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

In the realm of the planetary spheres my vote this week must go to Mars for the most gorgeous landscape. Check out these Martian dunes on BoingBoing. Absolutely stunning.

• Rob, in Another Nickel in the Machine, writes about the early career of occult writer Colin Wilson in “Hampstead Heath and the Rise and Fall of the author Colin Wilson“. It’s a wonderfully photo-rich piece. (Who knew Wilson was such a looker in his youth?)

• Chas Clifton, in his blog Letters from Hardscrabble Creek, wrote an interesting post recently considering whether or not contemporary Pagans could be considered indigenous. His answer is no, and his reasons make sense. The comments section breaks it down further, asking some interesting questions.

• Nicole Pasulka interviewed Peter Ross for TheMorningNews.org. Ross took a series of photographs of “William Burroughs’s Stuff“, “a selection of weird, touching, and often unexpected possessions found in Burroughs’s windowless New York City apartment, preserved since his death in 1997.” It’s an odd collection.

• In Magic of the Ordinary, Peregrin has written an excellent post titled “Golden Dawn Blogs and Tradition” that covers more than it implies. Peregrin’s summary of the commentary surrounding one’s Holy Guardian Angel, for example, is spot on. Check it out.

• LAShTAL.com has the latest catalogue from Starfire, Kenneth Grant‘s publishing house. Check it out for titles which have recently been issued, and what’s coming later in 2010. Several reprints, but some new material too, including a compilation of two grimoires by Austin Osman Spare.

I’m trying out delicious.com, a social bookmarking tool. It looks a little more complicated than the last time I logged in – they seem to have added a ton of new features in the past year.

This is to replace the 902834029834 some odd tabs I currently leave open in Firefox for compiling these Saturday Signal posts, but this little laptop, she cannae take it anymore. So, I’m experimenting once again with delicious. (There’s even a Firefox add-on for it.)

One of the great things about it is that you can tag your bookmarks and share them with other people. So, for example, if you tag a site “plutonica” I will be notified. Why is that so nifty? Because it makes it really easy to share cool sites.

If you use delicious, and you want to highlight something cool that you think should be included in Saturday Signal, tag it “plutonica” and I’ll add it. It’s an experiment. Let’s see how it works.

For those who are interested in stalking my path across the web, or, you know, simply getting the first crack at what may find its way into the Saturday Signal, my account there is, of course, plutopsyche.

Popularity: 6%

It should hardly seem surprising that something called “chaos magick” is constantly in flux, both in terms of what gets classed as chaos magick, and in who it attracts.

I was first introduced to the subject by some English bloke on IRC in a random Wicca chatroom who later, through a series of unlikely circumstances, became my husband. He introduced names I’d never heard of before: Austin Osman Spare, Peter J Carroll, Robert Anton Wilson – people with three names writing weird stuff.

It was refreshing. I was young, and apart from a few friends in high school, I didn’t know anyone else who was interested in magick. Until I found the chaotes, all I knew were religious Pagans who left me empty, or pedantic ceremonialists who bickered over trivia that seemed unnecessary.

From there I devoured everything I could find: Ray Sherwin, Phil Hine, Stephen Mace, Jan Fries, Steve Wilson, Ramsey Dukes, Jaq Hawkins, Hakim Bey, ye gods even Adrian Savage, simply because the word “chaos” was in the title. The books were difficult to find, expensive and experimental; the websites were raw and their authors approachable. Continue reading »

Popularity: 21%

Last year saw the re-release of Outside the Circles of Time, and earlier this year a new Typhonian musical was released based on Grant’s work.

Now, on LAShTAL.com, Starfire Publishing has announced the reprinting Kenneth Grant‘s The Magical Revival in December 2009, a deluxe edition of which will be released in January 2010.

The Magical Revival is the first volume in Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian Trilogies.

From the press release:

When the original manuscript of this book was submitted for publication, the author was told he had provided “too much material for one book”. This proved to be correct. The work here presented – in an enhanced edition – became the first volume of three Trilogies. It provides a detailed analysis of certain occult traditions which existed long before the Christian epoch, survived its persecutions and anathemas, and reappeared in recent times with renewed vigour.

The continuity of this magical current as reflected in the work of Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, Dion Fortune and others is here traced through the Tantrik Tradition of the Far East, the Sumerian Cult of Shaitan and the Draconian, Sabian, or Typhonian rites of the ‘dark’ dynasties of ancient Egypt.

The new edition will be limited to 1500 copies, with a new frontispiece, seventeen plates (some of which are new to this edition), and illustrated endpapers. The book will retail at £30.00.

The first 118 copies will comprise the deluxe edition, and will be individually numbered and signed by Kenneth and Steffi Grant and will retail for £120.

Both editions can be ordered direct from the publisher.

For full details please see the press release and LAShTAL.com.

Popularity: 8%

My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding was so last week. This week we’re all about Tales of the New Isis Lodge.

English Heretic, the producers of this fascinating new musical, describe themselves as England’s “very finest occult archaeologists, astral geographers and mystical toponymists”. They aim to “help people decode and realise the alchemical ciphers and conspiratorial interplay of the buildings and landscapes around them”.

Somehow this translates into making a 65 minute musical of “lush and occult exotica issuing from a transplutonic transmitter”.

The English Heretic blog, maintained by “Dr Champagne”, describes the musical as

Drawing its structure from the ultra decadent and ornate rituals described in Grant’s book Hecate’s Fountain English Heretic guide you through Egyptian pre-history to the fungi of Yuggoth, re-imagine flower power in an Indian Tantric idiom, describe the workings of Chinese sorcerers, realise the neither-neither hidden within the jump rhythms of Count Basie and invoke Choronzon in the Crimson Desert. Aeons in its reification and packaged in delicious artwork, stylised as a homage to Grant’s Typhonian tomes.

Wow!

The CD is £8 and can be purchased from their online shop. James of Mauve Zone Recordings is already a fan.

Spotted on LAShTAL.com, and further encouraged by Nova at The Third Mind.

Popularity: 7%

May 15th will mark the 53rd anniversary of Austin Osman Spare’s death. A short video depicting a posthumous “interview” with Spare has been produced by Jamie Gregory & Neil Dineen in commemoration.

The video is comprised of photographic stills and images of Spare’s paintings and sketches are interspersed throughout. Philip Glass‘ ‘Spaceship’ provides the soundtrack.

The “interview” is conducted via oracle, with a dice, playing cards, Beck’s and Zos Speaks!, and related through scrolling text on the screen. Questions are posed in places Spare had a connection with: the Royal Academy in Piccadilly where two paintings were exhibited in Spare’s youth, the British Museum which inspired Spare’s imagery, and the Goat Tavern he frequented with Kenneth and Steffi Grant.

For all that, the responses calculated to the questions are interesting, though this may be attributed more to Spare’s enigmatic style. Repeat answers, however, dull some some of the potency of this method for the spectator.

Amusingly, the oracle declined to answer the question “What really happened between you and Aleister Crowley?”

Following the “interview” two “new” automatic images are produced “via the menstruum of undines”, and a thankful toast of Budweiser is offered at Spare’s grave.

The twelve-minute video can be downloaded from LaShTAL.com at “An Interview with Austin Osman Spare – a commemorative video“.

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