"Master, I have a cunning plan..."

In the UK comedy tv series 'Blackadder', the timeless hero 'Blackadder' has a servant called Baldrick. Whenever Blackadder gets in trouble, Baldrick offers to save the day with a 'cunning plan'. Much hilarity then ensues...

Inspired by Baldrick and Blackadder I have come up with my own 'cunning plan'. This involves me first finding and then writing up a 'proof' that the works of Thomas Carlyle, G.W.F. Hegel and Kenneth Grant are - in fact - all intimately related. No doubt much hilarity will ensue...

History British Magick After Crowley -review

The History of British Magick After Crowley: Dave Evans: Hidden Publishing: 2007
I have put a photo of Mouse here since she knew almost everyone / many of the people mentioned in this book.

Anarchy, punk and magick. That is a heady brew. But like water, malt and hops (or saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal = gunpowder) in isolation they are neither so heady nor so explosive. They exploded for me as a combination in the Library of the Conway Hall [Red Lion Square, London, UK] back in December 1979 at a meeting of the Persons Unknown Anarchist Conspiracy to Commit Explosions Trial Support Group . Or to be more historically precise, in the pub next to the Conway Hall after the meeting . This was where I discovered that Tony D. (editor of punk fanzines Ripped and Torn/ Kill Your Pet Puppy ) had been reading ‘Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God’ by Kenneth Grant.

The anarcho meeting led on to the best piece of music the anarcho-pacifist-punk group Crass ever created - Bloody Revolutions (B-side ‘Person Unknown/ Poison Girls) which funded an ‘Anarchy/ Autonomy Centre’ at the Metropolitan Warf warehouse in Wapping , east London a year later and which in turn spawned the sub-punk culture ‘anarcho-punk’ …

This meeting with Tony ( and his sister Val and her then boyfriend Brett) changed my life. It led me to follow a different path, one which, 28 years later I am still stumbling along. The meeting was as unlikely as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table [Surrealist quote].
I went home to my bedsit flat in Ilford and wrote a ranting, raving letter in which I quoted the following from the final paragraph of Kenneth Grant’s ‘Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God’:
The artist, the occultist, the scientist, were among those who refused to conform to priestly superstitions. Even today these sections of society are regarded with suspicion, if not with animosity, as a danger to society. People sensed in the artist, the magician, the alchemist, some indefinable yet potent quality that was inimical to their comfortable vegetative existence. The danger lingers on. The scientist, Wilhelm Reich, was eliminated by the American authorities because the logical conclusion of his discoveries implied the total overthrow of society as it is known today. Yet it is upon the debris of that society alone that the Kingdom of Ra-Hoor-Khuit may be established and Liber Oz put into practice. The keen and persistent practice of even a few dedicated individuals will effectually overthrow society and thereby facilitate the unhindered development of the New Aeon and the reintegration of human consciousness.
The next time we met at the Conway Hall, Tony gave me a copy of Kill Your Pet Puppy 2 and there was my letter , including the Grant quote, embodied in it… anarchy, punk and magick indeed. [Reflective note: two years later I wrote to Mr. Grant himself and received some very useful advice ‘Remember the Fourth Power of the Sphinx’ - I.e. Silence - in return]

Silence? The following is unspoken….


There are books that I read. And then there are books that I devour, wolfing down hungrily, tearing off great chunks of raw and bloody text, crunching up the grammatical bones to extract their juicy marrow, washing down the words with great gulps of strange and exotically foaming wines… then, having consumed the feast, carefully re-assemble the fragments … and read it all over again. But this time more slowly, delicately teasing out the metaphors and allusions, admiring the craft of its construction, highlighter and day-glo book marks in hand, ready to note the more useful, the more revealing, the more surprising or even the more doubtful passages.

George Berger’s ‘The Story of Crass’ was the last book to receive such treatment . Dave Evan’s ‘The History of British Magick since Crowley ‘ got the treatment today. As with George’s book, my response is necessarily immediate and subjective - if ‘anarcho-punk’ filled the first part of my London years, ‘chaos-magic’ filled the second. And, like some great spectre haunting the city, the ‘perichoresis ‘ of Kenneth Grant connected the two eras - as did the very different ‘magic’ of Genesis P. Orridge.

However, I realise that the connection between anarcho-punk and chaos magic is not very obvious. Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare and Kenneth Grant do not feature in ‘The Story of Crass’ whilst Crass, The Mob or even Blood and Roses do not feature in ‘The History of BMAC’. But then ,as Dave explains, his book began as an academic thesis, as a history of post - war magic and he had to follow his sources.

So where do Dave’s sources lead him? On a long strange trip to the edge of infinity… and beyond? Not quite. Rather you get a pretty sensible ‘guided tour’ of the British occult scene as it has evolved since Aleister Crowley’s death in 1947. Indeed Dave spends the first 222 pages gently and carefully explaining to the reader that magicians are not mad-eyed, axe-wielding, raping and pillaging madmen hell-bent on destroying society as we know it by invoking demonic entities … attempting to defuse in advance academic doubts about the validity /usefulness/ sensibility of his project.

He then goes on to demolish the claims of a minor figure to be the secret love child of the Great Beast (AKA Edward Alexander ‘Aleister’ Crowley). On first reading I thought this section was a waste of space, but it is useful - it gives Dave the chance to show that he is a applying a ‘critical methodology’ to his sources rather than simply accepting claims made. It is a very good bit of detective work. For example rather than taking the person’s vague claims to have sold ‘thousands of books’ at face value, he checks out the financial records of the publisher and discovers the company is running at a loss…

So when Dave moves swiftly on to discuss the work of Kenneth Grant, his ‘post-academic thesis post-script’ : that Dave believes “ Mr Grant probably saved magic from disappearing into obscurity after Crowley died, and that Grant’s works are magical in and of themselves…” and despite Dave revealing (for them as didn’t know) that ‘so far as academic research is concerned Grant is very difficult’… I.e that Mr. Grants 9 volume ‘Typhonian Trilogy ‘ blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction; one can only agree.

My only criticism here is that Dave could have come over all French intellectual and post-modern in this section and argued the case for Grant as out flanking them all - to challenge Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari to ‘deconstruct this’…. but then Dave appears far too sensible to play such games.

Brief aside - for any one unfamiliar with the works of Kenneth Grant (born 1924), he knew Aleister Crowley in the late 1940s, just before Crowley’s death in 1947. Grant’s take on magic is best illustrated by his theory that USA horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft actually and accurately described real entities in his ‘fictions’. Cthulhu Lives! [ But Outside of Space and Time - the title of one of Grant’s early books].

From Grant, Dave then moves on to Austin Osman Spare. Spare’s ‘Zos Kia Cultus’ gave All the Madmen’s ‘Zos Kia’ (Psychic TV/ Coil offshoot featuring Min and John Gosling) their name.

Finally he has a stab at Chaos Magic. Whilst Kenneth Grant found the sources of his magick ‘outside of space and time’, chaos magic is ( or was - I reckon it is becoming a bit of recent history) ‘post-modern’, ‘post -quantum physics ‘ magic. Dave himself admits it is difficult/ impossible to use historical methodologies to make sense of something so recent. But he does his best and since no-one else has (outside of the chaos community) tried to contextualise chaos magic, it is useful.

In so far as the personal is chaotic, Dave’s use of ‘sources’ here (and throughout) is as good as they get. Dave quotes extensively from Phil Hine and Lionel Snell (rather than relying exclusively on Pete Carroll and Ray Sherwin ). I am not quite so sure about Lionel - his work preceded the ‘Chaos Current’ - but to the extent of my historically brief involvement in ‘chaos magic’ : 1986- 2001: and as someone who wrote for Joel Birocos’ Chaos/ Kaos and Dave Lee/ Phil Hine/ Ian Read’s Chaos International and was for about five minutes a member of the IOT [Illuminates of Thanateros] and so I met/ knew a fair few of the folk Dave mentions in his book … of these, Phil Hine was the man.

