An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for February 14, 2021

It’s that time of year again, when I’m secretly tempted to make an “Enjoy your Venereal Disease!” joke because of that and Valentine’s Day both being VD. But, this year I settled on this one, which will be posting to social media later today:

Over 200 subscribers to the new email Newsletter already! If you haven’t already, do consider following along. I’ve talked about this before, and I probably should have started this a decade ago, ignoring for a moment that I did start a list but didn’t keep it going; but, I think I’ve found how to make this fit into my work flow. Check it out and let me know what you think!

This weekend there’s a weather warning about wind chill down to -24° F here at the library. Today is supposed to be entirely below 0°F all day, and even colder tomorrow. Be cosy and safe out there, wherever you are in the world!

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

• Tweet—”We’ve just launched our brand new Ashmolean Image Library, where you can browse over 10,000 objects images for licensing, from Egyptian mummies to contemporary art. Take a look today –> http://images.ashmolean.org.”
• “Why Mighty Would Love it. Why You Might Hate It. Black School of Cyrpian Begins This Tuesday!“—”The Black School Course starts in just a few days, and as anyone who has taken it can tell you, it is a weird and wonderful thing that has proven extremely effective go-to system for many. I can say with confidence that it is the kind of thing you will love if you love this kind of thing…” “The course starts with a regimen of exercises and prayers that bring you into contact with St Cyprian the Sorcerer Saint who stands between heaven and hell and mediates the powers of both. He is your Guide, Assistant, and Facilitating Spirit and opens the roads for you. If you have felt that there is a way to work with Christ and the Devil, with Angels and with Demons: You Will Love This.”
• Another fundraiser for this, apparently. “Boleskine House: Fundraiser launched to help rebuild former home of Aleister Crowley.”
• “Call In Love This Valentine’s Day With These 3 Beginner Love Spells.”—”And just as an FYI, ‘magick’ with a ‘k’ serves to create a distinction from stage magic, or illusion. It was first coined by Aleister Crowley, who created the Thelema religion and lead the spiritual practice that would become Wicca. How you spell it is really up to preference.” Um. Well, at least it’s a mention of Crowley that’s not negative, I guess?
  
• “‘Crime Scene: The Vanishing At the Cecil Hotel’: The Theories About Elisa Lam’s Death.”–”Others believe Lam’s inexplicable connection to the occultist Aleister Crowley had something to do with her death. The founder of the Thelema religion, Crowley believed in interdimensional travel. Crowley frequented The Cecil in London, where he penned a poem about the sacrificial death of Selia — something many conspiracy theorists have connected to Lam’s case as an anagram of Elisa.” Um. What. the. fuck? (Also, maybe the poem part is a reference to a big of doggerel attributed to Crowley that I’ve seen but don’t have a source for: “When Celia cums, ’tis earthquake hour. The bed vibrates like kettledrums / It is a grand display of power when Celia cums. / When Celia farts, my hasty nose / Sniffs up the fragrance from her parts / Shamed are the violets and rose when Celia farts.” Reminds one of Leah Sublime, of course, so it’s not, like, impossible. Also this appears sometimes with and extra bit from Jonathan Swift’s The Lady’s Dressing Room added on as if also by Crowley. Idek. I went through everything and it isn’t referenced in any of my sources. Apparently it is in the head of chapter 4 in the fiction novel The Deaths and Afterlife of Aleister Crowley by Ian Thorton, but it isn’t properly cited, so is it made up there? I don’t have Sexual Imagery in the Early Poetry of Aleister Crowley by Sunny Shah, so maybe in there? This reference and the poem both seem made up. Do you know? Also, if we’re going to make up connections, how odd to link Crowley to “Selia/Elisa” but not also “Lam” with the image of Lam?!)

• “Did Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page really worship the devil?” More random stuff about Crowley.
• “Exotic aphrodisiacs and perverse sex: dive into Viktor Wynd’s cabinet of curiosities this Valentine’s Day.”—”Many might already know Mr Wynd’s cabinet of curiosities museum in Hackney, East London, which genuinely merits that often over-used label ‘wunderkammer’. Its rooms overflow with an excess of the weird and wonderful, from shrunken heads and natural phenomena (hairballs from a cow’s stomach, anyone?) to the darker sides of Surrealism, the occult and contemporary art, whether the works of Hans Bellmer, artist Austin Osman Spare, the deceased dandy Sebastien Horsley or Tessa Farmer’s miniature fairies fashioned from dead flies and moths.”
• Crowdfunding campaign with 9 days left: “An Art Apart: Number One. An Art Apart: A special film and book from the highly renowned documentary series.” From Carl Abrahamson of Trapart Books.
• Music for the Devil by Morvoren available now. “The idea for Morvoren arose from the invocations and chants in Gemma Gary’s book The Devils Dozen – Thirteen Craft Rites of the Old One. The book contains many invocations that naturally lent themselves to being put to music. Morvoren combines folk music influences and the hauntingly atmospheric use of a synth to create a unique sound.”
• “Kiss Day 2021: Timeless Quotes To Share On Last Day Of Valentine’s Week. Kiss Day Quotes: Valentine’s Day is just a day away. Send these timeless Kiss Day quotes and wishes to a loved one.” Short list includes William Butler Yeats.
• Moebius & More, with stuff by Moebius, Jodorowsky &c., from Humanoids and Humble Bundle. There’s some crossover with a previous bundle, but it appears not to be entirely the same. “We’ve teamed up with Humanoids for our newest bundle! Get ebooks like The Incal Vol. 1-6, The Metabaron Vol. 1-6, Space Bastards Issue 1, and The Metabaron Vol. 1-6. Plus, your purchase helps support Hero Initiative!”
• “‘Breaking Bad’: Gus Fring’s Gruesome Death Scene in ‘Face Off’ Was Inspired by a Real Event.”—”Famed scientist and occultist Jack Parsons died while working with explosives on a movie set. After suffering extensive injuries including having a hole in his face, Parsons lived for 37 minutes and communicated with first responders before he died from the blast, Wired reported. Gilligan used that as inspiration for Fring’s death.” Um. Accident at home. Not a movie set. 37 years old, not lived for 37 minutes. This is a, um, “creative retelling” of info from 2014’s “Occultist father of rocketry ‘written out’ of Nasa’s history“—”He ended up applying his skills to create pyrotechnics and explosives for the film industry. Just before a planned trip to Mexico in 1952, Parsons — who was 37 — received a large order of explosives for a movie. While preparing the order, there was an explosion involving mercury in which Parsons suffered fatal wounds — some of his friends suspected a state-sponsored consipiracy although it was ruled an accident.”
• “Decondition, Rinse, Repeat: Wicca and the Curse of Greyface.”—”Here’s the thing, folx: If we’re truly going to be a liberated Pagan community, we need to do more than just acknowledge that we’re stuck in Greyface Culture. We’ve got to actively divorce ourselves from it, and do what we can to prevent it from holding any further sway over us.”
• “Review: Egregores.” About Egregores: The Occult Entities That Watch Over Human Destiny [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Hermetic Library Fellow Mark Stavish, foreword by James Wasserman—”The first book to explore the history and influence of egregores, powerful autonomous psychic entities created by a collective group mind.”
• “Medieval Pattern Poems of Rabanus Maurus (9th Century).”—”Take a quick glance at De laudibus sanctae crucis (translated as In Praise of the Holy Cross), a ninth-century manuscript by the Frankish Benedictine monk Rabanus Maurus, and you might think you are looking at an elaborate word search or even a medieval knitting pattern. But these spectacular images are actually parts of a devotional poem.” Striking visual similarity to the Enochian tables.
• “Hine’s VarietiesChaos & Beyond.” About Hine’s Varieties: Chaos & Beyond [Amazon, Publisher] by Phil Hine, foreword by David Southwell—”From world famous occultist Phil Hine comes this amazing collection of esoteric essays. Divided thematically into sections—Chaos Magic, Tantra, Sexualities, Practice, Paganisms, Histories, and Fiction—each section is prefaced by new autobiographical writings in which the author reflects on the early beginnings of his magical path, and how his perspectives have changed over time. With content ranging from explorations of esoteric practice, magical sexuality and independent scholarship, Hine’s Varieties offers a unique window into the life and spiritual journey of a master magician.”
• Tarot for Troubled Times: Confront Your Shadow, Heal Your Self & Transform the World [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Shaheen Miro & Theresa Reed—”Out of Darkness Comes the Light of Transformation.” Tweet—”If you love doing Tarot readings—and you want to learn some Tarot spreads you can use for really tough situations, like addiction, divorce, and injustice—my new book is a must-have for your bookshelf. It’s called ‘Tarot for Troubled Times.'”
• “Astrological Mnemonic for Memorizing the Houses.”
• “L. Frank Baum’s Oz Series #3: Ozma of Oz.” About one of the books in the series: Oz, the Complete Paperback Collection by L Frank Baum—”The definitive Oz experience: Immerse yourself in the wonder of Oz in this keepsake collection of fifteen titles from L. Frank Baum’s cherished American fairy tale series.”
• “Malvern novelist publishes her second book during lockdown.”—”The book is about survival and defying convention; about a woman becoming strong in a society that views her as property. It’s also about alchemy – which at its heart was a search not only for gold but for spiritual enlightenment. Martha teams up with Edward Kelley or Talbot, a real historical figure, famous as the crystal gazer for John Dee, who was Elizabeth I’s astrologer. He led a wild, extraordinary life, from humble beginnings in Worcester to becoming a revered alchemist, and a Knight of Bohemia. A mysterious figure, he deserves to be more celebrated locally. The Good Wife picks out some of the notorious events of his early life.” About The Good Wife [Amazon, Publisher] by Eleanor Porter.
• Those Who Work. What you can learn about medieval Europe if you focus on peasants.” Excerpt from A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader and the World of English Peasants Before the Plague [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Judith M Bennett—”A Medieval Life offers a biography of one woman, a portrait of her world, and an introduction to historical method.”
• “Turner’s Loom.” About Loom by Matthew Turner—”Loom is an illustrated novella of psychotic architectures. It is a story about hidden wealth, identity, edges becoming centres and how our homes are a crowd of strangers.”
• Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Cassandra Peterson, due Sept 2021—”The woman behind the icon known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story, filled with intimate bombshells, told by the bombshell herself.” The Witch’s Heart.” About The Witch’s Heart [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Genevieve Gornichec—”When a banished witch falls in love with the legendary trickster Loki, she risks the wrath of the gods in this moving, subversive debut novel that reimagines Norse mythology.”

