Our life can experience an energy that is wrong for it in some way – albeit right for the energy’s place of origin.  Within it’s own people.  Why the energy comes to our space, and the effect it can have upon us, may be related.  For within our world the wrongness can serve to create a channel of understanding that in itself contains information that benefits us.  The way of this benefit – that times where it has a fitness for use – need careful consideration.  So if one comes across information of this kind, only patient deliberation will reveal the essence of rightness for our lives.

I read a dream someone transcribed wherein they had a close relationship with a dolphin.  The relationship was as roommates – sharing a space of living for a time in the life where the spirit finds its roots.  In the dream, they described the dolphin as having a romantic interest with the person, despite the difference in species making even its expression impossible – and in fact the person wrote that they also had some form of desire in this regard.  Again, it was unactionable, which is fortunate also because of the damage that the behavior would have upon the soul (non-fulfillment within the life that one has).

The desire, however, did create the fundaments of understanding between worlds that are fundamentally different (thus the improperness for them to have union).  So here is the reason that the story of this dream is appropriate here.  In the dream, they wrote that the understanding they had made for a channel of knowledge, wherein they knew about the ways and life of the sea.  “The secrets and rumors known within the waves and ports.” Special knowledge that was available to a community because of it’s unique position in the world – the knowledge of fish and ocean life! – would have a quite an impact on the thinking and feeling of non-oceanic consciousness.

Here I will propose is the notion of divine purposefulness acting in a scale of knowledge that is beyond individual lives.  Yet, because of that purposefulness, the life of one person may be a conduit to insight that can changes the lives of people.  How – where it is right for the individual and those people – as has been said, remains a matter for patient consideration.

One may suppose to figure out how a thing is done, the other is how to ask permission for it to be done.  The first is limited to an individual, the other is limited only by the divine.

Absinthe is derived from the Latin absinthium, which in turn is a stylization of the Greek αψίνθιον (apsínthion), for wormwood. ….. Some claim that the word means “undrinkable” in Greek, but it may instead be linked to the Persian root spand or aspand, or the variant esfand, which meant Peganum harmala, also called Syrian Rue-although it is not actually a variety of rue, another famously bitter herb. That Artemisia absinthium was commonly burned as a protective offering may suggest that its origins lie in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *spend, meaning “to perform a ritual” or “make an offering.” Whether the word was a borrowing from Persian into Greek, or from a common ancestor of both, is unclear. Variant spellings of absinthe are absinth, absynthe, and absenta. In English it is pronounced /ˈæbsɪnθ/ ; in French, [absɛ̃t]. Absinth (without the final e) is a spelling variant used by central European distillers. It is the usual name for absinthe produced in the Czech Republic and in Germany, and has become associated with Bohemian style absinthes.

Contemporary entheogenic studies have created a great fondness for Asphand – if not a secluded one.  The MAOI has become the foundation for ‘shroom-huasca’, another melange that has produced so notable effects as to be compared with the jungle-beverage, Ayahuasca.

The Greek affection of the name, even erroneously should we assume a Persian root, is interesting because of the mysterious ‘XueXion’ beverage also present at the in Eleusinian Mysteries.  It is no scholarly assertion that the Mystery beverage was MAOI-based, even by prevalent sources.  The etymological root between Absinthe and Asphand, however, does bear some consideration in this matter, with classical reinforcement by the Mediterranean prevalence of Rue.

Plainly, and personally, I am not convinced that Greek and Egyptian mysteries, even to the degree in which they may have had a psycho-chemical component, were composed upon DMT.

I had a realization about what ‘the transition through 2012′ means.  This vision was proudly brought to me by Andy Samberg’s single I’m On A Boat, and a viral ad by Old Spice.  Naturally, if you don’t know these memes front to back, from here “there are dragons.”

The I’m On A Boat song became a phenomenon by leveraging the laugh-at-yourself capacity of people who envision that they will never be on a boat, let alone a yacht. The whole damn song is a parody of the fact that being on a boat is such a rare thing for said individual that they would break out in song to solely celebrate the event. It’s light hearted cynicism and a self-deprecation even at its best.

The Old Bay ad took it up a level, and at the same time let the cat out of the bag.  It’s a romance-parody mindfu^# that crescendos in the main act announcing “I’m on a horse.”  Genius.  See what happened there?   Let’s imagine: the trigger sets in: [most] people don’t know what it’s like to be on a boat.  It’s more epic than most of what goes on for them.  Like many things.  E.G., like horses.  Equistrianism.  C.V. Arabic royalty.

