Wicca Pagan Jewelry

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When you think of Pagan jewelry, what is the first though that comes into your head? Is it witches or devil worship? This isn't necessarily what pagan jewelry depicts. It reflects more of a gothic personality than anything else. Pagan jewelry also reflects some of the symbols from ancient times, when people worshipped the sun and moon rather than God.

Sure, there are pagan Wiccan jewelry pieces out there that depict pentagrams, wizards and witches. However, that is just one offshoot of pagan jewellery. There is also a Celtic influence as well. You can find pagan Celtic jewellery as well. The famous Celtic knot or even a Celtic cross could be incorporated to create pagan Celtic jewelry.

TYPES OF MATERIALS USED IN PAGAN JEWELRY

You will discover that a variety of metals and gemstones are used in the creation of pagan jewelry. Does the material type signify anything special? The answer is not necessarily. However, the material used may invoke a particular "mood" to the piece. For instance, the use of pewter with semi-precious stones invokes sort of a mystical feeling with certain pagan jewelry.

There is also pagan gold jewelry. This is for those individuals who want their pagan symbols reflected in their jewelry in a more "upscale" way. Sterling silver pagan jewelry is commonplace. First of all, silver is cheaper than gold. Plus, silver tarnishes a bit which only lends more character to a pagan jewelry piece.

For a more homemade or hand-crafted look, you might consider page wire jewelry. This could be a shaft of crystal with wire wrapped around it or some elaborate wire rigging in the form of some elaborate design. It all depends on the inspiration of the individual pagan jewelry designer.

FIGURES DEPICTED ON PAGAN JEWELRY

As you might imagine, there are a number of mythical figures and ancient symbols incorporated into pagan jewelry. The pentagram is perhaps one of the most recognized symbols. Egyptian ankhs, Celtic knots, fairies, wizards, and dragons are just a few depicted. Because sun and moon gods were worshipped in ancient times, you can find the sun and moon present in a lot of pagan jewelry. Stars and spirals are used as well.

If you are a fan of pagan jewelry but don't have a source to purchase anything from, look to the internet for help. You can get some free pagan jewelry catalogs sent to you so that you can shop in the leisure of your home. Curbside service - you can't get any better than that!

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Babalon

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Babalon—also known as The Scarlet Woman, The Great Mother, or the Mother of Abominations—is a goddess found in the mystical system of Thelema, which was established in 1904 with English author and occultist Aleister Crowley's writing of The Book of the Law. In her most abstract form, she represents the female sexual impulse and the liberated woman; although she can also be identified with Mother Earth, in her most fertile sense. At the same time, Crowley believed that Babalon had an earthly aspect in the form of a spiritual office, which could be filled by actual women—usually as a counterpart to his own identification as "To Mega Therion" (The Great Beast)—whose duty was then to help manifest the energies of the current Aeon of Horus.

Her consort is Chaos, the "Father of Life" and the male form of the Creative Principle. Babalon is often described as being girt with a sword and riding the Beast. She is often referred to as a sacred whore, and her primary symbol is the Chalice or Graal.

As Crowley wrote in his The Book of Thoth, “She rides astride the Beast; in her left hand she holds the reins, representing the passion which unites them. In her right she holds aloft the cup, the Holy Grail aflame with love and death. In this cup are mingled the elements of the sacrament of the Aeon”.

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Magus And Ipsissimus

Only a few reach the final two stages, The penultimate is the becoming of a Magus (symbolized by entering Chokmah on the Tree of Life), whose essential duty is to communicate a new Truth to mankind. Of the Magi, Crowley writes:

There are many magical teachers but in recorded history we have scarcely had a dozen Magi in the technical sense of the word. They may be recognized by the fact that their message may be formulated as a single word, which word must be such that it overturns all existing beliefs and codes. We may take as instances the Word of Buddha—Anatta (absence of an atman or soul) Mohammed, again, with the single word Allah [...] Similarly, Aiwass, uttering the word Thelema (with all its implications), destroys completely the formula of the Dying God.

The state of being a Magus is described in Crowley's Liber B vel Magi. Elsewhere, he admits the possibility of someone reaching this rank without uttering a new magick Word. Such a Magus, he says, would identify himself or herself with the Word of the current Aeon and work to establish it. In Magick Without Tears, Crowley suggests (without actually saying so) that the Secret Chiefs of the A?A? have reached at least the rank of Magus, in some sense.

