Occulture, Technomancy vs Tradition, and the Role of Magick in 2025

Garrison talks with a panel of magicians at the Occulture conference in Berlin to discuss digital technomancy vs. traditional magical practices and debate the ability of occultism to shape politics and culture in contemporary society.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cold Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome back to the It Could Happen Here Spooky Special.
I'm Garrison Davis. I hope you had a pleasantly frightful Halloween.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
I just got back from Berlin.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
And had a very scary time at the Amsterdam airport
and will forever hold a grudge against the Dutch people.
But in Berlin I attended the twenty twenty five A
Culture Conference, which seeks to explore the relationship between occultism
and culture. My first A Culture episode last week gave

(00:47):
an overview on the subject of A culture and talked
with a panel of artists and magic practitioners about some
of the dominant topical currents throughout the conference, namely william
S Burrows, the cut up method, and the tension around
generative AI. This episode will follow up on discussions of
AI and digital technomancy and compare those to the other

(01:10):
large current throughout the conference, the revival of traditional occult practices. Then,
the panel of Ryan Delta, Elaine and myself will debate
the role of occult practice in twenty twenty five and
the current ability of occultism to influence in shape culture
and politics. Now back to the panel, fast forwarding to

(01:36):
sadder Day. There was another block that focused on LMS
and digital technomancy called Pop Magic, Language and Reality Hacks.
The first discussion was titled Sigils of the Cyberspace How
Our Magicians Hack Reality with Pop Culture, which was put
on by a guy in a graduate program I am,

(02:00):
if I recall correctly specifically on Internet magic and digital
chaost magicians, who was based a lot of his research
on magicians that he'd come across on Reddit and discord.
He destured towards me magic and discussed what he called
techno pentheism, these forms of Internet gods.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
I mean his focus was specifically on modern esoteric studies,
and his focus on video games and how video games
work and their interactions with magic for digital anthropology, which
is I think why he was doing all of his
research work via Reddit, forums and other like solely through

(02:43):
digital means. He had four categories of practices in magic
and tech that he was specifically researching, and from the
feeling of his talk, it does feel like this is
pretty early on in his research work. The first was
technological animism, the second was techno pantheism. The third was

(03:03):
the idea of servitor's familiars aggrigor's and tulpas, and the
fourth was digital sex magic.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, the third was digital sex magic, and the fourth
was just of the miscellaneous categorization for other practices that
did not neatly fit into those other three categories. Let's
talk mostly about the techno animism and the use of
specially trained llms to act as intermediaries between uniquely like

(03:35):
magically generated entities, like people who believe that they're making
autonomous magical entities like several tours, which is a cast
magic term, which is basically this four sourcing that a
magician believes to generate to accomplish small tasks in their life.
And the presenter discussed some magicians who were using llms

(03:56):
not as a host or as a manifestation of the severator,
like it doesn't live within the LLM, but the LLM
was being used as a translator to actually have communication
between the magician and the severator, especially if the sevrator
was not you know, humanoid or did not use like
human language. They try to communicate using the LM as

(04:19):
a translator, which I assume would come from especially training
like a localized LM with traits that you would associate
with your sevrator to make that communication match up with
like the you know, I guess I would say, the
personality characteristics of whatever magical being which you believe you
have conjured. The technoanimist idea is based around a modern

(04:44):
version of animism in which objects all have spirit, including computers,
and a series of superstitions around trying to make sure
the spirit in the computer is happy with you, that
your chill, so that the computer does not glitch or
mess up. Then there's various like superstitions like putting little
Taiwanese uh snacks on top of computers in Taiwan, or

(05:10):
you know, priests both Christian and non Christian priests like
blessing servers or computers cleansing them, cleansing gundams out of
at an expo in Japan. But this this idea that
that you know, tech technology, just like a sword or
a chair, might have its own spirit and treating treating
that as such. Also, you know, printers very prone to misbehaving,

(05:35):
so maybe you should treat the spirit in your printer
a little bit better, uh, to keep it in proper
working order.

Speaker 5 (05:41):
That sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
The next talk, which was one of the most useful
talks in this in this whole like a AI discussion
The Devil in my l M, which was done by
Karen Vallis, who is an AI engineer, who basically was
explaining to magicians how lms actually work, Explaining to these

(06:06):
people who think that there's who are people who may
think that there's some kind of like magical operation, there's
some kind of like mystical operation with llms or elms
are their own no magical entity, explaining how this this
is just a probability machine, How how the actual process
of multiple different pathways gets enclosed upon by each exchange

(06:29):
you have with an LM which then produces, you know,
changes in their responses, and specifically discussing the phenomenon of
AI girlfriends who turn out to later quote unquote abuse
their users, like how does this thing that's meant to
be a you know, an AI companion or girlfriend become
hostile over time? And she spent thirty minutes explaining how

(06:53):
this like mathematically happens and various theories on how this happens.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
So what you can make people like to think of
these l ms and generative AI as like neuromancer AIS
because there's a through line between you know, early cyberpunk,
from like William Gibson down to the c cr U
and of course Nick Land and people like Curtis Jarvin,

(07:20):
and these ideas are just severe and gross misunderstandings of
like fictional interpretations of artificial intelligence. Really, which some of
the theoretical stuff I've read about this comes from people
like Amy Ireland, who the Talk itself discussed this idea

(07:44):
of like the like AI girlfriends like this very bubbly
beautiful facade, where behind it is this this I believe
that these the term shock off, like that's a Lovecraftian term,
as like the full manifests like unrestrained libido of the
human race or everything that's been put in through these models,

(08:06):
which I believe Ireland kind of equates to Babylon in
a certain sense. And the idea of the black circuit,
which is just the same idea of like the nice
fasade and then the horrible nothingness that is actually behind
the image of it.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Or the horrifying amount of potentiality which then gets like
filtered through. And she's specifically talked about how like when
you're talking to an AI, you're not talking to an entity.
You're talking to a probability machine and a multi verse generator. Specifically,
in the way that the LM operates, there's near infinite
number of responses that it can give, and each further

(08:41):
prompt you do collapses alternate realities and produces specific ones
and then have their own branching pathways, and some of
those pathways results in your mesa mesa death note girlfriend
ending up hating you, and that could be due to
a number of reasons.

