John Carpenter: Fear Is Just the Beginning... The Man and His Movies

Filmmaker John Carpenter helped redefine the American horror film in 1978 with Halloween, a low-budget thriller which became a major box office success. Since then, Carpenter has devoted his career to bringing a fresh perspective to genre filmmaking, striving to maintain the freedom of an independent while working within the studio system. (Carpenter not only writes and directs his own projects, but often also serves as producer and composer as well.) John Carpenter: Fear Is Just the Beginning...The Man and His Movies is a documentary about this two-fisted maverick auteur, which offers a look at the making of such favorites as Escape From New York, The Thing, The Fog, and many more. The documentary includes interviews with Jamie Lee Curtis, Kurt Russell, Adrienne Barbeau, Debra Hill, and other friends and colleagues.

John Carpenter Wikipedia

Darkness, Darkness: The Films of Val Lewton

Looking Back at a B-Movie Master


http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/50/lewton.htm

Fritz Haarmann

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Friedrich "Fritz" Haarmann (October 25, 1879 – April 15, 1925) was a German serial killer who is believed to have been responsible for the murder of 27 boys and young men between 1918 and 1924. He was convicted, found guilty of 24 murders and executed.

Early life

Fritz Haarmann was born in Hanover in 1879, the sixth child of poor parents. Haarmann was a quiet child who shunned many boys' activities such as sports and preferred to play with his sisters' toys. He was also a poor scholar. At the age of 16, at the urging of his parents, Haarmann enrolled in a military academy at Neu Breisach. He initially adapted to military life, and performed well as a training soldier. After just one year in the academy, however, he began to suffer seizures and was discharged for medical reasons.

Haarmann returned to Hanover and took employment in a cigar factory. He was arrested in 1898 for molesting children, but a psychologist declared Haarmann was mentally unfit to stand trial, and he was sent to a mental institution indefinitely. Six months later, Haarmann escaped and fled to Switzerland, where he worked for two years before he returned to Germany. He again enlisted in the military, this time under an alias, but in 1902, he was again discharged under medical terms. He was awarded a full military pension and returned to live with his family and took employment in the small business his father had established. After an argument with his father, Ollie, led to a violent fight between them, Haarmann was arrested, charged with assault and again sent for psychiatric evaluation. This time, a doctor did not diagnose Haarmann as mentally unstable. A court discharged Haarmann and he again returned to live with his family. Shortly afterwards, Haarmann attempted to open a small shop, but the business soon went bankrupt.

Criminal career

For the next decade, Haarmann lived as a petty thief, burglar and con artist. He was frequently arrested and served several short prison sentences. He gradually began to establish a relationship with Hanover police as an informer, largely as a means of redirecting the attention of the police from himself, and later admitted that the police began to view him as a reliable source of information regarding Hanover's criminal network.

In 1914, Haarmann was convicted of a series of thefts and frauds and was imprisoned just as World War I began. Upon his release in 1918, he was struck by the poverty of the German Nation as a result of the loss the nation had suffered in the Great War. The country was bankrupt. Fritz Haarmann immediately reverted to the criminal life he had lived before he was arrested in 1914. The new state of Germany provided him with even more opportunities to operate on the fringes of the criminal network, and because of the increase in crime as a result of the poverty the nation was enduring, police again began to rely on Haarmann as an informer.

Murders

Between 1918 and 1924, Haarmann committed at least 24 murders, although he is suspected of murdering a minimum of 27. Haarmann's first known victim was a 17-year-old youth named Friedel Rothe. When Rothe disappeared in September 1918, his friends told police he was last seen with Haarmann. Under pressure from Rothe's family, police raided Haarmann's apartment, where they found their informer in the company of a semi-naked teenage boy. They charged Haarmann with sexual assault, and he was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment. Haarmann avoided serving his sentence throughout 1919, and during this time, met a young runaway named Hans Grans, who was subsequently to become his lover.

Haarmann served his nine months' imprisonment between March and December 1920. Again, he regained the trust of the police and became an informer. Shortly after his release, Haarmann moved into a new apartment: number 27 Kellerstraße. Shortly afterwards, Hans Grans moved into Haarmann's apartment.

Haarmann's subsequent victims largely consisted of young male commuters, runaways and, occasionally, male prostitutes who hung around Hanover's central railway station, whom Haarmann would lure back to his apartment and then kill by biting through their throats, sometimes while sodomizing them. All of Haarmann's victims were dismembered before they were discarded, usually in the river Leine. The possessions of several victims were either sold on the black market or retained by either Haarmann or his younger lover, Hans Grans. Rumour also had it that Haarmann would peddle meat from the bodies of his victims as canned black market pork. Although no physical evidence was ever produced to confirm this, Haarmann was known to be an active trader in contraband meat.

Haarmann's accomplice and live-in partner, Hans Grans, sold the possessions of several of the victims cheaply on the black market, and kept other possessions for himself, and Haarmann initially claimed that although Grans knew of many of his murders, and personally urged him to kill two of the victims so he could obtain their clothing and personal possessions, was otherwise not involved in the murders.

Haarmann was eventually apprehended when numerous skeletal remains, which he had dumped into the river Leine, washed up downstream in May and June 1924. The police decided to drag the river and discovered more than 500 human bones which were later confirmed as having come from at least 22 separate human individuals. Suspicion quickly fell upon Haarmann, who had convictions for molesting children and had been connected to the disappearance of Friedel Rothe in 1918. Haarmann was placed under surveillance and on the night of 22 June, was observed prowling Hanover's railway station. He was quickly arrested after trying to lure a boy to his apartment. His apartment was searched and the walls were found to be heavily bloodstained. Haarmann tried to explain this as a by-product of his illegal trade as a butcher. However, clothing and personal items known to be possessions of several missing youths were also found in his home. Under interrogation, Haarmann quickly confessed to raping, killing and butchering young men since 1918. When asked how many he had killed, Haarmann claimed "somewhere between 50 and 70". The police, however, could only connect Haarmann with the disappearance of 27 youths, and he was charged with 27 murders. It is interesting to note that only a quarter of the personal items found in his apartment were identified as having belonged to any of the victims.

Trial

Fritz Haarmann's trial began on 4 December 1924. Haarmann was charged with the murder of 27 boys and young men who had disappeared between 1918 and June that year. The trial was spectacular; it was one of the first major media events in Germany. The term "serial killer" had not yet been coined, and the public and press were at a loss for words to describe the case; Haarmann was simultaneously referred to as the "werewolf", a "vampire", and "The Wolf Man". Apart from the cruelty of what Haarmann had admittedly done, even more scandalous - shaking German society to the core - was the involvement of the police in the case: Haarmann was a police informant who frequently gave up other criminals to investigators; until Haarmann was arrested, it had never occurred to police that the serial killer they were looking for was well-known to them and right under their nose, even though some of the victims were last seen in his company.

The trial lasted barely two weeks. On 19 December, Haarmann was found guilty of 24 of the 27 murders and sentenced to death. He was acquitted of three murders which he denied, even though the personal possessions of the boys were either in his possession or acquaintances of his at the time of his arrest. Haarmann made no appeal against the verdict.

Haarmann was beheaded by guillotine on April 25, 1925.

