Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars: A Magical History

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King Arthur with the Isle of Avalon in the distance. Unkown artist, unkown date. Woodcut. 

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Flora Knight, July 2, 2024

Glastonbury, a town steeped in mysticism and legend, serves as a remarkable microcosm of the history of witchcraft. This enigmatic place bridges the gap between ancient practices of White Magic and modern Wicca, weaving a rich tapestry of magical heritage that has captivated the imagination for centuries.

At the heart of Glastonbury's magical history lies the Holy Grail. Integral to the Arthurian Legend, the Grail symbolizes the fusion of Christian spiritualism with contemporary magical thought. Central to this legend is Merlin, the wizard who conjures King Arthur into being, embodying the archetype of the magical practitioner. The Grail literature, steeped in mystical lore, enriches the tradition of magical dynamics, with the Grail itself often depicted as a powerful and elusive artifact. 

Joseph of Arimathea Preaching to the Inhabitants of Britain, c.1796. William Blake.

The Grail's origins trace back to the Celtic Cauldron of Ceridwen, a mystical vessel believed to produce healing potions and the elixir of life. In Arthurian legend, the Grail is frequently associated with the cup used to collect the blood of Christ at the crucifixion, brought to Glastonbury by Joseph of Arimathea. According to legend, Joseph built the first church in the area, burying the Grail beneath it. King Arthur is said to have sought the Grail extensively and was brought to Glastonbury to die.

Another variation of the story suggests that Joseph of Arimathea brought the infant Jesus to Glastonbury, where they constructed a small church of mud and wattle. This humble structure evolved into the now-ruined Glastonbury Abbey, as it expanded over the centuries. The legendary Isle of Avalon, often identified with modern Glastonbury, is not only the resting place of Excalibur but also the Grail—two of the four most significant tools in modern witchcraft.

In addition to the Holy Grail, modern Wicca acknowledges another mystical vessel in Glastonbury: Cerridwen’s Cauldron of Wisdom. This cauldron, associated with dark knowledge and crucial to Welsh magical tradition, represents another facet of Glastonbury's deep connection to witchcraft and ancient magic.

Beyond its Arthurian connections, Glastonbury is renowned for its earth effigies—vast structures shaped like figures and believed to form a celestial temple. These giant effigies, visible only from the skies or the top of the Tor (the original Isle of Avalon), are thought to represent zodiac figures. Each zodiac figure holds deep symbolic meaning in both magic and the Grail legend.

The Glastonbury Zodiac is of a series of mounds, paths, streams, and rivers, coming together to form terrestrial representations of the 12 horoscope constellations. These earthly structures correspondent to the celestial zodiac, exerting spiritual power across the landscape and all who pass through and over it. 

A map of Glastonbury with the Zodiac earth effigies superimposed above.

The Zodiac symbols found in this mystical temple and their Arthurian representations are as follows:

Taurus (Earth) – King Gurgalain

Aries (Fire) – Messire Gawain (The Sun in the second quarter)

Pisces (Water) – King Fisherman

Aquarius (Air) – King Pelles/Sir Perceval (The Sun in the first quarter, the Phoenix)

Capricornus (Earth) – King of Castle Moral

Sagittarius/Hercules (Fire) – King Arthur (Sun in the east, last quarter)

Scorpio/Libra (Water/Air) – Calixtus (The Scales of Death)

Virgo (Earth) – The Damsel, Sir Perceval's Sister

Leo/Cancer (Fire/Water) – Sir Lancelot (The Midday Sun, Third Quarter)

Gemini (Air) – Lohot, King Arthur’s Son (The Sun in the West, the setting sun, Orion in Effigy)

These celestial symbols, intricately linked to the Arthurian legend, guide the way to the resting place of the Holy Grail, weaving a profound narrative that merges the earth and the heavens. It is no coincidence that the world’s largest music festival, now in its fifty fourth year, is spread across this spiritual landscape. The ley lanes that cross the fields bring with them potent energy and each year, hundreds of thousands of revellers gather to walk through Glastonbury’s temple of the stars.

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Flora Knight is an occultist and historian.

Film

Tyler Cowen Playlist

Tyler Cowen July 1, 2024

Can we find God, or perhaps Godliness in music? Here are numerous different quests, taken from various religions around the world. Apologies to anyone left out!

