Sep 30, 2009
Musician and artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge talks about using magick to make the world a better place, challenging the status quo and the power of the cut-up style of art.
Transcript
0:01
[Music]
0:14
Welcome to Thelema Now. A podcast about Aleister Crowley, Ritual and Magic.
Our Guest today is musician and artist Genesis P-Orridge.
And now here is your host: Frater Puck [Music]
0:34
Do without Wilt shall be the whole of the law. Thank you for joining us Genesis. How you doing?
00:39
Um. fine except for being hot and sticky.
00:43
Well, yeah. New York is pretty hot and sticky
00:45
Yeah and I've been running back and forth. We've got um, an art opening: this gallery called Invisible Exports in the Lower East Side. It's called "30 Years of Being Cut Up".
0:57
And so I've been dashing backwards and forwards into Manhattan in this worst possible weather, hanging the show and doing interviews with different magazines and so on but it's looking beautiful. I was there today it's nearly all up. And I'm actually excited.
1:13
You know, after I heard things from the past it's sort of, a little bit of a sort of lackadaisical struggle. yeah but I did that 30 years ago so yeah
1:21
right
01:23
well this. This actually really does cover the earliest collages um '69 to '72 when I was in a lot of male art stuff with the FLUXUS type people and Ray Johnston and so on. Um but it goes right through to the present day.
1:38
so it also goes through a whole phase in the 80s where most of the work was sigils - which obviously is where this program is you know, relevant - Um and then from the sigils it moves into the most recent era which is pandrogyny.
So it's also a journey and it's also very intimate and it's actually really it's my Sketchbooks. My, my visual Diary of all the different projects.
And yeah we've been lucky. Someone has volunteered to finance a book, um a five and I said about seven by five inch like a post big postcard size book. With full color illustrations of 200 collages.
2:23
So that's going to be it available during the exhibition which is up until October the 20th.
02:29
October the 20th. Okay.
2:31
Um. It's gonna look beautiful. I've looked at the photos and it's really stunning.
02:36
Yeah it sounds exciting. The uh the main focus of, of your work now you'd say is pandrogyny?
02:44
Yes. Pandrogyny is the sort of the summation of the previous 45 years of insanity. Insanity and research and uh fascination with the mysteries of what we often call life, or we assume is life.
03:02
Right. Challenging gender, challenging sexual, challenging all those boundaries.
03:09
And believing that what people tell me or tell any of us is an inverted commas reality. We've nicknamed it nonsense this reality instead of consensus reality that that doesn't really hold up very well.
3:23
Even nowadays if you look at mathematics and particle physics and quantum theories, the - the language even - reads more like a magical manuscript than it does a scientific tract.
And of course we all know that science is the bastard son of alchemy.
3:43
and Alchemy is a serious very important part of the magical view of the universes. So in a way we're returning in this massive, long somewhat unnecessary Loop where we went through a phase called "rational" that back to the "deliriously irrational" but far more accurate magical view of things.
4:05
sure
4:06
and that's that's very that's why we're in a very very um very important era very important time. And that's why we think pandrogyny is is so important because it ultimately deals with the human species taking uh initiative in terms of the evolution of the species and its relationship with the planet and other planets and stars
4:28
and hopefully other dimensions.
04:30
Sure
04:32
How about that?!
4:36
So are we over-ruling DNA? or is the or are we just a mode for DNA? is it a challenge (sp?) or is it we're just taking the reins now?
04:46
Well, here's how it.. You probably know the basic story but for people listening who might not.
The whole thing really - even during Thee Temple Ov Psychic Youth in the 80s when that was still active - we began towards the end uh, discussing the ratios of male and female in terms of different people's personalities. Their characters.
05:09
Right.
05:10
And so as what some of the exercises we would say that the left-hand side was female on the right was male. So if somebody was being over macho or over testosterone then we would emphasize things to do with their left or with softness and so on. And we would very consciously try and redesign the balance between the two ideas of male female as stereotypes.
5:34
but when we met lady J, it became a much more serious exploration. First triggered by that sensation of having found one's other half.
05:44
sure
05:45
The, the the missing piece of the jigsaw that makes you complete and whole. So it was very much um an ultra loving expo.. exploration. We wanted to literally just be absorbed into each other.