The state of Ipsissimus is the very highest possible (symbolized by the sphere of Kether on the Tree of Life). Relatively little is openly written of this state of enlightenment

The Ipsissimus is wholly free from all limitations whatsoever, existing in the nature of all things without discriminations of quantity or quality between them. He has identified Being and not-Being and Becoming, action and non-action and tendency to action, with all other such triplicities, not distinguishing between them in respect of any conditions, or between any one thing and any other thing as to whether it is with or without conditions.

He is sworn to accept this Grade in the presence of a witness, and to express its nature in word and deed, but to withdraw Himself at once within the veils of his natural manifestation as a man, and to keep silence during his human life as to the fact of his attainment, even to the other members of the Order.

The Ipsissimus is pre-eminently the Master of all modes of existence; that is, his being is entirely free from internal or external necessity. His work is to destroy all tendencies to construct or to cancel such necessities. He is the Master of the Law of Unsubstantiality (Anatta)."

The Ipsissimus has no relation as such with any Being: He has no will in any direction, and no Consciousness of any kind involving duality, for in Him all is accomplished; as it is written 'beyond the Word and the Fool, yea, beyond the Word and the Fool'."

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Esoteric Cosmology

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There will be times when you will find it inconvenient to conduct your Magickal work in the space that you have set aside for ritual. You might be on a trip and find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings, or perhaps you feel a need to meditate and center while you are in the presence of others. How then can you still manage to conduct your work? The answer is very simple: construct an Astral Temple.

Building the Astral Temple requires time. It is accomplished during periods of meditation, and each time you visualize the Temple it grows stronger. I suggest you experiment with the following method and elaborate as you become more familiar with the process.

Go into the area you use for Magickal work, or any area where you can remain undisturbed. You may find it beneficial to light a white candle and a stick of incense. Take a few moments to clear your thoughts and establish a pattern of deep, rhythmic breathing. Once you feel very relaxed and calm, proceed with your visualization.

See yourself standing before an area that is bare. This area can resemble a piece of undeveloped ground, or even a blank artist's canvas. The key is to begin with a clean slate, so to speak.

Next, begin to visualize the Astral Temple taking shape from the ground up. Literally build it with your visualization. You can begin by constructing the foundation and then the walls. The design is entirely up to you, Dear Ones. This is a wonderful opportunity to use your creative faculties. How many rooms will your Temple have? What will the architecture look like? Make it unique! Make it reflective of your own tastes and personality.

One you have created a powerful visualization of your Astral Temple, set aside a period of ten minutes each day to visualize it in detail. Each time that you visualize it will give it strength and help to imprint it upon the Astral Plane. Once you have imprinted the Temple upon the Astral and upon your subconscious, you will find it a simple matter to mentally retreat there whenever you desire.

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Liber 161 Concerning The Law Of Thelema

Book: Liber 161 Concerning The Law Of Thelema by Aleister Crowley

An epistle written to Professor L...B...K... who also himself waited for the New Aeon, concerning the O.T.O. and it's solution of Property, and now reprinted for the General Circulation. This is an O.T.O. document. See also: Equinox III i; III x.

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Outer Gateways

Book: Outer Gateways by Kenneth Grant

This book reads like a mathematics text book. That being said, it is also an invaluable resource for Chaos magicians, practicioners of High Magick and followers of the left hand path. It delves into the numerology of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and it's relationship to Typhonian/Setian currents in history and religion. Grant uses Austin Osman Spare's books as a springboard for his ideas, and his admiration for both Spare and Crowley are obvious throughout. Although very difficult reading, the mind-blowing concepts and fascinating parallells drawn between fantasy and reality, magick and science and the past and the future make this book worth suffeing through for the serious and dedicated occultist.

As Aleister Crowley's last magical student at Netherwood in the 1940's, Kenneth Grant has upheld a proud occult tradition through a lifetime of study practice and writing. This latest book is not only for experienced students of the occult; it is also excellent for those who are new to Grant's work. Here is Grant moving through magic and beyond to a new and controversial view of human evolution and the ultimate goal of Undivided Consciousness. Topics include the primal grimoire the unfamiliar spirit and the fourth power of the sphinx along with aspects of dream control and the wisdom of S'lba.

