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Ultraculture Journal One

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Boy in a Suitcase

18:01 / 25.03.07

www.ultraculture.org

Ultraculture Journal One is AVAILABLE NOW, featuring many Barbelith members.

UC1 collects under one cover the most volatile and direct magickal writing currently available in the English language. It will change you at the cellular level. You have been forewarned.

6" x 9", 418 pages, perfect bound, $23.

This is the "Beta" edition as the publication is currently awaiting an ISBN and barcode for distribution on Amazon and in stores; it is available to purchase now without a barcode in what is sure to soon be a limited collector's item...

It is also available as a $10 shareware download.

This issue includes:

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on the holographic Garden of Eden

Brion Gysin’s travelogue of his journey to Alamut, the citadel of the Assassins

Lalitanath and Shivanath on the Magick Path of Tantra

Jason Louv’s essential guide to Western magick

Peter-R. Koenig on the occult career of David Bowie

Beat legend Ira Cohen on John Dee and the Kumbh Mela, the biggest religious festival in the world

Dave Lowe and Hans Plomp travel across India’s mountains and rivers without end

The psychedelic rantings of Ganesh Baba, the world’s most tripped-out guru

Johnny Templar broadcasts live from the tomb of Christian Rosenkreutz

Mordant Carnival on working with Loki, the Man With the Tattered Smile

Elijah casts a Spell to Open the Sky

Joel Biroco on the “War on Terror”

Prince Charming interviews Tibetan Tantric Adept Monica Dechen Gyalmo

New fiction from Jason Louv

New lyrics from the late Jhonn Balance of Coil and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Treasure chests full of rituals, reviews and wish-granting genies

Cover by Nelson Evergreen

The first in a series, Ultraculture Journal promises to catalyze a twenty-first century actually worth living in.

Welcome to the psychedelic make-out party at the beginning of history.

www.ultraculture.org

18:07 / 25.03.07

Woo hoo!

Going over to the website now to buy it.

18:54 / 25.03.07

Started reading it, picking out bits here and there.

An excellent article by Boy in a Suitcase that serves as both a magical memoir and a solid introduction to the theory and practice of Western ceremonial magic.

And Mordant Carnival has a fantastic piece on working with Loki that, once again, includes not just theory and lore but detailed notes on practical work.

Great stuff!

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:07 / 25.03.07

I'm dipping in here and there. I like the fact that most of the articles are very experience oriented: what people did, how they did it, what happened next. Not much bedroom theorising going on here.

16:10 / 26.03.07

How's the Biroco? I like his Yijing site.

16:26 / 26.03.07

What's $23 in pounds?

16:37 / 26.03.07

17:31 / 26.03.07

Ah- £12.67.

18:09 / 26.03.07

Awesome! I bought the book and reading the shareware PDF version.

21:22 / 26.03.07

buying it thursday -- from what i've seen, it looks pretty "woo" inspiring.

21:39 / 26.03.07

Well I enjoyed Generation Hex thouroughly and bought this as soon as I knew it was out. Just waiting on it arriving. Expecting it to be as good.

Not going to dive into the PDF though. Loving Nelson's art as always and very much looking forward to reading MC's contribution.

10:12 / 27.03.07

Wow, it looks fantastic! Can't wait to have a look. x

12:41 / 27.03.07

Jason Louv's guide to western magick better be essential or else I'm going to ask for my goddamn money back!

Seriously though, it sounds well good, especially Mordant's stuff about Loki. I'll be back with some feedback once I've actually read the thing.

13:19 / 27.03.07

The Jason Louv articles are pretty good. One complaint: The Genesis P. Orridge stuff reads alot like LSD/Datura rantings and I am not really getting into it while sober.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:49 / 03.04.07

Hate to be a party-pooper here, but as with Gen Hex UC1 has a rather low ladycount. I count 14 mans and a Genesis Breyer P-Orrige. The FI presence consists of me and one other.

This is a ghastly omen. I fear for the future.

23:53 / 03.04.07

Perhaps that can be remedied next issue with contributions from the likes of xk, rosie x, and Ember Leo, among others.

If they're interested, that is.

