It’s called the dot matrix… sort of a cool idea that came to me while thinking about the history of printing.
I’m not exactly sure yet what its focus will be. Probably will contain all the stuff that’s a bit too far out for here or Earthpages.
Check it out! Still a prototype… http://thedotmatrix.wordpress.com/
Photo credit: Rob Baxter
This commentary also appears at Earthpages.org
Well it’s come and gone. The 2010 Winter Olympics are history.
Once again I felt compelled to watch the closing ceremony, not because I like seeing massive amounts of money spent on superficialities, but because I was curious to see how my country chose to spend them.†
Granted, the whole thing is open to debate. I get that. I mean, some say we need “spectacles” to keep life interesting, even though people are freezing to death on the streets and aboriginal teens are killing themselves because of the grim desperation that poverty can bring.
Others say that spending money on the Olympics stimulates local economies. In addition, many corporations involved in their overall production benefit. I get that too.
But what I don’t get is why the artistic director of the closing ceremony dished out every idiotic stereotype about Canada known to mankind. To spend significant sums of money on massive images of bears, log cabins, and Mounties in red ceremonial uniform seems misguided.
That’s not Canada at all. That’s just a silly cliché that, so it seemed, the opening ceremony hoped to eradicate.
Contradiction?
You bet.
Waste of money?
Well, let’s just say that I don’t agree with Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that “The medium is the message.”
I believe that part of the message is content. And in my opinion, the content of the closing ceremony was a bit of a joke. And not a good one, as intended.
Having said that, it wasn’t all bad. Neil Young and Michael J. Fox were highlights. And William Shatner was… well, William Shatner. That is, overblown but delightfully so.
How ironic, however, that these stars made their fortunes south of the border and basically left Canada to live in the USA.
Bottom line?
Even these greats came off a bit thin because, as I say, the medium isn’t the only message. Content also matters. And despite their best efforts, these three stars sent out a message that Canada is a nice place to visit but, by gosh, we wouldn’t want to live there any more.
–MC
† Opinion – Olympic opening speaks volumes
Reality Films
This review also appears at Earthpages.org
Do you believe in magic? Miracles? Is there a difference?
The answer to these questions will most likely depend on one’s beliefs and experiences.
The Magick of Solomon: Lemegeton Secrets Revealed is an engaging instructional video by Carroll “Poke” Runyon of the Church of the Hermetic Sciences.
The film attempts to integrate a variety of religious and esoteric traditions by demonstrating an elaborate pagan ritual accompanied with a learned commentary.
For Runyon, it seems there’s no clash between his style of magic and genuine miracles, although he and his fellow Church members would probably make a distinction between their form of soul magick (with a “k”) and stage magic (without a “k”).
The DVD is a remastered and enhanced version of the original VHS of 1996, to include some older material from the 1970s and a commentary from 2003.
Runyon holds a Masters Degree in anthropology and begins the video with a disclaimer, warning of the inherent dangers of causally meddling with the potent forces that might be evoked by watching it.
And rightly so.
C. G. Jung, whom Runyon refers to, speaks to the power of the archetypes and cautions that delving into the collective unconscious without the appropriate psychological preparedness to integrate it within ego consciousness could result in mental disruption, perhaps even psychosis.
At the beginning of this movie I, a believing Christian, felt slightly uneasy. I’ve had minimal experience with paganism, only dabbling in Tarot cards in my youth and, years later, watching slick TV programs like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural.
After the first 25 minutes, however, my unease turned to fatigue. The DVD wasn’t dull by any stretch of the imagination but I probably had to enter the dream state to better understand why it was impinging on my comfort zone.
So I paused the disc and had a nap. On waking I was ready to go and, the second time around, found The Magick of Solomon absorbing but not uncomfortable.
This DVD may not be quite as slick as Buffy or Supernatural, but it does provide viewers with a penetrating look inside an alternative religion.
