The devils of Paris would not shut up. They declaimed as they came, in a hundred languages, they hissed and howled descriptions of their hadal cities, and beat their claws on the sigils they wore, of the houses of the pit, and they shouted rather too often to those they hunted and killed that it was from Hell that they came, and so that everyone should be terrified.
China Miéville, The Last Days of New Paris: A Novel [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]
An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for June 25th, 2014
Eddy Stevens’ Magical Paintings Capture The Bond Between Woman And Horse — Ellyn Ruddick-Sunstein, Beautiful/Decay
Considering the importance of the Vault of the Adepti to the Golden Dawn and of the Tomb of the Founder, Christian Rosenkreutz, to the entire Rosicrucian movement, the discovery of the tomb of the Golden Dawn’s Rosicrucian founder, S.L. MacGregor Mathers (nearly 120 years after his death), is an event of unparalleled Rosicrucian and magickal importance.
Sacred necklaces, guias or elekes are a form of talismans with a rich and long history both as sacred decoration, as an extension of the witches ladder or cord and in the form of prayer beads, they be the Hindu mala or the Catholic rosary to Freya’s brisingamen. In Lucumi a set of elekes are given to mark the first step towards initiation where the candidate binds himself to the godparents responsible for giving the elekes.
No one is safe, but especially you (I don’t know why, you just seem sort of fragile and susceptible to accidents). At any rate, the Illuminati grows stronger every day, and it is only a matter of time before they control every aspect of your life — no detail too small. It would be too dangerous to overlook the evidence. Let this carefully curated list of Illuminati hotspots guide you, strike fear into your heart, and who knows, maybe even protect you. Godspeed.
In the process of trying to defend my faith, I started thinking the other point of view was the stronger one.
In 12 years of touring with As I Lay Dying, I would say maybe one in 10 Christian bands we toured with were actually Christian bands.
The thing about nascent movements like this is that it’s hard to know when to pay attention and when to ignore them. If you ignore them they can grow in the dark, like mushrooms on dung. If you make too much fuss, you can attract idiots–particularly extremist idiots–who automatically assume that anything normal people find objectionable must be awesome, radical, and “not PC” and therefore good.
According to Hughes, these curious shepherd’s crooks first appeared in the 1770s as part of a fashion fad, possibly inspired by ceremonial maces. They saw a resurgence in the 1820s, and they continued to be known throughout the nineteenth century. The first clue that we have as to their use as “charm sticks” is in Soames’ Curiosities of Literature, from 1847, dealing with superstitious practices in Devon.
At this point, it seems that the glass rods were originally created as fashion accessories, which later became associated with disease and good luck, and later became explicitly connected with spirits.
His behavior is minutely chronicled by his biographers; whatever we think of him, we should at least get the facts of his life straight.
Magical Gem w/ King Solomon spearing a prostate female demon, reverse: Greek, "Seal of God" @kelseymuseum KM 26092 pic.twitter.com/SeqEnIm5bM
— Nathan Kesling (@nathan13109) June 24, 2014
Came across a great term for prostitute-witches in antiquity: Witch-bawd.
— Sarah Veale (@sarahveale) June 24, 2014
Could it be that Stonehenge was actually a prehistoric glockenspiel?
“Everybody’s been running a silent movie of prehistory for so long,” [Paul Devereux] said. “We’re only just now trying to recover the soundtrack.”
The origin of the television set was heavily shrouded in both spiritualism and the occult, Stefan Andriopoulos writes in his new book Ghostly Apparitions. In fact, as its very name implies, the television was first conceived as a technical device for seeing at a distance: like the telephone (speaking at a distance) and telescope (viewing at a distance), the television was intended as an almost magical box through which we could watch distant events unfold, a kind of technological crystal ball.
Andriopoulos’s book puts the TV into a long line of other “optical media” that go back at least as far as popular Renaissance experiments involving technologically-induced illusions, such as concave mirrors, magic lanterns, disorienting walls of smoke, and other “ghostly apparitions” and “phantasmagoric projections” created by specialty devices. These were conjuring tricks, sure—mere public spectacles, so to speak—but successfully achieving them required sophisticated understandings of basic physical factors such as light, shadow, and acoustics, making an audience see—and, most importantly, believe in—the illusion.
[Julian] Cope’s sentence structures collapse into rhythmic repetition and editorially suspect sub-clause clusters, three at one point all ending in the same three words, and all heroically deliberate. One section attempts to convey a character’s drugged confusion by repeating variations on the same three letters for five pages. The fool persists in his folly. He becomes wise. Likewise the eighty minute drones of cope’s Queen Elizabeth records were a conscious choice. “Yes,” he agrees, “I didn’t just stumble across a sound and then forget to turn it off. And I worked really hard on the cadences of the book, on the rhythms. That’s the musician part of me. People will get it who wish to get it but I don’t want to turn on tossers.”
“It’s like Christianity,” Cope says, brilliantly comparing his fiction debut with a major world religion of some 2000 years standing, “If you’re going to stand on street corners shouting you’re only going to pick up people who are utterly lost. I don’t want people attaching themselves to me who are lost. I want them to already be in some way on a trip. It’s demanding but great art is demanding. I really wanted to write something that people could complete themselves.”
Just remember that you were likely a “sheep” once too.
