About Me
I'm a 20 year old pagan-ish creature, pursuing a degree in Biology and Psychology. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up (if I ever do) and I'm mostly okay with that.
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On another note, my main occultic interests are traditional witchcraft, the Clan of Tubal Cain, the Cultus Sabbati, hedge riding, wort-cunning, LHP, chaos magic, and exploring the boundaries of the worlds and my mind. Assuming that there are any... *** Oh, and I review books when I'm not studying: http://bookmyrk.wordpress.com
Music
Loreena McKennitt, Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murpheys, Metallica, Marilyn Manson, Audioslave, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Korpiklaani, Ensiferum, Wintersleep, The Beatles, Bauhaus, The Tea Party, Nirvana, The Cure, Smashing Pumpkins, David Bowie, The Arcade Fire, Pogey, Joel Plaskett, afi, Irish drinking music, old school gothrock, folk metal.
Movies
Four Brothers, Labyrinth, Boondock Saints, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Prophecy, The Bourne Trilogy, Dogma, The Prestige, (Pan's Labyrinth) El laberinto del fauno, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Amelie, Sleepy Hollow, Pirates of the Caribbean, anything with Alan Rickman or Christopher Walken or Garrett Hedlund... or David Bowie.
TV
When I was little I loved Gargoyles, Beetlejuice and the Simpsons. I avoid TV now, though I watched What It's Like Being Alone while it was on, and I sometimes get lured into BBC News. It's a strange disease.
Books
Pharmako/Poeia, PharmakoDynamis, and PharmakoGnosis by Dale Pendell. Witchcraft Medicine by Christian Ratsch. Plants of the Gods by Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann. Horn of Evenwood by Robin Artisson. Masks of Misrule by Nigel Jackson. Visual Magick by Jan Fries. Pillars of Tubal Cain by Nigel Jackson and Michael Howard. Stealing the Fire from Heaven by Austin Osman Spare. Generation Hex by Jason Louv.
Also Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, Anne Rice's Violin, Lorenzo Carcaterra's Sleepers, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Other Poems, Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World, Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Christopher Paolini's Eragon and Eldest, JK Rowling's Harry Potter et al, John Constantine Hellblazer comics, Angel Sanctuary manga, and basically any other book I can get my hands on...
Likes
Books, absinthe, plants, snakes. Reading, writing, drinking, travelling. Traditional Witchcraft.
John Lennon's Working Class Hero.
So, my little experiment continues at BookMyrk. I really like their blogging options, as well as how you can build pages. My knowledge of code hasn't really increased, but I didn't expect it to that much....
Anywho, reviews of Grimoire for the Green Witch by Ann Moura and The Horn of Evenwood by Robin Artisson are posted. I'm still tweaking the one of The Whisperings of Woden by Galina Krasskova; I think it may have turned into a bit of a rant. (The book's great, however.)
.....
I looked at the med school in NL... The tuition there is the same as what I pay for an undergrad degree here. Crazy stuff. I also checked into some Naturopathic schools: they want at least $20 000 a year for tuition alone. I guess only rich people get to become NDs. Probably for the best, as most people are still looking askance at them, and you do have to pay back those student loans.
In other news, I've condemned myself to a summer of pre-cal, and a year of calculus in September. I think I'll start praying, too.
Well, I've added my own little bit of nonsense to the already swamped online world of occult and pagan book reviews. In my defense, I'm trying to focus on more obscure titles. There will probably end up being a slight focus on traditional witchcraft and hedge witchcraft books, but in the meantime it's a glorious free-for-all. I hope you enjoy. Posted so far are:
How Do Witches Fly? A Practical Approach to Nocturnal Flights by Alexander Kuklin
Thursday, February 7, 2008, 08:20 PM EST [General]
. . . What have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficient spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms. . .
T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"
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These lines get me every time. I find it difficult to write about them. You either feel it and know it to be true, and poignant, and awful, or you simply consider these lines to be no better nor worse than the convoluted poem in which they appear. The moments of poignancy, the little scraps of your undoing (or making) that are your life, will never be read about by others skimming the daily newspaper with morbid fascination. They exist only in that second of surrender and then are gone. Only their consequences remain.
So here's to Eliot, may his words be read for many years to come...
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Ha! I'm finally updating this. School usually sends a guilt trip when I do something frivolous, such as tending a blog. Oh well. Astronomy is interesting; the prof is trying to teach it without the Physics, which means that after every class we stumble away with our brains broken. Some things just don't make sense in words, they need to be explained with numbers. Yuck. So far all that I've really absorbed from the class is various reasons why we can't do what they do in Star Trek. Hopefully I'll be able to find a use for the information some time in the future, perhaps if I'm attempting to seduce a geek.
Biology is okay. The exams are pretty easy, though I seem to have lost all of my dissecting ability. Trying to open up a preserved grasshopper with a dull scalpel just makes a squishy mess. Speaking (typing?) of which, we've watched a few rather, interesting, videos in my Hindu Studies course. Mostly of the "I didn't know you could do that with that" nature.
My Drugs and Behaviour course is freaking awesome. Sure it's Psych, but it's taught from a neuroscience perspective. The textbook is all pharmacology. I'm so in love. Perhaps that's my calling, although medicine does seem more interesting.
I got... Books in the mail!
Raven Kaldera's Wyrdwalkers: Techniques of Northern-Tradition Shamanism
Kveldulf Gundarsson's Elves, Wights, and Trolls: Studies Towards the Practice of Germanic Heathenry: vol. 1
Diane Paxson's Taking Up the Runes
Galina Krasskova's Whisperings of Woden: Nine Nights of Devotional Practice
I'm also now in love with Storm Constantine and all Wraeththu-related goodness. I've only found 2 of the books so far (the 3rd of the 1st series and the 2nd of the Histories) but androgynous beings in post-Apocalyptic occulty sci-fi are just too hard to pass up. And she's writing non-fiction chaos-magic-style grimoires that involve the Wraethtu mythos! *drools*