Not Going to America Then…

December 10, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Because of the hip operation and ongoing recovery I have a fair bit of time on my hands. The media report that Trump has started a consultation process about the possible need for additional information on the ESTA system. {see below}.

There will of course be an added administrative burden.

I can be seen as critical about US policy and the goings on in Palestine.

Were I to consider going to the USA there is a very good chance that any application would be rejected as I am not sufficiently “fond” of things.

If the consultation approves the suggestions it will make any attempt to gain entry very unattractive. Not sure what that will do for the world cup and Olympics.

The data will fulfil a profiling requirement. Good luck to anyone who reads my blogs from the last five years. I am currently not living in a designated “shithole” country. This level of data is compatible with mid-level security vetting. It is a bit OTT.

The obvious conclusion is that I will not be going to the USA ever again…the mat outside the front door does not say “welcome”.

“Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
Oh tidings of comfort and joy”

What a great Christmas message from DC…

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Agency Information Collection Activities; Revision; Arrival and Departure Record (Form I-94) and Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA)

3. Mandatory Social Media:

In order to comply with the January 2025 Executive Order 14161 (Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats), CBP is adding social media as a mandatory data element for an ESTA application. The data element will require ESTA applicants to provide their social media from the last 5 years.

4. High Value Data Elements:

To comply with the January 2025 E.O. (14161), and the April 4, 2025, Memorandum Updating All Forms to Collect Baseline Biographic Data, CBP will add several “high value data fields” to the ESTA application, when feasible. This is in addition to the information already collected in the ESTA application.

The high value data fields include:

a. Telephone numbers used in the last five years;

b. Email addresses used in the last ten years;

c. IP addresses and metadata from electronically submitted photos;

d. Family member names (parents, spouse, siblings, children);

e. Family number telephone numbers used in the last five years;

f. Family member dates of birth;

g. Family member places of birth;

h. Family member residencies;

i. Biometrics—face, fingerprint, DNA, and iris;

j. Business telephone numbers used in the last five years;

k. Business email addresses used in the last ten years.

CBP invites the public to comment on both the previously approved emergency changes and the newly proposed changes.

Dream Follow Up – Alchemy

December 9, 2025December 9, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

All of these are extracted from English language Wikipedia. The theme of scripts and angels crops up herein. There are hints thereof in my recent dreams.

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John Dee (13 July 1527 – December 1608 or March 1609) was an English mathematician, astronomer, teacher, astrologer, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. As an antiquarian, he had one of the largest libraries in England at the time. As a political advisor, he advocated the foundation of English colonies in the New World to form a “British Empire”, a term he is credited with coining.

Early life

Dee was born in Tower Ward, London, to Rowland Dee, of Welsh descent, and Johanna, daughter of William Wild. His surname “Dee” is an anglicisation of Welsh du (black). His grandfather was Bedo Ddu of Nant-y-groes, Pilleth, Radnorshire; John retained his connection with the locality. His father Roland was a mercer and gentleman courtier to Henry VIII. Dee traced descent from Rhodri the Great, 9th century ruler of Gwynedd, and constructed a pedigree accordingly. His family had arrived in London with Henry Tudor’s coronation as Henry VII.

Dee attended Chelmsford Chantry School (now King Edward VI Grammar School) from 1535 to 1542. He entered St John’s College, Cambridge in November 1542, aged 15, graduating BA in 1545 or early 1546. His abilities recognised, he became an original fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge on its foundation by Henry VIII in 1546. At Trinity, he designed stage effects for a production of Aristophanes’ Peace. Using pulleys and mirrors, Dee was able to create the illusion of “the Scarabeus flying up to Jupiter’s palace” in a mechanical contrivance possibly based on rediscovered classical techniques. Dee would later claim this to be the source of his reputation as a magician. In the late 1540s and early 1550s, he travelled around Europe, studying at Louvain (1548) and Brussels and lecturing in Paris on Euclid.

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Edward Kelley or Kelly, also known as Edward Talbot ( 1 August 1555 – 1597/8), was an English Renaissance occultist and scryer. He is known for working with John Dee in his magical investigations. Besides the professed ability to see spirits or angels in a “shew-stone” or mirror, which John Dee so valued, Kelley also said that he possessed the secret of transmuting base metals into gold, a goal of alchemy, as well as the philosopher’s stone itself.

Legends began to surround Kelley shortly after his death. His flamboyant biography, his relationships with Queen Elizabeth I’s royal magus John Dee and Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, his repute of having great alchemical skill, and his claimed ability to communicate with angels have all led to his relative notoriety among historians.

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Angelical, the “Enochian” language

Kelley believed that angels communicated to him in a special language termed ‘Angelical’, subsequently called Enochian, which he then relayed to Dee. Some modern cryptographers argue that Kelley invented it (see for example the introduction to The Complete Enochian Dictionary by Donald Laycock). Some say that this was all a farce, but are not clear whether Dee was a victim or an accomplice. Because of this precedent, and of a dubious connection between the Voynich Manuscript and John Dee (through Roger Bacon), Kelley has been suspected of having fabricated that book too, to swindle Rudolf.

