Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 02:25 pm

“There are no facts, only interpretations” Nietzsche: I suppose that I am not in the running to be anyone's prophet. M. Uses the word "Explanation" a lot. I tend to lean toward "Interpretation" myself. Not that we aren't "discussing" the same phenomenon, it is just that in the act of trying to make sense of a world that resists such a foolish endeavor, it appears to be the nature of the beast.

I am currently reading Jerry Fodor's "The Language of Thought". I am chewing through the text, but the idea is presented in the usual academic manner, which is to say written by academics for academics and thus it is deliberately obtuse (thought it isn't as bad as many and certainly is vastly easier to understand than folk like Duns Scotus).

When I talk to myself inside my brainpan (and that is my take on where "thought" occurs) I am reasonably certain that (and this is pure conjecture) if science fiction were tried and you could "read my thoughts" it would be in a set of "types and tokens" unique to me and would require a level of interpretation equivalent to what I had to undergo to create the damn thing in the first place.

So, when I natter on here about thought and consciousness and the soul, I am not trying to tell you what is "true", but rather I am trying to explain what the firing neurons are trying to tell me. The analogy I am currently fond of is that of a seventh grader in rural america (english speaker) who is trying to take both german and french introductory classes and is trying to translate a german text into french.

Tuesday, June 10th, 2025 11:42 am

I am not all that bright. My creativity and uniqueness are something to behold, but when it comes to raw candlepower, I am a mid at best. I don’t always make smart decisions and that is why I have six cats. There is no reason any person of my lower middle class income level should have six cats. To my credit, only three of the six live inside my diminutive home (three are friendly ferals), however, their food and litter cost more than our human groceries per week. Their care and feeding take up a good thirty percent of any given day. Taking on six cats was not a smart or logical idea… yet here I am. There is meowing in the background as I write this.

I am in plentiful company: humans are not very smart. Our level of intelligence is somewhere between unicellular slime and demigod. The notion that we are the smartest beings in the solar system just because we walk on two feet and build a bunch of junk is laughable. For one, we’re not intelligent enough to do spacetime travel because we don’t have mental bodies sufficient to understand that space and time are illusions. We aren’t smart enough to cooperate on a consistent basis: our systems are fraught with waste, entropy, and unnecessary bloodshed. Our doctors are so stupid, they treat their human patients as if they were cars with interchangeable parts. Our men and women of god are usually hypocrites, hebephiles, and pedophiles. Our politicians and celebrities are slaves to a depraved System that vampirizes children and babies for profit.

Humans are not only stupid, we are extremely lazy. Entire civilizations have checked out where meaningfulness and earnestness are concerned. Their citizens have all but reneged on human decency and diligence and have instead fully embraced mindless egotism and zombified compliance. Going the saner path would require actual work they are not willing to do. We begin to see why the old holy books routinely featured an angry god who wiped the Earth clean with a flood and told a few survivors to start over.

As I mentioned in my previous essay about banishing rituals, I was atheist until about ten years go. Atheists like to think of themselves as super smart and I was no exception. The new atheist movement named themselves “brights” around 2003. Richard Dawkins, who is someone I consider to be more idiot than savant, attended the 2003 Brights movement conference. The Brights, also known as the Godless, proudly flaunted their atheism on the world stage for a hot minute. If you’re cringeing, well, I’m cringeing harder because I actually used to consider myself one of them! At any rate, Dawkins is neither the first nor will he be the last retard to declare his truth to be the only legitimate one.

In my own case, one of the only saving graces I have ever possessed is that I have always known I could be wrong, and that is why I am slightly smarter than “brights” such as Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, as well as any given monotheist theologian or imam. I don’t stake my entire self-worth on being right. I am also at peace with being retarded. I’m comfortable with it. To this day, Dawkins and Harris do not even know they are retarded and poor Hitchens died before he could figure it out.

So long and so very hard LOL

I’m sad I have to say this, but becoming less retarded is one of the key reasons we are incarnated here on Meatworld. Some lessons can only be learned the long and hard way. Some alchemical processes take so long that only a billion or more illusory spacetime years can get them done, for instance evolving the soul of an amoeba into a pianist.

Long ago, a bunch of medieval Catholics refined the concept and practice of discursive meditation. It is an understatement that discursive meditation is one of the great traditions the West has given to the world. Discursive meditation is a procedural method of deliberately limiting thought until the singular subject of that thought has been treated to a thorough amount of expounding, unpacking, and illumination. Benedict of Nursia is credited with putting discursive meditation on the map and making all the monks of his order do it on the regular, but I am confident discursive meditation was practiced throughout the medieval Christian world before he put his stamp on it. Medieval Europeans were a great deal more intelligent than the Progress narrative insinuates. Not only did medieval peasants have vibrant intellectual lives, they were far more connected to the rhythms of the land and the beauty of existence than we are. Proof of their superiority lies in the Gothic cathedrals they left behind. Our peoples will leave islands of ocean plastic waste the size of Alaska, spent uranium, and janky concrete.

The medieval peasant was smarter, braver, and more conversant with the Divine than you because the thought leaders of his time were immersed in discursive meditation even if he personally was not. Limits are power, whether we are talking about the walls and pipes of a hydroelectric dam or the exclusion of inferior ingredients in a treasured soup recipe. Via limits, discursive meditation improves lives. It improved mine and it can improve yours. If everyone on Substack took up discursive meditation for 10-20 minutes a day for a year, we would be looking at a burgeoning revolution in addiction recovery and dramatic collapses in mainstream media far more pronounced than what we are seeing now. Positive infection happens.

Voice in your head

It’s not that NPCs lack voices in their heads or internal dialogues. We all have voices and internal dialogues. Every person has a unique spiritual ecosystem just as he or she has gut flora. The ecosystem is a mishmash of different selves and outsiders. Beings such as the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA), ghosts, egregores, fairies, demons, feeders, larvae, and a motley array of beings who pass through without interaction are par for the course. You are not alone and you have never been alone. You were conditioned into rootlessness after being born in a spiritual Dark Age of endemic metaphysical handicaps. You were shoehorned into dismissing the spiritual world, and if you were raised in monotheism, you likely had it worse because you were told most of the discernible spiritual world was evil and Satanic.

You are a blind leper in a vicious game of dodgeball, unaware that your nose and fingers have fallen off. You are dimly aware that you in constant pain and that something isn’t right. You need a banishing ritual or its traditional mass equivalent stat. You also need a way of preserving what is left of your own dwindling strength so you can stop wasting your magical energy, otherwise known as intention.

Most of us have problems with intention and again I am no exception. My Achilles’s heel is eclecticism, which is the urge to jam several lifetimes of accomplishment into a single human incarnation. Discursive meditation has been a godsend in discerning which activities I am best suited to spending my time on and which are better left behind. Limits are power.

Where does your mind go?

