I have a small collection of Tarot cards I’ve acquired over the past few decades. But let me get this out up front: no, I don’t believe, and never have believed, in divination of any kind. That’s a rather strange statement coming from a person with a Tarot collection, since, as you can tell by my other posts, I do have a strong interest in hermetic magick and the occult, and my interest does come from actual involvement and not just an armchair curiosity.

Wait until I show you my collection of ritual magick implements! That will really confuse the hell out of you.

For now, I’ll leave you with this Crowley quote from the 1904 edition of The Goetia, where he writes:

"The spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain. Their seals therefore represent (Mr. Spencer’s projected cube) methods of stimulating or regulating those particular spots (through the eye). "

And this quote from Magick in Theory and Practice (1929):

"In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things that may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things, certain results will follow; students are earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philo-sophical validity to any of them."

But now back to the Tarot, and specifically, my favorite deck of all time, Crowley’s Thoth Tarot deck.

Tarot cards first showed up in the 15th century in Europe as just a card game, not anything "mystical". Early versions in places like northern Italy were called tarocchi and worked a lot like a trick-taking game, similar in spirit to bridge today. They used the usual four suits like regular playing cards, plus an extra group of “trump” cards that acted like a fifth suit and overpowered the others.

By the late 1700s, people started looking at tarot in a very different way. Some French writers, especially Antoine Court de Gébelin, claimed the cards were more than just a game and actually held ancient hidden knowledge, maybe even tied to Egypt. Even though there wasn’t real historical proof for this, the idea stuck and ended up shaping how tarot was later used in Western occult and esoteric circles.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, tarot got pulled into a lot of occult circles, especially groups like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. They started mapping the cards to systems like astrology, Kabbalah, and ceremonial magic, Becoming more of a structured symbolic system used for divination and spiritual exploration than a card game.

The biggest change in modern tarot came in 1909 with the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, created by artist Pamela Colman Smith under the guidance of occultist A. E. Waite, who was part of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This deck established many of the images still used in tarot today, especially in the Minor Arcana, and made the symbolism much easier to understand.

After that, tarot kept evolving into something used not just for divination, but also for psychology and creative expression, which is more my vibe when it comes to Tarot. Most modern decks either build on the Rider–Waite system or respond to it in some way, but they still trace a lot of their structure back to the Golden Dawn framework. Although, some modern interpretations are a little too whacky for my tastes. Thanks Peter J. Carroll!

The Thoth Tarot deck was created by English occultist Aleister Crowley, with artwork by Lady Frieda Harris. It’s one of the most influential modern tarot systems.

Its origins go back to Crowley’s time in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. After leaving the group, he developed his own spiritual system called Thelema, and later designed a tarot deck to express it.

Work on the deck began in 1938 when Crowley and Harris started collaborating. What was intended to be a short project turned into a full redesign of the tarot system. Crowley also used the opportunity to siphon some wealth from Harris in exchange for magickal training as he was prone to. But that's another story you can read at your own leisure.

Over about five years, Harris painted multiple versions of nearly every card, while Crowley provided detailed symbolic directions tying the imagery to astrology, Kabbalah, alchemy, numerology, and Egyptian themes.

Unlike traditional decks, the Thoth Tarot is more abstract and complex. It’s heavily symbolic, influenced by modern art as well as Crowley’s occult system. It functions not just as a divination tool, but as a visual map of his philosophy.

And it's very phallic ... VERY phallic!

Crowley finished The Book of Thoth in 1944 as the companion text, but died in 1947 before it was published. The deck itself wasn’t released in full until 1972 by Llewellyn and shortly after by Samuel Weiser, using photos of Lady Frieda Harris’s original paintings. It was the first time the complete deck was made public.

The printing wasn’t perfect. The biggest problem was color. Harris’s originals had very specific, layered colors, but the printing process couldn’t fully capture them, so some cards came out a bit off or flat. In a few early print runs, there were also small production mistakes, like cards being misaligned or occasionally printed in the wrong orientation, but those were fixed later.

My vintage deck is from 1973, known as the White Box B version. It doesn’t include the error cards, such as the “Eight of Cups” missing its number or the “Ace of Disks” printed upside down. However, the printing is somewhat faded and occasionally a bit blurry.

Here is a rundown of the different versions. I may be mistaken, completely wrong or missing something, so if you know something about anything, let me know, you know?

• Version A1 (Llewellyn, Hong Kong)
  • Contains printing errors
  • Ace of Pentacles printed upside down
  • 8 of Cups missing its number
• Version A2 (Llewellyn, USA)
  • Corrected version of A1
  • Still published by Llewellyn
  • Printed in the United States
• Version B (Weiser edition)
  • Introduces the Ordo Templi Orientis Caliph Card, although I believe early versions of this deck did not come with the Caliph Card
• Version C (Green Thoth)
  • Adds black Thelema unicursal hexagram card
  • Adds borders around card artwork
  • First version to include Hebrew letters and symbols on the Major Arcana
• Blue Box (Swiss Blue Box, Version A)
  • Included three variations of the Magus Playing cards

Before this there was also a small run by Sangreal Foundation printed with blue ink on the front and red ink on the back that is very rare.

There are more variations that I’m not privy to, but you get the gist of it. Eventually, they had the opportunity to re-photograph the paintings, so the imagery improved over time.

The modern cards currently being printed aren’t of very good quality and have an annoying border on the back of the cards that gives them a kind of print-on-demand feel. I would stay away from those and try to find a white box 90s or earlier version, which are easily obtainable at reasonable prices.

Check out more here:

• Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (Britannica)
• Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (Wikipedia)
• Cipher Manuscripts
• S. L. MacGregor Mathers
• Tarot
• Rider–Waite Tarot
• Pamela Colman Smith
• A. E. Waite
• Antoine Court de Gébelin
• Etteilla
• Chaos Magic
• Thelema
• Para Religion

If you have ever read The Equinox, Volume III, Number I (The Blue Equinox), you have most likely stumbled upon the mysterious portrait of a large headed entity with tiny eyes and a small mouth labeled LAM. It kind of just shows up with almost no explanation, right before Crowley’s hit piece on Blavatsky.

The only mention of the entity by Crowley is on the preceding page, where he gives this short note:

The Way: Lam is the Tibetan word for Way or Path, and Lama is He who Goeth, the specific title of the Gods of Egypt, the Treader of the Path, in Buddhistic phraseology.

And that’s basically all he ever says about it.

Enter Kenneth Grant:

The reason I’m bringing LAM up is because I’ve always been fascinated by its connection to the Greys in UFO abduction stories. It closely resembles what we would eventually call Greys, those big eyed, big headed, tiny limbed bastards that terrorized Whitley Strieber in upstate New York.

