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Mandrake Speaks Newsletter
Edited by Mogg Morgan
No 194
Monthly info for friends of leading occult publisher and bookseller Mandrake of Oxford
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Contents
| Boscastle Conference |
| PF Wessex |
| Association of Polytheist Traditions, |
| Esoteric Conference & Occult BookFair |
| Goddess Conference 2007 in Glastonbury |
THE CLEAR CIRCUIT
Chrys Livings
This is the lesson that I’ve learned:
Don’t be afraid when the tide has turned,
Cast off the old flesh, grow the new,
And keep your power just for you.
I found, sixteen years ago - through the Chaos Magick current, coupled with a rapidly growing interest in shamanistic magick - the means to express myself and develop my own way, which I tagged ‘Bestial Magick’.
My focus was that the ‘Bestial Self’, in all its forms and fusions, is the ultimate power-source. The art of the versipellis, or skinswitcher, where the ‘reality skin’ is turned, or reversed, became my preoccupation. I often talked of the ‘human shell’ that encased the Bestial Self.
Then followed a very fertile period during which I spent much time exploring what I called the ‘Bestial Matrix’, a field I found endlessly beautiful and inspiring. A core of work focussed on lycanthropy and borders and parameters of the human condition as keys to moving and turning. This opened many more doors, and I was riding an ever-developing wave of revelation and work, with atavistic magick and the domain of the ‘NightWitch’, culminating in what was to be my last talk of that period, in 1999, at the Ananke symposium, hosted by the Oxford Golden Dawn Occult Society, entitled ‘Queen, Colony and the Art of War’, drawing together threads of sorcery, insect ethology, martial art, and science fact and fiction. In this body of work I categorised magick into three stages: Appraising, Abrasive, and Invasive. I spoke of the superior states of formlessness and fluidity, of the paradox of martial ‘harmony’, and the inextricable link between combat philosophies and healing.
Then, over the next few years, I experienced what was the darkest period of my life, a frightening self-disintegration. I now see that the ‘condition’ had been buried within me for a long time, but I hadn’t ever properly recognised or appreciated its root, and like a demon inside me, it’d kept on secretly growing until fully awakened by the ‘right’ triggers.
It felt at the time as if it would never end, as if I were caught in a kind of spiteful time-lock. All the power-building and power-spouting I had done in my role as a magician seemed to have fallen away. I didn’t want to be ‘nothing’ and that is why I felt so much unbearable pain. Words don’t do the experience justice, but I described the feeling as being abandoned in space, and my umbilical to the ‘ship’ had become disconnected, and I couldn’t see another ‘star’ (somehow acknowledging that inside me somewhere was still a ‘star’, or spark of life). At other times I felt as if I were in a dark pit, and I was only allowed out when the lid was taken off; at other times I wasn’t allowed to exist, so I had to just sit there silently screaming. I also felt I wasn’t being allowed to express my sexuality at a time in my life that I felt should have been the ‘peak’ of my womanhood. These are such obvious archetypical images that I was completely familiar with in theory, but I seemed to have become a helpless victim. Part of me dimly recognised the dream I was in; the other part sat crying in desolation, unable to do anything except stay in the loop.
In retrospect, I’d say that this time in my life was due to a twisted warring of archetypal forces and transference, and such damage was being attracted to me. Everything in life is power-play; archetype-play. At times when one has been broken, and the open wounds are scented, carrion creatures gather to feast. I experienced a kind of repeated ‘trampling’ effect. When you are ‘on the edge’, there are those who want you to self-destruct, sometimes even unconsciously. It’s a morbid knock-on effect. There were some who wanted to help me, but this was frustrating as I was misinterpreted and I felt trapped in the ‘wrong’ role. There were a few genuinely good people there who listened, and didn’t judge me. Above all, I have my mother to thank for getting me through this horrific period, her extraordinary reserves of love and patience, despite her own health issues.
Despite everything ‘Bestial’ and ‘Martial’ that I believed in and had spoken out for, I was completely subject to my vulnerable human-ness. I was enmeshed in obsessive spell-casting again and again for the same objective, totally against the grain of everything I’d stood for magickally. I twisted the Web into desperate knots. I was being treated with homeopathic medicine, and was ‘proving’ the remedies (manifesting symptoms of the remedies as poisons). Later, my father, who I had not had any contact with since I was fourteen, died, and I had to plunge back through over twenty years of accumulated decay that he’d left in his wake.
