Plutonica.net

Divination teleseminar with Erik Davis & free offer

Psyche — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:22:28 +0000

Evolver.net is hosting a teleseminar titled Divination: How to Read the Future Now.

It will feature talks by Rachel Pollack, author of one of the most comprehensive books on tarot divination, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom; VerDarLuz, an astrologer; Stephen Karcher, who’s authored several books on I Ching, including Total I Ching: Myths for Change; and John Michael Greer, a Druid and author of many books on diverse esoteric subjects, including The Art and Practice of Geomancy.¹

Erik Davis (TechGnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information) will be hosting the seminar.

Two free entries have been offered to Plutonica.net readers, so:

The first two people who e-mail me here at Plutonica.net will get this series for free.

Update: Only one spot left!

Participation in the seminar 50$US, which includes participation in each of the live calls, a recorded copy of each call to download once the call is over, participation in a special forum, and what sounds like a really nifty experience with experts in a variety of divinatory fields.

The teleseminar is hosted by Reality Sandwich (which we’ve highlighted frequently in Saturday Signal) and Evolver.net, websites run by Daniel Pinchbeck (author of Breaking Open the Head, among many other titles).

For more information see EvolverIntensive’s Divination: How to Read the Future Now.

Copyright © 2007-2009 the author and Plutonica.net.
For the original source of the content please see Plutonica.net. Also check out our sister site, the occult resource SpiralNature.com.

Divination teleseminar with Erik Davis & free offer

Footnotes:

See SpiralNature.com for Gesigewigu’s’s review of The Art and Practice of Geomancy.

Plutonica.net’s second birthday

Psyche — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:00:38 +0000

Plutonica.net was first launched on October 31st, 2007, today marks its second birthday.

It’s gone through periods of hyperactivity and lagging for months without posts, but I think we’ve entered into a decent rhythm now. I’ve found it to be quite a learning curve, despite beginning my first blog in 2001, but it’s also been a lot of fun.

Write for us!

We’ve had guest bloggers in the past, but I’d like to open the blog up to anyone who’s interested in writing for it, be it a guest post or a regular column.

We’ve submission guidelines posted, but if you’ve been reading for a few weeks or – how exciting – since the beginning, then you probably have a good idea of the sorts of things we write about here.¹

If you’re interested, all you have to do is register, or log in if you’re already registered, and write. Users who’ve had commenting accounts before have all been upgraded to Contributor status, so if you want to use the same name, by all means please do.

Past, present and future

Our layout has changed over the past two years from copious categories and tags to a more streamlined approach. As such, right now most entries fall into one of the following four designations:

Essays & Opinion, which features longer articles about current trends in occulture and essays on techniques;
News & Shiny, which highlights people, podcasts, books, art, websites – anything that may be of interest to occultniks
Our Reviews section covers book reviews, oracle reviews, film reviews and media reviews of all types;
and last but not least, Saturday Signal is our occasional links round-up of the new and nifty that didn’t quite warrant a dedicated post of its own.

I like our current set up, but there’s always room for improvement, and I’d like to know more about what you’d like to see on Plutonica.net. What are we not covering that you want see, or, what are we doing that you would like more of? What sucks and should be reduced? Or perhaps there are layout issues that could be improved upon?

It’s Plutonica.net’s birthday. Give it to ‘er hard.

Oh, happy days

So, this is our second birthday.

Here in Toronto the leaves are falling and my street is orange with leaves I can’t identify because I’m a city girl.The houses are decorated in delightfully spooky ways. After attending a round table at the IFOA this afternoon, I plan to dress as a goth pirate and scare children who would extort from me my husband’s candy. It will be excellent.

I also intend to sit down and finish a nostalgia piece about chaos magick for Monday’s Essay & Opinion post. I intend continue with this blog for the foreseeable future. Often blogs come and go, but I enjoy this. I like the conversations it starts, both on this blog and off, on IM, on Facebook, on Twitter.

Thanks for making this worth doing.

