As Greenberg describes it: “Torah doesn’t say that God waved a magic wand and everything appeared; according to Kabbalah, He created a complex evolutionary system through which infinite Divine energy evolves into finite forms.”
via And the Lord said ‘let there be a Big Bang’ | JPost | Israel News.
The Admiral knows best
News of Fred Phelps imminent passing has produced a strangely consistent reaction in the world outside the Westboro Baptist Church. Much of it is seriously unwise – for the following reason:
Dead men serve no libel writs.But dying men can.
And what’s more, if he begins a libel action before he dies, his estate can carry it on afterwards.
That’s right: everyone who has thought fit to crow about this man’s predicament before he’s actually gone has potentially opened themselves up to a law suit. And this includes every website which has allowed libellous comments on articles reporting the situation.
So be sensible. Don’t give Fred Phelps the last laugh. Keep shtum.
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Ukraine
Banishing pentagram. Start from the lower left point and continue around, finishing where you started.
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“They didn’t sing it in my language, either.”
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Albert Einstein
“We cannot solve our problems with the samethinking that we used when we created them.”
Einstein
Karen Holland, the Witch who successfully won damages for unfair dismissal.
Q. When is the only time that nazi propaganda rag the Daily Mail is at least remotely fair to Wicca and Paganism? A. When there is an even worse Religion – i.e. in the Daily Mail’s view – to be attacked in the same article! So for example, here is a heart-warming tale of a Wiccan who was sacked after taking time off to celebrate Samhain, who went on to triumph at the Employment Tribunal when claiming unfair dismissal. The Daily Mail does not have a history of being kind to Wiccans, but in this instance because her employers were Sikhs it decided to side with her. Now I could try to infer that here is a none too subtle indication of the Daily Mail’s inherent racism against those of Indian ethnicity, but that would be churlish so I won’t. Anyway, here’s the story:
Comments Off on Witch sacked for taking Halloween off work to attend Wiccan ceremony wins £15,000 after claiming religious discrimination | Mail Online
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“Help! I’m stuck!” 😉
In an article in the forthcoming Journal of Consumer Research, researchers report that the way people react to a prediction of the future (e.g. an astrological forecast), depends to a large extent on the extent to which they believe in fate. In some circumstances this may lead to seemingly counter-intuitive behaviour. (NB: this story was misreported in the Daily Telegraph today under a headline luridly suggesting horoscopes may be bad for you, despite the fact that technically speaking, no actual astrology took place during the study concerned.)
The gist of their findings is this: if you give a prediction of ill-omen to someone who believes fate is malleable, that person is likely to choose a “virtuous” course of action (i.e. in an attempt to avert the omen). However, if you give the same prediction to someone who believes fate is fixed, they are likely to just thing “F— it,” and just go do something self-indulgent. In such a situation, trying to use the prediction as a warning to them to mend their ways will end up having the opposite effect that which is intended.
This has potentially important implications for those of us who practice divination, either in the form of Astrology, Tarot, or some other method.
In order to make use of divination as an effective tool to help someone, it is necessary first to make them understand that their Fate is not fixed, that they still have free will and therefore the choice to either avoid or accept the message being given to them. There is an old saying: the stars impel, they do not compel. This rather goes back to the ancient Hermetic view of the universe, which was that it was possible to rise above the influence of the stars and the planets if one were to ascend in consciousness – to “free one’s mind,” in other words. Divination – typically in the form of astrology – was thus the key to achieving this freedom, as it enabled the individual to be fully informed of the route he or she needed to take in life – rather than be imprisoned in a deterministic, mechanistic universe.
This approach can be applied by analogy to other forms of Divination, e.g. the Tarot, which releases intuitive insights from the consciousness of the reader. Instead of predicting the future, per se, the divination is in fact pointing out present causes: and, indeed, present opportunities. These only create a “fate” where the querent is unwilling to take responsibility for his or her own actions.
My tarot themed novel, Taromancer
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This is a response to Peregrin Wildoak’s Searching and landing – a MOTO review 🙂. It occurred to me it would be interesting to perform the same sort of exercise, to see what kind of search terms are leading people to my own website.
