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Big Announcement: I have started a SmugMug photography portfolio at www.jcdy.smugmug.com!
I have spent some time re-editing some of my favorite photos - like this one - and ordering test prints to check brightness and colors. In the process I’ve started using Lightroom and learned a lot about the difference between how photos look on a backlit screen vs printed on paper, and how to use histograms to judge brightness levels so that photos will look good on different monitors and also on paper. I’m now finally ready to make the portfolio public, and very excited about it! This is a whole new stage of photography for me!
This photo is from January 2015, when I lived in Chicago. I was busy writing my dissertation that year but I did find some time to really enjoy the winter more than I ever had before (having grown up in California). The times I spent exploring the frozen-over lakeshore was some of the most fun I’ve ever had with my camera. Re-editing this made me miss Chicago! But I’m also having fun exploring Boston, and I’m hoping for some real ice- and snow-scapes next year now that I have a better sense of the Boston area. (Though there are still plenty of places I haven’t explored yet - still always looking for recommendations!)
Regarding EXIF data: sadly, it seems like Flickr has a bug in uploads today and won’t show EXIF data. So I’ll just say here that this photo was taken with a Sony Nex 5T and the 16-50mm kit lens.
An area between two positions, mid ground is that point that defines what lay between the extremes. Many would challenge the placement of the main subject in the center of an image. However, Leonardo De Vinci might suggest otherwise. In his notes that are for public view in the Uffizi, (Art Gallery) located in Florence, Italy, one dissertation stands out. In it, he makes mention of a discovery he made around 1486. "Where two horizon lines meet two vertical lines (leaving nine equal areas), we are given four points of tension.
He was saying that if you wish to introduce tension to your painting, place the subject on one of the four points. Conversely, if you do not wish to introduce tension to your painting, do not place your subject on one of the four points. He looked at what we refer to as the "rule of thirds" in a very different way, Not as a tool for balance, but rather one of tension. Therefore, not wanting to introduce tension to my image, leads me to follow in the ways of Leonardo.
long stories shortened... (discarded and abandoned and intertwined short stories) well..actually they are chunks and fragmets and notes of stories that never made it
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a young PhD math candidate writing his dissertation on an obscure arab mathematician from the middle ages who specialized in cycles and periods in infinite series and develops a process to determine prime number density in a large number space. (which is all and good) except this makes it an excellent tool to decrypting military grade encryption, which is based on the computational difficulty of factoring large numbers into their prime components
the arab mathematician was ultimately censured by the religious mullahs for developing tools to rationalize the infinite, which is of course the nature of Allah and for man to attempt to place Allah into a human scale is blasphemy
so the arab mathematician disappears and the young phd candidate finds that his dissertation has been suspended pending review but cant get any information on who is reviewing it
finally another young mathematician approaches him and starts a long discussion on math and the nature of numbers and the mathematicians love of the underlying structure of reality that math represents. the phd candidate is leary of this mathematician cause he wont answer what he does or where he went to school or how he knows so many cutting edge fields in math
eventually, the young mathematician offers the phd candidate a position with the NSA, National Security Agency, (where all the big crypto and high math goes on) but explains that if he accepts that he will essentially disappear from his current world. his work will be classified, he will not be able to publish in academic journals or speak in public, or talk about his work to his friends on the outside, but the compensation is that he
would be able to work unfettered with the greatest math minds in the country, totally funded, free to explore any field or fancy he thought. after a few moments of thought, the phd accepts.
then the story will go back to the arab mathematician who is also approached my a young beared mullah, who offers him a position within his group of thinkers who do ponder and explore the nature of nature reality and Allah through mathematics, but that by joining them he would need to disappear from the world, after a few minutes of thought, he too accepts...
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Daniel sipped his 6th coffee (colloidal suspension for caffeine transport) while his batch jobs on ramanet, the Indian supergrid, finished their checksum verification. His chin, a bit stubbly, itched. His eyes, a bit red, were sore. The goa trance shoutcast feed had mushed into a fast cadence drone. The flat screen monitor warped and bulged with the oscillating fan blowing on Daniel's face
'O' glamorous larval life of a PhD student...' he jotted and doodle-circled on his notepad.
Daniel cracked his neck and jutted his jaw, stretching out the accumulation of kinks, as RamaNet finished the final integrity check on his dataset. this two hour round of processing on the Indian supergrid would cost about $130 out of his precious grant fund, but you couldnt beat the bargain. 120 minutes times 150,000 PCs in the RamaNet processing collective = 1,080,000,000 seconds or 18,000,000 minutes or 300,000 hours or 12500 days or 34.25 years of processing time for the price of a video game. Calculation was commoditized now. You uploaded your pre-fromatted dataset to RamaNet. the data was packeted and sent to out to 150,000 Indians who lent a few percents of never-to-be missed CPU cycles off their systems for background processing. when their alotted package was completed it was sent back to RamaNet for re-assembly into something coherent for the buyer. in return the Indians got a rebate on their net access charges or access to premier bollywood galleries or credit towards their own processing charges. a good deal all the way around. Daniel's dataset, an anthology of complex proofs from a long-dead arab mathematician, was queued with amateur weather forecast modeling, home-brewed digital CGI for indie movies, chaos theory-based currency trading algorithms, etc. the really high end, confidential jobs, like protein folding analysis or big pharm drug trials were more likely handled by the huge western collectives of several million collaborative systems, usually high-performance machines in dedicated corporate server farms. the cost there was out of Daniel's range, but you got a faster return and better promises of encryption for your buck.
Daniel scratched his scalp and flexed his fingers. 'two months from today i will be a doctor of mathematics...and no job. damnit. i need to find something fast.' Daniel calculated in his mind how quickly the student loans repayments would kick in and completely wipe him out. RamaNet would have done it in nanoseconds, ha! he laughed to himself. Daniel had avoided the rounds of job interviews and recommendations that passed his way. he was too absorbed in his research to look ahead, and perhaps a bit intimidated by the idea of the job hunt flea market. flexing his CV, getting a monkey suit, trying to explain his research to recruiters, who were often the same finger-counting business majors in college that made his skin crawl. Daniel always felt a bit embarrassed when he announced he was math PhD candidate. folks would immediately glaze over,
tsk tsk out a 'that's interesting', and swiftly change the subject. something will come up, he mantra'd to himself over and over, something will come up. stick with ali, there is something real in there, just a bit deeper. the real problem was his thesis advisor. dr. fuentes was not returning his calls, his secretary was not taking appointments from Daniel. he had submitted his finished draft of his thesis two weeks ago, but hadnt heard back since, except for a cryptic email saying that the review committee was having some issues with his paper and that Daniel would be hearing from him shortly. Daniel was rerunning his calculations on RamaNet to assuage the gnawing doubt that he completely botched some component of his argument and that the review committee was debating some manner of telling him to redo the entire effort. no PhD and no job. that would ice the cake. Daniel started calculating his body mass and general aerodynamic resistance relative to the height of the school cathedral to figure out if he had time to reach a terminal velocity before impact...only a failed math PhD would attempt to determine at what speed his body would smack concrete, he morbidly thought to himself.
ali ja'far muhammed ibn abdullah al-farisi slipped meditatively on his cup of water, thinking about his proof. he dipped a finger in the cup and held up a droplet of water under his fingertip, watching the sunlight prisimatically splay out on the mouth of the cup. 'praise be Allah and his wonderous bounty' he mumured to himself.
the elders had been in conference all day over his proof. though the heavy doors to their chamber were closed, he would occasionally hear muffled but distinctly angry shouts. ali sat on a divan in the anteroom, served numerous cups of tea by an obviously nervous secretary. ali knew there was deep resistance to his research, but for the life of him he couldnt figure out why. he was a simple mathematician. he came up with some unique observations. he wanted to share them with his peers...
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Overview: biotech researcher discovers a new life-extension technology and is murdered. He is cryogenically frozen for 150 years. When he is
revived he must stop a dark corporate conspiracy – and find his murderer.
Summer 2015 - Hot genius free-lance biotech researcher unravels the key component of a radical life-extension gene therapy that will ensure 300 years of robust life to its recipients. The researcher is murdered shortly after he hides the critical component. His distraught friend has him cryogenically frozen. 150 years later, the researcher is revived by the same major bio-med corporation for which he had originally been working.
Quickly he realizes that their motives are less than altruistic: his modification of the gene therapy is needed to resolve an unforeseen debilitation now creeping up in the recipients of the life-extension process. The recipients, now nearing 125 years off added life, are decompensating into psychotics. The researcher at first tries to remember and reconstruct what he did with the hidden critical component, but stops in disgust when he learns that in the past 150 years the life-extension therapy has been reserved solely for the ultra-affluent and has created an extreme and cruel global gerontocratic elite. He voices his disgust to his corporate minders, who cease being beneficent and show their true colors as trying to gain control of this critical technology in order to control the elites.
In the process of dealing with the corporation, he learns about his murder and begins investigating.As he comes closer to the identity of his murderer, he uncovers a wider conspiracy and is the target of more murder attempts.
He was killed by a friend in 2015. The friend was the CEO of a small bio-gen firm that the researcher was doing the LET work for. The CEO, a biz-head with a genetics academic background, took the researcher’s work and exploited it as his own, in the process growing his small firm into a bio-med powerhouse and him into one of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
The CEO also was the first recipient of the LET and is now 190 years old, but doesn’t look a day over 45. Smart, urbane, ruthless, the CEO used his wealth and position to start the cabal of Ultras. It is a faction of the top 50 smartest and wealthiest people in the world who have ‘ascended from the world’ (faked their demise) and control the global economy with their vast coordinated wealth. Perhaps they will call themselves ‘The Ascended’. We need to decide how the cabal lives. Are they sequestered on a luxurious island compound, or do they live in the open, surgically re-sculpted after each faked death, or do they live in the open.
Also we need to figure out what the world will look and feel like in 150 years.
As the ultras decompensate into psychosis, the CEO orders the researcher to be revived in order to find a cure. The CEO had the researcher’s lab notes decrypted and figured that the he was close if not successful in finding the missing component to stabilize the LET.
Tiberius Syndrome: the decline into cruel psychosis experienced by the ultras, named after the roman emperor Tiberius’ degenerate behavior after he sequestered himself on Capri.
The ironic twist might be that there is no cure, no stabilization. The psychosis is not the result of the LET alone, but also due in part to the unfettered ego/wills of the ultras. Absolute power corrupts…
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a brazilian hacking syndicate was subcontracted by a st petersberg crew to run interference on a hit on SWIFT, the global currency clearinghouse notification network. The UniFavela clan was going to run a multi-flank raid. They specialized in fast propagating virii and had created a custom mail-in virus that exploited a few microsoft vulnerabilities that they had discovered and kept mum. Their target was a Latin American PR spokesman listed on the corporate web site for press queries. The PR flak would be just the sleepy guard on the wall for their virus to slip past. 30 minutes after opening an inocuous spoofed email from a French e-trade publication requesting clarification on the SWIFT-Indentrus partnership. the virus would port scan and map its entire site LAN, salmoning its way up the router paths till it found the deep waters of the main corporate campus network in Brussels. Shortly, the internal LAN at Brussels would be suffering switch and router buffer overflows and traffic would gasp, ack, and sputter. UniFavela would then towel whip out a vanilla DDOS on the main company web site, any INTERNIC-registered addresses, and any other system in the IP block reserved for SWIFT that had previously port scanned as interesting, or ,even, as nothing. Mongols charging the village gates and tossing flaming torches on thatched roofs. IT Operations would be running to and fro, trying to figure out the internal bandwidth crunch and if there was a bleedout causing the external net problems.
