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#but in fact something that makes reality *more* tangible and easier to comprehend
hekateinhell · 5 months
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Remembering Anne Rice on the second anniversary of her death:
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What does the word "vampire" mean to you? The vampire for me is a metaphor for the outsider, the outcast, the predator in all of us --- the lonely one, the heart and soul that feels immortal even when it knows that we all die. Vampire characters help me to talk about reality. They always have. When I'm with Lestat, and Armand and Louis, and Gabrielle, I'm in the real world. All colors blaze bright and music soars to Heaven and I'm not lonely for a while, I'm safe. And that's why I write about them and through them and with them.
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happystressedmuffin · 5 years
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The way math is taught in school makes people fear math, which is a beautiful subject that most people (with enough practice) could excel in. 
you know, the thing about math is that truly, most people can do it. It’s just something you have to do every single day. I mean, you wouldn’t really claim “oh, reading is just not for me” if you’ve hardly ever read, right? (well, unless you have a learning disorder).  It’s just that schools do an awful job of teaching math. Children need to understand math laws and why they work instead of being told that they do -- it’s much harder to remember “2 x 2 = 4″ if it’s just a baseless fact you are forced to memorize, and much easier if you understand what “2 x 2″ actually means. The reason so many people (including me) struggle is because elementary mathematics taught us virtually nothing about numbers and how they really work, so we have a really shaky foundation to build upon. 
Many times in school, I’ve been taught a math law. I hear it countless amounts of times. But it’s nothing more than a concept to me that I memorize. I am fortunate though that my parents are mathematicians, so I usually have them help me before tests. They have a method of making me use these mathematical laws before I even really comprehend that I’m using these laws, and then after several repetitions, I myself begin to note a pattern and suddenly the law is no longer a concept but a tangible reality. If my parents weren’t mathematicians (and excellent teachers), I don’t think I would ever truly comprehend math as a subject founded in reality (rather than abstract laws and concepts). I’m not even good at math. Not at all. But I have an appreciation for it that I would otherwise not have if it weren’t for my parents. 
math really is a beautiful subject. But it’s a skill that needs to be developed. my mom says, “if you truly want to excel at math, you need to do it every day, and you need to really focus and understand what you’re doing.” the reason why so many people assume they cannot do math is because they don’t practice it, and they don’t practice it because school has turned it into a punishment. We’re focused on “getting the right answer” and punished for “getting the wrong answer.” It’s not about the answer. It’s about discovering the method that will get you the right answer. This requires a genuine understanding of the problem, thought, and trial-and-error. But in school, we also have such a thing called time limits and expectations, which limits the amount of time we’re allowed to think and limits the methods we are allowed to use. 
Not to mention, most of the time we don’t have a clue what we’re doing. For example, we just finished learning about derivatives in calculus. But why exactly are derivatives useful? I’m sure an answer exists. But nobody tells us. So we’re stuck sitting at a desk, filling out problems for seemingly little reason, and then getting punished for getting such a seemingly useless problem wrong. Children often ask, “why do we need to know this?” or “how does this apply to the real world?” and these are very real questions that children genuinely need to know. We don’t like to do what we feel is useless. And most of what we learn is not useless! But ask any teenager, and they will say it is. 
“why don’t we learn something useful, like learning how to pay taxes?”
fair point, but what we learn IS useful. We’re just not being given the reasons why. Everything we learn in math seems so conceptual, so intangible to the real world, that we forget that math is the very language of describing the world  -- it’s the language of every known science. Math literally is our world, and understanding it is literally nothing more than practice.
 But we should not blame kids for not wanting to practice. Math has become needlessly terrifying thanks to the way it’s taught that some people give up before they even begin.
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rogerrachel1995 · 4 years
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skepticaloccultist · 7 years
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The Vagaries of Occult Book Buyers
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There are benefits to having made a pact with a spirit who procures books as its very nature. The sideways of having something appear that you never were looking for, but indeed wanted, is particularly helpful.
As it was I have been thinking about the role of the occult bookseller down through the ages. How, from Roman times until now one could purchase a manuscript, and later printed books, of occult lore from a professional seller. In times of suppression there were still those who dealt books of forbidden knowledge, keeping a copy under the counter for those who inquire directly. Booksellers in London have carried the works of Dee and Agrippa for centuries, no less in the 16th century than today.
