“5 Messed-Up Reasons People Faked Their Own Death“—”If you’re well-adjusted mentally and properly medicated, thinking about death should not be an enjoyable affair. If the idea of getting pulped by a city bus brings you a deep peace and longing, I encourage you to seek out a mental-health professional. Fantasizing about faking your own death, though? Now there’s an enjoyable bit of theory-crafting.” “Here are five people who faked their death for weird reasons…” “2. Aleister Crowley” “Famous sex wizard Aleister Crowley, on the other hand, seems to have faked his own death purely for the fuck of it. Best guesses as to any possible reasoning outside of pure dark curiosity are that it was an attempt at a literal ghosting of a lover and travel companion. His friend, poet Fernando Pessoa, delivered a suicide note to police informing them the infamous magic man had thrown himself off a cliff and would no longer be occupying the current plane. The cliff in question? Boca do Inferno in Portugal, which translates as ‘Mouth of Hell.’ With a name like that, he might have just felt compelled, given how well it all fit together. After all, a bit of light fraud is a small price to pay for a published headline like ‘Famous Wizard Throws Himself into Mouth of Hell.'”

Yeah, it’s real. Check out the Hermeneuticon article for Boca do Inferno!

“Don’t Take ‘Putin’s Brain’ Dugin at Face Value“—”One of the favorite protagonists in journalistic investigations of deeper sources of Moscow’s recent foreign policies is the flamboyant Russian idealogue Alexander Dugin. Equipped with a long beard, sonorous voice, and extroverted personality, Dugin is a telegenic speaker who easily checks the box of an archetypical Russian philosopher. He can be different things to his various audiences – a modern Dostoevsky, a right-wing Trotsky, an Orthodox monk, a second Rasputin, or an alternative Tolstoy. Yet, Dugin’s role in inspiring the Kremlin’s new aggressiveness, in general, and Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, in particular, is complicated. In contrast to how he is often portrayed, Dugin is neither a philosopher of intellectual novelty nor an ideologue with direct access to the Kremlin. He likes to pose as both and is promoted as a deep thinker with links to the Kremlin by his Russian and non-Russian followers. Oddly, some of his critics, too, take these claims at face value.” “His political outlook accommodates a variety of approaches ranging from Samuel Huntington’s civilizationism to Aleister Crowley’s satanism, from far-left syndicalism to far-right traditionalism, and from staunchly reactionary principles to expressly non-conformist ideas. He has been called everything from a conservative, Marxist, imperialist, fundamentalist, and geopolitician. Most of these labels are, in one way or another, apt yet by themselves also imprecise.” “However, Dugin’s philosophical pronouncements and political ideas are merely Russian translations or reformulations of various older, non-Russian, anti-rational, and anti-individualistic philosophical discourses. Anyone familiar with classical geopolitics, integral traditionalism, international occultism, the German Conservative Revolution, French post-modernism, European New Right, and other alternative schools of thought will experience constant déjà vu when listening to Dugin.” “Dugin and similar right-wing drummers have relentlessly voiced openly imperialistic, radically nationalistic, and paranoid anti-Western ideas over more than three decades. When Putin announced his turn against the West 15 years ago, annexed Crimea almost 10 years ago, and started a large war nearly two years ago, many Russians did not need to be explained why Moscow supposedly had to do so. Russia’s extreme right, with Dugin as its philosophical patriarch, had already done so.”

Also published as “Russia’s ‘most dangerous philosopher’ Dugin is overrated.”

Major Arcana by Leonora Carrington, an expanded reprinting of a boxed deck of 22 major arcana tarot cards with booklet introduced by Susan Aberth and Tere Arcq, due February 2024.

“We are pleased to announce a new edition of the Major Arcana deck by Leonora Carrington is now available to pre-order. First issued by FULGUR PRESS in 2020, this important tarot has been out of print since 2021.

This new edition includes a substantive and previously unpublished essay from noted scholars Susan Aberth and Tere Arcq. It offers an introduction to Leonora Carrington and divinatory interpretations for her extraordinary suite of Major Arcana cards.”—via email

“The British-born artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is one of the more fascinating figures to emerge from the Surrealist movement. As both a writer and painter, she was championed early by André Breton and joined the exiled Surrealists in New York, before settling in Mexico in 1943. The magical themes of Carrington’s otherworldly paintings are well-known, but the recent discovery of a suite of tarot designs she created for the Major Arcana was a revelation for scholars and fans of Carrington alike. Drawing inspiration from the Tarot of Marseille and the popular Waite-Smith deck, Carrington brings her own approach and style to this timeless subject, creating a series of iconic images. Executed on thick board, brightly coloured and squarish in format, Carrington’s Major Arcana shines with gold and silver leaf, exploring tarot themes through what Gabriel Weisz Carrington describes as a ‘surrealist object’.

This tantalising discovery, made by the curator Tere Arcq and scholar Susan Aberth, has placed greater emphasis upon the role of the tarot in Carrington’s creative life and has led to fresh research in this area. For this new edition of the Major Arcana deck, Susan Aberth and Tere Arcq have written an insightful essay that outlines Carrington’s life and provides an essential analysis of the divinatory meanings of each of the cards.”