THE BEGINNING IS NEAR: An immersive discussion on apocalypse and renewal Dean Arts Studio, Dublin 2, Thursday March 28th, 7pm – 9.30pm + Streaming Online €15-€35 (pay what you can afford, ticket includes a complimentary refreshment) + ONLINE STREAMING TICKETS
Feel like everything is collapsing and decaying? What would it feel like to consider everything is about to begin and flourish?
Join me and a host of AEWCH guests – Croatian philosopher and organizerSrećko Horvat, journalist and activist Una Mullally, and Mark O’Connell, for a unique opportunity to dissect and create new pathways amidst both global turmoil and solidarity-building!
War, and the nihilism of over-consumption, are in a fever-pitch struggle with visions of peace, contentment, and connection. In THE BEGINNING IS NEAR, our four speakers will explore the polar opposites of disaster and renewal, inviting the audience into the discussion to create a broader vision for Dublin, Ireland, and the world at large.
THE BEGINNING IS NEAR marks Srećko Horvat’s first speaking engagement in Ireland. His knowledge in philosophy, school-building, and political organizing, conjures a spirit of resonance, which reveals what feels like ‘the end’, across so many fronts, can also mark a real beginning.
TICKETS are available on a sliding scale: pay what you can at €15, €25, or €35. Space is limited, buy your tickets early! Complimentary beverages provided.
LIVESTREAM TICKETS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE to watch the event remotely for a flat fee of €15 (about $16.50 USD), and comes with limited-time access to a recording of the event. When you buy a livestream ticket, you will receive the link 12-24 hours ahead of the event via the email you supply at point of purchase.
All ticket holders will receive access to a recording of the event for a limited time.
Join us at the edge of death and birth, truth and love.
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Friends, Following my series of episodes on horror, now we turn to another form of art that plays on in our astral world, that world of emotions and the heart: MUSIC. For a few episodes, I’ll be talking about music with some of my favorite musicians. But these won’t be the standard chats about the latest album or touring; instead, we’ll talk about music itself and how it lives in the lives of these artists, my life, your lives, and life itself.
Each episode will also feature a spotify playlist here in the show notes, with some of my favorite songs by the featured artist. The first episode, AEWCH 237, featured Will Oldham AKA Bonnie “Prince” Billy.
This time around, it’s IAN LYNCH, founder of traditional weird folk horror band LANKUM and host of the FIRE DRAW NEAR podcast, on which he plays and talks about traditional (mostly Irish) music.
Ian and I talk about how music draws influence from differing experiences of time, from history, from horror and murder, and from resistance, among many, many other things. I loved walking through this landscape with Ian, and there’s so much here for you — passages and tunnels and caves — to explore as a listener, too.
As a little bonus, at the end of the episode I’ve included a version of the traditional song, False Lankum, about a strange murderous creature, the Lankum (also known as Lankin and Lankim), for which Ian’s band is named. It’s a chilling song – in this instance performed by John Reilly Jr.
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST FOR THIS EPISODE HERE The Old Man from over the Sea • The New York Trader • The Young People • Go Dig My Grave • The Sea Captain • The Granite Gaze • The Pride of Patravore • On a Monday Morning • What Will We Do When We Have No Money? • The Townie Polka • Nette Perseus • Drinking Song from the Tomb • The Turkish Reveille • Lord Abore and Mary Flynn
Something that we do on this show a lot is express the way the spiritual, economic, and political interpenetrate. Usually when people or podcasters do that, they look at magical and occult parapolitics; and that invariably becomes funneled into messages of conspiracy.
But that rabbit hole is almost always just a variation of materialism because they privilege material conditions, material conspiracies. They focus on the manipulation of the world as it is by political agents instead of reflecting on the spiritual reality.
What if, instead, we moved past a focus on material conspiracies with spiritual dimensions and into the way true artists are working with the constitutive forces of being human, and the artistic presence of nature, and the invisible consciousnesses that sustain everything?
