Philosophy and Magic: Meredith Graves on the Politics of the Occult and Thinking Magically in a Disenchanted World

(upbeat music) - Salve, dear souls and saints, welcome to the "Acid Horizon" Halloween episode, 2025. We wanted to celebrate the season with something suitably weird, something adequate to the reason for the season and to draw a line toward our upcoming event, the "Durations Festival 2025" at public records in Brooklyn. That's Brooklyn in the United States. In case there's a Brooklyn where you live. Today, we've summoned our friend, secret weapon, and one of the co-organizers of "Durations," Meredith Graves, to talk about her research at the intersection of philosophy and magic. Meredith will be hosting a panel at the festival alongside Phil Ford from Weird Studies and some other folks, and will soon be teaching a new course on "Acid Horizon Research Comments." She was also instrumental in helping us launch a "Sephelis" and at the time of this recording, there are still a few decks available in our online store with more returning on October 31st. When Noah Treppelino and I will host a live stream on our YouTube channel to close out a year of bringing a "Sephelis" into existence. Go ahead and check the show notes for any items of interest. I should also say that this is a two-part episode with part of the discussion made available to the subscribers of the "Acid Horizon" Patreon. Now, let's talk with Meredith Graves about philosophy and magic, the history of witchcraft and the theory of the good witch and much, much more. Welcome to "Acid Horizon," the scary podcast. Today, in the spirit of Halloween, we open a different kind of circle. One where philosophy meets ritual and critical thought passes through the veil of enchantment. Our guest is Meredith Graves, whose work moves between philosophy, art and the practice of magic, from the experimental spaces of Salem to the upcoming "Durations Festival," Meredith has been developing a living inquiry into what it means to think and act magically in a disenchanted world. But this is not the revanchist mysticism of hierarchical orders or an escape into the imperialist imagery of Northern European mythology. It is a politics of enchantment grounded in labor, care and collective imagination. We ask what it means for those committed to a material life and its struggles to reclaim magic as something other than superstition. How a practice of enchantment might emerge without illusion, yet still carry revolutionary potential. Can the magical imagination become a force of insurrection against the dull rationality of capitalist modernity, an insurgent form of knowing that works through matter, gesture, and desire? And I have a lengthy intro. Why am I going to read all of this? Meredith is our friend, and we're bringing her on the show today. Welcome to the show, Meredith. That was phenomenal. That was an-- you just-- you actually, I wasn't here, but you, in that invocation, you conjured me into your podcast. Congratulations. A little bit of acid magic. Yeah, well, Meredith, there are many people who know you from other artistic and cultural venues. And we've known you for a while. You've been a kind of secret co-conspirator behind the scenes of the podcast. But lately your work has taken somewhat of a turn, at least explicitly towards philosophy, the ritual and the study of magic. And it seems like you are going to be putting a little bit more out there, not only in general, but perhaps for us in the acid horizon research commons. We have something coming down the pike. Let's just talk about your history with the study of magic, and its relationship to philosophy. And just maybe to qualify everything at the beginning, I will play a little bit of a devil's advocate here today as the staunch materialist, somewhat. But at least attempting to inquire and find out how the study of magical practice from either a philosophical perspective or a personal or psychological perspective can link into the kinds of thought that we ordinarily deal with on acid horizon. I do love the consistency of myth here. When the devil, whenever the devil needs an advocate, he calls up a guy who podcasts about delus. That's beautiful. Very common. Many such cases. So let's run that back. My history with magic. This is-- oh, I'm an old sorceress. I've been in this game a while. This is not my first rodeo with demons. I have been-- I think the pocket-sized version, I have been invested personally on a daily level with confrontation with the mystical and with the luminous and an active practice of or pursuit of magic in witchcraft. Since I was about 12 years old, and I'm almost 40. So do the math. That's like a really long time. My early life sorceress preoccupations led to later life, deep, deep desire to research these topics, to start to pull the spirit threads and weave them together from a global history of yes, magical and spiritual traditions, but also more classical ideas about religion. Philosophy did come into this pretty early on. It was, I believe, my second year of university, still around 2006, when one of my beloved advisors upon hearing me express some sort of vague discontent, if I remember correctly, with what I was reading in my more introductory classes turned around and kind of shuffled through his bookshelf and said, here, whack, how about this and gave me Deridan, Bodriard and Gideborg and like Roland Barth, who became-- he's a part of my spiritual canon at this point. All of these things since have sort of comengled and become part of this large cauldron of perpetual stew that has shaped my life ever since and only actually-- it was never just a phase as it turns out. This has been the core of my life, the sort of nuclear star core, and it has been what drives me to go on all the different adventures I've been on per what you said about other people, maybe knowing me from other places. If you ever wonder, how does one person manage to have this sort of life trajectory where I've been a researcher and a speaker and an educator, yes, but I've also been a baker and I've been a costume designer and I've been in bands that have been lucky enough to tour all over the world. I was the host of MTV News for two years. I was an outreach director at Kickstarter for five years where I launched an emergent program specifically designed to procure funding for a cultural artist. I'm currently back to being an educator. I'm a knitwear designer. I do all this different stuff. How did I do that? Well, make magic the center of your life and see what happens. So that's kind of the how I got to hear of all of it. Well, let me ask a more basic question to get a frame for this discussion, which is what is your definition of magic? And I'll just say, I mean, I understand there's all kinds of magic, maybe shamanic magic, ceremonial magic. Magic is metaphor, an archetypal magic, which whether you believe psyche has transcendent roots versus imminent roots, I mean, is there an imminent form of magic? So that's a great question. I hate it. Thank you, Craig. There are so many operative definitions of magic that when you're called upon to deliver one, it summons to the comments section, all of the people who have other ideas about how this is supposed to work. So per a little bit what we were talking about before we started recording, I'm going to lean on Crowley for this. I'm actually going to paraphrase Crowley for really specific reasons. I'm even going to foreshorten a little bit what I believe he said. And I'm going to say magic is in the broadest and most big sense causing change to happen in accordance with will. Now, saying that, I know there's going to be someone out there going, okay, yeah, well, if I want to turn the lights on in my apartment, I'm going to stand up and I'm going to flip the lights with John and I'm going to cause a change to happen in accordance with my will, ho, ho, ho, and I'm going to go, yeah, thank you. Great. Because at one point less than 200 years ago, electricity was magic. In fact, that sort of broad stroke, very basic definition will actually cover a lot of our understanding of human history and experience across the diversity of disciplines. It's also going