Weekly Photo Challenge: Tarot Reading From Above
Posted by moderndayruth | Filed under Uncategorized
09 Thursday May 2013
Weekly Photo Challenge: Tarot Reading From Above
Posted by moderndayruth | Filed under Uncategorized
06 Monday May 2013
Tags
Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot, Fifth Arcanum, fifth trump or Major Arcana, Hierophant, Religion and Spirituality, The Pope, WordPress
this path is for strong
this path is for those who remember
I come from a lineage
I was tried and tested
my faith
doubted by many
has endured
the core of my being
is innocent
childlike
it would be eaten alive
by the beasts of darkness
wasn’t it guarded
by canonical teachings
and stiff appearance
you must steal the key from me
I won’t give it away gladly
invisible forces stand by me
even when I am on the wrong
to the inexperienced and foolish
the woman brings the sword
she’ll fight those reaching for the key
that opens the essence of the child
the truth must not be exposed
not easily
it’s not yet the time
I know the secret
but you –
you are not ready to receive it
yet
I bless you
as I keep the secret from you
and I smile
as I am telling you
be wise as serpents
and harmless as doves
The Hierophant, Thoth Tarot, painted by Lady Frieda Harris according to Aleister Crowley’s instruction
Related articles
19 Tuesday Mar 2013
Tags
Arts, Blog, Mary K. Greer, Russia, Tarot, Word Press, WordPress, Writers Resources
Right, it’s as if we aren’t sick of ‘keeping up with the Jones’ outside Word Press, we have this FP thing pushed on us… I must admit i do like most of the entries that do get FPed, but of all the blogs i follow and adore, only Dianne Gray and Rian got FP-ed. Mind you, both are unconventional thinkers with genius writing stile, besides, Dianne is a pro writer who had been published (and popular) long before the Word Press craze, so no surprise there.
What does surprise me is the plethora of excellent and popular blogs that in my year or so on WP got zero promotion. Not to brag, but I am a pro writer myself, involved with all kinds of professional writers’ international activities and even happen to be the president of the national jury for EU prize for literature, so i don’t doubt all that much my own taste in writings; being a doctoral student at one of the world’s top ranked Universities specialized in linguistics, i have some confidence in my intellectual discernment too, and i did wonder for quite a while how come the stuff i love doesn’t get any special attention… Ever.
I went through the list of topics i search regularly:
Chinese Philosophy
Daoism
I Ching
Judaism
Russia
Zen
It’s not that i am looking for something socially unacceptable and on the edge of the good taste, right?
Check out those searches for yourself, there are absolute pearls among them – and by academically recognized authorities too (honestly, those are indeed quite sub-specialized, so very few non-experts discuss them publicly.)
The thing is that we have genius Bonnie Cehovet here on Word Press, a published writer, author of remarkable micro fiction and an independent books and Tarot decks reviewer. ‘Independent’ means you can trust her opinion because she’s reviewing stuff she chooses on a pro bono basis, so there is no way you could invest into a wrong, yet expensive collector’s item because she was paid to promote it; if only for that her work deserves all the praise – let alone that her own taste and, thus, recommendations are indeed exquisite.
Mary K. Greer, worldwide known author and scholar, one of the most respected contemporary experts on the philosophy and history of the occult is blogging on Word Press too.
Among us is Lisa Frideborg Lloyd, famed mystic and Tarot educator.
Amazing Thalassa Therese joined WP recently – she’s the producer of the oldest established Tarot Symposium in the world, founder of the Daughters of Divination, and founder/CEO of Beating the Boundaries Life Strategies and Transformative Arts.
I must tell you all of them are stars with international following and have quite an impact on big group of population with certain buying power. Have I mentioned that all of those blogs are amazingly entertaining and educative too?
One of the coolest and most informative blogs on collections and collecting is that of the famed Le Fanu – My Curious Cabinet; author’s writing style and keen observances on life in a ‘far off land’ would certainly be of interest to a wider following.