05:58
Right.
05:59
I actually had a very a very profound um Visionary experience. We were at our apartment with Timothy Wiley who used to work with John Lillian on Dolphin Intelligence Research and um, an altered state and some other people. And Lady Jane myself was sitting there we were all talking. And then all of a sudden she and myself both sat bolt upright and stared at each other. And we said to each other almost at the same time "can you see what I see?"
6:31
And then I said: "Don't tell me. Don't tell me. Write it down and I'll write down what I'm seeing."
So we both wrote down that we could see each other with one body but both our heads.
6:42
Wow.
06:44
And we had friends there as witnesses that we didn't cheat.
06:46
Right laughs
06:47
And that was when we actually really conceived that we were becoming the Pandrygyne in a more literal way.
06:54
Right.
06:55
So it was about, initially love. Then it was, we thought "well what are we really? What are we trying to to look at?"
and as you know we're very deeply influenced by William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin and their theories of the cut-ups.
And as we thought about the implications some of them, we thought: well Burroughs and Gysin would take their writing their collages and photos and they would literally chop them up reassemble them. And then say that no longer did these new pieces of work that have been created by this random process belong to Burroughs or Gysin, they were the product of this other energy. This other um entity that they called the third mind.
7:42
right
07:43
that it was a separate um intelligence that had some kind of existence and even agender of its own separate from them.
7:54
So one thing that Burroughs always used to say to me was "Where is Control located? and how do you short circuit Control?" In fact he gave me that as my life task to try and uh undo that puzzle.
8:11
so Jay thought what we could do was apply their theories and their techniques on an even deeper level by putting ourselves; our bodies, our personalities, our psychological profiles, our gender expectations from both outside and inside.. Um and cut those up and see what happens
And that would be create this third being which we call the Pandrogyne: the positive Androgyne
Or if you like: The Alchemical Hermaphrodite.
08:42
Right
08:43
um and then as we're looking at that we're thinking, well we're right back with magic and alchemy here. You know.. that the original perfect Divine being and and the the the state that we aspire back towards.. the the hidden the hidden Grail ...the the Philosopher's Stone right could be represented by the Pandrogyne.
by the self-chosen search to become and mutate into a neither male nor female being, but a sort of a new being.
an evolutionary step on: beyond.
9:21
So that's where it started and it got more um to do with DNA.
Because then we're thinking "Well what makes is male or female biologically? DNA."
What's the program that we don't have any control of over when we're born? DNA.
9:39
Yeah it changes how we are.. You know it has so much such a profound importance in terms of what we become as a being and what we are um.. what we look like what we might be able to achieve. All these other things.
9:55
But we we don't have a choice in who wrote the software
09:58
exactly
09:59
So this Ultimate Software.. we started saying: "Well are we really the important sort of uh beings creatures here?Or are we more like a pasture the the DNA grazes on?"
10:12
Right.
10:13
DNA has more continuity than we do.
10:15
Certainly.
10:17
You know. Each individual human being has a certain lifespan and basically we age once we can't reproduce. Which means number of no more use to DNA.
10:26
Correct.
10:28
But but DNA continues on - adding more information recording more information.
And so there's a strong argument to say that the the the primary life uh life form on this planet is DNA
10:43
And in a sense human beings and other other creatures, biological creatures. Um.. are just a combination of mobility, food and um replication techniques for this...
10:58
..right..
10:58
..DNA.
So we started to get more and more interested in that from going from just deep love we've got to Evolution and who's in charge of DNA?
Maybe DNA is control. And if that's the case how do we short circuit DNA?
11:16
Right
11:17
Is it possible for us to take control over that? And that that raises other questions one of the most important things we all have to realize is the human body is not sacred. It is just a body right and it is a body that's as arbitrary is the DNA you get. And so we shouldn't assume just because we've got used to the way that human beings tend to look, the basic thing is; two eyes, the mouth, the nose, the ears etcetera.. But that's the finished product.
11:51
And perhaps the prehistoric larval phase of the human species is what's coming to an end round about now. And the big choice we have is to take control ourselves over every possible option of redesigning and adjusting what we what we receive biologically. There's no reason once you say the body is not sacred that you have to accept anything that unfolds biologically.
