Chaotopia January 2022

CHAOTOPIA Newsletter
January 2022

A Happy 2022 to you new subscribers, and to all of you who read this!

All my main links including signups and archive of this newsletter:

A new fortnightly online group for doing just what it says.

Have you done a bit of meditation but haven't yet found a practice which is right for you?
Or have you been meditating for a while and would like some fresh input from me and other participants?

This is a series of 6 Zoom meetings at 19.00 GMT every alternate Thursday from 20th January 2022.
I shall give some instruction on the kind of meditation I do myself, plus some basic techniques that may help you to establish your own practice, but it's not a course; you can join and leave as you wish.
The first meeting, on 20th Jan 2022, will run for 90 minutes, to give us the opportunity to meet each other and talk about some of the basics of establishing a meditation practice.
That first meeting will be recorded (with the permission of all participants) to act as a resource for anyone who wishes to join in after the first meeting.
The other meetings will all run for 60 minutes, which gives us time for 30 minutes' practice and 30 minutes' discussion.

There's no course fee, please pay £10 for each session if you wish, or just turn up FREE - we'd rather have you along than not if you can't afford it!

If you want to join in, email me at dleedlpt@gmail.com and I'll send you the Zoom link.

In Chaotopia School of Magic - to celebrate the forthcoming release of Anwen's Rune Card set, my Introduction to Rune-Magic course is now just £35!

My first-stage Qabalistic pathworking course Journey to Tiphareth is available on Chaotopia School of Magic. Only £25 for 25 videos and 7 pdf handouts! This course is based on the live version I ran for MWCB in 2020, and is the necessary prelude to the second-stage course - The Magickal Triangle, which ran live last year and will be on Chaotopia School of Magic this year.

INTERVIEW

Chaosmagick.com interviewed me, about the history of Chaos Magic and the current relevance of it for the 'post-truth' era.

These chaps have also interviewed Lionel Snell and Duncan Barford, here.

A magnificent person, whom I met all too rarely, but think of as a friend, Claudia Egypt, died in October. Some people are just so impressive, and she was one of those. The first time I met her she struck me as someone utterly fearless. I didn't know her well enough to pen a eulogy, but there are many eulogies out there, one of which is by Ben Graham who remembers her very well.

All Hail Disclaudia!

Echoing down the months, Festival 23's Blame Blake day is still giving - here's a special edition of Jamie's podcast.

And BODGE has ended, the final issue, #12 fulfils the vows taken by Liverpool Arts Lab and their friends to price monthly mag for a year. This is a great showcase for what an Arts Lab can be, do check it out. The issues are available as free pdfs from above link.

PSYCHEDELIA

There's been a few psychedelic surveys on the go lately. I always answer as many as possible, there needs to be a few old-school freaks included in the psychedelic renaissance statistics. This one is for you ravers out there:

Dancing With Ancestors
(psychedelic trance culture research project)

Jackie Coverdale is a PhD researcher at UCLan (University of Central Lancashire) undertaking research about Psychedelic Trance Culture practices and principles to compare to traditional trance cultures. She is contacting participants that are part of psychedelic trance culture to ask if they would be interested in participating in a short, anonymous survey about their experiences, beliefs and ideas about the culture.

Jackie is also starting to arrange participant interviews in December for this PhD psytrance project. If you are interested, there will be a short 20 mins interview looking at your beliefs about trance, dance, the music, the customs and habits, and how much you think we are doing something timeless like our ancestors.
If you would like to take part, please dm or email her on JAnderson11@uclan.ac.uk.

TINFOIL HAT WATCH

A few months back I commented on the anti-vaxx sticker campaign that was run by something called White Rose, appealing to our desire for freedom and telling us that vaccination is a violation of that. White Rose took the name of a 1940s anti-fascist group, but the London Anti-Fascist Assembly did bit of link clicking and they say:
'In fact not only are these channels at most one or 2 link hops away from the White Rose channel, many of their admins make a policy and habit of sharing in their material and links. Everything from Tommy Robinson stuff, to memes about Jews, to Bitcoin scams, to Q drops goes in. ...It is in fact easy to get from the main white rose channel to channels where white ethnonationalists talk about exterminating Jews, POC and LGBT people'

So that's the kind of people that are pushing anti-vaxx.

What follows isn't conspiracy stuff but it belongs with that creepy shit.

The above picture is wrong on so many levels I hardly know where to start. Except to say that anyone who doesn't find it profoundly creepy and scary is probably of a different species to me. Nadav Neuman dives into the horror, via PK Dick's novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, in which the eponymous villain becomes increasingly recognisable in his desire to control everything about people's minds. Like Zuck, really.

Continuing in the theme of the horror of social media, check out this film by David Baddiel.

And this:

So it will come as no surprise that I am having a social media detox as soon as I've got this newsletter out. No Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for at least two weeks. Looking forward immensely to a break from it.

A nice piece by Rutherford Chang for time travel practice: 'created by layering 100 unique copies of The Beatles' White Album, this 96-minute double-LP captures how every copy of the iconic album has been distinctly shaped by its history, both visually and sonically. The 45 year-old albums, with scratches and physical imperfections accumulated with age, all play slightly differently, causing the 100 layers to gradually drift out of sync over the course of each side.'

PSYCHEDELIA

Dancing With Ancestors (psychedelic trance culture research project)

Dancing With Ancestors
(psychedelic trance culture research project)