Butterflies

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” – Carl Sagan.

The universe is ancient. The scientific consensus is that it’s approximately 13.8 billion years. It may even be older. Recently, a scientist proposed, based on observations made by the James Webb telescope, that it might be 26.7 billion years old.

In comparison to the universe, a human life is a brief flash. The average lifespan for most in the developed world, depending on where you live, is between 76 and 80 years. Of course, being an average means that a large number of people won’t live that long.

Despite our relatively short lifespan, we go about our days as though we’re immortal. Of course, if asked, we’ll say we know we won’t live forever. Then we’ll shove the idea away and go back to blissfully ignoring our mortality.

If ignoring our mortality meant that we always lived in the moment and enjoyed every minute of life, that wouldn’t be so bad. However, it more often means that we spend most of our life on pursuits that waste what little precious time we have in this life. 

Don’t waste your short time in this life.

Memento Mori.

Different Dark Aesthetics

In a recent YouTube interview about my book The Philosophy of Dark Paganism, I mentioned that many Dark Pagans prefer dark or gothy aesthetics. Of course, as luck would have it, I was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt (hey, it was 100 degrees Fahrenheit where I live), which the interviewer pointed out. Still, it did give me a chance to talk about how a person should dress as they want and not follow the herd (a good save, if I do say so myself). But that didn’t change the fact that dark aesthetics are preferred by many Dark Pagans.

In this post, I’ll explore three dark aesthetic styles that interest me.

Dark Academia
Dark Academia is a subculture that began as a literary movement on Tumblr in 2015 but gained popularity during the Covid pandemic of 2020. The clothing style of Dark Academia builds on a romantic vision of ivy league academic fashion of the 1930s and 1940s. Fashion elements include tweed and wool fabrics, cardigans, blazers, Oxford shoes, and a color palette emphasizing black, brown, white, beige, and dark green.

Dark Academia interior design also looks back to the past. It’s a romantic vision of the Collegiate Gothic style with dark wooden furniture, books cases, classical era busts, and various nostalgia from the late 19th and early twentieth century. There’s a maximalist tendency to Dark Academia interior design. Dark Academia imagery emphasizes scenes of autumn and winter with a melancholic feel.

Gothic Academia is perfect for Dark Pagans who like Dark Academia but prefer a more Gothic or spooky style. Gothic Academia, also known as Darkest Academia, adds occult and gothic literature elements. The fashion style is essentially the same as Dark Academia; however, the color palette is generally darker, emphasizing black, dark red, dark brown, and gray with goth accessories. 

Dark Deco
Dark Deco is an animated style that Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski created for the Batman: The Animated Series production. It combined elements of film noir and art deco. Whereas art deco is bright and shiny, Dark Deco is dark, melancholy, and moody. Dark Deco draws upon German Expressionism and has been described as a sub-genre of dieselpunk for it blends Jazz Age with modern sensibilities.

A few years ago, a major craft supply chain rolled out a theme for Halloween that they called Dark and Deco that, put a spooky spin to Dark Deco. Rather than film noir, it combined Gothic with art deco. According to the musician Voltaire (and I’m paraphrasing based on memory), “It’s as though Jay Gatsby was raised by the Addams Family.”

Like Dark Academia, adding the spooky element to Dark Deco creates another variety. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to call it Gothic Deco. Gothic Deco combines the macabre and classic gothic literature elements from the late 19th and early 20th century to the Dark Deco style. In addition to the Gothic Academia imagery, Gothic Deco includes photography and art from German Expressionist films, the Universal Pictures monster movies, and the Gothic Academia art style.   

Dark Cottagecore
Cottagecore is a romanticized vision of 19th-century European farm life. Imagine the British cottage in the Welsh countryside. Dark Cottagecore reimagines this rural cottage motif into a dark world that Brother Grimm would recognize. There’s still respect for nature, but it’s less fresh flowers with bowls of fruit and more dried flowers and mushrooms. The colors are muted and dark. It’s black iron skillets rather than shiny copper pans. Less warm sunshine and more cold rain.

While the Cottagecore literary themes tend to be beings of light, Dark Cottagecore entities tend towards dark and sometimes ominous. In Dark Cottagecore, a character is less likely to meet a Mother goddess while taking a walk and more likely to meet a witch or a troll.  