The word ‘sensible’ keeps coming back to me. It may not seem appropriate in the context of the furthest far out reaches of the UK counterculture which this book documents , but that is the way I see it. By using so many quotes from ‘sensible’ folk like Phil Hine and Lionel Snell, Dave Evans has managed to write a ‘sensible’ book on a not-sensible subject .

Hell, I could say so much more, but this is already 1000 words long. So come on all you aging punk rockers, live a little and buy this book.

Bath Road Protest 1994

This was Pinki/ Tanith/ Rebecca's 26th and last 'protest' arrest.

Chaos International 3 : 1987

Enlarge by clicking on image.

Note: cover art by Nick Blinko of Rudimentary Peni

My text mentions Mutoid Wast Co -

found a pic on Tash's site
www.gn.apc.org/tash/gal_mutoid1.htm

Organic Filaments

Gay punks at Stonehenge

This mentions Derby Lodge, the
Islington gay punks (Pip?), the
Pentonville Road ('Grimaldi') church
squat, Crass and Stonehenge.

Have highlighted.

Taken from:
http://www.starfarer.net/confession.html

"SAME THING DAY AFTER DAY - TUBE - WORK - DINNER - WORK - TUBE - ARMCHAIR - TUBE - WORK -- HOW MUCH MORE CAN YOU TAKE? -- ONE IN FIVE CRACKS UP!"

-Graffiti (circa 1977) on a wall facing the tube line between Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park tube stations.

Windsor 77 (or possibly 78)
Living in Uxbridge at the time, the local paper (I think) held forth about an army of invading hippies at Windsor (yet again). So I duly trundled off to Windsor for the bank holiday to be met by the massed ranks of the local constabulary & told to "fuck off home sonny". So I duly did. I later found out that a valiant few had somehow managed to evade said constabulary & hold a festival of sorts in a lay-by. Better luck next time.


Torness - May / June 79
This was a three-day "no nukes" demo / mass trespass on the then- site of Torness power station (just outside Berwick) but it deserves a mention. After a day of workshops (what to do if arrested) I was having tea at a campfire when this drum-like booming sound came out of the darkness. A minute or so later three people came out of the darkness & mist. One bearing a "Lambegh" drum, another with a cart full of firebrands and the third dressed as a ringmaster with a loudhailer inviting us all to "join the company of freaks". I needn't say that they all wore disguises, including face paint - which I had never ever seen before & so, of course, I joined in this Hamlyn-like procession round the site. We ended up in a field & watched a display of gymnastics, juggling & fire eating from our three hosts.

Stonehenge 1979
A friend & I hitched down from the far north, much to the surprise of people that we would travel that far for an event (then again there was absolutely nothing where we came from). Stonehenge, in some respects, was an introduction to democracy in action, which has stayed with me all these years. The "co-ordinators" would call a general site meeting & several hundred people would debate what needed to be done - organising the stage, bogs, and liaising with the local police, etc.. I'm afraid to say that it was rather spoilt by one of the Tepee people threatening to pull out "& if we go, the police will roll over the site" unless we all coughed up a (considerable) sum to finance the stage. What really hacked me off was that I later heard the allegation that some people kept 10% of donations back as a "tithe". The weather was OK for most of the week, it did rain heavily one night though - our tent got flooded out (ever tried bailing out a tent in the pitch black when you are "stoned immaculate"?). The Solstice itself was fine & sunny; there was a parade of Wally Smith's ashes round the site, the ritual storming of the gates to the Stones and people shouting "Wally!!!"

There was a "wedding" & a christening in the inner circle led by the (infamous at the time) "Rick the Vic". A Church of England vicar who had "dropped out" & whom (I think) was living with the Tepee people. (He later wrote an article for High Times, which differed significantly to how I remember the festival!) As it was hot & sunny that day, a few people stripped off, much to the excitement of a few passing Italian tourists, who proceeded to photograph everything that moved. ... Equally incongruous was an Asian family who turned up in a camper van & duly opened a shop.

Nik Turner (whom I didn't recognise with short hair) stood on me as he walked by & "Here & Now" organised the stage / running order of the bands. Some band called "Looney Q" took it upon themselves to disregard the set running & were promptly thrown off the stage by a Here & Now cohort. An aged relic from the 60's took offence to this "fascist dictatorship" & grabbed the stage mike to hold forth at length about this being "the people's festival" until hauled off - probably to have a heart attack. An enterprising couple set up "Mr & Mrs Normal's Tea Party". Which consisted of a bell tent, entrance fee 25 pence for which you received a spliff & a cup of tea. It was situated next to one of the minor stages.

Smokey Bears - Hyde Park, May 80
Having moved to London by then & cultivating the "bleak, northern industrial look" at the time, about 100+ of "us northerners" were living in a series of squats round Kings Cross / Islington. The look consisted of dressing in black Levi's, a black donkey jacket, short cropped hair -usually hennaed deep red- & a scarf; alternated between a Keyifah /an Om scarf. ... Heading the bill was Nik Turner's Inner City Unit (version 2). V2 had a much harder sound -later dubbed "Acidpunk"- & they finished the set with a storming version of Watching the Grass Grow / In the Mood (Nude) with a roadie, dressed in a silver firefighter's suit, dancing on the stage & instigating a flower fight - chucking boxes of dead daffodils into the moshing audience.

It was the day Arsenal won the FA Cup, at the time we where all living in this maze of squats round Kings Cross - the infamous Derby Lodge, which is worthy of another story. We had scored a whole blotter of "Red Dragon" (Rumour had it that it was pre-Operation Julie, recycled by a bent copper). It was enough for two tabs each & we had this big acid party - blood pouring out the walls time!

Stonehenge 80
A friend from school turned up on my doorstep, having deserted from the Navy! We put him up for a week or so & decided we would smuggle him to Stonehenge, at which point he decided that he would be better off taking his chances handing himself in. As luck would have it, the day I set off, the dole office decided they had underpaid me & sent me a giro for £100+. I had arranged to meet people on site, having found the tents & a message that they where in the pub in the local town. Of course by the time I got to the pub, they had gone.

The following day I scored some most excellent acid - orange barrel. As the rush kicked in, all I could do was sit down on the Iron Age hillocks at the back of the site, listen to some Rachmaninov being played at maximum volume from a sound system & watch this magnificent psychedelic sunset. .... Later on, we all sat watching satellites / shooting stars / UFO's zipping across the sky whilst I became earnestly involved in conversation with two (tripping) young women, that "yes, the universe really was an inverted pudding bowl, painted black & if you looked closely enough, you could see the strings the stars where attached to". Just one of those little, spontaneous events, which made Stonehenge so unique. The last memory I have of that particular trip was standing round a campfire at 8:00 am (ish) some 13 or 14 hours after dropping the tab, still too wrecked to speak, watching blue, red and green squares, circles and triangles appear on peoples faces.

Band wise, Inner City Unit played a couple of sets, Nik Turner played flute with a band called Entropy & a couple of Hawkwind bods turned up & played as an ICU/Hawkwind crossover - WindHawks?? Bar that, ain't got a clue who I saw, apart from Spacemen 3 & the wonderfully monikered "Psycho Hamster meets the Killer Doughnuts from Mars". If memory serves me correctly, the latter played something like an all-night, five-hour set, as nobody else would take the stage. I think I saw Ruts DC do a set, though after being on site for three weeks or so, everything became a little blurry round the edges. Pertinent to this story is the biker gangs - mainly from the South West, who would turn up in force & colonise a section of the festival for themselves & woe betide anybody wandering into it (see above). During the latter part of the festival Crass turned up & were listed to do a set on the Saturday night. Rumours started to circulate that the biker gangs where making noises about it being "their festival" & the punks could, er, "go away". At one point, whoever was organising the main stage made an announcement that "we needn't be worried by Crass, you can easily recognise them, and they are older than us & dressed all in black". Consequently I 'dined out' as they say, for months afterwards with a couple of Crass fans of my acquaintance on the fact that I had chatted to the band round a campfire.

