An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for March 10, 2021

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

• Watch Manon Hedenborg White’s talk From Chorazin to Carcosa: The Black Pilgrimage of Jack Parsons and Cameron, available through Friday, 5pm GMT.
• Crowdfunding with 8 days to go: “PERILOUS GARDEN rare 1920s horror scifi art Orchid Garden. Book 6 in our series documenting the eerie and creepy artworks from DER ORCHIDEENGARTEN (1919-1921), the FIRST fantasy horror magazine!”
• “Ode to a Young Aspirant, On Beginning the Abramelin Operation.”—”Just a reminder that this year’s Abramelin season begins on Monday 5th April 2021, which is only four weeks away!”
• Internet Archive, home of the Wayback Machine and more, has introduced a new tool, in beta, which seems to me a welcome alternative to the painfully commercial Academia.edu and Google’s barebones Scholar portal. “Search Millions of Research Papers. This fulltext search index includes over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth century journals though the latest Open Access conference proceedings and pre-prints crawled from the World Wide Web.” For example, here’s a search for “Aleister Crowley” to check out. First two are an article by Manon Hedenborg White and one on Alan Moore’s Promethea. Plus, plenty more.
• Night Walk – Sneak Peek with Antler Bart by Hermetic Library Anthology Artist Valerie Herron. About Night Walk: and Other Dark Paths [Amazon] by Aeryn Rudel, illustrated by Valerie Herron.
• “Take fright, leave, flee, depart, O unclean demon . . . wherever you happen to be, . . . whether you have the form of a serpent or the face of a beast or are like a vapor or like a bird, . . . whether you appear in the morning or at noon or at midnight or at some other untimely hour or at dawn, . . . whether you are in the sea or in a river or under the earth or in a well or by a cliff or in a ditch or in a lake or in a bed of reeds or in a forest … or in a grove or in a thicket or in a tree or in a bird or in thunder or on the roof of a bath or in a pool of water, whether we know or do not know whence you have come . . . depart to a waterless, desert and untilled land where no man dwells.”—J. Goar, Euchologion sive rituale graecorum in Cyril Mango (1928-2021), Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome quoted at A Prayer of Exorcism Attributed to St. Basil.
• “Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore.”—”Late last year I was asked to design a new cover for Voice of the Fire which will be published by Knockabout in a 25th anniversary edition later this year.” No direct links yet.
• Elucidation of Necromancy Lucidarium Artis Nigromantice attributed to Peter of Abano: Including a New Translation of His Heptameron or Elements of Magic [Bookshop, Amazon] with text, translation, and commentary by Joseph H Peterson, due December 2021—”Since it first appeared over 500 years ago, the Elucidation of Necromancy (Lucidarium artis Nigromantice) and the closely related Heptameron have become essential guides for individuals seeking to call on angels and other supernatural beings for help. Countless amulets and pendants have been made with its designs, and elements have repeatedly been adapted and incorporated into other manuals of ritual magic. In spite of this, neither a critical edition nor a translation has been previously published. In particular three manuscripts of Lucidarium have come to light recently, which provide a clearer and fuller ritual than the printed Heptameron. For example, they add critical instructions for making the seven angel sigils, which have become so widely known. Together they bring to life this important current of esoteric tradition, showing how it has been repeatedly adapted and used by different individuals for centuries.”
• Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan: Infernal Wisdom from the Devil’s Den [Publisher] by Carl Abrahamsson, foreword by Mitch Horowitz, due February, 2022—”One of privileged few who spent time with the “Black Pope” in the last decade of his life, Carl Abrahamsson met Anton LaVey in 1989, sparking an “infernally” empowering friendship. In this book Abrahamsson explores what LaVey was really about, where he came from, and how he shaped the esoteric landscape of the 1960s. The author shares in-depth interviews with the notorious Satanist’s intimate friends and collaborators, including LaVey’s partner Blanche Barton, his son Xerxes LaVey, current heads of the Church of Satan Peter Gilmore and Peggy Nadramia, occult filmmaker Kenneth Anger, LaVey’s personal secretary Margie Bauer, film collector Jack Stevenson, and film historian Jim Morton. Abrahamsson also shares never-before-published material from LaVey himself, including discussions between LaVey and Genesis P-Orridge and transcripts from LaVey’s never-released “Hail Satan!” video.”
• “Somebody Else Took His Place, and Bravely Cried … Reflections on the death of an artist.” From MASKS: Bowie & Artists of Artifice [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] edited by J Curcio—”This interdisciplinary anthology explores the complex relationships in an artist’s life between fact and fiction, presentation and existence, and critique and creation, and examines the work that ultimately results from these tensions. Using a combination of critical and personal essays and interviews, MASKS presents David Bowie as the key exemplifier of the concept of the “mask,” then further applies the same framework to other liminal artists and thinkers who challenged the established boundaries of the art/pop academic worlds, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, S ren Kierkegaard, Yukio Mishima, and Hunter S. Thompson. Featuring contributions from John Gray and Slavoj Zizek and interviews with Gary Lachman and Davide De Angelis, this book will appeal to scholars and students of cultural criticism, aesthetics, and the philosophy of art; practicing artists; and fans of Bowie and other artists whose work enacts experiments in identity.”
