This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply (no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank, no endless rehashes of questions I’ve already answered) but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic — with two exceptions.
First, there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the ongoing virus panic and related issues, so anything Covid-themed should go there instead.
Second, I’ve had various people try to launch discussions about AIs — that is to say, large language models (LLMs) and the chatbots they power — on this and my other forums. The initial statements and their followup comments always end up reading as though they were written by LLMs — that is, long strings of words superficially resembling meaningful sentences but not actually communicating anything. That’s neither useful nor entertaining. Thus I’ve decided to ban further discussion of this latest wet dream of the lumpen-internetariat here.
With that said, have at it!
If Faustian Europe ever converts to Islam, what would a Faustian Islam look like and how would it differ from Magian Islam in the Middle East?
Okay, I have to ask the Numero Uno Captain Obvious question: Do you agree with numerous observers and commentators that something very fishy was afoot in the events surrounding the attempted assassination of Donald Trump?
Musk went on record the other day to say that Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy helped him a lot. In particular to step back and pick your question will. (42 is the answer, what is the question.) As a history of ideas guy I ask: Was that original with Adams or does it have a long history? It seems akin to mindfulness.
John–
I’m continuing my exploration of other scriptures, particularly through the lens of alchemy and similar western traditions. After reading _The Refiner’s Fire_, I’ve decided to focus on LDS scriptures initially. Certainly, _The Pearl of Great Price_ has interesting hermetic elements, as indicated by some of my questions of previous MMs.
As I work my way through the _Book of Mormon_ proper, my question here is: how does one frame or approach a text which is written as a history but obviously cannot *be* a history. Genesis, for example, can be framed as mythopoetic and its meaning derived from something other than historical narrative. _The Book of Mormon_, on the other hand, is written quite precisely as a historical narrative, but one completely at odds with everything known about the pre-Columbian Americas. It is not set in the indefinite past, but rather in a fairly tight timeline and specific historical period. How does one approach a sacred scripture of that nature?
On behalf of publisher and editor John Engelin I’d like to announce a new low-tech and deindustrial fiction and essay magazine/journal, Symphonies of Imagination: A Manual for Tomorrow.
http://symphoniesofimagination.com/
Issue #1 is out now in ebook format and as a print on demand A4 sized illustrated glossy analog reading matter you can hold in your hands.
I was delighted that my essay “For the Love of the Amateur” was featured in the first issue. John also was kind enough to make this essay available as a preview for the kind of material you will find in its pages. You can read and download it as a PDF here: https://symphoniesofimagination.com/files/excerpt1.pdf
The full contents are here:
Story: Where Giants Will Stand by Spencer R. Scott
Story: Aloft by Anthony St. George
Poem: Ordinary Ways by Marianne Brems
Poem: In the Rubble of Bable by J. Kramer Hare
Story: Unemployable by Gustavo Bondoni
Normal People
Story: A Secure Environment by Glenis Moore
Poem: Happiness by Richelle Lee Slota
Story: Amortal Riche by M.C. Schmidt
Story: Merrily, Merrily, Merrily by Aldrian Estepa
Story: Resurrection by Brett Abrahamsen
Story: Follow the Carrot by Eddie Moore
Story: Those in Darkness by Laura J. Campbell
Story: Midnight in Turtleland by Clement Tyler Obropta
Essay: For the Love of the Amateur by Justin Patrick Moore
Essay: Imagining Differently in Order to Act by Ariel Kroon
Open Source Corner
With illustrations by Gregor Schop, Aly Elsayed and Elmakhina.
The cover illustration was done by Cindy Tran.
https://symphoniesofimagination.com/issue1/
John Engelin describes it as “a magazine that combines speculative futures with practical hands on advice. How will we live in the future? The fiction lets us imagine the possibilities and a number of essays and hands-on guides give us the knowledge we need to navigate such a world or at last understand it better. After all, this magazine is A Manual for Tomorrow.”
JMG or the community,
I’m a 20 years student of Rinzai Zen and I’ve recently begun doing a comparative study between Zen koans, the psychological mechanisms they speak to, and they cross cultural equivalents in Western occultism. I just started probing some alchemical texts which are proving rather fruitful for comparison. That said, I’m quite the novice when it comes to this field. Two questions. One, I swear I read somewhere that the language of the alchemist, their way of speaking, has a specific name. Something like “cloud speak”. I know I wrote that down because it seemed relevant, but I can’t seem to find it in my notes. The second question has to do with recommended reading. I’ve mainly been reading Jungian works on alchemy and not so much texts of alchemy. The former have been helpful, but can anyone make any suggestions as to the latter?
Thanks!
Hello JMG,
I have been looking into animal intelligence lately as it is interesting to understand human traits in the context of others. I am generally convinced altruistic behavior, language, self control, and consciousness are not unique to humans, but rather humans have complex versions of these traits. Do you think other animals have spiritual experiences? Elephants come to mind as they consistently decorate their dead with sticks and flowers.
One other topic! what is your take on the pyramids and other like structures?
I am responding to a post from Justin Patrick Moore a couple of weeks ago about Samuel Delaney’s essay about Wagner in “Longer Views.” First, that’s not a cheap book to buy or an easy one to find. I got it on inter-library loan from Calvin College, er, University. Though it was published 25 or so years ago, the copy was pristine, as tho I was the first person in 25 years to have checked it out. Anyway, thanks, Calvin. Delaney’s style of criticism, in the style of Derrida, Lacan or Kristeva, is not really my thing. (I did have some enjoyment from reading Kristeva on depression years ago.) However, the biographical info on Wagner was new to me. In the extensive index, I found references to James Thomson (BV) a 19th century poet and to his long poem “City of Dreadful Night” which uses similar imagery to “Dhalgren.” So I was interested to see Delaney’s familiarity with the Thomson poem. Thanks, Justin, for alerting me to this book.
I see in the news that a whale tangled with a boat off New Hampshire. From the video, that sure looked deliberate. Animal intelligence? Echoes of Arthur Machen?
GM JMG
Thank you always for your time and efforts helping your community of like-minded souls!
Ok, this inquiry is rather mercenary and if too much so, please feel free not to post.
When preparing to submit a book proposal on a highly esoteric subject, how much of the “secrets” contained in book do you reveal to prospective publishers? In other words, if you feel that ideas contained are, shall we say, new and unique (yes, I see the egotism there;) do you use them fully to entice or keep most of your “secrets” for the actual book deal to come?
Hope my question makes sense.
Thanks again!
Jill C
I would like to thank Saint Expedite, who interceded for mr with God, whom I also thank, and I want to thank all the pray-ers. Please continue. Saint Expedite kicked the cumbersome legal machinery and got it cranking again, but there’s still a way to go. And I want to thank my favorite Archdruid for providing a space for these religious noticed—such spaces are hard to find these days.
JMG,
After reading your latest Nibelung’s ring post, I am starting to think the legends that end in inevitable doom might be the origin of the apperent pessimism of German culture, at least among Germans I have had personal experience with. Do you think I’m onto something?
@ JPM #5
I’m very excited to see another journal coming out and I just ordered my copy of issue #1. I’m hoping to have a story in issue #2, if I can get it finished in time!
Looking forward to reading your contribution and all the others’ as well.
@Mr. Nobody #2 The near assassination was either a near tragedy of errors and stupidities or something deliberately planned or just allowed to happen as an opportunity to get rid of a troublesome politician had presented itself. It is curious that Thomas Crooks was able to hide his rifle on the roof prior to the event and it wasn’t discovered. And the fact no one was stationed on the roof.
Richard, that’s a fascinating question to which I can only offer the most tentative of answers. If in fact Islam in Europe takes on Faustian qualities, instead of simply marking a (probably temporary) expansion of the Magian sphere, I’d expect it to veer in a Protestant direction, away from the sunnah (the consensus of the faithful) as the ruling guide and toward fragmentation via personal study of the Quran. If Europe keeps the warlike energy by which most of its history has been marked, I’d also expect a lot of jihads, both within Europe and splashing out into the world. Beyond that, I’m far from sure.
Mister N, as usual with US political assassinations, there are vast numbers of unanswered questions and huge gaping holes in the official narrative. It’ll be interesting, in the sense of the apocryphal Chinese curse, to see if those questions ever get answered and those holes filled in.
Bradley, as far as I know it’s original to Adams.
David BTL, as a mythic narrative that, due to the time of its creation, had to masquerade as history. You’ll find plenty of those, including most of the middle books of the Old Testament.
Justin, huzzah! The more the merrier.
Neko, fascinating. The terms I have heard for alchemical jargon are in French, and they are langue verte (“green language”) and langue d’oiseaux (“language of the birds”). As for alchemical texts, you might consider starting with the Book of Lambspring:
https://www.alchemywebsite.com/lambtext.html
And the Splendor Solis:
https://archive.org/details/cu31924012366021/mode/2up
Alex, I would argue that everything living has its own modes of spiritual experience, since reality is essentially spiritual in nature; the material world is simply how we experience spirit in our current state of consciousness. As for “pyramids and like structures,” depends on the pyramid or like structure we’re talking about. They’re not identical and they weren’t built for identical purposes!
Phutatorius, it fascinates me that what started with orcas is spreading to other whales. I’m beginning to wonder what a cetacean jihad would look like.
Jill, well, that really depends. First, um, I hate to say this, but the chance that you genuinely have an idea that the publisher hasn’t heard before is fairly small. Every publisher in the occult field gets a stack of proposals every week claiming to have some wonderful new secret idea, and nearly all of those are things they’ve seen before. (When I worked as an outside reader for one occult publisher, I got to see this myself.) Most publishers, for this reason, will take one look at a book proposal that won’t explain the wonderful secret thing in the manuscript, roll their eyes, and pitch it into the nearest wastepaper basket.
On the other hand, if you’re one of the exceptions, you do run the risk of having your ideas ripped off. I know people who’ve had that happen to them; some publishers are notorious for it. (I won’t name them here because libel lawsuits are also a real thing.) This is why, especially if you haven’t published before, you need to finish your manuscript before you send a proposal around. That way, questionably honest publishers will know that if they turn your proposal down, you’ll have the manuscript placed with another publisher and in print before they can get a book finished and published. Once you have your manuscript finished, tell everythign in the proposal, and don’t go on about how unique it is — if it’s really unique, the publisher will know that. (They all keep track of what’s going on in their fields, after all.)
Four Sided, that’s a real possibility. It’s also possible that German pessimism is what led them to come up with such myths in the first place.
It is also curious that the question of how Crooks got his gun in isn’t widely discussed in the standard media.
I’ve got a book recommendation for the crafty among us. American Peasant, by Christopher Schwarz at Lost Art Press. They have beautiful foiled hardbacks, printed in the Midwest, or free PDF downloads. I downloaded and read it in a day, I might just buy a physical copy. The book has designs and directions for simple pieces of furniture inspired by European farmhouse pieces. Schwarz also gives directions for inscribing furniture with hexafoils, waves and other symbols, and goes into why one might want to inscribe hexafoils etc into one’s furniture. https://lostartpress.com/products/american-peasant-signed-by-the-author
JMG, What are your thoughts on the book “The Secret Life of Plants”? Is your understanding of plants based on this book?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants
Also, would you please suggest similar books?
I notice that HAARP continues to attract a lot of the conspiracy-minded.
My question has little to do with that in particular:
My understanding is that the peak energy output humans are capable of generating worldwide is many orders of magnitude smaller than what’s already there; this strikes me as yet another iteration of “man the conqueror of nature” mythos that is still hanging on by its fingernails in the teeth of contradictory evidence.
My question for JMG: is weather control part of the flying-cars-and-electricity-too-cheap-to-meter hallucinations from 70 years ago; and does it also make an earlier appearance in the pulp sci-fi era?(much like the new-ice-age idea was a thing for a while, before being awkwardly swept under the rug)
I am guessing it must have, but I couldn’t quickly find an example…
I am guessing the weather control trope reaches much further back into mythology; why wouldn’t it?
The current iteration seems just another version of the Faustian “look how powerful we are, we must be history’s special darlings” narrative.
I’m wondering how folks in the western US are doing with the grasshoppers? Here in Colorado, they have been bad- a store clerk the other day told me she has no grass at all in her backyard, my neighbor had her carrots and lettuce eaten to the ground. In my yard we have built up habitat for birds and snakes, so the hoppers are annoying, but not devastating.
Global weirding means the eggs overwintering in leaf piles didn’t freeze last year.
Book notes: For people who might be curious about an imaginative treatment of subsistence living, Galore, published in 2009, by the Canadian writer Michael Crummey, is a brilliant novel set in a just barely hanging on community in 19thC Newfoundland. Like most of the truly great works of fiction, Galore is compulsively readable.
Chicago, by David Mamet I gave up on. No thank you. Mamet may indeed be a brilliant filmmaker and scriptwriter, but the novel reads as if Mamet was expecting the camera crew to set the scene for him. In a novel about that most quintessentially American of cities, Chicago, I expect some sense of place and here there was none. Chicago, the novel, might as well have been set in Boston or Denver or any large city. Furthermore, the theme of organized crime factions fighting among themselves has been done to death by now.
A few weeks back, JMG, you were discussing magic and said the following:
“…Transmutations and metamorphoses run wild all through myth, legend, and folklore, and so does the closely related art of magical invisibility.
These are also among the things that would-be rationalist critics of magic most often seize on when they want to insist that magic can’t possibly work. After all, they insist, a man can’t actually undergo a material, biological transformation into a jackass, let’s say, just because some witch brews a magic ointment and has him rub it onto himself! On the one hand, the rationalists are quite correct: no such transformation can take place by magical means…”
I think you’re probably right but, I do have some doubt as to the impossibility of material-magical transformation. My doubt is based on the possibility of some form of hylozoicism being true. If all matter is in some sense and to some degree alive – if therefore the distinction between material and spiritual is not fundamental – then there may be some continuum between the kind of magical transformation that you believe in and the nursery-tale kind whereby a pumpkin can get turned into a carriage, etc. Given a sufficient power-source could it not be made to happen? It seems ridiculous and my instincts are against it, but my intellect finds it hard to rule out.
Mister Nobody, what I find interesting about the assassination attempt is the absolute lack of reporting about what meds was the shooter on. There have been vague, rather grudging, references to mental illness. The eager to cooperate with law enforcement parents of the shooter must surely know they might be prosecuted and sued. It is reasonable to suppose they had arranged treatment for their disturbed son and such treatment generally does include chemical intervention. The most likely “conspiracy” I see here is for protection of pharmaceutical companies, especially in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the fentanyl crisis. Am I the only one who noticed how quickly coverage of that decision disappeared?
I remember reading that timing projects and trips around moon cycles would help things go smoothly. When is the best time to leave on a long trip and when is the best time to return?
Transcripts that may show the mental deficiencies of Biden have been suddenly found after being said they don’t exist. https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-transcripts-found-doj-1929098
IMO Biden will be termed officially incompetent after years of deliberate cover up of this and pressured to leave “voluntarily” or even given the 25th amendment treatment to enable Harris to have the advantage of running as the incumbent president with its attendant powers.
Besides the value of this whole thing being a fascinating spectator sport, all this is interesting to me because this will be a test of the accuracy of Christian prophets (Protestant and Catholic) that predict a second term for Trump and his overall positive success and effect.
I don’t get too worked up over the coming election as the result of who gets the White House and Congress will have little effect on what happens in my own little life. Also there are tsunami waves of change and alteration coming in the next 50 years that governments can only hope to affect slightly and attempt to ride as best they can.
@Alex Thurber, #7
I am trying to recall a book I read more than 20-25 years ago. The image of the front page says something along the line of: “Animal altruism”, “Animal morality”, or perhaps “Altruist gene”… I really cannot tell. I remember the introduction made a case that Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene” was an incomplete, biased view of Nature, particularly the Animal Kingdom, and the present work was created with the explicit goal of debunking that.
When looking for that book, sadly unsuccessfully, I ran into the works of one Dr. Frans de Waal, whose name seems to ring a bell. From his bibliography the title that resonates the most is “Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals” (1997). I am not sure if it is the same book or not, but there’s a bunch of stuff from this author about Animal behavior, intelligence, emotions, etc. You might want to check him.
@Neko #6 – a lot of alchemical texts have a series of pictures or emblems, symbolic scenarios depicting stages of evolution. Zen has the ox-herding pictures, much the same sort of thing. That could be a fun project, an alchemical interpretation of the ox-herding pictures.
A quick internet search reveals that this is not a new idea, but I didn’t immediately discover anybody that really dug into it.
JMG, thanks for having us over again, for a cuppa tea and a nice chat about this, that, and the other thing… 😉
1. To everybody: I’m still practicing my blessing skills and would very much appreciate if people signed up for blessings. The link for next Wednesday can be found here, together with an explanation:
https://thehiddenthings.com/weekly-blessings-30
Thanks! 🙂
2. For people who might be interested in getting started with blessings themselves, I’m writing an essay series “Blessing: How to Get Started in 9 Simple Steps”. The first two parts have already gone online:
Part 1: https://thehiddenthings.com/blessing-how-to-get-started-1
Part 2: https://thehiddenthings.com/blessing-how-to-get-started-2
The next installment will go up on Monday.
3. To the ecosophians in Europe: I’m wondering if any of you are noticing a resurgence of the “old”, pagan gods in your area? If so, and if you don’t mind sharing, in which way, and in which country or area?
4. And finally, JMG and Four Sided Circle, “German pessimism”? That leaves me scratching my head. I read English-speaking sites and forums just as much as German-speaking ones (although, granted, hardly ever the mainstream in either language). And I can’t really see more pessimism in Germany than elsewhere. A general tendency to bad-mouth one’s own country might be somewhat more present in Germany than in the US, but only slightly. But pessimism?
Maybe I just can’t see the forest because I’m in the middle of it? 😀 Would anybody care to explain why Germans are more pessimistic than other nations, and in particular how that would express itself? Thanks!
Milkyway
Re: young people (and 30-somethings) and culture – the tide is decidedly turning now. Courtesy of today;s USA Today’ Life section.
Headline 1: “Hot Girl Summer is out and the “boysober” movement is in.” As seen through the eyes of college student/Lifestyle influencer Niy Johnson. The article notes the semantic difference between voluntary celibacy and ‘boysobriety,’ While celibacy centers on abstinence, sobriety is about “clear-headedness.”
Headline #2: “Ink fading? Gen Z is suffering from “tattoo regret.” Tik-Tok influencer and model Sara Beth Clark got tattoos in her ’20s and now, in her mid-30’s [That’s not Gen Z, folks. That’s core Millennial. Says the grandma of both.] But – a lot of the younger kids are making the same decision, apparently.
Headline #3: Actor Chet Hanks, 33, comes clean about his past as ‘a monster.’ He had been on cocaine, and had a severe bout of depression. He was feeling suicidal, but felt he couldn’t abandon his daughter. shortly after, at someone else’s funeral, “welcomed Jesus into his heart.”
Interestingly enough, the advice his Dad gave him as a boy was very similar to what was prized in my day: “Just show up on time, be prepared, and be nice to everybody, have good manners and treat people with kindness. And just doing that goes a long way.” (Excellent advice, but – how old is Tom Hanks, to think that way?)
If you ask me, folks, and nobody has yet, the 30-somethings have looked at the world around them and seen the handwriting on the wall. As a side note, in 1774, John Adams despaired of the lack of potential leaders around him – until the crunch came, and those who stepped up to the plate grew into leadership. Writers were sounding the same note of despair in 1933, and what the “mama’s boys” turned into is a matter of record. I have equally great hopes these people.
In reference to #2,
“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in The Sorrows of Young Werther, first published in 1774, writes “misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence.” (6) Jane West, in her novel The Loyalists (published in 1812), condenses the sentiment to, “Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to less criminal motives.”
As for me, if it really is true the Secret Service snipers really did wait until Trump was down before returning fire I’m going to have to go with malice. I could see them not shooting at the first sight of the guy on the roof. It could have been a kid with binoculars watching the proceedings. But given the sights on their rifle the SS men could certainly see the truth before the assassin had time to set up a shot.
One other note, I have a laser range finder. The beam is infrared, you can’t see it. And it looks like half a binocular, and actually is a six power monocular. It is not mistakable for a rifle.
Another thing, the now famous picture after Trump is upright, that SS lady is way too short to block a second shot. And she’s ducked her head too. A second assassin would have had a second try.
What dose everyone think is going on with President Biden? It seems he was pushed out but by who exactly and how exactly. Is he super sick, on his deathbed or is he mad about everything or has he even been told he dropped out?. I know no one here was in the room at the time but the whole on going episode is really odd even by 2024 standards. Bret Weinstein posted a hypothesis on twitter that the the isolation around the drop out is a psych-op designed to take attention away from the assassination attempt.
https://x.com/BretWeinstein/status/1815820781089349896
Thanks all
Will O
A motto for our times; problems much worse than thought.
“UK military problems ‘much worse than thought’ – defense secretary”
“The British Army, Royal Navy, and Royal Air Force are all struggling with “hollowed out forces, procurement waste, [and] low morale,” British Defense Secretary John Healey has warned.
“We now also see that these problems are much worse than we thought,” added the defense secretary, who has been in office for just over two weeks as part of the new Labour government.”
Of course he wants to spend money they don’t have on fixing the military.
Oh, Ukraine is completely missing from the news in the U.S. But apparently Ukraine has cut off an oil pipeline that supplies Hungary because Hungary has blocked money going to Ukraine. In return Slovakia and Romania have cut off electrical supplies to Ukraine leaving the lights out because Ukrainian power plants are mostly blown up now.
It is my belief that we don’t spend enough time thinking about time.
My own experience of “now” in various meditative states hints at a vastly more complex reality for time than is usually spoken of. The “now” I experienced was immensely bigger than I could easily imagine or understand.
I would like to see a post that discusses (among other things) the esoteric understanding of the nature of time in the various worlds however understood. For instance, in Assiah, Yetzirah, Beriah and Atziluth, or, variously– in the etheric, astral, mental and spiritual/causal realms. Whatever models you choose to explore.
Regular Classical Greek usage had it there are three kinds of time: linear, cyclical, and the third (for which I don’t have a single word) which is time “imbued with portent” or mythologic time. I would take the Book of Genesis (among others) to be set in time of this latter sort, especially at its beginning. The Passover Seder text is pretty explicit in stating that the meal and its service places it in that third kind of time.
Perhaps your discussion could explore the implications of the rationalist understanding of time whereby the past and the future in some ways have no substance. Yet even our enjoyment of music fiddles crazily with such an understanding, it seems to me. Pun intended.
There’s probably a better way to put it, but words fail me. The flattening of time to the purely linear (and then in modernity “now” is femtoseconds or less) would appear to have flattened our collective understanding such that naive interpretations of the Bible became dominant with resulting literal/linear understandings (e.g., insisting on taking the first several chapters of Genesis as representative of a kind of material reality or “scientific knowledge”). Other cultures encountering modernity and rationalism have had similar responses to their own traditional lore, giving rise (imho) to corresponding modern fundamentalisms.
Notwithstanding how useful concepts of space-time have been for physicists, et al.
Some cultures (I believe the Apache and Navajo traditional cultures are among them) don’t have clear-cut delineations of times past and times future, linguistically. Yet somehow they have been able to comport themselves such that their peoples are still among us!
I suspect that our experience of time is somewhat like that of the “flat” (and triangular) protagonists in Abbot’s book “Flatland” which described their experience learning about the terrifying existence of things heretofore undreamt of: such awful things as circles, for example. I’m reminded of the words in “The King in Yellow:” “no mask? no mask!”
So, please, a post exploring various understandings of time and their effects on our culture and lives. Or, failing that, some commentary from our learned host and commentariat on the topic. Thanks.
Has anyone noticed that celebrities who died years ago have been seemingly resurrected as if they never died, most only to die “again” in 2024? I mentioned this in a recent blog article (https://kimberlysteele.substack.com/p/a-new-more-positive-timeline) which is also on my Dreamwidth with no sub buttons, and I swear the You-Only-Die-Two-or-Three-Times phenomenon has ramped up since I wrote that article on Monday.
First of all, Richard Simmons and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. My recollection of Simmon’s death was fuzzy. He was a recluse in his later years, so when I heard of him dying in 2024, it felt off because I remembered him dying about a decade before that. People also say that he is now pictured without his trademark headband when from what I recall, he was never without it. I distinctly remember Dr. Ruth dying nearly 20 years ago. There were tributes and memorials about how she had changed people’s perceptions about sexuality. Now there are claims that Carol Burnett is still alive — I remember her dying years ago! I remember being sad about it! The weirdest one of all is Bob Newhart, who I am convinced died years ago. Now Wikipedia claims he died in 2024.
We live in extremely interesting times.
Good morning.
I didn’t get the chance to answer your last question last Open Post, whether the case of the murder-suicide I described had to do with corruption: It did not. The miscreants had been charged multiple times, but only convicted once and were under investigation. The reason the law could do nothing against them was because they were using shell companies to commit their crimes. So any conviction would be against a ghost entity, and never against the real people. Sort of like in D&D when a sorcerer can create multiple copies of himself and attack with those copies and but the victim only destroys the copy, not the sorcerer, who remains safe from harm.
This is where the whole question of collapse comes in. We are now at a place where the legal system is trying so hard to be so exactly just to everyone, and has become so abstract, that real criminals cannot be caught or convicted because they operate in this abstract realm. Until one person, driven mad, takes matters into his own hands. Now one wife faces old age in unexpected poverty, and two adult children mourn their father.
I now have another case that my GF was telling me (ok — ranting) about. Quite frightening, really. A Toronto woman (Nareen Atass) with an unbelievably vindictive nature took offense at a local doctor. (Actually she did this against several people, but this case illustrates her pattern.) The woman is indigent, homeless (due to her own actions), but, thanks to the kind efforts of high-minded and egalitarian Clerisy, has full public access to services such as the internet. Said woman created fake accounts on social media sites which she used to levy false accusations of fraud and sexual deviance against the doctor… his brother & other family members (who live in Arizona!)… his colleagues and other employees at work… his friends… anyone vaguely connected to this doctor.
All of whom suddenly found themselves under suspicion and under investigation (one must investigate such allegations of course) and suddenly under a social cloud without the slightest notion of who was attacking them or why. After years of costly investigations (costs borne by both the crown and the state and the victims), they found the woman, caught her, but now what? She cannot be convicted, only jailed for a short time and is utterly undeterred by the usual punishments. She has spent a total of 179 days (in small chunks) in prison for repeated instances of contempt of court, but just will not stop her attacks. She has done this to more than one person several times.
The law is utterly helpless to stop her. The whole structure of normal social systems cannot contain her. She doesn’t qualify as insane enough to lock up, she hasn’t committed the right sort of crime to put her in prison for life… and yet this would be the only way to stop her from continuing to randomly destroy lives. Fines &c. don’t work, because she has no money. She keeps attacking and attacking, but because it is in the virtual realm, and on the non-material planes, the usual remedies cannot be applied.
So, this is another case where the system has made itself so abstract as to be impotent to prevent or even nullify a clearly damaging situation. As you have pointed out in the past, we have come to the time of barbarism of reflection. The Clerisy have argued themselves into the place where concerns for the rights of a single individual are paramount to the well-being of dozens of otherwise law-abiding individuals. These individuals have all suffered permanent reputational damage (just try and forget the accusation every happened, please), real financial costs, real business costs and yet still worked within the system. If I one day hear of someone snapping at the impotence of the legal system and taking a baseball bat to her head, I will not be surprised. And the slope will tilt down towards a brutal dark age just that much more. I will say that this contemplation does frighten me.
Bruce
John – An astrology related question:
With Uranus moving into Gemini in the Spring of 2025, and with the previous 3 transits spanning the years 1941-49,
1858-65 and 1774-81, any thoughts on what this transit, 2025-33, may bring? Makes me think of the old Chinese proverb, “May you live in interesting times…”
Since today is open post… when I started painting wargaming minis, I was going ‘let’s do something completely frivolous and useless just for fun’. But the whole ‘LESS’ followed me, as I balked at games workshop prices and went down a path less traveled.
I’m finding I’m learning a lot of weird skills – sculpting on a tiny scale in multiple different materials, painting on a nonflat tiny surface and all that goes with that, using different types of glue, repurposing recyclables and seeing the potential in random stuff all around me, repairing broken things, using clear PVA glue to make water effects for ponds, making tiny plants out of paper, and now I’m looking at basic casting to copy some of the sculptures I’ve made so I can make lots of starfish for my new small sea elf/forces of nature armylet without having to sculpt every last one by hand. I’m learning hordes of older skills that the people moving into 3D printing may stop bothering with, and that most wargamers never bother to learn. I think I’m way happier than going the standard route, too. Though some of the people I met are into 3D printing, and it’s looking like I may end up with a 3D printed army for the cost of the resin at some point.
I’m not sure what this is actually good for in the long run as regards practical utility, but if nothing else, having multiple types of glue and knowing exactly how to best use them is bound to come in handy at some point. And I’m having a blast, which is helpful for my mental health (physical health issues interfered with some of what I was doing before and that was getting me down). So maybe this isn’t precisely useless after all…
Part of me expects the future of Europe to be roughly Dune-shaped: a charismatic European leader converts to Islam, his party takes control of the EU, and secures his reign by wrangling favorable
spiceoil deals with the Middle East that everyone knows will be cut off if he loses power.One result may be that the lights stay on in Europe even as they’re going out elsewhere. The continent could briefly become a major manufacturing center as other countries’ industrial infrastructures are falling apart.
A few thoughts about the election, for Owen and anyone else who might be interested:
1. Anyone who thinks this election will be about policy is delusional.
2. What I think we are seeing is a battle between factions, or maybe coalitions, of the deep state, oligarchy, or whatever you might want to call it. Sponsoring the Republicans are the extraction industries, transportation, pharmaceuticals, and Big Agriculture, with Christian nationalists for their useful idiot shock troops. On the Democratic side we have a loose coalition of banking, finance, real estate, construction (which needs govt. contracts), and the PMC managerial class, the useful idiot role being assigned to minority activists and the far left in general. Leadership on both sides might be evil but it ain’t stupid and is well aware that the easy life is coming to an end. Both are intent on grabbing as much as they can while they can. All parties except the clueless PMC have not failed to notice increasing signs of public discontent.
3. For a time the plan was to rule through aged but respected figureheads, Trump and Biden. We have seen how well that worked. (BTW, the Scottish politician, blogger and former UK diplomat, Craig Murray, has a post out today in which he makes a plausible case that the person in charge in the White House is Jake Sullivan.)
4. Yet another faction, Mittle European diaspora Russia haters, in coalition with ardent Zionists have apparently decided Now Is the Time to bring on what will amount to WWIII, dispossess the hated Czars, never mind those have been gone for a century, we are talking emotion and myth here, and establish Israeli supremacy from the Nile to the Tigris Rivers.
It’s seems Mussolini was nicked in the nose by an assassin’s bullet. But is there is more to the story?
https://popehead.substack.com/p/the-failed-assassin-the-dictator?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=871779&post_id=146743815&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=4vfme&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Hello Mr. Greer & co.,
I know you this is getting into broad generalities, but what the heck…
If German culture is known for it’s pessimism, what stands out of English culture? (Is this the same as asking fish about water?) I suspect that what stands out depends a lot on the culture that’s doing the looking.
How about Spanish culture? For Spanish culture, does Cervantes and Lope de Vega tap into this?
Before everything collapses, I think that we are obliged to bioengineer bacteria that consume plastic, and release them into the wild by the truckload, accepting that the world will never know or employ plastic again, and this is the acceptable trade-off for ridding the soils of this scourge. It’s the only solution.
@Four Sided Circle
I like to think of Germanic mythology as in some ways the opposite end of Indo-European mythology from Indian mythology (similar to how it’s the opposite end of the geographic spread): where Indian religions increasingly sought transcendence from life in order to avoid the suffering inherent in embodied existence, Germanic religion resigned itself to suffering as an unavoidable aspect of existence.
Thus where at the end of a cycle of existence, Shiva unleashes his full power and destroys the world along with all evil, Odin, Thor, and Freyr go down fighting the forces of entropy and destruction, giving their lives to save a remnant with which to start a new world.
Hello, I’ve written this question in the “Wagnerian” post too late, so if you don’t mind, I’ll repeat it again here.
A short question for JMG and the kommentariat. What do you think about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
@Alex Thurber (#7):
Chimpanzees and Baboons have each been observed showing behavior that is most easily interpreted as their being overcome by awe or some other numinous experience in nature. Here is the primatologist Barbara Smuts on her own observations:
“One experience I expecially treasure. The Gombe baboons were travelling to their sleeping trees late in the day, moving slowly down a stream with many small, still pools, a route they often traversed. Without any signal perceptible to me, each baboon sat at the edge of a pool on one of the many smooth rocks that lined the edges of the stream. They sat alone or in small clusters, completely silent, gazing at the water. Even the perpetually noisy juveniles fell into silent contemplation. I joined them. Half an hour later, again with no perceptible signal, they resumed their journey in what felt like an almost sacramental procession. I was stunned by this mysterious expression of what I have come to think of as baboon snagha. Although Ive spent years with baboons, I witnessed this only twice, both times at Gombe. I have never heard another primatologist recount such an experience. I sometimes wonder if, on these two occasions, I was granrted a glimpse of a dimension of baboon life they do not normally expose to people. These moments reminded me how little we really know about the ‘more-than-human world’.” — Smuts, “Encounters with Animal Minds,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2001), 293–309.
Oveer the last 15 or so years, the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture has been publishing academic studies of what seems very much like religious behavior or numinous experience in some species of animals, notably non-human primates. James R. Harrod goes so far as to speak of “chimpanzee religion” in at least one of his articles, and Paul Cunningham makes a good case for what he calls “animal spirituality.”
Since very many species of animals, including non-human primates, have rituals of behavior that serve to maintain their social orders, it seems to me reasonable to suppose a multi-step development over evolutionary time that led to human religions: (1) unsought experiences of awe and other sorts of numinous experience, and (2) ritualized behavior developing in response to such experiences, as it does in response to many other sorts of animal experience. From these develop (3) more or less well organized systems of ritual response, or ceremonies, which are to be exhibited at appropriate times and/or places (leading to calendars and maps of various sorts). And eventually, humans –being human! — eventually try to think about their behavior of this sort, developing philosophies and theologies as a sort of [inherently inadequate, IMHO] intellectualization of their experience. All this, of course,. is very much IMHO — basically, just my own [inherently inadequate] intellectualization.
JMG,
I remember you saying somewhere on this blog that the Islamic world itself is due its own version of the Protestant reformation in about a century or two, since it is about 600-700 years behind Christianity timeline wise. If that’s the case then maybe the Magian sphere does temporarily expand to Europe before the Islamic Protestant reformation leads Europe to break away from the Magian sphere and adopt a Faustian version of Islam with a focus on the Koran.
Dear JMG,
In “The King in Yellow” you discussed the respective workings that the 4-Channers and the Hillary insiders were unintentionally engaged in that affected the 2016 election (i.e. chaos magic and ‘mindfulness’). On your Dreamwidth journal you also mentioned the recent wind change in matters occult-ish that may have contributed to the failure of the Trump assassination attempt. Do you think there has been a similar working that a mass population has unintentionally engaged thing that lightened the karmic mood, either because they were intended to be malicious and failed, or were intended to benefit others and succeeded?
One possibility that comes to mind is the attempt by the corporate press to enforce conformity first through lies, then division and hate, and finally fear, which seemed to drive a lot of people mad. Their ultimate purpose was not achieved, although they certainly did enough damage. I wonder if seeing Biden’s performance at the debate allowed a great many people to see through the veil that had been pulled over their eyes and reduced the power of that working/persuasion attempt. But while that would lead to (well deserved) blowback, I don’t know if it would have released whatever positive energy into the world many seem to be feeling.
Is there an unintentional, positive working going on that we are benefiting from that can be identified without dampening the effectiveness? (I understand you may need to wait a bit before telling all you know.)
RE: media blowback–The funniest I’ve seen so far involved Don Lemon, who after being drummed out of CNN was given a lay-up on a silver platter by the richest man in the world to rebrand and launch a new show. But he couldn’t break out of the false narrative he’d been spreading for years and ended up beclowning himself by calling his benefactor a racist in the very first interview!
Here is a conspiratorial thought. The real purpose of some of the more questionable lone young male gunman incidents was not to encourage gun control, as some believe. But to condition the public to believe such incidents were to be expected and the result of meds or video games.
This when the deep state needed to remove a public figure from the game board they could set up some poor gullible kid as the patsy and no one would question his motivations.
@Jim Kukula
Neat idea! I’ll have to look into that. My real aim with this is to map the psycho-spiritual mechanisms found in koan practice against complimentary representations in stuff like alchemy, tarot, theurgic ritual magic, etc. In my experience, Westerners just don’t get what koan practice is all about. I know I didn’t coming up and I think what gets passed for koan “interpretation” on the internet (or even in treatments by people who you’d think would know better) is, shall we say, wanting. Or wrong. Mostly it’s just all wrong. But the fact of the matter is that koans can be quite approachable. The aren’t as impenetrable as people make them out to be. Most folks just need a kind of on-ramp.
I actually just started looking into Western esotericism about three years ago and was immediately struck by its parallels to Zen. I think that most people who do magical work already have their minds primed to productively work with koans. They just need to have that initial association made. I think there may be something here worth sharing.
And JMG, thank you much for the recommendations!
BeardTree, among the many other questions the media aren’t talking about…
Katsmama, thanks for this.
A Reader, I don’t know of many similar books, but one of the authors, Peter Tompkins, did one entitled Secrets of the Soil that may be worth your while. The Secret Life of Plants was interesting, though I never had the chance to replicate the experiments — which I’d want to do before trusting it. (There was a lot of world-class horseradish being shoveled in “alternative” books in those days.) My take on plants is much more based on personal experiences.
SilcoRaab, oh, heavens, yes. I recall reading stories in which weather control was a central theme when I was a kid. One — I have lost the author and title, but I recall the story — had “sessile boats” skidding over the sun’s surface to tinker with solar radiation and fix climate on earth. Given that a midsized hurricane releases more energy than is contained in all the nuclear arsenals on earth, I’m not too worried about seeing any of that come to pass.
Mary, thanks for this.
Robert G, of course it’s impossible to prove a negative, so I’ll just say it seems vanishingly unlikely to me. It’s always possible to hypothesize some technology so omnipotent that it can do anything you care to name, and as long as you’re vague enough about the mechanism you can get away with it in a story. Note, though, that I wasn’t discussing advanced technology; the example in question was that of rubbing an ointment on the body and being turned into a jackass in a matter of minutes. That, I think, is pretty clearly out of reach.
Misty, to the best of my knowledge it depends on the ruler of the third and ninth houses in your natal chart. You want a good aspect to the ruler of the third for a short journey and to that of the ninth for a long one.
BeardTree, I just roll my eyes and reach for the popcorn.
Milkyway, I’m judging it from a modest sample of famous literature over the centuries. I’ll leave it to those who are actually there to assess the current mood of the country.
Patricia M, Second Religiosity, here we come. Whee! 😉
Will O, we’ll find out eventually. Now? The squid ink is very thick in that part of the sea at the moment.
Siliconguy, there’s a certain bleak amusement in watching Europe wake up to the fact that it’s left itself disarmed and helpless under the delusive belief that history is over.
Clarke, hmm. I’ll have to put some time — and rather more than a few femtoseconds! — into thinking about that…
Kimberly, fascinating. I’ve never had that happen to me and I’m not at all sure what to make of the claims that it happens to others. (For that matter, I’ve remembered them all along as the Berenstain Bears.)
Renaissance, this is a common problem with legal systems in the late stages of a civilization. It’s one of the things that drives the rise of organized crime; if you can’t get justice from the legal system, after all, you can pay the local hoodlums to take care of it — and that’s part of how the capo of the local mob starts to morph into the baron dispensing justice in his hall.
Jeffrey, I’ve never found this kind of outer planet transit scheme to be especially meaningful, because it tries too hard to get information out of a single factor in the complex spiritual ecology of the heavens. What we get will depend on the whole picture of what happens in the heavens during those nine years.
Pygmycory, delighted to hear this!
Slithy, interesting. I suppose that’s one possibility.
Ennobled, I’ll throw this out to the commentariat as a whole.
Bofur, oh, for the gods’ sakes. How many times do we have to go through the same logic that gave us the Covid vaccines before we start thinking “ah, but what could go wrong?” instead of just spinning some vast scheme like this, with an almost infinite range of unknowable side effects? When you’re in a hole, stop digging; when your society is crumbling due to the unintended side effects of hypercomplex technological quick fixes, stop trotting out more of them.
Chuaquin, I don’t, really. He’s one of the current crop of third party candidates who are going through the motions but don’t have a chance.
Richard, it’s an interesting speculation.
Gollios, I’m not at all sure what’s going on at this point. If what’s going on right now is the effect of a positive working, it’s been competently designed and is being kept sensibly very secret — certainly I haven’t been informed. If it’s the results of a negative working going into full-force blowback, I’d expect a pretty high body count before it’s over with. As for Don Lemon, he’s the poster child for the priviliged classes these days — it probably never occurred to him that he might have to deal with the consequences of his actions.
Clay, hmm. I suppose.
Hi John,
In exploring the coming “Fall of Europe”, and having had discussions with the wife, it seems that she is outright refusing to ever consider leaving Europe.
She has found the idea of moving to Madeira quite appealing and thanks to the D7 visa route – see https://www.portugalpathways.io/documentation-posts/navigating-the-d7-visa-portugals-passive-income-visa-or-retirement-visa-benefits – this is a viable option for the future.
Madeira also has the advantages of having historic connections with where I currently live and we have a large Madeiran population.
