The Liminalist: The Podcast Between

It stands to reason that any communiqué should lead with the most interesting and compelling part. But here's the rub: the most interesting and compelling part of what I am up to is something someone else is doing.

Look at it this way: a good spice doesn't draw attention to itself but rather to the tastiness of the dish. At the same time, that dish gives the spice its meaning, purpose, and raison d'etre.

Last Sunday, Dave Oshana hosted an event called Dissolution & Inevitability: When Things Finally Fall Apart. This is what Dave said about the event:

This meeting was exceptional. Nothing has ever happened like this except on retreats. Dark heavy taboo themes require a light humorous touch before the drum roll and a climatic thunder and lightning finale. Not for the easily offended.

This is what I said about it: 

“A near-miraculous balance of inspiration with provocation that fused the two styles into a perfect blend of spicy & sweet; apocalyptically affirming, perhaps heralding a new prophet-genre: doom & joy?”

There's a replay of the event on Saturday, 1st February at 2pm London time, 9am Boston/NYC time, 8am Minneapolis/Chicago time,  6am San Francisco-Vancouver time, and 1am Next Day Sydney time. More info and how to book here.

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On Tuesday Jan 21, I did an impromptu 80-minute YouTube event called "Hell Doesn't Want You," the recording from which is here (I start talking at 5:30 mins). For those either with limited time or patience, below is a 16 min edit, below which is a mostly faithful transcript for those who prefer reading. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgK7XuMyEKo

For years, I have been aware of this bizarre contradiction in myself: that I want somehow to get known for alerting the world to its impending end, for being a herald of the apocalypse. I’m not really heralding the apocalypse anymore, at least not in such an overt way, but still, the absurd irony of wanting to make a name for myself by heralding the apocalypse hopefully speaks for itself.

I recently wrote (and rewrote, and rewrote again, maybe a dozen times or more) a pitch for my most recently completed book Maps of Hell, which I have subtitled “The Hollywood Occupation of the Global Psyche.” I keep changing the title and the subtitle, however, trying to package it to make it acceptable to publishers. This varies, depending on who I’m speaking to, whose mind I’m theorizing about. This is the latest description:

The transformative effect of visual media on human consciousness has been easily as great as that of the printing press. Nor has this transformation been undirected: for decades a shadowy cultural elite has been applying the evolving media technology to shape the global psyche and occupy the landscape of our unconscious. Since the early days of Hollywood propaganda, their manufactured narratives have spilled over the edges of the movie screen, into politics, science, academia, and journalism, slowly stripping us of our sense of reality and robbing us of all values besides “Hollywood” values. Now in 2020, the screen tech has reached the state of the art, making separating entertainment from entrainment all but impossible. Without ever fully recognizing it, we have been seduced into complicity with an imagistic empire, lured into mass infantilization and cultural-enthrallment, and afflicted with an as-yet undiagnosed condition of ...

Live liminalist meet to discuss William Blake, Imagination vs Fancy, the occupation of the imaginal realms, the language of the soul and the question of embodiment.

Part One: Two Masters (0 – 30 mins)

Blake’s hidden aspect, an element of duplicity, the question of embodiment, true and false uses of the imagination, Imagination vs. Fancy, keeping it liminal, internalizing Blake, rebelling against influence, discovering Blake, as religious figure, Huxley’s Doors of Perception, Crowley’s Moonchild, culture and status, devotion to art, the road of excess, Blake and sex magic, Blake’s aspiration, living in poverty, a poetic mission, true poets of the Devil’s party, Milton’s Satan, Albion’s sleep, primordial man, the Druids, the medium and the message, artists not recognized in their own time, serving two masters, Blake’s assumption of relevance.

Part Two: A Blakean Edifice (30 – 59 mins)

An invisible audience, soul & body continuum, the need for social recognition, spiritual rewards, solipsism, the voices from eternity, Steiner’s criticism of trance-painting, distinguishing psychic from spiritual realms, a second matrix, a cultural edifice of Blakean imagery, Blake’s influence, Christianity as psyop, Henry Corvin, activating the imagination from a moral foundation, magic & narrative construction, body morality, experiencing the reality of the soul with Dave Oshana, writing about the soul, distrusting mythology, a racial eggregore & the pseudo-numinous, the language of the soul, the imaginal realm, resonance.

