If you are coming to Mitch Horowitz’s new book Esoterika looking for one of those modern manifestation books filled with optimism and ecstasy, brace yourself. This book is a tell-all where Horowitz deliberately abandons tired therapeutic “love and light” approaches to “life on the path”. He unapologetically and provocatively exposes a “false being” and swings around, like a “goddamn hammer” some of the most stark and abrasive ideas from thinkers like G.I. Gurdjieff right at a modern seeker’s comfort zone.

Esoterika is not a “feel-good” book. It’s a harsh read, but for a New Age culture presently drowning in toxic positivity and forced conformity, you’ll understand after reading it that this friction is entirely the point.

Horowitz has always excelled as a chronicler of the occult underground, but here, the historical curation is personal and controversial. Four elements stand out that make this book essential.

Horowitz’s sharpest critiques are aimed at insidious conformity within the modern New Age, spiritual and religious communities. He point-blank says “service is a dodge” – a distraction from doing dirty, isolating work on oneself. Forgiveness? To Horowitz it’s an unavailing practice that creates inner division. Instead, he suggests abiding a wound and using it as a deliberate goad to propel one’s own self-development.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Esoterika is Horowitz’s embrace of the Left-Hand Path and the archetype of the “Romantic Satanist.” Drawing on Friedrich Weinreb’s translation of Satan as the “disturber,” Horowitz isn’t promoting cinematic evil; rather, he is elevating the ultimate rebel against the hive mentality. It is here he brings up the point and warns this isn’t a consequence-free, edgy rebellion. This “my will be done” binds the seeker to an inescapable ledger of cosmic debt and reciprocity.

Horowitz goes on to force the reader to look at the secret pleasure they derive from their own pain, victimhood, or conflict. Drawing on the work of Vernon Howard, he exposes how negative emotions provide a “false feeling of life.” He asks a jarring, inescapable question: What do I gain from this? Am I enjoying my suffering? It is a brutal mirror to hold up, cutting straight through the ego’s defenses to expose the ways we unconsciously impel our own failures just to feel the visceral thrill of the friction.

For Neville Goddard students, Esoterika presents a fascinating intellectual collision. How does the historian who sparked the modern revival of Neville reconcile Goddard’s limitless promise that “Imagination is God” with Gurdjieff’s bleak assertion that “Man is a machine”? Horowitz bridges this gap brilliantly by resurrecting the occultist P.B. Randolph’s motto of “Try” – specifically defining it as Volantia, or quiet, steady, non-muscular will. For anyone exhausted by the frantic, desperate exertion that modern manifestation culture often demands, this historical correction is vital. It proves that relentless effort doesn’t have to mean anxious desperation.

Esoterika is a deliberate bucket of cold water. It will not coddle you. But if you are willing to face the friction, Horowitz has curated the exact, abrasive tools you need to finally dismantle the False Self.

Interview

Mitch, Neville Goddard readers owe you a huge debt of gratitude. In 2005, he was almost forgotten. You wrote an article about him in Science of Mind magazine which ultimately sparked the massive ‘Nevillelution’ that brought Neville’s teachings to the millions of people reading him today. When you published that profile on him, your boss mocked the idea like Neville used the cruelty of his drama teacher who said he would never earn a living with his voice. You write in Esoterika about friction being necessary but also mention getting away from toxic people. Looking back at your boss’s negativity, can you clarify how to discern the difference between necessary friction and walking away from toxic situations?

Mitch Horowitz: Thank you for recalling that history so vividly. Of course, the personal angle of the situation is filled with complexity–I also owe a debt to my boss without whose influence I would not have discovered many of these ideas. I think we overly fear friction. We needlessly avoid it. Friction is what drives humanity to become itself. It ignites the creative act: the wish and passion for development, expression, and selfhood. I often act out in some way that prompts me to feel remorse. But my reaction or regret is the very thing that pushes me to build a sturdier approach to life and its demands. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve said some variant of, “Never again will that occur . . .” And, in fact, I mean it–I may not succeed, but the goad of suffering is often a beautiful ignition of the creative act. It is what turned me into a writer. Every artist, every individual, wishes to be seen, to be appreciated, to express. Those things–each one of them valid–frequently have an intimate rooting in pain. We must not fear that. Allow it. Work from it. 