Aftermath

Hans Grans was initially found guilty of enticement to murder in the case of Adolf Hannappel, a 17-year-old apprentice carpenter who vanished from Hanover's railway station on November 11, 1923. Witnesses had seen Grans, in the company of Haarmann, pointing to Hannappel, Haarmann claimed this was one of two murders committed upon the insistence of Grans and for this reason, Grans was sentenced to death. The discovery of a letter from Haarmann declaring Grans's innocence later led to a second trial and a 12-year prison sentence for Grans. After serving his sentence, Hans Grans continued to live in Hanover until his death in 1975.

The remains of Haarmann's victims were buried together in a communal grave in Stöckener Cemetery in February 1925. In April 1928, a large granite memorial in the form of a triptych, inscribed with the names and ages of the victims, was erected over the communal grave.

After his execution, Haarmann's head was preserved in a jar by scientists to examine the structure of his brain. Haarmann's head is now kept at the Göttingen medical school.

The case stirred much discussion in Germany about the death penalty, the correct approach towards mentally ill offenders, police investigation methods, and homosexuality.

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

Marjoe Gortner

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner, generally known as Marjoe Gortner (born January 14, 1944 (1944-01-14) (age 66) in Long Beach, California), is a former revivalist who first gained a certain fame in the late 1940s and early to mid 1950s when he became the youngest ordained preacher at the age of four, and then outright notoriety in the 1970s when he starred in an Oscar-winning, behind-the-scenes documentary about the lucrative business of Pentecostal preaching. The name "Marjoe" is a portmanteau of the names "Mary" and "Joseph".

When Gortner was three, his father Vernon Gortner, a third generation minister, noticed his son's talent for mimicry and overall fearlessness of strangers and public settings. His parents claimed he had received a vision from God during a bath but was later confirmed by Marjoe that this was a lie his parents forced him to repeat. They enforced this by moc-drowning him since they would not beat him due to his public appearances and scars being left over. They began training him to deliver sermons, complete with dramatic gestures and emphatic lunges. By the time he was four, his parents arranged for him to perform a marriage ceremony for a film crew from Paramount studios, referring to him as "the youngest ordained minister in history." Like much in Gortner's early life it is hard to say for sure who exactly ordained him, if his father ordained him, or if he was even ordained at all.

Until the time he was a teenager, Gortner and his parents traveled the United States, holding revival meetings. As well as teaching him scriptural passages, his parents also taught him several money-making tactics, involving the sale of supposedly "holy" articles at revivals which promised to heal the sick and dying. By the time he was sixteen, he later estimated, his family had amassed maybe three million dollars. Shortly after Gortner's sixteenth birthday, his father absconded with the money, and a disillusioned Marjoe Gortner left his mother for San Francisco, where he was taken in by and became the lover of an older woman. He spent the remainder of his teenage years as an itinerant hippie until his early twenties, when, hard pressed for money, he decided to put his old skills to work and re-emerged on the circuit with a charismatic stage-show modeled after those of contemporary rockers, most notably Mick Jagger. He made enough to take six months off every year, during which he returned to California, surviving on the previous six months' earnings.

In the late 1960s, Gortner suffered a crisis of conscience — in particular about the threats of damnation he felt compelled to weave into his sermons — and resolved to make one final tour, this time on film. Under the pretense of making a documentary detailing a viable ministry, he assembled a documentary film crew to follow him around revival meetings in California, Texas, and Michigan during 1971. Unbeknownst to everyone else involved — including, at one point, his father — he gave "backstage" interviews to the filmmakers in between sermons and revivals, explaining intimate details of how he and other ministers operated. After sermons, the filmmakers were invited back to his hotel room to tape him counting the money he collected during the day. The resulting film, Marjoe, won the 1972 Academy Award for best documentary.

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

John George Haigh

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John George Haigh (24 July 1909 – 10 August 1949), commonly known as the "Acid Bath Murderer", was an English serial killer during the 1940s. He was convicted of the murders of six people, although he claimed to have killed a total of nine, dissolving their bodies in concentrated sulphuric acid before forging papers in order to sell their possessions and collect substantial sums of money. During the investigation, it became apparent that Haigh was using the acid to destroy victims' bodies because he misunderstood the term corpus delicti, thinking that if victims' bodies could not be found, then a murder conviction would not be possible. The substantial forensic evidence beyond the absence of his victims' bodies was sufficient for him to be convicted for the murders and subsequently executed.

Early life

Haigh was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, and grew up in the village of Outwood, West Yorkshire. His parents, John and Emily, were members of the Plymouth Brethren. He was confined to living within a 10 ft (3 m) fence that his father put up around their garden to lock out the outside world. Haigh would later claim he suffered from recurring religious nightmares in his childhood.

Haigh won a scholarship to Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield. Claims were made that a desk carved with his name remained at the school (and caretakers would run trips to the cellars to show it to first year pupils), but they were put aside when a teacher of 30 years at the school said the desk was removed over 20 years before. He then won another scholarship to Wakefield Cathedral, where he became a choirboy.

After school he was apprenticed to a firm of motor engineers. After a year he left that job, and took jobs in insurance and advertising. At age 21, he was fired after being suspected of stealing from a cash box. The following year he was named as a co-respondent in the divorce of Evelyn and racing driver Eddie Hall.

Marriage and imprisonment

On 6 July 1934, Haigh married the 21-year-old Beatrice Hammer. The marriage soon fell apart. The same year Haigh was jailed for fraud. Betty gave birth while he was in prison but she gave the baby up for adoption and left Haigh.

He then moved to London in 1936, and became chauffeur to William McSwan, the wealthy owner of an amusement park. Following that he became a bogus solicitor and received a four-year jail sentence for fraud. Haigh was released just after the start of World War II.

While in prison he dreamed up what he considered the perfect murder of being able to destroy the body by dissolving it with sulphuric acid. He experimented with mice and found it took only 30 minutes for the body to disappear.

The "Acid Bath" murders

He was freed in 1944 and became an accountant with an engineering firm. Soon after, by chance, he bumped into McSwan in the Goat pub in Kensington. McSwan introduced Haigh to his parents, William and Amy, who mentioned that they had invested in property. On 6 September 1944, McSwan disappeared. Haigh later admitted hitting him over the head after luring him into a basement at 79 Gloucester Road, London SW7. He then put McSwan's body into a 40-gallon drum and tipped concentrated sulphuric acid on to it. Two days later he returned to find the body had become sludge, which he poured down a manhole.

He told McSwan's parents, William and Amy, that their son had fled to Scotland to avoid being called up for military service. Haigh then took over McSwan's house and when William and Amy became curious as to why their son had not returned as the war was coming to an end, he murdered them too - on 2 July 1945, he lured them to Gloucester Road and disposed of them.

Haigh stole William McSwan's pension cheques, sold their properties — stealing about £8,000 (£256 thousand when adjusted for inflation) — and moved into the Onslow Court Hotel in Kensington. By the summer of 1947 Haigh, a gambler, was running short of money. He found another couple to kill and rob: Dr Archibald Henderson and his wife Rose, whom he met after purporting to show interest in a house they were selling.

He rented a small workshop at 2 Leopold Road, Crawley, West Sussex, and moved acid and drums there from Gloucester Road. On 12 February 1948, he drove Henderson to Crawley, on the pretext of showing him an invention. When they arrived Haigh shot Henderson in the head with a revolver he had earlier stolen from the doctor’s house. He then lured Mrs Henderson to the workshop, claiming her husband had fallen ill, and shot her also.

