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War of Words

14/01/202614/01/2026 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Words, good slaves but bad masters.

H.G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds, a story about creatures from another part of the Universe invading the planet Earth and how the humans fought back. Words too can conquer worlds, especially the world in your mind. For this reason, I believe it is vital that we choose words that fit exactly the meaning we intend.

When speaking, we like to believe that we use words to converse clearly with others.

If there are no words in our own language we can create new words in fun and familiar ways. This linguistic phenomena is apparent in the speech of young people. New generations invent their own vocabulary with which to talk behind the backs of adults!

The power of language is it’s ability to open new perspectives on life. A restricted vocabulary will limit thoughts to the point that they no longer serve anyone’s best interest.

Words create our thoughts which can in inturn be inhibited by those words. Imagine a map of a city as a model of your neural pathways. Those journeys we repeat, such as to work, become familiar, almost over used. A map is also constrained by it’s boundaries. It does no show the whole world. The unreachable thoughts are as if in another dimension. Logic cannot venture beyond logic.

I listened to a debate on the radio recently in which scientists were challenging each other over the popular conundrum, ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ They conjectured about birds as dinosaurs and an absurd point in time when the first egg was laid. Only one scientist suggested that change is a gradual process when viewed over long periods of time. No parrot changes colour over night. Evolutionary changes take thousands of years before being noticeable. There is no single moment when chickens and eggs come ‘into being’.

picture credit: The Australian Academy of Science

The same is true in astronomy. Do you believe the universe happened in a nano second as the so called ‘big bang’. Scientists are currently theorising that universes expand and contract over vast periods of time. The explosive power of the ‘big bang’ phrase, froze original thinking about how the universe began for decades. The universe was never a chicken, nor an egg…it is obviously both.

Semiotics is the science of language and meaning. In my view, we all benefit from understanding how we structure our thoughts using language and meaning. Here is an exercise;

Imagine a ‘cake’.

There are many categories we can use to describe cakes. There are cakes we sub-categorise by their ingredients such as a sponge cake, fruit cake, carrot cake and oat cake. Then there terms for cake which describe when we eat it, such as birthday cake, Christmas cake or wedding cake. Alternatively the means of production is a description such as home-made or shop-bought. Another way of thinking about cake is the origin of the recipe such as Black Forest, Dundee or French Fancies.

None of these sub-categories describe cake but the word cake includes all of the sub-categories. When we choose which cake is included in which sub-category we use thought to DISCRIMINATE between different cakes. This tool is an important power of mental faculty but unfortunately it’s meaning has changed in common usage. It has become to mean PREDJUDICE and in my view, there is a loss of meaning and ergo understanding, when these two are confused.

Discrimination is an objective skill whereas prejudice is subjective. When we think subjectively we mix emotions with logic. Feelings introduce prejudice for or against something in a way that cannot be explained logically. Insignificant examples are then used ‘prove’ to oneself and others that a prejudice is based on fact in a process known as ‘bias confirmation’.

Bear with me if you think I am stating the obvious but in my view much cultural, ethnic, racial, gender based, geographic, religious and political misunderstanding has it’s roots in how language governs thinking and in particular, prejudice.

A mind which for whatever reason developes a predjudice against a general category of something is in trouble. To use our previous example, it would be wrong to say ‘I don’t like cake’ when what is meant is that you do not like cake with a lot of cream.

When it comes to making prejudices against categories of fellow human beings we hit trouble. Any prejudice is more a product of intolerance, misunderstanding, eliteism, narrow mindedness and other unelightened views in the mind of the observer. However, we hear predjudice views in the news regularly so it is important to unpick how and why they are held.

Consider the term ‘anti-Semitism’. The German journalist Wilhelm Adolph Marr lived at the end of the nineteenth century. He popularised the term ‘anti-Semitic’ to describe anti-Jewish sentiment within political ideology and the general public.

This prejudice towards Jews we know has been present for thousands of years. What was new then was the term, ‘anti-Semitic’. It could be argued that this contributed to the start of the second world war and it remains in common usage today, so did it ever serve the world well?

Let us examine the term. We might question the meaning of the term Semite. Who can define what this means other than an anthropologist? Cynics might suggest the use of the term was a pseudo scientific device to impress and support a prejudice which in turn came from right wing views on eugenics.

Certainly just as ‘cake’ has many sub-categories, so does the word Semite. Historically a Semite might be from a specific geographical location such as Canaan, Judah, Judea, Israel or Palestine.

The term ‘Jew’ is entomologically derived from the tribe of Judea. Then of course there are sub-categories for a Jewish person by religion such as orthodox, conservative or reform. Then there are those who are Jewish but do not practice a religion such as non-practising Jews and those who do not believe in God such as Zionists; who might be Jewish or Christian.

Sometimes language is used to catergorise a ‘people’ and using this categorisation, Semites would be a group who speak Hebrew and / or Aramaic.

The Nazi’s in the 1930’s arbitrarily define a Jew by racial characteristics, not religion, derived from an elitist philosophy of the Aryan race being superior to others on which an extreme predjudice was based.

We might expect a national category of Jew, but the Supreme Court of Israel has determined there is no Israel nationality.

There are other sub-categories of Jewish identity such as by culture, ethnicity and politics, but I hope that I have made the point that the terms ‘Semite’ and ‘Jew’ mean many things to many people depending on what category you choose to define them.

There is a criticism of the term Semite as meaning Jewish by non-jewish people, that it ‘disingenuously’ excludes those who also identify themselves as Semite, such as Arabs. Does the term anti-semite poplarly applied to Jewish people, imply a denial that Arabs are also of Semitic origin?

In my view, the nineteenth century pseudo scientific phrase ‘anti-Semitic’ continues to obfuscate clear thought and sustains predjudice rather than exposing it. It has been used by politicians in particular with the intention including victims of the holocaust and stealing their suffering to gain the moral high ground. Such verbal smoke and mirrors has spawned wars and continues to do so to this day, unquestioned.

In my view, it time to clear our thoughts of words that do not describe precisely what they mean. This is not just a matter of taking sides but simply being clinically clear about where are ideas come from? Are they the product of predjudices? What are the intended and unintended consequences?

To be impartial in a debate that is more a minefield than a cornfield, let us reverse the coin and examine the current term for ‘hatred of Muslims’; Islamaphobia. Again, should we not question the use of this term? Should the psychological term ‘phobia’ really be used to describe a fear of spiders, snakes and Muslims? Clearly confusion, not clarity will result from humans being casually categorised using a word from the science of psychology incorrectly, rather than a clear expression most people understand.

Fortunately, words can serve us to correct such unclear thinking. We can invent new words or phrases in any language and in doing so, say exactly what we mean, fairly and without bias.

It should not be, but if a bigot wishes to describe a group of humans using a term of predjudice, then I suggest that those describing distaste of a sub-category of a human being, should use the prefix ‘anti’. This creates the terms anti-jewish or anti-muslim concisely and without ambiguity. Alternatively, the terms ‘jew hate’ and ‘muslim hate’ in countries where ‘hatred’ is an important aspect of a legal definition and unambiguous to all. The prejudice is clear to all and not spun with fake science. It also makes clear that these are irrational generalisations.

There is a war of the worlds, but it is contained in our heads, not the heads of other people who we may not understand.

In my opinion, the dangerous, self-unaware prejudices that thrive in the emotional biases of current politics, poison the thoughts of otherwise rational and compassionate human beings, and in doing so whole communities. Such hatred of difference is so divisive that it incites violence between one group and another. The simplest example is when governments of countries declare war on each other.

Words are powerful as they form a part of the process whereby we create and sustain our beliefs. How much of the horror that we see in the news today, started as copied or learnt bias, built on an emotional response to an unfiltered stimulus, that slipped under the barrier of compassion towards others.

It is clear to many but sadly not all, that those who express ‘anti’ views in the name of a religion, are not following the most basic rules of the religion they profess to follow.

Fortunately, those who are strongly, even violently prejudiced, are in a tiny minority. The general population do respect and are prepared to learn from, those who are different to themselves. The world’s religions all follow the principle of do-as-you-would-be-done-by.

Speak as you wish to be spoken to

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Love Life Lust

25/11/202528/11/2025 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

The Traffic Lights Within

I have recently written two essays on ‘Physcial Enlightenment’ and ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’. The former is a rarely discussed subject, certainly amongst spiritual seekers. My point was that both are not only valid but complementary.

But in a western culture that thinks in dualistic terms, there will always be the question, ‘which is the most important?’ Even in spiritual countries such as modern and ancient India, ‘godmen’ have perched themselves on top of poles or stood on one leg for literally years, thinking this was a suitable way to deny their physicality and ergo, increase their spirituality.

This is in my view, nonsense but stay there if you want to.

My sideways sliding mind brought up the famous formula of Albert Einstein and a philosophers permutation of it;

SPIRIT = PHYSICALITY (c2) or E = M (c2)

I will also give credit to Alan Watts for a lecture ( now on You Tube) he gave on why saints struggle with lust. I don’t usually pick over the bones of someone else’s feast but Alan structures his talks so superbly that I shall credit to him because his ideas remain very relevant today.

The subject of lust has of course remained taboo in polite western society for many hundreds of years, repressed largely to it’s own detriment (almost suicide), by the Church.