Kelley said that Angelical was dictated by angels who he saw and heard by means scrying in a crystal ball or mirror. He also described the angels as communicating by means of tapping out letters displayed in a rectangular tablet. The first third were tapped out with each Angelical word backwards; the following two-thirds with each word forwards. There are no significant errors or discrepancies in word usage between the first and following parts. The English translations were not tapped out but, according to Kelley, appeared on little strips of paper coming out of the angels’ mouths.

Dee considered the dictation of the Angelical material highly important for three reasons. First, Dee believed Angelical represented a documentable case of true glossolalia, thereby proving Kelley was actually speaking with angels and not from his imagination. Second, the angels communicated that their language was actually the original prototype of Hebrew: the language with which God spoke to Adam, and thus the first human word. Third, the Angelical material takes the form of a set of conjurations which would summon an extremely powerful set of angels who would reveal many secrets to those who sought them, especially the key to the philosopher’s stone, to god-like wisdom, and eternal life.

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Enochian (is an occult constructed language —said by its originators to have been received from angels—recorded in the private journals of John Dee and his colleague Edward Kelley in late 16th-century England. Kelley was a scryer who worked with Dee in his magical investigations. The language is integral to the practice of Enochian magic.

History

According to Tobias Churton in his text The Golden Builders, the concept of an Angelic or antediluvian language was common during Dee’s time. If one could speak the language of angels, it was believed one could directly interact with them.

Seeking contact and reported visions

In 1581, Dee mentioned in his personal journals that God had sent “good angels” to communicate directly with prophets. In 1582, Dee teamed up with the seer Edward Kelley, although Dee had used several other seers previously. With Kelley’s help as a scryer, Dee set out to establish lasting contact with the angels. Their work resulted, among other things, in the reception of Angelical, now more commonly known as Enochian.

The reception started on March 26, 1583, when Kelley reported visions in the crystal of a 21-lettered alphabet. A few days later, Kelley started receiving what became the book Liber Loagaeth (“Book [of] Speech from God”). The book consists of 49 great letter tables, or squares made of 49 by 49 letters. (However, each table has a front and a back side, making 98 tables of 49×49 letters altogether.) Dee and Kelley said the angels never translated the texts in this book.

Receiving the Angelic Keys

About a year later, at the court of King Stephen Báthory in Kraków, where both alchemists stayed for some time, another set of texts was reportedly received through Kelley. These texts comprise 48 poetic verses with English translations, which in Dee’s manuscripts are called Claves Angelicae, or Angelic Keys. Dee was apparently intending to use these Keys to open the “Gates of Understanding” represented by the magic squares in Liber Loagaeth:

I am therefore to instruct and inform you, according to your Doctrine delivered, which is contained in 49 Tables. In 49 voices, or callings: which are the Natural Keys to open those, not 49 but 48 (for one is not to be opened) Gates of Understanding, whereby you shall have knowledge to move every Gate…

— The angel Nalvage

But you shall understand that these 19 Calls are the Calls, or entrances into the knowledge of the mystical Tables. Every Table containing one whole leaf, whereunto you need no other circumstances.

— The angel Illemese

Phonology and writing system

The phonology of Enochian is “thoroughly English”, apart from difficult sequences such as bdrios, excolphabmartbh, longamphlg, lapch, etc.

Alphabet

The language was recorded primarily in Latin script. However, individual words written in Enochian script “appear sporadically throughout the manuscripts”. There are 21 letters in the script; one of those 21 may appear with or without a diacritic dot. Dee mapped these letters of the “Adamical alphabet” onto 22 of the letters of the English alphabet, treating U and V as positional variants (as was common at the time) and omitting the English letters J, K, and W. The Enochian script is written from right to left in John Dee’s diary. Different documents have slightly different forms of the script. The alphabet also shares many graphical similarities to a script, also attributed to the prophet Enoch, that appeared in the Voarchadumia Contra Alchimiam of Johannes Pantheus, a copy of which Dee is known to have owned.

