This Canadian visited the White House Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and were surprised by the elegance of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, entirely unexpected, on the way to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. We saw more statues than I can name.

We visited Annapolis where I bought a book on Paracelsus and another on women in classical mythology. We stopped in Mount Vernon and took in George Washington’s estate.  (What’s with all the pineapples?)

Not merely confined to monuments and buildings, we also stopped in the United States Botanic Garden, where we saw this amazing Cthulhu plant.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum was ok, but they had little cardboard notices plastered all over the place advising that Pluto was no longer a real planet, just a “dwarf planet”.  Man, not only is that just plain wrong, it’s also, like, so so out of date.

My favourite part of the trip was our time spent in the National Gallery of Art.  The collections were quite good, and the lack of precaution taken was exhilarating.  Flash photography was permitted - almost encouraged! I could have licked a Botticelli, and the sparsely distributed guards would have been none the wiser.

I’ll gush more about the National Gallery tomorrow.  There was something delightfully unexpected that I’d like to share, and later I’ll let you in on a poorly kept secret of what else I’ve been up to…

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I’m back!

Today was Pagan Pride Day at the Pagan Harvest Festival in Hamilton, Ontario.  I was set to leave Toronto at 7 am, but I had a heck of a time getting there due to a “trespasser” on the train tracks which turned into a “fatality” according to intermittent updates from conflicting sources.  Instead of arriving before the festival began, I got there five minutes before my workshop was set to start at 11. 

It turned out five minutes is just enough time to find out where I’m supposed to be, set up, and get to work.

My topic was Magickal Philosophy 101, which generally proves an interesting discussion topic among Pagans.  There are so many angles that can be taken, and presenting it as a general introduction to the subject followed with concrete real-world examples is always a lot of fun.  A number of great questions as well, which I really enjoy.

HPPD is a great event and I could go on and on, but it’s Saturday, and you’re waiting for Signal…

• Jason Pitzl-Waters comments on Canada’s growing awareness of Paganism in public institutions.  Toronto Celtic Reconstructionalist and all around great guy, Brian Walsh is noted  as a University of Toronto chaplain along with Catherine Starr in a recent edition of The Wild Hunt’s  regular round up, “(Pagan) News of Note“.  It’s also worth noting that both of these lovely and delightful people were at HPPD manning information booths on Celtic Reconstructionalism and Gardenarianism respectively.

• In Practically Spiritual Anna Murphy writes about Dion Fortune’s psychotherapy, changelings,  “moral insanity”, and the serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan III in “The Devil Came Himself“.

• Paul Levy writes in a piece titled “Lucid Dreaming” published on Reality Sandwich: “When we become lucid in a dream, we realize that who we’ve imagined we are, what is called the “dream ego,” is not who we actually are, but is merely a model of who we are.”  Levy explores what it means to lucid dream, and how it can be done.

Optical delusions still themselves when you pass by in convexing pomp and sacral trance.

- Surrealist Compliment Generator

If you find something weird, cool or somehow noteworthy, please e-mail me about it. If you’re pro-promotion, include your name and website for extra credit.  Thanks!

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Saturday Signal: HPPD, Toronto Pagans, moral insanity and lucid dreaming

September’s another busy month: Pagan Pride days, the beginning of Ganesh Chaturthi, mainstream publishing begins its big Fall push, and the autumnal equinox and its surrounding festivities loom ever closer.

• Jason Pitzl-Waters comments on Canada’s growing awareness of Paganism in public institutions.  Toronto Celtic Reconstructionalist and all around great guy, Brian Walsh is noted  as a University of Toronto chaplain along with Catherine Starr in a recent edition of The Wild Hunt’s  regular round up, “(Pagan) News of Note“.

• Renowned tarot author Mary K. Greer, in a post titled “Prediction or Insight?“, looks at a tarot reading provided in one of her classes, and the dramatic events which occurred shortly after the reading.  Read it in Mary K. Greer’s Tarot Blog.

• In “Why I Leave Skeptics Alone“, posted in his blog Augoeides, Thelemite and ritual magician Scott Michael Stenwick offers two reasons why he embraces sceptical criticism of his practices.

• In her blog, sarahintampa, Sarah Perez briefly explains the difference between blogging, journaling and keeping an online diary in “Are You Blogging or Journaling?“  Ok, so this isn’t occult-themed, but even so, these dinstinctions are important in understanding the drive and purpose behind a site with a steady content stream.

