You have got to admire a country who have named their capital city after the Gnostic concept of redemptive wisdom. Since writing the blog entry which precedes this one, I have uncovered this new story: apparently government scientists in Bulgaria are already in contact with extraterrestrial beings. Personally I think these scientists are the victims of a practical joke by one of my colleagues in the occult community. Naming no names, but if these aliens start telling the scientists to stop using Apple Macs and switch to Windows-based systems instead, you will know what I am talking about 😉
Aliens & Magick
The Vatican apparently is now interested in astrobiology, i.e. life among the stars. This has set many tongues wagging, with commentators pointing out that if life does exist on other planets, this would go against a literal interpretation of the Bible. I do not think this will be too much of a problem, as the Catholic Church has not let its magisterium be constrained by something so inconvenient as actually reading the source text up to now.
However – never mind about what happens with regards to Christianity when life on other planets is confirmed: more importantly, how will this affect the Qabalah?
- A Tree of Life Crop Circle which has been photoshopped by some teenager *cough* I mean created by an alien who knows about Athanasius Kircher.
The Tree of Life
I have heard some people argue that the Qabalah is in fact a universal principle, given that there have been instances on earth of Crop Circles in the form of the Tree of Life. (Strange how our alien brethren approve of the Kircher version of the Tree of Life, as opposed to, say, the Lurianic version!) Now the Sepher Yetzirah makes great mention of the fact that the Qabalah is based on the number ten, not nine, ten, not eleven. But… what kind of Qabalah would an alien with a different number of fingers to us humans have come up with?
Now some people, still pointing to the crop circles as proof, have tried to argue that the number ten is a universal principle which has nothing to do with the number of fingers that we have. However: the evidence is in Sepher Yetzirah that the magic number ten is indeed associated with our fingers, as Qabalistic attributions are given thereto: moreover, it attaches importance to being able to form letters of the Hebrew alphabet with ones fingers. This incidentally is how Leonard Nimoy devised the Vulcan Salute. It is actually the sign a Cohen makes as he is giving the valedictory blessing in a synagogue (it actually represents the letter Shin).
Most authorities are of the opinion that we use a decimal system as opposed to any other simply because we have ten fingers – because they are our first counting tools. I therefore say this. If aliens have a version of the Qabalah and the Tree of Life, it will be based not on Ten sephiroth, but on whatever number-base they happen to use – i.e. which is most likely to be the number of fingers they have, if indeed they have fingers.
Astrology
The most popular forms of Astrology present on Earth are by their very nature Geocentric. The constellations are the way that the stars appear from Earth, and the belt of the Zodiac is defined by the route which the Sun – our Sun – takes through the heavens.
However, if Aliens had their own version of Astrology, firstly it would not be Geocentric; secondly it would be based on a completely different Sun and set of planets; and thirdly there would be no correlation to our constellations whatsoever, as their own would appear to be completely different. The only feature of our astrology which might feature in their version would be the fact that our Sun might be visible from their own solar system. This is significant because the development of Astrology on our own planet has been governed by attaching importance to that which is most visible (the Sun, the Moon), and then defining the rest of the system in relation to that. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Alien Astrologers would only attach importance to the objects which are most noticeable from their own home planet(s), which could mean that if our Sun is in what is to them a relatively obscure part of their sky, it may not enter into their consideration at all.
This is somewhat by the by, though, as I predict that Earth Astrology is soon going to be refuted according to its own logic. This has nothing to do with astronomy purporting to have refuted it already. I shall explain: Earth Astrology relies on a given birth / event / etc having a time, date and place somewhere on the planet’s surface, because the key to the Horoscope is the Ascendant, the sign which is on the horizon at the time for which the chart is drawn.
However, the higher one is above the ground, the more fluid the concept of the horizon becomes, until when one has left the Earth altogether, it ceases to have any meaning. Thus – at some point in the future, there is going to be a human being born in outer space, and when that happens, it will be impossible to draw up a horoscope for that person. Therefore I say that at that point conventional astrology will have to be abolished, because there will be at least one person alive to whom it cannot apply.
There is such a thing as Heliocentric astrology, although because of the peculiarities of the heliocentric system it is not suitable for dealing with the kind of issues for which geocentric astrology is currently used. However, even Heliocentric astrology is going to be refuted when the first human being is born outside our solar system. Which brings me back to Alien Astrology – if aliens do exist in other solar systems, then we cannot apply our astrology to them.
The Age of Aquarius
Finally, I shall just like to briefly mention this: the whole idea of cosmic ages is another geocentric notion which is going to go the same way as geocentric astrology. Now, as noted above, I predict that astrology is going to be refuted when at least one human being is born in outer space. Reason suggests that this is going to be sometime in the next hundred or two hundred years. The Age of Aquarius is due to begin in the next hundred or two hundred years – at approximately the same time that the whole concept of the Age of Aquarius will be refuted according to the logic of Astrology. Irony of ironies! Were I a superstitious man I would be inclined to say that the birth of the first human in space will be the actual event that signifies the Age of Aquarius. In any case the challenge of the next great aeon will be to move away from a human-centric, ego-centric, notion of mysticism and to evolve a more cosmological outlook.