The temple, itself, is devoted to Astarte, a deity with a long list of analogues, to include the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus.
Its rites are premised on the belief that wisdom may be gained by first invoking heavenly angels, and then evoking lower, possibly demonic powers. The rationale, in keeping with Jung’s model, is that higher angels protect and help the aspirant to integrate the lower demons, which essentially reside within the self.
At this stage Runyon differentiates the terms invoke and evoke. To invoke is to call on heavenly agencies from above and outside oneself, while to evoke is to activate the dark powers of the collective unconscious within the self.
From this we see that Runyon believes in heavenly beings – in particular, the four traditional archangels and their legendary mediators – while proposing that some demons are merely the result of mankind’s subjugation of pagan deities to the collective unconscious.
I found this cosmology a bit confusing because Runyon also treats the lower realm entities with all the awe and respect one would accord a real, independent deity.
Again, this brings to mind Carl Jung’s schema which raises the same question: Do the archetypes of the collective unconscious enjoy an independent existence or do they simply exist as a repressed part of ourselves?
Let’s also not forget that the “unconscious” is just an idea, a point which this video might have more thoroughly explained.
Runyon, himself, is articulate and charismatic. He seems to have a good grasp of the scholarly aspects of magic and esoterica. Moreover, his prior vocation as a salesman serves him well.
I don’t mean this disrespectfully. We live in a predominantly consumer-driven culture and it would be naïve to suppose that most organized religions don’t engage in some kind of promotional activity geared toward the twofold agenda of fund-raising and facilitating conversions.
There’s nothing wrong with fund-raising strategies provided that a house of worship believes in the goods, services and overall message it’s promoting and, more important, it’s not willfully deceiving, harming or manipulating vulnerable individuals.
After all, in liberal democracies we are free to choose.
Another similarity between The Church of the Hermetic Sciences and some traditional Churches becomes evident when Runyon suggests that his magickal synthesis is authentic and safe while a rival sect of former disciples is apparently proliferating dangerous doctrines and engaging in equally hazardous activities.
Runyon then says these former disciples have opened a “Pandora’s Box” of evil that his methods can effectively quell.
Shades of the old Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation?
Whether or not one envisions Runyon’s techniques as a key to psycho-spiritual insight, The Magick of Solomon: Lemegeton Secrets Revealed is certainly different and informative. It should be of considerable interest to those wanting to learn about a new Church that blends ancient legend, belief and practice with some recent concepts from Carl Jung’s analytical psychology.
–MC
NTCI – demolition days, originally uploaded by earthpages.
Was walking by my ol’ high school last night… it won’t be long before the whole thing is gone. Maybe I should take another picture… old structure is totally surrounded by new stuff, cranes, workers, etc.
… man of tomorrow, originally uploaded by x-ray delta one.
I just came across this image and thought it was great!
Reality Films
This review also appears at Earthpages.org
Synchronicity is a hard thing to prove. Even harder is to prove an idea by citing a series of perceived synchronicities.
And this is exactly what Dan Green sets out to do in The Murder of Mary Magdalene: Genocide of the Holy Bloodline.
Offering an alternative history to the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Green weaves an intricate tapestry of symbols, codes, clues and events to support his belief that Mary Magdalene was murdered to prevent word from getting out that she and Jesus Christ were much closer than the official story tells us.
This is the kind of thing that gets traditional religious persons up in arms. Similar claims made in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) led that book to be banned in strongly Catholic countries such as the Philippines.
Likewise, Dan Brown’s work of fiction The Da Vinci Code (2003) sparked heated debate and its overall content was deemed “offensive” by many Catholics.
Sociologists and professors of religion like John Gager suggest that whenever the truth claims and associated practices of a rival out-group get a bit too close for comfort to the beliefs and practices of an established in-group, members of the in-group become upset.
At this point the in-group feels the need to better define its boundaries, which may lead to exclusion, condemnation or, as we’ve seen in the often grisly march of human history, persecution.
