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Sacred Body Fluids

  
  

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trouser the trouserian
11:38 / 11.09.07
The energy a room full of leaping energised people gives off sounds like energy you might want to harness.

Presumably the "energy" of a Skrewdriver gig would be different - qualitatively - (or even morally?) to the "energy" of a Grateful Dead concert?

This is so reminiscient of Charles Leadbeater's writings on The Hidden Side of Things.

Here he is discussing the different "energies" of Buddhist, Muslim and Jewish temples:

"Completely different again is the impression which surrounds a Buddhist temple. Of fear we have there absolutely no trace whatever. We have perhaps less of direct devotion, for to a large extent devotion is replaced by gratitude. The prominent radiation is always one of joyfulness and love-- an utter absence of anything dark or stern.

Another complete contrast is represented by the Muhammadan mosque; devotion of a sort is present there also, but it is distinctly a militant devotion, and the particular impression that it gives one is that of a fiery determination. One feels that this population' s comprehension of their creed may be limited, but there is no question whatever as to their dogged determination to hold by it.

The Jewish synagogue again is like none of the others, but has a feeling which is quite distinct, and curiously dual-- exceptionally materialistic on one side, and on the other full of a strong, pathetic longing for the return of vanished glories."

and with regard to public buildings:

"The aura of a hospital, for example, is a curious mixture; a preponderance of suffering, weariness and pain, but also a good deal of pity for the suffering, and a feeling of gratitude on the part of the patients for the kindly care which is taken of them."

"The neighbourhood of a prison is decidedly to be avoided when a man is selecting a residence, for from it radiate the most terrible gloom and despair and settled depression, mingled with impotent rage, grief and hatred. Few places have on the whole a more unpleasant aura around them; and even in the general darkness there are often spots blacker than the rest, cells of unusual horror round which an evil reputation hangs."

"More terrible still are the thoughts which still hang round some of the dreadful dungeons of mediaeval tyrannies, the oubliettes of Venice or the torture-dens of the Inquisition. Just in the same way the very walls of a gambling-house radiate grief, envy, despair and hatred, and those of the public-house, or house of ill-fame, absolutely reek with the coarsest forms of sensual and brutal desire."
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:46 / 11.09.07
Perhaps we should be talking about power?

It has occurred to me that what i am actually describing when i use the term energy or faith or will in many respects is power, obviously these have other contexts, and power is created in a variety of ways. But isn't energy an expression of power, similar to faith and will as expressions of a power of some kind?
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:50 / 11.09.07
The descriptions above by the author tells you a lot more about his personal psychology and connotations than anything else.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
12:07 / 11.09.07
I dislike the term "energy" for reasons I've gone into elsewhere, but the above makes a lot of sense to me. Sometimes there's a mundane explanation for our responses, of course; it's true that the feeling, the flavour, of a place is likely to be coloured by what we know of its use or history, and it is also true that environmental factors such as lighting, state of repair, the presence or otherwise of dampness and mold, low-frequency sonic vibrations etc. can all contribute. But sometimes a place just has its own chracter that seems independant of these things.

I recall a visit I made to a prehistoric site in Ireland with some friends. There was a particular area on the site which was a recessed bit of ground, round, lined with stone and with what had once been a single entrance leading down into the structure that had once stood there. There was also IIRC what looked like a firepit in the centre. I got the most powerful sense of some kind of spiritual activity, magic and worship from this area. My impression was of a sweat-lodge or some communal place of meditation.

However, I knew that according to a noticeboard they had this bit down as the remains of a hut. I was disappointed that my sense was off, but minutes later my friend approached me and asked me "does this feel like a dwelling to you?" She'd had much the same impression as me, and was sure that this had been a place of considerable power. Make of this what you will.
 
 
Olulabelle
12:21 / 11.09.07
I suppose it's the essence of something as it appears to us. For you the esssence of the place was in its having been a dwelling and for your friend also. Charles Leadbeater's descriptions of different religion's places of worship are the essence of them, but that essence can't help be coloured by what he knows of the building he is describing.

People say hospitals make them feel ill, but they don't actually make them feel ill (insert bad MRSA joke)maybe they just are 'infused' with ill? When you're making a magical object it is coloured with intent, or when you do a group working, you all have the same intent. Is that intent a form of energy? If it is and it can affect the object or the group then certain types of group energy could also be 'coloured' by the people involved and the surroundings those people were in or the action they were doing, perhaps without that energy being the essence of something, as it is with a hospital.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
13:23 / 11.09.07
Sorry, that post was really unclear. What I meant was, the information available to us stated that it was a dwelling, but we both felt (independantly) that it was not a dwelling but a place of worship.
 
