Austin Osman Spare

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Austin Osman Spare (30 December 1886 – 15 May 1956) was an English artist who developed idiosyncratic magical techniques including automatic writing, automatic drawing and sigilization based on his theories of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious self. His artistic work is characterized by skilled draughtsmanship exhibiting a complete mastery of the use of the line, and often employs monstrous or fantastic magical and sexual imagery.

Biography

Spare was born in Snow Hill, near Smithfield Market, London on 30 December 1886, the son of Philip Newton Spare, a City of London policeman who retired after 25 years of service, and Eliza Ann Adelaide Osman. He was the fifth of six children.

According to his mother Spare first began to show signs of his talent (and of his well known lack of interest in selling his work) at the age of four:

All day long he would have a pencil in his hand, drawing anything that was placed before him - his parents, his sisters, or brothers. Nothing seemed to come amiss and we made up our minds that if it was at all possible he should be allowed to follow what was evidently his vocation. Of course it has been expensive to buy his board and paints, and all else that he requires, for, curiously enough, he can never be persuaded to sell any of his work. He is even averse to showing it to any one.

Spare's parents enrolled him in evening classes at Lambeth Art School in 1899, where he developed his skills under the guidance of Phillip Connard. At 14, he won a county council scholarship for ₤10 and one of his drawings was selected for inclusion in the British Art Section of the Paris International Exhibition. At fifteen he left school and began to work designing posters (briefly, at Causton's, producers of posters and other kinds of commercial art) and stained glass (at James Powell & Sons, Whitefriars Street). A promising stained glass design led to his being recommended for a free scholarship at the The Royal College of Art, where he subsequently began formal study. His designs for stained glass undertaken for fellow employee Thomas Cowell are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Shortly thereafter, his father pressured him to send two drawings to the Royal Academy for consideration, with the result that one, an allegorical drawing was accepted. At the age of only sixteen or seventeen, Spare had his work exhibited by the Royal Academy, creating something of a sensation. At this young age he was already deeply involved in the development of his esoteric ideas. In a 1904 article he is quoted as saying, regarding religion:

I have practically none. I go anywhere. This life is but a reasonable development. All faiths are to me the same. I go to the Church in which I was born - the Established - but without the slightest faith. In fact, I am devising a religion of my own which embodies my conception of what we were, are, and shall be in the future.

In October 1907 Spare had his first major exhibition at Bruton Gallery in London's West End. The content of this exhibition was striking, arcane and grotesque, causing controversy. These elements appealed to avant-garde London intellectuals, and perhaps brought him to the attention of Aleister Crowley, the infamous English mountaineer, magician and poet. However they met, the two men certainly knew each other. Their interaction appears to have begun some time around 1907 or 1908, as a copy of the 1907 edition of A Book of Satyrs with an inscription (dated 1908) from Spare to Crowley is said to exist in a private collection. The two also engaged in written correspondence. Spare almost certainly became a 'probationer' in the order A∴A∴ or Argenteum Astrum (Latin for "Silver Star"), founded by Crowley and George Cecil Jones. Spare also contributed four small drawings to Crowley's periodical publication The Equinox, and a photograph exists which shows a young Spare with his hands at the sides of his face in the same pose which Crowley himself adopted in the famous 1910 photo with book, robe and hat.

Whatever the nature of the relationship between Crowley and Spare it appears to have been short-lived, and a passage in Spare's The Book of Pleasure leaves no doubt that he did not hold a favorable view of ceremonial magic or magicians:

Others praise ceremonial Magic, and are supposed to suffer much Ecstasy! Our asylums are crowded, the stage is over-run! Is it by symbolising we become the symbolised? Were I to crown myself King, should I be King? Rather should I be an object of disgust or pity. These Magicians, whose insincerity is their safety, are but the unemployed dandies of the Brothels.

Spare married the actress and dancer Eily Gertrude Shaw on the 4th of September 1911. The two had met some years before. Whatever influence she may have had upon Spare's work the marriage was short-lived, though never formally dissolved. The two separated around 1918-19. One known work of Spare's, inscribed, signed and dated as "Portrait of the Artist & His Wife March 26th 1912 AOS" is known. It shows the head of Spare executed in colored chalks and pencil. To one side, executed with only a few ghostly lines, we see the face of a woman with fine features, her head turned down and to the side, her eyes closed.

The Book of Pleasure, published by Spare himself in autumn of 1913, most likely with the assistance of private patrons, is the most complete exposition of his esoteric ideas. "Conceived initially as a pictorial allegory the book quickly evolved into a much deeper work, drawing inspiration from Taoism and Buddhism, but primarily from his experiences as an artist."

In 1917, during World War I, Spare was conscripted into the British army, serving as a medical orderly of the Royal Army Medical Corps in London hospitals, and was commissioned as an official War Artist in 1919. In this capacity he visited the battlefields of France to record the work of the R.A.M.C. Spare himself recalled, "When the war broke out, I joined the Army. When I left the Forces, the world was a very different place. Lots of things had changed. I found it very difficult to keep going on with what I had been doing. That pushed me into the abstract world - and there I have more or less remained."

By 1927 Spare had certainly taken a public stance indicating disgust with contemporary society. Perhaps the time he spent documenting images of the horrors of war, followed by a period of financial instability and failing ventures, combined with often hostile reviews of his work and ideas led to this state of affairs. Whatever the cause, Spare's loathing was clearly expressed in his work Anathema of Zos - Sermon To The Hypocrites, which was published in that year. It was to be his last published book.

Dogs, devouring your own vomit! Cursed are ye all! Throwbacks, adulterers, sycophants, corpse devourers, pilferers and medicine swallowers! Think ye Heaven is an infirmary?

Hannen Swaffer, the British journalist, reports that in 1936 Spare wilfully rejected a chance for international fame. He relates that a member of the German Embassy, buying one of Spare's self-portraits, sent it to Hitler. According to Swaffer, the Fuehrer was so impressed (according to this account because the eyes and the moustache were somewhat like his own) that he invited Spare to go to Germany to paint him. Spare, instead, made a copy of it, which came into Swaffer's possession. Swaffer indicates that written at the top of the portrait is the reply that Spare "sent to the man who wanted to master Europe and dominate mankind". Swaffer reports the reply read as follows: “Only from negations can I wholesomely conceive you. For I know of no courage sufficient to stomach your aspirations and ultimates. If you are superman, let me be for ever animal.” This story is not the most incredible of the accounts which were (and are) in circulation regarding Spare. A number of anecdotes concerning Spare and his life have been recorded, many which include descriptions of magical occurrences, accurate divination or foreknowledge, and sorcerous manifestations. It should be said that whatever opinion one may hold regarding the truth of these tales, they are entirely in keeping with claims Spare himself is known to have made.

In 1941, fire and high explosive totally obliterated Spare's studio flat, depriving him of his home, his health and his equipment. For three years he struggled to regain the use of his arms until finally, in 1946, in a cramped basement in Brixton, he began to make pictures again, surrounded by stray cats. At the time he had no bed and worked in an old army shirt and tattered jacket. Yet he still charged only an average of £5 per picture. Clifford Bax, a friend of Spare's and a one-time collaborator recalled:

Spare knew the taste of life as it is for people to whom a penny and a ha'penny are very different coins, and he lived in a high bleak barrack-like tenement block, among men and women in whose life elegance and the arts had no place, and surrounded by their washing and their cats. He said to me once 'Don't put 'esquire' on your letters. We've only one other esquire in my block, and they think we're giving ourselves airs.' His attractive simplicity came out, too, when he said 'If you are ever passing my place, do drop in'; for it is seldom that anybody happens to be passing The Borough unless he lives there.

Spare was quoted as saying, “I have had a hard life, but I blame nobody but myself. I am responsible for my own misfortunes. I am rather apt to butt at a brick wall at times, and find, in the end, I cannot do any good about it. I cannot change things, so I give it my best.” He died in London on 15 May 1956, at the age of 69.