So, given I am almost 40 and realistically have maybe 50 years ahead of me (e.g. to the 2070s) is, at some point, moving to Madeira and hiding it out as Europe implodes in the decades ahead a reasonable plan?
“My take on plants is much more based on personal experiences.”
JMG, would you please summarize your experiences or give me some leads? I understand that it is a question for a full blog post and not a mere reply to comment. I look forward to reading the blog post if you have time to elaborate !!
“same logic that gave us the Covid vaccines”
Alright, alright, chill. I’m just throwing ideas out there. I just hate all the plastic, that’s all.
@ CR Patiño #26,
I greatly enjoyed De Waal’s “Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?” I reckon some of us are, and some of us aren’t 🙂
Last month I didn’t thank you for your answers to my question about the purely obsessive OCD I seem to have.
and I would like to do it in this open post
“Achille, I wish I knew of something that would help, but anything I know how to do would probably be against your religion. Sorry.”
JMG
Thanks I appreciate your sincere response JMG
methylethyl says:
@Achille
If your particular iinteration of Christianity allows it, you might try asking St. Therese, or the Archangel Raphael, to intercede for you.
Thanks for that , mi particular interaction with christianity Is catolicism but i feel ok also with ortodox christianity ( i belive they are the same church only separated by the wish of power of the empereors of west an east and whith very small doctrinal diferences.)
nowadays mi spiritual practices are 10 minutes of
Heart prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us)
And The prayer off our father two times at day in the morning and in the night.
I think im going to add one off the prayers you recomend.
With respect to the discussions in previous posts about Trump and his resemblance to Napoleon in terms of luck, I recall from Churchill’s autobiography that he put himself in danger a lot in his early military career and seemed to lead a charmed life. Between the wars he was also vilified by the media of the time as a war-monger and responsible for the debacle of Gallipoli. So perhaps he is a better model for what Trump could be.
@Ennobled (#41)
Your question reminds me of a corny old joke. Europeans say they can tell where they’ve gone in the afterlife from the nationalities of their neighbours: in heaven, the cook is Italian, the repairman is German, the policeman is English, the banker is Swiss, and so forth; in hell, the banker is Italian, the policeman is German, the cook is English….
Alex Thurber #7, Re animals. I know a young lively dog who annoys the daylights out of the cat and dog it lives with, but never bothers them when they are in their beds. That must be bar.
Siliconguy #32, Yes, Britain is militarily very weak now, but it was also weak in the 1930s and managed a comeback. Although let us not forget the aid of their American cousins.
To Robert +45
I only just read, last week, a description of a group of young male chimps, from Jane Goodall. If I remember rightly, they were walking down an unfamiliar river together when they rounded a bend and came upon a massive waterfall thundering into a pool. They all stopped, amazed, and then, after a goodly pause in which they seemed to be stockstill in wonder and awe at the spectacle, they put their hands above their heads and began to dance.
Is that not a most beautiful scene to imagine?
@Katsmama #17,
Thank you for the recommendation. I’ve already placed my order for American Peasant and included a couple other books from the site. I will definitely be perusing the site more closely.
WILL1000
JMG, you’ve talked before about how intentional communities (especially religious ones) seem to only work if the members accept poverty and chastity (and maybe there was one more thing I’m blanking on – hard work?). Do you, or anyone else here, know of a good overview of successful vs unsuccessful intentional communities (or even just one or the other), or is that something you’ve put together from your own observations?
@Ennobled little day #41 re: English Culture
I haven’t read it yet, though it’s been on my list for some time, but
Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behavior is meant to be a study of English culture that might give some insight.
Cheers,
Jeff
Dear Mr Greer,
On your Magic Monday post at the end of June you mentioned, about Star’s Reach: “It’s an early novel of mine and there are aspects of it that seem clumsy to me now, but on the whole it still works very well.”
Star’s Reach is one of my favorite novels and I try to re-read it at least once a year. I was just curious what, you as the author, feel are clumsy aspects? Or what you would have changed if you wrote it again?
Thank you!
No matter how I try, I will never forget the BERENSTAIN bears. Sonkitten loved them. I was ecstatic when he could finally read that crap himself. The authors were so lazy they didn’t even bother to name the kid bears, who were called Brother and Sister. 🙄
—Princess Cutekitten
Ok, history does rhyme and it’s probably time to get out your history bingo cards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drDs-Y5DNH8
It’s Billy Joel’s “We didn’t start the fire” put into medieval times (making only sparing use of visuals). That being said… “Few things here to read but the Nibelungenlied”.
Have fun,
Nachtgurke
JMG or others,
Are some people born “older” than others – as in already wiser to the ways of the world, less naive, better able to understand the world …? Is someone born “younger” a newer soul that has reincarnated fewer times – or is this thinking nonsense?
Thanks.
Siriusactuary
Regarding the assassination attempt, I agree with JMG that we may never know the full story. Too many gaps in the information.
I will point out is that many in the secret service have said there is one single weakness they have. If someone is willing to die to carry out a violent action, this makes them much more likely to succeed. It removes a lot of the cautious behaviour and questionable appearance of individuals.
It is like we could put somebody on Mars next year if we don’t have any plans to bring them back and are happy with the result just being a crater.
JMG,
> I’m judging it from a modest sample of famous literature over the centuries
That‘s interesting, it didn‘t occur to me to approach it that way. I’ll need to think about this. Thanks! 🙂
Milkyway
Clay,
I’m going to suggest something very unfashionable in some circles, and say that there is no way that it is possible video games are not involved in at least some mass shootings. There’s a very strange phenomena known as game transfer phenomena, whereby some people who play a lot of video games will start having hallucinations or delusions that they are actually in a video game. Given how popular first person shooters are, I find it highly likely that at least some mass shooters from recent years are suffering from this effect.
https://english.pravda.ru/news/society/160124-russian-economist/
Well-known Russian economist falls out of window of her apartment
Valentina Bondarenko, a leading researcher at the Center for Institutes of Socio-Economic Development at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, fell out of the window of her apartment in the Voskresenskoye settlement near Moscow on July 22.
@Phutatorius #8: I haven’t finished re-reading the essay yet (it was my lunch break reading at work, but I’ve been off vacation since last week with a family reunion just over yesterday). I hope to get back to it on Monday. I hadn’t gotten much past the Artaud part of the equation. My tastes in pomo lit crit have changed over the years, so it will be interesting to fully go through it again. In the meantime I will look up at the poem, “City of Dreadful Night” and give it a read. I hadn’t heard of it before. Thanks for taking a stab at the long essay, and I’m glad you got something out of it despite the Derrida / derivative, Lacan / Lacan’t-ian nature of it. (Lacan’t is one of the most dreadful IMO).
@David by the Lake #13: Hi David, I’m glad you will be submitting your work to the next issue. I really enjoyed your heartfelt story “Practicality” in the Winter 2024 issue of New Maps. It was one of my favorites in that issue. I’m looking forward to reading the other contributors works in Symphonies of Imagination as well. It was waiting for me when we got back home from Tennessee yesterday.
@Kimberley: I haven’t heard of this, but it put me in mind of the great Soft Cell cover of the James Bond theme for You Only Live Twice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQwCIDxO0cA
JMG wrote, “Phutatorius, it fascinates me that what started with orcas is spreading to other whales. I’m beginning to wonder what a cetacean jihad would look like.” I am guessing that this was just the whale retaliating for the recent arrest of Paul Watson.
There are no more grasshoppers here than usual. There were more potato beetles than usual. On the other hand there are many fewer squash bugs. Last year I gave up on cucurbits entirely, that may have starved them out. Or maybe it was the very cold week back in January that killed them. Either way, good riddance.
The other national news is the Crowdstrike screwup. It’s really efficient (by which they mean cheap) to outsource your corporate IT security to another company up to the second they screwup and your infrastructure crashes down around your ears. They had to go to every affected Windows PC, boot it in safe mode, then navigate to the correct directory and manually delete the messed up file. Then you can reboot.
Oh, if you encrypted the disk then there are more steps. If you don’t remember your Bitlocker password then you are looking at a full reinstallation situation.
The system just keeps getting more brittle.
And Social Security now has a one stop system by joining Login.gov. One common place for all your personal information. Doesn’t that just give you the warm and fuzzies?
@Slithy Toves #43 – Thinking of a European winter when for weeks even when there’s light there are no colours except for scales of grey and white, this somehow makes a lot of sense. Thank you!
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
Neko (#49) —
Re Jung and koan practice — perhaps Jung’s idea of the “transcendent function” would be useful Briefly, when one finds oneself enmeshed in an intense dilemma that cannot but must be resolved, there are times when *something else* happens, and one ends up seeing the situation from another point of view, one that, so to speak, resolves the binary.
For Jung, this occurs not through cleverness or other forms of ordinary problem-solving, but through a transformation in viewpoint that arises from outside ordinary, “official” awareness. The effect of several such experiences can be to de-center ordinary awareness.
Re alchemical texts, the Mutus Liber is also worth a look. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutus_Liber: the end of the article has a link to a PDF from the Library of Congress)
LeGrand
A natural magic question:
Since tin is kind of lousy to work with, and also not great for the skin… is a good tin alloy like pewter Jupiterian enough to do the job as a Jupiter metal, in jewelry for instance?
Thanks
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May Falling Tree Woman’s son’s girlfriend’s mother Bridget in Devon UK, who has recently regained consciousness after a week of sedation following a life-threatening fall from a horse, be blessed and healed and returned to full health.
May Neptune’s Dolphins’ husband David, who lost one toe to a staph infection last year and now faces further toe amputations due to diabetic ulcers in his left foot, be blessed and healed, and may the infection leave his body for good.
May young Azalea Troung of California, who recently had a life threatening reaction to the initial antibiotic applied for a finger bone infection, resolve her reaction without lasting issue; may the infection be completely cleared from her body; and may her family, including those physically separated from her, be strengthened against fear and dread.
May Rebecca, who has just been laid off from her job and is the sole provider for her family, quickly discover a viable means to continue to support her family; may she and her family be blessed and sustained in their journey forward.
May Just Another Green Rage Monster, his mother, and his Kiddo be blessed and healed as they deal with the loss of Monster’s father.
May Kerry’s dad Michael, who is experiencing extreme delusional behavior and overwhelming anxiety, be healed mentally and emotionally.
May Ian, who has recently been diagnosed with Diastolic Heart Failure, be healed and restored to full health quickly and completely.
Regarding Princess Cutekitten’s recently renewed problems with mortgage servicers causing her difficulties, may the situation resolve in the best way possible.
May MindWinds’ dad, Clem, be blessed and healed after his fall and consequent head injury.
May Jeff H’s cat Tuxy, who ran off from their new home in June, be safely returned home to Jeff’s family.
May Jennifer have a safe and healthy pregnancy, may the delivery go smoothly, and may her baby be born healthy and blessed.
May Ecosophian, whose cat Cheesecake (picture)ran away on Wednesday 6/12, be safely reunited with Cheesecake; and may Cheesecake be protected and guided on his journey home.
May Kyle’s friend Amanda, who though in her early thirties is undergoing various difficult treatments for brain cancer, make a full recovery; and may her body and spirit heal with grace.
May Jennifer’s father Robert, who passed away on May 29th, be blessed and soothed, and may his soul be helped to its ultimate destiny and greatest good.
Tyler A’s wife Monika’s pregnancy is high risk, and has now successfully entered the third trimester; may Monika and baby Isabelle both be blessed with good health and a smooth delivery.
May Jennifer’s mother Nancy G. in SW Missouri is still recovering from various troubles including brain surgery for hydrocephaly; may she be healed, regain her mobility, and be encouraged with loving energy.
May Erika, who recently lost her partner James and has been dealing with major knee problems (and who senses a connection between the two), be healed in both broken heart and broken knee, and be able to dance in the sun once more.
May Doug Y of Geauga County, Ohio be supported and healed as he makes his way through the diagnosis and treatment process for prostate cancer.
May Ms. Krieger’s hometown of Norwalk, Connecticut recover quickly and fully from the gasoline tanker fire that destroyed an overpass and shut down interstate 95 on May 2. May the anger and fire that has made driving in the area so fraught cool down in a way that benefits all beings. May all people, animals, and other beings around the highway, the adjacent river and the harbor be protected and blessed, and may the natural environment improve to the benefit of all. (update)
May Christina, who passed away on 5/8, experience a peaceful repose; may the minor child she leaves behind be cared for, and the needs of all affected me met; and may her family be comforted in this difficult time.
May Frank Rudolf Hartman of Altadena California (picture), who is receiving chemotherapy, be completely cured of the lymphoma that is afflicting him, and may he return to full health.
Lp9’s hometown, East Palestine, Ohio, for the safety and welfare of their people, animals and all living beings in and around East Palestine, and to improve the natural environment there to the benefit of all.
* * *
Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Taylor B, while I don’t deny that there are likely mass shooters that wouldn’t have done it without violent video games, at this point, nearly every male under 40 in developed countries has been exposed to violent video games – so the effect must be fairly small, if it indeed exists.
People on social media have been blaming George Soros for funding huge numbers of protesters to come to Washington by bus to burn American flags during Netanyahu’s visit.
I’m wondering what opinions you have of George Soros… is he an evil machinator pulling the strings to destroy the West or is he a bogeyman created to give a simplistic explanation for more complicated social phenomena?
>Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
When it comes to the deep state, ascribe to malice first then stupidity. They hate you.
Forecasting, it’s a crapshoot, but then so is everything else.
A Reader, I tend to be very shy about discussing my own spiritual experiences. I’d encourage you instead to spend a lot of time around plants, especially while doing daily occult practices.
Bofur, so noted, but that kind of thinking is far too common.
Achille, you’re most welcome.
KAN, a case could doubtless be made. Churchill was also a cad, so that’s another similarity.
Jeff, I don’t recall ever seeing one. It’s a subject I studied fairly closely at some point, but that involved reading a lot of detailed histories of specific communities and movements.
Ruinman85, some of the prose seems a little clunky to me, and I could have done a better job foreshadowing the business with Jennel Cobey at the end. They’re not fatal issues by any means, though, and I’m delighted to hear you like the novel.
Siriusactuary, there are certainly older and younger souls, and it’s very much a matter of how many incarnations they’ve been through. Most older souls aren’t necessarily fountains of wisdom, though, because they typically have a lot of scars from the karma due to bad choices back in the day.
Patricia M, that is to say, Russian politics as usual. Those windows do get a regular workout.
Phutatorius, maybe. We’ll see.
Woods, not really. Metal talismans require pure metal (except Mercury, which handles alloys well). Remember you can, and generally should, put the talisman in a cloth bag!
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Sam, both of those seem simplistic to me. That said, Soros and his allies have their own political agenda and are good at hiring mobs to push it forward.
@A Reader says:
I found ‘The Secret Life Of Plants’ to be a bit sensationalistic, shallow, and anecdotal. Though I read it way back in the day and might not be doing it justice.
But plants have so much to teach us, and they surely have over the millenia. Stephen Harrod Buhner has written very perceptively on this (among other things). You might have a look at ‘Secret Teachings of Plants’.
>Oh, if you encrypted the disk then there are more steps. If you don’t remember your Bitlocker password then you are looking at a full reinstallation situation.
There were some tragicomic moments where the in-house IT people had indeed saved those passwords – but the computer they saved them to was also unable to boot. A circular dependency of doom.
I don’t know if it’s so much about efficiency as it is blame shifting if things go wrong. Corporate bureaucracies tend to be cautious and risk averse. Clownstrike serves as a convenient place to point fingers at when things go wrong. It’s not my fault, Mr CEO, it’s that Clownstrike vendor everyone uses. Except as we saw, the systems were still down.
@ Old Steve #57
Funny!!! I will have to remember that one.
@Jeff #62
Thanks for the recommendation!
Hello Mr Greer,
I was wondering what your expectations are for Sub-Saharan Africa. The question has two parts: first, what about the fate of Africa itself? It has enormous demographic potential and natural resources, so possibly greatness awaits it if the peoples manage to throw away the European and American colonial yoke. But some geographic features work strongly against such destiny, so do you think Africa can become prosperous and a significant actor in the world affairs in its own right?
The second part is about the influence of Africa on the rest of the world. Arguably Africa is currenty one of the very few demographically vital places, and there are significant flows of people from there towards Europe and North America. However, most of the Africans emmigrating seem to be Christian or Muslim. Are there any other autochtonous traditions and systems of ideas that might get transferred in the people displacement process? Africa has already influenced Western popular culture to a large extent, but I have not noticed any philosophical or religious ideas connected with the demographic changes. Am I missing something? Are there any noteworthy African traditions that we will be hearing more of in the future? Thanks!
Many greetings.
>I think that we are obliged to bioengineer bacteria that consume plastic
Nah, nature will figure that out all on her own, just give her time. And it’s more likely to be the fungi that will figure it out first.
I’m not wanting to hurry that up at all either. Plastic doesn’t corrode but it does get brittle over time and eventually cracks or shatters. Add critters eating on it and it becomes almost useless to use it in any outdoor application. Or they’ll start adding things to the plastic to keep the critters away but that will make the plastic super toxic.
Hi everyone.
1) I’m interested in learning a bit more about the relationship between places/land and spirits/non-physical beings. Any advice on introductory reading?
2) I was wondering if anybody in the Brisbane area would be interested in a monthly meet-up group to discuss Ecosophian ideas, exchange plants etc. My email is cookr1808@gmail.com in case anyone wants to get in touch.
The extent to which language shapes and limits experience and thought is a recurrent topic, so I thought I’d mention two contrasting items, one of which I don’t think has come up so far, and one that has. The two ideally would be read together, so that they could raise a right ruckus in one’s head.
The first one is a book by the well-known (and now somewhat notorious) linguist John McWhorter, *The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language*. One of McWhorter’s specialties is “creoles”, languages that, like English and most other widely used languages, develop as a result of collision between and adaptation of various languages.
The book itself isn’t as intemperate as the title suggests. Basically, McWhorter goes after what might be called “vulgar Whorfianism” — that is, the casual, popularized notions that are associated with Whorf (and Sapir). In addition to a grab-bag of empirical counter-examples, he makes two major general points.
First, although at any particular point it’s possible to feel that a language has an inherent character and worldview that give it the quality of an organism, historically languages tend to be very much accidental agglomerations, picking up and dropping not only words but “deeper” features as well. When one documents a language, it is like taking a snapshot that freezes it in time, but that leaves out how it got there and where it is going. To take an example he doesn’t use, Finnish does not have grammatical gender — and, traditionally, Finnish personal names were not gendered. But, if I remember correctly, at some point in the late 19th or early 20th century some reforming souls decided that the modern, progressive thing was to have gendered names; an official list was made up, and afterward people assigned living at birth were required to be given a name that accorded with their
biological sex.
Second, supposedly determining features (like presence or absence of gender markers, tenses, etc) vary independently, not together, and drift across languages — and do not incapacitate speakers of those languages from dealing with time, sex, and so on. For example, well-meaning people try to improve things by outlawing or revising words or linguistic structures. But euphemisms often don’t last (or become dysphemisms — as with “special” ); massive structural renovations, like banning substantives in connection with people (“person with schizophrenia” instead of “schizophrenic”) simply create an official, and ever-changing, cant that runs alongside of what is already in place.
On the other hand, there’s Penny Lee’s “Whorf Theory Complex*, which is a very careful and subtle study of just what Whorf set out to do, and what the context of his project was. (One interesting feature is that Whorf had developed something like an early form of object relations theory. It was not so much that grammar was the primary source of the structures through which people “read” the world, as that interpersonal structures (especially familial) are the first models for linguistic structures.) Lee works extensively with Whorf’s unpublished papers, and is able to give a picture of his work, and its development, that moves it far beyond the second- or third-hand “vulgar Whorfian” ideas that float around in the collective consciousness.
LeGrand
A big thank you to whoever recommended the book “The Complete Tightwad Gazette” by Amy Dacyczyn written in 1998. It is now my 13-year-old’s favorite book. It’s inspiring, sometimes hysterical, and a great history lesson (and brought my family hours of entertainment). My kids wants to know if there a similar book, on being frugal, that is more up-to-date. Also, JMG, if you designed a homeschooling curriculum for high-schoolers, what would be your top choices? Many thanks for all you do.
Thanks for your reply, JMG. I remember it as Berenstain as well. When I was a kid, I had a photographic memory for spelling. I no longer have it. I remember being mildly weirded out by the Berenstain name because it had “stain” in it. But for others, maybe it is and always was “stein” and maybe they are not wrong.
As to the Mandela Effect, I speculate reality truly is subjective. In 1911, Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, two English scholars, wrote a book called An Adventure about a joint experience they had while touring the palace grounds of Versailles. Both had similar but different experiences of time-traveling back to the late 18th century. Both “saw” a sinister, diseased man who gave them the creeps. Moberly “saw” a woman she believed to be Marie Antoinette. Jourdain did not see the woman. Other details about the flashback were unique to each woman. I think the Moberly-Jourdain incident may have some truths to offer us here. It’s possible there are no alternate timelines at all. Maybe it is like Moberly and Jourdain. Some of us see certain vibrations that manifest “down here” one way and others see it differently. The details are changed for one individual or another: it’s like a version of colorblindness. Same source material, different perception. The material world is an illusion or a “stage” like Shakespeare said.
I mentioned in my blog comments that not all things seem to be mutable. For instance, there are people inspired by Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret, who think they can escape the karma of unearned wealth. There are people who believe they can alter the past by fervently wishing it didn’t happen or some such nonsense. I am going to speculate the consequences for unearned wealth and the kind of thinking time is whatever we want it to be are horrific. If the gods are kind, maybe these people will get to live them out over multiple lifetimes.
Hi JMG,
I’ve followed the Cell Salt Carey Protocol from the time you introduced it, and finally ran out of my old Hyland’s Bioplasma. IIRC , just one tablet of the new version from Hylands is correct for every day. Do I understand correctly? Also, for my appropriate moon phase doses of #4, #6, #9 and #11, should I cut the various doses to just one of each of the new Hyland’s version?
This new version of Hylands has an expiration date stamped on the bottle, but the old ones I have do not. Since they are a few years old, should I dispose of them and start fresh?
Thanks! I do believe my health is better following this program.
OtterGirl
With all the craziness goin on in the world this week, I figured it always good to have some perspective and realize, well, this ain’t the first time and won’t be last time things feel a bit hectic. So I’ll just leave this here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drDs-Y5DNH8
I’ll be darned JMG, they even manged to make Nibelungenlied rhyme, ha ha.
Regarding the possible “Protestantization” of Islam: Reza Aslan has suggested that al-Qaeda represents one kind of quasi-Protestant Islamism. Concretely, he referenced the fact that Osama bin Laden began issuing fatwas to promote attacks on the US and on American citizens. Aslan’s point is that bin Laden was neither a jurist nor a scholar, and therefore he had NO authority to issue fatwas!
If bin Laden had really been the kind of traditionalist he aspired to be, this would have stopped him. But it didn’t.
Hey JMG
I can’t believe that Katsama beat me to it, I was going to recommend “The American peasant” on account of it going into the meaning of various glyphs traditionally carved onto furniture in central Europe which seem to have some kind of magical and religious significance, like the “Hex-signs” of the Pennsylvanian Dutch. It is also just a great DIY book of furniture inspired by pieces built by “Peasants” throughout Europe.
Also, I shall be publishing my book-review of Dali’s “50 secrets” at some point this month.
Quin, #77. I am not sure how to be added to your prayer list, which I read every week and to try to pray for the people on it. But I would like to ask for prayers for my brother in law, Patrick, who is dying. He is 76 years old and has dementia and cancer. He is going downhill quickly. Unfortunately, my sister, Maggie, his wife, has been very ill herself, for years now and so is beyond exhausted. I would like to request prayers for Patrick to “Go gentle into that good light “, and for my sister to find the strength and peace she needs at this moment in time. Thank you very much, Quin. Please forgive me if this is the wrong way to ask for prayers. We are Catholics, but of course accept all prayers, especially from this wonderful, loving community. Thank you again, Quin, the service you provide this community is truly amazing and most appreciated.
@Patricia: re: the young folks: I am seeing it every week! If you only look at the internet, it’s easy to despair for humanity and the younger generations, but the ones turning up in surprising numbers every week at church… they give me hope. Whatever it is the culture is selling these days: they aren’t buying it.
It has felt to me that my life thus far has been a succession of stepping out of stories and narratives. My latest writing is both a chronicle of this and a plea to examine others’ stories from within, to relax judgement of others and seek common ground across divides, which feels especially important in this moment. With your permission I’d like to share it here.
https://dendroica.substack.com/p/the-view-from-outside
So how many people in the States do you think might be initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn?
Soko, as Europe collapses I expect Africa to rise. It won’t be a fast process or an easy one — there will be tremendous wars as the artificial colonial borders collapse, and those will drive a very large African diaspora over much of the world. What traditions they will bring with them is a complex question, since Africa is the world’s second largest continent and its peoples are tremendously diverse; I don’t know the cultures well enough to hazard a guess.
Russell, you might look into Nigel Pennick’s many books on the subject.
LeGrand, thanks for this.
Caroline, it would depend on the high schoolers! By the time they’re that age they should have a good grasp of literacy and numeracy, so it’s time to start letting them begin moving in more specialized directions depending on their personal interests and talents.
Kimberly, the Mandela thing is another example; I remember very clearly the death that most people talk about in that context, and it wasn’t Mandela, it was Steve Biko. Maybe the rest of you have come to my timeline. 😉 But, yes, I’m familiar with An Adventure; my take is that they had a burst of clairvoyant experience, and it happened to involve images out of time. There are other examples of that.
Ottergirl, one pill of the new Bioplasma will work, but the doses of the personal blend are a more difficult matter — if you just take one pill of each the proportions will be all wrong. You may want to look into one of the other cell salt companies. Cell salts don’t expire, btw, so you don’t have to throw them out.
Andrew, thanks for this.
Hosea, hmm! Yes, that makes sense.
J.L.Mc12, duly noted and thank you.
Mark, thanks for this.
Alan, depends very much on definition. There are at least a dozen competing GD orders active in the US right now, plus an unknown number of independent lodges working the original rituals, plus more orders and lodges working modified rituals, plus the gods alone know how many self-initiated practioners. What definition do you have in mind?
Jeff at #61
Dmitry Orlov published a short book called Communities That Abide. Without looking for it to refresh my recollection, I do remember it having an extended list of features he found in common among diverse small and insular communities that have managed to survive and remain independent for generations or centuries.
I seem to remember an anecdote about one such community that required having cut flowers on the table at meals, as an example of ways that cultural and ritual traditions often involve non-survival-related labor that serves to limit the accumulation of excess wealth. That is to say, the book was interesting!
It has been clear for some time that Biden could not serve or survive a second term in office. I do not agree that Jill Biden wants to go on living in the WH; she has made no attempt to establish herself as Important Society Hostess. I think she has been holding out for the best deal she could get for her husband, retirement with honor, revered elder statesman status etc. A number of things took place this last week to bring matters to a head, and (I surmise) Jill got what she wanted.
About Harris: she may be unpopular, but she does benefit from favoritism for great looking women bias. That would be the same bias which enabled the careers of any number of highly paid nitwits at FOX and MSNBC, not to mention Haley and others. The point being, there are a limited number of insults the Republicans can use against her. She cannot plausibly be denounced as ugly, well, synonyms meaning that, boring, school marmish, and so on. So far, childless and DEI are the best they can come up with. The Democratic staffers seem to have learned a thing or two since the Clinton debacle. The VP is now impeccably turned out, in professional attire which actually fits her (as a sewist, I notice things like that). There is no Clintonian jewelry flaunting vulgarity and no visible it’s all about me attitude on display. She was introduced to the voting public at a small but enthusiastic rally in Wisconsin as…Nancy Drew. The attractive, of course, but never mean, smart, capable girl who can get stuff done. Never mind what a lie that is, it is no worse a one than the theme that Trump is a brilliant businessman. The subtext of her speech, insofar as there was one, was not We need a revolution, but We can fix this. For voters repelled by Trumpian drama, that is a most appealing message. Nancy Drew is also a theme which is deeply a part of the American imagination; for fellow Wheel of Time readers, think Egwene.
If the running mate pick is Shapiro, that will mean the Democrats have decided, in the face of rising public opposition, to go Zionist all the way and they will lose. If Harris is well enough received over the next few weeks the Dems may decide they have a chance to contest Appalachia and the MidWest and the nod will almost certainly go to Andy Bashear. The choice falling on Mark Kelly would mean an all West Coast ticket. Kelly is the kind of candidate West Coast voters love and if he could, with relentless personal campaigning, deliver say, Colorado, Montana and Arizona and if Democratic officeholders in Nevada and New Mexico could deliver their states, that could leave Harris free to campaign in the South and the big cities.
Mister Nobody, there’s a minefield of consequences in front of Captain Obvious and his platoon of puzzlers, none of which Ms Cheatle managed to put out of action during her brief tenure after the assassination attempt.
Fishy? I’m gettin’ old and shorter of breath and closer to death and all that, and my patience wanes, and I don’t mean with you, I mean with that fool Cheatle and the Clappers and Brennans and Schiffs and Schumers and Frums and Cruzes and McConnells of this world, and there’s a whole ecosystem of them out there.
What all these years on this planet have taught me is to trust my ocular and olfactory apparatus. IOW things are almost always just as they look and smell.
The roof was too steep for the praetorians? Left me in stitches.
Just look at what they did to Trump and his hombres this past nine years, you know, the blatant prosecutorial persecutions and the outlandish accusations and hysterical rhetoric, and then we have the alleged security arrangements, and then wonder of wonders we have bullets fired.
Fishy? Very fishy? You have a marvelous gift for comical understatement. If this wasn’t a set-up, then what was it? But don’t try to answer the question. It can’t be done. It cannot.
And why not? Because if this really wasn’t a set-up, and maybe it really wasn’t, then modern language is inadequate to the task and a new grammar and vocabulary has to be invented to get our heads around this.
Unlike his dad and uncle, maybe RFK Jr read the memo because he was begging for protection. I cannot fathom what Bobby Senior didn’t get about the plain-as-can-be events in Dallas. As for Junior’s idiot Uncle Teddy, he didn’t need to get whacked because he did the job himself at Chappaquiddick.
You don’t need to be Lincoln or G. Washington. That’s obvious given the buffoons elected as president. But you do need the right sign-offs.
The point is this; if you aspire to the Oval Office and you are not one of the anointed, they will rub you out.
Hey JMG
I hope that you will enjoy my essay, however I don’t feel it really captures the book, it is one of those works that is too dense and ornate to easily summarise. I may consider revisiting it in the future, maybe even experimenting with some of his “secrets” to see how well they work.
@JMG – @SOKO “Soko, as Europe collapses I expect Africa to rise. It won’t be a fast process or an easy one” – “What traditions they will bring with them is a complex question”
I have maybe a few days total of reading about Africa culture and traditions, and that is like putting a toe in the ocean compared with the sheer volume of cultures, traditions and stories they bring. Not only is there a lot of people, there is a lot of time to accumulate this.
That said, I hope that the Yoruba idea of Itutu comes along. Essentially, be cool, take it easy and don’t stress TOO much about the ways of the world. And to put it in perspective again, the Yoruba at 50 million people only make up about 4% of the population.
You could spend a life time merely scratching the surface of everything from Africa.
Re Berenstain vs Berenstein – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenstain_Bears#Name_confusion
Greetings all!
(1) Any updates concerning the proposed ecosophian convention at Glastonebury in June 2025?
(2) How likely is it that Israel will launch this year a major air and land offensive on Hezbollah in south Lebanon?
(3) How likely is it that the US and its vassal states (UK, France and Germany mainly) will get involved in such an offensive?
(4) How likely is it that nuclear devices will be used by Israel in south Lebanon?
PS: by likely I mean a 50% or greater probability.
Regards and thanks
Bardcore’s “We Did Not Start The Fire” is both fun and fascinating. The rock melody translates very well into the medieval, acoustic instruments. It makes me wonder how many favorite rock and pop tunes will travel into future centuries as “Classical Rock”?
Tech Rot is amping up in intensity. My employer’s IT just let Microsoft push us into Windows 11 for our work machines. It is not an “upgrade”, it is a “downgrade”. I still use Windows 7 on my home machine and the diminished functionality of Windows 11 vs 7 is stark. File Explorer’s file search utility offers multiple, intuitive, user-friendly options, including a miniature calendar you can swipe and select the dates you want to search on. All of these are gone in 11. Similarly, the ‘F’ and ‘R’ hotkeys in Notepad’s “search and replace” box are gone– you now have to click the buttons Every. Single. Time. And of course, the beautiful Aero look from Windows 7 got tossed out in Win 10 even.
Adding clicks to formerly-simple user interfaces also seems to be the new thing. Wikipedia for example, now opens up in too-large font, and you have to use the new little window to select the smaller font, then close the little window. To search, there is no longer a visible search box, you have to click on a magnifying glass to make the search box appear, >then< you can enter your search term.
As for George Soros, he appears to be genetically, but not philosophically, Jewish.
Here are a couple of articles showing some Jews being critical of Soros:
https://www.jta.org/archive/in-rare-jewish-appearance-george-soros-says-jews-and-israel-cause-anti-semitism
https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/dissecting-the-george-soros-agenda/
A few months ago I was stunned to hear an “affordable” housing developer insist that 1200 square feet is the minimum acceptable home size. She quoted a statistic stating that 1200 sq ft is the average apartment size now. The implication is that if the average is 1200, it’s unfair to impose smaller living arrangements on lower income households.
It seems obvious to me that using fewer materials and less energy per home is the very essence of affordability. But not only was it not obvious to her, she became curt when I tried to explore her reasoning.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Is this still true in the current American milieu? I thought recent price shocks would have readjusted expectations. Clearly, I was wrong.
What are the attitudes of your friends and neighbors? Are there any signs that people are connecting the dots?
I was reading Monsters recently, and as soon as I read about the Faery and the association that the Japanese have between Faeries and Foxes, I immediately thought of Nāgas.
In India, there has always been a myth around serpents. The Mahabharata discusses mystical serpents in the service of the Serpent Lord Takshaka, who live in a chthonian realm lush with beautiful lakes and gorgeous jewelled palaces, where a mortal cannot survive without drinking the divine nectar. To this day, there are occassions during which people leave a bowl of milk out for the snakes.
My grandmother used to tell me the tales of the Nāga when I was a kid. In addition to the Mahabharata, there is a rich folklore around the Nāgas dating back to the middle ages, stemming from rural parts of India – especially my native province, Bengal. Based on these tales, the powers of the Serpents are shapeshifting and illusion. Their personalities are wicked, and while they may sometimes aid a weary and helpless traveller, soon after they will do the traveller harm to compensate for the help done (or, alternatively, demand an exorbitant return on the favour and harm the traveller if they do not pay). Also associated with them is the nāgamani, the Serpent’s Gem. It is a jewel that a Nāga carries, which has great value, a treasure. Sometimes a human may acquire this article from a Nāga, but to take it from a Nāga by force or trickery is to become their permanent enemy. They will not stop until their jewel is back with them.
In the Mahabharata, the queen of the Serpents of Pragjyotishpura, Ulupi, seduces the hero Arjuna and bears a son of his, named Babrubhavana, who proves to be stronger than Arjuna himself and slays his father in war. Ulupi then uses the secret art of Sañjīvanī, which is similar to Necromancy but is supposed to be a class of medicine, to restore the dead Arjuna back to life.
@Milkyway #28, I’ve known Germans who characterized their countrymen as famously—even archetypally—pessimistic. Usually they were laughing when they said it, so maybe this is a joke the Germans tell each other about themselves and non-Germans aren’t in on the joke. But they treated it as a matter of fact, … or at any rate as a normal opinion much like any other national stereotype.
@LeGrand Cinq-Mars (#88):
It’s great to see another here who appreciate’s Penny Lee’s Whorf Theory Complex! Kudos! By a happy chance, her book is sitting by my computer as I read your post and am typing this response …
Vulgar Whorfianism began not very long after Whorf’s death, under the influence of the day’s fashionable scientism, when some of his and Edward Sapir’s students (most notably, Harry Hoijer) thought it would be a good idea to reduce his insights to a empirically testable hypothesis. Of course, this meant simplifying and distorting Whorf’s (and Sapir’s) own thought in the process. In consequence their so-called “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” had not much to do with either Sapir’s or Whorf’s actual views, but it did seem to them to be empirically testable. And it had staying power at the time. (Their “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” was eventually tested, and it was found wanting–and not only by McWhorter. But that result has little bearing on the soundness of Whorf’s own, far more subtle views.)
Not many years after Hoijer’s article appeared I was studying linguistics as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, where the Department of Linguistics was chaired by one of Franz Boas’s own students (Mary R. Haas), where Sapir’s work was far more influential than Bloomfield’s, and where the deep-thinking anthropological linguist Dell Hymes was teaching a course on “Language and Culture.” So of course, it was mostly a Department of Anthropological Linguistics in those pre-Chomskyan days. Whorf’s work was mentioned a lot there, especially by Hymes, and mentioned quite favorably.
But in those far-off days, no one mentioned–and very few even knew–that Whorf himself, despite his MIT degrees in engineering, had also been a life-long esotericist and occultist, and had eventually become a member of the Adhyar branch of H P Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society. (One of Penny Lee’s great services has been her calling attention to this side of Whorf’s life and thought.) Indeed, the editor of the MIT edition of Whorf’s Selected Writings went so far as lightly to change the text of Whorf’s last long paper, which had been published in The Theosophist, to make it seem a little more academically respectable. (I have compared the two texts myself.)
So Whorf has had considerable influence on my own thinking as an esotericist and scholar of esotericism.
The reply #99 to Soko seems to imply that many of the 21st century African diaspora will be heading for Europe which, if the real chaos starts in the second half of this century, will otherwise be rapidly depopulating. Tom Murphy has a YT video on population trends showing every continent except Africa is falling below, or already below replacement level. He also shows that UN projections are nonsense and we will likely see a peak in world population in 10-15 years and a fall to below 4 billion by 2100 – and that is without the wars, pandemics and famines that are likely.
I’d conclude that European population replacement and cultural extinction could be well advanced within the lifetime of today’s children.
Heather says:
July 24, 2024 at 10:01 pm
Hello Heather, thank you so much always for your prayers. I’m sorry to hear about your family’s situation. I will add prayers in the following form for now, but do please feel free to write back again to revise it.
“May Heather’s brother in law, Patrick, who is dying of cancer and has dementia, go gentle into that good light. And may his wife Maggie, who is ill herself, find the strength and peace she needs for her situation.”
Please do feel free to leave a comment again at some point, in one of these posts or at the Prayer List Site, in order to update us on the situation, or to revise the prayer based on how the situation progresses.
Pygmycory wrote, “when I started painting wargaming minis, I was going ‘let’s do something completely frivolous and useless just for fun’…. I’m not sure what this is actually good for in the long run as regards practical utility, but if nothing else, having multiple types of glue and knowing exactly how to best use them is bound to come in handy at some point.”
You are imagining new worlds into existence, as in creatively inventing the images within yourself and then creatively breathing life into those images in the physical world. Now, why does that sound so decidedly similar to the behaviors attributed to God at the very beginning?
Emulating any god is a deep act of devotion, a blessing upon creation, and very useful training practice for our own ultimate divination. Walking in the footsteps of divinity will always be repeating a divine act, by definition. You are helping the gods to imagine your corner of the universe into existence, and I imagine they’re delighted by your efforts.
Besides, just how unnecessarily frivolous was it for the cosmos to ever bring itself into physical manifestation in the first place? What kind of utterly useless tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing… yet what divine fun it all turns out to be!
Congratulations on learning how to work with all of the wondrous glues that help to hold everything together. That is essential knowledge for any aspiring divinity, as well as a skill set very much needed in the jerry-rigged world now coming apart around us.
Hi Mr. Greer,
I am a young reader on this blog. I’ve found this place a home for uncommon truths in the modern world – especially your view on the near-term future of our civilization. I am struggling to understand what to do with my life given the predictions of civilization-level apocalypse.
In university, I studied reading and writing, and I find myself eager to read an write poetry and novels. I have a strong civic-minded drive to help improve society (despite the overwhelming signs pointing to collapse). I have graduated from University, and I have a strong work ethic. I have found myself in a rut moving forward – I am currently working in a retail job that is based in the recreation industry. I have not found a stable job using my reading and writing skills, as I found corporate writing wholly unappealing. I am considering law, and I am considering working for my city’s government.
I struggle to imagine how to utilize my skillset in a practical manner so that I can be prepared for the new world to emerge when society collapses. Do you have any clues to a path for someone like myself?
@Ennobled little day,
“How about Spanish culture? For Spanish culture, does Cervantes and Lope de Vega tap into this?”
If you read Spanish, Arturo Pérez Reverte “Una Historia de España” is a brief but sharp description of the Spanish character via the history of its people. The book opening is particularly illustrating, assembling a variety of quotes about the Spanish from Strabo to Hitler!
Depression is certainly not a Spanish trait, even if Galician morriña (akin to Portuguese saudade) might be perceived as bordering those sad valleys…
Cainism and envy, however, seem to make their presence more often in the Spanish character, alongside bravery and a this-worldly attitude. From inside Spain, every local nation/region has also got a cliché character, for instance Catalonians reputed to be tight and Basque to be stubborn (but not as much as the Aragonese…)
Can you please point me to where I can read about Blessing Walks? Thank you!
Viridian Nocturnal Platypus
Wer here
Well it seems that the bad situation is degrading even daily as we speak. i don’t know what some people in DC or New York can come up with but let me JMG make a scenario for you and the commentariat.