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The Post-Human Story of Minos:
the CEO of a powerful commercial combine is bore an illegitimate son by his indiscreet wife in retaliation for his own dalliances. the son has a hideous deformity but is fantastically brilliant - brilliant enough for the father overcome his own repulsion of the child - as a bastard and a freak. the father sequesters the child in an elaborate virtual domain. the child, a hacker savant, is used to breach competitor nets. but as his power in the digital realm expands, the child transforms into the tyrant-monster. using the nets, he lashes out at people who have caused him pain, then evolves into enjoying the taste of terror and fear. He becomes the Minotaur.
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'there was a mad scramble amongst all the big spook governments, dark side corporations, and the privacy maccabees once it was determined that quantum computation had left the tidal pool of academia, grown legs and air-breathing lungs, and was headed for the nat sec intel highlands. all previous encryption models were rendered obsolete, and worse, exposed. QC became an undefiable xray spotlight, laying bare any encrypted secret with a ease of opening a mathematical candy wrapper. And for a while it swung the advantage back to the state in the digital Boer War against the freecon partisans.'
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The Oort, to the Intras, looked as one people. Extra-stellar hillbillies, ekeing out a subsistance existence on extracted organics from the frozen crud comets and other planetesimals of the Oort Cloud that slung around the solar system in a 1K AU circuit. To the Oort there was no Oort. Each station, each kampong was distinct and seperate. Seperate dialects, traditions, norms, goals. Some were scientific collectives, some were tired mining operations, some were intense sectarian cults - they shared little between themselves beyond necessary trade links for scarce commodities.
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A young prince is disgraced in an internal court scandal and sent into a quasi-exile on a worthless mission. On his travels he builds the wisdom and learns the skills necessary to be a just and effective leader.
His exile was a gambit by his patriarch to remove Genji from the arena of pointless court intrigues and develop him as a real leader. The patriarch dispatched a team of loyal praetorians to discreetly follow and protect Genji on his odyssey.
Genji was sent as an emissary to the Oort system. He must pass through the Martian-Saturnine corridor, populated with industrial trading guilds and their private militias.
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Genealogy becomes paramount in a closed culture; hierarchy by heredity. Reference the roman patrician class’ death-grip obsession with lineage, or the medieval Japanese imperial court’s strict intra-elite caste system.
But in an era of extreme genetic engineering, how can bloodlines retain their importance? Perhaps this is the wrong question. Perhaps in an era of extreme genetic engineering, authentic bloodlines can only retain their importance. The longevity of an unchanged gene line demonstrates success in evolutionary competition. Over time however, the fitness of a rigidly enforced and ‘sequestered’ gene line will degrade. Consider the hemophilia of the European royal strata.
I would not want the imperial court of the inner system to be pure blue bloods, eschewing genetic manipulation. Rather I would have them take the opposite tack – and embrace genetic engineering in the pursuit of perfecting particular socially valued or distinctive attributes; a roman nose, elongated refined fingers, even the possession of certain ‘noble’ afflictions (for ex., the aforementioned hemophilia as a sign of noble lineage).
The elites should pursue genealogy with the same passion and gusto as horse breeders; studs and mares and percentages of bloodlines, enforced and suppressed gene expressions, surrogates, and gene modes des saisons.
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a bum finds a the wallet and keys of a man who jumped from a bridge
he goes to his townhouse to find something to eat or steal
is impressed and overwhelmed with the man's townhouse
showers, eats, gets cleaned up, finds some clothes
is ready to leave when he helps a woman wrestling with groceries at her door
she thanks him, but looks stunned.
‘are you the man in #560? umm..i have lived here for 3 years and have never actually seen you. you seem to leave so early in the morning and get
home so late and keep to yourself.’
they spend 30 minutes talking, having a generally warm friendly encounter.
‘well, I am so glad to have finally met you. Hope to see you soon.’ As she closes her door, the bum turns to leave but pauses and thinks for a moment, then goes back into the man's townhouse
he pours through the man's papers and keepsakes and learns that the man has no family that he speaks with, no friends, lives off a well-endowed trust fund
and
the bum moves in and takes over the mans identity
he brings warmth and sincerity to the man's identity
what makes a hermit tick? what lengths do they go to to remove themselves from society? does it become a game to avoid contact, trying to become a shadow, a phantom? does society dissolve away as a mental force in their thoughts, atrophy away or does it become an amputated impression?
what divsion line stands between a hermit and convict in solitary? the hermit, by and large, chooses their isolation, the convict has it enforced upon them. at what point does the human need for society or socialization collapse? is there anything left that we can inspect and evaluate? a hermit, however, is able to maintain walls against the Great Other, which would imply that they are seeking refuge from the world. a schizo or an autistic will be physically surrounded by others but unable or incapable of making contact.
when does the will to contact die? what is left over? do humans require contact to retain our humanity? can you love and sacrifice in a vacuum?
what defines humanity? oooh, a big question...
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genetic engineering will continue to deconstruct the human species
there will be catastrophic disasters: gene sequence specific viruses engineered to attack 'types' of people. Der Genkampf
petroleum will be replaced- hydrogen-powered locomotion and green power (in the wealthy states). the poor states will continue to be held hostage to oil politics
(cultures and civilizations do not move forward uneringly. they spasticly jerk forward and fro, in clumps andgrains, never ever as a lemming death drive.)
developed economies will be netized. a new state structure will be needed to manage and dsitribute resources. the corporate structure, the commercial backbone of the capitalist democracy, will replace the republic. it is flexible to markets and political forces, insistent on accountability, it provides a sufficient compromise between individual representation and republican government. they will begin their political evolution as projects in community development. assurances of an educated workforce by charter education. assurances of uninterrupted utilities by running their own power/water etc. net-based marketplaces create corporate agoras. employees are in fact de facto citizens of the corporation. citizenship, or regular employment, will be a reward for merit, stock shares will count towards suffrage.
great corporate collectives will arise. housing, education, security...all the needs of the middle class will be absorbed in the corporate state. the tradtional state will cede roles and responsibilities to the corporate state as their resources dwindle. a few isolated violent reactions (military or legal)by the republics against the corporate states, but they will fail over time. against, or more so, in conjunction with the homogenized corporatsists wil be the diasporae, non-corporates will glom to other modes of networked alignment, ethnic allegiance will become stronger over time - as the chinese, indian, and jewish disporaestrengthen as a formula for a successful competition against/with the corporates.
the american state, succored by its overwhelming techo-military supremancy, loses its mission, its vision - substitutes will to dominate for will to excel - and falls into the deep narcotic, insulated slumber of the unassailable. GE, nano, and the banknote net weaken the mythic cohesion of the american spirit. we are no longer united by common experience (mass-mediated or otherwise) the promise of science to make us stronger, smarter, near immortal is held like a manifest destiny or a divine IOU for services rendered to humanity.
Dissertations of the Prophecies by Thomas Newton 1758.
Which have remarkably been fulfilled and at this time are fulfilling in the world.
Dr. Thomas Newton, Chaplain to His Majesty and Her Royal Highness the Princess Dowager of Wales.
Printed for J. And R. Tonson in the Strand, London. Half Leather on marbled boards, 443 pages.
The e-book is here: books.google.com.au/books?id=n14XAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA402&am...
Dissertation title: Do the interactions between astronomy and religion, beginning in prehistory, form a distinct religious tradition? How much influence did astronomy possess in the prehistoric origins of religion? Was astrolatry (star worship) the first religion?
My MA dissertation is due on Friday. It is Wednesday. Shit is getting real, and so is the tea consumption.
I’m so pleased to announce that I have achieved a Distinction Grade of 87 on my Master’s Dissertation covering the prehistoric origins of astronomy and religion and the introduction of my theory of an Astronic religious tradition being the oldest tradition of its kind, far preceding the Abrahamic, Dharmic and Taoic traditions. #astronomy #religion #Astronic #Cometan
If you wish to read my dissertation, you can do so here - link.medium.com/pOBc4N87D9
The study below was derived from facts uncovered while doing research for the following Doctorial dissertation:
Light to the shadows of their mind:
Criminal tactics and strategies
Criminology Department Dept.
Chatwick University
Storyline:
The idiot had fallen for the ruse, hook line and sinker. Believing Sara had been kidnapped by a loan shark, he had willingly come to rescue his damsel in distress, bringing the $40,000 he believed she owed her life for. Seeing Sara handcuffed and bound to a chair had been too much for him, and he tried to attack Shane in a vain attempt to rescue her. Shane had unwisely hit him with his pistol, forcing Sara to wait until he regained consciousness to implement the second phase of her plan. Shane had unbound Sara until that time arrived, and she busied herself with counting her money with a lovingly caressing hand, hoping the lovesick twit had not been dumb enough to pawn the family jewels to raise it.
As she was contemplating these facts, she stole an uncaring eye on her would be love- sick suitor, whom she thought of, indifferently, as a clueless naive Romeo. Then she looked up at the blank faced Shane, who still held the rod lamely in his grasp. She hissed at Shane to tie the young man up securely. He did so, roughly tying him up, and then hand cuffing him to the chair he moved next to Sara’s vacated one.
Shane was not very bright, but he listened. He also liked to drink, and Sara had dangled a whiskey bottle as added incentive, not allowing him to drink until after the house job had been carried out. For, once Romeo started stirring, Shane would again tie up Sara and handcuff her to her chair. Then he would slap awake the lovelorn Romeo, coercing him to give him the combination to his parent’s house safe, threatening with a knife, to torture the squirming Sara if necessary. Sara’s Romeo should give the combination up fairly easily, for the dolt actually believed that Sara was as madly in love with him as he was with her. While she waited, Sara allowed her mind to relieve the events that had brought the rich young fly into her web.
Sara had literally bumped into Romeo a couple of months ago while at the horse track. But, as it so happened, it was a young lady who had garnered Sara’s attention first. The pretty Miss had stood out in a black satin blouse, glossy lime green skirt, and wide floppy hat. As she moved she sent flickering with rich sparkles, the stunning collection of emerald jewelry that adorned her shapely figure. This obviously wealthy girl was making her way timidly through the crowd while stuffing a wallet she had pulled from a lime green purse with a thick wad of track winnings.
Sara had trailed her through the crowd, waiting for opportunity to present its self. It did when the purse was set down, leaving it temporarily unattended. But, as her long slender fingers had reached for it, a young suited man dropped his race form and backed into Sara cutting her off. Sara apologized, employing the British accent she had been using that day, and picked up his race form, handing it to him with a sweet mousey smile. Thwarted, she then turned and immediately retreated back into the throng, but not before noticing that she had caught his eye. Sara had not found this surprising, given how fetching she must have looked in one of the customary long silky dresses that she habitually would pour herself into when on the prow! Sara wore them mainly because the slick material of the dress usually allowed her to slip in and out of tight situations, both physically and persuasively.
It was later that evening, still at the track and with no luck outside of bad, that Sarah saw Romeo, alone and looking vulnerable . She went up and slipped up against him, starting to feel for his wallet, but for some indiscernible reason, aborted the attempt. Apologizing instead, she engaged him into conversation, more out of curiosity than anything else. She even allowed him to invite her out for a bite to eat. It was then that she learned enough about his background to stir her felonious senses. Especially once she learned that the richly jeweled young lady whose fat wallet she had attempted to acquire was the Romeos twin sister.
Sara had then turned on her not inconsiderable charm. Using the British accent and faking the role of a ragamuffin vulnerable foreigner, Sara (who had been born in the Bronx) started seeing the rich kid for a couple of months. Making Romeo keep their clandestine affair a secret from his parents and sister, Sara carefully wove her silken web until the innocently gullible horsefly was wrapped up beyond his ability to fly. She had successfully gotten him to fall head over heels in love with her. Like a prowling cat, she waited, plotting meticulously, a way to part a small fortune away from him. When she had learned his parents would be in Europe for a month, she put her plan into action. She let Romeo in on her terrible secret, a racetrack gambling addiction. This had led to her “troubles” with a loan shark. After accepting her suitor’s offer to help her in any way possible, she suddenly vanished from his life. Taking the time to hire Shane to case the isolated country house where Romeo, his parents, twin sister and two older servants lived. She also convinced Shane, for a piece of the pie, to act the part of the loan shark heavy. Sara also bought a one way Cunard White Star Liner ticket to England to make her permanent escape. Once all the pieces of her scam were in place, she then sent Romeo the note pleading for him to bring the money, and rescue her from the Loan Shark.
