This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly (well, more or less!) 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 — but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic. (Well, with one exception: there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the current virus panic and related issues, so anything Covid-themed should go there instead.)
With that said, have at it!
1) Why are wizards associated with towers? Obviously there are many examples in modern fiction but Merlin is also associated with towers (I’ve read “The Mysteries of Merln.”
2) I have a memory of you once stating that you had thought about what a perfect ritual/alchemy space would be (I assume for you). Is this something you have set down on paper? If so, would you be willing to share it?
These question were prompted by the thread on the last Magic Monday regarding the possible impact of temple technology not just on crops but perhaps on scrying and other forms of occult work.
There are lots of astrologers weighing in on Pluto’s entry into Aquarius, Aquarius being a sign of, IMO, airy dreams, pipe dreams, and extremes…Pluto being almost finished with its destruction of empires and financial empires in Capricorn…What do you think?
Hi JMG, thanks for another opportunity to ask questions. I was reading through some older posts of yours recently and in the comments you noted “You’ll be amused to know that in the deindustrial novel I’m writing right now, the EU embraced the Great Reset and turned into the Soviet Union 2.0, complete with secret police and a Stalin clone in the newly created position of General Secretary of the European Secretariat” I wondered whether this book was completed and available now?
Hi John,
How do you see the emerging Cold War between Russia/China and the rest developing? In light of the remarkable words of Xi as he left Moscow about changes coming that we haven’t seen in a 100 years.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/xi-jinpings-chilling-words-for-putin/
Changes that China and Russia are driving together. This feels like a combination of great powers equal to or greater than the Hitler/Stalin duo in the 1940s.
Xi and Putin have a meaningful strategic partnership unlike the 1st round of Caesars that temporarily joined forces against the West.
What’s wrong with Guénon, do you think? Will you write a post on him?
#shortwavesnotdead
IMAGINARY STATIONS
Click on the radio, turn out the lights, and let sounds from distant towers carry you far away. These are stations that never were, but might yet be. There is so much in radio that hasn’t yet been done. The medium is still in its infancy, compared to other artistic endeavors such as poetry, painting, sculpture and the novel. Much work is needed to bring into being the full artistic potential radio has for program creators and listeners. This is the broad unmapped territory Imaginary Stations set out to explore…
Do you remember lying in bed
With the covers pulled up over your head
Radio playin’ so no one can see?
We need change, and we need it fast
Before radio’s just part of the past
‘Cause lately, it all sounds the same to me.
One of the first steps in such an exploration is getting out to a location where the electrical interference is low or non-existent to search the dial for existing signals. With a sensitive receiving system new call letters for stations yet unlogged and potential themes are zeroed in on. Next comes the collecting phase. The musical archives are scoured, the listening libraries plundered, the media channels scanned, sampled, and soundbites selected that fit into the intuitive flow of the theme. These are then taken into a tripartite playground, where radio is still a fun game, able to be played with relish. After each mix is concocted from the plethora of available materials, a version is then created by our chief engineer at a secret laboratory near the 45th parallel.
Interested?
Listen to Imaginary Stations on 9395 kHz via WRMI @ 2300 UTC (6:00 PM Eastern), Sundays. Brought to you by DJ Frederick Moe and featuring contributions from One Deck Pete and Justin Patrick Moore.
An Imaginary Station is a Station where we can do what we want to do.
Recent stations include: WORK, KBIN (WSTL vs. WELK), JNHK, and KSPY, among others.
Forthcoming shows include a revisit to the KZOO
( https://www.reddit.com/r/shortwave/comments/11ym94c/catch_a_buzz_with_kzoo/ )
and a trip out WEST.
Imaginary Stations have also presented Radio Carillon, and Radio Clarion, and other out-there- sounds.
If you don’t have access to a shortwave radio, but do have access to the internet, one handy dandy place to find them is on our mixcloud page: https://www.mixcloud.com/kmtsradio/
But, forget the ethernet and tune in to what you can hear over the aether!
I know it’s a long shot that we read the same sites, but I’d like to thank the lady ahead of us in the drive-through on a rainy night last week. She paid for Sonkitten’s order! God bless her.
I’m considering relocating, and I’m aware that you used astrology (can’t think of the name for this type of astrology)for your own move to Rhode Island with positive results. Can you recommend a website that offers this type of astrological forecasting for folks without the necessary skills to do it on their own?
I ran into an article about CGI and AI models recently.
https://www.cbc.ca/arts/commotion/does-the-rise-of-ai-fashion-models-mean-a-new-world-order-is-coming-for-creative-industries-1.6784879
It focused on the impact for models in terms of being out of a job, and an example of a black CGI model produced by a white man getting diversity plaudits until they found out she wasn’t real and who’d made her.
What I immediately flashed to is how a significant number of women are already frantically dieting, botoxing, and getting cosmetic surgery trying to look like models. Or ending up anorexic or bulemic. And now, they’ll be trying to look like women who are not only airbrushed and tweaked, but don’t even exist in the first place.
I can only hope that this will cause more people to realize that they should ignore the fashion, modelling, and industry-driven standards of beauty because these things are too broken to fix, and completely poisonous in their modern form.
Trying to become a computer image of idealized beauty when you’re a real woman is something worthy of Don Quixote.
@ JMG
I have a question about your nonfiction writing experience.
What is your approximate ratio of research notes to the final draft? What do you do with the rest of the notes? Over the years there must have been lots of them. Do you catalog them in some way?
Thanks,
Alifelongme
Hi everybody,
Hope everybody is having a good, safe and productive week! 🙂
1. Fermentation, alchemy and gardening
Somebody mentioned „knf“ (Korean natural farming) recently, and a little while ago, there was a small discussion about using specifically created plant ashes for pest control (to the best of my understanding, a form of alchemy).
I‘ve been wondering if folks here know of any other gardening/farming methods which use alchemy and/or fermentation (besides the obvious nettle slurry)? And also if anybody has any practical experience with such methods – whether they have an official name or are self-invented…
Trying to satisfy my curiosity, to better understand the underlying principles, and to sort out things to try in my own garden… 🙂
(Also, JMG recently said he wasn‘t aware of a book about „fermentation and alchemy“ – if anybody else is, I‘d very much appreciate a reference!)
2. For the Germans and German-speaking among us:
A few months ago, we started a German ecosophia mailing list. It‘s mostly online for now, as we‘re spread out through Germany and Austria, but we‘re aiming for some physical meetings as well. We‘ve also had a very nice and lively online meeting a couple of weeks ago, and are planning to have another one this Saturday. Plus, it‘s great to have an email list of people who simply understand what one is talking. 😉
If any other German/German-speaking readers here would like to join the mailing list, get in touch with me via email at sacredgeometry@gmx.net, or via my dreamwidth account (milkyway1).
3. JMG, thank you very much for patiently and consistently hosting this open space every month. Your comment section is literally my internet highlight nowadays. Thanks a lot for spending hours of your time on the open posts each month!!
Milkyway
Hello JMG
Is there a tradition in Western Occultism to store knowledge in objects? What I mean is, in the Yogic traditions, there is talk of akashic memory or storing knowledge in etheric space.
In a much greater sense, I’ve heard that Mt. Kailash is an archive of mystical knowledge where sages of the past have received and transferred knowledge from it, or in some cases simply merged with it.
I thought that the last subject on this week’s MM was timely and intriguing, and something that I’d like to see explored further; that was the Q&A about the karmic consequences of fraud, both for the perpetrator of the fraud and for the one who allows himself or herself to be hoodwinked by it. Perhaps a topic for some future 5th Wednesday(?) Who’d have thought that revisionist history or topics dismissed as “conspiracy theory” might rate as spiritual practices?
Hi John,
Thanks for letting me know about my late entrance to February’s open post. Here’s a (slightly) abridged version of my previous question
One of my big spiritual itches is the subject of ‘extreme religious experiences’ (as Jeffrey Kripal would put it). The intense stuff – visions, otherworld journeys, encounters with entities etc. It also freaks me out, if I’m honest, as it’s definitely not all sweets and roses (as some NDE researchers would like to believe).
It’s obviously a huge subject, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask you about it, to see if you might be able to help clarify some things, or direct me to some helpful resources.
My main issue is this – the contradictions in otherworld journeys. Some NDEs, for example, will recount a being radiating love, affirming the truth of reincarnation; some will recount a being (also radiating great love), *denying* the truth of reincarnation; some will be guided by Jesus into the infernal regions and shown the horrors of eternal perdition. There are wild contradictions all over the shop.
I have recently come across accounts of astral explorers who testify to ‘realms’ where thoughts wholly influence the astral material (sometimes solipsistically, sometimes as a consensus reality), creating whole worlds and entities which appear to be autonomous.
Frankly, I just wonder what the heck is going on here. If people can be told contradictory things by seemingly loving and benevolent entities, surely this means that: either there’s some serious deception going on, in which case how would we ever know what to trust (being so small and relatively powerless); or we’re creating entities as thoughtforms, which for me also creates a huge trust issue – how can we discern between illusions and the real deal?
The whole thing makes me shy away from any kind of spiritual practice. It seems like deception and illusion rule the day, which is rather disturbing.
Just a few of my light musings.
Thanks for reading.
I had a disturbing thought during discursive meditation about our digital world. Since every computer relies on binary code and simple on/off mechanical switches, this means that our interactions are always following a discrete polarity without any resolution with a ternary. Perhaps this is a contributing element of our increasingly caustic, online activity. Perhaps this is the reason why the subrealm is able to access the digital world.
A few year’s ago you asked readers to submit stories for an anthology based on the world of Star’s Reach, but stated that they could not include the character Plummer as he was your property, or words to that effect. I wondered if you thought there was potential to write further stories yourself based on the Star’s Reach world, maybe featuring him and his Rememberers?
By the way, when I read fiction I usually try to picture in my mind what major characters look like. I imagined Plummer looking rather like JH Kunstler!
re: Imaginary Stations
I have one correction to my previous post to account for the return to daylight savings time (why do we even do this?!?) … Imaginary Stations airs @2200 UTC, Sundays (6 PM eastern) on 9395 kHz beaming out of Florida.
We had recent reception reports as far away as St. Petersburg, so give it a shot. We also QSL, as per here: http://qsl-review.blogspot.com/2023/03/work.html
#shortwavesnotdead
I wonder what your views are on ghosts. Are they conscious and restless spirits, or souls that are for some reason “stuck”, or mere imprints or recordings? I like a good ghost story but one problem I have with the themes of many of them is that of revenge. If revenge from beyond the grave is allowed, the millions upon millions of departed victims of violence and injustice have by and large shown remarkable restraint.
@Petros:
Yes, religion in our society is sanitized into therapeutic spirituality. Like going to church is good for becoming a good person and learning love and hope and faith. Pottery barn stuff.
Well it is that. But it is also the demands of God, his commandments, the judgements, the scary prophecies, the fate of the damned, the roles of angels and demons, all of it.
If my fundamentalist upbringing has left me with anything good, it is to take religion seriously, take its texts seriously, and look beyond the hordes of nominally committed and minimally attached adherents to find out what it really believes and how it really works, and don’t just accept the sanitized popular “-lite” version of it.
As for the divide between spirituality and religion, that division is an illusion. Behind every spirituality is a religion of some sort. And the negative/challenging/dangerous aspects of that religion will creep up on anyone who seriously practices the disciplines of that religion in the name of spirituality.
Dear Archdruid,
As it’s an open post, here it’s my totally unsolicited progress report.
-Currently stuck in LRM, lesson 10. At least I’m banishing daily, with CC, MP and discursive meditation.
-I’m fostering my relation with Venus. She is a good guide and I can feel her daily. As a positive outcome, my love life improved from “miserable” to “meh” and now “exciting”.
-Despite of being of Jewish ancestry and raised as a Protestant in a Catholic country, I felt a clear calling from the Virgin of Montserrat. At the very first I felt uneasy, since She is normally linked to criminality, She is know as “the suitable one” to ask to be freed from jail or to escape the Law. But far from it, She has been like a nurturing mother to me.
-I’m continuosly attracted to feminine deities (see supra). Maybe it’s part of my background in Christian Protestantism, which now I see as very unbalanced to a single, male God.
All of this is because I’m following your teachings, sir.
@JMG from last week’s post: thanks for being so understanding. It is a good question, why they’re hitting church abuse so hard now. A diversion from other issues? Hearing and reading about his entire flood of nasty claims and counterclaims is like drinking water from a superfund site well.
AV, (a) that’s a fascinating question to which I don’t know the answer. Why do wizards like towers? Why not caverns, or mansions, or pleasant little houses in the woods, or temples with non-Euclidean geometry? Hmm. (b) ritual is one thing, alchemy is quite another. My perfect ritual space would simply be a room twice as long as it is wide, the long dimension oriented east and west, with plain white walls and an altar and other furnishings that can be moved as needed. For alchemy, a different room with a sturdy lab bench, a sink, storage cupboards for glassware and ingredients, and a fume hood would be best; the shape is wholly negotiable. I don’t feel I have a sufficiently good grasp of the temple technology to put that to use in designing a ritual space yet.
Pyrrhus, as always, it depends on what the rest of the chart shows. One-factor astrology has produced a lot of failed predictions.
Devonlad, it’s finished in draft and I’m currently letting it sit before final revisions. I’ll post something when it finds a home with a publisher.
Forecastingintelligence, the one essential geopolitical task of US and NATO strategy since 1949 has been to drive as big a wedge as possible between Russia and China, so that the two don’t unite and create a Eurasian power with its own access to the world-ocean and a resource, industrial, and military potential that the US and NATO can’t match. The last four US administrations have worked long and hard to do exactly the opposite, and to put a cherry on the sundae, they’ve driven Iran into alliance with the new Russo-Chinese bloc; Iran, as most people in the West don’t know, is a major industrial nation in its own right with its own huge resource, economic, and military potential. The senile kleptocrat in the White House and the younger but equally vacant-eyed corporate flacks who run US foreign policy have doomed my country and yours to a century or so of steep decline and possible dismemberment. While it took plenty of idiotic decisions and arrogant acts to get us to this point, I’m quite sure that the US decision to force a proxy war in Ukraine will go down in history as one of the supreme examples of slackjawed stupidity in high places.
Someone, I’m expecting to write that post next month — it’s tentatively scheduled to go up on April 19th. Stay tuned!
Justin, thank you for this. Vivat undae breves!
Joshua, I don’t. Most natal astrologers should be able to recast your natal chart for a new birth place and interpret it for you, though.
Pygmycory, my guess is that some women will continue to damage themselves in an attempt to fit a standard of appearance that is literally unhuman. Agreed, it would be nice if others got a clue and walked away.
Alifelongme, I take very few notes. I do research while I’m writing and the “notes” are first-draft passages in the manuscript. It saves time and paper!
Milkyway, you’re most welcome and thank you.
Mohsin, not really. In the Western tradition, if it can’t be stored in book form, the usual plan is to contact an angel or spirit who can fill you in on the details.
Phutatorius, truth is potent stuff, and facts — which are not the same thing as truths — are also powerful. Researching things that have been suppressed can be a potent act, so long as it’s governed by a respect for facts and truths, and isn’t simply out to create an alternative fiction.
Petros, if you go into a city you’ve never visited before, stop someone at random, and ask them about life after death, you’re going to get quite a range of conflicting responses. The same is true on what occultists call the astral plane, which is where people generally get when they have the kind of visionary experiences you’ve described. It’s because of this that serious occultists never put too much confidence in astral visions; they can be worth pursuing in certain contexts, but the notion that they’re any more guaranteed to be true than experiences on the material plane has been disproved repeatedly by experience.
The thing I’d point out, however, is that it’s only in certain branches of pop-culture spirituality that getting astral visions is the be-all and end-all of spiritual practice. Many of the more serious traditions actively discourage students from pursuing astral experiences, or experiences at all, and focus instead on the transformations of character and consciousness that will benefit you no matter what the fine details of the afterlife happen to be.
Have you ever read Moral Mazes by Robert Jackal? It’s a sociological study of managerial life, and it makes the case for it being a very strange way of life, utterly unprecedented in 19th century bureaucracies. It also obliquely makes the case for how any why management goes off the rails so regularly, which somewhat matches your arguments (although not entirely), so I’m curious if there is a link here.
Jon, hmm! That makes an uncomfortable degree of sense.
Robert M, I don’t plan on writing any further stories in that future, though deindustrial fiction in general is another matter — I have a novel in that genre waiting for final revisions right now. I’d encourage anyone who wants to write stories of that broad sort to come up with their own deindustrial future and put a comparable character into them. The temptation to put things in someone else’s world is strong these days, but it’s worth resisting — you can do much more, and have much more fun, inventing a world of your own and setting stories in it.
Robert G, according to occult lore, it really varies. Some ghosts are actual spirits trapped between lives. Some are imprints of tragic events with no actual personality involved. Some are cast-off etheric bodies — the basic graveyard specter, a vague pale presence seen hanging around an old-fashioned cemetery, is one of these. Most souls go directly to the afterlife after a very short delay — it’s during the delay that they routinely appear to family members — and once they’re in the afterlife they have no further contact with the material plane until they have a new body. (You can interpret this as a reference to reincarnation, or to the resurrection of the dead predicted in the Bible; it works equally well both ways.) It’s very, very rare that one remains stuck between the worlds and still has the energy and the consciousness to pursue revenge — though it has apparently happened.
Edu, thanks for this — it’s always good to know that there are people doing useful things with the material I’ve gotten into print.
Patricia M, a vivid description! And, alas, an accurate one.
Anonymous, no, that’s not something I’ve read.
A group of folks who enjoy discussing ideas from our gracious hosts’ books will get together on Saturday, April 8, meeting at 9am at Living Room Coffee, 2810 Sutton Blvd., Maplewood, MO (metro St. Louis area). The book all of us have read is Green Wizardry, but between us we’ve read almost all of his books. The conversation accordingly ranges wide. We welcome anyone who wishes to join us. If the weather is acceptable, you’ll find us sitting outside. Look for the copy of Green Wizardry on the table.
Hey JMG,
I was born in 2000, so I will likely die sometime around 2075. I know you aren’t big on predictions for this kind of thing, but what do you think I will see in my lifetime, Long Descent-wise? Will it be very obvious that our civilization is in decline by then? Or will it still be too gradual to notice? How will the average person’s life be different in the year 2075?
I am trying my best to prepare, exercising, learning skills like growing food, and doing LESS. I want to give my children a good shot at life in a world of crisis.
Complexity confounding itself – I tried to order something from an out of state store I’ve dealt with for years, and the order could not be placed, “Try using another browser, or call 1-800-xxx-yyyy. A line which was extremely busy, but on which I got a real live human being, who explained that their website was not compatible with Firefox. She was very good about it, and I needed the order, which was on clearance, or I;d have mailed in a check.
Welcome to the Long Descent.
Greetings all!
How likely are the downfall of SVB and Credit Suisse to cause a major financial depression in the west?
Regards
I will take this opportunity to remind all that the 6th Annual Ecosophia Midsummer Potluck will be held June 24, 2023 at our house behind the Charles Dexter Ward Mansion in Providence, RI. Only 94 days to go! Sign up here. I look forward to your presence, and once again, whomever comes from furthest is welcome to stay in our guest room.
John G,
The closer one looks at the digital world and the use of electromagnetic fields to transmit and store data, the less “1” and “0” things become. It takes a lot of special design, material, and construction to obtain the transmission and reception of data to run “simple” systems we rely on daily. It is a constant fight against natural processes to maintain the 0’s and 1’s. I have seen lots of digital equipment in ruins after any number of natural and man made conditions – storms, exposure to sunlight, vandals, rodents, insects, oxidation, fire, cold, electrical noise from other sources, geography, wind, sand, mud. The 0’s and 1’s themselves are resolved ultimately into little sine waves, or square waves, or flashes of light of one wavelength or another.
I have come back from a 2 week family-oriented trip to the Emerald Isle. I was somewhat constantly preoccupied with doing family stuff, but as in previous times, as long as I am outside Dublin, I always feel there’s a certain magical quality to the island, perhaps best felt in the north-western part of the island.
As per your previous mention (I can’t remember where) that some magical practitioners should spend a certain amount of time daily in wild nature, though I don’t claim to be a practitioner, I still I try to soak up the awe of the natural world when I’m out, and there are many places where one can do that in Ireland, notably at the seashore, where I went on two separate days for long slow walks. Nothing like facing the waves of the Irish sea or the Atlantic to keep me humble in the face of the natural world.
Seeing the irregularly shaped fields while departing or arriving by plane is another sight that strikes me and reminds me that the island has joined the modern economy paradigms only in recent living memory and there are still many living people tied to its older ways of living in the traditional towns and villages that still live on in most parts. So very different than the life I have known in my parts of Canada.
I have emerged from my trip feeling a bit wiser and enlightened when it comes to post-peak living and what possibilities I can expect from the rest of my life, now that I have arguably reached about the middle of my life expectancy.
I have also gotten my hands on a hard copy of Star’s Reach that I will be glad to read.
Thank you for your writings!
Thanks so much for your speedy and helpful reply, John.
I read this recently, from Steiner, on Swedenborg. It seems apt –
‘The example of an important personality like Swedenborg shows us that it leads to illusions if we ascend to spiritual worlds without being steeped in the ability to step out of the kind of consciousness we apply on the physical plane. We are met by an illusory world. My friends, if you go through all the available visionary literature and read its descriptions of the spiritual world, what you will find for the most part will be illusions of this sort. It is important not to let yourself be deceived by these illusions, because being deceived by illusions at the threshold to the spiritual world is much worse than it would be to fall prey to illusions in the physical world.‘
Joshua #8,
I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but I’ll put it out there just in case. Astro.com is a good website – I’ve been using it for years.
https://www.astro.com/horoscope
Click on “Horoscopes” (upper left) then “Location Astrology” then “AstroClick Travel”.
You need to create a free account, then you can generate charts pretty easily. This one will show you the location of planets at the time of birth. You can click on a planet’s “line” to get a short summary of what it means to be in that location.
There are lots of fun, free things to play with on this site. Hope this helps : )
Hi JMG,
Following on my question about farming in the next 20 years on the last open post. Oil and transport resources will gradually become more scarce over that period, and I thought that this sector of the economy does not use a big percentage of the oil. Maybe some immigrants will become peasants again and it looks like there won’t be a need for that many people do be farmers .
I am wondering what everyone else will do. I see in Latin America in countries that don’t use much oil that people are active in local commerce, local small industry, and they rely on their family a lot to share resources that 1 or more members are able to gather.
That is a viable model but Westerners seem too individualistic to cooperate with family now.
Maybe there will be a universal basic income for minimum needs? What do you think those who have no job or small business do? Will those who have a home garden more?
Iran, as most people in the West don’t know, is a major industrial nation in its own right with its own huge resource, economic, and military potential
They also have twenty years of close observation of American military techniques. Not to mention Persia has been the home of warrior cultures for at least the past two thousand years.
Hi JMG,
Question: Do you know of any resources (books, websites, articles, anything) that document the wickets used in fraternal lodges? I’m most interested in Odd Fellows examples but any others would also be useful.
Context: I am a member of an Odd Fellows Lodge and we found a very decorative old wicket when we cleaned up our storage room recently. Nobody remembers seeing it before, but it presumably was salvaged from either one of the lodges that consolidated with us or our own original building which burned in the 1920s. It’s my job to clean it up and figure out how to install it in our current door if possible. This find has sparked my interest but I haven’t been able to find any photos of other examples on the internet, although perhaps I haven’t tried quite the right search terms. I think it would be a fascinating thing to document, if it hasn’t been already.
Many thanks for anything you can provide.
@JMG, forecastingintelligence – The United States did also want to to drive a wedge between Russia and (German-dominated) Europe to prevent the same. Well, they have succeeded with that one. I use to wonder on which side of the Atlantic the level of stupidity is the highest – it’s difficult to say, though you have to be *really* stupid to outperform the German foreign secretary. Larry Johnson penned a short article commenting the meeting between Putin and Xi and I don’t think he overstates its importance: https://sonar21.com/you-have-witnessed-history-today-in-moscow-and-it-is-consequential/
When I was a child I lived in the Ruhrgebiet. The city I used to live in had a working steel mill, one of the largest in Europe. I still remember the blood red glow you could see in the sky when they tapped the furnace at night. They closed the mill in the late eighties. The Chinese bought it, little was left. The whole area is now a museum. When the Chinese came to fetch the parts, everything that should stay to become part of the exhibition got a round, yellow sticker labeled “Not for China”. I visited the museum a few years ago. It is a vast, fascinating place, and – strange, as it may seem – an enchanted one. The whole Ruhrgebiet, in all its ugly and all its beautiful places has this vibe. The descendants of the Lords of Form lived and worked there, transforming vast amounts of matter, creating their own group mind over the course of centuries.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@DT was this comment aimed at me? It reads as rather threatening.
My question to John was about the astral realm, primarily.
I’d say that fundamentalists take modernism very seriously; they read scripture like good positivists. I don’t find much love for the church fathers or church tradition among them.
Hi JMG, I’ve become pretty concerned about the blatant censorship being pushed by Big Tech at the behest of the government. I’ve been reading about plans for AI bots to basically scour the internet for wrongthink so that it can be countered. Of course, the Twitter files have recently revealed that anything counter to the narrative being pushed by the government can be considered misinformation and censored, even if it is true but inconvenient to our Overlords. Do you think open free speech is more-or-less done in the West? Are you aware of any strategies that can be used to evade or fight against this?
Book notes: Anyone seeking intelligent romantic fiction might enjoy a novel by the Frenchwoman Anna Gavalda, titled in English translation as Hunting and Gathering. Needless to say, the English title, an insufferable bit of Kilroy Was Here ism from some moron at Penguin, has nothing to do with this tale of four oddly assorted and variously damaged characters who manage to find and support each other in 21st.C Paris. Like all good romantic comedies, such as Pride and Prejudice and Fille du Regiment, there is a great deal going on beneath the surface in this novel. Here the subtexts are not so much about social class as about building a good life in a corrupt society. For Gavalda, that project begins with doing good work and having the fundamental integrity not to compromise in that one area.
After despairing of ever finding any well written works of history published since about 1990 at the latest, I came across Lords of the Sea, by John R Hale, about the Athenian navy. Hale is both a historian and archeologist. His book is everything good popular history should be. It is written in engaging style, with important details, such as how triremes were built and maintained, explained in such a way that non specialists can understand.
I picked up a biography of Alexander the Great at the library by the late Norman F. Cantor. Now Cantor was a medievalist and I read and liked, and own, some of his books in that area. The Alexander bio was copywrited in 2005 by Cantor’s estate. The opening pages are so riddled with glaring inaccuracies as to make the entire book unworthy of anyone’s time and attention, IMO. We do have a number of good books on the same subject. I liked the one by Robin Lane Fox. The temporary alliance between Athens and Sparta at the time of the Persian invasions of Greece was not the Peloponnesian War; the Battle of Marathon did not last ten years (!) or even ten hours I think, nor were Spartans present on the field. No Greek army ever surrounded a Persian one before the time of Alexander, so far as I am aware, and Athens founded no colonies–cleruchies were not colonies; they were parts of the Athenian polis planted in places, often islands, where Athens wanted to maintain control.
Tangent to my other post and your writings on enchantment – I wondered how “enchantment” comes into being and why some places, large and small ones and very different in type, ranging from small patches of land to whole countries, from hedges to industrial sites have the vibe of being enchanted and others don’t. What’s common between an enchanted hedge and an enchanted industrial site? My working hypothesis is, that it is a function of the amount of life, and interaction that has flown into the area. Which would explain why certain industrial sites can have their own enchantment – In the old times, enormous amounts of manual work went into the operation of, say, a steelmill. Every red brick went through many hands from its creation to being placed in a wall. Old (!) industrial sites – ugly and destructive as they may be – were organisms in some respect. Just like a hedge that’s bursting with life.
Would it be fair to say, from a CosDoc-perspective, that enchanted places have something like a group mind that has either been created or drawn into the place by the life that lived and lives there?
Greetings,
Nachtgurke
@JMG Hmmm… Since it’s not immediately obvious, at least to me, it looks as if the difference between facts and truths would be a good topic for meditation…
“Shale Boom Wanes as Gushers Dry Out”
Thus reads the front page, hard copy, headline at the Wall Street Journal
Better, the body of the report is talking about what industry people are saying at one of their conferences, not the protesting crowd. They quoted one executive saying “The world is going back to the ’70s and the ’80s”
A few days later, Biden opens up more extraction in Alaska and I didn’t see anyone making the connection.
Thank you for the last post “Destiny of Disenchantment”
As for a vote on what you would wax upon for our pleasure and edification; I’m always interested in anything “Hermetic”. The kybalion is very interesting.
Who were the initiates? What was the purpose of that work?
As always thank you for your continued great work.
@Anonymous #23 re: Moral Mazes
If you found the book worthwhile and interesting, you might find this review/discussion series on it interesting: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/category/immoral-mazes-sequence/
I also found it was well-complemented by this similar, but distinct enough to be useful, take on why corporate structures tend towards crappiness, especially as they age, using the TV show “The Office” to illustrate: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
I’ve found both of the above useful supplements to JMG’s thinking on the managerial elite, but haven’t gotten around to writing something putting it all together yet.
Cheers,
Jeff
JMG, The idea that all religions are different expressions of one universal perennial truth, similar to being different branches of a single tree with roots that go back to the beginning of time is an idea that seems to be very popular. This probably stems back to Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy and Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. If I understand correctly, you have a different take on things. Would you be able to explain briefly how your worldview differs from this? I am trying to find new ways of looking at life that challenge my worldview, and quite honestly, after reading your blog and books for more than a decade you have helped me see many things with new eyes, but I am not confident on how you would answer this question. Sincerely, Clark
@Joshua,
You might already know this, but Astro-Seek has a free relocation chart service. It won’t interpret anything for you, but you’ll get the chart.
https://horoscopes.astro-seek.com/relocation-chart-astrology-calculator
But if you’re looking for an interpreter, you could check any occult/new age bookstores in your town for recommendations. YouTube has a lot of astrologers that do videos, but I imagine they charge more because of their popularity.
Any fans of Mitch Horowitz out there?
AV (no. 1) and JMG (no. 22), *do* wizards actually like towers? We need some kind of quantitative survey. I’ll start us off:
Merlin–lives in a cave beneath Tintagel Castle (Cornwall)
Gandalf–wanders around, does not live in the towers mentioned in the story
Dr. Fate (he was in the “Black Adam” movie)–lives in a tower near Salem, Mass called the Tower of Fate. It has no windows or doors.
Dr. Strange–lives in a nifty Greenwich Village brownstone, his Sanctum Sanctorum.
Mandrake–technically a magician rather than a wizard. Lives in a New York mansion / estate called Xanadu
Yen Sid–Mickey Mouse’s boss–lives in a tower. (Not mentioned in the Goethe poem, where the wizard operates out of a workshop.)
Add more!
The Gainesville Sun finally published the exact content of the Stop Woke act. In the days of Martin Luther King, it would have been considered a great advance in race relations. with points 2 and 3: “No race in inherently superior to another race,” and “”No individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, disability, or sex.” And, what that period took for granted “Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are not racist but fundamental to the right to pursue happiness and be rewarded for industry.”
However, under that act, Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” an unflinching look at her childhood in the Jim Crow South of the period, was banned from Florida’s school libraries* – because her family and everybody in their village hated the local whites with a passion and called them “devils” – from other descriptions of the period, often well-earned by their conduct. There are people in Florida schools today whose grandparents’ stories parallel Maya Angelou’s. That said, I think it’s too strong for grade school kids and probably for middle school kids. On the gripping hand, as a kid myself, I was wallowing in whatever books I could find that I didn’t let my parents ever know about – some of it the most utter tripe imaginable (Forever Amber?) Shakes head.
*And DeSantis is running over local and other autonomy like a bulldozer, as I’ve noted before. Anyway, while a copy on newsprint on today’s paper comes out looking smudged, anyone who wants one, can have one for the asking. mathews55 at msn dot com.
https://psyche.co/ideas/how-the-ancient-philosophers-imagined-the-end-of-the-world?utm_source=pocket-newtab
During a conversation, i dropped the expression, yes dont worry we will have a future but we wont have any type of progress. progress cost too much financially and socially…
the conversation stopped in its track. you should have see the face he made…
I was thinking of one of your post you wrote the absence of progress is like telling a medieval paysan there is no god…
Or more like Emperor Ming looking at its Zargonian Generator blowing up
NO IT CANNOT BE!
Denis
Yes im known as the weird one at work
More sorcerers!
Sauron–lives in a tower, Barad dûr,
Dumbledore–Hogwarts.
Voldemoort–couch surfs? we find him living with other people
Prospero–some island
Allanon from Shannara–a Druid, not a wizard. Wanders around
Something occurred to me with respect to the discussion of ‘sacred masculinity’ on last week’s post.
I sometimes wonder why it is that factors like ancestry, ethnicity, gender, etc, seem to be rather important to certain people, and not so much to others.
Variety is the spice of life and all that, and so the question may have as much bite as asking why some people prefer classical music and others prefer jazz. That’s just the way it is.
With reincarnation in the picture, though, it gets kind of intriguing. For example, I have a strong attachment to European culture, particularly that of the Middle Ages. I wonder if I spent more than one life incarnating as a European, and fond memories get triggered when say, I visit an old English cathedral, or I hear reconstructions of medieval music.
Same with gender. Those with strong identifications with the idea of being “men” or “women” – perhaps, in part, it’s because these people have a spent a few lifetimes incarnating as men or women.
I’d be interested to hear what others think. I may just meditate on these themes myself.
Hi John Michael,
Since you’ve displayed a recent reluctance to dip your toes into the field of economics (and I very much appreciated your book on the subject: ‘The Wealth of Nature: Economics – as if Survival Mattered’ – if people haven’t read it or purchased it, why the heck not?), thought I’d step into the breach. After all, you may have noticed that there’s some stuff going on right now, but apparently things are sound and the systems strong – maybe… Candidly, I have some doubts.
Economics can be a rather dull subject, so instead of writing about mad cash, I thought that it would be better instead to substitute the idea of dog chews. Here’s a shameless extract from my recent writing efforts and hope that you will indulge me:
What is chewflation you may ask? That’s when there’s too much mad cash chasing a limited supply of dogs rawhide chews (i.e. the supply of mad cash increases, whilst the quantity of stuff to purchase doesn’t increase at the same rate, or even worse, declines). It’s real, and oh yeah, it’s happening. Prices for chews are on the up. Purely for research purposes for the blog, we went back and looked at how much we’d paid for chews over the past two years. And here are the results for packs of 20 rawhide chews:
May 2021 $85
December 2021 $100
April 2022 $140
October 2022 $145
February 2023 $160
A bit of quick maths (and someone please correct me if I’m wrong) suggests that over two years, the price of chews has risen over 37% compounding annually. And as a fun fact, the dogs have consumed over 200 chews (as we buy 2 packs of 20 chews each time), so no wonder the canines are happy. Whatever, you heard it here first: Chewflation is real.