to cover in earnest kind of very lead here. How I would like people who are interested in magic and philosophy and everything to start experimenting inside of their own head. How I would love it if people began to think about their direct experience. What is magical? What can be considered magical? The inner shift that is more often than not required to take place for a person who's interested in delving into these disciplines. That shift kind of is required in order to start thinking magically. So yes, if you are willing to accept or even consider that magic is when you cause change to happen in a way that aligns with your will, your desires, your drive, yeah, the lights which can certainly fall into that category. You know, I was thinking about the Crowley definition. And I was thinking, yeah, how do we get? Because that was one of my main issues of the Crowley definition, even though it is meant to be this mass enchantment. So it's actually meant to be part of the point. It's meant to be that expansive. And I've heard of the psychological model in which it is a kind of a self-implication or there's a metaphysical model in which these things are really out there or there's the, you know, there's the, I mean, I think this definitely comes as a forefront in Crowley because the will is so centered in everything he does. Of course, he's a filet-merd, a very word, means the will. Kaleima, for listeners, don't know, being the name of Crowley's kind of a cult system. And he's very much a ceremonial magic practitioner. And even at the same time, we have these new forms of fritably, we can call post-modern magical systems in which you don't need to necessarily believe in something, but nonetheless, the practical emanation of belief, the performance of belief, therefore, has a similar kind of effect. And I mean, how do you personally navigate these kinds of models? I mean, are they just models, or are there particular sort of camps in the magical scene that once sort of, you know, advocate for one side over the other? I mean, with Crowley, there's also this really fascinating notion, which sometimes he calls it, you know, scientific illuminism, the method of science, the aim of religion, and because it is always constantly in that ever experimentation, otherwise, then it is just prophecy, which isn't seri magic, because he was talking about your current circumstances, it's more imminent to the social field, and the magic necessarily has to be. So, also last one, I'll see what do you think of these these are always a framing magical experience in terms of these models and the various ways in which we've tried to conceive of these models as instead methods approach to the concept? I think you outline that really nicely. I mean, to wit, a lot of what we're thinking about now, there's a huge difference between magic when we're looking at it from a research perspective and magic when we're looking at it from a practitioner's perspective, right? And because I'm kind of caught between those two worlds, I often find myself working with both one versus the other. So, they're not as in conflict as they initially seem, right? A lot of what we talk about now when we try to hedge things into specific camps when we say, you know, this is the Lima, but this is serimonial magic, this is the golden dawn, this is the AA, this is pre-Masonry, this is Wicca, this is Gardnerian Wicca, Alexandrian Wicca, any tradition, Satanism, theistic Satanism, atheistic Satanism, a temple of set, you know, we can go on down the line, right? Those are in many cases, not all cases, but, you know, as someone who used to work with data a lot, I'll never say everything is all or nothing, I'll always allow for a little non-zero margin of error, but pretty much every case. This is looking at magic from the researchers angle and this is a lot of what would you call it? I don't call it larping because that sounds mean, but at the same time, it's a lot of like looking at it through a historical lens that doesn't actually accurately represent the lives of everyday people who were engaged in these practices or in these cultures. So what we talk about, when we talk about serimonial magic, which you'll often hear the term, for example, solomonic magic used interchangeably, what we're talking about there's the high ritual magic, you'll see in grimoires that often have the name King Solomon attached to them, right? We've always kind of looked at that as one school with magic. Recently, there's been some great research work done deconstructing that idea that solomonic magic is this one thing, which is one of those things that like practitioners, we've kind of all known it on a subtle level forever, but now there's academic proof being brought forward saying solomonic magic doesn't have the roots we always thought it did, and it's not this one linear tradition that some people assume it is, right? So what I think is useful about that separating magic out into its own modes and camps is it gives people who are interested in pursuing the study of magic on a practitioner's level of place to start. I would see it at the ground level as being more analogous to genres of music. Whereas to a person who's not necessarily an avid listener, metal is metal, we know that once you actually get it, well, are you into death metal? Are you into black into death metal? Are you into thrash metal? Are you into black suit? Sidal black metal, regular black metal, Norse black metal, Cascadian black metal. I just named like nine genres, and there are thousands, and I can already hear people getting mad at me for leaving out their favorite, right? So the study of magic is kind of going to start to feel like that really, really quickly, right? Breaking things down into those camps. Well, it is also useful for researchers. I'm not sure I made that abundantly clear at first, either. As the study of magic becomes more accredited, as it becomes something that's more respected in hardcore academic spaces, I think there are great scholars that are honing in on highly specific aspects of history, you know, religion, philosophy, all these different things, and it requires, as all things that academia do, really hard billionations being placed around it in order for something to be studied and honed in on at the level of like a PhD or a scholarly work, right? So they're useful. However, when we're looking back at history, it's very easy to figure out very quickly that what we have in the remaining and/or translated, Grimoire texts, for one example, just to go back to the ceremonial and solemn automatic magic part. What we have there is a book that was likely, it wasn't just, you know, they're not manuals that you read start to finish and you only do what's in the book and you do it in the exact order and then everything's going to go right. Much like the cookbooks of today, most cookbooks, the joy of cooking, mastering the art of French cooking, they don't start with turn on your oven, right? It's not software. So those brimores, they were going to be living books, no matter whose hands they were in or in what era they had them, right? The people who were using them, they would have brought in outside knowledge, they would have modified things to fit what they had on hand, they would have doctored up their recipe as it were to make it what they needed it to be. They would pull from one book and then they would get another book and they would go, "Oh man, there's something in here that I think fits in with this. There's that ground information." So, yeah, that there's a bug and a feature in that, you know, hardcore separation, this idea that there are these like super different schools with magic. Now, everything draws from everything else. It is much like our understanding of philosophy in that way. Hopefully that wasn't too word-salative and explanation. I think that's a great point to hit on as well because it's a point that we also, you know, if we study, you know, one religion, we also end up all these kind of synchronicities, but eclecticism, sorry, like even, you know, Catholic spirituality. Some people think this dog is a saint because, you know, it's the Latin is the same for dog. There are