#numinosity

[seasideretreat]

French

I play video games to learn French. It's actually really tough. My favorite one is Planet Zoo. You know, many people want to be zookeepers I've heard. I can imagine why, it's really fun to work with animals I think, especially exotic animals. You know, last night I was thinking of the numinous. Numinosity is a concept introduced in the Western world of thought in the early 20th century. I believe it is a crucial concept: it points us to the spiritual difference of religion, that pushes us to do stuff like meditation, cryptic philosophy, prayer and reading the Bible. We want to connect with the numinous, and this can actually be a really practical question; religions offer us many ways to do this, like adhering to a particular lifestyle or reading the Bible. You know, I got up early today again, not necessarily to write, but this is my new philosophy: if I get up before eleven I will write my blog in the mornings. It's quite nice because then I can have the rest of the day off. You know, I really get to write nice things all the time, because I have a better process these days, but I still don't really know what to do when writing; you know, I want to do research, you know, to write nice things but I just can't think of anything to research; well, I guess I could study English history, I am interested in that, but it doesn't do me that much and I know a lot about it already. Right now I am listening to a Let's Play by GhazPlays, he is a really good Youtuber, but he doesn't have that many viewers, still, he is really productive; I was listening to an album called Haunted Mountain by a guy called Buck Meek just now, and I kind of liked it, but I find Let's Playing more relaxing; not very much so necessarily, you know, writing is work, mostly, and you can't really relax whilst you're typing you know, but I am thinking later I could just sit in my chair and make a few Sudoku puzzles, that'll probably be relaxing, you know, it's not that hard to get through the day I suppose, when you just stay happy; and that's what religion is for, to allow us to stay happy, although it's hard; I don't know how religion really works, you know, and I don't know what the purpose of religion really is, but it's something with being a guide for life and the numinous, et cetera. You know, I really kind of regret not sleeping out, but that's the thing, I don't really want to stay in bed necessarily, you know, I just got nothing to do, and I usually get up at eleven, you know, I just brave the day anyway, but yeah, recently I started writing in the mornings, you know, and it's kind of harder because you don't get to prepare I'd say, but yeah, whatever.

You know, the point of a day is to have a good time. Sleeping is really pleasant, but writing can be pleasant too, you know; and if you know how to get through the day it ain't so bad; life is very weird, you know, and we do weird things all the time; this is the thing, I start writing at eight or around eight, and then just have a slow day until eleven o'clock; and what happens at eleven o'clock? Nothing, I just find something else to do. I suppose having an eventful morning is all right. I always really liked it when I got down the stairs in my parents' house in the morning when I was young and my mother would be sitting there, listening to the radio. My dad would always get up much later, just like my sister. My mother and I were the early birds. You know, I also really like talking I suppose, but these days I don't really talk so much, I can't think of anything to say. My dad said I was laconic, which is an admirable quality, although maybe he was just teasing me because I say so little. Tomorrow I have to work for the mail again, I feel okay regarding it, I think it will be okay; you know, its actually kind of nice; you know, I don't think I'd mind working in an office, but I can't think of any nice job in an office that I could take, probably since I don't have a very competitive degree. I studied Asian Studies. You know, I still don't know what I really learned there. I used to study history and I got my Bachelor of Arts in that, and I kind of learned how to write there, and kind of how great Dutch history is and all that, you know, random things; but with Asian Studies, I really have no idea what I learned; I didn't learn how to write, you know, I barely felt any of that teacher was saying in the tutorials, and the lectures were all so chaotic and specific; I really don't know what I learned, I suppose I will find out eventually, but it's all not so funny, you know, it's just bad. I did a course on Mongolian history, you know the history of the Mongolian empire, and that was a nice course, but also quite chaotic maybe, and not very companionate. You know, history was just really my thing, I guess, and I shouldn't have switched to Asian Studies; but yeah, I did a specialization that focussed partially on history, so I guess I can just profile myself as a historian; in which case, studying Asian Studies I just learned the glories of Japanese, Chinese and Middle-Eastern history. You know, I sometimes wish I'd have taken the opportunity, after my Bachelors, to study theology. I feel like theology is a much more academic and professional field than history. You know, it's really weird that history is such a big field in academia, considering theology is what university was all about in the beginning; and someone actually called theology history from the inside; you know, history is just a big pile of facts without the religious aspect; you know, we are kind of doubting the Whig version of history nowadays; you know, I did kind of learn something specific at Asian Studies, basically to ask big questions; you know, that's someting we don't do at history, I think; in history, you ask ridiculously small questions and then do a ridiculous amount of (virtual) work to answer it. But yeah, was studying Asian Studies of any practical value? I have asked myself this question a thousand times and I cannot figure it out. I didn't learn to speak Chinese, which would've been a great boon for my curriculum vitae, and I didn't learn how to hold a Confucian sermon or a Buddhist seminar or something like that, which might've given me a direction in life; but I did learn something about how we try to understand a foreign place, and I learned to think hard on historiographical questions. Of course, that ain't a practical value, but yeah, this is the age old question: what do we learn from history? I'd say we learn the most general truths from history, because it is the most general science, but people don't consider it a science, they consider it an art.

