Galdrbok. Practical Heathen Runecraft, Shamanism and Magic.

Nathan J. Johnson Robert J. Wallis: Galdrbok. Practical Heathen Runecraft, Shamanism and Magic. 398 pages, Wykeham Press of London and Winchester, revised edition of a privately circulated work, 2005.

It's been a long time since anything new appeared regarding Nordic magick. I had almost assumed that Germanic paganism got stuck in the usual merry-go-round of group politics and hierarchy games. Then, out of the blue, appears a magnificent book on practical rune magick. The Galdrbok is a work of art. It blends high-quality scholarly research with the pragmatic approach required to make things work. Out of the union emerges something new. It could be you.

Treadwells and Secret Chief Talks

Treadwells

Here's a selection of talks at Treadwells. Full descriptions of all events are to be found now on website, http:www.treadwells-london.com

Treadwells, 34 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London WC2
Places booked on 0207 240 8906
or by email info@...

Tuesday, February 14
Thanatology: Philosophy of Death
Dr Stephen Alexander
7.15 for 7.30 pm start. £5.00
A six-part series of lecture seminars on death, sex, suicide and sacrifice from a philosopher-scholar of the Continental school, an old friend and regular of Treadwell’s whose annual series always provoke controversy, dismay, and outrage. The first evening is entitled ‘On Dissolving the Distinction Between Life and Death’. It examines the metaphysical assumption that posits life and death as two mutually-exclusive terms within a dualist framework. Alexander asks us to consider the possibility that ‘being alive is actually nothing but a rare and unusual way of being dead’. Stephen Alexander, PhD, is a scholar philosopher and post-punk icon. His doctoral thesis was done at Warwick University.

Sunday, February 19
Magic, Drama Power: A Day Course
A day of drama, magick and improvisation. By John Harrigan and FoolishPeople 11 am - 5 pm £35.00
John Harrigan is director of the occultist theatre company FoolishPeople, whose current cycle of plays is being held at the Horse Hospital Theatre in Bloomsbury. On this one-day course he will take the class through exercises, challenges and experiences of the magical and theatrical arts that are central in this company’s work. These will include improvisation, visualisation, examining ones own world-view, and challenging assumptions about power, the world, the nature of reality, and magic. On the day please wear comfortable loose clothing. For more on FoolishPeople and the work of the company, see www.foolishpeople.org. Currently FoolishPeople are performing their Dark Nights Cycle at the Horse Hospital, and the next performance will be held on Saturday, 14 January. To register for this day course, please register via Treadwell’s as soon as possible, as numbers are strictly limited.

R J Stewart

R.J.Stewart is visiting Bath from America in March and holding a weekend workshop at Openings Saw Close. The subject matter will be The rivers of Blood and tears in the underworld , Prophecy and sacred springs. The Workshops will be held on Sat/ Sun 25/26 march Cost will be £100.

R.J is a skilled musician, and if the workshop is too expensive you might still enjoy his gig at B.R.L.S.I. in Queens square Bath on Fri 24th March. Cost for this will be £5.00 - for more details or workshop spec mail me on marue333@...

Shaping Formless Fire
Distilling the Quintessence of Magick
By Stephen Mace

Published by New Falcon Publications

Review by Akashanath 8/1/06 e.v.

Based on a series of articles originally written for German Magazine Zillo, Shaping Formless Fire is a comprehensive introduction to the author's unique magick system. This is not to say that the sixteen short essays will be of no use to people working in other paradigms. Nor should the experienced occultist be put off by the fact that this book is aimed at 'beginners'. The fermentation of Mace's thirty plus years of practical experience, sharp analytical mind and lucid writing style has produced a rich and deeply textured brew that will appeal to a wide range of palates.

For those who are not familiar with the work of Stephen Mace, it may be useful to rewind twenty years, to the point where he stepped out of the shadows. After a decade of sterility amongst English-speaking occultists, a new magickal underground had started to gather momentum. Bored with the elitism and exclusivity of Golden Dawn style hierarchical Orders and unimpressed with the repetitive formalism of rituals based on combinations of freemasonry and the qabalah, this new breed looked to individualists like Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare for their inspiration. The new credo eventually coalesced around the twin pillars of non-dogmatism and mastery of technique, subsequently acquiring the glamour of 'Chaos Magick'. Publications such as Peter Carrol's Psychonaut and Liber Null made the ideas accessible to a wider audience. This stimulated enough interest to generate several working groups and a few periodicals, notably Chaos International. These in turn gave a public platform to a surprising number of like-minded occultists who, it turned out, had been beavering away in the wilderness all along. It is to this group that Stephen Mace belongs.

