I hadn’t quite enough sense to know that what I really wanted was human companions. There aren’t such things. Every man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease—that of thinking.
Aleister Crowley, The Diary of a Drug Fiend
Do we not find that the most robust of men express no thoughts at all? They eat, drink, sleep, and copulate in silence. What better proof of the fact that all thought is dis-ease?
Aleister Crowley, Liber CCCXXXIII, The Book of Lies, Chapter 85, Κεφαλη Πε, Borborygmi
The leper women, deprived of their revels, suddenly found themselves face to face with their disease and spent their evenings sobbing in despair.
Italo Calvino, The Cloven Viscount [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
Evil, and mischief, and misery, and confusion, and vanity, and vexation of spirit, and death, and disease, and assassination, and war, and poverty, and pestilence, and famine, and avarice, and selfishness, and rancour, and jealousy, and spleen, and malevolence, and the disappointments of philanthropy, and the faithlessness of friendship, and the crosses of love—all prove the accuracy of your views, and the truth of your system; and it is not impossible that the infernal interruption of this fall downstairs may throw a colour of evil on the whole of my future existence.
Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library, Internet Archive]
An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for March 12th, 2014
“An illustration from an 1877 issue of Little Wide Awake magazine.” — Craig Conley, Abecedarian
“My mother always told me, ‘Do what you love, and the money will follow.’ It’s not true. I wish it were. Sorry mom. It’s a dangerous thing to tell a geeky little girl something like that when she’s trying to decide whether to be a coroner, an international diplomat, or a butterfly. I did not become any of these things. I got a degree in what I loved, but the money followed only when I got a job I didn’t love to pay for my husband to do what he loved. My landing a job with Massively (almost four years ago!) was the product of an unrelated cross-country move, a lot of luck, and an unusual combination of otherwise mundane knowledge. It was not something I planned and executed meticulously as a career plan.”
“#AmtrakResidency was designed to allow creative professionals who are passionate about train travel and writing to work on their craft in an inspiring environment. Round-trip train travel will be provided on an Amtrak long-distance route. Each resident will be given a private sleeper car, equipped with a desk, a bed and a window to watch the American countryside roll by for inspiration. Routes will be determined based on availability.
Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis and reviewed by a panel. Up to 24 writers will be selected for the program starting March 17, 2014 through March 31, 2015. A passion for writing and an aspiration to travel with Amtrak for inspiration are the sole criteria for selection. Both emerging and established writers will be considered.
Residencies will be anywhere from 2-5 days, with exceptions for special projects.”
“‘I was looking through drafts, but then slowly realised it was a draft of something very different,’ Dr [Cormac] O’Raifeartaigh said. ‘I nearly fell off my chair. It was hidden in perfect plain sight. This particular manuscript was misfiled as a draft of something else.'”
“There is a separation of colored people from white people in the United States. That separation is not a disease of colored people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it.”
“In the early 1970s, Lovelock—with the help of Lynn Margulis—developed the Gaia Hypothesis, which views the Earth and its ecosystems as resembling a sort of superorganism. Lovelock was working for NASA at the time, developing instruments that would aid the Viking landers in looking for signs of life on Mars, so he was thinking about how life interacts with its environment on a planetary scale. And Margulis was famed for her ideas about symbiosis.
This intellectual background led to the idea that organisms are not just passive inhabitants riding a big rock that determined whether they lived or died. Organisms were active participants in the molding of their environment, tweaking and improving conditions as part of a massive, self-regulating system.
In On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship Between Life and Earth, University of Southampton Professor Toby Tyrrell sets out to comprehensively put the Gaia Hypothesis to the test, using everything we’ve learned about life and its history on our planet.”
“In my understanding, the basic steps of our Order of Ritual (OoR) amount to a recreation of the Indo-European cosmos. As in many traditional ritual systems, our rites are set in a cosmological diagram. Since our Order is written for modern, park-and-church-basement Paganism, we assume that this cosmic model must be rebuilt and reconsecrated for each ritual. Thus our sacrifices open with rites for consecrating the space and establish it as a gathering-place for the Gods & Spirits.”
“During the winter solstice, the sun is filtered into the Monastery at Petra, Jordan, illuminating the podium of a deity. Just at this moment, the silhouette of the mountain opposite draws the head of a lion, a sacred animal. These are examples from a study where researchers from Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias and CSIC (Spain) showed how celestial events influenced the orientation of the great constructions of the Nabataeans.”
“Can your brain detect events before they even occur? That was the stunning conclusion of a 2012 meta-analysis of experiments from seven independent laboratories over the last 35 years, which found that the human body ‘can apparently detect randomly delivered stimuli occurring 1–10 seconds in the future’ (Mossbridge, Tressoldi, & Utts, 2012). In the studies, physiological readings were taken as participants were subjected to unpredictable events designed to activate the sympathetic nervous system (for example, showing provocative imagery) as well as ‘neutral events’ that did not activate the nervous system. These readings showed that the nervous system aligned with the nature of the event (activated/not activated) — and what’s more, the magnitude of the pre-event response corresponded with the magnitude of the post-event response.”
