Saturday 30 December 2017

A few words from Rudyard Kipling on his birthday

Words are one of the greatest of the unseen influences that affect our lives.

In February 1923, Rudyard Kipling gave a speech at the Annual Dinner of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. This well-known quotation comes from his address:

I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind…”

He is right. Words are a supremely powerful force that can affect people very strongly. Words help people to escape into another world.

While ‘tool’ would perhaps be a better word than ‘drug’, I remember reading that Dennis Wheatley got large numbers of letters from people in hospital who said that his books helped them to forget their pain.

Some of Kipling’s words are not so much a drug as a tonic and an inspiration:

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

This quotation has been attributed to Nietzsche, but Rudyard Kipling said it at an interview in 1935.

He was right about the price for being an individual too.

The potion of poetry
In Stalky & Co., Kipling says that a book of poetry borrowed from the Headmaster’s library makes McTurk completely drunk for three days. Beetle, who is Kipling himself, reads avidly whenever he gets the chance. He disappears for days into another world while reading a book that a master threw at him; it takes some hammering on his head with a spoon and a threat to drop a pilchard down his neck to make him stop reading and bring him back down to earth!

Some people don’t use or need alcohol or other stimulants; words and the images they evoke can inflame their imaginations, induce trances and intoxicate them. Rudyard Kipling was both a recipient of and a contributor to this phenomenon.

The weaving of words
I would call Kipling a weaver of words; some of his poetry is like a spell of enchantment.

Puck's Song from Puck of Pook's Hill, which demonstrates Kipling’s love of England and English history, is a very good example of his power to create magical pictures in people’s minds.  It mentions Gramarye, which has associations with magic and occult learning.  Isle of Gramarye has been used as an alternative name for Britain.

The entire poem can be read here here. These are the final two stanzas:

Trackway and Camp and City lost,
     Salt Marsh where now is corn;
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
     And so was England born!

She is not any common Earth,
     Water or wood or air,
But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye,
     Where you and I will fare.



Friday 22 December 2017

A beautiful Christmas card

I have always been good at finding high quality items at low prices. I am not sure whether it is my radar, guidance from the universe or just chance that does it, but I am always very grateful to whatever it is that helps me to find these treasures.

One day long ago I felt an inclination to go into a bookshop I was walking past. I found some beautiful cards that were reduced by 90%. I bought several packets in different designs. They were some of the best greetings cards I have ever seen, and they cost the least.

They are all gone now, but I can still look at the pictures because I scanned one of each type.

This is my favourite design from the cards I bought:


Thursday 21 December 2017

Life after leaving a cult: predictable paths people take

There is a lot of information available about cults, cult-like organisations, cult leaders and cult members and ex-members. I compiled some ideas and information myself from personal experience, experience for which my researches found much independent confirmation. 

I made posts on a forum that no longer exists. I want to overhaul the material and put a few extracts on here, in the hope that they will be of use to someone.

I will start at the end, with a short account of what I know about people who have left one of these sinister organisations.

Groups most cult leavers fall into
Many people who leave a cult just want to recover and get on with whatever lives they can make for themselves, perhaps after telling their stories to a few people.

A few high-profile people may expose the practices and describe their experiences mainly for the money, attention and publicity. I am thinking of celebrity ex-members of organisations such as Scientology here. One of them has a TV show.

Then there are those who go into the mechanics of cult leadership and operation in great detail. They take action on an intellectual level. They do a lot of reading and research and consult a variety of sources. They want to understand what forces were at work, mainly for their own benefit. They may also hope to educate others and deter them from joining; some write very helpful books and articles. This is possibly the best option, but not everyone has the necessary resources.

Most ex-members will think that they are lucky to be out of it, but a few may feel lost and miserable and blame themselves for not being able to meet the (unrealistic) requirements and (outrageous) demands. They feel that they failed to make the grade. They feel inferior, not good enough for the elite organisation. They have let the leader and the cause down.

They have been expelled from Paradise and the gates locked behind them. They may be unable to cut their losses and move on with their lives, even when they have support, options and opportunities. They may feel even worse than they did when inside. They may be very depressed and just give up on life. Someone once explained all this to me when I asked about people who had left, but not spoken out against, a cult.

Monday 18 December 2017

Princess Margaret’s death: was it a mercy killing?

Are there sinister elements in this case? Should we be suspicious of the official stories?

When Princess Margaret died in 2002, allegedly from a stroke, she had been off many people’s radar for a while. She was not greatly missed, and her death was eclipsed by the death of the Queen Mother a few weeks later. 

It was many years before the idea came into my mind that perhaps we were not told the full truth about her death. An article in the Daily Mail in 2016 about the release of art historian Sir Roy Strong’s diaries in which Princess Margaret was mentioned reminded me of these thoughts and inspired a short post for the old Conservative Conspiracy forum. I re-posted the material in the Alternaticity Project forum earlier this year.

Thinking once again about the tragic end to a life of hedonism reminded me of how the lives of Maria Callas and the Duchess of Windsor ended. In Princess Margaret’s case, so far as we know there was no sinister woman involved but she too ended up ill, alone and very unhappy. It seemed to me that there might have been some unseen influences at work in her life – and death.

Princess Margaret in 1949, decades before her decline:


Monday 4 December 2017

A meeting and another string of minor misfortunes

I have written several article about days when everything went wrong for me and I experienced some jarring incidents.

I have described some minor misfortunes and unpleasant occurrences, their effects and my ideas about their causes. 

These bad days are exceptional, but they still happen. The latest ‘one of those days’ was yesterday.

The misfortunes
They were very minor and also very typical.

I had left home and was walking towards the bus stop, when the sudden fear that I might not have switched off some plugs came into my mind. The fatal fire in the tower block in June has made me extra careful, so I went back and found that everything was in order. When my resistance is low, as it was at this time, wrong ideas get into my system like germs into a wound.

I went to get some money from the nearest ATM machine. Normally it says, "Please take your card and wait for your money", but this time it just said "Please wait", and I waited and waited and waited.

Eventually, I decided that something must be wrong so I pressed the Cancel button a few times, but nothing happened. I was very worried, and thought I would have to go into the bank first thing next morning and try to sort it out. Suddenly, the machine disgorged my money and card. It was lucky that I was still there to take them. I had trouble with this machine once before – again at a time when I was affected by bad energy.

I went on to pick up some parcels from a shop – I love the ‘Click & Collect’ option! I had intended to get there just before it opened, so I was worried that as I was behind schedule it would be packed with people. I worried unnecessarily. I had checked the opening time online, but actually they didn't open until one hour later so I had to kill some time. Then they couldn't find one of my parcels; they tracked it down eventually though.