Tag Archives | Magick

The Resurrection of Arthur

By on January 9, 2013 in News 0

Back in 2011, Disinfo helped impart the terrible news that one of my favorite publications in the history of the universe, Arthur, was unfortunately closing down shop (Arthur R.I.P.) due to financial strains, but we failed to tell you the upside. It came back.

So, we’re a little late on this story actually as the new issue officially dropped on December 22nd (those crazy kids) but that’s okay because I just got around to reading the last half of it over weekend anyway. Holy rad.

Arthur holds a special place in my heart. It was the interview they did with Grant Morrison back in 2004 (super embarrassing, didn’t even know who he was at the time) that maybe planted the first suggestion compelling me towards pursuing westernized occultism and chaos magick. A few years before that point I’d burnt out completely reading books about UFO’s and remote viewing. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction fine people.… Read the rest

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Pharmakia: Traditional Medicine and Black Magick

By on January 4, 2013 in News 11

An excerpt from Riding the Fine Line, by Gabriel D. Roberts. Purchase it here.  

I was taught as a young person that the Bible spoke out against black magick, or witchcraft. To a Christian, these terms are interchangeable. In college I learned the Koine Greek word for witchcraft was ‘pharmakia’. As it happens, this word is where we get the term pharmacy from and as a blanket statement was a biblical assertion of the condemned use of alchemic means of mixing natural ingredients for one’s own gain. I find it very ironic that this term is used as a proof against recreational use of entheogenic substances and naturally occurring plants. It’s time I brought the truth to light. There’s something very insidious about this modern contextual viewpoint that western society has embraced. You see, while puritanical groups maintain this argument, they take pills from mega-pharmaceuticals for every ailment under the sun.… Read the rest

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You May Be a Member of a Secret Society and Not Even Know It

By on January 2, 2013 in News 88

I spent my holidays reading a lot of esoteric literature. After polishing off Louis Bergier’s The Morning of the Magicians, I moved on to a cache of Rosicrucian literature in my collection, and then a book on Jungian symbolism. To top it all off, I started reading Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages.
Fantasy and Fantastic Reality

This isn’t a new habit for me, mind you: I’ve always enjoyed reading philosophical, magical and mystical texts. I’ve half-joked with friends that I’m some kind of amphibian: I need to spend a least part of my day submerged in the fantastic. This isn’t necessarily a healthy way to live, but to quote Shirley Jackson, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”

There are rewards, too, though: Learning to safely entertain multiple contradictory ideas is one of them; developing a sense for symbolism and correspondences is another.… Read the rest

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Magick, Abandonment, and the Desolate Beauty of Decay

By on December 20, 2012 in News 12

Picture: "Abandoned Factory" by Reddit User 'NotaMethAddict' (C)

Those of you with a taste for the desolate beauty of structures abandoned to nature may find a lot to like at Reddit.com’s AbandonedPorn subreddit. With a subscriber base of almost 80,000 the page is a never-ending virtual gallery dedicated to humanity’s vainglorious efforts to hold back the forces of entropy.

I developed my own taste for this kind of thing as a teenager. We had discovered an abandoned concrete factory in the middle of a plot of land left to nature. The building, with its flooded sub-levels, half-ruined factory floor and warren of abandoned offices, held an irresistible lure for us. Later, we discovered that the very same plot of land had once been a prison camp for captured German military officers during World War II. The factory rising above the scrubby trees and fields of grass cast a long shadow upon a territory long haunted by shadows of its own.… Read the rest

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A Beginner’s Guide to Sigil Craft

By on December 4, 2012 in News 38

“Magick has many aspects, but primarily it acts as a dramatized system of psychology”

- “Pope Bob”, Robert Anton Wilson

Part 4, Essays for the Discordian Occultist: the sigil.

Here’s one way of making a sigil. It’s partly cribbed from a talk given by Grant Morrison at the Disinformation conference[1] with slight personal additional details provided by my own experiences. Sigils are a low-magick technique which will not fail to get you exactly what you need. It can become a high-magick technique but for the moment we’ll just stick to the basics[2].

