Kyle Fraser: virtuoso of alchemy, the occult and Zosimos of Panopolis. This month, we had the chance to speak to the heavy-metal philosopher and HOST icon about 80s metal, B-movies and European destinations, as he was voted for faculty of the month by you, his acolytes.
Madeleine Hurley: Do you have a dream vacation?
Kyle Fraser: My favourite vacation thus far has been Vienna. It’s such a grand, European city. There’s so much rich culture and history there. So a dream vacation for me is an active vacation, I want to take in the culture.
MH: What’s your favourite way to spend a weekend?
KF: Just having some downtime. I like to be in the outdoors and hike and canoe. I also enjoy playing the guitar, I’m a bit of an amateur musician.
MH: Do you have any favourite music to play?
KF: I listen to heavy [metal] music for the most part. In the 80s, I was into the early thrash metal scene as a teenager and that’s when I started playing guitar. I also enjoy jazz, so anything with a little bit of dissonance in it to create interest.
MH: Do you have any favourite movies?
KF: I’m a fan of old B-movies, like science fiction and horror. I used to collect the old Roger Corman movies from the 60s. I like melodramatic, over the top, stylistic movies. I also like movies coming out of the Hammer Studios in England in the 60s and 70s.
MH: What do you like about living and working in the Halifax area?
KF: I live about half an hour out of the city and I’m in the wilderness. It’s good to work in the city and enjoy the culture of Halifax, and to get out of the city and into nature.
MH: What do you like about teaching HOST?
KF: I started at King’s in 1998, and began as a FYP tutor when we were called teaching fellows and I was lucky enough to stay on as a tenure track professor. I gradually began to teach in HOST, and started developing some unusual courses in the history of esoteric and occult traditions. I’m very grateful to have had the creative license to invent some courses that follow outside of traditional disciplinary boundaries.
MH: What got you interested in teaching magic, alchemy and the occult?
KF: I was a scholar of ancient philosophy to begin with as a graduate student. I began to come across references to some more obscure names and sources in my research, like the mysterious Hermes Trismegistus. I ended up discovering this completely marginalized area of study. When I first published on the alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis, in 2004, almost nobody was writing on him in English, so it hadn’t been mined to death. As my courses developed, divination came into the mix and astrology.
MH: Do you have a favourite historical figure?
KF: I like the troublemakers. I always really enjoyed Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant and Plato. Figures who really had this courage and insight to step outside of the dominant system and who are subjected to radical critique. Of course, Zosimos, who’s a relatively obscure Egyptian alchemist. He’s a remarkable figure who created this amazing synthesis of Egyptian ritual knowledge, Greek philosophy and early forms of Gnostic Christianity. I like figures who are a little avant-garde.
MH: You were the coordinator for Section 1 of FYP. Do you have a favourite text from the section?
KF: Plato, because of the way in which he subjects traditional Greek culture to this revolutionary critique. It’s of such monumental importance to the ancient Mediterranean world. It’s an exciting moment, because you can see how everything else is going to unfold from that point. I also like really weird texts that are introduced near the end. They’re pretty esoteric, but they really fill in the blind spots and expose some of the fault lines in the conventional ideas of the day.
MH: What do you like about King’s?
KF: We have the most amazingly inquisitive, enthusiastic students to begin with, as well as the kind of freedom we have as professors to design innovative and unusual courses. We have a wonderful community of scholars as well. There are many things to be grateful for.
MH: Do you have any advice for FYP students heading into the final part of their FYP year?
KF: One piece of advice I would give is return to the sources in the light of lectures and tutorials. Often, on a first read, the text can seem simply impenetrable. To go back to the text and set an hour for yourself to look at it with fresh eyes can be valuable cumulatively. It reinforces the essential message of that text, and it’s surprising to see the nuances that you can pick up.
