Tag Archives | Occult

Disembodied Erotomania

By on January 8, 2013 in News 23

Inspired by Matt’s The Incubus Made Me Do It post from last week, it occurred to me that I’d actually written an entire chapter on the rarely explored topic of astral molestation in my first book. It’s out of print and I’m quite sure none of you have read it, so we’ll just mine it a bit at this point as I finish the final edits for my next book on occult weirdness (out spring 2013). Maybe I’ll do a re-release some day, but truthfully, I basically did nothing to promote the thing because I didn’t like it much. Parts are great but overall, way too dark. As was the nature of my life at the time. The thing is, despite me not liking it much, it was in fact a quite intentional work of magick, intended to destroy the alcoholic jerk off side of my personality (the death impulse) and re-align myself with the sacred feminine current of the multiverse. In that regard, it worked spectacularly well. Details soon.

For now, let’s talk about sex with the spirits. It’s certainly one of those things that never, ever would have occurred to me as anything other than total batshit crazy-ville until it fucking happened, which is a theme you’ll find a lot in any kind of occult or paranormal circles. If you’re into this sort of thing, it’s probably because something went down in your inner life that you couldn’t explain. This would be one of those cases. To give a bit of lead up here, because of the bizarro art invasion experiences I had on mushrooms and acid in my late teens, I started playing around with Robert Monroe’s techniques of astral projection at the suggestion of my mother. She went to Berkeley during the sixties and never tried drugs (lame), but had caught a bit of the new age bug that was so trendy at the time…

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You May Be a Member of a Secret Society and Not Even Know It

By on January 2, 2013 in News 88

I spent my holidays reading a lot of esoteric literature. After polishing off Louis Bergier’s The Morning of the Magicians, I moved on to a cache of Rosicrucian literature in my collection, and then a book on Jungian symbolism. To top it all off, I started reading Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages.
Fantasy and Fantastic Reality

This isn’t a new habit for me, mind you: I’ve always enjoyed reading philosophical, magical and mystical texts. I’ve half-joked with friends that I’m some kind of amphibian: I need to spend a least part of my day submerged in the fantastic. This isn’t necessarily a healthy way to live, but to quote Shirley Jackson, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”

There are rewards, too, though: Learning to safely entertain multiple contradictory ideas is one of them; developing a sense for symbolism and correspondences is another.… Read the rest

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Witchcraft, Spells, Curses, And Exorcisms Thriving In The Welsh Countryside, Reverend Claims

By on January 2, 2013 in News 5

Are the picturesque towns of rural Wales a hotbed of the occult? The Telegraph on a scenario recalling the late nineties Sandra Bullock classic Practical Magic:

Witchcraft is thriving in the Welsh countryside, a church minister has said, as he described stumbling upon an increasing number of effigies, users of the evil eye and exorcisms. Rev. Felix Aubel claims occult practices in rural Wales have been increasing during the two decades he has been working in the area.

The minister spoke out after latest figures in the 2011 census has revealed 83 witches and 93 satanists are living in Wales. He said there was an “unusual connection” between Christianity and witchcraft in some chapel circles in Wales.

Rev. Aubel, who is the minister of five Congregational chapels in rural Carmarthenshire, said he has called out an exorcist after a witch placed a curse on one of his parishioners. He said: “This is not a joke and I would warn people not to get involved in the occult…I have been told that a coven of witches still meet locally.

… Read the rest

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This School Has to Make a Prophet

By on December 30, 2012 in News 3

In the year 1999, in the seventh month,
from the sky will come the great King of Terror,
bringing back to life the great King of the Mongols.
Before and after, Mars will reign by good fortune.

- Nostradamus

The passing of the 21st of December 2012 means the whiff of predicting the future is still in our collective nostrils. It’s perhaps ironic that a new school has opened in Tel Aviv which claims to teach the ancient art of Judaic prophecy. According to AP:

For just 200 shekels, about $53, and in only 40 short classes, the Cain and Abel School for Prophets says it will certify anyone as a modern-day Jewish soothsayer.

The school, which launched classes this month, has baffled critics, many of whom have dismissed it as a blasphemy or a fraud.

On a religious level, Jewish tradition recognizes a few dozen prophets from the biblical era — from the monumental figures of Abraham, Moses and Elijah to lesser known foretellers of doom and tormented questioners like Micah the Morashtite and Habakkuk.

