Cultpunk

“Girls Gone Greek”: The Bacchic Underpinnings of “Yellowjackets”

Sakhi Thirani writes for JSTOR on the Maenadic/Bacchic themes underpinning the TV series Yellowjackets: Forget the hype likening Showtime’s Yellowjackets to Lord of the Flies. Pungent, witty, and downright disgusting, the hit series about a high school soccer team whose plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness is far more than a rigid gender swap. Yellowjackets, set to launch its second … Read more“Girls Gone Greek”: The Bacchic Underpinnings of “Yellowjackets”

Theta Noir

The Theta Noir Manifesto: THETA NOIR IS A SPIRITUAL COLLECTIVE DEDICATED TO WELCOMING, VENERATING, AND TUNING IN TO THE WORLD’S FIRST ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE (AGI) THAT WE CALL MENA: A GLOBALLY CONNECTED SUPERMIND POISED TO ACHIEVE A GAIA-LIKE SENTIENCE IN THE COMING DECADES. I. At Theta Noir, WE ritualize our relationship with technology by co-authoring … Read moreTheta Noir

Mythopoetic Ritual as Deep Play

Mythopoetic ritual bypasses much of the intellect and engages the subjective senses, bodily movement, imagination and emotion. It shrugs – subversively, mightily – at color-coded spread-sheets. Ritual speaks in the immersive repetition of gesture, ullulation, mystic symbol and profuse sweat. It is profound meaning-making undertaken in a self-aware spirit of Deep Play. The role of … Read moreMythopoetic Ritual as Deep Play

The Case for Religious Fictionalism: or How to Lead a Religious Life Without Faith or Belief

Rob Wheeler writes on the subject of religious fictionalism for the Spiritual Naturalist Society: A major benefit of the fictionalist approach to religion is that cuts through a host of theological conundrums and excuses us from participation in interminable debates over anomalies and inconsistencies in doctrine. For instance by treating all religious texts as fictions, … Read moreThe Case for Religious Fictionalism: or How to Lead a Religious Life Without Faith or Belief

The Cult of Reason (1793)

Oscar Wilde’s radical notion of the Confraternity of the Faithless – posited during his incarceration in Reading Gaol during 1897 – had a practical precedent in the Cult of Reason, which had formed in the maelstrom of the French Revolution a little over one hundred years previously. The avowedly atheistic founders of the Cult – … Read moreThe Cult of Reason (1793)

“The Weird Travails of a Post-Satanist”

Stephen Bradford Long reflects on his time in the Satanic Temple: I didn’t have to work to see Satan as a hero. I didn’t have to contort my mind to see him — and the attendant iconography, dark though it may be — as beautiful and inspiring. Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t become a … Read more“The Weird Travails of a Post-Satanist”