To talk about all of this I invited Marko Pogačnik onto the show*. He’s best known as being appointed as one of the few UNESCO Artists For Peace, and also for founding the OHO art Movement in former Yugoslavia – a group that included such iconic figures as Tomaž Šalamun and Slavoj Žižek.
Marko’s artistic work is a conscious communication with the elemental beings and the places they are intertwined with and co-create. He practices something called lithopuncture, which seeks to calirfy the presence of elemental beings and heal the spiritual being of the earth using cosmograms. He also offers spiritual exercises in the form of Gaia Touch exercises… and if you don’t know what any of that means, we talk about it extensively on the episode,
His books are filled with exercises you can, and should, engage with as you read.
Enjoy this wonderfully bizarre and love-filled episode.
(*While I’m taking a little break from the series on Irish magic, since it’s proved even more trickstery than my other series, this still touches on Ireland and fairies. They pop up and express their importance. That series will be ongoing, so expect more to pop up soon.)
SHOW NOTES
WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ? A parallel to Marko’s work can be found in director and comic book writer Alejandro Jodorowsky’s healing work, which I mention on this episode. And the best introduction to that work is his book,Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy. It’s a fantastic, bizarre, and thrilling tour into Jodorowksy’s workings.
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? An episode about spiritual art and technology informing each other is AEWCH 113 with sculptor and radionics practitioner, Duncan Laurie (he wrote a great book on the subject or radionics, too!). This recording is from years ago that I turned into an AEWCH ep, and it didn’t get as much attention as it deserved, I don’t think. So it’s a bit of a hidden gem amongst the episodes.
WHAT SHOULD YOU LOOK INTO FURTHER? What would a science that engages with the elemental kingdom look like? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s method of science is brought forward at The Nature Institute in New York State, and though it often doesn’t recognize, explicitly, the elementals, it definitely goes all the way into spiritual perception. It’s a beautiful and vital initiative.
MORE ON MARKO The best place to find more on Marko is, of course, his website, which has extensive links to his books, his public events, and his biography. Marko is a founder of the legendary OHO Movement, an art movement which also had Tomaž Šalamun and Slavoj Žižek as members. And here’s an interview with Marko about his work in Art Margins.
Against Everyone With Conner Habib is funded exclusively by listeners like you. Do you find value in this show? If so, support the podcast. SUPPORT THIS PODCAST viaPatreon
Friends, Since 2019, I’ve lived in Ireland. It’s a country being pulled away from Catholic traditionalism and towards humanistic tech neoliberalism. But the spiritual Celtic landscape has never gone away, either. Here, the supernatural, paranormal, mystical, and occult still hold their strange and potent sway. But where they were once “contained” by religion or traditional belief structures, now they don’t reside in the same place in Irish experience or psyche. Where does magic “go” when it’s displaced? So here’s my series on the spiritual realm of Ireland, which will be looking at Ireland’s spiritual landscape specifically, and how that gives us a picture of the spirit and modernity in general. The first in the series was AEWCH 186 with Dr. Andrew Sneddon on Irish witchcraft and belief.
I’m so excited to share this episode with you, friends.
SHOW NOTES
WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ? With so few books of anthropological scholarship on fairies in Ireland – ones that don’t merely dismiss the phenomena out of hand – Dennis’s book is a standout. So your best bet is to go way back to anthropologist Walter Evans-Wentz’s kind of sort of classic book, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. Evans-Wentz’s big book is a favorite of academics, lay scholars, and para researchers because of its rigor, and shows up in the strangest places.
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? A great episode, I think, that pulls apart belief and disbelief, magic and where it hides in plain sight, is AEWCH 141 with religious scholar Jason Josephson-Storm. (BTW, I really, really love that episode!)
MORE ON DENNIS To be honest, info on Dennis is pretty hard to find! But here’s a good long review of Running with the Fairies. And here’s an issue of The Irish Theosophistfeaturing some writings on fairies. I didn’t know about the publication (from the 19th century) until I read Dennis’s work.