What do we learn from philosophy? They say history is just philosophy teaching by example. Philosophy may teach us that reality is an illusion. Or that we ought to be ourselves. History can teach us those things too, only it does so only after empirical investigation. Really, history is just telling stories, but the purpose of university is to figure things out based on this history. We often imagine history as reaching back into the past to discover more about a question. But I have heard it said that the news is also a form of history. Cicero said that history is the mistress of life. We are simply stuck in history and we have to do as she says. In this sense, history is just context. Studying history has no point, but it can serve a function when we try to learn something, since it gives us insight in the meaning of the science. In this sense, from studying Asian Studies I learned nothing, but I did get a better vision on things I already knew, such as war, or religion, or philosophy. But yeah, what is science? History is a part of science, not a science in itself, so studying history teaches you to think critically, but about very general topics. We might say that studying history is pointless, but it does make a difference. Without history, we'd not know the context of the science, and then we wouldn't see the point of anything. You know, it's clever to study history, because it helps you improve your science. I don't know.

#numinosity #asian studies #history

[lizardonthewindowpane]

#numinosity #across the universe

[herukapadmajungiansworld]

The Broken Mirror, James Hollis

#carl jung #jungian psychology #numinous #numinosity #to nod or beckon #the broken mirror #we want to be touched #james hollis

[dualdeixis]

[Image description: A digital drawing of the Ghost and Prince Hamlet. The Ghost is drawn as a rough, wispy silhouette in white. His head is in the shape of a star with a red, fiery trail and his red eyes shed bloody tears as he looks at Hamlet, beckoning him forth with one hand. Hamlet stares at the Ghost with an awed expression. He wears a hooded cloak, a doublet with paned sleeves, and paned breeches, all of which are black with red embroidery, and has a rapier attached to his belt. End image description.]

As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,

#hamlet #ghost hamlet #prince hamlet #drawings #*sigh* reread it and the numinosity surrounding the ghost... made me lose it a little bit #anyways i love that hamlet is canonically fat and hot #citing 'hes loved of the distracted multitude / who like not in their judgement but their eyes' + 'hes fat and scant of breath' #hes the blueprint for all my pathetic mentally ill meowmeow goth bitchboy favs hes every letter of lgbt at once etc etc #no one can change the trajectory of a gay and severely depressed high schooler's life like he can!

[mydudejc]

Something I've noticed:

More Christian blogs I follow are way closer to spiritual enlightenment than the pagan ones. Not that its a solid one over the other, but many of the pagan blogs are still quite literalist in nature. Hegemonic, status quo.

Most modern pagan are Calvinist American Protestants with a weird rune covered veneer. Or they're people who see the world as a spectrum of Christian/What Christianity Says is Evil and runs to that opposite side.