Yet, we fall in the uncategorizable category of a sub-culture and while the hard working and smart peeps behind FP selection will risk here and there to promote a post on anorexia or bipolar depression, rest assured they won’t go that far so to press any of us. And it’s absolutely fine, what’s socially acceptable changes every fifty years or so, where as those of us who are into the “obscure” occult disciplines have been around ever since the dawn of the humanity and by now we developed powerful surviving skills, like any other guerrilla does.
I’ve written before on subcultures in Skinny Bitches & Russian Ballerinas and, to be honest, i’d be utterly desperate if we suddenly became mainstream, so take this for what it is – not a rant, merely a stream of thought.
Other than that, there is this amazing blog on Russia – let alone all the ‘world’s being your oyster’ of the internet – there are still very few great blogs about Russia in English and From Russia With Love is definitely one of them.
It’s not that there are too many famous public personalities from Armenia writing in English – yet Arlen is around and at his blog you can read (among else) rare stuff on this exotic country, which is hardly available anywhere else.
That being said, mine too happens to be the only Word Press blog in English where you can read genuine stuff on Montenegro, another far off country on which culture and traditions still little is known.
And here is something else i thought of. Rian of Truth and Cake came up with the genius idea to Freshly Press yourself, hope she won’t mind mine borrowing it (ehem, well, snatching would make a more appropriate wording, but anyway ;))
So, let’s do it here as well, if you feel so inclined:
1. Pick one of your posts you take pride in;
2. Link to it in the comments section below, while adding couple of words on the content;
3. If you choose to do so – promise you’ll check out and comment on at least one entry by another blogger who linked to their respective post too. There is no FP police involved at this time, but karma is … well, mean, so make sure you do it ))
4. Comment directly on their blog and, please, don’t spam.
Have fun!
snatched from http://tfunworld.wordpress.com
17 Thursday Jan 2013
Posted Awards, Photography, Tarot
inIndeed, life is what happens while we are busy with other things…
If someone had told me i’d develop an obsession for cupcakes, i wouldn’t really believe them; i hardly ever eat sweets, cupcakes are not really common where i am, most of the ingredients used to make them are unavailable in our parts… Lo and behold, i stumbled upon Judy’s blog and formally converted into cupcakeism!
And as it usually happens, one thing lead to another and i became a Kenley’s blog devotee as well!
I don’t even remember how i got to HarsH ReaLity, but as soon as i read Opinionated Man’s Intro, i became a follower!
I am hooked on Paul Mark’s inspiring and motivating posts!
The conspiracy of pleasure got me at first post’s skimming!
You might be surprised, but yet another blog i follow religiously is Small Business of America News; not that i do business in US, but out of principal – owners of the small, independent businesses everywhere in the world are the very class on which the rule of democracy depends, hence my (symbolical, but still -) support.
thebettermanprojects is an old favorite.
These guys post amazing photography:
http://hellboy2503.wordpress.com
I love, love, love mymostlyunfabulouslife!
Maxim‘s is a versatile and pensive blog…
And i guess by now it’s pretty clear who is to blame for these scrambled thoughts and VERSATILE NOMINATIONS… the Tarot Alchemist herself!
Given that i ramble a lot about myself, here are (yet another) 7 interesting things about my collection:
(as promised to tuttacronaca )
Like every Tarot collector, i am a sucker for HTF (hard to find) decks, here is one of my darlings, Carnivale Tarot (Taiwan):
And another HTF deck from my collection, Turkish Kurmay Tarot:
I love dark decks – in thee foreground from right to left: Robert Place’s Vampire deck, New Orleans Voodoo (trimmed), Magical Forest:
and French decks (in the foreground: ‘The True Tarot of Marseilles’)
It goes without saying that i adore decks which depict cats (left to right: I Gati Buffi, I Gati Serie Originali, Baroq Bohemian Cats in their very own BBC bag)
I ‘ve mentioned sub-collections before as the fastest way to spend significant sums in the least possible time; these two babies i got (ehem) because they were created by members of the same family, father and daughter Trevisan – Tarot of the Renaissance and Crystal Tarot:
And now, ladies and gentleman, tada! Here is the latest arrival to the collection, The Grail Tarot:
Don’t ask! 😉
10 Thursday Jan 2013
Posted Awards
inTags
Automattic, Blog, Budva, Kate Upton, Montenegro, Publishers, Tools, WordPress
It’s my 1st Anniversary on WordPress! Party time! It’s been an amazing year and i loved every moment of it… Hold on, that’s not the whole truth. It’s more honest to say: i loved almost every moment of it! I couldn’t sleep AT ALL the night after my my very first WordPress post, i was excited, i was anxious, i was thrilled!