Imagine that certain old Hungarian gentelemen decides that enpough is enough and the Trump situation is getting out of hand and more “drastic” measures are requiered that some twink on a roof with a rifle. Luckly there are a lot young black men with red and black flags on t shirts who have been staying on social media and radicalized to scream “I am literally a communist” that can be of use for his an a certain old black man from Hawaii to use.
A certain 3 letter agency through different means supply that certain young black man with a truck and a large amount of explosives. thhen when Trump and Vance are on a convention in Iowa that black man radicalised completely thinking that white conservatives are Hitler and Putin decides to die for the black and red black cause.
He manages to park a truck with say 2000 pounds of explosives near the back of a building where trump is holding and rally (the Secret Service conviniently looks the other way when this happens like the last time)
The resulting explosion kills hundrets and turns the RNC into a burning crater while Kamala is laughing and saying “We did it Joe” What kind of reactions will this generate on the global stage and before some one mind point out that the won’t go this far. I would like to remind you that what happened in the Trump rally in pennsylvania would have been dissmised as a scenario of a bad Tom clancy movie (Joe Rogan said that himself apparently)
You’r thoughts anyone this might be a really controversial post here and you might delete it JMG if you want
Stay safe everyone Wer
Milkyway, and others, on the previous post someone mentioned periodical catastrophes in the German history of the last ca. 150 years. I think national self-immolation of Germany may well be a recurring factor in the future, too. The Federal Republic of Germany has hold out longer than Bismarck’s Reich or the Weimar Republic. But that does not guarantee that there won’t be a renewed national collapse due to the stresses of the current crisis of the Western world.
There is another point about European rearmament and reindustrialization which came to my mind: Somewhere, on Naked Capitalism, I believe, the opinion was presented, I believe, in an article, that it is simply impossible to remilitarize and reindustrialize Europe under a neoliberal framework. Do you think that may be true, JMG?
Achille: Farbeit from me to add on a subject I know so little about but you may get mileage from looking into the balance of neurotransmitters. As for example, here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r5KXRJItMdY
Although constantly a set of symptoms might have several underlying causes, to me a lot of OCD is a type of self-soothing which gets caught in a feedback loop. Or at least when I have headed that way, I need to “Zen out” and let it go, relax, which unfortunately means nothing, nor can I communicate what part is activated to allow it. However, reading the technical process of brain transmitters and how they work may technically help give you a hook to lever it with.
What’s more, I also believe in a magical or spiritual solution, not that brain chemicals are the whole issue. In my experience they are not. If you watch “E.T.” you have “Brain chemicals” when the alien dies. Is that “real” or should be “Cured” with SSRI’s? No. That’s called “Normal”. So your mind can clearly control your “Brain chemicals” at will, the same way you can control your breathing and heart rate. You’re not a clockwork meat machine, as science and medicine demand. That’s why they fail at everything.
So you can also affect this from the spiritual magical side, yes by praying to Therese or whatever, and that may even be a superior solution, but apparently that is not working well enough for you at this time for reasons yet unknown. A key is that a spiritual revelation can transform you permanently in a moment, while all medicine barely patches you up enough while taking a pill every day. I’d rather have the real fix than the symptom-suppressant, thanks. Magic can do that, Christian or otherwise.
Short note on time, I suspect time isn’t like God’s clock, each moment going tick-tock, but that it foams up all over the place simultaneously, and somewhat chaotically. As does its cohort: reality. This may work well with Zen or quantum physics that the universe snaps into being only when observed (or perhaps wanders into being slower if not observed) that is the Sound of One Hand Clapping. That is, you looking is a participant, not an observer. This is happening everywhere, noting that Trees and rocks have consciousness as well, and can also “observe”, although differently than us. So we have a case of several posts here: what is reality, when you can turn into a donkey or walk on water? That is, the rules of “Reality” itself are created by the OBSERVER. If you have such power, then the “Laws of Physics” change, or perhaps they even evolve themselves over time as the universe, or our corner of it, evolves in Consciousness. So yes you can be turned into a donkey, but no you’re never going to run into anyone here that has that raw power. Mother Ann of the Shakers had this sort of power, although less-so, for example, proving it can exist in “recent” history. Certain yogis in India play games making the entire audience see things, magic, by merely telepathically overwriting the people’s own mental perceptions. That’s how a guy can climb up a rope in a basket and disappear into the sky.
But back to time, so the ladies in the garden can fall through time, through consciousness, and either the ghosts are there, or they see through the ages, your choice, and also see different things as “reality” is to some extent chosen and directed by us. That’s why you can always get telepathic, voodoo experiments to work in small – that is allowed. But expand to a larger study and they always fail – that’s the large, and does not fit the present consensus of mass-consciousness. That’s why one person can see Bigfoot, but not 100. Their beliefs do not allow it, the “mass beliefs” of the mass consciousness of your time. If so, then we know the opposite would be true. If you stop having a mass Scientific perspective on the world, then seeing Gnomes and being kidnapped by fairies becomes possible, and time can be suspended as you return 100 years not aged a day as has been reported. The mass consciousness/perception rules have changed. The mass consciousness then allows that.
And this is what powerful people are trying to accomplish with mass media, as I believe most of them believe wholeheartedly in black magic. It’s also the basis of “The Matrix” which was supposed to have the humans being CPUs creating the VR Illusion, and not be a power-battery, which is stupid, in the original version.
Anyway, that’s why time can be flexible, expand and contract as we all know, or stop altogether, as we see during accidents, etc. Time is actually a feature of consciousness. Change consciousness, change time.
@Margaret:
Curious why you think any of those industries, (drug companies leap out here) are only supporting one party?
Was my impression that any sufficiently large industry covers all its bases by sponsoring both sides against regular people.
@Legrand
Oh yeah, without a doubt. I think I remember JMG talking about something similar in his Druidry books. I may be butchering this – again, still new to the whole occult scene – but there was something about ternaries resolving binaries in a way that often doesn’t always have much or anything to do with the tension between the original two ideas. Jung’s transcendent function is definitely applicable there.
I would caution you on approaching *all* koans that way, though. There are some that undoubtably seek some novel, third option to resolve a tension between opposites – e.g. Nansen’s Cat, Proceed from the Top of the Pole, Kyogen’s Man in a Tree, etc. But not all of them work that way. Some are really quite plain and akin to looking for your glasses only to discover that they’ve been on your face the whole time (e.g. The Western Barbarian Has No Beard). Others pertain to sensory perception (When the Bell Sounds) or the apprehension of “big mind” amidst ordinary consciousness (e.g. Your Mind Moves, the Buddha Holds Up a Flower, Josshu’s Stone Bridge). Broadly speaking, those make up the three or four classes of koans – those dealing with personal psychology, those that force you through a wall of thorns, and those dealing with sense perception: either mundane sense or “spiritual” sense.
@JMG #50:
The story about the Sun and weather control may be “The Weather Man” (1962) by Theodore L. Thomas.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/288857/short-story-to-read-online-the-weather-man-by-theodore-l-thomas
There is something about the reaction to Karmala Harris that bothers me. I am not sure what it is, so please excuse me as I ramble away.
I disliked being lied to by the establishment about Biden. Now, everyone is saying what a great person he is and how we should be grateful for Harris. The political cartoons have all anointed her Queen. or at least the Slayer of the Orange Dragon. The columnists and editorials and letters to the editors are all in lockstep with how we should all bow down before her awesomeness and kiss her ring. In fact, everyone is using the same language and the same wording. It is frightening to me to see groupthink at such a large scale.
Then the Neo-Pagans and others have declared her a goddess. They discuss how Paganism is supposed to make the world a better place. So, if anyone with an independent thought such as voting for Robert Kennedy or questioning the whole thing is shouted down as evil. The fear of the Orange Man is so great, that emotional blackmail is rampant.
Then there is the “second coming of Obama” i.e. Harris will finish the job. Is this the grief from the loss of the Progressive world raising its head? They are using the same language as they did with H. Clinton, as we are marching toward a brighter future with a black-Asian woman. And if you say she was chosen because she checks off boxes (a DEI hire), you are a racist, woman-hating pig.
I feel that it H.Clinton as Goddess all over again, this time with a smothering of everyone who has an independent thought or asks questions.
I guess that is it – how we are supposed to turn on a dime, accept the lies, and bow to our Progressive masters. My point of view that Harris is only speaking to the upper classes, the people she feel comfortable with. She is not going out among the working class (unless they are carefully vetted). That we are in the middle of class warfare.
Hi John
Have you seen the images of Netanyahu’s speech at the US congress? There were 50 ovations in a 55-minute speech; I have only seen something similar with Stalin’s speeches, but not as exaggerated as now, the members of the Soviet only applauded at the end of the speech and no one wanted to be the first to stop applauding, and at the end Stalin was the one who gave the order to to stop applauding, as Netanyahui has done, in fact he “ordered” the congressmen to stop applauding him in order to finish the speech.
The greatest genocide of the 21st century receives a reception that Kim Jong-Un would want in Pyongyang.
Is this a real “democracy”?
You don’t have to be a believer in conspiracy theories to see what “kind” of people hold global financial power and manage the politicians of the Empire as they please; it is in from of your (lying) eyes.
Cheers
David
I wanted to add a tangent to Harris,etc.
I read where the people of her ancestral village are praying for her. At the same time, I read where various supporters of Modi and the BJP were praying for Trump. They credit their prayers as saving him. I got the feeling that Trump is almost a God, worthy of prayers.
The people at the Republican Convention were also invoking religious intervention with the shooting of Trump.
Are we in for another war of people setting Harris as Goddess against Trump being God? My feeling about what I have read about that is that the fear of Trump is so great, that people need to raise a Goddess. That would mean, they recognize his power, and it scared them. Could be they see Trump as a God already.
Not far from Rhode Island a wind turbine came apart. It’s not the only one.
“On June 28, Ohio-based American Electric Power sued GE Vernova in New York court, claiming widespread issues with the turbines it has deployed at three wind projects in Oklahoma. The complaint says:
Within only two to three years of commercial operation, the GE wind turbine generators have exhibited numerous material defects on major components and experienced several complete failures, at least one turbine blade liberation event, and other deficiencies…[a]significant portion of the wind turbine generators have completely failed or have otherwise been rendered inoperable, requiring immediate repair.”
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/breaking-wind
Same old story, one really big one costs less per unit of output than multiple little ones so that is what the accountants go for. They never consider reliability nor whether physics says it’s a good idea.
DFC @ 128, Do you have or know of any site wherein we can find a list of those members of Congress who did not attend the Netanyahoo speech?
The BBC has an article on drone jammers on the battlefield.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cne4vl9gy2wo
Terminators of non-human form.
Quin, thank you so much for adding my family’s situation to the prayer list. I continue to pray for all on it and will update you as the situation changes. Thanks again, very much.
Re German pessimism:
We’re not. What we are is a nation of angry neurotics blaming everyone but themselves for anything that goes wrong. And that, you have to admit, is nothing to really stake out a claim to fame with.
We’re not the Germans of old, but we’re also nothing new.
German history took a long pause between 1945 and about 2020; we’re still rubbing our eyes.
@JMG, Forecasting Intelligence and others re. Islam in Europe and the future of the subcontinent
It’s been interesting to see this discussion come up here lately, since it’s a topic I’ve been thinking about on occasion too. Naturally, since it’s very likely my country will be swept up in whatever form it ends up taking. Anyway, maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I do think there’s a chance our hypothetical future European Islam might be more tolerant and less unpleasant, at least to an extent.
First, even with a Muslim majority, there’s going to be a sizeable minority of “native” Europeans left. There’s no way that won’t have an important effect on the incoming Muslims, like, say, how a lot of barbarians during the fall of Rome absorbed bits and pieces of Roman culture and tried to emulate some of it. There’s also going to be a lot of fairly moderate second/third/fourth/and so on native-born Muslims who might not appreciate a more fundamentalist view. Ie., there’s bound to be fractions and doctrinal quarrels among the Muslims, which could dilute the fundamentalism.
Per the discussions on recent posts, of course there’s no argument Europe has seen plenty of religious intolerance. On the other hand, there’s also been plenty of the opposite, and indeed, one of the most tolerant forms of Islamic society we know flourished here the last time Muslims had a major presence in Europe (ie. Al-Andalus). So it could go either way. And partly inspired by your writing about the future in general, I have a feeling the future religious forms of Europe will be extremely weird and mixed from our perspective, rather than a straight fundamentalism. I think this setting would make for a great deindustrial story too. But again, I’d of course very much like to not live under a strict Islamic theocracy, so I admit this could be wishful thinking on my part.
Regarding my own country, we also have a large minority of Muslims, but not on the order of other European countries. IIRC it’s maybe 20-30% in the capital Oslo and around 5-10% nationally, even if they do have more demographic momentum than “native” Norwegians. And while we have our issues, on the whole I’d say relations are much less acrimonious than places like Sweden or France, and many (but certainly not all) of the Muslims more moderate. Of course that could simply be a result of our relative wealth, which will go away in time as the decline proceeds.
As for leaving vs staying, I’m coming to the realization it’s probably unrealistic for me to leave Europe, but I’m still keeping the door open to a crack. Again, I do note your warnings and take them seriously. To Forecasting Intelligence (if I may), since Madeira in particular came up: from my admittedly limited research it seems like a decent alternative, certainly better than the Canary Islands: more moderate climate and much more water. Also harder to reach for potential warlords from West Africa, I suppose. On the other hand, it’s very small (see the comments last week from someone about limited resources on small islands), and I get the sense the locals aren’t exactly keen on more foreigners moving there. Still, it seems to be one of the most beautiful places in the world, with one of the best climates. So if nothing else you’ll probably get some enjoyable years there if you go. 🙂
On my part, I think Panama or Costa Rica might be some of the best picks for a European if you feel you have to get out, have some money on hand and can’t get access to the US, Australia or NZ. They both have fairly easy residency schemes, again if you have some cash for property or a passive/remote income. Maybe Thailand if you can deal with being a constant second-class citizen. In the end, though, I suspect I’ll have to ride it out up here in Northern Europe, for better or worse. I have some hope this part of the continent might be somewhat of a refuge in itself compared to places like Germany, France and Italy, but that could be more of that wishful thinking in action. And like I said last time we talked about this on an open post, if the AMOC shuts down, all bets are off. That still worries me much more than war or Islam, honestly.
@Milyway #28
Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but I can’t say I’ve seen any resurgence in the old gods here in Norway. Like I’ve said on earlier posts, I sometimes feel like the Germanic gods have mostly moved their focus to North America these days, and that the culture and sensibility (and the land?) there seem more receptive to them than our modern, thoroughly domesticated and PMC-based Scandinavian cultures. There’s a tiny Heathen scene here with a couple national organizations, but nothing like in the US. The one time I remember a recent-ish media story about Heathens, it was from the angle of “why are these silly people performing ceremonies outside getting public money?” (Every religious organization here gets public support proportional to its membership). Other Neopagan groups seem basically nonexistent as far as I can tell.
There’s a bit of what we might call “Viking romanticism”, but it doesn’t seem to lead into full-blown religious worship. Things do seem a little more lively over in Sweden, with a big springtime Blot every year at Gamla Uppsala etc, but not so much in this country. On the other hand, we do have a large “alternative” scene, but it seems to be mostly superficial pop culture “New Age”-like stuff.
Margaret, the GOP is well positioned to use terms like “extremist” for Harris, since her positions are well to the left even of the Democratic average. They can also use terms like “incompetent,” based on her job performance, and “cackling buffoon” based on — well, I don’t need to go on, do I? The videos are easy enough to find. Furthermore, and crucially, since she’s not African-American — she’s mixed-race Jamaican and Hindu, with a white husband — and her stint as a district attorney in California was marked by very dubious treatment of African-American suspects and prisoners, she’s profoundly vulnerable among the Dems’ core African-American constituencies. The question is simply how well the GOP exploits those.
Michael, it’s a worthy ambition! If the coming African diaspora follows the usual patterns, there will be regions of mostly Yoruba settlement, where that concept can take root. Depending on how fast the population of Latin America collapses — and it’s picking up speed — I would not be at all surprised to see most of the major West African cultural groups well represented in large parts of South America, and quite possibly here up north as well.
Karim, the entire Israel-Hezbollah faceoff is fascinating to watch. The radical wing of Israeli government and society wants to launch that war; the realist wing is frantically backpedaling; and Netanyahu, whose political position is very weak, is trying to balance in the middle. How it’ll turn out is a big question. With Ukraine crumbling and NATO desperately short on troops and munitions, I don’t expect direct involvement by the West unless war breaks out and Israel loses badly. As for nuclear weapons, remember that Iran now has hypersonic missiles, and Hezbollah and Houthi drones have proven their ability to get through Israel’s air defenses; if the Israelis start flinging nukes they’re facing a risk of lethal blowback. Thus I don’t expect mushroom clouds to play a part.
NoHype, I wish. We’re still the United States of Entitlement.
Rajarshi, fascinating! I think a volume in English on the nagas and other traditional monsters of India might sell like hotcakes — something for you to consider.
Robert, exactly. Europe has been collapsing demographically for more than a century now. I expect the future African diaspora to head in many directions, but Europe is certainly one of them.
MR, ah, but we’re not facing collapse. We’re facing decline, which is not at all the same thing. Our culture has this bizarre astigmatism of the imagination that leads people to think that the only alternative to perpetual progress is sudden collapse…and that’s not true at all. You might find this essay of mine worth reading along these lines — it’s one of the very first things I wrote on the deindustrial future. The timeline I had in mind then was a little off (I do learn from my mistakes!) but the basic principles are still sound:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2005-03-04/long-road-down-decline-and-deindustrial-future/
Or these three stories, which give the same narrative a more vivid treatment:
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2006/11/christmas-eve-2050.html
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2006/11/solstice-2100.html
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2006/12/nawida-2150.html
Since we’re facing a long ragged decline, not a sudden overnight collapse, you’ve got a lot of options. May I make a suggestion? Keep working on your writing. Print media are sustainable over the long term, even after resource and energy costs start pricing the internet out of most people’s reach, and plenty of writers got through the Great Depression in one piece by turning out nonfiction or fiction that people wanted to read. (Of course that’s what pays my bills, too.)
Julie, that’s one of the practices I was taught in the Modern Order of Essenes, one of the initiatory orders I inherited from my teacher John Gilbert. It’s in the MOE Apprentice papers, which you can find free for the downloading here:
https://octagonsociety.org/archives/modern-order-of-essenes/
Wer, it would be a great way to start a civil war. I don’t think anybody’s interested in that right now — well, with the possible exception of some old, cold men in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran…
Booklover, that’s an excellent point and one I’ll want to look into. If you or anyone else can find that article, I’d like to read it.
Anonymous, that’s the one! Many, many thanks!
Neptunesdolphins, well, yes. The thing that fascinates me is that so many people among the elite seem to think that they can do this and get the reaction they want. It didn’t work for Hillary Clinton — for all the groveling goddess worship she received, she lost an election that she could easily have won — and I doubt it’ll work any better for Harris, who has far more vulnerabilities.
DFC, of course it’s a real democracy. It’s not an ideal democracy, granted, but real democracies — that is to say, democracies as they actually exist in the real world — are inevitably corrupt and clueless. (As Churchill said, democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others.)
Neptunesdolphins, and this isn’t a Disney movie, so the winner is not decided by who scores highest in the Oppression Olympics.
Siliconguy, yep. They’re too big to be reliable in real world conditions, so failures happen quite often.
As for drone jammers, you bet. Cough, cough, Retrotopia, cough, cough… 😉
Kim, thanks for this. Well, we’ll see!
Hello JMG
Do you have any particular thoughts on China’s renewable energy generation capabilities? It is increasing much more rapidly than the rest of the world’s combined.
SMJ
Le grand cinq-mars #88 and Robert Mathieson #111- the Lee book sounds amazing. I’ll have to track it down.
The McWhorter book sounds like it would answer some questions like I brought up last week, if the land informs the culture, or the language, or is it all mixed together.
For people who like videos, Linguriosa is a channel on YouTube with explanations of language change over time, slang and accents in various dialects. https://youtu.be/9l-5L9yHKY0?si=GqxEYp6ELdrjsXNA
Elena (the host) speaks Spanish, the subtitles in English are decent, and she is all around entertaining for those of us who would like to become more pedantic in linguistics.
JMG- We have another Mercury Retrograde starting August 4th. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on Mercury Retrogrades in general. Some astrologers treat them as a non-event, some see them strictly in terms of an inner dynamics playing out in the lives of individuals. Sometimes I’m really affected by them, sometimes I hardly notice them. How do you look at Mercury Retrograde and do you have any advice about how to ride them out? I’m an Aquarius with Aquarius Rising.
Neptune’s Dolphins:
I wanted to add a tangent to Harris,etc.
I read where the people of her ancestral village are praying for her. At the same time, I read where various supporters of Modi and the BJP were praying for Trump. They credit their prayers as saving him. I got the feeling that Trump is almost a God, worthy of prayers.
The people at the Republican Convention were also invoking religious intervention with the shooting of Trump.
Are we in for another war of people setting Harris as Goddess against Trump being God? My feeling about what I have read about that is that the fear of Trump is so great, that people need to raise a Goddess. That would mean, they recognize his power, and it scared them. Could be they see Trump as a God already.
——–
JMG:
Neptunesdolphins, and this isn’t a Disney movie, so the winner is not decided by who scores highest in the Oppression Olympics.
—–
I am sorry but I do not understand the response to my post. I was trying to say that Trump is now so powerful in the Harris’ people’s view, that they had to raise her to Godhood. At least that what I think I said. So it may be another war between opposing magicians and the like.
@Neko #6: Interesting that you up koan-equivalents in the Western tradition, since I’ve been musing on the same thing recently. I haven’t studied alchemy, but I think the contemplative use of myth among the Neoplatonists is another example of the same phenomenon and may be of interest to you.
@Methylethyl – just as their peers did at the same age. During the Depression, they went into the CCC and the WPA and built things. Later on, they went to war.
BTW, the youngsters have catch phrases about to their elders.’ The Millennials say “OK, Boomer.” The Zoomers invented the term Karen for their shrill, nagging mothers.
@Cicada Grove – OMG, I really,really wish I had my hearing back. Bardcore sounds like something I’d love.
@NoHype – 1200 square feet as the minimum acceptable apartment for one person?!?!? Mine is a cozy L-shaped Deluxe Efficiency at 507 square feet, and I wouldn’t want it any larger. The developer must have been targeting the Spoiled Brat segment of the population.
Re: Faustian Islam
There’s also the Faustian tendency to want to enforce their ideas on the entire world (via Faustian infinite expansion / will to power), with disastrous consequences for everybody involved. Imagine the worst excesses of Nazi or Soviet totalitarianism, only now cloaked in the language of Islamism and Sharia law. This Faustian infinite expansion and will to power will also feed into Europe becoming a jihadi hotspot as John Michael Greer predicted above.
@ Mary Bennet
I don’t know where to find that list of congressmen you said but I’m sure the AIPAC political commissars know perfectly well who they are (if there are any) and I would like to know in 4 years from now how many of them remain at the first level of USA politics; I suspect few of them if any.
Last time I saw a map Israel was a foreign country (related to USA), but it seems I am totally wrong.
Cheers
David
Just finished reading View From Outside. If ever there was a person ill-fitted to her times, it’s Drea, a born idealist, and it has enabled her to see through all the social givens wherever she meets them. Her remedy at the end reminds me of DIon Fortune’s Battle of Britain.
Somebody really needs to do some studies of those who can’t conform, without hanging a negative label on them or, conversely,shoehorning them into the Hero Of Progress myth.
Side note: I’ve been seeing a lot of the name-shortening among my juniors that we noticed in Star’s Reach: “Drea” for Andrea, “Becca” for Rebecca, “Beth” for Elizabeth, etc. Not nicknames like “Pat,” but serious names.
@Booklover, I think it may be one of a series of articles I wrote on the subject, and which were discussed at NC, including.
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/service-to-what-nation
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-third-world-war-has-been-cancelled
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/natos-phantom-armies
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/everything-old-in-war-is-new-again
And some others as well.
@ Clarke aka Gwydion #33
Here’ s an interesting article about Time from Parabola magazine:
https://parabola.org/2023/05/01/sacred-time/
@kimberly, YES! the first thing I said when I heard they died was that I thought they already died! Also Shannon Dougherty… I could have SWORN she already died. That whole day when they announced thirst deaths was deja vu for me.
One that had always gotten me is the main character from Willow… I don’t know his name, but I swore he died and then there he was again. And the fourth member of Boys II Men. Every single one of my friends swore he died, but he just had scoliosis, and disagreements with the group, I guess?
>The point is this; if you aspire to the Oval Office and you are not one of the anointed, they will rub you out
Oh, it isn’t just here. Anyone remember an inconvenient politician named Pim Fortuyn? A “lone gunman” came out of the woodwork and whaddyaknow, he was dead. In fact, that’s the only thing I pay attention to these days. I don’t care what it is the politician is saying, I just look and see if anyone is trying to kill him. And if he survives, well, he’s got my vote.
Trump 2024. If he makes it.
it would be a great way to start a civil war. I don’t think anybody’s interested in that right now — well, with the possible exception of some old, cold men in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran…
You forgot Washington.
JMG, the opinion about regular German political collapse is in a comment by Paul Greenwood in the comment section of the following article: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07/the-us-vassal-state-of-germany-unravels.html
“With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning.”
― Guy Debord, “Comments on the Society of the Spectacle”
@NoHype
Re: housing square footage
The house I grew up in was 980sqft, for a family of six. It never felt crowded. Most families are smaller these days.
I wonder who benefits from insisting on a 1200sf minimum?
@Patricia #143
Are you referring to my “View From Outside” essay linked above or another one with the same name by someone named Drea? If the latter can you share the link as I’d like to read it.
#125 I watched a TED talk a while ago which had lots of clapping in the middle of the talk repeatedly and I was thinking is this a lecture or is this a pantomime?
SMJ, since China is still largely a command economy, I have my doubts about whether their renewable buildout is anything more than an opportunity for graft, not to mention if it will ever paid for itself. But we’ll see…
Joshua, Mercury retrogrades have been turned into a vast bugaboo by some modern astrologers. I’d point out that in the older tradition, retrogradation is just one more debility, no more challenging than (say) Mercury square some planet or in Sagittarius or Pisces, the signs of his detriment and fall respectively. It’s not that big a deal. I find, though, that there’s a very simple way to make it work for you — concentrate on doing things that begin with “re-“. I find that Mercury retrogrades are a great time to revise manuscripts, revisit old plans, reconnect with people, and so on. Since Mercury is going backward, any action that goes back is favored during the retrograde!
Neptunesdolphins, my point is that they haven’t just exalted Harris to ersatz goddess status, they’re assuming that because she (theoretically) checks all the right oppression boxes, she’s destined to win. They may be in for a harsh disappointment because, again, life isn’t a Disney movie.
Karalan, au contraire. If the politicians in Washington wanted a civil war they could have had one. What they want is little outbursts like the January 6 microaggression, which can be turned into fodder for pearl clutching and scenery chewing as needed. A geniune civil war, or even a decently effective domestic insurgency, would force the US corporate sector to its knees in about a week — and that’s before the Russians and Chinese finish working out ways to get arms to the insurgents.
Booklover, many thanks for this.
Justin, Debord is always worth reading!
Viduraawakened (offlist), er, when I say something is off limits, I mean it.
JMG wrote: “Thus I don’t expect mushroom clouds to play a part.” I really hope you are right.
Apologies to be a tiny weeny bit insistent but I think you forgot to give us any updates concerning the proposed ecosophian convention at Glastonbury in June 2025.
Any updates would be much appreciated.
For me to go to Glastonbury in June 2025 would be just about within striking range, however due to professional commitments I may need to prepare things much in advance.
Many thanks!
Greetings JMG and commentariat,
I don’t know if this counts as synchronicity, but I came across what I thought was an interesting parallel while thinking about the imagery from the Trump assassination attempt.
So, people have been talking about the similarities between Trump and Christ during the assassination attempt. I’ll admit this photo of Trump (WARNING for the blood) https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/2024/07/13/USAT/74396224007-getty-images-2161922590.jpg?width=1320&height=882&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp
immediately called to mind the Passion of the Christ movie poster (apologies if that sounds irreverent. I am not Christian, so that was my go-to), but there was a second image that came to me a few days later (spoiler alert for the movie 300):
At the end of the movie 300, Leonidas and his men are surrounded and impossibly outnumbered. The gold-tinted “God-king” Xerxes offers him a chance to surrender and live. Instead, Leonidas throws a spear from far away and just misses, grazing the right side of Xerxes’s cheek. Leonidas then dies in a glorious rain of arrows.
Here’s a screenshot from the movie (again, WARNING for the blood):
https://i0.wp.com/img.screencaps.us/200/6-300/full/300-movie-screencaps.com-11920.jpg?ssl=1
The analogy here is obviously very different from the Christ story and far more disturbing in my opinion for glorifying the gunman’s (hypothetical) motivation. The emotional charge of this scene is one of defiance and choosing to die for “glory.” I couldn’t say whether this scene matched what the gunman thought or felt, but the thing that caught my attention is that, in the movie, Xerxes is repeatedly called a God-king. Also, the near miss of the projectile that cuts open the right side of the face. And then Leonidas dying in the return fire.
I’m curious if you think this might have any connection to any of the archetypes you’ve discussed in the past in relation to Trump or if this scene seems like too much of a stretch to seem significant? I won’t try to argue that this scene/story has nearly the same influence on American culture as Christianity, but the movie did have its moment in 2006.
Cheers,
Telesto
I’ve noted previously that once Harris has been formally named as the Democratic nominee, there is no benefit for the party to retain Biden as president and every reason for them to induce him to “voluntarily” resign. (I’d expect behind-the-scenes maneuvers threatening use of the 25th amendment; Harris would only need a simple majority of cabinet officers on her side, something she could readily obtain by promises of a position in her administration.) I am wondering now, however, if rather than acting immediately, Harris wouldn’t keep that action in reserve for an “October surprise” in order to produce momentum and enthusiasm (theoretically) just prior to Election Day.
Just a thought as I try to game this thing out…
@JMG
Hello, wanted to share with you an interesting experience I had meditating. Im new to meditation and following your Druid Path book guide, so ill preface with saying i was simply sitting and thinking about “One Life”, after have done a body check-in. It felt successful however as i started to day dream with some decent vividness. In my day dream i was a small pond/ lake. A gazelle came and drank water from me and as i was inside this animal i was convinced that i was the gazelle and felt inspired to preserve its life and was generally worried about the business of life. Then as the gazelle died i came back to the pond and felt silly, indifferent, and interested that i at one point felt like i was this animal.
Before meditation i expected to realize “One Life” as meaning we are all similar so we should all be nice and sympathetic, but after meditation “One Life” to me means we are actually one essence that has parts of it thinking it has identities. Also instead of feeling of intense sympathy i felt more indifference interest and peacefulness.
Any way thought i would share, this could totally be me just projecting and im way off, but thought it was interesting non the less.
@SDI – Yes! That’s all tied up in there. Dharma gates, as they say, are without measure. That which can link you up with big mind is limitless! And I really want to thank you for that rendering of the sound of one hand. I’d never read that version before and it’s a really good example of the kind of spiritual mechanism I’m trying to map between the two traditions. Think of how Toyo practice the sound of one hand. Is this it, he asks? No, this isn’t it. Is that it? No that’s not it either. He’s constantly rejecting what arises no matter how enticing. He keeps his mind on the question by rejecting what isn’t the question. That’s the Katha Upanishad in a nutshell, btw (Neti neti, not this, not this), but let’s look at Lot’s wife for a second for a Western example. What does Yahweh say? I’m gonna burn this here city, so you guys might want to flee, but whatever you do, don’t look back. Now, you’ve got the lot of the Lots fleeing Semitic Vegas with Yahweh shooting off divine fireworks behind them. That’s gotta be one hell of a show, but you can’t turn around – Jehovah said so. Think of the tension that produces. There’s the rule you’ve been given to keep Sodom behind you (there’s a horrible pun there), there’s the pain of death if you break that attention, and all the while there’s that temptation to peak at what the Good Lord is doing behind your back. Isn’t that the instruction for a magical working too? We have our ritual with all of it’s movements and incantations. Maybe we have some amount of apprehension from going off script, getting it wrong, and maybe causing an undesired effect. But most importantly, the whole time we are going about our work, there’s that temptation to peak under the hood and see if what we’re doing is working. Are we feeling something? Did I sense a presence? What sort of energy is arising? The minute we ask any of those question – zap! – we become a pillar of salt and the whole work is lost. Our little Toyo from earlier, the minute he hears anything and asks is this it?, he’s no longer hearing the sound of one hand. So the sound of one hand *is* something we can ultimately hear, but only if we strictly adhere to the methodology. There’s a kind of tension that stirs when we reject the temptation to peak. The longer we can avert our eyes, the brighter the light becomes. The more silent we are, the more we are able to hear.
Lumpen internetariat! yeah.
– A festival –
A friend of mine, a learned cook but working as spiritual therapist, massagist, organizer of spiritual events, has organized a festival this summer. He is 15000€ in debt now I hear;
The festival was good for me, mostly, but for reasons I’ll come to later.
The festival was an unlucky hybrid between a rave festival and the orginate intention of my friends, who does not take to drugs nor alcohol, only cigarettes and coffe, to organize something healthy, spiritual, connecting. There were people on drugs, not extreme(my experiences are not a good standard) but present, and people who gave workshops, and people who wanted to sell
all kinds of merchandize.
Located at a baroque estate in the lower alps of Austria, it was visited by about 300 people. Too little for profit. A lot of families with children too.
There was also music. Some things were better or good, the relatively renowned Goa Trance dj was lukewarm at best to me, but certainly not cheap to my friend, nor was the electricity
I’m sure.
There I met for an example my former Yoga teacher, a woman mid forties from Salzburg, from the leftist scene, married lesbianly to a mexican woman, the manly part there. The yoga teacher is indeed a kind personality. Together they tried to establish a project to protect parrots in the highland of Oaxaca at the border of Chiapas, as I understand it.
The cartels burned to forests and threatened them, this time around, they should pay (a lot of money) or leave the grounds they have bought or rented, idk.
She saw columns of people from all over the poor parts of our planet, including children, walking towards the borders of the US, paying the cartels for every metre as she says.
The physical Yoga exercises I do come from her, they have greatly improved my flexibility, liberate my spine, unclog life force in me. This is my standard practice.
The breathing and energetic exercises I am doing now come from –
The Austrian woman that spent time in India and Italy, connected to an indian Yogi, cautioning her participants about fake teachers, energy leeching, dependency, and the danger of the male disposition to fall into sexual excess when coming to a point of higher energy.
I had participated several times with her. I have often doubted her work. I never doubted the energetic part, but the meditations she leads, where often she would employ motives in a fantasy
store to travel that I only know from this forum or otherwise a little from the Satanist music scene – Lemuria, Atlantis, Sirius B, the core of the Earth, Atlantis sinking and the memory etc
Often people there start to scream, cry, moan, laugh, talk in strange languages (light languages from other solar systems, as she says).
That put me of, though admittedly, in January the first time I was with it, sadness within me came to surface, that I cannot not let go of still (crying as a man is not something I did
since childhood with very few exceptions maybe)
Even new people experience this there. She goes around and touches people at energetic points, talks in several “light languages”.
I had terminated my participation there for a time, somewhat stressed. Meeting her at the festival, she kind of collected me again, set the times I should attend her sessions, and so I did.
“Look how great he looks now after these months, you can see what good work is doing” her and others who knew me from there agreed about me.
Side by side with a kind middle aged japanese woman I know, a practitioner of traditional Chinese massage and energetic healing. She is good at it I and many others can attest to.
Also, a tall italian man beginning of his forties I hadn’t met before, whom I like very much since then. He practices a little Tai Chi and postural Yoga, devotes his life to spirituality and helps her as an assistant.
My friend the organizer of the festival forgot to put the Yoga woman and her tent in the “Sacred Area”(no alcohol and drugs allowed beyond this point, it said at the entrance) on the billboard where all workshops were listed. Yet her tent was always full, which the Yoga woman attributed to the power of her energy. Very cautiously and with all necessary scepticism, I think there’s something to it.
Also, there was a Kung Fu workshop of an Austrian man, which a woman about ~30 I know from the Yoga woman wanted to visit and suggested I come along.
I have recounted here my horrible experiences with the Kung Fu club of the little Chinese man, who is kind and in several ways competent enough, but very bad with German, devotes enourmosly
little time to beginners of Tai Chi and just makes them imitate movements, questionable Qi Gong pratice I felt, but not sure, he speaks VERY badly German, and I think he has no good reign
on his stock, I found the people there in many instances shallow, arrogant, unspiritual and dull.
The Austrian man made a better impression on me right away. We did a truly intensive practice. He said I was good at it and whether I had done this before.
A welcome compliment to me, I am human and like compliments too.
I noticed then, that these movements cause my emotional sadness suppressed to come to surface. It was like that in the other Kung Fu club before, but I attributed just to my general
mode and the sorroundings that in several instances were quite hostile to me socially. I talked to the Austrian teacher about it, he said yes that is possible, I should work with this
after the Kung Fu classes.
There was a workshop with an egyptian bedouin. He talked about body language (some I knew from Felix Navarros books), had worked with the police on this too, and did also hand reading and interpretations of our health. I can’t quite describe how this was, me sitting there with him and a few young women and one old, he assumed many things about them, some seemed to be true
some not, very weird. He was quite in your face. A little man with a mighty appearence certainly.
To me he said I am very healthy. Then he played on his hangdrum, asking participants to tell him their inner impressions after. From those he read the problems and desires, and seemingly he
was not bad at that with the others. To me he asked about something he could not have known from anything I said about my living situation in the city, as I confirmed his guess, and he said:
“Yes, right: get out of there! Best 100, 200 kilometers away! Go away!”
Several times he repeated after: “you are a very good person. Thank you for coming. Do what I told you!”
The yoga woman said to me after: “I told you the same since months!”
Taking such decisions, well such decisions we are contemplating together here on ecosophia really, is a grave matter. However I am determined to take every step necessary, to let go of anything
thas has to be let, this year.
The festival was good on me with all the people I already knew. It was here and there friendly with others. It was good with some people of the organizing team and their buddies,
but some of them, especially a few narcisstic seeming young women, I felt not so good about. The reflections of several others agreed with me thereafter.
Also on the rest of the audience, as it was half a rave as well, the festival, a lot of darkness, and apparently also a lot of incompetent and irresponsible meddling with spirits
of some workshop givers.
Also, a young south american or mixed Austrian women, I saw here already in January, never talked but thought she seems certainly like an arrogant and not nice person.
She wanted to do “Sound healing” besides the tent of the yoga woman. The yoga woman, age 52, was a real Diva, as others put it.
She came out of her tent and proverbially folded that young south americanish woman into a little package before my eyes, attesting her incompetence and inadequacy at energetics
and healing anyone.
Back there I wasn’t sure about this although as you might imagine was a derisive bit pleased. Since then, I have met several older to be taken serious people who attested to the positive development since starting with the Yoga woman, one middle age woman who had her menopause had here period again after years, after working for six months with the yoga woman and the exercises.
Things like these and the energy I got from a retreat with the yoga woman in small circle after the festival have given me cautiously some trust and confidence.
Sometimes in the festival I just walked along a paved road alone, the background of the green lower alps around me, did my physical yoga exercises in a dirty industrial meadow, washed myself
in a very little torrent there leading to the river, passing bush and herb naked to step inside. So that I could do it all alone out of someone’s sight.
At the end of the festival was a water healing ritual from a woman from Suriname. This was very mighty, a truly powerful energy, and some people said thereafter they had never seen quite like this.
A very female ritual, people stood in a circle in a tent, clapping and weighing from one side to the other, a team of the young women drumming, while the water healer did different things with the
water with different people who stepped forwards to her. Women screamed, sat there after in totally different states, strong whatever I should call this.
I myself admit I fought with rage against some of the people I dont like in the circle, not that I have had interacted with them much, generally dissatisfied also, like a hedgehog
defending my place in the circle, clapping and supporting the ceremony for two hours and more, struggling within me with god and my fate, my hatred for some narcisstic people,
reigning myself in not to let my anger truly get to anyone else, not really wanting to hurt anyone, but burning with rage and emotion.
An older woman who I met at the egyptians workshop, a woke and enourmously hard, manly and sportive and also woke woman, came to me after and said: “You, you were in such an indescribable state, what went on inside you?”
I did not really say what I disclosed here.
I wonder what this did two and a half weeks ago with me together with the spirits, but I had a good time since, so…
For a reason I will describe in my next text, I’ll probably hear what the priestes of Suriname thought, she looked into my eyes a few times, I made sure not to stare back or let any aggression
leak out of my eyes, but I saw this is a person with a very deep energetic look.
Good and warmhearted and serious older people who as I found out know here personally attested to that too. The same I met at the retreat of the Yoga woman.
2024 seems as the youtube astrologers and others said in January, a great year for people willing to do spiritual development, a difficult and possibly overloading time for others.
So far this seems to be true, for me as well, I can only hope this goes on. A better year after all the burden and catastrophe of these past years.
@Bofur, I too find plastic waste quite depressing. About 10 years ago I was taking the ferry from Maine to Nova Scotia and was shocked at all the plastic floating in the water many miles from a coastline. What we have done to this beautiful, precious planet!