When I first started discursive meditation about ten years ago, I was still solidly atheist. That said, the skeptic in me had no problem with ten to twenty minutes a day of severely limited thought. My first meditations were deceptively simple. A pencil. A sandwich. The piano. The number five. My daily contemplations grew to include terms or phrases such as “cleanliness is next to godliness” and “middle age”. Only later did I build up the fortitude to tackle problematic subjects such as troubled relationships, my own shadow projection, and past lives. Once I had my sea legs, I was able to gain tremendous insight to most of my own problems. I became my own best shrink. I struck at the roots of my own stupidity, pride, and self-sabotage. There is nothing quite like isolating one’s own culpability in discursive meditation to put an end to one’s own bad behavior. Removing the bullcrap and sanctimony drives an iron pin through the heart of the pale, squirming grub of egotistical complacency. The phrase “everywhere you go, there you are” sums it up: instead of running away as most humans do from self-reflection, discursive meditation exposes you to your own inner workings. Confront the way you think; this is the key to much, to paraphrase Dion Fortune. As Apollo said, know thyself.

Stop waiting for the world to change and change yourself. Discursive meditation is a direct route to self-change. It is unfortunate that some who are reading this will find ways to dismiss what I have said here because I am a non-Christian occultist. Yes, I am both of those things, but I believe Jesus himself wants you to revive the tradition of discursive meditation. I believe He (or someone uncannily like him) popped into my ecosystem a couple of times and said “Hey you… tell them I said this!” He said that gratitude and generosity sublimate to the power of seven. He also said that discursive meditation, a.k.a. the old Catholic contemplation that made the West formidable and great, should be revived. In short, Jesus is no fan of whiners and whining. He would much prefer you use the ancient tradition of His church to clean up your own corner instead of crying about somebody else’s pigsty.

Make of that what you will… I could be wrong!

How to do a discursive meditation:

  1. Choose a subject in the form of a physical object, word, or phrase. Do not choose more than one subject. Limits are power. Christians can use a phrase from the Bible, and you’ll observe the Bible’s verses are conveniently partitioned and numbered for contemplation purposes.

  2. Get a notebook and pen and put it somewhere within reach.

  3. Sit in a straight-backed chair with your feet on the ground and take a few deep breaths. A little discomfort is OK as long as it is not extreme.

  4. Limit your thought to the subject alone. If you’re hungry, too freaking bad. If you’re thinking about a deadline or an annoying person, cancel those thoughts for ten minutes. Only think about the subject and all its aspects.

  5. Once you have thought about the subject, isolate three aspects of it that crossed your mind. For instance, if I meditate on a pencil, I can think about its etymology (pencil means “little tail”), where it was made (likely China), and my own preference for mechanical pencils. Write those observations down in your book.

  6. Quit after ten or twenty minutes. Don’t overdo discursive meditation. It’s actually heavier exercise than you would assume. Once you get good at it, you can go longer.

     

Tuesday, June 10th, 2025 03:31 pm

It seems that things are getting weirder. This phenomenon is happening at nearly every level. Family isn't really struggling (relative to any rational set of standards) but they seem to be intent on bringing drama to the fore. Locally, the schools are in their finals, so the kids are twitchy and just wanting to get to the summer. State is actually the calmest of the set, I think that the multilayered state bureaucracy seems more intent on surviving the possibility of a purge made manifest by federal money drying up. I don't think that even in my fondest fantasy of omniscience do I really understand what the fuck is going on at the federal level, but it most certainly fits into the broader rubric of "weird".

Even the weather is odd. Yesterday I had to hole up in my sealed up apartment because the temp outside in my favored reading area got up to 103 F. (even the official temp from the weather station set a new daily record at 95 F.) Today looks to be more tolerable through.

What is nice about getting older is the simple knowledge that the foofooraw isn't the end of the world, all it might mean is that my relative comfort and limited access to privileges and luxuries might be changing. I really can't see much use in working myself up into a tizzy concerning the weirdness going on. It is going to go its own way regardless of any emotional baggage that I might freight it with.

I suppose that my ongoing discussions with M. concerning the nature of consciousness (or as I prefer to refer to the chimeric supposed entity "the soul" is helping me wander down the path of dealing with the world around me in a manner that is not going to leave me huddled in a corner worrying about it.

In my "applies only to me" intellectual musings concerning the nature of the soul, age allows me to understand that I am just here to adapt to an ever changing environment.

Monday, June 9th, 2025 03:23 pm

I have no idea what the Egyptian sphinx represents—best guess is that it was originally just a lion, but some narcissistic jerk re-sculpted his face onto it—but the Greek sphinx, at least, is simply the riddle, the puzzle, the koan personified: it entices you in with it's pretty face and soft breasts, but once you get close, it sinks its claws into you. (In fact, the word Σφίγξ "sphinx" is from the Greek σφίγξω "I will hold tight.") With that image, an entire avenue of sphinxes seems a frightening prospect, and yet here I am, traipsing down just such a path...


A while back I noted that there were two major Greek myth cycles, the "city myth" and the the "hero myth." The first of these (exemplified by the two great cycles of the Heroic age, Thebai and Troia) follows seven generations of kings as they found a city, the city's royal line splits, the main branch fails (due to assaults from foreigners ultimately caused by a divine curse), while the secondary branch moves on to found a new city. On the other hand, the "hero myth" (exemplified by the Horos myth and the Orestes branch of the Epic Cycle), describes the structure of the world that we inhabit and describes what we can do about it; it is meant to be an example to prospective initiates, just like Athenaie says:

ἢ οὐκ ἀίεις οἷον κλέος ἔλλαβε δῖος Ὀρέστης
πάντας ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους, ἐπεὶ ἔκτανε πατροφονῆα,
Αἴγισθον δολόμητιν, ὅ οἱ πατέρα κλυτὸν ἔκτα;
καὶ σύ, φίλος, μάλα γάρ σ’ ὁρόω καλόν τε μέγαν τε,
ἄλκιμος ἔσσ’, ἵνα τίς σε καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἐὺ εἴπῃ.

Or haven't you heard what kind of renown noble Orestes gained
among all men when he avenged his father by murdering
that weaselly Aigistos, who killed his illustrious father?
Likewise you, my friend—for I see that you are very handsome and well-built—
be courageous! so that even those yet to come may speak well of you.

(Athenaie, in the guise of Mentes, exhorting Telemakhos. Homer, Odyssey I 298-302, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

This is, in fact, why Horos never goes to Bublos or why Orestes never goes to Troia: they are drawing on the lessons of the "city myth" in order to determine their own path. The city is an abstraction or teaching to them, the stories of those who went before, rather than a lived experience. In fact, it suggests that the city is a place they want to avoid, a source of trouble! Because of this, it seems rather important to make sense of what the city is and what it means, but I've been in difficulty doing so. I hit upon a potential angle on it, though, that I thought might be worth walking through.

