The Traveller in the Evening

We have long argued that Blake was a proto-Surrealist, but critics are confused about how Blake fits into the story of Surrealism and how they received him. The ‘dissenting Surrealist’, critic, philosopher, pornographer, anthropologist and ‘metaphysician of evil’, Georges Bataille adopted Blake as the presiding spirit of his later work, which puts the sacred and religion at the heart of politics. Breaking with the rationalism of Breton and the Hegel-influenced Marxist left alike, on the eve of WWII, Bataille proposes a Surrealist anti-fascism based squarely on myth, fashioned in the image of Blake, which leads him to found the secret society, Acéphale.Stuart KendallStuart Kendall is a scholar specialising in Georges Bataille, late modernism, environmental humanities and contemporary culture. He is the author of the book Georges Bataille, in the Critical Lives series from Reaktion Books, as well as translating key works by Bataille.Topics discussedBlake and Surrealism | Bataille as librarian and libertine | Bataille’s collaborations | politics, religion, art and literature | a life filled with contradictions | Democratic Communist Circle, La Critique Sociale | Acéphale, College of Sociology | battles with André Breton and Jean-Paul Sartre | influence on Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva | psychoanalysis, philosophy, literature, anthropology | Breton and Bataille as the two halves of Surrealism | Cabaret Voltaire, Arthur Cravan and militant anti-clericalism: Surrealism’s problem with religion | Why didn’t André Breton love William Blake? | Soupault on Blake and Lautréamont | energy and evil | automatism and Bretonian Surrealism | Surrealism and Communism | Freud, the unconscious, the magical | on the surface of Story of the Eye | translating between Bataille, Breton, Surrealism, and Blake | Alexandre Kojève: for and against Hegel | Surrealism’s enemy within | ‘impossible Surrealism’ | Boris Souveraine, Colette Peignot and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell | Marcel Mauss, potlatch economies | The Accursed Share: energy, exuberance, consumption and expenditure | Blake as a companion of thought for Bataille | mobilizing the masses through the use of myth | “Bataille never counted the pennies” | chaos, indeterminacy and over-determination in Blake | “don’t think I don’t know that you’re f*****g my wife”: obscentity and truth | contraries, negations and dialectics | Jean Wahl, Kierkegaard and the existential turn against Hegel | Corbynites and the Democratic Left | countercultural fascism and Bataille reception.Laure finds Bataille finds BlakeBlake managed, in phrases of a peremptory simplicity, to reduce humanity to poetry and poetry to Evil.Georges BatailleColette Peignot, known as Laure, had read William Blake in Madrid in April or May of 1936. She moves in with Bataille, and days later, he goes and checks out The Marriage of Heaven and Hell from the Bibliotheque Nationale. I mean, what an act of love that is to me. To me, it’s an utterly beautiful story. But that’s the moment when he is part of Acéphale. You know, it’s as the College of Sociology is being founded. It’s as Bataille is looking for myth and religion as ways to expand his political understanding of community and how it’s formed. And so William Blake and his appeal to the sacred, his appeal to the question of what is God and how does God work in the human imagination.Stuart KendallIf you read Job, there are these powerful subterranean currents of Canaanite mythology to do with the conquering of chaos and Yahweh’s defeat of chaos in order to make a world. And my argument is that Blake lets some of the chaos slip back in. When I was reading you on Bataille’s method, I got the similar sense that the reason he defers, the reason not everything adds up, the reason it isn’t a logical series is precisely in order to prevent the reader arriving at an idealist conclusion too early, or ever.There are elements to Blake’s method that directly mirror some aspects of Bataille’s, but this isn’t much commented on because people don’t see that aspect of Blake, and it hasn’t been a big feature of Blake commentary.Andy WilsonI think that William Blake became very important to a certain group of philosophers and critics in France in the 1940s. This is the group associated with Bataille, but also expanding beyond him. Blake offers a way of thinking about contraries and opposition that is non-synthetic, that is not purely Hegelian. And there are many other ways to sort of think about this problem, but that debate and that way of thinking about it had other implications important at that time. Bataille comes to Blake in 1937 at that same moment when he’s looking for alternatives to Marxism. And that’s to say he’s looking for alternatives to Hegelian dialectical thinking. And he’s not alone in that. Now, that problem is one kind of problem when it’s 1937, and your options are Stalin and Hitler. But it becomes a different kind of problem in 1943. And again, in 1946.When Bataille turns to Blake in the immediate post-war period, that same sort of debate is there. Now, the fascist threat is not there – though, of course, it has now returned. The communist problem is still there. So reading Blake and thinking about the problems of contraries is very important in the immediate post-war period because it’s a way of thinking about philosophy and the philosophies of life, existentialism. It offers a way of thinking about existence and the quest for meaning in human life that is outside the frame of existence.Stuart KendallAnti-ClericalismExtremely virulent – and eternally vigilant – anticlericalism is therefore a salient characteristic of surrealist thought. It can be verified on countless occasions in the history of a group that would often be divided by ‘the religious question’. [p17]Patrick Lepetit, The