The Earth though is quite resilient and if given time and opportunity (drastic plunge in human population and commerce) will eventually remedy all the damage inflicted upon it. Here is an interesting piece about plastic eating mushrooms in Ecuador.
https://earth.org/plastic-eating-mushroom-of-the-amazon-and-ecuadors-development-dilemma/
It seems that America is determined to accrue as much bad group karma as possible in a short time. I’m trying to understand the karmic implications of the practices of our medical-industrial complex, including big pharma. The latter is basically pushing out poison, full stop, these days, and little else. Recent examples would be the “safe and effective euthanasia” of MRNA vaccines, or drugs like Ozempic which are now known to cause potentially irreversible digestive issues and vision loss. The hospitals and their workers happily get people addicted to these things and rake in enormous filthy lucre from doing it. It has expanded to being more than one fifth of the entire US economy, while the rest of the economy looks to be an increasingly hollow Potemkin facade. Note, this is just one of the many things I could go on about here. The systematic abuse of honest workers by the lenocracy, which has accelerated in the post-pandemic era (since the lenocracy was able to capture most of the benefit of the trillions of money printed at that time), is another. And those are just the domestic trends, to say nothing of warmongering abroad. Am I wrong to think that the blowback for this bad karma is going to be catastrophic?
I would have to agree with the recent Wagner posts that doom and ruin seems to be intertwined with the Faustian/Germanic soul from the very beginning. At any rate, in recent years, the Wagnerian overtures seem to be gaining in volume here in the Western countries. I have felt a fair amount of unease recently about all this, the path we’re headed down, and when the other shoe might drop.
In the early 1960’s the average American. home being built was around 1200 square feet – with bigger families than today. Back then (I remember) two kids were a starter family, 3 or 4 children were typical. Now the average American home built is around 2200 square foot. Even now in most of the world an American 1962 1200 square foot house would be a deluxe dream home.
Clarke +33 May I recommend Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams on the subject of Time. The present moment has definitely got MUCH shorter, not to mention the present ‘day’. A wonderful film which gives me goosebumps just to remember it
@Nachtgurke
Thank you for introducing me to Bardcore music. I had no idea this existed and have been enjoying it all afternoon.
Signs of the times:
https://www.wsj.com/politics/inside-the-strange-new-world-of-tucker-carlson-09783fc8
https://newrepublic.com/article/183971/jd-vance-weird-terrifying-techno-authoritarian-ideas
https://www.propublica.org/article/jd-vance-alex-jones-leonard-leo-teneo-maddow-video
““If you listen to Rachel Maddow every night, the basic worldview that you have is that MAGA grandmas who have family dinners on Sunday and bake apple pies for their family are about to start a violent insurrection against this country,” Vance said. “But if you listen to Alex Jones every day, you would believe that a transnational financial elite controls things in our country, that they hate our society, and oh, by the way, a lot of them are probably sex perverts too.” Vance went on, “Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, that’s actually a hell of a lot more true than Rachel Maddow’s view of society.”
Seems to me this is the tip of the spear (JD Vance is an example) of the “changing of the elites”. Is “changing the elites” a known phenomenon in late stage civilizations? A la Spengler? I can’t remember if he discusses this. It seems to me that the change of elites may prevent the worst (eg., ancient Egypt) and allow the best outcome of civilizational senescence: lingering like India and China, until aeons pass away and the time of rebirth returns.
Hi JMG,
I see that you are researching John Dee. I tried once before to draw your attention to Alexander Waugh’s work on the Earl of Oxford/Shakespeare hypothesis. Much of the encryption he is deciphering was done by Dee. I think you would find it interesting, especially since, if he’s right, it means that the Free Masons of the early 17th C orchestrated his (the E of O’s) reburial into Poet’s Corner in 1740. He died in sixteen-ought-something. That would mean that the plans had to be passed down through the Mason’s for more than 130 years.
By implication, there may have been a much stronger thread of connection through the centuries between the actual free masons and the early Free Mason society. It also reinforces the tantalizing possibility of an actual connection between the ancient Druids and the medieval free masons.
I’d love to know what you think of Waugh’s work and I’m looking forward to seeing the outcome of your research on Dee.
>The point is this; if you aspire to the Oval Office and you are not one of the anointed, they will rub you out.
Like they did RFK Jr.’s uncle and father. Hoping they don’t rub him out, but he is certainly not anointed.
RFK Jr. 2024. If he makes it.
I wrote a post about Epic Bardcore Rap this past winter if anyone is interested.
http://www.sothismedias.com/home/epic-bardcore-rap
Big ups to the music of Ren.
I also cover the Pantonality of Arthur Schoenberg if that is more your speed : )
http://www.sothismedias.com/home/the-pantonality-of-arnold-schoenberg
Really funny, the whole 1200 square feet thing. I also raised four kids in a 1,000 square foot house. And before we rented that house, our former rental was an 830 square foot house. My three younger children were all born in that house. We had no furniture in the living room, just let the kids turn it into a playroom, with tatami mats on the floor. Later we moved our old mattress that we got for $10 from Goodwill in 1977 and turned it into a punee in that room. And I loved the little valley we lived in. It was so beautiful and peaceful, even when it wasn’t! I get very nostalgic for that house. I’m trying to figure out who benefits from always building larger houses, I guess the builders. Hardly the not so well off families, like we were.
Karim, I’m planning on being there but I have no updates about it, because I’m not the one making the arrangements. You can contact the person making the arrangements at the email address given in this post:
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/281028.html
Telesto, interesting. As I’m not a movie buff and I have no clear idea of the impact of the movies you’ve cited, I’ll simply note this for future reference.
David BTL, an interesting possibility.
Alex, that’s certainly one way of thinking of (and experiencing!) the One Life. I’m glad you’re taking the work seriously and doing the meditations!
Curt, thanks for the data points.
Deneb, you’re not the only one who’s concerned. Keep in mind, though, that while the privileged classes are piling up the karma, the people who are suffering the consequences of all this are clearing some of their own karma through their own experiences. It’s quite possible, for that reason, that the blowback will be concentrated on those who profit from the system rather than landing on those who suffer from it…
Celadon, it’s a very common phenomenon in all civilizations. Every elite class becomes senile sooner or later. The one now in power, the managerial-bureaucratic class, took power in the 1930s after the total failure of the earlier investment-capitalist class whose inept antics brought on the Great Depression. Now a rising class of entrepreneurial capitalists is gearing up to elbow the managerial-bureaucratic class out of the way and dismantle the mechanisms of their power. In another century or so the new class will be shoved aside in turn, having become senile and incompetent. I’d point out that both Maddow and Jones are correct, so long as you read what they’re writing as overblown expressions of a more nuanced truth: Maddow is right that a lot of Americans are eager to tip the entire system of which Maddow is a beneficiary into history’s trash can, and Jones is right that the people in charge of the current system have become arrogant, isolated, and decadent.
Claire58, what I’m doing right now is translating a couple of Dee’s early works and writing commentaries on them; I’ve managed to figure out what he was talking about in the Monas Hieroglyphica, a book of his that’s been seriously misunderstood for the last five centuries or so. The first of the translations, Aphorisms on Astrology and Magic, is already at the publisher; the second, the Monas itself, is in process. As for the whole who-wrote-Shakespeare business, though, I wonder if you know how many people in the occult scene of the last century and a half wasted vast amounts of time and money on that topic, without result. Some years ago I discovered a detail that shows there’s something profoundly wrong about the conventional dating of Romeo and Juliet — it contains an explicit topical reference to a figure who only became famous a couple of decades after the supposed publication of the play — but my attempts to get anybody to pay attention to that, in or out of the alternative-to-Shakespeare scene, went absolutely nowhere. So thank you, but that’s a swamp I don’t propose to sink into.
I’ve extended one of your ideas in a direction that almost certainly would not have occurred to you, given that you have never played a video game. I think when you talked about how every art form first explores and then settles in for performance, that you nailed the dynamic with video games. Early video games were widely exploratory, and tried out a lot of things, most of which did not work: while the handful of modern video games which are worth playing are almost all based on a formula of some kind or other. All of the Legend of Zelda games, for instance, play similar to one another; as do the Call of Duty games, for those who’s tastes lean that way. They are meant to: because the series are formulaic by nature. I suspect, now that I noticed this, that this is why Nintendo came to such a dominant position: they recognized in a way that no one else did for a while, that using a formula could be a winning move. When I consider the Super Smash Bro series, the Legend of Zelda series, the Mario games, the Donkey Kong games, etc. and what emerges is not so much a company that continual makes new games so much as a company that continual makes new takes on what works.
Amusingly enough, this has two implications: one, video games are a form of art, and two, if it was possible to explore the bulk of the notional space associated with them this quickly, they are not a particularly dynamic form. I think this is also a factor driving a growing and increasingly hostile divide within the gaming community, between the designers and the players: with a small number of exceptions, most game designers are trying to avoid noticing that they have passed the point at which innovation is useful, and need to settle into performance rather than continuing to push the limits.
Justin,
I think it’s also that not everyone is exposed nearly as much as a small number of number. Alcohol doesn’t kill most people’s livers, but it does do damage to a small number of people, and one of the key factors is dosage. Likewise, not everyone who plays violent video games will have psychotic reactions to them, but these are reportedly common enough among the people who game obsessively that I’d be surprised if this was not a factor in some of the mass shootings, especially the ones which do not make much sense in terms of the real world dynamics.
Secret Service agents are supposed to be at least as tall as the president so they can interpose their heads between his head and a bullet. (Whatever those people are paid, it’s not enough.). Practically speaking, does this mean no professional baseball player can ever become president?
Hi JMG,
This might be a crazy question. Can I use my DMH cauldron for the magical fires in Way of the Four Elements. Sorry for posting this here instead of MM, I was hoping to do one before then,
Thanks!
David by the Lake @ 157, Despite recent poling, Harris is not at all a shoo-in to win this election. In particular, she will be relying on women voters and will not want to be seen disrespecting and humiliating an elder statesman. So far it looks to me like part of the Democratic strategy is to present her as a nice person, not like those meanies Trump and Vance. Who, BTW, insulted my sister, a retired corporate executive who made more money in a year than I have ever seen in one place and my daughter, also childless and unmarried, who is generously offering refuge to a somewhat troubled niece. Vance’s “cat ladies”, are law abiding, employed TAX PAYING American citizens. No way will I ever vote for that clown.
David BTL #157, the way I imagine the Dem movers and shakers see it, if Harris has to govern, she’ll be too busy to campaign. They figure that whoever has been managing Biden for however long that has been needed can do it for another 4 months while Harris devotes full time to campaigning. So I predict no 25th amendment; in fact, they want to keep Biden alive and (theoretically) in charge until the day after the election, and I expect they will do what they deem necessary to accomplish this goal. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the 25th amendment enacted soon after the election if the Dems win it; but if the Reps do, no 25th.
TDS is alive and well among the Dem movers and shakers. The only reason they felt any need to force Biden out was that after the debate, polls indicated he’d lost too much support to have a chance at winning. In the mainstream Dem-leaning press, the reason for Biden running has always been because he is the only candidate who has proven he can beat Trump. Until that belief was shaken, it didn’t matter how bad his health became, he’d run and win. Whoever is handing him would keep him out of the public eye in anything but a highly stage-managed way until after the inauguration. Then they could trot him out unprotected and prove the need for the 25th amendment, upon which Harris, as the VP, would become president. Or he could die sometime soon after the election, when he wouldn’t be needed anymore, and Harris become president a little early.
Biden reminds me of the older people I have known who cannot acknowledge that they can no longer do something of importance to them, because it means that death is coming, and they haven’t done the maturing they need to do to face death squarely. Often the not-letting-go manifests in refusal to accept that they can no longer live independently and must move into an assisted-living situation, whether with their families or in a facility. However, unless and until a person is legally deemed incompetent to manage their own affairs, they are allowed to do so. Generally a process similar to what has been happening with Biden plays out, with those closest to the person increasingly taking on more responsibility while (for non-Bidens) pleading with the gradually-more-incapacitated-but-stubborn person to accept the inevitable transition to assisted living. It’s a tricky situation, one that my siblings and I had to deal with.
IMO in Biden’s case the denial of death is his refusal to let go of the power and privileges of being president as he became less competent to exercise it. The twist is that his being president gave the people who managed him a taste of power and privilege as Biden declined that they were loath to give up. Add in TDS, the post-debate polling, and donors withholding money needed to run a campaign, shake well, and we get the events of the past week.
For myself, I’m relieved enough that he won’t get a second term to accept that his handlers will continue to do his work for him for another four to six months. I’m not saying that I like the job that they’re doing, far from it, but four to six months isn’t a long time. As for the election, just wake me when it’s over, please. I’d eat popcorn but I don’t think enough popcorn exists for everyone who wants it while watching this election, and I don’t want to get caught up in the popcorn-acquisition frenzy.
Dear John,
If you could visit any time period, past or future, when would you go?
Hi JMG. You have me intrigued regarding the old souls who may not have much wisdom because of scars from previous bad decisions and karma. What would be your advice to such people, assuming they could know their situation? I’m assuming it would be to face up to their karma rather than trying to evade/avoid it? That they should think about how they have contributed to their own situations? That these actions would enable them to get past the places where they are stuck and so could move forward again. Am I on the right track?
I took a notion recently to look into the history of the use of rhyme in poetry/song and discovered that, although the Greeks knew of rhyme, they very seldom used it. The ancient Western peoples who tended to use rhyme a lot were the Semitic peoples who spoke early forms of Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. The latter two were the common languages of Judea under the Roman Empire, so rhyme was an inevitable element of early Christian hymns. It was the Church that brough rhyme to Europe. If this history is accurate, can the use of blank verse beginning in the 1500s be seen to correlate with the disenchantment process that began around the same time, and is that more than just coincidence?
As to house size, this one was built in 1957, is a bit under 1400 sq ft, and has four bedrooms with one bath. No basement or attic. The one bath may be the reason my property taxes are still tolerable. New houses seem to be buried in bathrooms. There is the old joke about houses needing one bathroom per female plus one for all the males, but someone seems to be taking it seriously.
As to smuggling weapons to either or both sides in a U.S. civil war, the Chinese would just use the existing fentanyl pipeline, simply add a couple carloads of AK-47s to the trainload of fentanyl that’s coming across the border anyway. I don’t know what the Russians would do. Small craft from Cuba?
As for who wrote Shakespeare, I never understood the fuss. He had a show to put on and on a fixed schedule to boot. I’m sure he was in the tavern with a pitcher of beer surrounded by brainstorming friends and actors trying things out. There was a scene in Amadeus where Mozart is writing an opera in a pub of some sort with a soprano trying out pieces of the melody behind him. That seems more likely. Why it has to be a solitary writer in an isolated tower is a mystery.
Claire58, what I’m doing right now is translating a couple of Dee’s early works and writing commentaries on them; I’ve managed to figure out what he was talking about in the _Monas Hieroglyphica_, a book of his that’s been seriously misunderstood for the last five centuries or so. The first of the translations, _Aphorisms on Astrology and Magic_, is already at the publisher; the second, the _Monas_ itself, is in process.
Speaking of translations, I was wondering what level of Latin experience is necessary to tackle Medieval and Renaissance texts on their own turf? The reason I ask is that I increasingly stumble across texts for which no English translation exists, and would like to start trying to rectify that – purely at an amateur level, in the sense of producing something free and online.
Taylor, hmm! I wouldn’t have thought of that, but it doesn’t surprise me.
Your Kittenship, funny.
Luke, no, it’s better to have a separate cauldron for that.
Enjoyer, I’d want to visit the northeast coast of North America a thousand years in the future. I think it would be fascinating to see what today’s world will have morphed into by then.
Shadow Rider, it’s hard to say, because the longer a soul is in incarnation the more unique its karma and character become. Generally, though, I’d encourage some form of spiritual practice, I’d suggest cultivating the habit of accepting difficult situations as the working out of negative karma, and I’d advise doing things to generate positive karma. All of those will help clean up the mess.
Joan, that’s a fascinating speculation and I’d encourage you to keep exploring it. Are there other literary or artistic trends around the same time that might support your hypothesis?
Strda, medieval Latin is much easier than classical Latin, and Renaissance Latin is about halfway between them. If you’ve got a solid knowledge of Latin grammar, take a Latin text that’s readily available in Latin and translation, translate a page or two, and then check your work against the existing translation and see how you did. Once you can do that and get good results, go for it. It certainly worked for me…
As a caucasian Australian I can attest that there is a feeling amongst many of my peers including myself, that we are somewhat more bereft of a concrete cultural identity than much of the northern hemisphere. This I feel among other things contributed to my attraction to both traditional Irish folk music and of course ceremonial Magick. I am currently deep diving into Australian aboriginal history and thought, Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk being a valuable wellspring of indigenous thought that is helping to provide a bridge to integrating the cultural whirlwind we all live in. With all that being said I have recently begun the process of re-attributing some ceremonial magick associations to align with life here in the southern hemisphere. The first of which has been invoking and banishing fire in the north as opposed to the traditional south. This is because the sun rises and falls with the summer and winter soltices in the north and not the south like it does in the northern hemisphere. The east and west are not affected in the same manner and so I saw no reason to alter them. This is a magnificent land just like any other and my knowledge and appreciation grows as I learn to respect it in turn. Being that the practice of magick is a reverential art and I have no intention of stopping my practice altogether the only way forward seems to be integrating with the land and relevant associations that arise here. I would like to open the discussion of any insights into ritual practice in the southern hemisphere as well as the meaning and relevance of associations in general.
Kind Regards, JRA
Hi John Michael,
Hope you’re doing well, and I don’t really have any questions on my mind, but over the years you may have noticed that I’m chatty! 🙂
Anyway, thought you might get a wry chuckle from this article in the news the other day: Winter cold spell helped drive record demand for power and spike in electricity prices across national market.
As a side note, I’ve been saying for years that this technology is good, but not good enough to replace fossil fuels. The reality is that sometimes it’s night, the wind isn’t blowing, and rainfall has been inadequate. And here we are where that has just happened. It seems so weird to me that these limitations get brushed aside, in fact it’s downright dangerous that is the case.
Anywhoo, that’s not the wry chuckle. Here is an extract from the article: Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen acknowledged the increase in wholesale power prices was a “serious issue” for households and businesses
All fair enough, use the technology and it’s more expensive. That’s been my experience with the stuff too. But then it gets strange because he goes on to say:
“The data shows renewables provide cheaper power, and when we’re forced to rely on coal generation and aging unreliable assets, it drives prices up,” he said. “The faster we can get more reliable renewables into the system, the better it will be for energy bills and energy reliability.”
When I first read the next paragraph my brain did a double take because it looks like he just contradicted himself and chucked in a soothing belief for good measure. Renewables aren’t cheaper, and they’re not reliable in the way a big coal fired plant is.
The problem for me is, if the authorities can get such basic things wrong, what the heck else are they getting wrong? Gives you pause for thought, huh! 🙂
Cheers
Chris
From the 36:40min mark of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Mike Cernovich (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7oryXsi8hk), Cernovich makes some very interesting comments on demons and possession in the context of Hillary Clinton and war with Russia:
“The demons don’t care which side of the war they are on, all they care about is that humans are killing each other. That’s their own agenda, so they’ll, that’s why when you hear people talk about things like we’ll have a civil war in the US, well that’s demonic and you don’t even recognise that you are under demonic influence, what do you think a civil war will be like? Have you looked at what happened in Yugoslavia? You look at the aftermath of that, show me where, show me you have a civil war and this is a good outcome. Where this is something you want to idealise [TC: Never] That’s right, it is demonic, but they don’t think that, they think we’re the good ideas and we’re being oppressed by the bad guys. That’s demonic influence, we’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys, [… admits here that he believes he is with the good guys etc. … ] once you led down that road, because you … the demons are smiling because they don’t care oh you are the good guys, you’re the moral, you’re the righteous, they’re the evil ones oppressing you, they worship demons, you’re the good Christians, you need to go to war with them, you’re still in that frame. Right, so everything about human flourishing is trying to escape that frame …”
Going all the way back to 2017 with ‘Hate is the new sex’. It has been said that because the Victoria era was trying so hard to repress sex, a lot of their furniture and buildings expresses that repression. Chair legs that have the same equivalents shape as women’s legs and the like. Buildings that have phallic tendencies.
With this idea in mind, if the repression of the modern age is that of ‘Hate’, it would explain a lot of modern design and architecture. It is hate manifest, which would explain it’s uninviting nature and awful impact on people. I have said that hate is a 1-dimensional emotion, it is very useful at pointing to something deeper but it is merely the 1st layer. You could apply that same logic to modern design.
@Manuel #116
Thanks for the info!
Neptunesdolphins wrote, “Are we in for another war of people setting Harris as Goddess against Trump being God? My feeling about what I have read about that is that the fear of Trump is so great, that people need to raise a Goddess. That would mean, they recognize his power, and it scared them. Could be they see Trump as a God already.”
Certainly all those infected with Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) have been pushing him up towards divine status ever since he first announced his intention to run for office. He is the god of their rather peculiar brand of obsessive idolatry, entrancing their hearts and minds with his every deed, utterance, and tweet. They are the most fervent of believers, quite devoted to his incomprehensible and seemingly unstoppable power.
They also tend to be painfully fashion conscious and hyper-attuned to social signaling, so they’re simply frantic for their god to be better decked out than any of the others, with not a single detail out of place. And what is currently de rigueur among all the better sort of deities? Why a consort of balancing polarity and a devilish arch-nemesis to be vanquished, of course! For convenience’s sake (or possibly out of sheer laziness), the TDS crew has decided to combine those two fashionable accoutrements into one handy dandy avatar, Que Mala Harass herself, the perfect anti-goddess if ever there were one. Not that the Hillary could ever be completely booted out of the running for anti-goddess perfection, as she is perfectly capable herself… of bumping off any competition.
So yes, the TDS crew are exhibiting a fanatic need to raise a goddess. Since that beastly goddess of pain, whose grotesque effigy they had installed atop a Manhattan courthouse, has yet to respond to their desperate gold-plated entreaty (she will, but her wrath will fall squarely upon their own shoulders rather than Trump’s), they decided to deputize a false goddess instead. Que Mala, the second-rate stand-in, is now the sole repository for their repeatedly-dashed hopes and dreams. Avert your eyes, children, for it is too horrible to witness! May the true god of their idolatry have mercy upon them, although why he would I cannot begin to imagine.
Hi JMG,
1. What is your opinion on what happens to the body and soul/spirit when under sedation or general anaesthesia for minor or major surgery?
2. Do you have an opinion on blood transfusions and their effects, if any, on the spiritual health or integrity of a person?
3. If one was given something unknowingly and against one’s will(such as a certain vaccine), and apart from the possible known physical side effects, would it have as much of a damaging effect spiritually,compared to if one blindly accepted it?
4. Have you ever heard of or been aware of it being possible to “smell” or “taste” someone’s aura or “vibe”. And I don’t mean it the normal sense of smelling or tasting, but those are the closest senses I can think off in describing what I’m trying to convey. These “smell-vibes” would feel to be on a different plane, and would usually be sensed first, but then often enough, that first sensed experience will fit with the place or person after consciously absorbing the place or person.
I know that you are not a licensed medical professional and am not looking for any medical advice.
Always appreciate these open posts and hope your doing well.
James, by all means, but I have nothing to contribute to it as I live on the other side of the planet.
Chris, I’ve noticed that kind of blithering stupidity becoming increasingly more common over time. I’m beginning to think that as the age of reason ends, a lot of people are losing the habit of reasoning, or even the capacity to think.
KAN, he’s not wrong.
Michael, oof! I hadn’t thought of that but of course you’re quite correct. The savage ugliness of modern art, design, and architecture is the return of our collectively repressed hatred. Thank you for this.
Himself (1), depends on the state of your astral body and mental sheath — that’s why some people have out-of-body experiences when sedated and others don’t. (2) I don’t. I avoid them myself for sanitary reasons. (3) It really depends on the fine details of your character and karma, which I’m not prepared to judge. (4) Yes, of course. All of the material senses have their inner equivalents, and any or all of them can be a vehicle for intuitive perception.
Hey JMG
I have a somewhat whimsical question. In sci-fi you see a lot of rather odd choices for building cities, such as underwater, or underground, or floating on the sea, or in the sky. Do you suppose that anyone in the distant future would bother making any of these things a practical reality? I personally think that of the 4 types of city, underground and sea-borne cities are the most likely to be developed since we already have what could be considered primitive prototypes of then now and in the past. (Cappadocia and Coober pedy are good examples of underground dwellings, sea-gypsies/Bajau and cruise ships of the latter). I am uncertain of floating and underwater cities since they have to face far more physical challenges.
Heather wrote, ” I’m trying to figure out who benefits from always building larger houses, I guess the builders.”
Always building bigger houses is one of the myriad tricks that keeps GDP continuously expanding, so it ends up benefiting every unnecessary bureaucrat who would lose their employment were the economy ever allowed to contract, at least according to the massaged and falsified statistics those bureaucrats specialize in cranking out. In terms of real value and product, US output has already been contracting for decades. That’s why they had to invent derivatives and swaps and other forms of distracting spellwork to keep everyone pretending that we’re producing much more than we are. Mandatory side-by-side bathroom sinks and redundant pot-filler sinks in kitchens are just the tip of the iceberg of the multitude of gimmicks by which citizens have been transformed into underwater debt-slave consumers.
The sexual revolution arrived in the 1960s after over a century of sexual repression. So when will the “hatred revolution” occur, after our current period of hatred repression? And what would the “hatred revolution” look like?
I see time as based on oriented perspective, where we are observing the past as every possibility that did Not happen. When you move from point A to B you see all the other points of interest from point B looking back, seeing all paths which are known unknowns. The human mind tries to make values by comparison, so if I time traveled to the 1920s, my mind would be using a base comparison from a 100 years later, in order to adjust to the new values of a new environment.
IMO, time is not reality as the world probably works under different principles than what we attempt to observe by default, our observation is an after effect of our species looking back for references (memory) in order to adjust, adapt and survive. In a way, our senses of time are just another useful biological tool to observe and feel the world, similar to what must have developed the original 5-senses.
Another interesting question is in animals which did not developed sight, do they experience time differently? As their main sensory perception is of a different primary memory allocation, not of visual memory. Does that lead to different orientational memories of experience, as different observations occur over time, also valued by different base comparisons by this non-visual sense?
When it comes to memory, perception can take on whole new dimensions, perhaps humans of the future will have 8+ different personalities and memory allocations (with different skills) depending on their observed geographical area, so a entirely different person comes from the same body and mind, depending on thier location.
Robert Mathiesen (#111)
Yes, Lee’s presentation of Whorf’s work is by far more interesting than the usual simplifications. And his esoteric interests are especially interesting — and germane. I was also interested to see how his approach and ideas were explorations — investigations, rather than doctrinal answers.
The idea of the importance of language, and the possibility of languages that showed important things about the world that ordinary language obscures, is old and pervasive., not only in the form of sacred languages, but also in the form of “adamic” languages or other forms of language used by higher orders of being. There’s a lot that could be said about this in terms of “language behind language”, but walls of text are awkward!
I didn’t come to Whorf so early — my earliest contact with anything like “linguistic relativism” was more through contact with General Semantics, mostly in the form of SI Hayakawa’s presentation (*Science and Sanity* was a bit beyond me at that time!). What was interesting about that approach was the emphasis on the agency of the speaker and listener (or reader): not simply being immersed in the flow of language, but actively disengaging from it, reflecting on it, and deciding what to do about it. (As opposed to the more passive model assumed in *1984* — although of course that was a provocation intended to help awaken its readers to the manipulative uses of language.)
An intellectual history of the whole subject would be very interesting. But quite a labor to produce.
LeGrand
I have a new definition of politics:
– It is whatever you are thinking, holding in awareness, convoluted of deepest thought, right before the mafia sucker punches you.
Now, if you focus on the mafia instead of political banter you might just be able to defend yourself. Which is why the media cannot report on the guy who suddenly dropped dead, live and on air, within their studio floor, but spin away the bigger & better political spider-web 24/7 for our amused, yet defenseless posture.
Convoluted, yet focused, distracted, thus useless. The charms of propaganda.
Is there really a point in politics, besides being a great theater play (staring all the worst lawyers), if the people have no political power…
If the people had power, then politician treason executions would be daily. Spaced out, so people could savor the replays In slow motion, before the next firing squad pulls in for duty/valor. (Lucky SOBs)
I think since ‘they’ have kicked the can down the road so long for such a unnaturally long time, that the explosion will be huge, yet like a conventional explosive, much of the additional force will simply deflect upwards into the air, and I doubt that it will increase the practical destruction to citizens in the west, besides the beauacracies.
BTW, Hopium for president. Despair makes a bad campaign and Pandora has a equally bad reputation.
Neko (#123)—
Yes, I gather that koans fall into several types, and the whole situation isn’t helped by what I’ve heard is the decline of the tradition that allows answer books to be produced, and used successfully. But still, it seems that some people get pretty desperate in the course of koan practice, and that kind of desperation is the kind of thing that can evoke the “transcendent function”. Not the same kind of person who gets by through looking up the answer in the back of the book!
Katsmama (#136)
The McWhorter book is generally pretty accessible – both in terms of its prose and in terms of availability. A local public library may well have it.
If you haven’t seen it, Victor Mair’s Language Log site (https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll) might be of interest. It rather leans toward Esat Asian languages, but it’s a collection of ongoing and entertaining expostulations and disagreements about language and languages.
LeGrand Cinq-Mars
@Bofur and bacteria eating plastics. To add what JMG said, the thing that makes plastic so useful is not just it’s astoundingly cheap price, it is that nothing can eat it. It is a material that if described a few hundred years ago would be considered magic (in the literary sense).
If we did succeed in a wild scale deployment of a plastic eating bacteria, the next thing many would try to do is make another material that cannot be eaten because it is so useful.
Another tech’no’-fix is not the way out, most of our problems today are from the ‘solutions’. What we need is a way to reduce out dependence on these materials before it forces us off of them through depletion. We have been in a world without plastics before, and will be going back to it in time. Hygienic cleanliness, food preservation, fermentation etc are all ways to keep these traits without the need to try and endlessly toy with the would without anticipating the inevitable blow back. These responses are not ‘sexy’ like high technology but they can be done individually, locally and are effective if a little messy at times.
The general lesson is that, we do not know everything about the world, and we do not know how to manipulate things exactly to our whims. We might be able to manipulate things on a greater scale both large and small, but that doesn’t mean we understand what is being done. We are just not as bright as we think.
James,
The north-south thing is interesting. From what I can tell there are three approaches:
1. south indicates the sun at its zenith, and thus its powers, and so in the southern hemisphere this should switch to north;
2. north-south axis represents the magnetic orientation of earth, and thus its powers, and so the hemisphere does not affect it
3. north and south use is a part of the egregore of the particular rite and so should not change.
So it all depends on the ritual. For instance, rune exercises as per Spiesberger are done facing North because they align with the magnetic field, and so here in NZ where I am I did them the same way.
Other Owen and Eagle Fang, given the imbecilics (I couldn’t think of a better term) issuing from western civilization’s capitol cities and citadels of learning (hah) and grand salons where people of (supposed) wisdom and (self proclaimed) refinement go to rub shoulders, I strain to believe that this isn’t worse and more absurd than the declining Roman empire as ministered by their own debauched and moronic elite at their most degenerate.
It’s not hard for someone to get offside given the enormous number of ridiculous things said and done by our purported betters these past two generations.
So, yes, I remember the unfortunate Mr Fortuyn who had the temerity to express his distaste for people of a persuasion who are not exactly shy about expressing their own antipathy for those of Mr Fortuyn’s particular orientation.
As for Bobby Jr, I wish him well, but he is up against a state apparatus of surveillance and repression of such reach and penetration that’s making Misters Xi and Putin raise a glass and Mr Orwell request permission from other-worldly Powers to take shape again in this material realm for a book tour.
Will Bobby and Trump manage to not meet a sudden end?
Trump at least has a large supporting network of money and people so he may survive to Nov 5. If he pulls off a miracle and wins an election that will make Pakistan’s look a paragon of scrupulous cleanliness, will he make it four years in office without acquiring bullet holes?
As for Bobby, I cringe to think.
James #183 regarding using the south to invoke and banish fire (and I assume also using north to invoke and banish earth).
(and JMG please feel free to weigh in)
I am in Australia, and I have been using the Sphere of Protection for just over a year now. I use the Way of the Golden Section version. I understand why you would want to change these directions around, so the ritual reflects the actual directions, but I have been reluctant to do that, initially because I was learning the ritual, and then I became accustomed to it. One thing that made me reluctant to change it, is that I would then be turning myself counter-clockwise, rather than clockwise. Since in SoP we trace the symbols clockwise to invoke and counter-clockwise to banish, it seemed to me that switching the north/south directions would add another level of imbalance. As I said I have become accustomed to doing it with fire in the north etc. but I have definitely noticed that if I am doing the SoP away from home, when I work out the directions before I start, it is confusing because I then have to switch my perceptions from ‘real north’ to ‘SoP north’. Sometimes I still wonder if I should change things around. But I tend to see the directions as symbolic, in the setting of the ritual, and so I haven’t tried it.
So I am wondering, did you start off using a ritual which used fire in the north, and then switched to using fire in the south? If so, how was the switch? Or did you take up the ritual from the begining using fire in the south? I would be interested to hear of your experience.
One of the reasons I like using the WGS in preference to JMG’s druid-related instruction books is because there is less emphasis on northern hemisphere trees and animals. It would be interesting to know if there are traditional aboriginal associations for trees and animals that could map on to the northern hemisphere life forms/associations. Is there anything about that in _Sand Talk_?
Apropos house sizes: when I am in Cali, I live part of the time with my daughter and her partner in a 9oo and something sq ft house which is plenty big for 3 people. It was built bit by bit starting as someones beach house in 1940, so the use of the space could be a bit better if it had been all planned out at once. There is a second fairly recently added tiny bathroom because one had to go through the master bedroom to get to the original one. The rest of the time I live in a 130 sq ft cabin.
Aside from the profit for the builders and the arrogance and feeling of entitlement of many residents, one reason for the larger houses is that so few adults or kids go outdoors anymore. Kids used to play outdoors and come in to eat and sleep and do homework or read around the kitchen table. now they all have to have their private computer space. I noticed this so much in Hawaii, where there used to be a lovely old bungalow surrounded by a beautiful garden and trees, that was replaced by an ugly huge box of a house that filled the entire lot and had to be air conditioned: for generally smaller families.
One absurd reason for the plethora of bathrooms in the US, and increasingly so elsewhere, is that they have the bathroom and toilet in the same room. Traditionally in Australia and Europe they would be separate, which permitted two people to employ the separate functions at the same time.
Stephen
I started reading the paper version of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Ford translation. I thought the title meant “My Camp.” But no. It is “My Struggle,” “My Battle.” Amazon refuses to carry the book. I got it from Alibris. The reading is slow-going.
💨Northwind Grandma💨📖😑
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Wer here
well I myself disagree with some of the comments about Trump being a god. In my opinion things are reking of desperation out of here. A lot of people are projecting absurt amount of characteristics and hopes and dreams into an old man right now at the great turning point in human history that is driven not by people but by the realities of decline, nothing Trump is going to do will not magically solve the issues that are facing a resorce starved nation thinking that it might get it’s own planet and eat it free. For example when Trump was in office the US national debt greatly increased and the COVID took the US intentionaly or not by suprise. Maybe Trump will make things in some regards better for the belt states and his church going followers but at this point a return to 1950 prosperity seems impossible. I’ve heard that the Bureaucrats in DC are some broke that intrest rates on the “official” debt are now the number 1 spending issue in the US. The country is so broke that attempting to repay the debt consumes more resorces that everything else last country in africa that had such a problem ended in hyperinflation. And you can’t print your way out of it because the Saudis and other important nations are no longer looking up to the US dollar, at this point it is not make america great again it is more like “Save What Is Left” SWIL. People in the us sure like acronyms.
On a related note some people in Poland noticed that we basically no long have a military and we had left was send to Ukraine a long time ago. They are planning a military parade in a large city near me but this is important without heavy vehicles only with soldiers marching (guess what happend to all thoose tanks that used to be always present there before?)
Hi John. Thanks so much for what you do.
I used to meditate for over an hour daily and clairvoyantly channel info and healing for my life. Sometimes for others. After I became pregnant, I took a break from this practice bc of some material I came across regarding safety issues for new mothers around magic. I see where you have counseled others around magical safety pertaining to pregnant and nursing mothers. I’m currently nursing. I understand that you recommend no ceremonial magic while nursing but would you consider reading energy in meditation (is that scrying?) ceremonial magic? I do protect myself before with prayer, intention and vocalization. Sometimes with hand movements.
I’m having a hard time with the idea that asking my higher self for messages around the baby’s health, education, development etc could be a negative thing or unsafe. I’ve used readings like this to navigate life for a long time (2013) and without having my clairvoyant connection to my guides I feel like I’m flying blind. And in the most important season of my life. I know you say meditation is fine, but I wonder if you mean just discursive meditation. Because I would consider what I’m doing in meditation visionary work, but not in any particular tradition. I’m pretty self taught. I’ve just never thought of my practice as officially magical.
Don’t you think protection rituals would be important for a new mother who has a child to care for? For instance, I made holy water the other day for his christening and the recipe I used felt …yeah…ceremonial, invoking names of God and commanding elementals etc. I made the signs of the cross etc. Is that ceremonial or natural magic?
Unfortunately I have an ex boyfriend that threatened to curse me and my family when i broke up with him in 2014. Sad end to our story. Just as an example of something to protect my family from, I would like to ensure that energy has no impact on my baby or family. My current partner isn’t magical or even a very big believer in the supernatural. He would do a ritual for me/us, but I wonder how powerful it could really be if he’s not a big “believer” so to speak.
Thanks for your feedback! I’ll ask a more interesting question after I get this one out of my system.
Cheers!
@Siliconguy #73
Back when I was doing Computer System Validation, one of the rules was that off-the-shelf commercial software didn’t need to be validated unless it was customized (in my industry, at least). I never really thought that was a safe assumption, but who am I?
Oh well, when the off-the-shelf software fails, at least you have someone to blame.
Kind Sir,
Karma. I can see how in a normal, unexceptional life certain amounts of karma are built up or worked out.
What I cannot see is, how can karma built up in the life of an insane mass murderer like Mao or Stalin can ever be cleared. The sheer scale of it seems impossible. How can a soul go on after that?
@Patricia Mathews: I’ve not looked into other defenestrations; in the case of an 82 year old chronically ill lady it’s safe to assume that all sort of things could have caused it.
Hey JMG and Commentariat
I Just found this interesting bit of new on the “Guardian” which may be of interest to you.
Apparently strange “Polymetallic nodules” that possess electric charges as strong as an AA battery have been found at the bottom of the sea, that somehow are capable of producing oxygen without sunlight.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/22/dark-oxygen-in-depths-of-pacific-ocean-could-force-rethink-about-origins-of-life
To Russell #87,
Re. an Ecosophian meet-up in Brisbane—I’d very much be interested! I’ll send you an email at the address you mentioned above. Cheers!
— Ekaterina
Chuaquin,
I can give you my own take on RFK, Jr., FWIW. I think he’s an old-school political insider with access to a lot more information than most. I think he has a good heart, and I think he truly cares about other people. I also think he’s an enormous threat to the Deep State/plutarchy. Which is to say, he doesn’t stand a chance!
I’ve planned all along to vote for him, but I’ve been a third-party voter since I turned 18, thirty plus years ago. Although curiously, with the attempt on Trump’s life I have felt myself wavering and thinking about switching my vote to Trump. Was that part of the intention? Maybe.
I think RFK is more popular with the younger generations and may have a fairly strong showing in that demographic. But we’ll see… It’s certainly high-time we had other options!
Cheers.
JMG – A couple of unfortunate choices in the news.
1. A week ago, Joe Biden was saying that some people want me to leave the race, but “I’m not going anywhere!” I know what he meant, but between the lines, I “heard” him say “my campaign is futile; I’m stuck right where I am.”
2. A moment ago, my local NPR station ran a 30-second teaser for their upcoming weekly news summary program, with a few audio clips and announcer-read text, with some vigorous early 70’s rock in the background. The tune, though, was “Hocus Pocus”, by “Focus”. Wikipedia has a fairly long article on the band, but I’ve thought of them as a quirky one-hit wonder, and this particular tune features a monotonously repetitive riff and nonsense vocalization. It’s inadvertently perfectly appropriate for NPR news! (Not to mention that “hocus pocus” is associated with stage-magic deception…)
Your thoughts?
Arson attacks against the train lines in France…Maybe related with the Palestinian “problem”?
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cxe24vg59lzt
As William Morris has recently been mentioned a few times I recommend the Rebel Britannia blog. It has an entertaining article about William Morris, as well as other characters and events in British socialist history.
https://rebelbrit.substack.com/p/rebel-britannia-a6f
Just seen from Stone Age Herbalist on Twitter:
“Glass sherds from the laboratory of Renaissance alchemist and astronomer Tycho Brahe have turned up high levels of nickel, copper, zinc, tin, antimony, tungsten, gold, mercury, and lead.
Tungsten is unexpected since it wasn’t identified until the 1780’s.”
https://twitter.com/Paracelsus1092/status/1816793351363919943
Mary Bennet #129
Info on who did not attend – no list but names some names.
https://swentr.site/news/601616-netanyahu-snubbed-congressional-us-democrats/
Hi Kim. A,
Thanks for responding.
Based on the fact that my wife simply refuses to consider leaving Europe I’ve concluded Madeira is my best bet.
Geographically it is far away from the coming chaos and has all the advantages you mention.
Portugal currently had various visa options and hopefully in the future I can take advantage of that once the inevitable starts to happen.
I see the growing disintegration of Europe a story of two half’s.
On the one hand a story of coming wars between states with historical divisions. I’m looking at the Balkans, Greece vs Turkey, Hungary and so on likely dragging in their neighbours (and of course Russia!)
In the western and Scandinavian core, Russia isn’t really a threat (Russian troops aren’t going to invade Belgium, France or Norway).
