Visiting my childhood home in Bellerose, Queens.

Please join us for the launch event on Summer Solstice, Sunday, June 21, 7 pm, at TV Eye in NYC. SPECIAL GUEST: fine artist John Newsom will be displaying his original cover art "Esoterika" (pencil, 60 x 44 inches) and will talk about its creation. RSVP free: eventim.us/event/mitch-horow…

"Do not grow fascinated with people who dislike you. It is a universal of human nature that we project our insecurities onto what we cannot have, including relationships and approval, hence elevating their perceived value." Esoterika. amazon.com/Esoterika-Formula…

"Anything that places an immediate demand on the individual is a metaphor. Anything that’s doctrinal is literal. [Laughs] That’s human nature." This week on Range and Basin, a detour from music writing to make way for a talk with @MitchHorowitz. Read: jasonpwoodbury.substack.com/…

@MitchHorowitz offers exceptional commentary on The Unexplained with William Shatner season 1 episode 5 on @HISTORY! New episode tonight at 8pm central.

I recently learned of the death of spiritual author and teacher Jean Houston (May 10, 1937-May 16, 2026). Jean, whom I published in the early 2000s, popularized key tenets of the human-potential movement, a branch of alternative spirituality that emphasizes self-knowledge, intentional living, and peak methods of creativity and expression. When I knew her, Jean was also tormented by mistreatment in the mainstream media. She was smeared for conducting “séances” with Hillary Clinton in the White House during Bill Clinton’s first term in 1996 and dubbed “Hillary’s Guru.” The story—nascent though not sensationalized by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post—eventually grew distorted and exaggerated, nudged along by a June 25, 1996, New York Times article: “Performing Seances? No, Just ‘Pushing the Membrane of the Possible.’” First some background, because I knew both of Hillary Clinton’s reputed “gurus” from the era. It is not widely remembered, but during Bill Clinton’s first term (1993-1997), the first lady was depicted as something of a New Agey figure in the media. This was cemented by a New York Times Magazine cover story headlined “Saint Hillary” by Michael Kelly on May 23, 1993. At the time, Clinton was talking with a leftwing rabbi and activist, Michael Lerner (1943-2024), for whom I worked after college. Michael coined the term “politics of meaning,” which Clinton used in at least one of her speeches. Michael was interested in investing politics with questions of self-­worth and the search for higher aims. The media predictably called him “Hillary’s Guru” or “Hillary’s Rasputin,” perceptions he never cultivated. A greater sensation arose around Clinton’s White House meetings with Jean, who I knew about four years later. They spent time together while Clinton was writing her 1996 book It Takes a Village. They held creativity sessions where Jean asked Clinton to conduct an imaginary conversation with Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the first lady’s heroes. A dialogue with Gandhi also emerged . . . mitchhorowitz.substack.com/p…

For twenty years or so, I have made my personal email available on my website. The same email used by family members, the gas company, and spam mills. People send me questions all the time. They often hear back. For questioners, my website has a link to “buy me a coffee.” It is routinely ignored. I usually—not always—reply anyway. People wonder, “Don’t you hear from a lot of crazies?” Hardly ever. Here is a secret: Hostility does not believe in itself—it just wants an audience. People who vent over social media virtually never write to me, even though my attention is near-guaranteed; even though a personal reply—if they conduct themselves reasonably—is likely. Because—they do not believe what they are saying. They simply wish to position themselves with authority and attract negative appreciation. Why do so many authors, journalists, politicians, and media personas make themselves difficult to reach? I ask that not rhetorically but earnestly. I already know what they tell themselves: I’ll get buried. For the reasons I cite, they are wrong. So—what do they really think? I think it is fear and lack of accountability, in many cases at least . . . mitchhorowitz.substack.com/p…

Miguel is 80% of the way there. Please take it home. @AeonByte gofund.me/fc686e44c

