We are Cultpunks. We affirm that belief systems, rituals, symbols, pilgrimages, tenets, holy days, shrines, festivals, taboos, mythologies and pantheons can and should be created as works of art. If so, then surely any sufficiently advanced magic is likewise indistinguishable from technology, and religions may usefully be considered as psychological technologies. Just like any other tech, … Read moreRead this first: “A Cultpunk Manifesto”
Alexander Dillabaugh writes on the spiritual neuroscience of the rave scene: For these adherents, underground dance culture functions as a kind of spiritual technology. That is, a set of environmental and social conditions that reliably produce the kinds of experiences that humans have long called sacred. Viewed through this lens, rave culture appears less like a … Read more“Why raves are such a reliable source of spiritual experience”
The inimitable M. Dudeck on This Podcast is a Ritual, discussing Xenotheology and the intimate relationships between imagination and spirituality.
Nyx Shadowhawk writes on the deeply playful “religion” of Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s award-winning children’s novel, The Egypt Game: Part of what’s appealing about The Egypt Game is that its characters have a fantastical secret double life, but the story doesn’t involve any actual magic. The gods don’t start actually talking to them, there’s no Egyptian … Read more“Playful Rites: Revisiting The Egypt Game”
“First three months were great. Waking up in Paradise.”
Trailer for this upcoming documentary on one of the High Priests of psychedelic counterculture. The producers are aiming for a late 2028 release and are crowdfunding to cover their completion costs.
According to The Church of Ambrosia: We are not a church built around a set of rules you must accept or a God you must name. We are a church built around direct experience. The Church of Ambrosia exists for people who believe that the most direct path to spiritual understanding runs through the body, … Read moreThe Church of Ambrosia
Charles Foster writes for Aeon on the subject of edginess: The cosmos is an edgy place. We are on the far edge of a rapidly expanding Universe, hurtling into nothing. Earth is now further away than it was when you began to read this sentence, from the place where, at the time of the Big … Read more“Embrace the edge!”
I first came across this poetic essay by the controversial anarchist philosopher Peter Lamborn Wilson – more widely known as Hakim Bey, author of the TAZ theory among many other provocative ideas – sometime in the early ’90s. I lost track of it over the years and only recently rediscovered the text, which (faint bell) … Read more“The Runaway Child”
The Cordite Poetry Review offers 13 collage artworks by Australian artist Deborah Kelly, in connection with her queer insurrectionary science fiction climate change religion known as CREATION: “The religion proceeds from a text I commissioned from artist SJ Norman called the Liturgy of the Saprophyte, and some of these artworks were made as part of calling-into-being … Read more“13 Artworks by Deborah Kelly”