I take nothing literally and question everything. I know the greater reality of the Divine is beyond my comprehension, so I just do what's comfortable for me. Physical rituals, spiritual items, prayers, ect are ways to access an interior dimension of relations with that Divine that can only be felt by the deepest soul and radiated outwards.

My idea of faith is...changing. The grand Whatever of Numinosity as a way of interior transformation instead of an some outer agent of change. Not to say that doesn't happen! But I think its more nuanced than that, less noticeable than a burning bush or a weeping statue.

[talonabraxas]

A Color Diagram

(From book, "The Anatomy of the Body of God")

The Geometry of the Tree

The drawing itself is a meditation, as anyone who has experimented with the quasi-spiritual exercise of exploring the results of drawing with a compass and a straight edge. These are the tools of Euclid and Pythagoras, the early Greek mathematicians, and also probably were used much earlier by the unnamed architects who built the pyramids and other structures. The game here is to intuitively contemplate the analogies–remembering that what's at stake is also the frontier of in here and out there, of mind and so-called objective reality.

It begins with a contemplation of the empty page. Yet there is the contemplator, who is also the potential artist. There is the idea of doing something–perhaps not even clear what–just something, of drawing. There is the idea of making a mark, of having a mark-maker, a pencil or its equivalent, a finger on sand. Not in the air–part of this paper-and-pencil idea has to do with a mark that will stay still, that will sit there, an extension of mind, an expression of will, a putting out there so that it sticks what is only glimmeringly becoming in the mind. So a toddler may experience the miracle of a crayon and paper–or before that, what? His own poop and a wall?

What if, as the esoteric students of many millennia suggested, what we do is in the "image of God," not just humans, but actions, and all the world. What exists in the divine milieu, the essential underlying principles, is manifested in what we call reality–even if that manifestation is only partial, only a tiny shadow of the greatness that expresses us. Thus, artists are known to express their frustration that their best efforts are only incomplete gestures, mere efforts at capturing the magnificence, the numinosity, of their mystical experience.

What if, speaking poetically, God wanted to express in a relatively static, dense context, in a form that wouldn't dissolve, like dreams, like water, a creative inspiration. She might begin by making a figurative mark on a figurative piece of paper. The paper is space-time, the mark is–well, we call it the "big bang." But at first it was just a mark, a gesture of God.

By the way, this initial point is the beginning of drawing the tree of life diagram. It is the first sphere, a radiating sphere–like a very dense ink on a very absorbent paper–starting infinitely small, but being Divine, almost infinitely energetic, and spreading over a billion or more years.

Becoming, yet going nowhere. That calls for a second geometric event: the extension of a point as a line. In geometry, this moves from zero dimensions to one dimension. A line–but a line can be of any length, it can be infinitely long. There is no defined space yet. There's a sort of direction, but no form. It's perhaps poetically related to the light in the darkness described in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible, or that wonderfully ambiguous word, "firmament." The kabbalists really contemplated this creation story, seeking the deepest meanings, including the ingenious idea that we are constantly, every moment, creating and being re-created as part of this divine process. It didn't just happen then. Like here and there, then and now may be equally an expression of our deepest habits of thought.

We don't even begin to have a diagram yet, we're just setting the stage for a process of diagraming, but pausing to contemplate how necessary it is to set this stage, to have a pen, a piece of paper, one who makes the mark, who moves, who stays involved in the creative process, proceeding from one step to the next. Each of these elements may have metaphysical meanings, equivalents.

(What have I been smoking? Naw. You see, when you really think about it, you don't need to alter your state of consciousness; the science-fiction / poetry activity is a stretching agent enough.)

Okay, so you point, line, and at some point, you say–wait, something else is needed. At least let's pick another point so that the line has a limit. A limit? Well, if you want to draw anything, you've got to have a limit. Two points. A beginning and an end. Oooh. Okay, let's stop this line...here. Wow, in all the time we've been talking, you've made the line really, really long. Depending on divine perspective and your belief in the limitations of the speed of light, let's just say that this line is... well, what? Several billions of miles long? Whatever, it won't fit on the paper. So let's have just you make it, not God, and let it be, say, four or five inches. We can work with that. Two parts of a line–pen, straight edge. Now what. Well, pick up the compass. A new tool–really, it could even be just the straight edge, the line itself, only able to move in a new way, in another dimension, off of the line. The line makes an angle, and fools around. A little angle, a bigger angle, a 90 degree angle, hey, why not go all around.... oooh, look what you made, a circle.

