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Emery Blagdon
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 1798
Meet Emery Blagdon (1907–1986), who manufactured "Found Art" antennae which would focus the healing energies from the atmosphere onto people in their neighborhood or vicinity. Interesting idea, more interesting artwork here:
Links: Make Online, Outsider Art Pages, Kohler Foundation (warning: you have to scroll), On Flickr, The Foundation for Self Taught American Artists.
Hell
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1698
I suspect my interest in the subject stems from the numerous recommendations I've received ..... "You really should go to ...".
Being an agnostic and all I don't credit Hell, or the conventional images thereof, greatly. But I find them interesting nonetheless.
Examine, for example, the Greek Hades, not a Hell per se, but hardly a place one would want to spend an eternity. Compare it to the Christian Hell, the punishment for an unproductive life, a life led as a sinner, as a non-believer, a place where anyone who thought differently than they did was sure to end up. A hell filled with fire and brimstone, the sulfurous hell of Satan and his attendant demons. And contrast it with the Buddhist Hell, similar in it's appeal, but there's the underlying belief or knowledge (??) that everything is an illusion, a projection of one's own consciousness, hence whatever your own hell contains it's of your own imagining. And the philosophy of reincarnation, which rewards or punishes you depending on your life's Karma.
Or the Chinese Hell, one filled with the conventional pleasantries, but to add to the pleasure there's an infinite number of weary and dysfunctional bureaucrats, so paralleling life on earth that it's necessary to forward one's ancestors "Bribes" or "Hell Money" so that they can make their way through with a minimal of discomfort.
Follow any of the links above to continue your investigations; this post is purposely brief to inspire your imagination. The illustrations are all by Gustave Doré, whose images of a frozen hell as a child terrified me....
The Outer Hebrides
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1639
I'm picking up my daughter, she's finishing up a 6 week summer camp. But there's lots of summer left, and the girl next to her is lamenting what she'll do. I tell her that her parents will probably find another camp for her and then take a vacation to Greece or someplace without her.
"Why Greece" she asks, and I explain it's because they serve free ice cream there, playing, as it were, for a reaction.
Now the little girls parents are there and they're talking to me about where they'll go for the rest of the summer vacation. Her mother, she's a frumpy middle aged woman in a floral dress, her father is covered head to toe in fur. And to make matters worse he's got a plastic flesh-colored mask on to try and make him look normal, but it's not succeeding, you can see the hair popping out the eye holes and he explains to me that it's a genetic condition. And they continue discussing where they'll go and decide upon the Outer Hebrides.
"AH, Scotland" I say, and he looks at me oddly and explains to me that the Outer Hebrides are in Peru, he was stationed there once for a time he should know. And I'm certain they're off the coast of Scotland, or maybe Iceland or Denmark but I'm betting they've got to be islands someplace but I'm loathe to argue with someone already so disadvantaged, and he explains to me the purpose of his research there and my mind is filled with graphic images.
Apparently every 12, 000 years there's a great salt flood over the entire Amazon Basin, and then a fresh water flood, and then life there starts anew, and as he's explaining I'm seeing a giant map of a square South America flooding from the Equator down and then the flood-waters circle about the end and run up to the top, there's arrows and graphics and it's a bit elaborate, like something you might see on the Discovery Channel.
I'm still not buying it and after they've left I go to the University Library where I talk to the librarian and he begins to look for maps of the Outer Hebrides for me...."The Furry Guy" he's saying, "Yeah, he's my supervisor...I've got to have a talk with him on Monday" and from the tone I gather the Librarian's going to fire him for being furry or bad at geography...
Magic & Mystery in Tibet - Alexandra David-Neel
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1684
Now this is great. This is travel literature. For a variety of reasons, which I'll illuminate below:
1) She's speaking of a place that has disappeared. The Tibet she has traveled was razed to the ground by the Chinese in the 1950's, what we have left are only travelers accounts, myths and cheap reproductions.
2) She talks of the miracles she witnesses - the thought projection, creation of doppelgangers, telepathy, internal combustion and other mysteries with some skepticism and common sense. And she reports many of these things as first hand experiences, not just relaying stories.
3) She interprets what she sees without prejudice and with (for the time) a fine balance of common sense skepticism and open-mindedness. You can't ask for more.
4) She illuminates you as to the 99% of Tibetan Buddhist dark magic and beliefs that somehow escaped export to a gullible western public. It's worth knowing, if only so that you can laugh in the face of the next "enlightened" white yogi who tries it on with his chanting of the "on-no-ma-ne-pad-me-ohm..".
And if she's somehow exaggerated or embellished her tales and interpretation of the events, who can blame her? It makes for a far far better story.
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