Jake Poller

Sigmund Freud discovered that in the unconscious a both-and dream logic prevailed. In his critique of the either-or binary oppositions of Western philosophy, Jacques Derrida appropriated this oneirologic, e.g. arguing that the incest prohibition derived from both nature and culture. In this article, I adopt a deconstructive approach to analyse this both-and oneirologic in a selection of New Weird fiction, namely The City & The City (2009) by China Miéville, the Southern Reach trilogy (2014) by Jeff VanderMeer and The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again (2020) by M. John Harrison. Not only do these New Weird fictions embrace the dream logic of both-and, they deconstruct the binary opposition proposed by Miéville between the Weird and the hauntological in that they combine the uncanny with what Miéville terms the 'abcanny'. In other words, they are both Weird and hauntological. Furthermore, I argue that the 'real externality' H.P. Lovecraft associated with Weird fiction is always already inside, marked with the oneirologic trace of the unconscious.

Although Alan Moore has criticized the occult appropriation of H.P. Lovecraft in interviews, this article contends that this is precisely what Moore has done in his graphic novel Providence (illustrated by Jacen Burrows). This article analyses the role of dreams in the occult appropriations of Kenneth Grant and other ceremonial magicians and compares them to the occult treatment of dreams in Providence. Where Grant maintained that Lovecraft made contact with real occult entities in his dreams and wrote about them in his fiction, in Providence Moore represents Lovecraft’s dreamworld as a real occult realm that has been repressed by human reality. And while Providence is a fiction, it illustrates Moore’s thesis that writing is magic and that there is no difference between fiction and reality, in that it presents Lovecraft’s fiction as being inexorably accepted as real and this catalyzes an occult apocalypse.

In Island (1962), Aldous Huxley presents a utopian community in which the inhabitants aim to become “fully human beings” by realizing their “potentialities.” I demonstrate how Huxley’s notion of the “human potentialities” have been misrepresented, both by scholars and by the founders of the Esalen Institute. Huxley’s focus on human potentialities arose from a shift in his thinking from the other-worldly mysticism of The Perennial Philosophy (1945) to the life-affirming traditions of Tantra, Zen and Mahayana Buddhism. In Island, the population attempt to realize their human potentialities and engage in an experiential spirituality that celebrates the body and nature as sacred through
the use of the moksha-medicine and the practice of maithuna. I argue that whereas Tantric adepts practised maithuna as a means to acquire supernormal powers (siddhis), in Island the Palanese version of maithuna is quite different and is used to valorize samsara and the acquisition of human potentialities.

In the wake of Bertrand Russell’s contention that Lawrence’s ‘mystical philosophy of “blood”’ led ‘straight to Auschwitz’, academics have been dutifully unearthing evidence of latent, cryptic or proto-fascist ideas in his work. Several scholars have chased up Russell’s suspicion that Lawrence somehow ‘imbibed prematurely the ideas afterwards developed by Hitler and Mussolini’ from Frieda and her circle of German intellectuals, and much energy has been expended on drawing dubious parallels between völkisch ideologues, such as Oswald Spengler, Alfred Rosenberg and Houston Chamberlain, and the work of Lawrence. In this article, I problematize some of the thinking that has led to his work being characterized as fascist, for this often involves a logic of contamination, whereby if Hitler read Nietzsche and Lawrence read Nietzsche, Lawrence becomes tarred with the fascist brush. This logic of contamination, I argue, is not only present in the work of the scholars who have highlighted völkisch elements in his thinking, it is also present in the Frankfurt School, which conceived of fascism as a disease, whose ideological symptoms spread and reproduced like a virus, infecting the body politic. I reveal that the Frankfurt School was in fact ‘infected’ by one of the völkisch thinkers who allegedly influenced Lawrence, and which led, by the logic of contamination, to his work being represented as fascist.