• Temple of Medusa—”Much like the sanctuaries built to house the likenesses of ancient Greek gods and goddesses, Temple of Medusa aims to create a similar shrine honoring this icon of world history. In contrast to the many renderings of Medusa’s defeat that have been created throughout art history, what would a visual testament to Medusa’s victory look like? If Medusa’s temple were built today, what works of art would adorn it? Century Guild is accepting applications for the opportunity to be selected as one of thirty artists to have their work published in a hardcover fine-art volume titled Temple of Medusa and correlating group exhibitions.”
• “‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ Is The Perfect Journey for a Sensitive Kid. Norton Juster’s classic novel isn’t about good versus evil, but reason, emotion and self-discovery.” (Norton Juster passed away this week.) About The Phantom Tollbooth [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Norton Juster, illustrated by Jules Feiffer—”This ingenious fantasy centeres around Milo, a bored ten-year-old who comes home to find a large toy tollbooth sitting in his room. Joining forces with a watchdog named Tock, Milo drives through the tollbooth’s gates and begins a memorable journey. He meets such characters as the foolish, yet lovable Humbug, the Mathemagician, and the not-so-wicked “Which,” Faintly Macabre, who gives Milo the “impossible” mission of returning two princesses to the Kingdom of Wisdom…”
• Gothic Nature Journal: New Directions in Ecohorror and the EcoGothic, Issue 2. “Gothic Nature is a new interdisciplinary and peer-reviewed academic journal seeking to explore the latest evolutions of thought in the areas of ecohorror and the ecoGothic. It welcomes articles, reviews, interviews, and original creative pieces from researchers and artists interrogating the darker sides of our relationship to the nonhuman.”
• “Orientalism and Its Afterlives.” About Edward Said’s Orientalism [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]—”More than three decades after its first publication, Edward Said’s groundbreaking critique of the West’s historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East has become a modern classic. In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of orientalism to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined the orient simply as other than the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.”
• “The Dolphin Letters. Revisiting Robert Lowell’s infamous book.” About The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]—”The correspondence between one of the most famous couples of twentieth-century literature.”
• “Véra Nabokov Was the First and Greatest Champion of ‘Lolita’.” About The Annotated Lolita Revised and Updated [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Vladimir Nabokov—”The annotated text of this modern classic. It assiduously illuminates the extravagant wordplay and the frequent literary allusions, parodies, and cross-references. Edited with a preface, introduction and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr.”
• “The Female Gaze. The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience – 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits.” About The Mirror and the Palette [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Jennifer Higgie, due October, 2021—”A dazzlingly original and ambitious book on the history of female self-portraiture by one of today’s most well-respected art critics.”
• “Friends by Robin Dunbar review – how important are your pals? The psychologist’s fascinating study of friendship finds that the quality of our relationships determines our health, happiness and chance of a long life.” About Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships [Bookshop UK, Amazon, Publisher] by Robin Dunbar—”Mixing insights from scientific research with first person experiences and culture, Friends explores and integrates knowledge from disciplines ranging from psychology and anthropology to neuroscience and genetics in a single magical weave that allows us to peer into the incredible complexity of the social world in which we are all so deeply embedded.”
• Later [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Stephen King—”The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine – as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.”
• “How Statistics Can Validate Our Beliefs… or Trick Us.” Excerpt from The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics by Tim Harford [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]—”Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us.” If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach them clearly—understanding how our own preconceptions lead us astray—statistics can point to ways we can live better and work smarter.”
• “Final thoughts. Do deathbed regrets give us a special insight into what really matters in life? There are good reasons to be sceptical.”
• “Universe’s oldest known quasar discovered 13 billion light-years away. Astronomers have found the farthest known source of radio emissions in the universe: a galaxy-swallowing supermassive black hole.”
• More about this: “In the Atlantic Ocean, Subtle Shifts Hint at Dramatic Dangers. The warming atmosphere is causing an arm of the powerful Gulf Stream to weaken, some scientists fear.”
• “Could space greenhouses solve Earth’s food crisis?”
• “How Inequity Gets Built Into America’s Vaccination System. People eligible for the coronavirus vaccine tell us they are running up against barriers that are designed into the very systems meant to serve those most at risk of dying of the disease. We plan to continue tracking these roadblocks.”
• “Study suggests that the modern anti-vaccine movement is shaped by Christian nationalist ideology.”
• “The History of Vaccination Hesitancy from the Science Museum.”—”Convincing Facts!”
• “Medieval women ‘put faith in birth girdles’ to protect them during childbirth. New findings cement idea that ritual and religion was invoked using talismans to soothe nerves.”
• “Mars on Earth: Turkish lake may hold clues to ancient life on planet.”
• “Meteor explodes over Vermont with the force of 440 pounds of TNT.”
• Rare meteorite that fell on UK driveway may contain ‘ingredients for life’
• “Exotic crystals of ‘ice 19’ discovered.”
• “Neanderthals disappeared from Europe earlier than thought, says study.”
