[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Supernaturalist,

I hear what you say about the “occult” but in fact it all started off quite innocently with a bit of a laugh and me inducing some folk into a past-life regression trance. There wasn’t even a ouija board in sight. But as I induced this one guy a really bad atmosphere built up and then as he started crashing around the apartment things got out of control. We called the ambulance and that brought the situation back to a temporary stability but the bad atmosphere continued and that was when I had the “spirits” come back for me!

Thankfully, I won the tug-of-war battle and my aetheric self finally stayed in my body (although there were some very scary moments as I felt myself being dragged away and was “looking down” at my physical body). There was a great line recently on Mark Kermode’s film review radio show where they asked his mother if, because he is so into horror films, she had ever worried that he was possessed. Her reply was “No…but he had his moments.”

Although it scared the crap out me that episode taught me several lessons (which I should have known anyway – but sometimes you just need to experience something before you really pay attention) like “Never buy drugs from an unknown source in a strange city – especially if they don’t look like you expect them too.” Seriously, though, I would say that any intense psychological/parapsychological investigation should be done with people you know very well or who are “vouched for” by people you trust. Everyone has their own issues but if someone is going through a particularly unbalanced phase you need to at least be aware of this and ideally keep them out of any major action.

Also be wary of mixing different things that all alter your consciousness. In my case it was hypnosis (I’m putting past life regressions in this category) and hash. Sometimes this will be exactly what you are trying to achieve but it helps if you don’t blunder into it like I did and have the necessary preparation in place.

The church ground thing was interesting. It exposed my own hypocrisy in that at a conscious level I would scoff at the idea of mass and church but when the chips were down that’s where I turned for protection (and yes it did help). Since then I have tried to go with the flow and with what works for me – regardless of how aesthetically unpalatable it seems to my conscious mind.

A case in point is one of my techniques for protection. I have two crystals – a rose quartz and a lapis lazuli – and when I want to cast a cone of protection around myself (or a group) I keep these somewhere about my person then visualise them starting to orbit my body, gradually circling it faster and faster and leaving a trail of light behind them, then they begin to move up and down (still circling) until the body is cocooned by the light-path made by these whirling crystals.

Now this is something I cobbled together from a number of sources (including Andrew Collins and any number of sci-fi movies) by chance and intuition. To my conscious, sceptical mind crystals are one of the worst, most embarassing of New Age whimsies but, for some irritating reason, they work for me and so I have to live with that.

(Personal aside: I find a similar thing with prayer. As a typical Irish Catholic I have rebelled against it all my life but the inescapable fact is, if I want to get into a meditative state quickly, then I have a sequence of corny old (mostly children’s) prayers that do it for me every time. A cynical interpretation is that maybe my brain has just learnt to “tune out” as soon as it starts hearing Catholic prayers – a skill carefully honed after years of reluctant attendance at mass. But it’s still a useful trick regardless of how it arose and why should I fight it or spend another 20 years developing a similar faculty in another paradigm just to achieve what I can already.)

As I think I mentioned in another post, the shamanic drumming thing does also seem to work quite well for me but (having now learnt my lesson) I would want some guidance from a more experienced person before I did too much delving into the otherworld – particularly if hallucinogenics were involved.

[imported_SimonMember]

I think that alcohol can be a useful tool. What it does very well is bind together the people and foster that sense of camaraderie. This can be very useful if the people on the quest don’t know each other very well and you need to break the ice quickly. The real problem with alcohol is where it’s used to blot out emotional issues.

As I’m not particularly psychic myself I can’t say if it degrades the sensitivities or not. In my own personal cirumstance my everyday conscious is pretty strong so a little dulling of with alcohol it is helpful to allow my more intuitive side to emerge.

As regards other drugs I have to admit that I’m a bit of a coward. Although I have inhaled much cannabis (oops – there goes my career in politics) I had a very scary experience a long while ago in Canada where I had been conducting past life regressions amongst a gang of stoned friends when one of them was temporarily possessed and when the guy (having smashed through glass coffeee tables and basically been writhing around despite several strong guys trying to hold him down) finally calmed down, I felt the evil spirits come after me and begin drawing me out of my body. I ended up in a sweat, lying face down in the grounds of a church with my fingers embedded in the ground on the basis that they couldn’t “get me” there.

In retrospect the hash resin appeared to have been dipped in some black substance but it was enough to scare me off more or less permanently.

Having said all that I have had good reports of Questing and magic mushrooms…

[imported_SimonMember]

If you’re interested in using psychedelics to access the Otherworld, “Breaking Open the Head” by Daniel Pinchbeck ([url:2kz4a9s9]http://www.breakingopenthehead.com[/url]) is a must.

[imported_SimonMember]

Yuri, that sounds very interesting. Let us know when it’s available.

Quick thought: Have you read “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell” (reviewed elsewhere on this site)? It does the “moving through the veil between two worlds” thing very well (even to the point of having the veil strengthening or weakening as the ages pass) with an extremely strong celtic faerie sensibility. It’s a long read but very enjoyable.

[imported_SimonMember]

OK, Michael.

I think I’ve worked out what’s happening (but sadly not why, yet).
You *can* use regular A HREF= tags to create hyperlinks and they work fine. But carriage returns in the text are being suppressed so you must use two break tags (that’s br in angular brackets)

I’ll try to find out what’s causing this but in the meantime at least there’s a workaround.

Let me know if you have any more hassles though as I want to try and make the site as user-friendly as possible and this is all valuable feedback.

Cheers,

Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Michael,

Apologies. My mistake – I thought you meant the forums.
I’ll check this immediately and let you know what I find.

