Occulture, William S. Burroughs, and Generative AI

Summary

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It Could Happen Here – Occulture, William S. Burroughs, and Generative AI

Podcast: It Could Happen Here (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Host: Garrison Davis
Panelists: Delta, Ryan, Elaine
Release Date: October 30, 2025
Theme: A deep dive into the 2025 Occulture Conference in Berlin, the intersection of the occult and mainstream culture, the legacy of William S. Burroughs, and debates over generative AI's place in magical/creative practice.

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Episode Overview

This "spooky special" episode finds host Garrison Davis and a panel of fellow magicians and researchers reporting from the Occulture Conference—a major biennial gathering on the fusion of occult practice and cultural trends. They explore the meaning of "occulture," the unexpected centrality of William S. Burroughs to modern magical thought, and the heated, sometimes uneasy arguments surrounding generative AI’s role in creativity and magical work. The tone is irreverent, deeply nerdy, occasionally combative, and brims with both skepticism and fascination.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Occulture Conference and the "Magical Travel Team"

[03:29–06:50]

• Garrison narrates his journey to Berlin, creating a vivid, satirical intro recalling occult atmospheres: “I entered this dark, looming building and inside the air was thick with smoke and incense. Figures dressed in all black emerged from the fog… Witches, wizards, and magicians.”
• The panel is introduced:
  • Delta (Belgian magician/artist): Focuses on chaos magick, Mark Fisher, CCRU, metafiction and hyperstition.
  • Ryan: Vajrayana, Greco-Egyptian, Haitian Voodoo practitioner, ex-academic (philosophy, rhetoric, economics). “My contributions are going to be wide and varied.” [07:28]
  • Elaine: Artist/researcher in Renaissance grimoires, folk magic, chaos magic.

2. Defining "Occulture"

[08:26–14:27]

• Garrison reads Genesis P-Orridge’s formulation: “Our sensory environment is whispering to us…this concealed dialogue between every level of popular cultural forms and magical conclusions is what we named ‘occulture.’” [09:46]
• Occulture acts both as:
  • An artistic/personal mystical current and
  • An “offensive element targeted against society and perceived systems of control.”
• The panel traces the commodification of the occult—the drift from radical mysticism to marketable trend.
  • “Even creative works, which are genuine explorations…get turned into products consumed by a mostly secular audience.” [10:57]
• Elaine: Naming “occulture” is “an attempt to sort of regain control over the ways that magical practice and greater society seem to influence each other.” [13:41]

3. How Occulture Varies (Europe vs. US)

[14:27–15:30]

• In the U.S., occult conferences veer towards neo-paganism and New Age, often with suspicion of academic analysis.
• Berlin’s Occulture is more intellectual and cross-disciplinary.
  • Ryan: “There is a resistance to the kind of academic styling that we saw very prevalent at this conference…”

4. Occult Practice, Ritual Design, and Conference Opening

[15:30–19:11]

• Garrison clarifies they’re discussing “magic with a K”: rituals to change self/reality, rooted in hermetic, pagan, and folk traditions.
• The Occulture opening ritual involved a blindfolded woman with scales; attendees set intentions into stones, placed on the scales to create equilibrium.
• Ryan: Praises the ritual as highly inclusive, spooky, and genuinely mood-setting: “It did an exceptional job of actually setting intention and adding to…the vibrations that we all felt as we engaged and were present.” [18:03]
• The conference theme: the “cosmic craftsman” as a figure of resistance, reclaiming rhythm and sacred time.

5. William S. Burroughs: Surprise Occult Icon

[25:53–38:18]

• Rather than typical occultists like Crowley or Dee, William S. Burroughs emerges as the most referenced figure.
• Ryan: Recognizes Burroughs and collaborator Brion Gysin are closer to late Surrealists than Beat poets—a “more compelling” connection given their cut-up experiments. [27:31]
• Garrison: For Burroughs, magic is “resistance” and “culture jamming”—disrupting the “one god universe” and mechanisms of social control.
• Magic, technology, and the manipulation of language/time are central:
  • Elaine: “Tech available at the time can be a magical instrument…for William Burroughs, it’s tape recorders, words and language.” [30:06]

6. The Cut-Up Method Explained

[31:22–32:47]

• Garrison: “Cut up the words or pieces of sentences, jumble them up…and see what sort of thought that generates, what kind of meaning can be constructed through that combination.”
• Elaine: Early cut-ups even involved literally cutting through book pages to see new combinations.
• Ryan (quoting Burroughs): “When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.” [32:54]
• The method aims to bypass linearity, break master narratives, and act as psychic/cultural subversion—a tradition that ties through to contemporary concerns.

7. Cut-Up, Reality, and Control

[34:44–39:58]

• The cut-up is not just art—it’s active “reprogramming,” attacking reality’s reproduction mechanisms (from language to media).
• The “third mind” theory: collaboration generates emergent creativity and intelligence.
  • Ryan: “When two people collaborate, a third mind, or intelligence, communicates with you through the revelation of the new that was already present.” [34:52]
• Burroughs’ “circuit jump” tactics: using replayed sound recordings as psychic “attacks” (cf. Burroughs shutting down a café by playing disruptive recordings outside it). [38:24]

8. Hyperstition and Reality Engineering

[39:16–41:31]

• The move from Burroughs to the CCRU/Mark Fisher’s concept of “hyperstition”—how repeated fictions (including political/moral panics) become real via cultural repetition.
• Garrison: “This is part of how reality can get formed… falsehoods, through repetition and dissemination, become self-manifest.”

