Apech

@beyonder ... thanks for that. Just going back to that 10,000 BC origin for smallpox which I see is quoted in Wikipedia and cited to an academic paper which would cost me 29.95 $ to buy (so I'm not going to) I suspect this is a bit speculative ... or possibly based on genetic history - probability of mutations and so on ... I find the Ram 5 as the first physical evidence more believable (also quoted in Wiki). It's well known that viruses mutate and become pathogenic over time ... some are originally animal diseases or perhaps mild infections which can break out into acute conditions due to unknown causes. So the idea of a stable and static disease organism existing over long periods of history is probably a poor model for understanding these things. The point being perhaps that it takes urban population concentrations to give the conditions for acute infectious diseases to flourish. On a deeper level the very process of 'civilization' which I have heard called 'syphilization' (this may be a homeopathic quote I'm not sure) but along with urban living comes the licensing of sex and so on. In some of the first cities they used to bury their ancestors under the floors of their houses which is a good illustration of living on a layer of unresolved psycho-spiritual stress = what we call now the subconscious (the dark dungeon of unconfronted fears and horrors). Compare this with the shamanic space of active dialogue with the ancestors and you can get some idea of why we are now so psychologically disturbed. Try asking friends and relatives how many people they know who are on anti-depressants and so on. Seems like nearly everyone.

Same to you ... and everyone Hope it's a good one.

The traditional view of history as distinct to modern one is of a long slow decline. And the so called steps of progress are either attempts to slow/halt that decline or simply products of human desire to try things out. Many of the things we see as progress are, as far as I can see, actually responses to decline. For instance the invention of writing is a response to the loss of oral tradition knowledge. I don’t think the development of agriculture was a one step process. We have hunter gatherers … who may have taken some steps to encourage or preserve the growth of seasonal crops, pastoralists who cultivated animals such as cattle and sheep and also may have started to cultivate some grasses to feed to cattle, then some kind of symbiosis between early agriculture and pastoralists … where the cattle graze on stubble and refertilize the earth through defecation. So there would be people living different life styles but in a kind of harmony. I think as soon as urban concentrations emerge and people start to defend their territory this all breaks down and this might be the beginning of real problems. Some of these early experiments just died out e.g. Indus Valley Culture while others persisted e.g. Mesopotamia and Egypt giving birth to what we now call civilisation. We are in part products of our age and have to deal with what we have. For some returning to the wilderness might work … if you can find a place where human terraforming hasn’t already occurred (very rare) but other wise maybe we should think about new alternative ways of living which make the best of our technology and so on … since we have now got it and for the most part lost our ancient connection with nature.

Just picking up from a PM conversation I'm having with Nungali. I studied the Pyramid Texts for a long time and reached some conclusions about this. The Duat is the inner space of dreams, after death and shamanic journeys etc. Usually translated as Underworld or Netherworld but the word actually means something like 'star realm'. Dua can mean star or door or 'giving praise'. And the 't' ending signifies a place or similar as well as being a feminine ending. So Dua-t. Early peoples found that there were natural geological sites that produced shifts in consciousness. Sacred sites. Could be caves, or rivers, or rocks, hills or even the landscape generally. After some time they began to 'enhance' these sites by deliberately placing stones, sometimes carved, sometimes natural at key points. For instance an recent BBC docu on Stonehenge showed that although the main henge is more less contemporary with the Great Pyramid (2500 BC) the wider site was used back into the mesolithic because of specific natural features. the same is true of the older Egyptian sites so there is no doubt that the Great Pyramid itself or at least the site its on goes back well towards to end of the last ice age maybe 10 or 12,000 BC. The site in Turkey/Armenia Gobekli Tepe demonstrates stone working skill existed form these early times. So the initial purpose of the pyramids was to focus and make use of naturally occurring energy features of the earth to enable certain practices. We don't have anything written down by the Egyptians till 2350BC the date of the Pyramid of Unas (Wenis) at the end of the 5th Dynasty. His was a small pyramid because Egypt was in decline having lost the economic power of the Old Kingdom through progressive poor harvests arising probably from climate change. After the 6th Dynasty it fell in the First Intermediate period of complete social collapse. But the Pyramid texts show us that the pyramid was used for a process which involved the constituent parts of a person, the body, the ka, the ba and the shade. This was a process if transformation, purification, revivification and reintegration to form an entity called the 'akh' which was seen as a luminous 'effective' spirit. 'Effective' because it was capable of action. The texts were placed on the various walls of the different chambers of the Pyramid and the whole structure forms a kind of 3D map of the Duat. By moving through the different chambers and performing magical acts the 'akh' was formed. Not just after death but in life also. Although Egypt subsequently fell into decline, the practices were preserved. Middle Kingdom tombs have copies of the pyramid Texts and some Coffins of the Middle Kingdom have maps of the Book of the Two Ways' which also map out the Duat. In the New Kingdom this idea was continued int he form the Amduat which charts the sun gods journey through the Duat.

