An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for March 24, 2019
If you’d like to participate, head over to Omnium Gatherum on the BBS, or suggest something.
- Tweet by Luna Laviolette
Apparently this is supposed to be anti-trans propaganda put out by the Catholic Church but like…
That's the single most inspirational and metal thing I've ever seen pic.twitter.com/RLSmqYe5Ep— Luna Laviolette (@LunaLaviolette) March 18, 2019
- “Black mould in your home can cause terrifying hallucinations of demons and ghosts. A third of Brits believe in ghosts but the solution could be more cleaning based” — Jane Lavender, Mirror UK [HT Dr. Demonology]
“Black mould in your home could be triggering terrifying hallucinations of ghosts and demons, experts have warned.
One in three people in Britain believes that a house can be haunted and 28 per cent think they’ve experienced a ‘supernatural presence’, according to a YouGov survey.
But a growing number of scientists now believe toxic mould – which grows on the walls of damp homes in the UK – could be to blame.”
- Introducing How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, free email course based on the forthcoming book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius which is due out in April from St Martin’s Press.
“This eLearning course contains lots of free resources based on my book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. It’s designed for people who haven’t read the book yet but are interested in finding out more. If you do want to get a copy of the book when it’s published, though, you’ll get even more out of these resources.
You’ll find an interview with me, the author, as well as videos in which I read excerpts from each chapter and provide a commentary explaining the contents. There are also lots of bonus resources, including Marcus Aurelius comic strips, a quiz, and an article about my experience of writing the book, as well as some links to podcasts and other relevant interviews.
By enrolling on this course, you’ll sign up to receive weekly reminder emails linking to each part of the content”
- “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future” — Felipe Lima; commissioned for Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, through April 23, 2019 at Guggenheim, New York [HT Open Culture]
“Commissioned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on the occasion of the exhibition
Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future
October 12, 2018 — April 23, 2019” - The Essays of Frater Achad from 100th Monkey Press
“A limited hand-bound edition of a series of rare, hard to find, essays written by Frater Achad. Edition limited to 75 numbered copies. Price: US $22.95
In 1923 Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones) wrote a series of rare, hard to find, essays for the short-lived, Los Angeles magazine, Occult Press Review. He first became involved with the magazine with the February-March issue and continued his involvement throughout 1923. Besides contributing five articles to the magazine he also developed a new cover design and became a contributing editor. Some of the articles he contributed included “Gambling with the World” and “Initiation.” Rounding out this book are an additional two articles he provided in 1923 & 1924 to the British magazine, the Occult Review.
Each book is bound by hand and measures 8 1/2” x 11”. 55 pages. Printed in blue and black on acid-free, 24 lb. Royal Laid paper specifically chosen for this edition. Bound using a stab style binding with a soft, acid-free, wraparound white paper cover with gold threads. The spine is wrapped in a red faux suede material.
The book includes graphics of each of the original covers of the magazines containing Frater Achad’s articles. It also includes a graphic of his “Wheel of the Tarot.”
As an added bonus, each book comes with a 5 1/2” x 8 1/2” hand-bound copy of Frater Achad’s essay entitled “Thinking Backwards” bound in matching paper.
Included with each book is a handsome bookplate and bookmark.”
- “Neoliberalism and its forgotten alternative. The debate between Walter Lippmann and John Dewey throughout the 1920s points to an alternative to the neoliberal world view, submerged in the subsequent war between capitalism and communism.” — David Ridley, Open Democracy
“According to [John] Dewey, we have access to this submerged substratum of information, or ‘qualitative’ thought, through reflection; if we look deeply into our experience, we can make the connections which turn bare facts into truth, or for Dewey, into wisdom.
All our knowledge is social, everything we know is in some way derived from the shared understandings, customs and collective experience which we have come to refer to as ‘culture’. This means that everything around us is a source of exploration and knowledge. Life itself is a learning process and the world is a classroom. This is what Dewey meant when he talked about ‘democracy as a way of life’.”
- Mervyn Peake, an Exhibition of Certain Rare Dreams. An exhibition of extraordinary drawings, illustrations and paintings by the celebrated author of Gormenghast. The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History, Mar 27–Sept 14, London; private view reception March 26, RSVP
“Viktor Wynd Requests The Pleasure of Your Company for The Opening of His Next Exhibition of artworks by Mervyn Peake. the exhibition will run until September 2019.
Peter Winnington writes in the introduction to the exhibition catalog
Mervyn Peake was born in China in 1911 to medical missionary parents. Educated at Eltham College, he won a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy Schools. In the summer of 1933, having completed only three of his five years, he left to join an artists’ colony on the island of Sark, where he painted intensively, producing some remarkable portraits and less remarkable landscapes. Spotted by the head of the Westminster School of Art, he was taken on to teach life drawing from early in 1935.
