“But what many don’t realise is that the best way in is to get out as soon as you’ve seen enough.”

Spot on, really.

“frankly I see these meetings as little more than a posing paradise for faded occultists who have reached their level and aren’t going to progress any more.”

This as well.

But, I find that I have a very different response when I go to the events that they hold at Treadwells. There is a very different dynamic there. It’s difficult to put my finger on what that is exactly. It doesn’t feel like any of those other London events.

They meet together above a bar to read from Finnegans Wake. That I would find an interesting experience. So, ironically, reading can be true orality, where the sounds of the words and the rhythms of the speech matter. Of course, for a talk on some alternative culture topic it is just the information a lot of the time. I often think: just shut up, give me a handout (which I will bin), your website address, and let’s go and get the drinks in. In other words, these talks I don’t find achieve what they might achieve. Maybe it’s the lack of urgency, maybe it’s just the habitual round of it all.

When ‘The Society’ was around, which was a semi-private ‘little essay club’ (as Lionel Snell described it to me when he invited me along the first time), it was a chance to come into contact with some interesting occultists, and I found it so for a while, though the talks were often dull. The current crop of London moots and talking sticks and whatnot all grew from the seed of ‘The Society’. They still provide, I suppose, a chance to meet occultists for someone just going through that door, and maybe that is their only purpose, but frankly I see these meetings as little more than a posing paradise for faded occultists who have reached their level and aren’t going to progress any more.

People starting out in the occult feel a need to fit in, join, find their soulmates, whatever. So naturally they’re drawn to the surface entrance of the occult: talks. If they find what they’re looking for there, then good luck to them. But over the course of time they’re actually more likely to find a lot of disappointment and hollow words and magical cliques. I don’t think enough is said about this. That these talks give off a miasma of something decaying, qlippothic. The wise person making their way into the occult soon moves through these formations and appearances. Many get stuck. It’s not about going to a talk, it never is in the occult. It’s about looking for ways in. But what many don’t realise is that the best way in is to get out as soon as you’ve seen enough. Otherwise, your teachers are all around you: a bunch of fucking idiots.

One of the best public speaking appearances I’ve seen was Howard Marks, in Hove a while ago. He said he thought risk needed to be taken, so he necked loads of shrooms before coming on stage. His risk paid off; he was enthralling, and got perfect punctuation for his speech from a thunderstorm outside. I’m not about to start doing public speaking off my nuts on psychedelics, but… that’s a bit of inspiration.

I should say that my comments here and above are nothing to do with Jeremy Harte.

The only talk I have ever retained anything from was at the Warburg Institute, where I learned that in Arabic astronomy there is a constellation called ‘The Two Buttocks’. No, never let me say that something interesting cannot be picked up at talks.

Oh, there’ll also be events on the calendar where you can dance if talks get you down :-)