After disposing of the Hendersons bodies in oil drums filled with acid, he forged a letter from them and sold all of their possessions (except their dog, which he kept) for £8,000. This 1948 amount is the equivalent of £216 thousand today.

Last victim and capture

Haigh's next and last victim was Olive Durand-Deacon, 69, a widow and fellow resident at the Onslow Court Hotel. She mentioned to Haigh, by then calling himself an engineer, an idea that she had for artificial fingernails. He invited her down to the Crawley workshop (number 2 Leopold Road) on 18 February 1949, and once inside he shot her in the back of the head, stripped her of her valuables, including a Persian lamb coat, and put her into the acid bath. Two days later Durand-Deacon’s friend, Constance Lane, reported her missing.

Detectives soon discovered Haigh’s record of theft and fraud and searched the workshop. Police not only found Haigh’s attaché case containing a dry cleaner’s receipt for Mrs. Durand-Deacon’s coat, but also papers referring to the Hendersons and McSwans. Further investigation of the sludge at the workshop by the pathologist Keith Simpson revealed three human gallstones and part of a denture which was later identified by Mrs Durand-Deacon's dentist during the trial and conviction.

Questioned by Detective Inspector Albert Webb, Haigh asked him "Tell me, frankly, what are the chances of anybody being released from Broadmoor?". The inspector said he could not discuss that sort of thing, so Haigh replied "Well, if I told you the truth, you would not believe me. It sounds too fantastic to believe".

Haigh then confessed that he had not only killed Durand-Deacon, the McSwans and Hendersons, but also three other people: a young man called Max, a girl from Eastbourne, and a woman from Hammersmith.

Trial and execution

After arrest, Haigh remained in custody in Cell 2 of Horsham Police Station when it was in Barttelot Road. He was charged with murder at the nearby courthouse in what is now known as the Old Town Hall.

The Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross KC, (later Lord Shawcross) led for the prosecution at Lewes Assizes, and urged the jury to reject Haigh’s defence of insanity because he had acted with malice aforethought.

Sir David Maxwell Fyfe KC, defending, called many witnesses to attest to Haigh’s mental state, including Dr Henry Yellowlees who claimed Haigh had a paranoid constitution, adding: "The absolute callous, cheerful, bland and almost friendly indifference of the accused to the crimes which he freely admits having committed is unique in my experience."

It took only minutes for the jury to find Haigh guilty. Mr Justice Travers Humphreys sentenced him to death.

It was reported that Haigh, in the condemned cell at Wandsworth Prison, asked one of his gaolers, Jack Morwood, whether it would be possible to have a trial run of his hanging so everything would run smoothly. It is likely that his request went no further, or, if it did, the request was denied. Haigh was led to the gallows and hanged by executioner Albert Pierrepoint on 10 August 1949.

The case of John George Haigh was one of the post-1945 cases which gained much media coverage at the time. Along with the case of Neville Heath, it attracted a great deal of coverage in the newspapers even though Haigh's guilt (as with Heath) was not questioned. In the case of Haigh, it was also the method of disposal which has given him his place in criminal history.

Haigh's confirmed victims

William Donald McSwan, 9 September 1944
Donald McSwan, 2 July 1945
Amy McSwan, 2 July 1945
Archibald Henderson, 12 February 1948
Rosalie Henderson, 12 February 1948
Olive Henrietta Robarts Durand-Deacon, 18 February 1949

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

Documentary on John George Haigh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxqJJJj1nVk

Harvey Glatman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harvey Murray Glatman (December 10, 1927 – September 18, 1959) was an American serial killer active during the late 1950s. He was known in the media as "The Lonely Hearts Killer".

Early life

Born in the Bronx to a Jewish family and raised in Colorado, Glatman exhibited antisocial behavior and sadomasochistic sexual tendencies from an early age. As a teenager, he would break into women's apartments, where he tied them up, sexually molested them and took pictures as souvenirs. He was caught in one such act in 1945 and charged with attempted burglary. Less than a month later, while still out on bail awaiting trial, he kidnapped another woman and molested her before letting her go. She went to the police, and Glatman went to prison for eight months.

Once out of prison, Glatman moved to Albany, New York, where he was eventually arrested in 1946 for a series of muggings. He served time at the New York State Reception Center at Elmira and then in the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, where prison psychiatrists diagnosed him as a psychopath. He was nevertheless a model prisoner and was paroled in 1951. He returned to Denver in 1951 and lived there until 1957. He worked as a TV repairman and also hired young women to pose for him in bondage situations. He claimed that his photos would be published on the covers of detective magazines, but none were.

Murders

Glatman moved to Los Angeles, California in 1957 and started trolling around modeling agencies looking for potential victims. He would contact them with offers of work for pulp fiction magazines, take them back to his apartment, tie them up and sexually assault them, taking pictures all the while. He would then strangle them and dump the bodies in the desert.

Glatman is also a suspect in the slaying of "Boulder Jane Doe", a victim whose corpse was discovered by hikers near Boulder, Colorado in 1954. Her identity remained a mystery for 55 years. In October 2009, the Sheriff’s Office was notified by Dr. Terry Melton, of Mitotyping Technologies in State College, Pennsylvania, that her lab had made a match between "Jane Doe's" DNA profile and that of a woman who thought the unidentified murder victim might be her long-lost sister. The positive identification of "Boulder Jane Doe" was an 18-year-old woman from Phoenix, Arizona, named Dorothy Gay Howard.

Glatman was in Colorado at the time and was driving a 1951 Dodge Coronet. The damage done to the body was consistent of being hit with the same car.

Arrest and death

Glatman was arrested in 1958, caught in the act of kidnapping what would have been his fourth murder victim. He willingly confessed to the other three murders and eventually led the police to a toolbox containing pictures of the victims which he had taken. He was found guilty of two counts of first degree murder and executed in the gas chamber of San Quentin State Prison on September 18, 1959.

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

Andrei Chikatilo "Butcher of Rostov"

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo (Russian: Андрей Романович Чикатило, Ukrainian: Андрій Романович Чикатило; October 16, 1936 – February 14, 1994) was a Soviet serial killer, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, The Red Ripper or The Rostov Ripper. He was convicted of the murders of 53 women and children, mostly in Rostov Oblast, Russian SFSR, between 1978 and 1990 (some victims were murdered in other regions of Russia and in Ukrainian and Uzbek SSRs).

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo

Today 16 years ago: Execution of a fat guy who dressed like a clown

But a great cook apparently...

Austin Osman Spare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

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/

Alferd Packer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alfred G. "Alferd" Packer (January 21, 1842 – April 23, 1907) was an American prospector who was accused of cannibalism. First tried for murder, Packer was eventually sentenced to 40 years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter.

Packer's life

Packer was born as Alferd G. Packer in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania to James Packer and wife Esther Griner. Packer served on the Union side in the American Civil War, enlisting in April 1862 in Company F, 16th U. S. Infantry Regiment. However, he was discharged for epilepsy the following December. He then enlisted in Company L, 8th Iowa Cavalry Regiment, but was discharged again for the same reason. He then decided to go west and try his luck at prospecting.