Circles are very heavy, very primal, very magical. People have written a lot just about the circle. It's one of the first designs kids make as they learn to draw. And it defines a space. It's very two-dimensional. No longer just a one-dimensional line. It's got two dimensions. A little bending here and there and you could make a triangle, a square, a figure with all kinds of edges and curves. But let's stay with the circle.

For now, we'll stop. The construction of the diagram deserves a separate paper from here, the compounding of circles, edges, angles, triangles, cross-connections. But it's very elegant, and its construction partakes of what the ancient yogis called the making of mainly circular (sometimes square or triangular) diagrams for meditation called "yantras." The point is to contemplate the "deeper"meanings of such configurations, what dimensionality, space, regularity, symmetry, and other fairly basic categories mean, and why, in a world suffused with chaos, we nevertheless also find amazingly widespread evidences of the operations of mathematical expressions in space–i.e., geometry.

[haggishlyhagging]

In order to effect this re-birth—that is, castration—of women, the therapeutic "mothers" know that it is essential to discredit real mothers. All Hags are familiar with the omnipresent "blaming the mother" syndrome among psychotherapists from Freud downward. C. G. Jung, whose theories are pernicious traps which often stop women in the initial stages of mind-journeying, displays with arresting arrogance another way of discrediting women who are mothers. He simply flattens them into projection screens. We read:

“My own view differs from that of other medico-psychological theories principally in that I attribute to the personal mother only a limited etiological significance. That is to say, all those influences which the literature describes as being exerted on the children do not come from the mother herself, but rather from the archetype projected upon her, which gives her a mythological background and invests her with authority and numinosity [emphasis mine].”

Having reduced women to nothing, Jung blames them for everything. The reader is subliminally led to accept the idea that mothers and not men (such as Jung) are the castrators of women. This renders invisible the fact of female castration by males. Thus, describing a daughter who has a "mother-complex," Jung writes:

“The daughter leads a shadow existence, often visibly sucked dry by her mother, and she prolongs her mother's life by a sort of continuous blood transfusion. . . . Despite their shadowiness and passivity, they [these daughters] command a high price on the marriage market. First, they are so empty that a man is free to impute to them anything he fancies. In addition, they these women are so unconscious that the unconscious puts out countless invisible feelers, veritable octopus tentacles, that suck up all masculine projections; and this pleases men enormously.”

Jung's reversals should be obvious to Hags. He frankly admits that the daughters' condition of being "sucked dry" is a male requirement for marriageability. Just as foot-binding was required by the men of China, so is mindbinding a universal demand of patriarchal males, who want their women to be empty so that they will be forced to suck male projections/ejections, becoming pre-occupied, pre-possessed. This deprivation of vitality is required by patriarchal males who "command [this] high price" which "pleases men enormously." On the level of body-gynecology we have seen what women are commanded to "suck up": The Poisonous Pill, carcinogenic exogenous estrogens, DES, et cetera, ad mortem.

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

#mary daly #medical misogyny #jungian psychology #motherhood #patriarchal reversal

[voidic3ntity]

diaphanous dichotomies of continuity, the duality of continuity,

the transitions of harmonic frequencies, traversing all which is;

grand malarkey, the meaningless utterance, from the mouth,

the most high, with bohemian ribboning of dazed unendings,

motion of notions, the notion of revolution, reality & fatality,

intimate partners to the dance of eternity, as all which is:

luminous & noetic, the depth of some poetic numinosity.

