Full Moon Reaction

By Justin Geoffrey

"At 8:30, I somehow manage to fall asleep. I do not dream. I never dream."

Full Moon Reaction is a piercing, comedic, and unnerving glimpse into the rot of American culture. Justin Geoffrey's literary debut, his book delves into the "secret history" of the U.S., connecting modern political trends and his personal exper

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terror House Press, LLC
• Release date: Jan 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781951897642

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Copyright © 2022 Terror House Press, LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means (whether electronic or mechanical), including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of nonfiction. While all of the characters and events depicted in this book are real, names and identifying details have been changed.

ISBN 978-1-951897-64-2

EDITOR

Matt Forney (mattforney.com)

LAYOUT, INTERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS, AND COVER DESIGN

Matt Lawrence (mattlawrence.net)

Excerpts of this book were published, in somewhat different form, by Amerika. The author would like to thank Amerika for their support.

TERROR HOUSE PRESS, LLC

terrorhousepress.com

Table of Contents

Overtaken by the Occult

History and the Occult

Sketches

Kultur

Politics and the Political

Overtaken by the Occult

This book is the wretched refuse of a brain cracked beyond repair, which all the king’s men could not put back together again. Long live the king.

Full Moon Reaction is a slim collection of essays, sketches, and musings that are united only by tenuous tendrils and an overall thirst for a darkened restoration—a restoration in politics, art, culture, and style. As someone heterodox in multiple ways, I find it hard to write anything singular of plot or singular of theme. As such, Full Moon Reaction is a scattered, jumbled-up mess, but it’s mine, all mine. You may enjoy it, or you may disdain it. More than likely you will be confused by it, as this work tries to be a lot all at once.

Foremost, Full Moon Reaction is a survey and study of the many shadows of the modern world. Occultism is the most obvious of these shadows. Like millions of other Americans, I believe and accept that we are at all times surrounded by multiple worlds. Ghosts are real; I have experienced them personally. Vampires and werewolves are too, although more often than naught these terms denote fully human monstrosities who lust after pain and suffering. Demons are real, and as a Christian, even a Christian who prefers to walk in the darkness rather than the effulgent light, I warn everyone away from the gateways to Hell. Therefore, my first essay, which concerns the witchcraft panic in Salem, argues that the entire ordeal originated in folk magic, or the abuses of conjuring by non-adepts seeking ways to know the Lord’s will. Our ancestors dealt with such dangers; today we are more likely to embrace the spiritually malignant under the false belief of religious freedom. The live and let live attitude has given rise to a new generation interested in black magic and dark ceremonies. It is a long, but linear continuum from using a Ouija Board (which is a key that unlocks different realms, many of which are full of non-human entities) to invoking demons to harm your political opponents. The rise of witchcraft during the presidency of Donald Trump was not a surprising development, as President Trump, a self-confessed Presbyterian of questionable stripe, represented that part of America that they wished buried: middle and working-class, devout, superstitious, and loyal to the original founding myths. Wicca and other twentieth century creations are the perfect religion for rootless strivers, and as the U.S. moves further and further away from its Christian roots, the more we will see situations similar to Brazil, where a large swath of the populace is nominally Catholic but practices Macumba. (The Brazilian elite is particularly attracted to black magic, just like their American counterparts.)

Occultism in the U.S. has not just manifested in terms of Jacobin and left-wing liberationist spellbinding. John Michael Greer, in his excellent book The King in Orange, broadly characterizes contemporary politics as a battle between Renaissance magic and chaos magick. The Uniparty of Washington, D.C. and the liberal consensus of the corporate boardrooms are practitioners of Renaissance magic, which can best be summarized by using spells or suggestions to create consumption desires (see: advertising). Chaos magick, on the other hand, is the millions of Internet autists who used Pepe memes to will Trump into office in 2016. Chaos magick online is still very powerful, as the signs and sigils of the de-centralized right serve the same function as the vanguard left. It is the autists who pushed Tucker Carlson towards neo-reaction and other harder right strands. The same holds true for the proliferation of non-traditional and right-wing information sources, from the private intelligence networks posing as shitposter forums, to news programs and literary endeavors. All of this is occult.

The occult also exists in the sevenfold rise in non-traditional creators, many of whom are creating new art and/or recreating older, more sincere forms of art. This cultural restoration movement was recently captured perfectly by RazörFist in a searing video demanding the re-embrace of pulp. Pulp, like comic books and jazz, is a uniquely American creation. Pulp was literature and film intended to inspire and entertain the blue-collar masses. Heroes like The Shadow and Doc Savage remain the pinnacle of all-American heroics and are not as pliable to corporate manipulation as Batman and Superman. Similarly, authors like Dashiell Hammett, Walter B. Gibson, and Robert E. Howard are quintessential American voices who lent our rugged individualist ethos to city streets and open plains. In a different vein, H.P. Lovecraft and the men who followed him like Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, and E. Hoffman Price finalized America’s break from British horror conventions and added intellectual heft to the genre. The pulps created the American cultural modes of the twentieth and early twentieth-first centuries, and as such the rejuvenation of the pulps is part of the wider cultural, historical, and spiritual push to save what is left of America in the age of intentional collapse and post-American art. Full Moon Reaction is part of this last-ditch attempt at renewal.

The most popular form of occultism in the United States can be lumped under secret knowledge or secret history, both of which are covered in this book. This occultism can best be represented by David Paulides’ Missing 411 series, which thoroughly documents the thousands of strange disappearances in the national parks of the U.S. and other nations. Mr. Paulides’ calling goes beyond mere true crime; he is asking dangerous questions about what is really going on in our country’s most isolated areas. This is the same vein of occultism as literature about cryptids and ghosts, as well as documentaries about secret societies, the cabal, and the hidden hands of history. Sean McMeekin’s work, which has exposed the manifold lies of World War II, is also part of this occult sphere. As the legitimacy of America’s centralized empire continues to break down under the weight of incompetence and social engineering plots, more secret knowledge and history will be exposed and produced by a populace imbued with a new consciousness. It happened during the Reformation, and it will happen again. Full Moon Reaction is a part of this new consciousness.

