Navigating the twisted path between abuse and self-transformation, we consider: the current tendency to distrust magickal groups; the importance of human connection; the benefits of group magick; power and control in human relationships; the vulnerability of magick to evil; the challenges of transgression; progression versus regression; regressive social structures in magickal groups; transgression of social norms and the dynamics of the perverse; the examples of John Dee and Aleister Crowley and their significance; Edgar Allen Poe on the perverse: the principle of no principle; Freud on the perverse: a "natural" disposition; Lacan on the perverse: a structure of desire; Kirsten Hyldgaard on perversity as transforming desire into the law; distinguishing perversity from Thelema; perversity versus transgression within magickal organisations; the sexual politics of chimpanzees and its manifestations in magickal organisations; the confusion of transgression and perversity; sex and power, desire and the law; why the pervert is no revolutionary; transgression and desire; when the desire of non-human entities becomes the law; the sharing of wives between Dee and Kelly; its effects and consequences; the struggle of the magician with the imposition of laws by spirits; possible parallels with the documentary series, Hellier; the story of the Cross Correspondences; the life of Henry Coombe-Tennant; parallels with the life of Jiddhu Krishnamurthi; parallels between the Cross Correspondences and Dee and Kelly; judging success or failure; Jason Louv on the intentions of angels; distinguishing perversity and transgression; transgression as the realisation of formless desire; Mark Fisher on the reality of unnameable desire; magical transgression: its risks and benefits.

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

Kirsten Hyldgaard (2004). The conformity of perversion, The Symptom 5, https://tinyurl.com/7yu88ah (lacan.com).

Greg Kaminsky (2018). Occult of personality: episode 191 – Jason Louv and John Dee’s empire of angels. https://tinyurl.com/y6qcamo4 (occultofpersonality.net).

Jason Louv (2018). John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.

Edgar Allan Poe (1845). The imp of the perverse, https://tinyurl.com/vvzwj8pt (wikisource.org).

Archie E. Roy (2008). The Eager Dead: A Study in Haunting. Brighton: Book Guild Publishing.

With an odd tingling sensation emanating from somewhere, in this episode we explore: an outline of the traditional concept of the chakras; the chakras, kundalini energy, and blockages; alleged functions of the chakras; why I was at first a chakra skeptic; sensations and white light at the crown of the head; why I disregarded these; random energetic experiences around the body; phenomena on the boundary between mind and body; why what we know the least about is matter; direct and indirect forms of knowing; William Blake's portrait of Newton and the scientist's struggle; why "energy" is a bad word; an academic study of how emotions are expressed bodily; how "energy" is always sensations and emotions; the feelings associated with the crown chakra; the opening of the brow chakra and how it felt; the seductions of overwhelming bliss; chakra sensations in the background of awareness; the contrast between chakra sensations and physical sensations; chakra sensations as more like emotions rather than physical sensations; the opening of the throat chakra; throat chakra activation in the presence of enlightened teachers; how the throat chakra feels; the chakras opening in a downward sequence; Rudolf Steiner on the chakras; Florin Lowndes on Steiner's writings on the chakras; Steiner's theory of human evolution beyond the physical plane, and why the traditional model does not apply to modern-day humans; the etheric body; Steiner on the importance of the heart chakra as a future "etheric brain"; the heart chakra as remarkable for only sometimes being under conscious control; how this seems dependent on general mood; what the heart chakra feels like; Bernini's statue of St. Theresa; the activation of the solar plexus chakra and how it feels; the question of blockages and imbalances; Tara Springett on the nature of blocks; why there might be no such thing as a block; materialist misconceptions of blockages; the sex chakra and what it feels like; the root chakra as a realm of outer darkness; differences in levels of connection to the lower or upper chakras; trusting personal experience; chakra activation as dependent upon a certain level of awareness; sensations leading to awareness, versus awareness leading to sensations; chakra experiences as sensations and emotions without a cause; transpersonal emotions; why chakras do not "give" us anything, but show us something already in action; an investigation of the heart chakra on retreat.