Filed under Comment
Square Dealings
Folks, I have a confession to make: I am on the level. What is more, in this blog post I am going to reveal some of the deepest darkest secrets of Freemasonry. Now the first thing that everyone who does not know anything else about the Craft knows is that Masonry has something to do with “funny handshakes.” These funny handshakes are technically known as “modes of recognition” and are supposedly the most secret bits of the masonic rituals which true Masons will always refuse to divulge even if the rest of Masonry is publicly discussed.
The fact that most of the handshakes are described on the internet somewhere if you search hard enough on Google is beside the point.
Now I am going to reveal something which no Mason has hitherto said on a public forum. So if you hear that I have been brutally murdered like one of Jack the Ripper’s victims or been found hanging underneath Blackfriars Bridge or died as a result of a bizarre accident at a cricket match, you know the reason. The gripping revelation is this:
The traditional modes of recognition are no longer in use: instead there is a new and completely different way of telling a brother by day or by night.
Yes, I shit ye not, there is a method now in use at lodge meetings and meetings of appendant bodies for telling if someone is a real Mason or not. And I am goint to reveal it to you! It is this: you go up to a bloke you suspect of being a Mason and say:
“Have you read the new Dan Brown book? It’s really rather good!”
OK I am joshing somewhat. But the fact of the matter is that up and down Great Queen Street and the various other masonic venues in London, the current talk is that The Lost Symbol is actually the greatest advert for Masonry in a long time: it actually depicts Masons as heroes. Not that it is an accurate description of Masonry at all: Brown has deliberately played hard and loose with the details, presumably to make it more exciting.
I was watching a programme on British TV “Channel 5” in which there were some lurid descriptions of American Freemasonry, whilst UGLE’s own Director of Communications, John Hammill, appeared defending the Craft. Reading through the credits at the end, I noticed that one of the masons interviewed in the programme was the executive producer thereof, and the production company was called “Three Degree Productions.” Oh ho!
I want to clear up some ambiguities which I feel have arisen, certainly amongst people I have spoken to. Firstly, this whole business of there being 33 degrees … there are in fact only three degrees in Craft Freemasonry, the supposed other 30 being worked by an appendant or side order known as the “Ancient and Accepted Rite,” or as it is more colloquially known in Britain, Rose-Croix. Now get this: the supreme authority for Freemasonry is not the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree of the Ancient & Accepted Rite, it is the United Grand Lodge of England – the reason being that the former has bound itself to source all its members from Craft lodges. You see the point here? The A&AR may work more degrees than the Craft, but it is only the Craft who work the three most important ones.
In any event, the A&AR do not work all 33 degrees. The first three are not worked at all – they are left to Craft Masonry. Of the remainder, the A&AR work only five degrees, the rest being conferred in name-only.
Another cannard that pops up regularly is some idea that Freemasons are somehow involved in a giant conspiracy. The fact of the matter is that there is no mechanism in Freemasonry which would allow such a conspiracy to operate. One of the reasons why Masonry has survived so long is that subject to a token amount of supervision, individual lodges are treated with a great deal of independence by United Grand Lodge. However the flipside to this independence is that just as the central hierarchy does not generally interfere with individual lodges, so the lodges are not in a position to interfere with the central hierarchy. Hence, the mere fact of joining a lodge is not going to increase one’s influence in the new world order.
It is conceivable that a mason could eventually use his connections to achieve some influence: however, if he did that much networking, he would not need Masonry to do so.
According to my personal research, there are at least two forms of corrupt networking which are far more sinister than Freemasonry, but these are seldom mentioned by the chattering classes. The reason I think is because Freemasonry has all the glamour – the rituals, the regalia, the nice big Art Deco grade 2 listed building on Great Queen Street – it attracts all the attention!
Far more serious in the conspiracy stakes is the Old-Boy Network. It is quite easy to get into Freemasonry, so long as you have a belief in a Supreme Being, but the OBN and the “old-school tie” are by their very nature exclusive. I seem to recall that many years ago the OBN got more publicity than it does now, but that was before Stephen Knight came up with his Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution. How one badly written conspiracy theory can affect public perception!
But by far the most insidious conspiracy in the world today is neither Masonry nor the OBN. It is quite simply a matter of sniffing cocaine with the right people in the right toilets. This is especially so in some of the more glamorous industries which appeal to young and creative types.
