Paganarchy Press

David Rankine, author of many fine books including Becoming Magick, Climbing the Tree Of Life and Practical Planetary Magick (co-authored with the lovely Sorita D'Este) has written a very positive review of Liber Malorum.

Here's an excerpt of it:

Bernadette (or burn many if they are mounting up faster than your ability to pay them) is the patsy, the eye of reason exposed to the horned serpent selling sex, drugs, magick and music from the garden stall. She is the straight woman providing mundane rationality as a piece of malleable plasticine for the plethora of authors to tease into bizarre and fantastic shapes. This book is a literary psychedelic with special guest appearances from the good, the bad and the ugly.

I enjoyed this book and seriously suggest you give it a try.

Read the rest of the review on the the Esoteric Book Review website.

Go on.

hugs to all from Sean

Sara Mulryan from the fantastic Oracle Occult magazine has just reviewed Liber Malorum in the latest issue 9. Wow, I'm well chuffed with what she had to say about it! Read on:

---

“Do you have the courage to dream, create and destroy?
If your answer is no, please, read no further.”
Oath of the Conscious Metanoid
by Nathaniel J. Harris in Liber Malorum


So, just how do you begin to describe the Liber Malorum – is it a journey, an initiation, a revelation and an introduction to the mysteries? Could it be a ‘how-to’ manual; how-to join a cult, how-to clown, how-to renew your life, how-to lose your mind? Is it a collective of 23 cutting edge magickians, sorcerers and witches whose writing and life experiences have been woven together by a crazed fool into an 7th dimensional tapestry?

Is it a portal through which the innocent bystander can glimpse the workings behind the dashboard, gain a view of The Work at the edge of comprehension?


OR IS IT JUST A WORK OF
ENTERTAINING FICTION?

Read more

Mike Gleason, from The Pagan Activist has reviewed Liber Malorum. The Pagan Activist is a mammoth site with stacks of book reviews, forums, news, polls, sample spells and other useful and engaging pagan and activist inspired resources.

Mike gave Liber Malorum a full 5 moon rating! Here's a snippet of what he had to say:

Read more

Teal Talking Raven, one of the founding ministers of the original Companions Circle, has written a review of a chunk of Liber Malorum!!

Here's what is written:

"All the characters and incidents in this book are purely fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events that have taken place is purely coincidental synchronistic."

That official disclaimer before the beginning is a strong hint of the powerful foolishness that follows. After a fun prologue the book begins in The Garden (you know where) and poetically sheds new light on that infamous universal trouble-instigating scenario from an alternative perspective.

Chapter 56 (5 + 6 = Magical 11!) tells the story of a profound talk and discussion led by (book character) Seani Fool about the key elements of Fool Sorcery and the re-creative possibilities of funner chaos. My shaman-fool partner Chammy said that this chapter covers the 'gritty-nitty' of shamanic clowning.

So join us (you must show you aren't a bot) and read the exerpts digest these apples, then contact Sean for more possibilities. Yay fun restoration!

hugs to all from Seani Fool

What ho!

I just saw that the wonderful people at Freedom Press have published a review of Liber Malorum in their issue dated February 16th.

The reviewer writes:

The stories and poems of Liber Malorum quest variously into the realms of magic, witchcraft, anarchism, psychedelic drugs and sex. There are spiritual uprisings in the desert, rebellions in the groves and woods, pirates, criminals, faerie huggers, subversives queering from police cells, tricksters and shape shifters. Keep your eyes out too for the myriad of nuances, messages and codes throughout. This is the stuff of the underground cult classic.

I'm so chuffed it has been enjoyed! Read the full review here.

With that high note, I'm looking for other places to have Liber Malorum reviewed. If you can think of any, please let me know.

Hugs to all from Sean!

Good friend (and contributor to Liber Malorum) Henry Lauer wrote an article in 2003 titled Odin Has a Light Sabre. I've just re-read it for the first time since its launch and still find it every bit as delightful.

At the end of The Return of the Jedi (which I will refer to as Return from here on in), Luke Skywalker, the Jedi knight, finds himself confronting his dark Jedi father (Darth Vader) and Vader's malignant master, Emperor Palpatine. Palpatine tries to defeat Luke by exhorting him to "give into the hate" that dwells within him. Here we see the fundamental conflict of the Odinnic magician, of the child of Wodanaz. The struggle for Jedi (which are equivalent to magicians) like Luke and his father is to find equilibrium between light and darkness, between Asgard and Hel. Each has an important place in the whole, but when one dominates disaster results.

Read the full article here.

Ooh, I just found this semi-groovy site StoryCode. Forgive me if it's already old news now, but I've just discovered it. Apparently you tell it what sort of books you have enjoyed and it uses some intricate formula to determine which other books you'll like and it makes fairly comprehensive recommendations. Well someone on StoryCode has coded Liber Malorum.

The good news is that Liber Malorum has been given a 5 star Rating! ... but it has only 2 ticks for readability

Liber Malorum on StoryCode

Link: http://www.tdpf.org.uk/Policy_Timeline.htm

A fascinating and well-researched history of the prohibition of drugs, psychedelics and other intoxicants.

