Suggest that magic plays a massive role in American politics today and most people will look at you as though you just sprouted an extra head. There’s a reason for that reaction, rooted in an impressive ignorance about the nature of magic. A century or so of pop-culture fantasias of the Harry Potter variety, using inaccurate notions of magic as a dumpster for the human needs and longings that our gizmocentric society does a poor job of fulfilling, stands in the way of understanding what it is and how it shapes our political realities.
The first step towards an understanding of the political dimensions of magic, then, is to remember that Harry Potter has as much to do with real magic as the Mel Brooks movie Young Frankenstein has to do with real science. Dion Fortune, one of the 20th century’s leading theoreticians of magic (and a crackerjack practitioner), is a better source of insight here. She defined magic as the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will. That definition is trickier than it looks. Whose consciousness? Whose will? Those are crucial questions, and they are political in nature.
Let’s start with a straightforward example. At some point during the last 24 hours you probably saw an advertisement for fizzy brown sugar water. That’s not what the ad called it, of course, and that distraction — think of it as a spell of invisibility — is an important part of the sorcery we’re discussing. Notice that the ad didn’t try to convince you of the alleged merits of the syrupy goo it was pushing at you, nor did it aim anything else at your rational mind.
No, the ad deployed imagery meant to set off emotional reactions that have nothing to do with the product. Here’s a group of people on a billboard. They’re young, they’re attractive, they look healthy, they’re wearing clothes that tell you they have plenty of money, they’re having a great time, and they’re all clutching cans of fizzy brown sugar water. If I tried to convince you that guzzling the contents of one of those cans will make you young, attractive, and the rest of it, you’d roll your eyes. Yet that’s the message the deep levels of your mind absorb, and your behaviour shifts in response. In magical terms, the ad cast a spell on you: that is, it caused change in your consciousness in accordance with the advertiser’s will.
This works because the rational mind is a thin veneer on the surface of a standard primate nervous system. Scratch that veneer, and you’ll find all the raw biological cravings and vague associative thinking that most people in industrial societies like to pretend they’ve outgrown. Repeated exposure to a spell — that is, a set of emotionally charged images and words designed in accordance with the rules of magic — punches straight through the veneer and speaks to the archaic primate-mind underneath it. Unless you’re aware of the effect and adjust for it, the images affect you, and you reach for that can of fizzy brown sugar water, even though you know perfectly well that the only thing you’ll get from it is tooth decay.
This kind of sorcery is pervasive in today’s industrial societies. Back in 1984, in his brilliant book Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, Ioan Couliano pointed out that most countries in the industrial world had discarded the jackboots and armbands of old-fashioned authoritarianism for subtler methods of social control rooted in magic. The industrial nations of the world, he argued, were “magician states” in which most people are kept disenfranchised and passive by manipulative images and slogans projected by the mass media. It’s a persuasive analysis and does much to explain the nature of power in modern societies.
Not all of the magic that surrounds us, after all, focuses on goals as straightforwardly mercenary as the example just discussed. Consider the vacuous slogans brandished by the three most recent presidents of the United States: “Yes We Can”, “Make America Great Again”, “Build Back Better”. All three incantations are meant to manipulate voters using the same kind of magic applied by manufacturers of fizzy brown sugar water. They target a different set of emotions, those that work on the contrast between dreams of a better future and the increasingly miserable conditions of life in today’s America, but they use the same strategy of exploiting non-rational emotions to market an unappealing product.
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SubscribeGreat article thanks – I will never dismiss magick as simpleminded again – but perhaps it requires a new name so as not to be maligned ??
I use “intention” when speaking with people who’d balk at magic. It neatly packages up “changes in consciousness in accordance with will”.
Satanism?
.
“Sorcery” covers it pretty well I think. It avoids the often whimsical, fairy-tale connotations of “magic” while suggesting a dark and malevolent will to power, or the state of being psychologically manipulated and put under a spell. It’s a fascinating article, by the way.
How did you become an owl?
