Essays

Among all the profiles and hit pieces, there’s been surprisingly little attention paid to Jordan Peterson’s attitude to environmentalism. One of the most prominent new voices in popular intellectual culture, supposedly out to tackle the major threats to our civilisation. And yet, when it comes to arguably the greatest challenges we currently face, either he’s quiet, or his remarks are slanted and disparaging, and rarely taken to task. Something stinks.

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An in-depth write-up of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’ inaugural lecture for the Centre for Ethnographic Theory at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, April 2016, discussing his theory that the image of the State has its origins in pre-State societies — in their vision of hierarchy between human people and ‘metapersons’ known as spirits or gods.

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This is an article I wrote to promote North in Watkins’ Mind Body Spirit magazine, Winter 2015-2016. It may be the most concise summary of the book I’ll ever manage.

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An exploration of philosopher Ray Brassier’s nihilist advocacy of technological Prometheanism, looking at his vision’s cosmological and mythical underpinnings, the forager cosmos as a ‘third term’ defusing the clash between religion and science, and the dilemma of which goal — ‘meaning’ or ‘progress’ — we should be ready to suffer for.

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In Sean Penn’s 2007 film Into The Wild, we follow the true story of Christopher McCandless’s escape from the suffocating dysfunctionality of normality in Atlanta, Georgia. After graduating, he gives his savings away to Oxfam, and takes to the road in a passionate, but ultimately fatally naive quest for freedom.

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On the complexities of the Zapatistas’ relationship to Classic Maya kingship and cosmology: Subcomandante Marcos, the Heart of the Sky, shamanic theatrics and radical democracy.

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Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) is a giddy Rorschach blot of images and themes. Held together by impeccable artistry, the strangeness of its construction creates an enticing labyrinth of suggestive meanings. There’s enough circular doubling back and cul-de-sacs to frustrate any singular reading. But the film can generously accommodate many fantastical perspectives.

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Delving into the significance of the seven stars of Ursa Major for Afro-American slaves, and the heritage of this asterism as a symbol of escape.

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Exploring resonance between the Palaeolithic ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ via the scholarship of David Lewis-Williams and Clayton Eshleman, the art of Leonora Carrington, and the ‘Grotto Heavens’ of T’ang Dynasty Taoism.

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The Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade has had a tremendous influence on contemporary conceptions of ancient cosmologies. One of the most important aspects of his take on archaic religion was his insistence on a sharp division between the sacred and the profane (or ‘Heaven and Earth’), and the corresponding necessity of a bridge between these realms. Only traffic across this bridge — in the form of visionary experiences — can bestow meaning and purpose upon the profane world of terrestrial life. Imaginally, this bridge took the form of an axis mundi, a central axial bond upon which the whole cosmos turned. This centre which connects us to the heavenly realm is periodically attained in ritualised experiences. Frequently it’s memorialised architecturally — especially, of course, in temples and other sacred monuments.

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