Shot in a style that renders it both an explicit homage to cinema noir and an exploration of fantasy and surrealism, “Nuit Blanche” (2010) is nothing short of exquisite. The title translates literally from the French as “white night.” The production company is Spy Films. The director is Arev Manoukian. The idea is this: Nuit…
Dead Can Dance: “Opium”
Anastasis is the first new album from Dead Can Dance in 16 years. The legendary musical duo consisting of Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard (backed by numerous accompanying musicians) has covered a lot of ground, both musically and geographically, since they formed DCD in Melbourne in 1981, and the appearance of a new album by…
Ancient pharaohs, temporal lobe epilepsy, and the birth of monotheism
Did the religious visions and experiences associated with temporal lobe epilepsy, suffered across generations by a pivotally important royal family in ancient Egypt, give birth to monotheism? This newly advanced theory, which adds a possible new dimension to the longstanding and widely accepted belief that monotheism was founded by the pharaoh Akhenaten, a.k.a. Amenhotep IV…
Philosophy as Martial Art in the Shadow of Apocalypse
De Umbris Idearum: the shadows of ideas. Giordano Bruno used this as the title of one of his treatises on the art of memory. As thematic inspiration for this weekly column, the notion of shadows is taken for its most expansive potential. Everything we encounter in the environment is in some way a shadow of…
Western civilization and the divided brain
In his 2009 book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, psychiatrist, doctor, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar Iain McGilchrist mounts a fascinating argument for the idea “that the division of the brain into two hemispheres is essential to human existence, making possible incompatible versions of…
John Dee’s Enochian Apocalypse
Doctor John Dee (1527-1609) remains one of London’s most intriguing historical figures. He was a confidant of Queen Elizabeth I, who guided the nation through one of its most challenging eras, partly based upon Dee’s unique blend of alchemy, divination and Hermetic philosophy. In fact, the Queen had so much faith in Dee’s calculations she…
The muse, morning writing, and the mythic imagination
In A Course in Demonic Creativity I talk at some length about the process of using early-morning writing to establish an open line of communication between yourself and your genius daemon. Here are some valuable further insights and reflections on this practice from poet Dennis P. Slattery, originally published in Spring: A Journal of…
Recommended Reading 24
This week we bring you an exceptionally rich list of excellent reading and, in two cases, excellent listening. Topics include: the inherent — and ongoing — problem with financial institutions that are “too big to fail”; the siege of higher education in its traditional form by tech startups and the exploding online college movement; the…
Terra Sacra Time Lapses (SHORT FILM)
Mesmerizing, beautiful, and even revelatory, this short film effectively does what the time lapse portions of Koyaanisqatsi did for contemporary urban-technological cityscapes and selected portions of untouched nature, only it expands the scope to encompass the planet as a whole — an appropriate ambition for a film titled “Terra Sacra,” Latin for “Sacred Earth.” “Terra…
Within Two Worlds (SHORT FILM)
“Within Two worlds” offers another impressive take on a philosophical and cinematographic idea explored in Koyaanisqatsi and “Terra Sacred Time Lapses” — specifically, the idea that unrecognized aspects of reality and nature, including astonishing patterns and motions of beauty, grace, and symmetry, become visible when time lapse photography allows us to view the world at speeds…