Sex

You may be amused to know (I certainly was), that according to researchers, the ideal duration for sex is only ten minutes – and anything more than 13 minutes is too long.

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This would be a source for a great deal of comedy if it were not so tragic. For a start, the methodology of the researchers leaves a lot to be desired. They did not find out the answers to their questions in the usual manner – instead they just went round asking people.

Furthermore, I take umbrage at the assertion that more than 13 minutes is too long. I mean, come on! That’s barely enough time to do it just once! What about foreplay, multiple orgasms, interplay, doing it more than once, afterplay and all that? Claiming that more than 13 minutes is too long almost makes me feel inadequate – for all the wrong reasons.

More seriously though there is an implied criticism of Tantra. This is something which concerns me not just for personal reasons but for professional ones as well: I deliberately incorporate a strong amount of “magick with a K” in my books. The fact of the matter is that when sexual magick is performed properly is it very powerful indeed. I cannot stress this too much. It leads one into a state of magickal consciousness in which one feels one has been handed the key to unlock the mysteries of the entire universe and beyond. It is so powerful that I deliberately want to avoid giving the impression that there may be an upper limit to what may be achieved.

However – very little of this will be experienced by people who merely aspire to ten minutes on average. It has been observed by Nikolas Schreck, author of “Demons of the Flesh,” that sex magic is essentially an elitist path – and, if the researchers mentioned in the article are allowed to define orthodoxy, it is likely to remain so for the near future.

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Star-Cross’d Alex

I was planning on making a public appearance on Sunday afternoon and sell a few copies of my new book Opus Secunda. I had been looking forward to it for some time! Instead: what happens? England are playing Germany that afternoon! 😩

It is all to do with the Saturn-Jupiter opposition at the moment – this if you recall was the reason England was playing in such a mediocre fashion – because their transits made squares to Fabio Capello’s birth-chart. If England had played better and had actually won the group, they would be playing on Saturday instead of Sunday – and I would have my Sunday afternoon free! Grr!

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The Music of the Sun

I read with interest that some scientists have concluded that the Sun actually makes music. What they in fact mean is that the various magnetic fields of the sun vibrate at frequencies which, if they were vibrations in an acoustic medium and they were speeded up to be audible to humans, they would indeed sound like something. The sceptical among you  will be thinking that a sound which is speeded up by an arbitrary amount can hardly be said to be the authentic music of anything: for example, if I had a note vibrating at 440Hz and speeded it up to 660Hz, I would be raising it in pitch from A to E. Do that too many times and on an inconsistent basis and that is tantamount to altering the melody of the whole song!

However, if one were to look at it not as the actual sounds in themselves but as a method of composition – by applying a consistent algorithm (algo-rhythm?) to the vibrations – one actually comes up with a piece of ambient process music of the kind that Karlheinz Stockhausen or Brian Eno would be interested in.

For those interested in hearing a WAV file of the sounds generated by the scientists from the Sun, Please click this link.

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World Cup Astrology – the post mortem

Oh dear, oh dear oh dear. What a disastrous result. Not for England – I mean for my attempts at predicting scores! In my last blog post I said:

Therefore, I am going to stick my neck out and say that England will have a slightly better game this Friday than against USA, however the underlying difficulties which caused them to perform badly have not gone way. Probable result: England to scrape by with a 1-0 victory.

This turned out to be somewhat optimistic – the final score was in fact 0-0. It would have been more accurate to say that in some respects England was both better and worse than they were against the USA. Better in that David James turned out to be a safer pair of hands than Rob Green: worse in that the England forwards were not nearly as good as previously.

It is only with the benefit of hindsight that I can say that the fact of Fabio Capello’s transitting Sun being conjunct his natal Sun was nowhere near significant enough to overcome the T-formed by the latter with the transitting Saturn / Jupiter (+Uranus) opposition.

Personally I doubt that Fabio will be able to shake off the challenging influences of Saturn and Jupiter / Uranus for the rest of this World Cup campaign: however I shall cease to predict further scores from now on.