No shortage of witches in these parts of Olde England: ‘A Witches’ Bible’ beckons for a penny in 2nd hand book shops (Janet and Stewart Farrar) amid the wrinkle-leafed Golden Boughs. In old houses long-cast charms are known to mould deep in the wattle walls of some unwitting souls. UK poet Simon Armitage recently incanted a BBC TV slot on the Pendle witch trials’ linkage from the north of England directly to Salem. Now what scries in Foggy Bottom bathed by Great Falls, while over here Samhain seizes the convening COPs – with much butchered biodiversity tossed into simmerimg pots of discord shadowed by the Burnham Wood of restless Scots? Lords of Misrule or carbon-cutting tools? Which spell of quantum-entangled spookery at a distance will this lot concoct? Heaven or earthly hell?
Excellent article on an unexpected topic. We live in an age where we’re constantly exhorted to rely on science and experts of all sorts, but we’ve lost confidence in the experts because they’ve obviously been corrupted and the science we’re fed has been edited and distorted by those who would manipulate us.
I suspect many people are now open to what might be called magic, to something other than cold rationality. Let the instinctive part of the brain listen to rituals and study the ancient symbols. I suspect it will guide us in the right direction–even if Steven Pinker suggests otherwise.
Science knows a lot about this kind of magic. They call it ‘the placebo effect’ and the ‘nocebo effect’.
Germany tried this with Mme Blavatsky and the rest of their cult revivals. It didn’t end well.
Great article and perceptive comment. We also live in an age where the more fashionable scientists claim supremacy and disdain the origins of their ideas. The mindfulness movement, for example, as promoted by Jonathan Kabat Zim, validates itself on the basis that its effectiveness is scientifically proven, with the implication that this is all very modern and supported by neuroscience, yet the techniques are thousands of years old. As The author wryly observes, this is Buddhism watered down.
A very readable article filled with interesting and apt insights. So it would seem that behavioural science is indistinguishable from magic. The government’s ‘nudge units’ and SPI-B are living examples. We really have abandoned reason and rationality in favour of appeals to the subconscious and the Enlightenment is over. I wonder who is the Rasputin de nos jours.
10 points Jim. Behavioural science is pretty close to magic as defined in this article, only it’s not your consciousness and your will, but your consciousness and someone else’s will. At least an advert is labelled as an advert. Nudges (and all behavioural science aimed at the public for that matter), should be labelled clearly with something like “This message has been designed to influence your choice architecture and may impact your decisions”. Of course, do that and it’s like pulling the curtain back from the Wizard of Oz.
… and the Wizard of COz.
…and all his cozening.
Perhaps the label should be ‘may contain nuts’
Very absorbing, well-written and intelligent article – and a timely reminder that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I tried to read it, but just could not struggle along so skimmed about. Druids and their death cult of tormenting victims to a ghastly death as a human sacrifice are not my thing. I knew some Santa Muerte people who once lived down from me, and they very house was creepy to pass – one of them ended up killing the other and so they were gone from the neighborhood, which was very good. I once was brought in to bid a job of fixing a house which had been wrecked by a group of Satanists who lived in it for year – the walls were all covered with satanist murals and signs. I told the owner I was not interested, but that I would have all the plaster take down, rather than just painting over them, so great was the evil emanating from the place – he agreed.
I have been around the world a great deal, and seen a lot of stuff – and when ever occult is being messed with it is always bad news.
Organized religions have a great body of literature, mostly centuries and millennia of philosophic refinement. They have set rules, always a strong moral code which is unambiguous, and you can see the societies they produced, and of the great ones existent, those societies were functional and civilized.
Societies based on ‘Magic’ have Not endured any test of time, they have no long history of philosophical reviewed literature, and no civilizations we can visit to see the results. From history we can see Aztec, Carthage as big occult societies with human sacrifice, and a very great many primitive ones, and in the distant past death cults, the Norse, Celtic Druids, all well consigned to the dustbin of history.
I find any person involved in ‘magic’ creepy indeed, I guess this was some nod to Halloween – There is a great amount of evil in the world, and messing with the supernatural is not wise, or safe.
Leslie, you come from a land where Magic is still about – how have you thought of what goes on there in this way?
There is good magic and bad magic. Thankfully there is plenty of good magic about.