9. Occultists vs. the Experts of Reality Manipulation

[41:54–42:14]

• Elaine (sarcastically): “Are you saying that media companies are currently cutting up reality to shape it in the image of the people who fund them?”
• The panel argues that modern media corporations—or political actors—are often more effective “magicians” than actual occultists, when it comes to reality manipulation.

10. Burroughs the “Doer” vs. Philosophical Contemplation

[47:45–49:24]

• Ryan: “The point is, those [philosophical] texts talk about similar things. What’s unique about Burroughs is that he’s actually doing shit… He was actively involved in this practice, which again makes him far more magical than most occultists.” [48:45]

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Generative AI Debates Within Occulture

1. AI as Magic? – Panel Discussion

[49:24–53:50]

• Post-Burroughs, the conference’s most contentious subject is generative AI: Is it magic? Art? Or corporate theft?
• Elaine: Audience questions orbited around whether prompting AI art is akin to magical trance, channeling, or the cut-up method. Most panelists were “very annoyed at the question.” [53:10]
• Ryan: Some conceded AI could theoretically be a magical tool (techne), but the analogy with the cut-up method is weak.

2. The Third Mind & AI: A Philosophical Friction

[55:03–59:49]

• Elaine: “Does it matter that corporations are controlling the algorithm…?” She and others saw AI as ultimately the product and extension of corporate interests, not spirits or muses.
• Ryan: “When one interacts with any form of Large Language Model or ChatGPT... that’s one mind. Can you tell me where the second is?” [58:59]
  • He argues LLMs fail to create the dialectical “third mind”—they are not true collaborative, emergent intelligences.
• Garrison & Elaine: AI’s outputs rely on scraping the “toilet bowl of human production,” as opposed to the intentional, creative cut-ups by a mind.
• Kate Lady (panelist, paraphrased): “No, this is bullshit. Let’s actually look at the material implications,” citing environmental impact and labor exploitation. [56:25]
• Garrison: “These large language models and generative AI just scrape so much data… appropriation of human labor to shit out some advertising, essentially.” [57:08]

3. Contrasts With Pre-AI Non-Human Creation

[59:49–61:00]

• Garrison describes a tarot-based experimental writing system—randomized, but still reliant on a human actively generating narrative links, not just passively assembling probabilistic fragments.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Our sensory environment is whispering to us, telling us hidden stories, revealing subliminal connections.” —Genesis P-Orridge (quoted) [09:46]
• “The occult bleeds into and morphs culture, affecting everything from pop culture to politics and philosophy.” —Garrison Davis [10:30]
• Elaine: “Naming it and calling it something is also… an attempt to sort of regain control over the ways that magical practice and greater society seem to influence each other.” [13:41]
• Ryan: “Reality is made of words, images and vibrations… and therefore these sounds and images and words can be marshaled or used, edited, cut through, rearranged for the purposes of reprogramming.” [33:01]
• Burroughs (paraphrased): “When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.” [32:54]
• Garrison: “Occultists are a class of people who are maybe the worst at doing magic because the people that are really good at this sort of thing are perhaps way better at the occult element of hiding their awareness of what they are doing.” [42:10]
• Ryan: “He’s not just developing a method… he was actively involved in this practice, which again makes him far more magical than most occultists. Don’t come for me.” [48:45]
• Kate Lady (paraphrased): “No, this is bullshit. Let’s actually look at the material implications as to where this is coming from…” [56:25]
• Ryan: “When one interacts with any form of Large Language Model… that’s one mind. Can you tell me where the second is?” [58:59]

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Important Timestamps

• 03:29 — Garrison’s spooky narrative intro & introduction of the panel
• 08:26 — What is "occulture"?
• 14:27 — The “American vs. European Occulture” comparison
• 15:30 — Distinguishing “magic with a K”; the opening ritual
• 18:03 — Ryan on the inclusiveness & atmosphere of the opening ritual
• 25:53 — William S. Burroughs as occult superstar of the conference
• 31:46 — Explanation of the cut-up method
• 32:54 — “When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.”
• 38:18 — The Burroughs “café incident” (psychic sound attack)
• 39:16–41:31 — Media’s role in “cutting up reality” for its own ends
• 47:45–49:24 — Ryan: Burroughs as a “doer,” not just a thinker
• 49:24–53:50 — Occulture’s AI panel: generative AI as magic, art, or labor theft?
• 56:25 — Kate Lady’s emphatic anti-tech, pro-materialist stance
• 58:59 — The impossibility of a “third mind” with current LLMs/AI
• 59:49–61:00 — AI vs. randomizing tarot writing: LLMs can’t replicate human-channelled randomness

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Conclusion: Episode Takeaways

• The Occulture Conference in 2025 is a vibrant, heady space where living traditions, radical politics, and cultural critique swirl together.
• William S. Burroughs—more than classic occult figures—exerts a surprising gravitational pull, with his techniques and philosophies mapping neatly onto anxieties about reality, control, and technological mediation.
• Generative AI sparks thorny debates: Does it undermine or extend magic? Is it creativity, labor theft, or merely an extension of capitalist realism? Most panelists remain skeptical and see more continuity between the cut-up (an art of surprise and intent) and the easy, pleasing output of LLMs.
• The episode closes with the suggestion that the people most skilled in reality manipulation are not occultists per se—but those wielding AI, media, and narrative power in politics and business.

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Next Episode: The panel will return to discuss digital technomancy, traditional magical practice, and the purposes of occultism in 2025.

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For more, check Cool Zone Media’s website or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

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[Garrison Davis]

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[Elaine]

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[Elaine]

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[Elaine]

Blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals and now my ceiling is collapsing.

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I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up A real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual?

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[Elaine]

Wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Commercial Announcer]

Call Zone Media.

