I'm delighted to welcome Mitch Horowitz as a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Mitch is a fantastic tour guide to the fringes of reason, high weirdness, deep esoterica, secret societies, and mystery religions. Mitch's fantastic new book Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation shares a "sacred space" on my bookshelf with works by Manly Hall, Robert Anton Wilson, Charles Fort, Jacques Vallee, and Erik Davis. In fact, Mitch, who is also a book editor/publisher, has revived essential classics by several of those folks. The next two weeks should be quite a trip. Mitch writes:
Hi all,
Glad to be here with you for a couple of weeks. I’m the author of the just-published Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation (Bantam) – it tells the long-overdue story of how esoteric movements and personalities have shaped America’s past and present. I’m also the editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin in New York, where I publish metaphysical books by people like David Lynch, Jacques Vallee, Daniel Pinchbeck, and Jacob Needleman.
In all of my work, I try to convey a sense of how occult and mystery religions (things that are very important in my life) are every bit a part of “normal” religious history and, in fact, are the well-spring for most of today’s self-help philosophies, from mental-healing to meditation to motivational thinking.
I write for a variety of subculture magazines (Science of Mind, Atlantis Rising, Fortean Times, New Dawn), arts and ideas journals (Esopus, Parabola), and appear on mainstream forums (The Montel Williams Show, The History Channel, Air America) to explore arcane ideas in a way that doesn’t seem so…scary, alien, or faraway. It’s not. I’ll expand in the coming days.
Thanks for being aboard.
Mitch * www.mitchhorowitz.com
PS My wife Allison and I raise two young sons in New York City. We sleep at 45-minute intervals.
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Wow...I'm actually tremendously excited about this, and will be very interested in following Mitch's posts.
I grew up in the SDA religion (Seventh-day Adventists), and while I'm not sure how it compares to other religions, in at least my community of SDAs, the occult was a very strong and dangerous presence; it was the worst of things to be involved/associated with.
We were told stories from adults about Ouija Boards that had screamed when they were thrown into fires, about how reading Science Fiction books would open our minds up to the occult, and that Dungeons & Dragons was a particularly powerful brand of occultism, allowing our young minds to pretend we could cast spells and defeat monsters.
When I think about it, for the vast majority of my life (I was SDA until relatively recently) 'occult' was synonymous with 'devil worship,' and, particularly, the black-cat-killing, sex-ritual-having, pentagrams-carved-in-your-chest-for-Satan kind of thing.
I'll definitely be interested to hear it defined with a more even hand.
So, welcome aboard!
Good to see you here, Mitch. I just recently received my copy of Occult America and I'm looking forward to digging in, just as soon as I can tear myself away from Manly P Hall's Secret Teachings of All Ages... must stop buying books in batches...
Ok, you're saying the occult actually exists? I'm out. The irrational woo crap is just plain silly. Provide empirical evidence and not anecdotal evidence/ confirmation bias.
I despise charlatans.
@cheeken
"...reading Science Fiction books would open our minds up to the occult..."
Well, in at least one case, they were half right! I definitely hear where you're coming from. Coming from a similar background myself, I heard a lot of the same stories (who knows, maybe from a lot of the same people).
Being something of a professional skeptic, I have a legion of doubts about mysticism. It's historical and cultural impact, though, is undeniable, and that I find compelling.
Wow! Great to see Mitch on here. Much respect.
Welcome. And have fun. Guest blogging on BB is a trip.
Yes! Good to see you on here, Mitch. I know that you will present your views with balance and integrity on a subject (one of my faves) that deserves such an approach. I put you up there alongside Jim Marrs and Graham Hancock, two pioneers ages ahead of their times in their ability to gaze upon the secrets of the past, hidden in plain view, in an effort to free them up for their intended applications today. As above, so below...
Excellent! This is going to to be very interesting. I definitely look forward to reading your posts. Welcome!