Wednesday, 29 January 2020

The Death of Diana



“Sometimes in my live shows I ask the audience if they belong to any groups: a football team, a religious group, a union, a book club, a housing committee, rowing club – I am surprised by how few people have a Tribe. 





Whilst the impact of globalisation on national identity cannot yet be fully understood, I can certainly appreciate the reductive appeal of statist myth. I become ultra English during a World Cup, the last one in particular was like a jolly revival of the ‘death of Diana’ in its ability to pull a nation together in collective hysteria. 



But soon enough the bunting comes down, the screens in public squares go black and we are atomized once more. The space between us no longer filled with chants, ditties and ‘in jokes’, eyes back on the pavement, attention drawn within. 

I’m not suggesting the deep alienation that Late Capitalism engenders can be rinsed away by joining a bowling club, but it’s a •START•.


And having a Teacher within the group to which you belong provides intimacy and purpose. In the guru traditions of India the love between teacher and student surpasses all other forms, for here it is explicit that what is being transferred in this relationship is nothing short of God’s love and how an individual can embody the divine.



We live in lonely and polarized times, where many of us feel lost and fractured. It is evident in our politics but political events reflect deeper and more personal truths. I’ve been trying for a while now to explain what I feel is happening in the societies that I’m familiar with, by which I mean Europe, Australia, the United States – not that I’m claiming to be a sociologist, I don’t have a clue how to approach whatever the hell may be happening in Pakistan or China, but here, here in our post-secular edge lands where the old ideas are dying and the new ones not yet born, I feel a consistent and recognizable yearning for meaning beyond the dayglow ashes of burnt-out consumerism, lurching dumb zombie nationalism, starchy, corrupt religion and the CGI circus of modern mainstream media. 




I’ve been watching for a long time and I knew before Trump, Brexit, radicalism and the ‘new right’ that something serious was up. 

• YOU KNOW IT TOO •

Sometimes we despair and sometimes we distract because it seems like too much for one person to tackle and we’ve forgotten how to collude. 

Yet alone, I am nothing”

Excerpt From
Mentors
Russell Brand


COMIC URBAN LEGEND: Writer/Artist John Byrne has been involved in an inordinate amount of eerie coincidences.

STATUS: True

I almost considered putting a "False" for this one, if only because, upon looking into this bit, I found stuff like:

Byrne is sometimes believed to possess the power to predict events in our world, when he does his comics, and of course these events are predominantly tragedies.

And THAT, of course, is totally bogus, as well, come on. Heck, I would go further to say that I doubt the veracity of "is sometimes believed," as I don't think there's anyone who ACTUALLY believes that.

But anyhow, yes, John Byrne has been involved in an inordinate amount of eerie comic book coincidences.

Fairly early on in his career at Marvel, Byrne drew an issue of Marvel Team-Up with writer Chris Claremont that involved a blackout in New York City.

Soon after the issue was released in 1977 (and months after Byrne had drawn it), New York City had one of its largest blackouts ever.

The next year, when Byrne was on Uncanny X-Men with Claremont, the pair had Japan be struck by an earthquake (courtesy of Mose Magnum).

 
In 1978, Japan was struck with a number of earthquakes.

(Speaking of Claremont, towards the very end of his run with Byrne on Uncanny X-Men, the pair depicted the dystopian world of 2013 in "Days of Future Past." One of the characters from that story made it to the present, and in a later issue of Uncanny X-Men (#189), the character included a (in retrospect) chilling "flashback" to the destruction of the World Trade Center.

 
)

Soon before Byrne's first issue of his Superman reboot, Man of Steel, which involves Superman having to save a damaged space-plane, the Challenger space shuttle was destroyed...

 
Finally, and perhaps most notably, in late August 1997, Wonder Woman #126 came out, reflecting the short-lived death of Wonder Woman, Princess Diana of Themyscira.

 
That Saturday, the REAL Princess Diana was killed in a car accident.

Some weird stuff, no?

Byrne, himself, wrote in to Scientific American magazine after Michael Shermer had written a skeptical look at a different writer's claims to have predicted the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and stated most of these facts, concluding:

My ability as a prognosticator...would seem assured-provided, of course, we reference only the above, and skip over the hundreds of other comic books I have produced which featured all manner of catastrophes, large and small, which did not come to pass.

Well said, Mr. Byrne.


Odin Lies.




Odin Knows Many Secrets. 
He gave an eye for Wisdom. 





More than that, for Knowledge of Runes, and for Power, He Sacrificed Himself to Himself.

He brought War into The World: Battles are begun by throwing a spear at the hostile army, dedicating the battle and its deaths to Odin.
 If you survive in battle, it is with Odin’s Grace, 

and if you fall it is because he has BETRAYED you....









“Sympathetic magic involves making a scale model, a simulation, or isomorphic mapping, of the real world, and by causing changes in the model—whether by sticking pins through the heart of a voodoo doll or painting spears in the hides of a herd of cave-wall aurochs—real-world events can be persuaded into a synchronous relationship with the magician’s will or intent. 

Will, as anyone who has ever tried to give up smoking or start exercising should know all too well, is the power humans have to act against our tendency toward inertia. Will motivates us to undertake hazardous journeys, build cathedrals and jet aircraft, and change our lives. With strong enough will-power, we can alter our behavior, our surroundings, our beliefs and ourselves. Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. 