Throughout this time, the irony was that I always had certain physical standards – healthy eating and fitness training. I kept my training up robotically through most of the time – I felt if I could maintain an athletic physique, that disciplined and positively defined me.
The ‘dis-ease’ was busy manifesting inside my body, attacking mainly my reproductive system, the seat of my creativity and my femaleness. Late in 1999, I had a bout of pre-cancer in my cervix and had surgery. A year later, I had an accidental pregnancy, and a miscarriage which went on through Yule. Then, in the Spring, two years later, I had another bout of pre-cancer in my cervix, which escalated. This time I had found a herbalist, and with six months of herbal medicine, my test results became normal. At Easter of 2004, I suffered ovarian and cervical cysts, and again, I turned to herbal medicine.
My herbalist suggested I try the Oriental healing art of Qi-Gong. As someone who has been long-immersed in magickal work, it is easy to think that you know what to do already, even if action and practice are currently suppressed, and such things can’t achieve more than you already know. My herbalist, who’d had some magickal experience himself, mentioned that he’d felt the same feeling of resistance, but he was now convinced of its effectiveness. I know undoubtedly that, from a holistic point of view, my reproductive organs were under tremendous pressure, because of my creativity being stifled, as well as having suffered an abusive relationship. In this relationship, which I had initially, and ironically, sought to control - and then which sucked away all but a tiny bit of my vitality - I had put myself in a strange position of believing I was being noble and ‘Goddess-like’ about a horrific interpersonal journey, and that I was going to ‘win’ magickally by suppressing vital parts of myself, and that I could modify myself in any way to achieve my goal. I feel so fortunate that a deeper, possibly split-off part of me – what I’d like to call my truly instinctual Bestial self, and that I wasn’t even conscious of at the time – somehow travelled beyond the Web and prevented this possible doom! These parts of ourselves know what is best for us when we consciously don’t.
At the height of the mess, I experienced congress with the Goddess Eresh-kigal, and a lot of serpent influence. Looking back, I think of it all as my immersion into a Duat-like state, the dark serpent-body of the realm of night and possible annihilation. Then I thought I’d emerged before I really had, not realising I was still stuck in a pattern of decay, and there was a lot more to endure.
Then, one day, I had an edge-of-sleep dawn encounter with what I like to describe as a ‘Ra’ initiation. I had done a Ra working recently before for a specific objective, and when an encounter happens later in dream of this nature, it is always exciting. This took the form of an immense, loud, crackling, blinding light-force that was heralded by a hawk-headed Horus-like robot-like golden warrior-guardian, who marched along in a subterranean cavern. I cowered before the light-force, it was way too much for me. It took my breath away; I was terrified. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, but I could see a changing in the quality of light, and a ‘shifting’, and I knew that this ‘being’ had to do with shifting time and space, and I had been ‘put’ somewhere else. It struck me that this being was responsible for the transition between life and death.
I was becoming particularly interested in Qi-gong and aspects of esoteric Taoism mainly because of researching ways to heal my mother. I have become even more interested now by the concept of holographic/cellular reality in the microcosm and macrocosm, and the function of the mind and energy streams within the body relative to external reality. Despite my long-standing passion for health and physical fitness training, I realised I had obviously not properly worked with the internal human state. I had never really ‘decoded’ myself, or learned the art of self-love. The human ‘vehicle’ is so much more than the Dayside Skin that masks the internal Bestial Power. The hidden networks that map our mortality reside within, and we need to learn how to keep their valves open, and circulate our reserves of energy and power so we don’t become stagnant or subject to divergence, and illness on all levels. Badness attracts more badness. Such blocks result in a build up of debris and rot within, psychically as well as organically.
There is a certain satisfying and exhilarating result of work that I call ‘Airstream Magick’, when a spell is cast (or sometimes, a space is simply cleared) and a whole ‘bounty’ comes flooding forth, as if a conduit has been opened. The ‘bounty’ is not always what one expects, but I’ve experienced it as a flurry of connected things, or opportunities, like flying entities magnetised by a power source. I believe the clearing of conduits is the key to everything in life, spirituality and magick. I’ve now experienced how vitally important it is to self-preservation, or should I say, the self-flow of healthy growth and change. I used to work with ideas of Airstream Magick often, (along with plenty of aerobic physical exercise) but the nature of what I now think of as the Aerobic, or Clear, Circuit, had never really ‘hit’ me. It is about really giving life to ourselves on every level. I had worked a lot with linear, spinal ‘ejaculations’ of power, pulling power from below, through roots, tail of the spine, etc. The skull would be a ‘cauldron’ for the power, or I liked to send it out as ‘horns’ through the eyes. With the Nightwitch idea, the phallic emblem of the broomstick, pole, or animal is ‘ridden’, with the transporting energy again, being linear. A lot of my work was explosive in nature, with energy travelling up and down, and I worked with the polarities of The Deep and the Outer Darkness as power zones, with the (middle) Web as the ground of making. I was always fond of ‘organic’ style magick, and I worked with the Runes, sigils and servitors in an organic way, yet I still had much to learn.
