Blog
- Details
- Hits: 15762
As the Prof has rescheduled the Summer Solstice till this Sunday (a Druid of his calibre can do that sort of thing you know), I’ve basically had a week of Solstice starting with midsummer Highland Games and Ceilidh in the hills above Loch Ness, putting the final touches to the sculpture of Flora, and preparing to hail the new official midsummer formally in a certain private circle of standing stones.
My part in the highland games came down to participation in three demented events that probably originated from military activities designed to break up medieval infantry formations, shot, hammer, and caber. The shot consisted of a stone larger than my head, the hammer of an eight inch iron ball on a hawser. I think that on one of my throws I managed not to come last despite throwing myself twice to the ground as well during the attempts. I had taken the liberty of a trying a couple of practise tosses with a couple of the cabers on the rack, and it seemed do-able. However when we got to the event the MC swept the cabers off the rack, ‘just the ladies ones and the practise ones’ he said, and it turned out that the real deal consisted of the rack itself, an intimidating twelve foot long, hundred pound plus spar. Nobody actually managed to toss it right over and nobody died. ‘The caber wins again’ pronounced the MC. Legend has it that someone in the village once accomplished it. They breed ‘em madly tough in the highlands, competition standard caber apparently involves 19 foot 175 pound cabers and men the size of bears.
As well as the delights of a family reunion I also enjoyed the sight of a rare Pine Marten foraging just outside the window of the croft, and the museum of Pictish art, weird stuff carved on stone that we still cannot decipher as their hieroglyphics or heraldry or religion.
Then back to my garage to complete Cloris-Flora the Greek-Roman Goddess of Gardens. In the absence of a block of white marble and the time and skill to work it, I started with a shop mannequin, concreted her onto a slab of bathstone, and then built up her headdress and accessories and surface detail with Jemsonite, a weatherproof sort of plaster like material, and then finished her with white masonry paint.
Meanwhile on Arcanorium College efforts to penetrate the Neconomicon Mythos of the Elder Gods by a team of intrepid psychonauts proceeds apace, we seem to have revitalised the old magical arte of Ars Notoria in this quest.
- Details
- Hits: 15489
So now, with the UK general election settled, the battle over the UK’s membership of the EU begins in earnest.
In 1973 the British people elected to join a Common Market. It seemed like a good idea at the time to dismantle trade barriers between the participating European countries. Some did warn us that it could eventually lead to some sort of federalisation of Europe and that some of the people behind it actually had full federalisation, or worse, on their agenda.
Now, four decades later, the British people find themselves increasingly subject to the diktats, laws, regulatory culture, and membership of a European Union that they never voted to join but which their politicians gradually signed them up to.
It has become increasingly apparent that the European Union heads towards government by Synarchy rather than by Democracy. We face ‘Ever Closer Union’ with a political entity over which we have virtually no democratic control.
Professional Politicians and Big Business much prefer Synarchy to Democracy.
Synarchy means government by a self-perpetuating clique of ‘Those Who Think They Know Best’ and who do not wish to subject themselves to democratic accountability. Rather they prefer to perpetuate their cabal by a system of appointing only those who agree with them.
The EU does in theory have an elected parliament but only a sham parliament; it raises no taxes, it originates no legislation, and it has no budget to spend except on its own extravagant expenses. It merely exists to rubber stamp the legislation created by the unelected European Commission and its vast unelected supporting Bureaucracy.
This Synarchic system suits professional career politicians and big business very well. Professional politicians can look forward to retirement appointments on the bloated gravy train of the EU if they lose elections. Many of the political class now choose to build their entire careers there, subject only to internal scrutiny and to zero public accountability. Big business loves the EU because the EU relies on big business to set so much of the regulatory agenda to its own advantage against smaller business competitors and external trade.
Synarchy depends on a self-perpetuating unelected clique and its clients; it maintains its position by assuming control of as many aspects of the populace’s lives as it possibly can by an ever multiplying set of rules and regulations. By passing laws and regulations about every imaginable activity it effectively gives itself the Arbitrary Power to criminalise any form of behaviour or dissent or opposition it takes exception to. In the EU most of this legislation gets passed under the ominous banner of ‘Public Safety’ or under the faux banner of ‘Internationalism’.
The strength and creativity of Europe has always lain in its diversity. The various European nations have experimented with just about every imaginable political, social, ethical and religious system over the centuries. Some became more scientifically and industrially oriented than others. They fought frequently and learned from each other’s advances and mistakes.
The EU Synarchists now seek to homogenise and rule the entire continent with a single vast set of rules and regulations about every aspect of people’s working lives, interpersonal relationships, the provision and consumption of goods and services, and acceptable beliefs and thoughts (secular political correctness trumps all tolerated faiths and political opinions.)
The hegemonistic homogenising ‘One Size Must Fit All’ philosophy of the EU Synarchists can only lead to a loss of diversity, experimentation, creativity, and competitiveness in the European nations that submit to it.