so many regional variations, even looking at things that produce other systems like, "Ah, it's not brewery. I wasn't called Santaria." For example, some other recent one, the synchronic religions as it enters the colonial context. And I guess, this extent, this is one of the problems with having a, maybe it's a problem of having a purely text-based or an archival approach to the study of magic, because there's no phenomenological aspect there. And of course one of the biggest problems is that most of the texts we were going to be reading about magic. Well, these in terms of the main ones had the most historical imports. We were essentially, for lack of a better term, texts written by Catholic nobles and various other gomras of man to identify various forms of women they can legally torture. And you know, it's hard not to bring up the Sylvia Federici angle here, or even some other other small piece. She's my, please, I ride for Dr. Federici. She is my hero and I've taught that bookly. I always bring up more bringing up of Sylvia Federici. Sorry to interrupt, I just, I'm so enthusiastic. Absolutely. Please, Lord, bring up Sylvia Federici. I was even thinking about another text that I read a while ago. It was called like a Nalako primitivist history of alcohol. And it was talking about how essentially there's a competition over brewing, the idea of the witch's cauldron essentially being about a competition over brewing, which ends up in the German purity law, listen, as the German purity law, a lovely turn of phrase, of course, which has no, no horrific overtones to it. Or the beer is quite good, I must say. But there is seem to this constant historical battle of how to approach magic. But in a way, not just from the standpoint of those who were sort of looking for it and the people who were looking for it were off to wrote the books. You had the abilities to write books were often, you know, people wanted to persecute those who they would identify through the prism of magic. I mean, what does it mean to take an approach that's more phenomenological that, you know, that doesn't, that wants to see magic from the standpoint of its practitioners rather than from the standpoint of those institutions who characterize themselves as its victims? Well, that is so fascinating because when you look at it from a historical angle, oftentimes they're much more inseparable than you would think, right? So it actually becomes, it becomes this huge circuit, books like the King James demonology, right? Or the Mellies, Maleficaerim. On one hand, they are the more privileged and the literate classes take on how to hunt, which is how to find, which is subsequent generations. If those were the only books that were available, they would go, oh, so that's what which is do. Okay, I'll take that and I'll go do it. And they became, let's like call them 16th, 17th century, hyperstitians in a way, right? So there's a mix of anti-social or unsocial behaviors that would be pinpointed by the witch hunting classes that would be picked up on and published in these books as, you know, signs that you can totally tell the old bitty next door is a witch. And then subsequently, people who were interested in pursuing witchcraft would take up those texts alongside, you know, folklore, common cultural practice, local traditions, a lot of synchronic Christianity, as you pointed out, especially in our quote-unquote new world and colonial times. They would take all of that and mix it together. And this is how a lot of, you know, at least North American witchcraft traditions got developed was the transmutation and sublimation of a persecutorial text. Now, it's true that when we look back at a lot of witch history in that era and after especially here in the United States, a lot of what we have to go on is more legal documentation. So obviously, I always say this mass literacy is still a global aspiration, right? And it certainly was back then. So a lot of the primary source documents we have that teach us is why Salem is going to be a paradox forever, right? We only have the limited texts we have in so many of those art court documents, right? We are looking back and we're piecing together a witchcraft history from legal history. I'll say that's so much of women's history, right? Like so much of the is emergent 20th century field of like domestic anthropology, right? So much of women's history is only able to be surfaced when we look back in court documents, in census records, in domestic accounts. So ledgers, receipts, bookkeeping, business records, piecing together the history of witchcraft. And here I'm kind of going, parking back to Dr. Federici's work. So much of the history of women is bound up in the law and bound up in capital. But of course, per some work that I did for the Salem witchcraft and folklore conference, not this summer, but last summer. The history of the way that the courts were developed in the West is largely based around the experiences of people who were experimenting with different ways to try which is during that era. So yeah, it's a little bit of that historical reconstruction asm that I was referencing in your first question about what we do when we're looking back on the history of magic, but it's also a way of understanding the longer line of women's history because, well, certainly magic witchcraft, these are not practices that are specific to women because of those documents that we have to do with the persecution of so-called witches, they do play a huge part in understanding women's history in our world. - I would like to go back to a question that we had approached just before we pressed record here earlier today. Meredith, you had mentioned that you believed that philosophical communities and occult communities were very much the same. The contours of the discourse were the same, maybe the character of those communities were the same in some way. But I'd also like to know what you see as the relationship between philosophy and magic more generally. And I just want to highlight what I think historically is this kind of serpentine track where philosophy intersects with magic now and again over time. I'm reading this book right now by Peter Kingsley called Reality. And first of all, look at that font in that title. Like that's just, you're just asking for it there. There's something very 1998 about that. But the book is about parmenities and the argument that he attempts to make is how parmenities had cleaved to, I guess it was somewhere between the mystery schools or the temple of a sleepy as sort of practices, the practice of incubation, for example. And we don't only see this in the history of parmenities. I mean, of course, it's rumor that Plato had partaken in this as well as many other philosophers. Even if you read the platonic dialogues, Plato makes recourse into myth to get out of all the apporias that come up in the statesmen, for example. So it suggests that there is this sort of complicated relationship between philosophy and magic, at least in the West very early on. You know, we see the resurgence of it in the Italian Renaissance with Fichino, Bruno and Pico, Dela Mirandola and all those folks. And of course, it's coming back today, like even a book like The Hermetic Delos. Or the book on hermeticism and Hegel, for example. So there's a way in which magic has this way of kind of creeping up or bubbling up in the cauldron of philosophy. But that itself is a kind of alchemical procedure where like alchemy and chemistry separate. But then alchemy comes back in the tradition of analytical psychology as a metaphor for the growth of the self. And I was wondering what you see as being the relationship, broadly speaking. Cool. Again, this is a great question. Let me just give you a super brief answer to that one. For a super long question. Yeah, just like real real brief. That's an easy one. That's an elevator. No, I'm so glad you asked this. And I'm so glad you phrased it the way you did because trying to answer this question is the crux of what I'm doing with my sort of philosophy of magic philosophy and magic project that I'm pursuing right now. So I was so interested in the way, you know, you said, they've been