12:24
So for example: if we want to go into space, or even inner space or outer space.. Let's just say space as in space travel.. As soon as you forget about the body having to look the way it does you go "Okay! Then why don't we do research into how creatures like theirs hibernate? Because one of the big problems is these long distances.
12:47
right?
12:18
but if we can hibernate that becomes more accessible
12:52
certainly
12:53
Um maybe we should be cold-blooded for space travel? maybe we need scales or fur? Perhaps extra limbs more arms but no legs because weightlessness you don't need legs.
and that's when it gets exciting when you start to let go of having any preconception about the way that human beings look.
And realize Consciousness is human beings..
13:18
Right.
13:20
..And the body is just a cheap suitcase as Lady Jay would say. Or as Timothy Leary used to say "The human body is just there to take the brain around and keep it mobile."
13:32
So that's where we got to with pandrogyny. And yes it seems like it's, it's ever more important.
Because what we discovered in a way and what's quite obvious to most people is that um in prehistoric times the the male female roles, the stereotypes were useful for our survival as a species.
13:53
Oh sure, yeah .
13:55
You know.. and and the male would go out and do all the violent work trying to kill these horrible animals, which was not easy; trapping animals, finding meat. And the women would try and take care of the caves and make things to keep warm and do some gathering and and so on.
But what would still happen would be - if some different plan appeared or some something unexpected happened something that was different or other than they knew about - they would attack it.
And so this inherently is built into us, in our genetic structure that something different, something other than ourselves, something unfamiliar is something that we attack. We intimidate and if necessary we kill it.
And of course Once Upon a Time as we said that was helpful. But now that's destroying us.
When you look at the posturing that's happening in politics, between sort of different religious dogmas, different economic dogmas right now. It's that same knee-jerk reactive process of something that doesn't agree with me: I must attack and kill it.
15:08
And that's what's leading us towards very dark age, a very directly dark time.
And so these are really, really critical issues which to reassess..
15:18
They are..
15:19
..and from a very different angle. So that's why we think it's important.
15:24
That's definitely important. The realization that Consciousness is really, is really what's important and not these cheap suitcases (or or whatever the phrase was) is what's so important or reacting to the other is what is so important.
That evolutionary step that mankind needs to make or laughs it's really not gonna to go too well. Really, he's really going down the drain.
15:49
Yeah. And of course it does bring you back to to to looking - when we get back to Consciousness - we're looking at Magic. Or Shamanism. Or certainly different ways of perception. Changing the means of perception.
You know some people assume that with me and Jay that we were swapping gender, that I was becoming female and she was becoming male or something like that. Or that we wanted to look like twins. Yes, it would be nice with conceptually to look the same but that's that's not really what we were doing.
We wanted to create a really clearly committed and serious metaphor for the ideas behind it. And say "We believe this is so important that we're putting our bodies where our mouth is."
16:36
And saying "No, we can do this. We can redesign ourselves and we can reconceive ourselves."
And we can then take all these different um areas of research like uh, there are all these different cultures have. One of the great things Crowley did - in my opinion - was bringing uh Eastern and Asian philosophies and techniques to the West in such um a carefully considered and methodical way. He's really The Godfather of holistic philosophy.
17:12
Um and that's been very very influential in so many ways.
So we've got to all sit back and um develop, develop techniques for a future where we don't think "I'm American, I'm British, I'm male, I'm female" or anything else. We just say: "I'm human. What is best for the human species?"
17:36
Or if we like to spell it Humane with an E. Big E on the end of human which stands for evolution; as well as Humane and compassion.
So it's a huge problem it's always been there. Why do we exist? And why do human beings hurt each other? How could there ever been a second war? Ever?
17:59
To this day that mystifies me. How could any human beings having seen anyone suffer and be mutilated and killed in in a violent way in a war over some stupid piece of territory or some food? Why could, how could they ever do it twice? How could they ever tolerate seeing that twice? And yet we'd be doing it for we've been doing it for thousands and thousands of years.
So somewhat, something is implicitly broken in our innermost behavior patterns. And behavior is the hardest thing to change. We all know that. And one of the greatest ways we've found to change behaviour was through ritual
18:44
You know, that doing ritual and breaking down ones um inherited cultural mores. And trying to eventually wipe clean the slate of of what you were expected to be. So that you can become the narrator of your own individual story. That all tends to become possible - in my opinion - through ritual magic and and uh that kind of research. Shamanic research, um obviously sometimes psychedelic research.
