A discussion with one of the most original and influential modern magical thinkers, delving into his formative intellectual experiences and his flexible, playful and wise models of magical reality and practice.
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Peter Harrison’s book The Freedom of Things: An Ethnology of Control is a challenging education in the anthropology of political organisation — from the nature of pre-state societies to the seemingly interminable pitfalls of modern revolutionary movements. I lack Peter’s deep immersion in political theory and activism, but we share a great deal of reference points and areas of interest — especially the work of anarchist anthropologist Pierre Clastres, and the relevance of indigenous societies to our modern dilemmas. Peter’s insistence in The Freedom of Things on avoiding ‘solutionism’ is a tough sell in these urgent times; but sympathetic internal critiques of leftism seem essential these days, despite (or sometimes because of) the rabid attacks on egalitarian politics from reactionary circles. We conducted this email via interview during late 2017 and early 2018.
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After reviewing Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm’s book The Myth of Disenchantment I was gratified that Jason responded positively on Twitter, despite — or, really, because of — my criticisms. Naturally he wanted to respond, and I certainly wanted to engage further with this very smart and engaging scholar of magic and myth. We conducted this interview via email.
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An in-depth discussion with writer, artist, occultist, Yijing expert and urban recluse Joel Biroco. Ranging wide over subjects such as memory, psychedelics, nonduality in Vedanta and philosophy, nihilism, suicide, speculative realism, and surviving in interesting times.
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Peter Sjöstedt-H is an Anglo-Scandinavian philosopher, based in Cornwall, who specialises in the thought of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Alfred North Whitehead. He’s particularly interested in applying the insights of such figures to the experiences unveiled by psychedelics, and the philosophical implications of panpsychism (the belief that mind is in some way a property of all matter). His book Noumenautics contains his essay ‘Neo-Nihilism’, which helped inspire Warren Ellis’ recent take on the Marvel superhero, Karnak. His essay ‘The Great God Pan is Not Dead‘ is an excellent overview of the psychedelic potentials in the notoriously oblique ideas of Alfred North Whitehead. The following interview was conducted via email.
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Like many others, I was switched on to Patrick Harpur’s writings in the ’90s through reading the subtly mind-blowing survey of Forteana and folklore, Daimonic Reality. Avoiding jargon, writing with vivid immediacy, he manages to bring immensely slippery concepts from the hidden traditions of Western religion—alchemy, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism—to bear on the wondrous oddities, such as UFOs and crop circles, of the modern world. It’s hard to recommend a better guide to the significance of the field.
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Talking with psychologist David Kidner, author of Nature & Psyche, about the need for culture to be rooted in nature, the industrial assault on ecologies of mind, the perils of optimism, the Gaia hypothesis, and finding meaning in rather than outside the embodied world of experience.
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This is a transcript of a small discussion with botanist-poet Dale Pendell, a long-time practitioner of Zen Buddhism and the occult, a student of the legendary intellectual Norman O. Brown, and — as they say — a graduate of Dr. Hofmann. It took place at the World Psychedelic Forum in Basel, Switzerland, on 23rd March 2008. A small group of people who’d just attended Dale’s talk on Zen and psychedelics gathered round a table in the busy foyer, and Dale created a focused bubble of attentiveness with his measured, colourful discourse.
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An interview with the author of Dreaming the End of the World, a study divining the ‘Country of Apocalypse’ experienced across different people’s dreams of nuclear armageddon. We discuss the Bomb as a unique juncture of archetypes, and his experience of mutual initiation with a healer in Zimbabwe.
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An in-depth interview with artist, writer and filmmaker Donal Ruane about his extensive experience with ayahuasca. Donal discusses his friendship with famed Peruvian visionary artists Pablo Amaringo, his gruelling initiation in the Amazon, mestizo shamanic mythologies, and the nature of this rich and dangerous psychedelic world.
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