• From the If It Weren’t Screwed On dept: “These sea slugs cut off their own heads and grow an entirely new body. Does that make them the Terminators of the animal world?”
• “Engineers Have Proposed The First Model For a Physically Possible Warp Drive.”
• “What crocodile mummies can tell us about everyday life in ancient Egypt.”
• “Ancient Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti & King Akhenaten finally in a photo.”
• “Who Built Teotihuacan, One of the Largest and Most Impressive Ancient Cities in Mesoamerica?”
• “China proposes teaching masculinity to boys as state is alarmed by changing gender roles.”
• “Who Was Gudrid and Did She Really Exist?”
• “Sherlock Holmes’ famous memory trick really works.”
• From the Tulip Mania dept: “Here is the article you can send to people when they say ‘But the environmental issues with cryptoart will be solved soon, right?’ Cryptocurrencies and NFTs are an absolute disaster for so many more reasons than the ecological.”—”I am so mad I had to write this … During unprecedented temperature increases, sea level rise, the total loss of permanent sea ice, widespread species extinction, countless severe weather events, and all the other hallmarks of total climate collapse, this kind of gleeful wastefulness is, and I am not being hyperbolic, a crime against humanity.” Also “NFTs, explained. I have questions about this emerging… um… art form? Platform?”
• “Why Channel 37 Doesn’t Exist (And What It Has to Do With Aliens). Since the advent of analog TVs, channel 37 has always been static. Here’s why.”
• Encode Mighty Things—”NASA JPL engineers landed a rover on Mars. People from around the world decoded the message in the parachute they designed. I just made this small tribute to their work.”
• “NASA named the Perseverance rover’s landing spot for Octavia E. Butler, the pioneering Black science-fiction author.”
• “Why white supremacists and QAnon fans are obsessed with the Byzantine Empire. Fanatics and conspiracy theorists have vowed to build a “New Byzantium.” But they don’t understand the old one.”
• “Big vagina energy: the return of the sheela na gig. Some say the explicit medieval carvings were fertility symbols; others that the figures were meant to ward off evil. Now a group of Irish feminists are bringing them back – as a reminder of women’s struggles.”
• “Life-Size Human Sculptures Reveal the ‘Inner Light’ of Body and Soul.”
• “Mimi Novic & Edmond Fokker – Seven Prayers of Love.” [Amazon, Apple, Spotify]
• “The Empty Religions of Instagram. How did influencers become our moral authorities?”
• “New report finds nonreligious people face stigma and discrimination. A new study finds that nonreligious people face discrimination and stigma, conceal their nonreligious identities and largely see themselves as atheists and humanists.”
• “Is This the End of French Intellectual Life? The country’s culture of argument has come under the sway of a more ideological, more identity-focused model imported from the United States.”
• “Can Free Assembly Survive the Internet?“—”We have had decades to take regulatory action against pervasive tracking and lack of consent, but we have done little. Those fighting against government use of facial-recognition technology are at the forefront of addressing how we have ported these challenges into public life. The destructive dynamics between privately governed social-media platforms and disinformation are now manifesting themselves in physical public spaces.”
• “What Was the Classroom?“—”The case for the classroom as somewhere that ideas and texts are made rather than delivered seems destined to become more interesting as we stop taking that material space for granted. If the example of Denmark has anything to add to this case, it’s that even state-funded and socially democratic educational projects will need to be defended in new ways. Reading, which is at the core of what we do, has always relied on a place and a time. Without those physical coordinates, we risk losing both the classroom and the research it inspires.” About The Teaching Archive: A New History for Literary Study [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan.
• “Witch’s Honor.”—”In the series, paired with its accompanying hand-sign (the terminally eclectic might say mudra here), Witch’s Honor in effect constituted an oath of truth-telling, and that’s exactly how my friend was using it. There’s no comparable gesture of ritual affirmation in the contemporary real-life Craft. Maybe there should be; this was just one of the things that my friend’s use of the TV hand-sign was saying.” This misses the obvious(?) point that the sign hilariously forms a W for “witch” if you take into account the fingers and the nose. And, if one wants to push it even further, let’s compare this with the sign of Harpocrates.
• “Indie tabletop RPG designers reclaim the Witch.”
• The 1909 Art Restoration Deck Tarot Cards—”The 1909 Art Restoration Deck is a 2020 perfect replica of this legendary 1909 ‘Roses and Lilies’ deck. The idea is to restore the 1909 deck with the same treatment of historical art, with minimal editing to preserve a maximum level of original details. A proper art restoration. This deck candidly reveals the minute printing artefacts from 1909 as historical features, showing the tonal variations in ink that reveal the travel of printing blocks, pen marks and brush marks involved. It retains the overprinting of colour blocks, minor misalignments and other charming imperfections that are characteristic of its creation and printing process unique of its time. This restoration reveals an entire spectrum of finer details previously lost and unseen.”
• Tweet—”Don’t let the party that tried to cancel Dungeons & Dragons in the 80s lecture you about cancel culture ever again.”
• Aleister Quailey
• “Owner of Welsh coastal park wants Stonehenge back.”

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