A lot of English ‘druidic’ activity (beyond the believing practioners) seems to be harmless fun and media-obsessed performance art at Glastonbury and Stonehenge (inc hangers-on); a compass bezzle- spinning search for meaning; a yearning for culture, identity and a green religion; and mundane excuses to get naked with humans, drugged or make money (merchandise). Nothing new. But, as you suggest, amongst wider sects lie not only the alt-spiritual but also deeply-troubled people inc those with a bent towards documented extremes of behaviour and politics (or both, as with other religions). It’s probably safe to say druids left violence behind here and are benign; where are the druidic deaths, riots, suicide bombers, brutal wars and the rest? However, I met several traditional chiefs in Africa and heard how terrified by them some folk remain. Witchcraft from around the world is practised here in the UK too: the odd court case paints an ugly, sadistic and sometimes fatal picture – with women and children suffering the most (a global history perhaps).
‘Magic’ (using the word that is being bandied about), is not found just in the practice of evil or harmless fun. Mostly it is found in positive spiritual practices.
There’s a place in the wide world for magic as a poetic metaphor for positive things, intent and events – together with ‘miracles’. And it’s likely true we know very little of reality. But separating the good from the evil-twin version will always be hard in the public mind, just as Yin and Yang balance in equal measure. The problem comes when there is any hint of people having voodoo stuff ‘done to them’ – that they did not invite, or of which they were unaware. Not unreasonably. Apart from that, nowhere in the article is there anything demonstrating that the brain/mind extends beyond the body, or the inferred idea that magicians may be able to remotely alter another’s behaviour by this medium. A confused bit of writing more suites to a 1920 edition of Marketing Week.
Across the aeons and incarnations the global hobo’s pursuit of the fair Lesley continues.
How magical, almost Arthurian, as befits an article by Merlin.
I would love it indeed if he caught up with me.
🙂 Over to you Sandford.
Add to that list… In the political ruling class’ insatiable desire to grow their tax base and seize societal control, they used progressing waves of feminism to cast a magic spell on women convincing them that their worth is tied to labor, as opposed to the miraculous gift of child birth and ability to nurture.
This has led to drastically declining rates of childbirth, and a dilution of the working class, requiring—as the author stated—a family to have both parents working.
The one or two children that are born get raised in daycare centers, priming them early for parental/familial detachment, so they can be more easily programmed in the public school system.
Single women have been reduced to serfdom, exchanging their window of motherhood for the stale jobs they need to stay current on student loan payments and rent for their 700 square foot urban apartments where they slug cheap wine, order Uber Eats, and binge Netflix series that perpetuate the lie that they’re happy and “crushing it”, because #girlboss or something.
Magical.
#girlboss – very funny. However I don’t really agree. My wife and I are two professionals whose 2 kids were in daycare. We are pretty much exhausted. But being run off your feet is kind of the whole point of being alive. I have cousins who inherited money young and they didn’t live more meaningful lives – the money ruined them. We all like to think that with more time we would write a book, do great things, but most of us wouldn’t. Being forced to get out of bed and go to your job is a good thing – even when you don’t love your job. I think that is one of the things proponents of welfare and basic universal income miss.
Your point is absurd – there is a healthy middle way between being a workaholic and being a slob.
Sane people aim at it.
You are using work as a drug to evade reality – that thing that nags at you when are too exhausted to keep running away from it.
We work to live – we don’t live to work.
Sorry – I should have been clearer -we aren’t workaholics – I work a 40 hour work week – but when you add in all the running around for kids sports and other family obligations it keeps you very busy.
For the sake of the kids. But increasing numbers of people are single or childless.
For various reasons, but partly because the long-hours culture + increasingly difficult commutes make that necessary.
Not to mention the soaring cost of buying, or even renting, a family home.
And these factors are all outcomes of globalised Capitalism.
No, no , there is much more to being alive than being run off your feet. And sometimes stay in bed ,look up to the ceiling and think. Go out for a long walk in the rain and figure things out is my strong advice. I am older than you, but I dare not say wiser, but I have a few life wounds that give me a few credentials….
…someone far wiser than me and much better at prose wrote-
“what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare ?
W.H. Davies
A Republican and a Democrat in the Arizona desert found a magic lamp.
The genie said “I will grant one wish to each of you”. The Democrat immediately piped up and said, “I wish all Democrats and Progressives had their own green planet, separate from all these fascists.”