serpentine and they've crossed paths at times. But then simultaneously, it's all in the same cauldron and some things just bubble evocationally. So per that, the history of philosophy and the history of magic are literally inextricably linked. There's never been a philosophy without magic. Some of our earliest most ancient guys are either in religious positions where they're allowed to philosophize and publish texts on these things or part of their philosophies. For example, determining in which realms the spirits live, right? Like figuring these things out is necessary for figuring out what it is the drive's consciousness, what it is the drive's the human experience. So, you know, guys with marble bust avatars on social media who believe that they're being super dank and stoic because they don't allow themselves to have feelings are completely foregoing the fact that most of their favorite stoics would have absolutely been purchased within some ancient state religions and like the god worship of localized cults, right? Which are the roots of all manner of magical traditions. So I think PSA to a lot of people who are really invested in stoicism on the internet, you should probably begin a process of self-initiation to a Dianician cult and then see how much further you get. So history philosophy and history of magic, even when it's not bubbling on the surface, it's always happening. And in that way, it's every person who's ever tried to determine what stuff the mind is made of, that idea of, you know, materialism versus idealism, but any way that you want to delineate it. As long as there have been people trying to separate out the stuff of thought and the stuff of life, magic has been the undercurrent that kind of makes the whole thing go. Even in instances where it isn't immediately apparent on the face of things, you know, even for people who like, let's say just as one example, read Leibniz's strictly mathematical in his study focused entirely on the mathematical work of Leibniz, he was, I believe, the secretary for a local alchemical society while he was, while he was publishing those tax, you know, Leibniz was deeply invested in the research and to alchemy at that time. To take that a step further, the link between alchemy and chemistry, right? As you correctly stated, at some point, it seems like they separated and this is a very common belief that a lot of people have, that we have alchemy up to a point and then it's almost as if a line can be drawn. And then after that point, we go, oh, a lot of this was nonsense, but now we have chemistry. And then alchemy seems to reemerge in the early 20th century after the divestment of young from Freud. It's not really that clean and a lot of people think it is, right? The understanding that we have of historical alchemy, that current never left in actual laboratory practice. It perhaps left at the textual level during the enlightenment when people really wanted to seem like they were pursuing this scientific project of materialism and rationality. Of course, there's a lot to be said about whether or not materialism is kind of a bogus thing to believe in as well. But even now to this day, people who are operating in the interest, this is a philosophy in other disciplines, like people who are following the Bachelardian trajectory and history of science are doing laboratory alchemy in science labs around the country and around the world. People like the great Dr. Lawrence Prince of Hay or Bruce Team around who are going back to medieval manuscripts and performing alchemical experiments in laboratories today, not at the level of say, yummy en psychoanalysis, but pursuant to chemistry and trying to link up the history where it may have been lost at the textual level, right? So these things have always been inextricably linked. And there's really something to be had, I believe, for trying to rejoin them and reintroduce all of these disciplines to each other to promote a better and more well-rounded understanding of the culture that undergrads so much research across so many disciplines that we see as being hyperrational to wit. The thing that I think is most interesting about the rejoining of philosophy and magic is far simpler than either a historical deep dive or more exploratory methods of researching the very idea as I'm viewing it as this vector for increase and understanding on a ton of different levels. What I'm the most interested in, and of course, Craig, this will take us directly to the work that we're doing at the Duration Festival here in New York in a couple of weeks, is at the absolute ground level where we're in a culture right now where I don't know about you, but on my YouTube explore page, every other video that I'm being offered at the moment is how to carry your brain around, how to go at a log because you're just being fed this AI slot and the demi-erage of artificial intelligence is feeding you nonsense memes and Italian pop songs and whatever the case may be, right? People are, it seems, entering a moment. I say people are going to really vague general sense because I really do mean it. This is everybody from like young kids who are getting siphoned in through esoteric Instagram meme accounts all the way up to professors who are expanding their scholarly work and everyone in between including Tucker Carlson viewers and so on, people like that. And people in our world and people. - We're gonna do it. - Yeah, I am, that's great. I am poisoning. I'm like, you know what I'm saying? - Well, if you don't mind if I interrupt you for one, we'll save that for the Patreon extra that we record. Yeah, but anyway, continue. I'm sorry. - Okay, I, the day after that aired, I had so many people saying, "Are you gonna weigh in on what happened?" And I said, "Oh no, I'm going into, I am the last person." Anyone needs to hear from on the topic. So if anyone who happens to be listening friends and otherwise were interested in hearing my take on the Tucker Carlson interview, subscribe to acid horizon on Patreon. I've been a subscriber for years, right? Join me as a patron of acid horizon, for a dollar a month. - Hold on, Adam's like a raging bull in the corner. I think we have to get, yes, just one comment. - No, I just think it's great to bring philosophy and magic back together, 'cause a lot of philosophers act like fucking magicians although they're not that good at it. - Okay. And this especially happens with Marxist philosophers sometimes or it's like, what are you doing when you say, you know, there's like a battle of spells here, which is read this and you're casting reading lists that you cover instead of you're not really doing any debate. You're just saying, read X and you go, "No, read Y, this is this conversation." And philosophy has a ground, a kind of magical thinking. I don't mean that in the ground. You don't mean that in the seri-pejorative sense of which. And I'm in Nietzsche about this. But philosophy is based on the premise that you could win a fight with words. Because I think Nietzsche did have a bit of a point. And it's like, well, why do you need to have your reasons on your sleeve all the time, like you're constantly trying to defend yourself, like you've got a shield up? It's because it's a continuation of war by other means. I mean, you can see this in some ways that philosophers treat philosophers there, particularly opposed to in developing, basically competing for grant money. I mean, it's a form of material that goes at the window where the suddenly, like, it's the postmodernists who have cast this devious spell over all of us, and every year, there's sort of a unity of certain kinds of competitions over grant money, which sound like magical battles. And but just on a more serious aspect, I think just one of the more foundational points I did want to ask about, though, is-- because we're talking about magic in the context of enchantments, and that requires a kind of maybe-- at least a rudimentary working theory of belief here. And in terms of-- and it's hard not to think about belief here in terms of a category, which is not itself, you know, unproblematic, which is a category of the investment of one's beliefs. And especially given