The irony is that those who seek to become spiritualy awakened and do so, also awaken their sensitivity to everything in the physical world. We are all, after all, spirits in an animal body.

The Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymous Bosch c.1501

Alan points out that with spiritual awakening induces a desire to withdraw from the world. The shallowness of values and the platitudes of conversation do not contribute to the compelling desire to know oneself. Silence and contemplation are the tools of those with this particular desire and naturally find a place and a way that enables them to do this.

It is my belief that humans are strongly controlled by their ‘chakras’. I assume I need not explain what chakras are so that when I use traffic lights as a metaphor for chakras, readers will understand.

I assume red appears at the top of automatic traffic signals as it can be seen from the furthest distance, and is the only one of the red, amber, green, that causes harm to motorists if not seen.

Let us reverse their order however and place the red light at the bottom, keep amber in the middle and place green at the top.

These three chakras, base, sacral and heart are of great interest for the purpose of this essay. The red base chakra covers our strong connection to ‘tribe’ and family and the amber sacral chakra to basically, lust and animal desire. These two chakras show our bodily physicality and how it connects us with ourselves and those around us, family, friends, lovers, colleagues, leaders, employers, politicians…you get the picture.

Yet our green heart chakra transcends all of this. It is concerned with non-instinctual desire namely, love. This is expressed as love between humans, love of nature, beauty, and our strongest excitement, Divine love.

To sustain the metaphor, these signals are changing within us all the time, red, amber, green and in doing so affecting our behaviour. As much as the traffic controller may want to, there is no point in being on green all the time and creating traffic chaos. We go up and down switching on and off our desires in response to our affairs. Importantly, as one becomes spiritually awakened, the lights get brighter and demand constant attention.

The consequence is that spiritually guided people become unconscious beacons to other people and entities. The latter includes thought forms who exist in other energetic dimensions where there is a vacuum of love. Prayer, choirs, bells, holy relics, smoke, smells, statues, architecture, geomancy, flags, gongs and other devices are employed by religions to dispel these demons from sacred places. The grinning gargoyles on mediaeval cathedrals are the embodiment of these forces that circle us day and night. Gremlins, Demons, Archons or Jinn, wish to shame and ultimately destroy spirituality awakened humans. The power and prescence of saints in any ‘tribal’ congregation is a threat to demons because ‘love conquers all’. They want to pull you down into the red and amber light and keep you there; the red devil. Their desire is to drain your battery to the last few volts.

It gets worse. A spiritually awakening person has to fight their inner demons as well. Since birth our inner lights have been frustrated and dimmed by various spiritual and emotional wounds. I remember crying on my last day of primary school when I realised I would never see my dear friends again. These were children with whom I had grown up, including one, Fiona, who I had literally been born with in the same hospital and ward. I have a photograph.

Alan Watts explains that spiritual awakening brings ‘old pains’ to the surface, such as loss, fear of abandonment, shame, fear of no love. Lustful pleasures sooth these wounds even if only temporarily. For a ‘holy’ or ‘noble’ person seeking the highest enlightenment and benefit for others, these lustful fantasies can be an embarassment if ever aired publically, depending on how unconventional, immoral or illegal they are.

Priests in the Catholic church are an example of how the desire for sexual pleasure, can become perverted and hurtful towards young impressionable children. Royal families live with the same threat of such practices becoming public. Watch out for public figures who fear media ‘intrusion’ and make ‘no comment’ responses or invent and supress ‘facts’ or create a ‘distraction’ or ‘protest too much’, when challenged by journalists and prosecutors.

The present theatre of tricks being played out in the politics of the USA around the love-less characters of the late Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell will, allegedly, reveal a full picture of perverted lust running amoke amongst an international elite, cheered on by All American demons shaking pom poms and pocket cameras.

Sprituality is not an easy path. When the highest faculties of all the chakras are awakened the challenge is to face inner and outer battles of the highest intensity. As my old teacher used to say, ‘immortality has to be earned’.

Arch Angels such as Michael carry shields and swords because this is war. Spiritual awakening unleashes human weakness of the same order of magnitude; in the words of Alan Watts, ‘as if the soul seeks balance’.

Here is what Alan suggested to overcome this dilema;

Stop pretending this battle does not exist. Flesh is real and desire is real.

Stop fighting alone. Isolation is the trap that feeds the beast. Find another who is non-judgmental with whom you can be honest. This is not confession, it’s illumination.

Attend to your old wounds – acknowledge the pain and the painful work.

Be present when you feel desire but do not act on it (this is very hard).

Do not suppress shame as this only delays advancement.

Take the middle way which allows you to be present with the feeling but not to give away your energy pursuing and enacting it.

Alan’s view and remedies are principally the way of Mahayana Buddhism. It teaches that a seeker of inner transformation must merely watch dispassionately as life rolls by to overcome desire. The adoption of extreme views (as presently seen in the USA and other countries) is not being dispassionate but passionate.

In my view there is more one can do to have the strength to carry the whispering ring to Mount Doom.

We are guided if we will, by the ‘green for go’ light as a symbol of the human heart and the love it attracts and sends out. For the Sufi’s, this is the dwelling place of Divine Love in the human body. As Divine love is by definition everywhere it is therefore within all of our chakras or centres of consciousness. Divinity is present in our most lustful desires and moments as humans share animal desires and pleasures. Sufi saints were allowed to have one or even more wives, although they did not always. The ‘sin’ of pleasure as seen by some religions, creates guilt and shame which then, only priests can forgive. Life in these religions puts ‘sinners’ on a see-saw of ‘moral and immoral’ judgement favouring only those who use this to weild power over the faithful.

But when we resonate with Divinity we allow our attention to focus on the Divine Prescence within, or in modern terms, ‘our higher self’. This focus is one of being ‘in the world but not of the world’. It is neither moral nor immoral, just being Self.

Noah and his wives collected the animals when the world was in flood. Instead of being overwhelmed and drowned by the great flood of all consuming energy which was water, he and his sons constructed a boat that floated above death and destruction.

Being an Arc is in my view the best strategy for survival in a time when there are great metaphorical floods of anarchic and parasitical energy, pervading and interfering with the normal balance of nature, the affairs of man and ultimately our spiritual well being.

So, build a boat and after great storms a small bird will land in front of you and place down a spray of green leaves from an olive tree, and the waters will slowly receed to reveal a new Earth, to observe from high.

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Spiritual Enlightenment

31/10/202501/11/2025 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

‘Know Thyself’ : words over the Greek Temple of Apollo at Delphi

I suppose the best place to start is to suggest that becoming aware that one is a spiritual being, is not the same as becoming enlightened. The latter is something few people ever achieve in a lifetime. The former is the first step of a long walk.

The question we might ask is ‘who is enlightened?’ There are many historical figures such as Guatama Buddha and Jesus the Christ who would qualify as ‘enlightened’, but surely enlightenment is not so rare that we have to look back two thousand years or more?

In modern times, spiritually aware people do not stand out. They are generally modest and seek actively not be achieve ‘celebrity’ status. They will not perform miracles, but if they did they would allow or manipulate things such that another takes the credit. An enlightened person does not dress up in old fashioned clothes or clothes from another culture. They are not in the game of impressing others.

There is an useful expression today known as ‘virtue signalling’. It explains that the signal is not proof of the integrity of the thing that is signalled. The performance of ‘good deeds’ is something many regard as having a spiritual benefit, but as certain stories in the Holy Quran demonstrate, harmful actions can appear to be good and good deeds can appear to be harmful. Explore this excerpt from Wikipedia;

Surah Al Kahf

60-65 Moses and Joshua visit Khidr
66 Moses desires to be taught by Khidr
66-69 Khidr, knowing Moses’s inability to receive his wisdom, yields to his importunity
71-77 He scuttles a boat, kills a boy, and rebuilds a collapsing wall
78-82 Khidr refuses to communicate further with Moses on account of his protests against his conduct, but condescends to explain his conduct.

You may look up these stories that (and it is worth repeating), when examined in detail, in context, over a period of time and without bias…apparently harmful deeds can be good and good deeds can have unintended harmful consequences. It’s a possibility that needs to be explored vigorously because ignoring invites ignorance. Today, ignoring complexity is a primary tool of those who wish to deceive. The present president of the United States, who enjoys global power, promised Americans he would stop the war between Russia and Ukraine within twenty-four hours. He failed but was elected on this false promise. Since then, he has brokered several ‘peace deals’ around the world, several which, when examined in detail, are no more than temporary ‘cease fires’. He was surprised when he didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize, which one might allege is because he is not aware of himself. We have to leave him to shine that inward looking light.

Ultimately, the only person whom you have a duty to judge is yourself. Hence, the gnostic practice echoed by Jesus the Christ in his words;

“Know what is before thy face and what is hidden from thee shall be revealed unto thee; for there is nothing hidden which shall not be made manifest.”

The Gospel of Thomas Verse 5

But can a mirror reflect it’s own image? Can an eye examine an eye? Have you ever seen the back of your head?

Becoming self-aware requires considerable skill and perseverance in observation. The ‘inner eye’ has to be turned upon one’s own thoughts. This is the first step in meditation where thoughts are likened to passing clouds. Eventually it is hoped the sky clears. It rarely does because there is work to be done, not just sitting.