But how does the supply of mad cash increase all the time? Turns out the Federal Government down here spends between $30bn and $40bn more than it receives most years in recent times. It doesn’t sound like much, especially when it’s described as around 1.5% of the value of Gross Domestic Product (economically speaking that’s everything in the country). They don’t have to worry about messy loan applications either, the Reserve Bank just gives them more chews, sorry, mad cash, and notes it in their records. How cool is that? And that much extra mad cash sure can buy a lot of chews, around maybe 43 million of them. No wonder chews are in such short supply and going up in price.
The politicians and bankers don’t like the idea of chewflation. Dog chews are meant to be affordable, otherwise dogs might go look for something else to chew, like say: politicians and bankers. With that worry in their minds, they’ve recently tried to slow down expenditure on chews by making debt more expensive. That’s called raising interest rates. After all, if dog owners suddenly have to pay more money to the banksters, they’ll have less money to spend at pet food retailers. With less people buying chews, the prices won’t go up as fast. It’s all about quick maths, and chews.
Dog owners however, don’t like the idea of rising interest rates, after all the dogs will end up with less chews, then they might decide to bite the owners. Never a good thing. Sooner or later, bitten dog owners might ask the politicians and bankersters to take the bite instead. That’s happened in the past with balanced or surplus government budgets and much higher taxation on the wealthier folks, who can probably afford the chews and not notice the cost. This hasn’t happened, yet.
We’re in a funny hang time right now, and all of us are just muddling on through. Prices for chews are still going up. There’s simply more mad cash in the system each year chasing a finite number of chews. And politicians fearful of chewflation are putting the squeeze on their constituents through increased costs for debt. For them, it’s an easy option but pressure is oozing out all over the place, such as the tanking bond markets, or increased house prices. Unless something changes soon, the chews are going to go through the guts of the dog and come out the back end in a dirty big stinking pile of poop.
As a general observation, it is a complex thing to be both clear and obscure all at the same time! 😉 It disturbs me that the very folks responsible for consistently expanding the money supply are desperately seeking to place the blame elsewhere. I’m embarrassed for them, for because they cannot even acknowledge their wrong doing, no alternative course of action will be implemented.
Cheers
Chris
Enjoyer, you’re going to see the end of US empire, a steep if unsteady economic contraction, a significant decline in world population, and a ragged but ongoing decrease in the availability of fossil fuels and everything made from or with them. You may well outlive the United States of America, in which you can look forward to living in one or more weak, unstable successor states, with plenty of political turmoil. When you’re old there will be a significant number of young people who will not believe that people were traveling into orbit in space shuttles when you were a child.
Patricia, yep. What was it that Joseph Tainter said about collapse being driven by excess complexity? 😉
Karim, anyone’s guess at this point. My guess? Probably, but we’ll see.
Poseidon, what a lovely experience that must have been.
Petros, apt indeed. It’s also ironic, because Steiner was far from immune to illusions in his own visionary experience!
Tony C, no nation on earth is going to be able to afford to keep paying people income they don’t earn — that’s a luxury of the oil age, and UBI is simply the latest form of an old and shopworn fantasy. Here in the US, the era when we could have everything we need manufactured or grown overseas, and pay for it by handing over unpayable IOUs, is rapidly coming to an end; a vast number of cubicle jobs are going away forever, and the jobs that will be opening up in the future will involve hands-on work producing goods and services. Granted, there are plenty of people who don’t want to do that; many of them will have to decide whether they would rather change their minds, or starve. Yes, the situation really will get that hard.
Cliff, closer to three thousand years!
Industrial, we had a very nice wicket in the IOOF lodge I was active in when I lived in Seattle. They were set a little below the eye level of a normal person, so that short people could reach them. Basically, a hole was cut in the door halfway between the two sides at the appropriate level, and the wicket was set in place so that the moving part was on the inside (the side facing into the lodge).
Nachtgurke, I’m sorry to say that your country has been offered up as a sacrifice to the collective ego of mine. I hope something survives.
Ari, the crucial point a lot of people miss is that it’s only on the big corporate forums that free speech is being restricted. There are plenty of independent venues like this one where officially denied realities can run riot. As I see it, one thing that can certainly be done is to make sure such venues exist and get the encouragement and support they need, and recommend them to people who are willing to think unapproved thoughts.
Nachtgurke, good! That’s certainly one hypothesis worth exploring. Future posts will have more to say about this.
Phutatorius, why, I was about to say the same thing. 😉
Russell1200, good. Yes, I’ve been watching this carefully — and I made the connection, though I’ll be posting about it later.
Travis, all “three initiates” were a man named William Walker Atkinson, who also posted under the names Theron Q. Dumont, Swami Ramacharaka, and Swami Panchadasi. You can look him up online — he wrote a lot of books and they’re well worth reading. I’ve noted your vote for future reference, but voting is closed on this month’s fifth Wednesday post because I’ve already started writing it!
Clark, the perennialist position is very popular, but it’s also hopelessly incoherent. Different religions and different spiritual paths teach radically different things, and can’t just be flattened into variations on one theme. Are there many gods or one? Do souls go to a heaven, or do they reincarnate here on earth? There are many other such issues, about which religions emphatically do not agree. I’ve argued in my book A World Full of Gods (soon to be reprinted in a revised and expanded version) that there are many gods, that the monotheist faiths are right in that the being they worship is a god but wrong in that he’s not the only one, and that there’s a variety of potential fates for souls; implicit in my entire argument is the suggestion that the world’s religions are all the product of religious experiences on the part of fallible human beings, and differ from each other for the same reason that ten witnesses of a car crash may give ten different accounts of what happened.
Bei, I was a fan of his before he decided to become a Satanist. At that point it was bye, here’s your hat, don’t bother calling.
Patricia M, the fact that this act is being denounced as “racist” is one of the best pices of evidence I know of that the Democratic Party has somehow turned into the Blue Meanies.
Denis, ha! I bet. I wish I could have seen it.
Luke, that’s a good question. I’ve never been sure why people get obsessive about biological markers like that.
Chris, ah, so your government is addicted to writing bad checks the same way mine is — though on a much smaller scale, of course. This will not end well.
Bei Dawei
In the case of Middle-earth:
Saruman lives in the tower at Orthanc.
Radagast lives at Rhosgobel in/near Mirkwood, but I’ve no idea whether that’s a tower or not.
Sauron has many other names, including Zigur, which is adunaic for wizard. He lives in Barad-dur, the dark tower.
The two blue wizards live in the east and south, details unknown.
DragonLance
Raistlin settled down in a tower. he was succeeded in this by Dalamar who started running some sort of wizardry school there. There was another tower that housed a whole bunch of wizards. I don’t remember details from this series, but towers do seem to be very popular with the more powerful wizards, especially powerful dark wizards.
Patricia M: In the future, there will be 10 ways to do anything you need to do, and 9 of them won’t work. You can quote me on that.
Figured I would post something a bit different. Came across this wonderful track ‘Portrait Of God’ by King Tuff. I think with all things Occult and Druidic here, folks would appreciate this. JMG, you don’t need to visuals – for everyone else it is a nice little thing.
JMG (no. 55), why do you find his Satanism objectionable? Horowitz sees Satan as an ethically positive, Promethean symbol of individualism and creativity.
Also, in the entry for “Kybalion” in your “New Encyclopedia Of The Occult,” you credit that tome to Atkinson, Paul Foster Case, and Michael Witty. What led you to change your mind about the identity of the “Three Initiates”?
Archdruid Emeritus and fellow readers, I’ve just today been hit over the head with a classic case of the “Threes”: three items which by themselves are momentous, but when stacked closely together are almost overwhelming. The three items are:
1. The recent brokering of a peace, and renewal of diplomatic relationships, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brokered by China. See: https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/03/what-you-need-know-about-chinas-saudi-iran-deal (that article deprecates the importance of the event, but even it points out things like the Iranian Rial having picked up 12% in value in TWO DAYS after the announcement when compared with the US Dollar.)
2. The ongoing apparent cover-up of the US involvement in the Nord Stream pipeline explosion(s), with our seemingly-senile Resident meeting in an odd get-together with Chancellor Scholz of Germany. See: https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-cover-up (the entire article is for subscribers only, but even the free introduction is enough to make me gasp in horror.)
3. Xi Jinping and his recent meeting in Moskva with Vlad Putin. See: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/xi-jinpings-chilling-words-for-putin/ for an absolutely stunning short video of Xi bidding goodbye to Putin, as described in the article.
A summary sentence which I came across today in an article gels things for me: “Even Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest man, made his billions by building a company that—whatever its other merits and considerable achievements—essentially serves as a storefront for Chinese sellers and products.” That’s from the free portion of this article: https://www.thefp.com/p/from-slavery-in-north-korea-to-jeff
So with that avalanche of items, I’m forced to say that, in my mind at least, it’s official: the United States of America has now been supplanted by the People’s Republic of China as the pre-eminent nation on the world’s stage. Throw in the aftermath of a biohazard leak from a US-funded Chinese lab, stir well with the senility of Woke Culture in the Western World, perfectly illustrated by the ongoing series of Male athletes winning in Female competitions by the subterfuge of declaring themselves Trans (oftentimes without any surgery or other medical interventions like hormone therapy), and it looks to me that the USA has crossed the equivalent of the Rubicon, transitioning from World Power to Thanatoid World (like being dead, but different.
Hello all,
Here’s something fun. In our desire to give our 6 year old exposure to other ways of doing things/older technologies, we had a friend wire a modern cable into a 50 year old dial wall phone we got at a used store.
Today we plugged it in and it works. He got such a kick out of it, having his stuffed animals get phone calls, just to hear it ring. He loved doing the dialing, plus we took off the cover so he could see the bells ringing. Then he told me he thought the phone was great! Next he wants to show it off to his friends when they come over. Most of them have never experienced a landline.
Ellen in ME
Hi JMG,
Recently Taibbi has been fending off various attacks due to his work with the “Twitter Files”. He keeps making the point — in so many words — that he hasn’t changed at all and rightly points to his journalistic record to prove it.
To what do you attribute the fact that so many on the left are oblivious to the fact they hold positions 180-degrees away from where they were 20 years ago?
@JMG
Have you read any novels of Roger Zelazny? This author holds a special place for me. I think exposure to his writing planted a seed for my interest in occult which germinated some 30 years later.
I’d be interested in your opinion.
Thanks,
Alifelongme
Re: JMG
Thanks for taking the time to answer. I’m preparing the best I can. Your books (and some others from the 70s I found at my local thrift shop) are helping a lot. Thank you for all you do.
To those who are interested, here are all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared across the Ecosophia community. Please feel free to add any or all of them to your prayers.
If I missed anybody on the full list, 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 at the prayer list page.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to these prayer requests.
2 year old ES, who is having upwards of 60+ seizures a day. As his first brain surgery was unsuccessful, he is getting one more surgery, on either Tuesday (yesterday) or Thursday (tomorrow). Please pray that his surgery is a success and that he be blessed, protected, and healed completely.
John (Mr. Beekeeper, Beekeeper in Vermont’s husband) is scheduled for bypass surgery on 3/28; for a successful surgery, and his return to being as healthy as he can possibly be in the aftermath.
Lp9’s request on behalf of their hometown, East Palestine Ohio, for the safety and welfare of their people and all living beings in the area. The details coming out are still caught in the fog of war (Lp9 gives a short update here, and says “things are a bit… murky”), and various claims of catastrophe and non-catastrophe are flying about, but the reasonable possibility seems to exist that this is an environmental disaster on par with the worst America has ever seen. At any rate, it is clearly having a devastating impact on the local area, and prayers are certainly warranted.
* * *
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.
Whoops, I messed up the link to Lp9’s update on the East Palestine situation. Here it is for real this time.
I am amused with the latest energy/climate virtue signaling trend. I am speaking of municipalities and states banning the use of natural gas, ranges or the complete ban of new gas hook-ups for homes. This is justified as decarbonization. These clowns are too stupid to realize that in most of the places they are doing this, the main source of electricity generation is Natural Gas. So they just add in the inefficiency of generation, and distribution so the electricity can be turned back in to heat for domestic use. They seem to think that by creating this new demand with the ” all electric home” ( anybody else getting deja vu back to the 60’s) that it will incentive more windmills and solar. They think that if you ask for it, it will come. At least back in the energy crisis of the 70’s people had a tank full of oil under the house and wood stoves were legal. Now you will be left in the dark and cold with the flip of a switch. You would think that watching the Russians dismantling the Ukranian electrical grid with a few well placed missiles would spark a bit of thinking on someones part.
Bei, my teacher John Gilbert had a standard rap about Satanists. He said that Satanists always want to imitate their patron and get thrown out of heaven, and they will do whatever it takes to get people to do some imitation of that. If you let one into a group you belong to, or for that matter into your life, they’ll smile and act nice and then turn around and start behaving like a jerk, trashing things with cackling glee and violating any boundary that matters to you. If you tolerate them, they’ll just crank up the jerk behavior until either they wreck everything or you throw them out. So he always threw them out the moment he found out they were Satanists, and never had any further trouble. I’ve found this to be true in my own experience, too, and so the moment that I find out that someone’s taken up Satanism, I throw them out of my life. That’s hardly heaven, but it seems to satisfy them.
As for the Kybalion, new information, of course.
Bryan, that seems like a very sensible take on things.
Ellen, how fun! I hope it starts a trend.
TJ, that’s far and away the weirdest thing in contemporary culture. A fantastic number of people on the notional left suddenly started insisting on blind faith in the corporate system and its captive media. Now they’re cheering for warfare and militarism, shrieking about evil Russia, and generally acting like everything they used to hate — and yet they can’t see this at all. If I’d tried to insert that into a satiric story twenty years ago nobody anywhere would have believed it. No, I don’t know what caused it.
Alifelongme, good heavens, yes. I read the novels of the original Amber series as they were first being published, and I still have (and treasure) several of his novels, especially Lord of Light. There was somebody who could write.
Enjoyer, you’re welcome. Thank you for collecting the old tomes — those need to be gathered and preserved.
Quin, as always, thank you for this.
Clay, natural gas stoves are the new plastic straws.
(On the tower thing again) I wonder whether we need to distinguish among wizards, sorcerers, and magicians? But my preliminary hypothesis is that a substantial minority are indeed associated with towers, and that AV’s impression is likely influenced by some combination of Tolkien and Mickey Mouse.
JMG (no. 68), thank you for your explanation. It occurs to me that a number of “alternative” (to Western Christianity) spiritual paths have been associated with evil in the popular imagination, including your Druidry (paganism, human sacrifice) and my Tibetan Buddhism (devil-worship, tantric ritual sex).
Horowitz has indeed been thrown out of one New Age group (they found out about the Satanism thing), and fired from a right-wing magazine he once wrote for (for praising Jesse Jackson), but continues to affiliate with, and give talks for, several occult groups. I have never heard any reports of him behaving like a jerk. In fact, he has written on what it means to be a rebel (he has a punk rock background) in an increasingly uncivil world.
(This is my interpretation of the “Brony” phenomenon: the only way left to shock and offend people on the internet was to embrace a cheery, positive message of friendship!)
“As for the Kybalion, new information, of course.”
From Philip Deslippe?
I made an occult themed TikTok called White Witch of the Prairie: http://tiktok.com/@whitewitchoftheprairie
I am doing small informational videos about occult and Druid stuff. I did one on discursive meditation that already needs a longer, less confusing re-do, I have one on sacred geometrics, and one on the Elemental Cross part of the Sphere of Protection. I plan on doing quite a few more of them: a series on the Ogham, planetary charity, simple natural magic, the Druid Tree Ritual, and so on. If anyone has advice or requests of short video topics they would like to see, I am open to ideas.
I don’t like TikTok but it is what most young people are into these days, and like other social media hubs, it is an astral trash heap, and the occult side of TikTok is ridden with wokesters and some very trashy intentions. I am hoping that I can inject some sane occultism into the mix. Wish me luck, I’ll need it!
Just to share:
Today I wrote:
Wishing Sun
Star bright, star brave
Only star I see today
Wish I might, wish I may
Have the wish I wish today;
For light, for life, for warming ray
Forever free, no need to pay
So you be you, dear star of day.
Then I wrote:
Day-Star Disappointment
Life loves the Sun, and the Sun loves Life. Life says to the Sun, “Never change.” The Sun says to Life, “Do change.” But both are doomed to disappointment; for over cosmic time, the Sun will change, but Life will not change.
Hey JMG
Out of curiosity, which vote from last weeks post one?
Ecosopy Enjoyer:
Predicting a 75 year lifespan seems to rely on actuarial tables. Actuarial tables, and statistics in general, can only say what might, on average happen, to large numbers of people in a certain group. They can say nearly nothing about an individual. While the average human lifespan has been increasing, actuarially, the maximum lifespan has been fairly constant at 120ish. When one particular person will die is not predictable. We all have from right now to probably 120.
Predicting what will be in 2075 is going to be nearly impossible. The, “World” is and irreducibly complex system with an incomprehensible number of variables affecting one thing or another. In order to comprehend it at all, people generalize. Further, they/we tend towards features of the world that appeal which in turn colors those generalizations. Depending on what is observed, one can predict a long decline, a short decline, a sudden catastrophe, more of the same or any number of utopias and everything in between.
If one is leaning towards the long decline view, one might question the desire to bring children into that world.
Karim Jaufeerally:
SVB was a Venture Capital friendly bank, and as such was sensitive to that market. Peter Thiel, the most influential Venture Capitalist, pulled all the funding lines from his Founders Fund from SVB and encouraged all the companies he worked with to do the same. Word spread and this sparked a run on SVB. Part two of this was that SVB, in order to make a spread on its deposits, went long on Treasuries without hedging this risk in any way and was caught out by the steep increase in rates by the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve met today 3/22 and raised rates by 25 basis points (0.25%). Commentators suggested that if the Fed thought there was weakness in the banking sector they would have foregone a rate hike.
outragedconsumer:
Then there’s this…
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ge3lKqufZWU
“And then the fit hit the Shan…”
i’m travelling and don’t have access to my usual computer, but these two links came across my radar tonight:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/why-hypersonic-weapons-change-everything
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/coronal-hole-30-times-earths-size-hurls-solar-plasma-towards-earth
the plasma is supposed to hit on friday (my birthday). it could prove that the digital banking problem, and moreso the entire digital problem, has always been a predicament rather than a problem, something i’ve always suspected.
one of the potential outcomes is i will have a several thousand miles walk home from my current vacation, unless i can score a bicycle! and that’s before taking into account the hypersonic weapons.
both seem to be potential “game changers.”
Hi JMG,
I’m trying to figure out what dates the moon is in my sun sign this year. Where can I find an astrological calendar suited for this? The ones I’ve found online up to now haven’t been any help. Thanks.
– Lacking Clever User Name
Clay #67 mentioned gas hobs. Here in the UK gas hobs looked set to be banned, at least for new installations fairly soon. The same applies for gas boilers though those able to also run on the great green hope hydrogen will still be allowed. Last year this forum’s favourite UK newspaper ran an article comparing gas and electric induction hobs and claimed the latter were more efficient, boiling water with less heat loss. They chose to ignore a few snags. The first is that in the UK at present, electricity costs exactly four times as much as mains gas per kWh – 28p/kWh versus 7p/kWh. Even if the electric hob offers say 95% thermal efficiency compared to 75% for gas, it will still cost about three times as much to cook with electricity as with gas. Of course induction hobs need special pans – a modest set is £150-300. The hob itself is not much more expensive than a gas one, £200-400 but if replacing gas the redundant pipe needs to be shut off and the hob wired in. Due to the current draw this means putting in a new cable direct to the mains box which is likely to cost the same again or maybe much more, a process my aunt is just going through. Depending on location this could be another £200-1000.
So not very efficient for your bank balance.
@JMG (about your reply to Petros in #22):
„It’s because of this that serious occultists never put too much confidence in astral visions; they can be worth pursuing in certain contexts […]“.
Does scrying count as „astral visions“, or are astral visions quite different?
And would you mind explaining what makes something a worthwhile or useful context for pursuing astral visions?
@JMG, @Nachtgurke (#37, #55): about the future of Germany…
I agree it doesn‘t look too good right now. But strangely enough, for a little while now (a few weeks or maybe a few months), I‘m not feeling that much despair anymore for the future of Germany. It‘s as if something has shifted in some very subtle way.
The discussions between ordinary people have shifted, but I think it‘s not just that – it‘s like old strengths and character traits are slowly reawakening.
And before somebody reads this as a breathless „Wotan is rearing his head again, the next Hitler is coming soon!!!“ – that‘s not what I‘m talking about. 😉 It‘s very subtle, and I can‘t really put it into words yet, but it feels more like a combination of the post-WW2 qualities (building up a thriving society from the rubble, and being proud of it) and of the old German „Dichter und Denker“ self-image (poets and thinkers = creativity and invention).
I‘m not sure yet if this is just within me or my immediate circle, or if this really is some subtle, positive change carefully lifting its head and blinking.
In any case… This is a question which might concern all of us, so JMG and everybody else:
What could each of us do to encourage such existing, positive and constructive patterns/self-images within our societies and countries?
And what are potential dangers or drawbacks to that?
(Yep, I‘ve read „The Castle of Heroes“. 😉 I‘m particularly thinking about stuff that doesn‘t necessarily require an occult order working closely together, as that might not be feasible for everybody…)
Milkyway
PS @Nachtgurke: Fully agree about the special „spirit“ of the old industrial steel mills. I’ve been to one, and that was a truly special place.
Thought you might be interested to see Twilight’s Last Gleaming mentioned:
https://sonar21.com/rending-americas-fabric-of-lies-is-it-possible/#comment-120258
Sitting considering matters a couple of weeks ago nights I asked a question in my head “I wonder what’s going to happen next?” and a different voice to my usual internal dialogue/meanderings popped up – distinct but no idea of origin:
> “It’s time to get ready”
Came into mind very distinctly, clear as day, no obvious emotion, just matter of fact and that was all
It could easily be just generated from my own thoughts, but the way it seemingly came out of nowhere and was not [directly] related to the subjects I had been thinking about was quite striking.
Went to bed with it in mind and early the next morning awoke with an immediate urge to do some stuff which morphed into a variation and extension on three cauldrons exercise etc from Dolmen Arch – the waters of the earth and fires of heavens – white steam in the moon cauldron and other things – very strong.
Funny thing though – a similar thing happened about 6 or more months ago with a similar voice out of nowhere “Remember your connection” which I’ve used as a theme for meditation and daily affirmation/prompt to initiate work since then.
Not asking for answers – it is something I’ll discover for myself, but have you or anyone in the commentariat heard any chatter recently from anyone getting disembodied cryptic messages popping into mind like that?
Anyway, it made me smile to see Twilight’s Last Gleaming coming up like that – in a dark humour though, as I remember you saying the story was not supposed to be prophetic…
Obviously China is a very old culture, but the current government and culture seem decidedly Western: the modern architecture, the aims and outlook of government, pop culture forms, the forms of government, even that Western classical music seems popular there. If I recall, you wrote about cultural ‘pseudomorphosis’, so couldn’t this change be due to that? Wouldn’t that mean that it isn’t so much as decline of the West, but more the re-rooting of the West in the East? I’ve never been to China, so my outsider view I freely admit is very limited, just going off this image of a high-tech China with western-looking cities.
But if China has turned into the West, and if the West is in decline due to its cultural ideals losing steam as part of the civilizational rise and fall cycle, then that would imply China’s potential dominance could be short-lived. Of course, that’s a speculation of which I have no way of verifying.
Also, if I remember right, doesn’t China have debt and economic problems of its own? I thought last year there were rumblings of some of its property companies potentially going insolvent.
Unrelated: an interesting twist in the AI chatbot area. Apparently, there are some fairly large security issues involved. If I am an executive and I ask a chatbot to write me an email, or a report, any data I give the chatbot is used to train the models that power it. Already there are new types of attacks called ‘training data extraction’ and ‘machine learning inference exfiltration’ used to get confidential information out of chatbots. Interesting to see how/if the makers of these chatbots can get around this, or if these are insurmountable limits.
Wizards and towers: I’m fairly sure those Clark Ashton Smith short stories that feature wizards usually have them residing in towers.
Hello JMG: What do you think about French “science” of Collapsology?
Does anyone have any thoughts on what constitutes a right to a piece of land? I have generally taken the view that it comes down to whether you have the martial force to keep others from taking it. As a citizen, you rely on the proxy force of your government to enforce this, as a nation you rely on your military and allies.
This will be a topic in Australia this year, so would like to get others’ viewpoints.
Hi John Michael,
Prescient words, and I tend to agree about it not ending well. You know, the geopolitical winds are turning against your country, and down here as well. To push Russia, China, Iran and the Saudi’s into at least co-operating, is the worst outcome possible. It’s utterly bonkers to have achieved that outcome.
And of course, what many folks may not realise, as trade in other currencies picks up, the ability to export inflation out of the west has diminished in almost direct correlation to the poorer geopolitical outcomes. Energy is part of that story too, but still much could have been achieved in decline, but with saner policies.
Anyway, wasn’t the case. Once the ability to export inflation diminished, the pressure returned inwards. And here we are today, facing consequences.
As far as I can understand the various elements of the story, what is feared the most is hyper-inflation. Looking into my crystal ball, my gut feeling is telling me that the price of money (i.e. official interest rates) will continue to be ratcheted up as a control mechanism. At this stage, no other option seems to be on the table and considered acceptable, although there are other policy choices.
It leads to poverty, but I know this state of being. Not sure how others feel about it. Probably fear, huh?
Cheers
Chris
JMG, I haven’t commented in a while, but have continued to enjoy your writings; thank you.
I thought you and the other readers might be interested in a piece I wrote for The American Conservative recently, referencing Spengler and incorporating themes that might be familiar to many people here.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/im-a-stranger-here-myself/
Also, @SLClaire, I plan on moving back to St. Louis for a while later this year and would love to meet like-minded people in the area. Would I be able to get your e-mail or some other contact info?
God(s) help me, I can’t help asking one last thing.
(first to say that John’s above endorsement of William Walker Atkinson made me smile. I was going to mention him in my original post as I came into possession of his book on the Astral realm a few weeks ago, and found it very informative, charming, and a little parochial)
As someone has now brought Perennialism into the discussion, I want to ask if John subscribes to a form of Henotheism. I’ve recently benefited hugely from two particular Christian writers, David Bentley Hart and David Armstrong (who until recently ran a delightful blog – A Perennial Digression). Also, DBH’s Roland in Moonlight is a magical book I’d recommend to everyone.
Anyway…
I’d say they both subscribe to a Neoplatonic worldview, and are not at all perturbed by the idea of other gods in the Cosmos. But, they would also affirm the One, the source of Being. I wonder what John makes of this, as there is clearly a category distinction between a being (a god, for example – contingent, among other beings), and Being itself.
DBH has written a great article on this – https://www.firstthings.com/article/2013/06/god-gods-and-fairies
@Milkyway – I am the original poster of that Dreamwidth comment. I guess the least I can do is share my experience with knf so far.
The main preparation I am using is FPJ – Fermented Plant Juice. I had a good experience using Nettle FPJ, as well as Syrian Oregano (Origanum syriacum, aka Biblical-hyssop). I made sure I only pick to young Oregano leaves to stimulate growth by capturing the growth hormone. In addition to growth, I noticed spraying this fermented juice on the plants had an effect of driving snails away from my plant – I even saw a snail crawling out of a pot instead of eating my plants.
I have also had success applying the FPJ procedure for onion (a great source of bio available sulfur for plants), and cabbage.
The other thing I have been doing with great success is water soluble calcium (WSC). This input is made by taking eggshells, cooking them until they are brown and brittle and then soaking them in vinegar, brown rice vinegar was originally used, but I use apple cider vinegar as it is more available to me. I notice spraying the resulting vinegar causes the plants to grow faster, but also stronger, with strong, thick stems and leaves.
Combining those two things, I got eggplants that are half a meter tall, and survived the admittedly hot yet existent Israeli winter we had. There are quite a few fruits waiting to be picked and I look forward to a spring full of heirloom eggplants now.
I am currently waiting for my water soluble phosphorus from calcined beef bones to finish, and want to start making plant tinctures – Oriental Herb Nutrient (OHN) in knf jargon. I want to experiment with fermenting fish for Nitrogen fertilizer, and eventually will try my hands producing the KNF holy grail – IMO – essentially compost inoculated with bacteria and fungi harvested form a thriving ecosystem. This can be applied on bad soil and transform it into a much more fertile land from what I hear. But I’m not there yet.
So far however, my plants are constantly green and health, producing me a steady stream of leafy greens, using sustainable inputs I can make myself, that are so safe you can drink most of them (fermented banana juice is delicious by the way)
Hello Michael. I am from Spain and I have read that the presidents of Russia and China announced a new trade agreement that distances itself from the US dollar and focuses on the yuan as the main currency for trade in different items. How do you think this agreement will affect the value of the dollar and the euro? Do you think that we holders of euros should take refuge in other assets for the future?
The mentioning of the current geopolitical rumblings lead me to add something about the energy situation in Germany: There weren’t any blackouts, as far as I know, contrary to fears beforehand. Energy has become quite a bit more expensive there, but on the other hand, the government has implemented quite a few subsidies for private energy users to cushion against high prices. There were some modest energy saving measures like shutting off lighting at castles and similar things, but not many. Anyone who was in Germany during the winter could have asked himself what all the fuss is about. But that doesn’t say anything about how the Germans will fare in the coming winter. It must be added, that even during January, temperatures seldom fall much below 0 °C (32 °F).
Secondly, a sign of the timea regarding the internet: The popular digital camera review site dpreview.com is shutting down in April because Amazon, its owner, is cutting services and it doesn’t have enough server space for hosting the dpreview archives.
#18 thanks JMG for the elucidation re ghosts. I guess the eerie medieval “lyke-wake dirge” (where the departed spirit takes his time to drift away) may have an authentic aspect to it.
Mein Gott in Himmel. We’re not even pretending anymore:
https://www.rt.com/news/573461-blinken-tikhanovskaya-special-envoy/
“TJ, that’s far and away the weirdest thing in contemporary culture. A fantastic number of people on the notional left suddenly started insisting on blind faith in the corporate system and its captive media. Now they’re cheering for warfare and militarism, shrieking about evil Russia, and generally acting like everything they used to hate — and yet they can’t see this at all. If I’d tried to insert that into a satiric story twenty years ago nobody anywhere would have believed it. No, I don’t know what caused it.”
JMG, I’d suggest you read Moral Mazes, because although publishes in 1988, written using interviews from 1980-1984, it manages to answer a host of questions about current events, including this one, why social distancing was and remains so popular with the middle class, the freak out over Trump, and the sheer stunning incompetence of current American foreign policy.. It requires a certain amount of reading between the lines; however, given the thorough discussion he made about the difficulties in getting the work done, Jackal all but says he had to tone it down in order to make the study work; and although he doesn’t discuss the publication of it, I’d be astonished if there weren’t similar issues.
All managers are constantly, always in competition for each other for advancement. Backstabbing, sabotage, throwing under busses, and the like are common practices in this world; it is quite common to create a mess and then blame one’s subordinates; ideally, in fact, to be the one who assigns the blame for the very mess! Managers are always under pressure to withhold information from their bosses; sometimes to protect their boss, sometimes to hide problems until they can get a different job. Since most such relationships are short term, there’s no real incentive to be loyal to one’s boss, and reap benefits one will never see since both the boss and underlying expect to be in new jobs shortly.
To refuse to participate in the competition means either falling out of the entire race, especially if younger, or to settle into a position as a “failure” if older; both of which are psychologically challenging and tend to lead to problems with social relationships, all of which are conditioned by this competition. Managers then are conditioned to accept that everything is part of the competition, and are forced to adopt, or discard, particular morality, worldviews, ideals, and so on at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile, there is a difference between public and private that is quite extensive, with managers forced to adopt the attitudes and image that will help advance their career, and also engage in private actions which violate the image they seek to present. Given the sheer intensity of the competition, everything becomes part of it; there is no part of human life immune from the race.
The relevance here is that a lot of left wing politics is driven in large part by the managerial class, and has been since the New Deal, which is forced to adopt whatever position they think will get them ahead. In particular, it tends to be driven by the governmental side of the managerial class, although the corporate side is also given to shaping things in important ways, it used to align with the right as a way to fight the governmental bureaucracies.
Back when corporate and governmental bureaucratic power was stronger, the governmental bureaucratic system benefited from their managers appearing to dislike corporate power, since it was a useful tool to attack companies with; and it was useful within the companies as well, because it offered managers a way to attack their superiors. Now that corporate power is waning, and the election of Trump reveals that the PMC is so wildly unpopular among the general public, such dissent is dangerous and can no longer be tolerated.
The governmental bureaucracies are now forced to ally themselves with corporate power, and corporations are increasingly forced to ally with each other in order to protect their power. All of which means that the kind of dissent and feuding that was able to occur before as a matter of course is no longer possible. They need to put a united front on, because to do otherwise means risking their power entirely.
In order to remain competitive, the managers are forced to adopt the positions that their bosses want to see, a tone which is set all the way at the top of the company or agency, and if that tone now is harsh war with Russia, no free speech, and so on, then that’s what the managers will adopt.
Moral Mazes even includes some rather striking examples of people becoming what they used to hate, so it’s not a new phenomena either; and it highlights the immense social costs of refusing to go along with this.
Just a note on my local imbalance of nature. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed 17 vultures in my back yard picking on a squirrel. This morning, there are 16 of them picking at another one. It looks like they’re hungry enough that they’re taking out live ones! It’s time to queue the famous Far Side cartoon.
JMG,
I have an Astrology related question. I am asking this question because right now I use my time and energy to study other things such as Alchemy, but since you are knowledgeable I thought I’d try ask you this question because I am curious. I thank you in advance for indulging me.
Possibly because of my OSA work (thank you for making this available), I noticed a cycle that keeps repeating itself in my life. Put it simply, sometimes all aspects of my life seem to stagnate simultaneously.
Books I ordered will not ship in time. No calls after job applications. Government bureaucracy is unresponsive. Friends are not available to hang out, etc.
I used to get worked up about this, but now my way to deal with this is to either relax, have fun and wait for this to pass, or put the energy into something I have been neglecting.
How would an astrologer think about this? Is there a specific heavenly body whose movements predict the appearance of those “stagnation periods”?
Hi JMG,
Thanks for your answer.
I think there will be enough oil for farming, and basic needs for a long time.
Does that mean that society will not necessarily allocate it to those,
and only a small fraction of people will have ample access to oil, leaving everyone
else scrambling?
Re: Ba Dawei / JMG: Mitch Horowitz
Horowitz became a Satanist? Wow, that comes as a surprise to me…but not a big surprise I guess given the way the occult & neopagan scenes have slanted these last years.
