Experience Design

Make Believe Exhibition and Book Launch at the Cobblestone Society Gallery (Rogers Park, Chicago)

The evening of Nov. 11th, 2026 saw the inaugural gallery exhibition and book launch of Make Believe: The Material Culture of Imaginal Religions. The event took place at the Cobblestone Society, a new art and community space attached to the Malliway Bros. magic and witchcraft store in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. Make Believe showcases assemblage … Read moreMake Believe Exhibition and Book Launch at the Cobblestone Society Gallery (Rogers Park, Chicago)

Make Believe: The Material Culture of Imaginal Religions pop-up gallery and book launch event

The Cobblestone Society: 1409 W Morse Ave, Chicago, IL 60626-3481, United States Date: Wednesday November 11th Duration: 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm, with an artist/curator’s presentation at 7.00 pm Join us for a pop-up gallery exhibition and book launch of Tony Wolf’s Make Believe project, a collection of assemblage artworks representing the shrines, altars and … Read moreMake Believe: The Material Culture of Imaginal Religions pop-up gallery and book launch event

Mushroom Church

A recording of Mushroom Church, a touring community art project created by Vancouver musician and biologist Tarun Nayar, who performs as Modern Biology. Its name arose when an audience member described one of his church-based concerts, featuring mushrooms connected to synthesisers, as “mushroom church”. Touring North America by 2024 and subsequently Europe, the events combine … Read moreMushroom Church

Pasaquoyanism: Building a Religion into Being

Pasaquoyanism was the religion of Eddie Owens Martin, the visionary artist better known as St. EOM. Its chief monument is Pasaquan, the seven-acre sacred environment he constructed near Buena Vista, Georgia from the mid-1950s until his death in 1986. There, brightly painted walls, temples, pagodas and monumental figures announce the presence of an imaginary civilization … Read morePasaquoyanism: Building a Religion into Being

The Sky Meadow Folkways

A short philosophical video on the developing folkways – meaningful rituals, customs and mythopoetic traditions – at Sky Meadow, a nature retreat in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom mountains.  The Sky Meadow folkways can be considered as the vernacular praxis of a hyper-local, naturalistic spirituality, taking the real world seriously enough to create ceremonies of storytelling, memorial … Read moreThe Sky Meadow Folkways

In Memoriam: Steve Aydt (1963-2026)

Sad to learn of the recent passing of Steve Aydt, a longtime fixture, mover and shaker in the Texan counterculture scene and founder of the Eulessyinian Hot Tub Mystery Religion. I interviewed Steve on that subject in late 2024, and that interview is part of the second volume of the anthology Poetic Faiths: New Religions … Read moreIn Memoriam: Steve Aydt (1963-2026)

Sky Meadow 2026

Just returned from our much-anticipated, at-least-annual visit to the Sky Meadow Retreat in Vermont’s Northeastern Kingdom mountains. The Sky Meadow property was first developed as a working farm in the 1850s, later became derelict, was rehabilitated and transformed into a spiritual/nature retreat in the 1980s and sustains a more recent ambition to serve as the … Read moreSky Meadow 2026

The Egypt Game

In Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Egypt Game (1967), a group of children transforms a hidden yard into an improvised sacred world inspired by ancient Egypt. They invent names, costumes, gods, ceremonies, initiations, sacrifices, funerary rites and an oracle, gradually developing a shared mythology that feels consequential without requiring literal belief. As an example of cultpunk … Read moreThe Egypt Game

“Xenotheology and Personal Myth with [M] Dudeck and Javi Acevedo”

Coincident with the recent Metamodern Meaning Lab at Sky Meadow, Brendan Graham Dempsey interviewed [M] Dudeck and Javi Acevedo on their upcoming book Xenotheology: The Transmedial Scriptures and on the practice of creating one’s own religion as a work of art.

“Why raves are such a reliable source of spiritual experience”

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”