An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for January 20, 2021

O fool of hopes and hates
Arise and begone!
—Aleister Crowley, Orpheus, in Collected Works, Vol III

Boo! Scow! Be off! Out! Vanish! Fly! Begone!
Out! Off! Out! Off!

Begone! I have a fiery flight of snakes
To lash you hence!
—Aleister Crowley, Adonis in The Equinox, I vii

Disturb not the sacred night with your cries! Children of the devil, I am at my prayers, my prayers for your lost souls! Accursed are ye, accursed of God! Begone!
—Aleister Crowley, Snowstorm in The Equinox, I vii

We cast him forth from us, and said: Begone
—Aleister Crowley, Jephthah in Collected Works, Vol I

Begone! Thou hast profaned the mystery; thou hast eaten of the shew-bread; thou hast spilt the consecrated wine! Begone!
—Aleister Crowley, The Cry of the 22nd Aethyr, Which is Called LIN in The Vision and The Voice

Also, just thinking “Every man and every woman is a star” doesn’t have to be binary. It could be read as a poetic merism. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Here’s a variety of notable things I’ve recently found that you may also be interested in checking out:

• An audience with “Robert Burns” (Jim Malcolm) & his sidekick “Jean Armour” (Susie Malcolm), January 23, 4pm PST / 7pm EST—”Chat, laughter, songs and poems, rousing choruses, images, slideshows and more than a little dressing up. Suggested donation $15. To register please email: [email protected] (please let me know you are registering for the Burns concert as we have a number of upcoming concerts.) Zoom codes and donation links will be sent to all who register.”
• “The window to pre-order the current MBC publication, The Perfect Ceremonies of Craft Masonry and the Holy Royal Arch, is open through 11:59 pm ET, this Thursday, January 21, 2021.” Also “Announcing Our First MBC Pre-publication Title!”
• Magic and Ecology: WITCHBODIES, via Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge, January 22, 2021: Podcast I Sabrina Scott & Lilith Dorsey, January 29, 2021: Live Q&A I Sabrina Scott & Lilith Dorsey (chaired by Alice Tarbuck), “Western magic historically has been concerned with discerning connections between the human (microcosm) and the world (macrocosm), but modern magical practices digs deeper into these efforts of discernment. Faced with environmental crisis, what can magical techniques teach us about what it means to be a body entangled with other bodies? Lilith Dorsey and Sabrina Scott have both researched and practiced forms of magical entanglement, and in this panel they discuss witchcraft as an art of attuning to the real.”
• Mapping Worlds: Medieval to Modern, Apr 12–16, 2021, a short course with Alessandro Scafi (Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Cultural History) via The Warburg Institute.
• “The Witch of Kings Cross Comes to Selected Cinemas and Digital Release. It premieres 9th February 2021 and in selected cinemas from 11th February 2021.”—”The Witch of King’s Cross is coming to selected cinemas and digital release. The production will be released worldwide on Amazon, iTunes, Vimeo and Google Play. It premieres 9th February 2021 and in selected cinemas from 11th February 2021. Known as the Witch of Kings Cross, notorious artist Rosaleen Norton faced allegations of satanic rituals, obscene art and sex orgies in 1950s Sydney. But this new film from writer/director Sonia Bible (Recipe for Murder) asks ‘did the scandals mask her genius?'” “Rosaleen Norton regularly hits the headlines throughout the 50s. She worshipped the God Pan and practiced trances and sex magic, inspired by the work of occultist, artist and poet Aleister Crowley. Eventually the relentless scandals lead to the downfall of her high society lover, Sir Eugene Goossens. Told ‘in her own words’, the film weaves stylized drama (Rosaleen is played by actress Kate Elizabeth Laxton) and erotic dancers with never-before-seen artworks, diaries and scrapbooks. The Witch of Kings Cross is the fascinating portrait of a fearless woman outlaw railing against fearful conservative forces and an insight into the work of an uncelebrated genius. In today’s new wave of feminism, Rosaleen’s story has never been more pertinent.”
• True Will, Thelema, & Ableism, podcast episode from Whiskey Stevens aka Grunge Magick on YouTube and Spotify—”This episode also has some exerpts from the Book of the Law and the Hermetic Library and quotes from Aleister Crowley’s Magick Without Tears.”
