High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
Language: English
1970s Aleister Crowley Anarchism Body; Mind & Spirit Bruno Latour California Cannabis Counterculture Cultural History Discordianism Drugs Entheogens & Visionary Substances H.P. Lovecraft Histories of Consciousness John Lilly LSD Libertarianism Literary Criticism Literary Studies Magic Movements Mysticism Occultism Phenomenology Philip K. Dick Philosophy Pragmatism Psychedelic Studies Religious Studies Robert Anton Wilson Science Fiction Science Fiction & Fantasy Spirituality Terrence McKenna The Occult Thelema Timothy Leary William James bohemia consensus reality esoteric studies psilocybin psychedelics psychosis religious experience social constructivism speculative realism ufology weird literature
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: Nov 5, 2019
Description:
MP3 CD Format
An exploration of the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson.
A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality—but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?
In High Weirdness , Erik Davis—America's leading scholar of high strangeness—examines the published and unpublished writings of these vital, iconoclastic thinkers, as well as their own life-changing mystical experiences. Davis explores the complex lattice of the strange that flowed through America's West Coast at a time of radical technological, political, and social upheaval to present a new theory of the weird as a viable mode for a renewed engagement with reality.
About the Author
ERIK DAVIS is a scholar, journalist, and public speaker best known for his cultural analysis and creative explorations of esoteric mysticism. Davis has written about music, art, film, pop culture, and technology for Spin, Details, Rolling Stone , and Wired magazines. He is the author of Led Zeppelin IV (2005), The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape (2006), and Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (2010), and co-edited The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011). Davis has appeared in a number of documentaries about technology and countercultural topics, including DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Electronic Awakening, and The Source. Along with Maja D'Aoust, he hosts a weekly podcast devoted to the ""cultures of consciousness"" called Expanding Mind, which is part of the Progressive Radio Network.