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| high weirdness erik davis: High Weirdness Erik Davis, 2019-11-05 An exploration of the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson. A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality—but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America? In High Weirdness, Erik Davis—America's leading scholar of high strangeness—examines the published and unpublished writings of these vital, iconoclastic thinkers, as well as their own life-changing mystical experiences. Davis explores the complex lattice of the strange that flowed through America's West Coast at a time of radical technological, political, and social upheaval to present a new theory of the weird as a viable mode for a renewed engagement with reality. |
| high weirdness erik davis: TechGnosis Erik Davis, 2015-03-17 TechGnosis is a cult classic of media studies that straddles the line between academic discourse and popular culture; it appeals to both those secular and spiritual, to fans of cyberpunk and hacker literature and culture as much as new-thought adherents and spiritual seekers How does our fascination with technology intersect with the religious imagination? In TechGnosis—a cult classic now updated and reissued with a new afterword—Erik Davis argues that while the realms of the digital and the spiritual may seem worlds apart, esoteric and religious impulses have in fact always permeated (and sometimes inspired) technological communication. Davis uncovers startling connections between such seemingly disparate topics as electricity and alchemy; online roleplaying games and religious and occult practices; virtual reality and gnostic mythology; programming languages and Kabbalah. The final chapters address the apocalyptic dreams that haunt technology, providing vital historical context as well as new ways to think about a future defined by the mutant intermingling of mind and machine, nightmare and fantasy. |
| high weirdness erik davis: The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick Philip K. Dick, 2011-11-08 A glimpse into the mind of the bestselling science fiction author through a collection of his personal, metaphysical, religious, visionary writings. Based on thousands of pages of typed and handwritten notes, journal entries, letters, and story sketches, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the magnificent and imaginative final work of an author who dedicated his life to questioning the nature of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the relationship between the human and the divine. Edited and introduced by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, this will be the definitive presentation of Dick’s brilliant, and epic, final work. In The Exegesis, Dick documents his eight-year attempt to fathom what he called “2-3-74,” a postmodern visionary experience of the entire universe “transformed into information.” In entries that sometimes ran to hundreds of pages, Dick tried to write his way into the heart of a cosmic mystery that tested his powers of imagination and invention to the limit, adding to, revising, and discarding theory after theory, mixing in dreams and visionary experiences as they occurred, and pulling it all together in three late novels known as the VALIS trilogy. In this abridgment, Jackson and Lethem serve as guides, taking the reader through the Exegesis and establishing connections with moments in Dick’s life and work. The e-book includes a sample chapter from A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick. “A dyspeptic dystopian’s mad secret notebooks, imposing order—at least of a kind—on a chaotic world…Fascinating and unsettling.”—Kirkus Reviews |
| high weirdness erik davis: American Trip Ido Hartogsohn, 2020-07-14 How historical, social, and cultural forces shaped the psychedelic experience in midcentury America, from CIA experiments with LSD to Timothy Leary's Harvard Psilocybin Project. Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activators for one's private muse or part of a political movement? In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers studied psychedelics in all these incarnations, often arriving at contradictory results. In American Trip, Ido Hartogsohn examines how the psychedelic experience in midcentury America was shaped by historical, social, and cultural forces--by set (the mindset of the user) and setting (the environments in which the experience takes place). |
