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A friend of mine, Beth Wingarner, author of Sacred Sonoma: Sacred Sites and Alignments in Sonoma County, California is working on a new book about how young people, and teenagers in particular, come to the occult and why parents shouldn’t freak out about it.

Details below: Continue reading »

A new collection from the UK’s Royal Mail titled Mythical Creatures artwork by Dave McKean.

The First Day Cover, Presentation Pack and presentation pack include very short stories for each stamp by fan-favourite Neil Gaiman.

The stamps began circulating on June 16th, and I’ve already received two birthday cards from Angleterre bearing the Fairies stamp pictured left. Though I rather think the Mermaid is my favourite.

The stamps feature various mythical creatures, including unicorns, giants, fairies, pixies, dragons and mermaids.

You can see them all, and their values, on the Royal Mail website here.

What do these three things have in common? I’m still not quite clear on that.

I received Francis Breakspear’s new book, If It Was Easy, Everyone Would Be Doing It! a few months ago, read a few pages, then got caught up in other things. I recently picked it up again, and so far it’s as direct and funny as his first book, Kaostar!, as expected.

Also as in Kaostar!, essays appear from Kate Hoolu and someone called “Dave Evans” (a pseudonym if I ever heard one).

I’ve just finished reading a two-essay interlude by Kate Hoolu, the first, titled “Stereotyping”, deals with issues of race and culture, and the second, “That behaviour is not normal! But how do you prove it?”, discusses mental health. It’s unusual to see these topics addressed in books ostensibly about practical magick, to say the least. Continue reading »

Legion 49, by Barry William Hale looks to be another fascinating title from UK’s Fulgur.

Hale’s blog seems to be dormant, but Caduceus Books gives us a taste of his style, while Fulgur’s author bio fills in the rest.

From Fulgur’s website:

Barry William Hale has nurtured an early fascination with the order Diptera to develop a buzzing, post-modern grimoire-bestiarum. Drawn from many years practical experience working with Beelzebub and his servitors, Legion 49 provides us with a rare glimpse of ‘the Lord of the Flies’ and the dark quintessence of his Legion. In a series of short, de-constructionist essays the artist explores traditional methods of evocation and the myths surrounding Beelzebub, before providing an iconographical and sigillic recension of his horde of forty-nine servitors, glimpsed through the protective-symmetry of the paper-cut traditions of old Mexico.

Fulgur always produces gorgeous work, last year’s Conjunctio, by Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule and The Valley of Fear, by Austin Osman Spare were further proof of this.

Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007) was an entertaining novelist, playwright, philosopher and magician.

His daughter, Christina, is selling some of his personal effects on eBay, including several tarot decks, mugs, lighters, clothing, and other items.

Each item has a little personal story associated with it.

Christina’s reasons are given on the new Robert Anton Wilson site as:

I do want to announce that you now have an opportunity to have an authentic RAW Artifact, from his life, his home, his library, his love: up close and personal items as I work to raise funds to help his disabled son, and pay off his final debts. Yup, he left some. Didn’t mean to, and apologized to me before skipping the event horizon. Wish I didn’t have to, but it’s my job to wrap up this debt, and move on so that we can actually do what he wanted. Which is to keep the lasagna flying – his work available to all who were interested, and provide some support for his son. He was never very attached to physical things, but he did get great joy from many items that came to be in his home. I want to make them available in the hopes that they will also bring you joy, and will close the door on Bob’s debts. So here’s your chance to have a real RAW Souvenir, to inspire your own Muse and bring RAW energy into your own space!

The auction appears genuine, so if you’re interested, click on over to eBay, grab something of RAW’s, and help support his remaining family.

Weiser Antiquarian’s fifty eighth catalogue titled “Austin Osman Spare. Books and Ephemera.” features works by and about Spare.

Here you’ll find first editions of Spare’s work, as well as (more affordable) reprints, biographies and rare catalogues from art exhibitions.

I just bought a copy of Evolution, Volume One, by Stephen Pochin and two catalogues, Borough Satyr and Austin Osman Spare: Artist – Occultist – Sensualist which I’m very excited about.

It’s also fascinating to see how much the prices have climbed for some of the works I already own. Geeze. If you’re interested in Spare, and can afford to, buy while still can.

And hey, as an added bonus, it looks like Weiser Anitquarian now hosts a variety of RSS feeds so you can be notified of any new books that come in under your favourite categories. Neat.

Hey, kids! Remember this?

Saturday Signal is Plutonica.net’s weekly round up of neat stuff found on the occult Internet. Though as it’s been on hiatus for a bit, I’ve decided to highlight a few nifty things you may’ve missed in that time.

As it was in the past, so shall it remain: if you find something weird, cool or otherwise noteworthy, please e-mail me about it. If you’re pro-promotion, include your name and website for extra credit. Thanks!

So, let’s see what we’ve got this week… Continue reading »