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

With all the news I post about space, how ’bout our home planet?  No, not Pluto this time: Earth. Apparently it’s missing two billion years. Kind of. Well, we are anyway, in that we have no idea what happened for that span of time. Theories abound.

Also, the solar system is about two million years older than we thought.

Science is cool.

• In her blog Know Thyself, T. Thorn Coyle reminds us that commitment and consistency are important in any practice, whether mundane or spiritual, in “Let’s Get Engaged“. You really do earn points just for showing up.

• Charlie Jane Anders asks, “Could self-aware cities be the first forms of artificial intelligence?” on io9. To which we respond, “the first” might be a stretch (servitors, anyone? or egregores, gods, etc?), but that cities can and do become sentient certainly seems reasonable. Let’s just keep an eye out for Skynet, ok?

• US Games, purveyors of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck (amongst others), now blogs! Fool Stop Tarot Blog is run by Janet, their social media person, who also maintains their Twitter account and Facebook page. Everyone’s so Web 2.0.

• Sannion (H. Jeremiah Lewis) writes in The House of Vines, “Speaking about the unspeakable“, that the old mysteries are dead, and that’s ok. We can’t reconstruct the past as it was, and that’s fine. Learning what was is great, but it’s not where we are now. Live life. Great stuff.

I had tons more links to share, but time intervened, so next week’s Signal will likely be double-sized. You’re welcome.

As always, if you come across anything nifty, please share it in the comments, or if you use delicious tag it “plutonica” and we’ll take a look. Thanks!

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

i09 is a fun blog – their tagline is “We come from the future”, which seems to mean they’ll cover anything science, sci-fi, and other geek stuff of that ilk.

A recent post titled “Jupiter became king of the planets by devouring a ‘Super Earth’” caught my eye because, well, it’s a great title, and it seems the planets’ names were more appropriate than the ancients may have realized:

New discoveries suggest Jupiter and Saturn learned a lesson from their mythological namesakes, “eating” any planet that opposed them.

For more on this check their source, NewScientist.

More cool news? Check out “Neptune will soon complete its first orbit around the sun since its discovery in 1846“. And by “soon” they mean yesterday. They come from the future, but Pluto’s far, it takes time for news to reach us. Forget it. Happy (Earth) birthday, Neptune!

With that, here’s your occultural linkage for this week.

• Jack Faust has a new blog, still called Dionysian Atavism but now located on its own shiny domain at eldritchinfluence.net. He writes well and with a depth and breadth that’s unusual in occultural blogging. See “The Tradition of Secrecy” for a recent gem.

• Christina‘s piece on Enfolding.org titled “Letter to a Young Gay Man on Celebrating Beltane” is excellent. She writes, “Maybe you, like me, have no call to create an internal heterosexual nuclear family with wedding bells, bride and groom” and then sets the record straight: “Beltane is and was the joy of desire of the body fulfilled in sex.” Hear, hear.

• Ryan Hurd writes about “Lucid Dreaming as Shamanic Consciousness” for Reality Sandwich. Using films such as Avatar and Inception as a launching point, he discusses our desire to become “Conquistadors of Consciousness”, and what that looks like in different cultures, on drugs, and what it all means.

• Johnny Rapture suggests a re-purposing of public space in “Public Statues, Pagan Shrines“, on his blog The Great Tininess offering specific suggestions with some great pictures. Sounds like an excellent idea.

• Mark Vernon, on the Guardian.co.uk, discusses the new etchings on display at Tate Britain in “William Blake’s picture of God“. A fascinating portrait of Blake’s thoughts on gods and religion.

As always, if you come across anything nifty, please share it in the comments, or if you use delicious tag it “plutonica” and we’ll take a look. Thanks!

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

Scheduling posts is a really useful WordPress feature, because by the time you read this I will be in a remote cabin in the woods and have no Internet connectivity whatsoever.

So, using the powers of technology and foresight, I have prepared a list of signals for your education and amusement.

Enjoy:

• Mary K. Greer. displays a new photo of Pamela Colman Smith, the artist behind The Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, occulture’s most popular tarot deck. Photos of Smith are rare, so this is interesting news.

• In a similar vein, Erik Davis writes about “The Comic Book of Thoth” for HiLobrow, which gives an overview of this deck and a brief history of tarot divination.