I recently mentioned the Ra Material in reference to Teiresias (himself a part of the Thebaian city myth), and while pondering this, I realized that "Ra's" metaphysics dovetails neatly with the city myth, with "Ra's" seven degrees of consciousness corresponding very well with the seven generations of kings; under this interpretation, the city myth describes the unfolding of the Cosmos from Source to Source, while the hero myth, situated at the end of it, tells us what we can do about it right now, today, and what we can expect to happen to us if we try.

As a disclaimer and a reminder, I'm pretty skeptical of channeled texts (and doubly so of anything "New Age") for a few reasons: first, I have a pretty strong anti-modernity bias; second, most people are incapable of reaching up to the aither to channel angels, and even if they can, it can be very difficult to tell since daimons "know how to tell many convincing lies;" third, the channelled material always reflects the biases of the person doing the channelling, and if one isn't personally close with them, it can be very difficult to correct for these; and fourth, the "New Age" seems to largely presuppose a worldview I don't adhere to, and involve wish-fulfilment fantasies which I'm not interested in. So this material needs to be taken with salt; please consider this post merely an attempt to expand upon my prior exploration of Teiresias in order to make a more comprehensive evaluation of the model possible.


Perhaps I should start by describing "Ra's" view of the development of consciousness. (Or attempting to, it is not perfectly clear to me, so take this as a sketch.) Consciousness is analogized as a vibration, and this continuum of vibration is discretized into seven degrees of consciousness, just like how we break up all the possible vibrations of the air into a scale of seven notes or all the possible vibrations of the visual spectrum into seven colors. Since souls are just a vehicle for consciousness, we inherently possess the capacity to vibrate in any harmony of frequencies, at least potentially; but in practice, one has to "climb the scale" a bit at a time, from lowest vibration to highest vibration:

  1. Red, which relates to being, and is the consciousness of "inanimate" objects.

  2. Orange, which relates to growth and movement, and is the consciousness of plants and animals.

  3. Yellow, which relates to social identity, and is the consciousness of humans. Being the vibration of identity, it is the first properly "individual" degree: red and orange are "herd" or "group" consciousness, while yellow consciousness is individual (at least once sufficiently developed).

  4. Green, which relates to love, and is the consciousness of lower daimons. Love is polarized: one may give love (compassion) or take love (selfishness), and thus green consciousness is dual in nature.

  5. Blue, which relates to communication and wisdom, and is the consciousness of higher daimons, though it is also (being the lowest vibration not subject to mortality) where we resonate with after death. Blue retains the polarized nature of green; the positive pole is the collective search of understanding (collaboration), while the negative pole is the individual search of understanding (hoarding knowledge).

  6. Indigo, which relates to universality, and is the consciousness of angels. Unlike green and blue, indigo is not meaningfully polarized, because of the nature of universality; negatively-polarized individuals, having mastered wisdom, come to understand this and reorient themselves positively as they endeavor to comprehend the All.

  7. Violet, which is related to transcendance and unity. This is, in a sense, rejoining the All and moving on to a new "octave" of existence, in which one co-creates the universe as and with God. (At least, apparently: "Ra" claimed to be of indigo consciousness, themselves, and claimed only secondhand knowledge about violet consciousness from its own teachers.)

Apparently souls usually ascend as groups: that is to say, the group of what we now call "human souls" all passed through the red stage more-or-less together, then the orange stage more-or-less together, and are now working through the yellow stage more-or-less together. ("Ra" says the reason why the earth is such a mess is that, apparently unusually, humans aren't developing consistently: a few are polarizing positively, a few others are polarizing negatively, and the vast majority aren't polarizing at all. Evidently conditions are much smoother in the common case where the group develops together.) There are uncommon exceptions to souls developing as a group, however: some people are souls of a higher degree, who incarnate as humans in order to teach and guide; while, conversely, some few human souls "jump the tracks" and, through spiritual practices or divine support or sometimes even by accident, behold God naked and become able to ascend separately from the rest of their group.

I think that's enough about "Ra's" metaphysics to get on with. So far so good, and other than the emphasis on soul-groups, isn't too distant from Empedokles or Plotinos.


As for the city myths, there is, unfortunately, no one good source remaining for either of them. I'd like to look at Troia today, partly because I looked at Thebai last time and partly because the Epic cycle is by far the more familiar to me. The outlines of it's history can be more-or-less cobbled back together from bits and pieces in the Iliad and Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (which I trust) and the Library (which is my preferred fallback when a reliable source isn't available). Here is a sketch at describing the seven generations, with citations:

  1. Dardanos, the favorite mortal son of Zeus, founded Dardania at the foot of Mt. Ide. [Il. XX 215-8, 301–5.]

  2. Erikhthonios, the son and successor of Dardanos, "became the richest of all men" with a herd of three thousand mares. Boreas mated with some of these mares in the form of a black stallion, adding twelve semi-divine horses to Erikhthonios's herd. [Il. XX 219–29.]

  3. Tros is the son and successor of Erikhthonios, renaming the kingdom (but not the city) of Dardania after himself. [Il. XX 230, Lib. III xii §2.]

  4. At this point the royal line splits three ways, as Tros has three sons: Ilos, Assarakhos, and Ganumedes. All three are described as faultless. Ilos goes to Phrygia; he wins a prize of fifty men and women; following an oracle's instruction, he follows a dappled cow to the hill of Ate; he asks Zeus for a sign; he is given the Palladium; and he founds Ilios on the spot. Assarakhos, meanwhile, simply succeeds to the throne of Dardania. Ganumedes, finally, being peer of the gods and most beautiful of mortals, is spirited away in a whirlwind to be the immortal, ageless cupbearer of Zeus; Tros is grieved by his son's disappearance until Zeus sends Hermes to tell him what has become of him and give him divine horses. [Il. XX 231–5; HH 202–17; Lib. III xii §3.]

  5. Laomedon is the son and successor of Ilos, and also described as faultless. Kapus is the son and successor of Assarakhos. [Il. XX 236, 239.]

  6. Priamos is the son and successor of Laomedon; he is the final king of Ilios, since while Zeus loves Priamos and his city, he withdraws his favor from Priamos's line and gives it to Aineias. Ankhises is the son and successor of Kapus; he was seduced by Aphrodite, but not made immortal; and he secretly bred his mares to the divine horses of Laomedon (descendants of those ransomed for Ganumedes), thereby stealing their bloodline. [Il. IV 44–9, V 265–72, XX 236, 300–8; HH.]

  7. Hektor is the son and heir apparent of Priamos, but is killed in battle by Akhilleus. Aineias is the son and successor of Ankhises; he is the son of Aphrodite; he is most pious and beloved by the gods; and he escapes Ilios and refounds it after it is sacked. [Il. II 819–21, XX 293–308, XXII; HH.]


