Malevolent Thoughts – Magic – White Scallop – Phowa Dream 06 -02-2026

I had hoped that we were past this, past this kind of projection at me. Here is last night’s dream on a night which had an otherwise long sleep.

The dream opens in a seemingly underground labyrinth, a warren of tunnels, which I know to be the mind of another or others plural. The walls are curved and of a grey muddy hue and texture. Hanging pendant from the ceilings of these tunnels are amulets shaped like a pain au raisin, coiled. They are palm-hand sized. They are British English of provenance. I know they are encapsulated thought forms and parcelled emotions. They are negative and malevolent towards me. They have variously resentment, jealousy and ill will. They are anger and even hate filled projections at me. In some cases they have festered long. They are by way of black magic spells directed at me either wittingly or otherwise. The persons generating these malevolence are not fully aware of their voodoo like essence. Nor do they understand that these emanations against a witch with well-practiced charms of reflective protection is for them, the emanator, a very unwise thing. Deep in the resentful caverns of their minds they are harbouring and feeding this negativity which is bad for them. They are nurturing it and it feeds upon them. It is eating them alive. To project against a witch is foolhardy.

In the dream I sigh.

The scene changes to a small cove on the coast with crystal clear waters. It too seems English. I am in the water swimming at the behest of an “archaeologist”. I am free diving to the bottom and searching the sand. I find a large pristine white scallop shell. Larger than normal, shiner than normal and whiter than normal. It is somehow special even magical white. I go to shore and show it to the archaeologist. He is excited. He asks me to find a living bed of scallops as proof. I know that the archaeology refers to the/my past. I dive and swim towards where a fresh water stream inlets into the sea. There on a small rocky outcrop are a bed of scallops. I take a picture with my underwater camera and with the knife from my ankle scabbard ease a living pair of scallops off. I return to the shore. I show the archaeologist who is very happy.  We go into the village and enter a small cottage with a “Tudor” blue wooden frame. We go into the kitchen and start to wash the scallops in the sink. The couple who are the cottage owners return and let themselves in with a key. At first they are surprised to see us in their house, their kitchen. The archaeologist apologises and explains. They are happy and the wife helps him wash the scallops in the sink.

The scene fades and I am left with a very strong visual image of someone known to me whom I have not spoken with for two decades. He is older than me and of a prior “generation”. I know that he nears death and this is by way of a checking in. If and when things progress I will see him during the transition and soon afterwards. The same holds true for a female also of his generation. As a part of the Phowa practice I will encounter them on planes non mundane in the in between. I am ready whereas they are not. I am at home there.

The dreaming sequence ends…

On waking I know that there is nothing you can do if someone harbours envy, bitterness and jealousy towards you. If you mention it, it does not go away. It only entrenches and gets worse.

Vampire DNA at Imperial College and Hip Replacement Update

I started watching “A Discovery of Witches” whilst in hospital after my total hip replacement. The other night we started series three. The main protagonists “academics” from Oxford University, also a vampire and a witch, had just gotten back from time walking to Elizabethan London in search of an alchemical text. They want to understand the vampire “blood rage” so obviously they go to Imperial College London to do some research. The TV programme had footage of the main entrance on Exhibition Road and drone views of the South Kensington Campus. The wife and I looked at each other.

There is no getting away from the place. It is everywhere like a rash. Like an antibiotic resistant STI it keeps popping up. Since the COVID days it is often in the news.

The story looks at the so-called vampire DNA of the de Clermont blood line and has quite a lot of London footage so-far including mews shots etc.. I do not look back at my interaction with that institution with fond memories. I am sometimes embarrassed to have been associated. And now it is in a bloody TV programme too!! FFS.

I am now four weeks into the time after hip replacement. I can walk around the house unaided, no crutches. Yesterday we walked the hills of Lannion centre and today my muscles ache. The actual joint pain in the hip is markedly reduced from before. There is enhanced flexibility and it seems that the functionality will continue to improve. There remains some problems with early morning-late nocturnal pain in the sacroiliac joints and where the sacral spine joins the lumbar spine. This kicks in around 5 AM. I am down to only one co-codamol a night taken around 2 AM. If I get up and move around, do some back stretches, I can sleep on a bit. I am sleeping through the night. We go to bed about midnight and I am up 6 – 6:30 AM at the moment.

It is not ideal though is tolerable. I could easily take some more dope – some more codeine. But I don’t think that is a good idea. When I am able to lie on my right hip, the operated one, I may be able to sleep better. The pain goes away within minutes of getting up and moving around. The incentive is not to lounge around like a hippie in bed.

The problem is I am not looking forward to going to bed. I am not looking forward to waking up in the morning. A non-ideal situation. Not sure what to do. I may try some back stretches later today. The pain may not go and I might have to resort to my previous medication which worked before the operation. Too early to tell.

There could be an enhanced vigilance at play. The last time I went to sleep, I woke up with an eight inch scar and a lump of Titanium…that is what happens if you doze off..

Luckily I know that many things do indeed pass. The hip progress seems OK. The sleeping and pre-dawn pains could be better.

