Apech

Just my point of view ... whatever you were going to say ... we are probably not in agreement I suspect

That's why they called themselves pre-Raphaelites to link to the renaissance ... Coleridge and Keats are my heroes also ... if you ever go the Rome visit the Spanish Steps and house where Keats died ...

Its a clever idea if you live in a sunny country ... but a Nobel Prize for sticking a bottle of water in the ceiling ...?

Just checked there's no Mac version ... I use Chrome but I don't really want to be a Googleslave.

It would never work in Manchester ...

yeti wanders home through that abominable snow he don't ever rest.

Does Waterfox have the memory leak problem ... I used to use Firefox but it made my Macbook over heat ...

looking for breakfast... just take one egg at a time no need to scramble.

OK but I don't think that destroys the basic premise ....

Expressed like that I don't think you can fit these two together. But I would question your definition of Taoism ...transcending the flesh doesn't sound very Taoist to me ... where did you get this from?

As Steward I feel I need to report a slight mishap in the Hermetic forum. A new member wandered into our regular Sabbat coven circle by chance and it seems that the Frogulus frogularum incantation (which we use as a regular protection) may have inadvertently transformed him into a toad. Unfortunately and perhaps a little carelessly I neglected to learn the reversing spell for this one … so it is probably permanent. I have written to his family offering apologies under the title 'Oooops' and received a very warm and understanding email back from his mother. She says that until I wrote to her she had not even noticed the change in her son as he spent nearly all his time in his bedroom glued to his keyboard surfing on nsfw and so on. But now I have drawn her attention to this change, she has observed while previously he was pale and spotty … now his complexion, a healthy green, is a distinct improvement even though he is a little warty. He is now more outgoing and a big hit with the girls from school who like to pet and cuddle him which he seems to enjoy. He has even joined the local congregation although an attempted exorcism/laying on of hands backfired when after a lot of prayer and shouting to Jesus he simply croaked 'Alleluyah! I was blind and now I can hop! I was dead and now I am spawn again'. I wonder if we should post some kind of warning on the main page but of course make it clear that TBs is an amphibian friendly board catering to a wide range of species and not just mammalians. However amulets of protection must be worn when entering the darker regions of the sub-fora.

The Belgians are multi-lingual French, German and Dutch (sometimes called Flemish) (and a few minority languages like Walloon (yes really)) ... they are heavily involved int he European Union and it was to preserve their neutrality that we fought WWI. They make nice chocolate ... but it is impossible to name a famous Belgian (apart from Plastic Bertrand) ... in fact it was in order to save the world from anonymity that the British invaded nearly everywhere to open the world up for creativity e.g. The Spice Girls and Simon Cowell( Pop Idol/X Factor) ...

Delusionalism is a way of life ... how could I possibly ignore you? My life would be empty.

I feel that reduces the Tao to something meaningless ... perhaps I have misunderstood.

I wouldn't go that far ..... well if pushed perhaps .... in fact ... come to think of it .... delusional doesn't really cover it.

Sma = union ... the north and the south bound together ... represented by two version of Hapy God of Nile ... central symbol looks like spine and sacrum but it usually translated as lungs and trachea.

Yep ... agreed ... we need to reclaim Calais at the earliest opportunity.

OK

Why?

You make a lot of good points I was only pulling your leg. I used to a real wishy washy liberal but as I get older the more grumpy I get

Hermetic Sub-Forum HEALTH and SAFETY warning It has been brought to my attention by the Hedgerow Witch Society that risks to health and safety exist in the field and that a public warning must be made to all participants in the monthly WILD HUNT. Many of the local hedges are topped with Spikey Devils Claw and the razor sharp Thorned Adders Wort. As such they expose WILD HUNT revellers to a real and pertinent danger. As is often the case the more enthusiastic members of the Hermetic Sub Forum are wont to leap such hedges when filled with full throttle ecstatic wyrding juice. It would be disappointing then, to say the least if they, on looking back from such a leap were to see their sacred glistening lingham of joy hanging like an over-cooked frankfurter from the high branches. We don't want this to happen and in order to prevent such an event we are issuing safety equipment. The Stealth Armoured Telescopic Fore-sock OR the Pecker-Pouch Lite cod-piece MUST BE WORN by all WILD HUNT MEMBERS. NB. these must be correctly fitted and ordering the XXL for vanities sake will not be allowed. There is a plentiful supply of small to below average sizes. Random spot checks will be carried out volunteers from the Moderation Team this will include strap tightening.