The genie nodded and the Democrat vanished. The Republican then asked “So are that crew really all on their own planet?”
“Yes” said the genie. “Are you sure? All of them?” The genie said “Yes” one more time. Then the Republican quietly said, “I guess I’ll just have a glass of water then.”
(Invert as required) 😉
Hahaha that’s so enjoyable. Thank you for making me laugh. There was also an immense rush of joy and relief when the genie confirmed that the whole crew of them had all gone to their own planet. Here’s to the glass of water.
Quite UnHerd – quite odd, but quite good.
When do we get to the virgin sacrifices in the high temple?
Love the picture btw, very druidical. And the profile picture too, very biblical.
Thank you, John – that was very thought provoking and inspired me to look again more deeply, too. An interesting and neglected topic (and I say that as a hoary old empiricist)…
How amazing to see my favourite writer here (though I read his other essays & books on peak oil and the collapse of civilisation that is currently underway) I turn to him constantly as a sane voice in a mad world.
I imagine most Unherd commentators would be quite disturbed even looking at his books!
It depends which books they look at, he’s written on such a wide variety of topics, which makes him excellent as a commentator. He joins dots that other people don’t even know exist. I wonder how they found him.
Lovely reframing of modern angsts and cod-liver cures. We allow emotional fears and needs to dominate over rational and actual needs – creating bogeymen and panics, labeling people as witches and demons to stoke our fears. Instead the emotional space is one we have to learn to manage and resist, to be dissected and diminished, not one to be pandered to with ‘magic’ and illogical incantations.
Absolutely fascinating and, dare I say, wise?
It’s absurd that I grew up in a single income household in the 70s, perfectly content, well fed, a bit cold away from the coal fire but very healthy and fulfilled.
I’m very keen on the Hayekian ideas taken up by Thatcher and Reagan but I fear that they may have engendered a materialistic, false society.
Yes, because by 1979, solid small businesses like the grocers shop run profitably for years by Mrs Thatcher’s father, had been put out of business by the supermarkets and Big Business generally.
Hence it is Big Business that has benefited from Hayek’s ideas, helped also by Big Business using cheap labour in poor countries.
Um, no. I dissent. Not the political observations for these are gaining visibility after years of elitism. But there is no magic – or at least redefining it as an exercise in conscious change is misleading.
The author has a very superficial view of magic and the examples he gives of magic in America are no more than advertising tricks in business and propaganda in politics which are common knowledge tricks of the trade not magic. Actually the author sounds suspiciously and pretty much transparently like an apologist for that very business, politics and status quo in the US.
We have had at least one recent article and talk by rational psychologist Steven Pinker. Pinker observes many of the manifested or observable traits of the rational human mind. I have recently also listened to recordings of Derren Brown’s “Boot Camp for the Brain” in which he makes many of the same observations as Pinker but differs favorably from Pinker on two major aspects. Firstly DB does not seek to present a grand view of the human condition but rather seeks to demystify and unmask charlatans. Secondly DB not only understands psychology and the traits and vulnerabilities but also is a massively skilled practitioner. Clearly following on from these two points it is clear that Derren Brown understands the vulnerability of humanity to advertising tricks in business and propaganda in politics in a way I regard as light years ahead of the author of this article.
Further, on the matter of Harry Potter on which the author dwells. The magic of Harry Potter arises not from the wizardry inside the books but arises from how JK Rowling somehow tapped into a well of inspiration in writing the books themselves.
The author is deeply steeped in traditional occultism but has very much turned down the volume for the purpose of this article. Look up his regular Monday Q&A sessions on his blog for a taster.
Advertising, PR and spin don’t use supernatural forces.
Magic does.
I was thinking that – but then wondered if it’s always true? Sure, some examples of emotional appeal are hyper rational – e.g. micros targeting. But in theory the two could go together. Perhaps not for nothing is PR often called a “dark art”. Some of the Nazis who created their effective propaganda were said to be active in the occult (though I’m not sure how well verified that is).
Switching to the light side, even Christians will sometimes pray for aid before making uplifting speeches or pleas for peace. Not magic, but still an attempt to invoke supernatural force. I’ve several times seen random non Christian social media posters who say they attempt to use magic to amplify positive messages – there’s probably thousands who do that. Perhaps even some movie directors, composers , and others who try to uplift humanity at scale.