Copyright © 2007-2009 the author and Plutonica.net.
For the original source of the content please see Plutonica.net. Also check out our sister site, the occult resource SpiralNature.com.

Plutonica.net’s second birthday

Footnotes:

I keep saying “we”, but aside from our fab guest bloggers, this has always been a one-woman operation. “We” somehow makes it seem like a bigger op, n’est pas? Oh pretension! Let’s be a real “we”. It’ll be great!

Myths, samhainophobia and possession

Psyche — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:05:51 +0000

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.¹

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.

Copyright © 2007-2009 the author and Plutonica.net.
For the original source of the content please see Plutonica.net. Also check out our sister site, the occult resource SpiralNature.com.

Myths, samhainophobia and possession

Footnotes:

I’m in it too! See “Ignorance – The Real Enemy” my ++heart atheism response to Donald Tyson’s paranoid delusions.

Latest Weiser Antiquarian catalogue available

Psyche — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:18:20 +0000

Weiser Antiquarian regularly publishes catalogues of newly acquired material. Today they announced their 65th catalogue, which features rare and secondhand books about magick, with dedicated sections on Eliphas Levi and chaos magick.

There’s always great stuff, and I was really excited to see a dedicated section on chaos magick…until I checked the catalogue and discovered that I already own all the titles represented.

However, for those of you looking to build your libraries,¹ definitely check it out, as well as the rest of their stock. There are usually quite a few good finds.

Copyright © 2007-2009 the author and Plutonica.net.
For the original source of the content please see Plutonica.net. Also check out our sister site, the occult resource SpiralNature.com.

Latest Weiser Antiquarian catalogue available

Footnotes:

I always am. It’s a compulsive habit. A good one, I must insist.

Atheism, Donald Tyson and Aleister Crowley

Psyche — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:14:23 +0000

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, & Others¹ 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.

Copyright © 2007-2009 the author and Plutonica.net.
For the original source of the content please see Plutonica.net. Also check out our sister site, the occult resource SpiralNature.com.

Atheism, Donald Tyson and Aleister Crowley

Footnotes:

I mentioned it when I learned it came out. I’m very excited.

Hey There Cthulhu

Psyche — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:00:34 +0000

The Eben Brooks Band riffs off The Plain White Ts’ “Hey There Delilah” and the result is “Hey There Cthulhu” a catchy tune with adorable lyrics:

Hey there Cthulhu, I’ve been studying your gospel
The Necronomicon, it gives me nightmares something awful
Where I see
The death of all reality
It fills me with glee

It’s a lovely song.

Turns out, The Eben Brooks band has a CD of Cthulhu-inspired music available for 5$US, sweetly titled O, R’lyeh? Iä, R’lyeh!

Video spotted on The Art of Darkness.

Copyright © 2007-2009 the author and Plutonica.net.
For the original source of the content please see Plutonica.net. Also check out our sister site, the occult resource SpiralNature.com.

Hey There Cthulhu

Fake a dead fairy

Psyche — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:00:12 +0000

A mummified fairy

So, Jenna, a person who is most certainly awesome, wrote about a dead fairy hoax perpetrated on April Fool’s in 2007.

She then decided to make her own dead fairy.

She then posted a “Doom It Yourself” how-to with the materials required, recommendations of where to go to acquire them, and step-by-step instructions – with pictures! – on how to achieve this.

In Jenna’s finished version pictured here, the placard is describes this creature as a “Common Wood Fairy/Oreades silvestrus/Natural mummification”.

I insist each of you make your own dead fairies and display them online. ‘Tis the season.

I love the Internet.

Copyright © 2007-2009 the author and Plutonica.net.
For the original source of the content please see Plutonica.net. Also check out our sister site, the occult resource SpiralNature.com.

Fake a dead fairy

Gnostic texts, an eerie Beast, 2012 and lasers

Psyche — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:00:26 +0000

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

Questions this week, both esoteric and secular – well, sort of.

Does Dr John Dee’s image need “rescuing”? Who knew film critic Roger Ebert cared anything for the I Ching, tarot, and “certified flywheel” Aleister Crowley? Is anyone really sympathetic toward “Jedis”?