I want to start a thread to discuss some Ancient Egyptian religious art or symbols. As you probably know Egyptian writing was still pictorial, the letters were pictures of real things, men, animals, birds, objects and so on. When they wrote religious texts if there was a picture then the picture was not so much art in the sense we think today but more a kind of writing, a way of expressing a set of ideas and so on. I want to start with this: This is a picture showing the structure of the world, the 3D world in which we live, and as you can see it has three main component parts represented by figures. It shows the sky (Nut) being held up by the air god (Shu) above the earth god (Geb). There are stars on Nut's body to show she is the sky and as you can see she forms and arc above the earth. Next to Shu's head are four Y shaped objects which are the Pillars of Shu which assist him is supporting the sky and they represent the four cardinal directions and the four energies of existence (pre-cursors of the four elements). The world as we know it is seen as a kind of bubble. Everything we know, 'the known' is within this bubble and beyond it are the infinite waters of the Nun, the primeval abyss. If Shu were to let go of his support to Nut she would descend and merge with the earth and everything would return to the abyss, the world would come to an end. The Egyptians had a female sky and a male earth which is different to most mythologies. Egyptian society while being basically patriarchal allowed women a lot of power and freedom. So what does this mean? If we link this to the Hermetic idea of the Spirit which is one and all, we can understand each of these figures as aspects of spirit or perhaps as we are more likely to say today energy. The sky, which is like a skin, or covering separating the world from the infinite abyss beyond, a womb, is the energy in its most attenuated and evenly distributed state. We can use our word Heaven ... and look at it as 'He' - even where 'He' means energy or power. So the sky is the most subtle state of energy. The earth, Geb, on the other hand is this same energy which has been compacted, knit together or bound up in physical form. It is the grossest state of energy. So the creation of the world ... the world we know ... depends on the separation of the subtle from the gross, the sky from the ground, heaven from earth. So if we look at all we experience, everything from physical objects to the most subtly refined ideas and feelings can fit into the space between sky and earth formed by Shu, the air or wind. The name shu can mean 'empty' or 'light', the air is seen as an invisible conductor of light, a sort of brilliance issuing from power itself. In fact Shu is thought of as the father of the sky and earth ... and so is the causal agent in this diagram. So we have the causal power, the subtle realm and the gross realm making up the threefold aspects of the world. Now, the reason for the four Y shaped pillars of Shu or cardinal points of the compass, is because within this structure of the world it is possible to have orientation. That is direction, North, East, South, West, up and down make sense because of the structure that the created has. The bubble of the world has shape and a stable relation between its parts. The opposite is true of a abyss of the Nun, here it is specifically said there are no directions, you cannot tell North from South because those directions have no meaning. This gives rise to one of the four qualities of the abyss, Nun that of 'lostness' or hidden-ness'. In the abyss all that can and will be, all the possible forms of being float in inert states called the 'niniyew', but are lost, hidden from view, unable to manifest. So the Egyptians saw that the world that they experienced had an inner structure, an order, which they called Ma'at. They also saw that within this structure energy evolved and transformed itself in a process they called 'kheper'. And they particularly were interested how the celestial regions moved with regularity because this would tell them about the 'way' of the evolving kheper energy. The primary celestial motion was of course the sun. So that which moved the sun through the sky was called Khepera and was shown as a scarab beetle. The seers of Ancient Egypt also noticed something else. They saw that this energy had way of renewal. That the sun and the stars seemed to them to constantly renew themselves. This in comparison with creatures on the earth which grew old and died, the sun never did. They also saw through their meditation and magical arts that the source of renewal was actually the abyss, the Nun. And from this they understood something else about their world, that it had a hidden dimension, a hidden realm where it was possible to interact with the waters of the Nun and become renewed. They called this hidden realm the Duat (which means star realm) or sometimes the Amenti (which means hidden or Western realm). They located this hidden realm 'within', that is within the body of the known, the world. Sometimes they said it was in the body of Nut the sky and sometimes in the body of Geb the earth, and sometimes in the body of the god of the dead Osiris. The key being that wherever you looked in the known world, if you were able to tear aside the veil of appearance you would see within this hidden dimension, this Duat. They also realised that this Duat was the same place that the souls of dead people went to, the same place that we went to in dreams and visions, they realised that it was inside the very fabric of everything and within all of us. That we ourselves could access this Duat in order to renew and transform ourselves, not just on death but on earth when living too.

Have you renewed your Daily Mail subscription?

tethered down by names in museum glass cases unmistakable.

Similarly I mistakenly thought this was a general Mahayana technique but it looks like it is specifically Tibetan (from Atisha though so I guess originally Indian).