Free download Ö PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB free è Mitch Horowitz

review Occult America The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation Mitch Horowitz è 5 characters Free download Ö PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB free è Mitch Horowitz It touched lives as disparate as those of Frederick Douglass Franklin Roosevelt and Mary Todd Lincoln who once convinced her husband Abe to host a séance in the White House Americans all they were among the famous figures whose paths intertwined with the mystical and esoteric movement broadly known as the occult Brought over from the Old World and spread throughout the New by some of the most obscure but gifted men and women of early US history this “hidden wisdom” transformed the spiritual life of the still young nation and through it much of the Western worldYet the story of the American occult has remained largely untold Now a leading writer on the subject of alternati. Having studied esoteric and occult culture for well over half my life this book doesn t contain anything that I hadn t already read about However the author s treatment of his subject matter is a refreshing change from either the condescending manner of skeptical writers or the credulous tone of New Age proselytizers While the book itself is a slim volume its pages are full of characters and their exploits woven together uite skillfully into a concise history of the main esoteric belief systems and trends from the earliest days of America down to the Auarian revolution of the late 60 s and 70 s As this is the author s first book I m willing to overlook its brevity and somewhat superficial treatment of the individual subjects contained therein Hopefully Occult America will be a basic introduction in a series of works that explores American esoteric practices with depth The author s top notch research along with his sensitivity passion and respect for the subject makes this a fantastic stepping off point and leaves me wanting Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man A Memoir young nation and through it much of the Western worldYet the story of the American occult has remained largely untold Now a leading writer on the subject of alternati. Having studied esoteric and occult culture for well over half my life this book doesn t contain anything that I hadn t already read about However the author s treatment of his subject matter is a refreshing change from either the condescending manner of skeptical writers or the credulous tone of New Age proselytizers While the book itself is a slim volume its pages are full of characters and their exploits woven together uite skillfully into a concise history of the main esoteric belief systems and trends from the earliest days of America down to the Auarian revolution of the late 60 s and 70 s As this is the author s first book I m willing to overlook its brevity and somewhat superficial treatment of the individual subjects contained therein Hopefully Occult America will be a basic introduction in a series of works that explores American esoteric practices with depth The author s top notch research along with his sensitivity passion and respect for the subject makes this a fantastic stepping off point and leaves me wanting