Oh, and i was such a techno-dummy back then! Not that i am a wizard now, but i had spent months googling mysterious terms such as WIDGET, trying to figure out how to insert pictures, links and just about anything else. And it took me MONTHS to get it what a pingback was!
Then the sweating over copy-right; I had emailed every single publisher whose decks i posted here, waited for an official reply from them – and for written authorization to use images of their copyrighted artwork. I am still strict with copy-right of anything i use in my posts, the thing is that publishers are fine with images of up to six cards from any deck being posted, as long as the copyright notice is there, there is no need to send them official inquiries and insist on getting a written authorization.
All of it can get quite overbearing in the beginning, i think the first month or so i was logged in almost all of my waken time, trying to figure out plugins, themes and other WordPress wonders.
Funnily, writing per se took the least of my time. There is a brief notice i posted at About this blog on why, being a published writer, i switched to blogosphere – mind you, i partially blame the funny evolution of-social networking for that!
It took me a lot of courage to start posting my own photographs, i was taken aback and felt humbled that those were liked! In the art of photography i am an absolute dilettante, i know nothing about it – i simply capture some special to me moments with automatic camera and later on retouch them a bit digitally, that’s it. The thing is that through these enthusiastic efforts here on WordPress i got to know some great artists whose work i love.
WordPress is a world unto itself, and it’s a safe, creative and supportive one. I have dabbled on phenomena of blogosphere before, in Pirate’s Heart &The Copper Sun.
It’s doable and you can make it, even if English is not your first language, and even if you write in it while living in one of those tiny European countries which most have problems pinpointing on the map.
Still, most of the advice on blogging is quite useless, what worked for some won’t work for others and there is no formula for success… Except the usual: do what you love, make it as relevant to others as you can, make it positive, at least in the potential – even the darkest of it.
I am all for quality, i don’t see a point in flooding other bloggers’ readers and I must confess that i am the first to unsubscribe from folks who overdo it.
I love Truth and Cake and i think Rian’s advice on how to start a blog and how to keep it going is about the best you can get.
I’d add only one thing: please don’t start your blog entries with WOW and AWW, it’s such a turn off! A great post on use of REALLY, LIKE & other simulacra by an adjunct professor of English was recently Freshly Pressed, if you are still tempted to use I MEAN, WHATEVER & GEEZ in your writing, please, do take the time to read it.
To my amazement, the rant i had written about Slavoj Zizek became the most popular piece I’ve posted; funnily, second to it is the entry mentioning Kate Upton’s cellulite.
The statistics are downright breath-taking, in a year of blogging more people had read my writings than over in a decade of traditional publishing:
The blog is featured at Portal Montenegrina, the main online cultural gate to my country, sponsored among else by U.S. Embassy in Montenegro and Government of Montenegro.
Meanwhile, in my native Montenegro, I published a collection of poems. Devil, an unauthorized biography was promoted at last Winter’s Book fair and at one of the main regional art&literature festivals held in the summer at the coastal city of Budva.
Other than that, in 2012 I’ve completed second year of the doctoral program at Pushkin University in Moscow; I’ve been to Brussels at the conference on author’s rights, chaired a session at the European Parliament, traveled to Hungary to attend P.E.N. congress, took some cool shoots of Pest and wrote a poem.
