October 30, 2025 • 49 mins
Garrison talks with a panel of magicians while attending a conference in Berlin focused on the intersection of mainstream culture and the occult.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cools Media.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Tricker treader. I heard, ah, hello, welcome to it could
happen here the Spooky Special. I'm your host, Garrison Davis.
Once again, there has been far too many important world
events taking precedents that we here at the show are
unable to provide listeners with an entire spooky week's worth
(00:35):
of themed episodes. But I know how important Halloween is
for many millennials, so I've taken it upon myself to
produce two spooky episodes to book and the Holiday, this
episode that you're listening to right now, as well as
another that will release Monday morning or Sunday night. As
(00:56):
the world is becoming an increasingly spooky, scary play, I
needed to up the ante to exceed the weird and
eerie fright that comes from living in America and the
world in general in twenty twenty five. So last week
I traveled from New York to Brussels, briefly caught up
(01:17):
with my close personal friend and colleague Hinton, and then
took the train to Germany. Very scary indeed, once in Germany,
I was confronted with seemingly occult words and symbols people
spoke in odd incantations. I came across a map that
appeared via my black scrying mirror the iPhone, which, upon deciphering,
(01:39):
led me to an old power plant warehouse in East Berlin.
I entered this dark, looming building and inside the air
was thick with smoke and incense. Figures dressed in all
black emerged from the fog, witches, wizards, and magicians. I
followed them into a candlelit room where hooded A cultists
(02:00):
conducted a ritual welcoming us to the twenty twenty five
A Culture Conference. A Culture is a bi yearly conference
that's once every two years, focusing on the intersection of
occultism and culture, pop or otherwise. This is arguably the
most prestigious occultism conference in the world. I have been
(02:24):
wanting to attend four years, and I was finally able
to go this go round on the condition that I
make four podcast episodes. The two that I'm releasing this
week and next will cover some of the core magical
and topical currents throughout the conference, mostly via a panel
discussion between myself and three other attendees, and then before Christmas,
(02:48):
I'll have two fully scripted episodes interrogating these concepts further
and discussing the use of a cult practice in twenty
twenty five. So to start, let's meet our panel lists.
I should introduce my magical travel team for this conference.
Let's start with Delta, a Belgian magician and artist which
(03:13):
I recruited to join me in this wacky adventure. Delta
say hi, Hello, what do you do Delta? What's your
magical specialty?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I suppose, Well, it's kind of.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
A mix into the microphone.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
It's kind of a mix of things where.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Part of it is just into the microphone. I'm sorry,
how you can you can you can get you can
get ptty close to it?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
It's a kind of a mix of things really between
conventional chaos magic and more theoretical like weird theory stuff
like Mark Fisher and the CCRU adjacent things.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
We talk a lot about Mark Fisher, some landstuff, meta fiction, theory, fiction, hyperstition,
and Delta myself talk about magic through the Internet quite
a bit and how it combines with cultural theory, which
is relevant to this conference. Let's move over to my left.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I've been recruited along on this magical journey. I'm Ryan.
I practiced the Vajrana, a Greco Egyptian magical practice, and
also am involved in a Haitian voodoo house. Prior to that,
I was also an academic for a good period of
time where I studied Renaissance rhetoric and political theory, philosophy
(04:34):
and economics. So my contributions are going to be wide
and varied.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
We've been making a lot of hegel jokes this weekend,
so many hegel jokes to our last crew member, which
people may have heard before on various shows.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
Hi'm my name is Elaine, and I make art and
research a lot of Renaissance script mark magic, and so
most of the things I do are a lot of
idiosyncratic practices and based on various folk magic and chaos
magic and Balcan folk magic.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Before we continue the conversation between myself and my three guests,
let's start by discussing the word a culture, the namesake
of the conference. Obviously, this is a combination of the
word occult and culture, and it describes how the two
influence and possibly undermine one another. To read a quote
(05:33):
from the person who originated the term quote, a culture
is a word that was inevitable during the hyperactive phase
of the Temple of Psychic Youth. In the nineteen eighties,
we were casting around for an all embracing term to
describe an approach to combining a unique, demystified spiritual philosophy
(05:54):
with a fervent insistence that all life and art are indivisible.
At any given our sensory environment is whispering to us,
telling us hidden stories, revealing subliminal connections. This concealed dialogue
between every level of popular cultural forms and magical conclusions
is what we named a culture that is from Genesis. B.
(06:18):
Purreage a musician, magician, artist, cult leader, and hashtag slightly
problematic queer icon. In the seventies, they started the band
Throbbing Gristle, pioneered industrial music, and later started the Chaos
magic organization, the Temple of Psychic Youth and its associated
band Psychic TV. Though a culture did not just describe
(06:42):
this sort of personal spiritual movement, it carried a strong
offensive element targeted against society and perceived systems of control
through their many projects, including Throbbing Gristle Psychic TV. In
the Temple of Psychic Youth, Purage utilized art and magical
practice to conduct a quote unquote war on culture. Similar
(07:04):
to another figure that will soon get to william S Burrows,
a culture describes a process of cultural osmosis. The occult
bleeds into and morph's culture, affecting everything from pop culture
to politics and philosophy. But as a part of this osmosis,
the occult becomes increasingly commodified, knowable, safe, territory, marketable. The
(07:30):
hidden occult loses its very essence of being hidden despite
its use as a tool of attack against mainstream culture.
Like most countercultural forms, the occult has been largely recuperated.
Even creative works which are genuine explorations into the occult
(07:50):
fall into this recuperation herodigm They get turned into products
consumed by a mostly secular audience, the works of Dueling wizards,
Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Now, some occultists rejoice, knowing
that this wide exposure will influence more people to become
interested in or adopt occult practices of their own, while
(08:14):
others bemoan this dilution and commodification of what to them
is an important spiritual practice. As the modern occult revival,
along with a heavy helping hand of scientific advancement, deterritorialized
Christian hegemonic religion. Now the occult itself has been re territorialized,
(08:35):
which is not to say that the occult is no
longer a field of play, which is what this conference
attempts to assert. Let's go back to the panel.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
In terms of the conference itself, as we'll get into later,
the term a culture very specifically seems to be focused
on the study of the interrelation of magical practic and
the material aspects of a cult culture and its influence
(09:05):
and appropriation by wider society. So in terms of political
projects or social projects, you can probably relate this. I
think that it would be fair to say that it's
something like culture jamming if we're looking for some familiar
concepts for people to map onto. That is to say,
a focus away from simply solitary practice in the ways
(09:25):
in which occult elements influence broader aspects of our society
or are appropriated, whether that's through consumerist forces or through
various artistic practices, or even the production of for example, film,
television movies. So I think that's a fair assessment of
the impacts of a culture.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
And relevant to our discussion later. It's influenced in the
tech sector and the emergence of AI, which the current
manifestation of has some heavily occult origins regarding around a
whole bunch of people in the nineties who were writing
about AI as this as this occult project, and that
influenced many a AI engineer and coder who are now
(10:08):
building this stuff and it's becoming an ever present part
of our lives, and the occultists now are trying to
incorporate it into their own practice, which we will discuss
in a sect any other notes on a culture as
a concept or what this conference is doing with the concept.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
I think a culture is a concept is something that's
basically been around as long as there's been magical practices,
just looking at so much of things, like you know,
the concept of the British Empire being invented by John
d because of conversations he was having with angels. So
I think that naming it and calling it something is
(10:49):
also very much felt like an attempt to sort of
regain control over the ways that magical practice and greater
society seemed to influence each other there as opposed to
a more unintentional way that they have been going back
and forth for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
There may also be one other aspect that's important for
our American audiences. Given that we're recording this in Deutscheland,
this conference varies significantly from other American equivalents, or something
that might be an American equivalent formerly Panthea Con in
and around San Francisco and San Jose specifically, or Paganicon
(11:32):
in the Twin Cities, which specifically has much more of
a New Age neopagan reconstructionist And so most academic discussion
is viewed with some suspicion. And I'm hesitant to say
that there's an anti intellectual trend because I don't necessarily
think that's true. However, there is a resistance to the
(11:53):
kind of academic styling that we saw very prevalent at
this conference to talk about the occult, but more generally
as an area of study in addition to just idiosyncratic
practice or part of a larger social neopagan movement, which
is again very much the focus of most US based conferences.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
As an editorial note, when we're talking about magic, to clarify,
we're not talking about stage magicians. We're referring to magic
with a K that is rituals and practices based on
occult knowledge. It seeks to cause change in accordance with will,
whether that's change within yourself or in our consensus reality.