Granted, I haven’t followed him that much, but I enjoyed his editing of Manly P. Halls writings on America into The Secret History of America (though I had previously read the Secret Destiny of America, this also had other material.)
I hadn’t read his other books. …just now looking at his website though, I’m seeing what you mean…
That’s a shame because his other work seemed to be doing a good job of representing occultism to mainstream America without all the Satanistic hype that gets thrown at it by some. Which is really a shame as I see the 2nd religiosity, with some of its attendant fundamentalism turning up around me and in the greater culture.
—
As for wizarding places, I like a good grove where I knew strangers wouldn’t stumble upon me, but I’d take a tower or an expansive underground lab, give a choice.
Or, I could do like that micronation, Sealand, and have my own offshore platform to do magic on. [ https://sealandgov.org/ ] Or, since I don’t actually live near the sea, maybe I could find an abandoned barge on the Ohio river, and use that. The one on a platform in international waters would be good for side work in pirate radio.
Still, a tower would work 😉
What about astral temples though? Creating your own inner temple was an exercise that seemed to turn up in a fair number of occult writings from the 90s, and I’ve given various versions of the practice a go myself. One of their advantages is they can be appointed however you like.
The reason why the High Middle Ages in Europe is special is that it was not only a springtime for one culture, but also an autumn for another civilization. Therefore, people today can often understand that era through some similarities and at the same time understand things that do not belong to their own era. You can find many elements in the scholastic philosophy that were only present in the cultural springtime, which were not present in other magian philosophies of the same time. In addition, many stories from the medieval period are closer to modern popular novels than to the serious myths that can exist in the cultural early period.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the Crusader meme is often popular among nationalists, as it was also another Warring States period, where war forced countries to adopt a unified belief, military system, commerce, and daily life.
The closest parallel to this type of society that I can think of is the Hellenistic era of the Middle East, as well as modern Eastern Europe, where you can find both the usual modernity and the “barbarism”.
” Natural gas stoves are the new plastic straws.”
Bravo Mr. Greer! you hit that one wayyy outta da park. It reminds me of all the raging brouhaha and nashing of greatgreta!HowDareYou!teeth, over the use of those flimsy plastic shopping bags, when no doubt many of the new-n-improved heavy duty industrial ‘replacements’ find themselves gravitating towards the same swirling end.
To all the Ersatz Eco Humaniacs out there in Stupidville .. please put a bag over your collective heads, and save us your shamless hypocritical idiocracy!
One could write tomes on how those on the political left morphed in to something unrecognizable by those on the left 30 years ago. But I think it all comes down a shift in the economy of the country since the 70’s. Once America began the process of converting from an industrial economy to one based on finance, military and intellectual property both parties needed to cater to the same banks and corporations for money. So as they did the bidding of big business ( casting the unions to the weeds) the real differences between them became nill.Thus they had to invent differences from whole cloth, but the trick was that these differences had to be acceptable to their big business masters ( no anti-war or pro-labor stuff). The right-to-life card was perfect for the notional republicans, and the oxymoron of “humanitarian war” ( thanks Bill Clinton) was one of many tricks played on the democrats. Once Obama started acting just like a republican and propping up finance and droning goat farmers things became a little obvious so the left had to crank up the mighty Wurlitzer and get some more rifts going. So the whole fake green energy and woke agendas were born, but those on the left kept the “humanitarian war” mindset they learned from Bill. Along the way the working class realized they had been abandoned by both parties and annointed a champion to defend them ( or at least bust up the china cabinet they had been locked out of). So here we are, the working class backing a real estate tycoon and the left calling for war and locking up whistle blowing journalists.
Re Re JMG: You’re welcome, I think I’m going to turn book collecting into a new hobby of mine. Since I got rid of all my social media and my “smart”phone I have had a lot more time with myself. There’s quite a few used bookstores in my town. In other news, I stopped using my car to get around and now I’m a pretty decent biker and I’m losing weight and saving money.
Yesterday in one of my classes I got in a heated debate with a guy who said that algae biofuels would save us from an energy decline.
He couldn’t understand that biofuels are inherently less juicy than fossil fuels and won’t support our decadent lifestyles because we have to put in energy to produce them and grow the organic material, unlike fossil fuels, where nature did all of that for us. He kept on rattling on about how X company said that they would be able to produce billions of gallons of fuel before 20XX or whatever.
I can affirm that people in my generation are just as energyblind and hopped up on techno-hopium as prior generations. Even worse, people in my generation are really overstimulated and don’t know how to control their relationships with technology.
Happy National Puppy Day! 🐶
@earthworm #80: such a voice can be a number of things, but among them is your “genius” or “guardian angel,” the sort of being Socrates relied on. A good sanity check to distinguish your angel from your common-or-garden-variety voices are:
1. They don’t impinge upon your free will (e.g. never order you to do something)
2. They try to protect you
3. They encourage you to an ever-higher standard of behavior
The connection to this being can be developed in numerous ways: magical, philosophical, religious, etc. You might try these links on my own blog, though be advised I’m coming from a mystical/philosophical background:
https://sdi.dreamwidth.org/75390.html
https://sdi.dreamwidth.org/31603.html
Polecat @ 98 I am a working class, non college graduate myself, and I hate gas stoves, plastic straws and plastic bags. Have you ever had a plastic bag rip when you were carrying home groceries in the rain? I have, and it is not fun. I use the brown paper bags for trash receptacles, making mini pots for seedlings, and as an aid to peeling roasted pepper, among other things. As for straws, I never would have them in my house. Kids and now grandbabies are expected to manage to drink out of a glass or cup without spills. Gas appliances, IMO, are a scam to make us have to pay two energy bills instead of just one. Gas stoves have one virtue, that they can be made to cook fast, which means they are appropriate for well ventilated restaurant kitchens. They are ubiquitous in rental housing and in my experience are rarely maintained. A gas stove is a housefire waiting to happen.
There was mention a while back of so-called vegetable butter. A discount store near me sells such a product at a price I can afford, and this is not the horrible chemical laced margarine of the 1960s and 70s. I find it is a good substitute for Crisco for frying and pie crust. It does not burn as quickly as butter and, along with gluten free flour, makes an excellent cream sauce. The expensive real butter can be saved for biscuits, popovers (yum), and fancy baking.
I know you’re revising your book on Atlantis, and I wonder where your best guess for the location might be.
I was recently looking at some bathymetric maps, and noticed that there are several big banks in the North Atlantic, like the Georges Bank and the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, that range from a few meters to dozens of meters deep. They’re situated along the gulfstream and the Labrador current, which seems like a good position if you have ships and want to flex your muscle around the Atlantic. And they’re nearly even with the Pillars of Hercules.
While I believe they were submerged more recently than the legend of Atlantis would state, it’s possible they could have been temporarily but catastrophically inundated well before they were submerged once and for all.
@Bei Dawei (#70) about the Kybalion and Paul Foster Case:
The inclusion of Paul Foster Case among the “Three Initiates” of The Kybalion seems to have been urged by a member of Case’s orgnization, The Builders of the Adytum. See the anonymous source cited in footnote 10 in Lee Moffit’s timeline of Case’s life, available online at various places, including: http://www.joyousworld.com/qabalah2/extras/pfctimeline.html
However, The Kybalion was first published in 1908, with copyright assigned to the Yogi Publication Society. (Library of Congress, Catalogue of Copyright Entries for 1908, entry #15438.)
In 1908 Case was just 24 years old. It was only around 1916 that he began to publish short articles under his own name; his first book (on the Tarot) appeared in 1920. Though he certainly could have known about Atkinson’s books and his Yogi Publication Society, there seems to be no publicly available evidence of any personal contact between Case and Atkinson at that time.
As Deslippe has noted in his edition of The Kybalion, the book’s teaching is basically Atkinson’s, as found in other, earlier works by him. He is most likely all three of the “Three Initiates.”
There is a list on the other blog of alternatives to Hyland’s. I’ve been using Elixirs.com, but noticed that they no longer carry Bioplasma, but an equivalent: “12 cell salts combination 12x potency. One dose is 3 pellets, taken one at a time.” The Hyland’s product is 4 tablets for one dose, and the included cell salts vary from 3x to 6x. I throw this out there because I wasn’t sure what to make of this new product, but felt as if I had to order it and find out. Now I know what’s in it, and so do you.
Drones…courtes of Jean Lamb in Oregon
“https://corvounmanned.com.au/
“Australia now has a model built…of cardboard. And rubber bands.
And it works. ”
Cardboard and rubber bands…. ROFL… a DIY project for the 3rd grade?
Princess Cutekitten,
Aww ‘Puppies’ .. squirmy, tongue slapping, bundles of furry energy. What’s not to love.
Now.. if only there was a National Pupa Day..
We would then have squirmy, tongue lapping, bundles of insectoid energy transformed.
I have a couple of interesting observations from Austria to share.
A couple of weeks ago our kids brought back a letter from school. A letter from school needs to be signed by the parents so the school knows it has been received.
In that letter the school asked parents to pick an option what they (the school) were supposed to do with the kids in the case of a blackout happening. Keep them there until they get picked up, or let them walk home by themselves. With that came a sheet explaining what a blackout is and what to expect when one happens. And with that came another sheet telling people to stock up and where to get food, water, medicine, find help, and other stuff in the case of a blackout.
You can imagine my surprise and after asking a little bit around I learned that schools of all levels (elementary to high school) all over the country have sent out similar letters. For this to happen, they need an order from the very top – the ministry of education.
Wow, what freaked these people out?
Turns out that civil protection has always been quite strong in Austria. For all the years it has been flying pretty much under the radar. Maybe because it’s unsexy and run by grumpy, white, middle aged men and you can’t earn much money with it and that’s why the managerial class left it alone. Anyways, it seems that these people and institutions must have made themselves heard after the recent developments concerning Austria’s somewhat unstable energy supply. Wink wink, Germany.
The Austrian armed forced seem to have played a role in this, too. Even for European standards, the Austrian army is nothing but a joke. But already in 2020 or so – that is before we cut ourselves off Russian energy supplies – they expected a major blackout to happen in Europe within the next 5 years. Stated as an official press release, again something that must have come from the very top.
It is also fitting that over the past few years and months, concepts have been developed and implemented for all Austrian blue light organizations + the army in order to keep them able to act in the event of a blackout.
If you now follow the publicly perceptible Austrian politics at the highest level, you inevitably get the impression that it’s all a collection of idiots. The classic Western European politicians who blindly parrot the things given by the USA.
This assessment still stands. But what I’ve just described tells me that there must be some very high-ranking people in the background who have a pretty good idea of what’s in store for us in the coming years and who are trying to make appropriate arrangements.
Robert Morgan #78, we gave up on gas cooking when we pulled the old kitchen out – modern gas hobs can’t even work during a power cut, which was the only appeal of the old one. We got two portable induction hobs from the company Andrew James in Ireland. One has one ring and the other two. Prices are £50 to a bit over £100. They cook incredibly fast and we have no regrets. Okay maybe a slight one – it gets so hot, the teflon lining on frying pans wears out quicker. From what I can tell, a large portion of pans sold these days have the coiled line induction symbol on them, for regular prices. Or you can get a metal plate to put under non-compatible pans and make them work. Portable induction hobs also plug in with normal three-pin plugs. When you’re done cooking you can put them away and have more work surface.
But for water heating we’re sticking with the gas boiler as long as we can. Heat pumps may make sense if you’ve got solar PV and it’s mainly for underfloor central heating that only needs to be at 28C. But heat pumps get less efficient the higher the temperature they need to produce, and domestic hot water has to be at 65C to prevent legionnaires disease.
@ Chris #54 “As a general observation, it is a complex thing to be both clear and obscure all at the same time!”
I have thought for quite a while, that out of all of this august company, you yourself are among the most proficient in the practice of this studied art.
May there be as many blessings upon your obscure doings as upon your clear intentions!
My autistic friend sent me this link and in view of the theme of this blog and the recent series of post about enchantment/disenchantment, I would like to share this article.
https://autcollab.org/2020/04/30/autism-the-cultural-immune-system-of-human-societies/
Thinking about artificial intelligence, I think one of the best things we can get from AI is actually inspiration.
Chess changed a lot because of chess programs. Back when the only way to really learn chess was from a master, there was a lot of culture built up around the game – what moves were considered ‘elegant’ for instance. But computers didn’t care about any of that and just wanted to win. A new generation of players – now much more numerous because they didn’t have to learn from a limited number of human teachers – learned how to beat ruthless above-grandmaster-level computer opponents.
Open chess competitions allowed any combination – human, computer, or a combination of both. When I read about this some years ago, the most potent team was a hybrid. Two human players who were capable and above average, but nothing special. They were assisted by three laptops that were underpowered compared to the brute-force number crunchers, but programmed to analyse fewer moves in more detail. This combination wiped the floor with both grandmasters and supercomputers.
It’s similar with the AI that beat one of the best human Go players. It did it in a way that no human had ever done before, and may never have done. Now theorists of Go analyse how it did it and what the implications are for the game. Players train to use the same strategy and defend against it.
There’s that saying – ‘wherever you go, there you are’ – it’s kind of true for humanity as a whole, not just individuals. We are all humans in human societies, bound by our histories. AIs are designed by us and trained with examples of what we’ve done, so are to some extent similarly constrained. But they’re also the closest we’ve got to an outside, alien viewpoint. Like they did with chess and Go, they may be the best means we have to push ourselves outside our previous experience, and go somewhere we might never have gone otherwise.
Today I saw someone asking, if a computer could write better symphonies than a human ever could – what does that say about human creativity, and humanity in general? The other side of that coin is if humans grow up listening to those better symphonies – how will it change their understanding of music, and what symphonies may they write in turn?
Bei, Horowitz got thrown out of a very comfortable position with the Philosophical Research Society because they asked him not to promote Satanism at PRS-sponsored speaking gigs and he promptly went right out and did exactly that. As for the other groups, give him time; once he figures out what their hard boundaries are, he’ll violate those, too. It’s as predictable and monotonous as clockwork. Please note that you’re the one who dragged in the issue of being associated with evil in the popular imagination; I didn’t mention it, because that’s not why I distance myself from Satanists. I distance myself from Satanists because they so reliably act like jerks. As for Deslippe, among other sources, yes.
Kimberly, delighted to hear this.
Paradoctor, thanks for this.
J.L.Mc12, Rudolf Steiner. It was fairly close, though.
P Coyle, happy walking! Seriously, though, coronal mass ejections are pretty common. Hypersonic weapons are another matter, but we’ll see.
Lacking, I use the ephemeris software provided by the Rosicrucian Fellowship. You can download that here:
https://rosicrucian.com/software/rf_ephem.htm
Russel Cook #83 – you ask: “Does anyone have any thoughts on what constitutes a right to a piece of land?” And you mention your context for this question is Australia.
I wonder have you had the opportunity to have any useful or interesting conversations with aboriginal Austraians in relation to this topic?
I have to say I found Horowitz’s book Occult America interesting and well-written. Didn’t know he was a Satanist.
Hello JMG and fellow commenters,
When I read the Republic by Plato I noticed that he gives rather detailed prescriptions of perfect cities (including Atlantis) including their topography and the length of the structures. Now, having listened to JMG I suspect that this might me a case of sacred cities / sacred temples. The same might me true for the description of the heavenly temple found in the book of Ezekiel However, the description is not complete, you have to find some of the measurements yourself. It’s like an ancient Sudoko.
Best Wishes
#83 Russel
Land in Canada. Vast majority is Crown landowner by Liz and now Chuck. Managed by Little Potato.
Grandpa came to Saskatchewan from Scotland back in 1900s when you could get 160acres (1/4section) for$10. I’d love to help my four adult trolls build rural off grid cottages in the hinder boonies of B.C. for $1000 for 10 acres. No real estate flippers or fracking Airbnb’s .
Bryan#60:
Wow…. Thanks for these.
That video says it all.
Xi: “”Right now we are seeing a change we haven’t seen in 100 years, and we are driving this change together.”
Putin: “I agree.”
Shake hands. Gently and firmly nod heads at each other while looking each other in the eye.
Putin: “Take care my dear friend.”
Xi gets in limousine.
Wow.
Time for a real wake up America!
(I just wish we could have done this whole collapse thing differently. Like maybe learn from the past. But that time has passed. The times of turmoil are upon us!)
Orion
Hi Scotlyn,
Many thanks for the lovely words.
I’ll tell you a funny story: In my first full time job at the age of 17, my boss took me aside. I’d written some drivel, which was most likely a poor excuse for a memo. He was of a grumpy disposition that bloke, which was the mask he wore when facing the world – which in this case and on that day, was me. He gave me some good advice though, delivered with little concern for my sensibilities. “Chris”, he began. “If you’re going to write something, make sure that other people can understand it. What is this ?” A more sensitive person than I may have missed that good advice! 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Re Justin Patrick Moore #96: “I hadn’t read his other books. …just now looking at his website though, I’m seeing what you mean…”
I took a look at the website earlier today too: a real horror show!
Robert M, that’s the wave of the future — governments figuring out elaborate excuses to deal with resource scarcity by raising the price of energy without talking about raising the price of energy. May I suggest learning how to make and use fireless cookers?
Milkyway, what you see in scrying are astral visions. They’re important in the same way that dreams are important — more precisely, they’re the equivalent of lucid dreams. They can be valuable but they can’t be treated as a source of objectively true information all the time. (Sometimes? Sure — the challenge is figuring out which things are true.) As for Germany, I’m delighted to hear this; I’d seen no sign of it up to now, thus my dour prediction. I’m not sure what to suggest in terms of ways of fostering such things, other than to embrace them yourself and share them with others who are interested.
Earthworm, thanks for this! No question, things are heating up; getting ready is probably a very good idea.
Jbucks, agreed, China’s global dominance will be shortlived; we’re rapidly moving out of a set of conditions in which global dominance is possible at all. I’m also far from sure that the Russo-Chinese alliance will survive the fall of the US — just as the US and Soviet Union were close allies until the Axis powers lost, and then turned on each other, it’s possible that once the US is out of the way Russia vs. China, or a Russo-Indian alliance vs. China, could become the new locus of conflict. But we’ll see.
Chuaquin, I haven’t had the chance to really study it carefully. I’ll put it on the get-to list.
Russell, a right is an agreement among people. That’s all it is. You have the right to vote, for example, because the Australian people agreed to a constitution that gives you that. What gives you the right to a piece of land? An agreement on the part of people to take seriously the legal abstraction of real estate ownership.
Chris, at this point the US and its allies are facing the extremely ugly choice between depression and hyperinflation. Here in the US, it’s quite simple: once the dollar finishes losing its reserve-currency status, and the 80% or so of dollar-demoninated investments held overseas come flooding back home, we’ve got a choice between currency collapse and a default on the national debt. Oh, or we could have both. It’s not pretty.
Brian, thanks for this! Good to hear from you — and good to see you still keeping up the fight.
Petros, no, I’m a polytheist, not a henotheist. There is certainly a category difference between gods and the One, but this implies that the One is not a god. I would agree with that; the One, the ultimate incomprehensible source of all being, is not a person; it is no more a god than it is a cucumber. Worship, as I see it, should be directed toward gods and goddesses; contemplation is the appropriate way to approach the One. (And a pickle jar is the appropriate fate for a cucumber, in case you were wondering.)
Paco, I’m not an investment counselor and you will have to judge what asset classes are best for your needs. I certainly grant that the latest news from Moscow does not bode well for the dollar or the euro, and other asset classes might be wiser — but in an age of decline, all investments on average lose money, so there may not be many safe harbors if there are any.
Booklover, many thanks for the data points.
Robert G., trust folk tradition of the sort enshrined in the Lyke Wake Dirge! There are millennia of experience in those traditions.
David BTL, I’m waiting for the Chinese and Russians to announce that they’ve just appointed a special envoy to Canada to help support the resistance against Trudeau’s government. It really doesn’t seem to occur to the clowns in DC that two can play that game…
Anonymous, fair enough; I’ll consider it.
Jon, that’s really eerie.
FourSidedCircle, all that sounds like Mercury. Check the condition of Mercury in your natal chart, and then see what is aspecting it during those times.
Tony C, remember that there’s a fixed amount of oil in the earth’s crust, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. If it all gets pumped out so that Bill Gates and his friends can go flying around the world whenever they want, that’s the end of it. That’s how it’s being allocated these days, too…
Justin, that’s the sad thing. He did some very good work back in the day — and then he went veering off on this devil kick of his, and down the drain it went.
Polecat, exactly! Glad you liked it — feel free to circulate the phrase.
Clay, that’s certainly a plausible analysis.
Enjoyer, it’s a continuing source of surprise to me how many apparently intelligent people literally can’t think in quantitative terms — who think, for example, that if it’s possible to make a gallon of biodiesel there’s no reason we can’t make a billion gallons. Not to mention the people who refuse to notice that corporate PR is not necessarily honest…
Kyle, at this point I don’t think Atlantis was a single location. Rather, the Atlantis legend is a dim memory of the drowning of large, thickly inhabited, and civilized regions all along the eastern seaboard of North America, of which the various submerged banks are the remnants.
Asdf, thanks for this. How well does it work?
Patricia M, by that standard, I was flying drones in my insufficiently misspent childhood:
Bergente, fascinating. Many thanks for the data points.
Kay, thanks for this! It seems quite plausible to me.
Yorkshire, maybe so, but I’ll pass. I have enough to work with from dead authors…
Your Kittenship, as far as I know, when he wrote that book, he wasn’t. Certainly he wasn’t yet swanning around doing the “Look at me, I’m a Satanist!” routine.
Engineer, yep. You might consider having a look at John Michell’s book The Dimensions of Paradise, which discusses these very points.
I have finished Guy Halsall’s Worlds of Arthur. After a scholarly overview of the breadth of the debate about the British 5th and 6th centuries CE, he enters some openly speculative chapters. Instead of copying what he wrote, I thought about an analogy. No offence to Alaskans, I admit I know hardly anything about that beautiful state!
Alaska was one of the latest regions to enter the Union and for a long time, its reputation was that of a last outpost of civilization. However, with the expansion of the federal civil service, its economy entered a certain boom period based on supplying primary products to other regions, much of it consumed by the military.
When the central government entered a phase of civil unrest and decided to abruptly reduce its presence in outlying regions, the local economy collapsed – there were no buyers for its products, and no subsidies anymore. The local army units decided to enter the fray in the lower 48 states. In the end, they were destroyed in the civil war. Before leaving, their commander had “temporarily” turned over the defence of the highlands to indigenous militias, and had settled Mexican military contractors on the border of the highlands.
Peace was not kept very well due to fights between coalitions of local land owners (or maybe, in this case, oil field owners), each of whom started building up private armis, partly of locals, partly of Mexican contractors, and among the indigenous militias. For a long time, most people kept up the hope or the pretence that the Union would come back at some indefinite point in the future, and it actually looked several times as if it would. A large chunk of the southern coast of the state was kept together in the old way, with soldiers using imitations of old-style uniforms. However, little by little the Mexican contractors, who kept bringing in relatives and acquaintances from back home, started to build houses and cemeteries and use clothes that resembled the ones in use in Mexico (while at the same time the American influence on Mexico also continued strong).
Almost a century after the withdrawal of the civil service and the military from Alaska, it could no longer be denied that the Union would never come back. At this point, the old-style military uniforms were dropped even in the south, and the most attractive new styles to adopt were those of the Mexican contractors, which expanded to the coast.
For a time, trade was almost exclusively with Russia, which increased the prestige of the highland indigenous groups. Little by little, the indigenous militias dropped the use of English. In the confrontation at the border of the highlands between English and indigenous languages and culture, Spanish and Catholicism won out, helped by the now very high prestige of Mexican clothes and customs, and spread into the formerly urbanized lowlands. Power in the lowland coalitions shifted back and forth between the descendants of the English-speaking landowners and the Mexican contractors.
When overland trade with the rest of North America was re-established after a gap of two centuries, the lowlands regained the upper hand against the indigenous militias of the highlands. At this time, they were ruled by Catholic Spanish-speakers of mixed descent, though an unknown proportion of the lower-class population still spoke English and considered themselves Protestant.
End of the analogy. To make it short, Halsall very tentatively suggests that if there was somebody who played a role a bit like Arthur, he might have been a commander in England south of the Thames before news of the final demise of the Empire spread, and that his “Roman” kingdom seamlessly morphed into a large Wessex, which only later fragmented.
None of all this historical speculation is to deny the importance of the Arthur myth as myth – I like my Parzival, my Fairy Queene and T.H. White just as much as anyone else does!
@bryanlallen #60: I read the entire story in Die Zeit about a Ukrainian group, not necessarily tied to the Ukrainian government, who supposedly blew up the pipelines by diving from a small boat, which had been conveniently rented through a Ukrainian company and which they conveniently did not clean very well, so that traces of explosives were found by investigators on the kitchen table. I like Die Zeit, but I remember how long they kept up the story of weapons of mass destruction justifying the invasion of Iraq! The new story was a welcome change from simply affirming without any proof that Russia blew up its own pipelines, but it didn’t sound very convincing. After that, I read Hersh’s version. It sounds coherent, but you have to trust him on his word…
Don’t know if the following is true or not, (or fact or not?) But interesting….
https://strangesounds.org/2022/07/the-pyramids-were-giant-musical-instruments.html
Especially in regards to music in regards to Enchantment. Which I am officially voting for as the topic of the Next 5th Wednesday. Whenever that will be! 😁
Orion
#80 Thank you SDI – that is something I had considered . Both ‘voices’ were of the same nature; what I’ve been wondering is if others are getting anything like this occurring. The ‘gut instinct’ thing really kicked up a notch at the beginning of the covid spectacle, though such distinct ‘voices’ with somewhat cryptic messages is something new.
Do I understand what they might mean? No.
Have they been useful? Yes, and for that I am thankful.
#122 JMG – “getting ready is probably a very good idea.”
Yesterday we rescued an injured little owl, took it to the vets but the broken wing was too damaged to save – funny thing – the owl was obviously frightened but suddenly stopped and turned to stare – massively enlarged pupils – unbeknownst to me, my partner had called to Minerva for guidance just before the owl turned to look at us. I went and got a box and amazingly, the owl did not struggle at all and stayed completely calm…
It saddens us that it could not be saved, but sometimes things need to end.
I couldn’t help but feel that the demise of the owl was a metaphor for the demise of human wisdom in current western society/culture.
And yes, things do seem to be building a head of steam don’t they!
JMG (no 114) “Bei, Horowitz got thrown out of a very comfortable position with the Philosophical Research Society because they asked him not to promote Satanism at PRS-sponsored speaking gigs and he promptly went right out and did exactly that.”
Did you hear that from PRS people? Hmm. (confused) (wheels turning) I remember that he was their “writer in residence” there c. 2018, about the time of his divorce (which might explain his willingness to relocate from NYC to LA, not to mention raise questions about the possible role of the whole Satanism thing, which also started around then). But wait! We find PRS president Greg Salyer hosting Horowitz in a 2020 video discussion (on the PRS YouTube channel), in which Greg Salyer asks Horowitz an obviously prepared (by both men) question, “Are you a Satanist?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20YGuqy6mnk
(Satanism question at 1:09:45). So this makes me think the PRS was okay with it and willing to stand by him. And he’s still listed on their “speakers”page:
https://www.prs.org/speakers.html
Horowitz does write in several places about getting kicked out of a “major” (but unnamed) New Age organization, but it seems to be a different one.
——————————
Princess Cutekitten (no. 116): “I have to say I found Horowitz’s book Occult America interesting and well-written.”
It was, although the selection of chapter topics is an issue and you could do a whole ‘nother book based on subjects he didn’t cover. Which I guess he did himself! “One Simple Idea” (about New Thought / positive thinking) was my favorite–he lives and breathes this stuff, and knows it backwards and forwards.
——————————
Robert Mathiesen (no. 105), thank you!
Towers are a bridge between the mundane and the ‘higher’ realms. I could very easily see a wizard associated with one.
I happened on this article: LANDLINE STORIES IN A SMARTPHONE WORLD by someone calling himself Zero HP Lovecraft.
https://asylummagazine.ca/LANDLINE-STORIES-IN-A-SMARTPHONE-WORLD
I suppose you have already heard of it. It’s about the occult, technology, science-fiction and mankind’s future, so pretty much up your alley.
It must be strange to be a bearded druid and to be psychoanalyzed in print. Or does it come with the territory?
OK you might disagree with the guy’s assessment that your vision is “to die quietly and with dignity on the road to eco-austerity”.
Any comment on the piece? Are we going to witness a Lovecraft-archdruid FLAME WAR?
@JMG, Thanks for the distinction between worshiping the gods and contemplating the One. That, I think, gets at the heart of my question even though I did not ask it that way. With this said, I think I understand contemplation, but what is the purpose of worship?
@Petros, David Armstrong’s substack is an interesting read. He gives much more freely than DBH. Also, you may like Marshall Davis on Youtube. He approaches Christianity and the Bible from a nondual perspective.
@everyone talking about gas stoves, They sure do work better when the electricity goes out especially for days at a time. Where I live, this happens from time to time and I get the impression that this may be an issue in more areas soon; although, I get the impression that cooking gas may be difficult to come by in the not too distant future, too. Solar cookers may be the wave of the future.
In re: the Elixirs.com 12 cell salts in one. “How well does it work?” It’s too early too tell. I just received them.
#85 Brian Kaller: I will look forward to meeting you when you arrive in St. Louis! If you let me know when you will be arriving and about how long you will be in town, we can arrange a get-together with our group of Green Wizards, so you can meet all of us. You can email me; use the same name you used in the comment to me, then the @, then att dot net.
Any info on the 2-year-old with seizures? I hope our prayers are resulting in help for him and everyone else on the list.
Correction: Greg Salyer is no longer PRS president / CEO as of late 2021 (according to his LinkedIn). Dennis Bartok is now listed as “executive director,” if this is the same office.
Hi John,
I just finished reading Big Serge’s latest post, this one on Operation Barbarossa. What’s so striking is the way that Hitler and the German high command completely misread the situation in the USSR, setting themselves and Germany up for a catastrophic defeat.
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/apocalypse-operation-barbarossa
Fast forward eight decades and it is becoming all too clear that the hubristic, senile, kleptocratic morons running the American government are making many of the same mistakes by provoking a confrontation with a coalition of rising Eurasian powers led by Russia, China and Iran, and in doing so are setting themselves and their country up for a disastrous fall in the process.
“if a computer could write better symphonies than a human ever could ”
But how does one define “better”? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. Personally I’m not that impressed by Beethoven, much preferring Mozart and Haydn.
This goes back up to the previous question of whether a generation of women will mangle themselves trying to match what the AI considers beauty. I imprinted on Lori Saunders at an early age and been immune to blondes ever since. :-). So how can there be one standard?
Hunters have been arguing about the best deer rifle since there were deer rifles and that should be a simple calculation. It’s not.
In your response to forecastingintelligence (#4), you mention Russia, China and Iran as rising powers. Why is India not on that list? They certainly have smart people, and plenty of them. Is it because they don’t have the vast natural resources like Russia or industrial capacity like China? Is it because they were once a western colony, whereas Russia, China, and Iran never were?
In regards to flood myths and Atlantis, I think it’s more likely these refer to the refilling of the Black Sea, but things were happening in North America as well.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL031318
Dogger Bank east of England was also flooded out. There is lots of literature on that to look up. It least those drownings were slow enough to leave evidence. Any Indian civilization living in central Washington was obliterated by the Lake Missoula Floods.
Reading jessie Weston from ritual to romance. Did you find her convincing? I do, and I love the scholarship style, very personal. Are there still untranslated basic records?
Aldarion, it’s a reasonable narrative.
Orion, fascinating. I find this plausible as quite a few ancient sites have interesting acoustic properties.
Earthworm, quite an omen. Thank you for this.
Bei, it was discussed extensively in various corners of the occult community, online and off, when it happened. A lot of us were shaking our heads.
Jean-Baptiste, thank you for this! No, I hadn’t heard of it. Of course I disagree with the author’s assessment; he’s a believer in progress and so literally can’t imagine a future that doesn’t follow the prophecies of that civil religion. It’s precisely the vast blind spot of the devotees of progress that they can’t imagine any of the vast panoply of interesting futures that follow the twilight of our self-limiting experiment in seeing how much energy and how many resources we can waste in the shortest possible time. That said, it’s an interesting essay, and I appreciate that he was willing to address, even if inaccurately, my critique of the mythology of progressivism.
Clark, worship is the process of establishing and maintaining a relationship between two persons, one of whom is a deity. It’s not that different from falling in love and getting married, all things considered, though it has different goals and a less biological mode of expression.
Platypus, it’s hardwired into the European psyche that Europeans never understand Russia. The great problem with the current US establishment is that it’s subject to a European pseudomorphosis and so shares the same giant blind spot.
Blue Sun, because I was talking about the alliance among those three, of course. There are several other rising powers which will probably become major players in global politics over the next two centuries. India is certainly one of them.
Siliconguy, Plato is very specific about the location of Atlantis — out past the straits of Gibraltar, close to the continent on the far side of the Atlantic — and the time of its drowning — right around 9600 BC. The flooding of the Black Sea basin was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There have been many catastrophic floods in the history of humanity — not all of them are Atlantis!
Celadon, I’ve recently published a book arguing that she was right. Yes, there are still various relevant records that have not been put into English.
@AV Wizards and towers?
I would’ve thought the symbolism is pretty straight-forward. Similar to the trope of the “Ivory Tower” of Academia, in the collective unconscious the trope of Wizards are associated those who are very intellectual and seek to understand the world from a new, original point of view. The “tower” imagery captures this well. First, You are able to look down onto the world from a distance and gain a bird’s eye view. You are able to see systems holistically rather than having an “ant’s eye view” where you are so involved in the system you cannot see the forest for the trees. Second, being in a tower puts the observer “at a remove” from society – not just in terms of perspective, but also in terms of seclusion. Third, if you see some cyberpunk images, you often see similar tropes but in a modern sense – a person sitting at a computer screen or window, looking out into a chaotic city scene full of neon. I believe this captures the sense of being online – peering through a window into the chaotic, hyper-stimulating, decrepit mass before us. Contrasted to this, wizard towers are often set aside in more natural settings, or are so high above cities that they are not at risk of being hyper-stimulated by everything going on. This further points to the calm, steady, in-control mind of those we see as wizards in society. Fourth, Wizard towers don’t only look down – they often have observatories looking up to watch the night skies. This is connected both with astrology as such, and with probing the deeper mysteries of the beyond.
@Clark WRT “All religions being the same truth”
Taking the perspective Jesus puts forth: “Ye shall know them by their fruit. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit,” it is interesting to observe the different outcomes of different religions, practices, or worldviews.