Alas, this sort of insular arrogance is not only more prevalent than we’d like to admit, it’s our own worst enemy. The idea of stupid, hopeless “sheeple” evokes the contempt that a hardcore Statist has for human ability, reason, freedom, and – for lack of a better word – spirit.
In short, the bell, book, and candle are used to damn people to hell. And sure, they’re all objects, but they’re not the same kind of objects! What are they doing together? What’s going on?
Drink, eat, have fun, make love.
I did not have much wealth or much property for my livelihood, but I worked hard and gained a modicum of learning. This enabled me to assist my friends, as far as I was able, freely putting the ability I had at the disposal of all. Helping anyone who was in need was a joy to me, as, in the case of other people, prosperity brings joy to the heart. Let no one deluded in his wealth harbour proud thoughts, for there is one Hades and an equal end for all. Is someone great in possessions? He receives no more, (but) the same measure of earth for a tomb. Hasten, mortals, gladden your souls at all times as (allegedly) a pleasant way of life is also the measure of existence. So, friends. After this, no more of this—for what more is there?
Many men tend to contradict on every point,
but contradicting rightly’s out of vogue.
Well, as for them there’s one old saw that’s all we need:
‘you can keep your opinion, I’ll keep mine.’
But the intelligent are soon persuadable
by reason, and they’re easiest to teach.
It’s no secret that in the Gnostic Mass, this central rite, involves a (fully dressed) priest, a (usually naked) woman on the altar, a simulation of hetero sex initiated by the priest, and a simulation of fellatio performed by the priestess. There’s a lot more involved — more people, more symbolism, magick words, all that great stuff — but these two roles are fixed. A woman may never serve as the priest, and a man may never lay upon the altar. When I asked about that, the instructor burst out laughing, “What, with some dude’s dong on the altar?” He was amused and horrified in equal parts.
I should stress that I don’t hold this lodge at fault, nor, necessarily, its members. They’re passing along the tradition as it’s given to them. Ok, they weren’t challenging it — true — but they didn’t invent it. They made it clear that any deviations in the performance of the Gnostic Mass meant it was no longer an OTO rite. This was it. I could learn to accept it, or leave.
Four years after Warburg’s death, the collection of about 80,000 books, many rare Renaissance volumes, was moved to London as Nazism took hold in 1930s Germany. However, the University of London is now seeking to challenge the status of the deed of trust it signed in 1944 when accepting the collection.
That document promised to maintain and preserve the collection “in perpetuity” as “an independent unit” – a pledge that now appears onerous as the Warburg runs a reported £500,000 annual deficit.
Professor Grafton meanwhile raised concerns over the future of the “highly skilled librarians” at the Warburg, which also has a small number of academic staff who supervise arts and humanities graduate students each year.
Further, there is speculation that a court defeat would mean that the collection would return to Hamburg where much of the Warburg family is still based. The US-based branch of the Warburg family are also known to have taken a keen interest in the case.
If you’d like to participate in the next Omnium Gatherum, head on over to the Gatherum discussions at the Hrmtc Underground BBS.
Rosslyn: Guardian of the Secret of the Holy Grail by Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins, the 2000 paperback from Thorsons, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.
“This is the first book to explore the existence of a configuration of seven pre-Christian sites which formed the route of a pilgrimage of initiation used by Druids, Knights Templar and Christian mystics in their search for true knowledge and enlightenment. Beginning at Compostela in Spain, the voyage of discovery proceeds to Toulouse, Orleans, Chartres, Paris and Amiens, taking us deep into a mysterious world where hidden streams of spirituality flow beneath the surface of European history, profoundly influencing the evolution of Western thought. The journey ends at Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, where the history of its founders, the Sinclair family, illuminates the revelations of Rosslyn and their significance for us today.” — back cover
“Au cours de cette sixième étape du ‘Voyage Alchimique’, nous pénétrons avec Patrick Burensteinas, alchimiste et scientifique, au sein du mystérieux laboratoire où doit se former la fameuse Pierre Philosophale. Pour nous aider à en percer les secrets, Nicolas Flamel, célèbre alchimiste parisien du Moyen Age, aurait figuré l’essentiel des opérations du Grand Oeuvre sous une arcade du cimetière des Innocents à Paris, mais elle a été détruite au XVIII° siècle, avec tout le cimetière. Nous la reconstituons ici grâce aux nombreux témoignages qui l’ont décrite.”
“Nicolas Flamel and the Cemetery of the Innocents
In the sixth stage of the Alchemical Voyage, with Patrick Burensteinas, alchemist and scientist, we enter into the mysterious laboratory where the Philosophers Stone has to be made. To help us to perceive its secrets, Nicolas Flamel, a famous Parisian alchemist from the middle age, would have mainly figured out the process of the Great Work under the arch of the Innocents cemetery in Paris. It was destroyed in the 18th century, with the entire cemetery. Thanks to many testimonials, we will make this arch alive again.”
Black Magic is Not a Myth in Articles by Aleister Crowley.
“The reason I left Paris was that the authorities refused to renew my carte d’identité. No charge was made against me; and no explanation given.
Somebody I had quarreled with had gone to the authorities and succeeded in making them think that something was wrong.” [via, also]
I Make Myself Invisible in Articles by Aleister Crowley.
“Steiner’s direction resulted in Von Moltke’s failing to take Paris when it was within his grasp, and that mistake cost Germany the whole war.” [via, also]