(12:38):
Occult magical practice can also serve as a form of spirituality, mysticism,
an alternative religious practice, or an alternative to religion, with
its beliefs in practice largely influenced by historical esoteric orders,
mystery traditions, paganism, witchcraft, herbalism, astrology, hermetic philosophy, and alchemy,
(12:59):
and all these things are influences. I'm not saying that
the actual historic manifestations of these things are the same
as the modern occult practices that are influenced by these things,
because often these can be wildly varying, especially when you
talk about things like witchcraft and alchemy, which have been
misinterpreted or reconstructed into completely new forms than what the
(13:22):
historical manifestation of them actually contained. But a lot of
modern day ocultism has manifested as an individually mediated spirituality
containing some of the group ritual or ritual aspects of
something like Catholicism, but with the individuality of Protestantism. Many
conferences have an opening ceremony and as I previously mentioned,
(13:46):
A Culture had an opening ritual. This accomplishes a very
similar goal to any opening ceremony, to get attendees in
a certain headspace, to prepare them for the rest of
the conference, and set a certain mood in which the
the rest of the events will kind of follow suit.
The A Culture opening ritual called upon the attendees demiurgic capacity,
(14:09):
how they are part of creating the reality of what
this conference is and how it will continue for the
next few days. Back to the panel, The framing of
the ritual was a blindfolded woman holding the scales of balance,
and each person put a intention for the week, or
for the conference, or for themselves into a stone, which
(14:31):
was handed out to each person who entered the ritual,
and at certain point these stones were placed on to
the scales of balance to create an equilibrium between the
two sides of the scale. Along with the you know, chanting,
meditation and a lot of incense.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
A significant deal of incense given that we were in
a former German forge warehouse. The you know, billowing smoke
that existed throughout the conference, from fires to incense to
various other inflammatory items was rather impressive, but in terms
of actual ritual design, it met several elements that I
(15:10):
found to be rather impressive. One it was encompassing of
all of those elements that we would later expect to
see in the actual body of the conference itself. In
terms of like the artistic performances, the musical you know,
metal goth music that was played, but also a very
practical and open approach to ritual. It was highly inclusive.
(15:32):
Everyone who was there participated. It did an exceptional job
I felt of actually bringing setting intention and adding to
I don't know, at risk of sounding to new age,
the vibrations that we all felt as we engaged and
were present. The theatrical quality, I have to say was
also very much dark and spooky. Dark and spooky, but
(15:52):
something to be admired. They did a very good job.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Definitely one of the more high effort rituals of the
weekend in terms of the sort of aspect, with there
being little less than a dozen hooded cloaked figures stationed
at different points, either holding specific positions in a meditative
state for probably over half an hour, standing still in
a decision that would become uncomfortable and swinging incense or
(16:18):
holding torches or lights. Setting intention specifically is usually you
talk to these people. The first step of any kind
of magical working is setting your intention for what the
work is supposed to do or accomplish in you or
out into the world. Mirroring the opening Ritual Culture twenty
twenty five little booklet has a few paragraphs on the
(16:40):
concept for this conference, talking about the cosmic craftsmen as
the demiir to shapes matter and spirit alike embodies creation
and transformation, revealing both the light and the hidden, the
shadowed face of the divine, as well as having cosmic
balance and balancing instruction with creation and order and chaos
(17:02):
and the hidden and the scene. The last paragraph in
which I will read I think relates specifically to this
show and the cultural political aspects quote. In the age
of relentless acceleration, the craftsman becomes a figure of resistance.
His patience and ritual discipline reclaim sacred time, restoring a
(17:23):
rhythm beyond the acceleration of modern life. A Culture twenty
twenty five invites us to dwell in this threshold where creation, intuition,
and the hidden divine converge, and with that we converge
on an outbreak, Welcome back to the it could Happen
(17:51):
here Spooky special on the Culture Conference. The figure name
dropped the most throughout this conference might surprise some people,
because I'm assuming most do not consider him to be
an occultist or really a serious occult figure. The most
discussed individual, at least in my experience of the conference,
(18:14):
was not Alistair Crowley, John Dee, someone like Lena Blovatsky,
but in fact william S Burrows. And now we'll return
to the panel to discuss the Barosian current. Let's talk
about what I would argue was the strongest current throughout
(18:38):
this conference, what I'm gonna call the Burrosian current, relating
to writer, beat poet, and mystic and occultist in his
own right, william S Burrows and the magical technology that
he either invented or popularized in the second half of
the twentieth century and played a significant role in influencing
(19:00):
successor movements such as chaos magic and even the work
of the CCRU and Land and Fisher. The very first
talk that we attended was specifically on Burroughs, and Burroughs
ghost haunted the remainder of the conference thereafter and introduced
a few of the key tensions throughout the rest of
(19:21):
the conference, which we will discuss as specifically technology in AI.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
So our first talk by Castor Obstrop, who I believe
was Swedish one of those.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
He was working at the University of Copenhagen, the.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
University of Copenhagen certainly Scandinavian of some flavor of variety,
focused on William S. Burrows and Brian Geyson. I think
that it's important and I appreciated this claim on the
outset that they argued that both Geyson and Burroughs are
actually closer to the late Surrealists rather than to the
beat poets generation which we typically associate them with, which,
(19:59):
interestingly enough, I made both of these figures far more
compelling to me my understanding of them. I mean, despite
my familiarity with the cut up method, and you know,
several of the things that Burrows had written, I always
considered them far more beat and therefore less less of
interest to me specifically. But this proximity to the Surrealists,
(20:20):
especially the latter Surrealists, I found particularly compelling, and I
think that brings us to the real focus of this
talk was Burrows's cut up method and another book that
he published on the third Mind, which gave way to
the latter discussions on artificial intelligence and large language models.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
So Burrow's definitely popularized the cut up method which Guyson originated,
that Burrows changed its different forms of manifestations to various
mediums of art like the tape recorder and his own
writings and just words and language. And I guess the
reason why I think talking about this current is important
to start is also revolves around this idea of magic
(21:00):
as this form of like resistance or this like a
culture jamming practice which Burrows framed his own work in
his like a you know, work that we could could
we could just describe as like esoteric or inspired by
esoterism or achieving esotericals is specifically for this cultural infusion
to to disrupt mainstream culture in some capacity, to go
(21:22):
against the one God universe, sometimes in an anarchic way,
sometimes in a libertarian way. Some there's a mix of
a mix of like uh motivations that play here same
thing with like Robert Anton Wilson, which I'm sure you've
heard Robert Evans talk about before. These were contemporaries, These
guys were friends and operating under like similar goals of
(21:44):
disrupting culture through these techniques which which they thought literally
like disrupted the linear flow of culture or the mechanisms
of control such as like language and linear time, which
later gets developed on by Land and Fissure.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Yeah. I think looking at some of my notes, some
of the things that stuck out to me, especially in
view of the fact that the other classes going on
at the time began with Alistair Crowley, but we're diving
into a lot of more classical and historical magical traditions,
was that language can shape reality, which is something that
(22:22):
would also be held up by a lot of the
classical magical ideas that sound and image have occult power,
which is very true in a lot of magical traditions
dating back to the Piatrix and more ancient texts, and
that tech available at the time can be a magical instrument,
which the tech available currently and for William Burrows is
(22:46):
very different than classical tech, but is something that has
been done for a very long time as well. What
really changes is stepping out of the idea of a
linear representation of it into something that could be edited,
cut and reprogrammed, specifically using technology that allowed that as
(23:07):
opposed to something that you're trying to control solely through
say more spiritual magical acts. It's something that you can
do with a tape recording.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
And this is like, you know, based on forms like
social engineering and the manipulation of the reproduction of reality,
which Burrows believes a language plays a key role in,
even though I might disagree with him in a few
ways on like the nature of like a language as
a as a human concept versus this like alien concept
which it's like infected the human delta. You should explain
(23:39):
what the cut up method is.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Yes, well the name itself kind of is self explanatory,
but the idea of being essentially too thick any form
of texts or writing, cut up the words or pieces
of sentences, jumble limup in a hat or a bucket
or whatever, then kind of like play a jigsaw puzzle
(24:04):
with language, reshifting sentences into new ideas and new forms
of poetry, especially which I'm just looking at my own
cutups right in front of me.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
To force like randomized combinations of words that you would
not choose to combine on your own volition, and seeing
what sort of thought that generates what kind of meaning
can be constructed through that combination.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
Exactly, we're on some of the first cutups done with
books and just making holes, cutting out words and seeing
the other words that would appear underneath, and if new
meaning would arise through the surprise combinations.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Words from like the future or the past presenting themselves
into a current present within the book.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
I think one of the Borough's quotes is when you
cut into the present, the future leaks out, which.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Is related to the concept of time sorcery that was
talked about towards the end of that discussion. I think
another element to the cutup mesas that's important, especially as
it was framed in this a culture context is as
the we quoted from the or as I wrote this
quote down from the actual lecture itself, reality is made
of words, images and vibrations, and sounds and images have
(25:16):
occult power, and therefore these sounds and images and words
can be marshaled or used, edited, cut through, rearranged for
the purposes of reprogramming. It's fascinating. I think that this
really is something that carries through to the whole conference,
(25:37):
and not just the Burrow's method, but what this Burrow's
method or the Barossian current of the conference. It seems
that there was a problematic I mean, we started basically
with dari Da and we ended with dari Da with
discussions of like critiques of the master narrative that we
get from you know, Deluze and Leotard and Baudriard and
these people. But the goal of this method was to
(26:01):
rewrite the master narrative. So again back to that concept
of culture jamming. As Gerre said, this concept of the
one God universe, this cut up method is meant to
interrupt the linearity of words of language, that is a
process of control. So I take issue with this concept
(26:25):
of language as a virus because that implies that it's
a foreign body, and I mean it's true post structuralists.
