{"id":5666,"date":"2013-06-20T17:10:51","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T23:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5666"},"modified":"2013-06-20T17:10:51","modified_gmt":"2013-06-20T23:10:51","slug":"vril-its-the-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5666","title":{"rendered":"Vril: It’s the Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before there was Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land<\/em><\/a> or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress<\/em><\/a>, water-sharing, grokking, TANSTAAFL, and line marriage, there was Edward Bulwer-Lytton and The Coming Race<\/em>, published in 1871.<\/p>\n

As Egil Asprem recently noted in a blog post titled “The (all too) secret history of\u00a0Vril<\/a>,”<\/p>\n

It is astonishing how much of modern occultism is dependent on works of fiction. The machinations of secret societies, the malicious rituals of satanic cults, and the magicians\u2019 adventures on the astral plane have all been portrayed in great detail in works of fiction, which have in turn directly influenced the creation of real organisations and inspired new ritual practices among self-styled occultists. The entire current of Rosicrucian initiatory societies even had its main impetus in a text considered by its authors to be a playful\u00a0ludibrium \u2014 <\/em>although no doubt one that expressed deep convictions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before there was Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, water-sharing, grokking, TANSTAAFL, and line marriage, there was Edward Bulwer-Lytton and The Coming Race, published in 1871. As Egil Asprem recently noted in a blog post titled “The (all too) secret history of\u00a0Vril,” It is astonishing how much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[216,39],"class_list":["post-5666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-literature","tag-occultism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1to","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7119,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7119","url_meta":{"origin":5666,"position":0},"title":"Links: Exorcists, Vampires, Shamans, and the New Gothic","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"So many links, so little time to comment. Pick one, two, or three of these to read. Mix and match. Fill your plate. Come back for more. \u2022 Sexy vampires threaten Catholic youth, thus encouraging \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 \"dabbling.\" \u2022 Witchy craft: I am building these. \u2022 Another\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.independent.co.uk\/incoming\/article10174021.ece\/alternates\/w460\/v2-21-True-Blood.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1278,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1278","url_meta":{"origin":5666,"position":1},"title":"Our Secret Order Will Rule the Empire","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"What is it with secret societies and magical orders in the movies these days? The Da Vinci Code. National Treasure: Book of Secrets. . . I could go on.Now M. and I are back from watching the new Sherlock Holmes, which felt like \"screenplay by Dan Brown and Dion Fortune,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":662,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=662","url_meta":{"origin":5666,"position":2},"title":"Waiting for Euro-porn","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 9, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Euro-porn\" is my new cinematic category, although really, it's just \"Gothic\" in the 18th-century sense dressed up.The Da Vinci Code is Euro-porn, of course. It's got ancient buildings like you won't find in strip-mall America, secret Catholic societies, and layers of corruption that Karl Rove could only dream of.Well, there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4212,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4212","url_meta":{"origin":5666,"position":3},"title":"Pentagram Pizza for May 15, 2012","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 At The Allergic Pagan, a three-part series on Neopaganism in America (link goes to the third part) with a lot of \"whatever happened to?\". \u2022 Jason Pitzl-Waters uses the reunion of the band Dead Can Dance (one of my favorites) to look back at the history of Pagan music.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/pentagrampizza1-126x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":798,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=798","url_meta":{"origin":5666,"position":4},"title":"New Pomegranate Contents","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In the rush of travel and then preparing for the spring semester, I forgot to post the contents of the latest issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies (Volume 8, no. 2, Nov. 2006).So here is what's happening in Pagan Studies:\"Santeria Sacrificial Rituals: A Reconsideration of Religious\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6347,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6347","url_meta":{"origin":5666,"position":5},"title":"‘Weird Tales,’ Hex Signs, and Folklore","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Joe Laycock examined the mythologies behind True Detective. (I have not seen it, being much the same situation as Jason Pitzl-Waters.) Religion scholar Philip Jenkins has suggested these two sources\u2014contemporary Satanic Panic and the \u201cweird tales\u201d of pulp horror\u2014are connected.\u00a0He suggests that it was the weird tales authors of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"folklore\"","block_context":{"text":"folklore","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=folklore"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5666"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5669,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666\/revisions\/5669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}