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Title: Occult Underground by James Webb ISBN: 0-8126-9073-7 Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company Pub. Date: 01 August, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: To Finally Anatomize The Beast Historically
Comment: ... the century of Enlightenment was also the century of shadows..."
Thus begins Pioneering Occult Scholar Sir James Webb's 2-volume,1000 page historical survey of the 19th and 20th centuries respectively succeeding one another in this book and its successor fittingly entitled: 'The Occult Establishment'---originally entitled as a single vast work: 'THE FLIGHT FROM REASON'. The Flight From Accepted Reason to Willed Imagination, or the great Occult Difference in the survival of the fittest from the dangerous.
Both texts are strong enough to stand entirely on their own as much as an enduring boxer jabbing at the ghosts of history in the mirrors of magical conjurations. Webb has become an underground legend in academic circles as well as more underground occult ones; to both scholarly historians and practitioners and dabbling dreamers he has uncovered the many hitherto unknown and un-addressed masked faces of European, American, and Russian Occult history in a way most likely never to be surpassed; but at best merely equaled for sheer verve and mind-staggering revelations throughout every page. In fact, there is a good sense of mythographic Rumors in circulation regarding his early death (1946-1980), said to have ended in madness to the effect that such was the result of his historical discoveries driving him beyond a scope the mind can deal with. But legends will always spring up around such scholarly figures who have the daring and the wisdom to seek out the truth for themselves in a way not unlike some real-life Fox Moulder without any backing but that of their own intelligence and heart, of which Webb had plenty of both. He is skeptical in a humoring way to his own astonishments as well as the reader's fancies, and writes from the p.o.v. of a well-reasoned scientific mindset Like the best of several other modern-day independent occult scholars such as Joscelyn Godwin who is the closest to Webb in this respect of there being no cruelty or direct and laudable ridicule of the LIVES he studies; in fact, the two men just named have that admirable sense of immense responsibility springing from a belief in the integrity of the work they are pioneering in the best way possible by assessing ALL their findings with a respect inborn in those who love the work they are doing. The result is that Webb's works, though definitely Historical tomes, are writ in such an expressive poetic non-fictional guise full of ingenious metaphors and lightning-flash insights that they are able to stand critique according to their rare literary merits independent even of their fascinating subject(s) (as the brief opening lines above are to exemplify for those interested parties reading this brief, shallow review)...in which they are insightfully steeped in that realm of 'MAGIC' which as Northwest University Professor of History and Religion, Richard Kieckhefer so well put: "is the Crossroads of History"---where most every facet of a given culture (such as Religion, science, medicine, the Arts and Politics foremost) come together in one vast scenic expanse of a magical landscape in constant flux the more a viewer penetrate into its interior.
There abounds in print references to Webb's work in probably 7 or more out of 10 works dealing with Occultic matters on a serious, scholarly level, both academic and/or independent (by which I mean these are in NO Way 'Conspiracy Theory pulpous editions; as ALL Webb's sources are fully listed in extensive annotated bibliographical format for each chapter...and what could be more serious than endeavoring to fathom the history of the world in every matter occultic? "Occult History" interpreted as being applicable to all that has been hidden, ignored, misunderstood or misrepresented, unacknowledged, rejected, lost, buried and/or intentionally destroyed in History? Or, in the other words of the mystics: 'To rend aside the veil of Isis for once and for All').
James Webb's books cost a fortune in the used book market, and rightly so are in great demand amongst those in the know, as evidenced by his wide references in innumerable works of the past 20 years in the burgeoning field of Western Esoteric Studies, quickly growing to be one of the fastest rising schools of its own in many nationwide State Universities and not just the private academic sector...So I am glad to see Open Court Press has wisely re-printed at least the first work. 'The Occult Underground' deals mainly with the 19th Century European Occult Revival, especially in the realm of the Arts, and centering of course of the Symbolists, Decadents, Aesthetes, and Romantics who would make of Art a religion at last. The Symbolist generation(s) being the culmination of millennia of Art History leading up to that pivotal moment when the Artist would become High priest or Mage in his own right, beyond mere social commentator or recorder, or Propagndic posturing for whatever Empire, to instead claim Art existing for the benefit of the individual in the context of cosmological proportions embracing all of Human History, and not exclusively standing for any one single country. The 'Unacknowledged Legislators of the World' finally came into their own at the turn of those two centuries numbers 19 and 20. Even in the midst of Nationalism, Symbolist Art embraced all that was beyond the borders as well, in an Art that communicated across continents in a universal Language without barriers, corresponding easily as astral doubles in a dream before God tore up the Tarot card with that tower of Babel on it. Webb goes into great depth especially in France where Artists found their definition in the realm of Occultism with which it merged forever. Eventually coming to give birth to all that grows in the Advanced Gardens of the twentieth century Avant-Garde, which begins in the last lines and tail end of this book, and's taken up at the horns of its Demon brother of the much darker and far more sinister 20th century world of the Occult of the 'Illuminated politics.
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Title: Himmler's Crusade : The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race by Christopher Hale ISBN: 0471262927 Publisher: Wiley Pub. Date: 03 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal ISBN: 080148331X Publisher: Cornell University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Unknown Sources: National Socialism and the Occult by Hans Thomas Hakl, Nicholas, Dr. Goodrick-Clarke ISBN: 1558184708 Publisher: Holmes Pub Group Llc Pub. Date: 01 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality by Geoffrey Ashe ISBN: 0750924020 Publisher: Sutton Publishing Pub. Date: 01 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The People of the Secret by Ernest Scott ISBN: 0863040381 Publisher: Octagon Press, Limited Pub. Date: 01 June, 1983 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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