Saturday Signal: sifting the signal from the noise of the Internet’s occultural cacophony.

Happy Samhain, kids!

Vampires are hot, hot, hot. Except in Twilight, where they’re just creepy and bizarre. Stephen Marshe suggests this is because young straight women want to have sex with gay men, whereas Charlie Higson thinks vampires are for girls and zombies are for boys. Even ABE is getting into it with a timeline of vamp lit – things even I haven’t read.

If you find all of this worrying, you can always pick up a nineteenth century vampire killing kit. I know I’d feel safer with one. My kitchen’s always running out of garlic.

• The latest issue of the online occult magazine Rending the Veil has come out, and Patrick Dunn has contributed an essay titled “Ritual and Myth” which looks at the role of myth in our lives and what that might mean.

• Joseph Merlin Nichter wrote about “Samhainophobia vs Samhainsensationalism” in his blog WitchDoctorJoe’s RattleBone. He discusses popular reactions to Hallowe’en, his his own family’s traditions. There’s also a picture of a stone monk in a pointy hat lookin’ fab.

• In a lengthly article in Reality Sandwich Paul Levy asks “Are We Possessed?” and responds with excessive quotations from Carl  Jung. The answer to the question seems to be “Probably”.

Also, Douglas Rushkoff intends to interview Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007) on Monday. Could be interesting.

That’s it for this week, mes amis. Wear your costumes proud and practice safe hex.

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Rending the Veil is an online occult magazine. Last ish they ran a piece by Donald Tyson called “Atheism – The Real Enemy“, in which Tyson ranted about atheism, demanding Christians and Pagans band together to take up arms against what he perceives as the Atheist Threat.

It was paranoid and weird, and as an atheist and a magickian I took exception to this and, of course, responded. My response is riffs off Tyson’s, “Ignorance – The Real Enemy” and actually explains what atheism is, how it differs from agnosticism and demonstrates that atheism and magick can and do indeed co-exist peacefully. Another essay will follow in the next issue which will explore this in more detail, but this is a start.

Someone called Gray Glamer also responded with “Does Materialism Threaten Paganism?” which is also worth checking out.

Read ‘em, let me know what you think.

In other news, my copy of The Progradior Correspondence: Letters by Aleister Crowley, C. S. Jones, & Others came in yesterday, and so did a copy of Aleister Crowley: A Modern Master, by John Moore, published by Mandrake of Oxford – expect a review of the latter in the coming weeks.

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This marks the second edition of Saturday Signal, Plutonica.net’s attempt to sift signal from the noise of the Internet’s occultural cacophony.

Last week Beth (author of Sacred Sonoma) asked “how our “fun day” (Saturday) got named after the least fun god/planet of the week”.

Fun facts: Saturday was named in the second century, and is the only day of the week whose name comes from Roman mythology.  According to Wikipedia, it was “called dies Saturni (“Saturn’s Day”), through which…it entered into Old English as Sæternesdæg and gradually evolved into the word Continue reading »

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