that we are living in a period dominated by-- I would say explicitly magical system, which is the stock market. I mean, it is about drumming up pipe. It's about investments of belief. Such that one will stake something of one's personality. And I mean, that in the legal sense of your personal holdings on it. How do we think about magic in the context of belief? And even in the context of beliefs it relates to enchantment and the literal sense of, we are chanting this is the future. This is the future. It's a matter of making not just self-refealing prophecies, but also constructing a structure of belief in which the entire meaning of the social sphere becomes subject to that belief. OK, excellent, excellent question, because I think you actually-- you did a wonderful job of setting up the answer as I perceive it, or at least one of the many-- if I ever say, this is the answer, you know, I'm absolutely-- one answer of possibly thousands, please, please tell me I'm wrong, I love it. I'm a vampire in that way, I feed on it. What you just outlined so beautifully is I think the argument itself, which is it takes nearly no-- it's health soft when you scratch at the surface of the world as we experience it. How much of what we experience on a day-to-day basis is enchantment, is magical thinking, is a glimmer or a glamour or-- yeah, some sort of ensoor-selement that for many of us we've experienced since birth, sometimes we come-- we come in and out of it due to our increased political or philosophical awareness and so on effectively to become invested in magic in this moment in time is, in many cases, as I've seen it unfolding, like on the internet when I'm observing the behavior of younger people who are just getting into the space or in my own community as I watch people's beliefs grow and shift and change, or my own beliefs most certainly, looking around and acknowledging how much of our day-to-day experience is already some form of enchantment, right? And now I'm going to go full like Keanu meme. The money isn't even real, man, but like functionally, it's kind of not. The systems we participate in, the amount of social interaction required to undergird even the most pragmatic or logical of systems, including science, the things that we believe to be defined hard, fast, capitalist realism, for example. This is a great example of like sorceress thinking, right? We have been in sconce in these beliefs of this inflexible-- this is how it is-- mandate from heaven, hand it down. Life is simply this way. Experience of our everyday life. This has led so many of us-- and it's thickening as we go down generations-- to a state of complete emotional disrepair and complete detachment from our passions. We're no longer-- like people no longer want to step into that, Nichean War. No one wants to part-- we are all so massively defeated. We're trying to figure out how we still can't pay rent when we have three jobs, in many cases, right? At least speaking here in the West, in bigger quotes, right? So with that said, to opt into magic once you've come to that moment of realization is to, at the very least, decide which illusional systems you're going to take on for yourself. It's looking around and assessing per your direct experience. What here isn't required? Maybe-- OK, so I can't opt out of capitalism fully. I have a job, right? But I can choose the degree to which I become aware of it as a process started and perpetuated by humans versus this inevitable-- well, that's just life kind of thing. Even something as simple as adopting that small shift in belief can allow me to make choices that assist me in building, at least in my immediate sphere, to a large degree, the world I would rather live in, right? If people, again, if they're listening to this and thinking, I can turn my life's on in my apartment and I've made a change according to Will, great. If you are more comfortable or benefit more from having the lights on, make every single small choice, reclaiming the ability to make choices, whether they are existential or ethical or ontological choices, like how you view the world, the lens through which you view the art that you make, the way that you relate with other people in your immediate community, the degree to which you accept a level of animism and begin to regard the supposedly physical or inanimate objects in your world as having a spirit that you engage with and a relationship that you have with them. These are all choices you make that move you towards a greater understanding of the world we live in and crack you out of the way that life has been dictated to you, in most cases, from birth, if that makes sense, which is interesting because what I was driving at previously that I got off track from is, additionally, this is why I think it's important that we reconsider philosophy in the context of magic and vice versa and why it's important to be having this conversation right now. Mass disillusionment leads to feelings of hopelessness and not being able to make choices. Magic and philosophy are two very common on ramps for people of all ages, but especially young people in their quest for self-liberation. Once they have that first moment of, oh my God, I won't be able to, like, people who've been telling me that I can grow up and go to school and get married in my house and this and that, and it doesn't actually look like I can. I need a way out. Politics, sure, but philosophy and magic look more like escape routes than potential like third options, right? And from the immediate outside, there are no two more overwhelming disciplines, right? Both philosophy and magic can look deeply in penetrable, complicated, convoluted, let's face it unfriendly. These are not welcoming spaces, at least from a distance from the outside. It's like when Dorothy and her friends first look over the yellow brick road into the Emerald City of Oz, it seems interminable in a million miles away, right? They call magic and philosophy, both look that way. Where do you begin? Where do you point people when they come to you guys and they say, I want to get into philosophy. Where do I start? How do you answer that question? Because people ask me that about magical the time when they have three years, right? I think illuminating the interstices of that discipline, showing people who are about to get interested in philosophy, that there is a magical and spiritual and creative vent to it, and showing people on the outside of magic that, you know, if you're worried about that question of belief, if you're like, I'm really interested in this, but I don't think I believe any of it, because I've been to Barnes and Noble and I read a book about crystals that have different colors and they're supposed to change my life. And so I got some rocks and they didn't really do much for me. I still wanted it, but I don't believe. Also, I'm showing those people, you know, a parminides or whatever, depending on their background, that can be incredibly valuable. So introducing people to the idea that philosophy and magic are and always have been like always already best friends and showing them that you can apply one to the other. It's not quite crony and scientific omenism, but it's something closer to it that allows you to use. One is a framework for the other and make it a much warmer, much more inviting, much more honestly accessible in road to both. And I think that's gonna combat a lot of disenchantment for people if you introduce them to both, and you simultaneously give them all of the new menace and spiritual information and give them a framework for how people throughout history have thought about that kind of thing. It can really provide a good, strong support from both sides to help bolster the minds and the well-being of again, especially young people. And that's something that I think is really interesting and something that people who were invested in that topic have a perhaps responsibility to think about and to look into. And so this is what we're doing at durations in a couple of weeks. We're starting off conversations about philosophy and magic with great thinkers who dance around the edges of all of these different disciplines. We're bringing