| high weirdness erik davis: Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations Jules Evans, 2013-10-03 When philosophy rescued him from an emotional crisis, Jules Evans became fascinated by how ideas invented over two thousand years ago can help us today. He interviewed soldiers, psychologists, gangsters, astronauts, and anarchists and discovered the ways that people are using philosophy now to build better lives. Ancient philosophy has inspired modern communities — Socratic cafés, Stoic armies, Epicurean communes — and even whole nations in the quest for the good life. This book is an invitation to a dream school with a rowdy faculty that includes twelve of the greatest philosophers from the ancient world, sharing their lessons on happiness, resilience, and much more. Lively and inspiring, this is philosophy for the street, for the workplace, for the battlefield, for love, for life. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Desert Oracle Ken Layne, 2020-12-08 The cult-y pocket-size field guide to the strange and intriguing secrets of the Mojave—its myths and legends, outcasts and oddballs, flora, fauna, and UFOs—becomes the definitive, oracular book of the desert For the past five years, Desert Oracle has existed as a quasi-mythical, quarterly periodical available to the very determined only by subscription or at the odd desert-town gas station or the occasional hipster boutique, its canary-yellow-covered, forty-four-page issues handed from one curious desert zealot to the next, word spreading faster than the printers could keep up with. It became a radio show, a podcast, a live performance. Now, for the first time—and including both classic and new, never-before-seen revelations—Desert Oracle has been bound between two hard covers and is available to you. Straight out of Joshua Tree, California, Desert Oracle is “The Voice of the Desert”: a field guide to the strange tales, singing sand dunes, sagebrush trails, artists and aliens, authors and oddballs, ghost towns and modern legends, musicians and mystics, scorpions and saguaros, out there in the sand. Desert Oracle is your companion at a roadside diner, around a campfire, in your tent or cabin (or high-rise apartment or suburban living room) as the wind and the coyotes howl outside at night. From journal entries of long-deceased adventurers to stray railroad ad copy, and musings on everything from desert flora, rumored cryptid sightings, and other paranormal phenomena, Ken Layne's Desert Oracle collects the weird and the wonderful of the American Southwest into a single, essential volume. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Recapture the Rapture Jamie Wheal, 2021-04-27 “A highly personal, richly informed and culturally wide-ranging meditation on the loss of meaning in our times and on pathways to rediscovering it.” —Gabor Maté, MD, author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction A neuroanthropologist maps out a revolutionary new practice—Hedonic Engineering—that combines the best of neuroscience and optimal psychology. It’s an intensive program of breathing, movement, and sexuality that mends trauma, heightens inspiration and tightens connections—helping us wake up, grow up, and show up for a world that needs us all. This is a book about a big idea. And the idea is this: Slowly over the past few decades, and now suddenly, all at once, we’re suffering from a collapse in Meaning. Fundamentalism and nihilism are filling that vacuum, with consequences that affect us all. In a world that needs us at our best, diseases of despair, tribalism, and disaster fatigue are leaving us at our worst. It’s vital that we regain control of the stories we’re telling because they are shaping the future we’re creating. To do that, we have to remember our deepest inspiration, heal our pain and apathy, and connect to each other like never before. If we can do that, we’ve got a shot at solving the big problems we face. And if we can’t? Well, the dustbin of history has swallowed civilizations older and fancier than ours. This book is divided into three parts. The first, Choose Your Own Apocalypse, takes a look at our current Meaning Crisis--where we are today, why it’s so hard to make sense of the world, what might be coming next, and what to do about it. It also makes a case that many of our efforts to cope, whether anxiety and denial, or tribalism and identity politics, are likely making things worse. The middle section, The Alchemist Cookbook, applies the creative firm IDEO’s design thinking to the Meaning Crisis. This is where the book gets hands on--taking a look at the strongest evolutionary drivers that can bring about inspiration, healing, and connection. From breathing, to movement, sexuality, music, and substances--these are the everyday tools to help us wake up, grow up, and show up. AKA--how to blow yourself sky high with household materials. And the best part? They’re accessible, by anyone anywhere, no middleman required. Transcendence democratized. The final third of the book, Ethical Cult Building, focuses on the tricky nature of putting these kinds of experiences into gear and into culture—because, anytime in the past when we’ve figured out combinations of peak states and deep healing, we’ve almost always ended up with problematic culty communities. Playing with fire has left a lot of people burned. This section lays out a roadmap for sparking a thousand fires around the world--each one unique and tailored to the needs and values of its participants. Think of it as an open-source toolkit for building ethical culture. In Recapture the Rapture, we’re taking radical research out of the extremes and applying it to the mainstream--to the broader social problem of healing, believing, and belonging. It’s providing answers to the questions we face: how to replace blind faith with direct experience, how to move from broken to whole, and how to cure isolation with connection. Said even more plainly, it shows us how to revitalize our bodies, boost our creativity, rekindle our relationships, and answer once and for all the questions of why we are here and what do we do now? In a world that needs the best of us from the rest of us, this is a book that shows us how to get it done. |
