Occulture

Erik Davis is back in the house for a second time to rap a bit about his latest book High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica and Visionary Experience in the Seventies.  Most of you know Erik from his podcast, Expanding Mind, or from the tome known as TechGnosis, or perhaps from his work on The Exegesis of Philip K Dick. No matter how you know Erik, you know he is the sultan of high strangeness, and High Weirdness may just be his magnum opus, which is saying quite a bit if you’ve read his previous work. High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from American countercultural voices of the 1970s, including Philip K Dick, Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality―but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?   PATREON EXTENSION Listen at patreon.com/occulture Erik’s idea of weird naturalism Terence & Dennis McKenna’s expe