It was occurring to me last night, while watching The Seventh Seal at the Castro in the wake of reading Orson Scott Card's "Ender Quartet", that free will is an illusion in the same way the Buddhists describe phenomenal existence as an illusion-not that it doesn't exist, but more that it doesn't exist the way that we think it does. In the end, ( Read more... )

A couple of weeks ago I picked up an odd, old-looking paperback at Half-Price Books purporting to be a "reconstruction" of the Latin Satyricon. I grabbed it, figuring I couldn't go very wrong for a dollar. I was later overjoyed, upon putting a bunch of material from the A∴A∴ reading list on my Amazon wishlist, to realize that this was a version ( Read more... )

If you're one of the people who has been following my practice record (posts titled "Anno iv13....") and you want to continue to do so, or if you haven't been but would like to, please reply to this post. I will be creating a custom permissions list for that thread so as not to weird out and/or bore too many others. If you've already expressed an ( Read more... )

Practice continues to strengthen, visualizations continue to improve, tiny bit by bit. I find it easier for now to use the Latin alphabet in preference to the Hebrew, just as I often did for the mantra chain in Tibetan visualizations. Must get around to memorizing the attributions for the cardinal directions & guardians before it's realy going to ( Read more... )

Why the fuck am I still awake? This vampire shit is getting old.

Well, I guess the day-sleep will do some good, since I'm supposed to go to Gaian Mind monthly psy-trance thing tonite. Hate the venue, though - the drinks are outrageously expensive for a run-down pseudo-club in South Philly. I've had better deals in Manhattan ( Read more... )