In today’s WEEKLIES post at our Patreon, I write (again) about truth vs lies on our contemporary take away media menu: ”The human qualities being eroded are precisely those that evolved to help us navigate actual rather than virtual environments: skepticism, curiosity, stratification, discernment, the ability to tolerate uncertainty and contradiction. These cognitive tools, refined over millennia of engagement with an indifferent natural world, prove poorly adapted to an environment designed specifically to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities. We find ourselves like deep-sea creatures suddenly exposed to atmospheric pressure—our internal architecture collapsing under conditions we never evolved to handle.” #vanessasinclair #carlabrahamsson

In today’s Magic Monday post at our Patreon, I write about LaVey’s ”total environment” as an important part of the magic of embracing the ideal: ”There is a lot to unpack in this, as is the case with many of LaVey’s magical innovations. Basically, being in an environment that is to as great a degree as possible styled by you based on honesty and resonance, will create a more or less perfect harmony and power that is in every way uniquely yours. In this environment and ensuing state of mind you will be able to formulate and perform magic of a different kind than the genie in the bottle kind; you will basically be your own genie, and the bottle could be anything from a designated corner, a room or an entire house. Or a preferred place in nature. Of course this doesn’t need to have anything to do with thematically magical objects or atmospheres. Only you know what’s creating that ultimate resonance in your sphere. Nostalgia is usually a great tool; weave an outer web filled with...

Just posted some thoughts about the streamings of monocultural unconsciousness: “And how will this change us? Optimistically, we gain a wider republic of stories. A village without a cinema can still host a festival on a Tuesday night. We travel by subtitle; we acquire the grammar of distant lives. The long form affords moral patience, letting characters unfold beyond caricature. But attention, stretched and smoothed by auto-play, loses the useful roughness of intervals. The week between episodes once invited speculation, memory, the embroidery of talk. Compressed into a night, a season flows through us like a river whose banks we scarcely see.” #dystopia #streaming #apocalypse #monoculture #ragnarok #occulture #anartapart #carlabrahamsson

I just posted part 2 of my Colin Wilson appreciation: ”Wilson’s language of the robot remains one of his most durable contributions. In an age saturated by distraction, the notion that we live robotically—failing to notice the miracle of the present because our attention has been captured by habit and utility—feels prescient. His counsel to cultivate wakefulness aligns with contemporary mindfulness practices, yet differs in its insistence on intensity and will. Wilson admired the saints and mystics, but he also admired mountaineers, explorers, and scientists—anyone who demanded more from reality and therefore received more. He thus aligns with a tradition of Western vitalism that includes Nietzsche and Bergson, tempered by the phenomenological insight that meaning is co-created by consciousness.” #colinwilson #occulture #thefenriswolf #carlabrahamsson