My interview on the “Raw Factor” segment of this morning’s Spiritually Raw radio broadcast felt like it went well. Hosts Ajay and April proved to be excellent conversationalists as they talked with me about my central focus as an author (and human being) on the convergence of religious experience with horror fiction and film, and…
H.P. Lovecraft, DMT, and the mysteries of the pineal gland
Does Rick Strassman’s DMT research provide a kind of real-world verification of Lovecraft’s fictional hypothesis in “From Beyond”?
Our alien obsession
UFOs and aliens have been a widespread subcultural attraction for decades, but presently they’re bursting the subcultural boundaries and extending into Western society at large to reach the status of a bona fide, near-ubiquitous obsession. Even the (weird, incomprehensible, utterly Philistine) people who aren’t interested in them are now confronted by them at every turn,…
What’s so horrific about religion (and religious about horror)?
In an interesting development, I’ve been selected as a potential “spot light guest” on SPIRITUALLY RAW, a (very) fringe-oriented occult/spiritual/conspiracy/New Age radio show with a 60,000+ daily listener base. I’ll be conducting a “pre-interview screening” live on air during a segment called “The Raw Factor” on July 5. Listener votes will determine whether I’m blessed…
Religion and the origins of civilization: The conversation continues
In a recent article here — “Rewriting the history of religion, civilization, and the human mind” — I talked about the article/essay in the June issue of National Geographic that details the discovery of Göbekli Tepe, a temple complex in southern Turkey that promises to overturn commonly accepted notions about the role of religion and…
The Zen of Prose Style: Writing can’t be taught (but it can be learned)
Recently, I quoted a jewel of sardonic wisdom from Joseph Epstein on what it takes to become a writer. His words were from seven years ago. In a review essay published just this month, he ups the ante for quotability: After thirty years of teaching a university course in something called advanced prose style, my…
Art and Spirit vs. Corporate Dystopia: Can the enemy’s tools be used against it?
In our present greed-fueled, corporate-consumerist global dystopia, it’s common for artists and subcultural or countercultural thinkers to reject the present order not only in principle but in practice. They (we) are so disgusted and discouraged by the socially, culturally, spiritually, and ecologically destructive nature of the all-dominating system that we’re driven to the edge of…
Rewriting the history of religion, civilization, and the human mind
As reported by National Geographic, an unearthed temple complex in southern Turkey is threatening to overturn our long-held assumptions about the relationship between religion, the human mind, and civilization. Interestingly, this shares a thematic parallel with what’s going on in today’s neuroscientific quest for the basis of the human mind.
What it really takes to become a writer
Recently, as I was doing some research for my Demon Muse blog, I came across an essay by Joseph Epstein that begins with an audacious statement of what it really takes to become a writer. Although the overall point of the essay is to criticize a book I love (Alice Flaherty’s The Midnight Disease: The…
The muse and the paranormal: Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson
[UPDATE May 2014: The article described here is no longer available online (nor is the Demon Muse blog). A slightly abridged version of it can be found in the book Daimonic Imagination: Uncanny Intelligence, edited by Angela Voss and William Rowlandson (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013). The same version can also be found in Paranthropology, Vol….