“The fMRI showed a ‘strong deactivation of the visual cortex’ while ‘activating the left side of several areas associated with kinesthetic imagery,’ which includes mental imagery of bodily movement. This is the part of the brain that makes it possible for us to interact with the world. It’s what makes you feel where your body is in relation to the world.”
“Anyone who really wants to promote scholarship may not content themselves with uniting uncontrolled ideas and research into a seductive synthesis, written in an attractive form, for the slightest critical touch causes such constructs to collapse. The established rules of scholarly method cannot be ignored with impunity; even the most gifted may not skip over the necessarily lengthy process.”
“Queen of Conjure, sacred Marie LaVeau. Her tomb needs restoration. Donate at http://www.saveourcemeteries.org“
“Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to a variety of material, textual, and literary evidence, the aim of this thesis is to shed light on the realities — rather than stereotypes — of an important aspect of late ancient women’s experience: the use of ritual power. Patterns of gender differentiation in late antique Egyptian magic are investigated and shown to be connected to the particular aims to which numinous powers were employed, aims which were in turn bound up with the social roles expected of each sex. The majority of this study consists of a series of case studies of different types of women’s rituals of power, which emphasize examples of significant trends in ritual iconography, praxis, and context, both those which were typical of late antique Egyptian magic as a whole, and those which were uniquely female in character. The fact that female practitioners came from a wide array of socio-economic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds is also addressed.”
“[Yehia] Gad isn’t the first to attempt to test Tutankhamun’s DNA, but he is the first to get this far. Previous efforts by foreigners were cancelled at the last minute. After decades of outside interference, Egypt’s politicians were reluctant to hand over the keys to the pharaohs’ origins—especially when the results, if dropped into the crucible of the Middle East, might prove explosive.”
“With vacant sockets and jaws agape, they stare at you like the skulls of the dead. They are 9,000-year-old masks found in the Judean Desert and Hills, and they are going on display for the first time next week at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.”
“Ever since the dawn of [humanity], even stretching back to the exits from Africa, people of different cultures have passed through this tiny country. There are places of worship to the Canaanite deities, Egyptian temples to Hathor, countless shrines to the Greek and Roman Gods, Phoenician influences and more.”
“The ancient Delphic Oracle was the inspiration for a recent application created by the Department of Classical Studies at the University College of London. This application will give the user the chance to have a unique experience. The application is very tempting and attractive as one can ask whatever he wishes online.” [via]
“Zeus became a swan, a bull, a satyr, gold, for love of
Leda, Europa, Antiope, Danaë.”
“Some in the ancient world might have interpreted the act of weeping as evidence that Jesus was not God.”
“The shift from book of grammar to book of magic isn’t as weird as it might seem. Few among the ordinary people in those times could read or write. For superstitious minds books were troubling objects. Who knew what awful information was locked up in them? For many people grammar meant the same thing as learning, and everybody knew that learning included astrology and other occult arts.”
“Did you know that witches help make Two-Buck Chuck? Sadly no one from The Craft is involved, but water witches are increasingly in demand in California as the state’s epic drought continues. John Franzia of the Bronco Wine Company, which makes Two-Buck Chuck and a slew of other wines, regularly uses diviners to find water underneath his California vineyards.”
“Pasi’s book, which has already appeared in Italian and German, proves an admirable introduction to the complex magical and political connections of this most elusive of figures. Ironically, what the book proves is the opposite of its title, which is simply that magical practice and practical politics have never mixed, and the attempt to fit them together was a doomed and ‘childish’ project. Crowley’s ‘political’ legacy lies more properly in the politics of personal liberation that he advocated and in the counterculture he helped to create.”
“In the article symbolic mechanisms of the transmission of alchemical tradition within the Russian Rosicrucianism are analyzed. The main point of the article is the idea, that masonic symbols and their interpretations were not just a form of communicating the alchemical tradition, but also a mode of its transformation according to the principles of rosicrucian worldview. All the alchemical interpretations of masonic symbols in rosicrucian rituals could be reduced to paradigmatic and syntagmatic models. Within the ritual those symbols and interpretations realized two main functions — suggestive (creating the sacral atmosphere for getting the esoteric knowledge) and initiatic (initiation through the shift from one level of hidden sense to another), which changed social and existential status of the neophyte.”
“Some of these might be of dubious Catholicity, but they all at least have something to do with a saint or a relic, so there you have it.”
“‘It’s like having my own internal iPod,’ says Sylvia. While she goes about her daily life she hears music. It may sound to her as if a radio is playing, but it is entirely in her own head.
Sylvia calls the hallucinations a nuisance, but they can be turned off, which has allowed researchers to work out what might cause them. The discovery paves the way for new treatments and hints at the cause of more common hallucinations, such as those associated with schizophrenia.”
“If you’re building a monument, why not build it out of stones that speak?
‘We don’t know of course that they moved them because they rang, but ringing rocks are a prominent part of many cultures,’ English archeologist Tim Darvill told the BBC. ‘Soundscapes of pre-history are something we’re really just beginning to explore.’