Filed under Rant
Creative Visualisation in the internet age
In what is quite clearly a shameless attempt to get pictures of scantily clad women into the Daily Telegraph, this august publication has published a review of weird and whacky 2010 calendars. But one of far the most interesting ones was one which did not resort to such cheap thrills at all, but was an attempt at humour: the 2010 Credit Crunch Calendar. This alliteratively-titled work features pictures of Britons (not) coping with the current recession, e.g. pictures of boarded-up branches of Woolworths, people going on staycations in Birmingham, etc. The idea being that it is meant to show that Britons can laugh in the face of adversity.
I say interesting, because it suddenly struck me that this was in fact a good example of how not to create a 2010 Calendar. I shall explain.
Several years ago I read The Cosmic Ordering Service by Barbel Mohr. It consisted of one page of sound, practical advice. Unfortunately the book itself was 112 pages long. Nevertheless, not to be completely underwhelmed by this publication, I have myself tried cosmic ordering in the past, based on the little amount of advice there is in the original book and have found some success with it. My attempts consist of – every January 1st – instead of making New Year’s Resolutions, I cosmically order what I want to achieve in the year ahead. Which brings me back to the subject of Calendars.
There is a common practice nowadays for people to create their own Calendars to give to others as Christmas presents: for example, a Calendar consisting of a set of family photographs to give to relatives. More to the point, there are an increasing number of resources availabe which are making it easier for people to do so, and also easier for them to make better quality items. For example: lulu.com. So here is my idea: instead of creating a calendar to give to your friends and relations as presents, why not create your own Cosmic-Ordering calendar for yourself?
Write out a list of twelve things you want to achieve in 2010 – one for each month – and then find or create a picture which visually represents each of your objectives. Do this now – do not wait for January 1st 2010, because by then it will be too late. Once you have assembled your list of 12 objectives and corresponding pictures, head on over to some site like lulu or if you are feeling adventurous and have access to a good quality printer and desktop publishing software, have a go yourself. Whichever way you decide, it should be of quality sufficient enough to impress you.
Once it is printed out and ready, try to spend some quality time next New Year’s Day contemplating gratitude to the Universe generally and its inhabitants in particular for all good fortune and blessings which have come to you in the past. Then, once you are in the mood, review each of the twelve objectives you are setting yourself, visualising the corresponding picture and mentally describing in words what it is you want to happen – and when you want it to happen by. You must be utterly convinced – at both a Conscious and Unconscious level – that you deserve all the success for which you are visualising / cosmically ordering – otherwise this exercise will not work. You can thenceforth use the calendar normally, displaying it somewhere where you will see it often.
The great thing about creating your own calendar in this way is that you can tailor it to your own personal aspirations. If you tried to make do with a commercially produced one, you would have to put up with affirmations which are only very general in character – which would thus lessen its importance for you.
This is why I thought the so-called 2010 Credit Crunch Calendar was such a bad idea. Instead of showing a load of pictures of Britain in recession, how much better it would have been to have twelve pictures of how we would like Britain to become in the forthcoming year – because maybe then we can all make it happen.
Filed under Supernatural
Voodoo Practitioner to become next Prime Minister?
In the news today I note that serial comeback-queen and Voodoo practitioner Peter Mandelson is attempting to become Prime Minister of the UK. Mandelson, as a life peer, is currently barred from standing in the House of Commons, under centuries old rules that say that members of one chamber in our bi-cameral system cannot simultaneously become a member of the other as well.
However, a bill is currently before Parliament which if passed would theoretically allow Life Peers to give up their peerage and thus become eligible to stand in the House of Commons. By convention, the Prime Minister of the UK has been a member of the Commons for the last one hundred years, when the then King refused to appoint a peer as PM saying it was more appropriate in modern times that he should come from the elected chamber, as opposed to the unelected Lords.
Should this bill allowing Life Peers to resign their peerage be passed? Quite probably yes. The House of Lords is an out-dated institution, destined for eventual oblivion: both main political parties are supposedly committed to its wholesale reform. It makes sense to allow its members to give up their peerages so that they can stand in an elected chamber – after all, in a few years’ time they are not going to have a chamber of their own. Moreover, one of the important disadvantages of the House of Lords is that it entrenches the notion of patronage in British politics. The majority of hereditary peers having been banned from the Lords back in the nineties, the chamber is now dominated by those who owe their seat there to the patronage of the current Government. Opposition parties are allowed to have a certain number of working peers appointed, but basically it is the Government who controls who becomes a peer and thus become a member of the Lords. Any measure that gets rid of appointees and replaces them with elected politicians must surely make Parliament more democratic.
Should, however, Mandelson himself become Prime Minister – even if it until no longer than next July? Let’s look at the record of this man:
July 1997 – Appointed Minister without Portfolio on Labour winning the general election. Given responsibility for the “Millennium Dome.” His management of the dome came in for constant criticism – Stephen Bayley, an adviser who was forced to quit by Mandelson, stated with unwitting irony: “If Mandy went down to a voodoo sacrifice in Brixton tonight, he’d come back tomorrow saying, `We must have voodoo sacrifices in the Dome’.”
