Tag Archives: crowdfunding

Stingbat says …

The Arcane Library‘s Shadowdark RPG Stingbat says …

Hermetic Library meme Stingbat Shadowdark prevail peace freedom true health through purity essence your natural fluids
“I will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of your natural fluids” (apologies to General Ripper.)

Hermetic Library meme Stingbat Shadowdark pardon me good word donating blood
“Pardon me, but have you heard the good word about donating blood?”

(These are a couple possibly funny, but definitely goofy, memes, for funsies, using the image of a monster from the Shadowdark RPG game, which is currently doing gangbusters in crowdfunding, with 23 days to go: “Shadowdark RPG: Old-School Gaming, Modernized. Classic adventure gaming for 5E and old-school players alike! One book, all you need to play.”)

Hermetic Library 2017 Funding Campaign

Help the Hermetic Library make Magick for another year!

Go to https://igg.me/at/hermeticlibrary

Help fund content, creation and curation at Hermetic Library!

Archiving, Engaging and Encouraging the living Western Esoteric Tradition, Hermeticism & Aleister Crowley’s Thelema for 20 years.

Will you help us be of service for another year?

Hermetic Library needs your help to keep going. For 20 years Hermetic Library has been the one of the most comprehensive and popular resources on the Internet for the kind of information in its collection. The Hermetic Library is justifiably famous, and perhaps a little infamous, as the source for an amazing collection of information useful to every researcher and student of the ancient and living Western Esoteric Tradition. Many students over the last two decades found their start with their studies by perusing the materials of the Hermetic Library and consequently started building their own actual libraries by downloading numerous pages of content made available to them in electronic and searchable form by the library.

Since 2009, John Bell, the Librarian, has been working to expand what was just a website into a multi-platform online presence, with active social media accounts in all the right places. He’s been working on constant updates and improvements to the site. He’s introduced many new services provided by the library. It’s still essentially a one-person show, with everything—all the work on the site and constant curation effort on social media and on the site and all—being done by John. Keeping the library going is more than a full-time job! The time and energy needed to keep up the pace and continue growing just isn’t possible without your help to make it sustainable.

This is the second funding drive for the library, and with your help we can beat last year’s $1,694 campaign total! If we beat last year’s total and reach our base budget of $9996 we can keep going for another full year. However, if there is enough additional support that surpasses the necessary goal, we can actually take large steps toward doing even more. With additional budget beyond the campaign goal, we can provide

more content from additional materials in existing and expanded sections;
more communication through developing a newsletter, podcast, or even finally launching our journal;
more curation of all the new and interesting things to be discovered through the website, blog, tumblogs and social media;
more creation through actively developing new ideas, new resources, and even commissioning new work from authors and artists to develop new ideas and resources.

What We Need & What You Get

$9996 dollars will allow us to pay our bills and expenses for the entire next year. That means providing money to offer a stipend or honorarium to volunteers for their effort, expenses related to keeping our websites up and running, and the tools needed to keep our social media presence going.

This budget is what is necessary for Hermetic Library to continue to be of excellent and essential service to the community. We need your help now in order to continue. It’s time to decide not only if we can keep going but if we can keep growing!

It is not a coincidence that this campaign is being announced on May 1st. Not only is this timing to coincide with celebration and solidarity for May Day—this campaign is a loud mayday call through the aethyrs to you. Will you help?

The Impact

The Hermetic Library is a shining example of excellence for providing and supporting a living esoteric tradition online. Millions of people a year visit the site. A hundred thousand people follow the Hermetic Library on various social media platforms. Every year more and more people can count on the Hermetic Library as their best and primary esoteric resource online.

We need your help not only in making the current level of activity sustainable, but also in taking the next step in our ongoing growth. This 2017 fundraising campaign will be what decides whether to keep going and growing or not. We need your help to make that decision, and your support is needed to continue putting in all the incredible amounts of time, effort, and love into this endeavour.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you aren’t able to help out by contributing, there are still plenty of ways you can participate and support this effort!

Let your esoterically-minded colleagues and friends, who may be interested in such matters, know about this campaign.
Please share this campaign on your social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and with any forums where you are active. Use the sharing tools here on Indiegogo, or post your own personal messages.
Let other people know how important Hermetic Library is to you!