• “How to keep from getting distracted when you are trying to read.”—”There is far too much going on these days. Truly, the world is being very inconsiderate.”
• “A Breakup Letter to My Writing Career.”—”A story isn’t a fucking chair. This isn’t Bauhaus.”
• “Astronomers Confirm Solar System’s Most Distant Known Object Is Indeed Farfarout. Gemini North helps define remote object’s distance and orbit.”—With the help of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, and other ground-based telescopes, astronomers have confirmed that a faint object discovered in 2018 and nicknamed ‘Farfarout’ is indeed the most distant object yet found in our Solar System. The object has just received its designation from the International Astronomical Union.” Also “‘Farfarout!’ Solar system’s most distant planetoid confirmed.”
• “Hubble Uncovers Concentration of Small Black Holes. Collapsed Stars Hide Out in the Core of a Globular Cluster.”
• No one goes to space anymore. It’s too crowded. “Orbital Construction: DARPA Pursues Plan for Robust Manufacturing in Space. New program to develop designs and materials for building large structures on orbit and moon.”
• “Rare Blast’s Remains Discovered in Milky Way Center.”
• The Spiral of the Southern Pinwheel. A camera designed to reveal the deepest secrets of our Universe captures the Southern Pinwheel galaxy in glorious detail.”
• “What happens when you replace a human gene with its Neanderthal version?. Neural stem cells with the Neanderthal version of a key gene behave differently.” Also “Tiny Blobs of Brain Cells Could Reveal How Your Mind Differs from a Neanderthal’s.”
• “Modern human origins cannot be traced back to a single point in time.”
• From the Mi-Go from Yuggoth dept: “NASA researchers reveal ISS has robust population of bacteria and fungi.”
• “Listen to haunting notes from an 18,000-year-old conch shell trumpet. Archaeologists in 1931 assumed the shell was only a broken drinking cup.”
• “Egypt unveils restored Isis Temple 150 years after its discovery. Egypt inaugurates the restored Temple of Isis in Aswan as part of the government’s efforts to revive the tourism sector.”
• “How you can help astronomers hunt for undiscovered worlds. Blink, and you’ll catch it.”
• “Dramatic discovery links Stonehenge to its original site – in Wales. Find backs theory that bluestones first stood at Waun Mawn before being dragged 140 miles to Wiltshire.”
• “Using whale songs to image beneath the ocean’s floor. Seismic data generated by whale songs helps build a picture of the ocean’s base.”
• “Tim Cook May Have Just Ended Facebook. Looks like it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy.”—”The path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.”
• “History of Vaccines and Past Pandemics. Throughout history, vaccines and their deployment have been key in pandemic prevention and management.”
• “‘Lex Luthor Of The Internet’: Meet The Man Keeping Far-Right Websites Alive.”—”That company is run by Rob Monster, a 53-year-old Dutch-American.”
• “Survey: More than a quarter of white evangelicals believe core QAnon conspiracy theory. There was also significant support among white evangelicals for the claim that members of antifa, or anti-fascist activists, were ‘mostly responsible’ for the attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to the survey conducted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute.”
• “‘Mark of the devil’: Some Hispanic pastors contribute to vaccine skepticism in Miami.”
• Oh, shit! J Z Knight’s Ramtha’s back, again, again. “QAnon Teams Up With Alleged Cult Leader. The conspiracy theory has a new group of allies: a woman who claims she’s a conduit for a 35,000-year-old warrior god, and her thousands of followers.”
• “Tesla pledged to donate $37.5m to K-12 in Nevada. But there are caveats.“—'”To me it’s symptomatic of how the state exists — as an appendage to corporate affairs,’ said Bob Fulkerson, who heads the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada. ‘That’s the reason for Nevada to exist. For corporations to make as much money as they can and pay as little as they can in taxes.'”
• “Irish president attacks ‘feigned amnesia’ over British imperialism. Michael D Higgins accuses academics and journalists of turning blind eye to impact of colonialism.”
• “General Unstructured Thoughts On ‘Being Cancelled’.”—”1. Being ‘canceled’ basically means learning that you’re replaceable.” “2. ‘Canceling’ is certain people discovering that capitalism doesn’t love them as much anymore.” “3. ‘Being Cancelled’ doesn’t mean you never work, it means you work in the minor leagues.” “4. When you’re privileged, consequence feels like oppression.” “5. The age of (unmediated) celebrity social media is (probably) coming to an end.”
• “A Utah school district says a book about a transgender boy is ‘inappropriate,’ and we have questions.”
• “From Tech Critique to Ways of Living. Neil Postman was right. So what?”
• “Practicing Acknowledgment.”—”Using some of the tenets of postcritique as our guide, we learned how our individual experiences with art could collectively enrich our interpretations. Even more important, we learned to see each revelation, each instance of surprise, each effort to make sense of our fuzzy and befuddling aesthetic experiences as another opportunity to enter into someone else’s world, to let ourselves “be imaginatively absorbed by” 22 different—and sometimes contrasting—visions. We became tied to each other because of our individual ties to works of art—because of our willingness to think and feel with one another. It was a community, we realized, that could sustain us, the kind of community that was worth fighting for.”
• “Pause. Reflect. Think. Susan Stebbing’s little Pelican book on philosophy had a big aim: giving everybody tools to think clearly for themselves.”
• “The Problem With the Postcolonial Syllabus. Against a peculiarly Western allergy to the pleasure of the text.”
• “Dante: Our Medieval Contemporary.”
• “The Story of Women Artists for Revolution, a Movement Against Patriarchy.”
• “The Modernist Poet Who Took on Colonialism.”
• Watch “This Diagram of Earth Is a Lie.”
• “Aliens Must Be Out There. Why aren’t we looking for them?”
• “Edward Sellon and the Cannibal Club: Anthropology Erotica Empire – V.”—”… I promised I would take a look at the work of Irish scholar Henry O’Brien, an early nineteenth-century exponent of the phallic theory of religion.”
• “See how libraries are meeting ebook demand for the NYT Best Sellers list with this visualization.”
• “Salesforce shifts away from in-person work: ‘The 9-to-5 workday is dead’. Most workers for San Francisco’s biggest private employer will come into an office just one to three days a week.” Also tweet—”However, the future of work must not be shaped by companies turning our home lives into nightmares of semi-permanent work. We need to determine our own futures, one with a right to disconnect and a #4DayWeek.”
• “Is Your Cocoa Ethically Sourced? Here Are 5 Ethical Chocolate Brands To Know.” Includes quote from Fernando Pessoa: “As quoted by twentieth-century Portuguese poet and literary luminary Fernando Pessoa, ‘there’s no metaphysics on earth like chocolate,’ and we couldn’t agree more!”
• “Mars, Nestlé and Hershey to face child slavery lawsuit in US. Chocolate companies are among the defendants named in a lawsuit brought by former child workers in Ivory Coast.”
• “Larry Flynt, The Porn King Who Founded Hustler, Dies At 78. The controversial figure, who was portrayed by Woody Harrelson in ‘The People vs. Larry Flynt,’ was one of the biggest names in adult entertainment.”
• “‘Buffy’ And ‘Angel’ Star Charisma Carpenter Says Joss Whedon Was A Toxic Boss. Sarah Michelle Gellar chimed in that she didn’t want to be ‘forever associated’ with the director as he faced new allegations of abusive behavior.”
• “Death to the Inspirational News Story. A teen gives up her college savings to pay her mother’s back rent. A student uses his lunch money to help pay down his classmate’s debt. Let’s stop pretending these stories are heartwarming.”
• “Shame and the Rise of the Social Media Outrage Machine. This ancient social emotion has always been complex. The internet poured fuel on it. Then came social media.”
• “Netflix acquires the rights to all 22 Redwall books, plans film and series. The film will be written by Over the Garden Wall’s Patrick McHale.”
• “Scooby-Doo’s brains — Velma — gets her own show on HBO.”—”HBO has greenlit Velma, an “adult, animated comedy series” exploring the origins of the Scooby-Doo gang’s top sleuth. Mindy Kaling will voice the title character, in a series following Velma Dinkley from her meddling childhood to crime busting fame, as she and the gang unmask land swindlers and insurance fraudsters.”
• “Jack Black will play the snarky robot Claptrap in the Borderlands movie.”
• “Arcade Fire’s Score for ‘Her’ Finally Released.” About Her [Amazon MP3, Amazon Vinyl, Apple] by Arcade Fire, due March 2021.
• “How Video Games Made Me Biophilic.”—”All how-I-came-to-love-nature stories begin with childhood, so here we go to the 90s.”
• “An AR App Wants to Correct the Scarcity of Monuments to Historical Leaders of Color.”
• “Parasocial relationships“—”If the isolation of the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s just how much we rely on our relationships to get through the day. Locked down with only FaceTime and fantasy to get us through, the boundaries between connections “real” and imagined are increasingly non-existent. So don’t fret if all that screen time has made the gang in Friends start to feel a lot like a gang of your actual friends; you’ve just crossed into the realm of the parasocial—a parallel world where one-way connections with celebrities or fictional characters have all the intensity of a reciprocal relationship. These bonds, while first formally articulated in 1956, have existed wherever humans have been able to create “intimacy at a distance.” Recent research reveals parasocial relationships can shape everything from what we buy and who we vote for to how we feel on a daily basis. It’s no illusion.”
• Watch “Parasocial Relationships in the Occult Community.”
• Watch “Francis Bacon: Scientist or Magician?.”—”Bacon was a key figure of the Scientific Revolution. But is it legit to call him a scientist?”
• “Solar activity is intimately tied to climate changes on Earth, which in turn have major effects on life on our planet, including humanity.” Dr Robert Schoch asks ‘Is Our Sun Conscious?’”
• “The Animations That Changed Cinema: The Groundbreaking Legacies of Prince Achmed, Akira, The Iron Giant & More.”
• Watch “In the Blink of an Eye: Space in an Instant.”—”When we look up at night, the universe seems pretty quiet. But that perspective is an illusion; in reality, there are millions of world-shattering events happening every instant across the cosmos. This short film explores just how much is going on every moment in our ridiculously enormous universe.” Reminds be a little bit of Lem’s One Human Minute, which is a little book I loved reading and thinking about.
• “I Miss My Bar is like audio therapy for barflies. Enjoy hearing some nostalgic sounds.”
• Watch, from 2017, “WOW｜INORI – PRAYER-.”—”The latest work to utilize real time tracking and face projection mapping using a state of the art 1000 fps projector and ultra high speed sensing, “INORI-PRAYER-,” has been released. This project was born when Nobumichi Asai (WOW) approached collaborators TOKYO ( http://www.lab.tokyo.jp/​ ), the dancing duo AyaBambi, and the Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory at the University of Tokyo.”

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An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for December 16, 2020

Welp, that’s a wrap! I just recently finished featuring each track and artist from Magick, Music and Ritual 15 on social media. So, it’s mostly done until next year. I’ve started to point people toward “following” Hermetic Library on Bandcamp for anthology news; but, of course, I’ll keep talking about it elsewhere too. But, hopefully, it will be another way to reach people that avoids drowning in noise or being drowned by algorithms.

Hey, I don’t know if you knew about this, but I ran into it, again, I think: OpenLibrary has a search feature that does text searching within the entire catalog of Internet Archive documents. Try it out: Thelema. It doesn’t work so well for terms like A∴A∴, but maybe they’ll improve it over time. Anyhow, that’s a neat way to check for terms across books. I think I’ll add that and Wiktionary to the list of external references on Hermeneuticon pages! This will become increasingly useful as I get further into adding important terms from the material at the library, as a way to find materials outside the library that are also relevant. I’ve long wanted to start adding crossindexing from within and without the library materials, with important quotes. That’s another step in the right direction, anyway, of being more useful as a reference and research tool for the site, as I’ve always intended Hermeneuticon to become.

In other news, I just added a bunch of new pages to the long suffering, ever-upcoming issue of the Zine. It’s gone from only 1/2 filled, to only a few pages before I can release it! Oh! So it looks like there’s definitely going to be a zine issue in 2021! (I shudder to imagine when the next one after that will be ready, but let’s celebrate now whilst we can …) Oh, gods, did I just jinx it?

