A mix of Maori, Eastern and Celtic Pagan mysticism.
The Greek goddess Athena had as her sacred animal familiar the owl, also known as the Athene Noctua in Latin. The Romans, fond as they were of stealing from the Greek pantheon, renamed Athena to Minerva. Athena and her owl are considered to be symbols of wisdom, in both cultures. Silver tetradrachm coin at the…
Continue reading ➞ Ancient word of the day: Athene Noctua or Athena’s Owl
The cultural phenomenon of Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne (1926) crosses generations and time. Winnie the Pooh still speaks to me as an adult within the adult world. It speaks to the child within and her curiosity and wonder at life. The characters are each archetypes of human desires and fears. Pooh: a certified…
Continue reading ➞ Book Review: The Tao of Winnie the Pooh by Benjamin Hoff (1982)
This crisis that everyone is in right now poses a range of unique opportunities for us as the dominant species on earth. This is the first time in human history that we as a sentient and conscious species have a three opportunities for growth as a collective: Limitless capabilities for (virtual) communication across time and…
Continue reading ➞ Within crisis is opportunity for growth, compassion and love
"Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it." — Marcus Aurelius (The Emperor's Handbook)
We do a lot of looking; we look through lenses, telescopes and TVs. Our looking is perfected every day - but we see less and less. Never has it been more urgent to speak of seeing...we are onlookers, spectators. 'Subjects' we are, that look at 'objects'. Quickly, we stick labels on all that is, labels…
Briana Saussy writer and founder of the Sacred Arts Academy in San Antonio, Texas has written an intimate, enjoyable and joyful guide to the art of creating spiritual rituals and ceremonies in your home. Making Magic is organised by technique and material. It makes the everyday rituals in our lives sacred and adds pleasure and…
Continue reading ➞ Book Review: Making Magic by Briana Saussy
“Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff."
“That’s the dream of replication: infinite attention, infinite regard. The machinery of the internet has made it a democratic possibility, as television never could, since the audience in their living rooms necessarily far outnumbered the people who could be squeezed into the box. Not so with the internet, where anyone with access to a computer…
Continue reading ➞ Infinite attention, infinite regard and the minor deities of the internet
Writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls the phenomenon of people being unable to predict the future based on the past the Black Swan principle. This name is inspired by the the 17th Century early explorers. People in Europe had always assumed that all swans were white. Imagine their surprise when they found that black swans that…
Continue reading ➞ The Black Swan Model: the domesticated chicken and what it never expected
Just keep laughing...that's all we can do... https://twitter.com/finty_williams/status/1240249008125337602 Teach me Senpai https://twitter.com/AnimeCuIture/status/1240707906955145216 21st Century Masters: Still Life with Bog Roll & Hand Sanitiser Feline Powered Gravity https://twitter.com/ziyatong/status/1240303392188248070 Hungry Hungry Sock Puppets https://twitter.com/gnuman1979/status/1239523796542992387 Have you seen any other funny things out there on the wilds of the internet lately? I am finding the more serious this…
Continue reading ➞ Being in isolation brings out people’s sense of humour
He who rules men lives in confusion;He who is ruled by men lives in sorrow.Yao therefore desiredNeither to influence othersNor to be influenced by them.The way to get clear of confusionAnd free of sorrowIs to live with TaoIn the land of the great Void. Chuang Tzu (300 B.C.) Water of Leith at dusk, Edinburgh. Copyright…
For every force, there is a counter force. Violence, even well intentioned, Always rebounds upon oneself.
It may be when we no longer know what to do, We have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, We have begun our real journey. Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is a poet, farmer, writer and activist. Frozen Lake Menteith in Scotland during mid-winter. Copyright Content…
Continue reading ➞ The challenge of a life’s time and a lifetime
The time will comewhen, with elationyou will greet yourself arrivingat your own door, in your own mirrorand each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat.You will love again the stranger who was your self.Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heartto itself, to the stranger who has loved you Watermelons during…
Continue reading ➞ Arriving at your own door by Derek Walcott
“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I…
“The desert could not be claimed or owned–it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names... Its caravans, those strange rambling feasts and cultures, left nothing behind, not an ember. All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished…
Vladimir Nabokov on butterflies and timelessness
The last gasp of Victorian spirituality infused cutting-edge science with old-school mysticism. Theosophy was all the rage; Many weird and and wonderful ideas being developed at the turn of the century around death, ghosts, the fourth dimension filled the Victorians with a palpable sense of possibility.
The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sunstruck hills every day. Diane Ackerman
A frog in a well never knows the vast ocean There is an ancient Taoist expression that 'A frog in a well never knows the vast ocean'. This is a reminder to be humble and to accept the world as being vast, with our own knowledge of it limited. We must never assume to have…
Continue reading ➞ A frog in a well never knows the vast ocean