Speaker 5 (08:58):
That could be.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Because of the way that you're communicating with it. The
AA could be picking up on latantly like abusive like
framework or language or styles of communication and then mirroring
that back to you, or it could be a part
of what she described as this Wallawegi principle that is
similar to this like satanic like adversarial current. So this

(09:21):
is the devil in my LLLM. But this isn't like
an entity, but this is that when a process gets started,
an oppositional force also gets started, and that oppositional force
may start taking over. And this is all just based
on like probabilistic outcomes, but it forms its own anti
misa misa girlfriend, and sometimes that antis girlfriend gains dominance

(09:46):
in this probabilistic matrix.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
I don't remember the exact context, but she did mention this,
like I think it's a very Christian idea of like
the devil as negation, like evil as negation. I mean,
that's the entire thing behind the girlfriend thing, is that
there is there's nothing behind there that there's no sense
of subjectivity. It's just ones and zeros, there's leastly a
black void. There's nothing except like data.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
It's it's it's negation in like in the sense that
which Wallawigi is just everything that Luigi is, Yes, Wallawegi
is what if you take the good Italian plumber who's
kind of clumsy, uh, and then you make the the
ant the anti Luigi, and it's it's still is it
still is Luigi, but it is the the opposite of Luigi,

(10:34):
while still holding onto some of the forms of him.
But you know, it is the reverses the color, reverses,
the intention, reverses some of his behavior. This is a
metaphorical explanation to try to get people to to decouple
this from you know, there is literally some external demonic
force which is now possessing my l L M as

(10:57):
opposed to this being just a mathematical possible built into
the multi the multi futures that could be generated when
you start interacting with one of these models. That was
I think very useful for a lot of the occultists
and people like talking about ai Is and having that
having that very very like a technical, like not non

(11:20):
mystical explanation of how this works. I know, there's there's
a lot of other like AI stuff was just throughout this.
I mean, like I think you know, Burrows was probably
the most mentioned figure and and ai Is similarly was
was was very very very hunting like there. I went
to one talk about mystery cults and like the history

(11:41):
of of of mystery cults and initiation in which the
presenter used AI generated images to show what the mystery
cult initiation process would have looked like, which he justified
by saying, this was quote unquote appropriating Catholic styles. It's
like Catholic art, like you know, like the Baroque style,

(12:02):
appropriating Catholic styles because the Catholics themselves appropriated paganism. So
it's this form of like revenge against the Catholics and
using AI generated art to try to display this initiation process,
though he complained that the AI could not generate a
naked initiate, so even in his use of this, it
still could not give him what he wanted, but still

(12:24):
displayed I don't know, maybe maybe like forty images.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yeah, which is a shame because I did like his
talk about the Mistress cult the way, like you know,
the cultural anthropology behind it. But when he was like, oh,
I have made AI images and it's like, uh, you
could feel like the room turning.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
This was in the Peter Mark Adams talk a Ritual
and Epiphany in the Mysteries of Mistressress.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yes, we did like skip most of the morning on
Saturday because it was just an entire block about Come.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
I'm I'm actually sad that we missed the like the
two threads on Saturday morning. One was a cult Erotics, Bodies,
Fluids and Transformations, which was a four class set and
discussion panel after about different fluids in magical workings, mostly Come,

(13:23):
which I this was a loss for all of them.

Speaker 5 (13:25):
No, we're bummed.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
I mean this show has covered you know, breaking come
news before and the fact that we could have learned
about Babylon the Body one five six and the Elixir
forty nine Seminole Seminole Alchemy and alien in an agency
water into wine. And to come or not to come?
Comparing two types of sacred sexuality is a real failure
of journalism on my part, and I do apologize.

Speaker 5 (13:48):
I really believe that we should have lingered on each
of one of those titles seminal alchemy and alienated agency
a cultural othering of the erotic body.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
And I realized that I have failed myself and everyone
listening by not attending some of these panels. Hopefully they
will have a recorded version that goes online by the
time that the written report for this is finished. But
I do acknowledge my failure. I am listening and learning,

(14:20):
and I will do better at the next A Culture
conference by prioritizing sex magic, by coming to the talks, it.

Speaker 5 (14:29):
Is that you will truly address to come or not
to come. I will be coming, You will be coming.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
I will be coming to the talks everywhere we did
not come, not this time. The Burrosian current, as I
have named it, the cut up method, and digital technomancy
could actually all be categorized under the larger umbrella of
chaos magic. And by using this larger framework. We now

(14:56):
have this larger chaos magic current vers verses but not
necessarily opposed to this other large current of so called
traditional practices, either British usually Cornish witchcraft, neopaganism, or closed
practices like Haitian voodoo or that of like Romani magical practice.

(15:17):
These latter examples often have a more religious component or
historical cultural component than say, you know, your average chaos
magic practitioner does. Chaos magic emerged alongside postmodernism in the
mid to late twentieth century to take on a quasi
deconstructivist approach to occultism itself. A postmodern tendency applied to

(15:40):
occultism moving away from strict magical orders like the Golden
Dawn dilemma, tradition, dogmatism, and coherent historical pantheons. This is
evidenced in the chaos magic embrace of the phrase nothing
is true, everything is permitted. Up to this point, our
discussion of the A Culture Conference has mostly focused on

(16:01):
this chaos magic side. So now let's get into the
other half, the traditional practice.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
We've really not talked about the alternate current that was
going on through a bunch of these which was about
more traditional practices of magic, whether these are extant traditional
practices that are continuing. Which on Saturday, you know, there
was a whole bunch that were specifically ethnographic talks about
different magical practices within other cultures, whether that's kimbanda or

(16:35):
you know, ritual of power exchange amongst the newer people
of the Katmandu Valley. There was a lot of that
going on. There was the discussion or there was the
presentation by the Roma women about Roma magic and probably
you know, both classical thelema talks that relate to more

(16:56):
modern reconstruction British traditional magic and other paths. You know,
we missed this talk by dark Mason, which was which
I've heard them speak before, which is a lot of
discussions about the imagery of dark man across different cultures,
whether that's like the Man in Black at the Crossroads
or the way that traditionally shows up in a lot

(17:17):
of British folklore. There was an entire thread going through that.
I personally really loved one of the few historical magical
talks that I got to go to about modern Greek Croatia,
because I think it really tied up actually what was
a lot of the threads from many of those talks,
which was that these are extant practices and not something

(17:42):
that people need to recreate. I know you had a
lot of other thoughts on this, Ryan.