Florin Lowndes (1998). Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart: The Fundamental Spiritual Exercises of Rudolf Steiner. Forest Row: Rudolf Steiner Press.

Lauri Nummenmaa, Enrico Glerean, Riitta Hari & Jari K. Hietanen (2014). Bodily maps of emotions, PNAS 111: 2, pp. 646-651, https://tinyurl.com/uxcnxune (pnas.org).

Tara Springett (2014). Enlightenment Through the Path of Kundalini: A Guide to a Positive Spiritual Awakening and Overcoming Kundalini Syndrome, https://tinyurl.com/3cep3wcx (taraspringett.com).

Rudolf Steiner (1947). Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, translated by George Metaxa, https://tinyurl.com/xdfw3ejx (rsarchive.org).

We drape ourselves in an old, white sheet and consider the nature of ghosts and hauntings: how no one knows what a ghost is; crisis apparitions; poltergeists; the changing criteria for manifestations of ghosts; technological manifestations; the lack of any knowledge about ghosts; Barrie Colvin's poltergeist hypothesis; occultism and the non-existence of ghosts; paranormal investigation as a form of magical ritual rather than science; Hellier as a example; why we should care about ghosts; the persistence of ghosts; Martin Wall and a ghost of his childhood; the intrusiveness of ghosts; a semblance of being; "to haunt" as neither an action nor a way of being; the persistence of nothingness and the failure of being; the ghost as a desire in search of being; when living humans haunt; the difference between ghosts and the dead; finding our relationship to the dead inside ourselves; the ghost as coming from outside ourselves; our lack of a relationship to the ghost; ghosts in search of relationships; when a ghost joins the dead; the potential deceptiveness of ghosts; not all ghosts are the dead; why we should be wary of external manifestations of the dead; motivations for externalising the dead; a recap on the ghostly; the possibility of many different forms of haunting; hauntology and the ghosts of lost futures; the postponement of the future promised to us in the 1970s; Mark Fisher on haunting as failed mourning; the difficulty of mourning what we never had; the future imperfect tense and interruption as aspects of the ghostly; how, when haunted, we become like ghosts; the Zeigarnik effect and how it manifests in experience; haunting as the persistence of interrupted desire; some possible responses for when we find ourselves haunted; Mark Fisher on becoming outcasts from our own time.

Barrie G. Colvin (2010) "The Acoustic Properties of Unexplained Rapping Sounds", Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 74: 899, pp.65-93.

Mark Fisher (2014). Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures. Alresford: Zero Books.

Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers & Frank Podmore (1886). Phantasms of the Living. London: Society for Psychical Research.

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

We plummet deep into the fundamental nature of reality in this episode, examining the necessary association of magick with evil: the premise of John Milton's Paradise Lost; Satan and the possible origin of evil; Satan as the archetype of the rebel; our relationship as magicians to this archetype; the absence of a moral framework from magick; the suggestion that magick needs to be kept "evil"; understanding evil in contrast to the good; Neoplatonist approaches to the good; the good as the aspiration of all beings; the misidentification of the good; the Platonic ideals as a guide to goodness; beauty, truth, goodness, and the One (wholeness); Proclus on the separation of being and goodness; wholeness as better than goodness; wholeness as the mystical state, as union with goodness; evil as a consequence of the separation of being from the good; evil as a characteristic of wholeness; evil as a consequence of the actions of beings versus evil as transcendent; Satan as the origin of evil versus Satan as a participant in evil; evil as an attribute of the Divine; the relationship of the Divine to goodness; a Divine wholly good as necessarily imperfect; evil as a bug versus evil as a feature; Nishida Kitaro on the self-negation of the Divine; how the Divine by its nature contradicts itself; Satan as the pawn of God; how Milton glosses over the evil in God; the perfect as perfect only if it includes the imperfect; Nishida's ideas as observations, not theories; the experience of emptiness as the experience of the self-negation of the Divine; how emptiness gives rise to form by standing in a relationship of self-negation to itself; how we have no relationship to the Divine; Creation proceeding not from any relationship to the Divine but by the Divine negating itself; the Heart Sutra and the nature of the Divine; (summary and an emergence from the metaphysical deep-end); Lionel Snell on art, science, religion and magick, and their corresponding principles of beauty, truth, goodness, and wholeness; magick as the aspiration to wholeness rather than to goodness; how magick rejects only the principle of rejection itself; how and why magick rejects neither untruth nor evil; how magick necessarily has a relationship to evil, yet not necessarily an answer to it; the mystery and elusiveness of evil; evil as unfixable, as the universe operating as designed; Jung on Job: humanity as morally superior to the Divine; Christ (God in human form) as the epitome of morality; accepting our moral superiority to God as a magician's response to evil; how there is no escape from evil or morality.