| high weirdness erik davis: A Couple of Things Before the End Sean O'Beirne, 2020-02-04 This brilliant collection mixes the storytelling originality of George Saunders and Lydia Davis with a sensibility all its own, taking the reader on an extraordinary tour of an old and a new Australia. A woman on a passenger ship in 1958 gets involved with a young, wild Barry Humphries. A man looks back to the 1970s and his time as a member of Australia’s least competent scout troop. In 1988, a teenage boy recalls his sexual initiation, out on the tanbark. In 2015, two sisters text in Kmart about how to manage their irascible, isolated mum. Then, in the near future, a racist demagogue addresses the press the day after his electoral triumph. As the cities heat up and lose their water, a lady from one of the ‘better suburbs’ makes every effort to get her family into an exclusive gated community. Outstandingly original, bitingly satirical and written in a remarkable range of voices, A Couple of Things Before the End is a powerful vision of where we are – and where we may be headed. ‘These voices, so superbly heard and rendered, threw me into fits of laughter and slyly broke my heart.’ —Helen Garner ‘Astonishing ... an inventive collection of missives from the end of history. Complicated and savage and difficult and funny and melancholy, it’s both harsh and a caress. How do we speak and write into a future? I think Sean O’Beirne is showing us one way of doing it.’ —Christos Tsiolkas ‘O’Beirne inflects his identifiably Australian characters with a darkly comic and empathetic voice ... altogether, this collection invokes [our] questionable past, ironic present and disturbing future.’ —Books+Publishing |
| high weirdness erik davis: The Paradoxes of Delusion Louis A. Sass, 2018-08-06 Insanity—in clinical practice as in the popular imagination—is seen as a state of believing things that are not true and perceiving things that do not exist. Most schizophrenics, however, do not act as if they mistake their delusions for reality. In a work of uncommon insight and empathy, Louis A. Sass shatters conventional thinking about insanity by juxtaposing the narratives of delusional schizophrenics with the philosophical writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Strange Attractor Mark Pilkington, 2005-06-03 The secind installment of the acclaimed new anthology series. Includes 24 articles exploring the outer edges of anthropology, psychology, magick, literature, art, history, science and religion. This journal has become a true product of London's undergound and this new edition opens the gates to a parallel sultural universe that few knew existed a little further. |
| high weirdness erik davis: China Lake Barret Baumgart, 2017-05-01 Barret Baumgart’s literary debut presents a haunting and deeply personal portrait of civilization poised at the precipice, a picture of humanity caught between its deepest past and darkest future. In the fall of 2013, during the height of California’s historic drought, Baumgart toured the remote military base, NAWS China Lake, near Death Valley, California. His mother, the survivor of a recent stroke, decided to come along for the ride. She hoped the alleged healing power of the base’s ancient Native American hot springs might cure her crippling headaches. Baumgart sought to debunk claims that the military was spraying the atmosphere with toxic chemicals to control the weather. What follows is a discovery that threatens to sever not only the bonds between mother and son but between planet Earth and life itself. Stalking the fringes of Internet conspiracy, speculative science, and contemporary archaeology, Baumgart weaves memoir, military history, and investigative journalism in a dizzying journey that carries him from the cornfields of Iowa to drought-riddled California, from the Vietnam jungle to the caves of prehistoric Europe and eventually the walls of the US Capitol, the sparkling white hallways of the Pentagon, and straight into the contradicted heart of a worldwide climate emergency. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Team Human Douglas Rushkoff, 2019-01-22 Porchlight’s Management and Workplace Culture Book of The Year “[A] thoroughly fascinating exploration of the long interplay between power and the technologies of communication.” —Adam Frank, NPR Team Human is a manifesto—a fiery distillation of preeminent digital theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s most urgent thoughts on civilization and human nature. In one hundred lean and incisive statements, he argues that we are essentially social creatures, and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work together—not as individuals. Yet today society is threatened by a vast antihuman infrastructure that undermines our ability to connect. Money, once a means of exchange, is now a means of exploitation; education, conceived as way to elevate the working class, has become another assembly line; and the internet has only further divided us into increasingly atomized and radicalized groups. Team Human delivers a call to arms. If we are to resist and survive these destructive forces, we must recognize that being human is a team sport. In Rushkoff’s own words: “Being social may be the whole point.” Harnessing wide-ranging research on human evolution, biology, and psychology, Rushkoff shows that when we work together we realize greater happiness, productivity, and peace. If we can find the others who understand this fundamental truth and reassert our humanity—together—we can make the world a better place to be human. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Built to Burn Tony "Coyote" Perez, 2020-07 BUILT TO BURN tells the story of how Tony, a San Francisco blues musician, became Coyote, builder of Burning Man's legendary city in the desert, and how he came to lead a ragtag band of circus runaways, freaks and geeks that would become its Department of Public Works. In 1996, Tony was making a decent living as a musician, but his creative juices had run dry: one night onstage, he realized he'd just played an entire sax solo while thinking about his laundry. So when a wild-at-heart friend invites him to something called Burning Man, he grabs his backpack and hops in the car, unaware that the experience ahead will not only turn him inside out, but alter the course of his life. An essential Burning Man origin story, BUILT TO BURN chronicles the wild uncertainty and creative chaos of the early days in the desert, when the event's future was under constant threat and the organizers were making everything up as they went along. It's a tale of struggle and survival, of friends made and friends lost, as Coyote and his misfit crew battle raging storms, crazed livestock, angry townsfolk and each other, locking horns with the real-life cowboys, Indians, outlaws and outcasts of Nevada's high desert frontier.Told with wry humor and a bit of cowboy philosophy, BUILT TO BURN invites the reader to experience Burning Man as it was before it got civilized, when it was as wild and untamed as anything out of the Old West. |
| high weirdness erik davis: It's Complicated Danah Boyd, 2014-02-25 A youth and technology expert offers original research on teens’ use of social media, the myths frightening adults, and how young people form communities. What is new about how teenagers communicate through services like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens’ lives? In this book, youth culture and technology expert Danah Boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens’ use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, Boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers’ ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions. Yet despite an environment of rampant fear-mongering, Boyd finds that teens often find ways to engage and to develop a sense of identity. Boyd’s conclusions are essential reading not only for parents, teachers, and others who work with teens, but also for anyone interested in the impact of emerging technologies on society, culture, and commerce. Offering insights gleaned from more than a decade of original fieldwork interviewing teenagers across the United States, Boyd concludes reassuringly that the kids are all right. At the same time, she acknowledges that coming to terms with life in a networked era is not easy or obvious. In a technologically mediated world, life is bound to be complicated. “Boyd’s new book is layered and smart . . . It’s Complicated will update your mind.” —Alissa Quart, New York Times Book Review “A fascinating, well-researched and (mostly) reassuring look at how today's tech-savvy teenagers are using social media.” —People “The briefest possible summary? The kids are all right, but society isn’t.” —Andrew Leonard, Salon |
| high weirdness erik davis: Turn Your Life Into Art Caveat Magister, 2021-08-17 Analyzing the work of Burning Man, the SF Institute of Possibility, the Jejune Institute, and other groups, this book is a how-to manual for designing transformative or psychomagical experiences. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Pharmako-AI K. Allado-McDowell, 2020 This book collects essays, stories, and poems ... [the author] wrote with OpenAI's GPT-3 language model, a neural net that generates text sequences--Page xi. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Zig Zag Zen Allan Hunt Badiner, 2015 More than ever, people are in pursuit of greater fulfillment in their lives, seeking a deeper spiritual truth and strategies for liberation from suffering. Both Buddhism and psychedelics are subjects that one encounters in such spiritual pursuit. Edited by Tricycle contributing editor Allan Badiner and art edited by renowned visionary artist Alex Grey, Zig Zag Zen features a foreword by Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor, a preface by historian of religion Huston Smith and numerous essays, interviews, and art that lie outside the scope of mainstream anthologies. This new edition of the classic work on Buddhism and psychedelics includes a recent interview with Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS, contributions from Ralph Metzner, James Fadiman and Kokyo Henkel, and a discussion of ayahuasca's unique influence on Zen Buddhism. Packed with enlightening entries offering eye-opening insights into alternate methods of inner exploration. |