You wrote guides on manifestation like The Miracle Habits and Cosmic Habit Force. Now, in Esoterika, you write that our human situation is one of ‘absolute automaticity,’ and that we are sleeping machines who, at the slightest friction of daily life, lose it. You touch upon Neville’s beautiful ‘radical idealism’ but then warn seekers constantly throw away miracles when they reject the packaging they arrive in. What do you tell someone to get out of their own way and accept the channels that actually open up?

Mitch Horowitz: It seems to me that we throw away wonderful gifts all the time because they differ from our mind’s-eye picture of what ought to fit our lives or the subcultures in which we function. The search is a paradox. We live in automaticity. I consider that situation hopeless. At the same time, we are also  causative or creative agents. As such, you will receive what you want: but probably not within the conditions pictured or wanted. Be flexible. The aperture will open. Allow it. It will close–that is inevitable. Within those fleeting moments of opening, accept a gift. It may arrive in the form of an unbidden or unusual solution. Do not shun it. One of the things I attempt in the book is the throwing off of internalized conformity. We imbibe so much in the way of custom and habit that we cannot even speak honestly to ourselves within the private confines of our own psyches. Start there: be unembarrassed and exquisitely clear within. Be willing to welcome strangers, so to speak, in both thought and event. Such strangers are our alienated selves. 

You don’t pull punches in Esoterika about being ‘shitcanned’ from an organization over rumors that you were a Satanist. Instead of apologizing or softening your image, you leaned into it. You embraced the label of ‘Romantic Satanist,’ and noted that according to Jewish scholar Friedrich Weinreb (1910–1988), Satan actually translates to the ‘disturber’. New Age culture is terrified of being canceled. If a seeker wants to achieve what you call “hard liberty” how important is it to rebel against conformity?

Mitch Horowitz: I believe the seeker must follow his or her passions–otherwise, we are not searching but reciting. The seeker is often torn apart by familiarized dictums and judgments of what the search–and even its endpoint–are supposed to be. Such ideas are acclimated and familiarized by repetition. They have nothing to do with your search. For example, the notion of forgiveness as a spiritual law or imperative is a decision, whatever its vintage, made by someone else–verify it. Explore it. Consider such imperatives from your own lived experience. In the book, I attempt to peel back the layers of our hallowed religious ideas to demonstrate that many of them are culturally conditioned–and are, in fact, more modern than we realize. Other times we as a culture have neglected or reconditioned primeval ideas to such a degree that they are lost or hopelessly muddied. I use the book to decipher lost threads and to stress-test familiar ones. I encourage the seeker to do the same. 

Mitch, one of the primary targets of your hammer in Esoterika is the hypocrisy of spiritual leaders. Having worked in corporate esoteric publishing for 27 years, you note that you’ve seen ‘how the sausages get made’. You point out that many best-selling spiritual superstars are filled with the exact same rage and weakness as anyone else and hide it when the camera goes on to maintain the illusion that they are “realized.”  To shatter this theater, you dedicated a chapter in Esoterika called ‘Be, and Not Seem’ where you expose your own failings and weaknesses. Why is this performance of perfection so damaging to the everyday seeker? Why do modern occultists need transparency from their teachers?