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Tyler Cowen is Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. With colleague Alex Tabarrok, Cowen is coauthor of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and cofounder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University.

Within The Context of No Context

The Aeon (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Judgment, the Aeon
Number: XX
Astrology: Fire (Pluto)
Qabalah: Shin

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Chris Gabriel June 29, 2024

“The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt.”
-William Blake

This card is the cleansing fire, the revelatory force that undoes what was. Each version features a large divine figure above three smaller ones. It depicts Apocalypse, literally unveiling, or revealing itself. This is both the Christian Revelation and in Thoth, the Thelemic Aeon.

In Marseille, we see an Angel coming through a halo, emitting great rays. He is winged, and blowing his trumpet, raising the dead from their graves. A man and woman are praying, as a corpse rises they are all naked. The Angel has a seal upon his head, and a nimbus over him. His trumpet bears a cross flag.

In Rider, the Angel is rising from clouds, his hair is fiery, he is blowing his trumpet, beneath we see the story of Revelation 20:13 play out… ‘“

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.”

Here caskets rise above the water, and the many dead raise their arms to the angel. All are grey. 

In Thoth, we have the most drastic departure in the whole deck. While Apocalyptic imagery has appeared in Lust, here the Apocalypse is undone. As in the Blake quote we began with, the end of the world is not an end, but a renewal, a clarification. The card depicts a fiery scene. Nuit, Goddess of the night sky and the cardinal directions, arches over a throne upon which the Elder Horus sits. Beneath the throne is the rising winged sun, and the Hebrew letter Shin, within which three babes reside. Superimposed over the whole scene is Harpocrates, or Horus the Child.

This is one of the most significant cards in the Thoth deck, certainly the most ‘religious’. For here we are given the telos of the Tarot, the end point of our journey, while the World or Universe will remain, the Judgment comes.

Marseille and Rider maintain the Christian view of Apocalypse, a nightmarish and literal end to the world, an end to the Universe in divine war, and subsequent Judgment according to God. Thoth concurs with William Blake, in that the end is not an end, and that Christianity misinterpreted the nature of Aeonic precession.

Christianity asserts a 6000 year age to the Earth, a set beginning, a few ages, from Judaism to Christianity, and an impending end. Thelema, however, finds the entirety of history and religion to be a cyclical movement. Thus the appearance of Harpocrates, the solar infant who despite being threatened by great beasts, snakes and scorpions, overcomes and continues.

I see this solar myth reflected perfectly in the fairy tales of Tom Thumb, a little boy constantly being eaten by creatures and coming out, a narrative known as a Swallow Cycle. This is the nature of the Sun, who is swallowed by each creature of the Zodiac, and keeps going.

When we pull this card, this is what we are tasked with. To see clearly what has swallowed us, be it an idea, job, or person, and to judge accordingly, to overcome what is by seeing it clearly. The Fire of this card will burn away those imperfections. Whether we are the risen dead being judged, or the solar child overcoming the past, we must see our situation clearly, and in doing so, see ourselves clearly. 

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
1 Corinthians 13:12

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
-William Blake

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

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Film

Tree Sightings

Study of a Tree, Fra Bartolommeo della Porta (1472 – 1517). Black chalk on antique laid paper, Harvard Art Museums.

Ale Nodarse June 27, 2024

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“Beauty: a fruit at which we look without trying to seize.” - Simone Weil.¹

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When did you last look at a leaf? At a branch and the fruit set forth? At the stripped peel of a birch or the downward swoop of a willow? 

Seldom are those senses which ground us used to their fullest. Writing on the limitations of sense, philosopher Luce Irigaray turns to trees. “Instead of lingering before a tree […] to contemplate its singularity and meet it in its reality, we pass it, at best thinking: it is an oak.”² Often, she continues, we “meet a tree only through a denomination, an idea, a use […].”³ We tend to name things before we see, really see, them. This haste entails a loss for vision. Since in rushing to name, we renounce “both a great part of our present sight and the energy that an encounter between living beings can procure.”⁴ Naming, in other words, reduces vision to categorization and, most often, to values measured by use alone. This entails a set of misconceptions. For the tree (even if we might use it) does not exist for our use. For this birch (which allows us to breathe) does not live for us. Not exactly. 