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Liber Loagaeth

Liber Mysteriorum, Sextus et Sanctus

The Angelic Tables

revealed to John Dee and Edward Kelley

Edited by Joseph H. Peterson

INTRODUCTION

This sixth volume of John Dee’s Libri Mysteriorum consists entirely of a book “in the angelicall language” which was revealed in the scrying stone. Dee is told it is “a Book of Secrets and Key of this World”. Most of the book consists of tables of letters and numbers, each having forty-nine columns and forty-nine rows. Dee is told,

“God shall make clere whan it pleaseth him: & open all the secrets of wisdome whan he unlocketh. Therfore Seke not to know the mysteries of this boke, tyll the very howre that he shall call thee. For then shall his powre be so full amongst you, that the flesh shall not be perceyued, in respect of his great glory.” (April 18, 1583)

“Oute of this, shall be restored the holy bokes, which haue perished euen from the begynning, and from the first that liued And herein shalbe deciphred perfect truth from imperfect falshode, True religion from fals and damnable errors, With all Artes; which are propre to the use of man, the first and sanctified perfection: Which when it hath spred a While, THEN COMMETH THE ENDE.” (May 5, 1583)

I believe that the details of its production reveal a lot about its nature, so I will recap them briefly.

The bulk of the text from this book is taken from Sloane manuscript 3189. However that manuscript does not contain the complete text. The earliest parts of the book are recorded in Sloane manuscript 3188. They were revealed using an elaborate and time consuming method: Kelley read the name of each letter one by one, and Dee wrote them down. Later, they were written out in Roman letters. Kelley was temporarily endowed with a mystical understanding of the book for a time, and was able to give notes on pronunciation and translate some words and phrases. Apparently part of the problem with this method was that Kelley had not memorized the alphabet (for which he and Dee were chided by the angels) and presumably had to refer elsewhere for the names. This method is later abridged, and Kelley simply read the names (or Roman equivalents) and Dee wrote them down in Roman letters, thus omitting the names of each letter. This method was also too cumbersome, and in the end Kelley wrote the rest down himself resulting in Sloane Ms. 3189.

An early copy of this ms. can be found in Sloane Ms. 2599, possibly by Elias Ashmole.

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My commentary.

The notion of angelic scripts and language perhaps has a Tibetan cousin in dakini script. The so-called occult language of Senzar or Sensar is said to be ideogrammatic and not letter based. A brief look at a proto-Hebrew today shows a more ideograph like formation. At some stage language evolves(d) from picture or image into scripts. The early occultists like Crowley were fascinated by Hebrew script and Jewish Kabbalah. It always felt a bit cul-de-sac to me. They got all excited by the lack of vowels. The sound of the name of God was a big deal.

The wishful thinking for a Hitchhiker’s guide to life the universe and everything was clearly extant in the late 16^th century. I speculate with confidence that the human mind would be unable to fully encompass such knowledge. It would be beyond assimilation. Yet people are always tempted by the promise of secrets, secret advantage. People have to make a living somehow. The “pitch” of talking with angels could not be disproved. Though why any angel would want to talk to geezers like Dee and Kelley is not explained.

Immortality in a puss filled world with life of often short duration seems an attractive notion. The Philosopher’s stone a powerful temptation. Possibly a good scam to put bread and wine on the table. In a world not renown for personal hygiene and Roman plumbing one needs some hope.

My own experience of looking into these things {before} is that they are like a dog chasing its tail. The answer, if there is one, is not intellectual nor will it arise from decoding letters and numbers. No matter how “Bletchley Park” one might be.

My yardstick is boredom. If something has an interesting hint, a whiff of something exciting, I am rarely bored by it. However if it is boring, I rapidly lose interest. The boredom-o-meter is an intuitional thing. It shows that there is no promise, no feeling of promise.

If one is underground a fresh breeze may indicate a way out of a cave.

Complexity is boring, though it may seem clever. It is often a mind-trap. Complexity stokes the embers of ego.

Anyway…I have front loaded some more stuff into waking consciousness. We shall see if there are any more dreams…

Provenance Lineage and Branding

December 9, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

If for example you had a couple of season’s playing premiership football at Manchester City recently, it would be a good thing to put on your CV. There would be an automatic few brownie points added mentally. Your power by affiliation to a “top” team gives kudos. People would not imagine you, a priori, a shite player. Likewise if you studied at a pukka university and did research in the group of a Nobel Prize winner, people might imagine you clever, good and perhaps competent. The CV then gives some notion of provenance. Where did you learn your trade and who taught it you? The quality of teaching may be far higher at a lower kudos university but human mind likes bragging rights. An Imperial College graduate commands top whack salary and employment in the UK. In France because of the lack of Harry Potter affiliation it is not such a big deal.

Put simply this is a form of reputational prejudice. Affiliation to brand can be paid for and claimed. Reputation, though often relied upon, is no guarantee.

I personally have interacted with an academic lineage and a martial arts lineage. Studying at a groovy place with high reputation did not make me any better. In terms of the martial arts lineage it did convey a connection with a real and lethal martial tradition. It is/was not in the ring kick boxing nor caged MMA. When the sensei says, en passant, that it was not unusual in the 1960s and 1970s for people to still die during training, or that they had undertaken a 100 man kumite, it is a different ballgame. In many senses here, the fewer words, the less show and less overt marketing the more “real” the tradition. Action speaks louder than words and need not be advertised and sold. For a westerner to be given the keys to a “Ryu” hundreds of years old, is a high honour and a mark of respect. I know that I only saw maybe 5% of what that sensei was capable of even though I was close to dan grade. I have by experience respect of the profound depth of what a direct transmission lineage might hold; I did not see it fully but I sure as hell sensed it. There was a lineage of marked lethality over and above regular combat skills. Perhaps of limited and specialised use these days.