in some people from more creative outlets. We're bringing in actual practicing occultists. We're bringing in authors and we're bringing in two of the scariest most brilliant philosophers known to man to have a series of conversations that kind of work around the edges of these two topics as they relate to each other and as they relate to modern life at large. - As a follow-up to that is because, as you said, these disciplines, philosophy and magic can be so there's such a high buy in the only terms of the intellectual cost of the book. sometimes, but also just the community, the matter of presuppose. knowledge, is there a central tension there between the magical and esoteric then? Because with the esoteric, the occult, sometimes people want against it into it because it's seem like a separate sphere because there's a lot of vinyl because it's something that can be you know, just for them. But in the sense, it's not in the sense that it would give them a sense of agency, but in the sense it would be an agency which is occult in a literal sense of being occluded away from other people. Is there a real tension here between the magical and the esoteric or even this attention of the esoteric for it's the, you know, I want to be seen in my robes. I want to be seen in my robes saying, you can't understand this, you know, it's like joining something like the AA, not alcoholics anonymous, listen to sorry, the we don't know what it means, the astramar gentum, and that's probably part of the points, you know. I think actual AA is also a secret society also though. I think that's if AA has a very like, I'm not an AA, I don't drink, but I'm not an AA, I've seen some of the spiritual teachings in their texts. I think AA, both AA is a secret society. That is such a fascinating question because there's a few answers there. First of all, anyone who is laboring under the delusion that there is a high financial price point to getting involved in the occult, I'm sorry, you've been deeply misled. Like yes, you can absolutely go in if you so choose and buy original copies of of alchemical manuscripts from the 1600s and you too can go to the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, shameless plug. I am an ambassador for the NYBF here in New York. I have this year touched one of Elifis Levy's personally hand painted like cursed personal magical diaries. I can't believe they let me touch it. It was one of the best experiences of my life. Also, a copy of the sorrows of young Worther bound in human skin that had a tattoo of I believe the world card from the tarot on the front, just weird side note, right? You'd it was, I have photos, it's surreal because of course I had to do that. I, you can do that. Every one of the major esoteric texts is on various websites around the internet. There is zero cost of entry to becoming involved in the occult in esotericism. Also, please remember that for most of history, the majority of humans have been contextually poor and people have been doing magic. This is why just as one great example in a lot of American folk magical traditions and in this I include out or spotlight, namely like Kudu and Routwork. You are working with the plants that grow in the blocks around your house. You got water, you got candles, you got chili powder from your kitchen, you've got graveyard dirt, you have things that are inexpensive leaning free for the most part. And it was only in the last century, century and a half that pre-made magical influence became like things you could get from mail order catalogs, right? So the barrier to entry financially should be incredibly low. Now, esoteric publishing in a modern context, that's very different. We all love to own like a luch beautiful copies of our favorite books, whether they're William Gibson novels or the asophilus compendium or the asophilus compendium, a gorgeous and massively occult text that every serious sorcerer should absolutely own for sure, which I here is now very hard to get. Absolutely. Because like the dexter's selling out, but the other thing that I want to say out of my response to that and I'm hoping this I feel like so much of the time when I'm talking about magic and esotericism in the occult. I'm just I'm actually I have a magic wand with a thumbtack on the end and I'm just bursting everybody's bubble left and right. So if you have it in your head that you want to get into magic or philosophy for that matter because you want to be the hardcore esotericist and you're doing this specifically because you're special and different and you want to wear your robes and you want every you want to be like an orthodox monk moving through the world and you want everyone to know that you've broken out of the matrix and you're a cool guy and you are worried at all that coming from a magic versus esotericism angle you're going to be part of like the masses. You might be there's still only like six of us broke. You never have a reason to worry about being one of many, right? As many people as are sincere and interested in genuine esoteric practices can get interested in it. It's still going to be a flavorant and endangered minority of people as I spoke about of my research that I presented at the Salem which crafted folklore conference this past summer. There has literally never been a time in all of human history including the 90s wicker resurgence of the craft and practical magic and including now when being a witch has widely been considered a good thing. It has literally always been dangerous and when I use the term which I'm also including you know magicians or so are all the other terms. There has literally never been a time in human history where it was safe or considered normal for anyone to be regarded as or to regard themselves as a practitioner of magic. So trust me you are still in endangered minority feel free to be esoteric about this as you would like or as normal a better disease you would like. Well for those battle hard and materialists like ourselves who want to be as endangered as you and others what would you recommend like you know for the delusian reader the hagelian reader the the Kantian are there Kantian magicians? I don't know but what are some texts that you would recommend that are firmly within the corpus of magical grimoires or texts that explicate magic that you would recommend as like a first touch. Oh well I mean you had to cite the los hagel and Kant all three of those people I believe have a deeply rooted basis in magic like you can't talk about any of those three guys in particular without referencing the inherently magical ask like you know hagel's like triangle you can't tell me that's not a it's an atoms it's his avatar like an unknown cover yeah. Hegel hagel's trying to I will I will put myself at risk some time and I will cast a demon into that triangle instead of the classic one and we will just see what happens right. The delusian thing in particular we've had conversations about this over dinner in the past right like the himetic delusia great book but even prior to that without having to take it from a brilliant but secondly scholarly resource that explains the hermetic nature of the loser of the tarry and thought I mean like when we're talking about Thalima for example like Adam you were saying earlier when we're talking about the will and like what does the will it's the will is so important to Crowley like what does it mean in my later years in my life I've come to regard the will as being deeply analogous to the body without organs. Insofar as its author is never sure it's one fixed meaning it changes and it grows and it shifts with the texts in which it is included right. I think if you're specifically interested in any of those three guys reread everything you've encountered with a magical bent you know specifically delusia one of my first encounters with acid arise and of course was in one of the delusian reading groups where I was listening to people discuss the becoming plateau right and one thing that I picked up on right around that time in my life through a closer reading of it is the idea that in the whole section on becoming becoming sorcerer is the only one that is sort of preemptive to the