PS – not trying to say PR foks would always be on the dark side.
Christian prayer is an invocation of God, whereas magic invokes supernatural forces that are not God and not from God. Therefore are necessarily wrong and destructive, even when used with good intentions.
Satan is the “Father of Lies” and thus the patron saint of PR and advertising. From which it’s not a great step to propaganda.
Thank you, UnHerd: this is precisely the sort of thought challenging article that I originally subscribed for.
Excellent scholarly article which is very rare today.
This really is a novel way of looking at the political situation we are in. Very thought-provoking.
Members of the political class base their identities on the idea that they are the good people, the capable and compassionate people.
Like the Brahmins, they have become a ruling caste. Ugh! The shadow of a ‘gammon’ has fallen over me, I must wash three times before the statue of Saint Mary of Seacole.
Extraordinary article. Very insightful. I had no idea this is what druids were up to. I look forward to the revolution.
Good article
In the 1920s, the American government thought that, with Prohibition, it could make alcohol disappear: at least the ill-effects and damage caused by it. But in fact alcohol dripped down from almost everywhere, from nearly every nook, crook and cranny, much of it adulterated and therefore dangerous. Locally made, the supply problems never materialised. The newly organised gangsters made the good stuff, the Real McCoy, magically appear, or so it seemed. America went on a wild drinking spree in the Twenties.
Was sensationalism combined with sloganeering a way for corrupt individuals and organisations to lead ordinary Americans up and down the garden path? Virtue-signalling on a grand scale, much of it histrionic, led up to the introduction of Prohibition; and if anything the virtue-signalling intensified throughout the Twenties – almost as a response to the new broadcasting mediums of the radio and cinema that many upstanding citizens had worried much about.
Sensationalism in the media today is overpowering. It’s all nuts anyway. Like, so you’re telling me millions of people around the world are drinking it or doing it, so why do you have to advertise at all, never mind going all out guns blazing over little old me? And who else was discovered to be going all out guns blazing, feverishly pulling levers this way and that, when the curtain was pulled back by Toto in The Wizard Of Oz? Why, it was none other than … the wizard of Oz. For Dorothy, there truly was no place like home.
With the belief in magic and occultism having seemingly dropped off sharply by 1939, that scene from Oz seemed designed to speak to, to reassure the audiences of the day. America was back! It seemed to say: beware of hot air. As who in the business of blowing hot air has designs on reassuring their fellow citizens?
(quote):
The industrial nations of the world, he argued, were “magician states” in which most people are kept disenfranchised and passive by manipulative images and slogans projected by the mass media.
(end quote)
Yes, yes and yes.
That reminds me of China and the WHO pumping out the ‘subtle’ idea that there is a novel corona virus floating around (and that this is somehow scary, given the fact new variations of [1]corona viruses float around every year as promulgated by nature in an effort to challenge and knock off the weaker and sicker species in order to prevent the sick and weak from being a dominant species);
When, in fact China never tested for a new virus using any known scientific measurements…
…. all China did to ‘verify’ a new virus, is scan the lungs of patients (with breathing problems) using a standard X-ray machine.. which is the same method they utilized the year before, and the year before that…
…and.. given that Wuhan, China is officially the most polluted country in the world, scanning the lungs for pneumonia is kind of important.
.. after calling those pneumonia issues a ‘new corona virus’ China was able to lock people in their homes..
.. which was rather convenient because the ‘slaves’ were protesting too much about pollution!
[1]Corona virus is a scientific definition for any common influenza type dis-ease also known as the common cold, the flu, pneumonia and other bronchial type ailments
That’s garbage. Covid19 is much more powerful than flu and much easier to catch than pneumonia.
You have completely misunderstood Darwinism – the weak and sick aren’t a distinct species. It’s only right-wing sh**heads who imagine that they are and try to treat them as such.
Fascinating correlation and proof if any were needed that the human condition means forever existing in an imperfect and unfinished state. As the surges in magical interest accompany major political system failures they kind of condemn us to repeat the cycle, albeit with overall decreases in lives and property lost when the systems fail. If there were a sudden upsurge in study of evidence based public administration the despots and kabals would have reason to fear. Magic does not frighten them. As an owner of 4 solvent businesses with 70+ years combined trading i accept this status quo: If i didn’t know how to change my customers’ consciousness to my will and keep it there they’d be someone else’s customers.
