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  1. Ganapati variations: the Ganapatyas

    Hail to the Lord of Vows, hail to Ganapati, hail to the First Lord, hail unto you, to the Big-Bellied, One-tusked, Obstacle-destroyer, the Son of Shiva, to the Boon-Giver, Hail, hail.
    Ganesa Upanisad

    Inspired after a recent Ganesa Puja in Wales, and reflecting on the fact that I have been a devotee of Ganapati for well over 20 years now, I thought it would be appropriate to write a short series of posts on some of the more obscure aspects of this much-beloved devata. Continue reading »

    August 26th 2010

    Posted by in History, tantra

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  2. Framing Rumi’s Ecstasy of Being

    The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
    As we laugh together

    From Rumi’s Divan of Shams of Tabriz (translated by James Coleman)

    Of late, I have been re-reading some of the writings of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, the thirteenth century Persian Sufi mystic whose poetry is so beloved in the contemporary West. Continue reading »

    August 22nd 2010

    Posted by in History, Queer, tantra

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  3. Ordering-machine: sketchy maps?

    Through the process of knowledge assemblage we have created a naturalised space amenable to being mapped; we now equate scientific knowledge with maps.
    David Turnbull, Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers

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    August 12th 2010

    Posted by in Occult

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    4 comments »

  4. Vodou in Berlin

    In our recent trip to Berlin, we happened across a wonderful exhibition at the Museen Dahlem – Vodou: Art and Cult from Haiti – which is on until 24th October 2010. If you should find yourself in Berlin, it’s well worth a look. Continue reading »

    August 6th 2010

    Posted by in Event reviews, Reviews

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  5. Experience – III: Some conundrums

    “At one extreme experience (present) is offered as the necessary (immediate and authentic) ground for all (subsequent) reasoning and analysis. At the other extreme, experience . . . is seen as the product of social conditions or of systems of belief or of fundamental systems of perception, and thus not as material for truths but as evidence of conditions of systems which by definition it cannot itself explain.” Raymond Williams, Keywords

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    August 2nd 2010

    Posted by in Occult

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  6. Letter to a Young Gay Man on Celebrating Beltane

    You asked about how a gay person can celebrate Beltane, as it’s about fertility.

    It is such a standard image, no? Beltane being about the God and Goddess having sex or marrying. She in her long hair and coy long-legged femininity. He always tall, muscular, strong, looking conventionally masculine, holding her a loving embrace. I too attended rituals celebrating their happy union. And at midsummer, they stood together, a couple with their child, born from their Beltane coupling. Like you, I heard this described as fertility. And it did seem logical. Continue reading »

    July 31st 2010

    Posted by in Gender, Pagan, Queer

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  7. Side projects: Tracing lives

    A couple of years ago, prompted by a footnote in Logomancy of Zos to the effect that Austin Osman Spare was one of the witnesses for the defence at the trial of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928) I became interested in attempting to trace this connection. Continue reading »

    July 23rd 2010

    Posted by in History, Occult, Queer

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    1 comment »

  8. Kula Bodies – II: Dividuals?

    “…persons – single actors – are not thought in South Asia to be “individual,” that is, indivisible, bounded units, as they are in much of Western social and psychological theory as well as in common sense. Instead, it appears that persons are generally thought by South Asians to be “dividual” or divisible. To exist, dividual persons absorb heterogeneous material influences. They must also give out from themselves particles of their own coded substances – essences, residues, or other active influences – that may then reproduce in others something of the nature of the persons in whom they have originated.” McKim Marriott Hindu Transactions: Diversity without Dualism

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    July 21st 2010

    Posted by in tantra

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  9. Intensities: Spreading outwards

    We did the ritual at the stump of Jenny’s cherry tree, and afterwards walked in silence down to the beach. Continue reading »

    July 5th 2010

    Posted by in tantra

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  10. Tantra’s Metahistory III: The Left-hand Path – II

    The Tantrists do not seem to go higher than the six visible and known plexuses, with each of which they connect the tattvas; and the great stress they place on the chief of these, the Muladhara Chakra (the sacral plexus) shows the material and selfish bent of their efforts towards the acquisition of powers.The Mahatma Letters (Letter CXIV, p480)

    In the last post I reviewed how the notion of the “left-hand path” and much of the themes which relate to it emerged out of nineteenth century Indology. I will now turn to how the concept of the left-hand path” was used by Madame Blavatsky and other early Theosophists. Continue reading »

    June 27th 2010

    Posted by in History, Occult, tantra

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    3 comments »