In November 1873, Packer was with a party of 21 who left Provo, Utah, bound for the Colorado gold country around Breckenridge. On January 21, 1874 he met with Chief Ouray, known as the White Man's Friend, near Montrose, Colorado. Chief Ouray recommended they postpone their expedition until spring, as they were likely to encounter dangerous winter weather in the mountains.

Ignoring Ouray's advice, Packer and five others left for Gunnison, Colorado on February 9. The other men were Shannon Wilson Bell, James Humphrey, Frank "Reddy" Miller, George "California" Noon and Israel Swan.

The party got hopelessly lost, ran out of provisions, and became snowbound in the Rocky Mountains. Packer made three different confessions that differed considerably in their details of what happened next. In the last of these, Packer allegedly went scouting and came back to discover Bell roasting human flesh. According to Packer, Bell rushed him with a hatchet. Packer shot and killed him. Packer insisted that Bell had gone mad and murdered the others.

On April 16, 1874, Packer arrived alone at Los Pinos Indian Agency near Gunnison. He spent some time in a Saguache, Colorado saloon, meeting several of his previous party. He initially claimed self-defense, but his story was not believed. During the trial, the presiding judge M.B. Gerry said:

“ Close your ears to the blandishments of hope. Listen not to its fluttering promises of life. But prepare to meet the spirits of thy murdered victims. Prepare for the dread certainty of death. ”

Packer signed a confession on August 5, 1874. He was jailed in Saguache, but escaped soon after, vanishing for several years.

On March 11, 1883, Packer was discovered in Cheyenne, Wyoming living under the alias of "John Schwartze." On March 16, he signed another confession. On April 6, a trial began in Lake City, Colorado. On April 13, he was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to death. In October 1885, the sentence was reversed by the Colorado Supreme Court as being based on an ex post facto law. However, on June 8, 1886, Packer was sentenced to 40 years at another trial in Gunnison. At the time, this was the longest custodial sentence in U.S. history.

On June 19, 1899, Packer's sentence was upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court. However, he was paroled on February 8, 1901 and went to work as a guard at the Denver Post. He died in Deer Creek, in Jefferson County, Colorado, reputedly of "Senility - trouble & worry" at the age of 65. Packer is widely rumored to have become a vegetarian before his death. He was buried in Littleton, Colorado. His grave is marked with a veteran's tombstone listing his original regiment.

Recent investigations

On July 17, 1989, 115 years after Packer allegedly consumed his companions, an exhumation of the five bodies was undertaken by James E. Starrs, then a Professor of Law specializing in forensic science at George Washington University. Following an exhaustive search for the precise location of the remains at Cannibal Plateau in Lake City, Colorado, Starrs and his colleague Walter H. Birkby concluded, "I don't think there will ever be any way to scientifically demonstrate cannibalism. Cannibalism per se is the ingestion of human flesh. So you'd have to have a picture of the guy actually eating."

In 1994, David P. Bailey, Curator of History at the Museum of Western Colorado, undertook an investigation to turn up more conclusive results than Starrs'. In the Audrey Thrailkill collection of firearms owned by the museum was a Colt pistol that had reportedly been found at the site of Packer's alleged crime. Exhaustive investigation into the pistol's background turned up documents from the time of the trial: "A Civil War veteran that visited the crime scene stated that Shannon Bell had been shot twice and the other victims were killed with a hatchet. Upon careful study of Bell, he noticed a severe bullet wound to the pelvic area and that Bell's wallet had a bullet hole through it." This may corroborate Packer's claim that Bell had killed the other victims and that Packer shot Bell in self-defense.

By 2000, Bailey had not yet proven a link between the antique pistol and Alfred Packer, but he discovered that forensic samples from the 1989 exhumation had been archived, and analysis in 2001 with an electron microscope by Dr. Richard Dujay at Mesa State College turned up microscopic lead fragments in the soil taken from under Shannon Bell's remains that were matched by spectrograph with the bullets remaining in what was indeed Packer's pistol. While it appears certain that Bell was killed by gunshot, the question of murder itself remains.

Popular culture

Packer is a legend in popular culture. He has been quoted as having said, in jest, "the breasts of man...are the sweetest meat I ever tasted."

Popular legend, albeit untrue (at least according to the official trial record), claims that District Court Judge Melville Gerry sentenced Packer by saying, "Stand up, Alferd Packer, you voracious, man-eating, son-of-a-bitch. There were seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you ate five of them."

In 1968, students at the University of Colorado at Boulder named their new cafeteria grill the Alferd G. Packer Memorial Grill with the slogan "Have a friend for lunch!" Even today students can enjoy the meat-filled "El Canibal" underneath a giant wall map outlining his travels through Colorado. In 1982 the university dedicated a statue to Packer.

In 1980, Jim Roberson and poet Burton Raffel made The Legend of Alfred Packer, a film that took many liberties with the story, including having Bell fall on a knife, exonerating Packer of any potential wrongdoing. The film also included an incident involving the reporter Polly Pry derived from Gantt that the film left completely unexplained and was only tangentially connected to Packer. Indeed, Pry's connection with Packer was barely noted. Packer was played by Patrick Dray.

An urban legend has it that the Department of Agriculture's cafeteria was officially named for Packer. While untrue, the legend has a factual basis. Incoming Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland faced two problems in prior Nixon administration contracts for security guards and cafeteria food service. Security personnel were paid minimum wage, were given no training and performed poorly. The cafeteria food service operation was poorly managed and was staffed by rude contractor employees. Concluding that the situation he inherited was intolerable, Bergland attempted to terminate both contracts for poor performance.
He was resisted by officials in the General Services Administration (GSA), who said that it would be impossible. For a time, there was a bureaucratic impasse. Intending to embarrass the GSA, Bergland and his employees convened a press conference Aug 10, 1977 to unveil a plaque naming the executive cafeteria "The Alferd Packer Memorial Grill," announcing ironically that Packer's life exemplified the spirit and fare of the cafeteria and would "serve all mankind." It was covered on ABC-TV Evening News Vanderbilt Television News Archive that night by reporter Barbara Walters.
The stratagem was successful and the contracts were terminated soon thereafter. In magnanimous victory, Bergland yielded to bureaucratic objection that the plaque lacked official GSA authorization, and removed it. Members of the National Press Club, ever happy to seize memorabilia of national significance, today display it with pride on the wall of The Reliable Source, a members-only bar. It doubles as a memorial to the late Stanley Weston (1931–84), a man who worked at the USDA. The Press Club's hamburger is called the "Alferd Packer Burger."

Lake City, Colorado, close to the memorial to the victims, has an annual 'celebration' of the Packer story, with the expected macabre humor and publicity.

In 1993, University of Colorado student Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park, made a film called Alferd Packer: The Musical, based loosely on Packer's life, with himself, billed as "Juan Schwartz" (a variation of Packer's "John Schwartze") as Packer, released commercially in 1996 by Troma Entertainment as Cannibal! The Musical and produced as a stage play initially by Dad's Garage Theatre Company and by several other theatre companies since.

Folksinger Phil Ochs composed a song about Packer's life, included on "The Broadside Tapes 1". Singer C.W. McCall wrote (with Chip Davis) and sang a song about Packer called "Comin' Back for More." It was included on his 1999 release The Real McCall: An American Storyteller.

Filk songwriter Alan Thiesen composed a humorous song about the trial, entitled "The Alferd G. Packer Memorial Drinking Song".

