Dr Angela Puca: Hello, Symposiast. I’m Dr. Angela Puca. As you know, I’m a religious studies PhD and University lecturer, and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, esotericism, Paganism, Shamanism, and all things occult. As always, I’d like to remind you that there are many ways to support my work if you’d like me to keep going by providing a free academic scholarship on all things esoteric.

Part of my project, as you know, is to bridge the gap between academics and practitioners—the world of Academia, which tends to be an ivory tower and is difficult to access, which is one of the reasons why I created this project, to make scholarship more accessible to the public, but also the world of practitioners because it’s also important to listen to practitioners’ voices. And today will be one of those cases because I will introduce in a second our special guest today. I just want to clarify as a disclaimer that I tend to not be adversarial as I don’t want to create drama on my channel, at least not on purpose anyway, so anything that my guest will say is not my opinion, so I don’t endorse their view.

Phil Hine: Hello.

Dr Angela Puca: Hi Phil, thank you so much for being a guest on my channel. How are you today?

Phil Hine: I’m very well, thank you. How are you?

Dr Angela Puca: I’m okay. I hope that we will have an interesting conversation today. So I’d like to ask you, as my first question, how did your journey in Chaos Magick… I know we will talk about more than just Chaos Magick, but since most people know you via that, could you please tell us a bit more about your journey and how you got into Chaos Magick? Then, it would also be interesting to understand your current relationship with Chaos Magick.

Phil Hines’ Start in Chaos Magick

Phil Hine: Okay, well, let me see. I think I first picked up Ray Sherwin’s “The Book of Results,” probably about 1979 or 1980, and I started experimenting with sigils. At the same time, I was doing a postal correspondence course with a traditional Western magical order called the Order of the Cubic Stone. This was obviously a long time before the internet reared its head, so everything was done by post. So, I had to do magical exercises, keep a diary, and send off reports to this guy who was mentoring me. And I think, in one of my letters, I said, “Oh, I’ve got this thing in the Book of Results, and I’m trying sigils,” and I was roundly ticked off and told that doing sigil Magick was really dangerous and it was for a beginner kind of thing, and you know, I shouldn’t be doing it. And I thought, “Yeah, [ __ ] off,” you know? I basically ignored his advice, a rebellious act that would shape my journey. He also told me off for spelling Magick with a “k” because, apparently, that was a Thelemic thing, and I wasn’t really aware that there was a thing called Thelema at the time, but he kind of sent me this letter saying, “We are not Thelemites!” with multiple exclamation marks. And I was kind of okay.

So, yeah, around the same time, I got hold of, I think, the first edition of Pete Carroll‘s “Liber Null,” and I don’t think the phrase Chaos Magick, per se, was in either book at the time. You know, Chaos Magick as a concept was still somewhere up on the astral plane, if you like. But I thought it was interesting.

Phil Hines: I think it was while I was at the Huddersfield Poly that I did my first experiments in what later became called Cthulhu Mythos Magic. I did a Cthulhu pathworking and tried to summon Yog-Sothoth on top of a hill at midnight, which was fun, let’s say. But you know, that was before I had a clear idea of what Chaos Magick was, or in fact, that there were distinctions between different magical genres. It was all just one exciting thing for me. And then, after I’d finished my social sciences degree, psychology, sociology, philosophy, all that kind of stuff, I moved back to my hometown and got initiated into a coven. And I talked to the high priestess of the coven about this “Book of Results” and “Liber Null,” and she was like, “Well, you know, it’s interesting; I don’t have time to read it. I don’t know anything about it. Why don’t you find out more about it and tell me?” And I was kind of okay, cool. So, I just bobbled along, you know, for a few years doing this and that and the other.

I went and worked on a Kibbutz between 1981 and 1982, and while I was there, I did you know “Liber MMM,” the training program in the front of “Liber Null.” And then, when I came back, I moved to various places. I spent some time in Nottingham and hooked up with a theatrical improv group that did some really interesting work. And then I moved to Huddersfield again for a while, and then I ended up in Leeds in about, I think, it was ’86 or ’87, something like that. And I kind of got hooked into the emerging Leeds Chaos Magick scene, sort of Dave Lee, Ray Sherwin, and people like that. It was a very vibrant thing, and I just kind of like, you know, bobbled along and read whatever books were around and kept trying stuff out.

AMOOKOS and Early Chaos Magick

Dr Angela Puca: How was it to be there when it all started?

Phil Hine: It was great, it was really interesting. You know, it was vibrant. There was a lot of crossover between people on different trajectories if you like. I also got involved in AMOOKOS, the Arcane Magical Order of the Knights of Shambhala, the East-West tantric group, whilst I was in Leeds. I’d been interested in Tantrism since about 1982, so there’s not much of a gap between getting interested in Chaos Magick, joining a coven, and getting interested in Tantra; it all kind of happened simultaneously. So, while in Leeds, I was involved in the Leeds Chaos scene, mostly around Leeds University of Occult Society. I met up with Rodney Orpheus, who you probably know—he’s a rock star and a Thelemite—and together we created a monthly Pagan magazine called Pagan News, which ran for about four years on and off and was, you know, quite successful in a very small way, of course. And I was also involved in AMOOKOS, as I said, the East-West tantric order, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, which is a kind of like sect of Cthulhu fanciers—very strange people they were—and I had a sort of Discordian group for a while as well, called MC Medusa’s Hydra’s Teeth. So we were kind of like, I had a great time, you know? And the Satanic Panic was going on. You know, I kept busy.

