Mysteria Misc. Maxima: February 10th, 2012

Mysteria Misc. Maxima is a weekly feature which brings together links on religion and esotericism from around the internet.

• A Rabbi who claimed to be the “Jewish Indiana Jones” admits the Torahs he passed off as lost artifacts were fakes. (MSNBC)
• There’s a culture clash in Brooklyn underway as hipster Jews move into neighborhoods that are more Manischewitz than PBR. (Religion Dispatches)
• Copyright may be a big topic with the advent of the internet, but back in the day, ancient Jews were putting their own stamp on things, specifically, kosher bread. (Live Science)
• Suffering from a lack of motivation to meditate? Here’s some tips to get onto the Zafu. (Tricycle)
• The Archbishop of York says  no to same-sex marriage. (The Guardian)
• Maybe he should read this: Interpreting Genesis in a sex-positive way. (History of the Ancient World)
• Speaking of the Bible’s first book, what does God look like anyway? (Storied Theology)
• Forget karate, the best self-defense is a homily. Well, at least it is for this woman, who fended off a knife-wielding psycho by reading bible verses. (ABC)
• While some folks drift away from their birth religion, one man in France is petitioning the Catholic Church to nullify his baptism. (NPR)
• Scientology was slapped by the French government for its expensive methods, but will still be allowed to operate despite efforts to shut down the religion. (Reuters)
• Alin Suciu was kind enough to scan in some coptic Papyri from the 1800′s. (Alin Suciu)
• Those of you without a hot date for Valentine’s can celebrate Lupercalia instead. (History of the Ancient World)
• Does the modern heterogeneous approach to “spirituality” have occult roots? (Moot)
• A new online journal: The Journal of Contemporary Heathen Thought. (Heathen Journal)
• And another one: The Society for the Promotion of Rational Esotericism. (SPRE via @teapollonius)
• The importance of language when doing magick. (The Magickal Universe)
• The Ruby Tablet is putting up a bunch of formerly unpublished Golden Dawn documents. (Nick Farrell)
• The ghost of Gerald Gardner is having quite the year: There’s yet another documentary in the works on the founder of modern witchcraft. (The Wild Hunt)
• Finally, forget asceticism, you can now find enlightenment at the strip club, where the dancers presumably give new meaning to the phrase “the Jewel in the Lotus.” (The Worst Horse)

Photo by Michael Holden.