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

• Christmas and Hogmanay with Jim and Susie Malcolm: “First up is our Christmas Cracker, Sunday December 20th, 2pm PST; 4pm CST; 5pm EST. A concert of carols and Christmas songs Lyrics, Zoom codes and donation links will be sent to all who register Suggested donation $12 per person. Bring along your favorite drink, your pets, some snacks, tinsel and baubles or just pull up the best chair in the house and come as you are.” “Then, Hogmanay in Scotland. Welcome in the New Year at a sensible time by joining us for the Bells as they ring out in Scotland. Thursday December 31st. Start time: 11pm in Scotland; 3pm PST; 5pm CST; 6pm EST. Featuring New Year songs, visiting, drinking and humorous songs (mostly with rollicking choruses). Special ‘show us your dram’ interlude, at which we hope to see many a bonny bottle. Zoom codes and donation links will be sent to all who register. Suggested donation $15 per person” RSVP to [email protected]
• Portland Cello Project’s Cello-rific Virtual Holiday Sweater Extravaganza! A free livestream 12/22 at 6:30pm PT.
• “January 1st brings public domain riches from 1925.”
• Pre-orders for limited book and DVD set, 222 copies only: “MetamOrphic Ritual Theatre presents… Solve eet Coagula, an Orphic Mystery Film. An immortal head, having learnt presence, disembodied yet with heightened senses, aware now of the power of the physical form in which it is forever encased, wise yet carnal, desires to make a new body… Three years in the making, SOLVE et COAGULA is writer-director Orryelle’s first feature-length film, an EsotErotic Surreal and psychedelic journey of re-enchantment. With a wyrd mix of contemporary subculture and Ancient archetypes (exemplified in a diverse and layered soundtrack ranging from bardic neo-classical to ritual ambient experimental) its central message of the reintegration of spirit and matter, mind and body is pertinent in our disconnected times…”
• 7th year! Watch intro to upcoming Breath – A 30 Day Yoga Journey by Yoga With Adriene—”Your Free 30 Day Yoga Journey for 2021 is here! We begin Jan 1st. Join me for 30 Days of Conscious Breath! To start your Free 30 Day Yoga Journey,” sign up.
• The Critique of the Image… Is the Defense of the Imagination [Amazon]
  edited by library Fellow Peter Lamborn Wilson, aka Hakim Bey. “This book has the ambition to stage a multi-phased resistance to the power that images exert in the contemporary world, and, at the same time, to offer something like the keys to the transformation of that power.”

• Check out this article about Living in the Sunlight, a meditation practice created by library figure Jeanne Robert Foster, Soror Hilarion, and described in a letter by figure Aleister Crowley to figure Frater Achad, Charles Stansfeld Jones; which is now a being revived as a modern official practice of OTO in Italy and Australia, and likely more to follow. Consider it for your own daily practice.
• “Series of teenage WB Yeats letters sell for over €53,000 at Sotheby’s auction in London.” Also “Letters written by a young WB Yeats fetch nearly £50k at auction.”
• More about this: “House of the Devil: Aleister Crowley and the curse of Boleskine. The occultist’s home has long been the scene of evil rituals, freak accidents, and rock excess. And the Satanic panic continues to this day.” “Plans to turn former home of ‘wickedest man in the world’ into holiday retreat approved. Plans have been approved to restore the former Highland home of occultist Aleister Crowley as a historic visitor attraction and holiday retreat.” “Notorious occultist Aleister Crowley’s fire-ravaged Loch Ness house will be restored and holiday homes built nearby after it was left in ruins by two blazes despite fears it could become a shrine for Satanists.” Also “Occultist Aleister Crowley’s Highland home to be rebuilt. The former Highland home of the “wickedest man in the world” will become holiday accommodation under rubber-stamped plans.” Also “Boleskine House: Plea to occultists not to spoil house renovation. Highland councillors have approved plans for the restoration of the former home of notorious occultist Aleister Crowley.”
• From the Cadaver Synod dept: Long before ‘Ghostbusters,’ fiction’s detectives were exploring the otherworldly. A look at psychic sleuths from Flaxman Low to John Silence, Simon Ark and more.” Mentions Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, and more.
• From the Crowley Corollary dept: “The Time for Talking with the Left is Long, Long Past“—”It’s reasonable to assume that mentioning right now the futility of reasoning with the Left is motivated by the election. It’s also, in my case, untrue. I’ve for decades recognized that devout leftists, emotion-driven and vice-ridden, operate by occultist Aleister Crowley’s “principle,” “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” But now, with the Left stealing an election after have stolen our whole culture and increasingly achieving its ends through violence, more people may accept this message.” “So how should we regard vanguard leftists, the Machiavellian destroyers of civilizations? How can you be prepared for them? Well, pretend you’re dealing with Satan. ”
• From Chorazin to Carcosa. Fiction-Based Esotericism in the Black Pilgrimage of Jack Parsons and Cameron by Manon Hedenborg White, LIR Journal, 2020—”Rocketeer, poet, and polyamorous proto-feminist, Jack Parsons (1914-1952) is one of the earliest and most legendary followers of Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) and his religion Thelema in America. A precocious only child and avid sci-fi reader, Parsons made vital contributions to the American space programme, and was briefly regarded by Crowley as a potential successor. However, Parsons’ romantic side, keen imagination, and tendency to be seduced by literary fiction was a source of fric-tion between the two men. Parsons drew freely on gothic horror as well as pulp and sci-fi literature in articulating his personal magical universe. In 1946, he undertook the ‘Babalon Working’: a series of magical operations aimed at manifesting the goddess Babalon on earth as a sort of Thelemic messiah. This paper will explore the importance of literature for Parsons’ magical worldview and experimentation, focusing on three key works: Crowley’s Moonchild, Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think, and M.R. James’ short story »Count Magnus«.”
• “Sappho and Dionysus.” Quotes figure William Bulter Yeats.
• “A whistle-stop tour of W. B. Yeats quotations in popular culture.”
• Correspondences Volume 8, no. 1—”three research articles, five book reviews, and an editorial, ‘Transformations and Troubled Times,’ by Manon Hedenborg White.”
• “Women and Other Monsters. A witty and erudite exploration of the enduring influence of the female monsters in Greek myths.” About Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Jess Zimmerman, due March 2021—”A fresh cultural analysis of female monsters from Greek mythology, and an invitation for all women to reclaim these stories as inspiration for a more wild, more “monstrous” version of feminism.”
• Coptica, Gnostica, and Mandaica: Language, Literature, and Art as Media for Interreligious Encounters [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] edited by Wolf B Oerter and Zuzana Vitkova, part of the Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur series, partially available Open Access from the publisher. Proceedings of a conference held in Prague 2017.
• Gods and Humans in the Ancient Near East [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Tyson L. Putthoff—”In this book, Tyson Putthoff explores the relationship between gods and humans, and between divine nature and human nature, in the Ancient Near East. In this world, gods lived among humans. The two groups shared the world with one another, each playing a special role in maintaining order in the cosmos. Humans also shared aspects of a godlike nature. Even in their natural condition, humans enjoyed a taste of the divine state. Indeed, gods not only lived among humans, but also they lived inside them, taking up residence in the physical body. As such, human nature was actually a composite of humanity and divinity. Putthoff offers new insights into the ancients’ understanding of humanity’s relationship with the gods, providing a comparative study of this phenomenon from the third millennium BCE to the first century CE.”
• “What Does It Take to Be Granted Sainthood?” From The Saint Makers: Inside the Catholic Church and How a War Hero Inspired a Journey of Faith [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Joe Drape—”Part biography of a wartime adventurer, part detective story, and part faith journey, this intriguing book from New York Times journalist and bestselling author Joe Drape takes us inside the modern-day process of the making of a saint.”
• “Ruins of a Memory Palace. On Judith Schalansky’s imaginative archives.” About An Inventory of Losses [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Judith Schalansky, translated by Jackie Smith—”With meticulous research and a vivid awareness of why we should care about these losses, Judith Schalansky, the acclaimed author of Atlas of Remote Islands, lets these objects speak for themselves: she ventriloquizes the tone of other sources, burrows into the language of contemporaneous accounts, and deeply interrogates the very notion of memory.”
• “Where Preposterous Dreams Meet the Raw Edges of Reality: Islam, Science Fiction, and Extraterrestrial Life by Jörg Matthias Determann.” About Islam, Science Fiction, and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Jörg Matthias Determann—”The Muslim world is not commonly associated with science fiction. Religion and repression have often been blamed for a perceived lack of creativity, imagination and future-oriented thought. However, even the most authoritarian Muslim-majority countries have produced highly imaginative accounts on one of the frontiers of knowledge: astrobiology, or the study of life in the universe. This book argues that the Islamic tradition has been generally supportive of conceptions of extra-terrestrial life, and in this engaging account, Jörg Matthias Determann provides a survey of Arabic, Bengali, Malay, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu texts and films, to show how scientists and artists in and from Muslim-majority countries have been at the forefront of the exciting search. Determann takes us to little-known dimensions of Muslim culture and religion, such as wildly popular adaptations of Star Wars and mysterious movements centred on UFOs. Repression is shown to have helped science fiction more than hurt it, with censorship encouraging authors to disguise criticism of contemporary politics by setting plots in future times and on distant planets. The book will be insightful for anyone looking to explore the science, culture and politics of the Muslim world and asks what the discovery of extra-terrestrial life would mean for one of the greatest faiths.”
• “Can We Deduce Our Way to Salvation? A new book suggests that modern readers can still follow the path of reason that Spinoza traced to true well-being, but they might not want to.” About Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Steven Nadler—”From Pulitzer Prize-finalist Steven Nadler, an engaging guide to what Spinoza can teach us about life’s big questions” “In 1656, after being excommunicated from Amsterdam’s Portuguese-Jewish community for “abominable heresies” and “monstrous deeds,” the young Baruch Spinoza abandoned his family’s import business to dedicate his life to philosophy. He quickly became notorious across Europe for his views on God, the Bible, and miracles, as well as for his uncompromising defense of free thought. Yet the radicalism of Spinoza’s views has long obscured that his primary reason for turning to philosophy was to answer one of humanity’s most urgent questions: How can we lead a good life and enjoy happiness in a world without a providential God? In Think Least of Death, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Steven Nadler connects Spinoza’s ideas with his life and times to offer a compelling account of how the philosopher can provide a guide to living one’s best life. In the Ethics, Spinoza presents his vision of the ideal human being, the “free person” who, motivated by reason, lives a life of joy devoted to what is most important–improving oneself and others. Untroubled by passions such as hate, greed, and envy, free people treat others with benevolence, justice, and charity. Focusing on the rewards of goodness, they enjoy the pleasures of this world, but in moderation. “The free person thinks least of all of death,” Spinoza writes, “and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life. An unmatched introduction to Spinoza’s moral philosophy, Think Least of Death shows how his ideas still provide valuable insights about how to live today.”
• “‘Strongmen’ Review: Nostalgia, Virility and Power. Can a group portrait of modern tyrants tell us how to prevent their outrages?” About Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Ruth Ben-Ghiat—”What modern authoritarian leaders have in common (and how they can be stopped).” “Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is—and by valuing one another as he is unable to do—can we stop him, now and in the future.”
• “Why Did So Many Doctors Become Nazis? In the answer, and its consequences, a bioethicist finds moral lessons for today’s professional healer.” Adapted from “Nazi Medicine and the Holocaust: Implications for Bioethics Education and Professionalism” by Ashley K Fernandes in Nazi Law: From Nuremberg to Nuremberg [Bookshop, Amazon] edited by John J Michalczyk—”Thus, the story of the Holocaust is a tragedy that unfolded because of the corruption of moral philosophy first, and medicine and law second. Why is this important? The reason is that there are those who argue against the contemporary application of lessons learned from the horrors of Nazi medicine.” “Other scholars have suggested that the real cause of the Holocaust was an economic, political, or racial one—not a moral one—and that, since the United States has a radically different political, economic, and cultural system, the use of the ‘Nazi analogy’ should be restricted.” “While I agree that the so-called ‘Nazi analogy’ has been misused and even abused, and therefore should be used with restraint and precision, denying the risk of backsliding steps too far.”
• “Writers on the Storm.” About Gigantic Cinema: A Weather Anthology [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] edited by Alice Oswald and Paul Keegan—”A luminous anthology of poems and prose inspired by the weather, that mutable, impressionistic action on the stage of the day.” “In three hundred varied entries, Gigantic Cinema narrates the weather of a single capricious day, from dawn, through rain, volcanic ash, nuclear dust, snow, light, fog, noon, eclipse, hurricane, flood, dusk, night, and back to dawn again. It includes reactions both formal and fleeting–weather rhymes, journals and jottings, diaries and letters–to the imaginary and actual drama unfolding above our heads. Ranging from Homer’s winds and Ovid’s flood to Frank O’Hara’s sun, Pliny’s reportage on the eruption of Vesuvius to Elizabeth Bishop’s “Song for a Rainy Season,” Gigantic Cinema offers an expansive collection of writing inspired by the commotion of the elements. Rather than drawing attention to authors and titles, entries appear bareheaded, exposed to each other’s elements, as a medley of voices. Assembling a chorus of responses (ancient and modern, East and West) to air’s manifold appearances, Gigantic Cinema offers a new perspective on the oldest conversation of all.”
• “The Medieval Philosopher Who Outlined the Basics of the Universe.” More from The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Seb Falk—”An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk.” “The Light Ages offers a gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world and conjures a vivid picture of medieval life as we have never seen it before. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today.”
• “Harry Clarke online.”—”It’s taken some time but with a little careful searching it’s now possible to see (almost) all of Harry Clarke’s major works of illustration online.”
• “Who Exactly Was Rilke’s Young Poet Correspondent?.” From Letters to a Young Poet: With the Letters to Rilke from the “Young Poet” [Amazon] by Rainer Maria Rilke and Franz Xaver Kappus, translated by Damion Searls—”A work that has inspired generations, this new edition of Letters to a Young Poet features a fresh translation of Rilke’s ten classic letters, along with the missing letters from the young poet himself.”
• “Rewriting the History of 1970s Gay Liberation.” In part about 2016’s Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Jim Downs—”From a prominent young historian, the untold story of the rich variety of gay life in America in the 1970s”
• “Unrecognizable. William Gaddis’s American pessimism.”
• “John le Carré didn’t just invent the characters in the foreground of the spy world. He designed the entire set. His genius was that his re-imaginings of people and events have proved more memorable than the real things.”
• “Tome raiders: solving the great book heist. When £2.5m of rare books were stolen in an audacious heist at Feltham in 2017, police wondered, what’s the story?”
• “‘Like nothing seen in nature before’: strange dinosaur has scientists enthralled. The highly unusual Ubirajara jubatus boasted a mane of ‘hair-like structions’ and two ‘ribbon-like features’, researchers say.”
• “Great Pyramid: Lost Egyptian artefact found in Aberdeen cigar box. A long-lost Egyptian artefact has been found in a cigar box in Aberdeen – and it is hoped it could shed new light on the Great Pyramid.”
• “The farthest galaxy in the universe. Chemical signatures give away the distance to the most distant galaxy.”
• “New synthetic molecule can kill the flu virus. EPFL scientists have developed a synthetic molecule capable of killing the virus that causes influenza. They hope their discovery will lead to an effective drug treatment.”
• From the Abramelin Operation dept: “Scientists show what loneliness looks like in the brain. Neural ‘signature’ may reflect how we respond to feelings of social isolation.”—”We use the default network when remembering the past, envisioning the future or thinking about a hypothetical present. The fact the structure and function of this network is positively associated with loneliness may be because lonely people are more likely to use imagination, memories of the past or hopes for the future to overcome their social isolation.”
• From the Digital Detox dept: “Meat-Ax Your Notifications.”
• Longest known exposure photograph ever captured using a beer can.”—”A photograph thought to be the longest exposure image ever taken has been discovered inside a beer can at the University of Hertfordshire’s Bayfordbury Observatory. The image was taken by Regina Valkenborgh, who began capturing it towards the end of her MA Fine Art degree at the University of Hertfordshire in 2012. It shows 2,953 arced trails of the sun, as it rose and fell between summer and winter over a period of eight years and one month. The dome of Bayfordbury’s oldest telescope is visible to the left of the photograph and the atmospheric gantry, built halfway through the exposure, can be seen from the centre to the right.”
• “Academics turn RAM into Wi-Fi cards to steal data from air-gapped systems. AIR-FI technique can send stolen data at speeds of up to 100 b/s to Wi-Fi receivers at a distance of a few meters.”
• “Imitation mosquito ears help identify mosquito species and sex. A mosquito-inspired detector could help identify the species and sex of mosquitos, which could be used to identify disease-carrying mosquitos and help save lives.”
• “Novel form of Alzheimer’s protein found in spinal fluid indicates stage of the disease. Discovery could lead to better diagnostics, speed efforts to find treatment.”
• “Researchers discover new particle in the blood of septic patients. LJI scientists get first glimpse of how mysterious particles break off of immune cells.”
• “Russian Communist Party Is Now Following the GOP Playbook on COVID. Just like Trump, Russia’s Communist Party is claiming the impact of the pandemic is exaggerated and anti-COVID measures are destroying the economy for no good reason.”
• “Closing the Loop: Becoming Aware of the Body Again Under Quarantine.”
• “The Chart of Doom: Ranking Apocalypses.”
• “How QAnon’s lies are hijacking the national conversation.”
• From 1964: “The Paranoid Style in American Politics. It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it—and its targets have ranged from ‘the international bankers’ to Masons, Jesuits, and munitions makers.”
• “A Cult of Ignorance” by Isaac Asimov, 1980—”There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
• “The Rotting of the Republican Mind. When one party becomes detached from reality.”
• “Global Inequality and the Corona Shock.”—”Even in a world accustomed to extreme inequality, the disparate experience of the COVID shock has been dizzying. It will be years before comprehensive data is available to chart the precise impact of the pandemic on global inequality. But what might a sketch look like?”
• Atlantic Slavery: An Eternal War.—”The recent protests have made clear that histories of slavery and colonialism are urgently relevant and that histories of resistance, rebellion, and revolution are still ongoing. It is not random that in 2020 the Black Lives Matter movement combines protests against police violence with outrage at the disparity in susceptibility to and deadliness of COVID-19 for Black people. Both violent state surveillance and disease risk and treatment are deeply rooted in the rise and fall of Atlantic slavery.”
• “Watching Whiteness Shift to Blue Via Nationalist Aesthetics.”
• Watch “Republicans try to deliver their own electoral votes to Michigan Capitol.” Also.
  
