This wasn’t a book I expected to read cover to cover. Not because it’s large, but because a goodly chunk of it is a list of herbs and essential oils and how they are used. In my mind, it was a book to flip through and then return to as needed. But I did...
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I like museums. I have always liked museums. Especially the British Museum. I don’t want to say it’s an unhealthy obsession but I don’t know anyone else who has visited these items as often as I have. And I like Ancient Egypt. It’s been an obsession since before I was ten. But I don’t...
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I bought this delightful little book from a discounted bookstore on my local high road. The bookstore itself is amazing -one of the benefits of witnessing the complete collapse of the publishing industry is that there are bargains to be had for ghouls like us. All you need to do is find a remainder...
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Oh, Sherlock Holmes. I never really liked you. You are an Edwardian Tory fantasy of upper class superiority and that doesn’t sit well with me. You expect me to believe that this meddling gentleman is somehow vastly superior to professional police officers and scientists who; like good plebeians; come cap-in-hand to one of their...
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I didn’t have high hopes for this show. Don’t get me wrong, I was always going to watch it. If you pay your license fee you might as well check in with the BBC whenever it produces a new comedy to see where your non-David-Attenborough money is being spent. In my head I figured...
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Here’s something I already knew. Some/most of my favourite historical personalities accomplished the things that make them my favourites whilst drunk. John Adams, for instance, liked to start each day with a couple of pints of cider. Even up until the 1820s, you wouldn’t be given water in London hospitals, you would be given...
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As we all know, Bilbo tricked his dragon. (At least to start with.) But then, it’s not like a hobbit would beat a dragon in a fair fight. No one would. I’ve been thinking about this in terms of reptilian metaphor for the amygdala. You know that ‘lizard’ part of your brain? You can’t...
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I’m still trying to work out what, if anything, is left of a magician if you remove the actual practice of magic. This is that ‘integration’ thing I have been looking at. Because, however many energy exercises you do on the tube or however many daily sigils you launch, you are still spending most...
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So if you haven’t read it, I listed the details of a little book game I used to play. And so far there has been some really great responses. As Steve pointed out, it’s unbelievably helpful in working out what your core influences are. But it’s also a really good tool to assess your...
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We like books. If someone asks us to recommend a book then we most certainly will. And some of us have recently been asked to do just that. Having given this some thought, I’m going to attempt something a little less helpful: A history of chaos magic through a century of seminal texts. There...
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