Good Bye LaLaLand

 

What a way to end my sixteen years in LaLaland! 

My good friend Keller and I hit the Palladium for Anthrax's 40th-anniversary tour. It was a fantastic night with a fantastic friend - the man who is driving with me in a 20-Foot Uhaul starting Sunday night at 7:00 PM, LA to Clarksville. The Modello tall cans were flowing. The Palladium was hot as Hades, and with my lungs, after a mile-and-a-half walk from Keller's to the venue, it didn't take me longer than five minutes to realize that, despite my best intentions, wearing a mask in that fucking place would be impossible. 

Black Label Society opened - great at what they do, but not really my thing. The five-plus minute behind-the-back guitar battle Zakk Wylde and his guitarist Dario Lorina tore the stage up with during the penultimate number of their set was pretty mindblowing, but really, I was just antsy for Anthrax. They did not disappoint, despite the fact that they only played twelve songs. But oh, what a great twelve songs. Here's the setlist:

1) Among the Living

2) Caught in a Mosh

3) Madhouse

4) The Devil You Know

5) Keep it in the Family

6) Metal Thrashing Mad

7) Anti Social

8) I Am the Law

9) In the End

10) Only

11) Bring the Noise - with Chuck D!!!

12) Indians

When they brought out Chuck D, I seriously teared up. I stepped away from Anthrax for most of my twenties and early thirties, but I always held the reverence for Persistence and Among. Persistence was the first record I bought by them - from a fucking Phar-Mor no less, and it made them my band back in the day. Sure, I loved Metalica, Slayer and Megadeth, but Anthrax always spoke to me the most, and it was great to see them again, this time the first for me with Joey, as the only previous show of theirs I attended was during High School, when Mr. Brown and I caught the John Bush-era 'Thrax at Chicago's Aragon Brawlroom - complete with Quicksand and White Zombie opening. That was another amazing night with another amazing friend, and I still remember the ride home in Brown's car, when he popped in Sugar's Copper Blue, we rolled with windows down and hit Lake Shore Drive on a crisp night that was twenty-nine years ago to today. Talk about crazy synchronicities here, on the even of my urban exodus. 

Video from Matt Bower's youtube channel, which is pretty cool, so head on over and give him some love HERE.

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Read:

Inspired by an episode of the Weird Studies podcast and a slowly rekindled desire to dip my toes back into the Occult, I pulled Aleister Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice off the shelf the other day and began reacquainting myself with it. 

I bought this 17 or 18 years ago from The Atlantis Bookshop in London, and while I've read parts of it, Crowley's writing has always been so opaque to me, that frustration has always ultimately thwarted any serious attempts to read this in its entirety. Eventual failure or not, I'm feeling like it might be time to give it another go.

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Playlist:

I've been so busy finishing out my last week in-person at the week at work, I've not had a chance to post in some time, so of course, if I actually recorded everything I've listened to it would be quite the egregious scroll for you, dear reader. Instead, here are some highlights up to and including today, July 30th, 2022:

Trail of the Dead - XI: Bleed Here Now...

Anderson .Paak - Malibu

Jóhann Jóhannsson - Mandy OST

High on Fire - Blessed Black Wings

High on Fire - Surrounded By Thieves

Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh

Milk Cult - Love God

Various - Daptone Gold

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

Anthrax - pretty much all their albums, all day. Fuel for the endless day of packing 

Bria - Cuntry Covers Vol. 1

John Cale - Fear

Infectious Grooves - The Plague That Makes Your Booty Move

Ozzy - Ultimate Sin 

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Card:

My intention was to do a big, involved spread for my departure, but I have neither the time or the strength for that. Here then, is a three:

Collaboration, honed through conflict/change, leads to a new status quo. Or something like that. Again, exhausted. This is a pretty pivotal moment in my life, so I should try to revisit this when I'm not falling asleep while I type.

You can pick up Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot deck HERE.

