Tag Archives: Occult
Hellraiser
Getting down to the last few days before we celebrate Halloween, here’s a documentary about the modern witch who brought us the most well-known system of modern witchcraft: Gardnerian Wicca, which was founded in the 1950′s by Gerald Gardner. Here’s Garner’s story from the Wiki… Born into an upper-middle-class family in Blundellsands, Lancashire, Gardner spent [...]
Manly: Mystery Master
Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy is a cornerstone book in any esoteric library worthy of the name, and Hall himself was a spiritual prodigy whose publishing and teachings helped to synthesize core ideas of Victorian spiritualism for Americans in the [...]
Austin Osman Song
Chaos magic is the emergent discipline of the occult revival of the 21st century, and chaos magic pioneer Austin Osman Spare is its spotlighted personality. Spare died in mostly-anonymous squalor in 1956, but in this new era his cult of personality is second only to Crowley, and his magical concepts and haunted art continue to [...]
There Be Dragons
Today I found out that a new Gary Gygax biography just came out this month. Gygax is credited with creating Dungeons & Dragons, giving birth to modern role playing games, and inventing an approach to adventure gaming that has had a massive effect on table top play and video gaming alike. I still have a [...]
Don’t Stop Believing
Continuing the spooky Halloween posts, here’s the 1987 Martin Sheen thriller, The Believers. This freaky little gem finds a widower surrounded by a threatening secret society after he and his son move to New York City. I think of this film as a charming occult thriller with the automatic kitsch of all things 1980′s. Add [...]
Yeats and the Faeries Yeats and the Faeries
Continuing our focus on National Poetry Month, here’s an interesting presentation about the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats and his preoccupations with the occult and the folk mythology of Ireland. R F Foster is a renowned Yeats expert. He’s the author of Words Alone: Yeats and his Inheritances. In this video Foster touches upon Yeats’s [...]
I, Madman
Another scary post for the month of October, this time I’m looking at horror flicks that were released on October 13. 13′s seem especially potent during this witchy month and, of course, October is always prime time for a horror flick to open in the theaters. Luckily I’m not the only person interested in this [...]
Isaac’s Apple
Sir Isaac Newton invented calculus, figured out the composition of light, and also gave us the laws of gravity and motion which just happened to govern the entire universe at the time of their revelations. Sir Isaac Newton is considered to be the father of modern science. He was also a sorcerer. This documentary follows [...]
The Witch of Kings Cross
This year we’re remembering the passing of Rosaleen Norton, 35 years ago in 1979. The infamous Australian occultist and artist lived the bohemian life of an artist in the red light district of Kings Cross, Sydney. Norton lived openly as a witch and created then-shocking paintings that found her demonized in the tabloids and targeted [...]
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 [...]