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SynchroMysticism in Books: Peter Levenda

As mentioned in the previous post, Peter Levenda is a person readers are likely to encounter as the probe the sometimes murky recesses of esotericism, occultism, and, yes, SynchroMysticism.

Levenda, similarly to Christopher Knowles, seems a bit more left-leaning than some of the individuals that we will look at in upcoming posts.  Professionally, he is an author and offbeat historian of sorts. An early focus was on the obscure intersection of Nazism and, well, magic.

In this genre, Levenda has three impressive offerings. The primary book of interest to those who study historic “Hitlerism” is his 1995 book, Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement With the Occult (New York: Avon). Of more specialized appeal is his quirky, 2012 speculations that Hitler escaped Germany at the conclusion of World War Two. (See Ratline: Soviet spies, Nazi Priests, and the Disappearance of Adolf Hitler, Lake Worth, FL: Ibis Press.) More recently, in his The Hitler Legacy: The Nazi Cult in Diaspora, How it was Organized, How it was Funded, and Why it remains a Threat to Global Security in the Age of Terrorism (Lake Worth, FL: Ibis Press, 2014), he has applied his historical views to more contemporary problems.

In this way, Levenda’s subject matter overlaps with the more mainstream academic publications of the later British Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. In such texts as The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935 (Wellingborough, U.K.: Aquarian Press, 1985), Hitler’s Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth and Neo-Nazism (New York: NYU P, 1998), and Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity (New York: NYU P, 2001), Goodrick-Clarke also explored the cryptic conjunction of 20th-century German National Socialism and the dark arts.

As a survey of the titles suggests, both Goodrick-Clarke and Levenda deal at length with personalities like Rudolf Hess (who had a well-known affinity for astrology and esotericism) and Heinrich Himmler (who had charged the Ahnenerbe with the task of validating Aryan and Nordic mythology).

But they also get into less-familiar territory and explore such controversial topics as the Teutonically tinged occult philosophy of “Ariosophy,” begun by Lanz von Liebenfels and Guido von List. Ariosophy (literally, “Aryan wisdom”) was, like Rudolf Steiner’s “Anthroposophy,” an offshoot of Russian mystic Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society. Readers may recall that Blavatsky had transplanted herself to Great Britain and founded “theosophy” (the “wisdom of God”) along with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. The society was continued by figures such as Alice Bailey and Annie Besant.

Meanwhile, the occultist R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, who also had links to the seemingly all-pervasive Theosophical Society, represents a connection between German and French occultism. Schwaller de Lubicz is one of the candidates for having penned the alchemical treatise The Mystery of the Cathedrals, attributed to one “Fulcanelli,” who the former claimed to have once met.

At any rate, Levenda has also produced several investigative tomes that may be of more general interest to those with a SynchroMystic turn of mind.

At the top of this list must surely be his Sinister Forces trilogy: The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (with Jim Hougan, Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2005), A Warm Gun: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (with Dick Russell, Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2005), and The Manson Secret: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2006). The books delve into “the roots of coincidence and conspiracy in American politics, crime, and culture,” and Levenda purports to disclose riveting ties “between religion, political conspiracy, and occultism.”

Levenda has also made forays into the arcane subject of alchemy that, readers will recall, was of seminal importance to synchronicity’s “founding father,” Swiss polymath and psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung. In such treatises as Stairway to Heaven: Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation (New York: Continuum, 2008), Tantric Temples: Eros and Magic in Java (Lake Worth, FL : Ibis Press, 2011), and The Tantric Alchemist: Thomas Vaughan and the Indian Tantric Tradition (Lake Worth, Florida : Ibis Press, 2015), he introduces readers to the related disciplines of alchemy and Tantrism, which have had such a profound influence on Western SynchroMysticism.

A versatile writer, Levenda has expanded his oeuvre with volumes on Freemasonry and on the 20th-century, American horror savant H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos has practically achieved cultic status in the years since his untimely death on the Ides of March, 1937.

On Freemasonry, which is itself arguably an outgrowth of the alchemically infused Rosicrucianism of the early 1600s, see: The Secret Temple: Masons, Mysteries, and the Founding of America (New York ; London : Continuum, 2009) and The Angel and The Sorcerer (Lake Worth, FL : Ibis Press, 2012).

On Lovecraft and the Lovecraftian universe, see Gates of the Necronomicon (written by the mysterious “Simon” and attributed to Levenda, New York: Avon, 2006), The Dark Lord: H. P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic (with James Wasserman, Lake Worth, FL: Ibis Press, 2013), and The Lovecraft Code (Lake Worth, FL : Ibis Press, 2016).

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Who Writes on SynchroMysticism and Synchronicity?