The opposite pole in the pyramid arrangement is the 'niched' chamber which holds the gold statue (or sometimes three gold statues). As 'opposite' to the physical body this is the perfected form of being ... the self-as-a-god. In the Great Pyramid this is the so called Queens Chamber, in King Unas' pyramid it is the three niched chamber. This where you become pure ba-spirit. 'Ba' as well as meaning something like 'soul' also means a power or god. It was sometimes used as an alternative for the usual word for gods 'neterw'. Here you are a being of pure light and because the ba can appear in any form it choses ... a being of pure imaginative power ... where imagination means literally the power to create images. To get to this space the 'ba' of the person, that is the individual soul must be released from the body so it can fly across to the eastern sky to greet it's own pure form imaged as the rising sun. The rising sun is the origin of everything that is. Each morning is seen as a recapitulation of the original creation. So the vision of the rising sun is the vision of our own origin, we and the power that brought us into being become one. But before we can do this we have to prepare the ka and also dissolve the body back into void power (nun) in order to be able to release the ba.

Archeologists of future times will dig it up and stand in wonder, turn to each other and say "what the f%ck is that!".

I think you always find a load of problems when you move somewhere new. After you deal with them you start to remember why you bought the place and it all becomes a lot happier. Where I am now took a lot of getting used to. I'm ok now but I used to have to escape every month or so just to get my sanity back. So just give it time I say.

I don't know what exo-psychology is. I can guess but I don't know. Of course one thing that sprang to mind is that its possible to talk glibly about the body without ever being clear about what the body is. I know this sounds obscure and I don't mean to be. Its just that I spent a long time immersing myself in Egyptian thought and they had a different way of looking at things. Its possible to see the body as an object. As in oh look there's my foot and so on. But also to feel inside the body to experience it as a field of substantiated energy ... a sort of basic presence if you like. these are both body but viewed in different ways. One looking at it, another looking into it. If we could see our own autopsy then say oh look there's my liver in that bowl ... (ewwwww) or we can experience our liver functioning ... 'livering' and whatever that is in terms of energy. The Egyptians didn't really abstract things ... they didn't see a statue of a god as being different to the god for instance. So the body looked 'at' is an image of divine power, not different to divine power, the world being composed of neterw (divine powers) .... this was summed up in one long text referred to by the Egyptologists as the Cannibal Hymn (because the king hunts and eats the gods) where it says .... the king (and by extension all of us) is a power and a power among powers, the king is an image, the most sacred image of the great one. So you are energy and an image of energy. Gods have statues and people have bodies. Its much the same.

A good friend of mine died and was laid out for all to see. It was the first dead body I ever saw ... this was in the late80's. I felt it was kind of a gift from him to me to see his body. I thanked him for it. I always find death and funerals give me some kind of 'message' ... some thoughts which help me in some way. Often very sad of course. If the relatives are very upset then its difficult and moving of course and sometimes you feel its a bit vicarious to see such a thing ... but in the end I think its important. In the midst of life we are in death (or is it the other way round) ... anyway it's always been for humans an important thing.

You need to adjust. Dig some drainage trenches in the spring or whatever ... you'll get to love it soon. Chin up matey.

