“Trump’s self-aggrandizing way of talking about himself has its roots in New Thought, and it’s a type of magic thinking…”

Read the whole thing, by Charles Norman:

Your words, thoughts, and beliefs are tools and powers unto themselves that can change reality. Trump, like hundreds of rappers (including the latest hitmaker Post Malone) and millions of Americans, believes in speaking things into existence. As the mystic scholar Manly P. Hall, who was read by Ronald Reagan, wrote: “Though the demonism of the Middle Ages seems to have disappeared, there is abundant evidence that in many forms of modern thought—especially the so-called “prosperity” psychology, “willpower-building” metaphysics, and systems of “high-pressure” salesmanship—black magic has merely passed through a metamorphosis, and although its name be changed its nature remains the same.”

RELATED: Gary Lachman, author of one of my favourite books (Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius,) has a new one coming out — Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump:

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.

Oh, and he just blogged:

In other news, the latest issue of New Dawn has my piece on Jordan Petersonmania. In it I ask the philosophical question “What is Jordan B. Peterson Really Saying?,” and come to what I think are some useful answers. They may even help us get past postmodernism sooner than we think.