[Garrison Davis]

Trick or treater I heard Ah, hello. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, the Spooky Special. I'm your host, Garrison Davis. Once again, there has been far too many important world events taking precedence that we here at the show are unable to provide listeners with an entire spooky week's worth of themed episodes. But I know how important Halloween is for many millennials. So I've taken it upon myself to produce two spooky episodes to bookend the holiday. This episode that you're listening to right now, as well as another that will release Monday morning or Sunday night. As the world is becoming an increasingly spooky, scary place, I needed to up the ante to exceed the weird and eerie fright that comes from living in America and the world in general in 2025. So last week I traveled from New York to Brussels, briefly caught up with my close personal friend and colleague Tintin, and then took the train to Germany. Very scary indeed. Once in Germany, I was confronted with seemingly occult words and symbols. People spoke in odd incantations. I came across a map that appeared via my black scrying mirror, the iPhone, which, upon deciphering, led me to an old power plant warehouse in east ber. I entered this dark, looming building and inside the air was thick with smoke and incense. Figures dressed in all black emerged from the fog. Witches, wizards, and magicians. I followed them into a candlelit room where hooded occultists conducted a ritual welcoming US to the 2025 OCCulture Conference. OCCulture is a bi yearly conference that's once every two years focusing on the intersection of occultism and culture, pop or otherwise. This is arguably the most prestigious occultism conference in the world. I have been wanting to attend for years, and I was finally able to go this go round on the condition that I make four podcast episodes. The two that I'M releasing this week and next will cover some of the core magical and topical currents throughout the conference, mostly via a panel discussion between myself and three other attendees. And then before Christmas, I'll have two fully scripted episodes interrogating these concepts further and discussing the use of occult practice in 2025. So to start, let's meet our panelists. I should introduce my magical travel team for this conference. So let's start with Delta, a Belgian magician and artist which I recruited to join me in this wacky adventure. Delta, say hi. Hello. What do you do, Delta? What's your magical specialty? I suppose. Well, it's kind of a mix of. Into the microphone. It's kind of a mix of things where part of it is just into the microphone.

[Elaine]

I'm sorry.

[Garrison Davis]

You can get pretty close to it.

[Ryan]

Okay. It's kind of a mix of things.

[Garrison Davis]

Really between conventional chaos magick and more theoretical like weird theory stuff like Mark Fisher and the CCRU adjacent things. We talk a lot about Mark Fisher, some land stuff, metafiction theory, fiction, hyperstition. Delta and myself talk about magic through the Internet quite a bit and how it combines with cultural theory which is relevant to this conference. Let's move over to my left.

[Ryan]

I've been recruited along on this magical journey. I'm Ryan. I practice the Vajrayana, a Greco Egyptian magical practice and also am involved in a Haitian Voodoo house. Prior to that, I was also an academic for a good period of time where I studied Renaissance rhetoric and political theory, fully philosophy and economics. So my contributions are going to be wide and varied.

[Garrison Davis]

We've been making a lot of Hegel jokes this weekend.

[Ryan]

So many Hegel jokes.

[Garrison Davis]

Our last crew member, which people may have heard before on various shows.

[Elaine]

Hi, my name's Elaine and I make art and research a lot of Renaissance grip Moroc magic. And though most of the things I do are a lot of idiosyncratic practices and based on various folk magic and chaos magic and falcon folk magic.

[Garrison Davis]

Before we continue the conversation between myself and my three guests, let's start by discussing the word occulture, the namesake of the conference. Obviously this is a combination of the word occult and culture and it describes how the two influence and possibly undermine one another. To read a quote from the person who originated the term quote. A culture is a word that was inevitable during the hyperactive phase of the Temple of Psychic youth in the 1980s. We were casting around for an all embracing term to describe an approach to combining a unique demystified spiritual philosophy with a fervent insistence that all Life and art are indivisible at any given moment. Our sensory environment is whispering to us, telling us hidden stories, revealing subliminal connections. This concealed dialogue between every level of popular cultural forms and magical conclusions is what we named a culture, unquote, that is from Genesis B. Peorage, a musician, magician, artist, cult leader and hashtag, slightly problematic, queer iconic. In the 70s they started the band Throbbing Gristle, pioneered industrial music, and later started the Chaos Magic organization, the Temple of Psychic Youth, and its associated band, Psychic tv. Though a culture did not just describe this sort of personal spiritual movement, it carried a strong offensive element targeted against society and perceived systems of control. Through their many projects, including Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV and the Temple of Psychic Youth, Peorage utilized art and magical practice to conduct a quote unquote war on culture. Similar to another figure that will soon get to William S. Burroughs, A culture describes a process of cultural osmosis. The occult bleeds into and morphs culture, affecting everything from pop culture to politics and philosophy. But as a part of this osmosis, the occult becomes increasingly commodified, knowable, safe territory, marketable. The hidden occult loses its very essence of being hidden. Despite its use as a tool of attack against mainstream culture. Like most countercultural forms, the occult has been largely recuperated. Even creative works, which our genuine explorations into the occult, fall into this recuperation paradigm. They get turned into products consumed by a mostly secular audience, like the works of dueling wizards Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Now some occultists rejoice, knowing that this wide exposure will influence more people to become interested in or adopt occult practices of their own, while others bemoan this dilution and commodification of what to them is an important spiritual practice. As the modern occult revival, along with a heavy helping hand of scientific advancement, deterritorialized Christian hegemonic religion. Now the occult itself has been re territorialized. Which is not to say that the occult is no longer a field of play, which is what this conference attempts to assert. Let's go back to the panel.

