Category Archives for magick

Friday, June 26: DR. STEPHEN HOELLER on Alchemy's "Red Stage" of Transformation at Gnostic Society in Atwater Village (L.A.)

hoeller

I attended dozens of Dr. Stephen Hoeller’s lectures in the early 00s at both the Philosophical Research Society and the Gnostic Society. He has a delightful accent, a mischievous sense of humor and, when he stays on track, a Joseph Campbell-like command of the world’s religio-spiritual-mystical-magical traditions. A living Angeleno treasure, fer shure…

From the Gnostic Society’s website:

June 2009: Alchemy: Its Stages of Transformation

In the past, Dr. Hoeller has periodically returned in his lecturing schedule to the subject of Alchemy. For several years, the topic of the three stages of Alchemical Transformation has not been used by our speaker. This month this vital subject will be discussed utilizing previously not used material. No previous knowledge of Alchemy is required to enjoy this series.

June 5: Alchemy, the Great Art: An introduction to Alchemy, utilizing magical, religious and psychological material of past and present. How may one prepare for one’s own Alchemical Process.

June 12: The Black Stage (Nigredo): The breaking down of the consensus reality. The forming of the original substance of being (Prima Materia).

June 19: The White Stage (Albedo): The dawning of the light of higher consciousness; the arising of enlightenment. Envisioning the heavenly light (Lumen Dei) and the natural light (Lumen Naturae).

June 26: The Red Stage (Rubedo): The melting of all realities in the red-hot Alchemical fire. The ultimate fusion of the opposites. The unifying of reality (Unus Mundus).

Lectures are given at The Gnostic Society of Los Angeles, California (3363 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90039). These programs are held every Friday evening at 8:00 PM. Lectures are free and open to the public (free-will donations are appreciated). Refreshments are offered following the lecture. Further information is available by calling 323-467-2685.

Established in America in 1928, The Gnostic Society is dedicated to advancing the study, understanding, and individual experience of Gnosis. “He who has ears, let him hear!”

http://gnosis.org/gnostsoc/gnostsoc.htm

SATURDAY: Blood Transfusion for a Ghost– Frank Haines at Kenneth Anger Exhibit at PS1

Saturday, June 20, 2009, 7 – 11 pm
PS1/MoMA
In celebration of the summer solstice, Frank Haines has organized an evening of ritualistic, mysterious, and mystical performances, music, film, and spoken word. Four performers—the trio Blanko & Noiry; 16mm filmmaker Rose Kallal and curator Mark Beasley; psychedelic metal band Miracle of Birth; and poet Cedar Sigo— will perform in a different corner of a single gallery. ARP (DFA/Smalltown Supersound) will provide musical transitions between each performance.
In a reference to his artistic relationship to the cult filmmaker Kenneth Anger, Haines borrowed this event’s title from Hugh Kenner’s novel The Pound Era, in which the author notes that Pound “came to think of translation as a model for the poetic act: blood brought to ghosts…essentially creating new life from old texts.” Anger’s current P.S.1 exhibition will be on view throughout the evening.
Ticket information here.

Haines, who currently has a show at the Lisa Cooley Gallery, is a visual, musical, and performance artist. His performances are rare and reportedly not to be missed, filling the entire space with energy in a manner consistent with the occult rituals, such as the gnostic mass, that link Haines with Anger. The performance is $10 and 21+, but it sounds like there will probably be free Grolsch!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CHLsN29AEA

Magik Markers' "Lighter Side of… Hippies"

Video artist and musician Heidi Deihl (formerly of Wooden Wand and Vanishing Voice) brings us the first music video from Magik Markers’ new album Balf Quarry released last month on Drag City. The video combines footage of the 90s Syracuse hardcore scene, Rainbow Gatherings, and other religious rituals.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69_5dI5EySQ&feature=channel_page

"Form is the Graveyard of Conciousness" – Frank Haines opening at Lisa Cooley

fh-poster-2009-low
Occultist artist Frank Haines debuts an installation of new paintings, sculptures, and situations tonight at the Lisa Cooley, located at 54 Orchard Street in Chinatown. Most of tonight’s work was made in the gallery space, utilizing a wide range of formlessness and abstraction. With heavy Theosophical influence, the exhibition invokes themes of duality, including one energetic sculpture of two two-tone dangling equilateral triangles. Also well known for his experimental music as one half of the duo Blanko and Noiry, Haines is offering attendees of tonight’s show first crack at a cassette tape limited to 500 of never-before heard music he created while studying in Austria.

