Civilizational Diagnosis
On why reading, listening, and watching activate fundamentally different modes of mind, what each format can and cannot transmit, and why the choice of medium is the first decision of the serious interior life
Civilizational Diagnosis
On how the financialization of publishing, the collapse of cultural literacy, and the neurological rewiring of attention combined to produce a civilization that can no longer receive what its most serious books contain
The Artists
On Nick Hexum's solo work as the most explicit engagement with the animist position in contemporary American rock, what Super Natural names that the band could not, and the natural world as primary transmission vehicle
The Artists
On how 311's synthesis of genres constitutes a genuine alchemical act, why their specific quality of joyful presence is not naive, and what the tribal loyalty of their congregation reveals about music as community technology
The Artists
On the Allman Brothers Band's transformation of catastrophic loss into the most honest katabasis in American rock, what At Fillmore East was documenting, and how the road became the school
The Artists
On the Grateful Dead as the most sustained Orphic mystery school in American music history, what the Deadhead congregation was actually attending, and what American Beauty knew that the band could not say directly
The Artists
On Dave Grohl's katabasis through catastrophic loss, what the Foo Fighters document about the creative imperative on the far side of grief, and why Everlong is the Orphic return song of its generation
The Artists
On George Harrison's solo career as the most complete Orphic arc in rock music, the Vedantic emptying that structured the descent, and what All Things Must Pass was actually documenting
The Artists
On how the Beatles constituted the largest single initiatory event in popular music history, why the band's dissolution was the necessary completion of the transmission, and what the four solo careers reveal about the return with the gift
Western Occult Revival
On the Knights of Columbus as a case study in fraternal imitation, why copies dilute meaning, and what the transmission problem reveals about the difference between a ritual and an initiation
Western Occult Revival
On how Austin Osman Spare's forgotten work seeded Chaos Magic, what Peter Carroll formalized, and why the democratization of magick through the internet is the most significant development in Western esotericism since the Golden Dawn
Hancock
On the criminalization of altered states, the political economy that determines which substances are legal, and why the same logic that sanctioned caffeine and prohibited psilocybin reveals everything about what the system fears