Haus der Luege : Noli Evocare Quod Reprimere Non Potes

The night before I slept soundly and through the night, waking up at my usual hour, around 8. The previous evening, I took both Flexeril and Vicodin. I awoke again with a dry mouth which lasted most of the day, finally resolving in the afternoon. Still had a lingering headache and so I had some coffee and that took care of it. The rest of the day went smoothly. I had recovered leaps and bounds from the previous day. I was active and on my feet, walking slowly, a bit stiff, but still walking. I took a walk through the park about a half a mile total. and then spent almost 3 hours in the car. By then of the day I was a bit more sore, but my pain was tolerable and so I relied on Motrin alone for my pain/inflammation management. I was finally able to leave the house and see my friends.

Read more at tumbling towards ecstasy

Well now that the blogs are all in a tizzy over Goetic evocation and demons in particular, I have decided to state a few of my own opinions on the matter. Over the past few months I have learned a lesson from adherents of the Left Hand Path, that it’s all too easy to judge a group of spirits by their class, even though like human personalities, they are actually unique individuals, and really need to be judged as such. To say that all Goetic demons are of a certain nature is to make a generality that is at best, inaccurate, at worst, a kind of prejudice. I admit that I have fallen into this trap, because magicians tend to categorize classes of spirits in order to place them into a greater context. However, all models and systems of categorization are heuristic devices that help one to understand what actually is a diverse and very loosely organized body of spiritual entities. Knowing a spirit’s alignment and determining its place within a spiritual hierarchy and class is an important tool for understanding and identifying that spirit, but its true identification can only occur when one has actually either invoked or evoked that spirit through some kind of magickal operation. This means that the old grimoires can’t be completely trusted in regards to how they describe and qualify specific demonic entities.

I am not going to name any names from the individual authors of these blogs, of course, since everyone who is commenting on this thread are experienced magicians in their own right. Magick can easily get out of control, but most of the time when this happens the magick just fails to really produce any verifiable effect. It’s also easy to blame magickal operations for being the cause of catastrophes, such as a house catching on fire, having an auto accident, causing the breakup of friendships or love relationships or any manifestation of bad health. Those of us who are committed and consistent workers of ritual or ceremonial magick can tend to paint our realities with too much literal and metaphorical magickal phenomena, since that is what we are particularly focused on.

Each situation requires a thorough examination, but I have found more often than not that mundane causes and chaotic accidents are usually to blame for the supposed “bad luck” that does occur from time to time to magicians. To blame one’s magick for disasters is probably all too dramatic and pretty difficult to refute or prove erroneous. When a magician makes such a statement they are no longer able to really objectively examine the facts. If my magick produced disasters that I had to suffer through (and I could objectively prove that it had indeed been the cause), then I would probably cease all magickal work for a while until I had discovered and corrected the flaw in my practice and operations.

I have often found that when accidents occur, it was a lack of magick that allowed them to happen without any warning or indication that something bad was going to happen. Also, magicians tend to believe their own tales of power, maintaining a kind of mythic perspective on the reality of their lives because it's more “magickal” to do so. But all human beings succumb to accidents, sickness, disasters and other unplanned events as well as unmitigated stupidity, and magicians are not immune to these occurrences either.

Getting back to the topic of demons, as a class they represent the unconscious forces and intelligences that exist both within and without human beings. However, some of them will impact and react with the unconscious mind of the operator in what could be judged as a harmful experience or an unleashing of an unconscious issue or complex. Whether or not a demon can have this effect depends on the quality of the unconscious mind of the operator and the exact personality of the demon that is evoked. Individuals who have a strong self definition and who have worked out many of their unconscious issues will probably not have the potential for encountering a demon that will produce in them a harmful experience. The older and more experienced the magician, the more likely that life itself has worked out a lot of that individual’s internal issues and complexes. However, everyone has an Achilles’ heel, so if one were to serially invoke all of the demonic spirits, eventually one would be found that produced a bad experience. The supposed bad experience could also be turned to one’s advantage, especially if it were used to work out that issue or complex it triggered, allowing it to be completely resolved.

Possession and obsession can be hazards that anyone who traffics with spirits could potentially experience. These are the risks that one takes to perform invocation and evocation. Either state can occur even with supposedly friendly spirits, depending on the psyche of the operator or one who engages in such experiences. Possession trance is not actually the same thing as being possessed by a spirit that one is invoking or evoking - being ridden by a godhead is quite different, even if the experience was not sought and produced unpleasant side effects.

In my unpublished treatise on Invocation and Evocation, I define these two terms in the following manner. I know that my definitions may be quite different than what others might believe or even how these terms are classically defined. Some may argue that spirits have as much a physical body as a human being. However, in my experience, spirits have a very different physical makeup and structure than a human being. The fact that they can assume multiple forms or even be completely invisible should give magicians a clue as to their actual physical quality.

“The primary difference between human consciousness and the consciousness of a spiritual entity is that the human egoic distinction between the self and not-self boundaries are sharply defined, based as they are on the physical body; whereas ego-less spirits do not have the same sense of distinctness and uniqueness. This is because a human being, like all living sentient physical beings, has a highly developed identity that is based upon that physical body. Human beings are only partially aware of their connection to other beings within the ocean of consciousness. The spiritual dimension of a human being resides within his or her higher self, wherein the experience of the unity of consciousness is primary. A spirit is aware of its union with all other conscious entities and uses its personal identity only as a means to focus itself so that it may temporarily function as an independent individual; otherwise it is only a participant in the undifferentiated mass of unified consciousness.”

“As stated above, a human being relies upon a highly evolved identity in order to function in the material world. A spirit uses an identity only for the purpose of functional differentiation, otherwise, it has no material identity. The danger to a human being from a spirit is the potential for a loss of identity or a loss of will. How this is accomplished is that the spirit may assume the mundane identity of the human magickal operator, or the spirit may enchant the operator, causing delusions and impassioned fantasies. When a spirit is said to have assumed a human's identity, what is meant by this is that it has entered that person's sphere of personal awareness and taken control of the normal egoic functions, thus taking possession of the individual's whole conscious being. Human beings may also experience delusions when a spirit is able to seduce their will and thus become far too influential, causing an obsession to occur.    

A spirit has an amoebic ability to attach itself to or completely engulf the consciousness of a human being. Because a spirit exists in an undifferentiated state of consciousness and has no restrictive physical component or material body, it does not understand the primitive necessity with which human beings require the maintenance of a distinct and unique awareness of self. Therefore, a spirit may possess or obsess a human being without harm to itself, but with dire consequences to those unprepared for an exposure to a spiritual being. However, a human being who has developed to the point of having an awareness of self that resides in the world of Atziluth would be immune to possession or obsession, but he would seem to have no personally distinct identity either. But this immunity would only include spiritual avatars and would not even include those who are even considered spiritual adepts. So therefore, you should take great care in dealing with spirits and assume the paramount responsibility to guard yourself from obsession or a loss of soul.

When a person has been possessed, he no longer functions as an individual, but is clouded and obscured by the consciousness of the spirit. Yet his own state of consciousness is twisted and distorted by a lack of normally occurring cohesive structures that are used to express his individuality in a coordinated manner. What remains is a fragmented self which cannot focus and is guided by whatever momentary impulse captures the imagination. The only remedy is an exorcism, which consists of withdrawing the interfering spiritual influence through an intercession with the ruling God-form, and causing the healing of the individual through purification, the restoration of the self-image through trance techniques, and an enforced period of spiritual fortification and retirement from all occult practices.

Obsession is easier to understand, but actually more difficult to rectify than possession. When a person becomes obsessed, she must be removed entirely from the source of her obsession and given other tasks to occupy her. All occult activity must be halted for a period of time until the danger of a relapse is past. Then the individual must undergo self analysis until the source of the obsession is discovered and its relevant issue resolved.

Both possession and obsession occur when a person's psychological issues are over stimulated. This causes the self to become vulnerable and then, subsequently, overwhelmed by the shadows of the unconscious mind that seek to extinguish its frail identity. Therefore, the disciplined adept continually deals with his personal issues and never attempts a magickal operation when depressed or emotionally distraught. Also, great care must be used when selecting others of lesser spiritual achievement to assist in an invocation. The adept is solely responsible for the welfare of his assistants, and he should discriminate against those who are psychologically unstable or unsuitable for withstanding exposure to supernatural phenomena. The performance of the magickal procedure for assuming a God-form ,which acts as a magickal identity for the magician, is the best means of safeguarding the self from possession or obsession. When you assume a God-form, you have taken upon yourself the protective grace and authoritative control to both direct and deflect the influences and powers of a spiritual entity. This is because the God-form is the primary archetype that governs the spiritual world and is, therefore, used in exorcism to extract unwanted spiritual influences. So long as you can maintain the connection to his God-form, a spirit cannot cause either possession or obsession.”

Since I have actually witnessed a few individuals who were possessed and even performed exorcisms, as well as counseled individuals who suffered from some kind of spiritual based obsession, I think that I can tell when someone is suffering from these maladies or not. I would judge that nothing that I have read so far in anyone’s blog would indicate to me that someone has succumbed to either obsession or possession. These are very serious maladies, and they usually require a fair amount of time for not only healing and recuperation, but also to avoid such an occurrence in the future. Once inflicted by one of these maladies, it can make it more likely for the victim to be inflicted again.

So, being balanced, emotionally and psychically clear as well as having powerful allies and intimately associated godheads are important if one is to ensure that neither possession or obsession can occur. I also tend avoid individuals who have a natural capacity for obsessive compulsive disorder, since they are prime candidates for obsession.

