In a fascinating article from 2008 at The Daily Grail, Aeolas Kephas (a.k.a. Jason Horsely) reflects at some length on the roles of Whitley Strieber and Carlos Castaneda as literary shamans whose dedication to sharing their paranormal experiences, encounters, visions, and insights brought them much trouble: Both Castaneda and Strieber were apparently singled out by…
Guerilla ontology on nuclear steroids: The realism of ‘Godzilla’
Charles Fort wrote, “I cannot say that truth is stranger than fiction, because I have never had acquaintance with either. . . . There is the hyphenated state of truth-fiction.” Robert Anton Wilson wrote, “The main thing I learned in my experiments is that reality is always plural and mutable. . . . Alan Watts…
Fearless Artist: Remembering Giger
Jason V. Brock reflects on Giger’s legacy and relates his personal meeting with Giger at the artist’s home in Switzerland.
Chris Hedges: Only the power of sacred imagination can save us
I’m always struck by the passion and power of Chris Hedges’ words whenever he mingles his signature brand of journalistic-prophetic doomsaying with reflections on spiritual and artistic issues. (No surprise that he’s quite lucid in the latter area, by the way; he does have a Master of Divinity from Harvard, after all.) Current case in…
‘The Forbidden Forest’ – Short film inspired by Arthur Machen’s ‘The White People’
Directed, animated, scored, and edited by filmmaker Keith Ronindelli, this amazing short film evokes the dark mystery and sacred terror of Arthur Machen’s classic tale “The White People” in just six minutes. I’m personally struck by the depth and richness of both the vision and the execution, and by the sheer awesomeness of the hallucinatory…
‘Mummies around the World’ now available for preorder
I’m pleased to announce that my mummy encyclopedia is now available for preorder from the publisher, and also from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and elsewhere. The scheduled publication date is November 30. From the official publisher’s description: Perfect for school and public libraries, this is the only reference book to combine pop culture with science…
Bobcat Goldthwaite: Why have a civilization if we’re no longer interested in being civilized?
A couple of years ago when I watched the movie God Bless America, written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwaite (whom I once had the pleasure of seeing live when he was doing standup comedy), it didn’t turn out to be as good in its entirety as I had hoped. The trailer (see below) had been…
The digital murder of the Gutenberg mind
Here’s a double dose of dystopian cheer to accompany a warm and sunny Monday afternoon (or at least that’s the weather here in Central Texas). First, Adam Kirsch, writing for The New Republic, in a piece dated May 2: Everyone who ever swore to cling to typewriters, record players, and letters now uses word processors,…
Teeming Links – May 2, 2014
Anatomy of the Deep State (absolutely required reading): “There is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose…
High weirdness: Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, and Chapel Perilous
Here’s Erik Davis, in a recent interview conducted by Jeremy Johnson, briefly discussing the similarities between the respective realms of high weirdness exemplified by Philip K. Dick’s VALIS and Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger. Erik and Jeremy also make some interesting observations about the way the reading of these types of texts can often kick…