Share this link: https://igg.me/at/hermeticlibrary

The Book of Starry Wisdom

The Book of Starry Wisdom, edited by Simon Berman and illustrated by Hermetic Library Anthology Artist Valerie Herron, has arrived at the Reading Room, the result of a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Simon Berman Valerie Herron The Book of Starry Wisdom

Strix Publishing recently started to tease a crowdfunding campaign for a follow-up companion volume, The Book of Three Gates, that will be starting up in early October.

Hermetic Library 2016 Funding Campaign

Help the Hermetic Library make Magick for another year!

Go to https://igg.me/at/hermeticlibrary

Help fund content, creation and curation at Hermetic Library!

December 2016 will be the 20th anniversary of Hermetic Library!

As it enters its 20th year, the Hermetic Library needs your help to keep going. Hermetic Library has been the one of the most comprehensive and popular resources on the Internet for the kind of information in its collection. The Hermetic Library is justifiably famous, and perhaps a little infamous, as the source for an amazing collection of information useful to every researcher and student of the ancient and living Western Esoteric Tradition. Many students over the last two decades found their start with their studies by perusing the materials of the Hermetic Library and consequently started building their own actual libraries by downloading numerous pages of content made available to them in electronic and searchable form by the library.

Since 2009, John Bell, the Librarian, has been working to expand what was just a website into a multi-platform online presence, with active social media accounts in all the right places. He’s been working on constant updates and improvements to the site. He’s introduced many new services provided by the library. Until recently, it’s been a one-person show, with everything—all the work on the site and constant curation effort on social media and on the site and all—being done by John. Even with the beginning of a wonderful volunteer team forming this year, the time and energy needed to keep up the pace and continue growing, as well as the new effort required for volunteer coordination, just isn’t possible without your help to make it sustainable.

This is the first ever funding drive for the library, and we can keep going for another full year on our base budget. However, if there is enough additional support that surpasses the necessary goal. We can actually take large steps toward doing even more. With additional budget beyond the campaign goal, we can provide

more content from additional materials in existing and expanded sections;
more communication through developing a newsletter, podcast, or even finally launching our journal;
more curation of all the new and interesting things to be discovered through the website, blog, tumblogs and social media;
more creation through actively developing new ideas, new resources, and even commissioning new work from authors and artists to develop new ideas and resources.

What We Need & What You Get

$9996 dollars will allow us to pay our bills and expenses for the next year. That means providing money to offer a stipend or honorarium to volunteers for their effort, expenses related to keeping our websites up and running, and the tools needed to keep our social media presence going.

This budget is what is necessary for the Hermetic Library to continue to be of excellent and essential service to the community. We need your help now in order to continue. It’s time to decide not only if we can keep going but if we can keep growing!

But, seriously, this is crunch time for the future of the site. It is not a coincidence that this campaign is being announced on May 1st is not only about timing to coincide with May Day—it is a loud mayday call through the aethyrs to you. Will you help?

The Impact

The Hermetic Library is a shining example of excellence for providing and supporting a living esoteric tradition online. Millions of people a year visit the site. Close to an hundred thousand people follow the Hermetic Library on various social media platforms. Every year more and more people can count on the Hermetic Library as their best and primary esoteric resource online.

We need your help not only in making the current level of activity sustainable, but also in taking the next step in our ongoing growth. This 2016 fundraising campaign will be what decides whether to keep going and growing or not. We need your help to make that decision, and your support is needed to continue putting in all the incredible amounts of time, effort, and love into this endeavour.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you aren’t able to help out by contributing, there are still plenty of ways you can participate and support this effort!

Let your esoterically-minded colleagues and friends, who may be interested in such matters, know about this campaign.
Please share this campaign on your social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and with any forums where you are active. Use the sharing tools here on Indiegogo, or post your own personal messages.
Let other people know how important Hermetic Library is to you!

Share this link: https://igg.me/at/hermeticlibrary

Guerilla Theurgy

Guerrilla Theurgy, Videos, Cards, Angels is a crowdfunding effort by Jason Augustus Newcomb to “help transform the world for the positive with this multi-media magical art and action campaign.”

Imagine living in a better, happier, more peaceful world. Imagine a world where creativity, pleasure, joy and spirit received as much attention as commerce, industry, war and competition. We can create a better, more balanced world together, but it requires a shift in consciousness.

Guerrilla Theurgy is a plan to make the world a better place one step at a time by taking small actions in the world to help people feel happier and better, and to awaken ourselves. The specific actions are inspired by the set of 72 angels most well known as the Shemhamphorash. The power of each angel inspires a positive action or instruction.