July 1998 – promoted to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
December 1998 – resigned as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry over a scandal involving an interest free loan which he had received.
October 1999 – Mandelson’s boyfriend contacts Brazilian “Voodoo” * priest Jose Lima Da Silva (aka “Zezinho”) to get rid of one of his arch-rivals, Charlie Whelan. Mandelson himself adds a short note to the letter. Eight days later he returns to government as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
*Technically it is not “Voodoo” but “Candomble” – a Brazilian practice which shares enough similarities to the former for a typical British journalist to confuse the two.
February 2000 – Charlie Whelan resigns from his political career – but goes on to forge a new career in the media.
January 2001 – Mandelson resigns again after he tried to do a favour for one of the Hinduja brothers – businessmen who were then under investigation for involvement in the Bofors scandal. Coincidentally the Hindujas were principal sponsors of one part of the Millennium Dome (qv).
March 2001 – Zezinho sells his story to the Mail on Sunday. It is implied that Mandelson and his boyfriend had met Zezinho in person sometime prior to October 1999, as it was alleged that they had been present at a ceremony in Brazil where a chicken was slaughtered.
2004 – Mandelson resigns from British politics altogether to become a European Commissioner.
2008 – retires from the European Commission and becomes a Life Peer, member of the House of Lords, and Business Secretary.
June 2009 – receives additional appointments as First Secretary of State (an honorary title), and Lord President of the Council (i.e. of the Privy Council – this position is usually given to the Leader of the House of Lords).
October 2009 – alleged to be contemplating wanting to return to the House of Commons and perhaps become Prime Minister.
So what we have here is a politician who resigned twice from senior Government positions in shady circumstances, yet somehow manages to keep coming back. Perhaps supernatural forces are calling him back to power – despite Mandelson’s best effort to scupper his own political career!
In Haiti, there is a practice of fetishizing politicians who have achieved temporal power, such as the President of the United States, on the basis that they must have some “pizzazz” about them to achieve what they have done. It strikes me though that if any recent British politician deserves that kind of veneration, it would be Tony Blair, not Mandelson. After all, Blair had a solid ten years as Prime Minister and was fairly successful at it. Mandelson’s career on the other hand has been decidedly volatile and haphazard – hardly what one would call prime ministerial.
In my opinion, Mandelson’s biggest fault is not that he practiced black magick – but that he practiced black magick so badly.
… but then we shall see face to face.
John Dee, the famous Elizabethan Mathematician, Scholar and Occultist, continues to exercise a powerful hold over the British imagination. So much so that British newspaper The Guardian this weekend featured a nice article this weekend about Dee’s “Shewstone” or black-obsidian disc with which he got Edmund Kelly to skry all the wonders of what we nowadays call Enochian Magic.
The article in question was about a new exhibition at the Tate St Ives (Cornwall, not Cambridgeshire) about magic and modernity. This proved to be somewhat ironic as according to the article, the exhibition neither featured the work of a modern magic practitioner, nor did it feature John Dee’s Shewstone. Ah well, serves me right for reading such a miserable excuse for a paper. Back to The Daily Telegraph for me in future!
But this got me thinking that I should take this opportunity to write a blog piece about Dark Mirrors and their use in magic generally.
A “dark mirror” or Speculum (not to be confused with the medical instrument of the same name) is not so much a conventional mirror but a black shiny surface in which one’s reflection may be perceived. It is used in magic for evocations.
Now a number of magicians seem to think that when performing an evocation, the spirit somehow materialises within the Triangle of Art out of thin air – but a survey of both classic magic texts and modern sources suggests that this is not the case. A great many texts suggest that the object of evocation is to make a given spirit appear in some sort of skrying medium: the most famous example of which would be the classic Crystal Ball.
However a number of other media have also been described as being used – e.g. Dee’s black-obsidian disc, or a bowl of water (a technique favoured by the Ancient Egyptians) or a small quantity of black ink held in the palm of one’s hand. Anything in fact which is black and shiny.
Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825 – 1875) advocated the use of dark mirrors for skrying purposes. He recommended using two sheets of glass, one flat and the other (the skrying surface) concave: the space between the two sheets of glass was to be filled with black ink. Randolph also wrote down practical instructions for getting started in dark-mirror skrying. (See his book Sexual Magic
Eliphas Lévi (1810 – 1875) famously attempted to evoke the spirit of Appolonius of Tyana into a mirror. Technically he succeeded (he claimed that an apparition of Appolonius appeared) but for all the good it did him he might have just as well tried reading the tea-leaves.
