Author: Erik Davis
Erik Davis is the author, most recently, of High Weirdness
Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies. He also wrote the cult classic TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Information Age, a critical volume on Led Zeppelin’s fourth album, and Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica. Davis hosts a weekly podcast called Expanding Mind, and posts at techgnosis.com.
Pop Arcana (1)
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The RWS Tarot is more like 1900s comic strips than Middle Age esoterica.
Read This PostFrank Zappa
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Of all the hilo heroes of American music, only FRANK ZAPPA (1940-93) turned the scramble of the brainy and the base into an aesthetic practice so strident it counts as an ethical philosophy. The dialectic […]
Read This PostKirk Hammett
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Long before they became whiners — carping about Napster and exploring their inner kiddie tantrums in Some Kind of Monster — Metallica were America’s best metal band, or at least the best American metal band […]
Read This PostAleister Crowley
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ALEISTER CROWLEY (1875–1947) Mountaineer, fiendish hedonist, and magus incandescent, ALEISTER CROWLEY (1875–1947) remains one of the more remarkable figures of Edwardian letters, though his peculiar reputation makes a frank assessment of the man a rare […]
Read This PostA. E. Waite
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Within the western current of occult mysticism, A. E. WAITE (1857–1942) stands out as a prototype of the modern scholar-practitioner — an initiate and seeker who was nonetheless devoted to mapping and organizing the occult […]
Read This PostColin Newman
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Now that the radical punch of punk seems no more potent than a daisy in a National Guardsman’s rifle, the artsy-fartsy fundament of its posture has become as evident — and as significant — as […]
Read This PostLéon Theremin
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Child of St. Petersburg, bug-maker for the KGB, and husband of the African-American dancer Lavinia Williams, LÉON THEREMIN (1896-1993) achieved immortality through the eponymous electronic instrument he invented in 1920. Originally called the “aetherphone,” the […]
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