Could we look then, really look, without naming? Drawing, I think, might come to our aid. “Drawing”, by its nature, is a process, the ‘ing’ always underway. Its origins speak to frictions. “To draw” comes from the Proto-Germanic dragan, a “dragging” movement through. It speaks to pulling and to pressing and to the force required to leave a mark. Picture, for instance, a pencil — whose graphite tip presses against paper and disintegrates into it. Or imagine stepping upon still-wet grass and bending a path through tender blades. Friction is always and essentially reciprocal. The paper against pencil, the grass against foot. To look through drawing is to let friction in, to be burdened by vision, to let sight affect us: to not name so quickly. Or to name, knowing this is not enough.  

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“ Rarely had it been glimpsed as a portrait, as something disposed to interiority — that is, as capable of a strange and other life.”

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A drawing of a tree functions to remind us of the strangeness of that creature — living, standing — on the other side of our vision. In the late fifteenth-century, a Florentine monk set black chalk to paper and began to draw. The monk, Fra Bartolommeo della Porta, set his gaze upon trunk and branches, and allowed them to spill, with a slight shift of the hand, into clouds of leaves. Gaps, patches of page, make room for light which in turn seems to flow in as if momentarily accompanied by air. Chalk, when taken up more firmly, also signals the force of outward shoots, as if newly unfurled, while gentle curves augur future growth. 

The field of vision is necessarily limited. We cannot know precisely what Bartolommeo saw, nor fathom the distance between his vision and that which still remains upon the page. Asserting his motivations would be more dubious still. Perhaps, in the friar’s case, a sense of divinity within the natural world, as increasingly asserted by mystics and saints, promised aesthetic compunction. Perhaps. We do know, however, that turning to the tree as such had rarely been done before. Far from the subject of vision’s focus, the tree had been presented as landscape. It had almost always stood in accompaniment. Rarely had it been glimpsed as a portrait, as something disposed to interiority — that is, as capable of a strange and other life.

Now Bartolommeo really looked. He saw through branch to chalk and back again. And what he saw seemed to be more than enough. The beauty of such a drawing remains, in part, with its partiality: not in the sense of a bias, but in its disposition as seemingly fragmentary and unfinished and thus alive in the present. (Its beauty serves to remind us that this tree, much like the paper upon which it is set, may well outlive its draftsman.) Drawing, as vision’s friction, acknowledges the tree as presence. The Study of a Tree opens up a new horizon, conditioning a space for reflection and raising questions. Might we permit ourselves, the drawing asks, “not to grasp but to be touched by the sight of a birch?”⁵

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¹Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 150.
²Luce Irigaray, Through Vegetable Being, 46. 
³Ibid
⁴Ibid
⁵ Irigaray, 51

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Alejandro (Ale) Nodarse Jammal is an artist and art historian. They are a Ph.D. Candidate in History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University and are completing an MFA at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art. They think often about art — its history and its practice — in relationship to observation, memory, language, and ethics.

John Sinclair

Film

Bright Moments (Gen Art)

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2021-2024 Complete Works, BRIGHT MOMENTS (EST. 2021)

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Ian Rogers June 25, 2024

On April 22, 2024, a ten-city, three year voyage including one hundred fifty artists, ten thousand “Crypto Citizens”, and tens of thousands of visitors to a roving experiential art gallery came to a close. Despite starting without a plan and riding a roller-coaster digital art market, Bright Moments delivered exactly what they promised: ten exceptional in-person events between June 2021 and April 2024, each with hands-on celebrations of generative and AI art sustained by “you’ve gotta see this” word-of-mouth. In each production the tight-knit Bright Moments team were cast members in a stage-play of their own creation, smiling, excited and giving each visitor the feeling they were the single most important addition to the fledgling CryptoCitizen community. The momentum was palpable and they could have easily extended their run but the plan was always ten cities and ten thousand CryptoCitizens and with these in the past chapter one came to an emotional closing. The Finale in Venice, Italy, simultaneous with the Venice Biennale, was bittersweet, a gathering of the community of digital art pioneers for whom Bright Moments was an outpost where the bubble and its burst weren’t the headline. Some two decades ago, sci-fi writer William Gibson stated, “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” At Bright Moments the future was evenly distributed, with artists and collectors sharing a world of art created by code and artificial intelligence, digitally scarce on a blockchain, delivered by a company espousing “OpenSource Capitalism”: no investors, only token holders/DAO member owners. This is their story.