#poetry #spilled thoughts #dark academia #dark prose #trauma #drugs #depression #alchemy #mental illness #art #mental health #spirituality #sad #introspection #liturature #tw #me #voidic3ntity #life is strange #pain #stoned #poets on tumblr #darkness #original #poem #life #death #poetic #philosophy #morbid

[santoschristos]

"The black color, if you follow me, is light of pure Ipseity;

within this Darkness is the Water of Life."

Shams al-Din Lahiji's Commentary on

Shabestari's Rose Garden of the Mystery

"In her pure numinosity, Sophia is forbidding Because she is a guide who always leads [the gnostic] towards the beyond, preserving him from metaphysical idolatry, Sophia appears to him sometimes as compassionate and comforting, sometimes as severe and silent, because only Silence can 'speak', can indicate transcendences” --Henry Corbin Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi

imagination perceives that the symbol is identical with what it symbolizes, creation is the same as the Creator, the form is none other than the meaning, the body is the spirit, the locus of manifestation is nothing but God as manifest, and the image is the object. This perception is unmediated by any rational process - it is a tasting, an unveiling, a witnessing, an insight. It is best exemplified in human experience precisely by concrete experience - tasting food, being carried away by music, falling in love. Theologically, imagination, achieves an incontrovertible understanding that the creature is God

The mysteries of the universe do not lie primarily in the universal laws and principles, even though these are mysterious enough. What is most mysterious and miraculous about the universe is its concrete particularity, its every object and inhabitant, each of which is ultimately unfathomable

Silence in Heaven Art: Frederick Carter

[incarnelia]

an instance of daoist transgender sorcery

there's this old paper by isabelle robinet i reread like half a year ago which around the middle of p. 46 mentions an early medieval daoist text yuanshi wulao chishu yupian zhenwen tianshu jing which contains instructions for talismans which transform your gender. obviously that's pretty cool so here's my go at a translation. (i figured i might as well share it) i will admit i'm only a private student of classical chinese but the language is Relatively easy to follow and i'm reasonably confident in the majority of my translation (nonetheless i beg indulgence for any errors...). not to mention the ctext edition (this is the original with the talismans proper, this is the punctuated version that's the base for my translation) is extremely accessible . so here, i hope you enjoy maybe someone vaguely in my internet circle will get something out of this .

(something of a sequel to that citation on gender transformation as an ill omen in han times)

九天太素陽生符，元始付太上丈人，其文在赤書後劫，見日宮之陽。

The talisman of yang generation of the Great Simplicity in the Nine Heavens was handed down by the Primordial Commencement to the Old Man of the Most High; its text resided in the Red Writings. After an eon, it manifested the yang of the Sun Palace.

玄都紫微宮舊格，丹書白素，方五寸，清齋百日，入室思日精，含而吞之，與日同壽，天地俱存，思靈念真，形自能飛。存濁炁於口，符既出而死也。一名生真券，一名八威龍書。女吞此符後，生為男身。

According to the old rules of the Palace of Purple Tenuity in the Mysterious Capital, it is written in vermilion on white silk, five inches square. After pure fasting of a hundred days, enter the chamber and meditate on solar essence. Encompass and swallow it. One will share the same longevity with the sun, persisting together with Heaven and Earth — meditate on numinosity and think on perfection, and one's form will be able to fly of itself. If turbid qi is visualized in the mouth, then the talisman will leave and one will die. Another name is the certificate of generating perfection; another name is the dragon-writing of the Eight Majesties. After a woman swallows this talisman, they will generate a male body.

三天太玄陰生符，元始以付太上大道君，其文在赤書後二劫，見月之上館。

The talisman of yin generation of the Great Mystery in the Three Heavens was handed down by the Primordial Commencement to the Most High Great Lord of the Way; its text resided in the Red Writings. After two eons, it manifested the High Office of the Moon.

