Thank you Chas.

Here's something to read:  http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/cat50.html

I do not know what LS means by "a sedition theory of history" -- that
shorthand phrase lacks clarity for me.  I suppose it could mean that the
modernists commonly held the opinion that voices of dissent tend to get
suppressed?  There's ample evidence of that. It was possible in the early
middle ages in Europe to be flogged to within an inch of one's life or
executed outright (after a little torture) for teaching "heresies" about
free will versus predestination.  And Galileo had a bit of a hard time
finding university teaching opportunities after contradicting Aristotle's
position on the speed of fall. Eventually the Church commanded his Dialogue
to be burned. Things were subtler in the dawn of the age of mass
communication.  Wyndham Lewis writes about a conspiracy of silence: his
books were not given bad reviews they simply were not reviewed at all.
(Wyndham Lewis has some interesting things to say about Hitler and the
Occult, BTW.) Augustus John's portrait of the poet Roy Campbell has been
hidden in the basement of the Museum of Art in Pittsburgh for more than
half a century; it has never been on display as far as I have been able to
ascertain.

With respect to Pound, when LS writes "a belief in the power of poetry to
communicate revelations of ultimately reality" [I assume that's your typo
for "ultimate reality"] he could be referring to Pound's "busting out of
the quotidian". If so, I would agree with him on that. But this revelatory
power has always been wielded by Art that is essentially (not
superficially) mythical. Cocteau's films 'Orpheus' and 'Beauty and the
Beast' come immediately to mind. Sandro Botticelli's paintings.

In my view, Pound describes the clash as occurring between the "Occult", as
represented by Judeo-Xianity, and the "Real" as represented by Art.
Tim Romano

At 10:58 PM 1/30/03 -0500, charles moyer wrote:
>Tim,
>     Perhaps this will help explain the use and misuse of "occult" in B of M.
>
>from p.11 amazing honesty-
>  "If we were to call our subject Perennial Philosophy, Gnosticism,
>Neoplatonism, or Hermeticism, some of the contempt and fear prompted by the
>label 'occult' might be allayed, for these terms isolate the occult from
>ghosts, poltergeists, witches, vampires, werewolves, and the like."
>     Then in order to understand the far-reaching range of the  "occult"
>  from p.45
>     "As with Nietzscheanism, the occult finds adherents across the whole
>political spectrum, from conservative authoritarians to revolutionary
>anarchists. A case in point is the admiration that Allen Ginsberg, a
>left-wing Jewish poet, maintains for the right-wing and anti-Semitic Ezra
>Pound. Despite these differences, they share a sedition theory of history
>and culture, and a belief in the power of poetry to communicate revelations
>of ultimately reality."
>
>     Then for an utterly and fantastically strained association
>  p.30
>     "A two volume expansion of "The Golden Bough" was published in 1900,
>and the great twelve-volume expansion appeared between 1911 and 1915. It
>was this expanded version that was read by Eliot and his contemporaries. An
>abridged edition appeared in 1922 - which coincidentally was also the year
>of publication of "Ulysses" and "The Waste Land", and of Mussolini's march
>on Rome which ushered in the "era fascista".


>     Is there an "occult" connection between these events?