What a wonderful book it would make, a history of those actual historic persons who sold occult books. A well written story of the occult publishers and bookshops that have existed from the middle ages until the late 19th century would be fantastic. Something very accurately written, well footnoted, and with an extensive bibliography.
So I mused for several days on this day dreamed book until, after having ordered a volume of the first edition of "Folk-Lore volume 5" 1887, I received something altogether different. Instead of a book of folklore, I received a copy of "Book-Lore, vol 5 1887". In it I found plenty of stories of booksellers, occult and otherwise, but even more so stumbled onto this absolutely fantastic portrayal of occult book collectors. Its such a perfect and spot on assessment of those who would be occultists, yet find the collecting part much more enjoyable than the actual practicalities of magic. As true today as it was 130 years ago when it was written.
I reproduce the full short piece below. I am still waiting for a concise history of occult booksellers to appear, but in the meantime this laugh will do.
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  "The Vagaries of (Occult) Book Buyers - III " from Book-Lore, a Magazine Devoted to Old Time Literature - 1887
Lord Lytton, in that curious and mysterious novel, Zanoni, mentions an old bookseller who, after years of toil, had succeeded in forming an almost perfect library of works on occult philosophy. Poor in everything but a genuine love for the mute companions of his old age, he was compelled to keep open his shop, and trade, as it were, in his own flesh. Let a customer enter and his countenance fell; let him depart empty-handed and he would smile gaily, oblivious for a time of bare cupboard and inward cravings. A purchaser was indeed a deadly enemy to the old man, for every proffered coin was scorching hot, a miserable and inadequate exchange for one drop of purple blood.
It is astonishing what a deep interest some people take in weird and obscurely written books. They will gloat over the mysteries of Hermes, and nervously finger the pages of Agrippa, - that foul magician whose judgment of himself and all his labours is so eloquently portrayed in his Vanitie of Arts and Sciences. No matter, says the devotee, Agrippa was mistaken; he was afraid of the Inquisition, and recanted. He could not have invented the sigils, triangles, and magic circles, without which congregated with horrid eyes the spirits of the Moon and Paymon, the King of the West Wind. Agrippa was afraid of the spectres he had raised; afraid of his own black dog, and of the hell to which it pointed.
The amateur occult philosopher is, however, not afraid - as yet - and every spare moment is occupied in ferreting out the names of ghostly men, who either suffered on the rack or at the stake, for leaguing themselves with the powers of the air, or else tumbled headlong into the talons of besieging hosts of devils, all screaming, as Paracelsus says they sometimes do, " Thy pentacles and thy circle are wrong, thy words are false; come thou with us."
The old bookseller was a type, and, as we think, a type only, of Lytton's own creation; perhaps a reflection of the soul of Lytton himself, ever groping through mists of tale and fable, and ever unsatisfied.
The purchaser of works on occult philosophy is usually exceedingly enthusiastic, so much so that he persists in his so-called studies, notwithstanding the fact that nine-tenths of his books are in Latin, a language of which he knows little or nothing. In a few words, he would become a disciple of Jannes and Jambres, and to this end sets about accumulating materials in the form of huge folios, conscientiously intending, no doubt, to read them when time and opportunity offer.
His course of reading so far has been confined to the Strange Story, which first riveted his attention on fiends and spectres, and to Barrett's Magus, which, being in English, and adorned with a number of weird plates, has proved an excellent stimulant to further exertions. The Bible is ransacked, and the "Witch of Endor and Simon Magus duly weighed in the balance, while such phrases as " Now the magicians of Egypt they also did in like manner with their enchantments," roll off the tongue with unctuous volubility. Presently the aspirant to " horrors fell and grim " stumbles across the treatises of Raphael and Sibly, and sighs to think that his ignorance effectually cuts him off from the delightful contemplations of those obscure authors upon whose diatribes their works are founded.
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At this point the average student comes to a full stop, and turns probably to astrology as being a more tangible study, and apparently much easier. His little library swells with the treatises of Lilly, Raphael, Placidus de Titus, and the great Ptolemy, while he rejoices to think that Flamsted believed in the reality of the science, and that old Burton, the "Democritus Junior," hanged himself rather than admit that his own horoscope was out of gear.