Phil Hine Intitiation into Wicca

Dr Angela Puca: I can imagine. What led you to also be initiated in Wicca…? Just curious.

Phil Hine: They were the first other occultists I contacted with. I mean, I spent three years at Huddersfield doing the social science degree, I met a few other, you know, solo practitioners there, and then when I moved back to my hometown, I was leafing through an old edition of Chris Bray’s magazine, The Lamp of Thoth. I found this kind of like, you know, coven in wherever wants new people, ring this number. So I was kind of like, ooh, great, and I rang the number, met them, and eventually got initiated. If I had a choice, I probably wouldn’t have gone for… I’d have gone for something a bit more dark, but they were the only game in town, you know? So I went and got initiated and spent several years having a really interesting time, you know, and I got into the, you know, the northern English occult scene, which is quite cool, and met loads of people and, you know, had got into big fights and did weird rituals. It was great.

The Northern English Occult Scene

Dr Angela Puca: How do you think it is in the northern English occult scene now? Do you think it has changed since those times?

Phil Hine: I don’t know because I haven’t been back to—I haven’t been up North for must be getting on 20 years. I’ve still got mates up there who live in Ilkley, you know, Phil Legard. He’s just finished his PhD on the occult, and I’d like to go back and wander around and a gander and see what’s going on, but I’ve no idea, you know. I’ve been in London for the last 25 years or so.

Dr Angela Puca: I see that, and do you think that even though it was kind of accidental, do you think that your initiation into Wicca has had any influence on your practice?

Phil Hine: Oh yeah, definitely. I got further into Chaos Magick through Wicca because I got into the goddess Eris and that whole Discordian scene, and I approached Eris very much from a Wiccan point of view. I did many rituals with Eris as the goddess, and getting possessed by her and having channel communication with her on Stockport station was fun. And you know, I’ve got old friends who say, “Oh, you’re still a witch at heart, Phil,” which I think is nice, you know? And I got occasionally invited to big dos and gatherings, and that’s nice. And I think what Wicca gave me was a love for goddesses. That’s the way my religious fervour goes; I’m really into goddesses, and I think really that’s what drew me further and further towards Tantra in the end, is that extremely personal and devotional goddess sensibility.

What is Chaos Magick?

Dr Angela Puca: I see, and so what is Chaos Magick? Because I know that different practitioners would give different answers, so what is Chaos Magick to you?

Phil Hine: That’s always a really hard question because I think I’m not going to agree with anything I’ve written back in the ’90s. I think the last time I tried to define Chaos Magick for anybody, I said it was “Magick without occultism,” which sounds like a real paradox, but what I was trying to get to with that statement was the idea that Chaos Magick for me, is sceptical of a lot of the narratives and tropes of occultism and looks at, you know, if you like, circulating occult narratives with a sceptical eye, and also has the other sceptical eye on its emerging narratives. So, I’d say it’s a sceptical approach to magical practice.

Dr Angela Puca: What do you think are the main narratives in occultism that Chaos Magick challenges?

Phil Hine: Well, where to start? You know, the idea that there are multiple astral planes, for a start. That’s an old idea that doesn’t emerge until you get the Theosophical Society, but that’s amazingly popular. I don’t believe in an astral plane at all, so you know, and I think doing Chaos Magick enabled me to challenge that whole thing about, “Oh, you know, I am an authority, and you should listen to me because I’ve been on the astral plane and I’ve met the Buddha, blah blah blah.” Mind you, there’s a lot of Chaos magicians who are really into astral plane stuff, so, you know, who knows? But for me, it’s like taking things apart, questioning things, looking behind the scenes, being skeptical, being curious about anything, really. That’s what Chaos is for me, and also having fun. The Magick nowadays tends to still cleave into two major directions: it’s either about, you know, personal growth or spiritual growth, whatever people mean by that, I don’t know, or self-transformation in one way or another, or it’s about, you know, scoring, you know, fit partners, or a new pair of training shoes, or a new car, or a better job, or whatever. And in the middle of that, you can say, well, it’s just about having fun, really, and being a bit silly. And I think if I’ve made any contribution to Chaos Magick, which is doubtful at best, it’s that, you know, Magick can be fun and silly. We don’t have to take ourselves too seriously because I think, yeah, another thing is occultists do tend to take themselves a bit seriously. There’s a fine line between being an occult adept and an [ __ ]. I think that’s something that Chaos Magick helps people watch for.

What makes Chaos Magick effective?

Dr Angela Puca: I can see how you would work with Eris as a goddess, but I was wondering, so what do you think makes Magick effective, and what would you do Magick for, other than having fun?

