Tommy P Cowan

This article argues that the true depth of William Seward Burroughs II’s ideological legacy within Western esotericism has been somewhat underappreciated by historians of religion, and this is evidenced by the insufficient credit Burroughs has thus far received for his pivotal role in the emergence of the “2012 phenomenon.” The purpose of this article is to distinguish Burroughs’ works as centrally spiritual, thus providing a context that can allow scholars to properly measure the communities that gravitate to his ideas. The body of this article begins by examining Burroughs’ role in the 2012 phenomenon, and it will be argued that “anti-magical polemics” are perhaps partly responsible for somewhat reducing the awareness of Burroughs’ roles in esoteric currents of the twentieth century. A diachronic comparison is then undertaken by analyzing Gnosticism to provide a foundational context for situating Burroughs’ worldview as a transhistorical pattern of thought that herein will be defined as ‘archontism.’ The concept of archontism is then used to more accurately classify Burroughs’ literature as ‘books of the dead,’ and this article concludes with a refutation of anti-magical polemics that explicitly denigrate the study of esotericism.

This article explores some of the myriad connections between geometric visuals, magic, and altered states of consciousness, more specifically looking at the colocation of geometric visuals and experiences of intermediary beings. The main focus here is on how geometric visuals relate to the consciousness experiments and magical practices of American author William Burroughs (1914–1997) and his Swiss-English collaborator Brion Gysin (1916–1986). Such an analysis will also dive into the broader intellectual currents that influenced Burroughs and Gysin’s uses of geometry, yielding more abstract conceptions of how geometry relates to altered states of consciousness and intermediary beings. Furthermore, understanding how geometric manipulation of the mind works has important consequences for multiple fields outside of the history of esotericism, including market-oriented disciplines like architecture and industrial design. As such, this essay proposes that the historical study of esotericism can promote and conduct itself as an interdisciplinary space that communicates the value of its data to market-oriented fields through “material approaches” to religion à la Birgit Meyer.

In this paper, I intend to do two things: 1) explore select phenomena within the category of intermediary beings called "archons"; and 2) analyze how experiences of archons during altered states of consciousness influenced the textual and philosophical productions of William S. Burroughs II and his entourage.