Spare the artist

Spare's work is remarkable for its variety, including paintings, a vast number of drawings, work with pastel, a few etchings, published books combining text with imagery, and even bizarre bookplates. He was productive from his earliest years until his death. According to Haydn Mackay, "rhythmic ornament grew from his hand seemingly without conscious effort."

Spare was regarded as an artist of considerable talent and good prospects, but his style was apparently controversial. Critical reaction to his work in period ranged from baffled but impressed, to patronizing and dismissive. An anonymous review of The Book of Satyrs published in December 1909, which must have appeared around the time of Spare's 23rd birthday, is by turns condescending and grudgingly respectful, "Mr. Spare's work is evidently that of young man of talent." However, "What is more important is the personality lying behind these various influences. And here we must credit Mr. Spare with a considerable fund of fancy and invention, although the activities of his mind still find vent through somewhat tortuous channels. Like most young men he seems to take himself somewhat too seriously". Our critic ends his review with the observation that Spare's "drawing is often more shapeless and confused than we trust it will be when he has assimilated better the excellent influences upon which he has formed his style."

Two years later another anonymous review (this time of The Starlit Mire, for which Spare provided ten drawings) suggests, "When Mr. Spare was first heard of six or seven years ago he was hailed in some quarters as the new Beardsley, and as the work of a young man of seventeen his drawings had a certain amount of vigour and originality. But the years have not dealt kindly with Mr. Spare, and he must not be content with producing in his majority what passed muster in his nonage. However, his designs are not inappropriate for the crude paradoxes that form the text of this book. It is far easier to imitate an epigram than to invent one."

In a 1914 review of The Book of Pleasure, the critic (again anonymous) seems resigned to bewilderment, "It is impossible for me to regard Mr. Spare's drawings otherwise than as diagrams of ideas which I have quite failed to unravel; I can only regret that a good draughtsman limits the scope of his appeal".

From October 1922 to July 1924 Spare edited, jointly with Clifford Bax, the quarterly, Golden Hind for Chapman and Hall publishers. This was a short-lived project, but during its brief career it reproduced impressive figure drawing and lithographs by Spare and others. In 1925 Spare, Alan Odle, John Austen, and Harry Clarke showed together at the St George's Gallery, and in 1930 at the Godfrey Philips Galleries. The 1930 show was the last West End show Spare would have for 17 years.

Spare's obituary printed in The Times of May 16, 1956 states:

"Thereafter Spare was rarely found in the purlieus of Bond St. He would teach a little from January to June, then up to the end of October, would finish various works, and from the beginning of November to Christmas would hang his products in the living-room, bedroom, and kitchen of his flat in the Borough. There he kept open house; critics and purchasers would go down, ring the bell, be admitted, and inspect the pictures, often in the company of some of the models - working women of the neighbourhood. Spare was convinced that there was a great potential demand for pictures at 2 or 3 guineas each, and condemned the practice of asking ₤20 for "amateurish stuff'. He worked chiefly in pastel or pencil, drawing rapidly, often taking no more than two hours over a picture. He was especially interested in delineating the old, and had various models over 70 and one as old as 93."

But Spare did not entirely disappear. During the late 30s he developed and exhibited a style of painting based on a logarithmic form of anamorphic projection which he called "siderealism". This work appears to have been well received. In 1947 he exhibited at the Archer Gallery, producing over 200 works for the show. It was a very successful show and led to something of a post-war renaissance of interest.

Public awareness of Spare seems to have declined somewhat in the 1960s before the slow but steady revival of interest in his work beginning in the mid 70s. The following passage in a discussion of an exhibit including Spare's work in the summer of 1965 suggests some critics had hoped he would disappear into obscurity forever. The critic writes that the curator of the exhibit

"has resurrected an unknown English artist named Austin Osman Spare, who imitates etchings in pen and ink in the manner of Beardsley but really harks back to the macabre German romanticism. He tortured himself before the first war and would have inspired the surrealist movement had he been discovered early enough. He has come back in time to play a belated part in the revival of taste for art nouveau."

Robert Ansell summarized Spare's artistic contributions as follows:

During his lifetime, Spare left critics unable to place his work comfortably. Ithell Colquhoun supported his claim to have been a proto-Surrealist and posthumously the critic Mario Amaya made the case for Spare as a Pop Artist. Typically, he was both of these - and neither. A superb figurative artist in the mystical tradition, Spare may be regarded as one of the last English Symbolists, following closely his great influence George Frederick Watts. The recurrent motifs of androgyny, death, masks, dreams, vampires, satyrs and religious themes, so typical of the art of the French and Belgian Symbolists, find full expression in Spare's early work, along with a desire to shock the bourgeois.

Spare the magician

It has been argued that Spare's magic depended (at least in part) upon psychological repression. According to one author, Spare's magical rationale was as follows, "If the psyche represses certain impulses, desires, fears, and so on, and these then have the power to become so effective that they can mold or even determine entirely the entire conscious personality of a person right down to the most subtle detail, this means nothing more than the fact that through repression ("forgetting") many impulses, desires, etc. have the ability to create a reality to which they are denied access as long as they are either kept alive in the conscious mind or recalled into it. Under certain conditions, that which is repressed can become even more powerful than that which is held in the conscious mind."

Spare believed that intentionally repressed material would become enormously effective in the same way that "unwanted" (since not consciously provoked) repressions and complexes have tremendous power over the person and his or her shaping of reality. It was a logical conclusion to view the subconscious mind as the source of all magical power, which Spare soon did. In his opinion, a magical desire cannot become truly effective until it has become an organic part of the subconscious mind.

Spare "elaborated his sigils by condensing letters of the alphabet into diagrammatic glyphs of desire, which were to be integrated into postural (yogalike) practices—"monograms of thought, for the government of energy." Spare's work is contemporaneous with Hugo Ball's attempts "to rediscover the evangelical concept of the 'word' (logos) as a magical complex image"—as well as with Walter Benjamin's thesis that "Meditation, which is the immediacy of all mental communication, is the fundamental problem of linguistic theory, and if one chooses to call this immediacy magic, then the primary problem of language is its magic. Spare's 'sentient symbols' and his 'alphabet of desire' situate this mediatory magic in a libidinal framework of Tantric—which is to say cosmological—proportions."

Influence on Chaos magic

Some of Spare's techniques, particularly the use of sigils and the creation of an "alphabet of desire" were adopted, adapted and popularized by Peter J. Carroll in the work Liber Null & Psychonaut.[30] Carroll and other writers such as Ray Sherwin are seen as key figures in the emergence of some of Spare's ideas and techniques as a part of a magical movement loosely referred to as Chaos magic.

Bibliography

Privately printed by Spare during his lifetime

--Earth Inferno 1905

--A Book of Satyrs 1907 (reissued by John Lane 1909)

--The Book of Pleasure 1913

--The Focus of Life 1921 (issued by The Morland Press)

--Anathema of Zos 1927

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Osman_Spare

The Occult Corps

In the late 19th and early 20th Century, there had been many
flourishing esoteric orders in Germany and Austria that sought to
establish a reborn Germanic identity and to reconnect the people with
their repressed archetypes. One of the most significant of these Orders
was founded in Germany in 1912 - the German Order, and from this sprang
the Thule Society (Thulegesellschaft). The Thule Society took its name
from the fabled land of Ultima Thule, which the Ukrainian witch Madame
Helena Blavatsky learned of after having been contacted by the Great
Race that had survived its destruction.

These ancient, highly intelligent beings worked in concert with certain human adepts - individuals with highly developed
occult powers. The truly initiated could, by means of magic-mystical rituals, establish contact with these beings and learn
secret arts unknown to the rest of humanity. The Nazies believed that with the help of this Great Race they could create
a race of Aryan supermen with supernatural strength and energy.

