12.01.2021

“The Book of the Law” and “The Book of Lies” by Aleister Crowley

Magick Matters

"Aleister Crowley’s black magic masterpiece The Book of the Law is the central sacred text of Thelema, written or ‘channeled’ by Crowley in 1904, who claimed it was dictated to him by a disembodied entity named ‘Aiwass’ while he spent the night in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Book of Lies consists of 93 chapters, each of which consists of one page of text. The chapters include a question mark, poems, rituals, instructions, and obscure allusions and cryptograms. The subject of each chapter is generally determined by its number and its corresponding Qabalistic meaning. This is the original 1912 public domain text without Aleister Crowley’s 1921 commentary and without any...>>

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11.01.2021

“Midnight Movies” by James Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum

Magick Matters

“It started out as an affectionate homage to late-night movies, and ended being an affectionately embraced late-night movie,” director Jim Sharman would say of that thing called Rocky Horror. A decade ago, The Rocky Horror Show — later to be filmed as The Rocky Horror Picture Show — was little more than a perverse gleam in the eye of one “Ritz” O'Brien, it could be said that the phenomenon virtually began with something that had already become a cliche and a commonplace: the late-night picture show. Ever since theater exhibitors got the idea of putting on special programs at midnight — mainly diverse kinds of marginal exploitation fare, ideal for Halloween spook-a-thons or rowdy...>>

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11.01.2021

“The Demiurge in Ancient Thought: Secondary Gods and Divine Mediators” by Carl Sean O’Brien

Magick Matters

"How was the world generated and how does matter continue to be ordered so that the world can continue functioning? Questions like these have existed as long as humanity has been capable of rational thought. In antiquity, Plato's Timaeus introduced the concept of the Demiurge, or Craftsman-god, to answer them. This lucid and wide-ranging book argues that the concept of the Demiurge was highly influential on the many discussions operating in Middle Platonist, Gnostic, Hermetic and Christian contexts in the first three centuries AD. It explores key metaphysical problems such as the origin of evil, the relationship between matter and the First Principle and the deployment of ever-increasing numbers of secondary deities to insulate...>>

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11.01.2021

“Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World” by Amar Annus

Magick Matters

"The concept of sign, a portent observed in the physical world, which indicates future events, is found in all ancient cultures, but was first developed in ancient Mesopotamian texts. This branch of Babylonian scientific knowledge extensively influenced other parts of the world, and similar texts written in Aramaic, Sanscrit, Sogdian, and other languages. The seminar will investigate how much do we know about the Babylonian theory and hermeneutics of omens, and the scope of their possible influences on other cultures and regions."...>>

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11.01.2021

“Inviting Angels into Your Life: Assistance and Support from the Angelic Realm” by Kathryn Hudson

Magick Matters

"Angels come to us in many ways: through the lyrics of a song we hear, a timely hand on the shoulder, or a book we happen upon. Angels come to our aid to help us feel safe and help our hearts open wide, so our light and our love shine through. After a powerful visit from an angel helped her transform her fast-paced, chaotic, and addiction-filled Manhattan banker lifestyle, author Kathryn Hudson decided to pay it forward and help others discover that each of us is surrounded by angels to help us. In this book, she shows how to safely open the channel to communicate with the angelic realm in order to access the help...>>

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