Plutonica.net

Stay Connected

Readers: 288

Followers: 617

Fans: 252

Review of Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods

By Ian 'Cat' Vincent | November 18, 2010 | Print This Post | E-mail This Post | 1 Comment

Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods, directed by Patrick Meaney
Halo 8, 80 minutes, 2010

I suspect there are only a few kinds of people who’ll be interested in the documentary Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods – either serious documentary fans, devoted comic-book readers, or magical practitioners. Each of them will come away from this film quite happy.

Director Patrick Meaney largely works with a familiar pattern for this kind of celebrity documentary – one of mostly stepping back and letting the interviews (and, of course, editing) tell the story. There are several attempts to visually represent the psychedelic elements of the tale created by cinematographer Jordan Rennert, though the results are far less annoying than is often the case in such films! The perspective is mostly one which aims at the comic-reading audience, introducing them fairly gently to the core of occult thought that permeates his work.

The film opens with a montage of several comic-book writers and artists talking about Morrison’s reputation as a very successful comics creator who is also out as a practicing chaos magician who’s no stranger to psychedelics – and the usual kind of “drug-crazed madman” rumours that inevitably follow. Continue reading »

Sparian delights

By Psyche | November 14, 2010 | Print This Post | E-mail This Post | 1 Comment

Austin Osman Spare self portraitFirst off, for those who haven’t yet seen it, an excerpt from BBC‘s The Culture Show, which featured a piece on Austin Osman Spare with Alan Moore.

The description given is as follows:

Legendary graphic novel author Alan Moore explores the biggest public art exhibition of Austin Osman Spare for over 50 years, and discovers why Spare, an Edwardian virtuoso artist and occult magician has been left off art history’s canon.

The eight minute segment also features Robert Ansell of Fulgur, who discusses Spare’s Buddhist influences; Phil Baker, who talks about his origins and career; Geraldine Beskin of Atlantis Bookshop, on Spare’s automatic drawings and their spiritual aspect; and Stephen Pochin who curated the recent exhibit at  curated the recent exhibit at the Cuming Museum in London.

Though the best quotes surely come from Alan Moore, who says:

Magick offers the artist a new way of looking at their consciousness and look at where they get their ideas from. [...]

If you can manipulate your own consciousness and perhaps that of others, which is surely something all artists are trying to do, whether their magickians or not, then you will have effected an act of magick. [...]

Spare was a visionary, he was somebody, like William Blake, who was not distinguishing between his art and his spirituality, who felt that the world inside him was as valid and important as the world outside him – if not more so.

(Video and links to two reviews below the cut tag.) Continue reading »

Sleep paralysis, the (non-)existence of god, and Technoccult dossiers

By Psyche | May 22, 2010 | Print This Post | E-mail This Post | 7 Comments

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

I’m writing this a few days before I leave for Paris, so I’m going to assume that I’m happily sitting in a cafe somewhere sipping  cafe sans lait, eating a croissant and conversing with the locals in perfect Ontarian franglais.

C’est magnifique, I’m sure.

Next vacation spot: Titan? Right now its surface has the texture of creme brulee, but give it time.

I’ve prepared this Signal especially for your clicking pleasure. Just you. Enjoy.

  • Ryan Hurd offers an excerpt from his eBook on Reality Sandwich with “Sleep Paralysis Visions: Demons, Succubi, and the Archetypal Mind“. I suffer from this more often than I like, and it’s always frightening as hell when it occurs. Hurd discusses a variety of commonly experienced apparitions and the theories surrounding them.

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!

Be a Happy Panda.