On the whole the now is a whole lot better than the before….

A Discovery of Witches – Thread

Whilst I was in hospital I came upon this UK TV series on Netflix. It seemed that I had already started watching it according to Netflix. I did not recall this.  So I started to watch again. So far it is enjoyable.

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A Discovery of Witches is a British fantasy television series based on the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, named after the first book in the trilogy.

Diana Bishop, a historian and reluctant witch, unexpectedly discovers a bewitched manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. This discovery forces her back into the world of magic in order to unravel the secrets it holds about magical beings. She is offered help by a mysterious biochemist and vampire Matthew Clairmont. Despite a long-held mistrust between witches and vampires, they form an alliance and set out to protect the book and solve the mysteries hidden within while dodging threats from the creature world.

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Discovery of Witches is a 2011 historical-fantasy novel and the debut novel by American scholar Deborah Harkness. It follows Diana Bishop, a history of science professor at Yale University, as she embraces her magical blood after finding a long-thought-lost manuscript and engages in a forbidden romance with a charming vampire, Matthew Clairmont.

When Diana Bishop returns to Oxford University, her life is flipped upside down. While researching in the library, Diana requests a book called Ashmole 782. This manuscript, also known as the Book of Life, has been missing for over 150 years. As soon as Diana touches the ancient manuscript, her powers are activated. Frightened by her clear cosmic connection to Ashmole 782, Diana returns the book. It appears, however, that her discovery had already caught the attention of other creatures, which results in a series of events that slowly brings her witch heritage and family back into her life.

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Diana is  cast as a young academic investigating Alchemy partly autobiographically inspired on behalf of the author. The first few episodes are very good for Oxford university tourism. The photography is top notch.

Ashmole was a founder member of The Royal Society and this is his coat of arms.

Note Hermes bearing the golden Caduceus top right. Note also the Breton symbol around the lower central panel.

Aside from founding the Ashmolean museum he is famous for collecting things like this:

Theatrvm chemicvm britannicum : containing severall poeticall pieces of our famous English philosophers, who have written the hermetique mysteries in their owne ancient language

by Ashmole, Elias, 1617-1692; Cross, Thomas, fl. 1632-1682; Vaughan, Robert, 17th cent; Goddard, John, fl. 1645-1671

Given where I did my Ph.D. and my interest in things witchy and Alchemy related I have found something to look into a bit while I recuperate.

A new thread to explore?

Granny Was a Gwrach…

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Gwrach y Rhibyn

The legend of the cyhyraeth is sometimes conflated with tales of the Gwrach-y-Rhibyn or Hag of the Mist, a monstrous Welsh spirit in the shape of a hideously ugly woman – a Welsh saying, to describe a woman without good looks, goes, “Y mae mor salw â Gwrach y Rhibyn” (she is as ugly as the Gwrach y Rhibyn) – with a harpy-like appearance: unkempt hair and wizened, withered arms with leathery wings, long black teeth and pale corpse-like features. She approaches the window of the person about to die by night and calls their name, or travels invisibly beside them and utters her cry when they approach a stream or crossroads, and is sometimes depicted as washing her hands there. Most often the Gwrach y Rhibyn will wail and shriek “Fy ngŵr, fy ngŵr!” (My husband! My husband!) or “Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn bach!” (My child! My little child!), though sometimes she will assume a male’s voice and cry “Fy ngwraig! Fy ngwraig!” (My wife! My wife!).

If it is death that is coming, the name of the one doomed to die is supposed to be heard in her “shrill tenor”. Often invisible, she can sometimes be seen at a crossroad or a stream when the mist rises.

Some speculation has been asserted that this apparition may have once been a water deity, or an aspect of the Welsh goddess Dôn. She is the wife of Afagddu, the despised son of Ceridwen and Tegid Foel, in some retellings of the Taliesin myth.

From Wikipedia

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If I were to show you the autocorrelation traces of two femtosecond laser pulses on an expensive oscilloscope in a dark laser lab it us unlikely that you would be thinking of the witch, the hag of the mist, Gwrach-y-Rhibyn. The two things do not correlate for most.

A part of my maternal family hails from Snowdonia, the foot of Snowdon,  in North Wales and the family legend has it that at least one of my maternal relatives, a granny of sorts, was a Gwrach, a witch, perhaps a seeress. In that context then there is a chance that I inherited the bloodline and hence the “gift” so to speak. As such it was entirely natural {and perhaps inevitable} that I would be interested in shamanism and shamanic ritual.

Of course in terms of someone able to write Fortan programs to calculate Franck Condon factors for anharmonic oscillator molecular vibronic photon excitations that seems far-fetched.

Contextually the vice versa might apply. Why would a shaman piss about with fancy lasers and science?

In Brittany there remains an interest in {and perhaps practice of} witchcraft. This is no way freaks me out. It is possible the practises here were sourced in the Welsh diaspora arriving. They are of similar roots.

I’ll speculate that a blog post like this would not enhance my promotion prospects were I still institutionalised in science academia.