I guess that I am. There is no outside to language,
and I think that that's actually something that shines through
in this third mind concept.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
As two people work together on something, there's a composite
mind that like emerges and affects the work. Is the
concept there.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
So when two people collaborate, a third mind or intelligence
communicates with you through the revelation of the new that
was already present. And I think that that's really important
to point out because it's it's not as though there's
this this outside thing. The implication is from this method
is that the new reveals itself through this process that's
(27:11):
already present in language. Because this is a question that
I had throughout, is that if if language is this
foreign entity that dominates us through control, and the method
itself is language, then how are we not just re
I mean, I guess it's a kind of inoculation if
we have a you know, a theory of language that
is based in you know, what what do we call this?
(27:34):
What is it that we all just got during COVID
Kevin fever? No, No, the things that we inject into
our body that created the INDI vaccines. There we go.
That's the ticket inoculations.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Not all, not all of us got vaccines.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Okay, care.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
You heard it here first vaccine did not know where
was it going with this? Okay?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Speaking of methods of speaking of methods of control.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
I mean a lot of it.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
The new just came out there. Wait just one moment, Sorry, Elane,
I likened this to this process of dialectics. But that's
because I couldn't shut up about Hegel the entire time.
We were there because I don't think enough occultists are
talking about Hegel. Why is no one talking about Hegel?
Everyone should be talking about Hegel.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
I mean, as fun as it is to think about this,
like third mind as like an egg grigor figure, which
we've we've mentioned before, is like it's like a group
thought form, like a being or a force that is
generated through through multiple people believing in it.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
You make up an imaginary friend in a way.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
That's what a severtre but true in a grigora is
as a is, yeah, a form of thought that they
gained its own, like an autonomy, and becomes kind of
like a like a little tiny god.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Or they also combined the third mind idea to like
net work consciousness. The one last thing I will say
on this before we get to the AI aspect, I guess.
On this culture jamming nonlinearity is the concept of the
circuit jump, which was playing back words from politicians in
(29:17):
different contexts as a sort of like a Uno Reverso
psychic attack, which I don't know if that actually works
considering the current's political situation, but this is certainly a
tactic to which I have employed many such cases and
we see a lot of people attempt attempt to do this,
(29:38):
and I think there are certain figures who have their
own very strong magical force field protecting them, which has
been pretty evident through the past ten years, including the
President of the United States. But as a as a
circuit jump is playing something from the wrong the wrong
time in a different context as as a form of attack.
(30:00):
The most famous version of this, which isn't necessarily for
political ends, so this was for personal ends. It's the
Burroughs cafe incident, which I've been a fan of for years,
in which he was slighted by a cafe so then
he started recording.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
All that happened was they changed their menu and he
couldn't order the one food that he ordered every day.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
There's been some menus that have changed that I would
continue using this tactic where he recorded sounds from from
outside of like people talking or arguing or walking by
or plates dropping, and then played them back outside of
the cafe for a series of months until the cafe closed.
And this is like the funniest, the funniest form of
(30:41):
this sort of magical obsession, because this really is just
a crazy guy playing loud sounds in front of a
cafe until they close. I mean it worked of yeah,
playing back sounds of you know, arguing, fighting, plates smashing,
which would probably create a negative aura around around in
this building. But that is the most most funny of Burrows,
(31:04):
the circum jump moment. Although I mean Burrough's life is
full of these humorous and sometimes worrying of anecdotes.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
There's one other thing that stuck out to me, given
what a lot of the other talks in that space
ended up dealing with, along with AI and stuff, was
really the speaker talking a lot about the fact that
for Burros and Geyson, the reproduction of reality is how
control occurs, and so the goal was to manipulate the
(31:35):
reproduction of reality, because if you can manipulate the reproduction
of reality, you are also manipulating reality itself, which I
don't think anyone went into nearly as much, but is
something that we're seeing with say even the Republican Party
releasing deep fake videos of Democratic politicians.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, and this is something our materialist friend me does
talk about, is how there's a quote from some neo
cons about how how like democrats just have to kind
of like you know, like react to reality versus the
Republicans who generate it and they like decide what reality is.
And you can see this with all of the sort
of like moral moral panics which have spread across the
(32:15):
United States and around the world the past few years,
whether that's gender ideology, whether it's immigration, whether that's this
non existent crime wave where it is a genuine like
creation of of reality. And then this this this goes
into you know, the Burrows ideas later get developed by
a group of academics and occultists that formed the c
c R. You this included say plant Nick Land who
(32:38):
then turned to the dark side and uh the since
past Mark Fisher, who put a name to some of
this sort of phenomenon called the hyperstition, which is Robert
has talked about before in the show. But it is
it is a self fulfilling prophecy. It is a fiction
that becomes true through the creation of the fiction and
(32:58):
the dissemination of the fiction. And this is part of
how reality can get formed, is through these falsehoods that
that through through repetition and dissemination, become self manifest.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
The thing about that, though, is that the high perscisional
model itself requires to the acceptance of the idea that
everything is a fiction?
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yes, like well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
A lot of most things go through a process like this, yes, yes, yes,
but doing doing such a thing like intentionally and like offensively? Right?
Which is which is the idea that we're discussing here
in like a political context? Is this this this offensive
reality formation where you literally decide what is real and
like what isn't And you know, if you have hundreds
(33:45):
of millions dollars in like a news company at your disposal,
this can become easier.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
Are you saying that media companies are currently cutting up
reality to shape it in the image of the people
who fund them.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, yeah, I mean they are. They are much It's
it's funny because like occultists, I think, are the people
who are often.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
The clips are you going to use from the conference?
Speaker 2 (34:07):
And I will later in my written work, But I
think on that note, I think occultists are a class
of people who are maybe the worst at doing magic,
because the people that are really good at this sort
of thing are perhaps way better at the occult element
(34:27):
of hiding their their you know, awareness of what they
are doing, because they a lot of a lot of
them know what they're doing that you just actually keep
it a more cultic whereas the magicians will not shut
the fuck up because there's always a there's always a
new book to sell.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
That was an excellent segue to an ad break Lane.
Thank you for that, and now a word from our
sponsors on this note, though, Gary with you completely as
a former academic and just a healthy level of skepticism
(35:05):
going into any magical conference. I sat down, I listened,
and I've been to enough conferences listening to magicians attempt
to map on rather poorly magic onto a cultural figure,
and I think Burrows is really unique here. But my
academic pretense was to sit here and to listen and
think about, you know, language as a pharmicon, think about
(35:27):
dry Da, Delouze, Baudrard, Leotard when they're discussing the master
narrative or rewriting the master narrative. But what's unique about
Burrows and why I gave up that, you know, academic
mapping of philosophy and asking myself, why are we having
this conversation. We could just go read these texts. They
talk about similar things. But the point is is that
those texts talk about similar things. And what's unique about
(35:50):
Burrows is that he's actually doing the doer. He's a doer.
This is fundamentally the difference between the vida activa and
the vita contempt of taiva. Like I'm thinking in terms
of philosophers, and it took me half of this talk
to be like, no, he's actually doing shit as soon
as we get out to like, you know, him actually
standing out in front of the cafe and doing this.
He's not just developing a method, but by virtue of
(36:10):
the fact that he's inviting other artists, like the slides
upon slides that we saw of him, you know, working
with new machines that he was creating and trying these things.
