Duende

Poetic Faith (or, Why Oscar Wilde Declined to Join the London Thirteen Club)

Despite their distinct lack of streaming video options, the ladies and gentlemen of the late 19th century were not short of amusing and instructive pastimes. Late Victorian social media was centered around clubs running the thematic gamut from banal to whimsically outré. During the 1890s, examples of the latter kind ranged from the Whitechapel Club … Read morePoetic Faith (or, Why Oscar Wilde Declined to Join the London Thirteen Club)

“Death by Design” Podcast

Kimberly C. Paul’s Death By Design podcast showcases interviews with deathcare specialists, artists, authors and others working in the end-of-life sphere: REMEMBER, YOU’RE THE DESIGNER. We must become the designer of our own destination. We must learn how to build the pathways to our last chapter by creating the blueprints that reflect our individual lives … Read more“Death by Design” Podcast

“Mi’i waw wi’a Law”: How Nell Honors Her Dead

For about a month now I’ve been trying to recall where I’d seen a memorial rite involving placing flowers in a skull’s eye sockets, and today it suddenly came to mind. The 1994 film Nell was based on Mark Handley’s play Idioglossia and stars Jodie Foster as a young woman raised in complete isolation by her reclusive, deeply … Read more“Mi’i waw wi’a Law”: How Nell Honors Her Dead

The Flowerskull Mask: A Thanatopositive Art Project

By Tony Wolf I recently took part in the month-long online course Make Your Own Memento Mori: Befriending Death with Art, History and the Imagination, which was organized and taught by Morbid Anatomy founder Joanna Ebenstein. This course combines extensive and fascinating weekly readings and viewings, lectures, discussions, art and writing prompts and so-on, towards a “final project” of each … Read moreThe Flowerskull Mask: A Thanatopositive Art Project

“Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion”

Social philosopher Alain De Botton’s essential argument is stated in his final line – “Religions are intermittently too useful, effective and intelligent to be left to the religious alone”. The first two-thirds of “Religion for Atheists” demonstrate the strength of that position via examples drawn from many spheres, persuading the reader how – having been, … Read more“Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion”

“What will your verse be?”

Here’s the full text of Whitman’s O Me! O Life!: Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects … Read more“What will your verse be?”

Maya Greenwood Embodies the Reaper

In Starhawk’s ecotopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing (1994), the pacifistic, neoPagan residents of San Francisco in the year 2048 must endure and somehow prevail over an invasion by the militaristic Stewards from the South Lands. As part of a multifaceted strategy, the San Franciscans conjure the ritual of “haunting”, in which the friends and … Read moreMaya Greenwood Embodies the Reaper

“Today is a Wonderful Day to Die”

In this interview, Belgian theater practitioner and ritualist Barbara Raes discusses devising new rituals of mourning: I make these rituals as co-creations with artists. I feel that many artists have a certain sensitivity for our profoundly human need for consolation and empathy, and are more adept at connecting to a more spiritual context. Art can … Read more“Today is a Wonderful Day to Die”