Jim Morrison, Secret Teacher of the Occult

A Journey to the Other Side

De: Paul Wyld

Narrado por: Jez Sands

• Reveals Jim Morrison as a shamanic initiate and esoteric teacher who used his role as a rock singer to promote the adventure of the spirit and express the power of inner experience

• Examines Morrison’s deep occult and artistic influences, including Kurt Seligmann’s The Mirror of Magic, Colin Wilson’s The Outsider, and the works of Jack Kerouac

• Draws on Morrison’s lyrics and poems, his intimate writings, and the recollections of friends like photographer Paul Ferrara and Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek

The groundbreaking 1960s band The Doors, named for Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, achieved incredible acclaim and influence, ultimately serving as a key group in the development of psychedelic and progressive rock. At the center of it all was front man Jim Morrison, who died in 1971 at age 27. Yet, as author Paul Wyld reveals, despite Morrison’s reputation as a lewd, drunken performer, he was a full-fledged mystical, shamanic figure, a secret teacher of the occult who was not merely central to the development of rock music, but also to the growth of the Western esoteric tradition as a whole.

Wyld looks at the mystical works that inspired Morrison, including Kurt Seligmann’s The Mirror of Magic, Colin Wilson’s The Outsider, and the writings of Nietzsche and Jack Kerouac. Drawing on Morrison’s lyrics and poems, his intimate writings, and the recollections of friends like photographer Paul Ferrara and Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek, the author makes the case that Morrison was not simply a superficial dabbler in the occult but an actual secret teacher transmitting knowledge through the golden thread stretching back to Egypt and Thoth-Hermes.

Explaining how Morrison sought to use his role as a rock singer to express the power of inner experience, Wyld shows how praxis was at the heart of Morrison’s approach, revealed in his journey through the arduous ordeals of shamanic initiation. He was a shaman, mystic, and sage—and an essential part of a great spiritual awakening to which he gave himself over fully.

©2024 Paul Wyld. All Rights Reserved. (P)2024 Inner Traditions Audio 2024. All Rights Reserved.

Paul Wyld is impeccable with his research, his adept use of the English language, and in his narrative style.

It is difficult to even attempt to accurately articulate the spiritual and existential depth and breadth of Paul Wyld's first masterpiece, as the premise, which can be summed up well in the title as well as within Jim Morrison, the man himself, because it would be hard to turn these many abstract ideas into words to describe a human, yet Paul has managed to do it as well as anyone could. This book has spoken to me on so many levels and in so many ways I can relate to as someone who may also be characterized with a tendency toward the dionysian archetype. Paul is a friend of mine, and we have had many in-depth and spiritually inspiring conversations, as I know his familiarity with the occult and esotericism, but I was not informed of his knowledge of the angelic as much until I read this book. It is thorough in approaching what these spiritual principles and ideas meant to Jim Morrison and how he might have used them and how others around him saw him as well as many of the stories there were to share to clear up any myth or rumor which might have been scattered about Jim Morrison over the years.

There will be a better review to come after I've read the book again, but I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone with any interest in Jim Morrison or anything angelic or occult or esoteric or spiritual in general. Paul's theories and approach are non-dogmatic and available to anyone who has an open mind to listen. His view and his opinions of Jim Morrison are spectacular and yet professional and adept, and his writing can be consumed ravenously, as it is as fulfilling to both the intellectual and the seeker alike, as they are so often one and the same.