These Ancient Masters told Blavatsky that she had been selected to play a part in the revival and public promotion of
their secret occult tradition, which had lain hidden for centuries in secret monasteries and libraries in the remotest
reaches of the Himalayas. Accordingly, Blavatsky spent a number of years in Tibet, learning the ways of the occult and
the keys to unlocking the mysteries of the secret doctrine. Among the magical runes and symbols was the swastika,
which became a common good luck charm in Germany and the symbol of the Thule Society. But the traditional 'righthanded'
swastika was to be reversed, forming an evocation of evil, spiritual devolution and black magic.

Both the Thule Society and the German Order became interchangeable in ideas and even membership.

In 1917 one woman and three men met in a cafe in Vienna under a veil of mystery and secrecy. The woman, called Anna
Sprengel, was a spiritual medium and she too had made contact with the Great Race. The four Austrians formed the Vril
Society, and their emblem was the 'Black Sun' symbol which could be found in many Babylonian and Assyrian places of
worship. They depicted the Black Sun's inner light in the form of a cross almost identical to the German Iron Cross.

With the victory of the NSDAP, the SS (Schutzstaffel) carried on the occult tradition in the Third Reich. Its Reichsführer,
Heinrich Himmler, was a member of the Vril Society and shared Hitler's obsession with the occult. He believed that the
persecution of witches in the 17th century represented a kind of Holocaust of the German race carried out by the Roman
Catholic Church. "The witch-hunting cost the German people hundreds of thousands of mothers and women, cruelly
tortured and executed," Himmler said.

In 1935, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Security and Intelligence Service (Sicherheitdienst - SD) reported to Himmler
that he had discovered the case of a witch called Margareth Himbler, burnt in Germany in 1629. The similarity of names
encouraged Himmler's interest in German witchcraft, and in 1935 he set up Special Unit H (Sonderkommando H) in
Archive Department 7 of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptarmt - RSHA), the umbrella organization
of the SS, Gestapo and criminal police. The "H" stood for the German word hexen (witches).

Himmler deployed Special Unit H to discover any traces of old Germanic magic that survived the witch-hunts, while Archive Department 7 administered book stocks, archived the confiscated materials, and then assessed their value.
Special Unit H would eventually loot more than 140,000 books on the subject of the occult from libraries across Nazioccupied
Europe, and among the manuscripts they found was a copy of Von Juntzt´s Unaussprechlichen Kulten and a
version of the Necronomicon written in ancient Gothic. These cursed books told of a race much older than mankind: the
nightmarish Ancient Ones.

The top-secret Occult Corps (Geheimnisvolle Korps) was soon established as the Paranormal Division of SSHauptsturmführer
Wolfram Sievers' Ancestral Inheritence Office (Ahnernerbe), which was responsible for investigating all
aspects of ancient German tradition. The Occult Corps incorporated into one organization the Thule Society, the Vril
Society and the German branch of Crowley's OTO. Despite her Slavic blood, Madame Helena Blavatsky's granddaughter
Marianna Blavatsky was then recruited as its High Priestess. (Allegedly the Ahnernerbe traced the Blavatsky roots back
to the Rhos - Scandanavian Vikings that had come into contact with the Slavs in 860 A.D.)

From Archive Department 7's stolen texts Marianna learned that violence begot a form of orgone energy which, if
properly seized, could be forged into magical effects. Thousands died to help Marianna and her Meta-Psychic Operatives
in the Bio-Energy/Psi-Enhancement Division better understand and control the new "blood magic" they had discovered.

Now under the direction of the SS Paranormal Division, Special Unit H continued to comb German-occupied territories in
search of more arcane knowledge and magical artifacts. Archaeological expeditions were sent to the bottom of the Baltic
Sea hoping to find some lost artifacts or magical items of Ultima Thule. The Spear of Destiny, the weapon that was used
to pierce the side of the Messiah while he was nailed to the cross, was found in Versailles in 1940. Early attempts to
recover the Lost Ark of the Covenant in 1936 and the Holy Grail in 1938, however, were less successful.

Likewise, during this same time Japan's own paranormal division, the Kuromaku (The Black Curtain), was attempting to
recover ancient magical items in Asia, including Genghis Khan's sword, the magical Books of Shan, and a stone tablet
left behind by Buddha.

The original base of operations for the Occult Corps was Castle Wewelsburg in Westphalia, which Himmler bought as a
ruin and rebuilt over the next 11 years at a cost of 13 million marks. The central banqueting hall contained a vast round
table with throne-like seats to accommodate Himmler and 12 of his favorite officers, making his modern-day "Order of the
Black Knights" a dark covenant of 13. The Black Guard, the toughest, smartest and most dangerous officers from the SS,
occupied the upper echelon of Himmler's personal guard. Beneath Castle Wewelsburg was the "Hall of the Dead" where
plinths stood around a stone table and the covenant could practice their witchcraft in secret.

After a crashed spacecraft was discovered in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) in 1936, the Occult Corps built the Institute
for Science and Mysticism (Die Institut für Wissenschaft und Mystizismus), also known as "Walhalla", to examine the
wreck and its dead crew. Walhalla soon became the headquarters for the Occult Corps' operations, while Castle
Wewelsburg functioned more as more of a private retreat for Himmler and his fellow conspirators.

Over the following years, alien technology was taken and combined with the information the Vril Society had received
through channeling and was made into a further project called the Haunebu I: the first large flying saucer (Flügelrad)
developed in Germany - approximately seventy-five feet in diameter. In fact, the Institute's "X-Labs" acquired so much
science and technology far beyond mankind's current knowledge base that soon various X-Labs were constructed in
several other locations throughout Germany as well, including Castle Erlangen, Castle Heidenheim, Castle Höllenhammer,
Castle Naudabaum, Castle Nuremburg, Castle Wolfenstein and the National Redoubt (the Alpenfestung).

Dr. Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse was the genetic engineer who had performed the alien autopsies at the Institute, and
the head of Operation Eisenfaust ("Iron Fist"). With the help of his assistant Dr. Schabbs, Dr. Strasse's twisted
experiments with orgonomy produced many mutant X-Creatures (X-Geschöpfe).

During this same time, Himmler became convinced that he was the reincarnation of Henry the Fowler, and that he could
raise Heinrich I from the dead. In doing so, the Third Reich would then possess the power to command an army of the
undead against the Allies. With Hitler's encouragement, Himmler began methodically researching how to approach the
dark ritual, throwing scores of scientists, great cashes of wealth, and the full power of the Nazi war machine behind the
efforts of "Operation Resurrection" while Dr. Hermann Schreck's Project Totengraeber had considerable success in the XLabs
with the living dead (Die Untoten)...

A ritual the inner adepts of the Occult Corps (Karotechia) perfected in the winter of 1944.

From: http://www.nemesis-system.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=224

Project SS Hexen

Hotshot sniper in one-and-a-half mile double kill

From The Sunday Times May 2, 2010

A BRITISH Army sniper has set a new sharpshooting distance record by killing two Taliban machinegunners in Afghanistan from more than a mile away.

Craig Harrison, a member of the Household Cavalry, killed the insurgents with consecutive shots — even though they were 3,000ft beyond the most effective range of his rifle.

“The first round hit a machinegunner in the stomach and killed him outright,” said Harrison, a Corporal of Horse. “He went straight down and didn’t move.

“The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too. They were both dead.”

The shooting — which took place while Harrison’s colleagues came under attack — was at such extreme range that the 8.59mm bullets took almost three seconds to reach their target after leaving the barrel of the rifle at almost three times the speed of sound.

The distance to Harrison’s two targets was measured by a GPS system at 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles. The previous record for a sniper kill is 7,972ft, set by a Canadian soldier who shot dead an Al-Qaeda gunman in March 2002.

In a remarkable tour of duty, Harrison cheated death a few weeks later when a Taliban bullet pierced his helmet but was deflected away from his skull. He later broke both arms when his army vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

Harrison was sent back to the UK for treatment, but insisted on returning to the front line after making a full recovery.

“I was lucky that my physical fitness levels were very high before my arms were fractured and after six weeks in plaster I was still in pretty good shape,” he said. “It hasn’t affected my ability as a sniper.”