• “Biden Wins Again, Again, Again, Again, Again.”

• “A New American Manifesto.”—”Adapted from the Declaration of Independence.”
• “Caught in the Crossfire. Brexit isn’t about Europe, and isn’t about the UK. It’s the outcome of a civil war within capitalism.”
• “Identifying Slut-Shaming, Racism, and Transphobia in the Byzantine World.”
• Ted Lasso, a Model for the Nurturing Modern Man
• “32 Museum Directors Lead Calls for German Parliament to Reverse BDS Ruling.”
• “What Does Success Look Like in the New Normal?”
• “Inside the Shady Sex Work Abolitionist Group That Gutted Pornhub. Following a Nicholas Kristof Times exposé, Pornhub removed millions of videos. But the group behind the crusade is an anti-sex work outfit that’s raising money off the controversy.” Also “40 Women Sue Pornhub Parent MindGeek for $80M Over ‘Sex Trafficking’ Videos. The Jane Does have sued MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub, accusing them of knowingly profiting off tons of sex-trafficked material.”
• “Remembering “Heat” for What It Was: The Most Homoerotic Film of the ’90s. Nominally it’s an action movie, but the simmering tension between De Niro and Pacino belongs to another genre.”
• “Meet the Renaissance Master of Instagram.”—”‘People who called me the new Michelangelo were probably drunk,’ says Jacopo Cardillo, 33, a promising Italian sculptor better known as Jago.”
• “Chris Pine In Talks To Star In ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ For eOne And Paramount; Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley Direct.”
• “The Masque Of The Red Death: New 4K Restoration & Uncut Version!” About The Masque of The Red Death directed by Roger Corman, with Vincent Price, &al., a 4k blu-ray restoration, due January 2021 in the UK, presumably coming to the US some time.
• “Santa and Mrs. Claus and the Christmas War of the Sexes. In the late nineteenth century, bachelor Santa got married. Unsurprisingly, Mrs. Claus contributed uncompensated labor to the Claus household.”
• Gnostic Films for the Holidays
• Tweet—”One goat, one sheep and three lambs have been terrorising the streets of Nevsehir in Turkey.”

This post was possible because of support from generous ongoing Patrons and Members of the newsletter. Both Patrons and Members get access to Omnium Gatherum immediately and directly via web and 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 December 6, 2020

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

• From 2015, but Krampusnacht was last night, so I hope you got up to something sufficiently naughty! “The Origin of Krampus, Europe’s Evil Twist on Santa. The mythical holiday beast is once again on the prowl, but beware, he’s making his way across the Atlantic.” Also “The Krampus and the Old Winter Ways.” Interestingly, I read something in passing an forgot to note it down, but Christmas goats, like the one in Gävle but also little ones in people’s homes, seem to have possibly been a less-scary replacement for Krampus. That’s just another reason for our friend in Gävle to burn. Or not, because, maybe, just maybe, this year maybe it should survive.
• “Aquarius Rising (Reimagined), December 18 – 20, 2020, a Symposium of Mysticism, Metaphysics + Music in Celebration of the Emerging Aquarian Vision. Unity Consciousness. Restoring Dharma. Strength in Numbers.”—”Transitioning from the chaotic and unprecedented waters of 2020 into a new dawning of human consciousness, we’re activating the Star archetype of Aquarius as Jupiter and Saturn align in this constellation of the zodiac on December 21st to set a brand new template and rise from power to love. To reimagine what is possible. Let’s come together to celebrate our interconnectedness, interdependence and remembrance that the paths are many but the truth is one! In the true Aquarian spirit of collective unity, we’ve assembled an incredible constellation of presenters and performers, each one to carry the energy of each archetypal influence of the twelve signs of the Zodiac to inspire, guide and illuminate the way into 2021.”
• The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in late December! Watch “How to View the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.”—”In late December 2020, the two largest planets in our Solar System, Jupiter and Saturn, will be so close in the sky that they’ll both be visible through a telescope eyepiece at the same time. Such close passes are known as Great Conjunctions. The Great Conjunction of 2020 will be the closest in almost 400 years.” Also “For the first time in 800 years, Saturn and Jupiter will align to make a ‘Christmas star’.” Also “Welcome to the Information Age – The Great Conjunction of 2020 and its Future Implications.”
• “Public Domain Day: Looking Ahead To 2021“—”What do The New Yorker, Felix the Cat, The Great Gatsby and Rudolph Valentino in ‘The Eagle’ all share in common? They were all first released in 1925. And looking ahead, that means that when the sun rises on 2021, thousands of works of literature, film, music and art will enter the public domain. We think having free access to these cultural riches is something to celebrate!”
• “Massive East Village Fire Destroys Historic Nearby Church. The six-alarm blaze in a vacant building spread to nearby Middle Collegiate Church, which is almost 130 years old.”
• More on this: “Facing collapse, the famed Arecibo Observatory will be demolished. The failure of two main cables sealed the observatory’s fate.” Also “Arecibo Telescope’s illustrious scientific career is over.” Also “The Damaged Arecibo Telescope Meets an Untimely End. One of the world’s most beloved observatories is being demolished before its time.” Also “Video Shows The Heartbreaking Moment The Arecibo Telescope Collapsed.”
  
• “Hello everyone, it’s that time of year again. Time for the Wapshott Press Annual Fundraiser!”
  
• The first ever AvalonCon, Summer 2021, from Jul 2, 2021, 12:00 BST – Jul 4, 2021, 17:00 BST, at the Assembly Rooms Of Glastonbury Ltd, High St, Glastonbury BA6 9DU, UK. “We are conjuring an exceptional weekend in Glastonbury, the mythical Isle of Avalon, where the greatest minds in magick, occult, and the paranormal will congregate to talk about their craft.” Guest speakers include Damien Echols, Sorita d’Este, Phil Hine, John E L Tenney, Alkistis Dimech, Peter Grey, David Southwell, Da’at Darling, Paul Weston.