23:58 / 05.04.07

Seems like neat stuff, will remember to check this out, and Generation Hex, instead of being an utter-douche and not owning either. (and no, you're not an utter-douche for not owning either, but I am, because I'm sure that I could do with both.)

Hope things are going well for you anyway, and good luck with this and whatever else you're doing!

Epop Bastart the Justified, I

18:18 / 06.04.07

Shaktinath is female.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:46 / 06.04.07

So she is. My apologies. However, that takes the ladycount up to a grand total of 3.

Epop Bastart the Justified, I

19:18 / 06.04.07

By and large, the women are out having kids and stuff. Seen "Great Housewives of Art"?

What's the Barbelith male/female ratio like?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:28 / 06.04.07

By and large, the women are out having kids and stuff.

I am reading this comment as a deliberate attempt to give offence. Is that what you intended? If not, would you care to, as the local jargon has it, unpack a little?

What's the Barbelith male/female ratio like?

Friteful. I'd definately like to see a higher cunt-count rounde here too. However, it's not immediately clear to me how the MI:FI ratio of one messageboard has to do with the apparent dearth of women writing about magic and spirituality.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:37 / 06.04.07

(To be very clear: I am taking the FI:MI discrepancy in this particular publication to be a reflection of a broader issue in modern magical writing, rather than attempting to imply that the editor is standing on a chair screaming about girl cooties and handling all the submissions from women with sugar-tongs.)

19:45 / 06.04.07

By and large, the women are out having kids and stuff.

I'm pretty sure it also takes a male partner to make babies. Unless I didn't get a memo?
Also does someone need a hand with finding modern female artists of note, 'cause I'd be happy to give you a list of them if you'd like.

19:46 / 06.04.07

I should qualify that with an emphasis on the *make* part not on the *raise* part.

19:50 / 06.04.07

Perhaps that can be remedied next issue with contributions from the likes of xk, rosie x, and Ember Leo, among others.

Sure if anyone wants me to write about some of the Ordeal stuff or related topics just send me a PM.

Boy in a Suitcase

20:59 / 06.04.07

OK. This is ridiculous.

Normally I don't respond to this type of thing but I am tired of this coming up so let me make this very clear.

I sent out calls for submission for Gen Hex and UC1 across the internet months or, in the case of Gen Hex, *years* before publication date. I published the best submissions I was given. The end. If you are waiting for somebody to come to *you* to write something because you think you're special for whatever reason, you do not have what it takes to be a writer. I'm sorry, that's just not how it works.

Both of my projects have been as open to public submission as a book could possibly be. Mordant, you sent me a professional article that was well-written, required little editing and actually said something of use. So I published it. It really is that simple.

I am in the business of publishing the best *writing* I can find. Which I did.

If you missed the huge and incredibly important article from the female *Master* (www.nathsociety.org) in the front of the book, you clearly didn't read the book before going off about gender imbalance. May I suggest you do so in the future. Also, if you believe there is a gender imbalance in magickal writing in general, may I suggest you take a look at the catalogs of both Llewellyn and Weiser Books as a representative sample.

I am also baffled yet again that this issue has only been raised by a contributor to the book, and not at all by the general public. Why is that?

As a final note, let me point out that it took me exactly three weeks to compile, edit, design, publish and market this book, with nothing more than an Apple laptop and $150 to cover the purchase of the ISBN number. Anybody can do the same. In fact, the ISBN is optional. If you feel that you have a voice that is being misrepresented, I am happy to answer questions about getting it into circulation via the indie publishing process. If you have a professionally done manuscript, I am even happy to consider it for publication.

Thank you.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:17 / 06.04.07

Now hold your horses.

I didn't "go off" about the gender imbalance. No, I'm not done reading the entire book yet because I have a reading list a mile long so yeah, admittedly, I have been skimming the PDF to read the articles that grabbed my eye and I'll get to the rest when my hard copy arrives. I believe the tone of my initial post was very much "quick headcount" rather than anything more indepth.

I mentioned what I saw as a gender imbalance, that's all. I've made it very clear that this was not an attack on you or on the journal, but that I saw the lack of input from female writers as possibly being symptomatic of a general lack of such writing. I'm not sure how I could have been more clear about that. I'm not sure why you've elected to take this as some kind of a personal attack.

