An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for April 28, 2020

Here’s some things I’ve found that you may be interested in checking out:

• Bandcamp is going to be waiving their revenue share on several days (May 1, June 5, and July 3; from midnight to midnight PDT) to help artists on their platform get more funding because of the pandemic. You can read more about what they’re doing. Also, be sure to check out the Hermetic Library and Odd Order Bandcamp pages, but also check out the artists that I have supported and follow there for other ideas too. Also, Anthology Artist Alien Lizard is doing a fundraiser with their new album Veux-tu la Vie, with all proceeds from that Bandcamp release go to Eden Reforestation Projects.
• LIL preview by Hermetic Library Fellow David Richard Jones—”An extract from the Hellfire Press edition of the Vision and the Voice.”
• Duncan Russell’s The Midnight Gospel is weird. But, there may be things of interest, and symbolism in the visuals, to check out. Interviews include Damien Echols and Jason Louv. “A fantastical trip through thought and spirituality from Pendleton Ward (“Adventure Time”) and comedian Duncan Trussell.”
• From Chorazin to Carcosa. Fiction-Based Esotericism in the Black Pilgrimage of Jack Parsons and Cameron by Manon Hedenborg White
• Plague Poems – The Fifth Week
• Tweet—”Have you heard about the time the Hapsburg army got drunk and attacked itself in 1788?”
• Tweet—”Mercury is, of course, poisonous and these days nobody with any sense would suggest treating a virus with a deadly poison… ”
• In the Ground of Our Unknowing—”Facing the paradoxes and ambiguities enmeshed with the COVID-19 pandemic, David Abram finds beauty in the midst of shuddering terror. As we’re isolated in this uncertain time, he writes, we can turn to the more-than-human world to empower our empathy for each other.”
• Museums in Quarantine
• Activity Sheets at Oxford Doodle Club
• Stonehenge is not like Lego – it’s cleverer!
• Unknown Language by Hildegard of Bingen and Huw Lemmey, with an introductory story by Bhanu Kapil and an afterword by Alice Spawls.—”A mutant fiction of speculative mysticism: time travel, visions and inner paths to outer space. Publishing on the Feast Day of Hildegard of Bingen on 17 September 2020.”
• Some free audiobooks from HPLHS
• “Earth Day 2020 could mark the year we stop taking the planet for granted. The 50th annual call for environmental reform falls at a time when the health of people and nature has never been more urgent.”
• “When The Holy Month Of Ramadan Comes At The Peak Of A Pandemic. Muslim Americans are forced to get creative in order to make the most out of Ramadan.” Also.
• “The Isolation Journals. One Creative Act a Day. Alone, Together. A Daily Creativity Project to Help Make Sense of Challenging Times. Throughout April 2020, I’ll be serving up daily journaling prompts from some of the most inspiring writers, artists, musicians and unsung heroes I know. We all hope this creativity project sparks your imagination and helps us all process and stay connected during these difficult times.”
• Try the scientifically proven “memory palace” technique to remember everything (Paywalled)
• Tweet—”I am the god damn plague/Renaissance police and I will be issuing citations anytime I see these takes on the TL. No. Absolutely not. I rebuke all of this.”
• You can now book a goat to liven up your boring Zoom meeting (yes,seriously) (Let the online initiations commence!)
• “ARAS and the Art and Psyche Working Group, in collaboration, have developed a new project, “Art in a Time of Global Crisis: Interconnection and Companionship,” as an international outreach through art. Our goal is to create a network of mutual support through art during this difficult time.”
• Why We Don’t Want a ‘Return to Normal’—”As we approach Earth Day 2020, Income Movement urges people to remind ourselves that the “normal” way we treated the planet might not be worth going back to. It might be time for some reimagining, and refocusing of our resources.”
• New normal? John Scalzi, famous local sci-fi author, predicts changes we may see post-pandemic
• Textures of completion—”The complete stance, the way of being that recognizes the inseparability of nebulosity and pattern, shows up in characteristic textures. For example: wonder, play, and creation.”
• Interview: Underground skyscrapers and off-grid bunkers: inside the world of preppers. About by Bunker: Preparing for the End Times (UK link) by Bradley Garrett, due in August.
• A Guide to Casting Phantoms in the Revolution—”A Guide to Casting Phantoms in the Revolution is a single-session roleplaying game, in which players work together to summon specters to fight the aristocracy during the French Revolution. Featuring the pentacrawl system, Guide is different every time you play. Played on a story map in the shape of a pentagram, create a cast of characters, interpret symbols to create unique moments, and have the phantoms do you bidding—or you’ll do theirs! ”