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“The legacy of Bright Moments will certainly be the community of artists it built and the works they have collectively left behind. More than one hundred fifty artists participated in Bright Moments events over the past three years, and the body of work includes some of the finest work in generative and AI art created during this time period.”

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CryptoVenetian #274, Bright Moments. Owned by higallery.

Using Covid lockdown as a catalyst, Bright Moments invented an event with elements of a music festival, experiential theater, and an art gallery. Instead of tickets, visitors would buy “mint passes” online, then generate their CryptoCitizen live in attendance at a spectacular and thematically-designed venue, often in the company of the artists themselves. The “minting process,” or process of receiving your CryptoCitzen, brought the buyer into Bright Moments as a member of the cast, including elements and references from the locale as well as the play acting of the Bright Moments team to make the visitor feel like they are part of the creation process. Visitors received an unforgettable in-person experience for what is at the end a digital collectible.

Bright Moments is not a traditional, VC-backed startup, instead these digital collectors are also the owners of Bright Moments. They have built the brand the past three years without debt or equity investment, using only the Ethereum collected from selling CryptoCitizens at each stop. It is structured as a Distributed Autonomous Organization, or DAO, whose members are the owners of the ten thousand CryptoCitizens. Ownership grants rights, access, and input (members voted on which city would be Bright Moments next stop, for example) and owners are free to sell their non-fungible membership tokens on the open market at any time. Venture capital firm Union Square Ventures has bought 6% of all Citizens and a couple other individuals have accumulated 5% each, but the membership is spread out among nearly three thousand owner-members and all ownership/membership is in the form of non-fungible tokens. 

Finale, Bright Moments

Only one third of all CryptoCitizens were sold for ETH. In each city three hundred Citizens were given to existing citizen-members and another three hundred were gifted to the local community in an effort to both reward existing members and build a community with roots in each city they visited.

The legacy of Bright Moments will certainly be the community of artists it built and the works they have collectively left behind. More than one hundred fifty artists participated in Bright Moments events over the past three years, and the body of work includes some of the finest work in generative and AI art created during this time period. Tyler Hobbs’ Incomplete Control, Emily Xie’s Off-Script, and Bosque de Chapultepec by Daniel Calderon Arenas are all seminal works by celebrated digital artists first showcased and minted at Bright Moments’ events. Seattle-based Mpkoz contributed two of his most important series, Parnassus and Metropolis, at Bright Moments events. Artist, teacher, and co-founder of pioneering platform ArtBlocks gave a presentation at NFC Lisbon showcasing his Bright Moments contributions as fully one-third of his career in digital art. Bright Moments also innovated on the way art could be collected, such as with Ben Kovach’s 100 Print where collectors bid for tokens then were able to choose their piece from a physical print on a wall in an NYC gallery, highest bidder goes first.

The Venice, Italy Finale brought together sixty artists who had participated in Bright Moments since the first event in June, 2021 in Venice, California, for one final mint. Mint pass holders chose a walk-on song, danced up the stairs, then entered a grand hall in the Scuola Grande San Giovanni for a theatrical reveal of their CryptoVenizian. After, a contribution from one of the one hundred fifty artists to the Finale was revealed on a screen adorned to resemble an eighteenth century Venetian mirror, with the artist’s name and hand-drawn likeness displayed on accompanying iPads disguised in a similar style. The technology was a vehicle but the art was the main event. The traditional art world has taken notice – this week, Thursday June 27, 2024, Christie’s will auction ‘Bright Moments 2021-2024 Complete Works’ a collection of 216 unique generative and AI artworks. 

Across the courtyard in the Chiesa de San Giovanni Evangelista Ganbrood’s AI-generated likeness of Jesus Christ appears to have been hanging in the church for hundreds of years and guests kneel, confess, and see artificial intelligence present their confessions in real-time via The Dream Cathedral by artist Huemin.