The long term and direct threat is both internal and external Muslim demographic pressures.
This is a story that probably only truly becomes apparent in the 2040s and 2050s but in the most Islamic cities you are already seeing problems emerge.
Probably for the next 15 to 20 years avoiding those urban cities with a heavy and growing Muslim population is probably sufficient.
After that you need to move somewhere far away!
Worst case scenario, even if Madeira got impacted, the Azores is always an option.
Middle of the Atlantic so a Portuguese golden visa is the way to go long term.
@Mary Bennet #175: “Vance’s “cat ladies”, are law abiding, employed TAX PAYING American citizens. No way will I ever vote for that clown.”
I remember our host, on a recent podcast with Jim Kunstler, recalling how, when he first read C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, he initially ridiculed the idea of scientists woshipping Satan. “And now,” he added, “we are in 2023, and where are we??”
In a similar fashion, in my youth, I dismissed the Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches”) as a dark relic of a superstitious age, thankfully forgotten. However, given the current transfixion of Western Civilization into stone by the Devouring Mother archetype (the ancient Medusa), I now wonder if Messrs. Kramer and Sprenger may not have known a thing or three.
Even if we leave purported witchcraft out of it, there is no question in my mind that, as Josh Slocum points out in his “Disaffected” Substack, Western society has become a macroscopic version of the Joan Crawford, “Mommy Dearest,” Cluster-B psychodrama played out in so many dysfunctional families. I, for one, will not apologize for noticing this and pointing this out.
These hysterical “Wars Against Noticing” have gone on long enough. Yes, I know – I know! “Not all …!” and “There are exceptions!” I get that. Still, J. D. Vance has called a spade a blooming shovel, and it is past time someone did so.
I have encountered yet another Neo-Pagan book on topic of demons. Are they scrapping the bottom of the barrel in finding things to believe in? Is this because quite a few are deconverts from Christianity but never really moved beyond that religion? I know as a Polytheistist, that I am a spiritual immigrant into the new land of Polytheism, with its richness and complexity. Is it that these Neo-Pagans are like immigrants who come but do not leave their neighborhoods of fellow immigrants and never learn the language? I think demons is a Christian idea that seems to be something they can hang on to about the old religion they left.
Hello JMG et al!
The relatively new GOP VP candidate JD Vance wrote in an essay a while back about his conversion to Catholicism. He cited his admiration for the writings of Rene Girard, and Girard’s theories of scapegoating as an origin of religion.
Any familiarity with Girard or the said theory? (I’ve never read him. Of course I looked at the Wikipedia article, but have no clue how worthwhile that is.)
>No way will I ever vote for that clown
Honk honk.
Sigh. And this is going to be a really unpopular claim I’m about to make. But just like Communism breaks when scaled up past a certain point (and it breaks pretty badly and quickly) – Democracy (and all the representational variants of it, stop nitpicking over terminology) also breaks when scaled up past a certain point.
It scales up much better but when it starts to fail, it doesn’t fail as spectacularly as Communism does. You don’t get mass graves and secret police. What you get instead is a circus and clowns. The only electable people past a certain point, are nothing but clowns, it’s a matter of how clownish they are, a matter of the size of their clown shoes and the redness of their nose, not whether they are a clown in the first place.
So, I would claim, you have no real choice – if you’re going to vote, you are going to vote for a clown. You’re arguing over the color of his clown shoes and the size of his honking nose. My clown is better than your clown.
I make one and only one exception to not voting – if someone is trying to kill the clown, then I’ll get up and vote. It’s pretty much the only thing I care about when looking at the clown show.
Honk honk.
I suppose certain variants of Democracy scale better than others. It’s amazing what those revolutionaries in 1776 built that it still functions at all. That it scaled as well as it did without them thinking about how it would work with 100s of millions of people participating.
JMB:
Neptunesdolphins, my point is that they haven’t just exalted Harris to ersatz goddess status, they’re assuming that because she (theoretically) checks all the right oppression boxes, she’s destined to win. They may be in for a harsh disappointment because, again, life isn’t a Disney movie.
Me: Thank you for explaining that.
I have pondered it more in light of how Julius Caesar became a Roman God. On the other blog, I did note I have a cultus to Julius Caesar as DIvus Iulius. Anyway, it was a ground swell from both the people and Senate that make him a God. It was a process that made sense by what they said he did as to become the Father of Rome. Then after his death, there were signs in the skies.
I do not see that with Harris. Only the day after Biden stepped down, the powers that be decided that she was a goddess based on her being a woman, black, and Asian. It was automatic by one group of people based on their desires and not her actions. There doesn’t seem to be any attachment to her and America in any sense.
Meanwhile, Trump seems more in the mold of Caesar and I can see his attachment to America. It seems more natural and evolving by the people around him. And there is none of this forced blackmail of believe in Trump’s Godhood or else.
JMG,
How common is it for dogs to reincarnate as humans, and once they do, are they forever on the human track?
I ask because my youngest daughter (18 months) exhibits a lot of traits of a dog, like plowing her face into her food instead of using her hands and sniffing the air while looking for people. We don’t know where she picked up this behavior since we don’t have pets or hang around anyone with animals, and my other kids don’t show this behavior. It’s hilarious, but I wonder what kind of challenges we are going to run into in the future.
“The faster we can get more reliable renewables into the system”
There’s the internal contradiction. There are no reliable renewables. Hydroelectric is probably the best, but in the end it depends on rain or snow.
He has a point about the coal plants though. Keeping the equipment ready for startup and paying the operators to do nothing most of the time does not result in cheap power. The best option for intermittent use has been gas turbines, and recently very large natural gas powered engine driven generators.
https://www.wartsila.com/energy/solutions/engine-power-plants/wartsila-34sg-gas-engine
Re: house sizes
I would guess that part of it has to do with the insanity of land prices, which are of course entirely speculative. No human labor went into the creation of a quarter-acre lot, but if that lot costs me $500k then it doesn’t make much sense to build a $150k house on it. When this bubble pops, land prices will have to fall dramatically as well.
@Evergreen #205
My mother channeled all through her pregnancy with me and continued her energy healing work with clients during that time and while nursing. Some of the messages that came through about who I would be felt a bit awkward as I was choosing my own path in life (in a “no pressure” sort of way), but now at age 39 they mostly feel aligned with my being. Otherwise I can report no ill effects, and if anything I think it may have helped me to avoid dropping quite so far into the denser energies and fearful/violent patterns of this planet.
So…sample size of 1 but no issues here :-).
Just me @ 216 I found a list at msn.com, which, surprise, surprise, seems to have been taken down. One of those times when I wished I had a printer. Sanders denounced Bibi as a war criminal on the Senate floor the evening before the Speech, which was, I gather, the usual disgraceful exhibition that occurs whenever Bibi invites himself to our capital. Senator Merkley, from OR, put up a brief message to his constituents about why he did not attend. (No, he is not running for president someday. He wants Schumer’s job.) Most of the Squad and allies did not attend. A presumably very well coached and briefed VP would seem not to have agreed to whatever Bibi demanded (bomb Iran?) in the private meeting. Maybe. At least there was from her none of the wholehearted agreement and fulsome praise we are used to hearing from Bibi’s puppets.
My congresscritter did attend. No vote from me will be forthcoming. At this point I might be tempted to vote for Tweety Bird.
@Mark 193 – the Hatred Revolution would like Rwanda during its genocidal civil war.
A true and authentic video of Obama meeting the Democratic party leadership to discuss Trump:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo81UqO54dg
P.S. I posted this as a joke, but it has been getting too real lately, hasn’t it?
P.P.S. I like the 1973 version more.
@J.L.Mc12
That is a interesting find, I wonder if the oxygen created will directly rise to the surface to become part of the atmosphere, or if it is used and transformed by another chemical process before leaving the deep ocean.
On a seperate note
I have also heard ‘rumors’ that oil forms naturally in the earth without the need of lifeforms to create hydrocarbons, yet have never seen any evidence of this.
Perhaps life is a biproduct of a self organizing earth, rather than the other way around. That could explain why there is no life found on similar planets, which are devoid of water/atmosphere, yet have direct access to sunlight where life could find energy to grow, despite the harsh conditions.
J.L.Mc12, underground cities strike me as a very sensible idea, as heating and cooling costs are very low, and you can get ample light via light wells and light tubes; floating cities are trickier but it wouldn’t surprise me to see somebody do that someday. Underwater cities on the continental shelves? Trickier still, but potentially doable. Flying cities strike me as very unlikely.
Mark, you saw the first round of it in 2016, as a great many liberal voters who’d spent years insisting that hate was horrible embraced their inner hater so they could shriek their rage at Donald Trump. It’s continued from there, of course; the revolution of hate is already well under way.
Wer, oh, granted. Trump is not himself a divinity, but people are projecting a vast amount of archetypal content on him, and the assassination attempt catalyzed a change in the nature of that content. Still, you do know, don’t you, that in large parts of Asia, people are burning incense to statues like this one?
Evergreen, by ceremonial magic I mean ceremonial magic, not anything else in the broad field of occultism, such as the things you do. It astonishes me how many people don’t seem to be able to process that. You might consider reading the Magic Monday FAQ for more details.
DropBear, the universe has plenty of time. If it’s necessary, in order for some soul to clear its karma, for that soul to experience dying in shrieking agony ten million times, the universe can provide that experience, too.
J.L.Mc12, interesting. I wonder just how many of the supposed laws of nature they violate in the process. 😉
Lathechuck, talk about truth in advertising!
Chuaquin, might be that, might be any number of other nations or non-state actors who have reason to want to mess with France. The list isn’t short.
Tengu, thanks for this.
Luke, what he means is that people who weren’t alchemists didn’t know about tungsten until the 1780s. Alchemists didn’t publish their findings, they passed them on secretly from teacher to student. My take, based on a good many years of close reading of alchemical texts, is that they knew quite a number of things that uninitiated chemists didn’t learn about until much, much later.
Neptunesdolphins, I think it’s the other way around. I think a lot of Neopagans these days are groping their way back to Christianity, and demonolatry is a convenient stepping stone — after all, once they’re ready to go back to church, they can announce that they’ve seen the light and renounced Satan and all his works, and their new Christian friends will cheer.
Joel, yes, I’m familiar with Girard’s theory. It’s self-evidently false. If Girard were correct, since Christians can project their need for a scapegoat onto Jesus, who is the perfect target for that projection, then Christian societies would see a lot less scapegoating in everyday life than other societies. How’s that worked out over the last two thousand years?
Neptunesdolphins, oh, granted. It’s one thing to be deified by popular demand and another thing to become the projection screen for the overinflated sense of entitlement of a pampered class.
Dennis, it’s pretty common, and most of the time once souls reach the human level, they stay there. You might read a couple of good books on how to get dogs to behave, and see how a modified version works on your daughter — she may be familiar with those methods of discipline, and so will find them comfortable and easy to work with.
I am old enough to remember when there were no plastic soda bottles. Soda was sold in glass bottles you could return for a few cents, real money back then. 11 year old boys were always on the look out for stray bottles. You could get a candy bar for a dime. I even remember the introduction of sandwich baggies. Back in the early 1950’s an owner of a general store, in Montana I believe, died. For some reason the building was locked up and became a time capsule of the past. As a general store it has a broad range of items, there were very few if any plastic items – everything was rubber, metal, wood, paper, glass, ceramics, cloth. Yes, a comfortable, “modern” civilization was done without plastic and can be done again. I say again no substantial progress and improvement has happened since the 60’s. We are well into the realm of extremely diminished returns and are actually IMO in the realm of actually negative returns in technological”progress”. Microplastics, forever chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals all through the biosphere as an example, there are other baleful items that could be listed.
Howdy JMG,
I just finished listening to your interview on the Hermetix podcast on polythesim and absolutely loved it! Super excited to read the latest addition!
A quick question. I’m trying to teach myself Latin so I can read more magical texts from the medieval period. Do you have any suggestions on books or courses to help learn Latin?
Thanks
Alex S
JMG, concerning pets…like cats and dogs. Is being a pet a sort of initiatory period before their souls reincarnate as humans? If that’s the case, then whoever owns a pet has a responsibility of sorts concerning their pets spiritual progression, right?
@Taylor Burgess #172 (if I may)
It’s always fun and mildly surreal to see people talking about things like The Legend of Zelda in JMG’s virtual living room of all places, haha. A real “worlds colliding” feel. Anyway, with a tongue in cheek apology to our host for more talk about video games, your comment is interesting. I’ve thought a bit along the same lines myself before, trying to apply JMG’s lens of “notional space” and “Era of Performance” etc to this medium.
While I appreciate your comments, I’d also like to disagree with some of them. For instance, IMO Nintendo’s (artistic if not economic) decline started when they went from the cutting edge in the late 80s to mid 90s and settled into their Era of Performance we see today, where all their stuff is indeed very formulaic. Maybe Miyamoto’s journey into middle age plays a role here, without making it too much about one person alone. Either way, I don’t think they were especially formulaic until well after they’d become a titan.
Very much agreed that it feels like video games went from a wide open era of exploration to Performance of formulas somewhere in the 2000s. I’d argue that’s not because studios used up all the notional space of the medium in a few decades, though. Instead, I’d say the current fixation on formulas and sameness largely comes down to a couple factors: one, in the 90s and 2000s there was a sort of “sweet spot” where mid-budget games could flourish, and even a triple-A production could be made on a reasonable-ish budget. These days, in a way I suspect would draw one of those famous wry smiles from our host, it’s become so crushingly expensive and complex to make a triple-A game it’s simply unsustainable both in economic and human (ie. crunch) terms. So just like Hollywood et al, they have to cater to the absolute lowest common denominator and take zero risk to make back all that outlay.
The second factor is more subtle and more interesting IMO: I’d like to claim the video game medium is largely “stuck” creatively because of the fixation of violence as the only way to create and solve conflict. It’s like if every major movie had to be an action flick. That puts sharp limits on the kind of stories you can tell. There are some exceptions, like the classic point and click adventures and modern “walking simulators”, but by and large every major game is built around combat. If devs would move past that and experiment with other kinds of conflict and storytelling, I think a lot of notional space would open up.
@Christophe (various comments)
Don’t have anything in particular to add, but just wanted to say I always enjoy reading your comments here, both the content and the writing style. Agree or not, always something good to chew on. Keep it up. 🙂
@Michael Gray #186
Ooh, I like it. Very elegant and insightful comment, and makes perfect sense. Thanks for this from me too.
@Mark #193
I think we’ve seen it already. Look at the way those who repress their hatred most ferociously talk about, say, Trump voters, vaccine skeptics or people who believe in biological gender. Flirting with the forbidden topic here, I know, but some of the intense vitriol during the pandemic was shocking to me. I think JMG might have explicitly said as much in his essay back then, but those who claim to be far above hate can make some really scorching comments about the people they’re “allowed” to dislike, far and above what political disagreement would suggest.
@Forecasting Intelligence #217
“Russian troops aren’t going to invade Belgium, France or Norway”
Someone sure needs to tell mainstream Norwegian politicians that, haha. They seem convinced those evilly evil Russkies are itching to invade any chance they get. Then again, our long-time former PM was head of NATO itself until recently, so I guess that’s par for the course.
Anyway, what you’re saying re. Madeira makes sense. I think you’re right it could be a solid bet, at least as long as its water supply can hold in the face of climate change. I wish you the best of luck and sincerely hope you find a happy and prosperous future there, and that the visa arrangements go smoothly when the time comes.
I’d consider Madeira myself, but like I might have said in these pages before, I personally lean much more towards Spanish language and culture over Portuguese if I have to adapt my whole life to one of them. It really does look like a lovely place, though. Unfortunately the Canary Islands seem like losing bets in comparison for reasons already mentioned, except possibly La Palma, which has more water and fewer people to share it with (and a sizeable expat community with hippie/green tendencies too, or so I hear). Tenerife has close to a million people, a declared drought crisis already, gets something like half its water from energy-intensive desalination plants and is set to receive 20-30% less rainfall towards the end of the century per public research. Ouch.
I remember ages ago, eons, an eternity, long ago, when I fantasized that at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) coming up August 19-22, 2024, that Democrats would hash out, debate, from roughly six possible candidates, which candidate they would put forward to the American people. In other words, well thought out. Ya know, do it Democratic-like, as if there weren’t an invisible batch of puppeteers controlling the story, as if they cared about “the Democratic process,” as if they cared more about others than they care about themselves.
Que Mala Harass was NOT among the six. (it was my fantasy, so I get to have it the way I want.) Gavin Newscum was one—also Truegretch Witmer. (I might have voted for Truegretch.)
The “ages ago” date was exactly a week ago: Friday, July 19, 2024, the day after the Republican National Convention ended. A lot happened in that week.
Notably, there has been no debate whatsoever on who the Democratic party’s candidate will be: Que Mala Harass. No democratic process. Just instruction from on-high designating the one true candidate.
It shows exactly what the Democratic party is: as power hungry as Tramp. At least, Republicans are somewhat more moral in some places and at some times.
In their senility, the Democratic party put forth the one low-hanging fruit being Que Mala Harass.
The Democratic party’s new motto: Don’t Make Me Think.”
💨Northwind Grandma💨🧐😒🫡
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
I’m late to the party as usual, but this is just a quick note to let people know that I quoted extensively from our host (fully referenced!) in a blogpost a couple weeks ago about Boeing’s current Quality troubles and what it will take to refocus management’s attention where it matters. You can find the post here:
Boeing again, and the power of systems thinking, Pragmatic Quality Blog
The quoted bit had to do with the fates of Shyster Co and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Inc—a solution whose time has clearly come! Thank you, many times over, for rethinking these topics so clearly.
Uh I hope I did not write too much a piece there – many impressions.
To make it shorter an interesting story also: there was a “water bar” at the festival I mentioned. The man there offered filtered water an to enlist so he visits your home and checks the quality of your water.
He said he started it because 10 years ago they noticed in Gmunden Upper Austria the water quality was horrifying. I have had courses on waste water treatment at university and could tell he had some deeper knowledge.
He said that for example the bacteria in the water treatment plants no die off due to the massive pollution in the water, from micro-plastics to industrial chemicals and heavy metals.
Shortly thereafter I saw a news peace about worrying pollution in some of Austria’s drinking water sources.
On note of the lenocracy:
One farmer I know has a new partner, a nurse at my age so 36. She told me not only about woke language mandates at her work that impede working with clients (who don’t understand the mandated artifical language constructs), but also about the local government administration paying people to search supermarkets for people issuing they have little cats to give away – that is illegal now, you need a breeder’s licence to give away kittens to somebody.
Youtube man Outdoor Chiemgau notes the european electricity grid is on the brink. A few weeks ago there was a big outage of electricity across former yugoslavia with all the consequences he always predicted – traffic chaos in the streets, no water, communications down etc
Recvently there have been several power outages in smaller German cities.
An an hour ago he reported sabotage of the French rail network leaving 800,000 people stranded because trains have been unable to move.
Menawhile in Vienna newspapers are full of news of youth gang violence and apparently also gun violence is increasing heavily here. That used to be rare.
Also schools have been alarming for some time it is impossible to school the exploding number of migrant children properly in Vienna.
@JMG
You always point out you expect our decline as continuity – that’s why you expect entrepreneurs of the type of Musk to still play a role in the USA (if they exist as such) in about a 100 years?
And what is your take on Soros? Just the head of a network of corporate interests, and what are those interests, why destabilize their own country by eroding legal justice? Is it the wet dream of a world without borders and limits for corporations unhindered by the state or something like that.
I always wonder, is Soros himself really that big, or just a poster child?
What I also wonder about, people here speculate about emigrating from Europe, but never to Guyana. The country is english speaking, sparsely populated and full of rainforest and arable land. Sounds somewhat like a good take.
What is your guess about Europe again – wars and hunger in a decade? Impossible to survive for someone like me at say, 36 years old? Any chance of genocide by foreign populations or religions?
regards,
Curt
Hi JMG,
As I understand it, the basic SOP invokes the elements, banishes imbalances, invokes the telluric and solar currents, and gives a place for the lunar current. All this strengthens the aura among other cleansing and balancing benefits. What do the advanced steps of the SOP like filling the caldrons and bringing the two dragon currents do?
Thank you!
>It’s hilarious, but I wonder what kind of challenges we are going to run into in the future
House training for one. Good luck with that. I imagine that a dog doesn’t have much use for algebra or calculus, and I would expect such subjects to be really challenging to a dog. Or a cat. I suspect other abstract types of knowledge would be maybe not beyond the moon but I’d set expectations early on about what can be mastered and what can’t.
I bet outdoor activities and physical stuff would be right up her alley though. Get her on a soccer team. They love chasing that ball.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone in their very first hooman life. You’ll probably learn more from this than she will.
>I found a list at msn.com, which, surprise, surprise, seems to have been taken down. One of those times when I wished I had a printer.
Like I told JMG, if it’s at all spicy, SCREENCAP IT. Sometimes you can get away with using archive.is but screencaps as dorky and wasteful as they are, they are robust, they work, they are postable, etc. There are questions about authenticity, but something is better than nothing, even if it has been messed with.
Spicy things are verboten in this bland bland era, don’t you know? Blandness is next to godliness. And the bland police are always watching.
Ah, you want to visit Nuwinga, then! 😉 Great choice! I would like to see my hometown one million years in the future, just to see how things have changed in that time. It would be cathartic to see all the roads and highways and strip malls be long gone. I wonder if humanity will still be around a million years from now.
Another question- How do you feel about invasive species? Right now for this season I have been working with taking care of some restoration and wildlife areas in my state. One thing I have quickly noticed is how arbitrary the designation of invasive species is, and how the medicine worse than the cure. To wage war on the invasive species, often the bureaucrats in charge contract out to expensive contractors who dump herbicide all over the place which just makes things so much worse. I and my colleagues are working to stop these heavy-handed tactics. Invasive species aren’t “unnatural,” they are just nature doing what it does. In fact, I’ve noticed that a lot of the invasives are performing valuable ecosystem functions. Thistles are important for pollinators, for example. The whole label seems absurd and politically motivated, and I think the only one who wins are the companies that make the herbicide.
@Jonathan #100 re: Communities that Abide
Thanks very much for the recommendation!
Cheers,
Jeff
I just ran across and advertisement for Tedlar on solar panels. What’s Tedlar you ask?
From Wikipedia:
The PVF-based film was first commercialised in 1961 by DuPont under the name Tedlar.
Polyvinyl fluoride (PVF) or –(CH2CHF)n– is a polymer material mainly used in the flammability-lowering coatings of airplane interiors and photovoltaic module backsheets.[2] It is also used in raincoats and metal sheeting. Polyvinyl fluoride is a thermoplastic fluoropolymer with a repeating vinyl fluoride unit, and it is structurally very similar to polyvinyl chloride.
Yet another fluoropolymer. Those things are everywhere, literally. Green living seems to require that you bathe in fluoropolymers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_fluoride
“Chris, I’ve noticed that kind of blithering stupidity becoming increasingly more common over time. I’m beginning to think that as the age of reason ends, a lot of people are losing the habit of reasoning, or even the capacity to think.”
I think there’s another issue at work here: the transition of the bulk of most people’s experience of the mass media into clickbait has left a lot of people too stressed to think clearly. It’s well known among psychologists that people lose the ability to think under stress; and it’s also well known that people respond more to stressful stimuli than non-stressful ones (the “negativity bias”). So if you want to keep people staring at a screen, the best way to do it is to make it slightly stressful, because they will then become unable to avert their eyes from it.
It used to be that someone had to put together everything in the mass media, and they are at least occasionally going to think of questions like “Does this even entertain people?” or “What will this do to society?” An algorithm that is solely built to keep people’s attention won’t think of such things; and it will also be able to identify what stresses each individual out the most, and will also know exactly how far it can push it: past a certain point, people will stop because they realize that they get too stressed from the mass media, but the algorithms can push it further than a human being can.
Canary Islands?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbre_Vieja_tsunami_hazard
Maybe it will happen in your lifetime, maybe it won’t.
Invasive species? Which ones? I like dandelions (imported from Europe), but detest Canadian thistles, (really from Asia). The court just gave permission for the Fish and Wildlife to kill barred owls (even thought they are from North America) because barred owls eat the most holy spotted owls.
Before we go on, a quiet little note. When I say that AI is off limits for these open posts, that really is what it means; I’ve just deleted two lengthy attempted comments about, you guessed it, AI. Any further attempted comments on the same subject will also be deleted, and no, I don’t read them first; the moment it becomes clear the comment is about AI, into the trash it goes. Keep it up, and my trash bin may just be given a new form — that of a giant Sloar. (Many a troll and spammer will know what it is to be roasted in the depths of the Sloar that day, I can tell you!)
Seriously, please abide by the house rules or I may get irritated and start banning people. ‘Nuf said.
With that said,
BeardTree, that’s a good point. Alternatives to plastic will also become much more cost effective as petroleum continues to deplete.
Alex, there may be any number of approaches, but the one that worked for me was to get a copy of Wheelock’s Latin, which is a classic text of Latin grammar, and work through it. Supplement it with Wheelock’s Latin Reader, which will get you to the point of being able to read fluently, and then go on to works of modern Latin prose such as Hobbitus Ille by JRR Tolkien, Alicia in Terra Mirabilis by Lewis Carroll, Magus Mirabilis in Oz by L. Frank Baum, or Winnie Ille Pu by A.A. Milne. (I mean this quite literally — these are great for getting fluency in Latin reading.) Then try your hand at some short passages in medieval Latin that have already been translated, so you can check your work. When you’re good at that, you know enough to tackle untranslated texts. Go for it and best of luck!
Bruno, all animals in close contact with humans are learning from us and preparing to make the leap to full sentience. As long as you treat animals well, you’re doing what you need to do.
Michael, thank you for this! It would be really helpful if those ideas got a little more circulation…
Curt, Soros is a little more than a poster child, but he’s not an evil mastermind personally responsible for all the wickedness in the world, either. He’s got too much money and a political agenda, but of course that’s true of a lot of other members of today’s senile kleptocracy. As for Europe, I summarized what I expect in these two posts:
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-next-european-war/
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-end-of-the-european-age/
Matt, the further expansions of the SoP build on the awakening of the lunar current, circulate it through the subtle body, and activate a series of inner centers that awaken psychic and mystical capacities.
Enjoyer, by the year 3045 it may not be Nuwinga any more; Star’s Reach was set in the 2470s, and a lot can happen in 600 years. As for invasive species, I discussed that in detail here:
https://www.ecosophia.net/a-conversation-with-nature/
Siliconguy, that’s one of the things that make me roll my eyes at the “green” rhetoric that surrounds so much current pseudosustainable technology.
Taylor, fair enough.
Curt, Guyana is currently at risk of war with Venezuela over the Essequibo region. I wouldn’t recommend anybody going to Guyana until those tensions subside.
Normally i am such a doomer it is kind of nice to post to something that might turn out to be helpful.
Here is some research that might actually help make a renewable energy future possible.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-024-01645-x
Storing energy in twisted carbon nanotube ropes.
here is the money quote
“The nanomechanical system proposed for reversible energy storage has significant advantages over current technologies. The core of the SWCNT rope was functionalized with an elastomer. The energy storage capacity and rate of energy delivery of a rope, which can be reversibly twisted, approaches those of explosives, including gasoline, on a gravimetric basis. The energy storage density of 2.1 MJ kg−1 exceeds that of leading electrical or electrochemical energy storage systems, in particular LIBs, by at least a factor of three. In addition, the energy retention rate of a twisted rope exceeds those of competing electrical and electrochemical systems that discharge over time. In contrast, the number of useful charge/discharge or load/unload cycles of the SWCNT rope appeared to be unlimited. Unlike chemical explosives and electrical or electrochemical systems, the storage and delivery of nanomechanical energy in SWCNT ropes is very safe. Although limited ion mobility reduces and even cripples the power delivery of LIBs at very low temperatures, the power density delivered by a twisted SWCNT rope remains rather constant over a wide temperature range, from deep cryogenic temperatures to the boiling point of water.”
High energy density 0.5 kilowatt hours per kilogram
Unlimited cycles (this is huge if true)
no self-discharge
Low temperature dependence
Safe
No exotic materials ( almost all carbon)
Potentially cheap to manufacture ( lots of work to be done to see if this is true)
It is neat that the energy is stored as mechanical energy, and you would not necessarily need to convert the mechanical power into electricity in order to use it.
This will not save industrial capitalism but may keep open some useful technological opportunities if it can be developed.
Heather, et al.
Not being a homeowner, I never really paid much attention to square footage in regards to living space. So, I decided to measure mine.
I’ve been living here happily for 34 years. I think it’s the perfect size for one person, and didn’t feel too crowded even when I had a girlfriend live with me for about four years. You wouldn’t want to throw a huge party here, but it’s more than adequate for day to day living.
Verdict? 450 square feet. So yeah, 1200 seems like more than enough for most families.
@ the child and speculation if it is first human life
Another perspective. Kids are different from each other. Some kids explore the world in the ways you say your daughter does, doesnt nessesarily mean anything else. A kid doesnt need another example to put their face into their food. They ay just try it, they might then do it more as they find they like the feel of things on their face. The child may love scents.
BUt, either way, canine in recent past or not, the solution is the same. Tablemanners is a slow socialization process. Keep encouraging her gently to grasp items, so make sure there are some easy to grasp food items, diced, correct sizes, crackers to teeth with. And, when not meal time, you can now and then massage her face and the rest of her body with a light oil with a drop or two of essential oils in it. So give her some of the stimulation she likes in another more appropriate setting
Owen and Michael Martin, First, a shovel and a spade are not the same thing. I own and use one of each.
As for witches, etc. that strikes me as yet another imported Europeanism which won’t take hold here.
I think the two of you and others are making the same mistake generations on the left made and make, ignoring people’s lived experience in favor of an ideology, or meme, if you prefer. In neighborhoods where I have lived, you insult someone’s family, you get your a** whipped. Do it again and someone might find your mortal remains in a dumpster. A guy like Vance is what back in those days we would call a punk. IDK what the hillbilly Appalachian equivalent might be.
The point is, details matter. They are the texture, the warp and woof of our lives. And human life is messy. Always has been. Us humans are perhaps the most contrary of all God’s creatures. Democracy is messy, as are republics. No, restricting the franchise to property owners does not do away with foolishness and factionalism.
If you want to understand political and social trends, you need to look closely and carefully at people’s lived daily experiences. Generations of classics students have assumed that Themistocles must have been some kind of fantastic orator, Demosthenes and Cicero rolled up in one, to persuade the Athenians to use their silver windfall to build triremes instead of a onetime payout to each citizen. No, he didn’t need to be. Athenians of the lowest class, thetes, had recently been admitted into the voting assembly. A one time payout is not much use to a poor man. By the time he clears his debts, and then his niece needs a dowery, and a cousin’s shop just burned down, etc. A hundred triremes to be built and manned, by citizen rowers, is a jobs program. Reliable money coming in each and every month for the foreseeable future.
Snark about childless women, that’s someone’s aunt who helped pay Jr.’s tuition. That is the daughter who is a nun and isn’t the whole family proud. This is not a theme you want to be taking into a general election.
88
@Hosea Tanatu #110
Interesting, thanks. I can’t recall ever encountering that “pessimistic” self-label (and I’m German and have lived in Germany almost all my life). Germans characterizing the general German spirit as discontent, as bad-talking their own country, or as grumpy, yes. I’ll have to keep an eye out for pessimistic! 🙂
@Booklover #119,
Thanks. The German history is a convoluted thing. I know that terms like “German Reich” or similar have been used for various constructs for centuries. But for most of these centuries, the majority of people wouldn’t have felt to be a “German”, but rather a “Württemberger”, “Kurpfälzer” or similar countryman. It’s only rather recently that there were energies calling for “German unity” in considerable parts of the people, which eventually led to a “unified” German reich/country. But still, to this day, people are making jokes about e.g. the Bavarians, the Saxons, the East Frisians, etc, and quite a few people are still feeling these identities.
I.e. the historical perspective here is a bit muddled. Over large swathes of time, apart from the then-current monarch and a few people around him, most others probably didn’t feel very “German”. That only changed not much more than these 150 years ago… (That’s not to say there can’t be another national collapse and re-organization, btw, just that a unified Germany isn’t that old yet, and has encountered some difficult times in the last century which didn’t only affect Germany. No idea if that’ll have any importance on future developments, though…)
@Kim. A #133,
Thanks for the data point. I’m not experiencing any resurgence in my neck of the woods either, at least not so far. It’ll be interesting to see if things get moving at some point.
Hope y’all are going to have a great weekend! 🙂
Milkyway
Just a heads up for everyone to keep their protections up. Seeing a few well known writers in the occult and their followers trying to curse anyone not voting “Blue No Matter Who.”
Gonna have to make one of those red bags and jars I think.
To our host and community what kind of blow back do you expect from this sort of thing?
Been quite a while since I’ve posted a question here JMG, but this one’s been on my mind for years…
I’m curious if you or any of your readers are familiar with an Irish author from the early 20th century, Eimar O’Duffy. Amongst other books, he wrote a trilogy (of sorts) called the Cuanduine trilogy. It consists of King Goshawk and the Birds, The Spacious Adventures of The Man in The Street and Assess in Clover. I’ve read the first and last, but haven’t gotten around the the second. This is a decent summary if anyone is interested: (https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/eimar-o-duffy-the-forgotten-irish-author-with-a-phantasmagorical-vision-1.3611638)
I have read you here and at the ADR for at least a decade, but read O’Duffy before getting to know you. I need to re-read, but it seemed like there were some occult themes throughout his writing.
Anyway, just curious. If you have read anything of his could you share your thoughts?
Re. pets and reincarnation
Interesting to follow the discussion. I know everyone raves about their animals, but I have a feeling my cat who passed away last fall might have been on her final incarnation before rising to humanity. She was exceptionally smart and curious and especially liked manipulating objects with her paws in some startlingly human-like ways. On the other hand, my still-living cat of the same age is the polar opposite in many ways, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he has many more rounds to go.
@Siliconguy #246
Yeah, I’m aware, even if it does seem pretty unlikely all in all per the Wiki page. It’s like saying you need to worry about the Yellowstone supervolcano if you’re moving to the US. Something’s going to get us eventually. 😛 Less flippantly, sure, it’s one more point in favor of Madeira, but I still think lack of freshwater is a much more acute threat down there.
@Curt #237-38
Re. youth and gun violence in Vienna: sorry to hear that. Even here in supposedly peaceful Norway, these kinds of incidents have been on the rise in what passes for “the big city” in our parts. A teenager died in a stabbing near the central station in Oslo recently, for instance. We’ve always had some of this, but it does feel like something’s been changing for the worse lately, with more violent crime of various kinds.
Re. Guyana: Also interesting. I haven’t seen it come up much. People tend to mention Belize instead if they want English in that part of the world as far as I can tell. What kind of visas do they offer? If you’re not allowed to live there, nothing else matters. Otherwise I’d probably be headed for Australia as we speak, haha. I’m far from an expert, but I still think Costa Rica and Panama are better picks if you have to move, just because they’re relatively much richer, safer and more stable, even if you do have to learn Spanish. Plus, as mentioned upthread, a land border with Venezuela is probably the last thing you want.
Okay, so here’s a question:
What is the allure of the debate about Shakespeare as an author? It seems to be a weird rabbit hole that draws people in, and I’ve never figured out the roots of the fascination.
Hi John Michael,
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy out there, but you know, such thinking is priming serious people for the second religiosity. The great god of progress is dying and something has to replace that! Just because their personal beliefs lead them to the Sloar, doesn’t mean they didn’t find comfort there. Although I heard from the Shubs and Zulls, that Gozer was one nasty customer…
Thanks for the laughs. 🙂
That was a genuinely funny line.
Cheers
Chris
I think my old cat Dufus Claudius a.k.a. “The Patrician Senator Dufus Claudius Felis,” a dignified and very curious and independent black and white gentleman, was certainly in line for promotion, then. Though I also hope a fine quality dog will reincarnate along with him to add love ans loyalty to the mix, though not, probably, as his sidekick.
I just got word this morning that the non-profit entity that owns The Village is selling off all its properties and will become a Foundation. The Village has been sold to a for-profit REIT, but the current management will be left in place, an unusual concession. We are supposed to be excited about this, and have a Positive Mental Attitude. Questions from the audience in the jam-packed meeting room were met with “Change is GOOD!” and this is GREAT! And when I made a passing comment to a high-level staffer about The Village having been in crisis, for so it seemed s they faced the sale and the search for a new owner, it was met with shocked denial of any crisis. In fact, Egypt’s Major River was in a high enough flood to drown the pyramids and any Cairo skyscrapers. I countered the lady with the basic Stoic maxim about the only thing you can control, and she took it as advice to greet things with the upbeat optimism of a high school cheerleader. Now, is this blinding yourself to reality? Or is it the necessary Crisis Era attitude of “nothing to fear but fear itself?” For me, of course, I’ll wait and see and roll with the punches and drop expecting things to make sense. Though hearing a contemporary of my daughter condescendingly blow off the concerns of his elders and seniors and a handful of centenarians irritated me intensely. Well, as my Mom used to say, “What can’t be cured must be endured,” bless her memory.
Mr Greer and Michael Gray, thank you for sharing your thoughts about the potential influence of Africa. I was delighted to hear about the rich traditions there that will, it is to be hoped, become better known around the world.
There is one more question that has occured to me today. While I was visiting a nearby town, I noticed that a local bookshop had Waite’s tarot cards on stock, and intrigued by this tool after a recent post here about flight from prediction, I have decided to purchase a set. I am now reading a basic introduction to the art of tarot, whether the book is any good I do not know. That is why I would like to ask Mr Greer and the community: are there any dangers asociated with using tarot cards that I should be aware of? Any meaningful use of cards that could be done by a complete beginner? I am aware that any serious study takes time. Many thanks!
Dobbs, thanks for this. What matters now — and it’s very nearly the only thing that matters now — is whether that technology can be manufactured in a cost-effective way. If it can, yes, there’s a real chance it will make a major contribution. If it can’t, it’s cerebral flatulence. So we’ll have to see how it costs out — but yes, the initial report is promising.
James, I really feel profoundly sorry for these people. They have doomed themselves to become everything they hate, to corrupt everything they value, to ruin the cause they think they’re supporting, and to remain utterly incapable of recognizing that this is what they’re doing, no matter how hideously clear it becomes to everyone else. Whom the gods destroy, they first make clueless…
Jed, hmm! I’d never heard of him. I note with some interest that King Goshawk and the Birds, at least, can be downloaded free of charge from Archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/kinggoshawkbirds0000oduf
So I’ll give him a look as time permits.
Kim, it’s quite possible. If the teachings I follow are anything to go by, the more complex and social mammals and birds are working their way toward full sentience with each life, and quite a few souls incarnate as human beings are pretty clearly not far past that stage. It’s nothing to be ashamed of — we’ve all been there.
Cliff, I have no idea. It’s an interesting question in the history of literature, but hardly the sort of world-shaking thing some people seem to think it is.
Chris, you’re welcome. The original is a fine parody of occult literature, thus a fave of mine.
Patricia M, the eminent patrician may very well be trying to figure out a newborn human body at this point, then; I wish him well. As for the fate of The Village, oh dear gods. I hope you’ll be okay.
Soko, none whatsoever; it’s quite safe. If I may presume, this book, written by my late teacher John Gilbert, is far and away the best introduction to tarot I know of. (Full disclosure: I edited it.)
@ Ecosophy Enjoyer
Your thoughts about invasive species sound like they could have been written by the author of “The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation”. You aren’t Fred Pearce, are you? I know I’ve mentioned this book before on this forum, and I kind of hate to bring it up again (I’m not a shill, I swear!), but it had a profound effect on how I see the world, and it sounds like you would really like it.
Working for a land management agency, I have a very tiny, but real, impact on some pieces of ground (not a botanist). The older I get, the more I think it is human hubris to get in the way of Mother Nature, even if we don’t like it. Your front yard. Sure. Garden? Absolutely. The rest of the planet, the large expanses and wild country? Best step aside and let the pros handle it.
I don’t know who said it recently, maybe it was on this blog, but when you think about it, absolutely everything out there is or was invasive. NONE of the plants you see outside were there a million years ago. And in your vision of coming back a million years from now, it will be different again.
I’m not even sure how to frame it historically. I was involved by back to land folks in Missouri. We learned under a lineage of the Cherokee who saw it as an intact from before it vanished in Europe. Arrived pre European contact, taught agriculture in and spread north to the Cherokee. A factor in the Cherokee being willing to adapt to European arrival. Not that it benefited them long.
Hey JMG
I definitely agree with you on underground cities, as I imagine that in the warmer future our ancestors will be living in there shall be pressure to find ways to live as cool as possible. However, there are a few things that will need to be worked out if they are going to be common and practical, such as rediscovering how to dig and build underground without hi-tech machinery (easy in soft rock such as chalk, but in the harder minerals it shall be a challenge) and figuring out the best infrastructure and architecture for making such cities livable.
Floating cities, or Sea-steads as the Tech-bros call them, are also going to be a bit harder since you need to figure out how to build a large ship or platform on a Ecotechnic basis that can withstand the sea with as little maintenance as possible. I think that if they are built the motivation for building them would be as a kind of “workers village” for rich fishing communities that would allow them to go into far ocean to capture and store large amounts of seafood during prolonged fishing trips. Another possibility is a kind of mobile prison, loke the “Hulks” of the British empire. Or as mobile stopping stations for ships where they can refresh or seek repairs in the far ocean.
Underwater cities are something I feel are unlikely, except for the same reasons that underwater habitats exist today, as deep-sea labs or fancy hotels for the rich. I have similar thoughts on Flying cities, or rather villages as I think that something city-scale would be just too heavy. One idea I had was that maybe a structure based on tethered airships could be used as a kind of fancy hotel or pleasure palace for the rich.
