Groups Souls – Dalai Lama – Cloying Awareness – Exquisite Sculpture – Dream 01-11-2025

Here are last night’s dreaming snippets. Sometimes when I need a “cheer me up” the dreaming provides.

The dream opens at a sea-side town-village. It is like Tenby or Tobermory with pastel coloured brightly painted houses.

I am with my group of souls or beings. The place could also be Denmark or Scandinavia. It is impeccably tidy and ordered. The light is light and bright without blinding. We are young in age, children and dressed in colourful togas. We often incarnate together en masse. We have known each other for aeons. This is the group to which I belong. We are beings made out of light each of their own colour witnessed by toga and not skin. There is a sense of primordial innocence to us. We are going in and out of each other’s houses enjoying the fluffy clouds which surround us.

I awake for a loo break a little after 4 AM.

As I drift off I have a strong mental image of H.H. Dalai Lama who fills the entire perceptual field. I sense he is deep in contemplation and sit there in that state with him silently for a length of time about 15 earth minutes. It seems much longer. We are happy and serene in contemplation together. A part of that visual remains as I type now.

I fade out and into sleep.

Sat at a pavement café in central London is a man of roughly my own age whom I had acquaintance of. He has bought me a glass of Coke with ice lemon and a straw. He is sat at a table there. He gestures for me to sit down with him. I cannot. I say that I have nothing personally to resolve with him, nothing to solve. I cannot be near his cloying preserving awareness. It is heavy and seeks to enfold and keep things the same. His awareness is like a cloying quagmire, it is old, ancient, dark and borderline evil. He gestures for me to sit again. I walk past. I have nothing to solve.

I walk off into a part of London I do not recognize. It is early morning, a little after dawn and the restaurateurs and bar owners are clearing up and setting up. It is warm maybe summer. The doors are open. I walk into one pub and put the Coke down on the bar counter. The owner is polishing the bar and tables and is happy to take the Coke. I admire the stained glass windows and period doors. I walk through into the next door pub which he also owns and out of the door back into the street.

I now come upon an Italian style restaurant which has a large ornate orangery-greenhouse attached. The manageress is there in her black and whites with a low apron on. She is organising tables in the orangery. The windows of the building are leaded in, like cathedral windows. The clear uncoloured glass is warped by the flow of age. The lead is painted crimson red. The overall effect is magnificent with interesting patterns of light refracted on the floor. I say to her that the light is truly wonderful. She concurs. She has a clipped English upper class accent. She say that it a pity that “he” the owner keeps rejigging the tables  because she likes the feel of Sicilian palace which it currently has. There are plentiful succulent plants. She is chuffed that I like “her” orangery so very much. It is her labour of love which she does not need to do. She suggests that I should visit the garden out back.

I follow her advice and enter a light walled garden with water features and wall alcoves with plants. In the centre is an exquisite sculpture / water feature. She says that it is OK for me and me alone to climb it. The stairway to the feature is made out of carved open books. The books are carved out of what looks like pewter, there is relief of binding and pages. They are joined together by a single metal rod/rail. Each book is by way of a step. In some the page writing is etched in relief. They are a testament to learning and library. The languages of the books are diverse. The staircase mounts a large globe of the Earth which has all the continents and oceans cut to scale. The globe is several times my size. I climb the “ladder”. Out of the North Pole a drinking fountain flows. Its flow is lightly pulsing and the water trickles downs wetting every side of the world. The water is collected in a fish pond in which the globe sits. The ladder passes over the pond. In the pond are ornamental koi carp. The manageress encourages me up and to taste the water. I do and the water is cool and refreshing nectar like in quality. Some of it runs down onto my white linen shirt. The morning light illuminates the garden and orangery.

The dream ends.

Dreaming Colour – Shaman – nagal Woman – Light – Dream 13-09-2025

Here is this morning’s sequence.