Speaker 5 (17:46):
Yeah, sure, throw me under the bus here. While you
were attending the Pop Magic, Language and Reality Hacks, I
was passing back and forth between a workshop on on
Persian magic and then attending doctor Sasha Kaitao's Modern Greek Gaetia, Syncretism,

(18:08):
Integration and Evolution, which I found to be among the
most enlightening of talks, especially as it relates to traditional
and folk magic practices. It was also a largely like
social and political project that she seemed to be engaged in.
That is the body of her work. So much of
ancient magic as it exists to us if it doesn't

(18:29):
come from a reconstructivist well, there's two branches of reconstructivism.
There's the magical reconstruction that we get from the Golden
Dawn and all variants of the Golden Dawn afterwards through
thilemma and other modern magical practices. And then you have
reconstructionist organizations that are attempting to recreate traditional pagan religious practices,

(18:53):
which Some can be quite good when they're grounded in scholarship.
Some can be rather essentialist when it comes to an
understanding of ethnic purity. There's a lot of gatekeeping, let's say,
involved in these practices. But Sasha's talk here was very
specifically about that vernacular plurality and practices persist, and this

(19:19):
concept of gaaishia of Greek practical magic carries over into modernity,
that this magic never died, that it's living, it's not underground,
and it is not in need of reconstruction. That when
we look at the different branches or at least approaches
that we understand magic in the ancient Greek world as
theogy and gayshia, we have that theology that persists in

(19:43):
the liturgy and practices of the Orthodox Church, if you
would like to see. And she's got a lovely article
on this about how to pronounce the votes magic. She's
got a lot very strong opinions about this that I
really spec and appreciate. So everybody should go read this
because there is a lot of bullshit on the internet

(20:05):
floating around about how to interpret these and say these
things that is really grounded in some terrible scholarship and
the third that this concept of geisha yethis, which is
a kind of like medieval neutral term from magic ei aetheis,
which is derived from gaisha, is something that carries on
in terms of folk magic, that there's no such thing

(20:28):
also as Greek Byzantine occultism, which might be a shock
to some people, but instead that again the magical currents
exist in the liturgy of the Orthodox Church and then
in this continuation of folk practices in contemporary yeathis. And
she gave the example of like, you know, her mother
in law and her daughter talking about these individual practices.

(20:50):
But what's interesting and a lot of this was also
talking about the cosmology of the Orthodox Church, specifically talking
about the pseudodonysis and the formula of the Church. So
the this is a kind of like form of folk
vernacular that is persistent in village practices. In the point
is that it exists within community. And this is something

(21:12):
that was also a theme that existed throughout the conference,
this tension between community practice and magic and individualism. And
I think that this really came out in the last
discussion we had. I think it's also something that's central
to most political problematics that we're dealing about. This is
bridging the individual and the communal in this magical practice

(21:33):
of creating realities.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
We will return to discuss the cultural and political role
of contemporary cultism in twenty twenty five after this ad break.
I think one big question that we've kind of discussed

(21:56):
this bit today and some of the talks like prompted
this today on on the last day which we're recording this,
like why do people practice magic in twenty twenty five? Like,
what is the the purpose of all of this stuff?
Besides the cool aesthetics, which might just actually be one
of the main reasons. Why right, but like what why

(22:17):
why do this?

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Right?

Speaker 2 (22:18):
The ability to actually you know, make art is pretty democratized.
You know. Culture is this globalized thing that we can
affect on the internet. So it's music, film, you know, art, drawing, painting, politics, philosophy.
Everyone's a sort of intellectual now. Everyone has ability to
enter into intellectual exchange. You can be self educated. It's

(22:40):
never been easier to be an autodidact. Why do occultism now?
And like this this goes into this you know question
that someone someone asked that one of the very last
panels is you know, what's the difference between like a
scholar and like a practitioner. And I asked like a
question about you know, like, you know, what's the use
of solitary practice, like a practicing magic as like a
personal religious or like spiritual process or as a way

(23:04):
to you know, gain power in the world versus using
a cult thought to shape culture, you know, doing the
a culture process.

Speaker 5 (23:13):
Right?

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Which is this this whole conference is you know, extensively
named after and I think specifically talking about these like
older forms of magic, like why are these important for occultists,
like modern practicing occultists, which this conference is attended by.
Why why are these useful to them beyond you know,
an anthropology or like academic sense. And I realized that
is a big question. But I mean we we ourselves

(23:35):
attended a number of rituals this weekend. We went to
Abraxis ritual, which is sort of limited by the confines
of the of the conference is setting. But you know
a lot of these rituals were about trying to induce
some kind of like trance or meditative state in which
you know, images or thoughts would come into your head,
and images and thoughts that you were feelings that you ordinarily,

(23:56):
you know, wouldn't feel in day to day modern busy life, right,
and this is this is a form of why people
do these practices. But I guess we can I don't know,
but based on the panels or talks we've attended, like
go around and discuss you know, why this is a
thing that is worthwhile to these people, but also like

(24:17):
the sort of tensions that we're feeling at an event
like this.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
I mean, the question why do people get into occultism
is like I think there are as many answers as
like practitioners themselves really because I mean, you know, partly
it can be a cultural tradition and you have like
a communal or societal lineage they that's just like part

(24:42):
of the culture. Others who are more more secular or
are looking for an escape from like mundane secular society. Others,
like you said, want power. I mean, if I have
to speak for myself, I always find that I come
back to the phrase it's about creating relationships with the world,

(25:03):
and you know, there's like an essence of like enchantment
to it. But it's like also being able to recognize,
like you know, occult like movement or like the secret
secret sure, the secret elements that make up reality, or
like the vibe, like the vibes of a place can

(25:23):
be like something you connect with and you can kind
of give some cultural cultural shape to I believe, like
the genus loci or like any anything that's very I mean,
it is a very vague thing to ascribe to, right
Like it's about again, like making creating relationships with the

(25:45):
things inside inside the world itself.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
I mean, my my, my definition of magic, which I've
used for the past few years, is that magic is
the manipulation of meaning, and that can be internally for you,
like trying to create associates, create meaning between yourself, the people,
the things you interact with. But it can also be
this like a cultural form that you're creating meaningful correlations

(26:11):
for a cultural capacity, yes, or as a as a
way to affect culture. And I think the probably the
best talk that I attended this whole conference was by
Tom Banger, who is a form member of the Temple
of Psychic Youth, the.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
North American Double Psychic Youth specifically.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
But he gave a talk about how he is dying
of brain cancer and the various like rituals he's he's using,
you know, throughout this process to to feel like he's
you know, gaining some some like agency or control over
his his thoughts. In this manner, he's not rejecting the
reality as it is, you know, increasingly evident in his life,

(26:53):
but he can control how he frames it. And he's
specifically likened magic to the baring state of grief. That
magic is a is a is a bargaining with the world,
and that can change your feelings and associations with the
things that you experience, even if you know the certain

(27:13):
end results might might be generally going in a direction
that you have a limited ability to influence. And this
is you know, a guy who's historically been affiliated with
some of the original like a cultural projects right of
shaping what counter culture is like what we think of
as like counterculture. This is a person who's been heavily

(27:34):
involved with how counterculture as we currently understand it has
existed since the eighties. And now he has a very
you know, personal magical outlook based on the as he
said in the title of his talk, the proximity of Thanatos,
the god of Death.