Around the Winter Solstice, a year ago, close to the area where I was born, I was doing some Qi-gong work – just simple organ-cleansing exercises, and meridian energy release. This triggered a very emotional magickal experience where I entered a womb-like void-state where I felt a profound, organic reconnection to the universe, an intense stillness but vibrant, throbbing life-source. Being ‘inside’, and yet in limitless space. The experience was very physical and visually amazing, considering I hadn’t planned anything, and had used no conscious triggers for inducing it. Tears coursed down my face with the thought that I’d been disconnected for so long, and now I was a human pentacle, floating in darkness, yet ‘connected’ again, where the head of an absolutely immense dragon-like prehistoric-looking creature manifested before me, quite frightening, but very passive. (The links with serpents and reptilian, primordial dragon-like beings in transcultural shamanism, and the idea that they are one with DNA is a subject that fascinates me, and which opens up a whole field in itself!)
In Beltane of 2006, I was making a sigilised spirit-‘medallion’ and burning it to spin it off into the ether, and it struck me that magickal completion is ‘nothingness’, that when completion occurs, it creates a moment of ultimate peace, as ‘nothingness’: there are no blockages, no stops and strains, no wilful requirements. Everything is synchronised, at peace; there is a still moment, a kind of poise, a ‘rest’ phase, before the wheels start turning again, and the Web starts reforming and continues growing.
The ideal state is to create a no-blockage state in everything, from one’s body to one’s home (an externalisation of the body), one’s relationships (which can become an unconscious externalisation of all manner of things!) and one’s life/reality as a whole (the ultimate externalisation!), and the most important Airstream magick is Inner Airstream work: the organic energy stream, keeping the circuit of clear power open within. This corresponds with what is known as the Qi-gong exercise known as the ‘Microcosmic Orbit’. It is a way of preventing stasis, activating and linking the two main channels of the energy-body so the inner current can flow in a continuous circle. The tongue is pressed to the roof of the mouth and used to connect the two main meridians, making an energy-ouroboros. In practice, it re-boots the system and performs a similar function to a colonic irrigation. It is a kind of openness that protects, as it conserves internal power, rather than leaving you vulnerable.
Sun Tzu’s teaching in The Art of War tells that the best skill for the warrior is to overcome without fighting (foiling the enemies’ plots), which is similar to what I tagged Appraising Magick in ‘Queen, Colony and the Art of War’: staying one step ahead. Likewise, the best thing to do in life is maintain an optimum state of health, then avoid contagion, next, take medicine, and finally, as a last resort: surgery. This analogy can be applied to everything. The problem we are faced with is that life is full of obstacles and challenges, and that is where my Abrasive and Invasive techniques come in. Yet… the one thing we can do at all times, can be in control of, is the Internal Circuit, the microcosmic ouroboros. As the Microcosmic is interchangeable with the Macrocosmic, the Clear Circuit, where energy is pumped wilfully through the organic world, an Aerobic Magick, an oxygenation of the Inner World, is incitement for the Macrocosmic to mirror this, and move in harmony with the flow. I believe the key is working with the overlaying of the ‘hidden’ magickal zone with the internal physical: the material body.
The Oriental concept of dantien (cauldron of elixir in the abdomen) is the pre-natal source of Qi, so the Inner Circuit flows from and through this area. Concentration on the navel is an instigator of the flow and the Circuit. I believe that the inner ouroboros may be the umbilical that connects us to the cosmos and reality-source, with the point of fusion (joining the two main meridians, like two inner serpents, with the tongue) being the joining of Microcosmic and Macrocosmic, with the Primordial Reptilian Beast Mother who encircles reality.
In the joining and meeting, and clearing and cleansing, we ensorcel our reality, our world. The circle is made, and I believe this is the true Circle of Protection, not a line we draw around us, but a state we create inside: the conduit that induces protection because it turns power and energy in a constant revolution, and links us with power beyond like the circuit of infinity: a circle of energy evolving, by meeting with the universal circuit, ultimately combining the coupled circuits into a figure of eight.