| high weirdness erik davis: The Great Big One J. C. Geiger, 2021-07-13 With natural disasters and nuclear war threatening their small town, two twin brothers find themselves enraptured by mysterious music that could change the course of their lives. Everyone in Clade City knows their days are numbered. The Great Cascadia Earthquake will destroy their hometown and reshape the entire West Coast—if they survive long enough to see it. Nuclear war is increasingly likely. Wildfires. Or another pandemic. To Griff, the daily forecast feels partly cloudy with a chance of apocalyptic horsemen. Griff’s brother, Leo, and the Lost Coast Preppers claim to be ready. They’ve got a radio station. Luminous underwater monitors. A sweet bunker, and an unsettling plan for “disaster-ready rodents.” But Griff’s more concerned about what he can do before the end times. He’d like to play in a band, for one. Hopefully with Charity Simms. Her singing could make the whole world stop. When Griff, Leo, and Charity stumble upon a mysterious late-night broadcast, one song changes everything. It’s the best band they’ve ever heard—on a radio signal even the Preppers can’t trace. They vow to find the music, but aren’t prepared for where their search will take them. Or for what they’ll risk, when survival means finding the one thing you cannot live without. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Nog Rudolph Wurlitzer, 1969 |
| high weirdness erik davis: LSD and the Mind of the Universe Christopher M. Bache, 2019-11-26 A professor of religious studies meticulously documents his insights from 73 high-dose LSD sessions conducted over the course of 20 years • Chronicles, with unprecedented rigor, the author’s systematic journey into a unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence • Makes a powerful case for the value of psychedelically induced spiritual experience and discusses the challenge of integrating these experiences into everyday life • Shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation and help birth the future of humanity On November 24, 1979, Christopher M. Bache took the first step on what would become a life-changing journey. Drawing from his training as a philosopher of religion, Bache set out to explore his mind and the mind of the universe as deeply and systematically as possible--with the help of the psychedelic drug LSD. Following protocols established by Stanislav Grof, Bache’s 73 high-dose LSD sessions over the course of 20 years drew him into a deepening communion with cosmic consciousness. Journey alongside professor Bache as he touches the living intelligence of our universe--an intelligence that both embraced and crushed him--and demonstrates how direct experience of the divine can change your perspective on core issues in philosophy and religion. Chronicling his 73 sessions, the author reveals the spiral of death and rebirth that took him through the collective unconscious into the creative intelligence of the universe. Making a powerful case for the value of psychedelically induced spiritual experience, Bache shares his immersion in the fierce love and creative intent of the unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence. He describes the incalculable value of embracing the pain and suffering he encountered in his sessions and the challenges he faced integrating his experiences into his everyday life. His journey documents a shift from individual consciousness to collective consciousness, from archetypal reality to Divine Oneness and the Diamond Luminosity that lies outside cyclic existence. Pushing the boundaries of theory and practice, the author shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation, beyond the present into the future, revealing spirit and matter in perfect balance. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Speculative Everything Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby, 2013-12-06 How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Chronicles of Wasted Time Malcolm Muggeridge, 1973 |
| high weirdness erik davis: Neighbor George Victoria Nelson, 2022-06-14 A lonely young woman and a mysterious man meet in a northern California landscape populated by poets, New Agers, stoners, and dropouts. Do you know the language of the birds? Summer, 1979: A lonely young woman housesitting for her aunt and uncle in an isolated bohemian enclave finds troubling reminders of a past family tragedy surfacing in odd and unsettling ways. When a mysterious man moves in next door, Dovey hopes for a romance like the ones in the novels she secretly devours. But a dark truth hidden since childhood erupts shockingly in a violent otherworldly intrusion, catapulting her into a desperate struggle for her life and sanity. Set in a haunted northern California landscape populated by poets, New Agers, stoners, and burnouts, Neighbor George is a deeply atmospheric story of psychological horror enacted in the liminal space where the natural collides with the supernatural. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Blade Runner Origins #10 K. Perkins, Mellow Brown, 2022-03-16 Early in the 21st Century, the Tryell Corporation advanced Robot evolution into the Nexus phase – a being virtually identical to a human – known as a Replicant. Replicants were used Off-world as slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and colonization of other planets. On Earth, Tyrell continued to experiment with further enhancements – because progress stops for no man. LAPD Detective Cal Moreaux has discovered that the suicide of Dr. Lydia Kine was actually an elaborate ruse constructed by the Tyrell Corp engineer so she could live freely as a Replicant named Asa. Dr. Kine’s latest experiment – the escaped Nexus 5 prototype – initially received the blame for her death, however Cal has discovered the truth – the identity of the Nexus 5’s host consciousness: his sister, Nia Moreaux. More existentially advanced than others, Nia has been “awakening” some Replicants in the slums of Los Angeles, causing them to leave their positions of servitude in pursuit of autonomy. Tyrell Corp executive, Ilora Stahl has been charged with the Nexus 5’s capture, and she will stop at nothing to protect her job and the company’s brand in spite of growing chaos. In desperation, Ilora launched an all-out attack against the Sectore-6B slums. Cal, Asa, and Nia raced to save the residents and together with Desiree, Marcus, and the survivors of Nia’s “awakened” Replicant followers sought refuge with Divina in the safe haven of La Plum Sauvage, only to find that it too had been destroyed by Ilora’s henchmen. Nia realized what she has to do to put a stop to all of this… |
| high weirdness erik davis: Mushroom Magick , 2009-04-01 Illustrates more than 90 of the known hallucinogenic species from around the world, with an emphasis of the genus Psilocybe and includes information about their habitats, psychoactive powers and role in human cultures. |
| high weirdness erik davis: God's Amateur: The Writing of E.C. Large Ernest Charles Large, 2008-10-04 E. C. Large (1902-1976) was—in chronological order—an industrial chemist, writer, and plant scientist. Best known for his 1940 history of plant diseases, The Advance of the Fungi, it is his long-out-of-print late-1930s oeuvre that will fascinate a new generation of readers. God's Amateur: The Writing of E.C. Large is a long-overdue critical revaluation of the fictional creations of a liberal free thinker whose exacting, imaginative prose is often compared to that of George Orwell. Featuring an account of Large's life; a full bibliography of published writings; and a selection of shorter pieces—travel essays, reportage, reveries, book reviews—God's Amateur reveals the full extent of Large's ambitions as a writer. An extended essay by Stuart Bailey (editor of Dot Dot Dot) discusses the writings from a wider contemporary perspective. |
| high weirdness erik davis: The English Heretic Collection Andy Sharp, 2020-10-13 From its inaugural Black Plaque in honour of Witchfinder General director Michael Reeves, this unique collection follows a veridical trajectory to the frontiers of belief. Reeves' film becomes a conspiratorial cauldron drawing in a host of tragic players in the end game of the Sixties. The Cornwall of Du Maurier's The Birds is ploughed to reveal the hidden psychic codes of our Blitz spirit. In a powerfully relevant occult rendering of a bruised Island, the myth of Churchill is dissected and re-animalised. New maps of hell are drawn by colliding the forensic vision of JG Ballard and Lovecraftian magic. Actors, witches and psychopaths maraud across a nightmare terrain of murderous henges and abandoned military bases; conflating creative research into a surreal documentary, history as hallucination. Geography becomes an alchemical alembic, a vale of soul-making distilled by the lysergic psychobiology of Stanislav Grof, the alcoholic lyricism of Malcolm Lowry, and the convulsive travelogues of the Marquis de Sade. If history is revealed as paranoid ritual, how do we escape its time traps to wild new imaginative geographies? The English Heretic collection is a darkly comical, urgently lyrical, mental escape hatch from the hells of our own making. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Dead Man & Company Marie Redonnet, 2004 Poetry. DEAD MAN & COMPANY is a puzzle book; a puzzle book in the respect that it is fraught with ambiguity and enigma, and in the respect that its pieces can be put together so as to make sense of it. Like a parlor game or a deck of cards, it has certain rules of play. Characters can move only according to their natures, and the dictates of the draw. Resembling the cast of a medieval morality play, they consist of a king, a dwarf, a dead man, and an entourage of consorts reminiscent of figures from the Tarot or from the time of the Black Plague--From the translator's preface. Marie Redonnet was born in Paris in 1947. In 1985, after teaching for several years in a lycee, she published her first volume, a book of poetry (Le Mort & Cie). Since then, she has published five novels, a novella, a collection of short stories, and three dramatic works. The five novels have appeared in English translation from University of Nebraska Press. |
