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Book Review
Dark Star Rising – Magick and Power in the Age of Trump. Gary Lachman.
This book argues that Chaos Magic has made Donald Trump POTUS and that it also made Vladimir Putin Tsar of Russia with the Chaoist Alexander Dugin as his Rasputin. However, the author (an American) barely mentions the role of Chaos Magic in the accomplishment of Brexit. Nevertheless, the book does provide a comprehensive introduction to some of the principles and practices of Chaos magic.
Most if not all political initiatives grow out of shadowy or ‘occult’ beginnings in the realms of fringe religion, philosophy, and metaphysics.
Chaos Magic provides a philosophy and a technology for encouraging rather improbable and unlikely events to occur. Its technical theory predicted the advent of the Pandaemon-aeon well in advance of its current phenomenisation. However, Lachman only quotes Liber Null, so perhaps he didn’t notice the Aeonics material in Liber Kaos. For some source material on the origins of Chaoism he resorts to the second-rate scholarship of Dave Evans who, after failing to get an interview (nobody liked him) simply googled existing disinformation to bulk out his lame PhD thesis.
In this new Pandaemon-aeon, Nothing has Truth and Everything remains Possible. Intent and Imagination trump ‘facts’, expert opinion, and probability, and we make up ‘reality’ as we go along.
Lachman explores at length the careers and occult antecedents of notable demagogues such as Hitler and Mussolini, yet these deplorables took their cues from the Nietzschean and Crowleyesque occult philosophy of the Triumph of the Will, rather than from the Chaoist Triumph of the Imagination.
Lachman also digresses at length upon various ‘spiritual gurus’ who have mastered the skill of exploiting some peoples need to have meaning and authority imposed. In this he perhaps doesn’t go far enough, as anyone spouting ‘spiritual wisdom’ spews only lies and bullshit.
Chaos Magic never became an exploitative religious or political cult itself despite a couple of (failed) minority attempts to develop such things within or alongside it, precisely because it gave away the secrets of how to do this to all commers, thus proofing them against it.
Lachman notes that the occult seems mainly associated with right wing political initiatives although he mentions the so far ineffectual Witches against Trump campaign. The liberal centre and left seem to have missed a trick here in recent decades by presenting their ideas in purely rationalistic terms lacking in imaginative glamour and charisma. By allowing vociferous minorities to write the book on politically correct thought-speech, the liberal centre and left have handed the radical right the opportunity to present themselves as heroic free-thinking rebels.
That mystically inspired conservative initiatives can, with the passage of time, mutate into an equally oppressive materialistic liberal absolutism may come as a surprise to many, so it seems refreshing that Lachman details the Synarchy or ‘Total Rule’ philosophy lurking within the European Union project.
Overall, Lachman has written a fascinating analysis of how esoteric and occult ideas have had political consequences, without descending too far into the murky pits of conspiracy theory.
Addendum
Chaos Magic has enlarged humanity’s toolkit, what will we eventually do with it?
Destroy all monotheist religions and create more amusing personalised ones for ourselves?
Achieve Chaocracy – government by randomly selected committees of citizens?
Overcome the almost universal scientific belief in the expanding universe hypothesis?
Achieve the five zeros – zero population growth, zero CO2 and pollutant emissions, zero resource depletion, zero economic growth, zero loss of life satisfaction.
Imagine!
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Recent research on Arcanorium College into Magical Thinking in general has thrown up some interesting insights into its contemporary use in Politics.
The supporters of the Trump presidency (and the POTUS himself) along with the supporters of Brexit have all become both applauded and condemned for their Magical Thinking.
Meme wars have raged in the noosphere as one might expect now that the Pandaemonaeon gets into its stride on the back of globalisation.
See this https://pepethefrogfaith.wordpress.com/
And this https://www.ecosophia.net/the-kek-wars-part-two-in-the-shadow-of-the-cathedral/
Note the references to Chaos Magic specifically.
Googling ‘Kek Frog God’ may provide some interesting surprises for those outside the American meme-sphere. In the next meme war we can expect to see far more of this phenomenon.
I guess a lot depends on whether the applauders or accusers like Trump and/or Brexit, and whether they consider Magical Thinking deluded or effective or, more interestingly - both.
Either way it has worked pleasingly well as a guiding principle in my life.
I recently watched The Darkest Hour in which Churchill rallies Britain to resist a seemingly inevitable domination by Germany. It worked brilliantly at the time, (although I note that Germany has recently acquired the Skoda works for which it invaded Czechoslovakia and the remains of British Steel have just fallen to Krupp. Plus, they effectively own Greece now, and evidently still quietly believe themselves at least the economic master race).
