Now, Mercury, Venus, Pluto, Polaris, Vega, Mirphak, Zubenelgenubi, they all get capitalized, no questions asked. But Sun, Moon and Earth? I challenge you to find any real consensus on this.

The most common answer seems to be that you capitalize them when you’re talking astronomy to someone, e.g. “The Earth orbits the Sun, and the Moon orbits the Earth.” But if you’re just talking about them in an everyday context, you don’t, e.g. “The sun’s warm today.”

Now, that last instance looks right to me. It’s how most people write. But I don’t see any sense in it. Or any other instance of these bodies being uncapitalized. They’re all proper nouns: “a noun representing a unique entity (such as London, Jupiter, John Hunter, or Toyota)”. There are some variations in the definition of proper nouns—the names of days and months are proper nouns in English, but not in many other languages. Fair enough, they’re abstract entities. But the Sun, Moon and Earth are as proper as nouns get. They’re unique, and very concrete.

There is the fact that these words can also refer to a class of entity, e.g. every star is a sun, in its own context; Jupiter has moons. But surely if you’re talking about the Sun or the Moon, capitalizing them is a way of being clear. I guess that until we start travelling to other planets (or stars), saying, “The sun is warm today” doesn’t need much clarification. But still, the principle holds.

As to why anyone would lowercase “Earth”—I’m lost on that one. Sure, you pick up a handful of dirt, you say, “Look at this lovely earth!” That’s a different meaning of the same word, which isn’t a proper noun, so you don’t capitalize it. Simple. But when you’re saying “the Earth rotates on its axis” or “he’s the most pedantic person on Earth”—why would anyone lowercase it? Because a style guide says so? What reason does it give?

I guess there’s an argument that it’s just the natural drift of language that’s commonly used, like “e-mail” becoming “email”. But I talk about London more than the Earth, and no one has ever started writing “london” (outside SMS and people who don’t write properly anyway).

The thing is, I’ve started coming across excellent books on the history of astronomy, recent books published by reputable academic presses, and they’re lowercasing “Earth” always, even in an astronomical context.

I would say (with tongue in cheek), “It’s XYZ gone mad.” But for the life of me, I can’t think what that “XYZ” even is.

Hot off the presses, the much-anticipated fourth installment of Strange Attractor Journal. Nestled amongst the illustrious contents is an essay by yours truly, ‘Sketches of the Goat-God in Albion’, documenting and ruminating upon the odd manifestations of Pan in my life.

Other highlights include an exploration of voodoo music history by Dreamflesh contributor Stephen Grasso, Peacock angel meditations from Erik Davis, other contributions from Paul Devereux, Alan Moore, Mike Jay, Ken Hollings, Robert Wallis, and David Luke, and splendid artwork from Arik Roper and Joel Biroco.

Essential stuff! Check it out.

Naturally I’ll post updates here as publication approaches (early 2012 a good estimate), but I’ve also kicked off a website for the project with a sign-up for a special mailing list dedicated to the book. The book’s title isn’t confirmed, but the site is named with rough aptness ‘Polar Cosmology‘.

Apologies for the late heads-up, but yesterday I posted my first contribution to Dorian Cope’s brilliant On This Deity blog.

November 16th saw the birth of Terence McKenna, the death of Alan Watts, and—just last year—the death of Pablo Amaringo. As if to confirm the wyrdness of this psychedelic confluence of anniversaries, the date also happens to be when LSD-25 was first synthesized. So, this was the topic of my November 16th post.

Erik Davis just posted a glowing review of a new book on ayahuasca: Singing to the Plants by Steve Beyer. While Erik makes the book sound like a must-read, it’s just out and for now is only in pricey hardcover. However, I’ve just been browsing Beyer’s blog, and I’ve quickly become impressed enough to be here pushing you his way.

Since discovering James Hillman’s work, I’ve had a very strong notion that, despite his total avoidance of psychedelics and “altered states”, his approach to psychology has a great deal to offer the modern psychedelic community. The non-Western influences on psychedelic culture have been diverse and profound, with Oriental notions of “enlightenment”, “gurus”, etc. perhaps outweighing the imports from shamanic societies. I’ve no wish to brush these influences aside with a snort of post-colonial disgust—they’re far from unproblematic, but they’re an integral part of our attempts to absorb the impact of these dimensions being unleashed on our barren religious landscape.

But Hillman presents a perspective firmly rooted in the Greek soil that much of our culture is also rooted in, giving it a particular resonance for Westerners (though of course he draws from the sidelines of our history, the Neoplatonists and Romantics). And his core opposition to “developmental psychology”, and the utilitarian narrowness of the quest for a “cure” or linear “growth”, exposes the vanities in our expectations of meditation, psychedelics and magic as much as it critiques modern psychotherapies. Psychedelic culture usually has problems at the other end of the scale from being fixated on a “goal”, too—sometimes it wanders too much. It strikes me that the discipline and diligence in Hillman’s approach to “following the image” is a valuable adjunct to the boundary-corrosion of hallucinogens, a useful position mediating between focus and drift.