This post was possible because of support from generous ongoing Patrons and Members of the newsletter. Both Patrons and Members get Omnium Gatherum posts delivered immediately and directly to their email. On the blog, this will be exclusive to Patrons for one year, after which I’ll make it publicly available to everyone so they can see what they’ve been missing.

An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for April 21, 2020

Here’s some things I’ve found that you may be interested in checking out:

• “Lyrid meteor shower 2020: how to watch the Lyrids from the UK tonight, and when the meteors will peak. The ancient Chinese are said to have watched Lyrid meteors falling ‘like rain’ in the year 687 BC.”—”The Lyrid meteor shower takes place between 16 and 25 April, but will peak – be at their most dramatic – on the evening of 22 April. […] Relative to other meteor showers on the astronomical calendar, the Lyrids are one of the less dramatic displays, but they can still offer up an average of 20 meteors per hour.”
• “As mafia delivers essentials in Italy, cartels distribute food in Mexico. Last week, reports first circulated of several Mexican cartels deploying members to dole out aid packages to help cash-strapped residents ride out the coronavirus pandemic.”
• “We Are Living in a Failed State. The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.”—”We can learn from these dreadful days that stupidity and injustice are lethal; that, in a democracy, being a citizen is essential work; that the alternative to solidarity is death. After we’ve come out of hiding and taken off our masks, we should not forget what it was like to be alone.”
• “Museums hold Twitter showdown to find world’s creepiest exhibit. Locked-down institutions go online for Yorkshire Museum’s weekly ‘curator battles’”
• The Wiccan Mystic: Exploring a Magickal Spiritual Path By Ben Gruagach. “Use the code AG100 at checkout to get this book for free (Offer good through May 31, 2020)”
• Subscriber Lectures—”Treadwell’s has built an international reputation for its exceptional lecture series, which since 2003 has brought together academics, authors, practitioners and curious learners. For the first time we are now making a few of these lectures available on subscription.”
• The scarlet C: Coronavirus survivors face the stigma and discrimination
• Howling into the Void whilst in Isolation? (And, marking your territory!) Like this one: “A very rare capture of a snow leopard calling in the wild.”
• “Second African locust swarm of the year 20 times bigger than the first. COVID-19 outbreak complicates efforts to fight the swarms.” See also. And, then comes drought.
• “Rick Steves Is Learning to Cook and Enjoying Every Sunset. Talking to the travel guru about his life in isolation, which includes piano playing and stocking up on weed.”
• “How a 5G coronavirus conspiracy spread across Europe. Spate of arson attacks on cell towers fueled by disinformation over pandemic origins.”
• “How the anti-vaccine community is responding to COVID-19. It’s the old, familiar path of conspiratorial thinking and government mistrust.”
• Contact! Contact! Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash Metaverse close in with banana gun at 270! “Silicon Valley is racing to build the next version of the Internet. Fortnite might get there first.—”The next version of the Internet is often described as the Metaverse, a term borne from science fiction, describing a shared, virtual space that’s persistently online and active, even without people logging in. It will have its own economy, complete with jobs, shopping areas and media to consume. The Metaverse is inevitable, many believe, and the Silicon Valley C-suite has been obsessed with the idea — as has a video game company in Cary, North Carolina.”