Some people (Kenneth Grant) started running with the idea that maybe the Greys didn’t just randomly appear later on, that maybe LAM was the first appearance, and that Crowley somehow opened a door during his Amalantrah workings and let something through.

Just like I wrote in my Loch Ness Monster post, it’s a great story. It just doesn’t really line up.

If Crowley really “let them in” around 1918, then why don’t people start describing Greys until much later? The usual reference point is the Betty and Barney Hill abduction in 1961 which is over 40 years later. You’d expect something to show up sooner than that.

A lot of the LAM/UFO connection actually comes from Kenneth Grant, not Crowley.

Grant basically took this one weird drawing he coaxed Crowley into gifting him as payment for his care and ran with it. He started building out this whole mythology around LAM, connecting it to extraterrestrial contact, other dimensions, and what he called the Typhonian current.

The important part here is that Crowley never did any of that.

There’s no solid evidence that Crowley ever explained what LAM actually was, and there’s also no concrete evidence that he encountered it during the Amalantrah Working, which was a scrying experiment he performed in 1918–1919 in New York. That connection mostly comes from Grant looking at the dates, looking at the drawing, and filling in the gaps himself.

The Amalantrah Working was a series of trance sessions done in New York between January and March of 1918 by Crowley and Roddie Minor, the Camel.

Minor would enter trance states and describe what she was seeing. Usually strange landscapes or entities, as if she were looking through symbolic “windows.” Crowley would guide the sessions and write everything down.

The entity they were in contact with identified itself as Amalantrah.

By the way, did I mention that they were also really high on drugs during these sessions ... REALLY HIGH!

Later on, people (again, mostly Grant) started saying that LAM came out of these sessions. But Crowley never clearly says that himself. It’s one of those things that gets repeated enough that it starts to feel like fact, even though it’s really just speculation.

Long after Crowley’s death, around the ’70s, actually, Grant turned it into something you could actually work with. Maybe.

In his system, LAM becomes less of a “being” and more of a kind of gateway or interface. Something you focus on to make contact with whatever is on the other side. That’s where a lot of the “LAM as a portal” idea comes from.

The idea being that by concentrating on LAM's portrait, you’re tuning into something outside normal reality by entering its head, and looking through its eyes at alien landscapes or other entities. Closing its eyes brings you back to our dimension.

At the end of the day, LAM is interesting because there’s so little information about it.

It’s just a drawing, a name, and a single short explanation and everything else gets built on top of that later.

Which honestly is probably why it’s stuck around as long as it has.

It’s fascinating to stare at when you’re alone in a quiet, tranquil place, knowing what you know about it. Do you see any shapes? Can you make out the ankh? Did you travel? Let me know.

Check out more here:

• Aleister Crowley
• Sex Magic & Space Lamas
• Alien Gurus & “Lama”
• Magickal Stories: Lam
• Lam & Kenneth Grant
• The LAM Statement
• The Amalantrah Working

One of my favorite pieces of gear is my reissue Fender Reverb Unit, also known as the 6G15.

If you’ve ever wondered how ’60s surf bands got that splashy, boingy water like “drip” sound on muted strings, this unit played a big role. A lot of it came down to it being an external effect. Amps didn’t have built-in reverb yet, so players ran it in front of their amp. That placement helped shape the character of those classic surf recordings in a way built-in or modern pedal reverb often doesn’t quite capture.

Many bands have tried to play surf with a pedal in front of the amp, sometimes in an effects loop, or using built-in amp reverb, only to find they’re missing that certain character they can’t quite put their finger on.

THE DRIP!

The 6G15 is basically a small tube amp in its own right. Your signal first hits a 12AX7 preamp stage. From there, it goes to a 12AT7 driver, which feeds a transformer and a 6K6 power tube, so the springs are driven the same way a speaker would be in a real amp.

Inside, the reverb tank is mounted vertically on the interior side of the front baffle, the signal is then turned into mechanical movement in the springs, then back into a very small electrical signal. That weak signal is then boosted by another 12AX7 recovery stage.

Finally, the unit blends the dry and wet signals, with controls for dwell, mix, and tone.

With all that tube circuitry goodness between your guitar, the tank, and your amp, you get a bit of added gain along the way, which helps glue the whole sound together.

The Fender Reverb Unit (6G15) was introduced by Fender in 1961. It was designed to solve a simple problem: players wanted ambience and space in their tone, but amps hadn’t yet been built with onboard reverb circuits.

By the early to mid ’60s, it had become the defining surf guitar sound for players like Dick Dale and many West Coast instrumental bands. Even when Fender and others started putting reverb in amps later on, people still stuck with the standalone unit because it had that extra bite and that super “drippy,” immediate feel you just couldn’t quite get from the built-in stuff.

In 1998 Fender reissued the unit during the surf revival that had bubbled back up in pop culture (thanks Pulp Fiction). They moved to PCB construction instead of the original handwired eyelet boards, but it ended up being a pretty faithful and more reliable version of the classic unit.

Although I’d love to have a vintage unit, they’ve become pretty price-prohibitive, so I went with a reissue from around 2000 instead. Fender used a 6V6 in place of the original 6K6, likely due to parts availability. I ended up picking up a vintage JAN 6K6 and swapping it in.

Even the modern reissues are starting to get price-prohibitive themselves these days, but they’re still far more attainable than vintage units.

I may even convert it into a handwired unit using one of the MojoTone kits, someday.

In 2009, Fender teamed up with BOSS and released the FRV-1 Fender Reverb, which claimed to model the ’63 Fender Reverb Unit using BOSS’s COSM technology. Surprisingly, this pedal sounds really close, minus the drip due to its lack of physical springs, but I keep one nearby on a mini pedalboard for those times I may not want to bring my whole setup out. Sadly, this pedal has gone out of production like everything else and is also becoming price-prohibitive, so if you fancy getting yourself one, good luck finding one under $200.

Today, you have some options that weren’t available to us in the ’90s, like the various kits such as the Mojotone one mentioned above, and a company called Surfy Industries that produces an excellent solid-state unit called the SurfyBear, which is actually an external unit with a full-size spring tank inside. I own a couple, okay, I own three, and they do sound great, but I feel they lack the character of the full-size unit that only a player like myself would notice. I don’t think anybody watching you tremolo pick your way through a set will ever say, “Yeah, that band was good, but they just didn’t have that Fender drip!”