If Haines’ style reminds you of Kenneth Anger, you’re not alone. Haines will present a new performance entitled Blood Transfusion for a Ghost at the Anger exhibition at PS1 June 20th.

The show runs from tonight to July 3rd. More of Haines’ art is featured here and here.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46zaCPZRlio

Runes for Freyja, by Sayre Vickers

freyja_cherry_open

Above: “Cherry double-beveled crossgrain ’tile’ style runes with light oil finish. Cream pyramid-shaped bag with a cherry button closure. This set was inspired by the Goddess Freyja.”

About the artist:

Hi, I’m Sayre Vickers. I’m the person behind Seven Sapphires. I am a Chicago-based artist, permaculturist, bicyclist, activist, and witch.

My work ranges from more traditional studio-centered approaches like ceramics or pen & ink on paper, to functional fabric arts, to site-specific installations including rooftop greenhouses made from dumpstered windows.

My projects are unified by a mindful honoring of connection and relationship:

To the Earth: I work sustainably whenever possible. This means that I almost exclusively use recycled/reused/reclaimed/dumpstered/scavenged materials. I also work to minimize non-renewable energy use and ‘waste’.

To People: Much of my work is by commission, so throughout the design and making there is the connection of intention from my hands to a specific person.

To Place: My spaces/installations are specific to the place they are built and ideally stem from locally available materials.

To Spirit: Many of the items I create can be put to spiritual uses – from meditation stools, to bowls for water meditation, to runes for divination, to vessels that can hold offerings.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, would like to hear more about my work, or just want to say hi.”

More info:
http://sevensapphires.net/about.html

April 5th – ALTERED STATES Exhibition at Transmodern Festival in Baltimore, MD

ALTERED STATES Exhibition

LOF/T Load of Fun Theatre
120 W. North Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21201

Tickets: $5 (tix can be purchased at the door)
Doors Open: 8pm, Performances: 9pm

ALTERED STATES, Curated by Jamillah James for Frontier Projects

Live Performances by Lexie Mountain Boys, Soft Circle (ex-Black Dice/Lightning Bolt), Blues Control (Siltbreeze Records, Brooklyn), Ra Khuit Noor, and New Jedi Order.

Altered States examines the history of collective action, originating in the 1960s with communalism (made families in hippie and freak subcultures), and avant-garde performance, where elements were borrowed from traditional rituals and ceremonial spectacle. This rubric for performance and artistic practice champions a freedom from creative, economic, and social constraints, and de-emphasizes the singular, commodifiable art object as the end-all of cultural production.

The exhibition considers a renewed interest in the aesthetics and performativity of mysticism. Through idiosyncratic performance, borrowed iconography, and the creation of “invested” objects and spaces, the artists in Altered States re-contextualize alterity, or “otherness”, as a psychedelic state of being, and explore the secular, the sacred, and the creative space in between.
Continue reading →

Announcement: March 28, Earth: RECLAIM THE STARS

Last May, Arthur published the Endarkenment Manifesto, Peter Lamborn Wilson’s “half-serious proposal for a political movement to uphold and propagate the ideals of Green Hermeticism.” So naturally we’re pleased to hear of the WWF’s new Earth Hour campaign…

World Wildlife Fund is asking individuals, businesses, governments and organizations around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour – March 28, 2009, 8:30 pm local time—to make a global statement of concern about climate change and to demonstrate commitment to finding solutions.

Lights out means a lot less light pollution, which means many of us will get to experience real darkness, and see the stars, for the first time in ages from our own homes. In other words, we’ll get to experience the night as it has been routinely experienced by homo sapiens for 99 percent of the time that they’ve been roaming the planet. Should be a real (cosmic) eye opener: the heavens, unveiled.

Continuing on the theme: how ’bout, say, a day without driving?

