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Influential Occult Group: The Church of the Hermetic Sciences & the Order of the Temple of Astarte

The Church of the Hermetic Sciences, and its associated Order of the Temple of Astarte, started back in the early 1970s by Carroll “Poke” Runyon, has been in continuous operation exploring ceremonial magick and celebrating modern versions of Canaanite and Phoenician paganism, particularly devoted to the goddess Astarte. Runyon and his group were also good friends and fellow explorers with Fred Adams, founder of the Pagan religion Feraferia. Books published by Runyon often feature articles and artwork by Adams as well as a number of other contributors. Their periodical “The Seventh Ray” in particular is particularly worth seeking out, as is Runyon’s book “The Book of Solomon’s Magick” which documents his ceremonial magick system.

The group’s website at http://hermetics.ning.com includes lots of recent updates, as well as links to Runyon’s podcast “The Hermetic Hour” and also Feraferia material on the web.

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Exploring the Magical World and Visionary Art of Rosaleen Norton

An interesting documentary about Australia’s most notorious Witch: Rosaleen Norton. She’s a perfect example of how there were definitely witches out there who had come to their Craft completely independent from and around the same time as Gerald Gardner.

My only criticism of this documentary is that it would have been nice to have a real human narrator rather than a computer-generated one.