We confront some increasingly common dimensions of depression, how these can affect magical practice, and a magical antidote in the tarot, exploring along the way: the Buddha on distractions and addictions; Gabor Maté on addiction as a relationship; how anything can become addictive; torpor, ennui, apathy: words for an enemy to our practice; Mark Fisher's “depressive hedonia”; some examples; promised rather than actual fulfilment; magick itself as an impediment to practice; profit from distraction; community as a corrective; the example of education; how consumerism thrives on distraction; resistance of control as a refusal to discipline or motivate ourselves; depressive hedonia as an understandable reaction; depressive hedonism as endemic; pleasure we did not choose to seek; the ecological crisis and the COVID pandemic; "bouncing along the bottom"; magicians as possibly more prone than others; a personal example; depressive hedonia as a defence that bolsters the ego; pessimism as a form of addiction; respect for resistance; difficulty and struggle as signs of progress; results from daily tarot divination; XV The Devil as a depiction of depressive hedonia; XIV Temperance (reversed); the major arcana as an anatomy of change; a tarot sequence applied to history and COVID; XIV (reversed) as a depiction of what is needed; Meditations on the Tarot, by Anonymous; the angel and the flowing water; St Bernard on “the divine image” versus “the divine likeness”; the angel on XIV as the guardian angel; the guardian angel as ally of the divine image; why the angel does not shield us from suffering; depression as a signal that we need our angel; the angel as mother-figure; the angel as protector of the divine likeness; the contact between image and likeness as “inner weeping”; the “water” on XIV as tears; depressive hedonia as the inverse of XIV; emotional intensity as the antidote to depressive hedonia; Steiner’s spiritual faculties: imagination, inspiration, and intuition; XIV as inspiration; inspiration as paradoxical activity and passivity; the behaviour of children as a template: humility and presumption; magick as a combination of humility and hubris; “to dare, to will, and to know”; Adam Phillips on “the desire for a desire”; inspiration as “the desire of a desire”.

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Anonymous (2002). Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism. New York: TarcherPerigree.

Mark Fisher (2009). Capitalism Realism: Is There No Alternative? Alresford: Zero.

Gabor Maté (2018). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. London: Vermillion.

Adam Phillips (2017). On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored. London: Faber & Faber.

Borrowing concepts from psychotherapy we explore how magick produces its effects, considering along the way: how nothing in what we are about to discuss should be construed as causal; magick as acausal; the sense in which magick does not work; how magick is not therapy, but how therapy might be magick; how therapy has its effect; a personal example of a therapeutic effect; possible similarities with teaching; Freud's idea of "impossible" professions; the impossibility of predicting effects in certain fields; magick as an impossible profession; why some people might be better at contending with the impossible than others; a certain way of being; not "doing", but changes in being; why there cannot be a theory of magick; our current, primitive theories of magick: spirits, belief-shifting, and quantum physics; borrowing from theories on the efficacy of therapy; not what a therapist does but what they might become; the work of Wilfred Bion; its mystical dimension; transformations and invariants; communication as transformation; the transcendence of meaning by the invariant; Platonic resonances in Bion; transformations in magick; the essence of ritual; Chapman's definition of magick; the priest or priestess as not causing an experience but offering a transformation; understanding as the recognition of the invariant; Bion's idea of "The Grid"; beta elements and alpha elements; beta process as the acting out of an invariant; transformation of beta elements into alpha elements; alpha process as the cognition of an invariant; transformation as a means of bringing the invariant into focus; the therapist as not doing something but offering her alpha process; therapy offers the possibility of experiencing truth; the similarity of psychotherapeutic change to synchronicity; the feeling of synchronicity; therapy as a synchronicity in understanding rather than in external events; how the magician's therapist is reality; understanding as inherently synchronistic; understanding as transformation; a kabbalistic perspective on understanding; every act of understanding as a miniature crossing of the abyss; Bion's concepts of K and O; transformations in K contrasted with transformations in O; O as the absolute truth and reality; the possibility of connecting with O; the function of the therapist as becoming O; this assisted by the absence of preconceptions; Bion on achieving freedom from memory and desire; the role of interpretation in therapy; abuses and misuses of interpretation; Charles Rycroft's liberating take on interpretation; the function of interpretation as opening up rather than closing down meaning; the possible tyranny of interpretation in magical culture; connection with truth is becoming transformed by it; the experience of this as a synchronicity between past and present; becoming O in magick; the occult idea of the evolution of different bodies; a body as a function that has become objective; the physical, etheric, astral, and mental bodies; the mental body as only partially developed; the experience of the mental body in enlightened beings; Bion's transformations as transitions between different bodies; sorcery versus mysticism from this perspective; becoming O in magick as a transformation of self through understanding, in the process developing the mental body.

