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As the so-called “ebook piracy” debate, with its threat of dire consequences for occult authors and publishers and the book trade in general has been under the spotlight of late – see recent articles on Plutonica.Net and The Wild Hunt I thought this would be an opportune moment to highlight some useful online academically-oriented resources – some of which are free. I’ve come across most of these whilst pursuing my tantric interests. Continue reading »
“Just as the plot or story of my own life is created by other people – the heroes of my life, so aesthetic vision of the world, its image, is created only by consummated or consummatable lives of other people who are the heroes of this world. The first and foremost condition for an aesthetic approach to this world is to understand it as the world of other people who have accomplished their lives in it…”
Mikhail Bakhtin, Art and Answerability p111
Avalonia Books have just released a new book by Jan Fries – Kali Kaula: A Manual of Tantric Magick. Jan Fries surely needs no introduction – his previous books, such as Visual Magick, Helrunar and Seidways are all highly regarded books – and deservedly so. David Rankine of Avalonia has been kind enough to send me a copy of Kali Kaula – so expect a review soon!
If there’s one topic guaranteed to get an argument going amongst pagans & occultists, its the topic of lineage – whether or not one has a connection to a lineage, whether its judged to be “authentic”, and so on. Continue reading »
I became interested in the female forms of Ganapati after a friend recounted to me a dream in which she encountered a female form of Ganesha. Continue reading »
In the early part of the nineteenth century, electricity was thought to be the force most likely to prove the existence of the elan vitale or life force of Naturalphilosophie. Schelling, at the turn of the century, for example, proposed that heat, light, magnetism and electricity were all byproducts of a single universal life force. The arising of electrical models allowed polarities to be discovered within organisms – and between discrete classes of persons. Thus maleness or masculinity was assigned to the positive pole, and femininity to the negative. The gendering of electricity and energy continued in the nineteenth century, particularly in respect to medical theories and the notion of “nervous energy”, and the rise in popularity of Spiritualism. Continue reading »
Hail to the Lord of Vows, hail to Ganapati, hail to the First Lord, hail unto you, to the Big-Bellied, One-tusked, Obstacle-destroyer, the Son of Shiva, to the Boon-Giver, Hail, hail.
Ganesa Upanisad
Inspired after a recent Ganesa Puja in Wales, and reflecting on the fact that I have been a devotee of Ganapati for well over 20 years now, I thought it would be appropriate to write a short series of posts on some of the more obscure aspects of this much-beloved devata. Continue reading »
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
As we laugh together
From Rumi’s Divan of Shams of Tabriz (translated by James Coleman)
Of late, I have been re-reading some of the writings of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, the thirteenth century Persian Sufi mystic whose poetry is so beloved in the contemporary West. Continue reading »
Through the process of knowledge assemblage we have created a naturalised space amenable to being mapped; we now equate scientific knowledge with maps.
David Turnbull, Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers
In our recent trip to Berlin, we happened across a wonderful exhibition at the Museen Dahlem – Vodou: Art and Cult from Haiti – which is on until 24th October 2010. If you should find yourself in Berlin, it’s well worth a look. Continue reading »
