modernity | Heterodoxology

“Materialization: Occult Research on the Soul” – an esoteric lecture with Andreas Kilcher at UCSB

This summer, the President of ESSWE, Andreas Kilcher, has been located at Stanford University. With me being based at UC Santa Barbara, we found a great opportunity to arrange a small esotericism event at the UCSB Religious Studies Department and the Religion, Experience and Mind Lab group that I am working with. So if you are in the area, consider this event on August 6th: Andreas Kilcher lectures on “Materialization: Occult Research on the Soul”. Scroll down for the abstract (or download the flyer here):

(more…)

Published in:

on July 23, 2014 at 10:13 pm Comments (3)
Tags: Andreas Kilcher, Experience and Mind Lab, Materialization, modernity, psychical research, Religion, secularization, the soul, UC Santa Barbara

Books from the Esoteric Brat Pack

As a member of what’s been called the “brat pack” of esotericism scholars I am proud to note that a considerable number of us are appearing on the scene this year with monographs based on PhD dissertations. The brat pack presumably consists of a group of (then) students and emerging scholars who were around at the time of ESSWE 1 in 2007, and who have frequently been seen together at conferences since. While some of us have teamed up for joint gigs in the past (think The Devil’s Party or Contemporary Esotericism, and the conferences that went with both of these), it looks like 2014 is the big year for solo work. I know of at least four titles either published or forthcoming in 2014 by (for the most part) recent PhDs working in the field of Western esotericism. There may be other publication plans I am not aware of (please leave a note!). Here’s a chronological list of the knowns.

(more…)

Published in:

on July 14, 2014 at 2:37 am Comments (3)
Tags: ancient Christianity, book reviews, brat pack, Correspondences, disenchantment, Dylan Burns, feminism, gender, gnostics, Kennet Granholm, Lucifer, modernity, new books, Per Faxneld, Satanic Feminism, Satanism, Sethianism, The Apocalypse of the Alien God, The Devil's Party, transgression

Magic in the desert – and more misplaced psychologisms

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) is a hot name for heterodoxologists. He is also the most famous English occultist to have lived, his life having been told in about a dozen biographies. Today I taught a class on Crowley, magic, modernity and psychology, drawing on a chapter from Alex Owen’s book, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (2004).