Though Mace's ideas definitely captured the Zeitgeist of the mid eighties, they have scarcely become less relevant over the intervening period. While many of his contemporaries departed from the early egalitarianism of the Chaos scene by attempting to build personality cults or by reinventing the Occult Order, Mace remained humble and unincorporated, with his nose firmly to the grindstone. I mention this because it bears closely on the work in question. The book is not interesting because it is written by 'The Great Stephen Mace', it is not interesting because the author is 'an XIo Adept in the Crowley Copyright Club'. It is interesting (and convincing) because Steve Mace has done exactly what he says he's done, usually repeatedly until he's understood it completely and assimilated any lessons to be learned.

The whole book exemplifies this, but to illustrate the point I'll use Chapter III (Astral Projection). It may help the reader to know that Mace's original Manum Opus (yes, they are plural) synthesised Sparian sigilisation with the Thelemic Liber Samekh (known to the old school as the Abramelin Operation). As many readers will know, those who claim to have achieved 'the knowledge and conversation' of their Holy Guardian Angels can often sound a little pompous. This contrasts sharply with Mace's matter-of-fact reportage. 'Of course, all this [astral magick] would be easier if you had an assistant on the [astral] planes to help you manage all the spirits you meet there' he mentions almost in passing. In case you were interested, he continues 'Traditionally the way to become acquainted with your Angel is through months of progressively greater austerities. An alternate method is to design an alphabetic sigil from letters of a sentence requesting knowledge of it. Then after about 6 weeks of putting energy into it you should be able to use it to meet your Angel on the Astral.' The only possible objection to this is that it sounds a little simplistic. As if he's read your mind, the author immediately meets you with the rejoinder 'I have told you a great deal about astral projection, but I haven't given you the explicit instruction you need to do it. This is because its proper practice is just too complex to fit into the space I have here …" This could equally apply to the book as a whole. It's full of fascinating detail about the author's down-to-earth approach to the whole gamut of magickal experience, from divination, through initiation, sacred spaces, and sex magick to magickal combat and black magick. But it's not a manual.

So, what are the highlights, apart from the aforementioned? The occasional personal anecdotes the author throws in to illustrate various themes are usually pretty entertaining. Take, for example, the story of his arrest and subsequent imprisonment in the 1970s, used to illustrate the process of initiation Chapter X. He also drops the occasional pearl about the modern world, such as the reference to '…the vast insurance pool that underlies modern society' . And Chapters XI and XII, which deal with black magick and magickal combat, should be compulsory reading for every hormone-high teenager who's just scared himself shitless by discovering that magick actually works. And the low points? Very few. Perhaps the book could've benefited by omitting the dark prognostications for the collapse of the Pax Amricana in the opening paragraphs, although it could equally be true that some readers will find inspiration here, as the author obviously intends. Some people might also take issue with the more idiosyncratic features of the author's approach, such as the location of the Guardian Angel at the centre of virtually every process, or his insistence on the necessity of 'magickal cleansing'. From my perspective, however, this one of the book's great strengths. The world is not short of occult writers who can read and digest books on magick, regurgitating in general terms any plausible sounding relationships and parallels, but rejecting anything that looks out of place. What we are desperately short of, on the other hand, is experienced magicians prepared to tell it how it is, and Shaping Formless Fire has this in spades.

To summarise, then, it's a modern classic by one of the less visible founders of Chaos Magick. Essential for anyone thinking about practicing Macian Sorcery, useful for the general beginner, and a good read for the experienced occultist.

www.spiritual-freedom.org

Breathing The Dawn The Dragon Lover

Breathing The Dawn: Tales of Hidden Bulgaria

presented by A Spell In Time

“A young man rides upon a horse

The horse breathes and makes the dawn

The moon is a ring upon the young man’s finger

And his weapons are small stars.”

Ritual song for a young unmarried man

“Strike me in my heart so that I may remember what it was like to be young and wild and free.”

Breathing The Dawn is a glorious tale about the legendary hero Krali Marko and his magical horse, Sharkoliya, set in a golden age when anything was possible. They thunder through a mythic landscape where fierce women ride the whirlwinds, children ride on dreams and nightmares and sparks fly from Sharkoliya’s hooves. But can black Mother Earth sustain Marko's unbridled power? There is a price to pay for there can be no hero without a wound and no warrior without a death.

With a fabulous blend of storytelling, ritual, evocative music and divine Bulgarian singing, A Spell In Time presents primal theatre from the heart of Bulgarian myth and folklore. Leap into the saddle and ride....