Within a genuine lineage there can be found knowledge and skill beyond the ordinary and mundane. The preservation of this can become an obsession and not all elements are “time of man” appropriate. The arcane knowledge is highly specialised and perhaps incredible, unbelievable to modern “scientific man”. If you have been choked out and revived on the judo mat and had an injury healed by Mr Miyagi “hands on” you may have a little more respect and less of a tendency to scoff. We do not regularly have the time for complex and extensive Vajrayana rituals in our 21^st century day to day. This does not mean they have no value. They do. Though the number of skilled practitioners of such things will wane. Everything needs some kind of modernisation. Sparsity of ritual can in fact enhance the intent and power thereof.

Because of the Western obsession with advertising PR and branding, those who might be called “spiritual” practitioners have been persuaded that they need jazzy web sites and recounting of lineage back to the founding fathers. Go Daddy may even have a “guru” template to get you started. In this respect claimed Zen lineages are core to the initial marketing effort. Everyone seeking a connection back to the twirling of a flower on vulture peak. Much like the kings of England sought a bloodline back to claim their divine right to the throne. Lineage is good marketing and appeals to some would be punters / clients / devotees.

However interacting with a true lineage carries with it something extra, not bargained for. If you are susceptible and open, the thought forms and aged collected intent of the lineage has an added “dimension”. The thought forms, built by mind after mind, transmitted between minds, have a power far in excess of the face value. If you are a knob or a bellend, you will be unable to receive and/or assimilate. To put it in another way, somehow the lineage itself discerns who is a worthy recipient.

It is unfortunate sign of our times that unless the advertising or PR aligns with expectation we do not “buy” or trust. We have become prejudiced to a certain form of inane packaging. There is often a ginger and a brown person in the advert. Sometimes this is saccharin woke. Not all advice is good advice. People are forever chasing a buck and may try to persuade you otherwise.

Being of a certain age I have come up with a new service. I will offer end of life insurance to pay for it {no medical questions}, a no fuss cremation plan, the construction and positioning of a bench in a country location with your name plaque, and a vetted agent to take your ashes on a SAGA Norwegian fjord cruise there to scatter them on a wind of your choosing.

I think that there is mileage in this…the trouble is I have nor provenance or lineage for so doing. I am pretty sure that I could come up with a catchy brand and use a template design web site which I can pay to have SEO optimised.

“Blowing in the Wind” our bespoke end of life package for the discerning over 60s…

Through Female Eyes – Ancient Hebrew – Operating Theatre – Horses Dream 09-12-2025

December 9, 2025December 9, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Last night’s dream. For me it is very unusual in that I am seeing a fair part of the dream through the eyes of a woman. The dream is in two parts, before and after a TV/snack break around 4:30 AM.

The dream starts with the visual field filled with a “word-cloud” of letters in black ink on a white background. The background looks a bit like a piece of cloth or parchment, frayed a little. But it is entirely mental, a mind projection. The letters are Latin-roman and the letter-word-cloud is in English, by way of a codex or very loose cypher or key.

I am aware that this is not my body and that I am female in it. I can feel long female plaited hair and the overarching perfume is female. The body is in good nick and pain free. The mind is academic and is problem solving. It is asleep and dreaming. The difference in smell is marked.

The word-cloud changes to a slightly more yellowed background. Here the text has some similarities to modern Hebrew only is in a much less brutal type face. The text is handwritten with an italic nib and there are a lot of dots and “commas” where a superscript might be. These are diacritical marks. The word cloud comes in several different batches and I know these to be segments of text. The text feels archaic and in the dream I wonder if she is reading Aramaic. She is familiar with the text I am not. It is old.

{On waking a quick Google search suggests that the text is archaic or ancient Hebrew. The level of confidence for this designation is around 70-80% by eye.} I get up for a “midnight snack” and to watch some shit TV to help me go back to sleep instead of tossing and turning.

Back in bed I drift off. I am at first looking up from an operating table at people in light blue medical gowns standing around me. There is an adjustable medical light. The men and women in theatre are masked and busy. One of the surgeons has a binocular headpiece with microscope objectives. He is examining a tool closely. It is modern day.

I am now above the operating table looking down. I can see that it is not the operating theatre I was in. I have a clear pre-operative recollection of that. I am seeing through the eyes of the woman again. She is having abdominal surgery of some kind. The sense is that the theatre is top whack high-end private medicine and it feels East coast USA money, lots of money. I am watching the procedure with a critical eye implying that the woman has some medical training.