I think the reason the drip is different in these is because it’s basically a floor unit with the tank mounted inside flat, unlike the original vertical floating style mount that vintage units had, and the lack of Tubes. Of course, I say this because I have a unit to compare it to, but if that's all you have, then it's more than capable of giving you convincing 60s surf guitar tones.

Other than those modern options above, and avoiding the crazy world of boutique pedals,I think the only pedal I have tried that comes close to a drip with out a spring is the Electro-Harmonix Oceans 11.

In the end, the 6G15 is one of those pieces of gear I am happy to own that I know I will never sell. And that's the best kind of gear to own!

Check out more here:

• Fender Reverb Unit
• Reverb FAQ
• SurfGuitar101
• FRV-1
• SurfyBear
• Surf Music
• Before the Beach Boys

I love this guitar so much.

I don’t exactly remember what I paid for it, but I do remember making a ridiculous offer that I was sure would be rejected. Let’s say the guy wanted $800 and I said, “I’ll give you $500,” fully expecting him to reply, “you’re crazy,” but instead he just said, “okay…”. That meant I was locked in :) I really wasn't anticipating buying it when I made the offer, but he called my bluff. It's the reason I don't play poker.

This one came with some aesthetic upgrades that I would have done anyway, along with a few modifications I probably wouldn’t have bothered with like locking tuners. But the tuners are excellent, Graph Tech units that use their “Ratio” gear system so I left them on. Basically, it means a half turn is roughly equal to a semitone change on every string, which is a big deal when you’re tuning. Anyone who’s used cheap tuners knows the struggle, you overshoot having to detune (because you always tune up to the note), or the string takes forever to respond. Each string gets a different gear ratio, calibrated to its gauge and tension, so the response feels immediate and even small adjustments actually matter. They’re especially great if you’re picky about tuning or like to tinker with sweetened tunings.

I remember wanting one of these ever since I saw a guy, maybe the guitarist who was playing with Heather Nova in the late 90s using one. It just had this really nice, organic tone when overdriven that I tend to gravitate to.

I know what you’re thinking: why not just get a Gretsch? Well, because, like Gibson, I think they’re overpriced and a bit subpar these days. That’s just my opinion, of course.

Why not just get a used Gretsch? ... well because the vintage market is ridiculously over priced. Even modern used is moronically over priced! Buying used today is not like it was when I was a kid.

This is basically a poor man’s Gretsch Duo Jet, and I say that loosely because there is nothing wrong with being a poor man's Gretsch if it's done right. The pickups really scream. The DeArmond 2Ks are very reminiscent of Gretsch Dynasonic pickups. Gretsch originally used DeArmond Model 2000 pickups before rebranding them as Dynasonics in the early 1950s. Of course, the pickups in this guitar are modern recreations of the 2000s, so they’re not identical, but they definitely deliver the tone I’m after.

The champagne sparkle has yellowed over the years, giving it a brassy, metallic sheen that really appeals to my senses. One thing I’ve learned over time is that you tend to play better on a guitar you find aesthetically pleasing, or one that has certain appointments you appreciate that don’t actually affect the playability or tone of the instrument. The brain is an amazing thing.

The DeArmond M-75T is a bit of a sleeper that not too many people are aware of. It comes from the late ’90s, when Fender brought the DeArmond name back for a line of affordable import guitars. They were made in Korea and based a lot on old Guild designs, especially the Bluesbird. The M-75T is basically a single cut with a Bigsby style trem, so it kind of sits somewhere between a Gibson style guitar and a Gretsch vibe.

Even though it was meant to be a budget friendly option, these guitars ended up being really solid for the price. Some came with DeArmond 2K pickups, which have a P90 style sound with a bit of extra bite, while others had humbuckers (boo!). The line didn’t stick around very long and Fender shut it down (as they do) in the early 2000s.

I’d forgotten all about this guitar when it graced me with its presence one day, and since buying it, it’s become my main guitar when I’m not playing surf.

Some people complain about the tuning stability of a Bigsby, but I say to those people: you just don’t know how to play a guitar with a Bigsby, or any tremolo style guitar. People expect "perfection" out of an imperfect instrument and demand impossible standards from its tuning capabilities, but you have to learn how to wield the trem and "bend" it to your will.

And another thing, tuning stability isn’t fixed by installing locking tuners on your guitar like the previous owner did on this one. It’s all in the nut and the bridge. No binding.

You have to let your guitar live and breathe, accepting that it will drift slightly out of tune now and then, requiring subtle corrections, whether by adjusting your touch on the strings or working the Bigsby arm to coax the pitch back into place. That introduces a kind of tension into your playing, giving it life and excitement in a way that sterile "perfection" never can.

Oh ... and don't forget the lube!

Check out more here:

• DeArmond Company History
• DeArmond M-75T - A brief history of corporate SNAFU
• Intonation on Fretted Instruments
• James Taylor Explains Tuning and Intonation
• Non Destructive Zero Fret Hack
• Floating Bridge Setup

James Taylor's 2 cents on Tuning

• E string -3 cents
• B string -6 cents
• G string -4 cents
• D string -8 cents
• A string -10 cents
• E string -12 cents

I spent my Saturday morning having some fun creating a text version of the site that would look good in a terminal browser like Lynx or w3m.

I’m always on the lookout for text dominant sites that lean toward content and hyperlinks. It’s a callback to the early internet, when that was simply how things were. Just words and links that sent you on a journey.

If you are interested, you can point your terminal at http://www .blackoctopus.org/txt/ and explore its full text-based glory, presented in all its monochrome goodness, where nothing distracts from the words themselves.

This is what it looks like in w3m on the left and Lynx on the right.

I was even able to get images to preview in w3m with help from this video.

Let me know if you visit it and have any issues or suggestions. I won’t be putting too much effort into it, but I will definitely include it when I update the website.

But not so much about the particle accelerator, rather the girl band Les Horribles Cernettes, who were responsible for the first ever photo uploaded to the internet.

More on them later, let’s talk about the accelerator for a bit.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, located at CERN near Geneva. What the hell does that even mean? Well, a particle accelerator is a machine that uses electric fields and magnetic fields to speed up charged particles (like electrons or protons) to extremely high energies, then control or collide them.

Still don’t know what the hell that means?

Well, it speeds particles up to near light speed, steers and focuses them using magnets, and collides them into targets or other particles.

What the hell for?

By doing this, scientists can see how the universe works by recreating conditions that existed fractions of a second after the Big Bang, letting them study how the universe evolved. It can reveal what matter is made of, how fundamental forces behave, or even create rare or short lived particles that don’t exist naturally for long, leading to medical imaging improvements, radiation therapy advances, superconducting and detector technology, and the destruction of the world as we know it!