According to this theory, it’s the similarity of the two groups that riles the in-group. Radically different out-groups lacking some kind of thematic overlap with an in-group are usually ignored. But when an out-group hits a nerve by getting too ideologically near to the in-group—that’s when sparks will fly.
This social-psychological dynamic apparently took place between the early Christians and the Gnostics. And a similar kind of dynamic has evidently continued to this day.
As for The Murder of Mary Magdalene in relation to the traditional Christian story, I found this DVD far more of a Jungian kind of treatise than a religious one. If anything, it’s a testament to the power of synchronicity.
Synchronicity is a term coined by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung to point to the idea of meaningful coincidence. From the perspective of synchronicity, nothing really happens by chance. In fact, the idea of chance, itself, is just a human construct. From watching this film it seems that Dan Green perceived an ongoing set of synchronicities during its research and production phases.
The DVD’s special features section includes a refreshing and helpful interview of Green by the film’s director, Philip Gardiner.
This interview not only summarizes the main points of the film but gives some biographical information about Green. It also reveals how Green’s eyes light up whenever he speaks about the synchronicities encountered during the film’s production. And having one’s eyes sparkle with excitement is something very hard to fake.
What did go through my mind, however, was a question. Not the central question posed by this film – was Mary Magdalene murdered? – but another, important question regarding the interpretation of synchronistic events.
Again, I have little doubt that Green believes he encountered genuine synchronicities. But I do wonder if Green’s interpretation of those inner-outer experiences is more about his own personal journey rather than a universal truth concerning the unwritten history of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
I don’t know the answer, of course. But the question did arise.
On the cinematography side, viewers should delight at the archaic cathedral at Lincoln, England, along with other sacred treasures so very well presented in this film.
The Murder of Mary Magdalene: Genocide of the Holy Bloodline was the perfect antidote to the mid-February grind of Canadian winter. And I suggest that viewers sit back, enjoy and let this highly imaginative work take them away.
Whether or not one agrees with its conclusions, chances are the only believers who’ll get angry about this film are those who aren’t really comfortable with their beliefs in the first place.
–MC
Reality Films
This review also appears at Earthpages.org
I bought my very first copy of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland while doing graduate work in India. Renowned for its mysticism and unusual happenings, India seemed like an appropriate place to enter into the intriguing world of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, best known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.
Funnily enough, I never read the entire book. I tried several times but for some reason it just didn’t work. Perhaps Caroll was a bit too intellectual for my tastes. Although the book is often regarded as a nonsense tale, author and director Philip Gardiner and co-writer Brian Allan rightly point out in The Initiation of Alice in Wonderland: The Looking Glass of Lewis Carroll that it’s anything but nonsense.
We all know the basic story. Alice’s adventures have become a part of pop culture. The rock group Jefferson Airplane released a hit single “White Rabbit” on their 1967 record Surrealistic Pillow, and the Quantum Physics / New Age movie What the Bleep Do We Know?! (2004) was enhanced and expanded in a 2006 version called What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole.
Although I’m reviewing this DVD without having read Alice In Wonderland in its entirety, that doesn’t really matter. If I can enjoy a documentary about a book I haven’t finished, if I can get what the film is saying and learn from it, then that’s a testament to the skillfulness of its creators. And this surely is the case with The Initiation of Alice in Wonderland.
The DVD offers some provocative biographical material on Carroll’s childhood, struggles with his family’s Anglican religion, Oxford days as a respected mathematician, and possible links with the esoterica of Theosophy and the Rosicrucians. It also delves into his controversial pursuits as a photographer, a hobby that seemed to reflect an interest in girls.
The commentary on the considerable controversy around Carroll’s photos of nude or semi-nude girls is noteworthy. Essentially, The Initiation of Alice asks us to bracket our 21st century Western notions of normality and try to imagine things as they might have been in the genteel Victorian circles in which Carroll moved.