72 short Videos are in production, each demonstrating one of these angelically inspired actions. See the video above for a fun example. These will be uploaded individually and collected with extras in a DVD.

A deck of 72 cards has been created which give detailed instructions for carrying out these actions. This deck is somewhat like a Tarot, but a Tarot of action rather than oracle.

Together we can change the world in a big way through small things that can be done every day or any day.

This material is created by Jason Augustus Newcomb, author of many books, meditation recordings, and Tarot decks.

Bibliotheca

Bibliotheca by Adam Lewis Greene may be of interest. Only a few hours to go on this crowdfunding effort, but it has been funded many times over, to create a presentation of “the biblical literature designed & crafted for reading, separated into four elegant volumes, and free of all numbers, notes, etc” printed in a typeface custom designed for the project. Greene has made clear that “this is not a fundraiser for an edition that you will be able to order after the campaign” but that the campaign is the only way to get the publication with no “guarantee it will be made available again” (though, honestly, I’d bet he gets a number of offers from publishers).

“The literature of the Bible was experienced by its ancient audiences as pure literary art—written or oral—with none of the encyclopedic conventions we are accustomed to today (chapter divisions, verse numbers, notes, cross references, etc.). Furthermore, the texts were appreciated as individual works of literature, which gradually accumulated into what we recognize as the biblical anthology (Biblia, meaning Books). It wasn’t until the middle ages that navigational conventions were added and the many texts were combined into a single volume (The Bible, meaning The Book, singular).

Today, our contemporary bibles are ubiquitously dense, numerical and encyclopedic in format; very different from how we experience other classic & foundational literature, and completely foreign to how the original authors conceived of their work.

By separating the text into several volumes, and by applying classic & elegant typography, Bibliotheca is meant to provide a fresh alternative to the reader who wants to enjoy the biblical library anew, as great literary art.”

Vault of Adepts

Vault of Adepts by Jordon Stratford’s Laudanum Studios is a crowdfunding effort to create a game which is described as “Penny Dreadful meets Arkham Horror in this pen and paper RPG of secret societies in 1900 London. Occult schemes in the age of absinthe.”

“VAULT OF ADEPTS is a pen and paper Role Playing Game of secret societies set in 1900 London. These occult Lodges attracted the elite of London society — poets and politicians, actors and heiresses, alchemists and aristocrats scheming against a backdrop of cut glass, in the age of absinthe.

You play one of these eccentric characters, choose a faction and an agenda — do you want to proceed through the mystic Grades to achieve enlightenment? To take over? To destroy from within? – and speed from location to location to secure ancient knowledge, spread rumours, and foil your opponent’s efforts.

A séance gone horribly wrong. A gentleman approached after a Mason’s meeting with an inquiry if he’d be interested in something more…unconventional. A book dealer looking over an incoming tome, and knowing more than he lets on. Somewhere in London, between Scotland Yard and the Blind Beggar, is the key to someone’s lifelong obsession. Seek it out. But will you use it, sell it, or destroy it?”

Bight of the Twin

Bight of the Twin by Hazel Hill McCarthy III is a crowdfunding effort, with only 4 days left to go and still trying to reach their initial funding goal, for a documentary about Vodun in Benin with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

BIGHT OF THE TWIN is a feature-length documentary exploring Vodun (Voodoo, Voudou, Vodoun), one of the world’s oldest and most misunderstood religions. Los Angeles based artist and filmmaker, Hazel Hill McCarthy III, documents Cultural Engineer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on h/er journey to Ouidah, Benin in search of the truths and origins of Vodun.

SYNOPSIS: Cultural engineer, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is serendipitously initiated into the ‘Twin Fetish’ – a practice within Vodun that honors twins. Through a series of ceremonies, Genesis reaffirms an eternal bond with h/er late wife and Pandrogyne partner, Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge. This is a deeply interdimensional connection of alternative Western culture in tangent with ancient African ritual. In this story we begin to see the link between Pangrogyny and the ‘Twin Fetish’, an activation of a complete state, and in fact the true fundamentals of Vodun religion.

In Benin, which has the highest national average of twins per birth, twins carry a sacred meaning. When one twin passes away, the living twin remembers its spirit by carrying around a small, carved replica of their dead brother or sister. The deceased twin is described as ‘having gone to the forest to look for wood’. This engaged and very public approach to grief and loss is in stark contrast to the closeted Victorian values that Western culture has been saddled with.