Franz Bardon (1909 – 1958) in his book Initiation Into Hermetics also describes how to create magic mirrors for the purpose of skrying. According to Bardon there are several methods – such a mirror can be made from an actual mirror or glass bowl, a concave glass disc (such as can be obtained from clock-makers), or bowl which has been made by oneself out of plaster-of-paris. Knowledge of what Bardon calls “fluid condensers” – substances which attract magical influences in a kind of very simplified alchemy – is necessary to render the mirror effective. Once prepared – and assuming that one undergoes all of the other steps required for magical training – the magic mirror can be used for skrying the various planes of existence, contacting dead people, contacting magical entities, and numerous other magical effects.
The most famous practitioner of dark-mirror skrying today is Carroll “Poke” Runyon, founder of the Ordo Templi Astarte. Runyon has stated that he re-discovered the practice all by himself in the early seventies, and uses it to contact the seventy-two spirits of the Goetia of the Lesser Key of Solomon (whilst using a crystal ball for contacting angelic beings). See The Magick of Solomon.
What is being observed when one looks into a dark mirror? The reductionist-materialist would say that it is merely a dim reflection of oneself. However, in every case of evocation with which I am familiar, the magician does not just sit down in front of the object, but prepares himself with a great deal of magic ritual, which involves concentration and entering into an ecstatic or visionary state of consciousness. Runyon for example explicitly states that both raja yoga and self-hypnosis are necessary requisites for proper skrying in the dark mirror. Therefore although the physical cause of the apparition is the dim reflection of the skryer, what the skryer perceives is in fact the sum total of the influences at work on his or her mind at that particular moment, due to the magical ceremony in progress.
There is a description of a dark mirror skrying operation in my novel which I do not recommend readers carry out literally – it is meant to be the direct opposite of what a normal respectable magician would do in real life. On the other hand it is meant to convey an authentic flavour of what a vile, degenerate luciferian ceremony would consist.
Finally I should point out that several magicians claim that it is not necessary to “see” a spirit in order to evoke it properly. Lon Milo Duquette for example has claimed success with Goetic operations, but readily admits that when he evokes a spirit he feels its presence rather than seeing it. In Chaos Magick, an evocation refers to evoking the effects of a magical force to physical manifestation, not necessarily to evoking a visible appearance of the force itself.
Filed under Comment, Supernatural, The Magus
Hallowe’en
In this blog post I shall present an overview of Hallowe’en, as well as a list of top five places to go and celebrate this special day.
Hallowe’en means so much to many people. For the Hollywood film industry it is the traditional time to release new horror movies. For children it is a time to dress in scary costumes and go trick or treating. For householders it is a time to insert razor-blades into apples. For a large number of adults in America it appears to be a time to dress up in bizarre costumes which seemingly do not have anything to do with the traditional theme of the day. For fundamentalist Christian ministers it is a time to complain about Satanism, black magic etc. For Pagans it means something else entirely, which I shall explain presently.
For me personally I usually spend the day doing Enochian work which is not really connected with the theme of the day except in a very recondite manner. I explain this fully elsewhere.
The Pagan view of Hallowe’en is that it is an ancient feast called “Samhain” (pronouned sa-ven or sa-wen). This is traditionally the time that the spirits of the dead are able to return to the land of the living to visit their descendants. It is really the reflection of the fact that it occurs around the time when the Sun enters Scorpio, which in astrology is associated with the House of Death (the eighth house).
The way people react to their deceased ancestors coming back to visit them is somewhat bemusing, to say the least.
My personal inclination would be that if I knew that the ancestral spirits were coming back to the land of the living on a certain day each year, I would set aside that day to honour them. And in fact, this is generally what Christians do. Yes you read correctly – Christians celebrate Samhain without knowing it! Only they don’t call it Samhain and they don’t celebrate it on October 31st. They call it “All Souls’ Day” and celebrate it two days later on November 2nd. “All Soul’s Day” is when Christians have masses to honour the souls of all deceased beings. It is thus a Christian form of a festival of the dead, like Samhain.
However the secular celebration of Hallowe’en derives from some traditional folk customs. These also acknowledge that the spirits of deceased people are coming back to the land of the living: however instead of conducting rituals to honour them, they dress up in masks and costumes so that the spirits do not recognise the pre-mortem beings and thus do not bother them. This incidentally explains the American practice of fancy dress on Hallowe’en – it is not necessary to dress up in horror-themed costumes, but it is necessary – in order to be strictly authentic – to have a costume which is some attempt at a disguise.
The actual practice of young children dressing up as goblins etc going out trick or treating is itself an old folk practice, which I believe can be traced to the Isle of Mann in the British Isles. There are in fact a number of folk practices associated with Hallowe’en which do not necessarily have anything to do with the idea of honouring the dead spirits but are just about having a good life-affirming community building merry-old time. Some sources allege that it was in fact the beginning of the Celtic New Year, which may explain a lot.