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World Cup Astrology – England vs Algeria

After my successful attempts to predict the outcome of the British General Election, I thought to myself, can I use Astrology to predict the result of the World Cup? As it happens, I recently had a conversation with an astrologer friend of mine, who claimed that one of her colleagues did indeed use astrology to predict the results of football matches. The basic principle is to draw up a chart for the time (kick-off), date and place of the match: the Ascendant represents the Home team, whilst the Descendant is the Away team.

Thinking about this however I quickly saw the draw-back to this approach. During the Football season in England, the vast majority of matches all kick-off simultaneously – 3.30pm on a Saturday afternoon – all within a country which in astrological terms is so small that the difference between one match and another will be minimal. Therefore if the approach suggested were taken, it would imply that on any given Saturday there would be a tendency for either all home or all away teams to win their respective matches. However, this clearly does not reflect reality so if astrology can indeed be used, some deeper considerations ought to be taken into account.

Fortunately I had an idea which was inspired by work on the General Election – to identify the key individuals concerned in each match, and then look at the transits formed between their natal charts and the chart drawn up for the match. This would tell me whether a given individual was likely to have a “good match” or a “bad match.”

I first tested this theory by drawing up charts for the England vs USA game, which took place on 12th June 2010, at Rustenburg, 1830 GMT. I then found England manager Fabio Capello’s birth data – 18 June 1946, San Canzian D’Isonzo (time unknown). I immediately noticed that Capello’s natal Sun was awkwardly placed – it was at right angles to the current Saturn / Jupiter & Uranus opposition. His natal Moon, however, was more favourably placed, being trine to transitting Saturn.

The Sun – representing what one is naturally good at doing. The Moon represents emotions, sensitivity, and in a certain extent popularity (especially when forming aspects with Venus). Thus – what possible result could reconcile Fabio having a difficult game (unfavourable Sun), with the fact that his emotions and popularity with the Press would not necessarily suffer? Clearly, a 1-1 draw! It is easy for me to say that now, writing this after the fact: but I am ashamed to say that when England were 1-0 up only for the ball to bobble out of Rob Green’s hands into the goal, I was secretly delighted that there might be something to my astrological predictions. (I should point out that hours before the game I tweeted that I predicted that “US will give England a difficult time.”)

So on to the England vs Algeria game, which is due to take place this Friday, 1830 GMT in Cape Town. The unfortunate fact is that because Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus are such slow-moving planets, the same factors which caused Fabio to have a mediocre time last Saturday will have hardly improved with the passage of six days. However there is one factor in his favour – the match occurs on his birthday. In Astrological terms, this means that his natal sun is conjunct the transitting sun. Therefore, I am going to stick my neck out and say that England will have a slightly better game this Friday than against USA, however the underlying difficulties which caused them to perform badly have not gone way. Probable result: England to scrape by with a 1-0 victory.

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Opus Secunda – now available on Amazon

Opus Secunda, my new novel, is now available on Amazon.com – http://tinyurl.com/OpusSecundaAmazon

This is the second book in the “Magus Trilogy” and features the continuing adventures of Nichola Peterson, now promoted to Detective Inspector in Scotland Yard’s Homicide Specialist Crimes Directorate – aka “The Murder Squad.” In an adult-themed story, whilst investigating the murder of a top scientist, DI Peterson becomes increasingly involved in Alchemy – in all its forms.

For a free preview of the first chapter, follow this link and enter the password NICHOLA

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Telepathy: Here comes the FUD

Months ago I commented on the possible use of fMRI scanners as a possible first step – but only a step – towards the goal of creating artificial, machine-assisted telepathy. Now, it seems, in a somewhat ludicrous development, the civil liberties brigade are shoving their oar in.

Apparently, so claims an academic from Edinburgh, “if left unregulated, scanners could threaten people’s privacy. They could, for instance, be used by employers to test the honesty of an individual’s CV or by commercial companies to analyse the subconscious preferences of their consumers.”

One wonders why he should feel intimidated about an employer finding out whether an individual’s CV (resume) is honest or not. Obviously he must be concerned for other people apart from himself! More seriously though, as I have said before, fMRI scanners can just about distinguish between different types of brain activity but it is not possible to discern the contents of individual thoughts. So for example, an fMRI scanner could tell if a person is thinking about something that involves spatial awareness, but would not be able to say spatial awareness of what.

