I present again an erotic poem from White Stains. For Aleister Crowley, love is passionate, intense, erotic, but always short-lived, as he repeats “we must part, and love must die.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) was an English occultist and writer, but foremost a libertine and a very bizarre man. Beside writing strange books, he created cults of which he was the guru. The British popular press called him “the wickedest man in the world.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
For years, Dan and Mary Peterson were inseparable. Then at age 80, Mary went to hospital for a heart condition, and she died there after 35 days. Taken by surprise, 82-year-old Dan fell into a deep depression. For six months he didn’t know what to do with himself. Day after day, he spent time staring out at the squirrels in his garden and remembering his wife’s favourite flower: white roses. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Suppose that you manage a website devoted to dogs, discussing everything about their life, health and happiness, giving advice on how to groom them, advertising dog events and contests, all with beautiful photographs of nice dogs on each page. Then someone comes and says that you hyper-sexualize dogs, that your site is a zoophile’s paradise. You will rightfully reply that the perversion lies only in that person’s mind, as your interest in dogs is friendly but not sexual, and you just want to share it with others. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The explorer and ethnologist Peter Freuchen (1886–1957) spent a large part of his life in Northern Greenland, exploring it in depth, trading with Inuits and making friends with them. He even married an Inuit girl, Navarana. Living in the most hostile environment in earth, Inuits held a very pragmatic point of view on many matters. In particular, they considered marriage as an economic and family association between a man and a woman, based on solidarity, but without any commitment to conjugal fidelity in relation to love or sex; often men lent their wives to other men, or borrowed their wives, or swapped wives with them, for purely utilitarian motives; they could also see their wives prostituting themselves to Europeans as a good business. Such exchanges were generally decided by husbands; as hunters feeding their family, they considered themselves as superior to women. Inuit men were basically macho, proud of their manly ways. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
“I Want a Little Girl” is a famous jazz song, ranking 360 among jazz standards according to JazzStandards.com. Written by Billy Moll and composed by Murray Mencher in 1930, it has for over 70 years been interpreted by many famous musicians, in various musical styles: jazz, soul, country and blues. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Today I will discuss the various types of feelings and emotions involved in what one calls love, I label them “components.” I am to some extent inspired by the famous book The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, but while he described them as distinct forms of love, I will rather consider that they can mix together in various proportions through any particular love relation. This idea of mixing different forms of love was developed by John Allan Lee in Lovestyles; however he views them as “styles,” which can be not only emotions, arousals and feelings, but also attitudes towards feelings such as commitment, playfulness or manipulation, as well as degrees of compliance with social norms such as marriage and family. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
I present here a second poem from the collection Waterside Memories by the famous British artist. Filled with nostalgia, it tells about a young girl seen on a beach, who swam naked; she held the promise of the growth of her girlhood, but the poet did not see her any more. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Absinthe: The Green Goddess is an essay in 8 parts by the famous occultist Aleister Crowley, first published in The International, Vol XII No.2, February 1918. It seems to have been composed in the legendary Old Absinthe House in New Orleans. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The Irish singer-songwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan was popular in the early 1970’s. One of his greatest hits has been the song Clair, which ranked top in the UK Singles Chart for two weeks in November 1972. It tells his affectionate love for a little girl aged 3 or 4 whom he babysat, the daughter of his producer-manager Gordon Mills. He expresses his feelings straightforwardly, with a spontaneity that would be difficult to find in our epoch of moral panic about intergenerational relations: “Each time I leave you I feel I could die / Nothing means more to me than hearing you say / ‘I’m going to marry you / Will you marry me, Uncle Ray ?’” (O’Sullivan’s real forename was Raymond.) CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