I have described this book as a psychological grimoire. It is something else. Without so intending, I have written a manifesto of the lefthand path. I use the term lefthand path in its modern, colloquial form. Lefthand practices are rooted in Vedism, tantra, and Buddhism as siddhis or bodily powers. In modern parlance, lefthand philosophy or spirituality is based in protean selfhood, individualism, and embrace of human will. Its motto, in my working, is: Try. I know what it means to change a diaper and sit up all night with a sick child. I care for and protect people. I support people financially. So—keep your self-inflated fantasies of how the world should work. Life is debt, broadly defined. I pay in conduct. Not words. In Esoterika, my words—and my conduct—illuminate one aim: life is self-expression. In its absence, the psyche withers. Life, too, is relationship. You must escape cruelty, or nothing is possible. Esoterika shines a klieg light on such paths. It reveals where we fail to look—in the places where we are lost. The result is astringency—with a great wish for your happiness. Esoterika is out June 16 in print, digital, and audio. Your preorders matter: amazon.com/Esoterika-Formula… x Please join us for the launch event on Summer Solstice, Sunday, June 21, 7 p.m., at TV Eye in NYC. SPECIAL GUEST: fine artist John Newsom will be displaying his original cover art "Esoterika" (pencil, 60 x 44 inches) and will talk about its creation. RSVP free: eventim.us/event/mitch-horow…

PLEASE HELP OUT MY FRIEND AND ONE OF THE GREATEST INDEPENDENT SHOW HOSTS OF OUR TIME, Miguel Conner of Aeon Byte Gnostic. gofund.me/245d23b04

This is a first, and I need your help. Other options for support below: Cash app: $MiguelConner8 Venmo: @miguelconner PayPal: miguel_o_conner@hotmail.com Bitcoin: 3Lzo2jEEf7jdHppGFThhGXpai5sAjStRuT gofund.me/6117718e9

Those of you who know @AeonByte know what he has meant to the search and as a friend. Please support him now. gofund.me/29c269808

I got my start @coasttocoastam in April 2005 discussing occult philosophy. I never forgot it. I return tonight at 1 a.m. ET to talk about my new Esoterika (June 16). Join us--call in. coasttocoastam.com/show/2026…

It occurred to me: my outlook has been wrong in connection with pursuing worldly ends and inner aims. Not in wish but approach, which is active. Colloquial wisdom teaches activity. Esoteric wisdom teaches passivity. Passivity is to receive. I ask that you live with this idea and not over define it. Or place it, as impulse dictates, into the template of: “in other words . . .” or “it’s like . . .” or find some quote to approximate it. The mind destroys ideas. Emotion fears inexactness. Mentality then fosters a recipe—lifeless and without transmission or nourishment. Mind in isolation is a destructive element. Ideas require the psyche—mind / emotion—and the body. The laboratory of transmutation is the fleeting experience of the whole . . . open.substack.com/pub/mitchh…

From Jack London’s 1904 novel of ideas, The Sea-Wolf: “On this sea a storm might blow up at any moment and destroy us. And yet I was unafraid. I was without confidence in the future, extremely doubtful, and yet I felt no underlying fear. It must come right, it must come right, I repeated to myself over and over again.” In this, America’s Tolstoy captures my philosophy—some would not call it a philosophy at all so much as an emotional impulse. But it spells into a philosophy: the power of intent. It is a fitful and incomplete power—but no less real. Intention is at the back of—or contrasts to—every ethical, magickal, and existential philosophy, including Stoical or Vedic acceptancy. In short: can the psyche—an amalgam of thought and emotion—evince more than psychological, or motor-cognitive, agency? Is it a causative element? For me, the considered answer is a yes. But a yes conditioned by myriad laws and forces. The spiritual—or extra-physical—nature of intent is our topic, in practical and historical terms, at this unprecedented five-day exploratory workshop at the Omega Institute in July. No one, me included, will emerge unchanged. Join us. Info, welcome video, registration: eomega.org/mind-magick portrait by Sante D'Orazio poster by @joshhyde666

