An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for July 31, 2019

If you’d like to participate, head over to Omnium Gatherum on the BBS, or suggest something.

• “Looking back at a time where major labels were releasing witchcraft rituals. During the 1960s, Capitol Records, A&M, and Warner Bros capitalised on the witchcraft phenomenon with spoken-word albums of occult incantations.” — Melanie Xulu, Dazed
  

  “Of course, witchcraft and the occult had always had a presence in the underground. Gerald Gardner, the eccentric Lancashirian anthropologist and ‘father of Wicca’, had a prolific influence, and led the way in Wicca from the 40s onwards, while the influence of occultist Aleister Crowley in underground film and music, from Kenneth Anger to Led Zeppelin, has been well documented. However, in that post-flower power period between the late 60s and early 70s, the occult was merging with popular culture like never before.”

• “Heroes: Genesis P-Orridge Transcends Again. For V120’s Heroes series, V analyzes the mind and impact of Neil Megson, aka Genesis P-Orridge who was nominated by Hedi Slimane.” — Samuel Anderson, V Magazine
  

  “This fall, Mute Records will reboot five albums from the catalog of Throbbing Gristle, the post-punk, ideology-slinging group cofounded by Genesis P-Orridge in 1975. Planned amid P-Orridge’s declining health and lingering tensions within the band, the slated re-releases promise to blur the lines between creation and annihilation, past and present—as P-Orridge has done ceaselessly for decades.

  Born Neil Megson in 1950 in Manchester, P-Orridge arrived in London as punk was in full swing. But P-Orrdige (who uses “s/he” and “h/er” pronouns) and like-minded transgressors would start their own experimental factions; besides founding Throbbing Gristle and coining the term “industrial music,” s/he would establish Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, an “anti-cult” aiming to transcend normativity in all its forms.

  These movements would mutate over decades, inspiring generations of punk offspring. “

• “Agnes Callard’s List of “views that are considered controversial that shouldn’t be”” — Justin Weinberg, Daily Nous
  

  “7. Fernando Pessoa was a philosopher. … The ones I would most like to persuade other philosophers of are (7) …”

• “Behemoth Release Disturbing, Nsfw New Video. In Their Latest Music Video, Behemoth Indulge in Some Delicious Satanic Nightmare Fuel.” — Kerrang!

  “Speaking to Kerrang! about his role as a spiritual iconoclast, Behemoth frontman Nergal said, “It feels like that Luciferian, Promethean [identity] is in my DNA. I can try to reject that. But, as the Greeks say: ‘Know thyself!’ I would rather die than deny my nature. [My creativity comes from that same place as poets John] Milton and [Percy Bysshe] Shelley, [occultist Aleister] Crowley, [poet] William Blake and the Bible itself.”

• “On Chuck Klosterman’s Latest in Junk-Food Intellectualism, ‘Raised In Captivity’. The best stories in Chuck Klosterman’s Raised in Captivity are the ones that most closely resemble his thinly-veiled essays.” — Kyle Cochrun, Pop Matters; about Raised in Captivity by Chuck Klosterman

  

  “On first read, some stories are so spit-take funny that the fundamental questions driving them are almost obscured by their downright nuttiness. Such is the case with ‘(An Excerpt from) A Life That Wasn’t Mine’, which details the filming of a Syfy Channel-style Loch Ness Monster movie that somehow morphs into a deeply experimental film about Jimmy Page summoning the spirit of Aleister Crowley and ‘using mind bullets to murder Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.'”

• “Witching Hour: Seven of the most influential figures in modern Wicca. The names all Wiccans need to know.” — Holly Mosley, Female First
  

  “For our latest installment of our Witching Hour series, we look at seven of the most iconic figures in modern Wicca. This list is by no stretch exhaustive; since contemporary Paganism made itself known in the mid to late 20th Century, there have been innumerous figures making their mark in Wicca.

  …

  1. Gerald Gardner …

  2. Doreen Valiente

  While Gardner might have brought Wicca out into the open, it was High Priestess of the Bricket Wood coven Doreen Valiente who was perhaps most responsible for writing a lot of the Gardnerian liturgy which ended up being incorporated into Gardner’s Book of Shadows. Originally, much of his text was based on the writings of Aleister Crowley, and Valiente wanted to change this out of concern for the reputation of Wicca. She is largely known as the Mother of Modern Witchcraft, writing and re-writing important Wiccan passages such as the Charge of the Goddess and The Wiccan Rede.

  3. Alex Sanders …

  4. Zsuzsanna Budapest …

  5. Raymond Buckland …

  6. Scott Cunningham …

  7. Stewart Farrar …”

• “Who Really Gives A Crap About The LBRP, Anyway?” — Scarlet Magdalene, Patheos
  

  “This is but the briefest primer on the LBRP. It contains within it a lot of layers and as anyone who has performed it on a regular basis can attest, it’s a wonderful place to learn about how to manipulate, sense, and project energy, engage in active meditation, balance out your personal sphere and any elemental influence, and get started on the road towards learning magic and practicing ritual on a daily basis. And that’s just barely scratching the surface of what this rite can do and is about.”

• “Babalon’s Cloister: Theosexuality — Sex and Magic” — Georgia van Raalte, Patheos
  

  “Allow me to ask you a question. Why is the occult world so ripe for abuse by the very worst aspects of the Patriarchy?”

• “Bodies in detail, Kipling in Vermont, and Shakespeare in the park” — Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe; Hyman Bloom: Matters of Life and Death, July 13, 2019–February 23, 2020, Henry and Lois Foster Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; also Hyman Bloom: Matters of Life and Death by Erica Hirshler (Author), Naomi Slipp, and Hyman Bloom

  

  “Bloom was a wanderer in the occult, gathered with the Order of the Portal, a “Boston-based, Christianized offshoot of the Rosicrucian Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,” according to an introductory essay, which studied metaphysics.”

  

• “Origins Of Aztec And Inca Obsidian Mirrors Revealed Through Scientific Analyses” — David S Andrews, Forbes

  

  “A second obsidian mirror, held by the British Museum in London, presents us with yet more intrigue. While the British Museum’s mirror has long been assumed to have originated in Mexico, it is more famously associated with a man named John Dee. Dee was a 16th century astrologer and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. It is alleged that Dee used his Aztec mirror to peer through the veil into the spirit world beyond.

  Yet even a court magician’s magic mirror can give up its secrets to scientific analyses. In a recent conference presentation, Yaroslav Kuzmin reported the results of an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer analysis carried out on Dee’s mirror. In this case, the object’s Mexican origin was confirmed with the trace elemental composition matching an obsidian source found at the site of Pachuca in central Mexico.

  How this mirror came into Dee’s possession, however, is still not fully understood. Kuzmin notes that Dee was well connected with political and intellectual leaders, and in particular that ‘he was acquainted with sir William Pickering, the British ambassador to the court of Emperor Charles V.’ Thus, setting aside how the mirror made it from Mexico to Europe, it may have come to Dee via the ambassador; but, Kuzmin adds that ‘we cannot exclude the fact that British pirates intercepted a Spanish caravan of ships with gold and jewels from Mexico.’

  While Dee’s interest in the esoteric powers of this obsidian mirror would have undoubtedly been stoked by the object’s foreign origin, we know that the Aztec themselves also placed great ritual importance on these objects.”