imagination

Man in the Sky

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Imagine a Man in the sky
Sitting all alone, poor guy
Thought he’d had a bit of fun
Play a game and then be done
He imagined so very, very hard
Opened his eyes and sighed
Seeing the beauty of it all

Better than being so fucking bored
Now I will be the one and only Lord
Mini me’s to worship me
And proclaim my divinity
They strut upon my stage
Hoping to avoid my rage
When they turn their back on me

Look at how they multiply
Many are born and fewer die
They deny that I exist at all
Chasing money and having a ball
I grow weary of watching and waiting
Find them so bloody aggravating
It’s Time to play another game

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Fog

This morning, for the first time in a very long time, it was really quite foggy here in Prague. We live at the top of a hill and it was quite bizarre driving up the hill into the fog. For a moment, my imagination was off and I half expected to emerge on the other side of the foggy wall in a parallel universe. Most disappointingly, I didn’t.

When I was a boy, there seemed to be much more fog. Maybe there was as in industrial Britain of the 1960’s it was smog rather than fog that we were dealing with. Perhaps, it was just Hull situated between the coast and the River Humber on the flat plains of Holderness. Always damp and cold, fog just seemed a natural part of the landscape. I recall walking to school in the thickest fog. So thick, you could hide a few feet away from people safely enveloped in thick white mist. It made the world seem mysterious as with only a foot or two of vision, that space took on more importance so that you really saw what was there. It focused your vision I guess. It was a safe sort of magical feeling that I have not experienced in many years.

By now the mornings fog has burned off and the Sun streams through my window. As I look down the street, I can see Prague below us reflecting back from the valley. Its an impressive view but it doesn’t photograph very well unfortunately.

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Meanwhile, my memory is full of foggy days and foggy fun playing hide and seek in the stuff with my brothers and friends. Fog is like a blanket white canvas on which you can project your imagination and as children, we did.

Sword of Destiny

There is a day every author enjoys more then others and that day is when you finally hold in your hands the product of your long and loving labour…. the book! Yesterday was the day this happened for my friend and co-author of The Mystical Hexagram – Sue Vincent. I know that Sue had worked long and hard on her novel – Sword of Destiny – and the result is now available to share with everyone. Sue asked me to read and review the novel a few months ago and I was honored to do so.

In Sword of Destiny, Sue has written a beautifully magical story set in her beloved Yorkshire. Each of the main characters in her story experiences personal growth through a sharing a thrilling and magical adventure. It’s a heartwarming tale that is full of unexpected twists and turns. Sue writes with a real grasp of the human side of people which is expressed lovingly in the personalities of her heroes and the recognizable characters that they interact with. The power and essence of her story is found in the admixture of her undoubted love of Yorkshire, her ability to see the warm and the good in all folk, and her knowledge of the magical forces one can find at work in such places and between such folk. An inspired piece of writing that keeps your attention until the very last page.

Sword of Destiny is available in Kindle and Paperback form from Amazon and should be on every magician’s wishlist. I wish Sue every success with this book. As she says in her own words “the proof copy of Sword of Destiny makes me smile.” All authors love the feeling of that finished product in their hands but they all like even better the idea of their book being in someone else’s hands – the readers.

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“…and the swords must be found and held by their bearers lest the darkness find a way into the heart of man. Ask the waters to grant guidance and tell the ancient Keeper of Light that it is time to join battle for the next age.”

Rhea Marchant heads north to the wild and beautiful landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales where she is plunged into an adventure that will span the worlds. The earth beneath her feet reveals its hidden life as she and her companions are guided by the ancient Keeper of Light in search of artefacts of arcane power. With the aid of the Old Ones and the merry immortal Heilyn, the company seek the elemental weapons that will help restore hope to an unbalanced world at the dawn of a new era.

Set in the ancient beauty of the Yorkshire Dales, Sword of Destiny weaves the tale of a small band of friends brought together as a new age of Man unfolds. Through their personal quests, through friendship, love and laughter, they learn to see the world with a clearer vision as they battle creatures of ancient myth and legend, under the aegis of the Keeper.

What you waiting for? Grab yourself a copy now!

A New way To Pray?

In between work items yesterday, I found myself watching a video on Youtube that claimed to be a new way to pray. a more effective way to pray. It wasn’t a long video and it featured someone being interviewed about this radical new discovery. The key to prayer is not asking for something because when you ask for something you simply confirm that it doesn’t exist in your reality. No, what you do is IMAGINE it already is.

This wasn’t an occultist or magician talking but it might as well have been. I recently wrote about imagination on my other blog. Imagination is the engine room of magic. Its the engine room of reality. It is the engine room of our very existence. It is imagination without any frontier that creates. It creates not just in terms of inventions and ideas but it creates in the plastic substrate on which reality is based and then manifests on the physical plane.

To digress a little, The Last Observer, carries this as a theme in that Stanley, our everyday hero, has an imagination of such intensity and value that black magicians are trying to recruit him and that imagination to alter reality. While this is just a novel, I wrote it for a reason and that was to share these ideas in a palatable way.

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It is all coming together. People are waking to the fact that imagination creates reality. Magicians have known this for milenia. Physicists are having to accept it. Even street hustler’s have caught on and instead of selling snake oil and love potions they are out there selling ‘The Secret’. It’s no secret. It’s how things work.

So next time you pray, meditate or whatever it is you do. Imagine. Imagine so intently you are there already. See it, hear, smell it…… We can change this world for the better. It starts by imagining it better. It’s the new way to pray!

