Monday28 Jan 11:22 AM
Ultraculture Journal One
Real magic happens when you drop the bullshit and remember that you’re God. Just like everybody else. No ritual required.So what are you doing?
Jason Louv, Mokshadelica, Ultraculture Journal One
Jason Louv, of Generation Hex infamy, has recently published the inaugural issue of a new journal, Ultraculture. It's a provocative and entertaining blend of art, mysticism, and Tantric thought.
Several years back, I had listened to a podcast interview with Louv and was impressed by his apparent levelheadedness and astute critique of modern western magick, calling for more practice and less theory. This meme is more fully demonstrated within the pages of Ultraculture and resonates with my own approach —which echoes Sri K. Pattabhi Jois's addage, "Ninety-nice percent practice, one percent theory" (itself reminiscent of Ben Franklin's perspiration/inspiration breakdown too, no?) For me this perspective is informed by a daily, non-verbal practice of ashtanga yoga, wherein the chatter of the mind and its grasping and gloating —"Why am I doing this?", "What is happening?", "Check this out!" or even "What is right or wrong about this pose?"— slowly becomes dampened by diligence, repetition, steadiness and surrender. This in turn allows space, patience, and perspective to emerge, a.k.a., The Observer.
Practice over theory is a tall order for a 420 page (primarily) electronic journal, and not entirely the aim. It has a sweet and somewhat Nietschean ambition to manifest our cultural Ubermensch. There are, of course, holes and distortions in this ego-gravity well. When it shines, however, the raw yet thoughtful spirit and energy, the ties to the hipster art and music world, and the often-excellent writing celebrates these holes like Goedel celebrates incompleteness. When it wallows, it becomes mired by these very same tasty Karmas: iconoclasm, humility and ego gravity, and the serpentine snarl of Chaos magick and assorted other esoteric black, bad-boy arts.
Louv and several of the contributors are largely influenced by Mahendranath and his Western Nath sampradaya(s). And there's definitely a strong strain of Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj non-duality. My favorite piece so far has been Ganesha Baba's clear and enjoyable Causal Comogeny & Cosmology. But there's a lot more treats as well: articles by cultural luminaries like Brion Gysin, Ira Cohen and Genesis P-Orridge.; a travelogue through India & Tibet; fiction and nonfiction by Louv and his band of Western neo-tantric practitioners. It's worth checking out by anyone interested in yoga and tantra in the today's global east-west con-fusion.
Most “magical systems” are either sterile and ineffective or will quickly hand your sorry ass over to “higher” entities who will gladly use you as a pawn in their old and feeble games because you were too weak to plot your own destiny and tap your own innate “magic.” And perhaps all of the freaky coincidences, the pressing late-night god contacts, the psychedelic grandeur, the arcane theories, the frantically-assigned meanings, the interstellar conspiracies, the greedily gathered flashes of insight and wisdom—perhaps, real as they can be, they’re simply more “stuff” at the end of the day, like the endlessly hypnotic lightshows and entity communications users of DMT or Salvia divinorium report as appearing to distract one from the real shit.
Jason Louv, Mokshadelica, Ultraculture Journal One
Link.
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Fri 01 Feb 2008 at 04:10PM
Andy
thanks for many links to explore, interconnections to think about...
after seeing this post I ran into this Alan Moore doc (whom I think I became aware of thru another Souljerky post) In it, he discusses Dr Sheldrake, 66 minutes in...
Here.
I think Watchmen is being filmed here now...
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