I think that these opinions and ideas will hopefully not only explain my perspective on the manner of demonic evocation, but also that possession or obsession can occur with any spiritual entity or process, regardless of whether it is supposedly positive or malefic.
Frater Barrabbas

(Above: Me playing at the Psychetect album release party)

Psychetect interview on the G-Spot

A couple notes:

1. I announce during the interview the upcoming City of Dead Toys EP, a collaboration between Skerror and me.

2. I’ll be opening for The Steven Losambras at The Parlour in PDX on April 30th.

Related posts:

1. My debut album: release date and shows
2. New Psychetect track: “Remembering”
3. Return to the Wasteland available now! Plus: Down Nightmare Lab for FREE

HipGnosis is the recording name of the Des Moines based electronic musician Eric Young. In addition to producing, Eric also DJs the Glitch.fm online radio show Between Zero and One every Wednesday from 10PM-12AM (CST).

Klint Finley: How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard it?

HipGnosis: Wow. Hmm. Experimental, psychedelic, electronic dance music combined w/ elements of hip-hop, classical, and plain weirdness.

I was classically trained, though I don’t play any “traditional instruments” any longer. Now I play a computer.

So you’re a Gnostic bishop, are you not?

Indeed. Consecrated in the lineage thru Tau Allen Greenfield (who is of Doinel lineage.) Also I have a chartered Memphis-Misraim lodge, though I have yet to find people in physical proximity to get the lodge very active. It’s currently a research/study lodge, primarily, with work done online at the moment.

How does your experience of Gnosticism effect your work?

Glad you put it that way. With a name like “HipGnosis” people often assume i am a Gnostic Christian (which is quite far from the truth.)

I am of a rather interesting strain of Gnosticism that probably shouldn’t be capitalized. I consider my own strain to be an innate sense of the divine within (and ANYONE can be that kind of gnostic), but also I am what I call “chemo-gnostic” as I am definitely not afraid to talk about the effects of chemicals/entheogens on my spirituality (again for lack of a better term).

I am very much of the 23-current, which when embracing chaos as much as I do, kind of creates its own inherent divinity maybe. Formerly a TOPY member, Discordian, and general chaos magick weirdo. The
Discordian side is NECESSARY so I don’t take anything too siriusly.

I know you use binaural beats and other methods to enhance your music by making it consciousness altering. Can you describe some of the methods you use?

Well, much of my music is a sort of “hypersigil” imbued with specific frequencies designed to induce altered states. When combined with psychedelics, it can be intense. I have done much research on cymatics/sound healing/binaurual tones.

I started making acid house as the first electonic music i did, and binaurals were first introduced to that music. I am heavily influenced by Coil, who also did much work w/ frequencies to transmit information/altered states-specific qualities. Psychic TV is an early influence as well, which was less about traditional sound-mind altering, but more about raw feeling/energy.

And as a raver since the early 90’s UK hardcore/jungle/garage, “techno” and old-school “trance” play huge roles in the type of vibe i try to get across. Pure butt-shaking, mind-quaking funk. Also heavily effected by hip-hop and breakbeat/sample culture, that kind of cut-n-paste mentality carried over.

But what, more specifically, do you do to make your music mind altering? Or is that a secret?

Semi-secret. Much of it is energetically imbued, but as far as technical wizardry goes: binaural tone generation and specific frequencies mixed in at nearly sub-liminal levels.

I’m afraid that’s *about* all i can say to that. I do a lot of my music when in trance states, so honestly SOME of my method is not even known to me.

Do the binaural effects carry over to MP3s or other lossy formats?

Yeah binaurals can carry over to mp3, since binaural tones are not actually tones that can be *heard*, as much as just perceived on a consciousness level. With binauruals, you have 2 tones, slightly offset by a small amount.

Say if you’re going for a 7Hz brainwave state you can put one tone at say 50 Hz and another at 43 Hz. You modulate the two together, and your brain actually picks up the *difference* between the two and matches that difference. In this case 7Hz.

In addition to the mind altering aspects of your music, is there any magical intent behind any of your works?

Very much so, but I’m afraid if i said anything about that it might negate the effects. I assure you it is nothing less than the upheaval of all societal norms, though.

I understand you make your living making music and doing mixing and mastering. About what percentage of your income comes from actually making music?

Not much, as I have given a lot of it away free. I get paid for gigs, but I’m not exactly greedy, so i don’t gouge people on fees. I actually make my “living” (if you can call it that), from disability. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 19, and after several years of constantly being in and out of the hospital I was put on disability.

It has allowed me to make music, which is a form of therapy in and of itself I feel. Perhaps part of my sickness (aside from being morally opposed to most of western culture’s ideals) was the inability to express myself due to having to work 50+ hrs a week in order to survive. Unable to finish school due to mounting mental health issues and a distinct sickness of the soul, and also being trained in mostly just music and philosophy/comparative religion, i am not qualified for much beyond this.

I have tried nearly every type of job under the sun – from corporate sales/HR, to debt collection, to telemarketing, to bar-tending. I seem to fail at living a normal life.

I currently live on approximately $400/month from disability and whatever little extra I can make from playing out and sales of music. Mixing/mastering work is few and far between, even at the EXTREMELY low prices I charge. I am both blessed and cursed by my illness, I am fully aware.

Well, that answer my question about how viable mastering is as a career path for musicians…

Ha. Yeah. It’s not a career path, but more of an “odd jobs” path.

What software and equipment do you use to produce your music?

These days I use Ableton Live for nearly everything, as it has proven to be the most versatile and functional tool for my particular style.

Hardware-wise, I’m using a Hercules DeeJay Trim 4&6 audio interface for live performance (since i can use it with MIDI-control vinyl/turntables and also with Ableton). For controllers, i use an M-Audio X-Session Pro for the mixing side and keyboard controllers such asAxiom 49 and (soon) an APC-20.

You were doing some music production in a Linux environment a while back. How was that?

I was experimenting w/ open-source audio software, and honestly, it still leaves a lot to be desired.

Yeah, there’s really nothing in Ableton’s class yet. Did you try Freewheeling though? I’ve been curious about that app.

Yeah, it has some interesting features, it was one of them that i played with a lot, as well as BEAST and Hydrogen. It sucks that each one is its own entity, though, and VST support is not exactly awesome with Linux.

Did you try LMMS?

Yeah, and was fairly disappointed with LMMS. partly because in order to make music with that stuff it would require configuring an admittedly screwy Linux Audio set-up (with less-than-optimum real-time audio driver support).

So you caused sort of a stir on Twitter a couple months ago with your commentary about DJ Shadow’s new online store. What exactly was it that set you off?

Hahaha oh boy, DJ Shadow…. Well, he was very much a hero of mine, and one of the main reasons why i decided to go into audio production. He also was an independent music icon, who sold his soul to Universal Music Group.

He published a (self-admitted) old-man, anti-technology rant about piracy and how it’s ruining the music industry (read: MAJOR LABEL MUSIC INDUSTRY, of which he is now a part.) He waited a couple days
for it to spread around the net… and BAM, he announces his new web-site where (*gasp*) you can buy all his MP3s!

He then proceeded to suck UMG’s dick and talk about how they “have it set up so any MAJOR LABEL artist can now sell their own MP3s too!” They being Universal, coz you know they’re so awesome and all.

Now, DJ Shadow made his career on ILLEGALLY sampling other people’s music for his records. All of his music is samples and he holds a Guinness record for the first completely sample-created album, with no “original” sounds. He was sued and his first few releases were taken off the shelves, because he didn’t list or license any sample material. And he could only release those things (due to money) on independent labels because
a major label would have made him license the stuff. His early releases were vinyl-only.

I just think he’s being entirely hypocritical.

So are you working on anything new that you want to plug before we finish up?

Well, I am currently working on a bunch of remixes for various people (official, not bootlegs) and getting ready to buckle down to begin this new production collab project called “The Blac Thumb” and subsequent live performance set-up. It’s going to be a wonky, funk-glitch-dub-hop project. Think 60’s-70’s psychedelic jazz-funk but whomped and glitched out. It will be headnoddingly, buttmovingly awesome.

Who are you collaborating with on that?

A young producer called iLford Brimley. I’m also beginning a collab w/ MusSck (of Daly City/Glitch Hop Temple/Car Crash Sets). And likely collabing with Mindelixir (a dubstep producer extraordinaire, who is making a lot of waves in the SE). I am playing a Winter Music Conference event March 27th in Miami, where I will be meeting him for the 1st time in person.

Related posts:

1. Red State Soundsystem’s Joshua Ellis – Technoccult interview
2. New Brian Eno interview
3. Cyborg anthropologist Amber Case, the Technoccult interview

Cracked has a surprisingly interesting article on the psychology of rewards and how it’s applied to game design:

Do you like your job?

Considering half of you are reading this at work, I’m going to guess no. And that brings us to the one thing that makes gaming addiction–and addiction in general–so incredibly hard to beat.

As shocking as this sounds, a whole lot of the “guy who failed all of his classes because he was playing WoW all the time” horror stories are really just about a dude who simply didn’t like his classes very much. This was never some dystopian mind control scheme by Blizzard. The games just filled a void.

Why do so many of us have that void? Because according to everything expert Malcolm Gladwell, to be satisfied with your job you need three things, and I bet most of you don’t even have two of them:

Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);

Complexity (so it’s not mind-numbing repetition);

Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the awesome results of your hard work).

Most people, particularly in the young gamer demographics, don’t have this in their jobs or in any aspect of their everyday lives. But the most addictive video games are specifically geared to give us all three… or at least the illusion of all three.