Harrison, from Gloucestershire, was reunited in Britain with his wife Tanya and daughter Dani, 16, last month. Recalling his shooting prowess in Helmand province, he said: “It was just unlucky for the Taliban that conditions were so good and we could see them so clearly.”

Harrison and his colleagues were in open-topped Jackal 4x4 vehicles providing cover for an Afghan national army patrol south of Musa Qala in November last year. When the Afghan soldiers and Harrison’s troop commander came under enemy fire, the sniper, whose vehicle was further back on a ridge, trained his sights on a Taliban compound in the distance. His L115A3 long-range rifle, the army’s most powerful sniper weapon, is designed to be effective at up to 4,921ft and supposedly capable of only “harassing fire” beyond that range.

“We saw two insurgents running through its courtyard, one in a black dishdasha, one in green,” he said. “They came forward carrying a PKM machinegun, set it up and opened fire on the commander’s wagon.

“Conditions were perfect, no wind, mild weather, clear visibility. I rested the bipod of my weapon on a compound wall and aimed for the gunner firing the machinegun.

“The driver of my Jackal, Trooper Cliff O’Farrell, spotted for me, providing all the information needed for the shot, which was at the extreme range of the weapon.”

Harrison killed one machinegunner with his first attempt and felled the other with his next shot. He then let off a final round to knock the enemy weapon out of action.

Harrison discovered that he had set a new record only on his return to UK barracks nine days ago. The previous record was held by Corporal Rob Furlong, of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, who was using a 12.7mm McMillan TAC-50 rifle.

Tom Irwin, a director of Accuracy International, the British manufacturer of the L115A3 rifle, said: “It is still fairly accurate beyond 4,921ft, but at that distance luck plays as much of a part as anything.”

News of Harrison’s success comes amid concern over a rival insurgent sharpshooter who in a five-month spree has killed up to seven British soldiers, including a sniper, in and around the Taliban stronghold of Sangin.

In a later incident during the tour, Harrison’s patrol vehicle was hit 36 times during a Taliban ambush. “One round hit my helmet behind the right ear and came out of the top,” he said. “Two more rounds went through the strap across my chest. We were all very, very lucky not to get hurt.”

From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7113916.ece

Chinese police told 'shoot to kill' to protect pupils

From Times Online May 4, 2010

Police in a Chinese city have been given shoot-to-kill powers at schools after a series of attacks against young pupils left eight dead and dozens wounded.

The extreme measure is a sign of the nervousness across China as classes resumed after the three-day May Day holiday weekend.

China’s Ministry of Public Security issued an emergency notice at the weekend ordering tighter security at schools and kindergartens nationwide after three attacks on schools in as many days last week left nearly 50 children and several teachers injured.

In southwestern Chongqing, a sprawling metropolis of more than 30 million people, police have decided to take no chances.

The Chongqing Evening News reported: “The police have clear regulations in these odious cases where direct attacks occurring at or in the vicinity of schools have injured students or children."

The newspaper said: “If they cannot contain the violent acts, police can shoot to kill in accordance with the law.”

Violent crime is unusual in China and, while police do sometimes carry firearms, they rarely use them.

However, the recent wave of attacks on schools in which men armed with knives have rampaged through classrooms slashing and hacking at children, as well as caretakers and teachers who tried to block the assaults, has shocked the nation.

On Friday last week, a farmer wielding a hammer battered five children and a teacher at a kindergarten in eastern China before setting himself on fire and killing himself.

The day before, a jobless man who said he was angry at a series of personal and professional setbacks slashed 29 children and three adults at a kindergarten in southeastern China with a knife used for slaughtering pigs.

Less than 24 hours before that, a 33-year-old former teacher with a history of mental illness injured 15 students and a teacher in a knife attack on a primary school in southern China.

The incidents appeared to be copycat attacks.

Last week, a former medical worker in eastern Fujian province was executed for stabbing to death eight children and wounding five others as they waited outside their school. He told the court he was enraged after his girlfriend jilted him.

Most schools in China have a security guard who sits in a box at the gate, but these men are barely armed in a society where a tough “one couple, one child” family planning policy means children are adored and usually spoilt.

The country’s security chief stressed yesterday that child safety was an issued that “most worried people”.

Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, said: “We must take fast action to strengthen security for schools and kindergartens to create a harmonious environment for children to study and grow up in.”

He ordered an increase in police patrols around schools and kindergartens and instructed health and civil affairs authorities to improve their management and treatment of people with mental disorders.

From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7115702.ece

Muslim woman fined £430 for wearing burka in Italy

A Muslim woman in Italy has been fined 500 euros (£430) for wearing a burka in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.

Nick Squires in Rome
Published: 12:02PM BST 04 May 2010

The Tunisian immigrant, Amel Marmouri, 26, was fined by police in the city of Novara, in the north-eastern Piedmont region.

The town council is controlled by the right-wing Northern League, which has pushed for much tougher immigration controls and at a national level forms part of Silvio Berlusconi's coalition government.

Mrs Marmouri was in a post office when police officers stopped her and issued her with the fine.

"As far as I know this is a first in Italy," said police officer Mauro Franzinelli.

Her husband, Ben Salah Braim, 36, said the family would struggle to pay the penalty.

He said his wife would continue to wear the full-length item of clothing because he did not want her to be seen by other men, but in future she would be forced to stay at home most of the time.

Novara introduced an ordinance in January that prohibits the wearing of burkas. The regulation invokes a 1975 anti-terrorism law, which prohibits people from wearing anything that obscures their faces and impedes identification.

The mayor of the town, Massimo Giordano, a member of the Northern League, said he had hoped that the new ordinance would have deterred Muslim women from wearing burkas and niqabs.

"But unfortunately it is apparently not yet clear to everyone that clothes preventing the wearer's identification can be tolerated at home but not in public places, in schools, on buses or in post offices," he said.

He said the new rule was introduced because it is "the only tool at our disposal to stop behaviour that makes the already difficult process of integration even harder".

Last week Belgium's lower house of parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of a bill banning clothes or veils that do not allow the wearer to be fully identified, including the niqab and burka.

The ban, which will not enter force for weeks, now has to be approved by the Senate.

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy's government is drafting a bill that would make it illegal to wear the burka.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7676367/Muslim-woman-fined-430-for-wearing-burka-in-Italy.html

Rosaleen Norton – Witch of Kings Cross

Once a fringe figure of a very conservative Australia society, Rosaleen Norton since her death in 1979, has become cult figure in esoteric circles for her visionary artwork. In her time she was portrayed as the epitome of wickedness. This was a facade she was quite happy to flaunt to the public and media, loving to shock conservative minds.

From a very early age, Rosaleen exhibited a non conformist rebellious nature. When she was 14, the headmistress of her school, Chatswood Girls Grammar, became the first in a long line of people to identify Rosaleen as a corrupting influence on others, and duly expelled her for producing 'depraved' drawings of vampires, ghouls and werewolves. She later studied for two years at East Sydney Technical College under the noted sculptor, Rayner Hoff who encouraged her 'pagan' creativity.

Although her talents were mainly artistic Rosaleen Norton also had considerable talents as a writer of macabre and exotic tales. At the age of 15 she had several horror stories accepted by Smith's Weekly, a famously irreverent and lively newspaper which seems to have kept almost all of Sydney's bohemian community in gainful employment at one time or another. She preferred to work as an artist, but during her months there she failed to produce anything conventional enough even for Smith's, and was let go.

Rosaleen was Australia's first female pavement artist. She also worked as a model for Norman Lindsay, whose early line drawings were both controversial and notorious. Norman's influence on Rosaleen's work is very evident. Of Rosaleen's own work Lindsay was not so impressed, being even a little too dark for even his own tastes.

In 1935 she met and married Beresford Lionel Conroy, and the pair spent some time hitchhiking around the country from Brisbane to Melbourne. The marriage lasted until after WWII when they divorced.