| high weirdness erik davis: The Night Land Annotated William Hope Hodgson, 2021-09-02 The Night Land is a horror/fantasy novel by English writer William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1912. As a work of fantasy it belongs to the Dying Earth subgenre. Hodgson also published a much shorter version of the novel, entitled The Dream of X (1912).The Night Land was revived in paperback by Ballantine Books, which republished the work in two parts as the 49th and 50th volumes of its Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in July 1972. H. P. Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature describes the novel as one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written. Clark Ashton Smith wrote of it |
| high weirdness erik davis: The Art of the Occult S. Elizabeth, 2020 A visually rich sourcebook featuring eclectic artwork (from the late-nineteenth century to today) inspired and informed by the mystical, esoteric and occult. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Secret Body Jeffrey J. Kripal, 2019-09-04 Over the course of his twenty-five-year career, Jeffrey J. Kripal’s study of religion has had two major areas of focus: the erotic expression of mystical experience and the rise of the paranormal in American culture. This book brings these two halves together in surprising ways through a blend of memoir, manifesto, and anthology, drawing new connections between these two realms of human experience and revealing Kripal’s body of work to be a dynamic whole that has the potential to renew and reshape the study of religion. Kripal tells his story, biographically, historically and politically contextualizing each of the six books of his Chicago corpus, from Kali’s Child to Mutants and Mystics, all the while answering his censors and critics and exploring new implications of his thought. In the process, he begins to sketch out a speculative “new comparativism” in twenty theses. The result is a new vision for the study of religion, one that takes in the best of the past, engages with outside critiques from the sciences and the humanities, and begins to blaze a new positive path forward. A major work decades in the making, Secret Body will become a landmark in the study of religion. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Sound Unbound DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, 2010 |
| high weirdness erik davis: Slow Manifesto: Lebbeus Woods Blog Lebbeus Woods, 2015-12-15 In the fall of 2007, Lebbeus Woods (1940–2012), long admired for his visionary architecture and mastery of drawing, began a blog. Part forum and part public journal, the eclectic mix of articles, drawings, anecdotes, poetry, interviews, and photographic essays explored topics ranging from architectural theory and criticism to education and politics. Amassing more than three hundred entries by its end in the summer of 2012, it is regarded by many as the most comprehensive and accessible archive of Woods's prodigious creativity. Slow Manifesto: Lebbeus Woods Blog, an edited volume of the blog's centerpiece entries, stands as a fragmentary essay on the nature of architecture that will be dear to architects, students, and thinkers everywhere. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Aleister Crowley Gary Lachman, 2014-05-15 This definitive work on the occult’s “great beast” traces the arc of his controversial life and influence on rock-and-roll giants, from the Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath. When Aleister Crowley died in 1947, he was not an obvious contender for the most enduring pop-culture figure of the next century. But twenty years later, Crowley’s name and image were everywhere. The Beatles put him on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Rolling Stones were briefly serious devotees. Today, his visage hangs in goth clubs, occult temples, and college dorm rooms, and his methods of ceremonial magick animate the passions of myriad occultists and spiritual seekers. Aleister Crowley is more than just a biography of this compelling, controversial, and divisive figure—it’s also a portrait of his unparalleled influence on modern pop culture. |
| high weirdness erik davis: High Weirdness by Mail Ivan Stang, 1988 |
| high weirdness erik davis: Prometheus Rising Robert Anton Wilson, 2023-07-23 Prometheus Rising describes the landscape of human evolution and offers the reader an opportunity to become a conscious participant. In an astoundingly useful road map infused with humor and startling insight, Robert Anton Wilson presents the Eight Circuits of the Brain model as an essential guide for the effort to break free of imprinted and programmed behavior, Bob writes, We are all giants, raised by pygmies, who have learned to walk with a perpetual mental crouch. Unleashing our full stature-our total brain power-is what this book is all about. The Robert Anton Wilson Trust Authorized Hilaritas Press Edition |
