“Knowledge trembling in secret”
Sometimes a phrase just jumps out at me, leaping off the page/screen, out of the conversation and hangs there; an invitation for an adventure. Continue reading »
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“That which gives Joy to the Heart”
Many years ago, I was involved in a panel discussion on magic at the Oxford Thelemic Symposium. Someone asked each of the panelists to say why they did magic. My own answer was simple: “I enjoy it.” onwards…
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New Interview
I’ve just been interviewed (via email) by Christopher Blackwell of the Alternate Religions Education Network. The interview is part of the Networks’ Imbolc newsletter (which also features interviews with other interesting folk) and can be found here.
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Jottings: Possession
Some further musings on “possession” – nothing really thought through here – just some noodling around with ideas which I may come back to later. Continue reading »
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queering Baphomet
“All the gods died of laughter to hear one among them proclaim himself unique!”
Pierre Klossowski, The Baphomet Continue reading » -
Haiti’s Terrible Earthquake is the Wrath of God, Says Tele-Evangelist
US tele-evangelist Pat Robertson has said, in a television interview over the last couple of days, “Something happened in Haiti a long time ago that people may not want to talk about… they got together a pact with the Devil. Continue reading »
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Must we love the Golden Bough?
What is it about Pagans and The Golden Bough? It seems like every time I open a book written by a Pagan or Magician, there it is, casting an inescapable shadow over the text, like the monolith in 2001. Continue reading »
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Pandora’s Pagan Paradise? Spoiler Alert – Avatar Review
Released in the same week as the Copenhagen climate summit (not an accident given its very deliberate environmental message), Cameron’s Avatar is alight with beautiful paradox Continue reading »
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Mandala bodies: a torrent of terminologies
To continue my examination of representations of mandalas, I will now turn to the problem of terminology – and how restrictive definitions of terms (a problem highlighted in this post) can limit one’s understanding of mandalas. In order to do this, one has to abandon the phenomenological representation of mandalas of which Jung’s presentation is an example (and as I hope to discuss at a later date, many occult/new age discourses are rooted in) which privileges individual “inner experience” over traditional/textual/cultural particulars and turn instead to matters of historical texts and their scholarly interpretation. Continue reading »