Yes, the LHC is no stranger to conspiracy theories, like the fear that it will create a black hole that will swallow up the Earth! Or that it could open a portal or rift in space-time, tearing reality apart and creating wormholes to other dimensions, or even worse, letting in whatever is on the other side to wreak havoc on us mere mortals! Lovecraft would be proud.

Oh yeah, and the idea that CERN is doing occult rituals in the name of our dark lord Lucifer!

But really, it's just a really big thing that blows up really tiny things in the name of knowledge and scientific advancement ... or is it?

Anyway, now to the fun stuff. Les Horribles Cernettes!

Les Horribles Cernettes started as an inside joke at CERN, but ended up becoming a small but important footnote in both internet and web history.

Formed in 1990, they were a parody pop group made up of CERN administrative staff and partners of physicists working at the lab. They leaned into comedy, performing upbeat, deliberately cheesy songs about life inside a particle physics lab. Their lyrics often revolved around dating scientists, lab culture, and the strange, obsessive world of high energy physics.

They even filmed a music video chilling around the LHC with no care in the world. See, it’s not dangerous. Really, it’s not.

The group’s name, Les Horribles Cernettes, is itself a joke, mixing pop culture parody with a reference to CERN. Their performances were part workplace humor, part creative outlet, and part affectionate satire of the scientific environment they were surrounded by.

What makes them especially notable in internet history is not their music, but an image.

In 1992, one of their promotional photos was uploaded at CERN by early web developers working alongside Tim Berners-Lee. That image is widely cited as the first photograph ever uploaded to the World Wide Web. It was a simple scan of the band posing in costume, but it became a landmark moment, proving that the web could transmit visual content, not just text.

Check out more here:

• CERN
• Large Hadron Collider
• Higgs Boson
• The Universe is Doomed
• Higgs Boson Doomsday
• CERN Ritual Hoax
• CONING THE MANDELA EFFECT
• Les Horribles Cernettes

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So let’s continue on the pseudoscience express and talk about… do plants really talk?

Cleve Backster was a polygraph expert and a CIA interrogation specialist in the 1960s.

One day he decided to take his polygraph sensor, which measures electrical resistance changes typically associated with emotional responses in humans, and hook it up to the leaf of a plant.

He used it to measure the rate at which water rises from a philodendron's root into its leaves by observing changes in electrical resistance as the plant was watered.

To his surprise, Backster stated, "the tracing began to show a pattern typical of the response you get when you subject a human to emotional stimulation of short duration". He claimed that after doing so, even the thought of burning the plant's leaf would cause the polygraph to register a spike that, in human tests, would be interpreted as stress.

This fascinated the amateur, off-and-on botanist in me to no end. Already knowing that plants are actual living organisms with vascular systems that transport water, nutrients, and sugars throughout the plant, of course, this could possibly be true!

I remember reading about one of his experiments where Backster hooked up two plants to polygraph sensors. A man in a white coat and with a hatchet entered the room and damaged one of the plants, and the polygraph connected to the other, undamaged plant showed a spike or reaction at the exact moment the first plant was harmed. When the man would enter the room again, the undamaged plant would spike in horror or fear!

Backster interpreted this as evidence that plants could “sense” damage to other plants at a distance, implying some form of extrasensory perception, and that they also retained memory of the experience and expressed fear. So did I!

Of course, the more I delved into it, the more disappointed I found myself.

Backster's work was published mostly in parapsychology outlets and ignored by mainstream science or plant biology journals. It was only a matter of time before I discovered it was all bullshit, and the sensors, if actually picking anything up, may have been reacting to the surroundings, like the air moving due to a violent act of plant mutilation.

Polygraph readings are extremely sensitive to electrical interference, vibrations, humidity, and other environmental factors, so who knows what the spikes were actually reacting to?

In reality, plants can communicate stress to neighbors, but through chemical signals, volatile compounds, and root interactions.

Still, it has always been one of my favorite subjects to dive into, especially the experiments with running the sensors through noise generating devices like synthesizers and modulators.

Some people have built on Backster's work by using sensors and piezo pickups to detect tiny changes in plants, like water movement, ions, humidity, or ambient noise, and convert them into musical signals for synthesizers or computer controlled sequencers.

Here is Backster's own paper published in the International Journal of Parapsychology, outlining the early polygraph tests on plants.

Check out more here:

• Plant intelligence
• The Secret Life of Plants
• The Secret Life of Plants (Film)
• Making Music with Plants
• Forcing Plants To Play Music
• Touching Plants

Radionics is a pseudoscientific system developed in the early 1900s by Albert Abrams a San Francisco physician who claimed that diseases produced unique electromagnetic “frequencies” in the body.

He developed a system called ERA (Electronic Reactions of Abrams), using devices with dials and electrodes to diagnose illness from a distance. Instead of the patient being physically present, the operator used a “witness sample,” typically a drop of blood on paper, though sometimes hair or other biological material.

His work gained significant attention and financial success, but was heavily investigated and ultimately discredited by the medical community during his lifetime. YOU DON'T SAY???

A radionics machine is basically a box with dials and plates that’s meant to “tune into” and adjust a person’s condition using symbolic frequency settings.

You place a sample (like blood, hair, or a photo) on an input plate and turn dials to different numbers (“rates”), which were numerical dial settings believed to correspond to specific diseases or conditions. By rubbing a pad on the machine and adjusting the dials, once the operator detects resistance like dragging or sticking on the fingers, that would determine when the correct "rate" was found.

The machine is then said to detect or broadcast a corrective influence back to the person, even at a distance, curing them of their ailment.

Nothing mechanical is actually changing in the pad. The effect comes from very subtle shifts in finger pressure and motion, often unconscious, like the Ideometer Effect causing the Ouija's Planchette to move across the board. So the sensation feels real to the operator.

In later years, people like Ruth Drown, George de la Warr and T. Galen Hieronymus expanded Abram's work and popularized the term Radionics.

In its modern form, radionics is largely found within alternative healing and occult communities. The devices range from traditional dial based boxes to digital or even purely symbolic systems with no electronics at all.

While it began as an attempt to apply electrical science to medicine, it remains outside the boundaries of accepted scientific and medical practice.

Check out more:

• Duncan Laurie on Radionics
• Wikipedia Entry for Radionics
• The Aural/Parallel Science Explorations Of Radionics Radio

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The Fool’s Journey by Kippi’s Kwest turns the Major Arcana into a single unfolding story instead of a set of disconnected meanings.

You follow The Fool who is naive, open, moving forward, about to take a devastating step because he’s not aware of his surroundings, even as his companion dog is trying to warn him. He encounters figures and forces that shape him along the way. The Magician reveals personal power, the High Priestess guards hidden knowledge, the Empress embodies creation, and the Tower tears everything down.