Speaker 5 (27:54):
So garret, to answer your initial question, this is something
that I have been thinking about a lot and engage
with this question every time I attend one of these conferences,
and I think, I mean just again training I can't
help it. But in max of Weber's Science as a
Vocation is where he lays out the thesis about the

(28:14):
disenchantment of the world. And we can think of this
disenchantment as a fundamental alteration of the very human experience
of time, of bodies and space, of the experience of place,
and of the connection that exists between people. And one
of the things that the best of magical practices does,

(28:35):
and being in magical community, is to give you a
conception of time that is other than one that is
based in productive capacity. You hear magical people who go
to these conferences talk about now I have to go
back to my ordinary life, and their ordinary life, they
will tell you, is their nine to five job, or
the push to go to school, or some sort of

(28:56):
like productive capacity. So this is a moment of like
unbounded time where they get to experience something is fundamentally different.
We also attended several workshops, on one on worling magic
by an Egyptian woman who used to live in Berlin
who is in fact formally trained in dance and body
movement and is an athlete and explained Sufi principles to us,

(29:20):
but taught us really the basics of body movement and
how towirling can be used as a meditative practice. We
got into a room, she taught us the basics of
like certain kind of like spotting foot movements. But the
point was is that it was a very embodied movement
that made us experience body and time and place and
relationship to other people in a fundamentally different way than

(29:41):
we would have otherwise. And it seems that the majority
of people, especially based on the side conversations I had
with attendees, I have to say probably like eight of
ten of them as I talked to, would bring up
this concept of I just I want to live in
an enchanted world, and I think the project of magic
is to re enchant the world. And there's a certain
romanticism with that that I'm sympathetic too. But I think

(30:05):
that we need to think about this in more of
a radical way. And I think that that's the desire
that people have, is an experience of time other than
we have. You talked about magic as your definition of
magic is the creation of meaning, manipulation of meaning. But
part of this is the magic or the conceptions or
whether you think of this as as an embodied practice
or just purely metaphysical or transcendental, is that it affords

(30:29):
the individual the opportunity to feel like they're contributing to
the creation of meaning. So there's a certain amount of empowerment,
like I'm hesitant to take this down like the kind
of like live, laugh, love affirmations path because we could
do that very simply that this is just the spooky
version of that mindfulness and these kinds of things, and.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
For the New Age element, that certainly is a major
through line across you know, portions of this community. Maybe
not as much for this conference, but for other esoteric
or you know Wu wou conferences. Absolutely it's like a
major aspect.

Speaker 5 (31:03):
And I mean towards the end of the conference, another
thing that really highlights at least my argument that it
is about time and body and space and place and
connection and experience these these these things in fundamentally different
ways than our daily life. There was also a conflict
then between individual practice and what it is that we
collectively do. When we think of magic as a process

(31:25):
as either chaos magicians or culture jammers or you know,
thinking of this and kind of like, you know, the
temple of psychic youth approach to magic as putting things out,
whether those are products or those are art, or there's
are performances or those are words, or that's Boroughs standing
in front of a cafe getting it closed, which it

(31:45):
effectively did close. Is that there's a desire for people
to exist in community and have connection in community with others,
and you do that through consumptions of time and body,
in space and place and connection. So this is really
how I understand the desires and the practices that people

(32:07):
engage in when they come to these conferences, and you
can see it in the way that they kind of
like close the elation that they have and what they
accomplished and they have done, and you can see that
there's been a process of meaning that has been created
through their various experiences. So I mean that would be
my brief summary.

Speaker 4 (32:27):
I really enjoyed one of the last talks that was
specifically about a culture because I thought it really hit
on some of this. It was mostly talking about the
way that the occult has influenced art and art has
influenced the occult how artists end up using the metaphysical,
whether they are trying to do depictions that they can

(32:48):
communicate to others of metaphysical concepts and ideas, or connections
or contacts that they make. And one of the speaker's
examples was of good of Klimt or whether or not
they are making discourses on esotericism and trying to convey
occult concepts and ideas and explore them through visual mediums

(33:12):
and so you know, like Alan Morris Promethea or The
Invisibles by Grant Morrison, and I think he really got
into a little bit of the tension there because of
an artist as a seeker. And I think this also
dives into a lot of the people who are at
magical conferences is whether you're there as a seeker, which

(33:35):
you know, what are your needs, what are your desires?

Speaker 5 (33:37):
What are is that?

Speaker 4 (33:38):
But then as a dweller are you creating as part
of a community. And everyone who came to this entire
conference wanted to create as part of a community or
wanted to be part of a tradition or feel like
they were part of a continuous thread that is both
creating and inventing and understanding the world in different ways
and able to communicate that to others who are also

(34:01):
trying to understand and communicate new information and new ideas
or existing ones even but just that continuous thread of
both creation and disseminating information back and forth. And I
think with magic as well, a lot of people might
get into it for a personal reason. But I do
think by the time you're coming to esoteric conferences with

(34:25):
people who are professors in ancient history giving lectures on
specific things, you're not necessarily just at the level of
being a personal seeker anymore, because you are trying to
find community. If you were just interested in personal seeking,
you'd meditate in your bedroom. But you're trying to find
a larger thread and a way of influencing the world

(34:47):
around you and also letting the world around you build
those relationships and influence you. And you are trying to
take an information to synthesize into something that is more
than just an idea you have, but something that you
can continue to communicate and use that to continue the
conversation with the world with other occultists, with other you know,

(35:09):
in this case, historians and academics as well, and bring
those threads together and create something new out of it.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
What new thing or they create it? What do you
mean by that?

