I've managed to write about these things seriously in mainstream news outlets, from The New York Times to The Washington Post, and discuss them on CBS Sunday Morning, Dateline NBC, and NPR's All Things Considered. But it is a struggle. I find that the bar is raised much higher for writing about outside-the-fold topics than it is for things that editors and producers already believe (e.g., "Positive thinking is for dupes and dumbbells.")
Here are some of the reasons it's tough to find a mainstream mic for these issues - and some different ways to think about how we communicate:
1) Disavowal is the price of admission to the mainstream culture.
I love journalist Jon Ronson. But he plays this game all too well. He studies a fringe topic - like ESP in the military - depicting it as hooey. But then he says ingenuously in an interview: "The psychic spies do have some successes that you can't explain. There are stories of 'remote viewers' divining map coordinates or sketching something that does, in fact, lead to something. Maybe." That, to me, is where to start digging. But Ronson quickly slams shut the door. Critic Janet Maslin in the New York Times admiringly quotes him calling his foray into ESP "frivolous."
I have no particular solution to this, as I refuse to disavow my sympathies - any more than historians such as Robert Peel, Gershom Sholem, or Richard Lyman Bushman should be expected to, respectively, disavow their dedication to Christian Science, mystical Judaism, or Mormonism.
2) Cable producers often deem fraud and fudging more saleable than fact.
This is a source of constant frustration - and it's why I do fewer cable documentaries than I used to. Producers want you to juice up stuff. If you don't comply, they may do it for you. For example, a certain show on the Travel Channel wanted me to do a piece based on my tours of occult imagery in New York's Grand Central Terminal. I made it clear that I didn't deal with conspiracy theories, fantasies about the Illuminati, or any such stuff, and wouldn't discuss these things other than to voice my disavowal. You can witness the (sneaky) result right here. (But y'all come back now - it gets better).
For my real views on Grand Central, check out this mini-doc from The Midnight Archive:
On a happier note, I also participated in a Discovery channel documentary called Secrets of Secret Societies (see below), which was more ardently factual than I had hoped for, not that I stand by the testimony of every talking head in it. I told the truth - and they used it: "Conspiracy theorists have a passion for making connections. It explains everything. It simplifies everything. If an individual looks out his window and sees a world wracked with tragedy, accident, unexpected events, all he has to do is take a leaf from a conspiracy theory and suddenly everything that had seemed complex before seems simple. And his fear and his anger now have a target."
3) The greatest barrier to seriously discussing the occult and the offbeat in public is the inability of critics and gatekeepers to understand that seriousness depends not on topic but on terms of engagement.
This is a persistent problem in our intellectual culture. Many academics and journalists simply cannot wrap their minds about around the principle that you can study an arcane topic without propagating it. For example, a friend of mine who is a professor of French history at New York University recently wrote a biography of Nostradamus. He wanted to consider all aspects of the 16th-century prognosticator's life, including his work as a professional astrologer. He discovered that Nostradamus had a poor grasp of the generally agreed upon tenets of astrology in his time. "He was actually a bad astrologer," my friend told colleague. "Is there such thing as a good one?" the colleague replied. Can you see the obtuseness of that remark? My friend's study had nothing to do with the value of astrology but with evaluating Nostradamus as a practitioner. Is there an emoji for "duh"?
In a recent debate about the legacy of 19th century occultist Madame H.P. Blavatsky (which has been going on now for about, oh, 140 years), my friend Richard Smoley, a historian and philosopher of mystical traditions, remarked: "There is a great deal of value in HPB's work and a great deal of nonsense. I see absolutely no reason to be forced to either take it or leave it all." This false choice to "take it or leave it" is perhaps the most limiting factor in how people view the world. It makes it difficult to discuss esoteric topics, and it wreaks hell on our political dialogue. For example, look at the video below. In a typical comment someone posted on YouTube (and I recount this almost humorously): "He doesn't even believe what he's saying - lying through his teeth...watch his eyes." Watch my eyes indeed.
4) Finally, when reasonable people don't get in the mix the space gets filled by wingnuts.
A lot of sloppy, anti-intellectual people are drawn to occult topics. They find them spooky, paranoia-inducing, and fun. But these toe-dippers often promulgate conspiracist dreck - I'm talking to you Alex Jones - that impoverishes our entire culture.
That is, finally, is why I keep at it. As the social activist and writer Michael Harrington once said in a different context: "We call ourselves socialists because it's the truth. And all we have is the truth."
