Ouija Board Printable Valentines

Love is a mystifying thing. Leave it to the spirits with these Ouija board printable valentines from Cult of Weird.
Ouija board printable valentines day cards from Cult of Weird

Download here: Ouija Board Printable Valentines

Consult the mystic oracle of love

Looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day card for the occultist in your life? Move the planchette of their black and shriveled heart with these Ouija board printable valentines, now available in the official Cult of Weird shop.

These DIY printable valentines are available to download instantly after purchase. The download includes 6 2.5×3.5 inch printable, double-sided Cult of Weird Valentines in a hi-res PDF file ready to print on a 8.5×11 inch sheet of cardstock or photo paper.

See also: I want you for your brain…

The Unpublishable Pop-up Book of Burlesque

Peter Larkin set out to create a pop-up book about burlesque where the clothes came off. The result is a sophisticated book about twirling tassels that will never be published.
Production designer Peter Larkin created a burlesque pop-up book that will never be published.

Peter Larkin is an award-winning production designer for film and theatre. He began his career in the early 1950s, and soon became one of Broadway’s most respected art directors.

For the last twenty years, however, he has immersed himself in another passion – burlesque. He set out to create a pop-up book of burlesque where the clothes would actually come off. The result is a sophisticated pop-up full of extravagant stage scenes, pink feathers and pop-up breasts in the true spirit of classic burlesque.

Larkin calls it Panties Inferno.

Page from the burlesque pop-up book by Peter Larkin

Page from the burlesque pop-up book by Peter Larkin

Sadly, it will most likely never see the light of day. Publishers have deemed it unpublishable, but not for the reason you may think. It seems the stripping ladies and illustrated nipple tassels are fine. The problem is Larkin engineered a pop-up book that would cost way too much to manufacture.

via The Paris Review

Declining Vulture Population Threatens Mumbai’s Towers of Silence

For three centuries Mumbai’s vultures disposed of the dead and ushered their souls through the cosmic transition inside the circular stone walls of the Towers of Silence. Today, however, the vultures have vanished, and India’s Parsi community is struggling to retain their 3,000-year-old funerary traditions.
Vintage photo of a Tower of Silence with vultures in India

In the 1980s, Mumbai’s vulture population mysteriously began to vanish. This was particularly alarming due to the fact that the local Parsi community relied on the scavenger birds to clean up their dead.

The 3,000-year-old Zoroastrian tradition Parsis follow regards all elements as sacred, so burying or cremating a body defiles nature. Instead, they practice dokhmenashini, a system that includes the use of circular stone structures called Towers of Silence, or dakhma. There, bodies are laid in concentric rows for the vultures to consume. They believe the dead are contaminated by evil spirits, and the soul is purified for it’s cosmic transition through the mystic eye of the vulture.

Before the vultures began to disappear, a body could be reduced to bone within an hour. Now, however, bodies rot in the hot sun for weeks while smaller birds such as kites and crows pick at the remains.

In 2007, it was discovered that a drug being given to cattle was actually toxic to the birds feeding on the carcasses. It was quickly banned by the Indian government, though by that point it was already too late. The vulture population had been decimated by 99%.

In Mumbai’s Doongerwadi forest, a lush wooded area surrounded by high-end high-rises, the Towers of Silence are making neighbors squeamish. One dakhma has already been closed, and air purifiers are required to deal with the smell. Solar concentrators have been introduced to help dehydrate bodies, but the process is slow.

Sanctuaries and breeding programs to restore the vulture population have not yet had any success. The end of the Zoroastrian tradition may be imminent.

How does the Tower of Silence work?

How the Tower of Silence works
Within the tower’s high walls, bodies are arranged in three rows – men on the outer row, women on the second, and children on the inner row. The dakhma in Doongerwadi forest are capable of holding 250 bodies at a time.

After a hungry flock of vultures picks the bodies clean, the bones are into the center well, called the bhandar, where they are left in the sun to return to the elements. Putrefying matter is washed into channels at the bottom of the well that lead to four outer wells. There the water filters through a thick bed of sand and charcoal, leaving the other material to collect in the underground chambers.

A small, “untouchable” sub-caste of Parsis called khandhias are the only ones allowed to handle the bodies, as dead matter is considered “unclean.”

via The Guardian and NPR

Tutankhamun’s Burial Mask Damaged Irreversibly

King Tut's burial mask has been irreversibly damaged

Conservators at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo have reported that the 3,300-year-old golden burial mask of pharaoh Tutankhamun has been irreversibly damaged.

It seems that during routine upkeep last year, the blue and gold braided beard was either knocked off during cleaning or removed because it was loose. It was then hastily glued back on using epoxy.

The museum, apparently, isn’t well versed in proper care of priceless antiquities.

In a bizarre twist that most assuredly has no connection to this incident, the beard of my replica King Tut mask also broke off last year while, transporting it home from the store in the trunk of my car. I hastily repaired it with super glue.

Coincidence?

via NBC News

The skull of Mary Magdalene

The Skull of Mary Magdalene

This bizarre reliquary in the St. Maximin basilica in France is believed to contain the skull of Mary Magdalene.