In relation to today's earlier posts, the following may help concretize and clarify the nature of the argument. It picks up on the pub discussion about whether you or I would refuse to work as a guard in a concentration camp.

The "concentration camp guard" argument is usually framed as a matter of principles and ...

Maolsheachlann's recent post "Interesting Words" led me to leave a comment mentioning the scene in the Balzac novel Le Père Goriot where people keep putting the suffix -rama on different words. I last read that novel in 2012 and didn't remember all the details of the scene, so just now I looked it up, clicking on the ...

I had a series of very brief dreams:

1. I heard the single word "fridge."

2. I opened a refrigerator, and a live dove flew out.

3. I was explaining how to do something with a deck of Tarot cards: "So I cut once and then turn the deck over and look at the bottom card." I demonstrated this, and when I turned the deck ...

One thing about the Litmus Tests of our era is that they are learning opportunities: but more emphatically they are opportunities to learn something important and especially relevant to ourselves and this era of human history.

This is because the very success of Litmus Test issues - the large degree of (often ...

One of the deepest and (it seems to me) most important insights from Jesus, is that what is inevitable in this mortal life, is not for that reason Good.

Many things in this life may be unavoidable - including our own natures, work, and taxes, but also many others - and therefore we should make the best of them; but ...

Looking at my blog dashboard, I saw the beginning of the title of a recent post, "Many are . . .," and my mind completed it as "Many are cold, but few or frozen," a humorous alteration, independently invented many times, of "Many are called, but few are chosen." This was reinforced when, minutes later, I read an ...

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A baby after his Dead Goggles were installed, and before they became invisible

The animistic world view is a consequence of the evolved nature of human intelligence. Human intelligence is substantially social intelligence, a set of psychological adaptations which evolved as an adaptation to the ...

We often talk about White Trees around here --- the Tree of Life from the Book of Mormon and the various White Trees in the works of Tolkien. These were most recently juxtaposed in "Apple of ashes, brine to the burning throat" (July 19), a post which was -- appropriately, as we shall see -- occasioned by a passage in ...

I first read some of Geoffrey Ashe's Arthurian books in the early days of my spiritual researching. They were not exactly spiritual books but there was an overlap because the Arthurian mythos taps into a deep level of the psyche where imagination, legend and spiritual exploration all meet up and feed off each other. ...

I find it recurrently very striking that although I may admire, study, reflect upon individual persons (my "mentors"*) - my strongly positive feelings about such people almost-never extend beyond that specific person; almost-never includes even their close associates, disciples, heirs... and almost-never include the ...

Google is being weird again.

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Update: I published this post at 10:59 a.m. Exactly 47 minutes later, at 11:46, I photographed this logo, which was on the backpack of the motorcyclist stopped in front of me at a red light.

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My reason for posting the Google search-result screenshot ...

Is Substack corrupting? *

Corrupting towards psycho-spiritual assimilation into, and support of, the global totalitarian-materialist ideology?

Yes; it does seem to be.

And the reason is obvious: Substack exists and is configured to extract payment, and (as of 2026, in this world as-is - it was not always thus) ...

My new book to be published shortly, 28th July in the UK and 4th August in the US. I notice that according to its page on Amazon, it weighs 7.4 ounces and its dimensions are 5.51 x 0.64 x 8.5 inches. Perhaps more to the point, it has 256 pages. Here is a list of the contents. Introduction

Part One: End TimesA Body of ...

Today is Wednesday, and one of the things the Hermit card of the Tarot of the Divine reminds me of is a picture I drew many years ago representing that day of the week. I no longer have those pictures of the days of the week, but I remember that one very clearly. Since Wednesday is associated with Hermes/Mercury and ...

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By Ted Nasmith

It was only on my current read-through of The Lord of the Rings that I noticed, and was puzzled by, the question of what Gandalf the White was doing hanging-around a particular part of Fangorn Forest for at least four days before meeting Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli.

