I had occasion to comment, elsewhere on the little “social
media” I use, on my initial encounter with the rather erudite and thoughtful
writer on matters occult and esoteric, Mitch Horowitz, who maintains a lively Medium blog which I follow. As I study what he’s written on the subject –
something that I have variously engaged here in these pages, and which
currently occupies my mind in relation to the UFO experience, to which this
blog as a whole is devoted – I wanted to record my initial impressions and
thoughts about Horowitz’s work. On the science side of the question, I think
there’s a lot to say – that is, regarding the facticity of those phenomena around
which the Occult and Esoteric traditions (perhaps arguable) orbit. (There’s a
thesis here that needs to be defended in more detail, viz., that these traditions
of “hidden” knowledge have been motivated or inspired by an awareness of, and
focused engagement with, a certain range of phenomena within the purview of
human experience which involve what we might call “mind-matter” or psychophysical
interactions of one sort or another – or which, in more general terms, involve
experiences of, at least from our contemporary point of view, what might be
called an extraordinary or anomalous sort: things like the paranormal, entity
encounters, and other “psi” or psi-related phenomena. Whether this is in fact related
to the subject of UFOs (and I think to be fair we have to concede that it is),
how exactly it is related, what the evidence for this relationship is, and how
the subject can be studied more formally both conceptually and empirically …
all of this occupies me now, and will therefore be an increasing focus of our concerns
here.)
I reproduce my social-media reflections below, only slightly
edited.
***
I’ve just returned from a four-day trip up north, to the
Elysian fields of Napa/Sonoma Valley, where I attended a private workshop
which, in a delightful afternoon, attempted to form a bridge between two
communities who don’t typically talk to each other (and which are sometimes
acrimoniously opposed): the SETI and UAP communities. I gave a talk that was
somewhat of a struggle to write (which I will chronicle on my blog sometime
soon). But on the way up I happened upon an episode of “Engaging The Phenomenon”,
a podcast allegedly about UAP/UFOs but which naturally enough ranges over many
a topic. The particular episode I hit “play” on for my northward journey (of 6.5
hours) had the host interview one Mitch Horowitz, who spoke rather eloquently
(as is his seemingly well-practiced style) on his new book Modern Occultism.
Listening to it, I was rather moved – and my interest piqued. I had learned a
certain appreciation of the value of “thought-traditions” (Horowitz’s term)
called “Occult” or “Esoteric” from an author who was, personally for me,
intellectually transformative: Morris Berman. So, learning about Mr. Horowitz
and his new book was exciting; I really didn’t know the writer at all, and
after listening to the interview, a sweeping 2 or 3 hour odyssey covering centuries
of the “hidden” traditions that claim lineages stemming from the ancient Egyptian
and ancient Mesopotamian worlds (among many others), I was impressed and inspired
to get the book (Modern Occultism), which promised an equally sweeping history
of the subject. So, on my way back home, I got the audio version, narrated by
the author himself, and got through about 3 full chapters (“10” on the audio
version), listening to nothing else on the voyage from the Napa valley, through
the Bay Area, into the fertile belt and into the Angeles Forest, up through to
four-thousand feet mountains, and then down again into Los Angeles. Now, trying
to learn about the author more, I am becoming very skeptical – not of
the scholarship per se, but its one-sidedness. As I learn that Horowitz
is also a chronicler of the “Positive Thinking” movement, attempting to situate
it in his historical understanding of occultism and esoterica, I am beginning
to see what the problem is – and it’s fairly simple: as he acknowledges to be
an “interested party” in the subject he chronicles as an historian, his
exposition slides inevitably into the hagiographical, a thinly-critical, almost
celebratory, unfolding of the story of movements people, ideas and practices
(many of which he himself is a practitioner). At the same time, he claims
familiarity with a vast literature demonstrating (allegedly) how “iron clad” and
“bullet-proof” the evidence is for a range of “psi” phenomena (ESP, etc.),
which then provides an apparent empirical ground for things like the power of
positive thinking – the effectiveness of which he hedges by taking note of its
state of immaturity (it’s too new). I have yet to work through the book I indeed
intend to finish, but I’m already dubious…
For example, while extoling some aspects of Plato, and painting
a picture of antiquity as this wellspring of Hermeticism, we don’t seem to get
a picture of those who, even then, rejected aspects of these “thought-movements”
or sought out rational alternatives (he barely mentions Aristotle, except to
blithely critique the supposed binarity of his logic which ends up being
crucial to the development of science and the empirical traditions centuries
later, traditions that make zero appearance in his account, except as an annoying
but unexamined counterpoint, a distraction from the author’s ultimate purpose – the book seems aimed at a revival, or revivification of the Occult ). Or what about Socrates’ ambivalent relationship
to his own religious tradition as we find in the Platonic dialogues? What about
Socrates’ (or rather Plato’s) famous rejection of “mythos” in favor of “logos”
(the latter we only find as a character in Horowitz’s hagiographical story of Gnosticism)?
