Salon is running a fascinating interview with James Carse, whose new book The Religious Case Against Belief raises all kinds of interesting questions about the nature of faith and religion.  I haven't read it yet, but based on this article the book has jumped to the top of my pending list.  He emphasizes the differences between religions, which I ( Read more... )

Last weekend I mentioned to a few people that I'm working on a project called "Vox Dei" which turns English-transliterated Hebrew words into music according to Paul Foster Case's note correspondences. A very preliminary, not-ready-for-prime-time version is here.

I'm mostly putting this out there to see if it works for other people; you'll need ( Read more... )

I just unsubscribed from a Rosicrucian mailing list after a week, in large part because its denizens relentlessly top-post and fail to trim quoted text when replying -- even if they're replying to a thirty-message digest.

I am reasonably sure that the true representatives of Frater CRC will exhibit much better netiquette when I find them.

Yet another renegade religion has nailed its theses to the internet.  While their fifth proof ot the divinity of Google is technically unsound (even under IPv6), I have to say they make a pretty strong case.  Isaac Asimov wrote a story with the same theme, back when transcendently knowledgeable computers were still a subject for science fiction.

It' ( Read more... )

The other evening I taught my segment of LVX's "Ceremonial Magick 101" class series, "The Language of Astrology".  During the class one of the attendees asked me to explain a trick I had surprised her with a few months earlier; to my own surprise, the entire class was flabbergasted and delighted with the trick, and spent most of the rest of the ( Read more... )

Over the last few days I attended Blue Horizon's annual Babalon Puja, a group campout and ritual marathon which I had never attended previously. Now I'm kicking myself for all the years I missed. Despite periods of winds strong enough to snap tentpoles, everything came off beautifully. The moment when a pause in the invocation of Hecate was ( Read more... )

There may be better ways to improve one's mood than sharing good food, good wine, and good conversation with a beautiful woman while sitting at an outdoor table at a nice little Italian restaurant on a crisp LA autumn evening. But I'll definitely settle for that one. Thank you, lady_saffir; it's nice to know that two obsessive-compulsives can manage ( Read more... )

"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment." - Gautama Buddha

"For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour." - Liber AL, I:61, excerpt

madelineusher just pointed this out to me.  I love my kid.  And I love how weird the world is.

A few days ago, I was getting a lift home with anubis75 and lady_saffir when she pointed out a car ahead of us with the vanity plate "ORGONE".  It turned out they weren't familiar with this term or with Wilhelm Reich, so I gave them a brief explanation and pointed them to the Wikipedia article about Reich.

Since then I have been immersed in a synchronistic haze of ( Read more... )