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Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, abbreviated as TOPY, was a British magical organization, fellowship and chaos magic network founded in 1981 by Genesis P-Orridge, lead member of multimedia group Psychic TV. [1] The network, including later members of Coil and Current 93, was a loosely federated organization of members and initiates operating as an order of ceremonial magic and sex magic, as well as an experimental artistic collective.
Their early network consisted of a number of "stations" [2] worldwide including TOPY-CHAOS for Australia, TOPYNA for North America and TOPY Station 23 for the United Kingdom and Europe. Smaller, "grass-roots"-level sub-stations called Access Points were located throughout America and Europe. [3] Throughout its existence, TOPY has been an influential group in the underground chaos magic scene. [4]
In 2016, French-Canadian director Jacqueline Castel began work on the feature-length documentary about TOPY, titled A Message from the Temple. [5] [6]
Potential TOPY members were encouraged to make magical sigils of a certain prescribed nature. [9] These acts were to be performed on the 23rd hour (11:00pm) of the 23rd day of each month. If an individual chose to do so, they were invited to mail their sigils to a central location where the magical energy in them could be used to enhance others. [4]
In the early 1990s, a rift occurred within the network when Genesis P-Orridge of Psychic TV, one of the few founding members still involved at that time, and probably the best known public face of TOPY during the 1980s, announced their departure from the organization. [10] This was later exacerbated with Genesis P-Orridge later claiming to have shut down the network upon leaving and requesting that the group no longer use the registered trademark of the Psychick Cross. Some of the remaining members of the network chose not to go along with this and carried on with their activities. TOPY continued to grow and evolve throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century while Genesis P-Orridge moved on to other projects such as The Process, as well as a similar project to TOPY called Topi.
Genesis P-Orridge's TOPY has been criticized by Dan Siepmann as being a front for abuses of power and developing an actual cult of personality. [11]
There have been a number of texts produced by Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth to expound its philosophies. Some of the key texts produced over the years have been:
A magical organization or magical order is an organization or secret society created for the practice of initiation into ceremonial or other forms of occult magic or to further the knowledge of magic among its members. Magical organizations can include Hermetic orders, esoteric societies, arcane colleges, and other groups which may use different terminology and similar though diverse practices.
Chaos magic, also spelled chaos magick, is a modern tradition of magic. Emerging in England in the 1970s as part of the wider neo-pagan and esotericist subculture, it drew heavily from the occult beliefs of artist Austin Osman Spare, expressed several decades earlier. It has been characterised as an invented religion, with some commentators drawing similarities between the movement and Discordianism. Magical organizations within this tradition include the Illuminates of Thanateros and Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.
A sigil is a type of symbol used in magic. The term usually refers to a pictorial signature of a deity or spirit. In modern usage, especially in the context of chaos magic, a sigil refers to a symbolic representation of the practitioner's desired outcome.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was an English singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, visual artist, and occultist who rose to notoriety as the founder of the COUM Transmissions artistic collective and lead vocalist of seminal industrial band Throbbing Gristle. They were also a founding member of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth occult group, and fronted the experimental pop rock band Psychic TV.
Psychic TV were an English experimental video art and music group, formed by performance artist Genesis P-Orridge and Scottish musician Alex Fergusson in 1981 after the break-up of Throbbing Gristle.
Allegory and Self: Illustrations in Sound is a studio album released by Psychic TV in 1988.
Cold Spring is an independent record label based in Northamptonshire, England, specialising in "all forms of extreme media, but particularly: dark ambient, neo-classical/neo-folk, orchestral, power electronics/noise, Japanese noise, minimal, death industrial, dark soundtracks, experimental, obscure electronics from Russia, China, Japan, Poland and others."
The discography of the experimental music group Psychic TV consists of over 100 full-length albums, over 15 compilation albums and over 30 singles and EPs.
Force the Hand of Chance is the debut studio album by English experimental group Psychic TV, released in 1982 by record label Some Bizzare. The first 5,000 pressings came with a bonus album, Themes.
Themes 2, also referred to as Themes, Vol. 2, is a studio album by a multimedia collective Psychic TV, released by Temple Records in 1985. It is the second album in the Themes series, predeced by Themes – initially an accompanying release to Force the Hand of Chance – and followed up by Themes 3, and was recorded as a soundtrack for videos by a British filmmaker Derek Jarman.
Pagan Day (originally released as A Pagan Day (Pages From a Notebook)) is a 1984 album by English experimental band Psychic TV. The cover photograph is of Caresse P-Orridge taken by Andrew Rawling.
Jack the Tab/Tekno Acid Beat is a compilation of material by Psychic TV released under the guise of two various artists compilation albums, Jack the Tab – Acid Tablets Volume One and Tekno Acid Beat.
Towards Thee Infinite Beat is an album by Psychic TV. It was followed by the remix album Beyond Thee Infinite Beat.
The Process was an art and philosophy collective formed in the early 1990s and birthed at the same time as, and with a subset of the same people from, the studio work for the Skinny Puppy album The Process. Early contributors included Nivek Ogre, Genesis P-Orridge, William Morrison, and Loki der Quaeler. The Process collective aimed to connect the international industrial music community via the nascent internet while ostensibly reviving the "deviant psychotherapy cult" Process Church of the Final Judgement.
Splinter Test was used as a group name for Larry Thrasher and Genesis P-Orridge. The name was first used for a box set of reissues of the more experimental material by Psychic TV, and then it was used to issue the spoken word projects of Psychic TV or their instrumental music, before the foundation of Thee Majesty. The name refers to an essay on sampling as holographic magick by P-Orridge.
"Roman P" is a song by Psychic TV about director Roman Polanski.
Peak Hour is an album by the English band Psychic TV, released in 1993.
Dais Records is an American independent record label founded in August 2007 by musicians Gibby Miller and Ryan Martin, and based in Los Angeles, California, and Brooklyn, New York.
In chaos magic, playback is a form of magical practice developed by William S. Burroughs, primarily as a way of placing curses on people or places. Burroughs was a part of the chaos magic movement, and this technique – along with others such as the cut-up technique – were further developed and commented on by later chaos magicians such as Genesis P-Orridge, Phil Hine and Dave Lee.
Jacqueline Castel is an American-born French and Canadian film director, screenwriter, and curator based in New York City. Her debut feature film, My Animal, starring Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Amandla Stenberg, world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023 and was released theatrically by Paramount. Castel's work has screened at Sundance, South by Southwest, the Sitges Film Festival, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and she has written for and directed such established auteurs as John Carpenter and Jim Jarmusch, and has collaborated with David Lynch and Stella McCartney. She is the in-house director for the record label Sacred Bones Records, and has directed music videos for Zola Jesus, The Soft Moon, and Pharmakon.
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