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Tag: cult

telemetry 2jan26

Published January 2, 2026 by Warren Ellis

“Every Day Carry” is a lifestyle native to the 21st century. This hobby was directly named after “the everyday.” “Every Day Carry” concerns tools, toys and/or utensils which somebody, somehow, feels obliged to lug around on their own person. All the time. Every Day.

“Weird Everyday Carry” is a niche even more intriguing to me, because it combines my abiding interests in the oxymoronic, the everyday, and the weird. How weird is everyday weird? What are the limits to weirdness? How long has this weirdness been going on?

Sources are now telling Deadline that Netflix reportedly only wants to keep movies in theaters for 17 days after it buys Warner Bros, a move that would “steamroll the theatrical business.” Major circuits like AMC continue to insist the line must be held at roughly 45 days.

Ghana has decided to deal with the viral spread of prophetic content on social media by setting up an official reporting mechanism for sensitive predictions, a move triggered by the August 2025 helicopter crash that killed the country’s defence and environment ministers along with six others. After the accident, TikTok clips circulated showing pastors who claimed to have foreseen the disaster before it happened. Elvis Ankrah, the presidential envoy for inter-faith and ecumenical relations, now asks prophets to submit their predictions for review. Charismatic preacher-prophets have been a fixture of Ghanaian public life since Pentecostalism arrived in the 1980s, but social media has amplified their reach and made their claims increasingly outlandish. Police have threatened to arrest prophets who cannot prove their predictions eventually came true. Some two-thirds of Ghanaians favor giving divine intervention a role in politics. Ankrah recently declared that most prophecies submitted to him are “total bunk.”
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telemetry 1nov25

Published November 1, 2025 by Warren Ellis

On All Hallow’s Eve, Jennifer Lucy Allan turns the cards and listens for what they reveal, tracing sonic lines across the tarot deck. From the ghostly atmospherics of William Basinski’s Wheel of Fortune, to the arcane explorations of early electronic pioneer Ruth White and Swiss krautrock mystic Walter Wegmüller, the spread unfolds in unexpected ways, its order uncertain, its juxtapositions surprising. Expect new sounds from Argentinian artist aylu, whose spiritually-charged album journeys from personal struggle to collective resistance, as well as slow-motion noise conjured by New Zealand’s drone trio Surface of the Earth.

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HERESY: JESUS CHRIST AND THE OTHER SONS OF GOD, Catherine Nixey

Published October 17, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Even when Jesus was small, the villagers realized there was something unusual about him. Perhaps it was because he showed a certain confidence – bordering on arrogance – in the way he spoke to adults. Or perhaps it was due to the way his parents, Mary and Joseph, treated him: with a respect that at times seemed to verge on anxiety. Or perhaps it was because he killed people.

Jesus was passing through his village when another small boy ran past and bumped him on the shoulder. It may have been an accident; it may not. Either way, Jesus was once again angered and uttered an ominously oblique curse. ‘You shall not go further on your way.’ His meaning became clear a moment later: the little boy fell down dead. These are the words of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

This is the story of very early Christianity, the things it took from to build itself, and the various versions of it that circulated back then. It’s an eye-opener.

…one ancient telling of the Nativity includes a Mary whose vagina can, and at one point does, roast human flesh. The text that contains this tale is in many ways very beautiful. At the moment of the birth of Jesus, the world quite literally stops turning: birds are stilled in mid-air; a shepherd who has raised his arm to strike his sheep becomes frozen, arm aloft; even the stars pause their nightly procession across the sky. Then, shortly after the birth of Jesus, a woman arrives at the familiar Nativity scene, with its ox and its ass, and – in a slightly less familiar twist to this story – inserts her hand into Mary’s vagina to test whether she really is a virgin. The woman’s hand is immediately burned off. ‘Woe,’ says the woman, as well she might.

And it’s that gospel from which we get the ox and the ass present at the Nativity. The gospels, odes and acts that didn’t make it into what we now know as the New Testament are really weird.

I’ve had this in the pile for a while, but, what with the recent missed Rapture and Peter Thiel apparently preaching about the Antichrist in a four-day closed conference the other week, I thought perhaps it was time I picked it up. Christianity had a long and strange journey, its story has been heavily edited over the millennia, and this is a book of what was left on the cutting-room floor.