I am now sat with the woman in a holiday “rental” near the sea and above some green grassed cliffs looking down on deserted beaches. I am making her breakfast. We are getting ready to leave. We are tidying up. Someone from the landlord comes and says that we need not do that. But I say that it is impeccable to leave a place more tidy than when found.

Before we go we go for a ride on the cliff tops. We are sharing a truly huge thorough bread dark brown horse with her in front, and me behind. We pause on a raised hillock. In the paddock below there are horses at gallop. They are very high quality. There is a man on one horse and a woman on another. They are a couple. He has the air of command. There are a several free horses being exercised and some horses with grooms following up the rear. The man pulls up and stops. He raises his hand and the free horses lie down and roll in the grass. He raises his hand again and they get up. This is his demonstration of power. They all gallop off. He waves at the woman with me who is possibly his daughter. He winks at her and then gallops off. There is some craic between them to which I am not party. They are “aristocratic” or quasi. It starts to rain and we head back to the lodge.

The dream ends.

“Spiritual” Journeys

December 7, 2025December 7, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have used inverted commas quotation mark here because I struggle a little with how words have in a sense become tainted by multiple usage and being bandied about as PR. Spiritual as a word has had its impact and meaning downgraded to the point of near meaninglessness.

I am going to attempt to put into words something which I have hesitated to do. It is close to impossible. This cannot be undertaken without emphasising just how important a few years of my childhood were in my development, in this life. One constellation in particular left its mark deep in my psyche.

–

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It was by its light during an English language common entrance exam that I foresaw events near two and a half decades later. It was the harbinger and the key of a volte face in life. I left the harbour alone in my coracle adrift upon the Southern ocean lit by its solace. I left Cape Town after being burned on table mountain.

Later I had another foreboding which was also to find consummation over a similar time delay. Each of these were pivotal. That foreboding prevented me making a UCAS university choice against the advice of my school teachers.

When I was young and in an English boarding school as an expat child I got to read the lessons and the prayers in church. While the others sat with parents. It was like a duck to water that I took to the lectern and the prayer “chair” deep in the nave. There I found St Francis of Assisi.

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« Seigneur, faites de moi un instrument de votre paix.
Là où il y a de la haine, que je mette l’amour. »

« C’est en pardonnant qu’on est pardonné,
c’est en mourant qu’on ressuscite à l’éternelle vie. »

–

This man was in tune with the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal. His words touched.

Unfortunately those with the skill of a chameleon can adopt any mask, any direction, any character they choose. Believe me I learned how to blend. And in blending one loses authentic essence.

At the end of my schooling I took general studies courses in Buddhism, cooking and Rastafarianism. Ever Jah, ever loving, ever faithful. Rastafari. I read all that I could on witchcraft and alchemy. I made “friends” with the librarian in our town.

The Buddhism was presented in an intellectual descriptive manner in which the various fetters were enumerated for debate. Although I understood, the manner was for me boring and definitional. I sensed beyond that which was being professed. It was during intense meditation sat in seiza at karate that I learned that I had in fact been meditating all of my childhood. I used to sit and observe. I used to wait. I was touched directly by the dreamtime out in the shimmering bush of western Queensland. The aboriginal pointing stick had cleaved something open.

And then when I went to university I mostly forgot. By the time I was doing my Ph.D. research I figured that I had found something I was good at. So maybe this was the future. I enjoyed “pissing about with lasers”. I was to an extent, life and soul of the party. It was only in the early nineties that I started to withdraw, as if driven by a deeper current, out into the hills, the mountains and the countryside. It set up a kind of imbalance. On the one hand was a “normal” life and career. On the other there was silence and quiet. My reading was more intellectual philosophy, science and philosophy of science. I noted that despite mundane academic achievement many of “the greats” struggled with non-salary paying bigger questions.

I was offered a choice. Fort Collins Colorado or Bern Switzerland. One of those would have brought me quicker into contact with things “spiritual” than the other. The Swiss francs were certain, so I saw the Berner Oberland and learned painfully of “qualität”. Something which I tried thenceforth to express.

In the mid nineties at the place of my prior foreboding I was brought to my knees. Despite writing excellent research proposals I was stymied and unfunded. A grudge held by a “competing” senior academic could kill a proposal with a mere word. I had a breakdown. The answer to life the universe and everything could no longer be found in the laws of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. It seemed there was more. It was around then that my ambition faded and the picture of a life academic dimmed. I began to search in earnest. I opened myself up wide. Again I largely forgot and tried to rebuild a life after breakdown. For some unknown reason money for research and start-up came more easily. I was “successful” for a while.