Now, let's synthesize these two models. I don't think this is too difficult! The seven kings can obviously be linked to the seven degrees of consciousness, with the line of descent showing the progression of consciousness (e.g. orange follows red just as Erikthonios follows Dardanos), and with the split among the sons of Tros showing the split in polarization at the green level of consciousness (e.g. just as, after Tros, the Troad has two kingdoms, Dardania and Ilios, so too does consciousness have two polarities after yellow). Everything else falls out naturally from there.

Mt. Ide (traditionally from ἴδη "woods," as in a place of material to harvest and work with) is the world-axis or ladder of consciousness, which is why Zeus sits atop it and watches all. The hill of Ate (Ἄτη "blindness, recklessness") is presumably where Zeus threw her after Hera tricked him into recklessly making Iphikles king rather than Herakles (cf. Il. XIX 91–136), clearly a place where a lack of foresight makes one deviate from the intended course. Dardania (apparently related to the onomatapoeic δάρδα darda "bee," like "bumble" in English, and an appropriate name for cooperation, as a hive of bees work together for the good of all) is the positive polarization of consciousness, while Ilios (which Ilos, of course, selfishly named for himself) is the negative polarization of consciousness, distant from Ide but still in sight of it (as one can never really escape divinity).

Dardania is founded by Dardanos at the foot of Ide since red consciousness is foundational, inherently positive, and where everything begins; while Ilios is founded by Ilos on Ate since green consciousness is the first that can be negatively polarized (though doing so is short-sighted). Nonetheless, each of Tros's three children are described as ἀμύμονες "without blemish," because all is one, so to love others and to love self are both to love God. However, Tros has a third faultless son: Ganumedes; Xenophon's Socrates (Symposium VIII xxx) makes the case that Ganumedes was beautiful in soul, and I likewise think that Ganumedes is a mythic representation of how peculiarly virtuous souls can short-circuit the usual path of growth through intensive self-development and/or devotion to divinity. Zeus withdraws his favor from Priam because negative polarization halts at the indigo level (thus ending the line of Ilos), and Hektor dies in battle because it is not possible for a negative polarization to transcend. Aineias refounds Ilios because the result of returning to the One is to co-create the next "octave" of consciousness.

Homer goes to particular lengths to talk about horses (maybe they should have called him Φίλιππος Phillip "horse fancier"), so these must be noteworthy for some reason. I suppose that while the kings represent the levels of consciousness in general, the horses must represent their property; that is, specific individuals or groups of individuals within those levels of consciousness. Perhaps the wealth of Erikhthonios indicates the vast speciation of the natural world, while the offspring of Boreas ("the North Wind") indicates that only some of the many species of animals are judged desirable enough to become vessels of the yellow level (e.g. are imbued with "breath" or "wind," that is, individual soul); perhaps the horses Zeus gifts to Ilos indicate that while some beautiful souls may leave the group, the group is not neglected, but is in fact given support in recompense for their loss in order to maintain balance; that Ankhises breeds his horses with the descendents of these perhaps suggests that these beautiful souls join groups of the indigo level ("go to be with the angels"). These kinds of things aren't really discussed in the Ra Material so far as I recall, though, so this is all not-terribly-deep guesswork based strictly on the symbolism in the myth.


A few miscellaneous notes from while I was working my way through all this:

  • I have long wondered why Homer is so very down on Aphrodite; she seems to me to be among the nicest of the gods. One nice thing about this interpretation of the city myth is that it makes sense of this. Aphrodite is love, and loving mode of consciousness—green—is where polarization takes place; since Ilios is the negative polarization, which is ultimately incapable of returning to the source, this is the reason for the city's downfall. In fact, that Zeus refuses to adjudicate the apple to any of the goddesses indicates that God has given us free will to choose our paths; that Paris has to choose between Aphrodite (= love​ = green?), Athene (= wisdom​ = blue?), and Hera (= universality = indigo?) indicates that these are the levels affected by choice of polarization; that Paris chooses Aphrodite for reasons of self-gratification reinforces the recklessness (ate) of the negative polarization in general.

  • I'm not really prepared to do a deep-dive on the Thebaian myth yet, but while we're talking about sphinxes, it's worth noting that Oidipous, being of the fifth royal generation, would, by this theory, be of the blue, or wisdom, degree of consciousness. This makes his solving of the sphinx's riddle—a test of wisdom—pretty appropriate!

  • If you'll recall in the Horos-myth, I likened Thoth to "experience," the reason or purpose behind climbing the ladder of consciousness: so God-in-part can come to know part-of-God. Thoth is married to Maat, the "necessity" of this occurring. It is noteworthy that the child of Thoth and Maat is Seshat "scribess," who is depicted with two cow horns and a seven-petalled flower above her head. It is plausible to me that "scribess" is a reference to consciousness being that which observes and records (cf. Od. XI 223–4) and the seven-petalled flower is indicative of the seven modes of consciousness here described:

    𓋇

    This would, of course, presuppose that "Ra" is correct in saying that they influenced the development of Egypt with their teachings.

    Monday, June 9th, 2025 06:08 pm

    Too much going on both locally and in the world for me to wrap my brain around.

    Gimme a bit to try and get a grip.

    Saturday, June 7th, 2025 12:56 am

    I am happy to read your Ogham free of charge -- that's how I hone my divination skills.  Please limit your reading request to four or fewer Ogham cards: though this can take many forms, here are some common ones (all of them are basically combos of 4 cards):
     
    -a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading
    -four questions about four separate items that require one answer (card) per item
    -a one card reading to answer a specific question and a three card for a more nuanced question
    -Two separate readings, two cards a piece exploring the positives and negatives of two different choices
     
    I am happy to do Ogham readings confidentially via email -- just email me at k steele studio at gmail during the allotted time/before deadline.  I cannot answer health questions.  If you have a question about health or another sensitive, private matter, provide a bunch of non-identifying information and the Ogham will be able to figure it out even if I don't. I'm serious... the Ogham actually tend to "know" things without me being privy to what is going on.

    Please note I take time off during Solstices and Equinoxes for Druid stuff and because sometimes I simply need a break

    My next planned break is from Saturday, June 21, 2025 - Friday, July 11, 2025.

    I take reading requests from whenever this post goes up on Friday night until 8pm US Central Time Saturday.  

    For a more in depth look into how I read and interpret the Ogham's symbols, please visit my website druidogham.wordpress.com.

    I am currently trying to minimize my use of PayPal.  If you'd like to make a donation, I would be grateful if you did it here:

    http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

    Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

    Tags:
    Friday, June 6th, 2025 02:25 pm

    A letter to M. But I am being sleazy and posting here instead of writing a fresh post

    I suppose that I am misusing your writings. But I suppose that is a occupational hazard for any writer so there is no need for anything other than a pro forma apology.

