Blog Archives
Austin Spare: Chaos and Cats
Austin Osman Spare was many people including both an enfant terrible in the London art world at the beginning of the 20th century, and one of the pioneering forerunners of contemporary occultism. Wiki has the basics… Visionary artist and mystic Austin Osman Spare, who was briefly a member of Aleister Crowley’s A∴A∴ but later broke [...]
Fishing with David Lynch
This year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the David Lynch sci-fi epic, Dune. While the film was a commercial bomb, it’s gone on to garner cult status and the theatrical release of Jodorowsky’s Dune — which tells the tale of director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed, earlier attempt to bring the Frank Herbert classic to the [...]
Speed. Spirit. Senna!
I’m posting this missive under “Occult” as anyone who’s ever seen footage of Ayrton Senna driving knows he was travelling on another plane. Last week, on what would have been the F1 driver’s 54th birthday, Senna was honored with a Google Doodle — kind of. Jalopnik explains: Over the past two days, you may have [...]
Witchboard!
Even as the internet and digital technology drag us inexorably into a faster-moving future, the wake of virtual living stirs up artifacts from the past, recontextualizing them in the frantic now. One of the best places to find the newly-turned-over flotsam and jetsam of yesteryear is on YouTube where you can watch every episode of [...]
Nine New Dead Sea Scrolls
Scholars have discovered nine new Dead Sea Scrolls that had been overlooked during the discovery of the documents in Qumran in the 1950′s. Part of the reason for the oversight might be the diminutive sizes of these new finds. Times of Israel explains: Phylacteries, known in Judaism by the Hebrew term tefillin, are pairs of leather cases [...]
The Wolfman of Brazil
If you are a regular reader or podcast listener, you won’t be surprised to find that I was immediately grabbed by recent headlines about a werewolf loose in Brazil. I’m inclined to click even the most mildly lycanthropic link and a story about a wild man-beast in a place that’s full of both tropical jungles [...]
Alan Moore on Austin Spare
On this episode of the BBC’s The Culture Show, graphic novelist Alan Moore takes us on a personal tour of magician/occultist Austin Osman Spare’s old neighborhood — stopping in the pubs where the artist showed his magical/grotesque works, and strolling a gallery exhibition of Spare’s mysterious portraits, nudes and still lifes. Stay Awake! Please subscribe [...]
Flight of the Aswang
Of all the weird creatures lurking on the shelves in my cryptozoology library, the bizarre beasts originating in the mythology of the Philippines are among the strangest. One example is the Kapre — a fuzzy, cigar smoking giant. The foul-smelling Sigbin uses its grasshopper-like legs to jump after the children it devours — it likes [...]
Satan’s Playthings
This crazy video features an insane look back on the toys and cartoons of the 1980′s by a couple of confused evangelical Christians who see the Devil in every detail. Author Phil Phillips and Pastor Gary Greenwald would be just a couple of bumbling buffoons if their brand of humorless hysteria hadn’t been part of [...]
The Horrible History of Halloween
It’s been a lot of fun spending the last month blasting this blog with profane and pitiless posts in the spirit of the season, but now Halloween is finally here! But what is Halloween? Where does our modern merrymaking come from and can the roots of our own costume and trick-or-treating traditions be traced back [...]