Phil Hine: What do I think makes Magick effective? I think emotional engagement is really important. If you can connect with something emotionally, it doesn’t matter whether it’s some traditional technique you’ve got out of a 14th-century grimoire or something you’ve made up in the pub with a couple of mates. What makes it work is emotional engagement. And it’s that same emotional engagement which allows us to reach out to people, you know, to heal our friends, stick pins in a doll of Rishi Sunak, whatever, you know? It’s that personal, that emotive wish to connect and change the world. I think that’s what’s important. As to how it works, I don’t know. I’m not—I’ve kind of abandoned that whole explanatory thing. I’ve never been fond of the whole “Quantumry,” you know, quantum physics explanations leave me cold. Psychological explanations have their limits. If anyone is going to come up with a viable explanation of Magick, it has to be interdisciplinary, at the very least. But I kind of get bored with explanations because I see them as limitations.

Dr Angela Puca: But in terms of the practical side of Magick, what do you think makes Magick effective, or is it nothing? Is it just the emotional connection, regardless of whether you use sigils or hypersigils?

Phil Hine: I think the emotional connection is important. As to what else makes it effective, I don’t know; it’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought to over the past two or three decades. You know, and when it works, it works; when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I’m very interested that it doesn’t work sometimes because many magicians don’t want to go there, you know? They want to be seen as powerful, resilient, the sort of person you’d buy a sigil from for 60 quid on the internet. Nobody wants to talk about when Magick doesn’t work, which is interesting.

When Magick does not work.

Dr Angela Puca: And do you try and find an explanation as to why Magick doesn’t work?

Phil Hine: No, but I’m interested in the fact that we don’t want to talk about why it doesn’t work, you know.

Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, I agree with you, and I think it’s interesting to cover for practitioners to investigate when Magick doesn’t work. I’m just wondering if your lack of explanation of how Magick works or doesn’t work is affecting the effectiveness of your Magick.

Phil Hine: If you don’t have an interest in understanding how it works, do you think it could negatively affect the effectiveness of your Magick? If you don’t know why it didn’t work, then you cannot avoid doing that thing for which your Magick working was ineffective.

Dr Angela Puca: Okay, it’s just random trials and errors?

Phil Hine: It’s complicated, and I would like to see somebody… yeah, it’s complicated, that’s all. And I don’t know whether it’s random, you know. It’s interesting that when the Magick works, it’s a sign that you’re a good practitioner. When the Magick doesn’t work, it’s because the universe didn’t want it to, or your Karma or you got a decimal point wrong, or you used the wrong kind of incense, so two different explanations are going on there, you know. And yeah, it’s complicated. I haven’t come up with a satisfactory model that works for me yet; maybe somebody else will do it, or maybe I will do it eventually; I don’t know.

Phil Hine’s Current Relationship with Chaos Magick.

Dr Angela Puca: And what is your current relationship with Chaos Magick? Do you still practice it, or is it something that you have distanced yourself from?

Phil Hine: I don’t see myself as a Chaos magician anymore. I mean, I stopped practising it as a majority thing, let’s say, by the late 1990s. I occasionally chat to people who are still doing Chaos Magick. Sometimes we have interesting conversations, sometimes it just kind of, shut up, you all get what do you know, you know. I’m a bit of an ancient dinosaur, I think, compared to some of the young people doing it these days. But it’s always been my hope that a new generation of people will take up the bare bones of Chaos Magick as defined by the various people who wrote the first books about it and just go either throw it all out and say it’s bollocks and come up with their own Chaos Magick, which would be good, or just surpasses, you know, come up with new ideas. Don’t cleave to the same old [ __ ] that gets circulated from book to book without any intervening thought. Do new stuff, you know. I think I did something recently called Queerying Chaos Magick with Patricia MacCormack. I don’t know if you know Patricia.

Dr Angela Puca: I don’t think so.

Phil Hine: Professor of Continental Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University.

Dr Angela Puca: Oh, I get who she is now.

Phil Hine: That was kind of interesting, and I’ve since talked to more if you like, radical queer Chaos practitioners who seem to be doing some interesting stuff. So, I’d like to see more work, more well, if not writing, then at least, presentations coming out from people into that kind of queerying Chaos Magick angle because I think that’s really interesting.

“Queerying” Chaos Magick

Dr Angela Puca: What do you mean by “queerying” Chaos Magick?

Phil Hine: I mean by taking Chaos Magick principles, which are very few, and approaching them with a queer sensibility. More than that, I can’t say that I found that interesting. And what I don’t, what I’m not interested in is people just recycling the same old stuff. So, I have quite a few arguments with people who come up with, “Oh, well, you know, to cast, to create a servitor, it’s difficult; you have to jump through all these hoops,” and it’s kind of like, no, it’s really simple to create a servitor, you know. Or to do a Sigil, you have to do this, that, and the other. You know, magicians have this weird tendency of making simple things complicated, and what I liked about Chaos Magick was a kind of reversal of that and say, well, let’s keep this as simple as possible. Anybody can do it. You don’t need to memorise the tree of life; you don’t need special tools, you know. It’s a kind of DIY ethos, which I think was, for me, a really powerful thing.

Phil Hine’s Interest in Tantra

Dr Angela Puca: And what led you to move away from Chaos Magick because you said you haven’t really identified as a Chaos magician ever since the 1990s?

Phil Hine: I think my interest in Tantra just came to dominate, really.

Dr Angela Puca: And can you tell us a bit more about that, about your interest in Tantra?