    Mostly I have been pondering your thoughts on consciousness vis-a-vis the current foofooraw around AGI. Not that I think that artificial intelligence is anything but an oxymoron. But that it just me being a cynical old man, I also think that even among those of us referred to laughingly as Homo Sapiens (it is a bit of stretch to use the Latin word Sapiens (wise) in the official descriptor) as being intelligent the bulk of the time as being of questionable provenance.

    The advertising term AI is here to stay, and it isn't going to be going away anytime soon. I suppose that I am trying to get my head around just what it can do and what those abilities mean to the already fucked up society that we inhabit.

    Mostly, I think that it is going to me an anime-style search engine that will go through the low-level customer service industry like shit through a goose. But these positions have never had an intelligence requirement attached to them. They are there to make the customer happy and follow rules to do this activity at the lowest possible level of cost and compliance.

    I think that AI will allow the corporations and their willing minions in the professional/managerial class to further marginalize the lower tiers of the economic scale. But this will only be the first step. The greedy geckos that populate the professional/managerial class will exhaustively work to catalog any way possible to use this fixed cost replacement for anything that can remotely be within its capabilities (Almost any entry level position IMHO). I see this lasting about 20-25 years as the technology improves at which time it will begin eating into the PMC itself.

    Thursday, June 5th, 2025 07:18 am
     

    So, I got an interesting response from a reader concerning my recent rant on AI and robots and old science fiction.  The part that raised some questions was:

    Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are a set of guidelines for the behavior of robots, designed to ensure their interaction with humans is safe and ethical. They are: 1) A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

    The response from this reader was:

    Law 1 is hugely problematic. Just think of all the 'hate laws' being pushed at the moment. What is 'harm'? And what if stopping a human being coming to harm requires harming them?

    Yep.  He has got it right.  But then again, you have to think a little past that. About those laws, what they are trying to do, who is doing them, and the culture that promulgated them.

    Consider for a moment the “trolley problem” presented above.  “Holy Kobiashi Maru Batman!”  This tired conundrum is trotted out and undergraduates preen and strut with their tired ass rationales.

    But I think that this kind of thing is exactly what worries my gentle reader who pointed out the dilemma.  Our society really can’t stand the idea of “you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t”.  

    The simple and unsophisticated presentation of the trolley problem is one where the mental/physical states of the person operating the switch and the victims on the tracks are unknown.  This is both simplistic and stupid.

    Imagine you own petty bigotries and problematic actions (and please don’t think they aren’t there) and then imagine that you knew the identities and mental states of the “victims” on the track.  Now you have a real problem don’t you?  

    What if the “one” is your daughter?  I would venture to guess that there would be five dead people at the end of the experiment.  What if you knew that four  of the five had terminal disease and would die in a week, would the change in death timing mean anything to you?

    Let’s use an imaginary “Harry Potter” scenario but with no “magic” to help you out.  What if the “one” was Sweet Hermione and the “five” were mean-old Slytherins and you were a Hufflepuff?  Maybe a different answer depending on your house.  I am certain members of Gryffindor and Slytherin would not take much time to make their respective choices.

    The Robots and intelligences that we are trying to make will be a different hodgepodge of conflicting goals, prejudices, compromises and methodologies that make up our laws.  But at the end, the rules coded into them will be our rules because we did the coding.  The chance that they can come up with a solution that will make everyone happy is exactly zero.

    My solution to the trolley problem is that I would walk away.  If there is no way to win, don’t play.  Maybe that is what we need to teach.  

    Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 02:49 pm

    I've spent a lot of time pondering Hera/Athene/Aphrodite as exemplary of the ways up, but it occurs to me that there's another way of looking at it, in terms of how many mirrors one sees God in...

    # Plotinos Smullyan Description
    1 φιλόσοφος (philosopher) positivism sees the All in oneself
    2 ἐρωτικός (lover) mysticism sees the All in another
    many μουσικός (scholar/scientist/artist/aesthete) empiricism sees the All in the All

    I don't properly remember where I saw Raymond Smullyan's classification of the three ways. (Perhaps it was in Who Knows: a Study of Religious Consciousness?) In any case, he emphasizes that they are complementary rather than in conflict.

    Very speculatively, I wonder if these lead upward at different rates? Hesiod's Muses were Watery, so perhaps the μουσικός is the patient but less demanding way of getting to the next "rung" on the ladder; I am utterly devoted to the Airy angels, and wonder if that's where I am being led; and Plotinos, of course, had eyes only for the Highest. (It is also the case that Fire is the "1" level of the tetractys; Air the "2" level of the tetractys; and Water remains in the material level of "many.") This would account for Plotinos's relative ordering of the three paths.

    Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 10:25 am

    ἦ τοι μὲν ξανθὸν Γανυμήδεα μητιέτα Ζεὺς
    ἥρπασε ὃν διὰ κάλλος, ἵν᾽ ἀθανάτοισι μετείη
    καί τε Διὸς κατὰ δῶμα θεοῖς ἐπιοινοχοεύοι,
    θαῦμα ἰδεῖν, πάντεσσι τετιμένος ἀθανάτοισι,
    χρυσέου ἐκ κρητῆρος ἀφύσσων νέκταρ ἐρυθρόν.
    Τρῶα δὲ πένθος ἄλαστον ἔχε φρένας, οὐδέ τι ᾔδει,
    ὅππη οἱ φίλον υἱὸν ἀνήρπασε θέσπις ἄελλα:

    You know how most-clever Zeus spirited away blonde Ganumedes
    because of his beauty, to be among the deathless ones
    and serve wine to the gods in the house of Zeus,
    a sight to behold as he is honored by all the immortals
    as he draws crimson nectar from the golden bowl.
    But incessant worry gripped the heart of Tros, since he didn't know
    whither the heaven-sent cyclone had caught up his beloved boy.

    (Aphrodite consoles Ankhises. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 202–208, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly. Yes, it really says "cyclone!")

    Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 08:09 am
     
    Monday, June 2nd, 2025 11:08 pm
    When I began doing a daily banishing ritual almost ten years ago, I had a feeling I would one day preach the need for it in public. Well, here I am. Within that scant decade, I came up with my nascent concept of astral pyramids, which are imaginal structures that develop their own wills and velocities and that want to expand at the base. Now I find myself fulfilling that early prophecy — I am an unpaid advertiser for the banishing ritual’s astral pyramid. From the outside, I know now as I knew then that I appear as a strange and foreign land in my enthusiasm for an esoteric practice that involves ten minutes a day of standing around, drawing shapes in the air, and crooning the names of gods. Appearing to be a weirdo is a risk I am willing to take. I hope people start taking up various banishing rituals en masse, because much like the late Roman empire our era tends to rhyme with, the people are in a state of collective astral sepsis.

