Running Your Own Cult:
Do's and Don'ts

ne of Aleister Crowley’s mottos was “the method of science, the aim of religion.” Just how well does the method of science apply toward understanding magick? Get ready to wear a lab coat over your ceremonial robes as we join Meta-Magick author Philip H. Farber for a six-week series of experiments in internet- and home-based magick.

We’ll begin with hypotheses based on possible neurological, physiological, psychological or philosophical explanations. From these, we’ll create experiments that we can perform at home or in virtual asynchronous gatherings. Expect thorough exploration of:

Remote phenomena – can we share information over a distance? What factors might hinder this and what factors can we employ to make it possible? Can we see, hear, feel, taste or smell things distant from our sense organs? Can we influence each other remotely?

Language – how much does our language affect our magical outcomes? Do changes in phrasing, syntax, or content change our magical results?

Ritual – how much does ritual structure contribute to the kinds of things we experience as magical? Does ritual performed physically give better results than that performed mentally?

Dreaming – can we use our nightly glimpses into the unconscious mind for magical purposes? How does lucid dreaming work? Can we share information or experiences through dreams?

Most of us have some opinions or beliefs about magick – let’s test those ideas out in controlled ways. I hope to take this into uncharted territory and document some real magick in replicable ways!

Text and multi-media will be provided. Make Uncle Al proud: come prepared to participate! (And, actually, neither lab coats nor ceremonial robes will be necessary – the only prerequisite or preparation will be your willingness to experiment!)

Based in the law of octaves, the 8-Circuit Brain was revisioned as a system for intelligence increase by Timothy Leary (Info-Psychology), given socio-political context by Robert Anton Wilson (Prometheus Rising) and expanded into practical applications for personal integration by Antero Alli (Angel Tech). This legacy informs a comprehensive study and practice of dynamic techniques capable of triggering actual results c thatan be measured, repeated and developed on your own. All eight circuits will be covered, as well as their specific internal supports and, the initiation into and out of Chapel Perilous. Once understood and redefined in your own terms, this eight circuit model can become an open-ended system for precision tracking and interpretation of signals within oneself, the world and beyond. If you are ready to test and nurture the existing conditions of your autonomy and integrity, while increasing your intelligence, this course may be for you.

Building on Alan Clements' book Instinct for Freedom and acclaimed show, Spiritually Incorrect--An Existential Anti-War Comedy, described as "Lenny Bruce meets Noam Chomsky" and "Michael Moore meets Krishnamurti," Alan Clements, a former Buddhist monk and war correspondent, and Jeannine Davies, a co-founder of the World Dharma vision, will lead a course entitled "World Dharma -- Following One's Instinct for Freedom -- Finding Liberation Through Living."

The course offers a unique approach to human/spiritual development that is common to all people--an engaged mysticism based in one precious human value: freedom, the liberation from fear, ignorance, and dogma, and the elevation of dignity, conscience, and beauty.

Peter Carroll, the foremost modern pioneer of Chaos Magick, is taking a sabbatical from a self-imposed exile in the ivory tower of esoteric research to engage once again with those who would practise the strange art and science of magic.

The course is an experimental approach to the basic techniques and philosophical underpinings of modern magick. Expect the unexpected. The adventure begins in known territory, but with the hope of reaching the unknown.

Course includes instructor-led forum discussions, additional readings, practical and magical exercises, weekly study questions and instructor-led group online-chat sessions.

QUESTION AUTHORITY/
CHALLENGE AUTHORITY

In this course, we will explore challenges to authoritarianism and work towards the creation of the “Question Authority Coalition and Education Project.” We will read and discuss a variety of anti-authoritarian ur-texts that are available on the internet taken from various points in human history and try to tease out their lessons for our current times. We will evolve new statements for public dissemination. We will leave the class prepared to soundly thrash the Bible thumpers while defending their freedom to be stoopid.

Besides exploring classic and modern texts in anarchism, libertarianism, the enlightenment, and post-modernist styles of anti-authoritarianism, we will look deeply into memetics –how ideas, attitudes, and behaviors spread throughout human society. And we will engage in memetics by developing a Question Authority website and possibly other related projects. Participants will be invited to continue working on the website and other projects beyond the length of the class.

Non-Euclidean Politics:
Beyond Left and Right

The Goddess Path
Myths, Invocations & Rituals

Take a trip into your own mind to discover your innate magical abilities and your relationship to gods, goddesses, loas, orishas, fictional characters, corporations, schools of thought, social movements, and world-changing works of art.

Meta-Magick draws on diverse roots, including Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), martial arts, memetics, applied kinesiology, hypnosis, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, yoga, Taoism, neuro-scientific discoveries, and much more, in addition to Western esoteric traditions. Meta-Magick offers tools and systems to uncover, observe and replicate phenomena in ways that can be calibrated and tested. This results in a collection of diverse behaviors, techniques, and patterns that we can combine in creative ways, resulting in new rituals, works of art, entities, schools of thought, new paradigms and so on. "Meta" means "above" or "beyond," and "Meta-Magick" signifies magick that enables us to think about magick and produce magick. It is magick about magick.

