serpent.antonchanning.com

Reported a few years ago so some of you may have seen this. I hadn’t so I’m guessing a lot of you hadn’t either, so I’m posting the link…

[www.sciencedaily.com]

How do writers of extreme books, lyrics and other things feel when their words go out in the world? I can tolerate every writing because i feel that words are a part of reality and imagination. Maybe extreme writing releases the negative energy in words instead of actually hurting people. But not everyone shares my opinion and some people get easily offended by words. I also get offended sometimes but it lasts only for minutes (maybe sometimes longer) and i clear it away with meditation. There was a time when i was trapped in the world of words and i suffered all the time. It was horrible. Keeping that in mind i try to be careful what i write or speak, to avoid hurt or being hurt. Not everyone is prepared for total freedom of words. Even if everyone is prepared for it, there should be some universal culture code.

I bought "A Short History Of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson in the airport bookshop, on my way to Poland before Easter this year. It was almost "accidental" choice and it turned to be one of these books that change my attitude to reality.

Around two months ago I had discussion with my boyfriend about the modern world in general. We noticed that in our childhood we both felt as though the world was full of mysteries awaiting you "in every street corner" but with time there were less and less mysteries left until we started realising that there is no much more to be discovered.

I even think that my obsession with paranormal world and UFO was coming form the deep need to find the world, I saw when I was a child.

And now I found this book, which in very simple words describes the history of science, lives of scientists and summarises the whole of the modern knowledge about the world. Almost every chapter ends with a conclusion that we barely know anything. We don’t understand universe, we don’t know what is really hidden inside our planet’s core and its oceans, we don’t know why we are here and how long it would take before people can become extinct. The whole of our world is built of bacteria and our existence depends on them, but more than 90 percent of them were never seen or classified. We don’t know how the genes work and why they exist at all… Suddenly I feel as though I opened the door to some magical land which hides more mysteries that I could ever wish to discover!

The book lead me also to some reflection about magic and occult practices. As I mentioned previously, the book describes the history of science and many scientists. It turns out that many of them had strong interest in occult, including for example Newton who was fascinated in alchemy… ( I didn’t know that). It is also surprising how many of them could be almost geniuses in one subject and at the same time complete ignorants in the other…

Many people criticize Crowley for some of his writings and they assume that he couldn’t that smart after all. My theory now is that if science made so many mistakes in its quest to define the world, surely the same would apply to the occult world which by its nature deals with much more subtle matters. Humans are allowed mistakes and we shouldn’t discredit all of their work just because they were wrong is some places. At the same time we should be able to question things and if something doesn’t make much sense to us it is worth to explore it further. Maybe we can not see the whole picture of it or maybe it is all wrong. That’s why conservatism in magic is as bad as conservatism in science or religion. :S

I am not sure if I mentioned that before, but for a long time I was really obsessed with UFO and conspiracy theories. There were countless hours and days in my childhood when I tried to call aliens, I was going to famous "UFO seeing" spots and I have never seen a UFO in my life

Last month, actually during the Beltane weekend my uni friends went to Loch Ness to celebrate the end of the academic year. I didn’t go with them as I had another plan for Beltane (see my Beltane 2010 post).

And guess what? They have seen UFOs in there!! Here is the link to the newspaper that published an artlicle about them:

[www.highland-news.co.uk] Search for UFO news on the website ::o

Now I am really convinced that aliens don’t like me…

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Hello apple lovers!

I thought I’d write a quick note about Liber Malorum’s subtitle, which you may have seen is Children Of The Apple.

Where exactly does this subtitle come from?

For a start, Children Of The Apple is one, but is not the only literal translation of the Latin words, “Liber Malorum”. That’s right! As outlined in the prologue which I posted on my blog there are in fact several possible translations.

Liber, in Latin has at least three different and useful meanings:

• Children Of (Noun, Pl)
• Book Of (Noun)
• Unimpeded (Adj.)

Malorum on the other hand also has at least three useful translations:

• Evil (Adj.)
• Apples (Noun, PL)
• Apple Tree (Noun, Singular)

Now this is all well and fine, and you can easily chop and change! Next time you pick up the book, take a moment to decide if you’re really reading Children Of The Apple as the subtitle suggests.

Instead of Children Of The Apple, you could decide to be reading an altogether different book. How about picking one of Unimpeded Evil, Book of the Apple Tree, Children of Evil or even Unimpeded Apples.

One of my favourite translations is The Book Of Evil, just because it sounds fun, and well, following your truth even when your truth breaks the established status quo can be seen by outsiders as an “evil” thing to do. But when you’re in that spiritual place, following your core truth even against the grain of established authority there’s that inner feeling of total freedom and power and love. Thelemites would say this is where they are following their True Will.

I’m not really a Latin speaker, so if some of the puns in the title slipped you by, that’s okay, I just thought it would be fun at the time! It’s the biting of the apple which is really important. Have you bitten one today?

Hope everything is wonderful out there for you. Feel free to read the prologue and table of contents in full.

And if you’re up to it, please leave a comment

Love to all from Sean