He was actively involved in this practice, which again makes
him far more magical than most occultists. Don't come for
me absolutely.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
AI specifically be discussing debates and uses of generative AI
in this conference because the last A Culture conference was
in twenty twenty three, as these large language models and
image generation platforms were just just starting to gain popularity
and now they have a stranglehold over at the stock
(36:52):
market and many people's imagination. The first I guess real
debate around AI happened as the three of you stayed
to listen to a panel after the Willly mess Burroughs panel,
as well as a Austin Osman Spare panel, a proto
cast magician from the twentieth century. It was a contemporary
of Alistair Crowley. I left to go listen to a
(37:15):
mathematical thelemic ontology talk, which was probably less interesting than
the panel. I'd like to hear you guys talk about
the debates around AI and how they emerged in this panel,
and then also juxtassing that to the different forms of
like AI in discussions are an AI that dominated a large
part of the rest of the conference.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
Well, actually AI came up because the initial discussion question
for the panel was what does it mean to talk
about art as magic in the digital era? So everyone
was very specifically being asked to discuss the differences between
the creation process is magic when you can use AI,
when you can use large language models to just generate things,
(37:57):
and if the generative method using AI I was at
all related to say, the cut up method or other things.
So that was the initial conversation that began that whole panel.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Well, and that was certainly a topic that was begged
by the other two talks that we didn't really discuss
the Austin Osmond spare was about automatic drawing. So this
conception and of you know, this drawing that is coming
from the outside, coming from the subconscious, coming from within,
(38:31):
with all within one line. But more than that, it
was a very traditional kind of European nineteen seventies lecture.
You know, you had a lovely Italian man who stood
in the front that was ready to smoke a cigarette
while trying to get through, you know, a very well formulated,
well argued essay, while a series of images presented to
(38:51):
us behind him that covered an overview of artists that
are doing very similar things. He argued, exist in a
similar kind of vein and the occurrences of not just
magical tropes, but cultural influences that happen independently, so artists
all over the world. The third talk by I believe
(39:13):
Kate Lady. Yeah, the ritual transformation and hybridity in Leonora
Carrington's Judith, which was a stage production which happened in
Mexico City, I believe, So we had a few pictures
of this, but Leonora Carrington's art very specifically has to
do with this like hybrid of like animals and mythical
figures and creatures, and the stage production was incredibly intense.
(39:36):
I really appreciated this talk a lot. But then focus
on talking about, you know, generative artificial intelligence in these
large language models and the role of art or what
it means to do art in this era was related
to this idea of the third mind, of automatic drawing,
of this concept of hybridity, of this like transformative or
this discovering of the new through a synth putting together
(40:01):
of different elements or images, words, sounds, costume ry, these
kinds of things, So that it was a natural question
to lead, but the audience members took it in a
very strange direction that I would like you all to
talk about.
Speaker 5 (40:17):
I mean, the initial question was really that people started
asking after the panel topic was proposed, was so, what
did the panelists think about AI art? Do the panelists
think AI art is magic? Do the panelists think that
AI art is channeling? Do the panelists think that, you know,
putting a prompt in a language model is the same
(40:39):
as doing some sort of trans state automatic writing. There
was a lot of variations on functionally that all of
the panelists reaction was no, it's not and a lot
of them did not immediately really want to even dive
into that topic and were very annoyed at the question.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
That's actually not true, because I got triggered almost immediately
because it was our first speaker that responded not to
that first question, but to the second question. And the
second question had to do with the role of technology
and whether we see that there's a possibility for these tools,
you know, as a technology a techne in magical practice.
(41:18):
And our first speaker's reaction was to sit back and
give us a tentative yes to.
Speaker 5 (41:25):
The tech, to the tech.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
That's correct.
Speaker 5 (41:28):
To AI, they were like, their initial reaction was still
also no, but.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Yes they they indeed got there, but it was unclear
at first, and I was a little raw about it,
given that seemed completely contrary to the talk that you
know that he had mentioned before. There was a question
about NFTs. Do you remember this question?
Speaker 5 (41:48):
Oh, I tried to put it immediately out of my head. Yes,
that was the fact that it started with, like, well,
NFTs failed because people like weren't ready to embrace the
blockchain as a generative idea for making art, as opposed
to the fact that why would I own an NFT
(42:08):
if I can screenshot the picture.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Yeah, well, it was this idea that like NFTs themselves
were part of this breaking up of the control process,
the linearity of money and financial systems, that somehow it
was related to the cut up method. It was one
of those questions that was a narrative before it finally
got to your question that really just invited the readers
(42:31):
to respond. There were others that talked about this too
and related their own personal experience to the generative AI
process that you know, they approach AI not with the
expectation that will provide sense, but it'll almost have this
oracular or again this they related to the third mind.
They this idea that again you and the AI come
(42:53):
together and somehow reveal the new which I at this
point was absolutely seething.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
Yeah. I think the closest actually that we had to
some really like someone even trying to approach it was
asking about, if you're making this art, if you're generating
these new things, does it matter that corporations are controlling
the algorithm by which you're doing so, Which started to
touch on some of the problems, but still was definitely
(43:21):
relying on the base assumption that using a large language
model to produce stories or art that you're interacting with
something else that's actually capable of creating it all.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
And to her credit, my girl Kate Lady, who was
talking about Leonora Carrington, the one that seemed to be
kind of tangentially separate from the other two, but the
hybridity really made it was the one that just gave
us a great straight Marxist answer of like, no, this
is bullshit. Let's actually look at the material implications as
to where this is coming from and the environmental costs
(43:53):
of running these programs of server farms, the destruction of
space of you know, livable areas throughout the United States.
That these are questions that we need to ask and
are not separate from these questions of magic. So really
shout out to her. I appreciated that response because it
was instant, and it was it was heated.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
It is also, like I mean, from from my perspective,
it's also a labor is she write because these large
language models and generative AI just scrape like so much
data that that's like writing from real artists and create
created by real like painters and whatever. And it is
(44:36):
the appropriation of human labor. To shout out some advertising
essentially that is like my main well, aside from all
the ecological and the political issues with it, it's like
very much that labor angle to it that frustrates me.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
Well, in the context of the talk, it's really important
to the ground. And this is the comment that I
made that the panel broadly seemed to agree with, although
I didn't really leave them much opportunity to disagree with me.
You're right, thank you. Go on. So this burrows concept
of the third mind this book that he wrote, right,
(45:17):
when two minds collaborate, a third mind or intelligence communicates
with you, again, not about creating the new, but about
revealing itself in what was already present. Yes, but the
idea is that you have to have two minds in
order to get this dialectical third mind that was inherent
(45:41):
in the conditions, the situation, the language of the two.
When one interacts with any form of large language model
or chat GBT, I in my mind and with what
I carry sit in front of a computer and type
my input. That's one mind. Can you tell me where
(46:03):
the second is?
Speaker 5 (46:05):
Because even if you're cutting up a book, there's a
mind in the book. There's a story, there's an actual
thing there. There's a thing that you are interacting with
that were thoughts that were produced by someone that you
are cutting up. You are not just scraping the toilet
bowl of human production.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
But even if we're going to be generous and say
that these large language models are the ones that are
doing the cut up process and you are secondary or
tertiary or even further down the line to it, I mean,
it doesn't involve a human intelligence at that point. So
just in terms of the you know, the Barosian current,
(46:46):
it's just not a third mind. It's the material conditions
are such that it is not and cannot be a
third mind.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Where I would like to take this discussion is actually
the very next talk that I attended was part of
a three talk series called the Politics of Taro, and
the specific one that I think continued on this line
of thought and even stuff like automatic writing was from
Icon to Index by Thomas Leak the Generative Logic of Taro,
(47:17):
in which he discussed I will have to check his
name later, but discussed an author in the eighties who
was trying to use Taro as a way to remove
the human element of writing, try to create an automatic
story using the Tarot archetypes assembled in a randomized shuffling
to generate a story based on the linkages between each
(47:39):
of the cards and remove his own agency and directing
where the story goes except for trying to bridge each
card one to another. And the presenter was discussing if
this bears any similarity to like generative text models. The
presenter said no. The presenter said, this actually is not
(48:01):
like llms, which purely operate on a people pleasing probabilistic
capacity to follow one word after another in accordance with
whatever the prompt of the person who's operating the AI
wants it to generate. Though the presenter stated that this
author who was using Tarot probably would have loved using
(48:22):
an LLM to try to accomplish this goal of his
trying to access. Kind of like a form of automatic
writing similar to Mike Astn Honsman's Beare, but without human input.
The shuffling of the cards and forcing the human brain
to make connections between these archetypes still contains a creative
human process based on randomness in the shuffling of the
deck versus the people pleasing probabilistic generative text that lms produce.