Conclusion
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little stroll through some of the dark aesthetics available. I like to think that it might have sparked someone to create their own dark look.

Real Sorcery by Jason Miller

Most people have heard of Aesop’s fables. I learned about them as a child by watching the animated Aesop and Son on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show in the 1960s and 70s. Sometimes statements made by Aesop are wrongly credited to others. For example, some claim that “God helps those who help themselves” is found in the Christian Bible; however, it’s not. It’s a misquote of Aesop, who was a pagan and wrote, “The gods help those who help themselves.”

Aesop’s expression is a good summation of the magical philosophy of the sorcerer Jason Miller. His philosophy, which he calls ‘Strategic Sorcery,’ holds that one should start with real-world action to achieve a goal and supplement it with magick. This differs from others who would have you make magick the focus for achieving your goal.

I’ve long been a fan of Jason Miller. His books are practical and very useful. I own, I believe, all of his books and have taken several of his courses. All of which has elevated my magical practice. 

His newest book is titled Real Sorcery. This book is an update on his classic The Sorcerer’s Secrets, which was the first book of his that I bought. In Real Sorcery, Miller starts with basic practices. From there he provides practical tools for financial sorcery, divination, love sorcery, and more. 

I highly recommend Real Sorcery by Jason Miller. Even if you already have the original The Sorcerer’s Secrets, Real Sorcery has lots of useful and very interesting updates.

The Great Deception

There’s a lie that has persisted for thousands of years. One variation of this lie claims that monotheism was always the norm and polytheism was aberrant. Another variant acknowledges that monotheism arose after polytheism but holds that monotheism is more intellectually and ethically advanced. 

I call this lie the Great Deception.

The truth is that polytheism has always been the human norm, and monotheism is aberrant. Archeology and ancient writings show humanity as universally polytheistic. Polytheism is the human norm rather than monotheism.

Even monotheist religious texts provide support for this. The Hebrew Bible, for example, which Christians call the Old Testament, contains evidence of the polytheist past of the Hebrew people. For example, one can see this in Genesis 1, where the Creator god refers to Himself in the plural (“Let us…”). In fact, in this text, the god’s name “Elohim” is a plural form that the Canaanites used for their pantheon of gods. Polytheism isn’t limited to Genesis 1. We also see evidence of polytheism as common among the ancient Hebrews in other texts, such as Jeremiah 44.   

Another truth is that contrary to the claim of the Great Deception, polytheism is the more intellectually and ethically advanced belief system. 

Intellectually, polytheism makes more sense than monotheism, for it reflects the world around us, which is complex and multi-varied. Diversity is the norm in the world. Therefore, reason says we should expect divinity to share in this diversity. 

History also shows that polytheism is more ethical than monotheism. For example, ‘religious war,’ where groups attack each other because they worship different gods, is common in monotheism and extremely rare in polytheism. This is not to say that classical polytheists were pacifists. But religion wasn’t one of the reasons they warred.

To learn more about this subject, I highly recommend the book A Million and One Gods: The Persistence of Polytheism by Page duBois. 

The Highest Holiday

In several Western countries, July is a month of civic holidays. For Canadians, July 1st is Canada Day. For Americans, July 4th is Independence Day. And for the French, July 14th is Bastille Day. Of course, there are also civic and religious holidays in other months. Wiccans, for example, celebrate eight festival days throughout the calendar year.

There is one day that, more than any other, each person should celebrate. This holiday is the highest of all holidays. It’s a day of joy and gratitude. 

That holiday is your birthday.

Corpospirituality, the belief that the physical world is as divine as the ‘spiritual,’ is one of the nine Dark Pagan principles. Because of the inherent divinity of the physical realm, as physical beings, we are the conscious embodiment of the divine. Therefore, your birth was the birth of a divine being. That alone is worthy of celebration.

The French philosopher Albert Camus said that the way to respond to the universe’s lack of meaning was to rebel. I believe the best way to rebel against a meaningless life is to strive to “actually feel the rapture of being alive,” as the mythologist Joseph Campbell said. 

Celebrating your birthday is a proclamation to a silent, meaningless universe that you are not going gentle into that good night.

Life is good. Celebrate it.