The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

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By Ursula K. Le Guin

Introduction by Donna Haraway

Images by Lee Bul 

In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin tells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination.

Hacking the linear, progressive mode of the Techno-Heroic, the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution proposes: ‘before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.’ Prior to the preeminence of sticks, swords and the Hero’s killing tools, our ancestors’ greatest invention was the container: the basket of wild oats, the medicine bundle, the net made of your own hair, the home, the shrine, the place that contains whatever is sacred. The recipient, the holder, the story. The bag of stars. 

This influential essay opens a portal to terra ignota, where the possibilities of human experience and knowledge can be discovered anew. 

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The White Paper

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By Satoshi Nakamoto
Guide by Jaya Klara Brekke

Introduction by James Bridle
Edited by Ben Vickers

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto published a revolutionary white paper that described a simple peer-to-peer electronic cash system that would later become Bitcoin. In the decade since the launch of the digital currency, the nascent blockchain technology behind Bitcoin has been heralded as having the same radical potential as the printing press or the Internet, in particular presenting extraordinary challenges to traditional banking. Yet the paper contains no reference to existing political ideas, monetary or economic knowledge. Why?

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Ignota Diary 2020

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The Ignota Diary is a tool for discovery in the practice of everyday life

The Ignota Diary is a tool for discovery in the practice of everyday life. This beautifully designed diary and week-to-view planner is filled with historically significant magical and sacred dates from around the world. Drawn from events such as the Buddha’s birthday, esoteric festivals and artistic and occult history, the diary touches on the lives of characters such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Zora Neale Hurston, Carl Jung, Simone Weil, Aleister Crowley, George Bataille, Timothy Leary, Hilma af Klint, Saint Hildegard of Bingen, William Blake and W.B. Yeats.  

The diary provides full astrological navigation for 2020 with an overview of the year, a birthchart template and guides to moon magic, houses, planets and symbols. Key transits, retrogrades and lunar phases, noted throughout the planner, allow you to organise your life in alignment with the astrological weather, visible at a glance. A global map showing sacred sites provides inspiration for transformative pilgrimages.

Rituals by the acclaimed artist Jesse Darling and poets CAConrad, Bhanu Kapil and Nisha Ramayya and seasonal tarot spreads by practitioners including adrienne maree brown and Rachel Pollack, author of the bestselling tarot guide 78 Degrees of Wisdom, offer guidance and space for reflection throughout the year. Additional sources of inspiration include guides to Soji cleaning by Zen monk Shoukei Matsumoto, author of the bestseller A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind, and guided meditation by Julian Vayne of the Psychedelic Museum. 

To support a holistic approach to health and wellbeing, an appendix contains guides to healing herbs, key acupressure points, the chakra system and Ayurvedic medicine, as well as a directory of key magical places, shops and websites

Contributors include

Acupressure by Maria Christofi, Astrology by Francesca Lisette, Herbal Remedies by Seed Sistas, Psychedelic Journey by Julian Vayne, Rituals by CAConrad, Jesse Darling, Bhanu Kapil and Nisha Ramayya, Soji by Shoukei Matsumoto and Tarot by adrienne maree brown, Rachel Pollack, Candida Powell-Williams and Sabrina Scott

 

 

 

 

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Spells: 21st-Century Occult Poetry

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Spells are poems; poetry is spelling.

Spell-poems take us into a realm where words can influence the universe.

Spells brings together thirty-six contemporary voices exploring the territory where justice, selfhood and the imagination meet the transformative power of the occult. These poems unmake the world around them, so that it might be remade anew.

Kaveh Akbar, Rachael Allen, Nuar Alsadir, Khairani Barokka, Emily Berry, A.K. Blakemore, Jen Calleja, Vahni Capildeo, Kayo Chingonyi, Elinor Cleghorn, CAConrad, Nia Davies, Kate Duckney, Livia Franchini, Will Harris, Caspar Heinemann, Lucy Ives, Rebecca May Johnson, Bhanu Kapil, Amy Key, Daisy Lafarge, Dorothea Lasky, Ursula K. Le Guin, Francesca Lisette, Canisia Lubrin, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Lucy Mercer, Hoa Nguyen, Rebecca Perry, Nat Raha, Nisha Ramayya, Ariana Reines, Sophie Robinson, Erica Scourti, Dolly Turing, Jane Yeh.

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Leave Husband, Practice Witchcraft Tote

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“Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” — Pat Robertson

This robust and substantial 250gsm cotton canvas is a bag for life—equipped with a 10cm bottom gusset that provides extra volume for your portable feminist library, spellbooks and mini cauldron.

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UNKNOWN LANGUAGE

By Hildegard of Bingen and Huw Lemmey

With an introductory story by Bhanu Kapil and an afterword by Alice Spawls

A mutant fiction of speculative mysticism: time travel, visions and inner paths to outer space. Publishing on the Feast Day of Hildegard of Bingen on 17 September 2020. 

Long before the collapse of the Information Age, in the twelfth century since the appearance of the prophet Christ, young Hildegard of Bingen finds grace in the ruins of her medieval world. 

After the great cataclysm and the Angelic power struggle that followed, Hildegard flees the City of God and embarks upon a pilgrimage towards the kingdom of the poor. 

In this story of survival and miracles, Hildegard encounters love, both queer and divine, and great peril. As the visionary healer  travels through the desolate landscape, she discovers the mythic quantum energy of viriditas in the natural world around her. Her journey becomes one of return, to the sacred truth of her own being. 

On the planet Avaaz, in a sea cave with cracked amethyst walls, Pinky Agarwalia finds fragments of a beguiling text called Scivias, a beautiful codex thought to be lost during the evacuation of Earth in the third millennium.

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