PsychArtcult

Body Modification, Polymorphous Perversity and Pandrogeny by Vanessa Sinclair and Forcing the Hand of Chance – A Look at the DIY Occulture of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) by Carl Abrahamsson

$8.00

Date: Sunday, October 23
Time: 2 pm EDT

PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for our Patreon members at $5/month and above. Become a Member HERE.

Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out at 12:30 pm EDT on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.

Body Modification, Polymorphous Perversity and Pandrogeny
Vanessa Sinclair

The cutting of the body has an effect on the psyche, as we experience ourselves through the interface of our bodies. Sigmund Freud described our ego as first and foremost a body-ego, as we learn about ourselves and the world via our bodies. This talk explores the impact of body modification may have by exploring the art/work of Genesis and Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, specifically their Pandrogeny project. Together Breyer P-Orridge explored contemporary ideas of identity, the body, consciousness, gender and sexuality at a depth few have dared to traverse. In an effort to break down prescribed notions of themselves as individuals, the pair underwent a series of surgical, medical, chemical, psychological, spiritual and behavioral procedures. Influenced by the cut-up method of Brion Gysin and William Burroughs, the pair took the process that much further, applying the cut to not only to word, sound and image, but to their own bodies and selves

Forcing the Hand of Chance – A Look at the DIY Occulture of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY)
Carl Abrahamsson

The Industrial music scene of the 1980s was one of intellectual curiosity and an eloquent DIY (“Do It Yourself!”) ethos. Many bands and artists had their own record labels and mail order operations; a “cottage industry” that facilitated independence and peer-to-peer interactions. Many of these artists extended their work into the domain of occultism and existential experiments; i.e., actively building an “occulture” through their own channels of interaction and dissemination.

This paper focuses on the work and ideas of Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth (TOPY, c. 1981-1991) as one of these typically atypical structures in which the DIY spirit merged with magical practice, encouraging artistic expression through not only overt “occulture” (like concerts, film screenings, publishing, etc) but also covertly through its focus on individual and private ritual “sigilising” as a communal and egregore-building process. TOPY’s integration of magical practice stemming from traditionally non-magical areas/sources, such as the work of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, helped create a talismanically charged “feedback springboard” for TOPY’s original ideas to move into new cultural territories. TOPY’s individualistic pathos expressed through a cottage industry ethos attracted many individuals who went on to take essentially the same philosophy onwards post-TOPY. The occultural effects stemming from this experimental order/network can now be felt, seen and heard exoterically way beyond its original esoteric imprint.

Vanessa Sinclair, PsyD is a psychoanalyst, author, artist and occultist based in Sweden, who works internationally. She is the host of Rendering Unconscious Podcast. Her books include The Pathways of the Heart (2021), Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art: The Cut in Creation (2021) andSwitching Mirrors (2016). She is the editor of Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Films of Ingmar Bergman: From Freud to Lacan and Beyond, forthcoming from Routledge (2022), Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics & Poetry (2019), Outsider Inpatient: Reflections on Art as Therapy (2021) with Elisabeth Punzi, On Psychoanalysis and Violence: Contemporary Lacanian Perspectives (2019) with Manya Steinkoler, The Fenris Wolf vol 9 (2017) and The Fenris Wolf vol 11(2022) with Carl Abrahamsson.

Carl Abrahamsson is the editor and publisher of The Fenris Wolf, and the founder of the Institute of Comparative Magico-anthropology. Among his books are Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan(2022), Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Sacred Intent – Conversations with Carl Abrahamsson 1986-2019(2020), Occulture – The unseen forces that drive culture forward (2018), Reasonances (2014), and the novels The Devil’s Footprint (2020) and Mother, Have A Safe Trip (2013). He is also a filmmaker, in particular with the documentary “An Art Apart” series. Together with his wife, Vanessa Sinclair, he has written It’s Magic Monday Every Day of the Week (2021) and The Mega Golem – A Womanual for All Times and Spaces (2020).

The Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, and occult practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences, and areas of research interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another though often operate in similar and complementary ways. Join them at Patreon! www.Patreon.com/vanessa23carl

Lost Dimensions: The Psychic and the Technical by Isabel Millar and From Success Comes Failure, on Cloud Computing by Dwayne Monroe

$8.00

Date: Sunday, September 25
Time: 2 pm EDT

PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for our Patreon members at $5/month and above. Become a Member HERE.

Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out at 12:30 pm EDT on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.

Virilio’s Lost Dimensions: The Psychic and the Technical
Isabel Millar

The French philosopher and architect Paul Virilio was famously against the ideology of ‘Towerism’ as he believed the future of cities would not be in their skyward dimension. In fact, he worked with the architect Claude Parent in the 1960s on the ‘oblique function’. A third order beyond the horizontal of rural dwellings or the vertical of the urban, the oblique function would make space completely accessible increasing the amount of usable surface according to the principle of ‘habitable circulation’. They only ever completed two buildings, a cryptic church and a missile design workshop. Inside these two (sacred) spaces, what is at stake are the two dimensions of speed incommensurate in our contemporary condition, the time of contemplation and mortality and the time of acceleration and death. Today this dialectical relationship between psychic space and technical space has become ever more oblique.

From Success Comes Failure, on the Dialectics of Cloud Computing
Dwayne Monroe

The term, ‘cloud’ is used to describe the utility services we use every day – from Google Drive to Apple Music; a sprawling collection of apparently infinite services stretching endlessly, we’re told, into the future. Unseen by most are the machines making this possible, consuming electrical power, millions of liters of water for cooling and a cornucopia of other resources. No one is stopping this growth which spreads across the globe like a shadow. However, what governments might fail to do, complexity and entropy will surely accomplish: the collapse of the computational order. Hidden within the heart of the tech industry’s unchecked success is the seed of its failure.

Isabel Millar is a philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist from London. She is the author of The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence published in the Palgrave Lacan Series in 2021, and Patipolitics: On the Government of Sexual Suffering forthcoming with Bloomsbury in 2023. She is currently research fellow and faculty at The Global Centre for Advanced Studies, Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Dwayne Monroe is a technologist and Marxist analyst of the tech sector with 20 years of experience in North America and Europe. Dwayne uses his hands-on knowledge to critique the nature and characteristics of the industry from a dialectical perspective. He’s currently finishing a book, ‘Attack Mannequins’ about the AI industry and has written for The Nation, Logic Magazineand Sublation Media. You can follow his blog at monroelab.net and on Twitter at @cloudquistador

The Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, and occult practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences, and areas of research interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another though often operate in similar and complementary ways. Join them at Patreon! www.Patreon.com/vanessa23carl

Exploring Consciousness through Liminal Dreaming by Jennifer Dumpert and Cinematic Dream Sequences by Mary Wild

$8.00

Date: Sunday, August 21
Time: 2 pm EDT

PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for our Patreon members at $5/month and above. Become a Member HERE.

Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out at 1 pm EDT on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.

Exploring Consciousness through Liminal Dreaming
Jennifer Dumpert

In the space between waking and sleep, you pass through the zones of liminal dreaming, hypnagogia and hypnopompia, where the mind meanders between daytime awareness and the depths of the dream. We all possess the ability to maintain waking, rational mind while sinking into the free associative, kaleidoscopic realms of the unconscious mind. Yet few of us develop this powerful tool for exploring consciousness. In this talk, author Jennifer Dumpert will describe the remarkable mind states of hynagogia and hypnopompia and will offer practical exercises for accessing and lingering in these remarkable liminal dream states for the purposes of consciousness exploration, creativity, problem solving, and mental healing and balance.

Cinematic Dream Sequences
Mary Wild

Sigmund Freud famously said that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. The ideas he put forward on dream analysis can be directly applied to film interpretation. In this talk, cinematic dream sequences will be explored, in which the spectator is compelled to take on an investigative role, sifting through manifest film content to uncover subjective associations and latent meaning. The proposition is that an active engagement with film as a projective test renders moving image as a “dreamwork” to be unpicked and interpreted.

