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Archive for the category ‘Occult’

1. Shamanism and gender variance: the eighteenth century – two sexes, three genders?

   “Among the women I saw some men dressed like women, with whom they go about regularly, never joining the men. The commander called them amaricados, perhaps because the Yumas call effeminate men maricas. I asked who these men were, and they replied that they were not men like the rest, and for this reason they went around covered in this way. From this I inferred that they must be hermaphrodites but from what I learned later I understood that they were sodomites, dedicated to nefarious practices. …I conclude that in this matter of incontinence there will be much to do when the Holy Faith and the Christian religion are established among them.”Fray Pedro Font, Font’s Complete Diary of the Second Anza Expedition 1775-1776

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   April 7th 2012

   Posted by Phil Hine in Gender, History, Occult, Pagan, Queer

   Tags: colonialism, eighteenth-century, shamanism

   1 comment »

2. Some Reflections on Transcendence – II

   “She who comes into being through the breath of life,
   from whom the Gods all took their birth,
   the Boundless Goddess of Infinity,
   who enters the cave [of the heart] and dwells there -
   This, I now declare, is that!”
   Kath Upanishad, IV, 7-9

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   March 20th 2012

   Posted by Phil Hine in Occult, Pagan

   Tags: Deleuze, immanence, intensities, reflections, transcendence

   3 comments »

3. Jottings: talking “energies”

   “Energy” is one of those words which has to do a great deal of work. It has become something of a generic term that gets used in multiple contexts, sometimes to the extent where any exercise/experience which gives rise to sensations or emotions is attributed to an impersonal ‘energy’ being present, moving, flowing, or being blocked, trapped, or stored. Continue reading »

   February 23rd 2012

   Posted by Phil Hine in Occult, Pagan

   Tags: bodies, energies, jottings, polarity, reflections

   8 comments »

4. Remembering the Lamp of Thoth

   Last year fellow Treadwells-regular Ed Gauntlett lent me his collection of a classic British occult magazine, The Lamp of Thoth. In many ways, The Lamp of Thoth (LOT) was a significant milestone in the history of my own interest in the occult, and reading through the old issues – finding favourite snippets of writing I hadn’t seen for some twenty-odd years cast me into a wave of nostalgia and reflection. Continue reading »

   January 31st 2012

   Posted by Phil Hine in Occult, Pagan

   Tags: Leeds, zines

   1 comment »

5. One from the Vaults: With both hands

   Fiction isn’t really my forte, but I’m rather fond of this one. With both hands was written between 1989-1990, and published in Both the Ones – a magazine produced by Mal from TOPY Shefffield. Of the few attempts at magical fiction I’ve made, I consider this one to be the best. Set in Headingley (Leeds 6) it’s also the most directly autobiographical. Continue reading »

   December 10th 2011

   Posted by Phil Hine in Fiction, Occult

   Tags: fiction, Leeds

   1 comment »

6. Occult gender regimes: Polarity and Thermodynamic bodies – II

   “…there is no word in any language I know which is an exact synonym for vril. I should call it electricity, except that it comprehends in its manifold branches other forces of nature, to which, in our scientific nomenclature, differing names are assigned, such as magnetism, galvanism, &c. These people consider that in vril they have arrived at the unity in natural energetic agencies, which has been conjectured by many philosophers above ground…”
   Bulwer-Lytton, 1871, The Coming Race

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   November 23rd 2011

   Posted by Phil Hine in Gender, History, Occult

   Tags: bodies, polarity, thermodynamics

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7. Some reflections on Transcendence – I

   “…what is emerging now is the nondualistic understanding of “immanent” and “transcendent.” Long seen as opposites in Western cultural history, transcendence is coming to be understood as “beyond” but not “above” the material plane we can see in every day life. What science calls “complex dynamical systems” has illuminated in recent decades the extraordinarily creative, complex, dynamic processes going on at every fraction of a second within, around, and through every entity in the universe. Our minds will never be able to map the endless networks of what I call “relational reality,” so spirituality that seeks to commune with either immanence or transcendence now sees that they are not apart. This realization is not new to Eastern philosophy or indigenous cultures, of course; we were simply late coming to it in the modern West because of our dualistic and mechanistic worldview.”
   Charlene Spretnak, Immanence as well as Transcendence

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   October 25th 2011

   Posted by Phil Hine in Occult, Pagan

   Tags: immanence, intensities, reflections, transcendence

   4 comments »

8. Shamanism and gender variance: the eighteenth century – “torrid zones”

   “On my visit this Morning to Tynah and his Wife, I found with her a person, who altho I was certain was a Man, had great marks of effeminacy about him and created in me certain notions which I wished to find out if there were any foundations for. On asking Iddeah who he was, she without any hesitation told me he was a friend of hers, and a class of people common in Otaheite called Mahoo. That the Men had frequent connections with him and that he lived, observed the same ceremonies, and eat as the Women did. The Effeminacy of this persons speech induced me to think that he had suffered castration, and that other unnatural and shocking things were done by him, and particularly as I had myself some Idea that it was common in this sea. I was however mistaken in all my conjectures except that things equally disgusting were committed.”
   William Bligh, The Log of the Bounty, 1789

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   October 7th 2011

   Posted by Phil Hine in Gender, History, Occult, Pagan, Queer

   Tags: colonialism, eighteenth-century, shamanism

   2 comments »

9. An extract from Smoke and Mirrors

   Admin’s note: There follows an extract from Stephen Grasso’s essay Smoke and Mirrors which features in a new anthology – The Wanton Green – out soon from Mandrake of Oxford. For more details and contributor previews, visit The Wanton Green blog.

   In the earliest creation stories of London, Brutus the Trojan was caught in a storm on his voyages from Troy, and amid the wreckage of his ship was witness to a vision of the Goddess Diana, the virgin huntress of The Moon. Radiant on the waters like so many incarnations of Our Lady from the Stella Maris to the Virgin Caridad del Cobre, each appearing to those in distress at sea. Diana saved his life, and told him to build her a temple at the place where he struck land. He founded a city and dedicated it to her. Luan-Dun, the city of The Moon, and built her sacred temple upon the hill where St Paul’s Cathedral now stands. Continue reading »

   August 23rd 2011

   Posted by Stephen Grasso in Announcements, Occult, Pagan

   Tags: London

   2 comments »

10. Occult gender regimes: Polarity and Thermodynamic bodies – I

    “Star and nerve-tissue are parts of the system-stellar and nervous forces are correlated. Nay more; sensation awakens thought and kindles emotion, so that this wondrous dynamic chain binds into living unity the realms of matter and mind through measureless amplitudes of space and time.”
    Edward Youmans, 1869, The Correlation and Conservation of Force

    This post will examine the arrival of thermodynamics in the nineteenth century and consider its wider cultural impact – in particular how it was used to reinforce gender regimes. Continue reading »

    June 12th 2011

    Posted by Phil Hine in Gender, History, Occult

    Tags: bodies, polarity, thermodynamics

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