Socrates was clearly pursuing a kind of “rational”
inquiry into traditional religious beliefs and practices, dominated by a class
of supposed “experts” (in possession of hidden or obscure truths), and wants to
know what knowledge consists in here, and whether it can be communicated and
taught freely, openly and democratically. No fan of political democracy (he
famously critiques is as being next to the worst form of government),
the irony is that Socrates ends up advocating for a kind of democracy of access
to knowledge, to truth. Without rejecting the supposed truths taught by the
traditional experts (the prophets, poets and priests of the time), Socrates
famously finds that they don’t “know” anything more than he does – which is, as
it turns out, very little. (I of course suspect that the same can be said for
the Occult and Esoteric traditions, whether past or present: there might be
something “real” to the phenomena alleged to be in operation (and it’s surely a
part of nature as anything else is – perhaps operating on the basis of
principles not yet discernible by the sciences, on account of the difficulties the
sciences have in handling anything of a more “psychical” nature); but
the extent to which anyone “knows” anything about it is going to be rather debatable,
and complex. Beyond, that is, some surface-level knowledge that the
phenomena (of one kind or another) exist. But that’s a much longer discussion
for later.)
The mark of a true historian – even one who attempts a
sweeping overview of a complex subject for a non-specialist audience – is to
present a true dialectical unfolding of the historical process, where there are
reasonable (and not-so-reasonable) detractors and critics to your preferred “thought-movements”.
In other words, what it seems we have in Horowitz is the classic “vulgar”
history which is painfully one-sided, because they are embedded in practices
and beliefs which subtly rob them of true criticism – the scholar’s pathos of
distance. My sense is that with him we have “superficial erudition”: someone buried
in his texts, very learned in them, and very capable of expounding on their
topics, but hermeneutically crippled by the very thing he loves. In any
case, this is my initial impression.
The counterpoint to the story, then, is the rise of a
rationalism, and later an empiricism (and of course the “New Science” of the
late Renaissance) that (eventually) challenged if not the core doctrines, then
their supposed facticity and the episteme that surrounded the teachings and
their transmission. A more subtle analysis of this dialectic of opposition might
reveal the various misunderstandings and failures and distortions involved
(from each side); but his narrative of suppression or repression of the “Occult”
and Hermetic traditions by the incipient technoscientific narrative (now
dominant) – or the elimination of pre-Abrahamic religious beliefs and practices
by Judaism, Christianity and later Islam is itself ultimately one-sided, and
thus unconvincing intellectually. There are very good reasons why the
Enlightenment thinkers rejected some or all of these traditions, and feared
them as forces of regression – a falling back to a world of prophets and
priests with special access to a world you’ve not been properly “initiated” into,
so trust them, they have the secrets, they have the truth. (One might lob the
same criticism against science, but at the end of the day, a good deal of its
discoveries and results can be learned and reproduced by anyone willing to do
the work.) Surely the politics of secret-ism and the logic of esoteric groups
organized around “hidden knowledge” presents profound challenges socially and
politically (complexities that could, for example, be analyzed on Freudian and
Marxist grounds), especially for those democratic societies we have come to
celebrate (the darker side of many of these Occult traditions is that they are conceptually
if not overtly inimical to actual democracy). Some of these more obvious socio-political (and arguably practical) complexities are
addressed in one chapter far in the middle of the book (Chapter 9) – though from the podcast/interview, it was not obvious the author would tackle such issues (I am glad to see that he does). In any case, despite some of these complexities being addressed*, we have a persistent, vulgar idealism of
historical analysis, a hagiography, that fails to offer a true accounting of
the picture of the Occult (and by “true”, I hope it’s clear, I mean
dialectical: multi-sided).
