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Abstract: Abstract This tome is both a “solar” dissertation and a “lunar” grimoire that performs its own argument. Adepts of Modernism argues that the infamous “little magazines” of modernism conjured their own enlightened, reading “counter-publics” by exploiting the same strategies and tactics of initiation and exclusion mobilized in occult circles. Figures from the literary and occult spheres from the Fin de Siècle and through the Great War converge in a network of adeptship. The magazines in this network disseminate knowledge from the occult “wisdom tradition” and share a common adept attitude that sets them apart from the public and the exoteric, mainstream media they consume. Chapter 1 analyzes The Little Review and shows how Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap’s editorial posture of insouciance reflects their initial commitment to both anarchism and esotericism, culminating in a thwarted mystical anarchism. A comparison of memoirs by Huntly Carter and Algernon Blackwood reveals how, for this magazine, poetry and spirituality go hand in hand. Chapter 2 focuses on co-editors of The Egoist, Dora Marsden and Harriet Shaw Weaver, along with Leonard A. Compton-Rickett, Richard Aldington, H. D., and Ezra Pound. These figures have a complex, ambivalent relationship with mysticism, but their common investment in individualism and an elitist, exclusive, classical modernism holds them together. Olivia Shakespear’s translation of the occult story, Le Comte de Gabalis, embodies these investments. Chapter 3 considers the distinct “presentative” style of The New Age magazine in relation to editor A. R. Orage’s mystical socialism. A series of articles by Florence Farr provides a feminist corrective to Orage’s masculinist “brilliant common sense.” This idiosyncratic, “Luciferian” socialism appeals to an audience of modernists, Fabians, and occultists alike, and its threads lead back to the great French magus, Eliphas Lévi. Chapter 4 examines Aleister Crowley’s Equinox in the context of modernist periodical culture. The Equinox is most committed to occult subjects and offers readers a course of study and a method of self-initiation. Esoteric literature, in the form of a magical diary and a short story, “The Dream Circean,” complements Crowley’s formal program of initiation and blurs the boundaries between objective and subjective ‘reality.’ Chapter 5 shows how Lucifer magazine, edited by H. P. Blavatsky and Mabel Collins, utilizes the same techniques of occult initiation replicated in the modernist little magazines that followed, thus revealing a continuity of esoteric editorial practice from the Fin de Siècle through the Great War. Blavatsky’s controversial “Luciferian” editorials and Collins’s serialized esoteric novella, “The Blossom and the Fruit,” exemplify the adept attitude that inspired subsequent generations of adept writers. Adepts of Modernism concludes with a personal reflection on occult pedagogy before outlining the legacy of these magical magazines and gesturing towards some new directions for future research.

In October and November of 1910 seven one-act plays were produced at Caxton Hall, Westminster, London, under the collective title The Rites of Eleusis. These public productions were as much an experiment in audience and performer psychology as they were an exotic entertainment. Written, produced and directed by leading cast member, Aleister Crowley, The Rites of Eleusis attempted to present a contemporary interpretation of an ancient myth in order to reignite the role and importance of mysticism in modern society. Through exposing the audience to a variety of sensory stimuli such as incense, rhythmic music, dance, and poetry, it attempted to create within the audience itself an altered state of consciousness which would make them co-celebrants within the performance/ritual. As Crowley stated in the original broadsheet advertisements for the productions, the Rites were intended “to illustrate the magical methods followed by a mystical society which seeks for illumination by ecstasy.” But Crowley intended much more: he hoped the audience would not merely view an “illustration,” but experience an actual state of “ecstasy.” for “self-development” not only to the performers onstage, but also to the spectators. This experiment to recreate not only the “performer-priests” of antiquity but to include the audience as a part of the production foreshadowed the later work of theatre anthropologists and theorists such as Richard Schechner, and serves to illustrate one of the first attempts in the twentieth century to consciously create a psychological connection between theatrical and religious practice within the western hegemonic society. A close reading of the first Rite demonstrates that there are specific occult motivations for every artistic decision reflected in the actual productions. Thus, the position in which performers are discovered at the opening of a rite is not merely an aesthetic choice, but is also reflective of specific criteria established by qabalistic, astrological, or other occult requirements. The costumes and properties used within the Rites are also dictated by deeper symbolism. The appearance of performativity in a religious or worshipful context is repetitive throughout history, and time after time it is spirituality that gives birth to the drama, rather than spirituality evolving from a performative context