Phil Hine: As I say, that started in the early ’80s. It started because I came back from working on the Kibbutz in Israel and thought I would have a break from all this weird [ __ ]. I’m not going to do any rituals or contact the covens or any of the Wiccans; just sit and chill out for a few months. And what happened was I started having these recurring dreams about Kali, and I probably had some idea of who Kali was through reading Kenneth Grant, but not much, you know. I certainly had no interest or didn’t feel drawn or memories of a past life as an Indian or any of that bollocks, but I kept getting the same dream every night, you know, Kali with streaming hair and surrounded by fire. And that, I think, after that, that’s kind of what got me interested in Tantra. But it took me ages to find somebody who shared my interest. I mean, there were lots of people doing the whole neo-Tantric sacred sex stuff, but I wasn’t particularly interested in that. I wanted to do tantric ritual, and it wasn’t until 1987, when I moved to Leeds, that this guy rocked up and gave a talk at Leeds University Occult Society on Tantra. He became my Acharya and initiated me into AMOOKOS so that, you know, that strand of my occult trajectory was already in play as I was getting into Chaos Magick. And I think as time moved on, I just got more and more fascinated by the tantric material and not interested in the Chaos Magick stuff, which a lot of it I found boring.

What Type of Tantra does Phil Hine Practice

Dr Angela Puca: And so what is the type of Tantra that you practice?

Phil Hine: I call it hybridised Tantra, which acknowledges that I’m not trying to—you know, I’m not a reconstructionist, and my background and culture influence me. I call it a hybridised Tantra, a light form of Shri Vidya. Shri Vidya, as you probably know, started as a kind of Crowley tradition and then became more normalized. The central deity of Shri Vidya is the goddess Lalitā Tripurasundarī.

Dr Angela Puca: And what are the practices that are involved?

Phil Hine: Okay, very simple, as well very simple. I do a lot of meditation. I do a lot of meditation where I place the goddess in my heart, and everything I experience becomes a sacrifice to her. I do Pooja, which is more elaborate occasionally. I read the devotional literature and scriptural literature, and I try to make sense of it; it’s often really difficult. But I don’t do anything complicated; it’s very simple stuff.

Dr Angela Puca: So, the purpose of your practice, as I’m understanding it, is more devotional. I wouldn’t say theurgical because maybe that conjures images of 14th-century grimoires, but is it more about aligning yourself with the deity, or do you also use Magick to affect your reality and the circumstances that you will find yourself in?

Phil Hine: Yeah, both, and you know, that’s often the same procedure. Yeah, if we’re doing a Ganesha Pooja, then we’ll often, you know, mention people, friends of ours who are having a really hard time, or events that we’d like Ganesha to nudge on. But any tantric practice aims to dissolve the distinction between you and your deity, or you and consciousness if you like. There’s a complicated philosophy behind that that I don’t have time to go into.

Dr Angela Puca: I’ve studied Sanskrit during my university formation, so I’m familiar with Tantra and Shri Vidya traditions. But I’m also interested in how it is reinterpreted today and how it is reinterpreted here in the UK by practitioners such as yourself, so that’s why I’m asking these questions because I think it’s fascinating how these things get reframed. You know, some parts are taken from the tradition and parts that are reframed in because it’s a different context.

Tantra Reframed for a Western Audience

Phil Hine: Yeah, I think that’s inevitable. With any tradition, there will be historical elements considered canonical, and then, you know, people will naturally reframe the tradition in terms. I mean, that’s what happened if you look at the history of Shri Vidya. You know, it starts as a love cult. It’s a very erotic cult; most of the Magick is love-Magick. And then it merges with the Kashmiri Shaivism around the 13th century and takes that on. Well, sorry, a lot earlier than that, 10th century. If you look at some of the middle-level scriptures, they’re very much influenced by the Patra Pinda philosophy. And then, over the centuries until the modern day, I mean, many Shri Vidya practitioners don’t think of it as Tantra at all because it’s kind of—anything that was deemed to be transgressive has been edged out of it. However, some still produce fairly scriptural and exegetical material in the 19th century, some of which are still quite radical.

Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, I thought that we could get mildly controversial. You said that you disagree with something I mentioned in one of my episodes about including Chaos Magick in the left-hand path.

Phil Hine: Yeah, I don’t see that at all.

Dr Angela Puca: Okay, so why do you think that?

Phil Hine: Okay, well, correct me if I’m mis-remembering this, but I seem to recall there were four points: one was individualism, the second was self-deification, the third was iconoclasm, and the fourth was transgression.

Dr Angela Puca: Iconoclasm and antinomianism, yes.

Phil Hine: Okay, well, let’s take the individual thing first. Okay, there aren’t that many, you know, Western esoteric movements that aren’t individual to some degree. You know, “For every man and every woman is a star,” Wicca, you know, the idea that power comes from within. That, you know, even the relationship between you and Jesus in the Protestant church is individual. So, if you like, I don’t see “individual” as a strong indicator of left-hand pathdom.

Tantra Versus Left-Hand Path 00:30:50

Dr Angela Puca: The individualism of the left-hand path, more than just serving your path, is more about tailoring your practice based on your individual personal needs, as opposed to, for instance, following a specific tradition. So, even though some practitioners are trying to serve their path by following, for instance, Freemasonry, a traditional form of Wicca, or a Grimoire tradition, they would still follow certain rules that are part of the tradition. Whereas in left-hand path traditions, there tends to be more of a tailoring of the practice based on yourself as opposed to a set of rules and dogmas. So it’s part of rejecting dogmas and tailoring the practice upon yourself instead of following a specific tradition with certain principles, dogmas, and set practices. So that is the type of individualism that you find in the left-hand path, in left-hand path traditions.

