or New Age movements tend to attract the same demographics and respective interests of people in power as they do everyday people, who may embrace, experiment with, or reject them” (283).
It would be easy to present the slipperiness or the nuance and complexity as tools of deflection against the critique of such movements and ideas, but Horowitz doesn’t give in to that temptation. Instead, he presents–often alternating–examples of how different significant figures have applied occult thought and practice contemporaneously to one another, with a key sample of this being the contrast between the progressive–if not downright anti-capitalist–views and actions of former vice president Henry A. Wallace and the antisemitic and fascistic views of William Dudley Pelley and his formation of the Silver Shirts. Horowitz presents a convincing image of the significance of both men without eliminating reasonable criticism of Wallace or glossing over the despicableness of Pelley’s views and influence.
What seems to be unspoken, however, in this particular examination is the role of capital in how Wallace’s identity as an earnest seeker was leveraged as a political weapon to first remove him as a vice presidential candidate in 1944 and then to embarrass him and stifle—if not destroy—his career. Similarly, the role of capital interests is conspicuously unspoken when Horowitz writes about Pelley’s early release from prison and how it was motored by presenting him as a “pioneering foe of Bolshevism” (282). This absence happens in other places in Horowitz’s accounting where progressive occultists are suppressed by social forces and where right-wing occultists (sincere or cynical) come to power. To be sure, my observation here is a byproduct of my own biases and intellectual investments, but intentional or not, the deftness with which Horowitz invites readers to draw this conclusion seems right on the surface. I appreciate this kind of writing because it invites a sense of discovery in a text without imposing a pre-packaged conclusion upon readers–it’s the difference between being lectured to and drawing one’s own conclusion after listening in on a conversation. So, I want to be clear that this perceived absence does no damage to Modern Occultism. Firstly, the implications of the role of capital are strong if unspoken. Second, the kind of critical discourse that Horowitz is participating in is very much in line with the historical criticism performed by scholars like Kevin Kruse (no relation) in One Nation Under God, which examines the ways in which corporate and capital interests conspired to coöpt Christianity for right-wing political ends without condemning Christian faith or explicitly identifying capital as one of the sources of the conflict. The similar implication of such coöpting of esoteric, occult, and New Age thought is clear across much of Horowitz’s work, and it’s one that I emphasize in Mysterious Travelers. For instance, Horowitz more thoroughly considers this connection in his examination of the occult ideas presented by Ronald Reagan in Modern Occultism, Occult America, and elsewhere. Gary Lachman’s Dark Star Rising, a text both Horowitz and I cite, is also a useful study of this problem.
Another part of my point in bringing attention to this seemingly hidden issue is that Horowitz is exactly right when he notes that it’s “inherently controversial to write about the occult and politics” (251). In large part, it appears that controversy is engendered by what Horowitz identifies as a ridiculous shorthand “that typifies most of the mainstream media’s inability or willingness to contextualize” (283) the very ideas, beliefs, and traditions they caricature. Such crude mockery is part of the political and media discourse that Michael Parenti identifies as establishing the perceptual reality that creates the limitations of thought and action (consider Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent if you prefer). The result of Horowitz’s study is another contribution to the ongoing examination of a sacralization of the state and capital, and I am of the mind that guiding readers to this line of questions (if not answers) is of increasing importance.
For these reasons and more, Modern Occultism is a vitally important part of the effort to recanalize the way that we evaluate the role of occult and esoteric thought in contemporary life. It demands of its readers further questioning and examination (personal and cultural), offering a thoroughly convincing demonstration of the perils of apriorism and the necessity of earnest, good-faith examination and critique. And it does so in highly readable and engaging prose. It begs not questions of literal truth but how the varying quests for truth–spiritual, social, personal–have played a significant, if often obscured, role in the formation of the modern world and how a thoughtful examination of those searches presents options not just for who we were but where we might go.
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Love yourselves. Love one another. And remember: there is a spooky, scary skeleton inside each and every one of you right now. Because of that, the mutant spirit is with you always.
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