Tag: Russia

Recent events and some talks on the way

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As many other people were, in recent weeks I was saddened by the terrible events in Ukraine. In my own case I can say that it was one of the few times when I was disappointed to have been proved right. How so? In my book The Return of Holy Russia I point out that Ukraine, and especially Kyiv, have a peculiar attraction for Vladimir Putin, and not only in the sense of his apparent aim to regain the “near abroad,” the lands lost to Russia with the breakup of the USSR. As I show in the book, Kyiv in the time of Kievan Rus’, was the birthplace of what we know as Russia, and it remains in the Russian cultural consciousness as a kind of Golden Age, what is called “the Lost Kingdom”, their equivalent, say, to the Arthurian legends. And in AD 989, when Vladimir I converted from Slavic paganism to Greek Orthodox Christianity, the Russians became the “Christ-bearing people,” a character that would later give rise to ideas of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” following the fall of the first and the loss of the second, Constantinople, to the Turks in 1453. Out of this came the notion of “Holy Russia,” a mantle that, cynically or not, Putin does seem to be gesturing to, in order to give the Russian people some sense of identity and purpose, something that seems to have eluded them since the economic free fall of the late 1990s. If nothing else, the sixty foot statue to Vladimir I he had erected just outside the Kremlin in 2015 suggests that the current Vladimir identifies more than a bit with his namesake.

When the book came out it drew some attention, mostly, it seemed, from readers interested in Russian Freemasonry, which I do write about - at least this was what I could tell when I saw that it had hit No. 1 in Freemasonry on amazon. Soon after Putin sent his troops across the border, I saw that the book was getting some attention again - I think it was No. 1 in Secret Societies this time. Although I can’t say I wasn’t pleased with this and didn’t mumble a sub-vocal “I told you so,” I was unhappy about the reason why. Not long after, David Fuller of Rebel Wisdom got in touch and asked if I would be up for talking about the book. Here is a link to that conversation. In it I refer to some material I go into in Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump that has quite a bit about Russia and the strange geopolitical ideas informing the Russian president.

I had an earlier conversation about Holy Russia with Jeffrey Mishlove, and here’s the link to that video.

And for a quick look on some of the people on Putin’s reading list, you can check out this short article on “The Philosopher Tsar.”

On a less troubling note, my latest book, Dreaming Ahead of Time: Experiences with Precognitive Dreams, Synchronicity and Coincidence is now out in paperback and Kindle in the UK, and Kindle only until May 24 in the US.

I’ve done two interviews with Jeffrey Mishlove based on the book. One is devoted for the most part to dreaming; the other to time.

And I’ve done podcasts about the book with Aeon Byte , The Higherside Chats and Rune Soup.

On May 27 I’ll be continuing my series of lectures on a Short History of Occultism for the Last Tuesday Society with my segment on C.G. Jung, the mystic who masqueraded as a psychologist - or was that the other way around…

I’ve added some extra lectures to the series:

On May 12 I’ll be talking about my experiences with precognitive dreams, based on the new book.

On July 5 I’ll be talking about Rudolf Steiner: Spiritual Scientist

On August 23 we’ll be looking at the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius: The Occult Roots of the 1960s.

And on September 28 it’s Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and the Fourth Way.

On April 5 I will be making my first live appearance since last Halloween, at the London Fortean Society gathering at the Miller Pub in Borough. I will be talking about precognitive dreams and I can tell in advance that you will all be there…

On April 10 I will be talking about Dreaming Ahead of Time to Theosophical Society.

On April 25 I will be back in zoomland, speaking once again about my dreams - and yours - to the Science and Medical Network.

But in June, I will be joining Iain McGilchrist, John Pickering, Shantena Sabbadini, and other engaging speakers at the Pari Center in Tuscany, Italy, for a weeklong exploration of the idea of Re-Visioning Consciousness. I will be talking about my experiences with dreams, hypnagogia, synchronicity and other unordinary experiences and will do my best to put any participants to sleep during a workshop aimed at inducing these strange states.