Why is Creation – a film about the life of Charles Darwin – deemed “too controversial” for American audiences? How is this possible in 2009? Why would this ever seem doubtful?

Jordan’s Stratford’s “How to Read Gnostic Texts” outlines the fundamentals for a comprehensive understanding of any period writing, especially of an esoteric nature. Take the time to read source texts. It’s essential.

According to JFrater on Listverse.com, a recording of Aleister Crowley’s voice ranks fourth in a list of Top Ten Eerie Recordings, falling behind truly eerie recordings of the December 26th earthquake (#3), a missing cosmonaut (#2) and a 911 call on 9/11 (#1). All recordings are available for download.

Mark Stevenson writes “2012 isn’t the end of the world, Mayans insist“ Can we believe them? Yes. I’m as much a fan of apocalypse mythos as the next gal, but seriously darlings, isn’t 2012 a bit much?

Science shoots lasers at yoga masters and is somewhat surprised by the results in an article linked to by Mind Hacks‘ Vaughan in “Strung out on lasers“.Which is just kinda awesome.

That’s it for this week, kids.

Gnostic texts, an eerie Beast, 2012 and lasers

Too busy for ghosts

Psyche — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:56:31 +0000

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.¹ 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.²

Lecouteux attributes their decline to “specialists” and the anonymity of death: “people no longer die at home, surrounded by family, but in hospitals or hospices, from where they are taken to stone gardens on the periphery of the community of the living…”³ Our changing attitudes towards death have lead to an end: “the door to the otherworld has closed, and the beyond keeps our elders for eternity.”⁴ Whether one takes a spiritual or psychological view on this, I’m inclined to agree.

Sean Thomas wrote a piece for the Guardian back in 2004 that spoke of “the mysterious death of the paranormal”, noting the decline in incidents of reporting of hauntings, Nessie sightings, abductions and other weird stuff.

Tony Cornell, vice-president of the UK’s Society for Psychical Research, put it this way:

I personally believe the decline in hauntings may simply be because people haven’t got time to see ghosts any more. These days people are always rushing around, playing computer games, surfing the net, and such activities aren’t great for experiencing apparitions.⁵

And yet, earlier today BoingBoing linked to the website scienceofscams.org, which purports to explain the “secret science” (secret? seriously? no.) behind various “paranormal” claims. I’m having difficulty determining whether it’s aimed at children or just the hyper social media-aware. Perhaps both.

The videos are hosted by “mentalist/magician” Derren Brown and Kat Akingbade who fills the role of The Scientist. (Kind of like a British Bill Nye tag team.) But I suppose the larger question is, do things like the “psi wheel” really need debunking anymore?

On the hand we have an obvious decline in everyday belief in the “paranormal”, on the other we continue to see shows like this one mocking a credulous public. But where is this credulous public?

Too busy for ghosts

Footnotes:

Read the review of The Return of the Dead on SpiralNature.com.
Claude Lecouteux, The Return of the Dead, p. 228
ibid., p. 229
ibid., p. 229
Guardian.co.uk, “What’s happened to the weird?“

Lovecraft’s Madness Out of Time in Seattle

Psyche — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:47:07 +0000

Seattle’s Open Circle Theater¹ is putting on a show of H.P. Lovecraft’s Madness Out of Time: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, as adapted by local playwrights Dustin Engstrom and Ron Sandahl.

From the show summary:

Something is desperately wrong with Charles Dexter Ward. Always a delver into the past, his search for info about an ancestor lead ultimately to madness, horror, and perhaps the extermination of all life on the earth.

The show will run from October 9th to November 14th, Thursday to Saturday at 7:30 pm, and on Sundays at 4 pm.

Apparently they do this sort of thing every year. Nifty. I so want to hear how this turns out.

Spotted on John Griogair Bell’s blog.

Lovecraft’s Madness Out of Time in Seattle

Footnotes:

They’re American, they spell it that way.