Andrew Sage

The figure name-dropped the most throughout this conference might surprise some people because I'm assuming most do not consider him to be an occultist or really a serious occult figure.

The most discussed individual, at least in my experience of the conference, was not Alistair Crowley, John Dee, someone like Helena Blavatsky, but in fact, William S. Burroughs.

And now we'll return to the panel to discuss the Burroughsian Current.

Let's talk about what I would argue was the strongest current throughout this conference.

I'm going to call the Burroughsian current relating to writer, beat poet and mystic and occultist in his own right, William S. Burroughs and the magical technology that he either invented or popularized in the second half of the 20th century and played a significant role in influencing

successor movements such as Chaos Magic and even the work of the CCRU and Land and Fisher.

The very first talk that we attended was specifically on Burroughs, and Burroughs' ghost haunted the remainder of the conference thereafter and introduced a few of the key tensions throughout the rest of the conference, which we will discuss specifically technology and AI.

So our first talk by Kastor Obstrup, who I believe was Swedish?

One of those.

One of those.

He was working at the University of Copenhagen.

University of Copenhagen, certainly Scandinavian of some flavor variety, focused on William S. Burroughs and Brian Geisen.

I think that it's important, and I appreciated this claim at the outset, that they argued that both Geisen and Burroughs are actually closer to the late surrealists rather than to the beat poets generation, which we typically associate them with, which...

Interestingly enough, I made both of these figures far more compelling to me.

My understanding of them, I mean, despite my familiarity with the cut-up method and, you know, several of the things that Burroughs had written, I always considered them far more beat and therefore less compelling.

Less of interest to me specifically, but this proximity to the surrealists, especially the latter surrealists, I found particularly compelling.

And I think that brings us to the real focus of this talk was Burroughs' cut-up method and another book that he published on the third mind, which gave way to the latter discussions on artificial intelligence and large language models.

So Burroughs definitely popularized the cut-up method which Geisen originated, but Burroughs changed its different forms and manifestations to various mediums of art, like the tape recorder and his own writings, and just words and language.

And I guess the reason why I think talking about this current is important to start is also revolves around this idea of magic as this form of resistance or this culture jamming practice, which Burroughs framed his own

in his work that we could describe as esoteric or inspired by esotericism or achieving esoteric goals is specifically for this cultural infusion to disrupt mainstream culture in some capacity to go against the one God universe, sometimes in an anarchic way, sometimes in a libertarian way.