One important thing to note is that sigils always appear to work. The distinction being; if I kicked in a window, I’d feel I knew who’d done it. If I cast a sigil which asked for that window to be broken and then discovered a few days later it was now broken, no one can prove a causal relationship between the sigil and the broken window.… Read the rest

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Manifesto for Disorder

By on November 29, 2012 in News 7

Picture: Public Domain

R: Will you test me as my Fool, so that all may understand?

C: I will.

R: Will you test me as my Jester, if none else will criticize?

C: I will.

from “The Insubordinate Ritual”, Liber Kaos by Peter J Carroll.

Chaos and disorder are to be embraced by Governments, Bureaucracies and Businesses who seek to become ‘Antifragile’. This, according to a new book, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Antifragile: Things that Gain From Disorder. Disinfo towers awaits its complimentary copy. In the meantime a particularly interesting review has surfaced in The Daily Beast where, The Goddess Discordia, is celebrated in all but name:

Taleb maintains that living things and complex systems are all antifragile to some degree. Our bodies, for the most part, thrive as a result of regular interaction with stressors in the environment just as “firms become weak during long periods of steady prosperity devoid of setbacks” and “[s]mall forest fires periodically cleanse the system of the most flammable material, so these do not have the opportunity to accumulate.” The process of biological evolution, technological progress, and economic growth all rely on some sort of messy, undirected trial-and-error process that is fueled by regular exposure to uncertainty.

… Read the rest

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Correspondences: A New Journal of Western Esotericism

By on November 26, 2012 in News 4

Picture: JR Brubaker (CC)

Via blogger Travis Apollonius, comes news of a new esoteric journal titled Correspondences. Sound intriguing?

Correspondences seeks to create a public academic forum devoted to discussion and exposition of issues and currents in the field commonly known as ‘Western esotericism.’ The editors acknowledge that the use of “Western esotericism” as an umbrella term for a widely variant field of alternate scientific and religious ideas is problematic. Thus, articles related to esoteric currents from other global cultural centers may be accepted if a connection to alternative currents in “western culture” is implicitly established. The following list of areas of study is provided for clarification:

Alchemy, Anthroposophy, Astrology, Eco-spirituality, Esotericism in art, literature, and music, Freemasonry, Geomancy, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Illuminism, Initiatory secret societies, Kabbalah, Magic, Mesmerism, Mysticism, Naturphilosophie, Neo-paganism, New Age, Occultism, Occulture, Paracelsianism, Rosicrucianism, Satanism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Traditionalism, Ufology, Witchcraft.

Correspondences encourages submissions from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds such as: History of Religions, Sociology, Art History, Philosophy, History of Science, Literature, Musicology, and Cultural Studies, just to name a few.

… Read the rest

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Dreams Without Nightmares, Hygiene For Our Souls

By on November 25, 2012 in News 10

Picure: Fibonacci (CC)

“Thoughts are things” – Prentice Mulford, noted American philosopher.

Part 3, Essays for the Discordian occultist: introduction to the art of freaking out

 

Previous articles in this series, “Life is but a dream” and “Living The Dream,” have deliberately avoided too much theory and focused instead on practice. One of the reasons we started in Part 1 with lucid dreaming is because it acts as a safe environment for your early magick use[1] while teaching you most of the essentials in a fairly short period of time. For example, in that particular state you will have noticed the slightest negative thought manifests instantly. Furthermore, if you set out to have a nightmare it’s not hard to make yourself wake up screaming. However, few people do this because dealing with such situations usually comes instinctively. After all in that world you are an all powerful great magician who can make even the grass go green.… Read the rest

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The Supernatural World

By on November 22, 2012 in News 18

Preface to The Supernatural World by Danish author and philosopher Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff:

Dear reader!

Are you fascinated by the supernatural? By the idea, that there may be a deeper meaning to existence?

That demons – or just beings from other worlds or dimensions – actually exist? Or do you simply wonder why some people seem to believe in, or even in some form experience, the supernatural?

If not, then you probably belong to a very small minority. In all likelihood it will not have escaped your attention, that there are entire retail chains, that exist to provide you with anything from gemstones with healing properties to inverted crosses – anything according to taste.

What is it all about? And what has auras and reincarnation got to do with the religion we were taught at Sunday school?

Are people who communicate with spirits insane, do they have real contact, or maybe both?

… Read the rest

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