Cheers,

Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

Yuri, coincidentally I came across this recently but from the perspective of sacred directions. I mapped out the 4 cities with scribbled notes as follows:

Fáilias (North, Stone of Destiny, Lia Fail, sage=Morias)
Gorias (East, Sword, sage=Euras)
Finias (South, Spear (of Destiny?), sage=Arias)
Murias (West, submerged (Atlantis?), Cauldron of Plenty/Cup (Grail?), Semias )

(Aside: Their family tree is descended from a “Noe” and there is mention of a deluge.)

This got me to wondering whether a sunken island always in the West (even in the Americas)? Or are Summer Isles always in the South (regardless of hemisphere)? If so these could be archetypal directions – or even locations in the otherworld – rather than relating to physical directions (or even the vague memories of physical directions) as the myths would tend to indicate.

[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Supernaturalist. This sounds quite annoying and I’ll definitely see if there’s something that I can do. I get a load of issues when I’m logged in as Administrator but as a normal user I haven’t noticed any problems.

The way I do URLs in my posts is to type in the whole URL (e.g. http://www.psychicquesting.com ) and then highlight the whole URL and press the URL button (top right) on the text editor. What result does this give you?

Thanks,

Simon

[imported_SimonMember]

Yuri, I just finished Lynn Picknett’s Mary Magdalene book and not only is your picture reproduced but you get cited throughout the closing chapters. Nice work! Are you considering publishing a book yourself?

[imported_SimonMember]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Adamastor, the Thelema Wine is pretty expensive over here so if you kow a cheap way of shipping some over I’d be very interested . I had a bottle of their white which was excellent but I haven’t managed to get my hands on a red yet. You could probably make quaffing a bottle a nice part of a Questing sketch – maybe drink a bottle or two in the Hellfire Caves and see what happens.

[imported_SimonMember]

Supernaturalist, you say:

Quote:

I have read somewhere that Mary Magdalene is to be identified with Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, which is an interesting idea considering your article about Lazarus being the beloved disciple.

However, if you examine the Gospel story closely, there does seem to be an inner circle based in Bethany. If Lazarus/John and Mary were brother and sister this would make perfect sense. Lazarus/John is Jesus’ closest male apostle who appears to have been initiated in some special way that the others weren’t (see the secret gospel of Mark) while his sister is Jesus’ closest female apostle (shall we say!). Martha appears to be left out of this circle, as does “Simon the Leper”/the Pharisee if he is also part of the family.

[imported_SimonMember]

Thanks, Yuri, Supernaturalist. Can’t wait for the feedback.

I’ve done a little more fumbling around in the dark and found the following:

The second mention of Mary Magdalene having seven demons cast out is, as Supernaturalist mentions, Luke 8:2 (usually translated as “Mary Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out”). Here the preposition used is “ap” (not the usual “ek”, but not the unique “par” either).

To me (and here I’m relying on schoolboy Latin so caveats as before) this suggests that the demons made a diving attack for Mary Magdalene but they were repelled *before* they ever entered. (Ab has that sense of “away from” in Latin). Thinking that I was quite probably mad I did a little bit of searching to see if this could be backed up at all.

Amazingly I found this diagram

on a webpage which is entirely devoted to the meaning of Greek prepositions in the Bible ([url:av5akvrs]http://www.biblestudysite.com/104.htm[/url]). This illustrates exactly what I’m saying (and so much more succinctly!) and I now believe that we are actually on to something here.

Instead of the usual “ek” (which we *do* see in the exorcism accounts in 1 Corinthians 1:25,26; 1 Corinthians 5:8; 1 Corinthians 7:26,29; 1 Corinthians 9:25) we get either “par” or “ap” – neither of which suggests that the demons came from within MM. Thus, the only two mentions in the Gospels of MM being possessed by seven demons seem highly questionable based on the original Greek. Now we just need some unbiased Greek scholars to properly scrutinise this.

[imported_SimonMember]

Yuri, that 4 beasts/Tarot link is very interesting. The trump card “The World” does definitely seem to tie in.

In fact, one could draw a very powerful version of this card by making the four beasts more nightmarish and making it clear that the woman has only attained her state of wholeness by escaping from them.

Also, and I’ll admit that I might be getting carried away here by our other conversations , is it merely coincidence that Marseilles has such strong connections with both Tarot cards and Mary Magdalene?

[imported_SimonMember]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Yuri. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said “soap opera” as that was exactly how it felt. Like you say, though, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true on some level.

By the way, do you have a particular meditation technique for questing? When I want to zone out my best results are with a Shamanic drumming CD but that tends to bring me “miles away” whereas with psychic questing what you often want to do is direct your intuition in a more focussed way to the place or object at hand.

Anyone got any suggestions?

[imported_SimonMember]

Hi Michael,

I think the four beasts represent those mentioned in Revelation 4:6-8 (6. And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal, and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. 7. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. 8. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him, and they were full of eyes within and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.)
which in turn echo Ezekiel 1:4.

Why they are there at all in an interesting question. One explanation is that the Icon Chapel is, in one of its aspects, a prison (the entrace is a barred gate). People who visit it are forced to free themselves from the fears that hold them back. These beasts represent the unamed demons that keep us in their thrall and from whom we must escape.

What all this has to do with Eastern Orthodox religious icons I have no idea! In fact it is far more like a Jungian descent into one’s Shadow.

Possibly the best (or at least the most familiar) modern example of this is when Yoda sends Luke down underneath the tree in Empire Strikes Back and he confronts a Darth Vader who ultimately turns out to be himself.

Errr – not sure if this is in any way coherent but I hope you catch my drift.

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