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  1. Bumblebees

    I love bumblebees…

    My love affair with bumblebees started years ago when I worked for a ‘design company’ that constructed Santa’s Grottos all year round [horrendous if you don’t like Xmas in the first place!] but also made some seasonal decorations for shopping centres. And for the spring/Easter season some centre up North had ordered 3 giant bumblebees so I spent a few weeks helping another woman construct ginormous bumblebees out of hoola hoops, fake fur and plastic foil. Continue reading »

    April 16th 2010

    Posted by in tantra

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  2. Theorising Practice II: Habitus/Hexis

    One of the consequences of the mind (theory)-body(practice) divide in contemporary approaches to magic (and more widely, spiritual development in general) is the notion that the spiritual/magical is set apart from the material/everyday world. There is a pervasive belief that materiality (and the concerns that relate to it) is a burden to be overcome; that development requires that the concerns of the body be transcended. This kind of discourse tends to privilege abstracted knowledge over bodied experience. Yet all practices (including those understood as inwardly turning, such as meditation or visualisation) involve our bodies. Continue reading »

    March 23rd 2010

    Posted by in Occult

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  3. Playful mind

    Meditation is often thought of in terms of stilling the internal dialogue, of calming the endless fluctuations or whirlings (vrittis) of cognition. Often, beginners in meditation find this difficult, and its easy to get into the routine of making meditation a seperate space from the rest of our lives; of practicing it at times when we won’t be disturbed by too many sense-distractions. It is difficult to still the endless flow of cognitions – to lengthen the gap between thoughts. Why not do the opposite? Let the mind play. Continue reading »

    March 19th 2010

    Posted by in tantra

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    13 comments »

  4. Watkins Bookshop: 1897-2010

    On the 23rd February it was announced that Watkins Bookshop – London’s oldest esoteric bookshop – went into administration, with 11 members of staff being made redundant. Unless a buyer for the business emerges by 25th March, the business will be liquidated. Continue reading »

    March 6th 2010

    Posted by in Announcements

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    6 comments »

  5. Kula Bodies – I

    “Yes, we perceive our own world in connected, synthesized and unfolded series, always from some specific zone of perception, such as the human eye or body. This is the productive synthesis which is at heart of all experience, not only human experience. We can see the way in which the eye connects its visual field, the way human bodies connect to produce groups, the way organisms connect to produce ecological synergies. But it is illegitimate to go from connection and production to an unseen but presupposed subject or ‘who’ that is the ground or hidden order of production. From organized bodies–assembled through connections–we can extrapolate a ‘body without organs’ that must have been their condition, but this will always be read back from its effects.”
    Claire Colebrook Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed

    Continue reading »

    March 4th 2010

    Posted by in Deleuze, tantra

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    7 comments »

  6. Baphomet possession obsession

    A while ago some friends and I, after an evening of lazy meandering conversations ended up discussing some of the topics on this blog, like possession and Baphomet and that set me off musing on past possessions. Continue reading »

    February 27th 2010

    Posted by in Occult

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    2 comments »

  7. Deity Meditation: Lalita

    Meditating on the image of a deity is a very old practice (its generally thought that it emerged from early Buddhist practice around the 5th century BCE). Meditation is not really a seperate “technique” as its often presented to be in contemporary writings (more of which another time) but is an aspect of one’s overall sadhana – inseperable from the visualisation/recollection of any interiorised image or form. The root of the Sanskrit dhyana – often translated as “meditation” is dhi – “to see”. Indeed, the seperation of “meditation” from other forms of sadhana is a relatively recent one, and can be seen emerging at the turn of the twentieth century with the prioritising of internal mental practices over bodily-oriented practices and external ritual. Continue reading »

    February 26th 2010

    Posted by in tantra

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  8. Occult gender regimes: reincarnation and ‘Uranian’ souls in the Nineteenth century

    It often seems to me that many occult representations of gender are rooted in nineteenth century formations, so I thought, for this post, it’d be interesting to examine some occult theories that emerged in this period – such as representations of the connection made between reincarnation, masculinity & femininity & the soul’s evolution, and the so-called “Uranian” temperament which emerged from various Theosophical sources in the late nineteenth & early twentieth century. Continue reading »

    February 23rd 2010

    Posted by in Gender, History, Occult

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    3 comments »

  9. Occult gender regimes: the Yin-Yang binary

    We shouldn’t be surprised that contemporary occult representations of gender mirrors and reifies the binary oppositions of masculinity and femininity central to western culture. One aspect of this that does interest me is how appeals to non-western cultural concepts are deployed to further legitimise this regime. Continue reading »

    February 19th 2010

    Posted by in Gender, History, Occult

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    4 comments »

  10. Scented bodies

    This morning, descending the pristine stairwells of the office, I’m hit by a blast of smells from the restaurant on the ground floor. Continue reading »

    February 15th 2010

    Posted by in tantra

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