Welcome back to Chaotopia! This is the first of a slightly slimmed-down format, which will also be a bit more frequent. No fixed frequency, just as and when I've got something to say, share or promote. (This one's a bit longer than future ones will probably come out at, but that's because a lot is happening!)

My biggest recent news is of course the launch last month of my new book Primordial Chaos. Here's an excerpt from the Foreword.

This selection of writings reflects my life in magic over the last four-and-a-half decades arranged in four parts.
Part 1, ‘Primal Chaos’, starts in the chaos magic scene I was part of from the beginning, as a founder member of the first IOT group in England, which was based in West Yorkshire and ran from 1980 to ’82.
I’m still working in the IOT. Chaos magic is still alive, evolving and changing, despite the warnings I’ve seen every few years since about 1987 that it’s dead. Some of the core chaos magic ideas have influenced new communities, sparking shared practices and philosophies that are needed more than ever in this traumatized, ‘post-truth’ world where people are getting into magical thinking but without any critical perspectives. 

... At age 17 I heard some Jefferson Airplane lyrics about activities that have not yet been given names (1), and decided that what I wanted in life was lots of exciting, weird experiences. Later, I found that ‘doing magic’ fitted that ambition quite well. That enthusiastically neophilic approach to life works much better when you have other people around you acting as mirrors for each other in evaluating weird experiences and non-standard ontologies. Sharing the weirdness with others boosts it but also acts to ground and balance it. With powerful magic, big shifts in your cosmology can occur, and these can be disturbing: Am I going madder than I want to be, or am I seeing things more clearly? 

... I had a number of intense magical experiences, mostly in my late teens, and involving LSD. Psychedelics were the beginning of my re-entry into the magical thinking I’d abandoned at about four years old. I explore that connection in Part 2.

In the mid-1990s I extended my fascination with the mysteries of place and the origins of cultures by beginning to study and practice the ‘Northern Mysteries’. I joined the Rune-Gild because they are the only organization I have yet found which brings to that work a respect for both the history and the magic. Some of that story I tell in Part 3. 

In Part 4 I gather together a few of the many public magical presentations I’ve done over the years and write about the scenes around those workings. I also present some entities that are still being worked with, which you can engage with if you wish.

You can buy the book here:
- and please leave a review on Amazon - every one helps, even a really short one!
 

One of the things I've been writing about lately is magical egregores, magically-engaged group minds, and the entities we can form from them. There's a bit about egregore entities in Primordial Chaos, and I've written a longer piece which will be going in Weiser's forthcoming anthology This Is Chaos: Embracing the Future of Magic, to be edited by Peter Carroll.

These written pieces are underpinned by practical work - an experiment in egregore magic using the internet and social media. One stage of it debuted at my book launch on December 9th 2023; the next will be done at my workshop/ live magic event on Monday January 22nd 2024, in a pub called the Angel on City Road (right next to Old Street tube). This is the Nova Stella series of magical events, keep an eye on their Facebook group via:

EGREGORES AND MEMETICS: MAGIC FOR THE ONLINE ERA
How effective is the magic that’s done on social media? How can we make it better? Join Dave Lee, for a talk and workshop where we will power up an egregore entity with rune-song, whose job is to make sure that weapons of mass destruction are never used.

This is of course the entity WABRI, familiar to anyone who came to the launch of Primordial Chaos. WABRI will be moving into the next stage of its development on Imbolc, 1st February this year, as we release our visions of it onto social media. The Nova Stella working will give all present an opportunity to create their own sigil and contribute to the power of WABRI by skrying its form in their inner vision, in the run-up to the sharing of visions at Imbolc.
 

MWCB

As promised, my second energy magic course with Sheffield's ever-evolving magical school Magic, Witchcraft, Chaos and Beyond is about to start. This is about internal energy alchemy - how to heal and strengthen your aura, how to harmonize and transmute currents of energy and desire.

In this course we'll explore internal sensed energy practices and the energy-alchemy of desire.

In the first of these two 2-hour sessions we’ll explore the practice and theory of internal energy circulation and concepts of auric structures and power-centres. In the second we’ll discuss and practice a rehearsal of sexual energy transmutation using the Dragon-Eagle Working.

Both sessions are 19.00-21.00 GMT
DM me or email me at dleedlpt@gmail.com to enrol. The full contribution is £50, but if you can't manage that we're happy to give concessions, please do ask!
 

CHAOTOPIA SCHOOL OF MAGIC

I'm in the process of migrating the CSM courses that were hosted on Teachable to the Udemy platform. This works much better for me. So far, these two are available on the new platform:

I don't know if the offer will still stand when you click on the above link - it's something Udemy set up. The price is in any case lower than the equivalent course used to be on Teachable.

The other course is always free. Magical Techniques for Health: a Beginner's Guide has the same course content as Magical Self-Care on Teachable, but Udemy insisted I had to change the name to make it more exciting (?).

My Teachable courses will continue to be hosted indefinitely, for those who have already purchased them. However, I can no longer take on new students on the Teachable platform.  If you have bought courses on Teachable and have problems with them, please email me at dleedlpt@gmail.com and we'll work something out. 

 

PUBLICATIONS, INTERVIEWS, BLOGS

Here are two recent interviews with me, about Primordial Chaos and some of the questions it raises.
With Stephen Rae at Saroth the Mage Podcast:

And with Miguel Conner at AeonByte Gnostic Radio:

- with which you get twice the fun, two interviews on one podcast! Should you wish to jump straight to mine, it's at about 1hour 5 minutes. 
 

Dan Sumption is my Discordian of the Month. Not only did we share a book launch - he launched King Arthur Vs Devil Kitty - but he, together with orbific, has produced a Discordian Mycelium Parish Magazine. 
This is an actual physical zine, (also available as a free pdf below). 

The idea is that with the increasingly sad state of the algorithms that drive social media for the World of Mindless Greed it's worth getting back to proper blogs and even paper products, to rebalance communications for small communities. It's a compilation of listings sent in by Discordians and fellow travellers about what they've been up to for the last year, generating interest in all sorts of artistic, and magical, projects. I'm slowly working my way through it, checking out the projects of people I know as well those I've barely heard of. Give it a go!

By Daniel Nathan Sumption and Maximilian Benjamin Hartley. Peakrill Press,  

We’re all brought up on the Arthurian legends, one way or another. The stories, the characters in children’s books and the themes that find their way into big budget films.  

But this is something else. I’m sure I’m not alone in never having come across this story, from the French Arthurian material, of how Merlin tells Arthur he has to go to France and overcome a giant cat that has been eating people.

No spoilers, but, like many old, popular tales, this one has more than one possible ending. And it must have been popular - apparently there's a mountain in France where these events are said to have occurred, that's still called Le Mont du Chat…