British foreign policy has for centuries had two guiding principles - self-preservation and the prevention of hegemony developing in Europe. Let us hope that Brexit hastens the breakup of the EU.
In its most ideal and heroic form Magical Thinking says, ‘We Can and We Will’ despite common sense, ‘the facts’, all evidence to the contrary, and all received wisdom and expert opinion: - because nothing has ultimate truth and anything remains possible. (NUTARP! as we say in Chaos Magic).
As Sturgeon’s Law states - Ninety percent of everything (and everyone?) consists of Bullshit. History consists of a ghastly mess of miscalculations, unintended consequences, and unanticipated events punctuated by the rare appearance of ideas that prove effective.
Humanity has a surfeit of experts, but no experts on the future. Yet I believe Britain could have a better future outside of a stifling, bureaucratic, synarchist, undemocratic EU, and that therefore it should try - whatever the short-term costs; and that Trump has not actually DONE anything catastrophically stupid yet despite the negotiable braggadocio, therefore we should wait and see if his alarming and refreshing new approach works.
Humanity advances by challenging its beliefs about its limitations.
We Can halt global warming by going over to renewable energy sources.
We Can stabilise the human population at sustainable levels without genocide.
We Can stop economic ‘growth’ without reducing our quality of life.
We just need to summon the belief that we both Can and Will accomplish these things. The Knights of Chaos may sally forth again in support of any of the three above - if we can agree on strategy and tactics.
Rebel Physics. What underlies the large number coincidences of the cosmos? More than mere human numerology methinks.
Just as the current Apophenia 2 draws towards a close She gifted me another Yog-Sothianan insight:
The mass of individual matter particles* in the universe and their total number AND the ratio of the Planck scale to the Cosmological scale mutually define each other.
Herewith the calculation in orders of magnitude terms in SI units: -
1) From Hypersphere Cosmology; the mass, length (antipode), energy, and time (temporal horizon) of the universe all have the same multiple (the Ubiquity Constant U) of the Planck mass, length, energy and time respectively. The Ubiquity Constant has a value of 1060. This huge dimensionless number acts as the magic number from which all quantum-cosmic ‘coincidences’ follow.
2) From Beckenstein-Hawking; The information deficit of the universe as a gravitationally closed system has the same order of magnitude as the Ubiquity Constant U, in terms of bits per Planck volume which results in a deficit of the cube root of Ubiquity (1020) per Planck length. Thus, the universe has an effective grain size or pixilation at 1020 times more than the Planck length, rather than at the Planck length itself. and this does indeed seem reflected in the ‘size’ or wavelength of stable baryons*. Few lengths below this seem to have any real physical meaning.
3) The measured mass of baryons* comes out as 1020 times less than the Planck mass, yet this figure inserted into the DeBroglie equation of wavelength = Planck’s constant / mass x lightspeed also yields a figure for baryon wavelength commensurate with the above.
4) From 1), 2), and 3) the total number of baryons* (matter particles) in the universe comes out at 1080, or U4/3, a number which fits comfortably with estimates derived from the number of stars and galaxies in the universe and their masses.
5) That the above relationships seem exact now, suggests that either we live in a very atypical epoch of the universe or, more likely, that the expanding universe hypothesis remains a faulty interpretation of observational data which we could better explain using hypersphere cosmology.
*Note that ‘matter particles’ or ‘baryons’ here means either proton-electron pairs or neutrons (which have the same mass, and which can interconvert) and which in a ratio of about 3 to 1 account for virtually all the mass of the universe at 1060 Planck masses, (1052 kg.)
Thus we can not only see the entire universe in a grain of sand, we can also see it in a single subatomic particle of matter.
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Sculpture.
Herewith a midsummer sculpture for the gardens, a vertical sundial calibrated in situ for a south facing wall. Turdcrete over steel wire with a figure of Time/The Grim Reaper done in plumber’s tin solder with blowtorch and soldering iron. Photographed on Solstic morning, and hour and a half before Midday GMT and subsequent mounting high on wall. Sorry photo on side.
Provisionally titled ‘Life’s too Short to be an Asshole’.
Magic.
On Arcanorium College the Apophenia 2 course winds down after Her birthday in May and we examine the inspirations received.
Currently we discuss Lionel Snell’s book ‘My Years of Magical Thinking’, probably the most deep and profound work of Magical Philosophy ever published, alongside Matthew Hutson’s ‘The Seven Laws of Magical Thinking’ a rather slimmer and more populist book for civilians which nevertheless raises some interesting questions.