Sara‘s scam had gone like a Rolex’s clockwork, and she now was forty thousand dollars richer. Now all she needed was that combination to set her up for life. She licked her lips, savoring the thoughts about what would conspire a once the combination was hers. Shane would again render Romeo unconsciousness, unbind Sara, and the pair would leave their victim incapacitated in the apartment, a living insurance policy, while they paid a nighttime visit to his parent’s isolated country manor.
********************** Postscript **********
It was early afternoon the next day when an ocean liner set sail from Boston Harbor, bound for a British Port. The majestic ships’ railed deck was lined with passengers watching the departure. Many more were lined up on the dock waving to the departing ocean bound liner. Several of those on the docks, mainly men, may have noticed a lady, with loose long raven hair, clad in a black satin blouse and a lime green skirt, with jewelry set with opulent emeralds sparkling merrily in the bright sun. No one would believe what the pretty faced girl with the satisfied look on her face had been up to the last 24 hours.
Sara was very satisfied and pleased with herself as her liner left the port towards its destination: a port in merry olde England. She put a hand down to hold onto her flapping lime green skirt as it caught in the breeze. Her eyes once again admiring the emerald bracelet and rings she was so brazenly wearing.
She allowed her mind to travel back to the early hours of that very morning, as her and Shane had entered the mansion, wearing Halloween masks and carrying small black satchels.
Romeo had accurately given Shane the combination to the mansions house safe located in the den. It had contained a bonanza of old bundled bills and several cases of amazingly bright sets of jewelry. Then came the part Sara had been waiting for, the girl’s room! Romeo’s twin sister’s boudoir where she insisted on keeping her jewels, rather than locking the expensive things in the house safe.
Sara could see that Shane became aroused as he had slapped a hand to the mouth of the sleeping Girl, jarring her awake. The look of terror in the girl’s eyes had made him drool with excitement. He made her get up, helpless and vulnerable in a long loose fitting purple satin night gown. Shane than tied her squirming figure securely to a chair, gagged her, and let her watch as Sara began to rob her blind. Shane, standing by the wide-eyed girl holding his knife to her heaving chest, did not understand why Sara was taking some of the captive’s long gowns and shiny clothes, but then he wasn’t meant too.
Sara saved the jewel case for last. Making sure their captive was watching, She pulled opened and meticulously picked clean the drawers of the massive oak jewel chest on a bedside stand next to their captive’s chair. The last drawer seemed to contain nothing but sets of satin gloves, which Sara happily added to the pile in the small black satchel. Underneath she found hidden a set of diamonds (ring, bracelet, cascading earrings and matching necklace) that put anything they had taken of her Mothers jewels to shame! Sara picked up the sets necklace and placed it around the frightened girl’s throat, admiring its fiery radiance. Sara went back to the bottom drawer and scooped up the rest of the set. After she placed it inside the now bulging satchel she turned and looked Romeos’ twin dead in the eye, commanding Shane to search her. He did, removing the necklace, and sucking off a solid gold pinky ring. He handed the loot to Sara, who had come over to take it; she looked at the struggling girl and said in a sultry voice, you will never wear these pretty toys again! They had then left her room; the girl forlornly slumped down, a sad little portrait in a limp purple satin bundle.
Sara had left Shane off at the apartment to deal with Romeo. She had previously doctored Shane’s promised bottle of whiskey with knock out drops. Whatever the pair’s fate would be, she did not possess the slightest worry or care.
After leaving Shane off, the rest of her plan had gone smooth as silk. Sara had gone to her recently rented hotel suit, placed the satchels in a steam trunk, changed into one of her newly acquired outfits and jewelry, then left the hotel in a rented (under an assumed name) chauffeured Limo for Boston, all before the sun rose. She boarded the liner as soon as it began to admit its passengers.
Sara’s mind came back to the present as the ocean line’s steam horn gave an explosively loud whoop as it sailed from the harbor. Watching the docks filled with spectators grow ever smaller, Sarah envisioned herself arriving in a similar set of London docks on the other side of the ocean. There, she would assume the life of a wealthy debutante, living the good life from the riches of her ill-gotten gains. She may even adopt the first name of Romeos twin sister for a self-amusing ruse; after all, she would be wearing the poor wretches’ gowns and jewels to all the best affairs!
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Courtesy of Chatwick University Archives
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The purpose of these chronological photos and accompanying stories, articles is to educate, teach, instruct, and generally increase the awareness level of the general public as to the nature and intent of the underlying criminal elements that have historically plagued humankind.
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As with any work of fiction or fantasy the purpose is for entertainment and/or educational purposes only, and should never be attempted in real life.
We accept no responsibility for any events occurring outside this website.
The study below was derived from facts uncovered while doing research for the following Doctorial dissertation:
Light to the shadows of their mind:
Criminal tactics and strategies
Criminology Department Dept.
Chatwick University
Storyline:
The idiot had fallen for the ruse, hook line and sinker. Believing Sara had been kidnapped by a loan shark, he had willingly come to rescue his damsel in distress, bringing the $40,000 he believed she owed her life for. Seeing Sara handcuffed and bound to a chair had been too much for him, and he tried to attack Shane in a vain attempt to rescue her. Shane had unwisely hit him with his pistol, forcing Sara to wait until he regained consciousness to implement the second phase of her plan. Shane had unbound Sara until that time arrived, and she busied herself with counting her money with a lovingly caressing hand, hoping the lovesick twit had not been dumb enough to pawn the family jewels to raise it.
As she was contemplating these facts, she stole an uncaring eye on her would be love- sick suitor, whom she thought of, indifferently, as a clueless naive Romeo. Then she looked up at the blank faced Shane, who still held the rod lamely in his grasp. She hissed at Shane to tie the young man up securely. He did so, roughly tying him up, and then hand cuffing him to the chair he moved next to Sara’s vacated one.
Shane was not very bright, but he listened. He also liked to drink, and Sara had dangled a whiskey bottle as added incentive, not allowing him to drink until after the house job had been carried out. For, once Romeo started stirring, Shane would again tie up Sara and handcuff her to her chair. Then he would slap awake the lovelorn Romeo, coercing him to give him the combination to his parent’s house safe, threatening with a knife, to torture the squirming Sara if necessary. Sara’s Romeo should give the combination up fairly easily, for the dolt actually believed that Sara was as madly in love with him as he was with her. While she waited, Sara allowed her mind to relieve the events that had brought the rich young fly into her web.
Sara had literally bumped into Romeo a couple of months ago while at the horse track. But, as it so happened, it was a young lady who had garnered Sara’s attention first. The pretty Miss had stood out in a black satin blouse, glossy lime green skirt, and wide floppy hat. As she moved she sent flickering with rich sparkles, the stunning collection of emerald jewelry that adorned her shapely figure. This obviously wealthy girl was making her way timidly through the crowd while stuffing a wallet she had pulled from a lime green purse with a thick wad of track winnings.
Sara had trailed her through the crowd, waiting for opportunity to present its self. It did when the purse was set down, leaving it temporarily unattended. But, as her long slender fingers had reached for it, a young suited man dropped his race form and backed into Sara cutting her off. Sara apologized, employing the British accent she had been using that day, and picked up his race form, handing it to him with a sweet mousey smile. Thwarted, she then turned and immediately retreated back into the throng, but not before noticing that she had caught his eye. Sara had not found this surprising, given how fetching she must have looked in one of the customary long silky dresses that she habitually would pour herself into when on the prow! Sara wore them mainly because the slick material of the dress usually allowed her to slip in and out of tight situations, both physically and persuasively.
It was later that evening, still at the track and with no luck outside of bad, that Sarah saw Romeo, alone and looking vulnerable . She went up and slipped up against him, starting to feel for his wallet, but for some indiscernible reason, aborted the attempt. Apologizing instead, she engaged him into conversation, more out of curiosity than anything else. She even allowed him to invite her out for a bite to eat. It was then that she learned enough about his background to stir her felonious senses. Especially once she learned that the richly jeweled young lady whose fat wallet she had attempted to acquire was the Romeos twin sister.
Sara had then turned on her not inconsiderable charm. Using the British accent and faking the role of a ragamuffin vulnerable foreigner, Sara (who had been born in the Bronx) started seeing the rich kid for a couple of months. Making Romeo keep their clandestine affair a secret from his parents and sister, Sara carefully wove her silken web until the innocently gullible horsefly was wrapped up beyond his ability to fly. She had successfully gotten him to fall head over heels in love with her. Like a prowling cat, she waited, plotting meticulously, a way to part a small fortune away from him. When she had learned his parents would be in Europe for a month, she put her plan into action. She let Romeo in on her terrible secret, a racetrack gambling addiction. This had led to her “troubles” with a loan shark. After accepting her suitor’s offer to help her in any way possible, she suddenly vanished from his life. Taking the time to hire Shane to case the isolated country house where Romeo, his parents, twin sister and two older servants lived. She also convinced Shane, for a piece of the pie, to act the part of the loan shark heavy. Sara also bought a one way Cunard White Star Liner ticket to England to make her permanent escape. Once all the pieces of her scam were in place, she then sent Romeo the note pleading for him to bring the money, and rescue her from the Loan Shark.
Sara‘s scam had gone like a Rolex’s clockwork, and she now was forty thousand dollars richer. Now all she needed was that combination to set her up for life. She licked her lips, savoring the thoughts about what would conspire a once the combination was hers. Shane would again render Romeo unconsciousness, unbind Sara, and the pair would leave their victim incapacitated in the apartment, a living insurance policy, while they paid a nighttime visit to his parent’s isolated country manor.
********************** Postscript **********
It was early afternoon the next day when an ocean liner set sail from Boston Harbor, bound for a British Port. The majestic ships’ railed deck was lined with passengers watching the departure. Many more were lined up on the dock waving to the departing ocean bound liner. Several of those on the docks, mainly men, may have noticed a lady, with loose long raven hair, clad in a black satin blouse and a lime green skirt, with jewelry set with opulent emeralds sparkling merrily in the bright sun. No one would believe what the pretty faced girl with the satisfied look on her face had been up to the last 24 hours.
Sara was very satisfied and pleased with herself as her liner left the port towards its destination: a port in merry olde England. She put a hand down to hold onto her flapping lime green skirt as it caught in the breeze. Her eyes once again admiring the emerald bracelet and rings she was so brazenly wearing.
She allowed her mind to travel back to the early hours of that very morning, as her and Shane had entered the mansion, wearing Halloween masks and carrying small black satchels.
Romeo had accurately given Shane the combination to the mansions house safe located in the den. It had contained a bonanza of old bundled bills and several cases of amazingly bright sets of jewelry. Then came the part Sara had been waiting for, the girl’s room! Romeo’s twin sister’s boudoir where she insisted on keeping her jewels, rather than locking the expensive things in the house safe.
Sara could see that Shane became aroused as he had slapped a hand to the mouth of the sleeping Girl, jarring her awake. The look of terror in the girl’s eyes had made him drool with excitement. He made her get up, helpless and vulnerable in a long loose fitting purple satin night gown. Shane than tied her squirming figure securely to a chair, gagged her, and let her watch as Sara began to rob her blind. Shane, standing by the wide-eyed girl holding his knife to her heaving chest, did not understand why Sara was taking some of the captive’s long gowns and shiny clothes, but then he wasn’t meant too.