• Major Exhibition of Wilde Manuscripts, First Editions & Ephemera Announced at Bonhams—”On 30 November 1900 in a rundown Paris hotel, the poet, dramatist, novelist, and society wit Oscar Wide died. Now, 120 years after his passing, Bonhams announces a major new exhibition dedicated to Wilde’s life and works to be staged at its London headquarters, 101 New Bond Street. Oscar Wilde: A Man for Our Times runs from 15-23 February 2021.” Mentions also library figure Ada “The Sphinx” Leverson.
  
• Weiser Antiquarian Books Annual Bargain List is now on-line. “Please note the ‘Bargain’ list will run for FOUR DAYS ONLY after which unsold stock will be removed, and most will be returned to stock at its regular price.” “Our annual ‘Holiday Bargain List’ is now on-line. It comprises an interesting mixture of items from stock and fresh items, mostly on magic and the occult, as well as some from other fields of interest, all discounted from our regular reasonable prices. It is a truly varied list: the oldest book dates from 1576, and the most recent from 2016; with most from the late twentieth century. Prices range from $8.00 to $2,500.00. There are a number of modern signed limited editions, rare and out-of-print works, and first editions. There will even be a few Aleister Crowley first editions.”

• More news coverage about Boleskine House: “Boleskine House was the site of occult rituals. A blaze-hit mansion once owned by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page is to be restored as a visitor attraction – but black magic pilgrims will not be welcomed.” Also “Aleister Crowley’s house is set to re-open to visitors but do you dare? Would you dare set foot in the house that once belonged to ‘the Great Beast 666, Perabduro[sic], Ankh-f-n-khonsu, the wickedest man in the world’ aka occultist Aleister Crowley?” Also “Former home of ‘world’s wickedest man’ to become holiday destination. The former home of black magic master Aleister Crowley is to be restored as a historic visitor attraction with 10 ‘hobbit’ style holiday homes to be created in its grounds.” Also “Plans to rebuild the fire-destroyed former residence of occultist Aleister Crowley backed by Highland Council planning officials.” Also “House of the Devil: Aleister Crowley and the curse of Boleskine. The occultist’s home has long been the scene of evil rituals, freak accidents, and rock excess. And the Satanic panic continues to this day”
• Lots more about library figure Aleister Crowley related to the anniversary of his death, and Greater Feast, on Dec 1st: “It happened today – on this day in history – December 1.” Also “High Times Greats: Top 10 Myths About Aleister Crowley. Don’t believe everything you read about the Great Beast.” Also “TV Review – Pennyworth Season 2. Martin Carr reviews Pennyworth Season 2…”—”Similarly, Jojo O’Neill’s Aleister Crowley is a decadent deviant who dominates every scene he inhabits, yet beneath the writhing flesh and post coital copulation there is little of substance.” Also “Dr. Strange Saved Spider-Man From Being Eaten By Actual Spiders. When a night of crimefighting goes wrong, Spider-Man ends up trapped in a world of ghostly arachnids, and it turns out they’re hungry for spiders.”—”The comic begins with two seemingly unrelated plot threads as Dr. Strange has acquired a mystical book once owned by real-life mystic Aleister Crowley, while Spider-Man is busy fighting the Vulture. However it turns out that Crowley’s book was booby-trapped …” And, last bu not least, via email: “The Atlantis Bookshop Magical Crossword.”
• “The philosopher and writer Eduardo Lourenço died.” Writer, and scholar of library figure Fernando Pessoa.
• Some mentions of Baphomet: “Kingdom of Night is a pixel-art action RPG set in the 80s where you take to the streets to save your small town from Baphomet.” Watch “Kingdom of Night – Trailer #2” Also “Angel & Spike Brings Three New Multiversal Figures Into Buffy’s World. Angel & Spike transforms a major character into a mystical powerhouse and opens the door to the expanded Buffy the Vampire Slayer multiverse.”—”Due to the mystical potential within her, Fred has found herself targeted by Baphomet, a demonic lord and the current director of Wolfram & Hart.” Also “The Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide To Kid Culture: Viral TikTok Overload“—”You know who’s gaining popularity on TikTok? Satan’s little pal Baphomet! The goat-headed deity first rose to fame in 1307 during the Inquisition of the Knights Templar, but he/she/it is still hip. Baphomet is all over the Tik these days, with gothy (and ironic) teens using the app’s ‘Time Warp’ feature to pay tribute to the dark one by making themselves in its image. ”
• “Review: His body is battered, but Shane MacGowan’s passion still burns in ‘Crock of Gold’” Documentary about Pogue frontman Shane MacGowan mentions library figure William Butler Yeats: “He still growls and curses, though, cackles with a Crypt Keeper gurgle, imbibes and holds grudges (William Butler Yeats and Elvis Costello are two on his list).” Watch the full documentary: “Crock of Gold – A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan.”
• More “gnosticism” is the new “satanism” panic dog whistle: “The Monstrosity of Gnosticism.” Also “Trumpian Gnosticism.”
• Approaching Babalon: Essays for the Abyss by Georgia van Raalte, illustrated by Hermetic Library Anthology Artist Luciana Vasconcelos—”Approaching Babalon presents a series of essays exploring the Goddess Babalon, the Divine Feminine, the Dark Mother, and the ever-revolving circuit of Sex and Death which lies at the centre of the Mysteries. An overview and introduction to the Goddess Babalon that takes a different road to that of Crowley and his followers, Approaching Babalon draws on the insights of Thelema, Ceremonial Magic, Critical Theory, Liberation Theology and the Decadents to weave its magico-theological poetics. Centralising the body and bodily experience, the author rejects patriarchal mysticisms which seek to flee from the body and the world and slink off into the pure white light of heavenly rationalist sanitized boredom. Inspiring, erotic and deeply poetic, the text reaches ecstatic heights as it offers a kaleidoscopic vision of magic, sexuality, spirituality, ritual and the body in the time of the apocalypse.”
• “What Does It Take to Be Granted Sainthood?”
• “What is Perfect, Anyway?”
• “Internet Archive Broadens Global Access to Theological Material.”
• “Opera Occulta is a quarantine collaboration between The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Cornwall and the singers and musicians of The Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. Working remotely across frontiers,and inspired by magical storytelling in baroque and classical repertoire, it is informed by the Museum’s collections and enabled by the collective gifts of all the musicians and singers involved.”
• Mystifying Kabbalah: Academic Scholarship, National Theology, and New Age Spirituality [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Boaz Huss—”Most scholars of Judaism take the term ‘Jewish mysticism’ for granted, and do not engage in a critical discussion of the essentialist perceptions that underlie it. Mystifying Kabbalah studies the evolution of the concept of Jewish mysticism. It examines the major developments in the academic study of Jewish mysticism and its impact on modern Kabbalistic movements in the contexts of Jewish nationalism and New Age spirituality. Boaz Huss argues that Jewish mysticism is a modern discursive construct and that the identification of Kabbalah and Hasidism as forms of mysticism, which appeared for the first time in the nineteenth century and has become prevalent since the early twentieth, shaped the way in which Kabbalah and Hasidism are perceived and studied today. The notion of Jewish mysticism was established when western scholars accepted the modern idea that mysticism is a universal religious phenomenon of a direct experience of a divine or transcendent reality and applied it to Kabbalah and Hasidism. ‘Jewish mysticism’ gradually became the defining category in the modern academic research of these topics. This book clarifies the historical, cultural, and political contexts that led to the identification of Kabbalah and Hasidism as Jewish mysticism, exposing the underlying ideological and theological presuppositions and revealing the impact of this ‘mystification’ on contemporary forms of Kabbalah and Hasidism.”
• William Blake vs the World [Amazon, Publisher] by John Higgs, due May 6, 2021—”Poet, artist, visionary and author of the unofficial English national anthem ‘Jerusalem’, William Blake is an archetypal misunderstood genius. His life passed without recognition and he worked without reward, mocked, dismissed and misinterpreted. Yet from his ignoble end in a pauper’s grave, Blake now occupies a unique position – an artist that unites and attracts people from all corners of society, and a rare inclusive symbol of English identity. Blake famously experienced visions, and it is these that shaped his attitude to politics, sex, religion, society and art. Thanks to the work of neuroscientists and psychologists, we are now in a better position to understand what was happening inside that remarkable mind, and gain a deeper appreciation of his brilliance. His timeless work, we will find, has never been more relevant. In William Blake vs the World we return to a world of riots, revolutions and radicals, discuss movements from the Levellers of the sixteenth century to the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s, and explore the latest discoveries in neurobiology, quantum physics and comparative religion. Taking the reader on wild detours into unfamiliar territory, John Higgs places the bewildering eccentricities of a most singular artist into context. And although the journey begins with us trying to understand him, we will ultimately discover that it is Blake who helps us to understand ourselves.”
• Robert Mitchell Jr writes on his blog about his suggestion for a Journey you can undertake, in the new, nascent Fundamentals section: The Hermetic Cross: Sixteen Days of Insight.
• Mystic Mondays: The Crystal Grid Deck: An 80-Card Deck to Charge Your Intentions by Grace Duong. “Use the power of crystals to tap into your intuition and supercharge your intentions. Created by Grace Duong of Mystic Mondays, The Crystal Grid Deck uses beautiful, vibrant illustrations to channel the magic of 80 gemstones, from rose quartz and lapis lazuli to amethyst and Tiger’s Eye. Featuring bold, 3D renderings of crystals, these deluxe hexagonal cards fit together, allowing users to magnify their intention-setting by creating grids and spreads. Each card offers users a glimpse into the properties of the stone, with notes on uses, zodiac connections, chakra work, and more printed on the reverse. Housed in a stunning, fully-illustrated keepsake box, with magnetic closure, this breathtaking set is an essential addition to your mystical toolbox. An accompanying 11 X 17″ poster shows all 80 crystals together, for convenient reference that doubles as bold artwork suitable for display.”
• Leviathan’s Knot: The High Priest’s Sash as a Cosmological Symbol by Andrei Orlov—”The study explores a tradition of the high priest’s sash, which is portrayed in Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities 3.154–156 with serpentine symbolism. In light of the sash’s associations with a serpent’s skin, some scholars have suggested that this sacerdotal item might symbolize the defeated Leviathan. In order to better understand the meaning of the priestly sash, this study examines its precise function in the broader context of Josephus’s description of the high priest’s accoutrement found in the third book of his Jewish Antiquities. It suggests that in Josephus’s account the temple was represented by the high priest and his sacerdotal garments. In such a cultic reinterpretation, the serpentine sash was understood as the courtyard of the microcosmic sanctuary, cosmologically corresponding to the primordial sea and its ruler — Leviathan.”
• More about this: The Princess and the Prophet: The Secret History of Magic, Race, and Moorish Muslims in America. About The Princess and the Prophet: The Secret History of Magic, Race, and Moorish Muslims in America [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Jacob S Dorman—”The just-discovered story of how two enigmatic circus performers and the cultural ferment of the Gilded Age sparked the Black Muslim movement in America.”
• “Big News: Goliath Might Not Have Been a Giant. The Bible says he stood nearly 8 feet. But a new theory suggests that number represents something else entirely.”—”Chadwick hypothesizes that the tradition relating to Goliath’s height may be related to the width of the Gath city walls and, thus, serve more as a symbol of Philistine strength and military power than an actual description of the height of their champion.” “Chadwick suggests that the author of 1 Samuel may ‘have been metaphorically describing the champion as being comparable to the size and strength of the Philistine capital’s city wall.'”
• “Was Eve Made From Adam’s Missing Penis Bone? According to the Bible, God fashioned Adam out of dirt while Eve, who was created as a companion for Adam, was made out of one of Adam’s ribs. Or was she?”—”it’s worth asking what ancient readers thought was happening when God ’caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and… took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh’ (Gen. 2:21). Explanations for what this strange ancient organ transplant involved is where things take a turn for the scandalous.”
• “English bookshops reopen, hoping for Christmas trade rescue after lockdown. After calls to allow them to remain open during the second lockdown failed, the next three weeks will be vital for the sector.”
• “J.R.R. Tolkien House Comes on the Market. Literary fans and celebrities who starred in Tolkien films start a crowdfunding campaign to preserve the house.”
• Quart Obsession, Nov 25: “Book Covers.”
• “When Virtue is Not Enough.” About What’s Wrong with Rights? [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Nigel Biggar—”What’s Wrong with Rights? concludes that much contemporary rights-talk obscures the importance of fostering civic virtue, corrodes military effectiveness, subverts the democratic legitimacy of law, proliferates publicly onerous rights, and undermines their authority and credibility. The solution to these problems lies in the abandonment of rights-fundamentalism and the recovery of a richer public discourse about ethics, one that includes talk about the duty and virtue of rights-holders.”
• “Japan’s asteroid sample return mission lands in Australian desert. Soon we’ll learn just how many asteroid rocks the mission gathered.” Also “For the second time ever, an asteroid sample returns to Earth. The Japanese Hayabusa2 mission to asteroid Ryugu returns with pristine space rock.” Also “Japan Space Agency Hails Return Of Asteroid Dust On Earth.” Also “A Japanese spacecraft is about to send a ‘treasure box’ of asteroid dust plummeting to Earth. Watch the sample return live.”
• “New Data Confirm 2020 SO to be the Upper Centaur Rocket Booster from the 1960’s.”—”Using data collected at NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) and orbit analysis from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, scientists have confirmed that Near-Earth Object (NEO) 2020 SO is, in fact, a 1960’s-Era Centaur rocket booster.”
• “3D printed Damascus steel. A composite material with metal layers of varying hardness can be produced through clever temperature variation. The material has a legendary reputation. Damascus steel is hard yet tough because it consists of layers of different iron alloys. In ancient times, this was the material of choice, especially for sword blades. A team from the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung in Düsseldorf and the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology in Aachen has developed a process that allows this type of steel to be produced layer by layer in a 3D printer. The hardness of each individual layer can be specifically adjusted. Such composites could be of interest for aerospace components or tools produced with 3D printers.”
• “Timnit Gebru’s actual paper may explain why Google ejected her. It questioned language models similar to the ones used in Google’s Search.” Also “We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says. The company’s star ethics researcher highlighted the risks of large language models, which are key to Google’s business.”
  