At this point I would like to say something to Christians reading this blog. I do not want to disrespect yer typical mild-mannered Christian who goes to church regularly and practices his or her faith in a modest manner. However, I shall not pull my punches with regards to the raving, bigoted, fundamentalist type of person who makes ordinary Christians embarassed to be associated with them. Dig this:
Christians invented “Hallowe’en.”
Yep, you read it correctly – Christians invented Hallowe’en. The word “Hallowe’en” refers to the fact that October 31st is the eve of All Hallows Day, i.e. All Saints Day on November 1st. October 31st was thus given the name Hallowe’en because it was the Church’s practice to assimilate old pagan feast days, not to alienate the pagans of old, but to get them on side.
What’s more: I hear fundamentalists saying that Hallowe’en glorifies the occult, to which I would respond with two things: firstly – what’s wrong with that? Secondly, and less flippantly – why do you suppose that the practices of dressing up in scary costumes and going trick or treating, and all the rest were allowed to flourish? Do you think it was because some sinister satanic conspiracy has been promoting them? No! It is because Christians themselves have been actively promoting the celebration of Hallowe’en all along, and encouraging the continuance of traditional folk practices, in order to demonstrate that they have nothing to fear from these old customs, and more importantly, any excuse for a party!
Fundamentalists by condemning Hallowe’en are therefore denying the tradition of two thousand years – which is just as much a Christian tradition as it is a pagan one.
My rant being over, I shall now present –
Alex’ Top Five Hallowe’en Destinations for 2009.
5
Canton, NC, USA
Apparently some sick Satanic cult are going to be celebrating Halloween by burning Bibles that night and then having a barbecue (over the embers of the burning bibles?). Oh wait – it’s not a Satanic cult, it is actually a fundamentalist Christian sect!!! Apparently they believe that all other versions of the Good Book apart from the King James Version are the work of Satan, on the grounds that if the KJV was good enough for Jesus and His disciples, it is good enough for them (!). Also they will be burning books by other authors as well.
This has set the Alex Sumner Astral Cash-Registers going.
It occurs to me that the Beatles’ record sales went up in the Deep South – because they were buying them before before burning them. Now, given that I am the author of an occult novel which is available on Amazon, maybe if I write to this crazy Pastor, he will burn my books as well? Unfortunately, this guy only has a congregation of just fourteen, so I won’t increase my sales that much.
NB: this town was put on my list just for the comedy value. I would not actually recommend going here on Hallowe’en or any other day if you look remotely pagan / gothy / black / jewish / asian / or even just like an ordinary Christian.
4
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
I have put this in the list firstly because there is an excellent supernatural tradition (e.g. Anne Rice’s novels) associated with this town, and secondly, because the local tourist board quite cheerfully says “why not set the mood for your Halloween party by visiting one of our historic cemetaries?” Top geezers!
People, I hate to contra-illusion you to the subject, but in real life no Vampire would ever go near New Orleans: and that is not because they do not like Jazz or Cajun food. As everyone knows, Vampires like darkness and hate sunlight. The places on this planet which have the most sunlight (longest days and shortest nights) are those nearest the Equator, whilst those nearest the Poles have the least sunlight (longest nights and shortest days). Therefore, if a Vampire would choose to live anywhere it would not be in the American South, but somewhere further north like Canada or New England. Note that HP Lovecraft long ago made the connection between cold places and horror by setting his stories either in New England or the Antarctic (At the Mountains of Madness) – he knew the score alright!
3
The Banks of the Foyle Hallowe’en Carnival, Derry, Northern Ireland.
According to press reports, this is “widely regarded as the biggest festival of its kind in Europe and a massive generator of revenue for the local economy.” Moreover, it is claimed that “We have heard reports of people having sex openly in the streets during and after the parade.” In case you are wondering, Derry has its own airport which has regular services to and from London Stansted and Luton, as well as some other places in Britain and Europe. Obviously I am not encouraging any licentious behaviour (i.e. because people who want to indulge in licentious behaviour generally need no encouragement whatsoever!), but because this got onto my radar from having a Methodist minister go on about Hallowe’en encouraging the triumph of evil, etc etc etc.
2
Whitby, North Yorkshire, England.
In the novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker, the Count’s ship makes landfall in England at Whitby in North Yorkshire. Ever since then, the town has exercised a fascination for real-life Dracula fans. It is nowadays a mecca for the Goth crowd. This Hallowe’en sees the celebration of the Whitby Goth Weekend 2009.
1
A Cemetery Where Your Own Deceased Relatives Are Buried
But the one truly authentic way to celebrate Hallowe’en is to go and honour your deceased loved ones, for then you will be cutting through all the commercialism and really recognising the spirit of Samhain.