Beside the seemingly ever-present Loren Coleman, and the  other individuals previously highlighted (so far: Jay Dyer, Carl Jung, and Jake Kotze), where else can interested readers turn for more examples and more information?

Here, we will list two (well, three) other others.

The first additional commentator of interest is the comic-book artist and author, Christopher Knowles. He is otherwise known for insightful books such as Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes (with Joseph Michael Linsner, Newburyport, MA: Red Wheel Weiser, 2007),  The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths, and the Movies (with Matt Hurwitz, Insight Editions, 2008), and The Secret History of Rock ‘n’ Roll: The mysterious roots of modern music (Berkeley, CA: Viva Editions, 2010).

Knowles’s weblog, The Secret Sun, is replete with references to SynchroMysticism and synchronicity, as a simple Google search will reveal. One particular post, “Credit Where Credit is Due,” eloquently makes one point that this author has been at pains to disclose: namely, the relevant areas of inquiry derive from the input and thought of many key people.

It is perhaps quite true to say that Carl Jung, more than anyone else, deserves recognition for initiating these studies. However, as Jung himself makes clear, innumerable, pertinent pieces of background came to him by way of reflections upon ancient alchemy (among other sources).

In addition to the above-mentioned post, which is ought to be given a careful read by interested students, Knowles has countless others that should both entertain visitors to his blog, as well as enlighten those wishing to contend with (if not quite get a handle on) SynchroMysticism.

A second fascinating analyst is the curious S. K. Bain, whose Most Dangerous Book in the World: 9/11 as Mass Ritual (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2012) contains a foreword by Peter Levenda (on whom more in a future writing). In Bain’s telling, the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001, were (in the words of the publisher’s able summary) an “occult-driven… Global Luciferian MegaRitual …a psychological warfare campaign built upon a deadly foundation of black magick and high technology.” It’s quite a SynchroMystical ride.

Something of a companion volume followed. In “Sherwood Kent’s” Most Dangerous: A True Story (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2016) one descends into a nightmarish tale abounding in disturbing and lurid instances of synchronicity.

Stay tuned.

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SynchroMysticism Applied: Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman is far and away the most prolific and well-known SynchroMystic on the web today. With over forty book titles to his credit, many of which are on the subject of cryptozoology (i.e., the study of alleged “hidden animals,” like “Big Foot” and the famed “Loch Ness Monster”), Coleman looms large on (what we might call) paranormal wavelengths.

For an introduction to the fascinating possibility that the world’s fauna include more species than those so-far cataloged and on display at your city menagerie, Coleman is the go-to guy.

Among his cryptozoological print offerings are Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America (New York: Paraview, 2003), Cryptozoology A to Z (with Jerome Clark, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates (with Patrick Huyghe, New York: Anomalist, 2006), Monsters of Massachusetts (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2013), and Mysterious America (Kindle Edition, 2007).

He also maintains the cryptozoologically dedicated weblog, CryptoZooNews, and is curator of (and, presumably, docent at) the International Cryptozoology Museum at Thompson’s Point in Portland, Maine.

Of primary interest to us here, however, are the industrious Mr. Coleman’s other, more Fortean and SynchroMystical, researches.

Prominent in this regard are his innumerable posts on the Twilight Language weblog, which boasts well over 4 million total visitors.

The site’s name is a reference to an obscure, symbol-infused “language” that has apparent connections with various, Eastern, religious concepts – especially in certain Buddhist sub-traditions. (See here.)

In his 2004 book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines (New York: Simon and Schuster), Coleman wrote:

“Twilight language” concerns, from psychology, the hidden significance of locations, dates, and other signs; from religious studies, the hidden symbolism that lies in the texture of the incidents; and, from criminology, the profiling insights that have revealed the ritualistic nature of certain crimes and violent incidents.

In Coleman’s estimation, these “hidden significances” are largely discovered (or masked) in “Lexi-Links” (from the Greek léxis, meaning “speech” or “word” and the English “link,” which obviously has to do with the component parts of a chain) or what he elsewhere calls “name games.”

By “name games,” the prodigious Coleman seems to designate odd name-related patterns, or synchronicities, that crop up in newsworthy events from election results and political happenings to school shootings, serial murders, and suicides. The latter seem to occupy a conspicuous place in his thinking, due to a past, personal tragedy. (Incidentally, Coleman identifies 18th-19th-century German writer and Freemason Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s 1774 The Sorrows of Young Werther, available in a Dover Thrift Edition, as something of a locus classicus for suicide “copycatting.”)

These bizarre interconnections are perhaps best illustrated as opposed to merely described. The best advice for a person just dipping her toes into this unconventional territory is to simply learn by meditating upon Coleman’s various examples, embedded in his books and online posts.

