James Randi, a MacArthur award-winning magician who turned his formidable savvy to investigating claims of spoon bending, mind reading, fortunetelling, ghost whispering, water dowsing, faith healing, U.F.O. spotting and sundry… Read more »
By the time Page acquired Boleskine he had already become fascinated by Crowley, buying up Crowley-related ephemera that included private manuscripts, first editions of books, artwork, items of clothing and… Read more »
Exciting news from Jerusalem Press: Featuring detailed notes transcribed by Frank Letchford from his advanced lessons in portraiture, [The Static Alignments] is an indispensable resource for anyone wishing to gain an intimate understanding of Spare’s work practice.
A CARVED wooden box may contain the secrets which unlock some of the mysteries of a notorious Highland home. A man from Grimsby is appealing for information on the box… Read more »
Manon Hedenborg White and [Henrik Bogdan] have signed a contract with Oxford University Press for an annotated edition of the magical diaries of Leah Hirsig (1883-1975). This will be the first academic, annotated, and complete edition of Hirsig’s magical diaries from the crucial period of 1923–1925, published together with a selection of contemporary letters.
The Thin White Duke’s strange obsession with keeping his urine safe is allegedly to do with a fall out he had with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page a few months prior in his Manhattan townhouse and, as a result, he became under the belief that the guitar god had sought to put his soul in danger.
In Season 1 [of Pennyworth], Martha found herself in a horrific situation after attending a part thrown by Aleister Crowley, the demon-worshiping, orgy-obsessed villain who kidnapped her. Three days later, she resurfaced, naked in a field, with no memory of what transpired.
[Oscar Eckenstein] was the inventor of the modern crampon and the first to develop a shorter ice axe. Both of which made climbing ice dramatically more efficient and safer and though having evolved some, these are still in use today. Crowley and Eckenstein met in the late 1800’s and he immediately recognized the young Crowley’s potential as a climber and took him under his wing. Like Crowley, he was an admirer of the works of Sir Richard Francis Burton who Crowley would later canonize a saint of the EGC.
Legendary comic book artist and writer Savage Pencil discusses three Edwardian underground figures: Montague Summers, Austin Osman Spare and Louis Wain… From his ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Zoo’ series for Sounds in the 1970s, to designing artwork for the likes of Sonic Youth, Sunn O))), The Fall and Current 93, under the name Savage Pencil he has established a wild, hallucinatory style – a trip that’s equal parts hilarious and terrifying.
‘The Magical Revival’ is currently being prepared for reprint, and will go to the printers next week. This is a straightforward reprint of the 2010 edition, and will appear in two formats: hardbound and softbound. This image shows the back, spine and front of the softbound edition.
SIRIUS LIMITED ESOTERICA presents Hoodoo Pilot, a hardcover volume in 2 editions collecting 16 esoteric essays and 31 magical works of art by Gnostic writer and artist, Kyle Fite. With an Introduction by Michael Staley, Hoodoo Pilot covers a wide range of topics, including Freemasonry, Buddhism, the Typhonian Tradition of Kenneth Grant, the Voudon-Gnostic Tradition of Michael Bertiaux, the mystical artwork, philosophy and sorcery of Austin Osman Spare, and the work of William Blake. These themes and more are woven together in this limited edition collection.
Jimmy Page has spent lockdown indexing his books, he said in a new BBC radio interview. Page spoke to Zoe Ball on July 22 to promote the release of “Scarlet,” a 1974 song he recorded with The Rolling Stones which will be released on their expanded edition of “Goats Head Soup.” Ball asked Page what he’s been doing during lockdown. “I’ve been going through, I’ve been sorting out and indexing my books. I’m actually in the countryside,” Page said.
Three great strands of practice and belief run through human history – science, religion and magic. Over the last few centuries, magic – the idea that we have a connection with the universe, and that the universe responds to us – has developed a bad reputation. But it is still with us, as it has been for millennia, as Professor Chris Gosden shows in this extraordinarily bold and unprecedented history.
Thanks to the new Google Arts & Culture tool Fabricius, anyone can interactively discover this fascinating language by means of three dedicated gateways: First, you can “Learn” about the language of ancient Egypt by following a short educational introduction in six easy steps. Secondly, Fabricius invites you to “Play” and translate your own words and messages into hieroglyphics ready to be shared with your friends and family.
After decades of neglect, the British Surrealist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun’s unique vision and hermetic life have generated enormous interest amongst historians and practitioners of art and magic. In ‘Genius of the Fern loved Gully,’ the first in-depth biographical study of Colquhoun and her work, Amy Hale examines the magical and cultural confluences that shaped her imaginative life and artistic vision.
When Jimmy Page bought an imposing mansion on the banks of Loch Ness in 1970, he was drawn to the property because it once belonged to infamous occultist Aleister Crowley. The Led Zeppelin guitarist sold up after 22 years and few visits, reportedly concluding that there were “bad vibes” there. Today there are claims that occult groups are still haunting the “most notorious home in the Highlands”.
[Aleister Crowley] visited west Cornwall and it is said by some that he summoned up the very Devil himself in Carn Cottage, which led to a woman’s death, and performed a black mass down the hill in Zennor church. What many may not realise is that in 1934, Crowley, then aged 58, was introduced to a 19-year-old from Newlyn named Patricia Doherty.Three years later she gave birth to the boy Crowley considered his son and heir, Randall Gair Doherty, who was nicknamed Aleister Ataturk.
“Aleister Crowley was born in England in 1875. He was a famous occultist, media personality and libertine. But in the summer of 1916, he needed a vacation – except he called it a magical retirement, because a man like him would never do anything so mundane as vacation. He chose Hebron, New Hampshire, to get away from it all because he had an acquaintance there, a psychic by the name of Evangeline Adams.”
“In the late Victorian era, the famous English occultist Aleister Crowley was also intrigued by the sphinx, writing in Liber Aleph (De Natura) of the sphinx’s wholeness and simultaneous fragmentation, an intermingling of the feminine and the masculine. There, the sphinx becomes a symbol of that which cannot be signified. According to Willis Goth Regier in Book of the Sphinx, the French symbolist Alfred Jerry, who lived at the same time as Crowley, was also fascinated by the sphinx.”
“We became aware that past social media posts made by one of our newly appointed trustees show images that are in conflict with this statement, and that many have rightfully found them upsetting, distasteful, and insensitive. Following this the trustee in question was asked to resign which they did this morning, alongside two others who resigned because they disagreed with this decision.”