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Saturday Signal: sifting the signal from the noise of the Internet’s occultural cacophony.

Science and Spirituality collide this week in multi-media extravaganza, brought to you by guest poster Cole Tucker.

• H+, a commercial Transhumanist magazine, edited by R.U. Sirius, has its Fall issue out.  Essays include Erik Davis on SF show Dollhouse, investigating the transhumanist aspects of psychedelic pioneers like Timothy Leary and Terrence McKenna, possibilities of eliminating pain through genetic manipulation and the neuroscience of spirituality.

• NPR recently ran a five-part series on the The Science of Spirituality.  Topics included long-term brain change through prayer, investigating the near-death experience and evidence for healing at a distance.

• Royal Art News reports that two weeks ago, the U.S. Army deployed its first Buddhist chaplain.  Novelty must be accelerating, just last month the U.S. was a Hindu nation.

• Ego Death and Self-Control Cybernetics has months worth.  Learn about the entheogen theory of religion, how the Dark Ages never happened, and why prog rock could be the West’s last great Wisdom Tradition.

• Fans of Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol, take down the Freemason’s official site.

If you feel like digging signal from the noise

Nothing but noise…

Finally, Psyche made the return trip safely!  Plutonica.net should be operating normally as soon as she has rested up.

Last week, Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford of The Baptist’s Head and Open Enlightenment were kind enough to answer several questions I put to them.  I have edited the questions for the sake of brevity and to make myself look less a twit.  Initially only Duncan was had agreed to participate in the interview, leading to a change in tone of my questions.

Duncan and Alan both demonstrate a lot of growth in their thought, and I believe many points I touch on rely on legacy material. I hope you enjoy.

Following the crisis, I had to rein in the slack other parts of my life had taken.  I stepped away from the occult bookshelf and focused on integrating what I could back into a life I wanted to live.  At some point I found a website called The Baptist’s Head.

Two chaos magicians from Great Britain run the site.  Alan and Duncan are both members of a prestigious order, have loads of experience and very complementary backgrounds.  The site contains their magical records beginning slightly before contacting their Holy Guardian Angels, to Crossing the Abyss, attaining the grade of Magus and experiencing final Enlightenment.  They also provide a grimoire of their own workings, a series of essays covering a variety of topics, and a forum for those seeking to engage in magic as a wisdom tradition.

Following their claiming the experience of final enlightenment, Duncan and Alan created a second site, Open Enlightenment.  Where The Baptist’s Head addresses magic as a path to Enlightenment, Open Enlightenment seeks to provide a non-sectarian forum for critically discussing the experience of enlightenment and its implications. Continue reading »

While Psyche is away on vacation, she has been kind enough to allow me to write for Plutonica.  As an apéritif, here is a little of my background.

Nine years ago, I had my first exposure to Aleister Crowley.  With a little digging, that led me to Robert Anton Wilson, Pete Carroll, Phil Hine and the rest of what I understood as the cutting edge Western Esoterica.  During this period, I also took initiations into a lineage of Raja yoga and the vajrayana based “Velocity Path” of the Arica Institute.  My magical and mystical bents developed tangentially, supported by a shared skill base.

Six years passed, and I had developed what I consider a solid competence with magic and state-based mysticism.  I also became aware of an extreme shallowness to my practices.  At some point, I had accepted the Eight Colors of Magic and the different stage models of development (Leary-Wilson circuits, Spiral Dynamics, etc.) as my reality.  They provide very useful maps for relative development, yet through my attachment to them, I had allowed my relationship with Soul to atrophy.

I returned to the Crowley material.  His earnestness spoke to me of something deeper, beyond my experiences with magic and mysticism.  I resolved to attain the Knowledge and Conversation of my Holy Guardian Angel and see what was what.  The plan was to proceed through the Elemental initiations by evoking the Seniors of each Enochian watchtower and the Tablet of Union.  Then I would create an Enochian version of Liber Samekh and work with it until the Knowledge and Conversation.

During the next three years I worked through each of the Watchtowers.  The experience transformed me in ways I could never have expected.  I also attained the Knowledge and Conversation much earlier than planned.  I refused to believe it, and instead attributed it to a late manifestation of the magical power of the Neophyte, The Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel.

I would like to share with you the individuals who helped me clear everything up.

Anton Channing is the author of Kaos Hieroglyphica and hosts the website for the KIA Illuminated Adepts. His blog is at serpent.antonchanning.com.

Publish and be damned they say.  I feel a bit like that with my book Kaos Hieroglyphica: Alchemy for the New Aeon.  I started writing this when I was just 23 and had finished writing it by the time I was 28.  It wasn’t published until I was 29, nearly 30.  I am now 35.  Inevitably my 35 year old self cringes at some of my decade old writing.   However, in the first article I ever had published, namely “Liber Minor 0“, I had enough sense to write one of the best sentences I have ever written, namely that ‘I reserve the right to disagree with myself at a later date.’

Well, here I am at a later date exercising my right to disagree with myself!  In particular I have cause to revisit the Psyche Magic chapter, in particular the ritual.  Rather than rewrite the ritual, I am going to tell the story of its actual performance, what lead up to it, and how the recipient has been empowered by it since. Continue reading »