[Ryan]

In terms of the conference itself, as we'll get into later. The term occulture very specifically seems to be focused on the study of the interrelation of magical practice and the material aspects of occult culture and its influence and appropriation by wider society. So 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 in 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.

[Garrison Davis]

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 a 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?

[Elaine]

I think a culture as 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. So I think that naming it and calling it something is also very much felt like an attempt to sort of regain control over the ways that magical practice and greater society seem to influence each other, as opposed to a more unintentional way that they have been going back and forth for hundreds if not thousands of years.

[Ryan]

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 Pantheon in and around San Francisco and Santa specifically, or Paganicon 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. However, there is a resistance to the kind of academic styling that we saw very prevalent at this conference to talk about the occult more generally as an area of study in addition to just idiosyncratic practice or part of a larger social neopagan movement, which is again very much the focus of most US based conferences.

[Garrison Davis]

As an editorial note, when we're talking about magic, to clarify, we're not talking about stage magicians, we're referring to magic with a kid. That is rituals and practices based on occult knowledge that seeks to cause change in Accordance with will, Whether that's change within yourself or in our consensus reality. Occult magical practice can also serve as a form of spirituality, mysticism, an alternative religious practice, or an alternative to religion with its beliefs and praxis largely influenced by historical esoteric orders, mystery traditions, paganism, witchcraft, herbalism, astrology, hermetic philosophy, and alchemy. And all these things are influences. I'm not saying that the actual historic manifestations of these things are the same as the modern occult practices that are influenced by these things, because often these can be wildly varying, Especially when you talk about things like witchcraft and alchemy, which have been misinterpreted or reconstructed into completely new forms, than what the historical manifestation of them actually contained. But a lot of modern day occultism has manifested as an individually mediated spirituality containing some of the group ritual or ritual aspects of something like Catholicism, but with the individuality of Protestantism. Many conferences have an opening ceremony, and as I previously mentioned, a culture had an opening ritual. This accomplishes a very similar goal to any opening ceremony. To get attendees in a certain headspace, prepare them for the rest of the conference, and set a certain mood in which the rest of the events will kind of follow suit. The acculture opening ritual called upon the attendees demiurgic capacity, how they are part of creating the reality of what this conference is and, and how it will continue for the next few days. Back to the panel. The framing of the ritual was a blindfolded woman holding the scales of balance. And each person put a intention for the week or for the conference or for themselves into a stone which was handed out to each person who entered the ritual. And at a certain point, these stones were placed on to the scales of balance to create an equilibrium between the two sides of the scale, along with, you know, chanting, meditation, and a lot.

[Ryan]

Of incense, a significant deal of incense, given that we were in a former German forge warehouse. The, you know, billowing smoke that existed throughout the conference from fires to incense to various other inflammatory items, was rather impressive. But in terms of actual ritual design, it met several elements that I found to be rather impressive. One, it was encompassing of all of those elements that we would later expect to see in the actual body of the conference itself. In terms of, like, the artistic performances, the musical, you know, metal goth music that was played, but also a very practical and open approach to ritual. It was highly inclusive. Everyone who was there participated. It did an exceptional job, I felt, of actually bringing, setting, intention and adding to, I don't know, at risk of sounding too new age, the vibrations that we all felt as we engaged and were present. The theatrical quality, I have to say, was also very much dark and spooky. Dark and spooky, but something to be admired. They did a very good job.

[Garrison Davis]

Definitely one of the more high effort rituals of the weekend in terms of the performative aspect, with there being little less than a dozen hooded cloaked figures stationed at different points, either holding specific positions in a meditative state for probably over half an hour, standing still in a position that would become uncomfortable, and swinging incense or holding torches or lights. Setting intention specifically is usually you talk to these people. The first step of any kind of magical working is setting your intention for what the work is supposed to do or accomplish in you or out into the world. Mirroring the opening ritual, the Occulture 2025 little booklet has a few paragraphs on the concept for this conference, talking about the cosmic craftsman as the demiurge who shapes matter and spirit alike, who embodies creation and transformation, revealing both the light and the hidden, the shadowed face of the divine as well as having cosmic balance and balancing destruction with creation and order and chaos and hidden and the scene. The last paragraph in which I will read, I think relates specifically to this show and the cultural political aspects. Quote in the age of relentless acceleration, the craftsman becomes a figure of resistance. His patience and ritual discipline reclaim sacred time, restoring a rhythm beyond the acceleration of modern life, a culture 2025 invites us to dwell in this threshold where creation, intuition and the hidden divine converge. And with that, we converge on an ad break.

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[Elaine]

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[Garrison Davis]

And that to half truth is a whole lie.

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What was that like for you to soft launch into the show?

[Ryan]

Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today.

[Commercial Announcer]

I forgot whose podcast we were doing.

[Ryan]

Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's, let's, let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The rich Russians falling out of Windows podcast is back. Sad oligarch season two. Since we left you in 2023 after season one, many po. Politically motivated Russian millionaires have continued to die in suspicious circumstances. We dig deeper into these odd deaths, which include everything from mushroom poisoning and mysterious heart attacks to window clumsiness and suicide by decapitation. One thing we have found since we started back in 2022 is the information on the suspicious deaths has become much harder to find. Not just that, it seems as if state controlled media in Russia is being utilized to purposely confuse and contradict the reporting that gets put out. As you can probably imagine, season two gets very weird. Listen to Sad Oligarch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Garrison Davis]

Welcome back to the It Could Happen Here spooky special on the Occulture Conference 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 Aleister Crowley, John Dee, someone like Helena Blavatsky, but in fact William S. Burroughs. And now we'll return to the panel to discuss the Berossian Current. Let's talk about what I would argue was the strongest current throughout this conference. I'm going to call the Berossian 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.