Not too bad, now that i think of it. 😉
31 Wednesday Oct 2012
Posted Humor
inTags
Google, Google Image, Google Images, Liverpool Daily Post, Moscow, postaday, Publishers, Random House, Search Engines, Searching, Templates, Tools, WordPress
I am all for quality, not quantity & all that jazz, i never aimed to post daily – except on days when i suffer from incurable logorrhea which side effects include the unrestrictable desire to share random thoughts on WordPress… This happens quite random, mind you.
Thus, i mostly bypass Daily Propmts, and the current entry would be on forthcoming NanoWrimo, hadn’t i come across this very Daily Post: “Pick a random word and do Google image search on it. Check out the eleventh picture it brings up. Write about whatever that image brings to mind.”
The midnight was long gone by local time and I was packing for Moscow. I don’t have time for this, yet, just for the sake of it – i hit random word generator… This is what i got:
Interesting, is it not? Curiosity is known to be one of the leading indicators of intelligence – and also of sleepless nights wasted on aimless browsing. Nah, not me, i don’t do those…
Next thing you know i was counting heads on Google Image Result.
And i was going to sleep immediately after that, i swear… Until a deprived shaven female head yelled out to me from the computer screen. Oh, every woman’s horror! You know those dreams where you walk naked across the crowded circus (and it’s winter and of course you haven’t shaved in a while, alongside other, usual problems with walking naked along crowded circuses)?
That’s what this poor head told me about – the unusually sad story of cyber neglect, of a digital art done in hurry and a male 3D artist who had left her hairless and sent her naked pictures into the big online word… I cringed. I felt sick in my stomach. “Didn’t bother do hair as it was just a quick project for practice”, the 3D artist says… Goodness, who does that to a cyber woman?!
I heard her plea. I understood and didn’t mind she used Google as some kind of reversed Ouija Board, so to get my attention. I would be capable of using anything to get the help i needed was i in her place… Look at that lipstick – not even a 90 years old would wear it! Not to mention that these colors are not produced for at least twenty years by now – and the girl could develop a cyber allergy from wearing expired make up!
Forget about getting sleep when your sister is in such a tragic situation! I made myself a cup of coffee and took the poor girl to http://www.taaz.com/
First i helped her get rid of that sickish tan she was given by her creator, in my opinion -a ruthless male 3D artist with no understanding of fine art of makeup.
We took off that horrible black eyeliner and removed the dreadful brown lipstick. You can’t grow hair overnight – not even online, so we opted for a wig. The poor head and myself then spent an hour or so applying concealers, shadows, mascaras and the rest of girl’s essentials. We made her lips bigger, teeth whiter. She needed contacts, colored ones of course. The eyebrows needed fixing – i mean, those are ‘half of the face’ as my mother likes to accentuate the importance of correct plucking.
After her makeover was done, the photo itself needed some corrections too – adding some light and filters here and there.
Around 3 am both once bald cyber head with tasteless makeup and sleepless me were satisfied with the result. Here it is, judge for yourself:
Copyright Notice: The original illustration was digitally altered beyond recognition and without prejudicial intentions, thus it can not be considered to be in breach of its creator’s intellectual and moral rights.
25 Thursday Oct 2012
Tags
Anne Enright, Evolution, Facebook, Myspace, Social network, Twitter, Wikimedia Commons, WordPress, Zuckerberg
“The internet ate my novel, but this is much more fun #careerchange #nolookingback oh but #worldsosilentnow Hey!” Anne Enright, Twitter fiction
In the beginning there were bulletin boards – the grandparents of contemporary public posting, followed by internet forums – somewhat similar to the state planning of the former USSR – ’twas was hard to get in, and even harder to leave them.
Then, there was MySpace – looking back at it, its sparkling layouts could only be compared to the shiny parachute pants, shoulder pads and big hair popular in the 80ies – no one remembers gladly they actually wore those.
