Lead Us Not Into Temptation, My Retail Savior Perhaps, before the powers that be at Target tackle the task of protecting their customers from the virtual horrors of digital sin and vice portrayed in the new Grand Theft Auto game, they could tackle the task of protecting their customers from the very real horror of having your credit card number stolen after you shopped at Target? But hey… they’re helping, right? —Magister David Harris
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Rabbi Jason Miller quite aptly points out the pitfalls of Michigan’s pending “Religious Freedom and Restoration Act” which would serve as a license for legalized bigotry. When I discussed the US Supreme Court’s decision in favor of Hobby Lobby in my essay “Mask Slippage,” I stated “Let this revealing behavior that has emerged since the SCOTUS decision be a clear warning to secular people that many religions are simply biding their time until the opportunities arise to recapture their dominance over those who are not of their ilk.” It seems “biding time” is ending. This emerging trend is also ringing […]
When self-proclaimed “satanists” commit heinous acts that grab headlines, journalists typically tend not to point out that their deeds are incongruent with our philosophy of Satanism—which we have accurately presented to the public for nearly 50 years—nor do they explain that there is no organization nor any philosophical literature that would support the committed crimes. We step up to make that point and it is then said that we are “distancing ourselves” from these criminals when in fact there is already a vast gulf between our philosophy and such behavior. It is not that we’ve embraced and then disowned these […]
After twenty-two years in prison, the last of the Satanic Panic’s actual victims have been released on bond, though not entirely exonerated. As time goes on, it is apparent that this episode in history will be classified along with other moments when Christian hysteria was allowed to run amok and ruin the lives of hapless people who, for one reason or another, are all too easy to burn at a proverbial stake. —Warlock Darren Deicide
Just as one Alaskan town is taking a civilized step forwards by seeking to tax its churches, so the State of Mississippi is looking to slam down the jackboot of Christianity upon the necks of its populace. I think I hear the Founding Fathers turning in their graves.
Could Point 2 of Pentagonal Revisionism soon take place in a small Alaskan town? If taxing churches does take flight, might more municipalities follow suit? How much longer until the Federal Government finally gets a clue that this would be a good way of reducing the National Debt? —Priestess Kim Rice
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art presents a ground-breaking exhibition, curated by Jonathan David Katz, with sculptures and images from antiquity to the present presenting same-sex desire in ways often meant to be “hidden in plain sight” for those who could perceive what had once been celebrated, but over time had become forbidden—even unto pain of death. The nude human form has always served as a means for embodying philosophical ideals suffused with eroticism, and there is much the perceptive viewer will learn from this wide-ranging collection about magical misdirection throughout art history. Under the visionary guidance of […]
In the DUMBO arts area of Brooklyn at 111 Front Street you will find The Stephen Romano Gallery spaces. Romano is passionate about art that comes from a dark perspective, pieces often originating from magical thinking with elements that embody diabolical, grotesque and horrific modes of expression. Currently he has three artists in his main space. First are the exquisite, one-of-a-kind prints by William Mortensen. His pieces are small in size and meticulously wrought with imagery that sweeps from the romantic to the ghastly. Viewing them in person one can contemplate the subtle, painterly aspects of these remarkable prints. Romano […]
Death Becomes HerA Century of Mourning Attire October 21, 2014–February 1, 2015 Metropolitan Museum of Art The Costume Institute This Costume Institute exhibition explores the aesthetic development and cultural implications of mourning fashions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Approximately thirty ensembles, many of which are being exhibited for the first time, reveal the impact of high-fashion standards on the sartorial dictates of bereavement rituals as they evolved over a century.