[Ryan]

So our first talk by Castro Obstrup, who I believe was Swedish, one of.

[Garrison Davis]

Those, one of those he was working at the University of Copenhagen.

[Ryan]

University of Copenhagen, certainly Scandinavian of some flavor variety, focused on William S. Burroughs and Brian Gyson. I think that it's important, and I appreciated this claim at the outset, that they argued that both Geyson 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, 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.

[Garrison Davis]

So Burroughs definitely popularized the Cut Up Method, which Gysen originated. But Burrows 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 this also revolves around this idea of magic as this form of like, resistance or this like, culture jamming practice, which borrows framed his own work. And his like, you know, work that we could, could. We could describe as like, esoteric or inspired by esoterism or achieving esoteric goals is specifically for this cultural infusion to. To disrupt mainstream culture in some capacity to go against the one God universe, sometimes in an anarchic way, sometimes in a libertarian way. There's a mix of. A mix of like, motivations at play here. Same thing with like, Robert Anton Wilson, which I'm sure you've heard Robert Evans talk about before. These were contemporaries, these guys were friends and operating under like, similar goals of disrupting culture through these techniques which. Which they thought literally, like disrupted the. The linear flow of culture or the mechanisms of control such as, like, language and linear time, which later gets developed on by land and fissure.

[Elaine]

Yeah, I think looking at some of my notes, some of the things that stuck out to me, especially in view of the fact that the other classes going on at the time began with Aleister Crowley, but were diving into a lot of more classical and historical magical traditions, was that language can shape reality, which is something that would also be held up by a lot of the classical magical ideas that sound and image have occult power, which is very true in a lot of magical traditions dating back to the Picatrix and more ancient texts. And that tech available at the time can be a magical instrument, which the tech available currently and for William Burroughs is very different than classical tech, but is something that has been done for a very long time as well. What really changes is stepping out of the idea of a linear representation of it and into something that could be edited, cut and reprogrammed, specifically using technology that allowed that, as opposed to something that you're trying to control solely through, say, more spiritual magical acts. It's something that you can do with a tape recorder.

[Garrison Davis]

And this is like, you know, based on forms like social engineering and the manipulation of the reproduction of reality, which Burroughs believes language plays a key role in. Even though I might disagree with him in a few ways on the nature of a language as a human concept versus this alien concept which is infected to human delta. You should explain what the cut up method is.

[Ryan]

Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, the name itself kind of is self explanatory, but the idea being essentially 2. Take any form of text or writing.

[Ryan]

Cut up the words or pieces of.

[Garrison Davis]

Sentences, jumble them up in a hat or a bucket or whatever, and then kind of like play a jigsaw puzzle with language. Reshifting sentences into new ideas and new forms of poetry especially, which I'm just looking at my own cutups right in front of me. To force, like randomized combinations of words that you would not choose to combine on your own volition. And seeing what sort of thought that generates what kind of meaning can be constructed through that combination. Exactly.

[Elaine]

Weren't some of the first cutups done with books and just making holes, cutting out words and seeing the other words that would appear underneath. And if new meaning would arise through the surprise combinations.

[Garrison Davis]

Words from the future or the past presenting themselves into a current present within the book. Yeah, I think one of the Burroughs.

[Ryan]

Quotes is when you cut into the.

[Garrison Davis]

Present, the future leaks out.

[Ryan]

Which is related to the concept of time sorcery that was talked about towards the end of that discussion. I think another element to the cut up method that's important, especially as it was framed in this occulture context. We quoted from the. Or as I wrote this quote down from the actual lecture itself. Reality is made of words, images and vibrations and sounds and images have occult power. And therefore these sounds and images and words can be marshaled or used, edited, cut through, rearranged for the purposes of reprogramming. It's fascinating because I think that this really is something that carries through to the whole conference. And not just the Burrows method, but what this Burrows method or the. The borough current of the conference. It seems that there was a problematic. I mean, we started basically with Derrida and we ended with Derrida with discussions of like, critiques of the master narrative that we get from, you know, Deleuze and Lyotard and Baudrillard and these people. But the goal of this cut up method was to rewrite the master narrative. So again, back to that concept of culture jamming. As Ger said, this concept of the one God universe, this cut up method is meant to interrupt the linearity of words, of language. That is a process of control. So I take issue with this Concept of language as a virus because that implies that it's a foreign body. And I mean, as true post structuralist, I guess that I am, there is no outside to language. And I think that that's actually something that shines through in this third mind concept.

[Garrison Davis]

As two people work together on something, there's a composite mind that emerges and affects the work. Is the concept there?

[Ryan]

So when two people collaborate, a third mind, or intelligence communicates with you through the revelation of the new that was already present. And I think that that's really important to point out because it's not as though there's this outside thing. The implication from this method is that new reveals itself through this process that's already present in language. Because this is a question that I had throughout, is that if language is this foreign entity that dominates us through control, and the method itself is language, then how are we not just re. I mean, I guess it's a kind of inoculation. If we have a theory of language that is based in. What do we call this? What is it that we all just got during COVID cabin fever? No, no. The things that we inject into our body that created the entire vacc. There we go. That's the ticket. Inoculations.

[Garrison Davis]

Not all of us got vaccines.

[Ryan]

Okay, Gar, you heard it here first. Vaccine denial. No. Yeah. Where was I going with this?

[Garrison Davis]

Okay, speaking of methods of control, I.

[Elaine]

Mean, a lot of it.