These Arms Are Snakes

 

In honor of the fact that These Arms Are Snakes has once again reunited for a show (Seatle, WA). Hopefully, there's new music coming, miss these guys.

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Watch:

Evil came back in a BIG way this past Sunday. I'll spare you my annoyance at having to sub to yet another streamer, this time Paramount +, because as it happened, I got two months for .99. Plus, honestly, this show is so freaking great, I would totally pay whatever the usual price is. Here's the trailer for season two:

While we were on Paramount, I remembered another show I'd been curious about, Strange Angel lived there. This one came out a few years ago, did two seasons and I'm not sure if it wrapped up or was canceled. I also wasn't sure I'd dig it, but Strange Angel is about Rocket Propulsion Engineer Jack Parsons, one of the men who designed the propulsion that put us on the moon. Parsons was also hand-picked by Aleister Crowley to run the California chapter of his occult organization.

 

From what I've seen so far I'm intrigued, even if the show appears to be "Hollywooding" up Crowley's organization as animal/virgin sacrifices, which of course they were not. The show is based on the book of the same name by George Pendle, which I didn't read, although starting around 2002 I read probably just about everything else I could find about Parsons, whose mix of military and the Occult absolutely fascinated me for a time. Still does, really, which is why I'm going to - for now at least - continue with the show.

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Playlist:

Entropy - Liminal

Deftones - Gore

Celtric Frost - To Mega Therion

Chris Isaak - Heart Shaped World

Numenorean - Adore

Lustmord - Heresy

These Arms Are Snakes - Easter 

Tape Waves - Bright

Cathedral Bells - Ether

Bells Into Machines - Eponymous

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Card:

 

Missi is going to laugh at me, but I still can't figure out what I'm not letting go of! I shuffled the HELL out of the deck for this draw, and as the saying, such is Ka.

Greg Dulli Random Desire Out Today

Greg Dulli's new solo album Random Desire is out today, and as I sit here this morning listening to it, it's fantastic and will no doubt jump start a binge on his various projects. This is the first of Dulli's solo albums I've listened to, and I'm remedying that as well. 2005's Amber Headlights is cued up and ready to roll in just a little bit.

**

Last night while reading Chuck Wendig's Wanderers, the book jumped from a solid three to an all-out five. Page 392, just over the half-way point. Game-changing development I did not see coming. At all. This book is about so many things, such an intricately crafted puzzle that also, reads in an eerie harmonic with events unfolding in China. This real-life effect is a first for me with a novel, and it's adding a layer that is as disconcerting as it is riveting.

I am so utterly infatuated with this novel now and fully intend on reading more of Mr. Wendig's work.

**

Playlist:

Antemasque - Eponymous
The Mars Volta - De-loused in the Comatorium
Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror
Drab Majesty - Careless
Myrkur - M


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Card:

Appropriate, yet a bit harrowing based on all the "Age of Horus" that comes up in a lot of the research I've been doing for Shadow Play Books 2 and 3, particularly ideas I'm playing with from Donald Tyson's essay, Enochian Apocalypse, which I first encountered in Disinformation's Modern Occult Tome Book of Lies, but which is readily available online HERE. I fully realize Tyson's work here is complicated in its presentation - read some valid critiques of it HERE - but the idea of Crowley cracking open the Watch Towers and poisoning humanity's collective unconscious just before the start of WWI is as chilling as it is fascinating.

2019: New Track from Upcoming Uniform and The Body Collaboration

This new album from Uniform and The Body is shaping up to be on my year-end list again. Man, these guys really create a sonic space. This sounds like a cosmic Suicide to me, and it juxtaposes nicely with the first track released from the album a few months ago.

Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back drops next Friday on Sacred Bones. Pre-order HERE.