• “A Requiem for the House of Netherworld“—”Until the perpetrator of the arson of Magister Joe Netherworld’s home—locally known as ‘The Halloween House,’ ‘The House of Netherworld,’ and ‘The Witch House’—is identified, we cannot be certain of that individual’s motivation. Over the years, Joe ‘Netherworld’ Mendillo worked with great diligence to make his home an exotic showplace, including a garden filled with rare plants, a koi pond over which a bridge he crafted himself was gracefully arched, and a water wheel which the rain spurred to action. Most who knew him enjoyed his feeling of ‘Halloween, 365 Days a Year.'”
• “Archaeologists uncover remains of women accused of witchcraft.”—”A recent archaeological find of a second set of skeletal remains in the market square in the city of Bochnia, Poland, could in fact strengthen the claim by archaeologists that the remains are those of several women executed for practicing witchcraft by burning in 1679. During restoration work, lead archaeologist Dr. Marcin Paternoga and his team uncovered first one, and then a second set of remains in the square.”
• “13-foot-long ‘Book of the Dead’ scroll found in burial shaft in Egypt.”—”A funerary temple belonging to Queen Nearit has been discovered in the ancient Egyptian burial ground Saqqara next to the pyramid of her husband, pharaoh Teti, who ruled Egypt from around 2323 B.C. to 2291 B.C., the Egyptian antiquities ministry said in a statement.” Also
• “Do Twins Share a Soul? An anthropologist—and identical twin—grapples with different cultural understandings of twinship.”
• “Mundane Sacred Objects.”—”Photos are often mundane things in the moment but when you come across them later as the sole image from an entire time in your life, they can take on an almost sacred feel, the one small path back to a different time and place.”
• What Happens When You Breathe. Our lungs sustain a delicate equilibrium in our bodies, while exposing us to a world that seems increasingly out of balance.” About Breath Taking: The Power, Fragility, and Future of Our Extraordinary Lungs [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Michael J Stephen—”From an expert in pulmonary medicine, the story of our extraordinary lungs, the organ that both explains our origins and holds the keys to our future as a species”
• “‘The Lives of Lucian Freud, Vol. 2’ Review: Chaos and Character. A painter’s journey from enfant terrible to the great portraitist of his age.” About The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame: 1968-2011 [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by William Feaver—”In this brilliant second and final volume of the definitive biography of Lucian Freud—one of the most influential, enigmatic and secretive artists of the twentieth century—William Feaver, the noted art critic, draws on years of daily conversations with Freud, on his private papers and letters and on interviews with his friends and family to explore the intimate life of Freud, from age forty-five to his death in 2011 at the age of eighty-nine.”
• “The wisdom of surrender. Samuel Beckett turned an obscure 17th-century Christian heresy into an artistic vision and an unusual personal philosophy.” By Andy Wimbush, author of Still: Samuel Beckett’s Quietism [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]—”In the 1930s, a young Samuel Beckett confessed to a friend that he had been living his life according to an ‘abject self-referring quietism’. Andy Wimbush argues that ‘quietism’―a philosophical and religious attitude of renunciation and will-lessness―is a key to understanding Beckett’s artistic vision and the development of his career as a fiction writer from his early novels Dream of Fair to Middling Women and Murphy to late short prose texts such as Stirrings Still and Company. Using Beckett’s published and archival material, Still: Samuel Beckett’s Quietism shows how Beckett distilled an understanding of quietism from the work of Arthur Schopenhauer, E.M. Cioran, Thomas à Kempis, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and André Gide, before turning it into an aesthetic that would liberate him from the powerful literary traditions of nineteenth-century realism and early twentieth-century high modernism. Quietism, argues Andy Wimbush, was for Beckett a lifelong preoccupation that shaped his perspectives on art, relationships, ethics, and even notions of salvation. But most of all it showed Beckett a way to renounce authorial power and write from a position of impotence, ignorance, and incoherence so as to produce a new kind of fiction that had, in Molloy’s words, the ‘tranquility of decomposition’.” Quietism, of course, also associated with EGC Saint Miguel de Molinos.
