M.J. Rose

We know David Bowie would have loved this guy — and by guy we mean Tesla, obviously – but also the incredible artist and illusionist Marco Tempest who does the most compelling and jaw-droppingly cool Ted Talk tribute to Tesla that we’ve ever encountered…

Enjoy!

The Thin White Duke’s occult leanings are explored in this very in-depth piece. There is so much in the media right now about our dearly departed David Bowie, it’s quite difficult to sort through it all – but this article has much in it that was previously unknown to us. Enjoy…

P.S. The comments associated with this article are an interesting blend of insanity – we chose to ignore them.

R.I.P Beautiful soul. We will miss you.

The Occult Universe of David Bowie and the Meaning of “Blackstar”

By VC

“In the wake of David Bowie’s death, his last album, “Blackstar”, is his swan song, an enigmatic conclusion to a career punctuated by otherworldly alter-egos and esoteric symbolism. We’ll look at the meaning of “Blackstar” in the context of David Bowie’s career.

Very few artists can boast the longevity of David Bowie in the music industry, as his career spanned over five decades and produced 28 albums. Throughout the decades, Bowie migrated from one musical genre to another, and even from one persona to another, but a constant remained: He was surrounded by an otherworldly aura.

Through his work, Bowie turned himself into a musical ‘ascended master’, a Gnostic Christ-like figure who achieved a high level of illumination and who sought to communicate a cryptic message to humanity. While many of Bowie’s eccentricities could be attributed to drugs and rock and roll, one cannot paint a complete picture of this artist without mentioning his most enduring obsession: Western occultism.

David Bowie, born as David Robert Jones in 1947, is seen by some as a sort of ‘Renaissance Man’ whose professed ‘universality’ is an attempt to show the apex of evolution by reassembling the fragmentary pieces of our society; thus, he resembles many occultists.

However unlike most occultists, Bowie has considerable wealth, critical acclaim, penetrating intelligence, and enduring good looks; he seems set to go on to even greater heights and achievements. What next, godhead? There is a Faustian/Mephistophelean element here. How else can one explain the absolute zenith of this man’s worldly trajectory? In fact, there are people who are convinced that his brobdingnagian success is not without some kind of otherworldly assistance. (…)

Nevertheless, it can not be ignored that Bowie has constructed his public persona from the various parts of the puzzle that are at the roots of modern occultism. He was summoning up some of these pieces at the early age of 16.

– Peter R. Koenig, The Laughing Gnostic – David Bowie and the Occult

Throughout his career, Bowie often turned himself into a mere vessel as he lent his body to various personas who spoke through him, often communicating messages of deep occult significance…”

For the rest, click here.

The Mapmaker’s Mystery…Undoubtedly this is one of the most interesting reads we’ve encountered in a long while.

Enjoy.

From Discover,

The Mystery of Extraordinarily Accurate Medieval Maps
Beautifully detailed portolan charts present historians with a puzzle: How were they made? A mathematical analysis offers some clues.

By Julie Rehmeyer

“One of the most remarkable and mysterious technical advances in the history of the world is written on the hide of a 13th-century calf. Inked into the vellum is a chart of the Mediterranean so accurate that ships today could navigate with it. Most earlier maps that included the region were not intended for navigation and were so imprecise that they are virtually unrecognizable to the modern eye.

With this map, it’s as if some medieval mapmaker flew to the heavens and sketched what he saw — though in reality, he could never have traveled higher than a church tower.

The person who made this document — the first so-called portolan chart, from the Italian word portolano, meaning “a collection of sailing directions” — spawned a new era of mapmaking and oceanic exploration. For the first time, Europeans could accurately visualize their continent in a way that enabled them to improvise new navigational routes instead of simply going from point to point.

That first portolan mapmaker also created an enormous puzzle for historians to come, because he left behind few hints of his method: no rough drafts, no sketches, no descriptions of his work. “Even with all the information he had — every sailor’s notebook, every description in every journal — I wouldn’t know how to make the map he made,” says John Hessler, a specialist in modern cartography at the Library of Congress.

But Hessler has approached the question using a tool that is foreign to most historians: mathematics. By systematically analyzing the discrepancies between the portolan charts and modern ones, Hessler has begun to trace the mapmaker’s tracks within the maps themselves…”

For the complete piece, click here.