玄都紫微宮舊格，黑書黃繒，方五寸，清齋百日，入室思月精；含而吞之，與月同壽。道士欲尸解者，黑書木刀劍，抱而臥，即為代人形而死矣。行此宜精，他念穢濁于口，符即出，身即死。此符一名化形券，一名九陰靈書，男人吞此符後，化為女子。

According to the old rules of the Palace of Purple Tenuity in the Mysterious Capital, it is written in black on yellow silk, five inches square. After pure fasting for a hundred days, enter the chamber and meditate on lunar essence. Encompass and swallow it — one will share the same longevity with the moon. Daoists who desire liberation from the corpse should write it in black on a wooden sword, embrace it, and go to sleep; it will take on your human form and die. When practicing this proper essence, if one has other thoughts of filth or turbidity in the mouth, the talisman will leave, and the body will die. Another name for this talisman is the certificate of transforming forms; another name is the numinous writing of the Nine Yin. After men swallow this talisman, they will transform into women.

此二符，陰陽二氣，日月之精，自不精身苦志，慎輕服御，惟清齋合式，即能無窮。

With these two talismans—the Two Qi of yin and yang and the essences of the sun and moon—even if one does not refine one's own body or discipline the will, cautiously making light of clothing and deportment, and only engages in the ceremony of the pure fast, they will be able to be boundless.

#i know i presuppose a familiarity with the traditions of the shangqing and lingbao which i doubt many have... #cun aren't really Exactly inches but its good enough an analogy; same for “eon”/kalpa here #daoism #occultism #it goes without saying that there's a real and unpleasant degree of oppositional sexism baked into yin-yang theory #nonetheless i think the underlying potential/intention here is delightful #(another topic of interest in this vein is symbolic male pregnancy and female masculinization in the daoist internal alchemical tradition)

[venuskind]

☆ Becoming a Crone ☆

Much of what has been written on middle age and becoming a crone only partially resonates with me, if it does at all. I feel the relative truth of what I hear and read, my truth though related is different. From my vantage point my experience and truth feels more expansive, as it does not limit me to a form, gender narratives, nor ancestral myths. 

The states I am being initiated into are not as earthbound, or linked to ancestral traditions still known to us. They are ancient in that they have been present on this planet in times before - before the forgetting and atrocities of separation consciousness. The states I am being led to carry in them the frequencies of earth, our galactic origins, as well as the dark formless that preceded all form.

The much glorified and centered rewilding has been a part of my journey, a part that was given to my thirties and which played a part in my liberation. Looking from where I am now it becomes obvious that it was but a preparatory stage, not an end or climax of this path. My Soul calling me to walk further, to remember ancient knowing of *all* my lineages planetary, non-planetary, and all the way back to the source of all form - the numinosity of the void.

One piece of this becoming is the lesson of stripping off all human identities, identifications with personality, body, and mind, to immerse into and know the formless essence of being. In stripping off the aforementioned I find myself no longer beholden to them, seeing them as mere constructs, artificial to the boundless nature of being. Realizing how being human has been limited to repeating patterns and limited possibilities of expressing and being due to the great forgetting and the rule of stark unconsciousness. Our being knows that there is another way of being human and exploring this dimension, and this knowing is calling ever so loudly for embodiment. To do so we have to take off the heaviness of unconscious patterning, and distorted perceptions, only then will we be truly receptive to and have enough spaciousness to call in expanded possibilities to flow through our being and rework our collective field.

Another aspect of this becoming is to wholly embrace oneness. It sounds simple but experience shows how much our mind body system resists it. It will accept it here and there but in the next moment it will hold on to separation consciousness in order to differentiate itself from 'others', which it holds in some form of judgement or dislike. So deeply ingrained are these conditioned distortions that we find ourselves once again split within, some part vibrating with the frequency of oneness and others clinging to separation consciousness. 

And I am learning that a nervous system which has been dysregulated by complex trauma is slow in releasing the fears and automated responses it has created for survival and open to the deeper meanings and ramifications of oneness. This is where deep compassion and skillfulness are needed to help integrate and heal with the guidance and grace of Self energy. It is a very slow process and yet it is a crucial part of this journey, it is the most important key to unlocking our full potential, expanded knowing, and full alignment with consciousness/life.

While working on the previous a third aspect is being learned and gently entrained in our body: 

To drink of the poison cup without sickening or dying. 

