By Psyche | June 7, 2010
I don’t usually post about new tarot decks, since they spring up almost daily, but the Science Tarot struck me as particularly interesting.
Five artists were each responsible for a suit, and their different styles seem to be reflected in the deck’s artwork.
They’ve turned traditional tarot imagery on its head in innovative ways. As the creators describe it:
In the Science Tarot deck, the traditional tarot suits – wands, pentacles, swords, and cups – explore different realms of science by using real world examples from astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics and more.
As an underlying structure for each suit, Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is adapted to tell each suit’s unique story from Ace to Ten.
The deck began life as an art installation at Burning Man in 2003, then consisting of only the major arcana, and has since evolved into a complete tarot deck.
The deck’s official launch is scheduled for September 23rd in San Francisco, details here.
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By Psyche | December 16, 2009
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 »
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By Psyche | October 16, 2009
Sorry, no time.
Hallowe’en’s but a few short weeks away, and it’s supposed to be the time of the dead, when “the veils are thinnest ‘tween worlds”. Yet, outside obvious fiction, when was the last time you heard of a young ghost?
Recently I reviewed Claude Lecouteux’s The Return of the Dead
for SpiralNature.com. In it, the author delves into Germanic and Scandinavian folklore to discover their pre-Christian beliefs about death and the afterlife, focusing on ghosts and revenants in particular.
He was writing of a time when they were taken to be a very real phenomena, yet for the mainstream, this no longer holds. He writes:
In terms of evolution, having suffered the outrages of time and history, revenants have lost almost everything that distinguished them: their physicality and their powers. They no longer kill or threaten, nor do they perform domestic tasks. They are no longer the tutelary or wicked spirits of an earlier age. Ordinarily, they appear mute, using their eyes or gestures to express what they wish to say, but they no longer have the power to express themselves with words because they are no longer of this world.
Lecouteux attributes their decline to Continue reading »
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By Cole Tucker | September 19, 2009
Saturday Signal: sifting the signal from the noise of the Internet’s occultural cacophony.
Science and Spirituality collide this week in multi-media extravaganza, brought to you by guest poster Cole Tucker.
- H+, a commercial Transhumanist magazine, edited by R.U. Sirius, has its Fall issue out. Essays include Erik Davis on SF show Dollhouse, investigating the transhumanist aspects of psychedelic pioneers like Timothy Leary and Terrence McKenna, possibilities of eliminating pain through genetic manipulation and the neuroscience of spirituality.
- Royal Art News reports that two weeks ago, the U.S. Army deployed its first Buddhist chaplain. Novelty must be accelerating, just last month the U.S. was a Hindu nation.
- Ego Death and Self-Control Cybernetics has months worth. Learn about the entheogen theory of religion, how the Dark Ages never happened, and why prog rock could be the West’s last great Wisdom Tradition.
If you feel like digging signal from the noise
Nothing but noise…
Finally, Psyche made the return trip safely! Plutonica.net should be operating normally as soon as she has rested up.
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By Psyche | January 13, 2008
A man who believed he bore the “mark of the beast” used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911, authorities said.
SFGate.com, “Man Cuts Off, Microwaves His Own Hand“
The man thoughtfully put a tourniquet on his arm before cutting off his hand so he wouldn’t bleed to death. It’s not clear whether the man had a history of mental illness or if this is a fun new thing for him. Kind of reminds me of Evil Dead.
Lest you begin to think it’s only Christians who spark bizarre news stories, an American scientist with Frankenstein-like leanings has developed a brain in a jar derived from rat brain cells that is capable of flying a virtual airplane.
A Florida scientist has developed a “brain” in a glass dish that is capable of flying a virtual fighter plane and could enhance medical understanding of neural disorders such as epilepsy.
CNN.com, “‘Brain’ in a dish flies flight simulator“
The world is a very strange place.
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