This, of course, does not address the more challenging
question of the reality or facticity of some of its more specific (and central)
claims (generally involving the efficacy of mind over matter – issues that are
given no philosophically interesting analysis); and the socio political
complications I’ve suggested play only a rather muted role in his text surely don’t count as arguments
against the truth (whatever it might be) of the system of reality on
offer. But again, in a real historical account that provides an appropriately
complex exposition, both sides must be addressed: both proponents (of which he
is one) and detractors (the more rationalist critics of these movements) must
be given equal voice. Thus, it isn’t really a reliable history after all,
despite the eloquence, care and apparent erudition of the text. (I’m not personally
susceptible to fear and trembling before his apparent towering erudition, and I
care only to look at the ideas, naked and shorn of that erudition, which frequently
can be used as a shield for lack of actual critical depth.)
What impressed me about Morris Berman was his honesty in his
magisterial “Consciousness” Trilogy: by book 3 (Wandering
God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality), he had reassessed his earlier
treatment of the Occult and Esoteric (which in Book
2 included a dive into Jung’s thinking as well, which had, towards the end
of his life, gotten caught up in the Occult), and proceeded to offer a
self-criticism (almost as Nietzsche had done for his own youthful embrace of
Schopenhauer – a philosopher, unsurprisingly, Horowitz writes approvingly of),
cautioning his readers not to go so far down the rabbit hole as to get lost in
endless mazes of mind-power and secret doctrines and the promise of spiritual
or material mastery. It’s ultimately a trap, even if there’s something extraordinary
and para-scientific or para-physical to the mind/matter relation on which the
Occult system seems to depend (though one ought to revisit that dichotomy carefully)
– something I myself am, as I’ve said, rather intrigued by.
And then I find that, perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr. Horowitz is
quite wealthy. And has titles out such as “The Secret of Think and Grow Rich: The Inner Dimensions of the Greatest Success Program of All Time” which I
almost don’t want to believe is a title he published. But there it seems to be.
And I’m sure “Mitch” would tell me to read the book before I judge.