There was probably a fair amount of politicking going on between the groups. I remember talking to a guy from Release who were considering leaving before the Saturday night. (Can't remember if they did or not). In retrospect, rather foolishly, I scored some "Ying Yang" blotter, on the following Saturday. I knew it was going to be good when after about an hour, I got that "electric taste" in my mouth & similar to "Fear & Loathing... "The sky suddenly rendered open, on good acid, I always had this thing that the sky was made out of jelly & the horizon was the jelly skin, & all these Pterodactyl type creatures started flowing out of the hole in the sky...


Inner City Unit were just starting a set, I remember a couple of us climbing up the inside of the Pyramid stage & sitting at the back, looking down on the band. The next couple of hours, I think I just wandered around until for some reason I ended back at the main stage, round midnight where a band, I thought it was Crass, but evidently I'm wrong, were playing & a couple of bikers jumped on stage, punched the singer and commenced to smash everything up. The rest is pretty confused; I can recall seeing people being chased across the field & beaten up - some acquaintances from the Islington gay punk contingent were pretty badly hurt. I later heard that they, the bikers (to be fair I suppose, a group of them) just set about attacking anybody with short hair who looked vaguely punkish...

Round 4:00 or 5:00 am, I found myself back at what was left of the main stage. Some guy, who deserves the most enormous respect possible (& again a big thank you) had pulled together a scratch band, got the generator working & started playing again. Whoever he was, he deserves respect for having the courage to get on stage & sound off on "how this was the people's festival & we don't want no fascists wrecking the place". Braver man than I (at that time, a veteran of several 1970's anti-Nazi rallies & pitched battles with the NF), I have to say.

I remember coming down, sat on the stage as the sun rose, thinking "fucking hell, I've really fucked up this time." I managed to grab some sleep & woke up to a drizzle, the bikers had departed en masse & the whole site was a smelly tip -so I grabbed my stuff & hitched back to London. One of the lifts was from a "geezer" type bloke from "sarf Lundun mate", who had spent a couple of days on site, checking the place out. He held forth on Thatcherite free market principles (& selling various substances & goods at mark up prices to the assorted masses). I guess him & his mates moved in pretty quickly once they realised the opportunities.


Kings Cross Benefit Gig
Psycho Hamster, having lost the Killer Donuts suffix, resurfaced in late Summer 81. There was a benefit gig (pay what you could afford on the door) held in a deconsecrated church in Islington (half way up Pentonville Rd, on the left if you are travelling up the hill) on behalf of a local squatters group. I walked past the site a month or two back - it's now a business centre, Headlining were (as ever) ICU. To make this one more interesting, they rigged up a projector - with 50ft images of Judge Dredd & other 2000AD characters projected onto the back wall. Needless to say, the police raided us. Apparently they received complaints about the noise from some two miles away! (Well, it was 2:00 am) Nik Turner negotiated one more song - a 20-minute version of "Amyl Nitrate" - which normally ended with a version of the theme from the 60's TV show "Bonanza". This time, it also segued into "Johnny Todd" - a Liverpudlian folk song, which was adapted as the theme for (the 60's TV show) Z Cars.

The tribe increases on myspace...

This is fascinating.... Mick Luggy (Lugworm) has just got a myspace page and added yet more photos to the archives... here is one of Mick's - Lou at the Centro Iberico 1982 [Lou = Hysteria Ward on myspace]... there is quite a network developing.

So go to http://www.myspace.com/kill_your_pet_puppy

and follow the'friends' links to Mick Luggy's page and others.

Bureau of Public Secrets/ Situationist texts

For anyone interested in the work of the Situationist International who has not already found it, here is an essential resource.

http://www.bopsecrets.org/

When I knew I was moving from London back to Scotland I went round to Compendium (sadly no more) in Camden and bought a few key texts Desert Island style.

The one which has proven the most essential is Debord's/ Society of the Spectacle. There were two versions, but the one I bought was the old Black and Red translation published by Dark Star/ Rebel Press - since it was the 'punk' one.

These days though I jump straight to Ken Knabb's more recent (and online at Bureau of Public Secrets) translation. Got to say it is 'clearer' than the old one.

I was checking Ken's version out today. Despite the poverty of academic life, I have been campaigning to stop Glasgow University closing down their Dumfries Campus. Or more accurately, I have been doing research for the campaign, which includes the IWW - see their postcard from Dumfries blogged below. CNT/ FAI flags flying ....

So I found a bit of maybe useful information - a recent/ 2006 critique of the 'Knowledge Economy'

http://www.ces.fas.harvard.edu/publications/docs/pdfs/Andersson.pdf

although not directly mentioned, the underlying theme seemed to be pretty damn close to that of Debord/ Soc. Spec. This line, from Section 57, in particular

As soon as society discovers that it depends on the economy, the economy, in fact, depends on society.

To give a flavour, here are some quotes I used from the article/ paper:

the Third Way is a political economy based on the assumption of the reality of globalization, and accordingly it redefines the role of social democratic politics to act for the creation of wealth within the parameters set by globalization. Since capital is uncontrollable, what government must do is to provide the stable framework and infrastructure so as to attract capital and inward investment. The other leg of this strategy, however, is to increase the value of the capital within its borders, that is, the human capital or the potential of the people. Attracting foreign investment has a parallel here in those labor-market policies, education policies, or asylum policies which attempt to attract the “best brains.”

Practically all New Labour policies, whether they be aimed at social inclusion, the pre-schooling of young children, or the preservation of the historical heritage, are economic in the sense of being given a role for the strategic creation of the human and social capital of the knowledge economy. In the same way, virtually all social or cultural values, from trust to curiosity and aesthetics are in New Labour thinking also economic values and therefore legitimate objects for economic intervention.

This expansion of the field of the Economy has meant that areas such as education policies, cultural policies and social policies have become new forms of industrial policies.

See what I mean? Everything starts with an e. Oops, wrong reference...

Everything is subjugated to the economy - including knowledge and the 'social and human capital' of the 'knowledge workers' - like academics - who are the latest recruits to the proletariat. Hang on, here is a quick Debord:

16 The spectacle is able to subject human beings to itself because the economy has already totally subjugated them. It is nothing other than the economy developing for itself. It is at once a faithful reflection of the production of things and a distorting objectification of the producers.

Which is more than enough to be going on with.

love n chaos

AL

Meanwhile Gardens under Threat

Just found this on Ian Bone's blog

http://ianbone.wordpress.com/

May 9th, 2007

MEANWHILE GARDENS UNDER THREAT OF LUXURY PENTHOUSE DEVELOPMENT

This is truly fucking diabolical! Anyone who’s ever lived over Ladbroke Grove will have a soft spot for MEANWHILE GARDENS but here’s a leaflet I picked over there yesterday:

‘STOP THE COUNCIL BUILDING LUXURY FLATS ON MEANWHILE GARDENS’

‘Kensington and Chelsea Council are spending£5.9 million on building works in Holland Park in the south of the borough, but they refuse to spend £2million to build new community premises in W10. Instead they want to erect £850,000 penthouses on this green space to pay for the new building.

But they are not short of money.They have £186 million in reserves and their Capital budget is a colossal £215 million. They can easily aford the money’

SAVE MEANWHILE GARDENS - THIS IS A BATTLE AGAINST LUXURY PENTHOUSES WE CAN AND MUST WIN!

FUCKING RIGHT ON!

Barcelona 1936, Dumfries 2007

Red and black flags in Dumfries

An Informatory Vindication Anno MDCLXXXVII

By way of a short reply to a comment made about 'Magic of Chaotes'... this was the faith of my ancestors...

An Informatory
V I N D I C A T I O N
OF

A Poor, wasted, misrepresented, Remnant of the Suffering, Anti-Popish, Anti-Prelatick, Anti-Erastian, Anti-Sectarian, True Presbyterian Church of Christ in
S C O T L A N D,
United together in a General Correspondence;
By way of Reply to Various Accusa-
tions, in Letters, Informations &
Conferences, given forth a-
gainst them.

