TODAY IN NETWORK AWESOME MAGAZINE

If we’re very, very lucky -- and I’m talking here about the kind of luck that would get you rudely expelled from even the highest-class Las Vegas casino -- the star Betelgeuse, located 640 light years away from us in the top-left corner of the constellation Orion, will die within our lifetimes. Betelgeuse is much larger than our sun, which means that its lifespan is correspondingly shorter. Its death throes will manifest in a supernova -- a stellar explosion of such magnitude that it will put out apocalyptic amounts of light and energy. Stars operate on eonic timelines, so Betelgeuse could erupt in the next ten seconds, or the next hundred thousand years. If our luck holds, we’ll see it almost as a second sun -- it’ll rival the moon in the night sky. We’ll be able to read by its light. For a few brief months, Betelgeuse will put on an inspiring show... More

As an atheist and skeptic, I don’t put much stock in organized religion. Still, even though I can’t get behind supernatural dogma, I do love a good story, and the world’s myriad religions offer up an unending supply of those. Moses and the ten commandments, tribal folklore, Greek gods smiting and fucking anything that moved; they’re all epic, interesting tales. While I don’t believe the theology for a second, the narratives are fantastic, full of plagues, earth-shaking revelations and drama, and, yes, even wisdom. I’m not in the market for a new faith or superstition, but I am looking to be entertained, and though it’s less a major religion and more of a fringe cult, the Unarius Academy of Science can spin a yarn with the best of them. I’d rather listen to anything by the Unariuns than experience the story of Adam and Eve or the first Christmas again, but that’s mainly because the Book of Genesis and the Nativity don’t have any cavemen, intergalactic battleships or bitchin’ special effects... More

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...
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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