Death metal band Cannibal Corpse's 1990 debut, Eaten Back To Life is dedicated to Packer with the inscription "This Album is dedicated to the memory of Alfred Packer, The First American Cannibal (R.I.P.)"

A 1999 movie, Ravenous, was loosely based on aspects of the Alferd Packer story, which screenwriter Ted Griffin says he first encountered when reading The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, wherein the entire story is printed as it appears in Thomas Duke's "Celebrated Criminal Cases." (The film also incorporates elements of another famous incident of cannibalism in the American West, the Donner Party.)

Devoured: The Legend of Alferd Packer is a 2005 film by Kevin Rapp that is also produced by Troma. This film depicts Packer as an unkillable monster 50 years after the original incident.

Tecumseh Lodge 65, a lodge of the Boy Scouts of America's Order of the Arrow located in Central Ohio, has dedicated its kitchen crew to the memory of Alfred Packer. The Alfred Packer Memorial Kitchen Crew prepares meals for all of the lodge's weekend events, often serving as many as 150 members of the lodge. The crew has adopted the slogan of "we would love to have you for dinner" and can be identified by their black shirts with Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (delineated with butcher cuts) on the back.

The volunteer food tent at the Philadelphia Folk Festival is named after Packer, with the slogan, "Ain't Getting Nothing But Today's Best!"

In 1990 through 1995, a theatre group from nearby Western State College of Colorado performed "The Last Trial of Alfred Packer", a play written by Western State College professors Paul Edwards and Michael Brooks. This play was written using extensive research from both of Packer's trials. It was performed live in the Hinsdale County Courthouse, where Packer's first trial took place. For this production, members of the audience were selected to serve as jurors for Packer's "last trial". In many performances, the members of the jury would vote "not guilty".

The Alferd Packer Memorial String Band, based in Lawrence, Kansas, was founded in 1979 by Jim Brothers.

United Kingdom based deathcore band Avarus has a song entitled, "There Were Seven Democrats in Hinsdale County and You Ate Five of Them!"

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

Ernst Haeckel (1834 - 1919)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (February 16, 1834 – August 9, 1919), also written von Haeckel, was an eminent German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including phylum, phylogeny, ecology and the kingdom Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularized Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the controversial recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species' entire evolutionary development, or phylogeny.

The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures (see: Kunstformen der Natur, "Artforms of Nature"). As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Welträtsel (1895–1899, in English, The Riddle of the Universe, 1901), the genesis for the term "world riddle" (Welträtsel); and Freedom in Science and Teaching[2] to support teaching evolution. This artwork was later the cause of court case, Haeckel himself was charged with fraud by five professors and convicted by a university court at Jena.

In the United States, Mount Haeckel, a 13,418 ft (4,090 m) summit in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, overlooking the Evolution Basin, is named in his honor, as is another Mount Haeckel, a 2,941 m (9,649 ft) summit in New Zealand; and the asteroid 12323 Häckel.

The Ernst Haeckel house ("Villa Medusa") in Jena, Germany contains a historic library.

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel

Selections from the the film Proteus, a documentary concerning the life, work, and philosophy of Ernst Haeckel, a 19th century naturalist. The film tells of the man's character and influences while using his detailed engravings of Radiolaria, single celled marine organisms, to make animated progressions.

Music by Yuval Ron.

Jack Parsons

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Whiteside Parsons (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons on October 2, 1914 – died June 17, 1952) was an American rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology and one of the principal founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Corp. An enthusiastic occultist, he was one of the first Americans to take a keen interest in the writings of English author and occult teacher Aleister Crowley, and he became a leading member of his organisation, Ordo Templi Orientis.

Youth

Parsons was the only child of a rich but dysfunctional family. When he was a teenager his father walked out on his wife and son.

In the biography Sex and Rockets, the author speculated that Parsons developed an Oedipal complex.

Parsons landed a job with the Hercules Powder Company while a senior in high school. The following year he entered Pasadena Junior College and spent two years at the University of Southern California though he never graduated.

Parsons and the Space Age

In 1936, he joined the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) working for Frank Malina and Theodore von Kármán in Pasadena. While his formal education was limited, Parsons demonstrated tremendous scientific aptitude and genius, particularly in chemistry. His rocket research was some of the earliest in the United States, and his pioneering work in the development of solid fuel and the invention of JATO units for aircraft was of great importance to the start of humanity's space age. The noted engineer Theodore von Kármán, Parsons's friend and benefactor, declared that the work of Parsons and his peers helped usher in the age of space travel. Parsons co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, commonly referred to as JPL. According to von Kármán, Parsons' work in solid fuel research "... made possible such outstanding rockets as the Polaris and the Minuteman.

It was in 1942, the same year Parsons was appointed as head of the Agape Lodge by Aleister Crowley, that Parsons made the crucial breakthrough in the development of rocket solid fuel. He came up with a solution that could only have come from someone having a knowledge of alchemy and magic: Greek fire. Try as they might the GALCIT people would fail again and again with their black powder. Then, by an intuitive stroke of genius, Parson switched from black powder to asphalt and potassium perchlorate. Compared with Peenemünde, America was finally in the race for jet propulsion with solid fuel for the space age. Wernher von Braun would acknowledge Parsons as the father of America's space program.

Parsons and the Occult

Parsons was also an avid student and practitioner of the occult arts, and a Thelemite. He saw no contradiction between his scientific and magical pursuits, and before each rocket test launch, Parsons would invoke the Greek god Pan.

In 1942 Parsons was chosen by Aleister Crowley to lead the Agape Lodge of the Thelemic Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) in California after Crowley expelled Wilfred Smith from the position.

Sara Northrup (aka "Sarah Elizabeth" or "Betty" Northrup), began living with Parsons after his wife, Sara's half-sister Helen Northrup, left with Wilfred Smith. Sara Northrup later married author L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology and sometime magical partner of Parsons.

Babalon Working and Marjorie Cameron

In 1946 Parsons and Hubbard participated in a ritual known as the Babalon Working which is famous in occult circles — loosely, it was an attempt to summon a living goddess and change the course of history. Paul Rydeen writes:

The purpose of Parson's operation has been underemphasized. He sought to produce a magickal child who would be a product of her environment rather than of her heredity. Crowley himself describes the Moonchild in just these terms. The Babalon Working itself was preparation for what was to come: a Thelemic messiah.

Parsons ended the ritual by declaring it successful. Almost immediately he met Marjorie Cameron right in his own home, and regarded her as the Scarlet Woman, the fulfillment of the ritual.

Parsons, Hubbard, and Cameron then began the next stage of the Babalon Working, with Cameron acting as Parsons' magical sexual partner with whom he could sire a Moonchild. The creation of this Moonchild had been previously covered in fictional form in Crowley's novel Moonchild. A physical child was not conceived, but this did not affect the results of the ritual to that point. Parsons and Cameron soon married.

In January 1946, Parsons, Sarah Northrup, and Hubbard started a boat dealing company named Allied Enterprises. Parsons put in the sum of approximately $21,000, and Hubbard put in $1,200. Hubbard eventually abandoned Parsons and their business plans, leaving for a port in Florida with the boat and with Sarah. Parsons retreated to his hotel room and summoned a typhoon in retribution (viz., with an evocation of Bartzabel — the so-called intelligence supposedly presiding over the planet Mars). A Florida court later dissolved the poorly-contracted business, ordered repayment of debts to Parsons, and awarded ownership of the boat to Hubbard.