Ramsey Dukes (2000). SSOTBME Revised: An Essay on Magic. El-Cheapo.

Carl Gustav Jung (2002). Answer to Job. New York: Routledge.

Nishida Kitaro (1987). Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview. Honolulu: University of Hawaii.

John Milton (2008). Paradise Lost. New York: Modern Library.

Proclus (2017). The Elements of Theology, translated by Juan and Maria Balboa, https://tinyurl.com/73bxtxsd (archive.org).

In this episode we open up to theories and techniques of channelling and possession: hearing voices; the experience of a part of awareness not being "ours"; the risk of over-engagement; a devious yellow blob and the danger of psychosis; the importance of holding the experience lightly and maintaining intentionality; Freud on the splitting of the ego; splitting in fetishism, BDSM, irony, the tacky and the camp, and in humour; splitting versus repression; the downside of splitting: that a part might assume dominance over the whole; the function of parts in PTSD and complex trauma; the importance of intentionality in a magickal context; possession as intentional splitting of the mental field; psychological trauma as a predisposing factor in splitting and a possible risk; the empty-handed approach to possession and channelling in chaos magick; the bag of art; acknowledgement of traditions that approach possession differently; the role of embarrassment and shame in possession workings and their potential uses; template for a group possession working; my personal method for getting possessed; breath of fire; bodily tension and release; an analogy of the post-coital state as a means of creating an opening for an entity; the sense that nothing is happening; accepting the experience we are having as the result; possession by the Archangel Uriel; that archangelic vibe; the differences between channelling and possession; channelling entities as a means of accessing clairvoyance; the Tempe workings: channelling a representative of the Great White Brotherhood; an indirect and interpretative means of communication; some striking results; the Aion working; an unfortunate prelude to the working; a more direct manifestation; encounters with persons presenting with Dissociative Identity Disorder; changes of personality and sense of presence; becoming sensitive to sub-personalities; my personal system of sub-personalities; every personality as a collective; we are always channelling someone.

Alan Chapman & Duncan Barford (2009). The Urn. Brighton: Heptarchia.

Coil (2000). Batwings (A Liminal Hymn), https://youtu.be/u8oal_1_YUk (youtube.com).

Sigmund Freud (1938). Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence, in: On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, Pelican Freud Library, vol. 11. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.

60 Minutes Australia (2019). Woman with Seven Different Personalities, https://youtu.be/pLvJDsojrC8 (youtube.com).

Arthur Edward Waite (1995). The Wordsworth Book of Spells [The Book of Ceremonial Magic]. Ware: Wordsworth Editions.

