Eques Peregrinus

How was it done in the west, before the "enlightenment"? (I suspect this is related to the recitation of the Penitential Psalms, although this is just a guess.)

At the contrary for hair on the chest and legs.

It is possible to cast an oracle with coins, but, traditionally, it was done with yarrow stalks and this technique is still practiced today, despite the longer time it needs to cast the lot. Therefore, I am wondering about the importance of the virtue of the yarrow in Yijing. Is the accuracy of the oracle effectively increased by the mediation of this plant? Which lead to an other question. Today, in Europe and probably also in North America, by yarrow we means generally the plant called Achillea millefolium, but was it really this plant which was intended? Could it also have been Achillea alpina which is commonly called Chinese yarrow?

I suppose you are specifically interested in modern physics, am I right? (Due to Pauli's portrait as avatar.) Pseudo-skeptics are really doing the exact opposite of skepticism, which consists in indulging doubts to their own dogmas to avoid falling into them. While those just doubt anything which contradict their own dogmas.

One of our federal councillor made a speech about health and laughter this year.

Is it normal that the links points toward articles about ISIS decapitating women and about men dressing as dolls?

Have anyone of heard about Gapminder? https://www.gapminder.org/ Building a world view based on facts is precisely its creator's aim.

Scones For 4 people Ingredients: 225 g of flour 2 t.s. of backing powder 40 g of butter 2 t.s. of sugar 175 ml of milk a pinch of salt Mix together the flour, the sugar, the salt and the baking powder. Incorporate the butter to obtain an homogeneous sand. Incorporate the milk by small portions to obtain a squishy dough. Roll the dough between 2 parchment papers to a thickness of about 1 cm. Cut rounds with a glass or a round mold (the trick here is to make the rounds just by pressing the mold down and taking it up without turning it, that way the scone will grow well during the backing.) Bake into the oven at 220 °C for about 15 minutes. The scones should remain pale. Eat with butter, cream, marmalade, etc... Ideally at tea time.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Do not forget there is a clear difference between modern and classic philosophy. And this is not a small difference, this is a rift, they are far more apart than many philosophers might want to admit. If we look into the classics, like Pythagoras, Plato or Aristotle, we have a cosmological view, a discourse on the organisation of the world (which includes the soul), and mystical practices which are sometimes outlined or hinted. If we look into the moderns (I suppose you were speaking about them), they are generally over intellectualising, sometime sending venom to other philosophers with which they disagree (Voltaire), or use overcomplicated sentences to show their intellect (Kant). As for psychologists, there are interesting theories, although I prefer the various classical discourse about the soul. Also: psychologist != psychiatrist

Great discussion! About the title page, I would add these two elements which indicate also a spiritual evolution. There are 10 stars in the sky, all of them are above the rose tree branches. There is a cloud at the top right of the picture, the Moon is visible inside it. This is the last crescent before the new Moon. I suppose the author put that cloud there to separate the sky in which are the stars and the sky in which is th moon, the same way the rose tree branches separate the sky that is below them and the sky which is above. There are 10 Sephiroth, but 10 can also be interpreted as a return to unity (because 10 points form the tetractys). That and the ladder reaching it push me to interpret the sky in which are the stars as the intellectual world, that is beyond the celestial and natural world (at least if we follow Agrippa's model). The sky with the Moon, is separated by a cloud, it should be interpreted in an other manner. I interpret it as a temporal indication. That scene is happening just before the Sabbath. Today the Sabbath take place every Saturday, but originally it took place at the 7, 14, 21 and 28th day of the Moon cycle, that is at the new Moon, at the first quarter, at the full Moon and at the last quarter. The beginning of the Shabbath holds the most important Christian Mystery. Which is also directly relates to this ladder. Now about the second engraving: There is a neat separation between the top and the bottom of the picture, but there is a sealed vessel or a water drop in the center of both sub-figures. As FratherUFA said "As above so below". On the flask above, three characters, a small man crowned by the Sun at the left, a small woman crowned by the Moon at the right, separating them, a man with a trident is sitting on a pile of rocks with what appears to be skulls at his feet. The right foot of the left angel seems to cross the border between the top and bottom part of the picture. The strange furnace seems like a tower, I do not know if this is important. Some curtains are placed on the back of the room which has also no windows (contrary to the following depictions of the room where there appears windows either square or rounded). The two characters at the bottom, male and female seems to be praying. This interpretation is more difficult, I admit I am lacking in practical alchemy. The characters crowned by the Moon and by the Sun are separated, that symbolism reminds me about the Devil card. While the curtains reminds me about Pythagoras teaching its new students behind a curtain. This is a metaphor, Pythagoras was teaching them mysteries, which could not be clearly understood by reason alone. Only when the students gained wisdom, they could understood him clearly, at that time they crossed the curtain. That concept is similar to Plato's cave, or the idea of hell in the renaissance. And we are back to the Devil card.

