Quotes of the day

If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?…The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Parsons was Winston's fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms—one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the thought police, the stability of the Party depended.

It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.

- from George Orwell's 1984

Traveling the world tree

Photo by Petri Laakso

I had a pleasure to meet a handful of local pagans for talking and traveling via drumming yesterday evening. In a local drum circle meeting there was first some half an hour of talking about what travelling via drumming is all about, then three about half an hour rounds of drumming. Two of those rounds were played with my self-made drum (pictured above), one with two drums of other individuals present.

I was asked to speak a bit about drumming as a magical technique and things involved. Since shamanism and its universal traits in their many forms have been of great interest to me both academically and magically for more than a decade, I was very happy to ask some questions from participants and also to say few words on the subject myself.

I decided to touch upon some very basic questions involved. What is actually taking place when you “travel” via drumming? What is the context where the experience takes place? How your traveling via drumming differs f.ex from some classical Siberian shaman’s context and contents of the experience – in physical, social, and conscious realms? What kind of shared elements are there?

I don’t to try explain here what I experienced during the drumming. As I said during the meeting while talking about the experience, I think that suprarational experience typical of traveling via drumming is something that is best grasped with a rather poetic language. I also noted, that if individual’s involved have studied enough the best sources available about shamanistic tradition they are using as their context and if they have synthesized that knowledge with personal experiments and experience (Dr. Stephen Edred Flowers has called this the polarian method), it is possible to understand what people mean by such a “poetic” language, as well as to truly link with transpersonal current involved instead of just indulging in some strictly subjective fantasy world.

My thanks for the organizer of the event and everybody present. It was a good evening in a good company. I am looking for more of these events.

Rûna magazine, issue 19

New issue of Rûna magazine is out and it includes, among other things, a conversation with Dr. Stephen Edred Flowers of the Woodharrow Institute, my essay of my rite of passage into the Rune-Gild and Ensio Kataja’s insightful article the Runes of the Holy. Because my friend Ensio Kataja already wrote a good review of the issue, I am hinting my readers to go and read Ensio’s review and also of other things that he so well writes about.

Ordering Rûna magazine:

UK: £3.00 + 50p p&p, made payable to Eormensyl Hall, BM Sorcery, London WC1N 3XX. 4-issue subscription £14. Subscription can also be paid with PayPal to Editor Ian Read's e-mail address. GERMANY: €6.00, made payable to Equinoxe Organization, Beethovenstraße 59, 09130 Chemnitz. USA: $8.50, made payable to Rûna-Raven Press, P.O: Box 557, Smithville, Texas 78957.

Some related links for the interested could be my recent entry about tiwaz-rune to my and Ensio Kataja’s blog about runes and the U.K. based One Tribe occult talk show’s one hour with Ian Read, musician and Drighten of the Rune-Gild.

Stefani on Aletheia

What an amazing time / What a family / How did the years go by / Now its only me / Tick-tock, tick-tock / Tick-tock, tick-tock / Tick-tock, tick-tock / Tick-tock, tick-tock / La, la, la, la, la, la, la /

Like a cat in heat, stuck in a moving car/ A scary conversation, / shut my eyes, / can't find the brake / What if they say that you're a climber / Naturally, I'm worried if I do it alone / Who really cares, cause it's your life / You never know, it could be great / Take a chance cause you might grow / Oh, oh, oh / What you waiting / What you waiting / What you waiting / What you waiting / What you waiting for? / What you waiting / What you waiting / What you waiting / What you waiting/ What you waiting for? /

Tick-tock, tick-tock / Tick-tock, tick-tock / Take a chance you stupid ho / Like an echo pedal, you're repeating yourself / You know it all by heart / Why are you standing in one place / Born to blossom, bloom to perish / Your moment will run out / Cause of your sex chromosome / I know it's so messed up, how our society all thinks (for sure) / Life is short, you're capable (uh-huh) / Oh, oh, oh / Look at your watch now / You're still a super hot female / You got your million-dollar contract / And they're all waiting for your hot track / What you waiting for?

- Gwen Stefani

Pessoa on Aletheia

I don't know what words could describe what a human being feels when he really feels that he exists and that soul is something real. I don't know if I have fever when I feel what I feel or if I don't any more have a fever for traveling my life in a dream. Yes, I am like a traveler who suddenly realizes to be in a strange place without knowing how I got there. When a human being loses his memory, he is for a long time someone else than himself. I have been someone else than myself for a long time - since my birth and awakening of my consciousness - and I am suddenly awakened on a bridge, and I bow down to see the river and I know, better than ever before, that I am alive.
- Fernando Pessoa

Pranksters at the Boca do Inferno

Aleister Crowley and Fernando Pessoa playing chess in Lisbon (according to Cláudia Costa they played either at A Brasileira or Martinho da Arcadia, both still in business).

I finished with a collection of Fernando Pessoa's selected poems yesterday and started with his Book of Disquiet today. The book, the author's main work, was written between 1912-1935 CE. Only one of Pessoa's books were published during his lifetime, the rest of his books from his massive corpus of writings posthumously. Book of Disquiet was among these posthumous publications, becoming published for the first time as late as in 1982 CE. I think it is somehow appropriate that Pessoa's main work has such an unusual history - reflecting the poet's unusual life and interests.

