
Show Notes
The seeds of chaos magic, uncovered in the unlikely context of a 1975 children’s book on chance and probability. We take a nostalgic romp through some of the fascinations and shortcomings of a scientistic take on magic, which seems to have formed a significant current in the 70s zeitgeist.
Our text for this episode is Chance, Luck & Destiny, by Peter Dickinson (London: Victor Gollancz, 1975).
For more about the book and Dickinson’s account of its origin, see https://tinyurl.com/yhks8vxe (peterdickinson.com). Accessed October, 2024. On the same website are details of all Dickinson’s books, including The Changes trilogy (The Devil’s Children, Heartsease, and The Weathermonger).
Support the podcast by joining my Patreon at: https://patreon.com/oeith. Buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/oeith or https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dbarfordG. Or you could send me a lovely book from https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/1IQ3BVWY3L5L5?ref_=wl_share. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from The Obscure Occult Book Report (TOOBR)
New podcast. Available from the usual places. Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford, editors of a forthcoming collection of Aleister Crowley's magical writings, discuss the true meaning of Crowley's legacy and thought. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A collection of fictional writings that break the traditional rules of storytelling leads us into a consideration of how writing might be used for magical purposes.
We consider in detail some intriguing and sometimes startling true cases, exploring a text that offers frank and practical guidance to psychotherapists on how they should respond when paranormal forms of communication occur within therapy.
An obscure and possibly much underrated poltergeist case, from 1938, is our springboard into issues concerning how a psychoanalytical approach to paranormal investigation radically recontextualises the notion of “faked” versus “genuine” psychical phenomena.
Can discarnate entities take possession of human beings? We consider an academic text that attempts to build a serious case by drawing on the work of Frederic Myers and considering evidence offered by the nature of dissociative states and hypnosis.