I recently rewatched the horror classic Hellraiser (1987), and as well as finding it better on the second watch, I was fascinated with its portrayal of the ‘ecstasy of agony’ or the ‘agony of ecstasy’ (which we could also call ‘ecstatic agony’). I’m currently working on a book on the subject of ecstasy, and despite…
View Post
I recently heard Alex O’Connor (host of the Within Reason podcast) offer an interesting perspective on the problem of divine hiddenness, or the idea that if God existed, He would make His existence more obvious to everyone. Yet God’s existence is not obvious, and it may be easy to doubt and disbelieve, which is a…
View Post
The connection between psychedelics and philosophy isn’t made too often, despite the fact that there are myriad ways in which the psychedelic experience can relate to, challenge, contextualise, and add weight to various philosophical ideas and theories. There is, however, a definite history to the philosophy of psychedelics, with writers such as William James and…
View Post
Star Maker (1937) is a sci-fi novel written by British writer Olaf Stapledon. It describes the rich tapestry of cosmic evolution, surpassing in scale his previous novel First and Last Men (1930), which details the history of humanity from the present day back to two million years ago. Star Maker tells the story of a…
View Post
There are possibly many ways in which we can define a religious experience. We need to ask ourselves: What features should such an experience exemplify? There is also the issue of trying to ascertain whether a certain experience is pathological in nature. For reasons which will become clear, I will be using the term religious…
View Post