Here are the top ten search terms used in the past year. In hit-parade style, they are:
10 – love in hebrew
8 – ehnb
7 – adonai ha aretz
6 – sol ascendans
5 – money logo
4 – books
3 – alex sumner
1 – Pentagram
Obviously I have a more intelligent class of people come to my blog – all the freaky ones must go to Magic of the Ordinary! However, looking through my list, there are some bizarre search terms, to wit:
invocation to lesser key of solomon for winning lottery jackpot – yes, someone out there has actually considered using the Goetia to win the National Lottery.
blank cheque god
http://www.facebook.com – Now this is impressive – someone was searching for the world’s most famous website and they found mine instead! Mind you it must take a special kind of idiot to not succeed in searching for Facebook even when you have the full web-address!
dracula illuminati
monty python and the holy grail she’s a witch – well, she looks like a witch, doesn’t she?
thong girl / thong bikinis brazil / trip to brasil thong / thong brazilian bikinis / etc – OK I know what this is about. I blogged about my books now being available via Amazon in Brazil, and may have just mentioned thongs, purely by accident and certainly not in a cynical attempt to attract traffic to this website.
hong sau satanism – not two terms one would expect to find together in the same search – “hong sau” being a simple Yogic method of meditating on the breath.
what tarot key is the month of june – surreal!
jared diamond it’s irrational to be religious arguments – this would actually make more sense if I had ever mentioned Jared Diamond on my website.
jonathan cainer becomes a druid – this is what happens when you just happen to mention Jonathan Cainer the astrologer in passing in one blog post, and then you mention druids in a completely different blog post! The Google search algorhythm managed to conflate the two and come up with my website.
fay weldon jehovah – what – someone was actually searching for both Fay Weldon and Jehovah in the same search term?
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Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
An Open Letter to the UK Government, on behalf of all Authors
George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I first wrote a letter like this in 2011. The law has not changed since then! Fortunately though, the UK Government today has yet another chance to get it right, as today Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne makes his Budget Statement.
To: the Rt Hon David Cameron MP, Prime Minister.
CC: The Rt Hon George Osborne MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Dear Sir,
Firstly, others of a churlish disposition might point out the irony of me posting an open letter to you on this, the kind of web-site you are trying hard to censor – but I am above that! Perhaps if my loyal readers re-blog or share this often enough, it might actually come up on your radar, as it were (hint hint).
Anywho, I appreciate you have a lot on your plate right now, and you are probably fed up to the back teeth with people adding to your woes by intimating that you may not have got it exactly right with the state of VAT policy right now.
Which is rather unfortunate as that is the precise reason why I am writing this letter.
However, I am not going to waste your time by going on a long rant about the fact that increasing indirect taxation only works during a time of economic prosperity because in a recession poor people don’t have the opportunity to get a higher paid job in order to escape their increased costs of living. Instead – I would like to take issue with the status as regards to Books and Ebooks. The situation is basically this:-
Currently, printed books are not subject to VAT – but Ebooks are.
Ever since VAT was introduced back in the 70s, successive Governments have shied away from putting VAT on books because they did not want to be accused of placing a “tax on knowledge.” Fair enough – but Ebooks contain just as much knowledge as print books, so on this basis they should be subject to the same preferential treatment, should they not?
Moreover – there is the environmental issue. Producing printed books entails chopping down lots of rain-forests, and is a far more costlier process than producing an ebook. Ebooks, however, can be sold at a far-lower price per unit than print books, for much the same reasons that it is cheaper to download MP3s than buy CDs – and no trees are hurt in the process. For a Government that is seriously committed to the Environment, surely the enlightened approach is to favour Ebooks over print-books.
IMHO, Ebooks are the future – especially when it comes to everyday reading. I can only think of two reasons at all why paper-books should continue to exist in the future. Firstly – Antiquarianism and the antiquarian book trade, for whom old editions of books and manuscripts are its raison d’etre. Secondly – gift books. After all, there is great value in getting a copy of a book autographed by the author – but unfortunately there is no comparable way to do this electronically.
There are some strange people who think they can’t do without the “feel” of a book in their hands, but I have no sympathy for them. If they are so kinesthetically-oriented, perhaps they would like to imagine that they have the sap of innocent trees on their hands as well? (Hey, it’s not quite as dramatic a metaphor as having blood on ones hands but give me some sort of credit!)
So to summarise – to recognise the increasing importance of Ebooks in the modern day world – and for environmental reasons – either put VAT on printed books but not ebooks (the reverse of the current situation); or abolish VAT on both books and Ebooks altogether.
Yours sincerely,
Alex Sumner
3 Comments
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Tagged as Budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Cameron, ebooks, environment, George Osborne, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, HM Treasury, HMRC, Leveson, Nick Clegg, rain-forests, VAT