We have a skill where we can control and create our thoughts. When we are not doing that, control and creation of thoughts does not cease, it becomes automatic. It is like breathing, which is either intended or automatic.

Awareness is similar. Thoughts that ‘come to us’ without our deliberate intent to create them originate in the unconscious part of the individual mind or the collective unconscious. These are largely unresolved and repressed, events and emotional disturbances in our or society’s past.

Pieces of music can replay themselves in our heads for which an apt metaphor is a ‘mind worm’. Unresolved encounters with others or other sections of society in the collective mind can become loops that replay themselves. Politicians use these triggers ruthlessly to distract and ultimately control others. In the UK, the cry is ‘stop the boats’ without really understanding the causes and solutions, just reacting emotionally to whatever people imagine ‘immigration’ is and does. The dumb are leading the blind.

Becoming ‘self-aware’ is, therefore, in my view, far more complicated than sitting in meditation. Become awake in a physical world surrounded by other cognisant beings with whom we have relationships, is a vital focus for our mind’s eye. It has to be done with the concentration of a meditator, or as is said, like a cat watching a mouse hole.

We have one brief but exciting lifetime to encounter all kinds of situations and deal with them skillfully, instantly and with joy, just as a tennis player learns how to deal with the ball when it comes from any probable or possible direction; plus any other ‘wild card’ life may deal!

I was once asked if I meditated and I replied that I meditate all the time. Whilst I may not achieve this of course, it’s an intention I try to fulfil. I was taught to become an observer of myself by being one step removed. An example of this was given as being able to hold honey in one hand and dog faeces in the other, and lick the honey.

All phobias are clear examples of how our unconscious holds us back from participating in life fully. But we can overcome the dark spaces in our minds and emotions by shining a penetrating light of consciousness into those spaces. This is the process of making the unconscious, conscious…like a baby, breaking the waters and breathing it’s first breath.

“I tell you the truth, unless you are born of water and the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

John 3:5

The metaphor used by Jesus the Christ was being ‘reborn’ which he meant as complete self realisation and, at another rarely realised level, as re-incarnation.

Enlightenment can only be achieved by opening one’s eyes and taking deep breaths and observing the world as if for the first time.

In Zen Buddhism this practice is known as ‘astonishment’. It is a principle trigger to ‘realisation’ in the same way that a joke operates mentally as ‘getting it’.

“The bamboo shadows sweep the stairs, but raise not dust”

This essay is intended to be complimentary to the previous one entitled ‘physical enlightenment’. To be a fully realised human being, I believe there must be a playful balance in oneself between the physical world and the spiritual. People, we, usually list towards one or the other.

Becoming an observer of the physical world and one’s inner world and the interplay between them, as if you were in no way involved in either, is in my view, the most important technique for self realisation.

An enlightened person never sleeps. There are many statues of Guatama Buddha where he is sitting upright with one hand resting on a knee and apparently sleeping. But there is only partial rest required for the mind; most is for the body. Being fully conscious in daytime will empower being similarly awake whilst sleeping. We all experience this to some degree as dreams when we sleep, because our unconscious is unrealised and, in effect, has a mind of its own. We generally find dreams confusing. A good dream interpreter can assist in the process of ‘observing’ and understanding what the unconscious is processing because it speaks using symbols, as described in the works of the psychologist C.G. Jung.

An advanced stage of dreaming is becoming conscious whilst asleep, known as lucid dreaming. Some hallucinogenic drugs achieve this same effect although if the conscious mind is not trained in detached observation, the effect can be a ‘bad trip’; a roller coaster ride through the ghost train of the unconscious.

There is also another level of dreaming, in which one’s spirit leaves the body at night and travels through physical reality. This once happened to me whilst sleeping in my car and I moved out through some woods to a statue in the middle of the woods. In the morning, I took a walk into the woods and found the same statue.

People who have had ‘near death experiences’ report similarly leaving the body and observing the room in which there body is, such as a hospital operating theatre.

None of these experiences are ‘enlightenment’. Rather I have tried to describe a few of the curious and infinite depths of the mind. As an analogy, not many of us of us explore the internet in a way that is possible. Instead, we revert to our favourite places again and again. The internet and our mental world become like a cage made from iron bars constructed and installed by ourselves.

Leaving the cage, whether it is the physical cage we leave to go ‘on holiday’ or whether it is a mental cage, is enlightenment. I call holidays, ‘environmental enlightenment’. They are a short lived state of mind and heart, but there is a sense of ‘new world’ in a vacation which excites us before, like Cinderella at the ball, a pumpkin pulled by rats returns us to captivity.

We live in ‘rat runs’ imagining ourselves having god-like freewill, but in fact, we are just repeating repeat. The same applies to every place and connection in the universe of our mind; a state the most imprisoned declare as ‘boring’.

The only constant is observing perpetual change. By being fully aware, we are able to deal with all encounters in any situation, physical and mental. The constantly changing point of Universal consciousness which we contain and describe as ‘the-all-knowing-Creator’ or a thousand other names survives and surpasses this temporary sorjourn in the physical world.

The Enlightened One’s will pass you in the street and you will never notice them, not unless you are also, one of Them.

“You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!

Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of this moment.”

Rumi

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White Hat Black Hat

01/07/202501/07/2025 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

In conversation with a friend of mine whose ethical values follow Buddhist philosophy, I was challenged with the idea of killing the mosquitoes in my bedroom at night with a pungent insecticide! ‘It is wrong to kill anything and I should be using a mosquito net to defend myself, not attack’.

To me, if I kill a mosquito, I am preventing it from attacking another person or animal with it’s uncomfortable sting and potential disease transmission, including malaria, dengue fever, Zika virus, chikungunya, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and Eastern Equine Encephalitis. The virus, bacteria or parasite with the disease varies with location in the world of course, however with climate change and species of mosquito: do you feel lucky?

The instruction to preserve life at all costs and in whatever guise, is of course, a dogma contained in many religions but not all. In Christianity the Holy Bible includes the Old Testament describing a blood bath of unholy wars. In the last two hundred years or so, ‘civilised’ humans interpreted Genesis 1,

( And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,)

– -as a licence to kill sentient creatures for sport, vanity and greed.

Even today, western ‘civilisations’ are in the same process of destroying the planet with great efficiency and little conscience. There is a possibility that the translators of the Old Testament should have used ‘steward’ of nature instead of ‘dominion’.

Historically, the planet was not seen as a benign mother in the nineteenth century, except by those who lived close to nature such as the North American First Nation People who were regarded as ‘savages’ by European invaders. Ironically, self styled ‘settlers’ regarded themselves as benign and entitled to lie, break treaties, enter sacred land and commit genocide through war and starvation – all whilst insisting they have moral superiority.

Does this remind you of anything happening today by countries who consider themselves beyond reproach for their actions?

In the ancient Hebrew Ten Commandments we find the instruction not to kill. This was probably meant to refer to human v human – but does it? Could this include insects and small mammals? Like all simplifications, it loses import through lack of detail.

Buddhist teachings could be interpreted that one should have no ‘intention’ to kill. If we kill a virus with our anti-bodies or an ant on the path where we walk without even knowing or controlling this, we are not at fault. To kill to prevent disease or disease spreading is not so plain. We venture then into the quandry of the lesser of two evils.

Because of contradiction and complexity or perhaps, despite of it, religious dogma encourages the following of rules ad absurdum. An example would be nuns of the Jaine religion who spend their days walking and sweeping the path in front of them lest they tread on an insect.

Whilst there is a continuum of intent between conscious and unconscious killing, we have to agree that conscious killing raises the ethical questions. Those who refuse to fight in a national army might agree to become stretcher bearers or another ‘non-combatant’ role. This even though their actions are supporting those who are fighting and killing. ‘Thou shalt not kill, directly or indirectly’ would have been a more relevant commandment to conscientious objectors in any war in my view.

Why would any country seek to start a war, and feel justified morally, is a very relevant question for today. A common cause and justification is the belief that a moral duty of ‘doing good’ is being fulfilled. The irony of this is when both or several parties in a war all use this excuse. Who wears the white hat?

The answer can generally be found through the actions rather than words such as ‘treaties’ and ‘ceasefires’. It used to be that soldiers would fight soldiers and civilian populations were only indirectly affected by war. But since the second World War, technology such as aerial bombardment from the air; drones, rockets and heavy artillery, civilians have become targets.

Both or all sides will see themselves as the wearers of the ‘white hat’. Their next ethical choice is to decide the target. Should it be military or civilian? Although the choice is obvious to all but the most morally challenged, much of the warfare we see today is aimed at civilian populations. The offending side continue to lie and break treaties and ceasefires, enter sacred land and commit genocide as if they were actors in the nineteenth century ‘Wild West’ in which religious or any kind of law, did not exist.

To do this they use words in order to confuse themselves and their followers. Military terms such as ‘offence’ and ‘defence’ sound as if their meanings are simple. But take an example from the Roman Army in ancient times. They carried large shields which are technically, purely defensive. But one of their fighting techniques was to use the shield to rush at the enemy and push them off balance, opening their guard and going for the kill. The short sword or gladius was used principally as a weapon of offence, and yet again, a sword fight includes using the sword in defence, as a shield.