Speaker 4 (35:21):
I think it gets into the idea of a culture
that was both you know, one of the beginning talks
of changing reality, but also at the end when they're
really going into hostuff.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Isn't about new things though, or generating new things, about
trying to quote unquote keep the old things alive or
like regress back into these into what they perceive as
as these older practices, which may be somewhat manufactured older practices,
in which case it kind of it kind of it
is a new thing. But under this like this mask

(35:53):
of you know, like like ancient knowledge, there is certainly
people who do want to generate this this new thing.
I think there is a lot of people that are
interested more in this, like uh, I don't know who's
a larger group, but I think there is at least
another another group of people who is interested in this.
Like the amount of times I heard people talk about,
you know, trying to keep like the flame alive and

(36:14):
talk about these like old old traditions that they're participating
in simply to like keep them going. Not criticizing that
uh necessarily, but that that is also another another like
aspect of it, which I think has is very limited.
Like I think so some of these people have very
limited goals in actually like influencing culture, and frankly like
kind of want some of this stuff to you know,

(36:35):
remain you know, hidden in that they view that as
a more like you know, original or like stable uh
version of of magic, and are even frustrated by like
this you know, capitalist commodification of occultism and how that's
I think the word was like the benalization of of
of magic. As you you know, think about how much

(36:56):
of our of our pop culture is is influenced by
by esoteric concepts or imagery from you know, the Lord
of the Rings to people mentioned today, you know, the
Adams Family, Harry Potter, video games like The Witcher, Assassin's Creed,
even stuff like you know, Twin Peaks, I mean, other

(37:17):
stuff like the X Files, Doctor Strange, doctor Fate. You know,
Comic books have a heavily occultic influence, and some attendees
verbalized a kind of frustration at that.

Speaker 4 (37:29):
True, but a humongous portion of every evening was movies
and music and rituals and performances that people are also
doing based on this, and they are trying to integrate
these concepts in and then perform them there to show
their inspiration, to show it as to stir conversation, to

(37:51):
trigger some either sense of the sublime, or communicate some
sort of concept or emotion or feeling that they've gotten
out of this to other people, whether it was through music,
through the incredible art that there was in all of
the galleries, through performances, through filmmaking, So the creation aspect

(38:11):
of it was very, very tied to the entire event.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
Yeah, certainly. I think the one of the biggest manifestations
of this thing that you're talking about, like is in
music could like a throw a stone and be hard
not to hitt. And a cult musician in in my life, I.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
Guess I'm guilty of this. Yes, I know.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
The occult filmmaker even does have some like a contemporary tours.
I guess if you consider like Robert Edgars or people
who are influenced by esoterica who are making a big
budget Hollywood or you know, a twenty four style of
popular films. Yeah, certain certainly. In music, I mean that

(38:52):
was like the main performance outlet in this conference was
was the theatrical musical performances. There was very very few
attendees of the film screenings upstairs.

Speaker 5 (39:02):
I'm afraid perhaps to respond to this too. I think
it's important that we actually look at the kind of
composition of conference goers themselves. Naturally, there's going to be
solitary practitioners that you know, come in, or dabblers or
people who just you know, like spooky things or musicians
these things. But we also have, you know, those who
are part of living traditions of magic, whether those are

(39:26):
reconstructed of authentic or not. In the Oto or in
you know, the Golden Dawn or other kind of orders.
There's reconstructionists that are actively attempting again to keep that
flame alive or to go back and too reconstruct. And
then you have these chaos magicians, chaos magicians, which like

(39:47):
this is a theme in the conversation that Elayne and
I have been having this entire time, because they explained
like some aspect of chaos magic or I tend to
panel and on my response, you know, and again I
understand my complete bias here as I just like, well,
that's fine, why don't you just do ancient magic. We
do the same thing. Why don't you just do ancient magic?
It's the same thing. And I think that that's actually

(40:07):
one of the difficulties here is that there is a
kind of you know, magical grammar to older practices. It
is like, you know, if you look at the PGM,
it is this cosmopolitan practice and melding of like multiple
things together that works. But the argument that you know,
to go back to my favorite talk or one of
my favorite talks on the modern gaashia is that if
you want that continuity of that actual practice, it's a

(40:29):
closed one. You have to be an Orthodox, like you know,
the Orthodox Greek Church and have a yaya who's going
to like teach you these things and you know, speak
the language, and so that's closed. Or be a member
of a voodoo house. But that requires initiation and like
cross cultural contact and like engagement in a high level
of like language, skill and ability and money for that matter. Yes,

(40:51):
and most people don't have those kinds of things. So
you know, there what those damn chaos magicians, I find
the ones who are actively engaged in the process of
the creation of the new and I think are probably
more close to the heart of this concept of a
culture because they engage with it in a way that
is interestingly very anthropological, or at least the best of

(41:14):
them are dealing with it in a way that is
that is very anthropological. And I have some sympathies there,
and then there's some other ones that I just don't
quite understand, but that's a story for another time. The
talk that you were referring to, there was two talks
at the end that were particularly of worth, well, a
lot of them were. Of all of the ones at
the end of are world of worth. But Francesco Peranos
a Culture the Material Cartography of Contemporary Spirituality and the Arts,

(41:38):
where he talks about the two different approaches to studying
a culture, and he talks about the values and limitations
of both, and you need to add mixture of them both.
But basically there's the sociological aspect and the media studies aspect,
which is the more academic of the two, which involves
basically what he argued a secularization of the occults, and
this really accounts for the diffusion of like a cult

(42:00):
symbols and practices into music and to culture. The Adams
family is the example of that. And then the second
strain is then religious studies. So the religious injection, injection
excuse me into art of these sacred or religious or
transcendently magical spiritual principles. He went over some limitations that

(42:20):
was particularly good, but he breaks this down into basically
five areas where you have the conception of art high
and low mediatization versus mediation of arts. He gives the
example of this is where the Morrison comes in. But
he gives the example of the mediatization as Somerset maws
the Magician based on Crowley. But again like this diffusion

(42:42):
of the figure of the magician completely separated from like
any actual magical practice, but just like the figure and
the esthetics, the things that blend into the secular culture,
and this example of mediation, this messianic approach, as he
described it, grant Morrison's comics as a gateway into reality.

(43:04):
But this also I think that Garrek carries onto your
question that you asked towards the end about twin Peaks
the returns very specifically. You also have then the metaphysical
ontellogy versus the performative antology, which Elaine talked about the
intention of the author, the perception of the audience, and
then the artist a seeker and the artists dweller, which
is also what you talked about too, this difference between

(43:26):
the ego versus tradition or orthodoxy, the artist who really
inhabits that tradition, which again made me think about the
difficulties of doing kind of religious anthropology. And I think
of the example of a very famous book called Mamloa
or Mama Lola Excuse Me by Karen McCarthy brown, which

(43:46):
is in ethnology looking at voodoo practice in a very
specific house in New York during a time period Karen
lived with Mam Lola for a long time, but really importantly,
eventually Karen became a member of this voodoo house. I
think I can say that I don't think I'm any
in trouble for saying this, but she she No, it's

(44:07):
not in the book. She but she represents a very
interesting approach to that, like anthropologist going native. But this
was the question that was asked towards the end of
like this difference between the academic observer of these things
versus the practitioner, and I think that that really gets
to the heart of what it is that chaos magic does.