(48:50):
This concludes the first episode of My Culture twenty twenty
five coverage, in part to releasing Sunday Night. The panel
will discuss digital technomancy, traditional magical practice, and why people
are doing accult practice in twenty twenty five. See you
on the other side.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cools Media.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Tricker treader. I heard, ah, hello, welcome to it could
happen here the Spooky Special. I'm your host, Garrison Davis.
Once again, there has been far too many important world
events taking precedents that we here at the show are
unable to provide listeners with an entire spooky week's worth
(00:35):
of themed episodes. But I know how important Halloween is
for many millennials, so I've taken it upon myself to
produce two spooky episodes to book and the Holiday, this
episode that you're listening to right now, as well as
another that will release Monday morning or Sunday night. As
(00:56):
the world is becoming an increasingly spooky, scary play, I
needed to up the ante to exceed the weird and
eerie fright that comes from living in America and the
world in general in twenty twenty five. So last week
I traveled from New York to Brussels, briefly caught up
(01:17):
with my close personal friend and colleague Hinton, and then
took the train to Germany. Very scary indeed, once in Germany,
I was confronted with seemingly occult words and symbols people
spoke in odd incantations. I came across a map that
appeared via my black scrying mirror the iPhone, which, upon deciphering,
(01:39):
led me to an old power plant warehouse in East Berlin.
I entered this dark, looming building and inside the air
was thick with smoke and incense. Figures dressed in all
black emerged from the fog, witches, wizards, and magicians. I
followed them into a candlelit room where hooded A cultists
(02:00):
conducted a ritual welcoming us to the twenty twenty five
A Culture Conference. A Culture is a bi yearly conference
that's once every two years, focusing on the intersection of
occultism and culture, pop or otherwise. This is arguably the
most prestigious occultism conference in the world. I have been
(02:24):
wanting to attend four years, and I was finally able
to go this go round on the condition that I
make four podcast episodes. The two that I'm releasing this
week and next will cover some of the core magical
and topical currents throughout the conference, mostly via a panel
discussion between myself and three other attendees, and then before Christmas,
(02:48):
I'll have two fully scripted episodes interrogating these concepts further
and discussing the use of a cult practice in twenty
twenty five. So to start, let's meet our panel lists.
I should introduce my magical travel team for this conference.
Let's start with Delta, a Belgian magician and artist which
(03:13):
I recruited to join me in this wacky adventure. Delta
say hi, Hello, what do you do Delta? What's your
magical specialty?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I suppose, Well, it's kind of.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
A mix into the microphone.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
It's kind of a mix of things where.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Part of it is just into the microphone. I'm sorry,
how you can you can you can get you can
get ptty close to it?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
It's a kind of a mix of things really between
conventional chaos magic and more theoretical like weird theory stuff
like Mark Fisher and the CCRU adjacent things.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
We talk a lot about Mark Fisher, some landstuff, meta fiction, theory, fiction, hyperstition,
and Delta myself talk about magic through the Internet quite
a bit and how it combines with cultural theory, which
is relevant to this conference. Let's move over to my left.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I've been recruited along on this magical journey. I'm Ryan.
I practiced the Vajrana, a Greco Egyptian magical practice, and
also am involved in a Haitian voodoo house. Prior to that,
I was also an academic for a good period of
time where I studied Renaissance rhetoric and political theory, philosophy
(04:34):
and economics. So my contributions are going to be wide
and varied.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
We've been making a lot of hegel jokes this weekend,
so many hegel jokes to our last crew member, which
people may have heard before on various shows.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
Hi'm my name is Elaine, and I make art and
research a lot of Renaissance script mark magic, and so
most of the things I do are a lot of
idiosyncratic practices and based on various folk magic and chaos
magic and Balcan folk magic.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Before we continue the conversation between myself and my three guests,
let's start by discussing the word a culture, the namesake
of the conference. Obviously, this is a combination of the
word occult and culture, and it describes how the two
influence and possibly undermine one another. To read a quote
(05:33):
from the person who originated the term quote, a culture
is a word that was inevitable during the hyperactive phase
of the Temple of Psychic Youth. In the nineteen eighties,
we were casting around for an all embracing term to
describe an approach to combining a unique, demystified spiritual philosophy
(05:54):
with a fervent insistence that all life and art are indivisible.
At any given our sensory environment is whispering to us,
telling us hidden stories, revealing subliminal connections. This concealed dialogue
between every level of popular cultural forms and magical conclusions
is what we named a culture that is from Genesis. B.
(06:18):
Purreage a musician, magician, artist, cult leader, and hashtag slightly
problematic queer icon. In the seventies, they started the band
Throbbing Gristle, pioneered industrial music, and later started the Chaos
magic organization, the Temple of Psychic Youth and its associated
band Psychic TV. Though a culture did not just describe
(06:42):
this sort of personal spiritual movement, it carried a strong
offensive element targeted against society and perceived systems of control
through their many projects, including Throbbing Gristle Psychic TV. In
the Temple of Psychic Youth, Purage utilized art and magical
practice to conduct a quote unquote war on culture. Similar
(07:04):
to another figure that will soon get to william S Burrows,
a culture describes a process of cultural osmosis. The occult
bleeds into and morph's culture, affecting everything from pop culture
to politics and philosophy. But as a part of this osmosis,
the occult becomes increasingly commodified, knowable, safe, territory, marketable. The
(07:30):
hidden occult loses its very essence of being hidden despite
its use as a tool of attack against mainstream culture.
Like most countercultural forms, the occult has been largely recuperated.
Even creative works which are genuine explorations into the occult
(07:50):
fall into this recuperation herodigm They get turned into products
consumed by a mostly secular audience, the works of Dueling wizards,
Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Now, some occultists rejoice, knowing
that this wide exposure will influence more people to become
interested in or adopt occult practices of their own, while
(08:14):
others bemoan this dilution and commodification of what to them
is an important spiritual practice. As the modern occult revival,
along with a heavy helping hand of scientific advancement, deterritorialized
Christian hegemonic religion. Now the occult itself has been re territorialized,
(08:35):
which is not to say that the occult is no
longer a field of play, which is what this conference
attempts to assert. Let's go back to the panel.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
In terms of the conference itself, as we'll get into later,
the term a culture very specifically seems to be focused
on the study of the interrelation of magical practic and
the material aspects of a cult culture and its influence
(09:05):
and appropriation by wider society. So in terms of political
projects or social projects, you can probably relate this. I
think that it would be fair to say that it's
something like culture jamming if we're looking for some familiar
concepts for people to map onto. That is to say,
a focus away from simply solitary practice in the ways
(09:25):
in which occult elements influence broader aspects of our society
or are appropriated, whether that's through consumerist forces or through
various artistic practices, or even the production of for example, film,
television movies. So I think that's a fair assessment of
the impacts of a culture.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
And relevant to our discussion later. It's influenced in the
tech sector and the emergence of AI, which the current
manifestation of has some heavily occult origins regarding around a
whole bunch of people in the nineties who were writing
about AI as this as this occult project, and that
influenced many a AI engineer and coder who are now
(10:08):
building this stuff and it's becoming an ever present part
of our lives, and the occultists now are trying to
incorporate it into their own practice, which we will discuss
in a sect any other notes on a culture as
a concept or what this conference is doing with the concept.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
I think a culture is a concept is something that's
basically been around as long as there's been magical practices,
just looking at so much of things, like you know,
the concept of the British Empire being invented by John
d because of conversations he was having with angels. So
I think that naming it and calling it something is
(10:49):
also very much felt like an attempt to sort of
regain control over the ways that magical practice and greater
society seemed to influence each other there as opposed to
a more unintentional way that they have been going back
and forth for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
There may also be one other aspect that's important for
our American audiences. Given that we're recording this in Deutscheland,
this conference varies significantly from other American equivalents, or something
that might be an American equivalent formerly Panthea Con in
and around San Francisco and San Jose specifically, or Paganicon
(11:32):
in the Twin Cities, which specifically has much more of
a New Age neopagan reconstructionist And so most academic discussion
is viewed with some suspicion. And I'm hesitant to say
that there's an anti intellectual trend because I don't necessarily
think that's true. However, there is a resistance to the
(11:53):
kind of academic styling that we saw very prevalent at
this conference to talk about the occult, but more generally
as an area of study in addition to just idiosyncratic
practice or part of a larger social neopagan movement, which
is again very much the focus of most US based conferences.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
As an editorial note, when we're talking about magic, to clarify,
we're not talking about stage magicians. We're referring to magic
with a K that is rituals and practices based on
occult knowledge. It seeks to cause change in accordance with will,
whether that's change within yourself or in our consensus reality.