A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world. A story can make us angry enough to change the world. We know that medical placebos work when a trusted authority figure, in the form of a doctor, simply tells us they will. 

There is even a “nocebo” concept to explain why some people get sick or die when they are cursed by a witch doctor or wrongly diagnosed by a medical doctor. We know that hypnosis works. There is observable evidence to suggest that what we believe to be true directly affects how we live. 

As the first few years of the twenty-first century wore on, I wondered just how badly people, especially young people, were being affected by the overwhelmingly alarmist, frightening, and nihilistic mass media narratives that seemed to boil with images of death, horror, war, humiliation, and pain to the exclusion of almost everything else, on the presumed grounds that these are the kinds of stories that excite the jaded sensibilities of the mindless drones who consume mass entertainment. 

Cozy at our screens in the all-consuming glare of Odin’s eye, I wondered why we’ve chosen to develop in our children a taste for mediated prepackaged rape, degradation, violence, and “bad-ass” mass-murdering heroes. “

And so All-Star Superman: our attempt at an antidote to all that, which dramatized some of the ideas in Supergods by positioning Superman as the Enlightenment ideal paragon of human physical, intellectual, and moral development that Siegel and Shuster had originally imagined. A Vitruvian Man in a cape, our restorative Superman would attempt to distill the pure essence of pop culture’s finest creation: baring the soul of an indestructible hero so strong, so noble, so clever and resourceful, he had no need to kill to make his point. 

There was no problem Superman could not solve or overcome. He could not lose. He would never let us down because we made him that way. He dressed like Clark Kent and took the world’s abuse to remind us that underneath our shirts, waiting, there is an always familiar blaze of color, a stylized lighting bolt, a burning heart. 

Tuesday, 28 January 2020

BLUE


Remember when we used to get high, 
and you'd ask, every time, 
"Why is it blue?" 

And I would say, 
"It's always blue, man." 

GODFATHER




CHAKOTAY: 
You're being called back to your life again, Neelix. 
Don't turn your back on it. 
We're your family now. 

NEELIX: 
It's not enough. 

CHAKOTAY: 
It is for us.
 
‘His function on this crew is diverse.’

That's what Seven of Nine said about you.
 
Even our Borg understands how important you are on this ship. 

It's not just the duties you perform, 
it's the way you make people feel when you're around

NEELIX: 
That Neelix is gone. 

CHAKOTAY: 
I don't think he is. 

(Ensign Wildman enters.)

WILDMAN: 
Why didn't you answer me? 
I had to have the computer track you down. 

Naomi thought she saw a monster in the replicator. 

Neelix, what's going on? 

NEELIX: 
I'm trying to decide some things. 

CHAKOTAY: 
That little girl needs you, Neelix. 

Monsters in the replicator? 

Who else on this ship can handle that? 

(Neelix thinks about it, then turns off his tricorder and hands it to Chakotay.

NEELIX: 
Duty Calls.





“One reason we hesitate to carry our own gold is that it is dangerously close to God. Our gold has Godlike characteristics, and it is difficult to bear the weight of it.

In Indian culture, there’s a time-honored custom that you have the right to go to another person—a man, a woman, a strangerand ask him or her to be the incarnation of God for you. There are strict laws governing this. If the person agrees to be the incarnation of God for you, you must never pester him. You must never put a heavy weight on himit’s weighty enough as it is. And you must not engage in any other kind of relationship with that person. You don’t become friends, and you don’t marry him. The person becomes a kind of patron saint for you.

J. Krishnamurti was a wonderful man. Lots of people put gold on him. One afternoon, he and I went for a walk in Ojai, California, and a little old lady was kneeling alongside the path. We just walked by. Later he told me, “She has put the image of God on me. She knows what she’s doing. She never talks or asks anything of me. But when I go for a walk, she somehow knows where I’m going to be, and she’s always there.” What was most touching was his attitude. If she needed this, he would do it.

This is the original meaning of the terms godfather and godmother. That person is the carrier of Godlike qualities for you. Nowadays we think of a godparent as the one who will take care of us materially in case our parents are not able to see it through. But the original meaning was of someone who carries the subtle part of your life—a parent in an interior, Godlike way. It’s a wonderful custom. Most parents are worn out just seeing their child through to physical maturity. We need someone else who isn’t bothered with authority issues, like “How much is my allowance this week?” Being a godparent was originally a quiet arrangement for holding a child’s gold.

When I was sixteen, two years after meeting Thor, I desperately needed someone like that. So I appointed a godmother and godfather, and those two people saved my life. They knew instinctively the duties of this need, and they fulfilled them. My godmother died when I was twenty-two, and I wasn’t ready to give her up. It was the most difficult loss of my life. I was forced to take my gold back before I was ready. My godfather lived until I was in my fifties, and by then I was ready to let him go. 

 I love the idea of godparents. Sometimes young people come circling around me, and I bring up this language. “Do you want a godfather?” If it fits, we work out the necessary rules. “You may have this out of me, and you must not ask that.” These are the old godparent laws. It’s a version of the incarnation of God in Indian custom.

Sometimes Gold Is Dark

  I love India, but being there can be challenging, sometimes even dreadful. During one visit, I nearly sank in the darkness.

An Indian friend and I went to Calcutta. He wanted to see his father, who lived in a politically sensitive zone near the city, where foreigners were not allowed. So I said, “Please go. I’ll stay in Calcutta while you visit him.” My friend tried to help me get a hotel, but there were no good ones, so I ended up in a sleazy hotel in a dark part of town. Because he was so anxious to see his father, once he got me settled, I encouraged him to go.

