For time immemorial, man has thought that all existence is imbued with spirit.

Before Deleuze, Foucault, and Wittgenstein. Before Nietzsche, Hegel, and Kant. Before Berkeley, Hume, and Descartes. Before Aristotle, Plato, and even Socrates himself, there were, by one name or another, the panpsychists. From Greece to India, from Persia to China, and from aboriginal Australia to 20th century America, the understanding of existence as an intertwined and, in some sense, living network of entities has perservered through unpopularity and oppression aplenty, entering the modern day as more of a force than it’s been in centuries. It reaches every corner of the Earth in one form or another. Its tendrils seem to stretch…

So I was sitting by the fire in the middle of a thunderstorm, nightmarishly late in a fittingly dark and stormy night. And the thunder, and the thunder god, bellowed out their boasts and put on shows of violet light. I watched. And I waited, and with nothing in return, for such a mighty time that I began to think the storm had stopped. But right then, once I’d looked away, the lightning flashed a brilliant blast. Well I was thoroughly a-taken. I watched the storm once more. Eventually, of course, I bored and gazed again into the fire. The…

The interwoven works of a Renaissance occultist and proto-abstract artist.

Johannes Bureus and Hilma af Klint; two Swedes, separated by three centuries, but intertwined with the same mysterious current of spiritual thought. One was a scholar of the highest order, revolutionizing the Swedish language and wielding great authority in the academia of his day. The other was a reclusive and obscure artist who barred the publication of her works until twenty years after her death. And yet, in some of their most acclaimed creations through their varied careers, they produced strikingly similar pieces that hint at a shared understanding of a secret symbolism.

Johannes Bureus and Hilma af Klint

Johannes Bureus (1568–1652), often called the “father…

The Left hasn’t had teeth since the 60s. But now, in the 20s, a change just may be on its way.

Hippies & Commies

The rise of the New Left may be called the last true social revolution in the history of the United States. The widespread appeal of the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war protests led to the mobilization of a generation against the American establishment with a ferocity rarely seen before and never seen since. Countless college campuses occupied. Some of the largest protests ever organized. Years of widespread riots. The rise of an entire counterculture. The very foundations of the nation were shaken. …

The fight for faith between radical factions

Religion and leftism have long been pitted against each other. This long-held historical truth, however, now seems to have been a mistake.

It’s an association that began, as many things in leftism did, with Karl Marx. The man himself, of course, was strictly atheistic. Despite being a devotee of Hegel, a Christian theologian, Marx possessed a distinctly scientific worldview, even going so far as to famously declare religion to be “the opiate of the masses”. This atheism was echoed in just about every major later leftist thinker; in Proudhon, Stirner, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Lenin, Mao, and an endless many more…

Deciphering the hidden history of a mythic archetype

Orion and Taurus, as depicted on the “celestial ceiling” of New York City’s Grand Central Station

The history of religion is beginning to seem to be a history of the stars.

For the last few decades now, but especially after the ascent of the Internet, a plethora of theories have popped up on the origin and evolution of religion. It’s an expansive and important topic, obviously, with innumerable secrets awaiting our uncovering. Most of these newfound theories don’t aim to seriously explain anything, though. Instead, they try to twist the ancient Mesopotamian Anunnaki gods into ancient aliens and the Egyptian Great Sphinx into a 10,000-year-old impossibility of a statue. In light of all this, then, let…

Gen Z’s cataclysmic golden years

An Underlying Crisis

COVID and its associated fallout may have irreparably broken an entire generation of Americans.

No, this won’t be the first article out there with the conclusion that “COVID bad”. Nor will it be the first to expose the psychological tolls that the pandemic has had on our populace, or even on the young in particular. But the extent to which this pandemic has utterly nuked Gen Z’s future still goes mostly unnoticed. The immediate material consequences of the crisis are clear. Grades have plummeted. Crucial tests for college entry have been fumbled or dismissed. K-12 schools have suffered massive faculty…

Now, oh now, I needs must part

Said the king to all who’d hear

Not an end, indeed, a start

Hardly felt a drop of fear

When, oh when, the Father knocked

Warmly grin he’d greet him with

Though so grandiose times it’d cost

Worth the risk was world of myth

Bit by bit, o’erworldly lift

Tugged his elder pains away

Tired mind, it tried to drift

Went not yet, he’d much to say

Now, oh now, I needs must part

Struggling king labored to say

‘Fore no more does beat this heart

Words I hold for those who’ll stay

A bliss without sin, a life without end

A smile so kind, none riled her mind

To suitors’ chagrin, her love was for him

But he let go, within was his foe

She fled to her kin, frolicked in the wind

And all the while, enthralled with her smile

The world stood and stared at red ruby hair

Since he let go, within was his foe

No man could withstand her grandiose gorgeousness

Still, they’d not scram for her hand in their boorishness

They wished to gaze, he wished he could get away

Once he’d let go, within was his…


Prehistoric man is an enigma to his modern progeny. We tend to think of life in the distant past as an unenviable thing; brutal, gloomy, and short. And, if we think of quality of life as simply the sum of material pleasures, then the hunter-gatherers undoubtedly had it rough. From the perspective of these prehistoric hunter-gatherers, however, material abundance meant nothing. Meaning was not derived from what things one owned, but what relationships one had and what contributions one could make. They needed not a thing in the world besides cohesion and community. …

J. W. Barlament

Writer of the most eclectic mix of material this side of the Mississippi. Author, 2016–2019. Blogger, 2017–2021. Columbia University, 2020–2024.

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