@JMG
Love your Ghostbusters references! I really ought to watch the first one of them again some day.
@LeGrand Cinq-Mars (#195):
Coincidentally enough, I too had read Hayakawa before finding Whorf, indeed before my college years.
In my High School an English course was required every semester, and most of them involved reading a lot of introspective novels with an emphasis on the evolution of the inner life of the characters — boring to the max, at least to me. But one semester there appeared a course with the cryptic title “Semanitcs,” which seemed to be completely free of boring novels. So I signed up for it, and discovered that the textbook was titled Language in Thought and Action, by someone named S. I. Hayakawa. It was by far the most interesting course I ever took in High School. I took to it like a duck to water, and I still have a copy of Hayakawa’s book on my shelves.
@ Siliconguy #246
First, I want to thank you for your informative posts! I wrote down the energy stats you provided for one of the months you reported on to keep in my pocket for discussions about how renewable energy will save us.
But I replied because I’m also appalled at what we are doing with the Barred/Spotted Owls. It seems to me that Mother Nature has made a better owl for this place at this time, and we’ve got no business playing God. I’m all for protecting NSO habitat and trying to give them a leg up, but actively killing other owls is a step too far.
And truly what got me to respond was to say, Barred Owls don’t eat Northern Spotted Owls. They just eat all the prey and are aggressive and take over nests and chase the NSOs out. Just trying to make a living like everything else.
“Storing energy in twisted carbon nanotube ropes.”
A rubber band powered airplane will show the problem quickly. The torque drops off rapidly as the rubber band unwinds. You can’t get constant power out of it. The same sort of thing hampers flywheel energy storage. Still, flywheels have their uses, and a super rubber band might be useful somewhere.
@Slink
I haven’t read that book, but it sounds great. I’ll be sure to get a copy. I do have a book called “Beyond the War on Invasive Species” which is similar. Yeah, I agree that most of the time, we need to just step aside and let nature do her thing, at least until we get a good enough understanding of nature (Such as the deep understanding many traditional cultures have) and develop the humility to cooperate with her instead of trying to enforce our silly plans on her. She will always foil them!
J.L.Mc12, oh, I figure that underground cities will only thrive in areas with relatively soft rock (or deep firm soil) and a big gap between the surface and the water table. Societies that don’t have vast amounts of energy have to put up with inconveniences like that!
Robert, glad to hear it. Somebody on a forum I visit now and then happened to say something snarky about the rectification of the Vuldronaii a little while back, and I looked up the whole rant and chuckled. It reminded me no end of encounters I used to have in the Theosophical Society library in Seattle, where somebody would go on about The Secret Doctrine or the writings of Rudolf Steiner just as though they were talking about the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants. It was exact enough that I wondered if the scriptwriter had similar experiences…
@JMG (#270):
I think one can be sure of it!
Dan Ackroyd wrote the original Ghostbusters’ script, and he is a fourth-generation Lily-Dale Spiritualist on his father’s side, with a life-long very strong interest in parapsychology as well. So undoubtedly he was well aware of Blavatsky, Steiner and similar occultists. His background really shows through in the film (assuming one knows what to look for). I had fun spotting some of the fingerprints when I watched it.
JMG’s answer to Dennis on reincarnation: “…and most of the time once souls reach the human level, they stay there.” How will that work out with the coming population bust? Births have plummeted throughout the world which will cause a catastrophic drop in population. With fewer human bodies available will more souls reincarnate as animals, or will there simply be a longer wait time to enter human form?
Joy Marie
Hi JMG (and the commentariat),
As I keep watching the events of the past few years, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four keeps springing to my mind. That and C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. There are some shades of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World too.
Are there any particular works of art or literature that come to your mind when you see the events that are going on? (Apart from Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee). I have already got Twilight’s Last Gleaming 🙂
Ramaraj
Re: shooting Northern Spotted Owls
I wrote my own rant about that earlier this year: https://dendroica.substack.com/p/on-control-and-participation
I’m basically done with anything that has the word “control” in it – at least in relation to the natural world.
@James #254
Would you be willing to name any of the occult authors who are cursing those who won’t “vote blue no matter who”? I’m curious to know if it’s anyone that people in my local pagan community follow. I tried searching it and couldn’t find a story including cursing or anything recent. Apparently “vote blue” has been around for years already.
And, to anyone, on the “childless cat lady” thing. Yeah, sure, call me a childless cat lady (I have stepchildren, but I didn’t raise them). I don’t mind, because I’m happy this way. It’s the claim that we’re all “miserable” and want to make everyone else miserable that’s wrong. /cue sarcasm/ Yeah, my mother was so happy and fulfilled in her life! Made me want to be just like her! /end sarcasm
First, thank you for your comments about RFK Jr and the sabotages in France. Now, I want to say that I watched Paris Olympic Games ceremony yesterday afternoon, and maybe I’m too subjective and tired of Faustian mythology, but it looked like too kitsch for me, and worse than older ceremonies. Any thoughts about it?
Hi John Michael,
Oh yeah, there was a lot going on in that film. Sorry to geek out a bit, but did you like how the trio originally worked as paranormal researchers at a prestigious institution? That was a nice touch to remind how things once were. 😉 And a building as an antenna to another dimension. So good, and so much to like. Plus Gozer’s avatar was a hoot!
Sorry, I digress and geek out! Is this an innovation?
Cheers
Chris
Wer here
Good Lord I’ve watched a part of the opening of Olympic ceremony. WHAT WAS THAT ????
I’ve once wrote a comment here about insane blue haired people with Che Guevara shirts who decided that having no children and letting people form Africa (where behadings are done to non belivers), but this is just too
could not watch to the end. It was the demons must be having a field day there. BTW didn’t someone shut down the TGV on the opening day and they didn’t fix that yet? Either people said goodbye France goodbye everyone or the Luciferian spirits demons or the malice of the fallen one had claimed an entire Western European nation….
It demands a throught cleansing and it seems that the first wave of barbarians are just arriving in that cespit…
Hi JMG,
A quick report on the garden this year, I don’t know if it’s due to being hotter than usual, earlier than usual, this year, although this is what I assume, and we have been treated to some nice heavy rains too, but my garden is about a month ahead of where it was last year, which is interesting, because technically I got off to a bit of a later start, and didn’t get around to strategically trying to beat the standard advice around here to not plant before the last week of May (what I’d experimented with successfully for several years now). The flowers are all blooming (it seems) at their standard times, but if I look at pictures I took at this time last year it is quite surprising, and really I have to look at pics from August for guidance – it’s only July and already I am having to decide if I want to cap my tomato plants because some of them are at the max height I can really work with, which is about 7 feet.
I am having better success this year with cucumbers, and have discovered a new favorite in malabar spinach which has happily joined my vertical gardening set up. The jungle of vines is well on it’s way!
Something I think you might like to hear about, as I think this would slot into the category of “nature led” which you used to describe the technique is that last year I let some of the bolting kale and swiss chard just do its thing, flower and go to seed, and I learned that the birds will fly up and land on the plants and eat the seeds out of the mature pods once they have dried. I thought this seemed like an easy and free way to give them some food, as I generally like listening to their songs and chirping, and they don’t take it all anyway. Mostly that is just because it’s always the soundtrack they provide to working out there in the morning, but functionally, once I hear them chirping I know it’s getting close to sunrise. Anyway, what I discovered this year is that if you let birds go to town on a buffet of swiss chard and kale seeds, you end up with a considerable amount of seedlings that just pop up with your weeds the following year. As a result this year I have a lot of swiss chard plants, most of which are doing quite well and are part of our supply of greens. I’ll report back next year, as this year I let considerably more of these plants to bolt.
I tried an experiment with some of these plants after they bolted, I clipped them back, hoping they would just bolt again and I could maintain some amount of these blooms indefinitely by staggering this process (since they attracted a good amount of bees). It hasn’t worked, but the plants I trimmed are in an interesting state, sort of paused – and I’m leaving them to see if they do anything else from here.
I had one general observation/question I wanted to add, that It seems to me, when I look around where I live, that one of the results of the roads and whatnot being less maintained than they used to be, is that you see more weeds growing at curbs, by walls of buildings, in between sidewalk cracks (etc etc), but also, maybe related, it seems like larger animals are around, including some predator types. I’ve seen a heron this year, a few ravens, coyotes a few times , and even some animals I wasn’t quite sure where they fit in. Part of me thinks there is a bit of a “rewilding” going on around the place, although it could also be that it’s a negative sign. due to habitat loss. The impression I have is that they are aware that our time of nature-conquering has peaked, and are getting on with things, preparing for what is coming next already.
I was curious if you have noticed anything like that around your way, although I appreciate you are relatively new to the area you are in now.
Thanks!
Johnny
“Boeing Starliner is apparently still stuck at the ISS, six weeks longer than planned due to engine troubles. The root cause seems to be overheating. NASA is still hopeful that they can bring the two astronauts back on the Starliner, but if not apparently there is a SpaceX Dragon craft docked at the station that can get them home. ”
I was wondering what had happened to them. Apparently nothing. I’m a little surprised the space station had enough extra food for their stranded guests.
Robert M, thank you for this. That’ll certainly do it!
Joy Marie, it’s quite simple. For most of history human souls had plenty of time between lives to process their experience — say, several centuries. Now most of us are having to rush back into bodies after just a few years. My guess is that after the population plummets, a lot of us are going to take a long, long breather from incarnation just to sort out everything that we’ve experienced; I’m rather looking forward to it myself.
Ramaraj, Gibbons’ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire comes to mind. So do the novels of Rosemary Sutcliff, a (mostly) children’s author I loved when I was a kid, who wrote historical novels that spanned the fall of Roman Britain, the brief Arthurian reprieve, the dark age that followed, and the slow recovery. The Lantern Bearers and Dawn Wind, which bracket the Arthurian era, were among my very favorite of her works.
Chuaquin, I didn’t watch it. I don’t have a television, remember? I read something this morning mentioning that it was kitschy and rather stupid, but that’s as far as my knowledge goes.
Chris, definitely a blast from the past.
Wer, okay, that’s two people commenting that it was kitschy and kind of stupid. I’ll feel even better about ignoring it. 😉
Johnny, many thanks for this! I’m delighted to hear about the chard and kale — sounds like a win-win arrangement. As for the rewilding, vacant lots and some houses’ yards are full of tall weeds, and even little spaces like the former grass strips along cheap parking lots now have herbs growing tall and young ailanthus saplings stretching their limbs skyward. It’s really heartening to watch. As for animals, that’s been an ongoing thing since we moved here — I’ve watched raccoons, skunks, an abundance of rabbits, hawks of various kinds, a great blue heron who lives nearby and flies each day to the riverside to fish, and more. They all seem quite comfortable.
Siliconguy, fortunately for the stranded astronauts, the Russians — unlike us — still have a functioning space program, and can haul loads of food and supplies up any time they want.
Chuaquin, about RFK, Jr. I do, so far, intend to vote for him. I don’t expect him to win, nor, I think, does he, but I do hope a new party can coalesce around his campaign.
Some background: In 2019 a unanimous CA jury found that Monsanto Corp. was liable for the injury, non-Hodgkins lymphoma in an advanced state, of the plaintiff, a school groundskeeper who frequently used Roundup in his job, Mr. Dwayne Johnson. Mr. Kennedy was present in the courtroom, as I think amicus for the plaintiff. He was not the lead attorney; I think maybe his firm, which has a LOT of experience suing big deal important corporations. did provide support to Mr. Brent Wisner who was the lead. Mr. Kennedy blogged about the trial and did not fail to mention the hostility the judge exhibited towards the working class plaintiff. Two more trials ensued, in which Kennedy was also present. In the third another jury awarded the husband-and-wife plaintiffs, property owners who had used Roundup in their maintenance, a cool billion$ settlement. I thought then, and I still think, that these three trials were watershed events, with ongoing consequences far beyond those which might have been immediately apparent.
Since that time, we have seen among other horrors, the Flint, MI water crisis and the East Palestine train derailment. I believe Mr. Kennedy’s law firm is among those representing East Palestine victims. There are some of us voters, call us the scruffy hippy vote if you like, who do in fact care about health of the natural world around us and of our families and neighbors. Clean air, water, soil, and access to non-chemically adulterated food are far more important to me than emotionally satisfying memes.
I do not see Mr. Kennedy as any sort of perfect person, much less having mythic demigod status, and while I cannot agree with his support for Israel, I note that he does call for dismantling the overseas bases and ending what he calls the forever wars. I hope this helps.
About animals and reincarnation and the like.
Before brain injury, I was a professional pet psychic. Yes, indeedy. What I learned was that humans and their animals have intertwined energies. I had one case where the mother and her daughter drover four hours to see me at a psychic fair. (They told me when they saw me.) Their dog was desperately ill and suffering but would not die. They wanted to the poor animal. I discovered that the dog needed an okay from the father, who had the dog since teenage years, to leave. So we worked with that. That meant working with the father and his dog and their relations. The father did let go and the dog did died. However, the dog stayed to watch over the family in spirit form.
My girlfriend who fostered old Welsh Corgies ask me for help when she and the Corgies keep sensing their former companion – an older Corgie named Merlin around. I asked her how the dog received the name Merlin. She said the Corgie told her his name. And yes, Merlin stayed around while she was alive fostering the dogs. And we believed that the dog was not exactly Merlin, the wizard, but some part of Merlin who came back. I hope that makes sense.
I am an animal communicator, not by choice but because my brain got wired that way. I have informed that yes squirrels have their own Gods, and that Moby Dick is a Whale Hero-God. I know this is all beyond the Twilight Zone and just plain weird. But the animals have their own culture, world, and traditions like humans do.
This is one of the few places that I can say these things without being laughed at. Thank you.
Ad religion in Europe:
Here in Vienna, I have been noticing for a while now that many people wear fairly visible cross necklaces. Mostly younger people too and if I had to guess, with a slight overrepresentation of people of a lower socioeconomic status and perhaps an immigrant background but by no means exclusively so. If perception and memory serve me well, this wasn’t a thing even a few years ago. Even if it is just seen as an innocous fashion statement by some, symbols have power as I am sure most people here would agree. I find it plausible that the self-confident display of Christian symbolism is a response to the ever growing and very visible presence of Islam. Also, perhaps disparaging ones own etho-religious heritage isn’t quite as edgy and cool if one finds oneself as yet another minority among one’s own age group. Whatever the future may hold for Europe, I don’t think its native peoples will go as as gently into the night as it may seem now.
As far as paganism is concerned, it never fully went away in the Alps.
Anyway, I have been a long time reader of this blog and thought this month’s open post would be a good occasion share some observations.
Cheers
About The Village – it came to me late last evening that the bog boss who was preaching enthusiasm and what a great thing this was might not be taken at face value (as I tend to do.) But rather, feels charged to keep the old hens in the chicken coop from sensing the coyote, for fear they panic or cause trouble. WTH, how do I know what’s behind what they say or do? At any rate, am simply watching to see what comes down.
@Johnny #279
Both chard and kale are biennials, which means that they bolt after they have experienced a certain amount of cold weather, and then they die. Pinching them back early as they flower can sometimes prolong flowering but at some point they will just hold in stasis and gradually die as you describe as they have no more energy to put into flowers and they have passed the life stage of making more leaves.
I’m not aware of any perennial chard but one of my friends has been working on a perennial kale that will continue sprouting new leaves indefinitely even as it flowers: https://store.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/products/kaleidescope-perennial-kale-grex
I am also noticing re-wilding in my area from neglected (but mostly wholly unnecessary) maintenance, and I appreciate all of the creatures that inhabit the untended thickets and overgrown fencelines.
@Ramaraj – Brave new World’s atmosphere rather struck me as having a 1920s or 1990s flavor – casual sex, casual drugs, intense stratification with every caste taught to be complacent about their place in it, and everybody soaked in the media.
JMG,
The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in France jumped the shark and will certainly get the Gold in the woke olympics.
They had a threesome between a man, a woman, and a trans/nonbinary dude, a golden calf, death riding a pale horse across the Seine, and drag queens reenacting the last super infront of a naked blue Dionysus/Bacchus instead of the traditional patron of Apollo/Helios. I’m sure there was more, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch it all.
What sort of fallout is this sacrilegious mockery likely to bring down upon France beyond the immediate criticisms in press?
Karen #275 and others on Vance’s “childless cat lady” comment:
As a childless lady (who would get a cat if I weren’t allergic), I have to say I knew the kind of people he was talking about, and I’ve met men who also fit the description. I think the phrase was a metaphor for a large segment of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) – I didn’t take it that literally. Some of the traits of these people are:
1. Opinionated, especially about politics, but their opinions have little to do with logic or facts, and tend to change with the prevailing winds (whatever the “current thing” is),
2. If you suggest another way of looking at a topic, or present some facts that don’t fit their narrative, they either change the subject, move the goalposts, or resort to name-calling (“Racist!” “Homophobe!”),
3. They have at least one college or university degree,
4. They have at least one (usually more) pets, and are inordinately attached to them, often referring to their animals unironically as their “babies” or their “children” (I’ve had childless female co-workers who referred to themselves as their pets’ “moms” and kept framed pictures of their pets on their desks),
5. And yes, usually childless.
I genuinely like some of my acquaintances who could be described this way – I just avoid topics that will push their buttons – but when people like this acquire power over others, they can be unbearable. While I tick several of the boxes (childless lady with degrees), I like to think I don’t fit the rest of the description, so I didn’t take his comments personally. Remember that Vance is a Marine veteran from a blue-collar Midwestern background, so he’s a bit rough around the edges; he doesn’t have Obama’s smooth diplomacy.
Peter Thiel once said about Trump that his enemies take him literally but not seriously, and his supporters take him seriously but not literally. Vance’s comment is one that I’d take seriously, but not literally.
re: Olympics. Didn’t watch the full opening ceremony on account of intuition, caved and saw a highlight reel of it. Regretted it. I think it is genuinely something of a showcase of contemporary France. The problem is that contemporary France is very hard to look at.
The song “Imagine” makes me gag. I’m not surprised that president Elagabalus likes it.
regards plants, conciousness –
I have a couple experiences I can share to this point.
Once I was walking down a city residential block. there was a large hedgerow to my left in a yard as I came to the intersection to cross I stopped dead in my tracks, though there were no cars and no other pedestrians. Something was calling to me, I turned my head and there embedded in the bush was a hundred dollar bill stuffed into a few leaves. It was just like the bush grabbed head and spun it to look. Heh – probably the bush just wanted the foreign object out of its leaves.
a second experience was with a bush i inherited on a property. the poor thing was almost all dead. I spent some time pruning back the dead wood. then I got up to walk away and the same feeling as above came to me – like a persistent strong voice calling for attention. I don’t know why but I started digging around the base of the bush into the earth, there I found a plastic-metallic thorn embedded right into the heart of the plants stem. It was some bit of landscaping that the bush had grown into. When I pulled out the thorn, I could feel a sense of relief from the plant. Today that bush is very healthy.
My conclusion from these anecdotal personal experiences is that plants have a conscious energy – just so unique and differently realized than ours.
A last thought – one my pleasures is clearing deadwood out of trees and bushes. My thought is that clearing dead wood off a plant improves its health by equation. What percentage of the plant is alive vs. dead. Removing dead material automatically improves that ratio, thereby improving the plants well-being. Would you rather be 50% dead or 90% alive? I rarely use a saw and break the dead limbs off by hand, but every plant I have tended this way has gone to become very healthy.
@Mary Bennet #282:
Yes! Even if he doesnt make it this time, RFK Jr. running will give him more visibility for 2028 or a new party. I still think he can get in. A significant number of Millenials have embraced him and are down with his platform.
@joan #175, however, end rhyme was not systematically used in the more prestigious forms of Semitic poetry. It hardly occurs in the poetic parts of the Hebrew bible (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and most of the prophetic books). I consider Job and Isaiah 40-55 (“second Isaiah”) the best poetry in the Hebrew bible, especially when read (even slow and stumbling) in the original language. Isaiah uses internal rhyme and alliteration quite a lot, but not systematic end rhyme. The effect is not unlike Welsh cynghanedd.
Formal Arabic pre-Islamic poetry (about Bedouin life, war, romantic love and wine) did not use any form of rhyme, but a very intricate pattern of syllables considered long and short. This is quite comparable to the formal meters of Greek and Latin poetry (hexameter, Alcaeic and Sapphic strophe, iambic trimeter etc.). The Quran is considered “rhymed prose” since it does not follow those rhythmic patterns.
Germanic poetry of course relied mostly on alliteration, and archaic Roman poetry seems to have used alliteration, too. Later Greek and Roman poetry and even formal prose avoided an excess of rhymes as unrefined.
I don’t know a lot about how systematic end rhyme first appeared. I do think that it was at first considered a marker of “popular” or even “vulgar” poetry. The poetic book of the Hebrew Bible that I didn’t mention above is the Song of Songs, which either derives from or is modelled on popular love songs, and there you find more rhyme than in any of the other books. So it might have spread from popular Semitic (Aramaic ?) poetry into Latin, or the story may be more complicated. In any case, rhyme is not typical of all Semitic poetry.
If anything, it might be typical of the first millennium AD in the Mediterranean, whether you consider that (like Spengler) a separate, “Magian”, culture, or like Toynbee in his later books an “Aramaic-Hellenic compost”.
Many people have speculated about European Islam. The past is not always a good predictor of the future, but it bears remembering that the “fundamentalist” states associated with Islam in the popular imagination (Saudi-Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, to some point Pakistan) are a product of the modern epoch and absolutely untypical of Islam over most of its history. Wahhabite Islam appeared at the end of the 18th century CE and spread abroad in the last decades of the 20th century; other extreme and intolerant varieties of Sunnitic Islam appeared during colonial rule in India and Egypt; the rule of the religious scholar was a complete novelty introduced into Shiite Islam in 1979.
For many centuries after 632CE, Islamic governments rules over non-Islamic majorities in Egypt, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere. Conversion to Islam was not encouraged, it was in fact initially discouraged because non-Moslems payed higher taxes.
Like JMG wrote, religious intolerance has been more typical of Christian Europe than of the Islamic world.
Karen #275 I’d rather not as one of them is definitely rich enough to be in the 1% and has lawyers that they’ve used in the past to deal with “slander.”
Yavanna, meaning no disrespect to you and yours, but my point re Vance was not my own poor liddle hurt feelingses, it was, as I said, he insulted my family. No amount of it was sarcasm, I was just funning, bein’ onery is going to make up for that. I guess in this instance I don’t have a sense of humor. Can this punk even be trusted to keep a civil tongue in his head when meeting foreign officials? That is not a chance I want to take.
Maybe his following haven’t noticed that we really are not numero uno anymore, and we hadn’t ought to be going about the world behaving any old way we please.
If the point is PMC idiots have far more authority than they have earned, about which there is little disagreement outside PMC circles, why not just say as much?
@Patricia Mathews (#259):
Are you living in “The Villages,” about midway between Orlanmdo and Gainesville? I ask because a good friend of ours has just retired, and is considering a permanent move there. At the moment she has just been renting (for a little more than a month now, I think), to see how she likes it. If it is the same place, we should pass on the news about the sale to her. (Her name is Patricia Mosey, just in case you might have run into her already, and she has two pet cockatoos, Rosa and Charlotte.)
@Mister Nobody #2
Forgive me for using my eyes and ears to watch and listen to the recording of the event rather than listening to the pundits, spin doctors, and circus clowns, but it’s obvious to me from the audio that there was more than one shooter. Since then I’ve seen several analyses of the audio, all of which come to the same conclusion. I find it highly suspicious that the FBI, Secret Service, DHS, etc. have shown absolutely no interest whatsoever in these analyses. The fact that this is not a major focus of the official inquiries and is hardly mentioned in the MSM, taken together with the extraordinary “security lapses” that day suggests to me that elements within the US government are complicit or are at the very least willing to turn a blind eye to pertinent factors surrounding this event.
Insofar as Thomas Crooks is concerned, I don’t know whether he actually fired any shots or not. What I do know is that we now have the 21st century’s Lee Harvey Oswald.
Ecosophia Enjoyer,
I think you’ll enjoy the book. Lots of stories of “invasive” species moving in and making the place better. Basically, examples of the amazing resiliency of the Earth and our biosphere. Life finds a way. It would be a really uplifting book if it wasn’t for all the stories about humans trying to stop it (i.e., poison).
I think the two party system is a malevolent enchantment on the American mind. As such, people are starting to wake up and shake off the mind forged manacles of this idiocracy. There is a deeply ingrained sanctity around the party system which I hope to see smashed and broken into a million little pieces.
51% of Americans now identify as Independent. Only 25% identify as Republicans, and only 23% as Democrats. With even more Democrats quitting after this recent soft coup, many of them could and will vote for RFK Jr. In fact, Kamala might not even get on the ballot in Ohio, a state with a lot of electoral votes. Without any other choice, a lot of those dems who still think of him as a conspiracist might none the less give him the vote. There is a path to victory for RFK Jr.
He might become the first independent president since George Washington.
But if not, Russel Eigenblick for an added four years won’t be the end of the world.
But how long can these dem-reps last? We don’t have whigs or federalists anymore.
Silicon Guy @ 268
I thought the same thing when I read about the twisted nanotubes on Naked Capitalism – ideal for when you need a spike of energy to do something but not a constant sustained power. Although that also makes me think if you could store the energy in twisted tubes, and then discharge them into something that can store the energy and disperse it smoothly over time without too much loss it could be useful as well.
>I was a professional pet psychic. Yes, indeedy.
A pet psychic that set policy at the Federal Reserve. You know, a lot of things are starting to make sense to me now.
http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2024/07/academia-and-journalism-again.html
Kaiser tears into wannabee philosopher-kings with their heads in the ’60s.
The one thing that the opening ceremonies at this year’s Olympic Games demonstrated is that the decadent decline-and-fall phase of the EU is well underway, with President Macrobe and his fellow Woke idiots seemingly hell-bent on speeding up the process.
JMG, Robert Mathiesen, Chris – I watched Ghostbusters during its first theater run, by myself, not long after I moved to St. Louis to work after obtaining a PhD. It’s one of my favorite movies. For me the funniest line came right after the three were “let go” from the prestigious institution where they worked. Assessing their situation following that, one of them said, “Now we’re going to have to get real jobs.” I burst into laughter, as did about 4 or 5 other people in the theater, while the rest of the audience looked at us quizzically. It was clear who in the audience was or had been in grad school!
Johnny – we have foxes, hawks, owls, frogs, raccoons, opossums, rabbits, squirrels and more who live in, visit, and/or fly over our suburban acre in metro St. Louis, MO. It doesn’t hurt that I have reforested about a third of our acre and have more widely-scattered trees elsewhere in the yard. Several black bears have been documented in the metro area this year, and I’ve seen bald eagles at the pond in the county park I can walk to, along with herons, ducks, geese, and bitterns. Urban and suburban areas feature lots of animals that have learned to thrive in these human-modified habitats.
Re: animal souls
Thanks @neptunesdolphins for sharing your experiences. Though I can’t claim to know the truth I have to say that JMG’s vision of an incarnational progression of souls from lower to higher forms – into, through, and beyond humankind – strikes me as rather teleological, hierarchical, and linear coming from someone who urges thinking outside of all of those boxes most of the time.
For myself, my own intuitive sense is that all life and ultimately all matter is composed of aspects of universal divine consciousness, which is endlessly creative and seeks primarily to experience itself and explore its own creation from within. So I imagine that souls branch off and divide and recombine and reunify with the whole, collecting experiences and understanding all along the way, and some dogs may want to be dogs for a very long time, and some part of Merlin’s soul may well want the experience of being a dog, and we have no idea what all of the reasons and possibilities and trajectories are, and that’s OK.
Dear Mr. Greer, et all – An interesting article popped up, today, about new research into 16th century astronomer … and alchemist, Tycho Brahe.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/27/science/tycho-brahe-alchemy-lab-tungsten
Alchemists secrets, revealed through archaeology. How cool. Lew
@Ramaraj #273
“Are there any particular works of art or literature that come to your mind when you see the events that are going on?”
“The Machine Stops” is eerily prescient, especially considering it was written before computers were a thing.
Another one you might enjoy is “The Good Soldier Svejk” by Jaroslav Hasek. It is a dark comedy set in Austro-Hungarian Empire during WW1. Sort of in similar vein as “Catch-22” except it is a comedy.
@Siliconguy, @Slink, @Mark L
The Northern Spotted Owl is a very politically charged species. Environmentalists whose goal is to save old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest need that owl as part of the legal structure they rely on to keep the logging industry at bay. From their point of view, killing other owls to protect that species is what’s necessary for the greater good.
Hello JMG and friends, today I will share the question and ideas that came to my mind: After the Olympic opening, Russian President Putin said that the West is ruled by Satan worshippers – which I think could cause very big events when combined with the increasing stress in the world, increasing nationalism and Second Religiosity, what do you think friends, how can a West in this situation be saved, the West seems to be destroying itself, what do you think to save from under a collapsing building ?
Re: Olympics in Paris
The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris was the absolute proof (if anyone needed it) that Christianity is dead as a political or social force in France. Drag queens re-enacting the Last Supper, as team10tim mentioned… I guess that millions of French people don’t even know what the Last Supper was, and they haven’t seen the numerous paintings (at leas one by Leonardo Da Vinci) representing it. The people who organized the blasphemous scene in the opening ceremony knew that the Christians would do no harm to them. In this century people have been murdered in France, on several occasions, for offending Islam, but never for offending Christianity.
Practicing Christians are a tiny minority in France now, with, in my opinion, zero political weight. Besides, the present Pope is visibly Woke. Mocking Christianity is not dangerous at all.
In France the de-Christianization process began in the 18th century. Three centuries later it left a void which Islam is eager to fill. I hope that the alternative is not the nihilism we now endure (in my opinion wokism is a form of nihilism).
Macron presided the opening ceremony. That man is a pervert, without a sense of decency.
https://cdn-s-www.dna.fr/images/B4B652FC-FBA9-4ADD-BCA1-1EB310957D47/NW_detail/title-1529787624.jpg
https://www.leparisien.fr/resizer/wFIOgWqP40yxvZ-FpxKD7YKUwtw=/932×582/arc-anglerfish-eu-central-1-prod-leparisien.s3.amazonaws.com/public/W36II6I6OO2HXBS67UZNHQVI2Y.jpg
The first picture was taken at the Elysee palace, the second one during a presidential visit to the French Caribbeans. Both pictures were taken before Macron was re-elected in 2022. Sometimes I don’t understand my own countrymen. The pictures are genuine, that’s easy to verify on the Internet, if you can read French.
But Macron is not a cause, he is just the expression of the general decay of French society. It’s more or less the same in the UK, but the British seem to have retained more of their sense of decorum than the French. Incidentally, Macron doesn’t really govern the country anymore since he lost the parliamentary elections this month. Joe Biden and Macron became mere figureheads without any real power the very same month, the Trickster god who rules this world has a sense of humor…
But every cloud has a silver lining. At least, nobody talks any more about sending French ground troops to Ukraine. We don’t even have those troops, it was just Macron foolishly tickling the bear.
There are also plenty of peeps who just love pets and are childless – I know several Christian Trumpers who fit this category.
But I also get the point he is making. It does relate to a quality of the PMC. I know about a dozen or so types of Gen X peeps without kids who are kind of clueless about things that a person who has had kids is not. And while I wint say it is 100 percent the case, because there are many variaions, a certain kind of unaware selfishness.
Team10tim, well, given that they’re now apparently frantically trying to take down every video of it on the internet, I’d say it was a pretty effective own goal.
Synthase, “President Elagabalus” is a keeper!
Jstn, thanks for this. The traditional occult explanation is that plants are guarded and protected by guardian spirits — the dryads of Greek mythology are an example — because they’re still fairly early in the process of spiritual evolution. Did the event with the $100 bill happen after the event with the thorn, by any chance?
Aldarion, sure, but Europe will have to deal with Islam as it is now, not Islam as it was a millennium ago.
Eagle Fang, excellent. I’ve wondered since 2016 how many people noticed how precisely Trump is shaping up to be our Russell Eigenblick.
Patricia M, thanks for this.
Ariel, the nickname coiners are hitting it on all cylinders today. “President Macrobe”? I like it.
SLClaire, it was a great line, and I didn’t even go to grad school!
Mark L, funny. Tell me, do you consider the statement “most children grow up to become adults” to be unacceptably teleological, hierarchical, and linear?
Lew, thanks for this.
Yiğit, er, I’ve written a few books about that, if you’re interested. 😉
Horzabky, I’m reminded of Péladan’s comments about the decadence of French society and culture — and of course he was writing in the 1890s, so it’s gone much further since then.
@Joan #309
I’m well aware that protections for old-growth forests depend in part on the survival of the Northern Spotted Owl. (There are other species, like Marbled Murrelets, that also warrant protection.) I’ve always found that aspect of the Endangered Species Act to be problematic. The Clean Air Act protects all of the air. The Clean Water Act protects – or at least claims to protect – all surface waters. Why exactly the environmental movement chose to protect individual species rather than ecosystems – and thereby to turn those species into political footballs being hurled in the interest of ecosystem preservation – is unclear to me, and is something I hope future generations can correct.
@JMG
“do you consider the statement “most children grow up to become adults” to be unacceptably teleological, hierarchical, and linear”
Well, no. But, on the one hand, those conclusions only apply when viewing a single lifespan. Zoom out to reincarnation – if that is part of your worldview – and the statement becomes incomplete and the reality becomes non-teleological, non-hierarchical, and cyclical. On the other hand, I can observe children growing up to become adults with my own eyes and within my own experience.
I can’t actually observe souls of plants and dogs evolving to become humans, and human souls evolving beyond our current incarnations, so that must either be taken on faith, intuitively known, or logically concluded. I personally find the alternative that each lineage is evolving its own consciousness and experience through time to be equally if not somewhat more compelling.
I didn’t mean to cause insult, just to point out that this is a forum that invites open discussion from folks with a diverse array of perspectives and cosmologies, and this particular topic of the progression of souls is a rare case where you seem to feel confident in saying “this is the way things are” in a manner that closes the door to other possibilities.
RE Olympics:
I admit I liked the part of the opening ceremony where various people were singing on balconies. It only took 5 mins for my opinion to change though. I realized that 90% of the thing was made for TV. Most of it was obviously recorded. In most opening ceremonies, the whole thing is presented live or on tape delay with no theatrical recordings. You would only see like 10% of the stupid thing, this year, if you were there in person. This especially made me dislike it, including the other shenanigans people mentioned already. I only watched like 20% of it because a fire pit called my name.
Eagle Fang Warrior #300: “I think the two party system is a malevolent enchantment on the American mind. As such, people are starting to wake up and shake off the mind forged manacles of this idiocracy.”
JMG, you’ve probably said this before, but is the two-party system a relic of the Piscean age? Pisces includes lots of binaries, as represented by the symbol: two fish swimming in different directions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisces_(astrology).
@Robert Mathiesen #297 – Great Ghu, no! That’s a large, rich complex notorious for sex, drugs, etc. ans voting Republican in huge numbers. There was a play written about them called Sunset Village or something like. Ours is a small campus on the outskirts of Gainesville, with 8 residential buildings and a double row of cottages. Two dining halls not counting the ones in thee assisted living and memory care buildings. You can walk from one end to the other in 15 minutes. We have a residents’ garden, an apiary, several duck ponds, one big enough to be called a lake, you can walk around in 20 minutes, and maybe 750 residents all told. A cozy little place with, as I said, all age groups ranging from centenarians through Boomers, a tiny handful of disabled younger people. Small enough that all the staff know me on sight even when I forget my name tag.
@ Cliff #257
re: Shakespeare Authorship Question.
As far as I’m concerned it was just a fun distraction. I find the encryption stuff interesting because it shows how subtle communication can become when there is massive censorship (from both church and state in that era ) that doesn’t merely result in be “cancelled,” or rather, that results in being permanently terminally cancelled in painful ways.
I watched the Olympic opening ceremony on TV, I didn’t really pick up on a specific reference to the Last Supper in the bit where they had the dancers on a dining table, I just thought it was a bit of a symbolic reference to cannibalism, with the diners at the side of the table.
Mark L, I do feel confident saying what I believe in the case of reincarnation, but it’s hardly the only theme on which that’s true; you might consider the confidence I express in the views I have about fusion power, abiotic oil, socialism, astrology, or the overall trajectory of industrial civilization, just for starters. Please note also that if somebody asks me for my opinion, it’s not exactly unreasonable for me to give it, and if I feel fairly confident about that opinion — as in this case I do — I’m not going to get all mealy-mouthed and “Oh, I don’t know” on the off chance some third person will be offended! In this as in some other cases, I feel I have good reason for my beliefs; that doesn’t oblige you to embrace them, of course — but if you characterize my beliefs in ways that seem one-sided and unfair to me, as you did in this case, it’s always possible that I’ll respond.
Yavanna, unfortunately conflicts between two parties seem to be fairly common in human history. Back in ancient Greek times, for example, during the age of Aries, most Greek city-states went through long struggles between aristocratic and populist parties. So I’m afraid we’re probably stuck with them! On the other hand, I don’t recall a lot of other cases of two-party conflicts being institutionalized the way ours have been, so that may be a Piscean thing.
I just am writing to thank all those responding to my post on time at #33. So far, I’ve not heard anything I hadn’t already considered, but lots of good poetic thought has been presented. I didn’t note all the names & post numbers, so I apologize for not getting sufficiently specific. I appreciate the roughly “mind-only” (cittamatrin) view of time one person brought forth, although as presented the notion seems to me to be muddying the waters on the topic–albeit very creatively. I vaguely recall words from Dion Fortune, Blavatsky, Col. A.E. Powell and others about how time works differently in the different realms, but I don’t have a systematic recall of those ideas. And I REALLY don’t remember anything said about it in “The Cosmic Doctrine.”
“Hamlet’s Mill” speaks quite well to some cyclical views of time in myth and history, but not to its nature. My physicist friend (a very eminent man indeed) says that physicists know nothing at all about time itself, and prefer not to discuss it directly. Grist for this bird’s crop and my digestion process. I look forward to whatever else anyone might have to say on the topic. Thanks again.
Here is a link to video excerpts of the Paris Olympic opening. Scroll down to find it. The Substack piece it is embedded is only so so to read. Past the video are pictures of the director of the opening “ceremonies” One of them shows part of an extensive design on his chest. It looks like to me a bit of deliberate symbol making. Any thoughts on what it might mean or indicate?
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-global-let-them-eat-cake-moment
@JMG
Fair enough. I discovered your weekly writings back in 2010 or so when I was working on hyped-up “cutting edge” bioenergy and starting to poke holes in the myth of perpetual progress. I also appreciated your simultaneous scholarly approach to history and potential futures coexisting with an embrace of nature-based spirituality – which helped me to forge my own escape from the progress and science worldviews.
In all these years you have remained remarkably steadfast in your assessments, beliefs, and opinions, and a part of me has always wanted to find a topic or a concept where I could present my worldview, or my own embrace of uncertainty, in a way that might lead you to question your own certainty. Your writings have had that effect on me many times, in a way that I feel was helpful as I was breaking free from false narratives. Then at some point your steadfastness started to feel rigid as I followed my own path of self-discovery that diverged from your perspectives in certain ways. Which is mostly why I have spent less time in Ecosophia land over the last several years.
Anyway, as you’ve said many times, it’s your site, and if I don’t care for your perspectives I’m welcome to go elsewhere. So that’s the last I’ll say on the topic, and I thank you for blazing your own path and having the confidence to share it and the patience to respond to hundreds upon hundreds of comments!
A ceremony from a different France – La Marseillaise, sung by Mireille Mathieu. American English subtitles. Performed at the base of the Eiffel Tower in 1989
A stirring patriotic song – with blood thirsty lyrics! I can see how this song would have braced the French soldiers in their sturdy resistance to the German invaders in the First World War.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MQ-SC9bmp4
@SLClaire (#305), JMG (#313): That line is so on the mark!!!
Hi JMG,
You mentioned weeks ago that you are formulating contingency plans to leave the U.S. in the event of civil war. I can imagine recent events have only made those plans increasingly relevant to you. My question: what particular signs or developments are you watching for that would convince you that, yep, it’s time to go? What would be that “final straw” for you, or alternately, what series of indicators would amount to what is, in your mind, a point from which kinetic conflict would inevitably emerge?
Thanks!
Thanks!
Balowulf, I don’t feel that it would be wise to me to telegraph my moves in advance in that way. I understand your curiosity, but it’s a call that each of us has to make individually.
@Patricia Mathews (#317):
Many thanks for clearing that up. That will set our friend’s mind at ease.
As for the sex, drugs, politics, etc. … Although our friend hails from the East Coast, she spent her working life in Los Angeles in the music and film industry. She originally went to LA with the intention of improving her Spanish; her native language is English. By now she has acquired a most impressive command of many of the most useful regional variants of Latin American Spanish. She was most recently employed by the people whom put on the Latin Grammies every year to write much of the Spanish publicity (every piece of which has to be in the correct regional variant of that language).
So she’s seen it all, probably including a lot that I remain blissfully unaware of; and she seems to us completely unaffected by any of it. She lives very quietly with her two cockatoos, and mostly socialized with other cockatoo and parrot owners (and her birds with theirs). That’s how we came to know her: my wife loves birds and has been a life-long student of animal behavior; and for several decades we lived with a highly intelligent African Grey Parrot (now deceased, alas).
So again, many thanks!
More drama in Paris. The city has been hit by a power failure. There’s a blackout in several disricts. Lots of people are opining on social media that it’s God’s response, but I think grumpy Parisians are more likely.
