Episode 96

The fourth episode in a series with Gyrus which sprawls across a variety of topics in anthropology, cosmology, cognitive science and recent political developments. Gyrus talks about his evolving ideas about "polar cosmology" and how there were affected by a story by anthropologist Mircea Eliade about an Australian aboriginal story, and its subsequent debunking by Eliade's successor at the University of Chicago, Jonathan Z. Smith.

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• Gyrus, North: The rise & fall of the polar cosmology (Strange Attractor Press, 2014)
• etymology of "vertex"
• axis mundi
• Polaris (north star)
• Ymir (Norse mythology)
• Mircea Eliade
• Terence Mckenna
• M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (1957)
• M. Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy (1964, French original 1951)
• hunter-gatherers
• Australian aboriginal culture
• Eliade's Australian aboriginal axis mundi story
• Gyrus's article, "Eliade’s Aboriginal cosmic axis"
• Jonathan Z. Smith
• San bushmen
• dodder (Cuscuta)