rest of them like one is one is one is almost already sorcerer in order for one to become animal in order for one to become woman. So even that is a very subtle gesture I think that that's my whole framework for delusia that becoming sorcerer section. Additionally you know I often return to that passage about how to become a body with that what is it always always have like a new plot of land like when you're moving between strata you always have like a new eye for where you're going to go that's a very very that thought is very in keeping with emergent magical disciplines of around that same time like the foundational moments of chaos magic or always retain that little vial of subjectivity for an experiment as a way to back out of it or if things collapse yeah it brings you back. Absolutely absolutely trying out what is it like continuities continuums of intensities right like that's so close to what we talk about when we talk about currents like the current 93 of philima right there's there's a way to read and again per the way that I'm beginning to unpack the idea of the magical philosophy of magic and philosophy reading philosophical texts as if they're magical texts and reading magical texts as if their philosophical texts can be an incredibly illuminating exercise that will immediately teach you more about both imagine being able to pick up any book by Hagle any book by Kant any book by Delus without the companion text that illustrates the nature of the magical aspects of those texts and simply being able to pick it up and read it as if it's a working magician's manual that's what I'm interested in pursuing that said you asked a different question I just got excited there's there's only I mean there's a lot of magical books in the world none of them do it all however there's but one book in modern terms that I recommend for let's say people who've already maybe delved quite a bit into philosophy who maybe have that belief hang up right where they see so much of ceremonial and salamonic magic requires Christian scaffolding or understanding or Christian praxis of the base right you have to be able to do all these invocations of the holy needs of God whatever let's say we have an atheist materialist who loves philosophy who still wants to start experimenting maybe they're like interested the wonderful ineffable Aiden walkter has written a series of fascinating books on magic with the the centerpiece of those books being one called six ways so six ways by Aiden walkter is the book that I recommend to everyone including people who are brand new to the study of magic as well as people like me who've been doing it forever who may just want to shake up what they're thinking about or the way they go about things a bit is the most it is simultaneously the most accessible and the most successful and functional book of magical understanding Aiden presupposes zero specific religious background you're not required to believe in anything you're not required to understand therapeutic modality anything about the history of religion, anything about the history of magic, you can literally take it. And it's just, it's a series of six exercises that you can do to begin to expand your sense of magical experience. That is the one I recommend, especially to people who have maybe experimented with a bunch of different psychological frameworks, right? People who have taken on the mantle. Because, you know, deep reading is one thing that I'll always endorse as a magical practice, whether people know they're doing it or not. How can one read, "Hagel? How can one read Kant?" Without at times losing themselves in the text and reading it as if they themselves are the author. In it, oftentimes, certainly not speaking only for myself here, but sometimes perhaps an adesprit attempt to understand what's going on. Say, "What does this mean?" If I stop trying to scan the page with my eyes and I instead start reading it out loud or reading it as the voice in my head, I'm suddenly in that body. "Hagel is, in fact, a middle-aged white woman from Brooklyn, right? So here we go. I'm reading this. And for a moment, I become him. I'm in the triangle, right? So you do that and you begin to understand what even the most simple acts can be if you'd be your magical ones. Pick up six ways by Aiden Wockter. That is the book that I would recommend, especially to postmodern enjoyers. Let's say. We've talked about the retreat and the educational seminar that you have done in Salem. And I know that at least some of that may be part of the course that you do for the Ascitarized and Research Commons. And unfortunately, we never got on to a full conversation between you and me about exactly what it was that you did up there. So could you maybe just give a thumbnail sketch of that and when you do a course for Ascitarized and Research Commons, what might we expect? Sure, absolutely. So the work that I didn't say in this year was really exciting because it was, you know, you always think you've had certain experience. Think, oh, yeah, I've done that. I've had this experience of being in love. I've had this experience of being in the zone with my art practice. I've had this experience of friendship. And then you have something that pushes that limit, and you're like, whoa, have I ever actually felt this before? I've had luckily through my career, like in media and as a writer, I've had some moments of like, aha, I'm having a unique idea right now within the way that one can have a truly unique idea. Like, oh, I'm really, I'm really cooking here, right? This year in Salem, I lost my mind. And I went down a wormhole that lasted almost nine months pursuing an idea that I, it was like I made this joke in my talk. I said, it's like parodolia. Like I sat down and all of a sudden there were patterns everywhere. And I just went, oh my god, I'm seeing the patterns for the first time. And I began to outline my theory of the good witch as a sort of soft archetype cultural figure as she has been presented throughout various forms of media since time immemorial. And the idea that I put forward, which we certainly can cover in my upcoming class for the Ashtarism Research Commons trademark.gov is the idea that there has always been and will always be a good witch figure. Now, this pertains to what I was saying earlier, very specifically about how there has never been a time in all of human history where it's been good to be a witch, right? The good witch figure, it's a temporary state of being placed on select agents who are pulled out of the common culture by whatever the governing body is at the time. This can be the police, the military, the actual government. They serve as a new menist figurehead that delivers the same messaging and speaks to the same desires that the dominant head, the monocover at that time, right? So if we take Glinda from the Wizard of Oz as our sort or from Wicked as our sort of original example, because that's what most people think of, they think of Glinda the good witch. We have her coming in and saying, the wicked, which is dead, her right, the wizard is so great. And then by the end of the Wizard of Oz, of course, we've learned exactly who the weather is and what he's been doing. And you have to wonder if Glinda is this all powerful witch you can take care of people and cause magic to happen and read. Why was she stumping for this guy? This ostensibly fascist dictator, which is implied in Frank Albaum's Wizard of Oz, but concrete and definitive in the Wicked book series as I learned. So the good witch is this figure who is allowed to exist as a witch, a thing that is undesirable and dangerous to be if she is willing to go along with the state program. So I began to outline this in the context, you know, and this referenced everything. I mean, I gave a two hour lecture on this that was the result of eight months of research that referenced everything from Delos, a Gambin and Evola to manga, 90s, wika, talk shows, like we really were we were all over the map and I had, you know, this talk exists online. People can find it on the serum conference website. And you can watch it. I made a point. I wrote myself a note that I wanted to warn people if