Boy in a Suitcase

21:34 / 06.04.07

Yes, I'm clear it wasn't a personal attack, thanks.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:36 / 06.04.07

That's good to know. Can we also be clear that I didn't "go off" about gender imbalance? My interpretation of the term "go off" would be a long, angry rant, not a short throway post of a couple of lines written in a very light tone.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:58 / 06.04.07

I mean, I've been sitting here reading and re-reading what I wrote and I just do not get what I've said that's making you so angry. I don't get why just mentioning this is taboo. Why is it wrong to ask why women aren't producing and submitting the kind of work that would go with UC's stuff?

I get that there are loads of women writers on the books at Llewellyn etc. But what I see you doing with the Ultraculture journal is a long way from what Llewllyn and other mainstream publishers are doing. There's a world of difference between the articles in Gen Hex and Ultraculture, and To Ride a Silver Broomstick. I can't imagine a piece by $ilver Ravingfluff making it into UC2, and that's the way it ought to be.

I never claimed not to have a voice, or that there's hordes of female writers out there who are being oppressed by teh eval editors. How mental would that be when my own article is in the journal ffs! It's just that I'd like more women to be writing and submitting work to publications like this. That's all! Honest!

Epop Bastart the Justified, I

03:15 / 07.04.07

Good god.

Have you actually looked up Great Housewives of Art?

It's a book. Of women trying to paint, while cleaning house, taking care of kids, and dozens of other household distractions which are - regardless of how you'd like it to be - typically disproportionately female activities if only because men appear to usually think that two inches of dust nicely offsets any collection of infrequently used objects.

And the baby thing? From what I've seen, the investment that a woman makes in having a child is considerably larger than that a man makes - indeed, a man can have a child without any knowledge or involvement whatsoever and many do. They don't have a complete rewriting of their body to act as a cocoon for an incoming being, gross body morphology and psychology rewiring...

No comparison, sorry.

I'm not kidding when I say the female magicians are by-and-large out there having kids. If you want to take about Great Work, try raising a child.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:59 / 07.04.07

Thank you for your clarification. It's much appreciated. Your tone however is not.

Mako is a hungry fish

10:23 / 07.04.07

If you want to take about Great Work, try raising a child.

Any yin/yang can pop out a sprog, but actually raising it and raising it well is another matter entirely, and isn't the strict domain of womanhood; it's a matter of parenthood, and parenting is a gender nuetral concept.

Yes women are fantastic, but so are men; raising women up high doesn't mean that you have to drag men down to do it.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:44 / 07.04.07

If you missed the huge and incredibly important article from the female *Master* (www.nathsociety.org) in the front of the book, you clearly didn't read the book before going off about gender imbalance. May I suggest you do so in the future.

Sorry, I haven't read the book, but I don't totally understand. Does that article's provenance mean that there is no gender imbalance in the book, numerically?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:49 / 07.04.07

Epop Bastart the Justified, I:

To clarify: I read your post as possibly an attempt to use stereotyped gender roles to give offence and to try and silence a female interlocutor, which is why I asked for a clarification. This is a very familiar tactic, used by many, many people I've encountered online over the years, which is why I ad to ask you to flesh out your comment a bit more. I accept that in fact you meant no such thing, although I'm not sure I needed to be good-Godded at since I hadn't in fact accused you of anything, or even taken a sharp tone.

I find it quite interesting that you bring up Great Housewives of Art (cute little book, that, although it's a while since I read it) in which the question "where is the housewife in art?" is expressed with wit and humour. It's still an interesting question, and one which I think can be at least partly answered by the mainstream art scene being rather male-dominated. (This is a matter of record, btw, I can bore everyone to death with statistics if they really want. You might have more fun just visiting this site for a nickle tour of the issues.) Your point about birth and childrearing as an act of magic is well-made.

Mako: Are men being dragged down in Epop's post above? How dreadful. Perhaps you could point out exactly where that's happening as I seem to have missed it. The impression I've got from my childed friends and from society at large is that whilst it's perfectly possible for a man, or men, to raise a child and raise hir well, a female primary caregiver is still the norm.

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