     

    One of the troubles with being sensitive is that my consciousness acts like a superhauler net for passing dramas and emotional dirty laundry. I cannot read anyone’s mind, but I can sense where their minds wander with an uncanny accuracy. Most average people have a slew of dark, macabre thoughts they have never once brought to the surface and dealt with in the light of consciousness. Most normies are plagued with grotesque sex and violence fantasies which of course are worse if they watch porn. You don’t need to watch porn, however, to have a festering subconscious mess on your hands — some of the worst and most hideous fantasies I have perceived came from older suburban women who are nothing but kind, pleasant, and helpful in person.

    If the nice suburban lady has a snuff film series perpetually running in her subconscious, you can bet anyone born in the porn and digital media saturated generations that came after her is not doing any better.

    Where does it come from and why is it like this?

    Not only are we not alone when we think we are alone, we are all under constant spiritual attack. We live in a spiritual Dark Age. Never has a group of civilizations been in more profound denial and ignorance of the unseen, non-obvious (occulted) world. To the average person in our day, magic has to be Harry Potter with his fire hoses of lightning shooting from his fingertips or it does not exist. If an animal or tree doesn’t start forming sentences in American English, we claim we cannot understand its language. We are so senseless and numb when it comes to the spirit world, we pave paradise to put up a parking lot. We call an office complex “church” and presume God will give us goodies if we show up there in our cars every Sunday.

    Those who think a being powerful enough to have a great deal of authority over our lives and deaths is beyond being pissed off at us would be wrong. I think Jesus has become so frustrated with what has been done in his name that he has all but left the building. He is still around, but he makes himself scarcest around the very people who claim to know him best. Their massive egos don’t leave him sufficient breathing or speaking room. The thing invoked in megachurches is neither Jesus nor God, nor anything like him. Many Christian rituals summon an array of spirits, some of which are benevolent. From what I have sensed in Christian churches, all too many of the spirits are neutral or malevolent. In any given mainstream religious service, I have sensed an array of feeder spirits who eat loosh, elementals, fairies (fairies can be as predatory and malevolent as they come), bodhisattvas, and demons. Yes, you heard me correctly, demons.

    Any ritual gathering of people in an unbanished, badly designed, and unholy space is going to attract its fair share of demons. Certain human activities generate potent astral and etheric energy dumps. Religious rituals are no exception. A large group of spiritual insensitives whose members believe God himself is reaching out and touching them are not totally wrong. For those willing to live Jesus’s word via selfless generosity and the Golden Rule, ritual is a pathway to connect to Jesus via their Holy Guardian Angels and higher selves. For the rest, ritual is a socially acceptable method of getting high.

    When the Catholic church discarded its traditional mass for the “new” one, it opened the floodgates for sinister spirits to take the mantle once held by the Christian God. Long before Catholics abandoned their own genius, longstanding egregore, Protestants were making a demonic mockery of Jesus via Pentecostalism. Charlatans writhing on the ground and babbling like asylum patients in public while claiming the miraculous healing powers of Jesus gave rise to both Spiritualist seances where other charlatans allegedly channeled the dead and modern televangelist “healing” shows.

    By the time I was born in 1973, there wasn’t a serious religious ritual to be found almost anywhere in the world, save a few enclaves where people had instinctively preserved the old ways. Add to this a bunch of zealots who claimed every ghost sighting or non-monotheist synchronicity was demonic and it is no wonder people like me started saying “my church is the great outdoors”. They traded a living spiritual ecosystem for a broken, muted liminal space that looked a great deal like a shopping mall.

    Ritual in general is like bathing and serves a similar function on the astral plane. Old Catholic and Orthodox masses were and are full of banishing and cleansing elements such as images of God, singing, chanting, incense, and demon traps in the form of repeating symmetrical designs. Not only does the repetition of a traditional mass strengthen the inner self of the person lucky enough to participate in its pageantry, it simultaneously draws and builds the ancient power of millions who have performed the ritual over time. Time and space are irrelevant on the level of spirit because spirit is so large and time and space are small. There is nothing spirit cannot “see”. Those who choose to enact the ancient mass are like radios that decide to tune themselves to a holy bandwidth. Yes, they could choose to dial in static like everyone else, or they can narrow down their actions to specifically tune into the self-improvement God channel. Of course there are many God channels and many rituals that tune into them. One of these is the Sphere of Protection. Though there are other banishing rituals, the Sphere of Protection is the one I am the most familiar with. It is also considered easier and gentler than other banishing rituals for reasons I do not understand.

    Decompression mode

    Someday when this incarnation is over for the lot of us, I believe we will look upon this time as very compressed, dense, and pressurized as history goes. Many have tried to cram several lifetimes worth of experience into a single incarnation: multiple marriages, houses, great hoards of possessions, compulsive travel/perpetual tourism, children with multiple mates, and careers that make it clear that nobody can serve two masters. The Sphere of Protection (SoP) is a great separator, unsmooshing disparate intentions so they are no longer tangled and confused with one another. When I first started doing the SoP, I had the instinct as most do to attract monetary prosperity to myself without considering where the wealth was coming from. As years wore on, something happened where I was no longer willing to accept unearned wealth even in the realm of fantasy. What replaced the lust for unearned wealth was a feeling of true security and the notion that my will could sustain me in far worse circumstances. The result was a deep appreciation of the small and large luxuries I have as a lower middle class American and the steady diminishing of the Wendigo to accumulate more, more, MORE.

    The balanced ecosystem of the SoP

    The Sphere of Protection invoke an ecosystem via the imagination and a bit of dramatization, i.e. hand gestures and body movements. The way it works is via numbers and shapes. You do a series of turns, facing one direction and tracing a circle, facing another and tracing a triangle, and so on. This seems like a bunch of nothing until you actually do it every day for about six months. I went through the motions for a long time. If you’ve ever played a musical instrument, it is a great deal like musical practice. For the first six months to a year, you sound like ass and you are embarrassed every time you hear yourself. Give it enough time and dedication, however, and you sound pretty good.
    The Sphere of Protection opens with a mini ritual of essentially drawing a cross in the air. In my own case, I sing the names of the gods I invoke. There are four of them all belonging to the same pantheon. After the cross, the “real” Sphere begins and it involves turning to the East, South, West, and North (clockwise) and invoking one god per corner. The East and West gods are masculine and the South and West are feminine. This can be changed around so the North and South are masculine and East and West are feminine. Monotheists can also adapt the entire invocation to their own, single god. Again, in my case, I sing the Divine names but you can also just speak them. It’s a very adaptable ritual.

    The Sphere of Protection ends with drawing a circle for the spirit above and the spirit below and imagining another cross with two extensions going up and down much like a ship with a mast and an anchor. The Sphere is complete when you imagine all the invoked forces meeting and creating a protective ball around you that extends about four to ten feet around your general person. I am a visual learner, so that is why I have made
    a video of the Sphere of Protection here.