Esoteric Secrets of SurrealismAcephaleWe are famously religiousGeorges BatailleOne of the three epigrams to [‘The Sacred Conspiracy’ (1939)] was a passage from Kierkegaard’s notebooks reflecting on the political uprisings in Europe in 1848: “what looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmasked itself as a religious movement.”Stuart KendallMasson’s drawing for the covers of the journal represents the emblematic figure of the Acéphale, the headless one, who has escaped reason. The figure holds the murderous, sacrificial knife in his left hand and a flaming heart, also symbolizing sacrifice - self-sacrifice - in his right. A skull takes the place of his genitals, identifying sexuality with both birth and death. In his abdomen, as Bataille wrote, “is the labyrinth in which he has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words as a monster.” The labyrinth, identified by Masson as ‘our rallying sign’, places the Minotaur myth at the centre of the Acéphale image. Drawings in the third issue of the journal explicitly depict the bull-headed monster of the myth, as well as evoking the early Greek context that so interested Nietzsche and the contributors to Acéphale.With its clearly delineated muscles, its assertive vertical stance, and the rigidly horizontal alignment of its arms, the Acéphale figure is a Massonian sign of masculine strength, radically altered by the loss of its head and the exposure of its intestines. Reinforced by the placement of the skull at the groin, this threatened status suggests the Nietzschean concept of the unstable self.Clark PolingAppearing in the first issue, Bataille’s text, ‘The Sacred Conspiracy,’ declared the goal of the project: a religious society, in which reason and civilisation are abandoned, and the grandeur of life is sought in ecstasy, with its attendant loss of self. Irrationality, sexuality, and baseness, as aids in overcoming the limitations imposed by society, are central themes in the journal.Clark PolingAcéphale was a secret society that Bataille set up. He did so after he’d been trying to work in probably the most intense way he ever did with the other Surrealists, with Breton, in a group he founded called Counter Attack…I find it inspiring that the Surrealists took politics seriously, that Surrealism wasn’t just an art movement, but an attempt to change the world. They started by aligning themselves with Bolshevism, Lenin and the Russian Revolution. It is astounding how few of them didn’t get absorbed into that. Some did: Aragon and others became Stalinists; Tristan Tzara did. But I think it amazing that Breton and many of the others stood out against that, became Trotskyists and so on.Counter Attack was Bataille’s attempt to come up with a way of countering fascism without having any illusions in the Communist Party. It’s obviously a radical position, to the left of the Communist Party. What I mean is that it’s amazing that he could achieve that insight at that time, to see so clearly the limitations of the Communist Party.The key thing about that is that Bataille’s insight was that fascism was successfully mobilizing the masses through the use of myth. He wanted to counter a different myth. This is very unlike orthodox Marxism, which is rationalist from top to bottom. The idea that we would mobilize myth is something I’ve always believed as an anti-fascist. It’s what the left doesn’t do.Andy WilsonThe figure of Acéphale… became their provocative idol, the emblem of their myth… Bataille explained: “originally the image of the Acéphale simply corresponded in my mind to a still ill-defined preoccupation with the ‘leaderless crowd’, and with an existence modelled on a universe that was obviously acephalic, the Universe where God is dead.” Acéphale, in short, represented an attempt to found a religion in a headless universe where God is dead. But this obviously represents a provocative and problematic paradox: what is a religion fit for a universe in which God is dead?Stuart KendallStory of the EyeThat style that he has in Story of the Eye is something that we could see in somebody like Raymond Roussel. Raymond Roussel, who is not a Surrealist, though celebrated by Surrealists, and of course celebrated by Michel Leiris, who knew him – constructed his books in a similar manner to Story of the Eye. It is language unfolding a thing. Stuart KendallAnd what happens – for those who haven’t read it, you’re not going to believe what I’m about to say – but it’s a pornographic story involving an eye, an egg, and all these things are inserted into vaginas and other orifices in many permutations. But the text, as you say, moves at the surface of words and meaning. So the egg and the eye are related because they look similar. Someone pointed this out to Bataille, and this becomes then a principle of how he develops the text. A urine stain in a circle then becomes a third member of this series. The sun is a fourth member.Andy WilsonBataille’s method in Story of the Eye works across the surface of language and is quite an erotic text, not just in terms of what’s described but in terms of how it functions that things become other things that words become other words uh that it is it’s a book that’s almost impossible to read in translation, at least in the english translation, because the words in French do things to one another and with one another their their proximities suggest the new words.Bataille’s method in that book – and we should specify that that’s that book is is very much set apart within his oeuvre; he doesn’t use that method very often you know he has written several other or he wrote several other novels or longer prose pieces which work in completely different ways you know some are much more traditional others use symbols in different ways you know they’re complicated at the level of of language and idea and quite extraordinary