Phil Hine: Okay, let’s consider Western left-hand path traditions. I don’t see that in the Tantric left-hand path.

Dr Angela Puca: No, no, no, no, no. When we talk about left-hand path traditions, and even in my videos, in my video I think I clarified that it’s not—it’s not vāmācāra, vāmamārga. It is not the Indian tantric form; it is the Western traditions. That’s why the ones included under the umbrella of left-hand path traditions are things like Chaos Magick and even forms of Satanism, and yeah, different forms of Western practices are included under that umbrella because they match those criteria.

Phil Hine: Okay, so how about self-deification then?

Dr Angela Puca: Okay, so the idea of self-deification—if you look at, correct me if I’m wrong, but if you look at the works, for instance, by Peter Carroll, and the idea of—you know, you studied yourself when it comes to even though you were talking more about your tantric practice, the aim is to become divine, to become the deity. And there’s some—this is something that also transpires in Chaos magicians’ works, the idea of the Zos and the Kia that have to become one, the idea that the power comes from the Chaos because Chaos is this primordial force, and that the individual is something that veils it in a way. So, the things that belong to the individual are hindering you instead of helping you towards that union. So that’s why there’s a stripping down of all the rules and all the shenanigans, as they are seen from ritualism, so that you can more directly become one with the source and act from that point, from that primordial Chaos, which is the infinite potential.

Phil Hine: Wow, okay. I don’t think I ever took that stuff very seriously. I gather, oh, it’s… yeah, I was never into that whole Kia business side. I’ll just pass that by, you know. Yeah, that’s fair enough. Okay, we won’t bother with the other two then because I, you know, I think this is a strength of Chaos Magick—that if you don’t like something that’s in a book, you just ignore it. You don’t have to feel hard-bound to go with it because you say, “Oh well, it’s talking bollocks obviously,” you know. That’s how I took bits out of Peter Carroll’s stuff that I liked and waved the rest aside, you know.

Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, I mean, it’s legitimate. Everybody can construct their practice. This is exactly what we’re talking about.

Phil Hine: Yeah, I guess that’s the individual thing coming in. Yeah, I don’t know about the self-deification thing because it’s not, you know, that’s a general idea in Tantra. It first emerged in the early scriptures of the Shiva Siddhanta, which we would now call the right-hand path. So the idea of self-deification being a left-hand path thing is, from a tantric point of view, completely erroneous, but people still go on about it. But I, yeah, I never really was even aware that there was a whole self-deification element of Chaos Magick.

Phil Hine’s Favourite Book

Dr Angela Puca: That’s okay. Can you tell us a bit more about your practices and beliefs in the tantric tradition? Then we can talk about your books and which one is your favorite. I’ve decided that we can.

Phil Hine: Oh, which one of my books is my favourite? I think the “Pseudonomicon,” actually, because it’s short, and I made a lot of it up, hence the name “Pseudonomicon.” The latest one, my utter favourite, is “Queerying a Culture.” I like it so much I can’t believe I wrote it. Somebody else might’ve snuck in, used my word processor, and put some stuff in it that I certainly don’t remember writing. That’s my favourite book. That’s a book I’ve wanted to write for 20-odd years, if not longer.

Dr Angela Puca: And what makes it your favourite?

Phil Hine: I think because it just brings together my love of history, my continual anger at the way that queer people are often excluded from having a place in modern society, and the way that, for so long, queer practitioners were just not allowed to be present, you know. If you look at a lot of early 20th-century occultism, the stuff I could work with, you know, if you were queer, you were on the left-hand path; if you’re a homosexual, you’re a black magician. Fuck off, you know. That still makes me angry, you know. And you know, those attitudes were still prevalent until the late ’90s, and you still encounter them nowadays. When that book came out, some American podcaster contacted me and said, “Oh, I like to talk to you about ‘Queerying the Culture,’ but I don’t want to talk about the politics.” I said, “Well, you know, I start with it by mentioning Roe vs. Wade, so how can we avoid the politics? We can’t,” you know. So, that interview didn’t happen, yeah.

Politics in Magikal Practice and Discussion

Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, we also had a chat about the fact that I also tend not to talk about politics, but when it is part of somebody’s practice, then, of course, it makes sense to talk about it. So, feel free to elaborate more on that because, you know, when it is an integral part of the esoteric practice that you are talking about.

Phil Hine: I did a book last year; I self-published it about the same time that I did “Queerying the Culture,” and it’s called “Acts of Magical Resistance.” It’s a very shortish book talking about the way that Magick has been used in the UK as a tool for political resistance, most on an environmental or, if you like, a queer left-wing agenda because I’m very left-wing in my politics. And I remember reading this book that I think the Witchcraft Museum put out, and it was kind of like a history of magical resistance. It’s a really interesting book, but they kind of jumped from… they had Greenham in, and then they jumped from Greenham to Trump, and I just thought, what about all the anti-poll tax stuff that was done in the ’80s and ’90s, what about the road protests, you know, a lot of magicians were involved in that. What about the anarchist stopped the city, you know, none of that stuff was mentioned. So, I thought, well, what I want to do is chuck in, just mention a lot of the political Magick I’ve done over the years. “Acts of Magical Resistance” is available on Amazon as a print or PDF book, and it’s short, punchy, and has cartoons in it. What more do you want?

