A brief introduction to Drugs in the Bible - with some excellent jokes!

The diagnosis of ADHD is certainly good for business, with the global medication market projected to hit nearly £25 billion by 2025. But it is good for us to agree to be called “deficient”, “hyperactive” and “disorderly” when it is not only insulting but inaccurate?

In honour of Chinese New Year in the Year of the Dragon, I’m sharing the story of Merlin as a boy.

This version was told to me by the great storyteller Eric Maddern. It is about finding our voice and expressing ourselves, and the powers that are released when we do.

Spoiler: It has dragons in it.

The therapist who introduced me to the art of hypnosis had a keen interest in magic and the occult sciences. When he hypnotised me and employed some of the tools of ceremonial magic, he not only cleared up a problem with anger that was troubling me, but also opened my eyes to an elegant way of engaging with the powerhouse of the deep mind.

It was my great pleasure to share some of this work in this talk, given at Occulture 2023.

Two summers ago, I led a series of collective rituals inviting people to bring slime moulds into their magic to feed a new type of spirit for a new world - something in the shape of a branching network. As with all great works, I learned a little something on the way - in this case about how to nurture a regenerative network.

Networks in nature made up of single-celled creatures without brains or nervous systems can solve mazes, predict rhythms in time, efficiently distribute resources and share information for mutual aid and collective resilience.

What might we humans be capable of if we work together and connect with something that goes beyond us?

The circles and incantations of ceremonial magic are a great way to approach some of the more powerful and unruly parts of the psyche, and trance makes it easy.

If you’re in Berlin, come along along to one of the following dates…

Neil and Francis from Storm Radio thought it would be a good idea to get me on the Short n Curlz show, talking about trance and the apocalypses in between Saturday morning tunes and puerile jokes.

Networks in nature made up of single-celled creatures without brains or nervous systems can solve mazes, predict rhythms in time, efficiently distribute resources and share information for mutual aid and collective resilience. What might we humans be capable of if we work together and connect with something that goes beyond us?

Most people today in the industrialised world think that medicine was a barbaric hit-and-miss affair until the advent of science, and that the medicines that were known to the ancients were discovered by trial and error.

Are there aliens in the Bible? Or is it something even more curious?