Zero Equals Two is a blog on magical news and culture sponsored by U.S. Grand Lodge, O.T.O. A diverse collective of contributors comb the worlds of magick, art, science, history, philosophy, and more every day for articles and events of interest to Thelemites and other modern free-thinkers and explorers, collecting them on this blog for your enjoyment.
Recent posts
- Carl Abrahamsson Completes Anton LaVey Film
2019/11/20Carl Abrahmamsson posted this update on his FB feed:
“Today I finished editing, rendering, and worrying that I need to add/subtract what-nots to/from the majestic project by the name of ANTON LAVEY – INTO THE DEVIL’S DEN. In other words, the film is finished!
“What remains now is the color-grading: a very interesting process that makes the film look great and coherent, look-wise.
“The first ever screening will be in Copenhagen on November 21st. Malmö follows the evening after: November 22nd. Then follow many other one-off screenings. I will post news here, but the best way to stay updated is by subscribing to my newsletter at: www.carlabrahamsson.com”
- New Thelema, NOW! Episode Featuring Richard Kaczynski Talking Panic In Detroit
2019/11/19A Thelema, NOW! favorite is back! Author and lecturer Richard Kaczynski talks about the newly revised and re-released “Panic In Detroit.” At 400 pages, this release is significantly expanded from the original 2006 limited edition. It includes original essays on the time of Aleister Crowley, Charles Stansfeld Jones, Wilfred Talbot Smith, Cecil Frederick Russell, and Dr. J. P. Kowal in Detroit; the newspaper accounts that followed in their wake; and the legacy of the lost crate of rare Crowley books. In addition, Panic in Detroit reproduces 40 letters between Crowley and his circle; 55 newspaper articles documenting the “mess in the press”; selected transcripts from the Universal Book Stores’ bankruptcy hearings, in which Crowley, O.T.O. and The Equinox III: 1 figure prominently; and much more.
You can buy it on Amazon and booksellers everywhere!
Listen or DL here: https://oto-usa.org/main/podcast/.
- Artifacts From Egypt’s Rival Nubia Exhibited in Boston
2019/11/19Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is hosting the exhibit “Ancient Nubia Now” until January 20. The Museum’s site says:
“This exhibition of magnificent jewelry, pottery, sculpture, metalwork, and more from the MFA’s collection of ancient Nubian art examines power, representation, and cultural bias—in the ancient world, in the early 20th century, and today. Through a majestic display of art and objects, “Ancient Nubia Now” confronts past misinterpretations and offers new ways of understanding Nubia’s history and contemporary relevance.
“What was ancient Nubia? For more than 3,000 years, a series of kingdoms flourished in what is today the Sudanese Nile Valley, a region known in antiquity as Kush and by modern scholars as Nubia. Ruling from the capitals of Kerma (2400–1550 BCE), Napata (750–332 BCE), and Meroe (332 BCE–364 CE), Nubian kings and queens controlled vast empires and trade networks, rivalling—and even for a brief time conquering—their more famous neighbors, the Egyptians. The Nubians left behind remains of cities, temples, palaces, and pyramids, but few written records. As a result, their story has been told in large part by others—in antiquity by the Egyptians, who used propaganda to cast Nubia as the barbaric “other,” and in the early 20th century by American and European scholars and archeologists who brought cultural bias to their work.
“The MFA played a key role in bringing ancient Nubia to light, undertaking excavations at sites in southern Egypt and northern Sudan between 1913 and 1932, when both countries were under British colonial control. As a result, the MFA’s collection of ancient Nubian art is the largest and most important outside Khartoum, but the Museum’s possession of the objects is complicated by the far-reaching impact of European colonialism, and its history of displaying and interpreting them has at times been based on incorrect assumptions.
“’Ancient Nubia Now’ showcases the strength of the MFA’s collection, with hundreds of objects on view, some for the first time. Highlights include the exquisite jewels of Nubia’s queens, an army of funerary figurines, gold and silver treasure, and a stele bearing the longest known inscription in the still untranslated Meroitic language and script. The exhibition also brings new insights and voices. Throughout the galleries, video interviews with a biological anthropologist, an Egyptologist, a young Sudanese American, a photographer, and a professor connect the objects on view to pertinent themes such as power, self-representation, and cultural appropriation.”
https://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/nubia.
- IO HEKA IO HO
2019/11/18MONDAY! Here’s an excerpt from Jason Miller’s Magick Monday Newsletter:
“This weekend people all over the world honored Hekate on a night that, for reasons I can’t quite pin down, everyone has decided was her most important ancient festival. Of course, like so much else this festival has no ancient roots at all. I think maybe one year the Dark Moon fell on November 16th and someone celebrated Hekate’s Supper – then instead of continuing with the practice at the dark of the moon, they decided to stick to November 16th. Or maybe it was an attempt to link Saint Hilda to Hekate. I dunno. Over the years that I was receiving the Hekate arcana I asked Hekate about a number of different traditions and symbols that modern Paganism has laid on her and she mostly flatly rejected them. She is not a crone. That Hekate Wheel symbol has zip Hekate’s ancient cults. And November the 16th, January 31, May 7,August 13 or 14, November 30th, don’t have any special significance. Like so much else, they are modern inventions that get labelled ancient.
