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Occult Features of Anarchism by Erica Lagalisse

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I missed this book when it first came out. As soon as I heard of it, the title grabbed me; I would have loved such a book when I was 19 and living in an anarchist commune house in Sheffield! At that time I was trying to find my way through the apparent powerlessness of anarchists and leftists to drive positive changes, stumbling towards some sort of esoteric approach via Situationism.  Most of the book is a rundown of symbolism and language in anarchism, showing the debts anarchism has to esoteric literature. And not only anarchism, check this contents listing: Lagalisse asks the big question in this slim volume: How can our resistance to oppression become more effective? And for me the most interesting subsidiary question she addresses is: Can dualistic materialists work alongside people whose activism is founded in religious faith or magical perspectives? Right at the start there’s an account of a conversation which opens up that question. At a meeting with Zapatistas in 2006, o...
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The Wild Kindness: A Psilocybin Odyssey, by Bett Williams

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This is perhaps the most personal of all the books I’ve read about psychedelics in the last fifty years. And it’s almost certainly the most extreme.  These qualities are not unrelated - Williams is coming from a heart deeply broken by the horrors of history, a feeling that will be all too familiar to most of us: ‘The wounds of history, of genocide, colonization, ecological devastation, and violence don’t heal on their own. Actions and intentions are needed to make that happen. … I ask for help.’ - and, similarly familiar, a terrible disappointment with the defeat of progressive forces in society:  ‘Occupy was a brief moment in time when we could collectively set aside what divided us in favour of a utopian spirit that permeated our spaces. Then Occupy was defeated. The new reality was impossible student loans; call-out culture; Abilify and Adderall; trigger warnings; PTSD; GoFundMes; safe spaces; paying rent in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York; Tinder; and MFA or Die. I...
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What Remains? by Rupert Callender

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This is a truly superb and ground-breaking book. And very well-written - it's hard to believe that someone who isn't a many-times published writer could deliver such an immensely readable text. He throws us into the deep end right at the start, with an account of his creeping into a field in the dead of night to make a crop circle, part of his ritual process for dealing with the darkness of life he encounters on a daily basis.  Callender writes about his own life, and the snags and traumas that led him into this unusual profession. He also writes of the cultural blankness surrounding our death rituals in 'Western' culture, the ways we try and purge the humanity out of the grieving process. It's 'undertaker, by the way, not 'funeral director'; the latter, as he shows, is another distancing phrase.  He relates vividly many of the emotionally fraught situations his profession gets and got him into. Many of them emerge into deep connection with the bereaved....
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How and why I'm leaving Fakebook this month

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I’m leaving Fakebook, deleting my Meta account. These words about how and why I'm doing so are slightly premature - it’ll actually be a few days more before my final post on there.  But I want to go on about it a bit because I want as many of my friends as possible to see the posts. And the way FB's algorithm scrambles the timeline does make it a bit like dealing with a dementia sufferer.  I'm going to miss some of you. And some features of this (really rather crappy) platform. I have to admit I’ve gained from using Fakebook over the last 15 years or so. I’ve recontacted old friends, I’ve advertised courses and events and shown support for things I approve of. I’ve had some laughs, enjoyed some amusing memes.  But I’m going to have a good old moan before I pack my bags. In the hope that maybe some of it will motivate you my friends to make the effort, to move onto a more civilized platform and join me on Bluesky.  So what’s wrong with FB? - Stupid algorithm rather th...
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CHAOS STREAMS #2 is here!

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Back in 2016 we in the IOT decided we needed to publish something that showed the substance of our magical lives, the actual stuff we got up to. We published a collection of essays, reports and ideas and called it Chaos Streams #1. (In case you don’t already have a copy, it’s available here ). It was very well received, people obviously wanted to read stuff about what magicians do.  We always planned to follow it up, and that long awaited issue 2 is with us now. Click on the graphic to go to where you can get a copy. Within those covers is a good mix of items, and writers who hail from UK, Italy, Scandinavia, Poland, Ukraine and Australasia.  There are reports of magical practice, including ancestor work, sacred places in Kyiv, group Enochian skrying, the magic of dyslexia, pieces on the magics of art, Baphomet, bees, Goetia, our semi-open London group CYN, pilgrimage, working with Choronzon; reflections on the magical path; guides to magical techniques, including the uses of ...
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Trip Sitting: the Art and Science of Holding Psychedelic Space by Julian Vayne

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Readers of my various writings will almost certainly be the kind of people who are familiar with Julian’s work. Over the decades, he has successfully cultivated a clear, engaging and approachable style of writing about esoteric topics, shuffled together in inspiring new ways. This book is no exception.  It is a book whose time has come. Although psychedelics are still illegal in many countries, including the stupid and backward UK, many people use them. (As David Nutt's 2009 report on the objective harmfulness of a range of recreational drugs showed, mushrooms are massively less dangerous than alcohol. Of course, Prof Nutt was sacked for revealing actual truths about drugs; truth was considered to be 'sending the wrong message').  People use psychedelics for a variety of reasons and goals, and this book is about inward-focused practice, the eyes-closed, music-on-headphones kind of trip. Julian sets the scene, discussing the venue, the construction and use of playlists, and,...
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This Is Chaos, edited by Peter J Carroll

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It's got quite a range of offerings, not all of which were to my taste; but of course that's how it is with anthologies. Personal takes on the history of CM from Pete Carroll and Jaq Hawkins, some good articles full of basic practical hints, and just for variety, one of those pieces which tell you how you  must  do magic.  Lionel Snell is of course represented, with a great piece,  Virtual Reality, Cybermagick and the Future of Chaos , resuming one of the main themes of his work over the last 50 years - VR. He is the man who invented Johnstone's Paradox, the idea that, if it's ever going to be actually possible to upload human-level consciousness into computers, then the odds are we are already living in such an emulation. This theory is now claimed without attribution by shameless plunderers of Lionel's originality. The essay ends with this computer analogy, symbolizing coding as magic, and the consensus world as the desktop: 'The moral of m...
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