Examples of magical political resistance in the UK

Dr Angela Puca: So, do you think—let me see if I’m understanding you correctly—that Magick has been used in the UK specifically as a tool of resistance by marginalized people?

Phil Hine: Oh yeah, very much so.

Dr Angela Puca: And what do you think about how Magick has been used by those in power who are more the majority? Do you think that’s a different type of Magick, or do you think that they don’t do Magick at all?

Phil Hine: Oh, I think they do Magick, yeah. Some of them, probably… you know, for every person who’s trying to stop a bulldozer bulldozing a forest, there is some twat out there probably trying to keep their local place where they live in a city a Muslim-free zone, you know, using those political stickers. This is a Muslim-free one; that’s a kind of Magick. The attempt to command and control space through political stickers. This friend of mine, Phil Legard, he’s done these great—him and his wife Leyla—they’ve done this great. This is a Pan Control Zone sticker, and it’s kind of got a little image of Pan on it, and it says things like, you know, “Take drugs, drink, eat, and be merry,” kind of thing. And they use those as a counter to a lot of the right-wing political stickering that goes up, and I see that as a solid act of Magick.

Dr Angela Puca: So, how do you define Magick now? I’m curious how you, because if placing a sticker can be seen as an act of Magick, how would you define Magick? Is it any act of asserting yourself and your will in the world, the form of Magick, or is there anything more specific to Magick?

Phil Hine: I would say it is anything that enables you to assert your sense of agency in the world. One of the major reasons I got involved in the whole magical thing was that I felt I lacked agency. I had no control of my life, and doing Magick gave me that sense of agency, of self-possessiveness, which I think I lacked at the time. Beyond that, I don’t have much to say on that score.

The Mundane Versus the Spiritual

Dr Angela Puca: You would also include mundane ways of asserting…

Phil Hine: Yeah, magical, you know. Mundane—it’s a terrible word, isn’t it? It’s kind of mundane and realistic. I just don’t like it, you know. Why make a separation? Enchantment is where you find it. Once you start splitting off your world, and oh, this bit’s spiritual, and this bit’s not spiritual—bollocks, that’s not my favourite thing.

Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, that’s something that I understand how you would think that. I think that sometimes dividing things is a way of understanding them, not necessarily as seeing them as ontologically separate in themselves. Still, it’s sometimes separating things and using different terms is a way of understanding all the nuances. What distinguishes one act from another, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that they are not ultimately one thing from an ontological, metaphysical point of view.

Phil Hine: Yeah, that’s true, but it’s very easy to get trapped in that dualistic binary thinking, and that’s something I try and avoid.

Phil Hine and Summoning Demons

Dr Angela Puca: Okay, that’s understandable. And let me see. I think that there are some questions from people. Thank you. Vocatus says, “Nice to see you here.” And Arcane Magick asks, “Phil Hine, what are your thoughts on demonolatry?”

Phil Hine: What’s that, then? What is demonolatry?

Dr Angela Puca: Demonolatry is the worship of demons.

Phil Hine: I’ve summoned demons. I went through a phase of doing stuff when I lived in Leeds with Crowley’s Goetia, and it was great fun.

Dr Angela Puca: Is there anything you feel comfortable sharing about those experiences?

Phil Hine: Yeah, it was… I had this friend who was interested in coming up with demonology for the Chaos Magick age, so we thought we’d try some traditional methods first, just to try them out. So, I was living in this one-room flat on Belview Road. I don’t know if you know it. I didn’t have space for a separate Temple, so we created a Magick circle on the floor with sticky tape, I think it was, and biroed in the god names, and we had a bit of wood with a triangle on it. We started experimenting, calling up creatures from Crowley’s Goetia, which was interesting. And one time, some friends of mine who had an occult shop in Hull got cursed—I mean, somebody sent them a really interestingly nasty curse object through the post, a real classic piece of work, a work of art. I wish I’d kept or donated it to the Witchcraft Museum, but we just threw it out. Anyway, we got this thing that these people had sent—oh, they’d also given like a week of really threatening abusive phone calls as well, just to soften them up. We got this thing that they sent, stuck it in the triangle, and did an evocation of, I think it was Horus or Glasya-Labolas, I forget which, but it’s all in a book somewhere, possibly.

And we did a big kind of Goetic evocation, and at some point, one of us said, “Oh well, you know, bring your Legions with you as well.” Suddenly the room seemed to be full of this black cloud with all insect legs coming out of it, and we just put them in the triangle and said, “Go and get the fuckers who’ve done this,” and off they went. I don’t know what happened, but, you know, my friends in the occult shop said they felt better, and they didn’t get any more threatening phone calls. So, we did a lot of stuff like that. We, I think we, probably did two or three turning-back curses on people and maybe even cursed somebody as well. It was, you know, not something I do nowadays, but it seemed to be the right thing to do at the time, so I have no problems with that. As I said, I don’t do it nowadays. There are wrathful tantric deities that you can do Pooja to if you need to shut somebody up, but I don’t feel the need to do that sort of thing nowadays. But demons, I have no problem with that if that’s your question.

Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, the question was your thoughts about worshipping demons and, I guess, working with demons.

Phil Hine: It’s not worshipping them; it’s kind of like, you know, I think Alan Moore put it quite well in one of his Promethea comics, you know, as you give us jobs to do, and then we go off and do them. And it seemed to us that the more jobs we gave them to do, the more they created their kind of weird [ __ ] in our lives so that we’d call them up and give them jobs to do. It all got very kind of self-referential in the end, and we just kind of thought enough, enough. The last time we did it, actually, was over some people who’d been queer-bashed. We called up one of these demonic entities and their legions, and just not so much against the person who’d done the queer-bashing, but the whole idea that it was fine to beat up queers and women because there were a lot of queer people and women getting physical and verbal abuse in our area, so we thought let’s make the target that attitude and go and hit that target with a load of demons. But some results, you know.

Phil Hine using Aleister Crowley’s Goetia

Dr Angela Puca: That just brings me to the question: When you summon demons, you used Aleister Crowley’s Goetia, so there was some structure to the ritual. So, do you think that it would have been just as effective to try and summon a demon without any of that ritualism, or do you think that to summon that specific entity, you needed that ritualism?

Phil Hine: Well, that was the interesting thing because when we first started doing it, we didn’t bother with many of the trappings, if you like, and it didn’t seem to work very well. So, eventually, we called up one of these demons and said, “Look, how would you like us to summon you? What are the ideal conditions for you?” And we got—there were several of us present, and we all got these sort-like ideations or visions of a dark room with loads of smoky incense, like a Necromancer’s cellar kind of decor. And we thought, well, we can’t do that, but we’ll do our best. So I got the idea that the ritual structure was part of the experience, that the ritual structure kind of framed that experience, and that the demons were part of that whole if you like, phenomenal experience. So yeah, there did seem to be a relationship between the way the ritual was structured and the experience of—obviously, this subjective, highly dubious experience—having these things pop up and walk around the room.

Dr Angela Puca: And you know, that just brings me—my researcher curiosity just leads me to beg the question, so does it mean that then ritualism does have some importance in the effectiveness of Magick?

Phil Hine: It can do, but it depends on the ritual. It often depends on what, again—it’s about emotional engagement, on what you like and don’t like. I’ve seen people who make up rituals on the spot and find them highly effective and be turned off by doing a traditional Ganesha Pooja. I remember doing a traditional Ganesha Pooja at a big meeting in Hebden Bridge. Some people got into it and had a good and valuable experience out of that, and others just say that was really boring, you know? All that mantra, all that—there was nothing they were used to, kind of exciting mode. So I think ritual does structure our experience. Still, it’s very much on how we approach it as individuals or, if you like, collectively because group norms and group stuff also affect it. Complicated, as I say—it’s not all subjective, but it’s kind of intersubjective if you like.

Dr Angela Puca: So, rituals are important insofar as the practitioner can connect with them and is not put off by them.

Phil Hine: It can do, but it depends on the ritual. It often depends on what, again—it’s about emotional engagement, on what you like and don’t like. I’ve seen people who make up rituals on the spot and find them highly effective and be turned off by doing a traditional Ganesha Pooja. I remember doing a traditional Ganesha Pooja at a big meeting in Hebden Bridge. Some people got into it and had a good and valuable experience out of that, and others just say that was really boring, you know? All that mantra, all that—there was nothing they were used to, kind of exciting mode. So I think ritual does structure our experience. Still, it’s very much on how we approach it as individuals or, if you like, collectively because group norms and group stuff also affect it. Complicated, as I say—it’s not all subjective, but it’s kind of intersubjective if you like.

Dr Angela Puca: So, rituals are important insofar as the practitioner can connect with them and is not put off by them.

Phil Hine: Yeah, that depends on people’s preferences. Some people like one type of ritual, and others are fairly eclectic. What’s interesting about a lot of tantric ritual is that it has a fractal quality, so if you’re used to doing the ritual, any part of the ritual can actually stand for the whole ritual. Does that make sense?

Dr Angela Puca: Yeah.

Phil Hine: Yeah, which I think is a very interesting thing because it’s kind of like the philosophy underlining it: Every part of the ritual is ultimately about losing that distinction between you and your chosen deity. So any part of the ritual can be an enactment of the whole ritual, and that’s how that works. But I’m not sure that you could take that into another domain and have it be effective, but try and see, you know.

Did Julius Evola affect Chaos Magick 00:52:19

Dr Angela Puca: Thank you, Jeanette, for the super sticker, and then we have another question from Cybervue. Can you comment on Julius Evola’s influence on the Chaos Magick tradition? So, do you think that Julius Evola influenced Chaos Magick?

Phil Hine: No, obviously not, because he was dead, you know, long before it started. I think, yeah, well, I think a lot of some Chaos magicians are really into Julius Evola. I’m not one of them. I think I read one of his books favourably when I was in my early 20s and thought, “Oh, this is good,” obviously, I got to know him better. But, you know, if I have to say, if there’s one group of people who are into Chaos Magick and like Julius Evola, it tends to be right-wing Libertarians. I’m not one of those, so no, not one of my favourite people.

