John David Ebert is a cultural critic, philosopher, and author from the American Southwest. He runs a successful YouTube channel and teaches courses through The John David Ebert School for the Study of Culture, Cosmology, and the Arts.
He covers topics spanning the literature of Cormac McCarthy and James Joyce to the films of David Lynch and Francis Ford Coppola to the paintings of Anselm Kiefer and Rembrandt to the philosophies of Heiddeger and Deleuze and the esoteric philosophies of Rudolf Steiner and Oswald Spengler.
John David Ebert is truly a man who is hard to categorize. He was kind enough to grace us with an interview.
What are you reading now?
At present, I am reading Thomas Pynchon’s novel Against the Day. We’re almost done with it, and I must say that not only is it Pynchon’s best novel, but it is the best novel ever written by an American. I would rank it as my third favorite novel of all time, after Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and then Moby Dick after it. And it must surely be one of the ten greatest novels ever written by anyone, including those amazing Chinese novels like Journey to the West, which is about on par with it.
What is hypermodernism, and how does it differ from postmodernism?
We’re doing a course on this beginning on Aug. 9 at 1 pm MST. It’s called “What is Hypermodernity?” and we will go into all the ways in which it is fundamentally a different structure than postmodernity, which ended in 1995 when the Internet was turned over to the public sector and then completely transformed our world from the ground up.
The task of postmodernity was to deconstruct the boxes that we had gotten ourselves stuck in with Christianity, on the one hand, and scientific materialism on the other. Christianity also made colonialism possible by encouraging the conquest of “dirt worshippers,” i.e., the world’s indigenous peoples who see sacrality everywhere and in everything, which Christianity decidedly does not. It sees Spirit only “up there,” to quote from Leonardo’s painting of John the Baptist. So once postmodernity was done deconstructing those worlds, we are left with its primary Ur-symbol, the junkheap (of which J.G. Ballard’s novel The Atrocity Exhibition is the exemplar).
So with respect to Modernity, then, we have three phases: Modernity proper (the Ur-symbol for which is the hyperdimensional object); postmodernity (the Ur-symbol for which is the junkheap); and hypermodernity (the Ur-symbol for which is the multiverse). So we have gone from Gebser’s Modernist / Integral, to the Postmodernist / dis-integral, to the hypermodern / re-integral. We’re looking for meaning now with sincerity, not irony. We now know that we don’t need Christianity to see the world as something sacred. There is a sacrality to it that is inherent and beyond Religion itself proper.
Who are your favorite visual artists and why?
Rembrandt, Picasso, Paul Klee, Caspar David Friedrich, Hilma von af Klint, Zdislaw Beksinski and Mary Church. They are all great Visionaries of the mythological and metaphysical universe, which is normally invisible to us but which the Artist, with his/her antennae, can pick up on with that third eye, the ajna chakra, and project it forth.
The visions of Mary Church are all about the monsters, devils, demons, and captured souls of the astral plane. Hilma von af Klint was a friend of Rudolf Steiner’s, and her paintings, on the other hand, portray the passionless world of the etheric or morphogenetic plane. That is the formative plane that is the source of all the blueprints (or Platonic Forms) that the physical world is based upon and which it presupposes for its existence. For Rembrandt, see my answer to your question about him below. For Caspar David Friedrich: I grew up reading horror fiction, and I love the spooky way he looks out on the world. For Picasso and Klee, it is their mastery of mythological / Jungian archetypes.
In your opinion, what is the most profound movie?
2001: A Space Odyssey for sure. Apocalypse Now is a close second.
Who are the most underrated novelists of the 20th century?
Doris Lessing and J.G. Ballard. Possibly W.G. Sebald as well.
How did you encounter the works of Rudolf Steiner, and how does he influence your thinking?
I encountered him when I was working for The Joseph Campbell Foundation and my friend John Lobell asked if I’d heard of William Irwin Thompson and I said that I hadn’t and then explained some of Thompson’s most brilliant ideas so I went to the library and got two of his books, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light and Pacific Shift. They totally blew me away, so I wanted to interview him. John Lobell gave me his number, so I called him and told him I was working for The Joseph Campbell Foundation, and then he went apoplectic on Campbell, pointing out that he’d stopped reading anything published after 1945 and he never read Rudolf Steiner, Marshall McLuhan, or Jean Gebser. I had never heard of these guys, but when I went and got their books, they opened up whole new intellectual horizons beyond the merely Jungian world of Campbell and the Eranos conferences.
Steiner’s influence upon me is very profound. He was the first to introduce me to the idea of reincarnation and take it seriously (whereas Campbell just dismissed it as a metaphor). And also his amazing cosmogonic myths of the evolution of the astral plane of our solar system with its four different epochs: Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth. Only the Earth phase takes place on the material plane, as the other three are entirely astral-etheric. And his ideas about our four different bodies are extremely mind-opening: the physical body which we share with the elements; the etheric body, which is the passionless morphogenetic field that shapes living things and which we share with plants; the astral body, which we share with animals and which brings in passions and desires; and the Ego, or the monad that transmigrates from one lifetime to the next, and which is unique to the human species. One amazing idea after the next.