But do I need to read it? I wonder…
*An earlier version of this post had stated, incorrectly, that the political side of things was not addressed at all; in fact is it, as noted above: in Chapter 9, devoted to “Politics and the Occult”. But I should perhaps articulate my basic thesis of the political incompatibility between the Occult or Esoteric traditions, and Democracy (at least in terms of its inner Idea). To some extent, the degree to which the two are incompatible will depend on the specific philosophical foundation (the metaphysical standpoint) adopted by Occult or Esoteric traditions; but they are both predicated on some notion of a hidden truth which has been (perhaps willfully or maliciously) obscured and suppressed by the forces of the uninitiated, the ignorant. What Democracy has done, joined as well philosophically by Science (speaking of both as containing a certain Idea which perhaps still yet struggles for expression), is institutionalize disagreement, allowing for a neutral space of juridical or legislative decision-making that is attached to no special theory of Nature or of Spirit (rather allowing a free inquiry into either, or none). This is the essence of the Secular, which governs the Public space in which the decision-making occurs. There is in principle no special access to a Truth that is not already public: neither Science nor Democracy knows (and indeed seeks to overcome) what is hidden, obscure, or otherwise the preserve of the few, the initiated. If there is a universalism (and there is), it is expressed as a collective determination of humanity that is first deliberative, public, practical and secular, before it can be the foundation for the settled, the private, the theoretical or the sacred (which, in the freedom determined thereby, are the universal but open and indeterminate values defended, politically, as the right of all humankind to enjoy). From this standpoint we see that Platonism and its variants, as well as the Hermetic, Esoteric and Occult traditions (which are sometimes joined) are politically incompatible with Democracy and Science (which two are united in principle). Yet, as well, we see that within the sphere of the Secular, which is the sphere of Freedom, each has its place as the preserve of the private exploration of man and her nature and place in the world, and as the free exercise of her mind, to edify and perhaps indeed satisfy the longings of the spirit (which can inform, specifically, no political configuration for the Public). (Note added 17 October 2023.)
I don't know how to respond to your critique except to say I don't read MH for philosophy or history. Relating to his areas of interest, he is l'homme engagé in Maulraux's sense, and so his journey of engagement is as much of interest to me as the ideas he explores and promotes. And he's a fluent, lively writer. I don't have much standing to speak of philosophical issues, but I've found MH's grasp of history generally reliable in terms of consensus views, and his dissents from consensus I often agree with, based on my own study. He's intelligent and well read, rational and responsible, and for those qualities alone he's a breath of fresh air in the often stultifying field of "the occult."
ReplyDeleteI disagree. The philosophy is painfully unreliable (even ignorant in places - as in his attempt to label Kant an "idealist" and lump him in with some kind of tradition of "mind power", or associate him with Berkeleyan idealism ... all of which is stupid if it isn't ignorant), and the history, as I've said, is one-sided and hagiographical. It can be read as a kind of "primary" text, for its value (such as it is) as a record of one contemporary intellectual's engagement/identification with his subject (as you've suggested), but as a history of anything I'm very dubious. Indeed, I suspect it's driven entirely by his own attempt to preach a kind of gospel of "positive thinking", which ends up as the crass doctrine of how to get rich using "mind power". Having read now half of the book, I'm convinced most of this stuff really *is* bullshit, sorry to say. And as to whether any of it has something to do with a real structure of nature (i.e., whether "mind" has some causal efficacy independent of matter - a distinction one ought to first philosophically question, as James did), well, without a clear unpacking of the issues and evidence, one can more or less trim the fat of the popular "metaphysical" doctrines (mostly rubbish) to get to the the core empirical reality - which is likely missed even by these apparently venerable "hidden traditions". And that's what real science does: who cares about what traditions have said, practiced, believed, taught, etc. (the logic even of Socrates, who initiated, despite Plato's attempt to "hermeticize" the old man, a "rational" repudiation of the obscurantism of these kinds of "though-traditions"); let's get to the actual empirical core and then work with that. I've always said that gurus as well as ordinary folk might have made contact with what we now might call a "para-physical" reality, but most likely neither the sage nor the uninitiated "know" what it is, how it works, and how it relates to the rest of Nature. At best, we have just a poorly understood "techne" without actual knowledge. Precisely the sort of thing Socrates heckled his contemporaries about.
DeleteWe're not talking about the same thing, Michael. How would the analysis you proffer respond to questions such as "Did Moses talk to God on Mount Sinai?" or "Did Jesus Christ rise from the dead?" Those who would answer "yes" to these questions are not working off a philosophical or historical base, although they might well attempt to adduce both in support of their "yes" -- they are expressing a faith base, primarily. As far as I can tell, hermetic occultism rests on faith, too -- ipso facto religion. I daresay MH would not be happy to hear me say that, but that's my view. Whether hermetics is based on seven principles or twelve, all are faith statements, worldview statements. As such they're prior to philosophy and frequently have more to do with making history than history making them. MH is engaged in making a 21st century case for some ancient dogmata. That's how I read him.