Against Everyone With Conner Habib is funded exclusively by listeners like you. Do you find value in this show? If so, support the podcast. SUPPORT THIS PODCAST viaPatreon
Friends,
Since 2019, I’ve lived in Ireland. It’s a country being pulled away from Catholic traditionalism and towards humanistic tech neoliberalism. But the spiritual Celtic landscape has never gone away, either. Here, the supernatural, paranormal, mystical, and occult still hold their strange and potent sway. But where they were once “contained” by religion or traditional belief structures, now they don’t reside in the same place in Irish experience or psyche. Where does magic “go” when it’s displaced? Welcome to my series on the spiritual realm of Ireland, which will be looking at Ireland’s spiritual landscape specifically, and how that gives us a picture of the spirit and modernity in general.
WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ? Two books on the conflation (and consequences) of withchcraft and fairies in Ireland are about Bridget Cleary – a woman burned to death by her husband in 1895 after he suspected her of being a changeling. First is The Burning of Bridget Clearyby Angela Bourke, and second is The Cooper’s Wife Is Missingby Joan Hoff and Marian Yates.
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? The obvious choice in AEWCH 98with Thomas Waters on the victims of witchcraft and the witchcraft of victims. Thomas is a scholar of witchcraft in the UK (and thankfully also examines the way beliefs in the UK permeated the places it colonized) and there are plenty of parallels here, especially in how magic “hides” by moving its use into new cultural corners and contours.
WHAT SHOULD YOU LOOK INTO FURTHER? Since we’re kicking off the series, it’s best to refer you first to the site of the The National Folklore Collection here in Ireland. It’s a huge site with tons of different directions and magical rabbit holes to go down.
Friends, In the midst of 2022, so many of us are seeking peace and meaning. So here’s my series on one meaning-rich tradition and religious stream: Christianity.
But this will be a different sort of Christianity: occult and esoteric Christianity. Some of it might look familiar. Some might seem absolutely bizarre. All of it, I hope will stir a feeling of warmth and depth of meaning for you, whether you feel any affinity with Christianity or the occult. The first episode in the series was AEWCH 181, featuring Rev. Patrick Kennedy from the Christian Community – a religious tradition informed by occultism.
So… how is esoteric Christianity used? Or put differently, how does it work into and through our being and then act on the world? How can we form a new picture of reality out of it and proceed into thinking, feeling, and willing a new one into being?
To discuss this, I spent some time in rural Ireland with spiritual teacher and writer Lisa Romero. Lisa last appeared on the show three years ago on AEWCH 68 to discuss the occult picture of sex and sexuality. It was a profound conversation for me, but it barely approaches this one in terms of depth and breadth. We talk about Christianity at work in us, around us, and in the world. We discuss why esoteric symbols are used (why, for instance, is a star shape important and not just arbitrary?). And we discuss so much more.
This is one of my very favorite episodes, I’m so happy to share it with you.
SHOW NOTES
WHATBOOKYOUSHOULDREAD?If you’d like to spend some time with one of the great Christian mystics, a good place to start is The Interior Castleby St. Teresa of Avila.
WHATOTHERAEWCHEPISODEYOUSHOULDLISTENTO?For another look at forgiveness and understanding, a great episode is AEWCH162withDr.GwenAdshead, who works with violent offenders and seeks to greet them with compassion. It’s a powerful episode and Gwen’s work is so utterly moving to me.
WHATSHOULDYOULOOKINTOFURTHER?Lisa mentions St. John of the Cross, and there’s a great series of episodes about him on the podcast Turning To The Mystics. There’s so much there and so many episodes, so I suggest you start with this one.
SUPPORT THIS PODCAST Against Everyone With Conner Habib is free for everyone, but it only exists via of support of listeners. If you like this show, if it has meaning for you, support it by using Patreon! Thank you so, so much.To buy all of John’s books, go to Lilliput Press, who deliver all over the world. Or you can buy them via my booklist for AEWCH 173 from bookshop.org. A lot of them are on. backorder, but if you order them, they’ll get to you! And I get a small kickback when you order from there.
