Musings

Wanna Buy A Photo??

A couple of years ago, my friend here in Brno – Walter Novak – a quite famous photographer in the USA – gave me some tips on taking photos. I started shooting things with my iphone that I thought interesting. It might be a sunset between buildings, an unusual view of the familiar, an unusual street lamp or anything like that. I then use a tool he shared with me to process it a bit and in as a creative ay as possible. The results I think, have been pretty good. As I collected all of these photos, I inevitable wondered what to do with them? I wanted to put them in an album online but couldn’t ind anything that worked well enough and didn’t cost a grand. Then I

Read More »

Proven? It’s a Theory….

Somehow, the idea that science is proven or settled has become a thing in recent times. I’m not just talking climate – I’m talking about science in general and how it is portrayed by the media in particular. “Settled, done, dusted…..” Er – nope. The scientific method is very specific. It is an approach that goes like this…. – Observe and collect data, – Create a theory to explain the observed data, – Invite criticism via a peer review process of the theory, and – Model the theory and make predictions based upon it that can be validated. Essentially, this process calls for continual iterations of a theory until such time as it no longer serves and is replaced with another. Notice the use of the word THEORY. All science

Read More »

Energy lines and Wyrd

A strange thought came to me this evening as I was thinking about mapping energy lines and doing a bit or research on the web. I was wondering what energy lines where? – where they came from? and so on and suddenly a thought popped up – Wyrd. The women of wyrd or the three wyrd sisters spinning the web of wyrd – what if part of that web was Earth energy? The ancients felt these earth energies and used them. They built huge structures where earth energy lines seem to cross. How did they use them? Brain Bates in his novel Way of Wyrd has the apprentice being taught how to use lines of the wyrd web to propel himself through space. The book is fictional of course but

Read More »

Social Media’s Mirror

One of Franz Bardon’s exercises is to spend a month writing down as many personal faults as you can think of and then a month writing down all of the positive traits you can think of. He calls this a mirror and it is known as Bardon’s Mirror. In fact, if you follow Bardon through, the next step is to assign an element to each fault and virtue (Fire, Earth, Water, Air) and see which element dominates and which is weak so you can work on addressing an elemental balance within yourself. It is actually a very hard thing to do. I have tried several times and never been truly happy with the results because plainly, I’m blind to my traits. I did ask a few close friends but despite

Read More »

It’s My Life

One of my more popular songs is a rock anthem called It’s My Life. It was one of those songs that as a writer, it is in your head and drives you nuts. You play around on the guitar trying to actualize something in your head with increasing frustration because you can’t quite get there. And then -POW – you got it and in a few minutes of recording frenzy… its done….. and bugger it – I want this song played full volume at my funeral.   A few days ago, a FB friend sent me a private message…. he basically said I was brave to tell it like it was. He agreed with me but if he said as much, he’d be in trouble and lose his job. The

Read More »

History of Warming

These days, we are hammered from almost every source about how it’s warming and the climate is changing. I can imagine for some, it is very alarming and even scary. Me? Well I’m an Aquarian and by nature a contrarian. I also have the dubious benefit of having studied Geology an extra 6-years after school attaining a Ph.D and having published about 8 or 9 peer reviewed scientific papers in that time. This has given me another way to look at things as follows; I understand how science works – I have played that game…. I have a 4.5 billion year perspective as opposed to a 60-year one…. I know how to do research and how to distinguish real facts from beliefs, I’m not afraid to say it like I

Read More »

A Final Stop and More Templars

After the experience at Mikulov, we headed back to Brno taking a short detour to a town named Čejkovice. I wanted to take a quick look to see if there was anything there worth spending time on later. Čejkovice was the second Templar establishment in the Czech Republic after Prague and the first in Moravia when they arrived in the 1230’s here. Just as in the case of Jamolice, the town’s coat of arms recalls their presence.     Unfortunately, not much is recorded regarding the presence of the commanderie – only a mention in 1248 in a document issued by the Lord of Břeclav apparently. The history of the town is summarized as follows by the website of the Chateau – more of which shortly! Following the dissolution of

Read More »

Feeling it at Holy Hill

By the time we reached the car from Templštejn, it was already early afternoon and after a quick stop for a late lunch, it was pretty much already dark. So we headed towards Mikulov on the border with Austria where in the morning the plan was to climb up Holy Hill. Mikulov is a beautiful town at the southern end of the Pavlov Hills and in the wine growing region (Palava is probably my favorite Czech wine). The town was founded sometime in the 12th Century and is today dominated by a fine Chateau at the center of the town standing on a rocky hill called Zameckÿ vrch. It was originally a Romanesque castle that was rebuilt in Gothic form and then as a Renaissance chateau and is now a

Read More »

Mother Earth is the Boss and Don’t You Forget it!

Sometimes I have to say what is on my mind and this is one of those times. Increasingly, we live in an era where the media is biased and it seems most people just read headlines to get their news. Despite the massive complexities of almost any topic you’d care to mention from inoculation to climate change, everyone feels as if they should hold an opinion and believes their opinion to be right. Debate has degraded to insult slinging in many parts of social media and indeed, the media in general. In my humble opinion, we are seeing the decline of humanity right now and its saddening to see when we had come so far in recent decades. One area that increasingly concerns me is environmentalism. For me, looking after

Read More »

Discovering Templštejn

A prior trip to discover Templštejn ended with the realization that I had somehow taken a wrong direction – at least for a car – yet the end of that journey was a beautiful gorge in the Jihlava valley – well worth seeing. As we left Řeznovice, I determined to try a different route – one that took us into the village of Jamolice. Jamolice was where the original Templar commanderie was set up in Moravia according to the history books and the small village still proudly carries the memory of that in its coat of arms.     Jamolice is a small village that essentially hugs the sides of the road passing through it. Once inside the village, we saw a sign pointing ahead to Templštejn but we drove

Read More »