Coleman seems less concerned with speculating about the possible, metaphysical foundations of “synchronicity,” and more focused upon engaging in and writing about examples of SynchroMysticism. This is evident in his above-mentioned “blogging” activities, which treat faithful readers to a steady diet of curious associations lying beneath interesting, and often world-historic, news events.

To date, Loren Coleman’s major, written statement on these matters is contained in the engrossing, and previously cited, The Copycat Effect, to which interested visitors are referred for further information. Happy reading.

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SynchroMysticism Defined: Jake Kotze

SynchroMystic guru Loren Coleman credited author and filmmaker Jake Kotze with having coined the term “synchromysticism.” Coleman wrote:

The word “synchromysticism” was first coined by Jake Kotze in August 2006, on his website-at-the-time, Brave New World Order.* Kotze defined the concept as: “The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance.” (Source.)

Let us mine some of the depths in this quotation.

One thing to notice is that the qualifier “meaningful” appears to do quite a bit of work. After all, on one definition of the word, “coincidence” merely marks out temporal correspondence.

Many of these correspondences are indeed mundane (both in the sense of being commonplace or worldly, and in the sense of being run-of-the-mill or, in a word, dull). For instance, as I type this, there is a song playing in the background, the air conditioner just kicked on, two Mourning doves are walking around outside, and so on.

Presumably, however, no one is tempted by the notion that there is any remarkable (i.e., meaningful) relationship between any of the scattered goings on that I just listed. For, at any given time, innumerable events are occurring simultaneously. The vast majority of these events with be nothing to write home about – whether individually or considered together.

What the synchromystic looks for, then, is not merely events that are temporally related, but events that are temporally associated in particular, “meaningful” ways.

Candidate events may have uninspired, “exoteric” (or outward and easily comprehended) meanings on the surface. But the synchromystic is the person who may notice esoteric significance lying under the uninteresting appearances.  (Or, at least, this is one way that person sympathetic to the project may understand it. Less sympathetic individuals may be tempted to the opinion that the synchromystic is “reading-into” events or engaging in wishful thinking or self-delusion.)

Kotze was a contributor to The Sync Book, published in 2011. He seems to take a monistic view of reality. On this sort of perspective, which appears (among other places) in some streams of Hinduism, all things are, ultimately “one.” Sameness is the fundamental property of existence, while difference is explained as illusion (maya).

Within this broad framework, synchronicity (that is, significant coincidence or simultaneity of “connected” events) is taken to be to a psychological phenomenon in which the percipient catches a glimpse of the “true,” undifferentiated nature of things.

Kotze’s view, while interesting, is far from the only view. In other posts, we will explore the views of other, influential thinkers from the famed Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung and Hungarian-British journalist Arthur Koestler, to lesser-known figures like the oraculist James Shelby Downard, and on to more contemporary commentators including the aforementioned cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman.

Stay tuned.

* Kotze’s weblog title is a composite of two phrases. Firstly, it is a reference to the so-called “New World Order.” Arguably, this phrase has at least two different interpretations. For more on the imperialistic interpretation, see books by Noam Chomsky and Henry Kissinger. For those with more conspiratorial turns of mind, see the “illuminist” interpretation propounded by persons like Mark Dice and A. Ralph Epperson. Secondly, Kotze’s phrase hearkens back to Aldous Huxley’s classic, 1932 novel, Brave New World. Huxley’s book, along with George Orwell’s dystopian nightmare, 1984, are practically required reading.

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SynchroMysticism

Is there an esoteric undercurrent to contemporary life? In the 21st century, the mundane monopolizes our attention. It is an understandable reaction. Banalities brutalize our senses, and the ordinary appears to tower over us like an unimaginative skyscraper in Anyplace, U.S.A. But appearances, as they say, can be deceiving.

Succinctly put, synchromysticism is postulation that below the surface of the commonplace appearance of modernity (or beneath the freakish artificiality of post-modernity), exists a vibrant network of hidden – dare we say “occult” – associations. Unremarkable interstices are punctuated at intervals by dynamic nexuses, identified – to those with eyes to see – by signs and words.

Synchromysticism can be approached as practice or theory or both. As an activity, it consists in the “reading” of culture (for example, its art, history, and socio-political goings on) to draw out latent connections – as one might scour an optical illusion looking for the picture within the picture. It’s not always clear whether we search for the big picture, as it were, or the little one. Theoretically, it might be held that the most significant aspects of the world are mise en abîme, “relegated to an abyss.” Whether this is by agency and contrivance, chance, or necessity is an open question.

~ Abramelin (7/29/2017)