Defence and offence therefore overlap and at times – become one. Politicians can over rule moral objections by calling this one something and the other something else. It is called ‘propaganda’. In this way offence using defence is called defence and defence using offence is called defence. Making use of this confusion in minds who do not question, they argue that since ‘defence’ is allowed in international law, every action is a ‘defence’ even when attacking unarmed women and children.

Leaders today deny or are complicit in targeting civilians, just as the Soviet Union did under the absolute dictator, Joseph Stalin in the Second World War.

After that war, Winston Churchill, the Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to replace Stalin’s ‘white hat’ (Russia had been an important ally) with a black one under ‘Operation Unthinkable’. They wanted to return Poland to the Polish people as that issue had started the war but Stalin refused and the country became part of the Soviet Union.

History has the ability to make sense of current events as world politics has usually been played out before and the consequences of actions do not have to be learnt through experience. The main variable is of course, new technology. But fundamentally, ethical values should not change and there is not reason why an aversion to violence should not be universal. This has been attempted through the United Nations and International Law but these voices are weak today.

‘War crimes’ being allegedly committed are investigated by those committing the crimes. Permanent members of the UN Security Council are allowed vetoe criticism of their actions on the grounds that they are ‘defending’ someone or something. Detail is avoided.

International Laws are dismissed by countries that have not signed the convention. So external rules, which should embody the highest ethical values, are ineffective.

Where civil laws and natural law fail to be applied, religious and spiritual rules, potentially have a greater influence by bringing about change within each individual. The rule supporting non-violence is the well known, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ It’s an uncomplicated way to behave but, with this injunction as guidance and followed, the world today would be a very different place.

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Francinsense, Gold and Err

13/04/202514/04/2025 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Who Stole Christmas?

PREMISE

The Church Fathers have had considerable ‘editorial control’ over what to put in and what to leave out of the Holy Bible. So much was ommitted and added, so should new ‘adjustments’ not be accepted?

OBSERVATION

In 1872 a scholar named George Smith found something remarkable in clay tablets from Nineveh. He was reading in cuneiform the Epic of Gilgamesh in which is described the great flood, God’s punishment for mankind. The suggestion that the Great Flood described in Genesis was just a retelling from ealier Mesopotamian texts, shook Victorian society. They gave Mr. Smith a hard time, as if he was the problem.

Today there is considerable proof that many of the stories in the Old and New Testaments have been subject to editing. We accept that the dates for the Christmas and Easter festivals are not in the Bible. They have been made up. The date for the birth of the Christ child was decided to be December 25^th but why?

*The Infant Horus: picture credit World History Encyclopedia*

Previous gods had been born on this date. There was Horus (Ancient Egypt), Mithra (Persian), Krishna, Zarathustra (Iran), Hercules, Babylonian god Bal (Nimrod), Heracles, Dionysus (Greek), Thammuz (Babylonian) Hermes (Greek) Adonis (Phoenician) and others. All were born of virgins.

If such a clear plagarism of ancient gods is disturbing, there is a logical explanation based on astronomy. December 22^nd is when the sun disc halts its annual progression northwards along the horizon. It then pauses for three days and rises anew on December 25th. This natural phenomenon supports neatly the story of a solar god being born; not dying and miraculously resurrecting but being born at least. Perhaps the birth of Jesus does not fit the story and date of how the ancient gods had been born.

If we investigate the ‘blasphemous’ notion that the Christ child was not born at Christmas then we should be able to find another meaningful astronomical date in the solar year relating to birth. After all, should a Christian festival be based on the Pagan festivals and superstition? The church fathers did, we should remember, hate and demonise Paganism, although Pagans did no worse than love nature and each other.

SUGGESTION

I suggest that the birth of Jesus was in the springtime; the lambing season, when shepherds watched their flocks by night. Consider afresh, the Christian nativity narrative.

The three Kings or Magi seeking Jesus were astrologers. So excited by and certain of their prediction were they, that they set off to find him, I argue, in the spring. They ventured eastwards towards the star Sirius, which rises in the east in March in the northern hemisphere. With their learning they probably knew of the goddess ISHTAR from Babylonia who represented Sirius and was associated with fertility, love and war. Another clue for us today is that in the English language is the word Easter which breaks down into two words; EAST STAR. It also is remarkably similar to the word ISHTAR.

If we dig deeper into pre-Christian gods, we find that in Ancient Egypt the star Sirius was represented by the goddess SOPDET meaning ‘skilled woman’. She was important because her appearance signalled the inundation of Nile and the beginning of their new year. She was sometimes portrayed as a large dog.

Sopdet was associated with ISIS who was the wife of OSIRIS. Their son HORUS just happened to be born on 25^th December; a holy family uncannily resembling a later one. They watch over us even to this day as Sirius (ISIS) in the constellation Canis Minor and her husband OSIRIS, the constellation ORION.

These curious facts add up to support the possibility that the Nativity occurred in the spring and the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ in mid-winter. Certainly, Bible scholars are unable to qoute verses that deny this, as is anyone to confirm it. The Christian practice of using the festivals and stories of the hated Pagan gods, appears to be the only reason for Christmas and Easter being where they are today.

We cannot deny the association in popular modern culture of ISHTAR and Easter. As a nature godess, she is depicted with with hares and rabbits (famed for their procreative success) and eggs (product of the female hormone Oestrogen). Eggs and Rabbits were omitted from the Holy Bible and yet survive as symbols of birth happening at the time of the great initiator, Aries. Perhaps, some archetypes are too strong to supress.

ENDING

At this time of Easter, instead of celebrating the joys of spring, Christians mourn. Then, in midwinter they celebrate birth.

One wonders whether these important festivals, reversed for the wrong reasons, have unknowingly undermined the modern world? Knowing the basics of life and death, ending and beginning, should support rather than undermine what it is to be a human, whose life is dependent on natural cycles.

I cannot expect anyone to agree with my view but for me, this fundamental reversal of ancient truths has led to our misunderstand and abuse not only of nature, but ourselves.

The mystic Hildegard of Bingham wrote ‘wisdom awakens to wetness and greeness and flowing waters. Wisdom says I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life’.

*Pagan Wheel of the Year: picture credit Friends of the Forest*

Happy Christmas!

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The Two Mary’s

30/11/202430/11/2024 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Resolving the Unresolved

The greatest influence on me as a male child growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s was naturally, my mother. She was my a ‘perfect woman’. To Jungian psychologists, this is the ‘anima’ upon which is modelled the feminine aspect of the male psyche.

But there is also a hidden, darker side to the male’s anima. Ideally hidden from child’s view, it was available in films, newspapers and magazines more openly than it is today. There was a ‘sexual revolution’ going on in the teenage generation above me and all was sex, drugs and rock and roll. ‘Flower (femininity) power’ countered the male Patriarchal aggression of the two world wars. Women were ‘burning their bras’.

Psychologists might view this as a healthy revolt against conformity through open expression of emotion. The mind bending drug culture and sexual freedom of that generation erupted and continues to this day.

The dream goes back to the Garden of Eden and the myths of Christianity. Adam and Eve were exposed to their own nudity and felt shame for the first time; their mutual feelings of new found lust moved into era of ‘covering up’, but the fig leaf was nowhere near big enough. The characters in the Old Testament carried out a lot of begetting and smote-ing. The Ancient World was like the Wild West and it needed a Sheriff to calm things down – Moses.

In the New Testament, Jesus’s mother, Mary, had to be ‘free of original sin’ meaning starting afresh. But how could the mother of the new Christ reproduce without being associated with the shame and guilt of sex? The answer was simple, sophisticated and a mind bender; the mother of Christ is a virgin.

Another convenient proof – after the fact – was provided. Mary’s husband, Joseph, was too old to be a father; so confirming Mary’s ‘immaculateness’. In Renaissance paintings of the Virgin Mary, her guiltless face looks lovingly down upon the infant Jesus, suckling at her breast. All was neatly explained.

The problem is; femininity isn’t like that. There is more than a hint of ambiguity in the archetypal feminine, because it is dark as well as a light; a destroyer as well as a creator.

The church fathers cleverly wrote this contradiction into the script and they did it by depicting ‘Mary Magdalene’ as a prostitute. If Mary and Joseph didn’t ‘do it’, then Mary Magdalene certainly did and according to the Catholic Church, she did ‘it’ plenty. But we might regard this depiction of Mary Magdalene as suspect, not least because the word ‘prostitute’ does no appear in the Bible and because Magdalene or Magdala sported the uncompromising title; ‘The apostle of the Apostles’.

*Saint Mary Magdalene* by Bernadino Luini – Italy – 1524

How much should we go along with this dichotomy of femininity? Was Jesus in his later life, such a bad character as to keep company with a ‘fallen woman’? The fiction survived until 1969 when the Catholic church declared the Magdalene was not a prostitute after all. But was the damage to women in general irreparable? What were the consequences of this unjustified denouncement of womanhood – ergo the Divine Feminine – by the Patriarchy?

Most frustrating of all about the Magdalene lie is that there had always been another version of her in the Gnostic Gospels or Nag Hammadi Library of the Essenes. In ‘The Gospel of the Saviour’ Jesus describes her as ‘the woman who knows the All’. Jesus must have had many female disciples and it appears that he initiated Mary Magdalene to the highest level. In contrast, the male disciples come over in the Gospels asking dumb questions; you cannot raise the consciousness of those who are not ready – too much ego.

