Before the current “Renaissance,” the psychedelic counterculture of the 50s and 60s instigated a “revolution” with far-reaching social and political consequences. Moving beyond the narrowly scientific research, we will explore thematic continuities in the literature, music, and art of both psychedelic eras. Our reading list will include emerging voices in the contemporary scene, as well as classic works by authors including Huxley, Leary, McKenna and others.

What I find fascinating in Hermetic and Gnostic Genesis myths are the formative encounters with limitation (and/or malevolent and inherently constricting daimons) that occur for the incarnating soul. In the myth of Sophia, for example, this limit is called Horos, meaning boundary. We can recognize the prefix from the well-known word “horoscope”—an astrological vision of a soul that has come under the dominion of a specifically limiting boundary.