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Herewith a clutch of Mandrakes grown in the greenhouses of Chateaux Chaos. A colleague from Greece, the wizard Xarisal, sent some seeds, two of which we germinated and which grew well but without flowering for the first year, however in this their second year they produced some leaves and then shed them so we unearthed the roots and dried them. Rather oddly 2 seed have produced 3 roots.
They have come at a useful time as my daughters and their friends approach the age at which reproduction becomes a consideration. We used to have a dried mandrake on a thong which we lent out to friends who hoped to become pregnant, it seemed to work astonishingly well but it got lent on subsequently and somehow lost. These days with late pregnancies, sometimes after many years on oral contraceptives, fertility can present a problem, but with a mandrake root around the lady’s neck things seemed to progress sort of ‘first shot first cycle’.
Maybe the mandragorine alkaloids diffuse into the skin, or maybe it works by suggestion, or maybe it works by magic, it certainly seems worth a try before IVF.
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As a follow up to the previous post, have a look at this book: -
Time Reborn: From the Crisis of Physics to the Future of the Universe .Lee Smolin
So far I’ve only had time for the reviews.
Time doesn’t really exist for physicists who believe in determinism because the past and future remain singular and fixed. Only the second law of thermodynamics suggests some sort of time going in one direction, all other physical laws and equations seem completely time symmetric.
In recent conjurations Yog-Sothoth and Hastur have intimated that Entropy does not in itself lead to the reality of time, but Probability does. As space consists of a volume with some places in it unoccupied by particles, so does time consist of a volume with places in it where some particulate events don’t happen.
Addendum in response to enquiry: Cogitating still upon the above, perhaps this may clarify: -
We get used to the idea of some parts of space not containing particles, but what about some parts of the VOLUME of time not containing particles/events either, ie stuff that didn't happen, we need some stuff not to happen to allow probability, however the whole volume of space and the whole volume of time lie full of wave functions perhaps?
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Herewith the Necronomicom Wand and Pentachoron instruments used to earth the forthcoming Chaos Necronomicon section of EPOCH, the Esotericon and Portals of Chaos.
The Wand consists of a length of 45 thousand year old Kauri wood from New Zealand, despite its antiquity it worked fairly easily, the geological processes which preserved it simply slowly dried it out, without fossilisation.
For practical work with the Necronomicon the magician will need to fashion such instruments, however very ancient timber does not form a necessary requirement, a prototype fashioned in a modern piece of Ash wood served well enough for most of the work, however as extra sigils came through an upgrade to a Mk2 as shown seemed essential and the surprise gift of a length of Kauri from a fellow wizard in NZ provided an unmissable opportunity.
A red glass sphere works well enough for the Pentachoron, translucent rubies of such size rarely occur in nature.
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Book Review
Farewell to Reality –How Fairytale Physics Betrays the Search for Scientific Truth. Author: Jim Baggott. Pub: Constable and Roberts £12.99 paperback.
Anyone handing out research grants and anyone reading or writing about the bleeding edge of cosmology or particle physics should read this book. Theoretical physics has got itself into a frightful mess by using exotic maths to develop ideas about speculative physical principles that we have very little hope of ever testing, and which despite the lack of any experimental or observational evidence get presented more or less as ‘facts’ on which to build further theoretical edifices.
Supersymmetry, String Theory, and Brane-Theory have all failed to deliver testable predictions. The Higgs Mechanism remains highly questionable, if every class of particle couples to the Higgs field with a different and unpredictable value then it doesn’t really explain anything.
None of the attempts to forge a quantum gravity theory have yielded anything of use.
The Cosmic Inflation required to prop up the Big Bang Hypothesis has incalculably weird consequences and no comprehensible mechanism behind it, and the subsidiary patches to BB of dark energy and dark matter seem to exist nowhere except as corrections to previous assumptions.
Multiverse theory in which black holes supposedly spawn new universes with different physical constants remains untestable In Principle and exists only because we haven’t found any constraints on the existing physical constants here and our physics breaks down inside black holes, if they exist, which by no means remains certain.