For adults. Not suitable for children under 10

Website: www.spellintime.fsnet.co.uk

Supported by the Arts Council England Lottery Programme

FORTHCOMING DATES SPRING 2006

Wed 15 February 7.30pm: MAC, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham. Tel: 0121 4403838. £5 / £4

Thurs 16 February 7.30pm: Whitworth Centre, Darley Dale, Matlock. Tel: 01629 826939. £5

Fri 17 February 7.30pm: Solihull Arts Complex. Homer Road, Solihull Tel: 0121 7046962. £4.50 / £3.50

Mon 20 February 7.30pm: Loughborough Town Hall, Market Place, Loughborough. Tel: 01509 231914. £7 / £5

Tues 21 February 7.30pm: West Bromwich Library, High Street, W. Bromwich Tel: 0121 5694911. £1.50 / 75p

Sunday 19 February 11.30am–4.30pm: Bulgarian Singing Workshop Moseley Post Office Rooms, Alcester Road, Birmingham. Tel: 01629 826939. £40 / £30 unwaged / £20 under 25s

The Dragon Lover: Tales of Hidden Bulgaria

presented by A Spell In Time

From your eyes strong sparks fly
From your mouth a fierce flame leaps
The horse you ride is like a mountain
The clothes you wear burn like a fire.

Ritual wedding song

He’s handsome, smiling, alluring, beguiling. His eyes are like fire upon water. He’s the man of your dreams. But is he all that he seems? Delve into the darkness and discover ... if he’s a man or a Dragon Lover.

Welcome to a world of dangerous delights where shapes shift, magic moves and dragons dwell. But some dragons wear their skins on the inside.

The Dragon Lover is a sizzling tale of seduction, a deliciously dark twist on falling in love where games of hide and seek are played out with deadly consequences. With a spellbinding mix of storytelling, ritual, evocative music and divine Bulgarian singing, A Spell In Time presents primal theatre from the heart of Bulgarian myth and folklore. Take your partners for the dragon’s dance......

For adults. Not suitable for children under 10

Website: www.spellintime.fsnet.co.uk

FORTHCOMING DATES SPRING 2006 Tues 28 February 7.30pm The Dragon Lover: Tales of Hidden Bulgaria Mythstories, The Seniors Club, Chapel Street, Wem, Shrops. Tel. 01939 235500 / 07969 541552. £5 / £3.50 concs.

Fri 10 March 7.30pm The Dragon Lover: Tales of Hidden Bulgaria Glasshouse Theatre, Glasshouse College, Wollaston Road, Stourbridge, W. Midlands DY8 4HF. Box office: 01384 399430. £7 / £5 concs.

Journal for the Academic Study of Magic (JSM)

Call For Papers for Issue 4, deadline 21-6-2006

Issue 4 of the JSM, due to appear late in 2006, is now seeking contributions. Scholarly articles in English about any aspect of magic/occultism are welcome up to 8000 words in length.

After a brief hiatus – JSM 3 should be appearing early 2006 (see contents below) – Drs Dave Green (University of the West of England, UK) and Susan Johnston Graf (Penn State, Mont Alto, USA) are taking over as co-editors of the journal.

We wish to thank Dave Evans, founding editor, for all his wonderful work in getting the journal up and running and establishing its reputation. The new editors are also pleased to announce that The Mandrake Press is continuing its involvement with the journal as publishers.

Submission to the journal is by Email attachment, in Rich Text Format documents using Harvard Citation Style. Full submission details, an outline style guide can be found here http://www.sasm.co.uk/styleguide.html

Could all submissions now be sent to Dave Green David2.Green@...

Please feel free to contact Dave or Susan - sjg9@... - about the suitability of any proposed article, but in principle we aim to be as inclusive as possible, welcoming submissions from any academic discipline concerning any aspect of magic/occultism from any geographic region in any historical period. Academic articles from magical practitioners are also encouraged.

Deadline for submissions is 21st June 2006, with early submissions welcome.

Issue 3 Contents

£19.99, isbn 1869928962, 300pp

Hannah Sanders - Buffy and Beyond: Language and Resistance in Contemporary Teenage Witchcraft / Amy Lee - A Language of Her Own: Witchery as a New Language of Female Identity/ Dave Green - Creative Revolution: Bergsonisms and Modern Magic / Mary Hayes - Discovering the Witch’s Teat: Magical Practices, Medical Superstitions in The Witch of Edmonton / Penny Lowery - The Re-enchantment of the Medical: An examination of magical elements in healing. / Jonathan Marshall - Apparitions, Ghosts, Fairies, Demons and Wild Events: Virtuality in Early Modern Britain / Kate Laity - Living the Mystery: Sacred Drama Today / Research Articles: David Geall - ‘A half-choked meep of cosmic fear’ Is there esoteric symbolism in H.P.Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath? / Susan Gorman - Becoming a Sorcerer: Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Quartier Mozart and the Magic of Deleuzian and Guattarian Becoming / Book Reviews

Generation Hex (review)

Jason Louv (Editor) £9.99 Disinformation Company 2005

Generation Hex comes on strong. Like the hissing intensity of a DMT hit it reaches out and grabs you. Hang on to your crown chakras kids, it’s going to be one hell of a ride!