It’s true. Academics and researchers are just beginning to think about what many historic places—both geographic and architectural—sounded like.”
“[Jeremy Kun] says it’s immensely important for mathematicians to be comfortable with extended periods of ignorance when working on a new topic. ‘The truth is that mathematicians are chronically lost and confused. It’s our natural state of being, and I mean that in a good way. …”
“Perhaps we should re-evaluate what we think was the state of science in Antiquity”
“It might be terrifying if we were amoebae. Instead, it’s just fascinating. The virus, found in a hunk of Siberian ice, is huge, but also loosely packaged, which is strange says evolutionary biologist Jean-Michel Claverie: ‘We thought it was a property of viruses that they pack DNA extremely tightly into the smallest particle possible, but this guy is 150 times less compacted than any bacteriophage [viruses that infect bacteria]. We don’t understand anything anymore!'”
My observation is this: stalkers, trolls and antagonists refuse to mind their own business and stop interfering with other people. Of course, they will say it is their Will to do what they do, but what they are really is a slave to their deep-seated emotional and psychological need for validation; and are not pursuing any kind of True Will, life purpose, of their own at all, but attempting to salve the sucking wounds they suffer from deep seated damaged desires at the expense of others, instead of seeking therapy or properly self-medicating themselves out of the way.
They are, in fact, some kind of Black Brothers, one and all. These creatures captured by their own egos are all unable to reconcile their deep psychological wounds and damaged personalities with the right of others to simply say “No!” to anything more to do with them. And, even this denied right to say “No!” is predicated on the illusion that the other has ever said “Yes” to begin with, and ends up being a kind of broken opt-out mechanism from abuse. What it comes down to is this fact: there are some people who hate themselves so much, and, because they are unable to reconcile that feeling, they will externalize their hate on anyone or someone specific that is a convenient target. After all, it is injustice that they can’t have their infantile demands fulfilled forthwith by someone else! There are sometimes even legendary levels of ultimately meaningless constructed illusion and phantasm completely divorced from reality necessary to justify their actions.
Disingenuous self-justifications may be proffered such as that they are “helping” people but at the core they are focused on what other people are up to and emphatically not doing their own work, or that they are being righteous and seeking justice, but at the core they are focused on getting others to do something that serves not the other but the person doing the interfering.
Maybe a dumb example, but (the primary advantage of this anecdote is that he’s dead now and is thus quite unlikely to throw a tantrum or have a hissy fit): my father used to do things like say he wanted to take me to a shop to buy me a gift. We would then go to some store, usually some place he suggested; and there he would say I should look around for something I liked. However, while I was looking he would do everything in his power to steer me to some specific items he had already selected, under the guise of attempting to “help” me find something I liked. In the end, if I was not amenable to being herded toward selecting as my choice some pre-selected gift he would get frustrated and create some kind of row in order to get out of buying me anything at all other than his gift, or anything at all if I still not a willing to succumb to the inexorable indirect demand to do what he wanted, which he could have simply purchased without my involvement in the process to begin with; thus proving that there was ulterior motive to the drama. In the end, I simply refused to participate in the sham any longer as it was a waste of my time and personally insulting to be expected to act as a puppet in the pantomime.
This kind of “helping” is a deeply suspect kabuki, entirely a constructed plot that the “helper” is attempting to manipulate others into acting out for them, usually in order to get some validation for themselves. In any case, the script appears to be written out of a desire to control others. In other words, these would-be centres of attention and sycophantic demanders of praise are of the vicious and venomous creeping conviction that they are the lead actors in someone else’s story when, in fact, they are not likely to even be more than a voiceless, faceless and uncredited extra, at most.
Stalkers, trolls and antagonists are not following their True Will, but are grasping desperately onto the tails of other people going about their own work and Work. This is fundamentally the opposite of finding and expressing one’s own True Will but is unilaterally and co-dependently demanding to be allowed into orbit around someone from whom they think they can suckle attention and feedback, positive or negative. These people are psychic vampires in need of being staked, and diseased social boils in need of being lanced.
Unfortunately, the heroic and hopeful Van Helsing and Dr Kildare in their attempt to be free from such interfering influences appear to be the aggressive party when they attempt to implement a cure to this parasitic perfidy. Those stalkers, trolls and antagonists fly into hysterics at the affront when confronted, and flop into pseudo-victimized apoplexy; violently dramatizing their plight at the hands of their target who dares try to defend themselves from distracting bites and defenestrate the annoying insects. And, unpleasantly, when one manages to eject the trash, the stench of its passing lingers far too long.
[Originally posted over on John Griogair Bell’s Blog at A preliminary initial Thelemic analysis of Stalkers, Trolls and Antagonists]
I Make Myself Invisible in Articles by Aleister Crowley.
“Of course there are forces which are definitely malicious. It is never necessary for a magician to deal with them, except as a bacteriologist studies disease germs, to find out their nature and subdue them.” [via]
ΚΕΦΑΛΗ ΛΒ The Mountaineer in Liber CCCXXXIII, The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley.
“Consciousness is a symptom of disease.” [via]