Traditional wisdom for modern afflictions
This podcast goes all over the place - enjoy!
I’m Danny Nemu: consciousness researcher, historian of medicine, hypnotist and heretic.
My books and talks explore knowledge systems that had been tried and tested for millennia before the “scientific method” came about, let alone the high priests of progressivism and lobbyists for lab test and lucre.
I’m also a science geek interested in the spaces between — between mysticism and neurobiology, scripture and psychedelics, the sacred and the silly. So if we’re exploring ancient incenses, expect terpenes and enzymes amidst the angels.
I might be an anarcho-reactionary (though reactionism isn’t what it used to be). Let’s just say I’m suspicious of state-sponsored progressivism — in medicine, in economics, in ballot-box battery and the spectacle of liberty. I think people should be left alone to shine.
Where next?
Writing on Substack
-
Peeling back dogmas to reveal how the stories we tell ourselves influence what we are capable of - and what liberties other stories allow us.
-
A biography of my ancestor Rabbi Diskin: autist, religious authority and vehement anti-Zionist.
The “disorder” of ADHD, the shoddy science of Ritalin, and herbal tonics to help the creativity fizz more easily.
A radical history of hypnosis and trance.
Tranceform Hypnosis
-
Unfortunately (and fortunately) your mind is being manipulated constantly, not just by marketing, politics and pillow talk, but wherever people communicate.
Sometimes manipulations help - ask any chiropractor.
Our imagination can cause the mouth to water; it can also alter other processes beyond the immediate range of the conscious mind - changing the heart rate, boosting or hampering immune response or wound healing.
With hypnosis, we approach the unconscious consciously, guiding the imagination with linguistic techniques and imagery. Rather than losing control, it helps extend conscious control over normally unconscious processes. Subjects can switch off pain, making surgery as comfortable as a haircut. We can rewrite hypercritical self-narratives and unhook phobic responses from triggers.
We can comfortably - often easily - redirect the unfolding of our fate.
-
Hypnosis profoundly changed my life - here’s how. Perhaps it can change yours too.
-
From working-class women defying Victorian doctors under hypnosis, to Quakers weaponising silence against empire, trance has always been politically charged.
Read the forgotten story of altered states used not to escape the world — but to challenge it.
Other interests
-
Bible nuts don’t generally care for pharmacology, and the psychedelic community hasn’t bothered to look into the terpenes in ritual plants of the Israelite priesthood - until I did.
See my peer-reviewed journal articles, pop science pieces, presentations at conferences and podcasts here.
-
Human beings seem to have a drive towards reliosity, that governs how they conceptualise good and evil, and the rituals and taboos they use to protect themselves from harm.
In my part of the world, in my sliver of history, that role is being played by Scientism - a doctrine that tends to defend its creed in a manner most unscientific.
-
Some of the most fascinating creatures on the planet network together into superorganisms. To my mind, the most interesting are some of the oldest: slime moulds.
How do they map space, predict rhythms in time, and solve problems? And what can we learn them as our world continues to network together?
-
The world didn’t seem to have a reforestation network inspired by and founded upon the principles that govern mycelia, so I created one. We work in Brazil with various marginalised traditional groups.
Check out RAIN here.
-
It’s not exactly in vogue, but diverse cultures spent millennia observing the body for clues about the constitution, and testing their observations.
The greatest medics were palmists, including Galen, Paracelsus and Hippocrates (who has a Hippocratic finger named after him). Alexander the Great chose his generals by their hands, which seemed to work.
I’m not saying you should believe in it without testing it. I’m saying: “don’t be the person who mocks 6000 years of cross-cultural wisdom when you know less about your fingerprints than the cops.”
Check out some videos from a workshop.
apocalypse
“Removal of a veil”
from Greek:
apo “off” + kalyptein “to cover”
Unveiling - Revelation - Discovery