Wilfred Ruprecht Bion (1965). Transformations: Change from Learning to Growth. London: Heinemann.

Wilfred Ruprecht Bion (2004). Attention and Interpretation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Charles Rycroft (1991). Psychoanalysis and Beyond. London: Hogarth.

Exploring an unsettling personal encounter with a “ghost” during a meditation retreat, we mull anxiously over: what "seeing a ghost" means to me; the ghost as a visitor; the messiness of ghostly experiences; why I have never “seen” a ghost, but have heard and felt one; feeling a ghost as perhaps more intimate that seeing one; tricks of memory when recalling ghostly experiences; going on retreat; re-visiting my original notes taken during the experiences, which suggest an altered state; waking inside a dream of someone trying to suffocate me; a malevolent female presence; banishing by pentagram; classic elements of sleep-paralysis; a dream of a nun haunting two children as the seed for what followed; the broken memorial and the nuns' burial ground; the history of the retreat centre; a fantasy of vengeful nuns; the blurring of boundaries between waking and dreams; the reaction of my teacher to the spooky experiences; the Buddha's teaching on how to deal with ghosts; attitudes of the retreat centre staff; a bedroom invader; getting intimate with a ghost; a dream without sleeping or waking; sending the ghost some metta; theories versus mess; effects of the meditation practice; blurring the boundaries between internal and external perception; a psychotic experience; psychosis as an intrusion of the real; sleeping with the lights on; meditating on the nature suffering; the effect of compassion on suffering; the mystery of suffering; the effects of this practice; an encounter with a beast; the effects of metta; beyond banishing; parallels between the ghostly experience and the meditation practice; an entity of many masks; holding experiences and theories lightly; the atmosphere of the retreat centre at night; night-time meditation as listening to night-time radio; last night at the retreat centre; something more than a ghost; apparently physical elements in the encounter; the sense of a farewell; a collision of multiple predisposing factors; ghosts more complicated than an object to be seen.

Back for a second season, we consider how and why the concept of narcissism has become little more than a term of abuse, considering along the way: what the concept of narcissism originally offered; the assumption that narcissism is necessarily bad and harmful; the usefulness of the concept of narcissism and a questioning the mainstream; Austin Osman Spare and "self-love"; a re-visitation of the myth of Narcissus; the lovers of Narcissus: Echo and Armeinius; the suicide of Armeinius and his avengement by Artemis; the myth of Narcissus as a revenge narrative; how the downfall of Narcissus is not due to self-love but to grief; Narcissus dies not because he loves himself, but because he doesn't love others; narcissism in psychology; Sigmund Freud's adoption of the term from sexology; narcissism for Freud as invisible and silent; Freudian libido as directed either towards outward objects or inwardly to the self; narcissism as not about behaviours but a form of desire; narcissism as a way out of a theoretical problem; Freud's model of the mind as a struggle between ego-instincts and sexual instincts; the challenge to this model from psychosis (and from Carl Jung); Freud's new model as a struggle between object instincts and narcissistic instincts; the problem of human destructivity; Eros and the death drive; the myth of Narcissus as an illustration of the deathly implications of refusing to love; the lack of an empirical basis for these theories; their usefulness in therapy; contemporary psychology as the study of behaviour rather than the mind; how self-love does not need to self-aggrandise; how the mind is not apparent in behaviour; how we are obliged to talk of invisible things if we talk of the mind; what "real" means in relation to mind; paraphrasing Crowley; psychology and magick; narcissism as an incantation; the mind of the so-called narcissist and of our culture at the moment; social media, celebrity culture, and reality television; their impact on younger people; Jon Ronson on the “great renaissance of public shaming”; the history of public punishments; the return of public punishment in the online world; the effects of constantly comparing one’s life to others; shame and the need to remain comparable; shame as the evil twin of narcissism; Phil Mollon on shame as self-preservation; narcissistic behaviour as an avoidance of shame; the constructive aspect of shame; the neoliberalist exploitation of shame; “becoming the best version of oneself”; self-division as the precondition of shame; Austin Osman Spare on transcending shame through self-unity; Spare on self-love; sigil magick and how it operates; Freud’s influence on Spare; narcissism as a feedback loop of desire; Spare’s transcendence of the loop through non-dual experience; the distinction between Freudian narcissism and Spare’s self-love.

