Haunted by Our Amnesia: The Forgotten Mainstream Impact of the Occult/Esoteric “Fringe”

7/28/2019 Haunted by Our Amnesia: The Forgotten Mainstream Impact of the Occult/Esoteric Fringe

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Haunted by Our Amnesia:

The Forgotten Mainstream Impact of the

Occult/Esoteric Fringe

by David Metcalfe

(Originally published at The Teeming Brain)

Its amazing what you dont learn in school. Even more so, its amazing how much common

knowledge has absolutely nothing to do with the actual facts. Im not talking about folk

wisdom here but the assumptions that the majority of supposed experts cling to when

discussing the reality that underlies our common lives.

Mitch Horowitz, Editor in Chief of Tarcher/Penguin, has been working for several years to

mitigate some of the amnesia that has arisen around our collective history. In his book

Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation, he

exposes a few of the forgotten influences that have shaped the American consciousness, from

former Vice President Henry Wallaces engagement with the Russian mystic Nicholas Roerich

to the fact that the very materially minded Mohandas Gandhis engagement with the

Bhagavad Gita was influenced by his relationship to the Theosophical Society in the U.K.

In an article for The Wall Street Journalon filmmaker Vikram Gandhis recent documentary

Kumar, Horowitz outlines the process that slowly softens these facts until they become part

of the culture:

Historically, Americans have regarded new religious movements with suspicion, if not

hostility at least at first. During the Revolutionary War, the Shaker leader Mother

Ann Lee was jailed and harangued by mobs who suspected that her religious pacifism

was nothing but a cover for British sympathies. Mormon prophet Joseph Smith was

run out of his central New York home in the early 1830s when locals derided his Book
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fmitchhorowitz.com%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNErvmCA0GwLy1KqiGibYootnw0XQAhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fkumaremovie.com%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNG341I31ntGePvxnCO6qZh9xLUWUghttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fexec%2Fobidos%2FASIN%2F0553385151%2Fdemmus-20&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEqVcv98A32rIBEKUHfLr_DYpNesAhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fmitchhorowitz.com%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNErvmCA0GwLy1KqiGibYootnw0XQA


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of Mormon as a hoax and Smith as an opportunistic fortune-teller.

In 1876, when retired Union Army Col. Henry Steel Olcott conducted the first public

cremation service in New York City, he was lambasted in the press as a heathen

presiding over a pagan funeral.

The list stretches on, snagging names from Christian Science founder Mary Baker

Eddy to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who taught the Beatles to meditate. Over time,

however, most of these figures and their practices became mainstream, to the point

where meditating seems as common as jogging. Cremations account for more than a

third of American interments. And our first Mormon president may be around the

corner.

Mitch Horowitz, The Secret Wisdom of an Ersatz Guru, The Wall Street Journal,

September 13, 2012
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10000872396390444184704577588840661821480.html%23printMode&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFv37Xze2Yu7vpkn1xWs3nO7LLOtQ


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When one starts to look, its as if history mirrors physics, where some hypothesize that nearly

84% of the mass in the universe is composed of dark matter. It seems as if the main historical

influences that affect us exist in a shadow realm that few give credence to, yet this realm

forms the main source of the ebb and flow that pushes us forward. What the media,

mainstream science, and academia consider fringe is often at the very heart of the issues we

face.

Think of it: both the much-lauded leader Mohandas Gandhi and the common funerary

practice of cremation (in the context of American culture) have their roots firmly planted in

the Theosophical Society, an organization that most people today know of as a New Age joke,

if they know of it at all. (See, for example, Gary Lachmans forthcoming biographyMadame

Blavatsky: Mother of Modern Spiritualityfor a look at the ironic open hiddenness of

both Theosophy and its formidable founder in todays spiritual marketplace.)