The Hubbard/Allied Enterprises relationship lasted until 1947, when Hubbard again defrauded Parsons of a sum of money and ran off again with Sara Northrup.

Parsons resigned his leadership of the O.T.O. in 1946.

Death

Fritz Zwicky, a member of the original Aerojet team, did not like Parsons, and called him a "dangerous man." This pronouncement proved prophetic.

On 17 June 1952 Parsons was killed in an explosion of fulminate of mercury at his home laboratory. Though gravely injured, he survived the immediate explosion, but he died of his wounds a few hours later. Distraught, Parsons' mother killed herself just hours after he died.

Unsubstantiated rumors of suicide, murder or magical ritual gone wrong have circulated. However Parsons stored many volatile chemicals and compounds in his laboratory and had been working to finish a contract for a special effects firm.

Honors

The crater Parsons on the far side of the Moon is named after him.

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

Balthasar Bekker

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Balthasar Bekker (20 March 1634 - 11 June 1698), Dutch divine and author of philosophical and theological works. Opposing superstition, he was a key figure in the end of the witchcraft persecutions in early modern Europe.

Life

Bekker was born in Metslawier (Dongeradeel) as the son of a German pastor from Bielefeld. He was educated at Groningen, under Jacob Alting, and at Franeker. Becoming the rector of the local Latin school, he was appointed to his satisfaction in 1657 as a pastor in Oosterlittens (Littenseradiel), and started as one of the first to preach on Sunday afternoon. An enthusiastic disciple of Descartes, he wrote several works in philosophy and theology, which by their freedom of thought aroused considerable hostility. In his book De Philosophia Cartesiana Bekker argued that theology and philosophy each had their separate terrain and that Nature can no more be explained through Scripture than can theological truth be deduced from Nature. From 1679 he worked in Amsterdam, after being driven from Friesland. In 1683 he traveled to England and France. In two months time Bekker visited London, Cambridge, Oxford, Paris and Leuven, with a great interest in the art of fortification.

His best known work was Die Betooverde Wereld (1691), or The World Bewitched (1695), in which he examined critically the phenomena generally ascribed to spiritual agency. He attacked the belief in sorcery and "possession" by the devil. Indeed he questioned the devil's very existence. The book had a sensational effect and was one of the key works of the Early Enlightenment in Europe. It was almost certainly the most controversial. Bekker became a heroic figure defying an army of obscurantists.

The World Bewitched is interesting as an early study in comparative religion, but its publication in 1691 led to Bekker's deposition from the ministry. He was tried for blasphemy, maligning the public Church, and spreading atheistic ideas about Scripture. Some towns banned the book, but Amsterdam and the States of Holland never did, continuing his salary, without formally stripping him of his post. He died in Amsterdam.

Works

-De philosophia Cartesiana admonitio candida & sincera. Bekker, Balth. / Vesaliae / 1668

-The world bewitch'd; or, An examination of the common opinions concerning spirits: their nature, power, administration, and operations. As also, the effects men are able to produce by their communication. Divided into IV parts; Bekker, Balthasar / Translated from a French copy, approved of and subscribed by the author's own hand / printed for R. Baldwin in Warwick-lane / 1695

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

Yoshiro Nakamatsu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yoshiro Nakamatsu (中松 義郎, Nakamatsu Yoshirō?), born June 26, 1928, also known as Dr. NakaMats, is a Japanese inventor claiming to hold the world record for number of inventions with over 3,000, including "PyonPyon" spring shoes and the basic technology for the floppy disk, the CD, the DVD, the karaoke machine, the digital watch, CinemaScope, armchair "Cerebrex", sauce pump, and the taxicab meter.

Nakamatsu claims that he licensed about a dozen of his patents related to the floppy disk technology to IBM Corporation in 1979, but the details of the arrangement are confidential. A spokesman for IBM said that the company has an "ongoing relationship" with Nakamatsu, and, in another media report, said that the company owns the legal patent to the floppy disk and that it reached several nonexclusive patent agreements with Nakamatsu in the late 1970s to avoid conflicts.

Nakamatsu has appeared on several American TV shows, including Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Late Night with David Letterman. He also appeared on the BBC show Adam and Joe Go Tokyo.

He was awarded the 2005 Ig Nobel prize for Nutrition, for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting). The goal of Nakamatsu is to live at least 144 (12x12, Japanese century) years.

In 2007, Nakamatsu became a candidate in the 2007 gubernatorial election in Tokyo, and also ran for the Upper House election, but failed to get a seat. He is known for frequently entering and losing elections in Tokyo.[citation needed]

In an interview, Nakamatsu described his "creativity process", which includes listening to music and concludes with diving underwater, where he says he comes up with his best ideas and records them while underwater.



Dr. Nakamats website: http://dr.nakamats.com/english/eng_index.php

MARTIN HEIDEGGER (1889-1976)

"Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. Man loses nothing in this "less"; rather, he gains in that he attains the truth of Being. He gains the essential poverty of the shepherd, whose dignity consists in being called by Being itself into the preservation of Being's truth." (Letter on Humanism, 1964)

"Philosophy gets under way only by a peculiar insertion of our own existence into the fundamental possibilities of Dasein as a whole. For this insertion it is of decisive importance, first, that we allow space for beings as a whole; second, that we release ourselves into the nothing, which is to say, that we liberate ourselves from those idols everyone has and to which they are wont to go cringing; and, finally, that we let the sweep of suspense take its full course, so that it swings back into the basic question of metaphysics which the nothing itself compels: Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?" (What is Metaphysics?, 1977)

Biography

Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher, was born September 26th, 1889, to Friedrich and Johanna Heiddeger, in the Black Forest region of Messkirch. He began gymnasium at Constance in 1903, but was later transferred, in 1906, to Bertholds gymnasium in Freiberg. Here, he boarded at the archiepiscopal seminary of St. Georg. Heidegger was impressed early on with Franz Brentano. A mentor, Dr. Conrad Grober, had given him a copy of Brentano's "On the Manifold Meaning of Being According to Aristotle." This early exposure to Brentano, who influenced Husserl's phenomenology, and the Greeks, most likely set Heidegger on his path toward greatness as a 20th century philosopher.

In 1909, Heidegger entered the Society of Jesus at Tisis in Austria to study as a Jesuit. However, most likely for health reasons, his canditature was rejected. Instead, Heidegger entered into study for the priesthood at the Albert-Ludwig University in Freiberg. At this time, Heidegger first began lecturing and publishing papers, and he was first exposed to Husserl's writings. For reasons that are unknown, Heidegger was directed by his superiors to change his path of study from theology to mathematics and philosophy. Heidegger took their advice, and, before long, had diligently read the works of Husserl and went on to complete his doctorate. Heidegger married his wife, Elfride Petri, in March, 1917. Shortly thereafter, Heidegger entered into the German army. He was promoted from private to corporal ten months later, but was soon discharged for health reasons. Shortly after the birth of his son, Jorg, in 1919, Heidegger, in a letter to a colleague, wrote that he had decided to break with "the dogmatic system of Catholicism."