Sara saved the jewel case for last. Making sure their captive was watching, She pulled opened and meticulously picked clean the drawers of the massive oak jewel chest on a bedside stand next to their captive’s chair. The last drawer seemed to contain nothing but sets of satin gloves, which Sara happily added to the pile in the small black satchel. Underneath she found hidden a set of diamonds (ring, bracelet, cascading earrings and matching necklace) that put anything they had taken of her Mothers jewels to shame! Sara picked up the sets necklace and placed it around the frightened girl’s throat, admiring its fiery radiance. Sara went back to the bottom drawer and scooped up the rest of the set. After she placed it inside the now bulging satchel she turned and looked Romeos’ twin dead in the eye, commanding Shane to search her. He did, removing the necklace, and sucking off a solid gold pinky ring. He handed the loot to Sara, who had come over to take it; she looked at the struggling girl and said in a sultry voice, you will never wear these pretty toys again! They had then left her room; the girl forlornly slumped down, a sad little portrait in a limp purple satin bundle.
Sara had left Shane off at the apartment to deal with Romeo. She had previously doctored Shane’s promised bottle of whiskey with knock out drops. Whatever the pair’s fate would be, she did not possess the slightest worry or care.
After leaving Shane off, the rest of her plan had gone smooth as silk. Sara had gone to her recently rented hotel suit, placed the satchels in a steam trunk, changed into one of her newly acquired outfits and jewelry, then left the hotel in a rented (under an assumed name) chauffeured Limo for Boston, all before the sun rose. She boarded the liner as soon as it began to admit its passengers.
Sara’s mind came back to the present as the ocean line’s steam horn gave an explosively loud whoop as it sailed from the harbor. Watching the docks filled with spectators grow ever smaller, Sarah envisioned herself arriving in a similar set of London docks on the other side of the ocean. There, she would assume the life of a wealthy debutante, living the good life from the riches of her ill-gotten gains. She may even adopt the first name of Romeos twin sister for a self-amusing ruse; after all, she would be wearing the poor wretches’ gowns and jewels to all the best affairs!
But coal is. This could be a long dissertation but it isn't going to be. I have already typed and lost the information once (blame Apple's latest upgrade) and I just want to give an overview. So let's say that the economies of Queensland and New South Wales greatly depend on coal mining. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are probably directly or indirectly dependent on coal extraction and export. Very similar to the importance of iron ore in Western Australia, but it doesn't come with quite so much controversy.
Australia is the largest exporter of coal on earth. 40% of the tonnage exported comes from these two states while the next biggest exporter is Indonesia with less than half of that share.
Coal directly and indirectly contributes to global warming from carbon dioxide (and other chemical) emissions from burning and also from less well known causes such as methane leakage from mines through soil. Coal has been a vital product in the production of electrical energy through burning at power stations (and elsewhere). Coal of a different sort is used in metallurgical processes, particularly steel making where it is converted to coke and is one of the primary ingredients. A variety of renewables are taking over production of electricity in many countries, the UK is a great example where coal mining, once a major industry has now been almost 100% phased out. Mind you, they haven't entirely stopped burning alternatives such as biomass but that is at least theoretically renewable!
The COP26 conference in Glasgow that ended over the weekend has issued a communique to "phase down" coal mining rather than "phase out" much to the sadness and disgust of many of the participating nations - hopefully you have read the news so I won't repeat what happened here. But it means inevitably that the shift from coal will continue. Alternative processes for metal production including steel are already being trialled or investigated, while renewable processes for electricity will continue unabated. And that's just the coal issues. Another outcome is that promises of job conversion for those involved in the coal and related industries will have to be delivered. We are not talking about a small cohort of people.
Meanwhile, a few brief notes on the photos which were taken from a viewing platform on the edge of one of the Moura-Kianga open cut mines. Coal mining, whether underground or open cut is not pretty. Open cut creates massive scars on the land as overburden, rock, soil, trees, farmland is laid bare and removed to the side to dig down into the earth and expose the coal seams, laid down millions of years ago.
The top shot shows a sectional overview of the vast expanse of one of the mines just outside the tow of Moura. The Moura-Kianga mines are metallurgical coal used in processes producing or refining metals like steel, lead and zinc. The coal is converted to coke which is the raw ingredient added to blast furnaces along with iron ore or scrap steel, coke, limestone etc. The second shot looks down deep into the mine where you can see the top of one of the very large dragline cranes that will most likely be removing more overburden. The coal is then dug up and transported by dump trucks so huge that entry to the cab which sits high up in the air is via a lengthy staircase. The coal is taken away and washed, graded, sized and loaded into heavy trains for the journey down to the port city of Gladstone via the new direct rail line that was opened in 1968 to shortcut the old lightly laid branch lines that went the roundabout way via Rockhampton.
You can just see the tip of the dragline in the distance in the top shot to give the whole scene some perspective.
In due course, closure of the mine will see the land remediated by the coal mining company. I doubt whether it will ever be the same again and my experience is that you can always identify remediated mining land because the contours do not look just right!
Lastly, because all the equipment and parts are so large, it usually comes in special convoys surrounded by police vehicles to shift other vehicles off the public highways as they pass. One of my other shots today (and another in the next day or so) show two such wide vehicles that required us to pull over as far as we could go to allow safe passage - even then it was a close run thing!
Hemaris thysbe on Cirsium discolor
Not the greatest but the best I can do. Thought I'd post this as I head to Austin, TX to present research on this organism.
HMF, NJ
August 2010
way back in 1997, almost 30 years ago, i started researching my dissertation project (which later become a book), asking, what happens to a working landscape when it becomes the subject of preservation as a national park? and yesterday the final answer came: it disappears, as a legal agreement was reached that will shut down the last ranches at Point Reyes, which have been in continuous operation since the 1850s. despite 170 years of ranching activity, this landscape has remained beautiful and inspirational—but that use has turned out to be incompatible with the simplistic idealization of “pure” nature and wilderness as the only acceptable model for a park. i’m so incredibly sad, and profoundly angry and disheartened, that such a long relationship of people and place is being forced to end.
details about this sad circumstance: www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/point-reyes-national-s...
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Regarding the award-winning physicist Dr. Elliot McGucken at Princeton University, the late John Archibald Wheeler stated, "More intellectual curiosity, versatility and yen for physics than Elliot McGucken's I have never seen in any senior or graduate student. . . Originality, powerful motivation, and a can-do spirit make me think that McGucken is a top bet."
Dr. E would go on to heal the blind with his NSF-funded, award-winning Ph.D. dissertation which also laid down the foundations of Light Time Dimension Theory. Over the years, LTD Theory added foundational *physical* postulates, principles, and equations en route to becoming numerous books, with this one forming the simple, illustrated introduction.
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The great thing about the beach is that it presents an entirely different universe from season to season, from day to day, from hour to hour, from second to second, with the ever changing wind, tides, clouds, and sun. A split second with tumbling surf and a sinking sun can make a vast different, resulting in entirely different photographs.
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Enjoy my physics!! Light Time Dimension Theory: The Foundational Physics Unifying Einstein's Relativity and Quantum Mechanics: A Simple, Illustrated Introduction to the Physical
**********************************************************************************
The study below was derived from facts uncovered while doing research for the following Doctorial dissertation:
Light to the shadows of their mind:
Criminal tatics and strategies
Criminology Department Dept.
Chatwick University
Storyline:
The idiot had fallen for the ruse, hook line and sinker. Believing Sara had been kidnapped by a loan shark, he had willingly come to rescue his damsel in distress, bringing the $40,000 he believed she owed her life for. Seeing Sara handcuffed and bound to a chair had been too much for him, and he tried to attack Shane in a vain attempt to rescue her. Shane had unwisely hit him with his pistol, forcing Sara to wait until he regained consciousness to implement the second phase of her plan. Shane had unbound Sara until that time arrived, and she busied herself with counting her money with a lovingly caressing hand, hoping the lovesick twit had not been dumb enough to pawn the family jewels to raise it.
As she was contemplating these facts, she stole an uncaring eye on her would be love- sick suitor, whom she thought of, indifferently, as a clueless naive Romeo. Then she looked up at the blank faced Shane, who still held the rod lamely in his grasp. She hissed at Shane to tie the young man up securely. He did so, roughly tying him up, and then hand cuffing him to the chair he moved next to Sara’s vacated one.
Shane was not very bright, but he listened. He also liked to drink, and Sara had dangled a whiskey bottle as added incentive, not allowing him to drink until after the house job had been carried out. For, once Romeo started stirring, Shane would again tie up Sara and handcuff her to her chair. Then he would slap awake the lovelorn Romeo, coercing him to give him the combination to his parent’s house safe, threatening with a knife, to torture the squirming Sara if necessary. Sara’s Romeo should give the combination up fairly easily, for the dolt actually believed that Sara was as madly in love with him as he was with her. While she waited, Sara allowed her mind to relieve the events that had brought the rich young fly into her web.
Sara had literally bumped into Romeo a couple of months ago while at the horse track. But, as it so happened, it was a young lady who had garnered Sara’s attention first. The pretty Miss had stood out in a black satin blouse, glossy lime green skirt, and wide floppy hat. As she moved she sent flickering with rich sparkles, the stunning collection of emerald jewelry that adorned her shapely figure. This obviously wealthy girl was making her way timidly through the crowd while stuffing a wallet she had pulled from a lime green purse with a thick wad of track winnings.
Sara had trailed her through the crowd, waiting for opportunity to present its self. It did when the purse was set down, leaving it temporarily unattended. But, as her long slender fingers had reached for it, a young suited man dropped his race form and backed into Sara cutting her off. Sara apologized, employing the British accent she had been using that day, and picked up his race form, handing it to him with a sweet mousey smile. Thwarted, she then turned and immediately retreated back into the throng, but not before noticing that she had caught his eye. Sara had not found this surprising, given how fetching she must have looked in one of the customary long silky dresses that she habitually would pour herself into when on the prow! Sara wore them mainly because the slick material of the dress usually allowed her to slip in and out of tight situations, both physically and persuasively.
It was later that evening, still at the track and with no luck outside of bad, that Sarah saw Romeo, alone and looking vulnerable . She went up and slipped up against him, starting to feel for his wallet, but for some indiscernible reason, aborted the attempt. Apologizing instead, she engaged him into conversation, more out of curiosity than anything else. She even allowed him to invite her out for a bite to eat. It was then that she learned enough about his background to stir her felonious senses. Especially once she learned that the richly jeweled young lady whose fat wallet she had attempted to acquire was the Romeos twin sister.
Sara had then turned on her not inconsiderable charm. Using the British accent and faking the role of a ragamuffin vulnerable foreigner, Sara (who had been born in the Bronx) started seeing the rich kid for a couple of months. Making Romeo keep their clandestine affair a secret from his parents and sister, Sara carefully wove her silken web until the innocently gullible horsefly was wrapped up beyond his ability to fly. She had successfully gotten him to fall head over heels in love with her. Like a prowling cat, she waited, plotting meticulously, a way to part a small fortune away from him. When she had learned his parents would be in Europe for a month, she put her plan into action. She let Romeo in on her terrible secret, a racetrack gambling addiction. This had led to her “troubles” with a loan shark. After accepting her suitor’s offer to help her in any way possible, she suddenly vanished from his life. Taking the time to hire Shane to case the isolated country house where Romeo, his parents, twin sister and two older servants lived. She also convinced Shane, for a piece of the pie, to act the part of the loan shark heavy. Sara also bought a one way Cunard White Star Liner ticket to England to make her permanent escape. Once all the pieces of her scam were in place, she then sent Romeo the note pleading for him to bring the money, and rescue her from the Loan Shark.