Rosaleen Norton had her first public exhibition at Melbourne University. However, two days after it opened, police descended on the gallery and seized four of the exhibited pictures. Charges were laid under the Police Offences Act, citing that the works were decadent and obscene, and likely to arouse unhealthy sexual appetites in those who saw them. The charges against her were dismissed and 4 pounds 4 shillings costs were awarded against the police department.

One of the confiscated paintings was the well-known work, Black Magic. This depicted a black panther copulating with a naked woman. Rosaleen Norton's paintings were a mix of magic, mythology, fantasy and Freudian symbols. They were the product of visions seen during self-induced trances and dreams or while carrying out occult experiments. She worshipped Pan – life and death, order and chaos, creation and destruction, and elemental forces. Rosaleen kept very detailed journals of her psychic explorations and was very well read on Freudian and Jungian psychology. She had her own well developed cosmology and an intricate understanding of ceremonial magick.

She experimented with self hypnosis and automatic drawing for years, devising rituals which would put her into a trance state in which she could explore other dimensions. Her paintings and drawings for the most part were depictions of the myriad of gods, demons and other entities with whom she communicated and caroused with on these journeys.

A brave soul named Walter Glover, saw merit in Rosaleen's works and put his own finances into publishing a book, "The Art Of Rosaleen Norton", a collection of her illustrations accompanied by poems by her young boyfriend, Gavin Greenlees. The book like the Melbourne exhibition attracted controversy, and landed Walter in court on obscenity charges. The magistrate fined Glover five pounds and ordered that two pictures, including one of "Fohat", a cheeky looking demon with a snake for a penis, be obliterated from unsold copies of the book. Because of this copies of the book were confiscated and burnt by the US customs. The whole affair bankrupted Walter. He was however never to loose faith in Rosaleen, and would years later when his bankruptcy was lifted, went on to republish the book, this time in a much changed Australia, causing no stir. Both editions are now collectors items.

Rosaleen was now a renowned figure in the infamous Kings Cross district of Sydney, home to prostitutes, criminals, artists and would-be cosmopolitans. She was attracting a steady stream of sensationalist media attention. Originally she enjoyed the attention and played upon the public persona. She certainly looked the part, her eyebrows plucked into high arches, her face framed with jet black hair and curves which resembled her paintings. She was also named as the leader of a witch cult, which was really nothing more than a few friends gathering at her flat. This was however enough for the tabloids to expand into something more elaborate.

By the 60's Rosaleen was starting to slip away from public attention as she increasingly found the small minded media tiring. Her liberated ideas were now no longer so shocking in an age of free love and open drug use. She quietly continued to create her visionary artwork and sell to any who were interested.

A decade later she had become a complete recluse confining herself to her close circle of friends. In her final years her health started to fail before she was finally admitted into the Sacred Heart Hospice, diagnosed with cancer. Here even to the last, surrounded by nuns and crucifixes, she remained unrepentant and committed to her beliefs, dying on December 5th, 1979.

From: http://beinart.org/modules/Word-Press/2007/07/11/rosaleen-norton-witch-of-kings-cross/

South Pacific tribe preparing for return of ’god’ Prince Philip

On a remote island in the Pacific, a group of villagers are counting down the days until they welcome their “god” the Duke of Edinburgh back to his rightful home.

By Bonnie Malkin in Sydney
Published: 10:15PM BST 30 Apr 2010

On a remote island in the South Pacific, villagers are counting the days until they welcome their god back to his rightful home.

The people of Yaohnanen on the island of Tanna believe a man descended from one of their spirit ancestors will return next month to live among them. While he was away he lived in a vast palace, but when he comes home he will sleep in a hut and hunt wild pigs with his tribe.

The man they are waiting for is the Duke of Edinburgh and they claim he promised them more than 30 years ago that he would return on June 10, his 89th birthday, to Tanna, which is part of the nation of Vanuatu.

Siko Nathuan, the chief of Yaohnanen, said: “He made a promise that in 2010, on his birthday, he will arrive in Tanna. We know he is a very old man, but when he comes here he is going to be young again, and so will everyone else on the island.”

Kirk Huffman, an anthropologist who has studied Vanuatu, said: “Those who are expecting something to happen will have earmarked pigs to be used in rituals. They will have been creating songs and dances to be performed whether he turns up or not.”

The villagers’ belief seems to centre on a trip that the Queen and Prince Philip made in 1974 to Vanuatu aboard Britannia. Tannese legend has it that during a reception at the consulate in the capital Port Vila, the Duke shook only the hands of men from Tanna. This news reached the residents of Yaohnanen, who were waiting for a gift in return for a pig they had given to a British officer some years before. The tribe sent a letter to Port Vila, asking where their gift was and inquiring about the Duke. In response the British delivered a framed portrait of the Duke, and the worship began. The villagers sent the Duke a “nal nal” hunting club, which he duly posed with in London, sending a photograph back. He even sent the tribe a letter of condolence when their chief died last year.

All his correspondence, newspaper clippings about him and his portraits are kept in a hut that has become a shrine. Children are taught about a god who lives in England and will one day return.

Mr Huffman said: “Some people might say what a load of codswallop, but they have a link with him and they have a right to revere him.” On the off chance that the Duke doesn’t make it to Tanna, Mr Huffman said: “If he doesn’t turn up, they have their own ways of explaining why not, it won’t destroy the belief.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/7660671/South-Pacific-tribe-preparing-for-return-of-god-Prince-Philip.html

Christian preacher arrested for saying homosexuality is a sin

A Christian street preacher was arrested and locked in a cell for telling a passer-by that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God.

By Heidi Blake
Published: 1:05PM BST 02 May 2010

Dale McAlpine was charged with causing “harassment, alarm or distress” after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of “sins” referred to in the Bible, including blasphemy, drunkenness and same sex relationships.

The 42-year-old Baptist, who has preached Christianity in Wokington, Cumbria for years, said he did not mention homosexuality while delivering a sermon from the top of a stepladder, but admitted telling a passing shopper that he believed it went against the word of God.

Police officers are alleging that he made the remark in a voice loud enough to be overheard by others and have charged him with using abusive or insulting language, contrary to the Public Order Act.

Mr McAlpine, who was taken to the police station in the back of a marked van and locked in a cell for seven hours on April 20, said the incident was among the worst experiences of his life.

“I felt deeply shocked and humiliated that I had been arrested in my own town and treated like a common criminal in front of people I know," he said.

“My freedom was taken away on the hearsay of someone who disliked what I said, and I was charged under a law that doesn't apply.”

Christian campaigners have expressed alarm that the Public Order Act, introduced in 1986 to tackle violent rioters and football hooligans, is being used to curb religious free speech.

Sam Webster, a solicitor-advocate for the Christian Institute, which is supporting Mr McAlpine, said it is not a crime to express the belief that homosexual conduct is a sin.

“The police have a duty to maintain public order but they also have a duty to defend the lawful free speech of citizens,” he said.

“Case law has ruled that the orthodox Christian belief that homosexual conduct is sinful is a belief worthy of respect in a democratic society."

Mr McAlpine was handing out leaflets explaining the Ten Commandments or offering a “ticket to heaven” with a church colleague on April 20, when a woman came up and engaged him in a debate about his faith.

During the exchange, he says he quietly listed homosexuality among a number of sins referred to in 1 Corinthians, including blasphemy, fornication, adultery and drunkenness.

After the woman walked away, she was approached by a PCSO who spoke with her briefly and then walked over to Mr McAlpine and told him a complaint had been made, and that he could be arrested for using racist or homophobic language.

The street preacher said he told the PCSO: “I am not homophobic but sometimes I do say that the Bible says homosexuality is a crime against the Creator”.

He claims that the PCSO then said he was homosexual and identified himself as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender liaison officer for Cumbria police. Mr McAlpine replied: “It’s still a sin.”

The preacher then began a 20 minute sermon, in which he says he mentioned drunkenness and adultery, but not homosexuality. Three regular uniformed police officers arrived during the address, arrested Mr McAlpine and put him in the back of a police van.