Cracked: 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted

(via Social Physicist)

Related posts:

1. Create your own video games with new DS game making game
2. Amazing video game trailer – Heavy Rain
3. Fake Video Can Convince Witnesses to Give False Testimony

...I’m in one place. With the exception of St. Patty’s Day (which I can take or leave, unless I need some vegetables winged at my head, which is what happens from the floats during the parades. Jay collected a dozen cabbages a few years back with which he fantasized about making kimchee. This plan involved many jars buried in the backyard. I put the kibosh on that right quick.), nothing much is happening in New Orleans.

Except for the earth-quickening of Spring. The air is finally in the 70s. The doors & windows are open. While July & August are quiet, too, March doesn’t have the ever-present fear of Hurricane-Around-the-Corner, so I can be home without thinking about packing up everything I care about & fleeing for high ground.

So I go out. Play with friends. Dance. Nap. Drink a bit too much. Paint. Think. Watch dumb horror movies at 2 in the morning with rosemary popcorn. Become a way-station for traveling tribe. Ride my bike. Pull some weeds. Play kitteh-bagpipes. Make new prints. Ship books & art. Tease friends on FaceBook.

It’s all battery recharging. I pack slack in preparation for when there is no downtime, no alonetime, no in-my-own-hometime, and there will be a LOT of that come May. June. September-December.

But right now it’s good. Peaceful. A little hungover. There’s a new painting on my easel, and I think I’m getting the kinks worked out. Jay’s set medic-ing today, and just got a gig on an ambulance, and folkloricfusion is here prepping for Gulf Wars.

It’s like a grown-up summer vacation. New Orleans ain’t a bad place to do it.

Day 2:
I slept fairly well through the night, walking up only a few times, but then falling back asleep quickly. And may I say, this dry mouth thing is nasty to wake up with... won't go into detail, so suffice to say my tongue feels like stiff laundry. Really hoping that disappears today.
I had a pounding headache yesterday, especially when I changed levels.. even slowly. I think it might be caffeine withdrawal. So I'm having coffee as I write.
The Vicodin made me into a shambling brainless zombie, but didn't seem to help that much, so I am only going to take it at night and stick to Flexeril (so I'm more mobile) and IBProfen for the inflammation/pain. All in all, this hurts but it isn't killing me. I feel the most pain when I put pressure on the incision (laying on my back, sitting against a chair), I feel some pain when walking because this cause the incision to move. I have some muscle tightness in low back and hips.
In terms of activity: I did some research for my paper yesterday when I was more with it, but wasn't with it enough to analyze anything. So, I'm going to pick up where I left off later. Mostly I slept all day with a few lucid moments.
I can't see the wound as its all wrapped up neatly.. but as soon as I get the chance I'll take a snapshot.

Read more at tumbling towards ecstasy

Ave,

In my daily work, I've taken to using the LIRP instead of the LBRP to begin my ritual battery -- not as a replacement, but because of the way the ritual battery should work. I've been doing regular LBRP's for years now; my sphere of sensation is pretty well buttressed at this point. Regular magical work has increased my sensitivity to changes in my sphere so that I can tell when something Is off, which is major for me. I used to have to result to divination; now I use divination as a double-check, and find my own "scanning", my own intuition, to be accurate.

The reason I feel it is important to use the LIRP in the opening instead of the LBRP is that for myself the Middle Pillar Ritual is the heart of the daily practice, and the daily practice is on one level about increasing the amount/raising the signature of the LVX in my subtle bodies. I plan to invoke and increase with these rituals, not just balance and level. The Middle Pillar does the work of equilibrating and balancing the energies (through the vibration of the Holy Names of the Sephirah).....the LBRP, with the Rose Cross, do a fine job of closing everything down at the end. Performing the LIRP initially has had a positive effect on the Middle Pillar component of my personal battery, and upon my scrying as well.

This isn't, of course, my Order's teaching on the subject. Just what I find works in my personal practice.

I do feel that it's necessary to close with the LBRP, though-otherwise there is an open, leaky kind of feeling going on.

On another note-had what was basically a lucid dream last night. These have been happening more and more frequently over the last year. They aren't completely lucid, because I am not aware of being in control. I am aware on a level that I am dreaming, and I have complete recall of the dreams upon waking...which is definitely a new thing.

 I dreamt I attended a small clinic-temple, led by some sort of mystic monk (who appeared Eastern) that was about meditation and energy work in the middle of a city. The gentleman moved in a fluid and interesting way, and wore a sort of beaded headdress and had symbols painted upon his face. His robes were a burnt orange, and his acolytes wore golden-yellow robes.  People came to this gentleman for attunements, it seemed. I laid on the altar, and this fellow touched me and there was a fantastic surge of energy into my system that laid me out-I woke up still in the dream, but after 6 hours of dream-time had passed. Called my wife to explain why I didn't come home, and she told me she knew already as she had called the clinic. I asked the acolytes what this was, and they said "Tikkun". I saw the spelling in the dream as well, oddly enough. I remember thinking in the dream that perhaps this was some Thai or Cambodian (this is how the gentlemen monks appeared to me) occult system. I made a note to look it up after I awoke.

Turns out Tikkun is Hebrew, and means repair of, or perfection of...even more interesting. Not sure of what that means or what it's significance might be fore myself, but planning on breaking out the cards to find out this evening. I'm going to have to start writing these dreams down. It's like I'm living two lives at once. I've heard very little talk about dreams in Hermetic circles --our New Age mates talk about it all the time, though. I wonder we don't? It seems clear that these things are important. One of our wiser Fraters brought up their importance a while ago-- other than him I really haven't heard much about their import. Perhaps when one enters the Inner this is discussed more, as Rosicrucian literature is full of dream-like imagery.

 More occurred after that point in the dream, but this is what stood out.

In LVX,

AIT

Here's an odd story from New Zealand. A woman who was troubled by two ghosts came up with the clever idea of selling them in an online auction - and wound up with a winning bid of over £1300!

They were sold in two glass vials, plugged with stoppers and dipped in holy water, which Woodbury says 'dulls the spirits' energy.'

The two departed souls sold for 2,830 New Zealand dollars (£1,320) in an auction on the Trade Me site.

She said they were the spirits of an old man called Les Graham who lived in the house during the 1920s, and a powerful, disruptive little girl who turned up after a session with a spirit-calling Ouija board. Since an exorcism at the property last July led to their capture, there has been no further spooky activity in the house, she said.
So once you have received the bottles containing the ghosts, what would you do with them?

'To revive the spirit, i have been told that you pour into a little dish and let it evaporate into your house,' the auction description helpfully suggested.
Personally I've always wanted a ghost butler who could bring me drinks from the kitchen and help to clean up around the house, but I would want some serious proof that these ghosts were capable of moving physical objects before I would pay that kind of money, even for two of them.

The winning bidder is believed to be a New Zealand company that manufactures electronic cigarettes. It's unclear exactly why they want some ghosts.
I have a hard time believing that this company could do much with a couple of ghosts without a magician on staff to control them. But I suppose stranger things have happened, and maybe they are just looking for a ghostly janitor or something to clean up around the plant. After all, a ghost wouldn't draw a salary and would be immune to any dangers posed by hazardous materials.

The auction has proved to be an inspiration for a number of other savvy entrepreneurs.

Since the auction attracted media attention, several more ghost-related auctions have sprung up on the site, including one offering 'a once in a lifetime opportunity for one lucky soul to own an EVIL GHOST', and another offering several vials of coloured water that, the seller explains, definitely don't contain ghosts.
I wonder if any of these bidders would pay extra for vials containing demons? That might be a future business opportunity right there.

Clackamas County Circuit Court Judge Steven Maurer sentenced Jeffrey and Marci Beagley to 16 months in prison this afternoon, calling the couple’s decision to not seek medical care for their 16-year-old son, Neil Beagley, a “crime that was a product of an unwillingness to respect the boundaries of freedom of religious expression.” [...]

“The idea of sending Jeffrey and Marci Beagley to prison is heart-wrenching,” Maurer said in a lengthy explanation of his sentence. “I think, certainly, that I’m in complete agreement with the jurors who observed that the Beagleys are good people.”

But Maurer said too many children had died unnecessarily because of the church’s beliefs: “It needs to stop.”

Oregon Live: Jeffrey and Marci Beagley sentenced to 16 months of prison for their son’s faith-healing death

(via Religion News Blog)

Related posts:

1. Even if you’re found innocent, you can still do 15 years in prison
2. Brain activity spikes at death
3. Praying man let his daughter die

(Image Credit: mike 23 / CC)

This is a guest post by Chris Arkenberg. Many readers wanted to know more about systems thinking after my interview with Chris, so he’s returned to provide us with some resources. – Klint

The term “systems thinking” has a few different connotations. Classically, non-linear dynamic systems represents a set of principles that describe the organization of energy as an extropic function of information, driven by power laws and bounded by limits. The formulas within this domain are often applied to natural systems such as populations, fluid dynamics, and so-called chaotic processes like dripping faucets and epileptic seizures. Some of the better-known ideas within dynamic systems are attractors, bifurcations, and the process of iteration.

More broadly, systems thinking refers to a widening perspective when studying networked domains. For example, the recent trends in Life Cycle Analysis in product design & manufacturing attempts to go beyond the material & energetic costs of the physical object – eg a plastic bottle of water – to consider every aspect of its life cycle from sourcing all of materials and manufacturing support, cost of shipping, human impact of the workers, environmental impact, and end-of-life in a landfill or recycling depot. Wal-Mart, to its credit, has made great strides across its supply chain by optimizing efficiency in the life cycle of the many products that end up on its shelves and in people’s lives. Some of these solutions can be a simple and radical as redesigning packaging for minimal materials use and shipping weight.

