Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age

Very interesting but also kind of jumpy format. Not my favourite.

I really enjoyed this book. It contained a lot of information and I liked how the author weaved information from the beginning of the spiritual movement to today. Fascinating!

I really enjoyed this book. It was intriguing and kept me engaged the whole way through, and I liked learning about the different elements woven into the story. It was an easy, enjoyable read/listen and gave plenty to think about and talk over.

3.5 stars Non fiction on the creation and evolution of spiritualism and New Age culture in the USA, focusing on various gurus and their cults like ‘Love Has Won’. This was overall an entertaining and informative read on interesting topics and I’ve learned quite a bit, especially the history of American New Age culture. I knew of cults in general and other “spiritual” movements that appropriated eastern philosophies adding their own mythology and practices with a heavy dose of imagination, fear and conspiracy. I knew how these predatory groups manipulate people who were mentally unstable or simply lonely. But I didn’t know how ultimately fascistic they were, how many of their ideas were filled with racism and antisemitism, how they were all ultimately connected by their beliefs and goals. It also echoed some of the themes developed in my previous read like conspiracy theories, disinformation, hoaxes, racism, eugenics, pseudoscience, anti intellectualism etc which made for a nice continuation. In terms of the organisation the text was a bit too chaotic and unfocused, specifically combining historical context and the evolution on the cults. I felt the author was jumping from one topic/cult to another too randomly. Separated chapters on each topic to explain the context first, critically approaching the cults beliefs or using a more focused approach (for example the importance of Mount Shasta for most of the cults) would have been more compelling to me. Also some parts were too detailed, with superfluous informations (like the tarot cards explained or the cult founders lives), repetitive facts and random tangents. The ending I really liked with the passage of Cole (the son of Amy, who created the Love Has Won cult) being interviewed, I think he and then the author really nailed what was wrong with his mother, religions/cults, conspiracy, MAGA/Qanon and more generally American society/dream in general.

This book was very well written as I found it easy to quickly read. It took me a full week (while I had time off work) to read. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting clarity on what New Age beliefs are and where their influences come from. I knew of some of the content before reading and learned more details surrounding the topics within.