In Pursuit of Mysteries

Edgar Rice Burroughs and Mars

I mentioned my love of Barsoom, the pulp Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs before but did not give any links to his books.

The first five of them are in the public domain in the United States and are available on Project Gutenberg.

1. A Princess of Mars
2. Gods of Mars
3. Warlord of Mars
4. Thuvia, Maid of Mars
5. The Chessmen of Mars

As it turns out, the rest of them are available on Project Gutenberg of Australia, where the copyright laws are different and the later books are in public domain.

6. The Mastermind of Mars
7. A Fighting Man Of Mars
8. Swords of Mars
9. Synthetic Men of Mars
10. Llana of Gathol
11. John Carter and the Giant of Mars
12. John Carter and the Skeleton Men of Jupiter

These last two were outside of the main corpus and published very late in Burroughs’ life.

In addition, there is his Venus series, similar but unrelated in connecting details. This is mostly available as well.

1. Pirates of Venus (text only here)
2. Lost on Venus
3. Carson of Venus
4. Escape on Venus
5. The Wizard of Venus (published late and not available online)

If you have the time and inclination, I recommend the Mars series especially. Flying airships, strange and ancient science (aka magic), swords, monsters, manly men…

Golden Dawn Audio

The Grey Lodge Occult Review is out with a new issue. Overall, there thing isn’t quite my ball of wax but there is one thing that they have made available that is… They’ve put up a bunch of the audio that Israel Regardie recorded of him doing Golden Dawn rituals or lecturing on them.

As my readers may recall, the Golden Dawn is the topic of my dissertation though Regardie did these in the 1980s so it is long after the period that I am concerned with in my work. Regardie was initiated in 1934 in the Stella Matutina. The SM was the Golden Dawn order that was created after the great split in 1903 and which was run by Dr. Felkin. He took it with him to New Zealand. It’s last surviving body was Whare Ra, which closed in the 1970s. Regardie’s claim to fame was being the first person outside of Crowley to completely violate his oaths to the order by publishing the four volumes of Golden Dawn material which Llewellyn still sells as The Golden Dawn. He was also, previously, the poor unfortunate young man who acted as Aleister Crowley’s personal secretary, whatever that actually means.

Later in life, he was much lauded over, probably rightfully so, as a Golden Dawn elder figure. What most people don’t seem to realize is that the Middle Pillar ritual, while described very loosely in the Golden Dawn material, was actually the creation of Regardie. Given the hundreds or thousands of occultists who have been time visualizing the Tree of Life on their body and circulating energy while vibrating Hebrew names, that seems to be a pretty lasting addition to the corpus as actually practiced.

In any case, this is a list of the material that they have up on the site:

The Golden Dawn Audios - CD 1 (53.1MB)

1. Introduction by Lon Milo DuQuette
2. Introduction by Israel Regardie
3. The Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram with Instructions
4. The Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram without Instructions
5. The Bornless Ritual
6. The Invocation of Thoth (music by Zehm Aloim)

The Golden Dawn Audios - CD 2 (56.3MB)

1. Awareness
2. Relaxation

The Golden Dawn Audios - CD 3 (61.5MB)

1. Introduction
2. Mantram
3. Breathing
4. Closing

The Golden Dawn Audios - CD 4 (69.4MB)

1. The Middle Pillar Ritual with Instructions
2. Psalm 23
3. The Middle Pillar Ritual without Instructions
4. Closing Prayers & Meditation

The Golden Dawn Audios - CD 5 (60.3MB)

1. The Practice of the Presence of God
2. The Holy Guardian Angel
3. The Bornless Ritual

The Golden Dawn Audios - CD 6 (40.2MB)

1. The Rose Cross Ritual with Instructions
2. The Rose Cross Ritual without Instructions

The Golden Dawn Audios - CD 8 (78.1MB)

1. Introduction to the Golden Dawn; Definitions of Terms

The Golden Dawn Audios - CD 9 ( 76.3MB)

1. Hebrew Instruction; The Tree of Life; The Elements; Terms & Pronunciations

The Golden Dawn Audios - CD 10 (82.6MB)

1. Terms & Pronunciations (continued); The Meaning & Significance of the Officers.

 

EXTRA!

THE COMPLETE GOLDEN DAWN SYSTEM OF MAGIC PDF

Geek Moments…

We had this conversation in the kitchen area at work yesterday about Star Wars. Now, by some accounts, that might be bad enough but this is a tech company after all…

What we wound up discussing was spin-off novels because I’ve been talking online to Sean Williams recently, who has co-written a trilogy of them and has more coming out in the next year.

So, you had a bunch of geeks standing in the kitchen of a Bay Area startup debating continuity in comparing Star Wars novels read as a child (like Splinter of the Mind’s Eye or the Han Solo series of books) with the current “Expanded Universe” continuity. The general consensus is that Lucas used to let people have a lot more fun.

Also, many of us are closet Star Wars fans who had our childhood memories burned, crushed, and then eviscerated by the combination of the re-edits of the original movies followed by the abysmal prequels that should have been just left to novels or not at all.

Remember, Han shot first!