The Dark Enlightenment, Theosophy, and the Future

The phrase "the dark enlightenment" occupies a highly contested and volatile space in our contemporary political moment. On the one hand, it is linked to the writing of neoreactionary thinkers Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land who use it to signal their rejection of democracy and racial equality as a viable path toward freedom. On the very opposite end of the political spectrum, feminist, queer, and decolonial scholars have turned towards a different version of the dark enlightenment or endarkenment as a liberatory framework with the unique capacity facilitate communitarian ethics, care, and resistance. Because esotericism acts as a ballast between these vastly different political positions, this paper examines the writings of medieval theosophist and mystic Jacob Böhme to understand how his cosmology and apocalypticism shaped contemporary debates about race, technology, and the end of time.