Following a 1 week break, to begin our series addressing the topic of anti-humanism, we will discuss Absolute Typhos by Alejandro de Acosta. What is a real human? What is real humanity, with real human relations? From the perspectives of the Greek Cynics, Stirner's Unique, and Situationist International, A de A explores these questions, and how mediation informs the human.
No reading for this week folks.
Instead, we'd like to invite people to join in on a discussion and try to bring reading suggestions from the world of anti-humanist thought. During the July 7th session ability/madness/child liberation/race/afropessmism/speciesism all got brought up as potential avenues of attacking this topic but we aren't precluding anything.
If you are interested in the topic we'd love to hear from you at 11 UTC, email bugs @ ni.hil.ist for the jitsi link.
For next week we will continuing our stumbling esoteric path with the piece “The Patter is The Pattern”.
From the publishers of this piece, Filler Distro:
A vast, unfathomable beast is slumbering, casting poisoned dreams through time. Our time, now, is the prelude to its awakening. There’s no such thing as fiction, it inevitably passes through us as a spectre, and forces itself upon existence. Now is the time of monsters, now is the time to see what comes of the encroaching desert.
On Saturday July 3rd at 11 UTC we will be discussing To Break the Jaw of the Night Mare: an exorcism by Tamarix. Contact bugs or a friend for the jit.si url!
For next week we will be reading select pieces from the text Serpent Songs -
An anthology of traditional craft. Those sections are:
Introduction – The Other Blood: A Prelude
Stregoneria: A Roman Furnace
Passers-By: Potential, Crossroads & Wayfaring on the Serpent Road
About the text
Traditional Craft is defined as any non-Gardnerian, non-Alexandrian, non-Wiccan or pre-modern form of the Craft. From The Other Blood: “Even if Traditional Witchcraft varies dramatically in its expressions, there are vectors of commonality to be found. It is those vectors that brought together this gathering of serpentine voices under the Traditional Witchcraft landmarks: blood, night, land and crossroads.”
“Stregoneria is the art of living strategically, with passion, dedication, desire and intention, taking into their own hands the responsibility for their lives by transforming the death of the physical body in the birth of the luminous body.”
“Hidden in the dark forest of each breath, there is a serpent-tongued road that offers the keys to heaven or hell; yet as quickly as this stang of opportunity reveals itself, it is gone again – until the bottom of the next breath, wherein a new road presents itself, and another, and another...”
For next session we will be continuing with Cosmic Pessimism, and diving deeper into this poetic piece. If you missed last week you could definitely read the whole thing and come this week, and you may want to do so because this piece is very good (imo) and the conversation it provoked has been really interesting. As always email bugs [at} ni.hil.ist for the room invite code, or message me on mastodon, or get it from a friend!
Up next for reading group is a both meticulously and totally arbitrarily selected which somehow nicely lines up with the rest of our reading. Our next piece is Cosmic Pessimism by Eugene Thacker. We will be splitting this reading over 2 weeks, reading up to page 44 for next week (don't worry, the font is big, the pages are small, and there's lots of images). Hope to see you there :)
For next week, we'd like to invite folks to come for a meta chat about where to go next. If there's something you think would make for a good discussion we'd love to hear from you. And even if you don't, you could also suggest a topic of interest and we can spend some time picking out a text together. Below is a list of all our past writings for some inspiration, and people have expressed an interest in ecology, but we wouldn't preclude anything! Also don't feel obligated to come with suggestions, if you're interested in participating this is a great opportunity to come by and get a feel for it.
Nietzsche and Anarchy
On The Genealogy Of Morality
Stirner's Critics
Nihilism as Egoism
The Unique And Its Property
Blessed is the Flame
Baedan 1
Meditation on Mediation: Direct Experience as Spirituality
First Protocols of Queer Goetia
The Individualist Anarchist Discourse of Early Interwar Germany
Reading: Chapter 3: Concepts, Intellectuals, Disobedience, Chapter 4: The Beiblatt: Individualist Anarchism and the Grotesque, and the Epilogue: Individualist Anarchism in the Twenty-First Century.
Theanarchistlibrary.org link
Meeting time: May 29th, 6pm CST
Get the jitsi link from bugs! (bugs) Ⓐni.hil.ist