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The Best Books I've Read, 2010-2025

There are yearly best-of lists, and decade wrap-ups. I thought I’d do a decade and a half: The Theory of Celestial Influence by Rodney Collin (1953) From a cell to a galaxy, the universe contains forms that are self-similar, from the molecular to the galactic scale. Beside chaos and information theorists, no-one wants to tackle the big question: why the cosmos seems to…

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The Best Books on Alien Abductions

These works I’ve chosen demonstrate first-hand original research and direct, compassionate interaction with the percipients; show diligence in investigating their backgrounds; and attempt to cover as many aspects to the events as possible (social, medical, psychological, physical evidence).   The memoirs feature lengthy therapeutic interventions to treat the PTSD-like aftermath of these…

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Best Books on Anglo-American Espionage

Twelve years ago, my dormant interest with the anomalous once again took hold, as evidenced by the many posts below.   Previous to that, I’d been reading dozens of books on espionage in furtherance of a few novels I was working on. Here’s my list of my favorite books on Anglo-American espionage:  The Spy Who Saved the World. By Jerrold L. Schechter and Peter Deriabin.   I doubt there will ever…

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10 Essential Books about UFOs 

These books accept the UFO phenomenon as real and proceed from there. The authors are to be applauded for plowing ahead with their analyses of the strange phenomenon’s significance.   If someone claims they absolutely know what and why these “things” are, rest assured they are full of it.   Thus, none of these works (except one, with reservations) exhibit dogmatism in their analyses, and are…

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10 Essential Books about UFOs

These books accept the UFO phenomenon as real and proceed from there. Theauthors are to be applauded for plowing ahead with their analyses of the strangephenomenon’s significance.If someone claims they absolutely know what and why these “things” are, they arefull of it. Thus, none of these works exhibit dogmatism in their analyses, and aregood overviews of the subject. Grassroots UFOs: Case…

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The Mysteries of Osiris

The Mysteries of Osiris was the most important religious event of the year in ancient Egypt. It was celebrated in all major cities, including Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus, where even the Greeks who lived in those cities took part.

It reenacted the murder and revival of Osiris, Egyptian god of the underworld. Osiris was one of the most important and popular gods in ancient Egypt. All pharaohs were believed to descend from him, as living incarnations of Osiris’ son, Horus. Osiris presided over the tribunal of the underworld, offering the promise of life after death for the deceased who were ‘justified’ in the eyes of the gods. He was also associated with fertility and the annual regeneration of nature.

Osiris, his sister-wife Isis, and their son Horus formed a sacred family, worshipped across Egypt and beyond. They became increasingly popular during the first millennium BC. Annually, in every temple-city in Egypt, the god was celebrated in this most important religious festival.

The Mysteries of Osiris took place between the 12th and 30th of the month of Khoiak (mid-October to mid-November), when the Nile retreated, depositing fertile soil ready to be sown. Every year, two figures of Osiris were prepared by priests in the secrecy of the temple. One was made of soil and barley grains, and the other was made of expensive ingredients including ground semi-precious stones. These sacred figures were carried in procession to their final resting place at the end of the ritual celebrations.

For a long time, the Mysteries were known only from depictions in temples and ancient texts. However, recent astonishing underwater finds allow us to see ritual equipment and offerings associated with the Mysteries for the first time.

Discovered behind the shrine of Amun-Gereb in his temple at Thonis-Heracleion, this vat was used during the Mysteries of Osiris. On the first day of the Mysteries, the mummy-shaped figure of Osiris – made with a gold mould of two halves using soil, barley grains and water from the Nile – was deposited in a garden tank where it was carefully watered for eight days in a row, until it germinated.

This image shows a priest watering the germinating Osiris figure, in a depiction from the Temple of Philae. 

Find out more about the Mysteries of Osiris in the BP exhibition Sunken cities: Egypt’s lost worlds (until 27 Nov 2016).

Experience the Festival of Osiris in our free late event on Friday 28 October. Enjoy themed food and drink, workshops and performances!

A statuette of Osiris and a model of a processional barge for the god, shown in their place of excavation at Thonis-Heracleion. Photo: Christoph Gerigk. © Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation.