Within hours, a woman on the street thrust a dead baby into my hands, children with amputated limbs poked their stumps into my ribs begging for money, and lepers and corpses were lying in the streets where I walked. It was too much for me, and I didn’t know how to get away from it. Normally I could just go to my room and hole up. As an introvert, that isn’t difficult for me. But my room in that hotel had paper-thin walls, and someone was actually dying in the room on one side, people were screaming and fighting in the room on the other side, and there was a nightlong political rally in the square outside my window. I just couldn’t take it. I had more in me than I could hold, and I started falling to pieces.

Gold comes in many varieties. Sometimes our gold is bright, but at other times it is heavy and difficult, and seems anything but golden. I had no friends and no telephone, and couldn’t cope. Then I remembered the custom I’d witnessed with Krishna-murti. I needed to ask someone to be the incarnation of God for me, someone with whom I could share my burden.

I went to a park nearby to look for a candidate. After standing still and observing many people for about twenty minutes, I selected a middle-aged man who was wearing traditional Indian garb. I felt a particular respect for him. He walked with great dignity. I continued to watch him closely.

Finally, trembling, I went up to him and asked, “Sir, do you speak English?”

“Yes.”


“Will you be the incarnation of God for me?” It was the second sentence I spoke to that man.

And, God bless him, he said, “Yes.”

I told him who I was and how frightened and burdened I was feeling, and that I was unable to stand it. I poured out my misery, and he just listened without saying a word. Finally I wound down and apologized for splashing all over him. I felt so much better. I had my feet under me again.

I thanked him, and then I asked, “And who are you?”

He told me his name. I said, “Yes, and who are you?” 

He said, “I am a Roman Catholic priest.” 

There are very few Catholic priests in India, and I had picked one to be the incarnation of God for me. 

He had listened, heard, and understood. 

Then we bowed to each other and went our separate ways. Because he did that for me, neither of us will ever be the same again. He did exactly what I needed with a grace and a dignity that lives with me to this day.


Excerpt from: "Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection" by Arnie Kotler.

Saturday, 25 January 2020

Sir! I’m Gonna Hafta Ask You to Exit The Donut







I spoke in the car about the hole at the center of this donut. 

And yes, what you and Harlan did that fateful night seems at first glance to fill that hole perfectly. 

A donut hole in the donut's hole. But we must look a little closer. 

And when we do, we see that the donut hole has a hole in its center - it is not a donut hole at all but a smaller donut with its own hole, and our donut is not a hole at all!”

Friday, 24 January 2020

Stories are a Science





“I find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about History. 

I had expected he would disbelieve the Gospels because they contain miracles: but he really disbelieves them because they deal with things that happened 2,000 years ago. 

He would disbelieve equally in the battle of Actium if he heard of it. 

To those who have had our kind of education, his state of mind is very difficult to realize. 

To us The Present has always appeared as one section in a huge continuous process. 

In his mind the Present occupies almost the whole field of vision. 

Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called ‘The Olden Days’– a small, comic jungle in which highway men, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armour, etc., wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond The Olden Days comes a picture of ‘Primitive Man’. 

He is ‘science’, not ‘history’, and is therefore felt to be much more real than The Old Days. 

In other words, the Prehistoric is much more believed in than the Historic.”

— C.S. Lewis, 
Christian Apologetics 




Now let me ask you a question. 
Why are humans so fascinated by old things? 

DATA: 
Old things? 

SOONG: 
Old buildings, churches, walls, ancient things, antique things, tables, clocks, knick knacks. 
Why? Why, why? 

DATA: 
There are many possible explanations. 

SOONG: 
If you brought a Noophian to Earth, he'd probably look around and say, 
“tear that old village down, it's hanging in rags. 
Build me something new, something efficient.”

But to a human, that old house, that ancient wall, it's a shrine, something to be cherished. 
Again, I ask you, why? 

DATA: 
Perhaps, for humans, old things represent a tie to the past. 

SOONG:
What's so important about the past?
 People got sick, they needed money. 
Why tie yourself to that? 

DATA: 
Humans are mortal. 
They seem to need a sense of continuity. 

SOONG: 
Ah hah!! Why? 

DATA: 
To give their lives meaning. 
A sense of purpose. 

SOONG: 
And this continuity, does it only run one way, backwards, to the past? 

DATA: 
I suppose it is a factor in the human desire to procreate. 

SOONG: 
So you believe that having children gives humans a sense of immortality, do you? 

DATA: 
It is a reasonable explanation to your query, sir. 

CHUD






In medieval Kabbalah, 
The Shekhinah is separated in Creation 
from The Sefirot by Man’s Sin
while in Lurianic Kabbalah 
Divinity is exiled in The Qlippot 
from prior initial Catastrophe in Creation. 

This causes “Sparks of Holiness” to be exiled in The Qlippot,
with physical objects redeeming mundane Nogah
while The Three Impure Qlippot 
are elevated indirectly through 
Negative prohibitions. 

Repentance out of Love retrospectively 
turns Sin into Virtue, Darkness into light. 