The argument that EU membership will prevent war does not hold water. Democracies have rarely if ever declared war on each other, and nowadays the economic costs of war between European nations far exceed any possible benefits, and will likely remain so.
The economic benefits of EU membership remain highly debatable. The free movement of capital and labour within the EU has done more for free-market capitalism than social democracy. The richer areas have sucked in the investment and labour to the impoverishment of the poorer areas that merely receive subsidised and frequently useless infrastructure projects. Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Greece have had their economies wrecked by the EU, whilst Germany has massively profited from a currency union which makes its exports ridiculously cheap. Poland has lost a million of its youngest and most motivated people.
The argument that Europe needs to act as a single bloc when confronting the major powers of America, China, and Russia does not hold water either. None of those countries have territorial ambitions in Europe. Europe has abandoned colonialism, military intervention in the third world becomes increasingly pointless, and nuclear deterrence thankfully keeps the peace. The Germans really should invest in some instead of relying on ours. When it comes to economic confrontation, America, China, and Russia would find it far easier to apply pressure to a single homogenous block rather than trying to apply it piecemeal to dozens of self-governing nations.
David Cameron has stated that he will attempt to renegotiate the whole relationship between the UK and the EU and then present the terms of a new relationship to the British people in a simple in or out referendum.
The red line for renegotiation should have equal simplicity.
‘The UK reserves the right to ignore any EU legislation that it considers inappropriate for itself.’
If that proves unacceptable then we should vote to leave, and hopefully in a manner calculated to weaken or collapse the whole rotten structure.
Any nation that waives the right to issue its own law or currency or to issue or refuse work or residency permits to visitors, no longer has meaningful sovereignty over itself, or a meaningful democracy either.
The issue of free movement of population for economic reasons obstructs the entry of Turkey into the EU. If we went back to a simple Common Market this problem would dissappear. Turkey could trade more freely with Europe and this would strengthen Nato's flank and Turkey itself as a bulwark against the problems of the middle east.
As a wizard I revel in creative juxtapositions, contrasts, differences, and varied excellences. I want different countries with widely differing customs to take my holidays in.
I don’t want Greece forced into the same culture as Germany. I prefer to enjoy both places separately, and don’t wish Britain to homogenise with either.
The EU project leads only to enforced uniformity and mediocrity beneath a mountain of rules and regulations. A ‘European Identity’ does not exist because nobody outside the Synarchist wing of the political class really wants one.
- Details
- Hits: 16909
After the exuberance of the last few posts, some rather negative stuff: -
Conspiracy Theory has become something of the half-thinking person’s alternative religion these days. The set of beliefs has gradually achieved some sort of canonical form these days, expect the inclusion of Zionism, Nazism, the Rothschilds, the JSK assassination, the CIA and MK Ultra, then add Area 51, Flying Saucers, Climate Change and Vaccination denial, weird interpretations of 9/11, and the British Royal Family to taste.
Conspiracy theories tend to appeal to the extreme right and the extreme left and to the paranoid and the self-important. Some people also delight in thinking they know something that others don’t, although the internet now contains so much of this stuff in the public domain that anyone can fill their heads with it without actually encountering anything to question or falsify any of it. You can google yourself into complete and comprehensive ‘self-consistent’ sets of mutually supportive delusions by a simple process of selective attention.
Some people seem to prefer the idea that the chaos of the world lies under the control of something, even if malignant. What about the filthy rich nuclear armed nazi reptile pervert house of Windsor/Rothschild ruling the world from a bunker beneath Stonehenge? Obvious innit!
In practise Conspiracies have a fractal form. Conspiracies operate between nations and within nations, within workplaces and social groups and within families. We also have conspiracies inside our own heads, with some of our thoughts and fears and desires at odds with others.
Conspiracies exist all right, but Snafu’s, screw-ups, misunderstandings, mistakes, fortuitous accidents, and stupidity generally set the fairly random and unpredictable course of human life and history.
Conspiracy Theory always retrodicts; it has no predictive power. It should not form any part of so called ‘esoteric knowledge’ at all.
Thus I find Ray Sherwin’s latest book ‘VITRIOL’ a dismal disappointment. He goes whole hog on uncritical Conspiracy Theory, and it becomes a tiresome and predictable read in which the author commits literary and intellectual suicide at length. Then he further sours the mix with rants against former friends with whom he developed business disputes, and with scientifically illiterate neurotic rants about health issues. He once wrote a couple of reasonable books on magic, this latest offering will probably depress the market for them.
The Spanish translator of the E-Epoch just pointed out that we had mistakenly attributed the authorship of ‘The Imitation of Christ’ not to Ignatius Loyola but rather to Thessalonius Loyola. (Ray’s old magical moniker). Maybe that or the Fuerteventura sun and isolation have gone to his head.
And now for another negative: Necromancy.
