{"id":4718,"date":"2012-11-24T09:38:07","date_gmt":"2012-11-24T16:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4718"},"modified":"2012-11-24T09:38:07","modified_gmt":"2012-11-24T16:38:07","slug":"a-day-and-a-night-in-occult-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4718","title":{"rendered":"A Day and a Night in Occult Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A statue of the goddess Ceres tops the Chicago Board of Trade building, as seen from a classroom building at DePaul University.<\/p><\/div>\n

For the third time in four years, we had a pre-conference event that tied into Pagan studies somehow. (Previously: Montr\u00e9al<\/a>, San Francisco<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

This was the Occult Chicago conference organized by Jason Winslade at DePaul University\u2014his take on “Chicago Quarter<\/a>,” an urban orientation class that all first-year DePaul students must take.<\/p>\n

Imagine a bright new student who, however, does not know a Theosophist from a Chicago Bear. Suddenly she (who maybe just took this section because it fit her schedule) finds herself immersed in a world yogis, magicians, witches, astrologers, hucksters, publishers, and \u2014 this being Chicago \u2014 architecture.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jason Winslade (black cap) points out the location of the former Chicago Masonic Temple on State Street, accompanied by “Occult Chicago” blogger Rik Garrett, right.<\/p><\/div>\n

Those of us who attended the one-day version (see also Jason Pitzl-Waters’ review<\/a>) heard some of the students’ capstone presentations, learned that the first skyscraper in Chicago was built by the Freemasons<\/a>, listened to representatives of contemporary magical groups, and visited sites and building associated with occult organizations, hauntings, violent deaths, and publishing houses.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mural on the tenth floor of the Fine Arts Building, Michigan Avenue, Chicago.<\/p><\/div>\n

One highlight was the Fine Arts Building,<\/a> 410 S. Michigan Ave., where at one time the Thelemite Choronzon Club<\/a> held its meetings and the Akbar Lodge of Theosophists had its office.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Pookah (right)\u00a0 and friends pursue the skeptical German professor in a Terra Mysterium skit.<\/p><\/div>\n

Finally came a performance by the Terra Mysterium <\/a>steampunk theatre troupe. You might think that a classroom would not make the best performance space, but the performance was laced with academic parody, so it worked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the third time in four years, we had a pre-conference event that tied into Pagan studies somehow. (Previously: Montr\u00e9al, San Francisco.) This was the Occult Chicago conference organized by Jason Winslade at DePaul University\u2014his take on “Chicago Quarter,” an urban orientation class that all first-year DePaul students must take. Imagine a bright new student […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[184,39,4],"class_list":["post-4718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chicago","tag-occultism","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1e6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4428,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4428","url_meta":{"origin":4718,"position":0},"title":"Call For Papers, Presentations, Workshops, Rituals and Performances Mapping the Occult City: Exploring Magick and Esotericism in the Urban Utopia","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 7, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A pre-conference for the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religions in Chicago, on Friday November 16, 2012, presented by Phoenix Rising Academy and DePaul University. In his classic essay, \u201cWalking in the City,\u201d ethnologist and historian Michel de Certeau distinguished between the \u201cexaltation of a scopic and gnostic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Chicago\"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=chicago"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5382,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5382","url_meta":{"origin":4718,"position":1},"title":"Magick and Improvisational Comedy","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 27, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Really? Witchcraft at Second City Chicago? Magical warding for the building? Or were those \"demons\" just metaphorical? How come this was not part of last November's \"Occult Chicago\" tour?","rel":"","context":"In \"Chicago\"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=chicago"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4685,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4685","url_meta":{"origin":4718,"position":2},"title":"The ‘Occult Chicago’ Event","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking forward to this event a lot. It should fortify me for the hard business of a confrontation with a certain publisher's editorial director. And keep an eye on Rik Garrett's Occult Chicago blog. Why don't you start one for your town?","rel":"","context":"In \"Chicago\"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=chicago"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6055,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6055","url_meta":{"origin":4718,"position":3},"title":"Beavering Away at Home","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Once in a while, I like to note that Hardscrabble Creek is a real place. The beaver pair had kits this year, and they also expanded their dams from two to five. A couple of years ago, they left because they had eaten all the available deciduous forage, mostly narrowleaf\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"beaver ponds10-13","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/beaver-ponds10-13.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5954,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5954","url_meta":{"origin":4718,"position":4},"title":"Oceania Has Always Been at War with Lemuria","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Los Angeles Review of Books offers a review of two books on Ray Palmer, the Shaver Mystery, and pulp-esoteric publishing of the 1940s\u201350s: The War Over Lemuria and The Man from Mars : Ray Palmer's Amazing Pulp Journey. From the review: Of course, the underground worlds of Richard Shaver\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Chicago\"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=chicago"},"img":{"alt_text":"51119-243x366","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/51119-243x366.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4769,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4769","url_meta":{"origin":4718,"position":5},"title":"Journalism and the AAR-SBL","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Journalists are few at the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature's joint annual meetings.\u00a0 But the New York Times' Mark Oppenheimer, searching around for \"the narrative,\" noted that some fraction of the participants wore flowing robes and weirdly remarked about people carrying hefty reference books, as\u00a0 Steven\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4718"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4736,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4718\/revisions\/4736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}