Dr Angela Puca: And he’s also asking about Kenneth Anger. He helped to solidify the queer left-hand path mythos. What do you think about that?

Phil Hine: I don’t know because I’m unfamiliar with Kenneth Anger. I like his films, but I don’t know anything else anything else.

Crowley, Liber Al and Hitler

Dr Angela Puca: Okay, so we have another question again. There is a lot of politics in the Magick communities these days, like it has infected religious congregations, and there is a lot of far-right fascist Magick. Crowley even tried to get “Liber Al” into Hitler’s hands. I’m not sure if that is a question.

Phil Hine: Yeah, and so what? I mean, but you know, Magick and politics have always gone hand in hand as far as I can see. It’s not a new thing. Again, one of the things I did in this little booklet, “Acts of Magical Resistance”, looked at some historical stuff about Magick in politics. In 17th century England, you could be done for sedition for casting the horoscope of the king because if you did the horoscope for the king, it kind of implied that you might want to find out when’s a good time to have him killed. So, casting a horoscope in 17th-century England was a political act. And if you look at many 19th-century magicians, they were heavily into politics at both strikes. So yeah, it’s, you know, the idea that Magick and politics shouldn’t mix, I think it’s rubbish. But that’s just my opinion, and you know, if you look into history and world cultures, you’ll find Magick and politics mixing all the time. India is a good case in point; a lot of tantric agitated against the British during the colonial period. Even nowadays, I don’t; you could call it religion or politics, but Bagalāmukhī, a very wrathful deity, is often propitiated by politicians who want to get her on their side. This, you know, it’s widespread right across the world. Religion and politics have always been bedfellows as I can say again, the idea that they all should keep the two domains separate.

Dr Angela Puca: It’s not what I said. I don’t know if you’re referring to me, but that’s not what I said.

Phil Hine: I’m not referring to you. I’m referring to a hypothetical listener who thinks that Magick and politics should be separate things. I’ve met people who cling very much to that idea, but it’s never been something for me, I’m afraid.

Magick Intersects will all Aspects of Life

Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, sure. I think that Magick intersects with everything, not just politics, and that’s one of the arguments I always make as to why it is important to research it because it’s so difficult for us academics to research Magick and historicism. After all, it is considered something that is not part of society, and it very much is, not just in politics, but it intersects with everything. I know that you were probably not referring to our conversation. Still, in my case, with my project, I focus on the esoteric side, which is not a way of negating that there is a political side. I would cover it when there is a sense in addressing a certain political viewpoint or a certain political core to a specific tradition. However, since I am a religious study scholar, I think it is more intellectually honest for me to focus on that side and not enter into politics, which is not part of my academic background. I would enter the realm of personal opinions. I don’t do personal opinions on this channel unless it is, of course, interviewing a practitioner where they would share their opinion, and that is fine because it’s similar to the interview that I would have with a practitioner as an anthropologist.

Since what I try and offer on my channel, on my project, is what the scholarship says, you will find that either paper focused on the political side. There are papers on the political aspect of Crowley, for instance, I’m thinking about the doctoral work by Marco Pasi, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, which focused on the politics in Aleister Crowley. So there are papers that gear more towards the political side, but for the most part, addressing esotericism from a religious studies point of view focuses on the religious studies side. In a way, it also helps to understand the subject matter, by looking at those points specifically. So it’s more a matter of focus than a matter of exclusion because then you can focus on the political side if you want. Nobody stops you. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Phil Hine: Yeah, sorry, I dozed off a sec. Well, you know, I wasn’t addressing you; I was addressing a hypothetical listener. It’s just something that pisses me off because there’s still this perception that magic and politics should be kept in separate domains.

Dr Angela Puca: Is there anything else you want to cover in this interview? I don’t know if you…

Phil Hine: I don’t think so. I hope people continue to buy and enjoy my books and maybe get something out of them. That’s always nice to get feedback. No, I think that’s it. I think we’ve covered everything. Thanks for having me; it’s been a very stimulating discussion.

Dr Angela Puca: Thank you for being here. I appreciate you being here.

Phil Hine: Okay, thank you. Bye.

Support Angela’s Symposium

Dr Angela Puca: So, thank you, guys, for being here. And, as you guys know, this project is supported by you guys, so if you want to support it, you know all the ways to do it via PayPal and Patreon, and you can find all the links below. You can also find all the contact details of Phil Hine, his links, and the names of his books, so you will find if you want to follow up on this conversation and get in touch with Phil, you can do so. You will find all the information in the description box. Also, if you like this video, don’t forget to smash the like button and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. Thank you to João and Andrew for moderating the chat. I’m sorry that I always forget to mention you guys, but finally, I remembered. So, thank you so much for moderating the chat. I want to know what you guys thought about this conversation. Let me know all in the chat, and yeah, I hope you guys stay tuned for all the academic fun.

Bye for now.

Recommended Reading

The Book of Results by Ray Sherwin
Liber Null and Psychonaut by Peter Carroll
Queerying Occultures: Essays from Enfolding by Phil Hine and Patricia MacCormack
Acts of Magical Resistance by Phil Hine