My introduction to “magic” was—in my personal mythology at least, which is all you have in personal matters after a certain stretch of time—the RE/Search book on William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Throbbing Gristle. Well, just recently I’ve been introducing someone wonderful to RE/Search books; and the other week it was a pleasure to see V. Vale, the tireless editor and publisher of these seminal volumes, hold forth on Burroughs, Ballard, and the history of RE/Search at Donlon Books in Hackney. So there’s been a little RE/Search revival in my world.

Now, I’ve never considered myself a “magician”. Like any skill or art, someone people are specialists. But my understanding of magic has always been that its particular exclusivity is more an artifact of our repressive culture and religions than something that makes it any more exclusive than, say, painting, or astronomy. There’s always those with an exceptional aptitude, who break new ground and mould the domain more than others. Pretence is probably the real issue, much more of an issue than honest “dabbling”, especially in the outrageous playgrounds for the ego that magic can facilitate.

In any case, while I’ve no special aptitude for magic, I’ve gradually moved past honest dabbling (OK, verging on pretension sometimes), towards something like engaged lay practice—which certainly feels like something that should be open to anyone who is interested in life. But it’s tremendously humbling to read P-Orridge’s definition of magic, which opened certain doors for me nearly 20 years ago, and realize how recently it is that I’ve even started approaching a realization of this definition (which is by no means, ahem, definitive):

I mean, basically what you do is—you have to have a very strong vision and direction. You have to have something that you really focus on that you want to be like, or you want to get to, or a kind of person you want to be. And the kind of things that you want that person to generate in the world. And then you just have to try to maximize the possibility of that happening, by avoiding the things that might distract you from it, or destroy it, or block it. So it’s a kind of removal process, you’re removing everything that’s in the way. So that it becomes more and more likely that you’re going to get it. And if you do or not isn’t the thing; the fact is, you get further to it that way than if you don’t. And you can only do that by not wanting to dictate what happens to yourself. You can’t be in control of that, because you don’t understand all the forces at work. Because everybody in the world and all the forces in the world are affecting your destiny . . .

You see, you have this vision of destiny, and then fate is what actually takes place. A lot of people think they’re the same thing, and they’re not. So what you try to do is—maximize the chances of fate not interfering with you going towards the destiny. And the destiny can actually change, you see, because certain times fate cannot be stopped. And it does deflect you and the vision mutates. You might still think: “I would rather have been that, but I can’t get there, so what’s the most useful thing I can still get to?”

Genesis P-Orridge (my bold emphasis)

As I said, it’s by no means definitive. I once heard a very experienced magician asked what magic was, and I was impressed and intrigued to hear him preface his take on it with the caveat that he tries to give a different definition every time he’s asked. In the domain of the trickster, how else to approach things?

And of course, I’m certainly not trying to hold Genesis up as any kind of guru-esque fount of wisdom. S/He just hit on something important with some good plain English here.

I imagine that to a certain extent I “understood” the slippery but potent hybrid of will and humility that’s expressed here at many other times in the past. Perhaps even the first time I read it. But “initiations” and understandings ebb and flow, and cycle round… And re-reading the above crystallized nicely my recent round of learning.

I look forward to understanding it all again some day.

In 2005 I went to the International Association for the Study of Dreams conference in Berkeley. It was a good excuse to visit the USA for the first time, and the conference itself was fantastic—an inspiring mix of solid dream research and the grassroots enthusiasm that characterizes much contemporary interest in dreams.

Since then, I think all of the IASD conferences have also been in the States. Not very “international”. But next year, they’re coming to Europe: to Rolduc, a former medieval monastery in Kerkrade, the Netherlands. Looks like an interesting venue, and I’m sure being in Europe will ensure a healthy blend of delegates.

I’ve not decided to go yet, but I’m very tempted. Check it out.

Nihilism and enthusiasm can manifest in association with both connectivity and freshness.

There is the nihilism to be found in too many inheritances, the burden of history, a tangled nightmare from which one tries to awake; and there is the nihilism found in isolation, alienation, lack of reference points, the terror of infinity.

There is the enthusiasm to be found in deep connections, multiple correspondences, a heady excess of relationships; and there is the enthusiasm found in an open road, the blue sky, the shedding of the weight of obligations and contact.

Any philosophy of enthusiasm that sides with either connectivity or freshness condemns itself to obvious shadows.

Explosion II by Roy Lichtenstein

Just heard via V. Vale’s RE/Search mailing list of an exciting upcoming exhibition in London, Crash: Homage to J.G. Ballard. Running from February 11th to April 1st at the Gagosian Gallery near King’s Cross, this major exhibition celebrates the impact of Ballard’s singular imagination, and of course follows the author’s recent demise.

Drawing on a wide variety of artists populating the Ballardian realms between Surrealism and Pop Art, the exhibition features work by (among others) Francis Bacon, Hans Bellmer, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Salvador Dalí, Eduardo Paolozzi, Andy Warhol, and Ballard himself. Apparently Ballard’s photographs of his own car crash have recently been discovered, and will be on display.

Just a quickie to direct your attention, if it’s not found it already, to enfolding.org. Billed as covering “tantra, history, gender, occulture & other queer assemblies”, it’s a group blog initiated by Phil Hine which is still building gradually, but already there’s some great material over there. Informed by recent academic theory as well as long-term practice, there’s plenty of thoughtful, accessible critiques of well-worn occult mainstays, such as the astral plane and The Golden Bough, a great boundary-melting examination of Baphomet, and oodles of beneath-the-surface thoughts on Tantric history and practice.