in terms of the range of experimentalism that we have in Bataille’s prose styles. I marvel at it – but nevertheless, these things stand a bit apart.Stuart KendallExuberance and expenditureIn potlatch, consumption is indistinct from the practice of sacrifice, as Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert defined it in their classic treatise on the subject. Sacrifice, as a religious practice, establishes a connection between two separate spheres of experience, the homogeneous profane sphere of everyday life and the heterogeneous sacred sphere of timeless and infinite value, the realm of the gods. In sacrifice an offering is effectively thrown out of everyday life, cast beyond utility into a realm beyond our comprehension. Bataille’s notion of expenditure wilfully conflates sacrificial consumption and raw waste, the high and the low, religion and popular culture. The religious practice of blood sacrifice has, of course, disappeared from modern culture, as have the gods who demanded it. We no longer slaughter the firstborn of our animals or children, nor do we build cathedrals to the glory of our gods. But the structure and the social and psychological necessities of sacrifice have not disappeared, they persist in consumption. Consumption is, in short, a means by which individuals negotiate their identities through expenditure.Stuart Kendall, Georges BataillePostscriptThe crucified Christ is the most sublime of all symbols - even at present.NietzscheWilliam Blake’s… battles between sovereign or rebel debilities seem the most obvious object for psychoanalysis. It is easy to perceive the authority of the father and the revolt of the son. It is natural to search in this relationship for an attempt to conciliate opposites, the desire for appeasement lending an ultimate significance to the disorder of war… The problem at hand, in the great symbolic poems, is the struggle of divinities incarnating the functions of the soul and, after the struggle, the moment when each lacerated divinity will find his true and predestined place in the hierarchy of the functions. But such a truth, with so vague a meaning, arises our mistrust. It seems to me that analysis is merely cancelling out a remarkable work and that it is substituting a somnolent heaviness for a weakness.Georges Bataille, ‘William Blake’See a transcript of the podcast discussion Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They have collaborated with Björk, Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Justin Guariglia, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. Morton co-wrote and appeared in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges, and is the author of a series of radical works on Ecology, culminating in last year’s Hell: Towards a Christian Ecology.Andy and Timothy Morton have been talking since Andy interviewed Tim for the Blake Society in March 2024. There was a second interview on the Traveller in the Evening (‘Throwing a Wrench of What the F**k Into the Machinery’), and a feature review of Tim’s book, Hell: Towards a Christian Ecology (‘Retipped Arrows of Desire: Timothy Morton's Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology’). After that, the conversation really got going. The discussion took as points of departure, Tim’s ideas about with Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) and hyperobjects, and the Christian ecology he explored so thrillingly in Hell; and Andy’s reading of Blake, in particular Blake’s emphasis on the imagination, and the possible political uses of the imagination, as imagined by the radical post-Marxist, Cornelius Castoriadis. A significant influence arrived with David Bentley Hart’s Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies ("an unanswerable and frequently hilarious demolition of the shoddy thinking and historical illiteracy of the so-called New Atheists”), which they read in tandem, emerging on the other side with an expanded sense of how Christianity cuts through contemporary fascism and its war against empathy, which, with careless accuracy, it calls ‘woke’.Topics discussed: from Houston to Phoenicia and back | making it up as you go along | Vala, animism, OOO | spending time with the cat while throwing toys out of the pram | deleted every week | going blind vs allowing a structure you haven’t yet thought to endure | solid as a rock | saying lovely things | David Bentley Hart | atheist delusions | Gyrus’s drive North | galvanised by George Floyd | objects from the master-slave regime | the thing called a person starts to get deeper | making Christianity dangerous | the Emperor and the forces of nature | how to live the hyperobject | the kryptonite posture towards hierarchy | the war against empathy | the bomb that went off was Christianity | enthralled by the nation | tea and cake with King Charles and traditionalism | Steve Bannon, Jordan Petersen, Alexander Dugin, and the new pagans | KKK, SPQR, wink wink | reeling from my own torture | the lone and level sands | flies all green and buzzin’ | the bacteria that pooped out oxygen | the hierarchy itself is implacable | the mask comes off | working for the man in Buddhism | Stewart Home’s fascist yoga | falling in love with your guru | all the words are corrupted | the most subversive claim ever made | construct yourself | it’s always going to feel a bit ugly | Bullhead, Nipton and hi-tech nothingness | deliver some string beans | when you put the sugar in the tea | something more general than ideology | the primum mobile of thought | the shark social imaginary | Plato’s cave is what it feels like to be a Platonist | a structure of feeling that hadn't hardened into an ideology | wanting to be cute-sounding | a black opal fire.We decided it was time to throw some of the ideas we were developing before the public, not in a structured way, but by continuing the discussion in a podcast