[Ryan]

Hey, the new just came out there. Wait just one moment. Sorry, Elaine. I likened this to this process of dialectics, but that's because I couldn't shut up about Hegel the entire time we were there. Because I don't think enough occultists are talking about Hagel. Why is no one talking about Hagel? Everyone should be talking about Hagel.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, as fun as it is to think about this third mind as like an egregore figure, which we've mentioned before, is like a group thought form, like a. A being or a force that is generated through. Through multiple people believing in it. You make up an imaginary friend in a way that's more of a severator. Okay, but true. Okay, in. In egregore as this as a. As. Yeah, like a form of thought that they gained its own like a autonomy and becomes kind of, you know, like. Like a. Like a little tiny God, I guess. Or they also combined the third mind idea to network consciousness. The one last thing I will say on this before we get to the AI aspect, I guess on this culture jamming non linearity is the Concept of the circuit jump, which was playing back words from politicians in different contexts as a sort of like a uno reverso psychic attack, Which I don't know if that actually works considering the current political situation. But this is certainly a tactic to which I have employed many such cases. And we see a lot of people attempt to do this. And I think there are certain figures who have their own very strong magical force field protecting them, which has been pretty evident through the past 10 years, including the President of the United States. But as a circuit jump, as playing something from the wrong time in a different context, as a form of attack. The most famous version of this, which isn't necessarily for political ends, this was for personal ends. It's the Burroughs cafe incident, which I have. I've been a fan of for years, in which he was slighted by a cafe. So then he started recording.

[Elaine]

All that happened was they changed their menu and he couldn't order the one food that he ordered every day.

[Garrison Davis]

There's been some menus that have changed that. I would consider using this tactic where he recorded sounds from. From outside of, like, people talking or arguing or walking by or plates dropping and then played them back outside of the cafe for a series of months until the cafe closed. And this is the funniest. The funniest form of this sort of magical obsession. Because this really is just a crazy guy playing loud sounds in front of a cafe until they close.

[Ryan]

I mean, it worked.

[Garrison Davis]

Of, yeah, playing back sounds of, you know, arguing, fighting, plates smashing. Which would probably create a negative aura around this building. But that is the most funny Burrows the circuit jump moment. Although Burrow's life is full of these humorous and sometimes worrying anecdotes.

[Elaine]

There's one other thing that stuck out to me. Given what a lot of the other talks in that space ended up dealing with along with AI and stuff, was really the speaker talking a lot about the fact that for Burroughs and Gyson, the reproduction of reality is how control occurs. And so the goal was to manipulate the reproduction of reality. Because if you can manipulate the reproduction of reality, you are also manipulating reality itself, which I don't think anyone went into nearly as much, but is something that we're seeing with, say, even the Republican Party releasing deep fake videos of Democratic politicians.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, and this is something our materialist friend Mia does talk about is how there's a quote from some neocons about how how, like, Democrats just have to kind of, like, you know, like, react to reality versus the Republicans who generate it. And they, like, decide what Reality is and you can see this with all of the sort of like moral, moral panics which have spread across the United States and around the world the past few years. Whether that's gender ideology, whether that's immigration, whether that's this non existent crime wave where it is a genuine like creation of, of reality. And in this, this, this goes into, you know, Burrow's ideas later get developed by a group of academics and occultists that formed the ccru. This included Sadie Plant, Nick Land who then turned to the dark side and the since past Mark Fisher who put a name to some of this sort of phenomenon called the hyperstition which is Robert talked about before on the show. But it is a self fulfilling prophecy. It is a fiction that becomes true through the creation of the fiction and the dissemination of this fiction. And this is part of how reality can get formed is through these falsehoods that through repetition and dissemination become self manifest. The thing about that though is the hyperstitious model itself requires to the acceptance of the idea that everything is a fiction. Yes, most things go through a process like this.

[Ryan]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Garrison Davis]

But doing such a thing intentionally and offensively, which is the idea that we're discussing here in a political context is this offensive reality formation where you literally decide what is real and what isn't. And you know, if you have hundreds of millions of dollars in like a news company at your disposal, this can become easier.

[Elaine]

Are you saying that media companies are currently cutting up reality to shape it in the image of the people who fund them?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. I mean they are, they are much. It's funny because like occultists I think are the people who are often.

[Elaine]

What clips are you going to use from the conference?

[Garrison Davis]

I will later in my written work but, but I think on that note, I think occultists are a class of people who are maybe the worst at doing magic because the people that are really good at this sort of thing are perhaps way better at the occult element of hiding their, their, you know, awareness of what they are doing. Because like a lot of the, a lot of them know what they're doing. They just actually keep it more occultic. Whereas the magicians will not shut the fuck up because there's always a, there's always a new book to sell.

[Ryan]

That was an excellent segue to an ad break, Elaine. Thank you for that. And now a word from our sponsors.

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[Ryan]

All I know is what I've been.

[Garrison Davis]

Told and that to have Truth is a whole lie.

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[Elaine]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

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[Garrison Davis]

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[Garrison Davis]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y' all said.

[Ryan]

They literally made me say that I.

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Took a match and struck and threw it on her.

[Garrison Davis]

They made me say that I poured gas on her.

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[Garrison Davis]

Blame America, y' all better wake the hell up.

[Ryan]

Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Commercial Announcer]

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[Ryan]

The Rich Russians Falling out of Windows podcast is back. Sad Oligarch Season 2 Since we left you in 2023 after season one, many politically motivated Russian millionaires have continued to die in suspicious circumstances. We dig deeper into these odd deaths which include everything from from mushroom poisoning and mysterious heart attacks to window clumsiness and suicide by decapitation. One thing we have found since we started back in 2022 is the information on the suspicious deaths has become much harder to find. Not just that, it seems as if state controlled media in Russia is being utilized to purposely confuse and contradict the reporting that gets put out. As you can probably imagine, season two gets very weird. Listen to Sad Oligarch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ed Helms. And welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new Snafu. Every single episode.

