Ammon Hillman is Unstoppable
It’s been about 30 days since I first encountered D. C. Ammon Hillman on Danny Jones’ ( ridiculously censored for youTube ) Koncrete podcast.
In this recording, which is available uncensored to Danny’s Patreon subscribers… we learn a bit about Hillman’s origins, indictments, passions and perspectives.
During the interview, Jones appears a bit disoriented, and spooked — there’s some kind of thunderstorm happening outside, as if Hillman is being accompanied by drumming of ancient Gods.
Zeus, for example.
Which, frankly, seems eerily appropriate.
Danny is entirely unprepared for what he’s about to experience. As usual, he’s thinking in terms of theories and ideas. Most of his questions don’t actually gel, because he has no experience of anything like what Hillman is becoming. Or talking about. He seems to be trying to keep Ammon from birdwalking, and to approach the Hillman’s oeuvre in a stepwise fashion so as not to lose his listeners. That’s an efficient strategy when interviewing a mantic prophet for an uninitiated audience.
Theories and ideas are not actually what Ammon is there to purvey, although he’s willing to hold back and play that way for the sake of honoring the public reputation of his host and his audience.
What Ammon is up to is, ironically, a form of psycho-linguistic ressurection. A beat-poet’s tranjection of linguistics and liturgy wrapped up in the living enigma he’s become.
And what he’s bringing back to life is not merely the ancient Greek language… but their ways of life, orienting concerns, and their polypharmacology.
Hillman conjures a strange mode of semi-evangelical fervor tinged with the fragrances of both the altar and the ( sacred ) whorehouse. He invokes the muses of old, and recollects to us situations and glimpses of reality cribbed from archaic Greek texts… of unimaginably sophisticated intoxicants and antidotes… of initiatory mysteries … death, resurrection, forbidden knowledge… and the complex poisons derived from the venoms of serpents coupled with herbs, dusts, dyes… and the carefully curated excreta of human bodies.
After listening to Danny’s overly sober interview, fraught with half-erased epithets and partial illustrations of bizarre rites practiced in pre-biblical times by ancient Greeks… I wanted more.
I wasn’t shocked by anything Hillman said, but I found something truly unusual in his vocal music, character and presentation… something half-familiar to me from my personal experience.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Histrionic Histories
When Jones asks him about the origins of his interests… which should more accurately be posed as obsessions… Hillman tells us that they all begin with Jesus. A felt urgency to understand who Jesus was. This naturally leads him into various evangelical situations and conflicts throughout his youth which are relatively tangential to his present state of mind and thought.
Eventually, he begins to study ancient Greek under a master classicist who tells him the three most crucial things to keep in mind as he pursues his education: 1. Primary sources. 2. Primary sources. You can probably guess what 3 is.
Primary sources.
Hillman reveres his mentor, John Scarborough ( University of Wisconsin ). But what he’s telling us is this: he was trained to ignore opinion and theory — and, particularly, people who specialize in ‘Religious Studies’.
“Classical Philologists laugh at ( scholars of ) religious studies because they don’t master the basics — don’t tell me what Cicero said — don’t tell me what Homer said unless you can read what Homer said.”
He adjures us to forget interpretations provided by secondary and tertiary texts — to go to the first, the oldest, the canonical authors, from whose side we should not depart.
Hillman studies a broad variety of such sources, but specifically highlights Galen ( who wrote some 20,000 pages of rarely examined surgical, pharmacological and medical material which Hillman purchased a copy of from St. Mary’s College ) and Nonnus. He also pays significant attention to Pindar, Ovid and Aeschylus among others.
The πρόβλημα
One of the seminal personal origin stories Ammon relates involves his dissertation on the Roman use of pharmacological substances. Apparently, no one had written anything anything meaningful on this topic, and Hillman’s master’s thesis involved a translation and commentary which he didn’t want to repeat. Over a period of about two years he wrote a general text so that readers could understand more about the context and use of drugs in the Roman world ( we’re probably talking about 200 BCE to 200 AD ).
