Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 1988 Page 103
particularly good at showing the inroads of New Age thinking in the ordinary affairs of American
life.
Unholy Spirits is a very different book. This fat tome, originally published 10 years ago under
another title, has now been brought up to date with a good deal of fresh material. The first
chapter alone, ―The Crisis of Western Rationalism‖ is worth half the price of admission. The bulk
of Unholy Spirits is taken up with extended treatments of some of the weirder aspects of the
movement. North has read his Edgar Cayce, Carlos Castaneda, the androgyny propaganda, the
meticulously documented and filmed instances of occult healing, Kirlian photographs, and so on.
He has refused to get caught in the Kantian trap. Having rejected the old rationalism, now
breaking up on the rocks, he also sees the disaster wrought by the mystical void. He‘s done that
by finding common ground for the worlds of flesh and spirit, a unifying conception for the One
and the Many. And he finds it the same place Groothius does -in the orthodox Christian faith.
As the century wears on, that faith may once again resemble an embattled sect struggling against
the forces of a bizarre and sometimes brutal pantheism.
*This review is reprinted, with permission, from Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture,
April 1987.
This article is an electronic version of an article originally published in Cultic Studies Journal, 1988, Volume 5., Number 1,
pages 140-144. Please keep in mind that the pagination of this electronic reprint differs from that of the bound volume.
This fact could affect how you enter bibliographic information in papers that you may write.
particularly good at showing the inroads of New Age thinking in the ordinary affairs of American
life.
Unholy Spirits is a very different book. This fat tome, originally published 10 years ago under
another title, has now been brought up to date with a good deal of fresh material. The first
chapter alone, ―The Crisis of Western Rationalism‖ is worth half the price of admission. The bulk
of Unholy Spirits is taken up with extended treatments of some of the weirder aspects of the
movement. North has read his Edgar Cayce, Carlos Castaneda, the androgyny propaganda, the
meticulously documented and filmed instances of occult healing, Kirlian photographs, and so on.
He has refused to get caught in the Kantian trap. Having rejected the old rationalism, now
breaking up on the rocks, he also sees the disaster wrought by the mystical void. He‘s done that
by finding common ground for the worlds of flesh and spirit, a unifying conception for the One
and the Many. And he finds it the same place Groothius does -in the orthodox Christian faith.
As the century wears on, that faith may once again resemble an embattled sect struggling against
the forces of a bizarre and sometimes brutal pantheism.
*This review is reprinted, with permission, from Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture,
April 1987.
This article is an electronic version of an article originally published in Cultic Studies Journal, 1988, Volume 5., Number 1,
pages 140-144. Please keep in mind that the pagination of this electronic reprint differs from that of the bound volume.
This fact could affect how you enter bibliographic information in papers that you may write.