**

A few nights ago I received the Ronin Flicks Blu Ray copy of Richard Stanley's Hardware that I fought ordering for about two months and finally gave in to. This is a 4K transfer, and I've gotta tell you, looking at most of the scenes, I can't believe what an outstanding job this turned out to be. Also, the second disc is packed with extras that will probably take me forever to get around to. For $35, this turned out to be a steal.

I won't waste time posting a youtube rip of this beautiful scan here, so instead I'll post the theme song (again), from PIL:



**

Playlist from 8/05:

The Budos Band - Burnt Offering
Alice in Chains B-Sides Playlist
Opeth - Heart in Hand (Pre-release single for In Cauda Venemum)
Opeth - Deliverance
Opeth - Damnation
Opeth - Still Life
Alice Donut - The Untidy Suicides of Your Degenerate Children

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Card of the day:

Another spread. I've doubled-down on my Tarot reading, so I'm trying to rebuild a more complex relationship with my deck. To do this, I pulled out Crowley's Book of Thoth and have been re-familiarizing myself with the cross-relationship between the Thoth Deck and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

This spread then, largely introduces the idea that after moving on from the Queen of Swords and her perceptive but possibly misguided analysis, there is a futility with new ideas being sluggish, and uncooperative (the Knight of Disks). From Crowley, "These three cards (speaking here not of the three that I drew, but Atu XIII Death, XIV Art, and The Devil) may therefore be summed up as a hieroglyph of the processes by which idea manifests as a form."

No lie, I have two almost-finished short stories that are rooted in, what I feel, are really cool ideas, and which start and unfold in a way I am very happy with, but which I cannot end, and which have become more and more sluggish (again the Knight) as I try to resolve the problem. This means, whenever I'm thinking, especially of writing, I have two huge open loops distracting me. I don't want to take the time off from Ciazarn, but I very much need to address this soon, or I'm just collecting psychic debris, falling more and more out of tune myself; becoming the Knight of Disks.

No Thanks.

2019: August 3rd - Satanic Panic Trailer!

I've been waiting this one for what feels like an eternity! Written by Grady "My Best Friend's Exorcism" Hendrix and directed by Chelsea Stardust, Satanic Panic is possibly my most eagerly anticipated film of the year. And now we finally have a trailer! This, along with Joe Begos' Bliss and a host of other films I can't quite bring to mind at the moment are all looking likely to play at Beyondfest this year, and I can't wait!

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Recently, I wrapped up Robert S. Wilson's Ashes and Entropy Anthology from Nightscape Press. The final story, I Can Give You Life, by Paul Michael Anderson finished the book perfectly, and - I think - ended up my favorite story in a book filled with stories that rabidly competed for that title. Either way, buy it HERE and read your goddamn hearts out; Anthologies do not get any better than this.

And now, of course, I need a new book to read. Luckily, I have one I've been chompin' at the bit to get to for months. Black Mountain, Laird Barron's second installment in the Isaiah Coleridge novels, and three chapters in I can't put this one down.

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Playlist from the last few days:

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Shake the Sheets

Motörhead - 1916

Aerosmith - Pump

Anthrax - Sound of White Noise

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper

U2 - War

Tool - Undertow

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Opeth - Blackwater Park

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Pusher Man (Single)

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Mind Control

Frank Sinatra - Moonlight Serenade

**

Card of the day:

Okay, this one is definitely trying to tell me something, and I've been pretty lax on listening. A promotion at work and the first draft of Ciazarn has consumed most of my time. Today we're heading to Midsummer Scream, but I'm putting Crowley's Book of Thoth in my backpack so I can start digging into this one a little more earnestly. 

2019: February 14th

My health is much better today, which means I'm back to work. It's been raining here in LaLaLand off and on for days; today the heaven water is planted firmly in the 'On' position, which is cool with me. I always get a kick out of what heaven LA rain does to the city - green sprouts up everywhere instantaneously, as if all this plant life you didn't even know is there has just been waiting for a few drops to come back to life and flourish. And the LA river? Right about now you could probably take a canoe to it.