In the very early part of this century I was tested by power. I had a taste of it and did not abuse. Like Galadriel I refused the ring and was no longer sorely tempted thereby. It was around this time that a series of what might be called micro-renunciations began. In which step-wise I renounced or was forced to renounce the accoutrements of normal life. Each one was more difficult and profound than the last. Slowly life was stripped of all that made it busy and hectic. Until in the middle of 2006 I renounced all and walked off into the metaphorical “wilderness”. Dramatic as that sounds, at face value it looked simple, at core it cleaved and parted, severed and up-ended.

I did not become a wandering mendicant with charnel grounds for abode nor skull cup for beverage. Though adrift I most certainly was. I had already learned as a child, the nature of impermanence. Strangely without accoutrement life did not cease, the world did not implode, nor did it stop.

When you are thrust from an Outlook calendar ruled life, with hours dissected into segments, with meetings set for you, with each action seemingly accountable, into nothing. The meaning of time changes in an unalterable and irrevocable way. It is no longer a spreadsheet thing. The boxes, the rice paper walls of the day, dissolve.

At end of 2008 I left the map so to speak. I began a series of meditations which went beyond. There was nothing, despite my research skill, which I could find written. These “meditations” continued in the UK in houses close to civilisation yet separate in the English countryside. I can say that the rigor of these was high and they continued for many years. In around 2010-11 I began having Buddhist dreams.

In the early part of the century whilst still teaching physical chemistry I had a series of waking visions in which I had “om mane padme hum” tattooed on my forearms in Sanskrit and with me in monastic robes. These visions were sufficiently powerful to be present whilst I was lecturing Chemical Reaction Kinetics to undergraduates in South Kensington. It was around then that I got to express my compassion for others, to care for them.

Overlaid on a “Toltec” background was a distinctly Buddhist vibe.

All the while I had a seemingly normal life as a married man doing for quite a while “A” level science private tutoring. The outer world and the inner world differed and markedly so.

To me as a member of the elephant dreaming class there is no problem with the scholastic wisdom teachings of Siddartha and the more dramatic Toltec corpus. The latter is a guide, when viewed with clarity, to the navigation of glamour and illusion. There is probably only one truth expressed via many different approaches. The Tower of Babel has a lot to answer for…

This is probably enough for today…

1747 – Dream Follow Up

December 6, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

The date mentioned in the dream the other day was 1747.

Typing 1747 into Google started this thread…..

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Asie

12 mars, Tibet : mort du général Pholané ; son fils Gyurme Namgyal lui succède à la tête du gouvernement tibétain (fin en 1750). Il complote avec les Dzoungars contre l’occupant chinois.

9 juin : Momozono succède à Sakuramachi comme empereur du Japon (fin en 1762).

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From a Treasury of Lives

ཕོ་ལྷ་ནས་བསོད་ནམས་སྟོབས་རྒྱས།

Polhane Sonam Tobgye

b.1689 – d.1747

Polhane Sonam Tobgye (pho lha nas bsod nams stobs rgyas) was born on an auspicious day in the autumn of 1689. His mother Dolma Butri (sgrol ma bu khrid) was the daughter of a well-known artist, and his father Pema Gyelpo (padma rgyal po) was a government official who served variously as a soldier and civil official. While little is known of the extended history of Polhane’s family, his namesake estate—Drum Polha (‘brum pho lha), near Gyantse (rgyal rtse)—was a gift for his grandfather’s service to the Fifth Dalai Lama (ta la’i bla ma 05, 1617–1682) during a rebellion of Tsangpa officials in the late 1650s.

Before his birth, a local lama instructed the boy’s parents to call him Gonkyab Dorje (mgon skyabs rdo rje) and declared him the reincarnation of Ganden Tsewang (dga’ ldan tshe dbang), a recently deceased Mongol war hero and erstwhile monk at Tashilhunpo Monastery (bkra shis lhun po). This identification was affirmed in auspicious meetings with the Fifth Paṇchen Lama, Lobzang Yeshe (paN chen 05 blo bzang ye shes, 1663–1737) and Desi Sanggye Gyatso (sde srid sangs rgyas rgya mtsho, 1653–1705).

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Sonam Tobgye also left a mark on Tibet as a patron of religious institutions. Aside from the aforementioned protection of Nyingma institutions, he endowed and restored monasteries all around central and western Tibet, including Ganden (dga’ ldan), Sera (se ra), and Drepung (‘bras spungs), Tashilhunpo, Nartang (snar thang), Reting (rwa sgreng), and many smaller institutions in his home region of Upper Nyang (myang stod). From 1729 onward he increased the scale of the Great Prayer Festival (smon lam chen mo) in terms of alms, food offerings, and overall attendance.