Though brash in it’s post post-modern reality hacking style Generation Hex is far from being all façade and no content (although the design quality of the volume, as we have come to expect from the Disinformation crew, is indeed excellent). This is a wonderful selection of essays by young magicians, mostly from the USA that I found a real inspiration to read.

The collection ranges across samples of diary extracts, detailed explorations of how magick might be understood through pure maths and physics, through to work on psychogeographical drifting and esoteric parables. The styles differ as well, from the post-Gibson swaggering psybermagickical, through cut-up discordianism and into more classic modern journalese. But uniting each essay are a number of common features. The first is that without exception each essay is wonderfully written. The second is that each essay gives the sense that it is a window into real experimental magick and that the authors are primarily practitioners first and writers second. The third is that in their different ways each essay is seeking to broaden the perception of what magic is.

I was particularly taken by the honest and direct position that drugs take within the magickal work of many of the essayists. I was inspired that such intelligent, honest and human magick is being produced by younger adepts. Though you’ll find techniques in this volume it’s so much more than a crummy how-to manual. Perhaps for me (aged about 10 years older than most of the guys and gals writing in this collection) one of the great insights was how the availability of esoteric technique and technology (especially via the internet) means that today’s new generation of occultists can spend their time experimenting and doing, and not waste so much energy in trying to obtain paraphernalia, find rare out of print books and hang-around at lame New Age festivals looking for real magicians (like I had to! Honestly these kids don’t know they’re born!).

This is a must read for anyone interested in the sociology of magick let alone those people who are themselves occultists. I have a feeling that the Generation Hexers are really going to be helping to set the new agenda for magick in the 21st century and if this book represents the way we’re headed then we can expect great things indeed.

If you’ve been wondering what was going to come after chaos magick then the approaches explored in this book may well be the answer. Buy it now.

‘THE POISON MAKER’ by John Symonds

Old Red Lion Theatre, Islington, Tuesday 31 January-Saturday 18 February 2006

"I don't need to step outside the front door. It's all here in this house." The words are Margaret's, half-sister of the play's protagonist Felix, and they aptly describe the complicated and torrid situations that make up The Poison-Maker.

Felix, a louche young man, lives alone with his mother Pansy in Edwardian London and likes taking pictures of her in the nude. One day he visits the other side of the family and inadvertently shows them the photos. This results in his other half-sister Anna becoming besotted with him. She moves in and they talk of their "quest to purify the world" and a "new civilisation". They also plan to go to Sweden, which is seen as a geographical epicentre for freedom (a bit like Goa or Ibiza today). There are distinct shades of Ibsen and Strindberg. Florence, Felix's father's second wife, has also become besotted with the boy and seduces him in a startling scene where she strips to the strains of modern disco music. She is a highly-strung woman in an unhappy marriage and is so liberated by the experience she gives Felix the phial of cyanide she has been keeping to end it all, with not quite disastrous consequences. Incest seems very much the order of the day. There is also a dubious subtext in the relationship between Felix's father, Tegg, and half-sister Margaret. The men are weak, badgered by the women, and nobody is happy. If the play had been put on in Edwardian London, it would have been banned and would now be famous. When Graham Greene read the script, he wrote: "Ejaculations such as these are not for the nature of publishing - frankly I do not care for it." To second that would be unfair. The actors play with conviction and there is an intriguing insight into a vanished world. The dialogue is snappy and indeed funny in places: "My publisher asked me to write a book about clocks, but I didn't have the time," quips Felix's father.

John Symonds, who is ninety one, claims the play is based on a true story. He was the editor of the literary magazine Lilliput, knew George Orwell and was the lover of Peggy Ramsey, Joe Orton's literary agent. He has written over forty volumes of plays, essays and children's books and is best known for being Aleister Crowley's literary executor and author of the Great Beast. The biography was the first to draw attention to Crowley and has caused much controversy ever since. Those looking for occult subtexts in the play will not be entirely disappointed. Florence, for one, dreams of snakes, curtsies to the pear tree in the garden and frequently employs the tarot (the pack of Thoth, as it happens, though perhaps not too much should be read into this). Though antiquated in style, The Poison-Maker is highly unusual. Anyone wanting a glimpse of the eccentric upper-class milieu that both Crowley and Symonds moved in should check it out.

The Alchemy Theatre Company presents ‘THE POISON MAKER’ by John Symonds
at The Old Red Lion, 418 St John St, London EC1V 4NJ
Tube: Angel, Box Office 020 7837 7816, Admin 020 7833 3053
31 January-18 February 2006 Tues-Sat 8pm, Sun 5pm Tickets £12/£10

'The Unbound Book' by Nicholas Green