No Discordian event could possibly be complete without the presence of the wonderful John Higgs, author of The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned A Million Pounds, the best introduction to Discordianism for the uninitiated out there, in our opinion, and a prolific speaker, talker and thinker. John will be bringing his Ziggy Blackstar and the Art of Becoming talk, his unique perspective on David Bowie’s death and why it affected people as deeply as it did.

John is a writer who specialises in finding previously unsuspected narratives, hidden in obscure corners of our history and culture, which can change the way we see the world. The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds, was described as “Adam Curtis brainstorming with Thomas Pynchon” by The Guardian. Ben Goldacre (Bad Science, Bad Pharma) called it “By far the best book this year, brilliant, discursive and wise.” The leading music website The Quietus said it “Might well be the best music book of the 2010s” and it was named as one of the top ten music books of 2013 by The Guardian, The Independent and Mojo.

Alan Moore describes his most recent book Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century as “A breathtakingly lucid and coherent map of the tectonic shifts which drastically reshaped the human psyche, and the human world, within a hundred thrilling, terrifying years [and which] leaves us asking ourselves how we could have missed so much about the wider implications of a time we lived through. An illuminating work of massive insight, I cannot recommend this magnificent work too highly.” Together with his first book I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary, which features a foreword by Winona Ryder, his work is currently being translated into seven different languages.

A prolific public speaker, Higgs has spoken at events and festivals including Wilderness, The Secret Garden Party, the Brighton Festival, the Port Eliot Literary Festival and LonCon3 (the World Science Fiction Convention). He has written for publications including The Guardian, The Independent and Mojo, and his fiction appears under the name JMR Higgs.

Before turning to full-time writing he directed over 100 episodes of animated pre-school television, created the long-running BBC Radio 4 quiz series X Marks the Spot, and worked as producer on a number of videogames for the Xbox, PlayStation2 and Nintendo Gamecube. He lives in Brighton, England, with his partner and their two children.

www.johnhiggs.com
www.twitter.com/johnhiggs
www.facebook.com/johnhiggsauthor

Not everything in the Cosmic Trigger blast radius is necessarily good or helpful.

It gets Weird out in the Wyrd: sometimes it can seem as though you are not just wandering in Chapel Perilous, but being pursued. At times like that, it’s helpful to know the basics of how to protect yourself.

This is not about turning you into an occult badass: it’s more like a anti-mugging course for those who want to be safer in their travels.

DADA 101: An introduction to Defence Against the Dark Arts.

In this introductory workshop Cat Vincent, a long-time expert on magical protection and curse-breaking, will take you through some useful underlying concepts, such as grounding, shielding and counter-spelling. Providing an underlying model for combat magic, Cat will demonstrate how to use these principles to protect yourself and even to disperse unwanted forces.

All you need is to be comfortable and ready for some mild stretching (in all senses of the word).

About Cat Vincent…

Ian ‘Cat’ Vincent is a lifelong student of the occult, and a former paranormal protection consultant.

In recent years he has turned his attention to Fortean journalism, with a focus on examining the rise of ‘hyper-real’ (fiction-inspired) belief systems and other pop-culture manifestations of the occult. He was one of the earliest journalists to write in depth on the Slenderman phenomenon. His writing has appeared in Fortean Times, the American college text Apocalyptic Imaginary, a monthly column at Spiral Nature and the Darklore anthologies, and he is a a contributing editor at The Daily Grail.

He has lectured on subjects including Slenderman, the life and works of Robert Anton Wilson, the fictional roots of modern paganism and the Westernisation of Eastern beliefs at a range of venues including the Senate House Library, the University of Leicester and the Royal College of Art.

http://www.catvincent.com