• Ways of Knowing: Praxis Volume 4 [Amazon] by Tiago Forte, book 4 of the Praxis series, due Jan 25—”Ways of Knowing is the story of Tiago Forte’s obsession with the nature of knowledge – what it is, where it comes from, how it’s created, and how to help people use it more effectively. It includes 14 essays tracing his journey to understand the interplay between “logical” ways of knowing centered in the brain, and “intuitive” ways of knowing through the body and heart. And not only to understand them, but to experience them first hand.”
• “We don’t object to this Reddit bot that turns arguments into Ace Attorney videos. Who doesn’t want to see video game characters act out internet fights?”
• “1st preserved dinosaur butthole is ‘perfect’ and ‘unique,’ paleontologist says.” Also “This fossil reveals how dinosaurs peed, pooped and had sex.” Also “Dinosaur fossils could belong to the world’s largest ever creature.”
• “Trying To Be Happier Won’t Work. Here’s What Will, According To Science. Actively pursuing happiness can backfire. Here’s what research shows actually helps increase joy.”—”‘Well-being’ is a much better framework.” Also “The plasticity of well-being: A training-based framework for the cultivation of human flourishing.”—”Here, we integrate evidence from well-being research, cognitive and affective neuroscience, and clinical psychology to highlight four core dimensions of well-being—awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. We discuss the importance of each dimension for psychological well-being, identify mechanisms that underlie their cultivation, and present evidence of their neural and psychological plasticity.”
• “Technosolutionism Isn’t the Fix. Whether a crisis of public health or public safety, is the best response increased surveillance?”
• “Quantum Drones Take Flight. A small prototype of a drone-based quantum network has successfully relayed a quantum signal over a kilometer of free space.”
• “Eliminating microplastics in wastewater directly at the source. Professor Patrick Drogui’s research team has developed a process for the electrolytic treatment of wastewater that degrades microplastics at the source.The results of this research have been published in the Environmental Pollution journal.”
• “WSU scientists identify contents of ancient Maya drug containers.”—”Scientists have identified the presence of a non-tobacco plant in ancient Maya drug containers for the first time. The Washington State University researchers detected Mexican marigold (Tagetes lucida) in residues taken from 14 miniature Maya ceramic vessels.” “The research team, led by anthropology postdoc Mario Zimmermann, thinks the Mexican marigold was mixed with the tobacco to make smoking more enjoyable.”
• From the Nothing That Slippery Should Be That Smart dept: “Scientists Discover Electric Eels Hunting in a Group. Never-Before-Seen Behavior Culminates in a Synchronized Zap of Eels’ Prey, Raising New Questions About How They Communicate.”
• “Study: X-Rays Surrounding ‘Magnificent 7’ May Be Traces of Sought-After Particle. Researchers say they may have found proof of theorized axions, and possibly dark matter, around group of neutron stars.” Also “Excess x-rays from neutron stars could lead to discovery of new particle. ‘Axions’ could help scientists learn more about dark matter and the universe.”
• “Helping the body absorb therapeutic cannabis chemical CBD.”
• “Designer cytokine makes paralyzed mice walk again. Using gene therapy, a research team has succeeded for the first time in getting mice to walk again after a complete cross-sectional injury. The nerve cells produced the curative protein themselves.”
• “AI-Powered Text From This Program Could Fool the Government. A Harvard medical student submitted auto-generated comments to Medicaid; volunteers couldn’t distinguish them from those penned by humans.”
• “Facebook Can’t Fix What It Won’t Admit To. Plus: Zuckerberg’s community manifesto, how to hold platforms accountable, and an accidental admission in Congress.”
