eGODS: Twitter, Grant Morrison, Ghosts.... oh my!

So twitter is something that I'm very into right now. You can follow me on twitter at Mercurialblonde. What's twitter you ask though? This is something I wrote on a message board in response to accussations that twitter was merely an extremely narcissistic blog:

"1. Twitter isn't really a blog. And if anything it's a less self-indulgent blog, because you're limited to 140 words.
2. I don't think the appeal of it is wholly in what you put into it, so much as what you get out of it.

It's more about tapping into a real-time ebb and flow of human existence strained through particular demographics which sort of ghost in and out of your walk down the street. There's a sense where with Twitter, a free floating hyper-reality is created that's shadowing very closely and very quickly whatever the world is up to or thinking about without neccessarrily taking you out of the world and subsitituting one reality for the other, which is in opposition to say instant messaging. Instant Messaging is maybe more prone to complete substitution, but something like this is more something akin to cybernetics. It's a fusion of the technological and the biological. You're taking the technology with you, and existing both within and without it.

This is more about a community of interconnected life, than it is the sole bastion of whatever thoughts you have. I write...a couple blogs. And this would never replace them. "

Even now I'm dreaming up ways to incorporate magical acts through twitter, especially given the way it is set up seems especially conducing to that kind of thing.


As a bonus unconnected bit, here's Grant Morrison from an interview with....Newsarama I think? He's talking about his comic book Final Crisis, but here he's talking about the conception of gods he is pushing within the book. I think it's fairly useful to read, especially given how much talk is given on this blog to invoking various deities:

"When we decided to do a book about gods, we felt it was important to do think through what a ‘god’ actually is. Gods aren’t like souls, or ghosts, gods are much bigger and scarier than that.

You know, it’s like every single word culture developed is own pantheon of Gods -which unsurprisingly all share similar traits, like the Greek goddess of Love is Aphrodite, while the Voudon goddess of Love is Erezulie and the Norse goddess of Love is Freya and so on. Now, what you have to understand is this: our primitive forebears weren’t stupid and when they talked about gods what they were describing were ‘eternal qualities’. In a normal human lifetime, we become possessed by ‘gods‘ every day. When we fall in Love, we are possessed by Aphrodite, when we are witty and clever we are possessed by Hermes or Thoth, when angry we‘re possessed by Ogun or Tyr or Ares. We tend to call such possessions ’moods’. but even when we are not personally in love or angry, there is always Love and Anger in the world and those eternal wells of Love and Anger and the other ‘big’ qualities of the human emotional spectrum are what our ancestors personified and called ‘gods’. The ‘god’ in this case, being the timeless quality of ‘Love’ or ‘Anger’ that we can all tap into for a little while.

No-one was really ever suggesting that there is a real woman you can touch called Aphrodite, who lives on Mount Olympus - but the sum total of every single human experience of Love is what the Greeks called Aphrodite and the Celts called Brigit and so on. I hope that makes sense."

Pyschopomp: The Death Pimp

Psychopomp:

"Many religious belief systems have a particular spirit, angel, or deity whose responsibility is to escort newly-deceased souls to the afterlife. These creatures are called psychopomps, from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός (psychopompos), literally meaning the "guide of souls". Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply provide safe passage. Frequently depicted on funerary art, psychopomps have been associated at different times and in different cultures with horses, whippoorwills, ravens, dogs, crows, owls, sparrows, harts, and dolphins.

In Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams as a wise man (or woman), or sometimes as a helpful animal. In many cultures, the shaman also fulfills the role of the psychopomp. This may include not only accompanying the soul of the dead, but also vice versa: to help at birth, to introduce the newborn's soul to the world (p. 36 of ^[1]). This also accounts for the contemporary title of "midwife to the dying," which is another form of psychopomp work."

Notable Pyschopomps include:
Odin, St. Peter, Eshu, Hecate, and Anubis.

While it's justifiable to approach psychopomp deities with some caution for fear of being dragged down with them on a whim, it's a bit irrational, and Psychopomp's can actually be very effective and important deities to have a relationship with. They can get you admission into just about any spiritual situation, and are a wonderful crossover guide between your conscious and subconscious.

Faster and Faster the Reaper Rises!

I thought this blog was interesting. It's a camera designed to take pictures of roadside altars:

Ostensibly I believe roadside altars are put there to commemorate accidents, but what you get eventually is a kind of monument to travel. Sacrifices to the great god Mercury. Trading in lives for greater and greater speed.

Or of course what better place to anchor a soul than by the roadside. It's a bit of a quirky thing with a long history across many cultures. You see shrines and memorials on the roadsides of Japan, Poland, and the US to name just three. Most cemeteries are built right on a main road so that many of their grave markers are visible clearly for those driving by.

The internet has this.