Something Wicked This Way Comes: The ultimate ambition of the Golden Dawn’s adepts was to utilise the “magical imagination” – a process which involved “visualising a desired reality”, concentrating one’s will on it, “moulding its form in astral light” and bringing it, finally, into “the plainest physical reality”. As a description of the process that saw neoliberalism imposed upon the world, this is pretty good. (Assuming, of course, that the mass media counts as “astral light”!)
THERE’S A LOT OF INSPIRATION to be found in waiting rooms.
At my dentist’s, just the other day, I discovered a veritable treasure-trove in
Greg Roughan’s extraordinary contribution to the March 2016 edition of North & South magazine – “Bewitched
in the Bay”.
Much to its dismay, Havelock North is now inextricably
linked with campylobacter poisoning. There was a time, however, when this
well-heeled Hawke’s Bay village was regarded as “the Vatican” of esoteric
spirituality.
According to Robert S. Ellwood, author of Islands of the Dawn: The Story of
Alternative Spirituality in New Zealand, at least one American adept is
said to have declared: “If you want to hear Elizabethan English, you go to
Appalachia; if you want to see what the original Golden Dawn was like, you go
to New Zealand.”
And, yes, he is talking about that Golden Dawn, or,
to give it its full title, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This
late-nineteenth century British-based occult society will forever be associated
with the “wickedest man in the world” and self-proclaimed Beast of the Book of
Revelation, Aleister Crowley; and, somewhat more respectably, with the
celebrated Irish poet, William Butler Yeats. Roughan’s fascinating article,
inspired in part by Ellwood’s book, retells the story of how, long after the
original Golden Dawn collapsed amidst scandal and recrimination, its colonial
Hawke’s Bay offshoot went on practicing “magick” well into the 1970s.
Roughan’s revelations got me thinking about two other
imported belief systems which took off and thrived in New Zealand long after
their offshore inspirations had faded – or disappeared altogether. The first of
these was “social credit” – the esoteric monetary theory formulated by the
British engineer, Clifford Hugh (“Major”) Douglas. The second, forever
associated with another Douglas, is the extraordinarily pure (some would say
extreme) variant of free-market economics which took root here in the 1980s.
Neoliberalism, as it is now known, has thrived in New Zealand ever since. To
the point where, like gorse, it has driven both its native and exotic
competitors into the shade.
Social Credit never really took off in Great Britain but,
like the magick of the Golden Dawn, it possessed sufficient power to spellbind
colonials. In Canada and New Zealand, particularly, social credit-inspired
political movements exerted considerable influence over domestic politics –
principally during the 1930s. For many years, the Canadian provincial
government of Alberta was dominated by social creditors, and several MPs in the
First Labour Government (1935-1949) were vocal advocates.
With the widespread adoption of the expansionary economic
ideas of John Maynard Keynes by progressive post-World War II governments, the
numbers following social credit’s monetary theories began to dwindle. In New
Zealand, however, the movement refused to die.
In 1953, despairing of ever again wielding influence in a
major political party, the social creditors reconstituted themselves as the
Social Credit Political League. At its first electoral outing in 1954 the
League secured 11 percent of the popular vote (an extremely creditable result
by today’s MMP standards) and immediately became New Zealand’s third party. At
the peak of its popularity in 1981, Social Credit’s share of the popular vote
rose to an astonishing 21 percent.
By 1987, however, New Zealanders were under the spell of a
much more potent variety of monetarist magick. Curiously, the policy
prescription which became known as “Rogernomics” (after Roger Douglas, the
Labour finance minister who drove it forward) may be traced to another esoteric
collection of adepts and initiates, the Mont Pelerin Society.
Appalled at the rapid expansion of economic and social
democracy unleashed by Keynesian economics, the “classical liberals” of Mont
Pelerin, laid out their plans for counter-revolution before the discomforted
capitalists of Britain and America, and waited patiently for the right
political moment to unleash them.
The ultimate ambition of the Golden Dawn’s adepts was to
utilise the “magical imagination” – a process which involved “visualising a
desired reality”, concentrating one’s will on it, “moulding its form in astral
light” and bringing it, finally, into “the plainest physical reality”. As a
description of the process that saw neoliberalism imposed upon the world, this
is pretty good. (Assuming, of course, that the mass media counts as “astral
light”!)
Following precedent, New Zealanders seized upon this latest
manifestation of esoterica with a zealotry unequalled in the rest of the world.
As before, elite enthusiasm for neoliberalism proved crucial. It intensified
and gradually took control of practically all of New Zealand’s significant
institutions. As though, in the mid-1920s, New Zealanders had woken to discover
that everyone in high places, from Governor-General to Chief Justice, Prime
Minister to Police Commissioner, were Magister
Templi in Havelock North’s occult society
Overseas, political support for neoliberalism is fading.
But, if its tenure here turns out to be as enduring as the Golden Dawn’s in
Havelock North, then New Zealand will not be neoliberal-free until 2046.
This essay was originally published in The Press
of Tuesday, 20 December 2016.
