Articles tagged with "highden"

The temple's awful (I'm being polite here) history isn't enough; they've recently created their own cryptocurrency called Highden Coin. On the Highden Coin website, very few details are shared, and what is said is very wishy-washy. They say their coins will be released gradually over twenty-five years, through 49 cycles/initiations - and twice each year they will gather at Highden for six weeks. These gatherings are to do "transformative work" at the temple, and build up the community. 17 of these initiations have already occurred, so a third of the supply was released when the coin was created. You can currently (as of the 24th of March) buy a coin for 0.01607 USD, or 100 coins for ~2.75 NZD - up ~60% from 0.01 USD per coin when it was released in March this year.

I'm unreserved in my assessment that this has been one of the biggest weekends in ISTA/Highden history, just not for the reasons ISTA would have anticipated. Anya Kamenetz, writing for New York Magazine's The Cut, has written a damning piece on ISTA, with the subtitle of: “_Can a neo-Tantric sex group dedicated to exploring dark desires root out abuse?_”

For an island nation with a population of 5.3 million, I would hazard that we have more than our fair share of pākehā with a hotline to millenia-long dead Asians. And by more I mean a non-zero number, because mediumship is a paranormal practice/belief that has failed to provide any empirical evidence for its efficacy.

It's been a couple of weeks since the final episode of this season's (!!) Sex.Life podcast aired with a less than revealing Q&A. The poor folks at the Culty Conversations facebook page have had to endure my stream of consciousness written but you, lucky skeptics, get to benefit from the cliff notes.

Because it has been a hot second since I wrote about Highden/ISTA, I thought it was time to provide an update on what's been happening since RNZ published their piece on Sacred Sexuality in October 2022.

This week I take a look at Halloween - today!, talk about Elon Musk's Twitter purchase, the Just Stop Oil campaign, and Bronwyn gives us an update about Highden Estate and ISTA.

The last time I wrote about Highden Temple, I noted that Bruce Lyon had been able to escape public and media scrutiny despite Highden's association with the controversial International School of the Temple Arts (ISTA) organisation.

Before you read further, I want to make it clear that this article is in no way an indictment about the sexual activities of consenting adults, or casting any aspersions or judgement on sex work. Instead, I am taking a surface view of some current controversies where the absence of effective mechanisms to address accusations levelled at ISTA are embedded in its foundation.

Highden Manor House (Source)