I explore this ...

It was only on my most recent, present, read through of The Lord of the Rings (and after more than 50 years of re-reading!) that I suddenly noticed the puzzling situation of Gandalf the White being in Fangorn Forest and in the vicinity of Treebeard's observatory hill; to be seen by Treebeard two days before Merry and ...

Wade has expressed the opinion that the Hermit with the White Hart "depicts a hopeful moment, and is a hopeful sign."

One of the preschoolers was wearing this T-shirt, which suggests the White Hart by way of the homophone heart, and associates it with hope. (The image is a reconstruction; I didn't take a ...

In an email last night, I wrote:The hart/hermit theme is still developing, but I think it likely has to do with Isaiah 35. "Then shall the lame man leap as an hart" -- cf. the hermit, who walks with a stick. The desert is a major theme of the chapter.I hadn't had that idea until I wrote it. It just came out as I was ...

The activity of mainstream modern Big Science is most reminiscent of a Soviet Union era organization – such as the grossly unprofitable Polish glass factory I saw on TV being inspected by John Harvey Jones in his TV show Troubleshooter.

The factory was producing vast quantities of defective drinking glasses which ...

It often seems that there have never been very many Christians in the world; because so very few people - even among the religious - seem even to want what Jesus offered: i.e. resurrected eternal life in Heaven, attainable by following him.

What the mass of religious people want most, is apparently a deity of ...

I saw this today on Peter Grant's latest meme post:

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It shows a person in a hooded green robe, a lantern, an owl, runes, and a green octopus-like Cthulhu doll.

Here is Laura Bruno's "Hermit Portal" painting, which I first posted on June 27, in "Owl-collecting (grand)mothers, octopuses, and Hermit ...

Introductory note: This is a slightly revised version of a piece I have previously posted. It seems pertinent in the light of the previous post serving as an example of what I consider to be a well-meaning but misguided and ultimately failed experiment.

Most of the time during our years in Yercaud not much happened. ...

Mark Docherty says so, in a post titled "Tyconius was right." The name is also spelt Tychonius (and sometimes misspelt as Typhonius, apparently!), and the Russian spelling, Тихоний, matches my surname very closely. Quoting a former pope, Docherty writes that

for Tyconius, it is not the infidels who will ...

For most Christians in recorded history (although not in the Gospels) being-a-Christian is the same thing as being an observant member of "The" church.

But, of course, the identity of that The as it is applied to church; has varied in often incompatible and hostile - even lethal, and frequently evil - ways; since ...

I'm old enough to remember when each of these countries had tens of millions of people.

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Last night one of the songs the algorithm lobbed my way was Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" performed in the style of System of a Down.

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The repeated oxymoronic line "The sun would set so high" synched with a meme I had just seen on Barnhardt's.

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As I have said in "Last night I ...

My last post, "Apple of ashes, brine to the burning throat," mentions that in the Book of Mormon, Lehi sees a tree with white fruit but does not mention the color of the tree itself, while Nephi, wishing to have the same vision, sees a white tree but does not mention the color of its fruit. It also notes that this ...

A lot of modern people are(or claim to be) averse to the exclusivism of "Christianity".

By "exclusivism" they usually refer to some particular self-identified Christian church, or denomination, or a selection of such churches.

And by exclusivism is meant a collection of various ideas that limit salvation: for ...

Can we genuinely - by making wise and responsible lifestyle choices - fight The System, and thereby work incrementally towards a Good, a Christian, world?

The true and ultimate answer, the answer from Jesus Christ, is: No, we cannot.

(Also; even if we could truly make a better this-world by our choices; that would ...

I just read this in Orson F. Whitney's Elias: An Epic of the Ages. The poet is apostrophizing worldly fame and commenting on its futility.

Apple of ashes to the longing lip!Brine to the burning throat and thirsting soul!Phantom, delusion, misty ghost of fame!Voidest and vainest of all vanities!

Whitney's intended ...