| high weirdness erik davis: Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism Gareth Knight, 1993-02-28 In this groundbreaking book, Knight shows how the Qabalah and its basic diagram, the Tree of Life, is a system of relationships among mystical symbols that can be used to gain access to the hidden reaches of the mind. He also demonstrates how the Qabalah is applicable to all mystical traditions and religious beliefs, including Christian mysticism, Greek, Egyptian and Celtic mythologies, and even Native American beliefs. It is indeed symbolic of our universal search for the Divine. Included here are two books in one. The first compares the Western Mystery Tradition with the Eastern system of yoga, analyzes the Tree of Life in full detail, and describes the practical application and theories of Qabalistic symbolism. The second gives the most comprehensive analysis ever published of the twenty-two 'Paths of Concealed Glory' that join the Spheres of the Tree of Life taking into account the Hebrew alphabet, astrological signs, and tarot trumps. A large section explores the history of tarot design and the varying systems of correspondence with the Tree of Life. |
| high weirdness erik davis: Quantum Psychology Robert Anton Wilson, 1990 |
| high weirdness erik davis: Out-of-Body Experiences Samantha Treasure, 2025-05-01 This illuminating guide investigates the incredible phenomena of out-of-body experiences, including why they happen, how to make sense of them, as well as how to pursue or avoid these experiences. Breaking free from the usual template of astral projection manual or personal account, this book takes an eclectic approach, weaving together anthropology, science , spirituality and fascinating accounts. It takes a neutral and holistic approach while refusing to shy away from the stranger aspects of this phenomena. This includes fieldwork with Eckankar (a new religious movement), interviews with Korean and Siberian shamans, participation in neuroscience experiments, a year interviewing alien contactees, and attendance at various workshops, retreats and lectures that are increasingly marketed within the growing spiritual marketplace. Based on interviews the author has conducted since 2015, the book will also explore how astral projection changes over the course of an episode or lifetime, taking into consideration generational, cultural, and biological differences. For example, utilising her background in medical anthropology, Samantha Treasure explores the links between OBEs and sleep paralysis, epilepsy and Charles Bonnet Syndrome, interviewing both experiencers and specialists. This book will also aim to reclaim OBEs from their growing commodification within social media and the wellness industry and will challenge definitions that privilege certain types of experience or narratives. While including evidence for their potential as a healing or spiritual tool, the author will also include the voices of experiencers and researchers who think otherwise, exploring their rationale while avoiding either sugar-coating or fear-mongering. This is the definitive guide to this fascinating phenomenon. |
HIGH Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of HIGH is rising or extending upward a great distance : taller than average, usual, or expected. How to use high in a sentence. Synonym Discussion of High.
HIGH | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary
HIGH meaning: 1. (especially of things that are not living) being a large distance from top to bottom or a …
High - definition of high by The Free Dictionary
high - greater than normal in degree or intensity or amount; "a high temperature"; "a high price"; "the high point of his career"; "high risks"; "has high hopes"; "the river is high"; "he …
HIGH Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
having a great or considerable extent or reach upward or vertically; lofty; tall. a high wall. having a specified extent …
HIGH definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
high is a general term, and denotes either extension upward or position at a considerable height: six feet high; a high shelf. lofty denotes imposing or even inspiring height: lofty crags. tall …
HIGH Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of HIGH is rising or extending upward a great distance : taller than average, usual, or expected. How to use high in a sentence. Synonym Discussion of High.
HIGH | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary
HIGH meaning: 1. (especially of things that are not living) being a large distance from top to bottom or a long…. Learn …
High - definition of high by The Free Dictionary
high - greater than normal in degree or intensity or amount; "a high temperature"; "a high price"; "the high point of his career"; "high risks"; "has high hopes"; "the river is high"; "he …
HIGH Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
having a great or considerable extent or reach upward or vertically; lofty; tall. a high wall. having a specified extent …
HIGH definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
high is a general term, and denotes either extension upward or position at a considerable height: six feet high; a high shelf. lofty denotes imposing or even inspiring height: lofty crags. tall is …