Once again, if you find something weird, cool or somehow noteworthy, please e-mail me about it.⁴ If you’re pro-promotion, include your name and website for extra credit.  Thanks!

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Saturday Signal: Toronto Pagans, tarot, sceptics, and blogging

Each event hosts a public ritual, food drive and provides press releases and information to encourage positive media coverage.

While largely a venue for promoting Paganism, the Pagan Harvest Festival hosted in Hamilton, Ontario also provides space for other alternative religions and spiritualities to share their voice.  In previous years they’ve hosted workshops on Thelema, ceremonial magick, and last year I presented an Introduction to Chaos Magick.

The Chairperson, Amanda Hyde, along with a host of excellent people, always puts together an amazing day.  There will be workshops throughout the day, musical entertainers, at least five public rituals, information tables on niche esoteric subjects, great vendors, concluding with a performance by the ever-impressive Dragon Ritual Drummers.

While Selena Fox will be the main attraction, (and Brendan Myers, and the bellydancers, and, well, everyone) I’ll also be there giving a workshop titled Magickal Philosophy 101, and hosting the Chaos Magick information table.

Hamilton’s Pagan Pride festivities happen in Gage Park on Saturday, September 13th, 2008 (click here for directions), and Toronto’s Pagan Pride Day is being held in Wilket Creek Park on September 6th, 2008 (click here for directions).

If there’s an event in your area (see Where for a list of events by region), I highly recommend checking it out, Pagan or not.

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Workshop at Hamilton Pagan Pride Day

Wishing all of you a very merry long weekend! 

I’ve already gone sailing.

• Michelle Belanger launched a new website in August called the Twilight Path, named after her upcoming book Walking the Twilight Path: A Gothic Book of the Dead (Llewellyn, October 2008).  The co-host of the popular Shadowdance Podcast introduces a new podcast: Twilight Path Studies with Jackie Williams.  The first six podcasts have already been released.

• Plutonica.net posted Mogg Morgan’s take on the British OTO trademark case in July. Read more in the post titled “OTO Matters” which reprints the original with more detail and follow up his blog Mandrake.

• John Crow writes about what being a Thelemite means to him in “The Sacred and the Profane” published in his blog Treasure House of Pearls.

• The British historian and author of The Triumph of the Moon Ronald Hutton was interviewed by Gary Lachman for the Independant.co.uk.  In “Ronald Hutton - Wicca and other invented traditions“, Hutton talks about his latest book, The Druids, released earlier this year in May.  Had I known it would have been on my reading list earlier.

• Jason Pitzl-Waters writes about “High Priest of British White Witches” Kevin Carlyon. In “Living God in a Red Bathrobe” posted on The Wild Hunt, Pitzl-Waters give a comic account of Carlyon’s spectacular antics, such as “exorcising” the spirit of Aleister Crowley.  Really.

• In “Is That a Real Reality, or Did You Make It Up Yourself?” published in Reality Sandwich, Steven Taylor explores themes such as “Is art merely illustrative of cultural conditions, or does it play a role in motivating cultural shift? ” through music and language.

Reality Sandwich is a great webzine which attracts and publishes many talented writers on a variety of alternative subjects.  Five weeks running they’ve been included in Saturday Signal - I highly encourage you to subscribe to their RSS feed if you haven’t yet.  (While you’re at it, subscribe to ours!) 

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Saturday Signal: Twilight, OTO, Thelema, Pagan historian, Pagan fool and real realities

The  comic, titled “The Marvel: A Biography of Jack Parsons“, is written by Richard Carbonneau and illustrated by Robin Simon.  The story follows Parsons’ life closely, beginning with his childhood and adolescence, carrying through to adulthood. 

A new essay by Parsons was published by Teitan Press in June, also reproducing “Freedom is a Two Edged Sword” in Three Essays on Freedom, and now a new biographical comic.  The beginnings of a Parsons revival?

Via Technoccult.

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New biographical comic about Jack Parsons

To commemorate the event, a book release party will be held on that day in Historic Pioneer Square at the Rodriguez Guerra Art Studio where publisher William Kiesel will be signing.