Part Three: Colonizing the Imaginal (59 mins – 1 hr 23 mins)

The danger of images, the power of sensation, diaspora dance clubs, 2020 dance party, Blake’s poetry as music, drawing in the disembodied, facilitating embodiment, the hook of psychedelics, the devil’s bargain, the Blake trap, cultural context, living in a high-stress environment, occupied psyches, product placement in dreams, navigating monoculture, the limits of conspiracy theory, carriers of the conspiracy, willing soldiers of empire, battery people, the limits of control.

Part Four: The Body Plane (1 hr 23 mins – end)

First distrust of Blake, toxic culture, reinforcing the divide between spirit & matter, sensual enjoyment, accountability, an audience of the imagination, Joker archetype, two Blakes, mapping Hell, back to the body, nested within creation, a body plane, community trust & relaxation.

Songs: “Pirates” by Entertainment for the Braindead; “ “Salad" by Milgrom; "Modular Home" by Emerald Park; "Place at the End of Your Street," by Cotton Jones; “Changes” by Short Hand. 

Conversation with Tom Hart on the ideological polarity, the dominance of liberal -progressivism, and the occult thread of Gnosticism in politics and group identity

Part One: A Purity Spiral (0 mins – 36 mins)

Tom’s interests, from journalism and academia, a bid for honesty, moving to the right, writing comics, occultism & Jung, Colin Wilson, Julius Evola, meeting John Cussans, finding a place on the ideological landscape, getting lumped with the right, ideology vs. religion, belief in the supernatural, a new secular priestcraft, The Guardian worldview, three major ideologies, fascism, Marxism, liberal progressivism, leaving the left, a purity spiral, liberal one-upmanship, mass-state education & mass media, narrative collapse, high-status narrative control crumbling & the arrival of populism.

Part Two: The New Church of the Liberal Progressive (36 – 57 mins)

The left and power, free speech, the impositions of the vocal minorities, Apartheid, minority rule in Africa & Israel, inside and outside views of the Left, the dominant western ideology, the power of the Marxist, the quest for real socialism, national socialism as the rightest part of the left, entropy & homogeneity, identity politics, gender & sex, gingers as acceptable white men, the meta-identity of good liberal, meaningless categories of morality, the modern-day Church, Hitler as Satan.

Part Three: Spiritual & Biological Value Systems (57 mins to end)

Occult and the right-wing, depth psychology, body awareness and pain, the scientific method & religion, constraining consciousness, nature loves to hide, awareness and the body, the interdependence of left and right, chaos & order, female & male, creating hierarchies, confronting death, spiritual & biological value systems, the third way, the worship of science, materialism & idealism, the problem of mind, the supernatural, transgender & Gnosticism, the denial of reality, the fallen state, working back to God.

Second audio:

https://boxes.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/TomHart2.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:23: 44 — 64.1MB) 

Part Four: The Gnostic Heresy (0 – 32 mins)

The will to power, the gnostic heresy, the difference between wisdom and knowledge, Crowley’s OCD, the wisdom of forgetting, a cabbie’s advice, Brexit, the cognoscenti & the myth of progress, the primacy of education, scientific method & religion, the theory of evolution, the quaternity of religion, science, art, and magic, the presence of ego, the use of will, two ways to see magic, shamanic culture & early religion, the esoteric tradition, killing the ego, siddhis and enlightenment, Taoism & renunciation, what is hidden, the lost child state, the zombie ego, trauma and the nervous system.

Part Five: Immanentizing the Eschaton (32 – 59 mins)

Nietzsche, Dionysus & Apollo, the contest between left & right, Nietzsche’s end, looking at the whole life, Crowley’s toxicity, sorting the seeds, Crowley’s magic powers, soul rescue writing, Crowley’s influence, immanentizing the eschaton, the Fabian Society, Luciferian liberal progressivism, two lives through technology, integrating the shadow, the power of the imagination, Jung & reconciliation of opposites, right-wing Gnosticism, the evolution of politics, defining fascism.

Part Six: A Second Dreamtime (59 mins – end)

Nuclear policy, the erosion of freedom,