true progress comes from small things, and small numbers. have we learned nothing from any story ever told, or from looking around.

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evil cannot be defeated, only banished. death cannot be banished, only defeated.

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facing north, the west is to the left. facing south, to the right. westerners need to choose which ...

In the dream recounted in "Joseph the Tirielist," someone called Peter "gave me a comically large pair of black hiking boots and said, 'Now you have to put these on!'" As I thought about this later, in waking life, this idea of being asked to put on much-too-large footwear made me think of the expression about being ...

It's been a sync-heavy day, and the afternoon is still young. Let's see if I can get everything documented in a somewhat easy-to-follow fashion.

As I was falling asleep last night, I for some reason started mentally reciting to myself the closing lines of Ulysses, by a Tennyson who, no mean poet in his own right, was ...

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Faery by John T Kruse - 2020

Over at The Notion Club Papers blog; I discuss how very different were JRR Tolkien's elves from those of folklore, such as described by John T Kruse in his 2020 compendium Faery: a guide to the lore, magic and world of the Good Folk.

Yet how, in late and unpublished ...

I have been reading some of the work of John T Kruse on the subject of fairies; especially - especially his Faery: a guide to the lore, magic and world of the Good Folk (2020) - which is, by far, the single most informative and readable work on the subject I have encountered.

Elf is the usual name for such people ...

I dreamt that as I was getting ready to leave the preschool after my morning classes, I met another White American there, who introduced himself as Joseph and said he was from one of the Midwestern states. (He said a particular state, but I don't remember which.) He was printing out some vocabulary flash cards and ...

Greg Carlwood trying to sell the idea of psychedelics as a path to God:

But the whole idea of DMT being out there, it's almost like Hansel and Gretel, like God left some breadcrumbs: Hey, if you want to find your way back home, it's all over nature. It's littered all over the place, so if you get lost, just ingest ...

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Sun rising due east: Note*

I have always supposed that on the day of the spring equinox (i.e. yesterday) the name and night both became 12 hours long - or, at least, it was the day in which they were most-equal; so that the next day was the first on which the day was longer than the night.

But ...

"Deus ex machina" is a term used to describe the plot device by which intervention from outside the action appears just before some catastrophic disaster, and solves an apparently impossible problem.

In "real life" DEM has long formed the basis of optimism - the hope that something not-known (or known but previously ...

The ghost could get into anyone in the village at will, though he never stayed in one body for long. Everyone knew whoever it was that, quote unquote, had the ghost, because all it made people do was cry out in pain. No words. The possessed sounded more like wounded animals than people. Wherever they were, and it was ...

The main source of mass media disinformation is in the frame.

No matter whether any specific claim is factual or a lie, we can be sure that all the facts, and interpretations of events, will always and without exception be falsely framed - because this has the effect of making the facts and interpretations ...

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Monarchy was a TV series by historian David Starkey from twenty years ago, which I am re-watching for about the third time.

The series runs from the Anglo Saxons up to Queen Elizabeth II; and treats this as a single narrative arc - albeit with major disruptions along the way (e.g. the Norman ...

On February 24, I downloaded Hugh Nibley's book Enoch the Prophet, which I haven't read since childhood but still remember quite well.

On March 1, I posted "Strange is the night where black stars rise."

Last night, I checked The Higherside Chats and found an episode, published March 4, called "Wayne McRoy Jr. | 2026 ...

On the road early this morning, I somehow got to thinking about doughnuts. I'm not sure what started this train of thought, but I was thinking about how doughnuts used to be a fairly regular feature of my life, how common it used to be to bring a box of them to the office or classroom, and how long it had been -- a ...

Acknowledgments: My starting point for this analysis was "What is Malachi doing in 1st and 2nd Nephi?," a Reddit post by someone using the handle stisa79, which Bill Wright brought to my attention; and "Samuel the Lamanite, Christ, and Zenos: A Study of Intertextuality," an Interpreter article by Quinten Barney, which ...

My March 12 post "Breadcrumbs, iron pens, and avian epigraphs" was about a synchronicity involving the three themes in the title. One of the iron pens involved was one with which things "may be written, upon plates of brass."

Yesterday, I read in Joseph Smith's Seer Stones:

If the record and the stones buried by the ...

When I recently wrote about the severe and increasing subfertility of the populations of all developed societies in the world; I had not realized that this was becoming a topic in the mass media...

Sort of.

Because the discussions reveal that people have not even begun to consider the implications of subfertility. ...

Certain places, even in today's world, retain an atmosphere that speaks of a reality beyond the everyday and the mundane. There are natural sites that have this quality and these were often adopted as sacred places in bygone days by our pagan forefathers. Springs, wells, mountains, caves and many other naturally ...

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As a Northumbrian (by inheritance, conception, and residence - if not birth!) who yet has a better claim to pretend to be Irish than most of the show-biz people who make such a big thing of it...

[The Irish can do what they like to celebrate their patron; but I am referring to the international, ...

For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord. When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me.-- Jeremiah 8:17-18

"Observe this motion: Clench the fist,Pull taut the tendons, flick the wrist -- For thus did Paul of ...

Over the past eight years; my reading-of and brooding-on the Fourth Gospel (called "John") has had many and profound effects on my understanding of the differences between what Jesus said and did, and the Christian churches that came after.

In particular, that the core of Jesus's work was to provide Men with the ...

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An interesting and useful resource has appeared on the excellent Fourble website: a collection of 45 podcasts featuring or written by Colin Wilson.

I have sampled a few - and enjoyed them all.

I am not sure who is responsible for making this compilation, but Thanks, whoever you are! ...

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I thought regular readers might be interested to see the official document by which I became Baron of Jesmond, some three decades ago.

This entitles me to the hereditary title of Lord - or just "Jesmond" among my close friends and equals (if any) - and those to whom I have given permission to use ...

Today I read in Words of Them Liberated a reference to a Silmaril as a "gem-pip sprouting" into a yellow flower, a stone become a seed.

Hours later, I read in Joseph Smith's Seer Stones that

Joseph Smith planted his seer stone like a seed, which grew to become the immovable oak of Mormonism.

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John Pritchard, Tragedian: 1830-1868

Seems to have been a rather handsome chap, and rather too obviously proud of it - given that this is the only sculpted head of the deceased in any of the three Jesmond cemeteries.

A "Tragedian" was a (self-styled*) serious actor of the Classics; and this is ...

I've just finished reading When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams -- a good read overall, though perhaps a bit too Creative Writing for some tastes.

I started reading it at about the same time that I started Words of Them Liberated, and in "Breadcrumbs, iron pens, and avian epigraphs" I noted the coincidence ...

The problems of this mortal life are (essentially) evil and entropy. Those who are honest and give the matter thought, acknowledge that these problems are intractable, incurable - they always have been, everywhere.

Some people assert that this is good enough, Life as it is and has-been is basically fine...

But in ...

I had a dream with no visual component, just music: a single cello playing, with great intensity and virtuosity, the Beatles song "With a Little Help from My Friends." It's been in my head all day -- the cello version from my dream, that is, which appears not yet to exist in the waking world, though I did check ...

A lot of poetry sites now append an "AI analysis" to the end of each poem -- as if anyone who loves poetry ever asked them to smear its sacred pages with that filth!

Today, wanting to read Emily Dickinson's "From Blank to Blank" while away from my library, I turned to one of these sites. When I reached the end of the ...