A new course/extended discussion and practical on the topic of EXPERIMENTAL BELIEF may follow shortly.
Physics.
The Standard Model (Lambda CDM) of Cosmology posits a big bang and states that the nature of reality prior to this ‘is’ unknowable and beyond the bounds of scientific inquiry.
The Standard Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics states that the nature of the underlying reality ‘is’ unknowable and beyond the bounds of scientific inquiry.
What a come on! Surely, as wizards we can do better than this.
I suspect that in both cases orthodox science has made some erroneous assumptions about Time.
In the cosmological domain the redshift in the wavelength of light from distant galaxies became misinterpreted as an expansion of space, and manifold nonsense has resulted, such as cosmic singularity, cosmic inflation, big bang, dark matter and dark energy - all forms of phlogiston required to patch up the discrepancies between the resulting mistaken theory and actual observations.
If instead theorists had concentrated on the frequency of cosmic light they might have modelled the decrease of frequency (Time rather than length) with cosmic distance in terms of a deceleration arsing from a small positive spacetime curvature A.
Thusly: - fo / fe = c – sqrt dA / c
Where f0 and fe mean observed and expected frequency, d means distance and A = GM/L2 (Gravitational constant times mass of universe over antipode distance squared).
This formula accounts for observed redshifts ((by frequency, (or wavelength if inverted)) without recourse to the hypothesis of a big bang and expanding universe and all the infinities and inconsistencies that this leads to.
In the quantum domain the standard assumption of unidirectional one-dimensional time renders the underlying reality inexplicable. Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation does however show how reversible time can explain interference patterns and entanglement.
All the basic equations of physics except for the second law of thermodynamics exhibit a potential time reversibility yet we do not often observe it simply because two-body collisions remain much more likely than three-body collisions and collisions involving even more bodies than that become fantastically unlikely, so stuff basically tends to break, and entropy creates an apparent arrow to time.
The curious wave-particle duality of both energy and matter quanta makes very little sense in a 3D space and 1D time manifold.
However, the transverse wave behaviour of quanta becomes easier to understand if we model it as a rotation of an otherwise unobserved vector that lies in a plane orthogonal to time as we measure it. If a plane of ‘imaginary’ time lies orthogonal to measured time it can account for various of the wavelike features of quanta, quantum superposition, and the apparent probabilistic and indeterminate behaviour of quanta. Imaginary time would act as a kind of pseudospace out of which particle like behaviour decoheres at measurement/wave function collapse.
A symmetrical hyperspherical 3D Time – 3D Space manifold might well explain the deep physics of this universe, and some of the curious phenomena of magic as well.
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Flat Universe?
Ah, the Scottish Highlands in spring, what a delight to see the still snow-capped Cairngorms, the sun kissed daffodils around the low roads, and my second granddaughter for the first time. What a surprise also to see The Flat Earth shop in Inverness and all the flat earth graffiti on the surrounding road signs; some people up there seem to take this as seriously as the Loch Ness Monster, and Dour Protestant sects by the bucket load.
Whilst I admire eccentricity and non-conformity, Flat-Earthism does seem rather vulnerable to immediate falsification. You may laugh but remember that almost the entire scientific community still subscribes to Flat Universe theory – the idea that exact Euclidian geometry applies to the whole universe thus giving it an overall zero curvature, a big bang beginning and a catastrophic ending.
You might think that the pervasive superstition of an explosively expanding universe suggests a negative curvature but by miraculous coincidence all the supposed mass within it supplies a positive curvature (gravity) just capable of arresting the supposed expansion given infinite time.
In centuries to come our descendants will laugh at Flat-Universism as heartily as we now laugh at Flat-Earthism. The cracks of its impending falsification have already appeared where you would most expect them – in the ‘crank’ scientific papers written by people such as myself.
The hypothesis of Hypersphere Cosmology for example: -
http://www.specularium.org/hypersphere-cosmology
shows that the universe has an observable positive curvature which we can see in the residual Pioneer deceleration, the retardation of the frequency of light when it traverses cosmic distances, and the diminution of type 1A supernovae luminosity due to cosmic hyperspherical lensing. Moreover, the hypothesis also explains the anomalous galactic rotation curves without dark matter and provides the only scenario in which Mach’s Principle of the origin of inertial mass can apply.
http://vixra.org/abs/1710.0066
All these parts of the hypothesis come with rigorous supporting mathematics.
Does any of this matter to us tiny humans on this quaint little planet in the suburbs of one unexceptional galaxy among billions?
Well it matters intensely to me because our views of the universe underlie our metaphysics and philosophies and religions and theories of magic, and thus what we believe about reality and thus how we live.
