11,114 words

Mr. Reagan is not going to make it to the year 1987, I can tell you that much. Now you mark that down.

— Brother Stair, 1987

We don’t reckon time the same way, do we, Clarice?

— Silence of the Lambs

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7,940 words

Peter Gatien
The Club King: My Rise, Reign, and Fall in New York Nightlife
Seattle: Little A, 2020

Driving with my father one day, we passed an imposing building, the Cornwall headquarters of the Orange Lodge, the Grand Order of British North America. “What’s that, papa?” I asked.

“It’s like a club,” he answered dismissively. (more…)

5,873 words

Galaxy Quest (1999)
Director: Dean Parisot
Writers: David Howard (story), Robert Gordon, and David Howard (screenplay)
Stars: Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, Missi Pyle

“It’s really a very sophisticated movie. . .” “. . . with eight-year-old audiences.”  (more…)

Frederic Remington, The Bronco Buster, 1895.

6,316 words

Gen. Turgidson: Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race.

“Is ‘Short Time Preference’ Really Such a Problem?” by Eumaios, apart from its own considerable merits, was particularly interesting for me — and I suppose some of my Constant Readers — due to his reduplication of a number of the most characteristic formulations of the midcentury Barbadian mystic Neville. [1]  (more…)

9,916 words

What has got to be gotten over is the false idea that a hallucination is a private matter.

— P. K. Dick [1]

There is no fiction. What is fiction today will be a fact tomorrow. (more…)

5,376 words

“If you’re committed enough, you can make any story work. I once told a woman I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it.” — Saul Goodman

“Jerry, just remember . . . it’s not a lie if you believe it.” — George Costanza (more…)

3,329 words

Infinite Potential: The Greatest Works of Neville Goddard
Introduced and edited by Mitch Horowitz
New York: St. Martin’s, 2019

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. — T. E. Lawrence[1] (more…)

Neville

4,196 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

It is with relief that one turns to Neville’s biography; the bright Sun, soft breezes and blue ocean of the Caribbean replace the dark and soggy little Plymouth Brethren colony.[1]

Neville speaks of his father many times – itself a clue – but here is one of my favorites, and it includes much interesting material for our considerations:

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Aleister Crowley, presumably after having consumed his daily drug regimen.

4,286 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

“It’s when one gets to the parents that a bottomless pit opens. My dear, such a pair.”[1]

“Can we ever be certain that it was not our mother while darning our socks who began that subtle change in our minds? (more…)

5,125 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

In my previous essay on Stirner, I suggested that the modern online community, or the Internet itself, would be an excellent example of a “Union of Egoists.” And here we meet with Neville again; for although, like Stirner, his career was on a downslope at his death – for reasons we will soon examine – (more…)

Neville

5,554 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

“While, to get greater clarity, I am thinking up a comparison, the founding of Christianity comes unexpectedly into my mind.” — Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own

In recent essays, I’ve looked at the writings of Max Stirner[1] and tried to determine the reason for his increasing relevance in the Internet age, and to the Dissident Right in particular.[2]

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547 words

1. Camille Paglia, Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education (New York: Pantheon, 2018).

Paglia is self-recommending, of course. I was a bit let down, as the subtitle seemed to promise a career-wide retrospective, while this is more like a reunion tour, with emphasis on more recent works. The key essays are a vast survey, “Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s,” a liberal education in itself; (more…)

7,841 words

Mitch Horowitz
The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2018

“I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. . . . When you decide to be something, you can be it. That’s what they don’t tell you in the church.”[1]

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3,820 words

Chuck Palahnuik
Adjustment Day: A Novel
London: Jonathan Cape, 2018

“Ears, gentlemen. Sandinista ears.”[1]

I had almost reached the massive iron door, hidden behind a construction dumpster, that serves as the entrance to the abandoned glove factory that has been my squat for the past several years (more…)

Two of Obama’s mentors, whose imaginations helped to meme his presidency into existence: anti-white Pastor Jeremiah Wright with Bill Ayers, former terrorist leader of the Weather Underground.