I hope you can join me in some, if not all, of these events.

Esoteric Evolution, Trickle Down Metaphysics, the Silver Age, and Colin Wilson needs your help.

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Here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2 of my three part online lecture series on Esotericism and the Evolution of Consciousness, given to the Theosophical Society in London, and based on The Secret Teachers of the Western World. Part 3 will be up sometime later this month or early next.

Here’s a link to my talk for the Explorers Club on “Trickle Down Metaphysics and the Goldilocks Theory of History.” The essay on which the talk is based is available here, on this site, or at academia.edu

Here’s another link, to a talk about the Silver Age I gave to a class in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. I was delighted that they were interested enough in my book The Return of Holy Russia to ask me to speak. The students were very engaged and their questions showed it.

The fund drive to finance the making of Dreaming to Some Purpose: The Life and Time of Colin Wilson, a much needed documentary about Wilson’s life and ideas, is still on and needs your help. We have less than a month left and so far have raised only a fraction of what we need. If you’ve ever enjoyed any of Wilson’s books or any of mine, please contribute what you can and pass the link on to others who might also do so. It would be a true shame for this not to happen. I don’t have to tell you that Wilson is one of the most important thinkers about consciousness in recent times and his ideas and insights need to be saved for posterity. I’ve done my bit: I’ve written a book about him. Now you can do yours.

One last item: a new recording by my son, the maestro. He too is a struggling artist. It runs in the family.

Autumn Talks 2020

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I’ll be giving several talks this October and November. Here are the details.

On 22 October I’ll be speaking about the Silver Age to students in the Slavic and Eurasian Studies department of the University of Texas at Austin. I write about the Silver Age, a remarkably creative time in Russian history that stretched from around 1890 to 1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution, in my book The Return of Holy Russia. It was a time of great interest in mysticism, magic, and the spiritual, with a brooding sense of the apocalypse, not unlike our own… I am not sure if the talk will be open to the public or if it will be available online. Details to follow.

On 25 October, starting at 6:00 PM London time, I’ll be giving the first of a series of talks for the Theosophical Society in England about “Esotericism and the Evolution of Consciousness,” based on my book The Secret Teachers of the Western World . This talk will look at how an earlier, “participatory” form of consciousness predated our more “alienated” modern minds, and how, although obscured by our more rational consciousness, it remained as the source of another “way of knowing.”

Part 2 in this series will be given on 8 November (6:00 pm UK time). “Esoteric Renaissance and Underworld” will look at how, following the rise of Christianity, the Hermetic tradition was kept alive in the Arab world and later transmitted to the west, where it influenced the Renaissance and other movements until it was forced to go “underground” by the rise of modern science.

In Part 3, “Toward the Integral Mind,” given on 22 November (6:00 pm UK time), I will look at how for the past few centuries we have been moving toward a possible completion of our “partial minds,” and how from the “Golden Age” of modern esotericism, through to the “occult revival” of the 1960s and today’s post-everything world, we have been involved in an important process in the evolution of consciousness.

On 26 October, starting at 7:00 PM London time, as a part of London Month of the Dead, I will be raising the dead, literally, giving a talk on the Russian Cosmist Nikolai Fedorov, who saw as the “common task” of humanity, the actual resurrection of the dead. Fedorov impressed Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and his ideas later led to the foundation of the Soviet space program. You can find out more about him and the other Cosmists in The Return of Holy Russia.