for the Traveller in the Evening, so we could see for ourselves where we were at. This is that podcast, hopefully the first of a series. Part two will drop when we think we’ve moved on.The fourth wall between the human subject and everything else evaporates. How to see global warming as part of the human drama, not as the end of it? How to rebuild the play when there is a fourth wall collapse, and when this collapse coincides with the actual theatre on fire? When being on fire is what causes this collapse, what happens? The play was s**t. We need another play.Timothy Morton, HellThe Christian view of human nature is wise precisely because it is so very extreme: it sees humanity, at once, as an image of the divine, fashioned for infinite love and imperishable glory, and as an almost inexhaustible wellspring of vindictiveness, cupidity, and brutality. Christians, indeed, have a special obligation not to forget how great and how inextinguishable the human proclivity for violence is, or how many victims it has claimed, for they worship a God who does not merely take the part of those victims, but who was himself one of them, murdered by the combined authority and moral prudence of the political, religious, and legal powers of human society.Which is, incidentally, the most subversive claim ever made in the history of the human race.David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

Andy and Conor discussed how the focus of their attention has shifted in recent years from environmental crisis to the rise of fascism and illiberalism, particularly in the context of the Trump phenomenon. They also revisited the importance of William Blake for the blog, with Andy confirming that his appreciation for Blake has not changed.A Blake-Inspired Spiritual JourneyAndy discussed his journey with William Blake, starting with his accidental discovery of Blake's work and his subsequent attraction to Blake. Andy shared how Blake's ideas influenced his understanding of the human imagination and its role in shaping our perception of reality. He also mentioned his relationship with Timothy Morton, who shares a similar perspective on Blake and the importance of the imagination. Andy's journey with Blake has led him to embrace Christianity, which he believes is a natural progression of his understanding of Blake's work.The Traveller in the Evening is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Christianity and Capitalism: A Philosophical InquiryThe discussion explores the resurgence of deeper societal critiques using Christian thought, with Andy and Conor reflecting on the role of empathy in capitalism and Christianity. Andy argues that Christianity offers a necessary response to capitalism, emphasising its communistic aspects and opposition to capitalism. The conversation then shifts to the popularity of various topics on Andy's blog and podcast, including the history of the British left, hauntology, and biblical analysis. They also discuss the importance of counterculture about Blake's influence and its potential for fostering alternatives to capitalism. The dialogue concludes with reflections on current countercultural movements and the overall project's focus on radical Christianity, counterculture, and philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality.Surrealism and Transpersonal AutonomismAndy and Conor discussed the relationship between Surrealism and magic, with Andy suggesting that Surrealism's automatism could be extended to include transpersonal elements. They explored the idea of the unconscious as a being rather than just a flip side to the conscious mind. Conor shared his own experiences with communicating with his unconscious through dreams and tarot cards, noting the importance of being in the right state of mind and using the right language for communication.The High and Low Art of SpectralismAndy and Conor discuss music and its perception, focusing on the importance of sound quality and timbre over traditional musical elements. They highlight an experience where Iancu Dumitrescu, a composer, performed at the Faust festival, bridging the gap between high art and industrial music audiences. The conversation then shifts to Andy's autism and how it has influenced his diverse interests and career paths. They conclude by discussing misconceptions about Christianity and the Catholic Church.Talking Bourgeois Politics BluesFinally, Andy shares his experiences of being moved by powerful speeches from a Baptist minister and Michelle Obama, noting how these experiences challenged his preconceptions about bourgeois politics and effective communication.The Traveller in the Evening is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

Revolutionary Left's Rise 1945-1985 OverviewJohn and Andy discuss the rise of the revolutionary left from 1945 to 1985. They start by examining the situation at the end of World War II, including the positions of Social Democrats and the Communist Party. They cover the emergence of the New Left from its post-war origins through significant developments in the 1960s. The discussion will provide context on key groups and figures, touching on the influence of the Russian Revolution. They explain how leftist movements expanded beyond a small niche during this 40-year period.Russian Revolution's Impact on Leftist GroupsThe discussion focuses on the historical context and impact of the Russian Revolution, particularly its influence on the revolutionary left in the post-World War II era. John explains the appeal of Bolshevism and its role in shaping the political landscape of Europe, emphasizing how it became a powerful myth that attracted various political forces. Andy adds that this ‘structure of feeling’ around the Russian Revolution is crucial for understanding the collective career of the revolutionary left in the post-war years, as it became a central point of