Images from Old School Freestyle BMX Days!

http://www.thumbprint.net/BMX.htm

okay…it’s an ugly page. I threw it together in about 20 mintues and for me to make a template, menu and load all those images into HTM pages by HAND in 20 mintues is pretty damn good! I’ll make it pretty later, but if you want to see some images from 1986-1989 freestyle BMX days…

Enjoy!!!

I made a header for this page…

Hi there I made a header image for this page. I even loaded it. You can see it right behind the sidebar and the main content panel. However, I haven’t found the magick-blogspot CSS definition that allows it to appear on the top of the page…centered…in front of everything else. I’ll keep poking…but in the meantime, enjoy the new header image…I’ll just pop it into my posts for now until I get the hand of this thing.

Tedium

This week has been draining. There have been a few events which have “shaken things up,” but nothing that really would rattle my cage, considering some of the things that I’ve dealt with. I stood up to a few petulant children in adult male bodies this week, although I’m sure if you spoke to them they would say that I was being the self-centered bully. Grown men, who are still babies, often feel this way when someone tells them their being pouty and they have no reason. Get over it.

The kid had a note from someone in her class saying “I love to have sex.” So I had to write MORE notes to principal and teacher and sit and talk with her about having respect for the special person you are and NOT letting others put you in a degrading position. Sometimes moms get to do very uncomfortable things. I’m handling things like this better. I’ve healed a lot in the past three years.

It’s hard to shake me from my center.

But I’ve been t I r e d again… Drained. Life drains me. I have so many things I want to get done, but I have to realize that I can’t get them all done at once. I’m NEVER bored though.

I’m in the middle of a magickal working in Enochian. I’m not very skilled at Enochian but it’s good practice for me and I’m still getting what I would consider “decent” results. I’m finding it interesting that I’m also being misled by some of the information. It’s not wrong, or lies, but it’s almost like the information is being delivered in a way that is ambiguous, so I’m forced to draw conclusions and the conclusions that I’m drawing are not correct and deliberately designed to flow my thoughts in a certain way.

I went to NOLA over the past weekend. St. Charles is beautiful. The Quarter is beautiful. The rest of the city is in rough shape. I have survivors guilt. I feel horrible that my beautiful Babylon has taken such a beating. She echoes the vibe of a rape victim. She is humiliated at her present state and wants to slink under the stairs and lick her wounds. I can understand why she would want those who love her to stay away. She doesn’t want us to see her like this. But know this Lady Babylon. I love you for you, no matter what. My energy is yours for your rebuilding. I may not be able to find a way to relocate my family to you lands, but I will visit often and I will spend my money at the businesses of those who do live there and have a vested interest in resurrecting your Will. I will keep my finger on your pulse and send you my mojo daily. I will do what I can, with my strong skills to aid and abette you.

Don’t fret lil’ trooper…It’ll be okay. In time. Keep your chin up.

Four Hours until Lift off and I’m going HOME!! NOLA

Yeah…I haven’t been back since the storm. No, I no longer reside in New Orleans, but she will always have my heart. She is the only city I’ve EVERY been in that felt like “home” and no matter, in the words of the Almighty Robert Smith from the Cure has he warbles in “Love Song”; “However far away…however long I stay…whatever words I say…I will always love you.”
Tonight, I get to go back for the first time in quite a while. I’m fidgeting’ around in my work chair like I’m hopped up on goof-balls and I feel like I have to pee all the time! It is safe to say that
I’m ‘cited. Very, very ‘cited.

One another front I am NOT traveling with my current paramour I will miss him. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve invited love into my heart and it likes the feel of it. It likes other things as well, but as this is a PG rated blog, I’ll leave that up to the imaginations of the masses.

Mia lost her first tooth and her legs are getting as long as a filly! She’s turning into a remarkably, beautiful young lady, but I always knew that would happen.

Toru B. is going to be in town for a wedding and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to coordinate schedules for 10 minutes or so. I’d love to see the old Capt.. Rent Boy is out of town. Tim-o-Tee and Satori are both on the direct opposite end of the Mississippi and won’t be able to join us, but Tedd and Stybbi and Loki and Chase and Argent and Angelo and Camille are all sitting pretty like the blackbirds being baked in a pie.

I can’t wait to see y’all. Live sure has changed since our 1996 days hasn’t it. Hell most of us are married, spawning, have slightly-respectable occupations, and don’t fall of the edge of the world on drug or alcohol binges anymore…well, most of the time.

Life is good. Life is beautiful. Even for us black-hearted, infernally inclined… May Babylon live on in our hearts and minds as she recuperates her strength and magick and will shine once again… We celebrate her in all her incarnations…

As it is…So Be it.

Hummingbird Totem

Hummingbird: messenger, timelessness

Hummingbird – the tiniest of all birds – brings special messages for us. It is the only creature that can stop dead while traveling at full speed. It can hover, or can go forward, backward, up or down. It lives on nectar and searches for the sweetness of life. Its long tongue lets it bypass the often tough and bitter outer layer to find the hidden treasures underneath. Hummingbird is loved by the flowers and plants, for as it sucks the nectar from the flower, the plant reproduces and more of its kind are created. In many traditions, Hummingbird feathers have been prized for their almost magical qualities. It is said that Hummingbird brings love as no other medicine can, and its presence brings joy to the observer.

If you have Hummingbird medicine, you adapt easily to whatever situation you may find yourself in, and make the most of your new circumstances. You don’t waste time looking back and wishing for “what was” for you are concerned with making the most of “what is”. Also, you could never become addicted to any artificial stimulants, for you find joy in your own heart. You take great pleasure in spreading joy and love and beauty to all around you, and have the gift of taking that inner joy into new and different surroundings. You have a talent for finding the good in people, and are not put off by a gruff or abrupt exterior, for you know that, if you can only get beyond that tough outside layer, you’ll find goodness and beauty inside. You may have a gift for working with flowers, maybe growing them to share with others, or using flower essences for healing. Aroma therapy may be your calling. You have high energy and a spirit that must be free. To restrict that wonderful, free, loving energy is to suffer great depressions and feelings of uselessness. Hummingbird must fly free in search of beauty, spreading joy and love to all it touches.

Being Poor Like the Nolas By Boyd Blundell

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/28359

When I’m talking about poverty in my ethics classes, I’ve always felt like I’m missing something. I cannot successfully communicate the sense of helplessness that goes along with it, the sense of being the victim of forces to large to understand. But above all, I cannot communicate the sense of humiliation that comes with accessing an impersonal system, or in receiving charitable support for one’s family in order to survive. I myself have never been in that position.

No longer. To be part of post-Katrina New Orleans is to understand something of the helplessness and humiliation of poverty, regardless of your personal income. Let me tell you about the Nolas.

New Orleans is the equivalent of a family (let’s call them the Nolas) that lives in a very affluent neighborhood (let’s call it Bush Gardens). The Nolas have always been a bit of an oddity among the other families in Bush Gardens. They’re not all that well off, but that’s not it. Their closest neighbors on the southern edge of the neighborhood are no better off, but they never seem as unkempt, never quite as scruffy as the Nolas. The Nolas are justweird, but in the eyes of the neighborhood, it has always been a good weird. They are a hospitable family that throws great parties with the best food and spectacular music, and pretty much the whole neighborhood has fond memories of the Nolas and all their weirdness.

It’s been a very bad year for the Nolas; as disastrous a year as anyone can remember. Their house burned to the ground, the entire property is destroyed, and they can’t even think about the expense rebuilding the family house until all sorts of even more expensive repairs are done to the property. Much of the family is bunking with neighbors. Some died in the fire, and a few are unaccounted for. And while the fire department and other emergency services haven’t done such a great job, most of the people in Bush Gardens are great. They seem to feel really good about helping the Nolas. But when it becomes clear that the help needs to be ongoing, the enthusiasm of many starts to wane. Because the causes of the Nola’s sudden “poverty” are very complicated and not easily fixable, many quickly become distracted by other things. Some are actually quite hostile, as though the Nola’s flagrant suffering is an insult to their sense of propriety.

This last group can be awfully brazen, and turn out to be very influential. This poor family, asking for help in its tragic circumstances from a neighborhood it helped build, suddenly finds itself being lectured on all its faults. The Nola’s begin to hear mutterings that they’re asking for handouts. The well-to-do Cato family offers a hectoring lecture on the Nola’s lack of sensible financial preparation. (Of course, they were wrong. But then, the Catos think that the failures of the fire department only goes to show that there should be no fire department. The Nolas think the Catos need to get out of the house more.) Other families launch aggressive attacks on the Nolas’ character, and some on the neighborhood council oppose any financial aid to a family so dysfunctional. (The Nolas think the council is pretty dysfunctional itself). The Nolas are asked, with no irony whatsoever, why the neighborhood should chip in to help them.

The Nolas, when they have time to think about it at all, are mystified by all this. “When did we become a them?” they wonder. Less than a year ago, the Nolas were part of the “we”. The Nolas were so cool that they made the whole neighborhood look cooler. Despite the neighborhood’s impressive wealth, travelers would often choose to come to hang out at the Nola’s messy and slightly dilapidated house. When the neighbors traveled, they were proud to claim the Nolas as their own, and were pleased to accept that the coolness of the Nolas were part of what made the neighborhood so great. Those crazy Nolas were firmly in the “we” column.

But now the Nolas are finding out what it’s like to be a “they,” to be “those people.” It’s not a whole lot of fun. The Nolas never had the most polished social skills, and have a difficult time in the other neighbors’ houses. Nor are they the most articulate people, so they have trouble explaining why they think they should be still part of the “we,” or how hurt they are that they’re not. They know that historically they were the gateway to the neighborhood’s wealth, and that the process of getting energy to the neighborhood houses had destabilized their property and made their plight that much worse. They had contributed. The Nolas find it a cruel irony that they became a “those people” at the precise moment that they most needed to be a “we”. And they find that their less savory relatives want to cooperate with the neighborhood and let most of the family property rot. On the nicest corner of the property, they want to build a banquet hall that will be a brighter, shinier version of the Nola’s old, rambling house – and people will come to the banquets and pretend that they’re at one of the Nola family’s amazing parties. But the Nolas won’t live there anymore.

The Nolas are a complex family. The younger and more idealistic Nolas are just waiting for things to go back to something like the way they were. Older and more experienced family members understand that things will never be the same, that their family will never fully recover from this. They hope that if they work hard and learn to make do, they’ll salvage the most important parts.

But the wisest members of the Nola family are the ones most worth watching. They’re heartbroken, and you can see the impending sense of doom on their faces. Every day, they become more and more convinced the neighborhood will abandon them, that they are the poor that the neighborhood wants out of sight. They work on the property alongside their family, but they are humiliated, and they work without hope. In their darkest moments, they have come to suspect something awful: There is no neighborhood. They realize that the if Bush Gardens could do this to the Nolas, who had been such a celebrated part of the neighborhood, then it could do it to any other family in a similar plight. It is dawning on these wise Nolas that not only will they be abandoned by Bush Gardens, but that the neighborhood they were always so proud of is nothing like they thought it was. And that hurts even more.

I fear for the Nolas.

I fear for the neighborhood.

So…How does one obtain the Knowledge & Conversation of their HGA?

Liber OS ABYSMI
vel
DAATH
sub figura CDLXXIV
A.·. A.·.
Publication in Class B.
Imprimatur:
N. Fra A.·. A.·.

This book is the Gate of the Secret of the Universe.
Let the Exempt Adept procure the Prolegomena of Kant, and study it, paying special attention to the Antinomies.
Also Hume’s doctrine of Causality in his “Enquiry.”
Also Herbert Spencer’s discussion of the three theories of the Universe in his “First Principles,” Part I.
Also Huxley’s Essays on Hume and Berkeley.
Also Crowley’s Essays: Berashith, Time, The Soldier and the Hunchback, et cetera.
Also the “Logik” of Hegel.
Also the “Questions of King Milinda” and the Buddhist Suttas which bear on Metaphysic.
Let him also be accomplished in Logic. (Formal Logic, Keynes.) Further let him study any classical works to which his attention may be sufficiently directed in the course of his reading.
Now let him consider special problems, such as the Origin of the World, the Origin of Evil, Infinity, the Absolute, the Ego and the non-Ego, Freewill and Destiny, and such others as may attract him.
Let him subtly and exactly demonstrate the fallacies of every known solution, and let him seek a true solution by his right Ingenium.
In all this let him be guided only by clear reason, and let him forcibly suppress all other qualities such as Intuition, Aspiration, Emotion, and the like.
During these practices all forms of Magick Art and Meditation are forbidden to him. It is forbidden to hi to seek any refuge from his intellect.
Let then his reason hurl itself again and again against the blank wall of mystery which will confront him.
Thus also following is it said, and we deny it not. At last automatically his reason will take up the practice, sua sponte, and he shall have no rest therefrom.
Then will all phenomena which present themselves to him appear meaningless and disconnected, and his own Ego will break up into a series of impressions having no relation one with the other, or with any other thing.
Let this state then become so acute that it is in truth Insanity, and let this continue until exhaustion.
According to a certain deeper tendency of the individual will be the duration of this state.
It may end in real insanity, which concludes the activities of the Adept during this present life, or by his rebirth into his own body and mind with the simplicity of a little child.
And then shall he find all his faculties unimpaired, yet cleansed in a manner ineffable.
And he shall recall the simplicity of the Task of the Adeptus Minor, and apply himself thereto with fresh energy in a more direct manner.
And in his great weakness it may be that for awhile the new Will and Aspiration are not puissant, yet being undisturbed by those dead weeds of doubt and reason which he hath uprooted, they grow imperceptibly and easily like a flower.
And with the reappearance of the Holy Guardian Angel he may be granted the highest attainments, and be truly fitted for the full experience of the destruction of the Universe. And by the Universe We mean not that petty Universe which the mind of man can conceive, but that which is revealed to his soul in the Samadhi of Atmadarshana.
Thence may he enter into a real communion with those that are beyond, and he shall be competent to receive communication and instruction from Ourselves directly.
Thus shall We prepare him for the confrontation of Choronzon and the Ordeal of the Abyss, when we have received him into the City of the Pyramids.
So, being of Us, let the Master of the Temple accomplish that Work which is appointed. (In Liber CDXVIII. is an adequate account of this Ordeal and Reception. See also Liber CLVI. for the preparation.)
Also concerning the Reward thereof, of his entering into the Palace of the King’s Daughter, and of that which shall thereafter befall, let it be understood of the Master of the Temple. Hath he not attained to Understanding? Yea, verily, hath he not attained to Understanding?
And that my friends…is all there is to it! So get going. Your True Will awaits!

Enochian – 4 Aspects of "God"

For anyone who doesn’t know I’m working in Enochian for this month…
Author’s Post: This month, since the 8th I’ve been charged with becoming more familiar with the Enochian system of Magick. Enochian is considered the language of the Angels and the Enochian system of magick was pioneered by Kelley and John Dee in the 1500’s. The Golden Dawn has expounded on this and many other have followed suit. It is an incredibly complex and veiled system and I find it challenging. One thing that I came across today that struck me was the four aspects for of “God.”

Someone relayed the information when I voiced my concerns about the Xtian alignment of the First Call, and how could someone with my black little heart, in good conscious say to these angelics “oh yeah, I’m aligned with you and yours. ” This person said “don’t confuse the First with the Third, pretending to be the First.

I’ve thought A LOT about this statement this week. I will have to remind myself that my original source is the First, that is aligned with my True Will indeed. The Third is the face of GOD that has already divided and now brandishes his poorly directed Will with impunity. Bah. Ptooy! I defecate on the face of that charlatean. Yeah, yeah. I’m perfectly aware that it would do the same to me. I’m used to it though…I’m a soldier. The fractured face of the Divine is a doddering, old relic with dementia having tantrums and not even able to realize why.

I must remember the Source…and the Will.

LVX baby…
As it is…So be it.

~Chinagrrrl

We see this gradual evolution in God’s self-awareness as a result of his increasing collisions with man in the names by which He is called in the Hebrew Bible:

Elohim — undifferentiated “God-ness” prior to mankind YHVH — partially differentiated, but still “meaningless,” after his first encounter with man El Shaddai — still-more, but not fully differentiated “Almighty” upon encountering Abraham Eheyeh — the fully differentiated “I Am” upon His encounter with Moses

Everyone suffers – sorrow of the Tzaddik

Everyone suffers — everyone “sighs and groans” — but the Tzaddik, by
virtue of being a Tzaddik — by virtue of being “a man of sorrows,
familiar with suffering” — suffers more, “sighs and groans” more, than
others do and, therefore, is more of a an instrument for the “fulfillment
for what they are lacking” than they themselves are.

This is not because of holiness or piety or purity, but proximity.
Because the Tzaddik, by definition, is closer to God than others, he is
more sensitive to God, more attuned to God’s own suffering, God’s own
loneliness, God’s own sorrow than they are. Because God is despised, he is
despised; because God is betrayed, he is betrayed; because God is
denied, he is denied, because God is misunderstood, he is misunderstood;
because God is reviled, he is reviled.

This is the both the burden and the blessing of the true Tzaddik — to
be reviled because God is reviled; to be misunderstood because God is
misunderstood; to be denied because God is denied; to be betrayed
because God is betrayed; to be despised because God is despised.

Disinformation :: UN Troops Continue Sex Abuse (s’more for my Circle of Hell)

UN Troops Continue Sex Abuseposted by crowleyon May 17, 2006 – 08:01 AM

‘UN peacekeepers and humanitarian staff are having sex with Liberian girls as young as 8-years-old in the very camps where their families have sought protection, according to a new report by Save the Children UK. Along with UN peacekeepers,