Grant's imaginal zone has been fed richly by the O.T.O. magickal tradition of course, but he also brings in ideas from advaita vedanta, Madhyamaka (Mahayana) Buddhism, UFOlogy, Wicca, American Indian traditions, alternative history, Western Mystery traditions, the channeled work of his own former lodge (the "Wisdom of S'lba"), and even fiction. His use of fiction is perhaps an example of the early stage of what has now become known as Synchromysticism.

In addition to those who are interested in the book for its magickal musings, others who might find this book of some value are those interested in conspiracy theory, the above mentioned synchromysticism, UFOlogy (he makes some interesting observations about this field that won't make the "nuts and bolts" crowd too happy), poets, artists, mythologyists, cultural historians, those studying NeoGnosticism, etc.

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Outer Gateways
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Greater Ritual Of The Pentagram

Book: Greater Ritual Of The Pentagram by Aleister Crowley

Written by Sir Aleister Crowley on May, 1906 e.v. on train to India, Edited by David Cherubim, 12 January, 1990 e.v. for members of the Thelemic Order of the Golden Dawn

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Amphora Or Hail Mary

Book: Amphora Or Hail Mary by Aleister Crowley

Amphora (Hail Mary). This book which probably stands as Crowley's most famous practical joke. In 1908 Crowley anonymously submitted the text of this book of devotional verse to the well-known Catholic publishers Burnes and Oates Somehow the publishers managed to overlook the dubious theology and strong lesbian undertones and published the book under the title Amphora. At around the the same time Crowley published his own private edition with an obscene epilogue. Somehow Burnes and Oates found out who the author was, and apparently withdrew the edition after only a small number of copies have been bound, giving (or perhaps selling) the unsold sheets to Crowley. Crowley had a new title page printed, and reissued the book as 'Hail Mary' under his Equinox imprint.

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The Drug Panic

Book: The Drug Panic by Aleister Crowley

This essay, originally published in the The English Review, July 1922 is still very topical. Crowley was ahead of his time.

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Night Of Pan In Writings Of Crowley

Aleister Crowley identifies this process as one of Love. He explains in Little Essays Towards Truth:

The truly magical operations of Love are therefore the Trances, more especially those of Understanding; as will readily have been appreciated by those who have made a careful Qabalistic study of the nature of Binah. For she is omniform as Love and as Death, the Great Sea whence all Life springs, and whose black womb reabsorbs all. She thus resumes in herself the duplex process of the Formula of Love under Will; for is not Pan the All-Begetter in the heart of the Groves at high noon, and is not Her "hair the trees of Eternity" the filaments of All-Devouring Godhead "under the Night of Pan?"

It is also described in the mystical text Liber VII:

Ascend in the flame of the pyre, O my soul! Thy God is like the cold emptiness of the utmost heaven, into which thou radiatest thy little light.
When Thou shall know me, O empty God, my flame shall utterly expire in Thy great N. O. X.
—Liber Liberi vel Lapdis Lazuli, I:39-40

Finally, Crowley writes of the Night of Pan in his The Book of Lies, in the chapter "Sabbath of the Goat":

O! the heart of N.O.X. the Night of Pan.
PAN: Duality: Energy: Death.
Death: Begetting: the supporters of O!
To beget is to die; to die is to beget.
Cast the Seed into the Field of Night.
Life and Death are two names of A.
Kill thyself.
Neither of these alone is enough.

In his Commentary on this writing, Crowley explains:

It is explained that this triad lives in Night, the Night of Pan, which is mystically called N.O.X., and this O is identified with the O in this word. N is the Tarot symbol, Death; and the X or Cross is the sign of the Phallus. NOX adds to 210, which symbolizes the reduction of duality to unity, and thence to negativity, and is thus a hieroglyph of the Great Work.

The word Pan is then explained, {Pi}, the letter of Mars, is a hieroglyph of two pillars, and therefore suggest duality; A, by its shape, is the pentagram, energy, and N, by its Tarot attribution, is death. NOX is then further explained, and it is shown that the ultimate Trinity, O!, is supported, or fed, by the process of death and begetting, which are the laws of the universe...It is then asserted that the ultimate letter A has two names, or phases, Life and Death.

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Language Shapes Our Reality

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Does language shape reality, or does reality determine language? Four new articles on four different sites suggest that how we experience the world is determined by the language we speak and with which we think.

I'm offering just a bit of each article -please follow the title link to see the whole article.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

New Cognitive Research Suggests That Language Profoundly Influences The Way People See The World; A Different Sense Of Blame In Japanese And Spanish

By LERA BORODITSKY

The Gallery Collection/Corbis: 'The Tower of Babel' by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1563.