[Commercial Announcer]

32 lost nuclear weapons.

[Garrison Davis]

You're like, wait, stop.

[Elaine]

What?

[Ryan]

Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player who still wore knee pads. Yes, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow, Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here.

[Commercial Announcer]

What was that like for you to soft launch into the show?

[Ryan]

Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today.

[Commercial Announcer]

I forgot whose podcast we were doing.

[Ryan]

Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On this note, though, Gar, I agree with you completely as a former academic and just a healthy level of skepticism going into any magical conference. I sat down, I listened, and I've been to enough conferences listening to magicians attempt to map on rather poorly magic onto a cultural figure. And I think Burroughs is really unique here. But my academic pretense was to sit here and to listen and think about, you know, language as a pharmakon, think about Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Leotard, when they're discussing the MA master narrative or rewriting the master narrative. But what's unique about Burroughs and why I gave up that, you know, academic mapping of philosophy and asking myself, why are we having this conversation? We could just go read these texts. They talk about similar things. But the point is, is that those texts talk about similar things. And what's unique about Burrows is that he's actually doing.

[Garrison Davis]

He's a doer.

[Ryan]

He's a doer. This is fundamentally the difference between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. Like, like, I'M thinking in terms of philosophers. And it took me half of this talk to be like, no, he's actually doing shit. As soon as we get out to like, you know, him actually standing out in front of the cafe and doing this, he's not just developing a method, but by virtue of the fact that he's inviting other artists, like the slides upon slides that we saw of him, you know, working with new machines that he was creating and trying these things. He was actively involved in this practice, which again makes him far more magical than most occultists. Don't come for me.

[Garrison Davis]

Absolutely. AI Specifically, we'll be discussing debates and uses of generative AI in this conference. Because the last acculture conference was in 2023, as these large language models and image generation platforms were just starting to gain popularity and now they have a stranglehold over the stock market and many people's imagination. The first, I guess, real debate around AI happened as the three of you stayed to listen to a panel after the Willy Mas Burroughs panel, as well as a Austin Osmond spare panel, a proto chaos magician from the 20th century who's a contemporary of Aleister Crowley. I left to go listen to a mathematical selemic ontology talk which was probably less interesting than the panel. Like to hear you guys talk about the debates around AI and how they emerged in this panel and then also juxtaposing that to the different forms of like AI and discussions around AI that dominated a large part of the rest of the conference.

[Elaine]

Well, actually AI came up because the initial discussion question for the panel was what does it mean to talk about art as magic in the digital era? So everyone was very specifically being asked to discuss the differences between the creation process is magic when you can use AI, when you can use large language models to just generate things. And if the generative method using AI was at all related to say, the cut up method or other things. So that was the initial conversation that began that whole panel.

[Ryan]

Well, and that was certainly a topic that was begged by the other two talks that we didn't really discuss. The Austin Osmond spare was about automatic drawing. So this conception and of, you know, this drawing that is coming from the outside, coming from the subconscious, coming from within, all within one line. All within one line. But more than that, it was a very traditional kind of European 1970s lecture. You know, you had a lovely Italian man who stood in the front that was ready to smoke a cigarette while trying to get through, you know, a very well formulated, well argued essay, while a series of images presented to us behind him, that covered an overview of artists that are doing very similar things or he argued, exist in a similar kind of vein. And the occurrences of not just magical tropes, but cultural influences that happen independently. So artists all over the world. The third talk by I believe Kate Lady. Yeah, the ritual transformation and hybridity in Leonora Carrington's Judith, which was a stage production which happened in Mexico City, I believe. So we had a few pictures of this. But Leonora Carrington's art very specifically has to do with this hybrid of animals and mythical figures and creatures. And the stage production was incredibly intense. I really appreciated this talk a lot. But then focus on talking about generative artificial intelligence, these large language models and the role of art or what it means to do art in this era was related to this idea of the third mind of automatic drawing, of this concept of hybridity, of this like transformative or this discovering of the new through a synthetic putting together of different elements or images, words, sounds, costumery, these kinds of things. So it was a natural question to lead, but the audience members took it in a very strange direction that I'm, I would like you all to talk about.

[Elaine]

I mean the initial question was really that people started asking after the panel topic was proposed was so what did the panelists think about AI art? Do the panelists think AI art is magic? Do the panelists think that AI art is channeling? Do the panelists think that, you know, putting a prompt in a language model is the same as doing some sort of trans state automatic writing? There was a lot of variations on functionally that all of the panelists reaction was no, it's not. And a lot of them did not immediately really want to even dive into that topic and were very annoyed at the question.

[Ryan]

That's actually not true because I got triggered almost immediately because it was our first speaker that responded not to that first question, but to the second question. And the second question had to do with the role of technology and whether we see that there's a possibility for these tools, you know, as a technology, a techne in magical practice. And our first speaker's reaction was to sit back and, and give us a tentative yes to the tech. To the tech that's correct, to AI.

[Elaine]

They were like they, their initial reaction was still also no, but yes, they.

[Ryan]

They indeed got there. But it, it was unclear at first and I, I, I was a little raw about it given that seemed completely contrary to, to the talk that, or you know, that he had mentioned before. There was a question about NFTs do you remember this question?

[Garrison Davis]

Oh.

[Elaine]

I tried to put it immediately out of my head. Yes, that was wise that it started with like, well, NFTs failed because people like weren't ready to embrace the blockchain as a generative idea for making art. As opposed to the fact that why would I own an NFT if I can screenshot the picture?

