
Erik Davis is an author and independent scholar based in San Francisco. His wide-ranging work focuses on the intersection of alternative religion, media, and the popular imagination. He is the author, most recently, of Blotter: the Untold Story of an Acid Medium (2024), which was longlisted for the Non-Ordinary Book Awards. His other books include High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies (2019), The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape, Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (2010), a critical study of Led Zeppelin IV (2005), and the cult classic TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (1998), which remains in print after a quarter century. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
Erik’s scholarly and popular essays on music, technoculture, and religion have appeared in scores of publications and books, including A New Gnosis (2023), Magic in the Modern World (2017), The World According to Philip K. Dick (2015), and Zig Zag Zen (2005). A dynamic presenter, Davis has spoken everywhere from Harvard to Esalen to Burning Man and the Boom festival. He produced the popular and influential Expanding Mind podcast for ten years. Davis has appeared in scores of documentaries, and has been interviewed by CNN, the BBC, the New York Times, and the Ezra Klein Show. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, and earned his PhD in religious studies at Rice University. He is the cofounder of the Alembic, an independent center for consciousness culture in Berkeley, California.