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

Take "Humpty Dumpty sat on a..." Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say "sat" rather than "sit." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) change the verb to mark tense.

In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.

In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you'd use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you'd use a different form.

Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?

* * * * *

LOST IN TRANSLATION

"We don't shape language, language shapes us" by Joan O'C. Hamilton, from Stanford - September-October 2010

Image Gallery Linzie Hunter / www.linziehunter.co.uk

Lera Boroditsky's journey to answer one of psychology's most intriguing and fractious questions has been a curious one. She's spent hours showing Spanish speakers videos of balloons popping, eggs cracking, and paper ripping. She's scoured campuses for Russian speakers willing to spend an hour sorting shades of blue. She's even traipsed to a remote aboriginal village in Australia where small children shook their heads at what they considered her pitiable sense of direction and took her hand to show her how to avoid being gobbled by a crocodile. Yet she needs little more than a teacup on her office coffee table to explain the essence of her research.

"In English," she says, moving her hand toward the cup, "if I knock this cup off the table, even accidentally, you would likely say, 'She broke the cup.' " In Japanese or Spanish, however, intent matters, she explains.

If one deliberately knocks the cup, there is a verb form to indicate as much. But if the act were an accident, Boroditsky says, a smile dancing across her lips as she translates from Spanish, the speaker would essentially say, "The cup broke itself."The question is: Does the fact that one language tends to play the blame game while the other does not mean that speakers of those languages think differently about what happened?* * * * *

DOES YOUR LANGUAGE SHAPE HOW YOU THINK?

Horacio Salinas for The New York Times

By GUY DEUTSCHER

Published: August 26, 2010

SEVENTY YEARS AGO, IN 1940, A POPULAR SCIENCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED A SHORT ARTICLE THAT SET IN MOTION ONE OF THE TRENDIEST INTELLECTUAL FADS OF THE 20TH CENTURY. At first glance, there seemed little about the article to augur its subsequent celebrity. Neither the title, "Science and Linguistics," nor the magazine, M.I.T.'s Technology Review, was most people's idea of glamour. And the author, a chemical engineer who worked for an insurance company and moonlighted as an anthropology lecturer at Yale University, was an unlikely candidate for international superstardom. And yet Benjamin Lee Whorf let loose an alluring idea about language's power over the mind, and his stirring prose seduced a whole generation into believing that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think.

In particular, Whorf announced, Native American languages impose on their speakers a picture of reality that is totally different from ours, so their speakers would simply not be able to understand some of our most basic concepts, like the flow of time or the distinction between objects (like "stone") and actions (like "fall"). For decades, Whorf's theory dazzled both academics and the general public alike. In his shadow, others made a whole range of imaginative claims about the supposed power of language, from the assertion that Native American languages instill in their speakers an intuitive understanding of Einstein's concept of time as a fourth dimension to the theory that the nature of the Jewish religion was determined by the tense system of ancient Hebrew.

Eventually, Whorf's theory crash-landed on hard facts and solid common sense, when it transpired that there had never actually been any evidence to support his fantastic claims. The reaction was so severe that for decades, any attempts to explore the influence of the mother tongue on our thoughts were relegated to the loony fringes of disrepute. But 70 years on, it is surely time to put the trauma of Whorf behind us. And in the last few years, new research has revealed that when we learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways.

Whorf, we now know, made many mistakes. The most serious one was to assume that our mother tongue constrains our minds and prevents us from being able to think certain thoughts. The general structure of his arguments was to claim that if a language has no word for a certain concept, then its speakers would not be able to understand this concept. If a language has no future tense, for instance, its speakers would simply not be able to grasp our notion of future time. It seems barely comprehensible that this line of argument could ever have achieved such success, given that so much contrary evidence confronts you wherever you look. When you ask, in perfectly normal English, and in the present tense, "Are you coming tomorrow?" do you feel your grip on the notion of futurity slipping away? Do English speakers who have never heard the German word "Schadenfreude" find it difficult to understand the concept of relishing someone else's misfortune? Or think about it this way: If the inventory of ready-made words in your language determined which concepts you were able to understand, how would you ever learn anything new?