reference for different leftist groups, including Trotskyists and the Communist Party, even when they disagreed with each other.Trotsky's Post-War Predictions and Their ImpactJohn and Andy discuss the aftermath of World War II and its impact on various political movements. They focus on how Trotsky's predictions about post-war events were largely incorrect, leading to a crisis among Trotskyists. The Labour Party in Britain implemented significant social reforms, which was unexpected and challenging for far-left groups to explain. The Communist Party, despite some growth, suffered ideological setbacks, while mainstream reformist forces gained strength. The discussion highlights the difficulties faced by Trotskyists in adapting their theories to the new realities of the post-war world, including the expansion of the Soviet Empire and the absence of a capitalist crisis or revolutionary wave.1950s Leftist Thought and 1956John and Andy discuss the development of leftist thought in the 1950s, highlighting three key factors: new forms of worker struggle, the impact of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and anti-colonial movements. They emphasize the significance of 1956 as a turning point for the revolutionary left, particularly in how it led to a reevaluation of Trotskyist perspectives on the Soviet Union. Andy introduces Tony Cliff's State Capitalist analysis of Russia as a fundamental break from Trotskyism, leading to new ways of understanding international relations. John adds context about the intellectual climate of the time, discussing the concept of ‘anti-anti-communism’ and how certain leftist positions, such as neutrality in the Korean War, were considered extremely controversial.Post-War Britain's Working-Class MilitancyThe discussion covers the social and economic changes in post-war Britain, focusing on the rise of working-class militancy and confidence from the 1950s to the 1970s. John and Andy highlight the impact of consumer society, technological advancements, and cultural shifts on working-class consciousness and activism. They note the paradoxical effect of these changes, which both diluted and strengthened working-class identity. The conversation then moves to the decline of this militancy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in the miners' strike of 1984-85. They describe this strike as a turning point and the last major struggle of the traditional workers' movement, marking the end of an era in British labor history.Far Left in Britain's EvolutionThe discussion covers the history and evolution of the far left in Britain from the 1950s through the 1980s. John provides a generational overview, highlighting key periods like the 1950s rebuilding of socialist traditions, the rise of CND in the early 1960s, the impact of 1968 and student movements, the workplace focus of the 1970s, and the miners' strike of the 1980s. He emphasizes how each period shaped leftist thought and activism, noting both achievements and challenges. The conversation touches on the transformative impact of events like the miners' strike on participants and the broader left, as well as the eventual decline and loss that followed. John and Andy reflect on the complexities of analyzing this history and the difficulties in reconciling past beliefs with current understanding.–––––… the first and, up to now, the only total revolution against total bureaucratic capitalism, [a system that in] its purest, most extreme form has been realized in Russia, China, and the other countries presently masquerading as socialist.Cornelius Castoriadis, on the Hungarian uprising, 1956.Tony Judt: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945“Khrushchev’s secret speech, once it leaked out in the West, had marked the end of a certain Communist faith. But it also allowed for the possibility of post-Stalinist reform and renewal...But the desperate street fighting in Budapest dispelled any illusions about this new, ‘reformed’ Soviet model. Once again, Communist authority had been unambiguously revealed to rest on nothing more than the barrel of a tank. The rest was dialectics.Western Communist parties started to haemorrhage… In Italy, as in France, Britain and elsewhere, it was younger, educated Party members who left in droves. Like non-Communist intellectuals of the Left, they had been attracted both to the promise of post-Stalin reforms in the USSR and to the Hungarian revolution itself...For forty years the Western Left had looked to Russia, forgiving and even admiring Bolshevik violence as the price of revolutionary self-confidence and the march of History. Moscow was the flattering mirror of their political illusions. In November 1956, the mirror shattered...Shorn of the curious magnetism of Stalinist terror, and revealed in Budapest in all its armored mediocrity, Soviet Communism lost its charm for most Western sympathizers and admirers...The difference in Eastern Europe… was that the disillusioned subjects of a discredited regime could hardly turn their faces to distant lands, or rekindle their revolutionary faith in the glow of far-off peasant revolts. They were perforce obliged to live in and with the Communist regimes whose promises they no longer believed… Their expectations of Communism, briefly renewed with the promise of de-Stalinization, were extinguished; but so were their hopes of Western succour…For most people living under Communism, the ‘Socialist’ system had lost whatever radical, forward-looking, utopian promise once attached to it, and which had been part of its appeal... It was now just a way of life to be endured. That did not mean it could not last a very long time… in many ways, 1956 represented the defeat and collapse of the revolutionary myth so successfully cultivated by Lenin and his heirs.”Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

