PSYCHEDELIA

Nine Runes of Mead-Speech by P D Brown. 

Once again I shall plug my friend PD's new book. I do this unashamedly because it's damn good, and a delight to those us who love the poetry of magic and myth, especially in the hands of someone like PD.

This book consists of nine original poems, all of which refer to Edda tales, and each with a separate commentary. 

PD is a poet whose imagery and wordcraft is underpinned by independent scholarship, unconstrained by the deadening hand of academia, so that we learn exciting new ways of looking at the old tales. For just one example, he discusses how the Giantesses form a chaotic complement to the male Gods, and how the latter give something of their power away each time they delegate creation to another kind of being.

These writings connect archaeology to ancient poetry, and enable us to connect aesthetically with the deep past. Highly recommended.
To buy a copy, email PD at pdandjulia@gmail.com, or via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005869655055 
 

Jake Stratton-Kent died in January of this year. This tribute was written in June, and is a great read. The writer gives us, in JSK's own words, something of the flavour of his extraordinarily original work with the grimoires. This is someone who delved deep.  

Philosopher of higher states Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes strikes another blow against the Dark Satanic Mills of Scientism in this essay. He takes apart one of the most insidious doctrines of Scientism - 'neuroessentialism'.

'It is the mainstream metaphysical belief of the last few centuries that has wreaked havoc upon Earth, treating Nature as a means and not an end. It is a dark faith, pollutive to the world. In its place, we endorse a brighter metaphysics that says, Nature lives.

'The belief that only the brain can occasion experience is thus not a scientific view, though it is often unwittingly dressed that way. It is a metaphysical belief – named ‘neuroessentialism’ – and a belief that renders Nature lifeless, insentient, without intrinsic value or purpose.' 

I missed this when it came out, so was grateful to Donal Ruane for mentioning it on Facebook. It's an extraordinary story, of committed idealists who wanted to spend two years in a sealed environment, Biosphere 2, recycling oxygen only through plants, producing the food they needed, even keeping farm animals inside the enclosure.

Watching the interviews with those who lived inside the domes, I thought: these are really weird people. They think like magicians. The weirdest of all was the project leader, John Allen, a man who was close to various countercultural projects and people, including William Burroughs and London's October gallery. The project manifested via investment from a billionaire, Edward Bass. Yes, some billionaires used to do intelligent stuff with their ill-gotten gains, unlike the present crop of narcissists and loonies. 

Biosphere 2 came to grief through a variety of issues. For one, they were less than transparent about the backup air scrubbers and oxygen tanks that were standing by for when the oxygen levels got too low. For another, the project was sabotaged by the greed and lies of another rich man, Steve Bannon. Yes, the same scumbag that ended up working for Groper Dump a few years later. 

 It's a story well worth watching.

How layered the world is!

"The subjective measures we analysed are not definitive, of course, but they strongly suggest that the widespread perception of moral decline is an illusion.' 
 

So how does that happen?

'First, numerous studies have shown that human beings are especially likely to seek and attend to negative information about others and mass media indulge this tendency with a disproportionate focus on people behaving badly. As such, people may encounter more negative information than positive information about the morality of ‘people in general’, and this ‘biased exposure effect’ may help explain why people believe that current morality is relatively low. Second, numerous studies have shown that when people recall positive and negative events from the past, the negative events are more likely to be forgotten, more likely to be misremembered as their opposite and more likely to have lost their emotional impact. This ‘biased memory effect’ may help explain why people believe that past morality was relatively high. Working together, these two phenomena can produce an illusion of moral decline.'

Curate your bloody news feed!