Anno MDCLXXXVII.

We shall now therefore, in the first place, give a short Declaration of Our Testimony: Shewing first, what we maintain, & positively own, as the matter {25} of it: And secondly, what we disown as prejudicial thereunto, & inconsistent therewith.

As to the First, we sincerely, unanimously, & constantly Testify & Declare, our hearty embracing of & adherence unto the written Word of God, contained in the Scriptures of the Old & New Testaments, as the only rule of faith & manners, & whatsoever is founded thereupon & consonant thereunto; Such as the Confession of Faith, our Catechisms Larger & Shorter, our Covenants National & Solemn League, the Acknowledgement of sins & Engagement to duties, the Causes of God's Wrath, the ordinary & perpetual officers of the Church by Christ's own appointment; such as Pastors, Doctors, Elders, & Deacons, & the Form of Church Government which is commonly called Presbyterial, either in Congregational, Presbyterial, or Synodical Assemblies, whether Provincial, National or Œcumenical; together with all the Acts & proceedings of our General Assemblies, (especially from the year 1638 to 1649 inclusive) yea & every piece of the attained unto Reformation of the Church of Scotland. In like manner we Testify & Declare, our cordial adherence unto all the faithful Contendings, that have been owned & prosecuted by Ministers or Professors, for promoval & defence of Reformation in former times; as these against the Publick Resolutions, Cromwell's usurpations, the vast Toleration of Heresies & Sects in his time; as also to all the faithful Contendings of Ministers & Professors since the unhappy Restoration of Charles the Second (when the work of Reformation was overturned) unto this very day; whether against the Sacrilegious Usurpation & Tyranny of the Malignant party, or against the Compliances, Defections, {26} & Unfaithfulness of Ministers & Professors: More Particularly, unto all faithful Protestations, Testimonies, & Declarations, that have been given in these latter times, for the work of the Reformation, & against all Usurpations of & Encroachments upon the Prerogatives of Christ's Crown & Privileges of his House, & anything else of whatsoever sort prejudicial to the Reformation: & expressly we declare our adherence unto the Declarations published at Rutherglen, Sanquhar, (first & last) & at Lanerk, together with the Apologetical Declaration, affixed upon some market Crosses & several Parish Church doors, for the matter, substance, & scope of them, as accommodated to the times wherein they were exhibited, according as we explain them afterward, Head 2. Finally we Testify and Declare, our cordial owning & approving of the faithful & free preaching of the Gospel in the open fields, as well as in houses, both before & since Bothwell; & of the duty of defending the Gospel & ourselves by arms, & the Lawfulness of Defensive war against Usurpers of our Ecclesiastical & Civil Liberties; & consequently, all these appearances in a Martial manner against the publick Enemies of this Church & Kingdom, at Pentland, Drumclog, Bothwell, & Airs Moss: And also our adherence unto the Testimonies given by Martyrdom on the fields, scaffolds, & Seas; or otherwise, by Banishment, Imprisonment, Stigmatizings, Tortures, or suffering any other ways, for their adherence unto the Reformation, & noncompliance with the God-provoking courses of the time, & for not owning the Authority or rather Tyranny of Usurpers, in place of magistracy qualified according to the word of God. {27}

As to the Second, We sincerely, Unanimously, & Constantly Testify & declare, our rejecting of whatsoever is contradictory or contrary unto the Written Word of God, or not founded thereupon, either expressly or by direct near or necessary consequence: And more particularly, in like manner, we Testify & Declare our Rejecting & Disowning of Popery, Quakerism, Libertinism, Antinomianism, Socinianism, & all other Heresies under whatsoever designation, together with the Blasphemies, Heresies, & wild extravagances of John Gib: All errors upon the right hand, such as Anabaptism, Independency, Millenarism [Premillenialism], & all other sects & Schisms, together with the divisive courses followed by any others, especially in our day, & the Usurping of any upon the Ministerial Function not duly called thereunto, as upon this ground (beside other reasons) we have excepted against Mr. John Flint; And all Errors upon the left hand, as Prelacy & Erastianism (against which our Church hath had much wrestling & contending) together with all kinds of Idolatry, Superstition, & Prophaneness, & whatsoever else is found contrary to sound Doctrine & the power of Godliness.

Moreover, considering what heinous & God-provoking sins have been committed in this Land against God, in contempt of & with prejudice to his Cause & Covenants, since we began to turn away from Him, we shall briefly enumerate some of these, Declaring our detestation & abhorrence of the same. Therefore in the first place, we declare our Testimony against all Compliances with the iniquities of this time established by Law, in obedience to their Cursed commandments directly or indirectly; {28} All countenancing of & complying with Prelacy, Supremacy, or Tyranny, or any Usurpation on Church or state made by this Malignant Enemy, All hearing of Curates or Indulged, or paying either of them Stipends exacted by iniquous [unjust] Law setting them up; All answering to the Courts of Persecutors, Taking any of their Oaths as the Declaration renouncing the Covenants, the Oaths of Supremacy & Allegiance, the Test, the Oath of Abjuration, The Oath Super inquirendis, and all others of like nature; particularly the late new contrived oath of Allegiance, substitute in the place of all former, & comprehending in its bosom the extract of all their iniquities, requiring the acknowledgement & Maintenance of the most open faced & declared absolute Tyranny of the Duke of York, in his invading the Sovereignty of the Most High, & all his subservient Popish & Atheistical designs, which is contained in the late Proclamation for the abominable Toleration; Likewise all subscribing any of their Bonds, imposed to fetter & defile the Conscience, as the Bond of peace, Bond of Regulation, The Bond of Compearance, & all others partaking of affinity with these; As also the paying any of their wicked Impositions for bearing down the Gospel & work of Reformation, as Militia money, Cess, Locality, Fines, or stipends, or anything that may strengthen the hands of such evil doers: and in like manner, we declare our Testimony against all the steps of defection, declining from or contradictory unto the Covenanted Reformation of the Church of Scotland; And therefore we disown, as inconsistent with our Ancestors Testimony, that promiscuous Association in the late {29} Expedition 1685, & all Associations & Confederacies whatsoever with Sectaries & Malignants, & any other thing that opens the door for their introduction & toleration, or whereby the state of the quarrel is not proposed according to the ancient plea, against both right & left hand opposites.