I’m now occupied with staying in tune with myself and not spurting my energy out all the time! Learning how to stabilise and nurture power within. I used to develop and practice magick in an excitable manner, all the time energetically projecting, unaware that I wasn’t properly heeding my own advice. The key is not simply with isolating states of huntress and hunted, and maintaining one’s stance as a sorceress who is an object of desire, not subject unto it – working to be always the desired so all things come in. The real key is in working to move beyond these concepts of desire entirely. Where desire as a motivation is superseded, because the Inner Current is creating a wave of life that takes one automatically to a ‘desirous’ state, or condition.
So, I’m now working with circuits within, correspondent to the inner, physical anatomy. We have to learn how to self-heal, even pre-heal; keep that self-heal device ‘on’. I believe this means keeping a careful ‘eye’ on our power flows: are we ‘leaking’? Are neglected tendrils of ourselves splitting off, and attaching to things other than ourself? If so, we need to call them back in and acknowledge their root. Are we building ‘dams’ inside ourselves with stubborn energy patterns from the past? Is our part in the Web more like cast iron than vital, living thread? Are we ‘banishing’ things that we can recycle in the Circuit, cleansing and preserving power flow? Sometimes, ‘banishing’ means burying one’s head in the sand.
I have come to more properly understand that true Making comes simply to life from the moving of elixir generated by the Clear Circuit and not from the wilful mechanics of the casting process. This may seem obvious – that creation comes from source, not from an act, just as genius precedes and generates any artform, but the point, or consideration, is, is the practice of the current of the Clear Circuit really enough in itself to truly harmonise desire and reality? That if we are fully attuned with the energy patterns and flows within our body, (or ‘Qi’, in the Oriental system of thinking), then we can dance conjoined with the body of the cosmos, and learn how it can be truly ours.
©Chrys Livings, Lupercalia, 2007
Ursula K Le Guin
Call for Papers: Paradoxa: World Literary Genres
A Volume on Ursula K. Le Guin
"She is the kind of writer businessmen hate most, producing challenging, unpredictable books whose meanings are too elusive to be easily controlled." - Meredith Tax, The Nation:, January 28, 2002
If Ursula Le Guin were Japanese, she would surely be designated a National Treasure. Her work in Science Fiction and Fantasy spans the fields of fiction and criticism. From her first published story in 1962, her writing has blended elegance and passion, vividness and acuity, and she has the unerring ability to capture the unexpected perspective that is the trademark of science fiction. Her fantasy has achieved that genre's variant sense of wonder, the taste of age and Elsewhere that Tolkien called the air of Faerie. Over the scope of her long career as a storyteller, a poet and a critical thinker, perhaps her greatest achievement has been her work's enduring commitment to ideas as being both politicized and political. It is this commitment, particularly from the 1970s on, when she began thinking about gender in both theory and fiction, that has made Ursula Le Guin a major presence in SF and Fantasy, and in the smaller but more exacting fields of feminist SF and Fantasy.
In these fields Ursula Le Guin's contribution is remarkable, not simply for her fiction's shaping of political debate in the more immediate and gripping form of characters' action, speech, and literal flesh and blood, but also for her jargon-free and emotionally rich critical voice. And, uniquely, for the courage that has allowed her not simply to shift a position, but to admit, freely and in print, as with "Is Gender Necessary: Redux," that her previous arguments, however famous and praised, could have been wrong. It is courage, as much as commitment and talent, that has made Ursula Le Guin not merely one of the best known but one of the most respected and perhaps best loved writers in her field.
Ursula Le Guin has been involved with _Paradoxa_ since the journal's first issue, when she graciously agreed to participate in a "Paradoxa Interview" (1995.) She also agreed to serve on the journal's Board of Editors, and has subsequently contributed articles, and with them wisdom, expertise and entrée at many stages along _Paradoxa_'s path. _Paradoxa_ is now pleased to propose the publication of a special Ursula Le Guin volume, which will be in part a collection of critical essays and commentary about her work. This call for papers requests abstracts or expressions of interest for essays dealing with her adult SF and Fantasy, her critical writing, her books for children and young adults, and her poetry, including her notable translation of the _Tao Te Ching_, and ranging from overviews of her work to studies of specific texts. Especially welcome will be essays that assess the value or standing of this work or works to the field(s) as a whole and at the present.
