Politics and the Occult: The Left, The Right and the Unseen

This talk comes from Gary Lachman’s current work on politics and the occult over the past two centuries.

For a taster of the evening, we can do no better than quote an interview he gave with Fortean Times in 2002, where he told Jack Phoenix “You hear a lot about the link with fascism, for example in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s excellent books The Occult Roots Of Nazism and Hitler’s Priestess, and in Pauwels and Bergier’s The Morning Of The Magicians… but there is another side: many of the Enlightenment thinkers were freemasons and were involved in magical or occult investigation; Eliphas Levi was a rampant socialist and wrote socialist tracts before his books on magic; Blavatsky was involved in the Indian Independence movement. There is some debate about the centrality and depth of Nazi involvement in the occult. Whatever the case, it has coloured and monopolized the issue of occultism and politics.” Tonight, Gary takes us through the occultists of the left as well as the right, and their views on the invisible realms. Gary Lachman has written numerous books on the history of the occult, contemporary culture, and on music. As Gary Valentine, he was an early member of the rock group Blondie. These days find him living in London and writing for The Independent, The Times Literary Supplement and others whilst researching his own books. An interview: http://www.forteantimes.com/features/interviews/40/gary_lachman.html.

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