In a nice blog post from 2010, Rebekah Higgitt, Curator of History of Science and Technology
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fexec%2Fobidos%2FASIN%2F1585428639%2Fdemmus-20&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFumBRyNZJZZ8fd1JGyqVL92x_ykQhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fexec%2Fobidos%2FASIN%2F1585428639%2Fdemmus-20&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFumBRyNZJZZ8fd1JGyqVL92x_ykQ


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at the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, brings out this

same issue in regard to Isaac Newton. A few weeks before Higgitts post and in fact serving

as one of the motivators for her to write it The New York Times ran an article whose tone

and headline (Moonlighting as a Conjuror of Chemicals) espoused surprise that, lo and

behold, the father of the classical model in physics, so long touted as a weapon against all

forms of supposed irrational scientific inquiry, was an alchemist obsessed with unorthodox

Biblical hermeneutics!

Higgitt responded:

The real news is not that Newton was involved in alchemy, but the on-going efforts at

transcribing Newtons archive, which demonstrates just how much and for how long

alchemy/chymistry was among Newtons major activities, and the scholarship of

[science historian William] Newman and others, which has shown that it was part of

the intellectual scenery of the time. The news is that although Newton is a familiar

name and a hero of modern science, the world he lived in and the ways he and his

contemporaries thought are, by and large, very unfamiliar to us today.

However, the thing that bugs me most is the fact that Newton has been revealed as

an alchemist, or as a magician, over and over again. In recent years the major

popular interest in Newton has related to alchemy and prophecy, and such

presentations tend to be accompanied by the suggestion that this is a surprising and

novel revelation. This process goes back at least as far as John Maynard Keynes and

his 1946 essay, Newton the Man, which presented Newton as the last of the

magicians. Keynes had acquired a significant portion of the non-scientific part of

Newtons archive (as judged by the scientists who catalogued and divided them in the

late 19th century), and he was undoubtedly struck by what he found. But, as I have

said in my book, he shouldnt have been as surprised as he evidently was.

Rebekah Higgitt, Newton and alchemy: a constant surprise? teleskopos, November

21, 2010
https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fteleskopos.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F11%2F21%2Fnewton-and-alchemy-a-constant-surprise%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGoD_A0rfXfCwaO5coN7reEHctrGwhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fexec%2Fobidos%2FASIN%2F1851969063%2Fdemmus-20&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGt2Du94HJVYQy7EzWOrbhxRfMtWwhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2010%2F10%2F12%2Fscience%2F12newton.html%3Fpagewanted%3D1%26_r%3D1&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNF7XhMygp5VU23Y-JXVsgO9uBaz_Q


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And yet the trend continues: just a few days ago the Guardian published an article rehashing

the question of Newtons influences. Its title: Was Newton a scientist or a sorcerer?

What happens when the rationalists are

irrational? When the materialists dont engage

with the material at hand? What happens when

our collective history is haunted by the ghosts

that drift in the shadows of our amnesia?

If we follow this thread farther, we find other surprises that shake the foundations of our

historical assumptions. Have you ever heard of Cotton Mather? Most know him as a central

figure responsible for fanning the flames of the Salem Witch Trials. However, most would not

suspect that both his library and his writings were replete with at least a surface-level

understanding of the art of alchemy. In fact, alchemy was one of the cultural gifts that the

Colonial Pietist groups brought to the New World from Europe.

As the Hermeticist and historian Mark Stavish outlines in his essay The History of Alchemy

in America:

While alchemy has strained the credulity and pocketbooks of many Europeans since its

general appearance in the 16th and 17th centuries, it has also held a fascination for a

fair number of prominent and not so prominent Americans as well.

