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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.

On the night of October 5, 1946, six young male Bowling Green State Universitystudents were recruited to a secret meeting by President Frank Prout in order to found ananonymous booster club, which would soon become known as SICSIC. This masked spirit crewinitiated a school spirit revival that has since become an integral part of BGSU’s campus culture.Despite its importance, however, SICSIC’s origins, practices, and values mostly exist as legendand lore. In this critical historical analysis, I analyze SICSIC as a carnivalesque secret societyand consider its meanings within the context of changing campus and national norms as a resultof World War II. This project puts BGSU’s spirit crew in conversation with other collegiatesecret societies and their influence on the greater American society. I argue that SICSIC wasfounded to assuage anxieties over the changing landscape of higher education, specifically theinflux of GIs and others who were not traditional college-age students. While the customs andrituals of the group have changed over the years, remnants of the group’s past still exist in thecontemporary SICSIC’s masked performances. Applying performance and critical race theory tothe evolving traditions of SICSIC, I show the continuities and disruptions to the University’scampus culture over a period of seventy years. I also consider the racial implications of thegroup’s performances of the past, present, and possible future. Using ethnographic researchmethods, as well as historical research, observations, and interviews with SICSIC alumni, this isthe most complete and comprehensive history of the group.