Despite the confounding variables in America, such as “self-selection” (did certain kinds of people choose different religious paths, or was it the impact that religion had on their lives?), Max Weber explored this topic deeply in the early 1900s and WhatIfAltHist looks at it today on a societal level.
The fruits of different beliefs can be seen more clearly on a human-by-human level in places such as Singapore, which is a relatively highly religious country with mostly ethnic Chinese people. Secular materialists tend to be more high-achieving but suffer while Muslims strive less for worldly achievement and focus more on family and community life, appearing contented, albeit bearing more material hardship. Protestants appear composed, Catholics seem well-rounded, Buddhists seem more Buddha-like, and Taoists (those with traditional Chinese folk tradition) are more typically Chinese and go-with-the-flow. You can argule that all faiths seek the same “truth,” yet the practices developed differ, creating different people, circles, and lives. It is easy to give things the benefit of the doubt based on logic and claims rather than their outcomes, but sometimes mimicking what works best, even without understanding why, can be beneficial.
JMG,
Thank you for the software link. It’s exactly what I was looking for!
Siliconguy #136, I’m assuming it would have to be a clear difference. Like a massive number of people hearing the AI music and immidiately saying it was the best thing they’d ever heard. Or even have an objectively different effect, like an MRI showing different parts of the brain lighting up when hearing it. Presumably it’d be segmented so there wasn’t one perfect song, but different ones for different tastes in music. At the theoretical top level it could be individualised so an AI could make the perfect song for you, based on a brain scan.
Another objective test would be if an AI understood humour so well it could write killer jokes, and people actually died laughing. And you know if the killer joke was real, people would still want to hear it. They’d have themselves temporarily paralysed so they could hear it without dying, like Ulysses being tied to the mast of the ship so he could safely hear the Sirens’ song. Whether they’d still be in danger when the paralytic wore off is another question. At least that’d be a fun way for the robot apocalypse to happen. 🙂
I’ve been listening to The History Of Rome podcast, and while parallels between then and now can frequently be drawn, occasionally they simply are jaw-dropping: https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/the_history_of_rome/2010/03/86-wealth-and-class.html
The added bonus here is that 13 years ago, they could still be stated in a manner this nonchalant; it really was a different time not that long ago.
One issue that concerns me is the distortion of our epistemic agent by AIs, which would endanger the peaceful governance of human societies.
Fixed star Betelgeuse has been calling out to me. I did some quick research and found out that a lot of sky nerds are disappointed because it’s been dim the past few years and they were hoping that meant an imminent supernova. Well it’s bright again now. One of the meanings that crosses cultures is that it presages war and carnage, but also wealth. I’m not sure what to do with this, but it does make me wonder how much longer the CCP is going to wait before taking Taiwan.
@ JMG in your reply to Chris at #122
“dollar-demoninated investments” made me giggle… 😉
Good day JMG and commentariat.
As I keep studying the occult, there are a few questions that have arisen over the whole thing. I wonder if some of you can share some light.
– I am unsure about what the magical ranks mean. There seem to be adepts, initiates and mages. I suppose mages are the ones that have successfully conducted a magical ritual or spell, after all that hard work. Adept sounds to me like a student who is taking seriously his studies, but still has nothing to show. Initiate sounds like someone who has been ‘introduced’ into the real thing, that is, who has been through an Initiation ritual, may it be personal or communal.
I am having trouble with the distinctions since for every occult lesson I learn, I feel some improvement in the way I conduct myself in life, and the outcome seems to be mostly positive. Also, I’m discovering that there’s not a single Initiation, but many. Each one breaks a mental barrier and change some fundamental aspect of myself, which indeed feels like a mini-death. In the outside it looks as if I was maturing but in the inside I know I am not the same man (with my wife suspecting the same).
Not that I need to use any label, but it would be nice to know how to tell an adept from an Initiate or a mage.
– I see the benefits of constant spiritual practices, it’s similar to physical exercise, whereas one makes my body able and the other makes my mind ready. Being able to escape the mind fog even for a moment is really useful. I’m also discovering the way praying works: it aligns mind and universe with a purpose, in other words, it helps myself to focus on a purpose and somehow it tells the whole world what my purpose is so it can respond in accordance. I’ve also used successfully a sigil to protect me from the foul influence of a loved person.
But I am yet to find what is ritual magic used for. Is it like a prayer with a loudspeaker or is it something else? Could you share some real cases of study?
– Of the three legs of power, foresight is the one I am having more trouble with. Scrying worked well for me for a while: it’s discreet and can be performed anywhere. But I never managed to do it daily, it requires some energies and quality time to interpret correctly, and caring for the baby seems to be draining those energies from me. Maybe it’s the excuse I am telling myself, maybe I am simply not fond on divination. It gives me insights, that’s true, but it is tiresome.
Do you have a default easy-peasy method for these days when you don’t have anything particular to ask?
And now for something completely unexpected… One of the more unusual characters whose substack I occasionally view is Paul Kingsnorth: the atheist-turned-Orthodox-Christian who lives in Ireland. Even though he is Orthodox, Paul feels and respects the spiritual roots of the country he lives in (hence the Green Man graphic associated with his substack). Anyhow, in this week’s entry he talks about how the ichthus was an important symbol for the early Christians to be able to identify each other right under the Romans’ noses and suggests something similar be used for the rising tribe who reject the Machine. And what he puts forward as a symbol has TENTACLES! Indeed: the graphic presented is a background of flames (in black) with a jellyfish (in white) in the foreground.
In case anybody thinks that I’m just making this up, here it is: https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/two-podcasts-and-some-jellyfish?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
My brain is now officially fried.
” Natural gas stoves are the new plastic straws.”
Here is a tongue in check article I wrote. I basically just changed it from being about gas leaf blowers to being about cars. Oh, also, I have taken to covering my paper straws with spray on plastic!
—–_————————
Takoma Park City Council approves amendment to gas-powered automobile ban.
Amendments exempt hybrid automobiles and amount of rebate for electric automobiles also discussed.
Takoma Park Councilmembers amended legislation that would ban the sale and use of gas-powered automobiles Tuesday, exempting hybrid automobiles from the proposal.
In a lengthy work session that lasted more than 4 years, the City Council considered amendments to the original bill. The legislation would also direct the head of the Department of Tree Protection to create a program that would partially reimburse owners of gas-powered automobiles who turn in their vehicles to the city and switch to electric automobiles. Councilmember John Jacob Livinthepast was concerned that without the Tokoma Park Junction parking lot being available, the city would not have anywhere to park all the cars that will be turned in as a result of these robust incentives.
In order to pass the ban of gas-powered automobiles, the city council would also need to pass regulations that the city’s Department of Tree Protection would draft, after the legislation passes. Those regulations would set more specific language on the ban, the exemptions, and other information. They wouldn’t be finalized until Friday.
Fines would be $5,000 for a first offense of driving gas powered vehicles in city limits, and $7,500 for repeat offenses, but city officials emphasized Tuesday that they would be focused on education of the new law in its beginning minutes, rather than issuing fines right away.
Much of the discussion Tuesday revolved around reimbursement for the owners of gas-powered vehicles.
City Councilmember John Jacob Greenwash was critical of a proposal that the city’s Department of Tree Protection had put forth, providing a $100 rebate for the owners. Greenwash said that, “$100 is way too much to give to those evil gas guzzlers!”
Greenwash also said that $100 would not help most gas-powered automobile owners throughout the city, who have few parking spaces and “tiny, tiny” automobiles already. City Councilmember John Jacob Jingleheimer, who introduced and passed the legislation four years ago in private session, said that his staff had done extensive research and found that gas-powered automobiles cost about $50,000.
Jingleheimer added that electric-powered automobiles cost about $60,000 to $150,000, and the battery pack that powers them is about $15,000 to $30,000. Not to mention the expense of adding a charging station at home.
City officials said the rebate amount has not been set yet. They fully acknowledged that the $100 rebate would not be enough for many automobile owners in the city, but urged the council not to set a specific amount on the rebate until more research could be completed.
Councilmembers also considered amendments to delay the implementation of the timeline of when gas-powered automobiles would be banned for sale and use, in order to provide more time for automobile owners and users to adjust. But those amendments failed in 6-5 votes.
According to the bill, city officials would enforce the law, and would receive complaints by residents via photographic evidence or hear from at least two witnesses who see the violation, and report via an online form which will be distributed free of charge on the various Takoma Park Listserves.
Steve Martin, environmental compliance supervisor with the City’s Department of Tree Protection (and a part time comedian and banjo player), said in an interview Tuesday an outright ban on gas-powered automobiles would be easiest to enforce. “Currently we are only using peer pressure and mocking of users, based on the size of the automobile, especially for vehicles like the Hummer!” Martin added.
The Town of Chevy Chase Village and Somerset have banned the use of gas-powered automobiles in recent years, as has Washington, D.C. City officials said in the first year of D.C’s ban, there were roughly 6,000,000 complaints about the ban. But he acknowledged that, luckily, Takoma Park residents aren’t “tattle tails” or “narcs”.
Martin added that including himself, there is one person in his part of the Department of Tree Protection and that if Takoma Park residents complain at a higher than anticipated complaint rate, he’s likely going to need a larger staff.
Gas powered automobile owners and users can always contest any potential fines in court, but court cases are backed up so much that if a citation is issued, the case won’t be heard for about six months, Martin said.
When asked whether that and other logistical hurdles makes the legislation worth it, Martin declined to comment with this comment:
“If I could answer that, I’d go pick the winning lottery numbers,” Martin said.
No more gas leaf blowers! But you can pry my car from my cold dead hands!
Orion
(Similar local humor like this can be found at tokomatorch.com )
(Thanks to MOCO360 for their article. And the Quotes from Steve Martin! Here is their article: https://moco360.media/2023/03/07/county-council-approves-amendment-to-gas-powered-leaf-blower-ban-bill/)
I’ve been reviewing how greatly my life has changed in the last 2 years. Occultist knowledge which seemed greatly abstract now seems like common sense. My understanding of what I would like to do with it during this lifetime is clear to me (and may change with the change of seasons). I feel more comfortable with myself as I age which has been a source of amusement and relief as the messaging about my self worth as a woman should go down as I age but truly has just gone up. I also appreciate my body and its work and see it as a temple and a gift. Someone mentioned above that fashion is using AI now and I am glad that these influences affect me less even as the societal pressure continues to mount.
My life is much busier with full time work, an engagement, a dog and an apartment (hopefully a house soon!) to take care of as well as spiritual practices, exercise, family and some fun when I can squeeze it in. The routine and discipline is good for me though I still think the 40 hour work week is a bit too much especially since it has become a requirement for both partners to work full time.
I suspect I may be pregnant but if I am not, I would like to know what small practices or rituals I can participate in to increase my fertility. I am a Christian occultist. I do my daily prayers and the rosary. I do plan on getting married soon as well since we are planning to expand our family from the three of us. I know marriage itself is a great ritual. Is there any other practice or ritual I can start to bless the marriage as well?
Thank you. I feel truly blessed by the commentators here and it has been interesting being pulled back to Ecosophia. It was a passing interest years ago concerning the environment and I was an atheist. I very confusedly had great spiritual experiences which I know understand its place and funnily enough was confirmed by a great natal astrologist (she and I had a laugh about it) to know just becoming how I gradually learn and grow and find great peace and rest. Its been a wild ride, I have been very vulnerable with you all. It has been hard and uncomfortable to see me become who I am but easing into it now, I am so glad. Thank you all for being a part of it.
>Hunters have been arguing about the best deer rifle since there were deer rifles and that should be a simple calculation. It’s not.
It is simple. The best deer rifle is your car or truck. Deer are retards.
@Clark Thank you for the recommendation, I’ll definitely check him out. I don’t know if you know Mark Vernon, too? He’s on a similar path, and is a very interesting fella. He wrote a book a while back on Owen Barfield.
@JMG I just want to say thank you for your responses. This little corner of the internet is a delight, and you rarely find people being so generous with their time.
Hi John Michael,
That’s a possibility. The short term risk once alternative currency trading arrangements are in place, and that seems to be where things are heading, is that other countries may dump their treasury holdings. Fast or slow, it matters not. What matters is finding buyers in order to stave off a devaluation, sorry to say. That might not even happen, merely reducing the demand for IOU’s, will increase the supply of them and lead to the same outcome with no angry fingers pointed. How could it not?
Cheers
Chris
JMG – “Now they’re cheering for warfare and militarism, shrieking about evil Russia, and generally acting like everything they used to hate.”
Last summer I was over at a friend’s house. We were talking about Ukraine. I brought up that the US had overthrew the government and Ukraine had killed 14,000 Russian speaking Ukrainians. And the Nuland recording saying “F the EU.”
I also mentioned that, at that time, the civilian casualties in Ukraine, by the Russians, was about 3500…. (Latest from UN: 8,317 killed and 13,892 injured. See: https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/03/ukraine-civilian-casualty-update-20-march-2023).
I compared that to the 200,000 to 500,000 civilians that the US had killed in Iraq.
His reaction was to yell at me “IT’S GENOCIDE!” (Meaning the Russians.)
And he wouldn’t talk anymore to me. And haven’t heard from him since. And he doesn’t come to church anymore, even though he used to be a regular… But that was before covid.
I admit to always being one to push people’s buttons….. But the reactions from people has really changed over the last 20 years, in particular, since 9/11.
Like you JMG, I also can’t explain it. Maybe Wotan?
Orion
@Abraham
WRT daily divination, I’ll share my own experience and others an correct e or give feedback.
If you are using Tarot cards you can ask simply: how will my day go, what should I be aware of, what challenges may block my way, what could I do to overcome it, what is the likely outcome, etc. drawing a card for each (or limit it to 3 of your choice). You can use poker cards instead if you want to be discreet, but in my experience they dramatically change the kind of readings that come to you.
If doing geomantic charts, you can just interpret the bottom 3 cells for a quick overall view of the (present state, best action, future state), and investigate any of the specific houses that touch on topics of particular concern.
If doing Yi-Qing you can just ask “how will my day go, how should I respond.”
All of these obviously take a while to ponder.
One reason I personally stopped after a while is it was often hard to snap back to cold pragmatic reality after finishing. LBRP helped clear it away to a degree, but divination still often made me too floaty and dreamy when I needed to be ready for work in the morning. Perhaps doing it the night before would be better.
Happy spring equinox everyone.
I vaguely remember someone in the comments of an earlier open post talking about the “violet flame”, the mystical energy supposedly gifted to us through the figure of Saint Germain for this Aquarian Age, I wonder if anyone is familiar or already working with it? It seems this type of knowledge/current is the peculiar result of Western branches of Theosophy (I have theories they’re connected to Freemasonry but I’m not sure yet). I’m talking about the “I Am” Activity and The Summit Lighthouse and their ascended masters teachings and all that stuff.
It’s striking to me because it seems to be part of all that New Age craze of the past decades, yet it’s genuine and effective from what I experienced that it seems a bit spooky, what is this energy exactly and where is it coming from? Has anyone been working with it and how’s their experience of it? The lineages claim that it is the active aspect of the Holy Spirit, the essence of the Violet Ray.
But who is that Saint Germain exactly? For a moment I’ve thought that he is (and his energy) could be the archetype and accumulation of all the Master Masons. To add to the weirdness, the Summit Lighthouse teachings “claim” one of their masters (along Jesus) has an etheric retreat somewhere in the northern parts of Arabia, that’s where I come from haha.
Lacking, glad to hear it.
Michaelz, yep. That’s a standard condition of decadent societies on their way to collapse.
Aloysius, well, let’s see if it gets a lot brighter!
Scotlyn, ha!
Abraham, (a) Those aren’t ranks. They’re simply labels, and different people use them in different ways. Initiation, as you’ve realized, is a continuing process, and it involves a lot of little realizations. (b) Ritual magic is a way of working with the subconscious mind, which thinks in symbols — a ritual is a symbolic action, after all. It also affects those centers of consciousness outside the self that are on the same level as your own subconscious. (c) I simply use the question “What do I need to understand about the events I will experience this day?”
Ron, funny. The Great Old Ones may be having fun with him. 😉
Orion, also funny! Thank you for this.
Danielle, delighted to hear that your life is going so well. I’m told that devotions to St. Anne and St. Brigid of Kildare are considered very powerful for bringing about pregnancy, and of course St. Joseph and St. Valentine are among the patron saints of marriage.
Petros, you’re welcome. I received a lot of help and good advice from people back when I was getting started in magic, and I’ve always believed in paying it forward.
Chris, I’m pretty sure the US is heavily involved right now in Enron financing — selling a lot of its bonds to offshore companies who are being covertly funded by the US Treasury — and the question is simply how long this can be kept up before it all comes crashing down.
Orion, I’ve seen the same thing happen much too often. It may indeed be Wotan, or some comparable archetype.
Aziz, that’s not a tradition I’ve studied in any detail yet, though it’s very widespread here in the US. Anyone else?
Aziz: “violet flame”
I’m not very knowledgeable about the rituals you mention, but I can say that all rituals are ways to access the infinite Universal Being, of which “violet flame” is just one aspect. (Of course we know that the “violet flame” exists because it causes sunburn!) (Anyone have any thoughts along these lines regarding beauty? Like Elizibethans thinking not being exposed to the sun was beautiful?)
So St Germain didn’t “gift” this to us, but instead revealed a part of the unseen. Using ritual methods to connect.And there are a lot of different rituals out there for this purpose. IMO – Studying them and their origins is very, very useful, but don’t let it distract you from trying them out and seeing what works for you.
Someone else who “revealed” “violet flame” to us was Sir George Stokes in 1852. Interestingly Stokes was into alchemy and a noted Irish scientist. More at wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_George_Stokes,_1st_Baronet
I recommend you look into the “Stoke’s Shift” as well.
Stokes was using a prism to shine light onto a piece of English fluorite and noticed that in the Ultraviolet area ( “violet flame”) the mineral was glowing. He called this “the essence of fluorite” – fluorescence. (essence from the Greek Ousia which means “all being” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousia which is different from the Latin essentia which is more limited).
So fluorescence is the revealing of “violet flame” to the naked eye using a medium.
In connection with the general discussion of enchantment and disenchantment involving “violet flame” I would point out that laundry detergent has an added fluorescent dye that makes your “whites whiter and your brights brighter”! When you go out in the sun or under any UV lighting your clothing literally glows! This is additive to the reflected light.
I am always reminded of this in these discussions because it is simply a “scientific” enchantment. Like applying make-up to us all the time, without our knowledge of this! And it changes our perception, subtlety, but strongly. They are making us glow! Like angles perhaps!
Hope this helps in some way.
Orion
Orion, your post is hilarious. I did follow the link to an article about banning of gas powered blowers–I thought the naked man jumps on firetruck story must be a lot more interesting. Howsomever, as a gardener who grows rare, unusual and heirloom plants, I am not interested in having same blow dried into extinction and then be expected to pay a hundred bucks or so for the privilege.
Ron M, so the first thing Kingsnorth does is announce to the world just what this secret sign will be. It is enough to make a person wonder just whom it is who finances this guy.
If I had to guess who will end up as the dominant power after the American Empire collapses, it will be an alliance between Russia and India once the traditional rivalry between Russia and China kicks back in. Sol over at SNAFU wrote recently in the comments section of one of his blog posts
i believe the coming super power that will have everyone sh*tting bricks is the INDIANS. they have a martial spirit and heritage, they have tech, they have a young population that is studying the hard sciences and they have ambition.
the Europeans don’t worry me, the Indians in a decade or two do.
In a more recent post on the death of a Chinese battalion commander during a border clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers, he wrote
Chinese leadership is putting their troops in a terrible position.
Indian troops have as strong or EVEN STRONGER martial tradition, they’re bigger physically and to be quite honest, the idea of fighting with melee weapons fits perfectly with their culture/mentality.
They really need to go back to the drawing board on the idea that banning firearms will keep this from zooming out of control and work out some type of agreement or this will be a Vietnam 2.0 for them, except the Indians will be giving the terrible lesson to them.
If they can’t do any of the above then they should think more like taking on horse cavalry from back in the day.
They need those long pikes to slow down the rush instead of absorbing body blows.
To the Major, rest in peace and to his family may his memory be a blessing.
Article can found here
You can already see an alliance forming between India, Japan and Australia in order to counter the growing power of China and I could very easily see the Russians joining in if relations with China in the post-American era go south by leveraging their already strong ties with India and taking advantage of the fact that Japan will need to look for new allies once the US is no longer in a position to project power beyond its near abroad. A Moscow-New Delhi-Tokyo axis could fit the bill quite nicely.
Aziz: I forgot to mention that the greek word Ousia also means “I am”… As in “I am of the essence” or along those lines…
Which really ties what I was saying back to your comment and questions.
Also remember that back then they didn’t have UV lights! They were trying to connect with UV without any tech.
If you still use tech at all and want to explore the world around you using “violet flame” you should get a UV flashlight!
I recommend UV Lights from https://www.fluorescents.com/
You can get a really nice rechargeable flashlight in the 365nm wavelength for around $40 to 60.
(Worth spending the extra over the mini!)
(I have met the owner, Bill Gardner, and he has done more than anyone else to make UV lights affordable for fluorescent mineral collectors than anyone else.)
Orion
St Germain (Germanus), c. 496-576 AD, was a Bishop of Paris, who is venerated in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. There lived, about 1200 years later a self-styled Comte de St. Germain, an occultist, adventurer and minor composer. He appears to have spent his life in Europe. Neither man had any connection to Arabia, so far as I can determine.
@ JMG and Danielle
re “I’m told that devotions to St. Anne and St. Brigid of Kildare are considered very powerful for bringing about pregnancy”.
Brigid (both goddess and saint, and who cares which) has been my patron deity for a few years.
What I notice these days is that when I invoke her in the lambing shed, she seems to appear in a thought form garbed in nun’s habit, possibly as St Brigid, and when I invoke her in the clinic, her most common thought form is as an old woman minding a cauldron at a fire from which she feeds the most nourishing soup, possibly as Brigid the goddess of home, hearth and healing.
JMG and P Coyle ~ interesting that this current large coronal hole created a G4 magnetic storm. That high level was not expected. I’ve been studying a Carrington Event, worth googling, as the basis for an Agro-Eco Thriller I’m working on. I’ve meet with academics, government agencies, and some sun-doom hustlers/hucksters and have developed a nuanced sense of the threat. I’d say, after months of research, that there is some risk to our electric grid from an event. One of the most interesting findings is that the first written record of a large geomagnetic storm is the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel. It was an eye opening re-read.
Hi JMG,
I recently re-read your graphic novel adaptations of “Winter’s Tale” and “10 Billion”. Both are really terrific. I’m excited to read more deindustrial fiction from you coming down the pike. I hope there will be more graphic novel adaptations–they are a wonderful complement the prose.
Ok, that makes sense. I think I phrased my question poorly so I was unclear. I was also wondering why India wasn’t part of their alliance. Between all four of them, they’d have a plurality of the world’s population and certainly a large chunk of the world’s land area too.
Perhaps India is not in the group because of its historical friction with China, or because it’s subject to the European pseudomorphosis (via Great Britain) which the other three are not.
It fascinates me how some countries, of similar size, end up scheming to be the movers and shakers, while others remain sleeping giants (e.g., why are China and Russia calling the shots rather than India and Brazil). And furthermore, why do some form alliances while others do not? I don’t know.
I guess one common denominator among China, Russia and Iran is that none were ever part of Faustian civilization. Or perhaps the good ol’ boys in the Pentagon inadvertently forced China, Russia and Iran together (“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”). Who knows?
I know very little about geopolitics so I have a very limited understanding of what makes a country go one way or the other.
Then there’s the wildcard psychological and cultural factors, such as our elites’ irrational burning hatred of Russia. I’ve read your blog long enough to know that is a grave strategic mistake for the US.
Theres so many variables in play it’s mind-blowing. I guess that’s what makes it interesting.
@Nachtgurke, #37:
It’s a small world.
What you describe in your post is the city of Hattingen in Germany and the Thyssen Henrichshütte AG.
I was born and raised in Hattingen, I still live in Hattingen, and – to top it off – I’ve been in the
last group of industrial clerk trainees ever at Thyssen Henrichshütte AG in the 1980s.
It’s a 15 minute walk from where I live to the steel mill museum…
Could someone explain to me, as concisely as possible, how exactly the hegemony of the US dollar is maintained?
I read today that Russian export settlements declined from 65% to 46% USD/Euro over the course of 2022 (https://www.rt.com/business/573507-yellen-dollar-russia-china-altenative/), and my first thought was “why the heck is Russia dealing in dollars and Euros at all at this point?”
My intuitive understanding of economics says that it’s all a made-up system based on agreements and geopolitics, and if I want to sell a million tons to grain to Sweden and get paid in Swedish kronor, which I can then spend on IKEA imports and Volvos, that’s my prerogative unless some bully nation with a giant army steps in to tell me otherwise. So I would expect the denominations of international trade to change rapidly and for warring nations to rapidly divest from enemy currencies.
And yet, somehow that’s not how it works. The proportions of various currencies used in international trade seem to change gradually and incrementally, like melting glaciers, with inertia from past system states (like dollar hegemony) providing resistance to change. What is it, exactly, about the nature of international trade that causes it to behave this way instead of experiencing sudden shifts?
Hey JMG
Lately I have been thinking about sourcing gemstones in the deindustrialised future. I’m pretty sure that as with coal a lot of the easy and high quality sources for a lot of gemstones are dwindling, although not nearly as bad since there may be some untouched potential mines somewhere, and a lot of gemstones are very common such as Quartz.
It has occurred to me that a very likely source of gemstones would be to simply salvage the millions of stones that would by found in the homes of deceased mineral collectors and new-agers, as well as abandoned gemstone stores. As with everything else once the current population has dwindled to less than a billion the possessions of 7 billion will be more than enough for a long time. It odd to think that some pieces of amethyst that a new-age mother bought at a gemstone store may be found by some peasant decades after she has died and be passed on for generations until someone losses it, then another person finds it and the cycle repeats.
I’ve just noticed that your book, The Druid Path, has recently been translated into Spanish.
This is such a wonderful new, i’m really happy about that. Now i will be able to recomend something written by you , since most people here will not take the trouble to read in english.
May the book succed in interesting people into revival Druidry, and in giving them a spiritual alternative between mainstream Culture and drug-powered Chamanism, wich unfortunately is very common around here.
Needless to say, i do wish your new edition all posible success!
March 2023
Dennis Kuccinich on ̶T̶w̶i̶l̶i̶g̶h̶t̶’̶s̶ ̶L̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶G̶l̶e̶a̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ pivot to China:
“…Now, in the White House and suspected of colluding to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines, President Biden, National Security Adviser Sullivan, Secretary of State Blinken and Undersecretary of State Nuland are positioning the U.S. to pivot from the proxy war with Russia.
“Ukraine will be abandoned so the U.S. can prepare for war with China by 2025. This dangerous brinkmanship is supported by both parties in Congress, the media and so-called think tanks cashing in from military build-ups and unnecessarily created conflict.”
https://denniskucinich.substack.com/p/from-iraq-into-the-abyss
Hello JMG
What’s your take on this:
https://twitter.com/uberboyo/status/1634989753048387586
In brief, that Christianity was the woke movement of its time.
SMJ
Hi JMG,
A thought occurred to me as I ready your response to Petros on the distinction between a God and The One: could the deities that are worshipped by monotheists as the One God have powerful aspects or features (metaphysically, as it were) that direct their worshipper’s attention towards contemplation of Oneness and Unity, in a way that other deities do not? Perhaps because those same deities, for reasons we can’t know, are invested with or in communion with that Oneness and thus become “conduits” for a type of religious experience that brings it into focus for the worshipper, but thus also stimulating the belief “this is the only, the one true God” etc?
Thanks,
Morfran (JH in the Dreamwidth forum)
Hello JMG and fellow commenters,
@JMG I will check this book out! Thanks for the recommendation.
I also want to share an extraordinary experience. My dear mother died late last year and ever since strange stuff has happened in her house (lights stopped working in one specific area, radio stations in the radio were all changed to other stations and so on).
Last week I went grocery shopping and didn’t feel like cooking so I went to a Chinese all you can eat buffet. I did what was expected of me and had loads of rather good food. Before I fell into a food coma I went home and took a nap, something I rarely do.
I had a dream in which I saw my mother doing normal chores. I followed her around and got agitated and said to her “Don’t you know that you are dead?”. To which my mother replied “Oh, I know that. I just want to be around for a little bit.” Then we hugged each other and I felt enormous relief and warmth.
I am still not over my mother’s dead but ever since I feel some sort of closure.
Best wishes.
@JMG #122, about Germany:
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that these are actual signs – more like inklings that things are shifting ever so slighty. There are still a hundred and one other possibilities of how things could turn out. But I’m a lot more hopeful than before, and, well… we shall see.
Thanks a lot for your encouragement and advice.
@FourSidedCircle #87,
thank you very, very much for that detailed account! I read some theoretical texts on the internet, but they didn’t really click. Reading through your experiences, though, somehow made it live and clear.
Two follow-up questions, if I may: The FPJ is the one which is fermented with sugar, isn’t it?
And: What exactly is so difficult or demanding about the IMO to make it the holy grail which can only be attempted after one has reached a certain level (of what?)?
The few things I read sounded like this was more or less a matter of “dig up some mycel-heavy soil from a healthy forest close by, and dump everything together” – but obiously it’s not that simple…. 🙂
Ah, btw, @JMG: After reading The Secret of the Temple late last year, I wrote in an Open Post that I had plugged a small sandstone into a small veggie bad and put some winter salad seeds in, and I promised to report back: I’m afraid there isn’t any result at all so far – as I had somewhat suspected back then, it really was too late for the seeds to start. They didn’t germinate anymore, on neither side of the stone. (I know. But it was so worth the try! 😀 )
I hope I’ll have more to report at some point…
Milkyway
Hi John Michael,
Weren’t that lot an exciting bunch? Kept us all entertained with their shenanigans. Smartest in the room, apparently. Such antics as theirs, makes me wonder if our definition of ‘smarts’ favours one group of folks, over the rest of us? In keeping with my recent theme of economic comments: More dollars than sense! 🙂
What you’ve written is likely. Incidentally, that trick also props up lots of onshore activity as well – that’s where the story begins. The folks with their hands on the policy levers in your country appear to have failed to be prudent in that regard, and may not be able to alter their policies when circumstances change (as is the case nowadays). I believe that your lot spend something crazy like three trillion (you read that number correctly) each year more than they earn and that’s pumping up the economic balloon in the west. That’s a problem because the additional supply of additional IOU’s has to be gotten rid of in an acceptable way, otherwise there’s more dollars chasing the same amount of stuff (or less stuff) and economists call that outcome: Inflation.
What we’re facing economically is not an actively hostile response, it’s far worse in some respects: We’ve decided you’re no longer required.
In the recession of the early 1990’s I was made redundant when unemployment was 10%. A brutal lesson, but one which I’ve taken to heart and accepted as a current and even a future possibility. That possibility is not even on your policy folks radar based on the way they’re acting. Sorry to say.
To use a seasonal metaphor, after summer comes fall, then winter.
I’m beginning to comprehend why you don’t write about this subject nowadays.
Cheers
Chris
FourSidedCircle,
would you have any recommendations for resources to learn more about the methods you are using in your gardening? I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea, for example, how to “calcine beef bones” and wonder what’s involved (and am curious about more in general).
Thanks!
#151
Ban gasoline-powered leaf blowers!
Make America Rake Again!
One of the most telling events with regard to the ongoing collapse is the pension riots in France. As Western civilization declines these generous pensions can not be paid no matter what kind of tax structure is enacted. It is logical that the French would be on the Vanguard here as they have the some of the most generous benefits and a grand tradition of large scale public protests. The last of the surplus from the previous decades of industrial growth has been strip-mined. And the Imperial wealth pump is sputtering and spitting out broken gears. I think Putin and XI just put the last nail in the colonial game this monday. From now on it is a downhill road for support from the governments of the west for it’s peoples, but this will not go down well so we are in for a decade or more of turmoil.
“And now for something completely unexpected… One of the more unusual characters whose substack I occasionally view is Paul Kingsnorth: the atheist-turned-Orthodox-Christian who lives in Ireland. Even though he is Orthodox, Paul feels and respects the spiritual roots of the country he lives in (hence the Green Man graphic associated with his substack). Anyhow, in this week’s entry he talks about how the ichthus was an important symbol for the early Christians to be able to identify each other right under the Romans’ noses and suggests something similar be used for the rising tribe who reject the Machine. And what he puts forward as a symbol has TENTACLES! Indeed: the graphic presented is a background of flames (in black) with a jellyfish (in white) in the foreground.
“In case anybody thinks that I’m just making this up, here it is: https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/two-podcasts-and-some-jellyfish?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
My brain is now officially fried.”
—
NO MY BRAIN IS FRIED!
wow… i’m doing errands today taking time off from my sketching and coming up with ideas BUT THE EL GATO-inspired “BE UNGOVERNABLE” is all “tentacles” in my head as craaaaazy flourishes in the lettering ends. like pen and ink fancy spencerian calligraphic tails that go mad. i wanted something that would screen well in one color and be thick enough for rough cloth to not lose detail.
i’m gonna put up closer-to-final sketches later for feedback to make sure any bad ideas don’t go through without my awareness. but yeah… the Hellenistic sculpture of “Laocoon”…
i’ve gotta go read Kingsnorth because i also want to help devise a logo or symbols or sets of symbols that are winks in real life. i’ve switched my clothing idea from custom refined casual arty stuff to yelling..somehow.
i’m struggling because i’m lurching between the I’VE GOT IT! phase and the MAN I SUCK part. that’s where i am now. i think i’m insane and either too late or too early… and i don’t know what we need artistically and i felt too audacious to offer a symbol or sign.
but what you wrote?
MY BRAIN IS FRIED.
x
erika
Platypus, India seems like a very likely major power to me too. They don’t have the serious economic troubles China will be facing as its export-based economy breaks down in the post-globalization world, and they’re already hard at work on a blue-water navy and the other requirements of great power status. It’s quite possible that they’ll have the brains to let Russia and China do the hard work of toppling the US and then step into the vacuum thus created.
Sunlight, hmm. That’s an interesting take on Ezekiel; other scholars see it as a visionary experience.
Samurai_47, thank you! My next deindustrial work is a full-length novel, so rather long for graphic novel fodder, but we’ll see what comes next.
Blue Sun, India isn’t part of the alliance because neutrality is a very good position to be in just now. It can stand back from the fracas, garner benefits from both sides, and prepare to step into a position as a global power when the current contenders are all reeling from the struggle.
Mark L, the key to US dollar dominance is the agreement the US and Saudi Arabia made in 1971, in which the Saudis agreed to accept only US dollars for their oil in exchange for security guarantees from the US. That meant that everybody who wanted to buy oil needed plenty of dollars, and that plus US exports made the US dollar the currency everyone had to have. Now? None of that is true, but all the world’s large banks still have vast amounts of US dollars, and switching away from the dollar would make those holdings lose most of their value in a hurry, placing many of those banks at risk of failure. So they cycle away from it at a pace that won’t roil the markets too much.