Creating a Ceremony

  It is possible to create a ceremony to mark the important occasion of returning someone’s gold. 
A young man I was seeing in analysis 
gave me a large chunk of his gold. 
From the beginning, he’d compliment me 
every time we saw each other. 
I’d say, “This is your value. You need to drape it around my neck for a while, but you’re going to take it back eventually,” using this language. 

He kept complimenting me
telling me how valuable I was to him
how lucky he was to have me as his therapist. 
“You’re talking about your own 
inner gold,” I told him.

He was an intelligent and powerful young man, a genius in his own right, and his gold was too heavy for him. He was desperate for someone to take it off his shoulders. So we discussed what was happening and the terms of the exchange, and he fully understood. This went on for almost five years. Then, one day, he said, “I want my gold back.” I had noticed that he was getting restless, so I agreed. “Things are changing,” I said. “Let’s do a 
ceremony to put the gold back in your pocket.”

I conjured up a small piece of gold, the size of a pea, and a few days later we had the ceremony. He held the kernel of gold, shaking, suddenly more aware of what he had been doing. Then he put it in my hands and said, anxiously, “Suppose you don’t give it back?”

I said, “Yeah, suppose.” 
I kept the gold for a while, 
held it in my hand, put it in my pocket, waited a bit, and produced it again. 
Then I ceremoniously put it back into his hands, and he was greatly relieved. I said, “This is your gold, and it belongs only in your pocket. I am honored that you would allow me to hold it for you all these years. But it’s yours, and now it needs to go back to you.” It was a profound moment, a coming-of-age. I had paved the way for returning it when the time was right. Being clear about what is taking place and what is the desired outcome can be very helpful.

It didn’t actually go this easily. The next day, he had his gold all over me again. He couldn’t hold it and wanted me to take it back. The exchange of gold is not entirely a voluntary matter. Sometimes it takes a few round trips. We traded the gold back and forth several more times until one day he could withstand it. Since then, I haven’t heard any more 
about him wanting it back.



Excerpt from: "Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection" by Arnie Kotler. 

Scribd.
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Wednesday, 22 January 2020

Black Vomit






JOSEPH CAMPBELL:  
This is killing The Dragon. 
And you have Fears and things, 
This is The Dragon; 
That’s exactly what’s that all 
about. 

At least, The European Dragon; 
The Chinese Dragon is different.

BILL MOYERS: 
What is it?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 
It represents The Vitality of The Swamps 
and The Dragon comes out beating his belly and saying 
“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” 

You know, that’s another kind of dragon. 
And he’s the one that yields the bounty and the waters and all that kind of thing. 
He’s the great glorious thing. 










1.3 Nigredo - Blackness

The wise man is not surprised by death
he is always ready to leave.
La Fontaine
This melancholic state is so powerful
that, according to scientists and doctors,
it can attract demons to the body,
even to such an extent
that one can get into mental confusion or get visions.
Agrippa


Nigredo, or blackness, in the alchemical sense, means putrefaction, decomposition. By the penetration of the external fire, the inner fire is activated and the matter starts to putrefy. The body is reduced to its primal matter from which it originally arose. This process is also called ‘cooking’. The black earth is closed up in a vessel or flask, and heated.

Nigredo

(Basilius Valentinus, Azoth, Paris, 1659)
The Body is to be decomposed, that is one shifts one's awareness to the inner self. The planets are both stages of the process and energies in the body to be transmuted. The Saturn star is black as Saturn reigns over Nigredo. Sun and Moon are the opposites to be united, and fire and air are the elements stimulating the decomposition. The black crow is another symbol for Nigredo. The two birds coming out of the body are the soul and the spirit. One needs to become aware of one's soul and spirit. The circle emphasizes the idea of union or unification.

"Putrefaction is so effective that it destroys the old nature and form of the rotting bodies; it transmutes them into a new state of being to give them a totally new fruit. Everything that has live, dies; everything that is dead putrefies and finds a new life." (Pernety, 1758)
On the mythological level, nigredo signifies the difficulties man has to overcome on his journey through the underworld. Nigredo is sometimes called ‘blacker than the blackest black’. Hercules had to accomplish twelve, almost impossible, tasks. The pilgrim traditionally encounters shadows, monsters, demons. In the ancient mysteries the candidates had to undergo difficult, sometimes painful and even dangerous initiation tests. 
In alchemy, one of the symbols of nigredo is the ‘decapitation’, and also the ‘raven’s head’ (caput corvi). Those symbols refer to the dying of the common man, the dying of his inner chaos and doubt because he is unable to find the truth in himself. In one of his works, Hercules cleanses the Augias stables. It is the cleansing of all the impurities in oneself. 
(Johann Daniel Mylius, Philosophia reformata, Frankfurt, 1622)

a monk in meditation

A monk in meditation in an earth crevice, shows that alchemy was in first instance a spiritual practice. The two bird-figures are the soul and spirit to become aware of.