Even Simon Peter was in denial of his faith when asked. In my view Simon Peter, might have been nick named the ‘Rock’ by Jesus because he was spiritually calcified. The Roman Catholic Church in building itself upon the character of Simon Peter, has certainly reflected much of Peter’s stiffness through the centuries.

Mary Magdalene on the other hand was not bland and serves our understanding better as a complementary female counterpart to the male Christ figure. Her wisdom represents that part of the Divine feminine which men find hard to understand. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, she, ‘takes…aches…fakes…just like a woman…with her fog, her amphetamine and her pearls’.

Joan of Arc by Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres 1854

If a further example of the positive anima was needed, then the figure of ‘Joan of Arc’ serves well. She was a saintly virgin with the Creator speaking in one ear and King Charles VII in the other. Joan’s knightly armour represents the code of chivalry brought back by the male knights during the Crusades, a code that held women in the highest esteem and made men bend at the knees in their presence, literally and metaphorically. Joan of Arc was a gender reversed version of knightly chivalry and the reverence owed to perfect womanhood. As a Christ–like heroarchetype, she had to suffer an early martyrdom in the hands of the Judas figure – the traitorous Duke of Burgundy. The character of St. Joan, you might feel, is just too goody goody. She needs less fire and more earthiness, more representative of the daily and nightly amours of the common man and woman. In a word; balance.

A more healthy expression of gender roles and spirituality can be found in sculptures of Indian Temples. The depictions of Tantric sexual intercourse in the statues must have made the Victorian missionaries blush. This was not the ‘virginal’ forbidden fruit that created so much male hypocrisy in Victorian society; from Royalty to the gutter creepers. In India we see an understanding and embracing of the spiritual power of sexual energy and an aspiration to achieve immortality through it, for both parties.

*Hero Chamunda* – Tantra at the British Museum

The two versions of femininity could not be clearer. Whilst the creation of the Raj was believed to be a ‘civilising’ of India and it’s people, the reverse could have been true. The depiction of sacred male and female sexual energy was brought back to Victorian England between the covers of the Kama Sutra and Arthur Avalon’s, ‘Serpent Power’. But their enlightened texts failed to remove the curtains from the legs of pianos of society’s ‘well to do’. Such sexual repression, psychologists now know, creates destructive, unconscious fantasies in the male psyche. A contemporary expression of this was the so called ‘Jack the Ripper’ who murdered prostitutes in Victorian London as readily as the Church burnt ‘witches’ in Mediaeval Europe; probably for the same reasons.

In Jungian symbology, the negative anima in men is likened to a Vampire that sucks a man’s life blood and by implication, their very Soul; dangerous territory. The term for such a woman in 1930’s, 40 and 50’s was appropriately a ‘Vamp’. Her picture adorned many a barrack room wall. As an aside it is interesting that in the eponymous film, the God-fearing General George E. Patton angrily tore down a soldiers pin-up of Lorraine Bond with the words, ‘this is a barracks not a brothel!’

The evolution of the internet and instant ‘view in private’ pornography, has pushed images of the negative anima onto a new generation young, vulnerable males apparently without consideration of consequences. The pornography and sexual violence on view is far more mentally poisonous than those penny-slot machine Edwardian ladies undressing before voyeuristic butlers. The United Kingdom is currently considering a law to ban the under 16’s from social media, and Australia just dropped the idea.

In 1950’s Britain, the main stream media exploited the saucy postcard ‘seaside’ style of humour, ripe with sexual innuendo. In a sort of uniquely British way, sexual ‘goings on’ were laughed off socially as a bit of ‘slap and tickle’. The ‘Carry On’ films had audiences falling off their seats. Sex and gender jousts were fun and funny.

In this vane, Alec Guinness starred in a 1953 film called ‘Captain’s Paradise’. His character was the Captain of a ferry working between Gibraltar and Spanish enclaves in Morocco. The gag was that he had a wife and mistress with opposite and (for him) complementary characters. In Gibraltar his English middle class wife played by Celia Johnson, spent her days engaged in housework and domestic trivia, in preparation for her husband’s return. In the mid point of the ferry voyage, the Captain always turns his domestic wife’s photograph around in his cabin. Once the reverse side is a photo of his exotic lover played by Yvonne de Carlo. She is by nature a hedonistic, sexually alluring young woman who loves to drink and dance the nights away with her sea Captain. In the end it all goes wrong but the point is clear. Men idealise a particular woman who is a projection of both their negative and positive male anima.

It should be acknowledged that the female anima in the male psyche has an equivalent in women which Jung called the animus. The reader is invited to study this yin yang polarity. Let it be enough to know that the sacred dance in the affairs and affairs of men and women is one that can and should be, vital to their individual spiritual transcendence.

As a summing up and because I like an answer of any kind, I quote Joseph L. Henderson in ‘Man and His Symbols’ p. 157;

“Any of us can see, of course, that there is a conflict in our lives between adventure and discipline, or evil and virtue, or freedom and security. But these are only phrases we use to describe an ambivalence that troubles us, and to which we never seem able to find an answer.

There is an answer. There is a meeting point between containment and liberation, and we can find it in the rites of initiation that I have been discussing…

…Initiation is, essentially, a process that begins with a rite of submission, followed by a period of containment and then by a further rite of liberation. In this way every individual can reconcile the conflicting elements of his personality: He can strike a balance that makes him truly human, and truly the master of himself.”

In highlighting the two Mary’s the ‘unresolved’ feelings within males needs such resolution. The Christian religion includes these processes in it’s rites of passage; (submission – mass) reconciliation (confession) and liberation (priesthood) but few ‘initiates’ become masters of themselves because, in my view, St. Peter keeps the key to himself. No gnostics may enter!

For me, the ‘sea captain’ of within, cannot and should not, keep up the charade. The individual needs of the women who are subject to anima projection, rightly demand their own initiation path.

The unresolved in worldly affairs takes place in order to illuminate and help us work through the contradictions within us all.

This ‘fight’ – which scales down in simplest of terms to ‘evil and virtue’ – is indeed hard to reconcile and much of the world’s greatest literature and other forms of expression, unpeels this angst before our eyes.

May we all sail on calm seas.

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Olympics in Flames

31/07/202425/08/2025 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

”Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Puck’s line to King Oberon Act 3 Midsummer Nights Dream William Shakespeare

This was going to be an essay titled ‘The Party is Over’ but then the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony 2024 stopped me. It was too extraordinary to ignore and in fact, contained the same messages. I wish the Olympics, the athletes and the people of France and the World come together in love at the conclusion of the Olympic 2024 as was surely the original intention of the games. I express no religious or political views other than universal love. If you do not have ten minutes please slide down to the final conclusion.

The gods on Mount Olympus would have watched the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony 2024 in Paris, with a conflation of amusement and horror.

Personally, I found it pedestrian, disjointed and more than at little weird, and I was not the only one. For a country renowned for its consummate sense of good taste, design, style, and pazzazz; what in Hell happened?

I shall express views here which some will find far fetched, even disturbing. However, this sideways analysis might explain why standards fell so low.

Those who have read Dan Brown’s book or seen the film The de Vinci Code, will appreciate the power of symbols. The main character played by Tom Hanks, is an academic ‘symbolist’. He unravels symbols as a trail of clues that lead to the truth and this is what I believe was happening at this Olympic Ceremony.

So are there ‘clues’ in the ceremony and if so, what truth is being disclosed?

The Olympian gods used to look down on humanity and create situations. If you were a modern organisation, similarly determined to influence the thoughts and feelings of 29 million remote viewers around the world, this ceremony is the perfect vehicle. Being performed in the ‘city of lights’ was surely an invitation the Illuminati could not refuse?

The Illuminati picture credit: National Geographic

I recommend personal research to discover the motives and means of the Illuminati and other cabals, but their aims might be summarised as; ‘to achieve a Global Order through the removal of personal and national freedoms’.

So when you hear on the news that the fibre optic cables serving the high speed trains to the city of Paris have been sabotaged, you wonder why? Curiously, a week or so after the attack, the media are still describing this planned event as ‘vandalism’. No organisation has yet claimed responsibility. You might wonder what reporters are avoiding saying and who has told them not to say it. Was a planned and co-ordinated attack to created fear? Fear of death is the currency of cabals as we witnessed in the recent global pandemic where, again no originator has come forward or been found.

‘Let them hate us as long as they fear us.’ Caligula

Fibre optic cables carry vast quantities of information over long distances. They send light through gross matter. Cutting off this supply in the four cardinal directions was like cutting off light to the City of Lights; the city of the Sun King, Louis 14^th. So similarly ‘cut off from the world’ was Louis, when he moved the Royal Court away from the Parisian minions to Versailles, where he could enjoy a privileged hedonistic lifestyle.

The leaders of the secret societies were closely involved with and led the French Revolution. They would have introduced the ‘Phrygian Cap’ as headgear for the revolutionaries; a symbol of Mithras represented by the bull.