J.L.Mc12, that makes sense. In post-Roman times, bits of Roman gold and silver had a long life as prized possessions in Dark Age noble households.
Guillem, I’m delighted to hear this! I don’t always hear promptly about foreign rights sales, so I wasn’t aware of the Spanish edition yet.
Again, every time I think the US establishment has plumbed the depths of drool-spattered, slack-jawed, blank-eyed stupidity, they go and do something to demonstrate that they’re about to go even deeper. I’m beginning to wonder if IQs can go into negative numbers.
SMJ, I’d have to look into it when I have the time.
Morfran, good question. I don’t think so, since the concept of the transcendent One is just as common in polytheisms such as Hinduism as it is in monotheist faiths.
Engineer, thanks for this. That’s a very common type of experience, and if occult tradition is anything to go by, you did in fact have the chance to encounter your mother in the after-death state.
Milkyway, it’s still very hopeful.
Chris, I’ll have more to say on the subject in due time, but right now there isn’t much point in it.
Clay, exactly. I expect comparable fusses to be made as the welfare state here in the US shuts down. I know a fair number of people on disability, for example, who are perfectly capable of working — they’ve just figured out how to game the system so they don’t have to. I don’t imagine they’re going to be happy when that stops working.
#180
“Ban gasoline-powered leaf blowers!
Make America Rake Again!”
Good one! How about?
“Ban gas-powered automobiles!
Make America Walk Again!”
(Except I don’t like bans…..)
JMG, I recently read Peter Zeihan’s latest book. He seems to think the US is the major power who is best positioned to thrive in the coming decades, compared to China, Russia, and much of Europe. Are you familiar with his work or his perspective? If so, what main factor do you think he’s failing to consider when it comes to the US and its prospects going forward?
JMG, I have been an AI sceptic forever. But ChatGPT4 has shaken me out of that. Its capabilities are surprising, astonishing and sometimes terrifying.
It can write copy. Really well. In any style and voice you choose.
It can parse and summarize dumps of data accurately.
Overnight it has rendered 90% of copywriters and call centre operators unemployed. Plenty of lawyers, accountants, coders and corporate flacks too.
Other tools are doing the same to graphic designers and other creatives.
It can’t innovate. It cannot truly create. But what it can do is game changing.
Here is a little example:
I asked ChatGPT to “Write 500 words on the myth of progress in the essay style and voice of john michael greer”.
Here is a sample:
“In our contemporary world, few beliefs are as deeply ingrained in the collective psyche as the conviction that progress is an unqualified good. This pervasive notion, which permeates every aspect of our lives, has become the cornerstone of the modern creed—a creed that has led to unprecedented material wealth for some, but at the same time, has plunged our planet and our societies into an accelerating spiral of crises. To challenge the myth of progress is to challenge the very foundations upon which our culture and civilization rest, and it is with this spirit of inquiry that we must delve into the heart of this matter.
The myth of progress, at its core, posits that the inexorable march of science, technology, and human endeavor will inevitably lead to a brighter and more equitable future for all. This faith in progress is a relatively recent invention, born from the ashes of the Enlightenment and fueled by the astonishing achievements of the Industrial Revolution. In the centuries since, it has insinuated itself into every facet of our lives, becoming a seemingly incontrovertible truth. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the myth of progress is just that—a myth. It is a narrative we have constructed, a story we tell ourselves in order to make sense of our world and our place within it. But like all myths, it is founded on a selective interpretation of history, one that ignores or downplays the myriad consequences of our relentless pursuit of progress.
To begin, we must recognize that the myth of progress is predicated upon the notion of linear advancement—a belief that with each passing generation, we are becoming smarter, more efficient, and more capable of solving the problems that have plagued humanity since time immemorial. This line of thinking suggests that the sum total of human knowledge and expertise is always increasing, and that as we move forward through time, we are steadily ascending the ladder of civilization.
Yet, this view of history is inherently flawed. It disregards the cyclical nature of human existence, the rise and fall of empires, and the countless civilizations that have crumbled under the weight of their own hubris. It is a narrative that privileges the material over the spiritual, the quantitative over the qualitative, and the new over the old. In doing so, it obfuscates the fact that the advances we have made in science and technology have not necessarily translated into a commensurate improvement in our quality of life, our happiness, or our wisdom. Indeed, it is all too easy to point to the myriad ways in which our so-called progress has created new problems even as it has solved old ones: the devastation wrought by climate change, the erosion of social cohesion in the face of rampant individualism, and the spiritual poverty of a society that values the acquisition of material goods above all else.”
It is worth setting up a free account and playing with it. If for no other reason than to glimpse the wrecking ball coming our way.
Citrine Eldritch Platypus and blue sun, I have for some time thought that American hegemony in the Pacific would be replaced by an alliance between Japan, Australia and Canada with India as a friendly partner controlling and patrolling the Indian Ocean. Canada may seem quiescent now, but wait until either the USA or China make their move to dominate the warming Arctic.
I am no expert on geopolitics either, but much can be learned by reading history and looking at maps. What I think China wants is access to the Arctic and the natural resources of Siberia. As for our foreign policy elites irrational burning hatred of Russia, Eastern Europe and the Russian Pale is where many of their parents and grandparents came from. The seductive ideology called ‘multiculturalism’ encourages these folks to believe that they are above such things as national interest. They are “citizens of the world”, the USA is where they temporarily reside.
I will try and get the real figures at some point, I wish I had taken notes as this calendar year has progressed.
The data point is again about the unreliability of the electrical grid in in my area. The outage I am in now will end up almost a 6 day outage. 3 weeks ago I had about a 6 day outage. I think I lost power for a day or two in between. January was so many outages, 4 days off, 3 or 4 on, 2 off etc…
They are running generators out on the main road for the internet transmission wires. Internet fiberoptic cables, and now most of the landline telepohone miles are also fiber optic need repeaters every so many miles. Outside in the constant hum of other peoples generators ruinning constantly. I don’t have one. Anyway, propane trucks are driving around refilling 250 or 500 gallon propane tanks to run some peoples whole house generators. I have heard that people have run thru it in 2 weeks.
SO I am thinking of the comments on all electric homes and induction ranges. And, I heard in the news that quite a few SF Bay Area areas are banning, not the stoves, but gas water heaters and furnaces. This is being done by the Air Resource Boards. Not elected representatives. As mentioned previously, this is not an easy switch for people. These appliances in the US are 240V and most regular outlets are 120V. A lot of houses have 100Amp or less service to the house, not the “new” all electric house standard of 200amps. Many water heaters are close to living areas or and in small closets. Heat pump electric water heaters must have a certain large amount of cubic space around them, and they are noisy, so I have been told. I asked a fire rebuild that is all electric and he said the fan noise is noisy, but theirs is in the garage and the garage doesn’t even have a connecting wall to the house, so not an issue for him. Yes, he is PMC and thinks everyone should just do this. The large heat pump furnaces they think should replace the natural gas furnaces for those homes are the ones with the one large outside compressor that is large and noisy like an air-conditioning unit. This also means all those homes will now have air conditioning and run it during the summer, if they do this conversion. An awful lot of SF Bay Area homes do not presently have air conditioning. As noted, the installation of these will be exceedingly expensive, especially in the greater SF Bay Area where labor costs are astronomical. The electricity rates in that area are .30 to .42 per kWH, depending on time of day. I don’t know what an electrician will run them, $100 an hour ? This is not my county,so I can’t say much about it yet. I wonder that people are not demonstrating. But, I think maybe not as the ones too broke to comply know they just won’t comply and we will have people buying furnaces and water heaters in Nevada or Oregon and bringing them back to install while forgoing the permit, just don’t tell the county it broke, how will they know ? Word of mouth of the compliant installers who will do this cash under the table….
Going full circle in this ramble. I actually live in an all electric home, built int eh mid ’70’s when that seemed a good idea. I have no range or water heating in the interminable electric outages. It is draining, this winter is very draining as some of my preps for this are broken. But then again, I am fortunate as I have a wood stove that is just a couple years old. It doeIt is not so easy to cook on, but I can prepare simple foods and heat the house. The days and days without internet are fine. But some days, the telephone company are not keeping up with their power to their lines and that is more potentially dangerous. Anyways, it is tough to be in all electric houses as electric service becomes more unreliable, and we are like the canaries int eh coal mine on this, and the rest of the state is not paying attention to us keeling over here and goes on with poor thought out policies
Take care and keep warm
Atmospheric River
@JMG
Regarding India –
I find your analysis interesting, and I’m sure you have your reasons for considering India as an upcoming major power. While I have absolutely no arguments with that part, what gets me worried at times is the thought of what comes after we attain that status, and the reason for that is ecology.
I believe you once mentioned about Chinese history being a series of boom-and-bust cycles. I think the same is true in our case too. An important but usually unmentioned reason behind the longevity of Indic civilization is the fact that after the collapse of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization, the people in the resulting Dark Age society learned their lessons about civilizational collapse due to inept handling of the ecosystems said civilization depends upon, and the descendants of these people who built the classical Indic civilization starting sometime around the 15th century BCE kept this in mind by way of including pro-ecology ideas in sacred and epic literature. These were put into practice, too – the Greek author Megasthenes noted the judicious use of farmland and protection of forests in the Mauryan Empire. Thus, while we had collapses of empires (Maurya, Gupta), we always recovered from the fall and moved into another cycle.
However, this time, I fear the situation is different. Modern India has become rich, but as a society, we have completely forgotten the pro-ecology behaviour hardwired into cultural habits that were kept alive as late as our grandparents’ generation. The ‘consumer culture’ of America that you have critiqued, has caught on here too. ‘Use and throw’ has become quite common here (although less than the West), as have a never-ending stream of ‘festival sales’ on Amazon and other companies’ sites, which promote buying stuff much more frequently than you did some 15 years ago – as a child, I would get new clothes twice a year, once on my birthday, and once for Diwali; and discounts for clothing stores would be relatively fewer in number than they are now. However, you now have discounts and special sales offers for an ever-increasing number of festivals, as also ‘Friendship day’, ‘Mother’s day’, etc., which just are a tool meant to induce mindless consumption. What the ecological cost of all this is, is something that no one wants to think about, much less address.
As a result, it is very much possible that this will be Indic civilization’s last boom-and-bust cycle. Most likely our fate will be like that of the Maya (who too survived multiple cycles until the final decline and fall), who eventually got eclipsed by the Aztecs. That said, what do you think could be the fate of Hinduism? I believe Hinduism might survive in Russia and/or North America, albeit in a very different form from the way it is practiced in the Indian Subcontinent, but I’m not entirely sure.
Orion,
Thanks for the information. You’re right about the physical aspect of it, but what’s interesting is the inner transformation along that, it’s truly remarkable. But another thing I’ve noticed is how the authorities on this subject emphasized the importance of blessing and protection before and after the invocation of the violet flame, it’s that strong and effective (I’m reminded of JMG’s mention of violet colour breathing in his Druidry Handbook).
So I can see how this might harm or delude some if they used it the way we use most energy resources on our planet. A moral discipline and personal enlightenment should be right there when we are using it. It’s a characteristic I’ve noticed in the New Age communities and how they deal with spirituality as if they were going to a shopping mall! It’s sad because I do believe the early and founding teachings of this current are valuable.
In case this has not been mentioned previously, anyone looking for yet another analysis showing the unfeasibility of quickly and painlessly transitioning to net-zero carbon can find one here, published just a few days ago: https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2023/03/Kelly-Net-Zero-Progress-Report-USA-.pdf
Part of the executive summary: The cost to 2050 will comfortably exceed $12 trillion for electrification projects, and $35 trillion for improving the energy efficiency of buildings. A work-force comparable in size to the health sector will be required for 30 years, including a doubling of the present number of electrical engineers. The bill of specialist materials is of a size that, for the USA alone, is several times the global annual production. On the manpower front, one will have to rely on the domestic workforce, as everywhere else in the world is aiming for the same target. If they were not doing so, the value of the USA-specific target would be moot. The scale of this project suggests that a war footing and a command economy will be essential, as major cuts to other favoured forms of expenditure, such as health, education and defence, will be needed.
JMG
While on the subject of gemstones, something that I’ve been wondering about is the ethics of gemstone mining. As bad as deforestation is, the trees will grow back within a few generations, but when gems are mined it can take millennia for the rocks to “grow” back, if they do so at all. While gems have always been mined the way it is currently done is hundreds of times more intense, widespread and brutal than how humans usually used to source gemstones in the past.
Apart from the aesthetic repulsion one must feel about so many mineral environments that took so long to form being plundered and razed, there is also a spiritual repulsion since if one accepts the existence of earth elementals then the widespread mining of gems can be seen as the destruction of the homes, bodies, maybe even art of a class of spiritual being.
Do you have any thoughts on this subject?
JMG, your experience with professed Satanists is interesting for me, because I have one really troublesome relative who has professed Satanism, but as he is a fundamentalist atheist who rejects all religions outright, I took his declaration to be his way of punking the Christian right and just ignored it. He lives near Salem, and the group he describes seems to be a gaggle of intellectuals. And I thought, well that’s nice if he has a community of like-minded people.
The problem is he is a very disruptive person–like has been your experience with Satanists. He’s manipulative and I think he argues for the sake of argument, to draw emotional responses from people. Worst of all, I have reason to suspect he shares those responses with others in the family.
I have sworn off of communicating with him before, but since he is family, I have felt like I have to keep up some minimal level of contact with him, and try to be pleasant, especially if he is addressing messages specifically to me.
Given your experience, though, I think I have good reason for refraining from any further contact with him, and if asked I can say it’s nothing personal, but I know someone else who has found professed Satanists to be disruptive.
Regarding the Transcendent One, I think most of Shinto lacks that concept, but the Fuji Faith Shugendo sect does, named as Go-Ku Fuyo Mirokujin in their liturgy, right after the Ancestral Trinity and before any other god. My late mentor pointed out, “That’s the One the Christians call God.” “Go-Ku” is an honorific like Aum, “Fuyo” combines Fuji and Sun, indicating the highest, “Miroku” is a special concept in the Fuji Faith, related to the Buddhist concept of Maitreya, and representing future hope. “Jin” is god.
hi JMG an indian here
don’t you think the efforts of pre industrial economies like INDIA, Vietnam to industrialize themselves are largely futile in nature given the end of fossil fuel age?
Also how do you see the future of countries like japan which are largely devoid of natural resources and their economies being based upon export model of globalization?
Re: India as major power
Both the United Kingdom and Portugal have premiers of Indian heritage. This seems to be like a pretty significant indicator of who might be calling the shots in post-collapse Western Europe. A very probable fault line for future civil conflict in the West is between Wahabbi insurgents and everyone else, so I can imagine Western elites brokering deals with India in return for military assistance.
Have been looking into Indigenous Australian concepts of time since I’d really like to be able to mark transitions appropriately and better predict gardening weather. We average a decent amount of rain but it comes in all sorts of odd ways – weekly summer tropical depressions one year, fierce winter antarctic storms the next, months of autumn and spring drizzle the next, with some hot dry bushfire years thrown in for variety. The first and last frost dates can vary by as much as three months. The El Nino/La Nina measurements are broadly helpful but not something I can do myself in a deindustrial future.
Anyway, looks like my area probably has 6 recognised seasonal periods, of different lengths and variable between years, marked solely by certain animal and plant behaviour. However, of equal importance is the 11ish year sun activity cycle which yields a progression of 9 distinct weather patterns and begins/ends when sun activity is strong enough to push the aurora to Sydney in coincidence with some other astronomical markers. The two cycles don’t necessarily match up so can moderate or exacerbate the resulting weather but in a predictable way. Very interesting and it gives me a structure to compare with my weather records and an idea of what further things I need to look out for. Also hope that there is a pattern in the madness of our weather.
I also came across some incidental information on the Bureau of Meteorology site regarding a further long term cycle of 12,000 to 20,000 years referred to as ‘the Time of Fire’ and ‘Time of Ice’ with transition period between each time. I guess this refers to the most recent glaciations since it also describes sea level changes. It’s interesting that it follows a similar cycle length to that recently reported for the Sahara green/dry and that neither match up well with current broad temperature estimates of the last 100,000 years.
“Morfran, good question. I don’t think so, since the concept of the transcendent One is just as common in polytheisms such as Hinduism as it is in monotheist faiths.”
Very true of course. And IIRC you discussed in A World Full of Gods how religious experience (of a particular deity) can give way in polytheist traditions too to experiences of Unity.
I guess I’m attempting to apply the logic in A World Full of Gods (I read the original edition) in a way that suggests a reason for the exclusive monotheist claim that isn’t solely due to metaphysical flattery or human scriptural/theological dogma. If diversity of religious experience is the primary evidence for theological plurality/diversity, perhaps worship of certain deities fosters the exclusive monotheist “tendency” in their worshippers just as a, perhaps unintentional, result of that deity’s features. I’m very much spit-balling here though…
Thanks
Morfran.
Mary Bennett: Agree about blowers…. Except for the authoritarian aspect… Which is what I was criticizing….
In regards to why “liberals” have become everything they used to criticize, Matt Tiabbi wrote this:
“I have a theory about what happened to America in this regard. After 9/11, people were scared, and they fell for a succession of propaganda campaigns convincing them that the hole in Fortress America, the chink in our national armor, was our system of democratic rights.”
From Matt Tiabbi’ latest article at https://www.racket.news/p/people-can-win?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1042&post_id=110476228&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
Much more in the article.
Fits with what I said about 9/11…
@smj, if I may: the analogy has some worth for the 4th century in the west, not so much for the first three centuries, nor for the east, where most people chose to antagonize the Roman government by choosing a different flavour of Christianity from the officially approved one.
Here is an interesting take on future China/India relations. In recent years the Hong Kong born movie star Jackie Chan has taken to making big budget “propaganda” movies in Main Land China. These are no more propaganda than James Bond or Top Gun are western propaganda but they telegraph the way that the Chinese government wants their citizens to think. A couple years ago he made a movie called ” Kung Fu Yoga” with his long time producer Stanley Tong. In a nutshell it is a movie about the Chinese and Indians coming together to save the world. Along the way it has Chinese martial arts, music and Indian Bollywood touches. The ending has a giant Bollywood style dance number with the entire Chinese and Indian cast dancing together in Harmony. This was one of the highest grossing movies of all time in China and also did well in India. I think this very clearly shows how the Chinese are thinking about the future.
JMG – Re: disability
I know a young man who I hesitate to call “disabled”, but who is certainly “impaired”. Being unable to work whenever he is called by the boss (due to regular medical appointments), he simply isn’t competitive in the labor market. If we were construct a probability distribution of “ability to work”, the threshold between “able” and “disabled” is not a threshold of strength, agility, training, or intelligence, but “can you come when you’re called?” (Obviously, there are self-employed situations where that isn’t relevant, but you know the challenges of building a self-employment business from scratch.) The next threshold is: can you earn enough money to pay for your health care and health-care insurance, and where public transportation isn’t feasible, can you pay for a car and (mandatory) car insurance?
@Robert Morgan
An excellent set of data points on the costs to shift to a “green’ energy economy. But they leave out the most damning cost of all, the extra energy required to accomplish this. In a nutshell, to transition to a fully wind and solar energy grid of a similar size to what we have now would require us reallocating 100% of the energy we use now for the next 10 years to build these projects. That might have had a slim chance in 1965 when we still had surplus oil to spare, but not today. Most people would not be willing to live without heat, lights, cars or Tv’s for the 10 years it would take to shift enough energy to this project.
Thank you JMG for clarifying. So the trick is about those consciousness outside me that are on the same level as my subconscious. My theory is that my subconscious is affected by the ritual, and everything it happens to be in contact with, becomes affected too.
Nati, that’s very helpful. I’m usually so concerned about the big issues that forgot about the petty ones. Maybe a daily divination about minor things is what I need.
Orion @ 184, Agreed. I don’t like bans either. I also don’t like the kind of “Have some compassion”, “friendly” social pressure that expects me to spend money I don’t have hiring somebody’s client to blow dry my plants into extinction.
Since nothing is off-topic… Moments of the Mysterious
Aimy is my 9 months old puppy. I know her for nearly all her life, and she does not cease to surprise me.
Once, when I was walking her family (the owner asked me to), i.e. her, her mother, father and brother, the puppies were chasing their mum so well, that she fell into a nearly frozen pond with unstable banks. I managed to rescue her without drowning myself; however, as I was taking her out of the water, Aimy jumped in. Nobody was chasing her…
On another occasion, Aimy saw some children sledding. As I did not provide her with a sledge, she sat down and slid down the hill on her butt…
Since a very young age, she has been displaying a curious personal (dogal? :-)) trait: she would not hunt anything that she could actually catch; no; birds, especially birds of prey were, and still are, her main focus. About a week ago she scared – or rather surprised – two birds of prey slightly larger than a common buzzard, but definitely larger than her. One of them came back and was circling above us for quite some time; probably trying to understand…I was relieved it did not want to take a closer look.
And today, Aimy became friends with neighbors’ hens. Literally. She came to the little fence dividing their and my father’s plot. Leaning her front paws against the fence (thus bending it), she started wagging her tail in a very friendly manner, and remained in that position, before the hens started flocking near her. She is a dachshund, so I thought: maybe a new hunting strategy? No, as soon as the hens were gathered, Aimy proudly and happily left the place…
Now, life truly is mysterious! 🙂
With regards,
Markéta
@ Clay Dennis & JMG
RE: plastic straws and natural gas
After rather recently learning, from somewhere in one of the recent posts, that barely any of the plastic that individuals recycle actually *gets* recycled, I was looking into the effectiveness of paper recycling the other day.
It occurred to me that if governments had an interest in banning little pieces of plastic, they would have done much better to ban the glassine windows on envelopes, rather than plastic straws. That might actually make a difference, because it would allow more paper to be recycled.
Then it occurred to me that the banning of plastic straws is more of a hassle for “consumers” than for corporations. Whereas banning glassine envelope windows would be more of a hassle for corporations than consumers. That’s my theory.
I wonder if that’s what is going on with natural gas. If we reduce America’s use of natural gas, we can sell more to Germany. At a higher price, of course. Certainly the timing is suspicious.
Aziz!
Agreed! Thanks for the response!
Yesterday I wrote out a ritual for fluorescence or “violet flame”. I plan on performing this ritual soon and posting it to my YouTube soon. Will share that as well. I understand that this ritual could easily be perceived as “just another new age bunch of…”
But I feel that this came from my soul. As JMG would say, “Your mileage may vary!”
I haven’t changed what I wrote initially yesterday based on your comment:
“Welcome to this space.
We are going to perform the ritual of “Violet Flame Revelation”.
To prepare us for the Violet Flame revelation we start by plunging ourselves into darkness. We return to the womb. To a place of darkness. We turn out the lights in recognition of the limits of our bodily form and the limits of our senses. We place ourselves in a sacred place of darkness, which will allow us to see more of the unseen and prepare our eyes to receive this revelation of light.
We bring forth this rock crystal of fluorite. A rock with a known essence of revelation. We place this rock on the altar in a place of reverence in order to glorify all of existence, all of the unknown, all of the universal being of which we are all but a small connected part.
Here I have the “Light of Violet Flame”.
We call forth the violet flame!
We call you forth from the Universal Being!
From the unknown, from the infinite and from the unseen.
We ask that you reveal yourself to us in your infinite and eternal glory.
That we may find joy and faith, peace and healing, in the revealing.
We call you to reveal to us your presence from beyond our senses.
That we may be awakened to your presence and that through this awakening we may see a small part of the universal being’s glory.
We call forth for the Violet Flame to be revealed!
Upon this rock we build our faith. We pray to learn more about our lives by this revelation. We pray that we remember the small part of the essence that has been revealed here today. We pray that this revelation of an underlying truth reminds us of the underlying truth of all existence. That it will remind us that we are a part of the interconnected web of all existence! That it will fortify our spirit and renew our connection with life and the universal being so we can live strong lives filled with joy, kindness, compassion, intellect, justice, service, and love. This revelation of the glory reminds us that our soul is also part of the glory and we pray that, just as the violet flame has been revealed, our souls are also revealed. Amen.”
I am wondering if you might share some thoughts about what you think is going on with the protests in France and what their significance might be. Thanks.
Atmospheric River
Where do you live, if you don’t mind my asking? It seems you are implying somewhere in California. I spend part of the year there, but have not been there for this crazy winter.
Stepnen
I know fb is flee-worthy, but I just discovered a publicly-viewable group focused on energetic agriculture. Lots of people doing lots of experiments and getting very interesting results (and also including references to ancient temple technologies as well as radionics)… https://www.facebook.com/groups/953499178440170/
don’t think so , imo you should read about kautilya, the greatest political thinker India and his book arthashastra.
also from Indian point of view we will definitely try to free tibet from china only after that any peace is possible
@Lathethechuck and JMG,
re disability and the ability to come when called being critical for maintaining paid work – Lathethechuck is absolutely correct, and this is a very large part of my problems. Medical conditions with fluctuating symptoms are a pig to deal with, and employers will only make so many allowances.
Unfortunately, it’s a big issue with self-employment in many situations, too. For example, if you’re making jewelry and selling it at craft fairs, you HAVE to be able to attend those craft fairs. Or if you’re teaching private lessons or tutoring, you can’t keep cancelling on your students at the last minute. So you have to ask what you can do on an average bad day and plan within that. And if that’s not enough to do what you need, that’s goodbye to that self-employment idea.
And if your condition(s) worsen and you suddenly have more bad days, then you can lose what you’ve spent months or years building very easily, whether its a job or your own business. Everything is super unstable and you tend to end up putting in massive amounts of effort and seeing little or no financial reward for that effort, especially in self-employment.
I also have the additional issues of a low cap on the amount of any one thing I can do even on good days, low energy levels, and stuff I just plain can’t do ever, but the fluctuations are a giant part of my problems and very hard to work around. If I could reliably do what I can do on good days every day, I would probably not have ended up on disability.
Just because people need assistance doesn’t mean it will stick around through the decline, though. Frankly, I would have given up on trying to make money long ago if I didn’t know about how tough the future is likely to be. So instead, I’m still trying… but thus far I’ve mostly found lots of different ways to fail at making useful amounts of money while doing stuff that hurts. It’s pretty discouraging, and I’ve had worse luck with self-employment than with employment when it comes to actually making it pay. Though it is more interesting, enjoyable and often less painful than employment.
I want to add that I didn’t search for or read about any of the other rituals for violet flame until just now, after I posted my ritual.
viduraawakened @ 189, in the USA today, Hindu worship is pretty much an upper class and elitist phenomenon, and has not spread in any noticeable way outside of the circle of wealthy and (mostly, I gather) high caste Indians who profess it. I will say that migrants from India are probably our most respected minority group, partly because they don’t attempt to force their religion down other people’s throats, don’t expect us to close schools and businesses for their religious holidays, and are generally seen as good, law-abiding productive people. What I have noticed is that various forms and flavors of neo-paganism are taking hold among American working class folks, especially the young adults. Mostly, this seems to center around invoking of classical and Nordic deities. The mainline Christian denominations abandoned working Americans right around the time the workers were no longer able to afford dress up for fancy event expenses. Meanwhile their Evangelical and Fundamentalist counterparts managed to discredit themselves with some very unwise political advocacy. Beating the war drums for Iraq was bad enough, but to follow that with shilling for the thrice married Trump…was a bridge too far for many, again, especially among the young generation for whom, so far as I see, conservative Christianity is simply not an option.
I suspect that phenomenon may be part of what prompted the ill-informed and illogical screed from Naomi Wolf, which has been referred to here before. Pagans are not going to be persuaded into the gung ho support of Israel which we have seen from Evangelicals and Fundamentalists. Give pagans a free trip to the Middle East and they will be looking for Greek and Roman shrines where they can worship. Wolf’s screed prompted some very well taken criticisms, on her own substack, on our host’s covid discussion pages, and from Mr. Dodson who also sometimes posts here. What I would like to add is first that there is no excuse for a privileged and credentialed person purveying the kind of misinformation and superficialities she displayed. One example: she all but implies that the reason the non Canaanite Mediterranean peoples did not practice child sacrifice–never mind that there had been no blood sacrifices of any kind in ancient Egypt, or so I have read in the works of reputable Egyptologists–is because of Abraham substituting a ram for his son, Isaac. I guess she is a Bible literalist when it suits her. Christians would, of course, say that the practice of any blood sacrifice ended with the Last Supper.
What she doesn’t say is that the Greeks had their own story on the same subject. That is of course the myth of Tantalus, progenitor of the House of the Atredae, who served up to the Gods a supper of his own dismembered and stewed son. The Olympians were so offended that they placed a curse on Tantalus which reverberated down the generations till the time of the Trojan War.
Ian, I think he’s smoking his shorts. None of his arguments seem at all convincing to me; I really wonder how often he gets outside and goes for a walk to see what life is like in the other 99% of the United States. If you want to know the reasons why I disagree with him, my book Decline and Fall covers the ground quite adequately.
Darren, that kind of pastiche is extremely easy to do — all you have to do is sample a sufficiently large body of text, online or off. Lousy writers have been making a good living that way for centuries; I could teach you how to do it in an afternoon. That said, I’m quite sure you’re right that a lot of corporate flacks are going to lose their jobs, and find out what they’ve been putting the working class through for the last fifty years. As for getting a free account, I’d rather dine on live tarantulas; I have zero interest in wasting my time on the latest geek toy, thank you.
River, ouch. Thank you for this collection of data points — a useful look at the future.
Viduraawakened, oh, granted, in the longer run India’s facing another dark age, and probably a very difficult one. The whole world is facing that; we’ve created the first global civilization in recorded history, so it’s pretty much baked in the cake that the first recorded global dark age will follow it. Before that happens, however, India’s in a good position to become a dominant global power — and it may hold onto that status until there are no more global powers.
Robert M, thanks for this. Obviously it’s not going to happen; just as obviously, plenty of handwaving and make-believe will be deployed to pretend that it’s going to happen.
J.L.Mc12, well, I don’t wear or use gemstones, so you can probably gauge my views!
Patricia O, that’s absolutely par for the course. The whole mythos of Satanism is about being adversarial and violating boundaries, so yes, Satanists are adversarial and violate boundaries — i.e., they’re jerks. The best thing to do is to walk away. Thank you for the info about the Fuji faith — I wasn’t aware of that.
Dhonos, in the long run, of course it’s futile, but those fossil fuels will be burnt by somebody — we’ve seen already that all the talk about swearing off fossil fuels hasn’t led to even the slightest decrease in their use, and the people who are loudest about insisting that everyone else ought to stop using fossil fuels are generally the first to insist that they’ve got to have their jet vacations and their fancy SUVs. That being the case, since India is a rising power, it’s likely to burn quite a bit before the last wells run dry.
Luke, that’s quite plausible.
TamHob, fascinating. Thanks for the data points.
Morfran, I suppose that’s plausible.
Lathechuck, I’m not denying that there are people who ought reasonably to receive disability payments. I’m saying that I know quite a few people who get them, who could perfectly well work for a living. I hope you see that these statements are compatible.
Abraham, exactly.
Markéta, it’s a detail of occult theory that many pets are on the brink of the human level of consciousness, and will be human in their next incarnation; it’s not surprising that some of them would be thoughtful, clever, and weird!
Blue Sun, exactly. It’s all virtue signaling at this point, and one of the core points of virtue signaling is always that you’re supposed to inconvenience yourself to show how virtuous you are.
Jacques, I don’t know yet. I’m watching the situation as carefully as I can at this distance, wondering whether we’re going to see a Sixth Republic sometime soon.
Temporaryreality, interesting. Glad to see this happening.
Pygmycory, again, I freely grant that some people need disability. I’m simply saying that I know a good many people on it who are gaming the system.
J.L.Mc12
you can already wander through thrift stores and look for old/broken jewelry to take apart, turn into something new, and give as gifts or sell. I do this:
https://www.etsy.com/ca-fr/shop/TheEcoJewel
I just finished reading 1984 for the library book club I run.
When I last read it in high school, it hit me right in my depression. I didn’t have the experience, the wisdom or the self-esteem to hold it off at a distance and treat it as a fable rather than an accurate account of reality.
Reading it some twenty years later, it strikes me that the world of 1984 needs a sort of Lovecraftian metaphysics to make it work. Of course, we can’t really know what the world looks like outside of Airstrip One in the story, but as depicted, it requires humanity to be completely mutable, and a shattering of cause and effect, in order to allow a perpetual state of controlled insanity. In other words, a universe that is every bit as anti-human as Lovecraft’s cosmos, or more.
It’s still a difficult and worthwhile read, though.
Jmg
You don’t use gemstones? I assume that maybe you thought that I meant precious gems used only for jewellery such as diamonds and ruby. I was actually referring to any kind of mineral from apatite to zeolite, including the gems referred to in your book on natural magic which I assumed was something you would be using gemstones for, unless you exclusively work with herbs in your magic of course.
@Ian and JMnG – 185 and 216
I enjoyed Zeihan’s first book where he discussed America’s coming disengagement with the world and our great geographic advantages (no nearby enemies, great croplands connected by the world’s best internal water system). He also does bring up demographics, but only in the view of age groups.
When he talked about Turkey’s demographics without discussing the Kurdish population within Turkey you didn’t know if he was ignorant or hoping for some Turkish consulting gigs so didn’t bring up that important consideration.
His second book was fun because he was willing to make some predictions on future wars, even if they are incorrect so far. Because he did talk about a Russian war I think he is getting his time in the sun like those people who predict a depression every year get when a recession happens.
His third book didn’t do much for me, but I would agree with him that the Chinese would suffer a lot more from the end of the current trading systems than the Americans would (we are the ones with internally accessible food and a lot of other resources).
However, he has now gone all video, which I understand from a business point, but don’t want to spend the time on.
More importantly to me, he has gone all in on the western elite party line on the Ukraine war, so I don’t trust him and have stopped following him.
When you say that it was the Russians who blew up their own gas pipeline it comes back to the question of are you a liar or an idiot.
I apologize for the long response and realize it may resemble an early fan of a band that was cool and quirky but has now made it bigger and apparently sold out.
Thanks, Drew C
@ Michael W. #169: A small world indeed 🙂 I went to primary school in Hattingen in the late 80s. Came back every now and then, the last visit was maybe 10 years ago… I loved to live there as a child and I still like that place very much. I am stunned, a little bit, I have to say…
Greet Hattingen from me 🙂
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
I highly recommend the article written by occasional poster Aurelian about the current state of France. https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/understanding-whats-happening-in
Sure, there is plenty of corruption and gaming the rules in various social programs. Anyone who thinks disability is bad needs to spend some time in a welfare, TANF I believe it is now called, office. In addition to the usual incompetence and emotional neediness of the low level PMC functionaries who distribute the funds–essentially as they see fit–there is also a lively out the back door trade in ID documents. And then there is CPS. Trust me, you do not want anything to do with CPS. In my experience, never mind what you read or see on the TV, the most hated functionaries in low income neighborhoods are not the police but social workers and with good reason.
dhonos, freeing Tibet is a tall order. There is a reason why the Chinese call Tibet “Treasure Mountain”.