Please send proposals by e-mail to Info@.... Final date for submissions will be August 31, 2007, and the volume will be published in 2008. For further information about Paradoxa, please visit our website:
Clairsentiences
"Clairsentience [From the French clair, “clear,” + sentience, “feeling,” ultimately derived from the Latin clarus, “clear,” + sentiens, derived from sentire, “to feel”] is a form of extra-sensory perception wherein a person acquires psychic knowledge primarily by means of feeling.[1]"(wikpedia)" ( the present wikpedia entry)
Clairsentience article
The following piece of research was done by Tim Crosby who was both the subject , with the condition known as clairsentience , and also the researcher who, much like research chemists in former times, on the edge of new discoveries , used themselves as white mice in white coats to test a new as yet untried compound.
He developed a philosophical approach over 15 years of research which he found indispensable given the nature of the study area he was exploring. unlike empirical science which hopes to measure the material world and then to gradually reach understandings of its workings through repeated testing , the mind and its contents appears to be a somewhat more slippery fish . Descartes after many years of dedicated reasoning came to the conclusion that no one could prove beyond a doubt that anything coming into the self via the senses could be proved to be objectively existant including measurments , graphs ; other people`s research etc ; the whole external world , and as ethnobotanist terence mckenna put it , " you are at the centre of the only universe you will ever know ".
This pre amble is necessary when coming at the word clairsentience in a way which does justice to the nature of the self/reality which is implicit in its existence as a concept but also its very meaning which is embedded in human culture at large . The word itself pre supposes both a self ; a supra higher dimesional sense world and implicitly , a group of senses and sense organs of a new more highly developed nature.
For the most complete and detailed research in this area i suggest one takes a long look at the work of ex nasa scientist barbara brennan who after a research post at nasa exploring the nature of electromagnetic fields , later developed higher sense perception to a very advanced level. Her work in this area is pre eminent and gives a broader and deeper understanding on the relationships of higher sense perception including , clairaudience , clairvoiance , claircognisance and of course clairsentience ; and their relationship to higher worlds / dimensions of the universe and self.
for more information go to http://www.barbarabrennan.com/
Her approach contextualises these newly discovered layers of reality within the framework of the holographic theory of the universe suggested by physicist Dr. David Bohm in his book " the implicate order " in which he calls the manifest reality " the explicate enfolded order ", in which , " parts are seen to be in immediate connection , in which their dynamical relationships depend in an irreducible way on the state of the whole system......Thus, one is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the classical idea of analyzability of the world into seperately and independantly existent parts." and also The Morphagenic field theory ( from morph, "form " , and genesis , " coming into being. " ) of Rupert Sheldrake which is explored more fully in his book "A New Science of Life ".
The action of this field involves " action at a distance " in both space and time . Rather than form being determined by physical laws outside of time , it depends on morphic resonance across time . This means that morphic fields can propagate across space and time and that past events could influence other events everywhere else.
An example of this is shown by Lyall Watson in his book , " Lifetide: The Biology of Consciousness ", in which he describes what is now popularly called the Hundredth Monkey Principle . Watson found that after a group of monkeys learned a new behaviour , suddenly other monkeys on other islands with no possible " normal " means of communication learned that behaviour , too.
Barbara brennan's exaustive work in this area gives a broad and highly detailed context for understanding unusually developed senses and perhaps a new understanding of other mechanisms in the universe whereby knowledege , feelings , thoughts and other objects in time and space , might travel across boundaries , for example between bird and tree ; between monkey and monkey or between human and human via a connectedness previously thought not to exist .
As Robert Anton Wilson so aptly put it , " any technology or science sufficiently far removed from ones own will be perceived as magic" , and much like the idea of new and emergent higher facilities which are explored to dramatic effect in the three X Men films , the idea of a new emerging higher state of consciousness is being discussed by integrated philosophers such as Ken Wilber , whereby the next stage of human evolution is not to be a physical innovation as our relative matereal comfort and sedantary lives suggest , but will be one of the mind.
Just as roaming homonids , with a culture which didn`t change one bit for millenia , were replaced by homo sapiens , with their art , religion , language etc , for whom culture now was so varied that it could be differentiated by an explosion of creativity , which is characterised by the highly individual designs of their hand axes and countless other artifacts which are found to be different from one valley to the next across the entire planet; so , the next leap of human development will perhaps be just as huge and qualatively different.