Sigmund Freud (1914). On Narcissism: An Introduction. In: A. Williams (ed.) On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.

Robert Graves (1992). The Greek Myths. London: Penguin.

Phil Mollon (1993). The Fragile Self. London: Whurr.

Jon Ronson (2015). So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. London: Picador.

Austin Osman Spare (1913). The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy. Thame: I-H-O, 2005.

In this, our final episode, we issue a very loud SPOILER ALERT as we unearth an ancient English national treasure, the film Penda's Fen (directed by Alan Clarke, 1974), exploring: the current relevance of Penda's Fen; the film as an initiation; its provenance; the problem of its Englishness; Pinvin and the Malvern Hills; William Langland and Edward Elgar; The Dream of Gerontius; Stephen's ignorance of his own sexuality; his notions of good and bad; the character of Arne and his counter-cultural views; Stephen's dream of demons and angels; the role of Manicheanism in the film; a possibly similar incident in the life of Carl Jung; good and evil as the products of personal participation rather than binary absolutes; the ceaseless battle between darkness and light; Stephen's visitation from a demon as an indication of deeper levels to his personality; impacts of Stephen's insights into himself; the beginnings of a new persona; "Pinvin" versus "Pinfin"; an encounter with an angel as the realisation of the possibility of Grace; "Pendefen"; the resurgence of the demon; a vision of the celebration of atrocity; Stephen realises he is not alone: insights into his father and Arne; messages in the landscape and the discovery of "Penda's Fen"; descent into the underworld: Stephen's meeting with Elgar; the humanity of genius and the longing of the dead for manifestation; the revelation of Stephen's origins; his acceptance of who he really is; Joan of Arc as a pagan worshipping an ancient god of death and resurrection; the sacrifice of humanity in the modern age; Stephen's father: "a self and a non-self"; Penda, the last pagan King in England; the demonization of Penda versus the more likely reality of his kingdom; Martin Wall on the magical potential of history; the implicit rather than explicit depiction of magick in the film; Stephen's rendition of Gerontius as a magical evocation; its magical result: a message and a vocation; the final scene as a temptation and a magical attack; the manifestation of King Penda and his mission for Stephen; the question of where we should direct our magick; a valediction.

Matthew Harle & James Machin, eds. (2019). Of Mud & Flame: The Penda's Fen Sourcebook. London: Strange Attractor.

C.G. Jung (1967). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. London: Fontana.

Martin Wall (2019). The Magical History of Britain. Stroud: Amberley.

In this episode we examine the pride, the pain, and the double-edged nature of identification, exploring along the way: a difference in attitudes towards work; the influence of a working-class upbringing; a working-class perspective on work, and its conflicts with a middle-class perspective; the struggle to identify with professional roles; Aidan Wachter on identification as a magical technique; the liberating potential of identification and identification as a trap; my continuing identification with being working class; the imposition of identification; against the (classist) argument that education changes social class; working-class alienation from power and privilege; professional identity as a means of exploitation of the middle class; middle-class discontent; varieties of identification; identification as the mother of all defence mechanisms; Jacques Lacan on identification and "the mirror stage"; identification and the birth of the ego as captivation in an image; identification and ignorance; Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go, about some unusual students; Ishiguro's genius for depicting the limited understanding of his characters; the horror of the students' surrender to their fate; Ishiguro's novel as an analogy for the creation of social class; education as a means of ensuring docility; the film The Island (2005) as a Hollywood variation on the same theme; the fantasy of breaking out of an oppressive reality into another one; an annoying feature of The Matrix (1999); the impossibility of self-transformation; Plato's allegory of the cave; how the prisoners are conditioned to imprison themselves; Russell Brand on the décor of power; the social sense of "belonging" for the working and middle class; the ruling class at home in and beyond the law; shame and guilt as instruments of social control; the shift into identity politics and away from social class; identity politics in "heroic" and "tragic" modes; enduring shame and guilt; the escape from Plato's cave and what this might signify; a hope for a spiritual, anti-materialism as a future, defining philosophy for the Left.