NCBD this week; I haven't been in to pick up my books in weeks, so despite tracking what came out each of the last few Wednesdays in these pages, I haven't picked up a single one. This week was a big one though, so I'll probably head in today for this, along with everything else:

Second Arc conclusion is bound to be a doozy; firmly the book I look forward to the most each month. No offense, TWD, you're still up there, too:

 Soooo good! The idea that we are living in a world with a monthly Criminal book is invigorating beyond description:

 And forgot that this hit last week:

Playlist from 02/13:

Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Pink Floyd - Animals
Jimi Hendrix - Axis Bold As Love
Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland

Card of the day:

Ah, the extra card. Most people take these out, I leave them in. That said, I've never drawn this before so I've never had the occasion to research it. If you do a little quick reading, this is the Unicursal Hexagram Crowley used in Ritual situations. It is a symbol of Crowley's 'religion,' Thelema. Not sure what this is saying; perhaps I should take a few moments today and peruse some of my Crowley texts, just to see if anything relevant bites.

2018: March 9th 7:37 AM

Wonderful night last night. After our move, we will live extremely close to both Mike and Chris from DwC, and in celebration of that we implemented a new, Night Before the show Reading Circle. Mike had us all over for a wonderful dinner and then we sat around and traded off the comics we were itching to talk about on tonight's show. This is a first and Mike gets full credit for the idea  - we always bring a bunch of disparate books to the table and that helps lead the discussions astray. Hopefully this will put us all on the same page. We'll be live on the Drinking with Comics facebook page tonight at 9:00 PM PST, so if you're not doing anything, drop by. One of the books we'll be discussing is a last minute edition to the stack and in two days turned into my most eagerly anticipated book so far this year:

From Image Comics.com:

"The lives of a reclusive young man obsessed with a conspiracy in the city's trash, and a washed-up Catholic priest arriving in a small town full of dark secrets become intertwined around the mysterious legend of The Black Barn, an otherworldly building that is alleged to have appeared in both the city and the small town, throughout history, bringing death and madness in its wake. Rural mystery and urban horror collide in this character-driven meditation on obsession, mental illness, and faith." From Image Comics.com



Sounds very "weird fiction" and that's my current wheelhouse, so I'm very much in.


Playlist from yesterday:

Converge - The Dusk in Us
Monolord - Rust
Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus
Queens of the Stone Age - Villains
Ludwig van Beethoven - King Stephen Overture OP 117
Joseph Haydn - Violin Concerto #4 in G

Card for the day:

"The Path to Enlightenment is about to become easier." - hanging out in my new neighborhood last night gave both K and I an enormous sense of happiness. There will now be time for so much more, Art, Love, and definitely Enlightenment. Another card tapping me on the shoulder, letting me know I'm on the right path. Accordingly, I can't help but also draw the juxtaposition with Crowley's maxim: "Every Man and Every Woman is a Star." Crowley had his more than fair share of BS, but he was a prophet to some degree, a human who communed with great, cosmic truths (when, to paraphrase a quote by Peter J. Carroll, he wasn't trying for your arse and your wallet) and that, well, that's one of his most important sentiments.

Evolution of the Arm - Twin Peaks Episode 8 Discussion

My thoughts on what is quite possibly my favorite episode of the new series so far.

Beneath the Panels #2: Nameless

Beginning with the second entry into this limited Beneath the Panels column I've begun in order to trace the Occult influences/ideas Grant Morrison has built into his new series Nameless I've moved the column over to Joup. The second installment which deals heavily with the Enochian undertones in this first issue just went up.

Grant Morrison & Chris Burnham's Nameless: Beneath the Panels #1

As I said in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column over on Joup, I've read Nameless #1 twice so far. Between reads I began digging around on the internet for some of the concepts Grant Morrison builds into the code that underlies the story begun in the book, and as such I've started to piece together some of what I think may be the initial ideas at work beneath the panels, so to speak.