(12:38):
Occult magical practice can also serve as a form of spirituality, mysticism,
an alternative religious practice, or an alternative to religion, with
its beliefs in practice largely influenced by historical esoteric orders,
mystery traditions, paganism, witchcraft, herbalism, astrology, hermetic philosophy, and alchemy,
(12:59):
and all these things are influences. I'm not saying that
the actual historic manifestations of these things are the same
as the modern occult practices that are influenced by these things,
because often these can be wildly varying, especially when you
talk about things like witchcraft and alchemy, which have been
misinterpreted or reconstructed into completely new forms than what the
(13:22):
historical manifestation of them actually contained. But a lot of
modern day ocultism has manifested as an individually mediated spirituality
containing some of the group ritual or ritual aspects of
something like Catholicism, but with the individuality of Protestantism. Many
conferences have an opening ceremony and as I previously mentioned,
(13:46):
A Culture had an opening ritual. This accomplishes a very
similar goal to any opening ceremony, to get attendees in
a certain headspace, to prepare them for the rest of
the conference, and set a certain mood in which the
the rest of the events will kind of follow suit.
The A Culture opening ritual called upon the attendees demiurgic capacity,
(14:09):
how they are part of creating the reality of what
this conference is and how it will continue for the
next few days. Back to the panel, The framing of
the ritual was a blindfolded woman holding the scales of balance,
and each person put a intention for the week, or
for the conference, or for themselves into a stone, which
(14:31):
was handed out to each person who entered the ritual,
and at certain point these stones were placed on to
the scales of balance to create an equilibrium between the
two sides of the scale. Along with the you know, chanting,
meditation and a lot of incense.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
A significant deal of incense given that we were in
a former German forge warehouse. The you know, billowing smoke
that existed throughout the conference, from fires to incense to
various other inflammatory items was rather impressive, but in terms
of actual ritual design, it met several elements that I
(15:10):
found to be rather impressive. One it was encompassing of
all of those elements that we would later expect to
see in the actual body of the conference itself. In
terms of like the artistic performances, the musical you know,
metal goth music that was played, but also a very
practical and open approach to ritual. It was highly inclusive.
(15:32):
Everyone who was there participated. It did an exceptional job
I felt of actually bringing setting intention and adding to
I don't know, at risk of sounding to new age,
the vibrations that we all felt as we engaged and
were present. The theatrical quality, I have to say was
also very much dark and spooky. Dark and spooky, but
(15:52):
something to be admired. They did a very good job.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Definitely one of the more high effort rituals of the
weekend in terms of the sort of aspect, with there
being little less than a dozen hooded cloaked figures stationed
at different points, either holding specific positions in a meditative
state for probably over half an hour, standing still in
a decision that would become uncomfortable and swinging incense or
(16:18):
holding torches or lights. Setting intention specifically is usually you
talk to these people. The first step of any kind
of magical working is setting your intention for what the
work is supposed to do or accomplish in you or
out into the world. Mirroring the opening Ritual Culture twenty
twenty five little booklet has a few paragraphs on the
(16:40):
concept for this conference, talking about the cosmic craftsmen as
the demiir to shapes matter and spirit alike embodies creation
and transformation, revealing both the light and the hidden, the
shadowed face of the divine, as well as having cosmic
balance and balancing instruction with creation and order and chaos
(17:02):
and the hidden and the scene. The last paragraph in
which I will read I think relates specifically to this
show and the cultural political aspects quote. In the age
of relentless acceleration, the craftsman becomes a figure of resistance.
His patience and ritual discipline reclaim sacred time, restoring a
(17:23):
rhythm beyond the acceleration of modern life. A Culture twenty
twenty five invites us to dwell in this threshold where creation, intuition,
and the hidden divine converge, and with that we converge
on an outbreak, Welcome back to the it could Happen
(17:51):
here Spooky special on the Culture Conference. The figure name
dropped the most throughout this conference might surprise some people,
because I'm assuming most do not consider him to be
an occultist or really a serious occult figure. The most
discussed individual, at least in my experience of the conference,
(18:14):
was not Alistair Crowley, John Dee, someone like Lena Blovatsky,
but in fact william S Burrows. And now we'll return
to the panel to discuss the Barosian current. Let's talk
about what I would argue was the strongest current throughout
(18:38):
this conference, what I'm gonna call the Burrosian current, relating
to writer, beat poet, and mystic and occultist in his
own right, william S Burrows and the magical technology that
he either invented or popularized in the second half of
the twentieth century and played a significant role in influencing
(19:00):
successor movements such as chaos magic and even the work
of the CCRU and Land and Fisher. The very first
talk that we attended was specifically on Burroughs, and Burroughs
ghost haunted the remainder of the conference thereafter and introduced
a few of the key tensions throughout the rest of
(19:21):
the conference, which we will discuss as specifically technology in AI.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
So our first talk by Castor Obstrop, who I believe
was Swedish one of those.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
He was working at the University of Copenhagen, the.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
University of Copenhagen certainly Scandinavian of some flavor of variety,
focused on William S. Burrows and Brian Geyson. I think
that it's important and I appreciated this claim on the
outset that they argued that both Geyson and Burroughs are
actually closer to the late Surrealists rather than to the
beat poets generation which we typically associate them with, which,
(19:59):
interestingly enough, I made both of these figures far more
compelling to me my understanding of them. I mean, despite
my familiarity with the cut up method, and you know,
several of the things that Burrows had written, I always
considered them far more beat and therefore less less of
interest to me specifically. But this proximity to the Surrealists,
(20:20):
especially the latter Surrealists, I found particularly compelling, and I
think that brings us to the real focus of this
talk was Burrows's cut up method and another book that
he published on the third Mind, which gave way to
the latter discussions on artificial intelligence and large language models.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
So Burrow's definitely popularized the cut up method which Guyson originated,
that Burrows changed its different forms of manifestations to various
mediums of art like the tape recorder and his own
writings and just words and language. And I guess the
reason why I think talking about this current is important
to start is also revolves around this idea of magic
(21:00):
as this form of like resistance or this like a
culture jamming practice which Burrows framed his own work in
his like a you know, work that we could could
we could just describe as like esoteric or inspired by
esoterism or achieving esotericals is specifically for this cultural infusion
to to disrupt mainstream culture in some capacity, to go
(21:22):
against the one God universe, sometimes in an anarchic way,
sometimes in a libertarian way. Some there's a mix of
a mix of like uh motivations that play here same
thing with like Robert Anton Wilson, which I'm sure you've
heard Robert Evans talk about before. These were contemporaries, These
guys were friends and operating under like similar goals of
(21:44):
disrupting culture through these techniques which which they thought literally
like disrupted the linear flow of culture or the mechanisms
of control such as like language and linear time, which
later gets developed on by Land and Fissure.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Yeah. I think looking at some of my notes, some
of the things that stuck out to me, especially in
view of the fact that the other classes going on
at the time began with Alistair Crowley, but we're diving
into a lot of more classical and historical magical traditions,
was that language can shape reality, which is something that
(22:22):
would also be held up by a lot of the
classical magical ideas that sound and image have occult power,
which is very true in a lot of magical traditions
dating back to the Piatrix and more ancient texts, and
that tech available at the time can be a magical instrument,
which the tech available currently and for William Burrows is
(22:46):
very different than classical tech, but is something that has
been done for a very long time as well. What
really changes is stepping out of the idea of a
linear representation of it into something that could be edited,
cut and reprogrammed, specifically using technology that allowed that as
(23:07):
opposed to something that you're trying to control solely through
say more spiritual magical acts. It's something that you can
do with a tape recording.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
And this is like, you know, based on forms like
social engineering and the manipulation of the reproduction of reality,
which Burrows believes a language plays a key role in,
even though I might disagree with him in a few
ways on like the nature of like a language as
a as a human concept versus this like alien concept
which it's like infected the human delta. You should explain
(23:39):
what the cut up method is.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Yes, well the name itself kind of is self explanatory,
but the idea of being essentially too thick any form
of texts or writing, cut up the words or pieces
of sentences, jumble limup in a hat or a bucket
or whatever, then kind of like play a jigsaw puzzle
(24:04):
with language, reshifting sentences into new ideas and new forms
of poetry, especially which I'm just looking at my own
cutups right in front of me.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
To force like randomized combinations of words that you would
not choose to combine on your own volition, and seeing
what sort of thought that generates what kind of meaning
can be constructed through that combination.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
Exactly, we're on some of the first cutups done with
books and just making holes, cutting out words and seeing
the other words that would appear underneath, and if new
meaning would arise through the surprise combinations.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Words from like the future or the past presenting themselves
into a current present within the book.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
I think one of the Borough's quotes is when you
cut into the present, the future leaks out, which.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Is related to the concept of time sorcery that was
talked about towards the end of that discussion. I think
another element to the cutup mesas that's important, especially as
it was framed in this a culture context is as
the we quoted from the or as I wrote this
quote down from the actual lecture itself, reality is made
of words, images and vibrations, and sounds and images have
(25:16):
occult power, and therefore these sounds and images and words
can be marshaled or used, edited, cut through, rearranged for
the purposes of reprogramming. It's fascinating. I think that this
really is something that carries through to the whole conference,
(25:37):
and not just the Burrow's method, but what this Burrow's
method or the Barossian current of the conference. It seems
that there was a problematic I mean, we started basically
with dari Da and we ended with dari Da with
discussions of like critiques of the master narrative that we
get from you know, Deluze and Leotard and Baudriard and
these people. But the goal of this method was to
(26:01):
rewrite the master narrative. So again back to that concept
of culture jamming. As Gerre said, this concept of the
one God universe, this cut up method is meant to
interrupt the linearity of words of language, that is a
process of control. So I take issue with this concept
(26:25):
of language as a virus because that implies that it's
a foreign body, and I mean it's true post structuralists.