Films discussed: Lost Highway (1997) dir. David Lynch, Paprika (2006) dir. Satoshi Kon, Surviving Life (2010) dir. Jan Švankmajer

About the speakers:

Jennifer Dumpert is a San Francisco-based writer and lecturer. She is the author of Liminal Dreaming: Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep and the founder of the Oneironauticum, an international organization that explores the use of oneirogens—anything that promotes vivid dreams, like herbs, roots, and foods—and the phenomenological experience of dreams as a means of experimenting with mind. She also teaches the practice of Liminal Dreaming, which entails surfing the edges of consciousness using hypnagogic and hypnopompic dreams, the mind states between waking and sleep.

Jennifer has lectured and led workshops at festivals, conferences, and venues worldwide. She has also authored numerous pieces about varied aspects of dream work and consciousness. You can read selected pieces and watch videos of presentations at Jennifer’s website. www.liminaldreaming.com. Jennifer posts a daily dream to Twitter as @OneiroFer, and has been doing so since January, 2009.

Mary Wild is the creator of the PROJECTIONS lecture series at Freud Museum London, applying psychoanalysis to film interpretation. Mary co-hosts the Projections Podcast, contributes to The Evolution of Horror Podcast, and produces exclusive content on Patreon.

The Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, and occult practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences, and areas of research interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another though often operate in similar and complementary ways.

The Atavistic Network by Charlotte Rodgers and Necromancy: Working with Blood and Adopted Ancestors in Art and Magic by Dr Vanessa Sinclair

$8.00

Date: Sunday, July 17 
Time: 2 pm EDT

PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for our Patreon members at $5/month and above. Become a Member HERE.

Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out at 1 pm EDT on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.

The Atavistic Network: Listening to the Voices of the Dead and Discarded
Charlotte Rodgers

Charlotte Rodgers has been creating creatures from bones and dead stuff for over 40 years. This was in part a reflection of her era’s countercultural, dystopian expression; however learning the language of death and memory was something she had always felt called to do. In this presentation Charlotte will describe a journey littered with discarded objects, bones and road kill; talking in terms of magic, animism, physical cut-ups and gateways of power; empathy, play and understanding.

Who we are now is an amalgamation of stories layered through time and how that is translated depends on the language used. The scientist, the magician, the story teller and the artist all can hold the same item and translate its voice into different scripts; what is key in all instances is that we pay attention and listen, not letting our agenda destroy the core meaning and not letting thoughts of what something does or how it appears, obscure the reality of what it actually is. 

Whilst Charlotte works with road kill and found dead, she never kills and is not trained in taxidermy. Her journey with bones is a tale of magic, attention and belonging.

Necromancy: Working with Blood and Adopted Ancestors in Art and Magic
Vanessa Sinclair

My practice is personal and very much of my own creation. It revolves around necromancy.

Not in any traditional sense, as in studying grimoires and structured systems of legions of daemons/ angels, but in a much more personal sense. My intention in this talk is to impart the importance of developing one’s own personal practice by nourishing one’s relationship with the dead – with one’s blood ancestral lineage, as well as with adopted ancestors, those artists, writers, friends, mentors and magicians who have influenced you; those who have had a lasting impact on your life, development and formation – thereby creating a unique mythology and personal pantheon of your own.

About the speakers:

Charlotte Rodgers is an author, artist and animist who is presently exploring an academic wormhole as an anthropology student at Bristol University. She has been widely published in magazines and anthologies and her books include, The Sky is A Gateway, Not a Ceiling, P is for Prostitution, and The Bloody Sacrifice. Her art incorporates remnants of death and discarded objects and has been exhibited widely, including shows in New York and London, and she has sculptures on permanent display at the Museum of Naive and Marginal Art in Serbia. Charlotte has spoken at conferences and venues globally, including ‘The Magickal Women Conference’ in London 2019, ‘Rewriting the Future: 100 Years of Esoteric Modernism and Psychoanalysis’ in Merano, Italy and ‘The Left Hand Path Symposium’ in 2020. A filmic exhibition of her work was recently created for Cambridge University’s CRASSH Magic and Ecology Symposium.

