Pertinax

Presumably secular tarot is an entirely materialistic take on divination; so you mean to say you’re literally and deliberately taking advice and insight from the random patterns of the cards? Calling it secular is really just an egoic fig leaf.

When you think about it etymologically, Secular Buddhism is a contradiction, it’s saying ‘I like the idea of enlightenment, but I think I’ll cling to the wheel of samsara anyway’.

Calling something ‘Secular~Buddhism, ~tarot, ~witchcraft’ is just a way of playing with a tradition while refusing to get your feet wet in all that icky belief stuff.

Can relate.

What nobody tells you about spiritual practice in middle age is the apathy. The ‘why bother?’ aspect, as the goal is revealed as goalless, the idea of a regimen of disciplined meditation or ritual looks more and more like a waste of ever diminishing time and energy.

About the most zen thing I do these days is sit up early in the morning drinking coffee while my mind processes the nights dreams and prepares for the day ahead. And I have to say Tarot is much more interesting than zazen.

Something I notice on social media, especially with the ongoing war in Ukraine, is how it is being used to amplify hatred among former allies. One has to ask, who does that serve?

OTO, as I understand it, is based on a semi feudal structure with an ‘enlightened King’ at the top. The older I get the more the very thought of it is repellent.

Mistaking the first entity to give you the time of day for your HGA.

Ever notice how the most vocally contrarian ‘free thinkers’ are the most susceptible to propaganda?

We are so eager to alter consciousness when we barely even understand day to day awareness.

Babalon isn't your secret mystical girlfriend or mother figure, she won't validate you or suck you off or satisfy your need for validation, and she is definitely not some idealised feminine archetype. She is indifferent to your hopes and desires, and only dances for the dances sake, not for you.

If you get up in the morning, walk towards the rising sun, keep walking towards it all day until it sets in the evening, you may just end up walking in a circle, or a sort of big horseshoe. This may or may not have philosophical implications.

It’s now 8 weeks since I broke a 20+ year daily meditation habit, and I have to say I feel no different, except that now I have more free time in the morning.

A couple of sentence structures that make me think AI are the excessive use of ‘quietly’, and ‘it’s not just this, it’s that’. There may be others which alone are pretty innocuous, but when seen all in one place are like weeds growing lush over a shallow grave.

If a person needs to tell you that they’re a powerful magician then most likely they’re not.

Coming back to playing fiddle after a few years of only mandolin, I realise that the scrapes and squeaks that I used to try to avoid are actually what makes the music, what gives it bite and personality.

Anyone who thinks LLM’s are sentient should have their own sentience assessed.

Knowledge and Conversation isn’t usually dramatic, in fact I’d distrust dramatic accounts as a rule. Rather, it’s a gradual realignment with the flow of life so that instead of fighting it you flow with it, like a navigator on a river rather than mere flotsam.

Note to A.’.A.’. aspirants. If you go on social media complaining about how awful the Order is and how shit its members must be for not getting back to you instantly despite your obvious greatness, there’s a good chance they’re going to see it.

Just saw a guy at the train station with a big placard, roughly translated as: “war and vaccines are both the fault of rich people”. I’m not sure what to make of it to be honest.

So who is actually reliable when it comes to Saturnine cults, Pre-Mithraic religion and other murky stuff without taking liberties with facts and going off the conspiracy theory deep end?