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IHS Annual Conference 2025
June 6-8, 2025
Hilton Garden Inn
242 Highland Park Blvd, Wilkes-Barre Township, PA 18702
Thank you to this year’s sponsors: REDFeather/Schiffer Publishing, LCSM Fund, and our Unknown Superiors. The conference will be live-streamed and made available as a recording afterwards. There will be lots of interesting books and items for sale!
REDFeather is the publisher of John Michael Greer’s new publication on mundane astrology The Astrology of Nations which can be found here: https://redfeathermbs.com/.
Registration: $60
IHS Annual Conference 2025 Registration
Admission to the 2025 Conference and/or access via live streaming or posted videos (upon completion). Please be certain to include your name and email address with your registration and if you will be attending in person or by live streaming/recording.
$60.00
Special Hotel Room Discount Link
https://group.hiltongardeninn.com/ovc0gq
Guests can also call the hotel directly at 570-820-8595 and ask for the Institute of Hermetic Studies to recieve the discounted rate.
Tentative Schedule
Friday Evening, June 6 – Informal Meet and Greet
Saturday, June 7
7:30-8:00am – Morning Energy Practices with Bob Smith of Sixty Skill
9:00 – 9:45 am – Conference Registration and Check-In
9:45-10:00am – Introductions
10:00 – 11:00 – Craig Williams – Free Will and Agency in the Kali Yuga
11:00-11:15 – Break
11:15-12:15 – Alfred DeStefano – On Systems of Magical Dreaming: Phantasia, Pretend & Paradox (or Madness in Theory and Practice in the Kali Yuga)
12:15-1:45 – Lunch
1:45-2:45 – John White – The Archetypal Hero in an Age of Iron
2:45-3:00 – Break
3:00 – 4:00 -Timothy Greive-Carlson – American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius
4:00-4:15 – Break
4:15 – 5:15 – Nick Siegert – The Sacred Geometry of Ephrata
5:15 – 7:30 Dinner
7:30 – 9:00 – Evening Presentation – TBA
Sunday
7:30 – 8:00 am – Energy Practices with Bob Smith of Sixty Skills
Program Description
9:30am- 11:00am – TBA
Free Will and Agency in the KaIi Yuga
Craig Williams
The period of the Kali Yuga is portrayed in traditional Indian source texts as a time of darkness, suffering, sickness, and confusion. These characteristics of the Kali Yuga are frequently used in contemporary times to create an atmosphere of fear and paranoia in both secular and religious circles. This talk will focus on the unique opportunities and spiritual practices available during the Kali Yuga according to Indian sources and how these practices can be applied in all traditions of contemporary spiritual practice. I will discuss how an alchemical vision of the Kali Yuga and the concepts of cyclical time over linear time can provide unique perspectives on spiritual practices for Self-Realization and social transformation during this supposedly dark time.
Biography
Craig Williams runs the American branch of the Academy of Traditional Ayurveda and is a licensed Acupuncturist, Clinical Herbalist, and Health Coach specializing in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture, Ayurveda, Qi Gong, and Yoga Therapy in Austin, Texas. Craig has Bachelor’s Degrees in Religious Studies and English Literature, a Master’s Degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (MSOM), and is currently writing a thesis for a Master’s Degree in Hindu Spiritual Care for the International Hindu University. Craig was awarded the prestigious titles of “Vedakovid” and “Yogacharya” from the American Institute of Vedic Studies and “YogaAyurvedacharya” from the Academy of Traditional Ayurveda. Craig is the author of “Tantric Physics Vol. I / II: Cave of the Numinous and Sacred Body, Sacred Space”, “Entering the Desert”, and “The Cult of Golgotha” for Anathema Publishing and “Desert Meditations: Gnostic Cartography (A Handbook of Agni Yoga)” for Gateway Publishing. More information can be found at his blog, “Transmissions from the Kali Yuga” and his website: www.AyurvedaAustin.com
On Systems of Magical Dreaming: Phantasia, Pretend & Paradox
(or Madness in Theory and Practice in the Kali Yuga)
Alfred DeStefano, III
Program Description
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur (“the world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived”). Once we understand that this general observation applies equally to ourselves as part of that world, we can begin to make use of it. In this spirit, our presentation will cover the history and techniques of “applied imagination.” Discussion topics include:
Phantasia as defined and depicted from Coleridge to Couliano. Giordano Bruno and the revolutionary De imaginum. Self-appointed prophets of the Imaginal from William Blake to Neville Goddard. The illusory form practices.
Pretend & Prestimentation: the magical art of radically altering (and re-altering) the Living Dream. Rimbaud’s “systematic derangement of the senses.” Vaihinger and the philosophy of “as if.” The subjective synthesis: How far can you take it? Why grimoires work (or don’t). Spellcasting: writing & re-writing with magical efficacy.
Paradox: The Key. Towards a philosophy of the Imaginal Realms (or “Necronomicon Metaphysics”). Principles to make use of (or “applied brain damage”). Hermetic foundations of magical dreaming. Oneironastics.
Biography
ALFRED DeSTEFANO III, under a variety of pseudonyms – has written, edited, or contributed to numerous works, mostly on topics in occultism, for over two decades. Among other projects, he oversaw the publication “from scratch” of the IHS Monograph Series in its entirety and provided editorial consultation and assistance for Llewellyn’s Seventh Edition Golden Dawn (with chief editor John Michael Greer) and Inner Traditions’ Egregores by Mark Stavish. A recipient of the IHS Teacher’s Certificate and “mathematics instructor by day,” he lives at the edge of a dark forest in Charlottesville, Virginia, not too far from one of the more reliable Portals to the Dreamlands.
He is also one of our most popular and long asked for presenters making his return after many years of laboring in the fields of Ma’at and Ca’sh, because nothing says “Kali Yuga” like Kenneth Grant and Necronomicon.
The Archetypal Hero in an Age of Iron
Dr. John White
Program Description
A number of ancient theories of history prophesy the coming of an “Age of Iron” (Kali Yuga), an age in which the higher principles of existence – first divinely revealed in a mythological Golden Age – are no longer operative in human civilization. Characteristics of the Age of Iron include widespread ignorance, social chaos, and a more or less total loss of transcendence. On the other hand, some of those theories also posit an age of the Heroes, in which the process of decadence and decay from the Golden Age is slowed or even partially reversed, through the agency of superhuman beings (initiates) and their extraordinary deeds. In this presentation, I discuss some of those ancient theories of the Age of Iron and offer some grounds for thinking we are living within such an age. I then treat the general notion or archetype of the Hero as a representation of a specific kind of initiate whose simultaneous capacity for spiritual transcendence and transformative social action empowers him to resist the decadence of the Age of Iron and lead others to do the same. Finally, I consider the importance of the rise of such Heroes in our own time and suggest conditions which might aid their emergence.
Biography
John R. White, PhD, LPC (Pittsburgh PA) is a Jungian psychoanalyst and Coordinator of the C. G. Jung Institute Analyst Training Program of Pittsburgh. He was a philosophy professor for twenty years, prior to becoming a psychoanalyst. His research interests include many aspects of psychoanalytic practice, Christian mysticism, the history and practices of New Thought, alchemy, and various links among psychology, parapsychology, philosophy, and esotericism. He is an initiate into several esoteric traditions and serves on the Board of Directors for the Institute for Hermetic Studies. He is author of Adaptation and Psychotherapy: Langs and Analytical Psychology (Rowman & Littlefield 2023) and co-editor of Jungian Analysis in a World of Fire (Routledge, 2024).
American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius
Dr. Timothy Grieve-Carlson
Program Description
This presentation focuses on the life and legacy of Johannes Kelpius (1667-1707), an enormously influential but comprehensively misunderstood theologian who settled outside of Philadelphia from 1694 to 1707. Timothy Grieve-Carlson explores the Hermetic and alchemical dimensions of Kelpius’s Christianity before turning to his legacy in American religion and literature. This engaging analysis showcases Kelpius’s forgotten theological intricacies, spiritual revelations, and cosmic observations, illuminating the complexity and foresight of an important colonial mystic.
Biography
Timothy Grieve-Carlson, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor and the Gibson Drinko Chair in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. He earned his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Rice University in Houston, Texas in 2022. Timothy was also a 2021-2022 Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the relationship between environmental phenomena and religious practice. His book American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius (Oxford University Press 2024) explores environmental knowledge and apocalyptic thought in the religion of the early modern mid-Atlantic world. His academic writing has appeared in journals like American Religion, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, Correspondences: A Journal of Esotericism, and Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft.
The Sacred Geometry of Ephrata
Nick Siegert
Program Description
The buildings at Ephrata do not appear to have been constructed with a master plan in mind, but Conrad Beissel and some of his followers organized some of their space and time around Beissel’s mystical language and beliefs. in design and in placement, these structures created a sacred or holy space whose placement and design possibly had special symbolic significance.
In order examine this topic, independent researcher, Nick Siegert will focus on one of the buildings at Ephrata and some of the influences and ideas that possibly led the people there to construct this building in the way that they did.
Biography
Nick Siegert worked at the Ephrata Cloister for 14 years from 2008-2022 as a Custodial Guide Supervisor. He was involved in Visitor Services, education, Guide Training and coordination. He is now a full-time Group Tour Coordinator and a Visitor Services Associate at LancasterHistory/Wheatland, the home of the 15th President, James Buchanan. He is interested in Radical Pietism, Jacob Boehme, the Western Esoteric Tradition, the history of consciousness, and areas where the Ephrata Community and these topics coincide.