In this episode we brace ourselves, take a deep breath, and consider magick and spirituality as an antidote to suffering, but not without their risks and limits; a bullshit exercise from Robert Anton Wilson; the limits of belief-shifting; dubious "exercises" in books on magick; the belief in belief-shifting; reality and belief-shifting; results from a recent sigil; possibilities for their causation; magick as adaptation to reality; the limitation of reality; the inescapability of feelings; the influence of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) on the contemporary understanding of suffering; Aaron Beck on depression as faulty cognition; the locus of responsibility for suffering; belief-shifting as a form of CBT; how work with spirits can also fall into this dynamic; how CBT and belief-shifting chime nicely with capitalism and neoliberalism; Byung-Chul Han on self-exploitation under neoliberalism; Mark Fisher on the dirty secrets of capitalism; how neoliberalism distracts us from these; magick and the lure of pseudo-freedom; Federico Campagna on the paradigms of technic and magick: instrumentality versus meaning; psychogeography as the practice of transitioning from technic to magick; Gareth Rees on car parks and the ubiquity of sliced ham; the limits of technic and capitalism; the insatiability of desire and the inevitability of suffering; a means to an end versus the endlessly meaningful; bringing meaning to suffering; magick as a means of encountering reality; Campagna on magick and technic as two contrasting ethical frameworks; avoiding harm versus maximising salvation; magicians as always caught between these two ethical outlooks; magickal crises and the pains of magick; the magick of the oppressed; Trump's presidency and its end as a magickal result; anti-magick as the elimination of the Other; depression as the absence of the Other, and magick as a reaching out for the Other; Han on the Other as a metaphysical anti-depressant; meaning as connection with the Other; mysticism as recognition of the self as Other; magick as a spectrum, including forms of magick that tend towards technic.

Federico Campagna (2018). Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality. London: Bloomsbury.

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

Byung-Chul Han (2017). Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, translated by Erik Butler. London: Verso.

Byung-Chul Han (2018). The Expulsion of the Other: Society, Perception and Communication Today, translated by Wieland Hoban. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Catherine Jackson & Rosemary Rizq, eds. (2019). The Industrialisation of Care: Counselling, Psychotherapy and the Impact of IAPT. Monmouth: PCCS Books.

Gary Lachman (2018). Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump. New York: TarcherPerigree.

Gareth E. Rees (2019). Car Park Life. London: Influx Press.

In this episode we begin by reading Rumi's poem "Love Dogs", then we discuss how to connect with spiritual entities and the link with desire; the case for mysticism as magick; defining desire as distinct from needs and wants; the characteristics of desire: persistence and authenticity; working with desire as the daily grind of the magician; desire versus will and intention; desire and identity; magickal development as a continual engagement with desire; a dream of a woman who was both mother and lover; dying in dreams; the relationship to the woman in the dream; a ritual to communicate with her and the message received; a defiling dream; mystical union with a goddess; looking and being seen as having become the same; fruition through the door of no-self; the dream as a shadow of the subsequent experience of union; the dream as a defilement that had to be recognised as such; the specific nature of the relationship to the divine; the contrast between this and the relationship to demonic spirits; demonic spirits as the object of desire; divine spirits as offering cessation of desire and experiences beyond the human; control versus surrender; a possible way of failing to recognise the divine; an overwhelming and substance-induced kundalini awakening; the work of Tara Springett and her perspective on the psychotherapeutic treatment of kundalini awakening; compassion practice and how it helps; surrender to Kali and a manifestation of the goddess; mystical union following kundalini awakening, and its aftermath; desire as the bridge to union with the divine; the erotic component of images of the divine; becoming a love dog.

Daniel M. Ingram (2018). Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. Revised and expanded edition. London: Aeon.

Jeffrey Kripal (2001). Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.

Rumi (2021). "Love Dogs", translated and performed by Coleman Barks, https://youtu.be/UF4_KZfIfVI (youtube.com).

Tara Springett (2014). Enlightenment Through the Path of Kundalini: A Guide to a Positive Spiritual Awakening and Overcoming Kundalini Syndrome, https://tinyurl.com/3cep3wcx (taraspringett.com).

Tara Springett (2020). Healing Kundalini Symptoms: Proven Techniques That Really Work. ISBN 9781689344975.