In his preamble he speaks of the incredible physical and emotional complexities of ancient life, by which he means injury, disease, death, insanity … women dying of childbirth was extremely common. Pregnancy wasn’t merely an ordeal, it was, directly, an encounter with death from which many women did not emerge. But war, famine, communicable disease and other misadventures took their toll on nearly everyone. Nearly no one lived long enough to die of heart disease or old age… though we might imagine that there were a few exceptions.
It seems unlikely that the Romans had any idea resembling what we think of when we hear the word ‘drugs’ with the connotation of ‘addictive substances that are illegal and best avoided’. And here’s the thing, when you’re examining ancient texts, as a classicist, you have to try to understand not only ‘what the senses of a word are’ ( these are the enumerated definitions you find in lexicons and dictionaries ), but also what the word was ‘most likely to mean’ given a place, a time, and a context for its use.
We have the same features of language today, though ancient languages such as Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit and Hebrew had astonishing ‘extra-lexical’ webs of possible or intended meanings… connotation ( associative implications ), it turns out, is at least as important as denotation ( definitions ).
The Romans (and probably the Greeks before them) didn’t really distinguish formally between medicines and what we think of as intoxicants. So they didn’t have the idea of ‘recreational’ drugs, though they surely knew the joys of alcohol and many other substances, including cannabis. [ Similarly, the concept of ‘homosexuality’ was effectively nonexistent. One doesn’t refer abstractly to something which is everywhere commonly known, practiced, and as ordinary as breathing. ]
And here is where the serious trouble appears to begin…
To hear him tell it, his advisor(s) declared that they would not publish his dissertation unless he removed all references to ‘recreational’ drug use.
Their words, not his.
When he asked why, he was told: “Because the Romans wouldn’t have done this.”
It’s clear that this is one of those shoulder-chipping moments that sets in motion a series of futurial passions, obsessions and determinations in many a scholar, whether academic or not.
“At that moment, I knew, that my job, for the rest of my life, was to discover all the things the Romans ‘would not do’.”
Let’s face it: to be told what not to study or speak of… especially for a classicist… can be… extremely motivating.
Hillman reiterates the relatively crucial observation that the Romans didn’t really have a concept of recreational drug use. Rather, given both the incredibly dangerous — and often lethal — exigencies of life, battle, birth, disease and death in their time — they had become masters of what he refers to as polypharmacology.
As for ‘what the Romans did or didn’t do’, the primary sources tell tales that overtly refute the bizarre objections of his dissertation advisor(s).
Nevertheless, although he was eventually granted his PhD, Hillman clearly resents the fact that he was never actually congratulated for having navigated the daunting array of challenges that one faces in the achievement of this academic pinnacle.
This insult led to the eventual formulation and acceptance of the manuscript for The Chemical Muse: Drug Use and the Making of Western Civilization by Macmillan / St Martin’s Press.
“The Chemical Muse uncovers decades of misdirection and obfuscation to reveal the history of widespread drug use in Ancient Rome and Greece. In the city-states that gave birth to Western civilization, drugs were an everyday element of a free society. Often they were not just available, but vitally necessary for use in medicine, religious ceremonies, and war campaigns. Their proponents and users existed in all classes, from the common soldier to the emperor himself.”
Citing examples in myths, medicine, and literature, D. C. A. Hillman shows how drugs have influenced and inspired the artists, philosophers, and even politicians whose ideas have formed the basis for civilization as we know it. Many of these ancient texts may seem well-known, but Hillman shows how timid, prudish translations have left scholars and readers in the dark about the reality of drug use in the Classical world.
Hillman’s argument is not simply “pro-drug.” Instead, he appeals for an intellectual honesty that acknowledges the use of drugs in ancient societies despite today’s conflicting social mores. In the modern world, where academia and university life are often politically charged, The Chemical Muse offers a unique and long overdue perspective on the contentious topic of drug use and the freedom of thought.”