“Imagination is the eye of the soul.”
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), French philosopher.

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German mathematician and physicist.

“Man consists of body, mind and imagination. His body is faulty, his mind untrustworthy, but his imagination has made him remarkable.”
John Masefield (1874-1967), English writer.

(The above quotes selected from – http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/ij/imagination.html

Six Weird Statements About Reality

Quantum physics – have you taken any time at all to see what quantum physicists are saying about reality? You should because it is totally bizarre. Check out these 6 statements.

If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.
Niels Bohr

[T]he atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.”
Werner Heisenberg

Observations not only disturb what is to be measured, they produce it.
Pascual Jordan

When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.
Eugene Wigner

In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.
Martin Rees

The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment.
Bernard d’Espagnat

Is reality inside or outside of you? Is it your reality or a shared reality? Can you change reality imply by seeing things differently?

It was questions like this that made me realize that Quantum Physics and the ‘Occult’ deal in the same things using different words. I explored that concept in my novel – The Last Observer officially released today. Give it a look… it may blow your mind!

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Just Today

Have you ever wondered if today is, in fact, the only day of your ‘life’?

Ever since I was a young child, I have puzzled over reality. As I have mentioned many times, in Inner Journeys, I talk about how as a young boy, I really felt like this wasn’t real and that I was in a booth somewhere looking through some glasses and experiencing life as a ‘virtual reality’ game. Back then there was no virtual reality of course. Later, at school, I couldn’t quite understand how I could be just a bunch of atoms floating around in space! What kept me together? How did I know which atoms where mine? and many many other questions. Other kids thought I was a bit weird. Probably they were right.

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I often ponder over the thought what if today is the only day I actually experience this reality? I wake up, live through the day and then go to sleep and that is the end of my virtual reality game. Memories? Pre-programmed of course. Everything I thought that I ever did, anyone I thought I had ever know, everything just a programmed set of unreal memories to give context to that one day! Imagine it. Your one day of life here….

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And when you do imagine that, there grows within you the idea that today then must be special. I must do something, achieve something beyond the norms of my programmed memories because this is my only chance. I must make today truly special.

Its a bit like the movie Groundhog Day except I live my day just once so killing myself to see if I wake up again at the same place probably isn’t on the agenda.

Imagine it. If this was the one day of reality that you could participate in. What would you do? How would you leave your mark?

Viral Thinking

What if The Last Observer took off? I mean really took off. If it sold, hundreds of thousands of copies. I have been just occasionally letting myself dream such things in the hope that, if I think and believe it, it will happen. Funny though because this thought is always rapidly followed by that other little voice that says ‘You stupid bugger! Who would buy your book?‘ It’s that second little voice that stops us all from dreaming too much but actually, if we listened to it too much, we would never do anything at all.

I set myself a goal with The Last Observer. It is this – minimum 3000 copies sold. 3000 isn’t that big of a number is it? Actually, I do think 300,000 would be achievable if only I could get the book into people’s hands. Everyone who has read it says the same thing…. it draws you in. Herbie Brenna read it and said this ‘I didn’t think I’d have time for more than a glance, but it pulled me in. Well done.‘ Today, I saw a review by WitchHazel and she says this… ‘I love a book that draws you in and lets you submerge yourself in the world it creates around you, much like Stan, but this book had me actually leaning in, desperate to turn the page and find out more.‘ I am pretty sure that this book has the je ne sais quoi that could tip the balance into it being a good seller. SC Vincent said ‘This slim volume packs a thought provoking punch and is an addictive read. The fast paced story leads the reader through the twists and turns of the plot with a feel of being caught within the story. As indeed we are.‘

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What I do need is simply channels to get the message to market. It needs that viral word of mouth component to help it take off. That’s what I will be imagining then from now on in… a little book that goes viral and steps above the other millions of books in reaching an audience. Perhaps you can all help me by writing reviews on Amazon and Goodreads etc. and by telling all of your friends?

I Used to be able to fly…..

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

I posted this quote on Facebook last night on the Last Observer page. For a novel about the nature of reality and magic, it struck me as a darn fine quote. Magic really does involve belief or faith. Faith really can move mountains. Magic rituals, far from being some evil activity performed naked with the lights out, are simply a very traditional human activity designed to help act out and therefore convince the subconscious and other areas of the psyche, that something is so. That, if you like, we can still fly. I discuss this in Inner Journeys where I use the example of projecting success and being successful as a result. A Rolex watch could be used to help convey the idea of success and it is, in this context, a magical instrument.

The quote though, reminded me of something I had written on Asteroth’s Domain a while ago. The blog article was titled Imagining and it deals with a memory of being very young and able to imagine things into reality. A sense that at some point I existed in a real place but fall back into this dreamworld on waking bringing a very real sense of disappointment. In this ‘Otherworld, whatever I imagine can be my reality. In this place, I can fly. The fact is, I am pretty convinced that I could fly but at some point growing up, I was laughed at and told, “don’t be silly, people can’t fly!” At that moment, I lost my ability to fly. At that moment, I lost something else far more important. I lost my belief in magic and I lost my childhood.

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Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming anyone for this. It is the world we live in and what would it be to think I could fly at my age? Well, guess what? There are moments when the magic is still there. When dragons still exist and Unicorns roam and yes, I can fly. They exist on that point between waking and sleep and who is to say that this is reality and not just imagination or that its really the other way around?

JM Barrie knew and gave us directions… “second star to the right and straight on til morning”