Baggott does not go quite as far as questioning BB itself, but to rescue physics from fruitless mathematically hypercharged metaphysics we probably need to question that assumption also, particularly as some contradicting evidence exists. Baggott mentions Pratchett’s Discworld in passing and quips that his novels will probably outlast many cosmological theories currently regarded more or less as facts.
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Arcanorium College, the Worlds Premier Cyberspace Academy for the Magical Artes, Proudly Presents: -
For Semester 6 beginning on June 24th.
Nikki Wyrd, Transmogrification
Andriehvitimus, An introduction to Energy work/magic
The college has undergone a major transmogrification itself; extensive cyber-building works have completely redesigned the place and provided some new facilities, you may experience a glitch or two as we add the final touches.
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UPDATE 24th April 2014.The Esotericon and Portals of Chaos has landed!
http://www.arcanoriumcollege.com/shop/
Epoch nears completion. It will likely consist of The Portals of Chaos, comprising a deck of about 55 book size cards designed primarily as altarpieces for Evocation and Invocation, but applicable to divination if desired, plus the Esotericon, a book with probably the following texts and b/w copies of the Portals images for ready reference. Parts of it may also appear as an i-phone app for those who like techno-stuff. For those who don't we have kept the equations down to just a single linear one, and expressed some of the more challenging magical concepts in words, pictures, and diagrams alone.
The Esotericon & Portals of Chaos. by Peter Carroll and Matt Kabryn.
Contents, Dedications, Prologue.
Ch 1 Introduction to The Esotericon and Portals of Chaos.
Magic over the Aeons, Elemental, Planetary, & Stellar Magic.
Ch 2 The Portals of Chaos Deck.
Tarot History. The uses of the Portals Deck.
The Esotericon Tree, Chaobala.
Ch 3 Elemental and Elementary Magic. The 1st Grimoire.
The Realm of the Elements and a Basic Magical Primer.
Baphomet.
Ch 4 Theometry & Aeonics.
A History of the Gods and Paradigm Shifts.
Ch 5 Planetary Magic.The 2nd Grimoire.
The Planetary and Bi-Planetary God-Forms.
Ch 6 Cosmology.
Strange Physics Interlude 1. Alien Life & The Perfect Cosmological Principle.
Ch 7 Omnality.
Strange Physics Interlude 2. Quantum Omnality in a Non-Local Universe.
Ch 8 Stellar Magic.The 3rd Grimoire.
Stellar Metaphysics. Necronomicon Prologue. Necronomicon Commentary. The Necronomicon.
Appendices.
1) Alien Elements.
2) The Joy of Texts. A humorous poem by Ronald Hutton. A sort of banishing by laughter.
Afterword, Glossary, References, Index.
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And on a lighter note, Toadmass update; my naturalist friends inform me that most of the inhabitants of my pond at châteaux chaos look like toadpoles. As their grazing clears the depths it becomes apparent we may have in excess of 20,000 this year. If significant numbers make it to adulthood and they decide to act in concert and jump a car I guess they could squash it between them.
Arcanorium College currently undergoes a substantial rebuilding program which will add many new facilities for Staff and Alumni, details of Semester 6 to follow in the next post here.
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A month on from Frogmass (see http://www.specularium.org/index.php?option=com_blog&view=comments&pid=120 ) and an estimated 10,000+ tadpoles now cruise my pond, grazing on the algae, plus the first of the newts have shown up. Just how many frogs will result from all this I don't know but I guestimate 10 with luck. Each year we see about 8 dragonfly larvae clamber up the reeds in autumn and hatch out of their armor and take wing. The voracious larvae probably account for hundreds of tadpoles each. I don't know which gives me the most joy, the sight of a majestic dragonfly perched on a pole in the sunlight regarding me through its thousand faceted alien eyes, or the surprised and slightly affronted look of a frog disturbed buy the repositioning of a flowerpot.
How many Frogs do we consider a Dragonfly worth?
Milder winters and duller summers in these parts of late may have done something to halt the decline of amphibians but any further lurches of climate bode ill, agricultural yields have fallen worldwide.
Atmospheric CO2 has now just passed the 400ppm mark, at a run, with every indication that environmental catastrophe rather than collective restraint will eventually halt the rise.
How many humans and how much consumerism do we consider the entire planet worth?