Standing statue of Osiris. Medinet Habu (modern Luxor), 664–610 BC. On loan from Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Photo: Christoph Gerigk. © Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation.

Pink granite garden vat. Thonis-Heracleion, Egypt, Ptolemaic Period, 4th–2nd century BC. Maritime Museum of Alexandria. Photo: Christoph Gerigk. © Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation.

Reproduced from George Bénédicte’s Temple de Philae, 1893.

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“Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

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One can study UFO reports and abduction tales for decades and remain more or less convinced these are physical beings from elsewhere who must possess advanced technology that is indistinguishable, to us, from magic.

But what kind of magic? Of the ritual…or of the stage?

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Part 2 of my essay “New Wine in Old Skins”

If things like this are going to happen, the ladies will be afraid to sleep alone in the house if so much as a sewing-machine or apple-corer be about.

—P.T. Barnum, 1855, referring to John Murray Spear’s Machine

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Imagine a 2000 year-old nightclub that holds an annual rave. At this rave, the people must abide by rules set by the MCs and bouncers. After, the ravers swear that they’ve lost their fear of death when they witnessed something inside a place called the ‘White Cave.’ It is only something a person can experience for oneself; it can’t be explained in words. And anyway, once you’ve experienced it you’re not supposed to talk about what happens in this White Cave. Discussing what occurs in the White Cave could even bring exile or prison.

A festival like this occurred, between 1600 BCE and about 400 ACE, in a small town called Eleusis fourteen miles outside Athens, Greece. That’s roughly 2 millennia of yearly events. Some scholars date it even earlier, and its first performances as far back as 2500 BCE, giving it another millennia of life. Some trace its roots to the Minoan culture.

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A satyr plays the double reed instrument known as an aulos to entertain Dionysus, who is crowned with ivy and holds his characteristic thyrsus (staff topped with a pinecone). Interior of an Attic red-figure kylix (drinking cup) by the potter Hieron and the painter Makron; 480s BCE. Found at Vulci, Italy; now in the Altes Museum, Berlin. Photo credit: ArchaiOptix/Wikimedia Commons.

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Purple nights 2.

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Laetitia Casta

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Anybody else got that Evergiven sized writers block

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Ejecting the intruder

The realm of reason is so narrowly restricted to man and his world, that to arrogate its extension beyond that world were absurd. Magick is the apotheosis of the Irrational. He is a Mage, a truly “kingly” man, who can create from the cosmic dust the supreme image of his Will, and, projecting it upon the mirror-world through the lens of consciousness, can awaken other minds to a sense of its dynamic existence. Such is the mechanism at work behind the universe of the artist who succeeds in creating a universe that ‘others,’ so called, may enter, and in which they can play their part; for these ‘others’ are themselves but a part of the artist’s creation. Arthur Machen drew attention to a profound magical fact when he observed that an entity such as Mrs. Gamp—the inimitable creation of Dickens—is known to almost all literate inhabitants of this planet, whereas Mrs. X, Y, or Z—our next-door neighbour—is known only to the few that constitute her immediate circle of acquaintances. Yet Mrs. X is ‘real,’ and Mrs. Gamp ‘unreal,’ the figment of a human mind. But that mind, being truly creative, was potent to imbue its images with some of its vital and enduring energy so that the images came alive and haunted the minds of countless individuals.

This form of creation is truly magical; it is channelled by a mysterious faculty amenable only to the artist, the poet, the magician, to those beings who are sensitive to the slightest stress in the cosmic aether, and able to draw upon the boundless energies of the cosmic mind.

In order for such a faculty to function, the intruder, the ‘squatter’ in the form of the ego that inhabits the house of flesh, has to be ejected; for the artist creates ‘reality’ only to the degree of his own absence. All magical creation is therefore the product of absence, of le néant. They alone may attract and mould the mysterious waves of energy that swirl beyond the Abyss, that have tempered their senses to such an exquisite degree of sensitivity, that their minds are rendered perfectly subtle, and able to mirror the movements of the soul’s most fluid fantasies.

[Kenneth Grant, Outside the Circles of Time]

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