The best-seller Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz explores how the mystical and esoteric movement broadly known as the occult shaped the spiritual life of the still-young American nation. From the meaning of the symbols on the one-dollar bill to the origins of the Ouija board,> Occult America briskly sweeps from the nation’s earliest days to the birth of the New Age era and traces many people and episodes. Tucked amid the stories of other famous Americans including Frederick Douglass, Franklin Roosevelt, and Mary Todd Lincoln is the wonderful account of Edgar Cayce, a rural Sunday-school teacher whose clairvoyant visions instigated the dawn of the New Age.

According to Mark Thurston, author of The Essential Edgar Cayce and 18 other books about personal spirituality, Occult America is an “invaluable addition to anyone’s library.” The review, published in the September/October issue of Venture Inward magazine, states that “Horowitz’s careful scholarship and knack for intriguing details makes this survey of pioneering figures constantly engaging… One of the final chapters, ‘The Greatest Mystic Who Ever Lived in America,’ is an especially cogent and even-handed assessment of the life of Edgar Cayce, with a particularly insightful closing section on the little-appreciated ethical dimension of the man’s work.” To read the entire review, visit EdgarCayce.org/News
 
$27.00