Close observers of the Olympic Opening Ceremony would have noticed the golden head of a bull next to the five Olympic rings at the flag raising ceremony. Should we conclude that Mithras and Revolution is alive and well in modern France?

The Roman Empire nearly adopted the Mithraic religion as it was popular with it’s soldiers and Mithraic temples can be found under many churches. In myth the bull’s spine sprouts corn and the blood is the wine of animal life. Christianity was chosen as the preferred Roman religion but the similarity of this Mithraic myth to the Eucharist should not be overlooked.

Light is a common symbol of spirituality and Jesus was not the only one who proclaimed to be the ‘light of the world’.

‘How thou art fallen from Heaven, son of the morning’ Isaiah 14:12

There is an old Testament character named Lucifer who the Church Fathers decided to eclipse by conflating Satan and Lucifer and Ahriman as the same beings

But Lucifer, the ‘Light Bearer’, is important today as he represents an ‘imbalance’ of spirituality, a powerful overload of light. We should not consider spirituality as being only goodness, as it can be too weak or too powerful and when either occurs it produces bad things.

Lucifer was responsible for the loss of the ‘third eye’ represented as the ‘brow or Adjna Chakra’ in Yoga and a Cobra in Ancient Egypt. Without this sensibility humans descend into illusion and delusion. The figure of Marie Antoinette in red in the Ceremony, represents how humans have collectively ‘lost their heads’ or rational thought and are fixed in the bright red base chakra of animal and tribal desires.

Balanced spiritual energy is a good thing, but when it becomes imbalanced it is not. Gautama Buddha discovered this after living an indulgent life in royal splendour, then aestheticism. He found little of spiritual value in either. He became enlightened when he followed what he called ‘the middle way’, which is the philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism today.

In the ceremony, Venus was represented by Beyonce as a feminine spirit of light and beauty with an enchanting voice; as with the Sirens in the voyage of Odysseus. But it was a narcissistic delight in self reflection that audiences were presented with and not the Venusian sacred mirror of ‘self reflection’.

The decent from balanced spirituality into base narcissism is present around the world in social politics today, not least in France where the left and right wing extremists, with no thought of a ‘middle way’ compromise, have recently taken over the government of the country.

The political values of the French Revolution, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death” were chapter headings in the ceremony as it appeared on television.

The above background information, is intended be some explanation of the following analysis of the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony 2024. Many have reacted to the ‘weirdness’ in the ceremony as something they could not relate to. The French people had given away their tax payers money and freedom of choice to those who created the ceremony; in other words they had given away their power.

You might ask who decided not to have an audience in the Olympic Stadium for this ceremony, as is traditionally the case. The loss in revenue from ticket sales was clearly a loss out weighed by whatever gain you must imagine. Instead of a climaxing parade of athletes before a cheering international audience, bookended by icons of national pride as in the Beijing and London Olympic Games opening ceremonies, there was nothing.

The world was given a ceremony mainly for the global television audience. The consequence was to separate people into individuals or small groups, such as those Parisians poised on balconies over looking the river. Bystanders had a partial view of the ‘ceremony’ unless they watched it on their phones. The revenue and energy created by sporting event stadiums was sacrificed on an unknown altar.

Performers were perched on buildings as individuals, groups of dancers, musicians, circus artists, singers and actors. Without the power of a telescopic lens and amplifiers, these figures were diminutive both visually and inaudible; a subtle expression of ‘disempowerment’ of the people; ‘divided we fall’.

Human performers made small by large buildings – foolish or just poor design?

Those who were clearly happy or at least good at pretending were the various circus and street performers along the route. They at least added enchantment to proceedings; especially the hired ‘global celebrities’. However these Venusian / Sirenesque qualities, come at a price to the observer as already described.

Only by being tied to the mast of his ship could Odysseus avoid a spiritual death on an island of enchantment and delusion. Is that our world today?

The ‘Minions’ or non-privilege populace, were depicted by cartoon characters who proceeded to sink their own submarine, much in the way humanity is today destroying it’s own space craft; planet earth; cheerless and disempowering messages for us all.

Humanity can not complain that it is has not been warned. The Book of Revelation in the New Testament gives warning of the apocalypse and one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse appeared in the Olympic Ceremony riding a metallic White Horse. Wikipedia informs us that;

In John’s revelation the first horseman rides a white horse, carries a bow, and is given a crown as a figure of, conquest perhaps invoking pestilence, or the Antichrist.

‘Conquest’ we can understand as victory in war and ‘pestilence’ something like the recent pandemic. The arrival of an ‘Antichrist’ is not an anti-Jesus but inverted Christ consciousness; love thyself instead of love others.

Nuclear war has been threatened by politicians and humanity would be the lesser for the intense light of the nuclear explosion – matter into energy. Are we being prepared? Spiritual and or physical death was shown to us repeatedly in the ceremony using various symbols.

A river was chosen as the central location for the ceremony. Rivers are a symbol of the journey from life to death and the Ferryman on the River Styx is perhaps the best known. At the beginning of the ceremony, three children (innocents) follow the light bearer (a football star) underground, the place of Hades or the Underworld denoted by shelves lined with human skulls.

The innocents (you and I) are given the Olympic torch which they pass onto a hooded figure in a rowing boat who takes them back into the world of light or from death into life.

Spectacular laser lights on the bridges and stages announce spectacularly that Lucifer is present above ground.

The use of the bridges that cross the River Seine must have been an enormous disruption to the daily travel of Parisians so there must also have been an overwhelming case for deciding to allow this disruption and disempowerment of ordinary Parisians. What was the benefit?

Were we being invited to remember in the recent history of these bridges that one was the location for the death of Princess Diana? The Pont d’Alma ‘underworld’ road tunnel is capped today with the symbol the Illuminati, a flaming cauldron; which incidentally is a copy of that held aloft over New York by the Statue of Liberty.

Another Royal death featured in the ceremony was that of Marie Antoinette. Actors appeared at the windows of the Conciergerie. This is a building which served the French Revolution by confining 2,370 prisoners, including Marie Antoinette, prior to horrific public execution by guillotine. The Ceremony could have chosen to avoid this macabre place in the interests of good taste, but instead chose to celebrate the horror.

If you are not convinced by these symbolic references, the next is so obvious that many Christian religious leaders have taken offence. They feel that the story of the Last Super in The Bible was mocked and their faith was being deliberately undermined. The long table on the bridge and the peculiar array of sexually ambiguous characters seated beside it employed frenzied cat walking and dance. The display, for many, was a celebration of sexual licence and depravity and even included children to whom Satanists are particularly attracted as a source of energy. The hermaphroditic characteristics of the figure on the left of Jesus in Leonardo de Vinci’s last supper is discussed in Dan Brown’s book referred to earlier and perhaps inspired the theme…is it Mary Magdelene?

To fulfil the imaginary prophecy of these orgiastic encounters, a near naked Dionysus appears wrapped in fruit on a plate as if about to be consumed by the depraved celebrants. Dionysian rites in Roman times were indeed not for the faint hearted. Was this parade endorsing such rites as an end to modern times?

Using the theme of ‘romance and love’ there were scenes in library where three sexually ambiguous young people made eyes at each other and then a rapid exit into a private room and purposefully closing the door. Families might wonder if a ‘ménage a trois’ is something to celebrate in an Olympic Opening Ceremony if is so, why?

In events such this ceremony, Satanists include symbolic messages for fellow Satanists around the world, in the way the newspaper advertisements once were used for covert communication. They will have been alerted to each message by a principle subversive technique, which is ‘reversal’ of the ordinary such when South Korean athletes were introduced as North Korea. Diplomatic telephones started to ring. An apology was demanded ‘for the next time you organise an Olympic ceremony’. Agreement was made but was ‘human error’ really involved?

The most glaring reversal was surely taking the audience out of the stadium for the ceremony. Disguised no doubt as ‘innovative conceptual thinking’ and ‘this is France’ – as President Macron explained- the losses appear to be greater than the overt gains. Why would you prefer funeral paced boats in the rain to the traditional carnival of athletes in previous ceremonies in the dry?

Light into darkness is a theme enjoyed by Satanists and the Olympic Ceremony would not have disappointed them. Whilst in a stadium the encroachment of night is gradually balanced out by artificial lighting, this effect is almost impossible to produce in a city. The clear ‘light of day’ passed into dark obscurity. One conceptual theme was actually called ‘obscurite’ meaning ‘darkness’.

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil,

Who put darkness for light, and light darkness,

And put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter,

Isaiah 5:20

A few days ago, You Tubers were posting Paris at night with large areas in black out. Electricity had been cut off. The only illuminated building was the Basilique Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. There has also been further ‘vandalism’ to fibre optic communication cables in other parts of the country.

In conclusion, if only half of these interpretations are close to the truth, I believe we are being given a warning of future problems, by those who are about to create them.

The stark warnings are;

People are being misled through their dependence on the internet and media.

Life will become more difficult because humanity is destroying the planet.

Humanity will have to become ‘Christ conscious’ (love thy neighbour) or there will be wars.

There will be a world government to achieve these aims.

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Hot Cross Males

29/03/202412/05/2024 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

There is a tradition in England to bake special buns at the end of the Christian period of Lent. These are characterised by a white cross symbolising the cross on which, they believe, Jesus the Christ was crucified.

