Mark Booth | Mystic Scientists, Strange Happenings, & The Secret History Of The Universe

Summary

Author Mark Booth, also known by his pen name Jonathan Black, returns to discuss his book The Secret History of the Universe, which argues that the founders of modern physics were often mystics, occultists, and spiritualists. He describes how pioneers like Wolfgang Pauli, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and Marie Curie drew on Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, Indian mysticism, and seances to make sense of the strange behavior of the quantum world. The conversation also covers synchronicity, the Green Children of Woolpit, the Jim twins, mathematical patterns as living 'thought beings,' and Booth's own childhood encounters with high strangeness.

Key takeaways

• 1Booth's 'The Secret History of the World,' published under the pen name Jonathan Black, was rejected by every London publisher before becoming a global bestseller.
• 2Booth claims a professor at a top English university secretly leads magical ceremonies in a secret society.
• 3Economist John Maynard Keynes discovered Isaac Newton's alchemical writings and called him 'the last of the magicians.'
• 4Booth says Schrodinger and Heisenberg were interested in the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, and that many early quantum physicists studied Kabbalah and Indian mysticism.
• 5Wolfgang Pauli was allegedly so prone to the 'Pauli effect' that a Nobel-winning physicist banned him from his lab. Pauli was obsessed with the number 137, the fine structure constant and also a Kabbalistic number, and he died in hospital room 137.
• 6Freud was reportedly haunted by the number 62. Booth also says Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, Paul Langevin, and Alexander Graham Bell were involved in spiritualism and seances.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

Just grab the link from the show notes or that QR code if you're watching on YouTube. It'll take you to thehighersidechats.com, put in only your email address, and I'll send you a username and password to access the full archive of extended interviews and bonus shows going back to 2010. You can hear more about it after the show. There's other details and all that stuff. Lots of wild, taboo material to be dug up in there. Don't say I didn't warn you. Enjoy. It's the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine. From the Sunshine State, I'm Greg Carlwood. And we've been conditioned to believe that any serious, well-educated, logical person must dismiss silly things like the spiritual, the paranormal, and the Fortean. But dig a little deeper throughout our history, and many academics and scientists have quietly considered their own personal experiences with the highly strange to have been a driving force in their scientific work, or maybe even responsible for their biggest breakthroughs. The reality is that ancient mystics were, in a lot of ways, scientists of their day, and many modern scientists are more mystic than they appear. The presentation we're given, though, is that you must choose one, superstition or serious knowledge-seeking, spirit or science. It's an outdated dichotomy that needs to go away, and really never should have been. Spirit, consciousness, and the unseen world is not at war with science, but it isn't a fight to the death with materialism. And I usually bet on the truth winning out, though it sure likes to take its time. ...

Excerpt from The Higherside Chats, Sep 25, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.