Around 6:15 AM back from the bathroom I lay in bed. I was unsure if I should get up or if I would go back to sleep. So I began a raja yoga thought form meditation building a form and a triangulation. I was having difficulty holding the form which is unusual. I started to notice breakthrough of dreaming colour of a passive kind. I decided to follow the cue and absorbed myself into the dreaming colour.

I am to explore. The visual field fills with a light blue and indigo blue light nascent and forming like clouds in time lapse. The colour assumes shapes similar to a Mandelbrot set though much more poorly defined. It is fractal. The visual field is breathing and transforming. The light is struggling against an inflowing darkness a kind of black ink diffusing into clear water effect. I allow the blue to swell excluding the ink. There is and ebb and flow of dark “ink” and vibrant light-indigo-blue. The dreaming is struggling against the incoming darkness. I know this to be caused by the darkness and evil currently expanding into the world. Unpleasant evil is on the rise. The dreaming of mankind is impinged by this darkness and it struggles to dream in, dream true. I observe and will the dreaming colour, the light-indigo-blue, to fill the visual field like a tide washing up a beach. It marginalises the darkness but does not exclude it completely. It holds the darkness temporarily at bay. The session lasts for between a quarter and a half earth hours, though it seems more eternal. I feel energised by the power of the dreaming.

I allow myself to leave the dreaming colour and build the raja yoga thought form and triangulation with ease.

The dream starts upstairs at Monty’s with Robin he is trying to find us a new house to live in. We are exploring the upstairs of a house. He says that it is bigger than the one at Monty’s, which it is. He has other places to show me. But first he wants us to meet someone.

The scene now change to the cafeteria of an ethnic shop come garden centre somewhere in the UK, query Wales or Borders. I am sat at a large round table with the wife to my right and Robin and a Mexican looking woman opposite. She is opposite me; Robin is opposite the wife. On the table is an earthenware bread basket and rectangular beaded place mats set with tiny turquoise stones. The feeling is very South America. On the walls are chianti-like wine bottle with a straw protective covering. Robin says that we should all join hands in a circle. I say that this is not a good idea, specifically for her, you. I look directly at her and she returns the gaze.

She has dark black hair with a few streaks of grey-white tied tightly back into a bun. She is of a similar though older age as me. She is slight and wearing a thick coloured line-patterned “poncho”. She has a single large “silver” earing in her left ear. Here eyes are obsidian black. She does not think it a bad idea to hold hands. She reaches out her right hand, which is small, tanned and leathery. As she does this the sleeve of her turquoise shirt rises up to reveal a silver ethnic bracelet. She offers me her hand. I can feel the palm-chakra in my right hand begin to burn and radiate heat. I say that I know she is a shaman to which she makes no reply but has a reciprocal knowing.

I bring my hand close to hers and we grip. She initially winces at the impact of heat from my hand. There is an instantaneous rush and a kind of melding. The room around us disappears. I know that she is a nagal woman. For what seems a long time we are sat there without chair or table for support suspended in space holding hands.

She then shows me by mental projection a truly brilliant white four pointed star of immense radiance.

The basic outline is as above. But the visual image was truly dazzling filling the entire visual-dream-field.

She asks me what it is that I do.

I say that I work quietly persistently against darkness and that I have always done this.

She says that I am a light and that I have always been a light a part of the light a greater light.

She says that I am not alone we are all connected.

We sit there joined isolated in space-time for a considerable time.

On letting go of hands we are back at the table in the restaurant. The others do not seem to have noticed. We have some food and browse the ethnic shop. I pick some items up and go to the till to pay. The cash register is not modern. The woman puts the items in a hessian bag and tells me to take care of them because the last time I was here I broke a few things. I discuss with the nagal woman how I once had a male student who I knew was a proto-shaman and more. I knew that he was like me and that he was not yet ready to learn this. He needed to have a shaman’s breakdown first in order to be ready. Just like I did thirty years ago. The feeling is that he is now ready.

