Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth
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Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) was founded in the early 1980s by members of Psychic TV, Coil, Current 93, and a number of other individuals. The ever-evolving network is a loosely federated group of people operating as a unique blend of artistic collective, and practitioners of magic. TOPY is dedicated to the manifestation of magical concepts lacking mysticism or the worship of gods. The group focuses on the psychic and magical aspects of the human brain linked with "guiltless sexuality".
Throughout its existence, TOPY has been an influential group in the underground Chaos magic scene and in the wider western occult tradition. TOPY's research has covered both Left-hand path and Right-hand path magick, various elements of psychology, art, music, and a variety of other media. Some of the influences on the network have been Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, and Brion Gysin.
In the early 1990s a rift occurred within the network when Genesis P-Orridge of Psychic TV, one of the founding members, and probably the most famous public face of TOPY during the 1980's, claimed that he was shutting down the network. The existing members of the network chose not to go with this and carried on with their activities. So Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth 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.
Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth continues to be an active network of magical practitioners, with a semi-regular journal, Broadcast (which has just seen issue 10 published), and a number of other projects available. It is one of the major influences on a more recent parody religion, Thee Church ov MOO.
[edit] Key texts
There have been a number of texts produced by Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth to expound its philosophies, many of which can be found on their website. Some of the key texts produced over the years have been:
- Thee Sigilizers Handbook
- Thee Grey Book (which was important during the 1980's but is no longer distributed by TOPY)
- Thee Black Book
- Broadcast (the journal of TOPY)