On Wednesday, 11 November, starting at 6:00 PM UK time, I’ll be talking about “Trickle Down Metaphysics and the Goldilocks Theory of History” for the Explorers Club. “Trickle Down Metaphysics” is how I describe the process by which the philosopher Nietzsche’s prediction of a coming age of nihilism in the late 1880s, “trickled down” from the metaphysical heights of his mountain top, via postmodernism and deconstructionism, to the lowlands of the “post truth” and “alternative facts” that fill our TV sets and Twitter feeds. The Goldilocks Theory of History is about getting our crises “just right,” and I don’t have to tell you we have many to choose from. “Trickle Down Metaphysics: From Nietzsche to Trump” can be found in my previous post and at academia.edu. Goldilocks turns up in a few places in my books.

A Midsummer Roundup

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Here are some interviews and reviews from recent months.

I was glad to see in a review of Dark Star Rising that I avoid “all that cheap and vapid capitalising on personal celebrity status, invariably zeroing in on low hanging fruit of negligible import, which is all too common in the field of popular entertainment and image marketing.” It’s true, you know.

Here’s a conversation I had with Christina Harrington of Treadwell’s Bookshop here in London about my new book The Return of Holy Russia.

At Thoth Hermes.com I have officially been declared a “living philosopher,” no mean feat, especially if you are trying to make a living out of philosophy.

Here’s another conversation a la Russe, with Greg Carlwood at The Higherside Chats.

Here’s a chat with Luke Dodson who, among other things, is the great grandson of J.B. Priestely, whom I’ve been writing about recently in my current work in progress, a book about precognitive dreams. Priestley was a “time-haunted man,” as evidenced by his still very readable and revelatory book Man and Time.

Here’s a review of The Return of Holy Russia by Stephen Greenleaf.

And if you are an absolute glutton for all things Russian, here’s another conversation about Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky,and what Tsar Vladimir is up to these days.

Spasibo!

Holy Russia, Aeon Bytes, and Ends of Days

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Here’s short notice of two live interviews about my new book The Return of Holy Russia.

Tonight, 15 May, at 9:00 PM UK time, I’ll be speaking with Michael Deacon about the book on his You Tube program End of Days

And tomorrow, 16 May, at 1:00 PM Central time, I’ll be speaking with Miguel Connor at Aeon Bytes about the book too.

Also, here’s a link to an interview I did about the book with Jeffrey Mishlove at the New Thinking Allowed.

Hoping you all are safe and well in these unusual times.

 

 

The Year Ahead: 2020 in View

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Work, holidays, and other unavoidable hurdles in life - and there have been some tough ones - have kept me from keeping up this blog. For one thing, 2019 had me travelling around the globe, from Bogota to Sydney and Melbourne, New York to California’s Big Sur coast - where I spent at week at a fantastic symposium at the Esalen Institute - with pit stops in Montreal, Munich, Berlin, Rome, Turin, Milan and even China along the way. Whew indeed. Now I’m stationary, at least for the moment, and able to look at what lies ahead. Some travel, but also some appearances closer to home.

On 20 February I’ll be at the Kensington Central Library again, this time talking about my book Jung The Mystic. Yes, I know, for some it should be Jung The Mistake, but not for me. As I grown older and imperceptibly wiser - hmm - I see that the sage of Kunsnacht has more and more to say to me. And to you.

On 29 February I’ll be talking about my book Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson at the Theosophical Society in England headquarters in London. To those who don’t know, Colin was and remains a central influence on my work. I’m happy to have a chance to speak about his ideas and the importance they hold for us today. He was and remains well ahead of his time. And ours.

On 7 March I’ll be speaking about Aleister Crowley, that old beast, at the Pagan Phoenix Conference in Penstowe. From what I gather from the flyer, it sounds like it should be a jolly good time.

On 16 March I’ll be talking about my book Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump for the Science and Medical Network in Hampstead, London. You may have had your fill of Trump - I’d be surprised if you hadn’t - but if you want to get an idea about occultism in politics today and the effects of what I call “trickle down metaphysics,” this is the place to be.

On 18 April I’m scheduled to be interviewed by Kasper Obstrup at the Avisen Live 2020 Festival outside of Copenhagen, Denmark. Travel again, but only a short hop to “the continent.” Kasper is a Danish writer with a fascination with “radical culture,” which means the Beats and other denizens of the outre fringe. I suspect I will be in good company.