The woman at the till is a confederate of the nagal woman. Something drops on the floor off the till and I kneel down to pick it up. She has pushed it. As I do this the nagal woman places a fine wooden tube into my left ear and blows with some force some plant material and a tiny diamond-like gemstone. I see them moving down inside the opaque tube and feel them enter my beingness via the ear.

I am kneeling in a position like martial arts seiza with my back straight and my eyes front. I have no shirt on and am in white linen trousers. I am looking East directly into the dawn. The light flows past my head like a wind blowing my hair which starts off longish black. I initially have no body hair on my torso. I am kneeling in a wind, a gale, of light. The kneeling form changes shape and I can see the face take on different forms which I know are different lives. She tells me to remember and have more faith because I am a light. By mind I tell her that I am made to endure and to wait. I may seem not to be doing but I am, I am waiting. She smiles and removes the wooden tube. We are back in the ethnic shop at the garden centre.

The scene changes and I am at a cottage with a wooden five bar gate. I am on the drive. The wife is in the house and Robin has asked me to look after a young dog. He is going on holiday and the dog needs a good home. I take the lead of a black and white springer spaniel type dog who is very exuberant. I close the gate and let it off the lead. It jumps the gate and Robin thinks it will run away. I call it and it jumps back over the gate and straight up into my arms. The dog has decided that I am OK.

The dream ends.

Power and the Intimate Privacy of Death

It is warm and sunny outside, so perhaps it is safer to write on these things. Although physical plane death may be public there is a private intimate part not shared by the consciousness of the living and those not in the transition. Ostensibly death may be quick brought on by an IDF bullet or a heart attack. It could be a slow drawn out process mediated by an ailing brain or a bleed. One could have a physically easy or a physically painful death. I have had both. These days death under morphine is not uncommon. Many full of bravado are nevertheless fear-full of that tap on the shoulder. It re-presents the time when the croupier of life spins the roulette wheel after shouting,

 « Mesdames et messieurs, faites vos jeux ! »

For logically we all know we are placing our bets on what may or may not happen when we die. The ball rolls and stops and we find out if we have won or lost.

History tells of many a shit-scared monarch buying papal indulgences on his death bed in an attempt to bribe God.

I’ll state here that I am not the kind of being who tries to use or take advantage of others. It is not my basic orientation. I am more likely to facilitate, to try help. We all have faults and mine is less nasty. I have to the detriment of others allowed myself to be used. I have robbed them in a sense of the battles which they may have faced. Because I have faced things for them. This in a way, although perhaps altruistic, is disempowering.

I have met a number of people losing their battle with power over the years. Caught up in the process they were and would be unable to see or accept that this is the case. Weirdly the power-flame attracts many a moth on the make, only for a singeing of wings. The lust for a share in apparent power is perhaps the most blinding thing which can happen to a being. They see only with blinkered eye the power, and not the consequence both on others and on them. Most people guess they can handle power. Most people are wrong, for it is power which handles them and changes them. Many in the throes of their battle with power present themselves as some beacon of light when they are anything but. Power deludes those hungry for it and their supporters. Power likes to justify.

I’ll make a little aside here. If there is significant influx of first ray “will-to-power” energy the number of people losing their battle with power will rise and a dark, dark, cloud will result. The first ray is very difficult to handle and cope with. Any crack, any latent cruelty, any lust for power over, will be activated.

The individual mentioned in my dream taught me a lot, for which I am thankful. Primarily he showed behaviours which I did not like and did not want to adopt for myself. It was an exemplar of what I did not want to become. At the same time I was interacting with others a tad obsessed with power and in some cases position.  I have never wanted to be lord and master with minions, slaves and serfs. Others like to lord it over; some like to be lorded over. I was not infected by his mood and intent.

Power in its knowledge aspect is inconspicuous and not ostentatious. It is gathered and stored, rarely is it exercised. Depending on predilection one may gather like a squirrel. Personally I have always been interested in learning.

That time in the very first part of this century I was engaged in what hindsight suggests was my battle with power. Clearly the scale was rather local, but I was presented with many temptations, the trappings of power. Luckily, I was largely able to resist those temptations, those traps and did not become an “A” grade arse. Other people I knew may have been less resilient and perhaps fell to the traps, the whims of power.