Recently, systems thinking has been applied to the design process suggesting that designers are uniquely empowered to engineer powerful solutions for complex problems in ways that benefit many different human and non-human stakeholders, eg nature is a primary stakeholder, as are future generations saddled with our often myopic creations.

I tend to use systems thinking to describe all of these connotations rolled up into a general way of looking at the world that goes beyond what is immediately visible and reaches into the extended connections and unseen impacts within a domain. In some respects, this way of thinking is a natural part of simply paying attention to things. In other ways, it’s a challenging and sometimes overwhelming course of study that can easily move from Aha! moments to a very dis-empowering sense of total non-determinism. In the face of such huge complexity it can seem impossible to make any actionable sense of things. Finding the balance and determining the appropriate scope of research in analyzing a domain is a critical skill that must be developed individually through practice, lest you tug on that thread and find you’ve unraveled the entire sweater.

Some resources to get you thinking about the micro & macro of complex systems:

Complexity: a Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell. A great, thorough introduction to complexity and systems thinking. Beginner to intermediate. Don’t be scared by the equations – there’s lot’s of good info here. “Readers will marvel at the sheer range of settings in which complex systems operate: from ant hills to the stock market, from T cells to Web searches, from disease epidemics to power outages, complexity challenges theorists’ intellectual adroitness. With refreshing clarity, Mitchell invites nonspecialists to share in these researchers’ adventures in recognizing and measuring complexity and then predicting its cascading effects.”

Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of Wholeness by John Briggs. A solid introduction to systems, chaos, and wholeness. “Briggs and Peat look at how chaos theory has also influenced other scientific disciplines, offering a model, for example, for understanding the human brain and developing computer systems for artificial intelligence. The book’s chapter heading quotations from Chinese Taoist texts and Alice in Wonderland are clues that readers are being led into abstruse territory. But encouraging readers to appreciate nuances of truth rather than to seek a reductionist version of truth may be what chaos theory–and this book–is all about.”

The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems by Fritjof Capra. A great analysis of how complexity and non-linearity inform the foundations of our natural world. “…brilliant synthesis of such recent scientific breakthroughs as the theory of complexity, Gaia theory, chaos theory, and other explanations of the properties of organisms, social systems, and ecosystems. Capra’s surprising findings stand in stark contrast to accepted paradigms of mechanism and Darwinism and provide an extraordinary new foundation for ecological policies that will allow us to build and sustain communities without diminishing the opportunities for future generations.”

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. An excellent general introduction to smart design and life cycle analysis that advocates for both prosperity and sustainability. “…the authors present a manifesto calling for a new industrial revolution, one that would render both traditional manufacturing and traditional environmentalism obsolete. The authors, an architect and a chemist, want to eliminate the concept of waste altogether, while preserving commerce and allowing for human nature.”

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. A highly-readable & engaging study of the vast, interconnected, and interdependent systems of agriculture, energy, and the journey of food to our plate.

Systems Science, a blog series by George Mobus. Scroll down (and go back a page) to start at “Systems Science, Part 1.” Mobus provides a good overview of systems theory.

Finally, just start training yourself to look beyond the visible, to follow connections, and to think in more holistic terms when considering the larger interconnections at play in all domains. Consider, for example, all of the machines, organizations, people, and processes that contributed to your dinner tonight. Nothing is as simple as it seems yet, often, there are very simple rules underlying their complexity.

Chris Arkenberg is a researcher, forecaster, and strategist focusing on the interplay of technology, culture, and human solutions. He is currently a visiting researcher with the IFTF, sits on the advisory board of Hukilau, and is a co-founder of the Augmented Reality Development Camp.

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3. A response to Trevor Blake’s post “Sustainability”

I thought that I would tell the tale of my spiritual and magickal origins, since this is probably one of the most interesting and compelling of all of my biographical material. Everyone wants to know how a person got started in his occult and pagan path. Where he learned about these subjects that he now uses almost reflexively. To understand my origins is to understand where I have come from and perhaps, where I am ultimately going. So here is the tale of my origins, full of truth, myth, some exaggeration and coloring due to the passage of time and many retellings. I hope that you find it informative and insightful - perhaps knowing me a little better than other occultists who would rather keep their life story a strict secret. I apologize in advance for the long length of this article.

Probably one of the most interesting stories in my repertoire is the one about my spiritual and magickal origin. One could say in a mythic sense that I came forth out of darkness, selfishness, a lust for personal power to combat an obvious self loathing and low self esteem. But I was just a goofy teenage witch learning about the gods, magickal powers and who my magickal friends and enemies were, all around the same time. I had no coven to guide me, or High Priestess or High Priest to teach me. In fact I had few books or other written resources and only an individual older friend who was also a non-initiate. I was about to begin my path as a kind of Trial by Fire. All of this occurred almost 38 years ago, back in what was for me a simpler and more optimistic time of 1972.

That was the year that Richard Nixon was president, the Vietnam war was escalating with U.S. aircraft dropping bombs in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam. There was an intense protesting of the war worldwide, others supported the war and the status quo, and it seemed as if the unity of the nation was in jeopardy of being pulled apart. It was a time of the radicalization of both the political left and the right, but for someone who was not yet old enough to be drafted and whose father was extremely pro military and a Republican, I was untouched by these issues. For me, the battle ground was between a newly risen pagan religion of witchcraft pitted against the rising of an evangelical social conservatism. Those times were different than now, but in some ways, they were eerily similar.

Having recently turned seventeen and messing around with the occult, paganism and magick, I was oblivious to much of these social upheavals. I was self absorbed and deeply involved in not only discovering who I was, but also searching for spiritual and personal meaning. Mine was a life bereft of spiritual meaning, since my father was an avowed agnostic who believed that religion was a blight on modern existence - one that should be eliminated. My mother was a gentle soul who had no intellectual taste for theology or philosophy, preferring to accept what society had established for spiritual truth. I was different, because I neither accepted my father’s beliefs nor did I accept the social norms for religious faith and practice. I heard a different drum beating than most of my contemporaries, but that was not either unusual or peculiar, since the late sixties and early seventies was a time of questioning orthodoxy in all fields and areas of life experience. It was a time of discovery and rediscovery.

Outer space was being conquered, but inner space was also being explored in a manner previously unknown. Science was poised to discover the inner powers of the human mind, or so we thought. Ancient disciplines, like astrology, alchemy, magic, yoga, tantra, and witchcraft were being re-examined with an open mind, and science was introducing a radical pharmacopeia that opened the mind to new dimensions. Even psychism and ESP were being studied and taken very seriously. It was the infamous period of the late sixties and early seventies, and although I was too young to participate in what was happening to the youth culture of that time, I was very much aware of what was going on around me in that regards, since it potently answered the emptiness that I felt within me. So I tried to be hip in my own fashion, seeking to grow up and pass myself off as an adult as quickly as possible. Some parts of me grew up very quickly, other parts remained quite adolescent. All of this jarring, uneven growth accompanied with an exploding self awareness was typical of the times.

Previously, when I was 15 in the summer of 1970, I had foolishly experimented with LSD, having acquired a small portion of a powerful dose of drug impregnated after-dinner mints, obviously based on the famous Owsley’s Acid. This dose had been freely given to me because I had helped some friends acquire this drug through a close intermediary. I had no idea what I had ingested, since I had not yet even experienced being stoned on marijuana. LSD was a thousand times more potent, as I soon discovered. I probably had gotten the maximum dose of a thousand micrograms, and the hallucinative  state lasted for a total of 13 hours. I managed to just barely cope with what I was experiencing, being left alone in my bedroom with no one to console or guide me. It was a terrifying experience, but I weathered the storm of complete dislocation with reality for hours.

I pretended to be sick so that my mother wouldn’t know what had befallen her son, making up the excuse that I had succumbed to a bout of mild food poisoning - nothing serious enough to warrant seeing a doctor. I managed to reassure my mother that all was OK, even though I weathered a storm of visual images that were totally unprecedented. I must have been made out of tough psychic stuff, because I made it through this experience without managing to loose my mind entirely. It was one hell of an initiation, and one that I was not interested in repeating for some years in the future. What it taught me was that reality is not iron clad or objective, it is in fact fluid, subjective and determined by many interpretations. The experience left permanent scars on my mind and in my visual capability - I saw tracers, auras and other odd phenomena from that moment onward. The occult world of the paranormal had been opened to me, and I was unable to close it. I stumbled around for a few days afterwards recovering from this powerful experience, but the impact on my mind was profound and permanent. This experience was probably responsible for most of my occult interests and the pursuit of all things paranormal.

The early seventies was a period when there was a lot of cheap and inexpensive books and magazines published about the supernatural, occult, mysticism, ESP, astral projection, hypnosis, and many other related topics. I was fascinated with everything having to do with the paranormal, and as I began to travel around with a marching band and later, a drum and bugle corps, I discovered some books here and there in the various cities that I visited. These occasional and rare acquisitions began to build up my repertoire of studies. When visiting a museum in Chicago, I purchased a book written by Gerald B. Gardner, but unfortunately, there wasn’t much that was useful in that book. It was full of history but contained no rituals for me to use. I also began to learn how to hypnotize other kids and how to put them into a trance state. I became something of a menace as far as other adults and parents were concerned, since I seemed to be able to elicit paranormal experiences in others. To the kids around my age, I was a pioneer and a hero. I finally got to show some basic hip intelligence and creativity that elevated my esteem in my peer group.  I was also very keen on astral projection and attempted many times to acquire this experience for myself, with limited results. I seemed more capable of helping others to experience these phenomena rather than get myself to experience it directly. I graduated from studying about paranormal phenomena and psychism to harder forms of occultism.   