With sons Toby (left) and Caleb and wife Jacqueline in Brooklyn. 🖤

Esoterika takes seriously your wishes. You will feel that from its opening lines to its last. It is rightly serious in so doing. But this comes at a cost. The cost is viewing life with a yes and a no, without which it is impossible to have real ideals. In so doing, this book is—at times—astringent. It asks you to avoid depletion that we needlessly experience by projecting our ideals onto people and situations that cannot sustain them. Life is relationship. We maintain too many. Like wood on a fire not allowed to breathe. A confession: I am too tough in this book. I say more than I should. But I do so with awareness that the hour is late. Halfway measures are insufficient to reverse the repeat note of life. Nothing can reverse it; but—we can and must function better within its passive current, which is also a receiving current. Receive this message and you will be happier. By which I mean: in right relationship to life. Therein lies the power you seek. Esoterika is out June 16 in print, digital, and audio. Your preorders matter: amazon.com/Esoterika-Formula… Please join us for the launch event on Summer Solstice, Sunday, June 21, 7 p.m., at @tveyenyc. SPECIAL GUEST: fine artist John Newsom will be displaying his original cover art "Esoterika" (pencil, 60 x 44 inches) and will talk about its creation. RSVP (free): eventim.us/event/mitch-horow… With great warmth: Portrait by Sante D'Orazio Poster by @joshhyde666

Friends please join me Monday night @coasttocoastam where I am discussing my forthcoming Esoterika. Coast gave me my start in 2005. coasttocoastam.com/show/2026…

This short interview clarifies a great deal about me, my work, and my relations to the various thought strands I engage. jweekly.com/2023/11/16/qa-th…

There is no confluence of evil and occultism. Evil is the polarity of ethics furthest from empathy. It exists in the human psyche. And in mobs or mob mentalities—which are not human. They are mechanical. Evil manifests through spite or pleasure derived from witnessing or inflicting pain. It rejects debt, broadly defined. Evil exists too, in direct indifference to suffering. I write direct because none of us can claim full awareness or sensitivity toward suffering—hence, we are all in debt. This indifference appears in both individuals and institutions, such as systematized coding procedures used by health insurers to deny treatment. Evil dwells in cubicles—or rather those who mandate behavior emanating from cubicles. I hesitate to blame the downstream actor. If I blame any actor, let it be me. I have not lately looked at the health-insurer stocks sitting in my index fund. Let me be judged by it. If you wish to study evil, and cannot bring yourself to look within, look at institutions like that just referenced—they are far closer to your daily experience than historical, mythical, or lurid examples sought in ultimacy. Such examples—like news events—are often real. But: for most of us, most of the time, their citation amounts to avoidance of the mundane evils we hourly encounter and sustain, including frivolous debasement that runs riot over digital culture. We look to things that cleanse us by their distance. Where evil exists, there must—by the law of polarities—coexist justice or reciprocity. But here matters grow complicated. Is justice, as colloquially used, any more than a mental idea? I ask because I cannot see with perspective. I cannot witness a life deformed or circumstances that degrade personal helplessness or loneliness into coarse emotion, or lack of empathy, conditions which I believe some beings temperamentally enter this world with. Nor can I witness the arc of restitution, which may be impossibly long, complex, and varied. That arc—not my self-perceived wound or objection—is justice. In this, I describe the classical karmic viewpoint found in most Vedic philosophy, and ably echoed in the work of Nietzsche. The Idealist master writes in Beyond Good and Evil in 1886: “One has to repay good and ill—but why precisely to the person who has done us good or ill?” (Walter Kaufmann trans., 1966) One immediately wants to argue with Nietzsche’s indifference to the object of payment. Yet—we do not argue with good tidings unbidden or unpaid for. Karma requires consistency. And sometimes fearful symmetry. Given what I have written, is the individual paralyzed to act in the direction of restitution—not so much to judge but to measure? I cannot strip the sensitive being of that rare agency. Or its justice . . . mitchhorowitz.substack.com/p…