Book Report: Occult Underground & Establishment, part 3 of 3

[Earl Wajenberg]

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 czarist 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 a 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 Anthroposophists. 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, gypsies, 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