The damned arte has reared its rotting head again, so herewith a counterblast from the annals of Esoteric Quality Control, new on this site.
http://www.specularium.org/wizardry/item/173-necromancy-and-magic
- Details
- Hits: 14939
With some exhuberance I post a picture of my victorious MP. Unlike a lot of them she once had a real job, as you can see from her magnificent lifeguard's shoulders.
I felt no need to actually vote for her or to sit up for the foregone conclusion of a result. The Sun and the bookies as usual called it right. The bookies had them neck and neck towards the finish, but bear in mind they offer odds based partly on their appraisal of the chances but partly on the money that actually gets placed, so you have to allow for the sort of people who actually go to the bookies, sample bias as we mathematicians call it.
So we have a sensible result for the UK, despite the simmering tartan romanticism north of the border, and we have avoided the dread Lab/SNP coalition of entropy.
I voted Green as promised in my electoral Pact with my eldest, a magical gesture for the future.
And now for a little light physics: -
Galaxies
March 15, 2014
Fifteen Old, Massive Galaxies Found in the Early Universe --"They Shouldn't Even Exist"
http://earthsky.org/science-wire/a-young-galaxy-in-the-local-universe
RELEASE DATE: SEP 27, 2014
A young galaxy in the local universe?
The nearby dwarf galaxy DDO 68 – only 39 million light-years away – looks young. But its nearness to us in space suggests it’s not as young as it looks.
Hypersphere Cosmology confidently predicts that astronomers will eventually discover galaxies of all ages at all distances, bright new ones are just easier to find at extreme distances. The Universe recycles everything.
- Details
- Hits: 16147
Confessions of a Right Wing Hippy.
Daughter, didn’t you recently tell me you had concluded that the dread Loch Ness Monster was actually a STURGEON? I quipped.
Dad, have you always been a Right Wing Hippy? Retorted my eldest, who has recently become a Doctor of Biological Sciences.
These quips arose during intense negotiations for an Emergency Electoral Pact between us in advance of this week’s UK general election.
In the end we both solemnly swore to vote Green on wizard’s honour and scientist’s honour. So that’s one less vote for the Conservatives in a constituency where it won’t make any difference, one less vote for the SNP where it won’t make any difference either, but two votes to add to the Green national total as a magical act of protest and long term enchantment for the future.
(Mind you, the Green’s policy of unrestricted population movement within Europe still seems profoundly ecologically unsound to me, but I guess they just put that in as a sop to the youth vote.) Nevertheless trying to conserve the environment satisfies my conservative instincts.
I think my moment of conversion to right wing hippiedom came on witnessing the ‘New-Age Convoy’ at Stonehenge. Children with matted hair and brown stumps for teeth, un-roadworthy vehicles full agricultural diesel stolen from farmers, surly feral men armed with machetes, scabby looking women selling themselves in benders, heroin on open sale, green hedgerows ripped down in failed attempts to light fires, human and dog excrement everywhere. Hawkwind still played well however. Peace and Love requires organisation and self-discipline you know man.
The overall level of human happiness seems more or less independent of ‘progress’ for the simple reason that anything ‘new’ or ‘progressive’ usually has as many downsides as upsides to it, most of them unforeseen. I find novelty profoundly interesting but not an unqualified good in itself. Science tends to improve over time, but architecture tends to get worse for example.
Politically I prefer a system that errs on the side of Liberty rather than Equality. (Fraternity has little effect beyond the 150 or so people that anyone can properly know). When it comes to Equality; equality of opportunity trumps enforced equality of outcome (socialism). I broadly support the Darwinian aims of STUB, stop the underclass breeding, or at least stop subsidising the feckless to do so. Yet I endeavour to practise benign capitalism as the most agreeable option available to me in current circumstances.
Like my daughter, most people seem to regard me as a mass of confusing contradictions. I would describe them as fertile juxtapositions. My appearance does not match my professional status and my opinions as a whole do not fall into any conventional category. I have left wing opinions about some matters, right wing opinions about others, conservative attitudes to some phenomena, liberal attitudes to others, and I currently hold some positions which have such a minority following that they don’t even have a category yet.
Whilst I have intense religious feelings I don’t believe in anything much except science, and a fair bit of that seems wrong; I suppose I merely respect the efficacy of scientific method in principle, although it often fails. Most ‘facts’ have fairly short half-lives. Official cosmology currently looks like a mistaken mess and as Richard Feynman said, ‘nobody understands quantum physics’ yet.
I respect the efficacy of magical method as well, despite its even higher failure rate. I value enchantment over divination on the basis of reasonably coherent quantum-theoretical reasons and personal experience. I dismiss the existence of ‘spirits’ as conventionally defined, and consider drugs and necromancy of limited or negligible value in magic.
In short, I Reject Herd Mentality.
Opinions shouldn’t come in exclusive boxed sets. (Prejudice by any other name.)
I value the antinomian perspective; we never really understand an idea until we also understand the conditions under which it ceases to apply.