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Archive for June 2022

  1. Book Review: Essays on Women in Western Esotericism – II

    Continuing with my review of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism from March (part 1).

    As editor Amy Hale points out in her introduction, the women profiled in this collection (for the most part British, living between the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries) lived at a time when women’s involvement in the esoteric was becoming more visible, as was women’s involvement with other social movements. These women saw esotericism – in varying degrees, as a route for both personal and social transformation.

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    June 30th 2022

    Posted by in Book reviews, Gender, History, Occult, Pagan

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  2. Kali: the Furious

    “Will the Bengalee worshipper of Shakti shrink from the shedding of blood? … The worship of the goddess will not be consummated if you sacrifice your lives at the shrine of Independence without shedding blood.”

    Jugantar

    “Mother, incomparably arrayed,
Hair flying, stripped down,
You battle-dance on Siva's heart,
A garland of heads that bounce off
Your heavy hips, chopped-off hands
For a belt, the bodies of infants
For earrings, and the lips,
The teeth like jasmine, the face
A lotus blossomed, the laugh,
And the dark body billowing up and out
Like a storm cloud, and those feet
Whose beauty is only deepened by blood.
So Prasād cries: My mind is dancing!
Can I take much more? Can I bear
An impossible beauty?”
Ramprasād Sen

    As Mike Magee’s new book – Kālī Magic – for my Twisted Trunk imprint nears completion, I thought I’d do a brief essay on the goddess Kali and her key characteristics – the most enduring of which is her fury.

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    June 28th 2022

    Posted by in History, tantra

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