Mandrake Speaks Newsletter

• War & Medicine (review)

• Honouring the Ancient Dead & Avebury Reburial Consultation

• Advanced Magick For Beginner's (Review)

• Helen Hodge (Obit)

• ~ EGRE~GORE ~

• Lectures Talks

• Groups Meetups

• Conferences & Exhibitions (click to view)

  
  PF; COA, Occulture, Thelemic Symposium and more - its going to be a busy year.

Advanced Magick for Beginners (reviewed by Julian Vayne)

Alan Chapman

Aeon Books

Advanced magick for beginners is a delightful volume. Its author, Alan Chapman, is a typical modern occultist in that his approach blends a variety of approaches to create a unique style. In Chapman's case the Thelemic approach to enlightenment described by the initiations of the Qabalistic spheres (aka the curriculum of the Argentium Astrum), the approaches of conservative analytical Buddhism (Theravada Buddhism) and the technology of belief shifting (from chaos magick), are his preferred modus operandi. The first seven chapters of this volume take us through many techniques that will be a familiar from chaos magick (including sigilisation) but where Alan pushes the envelope is by doing away with the 'magickal laws' that are typically bonded to these methods. The upshot is that the author assures us that we simply need to follow the process he outlines thus:

1. Decide what you want to occur.
2. Ensure that what you want to occur has a means of manifestation.
3. Choose an experience.
4. Decide that the experience means the same thing as what you want to occur.
5. Perform the act/undergo the experience.
6. Result

This elegant formula cuts to the heart of much magickal praxis. Alan then goes on to show how 'failed' magick is in fact exactly the above process operating successfully but where the object of the operation is incorrectly understood. Thus a beginner does a ritual hopeful that the sigil they are charging will bring them a new job and the ritual concludes (successfully!) with the result that they hope that the sigil will bring them a new job! The actually desired output (ie a new job) has been unconsciously replaced by the reification of the hope itself. The ritual worked on the actual desire fed into it. An object lesson in 'be careful what you pray for' but in a different sense than that in which this maxim is usually quoted.

Each chapter contains exercises and there are some neat tables that allow us to contrast different 'arbitrary magical methods' in some detail. The exercises suggest this book could be a primer for new comers. However this book would undoubtedly be a welcome addition to the shelves of more seasoned practitioners

My only uncertainty about the text is that while our author rails against the influence of extreme postmodernity in magick, there perhaps a subtle whiff of Solipsism in this volume. The scheme that Alan proposes does not seem to address the fact there are countless magickal operations happening around us all the time. In Point 1. (of Alans model of magick, above) we are not standing somehow outside the world, prepared to write on the tabula rasa of Reality. I'm sure the author recognises this and am excited to see how his insights into magickal process mesh with the shared reality and inter-subjective worlds we inhabit. Perhaps we must await "Advanced Magick for Adepts" to find out more.

As the blurb on the back indicates, the crowning joy of this volume is its style ("humours, direct, seductively logical…infectious"). Let's face it folks, style does matter! Alan's writing betrays a dry wit which is a delight to read. He makes good use of that core skill of dropping a rude joke into the depths of a learned treatise about the non-dual nature of the Mystery. In this respect I'm sure Uncle Crowley would be proud to number him as a senior member of the A.'.A.'.

Oh and a there is a picture of a hand grenade on the cover – brilliant!

[Ed: I heard Alan Chapman's lecture at the recent Colours of Chaos - it was very lively but I wasn't that impressed with his grasp of the history of magick. For example his contention that all magick is Greek in origin - which I find not only innacurate but almost offensive in the way it blanks one of the most important magical and pagan cultures of the Mediterranean. That's not his fault of course, just shows what a good job Egypt's colonial masters did at wiping it off the intellectual map. Someone catching me harumphing said well - the spirit of what he's saying is quite refreshing even if it is a bit rough around the ages - and maybe on reflection that's a fair point.]

