Tag: alt-right

Dark Stars, the Meaning of Life, and that Jordan Peterson article

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My interview with Nikita Petrov about Dark Star Rising for MeaningofLife TV is now up on You Tube. It seems to have generated a lot of discussion. But you can see for yourself here.

And an article I wrote about Jordan Peterson during the height of Petersonmania has also been put online by the good people at New Dawn magazine. Here it is.

And for those in the London area, I’m at Watkins Bookshop tonight, spelling out what these dark stars mean in our dim time.

That’s enough for a late summer post.

 

Madame Blavatsky, P.D. Ouspensky, and Magical Politics

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I’ve posted some video recordings of some recent talks on You Tube. I tweet about them when I post, but I’m not sure if everyone here sees this, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to put the links together in one place. So, in chronological order:

Madame Blavatsky, The Mother of Modern Spirituality, Thomas Carlyle House.

(The amazon.com and amazon.co.uk links for the book.)

In Search of P.D. Ouspensky, Kensington Central Library.

(The amazon.com and amazon.co.uk links for the book.)

Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, Conway Hall

(The amazon.com and amazon.co.uk links for the book)

An interview with me about Dark Star Rising for Rebel Wisdom.

For those in the London area, I’ll be talking about Jung, Maslow, and Colin Wilson in the context of Individuation, Self-Actualization, and getting “beyond the robot” at the Day on Meaning at Birkbeck College, University of London, this July 29th. Some tickets are still available.

My talk on Aleister Crowley for the Century Club 18 July is sold out. An encore is scheduled for September.

I’ll be giving the closing talk for the Decadence, Magic (K) and the Occult conference at Goldsmith’s College 20 July. My topic is “Occultism in the World Today” and will focus on all the strange occult politics I’ve been writing about of late.

On 9 August I’ll be giving a free talk at Watkins Bookshop on Dark Star Rising. I’ll post details when they’re available.

A Dark Star Round Up

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As you might expect, it’s been a busy week. Dark Star Rising; Magick and Power in the Age of Trump has been released in the states and will be available in the UK on 25 June. I’ve been promoting it left, right, and center, and will be doing so for the foreseeable future, with more interviews, more podcasts, and my talk for the UK launch at Conway Hall on June 26. In the meantime, I thought I’d gather some of the recent interviews and podcasts together, so those interested can find them all in one place. Here goes.

My interview with Sean Stone on RT’s Watching the Hawks Part 1 and Part 2.

My interview with Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing’s Incredibly Interesting Authors.

My interview with Erik Davis at Expanding Mind.

My interview at Aeon Byte.

An excerpt from the book at The Daily Grail.

An excerpt from the book at Reality Sandwich.

My interview with Gordon White at Rune Soup.

And an interview with me at Occult of Personality.

I hope you can enjoy these. I’ll be adding more as things progress and stars may rise, dark or otherwise.

 

Barfield, Ouspensky, and oh yeah, that Trump book…

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I’m giving a talk next week at Rudolf Steiner House here in London on the work of Owen Barfield. Readers of A Secret History of Consciousness, Revolutionaries of the Soul, and Lost Knowledge of the Imagination will be familiar with Barfield and how his ideas have been a central influence on my own work. I’ve talked about Barfield’s work in the context of other topics, but this will be my first talk on his life and ideas directly. I am looking forward to it and to returning to Rudolf Steiner House, where I gave a talk on Lost Knowledge not too long ago.

I’m also giving a talk later in the month on one of my favorite writers on consciousness and esotericism, and one of the first that I read, many years ago, P.D. Ouspensky. My first biographical book was about Ouspenky, and over the years I have found myself going back to his work on a number of occasions. Last year I made a kind of pilgrimage to Virginia Water, about twenty miles outside of London, where for a time in the 1930s and ’40s, Ouspensky had his own version of Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. This will be the first talk on Ouspensky that I’ve given in quite some time. The only other one I gave was when In Search of P.D. Ouspensky was first published, in 2003. As you might expect, I am looking forward to this too. Both talks will be videoed and, gods willing, posted on You Tube.

In other news, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, has finally risen. It was released in the US today - 29 May - and briefly occupied the No. 1 position at Amazon in, I’m not quite sure, magic, metaphysics, whatever genre it falls into in our increasingly classified times. (Remember when there used to be just an occult section in bookshops? Those were the days.) It’s holding on to that slot in Kindle and I don’t know how the audio book - which I’ve yet to hear - is doing. So far it’s garnered a few reviews; here are some links: Liberty Law Site, Forbes, the Faith Matters blog, and my favorite so far, Prof. Bruce Charlton’s splenetic response to the book. I have, in his words, “crossed the line”, “abandoned all” my “earlier standards of scholarship and fairness” and “joined the forces of darkness.” I have also been “corrupted” - very rapidly it seems - by “Global Elites” and have embraced their “moral inversion.” Or actually my hitherto hidden embrace of their “secular progressivism” is now clear as day. News to me but then I never get the memos.