With the techniques of Meta-Magick, we all become the creators of our own traditions, the originators of our own magick. With practice, these become just as rich as - or even richer than - the historical traditions.

Meta-Magick dovetails nicely with most existing schools of magick (and is great for newcomers, too), adding practical methods to calibrate experience, test results, and really and truly change your world.

Take advantage of this opportunity to work with Meta-Magick creator Philip H. Farber and explore the future of magick!

This new, live version of Meta-Magick: Where Magick Meets the Brain includes exercises adapted for the solo practitioner, suggestions for group online exploration, and much more.

Everything is changing, most of all the institutions which have acted both as providers and gatekeepers to culture, knowledge and power. The tables have been turned; now power sits squarely in our own hands. All of this is so sudden and so new that we have no sense of how to put this new-found power to work. Yet all of it hinges on a single point: we have learned how to share with one another, and every day we share ever-more-effective ways of sharing with one another. This, by itself, is enough to change the course of history.

Join with me as I document the changes and challenges of this new era in the pages of my next book, Share This Book! I intend to open up the creative process, to make sharing not just the core idea of the book, but the way the book comes into being. Share This Course! offers an opportunity to participate in re-thinking the way creativity works: no longer a singular author locked in a garret, but a community of like-minded individuals engaged in a common task, working toward a common goal. All of this is new, so Share This Course! will be as much about process as product: How do we share ideas? How do we format them coherently? How do we move from conception to execution?

If this sounds interesting – or at least intriguing – please do come join with me as we open the door on a new kind of collaboration, one which will become the cornerstone of 21st century culture. Share This Book! needs a sharing community to come into being, and Share This Course! is the place where this community will meet. Come play with us, and create a new way of creation.

Based in the law of octaves, the 8-Circuit Brain was revisioned as a system for intelligence increase by Timothy Leary ("Info-Psychology"), given socio-political context by Robert Anton Wilson ("Prometheus Rising") and expanded into practical applications for personal integration by Antero Alli ("Angel Tech"). This legacy informs a comprehensive study and practice of dynamic techniques capable of triggering actual results that can be measured, repeated and developed on your own. All eight circuits will be covered, as well as their specific internal supports and, the initiation into and out of Chapel Perilous. Once understood and redefined in your own terms, this eight circuit model can become an open-ended system for precision tracking and interpretation of signals within oneself, the world and beyond. If you are ready to test and nurture the existing conditions of your autonomy and integrity, while increasing your intelligence, this course may be for you.

Our ancestors once had to hunt for words in libraries and bookstores. Today, vast torrents of words pour into our homes via modems and networks. The new familiarity with flowing, scrolling text gives many of us a new ease with words - and yet we rarely lift the lid on the word machine to learn what makes them effective, how we respond to language patterns, and what distinguishes fantastic and inspiring prose from ordinary efforts.

Words and the World will explore the structure of textual interaction to gain insight into how to get the most from our own words. In the process, we'll highlight how our minds use words to create beliefs, belief systems and the models that we sometimes mistake for "reality."

In the meatspace, offline that is, NLP is taught in seminar settings that emphasize face to face interaction. That's an awesome way to gain skills - to use offline. Increasingly, though, our business, pleasure, education, and enlightenment can be found in e-mail, on the web, on networking sites, blogs, IMs and online forums.

Come prepared to participate in the online equivalent of an NLP seminar. We will put our skills to practice with found text and with each other. Exercises will address linguistic use in chat, web pages, forum debate, academic writing, fiction and much more. Enroll now to develop powerful text skills, flexible enough to keep pace with the online info-flow. Newbies as well as experienced cybernauts, writers, and NLPers will have some linguistic thrills to hone their interactive skills.

Our most extraordinary experiences—mystical insights, psychedelic voyages, visionary fever-dreams, magical trances—are often said to be ineffable, beyond language. And yet a lot of us want to talk, write, and read about them all the time. This hands-on course is designed for those driven to express the inexpressible, or who are fascinated by others who try. Using a combination of readings, voluntary writing exercises, and both group and individual feedback, we will refine our ability to express, reflect, and communicate our most transcendent and peculiar experiences to others—and to ourselves.

Whether you are interested in telling your own unique story, or in exploring the boundaries between language and consciousness, a great deal can be gained through the alchemy of writing the extraordinary. For those invested in becoming more engaging writers, such experiences challenge us to develop new and more powerful skills. At the same time, reading and writing about the extraordinary will also help us refine our own capacity to experience the extraordinary in the first place. The proof is in the pudding.

Each week we will read and discuss brief texts by Paul Bowles, Suzuki Roshi, Aleister Crowley, and others. At the same time, participants will be encouraged to share their own accounts, and to offer constructive feedback and reflection for others. During the course, participants will also have the opportunity (not required) to work privately with me on a specific account, availing themselves to my decades of writing and teaching experience.