Nameless #1 begins with a narrated series of atrocities taking place across the globe. The paneling on these first couple of pages is unique and, I'm betting, charged with some degree of subliminal meaning. After drawing them out and pondering them as distinct images by their own right I'm left with one observation and one theory.

The images, especially the first and third, bear strong resemblances to letters from the Hebrew alphabet, which is steeped in occult science and often used in the creation of 'spells'. However, despite the resemblance, after consulting a Hebrew dictionary I found myself unable to draw any direct comparisons. Stumped I thought about this some more and eventually came to a different conclusion about the shapes:

They are part of an elaborate sigil. If you are unfamiliar with sigil Magick - a concept Morrison has talked quite at length - go here and take the author's crash course.

Okay, moving out of the design aspect and into some of the direct references Morrison makes in Nameless #1, the first glaring one is during the aforementioned narrated atrocities on the very first page, we get another sigil-like image and four words:

The image is later defined by one of the characters as "the door to the anti-verse, the Gate of Az". If you google Gate of Az the search engine makes the assumption that you're abbreviating Arizona. However, if you do not search the phrase as you enter it, allowing instead the engine to use its intuitive functions you get three things, the aforementioned Arizona result, followed to more likely possibilities:

Gate of Azeroth

Gate of Hell, Azerbaijan

Here I began with the latter result, as it was something I was unfamiliar with. In a nutshell, there is a deposit of natural gas in the country of Turkmenistan known as the "Gate of Hell".

Once you reach the end of the issue you find there is definitely a parallel to be drawn in terms of what we find out this image represents in actual, physical terms to the story in Nameless. However, that's not it. Let's go back to the other search result and explore that a bit, shall we?

At first glance I misread Azeroth as Azathoth*. That is not the case; Azeroth is a setting in the World of Warcraft game. I don't think that has anything to do with what we're dealing with here. However, because Grant Morrison is as much a utilizer of pop culture in his Magick as he is occult code, this may be the point. It is not too much of a jump to consider that WoW's Azeroth derived its name from Azathoth, a character from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu cycle. Morrison has utilized some of Lovecraft's lore before, and there is an entire area of Magickal practice that treats Lovecraft's mythos as something of an operating system for ritual. In his story The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft describes him as the following:

[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes

I have always drawn an indirect comparison between Azathoth and Choronzon, a demon that traces its origins back to Elizabethian magician/scholars John Dee and Edward Kelley. Choronzon's entry in Watkin's Dictionary of Magic is as follows, and when juxtaposed with the definition for Azathoth above fully illustrates the reasons for my theory:

In Enochian magic, the demon of chaos and guardian of the Abyss. Aleister Crowley described Choronzon as "the first and deadliest of all the powers of evil". This point notwithstanding, Crowley invoked Choronzon while experimenting with the so-called 30 Aethyrs in a magical ritual on the top of an Algerian mountain in December 1909.

There is a great visual recreation of Crowley's ritual with Victor Neuburg in Alan Moore and JH Williams, III's Promethea, specifically issue #20, where the characters are on a multiple issue long trek through the spheres of the Kabbalhistic Tree of Life and fall through Daath, the abyss. Here they encounter Choronzon and are torn to pieces. Bringing this back around to Nameless #1, the Abyss - or Daath - could be the "anti-verse" discussed in the final pages, where we learn the harbinger of this Gate of Az is an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and thus inevitably going to destroy it, or rip it to pieces, the same way Choronzon or Azathoth obliterate those who encounter them in their respective mythological contexts.