Then I began to seriously explore the occult, but to facilitate that quest I needed more books. I attempted to borrow books on the subject from the local library, although it revealed little that was useful, since all of the good books seemed to be checked out and never returned. But finally, with a little cash and some digging around, I began to buy cheap books on the occult. Later I managed to buy some books that required some real savings to purchase. My book store of choice was an occult book store located in Milwaukee, on 615 N. Milwaukee Street, called Sanctum Regnum. Although I was chronically broke and had little money for books, I was inspired by the spooky accouterments of this store, right down to the throne in the back that opened up at the pull of a rope, to reveal stairs leading into a cavernous basement, containing an office, a ritual area and niches for Tarot readings. The owner of this store, Fritz, was also rather impressive and bombastic, looking and even acting a lot like King Henry VIII, with the red beard and corpulent body, and even dressed up to fit the part. His assistant was a lovely slender brunette named Jeanie, who was more accessible and friendly than Fritz, and who gave a lot of good advice and counsel to me.

The first two books that put me on the road to piecing together my practices of magick were Paul Huson’s Mastering Witchcraft and Lady Sheba’s Book of Shadows, and then later I managed to buy DeLaurence versions of the Greater Key of Solomon and the Goetia of the Lamageton. There were a few other books that I used extensively, such as June Johns, The King of the Witches, and books by Israel Regardie, W.E. Butler, Gareth Knight, Dion Fortune, William Grey, and of course the master of them all, Aleister Crowley. I also got a copy of Aradia, the Gospel of the Witches by Charles Leland, Witchcraft from the Inside, by Raymond Buckland, and Witchcraft Today, by Gerald Gardner. As I stated previously, I was disappointed by Gardner’s book, since it had no ritual information that I could use. But the books by Paul Huson and Lady Sheba provided the necessary information for me to cobble together a workable magickal system.

At this early time, I also met an older woman who became my friend and ally in occult matters. She was in her early 20's, while I was just a mere teenager. She had been practicing as a solitary witch for a few years and was looking in vain for a coven to join, since Racine was not a hotbed of occultism and witchcraft. I think her name was Gail. She had a crazy younger sister named Marlene who was lustfully obsessed with me. I must admit that I found Marlene’s attentions not at all to my liking, so realizing that she was obviously overly zealous in her pursuit of me, I tried to avoid her wherever possible. Yet her good and wise older sister had mercy on me, kept me out of reach of her younger sibling, and refined my nascent abilities in self-hypnosis and trance mediumship. She also had a car and occasionally took me up to Milwaukee to visit my favorite occult book store. I can remember her waiting for me after school in her car and then we would drive the thirty or forty miles from Racine to Milwaukee on the newly minted interstate freeway system to visit Sanctum Regnum.

I was learning to become quite a competent psychic. Once I mastered how to enter into a trance state, I then learned how to run a seance that really worked. This feat both intrigued and scared the hell out of my school chums. I remember being invited to attend parties of the more hip members of my school for the sole purpose of running seances. One evening in particular, I performed a seance that produced remarkable results. A couple of people automatically went into trance and channeled the spirits of dead people. I even had some difficulty getting one of the individuals out of the trance state that he had entered, which did kind of startle me somewhat.

The fact that I was able to successfully produce paranormal phenomena made me at first quite popular. Then my classmates, after having had an exposure to these phenomena, became afraid of what they were experiencing. For me, it was all a powerful validation of what I had believed possible. It made me into a young man who possessed occult powers, to be feared and respected for having such arcane knowledge and abilities. I also demonstrated a virtuoso talent for reading Tarot cards, even though I had not read a single book on the subject. An admirer gave me my first Tarot deck, and I began to give accurate readings almost immediately. However, after I started studying the Tarot, I become a much better card reader, and this of course was the case for the rest of my nascent talents. Training and practice helped to discipline and refine what I was able to do.

My witch friend often criticized me for pandering after mental powers and magick spells, using them to build up my reputation and attempt to control others. I also had the gall of calling myself a witch and not even really practicing the religion. Yet my excuse was that I was a callow youth who seemed to know everything and did not listen to anyone, not even Gail. I suppose that I aroused her maternal instincts, since she did seem willing to indulge my abilities and cater to me. I can recall that she encouraged my abilities as a trance medium, giving me Nettle tea to aid in this activity. She never attempted to be anything other than my friend, guide and confidant, so to this day I have doubts that her interest in me was anything but platonic and idealistic. I was also the only person that she knew who was also interested in witchcraft and magick, so I was someone that she could talk to about these topics. As I said, occultism was rare in my native town.

At the same time, I also began hanging out with a group of people who idolized a local Christian psychic named Norman Slater, a resident of Kenosha (sister city of Racine, my home town), who was in his late twenties at that time. Norman taught a class on the paranormal at the local technical college in Kenosha county. From this venue Norman began to build up a reputation as a powerful psychic, however, he kept his real beliefs and intentions to his inner circle. When I met him, he was entering the peak of his career and already had quite a large following.

Norman was a peculiar man. He was short of stature, solidly built, and had what almost seemed a hallow of blonde curly hair, like some Roman general. His eyes were a blazing blue and seemed to often look through one. He would often squint his eyes at a person, looking above their head to examine their aura, which he was supposedly able to read like a book. He was not a remarkable man in regards to his height or appearance, but he did have a powerful charisma. His one defect was an odd speech impediment that made him mispronounce words in a peculiar manner. He also had a kind of squeaky voice, but this did not detract from his charisma. I suspect that Norman was of good Anglo-Saxon stock, but his background was obviously lower middle class, since he didn’t seem very educated or eloquent. His mannerisms actually seemed crude and almost a caricature. Norman said nothing about his past or his level of education. This part of his life history he kept quite secret, for obvious reasons - he wanted to be a man of mystery.

Within his inner circle, Norman was more outspoken. He preached that his psychic powers had revealed to him the actual source of the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. He believed that this mysterious location contained the remnants of the lost civilization of Atlantis, which is what he thought was causing all of the strange phenomena. Norman not only believed that he knew where these ruins lay in the shallow depths and coral reefs of the sea around Bermuda and Florida, but he had convinced others that these amazing discoveries could be found if divers were to explore areas that Norman would point out. Word of these revelations began to circulate the community, and Norman began to talk about these ideas in public. For the average person, this was exciting news, of course, and Norman made himself the head of a group of people who were going to assemble an expedition to discover the actual physical ruins of the Atlantean civilization.

Norman was a truly psychic and charismatic man who had a lot of strange and possibly delusional ideas about himself and the world, but he was also something of a confidence man. He coldly used the gullible people around him, accessing their money, skills and support. These people wanted desperately to believe everything that he said. So he promoted himself as a great prophet, keeping them spellbound with amazing psychic prognostications. What psychic powers he did possess could not be reliably used in this manner, so he obviously compensated by unabashedly manipulating other people and situations. I believe that a lot of Norman’s abilities were used to charm the people around him, to gain the trust and unwavering loyalty of his followers. Of course, being fascinated by anything paranormal, I was also attracted to this man like a moth to a flame, even if his spiritual beliefs were contrary to my own.

Over time, it became obvious to me that Norman was only interested in becoming famous. Such fame and notoriety would allow him to get other people to financially back his various projects. Already, he had backers who were sending him to Loch Ness, Scotland, to locate and reveal the Loch Ness Monster. This project obviously took money and connections, which Norman’s followers had abundantly supplied to him. Other projects were also discussed, the one big one was the expedition to the Bermuda Triangle. Norman and his supporters formed a group of young men and women to be trained and certified as divers, who would also act as his sponsored fund raisers and labor pool for whatever else was needed. I attended an early meeting where this expedition was discussed, and was hooked! I wanted to dive in the tropical seas and help the team find the ruins of the lost city-state of Atlantis. We were all quite thrilled at being the advance group of a very special expedition - history in the making and seekers of adventure.

Although Norman was a psychic and had to promote psychism and paranormal abilities in human beings, he was very strict about what he considered to be acceptable areas of exploration, and other areas that he considered forbidden. Norman believed that psychism was a gift from God, but he steadfastly denigrated anything that even remotely appeared to be occultic or deviated from Christian doctrine. So, Norman was very rigid and sectarian. He didn’t like or trust anyone who was not deeply Christian, as he  himself affected a pious Catholic faith. He believed and preached that he alone was unique amongst men in regards to his gifts, and could therefore dispense of his visions and insights as he pleased.

Norman seemed to be always psychically sensitive, nearly omniscient, but of course, he was deceiving his followers about the true nature of psychism. Used alone, psychic sensitivities are generally unreliable, requiring other disciplines and techniques to make them a truly useful tool. I believe that Norman did a lot of acting and pretending to build up his reputation of being a great psychic. To this day, I honestly believe that Norman never questioned his abilities or critically examined his rather prophetic and messianic pronouncements. Nothing that he predicted later ever came true, but his followers were quite in awe of him and believed that the end of the world (as we knew it) was at hand. Norman was the prophetic messenger, combining the artifice of an evangelical preacher with a lay person with psychic powers. The real truth was that Norman was deceiving everyone around him, creating a kind of vortex of illusion and glamor centered around his person.

As it turned out, Norman became for me the ultimate example of a Christian hypocrite, representing all that I learned to despise in that creed. The irony is that Norman was exactly the kind of person that I had aspired to be - a man of power and mystery. Probably because of the similarities between us, Norman seemed actually fond of me. He felt it was his duty to teach me that I was really a wicked boy who needed to be converted to the ways of Christ and bathed in the blood of the lamb, or else shunned. I, on the other hand, was not so easily fooled, or so I thought. Yet I ended my adventure with Norman by becoming the pure victim and fool, but then turned things around and became the instrument of fate, indirectly assisting in his downfall. Truth and objectivity was Norman’s greatest enemy, yet it only took a short while for these powers to catch up with him, destroying his organization from the inside. Yet because I was such a sucker for anyone with extra ordinary powers, I sought to follow this man as well. Strangely, Norman became the very instrument that forced me to become fully committed to being a witch and a ritual magician.