Psychologically, nigredo is a process of directing oneself to find self-knowledge. A problem is given full attention and reduced to its core. This is not done so much in an intellectual way, but especially by feeling the emotions. By really going into to it, one causes putrefaction, the decomposition of that in which one had been stuck. The confrontation with the inner reality is often painful, and can lead to depression. But once in the depth of the darkness, with the discovery of the seed of the problem, the seed in the ‘prima materia’, the white light is born (=albedo, whiteness, the next phase). A state of rest arises. Insight into the problem has been gained, it has been worked out emotionally, and knowledge arises on how to handle it in a more positive way and to build a more pure attitude.
Alchemists talked about unraveling ‘the mixture’(=man with all his complexities) in order to return to the germ. "That from which a thing has been made in a natural way, by that same thing it must return to a dissolved state into its own nature. Everything has to be dissolved and reduced into that form from which is arose." (Anton Joseph Kirchweger, 1728)
‘Matter’ has to be stripped of its superfluities in order to arrive at the center, which contains all the power of ‘the mixture’. The seed is the essence and contains all the essential powers of the body. One has to go to the center of his problems, to the center of his emotions, to the center of himself. There is the power of transformation.
Saturn is the planet that rules nigredo. Saturn as an alchemical symbol is used, like Mercurius, as a symbol of chaos, the prima materia as rough stone, and as the philosopher’s stone. These are all symbols for man at the beginning of the alchemical process. Saturn, with his traditional scythe and hourglass, is the god of death and putrefaction, from which new life will arise. The scythe is another tool for penetration, as is the lance and the sword. Saturn is the philosopher’s lead. He is the god that can cause melancholy and devilish visions. ‘Melancholia’ is another term for nigredo. As melancholy can arise when alchemically working on oneself, the alchemists advised the use of music to lift the soul.
Saturn is also a god of fertility. Therefore "our black earth is fertile earth", an alchemical expression to express the transformation of death into new life, which is also clearly depicted in the thirteenth tarot card. The putrefaction is a necessary phase to start a new beginning. Life itself is a cycle of death and birth, ever creating new life, giving man the opportunity to work on himself and strife to improve his condition.
The alchemists say that nigredo lasts forty days. Forty days has a symbolic value. Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert. There are forty days of fasting between Easter and Ascension Day. The Israelites wandered for forty days in the desert. Saint Antonius spent forty years in the Sahara desert, being plagued by visions of extreme erotic scenes and devils.

 

1.4 The Peacock’s Tail

"What hinders men from seeing and hearing God, is their own hearing, seeing and willing; by their own wills they separate themselves from the will of God. They see and hear within their own desires, which obstructs them from seeing and hearing God. Terrestrial and material things overshadow them, and they cannot see beyond their own human nature. If they would be still, desist from thinking and feeling with their own self-hood, subdue the self-will, enter into a state of resignation, into a divine union with Christ, who sees God, and hears God, and speaks with him, who knows the word and will of God; then would the eternal hearing seeing and speaking become revealed to them. " 
Jacob Boehme (1575-1624 C.E.) 


‘Cauda Pavonis’, the peacock’s tail, or the peacock itself, is a phase in which many colors appear. Many alchemists place this phase before albedo, whiteness, although some of them place it after albedo. Gerhard Dorn (16th century): "This bird flies during the night without wings. By the first heavenly dew, after an uninterrupted process of cooking, ascending and descending, it first takes the shape of a raven’s head, then of a peacock’s tail; its feathers becoming very white and good smelling, and finally becoming fiery red, indicating its fiery character." The colors refer to the three stages of the Great Work, with rubedo, or redness, being the last one.

the peacock
(18th century manuscript from the Collection of Dr.C.Rusch, Appenzell)
The drawing represents Distillatio, 'distillation'. At a certain point in the distillation the peacock('s tail) will appear.

The symbol of the peacock’s tail was chosen because of the many colorful and brilliant ‘eyes’. It is said that originally they were the eyes of the Greek Argus, whose name means ‘he who sees everything’. Argus was a very strong giant with a hundred eyes, of which at all times fifty were open and fifty were sleeping. He was decapitated by Hermes. Hera, the mother goddess, placed the eyes on the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock.
The phase of the many colors was also symbolized by the rainbow, or the goddess of the rainbow: Iris, the messenger of the gods, especially between Zeus and the mortals.
The peacock’s tail can have two meanings in the Great Work. It can be the collection and totality of all colors in the white light. Remember, the white light refers to the second stage, albedo, or whiteness. In this sense the peacock was seen as a royal bird in ancient times, and it corresponded with the phoenix.
The second meaning is that it represents the failure of the alchemical process. When the conscious enters the unconscious "each part of a thought can take shape and become visible in color and form", according to a Chinese text about yoga exercises. One starts seeing all kinds of forms which look real and which look like they have an independent life. But one cannot go into it as it leads to discord of the mind, and possibly to schizophrenia. The alchemist is seeking unity, expressed in the white light.
It is know that during meditation exalted feelings and unusual observations can happen. In essence there are two kinds of observations. The first one is wanting to escape the discipline of meditation, which Zen practitioners call makyo. Makyo are illusions we project onto reality in order to escape the guidelines of meditation. For example, the object of meditation is starting to radiate with a wonderful light or color, or it expands and contracts rhythmically. One starts to feel lighter or heavier, or one feels pleasant energies going through the body. All kinds of sensations can happen. Many meditators are readily distracted by these phenomena, and even take great interest in them, thereby neglecting the real purpose of their meditation. One needs to be aware of this.
A second cause of distraction is a change in consciousness whereby we look at the world in a different way than we did in the past. It can be quite a shock reverberating on the psychic or bodily level. The accompanying feelings can be quite wonderful. But the advice is: enjoy it, do not take it seriously, and continue with the meditation.
Visions are also distracting. Many wise men and mystics have pointed to this kind of danger. "We should not long for or expect visions. With all our power we should refrain from them and look at them with suspicion." (Ignatius of Loyola). They always stress that visions of lights, of angels, yes even of the great masters, should be neglected, because they block inner progress.


