Dark Star Rising

Magick and Power in the Age of Trump

By: Gary Lachman

Narrated by: Jason Culp

Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

Within the concentric circles of Trump's regime lies an unseen culture of occultists, power-seekers, and mind-magicians whose influence is on the rise. In this unparalleled account, historian Gary Lachman examines the influence of occult and esoteric philosophy on the unexpected rise of the alt-right.

Did positive thinking and mental science help put Donald Trump in the White House? And are there any other hidden powers of the mind and thought at work in today's world politics? In Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, historian and cultural critic Gary Lachman takes a close look at the various magical and esoteric ideas that are impacting political events across the globe. From New Thought and Chaos Magick to the far-right esotericism of Julius Evola and the Traditionalists, Lachman follows a trail of mystic clues that involve, among others, Norman Vincent Peale, domineering gurus and demagogues, Ayn Rand, Pepe the Frog, Rene Schwaller de Lubicz, synarchy, the Alt-Right, meme magic, and Vladimir Putin and his postmodern Rasputin. Come take a drop down the rabbit hole of occult politics in the twenty-first century and find out the post-truths and alternative facts surrounding the 45th President of the United States with one of the leading writers on esotericism and its influence on modern culture.

©2018 Gary Lachman (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

A revelatory work

Absolutely amazing stuff. Brilliant synthesis of complicated ideas. I can’t recommend this book enough. Read it now.

Not what I expected but great

This book is a history lesson that leads the reader to understand how “thoughts are things“ became a way of thinking that led to the election of Trump. it doesn’t criticize but rather offers insight to the “whys”

good read

takes the author a while to make his points but this is in many ways frightening and fascinating!

An interesting exploration of our times

This was quite an engaging listen though I am not completely sure if it proves there is much occultism in the Trump phenomena beyond the influence of positive thinking gurus. I am also not sure if any of us really understands Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory, including the author, or if there is any occultism connected to it other than very thin connections to the ideas of Julius Evola. But it certainly was a fun adventure in speculation and possibilities as well as a good companion to Lachman’s “Lost Knowledge of the Imagination.” The narrator kept the journey exciting.

Memes and Propaganda Creating a Reality that is Trump

Chaos Magick is what we are seeing reflected back in social media, confusion and a grasping for certainty that attaches one’s “I” to a conspiracy that attempts to bring us back to coherence.

Gary Lachman reveals the hidden, or esoteric will that is at work among the strategists and political leaders of both the United States and Russia. The esoteric and occult roots of both Trump’s and Putin’s strategists/propagandists should be alarming to listeners of this audio book.

It appears that Trump is the simulacrum who has jumped from “reality tv” to the “world stage” and like the creature from stranger things will draw any energy he can to himself to proclaim himself as winner of the most powerful game on earth. This appears to be what is happening.

This is not a book on “Donald Trump,” the man. This book is about the ideas and philosophy that would nominate a Trump, an apocalyptic revealing of where “post modernism” in the west is today.

Gary Lachman’s best narrator thus far.

Blind Eyed Boomers

Boomers just don't get it. It's a shame that generation really had that "conspiracy theory" brainwashing drilled in and actually still trust mainstream media. It's clear Lachman is intelligent and informed, but the HUGE blindspot due to his rigid political paradigm is jaw dropping. The classic "Left=Intelligent/Diverse/Artistic" and "Right=Ignorance/White/War" analysis of the two parties is dead. This isn't the 60's, or hell even the 00's anymore. You have Globalists and Nationalists (not ethnic, but civil). People that love our country, and it's melting pot nature, but respect the structure it's built on, or the no-borders, lets all homogenize and forget our cultures, NWO Globalists. Richard Spencer is a plant, just as much as I think AOC may be. They're extreme puppets used to polarize the political landscape so nothing gets done. I witnessed the meme wars of 16' and have personally never listened to a word Richard Spencer, or any "white nationalist" for that matter, has said. The ALT-RIGHT is a MEME within itself to prevent people from listening to anyone with that label. Trump happens to be the first, no bullshit, love America President we've had in my lifetime. You should rewrite this book praising him.

Question Raising and Informative narrative of a global wave of mystic Trumpism, or Duginism.

I really enjoyed this book, as it dove into what I think it one of the most underappreciated and telling aspects of Trump’s personality; his reliance upon Positive Thinking, which manifests in his unbending insistence upon his strong self-image and self-empowering view of events, often directly in the face of facts to the contrary. The book also expands beyond Trump to other, international movements like in Russia, which both seem similar to Trumpism at a glance, and, in Lachman’s telling, mysteriously emerge from similar roots.

One additional, kind of unrelated, thing I wanted to say about this book, and about Gary’s writing and political perspective: Priot to this book, I read his Politics and the Occult, and a little of his “The Return of Holy Russia.”

I expected Politics and the Occult to simply address areas of modern politics where occultism is most apparent, but, iirc, it was mostly a history of Western Occultism, framed within an attempt to disprove the notion apparently common in academia that occultism and mysticism are intrinsically Right-Wing, Reactionary, and Fascistic. “No!” the book says. There is a wider and more nuanced political gamut to magic.

It was worth reading, like this book. And I personally believe that the “Left” is very well represented among believers in magic, and always has been. But when reading his books, I can’t shake the sense that Gary is not actually very interested in left-wing ideas or “left-wing occultism,” or not nearly as interested as he is in that which seems to lean rightwardly.

Perhaps his Academic upbringing has made the right more of an issue to address and study? Perhaps Gary is more interested in the right as it seems more immediately concerning to him, and he feels that he has enough basic insight into what it’s all about on that side? Perhaps I am too polarized to the left, and Gary actually presents an evenhanded, meta-political centrism, and I simply hear his rightward allusions more than not?

I don’t know. I think he actually his mystical Overton window is actually right of center at least. I agree with him that mysticism and magic are not intrinsically traditionalist, masculinist, or fascist, but I do think that he is more of a traditionalist at heart than he is therian cyber witch. But he’s also significantly a historian, so that may explain the past-orientation, too.

You will not be disappointed.

Gary Lachman’s level of research and storytelling is phenomenal in this book. Three years on from when it was written it’s only ripened in relevance- an achievement in itself.

A Novel Dissection of The Western Politics

Dark Star Rising is an interesting dissection of the West's current political climate through the lens of magical thought. I believe that contextualizing the rise of the Alt-Right and the decline of empiricism through chaos magic and the history of Traditionalist though hives a novel viewpoint that one very seldom sees in political dissection. Unfortunately, the analysis sometimes gets a bit bogged down by it's own philosophical analysis and doesn't quite hit the mark with it's relation back to modern Politics, but it's an interesting read none-the-less.

Thorough and fascinating

Lachman is a scholar and he shows the thread of cultural thinking and drops the names of authors and luminaries who inform his narrative.