I am very excited to be a part of this year’s Occulture Conference in Berlin. The line-up looks stellar and I look forward to meeting old and new friends alike. Check it out and get your ticket here!

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My talk this time will focus on the path between two recent books: my magical autobiography Meetings with Remarkable Magicians and the brand new Introduction to Occulture. Going from the occult scene of mid 1980s Stockholm to contemporary processes of occulture and occulturation (for good & bad), with lots of stories, meetings, wisdoms, and hopefully inspiring take-aways.

Seeing what works has always been important to me, and the very ambitious Occulture Conference is like an accumulation of exactly that; not only in terms of attracting individuals who have found their own magical truths and systems, but also in its own right: the conference is an active result of an original need that finds or takes form and then very tangibly affects other people. Sharing experiential and experimental experiences along the way is valuable, and it is deeply integrated in my own tradition and system (which we can call ”Current 23”). That’s why I feel such a strong kinship with this conference & festival. It has the audacity and eloquence to present itself without shame or hesitation, thus removing important perennial wit & wisdom from the strictly occult spheres to the more vibrant occultural ditto.

Concretely taking charge of space & time is important. Esoteric sand castles are no longer really useful or relevant. Pragmatism and eclecticism are the keys to building functional networks and foundations for the future. Less dogmatism and more open-minded experimentation lead on to greater things than denominational and territorial nonsense.

I think that this is especially important to keep in mind now that academia wants to get involved, too. There’s an inherent risk that the academic fetishization of data clothed in structure and their apparently erotically charged empiricism could cloud or mute the signal of both occulturation and occulture itself. Please don’t get me wrong: I think academics should always be welcome to the table – hence my own open attitudes in the editing of The Fenris Wolf, for instance – but it is important to realize that they are the ones needing to be challenged at this point in time and culture, and not necessarily the magical practitioners already on their way and already expressing themselves in a solid & healthy first-hand perspective.

That said, I look forward to going to Berlin and sharing my own past and present first-hand experiences. It’s an integral part of Current 23: to pay back & pay forward.

Vade Ultra!