Vanessa Sinclair, Psy.D. is a psychoanalyst, artist and occultist based in Sweden. She is the author of The Pathways of the Heart (Trapart Books, 2021), Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art: The Cut in Creation (Routledge, 2020) and Switching Mirrors (Trapart Books, 2016), and the editor of Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics & Poetry (Trapart Books, 2019), Outsider Inpatient: Reflections on Art as Therapy (Trapart Books, 2021) with Elisabeth Punzi and The Fenris Wolf, vol 9 (Trapart Books, 2017) with Carl Abrahamsson. She hosts the Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occcult series of events, as well as Rendering Unconscious Podcast.

The Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, and occult practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences, and areas of research interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another though often operate in similar and complementary ways.

Animism for Apocalypse by Langston Kahn and Spirit Voices: The Mysteries and Magic of North Asian Shamanic Traditions by David Shi

$8.00

Date: June 19
Time: 2 pm EDT

PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for our Patreon members at $5/month and above. Become a Member HERE.

Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out at 1 pm EDT on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.

Animism for Apocalypse: Working with Spirits and Ancestors to Find Freedom in Endings
Langston Kahn

According to the majority of indigenous peoples’ oral histories, the world has ended many times. After the world ends, the human experiment begins again with those who survive and in the space between worlds, the birth of the new world is shaped by the stories the surviving humans choose to bring with them. What is required in the space between worlds is that we carefully tend both the personal and collective stories we carry with us, because they will manifest through our actions. As we navigate this time of so many cataclysmic endings and new beginnings, many of us feel disoriented, tired and uncertain about the future. What might we learn from our ancestors, our helping spirits and the Earth about the stories keeping us from tending these endings well? How might we engage these endings as an opportunity to liberate ourselves from the harmful systems we are entangled with and tell a new story with our lives? Come join Langston Kahn this Juneteenth to explore how we might move through the grief of these times to find the power waiting for us on the other side of it.

Spirit Voices: The Mysteries and Magic of North Asian Shamanic Traditions
David Shi

David Shi will be talking about his new book Spirit Voices: The Mysteries and Magic of North Asian Shamanic Traditions, which will be coming out in Spring 2023. Shi explores the history and practice of shamanism. What is it? Where is it from? What do shamans actually do? He guides the audience through unfamiliar territory—the landscape of North Asia – and through what are largely hidden and unfamiliar traditions. This area, ranging from the Caspian Sea to the Pacific Ocean, is a vast region often described as the “Cradle of Shamanism” and where the word “Shaman” originates from. His book features history, first-hand experiential reports, mythology, and folklore to explore the spirits, spirituality, and practices of true shamanism. In addition to history and analysis of North Asian shamanism, Shi also provides practical information for those seeking to implement practices that are appropriate to non-initiates and outsiders to the culture.

About the speakers:

Langston Kahn is a Black, Queer teacher, author and shamanic practitioner who specializes in radical human transformation, ancestral healing, and restoring an authentic relationship with our emotions. He stands firmly at the crossroads; his practice informed by somatic modalities, contemporary shamanic traditions, initiations into traditions of the African diaspora, and his helping spirits and ancestors weaving it all together. Langston is the author of Deep Liberation: Shamanic Teachings for Reclaiming Wholeness in a Culture of Trauma. He is a senior teacher in the Cycle of Transformation and has served for 5 years in the Last Mask Community, a collective of people striving to live in alignment with ancient shamanic principles in service of personal and collective liberation. He lives in the ancestral lands of the Lenape, Rockaway and Canarsie also known as New York City. For more information please visit his website LangstonKahn.com.

David Shi is a shamanic worker and folk magic practitioner who engages in traditional North Asian forms of shamanism. He is primarily of Manchurian descent, but can also trace ancestry to Mongolian, Chinese, Korean, as well as a little Tungus Siberian and ancient Central Asian Turkic heritage as well. Raised in a household that incorporated both Southeast Siberian and North Chinese practices, David has dedicated his spare time to the study of the spiritual traditions of his ancestors and of greater Eurasia. Recognized as a sagaasha/ongodtengertei, a future shaman prior to initiation, among both Mongolian and Korean shamans, David’s practices are deeply rooted in spirit work in which ancestral and land spirits are called to empower all workings. David’s readings incorporate a combination of Tarot, Runes, Bones, Jaw-harp, as well as Mongolian stone divination (known as Kumalak in Turkic Central Asia).

