{"id":1415,"date":"2009-01-08T18:53:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T18:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/01\/08\/10-questions-with-gary-lachman\/"},"modified":"2009-01-08T18:53:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-08T18:53:00","slug":"10-questions-with-gary-lachman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/01\/08\/10-questions-with-gary-lachman\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Questions with Gary Lachman"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. As I made note of in my review of your latest book Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseenyou belonged to the band Blondie and were a fixture of the New York music scene, how did Gary Valentine the rocker become Gary Lachman the writer? <\/strong>
\nI had always wanted to be a writer’ and wrote poetry before I became a musician. It was through the poetry that I became a songwriter. While in Blondie, my own and other groups, I always read philosophy, psychology, literature and so on. <\/p>\n

2. What drew you to studying occult movements and philosophies? <\/strong>
\nI became seriously interested in the study of the occult through reading Colin Wilson’s excellent book The Occult, which takes a more philosophical approach to the subject than most other similar books do.<\/p>\n

3. One thing that stands out in Politics and the Occultis the colorful cast of characters that fuelled these movements. Who are you particularly fond of and why? <\/strong>
\nIn general I was attracted to the character of Freemasonry in the late 18th century, when it was motivated by what seems a real sense of universal brotherhood without class, religious or racial distinctions, and where men and often women of like mind could meet and discuss ideas about the nature of society.<\/p>\n

4. Help me out here, is Aleister Crowley really as big of a deal as my friend’s college roommate told me he is? <\/strong>
\nCrowley is probably how most people today discover the occult. A colorful if often annoying character.<\/p>\n

5. What was one of your most surprising or entertaining discoveries made while researching Politics and the Occult? <\/strong>
\nI was disturbed by the amount of far right and anti-semitic thought that informs much of western esotericism but encouraged by the many forms of progressive occult thinking.<\/p>\n

6. Since one of these women is deceased, this is a purely hypothetical question. In a fist fight who would win, Victoria Woodhull (the first woman to run for President) or Hillary Clinton?<\/strong>
\nVictoria, I think. Women were tougher in her day.<\/p>\n

7. Who gets more groupies, rockers or authors? Or is it about quality? Do authors get a better quality of groupie verses rockers? <\/strong>
\nI don’t get many groupies these days so its hard to tell.<\/p>\n

8. What is your next project?<\/strong>
\nI’m currently working on a book about C.G. Jung.<\/p>\n

9. Are you amazed we got through this whole interview without me asking you one question about Debbie Harry?<\/strong>
\nRelieved, actually.<\/p>\n

10. Parting shot! Ask us here at The Magical Buffet any one question. <\/strong>
\nAre you open on Sundays?<\/p>\n

Thanks to the glory of the internet The Magical Buffet is here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, barring server issues.<\/em><\/p>\n

About Gary Lachman<\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/a>Gary Lachman is author of A Secret History of Consciousness, A Dark Muse, Rudolf Steiner, and other books. A founding member of the rock group Blondie, in 2006 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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<\/br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Questions with Gary Lachman, author of Politics and the Occult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}