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I’ve started a Substack Newsletter – Unfoldings – for those who want to be informed of my various projects – upcoming lectures, new books, and Twisted Trunk publications. Whilst there will be some crossover with enfolding, the newsletter will mostly feature different content to what I post here – observations, reflections, ruminations and passing fancies. Sign up using the link below.
In this final (for now) post on tantric tattvas, I will discuss the tattva schema given by Lakṣmīdhara, from his 16th century commentary on the Saundaryalahari (“Flood of Beauty”).
Continue reading »I should say at the outset that Brooke Palmieri and I are friends, so this review will be somewhat biased. Just as the pandemic hit, we were drawing up plans for a queer anthology collection, but Covid put paid to it. Bargain Witch: Essays in Self-Initiation (Dopamine 2025, 282pp, p/bk) is a collection of autobiographical essays dealing with a wide range of subjects relating to Brooke’s journey into magic and queer relationality
Continue reading »“The God, whose nature is a free consciousness, whose characteristic is the supreme light, due to his own intrinsic nature and as a result of his enjoyment of the sport of concealing his own nature, becomes the atomic, finite self, of which there are many. He himself, as a result of his own freedom, binds himself here by means of actions whose nature are composed of imaginary differentiations. Such is the power of the God’s freedom that, even though he has become the finite self, he once more truly attains his own true form in all its purity.”
Abhinavagupta
Continue reading »This essay, originally published on the London Tantra Group wiki, is the first part of three pieces in which I attempted to make sense of the tattva schemas central to yoga and the tantric traditions.
Continue reading »“They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the words have been spoken and the rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with their voices and the earth mutters with their consciousness.”
The Necronomicon, The Dulwich Horror, H.P. Lovecraft
The Nyarlathotep Coven was a collective of magicians from a variety of backgrounds who came to work together to explore Lovecraftian magic.
Continue reading »A brief account of Durgā’s battle with Mahiṣa, followed by a meditation on Durgā and some notes on the Navadurgās. These were all originally entries in the London Tantra Group wiki.
Continue reading »A few notes on the goddess Bagalāmukhī, expanded from an entry in the London Tantra Discussion Group wiki.
“I meditate on Bagalamukhi, who with her hammer has killed my adversary, his unsteady rolling tongue having been pegged; the all pervading paralyser of speech and mind; who is seated on the corpses and skulls of one’s fallen enemies,(their remains forming the base) for her lion throne in the pavilion in the centre of a beautiful blossoming red lotus in the midst of the nectar-milk ocean.”
Hymn to Bagalāmukhī, translated by Mike Magee.
Some reflections on speaking and listening following a discussion at the London Tantra Discussion Group.
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The Gaṇeśa Upaniṣad is one of the central texts of the Gāṇapatya Sampradāya, the groups of devotees for whom Gaṇeśa was the supreme divinity. These groups are thought to have arisen from the 10th century onwards, although there has been comparatively little written about them by contemporary scholars. The Gaṇeśa Upaniṣad belongs to the class of Hindu texts that are considered to be revelatory – śruti – “that which is heard”, and in some quarters, are held to be without ‘origin’. It is a manifestation of a particular ‘Truth’. Like other Upaniṣads, it is not merely to be studied as a written text, but to be spoken – the text not only functions as instructive scripture, but also as a performative liturgy – the act of speaking the Upanishad becomes a revelatory experience. This translation is by the late Mike Magee, and the footnotes are my own.
Continue reading »Another essay from the London Tantra Discussion Group wiki – this time, a reflection on mudras following a retreat the group held in 2002.
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