I guess that I am. There is no outside to language,
and I think that that's actually something that shines through
in this third mind concept.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
As two people work together on something, there's a composite
mind that like emerges and affects the work. Is the
concept there.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
So when two people collaborate, a third mind or intelligence
communicates with you through the revelation of the new that
was already present. And I think that that's really important
to point out because it's it's not as though there's
this this outside thing. The implication is from this method
is that the new reveals itself through this process that's
(27:11):
already present in language. Because this is a question that
I had throughout, is that if if language is this
foreign entity that dominates us through control, and the method
itself is language, then how are we not just re
I mean, I guess it's a kind of inoculation if
we have a you know, a theory of language that
is based in you know, what what do we call this?
(27:34):
What is it that we all just got during COVID
Kevin fever? No, No, the things that we inject into
our body that created the INDI vaccines. There we go.
That's the ticket inoculations.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Not all, not all of us got vaccines.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Okay, care.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
You heard it here first vaccine did not know where
was it going with this? Okay?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Speaking of methods of speaking of methods of control.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
I mean a lot of it.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
The new just came out there. Wait just one moment, Sorry, Elane,
I likened this to this process of dialectics. But that's
because I couldn't shut up about Hegel the entire time.
We were there because I don't think enough occultists are
talking about Hegel. Why is no one talking about Hegel?
Everyone should be talking about Hegel.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
I mean, as fun as it is to think about this,
like third mind as like an egg grigor figure, which
we've we've mentioned before, is like it's like a group
thought form, like a being or a force that is
generated through through multiple people believing in it.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
You make up an imaginary friend in a way.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
That's what a severtre but true in a grigora is
as a is, yeah, a form of thought that they
gained its own, like an autonomy, and becomes kind of
like a like a little tiny god.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Or they also combined the third mind idea to like
net work consciousness. The one last thing I will say
on this before we get to the AI aspect, I guess.
On this culture jamming nonlinearity is the concept of the
circuit jump, which was playing back words from politicians in
(29:17):
different contexts as a sort of like a Uno Reverso
psychic attack, which I don't know if that actually works
considering the current's political situation, but this is certainly a
tactic to which I have employed many such cases and
we see a lot of people attempt attempt to do this,
(29:38):
and I think there are certain figures who have their
own very strong magical force field protecting them, which has
been pretty evident through the past ten years, including the
President of the United States. But as a as a
circuit jump is playing something from the wrong the wrong
time in a different context as as a form of attack.
(30:00):
The most famous version of this, which isn't necessarily for
political ends, so this was for personal ends. It's the
Burroughs cafe incident, which I've been a fan of for years,
in which he was slighted by a cafe so then
he started recording.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
All that happened was they changed their menu and he
couldn't order the one food that he ordered every day.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
There's been some menus that have changed that I would
continue using this tactic where he recorded sounds from from
outside of like people talking or arguing or walking by
or plates dropping, and then played them back outside of
the cafe for a series of months until the cafe closed.
And this is like the funniest, the funniest form of
(30:41):
this sort of magical obsession, because this really is just
a crazy guy playing loud sounds in front of a
cafe until they close. I mean it worked of yeah,
playing back sounds of you know, arguing, fighting, plates smashing,
which would probably create a negative aura around around in
this building. But that is the most most funny of Burrows,
(31:04):
the circum jump moment. Although I mean Burrough's life is
full of these humorous and sometimes worrying of anecdotes.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
There's one other thing that stuck out to me, given
what a lot of the other talks in that space
ended up dealing with, along with AI and stuff, was
really the speaker talking a lot about the fact that
for Burros and Geyson, the reproduction of reality is how
control occurs, and so the goal was to manipulate the
(31:35):
reproduction of reality, because if you can manipulate the reproduction
of reality, you are also manipulating reality itself, which I
don't think anyone went into nearly as much, but is
something that we're seeing with say even the Republican Party
releasing deep fake videos of Democratic politicians.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, and this is something our materialist friend me does
talk about, is how there's a quote from some neo
cons about how how like democrats just have to kind
of like you know, like react to reality versus the
Republicans who generate it and they like decide what reality is.
And you can see this with all of the sort
of like moral moral panics which have spread across the
(32:15):
United States and around the world the past few years,
whether that's gender ideology, whether it's immigration, whether that's this
non existent crime wave where it is a genuine like
creation of of reality. And then this this this goes
into you know, the Burrows ideas later get developed by
a group of academics and occultists that formed the c
c R. You this included say plant Nick Land who
(32:38):
then turned to the dark side and uh the since
past Mark Fisher, who put a name to some of
this sort of phenomenon called the hyperstition, which is Robert
has talked about before in the show. But it is
it is a self fulfilling prophecy. It is a fiction
that becomes true through the creation of the fiction and
(32:58):
the dissemination of the fiction. And this is part of
how reality can get formed, is through these falsehoods that
that through through repetition and dissemination, become self manifest.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
The thing about that, though, is that the high perscisional
model itself requires to the acceptance of the idea that
everything is a fiction?
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yes, like well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
A lot of most things go through a process like this, yes, yes, yes,
but doing doing such a thing like intentionally and like offensively? Right?
Which is which is the idea that we're discussing here
in like a political context? Is this this this offensive
reality formation where you literally decide what is real and
like what isn't And you know, if you have hundreds
(33:45):
of millions dollars in like a news company at your disposal,
this can become easier.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
Are you saying that media companies are currently cutting up
reality to shape it in the image of the people
who fund them.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, yeah, I mean they are. They are much It's
it's funny because like occultists, I think, are the people
who are often.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
The clips are you going to use from the conference?
Speaker 2 (34:07):
And I will later in my written work, But I
think on that note, I think occultists are a class
of people who are maybe the worst at doing magic,
because the people that are really good at this sort
of thing are perhaps way better at the occult element
(34:27):
of hiding their their you know, awareness of what they
are doing, because they a lot of a lot of
them know what they're doing that you just actually keep
it a more cultic whereas the magicians will not shut
the fuck up because there's always a there's always a
new book to sell.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
That was an excellent segue to an ad break Lane.
Thank you for that, and now a word from our
sponsors on this note, though, Gary with you completely as
a former academic and just a healthy level of skepticism
(35:05):
going into any magical conference. I sat down, I listened,
and I've been to enough conferences listening to magicians attempt
to map on rather poorly magic onto a cultural figure,
and I think Burrows is really unique here. But my
academic pretense was to sit here and to listen and
think about, you know, language as a pharmicon, think about
(35:27):
dry Da, Delouze, Baudrard, Leotard when they're discussing the master
narrative or rewriting the master narrative. But what's unique about
Burrows and why I gave up that, you know, academic
mapping of philosophy and asking myself, why are we having
this conversation. We could just go read these texts. They
talk about similar things. But the point is is that
those texts talk about similar things. And what's unique about
(35:50):
Burrows is that he's actually doing the doer. He's a doer.
This is fundamentally the difference between the vida activa and
the vita contempt of taiva. Like I'm thinking in terms
of philosophers, and it took me half of this talk
to be like, no, he's actually doing shit as soon
as we get out to like, you know, him actually
standing out in front of the cafe and doing this.
He's not just developing a method, but by virtue of
(36:10):
the fact that he's inviting other artists, like the slides
upon slides that we saw of him, you know, working
with new machines that he was creating and trying these things.