The Bells of …
Later, while ensconced in the Academic arms of St. Mary’s college ( Minnesota ) as a popular instructor of Ancient Greek ( and Latin as well ), he became an advisor for the production of a provocative play involving ancient Greek rites and orbiting Medea. The play ( coupled with other hijinx ) aroused the ire of the administrators resulting in his dismissal from his teaching position there, as well as a custodial position where he literally cleaned the toilets. This is a man who was absolutely committed to the concept of the university … and was willing to do the work that others wouldn’t as well.
In the Koncrete interview, Hillman seems bemused by much of this, but being dismissed from his position at St. Mary’s was obviously painful. His students fomented a serious protest; he was well-liked and skillful, if eccentric, mentor.
He underwent an investigation by the Catholic church, ostensibly for ‘summoning demons and opening portals’. If I recall correctly, a Monsignor had been taking one of his classes, and had a role in instigating the investigation.
Ammon says that a student accused him of something resembling astral rape… hovering etherically over her bed, paralyzing her roommate with his outstretched hand, and having his way with her — in soma pneumatikon.
Notably, in another podcast, ( Drawing Down the Stars ) Hillman claims he actually was doing some kind of magical operation that he refers to as incubus. He says that “the roommate of the person to whom I invoked the incubus called me up with an exact description of the event”.
Is this what catalyzed his investigation by the Church? It’s not entirely clear. Nor is it clear that these two anecdotes reference the same event…
What is clear is that, though Hillman usually downplays these matters and the charges he faced, he is simultaneously telling a personal history involving an attempt to actually understand, and perhaps directly participate in… the rites and magical… behaviours … spoken of in an array of ancient Greek texts.
A Kind of Resurrection
His present situation, however, has changed dramatically. Appearing on the Koncrete podcast has introduced hundreds of thousands of (actually about .75 million) people to his work, his mind… and his youtube channel.
It’s also riled a few religious scholars, some of whom are relatively powerful in the world of tik tok, youtube and beyond.
Although neither of them really thinks Hillman is worth much of their attention, I am talking about Dan McClellan and Kipp Davis.
Hillman has directly stated that this is one of his favorite passtimes… he deeply enjoys attacking the status-quo, and, particularly ‘religious scholars’, who, he claims, have effectively no idea what they are talking about. Why?
Well, both sides make a somewhat similar mode of claim. Hillman’s is that religious scholars are intentionally misreading ancient texts to protect their absurd biases, and overtly wrong historical and interpretive lies that have long been protected as canonical, or ‘authorized’ views. One can easily see the historical relevance of this in Hillman’s own academic history. He was told, specifically, that the Academy had standing dogmas about the predilections of the Romans that are inviolate.
Hillman takes great pleasure in ripping these to shreds utilizing his own combination of performance-art and understandings of ancient Greek — particularly the aspects of Greek antiquity relating to magic, rites and intoxicants.
McClellan ( who recently went on Danny Jones’ Koncrete podcast specifically to clarify his stance on some of Hillman’s claims ) and Davis are colleagues and have academic/scholarly backgrounds.
Their refutations are factually accurate, and, in terms of consensus, effectively inviolate. By which I mean to say that both of them are extremely well-versed in the history, Hebrew, Greek ( to a degree ), and the consensus scholarly views about the origins of the Torah and the New Testament.
McClellan is a fierce and extremely popular critical voice, who regularly takes on ‘Sunday-Driver’ self-proclaimed ‘revealers of biblical truth’ and shreds their arguments. It’s notable that in his recent interview with Danny Jones he declares that The King James version of The Bible is ‘A terrible translation’. He goes on to explain precisely why this is so, and his arguments are extremely compelling. This is monumentally important since nearly everyone thinks this is ‘the’ Bible, rather than a poor facsimile of what would emerge from a skillful translation of the source documents.
I know nearly nothing about Kipp Davis, but I did listen to his podcast with ‘Gnostic Informant’ ( Neil Sendlak ) regarding dating the origins of the Old Testament. Davis appears to be well-credentialed to speak authoritatively on matters related to the Dead Sea scrolls and historical Hebrew.