Friends,
I’m so proud to share with you a comprehensive introduction and exploration of Irish mystic philosopher John Moriarty‘s work. The episode is a recording of the event I curated at the National Concert Hall, Republic of Birds (part of the same event series I curated that AEWCH 170 – on utopia with Una Mullally and Andrea Horan – was part of: Utopia at the National Concert Hall).
The episode starts with me reading the chapter “Shaman” from John’s incredible book, Invoking Ireland. Then three guests speak:
First, human rights lawyer and activist Simone George. – whose incredible 2018 TED Talk with her partner Mark Pollock is a testament to the depths of love and grief. Simone offers up how John helped her through the trials of the time and in communicating with and moving through with Mark’s paralysis. It’s a profound meditation on the body and freedom and care.
Then Mary McGillicuddy – who offers the best intro to John I’ve ever heard – of course she does, she’s the author of John Moriarty: Not the Whole Story – it’s an amazing meditation on John’s work. One of my favorite moments is when she weaves in John’s idea of the “Diamond Dimension” and “silver branch perception”:
“No matter how evil,” John wrote, “in no matter how many lifetimes I might have been, I continue at the core of my soul to be as pure as a drop of water on a lotus leaf…at the core of his being the devil is still an angel…”
Finally, Dónal Ó Céilleachair co-director (with Julius Ziz) of Dreamtime Revisted, which you can rent streaming here, and founder of Anú Pictures. Donal’s offering gets cut off by the recording, but we managed to get at least one of his keen perspectives in, and it’s a good one.
SUPPORT THIS PODCAST! Against Everyone With Conner Habib is free for everyone, but it only exists via of support of listeners. If you like this show, if it has meaning for you, support it by using Patreon! Thank you so, so much.
FRIENDS:
Here’s a live episode of AEWCH, featuring one of my main collaborators, Una Mullally (AEWCH 151 & AEWCH 87) plus one of her main collaborators, Andrea Horan, who co-hosts their podcast, United Ireland.
In this live event, Una, Andrea, and I discussed Utopia with a live audience, and then got them to dream up utopia as well. The audience appears on this episode, expressing what they’ve dreamt up. It’s a messy and wonderful moment: Dream big, dream now, dream together with strangers. I’m so happy with how the evening turned out.
To that end, when you listen to this episode, please do the exercises we suggest (and the supplements to the exercise) as best you can.
No real show notes here, but plenty of references to Rudolf Steiner & social threefolding, Grant Morrison, Jacques Lacan, magic, self help, and of course, utopia.
In the midst of the loneliness and fear of 2020, Una Mullally (AEWCH 87 & 151) and I noticed something profound: people were helping each other. They were looking out for each other. We both had the same thought at the same time: if we could wash our hands, and stand far apart, and buy groceries for our neighbors, and live each day with concern in our hearts for one another, we could make a better world, too.
And it didn’t have to be complicated, we’d just need the right starting point. And that starting point was and is:
What do you want?
Instead of asking questions of what’s practical, what came before, or what’s expected next, we thought, why not really ask what people are imagining.
So we started a project just for people living in Ireland in the summer of 2020: Utopia Ireland. We asked people what their idea was for a better Ireland they’d think a better Ireland looked like. We got well over a thousand answers in just a few months with almost no marketing.
What we found was that people in Ireland are ready for something: not “new” not “old” but something connected.
When the National Concert Hall contacted Una and said they were curating new series of events that would take place just at the turning point of the pandemic, we knew that this was a way for us to ask the question again.
What did we want? In this case, what did we want from cultural and music events?
We wanted events that had a sense of risk, a sense of uncertainty, and a sense of vision.
We wanted a concert – Murmuration – that drew from the culture of buskers in Irish cities and from the unpredictability of nature. At the concert — which features Gang of Youths frontman Dave Le’Aupepe (AEWCH 31), Gemma Doherty from Saint Sister, Irish folk star Daoirí Farrell, and more — each musician “passes off” the stage to the next musician, sharing the space and working with the musical director Ben Castle. The show will be dangerous in the best sense of the word. Instead of a polished production, it will move like the light of birds it’s named after.