The thing is that power and evil have a kind of symbiotic relationship. Power is the lure; the bait of evil who can tie an appropriate fly for whatever fish it seeks. Evil ever the strategist and craftsman can, when and if needed, be subtle.

In modern days the notion of evil has become quasi-taboo which is testament to the guile and skill of evil.

I do not pretend to know the mind of the dark adepts and those drawn to them. The more evolved of them, aware of much, must make a calculation pertaining to death. That calculation at one level must offset the difficulty of transition with the perceived reward of a life of power. Only they would be able to comment if they have struck a good deal, made a good bargain.

I personally, this afternoon, in the middle of the day, am ready. In a sense I have already embraced my death.

There is a chance that you and I will meet gain at the hour of your death. You can decide for yourself if that is some morbid shit I made up, or not…

“Don’t know where
Don’t know when
But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day”

Terry – Evil Entity – Vajrapāṇi  Dream – 25-08-2025

Here is last night’s dream and my subsequent initial response to it. It was from before 3 AM.

The dream starts with me outside a car rental forecourt in southern England. Terry appears there on the opposite side of the road. He is, as he was wont, emanating aggression and anger in my direction. He saw me as the one he had to destroy. He is mouthing a foul invective about me and at me. He trying to catch the ears of anyone who will listen, any passersby. He is trying to talk me down and big himself up, as he did in real life. He imagines that he was responsible for the inventions and even claims this. He is full of anger, resentment and is not having a pleasant time of it. He is experiencing and emanating a dark cloying malevolence.

I cross the road and stand very calmy in front of him an arm’s length away. He continues to emit vitriolic anger, hard-done by vibes, fear and  clinging anger. They wash over me and he is disconcerted that I remain unaffected.

In the dream I know that I am witnessing an aspect of the evil which was in him. I know that this is a part of his death dance. The restless and unsatisfied, the angry and the bilious as he is slowly taken out of life kicking, sulking and most of all blaming, blaming, blaming. He blames me, others and the entire world because things did not go entirely how he wanted according to his whim. His death is very uncomfortable. As he passes out from this world, I see an evil entity leave and reluctantly let go of the dying form. It is a shimmer of dark malevolent tendrils, evil, now looking for a host.

I see next a young man of in-between “gender” in a hotel room. He has blonde hair and an androgenous look. He is psychiatrically unwell and contemplating suicide. I see the tendrils enter the man and he briefly wakes up coughing and spluttering as the entity tries to enter. I assist him in waking and forbidding the entity. The man is writhing around in struggle with difficulty gasping breath. I command him to wake up which he does and immediately reaches over to turn on the hotel room lights. He is dripping in sweat and very disoriented.

I awake and note that I too am disoriented.

I instinctively start Guru Rinpoche and Vajrapāṇi tantric practice for protection. I chant silently and invoke and create a full-blown Vajrapāṇi visualisation of considerable size which has persisted in consciousness afterwards and is still resident as I type. I make other tantric adjustments before falling off to sleep.

Maybe it is time for me to fully verbalize events from back then.

Martin Luther King Quotes

“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

“We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”

Coming Home to Roost Dream and Preparation 02-08-2025

Last night in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, in the cusp between here and yet to come, I had yet another coming home to roost “slide show”. In that, things come home to roost for some people whom I once had acquaintance of. I take no joy or glee from these happenstances, these scenarios, rather a tinge of sadness at folly and adamant folly to boot. For example if you falsify any official document there is a chance down the line that it could come back to bite you on the arse like a rabid chihuahua. If you succumb to temptation and allow the tendrils of evil to find purchase, they rarely let go and your relationship becomes symbiotic. Without knowing it you supply the food. Short of a full blown exorcism it is game over in terms of liberation for this lifetime. Nobody involved in such a symbiosis will ever believe or accept such a statement.