When it comes to Pessoa's life, readers of my blog might be especially interested to learn that the author was a keen student of the occult (although he was rather quiet about it) and that he corresponded and met with Aleister Crowley. The two authors initially got in touch with each other as Pessoa sent Crowley a correction on an erroneous astrological detail containted in Crowley's Confessions. After that Crowley and Pessoa corresponded, exchanged writings and finally met in Lisboa in September, 1930 CE.

After the Great Beast's scarlet woman of the time left him without a notice there, the two writers came up with a grand prankster idea. Gary Lachman has written a good summary about that:

Crowley then enlisted Pessoa's aid in faking a suicide. Leaving a forlorn lover's note at the Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell) - a treacherous rock formation on the coast west of Lisbon - Crowley implied that he had taken his own life by leaping into the sea. Pessoa explained to the Lisbon papers the meaning of the various magical signs and symbols that adorned Crowley's suicide note, and added the fact that he had actually seen Crowley's ghost the following day. Crowley had in fact left Portugal via Spain, and enjoyed the reports of his death in the newspapers; he finally appeared weeks later at an exhibition of his paintings in Berlin. Given Pessoa's frail ego, it was more than likely a blessing that his association with the Beast was brief.

Boca do Inferno, Lisboa.

When you pick up Fernando Pessoa's great writings the next time you might find this background to his thoughts fascinating. It is something that is usually not told about the author who is often considered as the greatest Portuguese author of all times.

Some related links:

Crowley and Pessoa at Lashtal.com

Karl Germer's letter to Pessoa

The magical world of Fernando Pessoa at Nhtposition

Pessoa at Literary Kicks

Visit to a crematorium

Last night I was reading poems by Fernando Pessoa. I was reflecting on his brilliant writing, his heteronyms, his encounters with Aleister Crowley, and also whether I was really into the next day’s visit to a crematorium with a handful of students of comparative religions or not. At 3 am I switched off my bedside light, put Pessoa’s poetry aside, and decided to see how I would think about the visit after some sleep.

Well, of course I did not want to miss the experience.

The tour the next day began from the cremation room itself. There were two huge silvery steel cremation ovens (made in Sweden) in the room. Inside of them it was around +900–1000 celcius degrees. That’s enough to burn an average dead in about an hour. Bigger bodies naturally burn a bit longer than smaller ones. We were also informed that bodies with cancer take some extra time to burn because of the disease. Those dead with pacemakers will cause little explosions inside the ovens if batteries are not taken away from the machines. We were allowed to take a look inside of those ovens from little shutters. Seeing a skeleton in flames is something you don’t see everyday.

Once the burning is finished the ashes are collected. Bigger parts of bones that have not burned totally are put through a machine that will make them into a powder. We saw some pieces of thightbone and such that were going to be processed. There was also an impressive collection of various pieces of metal that people have had in their bodies to keep broken bones together. Such pieces are becoming less frequent to be picked up from the ashes as metal is more often substituted with other materials in the use nowadays.

It did not surprise me that cremation has become more and more popular in comparison to the “traditional” coffin burial. But I was a bit surprised that cremation is actually more expensive choise over the two options (at least here in Southern Finland). But sure, it makes sense. In cremation you need to buy (and burn) the coffin in addition to buying just an urn for the ashes. And even if you make an urn yourself (which is all fine), you still need to pay the bill for that one hour in flames (which can be around 200 €). And of course there are payments about the gravesite as well. It made me wonder why people then prefer to be cremated if it can be even noticeably more expensive than just burying the dead in a coffin. Have people started to read more Edgar Allan Poe? Or to choose cremation for spiritual reasons? Or is the thought of dead rotting bodies six feet under categorically more terrifying to our more and more death-alienated Western minds than a thought of dead bodies quickly turned into a smoke and a tiny amount of ash?

Our very professional tour guide, the man who also worked at the crematorium, took us next to the cool store room for the dead that were on the line to be cremated. It was another plain and sterile room, this time with metal cabins and just slightly evident smell about the nature of the place. Some coffins were not in the cabins, marked with certificates and papers needed. From among the coffins one smaller vessel stood out. The information on top of it told about a child that was born dead. Among other things the room made me think what kind of things people put and were allowed by law to put with the dead inside of their coffins. The regulations didn’t sound very strict. I was informed that all kinds of objects from soft toys to jewelry are known to be put into coffins. No cases of cellular phones were known, though, at least they haven’t been called into before coffins were burned. What would you prefer to have with you in your coffin? Or does it really matter? And why?

The rest of the tour was about space available for the last rites. That was something I had seen numerous times before. While walking around in those rooms, my mind was reflecting on what I had experienced earlier on the tour - the reality of both natural and non-natural dimensions of human existence.

Aletheia.

Vox Paganorum 3/06

Vox Paganorum 3/06 is now available from Pakanaverkko (Pagan Net). The third issue for the year has on its cover my drawing Curse (see above). The drawing was published for the first time in my second book Saatanan Mustat Nahkasiivet.

You might also want to read my entry on Vox Paganorum 1/06 and 2/06.

Heja Sverige!

Hennes röst är som mango-melon-glass under en het sommardag. Trust me - again!

Vasemman Käden Polku

Vasemman Käden Polku (The Left Hand Path), my first book, is going to be printed in its 3rd edition by my publisher Voimasana in the next two weeks. The book is going to be published in hardcover for the first time, with a new foreword and an extra appendix. The book is also going to get out in English later this year. My many thanks for all the English proofreaders of the book.

Debunking the Da Vinci Code

Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene? I don't think so.