Category: Culture (Transformation)

Chess is two wills locked not only in combat but also in cooperation. Players must together create the conditions allowing one to emerge triumphant—or not.

In his near-century of life, Murray confronted race by re-constructing American identity as omni-American—that out of many, we are one.

"We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They don't care. We say we care but we do nothing. And nothing ever changes." BBC documentary by Adam Curtis.

In Western culture what is “feminine” has become associated over time with what is evil or immoral... This frightening view of the collective, akin to the archetype of the Terrible Mother, is what drives a lot of the global political and social narrative.

If new myths are born, re-tethered to something sacred, they must be brutally immediate, possessing unavoidable gravity, poignant, fragile, they must be anything but contrived, planned, and developed with the intention of bringing us the sacred. (She does not come to us on a platter. More likely, the platter will have your beating heart on it.)

Most of us have, in some form or another, if not a philosophy of time, at least a mythos of time.

I spoke with Conner Habib about his new course, "Banishing the World: Postmodern Philosophy and the Occult," and learned about the surprising ways in which the most interesting and sophisticated philosophies coming out of humanities converge precisely with occult ideas.

"It would be hard to communicate to someone growing up today just how widespread was the fallout from the threat of the Atomic Bomb. From July 16th, 1945, when the first bomb was tested over the Jornada del Muerto Desert, its occult light had continued to throw shadows from each object. The danger was not abstract; it was imminent, and it changed our whole way of looking at the world."

Dunbar proposed the limit of meaningful friendships is "150"—a far cry from our Facebook and Instagram network connections—but maybe it's more complicated than that.

But the dark truth conveyed in the character of Barb finds its counterbalance in the incredible creative power that Stranger Things attributes to the Cosmic Child, a power which is also present in each of us.

Beneath the conceptual overlay, reality remains what it is: not an orderly network of humanly comestible ideas, but a turbid, ever-changing, symphonic, indefinable process of becoming that is accountable to neither the predilections of reason nor the strictures of logical grammar.

The show remains open, ambiguous to the end, and it is this quality that raises it above the normal run of generic entertainment to make of it something that defies genre, something genuinely weird.

Welcome to our first Metapsychosis mixtape! This mix is all about the acclaimed Netflix series Stranger Things, and features J.F. Martel's essay REALITY IS ANALOG, plus the inaugural episode of Jeremy Johnson's Electric Symposium podcast. Enjoy!

"In their re-imagination of the Ellison/Baraka opposition, direct challenges alternate with playful taunts. These exchanges have the energy of a competition but the warmth and generosity of a collaboration."

This notion about our origins is the essential idea with which psychoanalysis grapples. Thought of in this way, psychoanalysis is nothing other than the meta-theorization of occult ideas.

What's another word for melting pot? Cauldron.

We are the robots. Or rather, we are like people who allow their servants to do everything for them, and subsequently feel they have lost touch with life, but don’t know exactly why.

I saw the freedom of the open streets in the early morning and the romance of the street lamps curled with the eerie silence of the city’s expanse. What you call “an isolated figure” makes a left turn into a horizon of pillowy clouds and endures some kind of ecstasy while being alone in a motel room. The film feels alive, present.

I felt it fitting to choose to stay at home alone and “rent” the movie right away. As the pixels on my laptop flickered with Herzog’s visions, I reveled in the juxtaposition of my solitude while consuming this film whose subtitle espouses connection....

"In a comment on my essay “The Vanguard of a Perpetual Revolution,” Okantomi wrote, “I often feel like I can see what is happening in the world, as well as what is just about to happen, and what will almost certainly happen later on, and it’s like no one else sees what I am seeing. It’s eerie, shocking, and finally depressing.”

When Gary contacted me about my biographical work on the German poet and Kulturphilosoph, Jean Gebser, I naturally took the opportunity to explore his work.

What if consciousness actually is something akin to the way it is experienced?

I came to see in Green Eggs and Ham a very sophisticated theology of incarnational nondual spirituality.

What comes after Facebook? How can we reimagine our social networks for a planetary digital democracy of the future?

Every day, when I sit alone in my dark room. Staring at nothing except the brightness of the moon I imagine I can hold it and put it as a lamp in my room. I can do whatever I need to do, like reading ,writing and painting. (I don't need such a few humiliated hours of electricity.)

Join us this Thursday, August 4th, at 8 p.m. EDT (time zone conversion) for a live Zoom hangout with the editors of Metapsychosis, as we close out our Inception cycle (0.6)—and look ahead to our next phase.

Understanding the folk beliefs of Faeries can give us insight into how humans understand our own liminal state between the animal and the angel, which, in essence, is what a Faerie is.

"Co-creating the world with the symbols laid out in front of us: What could be a better description of what is needed right now? We need to see what’s before us, learn to read it, internalize it, and then create it by combining it with our individuality."

Jenn Zahrt, fellow Metapsy author and publisher at Rubedo Press, is hosting a new course with Kepler College. “Benjamin, Literacy and the Stars” explores the lesser known role that astrology played in German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s oeuvre.

Conner Habib is a man of many hats, but if there's one thing he's been at the forefront of,  it's been his sharp, philosophical appraisals of the cultural pulse of Western civilization. I first discovered Conner through our mutual interests in the phil ...