We left Team Bright Moments in Venice, Italy as they were cleaning up the Scuola and Chiesa, exhausted and headed for an adrenaline come-down from this three-year ultra-marathon performance. It was an unquestionable success. Regardless of your opinion on the cryptocurrency hype cycle of the past four years, there is no denying Bright Moments have transcended and created a community, a gallery brand that represents an entire movement, and beloved art. Additionally they pioneered the delivering digital products with a physical, in-person experience. Both the product and the experience feel like luxury for a future generation, substituting openness for exclusivity.

The question everyone politely poked for an answer to was, “What’s next?” Founder Seth Goldstein, “We have a community around the world that wants to come together, be together, and experience this new kind of art in magnificent, overwhelming, IRL experiences. Next we will do something different that still lives up to the Bright Moments name. The Citizens are done. Bright Moments lives on.”

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Ian Rogers

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FURTHER READING:

PRESS

• 2021:

• Decrypt: An NFT Gallery Pops Up in Venice Beach, California 

• Decential:l Matt Leising: The Betrayal of Bright Moments

• The Information: Minting Takes Manhattan (Tyler Hobbs: Incomplete Control)

• 2022: 

• FAZ: In The Powerhouse of New Art: Einstein on the NFT  (English Translation)

• 2023:

• Coindesk: Art Blocks and NFT Gallery Bright Moments Team Up

• Decrypt: Bright Moments Transports Live NFT Art Minting Experience to Tokyo

• 2024: 

• FakeWhale: Bright Moments Founder Seth Goldstein in Conversation

• Outland: Bright Moments

• Le Random: Bright Moments on Prioritizing the Personal

VIDEOS

• Nov 2023: Deafbeef in Patagonia 

• Nov 2023: CryptoPatagonians in Buenos Aires 

• Feb 2024: CryptoParisians in Paris

• April 2024: The Last Supper in Venice

• June 2021-April 2024: Full Playlist of Key Videos 

POSTS

• Aug 2021: USV Joints the Bright Moments DAO 

• Nov 2021: Crypto Cities & CryptoCitizens 

• March 2022: Introducing Bright Opportunities NFT Investment DAO

ADDITIONAL LINKS

• brightmoments.io

• Twitter: @brtmoments

• IG: @brightmomentsgallery

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Iggy Pop Playlist

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Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, and actor. Since forming The Stooges in 1967, Iggy’s career has spanned decades and genres. Having paved the way for ‘70’s punk and ‘90’s grunge, he is often considered “The Godfather of Punk.”

Liberation

Eight of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Eight of Disks, Prudence
Number: 8
Astrology: Sun in Virgo
Qabalah: Hod of He ה

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Chris Gabriel June 22, 2024

The Eight of Disks is a card of establishment, regarding both the process of establishing and the well established. It is about “finishing touches” and maintenance. This is a card of material well being, and the investment it takes to keep it growing.

In Rider, we see a wooden wall adorned with five pentacles, and a craftsman sitting on his bench, working on two more. He is engraving one of the pentacles with a hammer and chisel. In the distance we see a town.

In Thoth, we see a plant. Twisting and full of leaves, it has eight flowers as the eight disks. It is the Sun in Virgo, consciousness applied to growth. There is the golden sky of the Sun, and the earth tones of Virgo.

In Marseilles, we see two columns of four coins with flowers between them. Qabalah gives us the numerical key to its significance, eight is Hod, the intellect or Mind of God, and He ה is the Princess, or the Earth. Thus, we have the Mind of the Princess. Prudence is the Mind of the Princess.

This is the image of caring for one's belongings and  maintaining things  rather than letting them decay. We can look at this energy as Investment. This is the sort of investment we make by planting a seed, watering it, and giving it time to grow.

Many people who seek the wisdom of the tarot are curious about their financial situation, they want to know if they’ll come into money, lose money, find a new job, etc. Few cards indicate wealth, as wealth itself is a fickle concept that has drastically different meanings to just about everyone. Rather, this card indicates the process of growing wealth. It reminds me of a proverb, in which an old man plants seeds for trees which he will not live to see the fruit of.

The efforts that this card indicates are not swift, and may not pay off for years, but they are the very flow of the Earth. Slow, driven, and direct. This is the great vegetable intelligence.

This card offers a warning against our all too human desire for speed and effortless gain . “Get rich quick” schemes will not produce lasting wealth, and the nice things we have which we do not maintain will spoil.

Consider the idiom, a stitch in time saves nine stitches. This card is the stitch that saves. 