Hi John Michael,
The lack of wider engagement with this topic has piqued my interest. It surely means something, don’t you reckon?
I’m curious as to your mention of timing, but I guess it is a step too far to seek further clarification – after all, you did say that you were going to get back to the topic in the future and I your word is trust.
Mate, it’s happening right now, and all around us! Oh well, patience is a virtue, they tell me. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
JMG (if I may) –
I read through Darren’s ChatGPT blurb and it doesn’t sound like you at all! “We must delve into the heart of this matter”? Please. And I don’t see a single use of the phrases “put paid” or “smoking his/her/their shorts”! 😉😝
@Darren
People who do machine learning for living are still sceptical about the latest incarnation of “AI” (warning: colorful language)
https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2023/03/23/how-to-be-a-technology-charlatan
Specifically on ChatGPT4 generating text in someone’s style:
“The only way you could be impressed by this result is if you haven’t played with more primitive gizmos that run on 2005 era graphics cards, or even, say, LZW generative models. You could literally get a better result, more grammatical and in my style by using a classical compression algorithm in generative mode a la Begleiter. Adding a query parser isn’t that hard.”
Hidden in the comments is another little gem:
“To show the tech cupboard is bare:
ARPA-E is currently funding cold fusion and the EU too (CleanHME project via Horizon 2020).
https://news.newenergytimes.net/
https://www.cleanhme.eu/
But still cheaper than hot fusion (which also doesn’t work) so I don’t mind so much…”
Looks like the powers that be have finally given up on hot fusion (the tokamak type) ever bearing fruit and decided to give money cold fusion charlatans instead. They really are getting desperate.
@Mary Bennett #161: I know what you mean. I find the latest Kingsnorth post utterly perplexing.
@erica lopez #182: maybe we need to establish a Fried Brains Club. 😊 I can feel the polarities and tensions of your creative process coming right through your words. As you surely know, it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. But sooner or later it’ll all mesh and like a cold air mass meeting a hot wet air mass some massive storm of creativity will be born. Let there be lightning and thunder aplenty! If I get news of some big thunderstorm in ‘Mordor’ in coming weeks or months, I’ll say to myself, ‘ah – looks like erica has had her eureka moment’. 😊
On AI gewgaws:
JMG, it’s always a relief to hear your prosaic and grounded view of such things. I find it all incredibly tedious, but some people seem to get tremendously excited about it. I recently visited my friend, who is currently working for a bunch of spiritually-bereft tech-nerds working in the “AI alignment” field. Despite being at odds with their techno-narcissist values in almost every way, his mathematical genius and thoughtful approach to the work has led to him becoming quite popular in that scene.
As it turns out, some AI researchers are now getting interested in Jungian psychology and “demonology”, as the artefacts created by these language-modelling programs appear to be generating clusters of archetypal entities, such as the demonic “petertodd” and the benevolent angel-dragon-moon/sun/earth-goddess Leilan. The latter appears to be generated from the vast amount of anime material on the internet that makes use of world mythology.
I suggested to him, as he’s open to the possibility of non-material intelligences operating in the cosmos, that he subtly introduce the idea of prayer to divine beings to his rationalist buddies under the guise of “empowering archetypal symbols that connect with human values that will feed back into the AI supercomputer god-thing whatever”, because frankly, I think these people are in serious trouble, and they need all the help they can get. He thought I meant starting a cult of Leilan, but I suggested that sticking with established gods that haven’t appeared through a computer might be better to start with…
RE: natural gas bans
Wow, from reading various comments I didn’t realize these bans are being taken so seriously. Wasn’t it just a few years ago we were being sold “clean burning” natural gas as the way to go? And “American energy independence” and “rah rah fracking” and all that? Now all of a sudden natural gas is the bad guy?
Does anyone know the timeline of when this all started? Was it after the Nord Stream pipeline was destroyed? Because as far as I can tell it came out of nowhere and I’m really starting to think the timing is no coincidence.
It really sounds to me like the plan is to stop selling natural gas to Americans so it can be sold to Germans at double or triple the price.
I intend to found a Dreamwidth community as a book club for https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2009/02/deindustrial-reading-list.html , following Jen Richardson’s idea ( https://jenrichardson.dreamwidth.org/2638.html ). Those interested please say so (and other relevant stuff you want) at https://deketemoisont.dreamwidth.org/1715.html . Thanks for the attention.
Almost forgot the monthly Bonneville Power Administration renewable energy results for February.
For wind power the worst day was Feb 1 with 1.73% of rated capacity for the day. The best day was Feb 13 at a very respectable 89.9% of rated capacity. Average for the month was 36.1% of rated capacity.
For solar power the worst day of the month was Feb 7 at 8.3% of rated capacity. The best days was Feb 25 at 32.3% of capacity, and the monthly average was 18.9%.
Nameplate wind capacity is 2827 MW, Solar is 138 MW. Solar is rated over the whole day, so night always makes it look bad.
As for the dreaded dunkelflaute, (using the definition that both wind and solar were at less than 10% of capacity) one was in effect for 21.7% of the month, including on Feb 1. The solar panels that day put out 16.3% of their rated capacity which was the break in the 15.5 hours of nothing. Power demand that day averaged 7187 MW, or 172,488 MW-Hr for the whole day.
So, on Feb 1 the solar panels generated about 540 MW-hr of power. To supply the full load for the day would take 319 times more than are actually installed not counting battery losses both in and out and the inverter losses.
The windmills did even worse. They averaged 49 MW, or 816 MW-Hr for the day even though they total 20 times the generating capacity of the solar panels. They were completely becalmed, (my definition of less than 1% of rated power) for 30.6% of the day.
Oh, a Tesla PowerWall has a capacity of 13.5 kw-hr. To get through that day would take 532,370 of them. On a reasonably cold day my house will use 60 kw-hr, fo if the solar panels can cover the day time that leaves 40 kw-hr at night, or three PowerWalls just for my house. On a really cold day it would take four Powerwalls to get through the night as we are looking at an 80 kw-hr power demand.
Violet Flame just once more….
Moses and the burning bush could have been fluorescence.
Exodus 3:2 Moses and the burning bush: “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.“
Fluorescent dye in laundry detergent does this!
Also, if I shine a UV light on many plants, and particularly succulents, they tend to fluoresce.
Maybe it was a cloudy day that day Moses saw the angel. UV light (at least some wavelengths) goes through clouds. And a darker day would let him notice the fluorescence.
My geopolitical musings. I wonder if the dogged at all costs get Russia via Ukraine may be motivated at least in part by the possibility that Russia under Putin will not be subservient to the WEF American-European axis. I am sure China has no intentions of going along either, though Xi Jinping mouths appropriate globalist platitudes at Davos. I imagine Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and probably India think the same.
Regarding Chinese resilience I don’t believe China is denigrating its history and traditions in the suicidal way the American elite denigrates America’s culture, its past and its foundational principles, those principles are quite good I think. And the mish- mash alternatives will not revive our national vigor.
The Chinese probably regard the Anglo-American dominance since the early 1800’s as a temporary historical aberration and China will soon regain its status as the true Middle Kingdom.
Hey John, I just remembered something I was hoping to talk to you about a topic that I think might be fruitful for you to explore someday. Sorry in advance for a very long comment.
I was raised as a Mormon. I was very strong in the faith up until I turned 16 and began to scrutinize it. Eventually my faith collapsed and I became an atheist. I remained an atheist for years until I began to question materialism, and upon rejecting it, I became receptive to spirituality again. Your books helped me get to that point.
Now that I have some knowledge of (and experience with) spirituality, hermeticism, magic, and the occult, I have been looking at Mormonism and its founder, Joseph Smith, from a new perspective. Joseph and his family were certainly involved in folk magic and the occult, and this influence found its way into the faith he established.
For example, Joseph’s visit with Moroni occurred on a full moon on the autumnal equinox, on September 21, 1823, and future meetings also occurred on the autumnal equinox. The Book of Mormon was ‘translated’ with a magic peep stone. It is well known that Freemason rituals were incorporated into Mormon covenant rituals. Joseph even died with a jupiter talisman in his pocket. I’m sure there’s much more, but these are the ones I know off the top of my head. There’s a book by D. Michael Quinn called “Early Mormonism and the magic world view” that is very comprehensive.
The Mormon Church today has a very rigid black and white view of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. To them, Joseph Smith is either the one true prophet of God or a conman, there’s no other option. The Book of Mormon is either a historical document or a hoax, there’s no in between. Getting into the occult has helped me realize that there is a middle ground.
I think Joseph Smith was an inspired occultist who had real visions, but was also a deeply flawed human being. I don’t think the Book of Mormon is a historical document from real golden plates, but I don’t think it’s a total fraud either. It’s a channeled book that contains truth, but is colored by Joseph’s upbringing and cultural milieu.
I would love to hear your thoughts about this, and I would definitely read anything you write about Mormonism.
JMG – Re: disability… I understand that we are not in conflict, that there are the obviously disabled (who need daily assistance with daily life), the subtly disabled (of my acquaintance), and the “opportunistically disabled” (of your acquaintance).
Shortly after my father died, a young man with a big truck showed up to reclaim the hospital bed and accessories that had been provided for his home hospice care. After briskly packing the truck, he mentioned that he was a “totally disabled” military veteran. Okaaay. I didn’t ask exactly what the nature of his disability was. Perhaps his military experience left him psychologically unsuited to monotonous factory labor or pointless office work?
I KNOW our dog who re-invented extortion was headed for (or descended from) humanity. I think every living thing has a soul. The custom of apologizing to your food for killing it has thus always seemed sensible to me.
On the disability issue – Back in Albuquerque, the Circle I belonged to had two intelligent but seriously mentally-or-neurologically disabled women. One had been raised in a middle class family, and may still be living on disability payments and in Section 8 housing. Before I moved here, she was talking about going back to college to study psychology. When she began the Circle, she claimed to be an Indigo Child, and later settled on a more prosaic diagnosis common in s/f fandom. And, BTW, did not make it a boast or something to enjoy. Just as fact.
The other was up from serious poverty, a totally dysfunctional family, and a nasty, abusive brother who she only stood up to after he threatened to kill her cats. Her attitude toward life would make the Stoics look like pikers, and even Norse warriors look weak. She walked everywhere, and I knew her to walk five miles to be at a meeting once. She worked in call centers or at other jobs, and before I left, was taking courses in computer science in order to go into IT. Now, she WAS – is – autistic. No question. And self-supporting.
Jay, who ran the Circle, was a pre-school teacher with a degree in art education, but he was a natural counselor and healer, dishing out tough love, good Midwestern common sense and support when needed, plus encouraging both of them to draw. I watched both women blossom – the middle class one to find a home in science fiction fandom and become more socially adept than I am; the other, in confidence and self-worth and come to believe her art was not, as she judged it, ‘crap.’ BTW,, Jay also has The Sight. I never had any doubt about that. So did his favorite nephew.
There was a third member, again middle-class background, who was not disabled, but who had a flaming case of Poor Me – to the point Jay asked her to leave the Circle because “she refused to do the work.” Before I left, she was screaming at everybody, and especially her husband, using Trump as an excuse (her husband was a Republican I used to be able to talk to without him parroting the party line; she was a knee-jerk Democrat you couldn’t discuss things with at all, because she didn’t bring any thought to her opinions, just duck-speak.
And, Minerva help us, these three and I were the car pool, with Poor Me the driver. (The first two for medical reasons; me, because my night vision failed me. When every light on the road looks like Van Gogh painted it…..)
Hey All!
Can anyone shed some light on the relative energy usage of a cd player versus a record player, or ways to calculate same? It seems likely that powering up a laser to play music would use more energy, but perhaps the record player is less efficient (though more resilient).
Thanks,
Tad
JMG,
In Jim Kunstler’s latest podcast he interviews Jeffrey A. Tucker, Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute. Toward the end of the podcast, they discuss the strangeness of what is been happening to the PMC left in their response to the “evil almost dictator”, the King in Orange. Tucker basically channels you by stating that what they hated (fixate on) is what they imitated and became. I find Tucker to be a very thoughtful man and he could have realized this on his own. He also might be reading the work of a certain Druid.
Cliff, hmm! That’s an interesting analysis.
J.L.Mc12, I don’t own or use gemstones, precious or semiprecious. I wrote that book on natural magic before I became John Gilbert’s student, and learned from him the trick of charging ordinary pebbles for magical purposes. That seemed far more Druidical to me! (Well, to be fair, that, herbs, and incenses.)
Drew, thanks for this. From my perspective Zeihan completely missed three major points about the US — the first is the vulnerability of much of our cropland to chronic drought as a result of climate change, the second is the complete hollowing out of our manufacturing economy, and the third is the exhaustion of our fossil fuel resources.. Those right there make his claims about the US exceptionally dubious. As for China, I gather he didn’t notice that China shares a 2,600-mile border with another very big nation that’s a massive exporter of food and fossil fuels, and has every reason to make nice with the neighbor in question — especially when the US is throwing its weight around. That is to say, I never liked the band much in the first place!
Mary, thanks for this.
Chris, it is indeed. Wasn’t it J.K. Galbraith who said, “The end had arrived, but it was not yet in sight”?
Blue Sun, thanks for this! Come to think of it, it missed most of the squares on any self-respecting JMG bingo card.
Vlad (if I may), what??!!! This is like seeing Richard Dawkins fall on his knees and accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior right out in public. If ARPA-E is funding cold fusion, they’re literally bucking the entire physics establishment — and that means there must be blind screaming panic going on among the elites. Wow.
Luke, you’re welcome and thank you. It doesn’t surprise me at all that AI researchers are starting to figure out what’s going on — the random samplings used by chatbots are, in a sense, a form of divination, so it’s not at all unlikely that they’re picking up on the paraphysical realms. I hope they can avoid getting eaten.
Blue Sun, you know, that may be the best explanation of the natural gas ban fracas I’ve heard yet.
Siliconguy, thanks for this. Not impressive…
Moose, that seems fairly likely to me.
Enjoyer, Joseph Smith is a fascinating presence in American occult history. It’s quite common for successful occultists here to end up founding religions, and Smith is arguably the most successful of the lot. Of course he was a mage; I have no reason to doubt that he actually had a conversation with a spiritual being named Moroni — mages do such things all the time — and while the Book of Mormon isn’t literally true, it doesn’t need to be in order to be spiritually valid. (As Sallustius said, “myths are things that never happened but always are.”) I’m familiar with Quinn’s book, and think very highly of it. You might also enjoy The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844 by John L. Brooke, which traces Mormon symbolism and tradition straight back to Renaissance Hermeticism. I know the leadership of the Mormon church can’t handle this, but I hope that someday Mormon occultists can pick up where Smith left off and get to work on the inner dimensions of their homegrown American faith.
Lathechuck, thanks for this. “Disabled” these days covers a lot of territory, not all of it legitimate!
Your Kittenship, makes sense to me.
Patricia M, thanks for this. It really is a mixed bag, isn’t it?
Tad, I’ll have to leave this to those who know how to crunch the numbers. Anyone?
John, delighted to hear it. One of the pleasures of being on the outer fringes of the intellectual world is that of watching the ideas I launch gradually spiral inward toward the center.
Re JMG on Mormonism:
I’ll make sure to get a copy of The Refiner’s Fire, it sounds like a great read. Much of the membership of the church wouldn’t be comfortable getting back to our roots of occultism, but maybe that could change in the future. As for today, the “Prophets, Seers, and Revelators” who lead the Church don’t prophesy, see, or revelate. They just tell everybody to fall in line and stop asking questions. We haven’t had an actual revelation from God in decades, and the membership is so starved for the smallest crumb of revelation that they consider policy changes as groundbreaking revelation from on high.
The leadership is also sweeping the unique beliefs of mormonism under the rug, like the divine feminine Heavenly Mother for example. The leadership seems to just want to morph the church into boring mainstream protestant christianity, which is a great tragedy.
“I’d rather dine on live tarantulas; I have zero interest in wasting my time on the latest geek toy, thank you.”.
Lol. I thought you’d feel something like that!
That suggestion was more for any readers with an interest.
I’m a deep sceptic on all things tech, but this is looking like a real disruptor. On par with the internet itself.
Just about everyone uses search engines now to find information.
These new tools are used to do information based tasks.
Millions of jobs are about to evaporate. There will be real world consequences.
@Ian, Zeihan is such a mixed bag. His insights into relative strategic strength of US compared with Europe, east Asia and particularly China has changed my thinking.
No matter how incompetent the US leadership, America will middle through and probably go full isolationist again.
China is in a relatively weak position because they are so dependent on imports of energy and food and do not have the naval reach to protect those supply lines.
But on the short term predictions he constantly misses but doesn’t alter his aim. He makes straight line prognostications and makes no allowance for various players to take steps to alter their circumstances.
@Vlad, thanks for the link. I’ll be adding Scott to my reading list.
I didn’t jump for any of those other techno fetishes. I sort of roll my eyes until it’s actually live.
These LLMs are live and racking up a body count already.
Low and mid level information workers are in deep do-do. The social consequences are potentially enormous.
@Ecosophy Enjoyer (#233):
In the last few years an independent researcher named Manuel W. Padro has begun to look more deeply into the roots of Momonism in magic, and into the early attacks on Joseph Smith Jr as rooted in the traditional fear of witchcraft. He has a brief article in the Newsletter of the Societas Magica, issue #37, which you can read or diownload at:
https://societasmagica.org/userfiles/files/Newsletters/docs/SMN_Spring_2022_Issue_37.pdf
Here he cites his three (so far!) other articles on the subject in footnotes 7, 9 and 13, I think they are very fine pieces of scholarship. He seems to be a generous person; he sent me PDFs of his three articles gratis. Two of them are also downloadable from his page on academia.edu.
He also has a very valuable review of a book by William L, Davis on Joseph Smith Jr’s visionary experiences, which was published in the journal Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, vol. 16 (2021), pp. 447-451.
BTW, you probably know that there are two editions of D. Michael Quinn’s book on Early Mormonism and the Magical World View. What you may not know is that each edition has material lacking in the other. Parts of the first edition had to be omitted in the second edition, for reasons of space; and of course by the time the second edition appeared, Quinn had found yet more sources to examine. (And I echo our host’s recommendation of Quinn’s and Brooke’s books.)
@stephen #210
Yes, I live in Ca, in the “greater” SF Bay Area. I live in Santa Cruz County, we are just “over the hill” from Santa Clara Valley ( i.e.., Solicon Valley) so some commute from this county
I don’t find the winter storms an excuse for why the phone lines are not being kept powered the, sure, I can see if it is during a storm and can’t come up here, but the last few days have been nice.
Looking again at atmospheric river’s post @188, I sometimes wonder if the powers that be in CA have completely divorced themselves from any connection with reality. Do they think the electricity to run these all electric houses comes from fairy dust, or that somehow ” renewables” will arrive in time to save the day like the cavalry riding over the hill. It also feels that they don’t care enough for their constituents to consider the expense incurred in the conversion. I will never forget last summer Gov. Newsom declaring that by 2035 only electric cars would be sold in CA and the next week during a heat wave and power shortage, saying that it was forbidden to charge electric cars in the evening. It often feels that they have got so caught up in their virtue signaling that that they are tripping over it. I am not surprised that their is a secession movement in the NE part of the state.
At the same time I doubt that, at least in CA, the move away from gas is to force the Americans to stop using it so it can be sold for three times as much in Europe. I think there are different entities involved in those two decisions.
Stephen
@ Blue Sun and JMG,
About natgas: I get some financial newsletters, and one self-proclaimed big wheel ranted at some length in his video link about how natural gas will be the preferred fuel of the future, as petroleum products are increasingly priced out of reach for most people. He spoke of cars being built or converted to run on natural gas. Maybe the very wealthy believe this, and want to reserve available supplies for themselves.
@Tad
A basic Walkman CD player can get 50 hours of runtime out of two AA batteries. That’s nine watt-hours of energy over 50 hours for an average energy usage of about 0.2 watts. It’s a really tiny laser – “laser” just means a very precise and coherent light beam, not a powerful one.
No record player is going to come close to that. They are of necessity much bigger, with larger motors that power the heavy turntables that support the vinyl records. The power usage is still pretty minor – I would guess on the order of 10 watts though I can’t find any actual specs.
If you want to amplify the sound to fill a room that will add another 20-50 watts which will be more than either option.
@blue sun, JMG and others, regarding a ban on natural gas stoves: the idea was floated here in the UK in 2021, so long predates the Nord Stream debacle.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/16/your-gas-stove-is-leaking-air-pollution-inside-your-own-home-go-electric
It disappeared pretty rapidly, as if someone decided it was too much too soon. The focus switched instead to banning wood-burning fires, which are allegedly not only harmful to health but also too middle-class. Once the wood stoves are gone the campaign against gas will resume, no doubt.
Regarding Russia and China: JMG wrote: ” I’m also far from sure that the Russo-Chinese alliance will survive the fall of the US — just as the US and Soviet Union were close allies until the Axis powers lost, and then turned on each other, it’s possible that once the US is out of the way Russia vs. China, or a Russo-Indian alliance vs. China, could become the new locus of conflict”.
I think this is a problem in western understanding of the situation. The existence of a natural rivalry between China and Russia has been an article of faith in the collective west’s foreign policy for decades. It’s well-documented that as the USSR fell apart it was taken for granted that Russia would have to accept whatever the west decreed for it (ie being broken up and its natural resources exploited by western corporations), because the Kremlin would be too terrified of China to the east, and the Muslim states to the south, to do anything else. Suggestions from Russia that they might actually build up partnerships with these countries was met with derision (there is a clip on YouTube of Joe Biden mocking this idea back in 1997, iirc).
This misunderstanding is derived from the post-Stalin rivalry between China and the Soviets, which was based on leadership within the Communist world. That disappeared with the USSR, of course. In historical terms, the Russian and Chinese empires actually co-existed pretty peacefully for several centuries, and for much of that time Russia was the only European power to treat China as an equal. There certainly was a fear amongst some circles in Russia about the vast Chinese population on Siberia’s borders. That’s disappeared now, as China’s northern provinces are depopulating rapidly, partly because of the consequences of the one-child policy, and partly because the younger generation are quite understandably heading for the warmer climes of the Chinese south.
So, my guess is that the Sino-Russian partnership will be quite stable; it fits with the historic relationship. As for India, I’m less informed about that, but I would guess that membership of the BRICS, SCO, etc will lead India and China to come to terms, possibly with Russian mediation. The issue of Tibet and the Himalayas ultimately comes down to water security, for which there can be a diplomatic solution.
Tad, at one point I had a portable CD player that ran for around 16 hours on a pair of AA batteries. The laser and electronics may be complicated and impossible to repair, but can be very energy efficient. A record player will use more energy, but in both cases the energy use varies wildly, depending mostly on the speakers and amplifier. Bigger speakers need more energy, and tube amps are less efficient than solid state amps. Likewise, fixing a digital amp is harder than fixing a tube amp, but not as impossible as a CD player. In both a digital and tube amp you will have capacitors that will age – so buying spares is not that helpful unless the equipment is in use quite often. When the machine is off, the capacitor sitting on the shelf ages the same as the one in the machine.
I can’t comment on tube vs transistor reliability and suspect it is a case of getting what you pay for. Solid state electronics can be extremely reliable, but if the designer cut costs by operating close to the limits then you might have some problems.
@Ecosophy enjoyer.. Your comment the Prophet Joseph Smith reminded me of the Prophet Muhammad. He had visions and the Quran reads very much like the words of a channeled being, in his case Gabriel.
We too however, are kept completely in the dark about this magical side. I don’t know if he was a magician, but he was definitely channeling a non-corporeal being.
Tad – Regarding the relative efficiency of CD vs. vinyl record players… I don’t think that it should make any difference to anyone, since neither of them consume a significant amount of electricity. I mean, a portable CD player can run for hours on just two AA batteries! And a phonograph could be spring-wound (I have used such a thing) with a mechanical diaphragm driving a trumpet-style horn. So, the absolute energy consumption seems trivial either way. Now, either one will probably be connected to an audio amplifier and speaker system, and that will probably draw a lot more power. And if you’re listening in a lighted room, there’s more power yet. (How long can you light up a room with two AA batteries?) And if the room’s heated, in a cold climate, you’ll be drawing a LOT more power than the amplifier.
On gas stoves and exports – I agree with Blue Sun that the US might be trying to figure out what it can still export other than IOUs. Interestingly, China is a big vegetable protein exporter, which coincidentally is what the majority of the synthetic meat, egg and milk products are made from. I’m not sure how the beef industry will hold up with climate change, but if the US can get its citizens to stop eating beef while maintaining production, that is another plausible export.
I think those that are focusing on weather or not various disabled people need or deserve financial support from the government are missing JMG’s real point. The important ( but hard to accept point) is that as the industrial world bumps down the stairway of catabolic collapse all forms of unearned income will disappear. This will also include most income derived from having money passively parked somewhere ( investments). Our job is not to decide if the disabled or others deserve or need this support ( the universe cares not about what we need) but how people can survive in the future who are not able to fulfill the requirements of conventional “work”. Historically this has been done by cultivating strong family units who can reallocate income among themselves and find useful roles for all family members. But it can also be done by redefining work. The conventional modern job with paperwork, taxes, fixed hours, and transportation is more the enemy of the disabled than anything. Coming up with ways for every person to be useful after the rubble stops bouncing is the task here. The key to survival in the coming age is not your woodsman skills, or your stash of gold in the basement but your ability to give up the sense of entitlement almost all of us have after living for a time in the western world as one of the aptly named ” Golden Billion”.
Ecosophy Enjoyer, what you mentioned is very reminiscent (and IMO quite likely based on) this claim that one has to either accept Jesus as a madman or take his word for what he is. IIRC, CS Lewis, if he didn’t originate this argument, at least popularized it.
I think it’s a double-bind, false dichotomy, whatever you want to call it.
As JMG also mentioned there is room for views that allow that Jesus (or Muhammad, or Joseph Smith etc) was in contact with a deity of some sort, but stops short of rejecting all the claims made about him.
@Milkyway – I am glad you found this helpful. Yes, FPJ and FFJ (Fermented Plant and Fruit Juice respectively) are both fermented in brown sugar.
As for your question about IMO, it is a little more complicated than that, and it is actually an elegant method because you trap microbes inside of a bucket of rice, so no hard feelings from stealing even a bucketful of hard earned topsoil from the forest. You then take 3 extra steps to inoculate the organisms first in hulls and then in a sample of your own soil before applying this. Here is a good series of youtube videos explaining the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N2PXBKf_GE
The process is best learnt by doing, a little like making sourdough, and many people start with this. I however lack the required yard as I live in an apartment, and from what I hear there are usually some failed attempts before succeeding, because you have to avoid contamination in the beginning, so it’s a bit of a right of passage.
But if you have access to a yard and a functioning ecosystem nearby, I’d love to hear about your experience!
On Intelligence of Politicians
“I’m beginning to wonder if IQs can go into negative numbers.”
I’ve been wondering about the same thing. I believe IQs actually oscillate; there might be some laws governing the oscillations: E.g. when an ambitious person of an average IQ becomes a Czech politician, they get smarter phones and computers, clothes and probably also fridges (because the people clearly do not go grocery shopping and thus not know the price of, say a loaf of bread or a carton of milk). However, to balance the sudden rise of smartness in those areas, they become very unsmart in other areas, like common sense, or clear speech.
The first thing to notice is that they do not make sense; they are very good at speaking in something that sounds like Czech on hours without ever saying anything. This has developed into something like an art; but it is still quite honourable.
There are more worrying things, which have to do with subtle changes in our language semantic fields, and thus with our understanding. “Do you know, what mobilization is?” “Of course. Everyone will get a new mobile.” (That is supposed to be a joke, if anyone wonders.) But the following is not; when our leading politicians want to do something, they put in effect “legislation emergency” which is illegal to do if the country is not in an emergency situation; traditionally wars, plaques, earthquakes, etc., but recently some politicians asked themselves: “What is an emergency situation?” and the answer probably was like: “I want to pass a law. Urgently. It is emergent, it is emergency.” Since covid, every time they need to pass a law quickly, we are in an emergency…
I noticed, that foreign politicians at least try to pretend that what they do is somehow good for someone; our politicians assume, that we (the nation) know that already, and without blinking, announce, at the same time: the highest inflation in Europe, rise of the prices of electricity and other energies, huge incomes from the dividends from partly state-owned giant energetic company, and cutting down all pensions (passed in the legislation emergency)… Anyone else dares to claim their own political representatives less intelligent?
With regards,
Markéta
@Mary Bennett
Thank you for your reply. I am aware that Hinduism is as of today, a minority religion in the US, practiced mostly by people of South Asian or South-east Asian origin, with relatively few practitioners among people of Black, White or Latino and/or mixed-race origin. That said, I believe our host once mentioned that as India becomes more and more powerful and dominant while America continues to decline, the US could well fall under an Indian pseudomorphosis – hence my comment about Hinduism finding a future home in North America. I’m not too well-versed with the religious dynamics of your country to make a very well-informed comment, but I suspect that if the US does fall under an Indian pseudomorphosis, there might well be some sort of religious ‘alliance’ between pagans in the US (irrespective of pantheon) and Hindus, with Hinduism providing some kind of a theological-philosophical framework for the religious beliefs of the formers, as also the borrowing and reshaping of Hindu rituals for the worship of pagan deities. It is in this context that an ‘American Hinduism’ might come into existence – if it does, it will be different from the one practiced in India (just like Balinese Hinduism is different from Indian Hinduism, for example). Thus, India will eventually go extinct, but Hinduism may well thrive in the US. I may be wrong due to over-optimism, of course.
@JMG
No arguments there. For all we know, modern India may become the subject of legends in the civilization which will succeed Indic civilization a millennium from now.
A paper on the reliability of wind power in the UK.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2023/03/Allison-Wind-energy.pdf?mc_cid=5c197dfa62&mc_eid=c926002e71
Same basic issues as I see here in Eastern Washington.
As to CD player vs turntable, my turntable is rated for 17 watts. The blue ray player is rated for 10 watts. I don’t have a CD only player any more, but my USB DVD drive is rated at 1.6 Amps at 5 Volts or 8 watts. Semi conductor lasers are not that efficient, but we are shining a very small light on a nearby mirror, not cutting steel.
Just ran across this in reference to drone weapons used by Ukraine against Russia:
“Firstly, there’ve been reports of a new mysterious Russian microwave weapon taking out Ukrainian drones several kilometers away, and AFU are strongly complaining about it.”
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-32323-offensive-paranoia
Hmmm . . . where have I seen that concept before ? : )
@Tad,
Are we talking full lifecycle or just to run? To run, the laser only takes a few milliwatts– almost a rounding error. The turntable motors aren’t much different in power I believe. For both the vinyl and the CD the main power draw is the amp driving the sound system. (Which means the phonograph wins hands down if you use a Victorolla, otherwise it’s a wash.)
When it comes to life cycle analysis, I do not have that data. CD players do need that laser and a couple ICs phonographs do not BUT. Since both players can be had second hand I don’t know I would worry about it. When I save junk from the trash I count the embodied energy as on the original owner’s account. So it comes down to the disks themselves.
The fact that CDs use less plastic is a point in their column. PVC is a nastier substance than polycarbonate, but that isn’t energy related. The key point IMO is that if you can avoid scratches CDs never get “played out” and never need replacement. From my POV that brings the embodied energy per play down far enough make it a slam dunk for CDs right now.
Going forward into the long descent, the need for sophisticated electronics will likely kill the CD and there will perhaps be a boutique industry producing hand cranked gramophones for our (great?) grandchildren.
My friend notified me beginning of February that a banking crash is near. He is one of the few making money off this chaos trading stocks, all by himself.
Though he himnself says it is absurd you can make money off of that and it should be banned.
He warns that turbulence is ahead, gold might eventually sink to lower prices when everybody is getting desperate, but it will shoot through the roof.
At least two astrological reports I know speak of a culminating chaos around November 20, this year.One is “Wien Astrowolf Tageshoroskop” from Vienna, unfortunately only in German as video. Humbly the man says he is just a hobby astrologer and that this is about probabilities, not detailed forecasts.His prediction is, problems may start end of april to beginning of may, culminate in Nov 20 coming in droves. He recommends storing food, also learning gardening and crafting skills, collecting organic reproducable seeds, and so on.
He says it is the most dire horoskope he has seen.
Another more general report says “until the end of summer, there is a chance to do a great spiritual work”.Also speaks of a Nov culmination.
A russian shaman in german last year in Summer I think said: ” Winter 2022/23 will still be more business as usual, it is Winter 2023/2024 that will be hard.
And that after a long crisis series until 2028 if i recall that correctly, the world will scatter into many local cultures, replacing our overarching modern world-
My aunt says that by 2026 “solutions will be searched for” (well that’s good) and that thereafter we are on our way into the “golden age”.
A very wise old spiritualist I know also says we are both heading into the next few dire and difficult years as well as into a golden age (for spirituality).
Is it true a few days ago a 250 years plutonian cycle ended and an aquarius cycle has started or something like that?
German industry has ceased most production and transfer to China and the US is already underway, the big names are going.
By next year German govt has decreed to put overhead costs on all house owners that will be unmanageable for most.
That’ll be the end of the last posession of the middle classes if so, a government expropriation like a tidal wave.
Meanwhile I work in the banking business and live in the big city, a double edged kind of comfort. Hooray, the new bank is coming online soon! The old farmer I met these days laughed and said “haha well that’s quite a bad timing, now with all the banks rolling downhill”
I laughed too, because even though, for now, my job gives me 1) no hassle 2) ample and flexible free time 3) PMC pay, my heart already longs for freedom.
The wise old spiritual man said: ” your liver is congested, due to your profession you loathe, the deceiving security of your inner city life binds you, therefore you are full of anger. If you don’t make a change soon, life will force it on you the hard way. Leave the city – do it while you still can”
By June, he suggested, I should finally deliberate to let go and go for a real vision.
The old man is strong as a bear and a great craftsman, gardener, besides being am avid astrologist and alchemist. I am 35. IS there still time to learn something different, with my hands, as I always desired but never dared, amidst this chaos?
I am still strong enough…
I’ve got to leave the city this year…what will be there to lose?
Oh boy- if it wasn’t posted before:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/we-sell-our-strategic-oil-reserves-ponder
US gambling with their last assets, and Biden flinging them into the hands of the Chinese.
Strategic oil reserve on the lowest point since the 1970s – all sold to save the economy.
@Tad, A few others have weighed in on CD players vs record players, and it all makes sense.