It’s the same boat phenomenon.  The media wizards get that and exploit it… but remember the context: 2012.  In 2012-is-coming world, people are waking up, or are going to, ‘cross the grand junction.  Waking up people live in the Real World – the one where the heart’s passions are front and center.  Passions like being on a boat, riding a horse, and others.  Memes make fun of the foibles, like alughing at yourself because you current world does not include the authenticity you know in your heart.

That’s the old game, though.  You still playing that?  Awakening people learn quick and live sincerely thereafter.  Sincere existence is the game post-2012, and if you aren’t playing it, you won’t be playing.  Getting wank and rile off the low-grade habits…. not very 2012.

So, you’re fully authenticized.  Your spirit rocks the moment, and the quantum timeless.  The Real multiplies your coherence in 7-fold fractals.  An ad streams through – the content is some lovely thing sitting there smiling, and the camera angles 100% render their profoundly real character.  It radiates with the force from a whole unified crowd of human energy…. and that’s the entire ad.  Brand.  Slogan.  fin.

Maybe.  Remember, this is 2012-means-something world – and if that means that your tricks are based on anything besides authenticity… you won’t be playing the game.

Authenticity, the trick of the new game.

An opportunity arrived to investigate the parish of St. Mark, after its gothic-evoking exterior elements were spotted from the street.  The site is current in use as a club venue called Seven Candles – turned over to the business sometime after 1988 when the building was given over in dispute.

It's still much like this, but with a wild dance floor and aerial acrobats

The feel of the place is great, particularly if you get there by 8 or 9pm, before it’s packed with people and takes on their mood.  Sushi is served in one of the side rooms until 1am.  The chapel, closed to the public, has an array of symbols that interestingly complement the rest.

The chapel sits in the NW corner of the building. The gusset tops form a ring of stained glass panels, alcoves of fleur de lys above a full-moon / disc, and five fronded palms, alternating. Two arches divide the room into three sections. Each arch is compose of reinforced square angles to follow the two slopes if the ceiling. This gives the arches the shape of the Hopi kivas – a square upon a larger square.

The eastern wall is three window panels. The centermost bears a gold caped nun with a central white stripe upon her robes.  The stripe is compose of 9 squares, and is ended top and bottom each with a half-square.

Her arms stretch out as the crucifix, but hands open to embrace. She smiles. Subtle to the cobalt background panel illumination are rays emergent from her head, high above which is a serif-cross (even arms) in red, evocative of a rose.

Beneath her in the panel are two flower-like designs, green and gold. The design is like four pin oak leaves to the diamond corners, the square corner 3-barbed points like fleur de lys.

The background surrounding each design and the nun is a vessica, double walled.  The vessicas interlock in a diamond arrangement, the nun’s head centered over one.  In the space of the wall is marks like rain or tears or thorns? These raise up the lower half of the vessica, the top half as garland, and evocative of the Apprentice Pillar. Outside the walls in the background is more oak leaf like pattern – forest like.

The entire border of the glass is patchwork of green and gold, red and white.  Most of the panels have a pattern like bark.  Two panels are red outline crosses.

The stone wall in which the window panels are set is painted with a tesselation of gold crowns in the spanish style, the glorious light radiating down from them in 9 rays. Vertical bands, floor to ceiling, of gold ivy and crosses – the ivy on green and the crosses on red – separate the crown tesselations. Beneath the cereal window panel is painted a Christian cross, it top truncated by the window above.

Painted on the wall to the left, amid a green field holding gold fleur de lys, is an Alpha surrounded by a triangle of black with gold borders. The right, amid the same field and trangle, is an Omega. The Alpha bears the same shape as the Omega except including the ‘lintel’ bar.

On the north wall adjacent to the alpha, and amid its own red field holding gold crosses, is an emblem of St. Mark. It is set upon white with a circle, a scroll bearing the name of St. Mark is surmounted by a winged sphinx. The sphinx bears a lion’s head – full mane, in the Coptic style, surrounded by a halo.  His right paw rests upon an open book.

Alas, these last paintings were seemingly not original to the parish’s founding in 1889.  The chapel, dating to the founding, is known as a Chapel of the Holy Comforter and from this photo in 1975, the walls were not covered the patterns and emblems that they do today.

Overall, no archeological discovery here – but it seems like someone may have attempted to make prominent the feminine amid the coptic / egyptian garments of ‘St. Mark.’  The builder’s inscription was not evident on the first visit, but given there was something surreally calming about the the dance floor and aerial acrobatics as I looked down from the VIP floor reading my book on grail legends – I’ll look next time I’m there.

Calmness permeates every arrival in the flow.  It creates space into which unfolds the force of life present and waiting in each person and thing.  The heart holds unwavering sensitivity for the entangled yet nonlocal complement.  Calm listening allows every quiver and tension of the space around, within, to yield upon the true path.

