Tuesday 31 May 2016

Robin Jarvis’s witchmaster Nathaniel Crozier: Part II

The end of Nathaniel Crozier’s visit to Whitby
We left Nathaniel Crozier just after he had tortured and killed poor old Mr Roper.

His next evil deed is to send the horrible fish demon he has secured to his service to kill Ben so that he can then destroy the magical artefact that Mr Roper passed on to the little boy.

Luckily, the monster follows the wrong trail; it kills another boy instead. ‘By chance’, this is someone who has bullied Ben in the past.

Miss Boston returns from a harrowing visit to London, and finds that all hell has broken loose because Nathaniel Crozier has destroyed two of Whitby’s guardians. Once again, she decides that she must confront an evil newcomer who is about to destroy Whitby. This at the age of 92: if she isn’t a good role model for older ladies, I don’t know who is.

Miss Boston knows that she has taken on what looks like an impossible task, but she sees it as a good sign, a sign of weakness, that the appalling man wanted her out of the way and used his agents to try to destroy her in London.

She has an advantage in that Nathaniel Crozier underestimates her. He never has a good word to say about anyone - he called his wife Roselyn stupid and greedy and Miss Boston an odious hag - and he thinks of Miss Boston as a senile, dabbling amateur.

Crozier would get on well with Lord Voldemort, who also underestimates the opposition and believes that “there is no good and evil, there is nothing but power and those too weak to seek it”. Crozier boasts of being a master of control and domination; he scorns limits and warnings – they are for the weak.

Thursday 19 May 2016

Injury and revenge: Part II a special case

I had a light-bulb moment a while back; it enabled me to look at some very painful experiences in a new light.

Robert Sheckley describes such moments of illumination far better than I ever could:

A thought had crossed his mind, a thought so tremendously involved, so meaningful, so far-reaching in its implications that he was stirred to his depths. Caswell tried desperately to shake off the knowledge it brought. But the thought, permanently etched upon his memory, would not depart.”

From Bad Medicine, available to read online in Project Gutenberg. 

This is a very amusing story about someone who, when prevented from taking revenge in one way for his – completely imaginary – injuries, finds another way to destroy his enemy.

The revolutionary idea that slipped into my mind was that the injury was not all one way; it was symmetric.  Although some people, perhaps operating under the control of unseen influences, had devastated me by leading me to believe I was going to get something I really wanted then taking it away at the last moment, I had in a sense done exactly the same thing to them – or to whatever was working through them.


Sunday 15 May 2016

Rudyard Kipling and Sol Invictus

After reading A Letter to the People of Europe from the US politician Augustus Sol Invictus, I created a thread about it on the - now closed - Conservative Conspiracy Forum as the message contained some views shared by many members of that site. 

Inspired by the name, I and several others went on to find and post many relevant references to Sol Invictus, the Invictus poem, sun gods, sun cults, sun symbols, black suns, freemasons, sunflowers, neo-fascist groups, metal music, Constantine and other associated topics and people...they are all connected.

Now Rudyard Kipling joins the party. As he is featured on this blog, the connections are best presented in an article here.

Rudyard Kipling and Invictus
Rudyard Kipling was a friend of William E. Henley, the author of the inspirational Invictus that was President John F. Kennedy’s favourite poem and that has been featured in the news recently because of its association with Prince Harry’s Invictus Games. 

Henley and Kipling were united in their admiration of the Empire and detestation of the ‘aesthetic’ style in literature and life. They exchanged books and many letters. After receiving a book from him, Kipling wrote to Henley:

“You have been where I have yet to go so I dare not ask why you are so tired. When you get my stuff you will see how far I have walked and where.”

This suggests to me that Henley inspired and was a good influence on Kipling. Invictus was first published in 1888, with Rudyard Kipling’s inspirational poem If appearing in 1910. Perhaps the one inspired the other.

Wednesday 4 May 2016

James Cameron’s Dark Angel: a sinister scenario

I watched James Cameron’s Dark Angel series when it was first shown on UK TV 15  or so years ago. I thought that it was very good indeed, despite the violence and a few other things such as gruesomeness and overuse of the evil twin meme.

I got the DVDs recently as part of an exercise to recreate the best of the past. After watching them just for the stories a few times, I came to realise that some elements of the underlying scenario could apply to more people than just the X5 group of genetically enhanced people featured in the series.

Many aspects of the lives of the X5s will seem familiar to some people, especially those who think of themselves as being different in some way. 

People who feel like the X5s
Such people may have been brought up without caring parents and in Spartan surroundings for example; they may have been brainwashed and tested to the limits of endurance in childhood; as children, they may have been isolated, essentially hostages and prisoners in a harsh and brutal environment albeit not necessarily a physical one.

Such people may feel that they were selectively bred, raised and trained for a mission – even if they don’t know or can’t remember what it is.

Such people may feel that they have escaped from the past but are separated from others like them. All the time, they are pining for the company of their own kind. Unlike the X5s, they don’t know who their people are.

They may live among the normals, passing as one of them and apparently integrated into society but knowing that they are very different on the inside. Their wiring, abilities, experiences, outlook, requirements and goals are just not the same as those of the normals.

Like the X5s, these people may be flawed.