As part of my annual Memoria activity during late October and early November, I enjoy attending the Día de Muertos exhibition, staged each year by the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen. Here’s a gallery of some of the 2022 displays:
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Megan Baffoe writes for The Order of the Good Death on the themes of mortality and disobedience in director Guillermo del Toro’s recent movie: The spirit explains her philosophy of death – that, all in all, ‘the one thing that makes human life precious and meaningful … is how brief it is.’ I’ve of course … Read more“Death and Disobedience in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”
In this episode of the Imaginary Worlds podcast, host Eric Molinsky and his guests ponder various personifications of Death in fantasy fiction: Sometimes Death is portrayed as a Grim Reaper, but Death doesn’t have to be grim. Death can be compassionate, and even funny. And more often in recent years, Death has been depicted as … Read more“Befriend the Reaper”
Tim Bunting writes for Psyche on the grueling death and rebirth rituals of Shugendō, the ancient Japanese discipline of mountain asceticism. I first learned about Shugendō as a teenager, and was inspired to undertake some ad-hoc ritual wilderness excursions/vision quests of my own at Red Rocks beach, a rugged stretch of shore along the southwestern … Read more“More radical and practical than Stoicism – discover Shugendō”
Ed Simon writes for Aeon on the subject of Paganism: Of course, humanity will be long extinct, our most enduring contribution to the geological record a precipitous rise in carbon dioxide and perhaps a narrow band of plastic threaded through the strata. Bertrand Russell, the great philosophical freethinker who forthrightly admitted to trembling at the thought … Read more“A New Paganism”
Historian Torri Yates-Orr and mythologist John Bucher of the Skeleton Keys podcast discuss the mythology of death, as well as Thanatos, Hel, Gede, the Grim Reaper, and the afterlife.
My new art project, the Omar’s Rubaiyat Contemplation Cards deck, is now available. Oh, come with old Khayyám, and leave the Wise To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies; One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies; The Flower that once has blown for ever dies. ― Attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) … Read moreOmar’s Rubaiyat Contemplation Cards
Worker THX-1138 confesses to the prophet OMM in this scene from George Lucas’s 1971 dystopian science fiction movie THX-1138. The Amazen Kiosk, a very widely lampooned 2021 publicity stunt mental health initiative from Amazon.com, Inc.
Writing for Active History, Daniel Ross offers a concise history of the die-in as a form of social protest: The fact is, by the mid-1970s the die-in was an established part of the repertoire of non-violent action used by social movements across North America and, to a lesser extent, in Europe. Local groups learned about … Read moreA Social History of the Die-In