November 18, 2010 · 10:00 am

“Humans Do Have Psychic Powers, study claims.”

The Daily Telegraph is down to its usual low standard of up to the minute scientific reportage, viz by getting round to covering a story that everyone else did last week. A study in the New Scientist says that humans do indeed have psychic powers. Apparently there was a test of 1000 volunteers who were asked to recall words from a list – it turned out the words they most remembered by sheer coincidence *wink* turned out to be words on a separate list that they were later asked to type out (I presume it ought to go without saying that the two lists were kept separate under controlled double-blinded conditions etc etc).

This at least is the hype – the hard fact is that it only “magically” worked in 53% of cases, which the author of the study reckons is 3% more than would be expected by chance alone. It was at this point that the Sumner brain spotted the flaw in the methodology – it’s a basic mathematical error: PROBABILITY IS NOT THE SAME AS STATISTICS!!!

Some people might have difficulty with this concept, but let me illustrate with a coin-toss example. The probability of getting “heads” when flipping a coin is 50%. The probability of flipping a coin ten times and getting “heads” each time is 50% raised to the power of ten, which is 0.09765625%. Now imagine the following situation:

I flip a coin ten times. I get seven heads and three tails. Does this mean that the probability of me getting heads is 70%?

Or again: I flip a coin ten times and do indeed get ten heads. Does this mean that the probability of me getting heads is 100%?

Or again: I conduct a parapsychological research with 1000 volunteers. 530 volunteers achieve “hits”, 470 do not. Does this mean that there is a 53% chance that people have psychic powers? Or that any particular significance should be read into there being 530 hits, as opposed to e.g. 500 hits or any other number?

Quite clearly, the answer in all three cases must surely be “No” – because PROBABILITY IS NOT THE SAME AS STATISTICS!

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that at no point during the study did the investigators attempt to answer the question “Why are the people achieving hits managing to be successful?” Come up with a decent answer to that and only then you have plausible scientific evidence for saying humans have psychic powers. I personally would be thrilled to bits if there was scientific validation for the existence of psychic powers, but unfortunately this study is not it. The great irony is that this experiment is not an exercise in psychic powers, but it is an exercise in “numerology.”

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November 17, 2010 · 4:18 pm

Wedding Date for Prince William and Kate Middleton predicted by Astrology

 

HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton

 

To His Royal Highness Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, and Miss Kate Middleton.

Your Royal Highness, Madame,

Firstly, may I be the first astrologer, tarot reader, ceremonial magician and all-round expert on the occult to congratulate you both on the happy event of your engagement. I daresay you are giving much thought to the preparations for the big-day. It is in this connection that I, as a loyal subject and Facebook fan of your (William’s) Royal Grandmother, wish to lend my assistance – to wit: picking the best date for the Wedding.

It is possible to calculate the best time astrologically speaking for any given occasion – this is a particular discipline known as Electional Astrology. I have taken the liberty of speculating what criteria you may feel best conducive to a good Wedding:

  1. Love
  2. Longevity
  3. The beginning of a successful partnership
  4. General good fortune and happiness.

In astrological terms these are respectively represented by:

  1. Venus – for obvious reasons;
  2. Saturn (which although in one respect is the planet of death, conversely it is also the planet of long-life when well aspected);
  3. Mercury – which as the planet of communication also rules over new ventures and agreements;
  4. Miscellaneous other planets – e.g. Jupiter, Mars, Sun or Moon, so long as they are all well aspected (or at the very least, not badly aspected).

The rule of thumb in Electional Astrology is to have regard to the position of the Moon. Thus I would suggest a date to you which fulfills the following criteria:

  1. It is on the Day and in the hour of Venus (i.e. it should be on a Friday – the hour of Venus I will refer to later);
  2. It should be when the Moon is waxing – because a waxing moon is traditionally good for attracting new influences, i.e. attracting good fortune;
  3. The Moon should form favourable aspects primarily with Venus, and secondarily with Saturn, Mercury and other planets.