DeleteHey, so can you choose a handle so I can identify you beyond "anonymous" - esp. since you've used my first name, and I have no idea to whom I'm addressing these comments...
DeleteMaybe we're talking past each other, or I'm not getting the point. Either way, the point I'm ultimately making is that not only is this terrain a thicket of real, utter nonsense mixed in with some generally spiritually useful or productive teachings, a "historian" of the terrain who has no clear principles to help us work through the territory, offering us little beyond a chronology of this cacophony, isn't really worth reading - except for the already-convinced. Again, my model is the intellectual historian and cultural critic Morris Berman, who has a clear handle on this material, its position within intellectual history overall, and enough of a grounding in the empirical world of "materialist" science to know not only what science's failings are (though, what is "science" exactly), but when we're talking about self-interested bullshit or just plain muddle.
At page 200, I've put the book down; I really felt as though my brain was getting curdled, honestly. I mean, after the n-th occult "theory", one has to wonder: so, how is one theory v. another one actually demonstrated, and what's the evidence adduce in its favor? And that's the problem: we're dealing with a sometimes confusingly aleatoric theoretical act that tries to make sense of some experiential reality about which neither the system nor the principles are clear. I say all of this in a deliberately provocative way, to illicit the typical reply "yes, but you're trying to think of it scientifically" - right. But except that's the point, I think: I'm not trying to approach it that way, the practioners themselves are! They propose to offer accounts and interpretations of experiences, and then to provide a system by which some unseen or "occult" "forces" are going to be manipulated to effect. The irony - a Hegelian point - is that this stuff is already scientific before it's occult. It's just bad science (and mostly bad spirituality moreover, insofar as it's operationalized as a "do this, and get this outcome" kind of a procedure). I realize that a good historian (intellectual or otherwise) should try, as much as possible, not to impose their own value judgements on that which they're chronicling. But with this work, something is clearly missing. In my estimation, he's not an academic historian; he's an "outsider historian" or something like that. As such, his work suffers from the lack of discipline and grounding that academic history (esp. intellectual history) affords you. Finally, about the "outsider" status: I mean, it's another instance of bullshit, right? He's an "outsider" to what, exactly? Institutions and people who judge BS when and where they see it? Someone who publishes books on the "power of positive thinking" for getting rich, or anything else that you want (if only you "attract" it with your "mind power"), has lost all credibility in my view.
Further evidence of the unreliability of the work as serious intellectual history comes from the fact that he doesn't seem to actually understand the history of the Western philosophical tradition, to which some of this stuff is related. For example, in around chapter 7 or 8, he lumps together Kant and Berkeley as both "idealists" (which isn't really defined, except as the view that the "mind" - or worse, perception - determines or creates "reality"), and throws in Hegel (and the German Idealists) for good measure. At best, that's confused. At worst, it's just ignorant. No mention is made, furthermore, of Kant's own well known repudiation of some of Swedenborg's claims, a mystical writer who makes a celebratory appearance in the text as the 18th century Ur-Source of the "mind-power" view, whose teachings (he tries to show) inspired many in the American occultist movement in the late 18th and into the 19th centuries. (Kant's arguments might have been poor, but what were those arguments?)
DeleteFinally: What were *any* of the serious arguments against *any* of this stuff (called "occult" or "esoteric" or "Hermetic" - monolithic terms whose validity was variously disputed even in the wake of Yates' brilliant scholarship here). Isn't an intellectual historian supposed to tell us anything about traditions that seriously opposed this stuff?
