REVIEW: #42 Occult America

Book Cover

Synopsis: (Taken from Amazon.com)

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 U.S. history, this “hidden wisdom” transformed the spiritual life of the still-young nation and, through it, much of the Western world.

Yet the story of the American occult has remained largely untold. Now a leading writer on the subject of alternative 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 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 globe.

Review:

I found Occult America to be an absolutely engaging historical account of the spiritual leaders and movements that helped pave the way for Mysticism in the world today. Many people were brought to my attention that I had never before heard of, but have played such a pivotal role in the spiritual movements such as Johannes Kelpius, Ann Lee, and Jemima Wilkinson to name just a few.

Occult America also discusses well known historical figures such as Mary Todd Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln’s wife) and her fascination with the occult and occult practices, often getting her husband involved in White House seances. Lincoln was well-known for her involvement in Occult matters, especially after the assassination of her husband, the President. Another interesting “celebrity” involved in the occult, so I have found through Occult America, is Sylvia Plath who used the Ouija board along with her husband, Ted Hughes. This is to believed to have been the inspiration for her poem, “Ouija”. It is eerily said that the Ouija predicted fame for Plath, which would cost her both her life with her husband, and her own life. It is a little spooky, if you ask me.

Horowitz’s brief history of the Ouija that both thrilled and terrified me.  The account taken from an excerpt in the 2001 International Journal of Parapsychology of an 18 year old’s experiences with the Ouija is enough to give you nightmares for a day or two.

Although Occult America is brief in the subjects it does introduce the reader to (and that is my only true complaint), Horowitz did a wonderful job of introducing subject matters not before heavily discussed. However, because of this – I really felt as if this was almost more of an introductory book about the history of the occult rather than any sort of true detailed literature. Because Occult America frequently jumped from subject to subject, it did have the potential to cause headaches in some readers, who really wish to get more involved in one topic at a time before transitioning to the next. Because of Horowitz’ obvious amount of time spent in research, I hope that this is only a sign of more to come from Horowitz, and am hoping he’ll continue to delve deeper into detailed historical accounts in future books so readers can gain a better understanding of each subject matter.

As there were so many peopled discussed I felt that there were many sections in Occult America that could truly be its own standalone book. I feel it is important that Horowitz takes the introductory information presented in Occult America and use that information as a skeleton for his next books, adding a little bit more meat to the bones so that the reader may truly gain an in depth understanding of the history of Mysticism.