…

Calmness permeates every arrival in the flow.

We are immersed.  The world around us is the ocean of time mythic.  When we are sad, it face is one of sadness.  When we are joyous, everything is a nerve ending rubbed right.  Like looking into the surface of the water, the world around us is no less a reflection – a mirror – when we are immersed within it.  Yet, each of us are stars, and the world becomes deeper as our reflections play with each other at the edges of our minds.  When we are still, like the qualities of meditation, the world expands as our perception grows – anxious with its own calm.  Every reflected bit of ‘other’ is like a stone in the river, possessive of its own sense of motion.  Our calmness, expanding, permeates each and every new arrival as it flows around and comes to know the forms.  They are known inasmuch totality as they know themselves; temet nosce - gnōthi seauton. Know that, that we know nothing.  The permeation is our doorway, our entrance into the life.

It creates space into which unfolds the force of life present and waiting in each person and thing.

As we touch and permeate each arrival within our flow, it too hears us.  This other listens to our essence, our intention, our vision.  We can unfold our nature within the perception of the other, and they can unfold before us.  All of the majesty contained and conducted by years of living lies locked within that other.  When it unfolds most completely we experience it as a port – a point to aid the venture forth – and as winds pushing, in their whim, toward one direction or another.  All of this life force unfolds when it is able.  Our calmness creates the space for this unfolding.  Our calmness holds all of our energy unto ourselves.  We do not spill out and flood the other mind we now permeate. Our calmness standing before the other allows it to enjoy the edges of its own tension and direction.  Like playing host, we grant space for the other to express itself.  Our calmness create the space for communion.  Whether this other be the mind and soul of another with which to fashion vision and fate – or a less-human thing of the world that acts like a statuary landmark in our journey unto dreamed and prophetic land.  Where mind and dreams are yet formless, the unfolding of each newly-arrived other provides roadways.  These roadways deliver us unto the direction of our intention, and we are fueled by the delight of the other.  Delight that our spacious calmness has allowed.

The heart holds unwavering sensitivity for the entangled yet nonlocal complement.

The heart hears across space and time.  What dreams and intentions are placed within it open before us a ‘path of least resistance.’  We become one with those things that are part of that fate.  Ourselves and all things present things participating in that future fate become as reflections of it.  We are entwined with it, knowing each other by being a part of the whole.  But the landscape of fate and serendipity is mostly invisible.  How and where to place the feet also comes from the heart.  It is infused with the dreams and intentions held within it.  The heart senses the things that are entangled with it.  It has the truth-hearing to know what before it is part of the fated to which it is yoked.  It can hear to what degree something, some path, some person, is part of those dreams and intentions.  As every thing unfolds within the space our calmness provides, the delicate edges of that unfolding flutter and incense.  The heart is magnetized to each movement, each aroma, that is part of its irrevocable future… a future that is Now, except for the steps needed to decloak its invisibility.

Calm listening allows every quiver and tension of the space around, within, to yield upon the true path.

Calmness too provides patience to hear all of the unfolding, so that truly the most potent for our fate becomes the activator of our next step.  The most rigid can initially be the most prominent – but this rigidity makes in less participatory in the living edge.  It is the meadow upon which the lovers play.  Moving into the space of communion reveals further the vulnerability of our most fledging and tender new edges.  Ever tender, quivering, tense edge that we find along the path is yet another face of that entangled whole.  Calmness and spaciousness with them – most – lets delight nurture their expression.  The green flame cheers bright and is innocent to any taste but its own purity.  This purity is the solid ground of our footsteps forward.  Every step along this path sprouts life and invites the light of life, and courses the waters of the soul.

I’m thinking more lately about telluric currents, and I’m remembering about the distinction you made between telluric currents and ley lines. That being, telluric currents flow vertically up and down within the earth, from core to surface, as opposed to ley lines which flow horizontally across the earth’s crust. I really liked that distinction and I really (no, REALLY!) want that to be true, but, alas, both Wikipedia and Britannica say otherwise:

· “natural electric current flowing on and beneath the surface of the Earth and generally following a direction parallel to the Earth’s surface.” (Britannica.com)

· “(telluric) currents are extremely low frequency and travel over large areas at or near the surface of Earth. …flow in the surface layers of the earth. …move between each half of the terrestrial globe… equator-ward (daytime) and pole-ward (nighttime). (Wikipedia.com)