Reclaim the stars, reclaim the streets…

This Sat: The First Poppy Seed See-in

Arthur presents

THE FIRST POPPY SEED SEE-IN
Saturday, March 7, 2009
4 pm
Eat Records
124 Meserole Avenue
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York

At the First Poppy Seed See-in we will gather together to look into what is called “the hidden dimension of the public sphere.”

For free distribution at the event will be the famous Poppy Seed Programmes: 200 pamphlets containing poppy seeds and illustrated by Michael Curtis Hilde with integral texts by Arthur “Weedeater” columnist/blogger Nance Klehm. Here’s an excerpt from her text:

“The hidden dimension of a public sphere is the sphere of imagination. How we locate disorder and remedy it is how we imagine our body and mind.”

Also available will be silkscreened prints of the Arthurdesh poster signed by artist Arik Roper. Posters are $5.

Come eat, drink, pick up poppies, talk and listen to records– support autonomous local businesses like Eat Records, haven to thinkers, practitioners, artists and free people alike– re-imagine, see-in.

Organized by Michael Curtis Hilde. Poster artwork by MCH.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

If you can’t make it to Eat Records this Saturday, we are setting aside 70 poppy seed-loaded Arthurdesh programs for sale online. These are for sale only in US ($6 postpaid) and Can ($8 postpaid).

Paypal your order to

editor@arthurmag.com.

First come, first seeded.

Seeding the hidden dimension with AN ACRE OF POPPIES

enlil

Above: Enlil, the Sumerian god of the Winds of the Cosmos

Seeding the hidden dimension with AN ACRE OF POPPIES
by Nance Klehm
for arthurmag.com

Come on then, what are you waiting for?
Nothing. Let’s hurry.
Yes, let’s run!
Come on! Come on! Hurry! Hurry!
Oh look!
You can see it there. It’s wonderful.
Oh…Oh… What’s happening? What is it? I can’t run anymore. I’m so sleepy.
Here, give us your hands and we’ll pull you along.
Oh no, please, I just have to rest for a moment.
You can’t rest now, we’re almost there.

The hidden dimension of a public sphere is the sphere of the imagination. How we locate disorder and remedy it is how we imagine our body and mind. Disease and healing exist largely within our own perception. Individually. Collectively.

Poppies are a successful weed. They pollinate by the wind and drop their seed easily. 4000-year-old large seed heads have been found in the graves of stone age lake dwellers. The most ancient testimony of the poppy is on a small white clay tablet written in cuneiform found in the ancient spiritual center of the Sumerians – Nippur. Nippur held the shrine to Enlil, the god of the Winds of the Cosmos. It was in Mesopotamia, the land cradled between the Tigris and Euphrates and the birthplace of agriculture, less than 100 miles from Baghdad.

Iraq’s seed bank used to be located in the town of Abu Ghraib. After the 2003 American invasion, the Abu Ghraib facility was emptied of its seed-filled glass containers. Iraqi seed bank employees had sent a “black box” of seeds to Syria prior to the invasion. That box contains samples of 200 varieties of 28 of the country’s most important crop plants. This is what is left of Mesopotamian agriculture. These seeds are held in a freezer now, maybe grown out by some scientists, and not circulated. A tragic irony.

I have been gathering, sowing and collecting poppies during the last 15 years. From their frosty green lettuce-y foliage, fuzzy buds emerge and open to four crinkly silky petals, with black or white flares and olive to purple-black dusty pollen. Some are cool pink, but most are salmon colored.

HOW TO SOW AN ACRE OF POPPIES (right) NOW

(I mean NOW. February 28th through the first half of March. Get out there. Poppy seeds need the cold of late winter to wake up to germination.)

1. Find a spot of open ground that the sun will shine down upon.

2. Scratch the soil lightly loosening the entire surface no deeper than the depth of kitten claws.

3. Sprinkle some seeds—just a few, each seed needs space to grow.

4. Don’t cover them. The loosened soil has small rills and furrows that the seeds will settle in.

5. Walk away and let the next moisture event, be it rain or snow, settle the soil and seed. Find another sunny spot and repeat until done.

Don’t hesitate. Sow your part of that scattered acre NOW.