Sara‘s scam had gone like a Rolex’s clockwork, and she now was forty thousand dollars richer. Now all she needed was that combination to set her up for life. She licked her lips, savoring the thoughts about what would conspire a once the combination was hers. Shane would again render Romeo unconsciousness, unbind Sara, and the pair would leave their victim incapacitated in the apartment, a living insurance policy, while they paid a nighttime visit to his parent’s isolated country manor.
********************** Postscript **********
It was early afternoon the next day when an ocean liner set sail from Boston Harbor, bound for a British Port. The majestic ships’ railed deck was lined with passengers watching the departure. Many more were lined up on the dock waving to the departing ocean bound liner. Several of those on the docks, mainly men, may have noticed a lady, with loose long raven hair, clad in a black satin blouse and a lime green skirt, with jewelry set with opulent emeralds sparkling merrily in the bright sun. No one would believe what the pretty faced girl with the satisfied look on her face had been up to the last 24 hours.
Sara was very satisfied and pleased with herself as her liner left the port towards its destination: a port in merry olde England. She put a hand down to hold onto her flapping lime green skirt as it caught in the breeze. Her eyes once again admiring the emerald bracelet and rings she was so brazenly wearing.
She allowed her mind to travel back to the early hours of that very morning, as her and Shane had entered the mansion, wearing Halloween masks and carrying small black satchels.
Romeo had accurately given Shane the combination to the mansions house safe located in the den. It had contained a bonanza of old bundled bills and several cases of amazingly bright sets of jewelry. Then came the part Sara had been waiting for, the girl’s room! Romeo’s twin sister’s boudoir where she insisted on keeping her jewels, rather than locking the expensive things in the house safe.
Sara could see that Shane became aroused as he had slapped a hand to the mouth of the sleeping Girl, jarring her awake. The look of terror in the girl’s eyes had made him drool with excitement. He made her get up, helpless and vulnerable in a long loose fitting purple satin night gown. Shane than tied her squirming figure securely to a chair, gagged her, and let her watch as Sara began to rob her blind. Shane, standing by the wide-eyed girl holding his knife to her heaving chest, did not understand why Sara was taking some of the captive’s long gowns and shiny clothes, but then he wasn’t meant too.
Sara saved the jewel case for last. Making sure their captive was watching, She pulled opened and meticulously picked clean the drawers of the massive oak jewel chest on a bedside stand next to their captive’s chair. The last drawer seemed to contain nothing but sets of satin gloves, which Sara happily added to the pile in the small black satchel. Underneath she found hidden a set of diamonds (ring, bracelet, cascading earrings and matching necklace) that put anything they had taken of her Mothers jewels to shame! Sara picked up the sets necklace and placed it around the frightened girl’s throat, admiring its fiery radiance. Sara went back to the bottom drawer and scooped up the rest of the set. After she placed it inside the now bulging satchel she turned and looked Romeos’ twin dead in the eye, commanding Shane to search her. He did, removing the necklace, and sucking off a solid gold pinky ring. He handed the loot to Sara, who had come over to take it; she looked at the struggling girl and said in a sultry voice, you will never wear these pretty toys again! They had then left her room; the girl forlornly slumped down, a sad little portrait in a limp purple satin bundle.
Sara had left Shane off at the apartment to deal with Romeo. She had previously doctored Shane’s promised bottle of whiskey with knock out drops. Whatever the pair’s fate would be, she did not possess the slightest worry or care.
After leaving Shane off, the rest of her plan had gone smooth as silk. Sara had gone to her recently rented hotel suit, placed the satchels in a steam trunk, changed into one of her newly acquired outfits and jewelry, then left the hotel in a rented (under an assumed name) chauffeured Limo for Boston, all before the sun rose. She boarded the liner as soon as it began to admit its passengers.
Sara’s mind came back to the present as the ocean line’s steam horn gave an explosively loud whoop as it sailed from the harbor. Watching the docks filled with spectators grow ever smaller, Sarah envisioned herself arriving in a similar set of London docks on the other side of the ocean. There, she would assume the life of a wealthy debutante, living the good life from the riches of her ill-gotten gains. She may even adopt the first name of Romeos twin sister for a self-amusing ruse; after all, she would be wearing the poor wretches’ gowns and jewels to all the best affairs!
*************************************************************************************
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~
[advance apologies; this is a long a@@ dissertation for one photo; If you don't feel like reading ... I totally get it :) ... This one is for Lyndell ... a tribute to Lillian Gish ... and for Lillian's namesake :) ]
~
~
Seeing Winfrey’s name on the sign-up sheet for OCTOBER 14th Blythe-A-Day theme of “LILLIAN GISH” ... was indeed a bit of a surprise.
Me: “Winfrey sweetie, are you SURE ??? ... this is not a glamorous role ... like the time you dressed up all in the SPARKLING GOLD and glitter you are famous for -”
Winfrey: “MOM! I am no shallow piece of plastic!! Here is the script I wrote out for how best to present today’s theme ...”
Me: “Script? This will be ONE STILL PHOTO Winfrey ... not a speaking part ...”
Winfrey: “Just read it, Ma ... and SEE!! I am ALREADY just like Lillian! As an up-and-coming actress in 1926, she knew she could nail the role of Hester Prynne ... but she still had to convince Louis B. Mayer to allow her to be in this movie! Just like I am begging you for this opportunity to be in the LILLIAN GISH photoshoot! She put her ALL into this particular role ... and I want to do LILLIAN GISH proud! I got this!!”
{Winfrey's Guidelines/ Script for this photoshoot:}
I imagine Hester wearing her scarlet letter with more than the initial shock and feelings
of humiliation intended by those not insightful enough to understand her own personal
inner TRUTH. Waaayyyy down deep, in the depths of her soul ... she knew she had
the prized possession ... a manifestation of everything she ever wanted ... to be a part
of another’s soul ... and to be desired ... and longed for by another.
That feeling alone ... gave her a certain unmistakable inner light beam of equal parts
of defiance and determination ... knowing she would shock the world if they had known ...
given the choice ... she would not trade this life for anyone else’s.
~ * ~ * ~
And with that, Winfrey donned her Scarlet Letter, her swaddled daughter (doll) ... did her best to channel Hester Prynne ala LILLIAN GISH ... and indeed, gave it her ALL.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
THE SCARLET LETTER
One of the most memorable roles LILLIAN GISH is famous for: Her portrayal of Hester Prynne in the silver screen adaption of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fictional character: Hester Prynne ... in “The Scarlet Letter”. Her character, a married woman, was accused of having an “A”dulterous affair, and part of her punishment was to have to wear a visible red letter “A” on her clothing, for the rest of her life, for the purpose of giving mere mortals the ability and indeed, permission, to treat her in a judgmental manner.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
WINFREY WARHOL
Our resident GOLDIE (Takara release: “All Gold In One” 2001)
our ONLY BL ! So around here, she really IS our “celebrity” !
(well, not including The Pips, the requisite “3 Kenners” of the BFA Modeling Troupe ... who mainly keep to themselves, because no one likes them anyway.)
~
~
The study below was derived from facts uncovered while doing research for the following Doctorial dissertation:
Light to the shadows of their mind:
Criminal tatics and strategies
Criminology Department Dept.
Chatwick University
Storyline:
The idiot had fallen for the ruse, hook line and sinker. Believing Sara had been kidnapped by a loan shark, he had willingly come to rescue his damsel in distress, bringing the $40,000 he believed she owed her life for. Seeing Sara handcuffed and bound to a chair had been too much for him, and he tried to attack Shane in a vain attempt to rescue her. Shane had unwisely hit him with his pistol, forcing Sara to wait until he regained consciousness to implement the second phase of her plan. Shane had unbound Sara until that time arrived, and she busied herself with counting her money with a lovingly caressing hand, hoping the lovesick twit had not been dumb enough to pawn the family jewels to raise it.
As she was contemplating these facts, she stole an uncaring eye on her would be love- sick suitor, whom she thought of, indifferently, as a clueless naive Romeo. Then she looked up at the blank faced Shane, who still held the rod lamely in his grasp. She hissed at Shane to tie the young man up securely. He did so, roughly tying him up, and then hand cuffing him to the chair he moved next to Sara’s vacated one.
Shane was not very bright, but he listened. He also liked to drink, and Sara had dangled a whiskey bottle as added incentive, not allowing him to drink until after the house job had been carried out. For, once Romeo started stirring, Shane would again tie up Sara and handcuff her to her chair. Then he would slap awake the lovelorn Romeo, coercing him to give him the combination to his parent’s house safe, threatening with a knife, to torture the squirming Sara if necessary. Sara’s Romeo should give the combination up fairly easily, for the dolt actually believed that Sara was as madly in love with him as he was with her. While she waited, Sara allowed her mind to relieve the events that had brought the rich young fly into her web.
Sara had literally bumped into Romeo a couple of months ago while at the horse track. But, as it so happened, it was a young lady who had garnered Sara’s attention first. The pretty Miss had stood out in a black satin blouse, glossy lime green skirt, and wide floppy hat. As she moved she sent flickering with rich sparkles, the stunning collection of emerald jewelry that adorned her shapely figure. This obviously wealthy girl was making her way timidly through the crowd while stuffing a wallet she had pulled from a lime green purse with a thick wad of track winnings.
Sara had trailed her through the crowd, waiting for opportunity to present its self. It did when the purse was set down, leaving it temporarily unattended. But, as her long slender fingers had reached for it, a young suited man dropped his race form and backed into Sara cutting her off. Sara apologized, employing the British accent she had been using that day, and picked up his race form, handing it to him with a sweet mousey smile. Thwarted, she then turned and immediately retreated back into the throng, but not before noticing that she had caught his eye. Sara had not found this surprising, given how fetching she must have looked in one of the customary long silky dresses that she habitually would pour herself into when on the prow! Sara wore them mainly because the slick material of the dress usually allowed her to slip in and out of tight situations, both physically and persuasively.
It was later that evening, still at the track and with no luck outside of bad, that Sarah saw Romeo, alone and looking vulnerable . She went up and slipped up against him, starting to feel for his wallet, but for some indiscernible reason, aborted the attempt. Apologizing instead, she engaged him into conversation, more out of curiosity than anything else. She even allowed him to invite her out for a bite to eat. It was then that she learned enough about his background to stir her felonious senses. Especially once she learned that the richly jeweled young lady whose fat wallet she had attempted to acquire was the Romeos twin sister.
Sara had then turned on her not inconsiderable charm. Using the British accent and faking the role of a ragamuffin vulnerable foreigner, Sara (who had been born in the Bronx) started seeing the rich kid for a couple of months. Making Romeo keep their clandestine affair a secret from his parents and sister, Sara carefully wove her silken web until the innocently gullible horsefly was wrapped up beyond his ability to fly. She had successfully gotten him to fall head over heels in love with her. Like a prowling cat, she waited, plotting meticulously, a way to part a small fortune away from him. When she had learned his parents would be in Europe for a month, she put her plan into action. She let Romeo in on her terrible secret, a racetrack gambling addiction. This had led to her “troubles” with a loan shark. After accepting her suitor’s offer to help her in any way possible, she suddenly vanished from his life. Taking the time to hire Shane to case the isolated country house where Romeo, his parents, twin sister and two older servants lived. She also convinced Shane, for a piece of the pie, to act the part of the loan shark heavy. Sara also bought a one way Cunard White Star Liner ticket to England to make her permanent escape. Once all the pieces of her scam were in place, she then sent Romeo the note pleading for him to bring the money, and rescue her from the Loan Shark.
Sara‘s scam had gone like a Rolex’s clockwork, and she now was forty thousand dollars richer. Now all she needed was that combination to set her up for life. She licked her lips, savoring the thoughts about what would conspire a once the combination was hers. Shane would again render Romeo unconsciousness, unbind Sara, and the pair would leave their victim incapacitated in the apartment, a living insurance policy, while they paid a nighttime visit to his parent’s isolated country manor.
