Book Review: Ghosts of the British Museum
It is perhaps not surprising to discover that the British Museum, founded in the eighteenth century at the former mansion of the Duke of Montagu, has more than its fair share of ghosts.
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Archive for the category ‘Occult’
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Book Review: Dreams of Witches
Go on any pagan or occult forum or social media platform, and at some point, inevitably, someone will assert that contemporary Witchcraft was, more or less, “made up” by Gerald Gardner. This was the conclusion drawn by Ronald Hutton in his 1999 book, Triumph of the Moon. Over the last two decades though, the story has changed, thanks largely to Philip Heselton’s careful investigation of the New Forest Coven in his books, In Search of the New Forest Coven and Witchfather. Thanks to Heselton, many of the members of this bohemian group have been identified, in particular, ‘Dafo’, Gardner’s friend, lover, and magical partner for 15 years.
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Mike Magee 7 December 1949 – 11 August 2024
Mike Magee, my friend, teacher, and publishing collaborator passed away in the early hours of 11 August 2024.
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Reflections on the Left-hand path
With a two-part lecture series on the left-hand path later this month at Treadwells Bookshop 25 July and 8 August, I thought I’d share some personal observations on my previous identification with the LHP.
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Brands of Magic – I
Some years ago, I was approached by representatives of a major marketing company who wanted to explore the possibilities of using direct magical techniques to promote a product. I cannot discuss this in more depth, as I signed a non-disclosure agreement. Suffice to say, I did not agree with what they wanted to do, and we parted ways on good terms. I did get some material benefit out of the affair. They rang my boss (I was working for a b2b media company at the time) and asked for a reference. My boss, alarmed at the idea that I was being head-hunted by another company, decided to reward me for my work with a present – a state-of-the-art (for 2000 anyway) laptop. I still have it.
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Reflexivity as Occult Practice – I
In a recent essay, I posed the question – How do we learn to be magicians? Is it simply a matter of reading books, studying with a teacher, doing practices, and taking on particular beliefs and attitudes? My answer was to reflect on my early dive into the world of the occult in which I introduced the term reflexivity. In this post, I will discuss the concept of reflexivity and propose that it should be accepted as a core occult practice.
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Don’t be a Dipshit
Words have Power.
Imagine a setting. You’re in a restaurant or a café perhaps, enjoying a quiet conversation with friends. Suddenly a stranger walks up to your table and without any opening or introduction, begins to offer a commentary on some conversational topic. You’d be slightly taken aback. Alarmed even. Who is this complete stranger who has suddenly, for no apparent reason, taken it upon themselves to intrude into a private conversation?
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On Becomings
How do we learn to be magicians? Do we just pick up a book or two, do the exercises and rituals, and take on the beliefs and perspectives that ‘feel right’ to us? Maybe do an online course with a teacher whom we have come to respect? Go on social media and engage constructively (or not) with other practitioners. Join a small group or a large magical organization? It is not, I feel, a simple process. Well at least, it was not a simple process for me. I was not initiated by fairies at the bottom of the garden, as one of my friends says he was. I did not have a magical granny or the memory of a past life being a high magus in Atlantis. I did not receive messages from a spiritual master on the Inner Planes. I did not experience a sudden spiritual awakening or a summons by a goddess.
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On Agency and other matters
One day in 2020, I ambled into my study and turned on my computer, and … nothing. My heart skipped a beat. I felt a sense of dread steal over me. Checking the startup options, I saw that not only had the SSD drive on which the operating system lives failed but also one of the disks in my RAID array had gone too. It was a palpable shock. All that was on the computer – work in progress, layout jobs for clients, photos, games, videos, half-sorted digital libraries … gone. More than that, I was cut off from the wider world of social media and the internet, extended knowledge repositories, news, friends; and the full panoply of digital life in networked culture.
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Book Review: The Subtle Body
I’ve been intending for a while to do some writing on the various tantric presentations of the ‘subtle body’. Before doing so, however, I’m going to review Simon Cox’s recent book, The Subtle Body: A Genealogy (Oxford University Press, 2022, Hbk). This is an important work that sheds much light on how the concept of the subtle body took off in the English language, and the many twists and turns taken in developing a concept that has become a staple of contemporary esoteric practice and thought.
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