[Ryan]

Yeah, well, it was this idea that NFTs themselves were part of this breaking up of the control process, the linearity of money and financial systems, that somehow it was related to the cut up method. It was one of those questions that was a narrative before it finally got to your question that really just invited the readers to respond. There were others that talked about this too and related their own personal experience to the generative AI process that, that you know, they approach AI not with the expectation that will provide sense, but it'll almost have this oracular. Again this. They related to the third mind, this idea that again you and the AI come together and somehow reveal the new. Which I at this point was absolutely seething.

[Elaine]

Yeah, I think the closest actually that we had to some really like someone even trying to approach it was asking about if you're making this art, if you're generating these new things, does it matter that corporations are controlling the algorithm by which you're doing so? Which started to touch on some of the problems, but still was definitely relying on the base assumption that using a large language model to produce stories or art, that you're interacting with something else that's actually capable of creating at all.

[Ryan]

And to her credit, my girl Kate lady who was talking about Leonora Carrington, the one that seemed to be kind of tangentially separate from, from the other two, but the hybridity really made it was the one that just gave us a great straight Marxist answer of like, no, this is bullshit. Let's actually look at the material implications as to where this is coming from and the environmental costs of running these programs of server farms, the destruction of space of livable areas throughout the United States, that these are questions that we need to ask and are not separate from these questions of magic. So really shout out to her. I appreciated that response because it was instant and it was heated.

[Garrison Davis]

It is also like, I mean, from my perspective, it's also a labor issue, right? Because these large language models and generative AI just scrape like so much data that that's like writing from real artists and create, created by real like painters and whatever. And it is the appropriation of human labor to shit out some, some Advertising, essentially. That is like my main. Well, aside from all the ecological and the political issues with it, it's like very much that labor angle to it that frustrates me.

[Ryan]

Well, in the context of the talk, it was really important to then ground. And this is the comment that I made that the panel broadly seemed to agree with, although I didn't really leave them much opportunity to disagree with me.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, you're right.

[Ryan]

Thank you, Go on. So Burrows concept of the third mind, this book that he wrote. Right. When two minds collaborate, third mind or intelligence communicates with you. Again, not about creating the new, but about revealing itself in, in what was already present. Yes, but the con. But the idea is that you have to have two minds in order to get to this dialectical third mind that was inherent in the conditions, the situation, the language of the two. When one interacts with any form of Large Language Model or ChatGPT, I in my mind and with what I carry, sit in front of a computer and type my input. That's one mind. Can you tell me where the second is?

[Elaine]

Because even if you're cutting up a book, there's a mind in the book, there's a story, there's an actual thing there, there's a thing that you are interacting with that were thoughts that were produced by someone that you are cutting up. You are not just scraping the toilet bowl of human production.

[Ryan]

But even if we're going to be generous and say that these large language models are the ones that are doing the cut up process and you are secondary or tertiary or even further down the line to it, I mean it doesn't involve a human intelligence at that point. So just in terms of the, you know, the Berossian current, it's just not a third mind. The material conditions are such that it is not and cannot be a third mind.

[Garrison Davis]

Where I would like to take this discussion is actually the very next talk that I attended was part of a three talk series called the Politics of Tarot. And the specific one that I think continued on this line of thought and even stuff like automatic writing was From Icon to Index by Thomas Leake, the Generative Logic of Tarot in which he discussed. I will have to check his name later, but discussed an author in the 80s who was trying to use Tarot as a way to remove the human element of writing, tried to create an automatic story using the Tarot archetypes assembled in a randomized shuffling to generate a story based on the linkages between each of the cards and remove his own like agency in directing where the story goes, except for trying to bridge each card from one to another. And the presenter was was discussing if this bears any like similarity to like generative text models. The presenter said no. The presenter said no. This actually is not like LLMs which purely operate on a people pleasing probabilistic capacity to follow one word after another in accordance with whatever the prompt of the person who's operating the AI wants it to generate. Though the presenter stated that this author who was using tarot probably would have loved using an LLM to try to accomplish this goal of his trying to access Kind of like a form of automatic writing similar to Austin Osborne's Bear, but without human input. The shuffling of the cards and forcing the human brain to make connections between these archetypes still contains a creative human process based on randomness in the shuffling of the deck versus the people pleasing probabilistic generative text that LLMs produce. This concludes the first episode of my Acculture 2025 coverage in part two, releasing Sunday night. The panel will discuss digital technomancy, traditional magical practice and why people are doing occult practice in 2025. See you on the other side. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcast from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

[Commercial Announcer]

Or wherever you listen to podcasts you.

[Garrison Davis]

Can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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[Garrison Davis]

Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless Hillbilly Heist my new true Crime podcast from Smartless Media, Campside Media and Big Money Pl. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer. That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan]

I live below a cult leader and.

[Elaine]

I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia, how do you.

[Garrison Davis]

Know she's a cult leader?

[Ryan]

Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid.

[Elaine]

Of of a Scary Story week on.

[Ryan]

The OK Storytime Podcast, so we'll find out soon.

[Garrison Davis]

This person writes, my neighbor has been.

[Elaine]

Blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals and now my ceiling is collapsing.

[Ryan]

I tried to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up A real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual?

[Garrison Davis]

No clue, Dakota.

[Ryan]

Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever.

[Elaine]

You get your podcasts.

[Garrison Davis]

Hey, I'm Kalpen, and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week I'm calling up my friends like Bill Nye, Lilly Singh, and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics.

[Ryan]

Put another way, are you high?

[Garrison Davis]

Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, but my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan]

This is an iHeart podcast.