As Robert Bellarmine, a sixteenth-century cardinal, Jesuit and inquisitor, put it, ‘I myself hardly ever read a book without feeling in the mood to give it a good censoring.’

Nixey is a terrific writer – I started reading her THE DARKENNG AGE years ago, but, honestly, it was so fucking sad I had to put it down again. This is a slightly less harrowing read, a little funnier (if darkly), and endlessly fascinating. Very recommended.

Also, this:

This, then, is a book about heresy and about how beliefs and ideas are violently silenced. But it is also about the ways in which people silence themselves. It is about the far more insidious ways in which things become first unwritable, then unsayable and finally unthinkable.

HERESY: JESUS CHRIST AND THE OTHER SONS OF GOD, Catherine Nixey (UK) (US+)

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telemetry 16sep25

Published September 16, 2025 by Warren Ellis

New Music Show:

Tom Service presents a live set from the Polish sound artist and composer Anna Zaradny, recorded at at this year’s Eavesdropping festival at Cafe Oto in London. We’ll also hear the London Sinfonietta with a modern classic by Salvatore Sciarrino, his ghostly, shimmering …da una Divertimento, from 1970; and GBSR Duo perform Tim Parkinson’s Project 9000 for piano, percussion and backing track, described by the composer as “a sunset that’s been photographed, laminated and pinned on the wall of a disused office”.

Cult Pens sent out an email to tell everyone it’s 100 days to Xmas and I almost unsubscribed.

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HOB’S LANE 005

Published May 16, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Archaeological discoveries made in London between 1946 and 1958 include a secret temple to Mithras, and The Fleet Street Ossuary and medieval Charnel House. Hidden alien gods and a mess of buried human bones.

Mithras was only ever worshipped underground, and icons depict him as being born from a rock.

The Roman Mithras mystery cult was a corruption of an Iranian deity, itself an echo of an ancient pre-Zoroastrian figure. Gods and rumours of gods.

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morning computer cults circles caves

Published March 2, 2025 by Warren Ellis

A massive bacchanalian frieze spanning three walls has been discovered in a banquet hall in the ancient Roman city Pompeii, the archaeological park announced in a press release.

And:

The frieze is located within the Casa del Tiaso or House of Thiasus in Regio IX in Pompeii. Thiasus is associated with the presence of Dionysus and followers. To become part of the ancient cult of Dionysus, initiates were required to participate in secret rituals.

The thing about these cults, like the Eleusinian Mysteries, is that much of their material is lost.

Archaeologists reveal the enigmatic burial practices of the Southern Jê people of Brazil. There was a time when they buried their dead in caves, before moving on to mounds.

The researchers noticed a potential pattern: most (88%) of the analyzed caves were located near water features such as waterfalls, rivers, and streams. According to Southern Jê mythology, water is the only element that connects all three levels of the universe: the underground realm of the dead, the earth-level realm of humans, animals, and untouched forests, and the celestial world of the stars, sun, moon, and gods. This connection to water may have thus helped the deceased souls transition from the earth level into the underground realm. While still preliminary, future geostatistical studies may help determine if this is a mere coincidence of geography or a deliberate act. Interestingly, the researchers also determined that burial caves were usually hidden in hard-to-reach areas and not visible to surrounding villages.

It’s tempting to associate this with the River Styx, and some kind of ur-myth around water and the dead.

A timber circle has been found in the Vesthimmerland region in Denmark, marking a significant discovery of a Neolithic cultural site much like the famed Stonehenge in England.

Timber circles are a circular arrangement of wooden posts or tree trunks set in pits and postholes that were likely used for rituals, ceremonies, astronomical observations, and social gatherings. This particular timber circle dates to 2600–1600 B.C.E. with a diameter just shy of 100 feet and consisting of at least 45 wooden posts spaced over six feet apart.

We have a “Woodhenge” in Britain. There seems to be a link between Woodhenge and this place, The Bell Beaker Phenomenon:

The Bell Beaker phenomenon was a widespread cultural movement from around 2800–1800 B.C.E. that spread across Europe, marked by distinctive bell-shaped pottery, advanced metalworking, and changes in burial customs. Archaeological evidence suggests it played a key role in the transition to the Bronze Age, influencing trade and social structures.

Everything is connected.

CONNECTED:

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