What I mean by it is the capacity to be present with the most harrowing aspects of human doing, with the oppressions, injustices, and violence our plant, animal, and human kin are suffering without resorting to denial, repression, numbing, or acting out. To be a vessel large enough to feel and hold it with compassion and perceive with eyes of consciousness, witnessing it fully and honoring the experiences observed, and act where it is in our power with love and care to alleviate and balance what we can. To feel and know the suffering of all - victim, perpetrator, bystanders, and saviors alike - knowing the underlying distortions and conditioning that keep recreating these experiences across millennia. 

Being, seeing, feeling, reflecting at the same time, side-stepping explanations and resolutions of the conditioned mind, and  opening to the mystery while leaning into not-knowing with trust. Letting the love at the core of our being call to the mystery to reveal knowing, a path to change or healing, and support us in holding it in a way that doesn't poison us to be a(n unwitting) part of it. 

This is what embodying a different frequency and holding it in a dissonant field is to me. 

... continued on the blog.

Art: 'ATMA - The Guide of Souls' by Autumn Skye

Source: https://venuskind.de/2023/11/crone/

#crone #wise woman #elder #elderhood #maturity #old age #mystic path #becoming

[9thbutterfly]

Tiny book reviews

(turns out it has been two months since I last did this. Though my reading speed has slowed down dramatically since I started working again...)

The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon (reread)

Now, see, I already don't know how to review this one except by flailing and shrieking because I love it, I want to be reading it all the time, and I'm too tired to articulate why I love it

(and I have given up hope that I will ever again hit that elusive combination of "well rested enough for intelligent words", "alone, without a toddler climbing all over me" and "remembering that this is a thing I want to do")

Essbare Landschaft [Edible Landscape] by Sabine Eilmsteiner

One of our dance group buddies wrote a book on foraging, and while it was interesting, I'm still feeling too burned out to even do anything with the nettles in my garden, let alone actually going foraging.

Which I realise is not a review of the book so much as of my relationship to the book...

The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch (reread)

Meh. I kept thinking of hearing him say something about the numinosity of fantasy books at a convention, and having to look up the word, and thinking, yes, that is one of the reasons why I prefer fantasy.

And it is precisely the thing that I feel is missing from this book. It just feels grubby and grimy and yet bland. And I didn't care for the characters and I wish I hadn't bought the other two books way back when my friends were raving about it.

Die heilende Kraft des Waldes [The Healing Power of the Forest] by Sabine Eilmsteiner

Same thing as with her other book. Interesting but unlikely to be used.

The Dragon Republic, by R.F. Kuang

Interesting but depressing. I will read the third book for closure, but I'm unlikely to enjoy it.

Gewürze aus eigenem Garten [Spices From Your Own Garden] by Manfred Neuhold

There were a few small interesting bits, but mostly it repeats a lot of things I already know, and it also feels very old. Not old old, but "climate change and invasive slugs weren't much of a thing" old (iirc it's from the nineties)

Also, they're herbs, not spices.

The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince, by Robin Hobb

A Local Habitation, by Seanan McGuire

Didn't exactly captivate me, and elements of it felt a bit repetitive of things in the other Six Duchies books, but ah, it is a comfortable world, and I was sad to have to leave it so soon.

A Day of Fallen Night, by Samantha Shannon

Again, please picture flailing and shrieking.

Maybe one day I will have whittled down the tbr pile enough to reread this (and Priory) and give them a proper review. But not today.

A Local Habitation, by Seanan McGuire

Took me a while to get into, and a long time to read because of work and toddler and garden and stuff and things, and it has been long enough that I can't remember much of the first part, but I enjoyed it and want to read more.

