An irregular hodgepodge of links beyond the library curated together from @OmniumGatherum at Hrmtc I∴O∴ and more … Omnium Gatherum for August 17, 2022.

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

• Visionary Medium: Psychoanalysis and the Magic of Cinema, October 14-16, 2022, Husets Biograf, Copenhagen—”The third Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult conference focuses on cinema as a gateway into and out of the human mind, in all its complexity.”
• Tarot for Dreamers & Visionaries: A Dialogue of Self and Soul. Friday 18th November – Sunday 20th November 2022. “Three days. Nine speakers. A myriad of enlightening perspectives. Welcome to The College of Psychic Studies’ inaugural Tarot Symposium.” The College Of Psychic Studies, London, UK
• Creative Spirits Exhibition. 11th October-10th December 2022, Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-5pm. “The College of Psychic Studies invites you to Creative Spirits, an odyssey into the otherworldly in which you will encounter art and photography created by 100 mediums, dreamers and visionaries over the last 165 years.” The College Of Psychic Studies, London, UK
• “A vision of 7 suns led a self-taught Ivoirian artist to draw the everyday and the holy“—”More than 1,000 of his writings and drawings are on display until August 13 as part of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound, an exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It is MoMA’s first solo exhibition of an artist from West Africa.”
• “No Pasaran: Antifascist Anthology from AK Press. No Pasaran is an antifascist anthology edited by Shane Burley and featuring Talia Lavin, Kim Kelly, David Renton, and more.” Crowdfunding effort with 4 days to go …
• The Weird—”Roleplaying games give us a chance to explore, discover, imagine, create, and face challenges. Our games shine brightest when they’re vivid, unique, and a little bit mind-bending. So how do you make another room full of orcs, another space station full of aliens, or another dark cult really special? How do you make every game session truly new and memorable—a moment of real discovery and imagination? You make it weird.” A crowdfunding effort upcoming Summer 2022 …
• Belief, Values, Bias, and Agency: Development of and Entanglement with Artificial Intelligence by Damien Patrick Williams, Doctoral Dissertation, 2022. “By considering both the magical/religious elements and the lived experiences of marginalized people, we can chart new paths for research and public policy, toward making more ethical and just ‘AI.'”
• Obsolete Spells: The Life and Work of Victor Neuburg (with Justin Hopper)—”We cover the life and times of Victor Neuburg, the now-obscure creator behind the Vine Press. A man who knew Aleister Crowley intimately, discovered Dylan Thomas, took part in the infamous Paris Working, and became the local eccentric publisher in a small English town.” About Obsolete Spells: Poems & Prose from Victor Neuburg & the Vine Press by Justin Hopper—”A collection of rare pagan poetry and purple prose from the heart of the 1920s counterculture.”
• “A pagan perspective on Feminine power: the divine to the demonic. As the ‘exhilarating’ (The Guardian) exhibition approaches its final month, we asked five community consultants, who contributed to the development of the exhibition, to respond to an object in the exhibition that relates to them as women but also to their pagan and witchcraft beliefs and practices.” About Feminine power: the Divine to the Demonic, thru Sept 25, British Museum, London. “The accompanying paperback catalogue to the British Museum exhibition Feminine Power: the divine to the demonic.”
• “The Sandman’s John Cameron Mitchell Wants to Bring Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles to Live-Action“—”The Sandman star John Cameron Mitchell once considered pursuing another popular Vertigo Comics series, The Invisibles, and would still like to write a series adapting the comic.”
• “Restaurant review: Tasty nosh at Gnostic, Belfast. Tiny Belfast bar and restaurant is punching way above its weight.” Gnostic eucharist in Belfast! Sort of.
• “Police: Hollsopple woman used pages from “spell book” to set car on fire“—”They say she ignited the pages from the book before placing them on the driver side front seat of the car through an open window.” That’s pretty practical kitchen witchery!
• “Future First Lady of UK was accused of ‘Targeting’ Married Boris“—”Politicalite was also given exclusive pics from her Uni days where she engaged in an ‘X-Rated’ production of mystic Aleister Crowley an occultist who was described as ‘the wickedest man in the world’.” “In the pictures, she is kneeling on the floor with a table in the background. On the table are written the words ‘cognac, c*** and cocaine’ – a reference to Crowley.” “A bottle of cognac and a small pile of white powder, believed to represent cocaine, are on the table, which is surrounded by a circle of cards. The words ‘Do As Thou Wilt’ are scrawled in chalk in the centre of the circle.” I mean, tell me more about the play, please.