The next step is the purchase of a planisphere, which conveniently dispenses with abstruse calculations in spherical trigonometry; and finally the student erects a horoscope all out of his own head, showing plainly enough that he was born when Mercury was retrograde, and at the square of the moon - a never-failing sign of idiocy, proved up to the hilt, be it said, when he is at last actually persuaded to go a-horse-racing with his slender capital, merely because the "quesited" - the famous "Flying Scud" - is in a trine aspect with Jupiter, Lord of the Seventh, and therefore cannot lose. The horse, however, breaks down, and is scratched four-and-twenty hours after the money is staked, and henceforth astrology is a Will-o'-the-wisp that will never again lure our bibliophile to his ruin.
Out of every twenty persons who take up the study of occult philosophy, nineteen are supremely ignorant of the most ordinary branches of knowledge, but the twentieth is a man of very different composition. He, too, began, perhaps, in the same way as his less gifted brethren, and has followed the same paths, and pored over the same books, and would like also to rival the deeds of Albertus Magnus, who had power over the elements; or of Peter of Abono, who raised terrible forms as easily as a market gardener raises cabbages.
He speedily discovers that Barrett's Magus is, in part, at least, a mere translation, and a very bad one, of Agrippa's fourth book, and that Raphael has mutilated the words of every author he quotes. There is no reliable work in English which can possibly be procured, and so he turns to the Latin, beginning with Iamblichus, and his famous book De Mysteriis, printed by Aldus in 1497. This rare and interesting specimen of typography loses, however, all its beauty in the absorbing nature of its contents; and the same observation is applicable to the author's Vita Pythagorae, published at Rome in 1556. These treatises are, it is true, mere introductions which every tyro who hopes hereafter to lift the veil of Isis must read if he wishes to fit himself to meet the petrifying gaze of the "Dweller on the Threshold" but they are also two most useful books, as from them can be gleaned a mass of information which, rightly understood, is declared by the initiated to point to the portals of the world beyond the grave.
With appetite whetted to a swallowing-point perfectly gluttonous in its magnitude, the student next turns to the treatise of the learned Jesuit, Martin Delrio, who, in his Disquisitionum Magicarum, examines the many different systems of magic practised by the professors of his day; to Bodin's De la Demonomanie des Sorciers; and in their turn to Boissardus, Jerome Cardan, Glanvil, Grillandus, Van Helmont, Wierus, and the Malleus Maleficanim of Sprenger and Institor.
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All these works, comprehending as they do an assortment of wonders the like of which the world never saw, and perhaps never will see, support one another in a manner that would put a coterie of Old Bailey witnesses to the blush, so precise and seemingly accurate are the expressions used, so consequential the inferences. There is no mincing matters, no equivocation nor contradiction; everything is so orderly and precise that what is usually regarded, in this country at least, as a structure composed entirely of falsehood and fraud, becomes quite natural in appearance, so that, at last, the student finds himself accepting a statement, no matter how foolish, simply because Sprenger affirms it to be true, or Robert Fludd hints that it possibly may be.
All this time money is going out as fast as credulity, for works on occult philosophy are very expensive. The dealers are aware of their patron's feverish anxiety to obtain them when once bitten by the mania, and, as a matter of course, charge accordingly. Thus £3 is, as a rule, demanded for the Opera Omnia of Paracelsus, 1658, 2 vols., folio; seven or eight guineas for the collected works of Cardan, Lugd., 1663; and as much and more for those of Robert Fludd, Oppenheim, 1617-38. Respecting this last author, Isaac D'Israeh, in his Curiosities of Literature, states that in his time as much as £40 had to be given for a single volume, so great in those days appears to have been the anxiety to obtain copies of works of this and a similar class. We can imagine, therefore, how large must have been the value of the unique collection formed by the bookseller to whom Lytton so fondly refers, and we - or at least some of us - may almost participate in his disinclination to have such a splendid assortment broken in upon by the amateur peripatetic philosopher who in all probability cannot read one hundredth part of the treasures he longs to possess.
The modern world has now been revolving for nearly 1,900 years, and during the whole of that time repeated attempts have been made to lift the curtain that shuts out the invisible world. Some few persons - as, for example, Rozencrantz, who founded the Society of the Rosy Cross, and Paracelsus, who is "now living in his tomb, whither he retired disgusted with the vices and follies of mankind " - are credited with having peeped for a few brief moments behind it; but with these and some other exceptions the progress that has been made is admitted by the most ardent devotee to have been nil. Rumour, as chorus, has taken the place of fact, and dreams that of reality, but still the modern occultist cannot be brought to see that he labours in vain. And so he goes on purchasing ponderous volumes, ugly to look at and absolutely useless for every purpose, theoretical as well as practical, until either he is forced by repeated failures to admit that his favourite authors are impostors, or that he himself has, in spite of all his application, failed to reach the road that leads from this world to that which is to come. He and others like him - and there are many even in this century - would outstrip themselves in a desperate race through the darkness of Erebus; they spend a lifetime in learning to walk, only to be afflicted with total paralysis at the last; and when they awake to find their labour has been in vain, they are amazed to think of the fallacy which engulphed years of toil in the futile attempt to discover what they will learn in five minutes after they are dead.