This saying has fallen out of fashion in a society so fixated upon ease of consumption. We’d rather purchase something new than fix something old, piling up endless piles of trash rather than maintaining and developing what we possess.

When we pull this card, we are being asked to invest our time and energy into the development of our goal, whether it be as small as a stitch in our pants, polishing our boots, or as large as purchasing a house. We are meant to act with care for the things in our life. Be prudent!

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, CARDS

Questlove Playlist

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Questlove has been the drummer and co-frontman for the original all-live, all-the-time Grammy Award-winning hip-hop group The Roots since 1987. Questlove is also a music history professor, a best-selling author and the Academy Award-winning director of the 2021 documentary Summer of Soul.

Film

Patricia Sun’s Spirit of Creativity

William Kilburn, c.1790.

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Patricia Sun June 20, 2024

Tetragrammaton is dedicated to the spirit of creativity available to all of us. "It is a way of being.", Rick Rubin tells us. This column is dedicated to that way of being.

This will be a space dedicated to actualizing our best selves. A space for healing our wounds and our fears and helping us to feel and understand how to release us into our highest self.

Here is a support for the evolutionary leap that is in process and happening to all of humanity. As we face our shadow with light, new reality comes into being.

There is a healing process that releases both logic and intuition together, to serve a high good – it is love released by human beings – by choice, It is, ultimately: "A creative Act"

Intellect and heart together is a harbinger, not only for wisdom but humanity matured, actualized, and freed.

"Truth and kindness together open a path that cannot be stopped --all we need is the courage to live it." And to remember it.

As Gandhi said, "Be truthful, gentle, and fearless."

It's time to live life. To end war. To heal ourselves. And it is time to transform fear. It is within our power to do this – it is quite possible to do so we might as well do it.

Hang out here in Tetragrammaton with me and you will see.

We see it. We will remind you and ourselves.

Thank you so very much for coming.

Till next time.

Blessings,

Patricia Sun

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Patricia Sun is a philosopher, an ethicist, a leader, an innovator, a speaker, a teacher, a problem-solver, and a communication expert of a new way to live.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

Film

A Brief History of White Magic. III, Post Renaissance to the 20th Century.

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A ceremonial tablet of elemental symbols from an Order of the Golden Dawn splinter group. c.1900

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Flora Knight June 18, 2024

And so we reach the end of our whistle-stop tour of White Magic. We have seen magic across time and society both revered and rejected but ever present. It has shaped our world quietly, offering answers beyond the reach of institutions and homes of controlled knowledge, and the history we have discussed still reverberates today, not just in magical practices but across everyday life. So much of the magic we think about in the 21st century happened in the brief period between the end of the renaissance and the start of the 20th Century. During this period, magic and witchcraft experienced a complex and transformative journey. Witchcraft was formally decriminalised and though occasional witch trials persisted, the fervor and fear that once surrounded this practice significantly diminished. In this era, the influence of the Rosicrucians led to a rise in secret societies such as the Freemasons, which contributed to the popularity of ritualistic magic and an interest in ancient practices.

Secret societies played a pivotal role in the evolution of magic during this time. While Masonic rituals had an essential influence on later magical practices, they were not directly relevant to the magical practices themselves. Instead, these societies fostered an environment where ritualistic magic could thrive. The late 18th century societies saw the development of somnambulism, a deep hypnotic trance state that would later become a significant aspect of magical and witchcraft activities.

A page from William Blake’s ‘The Four Zoas’, c.1800

One of the most symbolically intriguing developments of this period was the creation of the Four Zoas by the poet William Blake, for whom magic was a critical part of his practice. The Four Zoas are as follows:

Los: The Spirit of Prophecy and divine vision, derived from Sol, the guiding sun.
Urizen: The Spirit of Thought and Eternal Mind, residing in the Silver Mountains of wisdom.
Luvah: The Prince of Love, representing Eros and Eternal Youth, derived from the Lover.
Tharmas: The Corporeal Water of Matter, the fluid matrix of form and Prima Matter.

Blake’s work was a synthesis of millennia of magical thinking, exemplifying the third way that magic has always stood for. It imbued every element of his work, work that dealt antiquity and religion through a unique, magically informed, perspective.

Towards the end of this period, two significant occult groups emerged: the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society.

