For the third time in four years, we had a pre-conference event that tied into Pagan studies somehow. (Previously: Montréal, San Francisco.) This was the Occult Chicago conference organized by Jason Winslade at DePaul University—his take on “Chicago Quarter,” an urban orientation class that all first-year DePaul students must take. Imagine a bright new student [...]
Looking forward to this event a lot. It should fortify me for the hard business of a confrontation with a certain publisher’s editorial director. And keep an eye on Rik Garrett’s Occult Chicago blog. Why don’t you start one for your town?
From Deborah Castellano, who also blogs at Charmed, I’m Sure: “The Art of Career Occultism.”‘ Let me ask you, how do you see a career occultist? Do you see her as someone who gets up and does sun salutations, writing in her dream diary over herbal tea and an organic scone, sauntering through a field with [...]
A pre-conference for the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religions in Chicago, on Friday November 16, 2012, presented by Phoenix Rising Academy and DePaul University. In his classic essay, “Walking in the City,” ethnologist and historian Michel de Certeau distinguished between the “exaltation of a scopic and gnostic drive” that comes from viewing [...]
Robert Moss, novelist and noted writing on dreaming, has a series of posts on his blog about Dion Fortune’s Secrets of Dr. Taverner. Supposedly, the occultist/psychiatrist Dr. Taverner is based on a real doctor whom Fortune knew in the early twentieth century, and the “secrets” are retellings of actual cases. In my opinion, she succeeded [...]
• Twelve words for for bloggers, pointed towards people in the medical professions, but likely appropriate for academia as well. • While we are in the workplace, some thoughts from a Psychology Today article on why “diversity training” is a waste of time. Or why good manners are better than rules enforced by bureaucratic idiots. [...]
• At The Allergic Pagan, a three-part series on Neopaganism in America (link goes to the third part) with a lot of “whatever happened to?”. • Jason Pitzl-Waters uses the reunion of the band Dead Can Dance (one of my favorites) to look back at the history of Pagan music. • A new blog devoted [...]
• According to John Rentoul of the British newspaper The Independent, these phrases should be banned due to overuse. He tips his hat to George Orwell, all well and good, but someone in the comments notes that the Irish satirist Brian O’Nolan also eviscerated bureaucratese in his day, which was even earlier. • Abraham Maslow’s [...]
Not necessarily psychotropic mushrooms. To learn more about them, read Andy Letcher’s Shroom or the works of Paul Stamets, Dale Pendell, etc. These are metaphorical mushrooms—or mushrooms as metaphor—from an article by Wouter Hanegraaff on the German scholar of esotericism Will-Erich Peuckert (1895-1969): To me, [Peuckert's] book [Pansophie] breathed an unmistakable mycological atmosphere: the mushrooms [...]
Via Plutonica, a Life magazine slideshow on Aleister Crowley and his influence on pop culture. I had not known that Sidney Blackmer played his character, Roman Castevet, in the occult thriller Rosemary’s Baby, partly on impressions of Crowley. When the movie came out, I was too young to appreciate the depth of its scariness, let [...]