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However, be this as it may, the sale of books on occult philosophy goes on apace, and purchasers are very eager to part with their cash, a phenomenon which is observed in very few instances save the one under discussion. Some of these days enterprise may detect money in new editions and translations of Artemidorus on dreams, and Raymond Lully and Artephius on the philosopher's stone; but at present the trade is confined exclusively to old and battered copies which have served generations of investigators, which are now being read, and which will be read, in all probability, until they are thumbed out of recognition.
It is said of the Emperor Nero, that among other studies he ardently followed that of magic. He employed immense sums, wrung from the sweat of Rome, in this pursuit; searched far and wide for professors, - penetrating the remote regions of India and Africa, - and even prowled among the ruined towers of Chaldsea. Rewards were offered, and threats of cruel torture not only lavished but carried into effect, and with what result? Absolutely none, for all the power of Rome could not raise up another Witch of Endor, nor prolong the Emperor's life for a single second. And yet there are in England at this moment thousands of busybodies who think they can, with their limited resources, accomplish what Nero, with all Rome at his back, failed to perform; and so they go on, blinking like owls over distressing paragraphs that no one either in heaven above, nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth, can possibly construe into intelligible English. The only consolation is that these good people are out of harm's way, and may perhaps be laying up a store of patience which may serve their end when the fit is over. They are very good customers of the booksellers also, and rejoice exceedingly over one very small piece of silver which they persuade themselves they are on the eve of finding.
- M. A. G.
  Find the rest of this fantastic 19th century magazine of book collecting here:
"The Vagaries of (Occult) Book Buyers - III " from Book-Lore, a Magazine Devoted to Old Time Literature - 1887
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thebookofher-blog1 · 6 years
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December 14th 2017
Today is a day of new beginnings. The thought of starting a blog; an online appeal for virtually anyone to see, has crossed my mind a lot lately. I like to keep to myself, and yet my ego often yearns for the attention and validation that others can bring. I’m thinking that this is starting as a platform to voice my opinions, concerns, inner trials and tribulations. Maybe someone will read this.. and perhaps not. I like the fact that I can be anonymous about this; so that if this ever goes south, my own self image can remain preserved (as preserved as it is can be anyways). I have a lot of social anxieties and fears that come with actually speaking with other people. This is a conditioned trait, not something intrinsic.. though that doesn’t really matter. I find it easier to communicate via text. I realize that this is the opposite of how I want to move forward in my life- I’m actually going into the new year with the goals of creating more tangible; in-person relationships. But for my hidden self; the one attached strongly to my ego, the one that craves acceptance and acknowledgement, this will be the place to go. Do you ever feel like you have a role in this lifetime that is bigger and brighter than where you are now, than what you do now? I do. I’m not sure exactly where I’m going, but I know it’s going to be lovely. I’ve read a bit on the universe and how it gives back to you exactly what you put out.. and I’ve spent the last few months trying to make my own reality as positive as I can by changing the words I speak, the thoughts I think, and the actions I do into ones with more positivity. I plan to spend the rest of my life working on this. I can see so much beauty on the horizon. I haven’t been without heartbreak or disappointment, however, I want to choose love in all forms. It can be forgiveness (for myself and others), self-love and acceptance, romantic love, platonic love, love for this life, this earth, this universe- I don't care. I welcome it all in a loving embrace (pun intended). We create our realities. I couldn't comprehend this in the past, but as I move forward I can see that my path in life has no room for the negative aspects of the human experience. Sure, they’ll come and go; I’ll be angry or sad and say things I may not mean, do things out of spite, ruminate in jealousy, etc. But that can’t last forever, and I’ll work to make them few and far between, with no judgements for when they do occur. Our missteps are simply lessons after all. Thank-you kindly for this place to put my thoughts.
Yours in love, light, and happiness,
The Book of Her
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