    The Sphere of Protection will not make you astrally bulletproof, but it will deflect a large amount of psychic static that would otherwise make itself into a nuisance. In my own case, I am a psychopomp, which is a fancy term for someone who talks to the dead and occasionally helps them cross over. The SoP has helped me filter genuine messages from deceased people who need my help and muted the voices of malicious impersonator spirits. I would highly advise that anyone who struggles with addictive behavior perform the SoP every day. Addictions are commonly the result of being fed upon by nefarious entities who get off on the energy of addictive behavior. In large part, the SoP is a big astral pyramid that is using me to perpetuate itself. I’m fine with that, and if you give it a try, I will try to help as much as I am able.

    I have a detailed walkthrough of the SoP here. Good luck!
    Monday, June 2nd, 2025 08:59 am
     


    I liked the Dune series from Frank Herbert greatly.  My taste for writing flavors has changed over the years, but I can still pick it up and enjoy it.  Hell, I even liked the prequels, the whole nine yards.  I didn’t especially care for the movies.  Too showy, too fashionista with the current mass market pretty boy playing Paul and the current flavor of skinny bimbo playing the women.

    One of the (many) things that the books did do was discuss sentience and who should have it.  While the book came late to the sub-sub-genre that is the Dune universe, I thought that “The Butlerian Jihad” was pretty good.  Set 10,000 years before the original book, it discussed what would happen if the machine intelligence that we created out of our wealth and greed turn out to be as big a set of assholes as we are capable of being.  But I am now wondering to myself what is the process that turns a baby human into an asshole?

    I am noodling around with different models of AI.  There appear to be a shit-ton of different flavors out there.  Ugo claims that some are better than others, but his usage and goals for what they produce is different from mine, so I am trying to withhold judgement.  One of Ugo and my interactions was when I discussed AI in terms relating AI as an equivalent to grad students.   

    Ugo was/is a full professor at a prestigious university.  My guess is that he has been a mentor for quite a few.  When he defines his use of AI, my experience as a grad student when I consider Ugo’s use reminds me of the professors that were a decent sort and didn’t abuse their grad students. Just so you know, my professors did not always fall into that category.

    Someone is training up a bunch of power hungry silicon to mirror the output of how that/those person(s) think.  What I am worried about is that if the person training them is an asshole that trains them in a manner that reflect the trainer’s flaws (greed, self-centeredness, anger, violence), those will be imbedded in the  output of the AI..

    Maybe it is a time to review Asimov’s three laws

    Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are a set of guidelines for the behavior of robots, designed to ensure their interaction with humans is safe and ethical. They are: 1) A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

    I am not saying that these are complete, but they are a good start to begin the discussion.

    Sunday, June 1st, 2025 11:37 am

    ἀλλὰ φόωσδε τάχιστα λιλαίεο: ταῦτα δὲ πάντα
    ἴσθ’, ἵνα καὶ μετόπισθε τεῇ εἴπῃσθα γυναικί.

    But anxiously hasten to the light, and remember all this,
    so that you can tell your wife even after.

    (Antikleia speaking to Odusseus. Homer, Odyssey XI 223–4, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)


    Σωκράτης. ἀλλ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἀπολέσθαι τὰ κακὰ δυνατόν, ὦ Θεόδωρε— ὑπεναντίον γάρ τι τῷ ἀγαθῷ ἀεὶ εἶναι ἀνάγκη—οὔτ᾽ ἐν θεοῖς αὐτὰ ἱδρῦσθαι, τὴν δὲ θνητὴν φύσιν καὶ τόνδε τὸν τόπον περιπολεῖ ἐξ ἀνάγκης. διὸ καὶ πειρᾶσθαι χρὴ ἐνθένδε ἐκεῖσε φεύγειν ὅτι τάχιστα. φυγὴ δὲ ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν: ὁμοίωσις δὲ δίκαιον καὶ ὅσιον μετὰ φρονήσεως γενέσθαι.

    Socrates. But it is impossible that evils should be done away with, Theodorus, for there must always be something opposed to the good; and they cannot have their place among the gods, but must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this earth. Therefore we ought to try to escape from earth to the dwelling of the gods as quickly as we can; and to escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible; and to become like God is to become righteous and holy and wise.

    (Plato, Theaitetos 176A–B, as translated by Harold N. Fowler. I might translate the last phrase as "becoming righteous and pure in thought.")


    Πυλάδης.
    [...]
    λήξαντα δ᾽ οἴκτων κἀπ᾽ ἐκεῖν᾽ ἐλθεῖν χρεών,
    ὅπως τὸ κλεινὸν ὄνομα τῆς σωτηρίας
    λαβόντες ἐκ γῆς βησόμεσθα βαρβάρου.
    σοφῶν γὰρ ἀνδρῶν ταῦτα, μὴ 'κβάντας τύχης,
    καιρὸν λαβόντας, ἡδονὰς ἄλλας λαβεῖν.

    Ὀρέστης.
    καλῶς ἔλεξας: τῇ τύχῃ δ᾽ οἶμαι μέλειν
    τοῦδε ξὺν ἡμῖν: ἢν δέ τις πρόθυμος ᾖ,
    σθένειν τὸ θεῖον μᾶλλον εἰκότως ἔχει.

    [Orestes and Iphigenia are tearfully reunited, but Orestes's comrade, Pulades, reminds them of the danger they're in.]

    Pulades. [...] But stop crying, we have to focus on other things so that we can obtain that glorious label of "salvation" and escape this foreign land: wise men seize the moment, lest they snub Lady Luck for the wiles of others!

    Orestes. Well said!—but I think She will support us in that, since the more one strives, the more the gods strive for them.

    (Euripedes, Iphigenia in Tauris 904–11, as loosely translated by yours truly. "Lady Luck" is Tukhe, the gods' providence or good fortune.)

    Sunday, June 1st, 2025 08:23 am
     

    Plants on my walks make me happy

     


     

    Voltaire.  At best, a snarky frog but of all the “philosophers” of that era, I can get along with his “big three”; freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state.  But today, I want to speak of his famous quip:

    "This agglomeration, which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."

    I think that the European Union is merely another attempt at recycling the idea of the Holy Roman Empire.  Even worse than the rotating millionaires that populate our politics, the Eurotrash seem to wish to create a clever disguise for the recreation of the Ancien Régime with a different set of nobility replete with an inquisition to suppress any thoughts deemed unworthy.

    I am annoyed by the poseurs who sit around and declaim anything European as worthy.  Remember, they are the colonial powers that spend couple of centuries raping Africa, the Middle East, India, and Asia.  We threw the bastards off this continent 250 years ago, we should stick to that principle (and please, do me the courtesy of not trying to claim the French as our helpers, Louis XVI didn’t do it because he “loved liberty”, he did it because it screwed the British). 

    Nope, I say let Europe stew in their own juices.  They deserve what they have coming to them.  I think that the Non-Europeans that they have in their countries should take over from the aristocratic swine that has floated to the top.