On July 3 I’ll be talking about “Colin Wilson’s Double Brain,” relating Wilson’s insights into split-brain psychology to recent developments in that area at the Third International Colin Wilson Conference, held in Nottingham, 3-5 July.

I’m also on the bill for the Ozora Festival, which will be held in Ozora, Hungary, outside Budapest, a psychedelic trance event held from 20-26 July. Details to follow. I’ll be re-reading Arthur Koestler’s autobiography, Arrow in the Blue, on the way.

In other news, there’s an interview with me and an excerpt from my new book, The Return of Holy Russia, in the latest edition of New Dawn magazine. Here’s the tweet.

I also have an interview in a new book about David Bowie, of all people. Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice explores the relationship between identity and creativity. I’m included along with John Gray, Slavoj Žižek and other fascinating, talented individuals.

Last, but surely not least, some nepotism. Here’s a link to my son, Max’s, You Tube Channel. Max is a violinist and filmmaker who has one proud ex rock ‘n roller for a dad. Please listen and subscribe.

There’s your mission. You have no choice but to accept it.

 

Germany, Japan, Italy? It’s not the Axis Powers but Dark Stars and Lost Knowledge.

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I will be in Calw, Germany, later this month giving a talk on the Lost Knowledge of the Imagination at a conference on “The Crisis of the Ego” held by the Rosicrucian Society on October 20-21. Calw is the birthplace of Hermann Hesse, whose books I devoured as a teenager in the early 1970s, along with several million other of his posthumous readers. Some years ago I visited Hesse’s home in Montagnola, Switzerland, where he lived until his death in 1962. Seeing his birthplace completes the circle as it were.

I’m looking forward to the conference for several reasons, but an especial one is that I will have a chance to see my friend Rudiger Sunner’s new film, about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke - another German language writer whose work I’ve read and re-read more times than I can remember. Angel Over Europe: Rilke as God Seeker promises to be a spiritually insightful and culturally significant work - if any of Rudiger’s other films are anything to go by.

The Japanese and Italian rights to Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump have been sold. My Italian publisher, Tlon - their name comes from Jorge Luis Borges’ story “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, about an imaginary country - has asked me to write an introduction to the Italian edition, bringing the book up-to-date on events in Europe and especially in Italy, with the rise of the populist movement there, spurred on by Steve Bannon’s European crusade. I’m glad that my editor feels the book is very timely, but concerned that as its relevance increases, the dangers it points to increase as well.

I also have an article spelling out the differences between the “ancient wisdom,” perennial philosophy, and Traditionalism in the latest issue of New Dawn. The people there have been very helpful with suggestions and material useful for my current project, a book about the “return of Holy Russia” that I am doing for Inner Traditions and which I assume will be out sometime next year. I never thought I’d be writing a kind of mini-history of Russia but destiny doesn’t always announce itself ahead of schedule. I’m glad I’ve had a reason to go back and re-read early inspirations such as Dostoyevsky, the Christian existentialist Nikolai Berdyaev, and the tragic genius Gogol, among others, and also to explore new material. A lot has been churned up by our recent plunge into occult politics, but it isn’t only the nasty bits that rise to the surface.

And I am happy to announce that one of the rarest of Colin Wilson’s early works, his collection of essays on writers and literature, Eagles and Earwigs, has been published in a new edition. It’s edited by Wilson bibliographer Colin Stanley, published by Todd Swift at Eyewear Publishing, and has a preface by me, recounting, among other things, my visit to Wilson back in 1983 and my joy at finding a copy of the book at the old Reading Room of the British Museum. You may not be able to meet the author, but you can have the pleasure of reading his assessment of writers like Ayn Rand, John Cowper Powys, David Lindsay, L H. Myers and others.

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.