This actually narrows the number of dates available down in 2011 considerably. Obviously there are only 52 Fridays. 26 of these will be eliminated because they occur when the Moon is waning. Furthermore, I have eliminated all Fridays occurring between the end of January and the 13th June, because Saturn will be retrograde on those dates. Likewise, I have eliminated all Fridays which occur when Mercury is retrograde (it is always a bad idea to begin a new venture when Mercury is retrograde).

Of those that remain, most are unremarkable astrologically speaking – except one, which is the date I recommend for your wedding. It is:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7TH 2011, at 1.42pm

OK, I know the idea of an Autumn wedding is a bit unconventional but I beg to be indulged for one moment. The great thing about

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7TH 2011, at 1.42pm

is that it fulfils all the relevant criteria – the Moon is trine Venus, trine Saturn, trine Mercury and trine the Sun. A win win win win situation! The business about 1.42pm is what I was referring to about planetary hours – 1.42 is the beginning of the midday Venus hour that Friday. You could also have held it at dawn the same day, but not only would that have involved getting up far too early, the Moon would still have been within the orb of a Mars opposition. However by holding it in the afternoon this situation is neatly avoided.

 

Friday October 7th 2011, 1.42pm - Alex Sumner's suggested date for the royal wedding.

 

In conclusion, I earnestly offer you this advice freely without any suggestion of a reward *cough* KCVO *cough*. My best wishes for the future to you both,

Your obedient servant,

Alex Sumner.

PS: Any commoners reading this might actually get the hint that the same day would also be a good day for their wedding as well – to share in the Royal couple’s good fortune, as it were.

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November 17, 2010 · 10:27 am

Today is a good day for invoking Mercury

The moon is waxing and forms a good aspect with Mercury. The planetary hours for London, UK are (or were) 0722 – 0806; 1230 – 1314; and 1842 – 1958 this evening.

Planetary hours for the daytime can be calculated by taking the length of time between dusk and the preceding dawn and dividing by 12. The first hour (i.e. beginning at dawn) is always that of the planet after which the day of the week is named – it is in fact the reason why in ancient times the days of the week were named as they were. Hence: Sunday = Sun, Monday = Moon, etc. The rest of the hours follow the natural order of the planets, repeating after every seven: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon.

The planetary hours for the night-time are calculated by dividing the time between dawn the following day and dusk the previous day by 12. (See, for example, here). The planets are assigned in the same order as the day hours, following straight on from the last hour which ended at dusk.

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November 16, 2010 · 12:23 pm

Invisibility


News today that scientists are apparently working on a Star Trek style cloaking device. Overlooking the fact that we are banned from doing so after having signed the Treaty of Algeron, this apparently works by manipulating the speed at which light reaches the viewer to create an apparent time-gap in which an event could be hidden. What this will do will in fact amount to making real-life look as if you are trying to stream an HD-video clip on a low-bandwidth connection.

Star Trek technology around the corner?

The maximum size of time-gap this can create is apparently 2*10^-9 seconds – so it is pretty pointless for creating an invisibility device given that the human brain apparently only processes information at the speed of 60Hz (i.e. if you can perform an event within 2*10^-9 seconds, there is no point turning on your cloaking device as no-one will realise you have done it anyway). Realistically though such a cloaking device could have an application hiding events not from humans but from computers which have a processor speed of 476mHz or greater – which is actually most of them nowadays.

In any event, one must bear in mind that the figure of 2*10^-9 may well be improved upon in the future, and given the rate at which, e.g.,  artificial telepathy has come on in the past twelve months, the likelihood that this will be sooner rather than later cannot be discounted.

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November 12, 2010 · 10:16 am

Daily Mail Attacks Pagans – Again

 

The appalling threat to today's society ... an unguarded flame in an enclosed space.

 

Slow news day at Nazi propaganda rag the Daily Mail, so they trot out another article about Paganism. Samhain, if you will recall, was twelve days ago … so basically what the Beaverbrook press have done is rehash a lot of what they did about a fortnight ago. It is obvious by the sting in the tail that the article is meant to leave the reader with the impression that Pagans are actively threatening Christianity (the journalist spoke to a supposedly-naughty pagan who conveniently “would not be named.”)

