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.

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.)

Patrick Harpur, the essential guide to Hermeticism and alchemy, author of Daimonic Reality, Mercurius and The Philosopher’s Secret Fire, is breaking his customary seclusion with a series of courses next year to be held in the heart of West Dorset.

Together with Jules Cashford (co-author of the excellent The Myth of the Goddess) and others, Patrick will host talks, discussions, films and field trips exploring soul, magic, Forteana, folklore, mythology, dreams, and other byways of the imagination. Full details can be found at The Mythic Imagination website.

This just in… We’ve yet to confirm details, but hearing that psychopharmacological poet and occult anarchist Dale Pendell was visiting these isles, we had to pull together an evening for him to warp our minds with his words. It looks like the time and place will be the evening of 22nd July (a week on Wednesday) at the October Gallery in London.

If you’ve not encountered Dale’s work before, check out this interview.

Stand by for further information and confirmation, but pencil the date in your diary with a big thick 9B!

Dreamflesh Journal contributor Stephen Grasso is now blogging under the banner ‘Clean living in difficult circumstances‘. Stephen sums it up thusly:

It will predominantly feature writing about Voodoo, magic, music, obscure records, psychogeography, and whatever else I get up to and feel like writing about.

It’s essentially a way for me to get regular new material out while I work on finishing my book, so I don’t feel quite so much like one of those guys who secretly makes a throne for the Archangel Metatron out of lightbulbs and toilet rolls in his garage, that nobody else ever gets to see or hear about.

The book in question is, needless to say, much anticipated. For now, the blog serves up Stephen’s refreshingly relevant occultism, subversive antics in the City, and obscure Voodoo vinyl, with rum & cigars aplenty.

Last year me and a few others quietly put together an online discussion community whose aim was (in the words of the official blurb) “to promote a visible and intelligent discourse around the theory and practice of magic, spirituality and experiential religion”. We wanted a high signal-to-noise ratio, writing that could work as reasonable quality for readers as well as participants, and a respectful, good-natured, slowly-growing membership. Thus, Liminal Nation.

I, true to my preference for either a book or a pub to online discussion, have remained a shadowy background figure. However, by all accounts it’s gently thriving, and Dreamflesh readers who feel they might want to join in are encouraged to head over and apply.

Yeah, the application process was one of the moves to keep the whole thing troll- and bore-free. Sometimes not a popular idea for people who advocate a very simple “openness” on the net (are there many of those left in these days of 85% spam?), not to mention trolls and bores. To me it’s a no-brainer for the kind of site we’re looking to nurture. Freedom on the net includes the freedom to create your own space with its own rules, as long as they don’t infringe on others.

Anyway, you can read the discussions for yourself, read more about the site’s ethos, and apply if it looks like your cup of tea.

The past decade or so has seen an intermittent but healthy blossoming of various conferences and festivals celebrating intercourse between esoteric thought and the wider culture, between academic and fringe archaeologies, between the many varied disciplines and perspectives that any serious-minded, open-hearted student of consciousness gets embroiled in. Thankfully there’s been no centre to this flowering, no bloom that has easily outshone the rest; but the Occulture Festival, back after a 6-year break, has been one of the more colourful (see my review of the 2003 event).

The term “occulture” was a neologism waiting for the 20th century, when supra-cultural and sub-cultural exploration of consciousness burst the confines of eccentric little clubs and spilled into the mainstream. This represented a chaotic, perhaps unfulfillable, but certainly vital rejoining of wider cultural practices and gnostic spirituality—arenas which “religion”, etymology notwithstanding, has torn ever further apart since the dawn of civilization.

The Occulture Festival espouses “tolerance, open mindedness and celebration of life”, reflecting a rejection of the kind of naive political ambitions that have marred some attempts to promote modern occultism, whilst holding fast to the belief that this maturing phenomenon has a positive role to play in the future. For every caricatured, visible example of the all-too-familiar failings of modern esotericism, I feel that dozens of inspirational fires are quietly ignited in every walk of life. At their best, gatherings like Occulture promise to bring some of those flames into public view, and fuel them with new connections before they disperse back into society.

Leading proceedings for Occulture this year on 23rd May in The Courtyard Theatre, Hoxton, is the prolific chronicler of recent esoteric currents, Gary Lachman. Also lined up are speakers from Scarlet Imprint‘s expanding catalogue, Iain Sinclair introducing his psychogeographic circumambulation of the captial, London Orbital, a premiere of Disinformation’s film on the 2012 phenomena, and performers such as Dreamflesh contributor Orryelle Defenestrate Bascule. More information and tickets available on the website…

Tickets are now on sale for the exciting-looking Equinox Festival, to be held from June 12th-14th at Conway Hall in London.

Performers include Comus, John Zorn, Aethenor, Z’ev and Arktau Eos; speakers include Ralph Metzner, Erik Davis, Stephen Grasso, David Beth, James Curcio, Philip Farber, Carl Abrahamsson and Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule; films include The Holy Mountain, Divine Horsemen and The Mindscape of Alan Moore.

Seems likely to be an essential gathering.

A day of seminars featuring cutting-edge thinking from pioneers in the field of magickal practice, followed by an evening of rituals demonstrating Chaos Magick in action. More info »