MITCH HOROWITZ was raised in a world of Bigfoot stories, UFO sightings, and Carlos Castaneda books. He grew determined to find the truth behind it all - and today Mitch is a PEN Award-winning historian and the author of Occult America and One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life. Mitch has written on everything from the war on witches to the secret life of Ronald Reagan for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, and Time.com. The Washington Post says Mitch "treats esoteric ideas and movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness that is too often lost in today's raised-voice discussions." He is the voice of audio books including Alcoholics Anonymous, and hosts the web series ORIGINS: SUPERSTITIONS. Mitch is vice president and executive editor at TarcherPerigee, a division of Penguin Random House, where he publishes authors, living and dead, including David Lynch and Manly P. Hall. Visit him at www.MitchHorowitz.com and @MitchHorowitz.
Reader Comments
Using hidden deceit is the way to separate out the 'elect' from the 'masses' in the idea of being 'more' by inducing others to be 'less'.
Words can be used to such different meanings.
The knowledge of God is the Power of God is the love and peace and joy of God.
But in the passing off of a forgery, we have all the smoke and mirrors - and yes it has to be maintained and defended against disclosure not just for the elitist - but for the identity in the 'devil we know' in everyone.
The corporate 'parent' may be 'evil' in the sense of market-capture and mind-capture rather than truly served function - but it is also our creation as 'ego' writ large. Fear or survival mind sets up its own self-protected 'shadow gov' and the dependency upon a managed existence is an example of the great danger of putting all our eggs in a Corporeal basket.
Is it true that in any choice we are aligning in what we take at that moment to be in our self-interest? - even if we dress it in terms of good intentions, worthy causes and a wish to be loving or at least not seen or exposed to hateful vulnerability!
I feel this is so but that much of our thought is 'hidden' within suppressed or denied (guilted, feared or hated) experience.
If the 'devil' of a false protection racket calls, do we have to follow or even listen there?
The phrase 'buyer beware' is a call for vigilance as to what you buy into or invest attention in - including to such trickery as hides in the warnings against this or that 'evil'.
It takes one to know one - and yet this is not your person but your current acceptance of thought.
To look into a deceit is to be guiled, but to look straight at it, is to remove the guise and awaken in true guidance - because only the false can cover the true by a willingness to look or listen there. IN this sense the deceit operates a wake up to the stirring of an Unwillingness to persist in its terms.
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Furthermore, I question those "mystics" who claim they know more than everyone else. True mystics and occult pervayors KNOW that EVERYTHING is a reminder for them; that the "clues" and "breadcrumbs" that reveal the mystery come in many forms, including those clues representing the opposite POV to which they themselves presently hold.
Pretension is represented by the person who sits across the table from another expecting to teach. Humility is represented by those who expect to learn.
How in heavens name can anyone hold an apposing opinion without diferential opinions to oppose? The hermetic principle of polarity explains this quite clearly.
My council for these ppl is always the same: address every attempt at understanding with the phrase, "for now". This is what I believe "for now;" knowing perfectly well that as more information is garhered new understandings will blossom and the quest for "greater" understanding never ends.
When one KNOWS nothing, they KNOW everything.
There is no need to devalue any step of lived and shared now in terms of lesser and greater self (possession of knowledge), and the unfolding of Nowing presence unto Itself is ultimately (or truly) not a time concept and in the Presence of the Timeless is all else standing under. ('Behold I make all things new').
Understanding, assigned to a sense of define and control is backwards . In standing under that which Nows, is the mind a channel of extension of Idea (and embodiment) instead of a walled out object-persistence. (Body bagged).
Teaching and learning are two facets of one Event. Under the identity construct, 'do as I say, not as I do' operates the spin of a mind in 'disconnect' though of course the mind has no such power - unless at the founding of such mind you give yours to it.
The FORMS of seeming to know while only 'knowing about' operate the exoteric parody of inner knowing - which is wordless because it is You - although the recognition of this may unfold in ways that may seem the undoing of you as you thought to be.
The idea of not sowing pearls before swine is not a value judgement on the sleeping, but a simple wisdom of sowing in a receptive soil.
The need to keep secret is not initially a special identity but an alignment in a temporary function.
In your 'time function' (human focus or lifetime) do you keep secrets from yourself?
If the revealing of truth was disturbing to who you currently accept yourself to be, would you WANT to know, or prefer to remain 'protected' from knowing? And if the latter, would those who 'prevent and block' knowledge not be secretly serving the purpose YOU give them?
Filling a hole is a way to reinforce the sense of lack, but stirring of a wholeness serves an alignment within the whole; giving and receiving (teaching and learning) in place of 'getting' or trying to 'get rid of'.
Anyone who uses "conspiracy theorists" (a CIA/Nazi coined term) constantly in the negative is most likely a shill for the system. They want you to think that there ARE no conspiracy's, and your a goofball if you think so. When anyone capable of objective thought will come to the conclusion that there CLEARLY are plenty of conspiracy's!
The evidence for people/corporate entities conspiring is almost overwhelming nowdays. Actually, It would be ABNORMAL for there not to be conspiracys! Its part of how big business works it seems.