Also one guy on say an order pickers rate ($15-20 hr in Idaho) could easily keep 4 fed and housed and run a cheapie jap car. Sure they’d have do camping for holidays and booze, drugs + gambling would be off limits. Most people in the real toilets of earth countries would kill for that life, hey, wait a minute…? Our income levels have risen by factors of 2-3 since 1960s but our expectations have risen faster. Unless USA really goes south into woke dictator land the profit imperative will move capital into the areas where it can get best returns. Not a fan of Musk but move to Texas looks like smart money to me.
The real incomes of most people in the West have fallen steadily since the 1970’s.
And like many right-wingers, you use Dire Poverty as a weapon to bash the Poor in the West.
There is real Poverty in the West. That there is much worse poverty in the developing world doesn’t alter that.
Also, those brought up in the West have been hopelessly corrupted by Capitalism – which is a corrosive poison destroying everyone it touches. Which is why it’s Bye, Bye USA.
No tycoons or profit calculations can save it – they are the disease, not the cure.
Dear Tony, Hungarian joke from the 1950s ( those guys and girls really knew the reality)Definition of socialism: the incessant struggle against conditions that would not exist in any other system.
Wonderful and excellent article to read this weekend. You write so cleanly and comprehensively with gentle precision and incisiveness. A magical weaver! Magus, magi, magician, master-mistress, music, mathematics, magnificence and melancholy – the latter being a state of consciousness that enables a travelling of the realms ie to ponder and wonder! No ‘clinical depression’ in that! No drugs required, albeit a certain range can be an enabler if used well or wisely.
Invocation has a long long long history – it was known to be creative and purposeful. Ninmah (later named Ninhursag) employed her medical savvy in conjunction at key points with ‘invocations’. Not spells of the light entertainment kind but with the majesty of care and concern for what she and Enki, then Ningishzidda (later aka Thoth, then Hermes, then Mercury) were creating – Us. Such they came to realise themselves was their God-given purpose at creating Human life on Earth.
Our Hybrid origins are closer to being consciously realised more widely. Oh joy and rapture! This is not that which has blackly effected a capture of the
decadent political class from an uncomfortable awareness of their own failure, and so the overprivileged — like the underprivileged — turn to individual magical practice.
Thank you Mr. Green Man!
A grateful Australian 72yoa lady/woman/female/person/Human Being/Spirit/Energy/Consciousness/sister and daughter.
Great article. Imposing your will on someone via mental manipulation is indeed the oldest form of magic.
And yet also one of the most modern.
Remember the ridiculous story about Boris Johnson making model London buses in his spare time? That was to deliberately manipulate the results from search engines when doing an internet search on him. Something that would produce lots of incredulous articles and force down stories on his marital woes with his previous wife and his involvement with a Brexit supporting slogan on the side of a bus.
The “magic” worked. He became leader of the Conservative Party and thence Prime Minister.
This is an interesting article and one that coincides with a discussion I had with a colleague at work. He’s deep into conspiracy theories (more studying them than believing them) and he was discussing Free Masonry and its occult links to the highest rungs of power. He says there is evidence of its symbology everywhere in modern society and that we just don’t see it. For instance the American dollar bill has the word MASON in it (the section with the eye and the pyramid), but it’s only apparent if you draw an upside-down pentacle within the circle. In a similar vein, the Google logo (the red M in the envelope) is a representation of the apron worn by masons during their meetings. I was kind of skeptical at first, but the more you read about it, the more you kind of think there might be something to it: JFK assassinated a couple of years after warning the world of secret societies, Dr. Kelly committing suicide after his report on Iraq’s WMDs, Epstein’s suicide in his prison cell while the cameras happened to be off that day etc.