19:18
Sure. Because it always goes back to consciousness.
19:21
Yeah.
19:22
As you're breaking through whatever those patterns or or preconceived notions and getting out of your way long enough to actually experience a consciousness that's different than the herd - the limited herd consciousness you've had - and you might actually think of other possibilities. Or other possibilities that become possible.
19:43
Yeah well we're all crippled by other people's expectations. And when you're conceived in the womb the the parents - as soon as they know that one of you is pregnant - they start talking about whether it's a boy or a girl, what's it going to be like? what will we call it? And then the family get involved and the the friends and relatives and the community. And before you're even out! There's been nine months of pre-planning by all these people you've never met. About what you're going to be like, and how you're going to behave and how you're going to fit in with what they think is the right way of being.
And then that continues for the next 15 years or so usually, sometimes longer. And and the whole process is to fit you into what makes them comfortable or what makes their system continue to operate smoothly.
20:36
It is not about your best interest.
So, so you know, there's one of the things that we found ourselves with all kinds of uh you know traveling the world and seeing ritual in Nepal and India and Native American ritual and so on and in the jungles in Burma we secretly went there with the acatypes (sp?) people that it's all in a sense a form of cut up.
21:08
The cut-up is really the most, one of the most powerful tools of the 20th century in terms of um cultural engineering and behavioral change. Because you know, once you start breaking things up so that they are colliding in unexpected ways which is not controlled but who've not had a conscious pattern imposed on..
You'll see Revelations and surprises that change the way that you see something else forever.
And it's one of the few ways that we know of to to guarantee a fresh View. Yeah, from a very simple technique. If you chop it up and reassemble it, you've just created a world that did not exist before.
21:52
Sure.
21:52
And every time you chop something up and do that - you've done it again! And ritual is a form of cut up. Particularly if it's done with with minus the forethought.
22:05
Um, and this uh the Cut Pp Theory pretty much right from the beginning you were using that. In different ways of course. In all of your work.
22:17
Absolutely. It's it's the sort of the the underlying theme right the way through. Applying it with music - which is what we how we ended up with Throbbing Gristle and Industrial Music. We're saying "Well maybe we could take these tape recorder experiments that we read about Burroughs and Gysin doing - where they would record things off the radio and in the street at random and cut them together and and see what strange collisions happened."
22:44
One of the things that they discovered, one of the early descriptions of an actual magical ritual that Burroughs told me about himself in 1971 or '72. He was sitting in his apartment in Saint James London and he was showing me his notebooks and he went "Oh yes" and there was this photo of the street in London he says "let me tell you about that."
And there was a cafe that he used to like to go to for breakfast. And one day he went there and the people in the cafe were really rude to him - either they'd change staff or something - but they really really upset him and and were rude and he left in disgust and said "well I'll get my revenge on you."
23:25
So what did what he did he went back late so he took photographs of the street with this cafe amongst the buildings. Took that and got it developed. Then when he got the print with the the cafe in this in the middle of the street he sliced out the cafe with a razor and destroyed it and stuck the picture back together minus the cafe.
23:48
Then he took his tape recorder and walked up and down outside the cafe in its business hours recording the ambient street sounds. Then he went back to his apartment and he chopped in, cut in "trouble noises" as he called them. War sounds, Sirens, people screaming, uh ambulances going past.
And then he walked up and down in front of his Cafe and business hours the next day with the trouble noise he's added to the the basic background. And he did that for about a week and then the cafe closed and the building was never reopened for about 20 years.
24:25
That's pretty effective.
24:26
So there's an example of very modern magic using tape recorders and cameras and a curse. And, and focusing you know? "I want to erase this place," so he literally erased it and managed to to close them down.
So that's a really clear example of a cut-up Magic Ritual. Obviously it had ill intent but yeah sometimes sometimes we are angry. And sometimes, sometimes anger.. passion. Passion is always a good battery for magic whether it be love or anger or some other form of design. But passion is always a strengthener of magic.
25:12
yeah the uh.. you need to be inflamed.
