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3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
31–40 of 105 posts
Re: 3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
#32I suspect I'm one of the few readers here (@cstross being another) for whom this is genuinely important professional information. And it's fantastic.
Sadly no mention of license there, though - kinda vital if one is intending to use some of the imagery in remix works - although given the texts are thoroughly out of copyright I'd assume that's not too big an issue.
Re: 3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
#33Does this mean we're no longer allowed to make fun of renowned author Dan Brown[1]?
1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/dont-make-fun-of-re...
Re: 3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
#34Aleister Crowley is dancing a jig
Incidentally he's been dead long enough that his works fell into the public domain this last new year. So you don't have to pay Gerald Suster or whatever Thelemite fork that last had the copyrights any more.
Re: 3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
#35I was totally unaware that this Ritmam library existed. I can’t pretend to be into the occult, but I like the idea of studying people who are/we’re, and this seems like a terrific resource. Only downside... You want Great Old Ones? Because this is how you get Great Old Ones.
I really like these old texts because it's interesting to try and get into the mindset of the authors. To the medieval occultist, that plant over there is growing well because Saturn is ascending or whatever, and if a rabid dog bites you, you should apply the plant to the wound because the melancholic nature of Saturn will counteract the mania of the rabies, etc. Why did such-and-such happen? A demon did it. It's a c…
There's a parser text game called Hadean Lands in which you're on board a "spaceship" fueled by alchemy. You start the game by learning some basic rituals, then progressively you have more and more components missing for what you have to do next and have to hack together something based on concepts you learn progressively like planetary or elemental associations.
As weird as it is, everything makes perfect sense as you internalize the connections between things like planets, scents, classical elements, and other concepts. Within the world of the game, strange alchemical connections are as much a science as physics is in ours.
It's definitely a different experience to dip into that mindset, even just within a game.
Re: 3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
#36I suspect I'm one of the few readers here (@cstross being another) for whom this is genuinely important professional information. And it's fantastic. Sadly no mention of license there, though - kinda vital if one is intending to use some of the imagery in remix works - although given the texts are thoroughly out of copyright I'd assume that's not too big an issue.
care to expound on your profession?
edit: click their username to read about their profession
Re: 3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
#37I suspect I'm one of the few readers here (@cstross being another) for whom this is genuinely important professional information. And it's fantastic. Sadly no mention of license there, though - kinda vital if one is intending to use some of the imagery in remix works - although given the texts are thoroughly out of copyright I'd assume that's not too big an issue.
IANAL, but yeah: shouldn't these works not be under copyright, just on the basis of their age? Wouldn't the "phone book" doctrine apply here, also? There's no creative authorship in a collection of previous works.
Re: 3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
#38I suspect I'm one of the few readers here (@cstross being another) for whom this is genuinely important professional information. And it's fantastic. Sadly no mention of license there, though - kinda vital if one is intending to use some of the imagery in remix works - although given the texts are thoroughly out of copyright I'd assume that's not too big an issue.
This is probably correct. Scans of public domain works which are "slavish copies" containing "no spark of originality" were ruled public domain in Bridgeman Art Library vs Corel.
http://www.likelihoodofconfusion.com/who-owns-the-copyright-...
Re: 3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really like these old texts because it's interesting to try and get into the mindset of the authors. To the medieval occultist, that plant over there is growing well because Saturn is ascending or whatever, and if a rabid dog bites you, you should apply the plant to the wound because the melancholic nature of Saturn will counteract the mania of the rabies, etc. Why did such-and-such happen? A demon did it. It's a c…
If you're interested in the study of religion at all (at least as a human affectation), it can get pretty interesting to get into the Hermetic and Gnostic texts. Some of the traditions and proposed knowledge exists on a timeline parallel to popular history going back thousands of years. It's really quite something. It combined with other mystic traditions ultimately informed the theosophical movement of the 19th and…
>His sex magick informs a lot of the modern incel, red-pill, and proud boy ideas that you must refrain from "spilling your seed"—that your reproductive emissions contain some of your essential energy. The result being that you have to abstain or otherwise be reduced to a plodding pile of unenlightened goo (to give the idea some imagery).
As someone who appreciates occult and pagan symbolism for the aesthetic and narrative value, can I just mention how annoying it is that extremists have ruined so much of it by adopting it for code and shibboleths? Especially Norse symbolism. I wanted to get a valknut tattoo when I was younger just because I thought it looked cool - now I'm glad I didn't because if I had, Nazis would think I was one of them.
To say nothing of the manji/swastika.
Re: 3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're interested in the study of religion at all (at least as a human affectation), it can get pretty interesting to get into the Hermetic and Gnostic texts. Some of the traditions and proposed knowledge exists on a timeline parallel to popular history going back thousands of years. It's really quite something. It combined with other mystic traditions ultimately informed the theosophical movement of the 19th and…
> It combined with other mystic traditions ultimately informed the theosophical movement of the 19th and 20th century through to the magick of Aleister Crowley. His sex magick informs a lot of the modern incel, red-pill, and proud boy ideas that you must refrain from "spilling your seed"—that your reproductive emissions contain some of your essential energy. The result being that you have to abstain or otherwise be r…
To relate to another current event, Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea, Ged, was a virgin, and lost his power after he wasn't. Or at least that's how I remember it. I read the series a long time ago.