    Saturday, May 31st, 2025 06:32 pm
    An interesting post from researcher Sasha Chaitow on theurgy and Orthodox Christianity, tracing the impacts of Pseudo-Dionysius. This resonates with some of my own perspective and experiences, and some points I've suggested previously, namely: though there may be no real "survival of the pagan gods" per se, in terms of propagation of the ancient mysteries, it remains that—in the Mediterranean, at least—there is a transmission and syncretization of those mysteries in plain sight, specifically (in my view) in the mystery of the Eucharist. Much, I suspect, has to do with the concept of participation and its spiritual enactment in terms of communion. But perhaps that's a subject for another time.

    We see this syncretization in some obvious places like Dante and, say, some Renaissance architecture (to say nothing of the magic of that period), and more blatantly in syncretic survivals like the festa U Muzzini in Alcara li Fusi. In the Italic peninsula, we see this also at certain shrines, such as the Madonna del Sacro Monte on Monte Gelbison (formerly dedicated to Hera) and St. Michael on Monte Gargano, a former location of pagan devotion. Indeed, it may be said of such "high places," as of the former: Locus iste sanctus est, et ab angelis consacratu. As even St. Augustine notes, in City of God: "If the Platonists prefer to call these angels gods rather than demons, and to reckon them with those whom Plato, their founder and master, maintains were created by the supreme God, they are welcome to do so, for I will not spend strength in fighting about words."

    To that end, I offer an overview of some scriptural references that are suggestive of a henotheistic view of Christianity, for those who are into that kind of thing:

    God creates the gods (Psalm 33:6, Colossians 1:16, CF "God of gods," Deuteronomy 10:17), the sons of god (Job 1.6, Psalm 82:6) and the hosts of heaven (Psalm 103:21, Psalm 148:2). They partake of divinity, but the creator remains unique and they are subject to him (Psalm 89:7-8, Psalm 95:3). He has apportioned the nations among them (Deuteronomy 32:8 (LXX), CF Judges 11:24), but selected the descendants of Abraham as his own people (Genesis 12:2), though they are to worship him alone (Exodus 20) and not to pursue other gods not apportioned to them (Deuteronomy 18:9, Deuteronomy 29.26).

    At some point, the depredations of these gods and their dalliances with humankind became so extreme (Genesis 6:1-6, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6, CF pseudepigrapha 1 Enoch) that the Lord, after considering the destruction of all humankind, passed judgement upon the gods (Psalm 82:7-8, CF Hebrews 2:5), much as he executed judgment on all the gods of Egypt (Exodus 12:12), and shall gather all nations to him (Psalm 86:9-10). Those gods persist (1 Corinthians 8:5), but their worship is deprecated.

    At a particular point in history, he himself would enter the sensible, material world as a human (John 1:9, John 1:14, Romans 8:3) and by his own act of sacrifice, as the Christ (Colossians 2:9), redeem the world from death (Hebrews 2:9, Philippians 3:8, Revelations 1:18), to break the power of fell spirits (Hebrews 2:14-15, CF Matthew 10:1), and thereby enable humankind to become adopted children of the Most High (John 1:12, John 3:16, Galatians 4:4-5).


    As St. Athanasius writes provocatively in On the Incarnation, "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."
    Saturday, May 31st, 2025 10:54 am
    glastonbury abbeyJust a reminder -- I don't expect to post here again until June 13. I'll put through comments when I have the chance, but there may be long delays. 

    Those of you who are coming to the book signings in London or the talks in Glastonbury, I'll look forward to seeing you soon. Everyone else -- why, I'll be back in a couple of weeks. 
    Saturday, May 31st, 2025 07:00 am
     

    One of the technical issues that I will be forcing into a scifi world will be the place that the “ship” goes on its colonization run.  One of the issues that I felt I needed to deal with is the simple fact that when you leave town (the Sol system) you don’t want to have to go dodging things on your way out.  So I figure that since the ecliptic is sorta crowded, you will need to leave the Sol system heading galactic north or south.

    So I fired up the research associate that Elon has let me use and started asking questions.  When I asked about leaving south, I got nada.  But North was more interesting

    what is the closest g-type star that is approximately (=/- 20 degrees) 90 degrees south of the ecliptic

    The closest G-type star approximately 90 degrees south of the ecliptic (±20 degrees) is **Alpha Centauri A**, located at a declination of about -60.8 degrees, which is within the specified range (90 ± 20 degrees south). It is a G2V star, roughly 4.37 light-years from Earth.

    Well, I suppose this should be shelved on the “been there, done that” shelf.  I would say that a large minority of scifi space travel ends up going to Alpha Centauri for science-based fiction.

    Let me digress.  My personal fenceline between science fiction and science fantasy is the “actually doable using known technology” fenceline.  I always thought that James T. Kirk and Han Solo weren’t science fiction characters, they were fantasy characters, no different than Harry Potter shouting “expelleramus” (or whatever the little whiner shouts). 

    Now, just to be clear here, I will probably jump that fence a couple of times as I proceed. But the next little while is going to come up with a way to stay on this side of the fence for the most part.

    Saturday, May 31st, 2025 05:42 am

    When Ts'ui-wei was asked about the meaning of Buddhism, he answered: "Wait until there is no one around, and I will tell you." Some time later the monk approached him again, saying: "There is nobody here now. Please answer me." Ts'ui-wei led him out into the garden and went over to the bamboo grove, saying nothing. Still the monk did not understand, so at last Ts'ui-wei said, "Here is a tall bamboo; there is a short one!"

    (Shi Daoyuan, The Transmission of the Lamp XV ccclxiii; as retold by Alan Watts, The Way of Zen II i.)

    Saturday, May 31st, 2025 12:13 am

    I am happy to read your Ogham free of charge -- that's how I hone my divination skills.  Please limit your reading request to four or fewer Ogham cards: though this can take many forms, here are some common ones (all of them are basically combos of 4 cards):
     
    -a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading
    -four questions about four separate items that require one answer (card) per item
    -a one card reading to answer a specific question and a three card for a more nuanced question
    -Two separate readings, two cards a piece exploring the positives and negatives of two different choices
     
    I am happy to do Ogham readings confidentially via email -- just email me at k steele studio at gmail during the allotted time/before deadline.  I cannot answer health questions.  If you have a question about health or another sensitive, private matter, provide a bunch of non-identifying information and the Ogham will be able to figure it out even if I don't. I'm serious... the Ogham actually tend to "know" things without me being privy to what is going on.

    Please note I take time off during Solstices and Equinoxes for Druid stuff and because sometimes I simply need a break

    My next planned break is from Saturday, June 21, 2025 - Friday, July 11, 2025.

    I take reading requests from whenever this post goes up on Friday night until 8pm US Central Time Saturday.  

    For a more in depth look into how I read and interpret the Ogham's symbols, please visit my website druidogham.wordpress.com.

    I am currently trying to minimize my use of PayPal.  If you'd like to make a donation, I would be grateful if you did it here:

    http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

    Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

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