Each card becomes a moment: a lesson, a disruption, a shift in perspective. The path moves through discovery, illusion, loss, and transformation. Things build, collapse, and reform.

By the end, The Fool is no longer naive. He’s been broken down and rebuilt, carrying a deeper understanding of himself and the world. That’s what a lot of occult work is really about, not conjuring spooks, sitting in a dark candle-lit room, chanting barbarous names from a grimoire, and stuff like that. Even though it's all of that and non of that :) Ritual is just a way to trick your subconscious into believing that the work is uhh ... actually working. It’s about smashing the ego, facing the illusions you live in, and coming out different. You fall apart, you get messy, and by the end you’re stronger. Like The Fool: break down, rebuild, move on.

This video shows that the Tarot can be used as its own occult curriculum, a complete system for learning, practicing, and transforming yourself, card by card, and doesn’t have to be a "fortune" telling novelty.

It's such a clever way to present the Tarot.

Check it out:

• The Fool's Journey

A quick background:

Chrystabell, born Chrysta Bell Zucht in 1978 in San Antonio, Texas, is an American singer, songwriter, and occasional actress, known for her dreamlike style and longtime collaboration with filmmaker David Lynch.

Before her solo work, she was the lead singer of the swing band 8½ Souvenirs, where her sound leaned heavily into retro lounge and jazz. It’s a stark contrast to the darker, dreamlike direction she would later become known for.

Everything shifted in 1999 when she met Lynch, a meeting that became the defining turning point of her career. He stepped in as both mentor and collaborator, helping shape her sonic and visual identity. Lynch once described her presence as an “alien presence,” which aligns perfectly with the uncanny atmosphere that defines her work.

That collaboration extended beyond music. In 2017, she appeared in the revival of Twin Peaks as FBI Agent Tamara Preston, placing her fully inside Lynch’s creative universe, not just adjacent to it.

The guitar tone here is unreal, and the solo cuts straight through. I love those pickups! I haven’t pinned down exactly who’s backing her in this performance, but I also haven’t gone too deep trying, so if you know, drop me a line.

I’m not much of an art aficionado, but I do have a few favorites that include H.R. Giger, Hieronymus Bosch, Joe Coleman, and Rosaleen Norton.

Norton (1917–1979) was an Australian artist and witch. She grew up into myths and the occult and ran with Kings Cross bohemians. Her art mixed humans, animals, and spirits, often with nudity and sexual themes.

She didn’t just paint magic, she practiced it. She claimed contact with the “Green People,” spirits she said guided her and taught her magic. She took part in rituals with sex, ceremony, and invocations. Her look was striking with long red hair, sharp features, and she often wore men’s suits, standing out wherever she went.

Authorities raided her exhibitions, seized art, and confiscated letters. Nudity, magic, and her unconventional style made her a public spectacle.

One big scandal involved conductor Eugene Aynsley Goossens, who joined her circle and participated in rituals. In 1956 customs seized ritual items, erotic art, and letters tied to Norton. Goossens was charged with importing obscene material, fined, and forced to resign, and Norton’s reputation took another hit.

By the 60s and 70s the attention faded, but she kept making art and practicing magic. She died in 1979, mostly forgotten. Today she’s remembered by anyone drawn to the strange, the occult, and the unconventional.

Check out these links for more detailed information:

• The Occult art of Rosaleen Norton
• The Witch of Kings Cross
• Rosaleen Norton's Kings Cross Coven
• Check out the movie!

The first webcam appeared in 1991 at the University of Cambridge. It was called the “Trojan Room Coffee Pot” and was set up by computer scientists in the Computer Science Department to monitor the coffee pot, so they wouldn’t make the trip only to find it empty. The camera streamed images over the local network, and eventually it became accessible over the internet.

The webcam was eventually shut down at 09:54 UTC on 22 August 2001, leaving this final image of a person’s hand about to turn off the server.

Eventually, webcams became affordable, and many people began to “stream” a portion of their lives or environment online. These weren’t streams like we know them today, but static images that were uploaded to a website every few minutes, or sometimes days.

One of the first personal webcams that I remember was the JenniCam. She set up cameras in her apartment that automatically uploaded images to a public webpage, creating a 24/7 record of daily life. It ran until 2003 and became a prototype for modern personal broadcasting and social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch.

For the past few years I have been running a static webcam that harkens back to those glory days. Mine isn’t as exciting as a Coffee Pot camera. Instead, it’s just precariously mounted on the top of my roof, running on a Raspberry Pi with Allsky software. It’s basically a view of my sky so I know when clouds are going to ruin my night of observing.

You see, I do 90% of my astronomical observing electronically from inside the house. What do I mean by that? My scopes are outside, obviously, but I view the sights through my computer using various astronomical cameras attached to my scopes.

This allows me comfort and protection from the elements, and also views that wouldn’t be possible with my city’s light-polluted skies. But sometimes I need to know if clouds are going to roll in and ruin all the fun. Sure, I can hear you asking, “Why don’t you just go outside and look up dude?” And I do, but sometimes things might go dark for a second, and I want to know if something is wrong with my setup or if I just encountered a patch of clouds. This is very convenient. I can just take a quick look at my AllSky and see where the clouds are in my sky, or if I’ve been completely clouded out, which can happen in a matter of minutes without you realizing it.

I usually visit the NOAA GOES Image Viewer to check if it’s even worth the effort to set up my gear, but having my AllSky as a secondary source really lets me know if my area is going to be surrounded by clouds.

Basically, it takes a picture of my sky every minute and uploads it to my website. I suppose I could make that interval a bit longer, but I am also capturing timelapse videos of my sky and startrail images, which aren’t very exciting because you can’t see enough stars for a nice full circular trail, and all the planes and satellites really ruin everything.

If you’d like to check the conditions in my sky, visit my astronomical website, Whittier Skies, and click the AllSky link.

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you get into a hobby or even just think about collecting something you suddenly discover that millions of other people have recently started doing the same thing, and now the prices are three times what they were a year ago?

A few years ago we started collecting Ouija boards and were immediately priced out of the hobby. It’s like there’s this symbiotic central mind where, as soon as one person decides they want to do something, it sends a signal to other brains to do the same. Kind of like social media algorithms.

Not that I can’t afford it, but who wants to spend hundreds of dollars on a piece of cardboard?

History →

The Ouija board came out of the Spiritualist movement in the late 1800s, when people believed they could communicate with the dead through séances and automatic writing. Before the board existed, people used small heart shaped devices called planchettes that held a pencil and moved across paper to spell messages.

