Occult Books I Have Been Reading:

Lycourinos: Occult Traditions.
Ginzburg: Ecstasies.
Levenda: Stairway to Heaven and The Dark Lord.
Bogdan/Starr (eds.): AC and Western Esotericism.
Stratton-Kent: Conjure Codex I and II and his Encyclopaedia Goetica. (I plan to read more of this in the near future. I've perused his work on the Grimorium Verum early in the year and seem to share with him the rather dynamic, communicative-reciprocative approach to those 'entities' à la shamanism and Tantra.) On top are some of my personal notes.

Sabrer le Champagne!

An Abandoned Baroque Mansion

Villa de Vecchi, Cortenova - Lombardy

Ur-Romanticism

Out of pure ennui, a rich English noblewoman had the whim to do something for the poor. So she gave a great sum to her administrators to use for charity. Once, she travelled the continent for a few months, and upon her return found out that instead of the familiar grimy hovels of her beneficiaries, there now was a construction site where they built houses a school and a hospital. “Mon Dieu! What have they done to my beautiful, quaint slum!”, she exclaimed.

Rousseau:

The Sea Hawk

The South China Sea

On a freight ship, a veritable floating coffin, from odorous HK to haughty Shanghai: two friends and I had been drinking the previous night with two Russian sailors. As it usually happens on such occasions at least one out of three will be utterly destroyed. That time it was our comrade Kurt's turn.  In the morning when we prepared to go up for breakfast he just couldn't be roused.
 The petit dejeuner was truly abominable and seeing the whitish-grey porridge and the thin, watery coffee, my other compatriot, John Wanker, had the idea of mixing those two ingredients up, taking them to Kurti's bunk and pouring that concoction into his underpants that he was still wearing.

Barbour

Unfortunately it's still quite hot…but I'm eagerly awaiting any forthcoming drop in temperature!

Harry's Bar

Sexmachine

In our town there is a large bridge over the river Danube. The other night we had to cross it to get from one bar to another. Some of us were in a car and two on a motorbike...
 Some days later, the owner of the car got a speeding ticket with a notice to report to the police, so he went to the station to make further inquiries.
 When he asked why the fee was so unusually high, the officer on duty simply said: 'Come with me, Sir.' Thereupon latter showed him a picture: on it was a guy from our group leaning his upper body out of the car backdoor-window in the process of passing a beer-bottle to a guy we call Sexmachine (cause he looks a bit like a certain character from a movie) who was driving the bike greedily anticipating the generous offer with an outstretched arm.

Dr. Götz von Boyneburg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBBGIbz0YR4

Cufflinks:

‘The Scouring of the Shire’

I grew up in a small village at the fringe of the city of Vienna; when I was little, I came to believe that many older people were ‘bad’ cause of the way they looked at me. It was only much later that I heard that most of them had actually worked for my great grandfather and were consequently only looking at me in a strange condescending fashion so to gloat over the decline and downfall of my family’s fortune. My grandmother told me that, true, the Russians after the War had blundered lots of our stuff but that, were one to look into the homes and houses of that village, one would find at least as much of our furniture there as the occupation army had taken for spoils.

The English Way To Fight

Next week: the Scots Way to Fight featuring Master Begbie!

Bildung

"Eine Ausbildung durchlaufen wir mit dem Ziel, etwas zu können. Wenn wir uns dagegen bilden, arbeiten wir daran, etwas zu werden - wir streben danach, auf eine bestimmte Art und Weise in der Welt zu sein."

"Der Gebildete ist ein Leser. Doch es reicht nicht, ein Bücherwurm und Vielwisser zu sein. Es gibt - so paradox es klingt - den ungebildeten Gelehrten. Der Unterschied: Der Gebildete weiss Bücher so zu lesen, dass sie ihn verändern.[....]
Das ist ein untrügliches Kennzeichen von Bildung: dass einer Wissen nicht als blosse Ansammlung von Information, als vergnüglichen Zeitvertreib oder gesellschaftliches Dekor betrachtet, sondern als etwas, das innere Veränderung und Erweiterung bedeuten kann, die handlungswirksam wird. Das gilt nicht nur, wenn es um moralisch bedeutsame Dinge geht. Der Gebildete wird auch durch Poesie ein anderer. Das unterscheidet ihn vom Bildungsbürger und Bildungsspiesser."
http://www.hwr-berlin.de/fileadmin/downloads_internet/publikationen/Birie_Gebildet_sein.pdf

Siehe in diesem Zusammenhang z.B. auch hier:

http://vimeo.com/11547370

http://vimeo.com/55928150