It takes a sort of blind faith ignoramus to examine all this evidence pointing to things not being as described by USA Today, Time and the MSM psy-op masters, And call it all bullshit "conspiracy theory". Or, it takes someone whom has stock in said corporations or agenda.
That same ignoramus will claim nothing is real because he/she has never seen it themselves...So if they have never experienced it, its fake "conspiracy" type stuff...
Unconscious material or indeed suppressed experience or denied consciousness, is not held in denial without some cause assigned a past that persists as a pattern upon our present.
T here is a relational context to communication. There are rules and filters to consciousness. The mutually agreed world of such rules is a narrative construct or 'continuity' of invested identity. Within this construct are appropriate and effective defences against perceived threat or indeed change.
And so to a 'surface realty' - depth is hidden or managed in such a way as to redefine the life in terms of artificial currencies of thought.
The manipulative intent of twisting 'reality' to serve a personal agenda is framed to see all opportunity in terms of its own weaponising power and extension of its own possessive sense of self, and so will use the FORMS of any existing or emerging currency of thought to mask in or seek justification in.
The essential nature of discerning the 'obvious' instead of running the 'matrix' of conditioned response is of not being baited or triggered by the forms of past habitual associations, but pausing to look at them as both a cheering in with the purpose that is running.
A deceit seen as a deceit is educational towards more fully embracing true.
But the attempt to tell everyone or anyone about false witness is often a reaction to short circuit recognising our self.
On surface the 'other' is a candidate for blaming - and therefore dumping guilt and assigning hate to, in a world predicated upon blame and sacrifice. Yes it does not seem to be predicated upon fear - but look below appearances in any moment and see that the way we think and see is shaped by 'getting' or possession, and gear of being 'got' or dispossessed.
My sense of the revealing of what was 'hidden' is to a willingness for true - and to that add any of many qualifying suffixes - such as true peace, joy, love - instead of fake substitutes that have no power to heal or communicate themselves as a wholeness of being.
The MSM is s storymill for those that suckle it. If you do not find truth or true witness there, hold to your own instead of falling for judgements of the persona and be curious and open and prompted towards what is alive and resonant to who you are now accepting yourself to be.
The mind as operating in the world of things and powers is designed to rule out its true function. That you are NOT your mind is the revealing of the power to accept and align in true function. 'Make me an instrument of thy peace' is simply a living desire to be unconflictedly present WITH - whatever or whoever is in your field of awareness and relationship.
Down at the 'roots' are simple recognitions of wordless knowings. Out in the branches of personal entanglements are impossibly conflicted fragmentation that only grows by the attempt to put Humpty together again - and it is the appearance of undertaking such apparently 'worthy causes' that serves to keep the true cause hidden.
I look at language use as the deconstruction of mis-spelling (false creation) so as to let the light back into a true welcome.
The word difficult, shifted to 'delicate' because 'difficult' things called for slowing down and bring a more felt and delicate quality of awareness present. Then it shifted to 'different' because what is actually called for is completely different than the fear-framed toolset of the drive to survive under difficult - if not impossible conditions. And I say impossible because self-contradiction is ultimately an ideational construct given life. And so when a conflicted experience reveals a conflicted self-sense by reaction, the willingness to look at and feel the nature of that self-sense, so as to discern and recognize what is true from what is not - or what truly belongs to You - and what does NOT, undoes an impossible situation by recognising you are not in it - or defined and locked in its terms.
Why would on want to discuss anything anywhere? Because the movement to communicate is given expression.
I write into SOTT - to those who share the same purpose, or indeed the same 'classroom'.
To another purpose, I write gobbledygook - and that is as should be.
One of the deepest truths I can give witness to here is that of supporting and honouring others in their own freedom to discover, in their own timings and in terms that they recognize themselves in. If on 'thrusts' truth upon the unready or unwillingness for it, rejection is guaranteed. All attempts to manipulate and persuade must come back to the one who thought to have power - as an experience of subjection to what they wanted true. This is an opportunity to change our mind - but first we must change our mind about our mind.
You are not your thinking - but as you accept, so shall you give and receive.
Is this not simply the sowing and reaping of what goes forth to multiply as your abundance?
Why is it 'difficult' to articulate anything true without somehow corrupting or twisting it to a person-agenda?
Because the persona is a masking construct through which you can persist in 'private creations' or a gift you gave yourself that can be released to that which gives truly. And so even our world of preferred partial perceptions becomes a witness to a love that we did not make, nor control nor need to interject or impose upon.
I had joy of receiving and sharing this - and any moment of resonance in any moment of anyone's glimpse counts to me as a 'discussion' at the energetic 'level' of our shared being. Let the 'dead bury the dead' - and in this sense let the MSM continue to serve the function that each one elects to assign there.
'Official' recognition of otherwise un-accepted communication may rise from a true authority - regardless the forms that may take.