25:15
Hmm. Which is why so much of ritual can be about uh raising that tone of energy, that sense of excitement within the nervous system. Until you're energized and otherworldly and your body almost wants to explode! It's so full of of power and thoughts and focus and intent.
25:39
foreign [Laughter]. Any more questions Peter. Sorry i'm talking too much.
25:48
That's Ok. It's Perfect. If you're too naughty, I'll spank you too.
25:51
Okay
25:53
Um the psychic Bible. Almost finished?
25:59
it's finished 564 pages of text. And between 40 and 50 uh black and white illustrations. Plus a two hour DVD of TOPY rituals and series and and videos. And it's going to be hard bound just like a Bible where the gold leaf psychic cross on the front and red edges to the to the pages and a little ribbon like a one of those awful Christian Bibles.
And it's it's 30 years of research condensed into that book basically. Um, it's it's amazing.
And the person who's done the design - Hazel Hill. She's a someone we met from L.A just recently, and she's made it look so... also looks as if it's just.. the only way to explain it it looks like it has a real authority. It looks important.
27:05
Um and actually you know what? Having read it, having not looked at a lot of that work for so long, but having to go through it with the fine-tooth comb looking for typos and correcting it and adding it and deciding what goes in and what doesn't.. It's a really, it's going to be a really important book in in the uh the magical Canon. It really is.
And that's not because of me being involved with it it's just it's really fascinating. and there's not really been an experiment like that before. Um and thank goodness Scotland Yard didn't get that stuff.
27:41
Because they weren't looking in the silly things, we're only looking for films and photographs not the paper. Otherwise we would have lost everything.
So the other reason is, it's being done is that um the information gets staged and people have access to it. And yeah we were just talking about the crisis that's looming for the species and a lot of it deals with are different experiments with trying to set up uh magical communes, magical communities and how they didn't didn't work.
28:16
So people can actually go into it and say "We'd like to try that. That's kind of like it could have been a really worthwhile way of living." where everybody was sharing and everything had a magical emphasis and people would interrogate each other about you know, how they behave and whether they're just exhibiting Loops or issues? And if so, are there ways to get rid of those issues and Loops if they're seen as negative?
It became very very much a combination of psychotherapy uh communal living and Magic which which uh was a fascinating experiment.
In Brighton where we were in in England which was the TOPY station. I guess you could call that the headquarters. Um there were in the end there were five TOPY houses with only TOPY individuals living in them: each house had its own autonomy and would design their way of living within a TOPY framework as they understood it, right? And each house had a nursery which would be the room where rituals could take place and nothing else. That room was only for Magic, Magical ritual.
Anybody living in the house could use it anytime they wanted and plus once a month in some of the houses - in fact most of the houses - once a month, everybody in the house would do a communal ritual too right?
29:39
um and then they would report back every Monday we would all have a dinner. Each house would take turns in a rotor to make dinner for all the other houses. And we would all discuss what we'd found, what we'd thought about, what had been useful, what wasn't useful.
Any, anybody who wants to could tell people what they experienced - whether they thought it was relevant. And then a different house would do all the cleaning up.
30:03
And then one person would volunteer to tell their life story on the condition they left out nothing. Yeah and and people did people tell their stories. And it was amazing. I would say about 50 to 60 percent of the boys and girls - genetic boys and girls - had some kind of abuse in their childhood. It was shocking you know? Really, really shocking!
But the bonds that we all developed through exposing ourselves that deeply to eachother is what kept it such um a uniquely sort of uh powerful Network. So that when Scotland Yard and the British government were trying to smash it they couldn't find one person to say anything negative about me. The.. locked down, the Loyalty level was just and still is amazing. You know? um and I, I really believe that came from the the the the creation of a safe place that we we all had.
31:10
Yeah you had true bonds with each other.
31:12
Mmmhmm. So those houses were a very interesting experiment we tried all kinds of things. Uh, we got hold of the discount Little Red Book and we sort of practiced Gestalt exercises to see if those work. We read about The Process Church doing telepathy exercises so we tried those at dinner. Every night when we had dinner in the each house we would all first hold hands. For children as well, we're always invited if they wanted and we would all concentrate and people would write down what they've seen and then somebody would compare them all while we were eating they would read out what everyone had seen.
