New Course! Banishing the World: Postmodern Philosophy & the Occult + Updates!

Me & Eternity

I’m teaching a new online course called BANISHING THE WORLD: POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHY & THE OCCULT. One session, 2 hours, live, online, with a Q&A at the end.  It’s only 15.00 for a standard ticket. And it’s going to be awesome.

I’ve been studying both postmodern philosophy and the occult for decades now, and you know? They’re not easy! They’re difficult to read and understand, even as you sense the deep value in them.

But put them together and, whoa, alchemical reaction. Gold.

Below is the course description; click through to the Eventbrite page to sign up! (Oh, and, if you sign up for a Gold ticket, you get an occult-meets-postmodern t-shirt designed by me and customized to your size!)

Below that are a bunch of podcasts I’ve been on, interviews I’ve given (including one super in-depth interview with a literary magazine). Busy fella; thanks for hanging out with me!

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BANISHING THE WORLD: POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHY & THE OCCULT

Like the two snakes that twine around Hermes’s staff, the occult and postmodern philosophy embrace the same deep revelation:

The world is not as it seems.

But while the occult has been pushed out of serious academic study, postmodern philosophy remains much-discussed and influential. Of course, philosophy’s roots are in the occult: initiates in classical cultures discussing the meanings and substances of the universe. Then, as religion rose to new heights of power, philosophy rebelled against the magical, supernatural, and mystical. Now, after the distractions of the modern era, philosophers – as much as they may deny it – have once again found themselves at the altar with the occultists, the witches, and the mystics.

The postmodern philosophers are in many ways the mystics and maguses of our time. They speak in strange languages, presenting uncanny riddles, and exiling the old world by revealing the new. They’re renaming the gods, influencing cultures, changing medicine and science, and more.

With writer, radical thinker, and activist Conner Habib you’ll explore:

– How the theories of postmodern thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour, Donna Harraway, Michael Taussig, Michel Serres, and more, overlap with occult ideologies and practices.

– Why it’s all so complicated, anyway, and how using the occult to approach postmodern philosophy and vice versa can make both easier to understand.

– How to use both occult and postmodern ideas to reenvision the world you live in.

– How occult ideas have found their way into academia, science, and activism through the conduit of postmodernism.

Conner will guide you through the complex ideas of the occult and postmodern philosophy in plain, easy-to-understand language in this live, online course. It’s for the beginner and the adept alike.

The one-session one-hour lecture will be followed by a Q&A, so you’ll be part of the mind-expanding discussion.

If you can’t attend the day of, or if you want to watch the lecture again, you’ll have exclusive access to a recording of the course for 90 days. SIGN UP HERE!

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UPDATES

PODCASTS! 

I’ve returned to the great, mystical, dangerous, raspy clutches of The Duncan Trussell Family Hour! It’s my fourth appearance on the comedy-meets-sprituality-meets-tech-craziness podcast. I seriously love doing Duncan’s podcast. We go deep, and Duncan is one of the best conversationalists out there. Also, we invoke the god Pan together at the end. So, um, there’s that.

I also kicked it with sex positive power generator Dawn Serra on the Sex Gets Real podcast. We go deep there. I diss feminism. But in a non-diss feminism-is-also-good way. And I talk about why consent is a bit of a Trojan Horse when it comes to sexual ethics.

I was on writer/comedian/adult film witch priestess Sovereign Syre’s podcast, Observations. We talk about being (and not being) nice to other people, identity politics, and more. It’s a good one. Her podcast in general is pretty great. Listen to it.

The guys at Bateworld – a solo-sexual website (look it up, folks) – created a playlist inspired by me, which is kind of awesome. So if you need music to listen to while you’re, *ahem*, thinking fondly of me, it’s there. The site is not SFW, so if you have a horrible job that thinks looking at parts of the human body is wicked, don’t go there at work. Wait till you get home and you can blast it out. The music, I mean.

PRINT! I was featured in the rebel lit magazine, The Matador Review. It’s a good interview, and I’m proud of it. I like that I got to compare making porn to what César Aira must feel when he writes his novels.

Here’s an excerpt:  “…style is a mood. In other words, style is really this unique mood that you’ve created out of yourself. No one else has that mood, no one else has access to it. When you’re actually in your style, you experience a mood that you don’t experience in any other space, a mood that no one else can experience. That’s how you know you’re doing it. It’s this feeling of some emergence from you…”

Hurray that I got to be in Hot Press, which is basically the Irish Rolling Stone. I was interviewed by Olaf Tyaransen, who is the resident outlaw reporter there. Full disclosure, some of the facts are wrong in the interview. But that reflects an even deeper truth: that Olaf and I drank too much Guinness when we spoke.