Does your bile rise when you see fevered egos like Pat Robertson claim the earthquake disaster in Haiti was the upshot of the country’s (ahem) “pact with the Devil” he says it made in freeing itself from French domination? Looking for somewhere to put all that bile, as well as wanting to send urgently-needed aid to those struggling to survive after this calamity?

Look no further. Bid for a custom-made Pat Robertson voodoo doll:

(Thanks to Gypsy Lantern for this. Check out his post on Haiti for the background to Robertson’s lurid nonsense, as well as thoughtful reflections on the role of Haiti’s religious traditions in the reporting of the earthquake, and a round-up of other good places to send donations.)

This piece by Josh Schrei over at the Huffington Post is one of the best takes on Avatar I’ve read. The basic premise is that the criticisms of the cheesy lines given to the one-dimensional “baddies” altogether miss the reality that their real-life counterparts actually do utter such unthinkable crap, as they destroy indigenous ecologies. It’s a very fair point, quite revealing of how we fail to take on board some of the stark realities that we’re insulated from, but which destroy lives in remote parts of the world. Well worth a read.

Erik Davis just posted a glowing review of a new book on ayahuasca: Singing to the Plants by Steve Beyer. While Erik makes the book sound like a must-read, it’s just out and for now is only in pricey hardcover. However, I’ve just been browsing Beyer’s blog, and I’ve quickly become impressed enough to be here pushing you his way.

Since discovering James Hillman’s work, I’ve had a very strong notion that, despite his total avoidance of psychedelics and “altered states”, his approach to psychology has a great deal to offer the modern psychedelic community. The non-Western influences on psychedelic culture have been diverse and profound, with Oriental notions of “enlightenment”, “gurus”, etc. perhaps outweighing the imports from shamanic societies. I’ve no wish to brush these influences aside with a snort of post-colonial disgust—they’re far from unproblematic, but they’re an integral part of our attempts to absorb the impact of these dimensions being unleashed on our barren religious landscape.

But Hillman present a perspective firmly rooted in the Greek soil that much of our culture is also rooted in, giving it a particular resonance for Westerners (though of course he draws from the sidelines of our history, the Neoplatonists and Romantics). And his core opposition to “developmental psychology”, and the utilitarian narrowness of the quest for a “cure” or linear “growth”, exposes the vanities in our expectations of meditation, psychedelics and magic as much as it critiques modern psychotherapies. Psychedelic culture usually has problems at the other end of the scale from being fixated on a “goal”, too—sometimes it wanders too much. It strikes me that the discipline and diligence in Hillman’s approach to “following the image” is a valuable adjunct to the boundary-corrosion of hallucinogens, a useful position mediating between focus and drift.

Reading Beyer’s account of DMT researcher Rick Strassman’s story, his final paragraph seemed thoroughly Hillmanian to me. Discussing the fact that Strassman was disillusioned that not many of his research subjects seemed to “really change” after their initial rushes of revelation, Beyer remarks:

But is long-term personal change what DMT is even about? With his own preexisting biases, both Buddhist and countercultural, Strassman thought that spiritual transformation was the endpoint of the hallucinogenic experience; he was personally surprised and disoriented by the frequently reported contact with other-dimensional beings. Perhaps the hospital setting was less important than Strassman’s own unmet expectations. Perhaps DMT—like ayahuasca itself—is not a psychotherapist but a teacher, leading where it intends—not to some sort of enlightenment, not to self-improvement, not to community volunteer work; but into the dark and luminous realm of the spirits.

Then, sure enough, Hillman pops up. Beyer’s recent post on the collective unconscious is a brilliant critical summary of the history behind and the issues involved with Jung’s famous notion, which concludes using Hillman’s typically astute assessment of the “archetype” concept.

It’s great to see Hillman embraced within an intelligently psychedelic context. Perhaps not surprising that it’s around ayahuasca. The complex of traditions around this brew are saturated with animism, a perspective that, while Hillman largely avoids terminology that will associate his ideas with indigenous cultures, also saturates his work.

My other highlight so far from the blog is the great little summary of Pierre Clastres‘ work, with some interesting additional notes on the role that sorcery might play in the context of Clastres’ vision of primitive society dispersing itself to avoid the coagulation of the State.

Informed, eloquent and clearly possessing a great depth of experience: this is who we need writing about the boundaries between consciousness and nature.

The comfy crust of semi-hibernation got pleasantly broken last night at the positively bustling opening night of the Strange Attractor Salon. It’s an exhibition ably curated by SA guru Mark Pilkington, showcasing art from contributors and allies. Needless to say, the obscure, the psychedelic, the devilishly fascinating and the bizarrely seductive are thoroughly celebrated.

That much was clear, even though the exhibits were lost behind the thick crowd for most of last night—a quiet afternoon of proper contemplation beckons. I did manage a leisurely perusal of the excellent venue’s basement collection of skeletal oddities, pickled puppies and cultural emphemera. This assembly of strangeness is a fine companion for the exhibition, and another good reason to head there.

Also on the cards are a few performances, salon discussions and film screenings. Check out details and buy tickets.