But more particularly, because our principles are most suspected upon the Ordinances of Magistracy & the Ministry; Therefore we shall plainly unbosom our hearts about these also. We profess then concerning Magistracy (to obviate the suspicion of any unfriendliness towards that Ordinance, & disloyalty to rightful Magistrates) & Declare our minds in these Assertions. (1.) As we distinguish between Magistracy, or the Office (in the abstract) & the Persons invested with the Office; so of Magistracy in itself considered, we say, that as it is not subjectively founded upon grace, so it is a holy & Divine institution, for the good of human Society, the encouragement of Virtue & Piety, & curbing of Vice & Impiety, competent unto & honourable amongst both Christians & Heathens. (2.) As for such Magistrates as, being rightly and Lawfully constitute over us, do act as the Ministers of God, in a direct line of subordination to God, in the defence of our Covenanted Reformation, & the subjects' Liberties; We declare, whensoever we can obtain & enjoy such rulers, we will own, embrace, obey, & defend them to the utmost of our power, & prove encouraging, subject, & obedient to them in our places & stations. (3.) In things Civil, though we do not say that every Tyrannical act or action doth make a Tyrant, yet we hold, that habitual, obstinate, & declared opposition to, & {30} overturning of Religion, Laws & Liberties, & making void all contracts with the Subjects, or when he usurps a power without any compact, or giving any security for Religion & Liberties, or when he is such as the Laws of the Land do make incapable of Government; These do sufficiently invalidate his Right & Relation of Magistracy, & warrant subjects, especially in Covenanted Lands, to revolt from under & disown allegiance unto such a power. In such a case, when the body of a Land collectively considered, or the more faithful & better part of that Land, in the time of National & universal Apostacy, & complete & habitual Tyranny, adhering closely to the fundamental constitutions & Laudable practices of that Covenanted Land (when the fundamental Laws of the Kingdom are directly overturned, & the essential conditions of the mutual Compacts are broken, & such as cleave closely to the Reformation & Liberties of the Kingdom are accounted Rebels, & prosecuted as such) may reject and refuse the Magistratical Relation between the Tyrant & them: yet, before the erection of formal Magistracy, they may not Lawfully arrogate to themselves that Authority which the Tyrant hath forfeited, or claim to themselves the Authority of Judges; though radically they have the Authority of the Law, by their Natural right, & fundamental power, which God allows & is Nature's attendant; & the Municipal privilege of these subjects; but they cannot act judicially, in either Civil or Criminal Courts, only in the interim they may Lawfully do that which may most conduce to the securing of themselves, Religion, & Liberty. (4.) In Church affairs, we allow the Magistrate a power over the outward things of the Church, viz. {31} what belongs to the bodies of Church officers & members; but not over the inward things of the Church, such as Doctrine, worship, discipline, & Government: We own he may & ought to preserve both Tables of the Law, & punish by corporal & temporal punishment, whether Church officers or members, as openly dishonour God by gross offences, either against the first or second Table; but this he may not do every way, but after his own manner, not intrinsically, but extrinsically, not under consideration of a scandal, but of a crime: We grant he may order such things as are for the well-being & subsistence of the Church, & for that end may Convocate Synods in some cases of the Church, pro re nata [according to exigences], beside their ordinary Meetings (according as that part of Article 2, chapter 31, of our Confession of Faith, is fully and clearly explained by the Act of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, convened at Edinburgh, Aug. 27, 1647, Session 23, approving the foresaid Confession of Faith) & may be present there in external order; but not preside in their Synodical debates & resolutions; He may add his Civil Sanction to Synodical results, but we deny him any power to restrain Church Officers in Dispensing of Christ's ordinances, or forbid them to do what Christ has given them in Commission: We own that as he ought to take care of the maintenance of the Ministry, Schools, & poor, so imperatively he may Command Church officers to do their duties; yet we deny him an elicitive power, either to do himself what is incumbent to Church officers, or to Depute others to administer Ordinances in his name, or by any Ministerial power received from him: Finally we allow him a Cumulative {32} power, whereby in his own way he assisteth, strengtheneth, & ratifieth what Church officers do by virtue of their office; but we deny unto him a Privative power, which detracteth any way from the Church's Authority, for he is a Nursing father & not a step-father. In sum, we grant this to be the full extent of the Magistrate's Supremacy in the Church affairs, to order, whatsoever is commanded by the God of Heaven that it be diligently done for the house of the God of Heaven, Ezra 7.23. And what further he may Usurp, we Disown & Detest.

But considering the God-contemning & Heaven-daring wickedness, Usurpation, & Tyranny, of the present & latter pretended Rulers over this Land, & what grievous affronts, bold & open defiances, they have given to the Most High God, & what unparalleled abuses they have done to the Ordinance of Magistracy; Therefore We disown, detest, & abhor the corruption, perversion, & eversion of that Ordinance in this Land; And in the first place, for the late Tyrant; As we do abhor the memory of his first erection, & unhappy restoration, after by many evidences he was known to be an Enemy to God & the Country; his nefarious wickedness in ejecting the Ministers of Christ from their Charges, & introducing abjured Prelacy; his atrocious arrogance, in rescinding all Acts of Parliament for the works of Reformation; his unparalleled perfidy & Perjury, in making void, & burning the Covenants; his Heaven-daring Usurpation, in arrogating to himself that Blasphemous & Christ dethroning Supremacy; his audacious & treacherous exerting of that usurped power, in giving Indulgences to outed Ministers, to divide & destroy the Church; {33} his arbitrarian & manifest Tyranny, over the consciences of poor people, pressing them to conformity with the time's abominations, contrary both to Religion & reason, & imposing upon them conscience-debauching Oaths; His absolute domination over the whole Land, in levying Militia & other Forces, Horse & Foot, for carrying on his wicked designs, of advancing himself to an arbitrary power, & bearing down the work of Reformation, & enslaving the people; particularly in sending an Host of Savage & barbarous High-landers several times, upon a poor innocent people, to waste & destroy them; And imposing wicked taxations for the maintenance of these forces, professedly required for suppressing Religion & Liberty, & preserving & promoting his Absoluteness over all matters & persons sacred and Civil; His cruelty over the bodies of Christians, in chasing, catching, & killing upon the fields, many, without sentence past upon them or time previously to deliberate upon death, yea & without taking notice of any thing to be laid against them, according to the worst of their own Laws; Drowning Women, some of a very young & some of an exceeding old age; Imprisoning, Laying in irons, exquisite torturing by Boots, Thumbkins, & Firematches, Cutting pieces out of the ears, Banishing & selling as Slaves old & young, men & women, in great numbers, bloodily butchering upon Scaffolds, Hanging some of all Sexes & ages, Heading Mangling, dismembering alive, Quartering dead bodies; oppressing many others in their Estates, Forfeiting their Possessions, Robbing, Pillaging their goods, Casting Men, Women, & Children out of their Habitations, Interdicting any to reset [receive, harbour] them, under the pains of {34} being treated after the same manner; & all this for their adherence unto the Covenanted work of Reformation, while in the mean time many murderers, Adulterers, & incestuous persons, Sodomites, witches, & other malefactors, were pardoned or passed without punishment: So for the continued & habitual tract of these, & many other, Acts of Tyranny, we have disowned, & yet adhere to our revolt from under, the yoke of the Tyranny of Charles the Second, & Declare that his whole Government was a complete & habitual Tyranny, & no more Magistracy than Robbery is a rightful possession. And in like manner, in the Next place, we disown the Usurpation of James Duke of York, succeeding & insisting in the same footsteps of Tyranny, Treachery, & Cruelty; with the same domineering over men & Women's Consciences, & cruelty towards their bodies, & Estates, & oppression over the Land; arrogating to himself an absolute power, more declaredly than any other formerly; & labouring to bring these Lands again in Subjection to the yoke of Anti-Christ; being a professed Papist; & therefore, what ever right he may pretend by lineal succession, suffrage of Iniquitous Laws & packed Parliaments, he hath no legal or lawful right to the crown; especially, seeing many Acts of ancient Parliaments, declare Papists altogether incapable of bearing any Rule, or any other whomsoever, except they be maintainers of the true Protestant Religion, according to the National Covenant, as it is Statute by the 8 Act. Parl. 1. repeated in the 99 Act. Parl. 7. ratified in the 23 Act. Parl. 11. & 114. Act. Parl. 12 of K. James 6. & 4. Act of K. Charles the first. And here we stand as to the point of Magistracy. {35}

Magic of chaotes

This is deleriously delicious. In about 1989(I think) I wrote an article for Chaos International magazine about a wonderfully furious row the Late Gerald Suster and the still with us Peter J. Carroll had in a pub near the British Museum on the relative merits of Thelema (Gerald) and Chaos (Peter) .





Anyhow, it somehow found its way into cyberspace about ten years ago and has been reproducing itself ever since. Google tell me there are 128 versions out there. One is in French, and I found it with a bit of discussion about 'the magic of chaotes' - which google kindly translated into a form of English - see 1. below

Then I got google to translated my article from French back into English.... See 2 below

At last, I can finally understand what I was waffling about all those years ago!

This truly is chaos at its best...

I wonder if I could get all my ramblings translated into French and then back into English?



1. Good question my very expensive me.
I return to visit a forum where this question is still put, and the amateurs do not miss with the call to try to deliver an opinion on the Magic of Chaos. It is reproached the chaotes for being either immature or not to know what they do or, quite simply, to copy the old paradigms while hoping to make believe in the whole world that they created a new system.

