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Saturday, 09 March 2024 16:17

Marblog 2024

Marblog 2024

Sortilege

Elective Democracy increasingly displays all its weaknesses in the face of pressure and finance from powerful interest groups and propaganda from powerful media. It encourages the formation and dominance of political parties and it spawns career politicians more intent upon re-election than good governance.

The classical Athenian Greeks rejected it for precisely such reasons.

About half of the world holds elections this year. In many cases such elections simply enable de-facto dictatorships to shuffle their cronies and weed out dissent. Yet in countries with supposedly free elections, the choice of candidates usually remains effectively determined by non-representative cliques, factions, political parties, and the media.

Thus, we now face the unedifying prospect of national elections in the UK and USA in which most voters would probably tick a ‘Neither of the Above’ box if it existed but will otherwise vote only to deny power to whoever they consider the worst alternative.

The vulnerability of Elective Democracy to abuse by self-interested cliques and oligarchs and career politicians led the classical Athenian Greeks to choose Sortition Democracy instead.

In an ideal Sortition system, representatives become selected at random by some sort of lottery to form a government. They serve for a fixed period as a public duty and cannot seek re-selection. Such a system would create parliaments that proportionally reflected all adult age groups, social classes, ethnicities, and genders within a society.

Such parliaments would ideally debate openly but vote by secret ballot. At a stroke this would break the stranglehold of political parties and eliminate most forms of corruption and lobbying by self-interested pressure groups. We could pay the members of a Sortition Parliament well to turn up for debates and votes and have an independent judiciary to eliminate any last vestiges of corruption. Sortition selected representatives would have no other motivation in debate or in voting than their own consciences and the long term benefits to society.

A Sortition Parliament could have half of its members replaced every few years so that it does not have to restart with completely inexperienced members after a complete sortition. It could call upon any number of experts to advise it and it would have a civil service to do so as well.

A Sortition Parliament would of course contain a small percentage of liars, idiots, self-deluded narcissists, criminals, and psychopaths, but far less than the current elective system throws up.

We should not give power to those who seek it.

We could perhaps trial the Sortition system in the UK by replacing the House of Lords with a randomly selected second chamber that has absolute power of veto over the first. It would act as a Citizen’s Jury that acts as a check and balance to the flaws and abuses that become increasingly apparent in  elective systems.

Religiophobia.

There seems zero evidence that any religion has ever caused a net improvement in human behaviour. Every bit of charity and compassion promoted by any religion seems more than cancelled by the oppression it has self-righteously enforced.

In our theoretically secular societies, it seems perfectly acceptable to loathe political philosophies like fascism or communism which have very grim and ghastly track records, yet rather bizarrely it becomes increasingly taboo to discriminate between religious philosophies, no matter how bad their recent track records.

So now we have the peculiar spectacle of secular British politicians trying to make capital (and votes) out of accusing each other of phobias against religious philosophies that neither side has any genuine sympathy with.

Richard Dawkins famously described Roman Catholicism as the world’s second worst religion. Should we hate all religions equally or do some seem currently more despicable than others? Surely the more patriarchal, misogynistic, authoritarian, anti-democratic, intolerant, anti-liberal humanistic, and anti-rational ones deserve all the derision, criticism, and discrimination we can heap upon them.

This is Chaos. The Draft Manuscript has Landed!

The publisher has received all the written contributions to the Chaos Anthology and responded with a resounding Huzzah! There will now follow a period of editorial work to arrange it all in suitable form and sort out the illustrations, footnotes, and citations, hopefully it will appear sometime later this year.

Contributors include Ronald Hutton, Peter J Carroll, Jaq D Hawkins, Jozef Karika, Julian Vayne, Jacob Sipes, Aidan Watcher, Ivy Corvus, Dave Lee, Lionel Snell, Mariana Pinzon, Carl Abrahamson, Sinobu Kurono, and Sanhre Daffowt.

FSW8 ‘Magic’.

I have always had a fascination with designing and building board games. Analysing and trying to model historical, real world, and fantasy scenarios seems a productive way of stimulating strategic, tactical, imaginative, critical, and counter-factual thinking.

What rules do the actions of a system imply? What systems will emerge from a set of rules?

People keep asking me why I don’t write novels as well as books on magic and physics. Well, I tend to read, and I would naturally write, plot driven novels of ideas rather than character and drama driven stories. So boardgames have become my novels of ideas, my ‘what-if’ stories, and they also allow for endless experimentation with alternative rules and multiple possible endings.

For years I have experimented with modelling magic in a boardgame. It seems that any game system of ‘magic on its own’ can only lead to some kind of quest scenario where you use magic just to gain more magical ability, either cooperatively or competitively. In most game systems, magic or psi works as a ‘rule breaker’ in the sense that it acts as a combat modifier or a mobility modifier or that it distorts the probability of what would normally happen in some other way.

That seems reasonable enough because in the modern view, Magic - whether in enchantment or divination, consists of the art and science of modifying probabilities. (In divination it modifies the probability of guessing the right answer.)

The latest add-on to Frontier Space Warfare, the Psi Weapon Tournament Rules reflects this view. Factions may invest in various Psi facilities and wand like markers denote their presence on the board. Most act as production, combat, or mobility modifiers, but one has a function perhaps unique in game systems.

The power of Prescience allows a vessel or a flotilla of vessels to launch an attack in which, if it fails, the player can cancel it completely and restore the situation before the attack, but at the cost of the loss of the Psi weapon used. It may seem odd to call this Prescience, but this effectively models prescience because it gives a player the ability to explore what would happen if they did something, and then of either going for it or of avoiding doing it.

Herewith the Aquarian faction with a complete set of all 8 Psi weapons. The ones which have a non-local effect remain on the Aquarian homeworld, the expeditionary flotilla on one of its smaller systems carries the local effect combat and mobility modifying Psi weapons.

The Psi weapon tournament rules appear in the FSW8 rules appear in the games section and below.

 Psychopath’s Chess

With his attempted conquest of Ukraine bogged down into an attritional stalemate and a contest of endurance with the West, Vladimir Putin must surely have dreamed of opening up a second front to distract the attention, resolve, money, and resources of the West.

Putin has cultivated an alliance with the Iranian government, based on little more than the dictatorial and pariah status of both regimes. Iran sponsors, trains, and arms both Gazan Hamas and the Yemeni Houthis. It seems unlikely that either would have gone to war without Iranian approval, and most likely that they both went to war on Iranian instructions.

Putin likes sending messages by dramatic and violent means. Hamas launched its attack on 7th October, Putin’s birthday. He probably considers it a very worthwhile pawn sacrifice.

Amphibia

Climate change continues to confuse the wildlife, we have had an unseasonable period of exceptional rainfall, frosts, and warm days; some plants have flowered alarmingly early. During the unsettled weather of the last weeks, frogs and newts have appeared only fleetingly in the pond at Chateaux Chaos and then disappeared again. Nevertheless, we have healthy looking clumps of both frogspawn and toad spawn. Let us hope that the ferocious dragonfly larvae do not scoff the lot when they emerge, as they did last year.

Friday, 09 February 2024 09:36

Febblog 2024

Febblog 2024.

(Note that a Janblog 2024 does not appear, not because nothing happened but because too much did, what with seasonal festivities in Scotland, family gatherings, an abundance of birthdays (why did so many of the people I know get born at this time of year?), the demands of coordinating 15 others in the creation of the This is Chaos anthology, the writing of Interview with a Wizard 2, embarking on a course of silversmithing, masses of magical correspondence, and surprising responses from some quantum and cosmological physicists.)

Well, the year has ostensibly started very badly with wars raging in Europe and the Middle East in which none of the protagonists seem to have a realistic exit strategy, Humanity seemingly committed to burning increasing amounts of fossil fuels until Climate Catastrophe overwhelms industrial civilisation itself, Elections looming in the UK and the USA that do not look likely to produce results that inspire widespread optimism, The UK seemingly tacitly committed to both maintaining a permanent housing crisis and the long-term-idiotic policy of importing ever more people to shore up its dodgy economy.

On the positive side The Dark Energy Survey https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.02929

Came out as a preprint on January 5th. This resumes the data on 1,500 new type 1a Supernovae, some with redshifts exceeding Z =1.

Conventional cosmologists will interpret the raw data in terms of Flat Universe Theory in an attempt to confirm their ideas about so-called Dark Energy driving an apparent accelerating expansion of the universe.

As soon as the raw data becomes released upon acceptance of a paper, it will go into the algorithms of Hypersphere Cosmology to refine the measurement of the Antipode Distance in its model of a non-expanding hyperspherical universe that appears to us in stereographic projection because of its small overall positive curvature.

Dark Energy Survey data should hopefully confirm not the presence of Dark Energy in the conventional LCDM or wCDM models but the Curvature of the Universe within the HC model.

This paper shows the processing of older type 1a supernovae within the HC model.

https://www.specularium.org/hypersphere-cosmology/item/270-type-1a-supernovae-and-hypersphere-cosmology

This graph following shows the resulting antipode length results for the above data with estimated errors shown for apparent magnitude (blue) shown as + (red) and – (green). Horizontal scale redshift, vertical scale distance (metres).

Plainly two of the supernovae apparent magnitudes do not fit well, but despite the difficulties of apparent magnitude measurement all the rest give a reasonable fit to an Antipode distance of ~1.23 e26 metres or almost exactly 13 billion light years or 4 giga-parsecs.

I confidently expect the forthcoming DES data at higher redshift will confirm and refine this.

Brian Cox Horizons Tour – A twenty first century space odyssey.

https://briancoxlive.co.uk/

We went to this in Bristol recently and enjoyed it immensely. How refreshing to discover just how widespread interest in Cosmology has become. Cox lectured to a big packed venue in front of a screen full of spectacular images from near and deep space and out to the limits of observation from space based telescopes. Whilst I have  multiple issues with many of the conventional interpretations of the images and data that he presented, and particular doubts about the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems, I particularly liked the second half where he became more speculative and philosophical about life the universe and everything, and our beautiful planet, let us hope that the 99% unicellular slime hypothesis does not apply to the trillions of planets potentially capable of supporting life.

Under Construction

An Apophenia Ring in 1.5mm 925 Silver – Sawing the shank out of a sheet of silver seemed easy enough, bending it into a circle proved tough going, cutting out the Apophenia symbol with little files took many hours, soldering them together took mere minutes. I may later add a Chrysoberyl or Alexandrite cabochon in the circular part of the symbol which invokes the esoteric inspirations of Ouranos and Venus, with touches of Mercury and the Moon.

Herewith a rather delightful sci-fi image of Apophenia, I don’t know anything about the site it appears on.

https://www.apophenium.com/p/welcome-to-apophenium

Hopefully Apophenia, the goddess and muse of strange connections and the imagination will assist with the project below: -

A Quantum Ontology – Can we have such a thing?

Thought and language remain heavily structured by the preconception that phenomena (must?) consist of ‘something doing something’, yet we can only observe the doing and hypothesise (perhaps erroneously) about any underlying being.

Can we conceptualise something fundamental as exhibiting both doing and being?

Or do fundamental phenomena consist only of their doing and have no sort of substructure?

If  fundamental phenomenon have no substructure, then does causality not apply any further?

If, as according to quantum field theory, a near infinite number of quantum harmonic oscillators pervades all of space, and all fields, waves, and particles consist of excitations of these oscillators, does that make such oscillators truly fundamental? If so, what oscillates? Spacetime itself?

Does our model of cosmology influence our quantum epistemology?

IF the Transactional Interpretation of quantum physics can model bosons (energy wave/particles such as the photons of light) as closed loops of particle-antiparticle in spacetime -  

And IF the Wave Structure of Matter of Milo Wolff https://www.spaceandmotion.com/Wolff-Wave-Structure-Matter.htm can model fermions (matter wave/particles such as electrons) as the points from which outgoing waves subtend wavelike fields to the extremities of the universe and at which such waves reconverge in inverted form, AND the universe has a hyperspherical geometry; -

THEN – Could all quanta (or the spinorial twists that compose them) consist of closed loops in spacetime? This would at least sidestep the problem of fundamental phenomena and causality, as such phenomena would then appear as the causes of themselves – at least within our common 3+1 dimensional reference frame.

Friday, 08 December 2023 12:09

Decblog

Decblog 2023.

Seasonal Greetings! - Well why not, the weather (to the extent that we can rely on it these days of climate disruption) usually becomes dismal in the temperate latitudes of the northern hemisphere, our gardens look like blasted wastelands, the deciduous trees look mournful, the golden leaves of autumn have turned to mush and mud beneath our feet. The squirrels have given up on the last pickings of this year’s unusually abundant hawthorn berries. The news seems worse than usual.

So, eat, drink, and be merry, because we do not have the physiological adaptations to hibernate it all away. Happy Mithrasmass, Christmas, Winter Solstice, Hogmanay, or whatever you celebrate your survival of another year and your intentions for the future with.

For a bit of cheer, I send my seasonal greeting cards, Firstly, Aurora Borealis as seen recently from the hills surrounding Loch Ness. Those charged solar particles certainly do make gorgeous ionisation patterns in our atmosphere. We approach a solar maximum in the coming year, so expect unpredictability, mayhem, and ‘interesting times’. Secondly, the Mandragora Autumnalis in the greenhouses of Chateaus Chaos brighten the winter world with an unseasonal burst of green, Boris (centre) seems particularly ebullient in his new individual pot.

Esoteric News: -                                                                                                                

The Dean Radin & Pete Carroll Rap.

Recently I came into email contact with Dean Radin, a pre-eminent figure in Parapsychology in America and a notable figure in RENSEP, https://www.rensep.org/about/about-rensep/

We had an extended exchange of ideas, herewith by mutual agreement, the fruits of our deliberations, a substantial read : -

https://www.specularium.org/wizardry/item/381-the-dean-radin-pete-carroll-rap

ADDENDUM - HEREWITH THE EXPERIMENT https://www.magicktest.com/

Interview with a Wizard 2. (Or something like that.) Sanhre Daffowt and I approach the halfway mark on another mega Q & A adventure, we may have the finished item ready for the publisher by end 2024.

Chaos Magic Anthology.

Fifteen contributors now labour at this endeavour. From what they have chosen to write about from their various works and researches and experiences, I think we can expect astonishing result.

Geopolitics.  We only get to hear what the various news and propaganda media tell us. Currently, it seems that 37m Ukrainians slog it out with 144m Russians with potentially massive geopolitical consequences, probably 500,000 casualties so far, some very valuable lebensraum at stake, and Putin very clearly in the wrong. Yet this story has become largely eclipsed by the story of ~3m Palestinians slogging it out with 7m Israelis over territory worth very little, with nothing much at stake geopolitically, and neither side seeming entirely in the right or wrong. Do the media find morally ambiguous conflict and polarised opinion more marketable?

Instability in eastern Europe will not end until the neo-feudal gangster regime in Russia eats itself, and the Russian people and foreign allies turn against it. Keep the conjurations coming:

https://www.specularium.org/blog/item/349-putin-s-war

Science News. The JWST continues to provide confirmation of the Hypersphere Cosmology assertion that: - The universe will appear homogenous and isotropic on the large scale at all points in space AND time (once we have allowed for cosmological gravitational redshift and hyperspherical lensing).

See https://www.sci.news/astronomy/webb-massive-galaxies-early-universe-11680.html#:~:text=Astronomers%20using%20the%20NASA%2FESA,years%20after%20the%20Big%20Bang.

The universe seems full of mature galaxies and galaxies at all stages in their life cycles at all observable distances. This profoundly contradicts the currently official LCDM Big-Bang hypothesis.

Bronze Craft. In addition to a daily program of resistance exercise, an elderly wizard also requires handicraft distractions to survive the rigours of perpetual literary endeavours and scientific and magical research. Herewith some recent creations in Bronze, a couple of Stokastikos signet rings.  They look a very rough, but the beauty of the metal itself compensates, and things will improve with practise.

.

I cheated a bit here by using Prometheus Bronze Clay, a pesky and recalcitrant material which you can shape by hand and then fire with a gas blowtorch in a kitchen or shed, rather than converting an outhouse into a foundry with furnace, crucibles, and moulds.

Have a great festive season.

Monday, 30 October 2023 10:46

Novblog 2023

Novblog 2023

Obituary. Ray Sherwin.

I understand from friends that Ray Sherwin died in Las Palmas (Canary Islands) this June past.

I shall remember fondly the year that my wife and I spent in his village of East Morton. We kicked around a lot of the ideas that would become part of Chaos Magic, Ray introduced me to Chris Bray of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and a number of people who would become leading figures in the Chaoist revolution. We had some splendid times trying out new rituals with friends in his attic, and up in the woods around Sunnydale Reservoir.

Ray did not wear his modest literary scholarship lightly, yet his pomposity and arrogance had an amusing and endearing quality to it which brightened many an evening spent in the Busfield Arms in Morton. I considered his attitude towards his longsuffering first Polish wife Marlena rather Neanderthal, even by 1980s Yorkshire standards, my wife considered it appalling. Marlena eventually left him but soon afterwards she suffered a catastrophic stroke.

Ray contributed directly to Chaos Magic mainly by turning his Thelemic fanzine into a Chaoist one called Chaos International and in showing me how to make an edition of Liber Null on a tabletop scale in the days before it became cheap and easy to self-publish books.

Ray’s written contribution to the annals of Chaos Magic remained rather modest at just two small volumes, The Book of Results and The Theatre of Magic. He also seems mainly responsible for a small 25 page book by ‘Paula Pagani’ called The Cardinal Rites of Chaos which details the seasonal rituals of a short lived group he assembled in Morton after I had left. The grandly titled ‘Cardinal Rites’ seem most charitably described as Discordian amateur dramatics.

Yet after he retired with a new younger wife to a small villa in the Canary Islands, Ray published two regrettable diatribes, Vitriol and Ouroboros, both full of conspiracy theory nonsense and invective against his former friends and colleagues and the IOT, despite that I had urged him to desist and check his sources. We never communicated again after he published them.

I rather suspected that he had lost his critical faculties, and friends have confirmed that both Ray and his wife had sunk deeply into alcoholism, poverty, and conspiracy theory, and that their young daughter had become their carer. Having watched my own father drink himself to death decades ago, I concluded that alcoholism results from a Failure of Imagination; failure to realise what it does to you, and failure to imagine doing something else instead.

So, a rather tragic and sad ending to a life, but thanks Ray for that entertaining and highly productive year in East Morton.

For a further commentary on Ray, Vitriol, and Ouroboros see: -

https://www.specularium.org/component/k2/item/226-two-reviews

Retroactive Enchantment!

“Our Gedankenexperiment thus draws a metrological advantage from effective retrocausation founded in entangled states. While PCTC simulations do not allow you to go back and alter your past, they do allow you to create a better tomorrow by fixing yesterday’s problems today. “
Nonclassical Advantage in Metrology Established via Quantum Simulations of Hypothetical Closed Timelike Curves. Available from:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374681474_Nonclassical_Advantage_in_Metrology_Established_via_Quantum_Simulations_of_Hypothetical_Closed_Timelike_Curves

Does Science become more mystical?

Have a look at this! Io Baphomet! Neo-Panpsychism? Morphic Fields Strike again!

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310223120

Chaos Magic Anthology

One of my publishers has invited me to assemble a team to write an Anthology about Chaos Magic. I have already rounded up many of the veterans from the old guard and some of the more prominent figures from the new generations of Chaoists. We may have space for just one more to join our illustrious lineup, so let me know if you think of contributors I may have missed.

In other news: - The Apophenion, The Octavo, and The Epoch look set to appear in Spanish.

Samhain.  An Eisteddfod Poem.

Summer ends

The veil descends

Darkness begins

A time of fear

Illness, cold, and want

And thus,

A time to laugh at death

Yet the dead still live

Whilst still remembered

Fondly or otherwise.

Leaves fall

Like discarded ideas

I put them in

The compost bin.

Sunday, 08 October 2023 10:49

Octblog 2023

Octblog 2023

Poem.

Having recently answered more or less the same question from four different interviewers I put the question and the answer (of sorts) into a brief ditty for the Solstice Eisteddfod at Grove.

Tell me O Sorcerer-Scientist

How does a purely physical mind

Affect the material world?

Well physical theories

Have metaphysics all of their own

Classical physics has cause and effect

Events have definite causes

Realism rules, and thus;

Things always exist as definite states.

Relativity just adds locality

So nothing goes faster than light

And everything consists of particles.

Democritus at least got that bit right.

But we have two physical theories

The quantum one seems rather weird,

It contradicts all the above

Events have probabilities,

Unobserved events remain indefinite,

Entanglement works instantly in time

And oblivious to distance,

And everything consists of waves.

Dirac and De Broglie intuited that.

Both theories seem true

From a particular point of view.

We can only measure the particle reality

We can only imagine the wave reality

If our epistemology reflects ontology

Reality needs both

To do anything at all

So how does a physical brain

Interact with a material world?

Classically, or Weirdly as well?

Can experiments tell

What theories work best?                       

Therein lies our quest!                                                            

Antimatter down.

Observation of anti-hydrogen made in particle accelerators has recently shown that it falls downwards as expected, and not up. If it had fallen upwards in response to gravity the physics community would have reacted with shock and horror rather than levity, and all sorts of paradoxes would have arisen. Both mater and antimatter react identically to gravity, but that still leaves conventional cosmology with the headache of trying to explain why a big bang did not produce equal amounts of both.

I suspect the answer to the question of why the universe seems matter dominated has nothing to do with the supposed big bang and everything to do with the chiral asymmetry of the weak force arising from the Majorana Fermion nature of the Neutrino, i.e., it consists of a single type of particle that can either spin clockwise or anticlockwise with respect to its direction of propagation and that alone determines whether we categorise it as matter or antimatter. Furthermore, various particle’s spins in higher dimensional spacetime account for their electromagnetic and nuclear charges and our attribution of matter or antimatter status to them. Work continues on this idea.

JWST.

The James Webb Space Telescope went up primarily to investigate the unexpectedly vast number of galaxies at extreme distances that the Hubble Space Telescope first caught faint glimpses of. The big bang hypothesis predicts or at least heavily implies that galaxies like our own fully formed one should not exist at extreme distances in space and time because they will not have had time to form since a big bang.

It becomes increasingly clear from the JWST data that galaxies just like our own seem to exist everywhere out to the present limits of observation. Hypersphere Cosmology predicts that the universe will appear isotropic and homogenous on the very large scale at all points in space and time. It will look the same everywhere and everywhen, once we have factored in the redshift and the gravitational lensing arising from a small overall spacetime curvature.

Meanwhile the LCDM big bang theorists strive to add yet another ad hoc patch to their creaking model, by modifying their hypotheses about galaxy formation.

Resisting AI in Magic.

I have just written a somewhat critical appraisal of a forthcoming book on the use of Artificial Intelligence in Magic, I have read a book on magic written almost entirely by AI, and I have also watched a colleague getting AI to create sundry invocations and incantations online in seconds.

Herewith my verdict: -

AIs scour the internet for material created by humans and then attempt to compound a grammatically correct mash up from what looks like the most the most popular or readily available material. AI does not seem capable of creativity or of differentiating between popularity and quality.

Consequently, what it produces seems lumpen, verbose, predictable, generic, derivative, and uninspired. Don’t expect it to come up with anything surprising, memorable, or quotable yet. It has no spark or bite to it. It currently seems best suited to composing dull advertising copy for dishwashers or creating rather run of the mill travel brochures.

AI generated material makes magic look ridiculously easy to do, and this will lead some to engage with it in a far too casual manner, and to get poor or negligible results. Internet-itis (decreasing attention span) will follow, leaving enthusiasts to drift from one passing fad to another. Never underestimate the value of the work that goes into designing your own spells and rituals and entities for yourself and launching them with Gnostic levels of mental intensity.

It seems likely that some of the magic pages of the internet will fill up with a blizzard of mediocre and formulaic AI generated imagery, text, and rituals, which will rapidly turn off all but the most dim-witted dabblers. The fightback against AI generated magic text and imagery will soon follow.

Arcanorium College may institute new protocols for the submission of Batchelor of Magic Theses. We may eventually require that candidates write them under examination conditions inside Faraday cages with quill pens, but presently AI generated material looks fairly easy to spot.

New Book (eventually)

Following the publication of ‘Interview with a Wizard’, I established contact with another writer (this time a practising Chaos Magician) who wanted to conduct a further interview. This second interview has mushroomed into another mega-inquisition with the simple ground rule that he cannot ask a question already asked in the first interview.

As we recently passed question one hundred and seventy, I enquired of Mandrake, the publishers of Interview with a Wizard, if a second long-form interview book would interest them. I got a very enthusiastic yes to that. So, when have done another hundred and seventy or so in another year or more, we will submit it for publication. Watch this space for ‘Interview with a Wizard 2’ or similar title.

Chaos Magic in Japan.

My colleagues in Japan (who I have yet to meet in person) have requested that I place two articles here which they will later use in a Japanese book on introductory Chaos Magic. As the discussion of magical and metaphysical concepts can present difficulties when conducted across a cultural and linguistic divide, I have kept this as simple as possible.

Utilizing the Chaosphere, its application, and the underlying theory.

The Chaosphere consists of a three dimensional representation of the Eight Rayed Star of Chaos.

The Eight Rayed Star of Chaos has manifold scientific-metaphysical, psychological, and magical meanings. It can support the imagination of many symmetries and dualities.

Herewith one from recent Chaoist research for my Japanese colleagues: -

In basic science the eight arrows can represent the four axes of ordinary three dimensional space and one dimensional time. These represent our degrees of physical freedom in a universe with a simple Newtonian metaphysic.

In advanced Quantum-Relativistic Hypersphere science the eight arrows can each represent the degrees of freedom in our universe of curved three dimensional space and curved three dimensional time. (We can usually ignore the curvature ‘dimensions’ of space and time on the human scale, but it does affect the spacetime topology of the entire universe and the likelihood of alien intelligences existing). In this representation, all of the eight axes lie orthogonal (at right angles) to each other, implying the full higher dimensionality of the universe.    

Three dimensional time provides the key to understanding the quantum-probabilistic nature of our partly chaotic physical reality, and of how magic works.

In psychological terms, the Eight Rays represent the eight major impulses that we as biological organisms have evolved: Sex/Death, Fear/Desire, Love/Hate, Solar Ego/Magical Self.

In magical terms the Eight Rays represent the Eight Magics that derive from the human condition and which we can equate symbolically to Pagan Deities and their symbolic planets and colours.

Sex Magic – The Moon – Purple. Attraction, the inspirations of sexual desire and ecstasy.

Death Magic – Saturn – Black. The motivation that awareness of mortality brings.

Fear Magic – Orange – Mercury. Intellect, quick thinking, inventiveness, cleverness.

Desire Magic – Blue – Jupiter. Acquisition of wealth, power, status.

Love Magic – Green – Venus. Empathy, attachment, loyalty.

War Magic – Red – Mars. Vitality, aggression, competitiveness, combat.

Ego Magic- Yellow – Sun. Charisma, radiance, persuasiveness.

Pure Magic- Octarine- Ouranos. Magical research, esoteric and antinomian knowledge.

Chaos Magicians can place a Chaosphere on their altars to affirm their commitment to developing all of the powers and abilities latent within themselves.

A Chaosphere symbolises the random creative powers of the universe and of humans. The central orb represent the formless personal Kia or life force and the arrows represent its many possibilities of direction. The magician can impale various spells on the spikes.

Concentration upon the Chaosphere in thinking meditation can lead to new insights into the structure of reality and the human experience. Concentration on the Chaosphere in ‘no-mind’ meditation can lead to resonance with, and inspiration from, transpersonal and extraterrestrial sources of Chaoist insight and enlightenment.

How do you perceive Positive Thinking and the Law of Attraction?

People who cultivate many personal contacts and who remain open to new ideas and opportunities usually have better luck than others who do not. This seems more important than simply thinking positively and wishing for good luck.

The world has a lot of randomness in it, some of it can affect us negatively, some of it can affect us positively, but we can look for positive opportunities in whatever happens to us.

The subconscious and unconscious parts of our minds have a strong effect on what we do, and they can also have a direct magical effect on reality. If we keep thinking conscious positive thoughts these thoughts will gradually become part of the subconscious and unconscious mind. This can take a lot of time, but magical techniques offer some shortcuts.

Magical Spells, Rituals, and Invocations can achieve much deeper and quicker alterations to the subconscious mind than simply trying to think positive conscious thoughts for long periods.

Subconscious and unconscious desires have more powerful effects than conscious desires. Conscious desires tend to get mixed up with other thoughts and doubts, particularly if you keep consciously thinking about them.

Magicians should aim to concentrate their positive thinking into Spells, Rituals, and Invocations and then not consciously think about them afterwards and let their subconscious and unconscious minds create the magical effects.

Mandrakes.

In the greenhouses of Chateaux Chaos, ‘Boris’, one of the three Mandragora Autumnalis plants, has sprung from the underworld as the equinox passes and we enter autumn. Perhaps we shall see some mandrake seed pods later. The project to repopulate southwest England with them has fallen far behind schedule.

Tuesday, 05 September 2023 13:35

Septblog2023

Septblog 2023

Conspiracy Theory.

Illuminati update No 23. We note substantial incursions into the terrestrial noosphere at this time. These seem to originate from adolescent space lizards using the popular but frowned upon ‘Mayhem and Havoc’ Role Playing Game System here on Earth.

The three rules seem simple enough.

1) Pick a fairly primitive planet with only level three sentience, the sort of place where the inhabitants still believe in things like gods, money, nations, or the big bang hypothesis.

2) Select one or more inhabitants as avatars and see who can wreak the most mayhem and havoc.

3) Don’t tell your parents.

We currently seem to have six major players or teams of players in action experimenting with the following game challenges here on Earth: -

A) Reduce the most powerful nation to a laughingstock or to a civil war by using a single avatar that can only bluster bombastically and tell ridiculous lies.

B) Elevate the second most powerful nation to the top position regardless of internal and collateral damage, use a committee of avatars if required.

C) Use the third most militarily powerful nation to initiate major wars, and if possible worldwide war, using only a single misanthropic psychopath as avatar.

D) Using multiple avatars ensure that the planet’s potentially greatest alliance of nations descends into a corrupt ineffectual bureaucratic squabbling shambles.

E) Set the planet on fire, burn all the combustible deposits, wreck the climate, decimate agriculture and the population, use any number of avatars.

F) Pick a handful of major or minor religions or philosophies and see how much division, strife, and murder you can create with them, use multiple avatars.

All conspiracy theories, no matter how apparently absurd, reveal something about our responses to the order-chaos-disorder, and weirdness going on in our worlds. They usually do this by metaphor or analogy that displaces blame elsewhere because people do not wish to acknowledge or confront the more probable causes.

Hardline Christians started a Satanic Ritual Abuse scare some decades ago. Negligible real evidence of abuse ever appeared, but a tsunami of real evidence of abuse eventually emerged  concerning, - you guessed it -  Hardline Christians - both within the catholic church and within many protestant sects.

The professional and managerial classes in the USA have severely degraded the prospects of the children of the blue collar class, so we have a conspiracy about powerful satanic child abusers controlled by lizards.

 

When we perceive the rich and powerful screwing the poor more than usual, Antisemitism often rears its head, despite that Jews make up only a small proportion of the rich and powerful anywhere, and control only one government in a tiny nation.

When a culture war breaks out between factions of the professional and managerial classes, and they start demonising each other and trying to displace each other, we should consider the extent to which those classes have become severely overcrowded.

The popularity of lizard symbolism for demonic or hellishly immoral agents or agencies tells us something about ourselves and the primitive reptilian circuits that lurk in all our hindbrains.

A Fascinating Thesis. I have just received a PhD thesis from Vasilis Meletiadis  of Bristol University, ‘The History of Chaos Magic 1976 – 2000’. He has conducted lengthy interviews with many of us that he writes about, and exhaustive research into the cultural milieu in which Chaos Magic arose. As a rather non-musical, and non-party person myself, I had not realised the huge extent of the overlap between Chaos Magic and the more extreme end of alternative popular music and clubbing culture, nor quite how dark the UK manifestation of Chaos appeared compared to its American cousin Discordianism. Nor quite the extent to which its spread depended on amateur ‘zines’, and the extent to which the advent of the internet changed its method of spread and its structure and practices.

Overall, the thesis seems fair, balanced, and exceptionally well researched and written. Historically it will probably take first place as the definitive history. As soon as it becomes published and in the public domain, I will provide a link to it.

I hope to see a similarly definitive academic history of chaos magic 2000 – 2024 emerge sometime from someone.    

Parapsychology. Dr Dean Radin has a very high profile in the world of parapsychology, having presided over the Parapsychology Association for a number of years, written a number of notable books on parapsychology, presented many lectures on it, and worked with many experiments into it.

We finally got to talk at length and discussed such topics as the desirability (or not) of proving the existence of parapsychology to the satisfaction of scientists, the equations of magic, public belief in magic, Sheldrake’s experiments, the potential weaponization of psi, quantum physics and psi and the possible implications of the Tsirelson Bound, the measurement/observer problem, and the trade-offs involved between the magic friendliness and science friendliness of psi experiments – this last topic remaining a subject of ongoing discussions.

Citation 14/08/2023. Now in about its fifteenth year of operation, Arcanorium College proudly confers the degree of Batchelor of Magic upon a second alumnus!

https://www.specularium.org/arcanoriumcollege/item/273-arcanorium-college-department-of-magic

The course makes awesome demands upon the perseverance and dedication of applicants. Many come forward but few make the grade.

Global Warming. Whilst continental Europe has combusted, we have had a meteorologically lousy August here in the UK, - unseasonably dull, chilly, and often wet, plus one of my autumnal mandrakes (Boris) has woken up at least 8 weeks early and started to push forth leaf shoots, whilst Igor and Circe continue to slumber awhile.

My Sci-fi hobby.

The news that many hundreds of UK schools and public buildings will soon collapse if we don’t spend fifty or more billion pounds on them prompted research into precisely what material the hulls of the Lithonian and Skaron fleets consist of. Its apparently AAC, aerated autoclaved concrete - lightweight, cheap, not very strong, widely used for substandard dodgy building, and occasionally by sculptors. The massive demolition projects that will have to follow will likely ensure that plenty of the stuff ends up floating in Welsh watercourses and ultimately on the beach fronting the spaceship yards.

Herewith the new Lithonian Anti-Matter Dreadnought and its counterpart in the rival Skaron fleet. Both societies have created a single ultimate ‘deterrent’ in the form of a bomb with about a metric ton of antimatter in it – enough to trash a planet or an entire sector of space: -

As this seems to evolve towards an interplanetary game scenario with reaction thrust propelled ships rather than an interstellar one with warp drives, work has begun on a board/backdrop for interplanetary manoeuvring: -

On the larger map, silver washers show the last eight  moves of the two planets in their orbits and the movement of a red ship from the red planet to intercept the green planet. One of the smaller maps shows the gravity well around the green planet and a ship launched from it to intercept the red ship in low orbit.

Obliterating the rival civilisation counts as only a minor victory, forcing its surrender counts as a major victory. Several varieties of a draw remain possible, some worse than others….the game basically models a nuclear standoff.

Tuesday, 01 August 2023 07:37

Augblog 2023

Augblog 2023

Weird Physics. Herewith a result from evoking Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth simultaneously in an attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the cosmos; the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics integrated with Hypersphere Cosmology.

The idea seems crazy, perhaps crazy enough to prove useful.

At the very least it may lend particle attraction a visualisable mechanism, confirm the conservation of the spins or whatever underlying fundamental quanta and the suspected immortality of the Proton, it may also partially resolve Loschmidt’s Paradox concerning the emergence of irreversible processes (such as entropy) from seemingly reversible processes - because particle attraction does not simply equate to time reversed particle repulsion.

For a fuller exegesis of the hypothesis see: -

https://www.specularium.org/3d-time/item/376-tiqm-and-hypersphere-cosmology

Arcanorium College Department of Magic Update.

The Batchelor of Magic Syllabus has some updates including additional page references for the new Classic Editions of Liber Null & Psychonaut and Liber Kaos.

https://www.specularium.org/arcanoriumcollege/item/273-arcanorium-college-department-of-magic

Sortition.

Elective Democracy seems increasingly beset with problems the classical Greeks identified two millennia ago, plus a few more of modern origin.

Political Parties rather than individual Elected Representatives now dominate the political landscape. This has led to increasing groupthink and polarisation. It has also made it much easier for minority interest lobby groups to exert disproportionate effects on party policy by making donations or skilful use of the media.

Increasingly intrusive media have now completely eroded the personal privacy of anyone entering politics.

Increasingly powerful media now seek to influence opinion rather than to reflect it and disinformation and propaganda now proliferate unchecked.

The pressure to conform to all party policies acts as a severe disincentive to people of integrity becoming professional politicians.

Election pressure frequently forces party policy in the direction of short term popularity rather than the long term interest.

The Classical Greeks recognised the corrupting potential of electing representatives, and they had a ready solution which they regarded as the genuine form of  ‘Democracy’ – (rule by the people), they simply delegated the task randomly by lot amongst the people. That only included freeborn male citizens, a limitation we would not consider today.

A government selected randomly by lot would consist of 50% women and a proportional representation of all social classes and adult ages.

If it voted by secret ballot on any issue it chose to debate, it should prove corruption resistant. Paying delegated representatives a very generous salary and pension for turning up to debates and voting, and having severe penalties for any form of corruption or undisclosed interest should act as an additional incentive to integrity.

Because it remains vanishingly unlikely to become reselected it will likely choose to act in the best longer term interests of society.

A Sortition Democracy would eliminate political parties at a stroke. Few people really like political parties, fewer still actually belong to them, most people vote negatively to merely keep out the parties they most dislike.

The Greeks recognised that elective democracy lay vulnerable to oligarchy and the main political parties themselves have emerged as the oligarchs of political power.

Of course, a sortition government will contain five percent idiots and a percentage or two of selfish and evil people, but that seems a great improvement on what the current system produces.

Perhaps we could try out sortition to select the UK House of Lords for starters, and then think about extending it to reform the House of Commons.

My Sci-Fi hobby.

Down at our retreat on a remote shore in Wales, a rather dismal July and poor surf has occasioned the reopening of the spaceship yards.

Herewith the completed Detritus Squadron of the Skaron fleet (so named because a kind of Scrap-Dalek aesthetic seems to have inspired their design). Only stone from the beach, glue and leftover metal fitments go into their construction as the arms race between Lithonia and Skaron escalates to the point where I shall have to start work on the game rules and backstory.

Saturday, 01 July 2023 21:02

Julblog 2023

Julblog 2023

Liber Kaos, Chaos Magic for the Pandaemonaeon. The New Classic Edition.

First published by Weisers in 1992, this grimoire of magical theory, practise, and philosophy develops and expands the paradigm shift from the old ‘ancient wisdom’ approach to magic to something far more irreligious, powerful, and scientific. It builds upon the insights developed in the seminal first book of Chaos Magic – Liber Null & Psychonaut (~1980-7) through a decade of further intensive research and experiment, and now this updated edition comes with the benefit of a further two decades of work and contemplation.

Herewith the astonishing list of contents: -

Those unfamiliar with the concept of the Pandaemonaeon may choose to read these prophetic words: - https://www.specularium.org/wizardry/item/156-pandaemonaeon

Herewith a link to the availability of the book and some sample pages.

https://www.specularium.org/peter-j-carroll/liber-kaos

 

Knights of Chaos. Ukraine campaign.

A message from the Acting Marshal.

Most battles and wars begin with someone’s expectation of quick victory by manoeuvre, but most become settled by grim attrition. The war in Ukraine shows no exception to this.

On March 3rd, 2022, the KoC called upon the free world’s magical community to: -

Turn the people closest to Putin against him.’

https://www.specularium.org/blog/item/349-putin-s-war

Speculation surrounds the split between Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary army and Putin, yet there seems little doubt that the split has substantially weakened Putin’s political, military, and diplomatic position. We shall not have lasting peace in Europe until both Putin and dictatorship become rejected by Russians.

My thanks to the many who have already raised their wands and cast spells and sigils.

We ‘Enchant Long’ in this protracted struggle, and now as tide of war may begin to turn decisively, we need to redouble our efforts. KEEP THOSE CONJURATIONS COMING!  

Book Review.

https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Mindset-Champions-Daniel-Domaradzki/dp/B0C6VWRGDC/

Crowley’s dictum that magic consists of the raising of the whole person to the power of infinity seems often ignored by the magical community. Crowley appears to have explored all forms of debauchery to extreme levels but he also free climbed Beachy Head and performed quite astonishing feats of physical endurance, self-discipline, and concentration. For those who think they may need a bit more of the latter (and particularly for those who don’t) this book provides an invigorating challenge to become stronger and more focussed.

Personally, I have always considered physical and mental strength and resilience an invaluable support in the development of magical power and knowledge, so I have gladly taken a few tips from Daniel as we discussed the application of magical and esoteric techniques to strength training in which he works professionally. Techniques from both traditions appear in the book.

Expect a boot camp of a book, written simply and directly with no compromises offered or excuses accepted.

Saturday, 03 June 2023 18:57

Junblog 2023

Junblog 2023

Travelogue, archaeology, cuisine, etc.

The month of May proved a splendid time for a visit to the Scottish Highlands and Islands. The hillsides around Loch Ness blaze with great lush thickets of vibrant yellow gorse, the midges have not yet erupted from the bogs and ditches to make hillwalking hellish when the breezes drop. The Scottish secessionist movement has thankfully imploded under scandal and infighting. Our kids and grandkids thrive. The Scots Steak Pies* remain the pinnacle of British cuisine. I had a splendid time.

(*The ubiquitous Cornish Pasties remain a severe downside to my life in the Southwest. Bakeries seem to serve little else here except these artless greasy pastries filled with ghastly shovelfuls of swede, turnip, and mean gristle, whereas the noble Scots Steak Pie contains nothing but generous portions of bovine muscle tissue in fine gravy.)

On the slopes above the Ness, I came across a rare patch of about twenty False Morels, Gyromitra esculenta: -

These strange fungi resemble something between blowtorched spaghetti and mummified brains. They can kill you if you eat them, they can also kill you if you merely try cooking them, as they then give off methyl hydrazine gas.

Mainland Orkney seemed even more heavily livestock farmed than when we visited it half a century ago. Barely a tree or hedge remains anywhere, just endless rolling slopes of fenced grassland and sad stinking barns full of livestock kept mainly indoors to fatten whilst machines plant, harvest, and fertilise the grass for them. (I had better check on the ethical sourcing of those pies.)

All the wildlife clings to the Orcadian coast, we saw plenty of seals and a splendid variety of seabirds. As I went beachcombing in heavy boots, three layers of clothing, woolly hat, and gloves against the chilly conditions, our three hardy oat-fed highland grandchildren stripped off and hurled themselves into the icy north sea to frolic in the waves, laughing at us soft Sassenachs.

Fairly recent archaeological discoveries on the Ness of Brodgar between the small stone circle of the Stones of Stenness and the huge stone circle of the Ring of Brodgar have led to some interesting speculations. The historian Neil Oliver has presented some rather grandiose ideas about their significance. Do the neolithic remains on the Ness of Brodgar imply that Orcadian neolithic culture predates and inspired the culture that built Stonehenge? Do these remains imply that a Neolithic Theocracy dominated Orkney and built the stone huts and stone circles as a centre of religious cult activities?

I rather doubt this. The stone huts do not seem that large or temple-like when you get close up. They probably built in stone because wood had become increasingly scarce. Neolithic cultures consumed huge amounts of wood for cooking and heating, tool hafting, and roof building. The small lathe and hide Neolithic boats could not have transported significant quantities of timber from mainland Scotland once supplies had become exhausted on Orkney. Orcadian civilisation appears to have gone into severe decline until the development of bigger boats in the iron age.

The Ring of Brodgar seems singularly unsuitable for religious or cultish rituals, or even as a ceremonial meeting place. It has a diameter of 340 feet, you cannot even shout across it in a slight breeze, and it does not seem to have any features in its centre. The ring seems more like an example of Clan Power Bling to me. It seems more likely that some local warlord had it built as a statement of authority, control, and ownership of the land and the people. The stone huts contained very few items that looked like they could have had a religious function, but they did hold a number of finely worked stone mace heads for cracking skulls and intimidating people.

Appeal

I had a very enjoyable and fascinating day at Joanna William’s Fire Iron Art forge and studio at Bristol Docks after receiving a voucher for a day’s blacksmithing experience for my birthday.

See Joanna here at work in her forge and studio: -

Joanna guided me through the basics of the blacksmith’s craft showing me how to heat iron in the forge and then shape it with hammer, anvil, vices, and tongs. Herewith my apprentice pieces made on the day, a selection of useful hooks and hangers with a pleasingly rugged antique aesthetic.

Towards the end of the day Joanna indulged my request to try and hand forge some esoteric instruments and she expertly guided me through the process. Herewith three forged iron Pocket Wands which can also serve to delineate Triangles of Arte in works of evocation.

I had a great day at the forge, and I commend the experience to anyone interested in developing their creative craft skills.

I have since seem Joanna exhibiting her own creations at various sculpture and craft events and her skill and dedication, and artistry never ceases to amaze. One day I hope to commission her to create splendid wrought iron gates for my home.

However, disaster has struck Joanna’s enterprise. A night-time arson attack on adjoining buildings in the Underfall Yard at Bristol Docks has also pretty much destroyed her forge and studio.

Here is a link to the crowdfunding appeal to help Joanna restore her facilities and continue to practise and teach the skills of blacksmithing and artistry in iron. 

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/fireironartblacksmith?utm_term=pWbX8gyJx

Please give what you can towards restoring her forge and studio after the tragic fire.

The CMBR

Hypersphere Cosmology has successfully explained most the data from which orthodox cosmology has cobbled together the conventional concordance model of LCDM Big Bang Theory and replaced it with a simpler and more elegant model that has no singularities, inflation, expansion, dark matter, or dark energy.

The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation alone remains not rigorously reinterpreted within Hypersphere Cosmology.

Within the LCDM model the CMBR consists of relic radiation from a period about a third of a million years after a Big Bang when the primeval fireball had expanded and cooled to a mere 3,0000 Kelvin and deionised to become transparent to light. Subsequent ‘expansion of space’ or the separation of gravitationally bound structures within the universe has supposedly stretched out and redshifted the wavelength of the 3,000K light to a wavelength corresponding to 2.70 Kelvin. We can make out a fairly credible mathematical case for this but at the price of assuming that the contents of the entire or observable universe once occupied an infinitely or insanely small volume at unrealistic temperature and density.

As Hypersphere Cosmology can provide an alternative interpretation for all the rest of the cosmological observational data without using the hypotheses of a big bang or an expanding universe then it requires an explanation of the CMBR to complete its case for a new paradigm.

Some cosmologists continue to wonder of the CMBR may arise from the redshifting of starlight from distant sources to the point where it thermalises into equilibrium with cold dust and gas in intergalactic space. In other words, the thin intergalactic medium has a basic temperature of only 2.70 K and once starlight has become redshifted to a corresponding temperature it continues to bounce around at relatively short ranges and remains at that wavelength, in thermodynamic equilibrium with the medium.

A couple of fairly recent papers explore this idea further.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/2197/1/012026/meta

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/478/1/283/4975800

Alternatively, Hypersphere Cosmology can perhaps supply a mechanism. As any gravitationally bound structure in the universe will rotate by hyperspherical vorticitation to its antipode position within the universe every 13 billion years, and any light emitted will also tend to reconverge in highly redshifted form on its antipode position in the same period, then the CMBR we observe may consist of light emitted from our own and nearby galaxies reconverging here 13 billion years later.

A redshift of 3.0000 K starlight by a factor of z = 1100 suggests that it may have come from a region of space about 1/1000 of the size of the universe. This corresponds roughly to the local group of gravitationally bound galaxies - our Milky Way, Andromeda, Triangulum, and a swarm of smaller ones. The power output of the local group roughly matches the power input of the CMBR; however, the photon count seems badly off.

All collaboration on this topic welcome.

My Sci-Fi Hobby.

The winter storms have washed up more insulation blocks on the shores of the Welsh hideaway that conceal the spaceship yards of Lithonia and other empires. Plus, over winter I have collected spent vape accessories, old electric razor components, discarded nitrous cylinders, and small bits of metallic scrap and junk from all over.

The Lithonian empire now faces a challenge from these dark dreadnoughts.

In time this may lead to a vast boardgame on the beach with a scale of a yard to ten light years, or perhaps to a novel about Artificially Intelligent ship-minds and their motivations as a metaphor for the great existential and political questions.

Friday, 28 April 2023 15:54

Mayblog 2023

Mayblog 2023 (comes a little early due to impending cable works)

The Mandrakes of Chateaux Chaos.

With Igor and Boris having thrown their leaves for the coming summer and the huge communal pot looking very overcrowded it seems a good time to repot all three of them separately. Circe has retained some of her foliage till now, strange behaviour for Mandragora officinalis, but perhaps she finally attempts to adapt to the chilly British climate. They don’t really like it here and have taken eight years to achieve a collective mass of about a kilogram from seeds sent from Thessaly in Greece.

Magic.

It seems that a whole new academic industry has sprung up studying the recent history of western esoterics. History as they say, starts yesterday, but in practise, most academics today prefer to let events settle for a decade or so before they start writing about them. This allows for events which may have appeared confusing at the time to have become even more confusing in recollection, some possible consequences to have emerged, and for the interviewing of some of the surviving guilty. I get quite a number of academics asking for interviews these days and seem to have become an historical figure in my own lifetime. Herewith an interesting offering from one of the leading lights in the field. It discusses the somewhat paradoxical aims the IOT set itself and it presents multiple perspectives on ‘The Ice War’. I once got a round of applause at one of the early big IOT meetings by proclaiming the IOT Pact as ‘A Cult for those who don’t want to join a Cult’. Just how that played out in practise remains a subject of considerable controversy and ongoing debate. The following paper provides a substantial read.

https://www.academia.edu/35746068/The_Illuminates_of_Thanateros_and_the_Institutionalisation_of_Religious_Individualisation?email_work_card=view

Not Magic.

This years ‘Breaking Convention’ has come and gone with predictable and dreary results - a bunch of would be scientists and shamans reinforcing a collective neurological/psychological based compromise to use their arts to merely restore acceptable normalities rather than to explore the extremities of human potential.

How much has the western esoteric tradition neutered and emasculated itself since the heady Promethean idealism of the magical revival of the late twentieth century?

Does anyone else find the current fashion for reinterpreting/downgrading esoterics into mere ‘therapy’ rather disheartening? Today the esoteric scene seems pervaded by those who merely proffer psychological therapies with new-age twists, (new-age rhymes with sewage), or they bleat on endlessly about their mental health as somehow emblematic of their spirituality.

Whatever happened to the quest for weird knowledge and strange occult powers?

(I guess few people realised just how much hard work it would take to achieve any real strange knowledge or any useful magical powers.)  

Psychedelics largely failed to enlighten. Now we have a new wave of psychedelic gurus pushing their products as mere remedies for depression or trauma. The new theory runs that such substances randomly shake up many of the patterns that have become fixed in the brain and can allow for a normalising restructuring. Electroconvulsive therapy supposedly worked by exactly the same mechanism.

Physics.

Mach’s Principle remains an intriguing cosmic concept. Ernst Mach (popularly remembered for his work on the speed of sound and shock waves) first seems to have informally suggested the idea although Einstein formally attributed it to him as Mach’s Principle.

Broady stated, it asserts that the properties of the parts of the universe depend upon the properties of the whole of it. That sounds intuitively right to the holistically minded, but theorists have struggled to give it mathematical form and rigour. Einstein took some inspiration from it, but he failed to fully incorporate it into his relativistic cosmology.

Let us see how well Hypersphere Cosmology incorporates Mach’s Principle. Herewith the Wikipedia list of 11 of the more popular interpretations of the principle with annotations concerning the Hypersphere Cosmology model.

Mach0: The universe, as represented by the average motion of distant galaxies, does not appear to rotate relative to local inertial frames.

Agree. Although Godel’s theory asserts that  ‘Matter everywhere rotates relative to the compass of inertia with an angular velocity of twice the square root of pi times the gravitational constant times the density’, w = 2sqrt(piGp), it can do so about randomly orientated Hopf Fibration axes within a hypersphere giving the universe an average or overall angular velocity and angular momentum of zero.

Mach1: Newton's gravitational constant G is a dynamical field.

Agree. G = Lc2/2M, where L = antipode length, M = mass of universe. The value of the gravitational constant depends on the antipode length of the universe, lightspeed, and the mass of the universe. A universe of a different size or mass would have a different value of G.  

Mach2: An isolated body in otherwise empty space has no inertia.

Unfalsifiable but probably true. See Mach 7.

Mach3: Local inertial frames are affected by the cosmic motion and distribution of matter.

Agree. See Hypersphere Cosmology equations: -

6) The gravitational mass of the entire universe removes energy from photons in transit. (Redshift)

7) Individual inertial masses arise from the gravitational mass of the entire universe.

8) The gravitational mass of the entire universe slows matter in transit. (Pioneer Anomaly)

10) The gravitational mass of the entire universe reduces linear accelerations and increases orbital velocities.

11 – 15) The mass and size of the entire universe controls the proton-electron mass.  

Mach4: The universe is spatially closed.

Agree. It consists of a Hypersphere L = 2GM/c2 within a Black Hole r = 2GM/c2.

The conventional interpretation mistakes the Antipode length for the Hubble length.           

Mach5: The total energy, angular and linear momentum of the universe are zero.

Agree. Energy = Motion. The opposed centripetal and centrifugal accelerations A = c2/L, match on the cosmic macroscale, and probably also on the quantum microscale, we could probably mathematically summate the totality of all the multidimensional spins and all the motions that give rise to all the forces and particles within the universe to zero. 0 = +1&-1.

Mach6: Inertial mass is affected by the global distribution of matter.

Agree. mi = 2GMmg/Lc2  the inertial mass of anything within the universe depends on the mass and size of the universe which also control the c2/G ratio.

Mach7: If you take away all matter, there is no more space.

Unfalsifiable but probably true. At least it explains what lies outside of the closed universe – nothing – not even space.

Mach8: 4πpGT^2 is a definite number, of order unity, where p is the mean density of matter in the universe, and T is the Hubble time. (I don’t know who put in the pi or why.)

Agree. As p = M/2pi2r3 and T-2 = pi2r3/c2,  then 4pipGT-2 = 4piMGpi2r2/2pi2r3c2

= 2piGM/rc2 ~ 1.

Mach9: The theory contains no absolute elements.

Agree. The ‘fundamental’ constants G, c, M, L, and A all depend upon each other.

Mach10: Overall rigid rotations and translations of a system are unobservable.

Unfalsifiable but probably true.

It would seem that Mach’s Principle can only apply if the universe consists of a Hypersphere of constant size.

Black Holes and Hyperspheres.

How much spacetime does the universe contain? Conventional LCDM Big Bang Cosmology asserts that the observable universe has a radius of about 13.8 bnlyr, but that due to its apparent expansion since a hypothetical big bang it may now extend to perhaps 95 bnlyr and it may have the potential to expand into spacetime indefinitely.

Hypersphere Cosmology asserts that the entire universe consists of a finite but unbounded Hypersphere, closed in both space and time with an Antipode length of only13 bnlyr. This still makes it awesomely huge, but considerably smaller than the observable LCDM universe and certainly not even potentially spatially infinite. Such a Hypersphere will exist within a Black Hole with a radius equal to the Hypersphere’s Antipode length, as shown below.

.

Physicists commonly assume that if matter collapses under its own gravity to form a black hole with a Schwarzschild radius of 2GM/c2 then it will continue to collapse until the matter forms a zero size singularity inside that Schwarzschild radius. The Penrose – Hawking Singularity Theorems assert this, but only on the basis that they cannot conceive of anything that would stop it.

Hypersphere Cosmology asserts that matter will cease to collapse within a black hole when all the matter has collapsed to half the Schwarzschild diameter because at this point a Hypersphere will form within the Black Hole. Such hyperspheres will have a rotational velocity of lightspeed and will resist further compression which would push their rotational velocity past lightspeed.

If the Schwarzschild radius r and the Hypersphere antipode length L both equal 2GM/c2, then  L = r, or L = d/2, where d means Black Hole diameter. See A).

If we inhabit a universe that consists of the inside of a Black Hole and a Hypersphere has formed within it, then the optical horizon conventional cosmologists estimate to lie at ~13.4 bnlyr, and which Hypersphere Cosmology estimates to lie at almost exactly 13 bnlyr, represents the universe’s antipode distance not its radius.

If so, then the Hypersphere Cosmology universe has considerably less volume and a considerably higher density than conventional cosmology currently asserts. No surprise then that the Hubble Deep Field contains such an astonishing number of galaxies.

Furthermore, a Black Hole of any mass within the universe should contain a Hypersphere.

Breaking News

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/522/2/1736/7035603

The occurrence of greater numbers of quasars at long cosmic distances has become interpreted as evidence for the evolution of galaxies since a big bang, on the basis that younger (more distant) galaxies would have plenty of gas surrounding their central black holes, this gas would become sucked in to give rise to the quasar effect, and then when it had become exhausted the quasar activity would cease.

It now seems that quasar activity arises from the collision of galaxies driving gas towards their central black holes.

In which case, quasar distribution ceases to provide supporting evidence for the big bang hypothesis!!!

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