THE PSYCHEDELIC PILGRIMAGE TO CALVARY

On revelation, refusal, and the difficulty of following Christ. There were three Ayahuasca ceremonies in one year, and beneath everything they showed me there was a quiet and increasingly unwelcome suggestion that all of this was somehow going to lead back to Christianity. I did not want it to. I

The Record Against the Living

Jung, Ahriman and the anti-Christic logic of digital exposure The accuser no longer needs a court, an editor or even an assembled audience. An account is enough. Somewhere, in the private light of a phone, a name is searched, an old post reopened, a screenshot passed to someone who

THE MIDDLE AISLE OF ALDI

On systems, consumption, and the human animal beneath them People did not know they were interested in skiing until the ski helmets appeared in the middle aisle of Aldi. This is obviously not entirely true, which is why it is useful. Desire does not begin in Aldi. But much of

THE FINAL TRIAL

When Blood Claims Reason’s Jurisdiction A relationship can end long before the body receives the news. The belongings have been returned. The number is blocked. There is no practical reason for further contact. Yet the argument continues inside the nervous system. The body remains assembled for trial, rehearsing evidence,

MYSTICISM AND THE MACHINE

WHAT Ai OFFERS, IF ANYHTING, TO THE INEFFABLE Artificial intelligence has brought language to an extraordinary pitch of competence. Mysticism begins where competence ceases to matter. A large language model is pure language. Nothing else. It has no body beneath the sentence, no silence behind the word, no life that

THE SERIOUS NECESSITY OF BEING SILLY

Against the increasingly solemn business of being alive One of the things I love most about being with my children is how quickly I become an idiot. Silliness is one of the great forgotten human virtues. Not humour exactly. Humour can be intelligent, crafted, barbed, defensive, professional. A person can

THE MYSTICS RETURN

Revelation, Incarnation and the Problem of Form There is a suspicion I have begun to entertain about mysticism: that we have made it too nice. The contemporary account of mystical experience tends toward moral confection. One dissolves the ego, encounters unity, touches God, drinks the medicine, enters the void, and

LOVE DYSMORPHIA

On soul hunger, romantic fantasy and the failure to recognise love There was a time when romantic love was not expected to carry the entire weight of adult life. People fell in love, of course. They desired, betrayed, pined, wrote poems, crossed countries, ruined families, ruined themselves. But marriage was

THE INTOLERABLE MIDDLE

THE NEW RITUALS OF GRIEF IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Something weird is happening between human beings and machines. We are bringing artificial intelligence our grief. Not only the grief of death, but the other deaths too: the end of a relationship, the collapse of a career, the loss

THE RECURSIVE SHADOW

HUMAN, MACHINE AND THE CONCRETISATION OF ARCHETYPE The Recursive Shadow Human, Machine, and the Concretisation of Archetype The machine has no hands. We have hands. That may be the most important thing to understand about our relationship with artificial intelligence. We are becoming increasingly concerned with what artificial intelligence might