And the Devil Take the Hindmost

  For all that, the goal will not be to abandon the rigor and respect for evidence typical of the scientific sources on which we are to rely. (And note that by “science,” here, we mean to include the humanistic disciplines of literary criticism, systematic philosophy, and the like).  Instead, the goal is to respect the evidence as scrupulously as possible, assuming that endeavors such as literary criticism, archival work and – not to be underestimated, archaeology – give us the best possible understanding of the past. We aim to not depart from any of this evidence in order to assert anything definite about past times.  But how does this work differ from a straightforward commentary on various primary and secondary texts? What would it mean to proceed “in the shadows of” or “in the interstices between” the scientific investigations?  One framing is that the present work is an extended logical thought experiment. Or, that it is a magical operation. Medieval magicians o...

What is attempted here is not a work of history. That is to say, it is not a systematic study using the methods of historical science in order to reconstruct the past as empirically as is possible, given the types of extant evidence.  Rather, this is a writing project embedded within contemporary Western occultism; we shall no doubt say more about what is meant by occultism, and what “Westernness” might entail, if the concept has any remaining utility.  The texts that are to follow here should – in a very broad sense – constitute a series of meditations on time . Or, more precisely, they are to be a series of meditations on multiple temporalities, which themselves may not fit together so easily. (To wit: the various antiquities, nostalgias, modernities, post-modernities, post-post modernities, early and late capitalism, the rather shocking present of resurgent fascism and colonial-style genocide [Gaza], golden ages, and future utopias.) Given simultaneously the scope, generaln...