• “Robo-surveillance shifts tone of CEO earnings calls. Trading algorithms leave a mark with deeper focus on the spoken word.”—”‘There’s always been a game of cat and mouse, in CEOs trying to be clever in their choice of words,’ Mr Ellis says. ‘But the machines can pick up a verbal tick that a human might not even realise is a thing.'”
  
• It’s because they won’t make money on cash-cow repairs anymore, I bet. “One in Six Cadillac Dealers Opt to Close Instead of Selling Electric Cars: Report. When told to get with the times or get out of the way, 150 out of 800 dealers reportedly took a cash buyout and walked away.”

• From the Urban Spelunking dept: “Cemetery of Soviet computers.”
• “3D bioprinted heart provides new tool for surgeons. Surgeons will soon have a powerful new tool for planning and practice with the creation of the first full-sized 3D bioprinted model of the human heart.”
• “Cellular landscape“—”Created for Cell Signaling Technology, Inc., and inspired by the stunning art of David Goodsell, this 3D rendering of a eukaryotic cell is modeled using X-ray, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and cryo-electron microscopy datasets for all of its molecular actors. It is an attempt to recapitulate the myriad pathways involved in signal transduction, protein synthesis, endocytosis, vesicular transport, cell-cell adhesion, apoptosis, and other processes. Although dilute in its concentration relative to a real cell, this rendering is also an attempt to visualize the great complexity and beauty of the cell’s molecular choreography. Interactive versions of parts of this landscape can be explored at” Cell Signaling Technologies Molecular Landscapes. HT Nnedi Okorafor.
  
• “Earth faster, closer to black hole in new map of galaxy.”—”Earth just got 7 km/s faster and about 2000 light-years closer to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. But don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that our planet is plunging towards the black hole. Instead the changes are results of a better model of the Milky Way Galaxy based on new observation data, including a catalog of objects observed over the course of more than 15 years by the Japanese radio astronomy project VERA.”

• “Moon Mark captures the adventures of high school students from around the world who will compete in 2021 to design, build, land, and race two vehicles on the Moon. This inspirational story, culminating in touchdown, racing, and leaving scientific advances behind, will become the defining moment of their generation, unifying all people, in all cultures.”
  
• “New Hubble Data Explains Missing Dark Matter.” Also “The case of the missing dark matter: new suspect found in galactic mystery. A faraway galaxy with almost no dark matter has threatened to break our theory of galaxy formation. New evidence suggests the galaxy isn’t an anomaly – but a victim of theft.”

• “Study: Gut hormones’ regulation of fat production abnormal in obesity, fatty liver disease.”—”Gut hormones play an important role in regulating fat production in the body. One key hormone, released a few hours after eating, turns off fat production by regulating gene expression in the liver, but this regulation is abnormal in obesity, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found in a new study.”
• “Expedition finds record number of fishes in abyssal deep-sea.”
• “MOXIE Could Help Future Rockets Launch Off Mars. NASA’s Perseverance rover carries a device to convert Martian air into oxygen that, if produced on a larger scale, could be used not just for breathing, but also for fuel.”
• “North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences to Receive the ‘Dueling Dinosaurs’.” Also “Dueling Dinosaurs”
• “Researchers Discovered Solid Phosphorus from a Comet. An international study led from the University of Turku discovered phosphorus and fluorine in solid dust particles collected from a comet. The finding indicates that all the most important elements necessary for life may have been delivered to the Earth by comets.”
• “Scientists Reverse the Aging Clock: Restore Age-Related Vision Loss Through Epigenetic Reprogramming.”
• “Light-based Quantum Computer Exceeds Fastest Classical Supercomputers. The setup of lasers and mirrors effectively ‘solved’ a problem far too complicated for even the largest traditional computer system.”
• “Pandemic-Proof Your Habits. Too many people are still longing for their old routines. Get some new ones instead.”
• “Your Covid-19 Shopping Habits Are Changing What Jobs Are Available. The pandemic is accelerating a shift in the labor market to warehouse and delivery jobs supporting ecommerce.”
• “The GOP’s QAnon Faction Is Waging War on Republicans. It’s the conspiracy theories versus those who want to keep a toe, at least, in the world of the real.”
• “Hungary’s rightwing rulers downplay MEP ‘gay orgy’ scandal amid hypocrisy accusations.” Also “COVID Orgy Host: Lawmakers From Nine Countries Came to My Sex Parties. The party organizer claims the Hungarian anti-LGBTQ politician Jozsef Szajer had planned his own orgy for Dec. 12, but canceled after he was fined for breaking lockdown rules.” Also tweet—”In other news, that story about the MEP orgy gets better. When cops raided it, the MEPs thought it was part of the show and “tried to undo their pants””
  
• Watch “New Orleans Orgy Organizers Regret Lax Enforcement Of Social Distancing Rules.”

• Point: “Rantz: Edmonds extremists demanding you give up your home is peak 2020.”—”The drama is unfolding in Edmonds and Woodway where a group of squatters called the Moorish Sovereign Citizens have presented phony documents to homeowners claiming ownership of the properties. Ironically, Seattle’s Black Lives Matter activists should take note of the equally ridiculous but more polite — and creative — strategy of getting people to leave their neighborhoods.” Counterpoint: “Black Home Ownership – If You Don’t Know, Now You Know.”
• “Another Open Letter to the Star Trek Community.”
• 4 day work week and right to disconnect: “EU pushes for ‘right to disconnect’ from work at home.”—”With more people working from home during the pandemic, the boundaries between job and life are blurred. Lawmakers in the EU want to give workers the ‘right to disconnect,’ whereas Germany is looking at tax breaks.”
• Watch “80% of Americans Live East of This Line (And Other Interesting Population Patterns).”
• “Ammonite is intriguing queer fiction, but lethargic historical drama. Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet bring the heat, but not the plot interest.”
• “Egyptian Model Arrested Over ‘Inappropriate’ Photoshoot at Archaeological Site.” Also “Photographer arrested after pyramid shoot with model in Egypt.”
• Tricephalus and Headless Studio announce development of ‘Caravel: Set Forth’ with a teaser trailer—”Early 20th-century Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, once wrote “all seems daring to those who dare nothing”, and as it resonated with the theme of the game, the team made it its official motto.”
• Lots more about this: “Monolith Haters Are Convinced It’s Just a Dumb Marketing Ploy. The whimsy of the first discovery in Utah has worn off with each subsequent find.” Also “New mystery metal monolith appears on a California mountaintop. Not long after a similar structure was discovered in a Utah desert, a silvery column has been found in Atascadero.” Also “‘I guess this is a thing now, right?’: monolith appears on California mountain – video report.” Also “Why We Love the Monolith. The recent appearance of so-called monoliths in Utah and around the world taps into a deep-seated fascination.” Also watch “Third Mysterious Monolith Spotted, Then Destroyed in California.”
  Also “California monolith’s removal by ‘punks from SoCal’ outrages locals.” Watch “Stephen’s Mono-Log Explores A Dark New Chapter For The Mysterious Globe-Trotting Monolith.” Also “Bigot Livestreamers Tore Down the California Monolith in Christ’s Name.” Last, but not least, tweet—”Monolilith”

• Another sign of the end times. “The Artisanal Crocs Have Landed. Crocs are cool now, and artists are accessorizing them all over Instagram.”
• Watch “BFI at Home | Terry Gilliam at 80“—”On 22 November highly acclaimed film director, writer and animator Terry Gilliam turns 80! We are excited to mark the occasion by celebrating his film career with the man himself in conversation with writer and broadcaster Jason Solomons.”
• Watch official trailer for the series finale: “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Part 4,” coming to Netflix on Dec 31st.
• Looks, it’s advertising, of course, but just look at the technical part of how those drones create a volumetric light show (especially clear when they fly another drone camera through the array). This is certainly still in its infancy, with more wildness to come, and essentially just a new laser light show for now, but we can’t be very far out from Blade-Runner-2049-esque visual urban landscapes. Watch “Walmart Holiday Drone Light Show.”
• More of an accompaniment than a cover, but watch “Metallica / Enter Sandman (Buddhist monk cover) / Kossan.”
  
• Watch “The ‘Crude’ Art Of Pleasure: Life In The Rococo Age“—”Waldemar looks at the pursuit of pleasure in the Rococo age, to which a huge amount of cultural energy was devoted. For the first time in history, pleasure and happiness were seen as unalienable human rights that everyone was free to pursue and is reflected so poignantly in the art of Boucher, Watteau, Gainsborough and Tiepolo. In its boundless search for delight it often went too far, but, put crudely, Rococo art stopped tasting like medicine and started tasting like cakes.”

• Watch “Arctic Monkeys – Do I Wanna Know cover in Classical Latin”
• Watch Satan + 2020 k i s s i n g: “Match Made in Hell“—”A Love Story for the ages. Or at least this age.” Also “Taylor Swift’s new Love Story debuts in Ryan Reynolds’ Match ad starring Satan”
• “Care for a Cup of Satanic Chamomile? One tea company is trying to make the cozy brew a little more goth.”
• Watch Yo-Yo Ma playing “Bach Cello Suite No. 3 ‘Sarabande’“—”This is for the healthcare workers on the frontlines — the Sarabande from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3. Your ability to balance human connection and scientific truth in service of us all gives me hope.”