31:48
And bit by bit we discovered The Process which were right. That you could get a higher and higher incidence of of imagery happening amongst the group of people if you kept on just emptying your mind gently before this communal moment.
32:07
Um, There was one night when I had seen eight people; three, four saw lions fighting. That's quite a high incidence.
32:16
That is.
32:18
Um and one of them was one of the children correct (sp?) so. It was, it was an ongoing experiment when we we.. and what was very interesting reading this psychic Bible now was that it got to this point where we really felt that we had individually to some degree liberated ourselves and the preconceptions and obligations of the outside world.
32:43
But then what? When you become that individual, and empowered individual that magic can create right? There's there's two ways it can go; one is it can become ego-bloating and it becomes continually about being individual and empowered or you suddenly realize that now you have a network of individuals and the only really logical step forward is to become a collective that works together again.
33:06
But but with this new awareness of how we work, how our minds work. How our Behavior Works. What are real desires are communaly? And how to focus uh our intent; as a group as well as we've learned through civilization as individuals.
33:29
And so we decided to to close the dolphinarium in Brighton. There was this really horribly, horrible dolphinarium by the beach. It was just a circular concrete pool with not even... no rocks, nothing. Just a circular pool with chlorine which makes them go blind. And these two dolphins would just swim round and round in circles.
So we started to picket the Dolphinarium. Peacefully but every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Rain, wind and shine, there were the TOPY people always there saying "Please don't go in." And we would give leaflets to people and their families saying "this is why we would prefer you don't go in."
We went to local schools and did projects with children about what you know how how intelligent dolphins are and would you really want to talk to the dolphin the way that they're tortured at the Dolphinarium? And they would do projects about dolphins and research. We did pop pop festivals and got lots of friends in rock bands to come and do stuff um.
It took a year and a half but we never missed a weekend the whole time right? And people came from TOPY America and TOPY Europe to help and pick it all over.
34:41
We closed it. We closed it down even though it was a one and a half million pounds a year profit making venture, we closed it down. And we thought we made contact with animal rights groups through it through doing what we did. And they arranged for us for the two dolphins to be flown to the Turks and Caicos Islands by the Aga Khan Foundation "Blue Skies." and there they were rehabilitated, the two dolphins taught to hunt food and then set free.
35:11
Oh that's beautiful.
35:12
That's magic in practice.
35:14
Certainly.
35:15
And that was a really wonderful extension beyond the individual empowerment into group empowerment and having a positive, positive effect on your environment and your community that you, you live within.
Um, so it was ongoing. It's a very interesting story. Very interesting story.
And of course we, we now suspect that closing the dolphinarium is one of the triggers that made them come down so heavily on us because..
35:44
..I was just going to ask you that, yeah..
35:46
..Some of the, some of the people who owned that business were conservative Tory, uh you know conservative MPs. So they they had in's with the the police.
I mean you have to remember, I was never charged with anything. Not even a parking ticket.
But we lost two houses, we lost all our property, we lost every photograph of the kids growing up, all our videos and films. Two tons of archives were destroyed by them. They came in the house and smashed up Georgian and historical Georgian fireplaces and windows with crowbars. And sprayed things like "Now what are you going to do, Genesis?" This is the cops we're talking about.
36:26
Of course. Yes.
36:28
Um and this.. some of this is in the book too: the psychic Bible. It talks about the the backlash with the status quo.
36:37
So it's it's uh.. it's interesting to think back and realize how paranoid they must have got, about this group you know? Here we were doing these unheard of sexual rites but doing no harm to anybody. Not being secretive, you know? Being very passionate but very open and free and and being very positive about the, the people in the town doing we had.. You know we used to have a what we call a digger a digging a digger day every weekend where we would give away clothes and books and unnecessary items. We would just have a store that said it's yours it's free. And we would give away things to people too.
37:24
So there was a lot of support for us as well in the community and I think that that magic has to become a much more uh.. socially integrated process personally. Looking back now we, we think that it's time for people to to reconsider setting up communal magical batteries if you like, and experiments that the human, human species needs examples of alternative ways of being and living.
37:53
Right. And more people challenging things because part of the reason - I would think - that it was so easy to create problems for you, is that well you're challenging them. Even though there's really no reason for them to be afraid. On a real basic level the status quo is extremely challenged by your actions and if more people are doing it, the status quo just naturally starts to switch. It has to just by definition..