review Occult America The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation Mitch Horowitz è 5 characters Free download Ö PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB free è Mitch Horowitz Ve spirituality brings it out of the shadows Here is a rich fascinating and colorful history of a religious revolution and an epic of offbeat history From the meaning of the symbols on the one dollar bill to the origins of the Ouija board Occult America briskly sweeps from the nation’s earliest days to the birth of the New Age era and traces many people and episodes including•The spirit medium who became America’s first female religious leader in 1776 •The supernatural passions that marked the career of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith •The rural Sunday school teacher whose clairvoyant visions instigated the dawn of the New Age •The prominence of mind power mysticism in. Mitch Horowitz Occult America The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation Bantam 2009A Review ByRaj AyyarMitch Horowitz leads us on a fascinating journey through an alternative US history a landscape peopled with colorful eccentrics inspired visionaries and self help savants Contrary to a certain stereotype about the hardboiled pragmatism and muscular materialism of the American Horowitzian America offers us a peek into a radically different occult America whose thumbprint was felt as far as Asia through movements like the Theosophical SocietyHowever throughout the book Horowitz emphasizes the uniuely American uality of occult experimentation in the US American occultism is rooted in do it yourself American individualism and eual access Apparently in the house of the American occult there are many mansions ranging from hand holding s ances to good old fashioned self help and positive thinking approaches from Joseph Smith to Edgar CayceAmong other uniuely American features of the different occult movements is the belief that thoughts in some greater or lesser measure determine reality Occult America p 257 The New Age slogan you create your own reality has deep roots in the history of the American Occult New Agers may be surprised to learn that the Law of Attraction popularized by Esther and Jerry Hicks and by the best selling book and DVD The Secret has a long history in American Occultism Horowitz traces LOA back to Andrew Jackson Davis the Seer of Poughkeepsie in 1855 The Law of Attraction meant that whatever a person dwelled upon in their thoughts would manifest in events good or bad joyous or catastrophic in their earthly lives Occult America p96Horowitz points out that in the context of slavery in the American South such thinking could seem a naively cruel calculus ibid p96 It is hard to disagree with Horowitz when he argues that the Law of Attraction presupposes an American middle class level of comfort and stability In fact one could go further and argue that the Law of Attraction can be easily linked to a do it yourself get rich uick capitalist ethicOn the other hand Horowitz does not pause to consider how this business of reality creation with thoughts and feelings can be a profoundly self empowering calculus as studies of the placebo effect have shown Within certain limits the Law of Attraction can infuse one with the energy trust and confidence to change one s circumstances from illness to good health from poverty to a state of material comfort from struggling to a life of relative easeThere are some astonishing counter examples to the bourgeois halo surrounding the Law of Attraction and this business of creating reality with one s thoughts feeling and beliefs Horowitz points out that Wallace Wattles author of The Science of Getting Rich one of the 19th century self help gurus featured in The Secret had a Utopian socialist vision married to the gospel of wealth Wattles had a great admiration for American socialist Eugene Debs and hoped that the use of mind power to generate wealth would go hand in hand with fighting for the oppressed and the creation of an euitable social orderThere is another interesting section of Horowitz s book dealing with how iconic leaders of 19th Century African American movements such as Marcus Garvey were greatly influenced by New Thought Occult America takes the history of the occult and the New Age out of the alleys and byways and places it suarely within mainstream Americana Politicians like Lincoln and Henry A Wallace FDR s second VP among many others were fascinated by the occult The last chapter of Occult America zips through a medley of contemporary New Age authors and movements One wishes that it had the paced almost leisurely uality of Horowitz s history of earlier periods of occult history But then again maybe the contemporary New Age has such a plethora of ill assorted motifs modes and personalities that it is hard to find thematic threads that might capture its essence beyond a sweeping overview Sunjata Penguin Classics yourself American individualism and eual access Apparently in the house of the American occult there are many mansions ranging from hand holding s ances to good old fashioned self help and positive thinking approaches from Joseph Smith to Edgar CayceAmong other uniuely American features of the different occult movements is the belief that thoughts in some greater or lesser measure determine reality Occult America p 257 The New Age slogan geoff buda ve ben you create Perky your own reality has deep roots in the history of the American Occult New Agers may be surprised to learn that the Law of Attraction popularized by Esther and Jerry Hicks and by the best selling book and DVD The Secret has a long history in American Occultism Horowitz traces LOA back to Andrew Jackson Davis the Seer of Poughkeepsie in 1855 The Law of Attraction meant that whatever a person dwelled upon in their thoughts would manifest in events good or bad joyous or catastrophic in their earthly lives Occult America p96Horowitz points out that in the context of slavery in the American South such thinking could seem a naively cruel calculus ibid p96 It is hard to disagree with Horowitz when he argues that the Law of Attraction presupposes an American middle class level of comfort and stability In fact one could go further and argue that the Law of Attraction can be easily linked to a do it Rayleigh Through Time yourself get rich uick capitalist ethicOn the other hand Horowitz does not pause to consider how this business of reality creation with thoughts and feelings can be a profoundly self empowering calculus as studies of the placebo effect have shown Within certain limits the Law of Attraction can infuse one with the energy trust and confidence to change one s circumstances from illness to good health from poverty to a state of material comfort from struggling to a life of relative easeThere are some astonishing counter examples to the bourgeois halo surrounding the Law of Attraction and this business of creating reality with one s thoughts feeling and beliefs Horowitz points out that Wallace Wattles author of The Science of Getting Rich one of the 19th century self help gurus featured in The Secret had a Utopian socialist vision married to the gospel of wealth Wattles had a great admiration for American socialist Eugene Debs and hoped that the use of mind power to generate wealth would go hand in hand with fighting for the oppressed and the creation of an euitable social orderThere is another interesting section of Horowitz s book dealing with how iconic leaders of 19th Century African American movements such as Marcus Garvey were greatly influenced by New Thought Occult America takes the history of the occult and the New Age out of the alleys and byways and places it suarely within mainstream Americana Politicians like Lincoln and Henry A Wallace FDR s second VP among many others were fascinated by the occult The last chapter of Occult America zips through a medley of contemporary New Age authors and movements One wishes that it had the paced almost leisurely uality of Horowitz s history of earlier periods of occult history But then again maybe the contemporary New Age has such a plethora of ill assorted motifs modes and personalities that it is hard to find thematic threads that might capture its essence beyond a sweeping overview

Free download Ö PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB free è Mitch Horowitz

review Occult America The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation Mitch Horowitz è 5 characters Free download Ö PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB free è Mitch Horowitz The black nationalist politics of Marcus Garvey•The Idaho druggist whose mail order mystical religion ranked as the eighth largest faith in the world during the Great Depression Here too are America’s homegrown religious movements from transcendentalism to spiritualism to Christian Science to the positive thinking philosophy that continues to exert such a powerful pull on the public today A feast for believers in alternative spirituality an eye opener for anyone curious about the unknown byroads of American history Occult America is an engaging long overdue portrait of one nation under many gods whose revolutionary influence is still being felt in every corner of the glob. A sweeping and scatter shot survey of the history of esoteric spirituality in America Useful as an introductory overview it helped make sense of some of the connections between occult ideology and mainstream religious and social movements Horowitz provides ample illustration of his central thesis that occult traditions have had a significant often largely unseen influence on the history of the United States and that American culture in turn has left its distinctive stamp on these thought movementsThe particular connections and contrasts between the various movements discussed however were often hard to follow The lines of influence between occult traditions and certain Christian movements for example and the differences and reasons for those differences between the variety of esoteric systems were often presented in too uick and cursory a manner for solid comprehension The choice to proceed in a generally but not strictly chronological manner also lends confusion Key background information is sometimes lacking for example Emanuel Swedenborg is repeatedly mentioned as a major influence upon important figures in the narrative but he is not properly introduced The even handedness of the account is commendable Horowitz sympathies with the traditions he describes are sometimes evident but he doesn t avoid discussing some of the negative dimensions of their history The result is an insider s account of the history of American occultism that is highly accessible to an outsider excepting for some points of information that might demand outside research to flesh out the presentation