1.5 Albedo - Whiteness

Je ne craignais pas de mourir
mais de mourir sans etre illumine.
(I was not afraid to die,
but to die without having been enlightened)
Comte de Saint-Germain, La Tres Sainte Trinisophie
 
The herald of the light
is the morning star.
This way man and woman approach
the dawn of knowledge,
because in it is the germ of life,
being a blessing of the eternal.
Haji Ibrahim of Kerbala
 
Lucifer, Lucifer stretch your tail,
and lead me away, full speed through the narrow passage,
the valley of the death,
to the brilliant light, the palace of the gods.
Isanatha Muni

 

Being deep in nigredo, a white light appears. We have arrived at the second stage of the Great Work: albedo, or whiteness. The alchemist has discovered within himself the source from which his life comes forth. The fountain of life from which the water of life flows forth giving eternal youth.
The source is one: male and female are united. In alchemical images we see a fountain from which two streams of water flow into one basin.
Albedo is the discovery of the hermaphroditic nature of man. In the spiritual sense each man is a hermaphrodite. We can also see this in the first embryonic phase of the fetus. There is no sex until a certain number of weeks after conception.
When man descended into the physical world his body entered a world of duality. On the bodily level this is expressed by the sexes. But his spirit is still androgen, it contains duality in unity. Its unity is not bound to space, time or matter. Duality is an expression of unity in our physical world. It is temporal and will eventually cease to exist. When male and female are united again, one will experience his true self. Conscious and unconscious are totally united.
Albedo happens when the Sun rises at midnight. It is a symbolic expression for the rising of the light at the depth of darkness. It is the birth of Christ in the middle of the winter. In the depth of a psychological crises, a positive change happens.

aurora

(L'Aurore, Henri de Linthaut)
Albedo, symbolized by Aurora, by the dawn, the morning star (Venus-Aphrodite), and by the sun rising up from the Philosopher's Sea.

Albedo is also represented by Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn. Her brother is Helios, the Sun. With a play of words aurora was connected with aurea hora, ‘the hour of gold’. It is a supreme state of conscious. Pernety (1758): "When the Artist (=Alchemist) sees the perfect whiteness, the Philosophers say that one has to destroy the books, because they have become superfluous." 
Albedo is also symbolized by the morning star Venus/Aphrodite. Venus has a special place in the Great Work. In ancient times Lucifer was identified with the planet Venus. Originally Lucifer has a very positive meaning. In the Bible we find 2Petrus 1:19 "…till the day arrives and the morning star rises in your hearts". In Revelation 12:16 Christ says: "I am the shining morning star". Here Christ identifies himself with the Lucifer! We find the same in mystic literature. In ancient times Lucifer was a positive light being. It was just one man who changed all that: when a certain Hieronymous read a phrase from Jesaja 14:12 (Jesaja talking to a sinful king of Babylon): " How did you fall from heaven, you morning star, you son of the dawn; how did you fall to earth, conqueror of people". Hieronymous used this phrase to identify Lucifer with the dragon thrown out of heaven by Michael. By the interpretation of this one man, Lucifer was tuned from a shining light being into the darkest devilish being in the world.
We find Lucifer in alchemy associated with impure metals polluted by rough sulfur. It means that the light being Lucifer in ourselves is polluted by what the alchemists call ‘superfluities’, ‘dross’, caused by man himself. 
Mercury and Lucifer are one and the same. One talks about Mercury when he is pure, it is the white sulphur, the fire in heaven. As ‘spiritus’ he gives life. As ‘spiritus sapiens’ he teaches the alchemist the Great Work. Lucifer is the impure Mercury. Lucifer is the morning star fallen from (the golden) heaven. He descended into the earth and is now present in all humans. Lucifer is Mercury mixed with impure elements. He dissolved ‘in sulfur and salt’, ‘is wrapped with strings’, ‘darkened with black mud’. Keep in mind we are always talking about our consciousness. Lucifer represents our everyday consciousness, all the (psychological and other) complexes have clouded our pure consciousness, Mercury.
The light of Mercury that appears to us as Lucifer, because of the distortion caused by the impurities, gives the impression of what the alchemists called ‘red sulfur’. The red sulfur of Lucifer, as traditional devil, is actually an illusion. It does not exist by itself because it is only an image, a distorted image of Mercury. We ourselves caused the impurities, the blackness that veils our true light being. 
Red sulfur is the same as what is called Maya in eastern philosophies. Maya is the world of illusions, or the veil that prevents us from seeing and experiencing true reality, where the eternal light is. By the impurities of Maya, man has become ignorant. He has forgotten his origin and thinks he is in a world which in actuality is an illusion. 

The union of Hermes and Aphrodite
(Les Rudiments de la Philosophie, Nicolas de Losques, Paris, 1665)
The union of Hermes and Aphrodite. The moon is above the retort, indicating this is the stage of Albedo. The sun above is the next stage of Rubedo. At the same time sun and moon are again the opposites to be united. Aphrodite has two torches. One pointing down, representing the lower passions to be transmuted. The upside down torch is the purified energies. Aphrodite is standing on a tetrahedron, the perfect three dimensional body, as all corners are equally distant from each other, resulting in a lack of tension.


