Advertise on podcast: Professor Kozlowski Lectures

We venture down the rabbit hole of modern art criticism with a shallow dive into the history, inspirations, and major figures of the Surrealist movement - and I subject you to some naked fanboying over some of my favorite artwork. Related readings include Breton's Surrealist Manifesto, Nadia Choucha's Surrealism and the Occult, Nerdwriter's video on Un Chien Andalou, and some good old-fashioned wikipedia trawling for weird surrealist artwork.

Today we discuss some of the most dangerous purveyors and practitioners of occult philosophy - Hitler's Nazis. Using the Extra History series on Nazi Occultism, Hitler's Monsters by Eric Kurlander (and its proof-of-concept essay), and several other perspectives by Umberto Eco, Dan Olson, and Lindsay Ellis, we'll discuss how the Nazi party grew out of pervasive unscientific and border-scientific thinking, occult philosophy, and wonky mythology, and turned these ideas into a powerful propagandistic engine that continues to influence us today - even as those same ideas undermined the Nazis' success in reality. EDIT: Sorry about the inconvenience - I think the upload cut out around the 1:23:00 mark for some reason. I've re-uploaded the original file. I don't see any evidence that Spotify is censoring me on this one, but we'll give it another shot and see if I get any more trouble. The episode is supposed to be just about 1:39:00, and Spotify currently registers it at that length. If it cuts out prematurely again, you have my blessing to blame Spotify.

Today we discuss the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the secret magical society that included such luminaries as W. B. Yeats, Dion Fortune, and Aleister Crowley, who went on to shape the twentieth century's perspective of magic, despite the organization imploding spectacularly after barely two decades of operation. Among our sources today are the Extra History video on Crowley and the Golden Dawn, Crowley's "Auto-hagiography," The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Francis X. King's Modern Ritual Magic, Ellman's summary of his final interview with Crowley in the Partisan Review 1948, and snippets from both Ellman's Yeats: The Man and the Masks and Foster's Yeats: A Life.

Professor Kozlowski concludes his discussion of Goethe's Faust, Part One by discussing the fall of Gretchen/Margareta, and touching briefly on the conclusion of Faust, Part Two for the sake of closure.  He managed to do all this without breaking into tears - this time.

Today we discuss the influence of William Blake on the 20th Century. By tracing the development of some of Blake's artistic choices, ideas, and themes through the 19th century and into the 20th, we will hopefully see how many of the preoccupations of William Blake, many of which were revolutionary or unusual in his work, would develop into commonplaces of our own time and culture.

Today we tackle one of the most controversial figures in the history of philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche. By examining his ideas in the prologue to Thus Spake Zarathustra, "The Four Great Errors" in Twilight of the Idols, and his thoughts on "Peoples and Countries" in Beyond Good and Evil, we hope to lay bare many of the preoccupations and assumptions of the late Romantic era, discuss the development of these same ideas since Blake explored them in his prophecies, and set the stage for our discussion of the twentieth century in the weeks to come.

CW: Poetic imagery of blood and gore, ravishing, and apocalyptic discussion Today we discuss the works of William Blake that don't usually make it into anthologies and undergraduate curricula - namely "America: A Prophecy," "The [First] Book of Urizen," and "Laocoon" (as well as one EXTREMELY popular poem from the deleted preface to "Milton: A Poem", and Pseudo Ossian's "The War of Inis-Thona," for context). These works begin to describe the greater mythological project of Blake's, which extends all the way to his masterpiece: "Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Great Albion". These are trying texts, but reflect a dramatic shift in the acceptable understanding of Christianity, the understanding of a poet's role in society, and the artistic priorities of art in the 19th century.

Today we kick off our discussion of William Blake with a little history catch-up, some discussion of his biography, and a [brief] analysis of the "Songs of Innocence and Experience," and the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell." We'll discuss Blake's religious perspective, his creative interpretation of Milton, and the ideas that will go on to influence Romanticism, magicians, and 20th century thinkers of many stripes.

Today we finish our discussion of Milton's Paradise Lost with a close examination of Books 9-10. Along the way we'll look at Satan's last chance to make peace with God, his rhetorical strategies to convince Eve to fall, and Milton's relentlessly debilitating portrayal of Eve herself. It's rough, folks. We won't go on to examine Books 11-12, where Milton summarizes the rest of the Bible and concludes with the promise of Christ's salvation - but instead we'll spend the next week discussing William Blake and his interpretation of Milton's poetry and theology.

Today we wrestle with the whole of Raphael's digressions from the central plot of Paradise Lost - the war of the angels in heaven, Milton's recapitulation of Genesis 1 and 2, and some interesting side questions about the Renaissance controversies surrounding the nature of the cosmos, angelic diet and sexuality, and a big glaring theological muddle surrounding human sexuality.

Now that our discussion is officially behind our reading, let's take the opportunity to run through some of the main ideas in Books 3-5 of Paradise Lost, including Milton's (perhaps inconsistent) emphasis on human (and angelic) freedom, Satan's doubts, and the characterization of Eve, God, and Adam.

Today we set out many of the topics we'll need to know in our ongoing study of British Magick - including the varieties of Magical practices common among Renaissance thinkers, some of the ideas of especially prominent Renaissance magicians, and the 17th-century British history surrounding John Milton and the writing of Paradise Lost.

Today we discuss the opening chapters of Milton's Paradise Lost, to ask ourselves: why do we find Satan so compelling in this poem? We'll discuss the reasons why Satan seems persuasive, as well as Milton's hints that Satan is not trustworthy - and why they don't seem to be sufficient.

Today we get as close as we're going to get to reading actual magical grimoires and practical magic instruction - we're looking at three famous texts with differing relationships to the Judeo-Christian Canon and theology. Namely, 1. The Book of Tobit, an Intertestimental book included in some Biblical traditions and not in others, about driving off a demon with some fish parts. 2. The Apocryphon of John, a key text associated with Gnosticism, supposedly written by John the apostle, but which presents a very different interpretation of the Genesis creation story. 3. The Testament of Solomon, a catalogue of demons that continues to baffle scholars, insofar as it invokes a tradition as old as Christianity, and bears some of the hallmarks of ancient composition, but probably didn't exist in its present form until the Renaissance.

Today we discuss how the New Testament came to be: first, by looking at the historical evidences surrounding Jesus of Nazareth, then by examining the complicated and confusing world of writers and writings that emerged in the first centuries of Christianity's growth, then finally by looking at Constantine and Eusebius' efforts to codify Christian teaching, theology, and canon.