Crowley’s The Sword of Song (1904) consists mainly of two long poems, ‘Ascension Day’ and ‘Pentecost,’ both critical of Christianity; they are preceded by an Introduction and followed by lengthy notes. The title, with its subtitle and long dedication, is itself rather ironic: CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
In a gruesome country called “the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” reigns a horrible panic about children and sex. Anyone can come forward and accuse a dead person of the most bizarre form of sexual abuse, then he or she will automatically be believed and granted the “victim status,” an easy and quick way to gain public recognition. The discredited theories of “recovered memories,” which led to thousands of broken lives and shattered families in the USA, still enjoy public support in the “UK,” and are used to accuse ever more people of sexual abuse. Journals and the Internet have been filled with conspiracy theories about Lords, Members of Parliament, even ministers, involved in “paedophile conspiracies” to rape children in various ways, in particular by inserting tools into their anuses. This land has a distinctive institution, the gutter press, generally printed in “tabloid” format, whose so-called “journalists” can make a career by spreading the wildest nonsense. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
In the post “Components of Love” I presented the three types of love and friendship according to the ancient Greeks:
The ancient Greeks also used the word Agape for affection and tenderness, similar to Storge. Then in Christianity, this word evolved to mean a purely spiritual, selfless and undemanding love embracing all humanity; in fact, such an ideal love is extremely rare in real human beings. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Baudelaire publia en 1851 le court essai Du vin et du haschisch, comparés comme moyens de multiplication de l’individualité, qui étudie les effets des deux drogues sur la personnalité, le comportement et l’inspiration. Plusieurs éditions l’incluent dans Les Paradis artificiels, bien qu’il n’en fasse pas partie. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
André Breton ne fit jamais grand cas des enfants et de leurs capacités. Quand il cherchait un poète ou un artiste, c’était un homme, éventuellement une femme, jamais un enfant. Ainsi quand parurent les premiers poèmes de Minou Drouet, âgée de 8 ans, il proclama d’emblée, sans prendre la peine d’enquêter sur les faits, qu’il était impossible qu’une enfant de cet âge pût écrire par elle-même ces poèmes. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (b. November 30, 1835; d. April 21, 1910), the American writer and humorist better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was a free mind who evolved towards radicalism as he aged, opposing slavery and American imperialism, promoting civil rights and hailing labour unions. Although he was raised as a Presbyterian, he became distrustful of dogma and established religion. He did not publish in his lifetime his most controversial works about religion, and some of them were withheld from publication after his death, because his family disapproved them, notably: the novel The Mysterious Stranger published in 1916, the short story Little Bessie first published in 1972, and the collection of essays Letters From The Earth, written around 1909 and published only in 1962. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Après le recueil de poèmes Les Fleurs du mal, l’œuvre la plus célèbre de Charles Baudelaire est l’essai Les Paradis artificiels, publié en 1860, consacré à l’usage récréatif des drogues, plus précisément du haschisch et de l’opium. Il connut un large succès, il reste un exposé classique des effets de la drogue, comme l’exaltation, puis la dépendance et la souffrance. D’ailleurs l’expression “paradis artificiels” est couramment utilisée pour désigner l’utilisation de drogues (en particulier hallucinogènes) pour stimuler l’imagination ou enivrer les sens. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The English writer Thomas Penson De Quincey (b. August 15, 1785; d. December 8, 1859) knew fame with his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, published anonymously in two parts in the September and October 1821 issues of the London Magazine, then released in book form in 1822. In 1845, De Quincey published Suspiria de Profundis, advertised as being a sequel to the Confessions. Then in 1856 he revised his Confessions, which became much longer. Since then, the two are usually published together, their complete titles being Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar, and Suspiria de Profundis: Being a Sequel to the “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.” 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…
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…