We wanted a celebration of one of the most profound visionaries in Irish history, John Moriarty. John’s work is praised by Irish writers and celebrities. But he’s still largely unknown. He wrote about Ireland that was in touch with its eternal landscape, ancient mythology, and artistic present, all at once.
We wanted to present a merging of our podcasts, Against Everyone with Conner Habib and United Irelandto talk about utopia – and social threefolding – with each other and with the audience.
We wanted a room where sound was immersive, penetrating, and healing. A “sound bath” run by DJs and sound artists that passes the vibration through you as you enter; messing you up in the best way possible.
We wanted the unrehearsed, un-contained energy of rap music, with the spirit of a battle and freestyle. Music and lyrics that are craved from the air in the room by Irelands’ most innovative hi[p hop artists: Rebel Phoenix, Strange Boy, DJ Replay, Dyramid, and more.
We wanted something that felt involving. We learned in the pandemic that we saved each other. That participation, not spectating in the world is what got us through. So Utopia is a series of events that brings every audience member into a space of vision, anticipation, contemplation, creativity, and movement.
This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib onPatreon! Thank you so, so much.
Wanttobuy the booksmentionedonthisep? For Blindboy’s books you should order from Amazon. His two short story collections, Boulevard Wrenand The Gospel According To Blindboy as well as the book on Irish-English, A Dictionary of Hiberno English(by Terrence Dolan), which he helped re-release, are all a little bit of a pain to get from bookshop.org in the US, so I am unfortunately directing you to Amazon for them. Still, get them. Get them. For the other books mentioned on or related to this episode, please go to my booklist for AEWCH 140 on bookshop.org. It will help supportindependentbookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends,
Jacques Lacan once said something like, the only difference between “normal” people and paranoid schizophrenic people is that the latter has their frantic-Charlie-Day-bulletin-board on the surface. We all draw lines between seemingly disparate points, and our connections are ultimately meaningless. It’s just that you can see that process in the paranoid schizophrenic person.
Well, I don’t know that I agree that the points, the pathways, or the reason we select either are meaningless, but I do like this metaphor. Still, my question is why do you draw the lines you draw? Why are they different from the ones I draw?
I asked my pal Blindboy Boatclub – member of The Rubberbandits and host of The Blindboy Podcast (and also one of the most productively absurd people I’ve ever met) – to join me to talk about all of this.
You might remember Blindboy from my appearance on his show back in March 0f 2019 (and I talk about it in the intro to this ep), when we talked about the occult, ghosts, sex work, and more. This is a continuation of that conversation, and it leads us into weird territory.
ON THIS EPISODE
Versatile Irish words like “craic,” “ride,” and “horny,” why we have boners in America, and why we can say cunt in Ireland
Drawing lines between seemingly disparate topics
Why showing the process in art reveals its livingness
“The only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one’s desire.’
The connection between themes in our art and healing images in the world; and why birdflight is healing
Each problem has a virtue
Autonomous shadows and cartoon duck landlords
Anxiety, depression, and the recreation of time in the global crisis
• Here’s Jon Ronson’s story about his son saying the worst swear word ever.
• Duncan Trussell and I talked about the oblivion in the signal on his show here.
• Want to learn about the mind parasite of the fungal cordyceps? Yeah, of course you do.
• Here’s a good example of one of Blindboy’s drawings (which you can find in his books).
• AEWCH 40 with poet Zachary Schomburg is one of my favorite episodes of the show!
• My Irish Times essay about the changing nature of time and space is here. And here’s the Wittgenstein quote from it: “When we think of the world’s future, we always mean the destination it will reach if it keeps going in the direction we can see it going in now; it does not occur to us that its path is not a straight line but a curve, constantly changing direction,”
• Melancholiais my favorite Lars von Trier movie (maybe the only one I truly like?) and it’s a great comment on the power of depression.
• Here’s one of the first things I ever published, “Emit Time.” Just deciding that one of your first essays ever written would be a new ontology of time, nbd, Conner.
Conner Habib 