• Aleister Crowley’s ashes cameo in The Magicians s04e07, traded for a Bag of Holding.
• No Longer Longer by Carl Abrahamsson
• Being Broken In Half (But Wanting To Be Whole)
• Thinking about this again: Celestial Mechanical Calendar and Orrery
• ‘That’s not art it’s Victorian porn!’ – how one small Barbie doll took on the art world
• Plague Poems – The Fourth Week
• “Signs You May Be Burning Out—and What to Do About It. Now’s not the time to be a perfectionist, experts say.”
• Tweet—”it seems likely that this specimen is the largest ever recorded, and in strange UFO-like feeding posture.” Also, also, and watch
• Kaktovik Inupiaq numerals—”As the Inuit languages use a base-20 counting system, Arabic numeral notation (which is best used for a base-10 counting system) is rendered as inefficient. Students from Kaktovik, Alaska invented a new numbering notation in 1994 to rectify this issue, which has gained wide use among Alaskan Iñupiat, and has been considered in other countries where dialects of the Inuit language are spoken.”
• STALKING CHERNOBYL: exploration after apocalypse.—”a film that will examine the underground culture of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where–three decades after the world’s most infamous nuclear disaster— illegal hiking adventurers aka “stalkers”, extreme sports afficionados, artists, tour companies have begun to explore anew the mysterious, ghostly, post-apocalyptic landscape.” Also: Interview with filmmaker Iara Lee
• “What to read to stay sane during the coronavirus pandemic. Our books columnist Ceri Radford has found a healthy and wholesome sense of perspective in revisiting authors who ask big questions about how people endure hardship.”
• The IAD Build Your Own Monument Challenge Has Begun
• “I Saw Goody Proctor Jogging Without A Face Mask”
• Tweet—”working on some last-minute updates to our haggadah”
• Tweet—”Stuck this to the window and now the world makes more sense.”
• Tweet—”Using a Rosicrucian cypher system favoured by Francis Bacon and Henry Neville, I’ve discovered the following hidden message in the first folio: ‘I was not writ by W. Shakespurt or Kit Marlew, but writ by consumer affairs journo Dom Littlewood.’ #Shakespeare #AuthorshipDebate”
• Awake Under Anesthesia—”Anesthesiologists speak of patients descending through “the planes of anesthesia”—from the “plane of disorientation” through the “plane of delirium” toward the “surgical plane.””
• Paper: “The Satanic Temple: Secularist Activism and Occulture in the American Political Landscape” by Manon Hedenborg White and Fredrik Gregorius
• History serves to give us sense of place and tradition
• Courtney Marie Andrews’ Quarantine Recommendations: Gardening And Poetry
• “Have Austin’s Magicians Vanished for Good? With the coronavirus shutdown, it’s now you see ’em, now you don’t.”—”We can’t just wave a magic wand – hey presto! or avada kedavra! – and this whole coronavirus situation we’re struggling through just vanishes. None of us is Harry Potter. None of us is an actual magician, except possibly in that Aleister Crowley/Alan Moore influencing-our-cultural-environment way.”
• VIDEO: Clean-up reveals hidden secrets of Boleskine House—”A historic Highland landmark devastated by fire could be older than originally thought, according to its owners.”