At the same time, I’m perfectly willing to believe that there are such currents which flow vertically up and down within the earth. In fact, I want these to exist because their existence would lend credence to a personal pet theory of mine (which I’m sure you’ve already surmise). And, I would infer from your statement, that from personal experience/research/dowsing, you know them to exist. Nevertheless, for sake of clarity and to avoid obfuscation within scientific/engineering circles, you’d probably have to call them something other than “telluric” currents since that word is already taken for currents running horizontally just below the surface. As I write this sentence, the more ancient and mythic “chthonic” comes to mind. As telluric, from the Latin, tellūs, for earth; so chthonic from the Greek, khthōn, also earth, but more specifically the interior of the soil, distinct from Gaia, the surface of the land. Moreover, khthonios, meaning “in, under, or beneath the earth”, referring to earthy and subterranean, and designating deities or spirits of the underworld in Greek religion. [Sure, I know you know all this, I just had to get it out.]

Now, as to the electrical nature of telluric currents… I was skeptical reading Robert Neil Boyd (largely because most of what RNB writes is largely unintelligible). Nevertheless…

“The earth energies observed by the engineers of telegraphy and telephony in the mid-1800s behaved exactly like the powerfully surging earth currents… The engineers observed earth power so enormous it could not be attributed to electrostatic accumulations, nor to the weak electrical strains induced in ground systems by auroral discharges….

There’s obvious hyperbole here, but some core of it is borne out by Wikipedia:

“Telluric currents can be harnessed to produce a useful low voltage current by means of ‘earth batteries.’ Such devices were used for telegraph systems in the United States as far back as 1859.”

Are you kidding me?!? A century and a half ago they’d figured out how to power telegraphs across the western wastelands from telluric currents??? Who knew?!?! So RNB isn’t completely unreliable. Which gives me just a tiny bit of hope regarding his grander, more mythic claims:

“These currents were fiery and potent. World-connecting energies of vast, mysterious, and intelligent content. According to the alchemists, Kirchner, and many of the engineers of the mid 1800s, these energetic flows were direct representatives of Creation, direct evidence of the Divine in operation. …contained in these energies were the awesome secrets of the processes of Creation, the Power by which the real world was both constantly generated, and sustained. Those enterprising engineers who endeavored to draw their communicative power from the Telluric currents, found themselves engaged in surpassing technologies, empowered by the world-generative Source.

Okay, so now we’re talking the creation of worlds and the sustaining of reality. Pretty big stuff. But if we go back, and accept the notion that telluric currents are spiritual in nature, in addition to being legitimately electrical, then their “world-generative” nature is not too far afield. And this is where water comes in, specifically the waters of Genesis, of the uncreated world, and how separating water is what creates and perpetuates the world. Compare the Hebrew elements…

verse 1: God created shamayim and ‘erets.

verse 2: ’erets was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep; Spirit of God hovers over the mayim.

verse 6: God said, “Let there be an expanse between the mayim to separate mayim from mayim.”

verse 7: God made the expanse and separated the mayim under the expanse from the mayim above it.

verse 8: God called the expanse shamayim.

verse 9: God said, “Let the mayim under the shamayim be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.”

with the Heliopolitan cosmology of Egyptian Old Kingdom…

The pre-creational world was depicted as a deep, boundless, uncreated, watery mass. This is Nun, the abyss or chaos. The primordial waters are beyond turmoil because no opposition or movement occurs in this undifferentiated inertia. Nun is the passive, inert, undifferentiated set of all possibilities, which is not the same thing as an absolute non-existence, emptiness or void. For in Nun (water) lies the capacity to create eternal repetition, the foundation of order and creation as a whole.

Nun existed before the world was created. It was a body of water that contained divine entities whose potential (and form) had not yet been realized. There was darkness, inertia, and chaos. The appearance of a solid area on the surface of Nun, the primordial mound or egg, begins transition from a formless state to a structured one. This phenomenon triggered a dynamic that culminates in the construction of the Universe… at which point the primordial waters receded to the edge of perceptible reality. These waters continued to surround the created world, threatening to overwhelm it and return it to an inert state. The material and immaterial structure of the Universe thus served as a rampart to prevent this apocalyptic cataclysm. …Gods, kings and men worked jointly to insure the perpetuity of (the) realms, of everything found in them…. Egyptian imagery thus functioned as one vector of the necessary and sufficient task of perpetuating the Universe.

So RNB/Kirchner seem to be writing from the same mythic source as both Egyptian and Hebrew creation myth when he speaks of telluric (or perhaps more to our point “chthonic”) currents as

· “direct representatives of Creation”

· “evidence of the Divine in operation”.