I have always loved the mist and the fog. I nearly died on The Old Man of Coniston once. I was alone and following crows up a trail in the snow deep into the fog, alone on the mountain. It was exciting. Luckily before I got completely lost in the otherworld, I turned back. I have had much similar fun on Kinder Scout in dense fog. There is something womb-like and enveloping.

Of a still and misty night, when the full moon is partially veiled and you heard a voice at your window calling your name, what would you do.

Could you take secure refuge in the omniscience of your infallible reason?

Or would your blood run cold?

Isabella – Manipulation – Attack Dreams 31-11-21

Here are last nights dreams they are separated by an interlude of being awake.

The first dream is set in London, somewhere close to the centre. In the room next door to me there is a panel of science academics sat around the table. They are going over applicants for a job as a University Physics lecturer. There are more than seven of the academics. The room in which they are seated is grand as is the table and chairs. They are a mix of men and women the men are wearing suits and the women are smartly dressed. It is all very English. They are all my age or older.

They call me in from the next room and say that they want to offer me the job. This surprises me somewhat because I have not applied for it. They say that the salary is £30,000. That sounds very low to me for a university in London. In the dream I note that 30 is the dreaming symbol for manipulation. They say the reason that the salary is small is that the job comes with an apartment as part of the salary. Where is the apartment? It is in central London near Down street which I know to be near Downing Street. I ask is there any previous coursework. They hand me a folder of lecture notes which I skim through, and it does not look too tricky. I think that I can do this job.

They say that they will get the previous incumbent to show me the flat in central London. I am introduced to Isabella who is a talk dark haired Mediterranean women about twenty years younger than me. Her hair is long, and she has a flowing black skirt and dangly silver earrings. She leads me off to Down street. When we get there the normal passenger lift is broken so we have to go around the back to use the big goods lift.  We get in and she hands me a large old-style key of steel. Which I put in my left trousers pocket. She says that she lost the job because they did not like her blog content. I say that she should perhaps read my blog.

She and I stand facing one door. I turn and look into her eyes. They morph into swirling spiral flames for a second. She is unsure if I have noted this. Several other people mostly young men get into the lift. One of the men, a muscular eastern European, puts his hand on my shoulder. I brush this off. The lift doors close and we start to move upwards. Halfway to the flat the Eastern European man stops the lift and opens the double doors. He then proceeds to jump out of the lift onto the car park several floors below. After him three waves of young men also jump out of the lift. Some land safely, others pick up minor injuries and a couple die. Isabella and I look down at the carnage, close the door and proceed to the flat.

I know it is late and that my flatmates in North London won’t be able to get in because I have the key to that flat as well. I take the key out and open the door. I step into an ornate hallway. The man from the lift is there and he says that I owe him money to get out of the contract. He reckons that I owe him £100. I say that I do not. He says that he will not let me go until I pay him or join him. He pulls out a knife and asks if I have ever played stabby stabby. No. He then tries to attack me and stab me with the knife which he is holding in his right hand. He is a lot younger and fitter than me. I catch the top of his hand and apply kote gaeshi {an Aikido wrist lock /throw.}. Which sends him swirling through the air and leaves me with the knife in my right hand. I go over to the window and throw the knife out.

He continues to attack me bare handed. I wrestle him to the floor despite the fact that he is fitter and stronger than me. Using my favourite Judo choke hold I choke him out and he becomes unconscious.

I awake briefly, exchange a few words with the wife and fall back to sleep.

The wife and I are staying at a cliff side villa near an azure blue sea. At the end of the garden is a path out to a ledge in the cliff side. It is just wide enough to sunbathe on parallel to the cliff. The wife and I venture out onto this cliff. I sit down and she lies down. I have a small fishing rod and cast out a bait into the azure blue sea some 20-30 metre below. I can see that some fish are interested in my bait. Some have a nibble; another fish pops its head out of the water and looks me directly in the eye. Soon the bait is gone. I go back into the villa and the wife moves to where I was seated. In the refrigerator I find some snacks which are yet to be cooked. They comprise some beef mince and some cheese in a sort of meat ball. I bait my hook and leave the baited hook and fishing line on the grass in the garden. I go back inside for a glass of milk. When I come out some wasps or bees are on the bait and are dragging the fishing rod around the garden. I call the wife to see this phenomenon. She comes off the cliff edge and watches too. She is alarmed by this.

We move away from the wasps, and she finds a part of a dream catcher on the floor. She picks this up and reunites it with the other part which is hanging from a eucalyptus tree. We explore the garden and find a small statuette of a witch with “traditional” pointy hat. It is about one foot tall. I pick it up and suddenly it morphs into a full-sized woman dressed entirely in black with a full black flowing skirt. I know this witch to be Isabella. She is trying to embrace me to that she can do some evil to me. She follows me around the garden, appearing to fly. She has a series of hat pins in her hat. I snatch one of these hat pins and as she flies at me one more time, I make it grow in size. I then impale her directly through her heart so that she is fixed by the pin to a tree in the garden. I know that she is done for and resolve to do some protection “work” on waking,

Dream ends.

* Yesterday the plumber alerted us to some Asiatic Wasps close to the house.