CONFERENCE CONTRIBUTORS: AM4

Planets, Planets, Planets

sisterbride.com

Blair Bogin is an artist & astrologer. Outside of teaching, counseling and formal chart readings, she experiments with astrology through comedy theater and video art. She is the Director of Planets, Planets, Planets, an alt-comedy astrology theater troupe, runs astrology seminars for artists and crafts monthly moving image horoscopes. She's been going steady with the stars for over 14 years in tandem with her studies in film and physical theater clown.

Hymn to Orpheus

Orpheus and Orphism are re-emerging into popular consciousness from antiquity as medicine for a world shaped by the failure to adequately hold and process individual and collective grief. This stuck grief attacks the lungs and mutates across time and space into increasingly brutal forms of violence. Cynthia Day's "Hymn to Orpheus" offers a means of accessing this medicine in ritual or meditative space. Come listen to the hymn and hear Day tell its story.

bullofheavenastro.com

Cynthia Orpheus Day is a genderfluid oracular poet, singer and diviner based in Oakland, CA. As an Orphic initiate and high priestess of Artemis, he aligns with the power of queer ancestors and spirits of wildness and liberation to establish space for those who reject patriarchal gender and sexual roles. She resists the hegemony of academia and empirical forms of knowledge in favor of a collectively comprised and equitably distributed authority; she would rather sing than know. Their writing and sound-based work can be found under various names in baest, dirt children, and Hot Pink Magazine. You can find them on Instagram as @_bullofheaven.

Creative Memory in the Age of Computer Science: Seeking the Mentat through Image-Craft and Poetry

Magic means something different now - considering that the last 500 years have witnessed its supposed intellectual banishment followed by its pheonix-like return in the 20th and 21st centuries. During the "gap", the rise of computer science and technological machines of thought and memory have become prominent realities that impact all our lives.This is a show of images and works which relate to the project of outfitting the analog human brain - by means of art - to be able to parse the data-effulgences of the "information age" with the intention of seeking pathways to realizing an analog  "knowledge age" that replaces the digital "information age".

There may be a pathway through the age of "computer science" that reaches beyond externalized technology. Physical computers and biomechanical "hacks" need not be the end-game. What if it were possible to use artworks to create an oral tradition that is fully informed by the contemporary digital state of affairs, but which surpasses it? Here are my explorations of this potential trajectory - what Frank Herbert would call the "Mentat", and what Herman Hesse would see as a "Glass Bead Game".

peterducheminphd.com

Peter Duchemin is an artist, scholar and inventor, who has made innovations in the design of calendars for the planets, and in other fields. Working with diverse magical systems - Enochian, Hermetic Qabalah, and magic squares, he has developed approaches to spiritual work which are sensitive to the data of contemporary science - particularly astronomy. His astral magic practice is consequently heliocentric in nature. He holds a PhD in philosophy, sociology and religious studies, with a dissertation entitled "The Art of Hidden Causation: Magic as Deep Mediation". He has presented and performed both academically and artistically all over the work, from Canada, to Hong Kong, to Ghana, to Siberia. He currently works as a sculptor and foundry technician in Newfoundland, Canada.

Nativity Compositions & Planetary Scales using Harmony's Mirror

Harmony's Mirror is not only nature's mirror but also the mirror of any imaginary or potential nature. This is the mystical form of harmony, not the musical one. It is also a system of learning that has been used in some form or another for developing fair and meaningful culture that lasts, from prehistoric large game hunting to industrial markets and planetary resonance science.  

Summary of how the music is made:

Making rhythmic patterns of the planetary positions in orbit relative to one another. 

Using the frequencies of the comparative spins of the planets (planetary day length), we can make musical themes and decipher harmonic patterns in the planets in a number of ways, especially using Natal Charts. 

meditatingcomputer.com

Joseph Flinders is a filmmaker, writer, musician, natural mystic and everyday sort of dude with a BA in philosophy (with a high concentration in physics and mathematics). He studied magic in a classical mystery school mold as a Quareia Apprentice for 3-4 years. Trained in Qi Gong and Ba Gua Zhang 4 - 5 yrs. In 2024, Jo wrote and published two books about the mystical form of harmony: the Musical Cosmos Hypothesis (a thesis in 5 different disciplines about testing the oldest mystical theory of the cosmos) and Natural Mystic (divine harmony for the non-specialist). Music can be found at bandcamp under The Invisible Army.