Polhane sponsored the production of the first printed canon in central Tibet, the Nartang Kangyur, published in 1730–32, and Tengyur, in 1741–42. He also underwrote the Golden Manuscript Tengyur (gser bris ma), an ornate 225 volumes composed entirely in golden ink, which remains in Ganden Monastery to this day. These projects were far from economical and speak to the king’s desire to outdo his predecessors in the eyes of the clergy. His biography emphasizes that neither Lhazang Khan, Taktsepa, nor Kangchenne were able to complete the Kangyur, a project initiated under the Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (tA la’i bla ma 06 tshangs dbyangs rgya mtsho, 1683–1706). Such sponsorship of Buddhist foundational material was key to his performance as king of Buddhist Tibet; in practical terms, reproducing the scriptures was a necessary step in his obligation to his Buddhist subjects.

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Shortly after the Prayer Festival of 1747, a boil appeared on the king’s neck, and after a short bout with illness, he passed away. Several years later, his remains were laid to rest in a reliquary in Ganden Chokhor Ling Monastery (dga’ ldan chos ‘khor gling) in the Yarlung Valley. His presence remains in Lhasa as well, where an unassuming maṇi wheel (bar skor ma Ni lha khang) he sponsored as a young official has been rebuilt on the Barkhor following its destruction in the Cultural Revolution, standing directly between the former ambans’ office in the Tromsikhang (khrom gzigs khang), the Nangtseshar, or Lhasa City Court (snang rtse shar/shag), and the Jokhang; a fitting locale for this larger-than-life diplomat, administrator, and patron.

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J. Arya Moallem is a PhD candidate in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University. His dissertation research focuses on the life and times of Miwang Polhane Sonam Tobgye, and works to situate his particular mode of lay kingship within Qing, Inner Asian, and Early Modern contexts.

Published March 2022

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The Tengyur or Tanjur or Bstan-’gyur (Tibetan: “Translation of Teachings”) is the collected commentaries by great buddhist masters on Buddha Shakyamuni’s teachings. The Tengyur is included in the Tibetan Buddhist Canon, which consists of all of Buddha Shakyamuni’s teachings together with the commentaries on the Buddha’s teachings. The Canon also includes the Kangyur, which is repository of the Buddha’s recorded teachings, placed before the Tengyur in the Canon.

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Before today I do not recollect hearing the word Tengyur

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate

December 5, 2025December 5, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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Le rasoir d’Ockham ou rasoir d’Occam est un principe de raisonnement philosophique entrant dans les concepts de rationalisme et de nominalisme. Le terme vient de « raser » qui, en philosophie, signifie « éliminer des explications non nécessaires d’un phénomène » et du philosophe du XIVe siècle Guillaume d’Ockham.

Également appelé principe de simplicité, principe d’économie ou principe de parcimonie (en latin « lex parsimoniae »), il dispose d’une ancienne formulation :

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate

(les multiples ne doivent pas être utilisés sans nécessité)

Dans le langage courant, le rasoir d’Ockham pourrait s’exprimer par les phrases : « L’explication la plus simple est généralement la bonne », ou : « Pourquoi faire compliqué quand on peut faire simple ? » Une formulation plus moderne est que « les hypothèses suffisantes les plus simples doivent être préférées (il faut et il suffit) ». C’est un des principes heuristiques fondamentaux en science, mais ce n’est ni un principe de départ ni un résultat scientifique.

Le principe fait appel à une simplicité en termes de nombre d’entités, de concepts ou d’hypothèses utilisés, et non en termes de complexité de leur combinaison, les deux se contredisant généralement : si vous avez une explication d’un phénomène par la combinaison de deux causes séparées, le principe incite à rechercher une cause unique plus profonde qui serait à l’origine des causes préalablement postulées, ce qui donnera finalement, en cas de succès, une construction plus complexe mais avec un nombre plus réduit d’hypothèses.

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One of the interesting thoughts for me which pertains slightly to this blog relates to finding an internally consistent and comprehensive explanation as to the nature of the dreams I have had and which are archived in this blog. I would genuinely be interested to hear any explanation from the psychology / psychiatry profession which attempts to explain the scope of them. This specifically so given my prior training as a scientist and current life context as a relatively socially isolated retired person.

Those dreams which appear to point at previous incarnations can be discounted as merely dreams. There is no need to invoke the hypothesis of reincarnation. But saying things are just dreams is a bit of a handwaving dismissal. It is not entirely satisfactory.

Invocation of the single hypothesis of reincarnation renders explanation easier in context and does not require any complicated theorising as to just why or how come I dream about, inter alia, Buddhist themed, dreams. Inherent in this is a difficulty because it suggests that there needs to be some mechanism of transfer of memory between different lives, different incarnations. It raises the question as to what exactly is the nature of the “thing” which not only reincarnates but which is able to carry memory and recollection in the absence of a biological body. The neuroscientist is likely to prefer a brain and perhaps evolving synaptic scaffold construct to explain memory. Such a thing cannot exist beyond the soft wet matter of living humanity. There is no biological or biochemical hypothesis which can account for the notion of memory transfer between lives. The science fiction writer or scientifically inarticulate new-ager might say, “it is all in the DNA”. If it were, it is not facile to explain how “Buddhist DNA” found its way to a small valley in the foothills of Snowdon. Yes my mother when tanned could pass for an Indian especially if she wore a bindi. But the DNA explanation does not really wash. My dad was ginger.