Everything seems normal to them. Their playbook seems to work and they have success in the world and among peers. They can handle whatever mini-crises are sent to them. Or so they think.

The thing about karma is that it can be subtle. People who believe they are thoroughly entitled do not imagine that it exists. When something happens that is “bad luck” , “unfair” and not an effect which they have had a hand in causing. One day, perhaps in a lifetime to come, people get to have the penny drop whilst incarnated and they see with irrevocable clarity the outcomes and consequences of their actions, their emotionally charged bile and punitive vengeful thoughts. Theory has it there is a review at the time of death too. I witnessed bedside my father struggling with his. It was not pretty.

I have started mentally preparing for my operation and other commitments later in the year. It has become reasonably obvious in the twilight that I need to return to the A-U-M meditations and revisit Phowa practice just in case. I probably need to start doing more stretching exercises and work at building back some muscle in my legs and hips. At the end of the month I start a new birth-year, leading me further into my final pinnacle. Who knows what is in store aside from some hippie action in the operating block.

My understanding is that when people incarnate, they choose all the circumstances of their birth to enable them to learn from a “lesson plan” that might help them best evolve and work at karma. They made this plan themselves. For example I was born into a family in which the education mantra was strong. I was sent to boarding school in another country, education was more important than any close familial relationship. I subsequently ended up working  in “education” for a couple of decades. I planned this before birth.

In the birth lesson plan trajectories of whom you are “meant” to meet are bullet pointed. The possibilities exist. These individuals have the wherewithal through which you might learn. Human choice must be allowed. Thus it is possible to completely screw up the lesson plan which you yourself wrote. Literally miss the boat by miles. You can fuck up a life and badly so, through your own arrogance. The moot point is were you always destined to fuck up or did you simply act that way out of bloody-mindedness? Did you cut off your nose to spite your face or had you zero choice in the matter? In the grand scheme of things learning will inevitably ensue. But it may be many lifetimes later that such a great learning opportunity re-presents. People learn painfully yet effectively through loss.

It is the karma of snakes and ladders.

The thing about dreaming is that timing is never atomic-clock accurate. But when the dreams increase in frequency it does mean that the event is getting nearer in time, it will happen sooner. It also means that the likelihood or probability is increasing.

Dreaming by its very nature cannot be an exact science….

Evil and Exorcism – Quantum Exorcism

Last night we watched the film “The Rite” starring Anthony Hopkins {even though he was not the main character}. In the film a young man, reluctantly training to be a priest, encounters the phenomenon of exorcism via the seasoned exorcist Hopkins, and the trainee ultimately performs his first full blown exorcism of a demon which identifies as Baal which had possessed Hopkins. There was not much in the way of special effects and it was not a CGI tour de force. I suspect with Hopkins it could be done as a radio play, like Under Milkwood. The human mind could conjure some scary stuff, in the wee small hours. His voice is evocative.

Needless to say, there were a few noises in the {our} house here during and after the film. These could have been demons but were most probably the stray cats. Notably stray cats also featured in the film.

The crux of the film, in the denouement, is that the trainee exorcist priest accepts the reality of the devil the demon which by “quantum entanglement” proves the reality of God. One implies the other. Once the protagonist has acknowledged both he can call, now in full faith, on God to evict the demonic tenant.

Developing this tenuous theme further, good and evil exist as a quantum superposition state in each of us. It is by our actions that we resolve the superposition state and are then either mostly evil in orientation or mostly good. Schrödinger’s cat is either a bad feline or a good one. We look, we test, we observe and the good/evil wavefunction is resolved.

A residue of good exists {perhaps} in an evil person and vice versa. Nobody exists as a 100% pure good eigenstate; nobody is 100% impure evil. The coefficients can very over time.

If we do not believe in good or evil the wavefunction {and the cat} do not and cannot exist.

I’ll postulate that the best trick evil has ever managed is to render the entire subject or evil largely taboo in modern society. Few say that some of the alleged content of “Only Fans” is wicked or evil. We could say humanity has been hoodwinked to lower our standards.