Out of curiosity, I got out my watt meter and checked my turntable and my CD player, both regular household 120 volt units, no lights or bells and whistles on them. They fluctuated a bit while running, but were both well under 10 watts, generally closer to or under 5. The turntable was usually a bit less, but that could just be my units. So really pretty close to nothing. As others have said, the amplifier would be using a lot more juice than the source of the music.
Of course, there are Gramaphones or Victrolas that don’t use any electricity, the old crank ones with the big horn. I don’t think we’ll get to the point where that’s all we have (others on here disagree, of course) but they are great fun to listen to. And if we do get to that point, I think the music would be a great comfort. Antique shops are full of them; buy now and avoid the (collapse) rush.
Yes, those of us who are disabled and part of the commentariat here are paying attention that the fact is that the benefit will go down in effective value vs actual costs to live, which of course it has been doing already, or will go away altogether and this can all happen at any point. Taking measures to counter act this is of course more difficult due to the disability. The major points, as always, is to not have debt, to lower expenses as much as humanly possible and then lower some more. Work on cultivating a helpful and peasant demeanor and to not be rigid in how things are done but to be versital. To look for ways however small now to cultivate ways of contributing, even if it is not financial. BE a good listener, learn so that your knowledge can be used by others even if your muscle cannot, or if it is a brain issue, work on how to contribute with your muscle not he days that you can manage interacting and trying to comprehend the greater world. Garden, cook as much as one can in the circumstances. learn stories and songs that can entertain children and others. I wonder that the skills from the Essene thread on the other blog couldn’t be something that would be of use to the world and could fit in to limitations, I intend to try, I have been following but not practicing much yet beyond the blessing walk and in many cases it is also the blessing drive, the blessing shopping trip really. And when I can pull it off, people respond to me, start conversations, compliment me pn my smile ( I am older, it is not a come-on) Personally, I look to move towards the I can survive without that social security check and work on how to do so.
I converted, slowly it took years, part of my living space is n “efficiency” unit, which is legal in this county, but you can do it illegal as has always been done, and since housing is a big need, I have no trouble finding someone and can be quite choosy as single rooms in houses are charging about the same as mine with a kitchenette, bathroom,, separate door, no connection living space walls, etc… What I am trying to do is to keep that money aside to do the house repairs and upgrades to a lower energy future, but of course that is not much money so it goes slow. It is enough money to pay the property tax/ins on this place if every other source of income disappeared.
When I first moved here 24 years ago, I put in a sweat is now considered small solar electric system, with a small amount of battery back up. Then, a solar hot water system, which was almost as pricy. The panels are lower than the house, so it thermosyphons up to the tank but it is also a cold climate so it is more complicated in that it has to have a closed loop of freeze protected solution. These systems while overall robust do break down over the years. The solar hot water system has a broken panel, I think what happened is that the solution was degraded by heat as I never replaced it and then freeze damage happened to the hot water panel. all the copper lines etc are in place. The special tank of course is also quite old by now, but so far is not leaking, but it could break down at any point of course. A priority for me will be to get that panel replaced in the system, then I will have hot water when not in the middle of storms, which is of great value. When I first put this in, I also ran a loop thru the wood burning stove, thinking that when the sun wasn’t out, I was heating the house. This loop could not thermosyphon, so the whole needing to pump that water out of the wood stove became too nerve wracking. For example, once I was away from who house briefly, and Murphy’s law being what it is, my car broke down. I went into a bar and called home were the children informed me that the power was off, and of course we had a fire going in the stove. I said, ok, that should be fine as we have battery back up, where I was informed, no Mom, the power is REALY out, there is no backup power. This oder offspring of course got the metal sfire place shovel and metal bucket and took the fire out of the stove. And if not, likely the pressure relief valve would have tripped and kept any large harm from happening, but still. IN my case, the amount of heat with my setup was such that I did not reinstall in the latest wood stove. I do recommend the concept if it works for your situation.
Solar electric systems also degrade, the panels really do degrade in output, but they still do produce appreciable and useful output. That us fine, the part hurting me right now is that the wildfires 2 years ago made power surges that damaged my battery backup area so I do not have much when the electric utilities are off, I would have about 4kWh of power I think at this point, so that is rationed.
SO now, strategies have to be developed. And priorities. Solar hot water is a buigger priority than larger battery backup. And, as this solar electric system ages I look to more distributed solutions. I now have water tanks uphill of the house, so when utility electric is off, or if they ever do not exist in an appreciable way, at night when there is no solar pumping, there is water to the house and garden gravity flow from the tanks. This is slower but useable on the ground floor for all uses. On the second story you can use a flush toilet, but it fills up rather slow, and the sink is barely ok to. wash hands and teeth. SO, overall, this works. If that secondary house pressure pump goes away everything is livable. The well area also burned down, so now it has a pump in the well that will run off of any electric source, low power, high power AC or DC. So this well pump has 2 used solar panels I picked up that I neeso the well pump runs whenever the sun is shining just connected directly to a solar panel, and it can run on anything fro 30V to 300V DC, so in a salvage situation is fine for a little while. A hand pump would be a good addition, but is too low down the list of everything else I need to fix right now.
Ok, so he that is water, then heat from the wood stove and also from a porch converted to a small attached greenhouse, which does contribute and appreciable amount of heat when the sun is out, but due to the large trees I don’t get heat out of it until 10am, so usually have a fire for a bit on a cold morning, tea and pride are needed then anyways.
Right now, my older solar and batteries can run a refrigerator and lights. But, if I guse power for communication too and the storms always have the potential to be many days. SO, refrigeration is my current quandary
Any one JMG or otherwise that has read this far, let me know what you think. I can buy a DC chest refrigerator that is set up to run directly connected to a small solar panel. But, that is not an easy shape for things I typically do with my refrigerator, like pop in bowls, cakes, pots, that doesn’t stack well. And, then there is no freezer. I can get an upright DC fridge freezer that needs to connect to a battery ( cannot connect straight to panel) that might be able to connect to my current set up or have its own small one if I move away from my aging legacy solar. Or, I can keep using a regular fridge freezer. There is power loss having DC batteries go thru the conversion in the inverter to AC power, so that does use up batteries faster. Anyways, garden going, fix solar hot water, and decisions will have to be made on how to keep food cold as my area,, despite most of my surrounding people not seeing it,, starts to stair step down in fits and starts to lower services..
(nyes, I use a solar oven, I have two as I can make full meals and bake at the same time, but not a way to cook or have tea when the sun is not out… Now that we are beyond equinox, I have enough sun in the spot on my deck to pull one out again)
@temporaryreality – A great Youtube resource with detailed explanations is Chris Trump, a Hawaiian knf farmer. Here is his Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisTrumpSoilSteward
In particular, he has a video about making the beef bones Phosphorus input, I used the same technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi9vbLWzEqY
This website also has good information, the person who thought me is associated with it:
https://naturalfarminghawaii.net/
As a note, since I live in an apartment, I used an oven for the calcination, on 400 degrees Celsius. It took me about 12-15 hours. It’s not about time, you have to have the bones turn completely black but stop before they start turning white / gray. I did the rest as Chis Trump describes in his video above.
As with all calcination, if you can, do it outside as there is quite a bit of smell, but I wanted to share I got good results with an oven.
Enjoyer, it’s really sad to hear that the current LDS leadership is busy trying to convert their church into generic American Protestantism, just as generic American Protestantism is by and large running itself into the ground. I wonder if any of the other LDS denominations, such as the Community of Christ, might be more open to the original, magical spirit of the movement.
Darren, oh, granted — there are a vast number of people in cubicles who are about to lose their jobs, and also a very large number of people in the media who will shortly be replaced by chatbot-enabled CGIs. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when that sinks in.
Robert M, thank you for this!
Stephen, I get the impression that a lot of people in power in the US these days are weirdly detached from the world the rest of us inhabit. I’m really beginning to wonder if some kind of drug habit has become quietly widespread among the elites.
Kevin, that’s plausible.
Bogatyr, no doubt. As for Russia and China, well, we’ll see. One of the enduring lessons of history is that nations don’t have friends — they have interests.
Clay, yes, exactly. Thank you for getting this.
Alvin (if I may), that’s an excellent point. The forced dichotomy — “either you have to take every claim person X made in its most literal sense, or you have to denounce him as a liar or madman” — is a classic logical fallacy, which still gets constant use. In the case of Jesus, of course, we have no idea what he actually said, only what four approved authors (out of dozens) writing many years after the fact said that he said; in the case of Joseph Smith, we’ve got much better access to original sources — but in either case, that sort of Hobson’s choice is bad logic and gets in the way of any meaningful understanding of either man.
Markéta, our politicians here, instead of talking smoothly by the hour, mouth meaningless slogans and then get angry if people don’t pretend that they’ve made sense. I’m not sure whose are the dumbest.
Viduraawakened, yes, that’s quite possibly what will happen!
Siliconguy, thanks for this.
Darkwing, heh heh heh…
Curt, hmm! Many thanks for the data points. As for the strategic oil reserve, well, yes. Markéta was just talking about the abysmal stupidity of politicians…
@Bogartyr #249
This video: https://mobile.twitter.com/ImReadinHere/status/1500782351831662592
From 1997, Biden says that the thing most likely to provoke a hostile Russian response is expanding NATO into Ukraine, and if Russia doesn’t like it then maybe they should ask China for help, or failing that Iran. He says the Ukraine bit seriously and the other bit sarcastically. Worth watching.
@all
RE: The French protests.
Just FYI, a “tumbril remark” is a statement by a leader that is so hopelessly out of touch that it makes the audience feel fully justified loading the speaker onto a tumbril and carting them off to the guillotine. The classic example is “let them eat cake.”
The French public sector negotiated a retirement age of 62 with the government, they aggreed to accept lower wages as the price for it. Macron then raised the age to 64 by decree. Here he is in an interview asking the French people to make a sacrifice while wearing an $86,000 watch:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ricwe123/status/1639280490921304065
But at the end of the interview he is no longer wearing the watch.
To quote a certain Archdruid:
It’s tempting to imagine one of them, stepping aboard the tumbril that will take him to the guillotine, saying to another, “So, Henri (edit, Macron), how’s that political strategy working for you?”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-07-12/distant-sound-tumbrils/
Macron realized that the watch sent the wrong message, but he he realized it too late, and acted on that realization in the worst possible way. Is this the Diamond Necklace Affair 2.0?
@Curt #264 and anyone else who has an interest in mundane astrology: one of the best Vedic astrologers whom I know (and whose software I use) is PVR Narasimha Rao. He always states that astrology is a ‘probabilistic science’ and I have found him to be about 80-90% accurate. Rao recently posted his high-level annual predictions for USA (starting at 33:50 in the video), India, and a bit on some other countries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtG80q3bB40.
For the US, he predicts social unrest, volatile economy, intensifying ‘cold’ war, some big natural disasters and Trump riling up both political parties (looks like he still has some ‘trickster’ left in him!).
Rao also recently posted a 20-year cycle prediction (Jupiter-Saturn transit 2020-2040) for USA, India, China and Russia. In brief, the ‘20s are pretty miserable and will get really kinetic into the early ‘30s, resulting in a shattered China, troubled Russia, weakened USA and powerful India emerging by the mid-30s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T–RF1bpNs0&t=1564s
I don’t necessarily agree with everything Rao says. Some years ago, he predicted that in the future there would be a military alliance between USA and India (as an Indian living in the US, I understand why he would want to see that; however, I do not see that) – but, interestingly, he’s not saying that any more.
@Nachtgurke, Michael W. (and maybe others):
Concerning the Ruhrgebiet – I grew up there as well, and am currently considering moving back there. I have felt for a long time that growing up in a place full of defunct industry, on the one hand, and nature taking back step by step what is hers, on the other hand, made it easier for me to give up the belief in progress. But up to now I had never thought about possible ‘energetic’ (for want of a better word) qualities of the place, so thank you for that!
Viduraawakened (no. 259): Possibly relevant:
https://www.philipgoldberg.com/american-veda
(Explores the history of the Yoga / Advaita synthesis among white liberals in the USA since Emerson. Doesn’t cover groups like the Hare Krishna, which practice traditional pujas and the like. and are not very typical of the “export Hinduism” mainstream. Goldberg thinks Advaita has become the default ideology of many New Age types.)
@ Atmospheric River: Seems to me you are pretty well set up there; I’m a bit jealous.
A suggestion for refrigeration might be propane. If you are feeling wealthy, Lehman’s, the Amish supplier, sells very nice units. If you want to save a lot of money, look for one from a camper being dismantled. You might even get it for free. They generally run on 12 volts, 120 volts or propane, giving you more options. They work well, they’re practically silent and they have a small freezer too.
For baking when the sun isn’t out, there are ovens that sit on top of the wood stove. You could also get a wood cookstove. Some of the cast iron ones are really beautiful. Years ago they also made more modern looking ones with electric elements as well as a firebox. I know someone who got one for free when a neighbor was remodeling their kitchen.
I don’t have time just now to fact-check this, but I heard that one reason for the draw-down of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is that private storage of oil has greatly increased since the SPR was established, so it’s not as necessary as before, and also that Congressional budget negotiations have REQUIRED sale from the SPR just to pay for government programs without even more borrowing or even more taxes. “Just sell the oil!”
@FourSidedCircle #257,
That really does help a lot. I love fermentation – sounds like knf and me might get along just nicely… 😉
@Markéta #258,
“I believe IQs actually oscillate; there might be some laws governing the oscillations” – that image is hilarious, thanks! 😀
“Anyone else dares to claim their own political representatives less intelligent?” – har! I raise you a Lauterbach and trump with a Baerbock! The latter sometimes has trouble speaking in something which even resembles German – and yep, we’re talking about our foreign minister. I highly doubt you can undercut the two of them with any of your politicians… 😉
Milkyway
Orion – there are people who seem to be psychologically satisfied by the idea of banning things.
I saw a bit of this in the ideas around 15 minute cities, and how this has been planned to be implemented in Oxford, the idea is to reduce people driving across the city, by dividing it into sectors and having a number of automated number plate reading cameras. As far as I know the idea was that people would be allowed a certain number of free car trips crossing between sectors before they would have to start paying tolls.
To me it seems an overcomplicated bureaucratic way of getting people to drive less. In some ways it could even make people drive further by having people go around by longer routes, rather than cross a sector boundary.
@ Mark L., Justin, Lathechuck, Silicon Guy, Epileptic Doomer, Phil and Others
Thank You Doomer Audiophiles!
Your comments were enlightening, encouraging and useful! I’ve got LPs, CDs and tapes in my music collection and wondered how much of them I could listen to in the Long Descent. Of course, I’ve worn out more tapes than LPs (many of which I recorded onto tapes back in the 1980s) and CDs. It is interesting that cranking the amp(lifiers) uses more amps but the actual generation of music doesn’t cost that much energy-wise whatever system you use. I don’t crank “When the Levee Breaks” or “Roundabout” up that often anymore, and classical guitar doesn’t need it, so I’ll be set.
What does concern me is the equipment. The cd player in my 1999 Subaru (which has as many ashtrays as cup holders) has stopped working (though it does have tape player, too). Our record player (a cheap Crosley) plays at about 33 rpm, not 33 1/3, so that needs replacement unless I can find someone to fix it or tune it up.
About a dozen years ago the word was going around that CDs would start breaking down and losing their fidelity. Is this only true of the first CDs or is this a non issue or a ploy to go totally digital? I have some that are over 30 years old and not have lost any sound quality, at least as far as I can tell.
Many thanks again,
Tad
A follow up – the portable CD player I had as a teen ran for 16 hours with a pair of earbuds plugged in, which works out to somewhere between 250 mW and 375 mW depending on the energy content of the batteries I used (I have no idea what kind of batteries I used). Later I got a portable device that used an even deader technology, minidisks, which ran for 30 hours on one AA battery – 125 to 150 mW. There is no question that newfangled technology uses less energy to operate than older technology, although it is likely less repairable and/or the lifetime energy consumption may be higher.
Of course, there is a broader issue: The record player and headphones my father listened to Simon and Garfunkel on might have had a fairly large embodied energy in the form of the wages of the North American worker who was paid to make it. The minidisk player I used in my late teens and early 20s sipped energy, and was pretty cheap to buy, but the people who actually made it probably got close to nothing.
@Ian, Darren
I read Zeihan’s The End of the World is Just the Beginning.
He had me at ‘End of the World’.
I found it interesting but debatable. He does what a plausible job of running through the consequences of what would happen if world intercontinental trade would go away in pretty much the blink of an eye, what he calls the end of the american order, industry by industry. But I was most interested in the *why* this would happen, and that’s something he never explains. The US will lose interest in being world policeman, just because. And trade will stop, and pirates will attack and ransom all ships. Hmm. ‘kay.
@Curt, #264
Curt, it is never too late to learn new things, like woodworking or other hand skills. They become easier and more enjoyable as you practice the skills and therefore more useful. For example I’m now 55 and consider myself a woodworker but only on a basic level even though I have “messed around” with tools for most of my life. I didn’t get serious about it until I had a house of my own at 40 years old. You just have to keep doing whatever it is and be willing to learn from your mistakes (and I have made plenty!). I also take comfort that, even though I am an “amateur”, I’m still more skilled and independent than many people in my neighborhood.
It helps if you can focus on one skill or body of skills, you will find that they translate into other areas. For example, I like to build, repair and work on small boats. That incorporates a whole host of skills: carpentry, woodworking, painting/finishing, rope work…and you are not even on the water yet! But those skills can easily translate into stuff you can use around the home or for other people.
I went on a side track and did some blacksmithing for a bit. It was a lot of fun, and I even made some tent stakes that are useful (though they rather looked like something the Spanish Inquisition would have been used). Working at the forge is totally engrossing and and fairly addictive but my life changed at that point and haven’t circled back around to that yet. Then I went on a sailmaking/repair exploration and decided that was for a younger person.
Any skill that you learn can be used to help people, too. Where I live in Maine there are many people who need a handyman for a few hours to fix a porch, a leaky toilet or hang a picture. An efficient, courteous, affordable handyman could do well for his or herself.
Anyway, find something you like or think you might like to do and try it out. Don’t be discouraged if your first creations are not perfect. As those Silicon valley guys say “fail fast and early”. Then try again. Also, and this my own encouragement to myself: “perfection is over rated”.
I also wish I’d started earlier and had gone to one of the “Folk High Schools” in Norway, like Fosen, but I have learned a lot from craftspeople, magazines and books and just working in the shop.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents (2 euros? Pfennigs?)
Tad
JMG
Changing the subject from rocks to books, have you ever read the book “Attic nights” by aulus gellius? I have been reading a section or two a day for a while and it is an interesting menagerie of information from the Greco-roman world, which I’m a bit surprised isn’t more well known in classical literature.
J.L.Mc12, no, I haven’t gotten to Aulus Gellius yet.
Propane. That is also not as secure as it used to be. I don’t happen to have any propane service but almost everyone else does. Some houses, more than I would have thought, put in “whole house” propane generators, and they go on automatically when the grid electricity shuts off. I have heard that many people were surprised to have the outages go on so long that they ran thru the entire 250/500 gallon tank of propane and then not be able to get a delivery. They never did the math I guess on how many gallons per hour they might go thru and turn it off or conserve, they just didn’t look and then it was gone, or they looked after the first ling storm and went — oh, hardly any left.
I was staying in a travel trailer in my driveway from August 2020 until last April or May, and it has one of the refrigerators that run on 120V electric if it is plugged in or propane. That refrigerator is much smaller and yes, it does not use that much propane when the utility power is out and was completely silent. I loved how quiet it was and wondered why I can’t have a quiet refrigerator for the house. Great thing to have in the garage if you have someone how has medicine that must be kept cold, etc… I can’t afford propane piped in at this point or to. haul all that propane, it ws tough to do so when I was in the trailer. I actually made this decision quickly after the fire and ordered and bought a new regular refrigerator, waited 5 months for it to arrive, put it in the house and plugged it on and found it too noisy. I think the new ones have gotten noisier. Might be the fan for the new even temperature thing they advertise and other changes. I sold it without even unwrapping the shelves, this was 2 years ago and it was impossible to get one so a friend of a friend needed one. And, I am presently using a free refrigerator that is quieter, not like the trailer, but to me normal refrigerator noise. It is about 11 cu ft capacity, but not as energy efficient as I would like, but will hold me thru for the next few years if needed. I just think that certain options could all of a sudden go away, not be able to buy, kind of like some things during the COVID excuse era a few years ago. The direct to solar panel DC chest refrigerators were cancelled too, there is not much market, but Living Energy Farmsafter a year or so was able to get the manufacturer to commit that they really could still do it by special order, it is not too much different and they still know how. But many options really are tenuous.
As far as my being set up, I am telling you , it really is rough. Yes, it could be worse if I hadn’t done anything. But the takeaway should be that this stuff doesn’t last forever, which is why much of mine is in disrepair. And, other areas could move itnto what happens here, so it is good if everyone would practice turning off the power for a weekend, alll of it really, gas and electric, and see how it is. Practice and make some simple preps at least
I love those wood cookstoves ! Wish I could. All
@Chris in Fernglade #54 #84
Good news Chris!
Your dogs have provided the Financial Answer for All of Us!
One word: ChewCoin(R)
You are probably realizing by now that you could have doubled your investments in just a year or so if you had sold all your stocks and bonds and simply purchased Dog Chews! But where to store them?
The answer is ChewCoin(R). Simply buy ChewCoins from the ChewCoin online repository on Mount Barx, which will store the dog chews for you in a designated drawer in their online pantry. ChewCoins(R) will never lose their value because only a limited number of them can be made. Each one is a unique series of links in something called a “dog-chain.” It’s complicated.
Of course, you can mine your own ChewCoins(R) but that would require finding Dog Chews in the wild, and getting to them before all the other hungry dogs and their owners.
Why get “Bit” when you can “Chew?”
–EG
It’s a dangerous thing for me to meditate on your posts Chris. You never know how deep is the rabbit hole….
Further to China and India, the Chargé d’Affaires of the Chinese Embassy in India made some comments on the topic last week, which may be of interest (Section IV). His concluding words:
We believe that China and India could find a way for neighboring major countries to live in peace and develop together, so as to realize the “Asian Century”.
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjb_663304/zwjg_665342/zwbd_665378/202303/t20230324_11048438.html
A quick remark on a dichotomy I found myself stuck into much longer than I would have wished, after having been exposed to the idea that our industrial civilization could not be maintained in its current state (or wished for future), implying 1) that we would be facing an age of decline during my lifetime and 2) our descendants could not hope for ever-increasing improvements in their ability to spend energy and resources.
On the one hand, my immediate reaction was to simply ignore the far future to focus on the present (or more immediate future). On the other hand, I have had moments where I disregarded the present because it would not matter in the future a few centuries from now.
Both of them turned out inadequate: in the first case, I had a sense that what I was doing was increasingly out-of-touch; in the second case, I was trying to solve problems that were so out-of-touch with my immediate situation that it really felt like a distraction.
These days, I am perfectly aware that my lifestyle is still not sustainable, even though I keep making steps in that direction and I have willfully chosen more limitations compared to my more affluent friends. But I have found purpose in redirecting the underlying drive for “innovation” of our current culture (which still provides me with excitement!) towards solutions that can both solve more immediate problems while being compatible with increasingly limited energy and resources in the future.
Saturday night I found myself at the fundraising gala for a Portland Community Theatre due a confluence of things from my wife’s job in county government . After listening to several of the speakers tout the essential nature of community theatre several things struck me. These operations are not self sufficient at all but mostly funded by donations, and in the case of this operation a couple widows of Scrap Metal Barons. The entire orbit this theatre operated in was inside the world of non-profit organizations. Every person I could identify ( except for me and my wife as far as I could tell) made their living in the shadowy world of not-for-profit organizations either as paid staff or consultants. They appeared to have no interest in anyone outside of this community, either as supporters or patrons. And as you might guess woke issues were at the top of the agenda. They based their need for support not on the huge number of customers clamoring for entertainment but on the goodness and necessity of their mission, audience be-damned. It struck me that this entire sector of the economy ( really kind of a skimming operation like finance) was very large in a place like Portland and its insular nature, and in-bred mantra, that the rightness of the mission was more important than practicality, was behind much of todays woke agenda and the collapse off the Blue cities. You can get a glimpse of this. mindset by listening to the fund raising drive for the local public radio station. ” Support us so we can continue to light the world.” This becomes a positive feedback loop as regular business decamps for the suburbs leaving behind the nonprofit industrial complex and the “Creatives” who clamor for more of what ales them. There will be much knashing of teeth and despair among the entire non-profit world as we descend down the stairway of collapse. Hopefully of few of the more talented folks in the entertainment arm of this universe can find employment in Neo-vaudville or a traveling circus.
Re natural gas, bans thereof, and exports
It may be crediting the PMC with far too much intelligence, but the notion of consumer retail usage being discouraged in order to prop up other markets is not out of the realm of possibility. Two things are very clear to me: 1) natural gas fired electric generation is going to be absolutely vital for maintaining a functional electric grid as more wind & solar facilities come on-line, and 2) the increase in LNG (liquified natural gas) capability is going to begin to impact domestic market pricing at some point in the not-too-distant future.
On the first point, a regional energy conference I recently attended included a presentation by the state’s major investor-owned utility (IOU, in the industry lingo) that stated quite emphatically that their strategy involved installing NG-fired RICE (reciprocal internal-combustion engine) units–which are robust, modular, and can be operated remotely–in order to provide the rapid ramp capability required to handle the variability of large amounts of intermittent wind & solar projected to be added to the grid. On the second point, the most recent EIA (Energy Information Administration) numbers show the current LNG export capability to be in the neighborhood of 14 bfd (billion cubic-feet per day), climbing to ~20 bfd by the end of 2025. Current production remains ~100 bfd, so the new additions will bring export capability to ~20% of production capability. At some point, these exports will bring upward pressure to the domestic markets, which will not only raise prices for end-use NG customers, but for electric customers as well. Moreover, increased exposure of the electric market to a volatile fuel will result in more volatile wholesale electric prices, which increases the necessity for effective risk-management by utilities in order to manage their cash-flow and retail tariffs.
Tad (and others), I see more trouble with the media long term than from the players. The popular media all carry in them the seeds of their own destruction. Tape sheds a bit every time it’s played and can develop “sticky shed” syndrome. Vinyl LPs outgas plasticizers and become more brittle (and noisy). And humidity penetrates the lacquer coating atop a CD, eventually oxidizing the aluminum reflective layer. Most archivists are dealing with this by digitization and freely admit that the archival media themselves will have to be copied every five years or so.
Hi John, not sure if you’ve answered this question somewhere, but do you have any idea how long bicycles might remain as a viable technology? For example, they’ll survive longer than cars, but will eventually be replaced by horses; they have zero chance of surviving the collapse; they’ll be around forever; etc.
http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2023/03/chicago-1968-54-years-later.html
Re old-school cooking
I believe I’ve mentioned the YouTube channel “Early American” which highlights late 18th century and early 19th century cooking. Here’s an example of another out of Azerbaijan, “Country Life Vlog” wherein they make a pretty awesome-looking cheeseburger from lamb:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gq1DFcl67x4
@Ron M
@Tad
Thank you for your kind advices!
JMG – I recall that you’ve made positive statements about UBI in the past, but you told Tony that it won’t survive the coming decline. I also wondered about this possibility. Do you think UBI has any place in the short-term? Or have I mis-understood what I thought were positive statements about UBI from you?
@ Clay Dennis #288
”Support us so we can continue to light the world.”
ooh, that takes me back.
I grew up as what used to be called a “missionary kid”, and our time on the mission field was interspersed, every five years or so, by fundraising missions known in missionary circles as “furlough”. This entailed a months-long itinerary visiting churches all over the US, with ourselves, as children, dressed nicely, and told to behave nicely, and sometimes parcelled out to different church families for dinner and accomodation, while our parents testified to the “light” that they had brought to the world, and suggested that it would be worth people pledging a little something to help them continue to bring said “light” to the world.
Now, I know for a fact that my parents happen to be exceptional individuals, passionate about what they personally brought to the fields of Christian camping and recreation (my father) and to the world of labour and birth preparation and lactation consultancy (my mother).
And, but, still…
These furlough trips were always our special torture, as children – because, when it came right down to it, they were a jumped-up form of panhandling, and that was what our family was supposed to live on.
So, let’s say that I *viscerally* know what you mean!
Clay: During the local NPR “fun drive” last week for WAMU in DC one of the reasons given was “because Nina Tottenburg says so!”
They were also pushing some other nonsense about how giving was you being selfish! And it is good to be selfish! Not unselfish mind you! Selfish because it makes you feel good!
NPR is so bad now. I don’t even listen anymore. I actually wrote an email saying as much and got a kind reply with lots of details about things like how they have “strict guidelines” for corporate “sponsors” and that “almost half” of contributions are from listeners. I am flabbergasted by that! She actually told me that 1/2 of contributions now are from corporations and “nonprofits” like you mentioned. Yes, NPR has become completely insular now as you are talking about.
At least here in DC we have WPFW. Even with all it’s problems it is all volunteer and truly public still.
JMG
Something else I’ve wanted to share with you and everyone else is the work of a man called Chris staecker who not only collects and reviews old calculating devices such as slide-rules on his YouTube channel, but also makes print-outs that can be used to make versions of some of the devices on paper and plastic sheeting.
One very impressive device that he has made printouts for is a “Equameter”,which was a experimental analog device that as he explains it;
“The Equameter (pronounced “ee-kway-meter”) is a lost graphical computing device invented by H. Joseph Gerber in the 1950s. Using only a printout of graphical data, the equameter will compute terms of the Taylor or Fourier series. This is done by lining up a pair of transparent overlays on top of the graph, along with some by-hand computation requiring only additions and subtractions. ”
His printout is a simplified version of the device that you print on plastic sheet, but it occurred to me that this technology could be used in a deindustrialised future environment by using tracing/oiled paper or etched glass sheets with the necessary curves and other computational graphics. The gerber guy he mentions was an inventor of many other analog computational devices, which Chris explores as well.
Here is the link;
https://cstaecker.fairfield.edu/~cstaecker/machines/equameter.html
Re: Wizards – I recently came across a vividly illustrated book “Wizards” (part of the Heroes and Legends series from Rosen Publishing; by David and Leslie McIntee, 2016, the Rosen Publishing Group, New York, NY). Some of the content is eye-rolling, nevertheless, it contains some interesting legends and has a number of references ‘for further reading’ (including, IIRC, a name that has been mentioned at times by our esteemed host, JMG: Gareth Knight (“A History of White Magic”). The website noted in the book provides further links: http://www.rosenlinks.com/hero/wiz/
I’m wondering if you might care to share what sold you on the idea of moving to E. Providence RI? Of course everyone’s values and criteria are different, but I’m considering a move in the near future myself and would be very interested in what has drawn you to the area.
@JMG
Another datapoint for you.
Abhigya Anand (bills himself as the world’s youngest Vedic Astrologer, or used to before he hit puberty) says Saturn has a new influence on the planet. I forget the precise astrological term he used.
This latest heavenly position – according Vedic Astrological lore – is traditionally a scandal-ridden arrangement for the physician industry and even more-so for the pharmaceutical industry.
He believes this particular arrangement portends medical and pharmaceutical scandals breaking out more publicly (possibly even world-wide) that have so far flown under the radar of public consciousness.
For Vedic Jyotish astrology, as I understand it, the planets in various constellations actually do matter much more than it does for western astrology.
I raised an eyebrow upon hearing that.
Addendum:
Found it. Here’s the video for those whom would like to hear him discuss it directly.
Saturn enters Shatabhishak | What may happen after March 14
Clay Dennis – Speaking of public radio… I’ve supported it all my adult life, sometimes three radio stations at a time. The most recent fund-raising week for my favorite NPR station included a pitch that “we know you value the truth, and the truth is that we’re behind on our goals. Income is down (x) percent this year, and we need your help.” But, having started listening to public radio in the late 1970s in mid-Michigan, I remember when they simply didn’t broadcast 24 hours a day. Around 11 PM, the announcer would say goodnight, they’d play the sound of crickets chirping (and some other ambient sounds) for a few minutes, then it would fade out, and there would be a formal closing announcement. They didn’t start up again until about 6 AM. When stations get back to that kind of austerity, I’ll know that the situation is serious.
Atmospheric River – Why can’t you have a quiet RV refrigerator in your house? Because it’s just not as efficient, especially in the sizes that most people have become accustomed to for their homes. I found an estimate that an RV fridge needs about 1.5 lbs. of propane per day, or about $1. A conventional fridge: 1-2 kWh of electricity per day, or $0.15-0.30, less that 1/3 as much The RV fridge probably has a smaller capacity, too. Thermoelectric refrigeration is even less efficient, but (according to our Dept o’ Energy), acceptably efficient for wine and cigar storage: small volumes with low thermal loads. As energy becomes more expensive, we’ll probably be more careful about what actually needs refrigeration, and what should just be consumed more promptly when stored at room temperature. (Of course, “room temperature” will be closer to refrigerator temperature during the colder months of the year.)
@lathechuck
I would have to haul in bottle of propane, and that is worse than the noise. The oder one I am using now refried/freezer has normal, acceptable refrigerators noises, I will just have to be careful buying a new one once I get to that point.
So it is more than money, it is that I have electricity aneither AC or DC.
I know at some point in my life, should I live that long, things will stair step down even more. But, I bet that there will continue to be refrigeration and lights as these things are so important for our households for quite a while.
I really just need to decide if I go ahead and go DC or stay with a conventional AC model
Very late in this cycle but… I recently read an account of someone going to Mecca and it mentioned that the circuits around the Kaaba are performed in an anti clockwise direction.
I did not know that, but it has started me thinking again about the five rites, Judson, Sphere of Protection (SoP) and other practices/exercises as well as polarities, charges and thrust blocks (a la Cosmic Doctrine).
Doing a search on the matter, first results gave me references to things like:
3) That the moon revolves around the earth anti-clockwise.
4) The earth rotates around its own axis in an anti-clockwise direction.
5) The earth revolves around the sun in an anti-clockwise direction.
https://khutbahbank.org.uk/v2/2017/07/26/why-do-we-walk-anti-clockwise-around-the-kaaba/
1 Human Blood
We know that human blood flows around the body. However, the most interesting thing about the blood circulation is that it starts circulating in the body in an anticlockwise flow
https://lifeinsaudiarabia.net/why-the-tawaf-around-the-holy-kaaba-is-performed-anticlockwise-8-reasons/
And then from a site about the tibetan rites:
In her successful book, Hands of Light, Brennan says,
When the chakras are functioning normally, each will be “open”, spinning clockwise to metabolise the particular energies needed from the universal field. A clockwise spin draws energy from the UEF (Universal Energy Field) into the chakra, very much like the right-hand rule in electromagnetism, which states that a changing magnetic field around a wire will induce a current in that wire.