• In his blog Dionysian Atavism, Jack Faust talks about the origins of his pseudonymic surname in “The Fortunes of Faust“

Ok, this one could possibly classify as noise, but it seems pretty cool…if you can sort it out:

• On Laughing Squid Scott Beale shares a new wonder: Monkey-Pirate-Robot-Ninja-Zombie, an updated version of rock-paper-scissors. Do try this at home.

That’s it for this week, kids. I hope I don’t get eaten by a bear.

As always, if you come across anything nifty, please share it in the comments, or if you use delicious tag it “plutonica” and we’ll take a look. Thanks!

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

Hey! Good news! We may have an extra year!

That’s right, the civilization as we know it won’t end until 2013. Breath that sigh of relief.

NASA predicts that the sun will wake up “from a deep slumber” which will create massive solar storms which will disrupt communication devices and electronics causing major problems around the world.

This could seriously impact my vacation plans on Titan.

• Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve has created Circle Cemetery, which is “America’s first National Pagan natural burial ground and contemporary Green cemetery to be platted and recorded in Wisconsin”, reports Jason Pitzl-Waters on The Wild Hunt. This is something we talked a bit about at the Toronto Pagan Conference a few years ago. I’m glad to see a dedicated space for Pagan burials.
  

• In a recent feature on Reality Sandwich Patrick Harpur reprints “Soul an Daimon“, an excerpt from his book A Complete Guide to the Soul. Angles, personal daemons, ka, muse – a variety of whats and whyfores regarding the soul and its function. Neat stuff.

• Nick Spencer at Guardian.co.uk writes that Richard Dawkins would like to set up an atheist free-thinking school. Somewhat ironically, Spencer seems to have his doubts about the viability of such an institution.

• Jason Miller, in his blog Strategic Sorcery, describes “How to make a Psionic Wand from a Toy Sonic Screwdriver“. Cool. Doctor Who fans take note.

On a more personal note, thanks for your patience these past few weeks. Things have been hectic as I recently resigned from my job and there were a lot of things to wrap up before my departure. But as of today I am officially a free agent, and a more regular posting schedule will resume.

I’ll keep you up to day on my progress when I have news that relates to occultural subjects. At the moment one of my projects is a book on tarot which has been in progress for a few years. It’ll be nice to finally be able to devote full time hours to finishing this up.

As always, if you come across anything nifty, please share it in the comments, or if you use delicious tag it “plutonica” and we’ll take a look. Thanks!

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

Big news of a personal nature: last Friday I quit my job. I gave notice until the 25th, but after that I’m a free agent. Very exciting.

In the last Saturday Signal, I noted that Titan might make a nice vacation spot someday. It turns out visitors may find themselves interacting with the locals,  alien methane-based lifeforms. There’s still that little problem of it being utterly uninhabitable by humans, of course, but still: neat-o.

On to the linkage, also largely travel-themed:

• The Lovecraft News Network posted in “Lovecraft and National Geographic” advises that the National Geographic has created a travel guide of places featured in Lovecraft’s stories, written by Edoardo Molinelli. Check out places featured in “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, Miskatonic University, and other relevant New England sites. Travel information, photos of historical sites and weather information available. What a cool idea.

• “Spare Places“,  a video uploaded by squareye, is a psychogeographical guide to Austin Osman Spare’s London. The camera is shaky and kind of washed out, but it gives an idea of Spare’s London, with context and quotes from other writers. Video found in the comments section to a post on Rune Soup by V.V.F. Click here for Part Two.

• Khephra offers thoughts on the eschaton, in “What is the eschaton and why does it need hastening?” on Sophrosyne Radical. Dude may not always respect chaotes, but I still think he’s secretly one on the inside.

I read my first Hermann Hesse in December, and I’ve been dipping in to his other works over the past few months. I haven’t yet picked up Siddhartha or Steppenwolf, the two for which he is perhaps most famous. I’m saving them.

He’s one of those authors I read and think where have you been all my life? I would have adored them more had I read them as a teenager I think, but they’re still great now.

At the moment I’m reading The Journey to the East, in which the narrator describes a remarkable ’round the world trip with an unnamed secret society called here the League. Each member has a specific goal in joining the League, each different, but united in a search for beauty, truth and meaning. Regarding their destination the narrator explains:

…our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times.

Now that’s magick.

As always, if you come across anything nifty, please share it in the comments, or if you use delicious tag it “plutonica” and we’ll take a look. Thanks!

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