Michael Bay, director (2005). The Island. DreamWorks Pictures.

BBC Newsnight (2013). Paxman vs Russell Brand - full interview, https://tinyurl.com/yr36avaj (youtube.com).

Mark Fisher (2014). For now, our desire is nameless, https://tinyurl.com/ezxx5k66 (theeuropean.de).

Kazuo Ishiguro (2005). Never Let Me Go. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Jacques Lacan (1949). The mirror stage as formative of the “I” function as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. In: Écrits, translated by Bruce Fink, New York: Norton, 2006.

Plato (1997). Republic, translated by G.M.A. Grube and C.D.C. Reeve, 514-517. In: Plato: Complete Works, edited by J.M. Cooper, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Luxa Strata (2021). Lux Occult Podcast #29: Visualization demystified and imagination magick re-imagined with Aidan Wachter, https://tinyurl.com/yj4nawzk (apple.com).

Andy Wachowski & Lana Wachowski, directors (1999). The Matrix. Warner Bros.

We explore how gender identity and sex might free or constrict us, and what magick can bring to this, noting along the way: fire kasina meditation and "travels"; a transsexual travel and the experience of self as a different gender; gender and sex in relation to magick; the reality of dreams and visions; the biological and the cultural in mainstream discourse on sex and gender; biological destiny versus cultural fluidity; the common factor of manifestation; the mainstream discourse in the light of dependent co-arising; the Buddhist concepts of "name and form" and "body"; the apparent correspondence of these with the socio-cultural perspective and the biological; the concept of "soul" as the level of manifestation giving rise to both of these; soul as a personalised instance of universal consciousness; soul as the level immediately beyond gender or sex; the possibility of a uniquely magickal perspective on gender and sex; the myth of Tiresias; his seven years lived as a woman; the liminality of Tiresias, his relationship to duality, and the dimension of soul; the myth of Psyche and Eros; the mortal and the divine aspects of soul; the relationship between soul and desire; soul as the realm of transcendence; freedom versus manifestation; how capitalism hijacks feminism; Gloria Steinem and the CIA; manifestation as conflict; liberation versus assimilation in the struggle for LGBT rights; marriage as equality or as a lure; privilege and power as freedom from and ignorance of suffering; soul as a dimension of transcendence and liberty; biological perspectives on what it means to be male; the minimal participation of males in the biological act of reproduction; Charles Darwin's study of barnacles; the origins of the male in a quasi-parasitic relationship to the female; the function of the male as the diversification of DNA; the scarcity of egg cells and the cheapness of sperm; the impact of testosterone on the male mind; the social dominance of men as a reaction formation to asymmetries on the biological level; the features of toxic masculinity; the current crisis of being male; questions around masculinity; David Bowie as a master of masculinity; the negative impacts of the ubiquity of pornography on young men; the externalisation of sexual experience among men; the mistaking of porn for reality; how this might lead to rape; how real sex includes an internal dimension that men might be conditioned to disregard; the tendency of men to want to discharge sexual feelings; a vision of the goddess Kali; the practice of non-ejaculation; the distinction between orgasm and ejaculation; turning the attention towards sexual sensations; postponement of ejaculation by relaxation and oxygenation; how breathing heightens physical sensations; recognition of "the point of no return"; the "body orgasm" and its features; non-ejaculation as a meditative practice incorporating both vipassana and concentration; why ejaculation is not all that great anyway; afterglow in spite of hard-on; benefits of non-ejaculation; ejaculation as a possible lure into "hedonistic depression"; the incel mindset and non-ejaculation as a possible antidote; transcendence versus escapism.