The error of the answers rests simply on the incomprehension of the studied subject. If the chaotes cannot define their Art with precision it is stupidly that they know that any definition locks up the practice in a conceptual bottle which kills the spirit and denatures the letter of Art. To define, taxonomiser, to arrange in small boxes makes safe the human being which then thinks of having of its range a thing which can only be imperceptible. Therefore, not of definition but of the kilometers of foolish and insane sentences, of the thousands of ritual and practices strange, violent ones, striking, inconsistent.

No Book of Shadows but of the thousands of pieces of paper bottom griffonnés with haste in some sordid coffee. Not great theory but of hundreds of the revolutionary and contradictory slogans. No the Pantheon fixed for eternity but an insane dance gods and goddesses, phantoms and the alive ones called upon, devoted, adored then forgotten. No the dogma until in the refusal to prohibit the dogma by adopting them all.

No the temple or of place of society gathering, but of the wet cellars squattés temporarily, set up in taz magickes before to be forever abandoned. No ranks, not of a fixed nature, not of ceremony solidified in the vain one, but a cloud of groupings évanescents constituting itself only on the common will and yet single collectively to act the time of a breath of the god, plays and sarabands and some portable computers for all ceremonial books.

Not, the Magic of Chaos will not be the putrid statue of a finishing age, there remains breath of life and thirst for unsatiated will of goal.

2. Chaos vs Thelema [as re-translated from French back onmto English of a sort by google]
Inspiré, sans doute imprudemment, par la nouvelle lune & la « Psychedelic Jungle » de Cramp, j’ai décidé de pénétrer dans le débat opposant la Chaos & Thelema. C’est, bien sûr, une tâche impossible, & c’est sans doute ce qui m’a poussé à le faire.

Very from does accesses, what distinguish Thelema from Chaos? In “Starfire”, Mick Staley tries to distinguish Thelema from Crowleyanité. Thelema, us suggests it preexisted to the formulation that made some of Crowley. That poses problem immediately, since for the majority of the magicians: Crowley = Thelema. But if one can accept that there is something which existed independently of the writings of Crowley, then that must be this thing (Thelema) which must be contrasted with Magick of Chaos. The core of this thing, I suggest that it is the Will. Is this idea of Will in one way or another opposed to Chaos?

But then what Chaos?

For the needs for this argumentation, I will interpret Chaos as follows: that the world of the experiment day labourer has her roots in Chaos. Thus, any test to include/understand the world via the reason reaches a limit of which the other pouring lies in Chaos, a state of existence/non-existence which cannot be included/understood by the rational ego. However, through ritual techniques, this state can be expressed in the world of the every day, suspending the consensual “laws” of the direction common & allowing Magick to be born. Moreover, perhaps like result of this practice of Magick of Chaos, the idea of Chaos penetrates slowly in popular imagination through science. This refutes the traditional science, which is based on the belief that if the structure of the physical world could be sufficiently modelled in a mathematical form, it would be possible to predict the future states of various systems (weather for example) which constitute the physical world.

However, it is allowed unwillingly that that would require a measuring accuracy which it is impossible to realize. The engineers have for a long time to accept this uncertainty - that all measurements are limited by the veracity of the measuring apparatus. The absolute precision is an impossible goal é to reach. There is always a degree of uncertainty, an instability & by concentrating the Will on that, the magickien can exert an influence on this level on the world, which when it occurs, can produce a Voulu result.

Since Chaos is a form of Magick - seeking to exert an influence on the conscience of the world of the every day - it must thus implied the Will. Otherwise, it would be more one form of mysticism, which is a test “to follow the current” of the experiment of the world without seeking to influence the direction of this current. In this form, Chaos is closer to a high form of order which i.e. apparent chance or event impromptu of the experiment of the existence of an individual are only results of some existence higher than that of the individual himself. And by désengageant the desires of the ego, one can try out this higher existence, interpreting the obstacles & the failures of the existence of the every day like a stimulus with the development of a “stoical” conscience, which will make it possible the ego to freely swim a such fish in the river of the CAT, or Chaos.

The idea on which that is based tends to being that of the hermit, wise forests of the hindouism, the solitary follower of High Magick. No doubt that if that were possible at the time current, one could try out such an existence if one could withdraw remainder of the human existence. But such a model is not valid any more, since the development of the conscience of humanity is such as any place virgin & wild does not exist any more in order to undertake such a search. We are thus obliged to satisfy us with the results of the human desire of knowledge, power, control & safety.

It is perhaps there the crucial difference between Magick of Chaos & Thelema. Thelema, as developed by Crowley in a form adapted to the 20th century, contains all the heritage of the experiment & the practice which goes up through the Dawn Golden delicious, of Hermetism to Egypt & the Country of Sumer, which in their turns draw their beliefs from anonymous ancestors who fought in order to create the models of the world, cosmologies & the myths of the creation which enabled them to give a direction to their presence in this world.

The task of Crowley, like that of Mathers & Eliphas Levi before him, was to synthesize this vast corpus of conscious/unconscious knowledge & to represent it in a comprehensible way by its contemporaries. Unfortunately, if that is a question mainly of language, the language magicke is limited by the domination Judeo-Christian, on the one hand, & of the Reason on the other hand. Our language of the every day derives from our perceptions of a world made up of distinct objects, & on the faculty of the sight. But, as soon as we enter the more subjective sphere of Magick, the problems occur. Up to which point do share we same reality magicke & in the same way use us words such “Will”?

The problem is not confined in Magick. During a time I worked as controller of quality in “London Rubber”. Periodically, I was to compare my work with that of others in order to ensure me that we apply the same processes so that I do not reject hoods that others let pass. In science, the theory wants that the work of a person must be examined in a critical way by the unit of its pars. The difficulty is that, as soon as the creativity between concerned, the process is faded. Should the test for any form of Magick be “that functions?” But how can one of judge since the results of a ritual can not be visible during a certain lapse of time. At the beginning of the Eighties, a great work was carried out in order to stop the expansion of the nuclear weapons. But it is only today that a major change occurs in Eastern Europe & who can be regarded as a success. And the changes can however be lost by a failure of imagination & the difficulty of being opposed to the complex parasites militaro-industrialists of the East & the West.

It may be that Thelema is soiled by the terminology inherited the Golden delicious Dawn life Crowley, but in its heart a detector of conneries imparable rests. I discovered that the question “which is your Will?” directed towards any group which proclaims to wish changes, is an effective challenge. What is disturbing on the other hand is to discover that in the majority of the cases this question evokes only silence or, as well as possible, an escape.

I feel that that is the most detrimental criticism for Thelema, that it fails to pass from Magick to varied alternative beliefs which try to reformulate the company. It is not a question of simple academic interest, whereas the current néopaïen seems to emerge & take the control of the conscience & the alternative structures.

Can Magick of Chaos then succeed where Thelema (still) did not reach that point? I doubt it qu seen of the reaction of the average citizen lambda who thinks that it is “too dark”. The simple word of “Chaos” tends to be seen labelled like “anarchist” & evokes nightmarish sights of man-monsters traversing the streets in order to do everything péter. Of course, for some that can appear a call, since such a bad thing must, ultimately, being good.

Not, in one way or another we must achieve a task of Sisyphus by applying the concept of Will like razor of Occam towards the dualistic entities of the conscience - or the unconsciousness - of New Age. In practical terms, I understand that that means to direct our Wills towards & with the Vert movement in full growth, so that instead of disappearing in a fog from “good intentions”, it becomes true & critical volunteer of the culture consumerist. Just like the Marxism failed to carry out its desires, owing to the fact that the working class “had been mobilized already” by the capitalists, thus Magick fails it owing to the fact that energies of the unconscious mass was already exploited by the advertizing, via the mass media.