A description of the book from the Ouroboros Press blog, The Serpent Bites Its Tail:

Picatrix Volume Two contains the 3rd and 4th books of Ghayat Al-Hakim and will complete the English translation. It is a larger book than volume one and contains much in the way of the practical working of astral and talismanic magic. Planetary and Zodiacal magic and full instructions for invoking the related spirits are provided along with all the requisite materials needed; stones, plants, inks, colors, incenses, talismans and the invocations.

In addition to this are many anecdotes relating to Arabic and pre-Islamic magical lore, including the writings of Ibn Wahshija, the Nabataeans, Sabians, Chaldeans and Assyrians. Of particular note is the magical plant and mineral lore from the Nabataean Agriculture, which portray ancient practices of pagan Iraq.

The trade cloth edition will be , and the deluxe black leather edition limited to 500 copies will run 0.

For more information and to order, see the Ouroboros Press blog.

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Ouroboros Press to release volume two of the Picatrix in October

Recently on a forum someone inquired as to whether there were any “world renowned” LHP practitioners “like what Phil Hine is for chaos magick”.  This struck me as odd on at least two accounts.

Certainly, Phil Hine has written several well received books about chaos magick (namely Condensed Chaos and Prime Chaos), but why does Hine, for this person, serve to represent chaos magick?

Within the admittedly niche subject of chaos magick there are a variety of influential authors who have published a number of excellent books on the subject, such as its founders Ray Sherwin and Peter Carroll, as well as Lionel Snell (under various pseudonyms) and Stephen Mace, to name a few.  Why was Phil Hine singled out?

Is it the relative scarcity of available books/material on the subject that lead to his fame?  The simple ease of his writing style?  Or perhaps it his early and active participation in ‘zines, mailing lists, his website?

On another blog, Experiments of Magicians, Aleister Crowley is a recurrent target for Taylor Ellwood, who writes:

My original issue with Crowley essentially boils down to this: If after seventy years since his death, Crowley still represents the pinnacle of occultism, then occultism as a discipline hasn’t advanced at all, which then brings up the question as to why any of us even bother practicing magic at all, if all we’re trying to do is emulate him.

It’s only been sixty years, and I don’t think “emulate” is quite the right word, but it remain that here Crowley is viewed as the “pinnacle of occultism”.

Crowley certainly left a trail: mountaineering records, serving as the prophet of a newly defined religion, authoring more than fifty books on magick, as well as poetry, plays, political and philosophical commentary; further, he left various scandals in his wake.  It’s easy to see where the initial infamy arose, and the endurance?

Ellwood frequently laments that his favourite authors are not half so well known.  Why isn’t anyone talking, writing, lecturing about them, teaching their works?

I don’t have resolutions for the questions above.  Hine and Crowley are wildly different.  “World renown” and the distinction of being the “pinnacle of occultism” seem abstract, but the weight of authority carried is tenable.  It’s a curious game.

I might have an answer, though, in regards to well known (if not quite world renown) LHP practitioners.  Don Webb springs immediately to mind, and the late Christopher Hyatt likely qualifies.  Anton LaVey and the current head of the Church of Satan, Peter Gilmore. Also the head of the Temple of Set, Michael Aquino.  Stephen Sennitt, certainly.

Where do these names lead?  Wouldn’t a recommendation for specific works to study, biographies to read, people to practice with be more useful than name dropping?

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“Celebrity” occultists

This has been a crazy week: camping on the weekend, end of another fiscal quarter at work entailing many late nights at the office, treated with a delightful time at Cirque du Soleil’s Saltimbanco yesterday, and I now find myself playing Internet catch-up this weekend in preperation for another busy weekend come Labour Day.

• Meta-Magick author Philip H. Farber asks “What makes the character of Ganesh recognizable to worshipers as a god…?” in “Gods, Demons and Imaginary Friends“, published on Reality Sandwich yesterday.  Farber looks at the way we understand disincarnate entities in relation to the self, and creating them.  With exercises!

• William Dalrymple, writing for The New Yorker, highlights the distressing nature of modern worship of Yellamma in India, contrasting medieval devadasis with their modern counterparts in a piece titled “Serving the Goddess“.  Via Technoccult.

• In a brief post on Key 64 yesterday, author James Curcio announced that his second novel Fallen Nation (reviewed on Plutonica.net here) was optioned by Invictus Films and SB Productions.  Invictus Films is run by president and creative director Alexander Emmert.  According to the Invictus Films website “there are rumors that Emmert hopes to shoot the film in South Africa in early 2009.”  Best of luck to James on this project.