David is the author of the book North Asian Magic: Spellcraft from Manchuria, Mongolia, and Siberia, and conducted workshops across the country at occult shops such as Catland Books, as well as at festivals such as So Mote That Con sponsored by the That Witch Life podcast, WitchsFest NYC sponsored by the Wiccan Family Temple, and the Hoodoo Heritage Festival sponsored by the Lucky Mojo Curio Company. He was also interviewed on the podcasts “This Old Witch” by Eddie Massey and Alexander Cabot, “Witch Hat Chats” by Nikki Kirby, and “Witches & Wine” by Chaweon Koo. Additionally, David has studied Witchcraft, Hoodoo Rootwork, and Rune-lore from teachers within those traditions. David also teaches the Korean traditional drumming art of Poongmul/Samul-nori. David currently resides in Manhattan, New York where he occasionally provides spiritual services, products, and workshops to his immediate communities.

The Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, and occult practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences, and areas of research interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another though often operate in similar and complementary ways.

VISIONARY MEDIUM: Psychoanalysis and the Magic of Cinema

October 14-16, 2022 | Husets Biograf, Copenhagen

The third Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult conference focuses on cinema as a gateway into and out of the human mind, in all its complexity. No modern medium enchants quite as powerfully as that of the moving image. As film developed into an art form parallel to the emergence of both psychoanalysis and the late 19th century renaissance of the occult, its presence was rapidly imbued with a genuinely visionary power that continues to spellbind to this day. This event shines the light on a psychological screen filled with innovations, ideas, prisms and mirrors, revealing ever more to us about the intimate, intricate relationship between psychoanalysis, art and the occult.

In 1895, the same year Sigmund Freud published Studies on Hysteria with Josef Breuer, the Lumière brothers presented the first projected moving pictures to a paying audience and practicing occultist William Butler Yeats published his very first collection of poetry. As Freud continued developing his theories, the film industry established itself, with experimental film-making evolving alongside conventional cinema from the beginning. The early films of Georges Méliès, Hans Richter and Fritz Lang influenced generations of filmmakers, including Jonas Mekas, Luis Buñuel, Harry Smith, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Frank, Kenneth Anger, Antony Balch, Derek Jarman, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Peter Greenaway, John Waters, Darren Aronofsky, Anna Biller and Lars von Trier. 

When a filmmaker is a true artist, their vision and own unconscious processes are projected and worked through via the medium of film. The magic lantern’s cinematic spells are timeless expressions of the human condition – existing outside trends, discourses and even the larger Zeitgeists of the times – yet resonating throughout. As Freudian cinephile Mary Wild relays in her work, films are projective surfaces engaging similar mechanisms as the classic projective tests of psychoanalysts, such as the Rorschach Inkblot Test. In the chamber of the cinema, films are projected onto screens while audience members project their own internal worlds onto the films, identifying with the characters and enacting the drama being played out. Nowadays screens are ubiquitous in our everyday lives, the interactive screens of computers and phones providing countless opportunities for individuals to project themselves into the digital realm in a multitude of ways never before imagined. 

The Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, filmmakers and magical practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences and areas of interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another, though often operate in similar and complementary ways.

Topics may range from themes of the double, mirroring, projection, programming, propaganda and poetry to psychoanalysis on film, the history of cinema, celluloid tangibility, home movies, horror, underground cinema, spirit photography, the scopic drive, the Uncanny, Cinema of Transgression, Film as a Subversive Art (a la Amos Vogel), social media, TikTok, artificial intelligence and the digital realm to deep dives into particular auteur filmmakers, photographers or artists, such as Diane Arbus, Joel-Peter Witkin, Francis Bacon, William Mortensen, Werner Herzog or Russ Meyer. 