Filed under Supernatural
More Ig-Nobel Shenanigans
But this time the Norwegians are not responsible
Reading a hilarious piece in the New York Times about how a couple of physicists are predicting that all attempts to observe the Higgs-Boson particle under experimental conditions are being sabotaged from the future … by the effect of supposedly successfully observing the Higgs-Boson particle under experimental conditions. I.e. the HB-particle is doing the equivalent of travelling back in time and killing its grandfather. Whilst the concept of a particle creating a backward ripple in time is mildly-intriguing, the actual methodology proposed to prove the theory is only slightly less bizarre than the empirical data cited in support of it.
Essentially, the paper written by the physicists goes, if the HB-particle really is sabotaging its own discovery – for example, by causing governments to cut funding to high-energy physics experiments, getting scientists arrested as members of Al Qaeda, etc – then it will deliberately cause the most improbable situation to occur in order to do so. For example, if the decision whether to resume experiments with the Large Hadron Collider were to be made to depend on a card-drawing experiment, the HB-particle will cause the one card in the deck which denotes “do not resume the experiments” to be drawn. This, the physicists argue, would be so even if the deck in question consisted of a million-cards, 999,999 of which were “resume” cards and 1 “don’t resume.”
It is at this point that I spotted the flaw in the physicists’ theory. Not the fact that they were pair of complete barking mad fruit-loops who give Science a bad name: rather – that they had missed a prime chance to turn this into a money-making opportunity.
Card-drawing experiment? Card-drawing experiment??? I can think of a much better idea. One of the authors of the paper, Holger B Nielsen, is actually an employee of CERN, and so presumably would be influential in actually carrying out the LHC experiments. Therefore, all he has to do is to buy a ticket in the Euromillions lottery with the firm intention that if he wins the mega-jackpot he is going to quit his job and retire. Because it is in the HB-particle’s interest that Dr Nielsen be removed from his post at CERN, then surely it will help him win the lottery!
But hang on – Nielsen and his co-author Masao Minimoya have entered a Euro-lottery, albeit where the prize for being right is not quite the scale of the actual Euromillions jackpot but is still a fair old whack. I am talking of course about the Nobel Prize for Physics. If by some extraordinary fluke that Nielsen and Minimoya are proved right, then the implications will be so astounding that they must surely merit it.
Now readers of my previous blog entries will know that I have had some choice words to say about the Nobel Peace Prize – however, this one is completely different. For a start, it is judged by a Swedish panel not Norwegian (the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences). Moreover, assuming that Nielsen and Minimoya could provide convincing proof that they are correct, that would be hard evidence that they did in fact deserve it.
Of course it could turn out that the LHC fails without providing the proof that Nielsen and Minimoya so desire, in which case this could be evidence that the God-particle has a sense of humour.
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Alex is committed to World Peace
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| On the left, President Barack Obama (USA). On the right, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Norway). One of these is the most influential man in the world. | |
The recent uproar over this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has prompted yours truly to look more deeply into the matter. The criteria for the Prize are:
“The capital shall be invested by my executors in safe securities and shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: … one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Alfred Nobel’s will (emphasis added).
The prize physically consists of a nice gold medal, and approximately $1.5 million dollars in cash. It is officially awarded on the 10th December each year (the anniversary of Nobel’s death), but the deadline for nominations to be received is several months earlier – in fact it is February 1st each year. Now, here is the funny thing: Barack Obama only became President of the United States on January 20th 2009 (or if you want to be pedantic and say he got the words wrong when he took the inauguration oath the first time, January 21st 2009). Furthermore, Alfred Nobel’s will specifically says it must only be awarded for work done in the preceding year, not for the results Obama is expected to achieve in the future. You see what this means?
Barack Obama is being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for doing just 11 days “work.”
This is the equivalent of being paid approximately $140,000 per day for not doing anything. It was at this point in my researches that if I had had sufficient taste in music, I would have started hearing Billie Holiday singing “Nice work if you can get it.” I am glad to say that I am cultured enough not to have started singing “Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits. Instead, all I heard was a lot of cash-registers going “Kerching!”
Now, call me cynical, but if some secretive organization pays a high-ranking politician $1.5 million on the flimsiest of pretences, that is technically known as a bribe. The Nobel Prize Committee is quite shamelessly trying to influence President Obama’s future policy direction by paying him loads of money, and what is more, they are being quite blatant about it. Had this been someone like the Bilderberg Organisation doling out the wonga everyone would be shouting “New World Order!” But because the Nobel Prize has the sheen of respectability (the omission of Mahatma Gandhi notwithstanding), they seem to get away from the taint of accusations of conspiracy.
So who are these members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee? Alfred Nobel’s will goes on to specify that they are five people appointed by the “Storting” i.e. the Norwegian Parliament. The Storting is currently dominated by the so-called “Red-Green Coalition” (which maintained its grip on power after this year’s general election), which is a grouping of three left-wing and left-of-centre parties: the Socialist Labour Party, the Labour Party (the largest group in the three), and the Centre Party. The leader of the coalition and thus the Prime Minister is Jens Stoltenberg, the head of the Labour Party, who was also the incumbent before the recent election.