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An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for November 15, 2020

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

• “Contents of mystery box [claimed to have been] buried at Boleskine House [but was all but certainly a scam] revealed.” [fixed it]
• “Author Jeff VanderMeer Explores Absurdity and Politics in His New Young-Adult Novel.”—”This indulgence in absurdity is one of the highlights of A Peculiar Peril, which follows Jonathan Lambshead and his friends as they are drawn into the realm of Aurora and a war with a version of the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley and his shape-shifting familiar, Wretch.” About A Peculiar Peril [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Jeff VanderMeer—”A Peculiar Peril is a head-spinning epic about three friends on a quest to protect the world from a threat as unknowable as it is terrifying, from the Nebula Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer.” I was interested in this, but increasingly less so now. It isn’t clear to me at all that there is any story related reason for the character to be called Aleister Crowley, as there doesn’t seem to be any relation to the historical person, and library figure, Aleister Crowley, other than name. Might as well just go through the text using search and replace with “Boogeyman”.
• “Hinge: How This Lovecraft-Inspired VR Horror Game Wants You To Feel A Constant Sense of Fear.”—”Our game designer wrote over 100 documents and around 20 books specially for Hinge’s in-game environment. The information for these books was taken from real occultist’s books by Aleister Crowley and Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre.” The article goes on to mention about Crowley the Raoul Loveday death at Cefalu (see Chapter 96 in Confessions), Ozzy Osborne’s song, and other things, for context, but tangential to the game. Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre was a teacher of library figure Gérard Encausse, aka Papus.
• “Wiccan Devotionals Revisited.” Brandy Williams reminisces about, among other things, the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions, which was a centennial of the 1893 event when library figure Swami Vivekananda became well known to the world.
• “Slay the demon within. Free yourself of desire and ego. Let your spirit shine through.”—”So can you rise to heights of perfection.You are born with a unique gift, an exclusive talent, and an extraordinary ability. This is your svadharma, your own nature. The universe is tailored to help you blossom in that field. Oblivious of this, you get distracted, fall for temptation and chase mirages. Instead, you should look within. Identify your passion and invest in it.” Passing mention of Swami Vivekananda.
• “The ‘Lost’ Afterword to the Starseed Signals“—”Recently, we shared the never-to-be-RVP-foreword to Starseed Signals: A Link Between Worlds. And if that wasn’t enough, and of course it never is, I also penned an afterword for the RVP-never-to-be, which is a little dated in some regards, as it was composed in 2015”
• “Abramelin Adventures: Alchemy.”—”This post follows on thematically from Abramelin Musings: Square Dancing, which I wrote back in June, or as I call it, Day 53. In the previous post I suggested a method of how to verify the correct lettering of any given word-square, by skrying into it – an idea inspired by Aleister Crowley. I therefore decided to put my money where my mouth was, by actually trying this out myself, selecting the third square of chapter 7, book IV of the Book of Abramelin.”
• A Wondrous Spell: Necromancy in the PGM [Amazon, Publisher] by MHH—”Inspired by work with the Titans Hekate and Helios and various Necromantic workings both modern and archaic, MMH presents ‘A Wondrous Spell’ taken specifically from PGM IV. 296-466. This spell, like many found in the Greek magical papyri, contains rich examples of ritual techniques that were prevalent around the Mediterranean during the second century BC to the fifth century CE, and highlight the methods whereby the dead could be moved into action to achieve the goals of the sorcerer. In A Wondrous Spell: Necromancy from the PGM, MHH offers an analysis of the original spell including the materials used in it, as well as a revised version adapted for the modern magician.”
• “Clavis Goêtica – An Introduction“—”the Introduction of [Frater Acher’s] upcoming book Clavis Goêtica (Hadean Preass, 2021).” No direct links to the book yet.
• Alexandria: Hub of the Hellenistic World [Publisher] edited by Benjamin Schliesser, Jan Rüggemeier, Thomas J. Kraus, and Jörg Frey, with the assistance of Daniel Herrmann, due January 2021. “Alexandria was a central hub of the Hellenistic world. Businessmen and migrants, scholars, philosophers, and the religious avant-garde flocked here. Hellenistic, Egyptian, Jewish, and early Christian identities coexisted and influenced each other in the metropolis. The present volume describes these processes of identity formation from an interdisciplinary perspective.”
• Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art: The Cut in Creation [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Vanessa Sinclair—”Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art examines a strain of artists spanning more than a century, beginning at the dawn of photography and culminating in the discussion of contemporary artists, to illustrate various psychoanalytic concepts by examining artists working in a multitude of media.”
• “Review: Can academic discussion meaningfully advance antiracist Paganism?” About Paganism and Its Discontents: Enduring Problems of Racialized Identity [Amazon, Publisher] edited by Holli S Emore and Jonathan M Leader—”Proponents of racist interpretations of pre-Christian Norse-Germanic spiritualities have claimed to be preserving ‘heritage,’ while others belonging to the contemporary Heathen movements have moved to distance themselves from ‘volkish’ thinking. Long-simmering just beneath the surface of American Paganism, racialized Heathenry was on full display in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. The contributions to this volume delineate between two communities that are using shared symbolism for widely different purposes. The book will serve to broaden understanding of the narratives in play here, resulting in mitigation of the rising tide of hate and racialized identity.”
• “‘The Tree of Science’ an English translation of Eugene Huzar’s ‘L’arbre de la Science’ [Part 1].” Also part two, posted this week.
• “Review: Convenient Amnesia by Donald Vincent.” About Convenient Amnesia [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Donald Vincent—”An old movie theme song once observed, “What’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget.” That sort of convenient amnesia is at the heart of this incandescent first poetry collection from Donald Vincent. Incandescent, because that’s the sort of light that is produced by heat, and there’s a mighty heat raging in these pages, producing a brilliance that illuminates a legacy of racism and violence and appropriation and disenfranchisement and, and, and…all those things we’d like to forget, ignore, disown. All that pain. This is, in other words, a document on the subject of getting woke. And what an awakening!”
• The Gospel according to H L Hix [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher], due in December—”That’s because Hix has gone back to the original source materials, both the canonical and noncanonical gospels and histories and stories of the life of Jesus, and created out of them a single, more comprehensive and nuanced narrative.”
• “Is There a Cure for Burnout? Anne Helen Petersen’s Can’t Even grapples with the miseries of millennial work.” About Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by Anne Helen Petersen—”An incendiary examination of burnout in millennials–the cultural shifts that got us here, the pressures that sustain it, and the need for drastic change.” “Utilizing a combination of sociohistorical framework, original interviews, and detailed analysis, Can’t Even offers a galvanizing, intimate, and ultimately redemptive look at the lives of this much-maligned generation, and will be required reading for both millennials and the parents and employers trying to understand them.”
• “Can History Predict the Future? A historian believes he has discovered iron laws that predict the rise and fall of societies. He has bad news.”
• “‘Wagner Was the Original Canceled Artist.’ Alex Ross on the controversial composer and his own ‘ghost identity’ as an academic.” More about Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]
• “Revealing the mysteries of music. A musician shares his passion.” About For the Love of Music: A Conductor’s Guide to the Art of Listening [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher] by John Mauceri—”With a lifetime of experience, profound knowledge and understanding, and heartwarming appreciation, an internationally celebrated conductor and teacher answers the questions: Why should I listen to classical music? How can I get the most from the listening experience?”
• “Fireball is Werner Herzog’s ode to space rocks. New Apple TV+ doc from German auteur examines how meteorites have shaped human history.” Also “Werner Herzog on Why He’s a Fan of Putin and How Democrats Neglect America’s Heartland. The legendary filmmaker opens up about his new Apple TV+ meteorite documentary ‘Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds,’ the 2020 election, and how the world will end.”
• “This farmer’s field was once a powerful stronghold in Iron Age Norway. We know about it all because a farmer wanted to dig a drainage ditch.” Also “Archaeologists in Norway find rare Viking ship burial using only radar.”
• “Egypt uncovers more than 100 sarcophagi in ancient burial ground. ‘It’s the biggest discovery of 2020, but we are not stopping here yet…'”—”Egypt unearthed more than 100 sarcophagi in Saqqara on Saturday, the same ancient burial ground where dozens of coffins were also found last month as the country continues to make major discoveries in its bid to lure back tourists.”
• Mars Clock is a Raspberry Pi project by an author of Mars stories.
• “Eerie Footage Captures Elusive Deep-Sea Squid Near Australia For The First Time.”
• “Scientists spot a ‘kilonova’ flash so bright they can barely explain it.”
• “Water Present on All Rocky Planets, Martian Meteorite Study Suggests.”
• “Astronomers Discover First BL Lacertae Galaxy at Cosmic Dawn: The Farthest Black Hole From a Rare Family of Galaxies.”
• “Martian dust storms parch the planet by driving water into space.” Also “Mars died billions of years ago and its guts are still spilling into space. The planet is still drying out today. And faster than expected.”
• “Ending greenhouse gas emissions may not stop global warming: study.”
• “Ancient Lake Discovered Under Greenland May Be Millions of Years Old, Scientists Say.”
• “Ancient life signs under dinosaur-killing Chicxulub crater.”
• “Computer Scientists Achieve ‘Crown Jewel’ of Cryptography.”
• “Newly Discovered Fossil Shows Evolutionary Changes in an Extinct Human Species.”
• “First murder hornet nest found to have 200 queens capable of spawning new nests.”
• “We’ll need more than one vaccine to beat the pandemic. All COVID vaccine candidates work in different ways; none will be perfect for all.”
• “It’s Time to Hunker Down. A devastating surge is here. Unless Americans act aggressively, it will get much larger, very quickly.”
• “The COVID-19 Risk Level For Group Gatherings In Each US County, Visualized.”
• “The COVID-19 pandemic hits new highs and new lows.”
• “Parents Tried to Cover Up a ‘Superspreader’ Dance. Disaster Ensued. A massive, unmasked homecoming party at a steakhouse in Missouri included a deliberate campaign to hide from pesky health officials and contact tracers.”
• Watch “10% of Secret Service Officers Sidelined by COVID: ‘These Are The Things They Did Not Sign Up For’.” Also tweet—”Secret Service signs up to take a bullet for the president but I don’t think they’re expecting the president to be the one firing the shots.” Also “More than 130 Secret Service officers are said to be infected with coronavirus or quarantining in wake of Trump’s campaign travel.” Also “Expansive White House COVID outbreak sidelines 10% of Secret Service. Spread linked to Trump’s campaign rallies and the White House itself.”
• “Under the surface: Covid-19 vaccine narratives, misinformation and data deficits on social media.”—”Libertarians, traditional anti-vaxxers, New Age groups, QAnon adherents and others are uniting around safety and necessity concerns of a Covid-19 vaccine. The combination of these issues alongside mandatory vaccines is bringing very disparate communities together to oppose a future Covid-19 vaccine.”
• “Normalizing Care.”—”Being careful saves lives.”
• Watch “Constantly Wrong: The Case Against Conspiracy Theories.”
• “QAnon’s Home 8kun Is Imploding—and Q Has Gone Silent. Trump lost, one of the administrators quit, and it’s far from clear who’s in charge.”
• Oh, now they’re willing to self-quarantine! Lots of news about Parler lately, also Odyssee. On the one hand, they’ll go away. On the other hand, they’re gathering together. This could be a welcome respite, but it won’t end well. “Social app Parler apparently receives funding from the conservative Mercer family. Downloads of Parler in app stores skyrocketed in the days after the US presidential election.”
• “Pandemic Panic has Increased the Demand for Astrologers, Tarot Readers and Energy Healers. Amidst rising uncertainty and stress, more people are counting on divine guidance to navigate this crisis.”