#9thbutterfly life #books are magic

[robertschuetze]

Buchsicherungssituation [2/3]

Buchsicherungstore sind keine Versorgungsschächte. Aber sie sind entscheidend. Beiden ist zwar gemeinsam, dass sie den Verkehr von Menschen und Gütern regeln: In den Versorgungsschächten fahren Menschen rauf und runter, durch die Buchsicherungstore strömen Menschen ins Gebäude hinein und wieder heraus, ab und zu auch Bücher. Doch die Versorgungsschächte sind – anders als die Buchsicherungstore – der Schauplatz numinoser Verwandlungen. Sie führen in die Vertikale – näher zu Gott, näher zur Hölle. Deshalb sind die Versorgungsschächte der Ruhr-Uni dekoriert wie die Bundeslade. Niederländische Bildhauer, in ihren Gründungstagen von der Universität beauftragt, ummantelten die Schächte mit Betonreliefs. Die Buchsicherungstore wirken dagegen maximal kunstlos, außerdem minimalinvasiv: Sie steuern den Verkehr der Bücher, berühren den Verkehr der Menschen aber nicht. Die Menschen wissen, dass von den Buchsicherungstoren nichts zu befürchten ist. Jedenfalls solange sie sich nicht unterstehen, ein gesichertes Buch hinauszutragen. Die Existenz der Buchsicherungstore ist im Allgemeinen schwach, sie ist hintergründig. Bibliotheksnutzer haben diese Existenz internalisiert. Da ist nur dieses kleine Zucken im Kopf, die vorauseilende Scham, die über die Gesichter der Buchausleiher huscht, wenn sie die Buchsicherungstore passieren, in der Befürchtung vom Radiofrequenzscanner dieses eine Mal betrogen worden zu sein. Man könnte glauben, an den Buchsicherungstoren werde die Unterscheidung zwischen der Freude, gerade noch mit einem Verbrechen davongekommen zu sein, und der Freude, gar kein Verbrechen begangen zu haben, hinfällig. Insofern entscheidet sich alles an den Buchsicherungstoren.

Fotos: [1] Versorgungsschacht an Gebäude NB (Betonrelief von Adriaan Dekkers), Ruhr-Universität Bochum · März 2024 [2] Campusmitte, Ruhr-Universität Bochum · März 2024 [3] Gebäude ND, Nordseite, Ruhr-Universität Bochum · März 2024 [4] Versorgungsschacht an Gebäude NB (Betonrelief von Adriaan Dekkers), Ruhr-Universität Bochum · März 2024

#ruhr-universität #bochum #campus #bibliothek #bwphotography #new topographics #brutalism #architecture

[sognoillustre]

Filosofia di sognoillustre

Vi fu, v’è e vi sarà un’epoca in cui la filosofia, intrisa di senso romantico, è vissuta quale modo di stare al mondo. Essa rivela agli spiriti sensibili di tutti i tempi la responsabilità di mettere in pratica, al ritmo di meditazione e ricerca, yoga e lavoro energetico, oracoli, archetipi del profondo e tecniche di cura, un invincibile amore per l’umanità.

Quella di cui parliamo è un’epoca metafisica, in cui si vive e si conversa con lentezza, permettendo all’estro creativo di tendersi misticamente fra lingua e linguaggio, dando nomi magici a momenti sacri dell’esistenza e a esperienze numinose.

Come Zlastro ad esempio, che indica: l'istante prima di addormentarsi e l'istante appena ci si sveglia. Oppure sognoillustre: concetto unico che si riferisce alla qualità di un sogno quando attraversa i tempi e li guida, nello stile delle comete, puntando dritto al desiderio migliore di ogni vita con lo scopo di realizzarlo.

La filosofia di sognoillustre opera per la viralità dei sognillustri di tutti i tempi. La sua è una tradizione antica e nuova come l’umanità. E la sua epoca, dopo aver a lungo velato il suo splendore nell’ombra e attraverso fenici metamorfosi, sta finalmente tornando a diffondersi in sementi di stelle.

[levindesdieux]

The time we spend in the basement is time we miss in the attic; the glimmer that some believe they can find deep in the darkness always saturates the place of numinosity.

Ph. Ralph Eugene Meatyard, untitled, 1957

[brownskinsugarplum76]

To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one’s own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one’s own way. It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what we know. It means to stand and live.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves