Andrew Sage

In terms of political projects or social projects, you can probably relate this.

I think that it would be fair to say that it's something like culture jamming, if we're looking for some familiar concepts for people to map onto.

That is to say, a focus away from simply solitary practice and the ways in which occult elements influence broader aspects of our society or are appropriated, whether that's through consumerist forces or through various artistic practices or even the production of, for example,

film, television, movies.

So I think that's a fair assessment of the impacts of a culture.

And relevant to our discussion later, its influence in the tech sector and the emergence of AI, which the current manifestation of has some heavily occult origins.

regarding around a whole bunch of people in the 90s who were writing about AI as this occult project and then that influenced many an AI engineer and coder who are now building this stuff.

And it's becoming an ever-present part of our lives.

And the occultists now are trying to incorporate it into their own practice, which we will discuss in a sec.

Any other notes on a culture as a concept or what this conference is doing with the concept?

I think a culture is a concept is something that's basically been around as long as there's been magical practices.

Just looking at so much of things like, you know, the concept of the British Empire being invented by John Dee.

because of conversations he was having with angels.

hundreds, if not thousands of years.

There may also be one other aspect that's important for our American audiences, given that we're recording this in Deutschland.

This conference varies significantly from other American equivalents or something that might be an American equivalent.

Formerly PantheaCon in and around San Francisco and San Jose specifically, or Paganacon in the Twin Cities, which specifically has much more of a New Age, neo-pagan, reconstructionist.

And so most...

academic discussion is viewed with some suspicion.

And I'm hesitant to say that there's an anti-intellectual trend because I don't necessarily think that's true.