My work is literature. My work is music criticism. My work is history. My work is an attempt at new reactionary politics. Full Moon Reaction is an example of the Renaissance attitude among socio-political dissidents in the West. Let this humble work be an offering to the intellectual firmament that is rising everywhere online. Our age is an age of decrepit politics but vitalist content. There are shadowy corners full of creative brilliance; Full Moon Reaction is a small star in this bright constellation. It has no reason to exist except my will. I willed it into existence via compulsive writing and occult suggestion. I will it into your hands with the same power. God willing, you enjoy this tome.

More importantly, may God give us fortitude in the fight ahead.

History and the Occult

There is a history that is unknown. Most do not know that Solomon Kane was a real Puritan settler in Massachusetts who came here and cleared the land of devils like Saint Patrick cleared Ireland of snakes. Many don’t know that de Coronado found Quivira in the All-American state of Kansas. I offer initiates only a taste of my occult studies here.

To Cast Fortunes is to Cast Judgments

Criminalizing Foreknowledge before Salem

The hysteria of Salem began as an occult ritual. Rather than anything overtly diabolical or dedicated to perpetuating the medieval rites of the Black Mass, the hidden secret of Salem was held by a few local girls interested in learning their futures. The girls were likely inspired by a series of books that has been stolen into New England by unknown distributors and individuals. These books provided instructions about the basic workings of European folk magic, from casting spells to conjuration with sieves and keys, and peas, and nails, and horseshoes.¹ For their more devout neighbors, these books were part of a broader movement away from the church. The young, who never knew religious persecution or the dangers of living as a Puritan in Archbishop William Laud’s England, supposedly lacked the godly qualities of their forbearers, and as such they were easily led away with little sorceries.² So, by the time certain young girls began acting oddly and speaking of things like crystal balls, future sweethearts, and the like, the residents of Salem Village began suspecting the worst.

Initially, a quiet investigation was launched by Reverend Samuel Parris, the father of one of the afflicted girls. Following William Griggs’ medical examinations, which failed to offer an explanation for the strange behavior of Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, the physician told the clergyman that an ‘Evil Hand’ might be the culprit.³ Thus, the problems of Salem entered the legal realm, for those who suffered from witchcraft…were the victims of a crime, not a disease.⁴ Word spread quickly in the village. A matron named Mary Sibley claimed that a witch cake made of rye meal and the urine of the cursed girls had been baked by two West Indian slaves in Parris’ household. Eventually, one of the slaves, Tituba, offered a jumbled confession that explained that she had learned witchcraft from a previous master in Barbados. Tituba’s confession (in truth, multiple confessions) horrified the residents of Salem, many of whom grew convinced that several malefactors had provoked the decline in religious zeal among fellow citizens, and thus had opened the door to Satan.⁵ Visions of midnight orgies in the forest, mysterious figures dressed in black, and unholy books full of names written in blood obsessed Salem between 1692 and 1693.

While other historians have tended to focus on the Salem witchcraft panic as either an example of Puritan intolerance or as Massachusetts’ delayed entry into the wider history of Early Modern Europe’s witch trials, few have connected the blasphemy of foreknowledge, which orthodox Calvinists equated with knowing God’s will, with the legal actions taken against witchcraft. Put another way, the crimes of Salem had their origins not in general hysteria, but in a very Puritan concern over humanity’s relationship with God’s will. Salem was far from an isolated case, and other witchcraft and heresy trials, specifically the Connecticut witch trials of the 1640s and 1660s and the debate over the Antinomian Controversy of the 1630s, provide insights into how the issue of foreknowledge was central to Puritan witchcraft concerns.

The Hartford Trials

In the same year that the legendary Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins retired from his highly lucrative profession of persecuting witches in war-torn East Anglia, New England executed its first convicted witch. Between 1647 and the end of the Hartford witch hunt in 1663, the Puritan elite prosecuted witches with zeal.⁶ All told, the great Connecticut witch hunt tried thirty-four people in court. Fifteen of them were convicted and died at the end of a hangman’s rope. Before 1663, Connecticut was responsible for eleven of the witch hangings in New England, thereby making the colony ground zero for the legal war against witchcraft.⁷ However, between 1663 and 1688, a surprising development occurred wherein Connecticut, formerly New England’s most aggressive anti-witchcraft colony, became officially skeptical of most witchcraft claims. According to scholar Walter A. Woodward, the witch hunts of Connecticut came to an end thanks to Governor John Winthrop, Jr., a physician and a member of England’s Royal Society. Winthrop was also a practicing alchemist who knew firsthand the difficulties involved in practicing effective natural magic and believed that people were too quick to attribute misfortunes that occurred naturally to witchcraft.⁸ As such, under the leadership of Winthrop, Hartford and the other colonies of Connecticut changed the evidentiary standards for witchcraft conviction.⁹

However, even despite the changes inaugurated by Winthrop, one thorny issue remained that was not adequately solved by the Puritan legal elite, and that issue was the issue of foreknowledge. Although ministers like Gershom Bulkeley conclusively argued that God would not allow the devil to appear in the guise of an innocent person before multiple witnesses, thereby privileging cases with more than one witness, they could not decisively say that foreknowledge was not diabolical.¹⁰ Indeed, although the ministers left open the possibility that foreknowledge could come from reason, gossip, or even divine revelation, they did not fully define what those exceptions looked like. In the case of Connecticut during the 1660s, foreknowledge played