We are familiar with one of the meanings of the word cross is ‘annoyance’. Insignificant in itself but keep it in mind as you read on.

When I was a young student of architecture in London, we had lectures on the philosophy of architecture. I was greatly influenced by an American anthropologist named John Steel, whose philosophy of life in general appeared innovative and exciting to me. He said, for instance, that we should be wary of using right angles in our designs. He sited the geometry of astrology where an angle of 90 degrees indicates a clash, as does 180 degrees. In contrast, the angles of 60 and 120 degrees are harmonious.

I set about designing with architectural plans based on equilateral triangles. Other tutors cited the work of the great American architect Frank Llyod Wright who used this grid extensively. His buildings are greatly valued today for their harmonious relationship with nature and an ambience of content.

In the Chinese order of landscape and building design known as Feng Shui, the corner created by a right angle is called a ‘poisoned arrow’ and needs careful mitigation.

What this is leading up to is an invitation to consider the universal symbol of the cross; two lines that cross each other at right angles. It might be that it is not so benign a symbol after all; if only because it is a depiction of the causing extreme death of a human being.

The symbol of the cross is of course far older than Christianity, whether on the diagonal, vertical or the many other variations.

We should also remember the variation of the spinning cross known as the Swastika and it’s modern association with Facism. The spinning cross was a symbol of the sun for ancient cultures all over world. The Nazi’s reversed it’s direction in a doubtless, intentional Satanic reference because they studied and practiced spirituality for it’s power.

Jesus the Christ called himself ‘the light of the world’ and ‘the son of God’; but we rely on translations for this and it is possible that he came as the solar deity whom the ancient Greeks named Appollo. If modern day Christians are uncomfortable with this association then they are invited to read deeper into this subject.

Whether or not any of the above is absolutely true or relevent is not my thesis. Suffice to say that the crossing of straight lines is generally, a male and solar symbol.

Historically, much of mankind’s evolution over the last millenia, has been male or solar in character and I would argue that it is natural we would expect history to be filled with accounts of male humans fighting; war, opposition.

What was desperate to happen, in terms of human evolution, was the rise of the complimentary feminine principle known as the Divine Feminine. For we are not so bound by our religious dogmas today as to deny that God is equally female and male. The old stereo type of a white bearded ‘nice guy’ needs to be put into the ‘no longer believable box’. Humans were made in the image of the Divine male and the Divine female. Their physical bodies hold more in common than difference meaning the two genders have more in common than difference and are complementary in nature.

The power and relevance of the divine feminine appears in ancient Egypt. Their pantheon is a full of female gods as well as male. Isis and Osiris almost share the same name and are depicted, just as Mary and Joseph, with a divine child from their union.

This balanced recognition of Divinity as a whole ‘yin and yang’ complimentaryness should have informed all of human endeavour to the present day but sadly, the alpha-male energy jumped ahead of the game.

There were exponents of this Divine androgeny based on ancient Egyptian texts, the Greek Cabala and Jewish Cabala and Hermiticism, but they had to operate as a secret society. They were the Rosicrucians whose symbol was a vertical cross with a rose at it’s centre. The meaning is clear; that of a combination of male and female Divine energies forming a Unity.

At a similar time came another religion based on the house of Abraham, Islam. Whilst today many Islamic cultural dogmas (such as dress codes) are based on tribe and tradition. In countries like Iran, enforcement of dress codes if enforced more for male power than to solve any problem. Early Islam was a beacon of feminine influence in society at many levels such as architecture and art. Sufi poets aspired loving feelings towards a soft and nuturing, Creator. Islamic architecture is renowned for it’s flowing depictions of nature and it’s geometric patterns. Courtyards and landscapes were intended as earthly depictions of paradise and were characterised by soft flowing waters and fountains. The contemplative, reflecting, geometric ponds in the Alhambra Palace and castle in Spain, were invitations for reflection and enjoying the solar heat from the cool embrace of shadowed courtyards.

Islam was and is, fundamentally, a lunar religion, still represented today by it’s use of the lunar rather than the solar calendar and it’s use of the crescent moon as a symbol.

This ‘feminine principle’ was carried by returning crusaders and travelling troubadours to the Christian Europe as chivalry. Many of the Crusader knights learnt from Islam the importance of respecting women and the essence that women contained and expressed in enchanting, subtle ways. This sea change should not be underestimated as it continues to inform and revolutionise the feminine principle in modern societies; expressed as ‘feminism’ in modern politics but culturally is far more profound.

The ‘Round Table’ of King Arthur was a practical representation of the sharing of power amongst equals. This replaced the Alpha-male monarch of previous centuries who killed all who opposed him. The circle is a geometric form which expresses harmony and potential infinite expansion and/or introspection. It is a planet and a universe all at once and has none of the negative values associated with a cross. But most of all, it is the maternal womb and the expression of the greatest thing that the Divine Feminine has to offer; completion and life.

It is today, in many European and other progressive countries, that women have been given principle parts to play in the affairs of government and social order. Their plain speaking and intuitive understanding of complexity, is in contrast to the previous male dominated ways. As leaders they have become highly respected, such as Ursula Gertrud von de Leyen in the European parliament.

So may we this Spring season of renewal, view the ending of the male, solar dominated world (open to all to view across North America as a solar eclipse on 8^th April 2024) and welcome those gifts that the Divine feminine brings to us in abundance; the natural world, procreation love and an end to those hot cross males!

The Solar Eclipse; a moment for feelings or fiesta?

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The Wizard of Light

13/02/202406/02/2024 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

We Are Off to See the Wizard!

Most of us live ‘out there’. We see and feel our skin as the join between us and ‘that’; whatever ‘that’ is. For more and more people, the outside world is being discovered to be ‘not what it seems’ or in common parlance ‘fake’.

Films like The Matrix trilogy highlight the idea that what we look at is no more than some sort of construction. But who is making this illusory world?

In medieval times, before psychiatry and psychoanalysis, it was a widely held hypothesis that a being called God made the world and us. God therefore, had to be responsible for the running of human and if that gave you a problem you had an option to pray. Prayer was the only way humans were able to feel they had a say in the matter or else they abandoned themselves to kismet or fate. Both are soft options and unrealised humans, like soft options.

Mystics however held a different view, from times well before the Essenes and their Star pupil, Jesus the Christ. Mystics never believed in the story of an all controlling, Commander in Chief, deity. Instead they experienced directly a love of ‘God within’. As beings made ‘in the image of God’ (the literal consequence of what we now call fractal geometry) we are indeed God or as the poet and mystic Rumi said, a fragment of the mirror of God that shattered into countless pieces. We are, in other words, a shell within which energy and Mind (which is not us) are facilitated.

Picture a movie projector plugged into the electric wall socket and a light shining within the magic box. Out of the eye of this box are projected moving images in a most compelling way.

Because of a certain suseptability within the human mind, our attention becomes fixed on the world ‘out there’. Our attention moves from ‘here’ and ‘this’ (Self), to outside ourselves and we are transported to wherever and whatever (ego). So ‘ordinary life’ revolves around us in a merry go round that we call ‘experience’. Indeed it is because of our growing addiction to this series of dream sequences, that life can become a blur. In modern times the spinning world appears faster than ever and in a way and as a consequence, many feel overwhelmed by a lack of clarity and control. But there is a mechanism by which we can halt the confusion.

The ancient Greeks had an interesting take on how the human eye works. Whilst today we describe the eye as a camera or receiver of light, the ancient Greeks understood it as a projector. They thought the eye projected light, but perhaps they were describing how the process of mental projection works? Could it be that they intuited the idea that we create everything we see?

Quantum physics tells us that we are able to affect what we see by being an observer. The conundrum of Schroedinger’s cat imagines two realities present at the same time. Until the human observer makes a choice, the cat is both alive and dead.

When Jesus the Christ preached, ‘you are the light of the world’ he meant that we hold the power within ourselves to be not only our own light (God), but able to illuminate the whole universe. We hold tremendous power and he demonstrated this with miracles. Moses did the same when one of his followers walked into the rising tide of the Red Sea to certain death…except instead reality shifted and the waters receded. Parting waters was one of the many spectacular ‘tricks’ in ancient Egyptian magic.

We know that in Ancient Egypt the so called ‘Emerald Tablets’ of the demi-god Thoth or Djbuti instructed all beings to ‘seek light’. This is not as simple a process as it sounds of course. The illusion of reality is strong and shadows and false figures have to be ruthlessly eliminated in what mystics call ‘the hero’s journey’. The archetype of the hero as a warrior on the physical plane is nothing compared to the life long war of mystics and seers for understanding of themselves or enlightenment. This inner battle is the true and only meaning of the Islamic ‘Jihad’, whereby the veils that cover the inner light are tantalisingly removed, represented by the dance of the seven veils and the tantalising feeling of the hidden essence.

It is important to understand how all of this can apply to our own modern lives. One of the great ‘inhibitors’ to the removal of the veils is, ironically, religion. I shall not name and shame any particular religion because they are probably all guilty in my view.

How religion interrupts and corrupts the ‘hero’s journey’, is by promoting the description of the world as being ‘out there’. Most distracting of all is the notion that the saints and the angels and the Divine are all ‘out there’.

