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RVML Resource Center 2002-2007 Calendar Archives 17 January 2006, Tuesday |
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Lecture: Magic, Metapolitics, and Reality in the Twilight of the Industrial Age by John Greer
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: RVML Event Center - 258 A St, Ashland
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Lecture: The Magical Future - Magic, Metapolitics, and Reality in the Twilight of the Industrial AgeBy John Greer
$3-5 Suggested donation
(Everyone welcome, no one turned away)
Presentation Description:
As our modern industrial society stumbles from one self-induced crisis into another, it's crucial to realize that we can't solve our problems with the same thinking that created them. Even our most basic assumptions about what's real have to be questioned, for behind the ordinary politics of interest groups and self-seeking officialdom lies the deeper world of metapolitics, where the nature of reality itself is up for grabs.
350 years ago, the scientific revolution redefined the world as a place where matter is the only thing that matters and people have value only as interchangeable cogs in an industrial machine. Yet the triumph of materialist metapolitics was never total; a hidden stream of secret societies and initiatory lineages have preserved the indigenous wisdom traditions of our own culture right up to the present.
At the heart of those traditions is magic -- the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will. The abolition of magic was essential to the making of the industrial age, because magic challenges the basic project of industrialism, the creation of a "prosthetic society" in which people surrender their own abilities to the industrial machine and replace them with technological substitutes.
Today the nonexistence of magic is an article of faith for most people in the industrial world, even as methods of advertising and social engineering based on the old lore of magic play an ever larger role in papering over the cracks in the industrial facade. As the art of human potential, magic offers an extraordinary toolkit of possibilities to those willing to reclaim their own power and reinvent themselves and their world.
Presenter's Biography:
John Michael Greer has been involved in the study and practice of occultism and alternative spirituality since the 1970s and is an initiate in several esoteric lineages, including the Magical Order of the Golden Dawn and the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids. The author of 14 books, including the award-winning "New Encyclopedia of the Occult" (Llewellyn, 2003) and the forthcoming "The Druidry Handbook" (Weiser, 2006), and a regular guest on alternative talk radio, he currently heads the Ancient Order of Druids in America (www.aoda.org), a church of Druid nature spirituality founded in 1912. He lives in Ashland.
Website: http://www.aoda.org/about/greerbio.htm
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RVML's MISSION STATEMENT: "Providing easy access to a comprehensive collection of metaphysical, spiritual, and paranormal information that inspires and transforms."
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RENT RVML's LECTURE HALL: The 1,000 square-foot (15'x65') presentation area is air-conditioned and wheelchair accessible with full audio-visual capabilities available. Eighty folding chairs can be arranged in different configurations for meetings, lectures, and gatherings. Cost: $15.00 per hour, 2 hour minimum. Includes free e-mail and web-calendar advertising. Other publicity and production services available. More information: http://www.rvml.org/contact.shtml
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 Licensed To: RVML |
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