Evil has done a “good job”, a phrase that certain American political figures are keen on.

The film suggests that modern psychological intervention may help those “possessed”. It does not mention some of the barbaric horrors which the psyche-profession has enacted over the decades and centuries upon the so-called insane. Bad things have been done in the name of “science” as well as in the name of “religion”.

This crux of accepting, acknowledging without drama perhaps, the notion and influence of evil is a game changer. Whilst one imagines that evil does not exist, one is free to indulge in self-centred and gratuitous pass times. The norm is never questioned and the evil “demon-adviser” on the shoulder says “go on, everyone is doing it. You would not want to miss out, would you?”

A little more clarity, where one sniffs the sulphur in the air and notes, if only as a hypothesis, evil; can change orientation. This, if only for as long as it takes to succumb to temptation. Noting might be seen as a first step in acknowledging the influence of evil.

The film suggests that the “demon” “evil” had been stalking the trainee from his young days as a child, subsequent to the death of his mother in the Adams Family profession of undertaker.

Temptation need not be entirely salacious. It can be as simple as taking a short cut, cutting corners, being economical with the truth, bullshitting. The notion of getting something for free or at a reduced price is a cornerstone of temptation. Talking bad of, belittling, slagging off; are not exactly luminous beacons.

I’ll wager that no human being alive has never succumbed to some temptation or other.

One could say that some, in lust for power, turn to the dark side. The coefficient of the evil wavefunction is higher. The superposition is skewed to darkness and not light.

If one has largely succumbed to evil then there is little hope of redemption by self. The habit has become entrenched. One needs external assistance to exorcise the evil or re-balance the quantum superposition.

Hence one needs a Hermit-like quantum operator {exorcist} to act upon the evil-good superposition state to change it from one state to another. To lift it up from the low point and to address the uncertainty as to whether good and evil are actually real world things. To rebalance.

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What is your g/e probability?

Are you largely Good or largely Evil?

Are these two variables coupled?

If we are certain in one what limit does that put on the other?

Are you sure?

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The Wrong End of the Stick Dream 16-03-2025

An English idiom meaning to get something wrong by one’s approach by making stupid assumptions. To think that something you’ve been offered is the opposite of what it is. To confuse left and right. To turn an ability into a disability, a solution into a problem.

From the Urban Dictionary

Overnight I have had another dream in which some people get the very wrong idea about my “relationship” with them and on the basis of that make incorrect assumptions about what I must and will do for them, to help them out and otherwise clear up a mess which is entirely of their own making. They, in the dream, imagine that I am a bit like one of them, on the same level and with the same motivations. Which I am not.

The dream prior to that says that in some things I have no choice. I simply cannot do what might be convenient because it is evil.

This recurrent theme of somebody else’s mess has occurred numerous times over more than the last decade or so. It is not my mess, I cannot clear it up, nor can I like a fairy Godmother rescue them. Bonnie Tyler may be singing a song but it does not refer to me, sorry. I cannot offer any advice because it would fall on deaf ears.

It is said that a warrior lives by challenge. I have found increasingly that the challenge for me is non-intervention, to leave well alone and to let others have the opportunity to learn. This notion of stepping back did not initially sit well. It turns out not getting involved or conflated into the drama of others, is both relaxing and economic. In the midst of some soap opera or other everything seems very important, with detachment that looks more like emotional over reaction. Some people like drama and thrive thereupon. They stoke it and feed.

I have learned that it is impossible to explain to someone caught up in and obsessed by their social conditioning, what things are like, and how they look, when that conditioning has nearly completely gone. It is one of those things that has to be experienced. No verbalisation can convey.

This may sound arrogant, as if I may be looking down. Is that real or your reflection which you see in the mirror I hold up for you. Am I haughty? Or have I at least partially risen above the soap-opera-plane?

Poor me, I am so misunderstood…

It that my being victim or a truth of sorts.