The Golden Dawn, formed through the writings of S.L. MacGregor Mathers and the ideas of three Freemasons, was arguably the most important occult group in history. The society operated on a three-tier hierarchical system and was notable for admitting women as equals alongside men, a significant departure from other secret societies. The First Order of the Golden Dawn taught Qabalah philosophy, Geomancy, Astrology, and Tarot Divination. The Second Order, known as the Inner Order, focused on Alchemy, Vision Quests, and Astral Projection. The Third and final order was reserved for the Secret Chiefs, who allegedly controlled the others through spiritual powers. Though the Golden Dawn lasted only about 15 years, it profoundly influenced modern magic practices, including Wicca and Thelema and popularised magical practices that had long fallen out of use.

An etching of Abramelin the Mage.

The Theosophical Society was founded by Madame Helena Blavatsky, and predated the Golden Dawn. It was inspired by Blavatsky's extensive travels and studies of Eastern and Asian philosophies. The society was an amalgamation of Buddhist and Hindu ideas interpreted through Neo-Platonic thought, envisioning humanity's destiny as a spiritual evolution. Blavatsky's ideas, expounded in her book "Isis Unveiled," introduced modern concepts of witches communicating with spiritual entities, which she viewed as mischievous elementals like gnomes, fairies, undines, sylphs, and salamanders, corresponding to the four elements.

These two groups gave rise to two of the most important figures in contemporary magic – Aleister Crowley and Abramelin the Mage. Crowley, known as the Beast 666, began with white magic but later developed a fascination with the Occult, becoming associated with black magic. Contemporary occultism still owes an insurmountable debt to Crowley, whos writings and ideas are the basis for modern Black Magic.

Abramelin the Mage, on the other hand, was an ancient Egyptian mage, retranslated and contextualised by a contemporary group.  The works of Abramelins, who’s very existence is disputed, were compiled and translated by S.L.M. Mathers, focused mainly on Kabbalistic magic, Demonology and featured a number of Sator Squares which were believed to contain malevolent energy.

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“The rise of psychoanalysis also influenced the understanding of magic and witchcraft. Much of white magic can be seen as rudimentary psychoanalysis, focusing on the inner workings of the mind and self-improvement.”

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During this time, academic interest in historical witchcraft surged, most notably through the Witch-Cult Hypothesis. Proposed by German scholars Jarcke and Mone in the early 19th century, this theory suggested that the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries targeted a surviving pre-Christian Pagan cult that had descended into a Satanic sect. Although this theory, popularized by Margaret Murray's book "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe," has been widely rejected by modern scholars due to a lack of evidence, it significantly influenced the modern perception of witchcraft.

The rise of psychoanalysis also influenced the understanding of magic and witchcraft. Much of white magic can be seen as rudimentary psychoanalysis, focusing on the inner workings of the mind and self-improvement. W.G. Gray incorporated Jungian psychoanalytic theory into modern magic, refining the symbolism of witchcraft. This is best exemplified by the four magical weapons:

The Sword: Divides, cuts, and inscribes.
The Wand: Points, directs, or indicates.
The Cup: Contains.
The Disc/Coin/Shield: A field upon which information is laid out. 

These symbols, rooted in ancient Celtic mythology and Arthurian legends, represent the four tenets of Wicca and Witchcraft, as well as a basis of a psychoanalytical understanding of the subconscious.

Magic and witchcraft evolved in this time through the influence of secret societies, literary contributions, emerging occult groups, and the integration of psychoanalytic theory. These developments laid the groundwork for modern practices and significantly shaped contemporary understandings of magic and witchcraft. They returned magic to its origins, not as something separate from religion or science, but as something complimentary, necessary and integral to understanding the world and ourselves.

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Flora Knight is an occultist and historian.

Whisky David - Rusty Rock (Out of Print)

Matt Sweeney June 17, 2024

Paul Major, frontman of Endless Boogie, turned me on this astonishing album. Impossibly, it sounds as good as it looks.

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Matt Sweeney is a record producer and the host of the popular music series “Guitar Moves”. He is a member of The Hard Quartet (debut album out Fall of 2024). Rick reached out to Matt Sweeney in 2005 after hearing his “Superwolf” album, and invited him to play on albums by Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, Adele and many others. Follow Matt Sweeney via Instagram.