Please send inquiries and proposals for presentations to: sinclairvanessa [AT] gmail [DOT] com

Image: Carl Abrahamsson and Vanessa Sinclair with William Mortensen’s camera and work, care of Stephen Romano Gallery, NYC

“The Death Drive on Film” by Mary Wild and “The Revolution will go Viral… on Sexting, the Digital & Contagion” by Dr Clint Burnham

8.00

Date: Sunday, May 22, 2022
Time: 2 pm EST

This lecture will take place virtually, via Zoom. Ticket sales will end at 12:30pm EST the day of the lecture. This event will be recorded and ticketholders will receive a temporary streaming link after the live stream.

Ticketholders: a link to the conference is sent out at 1 pm EST on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please add info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com to your contacts to ensure that the event link will not go to spam.

PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for our Patreon members at $5/above. Become a Member HERE.

The Death Drive on Film, by Mary Wild

In “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920), Sigmund Freud defined the death drive as being in opposition to Eros (i.e., the affirmation of life through survival, propagation, productivity, and romance). This talk will focus the death drive on film, represented as self-sabotage, the unconscious wish to return to an inorganic state, and the urge to repeat painful past events. The proposition is that there is a cultural merit in coming to terms with the death drive, as it helps us to identify, comprehend and integrate harmful impulses in a functional way.

Films discussed: Damage (1992), Weekend At Bernie’s (1989), Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)

“The Revolution will go Viral… on Sexting, the Digital & Contagion,” by Dr. Clint Burnham

We need psychoanalysis to understand our conflicted anxieties brought to the fore by Covid, we needed Covid-19 to come along to help us comprehend the dyad of connectivity and isolation at work in the internet, and we continue to need the internet to understand such psychoanalytic ideas as the unconscious and “desire is the desire of the Other.” 

Drawing on the work of Freud, Lacan, Žižek, and Byung-Chul Han, and discussing sexting, anti-vaxxers, and “the subject supposed to LOL,” this talk will argue that our desires on the internet, our anxieties about vaccines and masks, and the way things go viral, can only be understood with the help of psychoanalysis, and, that these cultural phenomena can in turn help advance the theory and practice, the very relevance, of psychoanalysis today.

This talk is part of the Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, and occult practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences, and areas of research interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another though often operate in similar and complementary ways.

About the speakers:

Mary Wild is the creator of the PROJECTIONS lecture series at Freud Museum London, applying psychoanalysis to film interpretation. Mary also co-hosts the Projections Podcast, and contributes to The Evolution of Horror Podcast.

Dr. Clint Burnham is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where he also teaches theory and popular culture. He is one of the facilitators of the Lacan Salon. His books include The Jamesonian Unconscious: The Aesthetics of Marxist Theory (1995), The Only Poetry that Matters: Reading the Kootenay School of Writing (2011), and the collections Digital Natives (2011, co-ed. with Lorna Brown) and From Text to Txting: New Media in the Classroom (2012, co-ed. with Paul Budra). His most recent book Does the Internet Have an Unconscious? (2018) is both an introduction to the work of Slavoj Žižek and an investigation into how his work can be used to think about the digital present. Clint Burnham uniquely combines the German idealism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Marxist materialism found in Žižek’s thought to understand how the Internet, social and new media, and digital cultural forms work in our lives and how their failure to work structures our pathologies and fantasies. He suggests that our failure to properly understand the digital is due to our lack of recognition of its political, aesthetic, and psycho-sexual elements. Mixing autobiographical passages with critical analysis, Burnham situates a Žižekian theory of digital culture in the lived human body.

Uncanny Aspects of Oscar Wilde: “Dancing With Salome: Decadence & the Supernatural” by Nina Antonia and “Activating Wilde’s World View” by Robert Podgurski

• Sunday, April 24, 2022
• 2:00 PM  3:30 PM

Admission: $8 – Tickets and more info HERE

Nina Antonia will examine the aspects of enchantment that infused the Decadent movement as well as the perils of seeking wisdom outside of earthly boundaries. Robert Podgurski will address the ways in which Oscar Wilde’s liberated worldview may be read, not just textually, but as magical action.