I do not feel victimised rather inured to, accustomed with, bored by, an experience I have had often in my sixty years.

——————————————————-

We’re only making plans for Nigel
We only want what’s best for him
We’re only making plans for Nigel
Nigel just needs that helping hand

And if young Nigel says he’s happy
He must be happy
He must be happy
He must be happy in his world

We’re only making plans for Nigel
He has his future in a British steel
We’re only making plans for Nigel
Nigel’s whole future is as good as sealed, yeah

XTC

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Is the Notion of Exorcism Vicarious?

I am back to this topic because in some sense exorcism is not something that one discusses in polite circles, certainly not with a cup of Earl Grey and a slice of Battenberg. It might be spoken of in the dead of night to scare just before one gets out the Ouija board. In broad daylight many scientists might scoff at the notion and speak of psychological problems, delusions or schizophrenia. Yet to the practitioners of voodoo (or Voudou Lalwizyàn) the notion may not seem so obscure. There may even be a buck in it. There is a current exorcist in our department at Saint Brieuc.

—–

“Abbot Placide Guillermic, nicknamed Tadig Kozh, (born January 5, 1788, in Plounez, died April 28, 1873, in Bégard), was a Catholic priest and canon mythologized by Breton beliefs. Little biographical information is known about him, but eyewitness accounts mention the exorcisms this rector of Bégard performed at Méné-Bré in the Saint-Hervé chapel. Anatole Le Braz recounts that Tadig Kozh possessed knowledge of life and death, as well as supernatural powers, enabling him to reincarnate indefinitely, and to command demons and the wind.”

From Wikipedia

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Tadig Kozh performed exorcisms in a local chapel on a nearby hill.

In the movies the exorcisms are often dramatic, with profanity, bodily fluids and some garish biologically impossible movements. People possessed puke, piss and defecate. The exorcist is challenged by temptation, often sexual, by guilt and with fear. The faith of the hierophant is called into question and tested thoroughly. In general, there is some resistance from the possessing evil / demon which has some kind of anthropomorphic or zoomorphic shape. Rarely is the bad-doer entirely abstract. Sometimes the hierophant gets possessed to save others.

I’ll postulate that a fair deal of imagination is present and that may comment on the psychology and hang-ups of script writer and director. A good commercial director knows that sex sells so they would aim to include at least some nudity, preferably young and female.

I’ll speculate that those writing such material have not had personal experience either as hierophant or the person being exorcised. The theme music of such moves enters the collective consciousness.

While things remain in the realm of imagination, they are safe if a little creepy. If, however, a rite of exorcism started to become reality, detached observer orientations might fade. If it started to dawn on you that you yourself or a loved one were in need of an exorcism, what would you do?

Would you call up the departmental exorcist?

Look in yellow pages or on line?

Answers to the question “Can exorcism be done by Zoom?” suggest that it is possible and also by ‘phone. There may be a fee. A perusal online suggests that churches do not charge fees {but a gift may be welcome post hoc}.

I am not belittling here. What is very serious in the life of some is very serious.

An alternative movie script is when a sceptic doubts and gets drawn into situations way beyond their ken and control. The arrogant sceptic is punished and shits several large bricks. Their end may not be entirely happy.

The general gist is don’t take the piss of things you don’t understand.

In scenes of exorcism with whom do you most empathize?

Are you with the priest, overcoming doubt to banish with the help of God?

Are you with the helpless and afraid family whose loved one is possessed and whom they love and fear the loss of?

 Or are you with the demon telling the feckless priest of a non-existent religion to fuck off?

There is something vicarious and voyeuristic about watching a dramatized exorcism and not far below the surface are sexual overtones of possession and dominion. It could be said that portrayals of exorcism are a tad kinky.  There are S&M elements to movie portrayals.

Any movie which holds the attention must be at least a tad vicarious. We might imagine ourselves Hermione Grainger, Sheldon Cooper, Thor, Lara Croft, James Bond or Wotan Wagner in Ragnarök. Unless we are drawn in, we do not experience the emotional engagement.