The works of Joseph Campbell and Oswald Spengler seem to have molded your career early on. How did you come across them, and do you recommend young people read through their works? What is the best place to start?
I stumbled upon Campbell’s work back in college when I was channel surfing one night and then landed on The Power of Myth, where Bill Moyers interviewed him. That was life-changing. Literally. I didn’t really understand much of what he was saying, as I had never read much non-fiction up to that point, so I went and got his two most fundamental works (where the newbie should start): The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949) and the four volume epic The Masks of God (1959-68). The last one, Creative Mythology, is especially important to read for understanding the basic myth of Western, Faustian civilization: the Grail Quest. It has nothing to do with Christianity, however, which Campbell regards as a pseudomorphosis or “false form” that only conceals and covers up the indigenous Celtic-Germanic myth of the unique individual.
For Spengler, get hold of the abridged edition of Decline of the West, read that, and then, if you want more, get the two volumes of The Decline of the West.
Do you think that Trump has fulfilled the role of Caesar in the Spenglerian cultural life cycle?
I think it’s still too early to tell, but he does seem like the type of character Spengler describes as the Caesars, namely, absurdly wealthy money men with the power to create their own private armies. He’s more like a Sulla than a Caesar, i.e., somebody who has a deep mistrust of the political machinery of the Senate, and finds ways to get around their power, which in those days would have been with military force, but things have gotten too complex now for that. The structure of the American government in five years will not even remotely resemble what it is now, or what it was before America’s Pluto Return, which happens within a country every 248 years, and Pluto is the planet that brings death and resurrection along with its archetype.
Oswald Spengler talks at length about Rembrandt’s signature brown paint. What is the significance of that color, and what role did Rembrandt play in the evolution of mankind?
Spengler points out that Rembrandt brown is the one color that cannot be found in the rainbow or prism and is therefore a metaphysical color that signifies infinite space. Rembrandt’s self-portraits are the most complex and revealing of all time, and he is unfolding the Faustian myth of the human individual as a unique species unto himself. That’s our fundamental myth, and Rembrandt’s art is particularly important for detailing it.
Do you have any predictions for America’s political or cultural future?
Balkanization into a multiplicity of nations. Once you’ve read Joel Garreau’s Nine Nations of North America, you realize pretty quickly that there are some real fundamental cultural and economic fault lines that will eventually pull it apart. California will secede as most likely will Texas, as they are both worlds unto themselves with very little to do with the rest of the country. A few years back, for example, Eastern Colorado (which is all conservative Bible belt farmers) tried to secede from Western Colorado (all liberals).
From our previous discussions, it seems you have some strong opinions on Christianity. Can you expand upon that?
Yes, it is a religion that sanctifies colonization of indigenous peoples, whom it used to regard as “dirt worshippers,” as the physical world in Christianity is fallen and corrupt, so anyone who sees Spirit in rocks, trees, or eagles is suspect as having come under the rule of the Devil, which is ludicrous. It is also misogynistic: Augustine, for instance, defines woman as “a temple built above a sewer.” And it is also erotophobic, seeing sex as inherently sinful and shameful. Why? As I have the girl narrator say in my novel Every Angel is Terrifying: “god uses penises as brushes for painting in genetic pigments all over the earth canvas.”
Do you have a framework for knowledge/epistemology? How do we determine what is True?
By comparing and contrasting one thinker with the next and trying to see how they are NOT mutually exclusive, but complementary: Toynbee, for instance, adds very useful ideas to Spengler’s universe, such as the “internal proletariats” that form like cancerous tumors within the body social, or the “universal states” which is the same thing as Spengler’s Caesarism. Jean Gebser, in his Ever-Present Origin, is the sequel and antidote to Spengler’s pessimism. What Spengler saw as “the decline of the West” beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century with its descent into materialism, Gebser sees only as the “deficient” mode of the mental/perspectival consciousness structure with the birth of a new structure, the Integral, coming out of its ruins. He was the only German philosopher to see Modernism as a breakthrough, not a breakdown. And so forth. When you do these comparisons with an open mind, it becomes evident that they are all sensing some kind of Truth but using different vocabulary and seeing it with different biases. It’s the tale of the five blind men and the elephant. That elephant is definitely there, even if our great thinkers see only parts of it.
You recently taught a course on Dostoevsky. What were some of the big takeaways from that experience?
Mind-blowing. The tale of the Grand Inquisitor definitely lives up to its reputation. Spengler says that Dostoevsky had been thinking at one time of writing his own version of the life of Christ, and that if he had done so, it would’ve been an authentic gospel, and that’s exactly how that tale feels, as well as the one after it about the life of Father Zosima. Dostoevsky’s version of Christianity could actually work, since it embraces the material plane and sees it as fundamentally sacred. He also loves women, as is evident from Raskolnikov’s love for the prostitute Sophia in Crime and Punishment. It is only that love which redeems him after he commits the murders. There is also a hint of reincarnation, as the tale of the Grand Inquisitor has Jesus being reincarnated into the sixteenth century as a monk.