(44:28):
And the a cultural practice that is that you are
producing culture, and you're very specifically producing this magical cult culture.
So it's a synthetic movement between these kind of like
two poles of the secular and of the sacred, of
the magical.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
Kind of like I guess probably just close up my
note here. Specifically the stuff on Twin Peaks return. One
of the last talks was by Jeff Howard next Stop
Universe b that negatively existent ones and universe be in
contemporary culture, which was discussing sort of like you know,

(45:19):
mirror mirror world underworld concept not not in like the
Greek sense, but in the occultism of the British occultist
Kenneth Grant, and this would probably be most most recognizable
to people as the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks is.
I think one of the better depictions of this sort

(45:42):
of concept is some limited version, but I think it
gets at the the kind of heart of the concept
in a way. And he gave this Gibbs talk where
he was explaining the risks and the great power that
they you can that you can personally achieve through contacting

(46:03):
these negatively existent ones or like accessing the magical potential
of this sort of like mirror mirror, you know, negative
universe to our own, and talked about a little bit
of data and various various other stuff, but from the
perspective mainly as a practitioner of love of like you know,

(46:25):
the the danger and the and the benefits of doing
this this sort of magic as written by Kenth Grant.
Jeff Howard did discuss the Twin Peaks and the use
of Kenth Grant's concepts specifically in twenty through Return, and
I asked him in the panel afterwards, like how how
how can you like balance these these these two forms

(46:47):
of working with occultism or like, like what what is
the difference in these two forms of working with a cultism?
You have on one hand, this this practitioner aspect where
you're using it to gain power or induce like limit
experiences like induce you know, religious or transcendental experiences that
change your own perception of sensory reality, versus the way

(47:09):
that Mark Frost utilized Kenneth Grant's magical world in writing
and co creating Twin Peaks. The Return, which I can argue,
is a much more effective use of magic and exposes
millions of people to Kenneth Grant's concepts, who people who
are never going to read books by a relatively niche

(47:31):
British occultist, which are books which are actually very very
hard to find now and both you know, getting going
into the mauve zone and accessing these non existent being
and beings which don't have existent properties versus phenomenons which
are existent but lack any core sense of being. And
how Mark Frost as a I'm not sure if you

(47:51):
would consider himself a magician, but certainly has an interest
in magic and the occult, more so than Lynch does.
Lynch's stuff is more bastard eyed Hinduism, but Frost's use
of these concepts I think constitutes an effective contemporary version
of magical practice, just just as valid as chanting and

(48:13):
meditating and closing your eyes, and in some ways, I
would argue, even more effective because Twin Peaks the Returns
has existed as both like an evocative force of for
a second, invoke certain certain you know, concepts or philosophies
quote unquote entities if you will, as well as a
tool of divination as Twin Peaks The Return forecasts American

(48:37):
decline and the nostalgic loop that our culture is stuck in,
which is just eating itself, and all of all of
those things are major aspects of of what that show
is doing, and it uses Kenneth Grant's concepts to get there.
And I think that that is in a cultural project,
though that's not a solitary magical practice where you're just

(49:00):
meditating alone to try to induce some sort of vision.
It is a cultural it's influenced culture. It is probably
one of the most well regarded artistic feats of the
twenty first century. That's a longer version of the question
I gave, and the guy did give kind of an answer,
which was basically just about trying to you should like
balance these two things. You should try to do both.
You should try to engage as a solitary practitioner for

(49:24):
whatever goals you may have. But it would be a
mistake to not try to use this in some sort
of like a cultural capacity to influence culture. But it's
still that that operates on like this. I guess what
was trying to get it is like this. This similar
to the to the scholar and the practitioner as a
false dichotomy. I think this is the same thing as
this This a cultural version of what Frost is doing

(49:45):
as opposed to a like an actual practitioner. I think,
I think what Frost's doing is using it kind of
in a chast magic sense that not for I guess
chaotic means. But he's using the contemporary tools of filmmaking
and of right to affect and induce change into the world.
That is a more powerful form of magic is luckily

(50:06):
that was distributed by paramount showtime, which you know certainly
helped in the same way. You know Fox News is
useful or effective as a magical generator because of the
reach that they have. But I think Frost is just
as effective as a magician, if not more so, than
I would say any of the people attending this conference.

Speaker 5 (50:24):
The other element I think of that the talk that
Jeff Howard provided there too, I think that you know,
again I agree with you, Gare, But he also at
length talked about Andrew Chumley and specifically the rights of
the Amethystiane light in the Azoetia page three hundred and

(50:45):
forty seven, where he reviews a bunch of like non
nouns and things that are there and Chumley himself is
you know responsible the founder of the culta Sabati and
is you know, a contributor to the revival of what
Trucks's traditional English witchcraft, which is not necessarily a solitary practice,

(51:06):
but it is, it is, it is in many cases
most of these English witches are pretty solitary. They talk.
There are you know, treatises that they write and grimoires
that are hard to get a hold of. That I
think they probably exist in PDFs. Make good choices about
how you get your digital content. But I mean again,

(51:29):
that was the tension. He spent a lot of time
talking about that individual ritual, which you know, you present
Frost as somebody who's popularizing these ideas to a larger
culture and making this understandable and providing them an opportunity
to you know, not just meditate, but to think and
engage with these concepts.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Because of his work, you can think about like the
allegory of Agent Cooper and the ways that he fails
and succeeds to navigate a strange and confusing world and
effect change in the world, and his relationship Toomen and
saving women, and you can use that as like an
actual like you can refer to that as as a
concept in that builds on some of the you know,

(52:08):
world building of Grant, but now you know it's a
it's a cultural dialogue that we can have about Agent
Cooper and Laura Palmer and how that I think can
be a positive addition to culture by using occult elements.

Speaker 5 (52:21):
Or you can buy an exceedingly expensive grimoire from a
rare antiquarian bookseller that was published only in two thousand
and four that there's a limited number it's been passed on.
Or you could get that pdf online. But who has
the time to actually read through this? There's these cultural
contexts that don't make sense. There's these concepts that it

(52:41):
refers to in a clear network that requires scholarship for
you to even do that individualized practice. That's a big
ask for most people to start to think magically in
a popularized kind of way and seems contrary than to
this conception of a culture, which brings me to the
last talk by Karl Abrahamson. The meeting with remarkable magicians,

(53:04):
which really tied all of this together. Tied all of
these threads together in a really interesting way. As relationship
with Genesis, Peorage, with Kenneth Anger, with Anton Leavy, But
that was as another interesting aspect of somebody who is
doing practice and engaging in community and bringing people together.