This technique no doubt was inspired by the Chinese who used planchette writing or fuji (spirit writing) as a method of communicating with deities, ancestors, or wandering spirits.

Fuji dates back at least to the Song dynasty around the 10th to 12th centuries. In this practice a small wooden stylus or fork shaped pointer was suspended over a tray of sand or ashes. Two participants lightly held the stick while a third person watched the surface. As questions were asked, the stylus would begin to move and trace Chinese characters in the sand. Another person would then record the message.

In 1891 a businessman named Elijah Bond patented what he called a “talking board.” It used letters, numbers, and a sliding pointer so spirits could supposedly spell out answers.

Bond and his sister in law Helen Peters Nosworthy were involved in naming the board in 1890. During a session they asked the board what it should be called; it spelled out O‑U‑I‑J‑A, and when asked what that meant it answered “Good Luck.” Peters happened to be wearing a locket with the name Ouida (a popular novelist) in it, and some researchers think the board’s response may have been influenced by that.

The board became a novelty game and was later manufactured by William Fuld, who helped popularize it in the early 1900s.

Over time the Ouija board shifted from a spiritual tool to more of a parlor game. In 1966← it was sold to Parker Brothers and became a mass market board game. Today it sits somewhere between folklore, psychology, and pop culture. Scientists often explain the movement of the pointer with the Ideomotor Effect, where small unconscious muscle movements make it seem like the board is moving on its own.

Not so spooky, is it? Well, it’s still a fun spook show when you pull one out at parties, turn off the lights, and light some candles. The brain is a marvelous thing!

And they look really cool!

Check out these links for more detailed information:

• Smithsonian Article
• Salem Witch Board Museum
• Talking Board Historical Society

— Postscript —

During my Ouija searches on eBay, I stumbled across this oddity and had to buy it for the box art alone. It's called Ka-Bala, advertised as “The Mysterious Game that Tells the Future". released in 1967 by toy company Transogram Company.

Instead of a planchette, it comes with a large black metal marble that rolls around a green, circular, glow-in-the-dark “board.” The board is molded plastic and circular, with a rounded bottom that balances between two players, each placing their fingers on either side. As the board tilts, the marble rolls around and stops at various miniature Tarot cards placed along the edge of the board, as well as letters and zodiacal signs, producing a quick horoscope or random Tarot reading.

In the center sits the eerie Eye of Zohar, a spinning plastic eyeball watching over the board which, from what I can tell, adds nothing to the function of the game other than looking pretty cool.

Occult aficionados will recognize the references to Kabbalah, including the Zohar, which were gaining traction in pop culture around this time.

And then… nothing.

Early Origins →

The first possible Nessie story appears in Adomnán's Life of St. Columba (c. 565 AD). It describes the saint encountering a "water beast" in the River Ness that was threatening the locals.

I once read that Nessie didn't start appearing until Aleister Crowley abruptly abandoned his Abramelin working at Boleskine to go help S. L. MacGregor Mathers fight the Golden Dawn battle in Paris. According to the story, he left without banishing all the spirits he had conjured and up came Nessie! It's an exciting tale, but sightings began around 1871, long before Crowley purchased Boleskine on the shores of Loch Ness, and long after the earlier "water beast" account by St. Columba.

Nineteenth-century accounts described large unknown animals, sometimes interpreted as giant eels or plesiosaurs.

But the 20th century, that’s when the Nessie party really started, especially around 1933–1934, when a road was completed along Loch Ness and the first “modern” surge of reports appeared.

The most famous photograph of Nessie which, I'm pretty sure you can see in your head right now, was taken in 1934 by a London surgeon named Robert Kenneth Wilson. While enjoying a boat ride on the loch, he noticed what appeared to be a long necked creature and quickly snapped a photo. It would become the most iconic cryptozoology image ever taken, right alongside the famous Bigfoot film which we'll get into in another post soon.

The photo appeared in the Daily Mail, causing a frenzy of sightings, as these things have a way of doing.

Decades later, in the 1990s, it was revealed that the photo was a hoax. Man, not only did music suck in the ’90s, but apparently people did too.

According to a man named Christian Spurling, the image was created using a toy submarine with a sculpted serpent like head attached to it, he helped build.

Apparently the Daily Mail had hired a man named Marmaduke Wetherell to investigate the sightings at Loch Ness. Wetherell was later embarrassed when footprints he had presented as evidence turned out to have been made with a hippopotamus foot umbrella stand (what in the hell is that???). Seeking revenge on the paper, Wetherell organized the hoax that produced the famous photograph.

Spurling built a small monster head and neck out of wood and attached it to a toy submarine. They released it in the loch and asked Wilson to submit the photograph because he had credibility as a surgeon. I didn't even know you could get your hands on small submarines in the 1930s!

And just like the Shroud of Turin, after the hoax was revealed in 1994, some people still believed the photo might show a real creature. Wilson himself maintained his innocence, claiming the photograph was genuine. I mean, I guess the photo is real… technically.

People shifted their attention to other photos, sonar searches, and eyewitness reports from Loch Ness. But after 1994 the jig was mostly up, and interest in our little watery friend declined significantly.

But just like the Satanic Panic of the ’80s, these kinds of silly ideas, things that were once sanitized and put to rest, like the measles, are starting to seep back into the human conscience. I wouldn’t be surprised if a new wave of Nessie sightings starts coming your way.

Have you ever wondered where the superstition of Friday the 13th came from, or why the number 13 is considered unlucky?

In medieval Europe, 12 was seen as a “complete” number (12 months, 12 zodiac signs, 12 apostles). 13 was viewed as irregular or disruptive. Just like me!

There were also 13 people at the Last Supper before Jesus’ betrayal. That's 12 and unlucky 13 right there! But who exactly was unlucky 13? Judas or Jesus? I guess they both died, right?

Also in Christian tradition, Friday was associated with negative events, including the crucifixion of Christ, which some believe occurred on a Friday. I'm not sure how that works out with modern calendars, but that's what they say. It could have been a Thursday for all we know.

The Knights Templar were arrested on Friday, October 13, 1307, but that didn't stop the Illuminati from taking over the world!

In some traditions, 13 is actually positive, like in Judaism. A boy becomes religiously responsible at 13 during a Bar Mitzvah. Sounds like bad luck to me!

But historians don't really know when this all started, and the superstition may have existed long before these events occurred. These connections may have been popularized later.

In modern times, the superstition seems to have taken off after a novel titled, oddly enough, Friday the Thirteenth was written by Thomas W. Lawson in 1907, which used the superstition as a plot device. From there it entered popular culture and media.