This post was possible because of support from generous ongoing Patrons and Members of the newsletter. Both Patrons and Members get Omnium Gatherum posts delivered immediately and directly to their email. On the blog, this will be exclusive to Patrons for one year, after which I’ll make it publicly available to everyone so they can see what they’ve been missing.

An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for April 13, 2020

Here’s some things I’ve found that you may be interested in checking out:

• 30% off Red Wheel/Weiser titles plus free shipping. Use code WBFF by April 14.
• “Collisions reveal new evidence of ‘anyon’ quasiparticles’ existence. Some types of anyons may eventually be useful for building better quantum computers.”—”In the three-dimensional world we live in, there are two classes of elementary particles: bosons and fermions. But in two dimensions, theoretical physicists predict, there’s another option: anyons. Now, scientists report new evidence that anyons exist and that they behave unlike any known particle.”
• 30 Days of Ekstasis – a Free Ecstatic Dance Program
• “What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? Crises are, at least while they are happening, not educational opportunities. But there are still things to learn.”—“Now is an apt time to ponder the fact that the human condition means living under the shadow of death”
• Okay, so far in this plague year, there’s been the pandemic. But, also more hurricanes, rising risk of locusts, Krakatoa is rumbling, and furthermore radioactive wildfires. What’s next evil mastermind robots invading?! Oh no.
• “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting. You are not crazy, my friends.”
• Tweet—”This poem is called “First lines of emails I’ve received while quarantining.””
• Tweet—”a seance hosted in Pioneer Square in Seattle that was busted by health officers for violating the quarantine order” during the Spanish Flu in 1918.
• Lancelot’s Hangover: The Quest for the Holy Booze—”Monkey Island meets Monty Python’s Holy Grail (in a Belgian point-and-click adventure game with an attitude!) – WARNING : You play a sexy half-naked knight ! Your mom will be proud !” See also.
• The Procession to Calvary—”Pilfer from pirates, conspire with cardinals and perform miracles with an incompetent magician. The Procession to Calvary is a Pythonesque adventure game made from Renaissance paintings, and a spiritual successor to the critically acclaimed Four Last Things.” and “Huzzah! The holy war is over! Your oppressors have been vanquished, the churches of the Old God lay in ruin and thousands of innocent people have been murdered! But it’s not all good news; the tyrant Heavenly Peter has escaped your clutches, and you have been tasked with the mission of finding him… Your journey will take you through a richly detailed landscape built from hundreds of different Renaissance paintings. You will steal a ship, feed a donkey, compete in a talent contest, assist an inept street magician, sing, dance, play the (magic?) flute, poke a man’s face, hunt for treasure and have a chat with Our Lord God Almighty… But will you find Heavenly Peter? And if you do, how will you take your revenge!?” See also.
• Tweet—”There’s never been a satirical sci-fi mind in all of history astute enough to have predicted a future where Steak-Umm explains the scientific method in an act of resistance against a tyrannical game show host during a global plague. Not Aylett, Pynchon, Morrison, or Vonnegut”
• ‘Cards Against Humanity’ And Other Board Game Companies Are Releasing Print-At-Home Games For Families
• New normal? John Scalzi, famous local sci-fi author, predicts changes we may see post-pandemic
• Tweet—”When pestilence struck north Wales about 1550, Denbighshire poet Gruffudd ab Ieuan ap Llywelyn Fychan sought the advice of Master Llwyd, a local soothsayer. What was Master’s Llwyd’s advice? Self-isolate! Here are some of the englynion exchanged between the two men.”
• Oracles—”A modern day divination device based upon algorithms nobody understands, especially not the auhor. Maybe you’ll find it useful in these times of uncertainty.”
• The pandemic threatens imprisoned dissidents and journalists everywhere. They must be freed.
• “The 9/11 Era Is Over. The coronavirus pandemic and a chapter of history that should have expired long ago.”
• Diamond samples in Canada reveal size of lost continent
• Voting against Trump is an act of ceremonial magick
• “Curious Expedition” Game Review (Xbox One): Ready for Adventure?—”Other notable figures in Curious Expedition included Aleister Crowley”
• Unicorns—”Despite not actually existing, unicorns are everywhere.”
• The Beyt Tikkun Liberation Passover Seder Haggadah (PDF)
• Tzadik Records to Release its First Opera: David Hertzberg’s Hallucinatory THE WAKE WORLD
• “Birthing America’s Nation of Islam. In the ʺPrincess and the Prophetʺ, Jacob S. Dorman traces the winding path and idiosyncratic heritage of Noble Drew Ali, founder of The Moorish Science Temple of America, and America’s fascination with all things Oriental at the turn of the 20th century.” About The Princess and the Prophet: The Secret History of Magic, Race, and Moorish Muslims in America by Jacob S Dorman.
• Introduction to Romantic Satanism by Hermetic Library Fellow Michael Osiris Sniffin
• Letters against Separation on e-flux conversations—”As people around the world retreated into self-isolation, Hito Steyerl suggested “Letters against Separation” as a way of staying together: a collective project where writers from different parts of the world reflect on how Covid-19 has impacted them, their loved ones, their cities, and their work. Through a series of short, diary-like passages on e-flux conversations, the writers share their experience of this pandemic as its runs its course. And perhaps their words can, in some way, help us to turn this isolation into a form of kinship. […] “Letters against Separation” is loosely based on Boccaccio’s Decameron, which is structured as a mise-en-abyme—a story written by a group of young people sheltering in a secluded castle during the plague.”
• Jump into the fire with a mystical Twin Peaks reading list, with mentions of Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, and more.
• Video Premiere: The Servants’ Ball – Egyptian Princess—”The title, Egyptian Princess, is clearly a nod to the era of Egyptomania which started in the Victorian era and peaked in the 1920s with the discovery of Tutankhamun. It was a craze that didn’t just appear in music, but right across fashion, architecture, literature and even through to the Edwardian era’s ‘Wickedest Man in the World’ Aleister Crowley.”