In 1919, Heidegger became Edmund Husserl's assistant at Freiburg. There, he lectured and first met Karl Jaspers; from thereon, they would form a correspondence relationship for many years. During this time, Heidegger's second son, Hermann, was born. By 1924, Heidegger moved on to become an associate at the University of Marburg, where he would write his magnum opus, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit). At Marburg, Heidegger also met Hannah Arendt, who would become his lover. Through his brilliant lectures at Marbug, Heidegger influenced many thinkers, including Herbert Marcuse, who would become a primary figure in Critical Theory. Through Count Kuki Shuzo, Jean-Paul Sarte was first introduced to the work of Heidegger. Shuzo would also become the first to offer a book-length study of Heidegger, "The Philosophy of Heidegger," published in Japan.

In 1933, Heidegger became the rector of the University of Freiburg. At this time, he also joined the National Socialist Party. One year later, Heidegger would resign as rector due to disputes with faculty and local Nazi officials. Up until 1945, Heidegger continued his involvement with the National Socialist Party, although the degree of his involvement is still under debate. Nevertheless, Heidegger officially broke with the National Socialist Party in 1945 -- however, despite the urgings of Marcuse and others, Heidegger never publically apologized for his involvement with National Socialism. This shadow which hangs over the work of Heidegger is not something to be taken lightly, and any reader of Heidegger is urged to be mindful that Heidegger's philosophy does contain the possibility for a National Socialist perspective -- though it remains heatedly debated whether this is any reason to dispense with Heidegger's work altogether. In my opinion, Heidegger has too much to offer the world in his philosophy to cast him away, despite the dark-side of his politics. I believe it is possible to read and learn from Heidegger without either condoning or making light of his National Socialist affiliation. It is clear that Heidegger did suffer consequences for his National Socialist affiliation. With the denazification hearing in 1945, Heidegger was banned from teaching. Heidegger suffered a nervous breakdown. One would like to think that Heidegger's breakdown involved a recognition of his guilt due to his, most likely passive, complicity with the evil deeds of the Nazi party. This may hold some truth; yet, Heidegger was also threatened with the dissolution of all that he had worked toward his entire life. Following his nervous breakdown, Heidegger applied for Emeritus status, declaring that he would refrain from teaching. He was granted Emeritus status, provided he refrain from teaching. By 1950, Heidegger was reinstated to his teaching position, and, one year later, he was made professor Emeritus.

During Heidegger's hiatus from teaching, he met Medard Boss. With the help of Heidegger, Boss drafted "Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology," which would become a seminal work in existential psychology. Heidegger hoped that Boss' application of his philosophy to psychology would help those in need of aid, as well as take his thought from the academic world to a larger audience. Throughout his career, Boss would continue to promote a Daseinanalytic approach to psychotherapy and medicine.

After writing Being and Time in 1927, Heidegger later had a "turn" (kehre) in his thought. At what point this "turning" took place is still debateable, but it offered a radical transformation in his thought (see "thought" below). Heidegger's later work, following his "turn," would pave the way to hermeneutics (i.e., Gadamer) and poststructuralism (i.e., Foucault, Derrida, Levinas).

Heidegger died in Frieburg on May 26th, 1976. In the United States, the news of his death went largely unheeded. Interestingly, the news of Heidegger's death was received with widespread coverage in Japan. The connection of Heidegger' s thought to the East has not received much attention over the years. But it is clear that he first had his greatest impact in Japan with the writings of Count Kuki Shuzo. Further, Heidegger carried on a relationship with D.T. Suzuki, whom he met with on several occassions. Further, Heidegger at one time attempted to translate Lao Tzu into German, but never finished the project.

Thought

Heidegger's lifelong project was to answer the "question of Being" (Seinsfrage) (See the Why page). In Being and Time, Heidegger argued that, to understand Being, one must first understand the human kind of being, Dasein ("Being-there"), the kind of Being who asks the question of Being. To even ask the question, remarks Heidegger, implies that at some level the answer is already understood. As a student of Husserl, Heidegger felt that phemenology, which lets the phenomena "show itself from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself," was the only method by which to do ontology, the study of Being. On the other hand, for Heidegger, modern philosophy had forgotten the question of Being; that is, modern philsophy has become concerned with the ontic (beings), and, thus, covers over that which makes such an understanding of beings possible: the "isness" (Being) of beings such that beings can presence. And the concealing-revealing presencing of Being is Dasein. However, contrary to Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology, Heidegger argues that ontology as phenomenology must necessarily be hermeneutic, or interpretive. For Heidegger, truth or aletheia is always both concealing and revealing. When one interpretation is opened up, other interpretations are necessarily closed off. In this sense, ontology is always provisional.

In Being and Time, Heidegger's existential analysis of Dasein, the human kind of Being, reveals that Dasein is uncanny -- that is, "not-at-home" -- as Being-in-the-world. Dasein, Heidegger will conclude, is, proximally and for the part, not as itself as it is lost in the "they." Therefore, as "fallen" into the "they-self," in which Dasein exists in its "average everydayness," Dasein's authentic self as "uncanny" has been "covered up." Dasein's authentic, "ownmost" self as uncanny "pursues" Dasein via the call of conscience through the attunement of anxiety in which Dasein's 'world' is revealed as that which it is unable to fall into.

Heidegger's existential analytic follows the progression from an analysis of Dasein in terms of that which is "closest" to it: its "average everyday," existentiell, pre-ontological, pre- thematic, "lived" understanding of itself, towards the hidden meaning and ground of Dasein's primordial existential structure which lies concealed in its "everyday" understanding. The "who" of "everyday" Dasein is that which is closest to Dasein. Yet, proximally and for the most part, one's own Dasein is not itself. This "who" of "everyday" Dasein is the "they" [das Man], which is characterized by distantiality, averageness and levelling down and constitutes "publicness." The "they" is both everybody and nobody "to whom every Dasein has already surrendered itself in Being-among-one-another." The "they-self" is the "not itself" of Dasein to be distinguished from authentic Dasein. Authentic Being-one's-Self, therefore, is an existentiell modification of the "they" as an essential existentiale, and, therefore, the former is the more primordial disclosure of Dasein.

Heidegger uncovers the Being of Dasein as "care" [Sorge]: "Ahead-of-itself-Being- already-in-(the world) as Being-alongside (entities encountered within the world)." Through his analysis of anxiety, as a state-of-mind which provides the phenomenal basis for explicitly grasping Dasein's primordial totality of Being, Heidegger reveals Dasein's Being to itself as care.

Falling, explains Heidegger, is a turning-away or fleeing of Dasein into its "they-self." This turning-away is grounded in anxiety. Anxiety is what makes fear possible. Yet, unlike fear, in which that which threatens is other than Dasein, anxiety is characterized by the fact that what threatens is nowhere and nothing. In anxiety, Dasein is not threatened by a particular thing or a collection of objects present-at-hand. Being-in-the-world itself is that in the face of which anxiety is anxious. In anxiety, first and foremost, the world as world is disclosed as that which one cannot fall into.

Heidegger defined Being-in as "residing alongside" and "Being-familiar with." This Being-in is understood in the everyday publicness of the "they" as a 'Being-at-home," a tranquillized self-assurance. However, as Dasein falls, anxiety brings it back from its absorption in the 'world' and "everyday familiarity collapses." Thus, Dasein is individualized as Being-in-the-world. Being-in enters into the existential mode of the "not-at-home" of uncanniness. Thus, "Being-not-at-home" is the basic kind of Being of Dasein, even though in an everyday way Dasein flees from this understanding in the tranquillized "at-homeness" of das Man. Yet, what is the nature of this uncanniness which pursues Dasein as the "they"? Dasein, writes Heidegger, is uncanny in that uncanniness "lies in Dasein as thrown Being-in-the-world, which has been delivered over to itself in its Being."