Okay, I've barely even scratched the surface of this first issue but this is proving to be a much bigger project than I originally thought it would be. I'll continue with more decoding of Nameless #1 in a few days, in the meantime here are a few links for further study of the ideas I've discussed thus far:

Choronzon

Tree of Life

Promethea #20: The Stars are but Thistles summary/annotations

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* Another possibility, although less likely, is Astaroth. A quick referral to The Goetia and you will find the following definition for Astaroth:

The twenty-ninth Spirit is Astaroth. He is a Mighty, Strong Duke, and appeareth in the Form of an hurtful Angel riding on an Infernal Beast like a Dragon, and carrying in his right hand a Viper. Thou must in no wise let him approach unto thee, lest he do thee damage by his Noisome Breath. Wherefore the Magician must hld the Magical Ring near his face, and that will defend him. He giveth true answers of things Past, Present and to Come, and can discover all Secrets. He will declare wittingly how the Spirits fell, if desired, and the reason of his own fall. He can make men wonderfully knowing in all Liberal Sciences. He ruleth 40 Legions of Spirits. His Seal is this, which wear thou as a Lamen before thee, or else he will not appear nor yet obey thee, etc.  

Alan Moore's Course in Magick...

...appears in five volumes at $14.99 a piece. You didn't know Moore had a course on Magick? Yep, it's a series of graphic novels entitled Promethea and it is wonderful.

Basically Moore disguises his teachings/theories as a slightly futurist superhero comic following protagonist Sophie Bangs as she comes to grips with being chosen to be the new incarnation of ancient god/force Promethea, essentially The Scarlet Women. The entire series is packed with Magick, however the real gem is from issue 12 to about 20 where Moore walks Sophie through the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the ancient map of the Universe that the Tarot of the Egyptians is based on. It is brilliantly rendered in word and in art, J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray really pulling out all the stops and bringing each Sephira to life with the different colors, images and other associations.

In keeping with this, more for my own benefit really, because writing stuff like this helps me consolidate and streamline my own understanding, I'm going to write out the Major Arcana and brief definitions according to Moore.

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0 The Fool - Nothing. The Void. Ain Soph.
1 The Magus - The Father, the initial spark of creation.
2 The High Priestess - The womb in which that spark gestates.
3 The Empress - The Motherly crafting/nurturing of life.
4 The Emperor - The governing body of rules for that life = DNA.
5 The Hierophant - Something... more that guides that life. Birth of the idea of God or Higher Consciousness.
6 The Lovers - Life splits, Adam and Eve, the Protozic Amoebas. The Brothers, Cane and Abel. This Life thing gets complicated as life proliferates and takes on many new forms. Survival becomes you either kill or get killed.
7 The Chariot - The Holy Graal the dawn of man's exploration of imagination and enlightenment
8 Adjustment (formerly Justice) - Ying and Yang; Laws, compromise & cooperation. The first faint lines of civilization
9 The Hermit - A dark period of withdrawal and gestation. Re-grouping.
10 Fortune (formerly The Wheel) - Civilization: Empires come and go.
11 Lust - an undying drive that propels life further in spite of itself
12 The Hanged Man - Four points over one*: the triumph of reason and matter over the Spiritual
13 Death - A change of states.
14 Art (formerly Temperance) - The flip of card 6; alchemical mixing of Will and Imagination (Silver and Gold).
15 The Devil - Materialization over Spirit
16 The Tower - What goes up must come down (the Industrial Revolution).
17 The Star - The Path to enlightenment. The dawn of Spiritualism in the late 19th century.
18 The Moon - Hidden meanings. The Unconscious Mind.
19 The Sun - True Enlightenment.; revelation.
20 The Aeon - N.O.W. - Information age; Aeons turnover quicker and quicker. Eschaton.
21 The Universe - The Dance of Life. The mirror of card 0 - Everything.

XVI - The Tower

From Aleister Crowley's Book of Thoth:

"In its simplest interpretation it refers to the manifestation of cosmic energy in its grossest form. The picture shows the destruction of existing material by fire. It may be taken as the preface to Atu XX, the Last Judgment, i.e., the Coming of a New Aeon... At the bottom... is shown the destruction of the old-esatablished Aeon by lightning, flames, engines of war."