• “After an incarcerated firefighter was nearly killed on the frontlines, California delivered him to ICE. Bounchan Keola is facing deportation to Laos, a country he left when he was four, after helping to fight this year’s historic wildfires.”
• “The purposeful is political: Gen Z bowls over their doubters.”—”Now that the election is over and the doom scrolling has subsided, let’s give some well-deserved credit to Gen Z.”
• Tweet—”We have a planned economy its just planned for like ten people – the fact that we have reinvent the idea of public spending shows you how malnourished the national political imagination is. A house haunted by Reagan’s ghost.”
• “The economy as we knew it might be over, Fed Chairman says.”
• “Elon Musk’s Totally Awful, Batshit-Crazy, Completely Bonkers, Most Excellent Year. In 2020, the COVID-doubting, media-hating Twitterholic CEO became the third-richest man alive, SpaceX launched two astronauts into orbit, and Tesla became the most valuable car company on the planet. Inside the mind of Silicon Valley’s most vainglorious villain.” Also “Elon Musk Says He ‘Most Likely’ Has Moderate Case of Covid.”
• Trump the televangelist, a profession mainly about asking for blind brand loyalty and more money, so … “Scoop: Trump eyes digital media empire to take on Fox News.”—”Source tells me Trump plans to use vote-count rallies to “wreck Fox” so he can start his own paid MAGA channel, built from his campaign text-message database: ‘He’s going to spend a lot of time slamming Fox'” Also tweet—”The absolute least surprising exit strategy for Donald Trump was Trump TV. It was always this. Always. May justice and consequences sashay in, before more hate can be spread by these banal, amoral, tweeking douchebags.”
• “How Trump Almost Broke the Bounds of Reality. Even in the midst of a pandemic, the president set out to eliminate the drab and pain of everyday life from politics.”—”What Mr. Trump promised was the power to create imaginary worlds and the freedom to unleash a selfish and extravagant fantasy life, free of the constraints of political correctness or even good manners, the limits imposed by climate change and the international rules tying America to the ground.” “In the traditional way to think about freedom, we want to limit or even eliminate obstacles to individual choice, but ultimately we must deal with reality. Mr. Trump’s example is to take it an extra step: Why not be free from reality as well? Indeed, this may be the ultimate goal of contemporary America: a society that is pure fantasy life, free from reality.” Also Tweet—”Trump is ‘very aware there is not a path to victory,’ but he believes the 72 million who voted for him ‘deserve a fight’ so he’s battling as a form of ‘theater’ for them, a top White House aide tells me.”
• “Evidence suggests several state Senate candidates were plants funded by dark money.”
• “Donations under $8K to Trump ‘election defense’ instead go to president, RNC.”
• “Postal worker recanted allegations of ballot tampering, officials say.” Also “USPS ‘Whistleblower’ Told Agents Project Veritas Penned His Ballot-Tampering Claim.”
• “DeSantis pushes expansion of Stand Your Ground law as part of ‘anti-mob’ crackdown.”
• “The Ghosts of the Trump Presidency Will Linger Longer Than We Think.”—”If Trump’s body will soon leave the White House, his ghost will remain, haunting the Oval Office, and America at large, for the next four years—and probably more. Trump may very well go to prison after his term is over, but wherever he ends up, his movement will remain, casting doubt on facts, and this is Trump’s victory, his grand old party through America’s night. The movement may change its name, may quiet down for a bit, but it will be there, biding its time. Trump won, in the end, because he will still be with us after his loss—and to forget that is to already concede the next election.”
• “The Sore Loser, and the Malign Loser.”—”Trump is a sore loser. But the GOP is a malign loser. We can and should blame Trump for not conceding this election and starting the transition process to the Biden administration. But even more, we should blame and condemn the GOP for supporting and encouraging a position that endangers the county, internally and around the world. It knows better, and simply doesn’t care.”
• “Demons of the deep state: how evangelicals and conspiracy theories combine in Trump’s America.”
• “Imagining the Trump Presidential Lie-brary. The digital rendering, made by an anonymous New York-based architect, is complete with a COVID memorial, jail cells, and disinformation.” Also.
• Watch “Trump’s faith advisor goes HEAVY METAL!” Also “I Hear the Sound of Victory (Paula White) Drum Cover.”
• “The Case for Political Exile for Donald Trump. The country needs a clean break, Napoleon-style. And, hey, Trump might like his own island realm and an imperial title to go with it.”
• “10 things you need to know to stop a coup. While keeping people focused on a strong, robust election process is a must, we also need to prepare for a coup.”
• What a Biden-Harris administration should prioritize on its first day “—”Instead of allowing insiders to hijack the message sent by voters in both parties, we should listen to those voters and deliver real solutions to the problems we face.”
• “Why the ‘paradox mindset’ is the key to success. Although paradoxes often trip us up, embracing contradictory ideas may actually be the secret to creativity and leadership.”
• “The Distinguished Medieval Penis Investigators. In fourteenth-century England, one of the only ways a woman could get a divorce was if her husband was impotent. But first, she had to prove it in court.”
• More about this: “Wolfwalkers is the best animated film of 2020. The latest film from Cartoon Saloon is a masterpiece.”
• “Who Did This? Yet Another Amateur Art Restorer in Spain Has Absolutely Demolished a Once-Beautiful Artwork. When will the butchery end?” Also tweet.
• Wait. Did they hear about Juggalos via a telephone game?! “Leeds officer dressed as clown during five-year undercover police operation into ‘clown army’. Millions of pounds of public money was ‘misspent’ on undercover policing operations – which included an officer being trained as a clown, a public inquiry has been told.”
• “The ‘Panty-Preneur’ Queen of The Used Underwear Scene. Dalma Rosa, who hosts a podcast and online school all about the worn-items market, is building a panty-selling empire.”
• “Could a Peasant defeat a Knight in Battle?”
• “A Documentary Portrait of Environmentalist Greta Thunberg.” About “I Am Greta“, streaming on Hulu—”The story of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg is told through compelling, never-before-seen footage in this intimate documentary from Swedish director Nathan Grossman. Starting with her one-person school strike for climate action outside the Swedish Parliament, Grossman follows Greta—a shy student with Asperger’s—in her rise to prominence and her galvanizing global impact as she sparks school strikes around the world. The film culminates with her extraordinary wind-powered voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City.”
• “Karen Russo’s Films Explore the Manipulative Power of Nazi Imagery.”—”But Russo makes leaps to associate Third Reich ideology with not only art and mythology (known fundamentals of Nazism), but also the potential to lose oneself in fascination and obsession. Myths of the Near Future surpasses its own modest claim — “to explore the affinities between irrationality and nationalism” — and suggests that a marginal, isolated voice, an eccentric architect named Karl Junker, may have something in common with an oppressive ideology. The free-associative quality of the filmmaking draws connections that, though fuzzy, work wondrously on an intuitive level, producing a mythopoeic genealogy of German fascism with stimulating gaps in logic. When the smoldering streets of Germany appear in Russo’s films, these narrative lacunae fill with the depravity of the poetic imagination.” Karen Russo: Myths of the Near Future, an exhibit at Tel Aviv Museum of Art through early 2021. “Russo’s practice is informed, among others, by an eclectic range of sources, from architecture and science-fiction to psychology and criminology. She is intrigued by dangerous moments in history in which ancient myths and symbols merge with political ideologies to ground political narratives, often with disastrous consequences. The films demonstrate the failures of personal, artistic or national utopias, and the blurring of boundaries between history and fantasy.”
• Eight Digital Exhibition Spaces for the Second-wave Lockdown
• “When New Money Meets Old Bloodlines: On America’s Gilded Age Dollar Princesses.”
• “Netflix opts not to order more The Order.” Consider The Order on Netflix—”When Belgrave University student Jack Morton joins a fabled secret society, the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose, he is thrust into a world of magic, monsters and intrigue. Out to avenge his mother’s death, he uncovers dark family secrets and lands in an underground battle being waged between werewolves and practitioners of dark magic. Assisting Jack in the fight is Alyssa, a tour guide at Belgrave and fellow member of the Order, which is led by Jack’s estranged father.” I only watched season 1, but I recall, after a slow start (which Sam Trammell carried pretty much single handedly), it actually got pretty good and better than I thought it would. Enough that I’d recommend it, if you stick through to the full season. Also, there’s tons of fun casting choices from the pool of Canadian luminaries, including Davinci’s Inquest universe alums and other neat genre cameos, not the least of which is Matt Frewer. Stand out for me was Devery Jacobs, and her character, who was pretty hilarious, to me, in everything scene she touched. On the bright side, they got three seasons, which seems to be about as long as a Netflix run as one gets these days.
• “Jane Austen Anthology Series in Development at CW.”
• “Come Away takes Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan on a grim escapist journey. Brave and Prince of Egypt director Brenda Chapman makes her solo live-action debut.” Also “‘Come Away’ Review: Peter Pan and Alice Are Brother and Sister in This Epic Downer. Good luck finding the magic in this inexplicably serious and mostly depressing mashup between the worlds of J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll.” Also watch “A diverse cast leads new film ‘Come Away’. Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland are played by multi-racial young actors in the new fantasy film ‘Come Away.'” Also Premiering now at home.
• Watch “Musou Black—The (New) World’s Blackest Paint Turns Anything Into A Shadow.”
• “Six-hour Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind kabuki stage play is finally coming out on home video.” Via Amazon JP: “A magnificent story of 7 volumes of the masterpiece manga ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’ by Hayao Miyazaki will be performed as a new Kabuki. Hayao Miyazaki’s work and Studio Ghibli’s first Kabuki stage production will be released on DVD and Blu-ray.”
• Watch “Mona Lisa Stolen: This Is How He Did It.”
• Watch “The 2020 Witchies Presented by Modern Witch“—”The Witchies are the first awards ceremony to focus on outstanding achievement and excellence in witchcraft and occult media and content creation. Our genres are generally so niche that creators are often intentionally excluded or overlooked by other organizations in the awards circuit; but that stops now! With The Witchies, our community finally has a place to gather and celebrate the amazing artists, writers, producers, and hosts who both represent our fields in the public as well as inspire us on our own journeys.” Open nomniations, so kind of a people’s choice awards. Sponsored by The Mystic Dream Academy, Weiser Books, and Llewellyn Worldwide. Find out more at Witches’ Sabbat.
• Watch “Daemonia Nymphe ‘Psychostasia’ unseen footage-behind the scenes”
• Watch “The Strange World of Breatharianism.”—”In 2013, a YouTuber named Naveena Shine documented her attempt to become a breatharian—a person who claims to nourish themselves on air and light, rather than food. Breatharianism has been operating in the far fringes of new age esoterica for decades, with its history of fraudulent gurus, public humiliation, and tragedy. ” I have a very strong memory from the 80s of some luminary of Beatharianism being found buying twinkies at 7-11. Oh, yeah, haha! Twinkies and a chicken pot pie! [Also, Also]
• “Can Free Will be Saved in a Deterministic Universe?“—”Physicists have a long history of sticking our noses where they don’t belong – and one of our favorite places to step beyond our expertise is the question of consciousness and free will. Sometimes our musings are insightful, sometimes incoherent, and usually at least somewhat naive. Which a fair description of this show, so of course Space Time needs to weigh in physics and free will.”
• Watch “What Did The Pope’s Librarian Say About Saturn’s Rings?”, a clip from an older QI, with Stephen Fry. At 02:46: “There’s a Socratic acceptance of the limits of one’s own knowledge, and there’s ignorance. I’m not saying which is which.” Also #NotAllLibrarians.
• “Why Are There 7 Days In a Week?“—”Why does everyone use a 7 day week, and where did it come from? Where do the names of the days come from? And who can we blame for Mondays? Here’s the true story of one of the oldest human customs still in use today. It gets a little weird.”
• Tweet—”I tell you what: You are wrong. You are already dead. All you are is a monster. All you are is full of yourself. No amount of rebirth will ever give you the sensation of immortality. The first step to true everlasting life is true annihilation.”

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