@Mark L;
“Why exactly the environmental movement chose to protect individual species rather than ecosystems – and thereby to turn those species into political footballs being hurled in the interest of ecosystem preservation – is unclear to me, and is something I hope future generations can correct.”
You sound as if you see the environmental movement as being in a position to invent whatever laws it wants and shove them down the throats of the public. In reality, it has to work within a system in which it is and always has been vastly outspent by the interests (usually corporate but sometimes also governmental, such as the Army Corps of Engineers) that are likely to feel most limited by its proposals. The Endangered Species Act was politically doable at the time.
Hey JMG and Commentariat
I recently discovered this rather odd article on the wall street journal, which I heard of in a substack article.
https://www.wsj.com/business/when-this-supply-chain-essential-goes-missing-its-time-to-bring-in-the-pallet-detectives-607ef36d
Basically, for those who can’t get past the paywall (I apparently got a free view), there is a company in Australia composed of former law-enforcement and detectives whose sole job is to locate missing pallets. It turns out that despite their seeming cheapness and crude manufacture pallets are an extremely important part of industry and international trade, so much so that it causes significant trouble if enough of them go missing. Most of the cause of their loss is either business owners stealing them and selling them at a higher price, or even renting them when their owners aren’t looking. I feel that this is something important for you all to know since pallets are often a target for “upcycling” into furniture and the like, and as our economy comes unglued it is likely that “Pallet detectives” are going to become more common and less lenient towards ignorant DIYers.
I won’t insist on this point since I can’t predict the future. But the Ottoman empire (until the very end) and the Mughal empire until Aurangzeb were quite tolerant, too. Most Islamic states nowadays are authoritarian (like Russia or China), but not fundamentalist. As I said, intolerance is quite homegrown European.
I didn’t see the opening of the Olympics, but have heard some Christians complaining about the opening ceremonies being demonic/Satanic. Not sure if there was any real Satanism going on, but there were pictures of Drag Queens/Queers emulating the Last Supper. I’d guess Christians have a right to be mad at the Olympics making a mockery of their traditions and beliefs.
Wer made a comment about blue haired people. I always find it amusing that now days it’s the younger liberal people who get called blue hairs. When I was younger (oh, I’m beginning to sound so old myself!) a blue hair was a little old lady who had dyed her hair with a blue rinse. I think the effect was to brighten their already white or gray hair, but if overdone it could look more blue/purple.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/643186/why-old-ladies-have-blue-hair
How times and terminology change.
Joy Marie
Dear Mr. Greer – A couple of hours after I posted, #307, I got a supposed e-mail from WordPress, urging me to subscribe to Ecosophia. That was a first. Of course, I didn’t click on the link. Real or bogus? Opens a portal to endless spam, or worse, a nasty virus? Do you know anything about this? Thanks!
Olympics? What Olympics? 🙂
Hey JMG
You have often expressed a dislike for Amazon, on account of their tendency to abuse employees and underpay authors. I have a certain similar feeling about them also, which is why I don’t use them for deliveries. However, I make an exception when it comes to Kindle since I feel that ebooks are something that they do well, and I imagine that they don’t involve quite the same level of abuse that is necessary to make Amazon delivery service work so well. However, I have been thinking about alternative sources of paid Ebooks (Not free ones like Project Gutenberg), and so far the only provider I am aware of is Ibooks, which I do already use.
I want to ask if you are aware of any Ebook sellers that you believe have more ethical business practices than Amazon/Kindle?
JMG, you say you are a polytheist – or believe in polytheism. How do you think our universe dies? Do the gods that watch over it and / or maintain it pull the plug on it? More interestingly, how do you think the gods of our universe will die? Will they pull the plug on themselves? Strange questions, but may you have considered them at some point.
I had a weird thought recently. Maybe a black hole is a sort of anus, through which parts of the universe get excreted. There must be many black holes, of course. Perhaps that is how a universe eventually dies physically over time. But as for the gods – how do THEY die? Or do they just extinguish our universe and create a different one on different principles?
I’m wondering if anyone else has ever had this experience. In our continuing efforts to reduce our electrical needs we bought another, larger, dehumidifier about a month ago for the main living area of our house. Besides being able to bump the thermostat up a couple of degrees because the air is drier, we’re collecting about a gallon of water every day. (It would be more actually, but it shuts off when the reservoir is full!) That water then goes to watering house plants or into the dogs’ water bucket.
But since we’ve been watering our house plants with this water they are looking better than ever! We’ve stopped fertilizing them entirely. They don’t seem to need it anymore. Makes me wonder if there’s an etheric energy in the humidity inside our house, not present in city water, contributing a bit of life force to our plants? Or perhaps it’s the lack of treatment chemicals in the water. This phenomenon is fascinating to me. Any thoughts?
I’m all but done with Illuminatus!, all 850 pages of it, and was reading through the Appendix in the back regarding the Illuminati’s 5-stage analysis of civilizational history. Wondering where exactly our culture was, developmentally, I got to the 4th section – Beamtenherrschaft, or the Age of Bureaucracy, which reads thusly:
“This is the age of bureaucracy, and to live at this time is, as Proudhon said, “to have every operation, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, endorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected…to be laid under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, exhausted, hoaxed, and robbed.””
[. . .]
“In Beamtenherrschaft ages there is ceaseless activity, all planned in advance, begun at the scheduled second, carefully supervised, scrupulously recorded – but inevitably finished late and poorly done. The burden of omniscience on the ruling class becomes virtually intolerable, and most flee into some form of schizophrenia or fantasy. Great towers, pyramids, moon shots, and similar marvels are accomplished at enormous cost while the underpinnings of social solidarity crumble entirely. While blunders multiply, no responsible individual can ever be found, because all decisions are made by committees: anyone seeking redress of grievance wanders into endless corridors of paperwork with no more tangible result than in the Hunting of the Snark.” [. . . ] “The burden of omniscience on the rulers steadily escalates, as we have indicated, and the burden of nescience on the servile class increasingly renders them unfit to serve (more and more are placed on the dole, shipped to “mental” hospitals, or recruited into whatever is the current analog of the gladiatorial games), so the Tower eventually falls.”
Ah yes, that’s the one…
Hello Mr. Greer & co.,
I have Learning Ritual Magic (LRM), Paths of Wisdom, Circles of Power (CoP), plus several other of the recommended books in LRM on the Qabala. Hypothetically, could I stop after completing CoP? Or do you recommend that I continue onto a more advanced book like the one you edited (Israel Regardie’s The Golden Dawn).
(I’m currently making my way through AMORC’s material, but I’ve kept your books and would like to pick up where I left off later.)
I also have your natural magic book, which I have been studying over the summer. I’m assuming that it’s ok to work on both natural magic and AMORC at the same time. Am I right in assuming that?
Thank you,
Ennobled little day
James #295,
OK, I understand. I’ll do my own sleuthing.
Neko, on your initial post, in looking for a term for alchemy-speak, are you talking about “twilight language”?
@a reader and @sgage I HIGHLY recommend Evolutionary Herbalism by Sahjah popham https://www.evolutionaryherbalism.com/
Also, I wrote again on Substack, and it’s a topic I have wanted to it in front of you guys before tho I feel like what I got down was only part of the story or not quite the nail on the head. About a certain blindspot in the new right take on the left, a certain aligning against a straw man and ignoring the plank in one’s eye while seeing another’s speck. Among some but certainly not all writers. But it I really care about the project and felt compelled to say something so here it is. https://open.substack.com/pub/aliceem2de3u/p/new-lines-for-the-culture-war
Also I think you will love this https://open.substack.com/pub/samkriss/p/five-prophets
It ties together the visions of alelheid of Augsburg and the Tibetans of ervance and I found it to be brilliant and a delight – There was no sun below the heavens, and no separation within the firmament, yet the crystal wheel spun, and all was filled with the humming of the numberless angels… all of history is a message and this message is addressed specifically to me (Teo goz) https://samkriss.substack.com/p/five-prophets?r=1hp4he&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
Team10tim, or it might be the same group that sabotaged the rail system a few days ago. It’ll be interesting to see how all this plays out.
J.L.Mc12, it’s also a sign that costs and scarcities are beginning to bite, since pallets used to be insanely cheap to make and practically disposable. If it’s worth having detectives hunt them down, that shows just now much slack has been squeezed out of the global economy. Thanks for the heads up!
Aldarion, well, we’ll see!
Joy Marie, yeah, I had the same reaction — I used to know old ladies who used laundry bluing (does anyone remember laundry bluing any more?) to make their hair look white rather than dirty gray.
Lew, I’ll check; I haven’t done anything that should have enabled that.
J.L.Mc12, I only read free ebooks — usually from Project Gutenberg or Global Grey — so I don’t have any place to suggest. Anyone else?
Batstrel, one of the great differences between Abrahamic monotheism and traditional polytheism is that the monotheists believe that their god created the universe, but traditional polytheists believe that the universe gave birth to the gods. From my perspective, the universe is not an artifact — it wasn’t made by somebody. It’s a living thing. It has a life cycle of its own, about which we know almost nothing; for all we know, it was born from an egg laid by some other, older universe, the Big Bang was the hatching of the egg, and it’ll lay eggs of its own before it dies. The gods are simply those beings in the universe that are much, much wiser and mightier than we are. They are born and they die like other beings, though (as the example of Jesus shows) dying doesn’t seem to inconvenience them anything like as much as it does us.
Grover, that makes perfect sense, since the water you get from the dehumidifier will be pretty pure — it won’t have chlorine or industrial pollutants in it, as your tap water does. It may also be that the water is being charged by the positive energy in your home. As for Illuminatus!, that’s a nice synchronicity — I’m rereading it now (just about to start the third volume). Yes, we’re in Beamtenherrschaft now, the stage that the Principia Discordia calls “Consternation.” Fnord!
Ennobled, you can stop after completing the work of LRM, or after completing CoP and/or PoW, or you can go on and tackle the Gray Book of Regardie. It really is up to you. As for the AMORC material, I don’t know much about their current course, but as far as I know combining it with natural magic should be fine.
AliceEm, many thanks for these. I’ve bookmarked them to read as soon as I have the chance.
@AliceEm #342
Thanks for sharing your perspective on the culture war. I agree with you, and would love to see a movement arise based on autonomy. A few years ago when the left was attacking medical freedom and the right was attacking reproductive freedom it became clear that I couldn’t have a home in either. I would go a step farther (as I do in the essay linked in comment #97) and say that as long as we believe there should be a culture “war” at all then we’re still doing it wrong. I see there is something of a reality-distortion field around gender on the left that can be harmful and confusing to children coming of age, but the responses from the right are all ham-fisted, seeking to enforce their perspective by legislative or judicial force rather than through dialogue. Similarly I observe something of a reality-distortion field around the desire of some on the right to accumulate massive arsenals of military-grade weapons, but the left’s responses are ham-fisted and legislative, codifying the felt judgment without seeking understanding.
On some level I feel it is quite simple: those who have power and wish to maintain it benefit from keeping everyone else at each other’s throats over various issues that come into and out of vogue, and the solution is not a realignment but a dissolving of the divide so that we stop seeing enemies on the other team and start seeing human beings in thrall to a particular set of worldviews but ultimately seeking the same autonomy and self-realization that we wish for ourselves.
Re: pallets (#331)
As someone who receives and donates a lot of pallets, this is confused by the fact that many pallets are indeed “disposable” – priced into the cost of products with no intention of ever getting them back since the freight and logistics of collecting them in ones and twos from the final recipients and sorting them and shipping them back overseas doesn’t pencil out. It’s typically the blue-painted ones that are of somewhat higher quality that belong to someone who wants them back. But when I receive those, they’ve already been re-used and beat up and escaped from the logistics chain of their owner, so I have no idea how I would get them back or if they would even want them at this point. Perhaps some day I’ll encounter a pallet detective…
>More drama in Paris. The city has been hit by a power failure.
Not really. It’s just another third world country now. This is normal for a third world country. Import the 3rd world, become the 3rd world.
Since this is the open post,
I’d like to give a shoutout to orach, my new favourite “green”– in quotes because I’m growing the a variety with purple leaves. It self-seeded in my zone 5* garden last year; I was happy to let it bolt, as the leaves don’t change taste or texture while it is producing seeds. Indeed, leaf and seed production continue in parallel, so I’m not sure if “bolt” is the correct term. In culinary terms, orach is a close analog to spinach. In garden terms it is far superior, both due to its edibility while bolting and the fact it can grow over 3′ tall on a robust stem. 3′ means a lot more leaves per square foot than squat little spinach!
I’ve read that orach has naturalized and can be vanceforaged in some parts of Europe and North America where it was traditionally grown before spinach edged it out in popularity. Given how easiliy it self-seeds, I can believe it.
*I thought it was 4, but they updated the map for our changing climate. I swear it was 3b when I was a kid.
@Lew (#334) & JMG (#341):
I got the same message. Like Lew, I deleted it unanswerd.
JMG,
Well that makes perfect sense since the fnords started popping out of your reply as I read it!
😉
Thank you, Mr. Greer!!
Team10Tim #329:
Schadenfreude…I’ve been thinking about the Palestinian connection (because it’s infamous that Israel can play in the Olympics with the Gaza massacre and Russia cannot…); but lately I’m considering that maybe Putin would be smiling…It’s hard to accept with his arms crossed that you have been cancelated in sports too.
By the way, I’m not going to see the Paris Olympics ending “ceremony”; I’ve had enough with the opening one.
Thank you for your reply, John Michael Greer. It has given me much food for thought. And my next question is, why do so many Americans use their combined first name and middle names (or sometimes their first name and middle initial), compared to us Brits?
JMG,
The idea of an endless cycle of plant transpiration and re-watering with that moisture on our part suggests to me that it might just keep getting better too, as the plants finish eliminating any latent chemicals in their potting soil from past drenchings with city water, and the soil food web strengthens.
Many thanks for this open forum, as usual. Always plenty of delicious kernels to glean from it.
@joy marie
There was another group of people who liked blue hair and that’s where the screaming bluehairs came from – the punks. In fact the opening scene of SLC Punk illustrates the hairline crack that was to become the giant fissure it is today, where two blue haired punks are beating up on two rednecks.
J.L.Mc12,
re: pallet dicks (and I mean that in the nicest way…)
Since I started working in manufacturing management 4 years ago our pallet costs have gone from $7/ to $17/! Apparently enough of an uptick that the owner of our company can often be found in the garage cutting up larger pallets we receive deliveries on to fit our out-shipping needs. He will get a kick out of this intel! Thanks.
J.L.Mc12,
You might also find this old sub-Reddit worth a look:
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/9xrgyj/heres_a_pallet_i_made_from_an_old_coffee_table/
Funnier than ever now!
@Neko #159 re: “that rendering of the sound of one hand,” you’re welcome! That version is due to Nyogen Senzaki, collected by Paul Reps in his book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (which I regard very highly, perhaps after only the Tao Te Ching and the Enneads in its influence upon me). And thank you for that interpretation of the myth of Lot and his wife, as it is different (and no less valuable) from the way I had been considering it!
Hi JMG,
I just listened to a podcast with an entrepreneur, he said that he kept a daily journal with his thoughts and also tracked his business sales at the same time. When he was going through a slump, he went back to look through his journal and saw two periods where he had a huge increase in sales. He went back and saw that in the week preceding those increases, he had written in his journal that he was thinking “something amazing is about to happen”.
Subsequently, to get out of his slump, he repeated to himself “something amazing is about to happen” daily and he said he made the most improvements to his business he ever had in the next 12 months.
This seems like a very effective use of a general affirmation. There is a part of me that wonders if it’s not just due to the affirmation but also to other factors (maybe the right astrological period for him for example), of course, they are not exclusive.
Would you have any suggestions on improving this affirmation?
On another note, my baby daughter is 6 months old now. I plan to homeschool her, which I mentioned previously. I have a few links to share and also some questions to ask:
The first link is https://losttools.substack.com/p/an-egan-pattern-language
This is a Substack by Brandon Hendrickson. He wrote a book review for Kieran Egan’s work on the Astral Codex Ten Substack last year, and won the book review contest. I personally thought the review was the best of the batch I had read and it introduced me to Kieran Egan’s ideas on education. To summarize Egan, I’d say that for me, he is to the philosophy of education as Spengler is to the philosophy of history.
Just as Spengler contextualizes the stages of development of a culture-organism, Egan contextualizes the different approaches to education that have popped up over the centuries to the education of different capabilities for each individual. I can’t do justice to it in a blog comment so if it sounds interesting, I think Brandon has a good introduction in his Substack. His review itself is quite long.
Anyway, I’ve been following Hendrickson’s Substack and I enjoy it but I feel that there is something missing — he is a history major with an interest in science, so as you might expect, he is quite strong at encouraging the love of wonder at learning, reading, stories in themselves. I think students who go through an Egan-Hendrickson style learning experience done well would definitely emerge with a love of learning and reading. I think I would have enjoyed such an approach as a child.
However, much of the world is not just about learning and reading but also about creating, making, and doing.
Here’s where my second link comes in:
https://ozwrites.com/homeschool/
This is an article by computer science teacher and entrepreneur Oz Nova about homeschooling his children. He taught his daughter to read at 3 using phonics and he thinks reading is important, but his is what I would call a “maker” approach to education.
For example, instead of teaching children to be calculators, he wants his kids to progressively learn to make counting devices over the years, starting from counting rods, to abaci, to Pascal’s mechanical calculator and more.
Oz’s criticisms of homeschoolers at the beginning of his essay seem quite valid from what I saw of homeschooling groups — some are “more school than school”, and rarely do you see anything makes a radical departure from mainstream life. The closest thing I personally saw online was someone who spoke Latin as a first language to his child.
I think both approaches can be quite compatible and I would like to combine both in my own homeschooling. Oz’s daughters are both young but he is thinking roughly of progressing with projects through the history of science and technology, basically Hendrickson also recommends a similar approach of teaching through history.
Anyway, I found these two authors very insightful and they are leading my own approach to homeschooling right now, just sharing if anyone is interested.
For the ask:
What books would you recommend for children (especially girls) to read once they’ve started reading?
I noted down Rosemary Sutcliffe from above. And also I personally have both current Ariel Moravec titles, which my daughter might enjoy when she’s a little older.
When I was a child, Enid Blyton’s books, the Hardy Boys, the Famous Five, and more were found in every bookstore, but with the flood of new children’s books I don’t see these books anymore. They were already old when I was a child (in the 90s), so I wonder why they lasted so long but stopped being sold nowadays.
Neko: You might want to take look at R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz’s “Esoterism and Symbol”. It’s an interesting booklet.
A quote: “Esoterism is not a particular meaning hidden in a text, but a state of fusion between the vital state of the reader and the vital state of the author”.
JMG: Are you acquainted with it?
Grover – You don’t say anything about the origin of your tap water, but around here (the Washington DC suburbs), it’s got chlorine and zinc orthophosphate added to it. The chlorine kills many microbes, and the orthophosphate prevents pipes from dissolving (so they say). We catch rainwater for our houseplants, and noticed right away that the white chalky mineral deposits no longer form on the clay pots, or make a crust on the soil. However, I’ve also been catching the condensate from our A/C, and noticed a faint bluish tint to it. I’m thinking that it might be copper-ion-based, if something in the air (maybe just CO2, forming carbonic acid) is reacting with the copper tubing of the heat-exchanger, so I’m cautiously dumping it in the garden. Copper solutions are potentially toxic to plant life, but I suppose it depends on the concentration.
Something else to share– apparently there’s clear aerogel being made in the lab that makes for very good solar collectors.
see: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b02976
Aerogel is pretty high-tech, but it’s potentially more durable than evacuated tubes*– and can get hotter. This paper is talking about over 200C with no concentration!
(Later work talks about 1500C in simple trough concentrators. )
That’s not going to “save the world” but it might soften the decline a bit. I for one would love a to see a ‘Sun Oven’ that could make pizza (with no mirrors)!
Aerogel is high tech, but some people HAVE done it at home. See: aerogel.org
The clear(ish) aerogel seems to be a very carefully controlled variation on the normal process (they even have a translucent one on aerogel.org). Backyard production in this day-and-age is a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition to imagine a technology continuing past the industrial era, which it seems aerogels meet (and transparent aerogels may meet.). That of course means it might be possible, and we all know possible doesn’t equal economic. So we’ll see.
I for one am cautiously optimistic about this technology, however.
*some aerogels, anyway. No word on the mechanical properties here; silica aerogel can be pretty fragile, but then, so can vacuum tubes.
Tyler, when next I have a garden, I’ll give it a try. Thank you for this!
Batstrel, I use both my given names because “John Greer” is a repeating name in my family — my dad’s John David G., his dad was John Lawrence, his dad was John William, his dad was William John but his uncle was John William, and so on among Greers back quite a few centuries. Apparently this used to be standard in a lot of families on the bottom end of the working class, which mine was until my dad’s time. I don’t know if that sort of ancestry is why the habit of using both given names is so common in the US, but we did get a lot of dirt poor people from your country, you know.
Grover, that might do some very interesting things. One of the things I’ve been doing with my excess free time these days is getting back into spagyrics (herbal alchemy), which I did quite a bit back before Sara’s failing health put a lot of things on hold. One of the classic alchemical processes is repeated distillation — you take an herbal tincture with the powdered leaf matter still in it, distill over a very gentle heat until the liquid’s all come over, cool it down, then pour the liquid back onto the dry remnants, let it steep for a while, and then repeat the distillation; do this over and over again and very interesting and positive things happen to the tincture. You’re basically teaching the plants to do that, because they take the water you pour on them, transpire it as vapor through their leaves, and pass it to the dehumidifier — then they get it back to distill again. It sounds like an experiment worth doing!
Alvin, that strikes me as an extremely good affirmation. If you choose to use it, it’ll have the advantage that you know it’s worked wonders for someone else. Thank you for the links; I’ve added those to my to-read stack. As for recommended books, my very favorite book in infancy — the one I asked my mother to read to me every single day — was Over in the Meadow, a little rhymed story about nature, which probably had a lot to do with my becoming a Druid in adulthood. Both the authors you mention are out of copyright, so nobody can make money off them; fortunately, they’re readily available in ebook form, along with about ten thousand other good children’s books:
https://www.fadedpage.com/csearch.php?author=Blyton,%20Enid
https://www.fadedpage.com/csearch.php?tags=Hardy%20Boys%20(Fictional%20character)
A. Karhukainen, it’s on my bookshelf, along with half a dozen other books by him.
Tyler, hmm! Thanks for this.
A bit more background on how the spotted owl became the stand-in for old growth forests. I was there in the trenches of the old growth battle in Oregon back in the 80’s and and 90’s. The groups fighting to save intact old growth ecosystems such as The Cathedral Forest Action Group, and the Oregon Natural Resources Council ( the big DC based environmental lobbying groups like the Sierra Club and the Wilderness society were notably absent from this fight.) The groups on the ground were actively trying to convince law makers to expand the Wilderness act or create some other type of designation that would save the last remnants of the original Douglas fir and hemlock forest ecosystems that were left and had not been logged yet. By this time these were all on public land either natural forest or state forest. At the beginning of this fight less than 3% of what had existed when Lewis and Clark arrived was left.
The forest service itself first made the connection between spotted owl habitat and old growth forest back in 1977, and themselves recommended saving a reserve of 1000 acres for each nesting pair. The connection is what the spotted owl eats. It primarily feeds on the red vole which can only live within the root structure of a mature and intact old growth Douglas fir ecosystem. They eat fir needles, but rely on a complex set of gut bacteria that are only found in these forests. Without it the needles cannot be digested.
Since there is no endangered species act for intact ecosystems the spotted owl was a good proxy for the forests that was protected by an existing federal law. The red vole could have been chosen but it was less charismatic than the northern spotted owl which depended on it, and the owl being the apex predator was more sensitive to disruption than the voles which were lower on the food chain.
If congress ( and the ossified) national environmental groups had a tiny bit more vision and independence from industry a good set of laws could have been created that would have preserved a few intact old growth ecosystems, much like we did with scenic spots like with did with the National Parks. This would have created a much more beneficial outcome than the widely misunderstood use of the spotted owl to save those ecosystems in a much more chaotic and divisive way.
Alvin #357
> my baby daughter is 6 months old now. I plan to homeschool her
There are likely other parents around in the same boat. Think “one-room schoolhouse🏡.” All grades in one room. One teacher with one substitute teacher. The older kids teach the youngsters. Wood-burning stove in the center. Low-budget. Effective. No need for $millions currently being elicited from tax-payers.
It is my idea. It hasn’t caught on.
Best regards,
💨Northwind Grandma💨🧑🏼🏫
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Re. pets and reincarnation
I have a dog who, after noticing how much we humans move objects around, when she was left to her own devices would lay objects in a line, open boxes and packaging without damaging contents, like art from a fish skeleton scavenged at the tracks, a half full gallon jug and hand warmers from a flea market. I experimented with getting her to pick up an object near me once using just my thoughts and she did. She’s getting old and tired of competing with the trio of 18mo old pups. I think she will be human soon, sweet ol grizzly bear. She’s the first dog I raised from birth and she was allowed to be very true to the species she come from, denning, stepping into the light on her own time, much freedom, hunting (but she only likes groundhog cooked now). I think animals who suffer from being forced to conform to unnatural human conventions must have a harder time evolving anywhere good.
Hello JMG and friends, I found a blog post about where the Second Religiosity has reached; https://uncouthbarbarian.substack.com/p/catholic-polities-in-the-face-of with this, I think a new world is being born and the soft people of today will be the first to be discarded in this world, apart from this, if there are Christians who are thinking of living in Eskişehir, Turkey, they can contact me, apart from that, good day, Christians and JMG!!! Good day.
Alvin @ 457 It is one of the two biggest regrets of my life that, as a widow uninterested in remarriage, I was not able to homeschool my girls. I did lots of reading aloud at home–keep that up and no reading time tonight was effective discipline. The golden age of children’s fiction lasted from the 1920s to about the 1970-mid 80s. For girls, seek out the Dorrie books by Patricia Coombs. Newberry award winners from within those decades mentioned above are good choices. Some standouts include The Trumpeter of Cracow, The Wheel on the Schoolhouse, King of the Wind, Adam of the Road. For boys, do seek out books by Jack Kjeldgaard, boy and dog adventuring in the wilderness, My kids loved the I spy books and Jamboree, also magic Schoolbus, which are more recent. I would avoid the ghastly Princess books, and let your kids make up their own minds re fantasy. Do make a quick look through for appropriate content. Most libraries have not yet discarded their shelves of folk and fairy tales from over the world. Manga is since my time, but I understand that, at its best, if offers good storytelling and fantastic drawing.
I would encourage you to insist on non-sentimental excellence in illustration as well as content. I am convinced developing taste is part of moral education. Might it be possible to connect with other homeschooling parents for informal book swapping? And do check the library discard piles. You have as much right to those occasional treasures as do any ebay dealers. One thing to look for there is science for young children, birds, animals, rocks, the night sky, well-illustrated and described.
@A. Karhukainen
Re quote: “Esoterism is not a particular meaning hidden in a text, but a state of fusion between the vital state of the reader and the vital state of the author”.
AND @various re: consciousness of plants
In Evolutionary Herbalism “Focusing on the plant in this way, from a place of internal coherence, begins a process of entrainment as you fine tune your heart field like a dial on a radio, moving through the static until you find the right ‘station.’ … an etheric bridge is established between you and the plant as you enter a sort of waking dream… Everything you experience in this state of entrainment with the plant conveys meaning… to the evolutionary herbalist, every plant is a visionary plant.
@Mark L #97 and more
I too see need to move beyond culture war framing but it seems right now to me that the best way to do that is to have each ‘side’ one can find questioning their assumptions about the other sides and perceiving them (the sides) to be much more plural than one has been led to believe. Thanks for reading my piece and thanks for your writing too!
Dear Archidruid:
Could you say your opinión about the aperture ceremony of the Olimpic Games. Iam impressed by the mockery of Christ performed in this ceremony, and for the remarcable differences with ceremonies of passed Olimpic Games, starting with the 1936 (“Olimpia”)
Hey JMG and Grover
Funnily enough, the article said that a pallet costs around $20 to make, so you weren’t far off Grover.
Also, they aren’t just using detectives, apparently some pallets have $60 worth of electronic tracking devices hidden in them, make of that what you will. Also the pallet detectives largely focus on pallets made by CHEP, which apparently are somewhat better made than usual pallets
If you want I can copy and paste the entire article for all to read, here or on the frugal Friday page.
Re books for girls: as a young girl I loved the Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren. There are three of them: Pippi Longstocking, Pippi Goes on Board, and Pippi in the South Seas. The Wikipedia article on Pippi Longstocking will tell you more.
When I was a young teen I liked the Nancy Drew mysteries.
Yiğit,
The author of that article writes about the increasing devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe among Catholics in North America. I believe a number of authors have written about how the Virgin of Guadalupe is the same as the old pre-Columbian Nahuan goddess Tonantzin Coatlaxopeuh. Put that with John Michael Greer saying on this blog that North America will shake off its Faustian pseudomorphosis and possibly adopt a Mexican pseudomorphosis, I can see North American Catholicism evolving over the centuries into a religion that worships Our Lady of Guadalupe / Tonantzin Coatlaxopeuh as its main god(dess), becoming significantly different from the Magian and Faustian Catholicism present in Europe.
Hi Mr Greer,
Thank you for the encouragement regarding the tarot and the suggested literature. I have done my first single card draw and the results are very promising. I have been thinking a lot about an ex I have lost all contact with, and my question was how to proceed in that situation. I drew a six of cups, and according to online information, this card is strongly associated with looking back and nostalgia – an interpretation that fits perfectly with my frame of mind on the subject. As if to underscore the point, when I ended my reading and shuffled the cards, the card at the bottom of the deck was again six of cups. I am very much looking forward to learning more about tarot, and am hopeful that this will open up new paths.
I sometimes think about the modern science and its future once the material conditions enabling its astonishing rise have disappeared. What is your opinion on the prospects of quantum mechaniscs once further experiments in the field are too costly, and societies can no longer financially support academic networks to preserve and disseminate the knowledge? Will it be possible to maintain the progress made, or will all advances not practically applicable fade into oblivion? Thanks.
Hollywood follows the money and shifts movie production away from coastal preferences toward middle-American tastes and desires.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hollywood-message-red-states-movies-153634983.html
.
Joy Marie
@J.L.Mc12 re: ebooks
I only buy DRM-free ebooks so I have bought lots of ebooks over the years but never from Amazon or iBooks. Lots of authors and publishers directly sell their ebooks to consumers from their websites and often these ebooks are provided for download without Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and presumably put more money into the author/publisher’s pockets. When there is a book I know I want to buy I often see if I can buy it directly from the the author or publisher. I’ve also bought books from some of the alternative self-publishing platforms like Smashwords and itch.io (for indie RPG books) and those also seem to give better royalties/control to authors than Amazon. There are also bundle sites that sell ebook bundles for a limited period of time like Humble Bundle or StoryBundle that I like to buy from and let you direct part of your payment to charity. If none of those work as a last resort I’ll try Kobo which lets you easily download a DRM-free copy (if the publisher doesn’t mandate DRM and some publishers like Tor never mandate DRM) unlike some alternative ebook vendors which force you to use their app or e-reader device to read the books you purchase from them.
@JMG
You might want to look at getting a “Soxhlet Extractor”.
https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com/wiki/Soxhlet_extractor
Alvin @ 357..
I cannot advise you concerning ‘homeschooling’ as such.. however, I’d recommend buying a copy of Edward Lear’s “Book of Nonsence” asp! … and read passages as suits you, to that young, growing, sieve of a mind. She’ll no doubt pick up more that you might suspect: rhyme, syntax, and locution will impart it’s influence on those budding neurons. I did the same when my daughter was about your daughter’s age. Me thinks it did wonders for my progeny.
Just an fyi..
I’m afraid I’m not qualified to speculate on the philosophical future of European culture.
“Tightwad Gazette” is still a great resource, if I could just find my beat-up copy of volume 2 around here somewhere. I’d like to additionally recommend sewing or home-economics textbooks from 1900 through the 1950s. They tend to have a chapter about budgeting and planning a wardrobe, and a detailed chapter about mending clothing. Some of the older ones even have some simple pattern drafting! (Google library found me several nice ones, and used book stores have provided several others.)
On a different topic, I just finished reading “The Book of Haatan.” I enjoyed it, and I’m looking forward to a sequel if that is a thing that makes sense for the author to put effort into. The mystery plot was sufficiently mysterious, and the pirate captain was a nice touch. Does Dr. Moravec have magic to insure that he has a parking space when he wants one, or is Adocentyn low-density enough that parking is not usually an issue?
I notice that you are publishing a lot of new books. I hope that the print-on-demand model is allowing enough copies to be sold to make the writing financially worthwhile!
AliceEm, Sara and I once had a cat who had a vocabulary of half a dozen English words. One time when Sara was getting ready to make hamburgers, the cat came trotting over and stood at her feet meowing. Sara said, “Ignatz, if you can say the word ‘hamburger’ I’ll give you some.” She repeated the word several times. The cat stared at her all the while, then drew herself up and with a supreme effort meowed, “Wah-wur-wur.” Of course Sara gave her a big lump to chew on. I’m quite sure that cat is human these days.
Yiğit, thanks for this.
Anselmo, I didn’t watch it and certainly don’t intend to do so. I haven’t watched an Olympic games since childhood, for that matter.
J.L.Mc12, I’d rather you not cut and paste the article here or on Frugal Friday, but if you want to put it somewhere else and post a link here, that would be fine.
SLClaire, all the girls I knew when I was growing up adored Nancy Drew with the same passion the boys directed to the Hardy Boys, so it’s probably a good recommendation. Many of them are out of copyright:
https://www.fadedpage.com/csearch.php?tags=Nancy%20Drew%20(Fictional%20character)
Soko, I expect most of modern science to survive as a collection of dogmas in book form, which will hold back future societies the way Aristotle’s ideas held back medieval society. When the ideas of modern physics are rejected by the thinkers of some future culture and replaced by some new set of ideas, the next Renaissance will begin.
Joy Marie, here we go! The end of the cultural dominance of the bicoastal privileged minority was going to happen sometime soon anyway, but now it’s coming closer.
Other Owen, I’ve considered a Soxhlet for a long time, and may go ahead with it if I end up doing enough spagyrics to make it worthwhile. I’ve got distillation gear and most of the other necessities, and have unpacked them now.
Sylvia, thank you! The third and fourth volumes in the Ariel Moravec series, The Carnelian Moon and The House of the Crows, are already at the publishers, and I have four nonfiction books due out in the next six months or so, from three different publishers. I’m not too worried. 😉
About Our Lady of Guadalupe – when I passed shrine to her, of which there are many around Albuquerque, I bowed my head. Her presence was everywhere and very powerful. A the saying goes, “She is God in Mexico.” And in Mexamerica north of the Rio Grande, too.
@ Batstrel #351
Presumably by ‘Brits’ you actually mean ‘English’. England is a huge mongrel nation with a myriad of surnames and little or no historical continuity. The same is not true of Scotland, or indeed Wales.
In the Scottish Highlands there are a limited number of clan surnames and a limited number of ancestral forenames. So in a particular region a lot of people can have exactly the same name. As a result it is quite common to use a middle name as well, for example Iain-Donald, or else to give someone a distinctive nickname like Black John (Eoin Dhu), if they are dark and swarthy. So the traditional Highland family name Eoin-Micheal MhicGriogar (John Michael Greer) could easily be a thousand years old.
A few responses that some may appreciate.
@ Chris at Fernglade regarding that quote.
“The faster we can get more reliable renewables into the system, the better it will be for energy bills and energy reliability.”
That word ‘reliable’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Many don’t realise just how big of an issue that is. But then I have seen folks seriously argue with me that, ‘yes, we could go 100% green by 2030’. It is a mind set that comes about when you are completely detached from the physical world. Generally folks that have never worked in resources or manufacturing. Everything just appears to them. They must think they can just go to Amazon and order 100 billion solar panels for next day delivery and it is done.
@ J.L.Mc12 and underground cities. Look at Coober Pedy in South Australia. To escape the heat, big parts of the town are underground. Designs that could be improved on but it is a good proof on concept for others to work with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy
@ Wer “For example when Trump was in office the US national debt greatly increased”
And it hasn’t slowed one bit since. the US increases the debt by $1 trillion about every 3 months now. I’m not a fan of Trump but I do remember him saying “So long as people keep buying oil is US dollars, the debt doesn’t matter”. He wasn’t wrong, but the question is when that gravy train stops, the debt hangover will be huge. But for the two big parties at the top, neither seems interested in stopping the debt train just yet.
@ Siliconguy “Green living seems to require that you bathe in fluoropolymers.”
Maybe one day folks will be diagnosed with ‘Green lung’, similar to coal miners with Black lung.
@ Dobbs “Twisted carbon nanotube ropes”
Two key problems with Carbon Nano tubes. First, very costly to make in high quality, long lengths (more than a few millmeters). Second, they could be the next Asbestos as they are fine air born fibers that irritate lung tissues. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-019-0472-4
There is a reason why Carbon nanotubes were a darling of the science media and then they went very quiet on them as the limitations became apparent.
@ balowulf and JMG moving countries. You are thinking too small, he isn’t moving country, he is moving planet! I have it on good authority that JMG is going to be the first person to land on Mars via Elons Starship. The weather is good on Olympus Mons this time of year. 😉
@J.L.Mc12 and pallets. I haven’t been involved in logistics here in Oz for about 3 years now, but back in 2021 that was already a huge issue. There simply was not enough materials to keep making pallets, old ones were repaired far beyond their usual life span. Not too surprised this is still on going. Just remember, if you bought something at a super market, there is a good chance it came on a pallet.
Hey JMG
I understand, I shan’t post any electronic Samizdat smuggled from over the WSJ paywall.
I recently noticed your collaboration with the substack writer Ahnaf, and it remined me of a question that occurred to me concerning the realities of warfare in a Ecotechnic future.
If an Ecotechnic city, which presumably gets most of its energy from wind turbines and some form of solar collector, were to be attacked by an army, how could it protect its sources of energy from being destroyed by artillery/siege engines/rockets? By necessity Wind turbines and solar collectors must both be in the open and occupy a lot of open land as unobstructed as possible, which would make it very easy to destroy from a distance. With coal and oil generators, you at least can house them in fortified buildings, or use mobile versions as a stop-gap if the stationary ones are destroyed, but you could not do the same thing with wind and solar generators if you still want to draw power from them.
Maybe it would not be as much of an issue for ecotechnic civilisations as I imagine they would not be as dependent on machines, and most of the important stuff would be done manually, but it will still be an issue for them to work out. Then again, maybe they would have methane-gas generators as another source of power, which could be hidden and fortified as oil and coal generators are?
Hey JMG,
I’ve found your comments on reincarnation and time spent in and out of carnation (sp?) fascinating. It makes sense to me that seeing as there are a lot of humans right now, the turn over of souls would be quite rapid.
My question is – how does this affect ancestor veneration? I’m starting my path as a pagan (side note- I really want to thank you for A World Full of Gods) and I am considering reaching out to some ancestors, but I wonder that if I reach out I won’t find them.
Thanks!
Regarding animal souls, thanks for the input and here’s a story of my own childhood dog. He was an escape artist and there was nothing we could do to consistently keep in the yard, so my dad and I decided to trail him a few times to see where he would go. To our astonishment, he would use crosswalks and wait for crosswalk symbols to change. Wouldn’t be surprised if that dog is currently inhabiting a human form.
@JMG, thanks so much for your reply to my above question about magical safety around a baby. And sorry to be yet another that couldn’t make total sense of your definition at the FAQ page. I do feel my intuitive practice fits your literal definition of ceremonial stuff (change in consciousness using gestures, vocalizations, trained imagination) but I agree that scrying the astral light so to speak doesn’t fit under the umbrella of ceremonial. But frankly, you’re the first author that I’ve found that has paid any attention to defining these categories and I really appreciate it. Anyway, thanks for letting me double check. Definitely don’t want to risk anything with a baby. Not sure if you have time for another question, but do you have a preferred protocol for spiritually protecting loved ones and a home that doesn’t employ ceremonial stuff? I know about talismans bc I grabbed your natural magic book. I have holy water I use around the house. Definitely like the idea of something powerful and lasting as well. Ps, reading through Levi with your guidance and just received my marseille deck! Cheers.
Clarke aka Gwydion wrote, “My own experience of “now” in various meditative states hints at a vastly more complex reality for time than is usually spoken of. The “now” I experienced was immensely bigger than I could easily imagine or understand. I would like to see a post that discusses (among other things) the esoteric understanding of the nature of time in the various worlds however understood. For instance, in Assiah, Yetzirah, Beriah and Atziluth, or, variously– in the etheric, astral, mental and spiritual/causal realms.”
Well, first off spiritual and causal are two separate realms or planes. That’s an important distinction, given that the dimension of time maps quite well onto the causal plane, but not onto the spiritual plane. Just based on their names, that even makes sense linguistically. How can we discuss cause without implying some kind of temporal context?
As incarnated beings, we can only ever hope to manage a very blurry appreciation of time because we do not happen to dwell in that dimension. Of course, that does not imply that time has no impact us; it most certainly does, as well as impacting all of the dimensions we do happen to dwell in. Nonetheless, we will only begin dwelling in time once we eventually graduate to godhood. At that point, we’ll get the dubious benefit of coming back as pond scum in the dimension of time, slowly advancing our way out of the murk one rebirth at a time. Oh, and each rebirth will take an eternity — won’t that be fun!