 
Ticker
13:40 / 11.09.07
yay for Lula posts!

right.

I'm not convinced that sexual energy does anything more special than other kinds *except* the activity of generating it holds our concentration on physical awareness, which to me says more about our society's lack of physical expression. It seems to me to be a subset of using the bodily connection to raise the individual's overall sense of vitality. The goal being arousal of the senses and full engagement rather than the need to hump something. Not to dis sex magic mind you, but rather to say it is a tool to activate something as opposed to an end in and of itself.

Just sayin'.

...I should go post in the energy thread at this point...
 
 
trouser the trouserian
14:08 / 11.09.07
There's a stone circle about ten minutes walk from where I live. Over the past few years I've heard all kinds of assertions about how old it is "several thousand years", "iron age" etc., and what it was used for originally; (in one case, that it was used by Druids for human sacrifices!) how it intersects with local ley lines and how the stones have crystals embedded in them. The repeated refrain is that this is all down to those concerned being able to "tune in" on the psychic residue of the circle's "original builders" or variations thereof.

It all sounds quite lovely, and I think I'd be less skeptical were it not for the fact that the Stone Circle was put up by some local artists as part of the millenium celebrations. Sure, it's a nice space to hang out (though not when its full of football players on a Sunday afternoon), but most of the psychic "intuitions" I've heard from various peeps regarding its history are over the top to say the least.


 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
14:27 / 11.09.07
Yeah, I used to overhear similar comments about a stone circle near where I used to live in Wales. It seemed to awaken some pretty impressive responses in the more sensitive visitor, all the more so for its having been erected by a fanciful Victorian.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
14:56 / 11.09.07
So much scepticism. Obviously the Druids knew how to use human sacrifice to tap the energy of the ley lines and harness enough power to open a gateway into the far future, where they posed as artists and applied to the council for planning permission to construct that stone circle for the millenium, thus fulfilling the ancient prophecies.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
14:59 / 11.09.07
Which kind of knocks on the head the notion that places have an "essence" that is "independent" of those who interact with them, IMO. Ollulabell's comment People say hospitals make them feel ill, but they don't actually make them feel ill ... maybe they just are 'infused' with ill? started me wondering about this anew. I spent about six years working in hospitals - ranging from turreted gothic piles to bright and breezy purpose-built specialist units - and I can't really say I found them to be infused with "ill" - but I daresay it'd be different for someone who has different experiences/memories of being in hospitals. I was in a hospital the other day for a presentation and I found it a rather cheerful experience on the whole - quite nostalgic, actually.

Here's a bit more of Leadbeater (from the same link) - this time he's on about cemeteries:

"In countries which are not civilised enough to burn their dead, survivors constantly haunt the graves in which decaying physical bodies are laid; from a feeling of affectionate remembrance they gather often to pray and meditate there, and to lay wreaths of flowers upon the tombs. They do not understand that the radiations of sorrow, depression and helplessness which so frequently permeate the churchyard or cemetery make it an eminently undesirable place to visit. I have seen old people walking and sitting about in some of our more beautiful cemeteries, and nursemaids wheeling along young children in their perambulators to take their daily airing, neither of them probably having the least idea that they are subjecting themselves and their charges to influences which will most likely neutralise all the good of the exercise and the fresh air; and this quite apart from the possibility of unhealthy physical exhalations."

he's even better on the subject of pubs:

"Even the undeveloped specimens of humanity who cluster round the bar of a public-house would surely shrink back with terror, if they could see the class of entities by which they are surrounded-- the lowest and most brutal types of a rudimentary evolution, a bloated, livid fungus growth of indescribable horror; and far worse even than they, because they are degraded from something that should be so much better, are the ghastly crowds of dead drunkards-- drink-sodden dregs of humanity, who have drowned the divine image in depths of direful debauchery and now cluster round their successors, urging them on to wilder carousals with hideous leers and mocking laughter, yet with a loathly lust awful to behold."

Sounds like he was at the last London Barbelith meetup, doesn't it?
 
 
EvskiG
15:29 / 11.09.07
Sounds to me like "here I am (consciously or unconsciously) making shit up to suit my preconceptions and prejudices, and infusing it with a bit of authority by claiming that I'm perceiving some sort of objective 'energies.'"
 