~ EGRE~GORE ~

* Morgen of Lyonesse to the Sunset Bound. *

~ Ariel ~

Tendrils of Magick seep from the Internet
Twenty-four-seven, night and day.
Tantalising ectoplasmic tentacles
Like phosphorescent fern tree fingers
Unfurl languorously, penetrate my slumber;
Log-on, and I, the little cyber Match-Girl,
With precious few matches left,
Like Rapaccini’s daughter under her Datura,
Inhaling their otherworldly scent,
Hooked by indefinable longings
For unnameable things, become restless
As alien amorphous etheric Shades
Poke my dreams, probe my flesh,
Crafted by Will of disembodied strangers:
My faceless hierophantic Brothers,
With Pantagruelian appetite
Exuberantly roam in Cyberspace,
Where the Laws of Gravity don’t apply?

In the dull confinements of a prosaic existence,
A gem-like kaleidoscope of astral corollas,
Pervasive phantasmagorical Emanations
Seductively stretch, entwine, caress,
Tantalise and uproot. And I,
Thoroughly modern Moonchild,
Mesmerised, entranced by their convolutions,
Forgetting for a time both Nature and Nurture,
Melt, merge, dissolve,
Swept by this Great Tide

Psychic waves, tangible as the scent
Of blood and roses,
The acrid smell of burned wicks,
The spice of leather upon flesh,
A heady Open Source Psychotropic Draught
Bleeds from the Internet.
Ectoplasmic gales blow by numbers,
Relentlessly rocking my boat.
No matter how tight I will have myself
Tied in solitary confinement
To the rickety mast of my banal shipwreck,
They prevail: for the whole is greater
Than the sum of its part.

Their pervading vapours penetrate the stranglehold,
Rousing herds of long- repressed, shackled heraldic beasts,
Sleuth of primeval impulses,
Shoals of feral, unspeakable instincts.
In the disquieting twilight of a Dawn
That never quite breaks into day,
I beg the Shongmaw mend my broken heart;
But he doesn’t come. Instead,
Bilge water oozes, bitter as my tears,
Droves of addictive yearnings, like Golems, unleashed,
Hack at my safety net, the wilderness of brambles
Where I slept, murky chalice of Air, Water, Earth:
A Swamp awaiting the kiss of Fire.

My hand, languid, rests upon cool metal of laptop,
Carmine peonies in a broken blue vase slowly die,
Yesterday: engorged, tight and tumescent,
Shedding a lush carpet upon the dusty floor,
Their slow fall, like a clock, at first disquieted
The precarious comfort of my little Abyss.
Now, greedily, I bury my face
In their faintly scented petals,
Hungry for their soft, moist, cool pink caress
As the Occult Cyber peep-show twirls,
Night and day: Novelty-shop memetic Arcanas
Spell swirling neoteric Mayas over Gaia:
Death-Posture! Nimble reptilian fingers
Breathe life into a writhing theatre of Mandrake Servitors,
Conjure a Typhonian Pick-and-Mix
Of sharp sygilised Urban Myths;
Exalted, they arise like Baron Samedi
From the fertile graveyards of Pop Counter-Culture.

A kaleidoscope of foxy Masks, cloaked
In voluptuous shreds of bewildering Paradigms,
Dance in the Shadow of the Tree:
Papa Legba waltzes with Eris,
Cthulhu tangos with Madonna,
O! Ancient Mother - Tara: Mercy!
The Universe: a swirling Street Carnival;
Utterance of forbidden names in raucous fractals
Rips shrouds of diaphanous feathers, revealing
Glimpses of cryptic Temenos.
Polyamorous hermaphroditic Heroes
With heterochromic irises seek
The Chemycal Wedding at the Torture Garden,
Prometheus! Rise: I wanna live forever,
You know Al-ad-Insane was a junkie,
Ohm Namah Shivaya: Dionysus is on DMT,
And all the Spheres blur, veils upon veils,
Ouranian thunderbolts tear down
The controlled equilibrium of my precarious Tower:
My ancient Lions flee!
How I long for the Red Chamber,
The birch, the Cup and the Liknon!
I hide my lantern under a bushel:
I will run away with the Old Gods
Upon the wing of an Owl.
Do not unplug your computer -
It will turn off automatically.

