“Beyond Chaos” ∴ Phil Hine ∴ PRAGMAGICK

Watch The Episode!

Hey creeps, hope you had some hairy horrordays and are ready for the funk of 2020 to roll off your shoulder as much as I am. It is fitting, nay SUITING, that I end the year with such a magnanimous discussion with someone I hold in very high esteem (although he would hate said esteem I’m sure!) – Phil Hine, author and journalist of many different metaphysical trajectories – from chaos magick to tantra, to yogies and yoga, to elusive and archaic whimsy’s illustrated on his brilliant enfolding.org – he is a prolific journalist of thought – Hine has a unique perspective more than most in that he doesn’t feel he is authoritative on many subjects. I beg to differ in just a small way – he is authoritative to now, to not be pegged and labeled by his past dalliances, but screams growth through his continual need to document and toil with his own stasis as mage and writer. This means much to me.

I told him, not unlike a musician who has put out many records over the years, or any prolific artist for that matter, it was my duty to not hound him with works so far removed from his current, well, currents. I knew he had tired of all the chaos magick gusto sprung upon him from a popular work close to 30 years old now. I am talking of Condensed Chaos of course. But let me not dissuade you from thinking this is a chaos-less convo. Hine is stunning in his ability to saunter and weave his own growth with his past works, but as his 2020 collection, Hine’s Varieties, states in the title – he is a collection of brilliant and nominal experiences within many currents of magick and artistry.

Phil Hine is NOT the chaos magick guy, he is first and foremost a practitioner journalist ready and able to be humbled by his past decrees, and builds a sturdy humanism within the magistrate that is his body of work. A perennial student, humor laden, incorrigibly witty and personable, Phil Hine is the EXACT luminary I needed to hear from at this point in my life. One riddled with a severe self-reflection that is both transcendent and raw, and one that doesn’t take himself too damn seriously.

We were weavers of thoughts during our conversation; topics woven like threads through a bright discourse. I’m not one to over edit these pragmagick conversations, I worry I would devalue the experience that was shared. This is part and parcel. We cover so much, and I’m keeping the spirit of that congress of discourse alive by allowing the ebbs and flows.

We chat about so damn much; from the chaos magick ethos vs. the 70’s and 80’s punk ethos, the psychic soothing of self from a pragmatic, therapeutic standpoint, adversely, the bullshit of being too pragmatic with woo, too! We discuss mentors, gurus, and finding the others as friends first, not authorities. The death of the machismo through a fluid concept of sexuality and not their inherent confines. Tantra and its necessity for a traditionalism in praxis and his wonderful workings within such a praxis.