Robert Johnson Opened the Gates of Hell for Elvis Presley
Courtesy of Brandt Hardin
Robert Johnson supposedly made a deal with the Devil to obtain his blues licks and Elvis Presley was the televised Son of God. How appropriate that they share a death day at RockStarMartyr.net:
Even after the abolition of slavery, life in the Mississippi cotton fields was brief, brutal, and as boring as an aging preacher’s Sunday sermon. No wonder fieldworkers sought the fleeting comforts of cheap moonshine and loose women at the Saturday night juke joints.
Robert Johnson could mix it up with the best of them, but he was never one for hard work. His bizarre, spider-like fingers weren’t intended for cotton-pickin’ and penny-pinchin’. They were made for crawling across guitar necks, whiskey bottles, and the legs of middle-aged sugar mamas. If Johnson was going to suffer hell to make a dollar, it would be as a wayfaring musician. His road was full of adventure and ecstasy, but…
Occult Map Of New York
Last year the venerable Watkins Books published a Spiritual Sightings Map of London. The intent was always to expand the map globally and now disinformation author Gary Lachman (Turn Off Your Mind) has contributed an Occult Map of New York:
I had already been living in New York on East 10th Street for a few months when in the early spring of 1975 I was asked to play bass in a fledgling rock band that would later become fairly successful. Their name was Blondie and their bass player had quit to join another group, Television.
CBGB on the Bowery was just starting to make a name for itself and would soon become the home of an honest-to-goodness scene. Soon after joining the group I had to give up my place on East 10th, and I moved in with the singer and guitarist. Their tiny flat in Little Italy, however, quickly proved too small…
Aleister Crowley’s Dirty, Dirty Poems
Victorian Gothic on Aleister Crowley’s White Stains:
Readers will likely be familiar with Aleister Crowley, the notorious English occultist, bisexual libertine, recreational drug user, founder of the Thelemic religion, leader of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and all-around scary wicked person. Those familiar with Crowley strictly through his esoteric writings, however, may be interested to know that one the “Great Beast’s” first forays into publishing consisted of a perverse little volume of erotic poetry entitled White Stains.
It was issued in Amsterdam in 1898 by Leonard Smithers; a leading publisher of English pornography, but also of controversial literature. His clients included Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Symons, and Oscar Wilde. White Stains was published in a print run of one hundred copies which, according to rumors in the book world, Crowley is said to have white-stained himself. Most of these were destroyed in 1924 by British Customs; the surviving first editions currently sell for around $4,000 – $10,000.
The authorship of White Stains was attributed to…
Conspiracies and World Peace
The Infinite and the Beyond — Podcast: Episode #021 — Conspiracies and World Peace
Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS
In the latest episode of The Infinite and the Beyond, we look into the popular issues with conspiracy theories and uncover the truth behind what they are. Is the government really spying us? Do conspiracy theories actually reveal anything significant or is there something deeper and more personal behind their existence in the world?
In “A Corner in the Occult” we visit early 20th century Germany and discuss the Nazis and the issues pertaining to their possible involvement with occultism. Many people like to attribute their rise to power and the events pertaining to the Second World War to their involvement in the occult arts and even demonic influence.
We also read some listener email and in “The Essence of Magick” series we talk about visualization and astral projection. Learn why visualization is so important to the magickal arts and learn how to astral project in this episode’s installment of this great and informative series!
And to close, we finish the episode with a look into the ever present concern and pursuit for world peace. Take a new perspective on the issues surrounding world peace and why it may not be the easiest thing to accomplish after all despite what some people say about it.
Douglas Rushkoff On Kicking The Consensus Reality Habit
Doug Rushkoff. Photo by Paul May (CC)
An interview with Douglas Rushkoff via Technoccult:
“When Video Toaster for the Amiga came out everyone was really excited,” he Rushkoff said. “We believed that we could use it to create deeply alternative states of consciousness using lights and colors and things.”
“Today, those technologies are used by companies like Fox News to make you pay attention to what they want you to pay attention to, or to make your eye fall on a particular ad. Stuff like that.”
But he says if you know how the program works, you’re less likely to be hypnotized by it. “There’s two ways to experience magic,” he says. “And I don’t mean stage magic.” You can either experience it as a spectator, watching a priest or guru. Or you can participate. “Having a guru will only take you so far,” he said. “You have to become the guru.”
But it’s not easy.…
Have You Ever Had A Dream So Strange You Were Sure It Wasn’t Your Own?
Via Modern Mythology and Strange Factories’ IndieGoGo page:
Strange Factories is an immersive feature film that tells the story of a world haunted by a phantasmagoric fiction. A unique and powerful project that fuses cinema and theatre within a dreamlike environment to create an experience like no other.
