Saturday, November 14th 2026

Bruce Charlton's Notions One MILLION Dollars... I mean satellites

🖼️

I notice that Dr Evil has supposedly applied for* permish - and funding - to launch One Million satellites, presumably at a cost of considerably more than One Trillion dollars - allegedly to satisfy the insatiable demand for more-and-ever-more "AI".

In other words, the global totalitarian system has already decided ...

Bruce Charlton's Notions Neither God the Father nor Jesus Christ can make anybody wholly-good

I just state this here as something that I only recently realized explicitly, and which seems important.

That, in all of scripture, there is no instance of the God of the Old Testament, or Jesus Christ in the New Testament, making somebody wholly-good - for example by divine creation, or by a miracle.

This strikes me ...

Friday, November 13th 2026

Meeting The Masters As the World Descends

As the world descends further into spiritual chaos, we need to learn to stand back and watch it with detachment. I know many feel they should resist the obvious evil and they are not wrong, but the truth is those who do actively resist risk get sucked into the same spiritual evil as that which they are resisting. It’s ...

Bruce Charlton's Notions Why do nearly-all modern people regard themselves as ethically superior to everybody in the past?

Ancient societies were all religious, which meant that morality was taught with a divine and cosmic basis.

Whatever the specifics of moral socialization between different religions, places, and times; morals would be related back to an underpinning of spirits, god/s, creation, afterlife etc.

Modern societies are not ...

From the Narrow Desert Failure to wake up

I'm breaking my radio silence just this once, due to an urgent sense that someone needs to read this now, or at least sometime before my scheduled resumption of posting. This is, God willing and the crick don't rise, the last post you'll get until January 17. One mustn't be too inflexible.

I think most people have ...

Thursday, November 12th 2026

Bruce Charlton's Notions Creating is active - but more like choosing, than a willed-striving (a comment on Laeth's comment)

I had missed Laeth's comment on an earlier post of mine about creativity. here is my comment on his comment.

L & I may or may not have the same underlying understanding of creativity; but perhaps I should clarify my meaning when I said that creativity is Not a matter of striving.

I wanted to clarify that being ...

Bruce Charlton's Notions What are the demands and disadvantages of Christianity?

What Jesus Christ did was to offer everyone (who wanted it) the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven.

Such was the Simple Positive Good News... Albeit this seems very quickly to have become hedged about with negations and threats, and distorted in many ways...

Such as the idea that the system of salvation ...

Tuesday, November 10th 2026

Oct 26th - Nov 8th 2026 (Audio)

Bruce Charlton's Notions Many small and useless triangles: the anti-human dysfunctionality of recent modern architecture

🖼️

It would be hard for me to have a lower opinion than I do about architects since WWII; and they seem to get worse.

The bad architecture of the 1950s-70s was boxy and nasty - but cheap and broadly functional. Since the 1990s, however, buildings are boxy, nasty, expensive and grossly dysfunctional.

The above is an ...

Bruce Charlton's Notions The poor are always with us? Why Jesus never made anybody fundamentally a Good person by a miracle

There are two usual (but wrong) attitudes towards this life on earth:

1. To finesse the presence of evil and entropy (death), such that life is asserted to be basically good - evil is merely mistaken or unfortunate; decline and death are to be welcomed. Life is "good enough" as is - if only people would recognize the ...

Monday, November 9th 2026

Bruce Charlton's Notions Why did God create a sterile, lifeless universe?

It is very strange that nearly all modern Christians believe that God created an almost-completely sterile, lifeless universe.

If true; this would surely be very strange indeed...

So very strange; that most modern people have - reasonably enough - concluded that if the universe is indeed very-nearly completely dead; ...

Meeting The Masters The Metaphysical Cross of the Sexes

The last few posts, summarised in the two complete essays that precede this one, have sought to answer the question of how men and women can be both equal and not equal by referring the matter back to the only place it can be answered which is the root of being. This post is a summing up of what has come before.

The ...

Bruce Charlton's Notions Cats with thumbs (2011) - a great TV advert

🖼️

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdA_fLC7WIQ

The forty second, 2011 TV advert "cats with thumbs" is an example of the kind of perfect miniature at which British film-making used-to excel.

For such a masterpiece, every element must be superb; and here it is.

The script must set the situation, develop it, and provide ...

Sunday, November 8th 2026

Oct 12th - Oct 25th 2026 (Audio)

Bruce Charlton's Notions What the creature in the block of ice wants you to think...

🖼️

Satan, from Dante's Inferno

[Gareth Knight] steadfastly remained true to his contacts, which took him down a long line of different magical experiences, firmly based on Christian magic.

When I met him in the 1990s at a workshop he had a very interesting take on science which had become too complex for modern ...

