News From The Vestry - 15/04/25
Some things I think you should check out.
Blessed Day, Prometheans!
This week we welcome a new Pecuniary Congregant. Thank you, Charlie. And thank you to all of you - pecuniary and non-pecuniary - for your support. YOU are Church of Burn.
It’s been great to get a bit of reaction to the £10KBURN proposal. There is still a mountain to climb but the first steps have felt very positive. If you’ve not seen the document yet it’s here. I’ll talk a tiny bit more about this behind the paywall.
Mainly this week though I just want to recommend some events and projects that I think you should take a look at. Not least because all of them are the offspring of your fellow congregants. The Vestry is blessed to brim-full of amazing people. You included!! Xx
London Magical Moon Pilgrimage, Friday 26th April 2025
absurdintelligence.com
There is a quote I always put front and centre about CoB - “Church of Burn is a portal into a glorious world we’re not supposed to see. Where money’s power is revoked, reclaimed and reassigned. A sacrificial rite that rewrites our failing modern world. For once one has burnt money, what else is possible?” It’s written by Charlie Waterhouse and manages to capture in a few lines the key elements of what it is CoB is trying to do.
Charlie has done some amazing things and his work will already be woven through your consciousness and that of everyone you know. Absurd Intelligence is his latest project and I encourage you to take a look. And to support it if you can.
A good place to begin is the following two part essay by Charlie.
The Network is The Strategy, Part One: Last Exit From La-La Land
Right and left have failed us, and the centre cannot hold. Are you tired of pretending the slo-mo disaster movie doesn’t star us? And are you ready to do the previously unthinkable? Part one of two: the broken models of behaviour we need to escape.The Network is The Strategy, Part Two: in Praise of Fred Hampton
It’s time to do the previously unthinkable: get over ourselves, and start actually working with each other.
At one point Charlie talks about Degrowth. As you know, it’s been a bit of bugbear for me. I’ve seen the idea enchant a lot of good folks; enchant because it rationalises, justifies and utilizes our feelings about asceticism being a moral and spiritual good - which in turn is used to justify poverty.
Charlie draws on David Graeber’s argument that we need to replace the categories of Consumption and Production with Freedom and Care (as I’ve mentioned before David was not a fan of Degrowth). Charlie then augments this with distinguishing between freedom from and freedom to. I’ll quote at length because for me Charlie really manages to cut through here:
If we navigate our decisions based on centering Care, we will create more Freedom for ourselves. The more Free we are, the better able we are to show Care, to ourselves and others (and repeat).
This is the Freedom To so well described by Timothy Snyder in his new book On Freedom: a transformational, sovereign freedom that is not caught in old paradigm stories that bedevil Freedom From. Again, this is key – for the relation between Care and Freedom enables a paradigm shift in that tricky, slippery concept of Growth.
For rather than miring us in the impossible to-and-fro of Degrowth (a Freedom From) we are afforded an opportunity to embrace a continuation of perpetual growth – only this time measured in Kindness and Love, rather than GDP (Production & Consumption).
The interrelating values of Care and Freedom, and Growth, then, are meant not simply as ‘moral’ positions, nor economic measures, but communicative tools – designed as much to propel as to counsel. Aionic, repeatable, spreadable, transformational.
The other phrase Charlie uses is ‘direction of travel’. He says we - all of us - are being invited to be part of the solution-as-direction. Not be The Solution.
And that idea is of course captured in his line about CoB “For once one has burnt money, what else is possible?”
There’s much more I could talk about. Charlie digs into ideas of time in a way that reminds me of
’s C-Lab project. He digs into Utopias and Dystopias (before his untimely death Nigel Dodd’s next book project was to draw on “Utopia” - the final chapter of The Social Life of Money - to explore the relationship between Money and Time).Charlie does his digging a way that invites us to action. Action; the idea that is central to David Graeber’s conception of value.
But anyway… go read what Charlie wrote. And then take a look around all the other actions that his Absurd Intelligence collaborators - including my brilliant and awesome friend Clare Farrell are bringing into being.
Super Connected Tour
CoB superstars
, and are going back on the road with the brilliant Super Connected. It’s a film and a live performance merged seamlessly into single presentation. And its a must-see event.Smart phone use among children is a very hot topic at the moment. Tim was on Sky TV a couple of weeks back talking about it. Book your tickets here.
Out of My Head - Alan Watts is Alive and Well… Dead
At The Cockpit Marylebone this week, Out of My Head is written and performed by Jeremy Stockwell and directed by Terry Johnson. I’m going on Friday with Carrie Thompson (who blesses CoB with her invocation of The Goddess Melusine).
Watts’ famously asked ‘What if money is no object?’ as a way to guide the choices we make in life. He argued that if we pursue money as the means to achieving our desires it creates a prison for us. And worse, via our ‘responsible’ parenting and our educational institutions we transmit our unfreedom to future generations.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say I think Watts would have approved of CoB.
Anyway, if you’re in or near London this week do try to get along. It’s on now until this coming Saturday 19th April.
Breaking Convention
The UK’s premiere psychedelic conference is taking place at The University of Exeter this week from 17th - 19th April 2025. Get tickets here. Sadly I can’t make it but you’ll be among friends. Fellow congregants the genius Erica Lagalisse will be on a panel (with Giorgia Gaia from Occulture) and the great Chaos Mage
Thomas Sharp at Field System
If you’re heading down to Breaking Convention you could drive on just another thirty minutes and see Thomas Sharp’s corridor of language consciousness magick and romance at Field System at Ashburton. It runs until the 26th April. Tom calls himself a poet but I think he’s actually a word magician.
Now, Tom might argue that all magicians are de facto ‘word magicians’ - or perhaps more precisely de facto ‘language magicians’. I’m not sure I agree. But fleshing out this disagreement would require me to use language which would thereby nullify whatever argument I was able to muster.
Just before the paywall… I have been feeling a little listless this week. A bit low on energy and focus. Distracted. I seem to suffer these symptoms at this time of year, especially. This year I’m blaming tree pollen.
Apologies if that’s coming through to you - either here or in other communications. I’m very much looking forward to having this Friday off and doing something fun instead of selling myself to Blackrock and Vanguard. I can’t believe I’m (ultimately) offering my body and as little of my mind as I can get away with simply to move the numbers on their balance sheets in the ‘right’ direction. Fuckers.
Now… cometh the paywall. (As ever… if you can’t afford to take out a paid subscription but want to help CoB then get in touch and I’ll sort you out - Oath of Confidence applies!)
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