Thereafter, the new kid on the block arrived – and we welcomed the aeon of Facebook…
Back in the days of Myspace – Tom was everyone’s friend and many of us had developed a certain emotional attachment to his dorky picture, yet somewhere in 2008 it seemed that he went missing… He reappeared on G+ several years later and I swear I felt as if I was reunited with a long lost family member! (I bet you that many of Tom’s 237,991,950 MySpace friends felt exactly the same!)
Speaking of which, let us take a better look at cyber biodiversity.
First, we need to choose a method for categorization and here we are opening a whole new can of worms: Evolutionists are often asked what they mean by “species,” and creationists are often asked what they mean by “kind.” Creationists would like to define “kind” in terms of interbreeding, since the Bible describes different living things as “multiplying after kind,” and evolutionists also use the interbreeding criterion. However, scientists recognize certain bower birds as distinct species even though they interbreed, and they can’t use the interbreeding criterion at all with asexual forms.*
I am as confused as you are. Other sources clarify that: “Creationists oppose the idea that species can evolve indefinitely and charge evolutionary biologists with failing to define their terms properly.”
Right… It seems I am with evolutionary biologists on this one – most of my MySpace friends shapeshifted into Facebook friends and it was very few, Tom among them, who didn’t make it …
Anyway, as the story goes – any real (macro)evolution requires “an expansion of the gene pool, the addition of new genes and new traits as life is supposed to move from simple beginnings to ever more varied and complex forms.” So far – so good; according to an ancient data Facebook ‘s expanded gene pool “now has nearly 100 million more worldwide users than MySpace, which added 4 million new users in December to 125 million total. The page view difference is more dramatic – Facebook had 80 billion monthly page views in December v. 43 billion for MySpace. Just six months ago the sites were about the same size.”
‘Twas January 2009, mind you – and that’s probably the last time anyone bothered comparing the two; from there on Myspace, it seems, went down the online memory lane, extinct like some totally enormous dinosaurs.
As per transition from “simple beginnings to ever more varied and complex forms”, if you too are regularly bashing your head against the wall every single time Zuckerberg’s team introduces a new, complicated and unnecessary innovation, then you’d know that the above mentioned criteria is fulfilled as well.
Lo and behold, influenced by the philosophy of Zen, minimalists – whom for the purpose of this classification we can compare to evolution’s bowerbirds – started an upraise and in their everlasting search for simplicity had moved to Twitter. But, some of this distinct kind had interbred by keeping both accounts and interacting – tweeting and facebooking – inbetween the two networks.
With time, some started feeling rather nostalgic and occasionally started checking out their old forum accounts, albeit hardly anyone paid visits to the neglected message boards…
Anyhow, natural selection started favoring good typing skills and fittest Alpha males&females were pushed to the corner by those who could type faster.
It’s probably at that very time that the oldest question in the cyber world was raised – and the question which no one has answered yet was: To Tweet Or To Facebook?
As you would know, the impending 2012 elections are actually insignificant juxtaposed to Twitter vs Facebook dilemma and there are whole sorts of criteria one should be using while determining between the two- the former consisting of, but not necessarily limited to, the following:
a) are your grand-grand parents on that social network?
b) how many A list celebrities use it?
c) is there enough daily drama – so that you don’t have to watch soap operas (and thus can save on cable TV)?
Stuff like that.
That being said, given that everything changes but the change itself, as twitterrific as 140 character minimalism was, many felt too much is left unsaid – and here we are on WordPress, the world’s most popular blogging platform…
What’s next? That – Cyber Gods only know, but when it comes to me – I reckon I’ll stick around here for a while.
*adopted from: www.answersingenesis.org
France in the Year 2000; series of retro-futuristic illustrations by Jean-Marc Côté between 1899 and 1910 (public domain )
France in the Year 2000 (50 illustrations) are cataloged at Wikimedia Commons, the illustration above is my favorite.
L.R.S.