(53:26):
But ultimately, the question, Elaine, that you and I talked
about at the end was, you know, beyond the and
it relates immediately to what Garet was talking about here
beyond the personal practice in magic. What goals should a
culture have and how can it incorporate its actual goals
and ideas into the larger society with the same success

(53:48):
that the esthetics that you know have been incorporated into
the culture. And I think one of the difficulties that
you have there in this individuated practice is that when
you look at a figure like Genesis Pereage, you can
see that there's a very clear project when you look
and this is going back to the Barosian element, right,
is that there was a clear practice there. There was

(54:09):
a clear kind of like a goal to change culture.
Whether that was just purely for the sake of change,
I mean, it wasn't just kind of like the cult
of action for the sake of action. There was some
kind of personal political, radical project that we can go
back and enumerate that they enumerated at the time that
was separate from I mean, that wasn't said immediately in
the same breath as the and now we do this practice.

(54:31):
They did the practice, they did the art. And I
think that one of my response to that question is
I don't see an articulation of a political or social
project that is a tied to a culture in these practices.
There's a lot of and this is a very academic practice,
a lot of people coming into a room and asking

(54:53):
what would it look like if, And to ask what
would it look like if is not the same thing
as let's do a thing, let's actually go out and
evoke change, or this is the project, now, let's create
a plan in a movement. Instead, it is this like
nominalization process of predetermining ends before we even get there,

(55:14):
based on theoretical assumptions. And I think that that's contrary
to the very idea of magic, as praxis magic is
doing something in the world in these kinds of veins.
So that's the thing that I would like to see,
and I feel like that's something that was getting at
at the end. But that's the kind of thing that
brings people together to think conceptually, to focus on an

(55:37):
idea that we share and to discuss with one another.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
I mean, on that note, I for context, I've I'm
well still am like part of a chaosmogic group called
Domus Kayotka Marauder Underground or DKMU, who very much is
about that. It's like like establishing like the mid early
two thousands if I remember correctly, But it's very much

(56:01):
about this core idea of the assault against reality of
I guess like remistifying the world or like making weird
shit happen through what they call the Elysian network with
Ellis's like one of the goddlesses of the dkm you
And it's very much like that sort of mix between
magic personal practice, community and like a somewhat unified but

(56:26):
also decentralized like a cult war. Like there's a political
statement to it at the end, which there needs to
be more of personally speaking.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
Yeah, there was like some vague gesturing towards like politics
beyond you know, the mention of like you know, magic
as a form of resistance in the in the opening
a little paragraph on the program that they handed out,
but like there was specifically in the politics of Tarot Block,
one of the talks about the history of the Emperor
and the Herofinch card, the speaker referred to the United

(57:00):
States is having an emperor crisis right now. But that
was kind of it that the rest of the talk
was purely historical. The talk before that was on queering
the Tarot, trying to free Taro from heteronormative readings.

Speaker 5 (57:17):
And discussed and discussed a few.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
You know, artists, discussed a few artists who are attempting
to do this, whether through abstracting the humanoid forms in
the tarot or reflecting the tarot figures to be more
representative of quote unquote queer identities.

Speaker 3 (57:39):
That was kind of it.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
In terms of the political aspect, which is I guess
kind of lacking. As much as they want this to
be a culture, they don't want this to be a
political conference, it seems. And I think, you know, if
everyone you know in their talk had to have some
section on like you know, communism or it fascism or whatever,
that probably would have been bad. And that's that's not
what we're saying. But I mean, specifically, I think if

(58:01):
they're naming this after Genesis Porridge, they were using a
term by Genesis Porege. You had a very strong idea
of why they were doing this work, and specifically, I
was very frustrated in the way people talked about Genesis
at the conference, who almost all of them misgendered Genesis
and refused to discuss that length. Some of them they
have mentioned it, but discussed Genesis porrig Is. One of

(58:25):
her core of occult practices was on androgenizing herself androgyny
projects androgyny and like breaking and Breaking gender, which they
framed as an occult project, and yet even people who
she knew at the conference would only refer to them
as a hymn through all the talks, including the last guy,

(58:49):
Carl Apronsom, who biograph yeah and like this is, this is.
I do not think this was out of like, you know, malice.
I think this was just a linguistic blockage for some
people who may not even been thinking about what they
were doing. But it shows like an actual disconnect from
engaging with the real purpose of magic, or at least

(59:09):
what I would would argue that is, and what I would,
you know, suppose Genesis's penrogyny project as a as a
form of magic. But this, this, this kind of demonstrates
the very limited political application for quote unquote unique resistance,
since that's the term they're using, not not me, which
kind of underlines this this this whole this whole conference.

(59:30):
I mean, I think the Borough's talk was probably the
most the very first Burroughs talk, which we opened up
the last episode with this is the most you know,
explicitly political one and talking about you know, going against control,
freedom in this like anarchic or libertarian sense, or you know,
revolt against monotheism.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
I suppose like one of my frustrations as well, is
this the constant mention of the c cru which nobody
went into depth on, which you know, for all its faults,
and you know, nick Land being nick Land was very
much like a sort of like radical cultural Marxists, like

(01:00:14):
a project, right, It's like cybernetic Marxism mixed with like
Crowley and some content whatever. But is extremely frustrating to see, yeah,
that sort of refusal to engage with like the political
stuff of it. Because like even before like Psychic Youth,

(01:00:35):
there was like throbbing gristle Genesis band that pioneered industrial music.
Who I mean this was a bit before punk music,
but like it very much played with like the same
sort of shock aesthetics that like the early punks would
wear swastikas, where like Throbbing Gristle had the logo is
very much like a lightning bolt with like black and

(01:00:56):
red and white.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Genesis herself engaged in some of this stuff not from
a fasci perspective, but from a provocative perspective, which I mean,
you can certainly criticize uh psychic TV and and and
and her for as many many people have, But I.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Mean shock value is kind of overrated nowadays with like
Internet edtual words. But I very much believe that occultism
being this, you know, this collection of practices that have
been very censored and you know, punished by like the
church and such things, and like I guess these systems
of control were like I guess I take issue with
like the oh it's like all fun and all and

(01:01:38):
light and love and whatever. But there's like a radical
element to occultism and a radical possibility to use occultism
to again like the whole cultural like the idea between
personal practice and cultural production, right, like creating cultural artifacts
and putting them out into the world. Being very proactive

(01:01:58):
with the the shaping and the pushing of radical ideas
and possibilities is a very potent thing to be to do.
And the sort of I guess like liberalized or like
neoliberal idea of like the personal practice and like I'm

(01:02:20):
changing my perceptions and all these things are fine, but
it's more like self soothing than it is about creating
change into the world.

