Author:Stewart Home
Stewart Home has been an agent provocateur on the edge of art, punk, and politics since the mid-1970s. This romp through the chequered history of Yoga in the West through the twentieth century got him noticed by the main-stream media.
His story introduces a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells, from a US Houdini wannabee on the make, through Edwardian army officers who just happened to be Aleister Crowley acolytes and fans of fascism , to out–and-out Nazis and ends up in the era of QAnon.
It’s a well-worn ploy: something familiar and mundane being tarted up as Ancient Wisdom of the East. In this case, posture-based exercises were passed off as Yoga asanas and sold to rich Americans and Europeans. Of course, anything that seemed to be the esoteric wisdom of an Aryan Root Race got fascist blood pumping.
It’s an easy, entertaining read populated by eccentrics and sociopaths. Unfortunately, quite a few of them were – and continue to be – very influential.
Length of Read:Short
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
Bare Faced Messiah (the L Ron Howard biog), Strange Angel (the Jack Parson Biog), Bad Medicine.
One thing you’ve learned
Yoga as practiced in the West is pretty much an entirely 20th century invention.
A good piece about the book in the Observer here
https://observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/why-do-fascists-love-yoga
Ah thanks. This is a much better précis of the book and provides more background. Actually, in passing, the book does touch on a few musos as well.
I have that in my “expanding pile”. I’m a connoisseur of bad ideas and what became hippie grifting – things like yoga, esoteric beliefs, and New Age phonies. Saw it all in Brighton from the mid-70s on, and it immunised me when these things came around again (though they never seem to go away). The funny thing is how these sorts of things have always had a right-wing side, but that’s only been noted recently.