As we mentioned above, Aphrodite/Venus as the morning star is a central image for the albedo phase of the Great Work. Aphrodite was born from the foam that arose when the genitals of Uranus (cut of by Chronos, out of hate and jealousy) fell into the sea. The cutting of the genitals represents repressed and tormented love. The sea, symbol of the soul, however will bring forth the love goddess. Liberation will happen when we become conscious again of the contents of the soul. As Aphrodite is born from the sea, she is the guide through the fearful world of the unconscious (the sea, or the underworld). The alchemist descends into these depths to find the ‘prima materia’, also called the ‘green lion’. The color green refers to the primal life forces. Venus also has the green color. An important characteristic of Aphrodite is that she helps us in our human shortcomings. She gives ideals and dreams to fulfill. But she also gives frightening images in order to make man aware of his lower nature. "By her beauty Venus attracts the imperfect metals and gives rise to desire, and pushes them to perfection and ripeness." (Basilius Valentinus, 1679) Liberation can only happen by becoming conscious of the lower nature and how we transmute it.
In Jungian psychology Venus/Aphrodite is the archetype of the anima (in alchemy also the ‘soror’ or ‘wife’ of the alchemist). The anima is the collective image of the woman in a man. It is an image especially tainted by his first contact with his mother. The anima represents all the female tendencies in the psyche of a man, such as feelings, emotions, moods, intuition, receptivity for the irrational, personal love and a feeling for nature. She is the bearer for the spiritual. Depending on the development of the man she can also be the seductress who lures him away to love, hopelessness, demise, and even destruction.
Other alchemical images for albedo are baptism and the white dove, both derived from Christianity. Baptism symbolizes the purification of both body and soul by ‘living water’. ‘Living water’ was regarded as the creative force of the divine. It allowed the soul to be received into the community of the holy spirit. Thus baptism allows the purified soul to bring forth the resurrection of Christ in oneself. This is the ‘hieros gamos’, the ‘sacred marriage’ between the soul and Christ. Christ here represent our own inner divine essence.
There are many other symbols in alchemy for the second phase, or albedo: the white swan, the rose, the white queen, and so on. As lead is the metal of nigredo, silver is the metal of albedo, transmuted from lead. As silver is the metal of the moon, the moon was also a symbol for albedo. Alchemists also talk about the white stone or white tincture. They all means basically the same thing, although one has to understand them in the context in which they were written.
 

1.6 Rubedo -Redness

The alchemical process
is a method for self knowledge
that the soul undergoes
far outside its realm of existence.
Marry Anne Atwood
 
The jewel has been lost in matter
and everybody is looking for it.
Some look for it in the east
and some in the west,
some in water
and some among stones.
But the servant Kabir
has found its value
and has it wrapped with care
in the seam of the mantle of his heart.
R. Tagore, Kabir 72


Albedo is a phase of which the meaning was kept secret for many centuries. The meaning of the third alchemical phase, rubedo or redness, is even more secret and not easy to explain or understand.  

marriage of king and queen
(Philosophia reformata, Johann Mylius, Frankfurt, 1622)
The union of the Red King with the White Queen, symbolic of the union of male-female, albedo-rubedo. In other words, when after having attained albedo (having discovered the divine light in oneself), the 'spirit' must be fixated (the descending eagle), resulting in rubedo. The two lions with one head signifies the unified nature that has been attained. Out of its mouth flows the water of life.


Rubedo is the continuation of albedo. That is why they are often seen connected to each other, like the White Queen and the Red King. Once the inner light has been discovered it must be made into the only reality in our consciousness. After having descended into the unconscious, into the darkness, into the underworld, we found the Light, we found the volatile Spirit. Now the volatile Spirit, or quicksilver, has to be fixated or coagulated. This means that our conscious, or attention, must completely penetrate our unconscious, or soul, or everything that lies hidden in ourselves. By doing this we fixate (that is bring it into the conscious) the volatile and make it durable. When everything in ourselves has been purified and the Light appears, we have to fixate this Light and make it durable so it remains always present.
White sulfur, attained during albedo, is also called: "the bodies composed of pure essence of the metals". The metals are the contents of the soul, and now they have been reduced to their pure essence. Now that the soul has been penetrated with the pure light, the alchemist has to make it permanent.
In the eastern philosophies rubedo corresponds with the formation of the ‘diamond body’, an term fitting for the pure and permanent Stone of the Philosophers.

 The ressurected alchemist
(Scritinium cinnabarium seu triga cinnabriorium, Godfred Schulz, Halle, 1680)
The ressurected alchemist stepping from the shadow into the Light.
In Christianity, rubedo corresponds with the resurrection of Christ. Jesus ‘fixates’ the light garment of Christ. Jesus has left behind the old body and brought his inner divine self, the Christ body, into his consciousness, and made it his own reality. What Jesus did two thousand years ago, each of us can do the same, because we are all sons and daughters of the divine, and we all carry the divine essence, or the Christ body, within ourselves. 