This lecture will take place virtually, via Zoom. Ticket sales will end at 12:30pm EST the day of the lecture. This event will be recorded and ticketholders will receive a temporary streaming link after the live stream.

Ticketholders: a link to the conference is sent out at 1 pm EST on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please add info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com to your contacts to ensure that the event link will not go to spam.

PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for our Patreon members at $5/above. Become a Member HERE.

“Dancing With Salome: Decadence & the Supernatural” by Nina Antonia

Nina Antonia is the author of a trinity of critically acclaimed books exploring the uncanny forces surrounding Oscar Wilde and his coterie. The majority of contemporary mainstream studies of the 1890’s excise the unseen, magical aspects that would have informed the art of Wilde and his peers, including W.B Yeats and Arthur Machen, who were both members of The Golden Dawn. Nina will be examining the aspects of enchantment that infused the Decadent movement as well as the perils of seeking wisdom outside of earthly boundaries.

“Activating Wilde’s World View” by Robert Podgurski

In this talk, Robert Podgurski will be addressing the ways in which Oscar Wilde’s liberated worldview may be read, not just textually, but as magical action. In particular, Chuang Tzu’s non-doing as Wilde understood it, presents a puzzle for the engaging reader, but one that is first and foremost intended to be playful. This talk is a supplement to Podgurski’s essay “Oscar Wilde’s Active Inaction and Composing the Individual” that will be included in the upcoming issue of The Fenris Wolf. For those new to the thought of Wilde and his world, this presentation is intended to raise some awareness of the interpretive act as it relates to the contemplative. Ultimately, any attempt to translate the complexities of Wilde’s understanding of freedom is to challenge the procedures and basis of western learning itself.

Nina Antonia has been a published author since 1987, specialising in the unconventional, wayward and decadent. Despite critical acclaim from the likes of The Washington Post and The Gay & Lesbian Review, Ms Antonia has skirted establishment confines to create a unique body of written work. Over the last 5 years Nina has chronicled the esoteric aspects of the lives of Oscar Wilde, his ‘homme fatale’ Lord Alfred Douglas and the poet Lionel Johnson, who inadvertently caused the greatest scandal of the Fin De Siecle by introducing Douglas to Wilde. Ms Antonia will be discussing this uncanny alliance in her most recent books; The Greenwood Faun (Egaeus Press) Incurable: The Haunted Writings of Lionel Johnson, the Decadent Era’s Dark Angel (Strange Attractor Press) and Dancing with Salome: Courting the Uncanny with Oscar Wilde and Friends (Trapart Books).

Robert Podgurski’s engagement with magic over 40 years has included mountaineering, yoga, chi gong, prose, and verse. His Sacred Alignments and Sigils (North Atlantic Books, 2019) is the most current manifestation of his project(ive): the Grid Sigil. As a practical and investigative tool The Grid Sigil deals with the closely knit relationship between ley-lines, meta-neural-programming, and geo-magnetic sorcery. In continuation of this working Podgurski will be launching his book, The Aetheric Alignments (prospectively fall of 2022 / spring 2023 with Inner Traditions). This study encompasses the history of the aether in early western as well as eastern consciousness up to  our modern era as well as broaching practical applications. Podgurski is also the author of several works in poetry: Wandering On Course (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014); and his on-going long poem, Intersecting Visions / Vision Intersects (Bullhead Books, 2019).  His most recent poetry series, In the Shadow of This Branch is forthcoming in 2023. Along with poetry Podgurski has also authored fiction including his first full-length novel, Beyond the Lens of Time (date of publication to be announced shortly). For more information contact him at: deathsigil@gmail.com or visit his website: https://robertpodgurski.com/

The Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, and occult practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences, and areas of research interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another though often operate in similar and complementary ways.

Join us March 27 for “The Compleat Story: How Anton LaVey Created The Compleat Witch” by Peggy Nadramia: Part of the Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult Series, Live on Zoom, Morbid Anatomy Museum, online.

Date: Sunday, March 27
Time: 2-3:30 pm EST

This lecture will take place virtually, via Zoom. Ticket sales will end at 12:30pm EST the day of the lecture. This event will be recorded and ticketholders will receive a temporary streaming link after the live stream.