Most Civil Liberties issues arise when the potential for an infringement thereof actually exists. But the so-called Institute for Advanced Studies, which is organising the conference at which these claims will be made clearly thinks that shutting the stable door before the horse has bolted is obviously not good enough. It wants to shut it before the horse is in the stable for the first place! Really, this is the kind of news story that generally arises during the silly *ahem* I mean “conference” season.

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How to really achieve World Peace

Now I have been tough on certain Nobel Prize Winners in the past, and implied that I am perfectly willing to do as much for world peace as they have, but for less money. However, in all seriousness, I do know at least one thing about Peace and that is basically it is generally not a good idea to start a fight if you can avoid doing so.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, one of the five moral commandments (“Yama”) for every Yogi is Ahimsa – “non violence.” What Patanjali actually says is:

When non-violence in speech, though and action is established, one’s agressive nature in relinquished and others abandon hostility in one’s presence.

Now there is a famous saying, Roman in origin but made most famous by Metallica – “To secure peace is to prepare for war.” But the meaning of Patanjali says the opposite – to secure peace one must be peaceful. Indeed it does not take someone versed in ancient Yogic philosophy to realise that if you do not want to be challenged to a fight, it is probably not a good idea to go through life with a chip on your shoulder.

I say all this because I note in the news that Israel soldiers claimed that the deaths of the arabs on the so-called Freedom Flotilla was “self-defence.” Now of all the possible justifications for the controversy regarding the Flotilla, this must surely be the lamest. It was the Israeli soldiers who rappelled on to the ships. They were not obliged to board, they went looking for trouble, and of course they found it.

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Alex Sumner’s Amazon Page

This is just to inform you all that I now have an additional presence on Amazon.com – http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003O2ZIBC , or http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B003O2ZIBC if you are in the UK.

This page will publish links to my Books, and my blog entries. For previous blog entries, please see www.solascendans.com .

Currently only the first book – The Magus – is on Amazon, although my second, entitled “Opus Secunda” will be there by the beginning of July.

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Vestigia Through The Looking Glass

To London yesterday for an evening at Treadwell’s dedicated to Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum, aka Moina Mathers. Twenty seven people were crammed into the downstairs meeting room to hear three speakers give their take on this very important figure in the history of the Golden Dawn.

Moina (nĂ©e Mina Bergson, 28 February 1865 – 25 July 1928) was an artist by training, joining the Slade School in 1880. She always expressed an interest in getting back to her artistic career, but her involvement with magic, her husband S L Macgregor Mathers and poverty (arising therefrom) meant she never quite made it. As a magician, she is noted for the facts that she was a very talented clairvoyant, and helped channel a lot of the Golden Dawn’s inner order material. Moreover, however, she was instrumental in creating (with her husband) the “Rites Of Isis” – and therefore became one of the first modern Isian Priestess.

Christine, one of the speakers, had managed to translate two accounts written by contemporary French journalists of the Mathers’ “Rites of Isis” – and they appeared to be very impressive ceremonies. One journalist, AndrĂ© GauchĂ©, seemed to be happy embroider his account with a certain amount of lurid fiction, although it did correspond in large parts with another account of a public ceremony staged at the Great Paris Exhibition of 1890. Mathers’ husband claimed that he and his wife were genuine Isis worshippers and also pantheists.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the Golden Dawn was pioneering in insisting on admitting men and women on terms of perfect equality, because history of the time was written by men, there was a lot of focus on the Order’s male founders and not so much on its female members, such as Moina. Consequently there is not so much actually written about her comparatively speaking. Regarding details of her later life, she became ill in 1927, and passed on in 1928. What personal effects she had she left to her younger brother Paul Bergson. However her most important legacy – what she contributed to the Golden Dawn and subsequent Alpha Et Omega, suffered in 1939 when the then head of the AO burned the Order’s possessions, including a lot of furniture and papers which were painted or created by Moina.

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