Thesource42 17:37, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
References
Barbara Brennan ex Nasa scientist http://www.barbarabrennan.com/ also her two text books " hands of light " , and " Light Emerging ".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Brennan
Physicist Dr. David Bohm "The Implicate Order "
Rupert Sheldrake , " A New Science Of Life ", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
Lyall Watson ," Lifetide : The Biology of Consciousness ". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyall_watson
Robert Anton Wilson , " Cosmic Trigger ", " prometheus rising " and many more ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.A.Wilson
Terence Mckenna , " True Hallucinations " , " Invisible Landscape ", and " Food of The Gods ", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_mckenna
Rene Descartes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
David Horrobin , " The Madness Of Adam and Eve " .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horrobin
Ken Wilbur , http://www.kenwilber.com and http://wilber.shambhala.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilbur
A key idea in Wilber's philosophical approach is the holon, which came from the writings of Arthur Koestler.As a Mahayana Buddhist, he believes that reality is ultimately a nondual union of emptiness and form, with form being innately subject to development over time
The X Men , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men
Star Trek Next Generation In which Diana Troy is Ship`s Empath or Clairsentient. ( see , above the Robert Anton Wilson Quote )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Next_Generation
Emergence : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
"Perhaps the most elaborate recent definition of emergence was provided by Jeffrey Goldstein in the inaugural issue of Emergence.(Goldstein 1999) To Goldstein, emergence refers to "the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems."
Holism : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism
I Heart Huckabees . film. for an amusing take on the holographic universe.
The loon show , every saturday afternoon 2pm til 4pm at www.sheffieldlive.org.
The Journal for the Academic Study of Magic (JSM)
Call For Papers for Issue 5, deadline 21-6-2007
Issue 5 of the JSM, due to appear late in 2007, is now seeking contributions. Scholarly articles in English about any aspect of magic/occultism are welcome up to 8000 words in length.
Drs. Susan Johnston Graf (Penn State, Mont Alto, USA) and Amy Hale (University of Maryland University College) are the new co-editors of the journal.
Submission to the journal is by Email attachment, in Rich Text Format documents using Harvard Citation Style. Full submission details, an outline style guide and further details about the journal can be found at the SASM website: www.sasm.co.uk
Could all submissions in the first instance please be sent to Susan Johnston Graf: sjg9@...
Please feel free to contact Susan or Amy (halea@...) 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 2007, with early submissions welcome.
Lectures
Details of location below
Date |
Speaker & Topic |
|
| 14th March | Mar 14 Jeremy Morgan Tattooed Women & the Sacred Spoon Boxes of Daghestan Based on the pioneering work of Chenciner, Ismailov & Magomedkhanov, Jeremy’s talk is a brief look at the surviving & surprisingly strong traces of pre-Islamic Pagan culture in this little known country on the southernmost border of the Russian Federation, a land of ancient villages perched among the Caucasus Mountains by the shores of the Caspian Sea. Underlying this rural Islamic society, animist tattoos on women & decoration on ritual spoon boxes share symbols that are believed to protect the Hearth & Family. |
MWNN |
| 14th March | Poetry, Voice, Invocation and Magic: A Third Night with Occultist Zachary Cox Occultists take note! A night for you. Tonight at Treadwell’s, Zachary Cox will perform Crowley and other Edwardian occult/pagan poets. For those of you who are younger and may not know this living legend, Zach Cox is a Thelemic magician of some fifty years experience, who has dedicated himself in large part to excellence in ritual form and to the power of invocation and poetry. He has long championed lyricism and aesthetics in the pagan sensibility, and has a commitment to artistic beauty and music as integral to a “high culture” modern paganism. In the 1980s and 1990s, Zachary published and edited the occult journal Aquarian Arrow (famed for its Ramsay Dukes column). He and his partner ran a ritual training lodge for many years, whose rites have become the stuff of underground legend. In the 1980s the Neopantheist Society issued a recording of Cox reading Crowley invocations and ritual poetry; it remains a benchmark of the art. Much of his more serious work, however, has taken place in the private sphere, particularly in recent years. Treadwell’s is proud to present this rare public appearance. |