Mitch Horowitz: A teacher of mine once joked, “The problem with New Age books is that they actually make the work seem possible.” The reason I encourage disclosure is that it deepens exchange. If a bestselling spiritual author is more revealing of his or her weakness–truly revealing, not in some ersatz manner–then it allows all of us a deeper place from which to search. But the theater of being “the man with the plan” falsely persuades readers that their favorite spiritual guide is actually developed in some way which they are not–and that isn’t true. Falsity destroys the search. I try, without morbidity, to be clear about my weaknesses. The last thing I ever want is for someone to see me as an inspirational figure. That only deepens our sleep, which is already destroying us. It also inspires mimicry. People put on shows about themselves and position themselves in ways that they are never seen by their intimates. The real mirror of self is relationships. I do not want to hear principles from some random person at a New Age center. If I must hear something from or about that person, let me hear it from their children or spouse–let them tell me whether they are in a position to dispense wisdom or judgment about me or someone else. 

Mitch, for the audience listening, we want to be transparent about why we are bringing this up today. At Cool Wisdom Books, we wanted to wait until we’d pulled every last physical text before we write a final historical report on our Abdullah research. We have a few weeks to wait for his books from the Library of Congress. But your new book, Esoterika, came out now in June, and we always try to cover your work when it touches on Neville Goddard.

There’s another reason we couldn’t wait. In Esoterika, you mention adopting P.B. Randolph’s motto ‘Try’ and his concept of Volantia as your own personal philosophy.

That stopped us in our tracks. Randolph was already heavily on our radar, because when we were analyzing the 1920s advertisements of Neville’s mentor Abdullah, we saw Randolph’s esoteric language in his curriculum.

For the audience, a brief recap of the historical research. We finally broke the case and resolved the ‘Ethiopian Rabbi’ myth from two clues in Neville’s lectures: Abdullah lived in Atlantic City at one point (‘I AM in You’, 1968) and was born in North Africa (a 1964 Q&A lecture sometimes titled ‘The Pure of Heart’).

Following those clues, we uncovered a definitive paper trail of a Lamperti-trained Williams & Walker baritone from North Africa. One important note: in 1920s Pan-Africanism, ‘Ethiopia’ (drawing from Psalm 68) wasn’t a physical birthplace, but a biblical rallying cry for the global Black diaspora.[Duncan and Bekerie]

We found this man in Atlantic City advertising applied mind control, higher psychology, and the mystery books of Moses. He lectured on Rosicrucian Theosophy and ran a spiritualist church before copyrighting music and metaphysical texts under the name G. Mahmud Ahmad Abdoullah. The recovered copyright cards of his books included a 1923 book on Applied Mind Control, and a 1935 suite of songs like “That That Is Me” and “Somewhere (Song of Trust in the Absolute)” registered directly from 30 West 72nd Street, the address where Neville studied with him.

When we shared our findings, some in the community told us the comforting myth and mystery of a gentle ‘Ethiopian rabbi’ was easier to digest than the gritty reality of a man who built a Pan-African identity under Jim Crow, performed in the Ethiopian-themed Broadway show Abyssinia, and synthesized Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Spiritualism on his ordination certificates to survive.

But that is exactly what P.B. Randolph did almost fifty years earlier. Randolph and Abdullah were both brilliant, self-styled synthesizers of the same eclectic occult current and both arrived independently at a shared, results-driven, will-based vocabulary.

Neville mentions “try it” in hundreds of lectures in our index. You discovered that tie to Randolph way back in 2018 in your book, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality. Looking now at these two brilliant, self-invented mystics, how vital is Randolph’s concept of Volantia, that “quiet, non-muscular exertion of Will” you highlight in Esoterika for a seeker trying to put the Law into practice today?

Mitch Horowitz: The search is messy and its purveyors and practitioners are rarely the respectable beings that we sometimes like to think of as corporate officers in a self-developmental business plan. The work is not a flow chart. It is a suffering, disorderly path–filled with heterodoxy, failure, setback, and continual effort. Many of its guiding lights are suffused with contradiction. I urge people to know their history–but also to experiment from that point. I do not think that walking in another’s steps–or the familiarized steps conveyed to us–will bring happiness. Happiness–which is real–is risk. If you want inspiration from our forebears, sustain risk.