The King in Orange
The Magical and Occult Roots of Political Power
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
• Details the magical war that took place behind the scenes of the 2016 election
• Examines in detail the failed magical actions of Trump’s opponents, with insights on political magic from Dion Fortune’s war letters
• Reveals the influence of a number of occult forces from Julius Evola to chaos magick to show how the political and magical landscape of American society has permanently changed since the 2016 election
Magic and politics seem like unlikely bedfellows, but in The King in Orange, author John Michael Greer goes beyond superficial memes and extreme partisanship to reveal the unmentionable realities that spawned the unexpected presidential victory of an elderly real-estate mogul turned reality-TV star and which continue to drive the deepening divide that is now the defining characteristic of American society.
Greer convincingly shows how two competing schools of magic were led to contend for the presidency in 2016 and details the magical war that took place behind the scenes of the campaign. Through the influence of a number of occult forces, from Julius Evola to chaos magicians as well as the cult of positive thinking, Greer shows that the main contenders in this magical war were the status quo magical state--as defined by the late scholar Ioan Couliano--which has repurposed the “manipulative magic” techniques of the Renaissance magi into the subliminal techniques of modern advertising, and an older, deeper, and less reasonable form of magic--the “magic of the excluded”--which was employed by chaos magicians and alt-right internet wizards, whose desires coalesced in the form of a frog avatar that led the assault against the world we knew.
Examining in detail the magical actions of Trump’s opponents, with insights on political magic from occultist Dion Fortune’s war letters, the author discusses how the magic of the privileged has functioned to keep the comfortable classes from being able to respond effectively to the populist challenge and how and why the “Magic Resistance,” which tried to turn magic against Trump, has failed.
Showing how the political and magical landscape of American society has permanently changed since the 2016 election cycle, Greer reveals that understanding the coming of the King in Orange will be a crucial step in making sense of the world for a long time to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greer (The Long Descent), a spirituality and ecology blogger at Ecosophia, makes an ardent if zany argument that magic plays a powerful role in politics. He defines magic broadly as "the art and science of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will" and goes on to suggest salaried elites and corporate media have perpetuated the political status quo that oppresses hourly wage earners through a magic-inflected "ritual drama" of assigning blame. He trots out rehashed defenses of Trump supporters as being motivated by economic self-interest before suggesting users of online message boards used chaos magic to ensure Trump's 2016 victory. (He also posits that anti-Trump magical resistance failed to adhere to appropriate protocols and faltered.) Amid the more outlandish claims, certain lines of thought, such as his comparison of the liberal fixation on hate speech with the harmful Victorian obsession with sexuality, have some promise. He closes with a discussion of the projected rise of a new mode of life through a process called "pseudomorphisis" that will gain ascendency in the 26th century. While Greer's analyses are occasionally unusual enough to grab attention, anyone not already in his camp will remain unconvinced.