When rubedo has been realized the alchemist has accepted his spiritual inheritance. He has become what he always has been, but never knew he was. He has realized his divine essence while still in his physical body. It is the same as what the gnostici called pneuma, the divine spirit in each man that is concealed in the deep darkness of the world, but can be made conscious again. When rubedo has been manifested man is master over both the physical as the spiritual world. He has become a King master over himself. 
When the unification of all energies of the four aspects of totality has been achieved, a new state of being arises that is no longer subject to changes. Chinese alchemy calls it the ‘diamond body’ which corresponds with the ‘corpus incorruptibile’ (untouchable body) of the European alchemy. It is also the same as the ‘corpus glorificationis’ (glorified body) of the Christian tradition.
In yoga traditions, rubedo corresponds with the unification of the spirit of man, called atman, with brahman. Atman is a part of brahman. Brahman is the soul of the All, it is the breath or the energy flowing through you and giving you life and consciousness. Atman is the individual self, brahman is the univerself self.
"As the body used to be slow, rough, impure, dark and destructible because it lacked power and energy, so rebirth unifies it with the soul and spirit, vivified and volatile, light and penetrating, pure, refined and clear, overflowing with energy, indestructible and full of energy, and it is able to maintain this." (Franciscus Kieser, +/_1600).
 
 "Ascend above any height, descend further than any depth; receive all sensory impressions of the created: water, fire, dryness and wetness. Think that you are present everywhere: in the sea, on earth and in heaven; think that you were never born and that you are still in the embryonic state: young and old, dead and in the hereafter. Understand everything at the same time: time, place, things: quality and quantity." (Corpus hermeticum, 1460).
 
I feel that all stars
shine in me.
The world is breaking as flood
through my life.
The flowers are opening in my body.
Youthfulness of earth and water
is burning like incense in my heart,
and the breath of all things
is playing as on a flute
through my thoughts.

Art Thou for Us, or For Our Adversaries?



















13 And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?




14 And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto his servant?



15 And the captain of the LORD'S host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so.




worship (n.)
Old English worðscip, wurðscip (Anglian), weorðscipe (West Saxon) "condition of being worthy, dignity, glory, distinction, honor, renown," from weorð "worthy" (see worth) + -scipe (see -ship). Sense of "reverence paid to a supernatural or divine being" is first recorded c. 1300. The original sense is preserved in the title worshipful "honorable" (c. 1300).

The Lost Word








UHURA: 
Commander, a word. 

SPOCK: 
Yes, Lieutenant? 

UHURA: 
Was I not one of your top students? 

SPOCK: 
Indeed you were. 

UHURA: 
And did I not, on multiple occassions, demonstrate exceptional aural sensitivity, and I quote, "an unparalleled ability to identify sonic anomalies in subspace transmission tests?" 

SPOCK: 
Consistently, yes. 

UHURA: And while you were well aware that of my own qualified desires to serve on the USS Enterprise, I'm assigned to the Farragut? 

SPOCK: 
It was an attempt to avoid the appearance of favoritism. 

UHURA: 
No, I'm assigned to the Enterprise. 

(Spock presses some buttons on his PADD) 

SPOCK: 
Yes, I believe you are. 

UHURA: 
Thank you.

ENOUGH



“Through Max I met his mate Stan, a giant, charismatic and adorable man who I instinctively liken to Omar, one of the four Caliphs to succeed The Prophet. 

A bountiful and warm soul with a great strength, yet to be refined. 

I asked Stan: ‘Is there any way I have helped you that I might be able to use in a book about mentoring to illustrate how the principles work?’ 

He said: ‘Mate. The other day when that bloke knocked me for that money, you said that I should not look at the people of The World as resources there to serve me but at myself as someone who can help others. To accept that everything won’t go my way all the time and when I am disappointed to talk through those feelings before acting on them. 

In a situation like that in the past I would’ve acted differently, aggressively, and tried to solve the problem through intimidation, which would’ve led to complications because this bloke is part of That World. 

Instead I went round there and politely explained my side of the situation and offered to help find a mutually beneficial solution. 

This is because you have taught me that I am valuable and I do not need to resort to bad behaviour to get what I want, that I am enough and do not need money to prove that I am a Man. 

I no longer unthinkingly get into conflict with my wife because I am stressed about work-related things, without recognizing it. 

The other day she asked me to do the washing up BECAUSE I’d AGREED to and I just DID it. 

In the past there would’ve been an argument, especially if I was fearful around work. 

This is because you have shown me how to behave towards my wife and given me safe outlets for my feelings.’ 

Hearing this made me feel valuable and useful

The Gratitude of Others, is a good way to build self-esteem. 

If you Regularly Help Others, the tendency to think of yourself as worthless or not good enough diminishes.”

Excerpt From
Mentors
Russell Brand






“Joyce and Jung met a few times, and they didn’t like each other, by the way.  
Joyce thought Jung thought Joyce was a possible candidate for therapy, and Jung thought Joyce was a man on the edge of schizophrenia who remained on the safe side through his art: 
if he lost his art he’d go complete wack-o.  

Joyce did not wish to believe his daughter was schizophrenic.  
He told Jung, 
“I’m doing the same experiments with language that she is.”  

And Jung said, 
“The difference is you’re diving, 
and she’s sinking.” 













“ When we look at The World, we perceive only what is enough for our plans and actions to work and for us to get by. 

What we inhabit, then, is this “Enough.” 

That is a radical, functional, unconscious simplification of The World — and it’s •almost• impossible for us not to mistake it for The World itself. 

But the objects we see are not simply there, in The World, for our simple, direct perceiving.

They exist in a complex, multi-dimensional relationship to one another, not as self-evidently separate, bounded, independent objects. 

We perceive not them, but their functional utility and, in doing so, we make them sufficiently simple for sufficient understanding. 

It is for this reason that we must be precise in our aim. “

Absent that, we drown in the complexity of the world.