Yet despite trotting out various alleged Christian rentaquote people as well, the article is in fact surprisingly well-balanced – for the Daily Mail it is, attempting to give equal voice to both Pagans and the nay-sayers. They even try to be fair to paganism by asking Ron Hutton for a quote, so this might be a bit of a left-handed compliment after all 😛

IMHO, the Daily Mail is clearly secretly fascinated with something it doesn’t completely understand. I really think that Pagans, instead of reacting to every banal piece the Mail comes up with should instead aspire to remain aloof from its brand of journalism. One can no more expect the Daily Mail to produce a piece wholly uncritical of paganism than one can expect a dog not to bark. In that sense the Daily Mail does not deserve Pagans’ anger or hatred, but rather compassion instead, as one would show compassion to a wayward child. 😛

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November 10, 2010 · 10:05 pm

Ag EHNB? Niis od micma!

A correspondent has written asking why there have been no updates to the EHNB page since 2008. There are actually two reasons. Firstly I was not necessarily going to update it every year, but rather update it when I thought I had a good amount of new material to add.

Secondly, I recently did some work with EHNB – it turned out to have further reaching implications than just what could be written down after a day’s skrying. This will probably involve more Enochian work over the next few months or so.

Despite this, I am mindful of the number of readers who are interested in the subject, so I shall be posting updates when I can.

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November 8, 2010 · 4:58 pm

An Open Letter to Lady Gaga, on seeing that she has held a Seance.

 

Lady Gaga

 

Dear Lady Gaga,

We have not corresponded before but hopefully in the future you will look back upon this moment as the beginning of a long and fruitful professional relationship.

Have you ever imagined the sight of a bill for ghostbusting services which has the letters F O C* printed on it and felt like “Oh my God! Why didn’t I hire this wonderful man before now?” For this is the service which I, Alex Sumner, Prophet of the Age of Capricorn, Ascended Master, and all-round expert on all things Occult can provide! In fact I will start right now by proffering some advice on seeing that you have recently held a Seance whilst on tour in Ireland.

Firstly, the good news. The spirit you refer to as Ryan is unlikely to be the soul of an actual dead person in torment upon this Earthly plane. Generally speaking, the souls of dead people only hang around the material plane up to few days after their physical passing, whilst the remaining ties which bind them here are themselves dissolving. Thereupon they depart for the after-life in the usual manner.

Moreover, mediums do not generally contact dead people even though they purport to do so, because the person’s soul has long since ceased to be in a position to provide useful information. If they are collecting accurate information about a person’s life it is likely that they are reading it off the Akashic Records. NB: don’t expect a spirit to provide more information than it would have known whilst alive, and beware of any supposed spirit which purports to do so. There is a saying in the Occult: “Just because you are dead does not make you more intelligent.” This sounds so obvious but often people who go to consult mediums tend to forget it.

The bad news however is that it may very well be that Ryan is a genuine “thing” of some description. It might be some sort of negative entity or elemental which you have attracted to yourself because of emotional trouble. Like a Bad Romance for example! (Heh, see what I did there?) This is not the end of the world however as there are various ways to get rid of it, e.g. the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, or in extreme cases some of the techniques which I describe in my blog-posts about Vampires (see here and here). Furthermore, one can reinforce this by actively attracting positive and beneficial influences (see, e.g. here).

There is a remote, and I stress the word remote possibility that it is a real entity sent by someone nasty: however this is unlikely to be the case. The vast majority of people complaining about being psychically attacked by someone else are in fact nothing of the sort – if anything they are just severe cases of people attracting bad influences on themselves, in the manner I describe above. In any event, remedies such as the LBRP etc should be more than enough to protect you.

By now you should be reading these lines and becoming more and more fascinated with the idea of hiring the services which only I can provide. You will be pleased to know that you can contact me further to discuss hiring me. Hope the tour goes well,

Love,

Alex.

*NB: I may have said F O C but this applies only to my ghost-busting efforts. I still charge expenses!

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November 7, 2010 · 12:12 pm

Cosmic Music – reminds me of Lenny Henry

Me? Embarassed about that Lenny Henry remark? I signed Jedward 4fs!

