Joy Division left us with the most relentlessly depressing body of songs since Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. In some ways, though, this singularity of approach, this lack of light touches to add color to the palate, is responsible for making them enduringly fascinating. (more…)
Tag: the occult
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A Constant Reader has called my attention (keep those cards and letters coming in, folks!) to some critical commentary on the magical writings of Baron Evola[1] by none other than John Michael Greer, who is Past Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America and current head of the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn. (more…)
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Katherine Beem and Andy Paciorek, eds.
Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies
Wyrd Harvest Press, 2015The term “folk horror” is a relatively recent invention that can be applied to a wide range of artistic creations, not all of them belonging to the horror genre. It was popularized by the 2010 BBC TV documentary A History of Horror where the term was used to describe three horror films: Witchfinder General, The Blood on Satan’s Claw, and The Wicker Man. (more…)
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Paul Waggener
On Magic: A No-Bullshit Primer on Working the Will
Lynchburg,Virginia: Operation Werewolf: 2015 (e book)There are very few writings that deal with genuine magic in a straightforward way. Hocus-pocus, if you will, permeates every aspect of magical instruction—from the mainstream Law of Attraction books to Esoteric Runology tomes based upon initiatory occultism. (more…)
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Richard B. Spence
Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult
Port Townsend, Wash.: Feral House, 2008“The great scientists, the artists, the philosophers, the religious leaders — all maniacs. What else but a blind singleness of purpose could have given focus to their purpose? Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. (more…)
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1,120 words
Watching Carol Morley’s new film, The Falling, I found myself wondering, slightly obsessively, exactly which year it was set in. I settled on 1970 because the visual cues in the home of the main character, Lydia, suggested that strange point in time where hallucinatory sixties psychedelia ossified into lurid home furnishings. Subsequent googling revealed that it was set in 1969. (more…)
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The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult: Hidden Magic, Occult Truths, and the Stories That Started It All
Edited and Introduced by Lon Milo DuQuette
San Francisco: Weiser Books, 2014“What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad.” — Arthur Machen, “The White People” (more…)
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5,685 words
Matthew Levi Stevens
The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs
Oxford: Mandrake of Oxford, 2014[1]My very first question to him, a living, breathing, Beatnik legend in the flesh was . . . “Tell me about magick?” William was not in the least surprised by my question. “Care for a drink?” he asked. Putting on the TV to watch The Man from U.N.C.L.E., he explained “Reality is not really all it’s cracked up to be, you know . . .”—Genesis P-Orridge (more…)
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3,618 words
Erik Davis
Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica
Portland, Or.: Yeti Publishing, 2010“I find the internet-driven pressure to make pieces short, data-dense, and crisply opinionated — as opposed to thoughtful, multi-perspectival, and lyrical — rather oppressive, leading to a certain kind of superficial smugness as well as general submission to the forces of reference over reflection.” — Erik Davis[1]
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November 4, 2014 James J. O'Meara
Kenya Obama & the Temple of Dumb:
Election Day Reflections on Ignatius Reilly, Heinrich Himmler, & the Need for Roots“So check it out, and next time you go cruising down the street, take a look around. We are Franklin Franklin.” — Jeff Frankas
After reading Jeff Frankas’ excellent review of Small Apartments[1] I did what I usually do in such circumstances–head over to Amazon to see if there are any used copies in the $0.25 range (my current book budget). Once there, I discovered that it has already been made into a movie, a veritable “underground hit” with big stars like . . . Billy Crystal. (more…)
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Mircea Eliade’s The Portugal Journal, trans. Mac Linscott Ricketts (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2010) covers the years 1941 to 1945 when Eliade was a Romanian diplomat in Portugal. It is thus a prequel to Eliade’s four-volume Journal (Vol. 1: 1945–1955, Vol. 2: 1957–1969, Vol. 3: 1970–1978, and Vol. 4: 1979–1985), which begins with his arrival in Paris in September of 1945 and continues for the rest of his life.
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Translated by Cologero Salvo
The occult war is when the forces of worldwide subversion lead from behind the scenes, adopting means that almost always elude ordinary methods of investigation. (more…)
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9,609 words
Translated by Bruno Cariou
It is not easy, today, to give an exact idea of what is meant by Initiation and to define the figure of the ‘Initiate’. The main difficulty lies in the necessity of referring to a vision of the world and man, and to structures, which belong essentially to traditional civilisations, distant from the present one, not only from the modern mentality and culture, but also, to a large extent, from the religion which has come to predominate in the West.