Freedom of the mind is just as important as freedom of the body. It is outrageous that anyone can stop explorers from conducting personal psychological research in the magical realms of mind-altering substances.

http://www.tdpf.org.uk/Policy_Timeline.htm

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUgod3BJzc0

A good mate of mine Cath Connolly is an amazing puppeteer - with a friend of hers she has produced this amazingly funny vid.

check it now

All my music reviews are now being posted on the Dilated Choonz MP3 blog. Go there to listen to the best choonage around.

Hooray! I finally found a copy of what is probably the best choon ever. The Monks' track "I Hate You" is generally considered by those in the know to be the first ever punk track. It has some very aggressive riffs, vocals and a catchy repeatable buzz line of "I hate you... but call me" and "You make me make me make me hate you baby... but call me".

What a powerful number it is. I'd only heard it once before and thought it was fantastic and it was always on the back of my mind to get it.

I found a copy of it on Optimo's Kill The DJ (Part 2) which is altogether a great album that you can buy from amazon.co.uk. I don't know much about Optimo, but you can check out the optimo site here.

Because I love good music and want you all to hear it, I've put a copy of "I Hate You" on my server which I'll keep up for a few weeks and which you can Listen to now. Please buy a copy if you like it and support good music!

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4857800.stm

My heroes are the women and men who have the courage to refuse immoral orders, who speak out against injustice and want to make amends for what they feel they have done wrong.

Here's a 22 min vid about some US soldiers just back from Iraq who are speaking out against the war. This is what we need more of.

Click "Former US Soldiers" to watch the vid.

Last Saturday, February 18th, Major NutCake and I went to Reclaim Love, a major love-in love-fest at the feet of the statue of Eros in Picadilly in London. The objective of the day: To Reclaim Love for the people. It was a party and a protest and a hippy shindig all rolled into one.

(image from Oscar Beard @ indymedia)

Reclaim Love every year on the saturday before St Valentines day. V Day brings out some extremes in people - on the one hand it is a day of widespread, quite gross commercialism where to prove your love for someone, you have to spend loads of dosh on cards, flowers and sweat-shop teddy bears. On the other hand, most people don't want to get suckered in by what is a consumerist waste machine so Valentines day leads to cynicism right?

Oh-so-many people are oh-so-sick of this ugly commercialism that they do not in any way celebrate St. Valentines day. They do not celebrate this global day of love because they are turned off by what is a blatant dash-for-cash.

Up step the Reclaim Love movement! By Reclaiming Love from the consumerist machine, and by allowing ourselves to celebrate Love in all its raw power, we avoided the worst of both darkened worlds - we don't get suckered in by the need to consume, and we don't poison our hearts with cynicism.

Instead we had a great day! About 1000 people were out on the streets including capoeiristas, puppetistas, funky bro's and funky sisters, clowns, fairies, . It was an all-age, all-gender, all-colour event with the block-rocking Samba Band and the Pedal Powered Sound System.... Saw loads of people there that I hadn't seen in ages: old friends, lovers and ritualistas from various parties, protests and love-ins from all over the way. All with one goal in common - we were there celebrating Love.

It seems to me that Love is the most powerful of all the emotions. It can really make your day, or ruin your year. It can bring extreme joy and dizzing delight - but unreturned love can also bring suicidal death and hell. Surely the most powerful of all emotions! As Eros has a great way with Love, that Eros is the real ruler of the universe as we know it. Eros is also a trickster, so I as a rebel clown I can really relate to his vibe. Today Eros, you are the god of all.

Venus, the main organiser of Reclaim Love promises to post some photos of the event on her site soon. They'll be posted on this gallery page.

Indymedia coverage: [ photos | video 1 | video 2 ]

I recevied this short letter via email

"well done mate, you've got a wish list on the web-site of a massively rich corporation... I love your tactic of tackling consumerism, by getting people to spend money on you...no. That's not cool." - Dan Harris

A good point raised there Dan!

I've always said the only think I want to keep with me when I finally settle down somewhere is the collection of books I've read. If I was to pass on something to any potential offspring, it would be my books as they largely go to create who I am. Most of my ideas come from the books and texts I've read.

But on the other hand, rampant consumerism is without doubt one of the biggest issues facing our global environment and it needs to be curbed quickly. We all need to choose way more carefully the material objects we spend money on. With that said, I think books are probably one of the safer bets. Books and bicycles!

Dan, thanks for your input. I do still believe books are really essential in my life so the wish-list stays. I will, however, endeavour to find a less corporate outlet to put my list on in the near future. If you know of any eco-friendly, book co-operatives, please let me know...

Cheeers,

Sean

image lifted from ChAOrder website

This Summer Solstice just past (well, 5 months ago), I was a spectator/participant in Parzival: The Fool's Journey on Glastonbury Tor organised by The HermAphroditic ChAOrder of the SILVER DUSK. It was a beautiful and thought-provoking journey into the split between spirit and flesh that seems to stump many pagans and occultists these days. Pictures and video of the event have just been posted online here. If you get a chance to be part of an event put on by the ChAOrder, do so!