We might smile at the Renaissance painting of an old man sitting on a cloud today, as the archetypal God, but such a distortion of reality is still widely believed. Prayers are offered ‘to God’ as if such a being has both the time and interest in our self obsession. ‘You get on with it!’ one might hear a Divine voice command dismissively. Certainly in Christianity, humans were given ‘freewill’ at the beginning in the Garden of Eden, as a punishment rather than a gift. This Divine curse means we are always ‘on our own’.

If it sounds like heresy that God may not listen to prayers, then you are probably missing the point. Prayer was never intended to benefit a Universal Mind because God is by definition, complete in every way. Prayer is a mechanical process whereby a human mind can open paths to the human Soul, using those words that are not of one’s ego. Muslims are compelled to pray five times a day because it stops the ego in it’s tracks and can send our concentration inward. The body is bent in submission and the forehead (brow chakra) touches the ground. The arrogance of the ego is positioned (in Sajda) lower than the heart chakra, where Soul resides.

This process of ‘submission’ is found in most gnostic practises as a way of overcoming the constant demands of the lesser self (ego) and becoming aligned with the higher self (Self).

The words of the prophets to ‘know thyself’ are a hint to what today we might call ‘therapy’ or ‘psychoanalysis’. But these will not take you to a destination. They are principally an unveiling of an archetypal journey which is to travel inward to one’s higher Self, with skip in your step.

Body, Mind, Spirit and Heart on the Golden Road to the Wizard of Self
*picture credit Pacific Standard*

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The Silence of Words

27/12/202327/12/2023 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Words have both sound and meaning and it is these aspects of words that I shall explore in this essay. My case shall be that there is a subtle and hidden level of meaning contained in the abscence of words as well within words; a fact we tend to ignore in our conventional Western tradition.

A child, when it is born, has no words in it’s head. It has not heard human language and it’s world is without word. It is an obvious yet obscure fact that every human infant is capable of learning any spoken language. It listens, and then one miraculous day – ‘da da’ – it speaks.

From that moment on this organic computer learns what we call an ‘operating system’ based on a language; amazingly, any language. This is all very marvellous and yet in the future our language inhibits meaning, rather than expands it.

At a certain stage in life, we might reflect and realise how words dominate our perception. We have become slaves to both the external and internal chatter of ‘things’. Words run away with themselves in our heads and much of the time we might wonder who we are and who is in charge.

Slavery of the body by another is a very old problem but slavery of the mind is even older. Early philosophers like Socrates, were sent to prison and even forced to commit suicide on account of their desire to cut through the prison bars of language and thought.

Religious and philosophical minds have, at various moments in history, produced a key to unlock the chains that hold us enslaved. In the West, this was done by encoding ritual using a language people did not understand.

In Catholicism this was the Latin language spoken by bilingual priests. Sadly, in recent times church elders have allowed religious incantations to be delivered in the vernacular. The congregation, who previously had been held rather in awe and suspense by the mystery of Mass, suddenly had this balloon popped and replaced by the humdrumness of ‘understanding’. Mystery was unwrapped like presents on Christmas day.

Only those with a deeper calling, such as Christian monks and nuns, are told to move their consciousness away from the meaning of the incantations and ‘just say the words with your mouth’ and ‘keep your consciousness on the presence of God.’ The mystical revelation was that words deceive by reducing mystery to common ‘understanding’. No one explained this to the uninitiated.

In contrast, Islam has not fallen into this trap and in most countries the original words of Divine Revelation are spoken in the original Arabic. Vast swathes of the Qur’an are learnt and recited, without necessarily knowing their meaning, by non-Arabic speakers. When spoken aloud the sound is as important as the meaning as the sounds of the holy words and phrases, even single letters, transmit a power from the Divine.

Exceptionally Mustafa Kemal Ata turk, President of Turkey in the 1920’s and 1930’s, ordered the Quran to be translated into Turkish as part of his ‘modernisation’ political philosophy. Nothing, as they say, is sacred.

Let us pause for a moment and consider the leap of faith that is being suggested here. Behind stories, myths and legends there was always a sacred understanding transmitted from generation to generation. For instance, the mystery of the ‘white stag’ that skips over the horizon or pales into the mist, so evading the hunter, is a mystery that captures and teases with a sense of rapture and bafflement.

This is ‘not knowing’ and has a value that has been largely ignored by ‘rational’ thinkers in the West.

The modern film ‘The Deer Hunter’ 1978 picks up on this theme of and man’s insignificance when compared to the mysteries of Nature. Amidst the heavy hammers of industrialisation, depicted poetically in the opening sequences of a steel works in Western Pennsylvania the central character ‘Mike’ proposes a hunting trip to his friends.

“You know what those are? Those are sun dogs… It means a blessing on the hunter sent by the Great Wolf to his children… It’s an old Indian thing.”

It is hard normally, to sustain this sense of mystery in life, as we reduce it to ‘catch phrases’ and cliché in conversation. We talk to much and our words rattle around other people’s heads like toy trains on a table top track.

Personally, I have always enjoyed travelling in non-English speaking countries and not understanding a word anyone is saying. Instead of grabbing a phrase book to attempt to understand the hubble and bubble of random conversations, I smell the unusual air and absorb the colour of exotic flowers. In essence, the mind can and should be permitted to stand still and pause. There is benefit, if not buying vegetables in a market, from concentrating on the profound reality of consciousness without words; what we might call ‘being aliveness’.

Lewis Carroll, is one of the great nonsense poets in the English language and has guided children and adults into the land of ‘not thinking’ for over a hundred years. ‘Beware the Jabberwocky’ is neither useful nor profound information, without mask or disguise. This sense of the absurd is like a door into the ‘not normal’, a place children love and adults avoid.

It would be wrong to be completely dismissive about words. In poetry and other sublimely expressive forms of language, they can explore and reveal areas of ourselves that are beyond thought, emotions and intuition. Initiation ceremonies into mystery schools are designed to bring about a consciousness that is completely without explanation by language; otherwise books would have replaced all knowledge and experience.

Unfortunately, in the roundabout of real and virtual worlds that we experience today, words come to us in a repetitive form. Anyone who has started to learn a language other than their mother tongue, will understand what it feels like to talk like a child to another adult. We converse like fools and (not wanting to insult the intelligence of animals), like ‘talking animals’.

If we are to search beyond the meaning of words, as far as our human soul will allow, then words perform a function most purely as sound; with or without a perceived meaning. This sound is the most fundamental form of creativity and inevitably appears in multiple opening verses of Genesis in the Bible that begin with, ‘And God said…’. In English these words have meaning but in the original Aramaic their would also be a magical power to the expression, just as magicians incant ‘spells’…Abracadabra! Words have the quality of spells and are learnt by a process dependent on ‘spelling’.

Pure sounds have an effect upon the human energetic system, in a most fundamental way, which is why the music we listen to is so important; as creative energy devoid of meaning. Destructive music such as Heavy Metal, attacks our ethereal essence and can lead to mental and physical illness, should we allow it. The Ancient Chinese respected ‘harmonious’ music for this very reason and viewed the opposite as a signature of decadence in decline in the State.

At the other extreme, music of a spiritual nature elevates our mood and perception in an experiential way. Various mystical traditions around the world, such as Sufism within Islam, embrace these ethereal qualities of music with ecstatic chanting.

There is a tradition in Yoga called Mantra Yoga which uses the repetition of sounds either silently or aloud to stimulate the human subtle energy system known as the ‘chakra’ and at the same time, stop the internal babble of the ordinary mind.

The Universe (of which we are a microcosm) is a cloud of sound as well as electromagnetic energy. Even the planets of our solar system vibrate at a different frequencies to one another and this mysterious concert has been recorded by modern astrophysicists. It is akin to the ‘music’ heard by mystics in trance as a constant hum or combination of harmonious overtones. Pythagoras proposed that the Sun, Moon and planets all emit their own unique hum based on their orbital revolution, and that the quality of life on Earth reflects the tenor of celestial sounds which are imperceptible to the human ear. This truth has often been represented allegorically in Western art as ‘choirs of angels’ playing musical instruments such as the harp and trumpet.

Perhaps the greatest example of the decadence that words can bring is contained in the Biblical story of the building of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. Here the Divine restraint from advancement of civilisation was used to confuse mankind with multiple languages instead of just one. The English language translates the word ‘babble’ as to ‘talk rapidly and continuously in a foolish, excited, or incomprehensible way’. Turn on your television sets today and discover that nothing has changed since this Biblical event! The world spins and makes us giddy, words fail us, we argue and fight, and all fall down.

In the Eastern philosophies, you will find a great emphasis on non-verbal communication. Much of the Japanese tea ceremonies are conducted in silence and participants are taught to ‘know’ how to conduct the ceremony without the interruption of words. A Japanese friend of mine was late for her tea ceremony class and found herself standing outside the room in which the class was taking place. She knew she would be judged on knowing exactly when to open the door and enter the room.

‘Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.’ Lao Tsu

Matters Blog

Original thoughts on a variety of subjects that matter to me

Religion

War of Words

Love Life Lust

Spiritual Enlightenment

White Hat Black Hat

Francinsense, Gold and Err

The Two Mary’s

Olympics in Flames

Hot Cross Males

The Wizard of Light

The Silence of Words