Kenneth Grant, free eggs, experience, tarot and mounting deities

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

I feel like I need some sort of intro here. Last week I said science was cool, and that’s still true, but sometimes science has the mind of a child. A dirty-minded child. This is one of those times. But you gotta know what’s up there, right? Right.

So, um, it turns out there’s weird water lurking inside Uranus. (And Neptune.) If that’s not enough, there’s a giant ash hole on the Moon. I don’t make this stuff up, kids.

Back on Earth baby mi-go have been spotted off the coast of Japan. I’m not sure if I should be horrified or melt at how cute they look…No, I’m definitely horrified.

First, your occultural signal:

• A fascinating essay by Henrik Bogdan on Fulgur.co.uk about Kenneth Grant, Tantra and sex magick, his expulsion from the OTO and his splintered Typhonian OTO group, over at “Kenneth Grant: Marriage between the West and the East“. David Curwen also comes up, and his correspondence with Aleister Crowley is the subject of a new book published by Teitan Press.

• The Green Egg arose out of the Church of All Worlds in 1968, evolving from a one page ditto sheet to the print journal many remember and love. It closed in 2001 only to arise later as an online-only ‘zine. As of August 23rd, it’s no longer subscriber-only, the journal and back issues dating back to 1994 are available online, free of charge.

• On Enfolding.org Phil Hine has written a great series of articles on experience, beginning with “Experience I“, which looks at some of the problems surrounding UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis) and authenticity. “Experience II: when worldviews collide” discusses The Social Construction of Reality, by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, further expanding my reading list. “Experience III: Some conundrums” tackles what it is we mean when we say “experience”, and is the longest and best yet in this series. Check ‘em out.

• Fool Stop Tarot Blog has dug up an interview between Stephen Winick and Stuart Kaplan from 2008. It reads more as a biography or history of the U.S. Games, Kaplan’s company, but it offers a look into the man who has had the greatest impact on tarot of any non-card reader.

• Mark Morford writes for SFGate about “How to properly mount your deity“. It seems Morford has acquired a three foot statue of Nataraj and he is in the process of discovering what that means.

Noise? It’s not all bad. See “An idle brain may be the self’s workshop” for more.

• Apparently Christians aren’t listening to enough heavy metal, at least according to one Anglican priest. Martin Beckford reports on Telegraph.co.uk in “Christians could learn a lot about life from heavy metal, says cleric“. Who knew?

• Writing for Mind Hacks, Vaughn Bell comments on what some of us have suspected for some time, namely that “Solitude conjures imaginary companions“. It seems “loneliness, or even a brief reminder of it, leads us to see human-like qualities in objects around us, believe more strongly in the reality of God and supernatural beings”. Makes sense.

• Carl Sagan’s Dance Party confirms once and for all that “Wiccans aren’t evil!“…in the worst possible way. Satire FTW.

As always, if you come across anything nifty, please share it in the comments, or if you use delicious tag it “ahrfoundation” and we’ll take a look. Thanks!

Psyche is the editor of ahrfoundation.org and the curator for the occult resource SpiralNature.com, Psyche also operates a tarot consultation business, Psyche Tarot. She has been published in The Cauldron, Konton, Tarot World Magazine, among other magazines, and her essay “Strategic Magick” appeared in Manifesting Prosperity (Megalithica, 2008).

Psyche's website is http://www.ahrfoundation.org.