This segment should spark heated dialogue around notions of absolute versus cultural morality and I’ll leave it to God to find the right answer to this potentially divisive issue.
After working through Carroll’s biography, the film moves, quite competently, into the imaginary world of Alice. The novel Alice in Wonderland is mostly interpreted from the perspective of contemporary Gnosticism, where several belief systems are said to point to a common inner truth.
On the whole, the analysis of Alice’s underground adventures conforms to the Jungian idea of a collective unconscious where the conventional rules of space and time no longer apply. And like Jung’s work, the concepts of magical, mystical and The Holy are not as clearly delineated as some might hope for.
When exploring the symbolism of Alice’s eating and drinking of unusual substances in Wonderland, for instance, The Initiation of Alice sets up an analogy between the reception of the Holy Eucharist and the imbibing of psychedelic mushrooms.
Gardiner and Allan’s extensive analogical theorizing leaves much room for interpretation and debate. As with C. G. Jung’s work, some would applaud the far-reaching use of analogy while others might not. Regardless of one’s take on this, it would be hard to come away from this film not feeling a little bit closer to Carroll and his amazing imaginary realm.
Just a day before watching this video, I saw the movie The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for the first time, having made a few unsuccessful attempts to read the Douglas Adams novel on which it was based, and for much the same reasons as Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
Its seems these two great stories – the one set in Victorian England and the other in modern society – have something in common. Both seem silly and nonsensical but at the same time point to political and especially quantum realities that humanity will eventually have to come to grips with.
Altogether, The Initiation of Alice in Wonderland: The Looking Glass of Lewis Carroll is a probing, wide-ranging film that Carroll enthusiasts and interested browsers should learn much from.
–MC
brain-universe-parallel, originally uploaded by Cecilia Fletcher.
I thought this was sort of interesting.
Vectorized derivation from "Plushes Cool Monster" www.flickr.com/photos/27620885@N02/2594363003/ by SOCIALisBETTER
Vancouver 2010 Inukshuk: janusz l / Janusz Leszczynski
This commentary also appears at Earthpages.org
Last night’s Olympic opening ceremony wasn’t my top priority. I wasn’t going to bother watching it but realized I should see what my country was up to.
After all, I graduated in sociology and should know how the Canadian Olympic officials chose to represent this country to the world.
I suppose considering the budget they did a pretty good job. But what I found sort of bush-league was how the emphasis fell on Canada’s greatness instead of the greatness of Olympic Sport.
When doing graduate work in India in the late 1980s I saw a similar phenomenon. Anything of merit in India was pumped up to emphasize how “world class” that country was.
Canada is much the same.
This might be a sign of some kind of grand national insecurity. I mean, if you’re really the best you don’t have to talk about it. You just do it… and most everyone gets that you’re number one.
Having said that, I am proud of some of the claims made about my country last night. I believe we are miles (oops kilometers) ahead of many other lands in terms of forging a working and peaceful cultural mosaic.
It’s easy to talk about the wonders of multiculturalism when you’re banning religious groups from your country or beating up on minorities. It’s quite another thing to actually live peacefully with many different kinds of peoples (and their divergent beliefs) in close proximity.
That’s probably what I’m most proud of. And it’s probably the future of not only Canada but hopefully the world.
So why the lingering social insecurity? Is it because the US media tends to ignore and sometimes mock us? And if so, who cares?
From my experience the Americans worth interacting with see past all that, just as the Canadians worth interacting with don’t construct an identity by saying “we’re not the US.”
How boring!
Defining oneself as Canadian by saying “we’re not America” is also a bit thin and hypocritical. Canadian media anchors, for example, often jump at the chance to appear ‘cool and hip’ by being on Twitter and Facebook.
Uh… what country developed those social media? Or WordPress, for that matter?
So let’s get real. Canada does get a lot of things right but also depends on the USA and many other countries to stay afloat.
It’s an international world. So why don’t we all start thinking that way?
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