Cory Morningstar (2021). Gloria Steinem discussing her time in the CIA, https://tinyurl.com/fwh2p48t(youtube.com).

Marsha Richmond (2007). Darwin's study of the cirripedia, https://tinyurl.com/388br9t5 (darwin-online.org.uk/).

Mantak Chia & Douglas Abrams Arava (1996). The Multi-Orgasmic Man. London: Thorsons.

Seizing the Buddhist teachings on the transcendental nidanas, this time we haul ourselves along the path of awakening, from suffering to liberation, pausing to consider: an outline of the process of manifestation; the human tendency to make something out of nothing; how once something is born or it becomes then it is subject to death; the transcendental nidanas and how these proceed from suffering to liberation; how they present positive qualities that can be cultivated; the vulnerabilities of manifestation in magick; the magick of non-manifestation; the implications of proceeding from cause to effect, rather than vice versa; the nidana of suffering; two common means of avoiding a confrontation with suffering; suffering not as pain, but the impossible longing to be free from it; how faith offers a helpful response to suffering; faith as a means to remain steadfast; gladness as a means of turning towards suffering; gladness as gratitude and optimism; gladness as a self-perpetuating resource; rapture as a deep entrancement with experience; the magical dimensions of rapture; the dangers of rapture and how these should be navigated; rapture as sensitivity and positivity; tranquillity is to rapture as faith and gladness are to suffering; the path of liberation as the focus on the nature of experience itself, rather than on its contents; tranquillity as work; tranquillity as a calm and sky-like mind; happiness as the mind's "natural" state; happiness as being beyond positive or negative feelings; happiness versus luckiness; magick and the cultivation of happiness; concentration and its unusual features; the relationship between concentration and happiness; what concentration entails in terms of the nidanas and liberation; the knowledge and vision of things as they really are (TKAVOTATRA); that which is glimpsed in TKAVOTATRA; potentially negative effects of TKAVOTATRA; the desperation and disgust inherent in disenchantment; the necessity of this; equanimity as the recognition of all experiences as experiences; equanimity compared to tranquillity; the sense of self at liberation; liberation as the reconciliation of the previous stages; how there is no experiencer of our experiences; the end of suffering, death, and ignorance; the knowledge of the destruction of the cankers (TKOTDOTC); TKOTDOTC as the recognition of our destination; TKOTDOTC as the recognition that liberation is not a mental state; recapping the transcendental nidanas; suffering as the cause of liberation; the nidanas as two ladders: "up" and "down"; comparison of the nidanas with the Tree of Life; possible correspondences between the nidanas and the paths of the Tree of Life; connecting the 26 nidanas with the western esoteric tradition and the 22 arcana of the Tarot; Death and The Fool (ignorance); The Hanged Man (suffering); The Chariot (body).

Diagrams illustrating correspondences between the nidanas, the Tree of Life, and the Tarot can be viewed on the OEITH website at: https://tinyurl.com/4h6aj4jp

Aleister Crowley (2004). The Book of Thoth. Boston, MA: Weiser.

Israel Regardie (2003). The Golden Dawn, sixth edition. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans. (1997). "Upanisa Sutta: Prerequisites", https://tinyurl.com/3uccuuy7 (accesstoinsight.org).