4,834 words

“Anything is possible in this world. I really believe that. Dream on it. Let your mind take you to places you would like to go, and then think about it and plan it and celebrate the possibilities. And don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t know how to dream.”–Liza Minnelli

“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”–Antonio Gramsci (more…)

Neville Goddard

4,337 words

Part 2 of 2; part 1 here

Earlier, I noted Wilson’s second thoughts, 45 years later, about Religion and the Rebel as an “overstuffed pillow”; he specifically felt that the early biographical material on Rilke was “unnecessary.” But actually, it supplies us with a remarkable parallel to Neville’s method, as well as a hint of Wilson’s future development.

Wilson says if Rilke had died at age twenty-five, no one would have remembered him. Instead, he willed himself to be a poet. (more…)

6,326 words

Colin Wilson

Part 1 of 2

“What was needed was not some new religious cult but some simple way of accessing religious or mystical experience, of the sort that must have been known to the monks and cathedral-builders of the Middle Ages.”–Colin Wilson[1]

“The serpent said that every dream could be willed into creation by those strong enough to believe in it.”–Eve to Adam, in Shaw’s Back to Methuselah  (more…)

4,321 words

Neville (Goddard)
At Your Command: The First Classic Work by the Visionary Mystic Neville
New York: Snellgrove Publications, 1939; Tarcher Cornerstone Editions, 2016 (includes Mitch Horowitz’s essay on Neville’s life and work, “Neville Goddard: A Cosmic Philosopher”)

“Can a man decree a thing and have it come to pass? Most assuredly he can!” — Neville Goddard, At Your Command  (more…)

4,583 words

James Arthur Anderson
Out of the Shadows: A Structuralist Approach to Understanding the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft
Introduction by S. T. Joshi.
Wildside Press, 2014

“Drawing the line between concrete detail and trans-dimensional suggestion is a very ticklish job.” — H. P. Lovecraft[1]

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5,274 words

A Constant Reader has called my attention (keep those cards and letters coming in, folks!) to some critical commentary on the magical writings of Baron Evola[1] by none other than John Michael Greer, who is Past Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America and current head of the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn. (more…)

210 words

Neville Goddard
Feeling is the Secret
Edited by James J. O’Meara
Amazon.com, Kindle, 2016

“This book is concerned with the art of realizing your desire. It gives you an account of the mechanism used in the production of the visible world. It is a small book but not slight. There is a treasure in it, a clearly defined road to the realization of your dreams.”  (more…)

1,831 words

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.” — Woody Allen

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Norman Vincent Peale

7,144 words

“Personally, I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle Peale appalling.” — Adlai Stevenson on hearing Norman Vincent Peale was supporting Eisenhower.

“I know that with God’s help I can sell vacuum cleaners.” — Rev. Norman Vincent Peale  (more…)

2,471 words

“Assume you are what you want to be. Walk in that assumption and it will harden into fact.” — Neville Goddard’s “Law of Assumption” (attributed to Anthony Eden)

“A man is, whatever room he is in.” — Bert Cooper’s supposed Japanese saying

“With such expert play-acting, you make this very room a theatre.” — Vandamm to Roger Thornhill, North by Northwest  (more…)

4,572 words

Isabel Colegate
The Blackmailer
Richmond, Va.: Valancourt, 2014

“If you want to call it God, the divine, the energy in all things, the force that created the universe, nature, whatever you call it, I believe it’s fury not love.” — Jonathan Bowden

“What we feel for each other is really a passion for power,” said Judith. “We want to destroy each other by making the other fall in love with us.” — Isabel Colegate, The Blackmailer  (more…)

2,791 words

Caroline Fraser
God’s Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church
New York: Henry Holt, 1999

Christian Science (not to be confused with science fiction writer and religious guru L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, whose celebrity adherents include Hollywood stars John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and Kirstie Alley), a metaphysical religion that rejects most medical treatment, is probably a black box to most people. (more…)

1,989 words

Rhonda Byrne
The Secret
New York: Atria Books/Hillsboro, Oregon: Beyond Words Publishing, 2006

DVD:
The Secret (Extended Edition)
TS Productions, 2006

Many whites embrace New Age beliefs; sometimes the beliefs have venerable roots.

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