Which poses the question would you prefer to be exorcised or to attempt an exorcism?

Is The Concept of Evil Taboo?

I’ll speculate that the use of the word evil in its sense as an antonym to good has waned. To talk about evil is less common than it once was and that as a concept it is nearly taboo. Human brutality does not require any demonic influence it is bad enough without outside influence. The days when the churches could ensure bums on seat with the spectre of evil are passing.

In this sense it could be argued that evil has won, it is off the agenda and out of the consciousness. By subtlety and subterfuge evil has been redacted. The media when it broaches the subject uses the extremes of CGI to create outlandish portrayals. Whereas evil does not need to cause pustules and scars in those it possesses. They can wear neat uniforms, appear highly organised healthy and yet send millions to die in gas chambers harvesting their dental gold in the process. Evil wears, most often, a human face not a fictional demonic one.

We watched “The Pope’s Exorcist” last night. The film was heavily influenced by Catholicism and the iconography thereof, it even suggested that the Spanish Inquisition was the work of the Devil. Torturing people in God’s name does not resonate with the teaching of Jesus. It is not the work of a lamb. It suggested that evil and the devil, the demons, Satan, cause delusional and abhorrent behaviour in humans.

How simple to pass the buck and avoid responsibility.

I can watch films about exorcism without fear or empathy for the possessed and their family. I do not need to look through my fingers. Yet I can still be surprised by a sudden well scripted twist. I may jump a little but I am not scared nor shitting my pants metaphorically. I was not raised, indoctrinated, in Catholicism therefore its imagery and points of reference do not bind me like they may others. I am reasonably sure that I could attend an exorcism in whatever tradition without being scared witless, nor being overly sceptical.

I am not worried by the concept of devil or demon, yet I accept fully the notion evil as a concept and a force, a driver in the lives of some /many.

The weird thing is those influenced by and enacting evil are the most likely to deny that they are so doing. They are blinded. They have justified their evil thoroughly by the use of rationalisations and even precedent. Precedents are not always exemplar of good, beauty and humanity at its best.

I accept exorcism as a concept in that a being can be helped to drive out the evil influence which it harbours and gives succour to. Evil influence flows into a being, by the path of least resistance. Once it has gotten a foot in the door so to speak and is invited in by the tempted person over the threshold, the thin end of the wedge is driven home and the floodgate of influence can open.

Soon life before the “wise” guidance of evil is forgotten. The sense of cahoots grows. Evil knows well how to fertilise so that its tendrils root and grow. The light from before wanes and there is nothing to compare with any longer.  The contrast between light and dark fades to grey.  It becomes ever easier to succumb and justify each dodgy act. Malicious pleasure starts to seed and germinate. The temptation of power over in whatever flavour grows strong and less satiable.

To the eye of a seer the evil influence can be discerned. In cases of medium to strong influence one can see a dark black ink like tendril above the head of the strongly influenced being. It looks like a drop of ink in water. The darker the ink the stronger the influence. At this stage the evil is not well incorporated and is readily dispersed. Once there is no gap between the tendril and the form, the evil influence is already partially rooted. In some the influence is profound and it is aback the eyes where the seer sees. They have in their beingness an unpleasant vibe, somewhat cloying and suffocating. It is difficult to spend long in such presences without feeling drained.

If someone you know drains you by the simple fact of proximity, then chances are they are influenced by evil. Evil likes to feed.

I can think of more than a handful of people with whom I have had an acquaintance, who could benefit from a prolonged and profound exorcism. But of course, evil would keep them well away from anyone who might lessen its influence.

It is a strange occult fact that evil is always attracted to good. And that good needs encounter with evil in order to learn. Good tends to give the benefit of the doubt which is its Achillies heal and this is something evil learns in the evil 101 class.

It is an interesting metric to watch exorcism films. Where does your empathy lie? What frightens you about the devil taking your soul to toast in the inferno for eternity?

If you are impeccably pure of heart and deed, no such fear would arise.