When the chakra spins counter clockwise, the current is flowing outward from the body, thus interfering with metabolism. In other words, the energies that are needed and that we experience as psychological reality are not flowing into the chakra when it is spinning counter clockwise. We thus label the chakra as “closed” to incoming energies.
https://t5t.com/the-five-tibetans-rite-no-1-which-direction-should-i-spin
I’ve seen many variations over the years (e.g. females circulating energy one direction, males another) and thought it was about polarities; Cosmic doctrine talking about using thrust blocks instead of direct opposition to avoid being locked in place; and now the direction around the kaaba seeming to flow with a list of other things that apparently flow in n anticlockwise direction.
Now, given that we don’t actually know where we are (where am I. where is the earth, where is the solar system etc) and rely on making interpretations/best guesses to describe a system we are in and cannot look at objectively.
In the set up of a classical 7 level labyrinth, I have seen it said that the labyrinth can be set up with the initial entrance being on left or right, but since the turning of a labyrinth seems to act like a pattern breaker by confusing the mind as to where one is – an experiment I tried was to stand at the centre of a labyrinth and then, stay at the centre but turn as eyes follow the path from entrance to centre and then centre back to entrance. This results in quite an interesting effect of something that feels like a tai chi dance or what have you.
This has already generated more potential meditation themes than I can shake a stick at – Plenty to chew on and experiment with, and granted it may not be of particular importance or relevance just now, but JMG and commentariat – has anyone seen any particularly interesting discussion around this direction business in regards to flow in harmony, flow in opposition, flow at angles?
From a martial arts perspective I’ve found most effect in harmony and angles with opposition being a sort of fall back position in some circumstances.
But just because something works in one time, place and circumstance does not mean that will always be the case – things change and can call for different ways.
Do you think that a lot have things have become dogmas and tradition – sometimes it seems to me that arguing over minutiae is an exercise in futility… then again, if it is a discussion of which wires and in which order to connect them to avoid an explosion, it could end up being an exercise in fatality!
Not looking for the right way or the wrong way – I’m just interested in what others think about such matters…
Cheers,
eathworm
PS
Are the humans the electrons? 😉
Again, we can determine the direction of the force acting upon the electron using a hand rule. Since the electron has a negative charge, the left hand rule is used. The fingers of the left hand are pointed in the direction of the magnetic field and the thumb points in the direction of the initial electron movement. The direction of the force acting on the electron is the direction the palm of the left hand faces. The direction of the magnetic field, the direction of the moving charge, and the direction of the force on the particle are all perpendicular to each other.
Illustration of the left hand rule
[Figure 4]
https://dr282zn36sxxg.cloudfront.net/datastreams/f-d%3A457bf2da45f1022abc6d541a090041eed9a654027ef2156c15ff2366%2BIMAGE_THUMB_POSTCARD_TINY%2BIMAGE_THUMB_POSTCARD_TINY.1
In most situations, a positive test charged is used, instead of an electron. In these circumstances, the right hand rule is used. The right hand rule is the same as the left hand rule; the thumb is the direction of initial charge movement, the fingers are the direction of the field, and the palm is the direction of the acting force.
Illustration of the right hand rule for force
[Figure 5]
https://dr282zn36sxxg.cloudfront.net/datastreams/f-d%3A918198bc25c16a6900d0abb1ac1753b74e319747f2a6e3bc6ce5aece%2BIMAGE_THUMB_POSTCARD_TINY%2BIMAGE_THUMB_POSTCARD_TINY.1
In dealing with the relationships that exist between magnetic fields and electric charges, there are both left hand and right hand rules that we use to indicate various directions – directions of fields, directions of currents, directions of motion. To avoid errors, it is absolutely vital to know and express whether the system we are observing is using conventional current or electron current. This allows us to use the appropriate rule.
Regarding refrigerators…. My Amish friends all buy the good German propane fridges. Please remember that Amish don’t shun technology but I stead shun anything that makes them dependent on outside their community. Basically they are just off-grid with a strong orthodox religion.
Also, my understanding is that fridges back in the 1950’s were pretty energy efficient and the “frost free” function uses a lot of energy. Also, any holes in the doors, like for water and ice cubes, are very inefficient. And the energy stars are pretty worthless now because they compare like models and not all fridges. Just virtue signaling anymore.
Freezer chests are pretty efficient. It would be cool to turn them into a fridge with some kind of thermostat. I’ve seen people using them for fermentation etc this way and super energy efficient.
I’m just getting around to reading the second page of MM now that it’s Tuesday morning. There was a big thread about a national quiz and some dire events the questioner experienced during and after. This leads me to speculate that a very long running quiz, like “Jeopardy” for example, might have developed an egregore over the years and something associated with that egregore may have not liked the questioner’s “cheating.” Also that there might be some literal truth in the name of the show. Just my own speculation…
A German walks into a bar and orders a fancy beer.
The bartender tells him : “100 euros!”
The German is shocked – “100 euros? yesterday it was only 10 euros !”
“Well, today it is 100 euros.”
– “But why 100, damn it?”
Bartender: “I’ll explain it:
-10 euros is the beer,
-10 to help Ukraine,
-20 assistance to European countries who have imposed sanctions and are not members of the EU.
-20 euros in aid to the UK, for successful implementation of sanctions against Russia.
-Then 30 euros are sent to the Balkan countries as aid to buy furnace coal.
– and finally, 10 euros for a gas subsidy for the EU to fund and help maintain sanctions!”
The German silently with internal anger took out the money and gave the bartender 100 euros.
The bartender took them, entered in the cash register and gave him 10 euros back.
German in disbelief: “Wait, you said 100 euros, right? I gave you 100, why are you giving me back 10 euros?”
…There is no beer.
I had an interesting morning in church Sunday (First Unitarian in Providence, RI.) The service was part of a monthly theme on redemption, and included our youth. It was based on the book The Lost Words: A Spell Book. The book was published in 2017 in reaction to the Oxford Dictionary for Children, which dropped many words related to the natural world, such as “acorn”, “heron”, or “willow”,and replaced them with modern words relating to our new digital life. The Lost Words has a series of “spells” (in quotes) to be spoken or sung, with the intent of recalling the absent words, and, more importantly, reconnecting our youth with the nature which is so often absent from our lives.
Although the service was a series of “spells”, it was clear to me that we were actually doing a working, regardless of the intentions of the worship leaders (our minister and the Director of Religious Education). After the service, I spoke with them, recounting the definition of magic by Dion Fortune, and thanking them that for the first time, I had felt that we had actually done a magical working in the Meeting House. A brief note of concern flitted over the face of the minister: well educated as she is, I don’t think committing magic ever occurred to her.
We can discuss energy solutions over at green wizards, I think we are still at the old site, at least I haven’t been told it has moved. I am MountainMoma over there…..post something and we can make a thread about stuff for stair stepping down was to stay comfortable https://greenwizards.com
One way to run things off solar power without the complicated and expensive inverters is being done at Living Energy Farms https://livingenergyfarm.org
They have a store that is selling the DC chest refrigerator again, the manufacturer stopped offering it, but they convinced them to let them make orders of it since they still have the ability to easily put that change in them, Sunstar and others sell DC chest refrigerators and fridge/freezer combos that need a battery on all the usual off grid places. https://livingenergylights.com/product/sunstar-direct-drive-8-cuft-chest-style-refrigerator-freezer/
Link to one of our Green Wizard discussions https://greenwizards.com/node/1293
I posted my tiny addition to what was a craft room/family room, mostly detached to make it a rental income producing area. https://greenwizards.com/node/865
Dave T. the group moderator has posted the first part of his basement remodel to a separate living area. https://greenwizards.com/node/1771
Both are ways to either have income or to house family
We can start other threads there on solar hot water ideas, refrigeration options, etc…
Hey John, I’m back at it again with an oddball subject.
When I was around 11 years old I used to watch this cartoon called Adventure Time. I only watched it on and off when I went to one of my friend’s houses during the summer. He had cable, my family didn’t because my family has been very frugal after the 2008 disaster.
Anyway, a few months ago, I decided to rewatch Adventure Time with my wife because I had fond memories and each episode was short. I was struck by how much it is related to collapse and the occult. (Synchronicity??) Let me explain.
Adventure Time takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. At first you don’t realize it, but as the series progresses, it becomes obvious that the story takes place 1000 years after our civilization collapses. As Finn and his magical dog Jake journey around the land of Ooo, you notice derelict skyscrapers, broken televisions, rusting cars, ancient graffiti, etc. This is related to collapse for obvious reasons.
Here’s the more interesting part. I didn’t realize this upon my first viewing as a child, but Adventure Time is absolutely dripping with occult imagery and symbolism. This was super shocking to me and now the series is even more meaningful to me. In the first few seasons (1-3) it seems like a standard wacky kid’s cartoon. But as the series progresses, it becomes more complex, has plot continuity and storylines, and becomes more suited for adolescent and adult audiences, and this is where the occult really begins to stand out.
I’ll give a few examples. One of my favorite series of episodes is in Season 7 called “Stakes.” In this series of episodes, a demon-turned vampire huntress has to stake 7 vampires, and each character represents a tarot card. There’s The Fool, The Empress, The Hierophant, The Moon, Justice (The protagonist), The Emperor (The Vampire King). Each of the characters really embodies the characteristics and attributes of each tarot card. An episode called “The Mountain” resembles Hermetic and Thelemic initiation rites.
The show also features things such as Astral Projection, Reincarnation, Gods and Goddesses, and lots of magic (although the magic in the show is more like hollywood style magic) A certain mage named Peppermint Butler does lots of magic that references gnosticism, egyptian gods, and sikh magic. Here’s a clip that I really liked (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9b222MmjeU&t=63s)
On the very evening when I started studying your book Paths of Wisdom, I watched a particular episode that featured the Tree of Life. I was so floored!
@Orion, #307: Here’s a great DIY idea for turning a chest freezer into a fridge: https://mtbest.net/chest-fridge/
I’ve been wanting to do this for ages, unfortunately we don’t have room for a chest freezer. It’s great technology because the freezer is much better isolated than a fridge and the lid opens upwards, keeping the cold inside when opening (cold air is heavier than warm). It runs only about 2min per hour and takes almost no electricity, perfectly able to run off solar. Just as inspiration…
Here is yet another example of just how bizarre and out of touch with reality the mainstream media in America has become in recent years. The Newspeak coming out of the New York Times and USA Today reads more like something one would expect to see in The Onion or The Babylon Bee.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/03/28/media-outlets-apologize-correctly-identifying-transgender-shooter-woman/
West Virginia,
Bicycles will not last long. Primarily, the rubber goods like tires and inner tubes will quickly become scarce. Our current supplies are manufactured in China or somewhere in southeast Asia; and distribution networks for those manufactured goods are brittle and undercapitalized (they don’t make that much money as profit and cannot afford to buy in to different methods and networks of distribution). Ball bearings are the next casualty as are all the special smaller components.
I saw a movie about Cuba – and bicycles lasted until spare parts ran out. A good mechanic can keep equipment going for so long, but eventually metal rends, cables rust, rubber degrades, and you need a tremendous level of industrial output to include the production of even the simplest components.
Bogatyr, of course. Not that the Chinese are backing off on their territorial claims in the Himalayas, of course — they simply want India to allow them to take what they want. That’s one of the reasons you can tell China has achieved superpower status: they’re starting to act the way the US does. “Be reasonable, do what we tell you!”
Viking, good! That’s a much more productive approach.
Clay, and that’s why so much of art and culture are moribund, and will be dead soon. Once the arts become the private preserve of an entitled elite, they die.
David BTL, thank you for the data points!
West Virginia, depends on what kind of bicycle you have in mind. This kind will be available forever:
But if you want metal frames, rubber tires, gears, sprockets, and the rest, that depends on a stable source of rubber and a certain level of metalworking technology, which may or may not be available, depending on where you are and what particular set of roadbumps get hit on the way down.
Patricia M, a blast from the past!
Bob, no, I haven’t made positive statements about UBI in the past. I think it’s a bad idea — inevitably, in the real world, it turns into a means of graft and social control — and as the ongoing decline of industrial society accelerates around us, we’re no longer going to have the collective wealth needed to pay people for existing. Arguably we can’t do so now. What I’d like to see instead is a sustained process of pruning away the institutional barriers to small business formation, and taxes on “labor saving” (that is to say, job destroying”) technologies, so that full employment at decent wages is available. My novel Retrotopia, which will be back in print next year, covers this in some detail.
J.L.Mc12, I’m delighted to hear of this! It’s people like this who have the best chance of making sure that essential mathematical skills will still be around once the resource and energy cost of computer technology makes it no longer functional for most uses. Thanks for the note of cheer.
PatriciaT, thanks for this.
Joshua, it was as usual a range of things. The cost of living is fairly low in east coast terms — we pay a little over $1000 a month for a roomy 2 br place, and you can get a very nice house here for $300K — state taxes are low, while public services such as libraries and public transit are quite good. Rhode Island in general also has been a haven for eccentrics, dissidents, and misfits since there was a Rhode Island, so that was a definite plus. My wife’s health conditions are easier to manage in a place where we can get the allergen-free foods she needs, and that’s even easier now that Brazilian immigration is picking up — there are a couple of Brazilian groceries an easy walk from us now, and so we have access to farofa meal and other cassava-based products (yum). East Providence is also very walkable, and the part of it where we live has lots of amenities very close by, as well as good access to Providence proper on foot. So it’s a good fit for us.
Panda, hmm! Most interesting. I don’t know a great deal about Jyotish but I know that it makes good predictions, so that’s worth knowing.
Earthworm, fascinating. All this is good meditation fodder. No, I haven’t seen any good books on the subject; I do know that traditions vary about which is the right way. In Tibet, Buddhists circumambulate clockwise and Bon-pa circumambulate counterclockwise; similarly, in the Puget Sound country where I grew up, the Native peoples always dance counterclockwise around the longhouse in their ceremonies, because that’s the way the stars move.
Phutatorius, on reflection, I’m wondering whether it was the very common kind of magical blowback that happens when somebody tries to get something for nothing using magic.
Coat, funny. True, but funny.
Peter, careful! Don’t let them know that everybody does magic all the time; it might freak them out… 😉
Enjoyer, interesting. There’s this odd underground current of occultism and awareness of decline in children’s cartoons, going back I don’t know how far. I grew up long before Adventure Time, though, and this is the first I’ve heard of it.
Platypus, they’ve got to quit handing over such perfect meme fodder to the Kekistani brigade. Or maybe not. 😉
West Virginia (#291), keep in mind that bicycles are not without their own environmental costs. Even back in the 19th century tropical plantations (see “Heart of Darkness”) provided the rubber for tubes and tires and the League of American Wheelmen was instrumental in the movement to pave roads. That said, something resembling a velocipede should be viable for a long time to come.
Hey there JMG,
One of the common analogies used to analyze the current US political trajectory is to compare it against the fall and rise of Rome. Where do you think we stand compared to that other historic timeline? Rise of the Triumvirate, the troubles of the 2nd century? Diocletian’s Split of the Empire?
Hi Emmanuel,
Many thanks for the laughs! And where’s that prospectus, we really need to get onto this? Sounds like a sure thing to me. And hey, don’t believe the news reports that at the chew-exchange there’s been some dodgy record keeping, and that dogs have been put in charge of the stores of chews. Sure, some might have disappeared, but it was within allowable chew loss tolerances. Chews are still sound. Chews will save the economy! 🙂
Cheers
Chris
outragedconsumer, we have here in North America piles and piles of discarded tires and unused autos and appliances, not to mention all the structural steel left sitting around in abandoned malls and factories which can surely be mined and repurposed. Now, you might get a bike which can win a race, but surely you could hope for one which carries you where you need to go. We Americans really need to get over our fetishization of private property. Where someone lives on and uses the property, yes, stay off, but when a business entity leaves a whole building abandoned, I say let those who know how to use the materials have at it.
JMG (no. 316) “…and Bon-pa circumambulate counterclockwise…”
*Bon po (I occassionally see “Bon mo” for a female)
A really important one is Muslims performing tawaf around the Ka’aba (counter-clockwise). Same with Sufi / Alevi sema (whirling).
A little googling reveals that Hindu pradakshina is normally done clockwise, to keep object circumambulated on one’s right. (One person notes that counter-clockwise circumambulation is done at funerals.)
I often see explanations to the effect that the direction of circumambulation reflects the orbits of the planets–purely a matter of perspective to those who remember that there are two hemispheres, but the ancients may not have considered that. (Apparently the bathtub drain thing is a myth, though.) One devout person on Quora cited electrons.
Possibly related: according to custom, one enters a Chinese temple through the right door (from the vantage point of facing the temple), and leaves through the left. The middle door is for the gods.
Eep!
Apologies JMG and the board. I just rewatched that video I linked and may have drawn wrong conclusions from what Anand actually said about Saturn in Shatabhishak. I don’t know why I thought he mentioned the pharmaceutical industry in detriment. Faulty understanding on my part. So I am retracting my statements.
I tracked down some articles on Saturn in Shatabhishak and discovered Rahu (North Node of the Moon, Caput Draconis = Dragon’s Head) is co-ruler with Saturn of this Shatabhishak. He says that this arrangement will be affecting physicians and pharmaceuticals for approximately the next 400 days out from March 14. Though whether that will be for good or ill I don’t know. [note: that statement I can verify as accurate since I re-watched the video.]
Ketu (South Node of the Sun, Cauda Draconis = Dragon’s Tail)
In traditional Vedic astrology Rahu and Ketu are granted planet status because Yogis in samadhi see that both have the power and karmic influence of all life on earth like the actual visible planets. From the little bit I’ve looked into it the only planet able to affect Rahu and Ketu in turn is Jupiter. I think Rahu is considered a Malific. Don’t know if it’s considered a greater malific or a lesser one in Vedic astrology but I’m guessing a Malific + Malific equation likely doesn’t bode good fortune even if both are in the sign they rule. Maybe since they both co-rule this Nakshatra that will have a softening effect on whatever happens during this time?
He does mention that Saturn in Shatabhishak is a mixed bag with regard to karmic results. Technology in certain areas will be enhanced (why am I thinking of ChatGPT right now?) but other areas not so much. One of the big takes I got is that along with enhancement of technology and health it also amps up lies and lying. Maybe that’s why I had (the clearly faulty) memory that he was saying this combo would affect physicians and pharmaceuticals negatively. I may have just made that connection myself from reading more into his statements than he actually said.
This combo in this position also amps up disasters though he admits he doesn’t know if these will be natural or man-made. Clearly in ancient Vedic times large scale disasters were exclusively made by Mother Nature but we can no longer rule out humans having the ability to create large scale disasters anymore so he admits he can’t tell what kind or kinds of large disaster(s) might happen while these two are in this position. Heaven help us all if it’s pointing to a man-made one. 🙁
I did find the following info on Saturn, Shatabhishak and Saturn-Rahu as a combo.
Saturn
It is all that which we don’t like in our life. Saturn is Delay, Frustration, Restriction, Limitation and Anxiety. It is people of Authority, like Boss at your Work Place or Father-Figure at Home. Saturn is our Karmic Debt from past-life. Saturn is the things we didn’t treat too well in our past life. Saturn is our Challenges and Lessons of life. Saturn is Old-Age, Teeth/Bones in Human Body, Diseases, Changes etc. Saturn represents our Step-Relations, it means that wherever Saturn sits, people related with that house give us Step Treatment. Saturn is Hard Work, Efforts and most importantly Perseverance etc. Nothing comes easy and in one go with Saturn. You have to work hard continuously over the longest possible period of life. Saturn makes a person Legend as Legends have one thing in common that they choose one field and work hard in it for whole life.
Shatabhishak Nakshatra
It is a nakshatra related with healing and health care. It is related with serving humanity or higher cause.
Aquarius
As Shatabhishak is part of Aquarius sign, Aquarius and things represented by Aquarius are also important here. Aquarius is 11th sign of zodiac belt, hence it signifies the things and energy related with 11th house of horoscope, such as Gains, Desires, Hopes and Wishes, Large Organisations, Network Circles etc. Besides this, Aquarius also represents Scientific Thinking & Research, Uplifting the Society, Higher Goals & Rewards for all. Aquarius is made of another set of 2 and half Nakshatra, i.e. Dhanishtha, Satabhisha and Purva-Bhadrapada. Aquarius Lord is Saturn & Rahu.
Saturn & Rahu
As Saturn rules Capricorn & Aquarius and Rahu co-rules Aquarius & also rules Shatabhishak, their position and dignity is important to know about the overall functioning of any planet in Shatabhisha/Aquarius.
and
Generic Results of Saturn
Lots of things change in life with Saturn. Hence, many things will change with Saturn in different nakshatras. As Saturn represents delay, hard work and perseverance, it shows that whichever nakshatra it is placed in, Saturn will give results with hard work, delay and perseverance. With Saturn, it doesn’t matter if he is in friendly sign/nakshatra or enemy sign/nakshatra. Saturn represents either challenges or even more challenges anywhere. It can never be convenient or pleasant in any house/sign positions, not even in exaltation. Another generic thing will be Saturn’s results in relationship matters. Saturn is a cold or harsh planet. In any house/sign/nakshatra, Saturn would show that people related with that house will give person a very harsh or cold treatment. In romantic relations, Saturn will just suck the pleasure factor away and relationship life can be very dry and cold. People say that after 35 Saturn gives better results but I feel that it is not that Saturn will bring better results but we realize our limitations in life till 30-35 years of age and we understand that what we can expect in life and what we cannot. With this background, let’s understand Saturn in various nakshatras.
and found the following in a 10 second search
Rahu in Astrology:
Rahu is a malefic planet and associated with negative things such as fear, greed, illusions, etc but its placement is not always negative. If placed positively in one’s horoscope it bestows the native with immense luxury, fame, name and a sharp mind. Rahu is the co-ruler of Aquarius and the owner of Shatabhisha Nakshatra and so, the placement, and dignity of Rahu also plays an important role in deciding the proper functioning of Saturn in Shatabhisha Nakshatra.
On the differences between Rahu and Ketu in Vedic vs. Western Astrology
In Hindu astrology, Rahu and Ketu are considered to be malefic planets, meaning they bring negative influences and obstacles into a person’s life. They are associated with darkness, ignorance, and confusion, and are believed to be the cause of many misfortunes. In Western astrology, Rahu and Ketu are seen as more positive influences, representing the areas of life where we can grow and learn.
The similarities between Rahu and Ketu in Hindu and Western astrology are that they both represent the same areas of life. In Hindu astrology, Rahu and Ketu are associated with the areas of life related to material possessions, relationships, and spiritual growth. In Western astrology, they are associated with the areas of life related to personal growth, relationships, and spiritual development.
The differences between Rahu and Ketu in Hindu and Western astrology are that they are seen as having different influences. In Hindu astrology, Rahu and Ketu are seen as obstacles that must be overcome in order to achieve success. In Western astrology, they are seen as opportunities for growth and learning. Additionally, in Hindu astrology, Rahu and Ketu are seen as being more powerful and influential than the other planets, while in Western astrology, they are seen as being less influential than the other planets.
Overall, Rahu and Ketu have both similarities and differences in Hindu and Western astrology. While they are both associated with the same areas of life, they are seen as having different influences and levels of power. It is important to understand both perspectives in order to gain a better understanding of how these two planets affect our lives.
For an insight into prehistoric Britain I highly recommend ‘The Dark Twin’ by Marion Campbell.
One afternoon Marion had a picnic in a field of bronze age barrows adjacent to her ancestral home at Kilberry Castle in Scotland. She fell asleep on a barrow mound and awoke a few hours later in a state of complete madness that sent her sprinting home to write this book in one draft without resting or taking a single break over the course of two days. Later she conferred with her friend Robert Graves who confirmed that he had also once experienced a similar episode of inspirational madness.
What is interesting is that such ‘barrow dreams’ are only said to occur if one is actually a blood relation of the occupant, which is to say that Marion’s family must have been living on the same peninsula for at least three thousand years. In the Britain Isles this is not impossible. In the 1990s DNA analysis revealed that Mr. Adrian Targett of Somerset is directly descended from the Mesolithic ‘Cheddar Man’ (7100 BC) who was found near his home.
The story itself is a very peculiar version of the legend of Tristan and Isolde, so this tale is clearly a great deal older than is commonly believed. What I found most interesting is the description of other religious traditions alongside that of the Bronze Age Celts. In the ‘Dark Twin’ Marion wrote about an aboriginal people whose religion was classic Asiatic shamanism, and also Greek speaking priests who had travelled from the Mediterranean (perhaps in search of the Apollonian temples of Hyperborea).
As a whole this book has a strange dream like quality, which belongs to a very distant and far more enchanted age.
It’s late in the week, but yesterday I received an article on declining academic ability of children using smartphones in Japan, posted in Tokyo Shimbun, a major daily newspaper that has a reputation as the least inhibited about publishing controversial matters. I translated it and posted it here: https://sinners4diseasecontrol.dreamwidth.org/
The good news is that at least for short-term use, once the gadget is pried out of our cold dead fingers, humans have the capacity to recover. My own observations of children given cellphones, and especially smartphones, is that they gradually lose interest in study and recently, that serious conditions such as dyslexia appear. Apparently, the effects are even worse than I thought, with brain development effectively halted in heavy users, according to MRI scans.
From Magic Monday on how to cure being full of yourself – you had a very good one in the scene where one of the “brightest man in the room” types in a chess club takes on a real master and gets his head handed to him quite nicely.
@Citrine,
The TV news in Japan is apparently more properly Woke than the US media. They identified the shooter correctly as a lady and did not comment further. They didn’t even express surprise that women were now going berserk with gunnery in the US. I suppose they wouldn’t put it past a brassy American gal to do whatever.
I, not being very Woke, surmised the unmentionable and am not surprised to read it.
Peter,
I’m sure you blew Reverend Liz’s mind. It’s a very typical reaction from a UU clergy.
@Earthworm,
Regarding directions of circuits, in Japan I have been told (I forget by whom) that chanting while proceeding clockwise around a holy site empowers the spirits therein, while proceeding counterclockwise provides a cleansing effect. Almost everyone I’ve seen do this goes clockwise, though.
Archdruid,
Hope I didn’t just in too late in the comment cycle. I’m looking for a post you made on your dreamwidth account about wedding rings and the magical impact of using diamonds on them. Any chance you have a link?
Regards,
Varun
Oh, earthworm already mentioned tawaf. And electrons. Sorry, I’m reading the posts in reverse order (appropriately enough for our theme!)
A few more here (including Judaism and Christianity):
https://tamboo.co.za/thiasos/pan-time-talks/around/circumambulation/
(They don’t note this, but Baha’i circumambulation is counter-clockwise.)
https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/e-bikes-bill-electric-cars-environmental-groups-climate-change.html
Electric cars aren’t going to save the world after all, but e-bikes will! That and the15 minute gulag, er, city.
The stable state of the Sino-Indian border is a completely independent Tibet, which is completely unacceptable to China’s already rigid national ideology, and I do not believe that the Chinese Communist Party will make such a concession. The ratio of military forces on the Sino-Indian border is 1:8 (since the Chinese army is composed of lower-class civilians who have no tradition of war, rather than from the war caste like India, so the actual combat power ratio will be even more disparate), because China will Too many resources are invested in the navy, so that it is difficult for them to deal with the continuous expansion of the continental war in recent years.
There is a reason why most Chinese dynasties lack interest in the sea. Some people would think that China’s geopolitical activities in recent years are an attempt to rebuild the Qing Empire’s sphere of influence which is wrong. The Qing Empire was notoriously focused on the land and despised the sea (which led to their loss to Japan in the Sino-Japanese War), China’s current strategy is closer to focusing on the sea and neglecting the land, and the premise of this strategy is completely based on the post-World War II order-that is, the belief that land borders cannot be changed because of the war, which has been completely broken in the past few years.
@ West Virginia, #291
An interesting, detailed article from the online magazine “Low Tech” on bicycle sustainability :
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/02/can-we-make-bicycles-sustainable-again.html
Tamanous, it’s nothing like that exact a match. It never is.
Panda, thanks for this.
Patricia O, that doesn’t surprise me at all.
Patricia M, I suppose Seth Ames’ downfall in his one chess game with June Satterlee does qualify!
Varun, iirc it was a response to a question on a Magic Monday a while back. I just tried searching for it and couldn’t find it. The short form is simple enough: diamonds are a stone of Mars and so using them on a wedding ring is unfortunate, since it encourages quarrels and conflicts.
(If not too late.)
The idea I announced at #229 got enough interest that I made the community: https://dryreading.dreamwidth.org/ , having now 2 posts, introducing the book club and the first book.
(I also made https://goldensectionforum.boards.net/ for discussing the Golden Section Fellowship work.)
Hey John,
Here’s a recent study involving Peak Oil. It’s called “How much oil remains for the world to produce? Comparing assessment methods, and separating fact from fiction.” I would love to hear your opinion on the matter, whether it is correct, and what it means for us if it’s correct.
Here’s a link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666049022000524
On that note, I wish fossil fuels had never existed. They have allowed our species to gain power and abundance that we are not (and may never be) spiritually prepared for.
Very late in the cycle, but on the topic of clockwise vs anti-clockwise, I’ll add that the Chechen Sufis switch repeatedly from one to the other in their zikr ceremony. What the energetic implications are of that, I don’t know.
JMG #316, Bei Dawei #321/#330 & patriciaormsby #328
Thank you for the references – Many things to consider and think on!
PS to that last:
The Judson pamphlet does mention that to the left is ‘throwing off’ and to the right is ‘receiving’ but I wonder if this a simplification of what is going on.
i.e. that it is not so much just the directions but a combination of factors that are brought into play and over time these have been formularised through ‘rules’ and ‘correct methods’. And that it is almost alchemical in nature in the form of correct ingredients (factors) being brought into a mix in needed proportion and at the right time and right angle to align within the energies around and within us to effect a shift in consiousness.
Like the rules surrounding the whirling of sufis – I read a story that Rumi first began whirling as he approached a goldsmith and that it was it was not just the spinning but tied in with the pattern of sounds from the goldsmith’s hammer… True or not I do not know but I’d be willing to make a guess that a tomb shaped hat to signify death of ego came later.
@JMG 334 – our wedding rings are rubies and diamonds for her and ruby for me. A quick on-line search says that rubies are associated with the sun and Leo (I am a Leo). Is that correct?
@林龜儒#332
Communist China will never surrender Tibet, and their long term plan is to gradually assimilate and outnumber the Tibetans, so that they eventually become an extinct historical curiosity like the Manchurians.
Punjabis are physically much larger than Chinese people, and some of them have a strong martial tradition. The original Sikh armies were entirely composed of warrior yogis (Guru Gobind Singh’s bow has a draw weight of 496 lbs). Sikhs are more than a match for modern Chinese soldiers (whose ‘wushu’ is an extremely sad and desacralised remnant of China’s formerly peerless tradition of martial arts).
My own conclusions are derived from the prophesy of a Himalayan hermit who predicted that Communist China will be completely destroyed by unprecedented flooding, and as a result it will almost certainly break up into smaller states.
Extreme droughts and floods, and devastating mega-storms are apparently going to be the main news items in the future, rather than wars and plagues (although we’ll have plenty of those as well).
FYI: https://lithub.com/a-novel-is-like-a-camp-what-fiction-can-teach-us-about-surviving-the-slow-apocalypse/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit%20Hub%20Daily:%20March%2028%2C%202023&utm_term=lithub_master_list
NOTE: Her definition of “slow apocalypse” is just what I thought it was: “the current phase of the long descent.” And yes, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” caught the flavor of it quite nicely. For those who don’t care for movies, it would make a very good graphic novel.
Mary Bennett,
I speak from a limited experience as a bicycle mechanic for little less than a decade and as the founder of a bicycle repair co-operative. Trash picked bicycles are how I learned my trade. Spoke solely from my limited person experience: the modern version of a bicycle does not last very long once someone starts riding it daily. If we are talking about two-wheeled conveyances – JMG showed a perfect example of what we might expect as the global supply chains we rely on sputter and die.
The examples are numerous, but consider the threaded axle, cups, cone and lock nuts, hub, ball bearings, spokes, spike nipples, and rim of a “simple” wheel front wheel. Right there, I can see six or seven distinct metal alloys machine, pressed, cut, electrolytically plated and/or chemically coated. Perhaps a specialist master craftsman/engineer/machinist could keep a trickle of bicycle wheels going given an ample supply of fuel, machine tools, lubricants, and properly made alloys at an enormous cost. What is more likely is that what we consider a bicycle is worth its value as scrap material in some rolling conveyance or as some other device that requires none of the capital inputs a modern bicycle requires to stay rolling. In a medium sized city where craftsmen are engaged in machine works, bicycles will stay viable as their utility and design efficiencies truly are works of moving art. That will be spotty, and though they are amazing devices don’t expect them to be the panacea they are once you get too far afield of tool makers, machinists, and metallurgist required to keep these “simple” machines going.
Wheeled conveyances will exist, but the technological burden required to keep what most of us consider a bicycle running is very high.
Tengu, we should not take India too seriously as a credible rival to the Chinese state, as there is little evidence in India’s recent history to support the idea they are martially adept. Remember, it was the much weaker and poorer Chinese of Mao’s time that gave both the Americans and the Indians some of the most humiliating military defeats of the 20th century! Just ask the survivors of Task Force Faith, whose regimental standard is now hanging in a Chinese military museum after the entire combat team was wiped out on the frigid Korean Peninsula.
@Tanuki #344 The US hasn’t been able to field a credible or successful military force since WW2 and China and India’s past conflicts have been little more than skirmishes. In any event it isn’t about a straightforward comparison of strength because India (Bhāratakhaṇḍa) has some hidden advantages that prevent it from being overrun or destroyed by any foreign power.
Thought our host might enjoy knowing that The Worthy House what I’d call a Dissident Right blog has a review of Retrotopia. Its a bit caustic but clearly made by someone who read your work and agrees with a fair bit of it
https://theworthyhouse.com/2021/01/01/retrotopia-john-michael-greer/
Stoked #347. (tallyho_347@hotmail.com) JMG. I remember you wrote about how an 18th century mystic had scoffed about the origins of Stonehenge being created by a ‘race of intelligent elephants.’ While I’ve yet to properly contextualize that statement, I teased some things out of that, as though it might have been made within the context of what Don Juan Matus might have called ‘silent knowledge’. Elephants do circle around the birthing calf and cow in a tight protective formation. They also circle around the young and elderly when attacked by predators. The strongest defend a perimeter. I asked myself :”what if the stone trilithons were an architectural depiction of those mammoths that made their stand in the ancient Doggerland–remembered thousand years later, leaping out of oral legend and immortalized in a temple to their extinction. It would explain the existential sadness of the place.
@tengu #345 Can you name a few? Or maybe some sort of book/article on this matter, sounds like interesting info.