Charged With Sorcery: Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s Inner Circle
More specifically of summoning djinns … Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, secret “Magic: The Gathering” player? Saeed Kamali Dehghan writes in the Guardian:
Close allies of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being “magicians” and invoking djinns (spirits).
Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as “a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds”.
The arrests come amid a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several MPs to call for the president to be impeached.
Beware Of The Real Men In Black
For decades – or perhaps even for centuries, some firmly believe – the infamous Men in Black have been elusive, predatory, fear-inducing figures that have hovered with disturbing regularity upon the enigmatic fringes of the subject of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), coldly nurturing, and carefully weaving, their very own unique brand of horror and intimidation of a definitively other-world variety.
The preferred tools of terror of the MIB are outright menace, far less than thinly-veiled threats, and overwhelming, emotionless intimidation. And they are relentless when it comes to following their one and only agenda – that is, to forever silence witnesses to, and investigators of, UFO encounters. Unfortunately, it has to be admitted, they have been highly successful in achieving their unsettling goal, too. Indeed, and without any shadow of doubt whatsoever, the long and winding history of UFO studies is absolutely littered with fraught, frightened and emotionally-shattered figures that have…
An Outsider’s Firsthand Look At The Aghori And Tantra Traditions
James Curcio
Special guest host James Curcio talks to William Clark about the time he spent in India, covering everything from tabla, the aghori sects of tantra, hinduisim and all points in between.
Over the course of the Immanence of Myth project, James Curcio has had many conversations with mythic artists, intellectuals and professors, and outright mutants who in Hunter’s words are “too weird to live and too rare to die.” Most of these are being written or transcribed in part for the book.
The Gspot: William Clark and Tantra (Or listen to the podcast on Alterati.com)
In the time since, we produced a “Gonzomentary” satyr-play about the modern artist called Clark. This podcast provides a very different look at the character behind the character.
Joscelyn Godwin’s ‘Atlantis and the Cycles of Time’
David Metcalfe provides a thorough look at Joscelyn Godwin’s Atlantis and the Cycles of Time: Prophecies, Traditions, and Occult Revelations:
Existing in the liminal spaces of the cultural narrative Atlantis has been a magnet for alternative theories of history and a tool for those looking for a vision of unity in the evolutionary development of human culture. With the solidification of allegory during the Enlightenment Atlantis provided the perfect mythic capstone for rationalists in a quest for historical accuracy in their explorations of the possibilities of a perennial culture.
From the 17th century inquiries of Athanasius Kircher to the publication of Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World in 1882, the empirical search for Atlantis has provided an impetus for archaeological speculation on the unification of cultures across the globe. Where present facts show disunity, the idea of an advanced and far reaching civilization in prehistory gave momentum for theorists to develop complex models of…
The Occult, Alchemy and Black Swan
I received a strange knock on my afternoon door earlier this week, followed by the sound of something hitting the wood floor in the hallway and hurried footsteps fading down the stairs. Opening the door, a large white envelope stared up at me, the unblinking red postmark stamp as omniscient as the eye of Solomon.
I grabbed the package, closed the door and locked it. The new Black Swan DVD had arrived.
Darren Aronofsky’s tale-within-a-tale, Black Swan was one of last year’s best films. Many are familiar with the Oscar-nominated flick’s re-telling of the Swan Lake ballet to create a psychological horror flick that explores the perils of artistic perfection.
The movie has rightly earned it’s place among genre classics like Rosemary’s Baby and Carrie and — like the former — Black Swan is rife with occult symbolism and references that add weight to the scary-movie-cliches, making this bloody ballet one of those unique films that define a…
Did Christianity Kill Marvin Gaye and Rozz Williams?
White magic failed to save the one, and black magic was of no avail to the other. From RockStarMartyr.net:
In private moments otherwise shrouded in darkness, Christians feel the presence of God looming over their shoulders. The Omniscient Eye bears witness to every messy indiscretion behind closed doors and probes dirty thoughts like a supernatural panty-raider.
In view of their popular images, Marvin Gaye and Rozz Williams seem as different as sly grins and slit wrists, but the camera overlooks their common heritage. They were both children of a church-dwelling God, and His relentless imposition of conscience drove them to the very edge of sanity — where they promptly jumped into the Abyss.
Both met their Maker on April 1st. No foolin’.
Marvin Gay Jr. grew up under the thumb of the “Hebrew Pentecostal” House of God denomination. His father, Marvin Gay Sr., was an ambitious preacher in the Washington DC congregation, and swung an iron fist…
Interview with ‘Selections From the Dream Manual’ Artist Michael Skrtic
Via Technoccult:
Klint Finley: What possessed you to undertake this process of creating a collage painting for every line of Bill’s original Dream Manual?
