First, some comments by others on "All the pebbles I have seen," pasted here for searchability and ease of reference.

William Wright (WW) said...

When I read the line about "precious stones for Colleen", the image that actually came to my mind was Ungoliant. Specifically, the scene in which, after she and Melkor ...

If you agree that the primary unit of reality is Beings, then there are no "causes".

If beings are the reality, then the first step in anything is the freedom of some Being as expressed spiritually; and that is not "a" cause. It can be thought of as some kind of action of their "self", their ultimate nature.

This ...

"When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The ...

Altruism - helping others, especially at the expense of oneself - is widely regarded as the highest human value.

This is especially on the Left, but in a modified form also on the self-styled Right - and very commonly among self-identified Christians (who may even claim that helping-others is the single core and ...

In 1964 a hospital in the United States carried out a series of experiments on dream telepathy. While one person slept, another person would attempt to transmit telepathically a randomly selected image. The sleeper would then report his dreams, and a panel of judges would decide which of eight possible target images ...

I was re-reading the Introduction I wrote for the second edition of William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness (2019).

In this writing I am explaining Arkle's spiritual philosophy, to the best of my ability - and Arkle has been a significant influence on my own understanding over the past fifteen or so years. ...

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tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of the fire. that’s the famous dictum. i know it’s not fair to dissect a metaphor, but maybe i can learn something by it. so what are the requirements of preserving a fire.

you have to get some firewood. that involves planting trees (and that ...

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There is some kind of a consensus - especially among Christians - that Western Civilization is ending, and that this multi-stage collapse is substantially self-inflicted - partly suicidal due to hedonic materialism and cowardice of the unreligious-aspiritual masses; and partly the outcome of deliberate contrivance ...

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As I was contemplating the Three of Pentacles, two lines of an otherwise forgotten song began playing in my mind:

All the pebbles I have seenPrecious stones for Colleen

I began to hear it in my head as a round, with two voices repeating the two lines endlessly, but staggered, so that one voice ...

As I was falling asleep, I thought of a scene from Flight of the Gargoyle in which a girl had an improbably large percentage of her body eaten by a demonic creature (a razor-toothed "mermaid" with the lower body of a leech rather than a fish) while the girl herself remained alive and conscious. I thought, In real life ...

Our creator is a loving God, and the divine creation is "built" with love; so to be on the side* of Good is to live from love.

A person motivated by love, thinks and does things for other people (and other beings), because of love.

This means that the Good person will often do something that sacrifices his own ...

An excellent series of reflections and observations over at Laeth’s place today. I found the following particularly striking:

i find myself more and more at odds with both classical religion and mainstream attitudes to reality. the first one refuses to accept just how random and chaotic a world of true freedom ...

If you really believe that you personally are free, and you are a Christian; it follows that You Are Responsible.

You are not a communal being; you cannot evade your ultimate responsibility by claiming unawareness, or automatic habits; because such a claim gives-away the lie.

If you are responsible, then it is ...

The main reason why most would-be deep discussion (as well as superficial argument) is a waste is... Metaphysics.

Metaphysics is our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality; and when these assumptions are wrong, all answers will be wrong - even if they are superficially correct.

All answers will ...

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since the individual is now primary, there is zero hope for society, and less so for humanity. (the larger the group, the less reality it has, the less sense the category makes). there is no automatic collective purpose anymore. at least for modern people. any real purpose must be consciously shared and pursued. an ...

During the five years Michael Lord and I spent in Yercaud we met many people, both Indians and Western travellers, some through our guest house and some just chance encounters. There was Arati, a Parsee lady in her 60s from Bombay who stayed with us for a couple of months, supposedly for health reasons. Her husband ...

My last post, "Wounded Rahab," quoted this verse from the Book of Mormon, in which Jacob quotes Isaiah:

Awake, awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days. Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? (2 Ne. 8:9)

Today I had a nasty migraine and spent most of the day ...

While I still get intermittent great pleasure from music (as evidenced by my occasional postings here) there has certainly been a tremendous decline from the days of my teens and early early twenties, when music was probably second only to literature and ideas in its importance for my life.

By music, I mostly mean ...

I checked my comments this afternoon and found a new one from Bill on "Turn around, bright eyes," a post from several days ago which prominently featured an octopus. Bill wrote:

There is another potentially interesting connection to the symbol of an Octopus I stumbled across in looking at some old LDS endowment ...

​I wanted to be a writer when I was young, so much so that I barely paid any attention to starting or maintaining a career in anything else. Luckily, employment prospects were bleak after I graduated from university in Canada, so I would have struggled to launch a career even if I had had the burning desire to ...

The migraine is like a screwdriver twisting repeatedly in his left temple. It has been so ever since Edgar was a teenager. He used to joke about having a screw loose, but now at forty three he no longer finds it funny. The migraines are as much a part of his life as… what. Could it really be that the awful ...

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The book in which Garner decisively began to react-against Tolkien

I discuss Alan Garner's work in term of his Anxiety of Influence with respect to JRR Tolkien, over at my Notion Club Papers blog.

It is some decades since I read Harold Bloom's 1973 book "The Anxiety of Influence". The idea I retain from it is that a "strong" (and would-be "major") writer will sometimes (I recall that Bloom says always, which isn't true - but let's say "sometimes") have his work shaped by the "anxiety" of his major precursor. ...

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'AI' is inherently reactionary. all it can do is collect and rearrange. nothing new can come of it. no real progress is possible with it. and that seems to be the point. to stagnate humanity once and for all.

so perhaps it's not surprising that it finds advocates among traditionalists. at the same time, many ...

Today we take a break from our regular synchronicity programming for a random bit of Bible criticism. (This was going to be a parenthetical aside in a post on my Book of Mormon blog, but it grew too big for its britches.)

After Cain's offering is rejected, but before he murders Abel, the Lord speaks to him:

And the ...

"Creative power is used for destructive purposes. Nearly all modern arts are blasphemy."

This is a quotation from Towards the Mysteries by Swami Omananda (Maud McCarthy) which is presented as a record of communications from elevated spiritual beings. Most of this sort of stuff is spiritually sub-standard and not ...

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One of the difficult lessons, particularly emphasized by Owen Barfield, is that in every way the spiritual is prior to, and encompasses, the material.

The spiritual world existed first - material and incarnation came later, and locally. Reality is spiritual - with some parts of it also material. ...

disclaimer: this is a work of nonsense, meant to be used only for entertainment and divination purposes. any resemblance with actual wisdom is purely coincidental and certainly not intended by the author. reader discretion is advised.

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ebook / paperback

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it’s now the third time i do ...

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Ever since, as a young child, I saw a Scottish Curling game on TV (something like this), I have strongly disliked it - for one simple reason.

Because of the characters running along with brooms, sweeping their brushes in front of the stone.

If it was not for these sweeping guys, I would feel as ...

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Michael Green: self-deprecating comic fantasist - 1927-2018

People who are untruthful in a character-driven way, whose discourse (spoken or written, or perhaps visual) is not aimed-at correspondence with reality - seem to fall into two categories: fantasist and liar.

A fantasist is not truthful ...

My last post, "Sync bananza," included this image, originally from my 2022 post "Break on through to the other side":

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In order to make it correspond more closely to the Flammarion engraving, I used the mirror image of the Tarot card, as is obvious if you look at the Roman numeral at the top: IIIV. ...