There was a SQL error message yesterday. I took the opportunity to listen to the requests made with the browser and what the server was answering. This is the server's response. HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable Server: nginx Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:35:35 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 3049 Connection: keep-alive X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.17 Cache-Control: max-age=864000 Expires: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 12:35:35 GMT <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> ... We observe the server tells the browser to put the page in cache for 10 days (86400 seconds). For that time, the browser will consider the error page up-to-date, even if the server is working correctly. This is why it is necessary to either to clear the browser cache or to bypass it while reloading the page. (An alternative would be waiting 10 days.)

No, that was a rather vague project made by an group of idealist people which managed to get enough votes to launch an initiative. The initiative was evaluated by the National Council, the State Council and the Federal Council. At an almost unanimity, they all advised the people to reject the initiative. Mostly due to the costs it will imply and the impossibility to live decently with 2500 CHF (about 2600 US $) per month in Switzerland. Then the people had to vote and decided to reject the initiative. It is rather difficult to see how this is related to the EU. Except if the people in the group that launched the initiative were in favour of an adhesion. Although, I doubt much the EU to be this popular at the moment.

This is unlikely, this cached data is only meant to be temporarly stored. The worst outcome would be some frequently visited websites to appear slower than normal.

Aside from the SQL errors, there are also caching problems with the page used to display the error. The browser do not even bother to make a request to the server, but just take the page in its cache. If correctly implemented, this mechanism avoid unnecessary traffic for the server and reduce the delay to display a page for the client. A consequence is that if one time a page is not displayable due to an SQL error, later, even when the server is completely available and the page could be rendered without problems, the browser will fetch the error page in its cache and display it. It is possible to observe if there is a cache problem either by observing the tame taken to display the page by the browser or by sniffing the packets in our private network (only allowed if you own the network). A work around is either clearing the browser cache (radical solution), or by requesting the browser to reload the page without checking its cache (CTRL + F5 for most browsers).

Let's try this one. The title page of the Mutus Liber. This whole book is constituted by engravings, with almost no text. Therefore, the only way to understand it is by meditating over them. The full title is: Mutus Liber, in quo tamen tota Philosophia hermetica, figuris hieroglyphicis depingitur, ter optimo maximo Deo misericordi consecratus, solis que filiis artis dedicatus, authore cujus nomen est Altus. Which can be translated to: The Mute Book in which are still all hermetic philosophy, portrayed in hieroglyphic images, consecrated to the trice most great merciful God, dedicated only to the sons of the art, its author's name is Altus. Source of the picture: http://www.e-rara.ch/cgj/content/titleinfo/1350330

Let's separate this image in a background and a foreground, it seems appropriate. On the background: The background itself can be divided in the sky and the earth. In the sky, there is a point from which multiple rays seems to emerge, to pass though a rainbow, and eventually reach the foreground. The earth part of the background is mostly a spread of water, with a coast constituted by savage nature, but also cities. The nearest city in the background can only be viewed though the ladder. An other element of the background (but far nearer than the other elements) is the bat (or a kind of winged rat) spreading its wings to display a name: "MELENCOLIA § I". On the foreground: In this scene we have 3 characters: The most noticeable is a large angel holding a compass in its right hand reposed on a book and holding its* face with its left hand. Its face is in the shadows, light comes from behind it and the angel is looking slightly at its right (the truncated cube). At its belt, 6 keys are hanging, and a purse which is posed on the floor. It is also crowned by a wreath. The second is a small angel its attention is on a tablet on which it is writing. It is sitting on a carpet placed on a grinding wheel. The last character is a sleeping dog, next to the large angel and in front of the small one. There are two volumes, a cube truncated on 2 of its corners and a sphere. There are also multiple tools on the floor: 4 nails, a saw, a plane, a ruler, pincers (partially hidden by the angel's robe), an hammer (behind the dog), a kind of weight (behind the sphere) and one I do not recognise (in front of the sphere, next to the plane). Behind the truncated cube, there also are pincers and a crucible in use. On the building wall, are the famous magic square (by the way the date of the engraving is also hidden in it), a scale, an hourglass, a sundial and a bell. The rope used to ring the bell goes outside the picture. Next to where the angel sits, the date (1514 AD) is engraved A ladder with 6 steps is placed against the building. Now, let's try to interpret it. But before reading this, I urge you to meditate on your own on this image and to reach your own conclusions, to avoid tainting your understanding with my speculations. * Change the pronoun accordingly to the sex of the angel.