Today you can still find many buildings “missing” the 13th floor or hotels omitting room 13. Some airlines skip row 13, or at least they used to. And many people avoid making plans altogether on Friday the 13th.

So did I answer your curiosity, or did you zone out in the end like I did while researching this topic before realizing no one really knows where it came from?

I will just leave you with this picture I really love of Nathaniel Leverone. It shows a 1950s press gathering of the Anti-Superstition Society, which was basically a playful group poking fun at common superstitions. They were celebrating Friday the 13th by doing the classic “bad luck” things on purpose, like walking under a ladder, wearing black cat costumes, and even bringing umbrellas indoors just to mess with the whole idea of superstition.

The photo was taken at the Pick Congress Hotel in Chicago.

Oh, and congratulations, you just received some bad luck by reading this post!

SUCKERS!!!

Were people just lazily recreating it and selling their own versions online?

Well… it turns out I had just stepped right into it.

Did you know that, according to the in-universe backstory, Mulder supposedly bought the poster at a random head shop and stuck it on the wall of his basement office where the X-Files lived?

Neither did I. I didn’t even know there was an in-universe backstory for the X-Files. But fans are gonna fan.

The photo used for the poster was actually based on a "UFO" picture taken in Switzerland in the 1970s by a guy named Billy Meier, who claimed he had contact with extraterrestrials. Whether you believe that or not is another story.

Over the years a few slightly different versions appeared on the show (one even got destroyed in a fire during the end of season 5), but the idea stayed the same.

The different posters came from a mix of legal issues, production redesigns, story events, and prop reuse over the years.

Here’s a lazy man’s list so you don’t have to go digging around for the information.

• Copyright lawsuit - The original Seasons 1-3 poster used a cropped "UFO" photo by Billy Meier without proper clearance, so the production team had to redesign it for Season 4.
• Production redesign - For Seasons 4-5 the art department created a completely new "UFO" image and layout while keeping the same concept.
• Story events in the show - The poster was destroyed when the X-Files office burned down in the Season 5 finale “The End.”
• New poster when the show moved to Los Angeles - In Season 6 Mulder receives another poster, which is almost the same as the previous one but with small design changes ("UFO" flipped direction, darker tones, even border).
• Movie prop variation - In the 2008 film The X-Files: I Want to Believe they reused an old poster prop but without the white border, creating another variation.
• Revival production choices - When the show returned in Season 10, the production reused an earlier poster design again, adding more continuity quirks.

Either way, the poster ended up becoming one of the most recognizable images in sci-fi culture. A simple reminder that sometimes you don’t necessarily believe… but you want to.

But now the dilemma… which version of the sticker do I buy?

— Postscript —

Here are my two favorite X-Files episodes, which I always seem to forget the names of, so I’m posting them here for future me.

Je Souhaite (Season 7, Episode 21) - A story about a woman who finds a genie in a metal flask and learns that wishes don’t always turn out the way you expect.

Jose Chung's From Outer Space (Season 3, Episode 20) - A funny, surreal take on an alien abduction case, told through several different, slightly unreliable perspectives.

That's why when I need to block outside stimulation and I am a bit fatigued from music or podcasts I prefer to listen to various noise files I have accumulated over the years.

These are audio files categorized as white noise (equal energy across all frequencies, like steady static) and brown noise (bass-heavy rumble, like ocean waves). My preference is the more subtle brown noise track you can find linked below. It's a more Deep, rumbling low-end tone, like crashing waves or heavy rain for a deep relaxation without jolting you out of your groove.

I’ve also used this file for meditation. Living in a noisy environment makes it nearly impossible to meditate unless you’re some hardcore enlightened yogi. The trick is playing these audio files just loud enough to mask the real-world noise, but not any louder that you start thinking about the noise.

Here is a zip file with White, Brown and Pink noise for your own pleasure! noise.zip

So I was very excited to capture Mars with my photo setup this year.

The next time Mars will be at full opposition and brightest in the night sky is February 19, 2027. It will rise around sunset and remain visible all night.

Here are a couple of shots from this year. The first, taken during opposition, highlights Syrtis Major at the center, Tyrrhenum in the south, the bright Hellas Basin, Arabia Terra in the upper center and left, Elysium subtly to the left, along with the northern polar cap and southern limb haze. The second, taken on December 4, 2025, shows the bright Tharsis Plateau, the dark Valles Marineris, the northern polar caps, and some thin, wispy clouds.

That is all. 🦶

It's no secret that my favorite ride at Disneyland has always been the Haunted Mansion and my favorite character, Madame Leota. Well, maybe it's a secret to you since you don't know me. And who the hell are you anyway? Don't forget to tell me using the Contact Me link above!

Anyway, I digress…

The character was named after Leota "Lee" Toombs Thomas, a Disney artist and Imagineer who provided the facial model for the medium's ghostly head.

Though Leota’s face is modeled on Toombs’s features, the original voice in the ride was provided by Eleanor Audley, famed for Disney villain roles such as Maleficent and Lady Tremaine.

Toombs' daughter, Kim Irvine, followed in her footsteps as an Imagineer and has contributed to Haunted Mansion updates, even providing the facial model for newer versions of Madame Leota in seasonal overlays.

Madame Leota appears in the Seance Room, floating inside her crystal ball and calling out incantations that help “materialize” the mansion’s ghostly inhabitants. Her chants and presence bridge the world of the living and the dead for guests.

The effect is a projection, using a combination of filmed headshots and lighting tricks to make her appear as a levitating, glowing head inside the crystal ball.

She also appears on my porch every Halloween in my makeshift recreation of the prop used in the Mansion.

You can visit the Astronomy section for details on the equipment I used to image these targets.

These thumbnails really pop out if you toggle the dark mode on!

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]]> https://blackoctopus.org/#saturn2023 https://blackoctopus.org/#saturn2023 Mon, 04 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT shot taken during opposition, with some excellent seeing that night. The Cassini Division is especially clear in this image, cutting a sharp dark line through Saturn’s rings. You can also see the planet’s shadow falling across the rings behind the disk. 🪐]]> Another great shot taken during opposition, with some excellent seeing that night. The Cassini Division is especially clear in this image, cutting a sharp dark line through Saturn’s rings. You can also see the planet’s shadow falling across the rings behind the disk. 🪐

]]> https://blackoctopus.org/#jupiter2023 https://blackoctopus.org/#jupiter2023 Fri, 03 Nov 2023 07:00:00 GMT nicer shots I’ve managed to capture of Jupiter. It helped that the planet was in opposition that night, which made for especially good viewing conditions.]]> This is one of the nicer shots I’ve managed to capture of Jupiter. It helped that the planet was in opposition that night, which made for especially good viewing conditions.