Transcending assumptions of what it means to be “gendered”, lead character, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, embodies a re-union and re-solution of male and female, seeking to perfect a hermaphroditic state through Pandrogyny. Genesis and Lady Jaye underwent a series of surgical procedures to become gender-neutral human beings that looked identical to one another. In 2007 Lady Jaye passed away and “dropped h/er body”. Since that time Genesis has continued to represent the amalgam BREYER P-ORRIDGE in the material world while Lady Jaye represents the amalgam BREYER P-ORRIDGE in the immaterial world creating an ongoing inter-dimensional collaboration.

By exploring their non/all-gender we begin to see the link between Pangrogyny and the ‘Twin Fetish’. As the French anthropologist, Michel Cartry, wrote in 1973, “Twins are a reminder and an incarnation of the mythical ideal. It is as though they are representatives of a state of ontological perfection, a state which the non-twins have completely lost. The first living creatures were couples of twins of opposite sexes. The loss of twin hood… is the price that man had to pay for a sin committed by one of the ancestors. But the birth of twins is a reminder of that happy condition, and that is why it is celebrated everywhere with joy”.

Sasha Chaitow crowdfunding participation at OCCULT in Salem, MA

Sasha Chaitow is crowdfunding to help her participate at the 2014 OCCULT in Salem, MA with an exhibit of her art and a workshop about Joséphin Péladan.

Hi everyone, my name’s Sasha Chaitow, and I’m an artist, writer, and scholar of the crossover of esoteric thought and cultural history. I’ve been painting since 1996, and I hold two MAs in Literature and in Western Esotericism. I have just completed my PhD in Myth and Literature, examining the life and work of the mysterious Joséphin Péladan, a French visionary author who wrote over a hundred books devoted to his cause of inspiring a cultural renaissance through esoterically inspired art.

The Contrarian’s studio was burglarized

Casey Rae-Hunter, who you will probably more readily recognize as Hermetic Library anthology artist The Contrarian, has had his studio burglarized! Casey was thrown for a multiple month spiral, but is now running a crowdfunding effort to get back on his feet, which you may want to support, and is offering a bunch of reward for supporters that may be of interest as well.

“Lux Eterna Records is an art-rock and experimental label based in Washington, DC. It is the music wing ofThe Contrarian Media, a hydra-headed media empire of some repute. Lux Eterna has put out dozens of well-received records over the years, most of which were lovingly assembled at Sounds of the Baskerville Studios in Washington D.C.

Some months ago, Lux HQ was burglarized and the rat bastards made off with a bunch of studio equipment, including our main computer, associated software, microphones and sundry. Since then, we’ve been unable to provide the top-notch musical entertainments for which Lux is known.

This sucks. But you can take a sad song and make it better (na-na-na-na, hey, dudes)!

It Ain’t Even a Lot We’re Asking, I Mean, Jeez

We’re a fat-free, farm-fresh, free-range, friendly-feels enterprise. Your contributions will be used to do what we were put on this planet to do: create quality music and help our artist pals do the same. Look, it’s not like we’re gonna blow our money on frivolities like gourmet cat food and vintage monster figures (though it’s tempting).

More specifically, we are seeking funds to acquire the following:

· A replacement production computer with a few bells and whistles like expanded RAM and an on/off switch (Apple’s got us by the what-have-you)
· Replacement software (lemons-to-lemonade: we were due for a ProTools upgrade anyway, but there’s also a bunch of plug-ins that we lost)
· New microphones (this is the real bummer, but we’ve got an eye on a couple that are inexpensive but still decent)

30,000 Foot View

The rent is too damn high! Nobody makes money from music! The crops have failed and the cattle have gone dry! It’s tough out there for everyone—especially a teensy label/studio that got ripped off by nogoodniks. This is your chance to right a moral wrong and help proudly independent music-makers back on their feet.

We are a small business. Our studio literally takes up less space than some people’s shoe collections. We work really hard on everything we put out. There is no chaff in our enterprise whatsoever. Your investment is proportionally important. Every dollar contributed to this campaign will be used to bring independent art forward.

What Else?

We understand that not everyone is able to fund our work. If you like our music, or even if you don’t like our music but think that what we offer is important anyway, please tell your friends about us (ideally using the Indiegogo sharing tools, to make it easier for them to support us).”

The Hermetic Library Blog

Faint gibbering heard from somewhere near the restricted stacks