My involvement with Norman Slater and his group and my penchant for working risky magick forced an event to occur that changed my life forever. I usually note this time as the point of my true conversion into the religion of witchcraft. It was at this time that I was finally and quite forcefully brought into the spiritual path of witchcraft, although how that happened was really something spectacular, or at least it was for me. It was a lesson that I had to learn the hard way. That lesson was this: that what you said about yourself and how you conducted your affairs must have some congruence if you were to remain intact while messing around with psychism, magick and occult spirituality. I didn’t understand that lesson. I also ignored the warnings that Gail gave me, thinking that I was somehow special, thereby being protected from my own stupidity.

I was fooling around with the Key of Solomon and the Goetia, trying to cobble together a cogent magickal system from these books. I even went out into the woods one evening in the summer of 1971 and attempted to invoke one of the Goetic demons. To my trance-trained eyes, I had even succeeded somewhat. Unfortunately, I forgot to use the magician’s triangle to constrain the demon, so he appeared to wander freely around, a giant ghost, inspecting the world and me, while I was trapped in my magick circle. I experienced a period of curious horror that lasted at least several minutes, although it seemed a lot longer. When the demon finally dematerialized, I hastily doused the candles, collected my regalia, covered my spoor and hastily left the area. But that evening’s experience did not teach me to stop fooling around with Solomonic magic, in fact it emboldened me, since the magick had indeed worked, albeit, in a dangerous and chaotic manner.

Discovering the Key of Solomon and the Lamegeton for the first time was an intellectual milestone for me, but I soon found the lack of practical ritual structures very annoying as well as the dearth of any kind of realistic instructions. Yet the talismans and sigils presented a great temptation for a young sorcerer to play with them, so it was only a matter of time before I got burned. I was ready to experience some real trouble in my life and for the first time, to taste true evil.

It was the spring of 1972, and on the night of April 11, I finally got blasted with my own magickal manipulations. I put together a session of black magick ceremonies that I performed for a few acquaintances who wanted to be amused by a magickal demonstration. I used a badly mixed system of new-age shamanism and hard-core Goetic magick. It produced a very nasty uncontrolled energy.

For once I was actually a bit afraid, particularly when one of the women in my group of voyeurs took an athame and tried to stab me with it. She was obviously tranced out, perhaps even mildly possessed, since her movements were stiff, slow and ineffectual. I was never really in any danger, but the incident unnerved me. I quickly caught her arm and removed the athame from her hand and put it back on the altar, telling her to sit down and behave, which she seemed to do, although with some obvious wild-eyed nervous trepidation.

This event was followed by another more frightening event. All of a sudden the candles were simultaneously and inexplicably extinguished. The nervous woman at that moment completely lost her nerve and briefly screamed. There was some fumbling in the dark to relight the candles and see what had occurred. The woman was sitting on the floor with a look of complete terror on her face. She babbled that she had seen something that looked like a demon, but to this day I don’t know what she saw when the lights briefly went out.

I was also quite puzzled by how the candles had gone out in the first place, since there were no windows open in the room and no one had detected any perceptible breeze or current of air. However, it seemed that I couldn’t proceed any further with the working, since whatever focus or raised energy had been developing had obviously and quickly dissipated. That scream had ended the magickal working right then and there. My acquaintances had experienced more than enough from my little demonstration. They were quite convinced that I was a very “far out” guy, but way too far out for their tastes. My demonstration did not amuse them, so they hurriedly left, never to return. (In fact, some of them actually sought to steadfastly avoid me, spreading gossip that I was a practicing Satanist.)

At that moment my friend Gail arrived to visit me, walking into my room while the participants were quickly stumbling for the door. I can imagine that she was somewhat amused by the looks of fear and paranoia that greeted her as she entered my room, being briefly jostled by those who were eagerly leaving. Soon we were alone in an awkward silence, amidst the obvious stench of incense and the artefacts of illicit magick. When she was ensconced on her favorite chair in my room, she remarked on how obnoxious the spiritual atmosphere felt in my temple area. I demurred at first to explain the situation, but she pried it out of me after a short while. I tried to laugh it off and even managed to amuse her a bit. She laughed, more at me than with me. Then she said, “You have much to learn, little one, and you dare a great deal.”

Then she bade me go into a trance to determine the nature of the problem. I did as she asked and discovered that I had finally created a profound spiritual crisis for myself, unbeknownst to me, the first of many. I was standing on a threshold, a kind of slippery slope. I had pushed the forces of my own duplicity and selfish lust for magickal power too far. I worked the powers in the name of the goddess, but denied her a reality in my life. I had two choices in front of me. I either crossed the threshold, paid the price for my foolish actions and went on as a true witch, or dropped my dark practices before I caused myself greater damage. I was hooked on working more magick, so I chose to become a real witch and to undergo the ordeal of death and resurrection, although I did not know what my immediate fate was to be. How strange it was, that the day was Palm Sunday, the week before Easter Sunday. Since I had abandoned the church, I was no longer aware of the spiritual significance of the season. I only later realized how strange was the coincidence of these two events.

As I went into that trance, I was pulled down very deeply into it, and felt as if I were falling into a great pit of darkness and desolation - it took a while for me to hit bottom, too. As I stood in the very bottom of that pit of stygian gloom, I saw the silhouette of a great black cat enter into my space. It had large amber eyes and a loud purring noise emanated from it. I did not feel comforted by the appearance of such a large cat, for I sensed from it a great menace. Then I heard an angry whispering voice and a silky dark presence came over me. The voice was feminine and the whisperings of her words sounded like the wind blowing dead leaves. This was my first encounter with the Goddess and she was quite angry, calling me a fool and an idiot.

I had allowed Norman Slater, a few weeks previously, to defame her by name (Goddess = Devil) without defending her, when he publically spoke in an auditorium to my whole highschool class, condemning all forms of the occult, especially magic and witchcraft. Afterwards, I was silent when it came time to ask questions or make remarks, being wholly mesmerized by those psychic powers. I was in Norman’s thrall and that is what angered the Goddess more than anything. The entire experience of meeting a deity, to feel it riding my body, was quite astonishing to me. However, before she departed, a period of psychic stasis was laid upon me, and I was cursed so that I would be unable to work any of my psychic talents for a week. Then I would experience the transformation that I had previously tried to avoid, becoming a true witch of the Goddess and thereby earn her forgiveness. So ended the trance session and the atmosphere was completely cleared up; but in fact the energy became empty and stale, and all was placed in a darkness of deprivation. I was blinded and powerless, so I meekly awaited my fate.

The next few days were uneventful, but also frustrating for me because I was psychically blind. I was off from school for the Easter holiday, so I attended a going away party for Norman Slater on Thursday (April 15). He was traveling the very next day to Loch Ness, Scotland, to reveal to the public for the first time, the truth behind the mysterious beastie known as the Loch Ness Monster.

We all thought that we were seeing the arrival of the miraculous times and that evening, Norman stood before everyone in a haze of golden candle light, went into trance and made many pronouncements and prognostications, telling us that the hour of judgement had drawn near. Our expedition was the trigger of this event, since we were about to discover the awesome remnants of Atlantis. That discovery would cause the end of the world due to the many relics of a future and as yet undiscovered technology. Norman melded his obvious occult beliefs with those of the Bible, making himself the first prophet to declare that the end times were now here. We were all suitably stunned and in awe of him. We felt privileged to be a part of his inner court. Then we proceeded to celebrate in a quiet and friendly fashion. Not long into the evening I started to feel kind of giddy. I had my first unfortunate experience becoming drunk, and much of what occurred later that evening was forgotten in an alcoholic haze. For such a pious group, they allowed minors to consume alcohol, and several of us took advantage of this opportunity. I apparently, over did it, consuming enough to get fairly smashed.

Norman used my moment of vulnerability to take me to task, first to mock and ridicule me in front of the others, and then later in his garage flat, to reveal several of my most wicked past lives. This was his opportunity to apply some real pressure to me, to change and convert my obvious occult and pagan practices. He had already planned on such an occurrence, since his followers were ready to denounce me, but I unknowingly had made myself available for some old fashioned brain washing.

He put me through a kind of informal Karmic tribunal, which was attended by a few of his key followers. I was cast as an evil young man - and of course, it was all absurd. Norman went through a recitation of all my previous past lives, all of which had been evil and diabolical. I was a spiritual miscreant. He even acted out one of my murders in a former life in ancient Egypt. Where I had felt powerful and privileged, I was brought down to the lowest level imaginable. However, I was also very stubborn and far less malleable than Norman had anticipated. All Norman accomplished was to make me feel very badly about myself.

I ended up finally sleeping on a couch at his garage apartment. Although I was physically unmolested, I was emotionally and mentally raped by the experience, and my identity and ego were dashed upon the rocks of despair. On good Friday (April 16), I dressed in the previous day’s clothes and accompanied Norman to the airport with his official entourage. I was chastened, feeling pretty sorry for myself, and perhaps even seemed repentant in the eyes of Norman and his clique.

