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The Internet's Darkest Rabbit Hole
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
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This is a curious tale about an AI Influencer who goes by the name of A. Egon Cholakian, who posts inane and misleading videos online, and then leads to a mysterious former Chiropractor Igor Danilo who has styled himself a new Jesus, built a cult, created a following via the "Creative Society" and "AllatRa", has compounds in the Ukraine filled with both pro-Putin and pro-Trump propaganda...
This is the real purpose of AI - to "influence" and further dumb-down an already ignorant public.
It is a fairly deep and dark rabbit hole, and while I'm grateful for the information (basically, we live in an era where all conspiracies are coming true...) - I find the delivery of it, in the standard YouTube podcast format of a little-too-long-in-the drama and suspense department, a little bit - ...
Well, if this is what it takes to bring in the viewers I guess that's it, personally I don’t want for the entertainment, merely the understanding.
Out of Storage
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 93
Google's working the hard sell on me. I deleted a bunch of photos, and now apparently I'm using more storage! Despite having turned off all back-ups. I guess it's time to take an hour or two and back-up all my photos.
We all just rent our lives from the Company...
Witch Villages and Cursing Wells
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 111
We've all heard of wishing wells, but not all wells are so innocent...
I came across this in Sir Walter Scott's letters on Witchcraft and Demonology. Curious.
Link: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2021/01/06/witch-villages-and-cursing-wells/
Voodoo & Hoodoo - Jim Haskins
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 114
“The Craft as Revealed by Traditional Practitioners”
Having a pretty fine understanding of the craft in the more abstract and universal sense, from reading Levy & Others, this was an easy read filled with recipes and some background on the practice.
Some notes:
The Importance of Symbolism & Ritual - the preparation of the supplicant, the items selected and their usage, the time of day, month, year, the circumstances of the ritual to be performed (is the fetish to buried or cast into a river or in a specific direction), the points of the compass, the use of magnets or lodestones for sympathetic magic, red cloth (usually flannel), biological ingredients - eg Pubic & Armpit hair, menstrual blood, semen, urine, etc (there might be something too this above & beyond magic - in love philtres they might have the effect of “familiarizing” the love object with your scent & dna), noteworthy was how all the spells adhered to what I now would understand as "Universal" general rules of magic.
Treasure - that you must wear a cross when digging for treasure to prevent it from sinking further into the earth. I've seen so many similar charms and rituals you must obey before searching for treasure that I'm thinking it might be time for me to come up with a few myself.
Ingredients - In this little attention is paid to the obtaining of ingredients. Generally every ingredient itself would or should require some ritual to be observed before it's acquiring, in this the many of the ingredients can be store bought throughout the American South by various Hoodoo supply shops, the act or practice of Magic being reduced to the assembly of store bought ingredients that oft are not even what they purport to be.
This is a short list of some of the doubtless endless supplies one can acquire via these shops:
This reduces the act of Magic to basically a recipe and formula, readily assembled from such store-bought ingredients as
- Graveyard Dust
- Jinx Killer Incense and Oil
- Drive Away Evil Incense and Oil
- Compelling Power Incense and Oil
- Holy Power Bath Oil
- Goofer Dust
- Love Drawing Power Bath
- Strong Love Cologne, Hearts Cologne
- Make Your Wish Sand
- etc, etc,.
A lot of these "recipes" balance home grown ingredients and those one can find locally - things like hot peppers, salt, a knotted string, etc - with the more exotic ingredients (still easily acquired) - such as toads, frogs, lizards, snakes and chickens. Sadly the last few creatures on the list rarely survive the magic. It does make me wonder though, as the recipes shipped with ingredients usually recommend proprietary ingredients - would you be able to substitute "Jinx Killer" for "Drive Away Evil" incense and oil? What about "Strong Love" and "Hearts" Cologne?
Now while I have great skepticism of Magic done with store-bought materials obviously the hoodoo practitioners that endorse all this don't. And some credit must be given to the people who make up the ingredients and spells - they have to somehow - subconsciously - "ring true" - to the client for the magic to have any endorsement or success whatsoever.
TO conclude, this was a light read that in it's details confirms a lot of what anthropologists and psychologists already know. As a guidebook to practitioners of the craft, well, I'll leave that alone.
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