Eostre Chaotopia

CHAOTOPIA Newsletter
EOSTRE 2023

Welcome to Chaotopia in the lovely Spring! Things have been a bit quiet on the new courses front, because I've been busy with other things, including the new book, Primordial Chaos. It's very nearly ready, the next Chaotopia will have a more detailed announcement about anticipated publication dates.

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

An album I and my musical-magical friends have been working on for seemingly ages is finally out!

Eight Musics for Eight Magicks is a suite of musical compositions with words, designed and crafted to facilitate a powerful experience of each of the Eight Colours of Magick.

Most of the tracks are about 15 minutes long, with the guided meditations taking up the central third of the track. You can utlilize each of these pieces as a stand-alone guided meditation sequence, as background music for magickal work, or in some other way; the Eight Magics are yours to define, experience and empower for yourself.

You can listen to samples at the above link. Full album is nearly 2 hours long, at £12.99 to download. Plus artworks for each of the Colours; here's Octarine:

BREAKING CONVENTION

Europe's biggest psychedelics conference is back, and will no doubt be as multi-faceted and brilliant as on previous years. It's very varied, with everything from the academy to the fringes, and a generally fun event. I'm presenting a 90-minute workshop, INTRODUCTION TO ENERGY MAGIC. Here's the blurb for it:
The purpose of this workshop is to provide participants with a direct experience of sensed energy, using Connected Breathwork to generate an ASC in which we clearly sense flows of energy (chi, prana etc) in our bodies and immediate environment. Participants will learn how to entrain the energy sensations and project the energy from the hands to heal physical ailments.

The workshop will involve: an introduction to Connected Breathing, together with health and safety considerations; Connected Breathwork practice; energy entrainment practice; energy healing practice.

with VIKTOR WYND

Introduction to Energy Magic Part 2 is launching this Spring, sessions on April 26th and May 3rd. This is about the internal dimensions of energy magic, and consists of explorations of 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.

EXPLORING MEDITATION

This sequence of meetings has already started, but you are still welcome to join - it's not a course but a drop-in group with a small amount of teaching.
It's on Tuesdays, 19.00 GMT, running till the start of May. Payment is optional, what you can afford, what you think it's worth, £10 per session is suggested. But £0 is ok, we want you to join in.

If you're interested, email me at dleedlpt@gmail.com
Here's a piece of writing that came out of that original group experience:

CHAOTOPIA SCHOOL OF MAGIC

The link below takes you to the permanently-free course Magical Self-Care, but as you can see there's lots of other good stuff there.

PSYCHEDELIA

Wanna know about mushrooms? Here's the man: Paul Stamets on Fungi, Heterodoxy and Systems: An interview with the world's leading mycologist

Just finished reading this. About time someone contextualized the discovery of LSD's power in 1943, the milieu it arose in, the drug companies and their involvement in the war, and the underground psychedelic explorers who existed between the wars.

And here's one of the essays from that book. Psychedelics and the Legacy of Transgression. Important article about the positioning of psychedelics in culture as transgressive, and the way that transgression in itself is old hat, no longer useful for moving culture along.

Lionel Snell aka Ramsey Dukes aka Lea and Angerford originated the compass of four ways in which we all think - Art, Science, Religion and Magic. This is probably the most valuable philosophical idea to emerge from the magical scene in at least half a century. Here, his early work SSOTBME is being discussed by two chaps who definitely get it.
For a full download of Lionel's extraordinary thinking, read SSOTBME and My Years of Magical Thinking, which I reviewed here.

Erin Sexton makes magical art from stray radio waves and the equipment required to pick them up. That description does her work no justice at all - suffice it say that her magic is amongst the weirdest I've ever experienced, and if you know me, you know that that is high praise indeed!

Her book Noospherics is a beautifully-packaged introduction to her world, with essays by her and by, among others, Eirik Storesund of the contentious blog Brute Norse, not to mention photos of her astonishing installations.

Christopher Smith has written another book on Icelandic Magic.

The first was Icelandic Magic, which reviewed what we know about that tradition, until recently a continually-living current employing runes and special magical figures known as galdrastafir.

The new book takes up the thread for the practicing magician. It is a technical manual, aimed at the beginner in magic; by whom I mean not the TikTok Instawitch who’s read three books, downloaded an automatic sigil generator and thinks they know something, but rather the person who has sufficient passion and humility to apply themselves wholeheartedly to living a magical life, via a commitment to a persistent daily practice.

The book's purpose is reflected in its two-part structure - 'Preparing for the magical life' covers the first considerations of practice and philosophy. 'The techniques of runic and Icelandic magic' goes into the specific practices.

It's nice to see a beginner's approach couched in Northern Magic terms!

CULTURE AND HOPE

Two important things about covid. First, a new nasal molecule that seems to have a very wide applicability.

And sorry, but masks don't generally work:

That survey is a gold-standard meta-study. Such things have a coarse-grained sensitivity to details, so it doesn't readily show that there are some limited circumstances in which P95 masks make some difference, but the overall conclusion is inescapable: non-P95s are completely useless.

I hope you're sitting down for this shock: A 'tech guru' who doesn't come over as a complete a-hole.

“We have to say consciousness is a real thing and there is a mystical interiority to people that’s different from other stuff because if we don’t say people are special, how can we make a society or make technologies that serve people?”

Watch this exuberant film about Candomble, by David Byrne. The music, the public rituals, the social and political dimensions to this vital religion, in South America, Africa and elsewhere.