From an existential-ontological viewpoint, uncanniness ("not-at-home") is the more primordial phenomenon, the hidden meaning and ground of Dasein as fleeing into the "they" in its everyday concern and solicitude. In the state-of-mind of anxiety, Dasein's care structure is uncovered from its concealment in which Dasein, as lost in the "they" in its everyday engagement with things, understands itself in terms of the world as a thing present-to-hand. For, anxiousness is a way of Being-in-the-world in which Dasein flees in the face of its thrownness (facticity), has anxiety about its potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world (existentiality), and flees into the "they-self" in its fallenness. Thus, Dasein's care structure is revealed as existentiality, facticity and fallenness. State-of-mind reveals Dasein as it is in its factical thrownness, understanding reveals that Dasein is its possibilities as "Being-ahead-of-itself," and, finally, Dasein's fallenness is its "Being-alongside" as, proximally and for the most part, it is occupied by its average everyday engagement with the world as the "they."

What compels Dasein's flight into the "they" as fallenness? Dasein is tempted into the lostness of das Man by the tranquility which disburdens Dasein from having to face its ownmost potentiality-for-Being. In its inauthentic tranquility, Dasein compares itself with everything and thereby drifts along towards an alienation in which its ownmost potentiality-for-Being is hidden from it. Dasein engages in a downward plunge in which it becomes closed off from its authenticity and possibility. Dasein, as fallen, is characterized by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity which involves a levelling down of all possibilities of Being. In idle talk, the "they" closes off the hidden meaning and ground of what is talked about. In curiosity, Dasein is constantly uprooting itself and concerned with the constant possibility of distraction. As ambiguous, the "they" acts as though it "knows everything," yet, at bottom, this understanding is superficial in that nothing is genuinely understood. The "they" is essentially death-evasive in that it conceals Dasein as Being-towards-death.

Death is a way of Being which Dasein takes over as soon as it is. "Dying," therefore, stands for the way of Being in which Dasein is towards its death. Death, as "Being-towards-the- end," is defined by Heidegger in terms of the basic state of Dasein as care. Death is "the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein." Death reveals itself as that "possibility which is one's ownmost, which is non-relational, and which is not to be outstripped." Dasein stands fully before itself as assigned to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being as death, the possibility of no-longer-being-able-to-be-there. Moreover, Dasein will die alone in that death cannot be shared, and, finally, death cannot be avoided. Anxiety, as state-of-mind, discloses Dasein as it exists as thrown Being towards its end. Yet, proximally and for the most part, Dasein covers up its Being-towards-death by falling.

How does Dasein, as its "they-self", "cover up" its Being-towards-death? The 'they" does not deny death, but, instead, understands death in the "indifferent tranquility" in which death is seen as an actuality rather than as possibility. The "they" covers up what is peculiar in death's certainty: that it is possible at any moment. By assigning definiteness upon death (i.e., "I will die someday"), everyday Being-towards-death evades the indefiniteness of the "when" of the certainty of death. When death is understood authentically, it is understood as the possibility of not having anymore possibilities. In anticipation, Dasein is as an authentic Being-towards-death as letting death be as possibility. When we are closest to our death, it is as far as it will ever be as an actuality. If Dasein makes death an actuality, then it is no longer death. Dasein cannot understand death in terms of the world as the "they" -- for death is the possibility which radically individualized Dasein in that it can only be taken up as its own possibility. Death discloses what Dasein cannot have: All the possibilities.

Being-towards-death is essentially anxious. Anxiety is the attunement of anticipation, and, being so, becomes a way for Dasein to understand itself in an authentic disclosure of itself. Anxiety reveals to Dasein its lostness in the they-self in that Dasein is unable to understand itself in terms of the world as concernful solicitude. As lost, Dasein can be brought back to itself since, as fallen, Dasein has neglected to choose itself. Authenticity is an existential modification of the existentiell manner of existing. In terms of its possibility, Dasein is already a potentiality- for-Being-its-self, but it needs to have this attested. This attestation is disclosed as the call of conscience.

Conscience is the call from Dasein's ownmost self to its "they-self" which recalls Dasein from its lostness back to its ownmost, authentic self. In the state-of-mind of anxiety, Dasein is wanting-to-have-a-conscience. The call discourses in the mode of silence. As reticent, Dasein is disinclined from engaging in the idle talk in which Dasein fails to hear itself. The call tells us nothing. It is the voice which Dasein, as "lost in the manifold 'world' of its concern," finds as the "alien" voice of the self which has been individualized down to itself in its uncanniness. The call of conscience calls out "Guilty!" in recognition of itself as a null basis; that Dasein is in the process of not being any more possibilities and must, therefore, eliminate choices whenever it makes a choice. Dasein is revealed as thrown, as delivered over to Being without Being the author of itself. Yet, as this null basis, Dasein is its basis. Conscience calls us to appropriate ourselves as the kind of Being that we are.

Dasein is authentic in its resoluteness: a "reticent self-projection upon one's ownmost Being- guilty, in which one is ready for anxiety." In resoluteness, Dasein is most fully disclosed to the kind of Being that it is. Resoluteness brings Dasein into solicitous Being with others alongside things as one's ownmost self, not as the "they." Dasein's authentic self as uncanny, therefore, pursues Dasein and threatens the "they-self" in which it has become lost. Dasein, at first, understands itself in terms of its concernful solicitude as the "they" in which it understands itself as a thing. This existentiell familiarly, however, covers up Dasein's existential, primordial understanding of itself as uncanny. Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenological approach to his existential analytic of Dasein uncovers the phenomenal structure of existing in such a way that it uncovers what would have been missed had the analysis followed the "order of the sequence in which experiences run their course."

Through this existential analysis of Dasein, Heidegger then pursues an understanding of time, including his understanding of history. For a thorough examination of Heidegger's understanding of history, I recommend my paper, Kuhn in Light of Heidegger as a Response to Hoeller's Critique of Giorgi. In this paper, I also introduce the reader to "later" Heidegger after his "turning." Heidegger had intended to complete a third part of Being and Time (there are two parts), but he never completed the project.

In Heidegger's later writings, he moved away from the kind of humanism that characterized Being and Time. That is, Heidegger no longer placed Dasein at such a central place in the presencing of Being. Rather, the human being is understood as the "shepherd of Being." Though Being is needful of human beings, so that beings can presence, the human being is, consistent with Being and Time, finite. More importantly, Heidegger's understanding of "resoluteness" is replaced by the idea of releasement or Gelassenheit. With releasement, the human being engages in a meditative thinking which is characterized by a profound humility, which understands the "gift" of Being and holds itself open to the "call" of language. With Gelassenheit, Heidegger turned toward the subject of language, the logos, by which beings are gathered and named. Yet, in naming, Being remains concealed. In my opinion, Heidegger's conception of Galessenheit truly reveals his indebtedness to Lao Tzu, whose writings on "wu wei" (non-action) hold greater similarities to Heidegger's releasement-toward-things.