Reading Beyer’s account of DMT researcher Rick Strassman’s story, his final paragraph seemed thoroughly Hillmanian to me. Discussing the fact that Strassman was disillusioned that not many of his research subjects seemed to “really change” after their initial rushes of revelation, Beyer remarks:

But is long-term personal change what DMT is even about? With his own preexisting biases, both Buddhist and countercultural, Strassman thought that spiritual transformation was the endpoint of the hallucinogenic experience; he was personally surprised and disoriented by the frequently reported contact with other-dimensional beings. Perhaps the hospital setting was less important than Strassman’s own unmet expectations. Perhaps DMT—like ayahuasca itself—is not a psychotherapist but a teacher, leading where it intends—not to some sort of enlightenment, not to self-improvement, not to community volunteer work; but into the dark and luminous realm of the spirits.

Then, sure enough, Hillman pops up. Beyer’s recent post on the collective unconscious is a brilliant critical summary of the history behind and the issues involved with Jung’s famous notion, which concludes using Hillman’s typically astute assessment of the “archetype” concept.

It’s great to see Hillman embraced within an intelligently psychedelic context. Perhaps not surprising that it’s around ayahuasca. The complex of traditions around this brew are saturated with animism, a perspective that, while Hillman largely avoids terminology that will associate his ideas with indigenous cultures, also saturates his work.

My other highlight so far from the blog is the great little summary of Pierre Clastres‘ work, with some interesting additional notes on the role that sorcery might play in the context of Clastres’ vision of primitive society dispersing itself to avoid the coagulation of the State.

Informed, eloquent and clearly possessing a great depth of experience: this is who we need writing about the boundaries between consciousness and nature.

Dreamflesh Journal contributor Stephen Grasso is now blogging under the banner ‘Clean living in difficult circumstances‘. Stephen sums it up thusly:

It will predominantly feature writing about Voodoo, magic, music, obscure records, psychogeography, and whatever else I get up to and feel like writing about.

It’s essentially a way for me to get regular new material out while I work on finishing my book, so I don’t feel quite so much like one of those guys who secretly makes a throne for the Archangel Metatron out of lightbulbs and toilet rolls in his garage, that nobody else ever gets to see or hear about.

The book in question is, needless to say, much anticipated. For now, the blog serves up Stephen’s refreshingly relevant occultism, subversive antics in the City, and obscure Voodoo vinyl, with rum & cigars aplenty.

Top of my current list of things that warrant me doing a Moses on the Red Sea of busyness bearing down on me, to bring my dear readers’ attention to it, is Dorian Cope’s new blog, On This Deity: Commemorating Culture Heroes & Excavating World Events.

Billing it as “an alternative ‘On This Day’”, for a good few weeks now Dorian’s been posting every few days on some birth, death, or other significant event that took place on that date. The focus is on visionaries and radicals from everywhere on that riotous spectrum: from the death of Maud Gonne (muse to W.B. Yeats and bold revolutionary in her own right) to the release of ‘God Save The Queen’; from Oscar Wilde’s release from Reading Gaol to the straw that broke the back of the camel in the way of me writing this, a remembrance of Helen Keller’s death, and a reminder of her radical political views.

Dorian and her indefatigable husband Julian have been staunch and forthright supporters of my writing and publishing since we met in 1996. What makes this much more than an obligatory reciprocation is the pleasure of seeing Dorian’s razor-sharp perceptions and infectious energy, which have inspired me endlessly in conversations over the years, transfer so well to writing. Her posts popping up several times a week in my feed aggregator have the habit of quickly creating a bubble of attentiveness, within which she paints a vivid picture of a moment in radical history. It’s a steady stream of historical nourishment—feast away!

Last year me and a few others quietly put together an online discussion community whose aim was (in the words of the official blurb) “to promote a visible and intelligent discourse around the theory and practice of magic, spirituality and experiential religion”. We wanted a high signal-to-noise ratio, writing that could work as reasonable quality for readers as well as participants, and a respectful, good-natured, slowly-growing membership. Thus, Liminal Nation.

I, true to my preference for either a book or a pub to online discussion, have remained a shadowy background figure. However, by all accounts it’s gently thriving, and Dreamflesh readers who feel they might want to join in are encouraged to head over and apply.

Yeah, the application process was one of the moves to keep the whole thing troll- and bore-free. Sometimes not a popular idea for people who advocate a very simple “openness” on the net (are there many of those left in these days of 85% spam?), not to mention trolls and bores. To me it’s a no-brainer for the kind of site we’re looking to nurture. Freedom on the net includes the freedom to create your own space with its own rules, as long as they don’t infringe on others.

Anyway, you can read the discussions for yourself, read more about the site’s ethos, and apply if it looks like your cup of tea.