The Cunning

'The Cunning' is a series of analogue photographs exploring contemporary cunning craft. Based in personal practices these images are a documentation of herb witchery, folk medicine, divination, pilgrimage, and spell casting. Astrological magic plays a key role in these practices, in ritual timing and in sympathetic magic.

As I discussed in my 2022 Astromagia presentation, the creation of images in the darkroom uses astrological days and hours and is an alchemical tempering of the Sun (light) and the Moon (silver present in the silver gelatin).

linseygosper.com

Linsey Gosper is an artist and magic practitioner based on Bundjalung country, NSW Australia. Their creative practice is an intersection of art and magic, Linsey has an active ritual practice which informs their artwork as an area of research, play and documentation. Working predominantly with photography and installation they experiment with the materiality of the photographic medium through darkroom processes, incorporating various magical techniques in the production of the images. Since 2019 Linsey has been sharing their experience and knowledge of magic through facilitating rituals, tarot readings, presenting at conferences, and writing about plant magic and astrological magic.

Mercurial-Mecha-Morphius

‘Mercurial-Mecha-Morphius’ is a black and white film-essay comprising of many still images and narrative voice over, inspired by Chris Marker’s poetic exploration of tragic romance and möbius temporality ‘La Jetée’ (1962) and Andrej Tarkovsky's psycho-geographic odyssey ‘Stalker’ (1979) whose protagonists self-reflexive search, quests through a post-cataclysmic landscape, pregnant with perilous psychic portent.

benjeanshoughton.co.uk

Gnostic Animist, Artist and Astrologer Ben Jeans Houghton’s multidisciplinary practice spans votive sculpture, architectural installation, oneiric film essay, self-reflexive writing, ritual-costume, improvised performance, mantric-glossolalia and esoteric lectures. The work explores and expresses magic; the art of transformation and its methodologies, technologies, agencies, and implications, through art-praxis, as-gnosis, informed by astrological, philosophical, and metaphysical perspectives.

Ben has delivered exhibitions, screenings, presentations, performances and publications internationally in Germany, Greece, Africa, Japan, South Korea, and America and nationally across the UK with CCA, Gymnasium Gallery, Bloc Projects, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Generator Projects, Whitstable Biennale, BFI and Channel Four amongst others, alongside writing and presenting lectures for esoteric conferences: Trans-States; Esoteric Arts - UK, AstroMagia; Art of Astral Magic - INT, and Occulture - DE.

Lunar NFTs

I am minting NFTs from the videos I create from near-infrared videos of the Moon and very low frequency electromagnetic cycles (waves) lightning transmuted into sound. For this phase of the cycle, I propose ways these electrical creations can support your astro-magical practice as they manifest in the Air with your participation.

livingelectriclanguage.com

Anne Krause: To say that I am obsessed with finding nested cycles within all systems that I encounter is an understatement. In an earlier cycle of my life, I was a professional scientist who researched ecological and social systems. While I may have left the profession, I didn’t leave behind this passion. I have tried out a variety of magical practices and stick with those that deepen my relationships the Land+Water+More-than-human beings+Planets+Stars. This is my emergence into the visible part of this current cycle of my life.

Cosmic Children

Cosmic Children is a series of collages that re-imagines the twelve signs of the zodiac. The digital collages re-invent the archetypes with an interest in how images might create our reality. The series challenges the gendered nature of astrology and uses a racially diverse cast, selected from Berlin’s performance community and cast from their astrological chart. The backgrounds are collaged from sources including classical painting, the decorative arts and the archetypal realm of stock photography.

lyndalwalker.com

Australian artist Lyndal Walker has exhibited for 30 years and will soon release a book ‘Venus & Saturn’ for which astrologer Brian Clark has written an essay. She has explored themes including gender, identity and time through photography, installation and textiles. Her work has been exhibited at The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Modern Culture, New York; The Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and Hangmen Projects, Stockholm. The Mountain Astrologer, Artforum, Art & Text and Frieze have published and reviewed her work.

Creating rituals is an increasingly important part of her practice. She is an Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioner and a host and member of The Stewards’ Council of The Church of Interbeing, Berlin. She lives and works in Berlin.