Both of them essentially claim that Hillman’s understanding of the ancient world ( and the Bible ) is wrong ( Davis actually uses the word demented to describe one of Hillman’s assertions ), and that he selectively promotes uncommon or medical senses of specific Greek words to a kind of universality that is totally unjustifiable and simply wrong.
Their primary objections:
- The Septuagint doesn’t predate the ( written ) Hebrew Torah. ( Hillman is certain that it does and can provide a broad selection of compelling linguistic and idiomatic evidence for this claim ).
- Christos (anoint) doesn’t (biblically) mean to have burning purple initiation drugs in your eyes ( or up inside your nether recesses ).
- Hillman’s profoundly controversial assertions about Jesus from Mark 14:51–52 ( the garden incident with the young boy ) are unjustified.
- One cannot reasonably promote specific senses of Greek words from medical texts to a universal application in Biblical contexts.
- The Hebrew vocabulary is ~85,000 words, not ~8,000 as Hillman commonly mockingly states when comparing it to the Greek vocabulary of around 350,000 words. ( What Hillman is actually claiming is probably close to correct and is that ancient or Biblical Hebrew had a vocabulary of around 8000 primary words ).
- Jason Jorjani says that Hillman’s perspectives on the prevalence of homosexuality in ancient Greece might apply to the mystery cults (Hillman’s specialization), but are clearly wrong since homosexuality was clearly indicted by Isocrates and Plato (in The Laws). Jorjani also claims, in his conversation with Danny Jones, that Aristotle (and other prominent intellectuals) opposed this behavior as well.
Be that as it may, we’ve covered enough history.
What’s Hillman’s claim to Academic or Linguistic expertise?
A Classicist
Ammon Hillman is a Classical Philologist. A Classicist. In his own words (slightly paraphrased) this is someone who, given a small block of text with some idiom in it, can accurately determine when and perhaps where it came from, with a margin of error of perhaps 75 years.
He’s spent 30 years studying every Greek text he can get his hands on, as well as delving into the medical, surgical and pharmacological texts of Galen to a degree far surpassing any existing scholar.
While Hillman is clearly a skillful academic, he doesn’t resemble someone whose expertise is limited to Biblical or religious contexts. One of his arguments is that the scope of understanding of most if not all such academics is not merely limited by their concerns; these disciplines inculcate biases of interpretation in their pursuit of scholarly insight due to normative and religious agendas that should remain outside the true application of scholarly research and understanding. How can we understand history if we’re limiting ourselves to interpretations that remain within the lines of preferred narratives that are often basically just lies?
It’s not surprising that his detractors find this ridiculous and provocative. There’s something to be said her for both sides of the argument. But what is Hillman actually trying to get us to understand about the ancient Greeks and their fascinations with ritual, sex, drugs, initiation and … ‘dotes’ and ‘antidotes’?
Olden Times
Firstly, that drugs were a common part of daily life for ancient people, particularly the Greeks. There weren’t laws prohibiting the use of pharmacological substances, and there were a broad array of sources for them. They could be had at any marketplace, in diverse forms and potencies.
These include botanicals, venoms (particularly important), dusts and dyes. As far as the latter goes ‘the burning purple’ is central to a few of Hillman’s propositions. This is some kind of drug that can be used for various purposes, but is specifically noted for inducing either death or a near-death state from which a person thus intoxicated can be ‘resurrected’. This initiatory process, which he proposes is central to the activity of Elusinian or other mystery schools, results in an ‘opening of the eyes’, and, specifically, the permanent loss of the fear of death. He literally says that the Greek understanding of Mystery is directly emergent from an experience of the performance of ritual intoxication and ceremonies that lead one into death and resurrection, resulting in the acquisition of ‘keys’ that effectively empower the initiate to decrypt key ideas, phrases, metaphors and texts… that are otherwise completely inscrutable.