Michael Skrtic: The Dream Manual appeared first in 1984 or 1985 in a magazine called The Negentropy Express, which was an APA (an amateur press association) by the Society for Creative Thought. I was one of the founding members of the Society for Creative Thought and I was immediately taken with Bill’s original text and the original short little collage things that he did to accompany the text. It sort of followed me around since then. In the early 90s, I had just moved to Stockholm and I was looking for a project. I thought, ah, I know what I’ll do, I’ll colorize Bill’s original collages, so I blew them up and I colorized a couple of pages, and then I got involved with something else. Fast forward to 2003.…
The Occult Symbolism of the Los Angeles Central Library
Thanks to veteran disinfonaut Nimrod Erez for sending us along this story from Vigilant Citizen:
Throughout the history of Western Civilization, libraries have been the repositories of nations’ accumulated knowledge and the epicenters of their culture. Central libraries, more than being big buildings containing books, are important landmarks designed with impressive architecture and filled with symbolic art. The Los Angeles Central Library is certainly no exception. An in-depth look at the art found at the Library is quite a revealing one: It describes the occult philosophy of those in power. We will look at the Central Library’s history and the hidden meaning of its architecture.
Built in 1926, the Central Library is an important landmark of downtown Los Angeles. It is the central piece of one of the largest publicly funded library systems in the world, the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL). Most touristic pamphlets describe the building’s design to be inspired by…
Fresh Angles On John Dee’s Angels
The good people at Destiny Books/Inner Traditions recently sent on a new volume that finds some of magic’s most mysterious writings collected in one book for the very first time. With Decoding the Enochian Secrets: God’s Most Holy Book to Mankind as Received by Dr. John Dee from Angelic Messengers, author John DeSalvo, Ph.D. offers up the complete writings and Tables of Enoch that Dee and Edward Kelley received from the angels.
If you’re already confused, this book isn’t for you. This is not a biography of John Dee or an in-depth examination of the events that found the 16th-century mathematician, scientist, occultist, and the astrologer of Queen Elizabeth I seemingly contacting angels and receiving what may be the most important divinely-channeled communication of all time. If you are interested in finding out more about Enochian Magic, start with Benjamin Woolley’s excellent tome The Queen’s Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John…
Vale Kenneth Grant, 1924–2011: Grandfather Chaos and Flying Saucerer
Kenneth Grant by Austin Spare (c. 1951).
Finally unpacking the books bequeathed to me by my late ex-Freemason father-in-law’s estate has put me in a wistful mood. I just keep being reminded of how many 20th century disinformationists we’ve recently lost: John Keel, John Mitchell, Zecharia Sitchin — and a loss equivalent to the space filled by their contributions to occulture.
Stacking my now prized Golden Dawn collection turned my thoughts to Israel Regardie and so Crowley — and to his other spiritual son and former secretary, Kenneth Grant.
Both did a great deal to popularise modern post-Thelemic magic. I’ve got some fond ’80s teenage memories of coming across them all in the Psychology section (?) of my local library and reading furtively with one eye over my shoulder. It was the start of an endless study of esotericism.
So I was not surprised when I read that Kenneth Grant had passed away in…
February 3: The Death Day Of Buddy Holly
Joseph Allen writes about “the Buddy Holly Curse” on RockStarMartyr.net:
Anything cool you ever did, Buddy Holly did first. Those trend-lemming black specs? Buddy wore those when glasses were for nerds. Your hip, four-piece rock band? Buddy set that standard, son. Radical race-mixing? Buddy played with black musicians and married a Latina before such associations yielded multiculti cred—back when it got you bludgeoned by mongrels. Those teenage girls shaking hips by the jukebox? Buddy got the first slice of Miss American Pie, and by all accounts, she was home-grown cherry. And your tragic demise in the passenger seat of a hexed death-machine? Buddy beat you to it, dude. He’ll be worshipped forever, and you’ll be another statistic.
Like a sacrificial life-force, rock n’ roll was in Buddy Holly’s blood. His voice won over crowds from kindergarten on. As a teen in 1955, Buddy marveled at Elvis’ rockabilly performances, eventually opening for the King later…
Aleister Crowley Running For President In 2012?!?
When I was growing up in the UK we had some wonderful political parties competing in our national elections, including Screaming Lord Sutch and the Monster Raving Loony party. In comparison the choices in the U.S. are decidedly dull (although New York’s 2010 gubernatorial race did feature the fantastic Jimmy McMillan’s Rent Is Too Damn High party).
It’s a relief, then, to find that some nuttiness is in store for the presidential elections in 2012: as well as the Sarah Palin freak-show, it appears that the Great Beast 666, Aleister Crowley, is in the running (I know, he’s been dead a long time and he’s not American…). Here are his campaign’s top ten reasons to vote for the Beast in 2012:
10. If you are fed up with the election process, for whatever reason, Aleister Crowley provides a more meaningful choice than Mickey Mouse, Cthulhu, or Jackie Broyles. 9. You can get a photo posted here — of…