• Cthulhu Crochet and Cousins is an endearingly nerdy blog begun late January of this year.  It showcases odd crochet projects from fandom (Dr. Horrible, anyone?), and offers crochet patterns for Cthulhu figures (Cthulhu and Tiny Cthulhu) and monsters (Bartlby, the Baby Rat Creature and Bunnicula).  Horrifyingly cute.

• Finally, over at Mishkan ha-Echad, Dean Wilson, inspired by Plutonica.net’s Saturday Signal, has created his own weekly round-up, the first of which was posted today.  For those of you who just can’t get enough, check it out here: “Weekly Roundup: Dangers, Sex, & Rock N’ Roll“.  (PS: I’m not a guy.)

With this hectic week drawing to a close Plutonica.net will resume its regular schedule on Monday.

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Saturday Signal: Imaginary friends, sacred sex, Fallen Nation, Cthulhu crochet, and another round up

In our first Saturday Signal Beth asked “how our “fun day” (Saturday) got named after the least fun god/planet of the week”.  Last week we looked at one possible reason, and Gesigewigus commented on how the planetary hours align nicely with the days of the week:

To figure out a planetary hour (as they were used before the invention of a 60 minute hour), you would take the time from sunrise and sunset and divide it in twelve, or from sunset to sunrise to get the night hours. To figure out what planet rules the hour, you take the day (Sunday for example) and the ruling planet (the Sun), and that is the planet that rules the first hour of the day. The planets cycle in a pattern based on their apparent speed of motion in the sky, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, a pattern familiar to anyone who knows their QBLH or ceremonial magick. So the first hour (Sunrise hour) of Sunday, is the Hour of the Sun, the next hour is the Hour of Venus, then Mercury, then Moon, then Saturn, etc. etc.

If you start with Sunday, go through 24 hours, cycling the planets, when you get the sunrise hour of the next day, it is ruled by the Moon, and is Monday. Follow the 24 hours cycling the planets in order, and again, for the next day at sunrise hour Mars (Tuesday).

This makes a strange kind of sense, and I think we’re closing in, though I still don’t understand why this seemed like a reasonable way to calculate time.  It seems unnecessarily complicated.

If you want to figure out what planetary hour you’re reading this, put away your abacus, and check out Lunarium.co.uk for a schedule of today and tomorrow’s planetary hours.  (The default city is Glasglow, so if your sun rises in another city, select it from the drop down list on the right.)  Neat.

• In “Religion and Insanity“, published on Reality Sandwich, Jay Michaelson writes about the challenges facing the views of a once-hardcore sceptic to someone more “open”, all while acknowledging that “openness still has its limits”.  Michaelson discusses a fence-sitting that many of us are familiar with, the irony of “trying to avoid making the “insane” choice” and driving oneself crazy in the process.  It’s a great piece.

• Grant Morrison (author of The Invisibles) is interviewed by A. David Lewis for Publishers Weekly. In the aptly titled “Grant Morrison Talks Comics, Magic, Life and Death” Morrison discusses these very things, and yet, amazing, the subject of drugs never comes up.  Perhaps it’s just assumed?

• Sincerus Renatus in Gyllene Gryningen has posted “An apology of Mathers“, which aims to defend the eccentric magician¹ and his significance in putting together the Golden Dawn material. It’s a gossipy piece, certainly, but it touches upon an understanding of the foundational core of the Golden Dawn system.  Dean Wilson responds in his blog Mishkan ha-Echad in “Mathers - Hero or Villain?“

• Leisa ReFalo hosts the excellent podcast Tarot Connection, and in a recent episode she describes, in detail, how to design and prepare a hand made deck.  See “Episode 85: Hand Crafting Decks” to download the podcast.  ReFalo’s always handy show notes also suggest supplies, list methods, and a pdf handhout.

This post was made possible by the magick of Wordpress.  I’m actually camping right now, I left Friday night for Georgian Bay.  I’m probably enjoying the beach, or roasting vegan marshmallows over an open fire, or doing some other uncharacteristicly outdoorsy thing.  Which means I may be a few days behind in my replies, but fear not, reply I shall.

Once again, if you find something weird, cool or somehow noteworthy, please post it here, or e-mail me about it. If you’re pro-promotion, include your name and website for extra credit.

Have fun, kids!

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Saturday Signal: Insanity, Grant Morrison, MacGregor Mathers, and tarot