Supernovas and Star Sorcery

The glowing Orb is officially a thing. We keep seeing it in odd places, most recently this enigmatic music video from Ariana Grande (with a guest appearance by Nikki Minaj, who seems to be fraying a bit at the edges lately). 

Serpents, Sirens, Solstices and Supernovas

Well, Happy Belated Summer Solstice to all you Northern Hemishere Secret Sunners out there. Hope you enjoyed it, if that's your particular bag. If not, well hey; buy yourself something nice today.

And whether the Solstice is your bag or not, I hope everyone had a lovely day and enjoyed the remaining time we have left before Solstice celebrations become mandatory.

The Siren is Still Taking Trophies

Terribly sad news: Scott Hutchison, 36, lead singer and songwriter for the Scottish rock band Frightened Rabbit fulfilled a longstanding promise and swam to the Siren in the waters of the Firth of Forth. His body was found at Port Edgar.

NXIVM: Eros Ouranos Thanatos

Well, I have some good news, some bad news and some insanely-terrible news. Which do you want to hear first?

OK, the good news? The world is being re-paganized at an almost-unimaginably rapid pace.

NXIVM: Buckle Up and Enjoy the Ride.

So this NXIVM sex cult story just keeps getting uglier and weirder. Allison Mack, the co-star of the long-running Smallville TV series has been thrown to the wolves and is reportedly angling for a plea deal. 

It's the End of the World As We Know It (and Larry Fine)

Hey, giant extraterrestrial demons on the roof of the most prestigious museum in the western hemisphere? Sure, why not? Go for it. I mean it is 2018, right? 

Take a good long look, my friends. You're looking at the future. 

Don't worry, they come in peace. Don't he look peaceful? A regular pussycat.

Yellowstone Apocalypse, or What Worries Me Most

There is so much going on out there, so much mischief and madness being thrown at us, so many toys coming out of those DUMB labs and archonic think-tanks that I can hardly keep up with it all. Then there's nightmare in Austin that seems to have risen like Cthulhu from the deep, dragging a gaggle of potent symbols in its wake like tin cans behind a newlyweds' Studebaker.

Ritual Olympics: The Locusts are Coming.

The Winter Olympics just wrapped up, and did so in style. We saw several Secret Sun Scrabble bases being hit (twins, Orange, etc etc) throughout the past two weeks, but I was particularly interested in the massive Orb/Pearl ritual, led by a gauntlet of young women dressed in cloaks and hoods.

No, seriously- check it out. And wonder with great admiration.

The Siren: Lady Bird and the Never-Ending Ritual

Before you know it all of the stars will be walking the red carpet under the shadow of the Babylon Gate and entering into the Dolby Theater, which was the former site of the Hollywood Masonic Lodge.

Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan Swims to the Siren

Three months ago, I told you guys that this thing we've been looking at here since Chris Cornell died-- whatever the hell it actually is-- was just beginning. And here we are, yet again.

Dolores O'Riordan, former lead singer for 90s dream pop superstars The Cranberries, died suddenly this morning in the Hilton London, just off Kensington Gardens. She was working on a new album with a new group called D.A.R.K at a nearby recording studio.

Heaven Upside Down or Las Vegas: It Takes Two

Since the Route 91 Harvest shootings on 10/01 we've been bombarded with a flood of stories calling the official account into question at the same time we're seeing a whole spate of seemingly-unrelated news items that seem to have a recurring theme.

We're seeing all kinds of major announcements coming from NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory and so on that keep hitting this "twin" thing. Some do it obviously, others less so. But I think we may want to get a handle on what this is all about.

Heaven Upside Down or Las Vegas

I have a major problem. 

Well, I have a lot of major problems, but this particular one that I have is major OCD. It manifests itself through an obsession with detail, particularly detail pertaining to evidence. 

When Heath Ledger Swam to the Siren

Her honey mouth has got the old fool gold. 

"I Always Felt There was a Prophecy of Death in That Song."

Led Zeppelin. John Lennon. Prince. George Michael. The Monkees. Lord Byron. Sinead O'Connor. Chris Cornell. 

What do all these people have in common? 

From Eleusis to Edinburgh

Not safe for workish

Well, in honor of the holiday there's a gallery of photos from the Beltane Fire Festival up on the Daily Mail's site to eye-gobble. The Festival is celebrating its 30th year anniversary, yet another landmark correlating to the Years of Seven we looked at a short while back.

What Year is This? It's SecretSun16

What an interesting year this has been already.

Last year during the New Horizon mission to Pluto (and points beyond), I speculated that the real purpose of this mission was not Pluto at all but was in fact about searching the murky reaches of space beyond the former planet, specifically looking for Planet X. 

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. Penny Dreadful star Reeve Carney has been cast as Buckley and Medium/ Gospel of Thomas channel Patricia Arquette has been cast as his mother. 

For those of you who may not know, Buckley died by drowning in a river in Memphis, TN in 1997, just as he was celebrating the completion of a new group of songs for the follow-up to his 1994 breakthrough album, Grace.

I don't know if they'll include former Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser in the story; if they've read my posts on Buckley's relationship with the Siren, they may very well not. It's not a story a family would want to tell. 

But it's the only story that's true.

The Secret Commonwealth of Elusive Companions

We see the world through an extremely limited band of the electromagnetic spectrum. The same goes for our hearing. We consciously process a remarkably tiny proportion of the limited sensory input we receive. 

We are only able to measure that which can perceive. And we still don't understand exactly how or why we process anything, other than to facilitate our survival on a purely reptilian level. 

The Siren: The Lovely Bones

Like several other films before it, Peter Jackson's new film The Lovely Bones features one of the central mysteries of the Secret Sun-o-verse, Elizabeth Fraser's heart-ripping cover of Tim Buckley's 'Song to the Siren' (recorded for the This Mortal Coil supergroup project). Jackson is obviously a Cocteau Twins fan- he hired Fraser to sing on the Lord on the Rings soundtracks.

Karen Carpenter and the Show Biz Crab Bucket

What the hell is that disk 

in the background?

My god, this is fascinating. I had only seen brief bits of Karen Carpenter playing the drums, but I had no idea she was this kind of virtuoso. Coming from a pretty hardcore musical family (and being a former musician myself), I can tell you that as players the Carpenters were drop-dead pros with impeccable chops.