• “I’m a Cradle Catholic. I Don’t Want Christian Nationalism in My Church. ‘America First’ types are becoming ‘trad-Caths.’ But they don’t actually get the church or Jesus’ teachings.”
• “Heiress Used Fake Psychics to Scam Mom Out of $140 Million in Art, Say Police. Sabine Boghici allegedly had friends convince her mother that the wealthy family’s trove of artwork had possessed her and needed costly ‘purifying.'”
• “A peripatetic pilgrimage: When travel feels like a secular religious experience“—”Under the big sky and in the invigorating weather, everything seems possible and contemplatable in this place, and others like it. It reminds us to be humble and grateful when travel uncovers locations that speak to us so emphatically that just by walking through them changes us for the better.”
• “The Art That Inspired Joan Didion Goes to Auction. Those with a Didion-shaped hole in their hearts can also bid for portraits of the author, her books, and other personal items.” Also “Author Joan Didion’s Estate Is Heading to Auction. The American writer’s fine art, furniture, decor, and other possessions will be on offer at Stair Galleries this fall.”
• “Learning and Healing in the Archive of Black Thought. Farah Jasmine Griffin’s memoir Read Until You Understand doubles as a syllabus, taking readers on a personal tour through Black intellectual history.” About Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature by Farah Jasmine Griffin.
• “Ranked: The 50 best books of the past 100 years — do you agree? On the 100th anniversary of Ulysses, our jury of authors and critics pick the finest novels published since Joyce’s classic — how many have you read?”
• “Sarasota Schools freezes library book donations, purchases“—”The Sarasota County School District has halted all donations and purchases of library book material until at least January 2023, according to guidance sent to all schools.”
• “This Mystical Book Was Co-Authored by a Disturbingly Realistic AI
  Occult author Alley Wurds is using machine learning to unlock ‘the subconscious mind of the internet.’” About GPT-3 Techgnosis; A Chaos Magick Butoh Grimoire by Alley Faint Wurds.

• Gallowmen and Mandrakes: The occult life of Bob Laurentius Richel by Wilmar Taal—”Gallowmen and Mandrakes explores the life and art of Bob Laurentius Richel, the son in-law of JHW Eldermans and an equally enigmatic contributor to this unique collection.”
• “When they came for the librarians: My profession is under attack — what happens now? People in my profession are used to mockery and low salaries. We didn’t expect constant insults and real danger.”
• “In the 1930s, Poetry Was Essential in Fighting Fascism. A group of Communist Party–aligned Yiddish poets in the 1930s sought to bridge national and cultural divides through language. Their poetry remains a milestone of internationalism in the arts.” About Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry from Scottsboro to Palestine by Amelia Glaser.
• “How AMC’s Interview With The Vampire will expand on Lestat.” Ramses the Damned or riot.
• Mirror Stage: Between Computability and Its Opposite, HOLO issue 3, May 2022—”Guest editor Nora N. Khan and fifteen luminaries question our problematic faith in and deference to AI. Exploring the limits of knowledge, prediction, language, and abstraction in computation, their collected essays and artworks measure the gap between machine learning hypotheticals and the mess of lived experience.”
• Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain by Amy Jeffs, due September 2022—”Soaked in mist and old magic, Storyland is a new illustrated mythology of Britain, set in its wildest landscapes.”
• “Beyond the right-wing panic: Why “critical race theory” actually matters. Long before the racist backlash, critical race theory was a useful tool — for explaining racist backlash.” About On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters & Why You Should Care by Victor Ray.
• “No weekend plans? Gather your party and play this literary RPG about Lord Byron.“—”After all, everyone knows what can happen when you’re left inside with Byron for too long.” Pretty sure I’d mentioned this before, but here’s another …
• “The Cute and Horrifying World of Jim Woodring. In ‘One Beautiful Spring Day,’ the cartoonist takes his orders from the imaginary world that he creates.” About One Beautiful Spring Day Limited Edition by Jim Woodring. Also ebook and paperback.
• “Dy5topia: A Field Guide to the Dark Universe of Chet Zar. Chet zar’s long-awaited field guide is now available! Zar has been detailing this dark universe for decades within his oil paintings, and now his field guide attempts to decipher and categorize this bizarre world.” Pre-order.
• “A mom’s campaign to ban library books divided a Texas town — and her own family. Weston Brown had given up challenging his mother’s anti-LGBTQ beliefs. But that was before she started coming after library books.”
• “More Than a Muse. Mark Braude’s biography of a bohemian icon makes a case for Kiki de Montparnasse as an artist in her own right.” About Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris by Mark Braude—”A dazzling portrait of Paris’s forgotten artist and cabaret star, whose incandescent life asks us to see the history of modern art in new ways.”