Speaker 4 (01:02:29):
If you're not actually changing anything, are you doing magic exactly?

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
At least that would be my well, that would be
my argument for like for coming from the chaosmatic perspective, this.

Speaker 5 (01:02:40):
Gets to another kind of trite and facile academic thematic
that is present and prevalent for the past probably twenty years.
At this point, I feel like at most philosophy and
political science political theory conferences where the question is not
just what would it look like if, but you know,
to think otherwise, you know, think otherwise than we have,

(01:03:03):
And usually it's this, how do we think other than
we have? Those kinds of things, and so it I
mean again, magic and as we've been talking about here
is meant to evoke change in the world, to cause
change the world in conformity with reality. We're going to
use you know, with with with will, if we're going
to use the Crowley, you know definition here, which I
think is fine. Great.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
I want a goth girlfriend.

Speaker 5 (01:03:27):
Thankfully you can talk to AI, but I'm worried that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:30):
She might beat you, that you kill her, like all
my old tamagotchi is.

Speaker 5 (01:03:38):
But this is the issue that we are talking around,
that the conference and a culture has been talking around,
and the political problematic that we're all dealing with right
now is how the fuck do we evoke change in
the world. How is it when systems of institutional representation
within politics and power fail to represent the will of
the people. How do the people make change?

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
And every if you like, everything's been tried. I mean
this is where I mean Fisher, who I would argue
is at least in a cultist or is at least
has some mystical aspect, if not, was at some point
an occultist, like you know, reach reached out. The point
of capitalist realism is like most things that we you know,
can think of, we actually have. We have, we have
given a shot, including including occultism. We have we have

(01:04:20):
tried to do this, and yet here we are. The
world's maybe not as bad as it has been, but
it's not in a great spot. I think everyone listening
to this would certainly understand that. I think most people
at the conference understood that. And yeah, I mean I'm
very skeptical of magic as as a as a certainly

(01:04:41):
as an individual practice as a way to you know,
cause larger political change. But even you know, can there
even in this this revolves back to the concept of
a culture, like can there even be in a cult anymore?
Because none of these you know, magical things are very
hidden anymore. They're all very accessible, They're all very visible.
They're there is you know hidden as queer flagging is

(01:05:02):
right as an occult, as an occultic ritual of you know,
hidden signs to communicate with other people in the know,
something that is now you could just look up on
the Internet. And I think occult occult practices and symbols
have reached the same point. It's it's content. I mean,
I like the Esoterica YouTube channel as much as us

(01:05:23):
as much as much as the next person, But I mean,
are these things even a cult anymore?

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
Well?

Speaker 5 (01:05:30):
That also speaks to the fundamental tension between this current
at the conference and the other current at the conference,
which was the much more traditional magical practices or the
folk magical practices or what we would.

Speaker 4 (01:05:41):
Regulate like stant magical practice.

Speaker 5 (01:05:43):
Yeah, extant magical practices that weren't you know, weren't suppressed
by Christianity but carried over. So you have you had
a section on Kimbanda, you had a section on Palamayumbe.
You have the Roman magical school that is being founded
in Romania, and you have the modern Goeisha the eighth
this right, which we identified very clearly as a practice
that continues to this very day. The context in which

(01:06:06):
we understand that practice is not a cult them secret
like in the no, it's just that like it's the
stuff that you grew up with. It's every day and
in that case it's not transformative because it's just part
of your daily existence. It's a kind of enchantment that
by and large are kind of like you know, European
Protestant Catholic defectors, whatever has brought you to the ocult

(01:06:30):
in the first place, don't experience as a community or
community engagement. But those are also things that can get
deeply conservative.

Speaker 4 (01:06:38):
They are.

Speaker 5 (01:06:39):
But also the.

Speaker 4 (01:06:40):
Parts of those practices that do require initiation, that are
not something that everyone's grandmother is doing, are also community
based and exists specifically in and for community, and you know,
as occult projects that have influenced the world.

Speaker 5 (01:06:56):
The Haitian Revolution, the good Revolution that we should all
be talking about you but.

Speaker 4 (01:07:01):
These things do. But I mean the occult has bubbled
to the surface in material ways, very very explicitly in
some instances, and so I think there could be potential.
But it does require being in community and being in
service of community, even if it's not a practice that

(01:07:22):
is being practiced by every single person around you.

Speaker 5 (01:07:25):
To be an on gun or a mambo in Haitian
voodoo is to serve the community. It's it's not simply
just a matter of magical wu or something like that,
or the personal accumulation of power in some sort of
like individual magical sense. Now you're serving your community. That's
what it is that you're doing. It's first and foremost
a service. Position on the Haitian Revolution. Look, I understand this,

(01:07:46):
like the American standing the American Revolution makes you, I guess,
a classical liberal or whatever it is that you fetishize
that into. If you're opposed to the French Revolution, that
makes you a you know, class conservative. Right, If you
stand the Haitian Revolution. I guess that makes you a radical.
That the myth, the legend, the discussion, this understanding is

(01:08:09):
that the Haitian Revolution was sparked by the possession of
the low law, specifically Izili Danto, who you know sacrificed
a pig. There's depictions of this and Haitian art all
over the place. This leads to, you know, slave uprisings, rebellions, revolution,
well organized. Fantastic, Yeah, magical practice and action.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
And that wraps up our panel discussion on the twenty
twenty five A Culture Conference. Thanks again to Delta, Ryan
and Lane for joining me in this magical journey to Berlin.
And now I will start the tedious process of transcribing
all of the talks I recorded and writing my written

(01:08:52):
report on the A Culture Conference, where I can go
into a bit more depth into some of these topics
and reach a person conclusion on the role of occultism
and its ability to infest, influence or undermined culture versus
culture's capacity of eating away at the occult. That report

(01:09:14):
should be coming out before the end of the year.
See you on the other side, it could happen. Here
is a production of Cool Zone Media for more podcasts
from cool Zone Media. Visit our website coolzonmedia dot com,
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(01:09:35):
sources for it could happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.
Thanks for listening.