Skip to navigation | Skip to content
Current circumstances have disrupted my lecture plans for 2020, but I have contributed a number of lectures to a new venture from Treadwells of London – their online subscriber lectures. Continue reading »
Anyone interested in the passage of South Asian esoteric traditions into Western occultism can’t really ignore the influence of Aleister Crowley. I recently had to re-acquaint myself with Crowley’s work as part of my research for my lecture at Treadwells last year on Yoga and Magic, and just after the lecture, picked up a copy of Tobias Churton’s new book Aleister Crowley in India: The Secret Influence of Eastern Mysticism on Magic and the Occult (Inner Traditions, 2019, Hdbk with dustjacket). Continue reading »
Something I find fascinating – and at times infuriating – is how a great many people claiming to be advocates, teachers, or representatives of “authentic” Tantric lineages or practices continually recirculate tropes that effectively erase any recognition that Tantra has any historical or cultural specificity. Continue reading »
“in view of the indelibility that is characteristic of all mental traces, it is surely not surprising that even the most primitive forms of genital worship can be shown to have existed in very recent times and that the language, customs, and superstitions of mankind today contain survivals from every phase of this process of development.”
Sigmund Freud, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo Da Vince, 1910
Before I move onto an examination of Edward Sellon’s anthropological and “phallic” works, I want to first discuss the wider context of phallic theories of religion in the nineteenth century. Continue reading »
Interest in witchcraft seems to be at an all-time high at the moment, and over the last few years, there has been a steady stream of books examining the history of witchcraft in its various manifestations. The latest work I’ve had the opportunity to read is Thomas Waters’ Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times (Yale University Press, 2019, Hdbk). Continue reading »
With apologies to the shades of Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, and Hugh Paddick.
I’ve been doing Pagan workshops for some time now but recently attendance has dropped off. It’s as though Pagans aren’t interested in finding out about the role of the semicolon in the 300 laws of witchcraft anymore. So I thought I’d catch the current wave and reinvent myself as a Shaman. Picking up a copy of “Mystic Muscles” – I buy it for the gardening section – I saw, between notices for Aura Massages and Tantric Hand Shandy therapy, a small advert for Bona Shamans of Islington. So I thought I’d pop along and see what they could do for me. Continue reading »
Copies of Mike Magee’s new book Yakṣiṇī Magic can now be purchased from my Twisted Trunk website. There are only two copies left, so act fast!
And so to Edward Sellon; libertine, atheist, orientalist, anthropologist, pornographer. For this post, I’m going to focus on Sellon’s pornographic productions and then will turn to his anthropological excursions in the next post. To some extent, this is a repeat of the approach I took in my first two essays on Edward Sellon (here and here) but I shall endeavour not to repeat earlier material too much. Continue reading »
Here’s a short extract from my new book, Hine’s Varieties: Chaos & Beyond which deals with how I became engaged with Tantra as a subject and a means of practice. It’s a section of the introduction to three essays in the book which deal with tantra-related themes. Hine’s Varieties: Chaos & Beyond is available direct from Original Falcon Publications as both print and ebook. Continue reading »
Following on from the previous post in this series, I will now examine the activities of the Anthropological Society of London and its “inner cabal” – The Cannibal Club. Continue reading »
