I can’t seem to escape Crowley. He’s everywhere and in everything. Like q-ball.

I’ve been reading Paul Muldoon’s excellent book, The End of the Poem, which collects a series of lectures he delivered over five years at Oxford under this title. I’m only about two thirds of the way through The End of the Poem, but I’ve immensely enjoyed  what I’ve read so far.

Each lecture focuses on a specific poem, and Crowley features quite prominently in Muldoon’s reading of “Autopsychography” by Fernando Pessoa.

Pessoa first came to my attention when I heard that letters between himself and Crowley were to be auctioned off. But after reading this poem, and Muldoon’s extrapolations I really want to read more of his work, especially The Book of Disquiet, several poems of which seem to have been written shortly after Crowley’s Book of Lies first came out, and which may have been directly influenced by it.

Including the account of Pessoa’s role in assisting in the charade of Crowley’s false suicide: Continue reading »

The comments section for “Sexism in contemporary occulture” and “Gender and the elements” have recently flared up again, and it’s clear that the larger conversation is far from over. If you haven’t read these posts yet, please do and share your thoughts in the comments.

Two new essays have appeared recently on this theme, and they bear a closer look.

In a recent essay on Enfolding.org titled ”Occult gender regimes: Polarity and Tradition“, Phil Hine gets to the heart of what makes so many uneasy broaching the subject in the first place. He writes,

the very act of questioning the inevitability of gender polarity is a radical step – and one which potentially shatters the foundations of the occult implicit-order – itself a reification of the wider gender-order of Western Culture. Gender polarity is often reified in occult texts as an earthly reflection of cosmic or otherwise essential principles – which are held to be inevitable and juridicial (“Laws”). Frequently it is asserted that gender polarity is inevitable because it occurrs on the “higher planes” or is a reflection of essential qualities of deities, archetypes, etc – it is universal and timeless – part of an unchanging/unbroken tradition which has only been challenged very recently…

Hine traces the origin sexual poliarty to Continue reading »

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

Six days out of seven this site really depresses me, but today it’s golden: http://isitsaturday.net/.

Lots of new blogs popping up lately. Is anyone keeping track? I’ve linked to a couple here, but if I’ve missed anything cool let me know.

I feel guilty when I miss these posts, but worse still I’ve been told you miss these posts too, that I’m making some of you into Sad Pandas. I don’t want you to be a Sad Panda, so here’s today’s Saturday Signal:

• Diabolical Discourse is a new blog which announces “events, lectures, and talks in the north of England featuring prominent members of the magical, mystical, and occult communities”. It just began life on April 1st (no joke), and looks like it could become an excellent resource.

• Cheerfully ripping off the wildly successful blog Stuff White People Like, Glaux, Laurelei and temperance have created Stuff Pagan Culture Likes. Samples: ” Herbal Remedies“, “Indiscriminate Blessings“, and “Mead“. (Doesn’t everyone like mead?) No updates since March, but hopefully this is a blog which will continue. There’s a lot of stuff to be made fun of here, folks.

• Sneaking in one of my own, my essay “Differing Models” is up on Rending the Veil in the Beltane issue. It discusses Frater U.: D.:’s “Models of Magic” and what it can mean for your practice.

I’ll also work on Saturday Signals for the weeks I’m in Paris.  Hopefully this will make for Happy Pandas.

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!

Dr Brendan Cathbad Myers, professional philosopher, lecturer, author, podcaster and all ’round swell guy, is offering a course on Nietzsche and Paganism through Cherry Hill Seminary.

From the course description:

Perhaps the most misunderstood, difficult, and notorious philosopher of the modern age is Friedrich Nietzsche, creator of such powerful ideas as the Will to Power. Accused of promoting a kind of paganism, even within his own lifetime, he certainly mounted the most powerful critique of all religious thinking ever written in the Western philosophical tradition. In this course we will examine three of his most important books very closely, and we will learn why his work remains important for the study of ethics, religion, and culture and also why it remains dangerous.

It’s a 12 week Masters’ level course taught online, and as per Brendan’s note, “although it is a graduate level course, it may be audited by anyone (with [his] approval)”. It’s only $375, and it is bound to be excellent.

Unfortunately, I’ll be in Paris when it begins, and won’t be able to take it, but please do check it out and consider signing up. Continue reading »

Upon checking my postbox yesterday I found a package from Disinformation.com containing their 2008 and 2009 catalogues, and Hidden Wisdom: The Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition, by Tim Wallace-Murphy.

I don’t normally post about all the neat stuff I receive from publishers, but this is the first time I’ve received anything from Disinformation, and this one sounds kind of neat.

From the description found on the website for Hidden Wisdom (which, not-so-coincidentally, is the same text found on the back of the book):

From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the druids and the gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition.

This tradition exerted a seminal influence on the thinking of the builders of the great cathedrals; leading teachers in ecclesiastical schools; philosophers; playwrights; poets such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake, and W. B. Yeats; and on artists and Renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. It is also the root from which sprang alchemy and modern science.

Now, as more people are looking to find information on the alternatives to dominant religions and dogmas that have told us what to think and how to behave, as faith has been questioned by religious scandals, economic meltdowns, and an increasingly sick planet Earth, Wallace-Murphy reveals the secrets of the masters, including invaluable spiritual insights into everyday life that have been hidden throughout the ages. He shows us who kept this spiritual tradition alive despite appalling persecution, so that we in the twenty-first century might benefit from its accumulated fruits and ennoble our lives.

It’s been a good long while since I last read this sort of book. Sounds like fun.

Disinfo has a lot of neat stuff in their catalogue, I look forward to pursuing more of their stuff. Is there anything you’d like to see reviewed?

Full 2009 catalogue available here.