An edition of Occult America (2009)

Occult America

the secret history of how mysticism conquered America

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Last edited by mheiman
September 21, 2024 | History
An edition of Occult America (2009)

Occult America

the secret history of how mysticism conquered America

  • 3.0 (2 ratings) ·
  • 10 Want to read
  • 2 Have read

It touched lives as disparate as those of Frederick Douglass, Franklin Roosevelt, and Mary Todd Lincoln--who once convinced her husband, Abe, to host a seance in the White House. Americans all, they were among the famous figures whose paths intertwined with the mystical and esoteric movement broadly known as the occult. Brought over from the Old World and spread throughout the New by some of the most obscure but gifted men and women of early U.S. history, this "hidden wisdom" transformed the spiritual life of the still-young nation and, through it, much of the Western world.Yet the story of the American occult has remained largely untold. Now a leading writer on the subject of alternative spirituality brings it out of the shadows. Here is a rich, fascinating, and colorful history of a religious revolution and an epic of offbeat history.From the meaning of the symbols on the one-dollar bill to the origins of the Ouija board, Occult America briskly sweeps from the nation's earliest days to the birth of the New Age era and traces many people and episodes, including:-The spirit medium who became America's first female religious leader in 1776 -The supernatural passions that marked the career of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith -The rural Sunday-school teacher whose clairvoyant visions instigated the dawn of the New Age -The prominence of mind-power mysticism in the black-nationalist politics of Marcus Garvey-The Idaho druggist whose mail-order mystical religion ranked as the eighth-largest faith in the world during the Great Depression Here, too, are America's homegrown religious movements, from transcendentalism to spiritualism to Christian Science to the positive-thinking philosophy that continues to exert such a powerful pull on the public today. A feast for believers in alternative spirituality, an eye-opener for anyone curious about the unknown byroads of American history, Occult America is an engaging, long-overdue portrait of one nation, under many gods, whose revolutionary influence is still being felt in every corner of the globe.From the Hardcover edition.

Publish Date
Publisher
Bantam Books
Language
English

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Occult America: White House Seances, Ouija Circles, Masons, and the Secret Mystic History of Our Nation
Cover of: Occult America
Occult America
2009, Random House Publishing Group
Electronic resource in English
Cover of: Occult America
Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation
Sep 15, 2009, Blackstone Audio, Inc., Blackstone Audiobooks
mp3 cd
Cover of: Occult America
Occult America: the secret history of how mysticism conquered America
2009, Bantam Books
in English

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Book Details


Table of Contents

Introduction: What is the occult? (and what is it doing in America?)
The psychic highway
Mystic Americans
Don't try this at home : Ouija and the selling of spiritualism
The science of right thinking
The mail-order prophet
Go tell pharaoh : the rise of magic in Afro-America
The return of the "secret teachings"
New deal of the ages : politics and the occult
The masters among us
Secrets for sale
"The greatest mystic who ever lived in America"
Epilogue: Aquarius rising : the new age dawns.

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Published in
New York

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
130
Library of Congress
BF1434.U6 H67 2009

The Physical Object

Pagination
p. cm.

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL23180779M
Internet Archive
occultamericasec0000horo
ISBN 13
9780553806755
LCCN
2009009864
OCLC/WorldCat
299706517
Library Thing
8541870
Goodreads
6552924

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History

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September 21, 2024 Edited by mheiman Merge works
July 22, 2019 Edited by MARC Bot remove fake subjects
May 23, 2019 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
June 17, 2010 Edited by ImportBot add details from OverDrive
December 11, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page