• From the Razzle Dazzle Camouflage dept: In a World Run by Algorithms, Weirdness Is Our Best Weapon. How anomalous behavior defeats the systems of social control.”
• “Men more susceptible to COVID-19 than women”
• “Let’s flatten the infodemic curve.”
• “What Parler Saw During the Attack on the Capitol.” Also watch “Inside the U.S. Capitol at the height of the siege.”
• “What psychology of mass mobilization can tell us about the Capitol riot. Research suggests disinfo and demagogues coordinate, not manipulate, the masses.”
• “What motivates the motivated reasoning of pro-Trump conspiracists? New study suggests a desire to see society focus on men helps drive support.”
• Watch “Wake Up Call for Republicans.”—”The deliberate mass deception campaign you’ve been a part of is a public health crisis.”
• “‘A hack job,’ ‘outright lies’: Trump commission’s ‘1776 Report’ outrages historians. The 45-page report, released on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, is largely an attack on decades of historical scholarship, particularly when it comes to the nation’s 400-year-old legacy of slavery. Most of those listed as authors lack any credentials as historians.”
• “What Lincoln Knew. In his second inaugural address, the 16th president had a message for a war-weary nation.”
• From the Don’t Kill The Messenger dept: “GitHub regrets firing Jewish employee who called Trump-incited mob ‘Nazis’. Worker was fired after writing in Slack, ‘stay safe homies, Nazis are about.'”
• From the Better Happiness Through Social Engineering dept: “Walmart’s e-commerce chief is leaving to build ‘a city of the future’. Marc Lore, the founder of Jet.com, helped Walmart become the No. 2 online shopping site after Amazon.”—”His next big entrepreneurial swing will be something far afield from his current expertise: a multi-decade project to build ‘a city of the future’ supported by ‘a reformed version of capitalism.’ ‘It’s a new model for society we’ll be testing,’ he teased.”
• “King toppled from throne by gender-neutral card deck.”—”After a lot of trial and error, she designed a genderless deck in which the images of a king, queen and jack were replaced with gold, silver and bronze.”
• “Youtube’s Blind Troublemaker Is Fighting for Justice With His Bodycam. Mike Nelson, aka ‘Blind Justice,’ relies on video recordings to navigate the world. What he captures, and shares with the public, is eye-opening: the mistreatment disabled people often face at the hands of the powerful.”
• “The English Language Wikipedia Just Had Its Billionth Edit. The free, open-source encyclopedia is a monument of human cooperation and collaboration.”
• “INFERNAL FLAME Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina-scented candle explodes into flames causing an ‘inferno’ in a woman’s living room.”
• From the Is It Real Or Is It Cake? dept: The erotic origins of Italy’s most famous sweet. Italy has a number of age-old pastries that resemble genitalia, like cannoli. But while they may induce a few giggles nowadays, their origins are linked to serious traditions.”
• thatlittleitch zine—”thatlittleitch began as a tumblr blog as a means for a queer, hypersexual, nonbinary creator to explore their identity and work through the nightmares that plagued them. After the tumblr fallout, it moved to Twitter and Pillowfort, but has been a held breath for a long time – the creator, Beau Jágr Sheldon found out that sometimes a creative block was because the void inside them wasn’t being released and given new souls to expose. Enter this thatlittleitch zine. Filled with prose, poetry, and fiction all wrapped up in erotica and horror, this zine also includes photography of nature and of the creator themselves.”
• From the Encino Man dept: A Caveman Encased in Ice Has Appeared In a Minneapolis Park. To help people through these trying times, a Minnesota artist created a new version of the mysterious monolith.”
• “Netflix’s live-action Fate: The Winx Saga goes all in on the magic, but not the Magical Girls. A vibrant cartoon gets a gritty, familiar live-action treatment.” About Fate: The Winx Saga premiering Jan 22 on Netflix.
• Watch “Baba Yaga: The Ancient Origins of the Famous ‘Witch’.”
• Watch “Kenneth Copeland goes Heavy Metal! [Hair Grow remix].”
• Watch “Australian lake’s spectacular ‘tree of life’ discovered by drone.”
• Watch “30 Minutes of Relaxing Visuals from Studio Ghibli.”

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