The easiest explanation is to blame an overactive imagination on my part which somehow breaks though during sleep. Perhaps there is a part of my deep sub-conscious which wants to be “special” and thereby invents some new DSM-5 type nocturnal mental disorder, the classification of which could be career enhancing for some psychologist or other. I have a form of delusional psychopathy which may or may not be common. After all who in their right mind would make dreams like mine public? Best kept secret to avoid public gaze. We can come up with the Whacko McNutjob persona.

The fact of the dreams and their recall are, at least to me, real. My speculation is that they are not “common or garden”.

This does not require the invocation of significance. I am just some bloke who happens to dream a lot. No biggie…

Provided that they are not significant there is no wider problem or issue.

If however we invoke, even tentatively, a putative wider significance, a gamut of implications might surface. A similarity to mystical vision and quasi-religious imagery can be drawn. In some circles that is significant in terms of context and perhaps faith. The follow on question might be, “why does someone who, was for a short while, deep in the UK based science community have such phenomena?”. This community being the self-assigned debunker of myths and pseudoscience. “Bah!!”

One could say that weird stuff happens, end of story. It / he is just an anomaly.

The easiest hypothesis is that the hundreds of dreams archived here are all “just some shit that I made up”. The follow on to this is that I must therefore have at least some imagination and persistent inventiveness. One could counter with the deep philosophical argument, “you just can’t make shit like this up!” I am not sure as to what the motive might be for this inventiveness though others could speculate freely. Maybe I am simply an attention seeker. Maybe it is all some big game to make people question the extent and wider applicability of their self-diagnosed omniscience.

For me it is just habit. If I have a dream which I can recall and am lucid in, when I get up of a morning, I type it up in Word. I sometimes make a short note on a post it before typing. There are close to 100 dreams in 2025.

I personally have no strong need to pick an explanation and have that as a definite. A part of the art of dreaming is to enjoy the unknown and the partially or poorly explained.

I can see multiple implications which will almost certainly never manifest. Life circumstance does not support these weekly possible trajectories. There is nothing I can do about it.

I could say something groovy…

The coalescence of the dreaming onto and into the physical plane is not easy. Surprisingly little, though nascent in dreaming, makes it through into the “agreed” and “shared” physical plane realties.

He is just a feckless dreamer, head in the clouds…

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Each of us make our own versions of reality not all of which are entirely apt.

Socks on – no crutches…

December 5, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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It’s a Mystery

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Somewhere in the distance

Hidden from view

Suspended in the atmosphere

Waiting to come through

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Toyah

Written by: KEITH HALE

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This morning a little after 7 AM I did something that I have not been able to do for many months, I put both my socks on, all by myself. The socks are so-called diabetic socks which means that the elastic is not overly tight. The socks are designed to limit need for amputation and are loose. But I managed it with little or no drama.

Yesterday afternoon less than two weeks after surgery I was walking up and down our living room without any crutches whatsoever. I probably did some 40 metres without any crutch. Now I have to be careful to not learn an accentuated limp.

Not bad for two weeks…everyone seems mildly surprised at just how quickly progress is being made. If you would have asked me to bet on it, walking in two weeks, I would not have made a significant wager.

Long may it continue.

Last night I had a dream with a couple of people from my undergraduate chemistry cohort in. The dream also referred to a very specific date and cross referenced another dream also with a specific date. Why I have eighteenth century dates in dreams has no obvious explanation. It is a bit of a mystery perhaps related to the time-walker thread…

During the night the smoke detector started to beep. I can say that taking a smoke detector off from high on the wall when perched on a spiral staircase and unplugging the battery whilst recovering from hip surgery mildly trolleyed due to codeine is not ideal. New battery now fitted and smoke detector is back in place.

Anyway the guys from the hunt are here and hopefully they will deal with the wild boar situation…

Adopting the Awakening Mind

December 4, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

For whatever reason I am back with Śāntideva today…

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Yes really, wild boars…

December 4, 2025December 4, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Last night and the night before we have been visited by one or more wild boars. They are a bit of a pest around here. They have made a mess in two large patches of the lawn which will cost hundreds to repair. There is nothing that I can do about it now being incapacitated. The wildlife has already been more present in the garden as I/we have been spending less time there due to the arthritis. They are reclaiming it.

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We have called the local Mairie and members of the “hunt” are due to visit during the day. It is one of those things which you do not need, wild boars messing up the lawn. Hopefully the hunt geezers will have some suggestions. I cannot shift our heavy gate at the moment. Maybe there is some other way of scaring them off. Maybe piggie is still on the premises.

Something needs done in case the little buggers come back tonight…

If they manage to get it, it could add to the Christmas festivities…