Ectoplasm

[David Casseres]

Tom Stanton sez

>I wonder if there's any relation between the end of Newtonian mechanics
>and the rise in occultism from 1900 forward. It does seem that as we
>started losing our central role in the universe, we started to develop
>highly complex belief systems based on mysterious islands or ethereal 
>planes or interplanetary beings, and it has become more popular since
>WW2.

Indeed, not just Newtonian mechanics (as an absolute) but the entire 
post-Romantic, pre-Industrial world-system perished around 1900, leaving 
a horrible sucking vacuum into which the Blavatskys and the Eckarts and 
the rest of them spewed forth like foam off a dog's mouth.  The Great War 
finished the job of demolishing any real competition for spiritual 
direction, and after WW II it was time for the occult program to pass 
from the intellectual Elect to the spiritually needy preterite, who found 
themselves with a choice of embracing the New Age or retreating into 
forms of "traditional" religion that in fact are equally a product of 
fin-de-siecle spiritual panic and hysteria -- or advancing into Christian 
Identity Neonazism.  Of course, They laugh with delight at all this, it's 
all so deliciously manipulable and labile, so readily conditioned, as 
reversible as a nice raincoat and twice as useful.


Cheers,
David