What about the actual arguments for example (as bad as they might have been) against the so-called "gnostics"? All we get is a sense that "oh, those poor outsiders, the gnostics, who were persecuted, they were the good outsiders resisting the newly-formed state religion of Christianity, with its incipient orthodoxy". It's surely bad intellectual history not to supply the reader with the counterpoints that challenge the central historical subject matter. It's bad just because it just ends of being hagiographical: one-sided, and therefore imbalanced precisely in the ways that orthodox opponents (to gnosticism, esotericism, Hermeticism, etc. - if these are clearly definable historical traditions) would cast their own histories.
I'm left wanting to go back to Yates (as problematic as it might have been for casting a "grand narrative" type of history), and to just read the original works. But then again, why would I even want to read Blavatsky? Indeed, whom should one read? And what should one's "practice" be?
There is one thing I think I agree with, which the author articulated in the interview on "Engaging the Phenomenon" (the podcast that touched off my attempt to engage this occult material again): these traditions are organized (very confusedly and perhaps very ignorantly) around some structure of real phenomena indicative of process of nature about which we have very little understanding, beyond as surface-level awareness *that* it's there. But what the "that" is, and how these occulta can be systematically related to the "material" forces of nature, over which technoscience is able to exact a measure of control. Well, that's an entirely different matter all together. Connecting the two isn't the job, of course, of the historian or the technician of the Occult. And without this more systematic and empirically well-grounded understanding, neither is it the job of the historian to dabble in the snake-oil salesmanship of the "mind-power" movement the author thinks he's providing a "case" for. Indeed, you say he "is engaged in making a 21st century case for some ancient dogmata" - but what's the "case"?
(Sorry, had to break up my reply into two parts.)
Apologies, Michael, for my neglecting to identify myself properly. It was an oversight I won't repeat. Avanti: You write: "In my estimation, (MH is) not an academic historian; he's an 'outsider historian' or something like that." Well, yes, exactly -- and I think he would agree. As I have no reason to doubt that MH sincerely believes the gospel he's preaching, I don't think of him as a snake oil peddler or any variety of charlatan, but as an evangelist of modern-day hermetic reformation. I'm framing his position within explicitly religious imagery because that's what I think this is all about. You are criticizing MH for succeeding at what he set out to do -- which is NOT to write systematic philosophy or academic history, but to make a 21st century case for an ancient dogmatic tradition. Cheers and best wishes.
DeleteHi Michael! Thanks for identifying (though I only ask respondents that they use *some* handle other than "anonymous", going forward; thanks again). I see the point you're making, quite clearly (and I appreciate the clarity). However, I'm not sure that even on *those* terms, he's succeeded. Let's suppose it's a case for "reformation". Well, then, I'm not sure what's *new* here, or "reformed" - esp. since he himself ends up doing the same stuff that occurred in the 19th and early 20th cents.: preaching a gospel of "mind-power", which, as far as I can tell, ends up meaning how to get rich - if not quick, than somewhat quickly. Another way of asking the question is: so what the model of reformation employed? Usually, it takes the form of some kind of "back to the roots" movement. Is that what's going on here? Again, I don't see what the "case" being made really is, or what it amounts to. (That's partly a function of my ignorance of what's going on today, aside from the "mind-power" stuff about attracting the things you want with your positive thinking, and so on ... not particularly new, interesting, or compelling.)
DeletePS re "a hidden truth which has been (perhaps willfully or maliciously) obscured and suppressed by the forces of the uninitiated, the ignorant." That's half the story, however. The "suppression" also arises from the initiates, who argue that some occult knowledge is positively dangerous in ignorant minds -- like handing a loaded gun to a child. The issue here isn't "democracy," it's concern for the general welfare.
ReplyDeleteFair enough, but this argument that would be employed by the initiates, presupposes an efficacy (causal or otherwise) that simply wouldn't be granted in the first place by outsiders (e.g. by the uninitiated).
DeleteI can't help myself https://video.disney.com/watch/sorcerer-s-apprentice-fantasia-4ea9ebc01a74ea59a5867853
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