Prague and Magic
One might think the Czech Republic would be teeming with occultists, mystics, and magicians. After all, at one point in history it was the center of the Universe for alchemy and magic and even John Dee spent time here along with Edward Kelley. The Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, was extremely interested in the occult and gathered many alchemists and occultists in Prague in the 16th Century. Apparently, however, Dee and Kelley didn’t impress the Emperor and instead found favor with a Bohemian Count instead. Rudolf patronized natural philosophers including the astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. He was also the earliest recorded owner of the mysterious Voynich manuscript. Rudolf even performed his own alchemical experiments in a private laboratory. According to Wikipedia, when Rudolf was a prince, Nostradamus prepared
Read More »All Sixes and Sevens
Six strings Strumming along Six stars In this song Six days to work hard And one to rest Six metals to reduce To the best A sixth sense Or six of the best Perfection Add one for Completion Six points to make Six cakes to bake Six maids a dancing Around a point Six gates to open Six planets around A golden Sun This song is nearly done Seventh heaven Seven seals Seven balanced Gently heals Six Seven On our way To that place heaven
Read More »The Art of Dreaming
For a while this morning I was researching Carlos Castenada. I had read his first four or five books as a teen and was thinking perhaps it was time to refresh my memory as regards their content. Pretty soon, I was reading about the man and how most likely, he was a fraud who rather than sitting in a small room with Don Juan was reading books about the subject at the University Library. I felt a rising sense of disappointment too as I read how he had retreated to a mansion with three female followers who gave up everything to live with and follow him and how he treated his family. All the classic symptoms of ego, sex and cult. Very disappointing. I read too a summary of the
Read More »The X Zone
On monday I will appear on the X Zone radio show as a guest of Rob McConnell. I’m really looking forward to it. The show has a huge audience but my interview will be between 2am and 3am my time which is a tad challenging. Welcome to The ‘X’ Zone…. a place where Fact is Fiction and Fiction is Reality where Canadian broadcaster, the host, creator and executive producer, Rob McConnell has been at the helm of this Internationally syndicated terrestrial radio and satellite programming since 1992. Topics that are discussed with those that Rob interviews from around the world include: 11:11, 2012, 666: The Number Of The Beast, 9/11, Alien Abduction, Aliens, Angels, Apocalypse, Astrology, Atlantis, The Bible, Chinese Astrology, Conspiracy Theories, Cosmology, Crop Circles, Cryptozoology, Crystals, Demonology, Dreams
Read More »So You Want to Kill Me?
I am surrounded by friends and people I hold dear both physically and also via social media. Like most other people, I feel quite secure in my imaginary cocoon that is my life. I never really give much thought to the fact that a large number of people want to kill me. Why these people would want to kill me is a puzzle. They don’t know me, they don’t interact with me, they don’t know my name or what I do with my life. They don’t know about the things I am good at, they don’t know if I am a good person or a bad person. They don’t care about my hopes, my fears, my loves or my passions. Rather, I am somehow a subject of hatred for them
Read More »European Football Trip
I awoke yesterday morning with just a twinge of rising excitement. Later in the day, we would be off on a 200km road trip to watch Hull City in their European debut. Sometimes, you do get the feeling that events conspire against you though on days like this one and yesterday turned out to be challenging….. At around noon, as we made final preparations to leave, the skies opened. It rained so hard, Brno streets flooded within 30 minutes. Really, I have never seen so much rain here in the 7-years I have lived in the Czech Republic. If it was raining like this in Zilina there would be no game at all we thought. A check of the internet held out hope. The rain was more or less north-south
Read More »The Big Adventure
I haven’t managed to take in a live Hull City game for several years unfortunately. The last game was an away game versus Leicester City that I decided on the spur of the moment to go to. At the time, my son Liam and I were visiting family in Hull and we were heading back down to London and the airport at Gatwick for Liam to fly home. We set off on the Saturday morning and in the back of my mind, I had a half a mind to jump off the M1 and go grab the game in Leicester. Of course, the M62 was a packed with traffic due to an accident and so by the time we got to the M1 I wasn’t at all sure that we
Read More »Alchemy and the Hexagram
During the 4 or 5 years that I struggled with the content of the book The Mystical Hexagram, which was all received in meditation, I understood that this material was important. I also understood that the approach, using the symbol of the hexagram to cast light on a variety of other magical systems and techniques would appeal to just a small number of people. In the end, I took the use of the symbol only so far and stopped short of where I had intended to go with it – which was to look at what it meant also in alchemical terms. The reasons for this is that I am not expert enough in many areas to trust what was coming through sufficiently to commit it to paper and the
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