SINCE THERE IS NO EVIDENCE that any language forbids its speakers to think anything, we must look in an entirely different direction to discover how our mother tongue really does shape our experience of the world. Some 50 years ago, the renowned linguist Roman Jakobson pointed out a crucial fact about differences between languages in a pithy maxim: "Languages differ essentially in what they "must" convey and not in what they "may" convey." This maxim offers us the key to unlocking the real force of the mother tongue: if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language "allows" us to think but rather because of what it habitually "obliges" us to think "about".

Consider this example. Suppose I say to you in English that "I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor." You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it's none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn't have the privilege to equivocate in this way, because I would be obliged by the grammar of language to choose between "voisin" or "voisine"; "Nachbar" or "Nachbarin". These languages compel me to inform you about the sex of my companion whether or not I feel it is remotely your concern. This does not mean, of course, that English speakers are unable to understand the differences between evenings spent with male or female neighbors, but it does mean that they do not have to consider the sexes of neighbors, friends, teachers and a host of other persons each time they come up in a conversation, whereas speakers of some languages are obliged to do so.

On the other hand, English does oblige you to specify certain types of information that can be left to the context in other languages. If I want to tell you in English about a dinner with my neighbor, I may not have to mention the neighbor's sex, but I do have to tell you something about the timing of the event: I have to decide whether we "dined", "have been dining", "are dining", "will be dining" and so on. Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions. Again, this does not mean that the Chinese are unable to understand the concept of time. But it does mean they are not obliged to think about timing whenever they describe an action.

When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time. And since such habits of speech are cultivated from the earliest age, it is only natural that they can settle into habits of "mind" that go beyond language itself, affecting your experiences, perceptions, associations, feelings, memories and orientation in the world.

BUT IS THERE any evidence for this happening in practice?

Let's take genders again. Languages like Spanish, French, German and Russian not only oblige you to think about the sex of friends and neighbors, but they also assign a male or female gender to a whole range of inanimate objects quite at whim. What, for instance, is particularly feminine about a Frenchman's beard ("la barbe")? Why is Russian water a she, and why does she become a he once you have dipped a tea bag into her? Mark Twain famously lamented such erratic genders as female turnips and neuter maidens in his rant "The Awful German Language." But whereas he claimed that there was something particularly perverse about the German gender system, it is in fact English that is unusual, at least among European languages, in not treating turnips and tea cups as masculine or feminine. Languages that treat an inanimate object as a he or a she force their speakers to talk about such an object as if it were a man or a woman. And as anyone whose mother tongue has a gender system will tell you, once the habit has taken hold, it is all but impossible to shake off. When I speak English, I may say about a bed that "it" is too soft, but as a native Hebrew speaker, I actually feel "she" is too soft. "She" stays feminine all the way from the lungs up to the glottis and is neutered only when she reaches the tip of the tongue.

In recent years, various experiments have shown that grammatical genders can shape the feelings and associations of speakers toward objects around them. In the 1990s, for example, psychologists compared associations between speakers of German and Spanish. There are many inanimate nouns whose genders in the two languages are reversed. A German bridge is feminine ("die Br"ucke"), for instance, but "el puente" is masculine in Spanish; and the same goes for clocks, apartments, forks, newspapers, pockets, shoulders, stamps, tickets, violins, the sun, the world and love. On the other hand, an apple is masculine for Germans but feminine in Spanish, and so are chairs, brooms, butterflies, keys, mountains, stars, tables, wars, rain and garbage. When speakers were asked to grade various objects on a range of characteristics, Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more "manly properties" like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant. With objects like mountains or chairs, which are "he" in German but "she" in Spanish, the effect was reversed.

In a different experiment, French and Spanish speakers were asked to assign human voices to various objects in a cartoon. When French speakers saw a picture of a fork ("la fourchette"), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman's voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom "el tenedor" is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it. More recently, psychologists have even shown that "gendered languages" imprint gender traits for objects so strongly in the mind that these associations obstruct speakers' ability to commit information to memory.

* * * * *

This article is presented whole since it is essentially a press release:

LANGUAGE APPEARS TO SHAPE OUR IMPLICIT PREFERENCES

Study Of Bilinguals Hints Language May Help Create, Not Just Convey, Thoughts And Feelings

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 3, 2010 -- The language we speak may influence not only our thoughts, but our implicit preferences as well. That's the finding of a study by psychologists at Harvard University, who found that bilingual individuals' opinions of different ethnic groups were affected by the language in which they took a test examining their biases and predilections.

The paper appears in the "Journal of Experimental Social Psychology".