Think about how liberating that would be… to be entirely freed from the fear of death, which is the central nexus of all other fear. Someone in this situation can longer be compelled by weaponized nonsense from religious, political or ideological sources… and is capable of courage and self-determination far beyond what others may understand, be familiar with or expect.
Secondarily, that sexual activity of every kind was common, practiced openly and ritually, uninhibited, and clearly included forms we’d reject as morally reprehensible. This is part of what Hillman detests — the strange stance of moral superiority that impunges sexual ecstasy as ‘dirty’ or depraved… although even Hillman finds some aspects of what he’s uncovered of ancient links between eros, intoxication and ritual… reprehensible. Specifically, the trafficking in children that he accuses certain figures ( including Jesus and ‘Christian Priests’ ) of.
But we’ll get to that.
Medea | The Medusae | Med-icine
Hillman describes a world where women, and particularly certain carefully prepared adolescent and pre-adolescent females… were inculcated with a variety of powers acquired through ritual, intoxication and initiation. Some of these were prophetic (the Oracles of the Ancient World), others were pharmacological or medicinal, yet others were magical and/or ‘necromantic’… a word for which Hillman seems to have a peculiar and specific meaning. I’ll return to that topic later.
He speaks of Medea (c: 1200 BCE), and her peculiar abilities with venoms as the living source of the idea that becomes medicine in the Western World. By carefully inculcating venoms and other substances into their bloodstreams, Hillman says, ancient women become not merely doctors, healers (and assassins)… they became living pharmacies capable of producing drugs within their bodies.
He tells a story of Medea traveling to Syracuse (Sicily) where she encounters an important man bitten by a marsh viper. He will die very quickly. She produces an antidote, according to Hillman, from her Colpos — her vagina — which saves his life. They build a temple to her nearby to honor the event.
The implication is this: she can produce substances in her body, available in various excreta and/or her blood, which can be used to form or in fact comprise intoxicants, antivenoms, antidotes, and other medicines. He also claims that there are texts he’s seen that imply or overtly state that she occasionally actually stored small snakes inside her body...
Think carefully for a moment about these statements, their origins, and their actual implications, for they are broad beyond what we might ordinarily be capable of thinking.
Suppose, for example, that the Serpent in the Garden of Eden story, is not an enemy of the human form or species, but rather… a liberator. This ‘Satan’ or adversary is the enemy not of God, but of a Demiurge who, masquerading as The Creator, is actually rather vicious and imprisons us with fear.
Effectively, this story could be taken to mean that the ‘fruit’ of the ‘tree of knowledge’ was venom. An intoxicant that induced a death-like state, and a ‘resurrection’ — after which the fear of death is overcome and the mysteries come to life within awareness, understanding and consciousness in such a way as to overcome the possibility of lethality (forgetting) and thereafter actively generate anamnesis.
Hillman’s presentation of the ancient situation is astonishing, but it’s not invented. These are not his opinions. They are what he has come to understand from careful reading and comparison of a vast array of ancient Greek texts, as well as the Septuagint and the New Testament (in Greek). The medical and surgical texts of Galen are particularly important here. But there’s so much more to cover…
In his interview with Danny Jones, when Danny asks him about the Annunaki and the Nephalim, and what he thinks about the idea of ‘ancient aliens’ associated with these words, Hillman scoffs.
He explains that the Nephalim were not physical giants, but that from the Giza texts he learned that they were Gigantae; giants of knowledge… specifically the knowledge of intoxicants.
He regales us with stories of the Medusae, often depicted as snake-haired women with the power to paralyze with their gaze (which we should understand the Greeks to think of as a projection of rays of power/intelligence, rather than merely the ‘receptors’ we have been scripted to think of our eyes as today).
Hillman’s Medusae (Gorgons) are warrior-guardian women who have been initiated into a broad array of arts and mysteries. They are set to guard temples and deal with men who have become problematical.
One imagines them as dreadlocked ‘police-assassins’ who were capable of producing venoms in their bloodstream and storing pharmacological concoctions in their dreads, each of which might contain a different substance which they could cause to coat a spine, blade or arrow.