A new book from Phil Smith offers a chance to consider Mark Fisher's hauntological legacy and the politics of life lived without a future, among the remains of the past.Phil Smith, Albion’s Eco-Eerie: TV and Movies of the Haunted Generation, Shrewsbury: Temporal Boundary Press, 2024.Mark Fisher (1968-2017) founded Zero Books, Repeater Books and the k-punk blog. He was the author of Capitalist Realism and Ghosts of My Life, and taught at Goldsmiths, University of London.Culture has lost the ability to grasp the presentMark FisherIf we gift them the past we create a cushion or pillow for their emotions and consequently, we can control them better.Eldon Tyrell, Blade Runner.Perhaps a better hour may at some time strike even for the clever fellows: one in which they may demand, instead of prepared material ready to be switched on, the improvisatory displacement of things.AdornoPodcast Discussion Summary »TLDR: A discussion about the details of Phil’s book quickly turns into a reappraisal of the work of Mark Fisher and his kin (Zero Books, Repeater Books, Nina Power, Nick Land, Simon Reynolds, David Stubbs, et al.) and their ideas about hauntology and the Ghost of Marx.Films reviewed in the book include: Night of the Demon, The Company of Wolves, Fireball XL5, Quatermass and the Pit, O Lucky Man!, Children of the Stones, Whistle and I'll Come to You, Hellraiser, Hellbound.It is a bold book that takes the weaving path of blood, trauma and sensuality away from Folk Horror and fashionable 'hauntology' into new, enchanted spaces. Digging up and doubling down on messy ideas and demon lovers that exist not to elevate us to transcendence but to immerse us in the mud of grotty instinct.Stephen Volk, author of The Dark Masters Trilogy and Ghostwatch Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

Planned as a long Q&A session between Andy and long-time Traveller podcast co-host, Conor Kostick, that discussion raised so many questions and went on for so long that it seemed best to postpone airing the issues on the podcast. For this episode we excerpted Andy’s intro to the discussion, touching on his own experience listening to and making electronic music. Starting with Wendy Carlos and Popcorn, (yes, it’s Hot Butter by Popcorn, not Popcorn by Hot Butter… Andy got that wrong throughout) passing through Kraftwerk, David Bowie, Throbbing Gristle and Nurse With Wound, Andy argues that the technology is generally used lazily and to little effect, compared to the enormity of, eg., the work of Iancu Dumitrescu.The gist of Andy’s argument is that all the things he found interesting in the distorted timbres and extremities of electronic rock and industrial music are used with overwhelming effect in the music of the Romanian Spectral composer, Iancu Dumitrescu, whose music runs throughout the show, along with samples from David Bowie, Throbbing Gristle, the Tim Hodgkinson / Ken Hyder collaboration, KSpace, and Andy Wilson’s own recorded archives. Along the way, Andy discusses the combined and uneven development of electronic music, with huge increases in the expressive power of the tools available to musicians still lagrely unexplored by most musicians. Yes, Andy is complaining about the music young people make today. Conor thought so, and he might be right. Andy also tells stories about visiting abandoned quarries on a military base to record foxes with Chris Watson of Cabaret Voltaire, Cod that burp (off the Galapagos Islands, not Japan) at hissing cockroaches, Chris Carter’s Gristleizer, Bourbonese Qualk’s Simon Crab buying Throbbing Gristle’s Korg MS20, comparisons between buying tickets for Oasis and dumping grain in the Pacific, seagull reverb, the Nagra tape recorder, BBC Radiophonics, ‘Dada, Futurism, Industrial Music’, Wendy Carlos, hand-cranked ring modulators, The Aphex Twin and the Supercollider user group, Steve Stapleton bunking off at Faust’s Wumme and Kurt Graupner’s Faust Machines, computerised shamanic improv, John Lennon’s tape experiments, SoundRaider, time division multiplexing, nature recording with David Attenborough, the pleasures of dentistry under general anaesthetics, and more besides.Criminally, I didn’t get around to talking about how the sound of King Iwah and the Upsetters’ Give Me Power, produced by Lee Perry in 1972, set the scene for everything that followed. I can only apologise and drop this video here.Traveller Music Tech Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

The Traveller in the Evening talks to Timothy Morton about Tim's new book Hell, their personal journeys towards Christianity; the role of aesthetics in theory; the war against The Holy Spirit and Žižek's blindness to the latter; charisma; Speculative Realism as an attack on theory; ‘French feminism’; the impact of music on their lives; the trouble with Marxists pirouetting like Jerry Falwell… and Falwell’s demonic level of aggression toward Desmond Tutu; doing peyote with your mum; The Sex Pistols tearing a hole in the curtain of reality on the Bill Grundy Show; transpersonal boundary-violating sensations of extreme benevolence; Bjork as a 'soul-opener'; René Girard channelling Alice Through the Looking Glass; Marx's meanness, the role of wonderment in theory; Terry Eagleton giving Marx a leg up; being a happy scapegoat and cheerful assassin; Luce Irigaray and the Sokal hoax; and the influence of childhood trauma on their views.“Aggressively expressed contempt is absolutely the wonderment killer.”"I've been calling them Right Club recently, like Fight Club. The first rule of Right Club is you never mention Right Club... and the second rule of Right Club is that you never mention Right Club. And as soon as you call them out, like we actually were in a church, this is a church with some Hegel, with a sort of stained glass window of Marx, and you are all like crusading inquisition people. They get so mad, you know? And the first time I ever said I'm not quite sure anymore about the concept of critique, I got killed in public for three days by people who had to perform a ritual sacrifice on me. And incidentally, by the way, I love Theodore Adorno."