Most of us are familiar with the writings of Thomas Vaughn, Paracelsus, Bacstrom,

and dozens of other authorities on the Royal Art, yet it was from colonial America that

one of the most famous and mysterious Alchemists arose Philalethes. It is among

the apocalyptic Pietists of Pennsylvania, said to have been Rosicrucians fleeing the

religious wars of Central Europe, that we also find hints of laboratory alchemy being

practiced in their wooden, gothic-structured cloister in Ephrata, on the Pennsylvania

frontier. Even late in the Golden Game, the 18th century that is, the illustrious, even
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fhermetic.com%2Fstavish%2Falchemy%2Fhistory.html&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFi43v4POOUWaM6RGhAGy-0DXERgQhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fhermetic.com%2Fstavish%2Falchemy%2Fhistory.html&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFi43v4POOUWaM6RGhAGy-0DXERgQhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fscience%2Facross-the-universe%2F2012%2Fsep%2F21%2Fisaac-newton-scientist-sorcerer&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNG9KNYnzuvwlHGIXjMA2djcRPPsHQ


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then ivy covered, halls of Harvard were teaching their students the theory of the

transmutation of metals. And the Governor of Connecticut and Massachusetts dabbled

with quicksilver now and again as well.

Mark Stavish, The History of Alchemy in America, Corpus Stavish (at

Hermetic.com), 1996

A quick search of Archive.com or Google Books shows that many of the scanned books on

alchemy come from the libraries of Harvard, Cornell, Yale, and other buttoned-down

American Ivy League institutions that today would, at least in public, scoff at the idea that

any of these ideas hold credence.

Even when mainline historians admit these facts, they often downplay the influence that such

ideas have had on the culture. While its true that ideas like these have always existed within a

region of controversy that keeps them part of a hidden stream, the very nature of such

inquiries effects a deep change in the worldview of anyone who begins to undertake them.

When, as often happens, these studies are undertaken by community leaders, politicians,

revolutionary groups, and religious leaders, to deny that they have had a profound impact on

the development of culture amounts to a strange amnesia that can have nothing but an ill

effect on the culture itself and a dampening effect on any hopes for progressive development.

In sum, and reapproaching all of these issues rhetorically: What happens when the

rationalists are irrational? When the materialists dont engage with the material at hand?

When our scholars arent very scholarly in their investigations? What happens when our

collective history is haunted by the ghosts that drift in the shadows of our amnesia?

Most importantly, what can we do in this digital age to make amends for these glaring

oversights?

(Special thanks go out to Sasha Chaitow, Founding Director of Phoenix Rising Digital

Academy, for pointing out the Newton material referenced in this post.)

-

David Metcalfe is an independent researcher, writer and multimedia artist focusing on the

interstices of art, culture, and consciousness. He is a contributing editor for Reality Sandwich,
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fphoenixrising.org.gr%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGKVMP5DKFueQ57tTvYhNdExHJHsQhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fphoenixrising.org.gr%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGKVMP5DKFueQ57tTvYhNdExHJHsQhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fhermetic.com%2Fstavish%2Falchemy%2Fhistory.html&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFi43v4POOUWaM6RGhAGy-0DXERgQ


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The Revealer, the online journal of NYUs Center for Religion and Media, and The Daily

Grail. He writes regularly for Evolutionary Landscapes, Alarm Magazine, Modern Mythology,

Disinfo.com, The Teeming Brain and his own blog The Eyeless Owl. His writing has been

featured in The Immanence of Myth (Weaponized 2011), Chromatic: The Crossroads of Color

& Music (Alarm Press, 2011) and Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness (North

Atlantic/Evolver Editions 2012). Metcalfe is an Associate with Phoenix Rising Digital

Academy, and is currently co-hosting The Art of Transformations study group with support

from the International Alchemy Guild.

For more information on Santa Muerte, and the sanctification of death in the popular faith

traditions of the Americas, check outhttp://skeletonsaint.com, a collaborative project

hosted by Dr. R. Andrew Chesnut, David Metcalfe and Liminal Analytics.
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fskeletonsaint.com%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHuvzD2qoQPT172Rx19If26YLl9XQ

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Haunted by Our Amnesia: The Forgotten Mainstream Impact of the Occult/Esoteric “Fringe”