© ~ARIEL ~ Kernow ~ June 2008 ~

War & Medicine - Wellcome Trust, Euston Road, London until 15th February - Admission Free

"As humankind has developed increasingly sophisticated weaponry with which to harm its enemies, medicine has had to adapt to cope with the volume and the changing nature of resulting casualties. Concentrating on the modern era, 'War and Medicine' will consider the constantly evolving relationship between warfare and medicine, beginning with the disasters of the Crimean War and continuing through to today's conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The exhibition highlights the personal experiences of surgeons, soldiers, civilians, nurses, writers and artists and will look at the impact of war on the ‘home front’ as well as on front-line medicine, considering the long-term implications for society of the traumas suffered and the lessons learned."

The wonderful hidden gem that is the Wellcome Trust collection in Central London has another of its winter exhibitions, this time focussing on the theme of War & Medicine. For those who are unfamiliar. I can say that the Wellcome is one of the world's greatest collections of information and artefacts connected with medicine's long and fascinating history. Henry Wellcome was a great Victorian collector who specified that a fixed percentage of profits from his pharmaceutical company be devoted to historical research. Hence the collection is very well endowed with artistic and magical masterpieces, all available to the general public free of charge. Wellcome special exhibits almost always have as large an artisitic imput as scientific. This includes participation by living artists often commissioned to produce work on the theme of that particular show. It's a strong subject and has some images not for the fainthearted - including Tonks rather amazing paintings of plastic surgery techniques, inspired by material from ancient Ayurvedic medicine and put to good use to reconstruct casualties from WWI. Also on display is an example of Austin Spare's work as WWI Artist, where he documented the innovative dressing stations that became part of the industrial / medical response to industrial warfare - one of the exhibits themes. Austin Spare is of course well know to occultists as a magical artist, but here you see him in an earlier incarnation. - unmissable [Mogg]

ps: The Austin Spare image is currently on the Mandrake Blog & Archive:

http://mandox.blogspot.com/2008/12/war-medicine-austin-spare.html

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Honouring the Ancient Dead & Avebury Reburial Consultation:

In case you missed it -

EH / NT / CoBDO Reburial Consultation has arrived and this is a final call for submissions from you. If you are also submitting a response as an individual or through
another organisation, please don't let that stop you adding your voice to our shared submission. If HAD's voice is to have validity, I need to hear from you.

direct to:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.19820
which is another very informative website with all the relevant documents

This story definitely has legs, as just one example from UK's Daily Mail online
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1127430/Druid-wars-How-drunken-row-4-000-year-old-bones-causing-chaos-pagan-circles.html#

Some elements of the pagan movement have rather built "King Arthur" up over the years -
something they may sometime regret :) - especially as he uses his undoubted clout with the media to slag off former friends.
This story about the Avebury Consultation is set to run and run -
and is something of a landmark for Pagans interested in the topic -
the consultation has now been extended btw.

HAD (www.honour.org.uk) is not supporting the application for reburial
but thinks Paul Davies made a reasonable case but not one that has universal support amongst pagans.

HAD on the whole emphasises appropriate and respectful display and
access to all. Most press reports have tended to favour certain perspectives within the
pagan movement that make a better story. (btw there is a proposal that pagans perform some sort of annual rite in
museum collections at samhain)

HAD "queries the language of the DCMS Guidance, proposing that the language of ‘claims’
is inappropriate and has put CoBDO in a no-win situation. If a British organisation such as
CoBDO had been given the option to use the language of ‘expressions of interest’, the
relevance and value of their input would have been immediately heard, supported,
understood and of value. It is essential that an inclusive language be
offered that is more appropriate for the British situation. "

Full background see:

www.honour.org.uk

Bright From The Well – Northern Tales in the Modern World by Dave Lee
Review by Akashanath

