This year I have read Tricksters & Punks of Asia by Phil Nicks, which is a unique collection of essays and inspired fragments of the punk philosophy.
Author Phil Nicks is, in his own words, “the itinerant UK exile, outsider rascal and uncompromising enemy of political correctness. Nick was employed as a finance director of an offshore bank before he was chased away by Mafioso clients to a new life in Asia.”
Phil Talking About Tricksters
“Tricksters are the mythological demigods who preside over punks and other masters of ‘the shortcut’.
“Political correctness is the modern form of control that prevents many people from expressing themselves truthfully”.
Chiron
I would like to give my personal introduction to the trickster punk philosophy and how it relates to the astrological consciousness of Chiron. Punk emerged with Chiron’s discovery in 1977, as did greater environmental awareness, deeper expressions of therapeutic healing such as primal therapy, extraterrestrial involvement with Earth and with human development and many other oddities that are clues to a whole new implicate order of holographic reality.
Phil Nicks is aware of the Punk/Trickster Chiron connection and gives voice to many different elements that arise with this consciousness.
Chiron rules the attempt of the spirit to integrate and to make whole everything in life. This impulse from the spirit brings the truth of the psyche’s fragmentation. When you truly look at the world and seek the unity of it without the filters of idealism, or you look at yourself in the same vein and you also feel what you see, you firstly feel the pain of disconnection. The cascade of pain you feel is derived from the chasms between all of the intersections of the seemingly disparate elements of life.
Here is how I introduce the Enchantments perspective derived from what I call the Chiron Enchantment.
Film, advertising, science, governments, the integral movement, the new age phenomena, UFOs, religion, the Internet, game culture, hip hop, skateboarding, punk, robotics, genetics, the corporate world, office life, the harsh reality of a slum, sex, love, human imagination, the ocean and the stars at night … seemingly random fragments of reality, yet all part of our one-planet experience.
Our world and its kaleidoscopic diversity is starting to wake up to itself. All realities are impermanent—some more enduring than others, all of them real unto themselves, all constructed from agreement-sustained magic. Which is to say that the world as a totality is an Enchantment with different scales of Enchantment within its fabric.
The planetary awakening is pushing us to start integrating. To do that, we have to be prepared to express discordancy, even anger, to connect to our primal and sexual self, and to rebel against anything that inhibits this new subtle and slowly emerging complex consciousness.
The emerging Chiron consciousness requires that we are not afraid to get it wrong, that we must learn to express the self from differing and even opposing perspectives. On the psychological level, the synthesis and integration I speak of is a messy business without easy neat conclusions—it is open ended. By breaking free from spiritual idealism, political correctness and other safe structures inherited from philosophy and moral thinking, we increase the disturbing sense of insecurity.
The healing from this new complex holism lies beyond the mind; it lies in a whole energy experience that can only be realized through first acknowledging and feeling the unavoidable discordancy.
Unlock the Door
Needless to say, not many people are yet willing or able to open up this door. Phil Nicks, however, is. In his own life he has undertaken a nonlinear journey of healing and exploring consciousness, thrown off alcohol dependency, dived into the seedy world of Asia and here reveals his heart, his ranting self and his mental musings in an attempt to make sense of it all.
Appropriately, Phil Nicks has created his own publishing imprint, Fast Track Publishing, and his books include How to Make a Living in Paradise, Love Entrepreneurs, Genius of Love and Tricksters & Punks of Asia.
While the book does lack synthesis, it opens up many different and valuable avenues and is full of amusing personal anecdotes. My favourite chapter is “Spiritual Tricksters”, where he encounters a conman and then goes on to experience the real-deal ‘psychic’ surgeon.
Tricksters is a different kind of book. Phil expresses his paradoxes and lets his emotion and philosophic self off the rein simultaneously—so if you want a singular linear message you might be frustrated by it. The ideas seem to jump around quite randomly, but there is an underlying unity.
Which I would say is this:
The book expresses the important impulse to break free from social restraints that are no longer serving humanity and to seek a new more honest expression of being human. Phil exposes the need for trickster energy in our world and reminds us that the terrain is hazardous.
My personal opinion is that the world is presently being ruled by tricksters who emanate a veneer of respectability to control the masses. More people need to develop a trickster mentality to liberate the spirit in our world and yet that potentially opens the door to some anarchy and chaos—the terrain ahead does indeed look well tricky.
In this book, as well as in Genius of Love, the author offers some truthful insights into living in Asia that you won’t find expressed anywhere else. Trickster criminals, spiritual fakes, and opportunists in general are linked in with the punk rock scene of the 1970s, the growing unease of corporatization and the need for love.
His books are for those wanting to open doors and are written with a distinctly Asian ex–pat flavour.