********************** Postscript **********
It was early afternoon the next day when an ocean liner set sail from Boston Harbor, bound for a British Port. The majestic ships’ railed deck was lined with passengers watching the departure. Many more were lined up on the dock waving to the departing ocean bound liner. Several of those on the docks, mainly men, may have noticed a lady, with loose long raven hair, clad in a black satin blouse and a lime green skirt, with jewelry set with opulent emeralds sparkling merrily in the bright sun. No one would believe what the pretty faced girl with the satisfied look on her face had been up to the last 24 hours.
Sara was very satisfied and pleased with herself as her liner left the port towards its destination: a port in merry olde England. She put a hand down to hold onto her flapping lime green skirt as it caught in the breeze. Her eyes once again admiring the emerald bracelet and rings she was so brazenly wearing.
She allowed her mind to travel back to the early hours of that very morning, as her and Shane had entered the mansion, wearing Halloween masks and carrying small black satchels.
Romeo had accurately given Shane the combination to the mansions house safe located in the den. It had contained a bonanza of old bundled bills and several cases of amazingly bright sets of jewelry. Then came the part Sara had been waiting for, the girl’s room! Romeo’s twin sister’s boudoir where she insisted on keeping her jewels, rather than locking the expensive things in the house safe.
Sara could see that Shane became aroused as he had slapped a hand to the mouth of the sleeping Girl, jarring her awake. The look of terror in the girl’s eyes had made him drool with excitement. He made her get up, helpless and vulnerable in a long loose fitting purple satin night gown. Shane than tied her squirming figure securely to a chair, gagged her, and let her watch as Sara began to rob her blind. Shane, standing by the wide-eyed girl holding his knife to her heaving chest, did not understand why Sara was taking some of the captive’s long gowns and shiny clothes, but then he wasn’t meant too.
Sara saved the jewel case for last. Making sure their captive was watching, She pulled opened and meticulously picked clean the drawers of the massive oak jewel chest on a bedside stand next to their captive’s chair. The last drawer seemed to contain nothing but sets of satin gloves, which Sara happily added to the pile in the small black satchel. Underneath she found hidden a set of diamonds (ring, bracelet, cascading earrings and matching necklace) that put anything they had taken of her Mothers jewels to shame! Sara picked up the sets necklace and placed it around the frightened girl’s throat, admiring its fiery radiance. Sara went back to the bottom drawer and scooped up the rest of the set. After she placed it inside the now bulging satchel she turned and looked Romeos’ twin dead in the eye, commanding Shane to search her. He did, removing the necklace, and sucking off a solid gold pinky ring. He handed the loot to Sara, who had come over to take it; she looked at the struggling girl and said in a sultry voice, you will never wear these pretty toys again! They had then left her room; the girl forlornly slumped down, a sad little portrait in a limp purple satin bundle.
Sara had left Shane off at the apartment to deal with Romeo. She had previously doctored Shane’s promised bottle of whiskey with knock out drops. Whatever the pair’s fate would be, she did not possess the slightest worry or care.
After leaving Shane off, the rest of her plan had gone smooth as silk. Sara had gone to her recently rented hotel suit, placed the satchels in a steam trunk, changed into one of her newly acquired outfits and jewelry, then left the hotel in a rented (under an assumed name) chauffeured Limo for Boston, all before the sun rose. She boarded the liner as soon as it began to admit its passengers.
Sara’s mind came back to the present as the ocean line’s steam horn gave an explosively loud whoop as it sailed from the harbor. Watching the docks filled with spectators grow ever smaller, Sarah envisioned herself arriving in a similar set of London docks on the other side of the ocean. There, she would assume the life of a wealthy debutante, living the good life from the riches of her ill-gotten gains. She may even adopt the first name of Romeos twin sister for a self-amusing ruse; after all, she would be wearing the poor wretches’ gowns and jewels to all the best affairs!
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24th June 2013
The Dissertation
Well, last night I was proof reading Simon Brooke's dissertation for him & happened to have Gorm sitting on the table next to me after photographing him yesterday & it got me to thinking. What would a dinosaur write their dissertation on? The answer seemed fairly obvious really
(c) Sarah Brooke 2013
Me talking about the "Management of big data on Alzheimer's disease" during the dissertation of yesterday.
According to our guide, the people of Kuélap farmed on the plateau that is partly visible on the left.
She also told us there were wells on the plateau which, if correct, conflicts with the conventional notion that Kuélap lacked nearby sources of water.
Since the guide lives close to the site and has worked with archaeologists, I tend to believe her.
According to our guide, the plateau that's visible to the left was where the people of Kuélap had their agricultural fields.
Before visiting the site, I read a dissertation by a would-be art hisorian that said Kuélap was waterless and that the residents had to go great distances for their water. However, our guide told us that they drew water from wells on this plateau.
Wikipedia says:
The fortress of Kuelap or Cuélap (Chachapoyas, Amazonas, Perú), is a walled city associated with the Chachapoyas culture built in 6th century AD.
It consists of more than four hundred buildings surrounded by massive exterior stone walls.
The complex is situated on a ridge overlooking the Utcubamba Valley in northern Peru and roughly 600 meters long and 110 meters wide.
It could have been built to defend against the Huari or others, but evidence of hostile groups at the site is minimal.
The monumental ruins of Kuelap are situated at 3000 metres above sea level. The ruins of Kuelap are located at the summit of a hill that rises on the left bank of the Utcubamba, at coordinates 6°25′07″ S 77°55′24″ W, according to the engineer Hernán Corbera.
Radiocarbon dating samples show that construction of the structures started in the 6th century AD and the complex was occupied until the Early Colonial period (1532-1570).
Through the pre-Columbian, conquest and colonial periods, there are only four brief written references to Kuelap.
It was rediscovered in 1843, when Juan Crisóstomo Nieto, a judge in Chachapoyas, made a survey of the area and took note of Kuelap's great size; he was guided by villagers who had known of the site for generations.
Subsequently, Kuelap gained the attention of explorers, historians and archaeologists. Notable observers who helped publicize the site included Frenchman Louis Langlois who wrote a description of Kuelap in the 1930s, Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier, Ernst Middendorf, Charles Wiener and Antonio Raimondi.
The first exploratory expedition mounted by archaeologists was directed by Federico Kauffmann Doig between May and June 1997.
Five mausoleums, protected by a cave filled with rock paintings, were found to be replete with funeral bundles, objects of ceramics, quipus, etc., attributable to the Chachapoyas culture.
In July 2010, remains of 79 human bodies dating back to the seventh century AD were found inside a stone wall believed to have been a secondary grave site. The remains had been removed from their original resting places, a widespread custom in pre-Columbian Peru. Most of the human bones found to date are adult.
For more information, see:
www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/kuelap-pe...
Un'immagine normale, di una giornata normale, di una ragazza quasi laureata...
An ordinary picture of an ordinary day of an almost graduated girl, writing her final dissertation
Abstract
This dissertation seeks to define the importance of John Dee’s interpretation of mediaeval and Renaissance esoterica regarding the contacting of daemons and its evolution into a body of astrological and terrestrial correspondences and intelligences that included a Biblical primordial language, or a lingua adamica. The intention and transmission of John Dee’s angel magic is linked to the philosophy outlined in his earlier works, most notably the Monas Hieroglyphica, and so this dissertation also provides a philosophical background to Dee’s angel magic. The aim of this dissertation is to establish Dee’s conversations with angels as a magic system that is a direct descendant of Solomonic and Ficinian magic with unique Kabbalistic elements. It is primarily by the Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and alchemical philosophy presented in the Monas Hieroglyphica that interest in Dee’s angel magic was transmitted through the Rosicrucian movement. Through Johann Valentin Andreae’s Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459, the emphasis on a spiritual, inner alchemy became attached to Dee’s philosophy. Figures such as Elias Ashmole, Ebenezer Sibley, Francis Barret, and Frederick Hockley were crucial in the transmission of interest in Dee’s practical angel magic and Hermetic philosophy to the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The rituals of the Golden Dawn utilized Dee’s angel magic, in addition to creative Kabbalistic elements, to form a singular practice that has influenced Western esoterica of the modern age. This study utilizes a careful analysis of primary sources including the original manuscripts of the Sloane archives, the most recent scholarly editions of Dee’s works, authoritative editions of original documents linked to Rosicrucianism, and Israel Regardie’s texts on Golden Dawn practices.
Introduction
John Dee’s (1527-1609) conversations with angels have been the subject of scrutiny of various parties since their inception. Nobles were divided in their opinions of the supernatural. Dee and his notorious scryer, Edward Kelly, were praised, supported, threatened, or betrayed for their experiments in super-celestial magic; a kind of magic especially noted amongst detractors for its risk in contacting chthonic spirits. The traditional Christian perspective regarding the summoning of angels has been suspect since the Middle Ages due to the biblical assertion that, whatever the entity’s own claims, a ‘demon’ may appear in the guise of an ‘angel’, especially those bearing non-traditional names (II Corinthians 11. 13-14). What made Dee capable of accepting this risk while expecting positive results?
Prior to his conversations with angels, Dee’s reputation was that of a learned man of the highest caliber. He had been offered the position of Court Mathematician by the kings and emperors of various countries after his lectures on Euclid at the University of Paris in 1550.2 His personal library’s vastness was well marked as the largest in all of England. 3 His comprehensive mastery of its contents and its ramshackle organization made his presence necessary in order to even navigate it.4 The quality of the library and its learned archivist were such that it was frequented by the leading lights of the day, including Queen Elizabeth herself.5 Why would such a man of such great erudition seemingly eschew reason, turn his back on his higher learning, instead attempting to receive the answers to his life’s scholarly inquiries from a crystal ball? In Dee’s final years and those following his death, the dangerous reputation of a magus dealing in super-celestial magic caught up with him. Despite Dee’s low reputation after his death, Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654) published his Rosicrucian work, Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 (or the Chemical Wedding; 1616),6 which featured Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica on the invitation to an allegorical wedding that described the process of the inner alchemy of the human spirit (which will be further discussed later in this dissertation).7 Elias Ashmole (1617-1692) also made it his mission to collect Dee’s writings and corresponded with his son, Arthur Dee (1579-1651), with the intention of writing a biography on Arthur’s father, which was never completed. Méric Casaubon (1599-1671) used Dee’s journals to write the True & Faithful Relation (1659) that, at the time, seemed to seal Dee’s fate (despite Casaubon’s noting of and respect for his pious and fervent Christianity) as a deluded diabolist who had clearly overstepped the station of man in the spiritual hierarchy by attempting to directly contact and hold conversation with angels.
Frederick Hockley is thought to have been a member of the possibly spurious Society of Eight and possessed a great interest in Dee’s use of crystals to contact angels.10 Hockley and MacKenzie’s works and reputations were highly regarded by William Wynn Westcott who, alongside Samuel Liddel MacGregor Mathers and Robert Woodman, founded the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888.11 The Golden Dawn’s Second Order introduced its members to Dee’s Enochian tables and angel magic in the form of Book H12 and Enochian Chess.13
This dissertation shall attempt to treat the following questions: How did Dee’s philosophy and angel magic prove resilient enough to survive Casaubon’s damning persecution and persist into the modern era? What was the importance of Enochian angel magic to the Western esoteric traditions?