Ticketholders: a link to the conference is sent out at 1 pm EST on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please add info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com to your contacts to ensure that the event link will not go to spam.

PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for our Patreon members at $5/above. Become a Member HERE.

Peggy Nadramia, High Priestess of the Church of Satan, spent several years reviewing archival records to reconstruct Anton LaVey’s plans and process in writing this, his most personal book. She will relate that story as well as the details of LaVey’s exhausting promotional tour and how the book fared in the years that followed. The Compleat Witch, or What to do When Virtue Fails, was first published in 1971, and then reissued in 1989 by Feral House as The Satanic Witch.

The Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, and occult practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences, and areas of research interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another though often operate in similar and complementary ways.

Peggy Nadramia was born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City. She attended Catholic school as a child and received her degrees from the State University of New York, Fordham University and New York University. In 1985, she founded Grue Magazine, a small press journal of horror fiction, which received the World Fantasy Award in 1990. In 2002 she became the High Priestess of the Church of Satan. She is currently working on an extensive archive project for the Church and developing articles on the organization’s history and influence. She resides in Poughkeepsie, NY, in a haunted mansion. She is married to Peter H. Gilmore.

Experiences with Precognitive Dreams, Synchronicity and Notes on the Occult Influence of Derek Jarman: Part of the Psychoanalysis, Art and the Occult Series, with Gary Lachman and Carl Abrahamsson

• Sunday, February 20, 2022
• 2:00 PM  3:30 PM

Time: 2 pm EST
Admission: $8 – Tickets HERE

The Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, and occult practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences, and areas of research interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another though often operate in similar and complementary ways.

“Dreaming Ahead of Time: Experiences with Precognitive Dreams, Synchronicity and Coincidence”

 Can we dream the future? Does time flow in only one direction? What is a ‘meaningful coincidence’?

Gary Lachman, author of many books on consciousness, culture, and the western esoteric tradition (and former bassist for Blondie), has been recording his precognitive dreams for forty years – dreams, that is, in which bits and pieces of the future turn up “ahead of time.” In his talk, based on his new book Dreaming Ahead of Time, Lachman will relate how he came to discover that he “dreams the future,” and how this surprising ability is something we all share but are unaware that we do. Along the way, Lachman will look at the work of other “time haunted men,” such as J.W. Dunne, J. B. Priestley, P.D. Ouspensky, C.G. Jung, Arthur Koestler, and others who, like himself, discovered that the “tick tick tock of the stately clock” – with apologies to Cole Porter – is not the only way in which that mysterious something we call “time” can be understood.

Gary Lachman is the author of many books about consciousness, culture, and the Western esoteric tradition, including The Return of Holy Russia, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, and Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson. He writes for several journals in the US, UK, and Europe, lectures around the world and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In a former life he was a founding member of the pop group Blondie and in 2006 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Before moving to London in 1996 and becoming a full time writer, Lachman studied philosophy, managed a metaphysical book shop, taught English literature, and was Science Writer for UCLA. He is an adjunct professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He can be reached at: http://garylachman.co.uk

“Tripping the Dark Light Fantastic – Notes on the occult influence of filmmaker Derek Jarman”

 Watching Derek Jarman’s experimental film “In the Shadow of the Sun” for the first time in the early 1980s formatted my own aesthetic not only concerning cinema but also art in general. An important individuation key for me since then has been to continually evaluate Jarman’s distinctly magical, alchemical approach (and its many ripple effects) as a conscious expression of, and connection to, occultural history and general occult experimentation. Meaning, what you are creating is not “only” art, but also a talismanic platform through which desires may or may not be processed. And that this approach is a living and thriving tradition; not just an odd intellectual occurrence in our own contemporary times.

Carl Abrahamsson is a Swedish author, specializing in Occulture and Magico-anthropology. His books include Resonances (2014), Occulture (2018), The Devil’s Footprint (2020), Sacred Intent (2020), Different People (2021), and Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan (2022). He is also the editor and publisher of the highly renowned anthologies in The Fenris Wolf series. https://www.carlabrahamsson.com