I’m typing this as I watch the breaking of the US presidential election. The BBC is reporting that the race is close, but the outcome appears to be in sight and that Biden, the Democrat, will take the final victory. For the moment, the Trump era may be coming to an end, but the election has also reminded us of how deeply divided America is.

Whether the Trump era will ever be a thing of the past or not, the book I would like to introduce here is Gary Lachman’s Magic and Power in the Age of Trump (translated by Takashi Yasuda and Yoko Ozawa). The publisher is Hikaruland, known for its interesting lineup of occult and spiritual books. Nevertheless, a cursory look at the line-up reveals that the Das “Ahnenerbe” Der SS 1935-1945 (800 pages, 9,900 yen!), a voluminous study of the Nazi SS’s occult archaeological research institute, Arnen Elbe, the Nazi concept of the Aryan Empire and the science of madness, and A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith During the First World War, a masterpiece of “war ethnography/social history of war” that analyzes a number of superstitions and witchcraft in World War I Europe. Hardcore books that can’t really be kept hidden.

Dark Star Rising: Magic and Power in the Age of Trump, which we’ll be discussing in this article, is one such black-and-white book, but still (?) that’s quintessential Hikaruland, and it’s not a simple matter. This book is about exposing the great underground vein of Western esoteric occultism that is behind the global rise of the alternative right and populism, symbolized by the Trump whirlwind. Yet the author does not, of course, subscribe to the usual occult conspiracy theories. The author does not give up his consistent stance of trying to empirically trace the esoteric currents behind Trump’s rise to power.

For example, behind Trump’s seemingly megalomaniacal confidence in his “victory” (he says in his autobiography, “I am a competitive man and I will do almost anything within the bounds of the law to win,”) there is the positive thinking that he was fascinated by from his youth. There was the influence of the Reverend Peel, who was a proponent of and rooted in the “New Thought” movement (a spiritual movement based on the doctrine that “thought can directly affect reality,”) and from there, the Italian Renaissance revival of the magical nature of mind and reality. You can find the origin of occult ideas such as Hermesology.　

You will have to read the book to understand the detailed genealogical reasoning. The number of people who appear in this book is enormous: René Guénon, Julius Evola, Aleister Crowley, Neville Goddard, Rudolf Steiner, and Alexandre Dugin, to name but a few. The author is not, of course, capable of unraveling the rhizome of complex genealogies and organizing them compactly. Nevertheless, I would like to add that the abundance of information on Julius Evola was a boon to me personally. The reason being that there is still very little written in Japanese about this monstrous Italian esoteric philosopher of the 20th century, who is said to have inspired the alternative right wing. In my opinion, it is impossible to fully understand the contemporary alternative right-wing currents without knowledge of Evola. For this reason alone, this book is invaluable.