Flowing Downhill?

Yesterday, I watered some flowers in a wooden bucket out back. I watched as the water came out of the bottom of the bucket and began to accumulate and then migrate a path across the concrete flowing downhill. It made me wonder if life isn’t like that. We think that we make decisions about everything from what we will have for breakfast to who to marry. Each decision dictates a pathway and we become the product of our decisions over time. I am now who I am because I made a decision to go to Aston instead of Sheffield University, for example. But do we make hard decisions or do we in reality chose the easiest pathway – going downhill if you like? Do we wait to make decisions until

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A Pain in the Neck

Today, I woke up with a pain in my neck and upper back which rapidly became a headache to boot. I wish there were chiropractors in the Czech Republic but there are not so I make do with a heat patch and two headache tablets. I know that the heat patch will probably do the trick and that the headache pills will not. It’s bizarre really but I had this problem for about 15-years now and it must be related to the way I have slept. My chiropractor in The Woodlands could fix it with a quick twist of the neck! He always told me I had knocked a vertebrae out of alignment high up in my neck most likely by hanging my head off of the back of the

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Fate, Destiny and Free Will

The Vengeful Fates cackle While spinning their eternal web Objective achieved The plot in place They watch and wait From The Eagle’s Saga – A poem from Weird Tales: Otherworld Poetry by Dr. G. Michael Vasey, 2006 Free will. We all very much like to believe that we have freedom of choice. That we have the power to make the decisions in our lives. Indeed, those decisions are our life as they weave the patterns, twists and turns of our existence. But do we? Hermes, when asked about the nature of ordinary man – that is, of man that had not entered the stream of development that leads to initiation – he said that such a man or woman was merely a ‘procession of fate’. from The Zelator by Mark

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It’s In The Silence

It’s in the Silence So they say The loudness of the quiet day It’s in the Darkness I’ve heard said The brightness shining in my head It’s in the Void I was told And followed deep to behold It’s in the wind So it reads Not in your dry and powdered creeds It’s deep inside I know this You are the sought after bliss Its where you least expect to find it Hidden in plain sight Ears to hear and eyes to see Inside you will find the light

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The Cycle of Life

At this time of the year I am struck by the colours of spring. The lush greens of the grass and trees with new leaves and then the dustings of purple, yellow, pink, and white of wild flowers and of the blossoms. It is as if the world has been created anew and it is wonderous. Everything is in its youth or infancy in the cycle of the year. The vitality and the strength of the life force is there and is both plain to be seen but can also be felt. The days of course, are getting longer and more light-filled and the air is warmer. Spring has sprung. As I think about the endless cycle of birth and death – the orouboros of life – the eternal return,

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Imagining

Sometimes, in a meditative state, I have some impressions about imagination. I can barely explain in words what these are except to say that I get the strongest idea that if I could truly imagine something as really there, it would be and that this is how everything works. What is even stranger is that I often have a memory of being very young and being able to do this. I haven’t explained very well. I can’t. It is very frustrating though because it is a knowledge and a memory and then it’s gone again. It’s leaving is tinged with the sadness of knowing that I knew this/know this/can do this/did do this but have now forgotten how. I have also experienced this same sense of loss on waking up

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Why We All Need to Look Up….

Living and working in a city like Prague has its benefits and one of them is simply seeing the sights on a daily basis. I work just off the main square in Prague 1 and I commute from the Beautiful Hanspaulkou area of Prague 6. My journey is partly by bus, partly by Metro and partly on foot. It is the latter bit I like best as I can observe the architecture and trip over the tourists! You just have to remind yourself to keep looking up or else you miss it all. What do I mean by ‘look up’? Well, most of us walk along staring at the floor probably thinking, worrying or planning our day. We are self-absorbed and living in our own minds walking as if on

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Bardon’s Mirrors

Recently, I decided to start working the exercises in Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics. I am starting at the very beginning in which one of the exercises is to essentially spend a lot of time noting all of your weaknesses and faults. These are then matched to one of the four elements and also to a level of seriousness of fault. One then repeats that for positive qualities and these become Magical Mirrors of the Soul. Let me tell you its an interesting exercise. At first, its problematic to come up with qualities actually either negative or positive but after a while and, through indirect inquiry of others, you start to get pretty good at it and my lists are prolific already (and I am not done yet!). I’m afraid I

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Waking From The Great Sleep

Looking around, I think that most people are totally unaware of what and who they truly are. Occultists have referred to this as ‘sleeping’. The vast majority of us are sleeping through life pursuing some materialistic dream like children distracted by shiny new toys. I can feel myself being sucked in to this quite often now that I am aware of it. Glued to the TV, or lusting after a new and faster sports car, our attention gets sharply focused on the outer world around us and that inner voice that speaks quietly to us gets drowned out by the noise of the world. WE Butler, a famous occultist and founder of the Servants of the Light, discusses this at great length in his lectures to the Ibis society*. The

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