Numinous Machines

Rudolf Otto coined the term numinous to refer to the primal experience of the holy. When captured and articulated, the numinous is the basis of religion and culture. But in our age of religious unbelief and cultural decline, where do we find the numinous sources of spiritual and cultural renewal? According to Christopher Pankhurst’s Numinous Machines, the answer is all around us — along the margins and even in the dregs of modern culture — if only we have eyes to see.

Numinous Machines collects thirteen essays and four short stories in which Christopher Pankhurst descrys the numinous from a number of different angles—philosophy, religion, Traditionalism, magic, visual art, classical and popular music, contemporary literature, and even the spirit of place. Pankhurst uses such figures as Spengler, Wagner, Nietzsche, Sibelius, Giacinto Scelsi, James MacMillan, Damien Hirst, Alan Garner, David Myatt, Aleister Crowley, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and even Derrida and Stephen King to open our minds and sharpen our discernment.

Numinous Machines establishes Christopher Pankhurst as one of the leading theorists and critics of the New Right.

PRAISE FOR NUMINOUS MACHINES

“This collection of Christopher Pankhurst’s essays will—or should—provide the groundwork from which springs an ongoing and lively dialectic for many years, one that has the potential to redefine much about the New Right in the Anglosphere and further afield. What Pankhurst has achieved is the articulation of a philosophy that is quite unique at a time when one might wonder whether there is anything unique left to say. Like any genuine work of philosophy, it prompts many questions, and therefore provokes—literally provokes—one to think, and in directions that are usually left derelict by the Right.”—Kerry Bolton, author of More Artists of the Right

“Christopher Pankhurst makes a compelling case for the numinous manifestations of our god, who is reborn again like a phoenix, if only we are willing to listen and see. This is one of the most important books of our time, one that transcends Spengler’s The Decline of the West like a shining aureole.”—Leo Yankevich, author of The Hypocrisies of Heaven

CONTENTS

Foreword by Kerry Bolton

Author’s Note

1. Spengler: The Numinous Genesis of Culture2. Music of the Future3. Parsifal  the Possibility of Transcendence4. Tapiola: Sibelius the God of the Wood5. The Confession of Isobel Gowdie6. Giacinto Scelsi: A Soundtrack for Radical Traditionalism7. The Dance Continued: Perichoresis in the Novels of Alan Garner8. God Has Become Cancer: Damien Hirst, Religion, Death9. Nexus of Life: David Myatt the Acausal10. The Metaphysics of Death11. Ashes Hollow12. Liber III vel Jugorum Self-Mutilation13. The Yoke14. The Immortal Death of Mishima15. An Experiment in Relativity16. The Presence of the Past: From Ancestor Worship to Hauntology17. The Grey Wood

Index

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Pankhurst’s writings on music, the visual arts, literature, religion, folklore, occultism, philosophy, and politics have appeared in Counter-Currents/North American New Right, Helios, Black Gnosis, and the Thoughts and Perspectives series. Numinous Machines is his first book.