Currently we have public and private institutions producing an ideological firewall around the west, one that inverts good and evil while those who dissent against it are fired. The transgender ideology (rooted in online p0rnography culture) seems to be the wedge issue fomenting this. There is much mention in occult literature of fusing the male and the female in one being, often represented by Baphomet a demonic deity who has the words ‘Dissolve’ and ‘Coagulate’ imprinted on his arms:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33682878 – note the resemblance in the photo to drag-queen reading hour:
https://www.sfweekly.com/culture/bloviating-conspirary-theorist-really-hates-drag-queen-story-hour/
Coincidentally, JK Rowling also has the words ‘Dissolve’ and ‘Coagulate’ tattooed on her arms.
Edit: I forgot to mention that Free Masonry is a religious order. Belief in a Higher Power (the name of which is not specifically mentioned) is a pre-requisite to joining.
This is an interesting article and one that coincides with a discussion I had with a colleague at work. He’s deep into conspiracy theories (more studying them than believing them) and he was discussing Free Masonry and its occult links to the highest rungs of power. He says there is evidence of its symbology everywhere in modern society and that we just don’t see it. For instance the American dollar bill has the word MASON in it (the section with the eye and the pyramid), but it’s only apparent if you draw an upside-down pentacle within the circle. In a similar vein, the Google logo (the red M in the envelope) is a representation of the apron worn by masons during their meetings. I was kind of skeptical at first, but the more you read about it, the more you kind of think there might be something to it: JFK assassinated a couple of years after warning the world of secret societies, Dr. Kelly committing suicide after his report on Iraq’s WMDs, Epstein’s suicide in his prison cell while the cameras happened to be off that day etc.
Currently we have public and private institutions producing an ideological firewall around the west, one that inverts good and evil while those who dissent against it are fired. The transgender ideology (rooted in online p0rnography culture) seems to be the wedge issue fomenting this. There is much mention in occult literature of fusing the male and the female in one being, often represented by Baphomet a demonic deity who has the words ‘Dissolve’ and ‘Coagulate’ imprinted on his arms:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33682878 – note the resemblance in the photo to drag-queen reading hour:
https://www.sfweekly.com/culture/bloviating-conspirary-theorist-really-hates-drag-queen-story-hour/
Coincidentally, JK Rowling also has the words ‘Dissolve’ and ‘Coagulate’ tattooed on her arms.
Edit: I forgot to mention that Free Masonry is a religious order. Belief in a Higher Power (the name of which is not specifically mentioned) is a pre-requisite to joining.
Going to necropost. Thanks for this excellent article. Magic and the principles it is based on have actually been examined in depth by various scholars in the relatively recent past. Interestingly, instead of moving from something that is taken as a joke to something that is actually grounded in the human psyche, it was simply forgotten. Unbelievable. I am happy to say that Aleister Crowley, and his extremely clear view of the basic laws of reality have influenced me from very early in my youth. I have never forgotten those teachings, that told me to use my own intellect and will over that of everybody else’s. And I believe that is the most important lesson in life anybody can learn. It really is the utmost basic principle of magic. To quote: every man and every woman is a star. Even quite feminist, way ahead of his time.
What about the blood-stained, guillotined magic that followed 1789? What about the spell of spilt Russian blood, post 1917, that enabled Stalin and his legions to impose their murderous will over millions in the gulags? What about the grandmaster of blood magic whose spellbinding speech and massive death sentences imposed hell on European earth, post 1933?
A far greater power than all of these human-imposed murderous sacrifices is found in the shared cup by which Christ-believers share–and appropriate for themselves, in lieu of their own shortcomings– the spilt sacrifice of a life perfectly lived which was nevertheless nailed to the cross of politics and religion, only to overcome all that arcane power three days later.
What have we come to? Imagine randomly picking out from a newspaper library an old copy of an established broadsheet from, say, the 1970s or 80s, and seeing one of the main opinion pieces headlined as given above here:
Will Magic Defeat America’s Elites?
Or, in the same vein,
Will Pop Music Bring Down The Iron Curtain?
Back in the day, no such frivolous baiting of the public got into a serious newspaper’s opinion pages. Pop music may have cast its spell a bit, but why this slip into fantasy here with this article? It’s terrible. Nobody has any reason to embrace magic under any circumstances!
Instead the headline is better served up as a sporting one.
It is Hallowene to be fair.
What about “will religion bring down the Iron Curtain”? Perhaps not, alone, but few doubt it played a part through Poland. You don’t have to be religious to see why banning it failed. As for pop, ask Havel.