Over at Rune Soup Gordon introduced a book game with the following guidelines:

How would you introduce someone to magic using only books? He or she has a month in a lake house and will read whatever you tell them in the exact order that you tell them to. Not even any peeking at other books on the list.

It’s a good game, for the full list of rules and to participate, click here. You can see Gordon’s picks here. I offered my response in the comments section, but I thought I’d share it here too, with a little more about why I chose these books in particular.

My aim was a little different than Gordon’s, I took the game as a chance to create a new magickian from a complete skeptic, not to create a mini-Psyche – that would have been a different list altogether. Perhaps a project for another day.

Without further ado, here’s my list: Continue reading »

Catalogue Seven was released today from Fulgur, featuring works of art by several of their authors and illustrators.

Most notably it contains several drawings and illustrations by Austin Osman Spare, including the one pictured left, titled there as “Three Men in a Cavern”.

Also included are “hand-decorated diabolical objects” by Barry William Hale, whose Legion 49was put out by Fulgur last year. By this they mean  Jack Daniels and rum bottles decorated with sigils and atwork and, well, I’ll use Hale’s description:

The Sigillick Conjuration of Beelzebub is incorporated into the walls of these Seven unique Talismanic Bottles sporting a variegated panapoly of magical signs and symbols sacred to the Lord of the Flies.

One of my favourite modern occult aritsts is also featured, Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule, with images from his Conjunctio, also published by Fulgur.

I’m more than a little in love with the pencil drawing of Isis, especially after getting the chance to see Orryelle’s Ganeshe in his glory at Treadwell’s last fall.

Even if, like me, you can’t afford any of them, it’s definitely worth a look.

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

In the realm of the planetary spheres my vote this week must go to Mars for the most gorgeous landscape. Check out these Martian dunes on BoingBoing. Absolutely stunning.

• Rob, in Another Nickel in the Machine, writes about the early career of occult writer Colin Wilson in “Hampstead Heath and the Rise and Fall of the author Colin Wilson“. It’s a wonderfully photo-rich piece. (Who knew Wilson was such a looker in his youth?)

• Chas Clifton, in his blog Letters from Hardscrabble Creek, wrote an interesting post recently considering whether or not contemporary Pagans could be considered indigenous. His answer is no, and his reasons make sense. The comments section breaks it down further, asking some interesting questions.

• Nicole Pasulka interviewed Peter Ross for TheMorningNews.org. Ross took a series of photographs of “William Burroughs’s Stuff“, “a selection of weird, touching, and often unexpected possessions found in Burroughs’s windowless New York City apartment, preserved since his death in 1997.” It’s an odd collection.

• In Magic of the Ordinary, Peregrin has written an excellent post titled “Golden Dawn Blogs and Tradition” that covers more than it implies. Peregrin’s summary of the commentary surrounding one’s Holy Guardian Angel, for example, is spot on. Check it out.

• LAShTAL.com has the latest catalogue from Starfire, Kenneth Grant’s publishing house. Check it out for titles which have recently been issued, and what’s coming later in 2010. Several reprints, but some new material too, including a compilation of two grimoires by Austin Osman Spare.

I’m trying out delicious.com, a social bookmarking tool. It looks a little more complicated than the last time I logged in – they seem to have added a ton of new features in the past year.

This is to replace the 902834029834 some odd tabs I currently leave open in Firefox for compiling these Saturday Signal posts, but this little laptop, she cannae take it anymore. So, I’m experimenting once again with delicious. (There’s even a Firefox add-on for it.)

One of the great things about it is that you can tag your bookmarks and share them with other people. So, for example, if you tag a site “ahrfoundation” I will be notified. Why is that so nifty? Because it makes it really easy to share cool sites.

If you use delicious, and you want to highlight something cool that you think should be included in Saturday Signal, tag it “ahrfoundation” and I’ll add it. It’s an experiment. Let’s see how it works.

For those who are interested in stalking my path across the web, or, you know, simply getting the first crack at what may find its way into the Saturday Signal, my account there is, of course, plutopsyche.

Ok, so I received this copy of Abraxas back in September during my visit to Treadwell’s. This review has been a long time in coming. What took so long?

Mostly, I wanted to do it properly. I didn’t want to rush reading bits and pieces here and there, I wanted to really sit down and savour it.

Abraxas isn’t just “An International Journal of Esoteric Studies”, this first issue is also an art book. At 290mm x 232mm it’s a large quarto, beautifully bound, and printed on high quality paper, including a handtipped sheet. Richly coloured paintings are beautifully reproduced, along with many lovely illustrations in monochrome. And then there’s the text.

This first issue focuses largely on witchcraft, and while I can’t detail every essay that appears, I would like to highlight several that I felt stood out in this already exceptional collection. Continue reading »

It should hardly seem surprising that something called “chaos magick” is constantly in flux, both in terms of what gets classed as chaos magick, and in who it attracts.

I was first introduced to the subject by some English bloke on IRC in a random Wicca chatroom who later, through a series of unlikely circumstances, became my husband. He introduced names I’d never heard of before: Austin Osman Spare, Peter J Carroll, Robert Anton Wilson – people with three names writing weird stuff.

It was refreshing. I was young, and apart from a few friends in high school, I didn’t know anyone else who was interested in magick. Until I found the chaotes, all I knew were religious Pagans who left me empty, or pedantic ceremonialists who bickered over trivia that seemed unnecessary.

From there I devoured everything I could find: Ray Sherwin, Phil Hine, Stephen Mace, Jan Fries, Steve Wilson, Ramsey Dukes, Jaq Hawkins, Hakim Bey, ye gods even Adrian Savage, simply because the word “chaos” was in the title. The books were difficult to find, expensive and experimental; the websites were raw and their authors approachable. Continue reading »