At the station, he was told to empty his pockets and his mobile telephone, belt and shoes were confiscated. Police took fingerprints, a palm print, a retina scan and a DNA swab.

He was later interviewed, charged under Sections 5 (1) and (6) of the Public Order Act and released on bail on the condition that he did not preach in public.

Mr McAlpine pleaded not guilty at a preliminary hearing on Friday at Wokingham magistrates court and is now awaiting a trial date.

The Public Order Act, which outlaws the unreasonable use of abusive language likely to cause distress, has been used to arrest religious people in a number of similar cases.

Harry Hammond, a pensioner, was convicted under Section 5 of the Act in 2002 for holding up a sign saying “Stop immorality. Stop Homosexuality. Stop Lesbianism. Jesus is Lord” while preaching in Bournemouth.

Stephen Green, a Christian campaigner, was arrested and charged in 2006 for handing out religious leaflets at a Gay Pride festival in Cardiff. The case against him was later dropped.

Cumbria police said last night that no one was available to comment on Mr McAlpine’s case.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html

Secrets of the Occult

Secrets of the Occult explores the world of the occult from the ancient and modern magicians who practice it to the cutting edge scientists attempting to explain its mysterious claims. This program highlights the advances that have been achieved by innovators who challenged established reality like Newton, Galileo, Carl Jung, and Einstein.

Part 1: The Magicians



Part 2: The Scientists



Part 3: What is the Occult?

GIGER - Occult experience

Liber II The Message of The Master Therion

This Epistle first appeared in The Equinox III(1) (Detroit: Universal, 1919).
The quotations are from Liber Legis-The Book of the Law.-H.B.

Copyright (c) Ordo Templi Orientis

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
“There is no Law beyond Do what thou wilt.”
“The word of the Law is Velhma.”
Velhma—Thelema—means Will.

The Key to this Message is this word-Will. The first obvious meaning of this Law is confirmed by antithesis; “The word of Sin is Restriction.”

Again: “Thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that and no other shall say nay. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.”

Take this carefully; it seems to imply a theory that if every man and every woman did his and her will—the true will—there would be no clashing. “Every man and every woman is a star,” and each star moves in an appointed path without interference. There is plenty of room for all; it is only disorder that creates confusion.

From these considerations it should be clear that “Do what thou wilt” does not mean “Do what you like.” It is the apotheosis of Freedom; but it is also the strictest possible bond.

Do what thou wilt—then do nothing else. Let nothing deflect thee from that austere and holy task. Liberty is absolute to do thy will; but seek to do any other thing whatever, and instantly obstacles must arise. Every act that is not in definite course of that one orbit is erratic, an hindrance. Will must not be two, but one.

Note further that this will is not only to be pure, that is, single, as explained above, but also “unassuaged of purpose.” This strange phrase must give us pause. It may mean that any purpose in the will would damp it; clearly the “lust of result” is a thing from which it must be delivered.

But the phrase may also be interpreted as if it read “with purpose unassuaged”—i.e., with tireless energy. The conception is, therefore, of an eternal motion, infinite and unalterable. It is Nirvana, only dynamic instead of static—and this comes to the same thing in the end.

The obvious practical task of the magician is then to discover what his will really is, so that he may do it in this manner, and he can best accomplish this by the practices of Liber Thisarb (see Equinox I(7), p. 105) or such others as may from one time to another be appointed.

Thou must (1) Find out what is thy Will. (2) Do that Will with a) one-pointedness, (b) detachment, (c) peace.

Then, and then only, art thou in harmony with the Movement of Things, thy will part of, and therefore equal to, the Will of God. And since the will is but the dynamic aspect of the self, and since two different selves could not possess identical wills; then, if thy will be God's will, Thou art That.

There is but one other word to explain. Elsewhere it is written— surely for our great comfort—“Love is the law, love under will.”

This is to be taken as meaning that while Will is the Law, the nature of that Will is Love. But this Love is as it were a by-product of that Will; it does not contradict or supersede that Will; and if apparent contradiction should arise in any crisis, it is the Will that will guide us aright. Lo, while in The Book of the Law is much of Love, there is no word of Sentimentality. Hate itself is almost like Love! “As brothers fight ye!” All the manly races of the world understand this. The Love of Liber Legis is always bold, virile, even orgiastic. There is delicacy, but it is the delicacy of strength. Mighty and terrible and glorious as it is, however, it is but the pennon upon the sacred lance of Will, the damascened inscription upon the swords of the Knight-monks of Thelema.

Love is the law, love under will.

From: http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib2.html

Occult Symbols of Nazi Germany

Teacher with rabbit phobia to sue 14-year-old for drawing bunny

A teacher with a phobia over rabbits is suing a 14-year-old pupil for compensation after she drew a bunny on the blackboard.

Published: 3:02PM BST 30 Apr 2010

The teacher, from Vechta, Germany, says she was traumatised by the drawing, and claims the girl knew it would terrify her.

She had transferred to the school where a pupil from her former school had just become a pupil and told her new friends about the teacher's fear of rabbits.

"We did it for fun and out of curiosity", one of the girls told a court, adding, "We wanted to see if she would really freak out."

School officials removed her from the class and now the teacher is seeking compensation for her terror and her loss of earnings, her lawyer Manfred Bormann told the court.

The case continues.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/7657569/Teacher-with-rabbit-phobia-to-sue-14-year-old-for-drawing-bunny.html

Men who force women to wear burka would face €15,000 fine in France

Anyone who forced a woman to wear a burka would face a fine of €15,000 (£13,000), according to leaked extracts of a proposed French law banning the face-covering Islamic veil.

Published: 6:23PM BST 30 Apr 2010

While women caught wearing a burka or niqab would face a €150 penalty, President Nicolas Sarkozy would fine those making others wear them one hundred times that amount, and would sentence them to one year in prison.

"No-one may wear in public places clothes that are aimed at hiding the face," says the text of a new law that is to be presented to parliament in July, according to a copy seen by Le Figaro.

The law would create a new offence of "incitement to cover the face for reasons of gender," the centre-Right daily newspaper reported.

The extracts cited did not say whether the law would contain exemptions for people covering up their faces for popular non-religious purposes such as skiing, nor how these exceptions would be defined.

Legislators decided to impose a much smaller fine on women caught wearing the veil in public "because these women are often victims," one of the authors of the law told Le Figaro on condition of anonymity.

Women caught wearing the full veil could choose to attend a "citizenship course" instead of paying the fine, the paper said.

Mr Sarkozy decided this month to opt for a total ban on the full-face veil, despite warnings from the State Council, France's top administrative body, that the law could be struck down as unconstitutional.

The president has declared the burka and the niqab - veils worn by Muslim women in parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Gulf - unwelcome in France, calling them an affront to French values that denigrate women.

There has been a fierce debate in France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority of between five and six million, with supporters of a ban arguing that veils are a sign of creeping fundamentalism that must not be allowed to take hold.

But opponents accuse Mr Sarkozy of pandering to the far-Right with such moves and note figures showing that only 1,900 women wear the full veil in France.

Neighbouring Belgium on Thursday became Europe's first country to vote for a ban.

Belgian lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to make covering the face in public a jailable offence, prompting dismay among Muslims and warnings of a dangerous precedent.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7659409/Men-who-force-women-to-wear-burka-would-face-15000-fine-in-France.html

Student killed while sticking head out of roof

By The Associated Press

12:10ET 30-04-10

OSLO, Norway — Police say a French student on a school trip to Norway was killed when he stuck his head out of a roof hatch and slammed into a highway overpass.

Police spokesman Tom Midthaug says the bus was moving about 45 miles per hour (70 kph) when the accident took place Friday afternoon.

He says the 15-year-old boy, whose name was not released, was flown by helicopter from the site of the accident, about 50 miles (80 kilometres) north of Oslo, to a hospital in the Norwegian capital, where he was pronounced dead.

Midthaug says it’s not clear why the boy opened the emergency hatch. The double-decker bus was carrying about 60 French and Norwegian students.

