For episode 7, we welcome the writer and scholar Erik Davis (4:06) to reflect on the journey that led to his new book, BLOTTER: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium. We discuss Erik’s writing for the Village Voice in the early 90s, his breakthrough monograph Techgnosis, and how his home state of California informs his oeuvre. In the second half of the interview, we discuss the academic study of “the weird,” perils and possibilities for the psychedelic renaissance, and how BLOTTER is a love letter to LSD.

LINKS

• Blotter book launch event 4/30
• Erik's website
• Burning Shore
• Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium
• Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information
• High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
• Led Zeppelin IV 33/13
• Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica
• Visionary State

For our sixth episode, we welcome the spirit channel, teacher, and playwright Paul Selig. In this conversation 8:14, we explore Selig’s early career as a playwright and professor, his spiritual awakening during the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, how he cultivated his mediumship abilities, and the twelve books Selig has channeled from “the Guides.” On the way, we explore what happens to Selig in the channeling state and the metaphysics of mind that make these states possible.

LINKS
Paul Selig's Website
Selig, I Am the Word
A Course in Miracles
Ann Braude, Radical Spirits
Ed. Cathy Gutierrez, Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling
Taves, Revelatory Events
Jane Roberts, Seth Speaks

For episode five of the pod, we are honored to welcome Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Chair of Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. In this career-spanning chat 10:36 we discuss Kripal’s Catholic upbringing, psychoanalysis, and the ecstatic experience in Calcutta that changed the direction of his career. From there, we touch on Jeff’s role at Esalen, historical mystics and paranormal powers, telepathic insects, and how the study of religion and popular culture come together in film, comedy, and music.

NOTES

Peripheries No. 6 launch event
Jeffrey J. Kripal's personal website
Jeffrey Kripal, Mutants and Mystics
Kripal, The Superhumanities
Kripal, Authors of the Impossible
Kripal, Kali's Child
Kripal, How to Think Impossibly
The Archives of the Impossible
Hellier, season 1
Hellier, season 2
Esalen's Center for Theory and Research

For episode four, we welcome the acclaimed novelist and scholar Victoria Nelson. Nelson is the academic doyen of what is today labeled Occulture Studies. Her first monograph on the supernatural in popular culture, The Secret Life of Puppets (2001), practically willed the field into existence. The follow-up book, Gothicka (2012), theorized shifts in popular culture that we are living through today. In this interview we discuss Victoria’s early life, her first forays into fiction, and explore expressions of what Nelson terms the “repressed supernatural” in androids, vampires, and hyperreal religions.

Victoria Nelson is a writer of fiction, criticism, and memoir. Her books include The Secret Life of Puppets, a study of the supernatural grotesque in Western culture that won the Modern Language Association’s Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies in 2002, and Gothicka, which won the Association of American Publishers PROSE (Professional and Scholarly Excellence)Award in Literature in 2012. A novel, Neighbor George, came out in 2021. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016 and teaches in Goddard College’s MFA creative writing program.

####Show Notes
Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets
V. Nelson, Gothicka
V. Nelson, Neighbor George
Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories
Victoria Nelson on the Weird Studies Podcast
Stephenie Meyer, The Twilight Saga
Harold Bloom, The American Religion
The website of Paul Selig

For our third episode, we welcome the #1 New York Times best-selling author Whitley Strieber. Whitley discusses his boyhood as a Roman Catholic, the erotic dimensions of alien contact, his lifelong meditative practice, evolving views of the afterlife, and the recent U.S. Congressional testimony concerning Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs).

Whitley Strieber is the author of Communion, one of the most iconic books in the literature of the unexplained and the bestselling nonfiction book on UFO-related subjects in history. His most recent book about alien contact is Them, published in 2023. In 2021, he published Jesus: A New Vision, and in 2022, A New World. Both Them and A New World are follow-ons to Communion that extend his research beyond personal issues of contact and into broader areas.
He is the author of over 40 other books, including the Wolfen, the Hunger and Superstorm, all, like Communion, made into films.

Pop Apocalypse now has email! Please reach out to us at popapocalypse@hds.harvard.edu with any queries.

References from the episode:
The Afterlife Revolution
The Super Natural, by Jeffrey Kripal and Whitley Strieber.
American Cosmic by D.W. Pasulka
Passport to Magonia by Jacques Vallee
Intimate Alien by David Halperin
The Myth and Mystery of UFOs by Thomas Bullard

For episode two, we welcome Laurence Caruana, one of the leading figures in the European visionary art world. We discuss the ontology of dreams, Henry Corbin, ayahuasca visions, the language of images, Jesus in the Nag Hammadi Library, the ascent of the soul at death, and Laurence’s plan for an Apocryphon Chapel based on the ancient gnostic scriptures. 

Laurence Caruana is a visionary artist, novelist, historian, and teacher. His paintings have been exhibited from Seattle to Hungary. Laurence has written several books, including Enter through the Image: The Ancient Image Language of Myth, Art, and Dreams, the novel The Hidden Passion, and most recently Sacred Codes, an exploration of sacred geometry and imagination in the history of art. He founded and directed the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art from 2013-2020, and is now working on the Apocryphon Chapel, the first such chapel to be modeled on the ancient Gnostic scriptures. 

Pop Apocalypse CSWR homepage

Laurence Carauna's webpage

The Apocryphon Chapel

April DeConick webpage

Gnosis in Song and Rhythm

Secret Chiefs 3 homepage

Henry Corbin, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, Alone with the Alone 

Elliott Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream

Charles Stang, Our Divine Double. 

For our premier episode, we welcome the visionary artists Alex and Allyson Grey. We discuss Alex and Allyson’s early performance art, the ecstatic experiences behind their paintings, the history of their Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, and the culture-shift around psychedelics in the last twenty years.

* Alex Grey's personal website

* Alex Grey's Instagram page

* Allyson Grey's personal website

* Allyson Grey's Instagram

* The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors website

* Music by Secret Chiefs 3

* Artwork by Kristie Welsh