How did you come across the paintings of Anselm Kiefer, and what impact did that have on you? Is he the greatest living painter?
I wouldn’t say that he’s the greatest living painter, but he is very, very good. He was one of Mary Church’s favorite artists, too. I remember us watching his film, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow. I came across him when I was doing research on contemporary artists for my book Art After Metaphysics, which examines the semiotics (and semiotic vacancies, a term I coined specifically for that book and which the Los Angeles poet Michael Aaron Kamins picked up on for his amazing poetry collection Absences, which I highly recommend).
We have previously discussed the films of David Lynch. You have talked about the dreamlike realm Lynch creates and how it is an accurate representation of the astral realm and its inhabitants interacting with our normal waking life. Can you expand upon that and explain? What does the progression of David Lynch look like throughout his career?
He has a po-mo phase that is followed by a hypermodern phase. The po-mo phase begins with Eraserhead and ends with Wild at Heart. All those movies are about making fun of trying to find meaning in an obviously meaningless universe. But with Lost Highway (1996), he crosses over into the realm of the multiverse, and his work is hypermodern from thenceforward. Lynch in those later films sees the world for what it really is, namely, a covering that occludes the spiritual realm of the astral plane, which is the non-material realm that our astral bodies travel to every night when we dream. It is the plane of passions and desires, beings with shifting identities, and so forth. David Cronenberg said that when people ask him what his movies are about, he says, “Imagine that you’ve drilled a hole into the middle of your head and that what you dream is then projected onto the screen.” Perfect description for what Lynch was up to with his work, the grand climax and finale of which was Twin Peaks season 3.
You’ve stated before that the career of painter Francis Bacon is clearly divided by Saturn cycles. Can you elaborate upon this?
Every artist goes through 7-year Saturn phases (and indeed so does everyone, no matter who you are). But it becomes especially visible with artists like Bacon or Caspar David Friedrich, or Rembrandt. Every 7 years, their style changes. Jean-Michel Basquiat painted for exactly 7 years before overdosing on a speedball. Mary Church killed herself just one month after she turned 28 and so joined the 27 club along with Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and others. Saturn takes 28 years to go around the sun. Every 7 years, it forms a significant aspect: at age 7, you’ll have Saturn square Saturn; at age 14, Saturn opposite Saturn; at age 21 Saturn square again; and then at 28 there’s a full return. Saturn is the planet of threshold crossings, which are always difficult, and this is why Saturn is associated with difficult things, obstacles, form, rigor, discipline, and so forth.
You have a great capacity for knowledge retention and the ability to draw upon it at a whim. Do you have any techniques for memorization or lecturing from memory that you can share?
No, not particularly, but I think what helps is that when I read a book I constantly highlight and annotate the pages, which creates eidetic visual images of those pages in my memory, which is photographic to begin with. When I first started lecturing, I would just think out loud until I had a structure with some sort of spine and then I would pace around the room reciting the lecture and pretending I’m in front of an audience. Nowadays, whenever I give a talk or am on a podcast, I just speak off the top of my head. It’s become effortless over the years.
How has William Irwin Thompson influenced your thinking? Do you have any other intellectual mentors?
Joseph Campbell and Thompson were my mentors. Beyond them were Europeans like Jung, Steiner, and Spengler. They formed role models for me. Sam Keen used to say, “Tell me who you most admire and it’ll tell me the kind of man you aspire to be.” Thompson was different from those others in that he was a living mentor who had shaped my development for 15 years (i.e., half a Saturn cycle).
Here is what I’ve written about my relationship with Thompson in my autobiography:
Now, Thompson became my mentor for the next 15 years. And he was very hard on me, but his criticisms were essential to my success. It’s important for a young man to have a strong, older male role model whose opinion he can trust. And I trusted Thompson because he was always brutally honest with me. I would send him a manuscript, and he would say, Not your best work, try it again. I would work on something else and send it, and he would say, Don’t go in this direction, it’s not where your strengths lie. And so on for many years until I finally sent him a manuscript, and he said, Hey, this is not bad, actually. And that became my second book, published in 2005, Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons. Thompson liked it enough to give it his imprimatur with a Foreword.
In other words, he was another wandering nomadic maverick like Campbell, who managed to have a career outside of academe, which anathematizes you if you have any fresh, new, or original ideas. You can’t have your own thoughts in academia; they must be thoughts that your peers will approve of. Otherwise, if you say something speculative that turns out to be wrong, you may not get tenure, or you may be ridiculed by your peers at cocktail parties. Real thinkers, however, are not interested in cocktail parties or indeed, in anyone’s opinions of them. Other people’s opinions are usually stuck in the past while you, meanwhile, are shaping the future for future academics who will then think they have the answers. And that’s how the cycle works. Thompson defined academics for me perfectly: “They’re postal clerks, stamping received opinion and passing it along.”