When I finally got home that evening, I knew immediately that I was really unrepentant. I was actually quite angry at what had been done to me, particularly the more I thought about it. When the seven days were finally over, all of the powers and abilities came back to me. I invoked the Goddess again and she rode me with jubilation, praising me for my steadfast ways. It was then that she began to teach me the real art of witchcraft magick. But first, she had a task for me to perform. It wasn’t long after my humiliation that I ritually cursed Norman and his group, being shown how to do this by the Goddess herself. It felt exhilarating and empowering, so from that moment onward, I was  drawn into a battle for the honor of my Goddess. It must have worked quite well, because when Norman returned from Scotland he had nothing to show for activities. There was no revelation of the Loch Ness monster, and the press ridiculed him as a fraud and a confidence man. Other factions of the press got a hold of his story and what he planned to do in the Bermuda Triangle and made a laughing stock of him. Norman was just too vague about the details of the whereabouts of the Altantean ruins. There was also no scientific corroboration for his many claims. A remnant news article of the time can be found in a Miami Herald newspaper piece on Norman Slater, dated August 1972. (By this time, he was already in decline.)

My magickal war with Norman was actually precipitated when some of his followers at school had threatened my life in front of bystanders. I had, of course, left the inner circle and had denounced Norman to my peers. They said that Norman’s powers would seek me out and destroy me because I was evil and in league with the devil. I told them that we would see who was the stronger psychic; me, standing alone, or Norman and his group. As it turned out, by the end of the year Norman’s great plans and his group had fallen apart. There were investigations of tax evasion and improper use of funds, Norman had become erratic and chaotic, and then succumbed to illnesses and various sicknesses. He spent two long sessions of time in the hospital, although to this day, I don’t know what was causing these illnesses. Norman’s fragile world was falling to pieces and as members quit and left his group, his powers seemed to grow more feeble and weakened. This led me to believe that perhaps Norman’s powers had been syphoned off of his followers, like some giant bloated tick.  However, I was relentless in sending bolts of magickal power to combat and defeat this man - I sought no more than that. I never attempted to be unjust or to physically hurt Norman. 

Some time later, when his mission had failed in disgrace and bankruptcy and all his followers had left him, I turned my back on that evil, vile but broken man, and went into the protective custody of the Goddess. Since then, I have never had to personally use magick to harm anyone, even though at the time that I did it, it was to protect myself and others from this psychic villain. A man who readily exploited others in the name of Christ.
 
I had bravely passed the test and was received into the Goddess’ heart and soul. She possessed me and made my life full of wonder and realization. To celebrate this transition, she named me on two separate occasions. The first name was Barrabbas, because I was a holy rebel and her magickal son, and the second name, Tiresius, she gave to me because she sought to show me my masculine and feminine sides blended together.

She began to teach me magickal rituals and lore, communicating to me through trance. She showed me how to practice them, to worship her divinity and how to be like the Gods. As I seemed to become her mortal consort, I lived my life with her inside my head and heart, listening to her whispered words of compassion and insight, and glorifying in her visions of power and majesty.

It was thus that I suddenly discovered I already knew how to use the rituals and talismans from the various occult books and grimoires that I now possessed. I used these and her insights to create the first structures of the magickal system whose foundation I use today. The origin of this system was the illumination of the Goddess guiding my hands and senses to a greater understanding of magick. I was a goddess intoxicated young man, and wandered through life as a ghost, living only for the magickal worlds of spirits and gods. What I needed was a good sexual grounding, but unfortunately I was still a virgin. I had offered myself to the Goddess as a virgin, and the offering was most heartily accepted by her.

However, I had gained a powerful alliance and alignment with the Goddess of the Witches, so it was only a matter of time before she guided me to a real coven. Until that time, I was to have a number of remarkable adventures, some of them good and some revealing a greater darkness in the occult world that I had entered. I had a basic magickal system that seemed to work, but the greatest revelations would occur later on that year, in the golden autumn of 1972, a time that I would fondly remember for my whole life.
Frater Barrabbas

School
Still working on getting the best study technique for each class, but I am more less alright with how I am doing in my program. I seem to do quite well on papers, so I am hoping those high grades will bring up some of the B’s.
Pharmacology/Pathology: Good class, great professor. Tough as Tupperware. I have never studied this hard in my life. But I love the material, as I have said before. I have a paper coming up on a disease of my choice, looks to be fun. Still not sure which one to do…
Nursing Skills: Read, read, read. Did ok on my last exam, but didn’t realize that so much of the material we covered in lab would be on the exam. I had thought, foolishly, that they might be separate entities.
Nursing History: Doing really well in this class and I’m really excited about my nursing issue paper coming up.
Nursing Essentials: Not the biggest fan of this class. The topics seem straightforward enough but then the exam was really subjective and vague. Still working out the best study method for this class.
Health & Wellness
I had back surgery yesterday. L4/L5 microdiscectomy to be precise. The process went smoothly: I was asleep within seconds of the drug entering my IV, then I was awake. When I awoke, it was if I had taken a nap, with no strong pain or nausea. Had a nice chit-chat with nurse while I recovered and then left, after I proved I could walk. I’m going to keep a more detailed log of my recovery process posted, as when I looking online I had trouble finding a clear picture of what that might look like. If you don’t like medical details or they bore you, I’d skip the next part.

Day 1 - Details: Walked around quite a bit yesterday, I’d say a few 20-30 minute stints. Had some muscle stiffness that was handled with Flexeril and slowly as the pain meds from the surgery wore off, some pain (4) from my incision. I took Vicodin 325 and that took the edge off the pain and I was left with a dull ache (2). The biggest issue yesterday was the complete dry mouth from the anti-nausea meds. Drink, drink, drink and I was still dry as a desert. Ice chips alleviated the issue somewhat. The other annoying side effect was urination. As in had trouble. I think this was difficult to accomplish because of the muscle relaxants preventing me from contracting my bladder. Not a 100% sure on that. Just a guess. Overall, I spend most of yesterday sitting at my computer or retrieving things from downstairs. I took a short 1 hour nap after my dose of Vicodin. Then later, I had a friend or two over to sit and talk or watch a movie. When watching the move I was most comfortable on my side in bed. Getting to sleep was not difficult, as I am normally a side sleeper, accustomed to using a pillow between my knees and hugging another to my chest. The most challenging part of all is going from standing to side-lying in bed, while trying not to twist too much. I slept through the night, only waking once in early morning to shift to my other side.
Employment & Finance
Loans came through, but I will have to budget to have the money last me till my next loan dispersement. I am not even going to consider a job until my back is feeling better.

Personal Practice
I found a Buddhist organization that sits on Sunday mornings in Brookline. It is really worth the drive for the peace of mind I have afterwards. I also like the idea of stopping in Somerville to get mocha/hot cocoa at the my favorite café/bookstore. Taking a bit of a time outside of my Worcester life to walk and read.

Social Life

Sadly, I did not get elected during class elections. But onward and upward, right?
I’ve been having some social time, meeting a friend for coffee, going to game night when I can. I’ve also had the pleasure of attending a few parties. Hoping I’ll be well enough to go to my friend’s 40th this weekend.
Bits & Bobs

I’ve been baking and sharing. Best way to bake in my opinion… all the yummy without the guilt of eating a pan of cupcakes all by your self. I get to make another delicious something for the party this weekend. I’m thinking a layered strawberry shortcake… cake.

Namaste all.

Read more at tumbling towards ecstasy

This is an article that appeared in Rending the Veil - Yule Edition. I thought that it would be good to place the raw article here for my readers to examine, since it is a continuation of my exposition of practical magick.

Yule - the wheel of the year turns; yet everything appears to stand still in the frozen icy world. Thoughts during this season turn to the past as we examine and reflect on everything that has happened -- from joys to disappointments.

We make promises to ourselves “New Year’s resolutions” aimed to fix the flaws and invigorate the positive within ourselves.

Timing is everything. That is probably the greatest lesson to be learned from the year’s successes and failures.

In the realm of magick there are many considerations to make, such as when to work magick, when to pause and when to plan. We can examine our natal charts to determine trends, consult calendars that tell us the cycle of the moon and what sign the sun is in. We can divide the day and night into planetary hours, seeking some kind of insight as to when a given event is auspicious. Timing is everything, but in the practice of magick there is little said about when we should or shouldn’t work magick. Are there auspicious times? Does it even make a difference?

With all of these factors to ponder, we ignore one important consideration and that is the personal cycle or wheel of fortune of the magician performing the magick. Even the most optimal and auspicious signs and portends will avail magicians nothing if they ignore important factors about their own waxing and waning material fortunes. Magick done during a weak trough in the personal fortune of the magician will produce nothing or it might even cause losses and misfortune. Perhaps the most important knowledge that magicians can possess is that which will enable them to work magick on their own material circumstances, and knowing their own timing is critical to that kind of working.

In the many years that I have worked magick I have discovered purely by accident that certain times of the year are better for material based magick than others, and that there is a pattern to this cyclic process.

What I discovered is that there is a personal wheel of fortune that systematically turns so that half of the year has the potential for material gain and the other half is better used to plan and position oneself for more optimal times, when action can be met with success. The year is cut in half, and one half fosters increase and the other, decrease. It may not be that the poorer half of the year actually experiences losses or setbacks, although this certainly can occur, rather the richer half of the year seems to effortlessly assist one in the pursuit of material gain and personal advancement.

It’s analogous to breathing -- inhalation represents internalization and re-grouping, and exhaling represents external activity and successful outcomes. Both are required for the cycle of breathing to be complete. This is also true of the wheel of fortune.

The simplest way to determine this wheel of fortune is take one’s birthday and add exactly six months to it. So if you were born on January 5, (as I was), then your halfway date is July 5. So the two most important dates are the natal return and six months later, which would be a point where the sun would be 180 degrees from its natal position. I am a Capricorn according to my natal sun sign, so my annual halfway point is under the sign of Cancer.

