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The Limits of Psychedelia - The Non-Revolution of the Leary Set

Birth of a Psychedelic Culture: Conversations about Leary, the Harvard Experiments, Millbrook and the Sixties (2009) Ram Dass and Ralph Metzner Interviewed and Edited By Gary Bravo  The ghost at the centre of this invaluable testimony about the early days of consciousness studies surrounding drugs that alter mental states is, of course, the late Dr. Timothy Leary. This is the well edited transcript of a conversation, mediated by Gary Bravo, between Leary's two main associates in the experimentation that took place, first at Harvard, then at various experimental locations and finally at the Millbrook Commune, between 1960 and 1966 - Richard Alpert (here in his later ego as Ram Dass) and Ralph Metzner. Both Dass and Metzner moved on from psychedelic studies to Eastern Tradition spiritual and West Coast consciousness studies respectively, while Leary became part of something that might be called part cultural phenomenon and part resistance movement against authority that h...
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The Mysteries of the Organism - Nakedness, Magic and Mysticism

Sexual Magick & Other Essays (1988) Katon Shual   The Secret History of Western Sexual Mysticism (2008) Arthur Versluis   A Brief History of Nakedness (2010) Philip Carr-Gomm   If you are looking for some 'how to' manual involving dark side practices, Shual's Sexual Magick is not the book for you. Rather it is a sensitive and humane investigation of the role of the sexual in modern magical practice and it is thoroughly liberal in tone. Katon Shual is the pseudonym of the Oxford-based magician, Mogg Morgan, who has done much in such circles to bring the somewhat harsh and masculinised world of Crowley and Grant into line with modern liberal and tolerant culture. The high point for me was an extended 'rant', allegedly from the God Set, against not Christianity (the usual target of neo-pagan resentment) but late paganism as it developed under the Roman elite. For a simple account of how neo-pagans see sexuality in quasi-political and cultural terms, pag...
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Eco-Thought and the Mind of the Engineer - Buckminster Fuller on Spaceship Earth

Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth (1969) R. Buckminster Fuller I came to this 1969 cult 'classic' in the fervent hope that it might allow me, finally, to 'get' modern environmentalism for which this is a seminal text. Part of my subsequent lack of enthusiasm is down to style. There is no doubt that Buckminster Fuller was a genius of sorts - at least as an engineer, planner and technologist - but he writes like a 'speak your weight' machine with a propensity for creating neologistic compound words that would put German philosophy to shame. Far from inspiring, the man just cannot write imaginative prose and yet his subject cries out for imagination. I am sure that he says precisely what he means but it is next to impossible to sustain an interest while being hectored by a person, no doubt kindly in intention in his way, who is egotistical to the nth degree - a 'speech-talker', as my daughter would term such types. Still, great thoughts are ...
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Taoism

The Principles of Taoism (2000) Paul Wildish The Principles of Taoism is an excellent and very readable basic account of Taoism in Thorsons' 'Principles of ...' series. It covers not only the basics of the belief system in both its philosophical and religious forms but gives a solid and rounded account of its history and its influence on Chinese medicine and martial arts. Personally, I find Taoism a highly amenable philosophy and approach to religion even if I cannot wholly engage with it myself. It is possibly the most humane of ancient philosophical paths but it is highly culture-specific in its general forms even if its basic philosophy can be studied with profit outside East Asia and the Chinese diaspora. It is not, however, without flaws. The most obvious one derives from what tends to happen when 'essentialist' a priori reasoning gets hold of reality and then tries to bend it to its will - this is the so-called Outer Alchemy, derived from an ove...
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The 'Introducing Series' and Philosophy

Introducing Eastern Philosophy (1992) Richard Osborne   Introducing Baudrillard (1996) Chris Horrocks   Introducing Nietzsche (1997) Richard Gane & Richard Appignanesi  Introducing Lacan (2000) Darian Leader & Richard Appignanesi Introducing Existentialism Richard Appignanesi Between 1965 and 1975, there was a series called 'The Bluffers Guide to ...' This provided short light-hearted introductions designed to get the middle classes through their dinner parties. Today we have the far more serious Oxford 'Very Short Introductions to ..." which started in 1995. Inbetween came instant graphic guides to intellectuals and ideas - the 'Introducing ..." series published by Icon which was an expanded British version of an American series 'For Beginners' that went back to the 1970s. These dominated the instant knowledge market in the 1990s. The series included graphic accounts of significant modern philosophers and ideas. The original idea be...
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