Those of you who have been following my Monster Powers / Gila Lizard Powers (GLP-1) posts know I became obsessed with perfume after starting the GLP-1 drug Mounjaro. I like to call it getting Gila Monster powers because GLP-1 drugs were derived from a Gila Monster natural product. I have been trading perfume samples and posting reviews in the What Did You Test Today thread on Fragrantica. Recently another fragrance afficianado posted on the thread to congratulate me on my great review posts and suggest I have a soft launch as a fragrance influencer. I replied that I was planning to launch my own brand. My reply was the simplest and clearest explanation I've ever given for what I'm doing and why, so I copyied and pasted it here for all of you, with a few minor edits:
I'm planning to launch my own brand, to be called Magical, which will be mostly soaps and lotions but with perfumes too. I have a handful of test batches already made for the Erin's Garden collection and notes for many future collections.
Heathen Visibility Project artists had to decide whether to continue to make and share art, including Project art, in the face of the cesspool of genAI slop invading art spaces with images "generated" via near-universal data theft by so-called "AI" companies. (Generative AI is neither generative nor AI. It merely digests the creative output of human beings and regurgitates average output.)
Many artists have stopped sharing art online, and have taken down their already existing galleries. I too stopped making certain kinds of art. However, since the purpose of the Heathen Visibility Project is to provide free images for editorial use, I have made some Project photos this year. I hesitated to load any more art to my Deviantart because it's not only awash in AI slop but has added features for making the crap. Nonetheless, I do have an established gallery with followers there, and I decided to go ahead and load one Project image there: a photo from the Swords and Swimming ritual. You can see it on this link:
I'll be participating in a round table discussion at the American Academy of Religion conference at UNLV in March. The title is History of Mystery: Pagans in Las Vegas. I plan to blog about the experience here, so stay tuned.
Next up on this post is my brief report about another author's article, with a link. After that I relate some of my recent personal gnosis.
Erin Lale
Steven, there is a sauna tradition across northern Europe, from Norway to Russia, centering on Finland, which may have been its origin. In the Viking ...
Steven Posch
Erin, can you think of any references to the sauna/sweat-bath in the Norse lore? I've always thought it a circumpolar tradition generally, but nothing...
Steven Posch
Let me add a hearty "So mote it be" to your prayers.After the election, my friend and colleague Volkhvy--probably the most eminently quotable person t...
Anthony Gresham
Since the Ukraine invasion I've been doing a ritual every morning for Putin to reap what he has sown. I figure that if Trump's ideal collapses under ...
