Samhain! Samhain! Samhain!

This is our Jack O'Lantern for 2005; B. based him on an 'Evil Rabbit' although you can't really make out the Pumpkin Ears in this particular picture! He's now glaring down on the lane by the river to scare any unruly night-time walkers! Mhuaahahaha!

I feel really Halloweenish for some reason this year - I've been jumping out on R. in the corridor in the dark much to his annoyance. Parents, huh!

But it feels like a New Year starting, which is good. Going into the dark is no bad thing - time for learning, healing, recuperating, preparation, planning, warmth, hibernation, transformation, protection and the Sun at Midnight.

Someone was reminding me yesterday about a tunnel we used to get taken a walk through as kids - it was so long that although you could see the end from the entrance, half-way through, just for a few metres, it became pitch-black, and you had to keep your nerve, or put hands on the shoulders of the person in front, in order to ensure you kept going the same direction. It's like that in all sorts of things - projects at work, relationships, learning, creativity - at some point you enter the darkness and just have to keep faith that the Light you started out for will still remain, and be evident in just a few moments now ...

The Western Esoteric Tradition

As it is Samhain tomorrow, it is timely to start a new venture; for the MA in Western Esotericism, I'm launching a new academic site at http://www.westernesoterictradition.com which is also available at http://www.westernesotericism.com . I'm hoping to create a useful archive and portal of material relevant to students of Hermeticism, Alchemy, Gnosticism, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, Magick and related subjects.

It's in its early stages of development, but as the MA continues I'll be expanding the site with Book Reviews, Articles and Papers. There'll also be a section of Links to academic sites, publishers and societies.

Illustration: The Invisible College of the Rosicrucians

A Tough Day (but not really for me)

I had three clients today, out of the blue almost, so I'd lined them up for visits as I'm on holiday from my full-time IT Project work. I said to B. that I'd be back after lunch and we'd do something in the afternoon as I'm on holiday.

But each of the clients turned out to be the most serious issue(s) I've been presented with to date, and took more concentrated work to begin to help than I was expecting (which tells me something about my expectations, I guess). So I ran late, then got lost travelling in heavy rain and floods, and didn't have my mobile to easily delay the third client, etc.

I eventually arrived home, hours late, dazed and dripping wet, and began to say, "I've had a really bad day" when I thought of what my three client's were brave enough to be dealing with in their own lives, and suddenly, naturally, my day didn't seem too bad at all.

Make the most of anything today that makes you smile, lifts you up, or provokes curiousity - you have breath and your heart is beating, you are aware, and from that comes life - YOUR life.

What you doing with it?

No Word Wasted NLP & Hypnotherapy Weekend

I've just finished recovering from teaching a weekend course I organised here in Keswick, entitled "No Word Wasted," which covered NLP and hypnotherapy techniques I've found useful in my own practice. The best thing about teaching is how much you personally learn, and how much you gain from other people learning. I think we had a lot of fun as well, even watching an episode of 'Coupling' to illustrate the concept of 'Reframing' (the episode 'Remember This' if you're interested!).

I was worried for a while I didn't really have enough material for 16 hours of training, but in the event I suspect there was way too much - the whole exercise of belief elicitation could easily have been explored further for a whole day, not the two hours I gave it. Similarly, I introduced, demonstrated and taught 8 different ways of hypnotic induction in about an hour, which was probably a whole course in itself.

Although exhilarating, it's taken me a few days to change gear; for hours the following Monday I was unable to listen to anyone without meta-modelling their speech and tapping along to their internal rhythm!

Currently studying Botticelli's "Primavera" with a view to writing an article. There is already a great deal of material on the Hermetic structure of this painting and it makes fascinating reading. I've always loved Renaissance art, and wonder what it would be like to pathwork this particular scene ... 

Not exactly the route we did, but close enough - apparently about 10-12 miles. Again, ouchies.  

The Land moves from Day towards Twilight as we return from Styhead. 

Walking back down from the cloud to Sprinkling Tarn. 

The Summit of Glaramara. 

Glaramara

Yesterday we walked up "Glaramara". The weather forecast had said "sunny intervals," but we walked up into the cloud at about 10am and didn't see the sun until it was setting again at about 6pm. In the meantime, we walked up and up ... and up ... and it turned out that "Allen Crags" wasn't a single place, but a journey in itself. We walked for over 8 hours! By the time we returned to the car, via the pub, we were both veering a little to the left or the right. Today, we both ache - even our toes ache! Memorable moments will include the clouds sweeping below us across Esk Hause, driven by a literal wind turbine - not a metaphorical one! The link on the title or here will download a 20Mb video clip of the 'view' from the summit.

Luckily, Brina's compass-setting and map-reading skill saved the day and we were able to navigate our way off the summit for several hours in cloud without too many mishaps, misdirections, or falling to our deaths over mountain-edges.

Ouchies.

Torture at the British Museum

Urghh! This coming week I'm off to Oxford (again), London and Brighton to visit potential suppliers for a software project I'm involved with at work. Our administrator kindly got us a hotel in Bloomsbury overlooking the British Museum, but when I scheduled the trip I realised that as it isn't a late opening day, I'll arrive at exactly the same time the museum shuts! Arghhh! One of my favourite places, and I'll be shut outside it! (I always go say hello to a particular Sekhmet statue everytime I'm in London, anyone who is even slightly sensitive to 'occult vibes' will know which statue it is). Maybe 'Atlantis Bookshop' will be open???!!! In which case someone call my Bank Manager ... lol.

And a 7-8 hour drive back on Thursday. Ugh! We live far far away.

Books, Books, Books!

Whoarrrr! I've got too many books to read! I went on a bit of a pre-MA spending spree, and bought some titles on the Reading List I didn't already have; 'Access to Western Esotericism' (Faivre), 'The Occult Establishment' (Webb), 'The Place of Enchantment' (Owen) and some others on Occultism in Art, Yeats, and more of Joscelyn Godwin's works, including the wonderful 'Pagan Dream of the Renaissance'. On top of that, I've still got fiction to read, like 'The Time Travellers Wife' - a book that kept jumping off the shelves at me until I had to buy it (still haven't found out why, but I will) - and 'Kil'n People' and 'The Etched City' and a few books on NLP for the course I'm about to run ... my head hurts (and all those words probably explain the dizzy spells!).

My Brain goes to South Africa on a CD

Well, I couldn't resist the title, but it's true! I've been having dizzy spells for a while, which wasn't an issue until they started to increase and make me nauseous and on one or two occasions, actually almost fall over. So, I've been having some tests - Ear, Nose & Throat (i.e. Meniere's Disease (idiopathicendolymphatic hydrops for short), Blood (i.e. Anemia) and today, an MRI scan (for anything more horrid). So off I go to Carlisle, which has actually got a brand new hospital that always reminds me of an Airport concourse, for my scan. I turn up and when called, get taken back outside, and round the back (I kid you not!) into a carpark where a large NASA-like Tour Bus is parked up, with cables running into a generator. Turns out that this is the mobile MRI scanner unit! Anyways, the scan was rather an anti-climax; I joked when I got out that for all of that noise and trouble, at the very least I was expecting a little bit of time-travel. The technician didn't find this amusing, and was busy writing 'Confidential' on a CD. I recalled that on my questionairre I'd been asked if it was OK to send the results to specialists in South Africa (tells you about the state of the NHS and Outsourcing, huh?) and I'd said OK. So, either the technician was busy downloading the latest Oasis tracks from Napster, or that was my brain pictures, ready to be popped into a jiffy bag and sent surface mail to South Africa!

You couldn't make this world up, could you? - but I think someone did!