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

Just posted an essay about the literary timelessness of Xenophobia. Nothing new under the sun, neither here nor over there… with the OTHERS: ”Still, literature is not a cure-all. It cultivates empathy and can sharpen suspicion. One page opens a window; the next rehearses a slur. Rather than imagining a straight moral ascent, it is truer to see an ongoing argument within the bookshelf. Readers learn to recognize signatures of fear: metaphors of dirt and infection, the tidy conversion, the noble demise that clears the stage for the dominant couple. Once learned, these patterns become audible even in works that otherwise enchant.” #xenophobia #anartapart #carlabrahamsson

Just posted a review of Vincent Peal’s excellent new photo book RITES & CEREMONIES: ”Let’s face the music and dance… These people’s approaches are very different from the consensus Western ones. We can clearly see that the ecstatic moment desired or needed to be able to transcend and enter the NUMINOUS seemingly needs a colorful, traditional and most often communal approach. The mechanics seem almost the same in all of these circumstances: upheave the normal mind-frame, shock the system, jolt the perceptions, and be temporarily free within these sacred and confined times and spaces. The mythic and strictly religious-symbolic trappings are essentially secondary. What these strange men and women do might just might be PURE religion in the most literal sense.” #vincentpeal #timelessedition #ritesandceremonies #huntingasia #occulture #carlabrahamsson

In today’s Magic Monday at our Patreon, I write about how some pilgrimages can bring more than you bargained for: ”Here’s the main insight: if we flip the script of analysis and look at this not as a causal camera trip via esthetic titillation but as a psychoanalytical journey proper, our bounty is more than a (pardon the pun that is not a pun) ”memory card” filled with said slices. Instead, it becomes pure fodder for analysis and many insights. What do we look at? Why? And how is that connected to… What, exactly? Of course one can just go and snap away, happy about spending time in a photographic paradise. But looking at the process as such in this magico-analytic way (definitely under the umbrella of what I’ve called ”Chimera Obscura”), the images in themselves are no longer general observations and documentations but actually particular revelations within a psychic grid. Because to ”take” a picture is to (un)consciously make a choice, a selection. And there’s always a reason why we...