The Sea Priestess
Astral Disaster - COIL

“The Sea Priestess”
We thank Frater Perdurabo on the sleeve of the record. This is a magickal name Aleister Crowley used. It means “I will endure”. A lot of the lyrics are based on Crowley’s written descriptions of the so called ‘obscene’ murals on the walls of The Abbey Of Thelema at Cefalu in Sicily. The place still exists. Peter and I made a pilgrimage there last year and while there, we discovered a lost painting on an internal door, the door to Crowley’s bedroom, the fabled “Chambre de Couchmares”. It was a very roughly done Chinese style astral landscape with waterfalls and pagodas. All that remains of the original murals rediscovered and painstakingly restored by Kenneth Anger in the 50’s are crumbling and devastatingly beyond restoration now. I spent the day there photographing what remains, bitterly crying at the terrible loss of such a direct and beautiful magickal temple. The rest of the lyrics were written as a result of experiments with a small obsidian scrying mirror. The sub-concious surfacing. Brion Gysin would scry for hours to gain entrance into the place “where light writes in space”. Whatever pollutants and poisons Manunkind pours into the seas, they too will endure.
jb

First of all thanks to MaT for this one. A powerful reminder as to the human cost of revenge. Below is a Guardian interview with the director Andrea Arnold.
more red road - AA at greencine

‘I like darkness’

Andrea Arnold is aware she will for ever be the woman who said “bollocks” at the Oscars. The glorious moment came at last year’s ceremony, where her film Wasp was nominated as best live action short. She was, she recalls, sick with nerves at the thought of having to make a speech. When she was announced as the winner, clutching her statuette, she declared to the assembled beautiful people and a billion live TV viewers that the victory was, in short, the dog’s aforementioned.
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If we are to talk about influence. WSB is a primary one. The picture above is an image devised by John Coulthart, being an advertisment for a night of Burroughsiana, that Jenx kindly accomodated. But if i remember correctly hardly anyone came. Even those of us who were there have but a smoky recollection to draw upon.
Anyone interested in cultural time bombs, the nature of language, the list is almost endless, would do well to investigate this titan of C20th literature and ideas. While your digging take a peek at Brion Gysin as well. I’ll leave it to your imagination to wonder what modern culture would be like without these two horny old goats!

WSB_Art - John Coulthart Site

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lavengro - George Borrow:Lavengro

Several causes–Frogs and eftes–Gloom and twilight–What should I
do?–’Our Father’–Fellow-men–What a mercy!–Almost calm–Fresh
store–History of Saul–Pitch dark.

Heaviness had suddenly come over me, heaviness of heart, and of
body also. I had accomplished the task which I had imposed upon
myself, and now that nothing more remained to do, my energies
suddenly deserted me, and I felt without strength, and without
hope. Several causes, perhaps, co-operated to bring about the
state in which I then felt myself. It is not improbable that my
energies had been overstrained during the work the progress of
which I have attempted to describe; and every one is aware that the
results of overstrained energies are feebleness and lassitude–want
of nourishment might likewise have something to do with it. During
my sojourn in the dingle, my food had been of the simplest and most
unsatisfying description, by no means calculated to support the
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“OH, WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD” (1904)
by M.R. James

From The collected ghost stories of M.R. James (1931)
LONDON
Edward Arnold & Co.
“I SUPPOSE you will be getting away pretty soon, now. Full term is over, Professor,” said a person not in the story to the Professor of Ontography, soon after they had sat down next to each other at a feast in the hospitable hall of St. James’s College.
The Professor was young, neat, and precise in speech.
“Yes,” he said; “my friends have been making me take up golf this term, and I mean to go to the East Coast–in point of fact to Burnstow–(I dare say you know it) for a week or ten days, to improve my game. I hope to get off to-morrow.”
“Oh, Parkins,” said his neighbour on the other side, “if you are going to Burnstow, I wish you would look at the site of the Templars’ preceptory, and let me know if you think it would be any good to have a dig there in the summer.”
It was, as you might suppose, a person of antiquarian pursuits who said this, but, since he merely appears in this prologue, there is no need to give his entitlements.
“Certainly,” said Parkins, the Professor: “if you will describe to me whereabouts the site is, I will do my best to give you an idea of the lie of the land when I get back; or I could write to you about it, if you would tell me where you are likely to be.”
“Don’t trouble to do that, thanks. It’s only that I’m thinking of taking my family in that direction in the Long, and it occurred to me that, as very few of the English preceptories have ever been properly planned, I might have an opportunity of doing something useful on off-days.”
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“A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.”
Bertrand Russell

To summarize, traditional conceptions of mental health assert that well-adjusted individuals possess relatively accurate perceptions of themselves, their capacity to control important events in their lives, and their future. In contrast to this portrayal, a great deal of research in social, personality, clinical and developmental psychology documents that normal individuals possess unrealistically positive views of themselves, an exaggerated belief in their ability to control their environment, and a view of the future that maintains that their future will be far better than the average person’s. Furthermore, individuals who are moderately depressed or low in self-esteem consistently display an absence of such enhancing illusions. Together, these findings appear inconsistent with the notion that accurate self-knowledge is the hallmark of mental health (Taylor and Brown, 1988).