Energy tending towards the change of the conscience was diverted by the culture consumerist in a desire to have a flood without end of merdasses useless. All the flood of the advertizing is to exceed our logical circuits & to reach our desires directly to reach with a statute & safety. We do not make that to buy the product, we buy the dream, the illusion of Maya. That is, as we can assert it, a form of Magick. I then to be a poor squattor of a shantytown the Third World, but if I can buy a bottle of Coke, I think of having the dream of richest American multimillionnaires. I can be the owner of old a Trabant of East Germany, but while crossing the Wall I become the potential owner of Porsche.

But if you observe those which have already such dreams, that do you find? That it is, as in California, these same people who turn to the most ridiculous conneries New Age in order to satisfy their race for always more, for something which will fill the painful vacuum & without end that they feel to crawl & to corrode them like some Charles nightmarish Manson waiting behind the walls of their house of Beverly Hills.

But, of course, the last thing that they want to hear is the “truth”. They prefer to create an industry New Age richissime rather than to accept that within the richest houses reality is held of the Chaos, this Vacuum which drapes veils of Maya, the dance of the Illusion, in which we all are, at the same time, this famished tramp & this voluptuous starlet of cinema. “Which is your Will?”

Of course, I am somewhat predisposed thanks to all that I sang with Bowie on Ziggy Stardust, I chose Magick like Voie. Through experiments at the same time beautiful & terrifying, I arrived at comprehension that the human condition is only one aspect of a continuum of conscience. For me, all the universe is an alive entity with which I interacted in the fugacious currents of energies which inspire my awakening. Rationally & poetically, I perceive my brain, my body like part of the substance of the universe & not like an element distinct from him. For me, the human condition is partly a tragedy, partly a joke. We are semi-intelligent monkeys which were led by the fugacious vision of what could be, in order to create this world, our reality. But in our ignorance, we took the vision for the unit, the ego for self. We fight for the order & create chaos, & then we recognize in chaos a “higher form of order”.

“Knowledge is the capacity, the capacity is control, control is safety”. Ah yes? But knowledge is as the pleasure, a pleasure more intense as any other pleasure created by our safety. Safety is sterility, sterility is death. We run after the evolution but let us not can accept that the evolution implies changes & that these changes deny any safety. What do we want?

If our Will is safety, stability, whereas that is, like so many fossils. To embrace Chaos (Thelema) is to give up the false gods & to accept that our actions as a magickiens will change not only ourselves but also our world. In so far as Chaos & Thelema are valid ways, then they will change us. To cling to an identity, although that is pleasant or gratifying, is a negation of Magick. Magick is changes, the only constant factor being the revelation of the existence of the order/the chaos of the universe.

In addition to Thelema & Chaos, I also practise Magick de Maat. For the Egyptians, Maat was “the order right of the universe”. Contrast rests between the Hindu concept familiar of “karma”, which deals with our human existences, & the concept less familiar of “rta”, which deals with our aspects as forms of the universal conscience.

Magick diverged from Science 300 years ago. Science sought to discover the “hand of God” in the natural world; Magick wished to become equalizes it gods. Today we are the witnesses of the overlapping of these two ways. We are not any more creations of some distant god, but the natural products of the universe. We “evolved/moved” starting from organic chemical compounds. Today, we have the capacity, through the replication of the ADN, to make us evolve/move ourselves. We have, literally, the capacities of the gods. That of which we miss, & what Magick must try to provide us, it is intelligence to use such a capacity. Is the way to make a success of that to put the question “Which is your Will?” Are our genes our justifying force, or there it is another thing which I can call “Conscience”? This conscience I hold it for implicit within the structure of the universe, & that was proven like such by quantum physics. It may be that that is unprovable/undeniable & consequently A-scientist, but I suggest that our so-called conscience is a quantum phenomenon.

It is that which Crowley tried out by the interaction of Night & Hadit in the Book of the Law. It is also the root of Chaos. Thus, Thelema & Chaos are only two aspects different from a single experiment, expressed in the language appropriate to different times & in different cultures.

Only, I then to completely express the complexity of these possibilities, & however we all must try to do it. While placing them in the middle of our experiments to be in the world, we can hope to create a company which will survive rather than will perish under the effect of its unconscious contradictions. We are only “naked monkeys”, but we are monkeys having of the sufficiently complex brains that to apprehend the possibility of being more than what we are & to become “homo veritas”, a true man at the very least.
Such as we are, we cannot entirely perceive the truth of all that, only our imagination can apprehend the potential of it. It is my Will to make that that is, for this reason I write these words, so that they touch & stimulate those which read them. How it is thus!

While reading again what is above, I feel the need to develop the arguments somewhat. The events in Eastern Europe of these last years strike me by their consequences. The gasoline of the “iron curtain” was to make it possible the East to develop its own alternative economic system as enacted by Marx. What currently occurs, is the incorporation of this economic system in the total economy, which implies a failure of the Marxism. This failure leaves a vaccum capacity. The majority of criticisms as for the structures of the powers of the West come from the Marxism. But if this one failed, the possibility for a new criticism of being born.

Where will we find this criticism? In Magick. Of course, that requires magickiens that they adopt a more rigorous intellectual approach as for their beliefs, & it is undoubtedly that in question with the arguments of Chaos or Thelema, i.e. one & the other shows the other to be perverted compared to the “true form” of Magick. What I suggest is that the magickiens start to seriously take Magick as an energy directed towards the change, rather than like parasitic system of beliefs in order to escape economic success from capitalism. To practise Magick we must believe undoubtedly that we live a universe magicke, rather than economic. How much more effective would be our Magick if we replace the system of beliefs of the economic company by that of a company enracinée in the design magicke of reality.

Here the apple with which I try you - will dare you to taste with the forbidden fruit?
Alistair Livingston
French translation by Spartakus FreeMann, Nadir de Libertalia, Anno iv13 Ground 25° Aries, Luna 15° Cancer Dies Veneris

Anarcho-punks or psychic youths?

Strange Attractors - all that is solid melts to air .

Photo - Mob gig , Meanwhile Gardens 1982 - where are all the black clad hippy punks?

Image - a strange attractor: Crass and Psychic TV.

Still thinking about Rich Cross’s book ‘ Hippies Now Wear Black - Crass and Anarcho Punk 1977-1984’ , I found that Alex Fergusson has a website. This is not the football club manager. Nor is it the Scottish politician (bit obscure, but he is my MSP and now Presiding Officer of Scottish Parliament).

This is Alex Fergusson who was a founder member of Alternative TV in 1977 and then a founder member of Psychic TV in 1981. His website is http://www.alexfergusson.com/

It has a detailed discography from which I found he played guitar on ‘Rape’ by Zos Kia - released by All the Madmen in 1984. There is also a biography. Years ago, Tony D. told me that when he first moved to London [late 76/ early 77] he lived in a west London squat with Alex Fergusson and Sandy Robertson - part of ‘Frestonia’ / Freston Road. Sandy Robertson became a journalist and wrote for Sounds. He also had an interest in magick and compiled an Aleister Crowley Scrapbook [1988] Sandy went to see Jim Morrison/ The Doors at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970 aged 17.