Digging out some dusty old magickal journals, I relate how I first discovered the Goetia; the appeal of a catalogue of spirits; the Goetic spirits as troublesome demons; why I became interested in magick; my first ever working; my first ever Goetic ritual; the result; the mechanics of the ritual; the real result; a sense of manipulation; a disastrous confrontation with the spirit; the "nuclear option" in Goetia; that peculiar Goetic vibe; an evocation of the spirit Bune; saying "hi" to Bune; a distressing incident; one of our group goes rogue; a failure of protection and ethics; angelic intervention; an evocation of the spirit Shax; a horrible spectacle; "reverse Quaker Goetia"; Shax steals money from the houses of kings; my goodbye to the Goetia; odd attitudes among the demonically possessed; Crowley on the Goetia; a non-dual perspective on spirits; spirit as that which does not exist yet which is real; relationships as differentiations of non-existence; spirits as different kinds of relationships to the non-existent; the demonic as a particular form of relationship; demonic possession as the appropriation of human desire; the Goetic spirits as old gods demanding attention.

Samuel Liddell MacGregor-Mathers (1995). The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis Regis), edited by Aleister Crowley. Boston, MA: Red Wheel Weiser.

We listen to Grant Morrison on individuality and Rob Burbea on divinity before venturing into: "soul-making dharma"; what all magicians share; Aleister Crowley's "Liber B Vel Magi"; definition of a magus; Crowley's notion of the word of the magus; the Gospel of St John and the word made flesh; the meaning of logos; the impossibility of meaninglessness; the dilemma of the magus; the silence of the ipsissimus; the curse of having always to speak falsely; how there is no escape from meaning; enslavement by one's own magick or someone else's; Lacan's symbolic order; everyday and magickal relationships to meaning; Darian Leader on the manic-depressive relationship to meaning; "depressive" and "manic" styles of magickal practice; the calling for "closed practices" as a depressive approach to magick; Morrison and Burbea as the manic style versus the depressive; these styles as strategies, rather than as ethical or non-ethical in themselves; magick as the relationship to truth and ethics as the relationship to the good; how practice and ethics can be separated; an encounter with a dodgy guru; how our ethics reflects who we are, not our practice; "cancel culture" as the confusion of goodness and truth; the case of Julius Evola; why the word of a magician cannot make us ethically either better or worse; words of some magi; my personal word as a magus: ελεφαιρο / elephairo ("to deceive"); the appearance of this word in Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid; Borges on the gate of ivory; the significance of this word for my personal magickal practice. 

Jorge Luis Borges (1985). Nightmares. In: Seven Nights, trans. E. Weinberger. New York: Norton.

Rob Burbea (2016). Sensing Divinity, https://tinyurl.com/vx9nt8jd (dharmaseed.org).

Alan Chapman & Duncan Barford (2010). A Desert of Roses. Brighton: Heptarchia.

Aleister Crowley (1988). Liber I: Liber B Vel Magi Sub Figurâ I. In: The Holy Books of Thelema. York Beach, ME: Red Wheel / Weiser.

Darian Leader (2013). Strictly Bipolar. London: Penguin.

Grant Morrison (2000). Disinfo Conference Lecture, https://tinyurl.com/e2wvj6fb (youtube.com).

We start with an account of a dream that helped to lift a depression, and then go on to consider how dreams might heal; dreaming as a magickal practice; the possible meaning of the dream and the role of interpretation; the dream as a process; the diversity of mental phenomena; intrusive thoughts and the differences between thoughts and feelings; the difference between imagining and thinking; the infallibility of thinking; different schools of dream interpretation as reflective of different mental processes and levels of consciousness; the differences between Jungian and Freudian dreams;  a personal example of a Freudian dream; the wide variety of dream states; the healing potential of dreams in therapy; Guy Dargert on the origins of psychotherapy; Asklepios, Apollo, and Chiron; Asklepios as an influence upon the iconography of Christ; the staff of Asklepios and the symbolism of snakes; the temples of Asklepios as places of healing; the abaton, the ritual sleep, and the healing dream; types of healing dreams and how they were understood; healing through the mind rather than through the body; finding healing dreams in the present day.

Guy Dargert (2016). The Snake in the Clinic: Psychotherapy's Role in Medicine and Healing. London: Karnac.

Rumi (2021). Out beyond ideas. https://tinyurl.com/utr725bu. [Excerpt from a longer poem, entitled "The Great Wagon".]