Treadwells |
| 16th March | Bloodlust & The Evil Dead in Ancient Egypt Friday 7.30 mogg morgan, author or the Bull of Ombos, Tankhem and Pan's Road, continues his left-field exploration |
Dark Arts |
| 20th March | In the Company of Wolves – Animal Transformation Fantasy Therianthropy refers to the idea that we might shed our clothes, our skin, and our humanity and transform ourselves into beasts. It has long had a powerful hold upon both the magical and literary imagination. Via a reading of Angela Carter’s erotic re-workings of Beauty and the Beast and Little Red Riding Hood, we will examine this fantasy, as well as pay a brief visit to the world of furry fandom. |
Treadwells |
| 27th March (Tuesday), 7pm | "Edric Rides - folktales, earth mysteries & the traditional craft - a Shropshire case study" A talk By Ken Rees ADMISSION: £4 (Concs. £3.50) Members £2.50 THE DIORAMA CENTRE Triton Square, NW1 3JG |
London Earth Mysteries |
| 28th Mar | Liz Maddison The Use of Pop Culture in Magic |
MWNN |
| April 11 | John “Crow” Constable Native Magic The poet John Constable, aka John Crow Shaman, has worked for more than ten years with the spirits of his native Southwark and especially with The Goose at Cross Bones graveyard. He recently returned from a trip to the Amazon where he studied the esoteric practices handed down within tribes and families. In this talk, which features his magic songs and incantations, John looks at what we can learn from cultures with more established traditions of shamanism, while reflecting on the importance of connecting with our own ancient lines and working with our own "caboclos". |
MWNN |
| 27 May | THROBBING GRISTLE LIVE EVENTS 2007 Full details and other dates: |
Venues & Organisers:
| Bath Omphalos | Bath Omphalos All talks running from 2pm-4pm Invention Arts Cafe St James Memorial Hall, Lower Borough Walls Bath BA1 1QR (next to the Fairy shop) for further info contact:01225 852647 Website: http://www.omphalos.org.uk/ |
| The Dark Arts Society | The Dark Arts Society Upstairs at the Devereux public house (20 Devereux Court, off Essex Street, Strand, London WC2). Nearest tube is Temple. Our website is now www.darkartsociety.com (not khemet.org.uk anymore). |
| London Earth Mysteries Circle | London Earth Mysteries Circle 7.00pm Tuesdays (2nd 4th in month) |
| London Secret Chiefs |
SECRET CHIEFS 8pm - at the Devereux Public House, 20 Devereux Court, off Essex Street, Strand, London WC2, near Temple Underground). Check for updates and programme on http://www.pflondon.org (Talking Stick began at The Plough on 14th February 1990, moving through the years to The Marquis Cornwallis, The Dog Trumpet, the Black Horse to the Princess Louise, there becoming Secret Chiefs on 15th March 2000. Now at the Devereux). |
| MWNN | THE MOOT WITH NO NAME Alternate Wednesdays, 7.30 for 8pm. Upstairs, Devereux pub near Temple tube station. £2. (Unless otherwise stated.) F indicates an illustrated talk. Opposite the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand (near Aldwych) is a Tudor-style pub, the George. The Devereux is down the alley next to this. See map at http://tinyurl.com/cp7u2. |
| R.I.L.K.O | RESEARCH INTO LOST KNOWLEDGE ORGANISATION - R.I.L.K.O presents regular public lectures by experts in their fields- Venue: 41 Queen's Gate, South Kensington, London SW7 5HR at 7.15 p.m. prompt. |
| Treadwell’s Books |
Treadwells Bookshop 34 Tavistock Street, Full descriptions of all events are to be found now on website,# http:www.treadwells-london.com |
Groups Meetups
| Cambridge Talking Stick |
Meet at the Salisbury Arms, Tenyson Road. Every Wednesday at 7:30pm for 8pm start. This is a chance for all with an opinion on Magick, in all its guises, to share it with others. All can speak without interruption as only the bearer of the stick, which is passed around, may speak at any time, thus giving all a say. Topics for discussion are democratically decided for the following week’s Talking Stick, at the end of each meeting. There will be no fixed speakers, as everyone present can be a speaker if they choose. Please arrive from 7:30 pm (although late comers won’t be excluded) for a prompt start at 8pm for the first round of the stick. There will then be a beer break before it goes round again with a social at the end until closing. Write for details to: alex@...Mill Road Winter Fair will be happening again this year, on Saturday 2nd December. From 10:30 till about 5pm there will be a huge variety of activities taking place up and down Mill Road: stalls, circus performers, singing, dancing, trishaws, storytelling - even an ice rink! Here at Libra Aries we are assembling a group of hearty singers to wassail the shop on the morning of the Fair. If you would like to get involved, we are holding a short rehearsal (about half an hour) in the shop every Tuesday evening at 8pm, which makes the next one Tuesday 14th November. (No need to be at all the rehearsals, but it would be a very good idea to come to at least one!) Hope to see you then! http://www.libra-aries-books.co.uk/cat/author/ Libra Aries Books 9 The Broadway, Mill Road, Cambridge CB1 3AH Tel: (01223) 412 411 http://www.libra-aries-books.co.uk/ |