I have found that my time of increase begins after the halfway point in the year. From there it proceeds to climax at my birthday and then declines until the halfway point is again achieved. For me, the best time to plan and reorganize is during the winter, after the holidays and before the summer. After the summer vacation period, I am ready to start putting into action everything that I have learned and determined in the previous six months. This is how my wheel of fortune works.

A few years ago I experienced a terrible economic downturn and the resultant massive debt almost forced me into bankruptcy. However, with an open mind and a willingness to do whatever it took to legally regain my fortune, I performed a large series of Elemental magickal workings, starting in June and proceeding for three months. At the climax of these workings, I also invoked and charged several items with the talismanic elemental, Jupiter of Earth, during the lunar mansion called the Star of Fortune (or Al Sad Al Su’ud  #24 The Star of Fortune, Capricorn 25̊ 51ʹ - see Celestial Magic by Nigel Jackson,  pp. 82 - 96). In addition, I put together a list of specific material objectives that I wanted to accomplish and crafted them into magickal sigils, which I charged. In the intervening months, I was able to accomplish all of my objectives.

All of these events helped me to completely transform my financial situation. In fact, the magickal workings are still continuing to aid me, often from unexpected sources. Because I worked this magick at the most important pivotal point in my wheel of fortune, it had a profound and incredible effect on my material situation. Once I discovered this pattern and realized it, I decided that it was the most important piece of self-knowledge that one could possess.

How do you determine the greater wheel of fortune for yourself and learn about your own important personal timing? The first thing that you do is to find that halfway point in your yearly cycle and note it down.

Then look at the past several years and see if you can see a pattern as to when important material advancements occurred for you. It won’t be perfect, but I think that you will find that one of those half year cycles is more auspicious than the other, which is better for planning and regrouping.

The period from the halfway point to my birthday is the most important time for material advancement. However, for others it may just the opposite, from their birthday to the halfway point might be auspicious. I don’t believe that one pattern should fit everyone, but you should at least examine all of the things that have happened to you in the past and make some kind of judgement as to what part of the year is better for advancement, and that will reveal the time that you can work magick to aid that advancement.

An astrological examination of the transits of the Sun to the natal chart Sun show that a conjunction aspect for the birthday and an opposition aspect for the halfway point are clearly delineated as auspicious points in one’s astrology. The Natal Sun is compared against transiting positions of the Sun in the paragraphs below.

Transit Sun conjunct Natal Sun aspect: This is the Solar Return, when the Sun returns to the position that it had when one was born. This aspect represents new beginnings, the ability to perceive the whole year ahead as if one were standing upon some metaphorical ascent and looking across time at the events for the coming year. It is a time of receiving new impulses and perspectives as the old year gives way to the new. (See Planets in Transit: Life Cycles for Living by Robert Hand, p. 55.)

In some ways a birthday is a lot like a personal New Year’s day, symbolizing the end of the old year and the beginning of the new year.

Transit Sun opposition Natal Sun aspect: This aspect represents energies in life reaching a culmination, events causing realizations, revealing a critical point of success or failure. Situations judged to fail now appear to fail. The way to success opens up and is revealed. It is necessary for one to change course or redirect one’s self. (See Planets in Transit: Life Cycles for Living by Robert Hand, p. 58.)

The halfway point is a place of judgement and evaluation, where one thoroughly examines all of life’s activities, especially those that bear upon one’s fortune. Those efforts that are failing should be either drastically adjusted or ended. Those that appear to be gathering momentum for success should be steadfastly continued. New opportunities may also arise that will need to be judged as to their worth and a change in course may be called for to take advantage of them.

If one reads these two aspects correctly, then my cycle of the wheel of fortune would seem to fit them. However, it would also fit if one experienced the greater fortune on the first half of the year instead of the second half. It really depends on the individual to determine his or her own personal cycle, and once realized, it should be used to one’s greatest advantage. What is clearly indicated is that these two points in the calendar are very important to working material based magick.

Frater Barrabbas


Bibliography

Hand, Robert (1976) “Planets In Transit: Life Cycles for Living”,  Para Research Inc., Gloucester, MA

Jackson, Nigel (2003) “Celestial Magic - Principles and Practices of the Talismanic Art”, Capall Bahn Publishing Sommerset, UK

The world’s first patient-ready and commercially available brain computer interface just arrived at CeBIT 2010. The Intendix from Guger Technologies (g*tec) is a system that uses an EEG cap to measure brain activity in order to let you type with your thoughts. Meant to work with those with locked-in syndrome, or other disabilities, Intendix is simple enough to use after just 10 minutes of training. You simply focus on a grid of letters as they flash. When your desired letter lights up, brain activity spikes and Intendix types it. As users master the system, a few will be able to type as quickly as 1 letter a second. Besides typing, it can also trigger alarms, convert text to speech, print, copy, or email. Retailing for €9000 (~$12,250), Intendix isn’t cheap, but it’s the first thought to type system available that’s geared towards easy to setup personal use in the home. Brain computer interfaces just got more accessible, and that’s a step towards them becoming more common all over the world.

Singularity Hub: Intendix, The Brain Computer Interface Goes Commercial

(via Edge of Tomorrow)

See also:

Chris Arkenberg’s 3 Scenarios for Brain Computer Interface.

Related posts:

1. Brain-Computer Interface Allows Person-to-person Communication Through Power Of Thought
2. Researchers use brain interface to post to Twitter
3. Identifying Thoughts Through Brain Codes Leads to Deciphering the Brain’s Dictionary

I had no idea the link between serotonin and depression was in doubt. Very interesting:

Via Dormivigilia, I came across a fascinating paper about a man who suffered from a severe lack of monoamine neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin etc.) as a result of a genetic mutation. [...]

Overall, though, the biggest finding here was a non-finding: this patient wasn’t depressed, despite having much reduced serotonin levels. This is further evidence that serotonin isn’t the “happy chemical” in any simple sense.

On the other hand, the similarities between his symptoms and some of the symptoms of depression suggest that serotonin is doing something in that disorder. This fits with existing evidence from tryptophan depletion studies showing that low serotonin doesn’t cause depression in most people, but does re-activate symptoms in people with a history of the disease. As I said, it’s complicated…

Neuroskeptic: Life Without Serotonin

See also:

Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature

Related posts:

1. Depression’s Evolutionary Roots
2. New research focuses on the power of physical contact
3. Depression as Deadly as Smoking, Study Finds

In addition to the number of frameworks and ideas, and the density of the interconnections among them, there was a strong normative quality to the material and its presentation. “If one hopes to make any progress at all,” we were told, “you need to both understand and accept these related ideas.”

This particular version of systems thinking is not unusual in this respect. Peter Senge’s 1990 edition of The Fifth Discipline describes one manager’s reaction to a five-day introductory workshop on his approach, which among other things, requires growing comfortable with eight archetypes: “It reminds me of when I first studied calculus (p. x).” Systems dynamics, the Soft Systems Method and other approaches face similar concerns.

Each of systems thinking’s various manifestations demands some degree of subscription to an orthodoxy (a particular view of just what systems thinking is). And each requires that the user master a large number of related ideas and techniques, most of which are not particularly useful on their own.

Fast Company: Lessons Learned — Why the Failure of Systems Thinking Should Inform the Future of Design Thinking

(Thanks James Curcio)

See also:

John Kay’s work on obliquity, which critiques decision science.

(Photo credit: Gutter / CC)

Related posts:

1. Guest Post: Some resources for thinking about systems
2. Vintage Japanese graphic design
3. Future of work?

Shapeways has a round-up of evolutionary, algorithmic & generative design projects, including the “cellular bowl” above, designed with Processing.

The marriage of tech and design is all around us. In a world where everything is designed a meta “way to design” that algorithmically cuts through the clutter is very appealing. A perfect design algorithm could potentially engender choice in design the same way that Google’s PageRank set of algorithms do for the web. And this is what generative design already partially does. It simplifies design by codifying it and somewhere within lies the promise of “true”, “simple” & “beautiful” design.

With technologies such as 3D printing letting everyone design or co-design things there is also a real need for generative tools. They allow for unique designs but since each is machine made, the marriage is a conceptually comfortable and inexpensive one. Also, rather than forcing the customer into a “blank canvas conundrum” whereby the sheer possibility overwhelms them to the point inactivity, generated models could lead to choice or guided choice in design.

Shapeways: Dasign: data driven, evolutionary, algorithmic & generative design

(via Bruce Sterling)

Related posts:

1. Depression’s Evolutionary Roots
2. Why the Failure of Systems Thinking Should Inform the Future of Design Thinking
3. Slime mould could design Tokyo’s railway

Doctors treat millions of children with Ritalin every year to improve their ability to focus on tasks, but scientists now report that Ritalin also directly enhances the speed of learning.

In animal research, the scientists showed for the first time that Ritalin boosts both of these cognitive abilities by increasing the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine deep inside the brain. Neurotransmitters are the chemical messengers neurons use to communicate with each other. They release the molecule, which then docks onto receptors of other neurons. The research demonstrated that one type of dopamine receptor aids the ability to focus, and another type improves the learning itself.

The scientists also established that Ritalin produces these effects by enhancing brain plasticity – strengthening communication between neurons where they meet at the synapse. Research in this field has accelerated as scientists have recognized that our brains can continue to form new connections – remain plastic – throughout life.

PhysOrg: Ritalin boosts learning by increasing brain plasticity

(via Chris S.)

Related posts:

1. Scientists discover how the brain encodes memories at a cellular level
2. Cannabis-Psychosis link not caused by dopamine increase
3. Education: Learning Styles Debunked