I can only thank Prof. Charlton for being moved enough by my book and the outrage it sparked to put his ideas into print - or pixels. I can also only say that if he thinks I am an agent of secular progressivism he has not read my previous books as attentively as he suggests. But of course in our highly polarized time, if you are not on one side you must be on the other and of course there are only two. For an idea of my take on progressive ideas, readers - and I include Prof. Charlton - may want to take a look at my article “What is Jordan B Peterson Really Saying?” in New Dawn magazine. Unfortunately the article isn’t online and I can’t disseminate hard copies. I don’t profit by it, but if you plump for a copy it may give you pause for thought next time you think of bemoaning the fact that I have been corrupted by the forces of godless globalization. If only.

Dark Star will continue to rise this week, and, I hope, for many weeks to come. I am on BBC Radio 3’s Freethinking broadcast this Thursday evening, 31 May - GMT - discussing the book with Matthew Sweet. And on Friday evening I am being interviewed for RT for their program Watching the Hawks. I’m not sure when this will air, but when I know, I’ll spread the word. And on 26 June I’ll be talking about the book to the Fortean Society at Conway Hall, a venue which, in its day, welcoming figures like Bertrand Russell, was most likely a veritable hotbed of secular progressivism. Drat, tarred with that brush again!

I should also mention that my online course for the CIIS on Lost Knowledge of the Imagination begins today. Something else I am looking forward to.

In the meantime, if you’d like to join me here, in my work for the forces of darkness, by all means do. Buy the book, read it, post a review, and then together we will look for a flashlight.

Seeing the Invisible, Hearing Lost Knowledge

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My talk at the Center for Contemporary Culture Barcelona (CCCB) last week on the influence of the occult on art - part of their fantastic Black Light Exhibition - went over well. The audience - more than a hundred people - seemed to enjoy it, and although there were some slight technical problems - rooted in my clumsiness with the universal translator - I count it as a success. The curator, Enrique Juncosa, is a charming, intelligent character and it was a delight to speak with him about the ways in which the mystical, the magical, and the esoteric have informed much of the art of modern times, and what they are getting up to in it today.

I’ve contributed an essay to the exhibition catalog, La Luz Negra (“Black Light”). Two friends have also contributed pieces: Erik Davis, of Techgnosis fame and the curator Cristina Recupero, with whom I worked on the Geheim Gesellschaften (“Secret Societies”) exhibition held in Frankfurt and Bordeaux in 2011. The catalog is tri-lingual, with Spanish-English and Catalan-English editions. If you are interested in occulture and can make it to Barcelona, the exhibition is well worth the trip. If you can’t go that far, the catalog can give you an idea of what you are missing.

As for my talk, here’s the link to the video. There is a brief introduction by Enrique, then the talk. In the Q & A that followed, I speak a bit about Dark Star Rising, which will be released on 29 May. Among other things I raise an interesting point: Is a tulpa sitting in the White House? What’s a tulpa? That’s a good question and I give some ideas of an answer in the book.

In other news, the audio book of Lost Knowledge of the Imagination is available. Here’s the link. It’s also available at amazon.com There’s a free trial offer or you can purchase it separately. I haven’t heard it yet and look forward to hearing my words in - well, not exactly print but you get the idea. There’s also an interview with Mark Jeftovic, who produced the audio book.

It looks like it’s going to be a busy summer.

Dark Star Rising Over a New Dawn

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Goodreads is having a giveaway for Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, which will be released on May 29th. Five copies are up for grabs so get your skates on. And the Dark Star audio book - my first - is also available.

In other news, the latest issue of New Dawn has my piece on Jordan Petersonmania. In it I ask the philosophical question “What is Jordan B. Peterson Really Saying?,” and come to what I think are some useful answers. They may even help us get past postmodernism sooner than we think.

Happy May Day. I’m giving a talk on Madame Blavatsky this week at Carlyle House - I think she would approve - and remember that May 8th is White Lotus Day, when she pulled up stakes once again and headed into the Akasha…

Crowley at Kensington Library and a teaser for Dark Star Rising

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Here’s a link to a video of a talk on Aleister Crowley I gave last month at the Kensington Central Library here in London. I’m editing the second part of the talk, based on my book Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World, and will post that soon. Also, here’s a link to a teaser for Dark Star Rising, which will be released at the end of May (end of June in the UK). This short piece originally appeared in New Dawn magazine and a slightly longer version, given here, turned up in Fortean Times. I’ll be writing a longer piece for the FT based on the book, which should come out around the same time as the book’s UK publication. And an upcoming issue of New Dawn will carry an article of mine on the Jordan Peterson phenomenon.

In other news, the narrator for the Dark Star Rising audio book has been chosen. His name is Jason Culp. I don’t know his work but his voice stood out among the other candidates and I’m glad Brilliance Audio went with him. A brief mention of myself and the book appears in this Wired article about the apparent rise of occultism associated with Trump’s presidency. Years from now a later generation may ask: where were you when the singularity got into the White House?

Dark Politics and Lost Imaginations

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This Wednesday, March 7th, I’ll be taking part in a live-streamed event with Evolve and Ascend: Dark Politics: Imagination, Magic and Power in the Age of Trump. I’ll be interviewed by Jeremy Johnson about my new books, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination and the forthcoming Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump. Jeremy is a brilliant writer, researcher and interviewer and I expect the exchange to be thought-provoking. We will be taking calls from listeners.

Also, Watkins Books has posted the video of my recent talk there about Lost Knowledge.

There, you have all you need to get spring on the road.