The big bang hypothesis with its big crunch or entropic fade-out ending seems a horrible sort of monotheistic style apocalyptic scenario from which humanity can never escape except to the imaginary transcendental realms of some great sky-fairy or other. This doesn’t encourage people to value this life or to look after this planet.
On the other hand, the Hypersphere Universe has no beginning and no ending, it has finite but unbounded extent in space and time – meaning that you can never fall off the ‘edge(s)’ of it in any dimension. Humanity could survive for effectively unlimited time if it proves clever enough to move to fresh habitats as stellar and galactic events render old ones unusable. Plus, the universe having effectively unlimited age will most certainly contain intelligences far older than our own that may eventually decide that we have become worth communicating with.
Meanwhile the extended Apophenia working on Arcanorium College continues to produce a splendid burst of inspiration and creativity in many fields.
For me it has led to the evolution of the structure of Square Rigger Chess as a sort of distraction activity (soon to appear on the games pages) whilst making some progress with the Quantum Hypersphere hypothesis. It has become clear that the phenomena of individual quanta depend on the phenomenon of the entire universe; as Hermes Trismegistus quipped – As Above, So Below.
Imagine a perfectly spherical planet with no land, just an entire surface of water. Drop a rock into it and circular waves spread out, eventually these waves will converge on the other side of the planet and get higher as the circles get smaller, finally producing a spike in the water as the inverse of the hole in the water that the rock made.
Three dimensional spherical waves in a hypersphere will do something analogous in a hypersphere. An antiparticle will appear at the antipode.
That an antiparticle appears at the antipode may seem a little odd. However, consider this – if you travel to the other side of this planet you end up upside-down with respect to your starting orientation, you have rotated 180 degrees. If instead of simply moving across a slightly curved plane to a terrestrial antipode, a particle moved right across/around the curved hyperspherical universe it would become rotated through all dimensions of space and time to become its mirror image antiparticle.
This all seems to fit in with Milo Woolf's ideas on particles as spherical standing waves, the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the hypersphere cosmology idea of antipodal particles having opposite matter/antimatter sign.
De Broglie hypothesised that matter quanta have the wave/particle duality that energy quanta exhibit, and indeed we can now demonstrate quantum entanglement, superposition, and tunnelling with matter quanta such as electrons. As the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics seems the only one capable of providing a physical-principle model for these phenomena then presumably the phenomenon of moving matter particles must also arise as a transaction process in which advanced waves move backwards in time.
Thus, the wave function of any quantum stretches all the way around the universe to its antipode point at about 14 billion light years away.
So, a photon, an electron, a proton, a ball bearing, this planet, you and I, all consist of interreference patterns that manifest as particles out of wave functions that extend right around the entire universe.
Om.
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Springblog
I feel thrilled to announce the spring arrival of a second Granddaughter. Mother, baby, and husband all doing great, they put this down to the hypno-birthing techniques they used, plus I guess an oat-fed hardy Highland lifestyle helps.
Life up there certainly has some big upsides, you can wander around the miniature city of Inverness without having to watch your back, and random people will strike up pleasant conversations with you and none of them seem mad or demand anything of you. Plus, you can actually observe people walking around or sitting down without the aid of mobile phones.
In a further celebration of spring all three ponds have started to fill with amphibia, frogs and toads in the mature ones and just frogs so far in the new one. Just in time for the spring equinox I finished and hung Sol Invictus on a south facing wall and readied the Moon for a propitious hanging date. These consist of ‘turdcrete’ (sheepswool and bracken compost with Portland cement) over steel wire frames, acrylic finish.
Have you noticed the appalling deterioration of political and social debate in the years since the development of the internet and social media? Debate seems to have descended into the hurling of insults, recycled soundbites and abstract memes. The words ‘fascist’ or 'phobic' seem to have become items of punctuation, and applied liberally to anyone the speaker fears to even enter debate with and would therefore rather no-platform to preserve the safe space inside their head which has become so fragile due to the abandonment of critical thinking. It seems that in this age of mass-alienation and too much information, so many people seek the identity and solace of niche-herd-minds and preformed opinions.
Perhaps that constitutes the secular substitute for religion these days. We used to value the principle of trying to see the others’ point of view, at least in secular matters, but if opinion and identity become a religion, that option goes.
Correspondents inform me that even the esoteric social media platforms have degenerated into factional invective these days.
As an antidote to all this Arcanorium College proudly announces that we will shortly conduct a Philosophy of Magic course, a leisurely debate over some months.
We shall conduct this as always, as men and women of letters.