Meeting The Masters The Spark and the Vessel: the Two Poles of Being (complete essay)

When my book By No Means Equal was being prepared for print the publisher emailed me to say that certain passages contained what he called "problematic concepts involving unsubstantiated derogatory claims aimed at targeted groups (women, people of colour, et al.)" which contravened their editorial policy, and that ...

Saturday, November 7th 2026

trees and triads loving action

what follows got too long, and too preachy, for the comment section of this post. i was going to name it something boring like ‘on creativity’, but repented in time and chose this ambiguous title instead. it’s essentially the conclusion: creativity is loving action. i realize this too is ambiguous, but i think both ...

Bruce Charlton's Notions Spiritual contact: then and now (from willed control and external authority, to soul and love)

Spiritual contact in the past - for example the forms of monasticism, or the various formal magical systems - desired to re-establish contact with spirits (and perhaps the divine). But nearly-always the practices recognized the pitfalls and dangers of adults reverting to fully immersive and spontaneous Original ...

Meeting The Masters Macrocosm and Microcosm: Fludd’s Cosmic Map (complete essay)

🖼️

One of my favourite images is Robert Fludd’s engraving Integrae Naturae Speculum Artisque Imago (The Mirror of Whole Nature and the Image of Art), which comes from his book Utriusque Cosmi Majoris scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica, Physica atque Technica Historia (The Metaphysical, Physical and Technical History of ...

Bruce Charlton's Notions Synchronicity and "signs-following"

In reading Gareth Knight; I came across the concept of "signs-following" (S-F); which he used to describe the confirming effect of synchronicities that may follow after a significant life-experience, insight, or decision.

As an example of signs-following; a new life-project might be decided upon, and this is followed ...

Friday, November 6th 2026

Bruce Charlton's Notions How to be more creative

If creativity is understood as I described recently; then we can see why it is that in practice creativity is so rare, and also why the usual notion of "creativity" is almost the opposite of reality.

Creativity is only natural and spontaneous if and when a person is motivated by his "soul" - his ultimate and eternal ...

Thursday, November 5th 2026

Bruce Charlton's Notions The spiritual-magic of the rulers: narrowing, hardening, and concentration of the will

One of the themes that goes back to the start of this blog is that demotivation is a profound problem in modern Western civilization; and that this relates to our alienation - our lack of participation in the world outside of our-selves.

To this could be allied a feeling of lacking energy, which is partly a ...

Wednesday, November 4th 2026

Meeting The Masters The Spark and the Vessel. Part III

We have been talking about how Spirit, God, expresses himself in creation through duality and how the two poles of this expression can be identified as masculine and feminine aspects of reality. Some systems regard these as completely equal as you cannot have one without the other, but these systems would posit an ...

Bruce Charlton's Notions What is creativity?

Creativity is a positive personal contribution to divine creation - an addition to divine creation.

Creativity is possible because each Being is unique (ultimately; none other is the same) and therefore each Being has something unique to add to divine creation.

Indeed; creativity is an inevitable consequence of any ...

Bruce Charlton's Notions A core purpose is to learn from life, not try to make a better world

A core purpose is that we should learn from life; that is, should spiritually learn from our actually-existing life.

Learning is validly "core" because it can always be accomplished, by every person, in all possible circumstances.

Conversely; it is not our purpose to strive for "a better world".

People who strive for ...

Tuesday, November 3rd 2026

Bruce Charlton's Notions Saint Aidan's forked timber - Bamburgh church

🖼️

Saint Aidan's church in Bamburgh is an exceptionally beautiful and interesting building; dedicated to one of the most significant of British Saints: Aidan; who came from Iona in the middle 600s to found the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Holy Island.

This stimulated the Golden Age of Northumbria; during which the ...

Bruce Charlton's Notions Friendship between adult men and women

I don't like to write much of a personal nature on this blog, and I don't intend to start; so don't ask!

But it strikes me that friendship between adult men and women is a topic almost wholly neglected; indeed the possibility is sometimes outright denied, or else regarded as of insignificant importance compared with ...

Monday, November 2nd 2026

Bruce Charlton's Notions Conscientious Obedience versus Creativity - the problem of Christianity

For a very long time, in most of the world, Obedience has been prized as a Christian virtue.

Indeed, in practice, obedience is often the primary virtue; in the sense that obedience to God, the locally-dominant Church, and legitimate secular authority was instilled and enforced as the basis for all else.

I say ...

Saturday, October 31st 2026

Meeting The Masters The Spark and the Vessel. Part II

From the perspective of traditional metaphysics, and one might add just simple truth, the modern flattening of the sexes is a disruption of the primal duality necessary for manifestation because it attempts to resolve an inequality of value by enforcing an artificial identity of function. Thus, modern feminism does ...