• “From Pittsburgh to New Orleans, on a 19th-Century-Style Flatboat. In ‘Life on the Mississippi,’ Rinker Buck takes a lengthy river trip to examine a uniquely American history.” About Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure by Rinker Buck—”The eagerly awaited return of master American storyteller Rinker Buck, Life on the Mississippi is an epic, enchanting blend of history and adventure in which Buck builds a wooden flatboat from the grand ‘flatboat era’ of the 1800s and sails it down the Mississippi River, illuminating the forgotten past of America’s first western frontier.”
• Free Will: An Opinionated Guide by Alfred R Mele—”Free Will: An Opinionated Guide offers a clear and straightforward introduction to a vexing topic, from an internationally recognized authority on free will.”
• La Maupin by Jordan Stratford, part of the Sword Girl series—”Teenage swordswoman. Grave-Robber. Arsonist. Nun. Assassin. Superstar. La Femme Nikita of the 1600s.” “The true story of 17 year old Julie d’Aubigny, who took 17th century Paris by storm, by stardust, and by steel. Queen of the underground dueling scene among the wealthy sons of noblemen, daughter of the King’s fencing master, she rose in scandal, blood, and reputation to become the leading star of the Paris Opera.” Also “La Maupin Stars in Jordan Stratford’s Newest ‘Sword Girl’”
• “Math error: A new study overturns 100-year-old understanding of color perception. A paradigm shift away from the 3D mathematical description developed by Schrödinger and others to describe how we see color could yield more vibrant computer displays, TVs, printed materials, textiles and more.”
• Thread—”BREAKING: Trump’s lawyer confirms that he’s admitting to the crime of unauthorized disclosure of Top Secret information. Also, she seems to not be aware of the existence of the Federal Register, which proves that her client is lying.”
• “All the Weird and Wonderful Tech and Game Commercials That Live Rent Free in My Head. It’s impossible to argue these ads weren’t effective when we still remember them decades later.”
• “Family Unwittingly Buys Suitcases Filled With Dismembered Bodies at Storage Unit Auction. A family made the grisly discovery once they hauled the contents of a storage unit home.” As if the ghastly, ghoulish gambling business of storage auctions wasn’t bad enough already in an of itself …
• “Swinger film ‘Bloom Up’ explores polyamory with a couple whose love is ‘really, really pure’. Filmmaker Mauro Russo Rouge spoke to Salon about filming swingers to ‘explore a world that is usually judged’.” Watch Bloom Up – Official Trailer—”Pet shop owners by day and swingers by night, Italian couple Hermes and Betta are, in most ways, regular people.”
• “‘Never Have I Ever’ should let Devi be single. This season, the Netflix series offered a prime catalyst for its lovelorn lead to change, but ultimately failed her.” Porque no los dos?! (I mean, other than there was a whole season that asked and answered that question, I guess.)
• “How the conscientious casting of women in “The Sandman” defies the gender-swapping trope. From Lucifer to Johanna, why the most intriguing Netflix “Sandman” characters are given life by women.”
• “Call My Lawyer | Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law | Disney+“—”Lawyer show!! ⚖️”
• “Grant Morrison Gave DC Its Own Doctor Who & Wants Them To Use Him“—”It’s Grant Morrison time! Nix Uotan was initially created for DC Comics’ Countdown to Final Crisis, as a nameless Monitor with only minimal distinguishing features, seeking guidance to combat rising tensions in the Multiverse. Grant Morrison grabbed him, named him Nix Uotan, pronounced “Wotan”, as the Monitor of Earth-51″
• “The importance of “Prey” doing right by the dog, Sarii. The dog in the film steals our hearts, scenes and rodents, but doesn’t stress us out.”
• “Cash-strapped Britons give up pets as living costs soar“—”The trend, which follows a surge in demand for pets during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in a country known for its love of animals, comes as households brace for energy bills to more than triple in January on last year, hammering people’s incomes.” Worst timeline ever.
• “France whale: Beluga put down during dramatic rescue mission. A beluga whale that became stranded in France’s Seine river had to be put down, ending a dramatic rescue mission that captivated world audiences.”
• “We Didn’t Deserve Freya the Walrus“—”people started swimming with Freya, taking her picture, and even throwing things at her—so much that she had begun chasing off paddle boarders and kayakers. The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries warned the public to stay away from Freya, for their safety and hers. Last week, officials said they were weighing several options, including relocating Freya, but warned she might have to be killed if people wouldn’t listen.”

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