I really like the marble-like appearance that came out during processing.

Like all of my astrophotography images, this one looks best when you switch to dark mode using the toggle at the top of the page.

]]> https://blackoctopus.org/#blackcats https://blackoctopus.org/#blackcats Thu, 05 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT Black Cats at an Audition">photo essay while I was poking around the internet after reading about the strange wartime story of people supposedly trying to hex Hitler. One link led to another, and I ended up on this great little piece showing a 1961 casting call for a film version of The Black Cat. Over 150 black cats showed up with their hopeful owners, all trying to land a role in the movie. Many were quickly ruled out for having white patches, and in the end only a handful were used as extras since the starring cat had already been hired.]]> I stumbled across this LIFE photo essay while I was poking around the internet after reading about the strange wartime story of people supposedly trying to hex Hitler. One link led to another, and I ended up on this great little piece showing a 1961 casting call for a film version of The Black Cat. Over 150 black cats showed up with their hopeful owners, all trying to land a role in the movie. Many were quickly ruled out for having white patches, and in the end only a handful were used as extras since the starring cat had already been hired.

Midnight Cat Lore →

Black cats have had a strange reputation for centuries. Depending on the culture, they are seen as either omens of bad luck, Witch familiars, or symbols of protection and prosperity.

In ancient Egypt, cats were associated with the goddess Bastet, the protector of the home, fertility, and motherhood. Many cats were even mummified and buried with their owners as guardians in the afterlife.

The darker reputation of black cats largely developed in medieval Europe. During this time they became linked with witchcraft and the Devil.

People believed witches could transform into black cats to travel unnoticed at night. Have you ever seen the TV movie Midnight Offerings? No? Well, get to it then!

They also believed that black cats were familiars, supernatural spirits that assisted witches. Have I asked you if you have ever seen the TV movie Midnight Offerings? Yes? Well, what are you waiting for!

They also thought that seeing one cross your path meant bad luck or misfortune. WATCH OUT FOR THAT CAR!

These ideas intensified during the Salem Witch Trials, and unfortunately many cats were killed during this time.

On the flip side, sailors considered black cats good luck because they controlled the rat population that damaged ropes and food and were believed to bring safe voyages and favorable winds. They were kept as talismans on ships, and sailors’ wives kept black cats for good luck, believing they would help ensure their husbands’ safe return.

I have always loved black cats myself. My own cat, Broom-Hilda, is technically more of a dark tortoiseshell, but she still has the proper witch’s familiar vibe. We do sometimes feel like she is trying to kill us by tripping us into an early death as we walk around the house.🐈‍⬛

]]> https://blackoctopus.org/#typefaces https://blackoctopus.org/#typefaces Mon, 02 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT I stumbled across this post on John Coulthart's Feuilleton: Typeface of the Occult Revival and loved it. It’s all about the weird, decorative typefaces that popped up during the occult revival of the ’60s and ’70s.]]> I stumbled across this post on John Coulthart's Feuilleton: Typeface of the Occult Revival and loved it. It’s all about the weird, decorative typefaces that popped up during the occult revival of the ’60s and ’70s.

I’ve always been drawn to that era’s lettering. The slightly hand-made feel, the experimental shapes, and how design could be playful and a little strange. If you’re into vintage publishing aesthetics or the history of odd and beautiful typography, this is definitely worth a look.

]]> https://blackoctopus.org/#hitler https://blackoctopus.org/#hitler Sun, 03 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT strange it was, so when I found a copy of Life magazine’s February 10, 1941 issue, I bought it mostly for the photos.]]> I had read about this story before and was drawn in by how strange it was, so when I found a copy of Life magazine’s February 10, 1941 issue, I bought it mostly for the photos.

Looking at the pictures, it feels less like a serious occult ritual and more like an eccentric party in the woods. I'm not gonna lie, it’s the sort of party I would have loved to stumble into. It's more like voodoo or witchcraft imagery than anything resembling "black magick" but it definitely looks like a fun, good time.

The story itself takes place in January 1941 in the Maryland woods, where a small group gathered inside a cabin to symbolically curse Adolf Hitler using "black magick". The gathering was led by writer and occultist William Seabrook.

They built a Hitler effigy dressed in a Nazi uniform, surrounded it with drums, chanting, and ritual gestures, then hammered nails into its chest, shouted curses, and eventually decapitated and buried it deep in the forest.

So did it work? Hitler did eventually die and the war did come to an end, but it’s hard not to look at the photos and think of it less as a powerful ritual and more as a very strange, very dramatic party in the woods. Again, my kind of party!

Maybe they should have invited Crowley, though he might have been busy with espionage thingies or other mysterious wartime shenanigans at the time.

]]> https://blackoctopus.org/#mission https://blackoctopus.org/#mission Sun, 01 Jan 2023 08:00:00 GMT bookmarks. Way too many bookmarks. Most of them get filed away and then immediately forgotten.]]> I have bookmarks. Way too many bookmarks. Most of them get filed away and then immediately forgotten.

They are organized into folders, then subfolders, then folders inside subfolders inside folders inside more subfolders, and it just keeps going until it becomes a mess.

The problem is simple. Once something is buried deep enough, it becomes effectively lost. And finding something you vaguely remember saving is close to impossible.

The other problem is the internet itself. Search feels increasingly shallow. You get the same handful of sites repeated until you give up. Meanwhile I know I have a lot of interesting material already saved, but it is hard to surface or revisit in any meaningful way.

What I actually want is the opposite experience. To randomly rediscover something I saved years ago and get pulled back into it. To fall into a research spiral because something resurfaced at the right moment.

That is what this site is for.

This feels like a much better way to use bookmarks, turning them into something intentional, thoughtful, and useful instead of letting them get buried and forgotten in folders.

This is mainly for me. A way to take bookmarks I have collected over the years and turn them into small blog-style posts with context, notes, and related links. If other people happen to find it useful or interesting, that is just a bonus.

Each post’s links also feed into a simple links page. Every link includes a small blurb so you know what you are clicking before you open it, keeping everything exposed, contextual, and easy to stumble across instead of buried away.

I am probably not going to spend much time re-reading most of my posts, but I will spend time scrolling through the links page looking for something interesting to get lost in, and I think other people might too.

Of course, along the way I will splatter in personal meanderings, like astronomical observations I am proud of, personal anecdotes, and musical inspirations when the mood strikes.

So the mission, if you choose to accept it, is a living archive of bookmarks turned into annotated posts.

]]>