From: http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2010/04/30/13777611-ap.html

Man Shoots Neighbor With Bow and Arrow: Police

By KAREN ARAIZA
Updated 4:21 PM EDT, Fri, Apr 30, 2010

A New Jersey man's accused of shooting his neighbor in the back with a bow and arrow.

Anthony Giovannini had just parked his car and was walking into his home Thursday night when he felt a thud on his back. He told police it felt like he'd been hit with a rock.

He glanced back and saw his neighbor, Robert A. Wood, Jr. going into his home. They two have been arguing, apparently for some time, over parking.

Giovannini, 35, opened his front door and that's when he noticed the arrow sticking out of his back, according to Trenton police.

It was stuck three to four inches deep. Giovannini yelled for his girlfriend who called 911 to get him to hospital.

When police got to the scene at Franklin Street and Morris Avenue they arrested Wood and confiscated two bows. He's charged with aggravated assault and a weapons offense.

Giovannini was treated and then kept at the hospitalized for observation. He was in stable condition Friday morning.

From: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local-beat/Neighbor-Shot-With-Bow-and-Arrow-92491449.html

May 1st - Beltane Fire Festival

The old Celtic name for May Day is Beltane, in its most popular neo-pagan form, which is derived from the Irish Gaelic Bealtaine or the Scottish Gaelic Bealtuinn, meaning “Bel-fire”, the fire of the Celtic God Bel.
He, in turn, may be traced to the Middle Eastern God Ba'al.

The truth is that from Baal and Bel is derived the English word "Bull".
The Beltane Festival is the Bull Festival.

Ba'al as a possible focus of this ritual or festival could be suggested.

Fire is still the most important element of most Beltane celebrations and there are many traditions associated with it. It is seen to have purifying qualities which cleanse and revitalise. People leap over the Beltane fire to bring good fortune, fertility and happiness through the coming year.

Beltane is the most overtly sexual pagan festival. The tradition of dancing round the maypole contains sexual imagary and is still very popular with modern Pagans.

From: http://www.templeofbaphomet.com/festivals.html

Beltane or Beltaine (pronounced /ˈbɛltən/, origin Old Irish) is the anglicised spelling of Bealtaine (Irish pronunciation: [ˈbʲal̪ˠt̪ˠənʲə]) or Bealltainn ([ˈbʲal̪ˠt̪ˠənʲ]), the Gaelic names for either the month of May or the festival that takes place on the first day of May.

In Irish Gaelic, the month of May is known as Mí Bhealtaine or Bealtaine, and the festival as Lá Bealtaine ('day of Bealtaine' or, 'May Day'). In Scottish Gaelic, the month is known as either (An) Cèitean or a' Mhàigh, and the festival is known as Latha Bealltainn or simply Bealltainn. The feast was also known as Céad Shamhain or Cétshamhainin from which the word Céitean derives.

As an ancient Gaelic festival, Bealtaine was celebrated in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, though there were similar festivals held at the same time in the other Celtic countries of Wales, Cornovii areas of England, Brittany and Cornwall. Bealtaine and Samhain were the leading terminal dates of the civil year in Ireland though the latter festival was the more important. The festival survives in folkloric practices in the Celtic Nations and the Irish diaspora, and has experienced a degree of revival in recent decades.

Origins

In Irish mythology, the beginning of the summer season for the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Milesians started at Bealtaine. Great bonfires would mark a time of purification and transition, heralding in the season in the hope of a good harvest later in the year, and were accompanied with ritual acts to protect the people from any harm by Otherworldly spirits, such as the Aos Sí. Like the festival of Samhain, opposite Beltane on October 31 Beltane was also a time when the Otherworld was seen as particularly close at hand.

Early Gaelic sources from around the 10th century state that the druids of the community would create a need-fire on top of a hill on this day and drive the village's cattle through the fires to purify them and bring luck (Eadar dà theine Bhealltainn in Scottish Gaelic, 'Between two fires of Beltane'). This term is also found in Irish and is used as a turn of phrase to describe a situation which is difficult to escape from. In Scotland, boughs of juniper were sometimes thrown on the fires to add an additional element of purification and blessing to the smoke. People would also pass between the two fires to purify themselves. This was echoed throughout history after Christianization, with lay people instead of Druid priests creating the need-fire. The festival persisted widely up until the 1950s, and in some places the celebration of Beltane continues today.

Beltane as described in this article is a specifically Gaelic holiday. Other Celtic cultures, such as the Welsh, Bretons, and Cornish, do not celebrate Beltane, per se. However, they celebrated or celebrate festivals similar to it at the same time of year such as the Padstow 'obby 'oss. In Wales, the day is known as Calan Mai, and the Gaulish name for the day is Belotenia.

Dwelly wrote:

In many parts of the Highlands, the young folks of the district would meet on the moors on 1 May. They cut a table in the green sod, of a round figure, by cutting a trench in the ground of sufficient circumferences to hold the whole company. They then kindled a fire, dressed a repast of eggs and milk of the constituency of custard. They kneaded a cake of oatmeal, which was toasted at the embers against a stone. After the custard was eaten, they divided the cake into as many portions as there were people in the company, as much alike as possible in size and shape. They daubed one of the pieces with charcoal, til it was black all over, and they were then all put into a bonnet together, and each one blindfolded took out a portion. The bonnet holder was entitled to the last bit, and whoever drew the black bit was the person who was compelled to leap three times over the flames. Some people say this was originally to appease a god, whose favour they tried to implore by making the year productive.

(Dwelly, 1911, "Bealltuinn")

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane

Anal Eel Insertion Kills Man

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Thug jailed after ripping pet bird apart in front of his beaten girlfriend

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 1:50 PM on 30th April 2010

A THUG who beat his partner and tore her pet parrot apart in front of her has been jailed for 16 months.

Keith Doyle, 34, attacked his girlfriend of seven years before turning his rage on her African grey parrot Jasper, killing it by pouring scalding hot tea over it and ripping out its feathers as it squawked in distress.

All the while their four-year old son cowered in fear upstairs.

Last night the woman's parents, Pat and Cath Regan, spoke out on behalf of their eldest daughter, 23 - who was too traumatised to comment and did not want to be identified.

And the couple slammed the 16-month prison sentence handed to Doyle at Preston Crown Court - of which eight months is on licence.

Mr Regan, of Sandbrook Road, Ainsdale, said: 'With good behaviour, the police have told us that this thug could be out by August.

'He put our daughter through hell and, quite frankly, she is lucky to be alive. He beat her to a pulp and threatened to kill her. How can this be genuine justice for what he did?'

The court heard unemployed Doyle wrecked the pair's home on Bonfire Night last year after drinking, smashing windows and breaking furniture.

He then went on to attack his long-term partner, hitting her in the face and body. He also bit her fingers in several places.

Mr Regan said:'Blood and broken glass were all over the house.

'He poured his cup of tea over Jasper in its cage and pulled its feathers out as it was squawking. Jasper was almost human, he talked. It is sickening what he did.'

Doyle's partner had to be taken to Southport hospital for treatment. Mr Regan added: 'She is scarred for life. It will always be with her. I can only imagine what it must have been like for her that night.

'We had warned her for years that this would happen. She had been trying to get away from him, but she was in his grip. She was so scared of him."

Doyle pleaded guilty to three counts of actual bodily harm, causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal and making threats to kill on November 5, 2009. He was also ordered not to keep pets for five years.

Mrs Regan said: 'All of us are outraged that he could be out by August after serving four months of what is an already lenient sentence. None of our family want anything to do with him ever again.'

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1269981/Keith-Doyle-Ripping-pet-bird-apart-beaten-girlfriend-gets-thug-jailed.html

Science teacher's hearing resumes

Friday, April 30, 2010 2:49 AM

By Dean Narciso
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio - Participants hope to wrap up a hearing on whether John Freshwater should keep his teaching job by sometime in June, but sessions could resume next fall, they said yesterday.