No presents anywhere? I knew Christmas was over.

See above. I'll try to briefly go through the nine steps: 1. orientate yourself with respect to the body, gather the parts of body and integrate. OK so this has some detailed parts. first the body 'khat' is often referred to in the plural .. khaw ... which means something like 'body parts' or members or organs perhaps. Just as the person is seen as the interaction of a number of entities (ka, ba and so on) the body is a kind of community of different parts working together and under the protection of different deities. You create a kind of microcosmic mandala with your body. First is the correct orientation with respect to the outer world (the big cosmos). The standard orientation is standing facing south so your right hand is to the west and left to the east. In Egyptian the word for west and right hand are the same and so on. To make it more accurate you incline the body backwards ... by resting on a mound of sand ... so the top of your head is towards astronomical north. You can imagine this rather than actually doing it. If you position yourself like this and gaze ahead at the horizon you are looking down your nose (like standard meditation gaze) this is the lower way or gateway into the duat. If you gaze directly ahead you will be looking into the sky at the bright constellations of the south sky i.e along the plane of the ecliptic which is the upper or luminous attention point. When in the sarcophagus the posture is changed, still head in the north and feet in the south but turned on your side to face the east. This is why eyes were painted on the left side of coffins for gazing east towards the sun rise. Now you have to look internally to your body. Imagine it not as one thing but a community of parts or organs. the most important is the heart. This is the seat of your mind. Imagine it as a throne and you are the king/queen (same for men or women). The heart is connected to the rest of your body by channels. These channels are mentioned in Egyptian medical papyrii as being 22 in number and connecting the heart to the head and to the anus ... but basically all parts of the body. As ruler your body is your kingdom. You have to join it up and unite it. This is done by circulating energy. This has two phases ... upward, light, expansive, warm = Isis, and down, dark, cool, refreshing = Nephthys. In order to do this you have in addition to the heart four other organ centres which act as mini-pumps which direct the energy (called sechem) at different phases. these are the liver, the stomach, the lungs and the intestines. They are identified with deities called the Four Sons of Horus. This circulation has the following effects. Energising the body, flushing out toxins, joining the head and the body (specifically heart), coordinating the whole body. Joining the head to the body probably requires some explanation. The head is specifically related to zones of awareness e.g. the five senses. This is not really the physical head but what is called the 'head of mystery' or 'sacred head' ... so called because it was not really physical. the Egyptians would sometimes have a symbolic head to represent this ... e.g. Tutankhamun's gold mask .... is not a mask but a 'head'. What they were saying here is that you need to engage attention when you circulate energy. You have to be able to see the phases of its circulation. All living beings circulate energy but are unaware that they do ... in this process you have to join awareness to the energy. So that's really the first step .... to align yourself correctly to the outer cosmos and then circulate energy. Not particularly advanced or complicated but essential as the first step.

I would recommend looking round this site http://www.pyramidtextsonline.com/ or this book http://www.amazon.com/Shamanic-Wisdom-Pyramid-Texts-Tradition/dp/0892817550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419681169&sr=8-1&keywords=naydler+pyramid+texts the best translation is by James P. Allen and also R.O. Faulkner (but these are expensive and Egyptological i.e. not much in the way of interpretation).

A traditional Christmas greetings from me ...

inconceivably interpenetratingly telepathically.

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December Solstice 21 Dec 23:03 for me ... that's in about 45 mins.

We call them comets, Where someone sent a tin can, to land upon it.

and undo the spell. Just by walking widdershins around the circle.

Go on, don't be shy.

Karma means 'action' ... so what you refer to as karma is just the result of action. Everything you do has some effect. Its a rule of thumb to do good things to get good results ... but the result only arises when the conditions are right for it to do so ... so the result is not usually immediate.

4300 years of separation says no.

You need a gang leader with a whistle called 'Toot-I'm-Coming' ... and his wife who hardly ever shows up called Rare-missus. (you know sometimes I laugh so hard at my own jokes ... shame nobody else does )

Do you have a few thousand men in skirts and little beards walking around in bas relief to help you?