Ep 27, Eric Cunningham: The Luciferic Verses

Eric Cunningham is a professor of History at Gonzaga University specializing in Japanese Intellectual History. After earning a BA in History from the University of Colorado in 1984, Cunningham was commissioned as an officer in the US Navy, and served for six years as an engineering and deck officer aboard guided missile cruisers. After resigning his commission in 1990, Cunningham went on a solo world backpacking tour for a year before taking a job in Northern Japan as an English conversation teacher. He spent five years in Japan, eventually directing his own school based in Tokyo. He returned to his home in Oregon in 1996, and entered the University of Oregon a year later, earning an MA in Japanese Literature (1999), and a PhD in History (2004). He was hired at Gonzaga University in 2003, and has spent the last twenty years there, teaching World History, Asian History, and several specialty courses in Catholic Intellectual History. He has published three books, Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen, and the Psychedelic Eschaton (2007), Zen Past and Present (2010), and The Luciferic Verses: The Daodejing and the Chinese Roots of Esoteric History (2018). He has just finished a fourth book, The Tarot of the Gospel of St. John in which he argues that the Major Arcana of the Tarot Deck serve as hermeneutic doorways into each chapter of the Gospel of John. In addition to his academic pursuits, Cunningham conducts research in Anthroposophy, psychedelia, film studies, and Hermeticism. Cunningham has seven children, and divides his time between Spokane, Washington and 10 X 27 foot cabin in Northern Idaho.https://www.biodynamicguild.org/