Now, call me cynical in Norwegian, but it seems to me that if the Storting appoints the committee which decides the Nobel Peace Prize, then its composition cannot fail to reflect the influence of Jens Stoltenberg’s government. And, what do you know? The recipients in recent years are people who have generally held views coinciding with Stoltenberg’s brand of centre-left politics. Had this year’s recipient been someone who had actually done stuff in the past year, it could justifiably have been argued that this simply reflects the fact that the majority of Norwegians are naturally inclined to that view of international relations. However, the fact that this year the Nobel Peace Prize has spectacularly come a cropper suggests that other considerations are at work, e.g. the Nobel Peace Prize committee is cynically trying to influence the direction of US policy, or that Stoltenberg is pathetically trying to curry favour with the new US President.
Hence, I therefore say to the people of the World generally, Norway specifically, and Prime Minister Stoltenberg in particular:
- I, Alex Sumner, hereby fully commit myself to the cause of World Peace.
- I have not actually done anything in particular for world peace, but as events have shown, this is not necessarily a bar to consideration and, what is more,
- My rates for not doing anything are considerably cheaper than President Obama’s. I am prepared to go as low as accepting $100,000 a day, and will limit my “working” days to no more than the last guy’s.
- I really appreciate the Christmas Tree you guys in Norway send us every year. Honestly, Trafalgar Square just would not look the same without it.
- I will of course continue to work for World Peace at least as hard as President Obama has done after receiving the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize; and lastly and most importantly
- JEG ELSKER NORGE! 🙂
The opinions expressed in this article are complete bullshit, but hey! If I am going to monetize my blog, I have got to find some way to attract traffic to it.
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Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
Psychic Self Defence for Footballers (and the rest of us).
Cristiano Ronaldo, Read Madrid footballer and Portuguese international has apparently been cursed by a Voodoo priest with the intention of ending his career. Pepe, the Voodoo priest in question (presumably no relation to the Real Madrid number three), claims that he is not doing it because he has a thing against Real Madrid or Ronaldo personally, but because he has been paid good-money to do so. Well, you can’t fault the man’s ethics!
But the real question is who hired Pepe to work this evil magick? Journalists have come up with a short-list of likely suspects. They have narrowed it down to Ronaldo’s ex-girlfriends, and several million Barcelona / Man City / England / etc fans.
“But Alex,” I hallucinate that I hear you say, “can you not provide some magical help or advice for those of us who might find ourselves caught in the same situation? Even if we don’t play for Real Madrid?” Why certainly! Here is my quick guide to Psychic Self-Defence.
By far the most lucid and sensible account of the subject is the book of the same name by Dion Fortune. Unfortunately, from the cases I myself have heard about, this book is obviously far too sensible for anyone to take any notice of! Basically, Dion’s gist is this: at least 90% or more of cases of alleged psychic attack are in fact nothing of the sort – instead they are far more likely to be either imaginary or symptomatic of a psychoneurotic condition (or worse).
Hence the first step in warding off a perceived magical or psychic attack is to seriously consider whether it might not be as bad you first thought. I have heard from people who claimed that they were being attacked and cursed and hexed right left and centre – and then casually admit that they had been hospitalised for schizophrenia in the past, and not make any connection between the two.
So let us assume that you have been able to dismiss every possible mundane explanation for the run of misfortune you are experiencing, and suspect that it may well indeed be a psychic attack? What then? The simple answer is that just as a psychic attack starts from somebody else’s mind, so a good psychic defence starts from your own. You basically have to fervently Will that you are protected, and it is so. There are a number of methods which facilitate this.
Essentially by visualising a magical barrier surrounding oneself, and concentrating on the idea that it will protect you from malicious influences, this has the effect of actually repelling such forces. The most famous method of forming such a magical barrier is the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, which was originally devised by the Golden Dawn.
The casting of the circle in Wicca is itself a circle of protection which protects all the participants whilst they are taking part in a particular ritual.
In his book, Auras: What They Are and How To Read Them, the author Joseph Ostrom describes several Aura meditations which are effectively protection rituals. For example, visualising oneself in a gold-metallic aura: this not only protects from unwanted external influences, but also energises and perks up the individual thus protected.
There are many other such protection rituals which are based upon the same principal e.g. the meditation on the Cloak in Martinism, numerous variations on the Pentagram ritual itself, etc. One important fact is that these rituals not only protect from external malign forces but also close down ones own psychic sensitivities if one has negligently left them open.
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Tagged as aura, cristiano ronaldo, dion fortune, Golden Dawn, Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentgram, magic circle, paris hilton, psychic self-defence, real madrid, voodoo, wicca