Following on from a story I reported on several months ago that scientists had recorded the music of the Sun, it turns out they have been applying similar techniques to other stars, including one with the catch name of KIC 11026764. For publicity purposes this has been bigged up as a “star’s song,” but it would be more accurate to say it is more of an ambient drone of the kind that Brian Eno might come up with. As soon as I read this this article I thought: “KIC 11026764! Of course, it’s so obvious! I mean, as if anyone wants to hear what more famous stars like Regulus or Aldebaran sound like.”

Anyway – it certainly beats listening to X Factor.

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November 1, 2010 · 9:04 pm

All Saints Day

“Dressed in hooded gowns, women were seen standing in a circle around a cauldron while ritualistic acts were conducted.” Shock! Horror!

A news report in the Daily Mail has criticised the BBC for devoting time to paganism on Halloween. Note that this is the Daily Mail, of which I have had choice words to say in the past.Just in case my comment conveniently gets lost in the ether, I shall repost it here:

Halloween is not a Christian festival. *All Saints Day” (November 1st) is, so is *All Souls Day* (November 2nd). Indeed the latter is in fact the Christian version of Samhain – i.e. the true Samhain, not the crassly commercialised entity known as Halloween.

The fact is that both Christians and Pagans used the end of October / beginning of November for the same purpose – honouring the souls of departed loved ones.

I say let the pagans have their air-time on 31st October – as long as the Christians can have their air-time on November 1st. Criticising the BBC for lack of Christian coverage on Samhain itself is premature. Only if the Christians don’t get coverage on All Saints Day can one begin to complain that they are being marginalised by the BBC.

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October 31, 2010 · 11:52 am

“If you hear any noise, it’s just me and the boys, hit me!”

News that it is estimated that as many as one in four Sun-like stars could have Earth-like planets. Hey! I don’t make this shit up, that is how the Daily Telegraph words it. It’s like that old line from The Naked Gun – “Doctors say that Nordberg has a 50/50 chance of living, though there’s only a 10 percent chance of that.”

Anyhoo – let’s assume for one moment that one in four Sun-like solar systems are in fact inhabited. Recently I have been observing (on this planet) a growing phenomenon which finds manifestation in a number of different forms, but is essentially different ways of saying the same thing. I refer to what I shall call by a generic name of Special People. As far as I can discern, the “Special People” Phenomenon consists of the following:

  • There exists a number of people on this planet who are not like other people – the eponymous “Special People”;
  • There has been a trend since 1968 or thereabouts for progressively more children to be born as “Special People.”
  • These “Special People” are particularly gifted when it comes to psychism, intuition, meditation, etc
  • The “Special People” in some way feel apart from or separate to the rest of humanity.
  • What makes “Special People” special is hotly debated in the New Age community (and takes up a lot of shelf-space in the Mind Body Wallet section of New Age Bookshops).

The “Special People” go by different names, including:

Star-Seeds – Indigo Children – Walk-Ins – Old Souls – etc

The more I seem to read up on the subject however, the more I notice one thing in common with all of them: they are all attempts to apotheosize the social inept and awkward, and sometimes in extreme cases the downright sociopathic. It strikes me that if Karma has propelled one’s soul to a specific location, then the Karmic Lesson is to learn how to integrate with the destination, not remain aloof from it.

Moreover: the “Special People” phenomenon overly emphasises the role of people born in the past forty years or so. The danger here being that this is rather unfair on elders who, after all have traditionally been society’s teachers. Hell: most of today’s wisdom originated with people born hundreds or even thousands of years ago, so where they figure into the “Special People” phenomenon is anybody’s guess.

We are all “old souls,” the only difference being that one person may appreciate their past-life  experience to a greater extent than another. We are also all “Star-seeds” – the star in question being our own Sun. If we could look within ourselves and find out what is the best of humanity, then that is what we would be taking out to the cosmos – instead of expecting the flow of information to be one way, from cosmos to Earth.

Not too sure about walk-ins or indigo-people, although the latter does remind of the Purple Joke.

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