[ Note: The ‘dreads’ are my own addition to his description, I do not think he mentions these specificially… ]
Ammon specifically mentions a few drugs and their purposes. A coagulent that could be used to stop women from bleeding out during childbirth (and warriors from dying of serious wounds or amputations), a stimulant that could cause a man to have an undying erection that persisted through orgasm ( he speaks of Medusae hunting men, taking them into a place where they could be bound, and riding them endlessly )… and a paralytic agent.
He mentions ‘5 days’ as the absolute outside of the survivable period for a male in this condition of Priapism. If the ancient tales are to be taken seriously, the drugs and rituals involved must have been complex enough to inhibit the damage to the male organ ( and circulatory system ) that would otherwise necessarily ensue from a sustained state of erection.
The Burning Purple
Hillman tells us of the use of a kind of ceramic dildo called an alabastrum, which is used to administer a complex ceremonial drug that we should assume there are different versions of … for different intended outcomes. Some of these, those involving initiation into the mysteries which are not necessarily specific to some given ideological milieu … but rather a library of methods for achieving anamnesis … and the total remediation of the fear of death (and, perhaps, of human authority).
This drug could be administered ocularly ( by putting it in and perhaps around the eyes ), anally or vaginally. In the case of the latter two pathways, the alabastrum was employed. This led Hillman on a quest to discover evidence of ‘the purple anus’ in primary sources.
Apparently, Carl Ruck, the man who coined the term ‘entheogen’ and a friend and ally of Hillman’s told him he’d need to find textual evidence for this to back his assertions about the alabastrum and its application in ancient initiatory and ecstatic ritual.
Hillman makes some unexpectedly severe and complex claims about the Biblical Jesus. To wit: That he was a trafficker in children, a λῃστής (lēistēs). This is a kind of pirate, brigand… slaver or trafficker. The Hillmanic Jesus is… a guy who hangs around with his 12 teenage male acolytes and recruits teen and pre-teen boys for purposes related to their ritual abilities and their occult capacities.
He codes this as sexually predatory, which is a bit strange since there’s no specific evidence for this in… well, the primary sources.
The only evidence he gives is that Jesus was ‘in the garden of Gesthemene at 4 o’clock in the morning with a child-male’.
He says that the Greek words for ‘medicated bandage’ are used to describe what is usually translated as ‘a linen cloth’, and that this is the kind of bandage that someone who’d recently been castrated might wear.
“The scholars study the past from a great distance, because they are here, not there. They poke at it with their long, thin sticks. Ammon has dived into the past — he’s become it. He’s actually there; when he’s reading those texts, he’s there. And through his own madness, he’s connected us — to there — and he’s just channeling, directly, the energy and the culture — the living culture… a wormhole from here to there. That’s what he is. All of the performance in his art — and that’s what it is — it’s pure Art — all of that is necessary.
That’s the plumbing that allows that energy and that culture, that living place — to connect directly — to here, to us. And part of what’s happening with this ‘not being a year’ and this complete breakdown of reality that is going on — the culture and the time — is dissolving — and… some kind of weird, quantum thing is going on where it’s possible to connect directly to different times, different places, maybe forwards as well as backwards.”
A Failed Initiation?
He tells us that Jesus had probably been intoxicated with the drug of initiation. That this concoction was known to sometimes (or always) contain certain exotic exudates. Specifically, serum from the breasts and/or vaginas of girls or a similar substance from the genital secretions of boys.
Although there’s no evidence of anything like this in the Bible as it has been translated to us, we should remember that Hillman knows things about the place and time, what was practiced and recorded in text that people who simply study a language or its Biblical lexicon… would know nothing whatsoever about.
Ammon has read things that no one else or nearly no one else knows anything about. And he’s had a variety of unique experiences related to these matters… experiences… of a decidedly occult character.
Jesus, at the time of his crucifixion, Hillman says, was in the throws of a lethal drug, from which he expected to be resurrected. A christos… an annointing, which was an actual physical annointing of a blend of toxins.
