𝐌𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐳

Visiting my childhood home in Bellerose, Queens.

It is sometimes stated that William Walker Atkinson (aka "Three Initiates") derived his "Seven Principles" in The Kybalion (1908) from an 1885 translation and commentary on Hermetic tracts, The Virgin of the World by Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland (whose English translation is adapted from an 1866/67 French compendium by classicist Louis Ménard). This analysis first appeared in a 2009 blog article by esoteric scholar Mary K. Greer ("Source of The Kybalion in Anna Kingsford’s Hermetic System") and later in a 2018 introduction to The Kybalion that I commissioned from my friend and source of literary inspiration, Richard Smoley. Having compared Greer’s and Smoley’s comparisons—which variously correspond to and depart from one another—to Kingsford and Maitland's book, I find the evidence tangential—not necessarily thin but incomplete—that Atkinson devised (or in the overly determined phrasing of an online commentator “plagiarized”) his seven principles from The Virgin of the World. The Kybalion has passed through two stages of disdain in our generation. The first is that it is fake Hermeticism. This is overwrought. It is a modern novelty—in my estimation a meaningful novelty with insights into Hermetic themes and a canny analysis of New Thought and its physical limits. The second and more recent disdain results from commenters reading one another versus reading the book, and hence arriving at semi-bizarre political claims suggested nowhere in the century-old text. Ad fontes.

I will not chop up history into segments of maximalist criticism or affirmation that say "I like" or "I don't like." My servings are whole: husk and fruit. This article is gratis. mitchhorowitz.substack.com/p…

tonight 9 pm ET | youtube.com/watch?app=deskto…

“I wouldn’t be a slave to God Himself, let alone man.”—H.P.B. It is difficult even to introduce Madame H.P. Blavatsky (1831–1891)—variously one of the most debated, venerated, and deplored figures in modern life. With the exception of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), no other occultist has been so widely, and critically, written about. In 2012, during my publishing days, I issued an excellent biography of Blavatsky by historian Gary Lachman. The book received considerable praise—along with oh-no-you-don’t coverage in organs of lettered culture, including Harper’s Magazine and The Paris Review. I was surprised that such journals, usually dismissive of alternative spirituality—we never pitched them—set sight on a Ukrainian-born mystic who died ten years before Queen Victoria. Thematically speaking, their articles, acidulous and know-better, were conceived in advance, the blight of most letters. The same charge can be directed at me. And pertaining to this very piece. I am a “believing historian.” I have been—I am not currently—a member of the Theosophical Society in America, the organization she cofounded. Use that background to judge my portrayal. I disdain the cheapness of mainstream letters when approaching culturally disfavored figures—the practice of just broaching the line of dishonesty, experiences that have moved me to write less for legacy media, where I have plenty of bylines, and perhaps talk less to it. In any case, the tote-baggers sought blood, more so in Harper’s Magazine. They portrayed Blavatsky as a peddler of mediumistic fakery, invented biography, and kook philosophy. That is the axe-handle of critical judgment. The blade, pervasive in online comments, calls her a purveyor of colonialism, genocide, and even proto-Nazism. In a novel twist, a detractor recently wrote me that “Theosophy was and is a Trojan horse for the new age, transexual, transhumanist woke movement.” Right. I concede this: H.P.B., so known to admirers, frustrates scrutiny. As such, she is a kind of Rorschach. Documenting her requires entering a “hall of magic mirrors.” And yet—it is nearly impossible to imagine today’s culture without this one woman. mitchhorowitz.substack.com/p…

graphic by @joshhyde666 watch: youtube.com/watch?v=-_RPVbEX…

You are never alone. Not really. I am inviting you into an ad hoc, long-distance club—a circle of metaphysical company—that meets daily at 3 pm ET. We are approaching our ten-year anniversary. It is called The Miracle Club. The Club works this way: every day or any day at 3 pm ET you can join me in silently holding the intentions of each member of the group. And your own intentions. That is all. Join daily. Join once. Join whenever you feel like it. There is no fee, membership, or declaration. Your only commitment is a brief (two to three minutes—or if you are pressed just a few moments) silent meditation at 3 pm ET on any day you choose—wherever you are and whenever you like—with me and other members. mitchhorowitz.substack.com/p…

What Is the Search? | Mitch Horowitz Explores the ‘Three Objects’ of the Theosophical Society youtube.com/watch?v=60qLoLen…

You harbor a hidden power. It arrives through concentrated focus of a very particular sort. I often urge seekers and practitioners—or at least those possessed of an outlook of aspiration, broadly defined (which I maintain characterizes the path)—to embrace just one wish. My insistency on a single wish engenders pushback, including within me. After all: life’s demands are legion. How can aspirants limit themselves to a sole desire? I say: a well-selected, passionately felt, and sincere wish covers the gamut of bases, however complex. One wish satisfies myriad needs. I further contend that the prospect of psychical causation or influence benefits immeasurably from this type of concentration. Besides, in essence, none of us has a choice. A true wish—the kind without which you cannot experience more than a shell-like existence—possesses us, not us it. Let that inform your spiritual outlook. I define spirituality as extra-physicality. Hence, it harbors no intrinsic injunction. I consider reciprocity a universal law. That forms the heart of my ethics. Ethics emerge from the emotions. A coarse person will never experience true ethics, whatever label they wear. A sensitive person will never be able to flee them. Ethics are empathy. I have written widely on the question of selecting a single wish. Here I support my defense of the “one wish” approach through an unusual source, at least for my work: eighteenth-century scientist-mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Swedenborg’s admirers see him as one of the few true spiritual geniuses of the modern age. I consider that warranted, even as I orbit a different star from Scriptural revelation, on which the seer focused. Truth resounds—and benefits you—more fully when you know its source. Hence, I offer some background before enlisting Swedenborg’s work in my argument, though not my overall outlook. To claim such would misrepresent him. My intent here is more limited. The mage’s sublime insight supports my urge to embrace a single wish. It does so indirectly. What I suggest grants you greater power and self-knowledge . . . mitchhorowitz.substack.com/p…

Never has more verbiage gone more wrong than over fixations, fictions, and fantasies around Michael Aquino. I consider his career in “The Trials of Michael Aquino.” mitchhorowitz.substack.com/p…