“The sense of beauty that even beetles and perhaps flowers… share has nothing to do with being a 'biologically female' body: this is a trans theory of beauty, as a matter of fact. I'm going to say that again: the default theory of sexual selection consists of a trans theory of beauty. Far from 'essentializing' or 'biologizing' art, what this means is that beetles and flowers also make art: 'art history' can't possibly stop at human beings or even primates. And that art is profoundly queer and indeed trans. Think about it. Those female ducks and butterflies simply can't be the only lifeforms with a sense of beauty. The non-cloning part of our biosphere, the way it appears, from flowers to wallpaper to disco balls to iridescent beetles, is a reflection of queer desire without a goal.Thel created Earth.So Thel is a figure for theory, throwing a wrench of 'what the f**k?' into the machinery. And therefore Thel is a figure for 'life,' but not the procreative, goal-directed life of parents and daughters. Wonderment is the 'feel' of theory, and wonderment is without a goal. The fact that consciousness can wonder is perhaps another flower, another 'meaningless' life, meaningless in the sense of not having a telos or point. And what is esoteric religion aside from asserting what Kant asserts about beauty, a meaningful lack of meaning?”Timothy MortonTimothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They have collaborated with Björk, Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Justin Guariglia, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. Morton co-wrote and appeared in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges, and is the author of Ecology without Nature (2007), The Ecological Thought (2010), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (2013), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (2016), Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (2017), Being Ecological (2018), ten other books and 250 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food. Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

The fourth wall between the human subject and everything else evaporates. How to see global warming as part of the human drama, not as the end of it? How to rebuild the play when there is a fourth wall collapse, and when this collapse coincides with the actual theatre on fire? When being on fire is what causes this collapse, what happens? The play was s**t. We need another play.Timothy Morton, HellHell on earth is here. The toxic fusion of big oil, Evangelical Christianity and white supremacy has ignited a worldwide inferno, more phantasmagoric than anything William Blake could dream up and more cataclysmic than we can yet fathom. As Timothy Morton’s new book, Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology, shows, escaping global warming hell requires a radical mystical marriage of Christianity and biology to awaken a future beyond white male savagery.On 17th April 2024, Timothy Morton was interviewed by Andy Wilson for The Blake Society and The Traveller in the Evening. This podcast captures the interview and resulting discussion.Timothy MortonTimothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They have collaborated with Björk, Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Justin Guariglia, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. Morton co-wrote and appeared in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges, and is the author of Being Ecological (2018), Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (2017), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (2016), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (2013), The Ecological Thought (2010), Ecology without Nature (2007), ten other books and 250 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food.Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology is published on Earth Day (22 April) 2024.The Traveller in the EveningAndy Wilson runs the blog The Traveller in the Evening: Reflections on William Blake, Radical Theology, Politics and Surrealism, founded Reservists Against War and co-founded the Association of Musical Marxists (AMM). He is the author of Faust: Stretch Out Time 1970-75 (2006), Cosmic Orgasm: The Music of Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram (2013), and The Brilliant New Hercules: A Blake Reader (2015). With Michael Tencer he edited The Assassin (2014), and with Jules Alford, Khiyana: Daesh, the Left and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution (2015).Join the Blake Society here. Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

In 1786 the United States signed the Treaty of Marrakesh with Morocco, creating trade and diplomatic agreements but, crucially, also guaranteeing that no Moroccan would ever be taken as a slave in the US. In the following decades, several Black Muslim groups grew up in the US. Among these were the Moorish Science Temple and, later, the Moorish Orthodox Church (MOC), who seized on the treaty as a secular guarantee of their essential freedom, a freedom itself rooted metaphysically in Islam as the ancestral religion of the Moors, a tradition stolen from them through slavery and exile, which they now intend to recover.In the 1960s the Moorish Orthodox Church developed into a free-thinking, avant-grade spiritual and artistic movement, with a Dadaistic, Prankster style of communication and a parallel commitment to spiritual insight. Church members were in contact at times with Timothy Leary, and included Hakim Bey (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson), author of works such as CHAOS: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism (1984), TAZ / The Temporary Autonomous Zone: Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (1985) and a stream of other books exploring esoteric Islam, anarchism, ecology, alchemy, pirate utopias, and other matters of vital interest.It is through Hakim Bey that I first heard of the Moorish Orthodox Church, but the church has moved beyond him of late. In this instalment of the Traveller in the Evening podcast, I interview comrade Theophrastus El about the origins, history and beliefs of this radical spiritual group, united around the ‘five pillars of Moorish Science’; love, truth, peace, freedom and justice (while some add: beauty.) Contact Theophrastus El.Theophrastus al-Razi El: The Straight Balance: Islamic Alchemy and Moorish ScienceDownload the pamphlet, The Straight Balance: Islamic Alchemy and Moorish Science, by Theophrastus al-Razi El, originally published by the Aurora Consergens Lodge of the Moorish Orthodox Church, Albion 2020.AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank a number of people who have assisted in bringing this MOC pamphlet into being; Brother Ishraq El of Lodge Al Buraq, who provided important source material and, most importantly, feedback and encouragement, Brother El-Imran Arif of Lodge Aurora Consurgens, who read an earlier draft of this document and suggested a number of key improvements, and Brother Mustafa Al Laylah Bey, who deemed this worthy of publishing as a Moorish Orthodox Church pamphlet, and who worked on the layout and graphics. Brother Andy Wilson also stepped in for post-production / re-editing duties.An earlier version of this paper was delivered as part of the MOC-UK online seminar series. I’d like to thank the attendees for their incisive questions and comments. Any errors and shortcomings in what follows are of course entirely my own.Alchemy as Moorish ScienceWe are told that alchemy arrived in ‘Latin Europe’ on Friday, the 11th February 1144, when Robert of Chester completed his translation of De Compositione Alchemiae. This manuscript allegedly consists of the teachings of the monk ‘Morienus’, as given to the Umayyid Prince Khalid ibn Yazid. According to legend, this shadowy figure assists Khalid in deciphering a cryptic manuscript describing the making of the philosopher’s stone, and then disappears into the desert.As the inhabitants of Western Christendom came into contact with Islamic civilisation from the C 10th CE, they found libraries full of works by Ptolemy, Galen and Aristotle, as well as manuscripts describing entirely new sciences – including alchemy. Scholars travelled to Sicily and Jerusalem in search of new knowledge, and manuscripts to translate. But most of all, as in the case of Robert of Chester and his colleague Herman the Dalmatian, they travelled to the Moorish Kingdom of Al Andalus. According to Sharif Anaël-Bey, the Caliphate of Cordoba was established in the C 8th by Moors from Mauritania, who ‘were the recipients and custodians of the ancient… mysteries of Egypt.’The Holy Moorish Koran, ‘divinely edited’ by Prophet Noble Drew Ali, declares that Moorish Americans were enslaved for forsaking their true nationality and must return to Islam, the religion of their forefathers. The text also contains a number of explicit alchemical references, to transmutation, sublimation and alchemical Sulphur (the ‘seed’ representing the human spirit). However, whilst the Caliphs of Cordoba may have been the inheritors of the mysteries of Egypt, Drew Ali derived most of the alchemical portions of the Holy Moorish Koran from the Aquarian Gospel, a New-Age Christian text from the turn of the C 20th. The Gospel’s author may have been inspired by Victorian occultist writers, themselves drawing on Paracelsus or Agrippa. By the late Renaissance, any influence on European alchemy from Islamic Spain had been thoroughly ‘occulted’. So there is no direct chain of transmission from Al-Andalus to Moorish Science, at least if we stick with the realm of historical evidence, rather than that of mythology and ‘poetic facts’.What follows is therefore not an attempt to uncover non-existent historical evidence, but rather a search for resonances and parallels between Moorish Teaching and Islamic alchemy. This is a modest attempt at ‘returning’ Moorish Science to its original sources of inspiration, however broken and fragmented the actual lines of historical transmission. The Arabic root meaning ‘return’, gives us the terms for both ‘repentance’ (tawba) and ‘hermeneutics’ (ta’wil). Perhaps what follows is a very modest venture in hermeneutical interpretation in the guise of repentance for the appropriation of alchemical knowledge by the Fallen Europeans, from its original Moorish, Islamic, and ultimately Egyptian sources.Theophrastus al-Razi El Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

The recent discussion of Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job led me to think about the role of chaos, first in the Book of Job itself, then in the Bible generally, and then across the Near and Middle East and beyond. On this podcast, I’m joined by Sam Hamad to talk about Baal and Leviathan, and how their struggles entered the Old Testament via the traditions of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. Sam discusses similar ancient Egyptian traditions, in which Apophis / Apep and Set are cast in the role of chaos gods. Join us to hear about Isis’s plan to revive the dead Osiris while disguised as a cat with a knife for a tail, and Set’s creation of the Egyptian deserts through his ejaculation. Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

Podcast | Andy Wilson interviewed by Conor Kostick on William Blake, Surrealism, ecology, radical politics and theology, and how Blake's meaning has been distorted by contemporary Blakeans such as John Higgs. Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe