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Thoughts of the Week.
Thoughts of the week.
1) The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Physics seems to give a more coherent view of Strong Nuclear Interaction than other models. See http://www.specularium.org/3d-time/item/161-quantum-chromodynamics This may even provide a basis for discriminating between rival interpretations. We mention this because of the very significant metaphysical and magical consequences of quantum transactional mechanisms underlying reality.
2) It seems particularly bizarre that a secular state such as Britain should fund faith based schools of any kind*. This seems either to arise out of a sense of fairness gone mad, a failure of confidence in its own secular values, or perhaps even a quiet overconfidence that they must eventually always prevail. Faith based schools will always prove socially and culturally divisive. Perhaps the famous British traditions of politeness, compromise, and even-handedness now do it a disservice. Liberalism should not extend to compromises with illiberalism.
*Secularism has become the foundation of British Culture. The ‘established’ Church of England no longer plays any significant role in governance. It now follows rather than leads moral culture. It remains as a merely decorative appendage to state occasions and as a service provider to a dwindling minority religious interest group.
A secular, science based, and evidence based culture like Britain should have a religious studies school curriculum which requires familiarity with the overwhelming evidence that all religions without exception have evolved by syncretic processes in which bits and pieces of older religions became cobbled together by humans for various social and political purposes.
This could do more than anything to reduce religion based social decisiveness and home grown terrorism.
Historians and archaeologists should cease to remain the custodians of hard-won and uncomfortable information that we keep away from young people.
3) Leon Brittan dies. The British establishment will however probably wait for a few more of his generation to die before it seriously investigates the allegations. I distinctly remember asking a friend in Reuters about all the accusations in the graffiti sprayed on the walls of London back in the late seventies and early eighties. Everyone in Fleet Street knows, he replied, but it’s unprintable. I also distinctly remember Brittan getting kicked upstairs to the European Comission by Thatcher after his peculiar sudden resignation as home Secretary.
4) Cameron, ever the brilliant tactician, goes to Scotland bearing insufficient devolutionary gifts, so the SNP will drub Labour and the illiberal dimocrats there in May.
5) The European Central Bank decides, Weimar Republic style, to print a trillion euros but this may not persuade the Greeks from taking the sensible route of leaving the EU. If this initiative fails as seems likely, expect the EU to begin unravelling. Hooray!
See Varoufakis here.
http://trumanfactor.com/2015/varoufakis-interview-2-14800.html
"Currency Union can not prosper due to the lack of any deficit/surplus recycling mechanism." Indeed.
In any nation, capital transfers from richer to poorer regions have to take place to prevent the richer regions from further impoverishing the poorer regions and stimulating rebellion. Basically - if the Germans want Greece they will have to buy it first and then force the Greeks to live and work like Germans. (I assume here that they won't try to invade it again.)
The power-crazed Synarcho-Federalists who put the EU together knew full well that monetary union without political union would not work for long and hoped that the first crisis would end in the political union they sought, however the first crisis turned out rather larger than expected and the appetite for political union within a euro-bureaucracy has diminished markedly.
A european union consisting solely of East Germany and West Germany, with the rest of us doing our own thing now seems like a much better idea.
6) Lake Chad has apparently shrunk disastrously due to climate change and excessive demands on its waters. Boko Haram appears as a probable consequence.
New Years Address.
The 2015 Chaoist New Year Pontifical Address, Stokastimass, January 8th.
From His Pestilence, Pope Pete 1st.
As we languish in the slough of the dog days following the seasonal celebrations and brace ourselves for a coming year of incessant toil, it behoves us to draw comfort from the better events of 2014 and to contemplate the Chaos ahead.
Firstly 2014.
EPOCH, The Esotericon and Portals of Chaos eventually receives a rapturous reception from the esoteric cognoscenti despite a bit of a cock–up at the print works which led to its unavailability for its official launch at the Esoteric Conference at Glastonbury. The memory of standing up at the conference to talk about a book which didn’t actually exist at the time will long remain. Nevertheless soon after we took delivery of them they started to fly out all over the world despite the daunting carriage costs of sending the two kilogram book and card deck package to foreign lands. Matt Kaybryn’s artwork has set an astonishingly high new standard for magical artwork, the concept of extra-large cards for use as altarpiece icons has already proved its worth, and the paradigm challenging text looks set to keep a lot of philosopher-wizards busy for some long time. A party of intrepid volunteers currently seeks to explore the possibilities of the Epoch’s Necronomicon Mythos on Arcanorium College. Hopefully Azathoth of the Nuclear Chaos may have some intuitions to offer on the particle physics front.
Our Eldest finally got awarded her science doctorate, however in the mental aftermath of writing up her brick thick thesis which specially flown in experts from abroad passed without correction, she forgot to book the actual doctoral graduation ceremony, (a bit of a relief all-round actually) so we climbed a suitably symbolic mountain near her highland home and placed a suitably customised mortar board on her head for posterity and photographs.
The Scottish Referendum yielded a thankfully sensible result, one of the world’s most successful political unions remains secure, and the family feud over this matter has now subsided. My arguments and propaganda efforts did not go down well with our eldest who has gone native bigtime with all the fervour of a recent convert, after marrying into a clan up there. You have to admire Cameron’s balls in calling the bluff of the tartan romantics. I hope he does well in the coming May General Election; a Con-Ukip-Green coalition seems like an interesting and agreeable possibility, and an opportunity to distance Britain from the ghastly mess of the European Union. The other two parties seem laughable and without principle or credibility.
Readership of Hypersphere Cosmology on this site suddenly went astronomical and currently stands at nearly three hundred thousand and climbing. The breakthrough in this hypothesis came with the identification and quantification of the mechanism of galactic redshift which arises as a natural consequence of the positive spacetime curvature of this rotating hypersphere of a universe that we call home. So don’t panic, the universe did not arise from a cataclysmic big bang, it doesn’t bizarrely expand at lightspeed, it won’t end in an entropic fade out or a catastrophic collapse and it doesn’t mostly consist of phlogiston like dark matter and dark energy.
This year’s Knights of Chaos campaign scored some notable hits by psychic attack against specific ecocidal projects going on in various parts of the world, but so much remains to do. Nevertheless a consensus grows that in principle humanity must leave the planet’s carbon reserves where they lie, but the practise desperately needs to catch up.
2015. What Chaos lies ahead?
Particle Physics. Don’t expect any surprises from the Large Hadron Collider when CERN fires it up again. They have probably found all the fundamental particles now and just pouring in more power will only create fleeting composites like the supposed Higgs Boson. The Higgs mechanism remains unproven and unnecessary and in contradiction to General Relativity. Gravity will never reduce to a Gauge Theory. A unified theory will look more like quantum geometry with extra time dimensions, rather than a quantum gravity theory. The LHC may become another Euro-White-Elephant-Mega-Financial-Disaster-Investment if desktop Wakefield Generators come online this year and do much the same job. (I may get one myself.)
Cosmology. Expect to read a lot of sense in the forthcoming book: ‘The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy’. Hardcover – 31 Jan 2015 by Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin
The publication has become a little delayed but from pre-publication reviews and e-book reviews it would seem that these two gentlemen, the first a Philosopher and the second a Physicist, call for a reversion to the principles of Natural Philosophy when it comes to cosmology and the big questions about existence because the current cosmological ‘physics’ has let the mathematics run away with itself into realms of crazy speculations about singularities, dark matter and dark energy, cosmic inflation, multiple universes, multiverses of multiple universes, or a block universe where absolute causality reigns supreme and time has no real meaning, with each of these otherwise unsupported conjectures acting as articles of faith for various cliques of believers in the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics even in the absence of any sort of observational confirmation.
It may well prove a seminal book.
Earth. The plague of humans on this planet shows few signs of self-control when it comes to population growth or resource consumption. We burnt 43 gigatonnes of fossil fuels last year and we seem set to exceed that this year. Expect unpredictable extremes of weather. Whether the human population of this planet by the end of this century will reach 10+ billions or whether it will collapse back to a few hundred thousand hunter-gatherer-scavengers remains an open question.
A world human population of 500 million and an environmentally neutral steady state economy seems the only sustainable long term policy. The challenge remains to achieve this without passing through a phase of civilisation wrecking catastrophe first.
Many of the Islamic countries seem caught in a very difficult position; the theological differences serve only as convenient flags for the underlying problem of conflicts of population and resources. Nearly all of those countries have huge and still growing populations living on rapidly diminishing resources, and cultural attitudes which often inhibit the social and technological reforms which could ameliorate such problems. In the meantime expect the situations to worsen indefinitely.
Beware of any meme complex that cannot tolerate criticism, humour, apostasy, or blasphemy. It means that its own internal contradictions will make it behave violently.
Moral Philosophy. Don’t expect any major changes of moral fashion in 2015. Those who have had their sexualities legalised will continue to opine upon the involuntary nature of such orientations, whilst society will continue to opine upon the elective and punishable nature of illegal orientations. Law and Disgust continue their cultural dance. Necrophilia with prior consent will probably still remain illogically illegal. The victimless crime of sex with other animals will probably continue to attract surprisingly harsh punishment despite that the killing and eating of other animals remains approved. Violence, murder, and war will provide much of the entertainment for all ages as usual, although the slightest hint of sex will still trigger an avalanche of restrictions. Offending fat people may become politically incorrect and then illegal if the fat lobby can prove itself involuntarily fat. Sick old humans will remain condemned to suffer for as long as possible whilst we will continue to put down sick animals at the slightest sign of distress (to us). Sometime in 2015 expect the emergence of a euphemism for ‘unacceptable’, a word which has become tiresomely over used to imply that everyone should dislike what the speaker dislikes. Also the current official PC euphemism for ‘Dimwit’ may become due for its five year replacement.
Magic and Esoterics. The excitement of the last magical revival which began in the late 1960’s shows definite signs of cooling with fewer young magicians taking up the wand at present, the hardcore survivors getting older, and fewer innovative titles becoming published. Basically the 1960’s revival began as a resurgence of a paradigm rooted in Platonism and Neoplatonism and coloured with Neo-Paganism and Orientalism, against the growing current of scientism and the decline of religion in western culture. It took many of its cues from the previous magical revival in the 1880’s when the Romantics tried something similar in the face of growing Industrialism.
The recent revival has left two legacies, firstly it has kept alive the third way of thinking, the magical one, as opposed to the scientific and the religious ones, and this continues as a sort of softcore new-agey factor in many peoples thinking. Secondly, as the revival developed, some theorists began to question the underlying Platonist and Neo-Platonist metaphysics which supported both conventional religious and conventional magical thinking to a considerable extent, and speculated on whether they could replace it with metaphysics based on quantum physics instead.
The mind-body dualism has become as suspect as the spirit-matter dualism and the Platonic essence-substance dualism, whilst the wave-particle dualism has become physically demonstrable, if only in limited circumstances, and it promises a mechanism that could nowadays more comfortably provide an explanatory model for magic. In religious aeons magic tended to share its metaphysics with religion, today it moves towards sharing its metaphysics with science.
The removal of the Platonist essence-substance model form magic would weaken the hold of the spirit-matter model of most contemporary religions. This pernicious idea underlies most of the justifications that religions use for their appalling behaviour on the material plane.
However this paradigm shift remains a struggle in progress, the old model falls into disrepute but the new one remains somewhat obscured by confusion, ill-informed enthusiasm, and the intellectual difficulties associated with any non-trivial new concept. Expect another magical revival as the new paradigm achieves greater coherence, its own vocabulary, and a more widespread understanding.
Over the last year we have found much of interest in the breathtaking scholarship and the musings of the grumpy old Archdruid of America, John Michael Greer: -
http://galabes.blogspot.co.uk/
However his other blog on the decline of technological civilisation: -
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/
Provides a sobering and sometimes terrifying read.
We live in interesting times, welcome to 2015. Pete.
Cuda
An interest in Druidry has led me to an exploration of the 'Spirits of Place' of this area. The local Celts had a Goddess of the Cotswolds that they called Cuda. Cotswold probably means Cuda's-wold. Stone engravings of her still exist at Cirencester, the old capital of the Dobunni tribe hereabouts.
She appears as a goddess of prosperity and sits enthroned holding something suggestive of a baby or a loaf or an egg, and surrounded by three mysterious figures, the Genii Cullculati.
This area has remained prosperous for thousands of years. When the Romans arrived the Dobunni cooperated with them and the area became of of the most desirable 'suburbs' of the Roman empire.
Today it remains one of the few areas outside of London where the economy remains upbeat. I hitchiked to this city of Bristol perched on the edge of the Cotswolds some thirty years ago with just my girlfriend, a sleeping bag, two hundred quid, and the prosmise of a friends sofa. It has proved bountifull for us beyond measure, and making this statue became an act of homage and thanksgiving for the prosperity and natural beauty of the area.
As we discussed the form She would like to appear in today we settled on a ramshorn hairstyle as a nod to the sheep-rearing that has gone on in these hills for millenia, the egg represents bounty both material and spiritual. The Genii can represent elves, Druids, landwhights, or maybe the hills themselves.
I couldn't resist giving the Genii candles in view of the season, I will take her to the midwinter solstice of the Grove on Sunday.
A Merry Solstice, Mithrasmass, Saturnalia, Christmas, or whatever you celebrate, to all my friends and colleagues and readers. Pete.
PS, see:
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=48375#.VJPz9siA
and,
http://www1.maths.leeds.ac.uk/~amt6eac/threetime.htm
At least some respectable physicists entertain hypotheses of hyperspheres and three dimensional time.
Hypersphere
The symbol shown here represents a Hypersphere, sometimes called a three-sphere, or a 4-ball, or an S3 manifold.In such a hypersphere the internal 'diameter' or Antipode length equals half the circumference, making it somewhat 'larger on the inside than on the outside'. Its resemblance to the Taoist yin-yang symbol seems most pleasing, the classical oriental mystics thought of most things at one time or another although not always in simple to understand terms.
The Hypersphere Cosmology section of this site now contains several new papers dealing with aspects of the main hypothesis in more mathematical detail and with more detail on the physical principles implied.
Hypershpere Redshift shows the mechanism by which the small positive curvature of the non-expanding universe redshifts light from distant galaxies.
Hypersphere Rotation shows the derivation of the equation for the four-rotation of any hypersphere derived from Godels three-rotation of a simple sphere. Any valid derivation from an exact solution of the field equations of General Relativity presumably has its own exact solution in there somewhere.
Hypersphere Holometry derives from the Beckenstein-Hawking conjecture about the relationship between the information content of a black hole and its surface area. If true, and if applicable to hyperspheres, the conjecture leads to a prediction about the quantisation of space and time which Holometry experiments in progress may validate.
Hypersphere Visualisation and Lensing shows a fairly simple method of visualising what a hypersphere 'looks' like, and the lensing diagrams show how a hypersphere will distort sight lines across the universe creating the optical illusion of an apparent acellerating expansion.
On an entirely different matter Pactionis 2, first presented on a blog here in 2013, reappears in the Wizardry section, because it needs to.
Hypersphere Cosmology
Hypersphere Cosmology
An exhausting 30 day battle has just finished on the Cosmo Quest Physics Forum:
(See ‘Against the Mainstream’ section.)
This battle, fought mainly with n-dimensional algebra through many a sleepless night, ended with the massed advocates of standard cosmology at a standstill and throwing in the towel by invoking a 30 day rule to avoid a retreat.
During the conflict, worldwide mass googling of ‘hypersphere cosmology’ brought the following obscure scientific paper, published in June 2014, out of the woodwork and up the rankings:
www.scirp.org/journal/PaperDownload.aspx?paperID=48375
‘On the Physics inside a Closed, Static, Rotating Einsteinian Hypersphere in Due Consideration of the Galaxy.’
Beneath the blizzard of algebra and differing notations in this paper, it seems obvious that its theory exhibits almost complete isomorphism with hypersphere cosmology as presented on this site, and previously published in outline form in a natural philosophy treatise - The Octavo 2011.
It would seem that the Natural Philosophy approach and the Hard Science approach have come to identical conclusions here.
Natural Philosophy theory tends to start with physical principles derived from reason and imagination and then tries to wrap some maths around them to check their validity. Hard Science theory tends to start from accepted physical principles and then tries to extend them by mathematics.
Because we can think of far more physical principles and far more mathematics than the universe actually uses, both endeavours can run into problems. Both approaches require the reality checks of plausibility and experiment.
The hypersphere cosmology hypothesis began with the natural philosophical intuition that the physical principles implied by the initial conditions of the big bang theory remain totally implausible.
We can only rely on ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics’ when they don’t lead to implausible solutions that require dozens of equally implausible patches to shore them up, like singularity theory, cosmic inflation, dark energy, and dark matter.
We may now confidently expect the replacement of all variants of the big-bang-expanding universe theory with variants of hypersphere cosmology theory within a few years.
This may upset a number of older physicists but it will provide plenty of work and excitement for the coming generation of bright young physicists.
It may also upset the Pope a bit, which seems a pity because the current one seems a nice humanist type, but nobody has infallibility, and maybe the idea of a deity who doesn’t start the universe with a cataclysmic explosion and who doesn’t end it all with a feeble entropic fade out or a crushing collapse, may catch on.
Lugh
Herewith Lugh, one of a series of Celtic Gods associated with my area as the pan-celtic god Lugus and his welsh counterpart Lleu.
In the recorded Irish myths he appears as the thinking man's superhero - a wright, a smith, a champion, swordsman, a harpist, a hero, a poet and historian, a craftsman and a sorcerer.
Anything you can do Lugh can do better - as the Prof has quipped.
In this faux first century bronze (rendered in metal and milliput) I've depicted him with a mercurial style magic spear (the Romans equated him with their Mercury) and a slingshot at his belt and a harp for his atributes in the Irish myths.
Academic Paper
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As no tenured academic seems to want to risk career suicide by endorsing the following scientific paper for journal publication I release it here into the public domain for free use.
http://www.specularium.org/hypersphere-cosmology
It's located on the Hypersphere Cosmology section of this site.
Unfortunately its radical conclusions may invalidate the current work of some 20,000 or so theorists, however it will give them plenty to do with the rest of their time.
Perhaps doubly unfortunately this all comes from an old style Natural Philosopher and Wizard, but don't let that inhibit your rigorous investigation of the maths and physical principles that it implies.
And on a lighter note see my impression of Sulis, Goddess of the hot springs at Bath, 1st century romano-celtic bronze in the neo-barbaric style :) actually rendered in milliput and steel wire framed, black lacquered and verdigrissed, I hope they like it at Grove. Impression of Lugh to follow.
Autumn Equinox
Autumn Equinox and my three Mandrakes have again sprouted leaves after a dormant summer; I guess I must have the Autumnalis variety. They certainly take their time; I may just get some flowers and seeds this year. Milady, the largest one who looks like she reclines cross-legged on a couch, has achieved the size of a modest parsnip in 3 years. My cunning plan to re-seed all the hedgerows of southwest Albion with the m may take centuries.
Walking over the peaks in the north of the Lake District earlier in the week I could see Scotland and wondered if I would ever see it again.
But Scotland just said YES to common sense, despite the juvenile element to the vote. The canny Scots will get devolution and even more of our money and they will retain British citizenship, and I won’t have to send food parcels to my eldest in the highlands.
Cameron will probably get re-elected now, and hopefully buoyed by his success he will grant us all a referendum on the EU……. and loose it.
Divorcing Britain to get closer into bed with the damned EU always looked like the Achilles heel of the argument for Scottish Independence.
The Wizardry section of this site now contains a new piece called The Neoplatonic Chocolate Screwdriver. Ever since I picked up my first books on magic and esoterics forty years ago I’ve had issues with certain dubious parts of the corpus like astrology and the essences of the elements. My experiences of Neo-Druidry have served to crystallise my thoughts on the subject further, I love the overall ambience of Druidry but the Neoplatonism in it leaves me cold.
Scotland
Scotland, bonnie Scotland, adopted home of my firstborn. Please take the new Devo Max option and vote No to the foolish romantic notion of a hasty divorce in favour of that damned European Union. Stay and we can go Independent together.
If the hotheads of the Yes campaign loose expect a few brawls and some vandalism, but if they win expect massive disinvestment and refugees migrating south.
In other news: -
Hypersphere Cosmologyachieves 150 thousand+ hits from all over the planet!
Do keep me informed of your debates with the timid tenured guardians of cosmological orthodoxy, I hope to outlive the big bang theory.
http://www.specularium.org/hypersphere-cosmology
Epic Fail. IOT Pastgrandmagus Fails First Grade of Druidry!
Oops, well at least it’s useful to know just how high they set the bar these days.
I shall nevertheless remain a Bard and continue at Grove, and with my studies, differences of opinion over Neoplatonist metaphysics notwithstanding.
Insanesburys. Sandwich and a juice? That’s £4.19 Sir, mind you, if you have a packet of crisps with it, it will only cost you £3. Okay thanks mate, ring in a notional packet of crisps as well then. Sorry Sir, but you will actually have to take the crisps as well; shall I get them for you? Err thanks, do you fancy them yourself. Sorry Sir but I’m not allowed to accept them. No wonder we have an obesity crisis, even amongst the pigeons in the park.
More...
Natural Philosophy
Natural Philosophy.
On Saturday night I attended with friends the open-air Robert Plant concert at Glastonbury Abbey. This event seemed a thousand miles away from the big annual Glastonbury pop festival, no mud, few twentysomethings, mainly nine thousand senior folk with their own portable chairs, picnic tables, hampers and champers, and sometimes their kids.
The Maestro gave a spellbinding performance, the elder god of rock looks like Odin now but he still sings like Apollo. He covered a number of old Led Zeppelin songs but gave them all an upgrade with fresh twists and subtleties and some new ethnic inputs from his band which included a very talented guy from the Cameroons. By the end of it he had all of us oldies up out of our portable chairs. A master of his craft finessing his career.
I note that the Hypersphere Cosmology in a Nutshell paper here has already notched up eighty thousand reads. A new more powerful equation has replaced the redshift equation given in The Octavo. Either the world’s physicists must have started passing the joke around to all their mates or they have started scribbling furiously on their blackboards.
I suspect that the flurry of interest may have arisen because of the ‘axis of evil’ that the WMAP probe recently revealed as an embarrassing anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation could bear interpretation as some sort of rotation of the entire universe.
To forestall the possible headline ‘Mad Occultist Cracks Secret of Universe’ I’m redefining myself as a Natural Philosopher. Natural Philosophy was what we used to have before science and magic parted company after Newton. Somewhat paradoxically Newton himself researched alchemy and esoterics and science and maths with equal vigour, but we only tend to remember the old sorcerer-scientist for his science and maths. Me, I like to look at the bigger picture too.
So I’ve decided to try and pass the Bardic Review and apply to become an Ovate.
Zero
Welcome to the upgraded Specularium website, Anti-Social Media at its best, you cannot post replies here but you can email and initiate a discussion of serious ideas.
Those wishing to initiate serious discussions about esoterics and science, art, magic, politics, and religion in general may care to participate in Arcanorium College. Debate here proceeds according to the highest standards of civility and intellectual discourse, to maintain this we levy a minor subscription which frees us from spam, incivility, and nutters, yet we do allow a probationary free membership for a couple of weeks.
I haven’t the time for internet social media. I prefer the more measured and thoughtful interaction that Arcanorium College offers. www.arcanoriumcollege.com.
This Specularium site has 3 major sections and a blog. Many have wondered why a wizard chooses to devote so much effort to scientific speculations, a recent item in a debate on the Blog of Baphomet clarifies this issue: -
‘Wizards of old had to have a detailed working knowledge of religion, for religion formed the cultural and intellectual backdrop to their times and they would have fallen foul of it, or appeared stupid, without such knowledge. Today’s wizards need to familiarise themselves with science for exactly the same reasons.’
Plus any sort of esoteric or magical hypothesis implies some sort of Rebel Physics, some sort of extra component to reality that requires explication or refutation, and which may lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the profoundly peculiar reality in which we find ourselves incarnate. When you look at the sharp end of physics in the quantum and cosmological domains the standard conventional models look full of holes and contradictions and unresolved questions, leaving many metaphysical assumptions open to potentially fascinating debate. The Path of Knowledge needs to encompass all that we can know, including the contra-intuitive and the peculiar and the esoteric. Much of what now passes for science previously lay in the domain of wizard’s speculations. Let the titanic struggle continue!
Anyway, on a more mundane note, a few observations about Book Zero.
My contacts inform me that Ray Sherwin recently sold a handwritten manuscript of Psychonaut to an unnamed American collector for an undisclosed sum. Plus Ray, with whom I exchange approximately biennial emails, informs me that he has recently retired to the sun with a nice little villa in Fuerteventura.
Methinks these events may have a connection, if so, well done Ray, enjoy the proceeds. The manuscript in question had long ago faded from my attention. The natural products business idea I borrowed from you has made me millions, even though you in your inimitably laid back style didn’t go all the way with it yourself.
I do however wonder exactly which manuscript this concerns. Before departing for a couple of years in India and Australia I left a first Liber Null manuscript with the Morton wizard and eventually received a single copy of Liber Null with a White Cover whilst in Australia. This proved invaluable in setting up the Church of Chaos down under for the duration of my stay, the eight of us did tremendous work in the basement of the self-styled Lord Vegtam’s apartments. Ian Johnstone, do you still live?
On the way back I rewrote Liber Null in the foothills of the Himalayas and this manuscript became the basis of the Red Cover version of Liber Null which Ray and I made about 400 copies of and sold mainly to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Leeds during my 2 years in Yorkshire at Ray’s village in East Morton. We collated and glued the books together in Ray’s kitchen. This red version became the text adopted by Weisers and eventually rolled into a single book along with Psychonaut which I wrote on my return to the UK. I had thought that I'd given the Psychonaut manuscript to The Sorcerer's Apprentice for their initial Brown Covered A4 edition.
Ray always seemed vague and evasive about just how many White Cover Liber Null’s he made. The one I had eventually got lost or given away sometime after I moved to Bristol. I never saw another, rumour has it that only either 2 or 5 got made. So this little tome, whimsically titled Book Zero, that sunk a hundred paradigms and launched a hundred more, actually came out in a sort of ‘zero’ edition limited to perhaps 2 or 5 copies. Does anyone know what became of them?
Anyway in the longer term, having recently acquired sachet making machinery, in a few decades my executors will market my ashes, attractively packaged in 10g sachets, partly for the pleasure of esotericists of an essentialist persuasion, partly for use in occult art and science, and partly to offset the rapacious death duties on my estate. Prices on application, (probably in Chinese Yuan/Renminbi) when the time comes.
Supplemental : A correspondent just sent me a pic of a White Cover Liber Null. It bears the number 50 of 100 and contains what looks like a brief message from the author and a signatorial squiggle, neither from me methinks. What did the mouse do when the cat went off to the Himalayas?
Various
Eurosceptic parties of the left and of the right have made a good showing at the elections for the sham ‘EU Parliament’, and UKIP have done exceptionally well in the UK. The response from the unelected EU commission and the Germans appears to consist of: - ‘we will make a pretence of listening to the protest but we will basically ignore it and hope that it will go away when the economy improves’. The ‘ever closer union’ faction of the euro political class remains in power but the tide has started to turn.
The EU economy seems unlikely to ever improve now because energy and raw materials become ever more scarce and expensive, and dynamic emerging economies with cheap labour look set to dominate future markets. An over regulated synarchist managed, undemocratic and creatively inhibited europe hamstrung by political correctness and gigantic social security bills seems set for decline. The EU will reap a hurricane of revolt next time if it continues to ignore calls for a complete rethink of its function or for its dissolution. UKIP has done the British a huge favour by providing a Eurosceptic alternative to the BNP, the French eurosceptics had little alternative but to vote for the National Front.
UKIP’s triumph seems a fitting kick in the teeth for the Guardian reading classes and the illiberal dimocrats. The party of little more than ‘neither of the above’ has become trounced by a party with serious alternatives. (It just seems a pity to me that UKIP’s environmental policies seem very poorly scientifically informed.)
The widespread attempt to accuse UKIP of racism has backfired spectacularly. Whilst the party (like any other) probably does include some individuals with such opinions, its general stance appears Culturalist rather than racist. Most Brits don’t feel too bothered about skin colour but they do object to militant multiculturalism and believe that some cultures have stupid and ineffectual ideas and inhumane value systems.
Since the sixteenth century the foreign policy of the British has centred upon denying anyone hegemony in Europe. Thus they fought the Spanish, the French, and the Germans for centuries and then opposed the Russians throughout the cold war simply to prevent anyone dominating continental Europe. The strength of Europe lies in its diversity and the ability of its various separate nations to try experiments with different approaches. Britain reinvented democracy and taught it to the world, now it must struggle again to prevent Europe descending into an undemocratic Soviet or modern Chinese style hegemony led by an unelected and unaccountable synarchy of the political classes hiding behind a vast faceless bureaucracy.
I do hope the Scots see sense before their independence referendum. If they want more independence then trying to throw their lot in with the EU will have exactly the opposite effect. They would do better to negotiate more independence for themselves within a UK free of the EU. Tartan romanticism would eventually become heavily regulated by the EU you know, expect 5,000 pages on the health and safety and political correctness of kilts and sporrans and bagpipes, and you can forget about those sock dirks.
The Epoch seems to have received rapturous reviews from everyone who has read it
The basic Platonic-Pagan-Monotheist paradigm which has dominated esoterics since the first centuries of the first millennium until quite recent times has finally met its fully formed nemesis and replacement in the Quantum-Neo-Pagan paradigm. The new map of esoteric reality looks disturbing and challenging………. and strangely beautiful.
***
News
News.
Ah, Beltane has passed, the sun shines, ten thousand toadpoles graze the pond at Chateaux Chaos once again, and the gardens sprout their glories. The mandrakes however have gone to sleep again, methinks I must have the autumnalis variety.
EPOCH, The Esotericon and Portals of Chaos has received a rapturous reception, we have dispatched them to every continent except Antarctica, and the Americans have ordered them by the hundreds, have a look at the reviews and customer comments: -
This Thursday we have the elections to the sham European parliament. I’d recommend voting UKIP in the UK, or for similar alternatives in other parts. Don’t worry, the UKIP nutters will never come to power in Britain, but one may as well exploit the opportunity to protest at our continued membership of a grossly undemocratic, unelected, unaccountable, corrupt, and incompetent European Union, if only to encourage an eventual referendum about leaving it.
Matt Kaybryn and I will deliver a talk on EPOCH in Bristol on June 11th, in support of Sef Salem’s Visible College. (Flushed with the success of his Glastonbury Occult Conference he has decided to have a go at more widespread conference organising, and despite our err, ‘metaphysical differences’ we shall make the ecumenical effort.)
For details see here: -
http://www.visiblecollege.co.uk/bristol-sessions/
For details of our metaphysical differences see this ongoing debate: -