| Harrogate Magical Moot | A magical lore group, adhering to the study and research of esoteric and occult ideas and cosmologies, with the foundation of leading to ritual praxis. Practitioners from all paths welcome. Monthly meetings with talks followed by discussion. Contact Damon winegodunbound@... |
| 'Oxford Talking Stick Pub Moot' | Meets every Thursday at The Angel Greyhound Pub (St Clements st) Oxford. There is now a regular blog with summaries of past discussion and news of next session. |
Conferences
| 30 March | Boscastle Conference March 30-31 2007 Venue: Wellington Hotel, Boscastle, North Cornwall http://museumofwitchcraft.blogspot.com/ For all those interested in Cornwall, folklore, the museum, history, and music, let it be known that on March 30 and 31 2007 The Wellington Hotel in Boscastle will host a fabulous weekend that will satisfy all your interests and more. Steve Patterson has put together an extremely interesting programme. On Friday evening March 30, 3 Steve Patterson - Tales of the Museum which includes a history of the museum and a biography of Cecil Williamson Saturday evening's entertainment will include more music, puppetry, and storytelling. Tickets for the day are £15.00 on the door and you can reserve a place by calling Steve Patterson on 07941 078975 |
| 13-14th April | As part of Northampton Museum and Art Gallery's new exhibition on superstition, "Unlucky for some", there will be a weekend of talks on Friday 13th and Saturday 14th April. Native psycho-geographer, occultist and legendary graphic novel writer Alan Moore will discuss "Magical Northampton" on Saturday 14th from 2:00-4:00pm. University of Northampton parapsychologist David Luke will discuss "The psychology of superstition" on Friday 13th evening 7:00- 8:30pm, and again on Saturday 14th from 1:00-200pm. Charge: Friday - £3 (inc. refreshments), Saturday - £2. Booking essential please contact Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, Guildhall Road, on 01604 838110, or at museums@.... The exhibition runs from 7th April - 20th May. "Magical Northampton" – Alan Moore (Saturday 14th April, 2-4pm) Native psychogeographer, occultist and legendary graphic novel writer "You Never Know Your Luck: The psychology of superstition" – David (Friday 13th April, 7-8:30pm, and Saturday 14th April, 2-4pm, ) Superstitions are common everywhere yet little understood. David will |
| 29th April 07 | PF Wessex Conference April 07, Glastonbury Town Hall. Speakers: Maxine Sanders; Gordon Strong, Cassandra Latham & Mogg Morgan, entertainment: Inkubus Sukubus; Wolfshead Vixen Morris. More to be announced. |
| 26th May | Conference info - Association of Polytheist Traditions, 26 May, Manchester Museums. Please circulate widely. This should soon also be up on the APT website, http://www.manygods.org.uk. This year's theme is - Traditions, gods, spirits in the land: with animist religion, do
* Thornborough Henges, where there is going to be more quarrying. * Reaching out to other Polytheists - ideas and guidelines. Back to the main title. Last year's APT conference raised so many What do you think on this - as a polytheist practitioner, or a What kind of theology - or theory - makes sense in 21st century polytheism? This conference provides an opportunity to grapple with ideas of what Small print notes: We are not aiming this at 'star' participants or * Panels or sessions: panel topics will be announced after we've * Contributions are invited for a short talk 15-20-ish minutes) or * Date is Saturday 26th May, 2007, at Manchester Museum. APT AGM is * Deadline for abstracts is 10 MARCH 2007 (but please send earlier if There will be an evening session, and offers of performances are -- |
| 9th June 07 | Esoteric Conference & Occult BookFair Speakers are: Daniel Schulke on The Sabbatic Ointment, consideration of praxis & materia David Rankine on The Missing Practical Kabbalah Guy Ogilvy on The Alchemical Arte Geraldine Beskin on The Women of the Golden Dawn Shani Oates on Traditional Witchcraft The following book dealers will be present: Midian Books, Man, Myth and Magic Books, Atlantis Bookshop, Labyrinth Books, Crow Bone Books. Tickets are £15 each pay Verdelet and are from PO Box 82 Craven Arms |
| 1-5th August | Goddess Conference 2007 in Glastonbury Wednesday 1st-Sunday 5th August with Fringe events Sunday July 29th-Monday August 6th Full details are now on the website www.goddessconference.com Celebrating the Crone Goddess at Lammas
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