38:20
..Right. Of course (unintelligeble)..
38:23
...switching over. Yeah.
38:24
..and they were.. you know there were access points. Which were sort of um groups of top individuals who would organize events. Whether it be raves, film nights, whatever. But they were about 30 or 40 of them all over the world. And and there were book pub... we were publishing books. We were bringing out records and CDs and DVDs, organizing Arts festivals all over Europe and America and Canada.
And I mean for a very small number of people, relatively small, we were we were showing that with with not so much material wealth, if you all share your resources you can achieve more than people imagine.
39:07
we call it the um The Millionaire With Nothing technique. Where if if three of you have.. still one of you has a house in India and one of you has a house in Oregon and one of you has an apartment in New York. And you have that level of trust, you all have a key. Then ina theory you're like a millionaire because I have a house in India and I have a house in Oregon and an apartment in New York and I travel around amongst them.
Which is what we were doing. There were quite a lot of nomadic TOPY people who just traveled around the world staying at different centers and contributing and working and then moving on and sharing information and ideas. And um it was a very vital, very active, very vibrant Network. And I think that you're right. The the power that be saw the potential for it to exponentially grow quite fast.
40:01
So we do recommend to everybody listening.. When it's available.. it should be published in our on Valentine's Day next year 2010. and it's it's recommended, recommended reading.
40:13
oh definitely
40:15
So anybody wants to change the world, go have a look. And we made a point in the back of adding in letters where we're arguing with different access points, you know? They're telling me that my ideas are completely crooked and crazy and they disagree completely and we wanted that in too. So people could see that that was all part of the dynamic. Disagreement was just as important and wasn't seen as threatening but as another way forward.
40:42
Um, so there's lots of different templates. And people can take and change, you know.. take a bit here a bit there discard this discard that add something that no one else has done in here. And just start living it living magic. live it 24/7, you know?
40:58
Yeah it's one way or the other way. I mean you can read magic and you can talk magic but to live magic is a completely different thing.
41:08
And as as you've seen with what happened to us, of course. There's a danger and there's a danger for Crowley, you know? But we're in good company; Crowley had problems with the British government, Oscar Wilde had problems with the British government Quentin Crisp had problems and so did we. So we're in with the good people.
41:25
Yes. It's a validation of sorts yes.
41:26
It is, it is... we have them worried
41:33
And now just when they probably think we've disappeared, out will come the book. And that that uh that potential is back on the, on the street for for use by whoever thinks it's of any help.
41:46
And it's it's a very very uh, a very unique sort of phenomena. It's it's, kind of Cefalu taken to a next. next step you know. Trying to make it bigger and Bolder and of course, we were aware that we would we were quite possibly going to run into a cultural brick wall. of course.
42:03
Of course, yeah.
42:05
Um, but it's worth the risk isn't it? For the, for the...
42:08
..certainly...
..for the Joy. The joy of finding out what can be done.
42:11
I mean because what's the point otherwise? to just hide in your room thinking things? you know?
42:16
Yeah and then wearing a robe and shouting Egyptian names and they're running into circles. I mean that's okay. Of course! But but for me I'm I'm I'm from the 60s, you know? And the Sixties is very much about if you think about it you have a responsibility to try and do it. And if you want to try and do it you could try and do it on behalf of everyone. To make the world a better place.
And if magic is really as wonderful as so many of us say this, then surely it's going to make the world a better place. So go out and do it!
42:50
Yeah.
Thank you so much for joining us Genesis. Our guest today is the musician and artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. thank you for joining us. Love is the law. Love under will.
thank you for joining us today on Thelema Now. Our guest has been Genesis P-orridge who's a musician and artist and you can find out more about Genesis at her website Genesis P hyphen orange.com
43:22
you can find out more about her music and photographs her upcoming art show and we thank you for listening to Thelema Now which is produced with the support of the Ordo template orientus USA Grand Lodge.
The opinions expressed on this program by the hosts and guests do not necessarily represent those of the OTO USA or any other officers or directors.
Our mission is to provide listeners with interesting and thought-provoking interviews featuring people involved in mysticism spirituality and magical theory and practice.
our theme music is provided by Fern night. you can hear more about Fern night at their website Fernnight that's
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