Tag: New Thought

Lost Knowledge with Jung the Mystic - and a Dark Star

· 9 Comments ·

I’ll be speaking about my books Jung the Mystic and Lost Knowledge of the Imagination at three Saturday Salons hosted by the Salome Institute of Jungian Studies. (Odd, just as I wrote “Salome,” the announcer on BBC Radio 3 - their classical station - commented on Salome’s “Dance of the Seven Veils” from Richard Strauss’ opera… That’s synchronicity for you.) The dates are April 11 and 25, and May 9. The talks are on Saturday mornings, 10:00 AM PST, which is 6:00 PM GMT. The Salome Institute is offering a 3 for 2 deal. If you’re tired of looking at cat videos, this might be a surprising change.

I’m also talking about my book Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump at an online event hosted by the Science and Medical Network. This starts at 7:30 PM GMT on 6 April.

I hope everyone is staying safe. As I mentioned on Twitter, I’ve been looking over my dream journals of several years - going back to the late 1980s and early 90s - and in a dream from 1998, I am told to “Just stay home. There’s no reason to go out. Just stay home, where it’s safe.” Here’s the link. I don’t know if this counts as a precognitive dream - that’s the focus of my next book - but it is certainly quite a coincidence.

 

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

· 2 Comments ·

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.

Dark Star Rising Over a New Dawn

· 4 Comments ·

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

· 3 Comments ·

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

· Leave a comment ·

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.

From Blondie to…? An Interview about the occult, Swedenborg, Pepe the Frog, and much more.

· 2 Comments ·

Here’s a link to a recent interview with Curtis Childs for his web series “Swedenborg and Life.” My book on Swedenborg was the occasion, but the topics covered ranged far and wide, from my early days in the Blank Generation to my upcoming work on the occult politics surrounding Precedent Trump. In between we ramble about the western esoteric tradition and its place in modern culture, the unnecessary split between science and mysticism, and resurgence of ‘mind magic’ and ‘mental science’ in recent years, and the ability of the internet to affect ‘real life’…

A Dark Star Rises

· 1 Comment ·

Amazon has posted a link to my new book, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, which will be published in May 2018. It is a kind of follow up to Politics and the Occult, except that in this case, the occult politics I look at is taking place now, not in the past. The focus is Trump - I could even say he was the inspiration for the book - but my investigation led beyond the White House and to points east, such as the Kremlin. I encountered some odd pairings, such as positive thinking and Traditionalism, and chaos magick and New Thought. And what exactly do Norman Vincent Peale, Austin Osman Spare, and Julius Evola have in common? You’d be surprised.

Dark Star Rising

· 4 Comments ·

Yesterday I submitted the manuscript of my new book, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, to Mitch Horowitz, my editor at Tarcher/Perigee. Mitch must like it, at least that’s how I read his tweet about it. It’s a report on the strange “occult politics” that seems to have come out of the shadows with the recent US presidential election, and which I discovered has been at work in Russia for some years prior to this. Researching it I came upon some odd pairings, between “positive thinking” and chaos magick, Traditionalism and a resurgent Russia, and a cartoon frog and postmodernism, to name a few. The book will be out next year. In the meantime you can look forward to The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination which will be available in the fall. In a sense Dark Star Rising begins where Lost Knowledge ends.