He tells us to imagine a dying Jesus, envenomed and terrified… uncertain if he actually wants to proceed through the living nightmare that surely awaits him.
Hillman says that Jesus’ cries of thirst on the cross indicate his intoxication with the venom of the Dipsas. And that the vinegar he was given was supposed to contain the proper antidotes that would rescue him from edge of death. But they were insufficient.
There are hints that ‘the burning purple is a dye containing a Zoopharmacognostic substance originating in a mollusc. Perhaps this is the purple dog whelk or purpura lapillus…
“As the result of chemical and physiological experiments, Roaf and
Nierenstein (8) came to the conclusion that the mantle of Purpura
lapillus yields a pressor substance allied to adrenin.
The green colour given with ferric chloride shows that it is probably
an ortho-dihydroxy-phenol, and the results of Barger and Dale (1) and
Harold, Nierenstein, and Roaf (6) point to the probability that the
pressor substance is an amine.”
— THE SITUATION IN THE MANTLE OF PURPURA LAPILLUS
OF THE CELLS WHICH YIELD A PRESSOR SUBSTANCE.
Hillman’s fascination with Jesus and re-interpreting the entire Christian origin story and narrative are as maniacal as they are, sometimes, compelling.
But what’s interesting here is not merely the questions that scholars argue over. Ammon Hillman is not merely ‘talking about things’, and he’s not a historian.
Hillman is, in fact, a very unusual creature.
He’s part academic, part scholar, part performance artist… and part prodigy.
He’s a magician and a rhapsodic orator.
The Greek, you see. It’s transformed his mind. He has become what he is impassioned by.
He has become the spirit of the ancients and their ways of life…
“I Have a Cheat”
Host (The Sacred Speaks): “Ammon, you’re not a guy that can be…held down…you move so fluidly in and out of different time periods and texts that I can’t imagine what it would be like to have read the amount of documents and texts that you have read it it just falls out of you like it’s fluid…”
Ammon: “I have a cheat… you want to hear my cheat? I’d love to… can I tell your audience? I shouldn’t do this because I’m exposing myself… and you’re never supposed to expose yourself as a magician but… I have a cheat…
I have a muse — and this muse is a dead girl that I am able to talk to via a practice handed down from the late Bronze Age. And she is able to resurrect in front of my eyes the spirits of the dead. And I call them up, one by one…”
The left side of Hillman’s head is tatooed with Medea’s name in Greek. I hope to learn, over time, what the rest of his tattoos say… and the stories of how and when he acquired them. I know that one of them translates into something like this: ‘The wealthiest bastard is the one beloved of the Muse.’
Anyone who is poetically and philosophically minded… and has a passion for language, is always proximal to something nonordinary. One might call this force λόγος Logos. But the sense of the word I mean is not the ordinary one. I mean the transcendental being that is the source and origin of the possibilities of language, conception, thought and consciousness. As the Sun is to light, around here, this Logos is to mind (in all of time). This is a dangerous situation… to become proximal to this originary force that is more than merely a being. There’s something resembling its lightning that can strike and indwell in a human mind and life.
I long ago discovered the strange and compelling features of a sort of ‘poetic game’ which is at once ‘magical’ and prophetic. In the beginning, I didn’t have a word for it. It’s best practiced in a library, unless one has a book collection of significant size… or, perhaps, content.
One can begin with a question. But it’s not specifically necessary. You simply select a book, or some books, or randomly approach a bookshelf. You get the volume, and turn to some page, and read the first thing that catches your eye there. This can be done in a cascade.
Poets, particularly those who were infected with some of the magical origins that orbit surrealism, are often aware of this game. Few take it seriously.
Because of my direct experience of its power… and nonordinary aspects, I take it seriously. It’s a real experience of nonordinary intelligence…
Of course, success in this endeavor depends on many factors. The passion of the querent. Whether or not they have acquired the attention and concern of nonhuman intelligences, the dead, angels, djinn, demons… the sky.