So yes, the gods do dwell in the dimension of time, which is part of why we experience them as beings so immeasurably far beyond us. That phrase ‘immeasurably far beyond’ makes for a perfect encapsulation of the limitations of incarnated thought (at which Jove is surely laughing right now), and the perfect starting point for a discussion about what we are able to comprehend regarding time. The highest of the dimensions that we dwell in is space, where directions and distances make perfect sense. Our thinking is utterly infused with references to spatial relations like ‘immeasurable’ and ‘far’ and ‘beyond’. Most of the prepositions, in any languages that use them, clarify spatial ambiguities. Even though our thoughts and language don’t allow us to undo that extreme awareness of space, in any vain hope of thinking from within the dimension of time, they can provide us with a working model for how any beings might relate to and experience the highest dimension they happen to be dwelling in.
Because we dwell in space, we’re not particularly likely to describe ourselves as being spaceless. We can point to our various body parts, tell people the address where we live, and describe the farthest away we’ve ever travelled. We’re quite the opposite of spaceless — we’re grounded in, tethered to, limited by, and unable to escape from space. We can’t be in two places at once, and, although we can see distant stars, it still requires a great deal of effort and energy for us to move from one place to another right here on earth. So, if the gods dwell in the dimension of time, whatever causes us to describe them as being timeless? They would be as tethered to and limited by time as we are in space.
What if gods similarly dwell somewhen in time, can point to when each of their body parts are, and must exert a great deal of effort to make minor movements through time, even though they can see some far distant times without moving? That would help to explain why intercessions to a particular god should be made on Tuesday or at the harvest or on the equinoxes. That’s where they can be found; that’s where they dwell, or more accurately when they dwell. They may help you on Friday; they may even be visiting a divine friend whose address is Friday, but you’re more likely to have a pleasant visit with them if you drop by their own house at Tuesday.
The gods are the opposite of timeless — they’re grounded in, tethered to, limited by, and unable to escape from time. They can travel through time with some effort. I’m sure they have an affinity for certain times and consider some other times to be too ugly for words. They may even have fantasies about using some higher dimension they don’t yet dwell in to tesseract through time without all that energy expenditure — silly gods! The point is that they actually dwell fully within time, while we can only pick up on a few of the many complex ways that time interacts with the various dimensions that we are dwelling within.
To continue my earlier comment on Our Lady of Guadalupe, if the Europeans do regroup around Our Lady of Guadalupe and manage to beat back Islam with her help in a similar way to the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, then Western Europe may end up in a Mexican pseudomorphosis in the future after the end of Faustian Europe.
Patricia Mathews,
If the substack article is anything to go by, devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is not just limited to Hispanic America, but is becoming more widespread among the traditionalist Catholics and Latin Mass enthusiasts in America as well, many of whom are of historic European stock.
I wonder if this increased devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe among the traditionalists in America is feeding into the Vatican’s attempts to suppress the Latin Mass, since the entire movement represents the rejection of the heavily Faustian Vatican II church in favor of something not Faustian, i.e. what appears to be a Catholicism of the future Mexican civilization, at least in North America. This might be yet another sign of America throwing off the Faustian pseudomorphosis.
JMG, Team10 and others, didn’t the French learn with the Hebdo cartoons? I seem to remember that Jesus (Isa) is very important in Muslim doctrine, the prophet preceding Mohamed, and due for a Second Coming. Mocking Him doesn’t sound like a very bright idea, it could even be very deleterious to health and safety.
Deleterious because it sounds like the kind of thing to set off a restless youngster in the banlieue, you’ve seen the type on this side of the pond, a fella with a crap job, no money, no wife, no life, no prospects, and nothing to look forward to.
I guess nobody told the genius who cooked up this Last Supper fiasco. Maybe all the videos are disappearing because somebody realized after the fact that maybe this nonsense might get up somebody’s sensitive nose, you know, somebody with a bad temper and a gun.
I mean, the French can be really annoying. So who do they insult next? The Hindus?
I didn’t watch the ceremony, but apparently they raised the olympic flag upside down. Quite the symbolism, I’d say.
bk.
@Mark L
I also share some of your opinions regarding reincarnation and the progression of souls outline by JMG, that is I can’t really verify this for myself. Perhaps more spiritual practice could unlock memories of previous lives that I could objectively correlate with historical records, but for now that is outside my own capabilities.
Regarding the steadfastness of some beliefs of JMG, I think we must always remember that we are interacting with an accomplished occult practitioner. Therefore JMG’s opinions and attitudes are deliberately chosen *for the effects they will have on consciousness*, both his and that of others. The opinions don’t need to have perfect and objective explanatory power, they only need to be sufficiently plausible (and sufficiently grounded in reality!), to generate the intended effect. As above so below.
Mark @371
The author also says that everything needed for a Catholic revival is ready and that the West needs to experience a spiritual revival to confront Islam, I wanted to point that out too
Tengu wrote:
“@ Batstrel #351
Presumably by ‘Brits’ you actually mean ‘English’. England is a huge mongrel nation with a myriad of surnames and little or no historical continuity. The same is not true of Scotland, or indeed Wales.”
No, I meant Brits. I myself am English, it is true. England is a huge nation? Actually small to medium, I would say. Little or no historical continuity, you say? Well, let’s compare that staple Scottish food, the deep-fried Mars bar, to our English Yorkshire pudding, which goes back generations, I’ll have you know.
Scotland is not “mongrel” ? What about the Picts and Manx and Vikings? What about the Catholics of Irish descent, who have helped fuel Glasgow’s sectarianism? What about all the Italians who emigrated to Glasgow, and provided the Scots with plenty of ice cream and even fish and chips? And until recently the Scottish First Minister was one Humza Yousaf, don’t you know?
I count two native Welsh speakers among my friends and a lesbian from John O’Groats, Scotland. If they have middle names, they don’t use them. The Highlanders do, you say? But how many are left, after the clearances that “ethnically cleansed” them, to the extent that Smith is actually the most common surname in Scotland? Think of Adam Smith for a start. And how many Scottish stars used their middle name? Billy Aloysius Connolly? Sean Jocelyn Connery? I jest. Or maybe Hamish Angus McTavish (I made that one up).
My statement, “why do so many Americans use their combined first name and middle names (or sometimes their first name and middle initial), compared to us Brits?” remains generally true, despite the minority exceptions that you have mentioned. Are you actually Scots yourself? Given your implicit fantasies about Scottish purity, I imagine you are far more likely to be Transnistrian or even American . 😉
Lathechuck,
Yes, we were originally watering with city water from our tap, but with all the water we’re collecting with the new dehumidifier that was an easy and obvious change of source. Glad we did it too. I’m just blown away by the difference it’s made! Yeah, copper rich solutions can be awful for plants. I think you’re right to be cautious with it. I planted a few canna lily bulbs under the drip of our condenser and they have definitely struggled to get established.
Cheers.
JMG,
Herbal alchemy sounds right up my alley. And a great opportunity to build that solar still I’ve been thinking about for years. Any titles to recommend to get me moving?
Many thanks!
Growing up in the ’50s I never liked the Hardy Boys. My hero was Biggles in the Capt WE Johns books, pilot of a Sopwith Camel with the help of his trusty mechanic, Algernon Smythe, and no doubt extremely non-DEI in those colonial supremacist days.
Incidentally, Lord Sopwith had a holiday home in a resort near here. One holiday we got to stay in the manager’s cottage. It had a hidden room without a door. You had to pick up a counterwaited staircase to get in. Of course we kids insisted that was the room we had to stay in.
Other favourites were the Hornblower books, Rene Guillot’s pirate books, Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books, The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, and anything with dinosaurs, like The Lost World by Conan Doyle.
My impression of England is a heavily diluted Germanic culture, beer drinking and all.
@Mark #387 – it won’t be Europeans who gather around La Guadalupana’s banner, it will be Americans in the dryland west, where a Mexican pseudomorphosis is extremely likely, Coyote willing. And remember, she is the Lady of the Americas, Hispanic, Anglo, whatever
JMG: “Sara said, “Ignatz, if you can say the word ‘hamburger’ I’ll give you some.” She repeated the word several times. The cat stared at her all the while, then drew herself up and with a supreme effort meowed, “Wah-wur-wur.”
C’mon JMG, everyone knows that cats only say “I can has cheezburgers .“
Joy Marie
It is sometimes quite embarassing when I look back at my own all-too apocalyptic thinking throughout these years, despite reading this blog all the while. Even the philosophical forebears of my course of study, professors who also informed us students about the implications of EROI and peak oil, explained the faulty implications of apocalypctic thinking back then.
But I guess sometimes we just need to make the experience ourselves. Certainly I have undermined my credibility to people and in turned undermined the credibility of the still standing news of entropy and resource depletion.
Alas, almost nobody says things really got better either.
Simplicius on substack has now also admitted he underestimated the durability of NATO and the western power structure. He also says that the great powers of the world in the 17th century were the same as today and no amount of disasters and turmoil has changed the equation.
OK, not true for the USA, and here on this forum we also assume that Europe in the long term will revert to its global standing not to the baroque age, but pre roman empire or so.
I remember the youtube channel Outdoor Chiemgau alarming that our whole energy grid goes down if the planned sanctions of energy go into place in 2022. As we know, things weren’t done as proclaimed, simply.
His reports on official energy grid data are no doubt competent, there are certainly problems. But I was a bit naive, even if also Austrian military man Herbert Saurugg is right that black outs may pose certain dangers, even if we saw some of it recently in Yugoslavia, the grand catastrophe seems far off.
My father was a bit more prescient when a few years back he simply said “It’ll be like in Brazil 1980 then, I was there, outages were simply normal and people lived with them”.
A slow decline, more likely, and it looks like just that. Also Simplicius mentions, Russia could theoretically incapacitate the whole of the UKR energy grid in a few strikes entirely, but the resulting humanitarian crisis is not what it wants. Back in 2022 I thought wrongly they had put that into action, but no, they simply weakened capacities, to have a stronger hand in negotiations.
Since then progressively so of course, but still, I read many news, like Germany closing its fertilizer plants, shortages of Ad Blue for truck diesel engines and so on, well that all happened, but obviously all the holes are patched, not as cheaply as before maybe, but it just does not go down so fast.
ALso the Irlmaier and other prophecies I read about from Stephan Berndt, well you can give him he has been thorough with his research, but the soup of his conclusions was often very thin all the same. Now Peter Denk says of the spirit world Irlmaier called and said his prophecies were just a possibility that did not happen due to changed circumstances.
To be fair, the twentieth century had its share of genuine and hard human catastrophes killing many in just a few years, Cambodia, Cultural Revolution in China, Rwanda….and of course the fall of the Soviet Union was quite a shock to many societies there, quite an increase in mortality.
So what have I learned? To be more cautious about the immedeate psychological effects of negative news versus the bigger picture, to be more patient monitoring outcomes and all that.
I certainly do not expect things to get much better over here in Austria, but bracing for a Mad Max Style chaos isn’t very effective against that.
@Mark
Thanks for your advice about Guyana
I didn’t hear much about the Essequibo Conflict since the last couple of months, seems dormant now, but you’d never know.
@Kim A.
Good question what kinds of Visas Guyana offers. Quick research showed you may work there if you already have an offer before you come and you may prolong indefinitely, but you must pay. Seems in theory doable, I just think the country is just overall not a big economic destination.
The question is always the same anways: what to do there to make yourself useful, and useful enough that you should be an addition to the domestic workforce?
Australia is certainly for that an easier place to immigrate to as a European, not entirely easy, but doable.
Patricia Mathews #379: “About Our Lady of Guadalupe – when I passed shrine to her, of which there are many around Albuquerque, I bowed my head. Her presence was everywhere and very powerful.”
I was in a cafe once in Albuquerque where there was a beaded curtain with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on it. I asked where the restroom was and an employee pointed to the curtain and said, “Through the Virgin and to the left.” A bit irreverent perhaps, but I enjoyed those directions!
Hey John,
I was wondering if you would consider someday writing a book about Mormonism and Magic. Obviously there are plenty of books on the subject l, but as far as I know, none are written by practicing ritual magicians like yourself. And I think that is a perspective that desperately needs to be told.
Recently a practicing ceremonial magician named Dr. Nick Literski made a video and wrote a paper where he broke entirely new ground on the meaning of the Smith family lamen which critical historians like Dan Vogel and D. Michael Quinn missed completely. I’m positive that you could make similar advances. Most of these historians only have surface-level understanding of magic, not the deep understanding required to notice things hiding right in front of them.
Obviously you’re a busy wizard and have a lot on your plate and have plenty else to write about. Just a suggestion.
Mark,
In Mexico there’s a movement worshipping Santa Muerte, a folk saint who is vehemently opposed by the catholic church. She has become very popular, especially among the narco gangs.
Catholicism in America has the potential to become a quasi-polytheistic religion in the future. I’m sure the religious landscape of Long Descent America will be very unfamiliar!
Another note: Gnosticism is WIDESPREAD on 4chan. A lot of 4channers believe in Gnosticism wholeheartedly. There are many many memes about it too. If 4chan is a harbinger of things to come, we have an interesting future ahead.
My two cents on the Olympics Inauguration Shenanigans,
I would not have been much interested in the Ceremony anyways, but I went out of my way to not watch it after some morbid commentary from my offline social circle. I was still exposed to what I think was the evening rerun while on the gym; I did not pay much attention, but…
Aside from the forced “inclusivity” and the apparently Sacrilegious Last Supper Sketch (can you sin against a religion you are not a member of? I am honestly guessing), there was a disturbing scene nobody else seems to have caught. There was a fireworks show that propagated through a bridge, athen a path, and then engulfed a large, beautiful building (I don’t know a thing about French see-sights, so cannot tell), and from the fire, the forces of chaos emerged, dancing. The fireworks part triggered my memory of another two similar scenes, from the movie V for Vendetta: the bombings of the Old Bailey and the Houses of Parliament, in London. Main difference, aside from the building not falling into rubbish, was that the real scene took place in broad daylight.
So, do these people have any sense of self preservation at all? One thing is to mock the senile religion of your great-grand parents, but to undermine the symbolic foundations of your own worldly power????
Kim A (234),
This tendency for the occasional totally odd and insightful tangent to emerge is one of the reasons I still regularly read the comments here, even though I’ve given up with most of the rest of the internet’s comment sections. I also enjoy the back and forth, and so I do not mind at all that you jumped in with my peculiar tangent.
I do agree with you to some extent about the costs, but I’ve also come to think that part of what’s driving the film industry into repetition is that everything that can be said in the feature film format has been said. That being said, I think there’s a lot of potential for other forms of cinema, with differing timing and conventions; but the current style has reached the end of what is possible.
As for the role of violence in video games, I’ve begun researching the history of video games and have come to the conclusion that the focus on violence is because that is what works best in the medium: without some hook, video games, especially solitary ones, involve nothing more than looking at a screen and pressing buttons, which is not a very interesting activity. They need something to keep people engaged, and the adrenaline rush from video game violence is one option.
There are others: the Civilization series, for instance, works because it is highly cerebral, and there is a kind of mind that can get lost in the strategy involved (such as mine); and games such as Animal Crossing and Second Life get by on the social aspect, just like the old arcade games did.
As a final note, I find Nintendo fascinating because I think they went in with the idea of finding a niche for performance right away. They were originally a company that made Hanafuda, a style of Japanese playing cards, before branching out into making toys and then video games. Hanafuda were an art style which long ago settled into performance, and I think that Nintendo adopted a mentality of trying to find a similar niche with video games from the start. They still try new things, and so some of their major series are fairly new, but I think they were interested in reaching performance right from the start.
JMG, I know you don’t do video, so I thought you might “enjoy” (?!) this brief transcript of a reply Que-Mala Harris gave to the press on the tarmac of an airport recently: “(shaking head side-to-side for many seconds while speaking) I am meeting, um, with a lot of vokes [folks?], and the work that we have begun is the work that is gonna be ongoing. There is NO question, and I said this from the very beginning, that our approach to this issue, has to be with a commitment, to a long-term, investment, and it has to be a commitment to consistency. The United States has to be consistent. There were times when we were (gesticulating with both hands, up and down), more engaged, and we saw: good results. Less engaged, and and we can see where, where the work and the partnerships then deteriorate. So I am committed, to ensuring that we, engage in an active way, on the root causes, on addressing the cause and effect, and also being partners, in the western hemisphere, understanding that we have a responsibility and if we ignore that responsibility it will visit itself upon us in a very domestic way. So thank you.” (The question had something to do with talking to GOP leaders about the border. Pauses are delineated with commas.)
For the video-curious, see the Coffee & Covid posting for today: Mon. July 29th.
JMG, I cannot remember if I ever linked this through to you. If not you might enjoy this little piece of Australian history. All about the United Ancient Order of Druids in Victoria that acted like the Free Masons/Good Fellows in the early 20th century.
“Why is there a wizard at the top of this Melbourne building?”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-14/curious-melbourne-druid-house-history/10243302
Hey JMG and Commentariat
After a bit too much procrastination, I have finally posted my review of “50 Secrets of magic craftsmanship” by Salvador Dali. I do hope that it is a good read for you all.
https://jlmc12.substack.com/p/50-secrets-of-magic-craftsmanship
Alvin #357 re: book suggestions for early-readers
As a child, my father was given a series of books that subsequently came down to my brother and myself and became our absolute favorite read-aloud bedtime stories. The books later became the perfect early-reader “chapter” books for both of us. The very first book was called Old Mother West Wind (1910) and that became the de facto name of the series. The author’s name was Thornton W. Burgess. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton_Burgess) I trace at least some of my early and ongoing fascination with the natural world and love of narrative fiction to my early immersion in Burgess’ work. The (cheap) hardcover editions we had contained some line drawings and occasional B/W plates, which I greatly enjoyed, though I recall, even as a little one, recognizing that illustrations varied in their imagining of the same characters and that the “illustrations” in my head were equally valid interpretations of the text. Burgess was famous as the “bed-time story man” and I suspect that many of my dreams as a child blended my own experiences in the fields and forests of Idaho with those of Peter Rabbit, Johnny Chuck and Reddy Fox playing in the Green Meadow and listening to Grandfather Frog tell stories from his lily pad in the Smiling Pool.
China has taken the ever more advanced technology and increasing renewable energy as the path to the future, and a big push on nuclear power plant construction, electric vehicles, the 4th Industrial Revolution, an ambitious space program. They still use a lot of coal, use 14% of the world’s oil, produce and import much natural gas. A test case to see if they can pull off this high tech, high renewable energy use and a whole lot of mining as a long term approach to the future. I am sure our technology “progress” at all costs elite is watching with envy China’s centralized government controlled push towards this brave new world. Failure I believe will arrive eventually though every effort will be made to postpone the inevitable. As the saying goes “there’s a lot of ruination in a nation” Our present system will not go easy into the night but will struggle against the long descent for a good number of decades IMO
The following link is an opinion piece by one of my favorite commentators discussing this, David Goldman.
https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2020/07/01/you-will-be-assimilated-chinas-plan-to-sino-form-the-world-n595606
Growing up in the 90s I loved lloyd Alexander, the series The Chronicles of Prydain. I didn’t love Nancy drew and hardy boys or not love them. She’s alright. Boxcar kids nice for small ones. The Black Stallion books I did love. Pippi longstocking too. Rhold Dahl EXCEPT Charlie and the chocolate factory and James and the giant peach which are both vastly outshined by Matilda, BFG, and Witches. Mercedes Lackey. I was on The Glass Bead Game, Siddhartha, The Mists of Avalon, The Alchemist by the time I was 13 and I can’t remember much about being younger and what I read like before the black stallion books…
Greetings!
Grover, we too have been watering part of our garden with dehumidifier water, mainly the cukes. I’ve been wondering why they are way more robust than ever . . . As an aside, I haven’t been using that water on the cukes in a different bed and they look ho hum as usual.
JMG, I hope the acorns are working out for you.
Ellen in ME
@JMG @Other Owen
For essential oil extraction I can personally recommend both the Leonardo Still and courses from https://www.distilling-essential-oils.com/ in Austria. The still is made of copper based on a design by Da Vinci and will handle a practical amount of plant material per extraction as well as getting virtually every drop of oil available.
The course takes a couple of days in English (by request) and includes a practice session. I ended up with a small bottle of powerful lemon oil and another of Lavender.
Hello JMG,
I’d like to ask about the karmic consequences of eating meat. Some spiritual traditions discourage it, others don’t. In my tradition (Zen Buddhism) the monks are vegetarian but they don’t insist the laity be—I’m a layperson. I always get the sense, though, that in their view it is better, karmically, not to eat meat. I observe that my body feels healthier if I eat some meat, though, so I do, but I wonder/worry about it. My teachers have said gratitude is the main thing; to be grateful for what is given and to bless/pray for the animal. So I do that. But I still feel a bit guilty/concerned about the potential consequences. Any thoughts are appreciated!
@Batstrel #393
Hi Batstrel
It’s a bit complicated but I’ll try to reply to all your comments.
>Actually small to medium, I would say.
In comparative terms England has a population of about 67 million and Scotland has a population of about 5 million.
>Little or no historical continuity, you say?
Apart from the Saami, Europeans are made up of only three ethnic groups; Western Hunter Gatherers (WHG), Early European Farmers (EEF) and Western Steppe Herders (WSH). Britain had a substantial population of WHG who walked into these islands after the ice age, but they were 99% ethnically cleansed in the Early Neolithic period by EEF arrivals, who hailed from Anatolia.
In the early Bronze Age the EEF were in turn 90% replaced by the Bell Beaker people, who were better equipped and who were apparently also plague carriers. Although their mysterious religious culture hailed from the Tagus estuary, they were actually WSH, whose DNA had only been slightly modified during their long migration across Europe from their original home on the Pontic-Caspian steppe. They brought with them blonde hair and the Indo-European languages.
In the late Bronze Age another invasion of Britain occurred (which only affected England) from what is now Northern France, and they had a more common continental balance in which the WSH element is only about 40%, as opposed to close to 60% for the Bell Beaker people. In terms of specific Y-DNA lineages the Bell Beaker people were entirely WSH, and in fact the WSH lineages completely replaced the EEF lineages right across Europe, apart from Sardinia. To cut a long story short the Insular Celts are the Bell Beaker people, who have resided in these islands unchanged since the Bronze Age, and who still have 95% WSH Y-DNA. England is part of a much more modern continental gene-pool.
Later small scale invasions made no discernible difference because the Germanic peoples are also predominantly WSH. So the Celts have some genuine continuity in these islands which the English do not share. In any event, hardly any modern Britons are descended from the people who built Stonehenge, and even fewer are descended from the original hunter gatherers.
>What about the Picts and Manx and Vikings? What about the Catholics of Irish descent, who have helped fuel Glasgow’s sectarianism? What about all the Italians who emigrated to Glasgow, and provided the Scots with plenty of ice cream and even fish and chips? And until recently the Scottish First Minister was one Humza Yousaf, don’t you know?
The Picts were Brythonic Celts, the Catholic Irish are Goidelic Celts. There are small numbers of South Asians in Scotland’s larger cities but this immigration is insignificant in comparison with England where some the major cities are now majority South Asian (Birmingham, Bradford etc.). As for Italian cafe owners, it’s true that most seaside towns have a single Italian family, usually related to the Italian POWs who were interned in Scotland during WWII. The Scandinavian element is indeed Caledonia’s only significant settlement in recorded history, but it applies only to Caithness, the Hebrides and the Northern islands where about half of the local ancestry is Scandinavian (much like Ellen Vannin down in the Irish Sea).
>The Highlanders do, you say? But how many are left, after the clearances that “ethnically cleansed” them…
It’s true that the majority of the more than forty million diaspora Scots around the world are descended from the ethnically cleansed Highlanders, but the glens were not completely cleared and today there are about 600 thousand Highlanders in Scotland. Who do you think lives in Wick, Inverness, Fort William and Oban?
>Smith is actually the most common surname in Scotland? Think of Adam Smith for a start.
England has long been an industrial urban nation so they actually required less smiths. In Scotland every clan and every community had to have an armourer, because of the Scottish fondness for feuding in former times, so as a result there were an awful lot of smiths. The surname Smith is just an Anglicization of the Gaelic ‘Gow’ (also Gowan and MacGowan). They are not related to the Smiths of England and they are considered part of Clan MacPherson or Clan Donald.
>My statement, “why do so many Americans use their combined first name and middle names (or sometimes their first name and middle initial), compared to us Brits?” remains generally true…
That is true, but you were specifically referring to the author, who is part of the diaspora Scottish community in the USA, and whose family naming conventions apparently still follow the Highland tradition (which was originally due to reverence for particular saints and clan heroes).
>Are you actually Scots yourself? Given your implicit fantasies about Scottish purity, I imagine you are far more likely to be Transnistrian or even American .
I’ve always wanted to visit Tiraspol, but in answer to your question I’m from a Norse-Gaelic Hebridean clan, which is affiliated to Clan Donald. So my high chief would originally have been the King of Mann, rather than the King of Scotland. I’m two metres tall, bearded, heavily tattooed and my favourite hobbies are seamanship, swordsmanship and Scottish folk dancing. 😉
Yesterday: More sabotage attacks against Paris Olympics, fibre optic cables vandalism…
https://www.connexionfrance.com/news/mobile-phone-and-internet-cables-cut-in-several-areas-of-france/671230
A fantastic quote from Aurelien’s essay Death in Dreamland: “Not a sparrow falls, in other words, without the CIA having poisoned it.”
I wish I had been that eloquent and concise on some past occasions on this blog… It does seem that election years in the US lower the quality of the comments even on a blog as well regulated as this one.
For those who like to delve into the details of the political ‘theatre of the absurd’ that has been happening in the USA this month, it’s worth the time reading the observations of Naomi Wolf, who was quite involved in both a presidential campaign and a VP campaign. To say she is alarmed by what’s been going on is an understatement. I’m afraid that the phrase ‘banana republic’ comes to my mind.
https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/the-double-coup
Patricia M, she really does seem to be a rising goddess.
Tengu (if I may), interesting. I don’t know if anyone’s traced our particular family habit back to Scotland, but it’s quite plausible.
Michael, funny. I’ll have to finish working out the details of Martian astrology first, though.
J.L.Mc12, that’s one reason why hydroelectric power will probably be a mainstay in the ecotechnic future, since its generators can be subterranean and well protected. Methane generators fueled with manure are similarly easy to protect, as you note. Very likely — I hope writers of deindustrial fiction are taking note! — when a fortress city in some future ecotechnic age comes under attack, the wind turbines will be folded down and tucked away for safety, the solar collectors covered with protective roofs, and power is strictly rationed until the siege ends.
Marie, you might have trouble getting in touch with your immediate ancestors, but those who have been dead a good long while will quite likely have finished with their incarnate lives and be available for invocation. That’s why in Japan, for example, you do rites for individuals only for a certain period after their death; after that you simply fold them into “the ancestors,” who are invoked collectively.
Dennis, thanks for this!
Virginia, one of the very interesting things I’ve noticed is that women who ask questions about this always stretch the boundaries outward — they’re worried that what they do might qualify as ceremonial magic, through some expansive definition — while men who ask the same questions always try to push the boundaries inward and rule lawyer to try to get me to let them do ceremonial magic despite having a newborn in the house. It’s a very consistent gender distinction. No, what you’re doing isn’t ceremonial magic; while it has some factors in common with ceremonial magic, the same is true of prayer (that has hand positions, vocalizations, and the direction of the imagination, too!) and quite a few other practices, including at least one martial art. In terms of protective work, prayer helps, if you have a relationship with one or more deities, and then there’s natural magic — that’s been the mainstay for new families for a very long time. (If you look into folklore, you’ll find that natural magic amulets and the like to protect babies are incredibly common.)
Mark, that’s quite true. I’ve suspected for some time that a revived Mexican great civilization, throwing off the European pseudomorphosis brought by Cortez et al., may be a great power a few centuries from now. (That’s why the Empire of Meyco is a distant but potent presence in the 2475 AD of my novel Star’s Reach. The thought of Mexican armies crossing the Atlantic to do battle with the Moors is an enticing one, at least to this science fiction author.
Smith, with Hindutva on the rise, insulting the Hindus would be another very bad idea. I doubt the result would be violence, but given India’s increasingly powerful role in the global economy, the economic impact on France might not be something they’d want to risk.
Grover, easily done. You want The Path of Alchemy by Mark Stavish, Alchemist’s Handbook by Frater Albertus, Spagyrics by Manfred Junius (the earlier edition, which is just as good, was titled Practical Handbook of Plant Alchemy, and then this correspondence course:
http://www.portaelucis.fr/GB/html/publications/alchimie.htm
That’ll give you enough to keep you busy for the next ten years, and teach you all the basics.
Joy Marie, Sara and I chuckled more than once over that meme.
Curt, excellent. It takes a long time and a lot of work for many people to realize that.
Enjoyer, the problem is that I don’t know anything like enough about Mormonism. I’ve studied it enough to know that it’s a very rich and diverse tradition, with a lot of unexpected complexities. I’d probably have to find a coauthor who knew the Mormon tradition inside and out, in order to make any real progress. Do you have a link to the Literski paper, btw?
Bryan, by her usual standards, that’s almost coherent.
Michael, you did indeed, and I found it delightful.
J.L.Mc12, thanks for this — it’s on my to-read stack.
BeardTree, it’ll be interesting to watch, in the sense of the apocryphal curse!
Ellen, they’ve been macerating in rectified alcohol since June. I’ll be checking them right around the winter solstice to see how it’s proceding. Alchemy isn’t fast!
Andy, so noted. I’ll take a look, though extracting the essential oil is only one modest part of the work.
Erica, there are two things to keep in mind here. The first is that plants are just as alive as animals are. Plants also feel pain, and communicate with each other; thus the karma’s the same either way. Second, in this world of material incarnation, all life feeds on other life. Plants send their roots into the soil to find the remains of dead animals and plants; some animals eat plants, other animals eat animals, and we, like other omnivores, eat both. That’s simply the nature of incarnate existence. Gratitude is essential; as an old ritual phrases it, “all things have died that you might live.” Accept that, acknowledge the suffering that is an inevitable part of material incarnation, and bless every being who has helped to contribute to the food that keeps you alive — the plants, the animals, the farmers, the truckers, the clerk at the grocery store, the cook, the dinosaurs who died to provide you with fuel to get to the store and cook your meal, and so on — and you’ll be fine.
Aldarion, one of the reasons I read Aurelien regularly is that he’s got such a fine touch with prose!
Ron, I’ve bookmarked it. Of course we’re a banana republic, btw — we’re just a Third World nation that accidentally ended up in control of the West due to the stunning incompetence of European governments.
JMG,
Excuse my simple questions about economics with perhaps obvious answers. I find it hard to understand economics but find that you write about it in ways that makes sense to me.
1) Why wouldn’t the stock market keep rising for many years since the fed creates new money and seems to manipulate it? In other words, can it fall despite the manipulations/machinations?
2) Is it inevitable that huge inflation in future will continue as a way for the US to lower/get rid of its huge debt?
Thanks,
Jacques
Regarding the survival of modern science,
I expect the mathematics of general relativity to stick around for the long run, or at least general relativity’s inverse cubic term addition to Newton’s inverse square gravitational force law, since it is useful in explaining the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, which should still be measurable by astronomers in the deindustrial future. I don’t expect dark matter or alternatives to general relativity like MOND to stick around because I don’t think the matter distribution of galaxies far away from us will be observable in the deindustrial future by astronomers. As for the curved spacetime, there are theories like gauge theory gravity which are mathematically equivalent to general relativity but which posit an entirely flat spacetime, so whether curved spacetime sticks around in the future is debatable.
The Plutonian big bang theory and its accelerating expansion, as well as the cosmological principle commonly assumed today, are currently being disproven by new discoveries in modern astronomy from the JWST and other telescopes, so I wouldn’t expect it to survive by 2036, let alone for centuries after. Afterwards, I’d expect the view of the cosmos to return to a non-expanding cosmos which has prevailed for centuries before the 1930s, as well as a cosmos in which there is structure at all levels of the cosmos, nested neatly together in a hierarchy encompassing the entire cosmos, and where we happen to live in a giant cosmic void.
As for quantum physics, that is entirely dependent on whether humans will have access to electricity in the future to perform quantum experiments, and since that is doubtful, I don’t think quantum physics will be preserved and survive. The current beliefs of quantum physics may survive as dogma, but I find it more likely that anti-materialists will take over society and point to the measurement problem, Bell’s inequality, etc from quantum physics as evidence why consciousness takes precedence over the material world. By the time human society loses the ability to perform quantum experiments, it would already have an anti-materialist worldview that views the materialistic quantum realm as somewhat irrelevant to the major philosophical problems of the future.
> extracting the essential oil is only one modest part of the work.
I was looking into essential oils for entirely non esoteric reasons although I’ve got the Manfred Junius book on the pile. Did you ever write anything about Spagyrics?
About the speed of the descent, two things.
First, Every crisis era in America’s history has left the nation totally changed. In 1774, we were a weak bunch of disunited colonies; by 1789, a nation to be reckoned with.
After the Civil War, the Union was a major industrial power, and “These United States” became “The United States.” Likewise the nation in 1946 was nothing like that of early 1929. Likewise, the USA of 2036 will not be the USA of 2007.
However, the end of this one won’t be a Mad Max scenario of ruins nor a peasant-and-warlords feudalism. We’ll come out of it poorer, less in love with the insanities of today, stripped down and simplified, sacrificed to the need for survival, and with many other changes, but as Robert Heinlein once commented, “there will still be cattle in Texas, and the English will still break for tea.” The survivors will place a lot of emphasis on home and family and protecting the children. The children of that time will stage a cultural rebellion against the old fogeys, and new religions will blossom like weeds. I expect those to be polytheistic, but Latin Mass Catholicism and Judaism will survive, based on their track records. And there will be a time of rising disorder and hard times as the resource crunch gets tighter. Then – rinse and repeat until all the slack has been squeezed out of the system, and a dark age sets in. We’re talking a long, long cycle here, and I’m saying this as an honorary member of today’s tribal elders.
I give you my take on JMG’s illustration of the process. Joe and Jane are at the time when things are stating to go sour again. . Molly’s Tale is in a time of relative calm and peace. The Schoolteacher’s Tale is in a time when the dust has settled and recovery is well underway. He, the last of the old order, is handing on his legacy to the representative of the new order, Sister Juli, because he knows he’s an anachronism, a peaceful transition. But he has enough history under his belt to wonder when the next go-round will come.
JMG -any comments or corrections? –
JMG, are fungi and bacteria conscious too?
@Ken (#409):
My wife and I both grew up on Thornton W Burgess’s books, which left each of us with an abiding respect for the world of animals in Nature. He told wonderful stories.
In regards to the Olympics preview, the word seems to have gone out to the media to sweep the embarrassing elements under the rug
This morning, in addition to the usual recital of medals the US had won, NPR featured 5 minutes on the Olympic flame. In past years, the flame was brought by relay from Olympia, Greece, and stayed lit in a cauldron for the duration of the Games.
This year, the flame was extinguished at the end of the relay, and replaced by an artificial flame lifted by helium balloon from the spot that the Mongolfier brothers launched the first human flight. In an interview with the designer, he emphasized the amount of CO2 that was not emitted by replacing a flame with an array of LED bulbs and mist emitters. No word on the CO2 footprint of the rest of the ceremony…
So, the light of the Olympic movement has finally been snuffed out, and the IOC can finally discard their Mission $tatement and focus on the commercial exploitation of the athletes.
@JMG (#419) on Literski’s work:
I went searching for a published paper, and all I could find was a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhPsyJwxjqM
Like you, I really hate watching videos, but I managed this one by turning off the sound and using closed captioning. It’s only a little more than 30 minutes long, and what isn’t just a talking head is really high-quality photos of the Lamen (as a whole and of its individual parts). His source analysis seems really solid to me, and he has even found one source that Quinn and others did not manage to find. I haven’t tried to do this yet, but I expect one could extract still copies of each of the photos and summarize Literski’s comments on each photo. I’m probably going to do that for my own files.
A recent scholar working on Joseph Smith Jr’s magic is Manuel W. Padro, who has several papers up on academia.edu and one more in the Journal of Mormon History.
And coincidentially, this article appeared today in Quanta Magazine, about the intersection of quantum physics, metaphysics, and consciousness:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/metaphysical-experiments-test-hidden-assumptions-about-reality-20240730/
@Alvin: my young children enjoyed the first few books of Ralph Moody’s memoirs: Little Britches, Father and I Were Ranchers, The Home Ranch, Mary Emma and Company. They have read nearly all of the many, many Oz books by L. Frank Baum, and lots of the Tom Swift series. They enjoyed Alice’s Adventues in Wonderland and the Jungle Books. Swiss Family Robinson is deeply silly in all its translations but the kids loved it anyway. We read aloud Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe and those were also big hits. We all liked Swallows and Amazons, which has several enjoyable sequels, and basically any children’s book by Edith Nesbit. Those are all delightful. They have also spent many hours plowing through Andrew Lang’s various-colored Fairy Books, and they all liked the weird combination of fright and delight in MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin. We’ve read all the Little House books, and being boys, my crew particularly enjoyed Farmer Boy… which they say is an ode to good food.
P.S. I’m going to bet on 2036 as the year the current crisis is settled once and for all., as in 1945. Partly because that’s the year Pluto has no more influence on is than any other dwarf planet (see Twilight of Pluto) and partly because it’s about the right length of time.
Phrase of the week, courtesy of a brief leaf-through of the New York Post – “Karens for Kamala.”
Thank you, JMG, that’s very helpful about the eating of meat, and it’s basically exactly what my Zen teachers have told me as well. Are there other spiritual reasons why monastics in some traditions don’t eat meat? I’ve heard it can make a person more spiritually sensitive/intuitive. Maybe it helps the monks do their job. They say they’ll eat meat, too, though, if they deem it necessary for health reasons.
What I lament most about the Oympics this year is the bad PR for Dionysius.
(I still don’t understand the obsession with drag queens… I guess like all fads… this too shall pass.)
Ellen in ME,
Another solid vote for dehumidifier water on the plants! Thanks for that.
JMG,
Many thanks for the next decade’s worth of course work! Sounds like it’ll pair well with Druid land enchantment too.
I just finished reading Illuminatus! today, on my 51st birthday! (You know what 5 X 1 is, right? And that 23 + 23 + that 5 = 51? And that 51 is three 17s? How magical… 😉
French police says “olympic” sabotages were made by the usual suspects: far left extremists. Well, we’ll see it…
Ron M @ 418, I read the Wolf piece. double coups, huh? The amazing coincidence of the ICJ ruling, or opinion being handed days before, and the Bibi show back in town the following week had nothing, nothing to do with it. Whatever you say. IMHO, misdirection is what Wolf does.
Our Lady of Guadeloupe is patron saint of the New World. Of course, a New World variant of Catholicism would crystalize around her worship. I long for revival of the Latin Mass.
Dionysius was a family values kind of immortal. He married Ariadne, after she had been deserted by that cad, Theseus, and had somewhere between 5- 10 or more sons with her. When she died in childbirth, he brought her back from the Elysian Fields, along with his mother Semele, and persuaded Zeus to grant them immortality and lodging on Olympus.
John, you wrote above that “one of the great differences between Abrahamic monotheism and traditional polytheism is that the monotheists believe that their god created the universe, but traditional polytheists believe that the universe gave birth to the gods.”
Could someone successfully argue the traditional polytheist point of view from a Biblical perspective? Are there serious Christian polytheists?
@jfisher #439
Experientially traditional Christianity is a Tritheism, a limited polytheism – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Theologically and philosophically it is defined as a monotheism by explaining the Trinity as a kind of quantum physics superposition where if a gallon of water had the characteristics of the Godhead the gallon of water would be entirely vapor, liquid and solid all at the same time and for eternity. The Threeness goes to the core of the Godhead. Naturally Muslims and Jews cry foul at this approach and say that’s not a real monotheism. For me the classic Christian Trinity explanation fits my personal spiritual experience and what I see in the Bible, especially the New Testament. The Old Testament is a Wild West of various gods and various words used for the god of Israel with Yahweh seen as having primacy and creatorship. It’s complicated with tons of room in the Hebrew for differing understandings.
Hi John, folks.
I was talking with my GF this morning about the recent capture of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, the son of El Chapo and El Mayo Zambada. They apparently turned themselves into the US authorities. We remember a few years back when AMLO captured the other “Chapito”, Ovidio Guzmán, but released him immediately after the cartel besieged the entire city (either Culiacán or Mazatlán. Irrelevant). This time they are turning themselves in, and we were speculating that the US probably has something on AMLO and his ties to the cartels (you cannot win the Mexican presidency without them). It does track with the cop persona that Harris is going for as a strategy, and we fear that we might have a coup over there in the coming years leaving AMLO behind bars in the US, and the Sheinbaum administration dismantled.
We’re probably being a bit catastrophistic but it’s scary to be looking down the business end of the US’s old fashioned foreign policy.
I’d appreciate your thoughts on this. Blessings from Berlin.
>I long for revival of the Latin Mass
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/01/23/latin-mass-held-in-capitol-on-anniversary-of-fbi-memo-targeting-traditional-catholics/
And the FBI just put you on a list. Don’t ask my why, they’re unhinged, if had to guess. Sanity is the most precious commodity in this era.
>this year is the bad PR for Dionysius
I just had a really Bright Idea(tm). Or maybe it’s an extra Modest Proposal.
NASA should change Project Artemis to Project Dionysius.
It’s fitting for this era.
@The Other Owen #443:
Well, I won’t argue with the phallocentric fantasies of the men who want to penetrate space.
As a god of love, dance, poetry though, those on the Olympic float still gave him bad PR IMO.
Hi John, as well as my phd thesis I am about to start writing some papers for publication… it is a uncertain process from me at least, but if when i have articles in journals I will forward to you and hopefully the book after that…