This post was possible because of support from generous ongoing Patrons and Members of the newsletter. Both Patrons and Members get Omnium Gatherum posts delivered immediately and directly to their email. On the blog, this will be exclusive to Patrons for one year, after which I’ll make it publicly available to everyone so they can see what they’ve been missing.

An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for April 6, 2020

Here’s some things I’ve found that you may be interested in checking out:

• “Meet the Xenobots, Virtual Creatures Brought to Life. Computer scientists and biologists have teamed up to make a new class of living robotics that challenge the boundary between digital and biological.”—”Strictly speaking, these life-forms do not have sex organs — or stomachs, brains or nervous systems. […] These are all programmable organisms called xenobots” See also
• Sometimes We Get Lucky: ProjectN95.org—”We spend billions as a culture trying to build digital versions of such webs of trust, but sometimes it is better to do it the old fashion way.”
• “CNN Host To Pastor: How Is It ‘Pro-Life’ To Pack People Into Church Amid Pandemic?. Tony Spell said he has a “command from God” to hold in-person services despite warnings from medical experts and state officials.”
• “Analysis: It’s still religion even if you’re not congregating in person. To help keep the new coronavirus at bay, Gov. Greg Abbott wants us to stay away from each other, but he made an exception for church services. That was a critical mistake during the 1918 flu pandemic. It still is.”
• How the Catholic Church adapted during the Black Plague
• The Coronavirus is not the Black Death
• Tweet—”Since the seventh century, a Sunni Muslim family has held the keys of the Church. And this remains the case even today, in the hope of avoiding clashes among rival Christian sects for control over the church.”
• COVID-19 Lotería designs by Pinche Raf
• “Plague Waters: Seeking a Cocktail Cure for an Epidemic. From the bubonic plague to cholera to tuberculosis, people have sought spirited remedies for a range of serious conditions. But did any of these concoctions work?”
• Tweet—”I would attend this sermon.”
• “The Other Occupy Oakland: Lessons From Depression-Era Mutual Aid. A Look Back At Mutual Aid Driven, Autonomous, And Cooperative Responses In The Bay Area Of California And Beyond During The Great Depression.”
• “‘We can’t go back to normal’: how will coronavirus change the world? Times of upheaval are always times of radical change. Some believe the pandemic is a once-in-a-generation chance to remake society and build a better future. Others fear it may only make existing injustices worse.”
• How technology will change us after the COVID-19 pandemic is over
• “The Pandemic Is Turning the Natural World Upside Down. Widespread social-distancing measures have produced some jarring effects across land, air, and sea.”
• “Finnegas by Paul Kingsnorth. In the time of this great, strange plague, Paul Kingsnorth returns to the Celtic tale of Finnegas, the woodland hermit who devoted his life to catching and eating the salmon that contained the wisdom of the world.”
• Tweet—”Announcement! Cheering megaphone Our Coping Companion is now available in digital format, we want as many people as possible to have access to these proven mental health coping techniques. Grab your copy here: https://checkpointorg.com/coping-companion/ Orange heart”
• Always Narrating: The Making and Unmaking of Umberto Eco
• Gratuitous Crowley cameo: “Top 9 Mind-Blowing Music-Related Conspiracy Theories. CIA doesn’t want you to know about these…”
• Tweet—”No matter who someone is, what species they are, what they look like or where they’re from, the Moomins think that everyone deserves to be treated with respect. This is the main message of Tove Jansson’s work, and should guide the way we live.❤️”

This post was possible because of support from generous ongoing Patrons and Members of the newsletter. Both Patrons and Members get Omnium Gatherum posts delivered immediately and directly to their email. On the blog, this will be exclusive to Patrons for one year, after which I’ll make it publicly available to everyone so they can see what they’ve been missing.