A common difficulty for magicians moving from one tradition to another is reductio ad nauseum. With little effort, it is easy to nail the symbolism of one's latest trip onto the pre-existing crucifix of one's earlier experiences, eventually reducing every opportunity for novelty to a stale repeat of one's preconceptions. Chaos Magick has often fallen into this trap, its dogma of 'non-dogmatism' leading adherents to strip belief-systems to their 'essentials', sometimes to the point where they lose much of their beauty and function. At the opposite extreme one can simply be overwhelmed by the strangeness and unfamiliarity of a new world-view, and fail to find a point from which to begin one's assimilation.

The Norse and Saxon myths, with their fragmented, archaic language and almost prehistoric themes, can often evoke this type of response. In his newest book, Dave Lee lithely navigates the pass between these twin peaks, taking time to pause and explore the dilemmas, or muse on them in the form of short fables. People expecting a book about the runes will not be disappointed. Those hoping for further expositions on the subject(s) of Chaos Magick will find plenty of interest. But for me where Bright From The Well comes into its own is as a series of reflections on dilemmas that will be familiar to many 21st century occultists.

For example, Chapter 5 is entitled “The Magician In and Against The World.” It's essentially an analysis of the twin functions of the magician as anarchist, challenging the false autocracy of consensus reality, and the magician as priest, strengthening social traditions by helping the laity to connect them to their spiritual and cosmic sources. Within his complex analysis, Dave grapples with magicians' tendencies towards transcendence on the one hand and immanence on the other. This rang loud bells for me; in my magickal quest I have often lurched from mind-bending hedonism to ruthless ascetic austerity and back again, struggling to marry my hungers and drives with some arbitrary construct of ultimate purpose. Dave also concludes that some sort of unification is necessary, describing this in terms of the intermarriage of the Vanir and the Aesir, the two Northern pantheons who exchange hostages somewhere near the beginning of time. Dave's exegesis interprets the former as gods of immanence and the latter as deities of transcendence and consciousness (though not exclusively so). In a story from Snorri's Prose Edda, Dave tells us how the Aesir (in the form of Odin) and the Vanir (in the form of Tyr) trick the Fenriswoolf (primal chaos) into allowing itself to be bound, creating the ordered universe that is a necessary precondition for human society and hence both esoteric and exoteric religious practice.

Students of Tantrika may find parallels here, and indeed Dave makes passing reference to the left and right hand paths. In many contemporary Hindu icons the transcendent Shiva is depicted sitting on his mountain, meditating and smoking Ganja, largely disinterested in the world. One myth tells us how the goddess Kali once went on a killing spree. Initially invoked by men seeking support in their war with the demons, Kali has lost sight of her original intention in an orgy of destruction. With all the demons slain, she turns her unstoppable fury on her former allies, slaughtering them with her many arms. Summoned from his mountain, Shiva is intrigued. Lying in front of her with his cock erect, he looks up, turned on by her warped face and blood-stained body. Gradually her lust for killing turns into a different kind of lust, and the two deities begin to f**k. Separate from one another, they are aimless, functionless. In unity, Shiva (transcendence) gains the capacity to manifest in the physical world, while Kali (immanence) transmutes her destructive power to generative.

Some of the other sections completely obviate the need for parallels by speaking directly to the magician's experience. In Chapter 7, the author recounts a fascinating and credible list of magickal anecdotes spanning over 20 (and perhaps closer to 30?) years of workings, grouped into a rough typology of function. Several chapters take the form of stories, some obviously derived from Nordic originals, others less so. The style is engaging and entertaining, not laboriously educational or annoyingly whimsical, and each is short enough to be knocked off quickly (or omitted altogether) should it not be to the reader's taste.

As well as re-telling stories from the northern traditions and presenting a novel method of working with the entities described as dwarves, the book contains a complete rune poem in English. Although it probably wouldn't stand alone as a manual of rune magick, anyone genuinely interested in the subject could probably learn something new. The main strength, for those interested in Nordic traditions, will probably be for those looking for another perspective from which to triangulate dry, historical academic texts on the one hand and the often pedantic dogmatism of modern Odinists on the other. Overall, as the title implies, the collection is refreshing and inspired. Well worth a read!