Back in London, he was invited to contribute pencil portraits of well-known figures to the London Mercury; he painted both portraits and landscapes for himself, at the same time as writing poetry. He had his first major exhibition in the spring of 1938.
With the coming of war, the Westminster School closed and Peake withdraw to the safety of a tiny village in Sussex. He applied to work as a war artist, but he was drafted into the Royal Artillery, which could find little use for him. From the moment he was called up, he started writing a work of pure imagination which was published as Titus Groan in 1946. A second volume, Gormenghast, followed in 1950, and a third, Titus Alone, in 1959. Re-issued as “Penguin Modern Classics” at the end of the 1960s, they finally found the public they needed; they have never since been out of print.
Recognizing Peake’s gift for illustrating nonsense and the fantastic, Chatto & Windus brought out his Hunting of the Snark in 1941, followed by The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which sold out within a week of publication in 1943.
It was a Swedish publisher that commissioned his Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass; his drawings have been called the definitive modern interpretation of Carroll’s books. Nineteen forty-eight saw the publication of one of Peake’s illustrated books for children, Letters from a Lost Uncle (which was remaindered). In the same year he illustrated Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for the Folio Society, and he started illustrating Bleak House by Charles Dickens, but the publisher abandoned the project. His Treasure Island (1949) was the last of his great illustrated works.
In 1950, the year in which Gormenghast was published, Peake returned to teaching and, for lack of commissions, he devoted much time to writing a play, which had a very brief run at the Arts Theatre in 1957. By then, he was suffering from early onset Parkinson’s Disease, from which he died in 1968.
As an illustrator, Peake is remembered mainly for his black-and- white work. This exhibition reminds us that, given better means of reproduction, he would have been known for his coloured illustrations too.”
- Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity by Peter Kingsley
“Catafalque offers a revolutionary new reading of the great psychologist Carl Jung as mystic, gnostic and prophet for our time.
This book is the first major re-imagining of both Jung and his work since the publication of the Red Book in 2009–and is the only serious assessment of them written by a classical scholar who understands the ancient Gnostic, Hermetic and alchemical foundations of his thought as well as Jung himself did. At the same time it skillfully tells the forgotten story of Jung’s relationship with the great Sufi scholar, Henry Corbin, and with Persian Sufi tradition.
The strange reality of the Red Book, or “New Book” as Carl Jung called it, lies close to the heart of Catafalque. In meticulous detail Peter Kingsley uncovers its great secret, hidden in plain sight and still–as if by magic–unrecognized by all those who have been unable to understand this mysterious, incantatory text.
But the hard truth of who Jung was and what he did is only a small part of what this book uncovers. It also exposes the full extent of that great river of esoteric tradition that stretches all the way back to the beginnings of our civilization. It unveils the surprising realities behind western philosophy, literature, poetry, prophecy–both ancient and modern.
In short, Peter Kingsley shows us not only who Carl Jung was but who we in the West are as well. Much more than a brilliant spiritual biography, Catafalque holds the key to understanding why our western culture is dying. And, an incantatory text in its own right, it shows the way to discovering what we in these times of great crisis must do.”
- New Antiquities: Transformations of Ancient Religion in the New Age and Beyond edited by Dylan M Burns and Almut-barbara Renger
“Just as we speak of ‘dead’ languages, we say that religions ‘die out.’; Yet sometimes, people try to revive them, today more than ever. New Antiquities addresses this phenomenon through critical examination of how individuals and groups appeal to, reconceptualize, and reinvent the religious world of the ancient Mediterranean as they attempt to legitimize developments in contemporary religious culture and associated activity. Drawing from the disciplines of religious studies, archaeology, history, philology, and anthropology, New Antiquities explores a diversity of cultic and geographic milieus, ranging from Goddess Spirituality to Neo-Gnosticism, from rural Oregon to the former Yugoslavia. As a survey of the reception of ancient religious works, figures, and ideas in later twentieth-century and contemporary alternative religious practice, New Antiquities will interest classicists, Egyptologists, and historians of religion of many stripes, particularly those focused on modern Theosophy, Gnosticism, Neopaganism, New Religious Movements, Magick, and Occulture. The book is written in a lively and engaging style that will appeal to professional scholars and advanced undergraduates as well as lay scholars.”
- “On the Road with Thomas Merton. Film by Jeremy Seifert, Essay by Fred Bahnson” — Emergence Magazine [HT Robert Macfarlane]
“In May 1968, Christian mystic Thomas Merton undertook a pilgrimage to the American West. Fifty years later, filmmaker Jeremy Seifert and writer Fred Bahnson set out to follow Merton’s path, retracing the monk’s journey across the landscape. Amid stunning backdrops of ocean, redwood, and canyon, the film features the faces and voices of people Merton encountered. The essay offers a more intimate meditation on Merton’s life and the relevance of the spiritual journey today.”