Alex and Sandy had a group ‘The Nobodies’ which were featured in an early Ripped and Torn which as you should know by now was edited by Tony D. [photo on Alex’s website]. Alex then joined ATV in 1977 and they rehearsed at Throbbing Gristle’s Martello Street [Hackney] studios. But when the rest of ATV went on tour round the free festival circuit with Here and Now in 1978, Alex got involved in an abortive Throbbing Gristle and Fred and Judy Vermonel film project which evolved into the Cash Pussies

The Cash Pussies were the brainchild of husband wife team Fred and Judy Vermorel. Fred had encountered Malcolm McLaren, the Pistols manager, in 1965 at the Harrow School of Art. In August 1977, Fred and Judy were commissioned to write the first book on the Sex Pistols. The book, The Inside Story, was completed in three months, and published by Star Books in January 1978. It featured in the main the diaries of Sophie Richmond who worked for the Sex Pistols and interviews with the Pistols and relatives. In mid 1978 they begin writing a script for a film called 'Millions Like Us' with Throbbing Gristle to provide the music. They in turn contacted Alex Fergusson, now out of ATV to help out. Fred Vermorel would also write text which Alex would edit into song verse. By late November, Throbbing Gristle had left the project and Alex started working on Vermorel`s new project The Cash Pussies.
http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/cash_pussies.htm

Fast forward to 1981 … and Alex visits Gen (Genesis P. Orridge) at 50 Beck Road, Hackney …. Here is one version of what happened…

Psychic TV was founded by ALEX FERGUSSON and GENESIS P-ORRIDGE in Hackney, East London in 1981. The actual story is that Genesis was so disillusioned with even the independent music scene and being in Throbbing Gristle by 1981 that he quit TG in Los Angeles prior to their last 2 live gigs. Alex Fergusson, was previously co-founder of Alternative TV with Mark Perry (of Sniffin' Glue fanzine infamy). A little known fact is that G. P-O was the first drummer in ATV! Genesis and Monte Cazazza had been planning an agenda for a Psychic para-military occult group in secret for 2 years or so. Alex continually told Gen that he should still write songs and "not waste his lyrical talents." One day Alex noticed a poem on the water heater in Gen's kitchen over a cup of tea, literally! "Hows about I take that poem and IF I can turn it into a song you like we'll start a band combining our two names? Psychic and TV?" said Alex. To get him off his back Gen said OK. A day later Alex returned and played a stunningly appealing ballad to Gen accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. That song was "JUST DRIFTING". Both the romanticism, and anti-Industrial style hooked Gen's aesthetic and emotional attention. Perfect irony to go acoustic, let's add an orchestra he suggested. Psychic TV was born and "Just Drifting" was the first track on their first album for WEA in 1982-3 "FORCE THEE HANDS OV CHANCE". Because in Gen's mind Sleazy (aka P. Christopherson) was associated with bad memories of the demise of TG it was not until almost a year later that Gen and Alex decided to sound him out about joining PTV as a band member conditional on Gen owning the name and having full control in the event of any disagreements. Too often Alex Fergusson has been wrongfully relegated to a minor role in the story of PTV and it is IMPORTANT, especially in the context of VOICEPRINT where legacies are carefully preserved to be clear that without ALEX FERGUSSON there NEVER would've been PTV and HE was the co-founder with Genesis….

[oops, lost link to website source, sorry]



So where is the connection with Crass and anarcho-punk? Um…ah… ok, here we go…

What if the situation was in practice a bit / a lot more confused than the version which Rich Cross is trying to construct? Maybe there were lots of different and competing ‘strange attractors’ out there in the punk multiverse. Crass was just one of them. Crass was a strong strange attractor, but so was Psychic TV. Another attractor was Stonehenge Free Festival and the travelling scene. Beyond punk lay others - Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and other anti-nuclear Peace Camps. Heroin. Totalitarian ideologies - fascist, Nazi, the 57 varieties of Marxism. And many, many more.

Sure , it was possible to adopt one to the exclusion of all others, but most folk, most punks felt the pull of more than one such strange attractor. “Boy tomorrow, girl today” as Adam and the Ants might just have said.

So what ‘really’ happened was that punk spawned a brief era of utter creative confusion. In which, to quote Marx and Engel’s ‘Communist Manifesto’ of 1848 “All that is solid melts to air …all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life… “[which is a rip-off of Thomas Carlyle’s ( local lad) Sartor Resartus of 1833/4 Chapter VIII “ So that this so solid - seeming World, after all, were but an air-image…” and, in Chapter X “in this so solid-seeming World, which nevertheless is in continual restless flux” ]

I am not saying it can’t be done; that Rich Cross can’t write a book which makes everything revolve around Crass - Orwell showed how that can be done in 1948 with his 1984 - but I am saying it won’t work. That any attempt to re-write our history in such a way will fail. You just have to look at the photographs taken at Meanwhile Gardens in 1982 . Where are all the black clad hippies? I can’t see any, can you?

And what happened next? In 1983, 1984, in 1985... Well some of the folk in the photos went off on the road to become travellers. Some became psychic youth / Temple of Psychic Youth. And some did both.

Conclusion.... at the level of 'spectacular products' Crass and Throbbing Gristle/ Psychic TV were equally influential on what became of punk.

So maybe I should change the tag line for greengalloway so it reads 'anarcho-psychic-goth-punk- hippy- freaks' ?

Yeah, why not.

love n chaos

AL

Psychic TV and All the Madmen

This is for gig on 11th December 1985 . It illustrates the difficulty of fitting what really happened into artificial categories like 'anarcho-punk' or 'psychic youth' or 'hippy travellers' or 'folk- punk'.

The boundaries were blurred which is why the era was creative.

Dave, I think my mind is going

Back in the long hot summer of 1976, late July I think, I visited London and spent a day wandering around west London (Portobello Roadish) looking for where Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies used to hang out. I found a 'headshop' and bought some old underground mags - Frendz, cos it had a piece on Hawkwind, some OZs and an International Times (which was new - had revived itself). I even bought a Gong album. Flying Teapot? Or You?

Punk hadn't registered with me then. A few months later it had. I thought "Why am I listening to all this music made by old guys when there is all this music being made by people my age (18)? "

At the time it seemed like a revolution, one which required a re-invention of myself. Except I still had all my old records. And kept buying some new old ones.

Now, it seems, 1976 was not such a break with the past. The first punk record which really grabbed me was White Riot buy the Clash. [Just checked, actually came out in March 1977...]

Turns out the Clash came out of the west London hippy squatting scene. And that Julien Temple's new film about Joe Strummer is going to reveal all. And that even the Slits are now middle aged...

I suppose I shouldn't be, I've known the 'facts' for years, but I am still just a bit confused. Punk or hippy? Though of course, as Pete of Small Wonder told me years ago "We weren't hippies, we were freaks...".

Thursday May 10, 2007
The Guardian

The Future Is Unwritten is a two-hour documentary about Joe Strummer made by Julien Temple

It's packed with striking moments: some startling footage of life in the west London squats where Strummer formed his first band, the 101ers;

Temple's own film of the Clash's first recording session; clips of an aimless post-Clash Strummer appearing on a US cable talk show, at a loss to explain what he's doing with his life; Mick Jones recalling his dismissal from the Clash with a peculiar combination of bitterness and maniacal laughter ("I think he'd had a few drinks by then," offers Temple); the contrast between a sweet, mumsy-looking, middle-aged Spanish woman reminiscing fondly by the campfire, and the footage of her 30 years ago, when she was Palmolive, fearsome drummer of all-girl punk band the Slits.

Free Festivals 1970- 1992

Have you ever been experienced?







Have you ever watched the sunrise from the bottom of the sea?

Not necessarily stoned but beautiful.

Patti Smith just done a version of song - Are You Experienced: Jimi Hendrix: 1967 - on her new album.

The Hendrix link is that Jimi played Isle of Wight in 1970. Nik Turner was in front of the stage resting his chin on it, his face painted silver and his eyes shining bright. Jimi dedicated a song to "the cat with the silver face" ... Nik Turner went on to help Big Steve 'disorganise' the later (post 1980) Stonehenge Free Festivals... which, after 1985/86, Big Steve reckons mutated into the first 'acid house' raves... which led to Castlemorton in 1992.

I have written 5500 words (well 2000 or so, most just cut and paste) on festivals from Isle of Wight 1970, through Windsor 1972-74 , Stonehenge 1974 -1984 and Castlemorton 1992.

Way too long. So here are some photos instead - of Isle of Wight 1970 , Stonehenge 1984 and Castlemorton 1992

Sourced from:

www.gn.apc.org/tash/hist_5.htm

www.gn.apc.org/tash/gal_stone-aerial.htm

members.madasafish.com/~chelsearecords/luv.htm

R U Xperienced 2

JIMI HENDRIX lyrics