He was actively involved in this practice, which again makes
him far more magical than most occultists. Don't come for
me absolutely.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
AI specifically be discussing debates and uses of generative AI
in this conference because the last A Culture conference was
in twenty twenty three, as these large language models and
image generation platforms were just just starting to gain popularity
and now they have a stranglehold over at the stock
(36:52):
market and many people's imagination. The first I guess real
debate around AI happened as the three of you stayed
to listen to a panel after the Willly mess Burroughs panel,
as well as a Austin Osman Spare panel, a proto
cast magician from the twentieth century. It was a contemporary
of Alistair Crowley. I left to go listen to a
(37:15):
mathematical thelemic ontology talk, which was probably less interesting than
the panel. I'd like to hear you guys talk about
the debates around AI and how they emerged in this panel,
and then also juxtassing that to the different forms of
like AI in discussions are an AI that dominated a large
part of the rest of the conference.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
Well, actually AI came up because the initial discussion question
for the panel was what does it mean to talk
about art as magic in the digital era? So everyone
was very specifically being asked to discuss the differences between
the creation process is magic when you can use AI,
when you can use large language models to just generate things,
(37:57):
and if the generative method using AI I was at
all related to say, the cut up method or other things.
So that was the initial conversation that began that whole panel.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Well, and that was certainly a topic that was begged
by the other two talks that we didn't really discuss
the Austin Osmond spare was about automatic drawing. So this
conception and of you know, this drawing that is coming
from the outside, coming from the subconscious, coming from within,
(38:31):
with all within one line. But more than that, it
was a very traditional kind of European nineteen seventies lecture.
You know, you had a lovely Italian man who stood
in the front that was ready to smoke a cigarette
while trying to get through, you know, a very well formulated,
well argued essay, while a series of images presented to
(38:51):
us behind him that covered an overview of artists that
are doing very similar things. He argued, exist in a
similar kind of vein and the occurrences of not just
magical tropes, but cultural influences that happen independently, so artists
all over the world. The third talk by I believe
(39:13):
Kate Lady. Yeah, the ritual transformation and hybridity in Leonora
Carrington's Judith, which was a stage production which happened in
Mexico City, I believe, So we had a few pictures
of this, but Leonora Carrington's art very specifically has to
do with this like hybrid of like animals and mythical
figures and creatures, and the stage production was incredibly intense.
(39:36):
I really appreciated this talk a lot. But then focus
on talking about, you know, generative artificial intelligence in these
large language models and the role of art or what
it means to do art in this era was related
to this idea of the third mind, of automatic drawing,
of this concept of hybridity, of this like transformative or
this discovering of the new through a synth putting together
(40:01):
of different elements or images, words, sounds, costume ry, these
kinds of things, So that it was a natural question
to lead, but the audience members took it in a
very strange direction that I would like you all to
talk about.
Speaker 5 (40:17):
I mean, the initial question was really that people started
asking after the panel topic was proposed, was so, what
did the panelists think about AI art? Do the panelists
think AI art is magic? Do the panelists think that
AI art is channeling? Do the panelists think that, you know,
putting a prompt in a language model is the same
(40:39):
as doing some sort of trans state automatic writing. There
was a lot of variations on functionally that all of
the panelists reaction was no, it's not and a lot
of them did not immediately really want to even dive
into that topic and were very annoyed at the question.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
That's actually not true, because I got triggered almost immediately
because it was our first speaker that responded not to
that first question, but to the second question. And the
second question had to do with the role of technology
and whether we see that there's a possibility for these tools,
you know, as a technology a techne in magical practice.
(41:18):
And our first speaker's reaction was to sit back and
give us a tentative yes to.
Speaker 5 (41:25):
The tech, to the tech.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
That's correct.
Speaker 5 (41:28):
To AI, they were like, their initial reaction was still
also no, but.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Yes they they indeed got there, but it was unclear
at first, and I was a little raw about it,
given that seemed completely contrary to the talk that you
know that he had mentioned before. There was a question
about NFTs. Do you remember this question?
Speaker 5 (41:48):
Oh, I tried to put it immediately out of my head. Yes,
that was the fact that it started with, like, well,
NFTs failed because people like weren't ready to embrace the
blockchain as a generative idea for making art, as opposed
to the fact that why would I own an NFT
(42:08):
if I can screenshot the picture.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Yeah, well, it was this idea that like NFTs themselves
were part of this breaking up of the control process,
the linearity of money and financial systems, that somehow it
was related to the cut up method. It was one
of those questions that was a narrative before it finally
got to your question that really just invited the readers
(42:31):
to respond. There were others that talked about this too
and related their own personal experience to the generative AI
process that you know, they approach AI not with the
expectation that will provide sense, but it'll almost have this
oracular or again this they related to the third mind.
They this idea that again you and the AI come
(42:53):
together and somehow reveal the new which I at this
point was absolutely seething.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
Yeah. I think the closest actually that we had to
some really like someone even trying to approach it was
asking about, if you're making this art, if you're generating
these new things, does it matter that corporations are controlling
the algorithm by which you're doing so, Which started to
touch on some of the problems, but still was definitely
(43:21):
relying on the base assumption that using a large language
model to produce stories or art that you're interacting with
something else that's actually capable of creating it all.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
And to her credit, my girl Kate Lady, who was
talking about Leonora Carrington, the one that seemed to be
kind of tangentially separate from the other two, but the
hybridity really made it was the one that just gave
us a great straight Marxist answer of like, no, this
is bullshit. Let's actually look at the material implications as
to where this is coming from and the environmental costs
(43:53):
of running these programs of server farms, the destruction of
space of you know, livable areas throughout the United States.
That these are questions that we need to ask and
are not separate from these questions of magic. So really
shout out to her. I appreciated that response because it
was instant, and it was it was heated.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
It is also, like I mean, from from my perspective,
it's also a labor is she write because these large
language models and generative AI just scrape like so much
data that that's like writing from real artists and create
created by real like painters and whatever. And it is
(44:36):
the appropriation of human labor. To shout out some advertising
essentially that is like my main well, aside from all
the ecological and the political issues with it, it's like
very much that labor angle to it that frustrates me.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
Well, in the context of the talk, it's really important
to the ground. And this is the comment that I
made that the panel broadly seemed to agree with, although
I didn't really leave them much opportunity to disagree with me.
You're right, thank you. Go on. So this burrows concept
of the third mind this book that he wrote, right,
(45:17):
when two minds collaborate, a third mind or intelligence communicates
with you, again, not about creating the new, but about
revealing itself in what was already present. Yes, but the
idea is that you have to have two minds in
order to get this dialectical third mind that was inherent
(45:41):
in the conditions, the situation, the language of the two.
When one interacts with any form of large language model
or chat GBT, I in my mind and with what
I carry sit in front of a computer and type
my input. That's one mind. Can you tell me where
(46:03):
the second is?
Speaker 5 (46:05):
Because even if you're cutting up a book, there's a
mind in the book. There's a story, there's an actual
thing there. There's a thing that you are interacting with
that were thoughts that were produced by someone that you
are cutting up. You are not just scraping the toilet
bowl of human production.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
But even if we're going to be generous and say
that these large language models are the ones that are
doing the cut up process and you are secondary or
tertiary or even further down the line to it, I mean,
it doesn't involve a human intelligence at that point. So
just in terms of the you know, the Barosian current,
(46:46):
it's just not a third mind. It's the material conditions
are such that it is not and cannot be a
third mind.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Where I would like to take this discussion is actually
the very next talk that I attended was part of
a three talk series called the Politics of Taro, and
the specific one that I think continued on this line
of thought and even stuff like automatic writing was from
Icon to Index by Thomas Leak the Generative Logic of Taro,
(47:17):
in which he discussed I will have to check his
name later, but discussed an author in the eighties who
was trying to use Taro as a way to remove
the human element of writing, try to create an automatic
story using the Tarot archetypes assembled in a randomized shuffling
to generate a story based on the linkages between each
(47:39):
of the cards and remove his own agency and directing
where the story goes except for trying to bridge each
card one to another. And the presenter was discussing if
this bears any similarity to like generative text models. The
presenter said no. The presenter said, this actually is not
(48:01):
like llms, which purely operate on a people pleasing probabilistic
capacity to follow one word after another in accordance with
whatever the prompt of the person who's operating the AI
wants it to generate. Though the presenter stated that this
author who was using Tarot probably would have loved using
(48:22):
an LLM to try to accomplish this goal of his
trying to access. Kind of like a form of automatic
writing similar to Mike Astn Honsman's Beare, but without human input.
The shuffling of the cards and forcing the human brain
to make connections between these archetypes still contains a creative
human process based on randomness in the shuffling of the
deck versus the people pleasing probabilistic generative text that lms produce.
(48:50):
This concludes the first episode of My Culture twenty twenty
five coverage, in part to releasing Sunday Night. The panel
will discuss digital technomancy, traditional magical practice, and why people
are doing accult practice in twenty twenty five. See you
on the other side.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!