An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for May 3, 2020

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

• “BOTANICA: A Tarot Deck about the Language of Flowers. Explore the biological roots of the Arcana with this gorgeously painted artist’s deck.” Four days left in crowdfunding.
• Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller swap roles in National Theatre at Home’s Frankenstein adapted by Frank Dear Jonny Lee Miller as the creature and Benedict Cumberbatch as Victor Frankenstein (available through May 8) and Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Victor Frankenstein (available through May 7).
• Esotericism and Narrative: The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams—”Situates the life and fiction of Inkling Charles Williams in the network of modern occultism, with special focus on his initiatory experiences in A.E. Waite’s Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Roukema evaluates fictional projections of magic, kabbalah, alchemy and ritual experience in Williams’s seven novels of supernatural fantasy. From this specific analysis, he develops more broadly applicable approaches to the serious expression of religious experience in fiction. Roukema shows that esoteric knowledge has frequently been blurred into fiction because of its inherent narrativity and adaptability, particularly by authors already attracted to the syncretism, multivalence and lived fantasy of the modern occult experience.”
• “Forgiveness: A Dissent. “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions?””—”I have worked intently with forgiveness for seven years. I have prayed, pondered, assayed, and studied. I reject the moral imperative of forgiveness. My reason, in the end, is simple: I believe that the moral suasion to forgive often places the individual in an unnatural position and produces inner division that gets diverted into other, often hostile or self-negating behaviors.”
• Tweet—”Pro-tip for couples suddenly working from home together: Get yourselves an imaginary coworker to blame things on. In our apartment, Cheryl keeps leaving her dirty water cups all over the place and we really don’t know what to do about her.” Get yourself an egregore, servitor or tulpa to blame!
• Frankenstein monsters and servitors! Peer-to-peer EV charging could completely eliminate EV charging stops.—”If aeroplanes can refuel each other mid-air, then why not electric cars? A weird and wonderful, if probably impractical, idea out of the University of Florida would see vehicles in high-speed convoy sharing energy in a peer-to-peer model.” And we’d have a kind of moving mechanical machine-mycelium network of electricity!
• Or, let’s go all in with actual mycelium: These Researchers Want You to Live In a Fungus Megastructure. Let’s just hope you aren’t allergic.
• Sigils in the Dark—”The goal of the game is to create an evil mage’s spellbook.” Also
• “‘The First One That Died Sure Unnerved Me’ What a mordantly funny letter from the 1918 pandemic says about 2020.”
• “The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations. What felt impossible has become thinkable. The spring of 2020 is suggestive of how much, and how quickly, we can change as a civilization.”
• “Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing. A guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend.”
• Ramadan in a pandemic—”A selection of Reuters photos showing how people around the world are observing the month of Ramadan.”
• “Skin hunger helps explain your desperate longing for human touch. Millions of people are being deprived of even the slightest physical contact during lockdown. And there’s a name for it: skin hunger.”
• Modern-day witches are holding Zoom coven meetings to continue rituals, spells, and the occult
• “Amsterdam is now using the ‘doughnut’ model of economics: What does that mean?. It’s a simple way to illustrate an economic system where the city doesn’t let anyone fall into poverty, while also living within a sustainable environmental footprint.”—”As Amsterdam plans for its post-coronavirus recovery, it’s also rethinking what economic success looks like. In doing so, it’s not looking at traditional financial metrics of how to determine when the city has recovered. Instead, the city will be the first in the world to officially adopt the “doughnut” model of economics.”
• A group of volunteers in China who worked to prevent digital records of the coronavirus outbreak from being scrubbed by censors are now targets of a crackdown
  Pope says coronavirus vaccine must be shared worldwide—”In fact, it is important to unite scientific capabilities, in a transparent and impartial way to find vaccines and treatments.”

• A Book-Worm’s Eye View of the Goddess. About Pagan Portals: Seeking the Primal Goddess by Melusine Draco.
• Lovecraft Country: Official Teaser | HBO. Based on Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff.
• Art in the Age of Black Girl Magic, 4-week online course, May 25 – June 22, 2020. Also.—”The extremely popular Art in the Age of Black Girl Magic course which has been taught at Tate and featured in Vogue, Metro and Dazed will now be hosted online for the first time! Students will have the opportunity to investigate how black women and Black non-binary artists have creatively challenged the status quo by radically intervening in institutions, as well as the DIY approaches adopted by many to ensure their art and voices are heard and remembered.”
• Dissociation of ideas—”RAW practised (and recommended) a sort of semantic strategy called “dissociation of ideas”, which originated (under that name – ‘la dissociation des idées’) with the French symbolist writer, Remy de Gourmont […] And what of current political scenarios?”
• Keep Calm and Log On: Your Handbook for Surviving the Digital Revolution by Gillian Andrews.—”How to survive the digital revolution without getting trampled: your guide to online mindfulness, digital self-empowerment, cybersecurity, creepy ads, trustworthy information, and more.”
• “A puzzling past sea level rise might have its missing piece. About 14,650 years ago, sea level jumped 12 meters in just a few centuries.”
• “The Coronavirus Becomes a Battle Cry for U.S. Extremists. White supremacists seek to stoke the fear and disruption caused by the pandemic to push their agenda and to recruit.”
• Gods in face masks: India’s folk artists take on Covid-19—”It shows the Hindu deity Krishna dancing in a garden with a venerating saint wearing a face mask and sitting near a bottle of hand washing liquid soap.”
  The British Museum has revamped its online collections database, making over 1.9 million photos of its collection available for free online under a Creative Commons license.—The new Collection online is here.—”Due to current extraordinary circumstances, we wanted to launch the revamped Collection online to give you access to our fantastic upgraded online collection with all its new filters and features.”

• “Welcome to the Online Egyptological Bibliography (OEB). **OEB is now mounted on a new server system. Users are encouraged to report any problems they may encounter. During the COVID-19 crisis OEB is being made freely available. Please login with ‘guest’ as the user name and ‘temporary’ as the password.**”
• A modern-day thriller centered on authentic historical letters encoded with Templar and Rosicrucian secrets.
• “Verification Handbook. For Disinformation And Media Manipulation.”—”The latest edition of the Verification Handbook arrives at a critical moment. Today’s information environment is more chaotic and easier to manipulate than ever before. This book equips journalists with the knowledge to investigate social media accounts, bots, private messaging apps, information operations, deep fakes, as well as other forms of disinformation and media manipulation. The first resource of its kind, it builds on the first edition of the Verification Handbook and the Verification Handbook for Investigative Reporting.”
• “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels walks a fine line between realism, the supernatural. Spinoff series trades Gothic horror of its predecessor for more of a noir aesthetic.” Though it looks like they screwed up their presentation of Santa Muerte.
• Sutra Stories: A Fate Core Game—”Sutra Stories was an Atomic Robo hack that blew way out of proportion. Envisioned as a continuation of the literal narrative told in Journey to the West, players would portray the gods of the Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions and navigate the complicated politics of the Heavenly Nation, beat righteousness into wicked deities, or awaken to enlightenment and forge new dharmas.”
• Paracelsus: An Alchemical Life by Bruce T. Moran
• A Special Performance of “Rainbow Connection” from Kermit the Frog

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