Hijacking the Buddha's teachings on dependent co-arising as a detailed model of manifestation, we consider its magical applications: the Maha-nidana Sutta and its relevance to magick; its contrasts with Kabbalah; differences between religion, science, and magick; the centrality of dependent co-arising in Buddhism; religions as models of reality; the nidanas as steps in the process of manifestation; a personal perspective on Buddhism; hacking dependent co-arising; death, birth, and becoming; death and life as interwoven; birth not as creation, but as parts becoming perceivable as wholes; the constant flux of becoming; death and life as different perspectives on becoming; grasping as a lust for existence and a means of existing; craving as a prior judgment call that can sometimes be resisted; the validity of positing psychological causes for material phenomena; how to hack grasping and craving; feeling-tone or vedana and its relationship to craving; regular spiritual practice and psychological work; the effects of an exercise concerning vedana set by Rob Burbea; how states fade, but knowledge remains; how interrupting the process of manifestation allows something besides the ordinary to appear; sensory contact, and why the tree that falls in the forest without anyone to hear it definitely does not make a sound; the sense of an external world; psychedelics as a hack at this level; six senses, and the mind as a sense organ in Buddhist psychology; a personal experience illustrating how this is the case; the tendency to regard mind as a "thing"; name and form; the myth of the conquistadors' galleons; Platonic forms and Jungian archetypes, not as ideal objects but as universal predispositions; the importance of name and form in magick and in therapy; the impact of the human body on human experience; the body as agent rather than object; how some of these phases are more hackable than others; mind, psyche, and soul; soul as an individual instance of human experience; how the body is in the soul; soul as awareness of individual experience versus consciousness as pure awareness; an exercise for exposing the unfindability of awareness; consciousness as the qualityless provider of qualities; consciousness as discernment or discrimination; formations as karmic imprints or tendencies; the possible relevance of formations to scientific experiments concerning free will; how formations may be encountered in meditative states; at the very fringes of manifestation; ignorance as the impulse to make something out of nothing; reviewing the process from ignorance all the way to death; manifestation as a process proceeding from ignorance to samsara; the possibility of transcendence.

Peter G.H. Clarke (2013). The Libet experiment and its implications for conscious will, https://tinyurl.com/s2xshu84 (bethinking.org).

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans. (1997). Maha-nidana Sutta: The Great Causes Discourse (DN 15), https://tinyurl.com/zf5f2m27 (accesstoinsight.org).

In this episode we take a wide-angle view on dreams and dreaming, and consider the significance of dreams that just keep coming back: the importance of personal notebooks; Mervyn Peake and the awakening of my imagination; the creation of reality from imagination; sharing the vision; the Gormenghast books: their possible roots in biographical influences, and the paradoxical realism of Peake's fantasy; Peake's impact on my dream-life; spontaneous recall of dreams during meditation; how dreams are experienced largely through memory; not "remembering" but "coming back"; an experience of a recurrence of dreams about demons; the puzzling nature of these experiences; the tendency to view dreams as individual, isolated events; the timelessness of dreams; the fallacy of "the present moment"; the idea that some dreams might return because we are always dreaming them; the element of déjà vu in these experiences as a possible indication of an encounter with the timeless; "the present moment" as unfindable; embracing the eternal "then"; recurring dreams as a possible compensation for an exclusive focus on the "now"; the various uses of dreams in magick; the tendency here also to regard dreams as isolated events; the possibility of taking a wider view; going beyond the "now"; an example: a dream of the two cemeteries; how the dream varies, but the underlying structure is the same; distinguishing these dreams from recurring dreams in trauma: "cannot understand" versus "needing to understand"; an outline of the structure of the dream of the two cemeteries; the horrors and dangers of the old and semi-buried; possible biographical elements in the dream; the failure to find a specific interpretation of the dream; the cessation of the dream as a possible clue to its nature; dreams of this type as long-term processes; fallow periods on the magical path and some advice on this; the concept in Buddhism of "near-enemies"; art as the "near-enemy" of magick; distinguishing between magick and art; the status of the artefact; the creation of Liber Somnia and its methodology; arrival at a list of the dreams I am always dreaming; the dreams as a possible map of the soul's long-term processes; two categories of themes, and the themes therein; "Baltimore in the early morning": Lacan's metaphor for the unconscious; dreams that keep coming back as a recurrence of thoughts that have no thinker; the "double whammy" when a gifted artist performs magick; how a "hypersigil" is not the result of a working.

Joe Hunt (2013). "The Dark Side of Positive Emotions Is Hidden in Plain Sight", https://tinyurl.com/y8fbhhmu (medium.com).

Jacques Lacan (1966). "Of Structure as an Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever", https://tinyurl.com/sw66tdk5 (blogspot.com).

Mervyn Peake (1999). The Gormenghast Trilogy. London: Vintage.