“Of course, Halloween doesn’t have anything to do with Hekate either and that’;s when I send out the Global Rite. The first New Moon of January and the Perihelion don’t have anything to do with Hekate and Helios either, but that is when Strategic Sorcery engages them together. I chose those times because their symbolism and their general psychic impression on the populace of the present makes them a good choice for those events. Now, I can and will argue all day that November 16th, Hekate’s Wheel, and the crone, have no ancient connection to Hekate, but I am probably not going to convince anyone. Bottom line is people like these things, and find meaning in them, and WANT them to be ancient, whether they are or they aren’t. As Neil Gaiman once noted: “Things need not have happened in order to be true”.
“So Saturday night I performed the Sorcery of Hekate Rite with no other goal than lifting my voice up with hundreds of others from dozens of traditions – all honoring an Ancient Titan that has shown more tenacity than most Gods. IO HEKA IO HO.
Subscribe to the newsletter, buy his books, sign up for his classes: https://www.strategicsorcery.net/
- Scientia Diabolicam
2019/11/18Yep, Hellfire Book Club has been busy with new publications as of late including, The Black Arts: Scientia Diabolicam by Humberto Maggi, available in deluxe full leather, and quarter cloth and silk editions:
https://hellfireclubbooks.com/product-c…/available-titles/…/Their website describes this tome thusly:
“A collection of full length writings expanded and illustrated in colour, over 390 pages with numerous charts and diagrams
Limited to 60 copies bound in full burgundy goatskin with a soft crushed grain, bright emerald silk doublures, black and gold head and tail bands. With a further 190 copies bound in quarter smooth snakeskin and emerald silk with black Ortiz endpapers“The chapters in the book form part of a remarkable personal journey around the world from South America to Europe and Africa, into the realms of magic, ancient grimoires mixing with modern practise, the sorcery of Exu jostles against the Goetia, Faustus finds a bedfellow with Saint Cyprian and Solomon with the Devil…..
“In the authors introduction we find immediately the struggle between the trained scientific mind and the magicians yearning for supernatural, daemonic experience, an ecstatic awakening which is the key feature of Humberto Maggi’s endeavours. For thirty years he has dug deeply into the textbooks of magic and into the layers of his own psyche, showing throughout these essays a profound grasp of both the esoteric literature of magic and the subtle nature of our relationship to the spirits.
“The contents in the book are:
1) Daemonic Knowledge:
an intimate discussion of the prime feature of magical experience as described in ancient literature and the philosophy of magic2) The Lesson of Phenex:
conjuration of the Goetic spirit with proofs of the objective nature of spirits and their effects upon us3) The Tree of the Grimoires:
the survival of shamanic iconography and ecstatic experience echoed in grimoire literature4) The Language of the Birds:
on the true nature of magical language, the subtle communications of spirits being the prime material of communication and thus facilitating human evolution as shown in the authors invocations of the Angels in the ARS PAULINA5) Crossing Worlds:
dissolving the apparent dichotomy between Goetic and Theurgic magic, Maggi discusses the facility for both angelic and demonic discourse within the self and as expressed in ones personal experiences including the invocations of the Seven Great Princes6) The Solomonic Spirit:
concerning Humberto Maggis personal invocation of The Holy Guardian Angel, the parallels with other forms of magical practise and the assertion of scientific method to the communion of spirits7) The Lord of the Good Tree:
Babylonian and Sumerian legends are woven together with those of the biblical Satan and the gnostic allegory of the shadow cave, a dissertation on the nature of magical perception8) The Gnosis of the Devil:
The past and future practise of Quimbanda with some personal observations and encounters with EXU, the spirit chiefs of the Grimoirium Verum aligned with the hierarchy of the Exus9) The White Snake:
On the nature of the wisdom tree and its powerful energetic revealer deity the Serpentine God of Magic and the deities of Vision and Rainbow10) The Great War of Magic:
The impact of the Renaissance of occultism and the return of Hermes Trismegistus in the early modern period redefining the nature of the Magus and the creation of our esoteric utopia11) The Saint, the Magus, and the Devil:
The inheritance of the conjurers craft, shamanism and the Knowledge and Conversation of Spirits, the torments of St.Anthony and the lessons learnt from explorations into the world of the demons12) Ars Moriendi:
The arts of necromancy, magical eschatology and the Ars Moriendi Magicae, survival of the consciousness after death13) Faustus’s Good Friend:
Being an archaeology of late antiquity magical techniques obscurely found in in Christian legends; Simon Magus, Mephistopheles and Faustus, the Sanctum Regnum of the Dragon Rouge and the ‘paredros’ of the Papyri Graecae Magicae with a disquisition on conjuring the magical assistant14) The New World of Saint Cyprian:
Contact with the grimoire of Cyprian in Brasil and Angola, a discussion of the transformation of Cyprian the Mage and his influence on sorcery15) The Spirit of Saint Cyprian:
The Black Pilgrimage to Sintra, Toldeo and Paris, with a vision of the Devil…”order your copy here:
https://hellfireclubbooks.com/product-c…/available-titles/…/