The first chapter, in two sections, will examine the sources of influence on John Dee’s angel magic. The first section will present the sources of Dee’s Hermetic philosophy that served as his rationale for his capability to perform theological magic; namely Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and the Corpus Hermeticum and their reflections in Dee’s works. The second section will investigate the sources of practical magic that Dee used as inspiration for his own practice (directly or indirectly); namely Peter de Abano, Johannes Trithemius, Heinrich Agrippa Cornelius von Nettesheim, and the various pseudoepigraphic or authorless grimoires such as the Liber Juratus Honorii, Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel, Ars Notoria, and Arbatel de Magia Veterum, and others. The second chapter, in two sections, will examine the transmission of John Dee’s Hermetic philosophy after his death. The first section will present John Dee’s Hermetic and Apocalyptic philosophies as transmitted through the Rosicrucian writings of the Fama Fraternitatis, Confessio Fraternitatis, and the Chemical Wedding. The second section will investigate the transmission and revival of Dee’s practical magic through the fringe-Masonic societies; especially through Frederick Hockley. The third chapter will examine the transmission of Enochian angel magic within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its direct descendent order, the Stella Matutina. The examination will include Book H, Enochian Chess, the connection of Enochian angel magic to spiritual alchemy, Robert Felkin’s usage of Dee’s angel magic within the Stella Matutina, and the reformation of the Stella Matutina into the Order of Smaragdum Thalasses; the Order of Smaragdum Thalasses being the last known Golden Dawn organization to have made use of Enochian angel magic.
Overall, this dissertation intends to illustrate the resilience and importance of John Dee’s philosophy and its transmission from his angelic conversations to the highly influential Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and thus to the modern era.
Chapter 1: The Philosophy and Practice of John Dee’s Angel Magic
It might be so if madness were simply an evil; but there is also a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men. For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona when out of their senses have conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public and private life, but when in their senses few or none.1
In his outline of the history of magic and exaltation to the divine, Szönyi highlights the furies of Plato’s Phaedrus.2 In Phaedrus, Socrates praised the madness that comes as a gift from the Muses, which Szönyi equates to an occult knowledge only available to the ‘hypersensitive elect’. As mentioned before, Méric Casaubon praised John Dee’s Christian piety and goodness (though he also regarded Dee as deluded and a bit gullible) throughout the preface to his True & Faithful Relation.4 French neatly illustrated the fall of Dee’s reputation in the centuries after his death and illustrated how Casaubon’s perception of pious delusion was further degraded into ‘execrable insanity’ by Thomas Smith in his Vita Joannis Dee (1707).5 By the nineteenth century, the character of Dee had devolved from Casaubon’s misled, pious scholar to an immoral conjuror of spirits6 and a necromancer fit for sensationalist fiction.7 Calder aptly noted that the nineteenth century likely viewed all sixteenth century science as ‘devil-ridden superstition’ and quoted a treatment of Dee by an anonymous writer in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1842): The majority of them were in all probability half mad and those who were whole mad of course set the fashion and were followed as the shining lights of the day. Regarding Dee in comparison to his assistant, Kelly, the article stated, ‘Dee was more respectable, because he was only half a rogue; the other half was made up of craziness.’9 Dee seemed to be possessed by this Platonic, divine madness and eschewed the orthodox Aristotelian assertion that science was to be the deduction of causal demonstrations on the basis of self-evident principles that could only be intuited and not demonstrated within a given discipline.11 The undercurrents of Neoplatonism that accepted magical practice within Arabic Aristotelianism provided a framework through which Neoplatonic philosophy, and thus Hermetic philosophy, could be combined to form a perspective that allowed the practice of magic to be considered a viable applied science. John Dee’s angelic conversations were not the casting off of his high learning, but the very application of it in a context of divine madness. The next section will examine the Hermetic background of Dee’s angel magic. Ficino and Pico: The Hermetic Roots of Dee
This dissertation cannot effectively present Dee’s Hermetic philosophy without addressing Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the translator of the Corpus Hermeticum, and the author of De religione Christiana, De Triplici Vita, Libri Tres, Theologica Platonica, and Epistolae,13 and a densely annotated Omni Divini Platonis opera (1532), all of whose books sat on Dee’s shelves.14 In a time when the age of a work lent it greater authority,15 Ficino, and all other scholars of the Renaissance, believed Hermes Trismegistus to have been a very real figure and a pre-cursor to all Greek wisdom: Of the sources for his magic to which Ficino himself refers the most are the Asclepius and, of course, Plotinus. The Asclepius, like the Orphica, had great authority for Ficino because it was a work of Hermes Trismegistus, a priscus theologus even more ancient than Orpheus, indeed contemporary with Moses; Plotinus was merely a late interpreter of this antique Egyptian wisdom. Ficino applied the Hermetic writings as the basis of Neoplatonic philosophy. He believed the Plotinian lemma ‘De Favore Coelitus Hauriendo’ to be an expansion on the ability of man to create gods in the making of statues as described by Hermes in Asclepius 24 and 37.17 The similarities to Christianity present in Platonic and Neoplatonic texts assisted in their assimilation into Ficino’s theology18 and provided a fine vehicle for his Hermetic Christianity.19 While this section deals with the philosophy behind Dee’s angel magic, Ficino’s own theological magic is deeply rooted in his theological philosophy and must be examined. Ficino’s Hermetic-Christian magic was transmitted through the Stoic and Aristotelian elements of the stellar influences on man,20 a philosophical framing of magic that Dee shared.21 Like the Greek sources it drew on, Ficino’s Christian super-
celestial magic was ‘daemonic’ (not to be confused with the Christian invective ‘demonic’). As Ficino states: [...] every person has at birth one certain daemon, the guardian of his life, assigned by his own personal star which helps him to that very task to which the celestials summoned him when he was born. Therefore anyone having thoroughly scrutinized his own natural bent [...] by the aforesaid indicators will so discover his natural work as to discover at the same time his own star and daemon. Following the beginnings laid down by them, he will act successfully, he will live prosperously; if not, he will find fortune adverse and will sense that the heavens are his enemy.23
Furthermore: Now remember that you receive daemons or, if you will, angels, more and more worthy by degrees in accordance with the dignity of the professions, and still worthier ones in public government; but even if you proceed to these more excellent [levels], you can receive from your Genius and natural bent an art and a course of life neither contrary to, nor very unlike, themselves. Ficino’s cosmos are composed of a hierarchy of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ daemons assigned to the planets and the houses of the zodiac whom are responsible for communicating the will of the Anima Mundi to the inferior spheres. Ficino believed that through astrological interaction with nature, ‘celestial goods’ can descend to the pious magus’ ‘rightly prepared spirit’ to receive fuller gifts from beneficial daemons.26 Interestingly, Ficino outlines a talismanic imagery in order to connect with his astral daemons that is clearly influenced by the Picatrix.27 We shall use the planet Mercury as our example: For example, if anyone looks for a special benefit from Mercury, he ought to locate him in Virgo, or at least locate the Moon there in an aspect with Mercury, and then make an image out of tin or silver; he should put on it the whole sign of Virgo and its character and the character of Mercury. [...] The form of Mercury: a man sitting on a throne in a crested cap, with eagle's feet, holding a cock or fire with his left hand, winged, sometimes on a peacock, holding a reed with his right hand, in a multicolored garment. The Picatrix states the following of the stones proper to each planet and the formation of figures:
Of the metals, Mercury has quicksilver and part of tin and glass, and of stones it has emerald and all stones of this type has part of azumbedich. [...] The image of Mercury according to Hermes is the image of a man with a rooster on his head, sitting in a throne; his feet look like those of an eagle and in the palm of his left hand he has fire and under his feet are the signs stated before. This is its form. Dee’s magical practice likewise exhibited angels that corresponded to the planets through the metals associated with them30 and the respective days of the week.31 However, Dee owes much of the structure of his seals and talismans to Giovanni Pico, discussed later in this section.
Supplied with the basis of ancient, newly unearthed lore anterior to the Neoplatonists and Arabic astrological magic, Ficino’s theology was drawn from this long-forgotten, secret wisdom worthy of the title prisca theologia (Ficino’s idea of a primordial faith from which all faiths stem).32 33 The next section of this chapter will address in detail just how influential the quest for a singular, united faith was to Dee. In 1614, a mere six years after Dee’s death, a long debate on the authenticity of Corpus Hermeticum’s antiquity came to an end. Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), Méric Casaubon’s father, correctly identified the Corpus Hermeticum as having been written in the second and third centuries C.E.34 Still the Hermetic (and intrinsically Platonic and Neoplatonic)35 influences on the culture and science of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment —while controversial36— are arguably visible. The importance of the blend of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophy that amalgamated the Great Chain of Being as represented by Ficino (further supported by
Johannes Trithemius and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, discussed later) cannot be overlooked. The Great Chain of Being as a concept predates Greek thought and was vitally important in the forging of cosmologies. As Lovejoy and Szönyi both
pointed out, Proclus used Cicero to succinctly summarize the idea and metaphor of the Great Chain of Being connecting all things to God: Since, from the Supreme God Mind arises, and from Mind, Soul, and since this in turn creates all subsequent things and fills them all with life, and since this single radiance illumines all and is reflected in each, as a single face might be reflected in many mirrors placed in a series; and since all things follow in continuous succession, degenerating in sequence to the very bottom of the series, the attentive observer will discover a connection of parts, from the Supreme God down to the last dregs of things, mutually linked together without a break. And this is Homer’s golden chain, which God, he says, bade hang down from heaven to earth. The Hermetica alone supplies no means through which to interact with the entities above Man in this Great Chain, and so Ficino developed his methods from Arabic and mediaeval medicine, matter theory, physics, and metaphysics all based upon his studies in Neoplatonism.43 Copenhaver gives special attention to Proclus in the formation of Ficino’s magic, an idea and further acknowledged and corroborated by Clulee and Szönyi.The most significant connection in regards to the connection of Neoplatonism
to the Hermetica is Proclus’ statement Thus all things are full of gods [...]. The authorities on the priestly art have thus discovered how to gain the favor of powers above, mixing some things together and setting others apart in due order. Ficino thought this to be Hermes Trismegistus’ understanding of the cosmos as relayed by Proclus, as exemplified in Asclepius in Hermes’ discourse on the ensouled gods created by man in the forms of statues. Thus, man can form a way to interact with intermediary entities by creating the images of gods. Proclus suggested the practice of a ceremonial magic in mentioning that through consecrations and divine services practitioners could achieve ‘association with the [daemons], from whom they returned forthwith to actual works of the gods’. Ficino derived the natural ingredients of his magic from Proclus’ De Sacrificio,50
which he included in his De Vita:
Under the Solar star, that is Sirius, they set the Sun first of all, and then Phoebean daemons, which sometimes have encountered people under the form of lions or cocks, as Proclus testifies, then similar men and Solar beasts, Phoebean plants then, similarly metals and gems and vapor and hot air. By a similar system they think a chain of beings descends by levels from any star of the firmament through any planet under its dominion. If, therefore, as I said, you combine at the right time all the Solar things through any level of that order, i.e., men of Solar nature or something belonging to such a man, likewise animals, plants, metals, gems, and whatever pertains to these, you will drink in unconditionally the power of the Sun and to some extent the natural power of the Solar daemons.51
Ficino clearly felt the weight of what he perceived as a monumental discovery of a tradition of theology and philosophy that had remained unbroken from Hermes to Plato.52 The assertions of a world full of gods by Hermes, the Stoics,53 Plato, and the Neoplatonists clearly impressed themselves on Ficino, but, with the further connection of Arabic medicine and Hermes’ fortunate student being none other than Asclepius (the Greek god of medicine of healing), it seems a matter of course that so pious and learned a theologian would craft a magical system when it was so neatly assembled before him. One question remained: how does one make this daemonic, astrological magic compliant with Christianity? Dee faced a similar question in his conversations with angels, though Ficino chose a much different solution.