At the start of 1959, the Scottish artist and occultist Benjamin Creme (1922-2016) claimed that he began to receive telepathic messages from one of the Theosophical Masters. He spoke of these communications in terms of ‘overshadowing’, which he defined as a ‘voluntary co-operative process in which a Master’s consciousness temporarily enters and works through the physical, emotional and mental bodies of a disciple’. Later that year, he was overshadowed by the Maitreya, also known as the Christ, who had previously incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Maitreya informed him that he would shortly reappear in the world and that it was Creme’s mission to broadcast his coming to humanity. In the first part of this chapter, I provide an overview of Creme’s life and his role as herald of the Maitreya. In the second part, I examine Wouter Hanegraaff’s notion of the ‘Theosophical imagination’ in relation both to Blavatsky and later Theosophists and argue that Creme’s overshadowed messages from Maitreya and his Master were received in an altered state of consciousness, in which the products of Creme’s imagination were experienced as real.

In this chapter, I parse the different meanings of the Theosophical concept of 'glamour', which derived from its original usage in the eighteenth century, meaning 'magic, enchantment, spell'. I argue that glamour is central to an understanding of the Neo-Theosophy of the second-generation Theosophists C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant. It was often alleged by their critics that Leadbeater and Besant were 'under a glamour', meaning that they were deluded about their occult powers, and that they books they wrote about their astral excursions to the lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria were works of the imagination.

There has been a welcome emphasis in the last decade on the importance of mysticism in the work of Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) from several scholars, including Dana Sawyer, Jeffrey Kripal and K.S. Gill. Less attention has been paid to Huxley's interest in the paranormal and his contacts with the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). While Huxley did not join the SPR until 1956, he closely followed its Journal and Proceedings, and wrote a number of essays on the subject of psychical research. I examine his treatment of spiritualism in the play The World of Light (1931) and in the novel Time Must Have a Stop (1944). In his experiments with mescaline and LSD, Huxley also drew on key thinkers from psychical research, namely Henri Bergson, C.D. Broad and William James. In this article, I examine Huxley's links with the SPR and the role of psychical research in his work.

The twentieth century saw an unprecedented spike in the study of altered states of consciousness. New ASCs, such as those associated with LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, were cultivated and studied, while older ASCs were given new classifications: out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, psychokinesis, extrasensory perception.  Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century analyses these different approaches and methodologies, and includes exciting new research into neglected areas.

This volume investigates the representation of ASCs in the culture of the twentieth century and examines the theoretical models that attempt to explain them. The international contributors critically examine a variety of ASCs, including precognition, near-death experiences, telepathy, New Age ‘channelling’, contact with aliens and UFOs, the use of alcohol and entheogens, analysing both the impact of ASCs on the culture and how cultural and technological changes influenced ASCs. The contributors are drawn from the fields of English and American literature, religious studies, Western esotericism, film studies, sociology and history of art, and bring to bear on ASCs their own disciplinary and conceptual perspectives, as well as a broader interdisciplinary knowledge of the subject. The collection represents a vital contribution to the growing body of work on both ASCs and the wider academic engagement with millennialism, entheogens, occulture and the paranormal.

Aldous Huxley was one of the twentieth century’s most prescient thinkers. This new biography is a rich and lucid account that charts the different phases of Huxley’s career: from the early satirist who depicted the glamorous despair of the postwar generation, to the committed pacifist of the 1930s, the spiritual seeker of the 1940s, the psychedelic sage of the 1950s – who affirmed the spiritual potential of mescaline and LSD – to the New Age prophet of Island. While Huxley is still best known as the author of Brave New World, Poller argues that it is The Perennial Philosophy, The Doors of Perception and Island – Huxley’s blueprint for a utopian society – that have had the most cultural impact.

Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality offers an incisive analysis of the full range of Huxley’s spiritual interests, spanning both mysticism (neo-Advaita, Taoism, Mahayana and Zen Buddhism) and Western esotericism (mesmerism, spiritualism, the paranormal). Jake Poller examines how Huxley’s shifting spiritual convictions influenced his fiction, such as his depiction of the body and sex, and reveals how Huxley’s use of psychedelic substances affected his spiritual convictions, resulting in a Tantric turn in his work. Poller demonstrates how Huxley’s vision of a new alternative spirituality in Island, in which the Palanese select their beliefs from different religious traditions, anticipates the New Age spiritual supermarket and traces the profound influence of Huxley’s ideas on the spiritual seekers of the twentieth century and beyond.