"Charlemagne is reputed to have said that to speak another language is to possess another soul," says co-author Oludamini Ogunnaike, a graduate student at Harvard. "This study suggests that language is much more than a medium for expressing thoughts and feelings. Our work hints that language creates and shapes our thoughts and feelings as well."

Implicit attitudes, positive or negative associations people may be unaware they possess, have been shown to predict behavior towards members of social groups. Recent research has shown that these attitudes are quite malleable, susceptible to factors such as the weather, popular culture -- or, now, by the language people speak.

"Can we shift something as fundamental as what we like and dislike by changing the language in which our preferences are elicited?" asks co-author Mahzarin R. Banaji, the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard. "If the answer is yes, that gives more support to the idea that language is an important shaper of attitudes."

Ogunnaike, Banaji, and Yarrow Dunham, now at the University of California, Merced, used the well-known Implicit Association Test (IAT), where participants rapidly categorize words that flash on a computer screen or are played through headphones. The test gives participants only a fraction of a second to categorize words, not enough to think about their answers.

"The IAT bypasses a large part of conscious cognition and taps into something we're not aware of and can't easily control," Banaji says.

The researchers administered the IAT in two different settings: once in Morocco, with bilinguals in Arabic and French, and again in the U.S. with Latinos who speak both English and Spanish.

In Morocco, participants who took the IAT in Arabic showed greater preference for other Moroccans. When they took the test in French, that difference disappeared. Similarly, in the U.S., participants who took the test in Spanish showed a greater preference for other Hispanics. But again, in English, that preference disappeared.

"It was quite shocking to see that a person could take the same test, within a brief period of time, and show such different results," Ogunnaike says. "It's like asking your friend if he likes ice cream in English, and then turning around and asking him again in French and getting a different answer."

In the Moroccan test, participants saw "Moroccan" names (such as Hassan or Fatimah) or "French" names (such as Jean or Marie) flash on a monitor, along with words that are "good" (such as happy or nice) or "bad" (such as hate or mean). Participants might press one key when they see a Moroccan name or a good word, and press another when they see a French name or a bad word. Then the key assignments are switched so that "Moroccan" and "bad" share the same key and "French" and "good" share the other.

Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf first posited in the 1930s that language is so powerful that it can determine thought. Mainstream psychology has taken the more skeptical view that while language may affect thought processes, it doesn't influence thought itself. This new study suggests that Whorf's idea, when not caricatured, may generate interesting hypotheses that researchers can continue to test.

"These results challenge our views of attitudes as stable," Banaji says. "There still remain big questions about just how fixed or flexible they are, and language may provide a window through which we will learn about their nature." ###

Ogunnaike, Dunham, and Banaji's work was supported by Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Mellon Mays Foundation.

Tags: Psychology, brain, language, perspectives, bilingual, preferences, thought, mind, consciousness, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Roman Jakobson, Lera Boroditsky, Joan O'C. Hamilton, Lost in Translation

Suggested ebooks:

Aleister Crowley - Songs For Italy
Richard Weiss - Recipes For Immortality

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Magick Fluid Condenser

Magic fluid condensers are designed to expand or release at a certain time, some of the forces behind a spell.

There are three principle groups of condensers:

1. The 'solid' fluid condensers are metals and resins. Gold is the highest force. Human blood and sperm may be substitute for gold.
2. Extracts from resins including lacquers, oils and tinctures.
3. Least important are smelling waters and evaporations. Useful for making up bulk.

There are two types of fluid condensers:

1. Simple - made from one material or one plant.
2. Compound – made from blending and mixing several materials and/or plants.

A tiny amount of gold is needed in both types. One gram of gold chloride diluted in 20 grams of distilled water produces a gold tincture. Five to ten drops of gold tincture are needed for 100 grams of fluid condenser.

SIMPLE FLUID CONDENSER

Put a handful of fresh or dried Chamomile flowers in a pot (preferably not metal) and cover with water. Boil for 20 minutes. Let cool with lid on pot.

When cold, strain through fine linen. Return liquid to pot and boil again for 20 minutes. Cool and mix with an equal amount of fuel alcohol or spirit of alcohol.

Add 20 drops of gold tincture. If the condenser will be used especially for your own interests, add one drop of your own blood or sperm.

Place liquid in a dark bottle, well corked or sealed, and store in a dark place.

In place of Chamomile flowers, you might use white lily flowers, poplar leaves, acacia flowers, etc.

COMPOUND FLUID CONDENSER

Angelica
Sage
Lime tree flowers
Cucumber skin
Melon seeds
Tobacco, green or dried
Chamomile or lily flowers, leaves or roots
Cinnamon bark or flowers
Violet ordorata, leave or flowers
Willow, leaves or bark

Take equal parts of all ingredients and place in a large earthenware pot. Cover with water and boil slowly for 30 minutes. Cool and strain, then boil again.

Cool, and add an equal amount of spirit of alcohol. Add 10 drops of tincture of gold to every 100 grams of liquid. Add 5 drops of blood or sperm or 5 drops of each.

Strain through fine linen, bottle and cork. Store in a dark place.

ALTERNATE METHOD (Compound condenser)

Place all leaves and seeds in a very large pot. Cover with alcohol and leave in a warm place for 28 days. Pass through linen filter, add gold tincture, and your won blood or sperm. Fluid condensers are added power to the spell.

There are four systems of influencing people:

1. FIRE – influence through combustion
2. AIR – influence through evaporation
3. WATER – influence through mixture
4. EARTH – influence through decomposition

To influence a human - EARTH
Drive to a special goal - FIRE
Romantic vision/union - WATER
All matters of the mind - AIR
Greater spirituality - WATER

(Most spells must be renewed)

USE OF FLUID CONDENSERS

FIRE ELEMENT

Take a piece of blotter paper or linen, moisten with either condenser, then place it in front of you and concentrate on what you wish to accomplish. Load the paper or linen with your desire until you find your concentration breaking. Then burn it. While it is burning, concentrate on your desire again. The power of your concentration and the condenser are released by burning. Turn the problem over to the Universal element and discard the ashes.

AIR ELEMENT

Take a metal container (an ashtray will do) and pour in enough water to cover the bottom. Add a few drops of condenser. Concentrate on your desire as you look into the liquid. Put the container on a stove and let the desire-loaded liquid evaporate. As you concentrate on the steam, wish your desire to be taken in the air element. Continue thusly until all the liquid is gone. Very good for respiratory troubles or for the better health of a friend.

WATER ELEMENT

Take a new unused container (glass – no plastic) and fill with water, bottles, spring or rain water is best. Add a few drops of condenser (use compound only in a real emergency). Fill the water element with your wish or desire. When concentration breaks, the water has been loaded. Now throw the liquid into a river as you think how happy you are that your desire has been absorbed by the Water element, and that part of its power is released with your wish.

EARTH ELEMENT

There are two methods, rain water may be put into a bottle with the condenser or the condenser can be poured directly on the ground. Concentration (loading) must be done first. Liquid should be poured where people will not be walking. A flower pot of earth may b used, or make a hole in a large apple or potato and pour the condenser into it, then bury it in the ground or flower pot. Concentration should continue through each operation.

(by Sybil Leek)

Suggested ebooks:

Carroll Runyon - Magick And Hypnosis
Kelly Link - Magic For Beginners
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Rodin In Rime

Book: Rodin In Rime by Aleister Crowley

Contains seven lithographs executed by Auguste Clot after the original sketches with water-colors of Auguste Rodin which were presented to Crowley during a visit in 1903.
It's said that many of these books were destroyed or damaged due to a flood that occurred in a warehouse where they were being stored prior to sale.
Title page and dedication page printed in black and red.

While other defenders of Rodin were apologizing for him in detail I brushed aside the nonsense-"a plague o' both your houses!" - and wrote a sonnet, which is, in its way, to conventional criticism exactly what the Balzac was. It was translated into French by Marcel Schwob and made considerable stir in Paris. Even at this length of time, I attach a certain importance to it. For one thing, it marks a new stage in my own art.

The upshot was that Rodin invited me to come and stay with him at Meudon. The idea was that I should give a poetic interpretation of all his masterpieces. I produced a number of poems, many of which I published at the time in the Weekly Critical Review, an attempt to establish an artistic entente cordiale. The entire series constitutes my Rodin in Rime. This book is illustrated by seven often lithographs of sketches which Rodin gave me for the purpose.
- The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. New York, NY. Hill and Wang, 1969. Page 340.

Download Aleister Crowley's eBook: Rodin In Rime

Books in PDF format to read:

Howard Phillips Lovecraft - The Disinterment
Hellmut Ritter - Picatrix In German
Aleister Crowley - Rosa Inferni
Howard Phillips Lovecraft - Necronomicon In German
Aleister Crowley - Rodin In Rime