Blog Archives
Rerun Rand
I came across an interesting article earlier today. With the rise of Trump I thought the religious right and the Ayn Rand extremists in the Republican party had been ousted. Unfortunately, the fake Christians seem as empowered as ever, and according to this piece, Ayn Rand has never held more sway over D.C….Here’s the word [...]
Glenn Gone
Last Friday I was posting the latest From the Archives pick when I read about Glenn O’Brien’s passing in The Guardian. Here’s the word… Glenn O’Brien, the New York cultural figure who was an author, musician, magazine editor, style guru, TV host and key figure at Andy Warhol’s Factory, has died aged 70. Described by [...]
Moore’s Mages
Earlier this week I came across a cool post on the Confidentials site that featured comic book legend/sorcerer supreme Alan Moore talking about the history of Western esoteric traditions and giving a list of his top five mystics and magicians. Here’s a bit about the poet/artist/gnostic prophet William Blake… Blake summed up the artistic, anarchic [...]
Remembering Rosaleen
This year we commemorate 60 years of Rosaleen Norton’s art and pioneering occultism. Norton was an Australian witch and a visionary painter born on October 2, 1917. We’re jumping the gun by remembering Norton’s contributions to art and magick at the beginning of spring, but maybe we’ll plan multiple posts counting down to Norton’s autumn [...]
Shock Now
Following John Berger’s January death there’s been a resurgence of interest in his 1972 BBC television series Ways of Seeing. The series addresses the various modes of representation that Berger observed in visual art along with an exploration of what I would call the psychology of observation. It’s deep, interesting stuff, and even rather revolutionary [...]
Sunshine Supermen
I just watched the The Sunshine Makers documentary. The 2015 flick tells the story of two idealistic young men in the 1960′s. The pair couldn’t be more different, but they both shared a common goal: to manufacture and distribute a massive amount of LSD, thoroughly convinced that the insights provided by the drug would create [...]
Cartoon Crime
I spent some time at the Nashville airport last week where I discovered a paperback copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov sitting on a sectional near one of the gates in a bustling concourse. There was a boarding pass inside the book so I took to them both to the nearest gate in case [...]
From the Abyss
Charles Stanfeld Jones was two men in one: On one hand Jones was a London accountant born in 1886. On the other, he was a brilliant ceremonial magician whom Aleister Crowley recognized as his “magical child” when Jones shared his brilliant insights into Crowley’s own The Book of the Law. Jones went on to found [...]
Hail Hicks
Bill Hicks is probably the greatest comedian of Generation X. The only competition for that title might be Chris Rock, and both of them are automatic candidates for any top ten list of all-time-best stand-ups. Yesterday we marked the 23rd anniversary of Hicks’ death from pancreatic cancer on February 26, 1994. Of course, Hicks was [...]
Black Spy Story
I love a tense spy story, and there’s always another take on the genre in the next book on the shelf or the next film on the screen. Of course, many of these books and films are based on real life heroes whose spycraft outed enemy spies, uncovered covert plans or even “eliminated” human targets. [...]
