Tag: alchemy
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Alchemical Consciousness After Descartes: Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism as Psychedelic Realism
The following is an essay originally submitted for publication in a book on philosophy and psychedelics. After some feedback from the editors, I realized it is too long and includes too many (I hope interesting!) digressions. I’ll be thoroughly revising my submission for the book, so I figured I’d share this earlier version here. Feedback…
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Integral Entheogens (Ep. 5) – Molecular Alchemy and the Evolution of Spirit
Thanks to Bruce Alderman and The Integral Stage for putting this together! In Episode 5, Matthew Segall discusses how entheogens or “ecodelics” have impacted him personally and philosophically, inspiring some of his deepest ontological insights and courses of inquiry — particularly in the areas of panpsychism, deep or integral pluralism, and process thought. He then…
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Eric Smith on the geochemical inevitability of life on earth
For more from Smith, see this co-authored essay “The Origin of Life”: “As we see it, the early steps on the way to life are an inevitable, incremental result of the operation of the laws of chemistry and physics operating under the conditions that existed on the early Earth, a result that can be understood…
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An interview with Jesse Turri at Home Brewed Christianity on Science, Religion, Imagination, and more…
HERE is the interview. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I remember a wide-ranging conversation on everything from my own intellectual and spiritual development, to the relationship between science and religion, to the role of imagination and psychedelics in the philosophy of nature. HERE is Jesse Turri’s personal website.
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Solstice Prayer from Dec. 21st, 2014
The photo is from last summer’s Burning Man festival, taken by Zipporah on Sunday morning while I sat in the Temple of Grace contemplating my life’s loves and losses. Later that night, the Temple collapsed in upon itself like a curtsying ballerina after burning for fifteen short minutes. ……. I read the following prayer at the opening of a small medicine ceremony I…
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Schellingian Reflections on Latour’s 2nd Gifford Lecture – “A Shift in Agency, With Apologies to Hume”
Latour is introduced by professor of physics Wilson Poon, who publicly confesses to being a great admirer of Latour’s work. Latour, thinly veiling how tired he is of the “Science Wars,” thanks him for the “rare confession”: “I don’t have many friends among physicists.” Poon contributes to a course at the University of Edinburgh on…
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Fragment of a Dialogue: A Walk to Imagination’s Limits
This is an incomplete project that I may not be able to pick up for a while. Thought I’d post the fragment. It was inspired by Schelling’s dialogue Bruno. —————————————————– A Walk to Imagination’s Limits Chroma: We have chosen a wonderful evening to set out on a walk along the riverside. Don’t you think so, my friends?…
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This Must Be Heaven : Sam Harris responds to Eben Alexander’s NDE
This Must Be Heaven : Sam Harris responds to Eben Alexander’s near death experience. I must admit that I was deeply moved the first time I heard Alexander recount his seizure and ensuing comma. His description of his NDE–a hyperreal encounter with numinous beings from another world lying in wait beneath the phenomenal space and time of our…
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Participatory Psychedelia: Transpersonal Theory, Religious Studies, and Chemically-Altered (Alchemical) Consciousness [final draft]
Participatory Psychedelia: Transpersonal Theory, Religious Studies, and Chemically- Altered (Alchemical) Consciousness Photo: Tree of Life by Ron Barnett Preface: Take it and eat it. Walking alone on a quiet beach at dawn, I found an old, leather-bound book half buried in the sand whose title, once stamped with golden letters, was now too worn to…
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The Spirit of Integral Poetry: “Waring” the Symbolism of Organism
The Spirit of Integral Poetry: “Waring” the Symbolism of Organism Introduction In the preface of his magisterial account of the evolution of consciousness, The Ever-Present Origin (1985), Jean Gebser warns of a crisis “of decisive finality for life on earth and for humanity,” a spiritual crisis heralding the end of the deficient mentality of the…
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Alchemical Distillation
Alchemy is an ancient science, so primordial that its practice assumes a unification between art, technology, and religion. Prior to the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, these spheres were understood to be concerned with one and the same pursuit: the realization of the ends of spirit in earthly time. Distillation was never merely* a physiochemical process of…