-------------------------------------------

Bright from the Well
Northern Tales in the Modern World

By Dave Lee

978-1869928-84-1
£10.99, 166pp

We change and develop ‘the past’ with narrative, and we create ‘the future’
by re-mixing the stored elements in order to continue it onwards.

All the verbal tenses cluster around the same mighty place, the same source of narrative and mythic significance.
The people had a name for this place: the Well of Urdhr, Anglo-Saxon wyrd, one of three Norns of fate,
Urdhr, Verdhandi and Skuld, who cluster around the Well. These Norns are mighty beings,
beyond and above the gods, in the sense that they are eternal and know the fates,
the rise and fall of the gods themselves. They are watchers of the Well and helpers to the Tree.
The Tree, which contains all the worlds in present time, all the branches of the Now, is nourished at its roots by the Well’s waters.

'Bright From the Well' consists of five stories plus five essays and a rune-poem.
The stories revolve around themes from Norse myth - the marriage of Frey and Gerd, the story of
how Gullveig-Heidh reveals her powers to the gods, a modern take on the social-origins myth Rig's Tale,
Loki attending a pagan pub moot and the Ragnarok seen through the eyes of an ancient shaman.
The essays include examination of the Norse creation or origins story, of the
magician in or against the world and a chaoist's magical experiences looked at from the standpoint of Northern magic.'

Dave Lee coaches breathwork, writes fiction and non-fiction, blends incenses and oils, creates music and collage.

His previous books include "Chaotopia!"

http://www.mandrake.uk.net/9781869928841.jpg

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The Apophenion (Review)

- A Chaos Magic Paradigm
by Peter J Carroll
isbn 978-1869928-650 / £10.99 / $22

Reviewed by Julian Vayne

Framed as the outpouring of insight generated by the novel Goddess 'Apophenia', Pete Carroll's new work is a real gem. Coming from a science background, this is his attempt to create a falisfiable model of why the universe looks the way it does, and just why magick can operate successfully.

In the inimitable Carrollian style we have come to know and love, our author sets out to demolish the edifices of being, consciousness, causality, the big-bang and more. In toppling these ontological Titans Pete discovers a universe of panpsychism and intense meaning. If nothing else this agrees with my own views and is therefore a Good Thing. Pursuing this process through the scientific style of exploration means that quantum physics, special relativity et al show up pretty frequently in the text. If you buy this book expecting lists of planetary correspondence and ritual-by-numbers instructions you're going to be disappointed. However this doesn't mean that this is all physics and no esoterica. Rather the point is that the reading of the universe that the author presents is suffused with magick. (Nevertheless there are some reassuring illustrations of occult entities and one explicit ritual – a rather lovely evocation of the Goddess Apophenia herself).

My reaction in reading this book was one of excitement. The suggestions that Pete advances tickle the mind delightfully. Certainly this isn't Liber Null. It's not a manual of techniques but instead concentrates on theory, yet that doesn't make for a dull read. The theorisation presented here can light the touch paper of a hundred disciplines: cosmology and magick for sure but also Fortean studies, ethnography and especially neuro-biology.

Algebra explodes across the appendices of the book scattering the non-mathematicians towards the Epilogue where things are nicely rounded off in laypersons terms. The truth may well be that we live in vorticitating hypersphere with three dimensional time that, as the author beautifully asserts, "...invites us to become apprentice gods." The very fact that I can now say 'vorticitating hypersphere' and know what that means is a testament to the authors explicatory powers.

The final and perhaps most wonderful thing about The Apophenian is how it demonstrates the development and maturation of Pete Carroll's earlier writing. If nothing else this stands as a testament to the work of an individual (or perhaps conspiracy of selves!) who's magick really does seem to work.

Eight chaospheres out of a possible eight!

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