… Read the rest

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Brian Butler Performs Aleister Crowley’s ‘Bartzabel Working’ Ritual

By on December 27, 2012 in News 1

Witness the spirit of Mars summoned three weeks ago in Los Angeles in haunting and beautiful fashion, as Butler invokes forces I would be scared to tamper with:

L&M Arts presents The Bartzabel Working, a performance by filmmaker and artist Brian Butler, on December 4th, 2012. Based on a ceremonial evocation of the spirit of Mars, first written and performed in London in 1910 by the famed British occultist Aleister Crowley, the ritual later became part of Los Angeles history in 1946 when Jack Parsons conducted his own version of this rite with the intention of placing a Martial curse on a pre-scientology L. Ron Hubbard.

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Magick, Abandonment, and the Desolate Beauty of Decay

By on December 20, 2012 in News 12

Picture: "Abandoned Factory" by Reddit User 'NotaMethAddict' (C)

Those of you with a taste for the desolate beauty of structures abandoned to nature may find a lot to like at Reddit.com’s AbandonedPorn subreddit. With a subscriber base of almost 80,000 the page is a never-ending virtual gallery dedicated to humanity’s vainglorious efforts to hold back the forces of entropy.

I developed my own taste for this kind of thing as a teenager. We had discovered an abandoned concrete factory in the middle of a plot of land left to nature. The building, with its flooded sub-levels, half-ruined factory floor and warren of abandoned offices, held an irresistible lure for us. Later, we discovered that the very same plot of land had once been a prison camp for captured German military officers during World War II. The factory rising above the scrubby trees and fields of grass cast a long shadow upon a territory long haunted by shadows of its own.… Read the rest

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Texas Man Arrested For Carving Pentagram Into His Son On 12/12/12 ‘Holy Day’

By on December 14, 2012 in News 12

CNN reports a case with all the telltale signs of demonic possession, or the impending end of the world:

A Texas man appears to have interpreted the date of 12/12/12 as a reason to carry out a grotesque and sinister act. “I shed some innocent blood,” Brent Troy Bartel told a police dispatcher from the Fort Worth suburb of Richland Hills in a phone call just after midnight.

When the dispatcher asked him to clarify, Bartel responded in a matter-of-fact tone, “I inscribed a pentagram on my son…’Cause it’s a holy day.”

When police officers arrived at the home, they say they found the traumatized boy standing shirtless with a large red pentagram carved into the skin on his back. His blood was smeared on the front door of the house. They arrested Bartel, whose manner was flat and emotionless. What exactly may have motivated Bartel, who is being held in local jail on a $500,000 bond, remains unclear.

… Read the rest

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Interview With ‘Psychopomp’ Author Amanda Sledz

By on December 13, 2012 in News 0

In her series Psychopomp, author Amanda Sledz takes a literary approach to writing about urban shamanism, magical thinking, tarot, telepathy and other themes usually reserved for the fantasy genre. The series follows four characters: Meena, a woman who has experienced a break with reality; her parents, Frank and Esther; and Lola, a teenager who is becoming a shaman whether she wants to or not.

The first book in the series, Psychopomp Volume One: Cracked Plate, explores mental illness, empathy, our differing experiences of place, immigration and cultural identity, and the way our experience of family shapes our identity — without resorting to the cliches of genre fiction or descending into boring academic prose.

An excerpt from the first installment is here. I recently caught-up with her to talk about Psychopomp, self-publishing and more. Via Technoccult:

Klint Finley: I understand you wrote a first draft of the first book in college — can you walk us through how the book evolved?

… Read the rest

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Did Aleister Crowley Communicate With Extraterrestrials?

By on December 8, 2012 in News 9

Did Crowley channel an alien being called LAM, long before the modern UFO movement? Via Who Forted?, Patrick Fennelly reveals:

Throughout Crowley’s years as a magus, he often attempted to contact intelligences of the non-human variety. Through the uttering of ‘barbarous’ names, incantations, and ancient inscriptions and veiled verses, Crowley called forward all manner of spirits, daemons and invisible masters.

One particular ‘entity’ is the character known as ‘LAM’. Around 1917, in New York, Crowley drew the image of this ‘praeter-human intelligence’, after performing a ritual now known as the ‘Alamantrah’ working. During this experiment, a discarnate entity urged Crowley to “find the egg”, and it seems, at some point, Crowley experienced contact with this large headed entity we have come to know as LAM.What’s interesting about LAM, or, at least, Crowley’s drawing of large headed, small featured alien LAM, is the stark resemblance it bares to the popular image of aliens we have come to know since the UFO boom following the Roswell incident in the 40s.

… Read the rest

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