Origin(s).
Hillman refers to this as necromancy, and it’s clear that some of his prodigy and madness are related to his developmental experiences with something resembling this … behavior … more commonly referred to as bibliomancy.
μαίνεσθαι ( mainesthai )
Ammon Hillman’s visions of ancient history and meaning are profound, iconoclastic and inspired. They’re also partly mad. But his madness isn’t an ordinary thing. Not even slightly. He’s an inspired scholar of ancient Greek, and not merely the language itself… the ways of life… and the priorities that informed it.
He often refers to himself as ‘a ronin’, a term used to describe a samurai who has lost his master, or has become independent of any extrinsic authority… It’s clear that what he’s referring to is his entirely unjustified ejection from the Academy, and the sense of vengeful retribution this inspires in him.
His theogeny is feminine and shocking. It obliterates our common understandings of a ‘history’ he claims we’ve failed to properly examine and which is routinely lied about in Academia — particularly ‘Bible Scholars’ who attract his ire, scorn, insults and refutations.
But Hillman is no ordinary scholar. He’s a mantic prophet; it’s not merely the ancient language that has come to life in in, it’s the spirits of those who lived and died in it. Their urgencies, their stories, their medicines… their transgressions and initiations.
His characteristicly lilted prosody is both abhorrent (to scholars) and infectious (to the curious). It either drives you away or enchants you… perhaps in some, both. Some have accused him of being a drug user, or being intoxicated during his interviews or presentations. They do not understand the man, his mission, or his mind. I recognize in him something I’ve not merely seen, but known firsthand. Mantic, prophetic fury. Passions that arise only in intimacy with unimaginable mystery, and nonordinary encounters with the dead, the gods, daimons and… the muses.
His ‘muse’ he calls a dead girl. And it’s clear he’s married to her. He adores her like a living woman or a goddess. They are one, and she casts her intoxications into his mind, his body and his way of life. You can sense her proximity in his speech.
He doesn’t preach intoxication. Rather, if you listen, he will tell you that the ancient Greek itself comprises the vehicle that will bring the apocalypse to the seething lies and blatant blasphemies of both the Academy and the Seminary.
The ancients, he avers, mixed bodily and sexual fluids into their ‘communion’ sacraments, which also regularly contained intoxicants. Is it an accident that the Seminary is thusly named? Hillman would smirk, with his characteristic lilt, and advise us to listen there for the sounds of the goat — the sounds of youths being subjected to forced oral relation with Christian priests, who he despises as lying idiots and adulterers.
He says there is no such thing as ‘eternal life’, but rather, what he calls Aeonic Life, which exists outside of time entirely.
He is teaching ancient Greek, freely and profoundly. This is his intoxicant. His pulpit. A kind of ‘burning purple’ that will initiate his students… and carry them beyond the world they’ve known into another domain where the mysteries are alive, provocative, furious, hungry… and viscerally accessible to those who dare pursue their intimacies.
Let scholars and academics attack his claims. He’ll bite back where it matters, but the simple fact is he isn’t here to make or defend claims. Those scholars are facing the same problem that people who engineered biplanes in WWI would encounter if they saw a timeship from another universe. They think that airships are for war or the transport of cargo; it would never occur to them that they’re witnessing a transcendental phenomenon whose travel in space is equivalent to travel in consciousness and intelligence.
Hillman’s a sorcerer. A resurrectionist. A phenomenon. And now that social media has lit his fuse… I think his rise will be momentous … and explosive.
Ammon Hillman is unstoppable.
I am insatiably curious about the nature of living beings, intelligence, language, and nearly everything else. I hope my work may contribute to our ability to assemble the authentic sources of what our modern cultures are but the broken remnants and falsified costumes of. Together. With and for each other and our world.
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( My writing is a gift that I hope may inspire speculation, wonder, discovery and new relationships. If you enjoy it, kindly take a moment to share it, connect with me personally, comment, correct me, or tap the Recommend button ⇩ ☺ )