 
Alex's Grandma
16:30 / 11.09.07
Obviously the Druids knew how to use human sacrifice to tap the energy of the ley lines and harness enough power to open a gateway into the far future, where they posed as artists and applied to the council for planning permission to construct that stone circle for the millenium, thus fulfilling the ancient prophecies.

Yeah, but the point is, surely, that from a certain angle, in a certain light, that thing's basically a big yellow 'M'.

Stay asleep, if you want to.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
16:31 / 11.09.07
"...and that my extra-sensory abilities are oodles more advanced than those booze-swilling, pram-pushing mundanes. Greyfaces."
 
 
Unconditional Love
16:42 / 11.09.07
Do the footballers use the two nearest stones as goal posts by any chance? Do there balls disappear as they enter the ring?
Would'nt like to dive into one of those posts thou.
 
 
Unconditional Love
16:48 / 11.09.07
Really short playing field, Do you play druidic football with a ball of adders by any chance? Cant really see the archbishop of Canterbury doing that, thou he is probably used to dealing with a group of venomous snakes.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
16:56 / 11.09.07
You play it with the SEVERED HEAD of a VIRGIN. I intuited it from a psychometric evaluation of that photo.

Hey, didn't old Dion Fortune mention something like this? Psychics of the day obtaining fascinating psychometric data from an Egyptian mummy that turned out to be made of newspaper?
 
 
Quantum
17:12 / 11.09.07
"Even the undeveloped specimens of humanity who cluster round the bar of a public-house would surely shrink back with terror, if they could see the class of entities by which they are surrounded-- the lowest and most brutal types of a rudimentary evolution, a bloated, livid fungus growth of indescribable horror"

Sounds exactly like my local.
 
 
Unconditional Love
17:15 / 11.09.07
The Press must be having a field day with all those satanic football cults at that park, its those different coloured shirts with all their numerological associations and those damn capitalist sponsors, killing virgins! why cant they just jack off like those harmless chaos magicians.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
17:25 / 11.09.07
the lowest and most brutal types of a rudimentary evolution, a bloated, livid fungus growth of indescribable horror

I told you kids to stay outside in the beer garden! Now go back and sit down or you won't get lemonade and crisps.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
17:29 / 11.09.07
Do the footballers use the two nearest stones as goal posts by any chance?

Yes they do. Best of all though, is wandering up at either of the solstices where one can find small groups of paganfolk standing expectantly in front of the "goalposts" waiting for the sun to shine majestically through them - which it doesn't as the circle wasn't set out that way by its non-druidic builders.

You can always tell when there's been massed pagan activity up there as there'll be a new "firepit" burnt into the grass.
 
 
Papess
17:54 / 11.09.07
Why the fuck would you need to harvest energies, even "the sort of energies that humans naturally give off" to provide a battery for your own workings? That doesn't even make sense! If we decide for the sake of argument to work within an energy model informed by the concepts of chi, prana, whatever--we're made of energy and surrounded by energy on all sides.

In principle, I do agree with this. This "energy" is everywhere.

We don't need to go through some ridiculously elaborate servitor creation rite to tap into that. Just reach up your arms, breath in, and it's right there.

However, sometimes there are blockages in the flow of chi and in that case, a ritual or practice may be necessary to unblock it. Although, I am unsure about the use of a servitor in this case.

Olulabelle: I like the use of the word "essence" in place of "energy" in most circumstances. Not always, but most of the time it seems to fit the meaning.

Inkwitch: I'm not convinced that sexual energy does anything more special than other kinds *except* the activity of generating it holds our concentration on physical awareness, which to me says more about our society's lack of physical expression.

Nope, much in the same manner as the Aunt Beast quote above, energy is everywhere. What the sex and sexuality does do is quicken the energy by gathering it to create a tension. Thus, when released into or with intention, it is done with a greater driving force. It makes for quicker or sometimes, more potent results. YMMV. As a crude example, it works in much the same manner as a slingshot.
 
 
Papess
17:59 / 11.09.07
Sorry Inkwitch, that read wrong: ...sexual energy does anything more special than other kinds

I meant, Nope, it doesn't! Just as you stated. I am in agreement with that. Sexual energy is not anymore special, except for the quality of tension that it offers.
 
 
Ticker
18:12 / 11.09.07
I've always had that in mind when people tell me about visiting haunted buildings. A lot of folks over look the impact of abandoned empty spaces that are normally to be filled with stuff. A realty agent told me that's why it's easier to sell a house with furnishings still in it than without. Empty residential spaces give people the wiggins. Stick a live plant in the room and people like it a lot more as well. Not sure about cat hair...
 
  

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