Where Ficino drew on nature to connect with the planetary daemons, Dee drew on the planetary daemons to connect with nature.54 All of Dee’s sigils, talismans, and orations came from the angels themselves in compliance, rather than reliance, with esoteric literature available to him.55 It seemed Dee believed he had found a path that reconciled celestial magic with Christianity more aptly than Ficino’s daemonic astrology; a path less ‘daemonic’ and more ‘angelic’.
Ficino relied on the ancient Christian authority of Lactantius (c. 240-320). Lactantius, a Christian apologist, utilized Hermes Trismegistus’ Asclepius in reconciliation with Christianity as the ‘original faith of mankind’ in his work Divinae Institutiones (304-313).56 While this text is not a directly supportive work of Hermeticism,57 it shows a precedent for Hermetic philosophy to be used as a method of reconciling differing patterns of belief. Ficino found this argument a viable counter- balance to St. Augustine of Hippo’s (354-430) objection to Asclepius in Book VIII of De civitate Dei (415-417).58 Ficino also found Lactantius’ argument in support of his idea of the prisca theologia.59 These arguments linking Christianity to Hermeticism are certainly felt in Dee’s reworking of grimoire magic into a profoundly Christian, prayer- based practice at its inception.60
Plato’s key role in Ficino’s cosmology also necessitated a Christian sanitization. Here again, we find Plato’s four furies, the ‘divine madnesses’, but combined with the theology of the Christian Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, wherein each madness (prophetic, religious-mystical, poetical, and love) brings the aspirant closer to unity with God.61
In the Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558), Dee seems to have agreed with Ficino on the stars indeed having powers that mankind can benefit from, but through the use of mirrors rather than the agency of daemons.62 Clulee compares the Propaedeumata to Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (1564) stating that where the Propaedeumata presents man’s interaction with the cosmos as a mechanically physical fact, the Monas sought to illustrate the power of symbols over that which the symbols represent.63
Thus, Dee more clearly illustrates his acceptance of Ficino’s Neoplatonic-
Hermetic theological philosophy within the Monas.64 In the Neoplatonic paradigm,
Calder underlines Proclus (and ancient mathematicians such as Theon and Nicomachus)
as a figure of important influence on Dee’s philosophy in the Monas Hieroglyphica in
terms of the notion of One, or Unity.65 Proclus posed a problem wherein the One, or
God, can only be approached by analogy or negation and supplies the analogy that
‘[t]he One is like the sun’s light which illuminates the world and radiates far and wide
while it remains undiminished at its source’.66 Dee seems supremely confident of his
attempt to communicate the One in a single symbol rife with countless analogies:
Though I call it hieroglyphic. he who has examined its inner structure will grant that all the same there is [in it] an underlying clarity and strength almost mathematical, such as is rarely applied in [writings on] matters so rare. Or is it not rare, I ask, that the common astronomical symbols of the planets (instead of being dead, dumb, or, up to the present hour at least, quasi-barbaric signs) should have become characters imbued with immortal life and should now be able to express their especial meanings most eloquently in any tongue and to any nation?67
The recent scholarly opinion regarding the Hermetic element of Dee’s philosophy
as illustrated in the Monas is unified and agreed upon by Walton, Clulee, Szönyi, and
Harkness68 in the following:
Since the Creator made the whole cosmos, not with hands but by the Word, understand that he is present and always is, creating all things, being one alone, and by his will producing all beings.69
Ficino’s reconciliation of his philosophy, magic, and Christianity were highly formative to Dee’s justifications for his questionably heretical angelic conversations. However, Dee also incorporated Kabbalistic elements Ficino eschewed. Ficino’s friend, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, artfully reconciled Kabbalah with Platonic and Hermetic philosophy, as well as Christianity.70 The connection of the divinity of the cosmos and man’s ability to connect with them through images is granted new depths when combined with the power of names presented in practical Kabbalah, as written by Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522), and further linked with Hermeticism and Christianity through Pico. Pico’s contribution to the Hermetic-Kabbalistic philosophy most certainly piqued Dee’s interests, as exemplified in his Hermetic-Christian definition of the ‘real Cabbala’ in his Monas Hieroglyphica.
It is fascinating and highly relevant to this essay that Pico proclaimed Ramon Llull’s works, or the Ars Raymundi, to be Kabbalistic.72 Ramón Llull (1232/3-1316) channeled the idea of the Great Chain of Being in his assertion of the capacity of man to ascend the scala naturae, or the ladder of nature, through intellectual contemplation.73 Llull used the combination of a series of nine letters (B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and K) representing ‘absolute attributes’, to which nine relations, nine questions, nine subjects, nine virtues, and nine vices were added.74 75 The resulting number of binary combinations was calculated to be 17,804,320,388,674,561, which Llull explored with the use of geometrical figures meant to enumerate the terms and generate combinatorial pairings of the aspects of reality.76 The acceptance of pseudo-Llullian alchemical and Kabbalistic works as authentic in conjunction with his mystic, mathematical diagrams only served to make the Ars Raymundi all the more appealing to Dee.77 Pico argues that Llull’s usage of combining letters of the Hebrew alphabet was not unlike Kabbalistic techniques78 and relied on Llull’s Ars Combinatoria for his own system.79
Regarding Pico’s own system, in his Nine Hundred Theses (1486), he succinctly states his thoughts on Kabbalah and Platonism: That which among the Cabalists is called <[...] Metatron> is without doubt that which is called Pallas by Orpheus, the paternal mind by Zoroaster, the son of God by Mercury, wisdom by Pythagoras, the intelligible sphere by Parmenides.80
He then addresses Kabbalah and Christianity:
11>7. No Hebrew Cabalist can deny that the name Jesus, if we interpret it following the method and principles of the Cabala, signifies precisely all this and nothing else, that is: God the Son of God and the Wisdom of the Father, united to human nature in the unity of assumption through the third Person of God, who is the most ardent fire of love.81
Pico’s clear devotion to Hermetic philosophy was illustrated in the dedication of ten theses to ‘Mercury Trismegistus’ that explicated man’s connection to a living nature, and thus to a God who is present in that life.82 Pico clearly believed in not merely the syncretism of faiths, but the reconciliation of seemingly disparate religious, philosophical, and cultural paradigms.
Johannes Reuchlin boldly deepened the connections between Kabbalah and Christianity in a time when Judaism was defined as a form of Satanism, perhaps even if unwitting.83 Pico’s Theses inspired Reuchlin to write De Verbo Mirifico (1494) in defense of Pico, and the central work on Christian Kabbalah, De Arte Cabalistica (1517).84 In De Verbo Mirifico, Reuchlin presented what he believed to be the reality and name of the Christian God made known through the Son in the pentagrammaton, the five lettered name he believed to signify Jesus Christ.85 De Verbo Mirifico was listed in Dee’s catalogue and it is quite likely Dee was familiar with its material based on the tone of his magical practices86 and some of the aphorisms in the Propaedeumata Aphoristica.87 Through Pico and Reuchlin, the idea that the presence of God existed in images was expanded to include names of power.88 This presentation of the Kabbalah in a Christian, magical context was a crucial element to Dee’s practice.89
The encoding of the Sigillum Dei Aemeth,90 the Kings and Princes of the Heptarchia Mystica, and the divine names of the nations of the world and the angels overseeing them in the Liber Scientiae Auxilii all go to great lengths to identify the names of the angels.91 Dee presumably considered the use of these names crucial to contacting the angels in order to achieve divine understanding related to their offices, though there are no existing records of Dee ever using the names and orations described in the aforementioned books in such a way.
The significant link between Pico and Dee was the transmission of the combined Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and Platonic ideas through Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres (1533), especially in regards to the threefold world (elementary, celestial, and intellectual/supercelestial)92 93 that Dee presents in his Mathematicall Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570). Dee utilized this threefold world as the basis of his supercelestial magic dealing with ‘intelligences’ or angels.94 His
treatment of the threefold world in the Mathematical Preface follows:
All thinges which are, & haue beyng, are found vnder a triple diuersitie generall. For, either, they are demed Supernaturall, Naturall, or, of a third being [...] which, by a peculier name also, are called Thynges Mathematicall.95
The linkage between the emanations of God in Neoplatonism influencing
Kabbalistic works has been conjectured, but regardless of such a connection,96 the
theological philosophies seemed to have been more separated by the cultures that
espoused them rather than the actual contents of their literature.97 The inclusion of
Kabbalah into the Neoplatonic and Hermetic philosophy under the auspices of a deeper
Christianity influenced Dee’s thought, and eventually his magical practice. This will be
evidenced and examined in greater depth in the following section treating his angelic
conversations.
www.academia.edu/921740/Enochian_Angel_Magic_From_John_De...
This is my main typing desk while I'm doing my final year dissertation. I've cleared everything off it, and from around it, until it is just the stuff I need to do the work! That means my G4 Cube has been put in a box for the moment, along with the extra Apple keyboard I keep around for FB chat on my iPad. At least it gets rid of some of the distractions! No doubt that will change as soon as I have some free time again!
Most of this stuff I've generally accumulated from eBay in keeping with my student budget, the Harmon Kardon Soundsticks, iMac 21.5" i3, iPad and its dock.
Thanks for reading!
In March 2025, I photographed Dr. Catie Cuan, a rare kind of technologist—one who does not merely study movement but inhabits it, shaping our understanding of both human and robotic motion in ways that feel at once inevitable and revolutionary. To witness her at work is to see someone in deep conversation with machines, coaxing out a language of movement that is not just efficient but expressive, not just technical but emotional.
A trained dancer and mechanical engineer, Cuan is a pioneer in ‘choreorobotics,’ a field that merges artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and art. Her career has been a dance in itself, moving fluidly between performance, research, and entrepreneurship, all in pursuit of a singular question: how can robots move in a way that feels alive?
Cuan holds a PhD and a Master’s of Science in robotics and AI from Stanford, where she is also a postdoctoral researcher leading the art and robotics efforts at the new Stanford Robotics Center. Her dissertation, “Compelling Robot Behaviors through Supervised Learning and Choreorobotics,” explores how machine learning can teach robots to move in ways that evoke presence—where motion itself carries meaning. During her doctoral research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, Google, and Stanford University, she led the first multi-robot machine learning project at Everyday Robots (Google X) and Robotics at Google, now part of Google DeepMind.
But Cuan is not content to leave her work in the realm of academia. She has spent years choreographing robots, treating them not as rigid automatons but as performers capable of communicating through motion. She has held residencies at the Smithsonian, the Exploratorium, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, TED, Everyday Robots (Google X), the RAD Lab, and ThoughtWorks Arts, working with nearly a dozen different robotic platforms—from the industrial ABB IRB 6700 to small, interactive tabletop machines. Her performances reimagine robots not as servants or tools, but as collaborators, capable of moving with grace, intention, and even artistry.
Cuan’s vision is as much about rethinking robotics as it is about rethinking humanity’s relationship to machines. Her work suggests that the way a robot moves can influence the way we feel about it—that movement is not just a function of engineering but of psychology, of storytelling, of something deeply embedded in how we perceive life itself. In healthcare, she envisions robots that move with a bedside manner, adjusting their motion to put patients at ease. In entertainment, she imagines robots that can dance, that can anticipate and respond to human motion as a partner rather than an operator. Her work, at its core, is about breaking down the binary between the organic and the artificial.
Photographing Cuan, I saw someone who carries these ideas not just in her mind but in her body. Her own movements are precise yet fluid, deliberate yet spontaneous, as though she is always attuned to the forces of motion around her. In that moment, it was clear: she is not just designing how robots move—she is teaching them how to be seen, how to be understood, how to exist in a world that has, until now, only made space for the living.
Our Daily Challenge....THEN AND/OR NOW
I spent most of the day pondering what I could do for today's challenge. Then I opened my notebook to the first page which has written along the top with Dissertation Plan! Clearly I never got round to actually writing a plan but I have managed eight full chapters comprised of 16,000 words =)
The end is nigh!