TODAY IN NETWORK AWESOME MAGAZINE

To start this article, I must wave a very obvious disclaimer:  Obviously someone who has read literature about Hell’s Angels is NOT a Hell’s Angel, no matter how extensively they have studied, and this is actually the OPPOSITE of the proper way to become an Angel; likewise a scholar who can quote the bible better than any God Fearing Appalachian cannot attest to the same ecstasy of handling a poisonous snake to solidify their faith.  So I would like to admit now, I am nothing but a white Australian who has read obsessively about the Haitian voudou tradition and listened to a lot of blues music.  My understanding, fascination and admiration are mainly that of an outsider, syphoning the tradition through a crass understanding of Jodorowsky shamanism, Jungian mythology literature and a perverse love of exoticism.

So please, I’m going to say a lot of things I learned out of books or from my own imagination in this essay with very little hinge on first hand experience. Forgive me.

However, this still makes sense in my understanding of Voudou.

This is because all of the actions within a Voudou ceremony are similar to the description of Sympathetic Magic in Frazer’s The Golden Bough, as well as in the work of Jung, which is to say there is no guessing as to the meaning.  The sensuous love goddess Erzulie is...
More

In 1967 Econ-Verlag published Erich von Däniken’s, Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (Memories of the Future), later to be translated as Chariots of the Gods. The title would go on to sell over 20 million copies worldwide. In this book and the 26 that followed, Däniken would expound upon his theory of “paleo-contact”, that human civilization was a consequence of our ancestors being visited by extraterrestrials. In the course of his literary career he would become a very wealthy man, posing the provocative question, “Was God an Astronaut?” More

Don Cherry's stepchildren likely didn't need to take his last name as their own. Nor did his son David Ornette Cherry need to emphasize his surname on the covers of his many albums by highlighting it in red. But there's a connection there that they obviously feel to their father/stepfather. Something that runs much deeper than—in the case of stepchildren Neneh and Eagle Eye—wanting to relate their musical efforts to the deep, deep artistic legacy of Don. There's an obvious amount of love and respect for Don that thrives still today. For example, on David's recently released album Eternal Monologue, one of the centerpieces of the disc is the song "Groove For My Father." When I spoke to David about it for a piece I wrote on him for Willamette Week, he said that he was inspired to write it when he was visiting his father's old hometown of Los Angeles. More

In 1989, Reverend, televangelist, and Founder of the International School of Exorcism Bob Larson sat down for a friendly interview with two people who represent everything he opposes in life. Those two people were Nikolas Schreck and his wife Zeena, daughter of Anton LaVey – the founder of the Church of Satan. Together the Shrecks were black magicians and leaders in the Church of Satan’s Werewolf Order, which they defined as a “magical resistance movement, esoteric research network, and radical ecology faction.” As the daughter and son-in-law to Anton LaVey, the Schrecks were arguably (outside LaVey himself) two of the closest people to Satanism. In a way, they were connected to the very reason it exists, to the movement that was giving a name and strength to all that Bob Larson believes is wrong with the world. At any given point in time, the interview is any combination of openly aggressive, passively aggressive, shockingly civil, shockingly lucid, hard to watch, and completely riveting... More

Perhaps the literary descendant of the knight, or something like the Japanese ronin, the protagonist of a Western is a wanderer and an honourable outsider, usually a gunslinger or cowboy. In the original Western he’s a hero, but in the revisionist Western, he’s an anti-hero. David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was a well known revisionist Western director, and a well known anti-hero. Many contemporary filmmakers have acknowledged his influence, including Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.

Peckinpah first achieved fame, or notoriety, for the critically acclaimed and graphically violent film The Wild Bunch (1969). His creative and often explicit fight scenes earned him the nicknames "Bloody Sam" and “The Picasso of Violence”, although his films aren’t too shocking to a 21st century audience. Reportedly, when The Wild Bunch was shown to the Nigerian army, the fight scenes, made the troops ‘go crazy’, shooting at the movie screen, and the next day storming into battle fully charged. Many critics hailed The Wild Bunch as best picture of the sixties, including high-profile film editor Paul Seydor, who called it one of the best films ever... More