The Secret Sun Year in Review: 2014 Edition

I started blogging again after a ten-month break with the piece "These are Gnostic Times." This was a confession as much as an article, and I do try to make everything I post here read as much like a proper article as much as possible.

Graphic Depictions

Ever since I started this blog, I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life doing someone else's laundry. 

Pretending that the Wars are Done

I've been saying for many years that we don't really have a two party system in this country, and certainly we don't really even have the appearance of one like we did when I was young. Back then you had bonafide working class Democrats like Tip O'Neill, who opposed the Republicans based on substantial economic differences. 

The Numinous Power of Night Slaves

.I have several essays in the pipeline that I am currently wrestling with, perhaps having bit off more than I can chew. In the meantime I wanted to repost this film, which I had post a while back on The Solar Satellite.  It seemed to get lost in the shuffle and really deserves a much closer look. 

This is a perfect film for a cold, rainy weekend, like the kind we're suffering here, and its theme of sleepless nights is apropos for daily savings time tonight. There's a strange kind of numinosity that I don't think you'd see in many films today.

They Hide in the Light

One of the more fascinating figures of the collision of 20th Century pop culture and future-science is Otto Binder. 

First Born Unicorn

David Duchovny's long-running sex comedy Californication wrapped this past summer. We looked at some of the symbolism in the series in a Stairway to Sirius post a few years ago (and another here) but I thought this past season was worth a Picture Parade, y'know, just for the giggles and grins.

Songs of the Siren on the River Styx

Jeff Buckley's family is producing a bio-pic on the late singer's life, provisionally entitled Mystery White Boy. 

Psychic Survival Strategies on Aeon Byte

This is one of my favorite podcast appearances. Miguel Connor is a great conversationalist with a wide range of interests and we both spent a lot of time preparing for this talk. The general outline covers politics, pop culture and Gnosticism, but as good conversations do we cover a lot of bases in-between.

AstroGnostic: The Mandaeans' Elusive Companions

There is a lot more going on in Iraq and Syria than almost unimaginable carnage and human suffering, from the looting of the Sumerian artifacts from the Baghdad museum in 2003 to a more current situation in which the Islamic Caliphate is blowing up ancient archaeological sites and shrines, a practice begun by the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

Ancient Aliens Buries the Lead

"The Great Stone Face," 1957

Ancient Aliens is now in its seventh season. I DVR it, but don't really watch it that often. It's gotten to the point where it's not telling me anything I don't know already, and having been on the other side of the camera a number of times I know how the game is played. 

Propaganda in the Classical Sense

Throughout history, cults of all sizes and shapes have created exciting dramas to spread their doctrines to the uninitiated. Many of the same elements we see in comic books, paperback SF and fantasy novels and Hollywood movies were first introduced in these stories, not as entertainment per se, but as literal propaganda, meaning as messages designed to 'propagate the faith'.

HP Lovecraft's Strange Travels

I've been thinking about the Lovecraft issue, and the curious simultaneity of Lovecraft and Bailey's parallel update on forty year-old Theosophical doctrine, which is especially strange at a time when the Theosophists themselves were locking crazy old Grandma Blavatsky up in the attic in order not to scare the rubes away from their chosen one, Krishamurti.

Did You Hear? UFOlogy is Dying. Again.

New York Magazine spends the slow weeks of midsummer declaring "The End of UFOs!" The title is a major misnomer, as the article in question is actually about the latest death of UFOlogy (or UFOOLogy, as it's alternately known). 

These Are Gnostic Times

It's been nearly a year since I've posted here, having been overwhelmed by the two irreducible realities in my life: work and chronic pain.