you're interested in my research and you do this, please know I had violent laran gytus and it's even harder to listen to me. Normally, I would like to at some point re record this talk with the slides. So it's a little easier to listen to because I sound. I sound pretty insane. But yeah, this was the work that consumed the first two thirds of my year this year was suddenly going, OK, wait, hang on a second. Any point in history, this also forget me, this wasn't just media driven. I also looked at examples throughout history of a few notable times when magicians or witches were taken up by government organizations and what happened to subsequently. So everyone from John D in England to Joan quickly in the Reagan White House to Jose rega in Argentina times when there have been actual sorcerers, which is an astrologer installed in pet physicians in world governments and then what happens to them when the beliefs fall out of favor because if the good which is anything she is a scab. She's a temporary she's a temporary state she's filling in until the winds change or until she decides to stop going along with the government program things change on a dime. So it's my warning to anyone who thinks she sure would be nice to be in that position. You don't want to be in this position, right? So putting this forth as a sort of exploration of this archetypal figure who has always existed in media and has come to exist in many instances in the real world in government, especially at a time right now when we are seeing a major resurgence of this behavior. And if we don't think that's what we're seeing at first there is currently a mass wave of new menace and bizarre spiritual beliefs, undergirding like the dominant strata culture here in the United States per the current administration. We need to be able to identify this. I think those of us who are invested in mystical practices and new and traditions have a responsibility to know it when we see it to understand where it comes from because it has some pretty prinicious roots and to know what to do when it attempts to become part of our community to weed it out and get rid of it. Just a philosophical exploration, although it is it's also a bit of a bit of a manifesto. If you if you watch the top at least you'll see me getting very heated by the end of it being like here's how to defeat this. I think. But yeah, that that was some of the work that I was going to be doing and per that. The reason that I'm so excited about doing a class for the acid arrest in research comments is because. I love more or less everything that I just said at the end of that there is a movement going on right now to almost mass train good witches in our culture and unfortunately in one. You know, vicious manifestation. They're taking the form of tradwives who talk about going back to a natural state of being and these don't always have to be the super Christian influencers either although a lot of the time it is. This can be the no religion is right for me, but I don't want microplastics in my kids food. I just don't think vaccines are very natural. I'm only going to put beef tallow on my skin. We're only using herbal medicine in our house. I don't want my kids to be you know, in doctorate people who think that like the whole media and the music industry is run by lizard people like version on day that I kind of stuff. You don't have to be Christian, but then there are of course charismatic and evangelical. Far it's weird to like call them Christians, but this is the common like parlance, you know, they very they really have very little to do with the Bible a book about a guy who was killed for among other reasons charges of sorcery and necromancy. These are the people who are making tiktoks of themselves pouring circles of grape juice around their house to try to get the devil out right. We have all of these conversations that are happening on other esteemed podcasts about how to identify the anti Christ, for example, you have it's this huge pastiche that's happening right now of bonkers, esoteric and spiritual beliefs overlapping with charismatic and evangelical Christianity and fundamentalism. We have you know, Mormon family annihilators doing it on the basis of their ability to see spirits were in a very weird moment for fringe spirituality and looking back on history. Moments of government sanctioned fringe spirituality where these good which is pop up are usually indicative of being immediately before or immediately after collapse. In the denotification period in Germany, which is a story I opened my talk in Salem this year with a story about the resurgence of interest in which history and folk religion prior to crystal mocked and then there was a massive resurgence of interest in full healing immediately after the fall of Nazi Germany in the denotification period right. When we see these figures who because their witches or spiritual practitioners or something analogous to that they can come forward and say all the things the government is saying, but they put themselves in this mystical post so they don't have to have any normal sources. These are the people who are allowed to you know prophesy and stuff like that. We're living through that time right now and is discordant as it seems both sides of the coin that is the right both that wacko spiritual beef tell a grape juice in the front lawn side and the hardcore material atheists in so. Online black pill marble bust in the Twitter avatar how do those two has w it why do it doesn't really make sense or didn't make a lot of sense to me how those are the two things that are making up the right in America right now the really dangerous right in the America right now. What is the bridge that puts those two groups of people together, looking at the history of philosophy of magic, looking at the history of philosophy and magic, can start to untangle that, like really insane knot that you see if you just look at it from a distance, if you look at it from the outside and if you go, how do these two things go together? How can these two groups of people get along? This doesn't even make sense. How can like a 15-year-old kid on terrorgram who's obsessed with Nick Land get with like a woman in Texas who's watching a live stream of cows trying to figure out when a red one's going to be born so we can sacrifice it to whatever nation, right? There is a legitimate bridge that connects those two groups of people and makes them feel like allies and it's found in mystical philosophy. So that's one of the things we're going to be exploring in my class is the link between mystic thinking and hardcore religious adherence in the current government administration and the mystic rate. We're also going to be talking about a lot of the other things we've mentioned so far. We're going to talk about the inextricable history of philosophy and magic. We're going to talk about reading magical texts like philosophical texts and reading philosophical texts like magical texts. We're going to do a survey of philosophers who were obviously sorceress on some level, whether it's someone like Dr. Sylvia Federici who's work explicitly deals with the history of which craft and which persecutions or someone like delus, or we'll go into the whole you know, labnitz is the alchemist thing. There's a lot we're going to get into. So hopefully if people are interested in this topic, they can come hang out with me in 2026 and learn a little bit more about it. Well, I see a dark chasm opening beneath our feet and it's in fact the crease in the furrowed brow of Tucker Carlson staring at the pneumogram picture. And we're about to be sucked into it on our Patreon account where we will continue the conversation. And if you subscribe to the acid horizon patreon, you'll get to hear the rest of this conversation. And I'm going to ask you about Etsy witches in addition to yeah, we're going to get into some stuff. So we'll see everybody back there and take care for now. So if you made it this far, I suppose we will see you on Patreon. It's just $5 to subscribe and it helps keep acid horizon in motion. Thanks for listening and take care for now. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]