After a bit of searching, I found that these illustrations come from the Splendor Solis. (You can find a scan of this manuscript there: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=7881). It is possible to discuss about them, but because these images represent each a stage of an alchemical process, it will be more difficult to analyse them than the first, especially whithout practical experience in alchemy (which is expensive). Alchemists modelised the alchemical reaction in different manner. For exemple some might have used the scale of 4 and separated the reaction in 4 stages: nigredo, albedo, citrinas and rubedo, while others are working on the scale of 7 or 12. In the case of the Splendor Solis, the scale of 7 is used. But the nigredo, albedo and rubedo are still used and are represented by the 3 birds (black, white and red) in the flask of the first picture. In this case, we are also are speaking of gases because birds are related to air. In the last picture (or the next one in the book), they united to form a 3-headed crowned bird.

I found an other engraving of the same scene. We can observe that the guy within the dragon biting its tail is sitting on a pile of round things (likely gold coins), and presents a necklace. Also note his feet are naked, while the man at the right has shoes. The angel seems to be holding a rope in its left hand. Also the dragon is forming a circle, at the same time the region of fantasies is also forming a circle around the region illuminated by the light of nature. In both engravings there are 5 grapes at the top of the mountain and 32 stars in the sky, among them, 3 are shining more than the others. There are also 12 demons in the region of fantasies and the dragon biting its tail looks wicked. Now an interpretation: The image is composed of 3 layers. The first with the man on the pile of gold and the dragon biting its tail. The second with the blinded man, an angel and a region of fantasies. And the third, containing the heavens, the sun and the moon, with the mount of invisible magicians. Concerning the first layer: I disagree that the guy within the circle formed by the dragon biting its own tail is an alchemist, more likely it is someone who contents himself with common gold (because he is sitting on a pile of gold, and hold a necklace), and is not a true alchemist (because his feet are naked he can not walk on the path of alchemy, as does the adept at the right side). That guy is also encircled (imprisoned) by the wicked dragon, I agree with the interpretation that the dragon represent the adversary of the alchemist, literally satan. This is also why when a dragon appears in an epic quest, it is generally slain in a manner or an other. I would place there people unconcerned by wisdom. On the second layer: We have a dark region formed by fantasies, and a region lightened by the light of nature. An angel with a flamberg and a rope look upon a blinded man wandering. That man wears different cloth than the one encircled by the serpent, it is not the same person. That person seeks within the darkness, while remaining within the reach of the light of nature, therefore he is not completely lost, and he is neither really in danger, because an angel watch upon him. I would place there people following the wisdom of nature*. On the third layer: We have a mountain with 5 grapes at its top, which is an evident Christian symbol. Something very surprising about this layer is that there is only 32 stars, I recounted them many times, because I was expecting to count 33 of them for the 33 years of the Christ. I would place there people following the wisdom of Christ*. * According to Paracelsus (who influenced Vaughn), there are the wisdom of nature which can be studied by observing nature, and the wisdom of Christ. Among the followers of the wisdom of nature are the alchemist and astrologers, but also pagans, while prophets are following the wisdom of Christ. The wisdom of nature shows a partial view of the world, while the wisdom of Christ shows the whole Truth.

I would like to know which considerations should be taken to choose a meditation technique or a cultivation practice among the various ones that exists. Things like their requirements or in what they consists in very general terms. Or if they would require the presence of a teacher, or, at least, his/her/its instructions. Or if they can likely cause problem to the health, physically or psychically, even if they are not too badly practiced. Or if they are in part oath-bound. Etc... Also, Daoism is not an unified movement (neither is Buddhism, neither is Hinduism, neither is Christianity, etc... for what is matters), but are there some practices or rituals which are more prevalent among schools?

In the case of horary astrology*. It would made sense that the question's seed first birth within the Divine's mind, then that the question itself is formed by "intellectualising" this seed. (That is by the question "passing through these layers", and losing its subtelty, hence the difference I made between the question's seed and the question itself). What bother me at this point is when a querent comes to the astrologer for enquiring about a subject, with questions which may have already been formulated hours or days before the consultation. What is your opinion on this matter? * For non-astrologers, that is the astrology used as a divination similar to Tarot or I-Ching rather than for doing an analysis of the querent's birth chart. A querent asks a question, like "Will I get the job?", the astrologer answer to it based on the sky chart at the time when the question is asked, if you prefer, by doing the analysis of the birth chart of the question. PS: I'm getting off-topic here, am I right?

I am somehow surprised shamanism or astral travelling not appearing in this list. Especially when they are accompanied by entheogens consumption.

That women are unfit for spirituality or education is also a rather Victorian idea. It started with the so called "enlightenment" age. Before that time, women were perfectly allowed to take courses at university and there were mystics among them, like Teresa of Ávila or Yeshe Tsogyal. On the idea of the divine union, the idea was also present in the west, but the mystics who openly proclaimed it were prosecuted by the Inquisition. You can look up the free spirit movement, this is a fitting example. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heresy_of_the_Free_Spirit) Or there is Eckhart:

Neither do I.

The stars twine a musical score in sympathy with the cosmic harmony. The chorists choose how to chant it to take part in this universal symphony.