Magick Matters

19.11.2021

“Body Gothic: Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Horror Film” by Xavier Aldana Reyes

Magick Matters

"Ever since horror became wildly popular in the 1970s, journalists have warned against the dangers of increasingly explicit forms of violent entertainment. Xavier Aldana Reyes takes a different stance in Body Gothic, celebrating the transgressive qualities of this genre. Reyes considers relevant popular literary and filmic movements of the past three decades and reads them as updates in a long gothic tradition that goes back to the eighteenth century. Body Gothic contains case studies of key texts in splatterpunk, body horror, the new avant-pulp, the slaughterhouse novel, torture porn, and surgical horror."...>>

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19.11.2021

“Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic” by Fred Botting

Magick Matters

"Horror isn’t what it used to be. Nor are its Gothic avatars. The meaning of monsters, vampires and ghosts has changed significantly over the last two hundred years, as have the mechanisms (from fiction to fantasmagoria, film and video games) through which they are produced and consumed. Limits of Horror, moving from gothic to cybergothic, through technological modernity and across a range of literary, cinematic and popular cultural texts, critically examines these changes and the questions they pose for understanding contemporary culture and subjectivity. Re-examining key concepts such as the uncanny, the sublime, terror, shock and abjection in terms of their bodily and technological implications, this book advances current critical and theoretical debates on Gothic...>>

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19.11.2021

“Hitler’s Master of the Dark Arts: Himmler’s Black Knights and the Occult Origins of the SS” by Bill Yenne

Magick Matters

"At the heart of the evil of Nazism was Hitler’s “witch doctor,” Heinrich Himmler, and his peculiar and deadly organization with the mundane name Schutzstaffel, literally “protective squadron.” Undoubtedly you know them better as the feared SS, the very essence of Nazism. Their threatening double lightning bolt is perhaps the most dreaded symbol of the Third Reich. The facts of the SS’s origins are truly stranger than fiction. If you thought Raiders of the Lost Ark was an inspired Hollywood fiction, think again. Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts reveals the hidden “truths” of the SS in full and morbidly fascinating detail."...>>

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19.11.2021

“Hitler’s Astrologer” by David Bryant Perkins

Magick Matters

"Why were the Nazis scouring the globe for ancient artifacts? Hitler's war machine was always one step ahead of England and France in the opening years of World War II. Germany occupied Norway in 1940, just two days before the British planned to. After being totally outwitted in the conquest of France, the British High Command began hearing rumors that these successes were due to more than precise military planning. The Wehrmacht was using the dark forces of the occult. The suspicion strengthened when a German refugee writer and amateur astrologer — Ludwig von Wohl — came to the British with a fantastic story: The Third Reich was using one of Europe’s best astrologers to influence...>>

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19.11.2021

“The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind” by B. Alan Wallace

Magick Matters

"Meditation offers, in addition to its many other benefits, a method for achieving previously inconceivable levels of concentration. Author B. Alan Wallace has nearly thirty years' practice in attention-enhancing meditation, including a retreat he performed under the guidance of the Dalai Lama. An active participant in the much-publicized dialogues between Buddhists and scientists, Alan is uniquely qualified to speak intelligently to both camps, and The Attention Revolution is the definitive presentation of his knowledge. Beginning by pointing out the ill effects that follow from our inability to focus, Wallace moves on to explore a systematic path of meditation to deepen our capacity for deep concentration. The result is an exciting, rewarding "expedition of the mind,"...>>

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