· containing “the awesome secrets of the processes of Creation”

· “the Power by which the real world was both constantly generated and sustained”

· “empowered by the world-generative Source”

It’s a curious side note that “…these specific Creative energies could only be summoned by direct contact with the ground at special sites, which were held to be Sacred Land. The Victorians prized locations deep within the Earth… numerous arcane grottos, and magical caverns…” to which we might add enchanted pools and sacred wells. All places of water.

Ultimately, if you pull all these threads together, you come to the preposterous question: “Is the world/creation somehow sustained because the energy found telluric/chthonic currents continues keep the firmament in place (i.e.: maintains the structure of universe), thus holding back the waters of chaos/inertia from overwhelming us all into itself?“

Psychedelic Medicine

Ed. Michael Winkelman, Thomas Roberts

It is said that a medicine’s power can heal or hurt in equal proportion.  Rarely is the sentiment more appropriate than in the study of psychedelic medicines.  The insights presented in the two-volume set, Psychedelic Medicine, edited by Michael Winkelman and Thomas Roberts, stand for the healing capacity of such medicine.  For those outside the field of clinical / therapeutic treatment of addiction, and whom may assume that all addiction is inherently linked to drugs, will find these books illuminating.

The authors are clean in presenting that they do not condone, nor even intimate guidelines for the public consumption of psychedelic medicines.  Rather, they frame what attempts have been made to define the best practices for their use within the setting of experienced and professional care.  As such, this works sets itself as a touchstone in the proper research and development of new medical practices.  It is, in this early stage of the field, an encyclopedia and bibliography of the most significant scientific studies into psychedelic medicines.

Volume one reviews social context, history, applications and legality.  Volume two carries through numerous reviews of clinical work with an object toward best-practices.  The researcher will find it indispensable.  For those that have used these substances outside of professional contexts, it is an illuminated look into the future framework by which such substances may gain acceptance.

The authors offer several important ideas in their writings.  One is the notion of “psychointegrator technologies.”  The concept is intended to highlight any technology, from a medical drug to digital media, that has a specific range of affect upon consciousness.  This forward-thinking idea is founded upon work ranging from the application of psilocybin for depression to the use of virtual reality systems in the treatment of phobias and post traumatic stress disorder.  Furthermore, the authors go so far as to propose a business plan for the establishment of a institute that leads the cultural application and advancement of psychedelic medicine and psychointegrative technology models.

The only real want for improvement in the books is in having Robert’s last chapter of volume 2 – profound in its history and perspective on the future - become the introductory text to each volume.  These works simultaneous are a banner for harm-reduction and best practices within the field of psychedelic medicine, and a roadmap for how the knowledge from psychedelics research will go beyond their use to impact culture and technologies broadly.

Cons

There are a number first possible issues that come to mind.

The biggest one is that bottom of the screen is sometimes a place that sites will float their own menu bar.  If such an ad unit overlays a site menu and inhibits user navigation, the advertiser and ad supplier forever be evil with little hope for recovery.  The host site will also lose lots of face.  The the ad unit to sense an existing floater in this region could be challenging – to unpredictable….  Not a happy engineering endeavor.

Also, I get used to the notion that when I scroll down, ads go away.  This breaks that relationship to ads, and may keep up any ire I develop, in forcing me to close the ad.

Pros

That said The non-rectangular ‘skline’ is a nice touch, as it allows for a new dimension of branding.  As much as I generally disfavor what is displayed to me in web ads, I actually get excited to see how companies would take advantage of this opportunity to brand themselves.  It’s a challenging area, as breaking outside of a box region can go from tacky to terrible fax paux – but the successes will be big wins, I think.

Click-throughs, CPC, CPM

I’d expect higher than normal click-through rates, but with a caveat.  My sense is that there will a sharper break-point between for traffic given on quality ads vs. terrible ads.  Since this ad unit remains on-screen all the time, I personally expect the ads therein to be more beautiful and enjoyable… as well as more yielding and semi-subtle.  This is a great opportunity to please the visitor and win brand status.  If I get any weight-loss-flashers or other wank there I’d be very upset at the site that allowed that kind of trash to be stuck at the bottom of my screen.  Even average ads will enter into the It’s Not Pretty category and be displeasing.  So I think those managing this ad unit (Premium Access & affiliates) will have to be more selective in screening & applying an ‘aesthetics policy’ to the advertisements that go out.

Given all that, I’ll also expect the cost to use the ad unit, in CPC / CPM will be higher.  Not the level of a video ad, but higher than traditional ad units.

It’s interesting that all of their initial advertisers for this unit seem to be gaming companies.  I think it says something to the comfortability that the gaming culture has with novel experiences.  The sports industry would probably find a way to put their glitter and polish out through it, too.