The administrative hearing started almost two years ago after Mount Vernon school board members voted that they intended to fire the eighth-grade science teacher for teaching creationism and intelligent design, failing to remove religious materials from his classroom after being told to do so, and burning crosses on students' arms.

The hearing appeared to end three months ago, but Freshwater's attorney, R. Kelly Hamilton, never closed his case.

The hearing resumed yesterday and is to continue today. At least three additional dates are scheduled for early June, and both sides have agreed not to hold any sessions during the summer school break, because witnesses will be difficult to schedule.

Once the hearing is concluded, the referee will make a recommendation to the board, which can take final action. Freshwater has been suspended without pay.

Hamilton has subpoenaed 16 additional witnesses since Jan. 15, when Freshwater and the school board received an anonymous letter telling them about materials allegedly taken from his classroom that might exonerate him.

The items include textbooks with handwritten notes that Freshwater testified would illustrate his science-teaching techniques at Mount Vernon Middle School.

David Millstone, attorney for the school district, said the items have always been available.

"Had they asked for it, I could care less," he said. "There's nothing there."

Several former students testified yesterday that Freshwater touched students' arms with an electrostatic lab instrument to illustrate electricity. But each denied that anyone was forced to participate.

From: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/04/30/science-teachers-hearing-resumes.html?sid=101

Surgeons extricate hot-sauce bottle from state inmate

Thursday, April 29, 2010 2:55 AM

By Alan Johnson
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

An inmate in a state prison was hospitalized and needed emergency surgery to remove a hot-sauce bottle he apparently had used as a sex device.

Taxpayers will end up paying the prisoner's medical bills, expected to run into the thousands of dollars.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction won't release the name of the inmate, citing federal regulations regarding the privacy of medical records.

However, a report by the State Highway Patrol, which initially investigated the incident as a rape case, said an inmate at the Noble Correctional Facility in Caldwell was taken to Marietta General Hospital on Sunday evening after saying he had been sexually assaulted in the shower by another prisoner.

The injured inmate later acknowledged that he had not been assaulted, but on his own had inserted the hot-sauce bottle anally, sources said.

"At this point, we don't believe there was a perpetrator involved in the incident," said prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn.

However, sources said, surgery was required to remove the bottle. The inmate was hospitalized and was treated in the intensive-care unit.

Walburn said the state won't know the total cost until all medical bills are submitted.

State officials frequently point out that the state is required by law to provide medical care for prisoners - even those who harm themselves. The state is self-insured and pays its own bills.

From: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/04/29/surgeons-extricate-hot-sauce-bottle-from-state-inmate.html

Two arrested for brutal beating of 5-year-old boy

April 30, 2010 7:34 PM

Two people are in custody today for the brutal beating death of a 5-year-old boy in Gary.

The Northwest Indiana Times is reporting that murder and neglect charges are expected to be filed against the man and woman.

Leon D. Walker's body bore up to 40 marks of violence, some of them old, according to Gary police Sgt. William Fazekas, supervisor of the Violent Crimes Unit and lead investigator in the case.

"You could clearly see that he was beaten to a pulp," Fazekas said.

The boy was dead when he arrived at Methodist Hospital's Northlake Campus in Gary Wednesday night. Police were at the hospital interviewing a gunshot victim when the boy was brought into the emergency room on a stretcher with his clothes cut open, Fazekas said.

The boy's father and girlfriend arrived at the hospital a short time later, he said.

His death was caused by trauma to the body so severe it shocked even longtime law enforcement officials. "What happened to that boy is incomprehensible," the coroner's spokesman said.

Four other children were taken from the Virginia Street home by Child Protective Services, Fazekas said. Their ages ranged from 1 to 13, he said.

Leon had been reported missing from his house on Sunday but was found in an abandoned building and returned home, Fazekas said.

"They reported him missing, but there was no sign of wrong play at that time," Fazekas said.

From: http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/04/two-arrested-for-brutal-beating-of-5-year-old-boy.html

Dallas man accused of taking foot from corpse in Pleasant Grove cemetery

10:22 PM CDT on Friday, April 30, 2010
By TANYA EISERER / The Dallas Morning News

Daniel Wayne Staley is fascinated by death – so much so, police say, that he dug up a grave and used a hatchet to cut off the foot of a corpse in a private Jewish cemetery in Pleasant Grove.

Police plan to charge Staley, 18, with abuse of a human corpse or grave. He faces up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine in the Class A misdemeanor case.

He is being held in the Dallas County Jail on $10,000 bail.

"He's infatuated with death and decided to do it," said Sgt. Bruce McDonald, a homicide unit supervisor. "He has some very serious issues and possibly mental problems. He knew what he was doing was wrong."

Staley's mother, who asked that her name not be published, said he has been in and out of mental institutions and suffers from a laundry list of illnesses, including schizophrenia. She said he won't take his medications. She also said he called her from jail and indicated no remorse for disturbing the grave.

"He's ready to get out so he can do something worse," she said. "He thinks it's funny. I'm terrified of him doing something to harm another person because it is reaching that point. ... It is just so horrible what he did. I can't find words for it, but it's so sick.

"As his family, we really have no control over what he did, but also as his family we want to somehow make some sort of apology."

Staley's MySpace page conveys a sense of nihilism and frequent references to death. In one photo, he points a gun to his head. On April 19, he writes that he is "still contemplating the time when i go get my corpse. i dont think i could fit the whole thing in my bag."

He last logged in Thursday afternoon, listing his mood as "good as dead."

About 12 hours later, Staley approached police officers and told them that he had a human foot in his bag. Police said he pulled the foot out of the bag and showed it to the officers about 3:30 a.m. Friday, telling them that he dug it up from a nearby grave and took the foot from a "Jew girl."

Police found a small hatchet and fragments from the foot in the bag.

Staley then led officers to the Tiferet Israel Agudas Achim Cemetery on Buckner Boulevard near Scyene Road. He showed them the grave he had dug up. He was then arrested.

Police found a shovel thought to have been used to dig up the grave. They also searched the woods behind the cemetery, looking for more body parts. A rabbi also came to the cemetery to check out the grave. Police believe the foot came from the grave of Leibe Vener, who died in 1941.

McDonald of the homicide unit said Staley didn't take the foot because the corpse was that of a Jewish person.

"I think it was a spur-of-the-moment deal," he said. "He just decided to do it."

McDonald said officials are trying to reach Vener's family. "My detective was working through the contacts with the cemetery just to let them know that this happened," he said.

Gary Weinstein, president and chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas, said he was glad to hear that it did not appear to be a hate crime.

"The Jewish community respects all of our religious communities and we, too, would expect that everyone would respect our traditions and other customs as well," he said.

For months, Staley has been spiraling out of control, according to his mother and police records.

Staley faces one misdemeanor count of making a terroristic threat over a March 15 incident that took place in the 13600 block of Preston Road. According to police records, Staley told a sales manager that he would "blow up this building and kill everyone."

Staley told officers that he had made the statements in anger and because of his inability "to deal with authority." While officers were on the scene, he told the man that he would beat him up if he saw him, police records state.

On April 1, Staley told police that he was thinking about setting his mother on fire by pouring gasoline on her. He told police that he was off his medications for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

He also stated that he wanted to commit suicide. Police took him into custody and took him to Parkland Hospital for mental treatment.

"This the first time he's threatened to do anything to me, to my knowledge," his mother said. "He's threatened to kill his dad."

She said she was at a loss about what to do to help her only child. When he's not on medication, she said, he's dangerous to himself and others.

"We've all tried to get him help," she said. "The problem is that the help is only temporary and he's released again, and someone with his kind of illness can't be released and expected to take care of himself. He's not going to take care of himself. He has no control over his mind."

Staley's mother said neither she nor other members of the family plan to bail him out. In fact, she hopes he stays put.

"I hope he stays in there for a long time," she said. "He does not need to be a free person. I hate to say that about my own child."

From: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/crime/stories/050110dnmetfoottheft.119456c.html