Summary: ‘This fear of the unaccustomed’; Novalis
on the destruction of civilisation; the solution: collective prayers and
fasting; ‘paginas
meas’ changed to ‘scripta mea’;
‘and our, and us’ added to Psalm 67:2-3;
the frog and the scorpion (a cautionary
tale); a prayer for activists.
Electronic
logbook for August 2021
Visita,
quaeso, Domine, scripta mea et omnes insidias inimici ab eis
longe repelle; Angeli tui sancti habitent in eis et me in pace
custodiant. Amen.
‘This fear of the unaccustomed’ (Charles Richet, 1922)
I came across the following excerpt a couple of hours ago in an
anthology having to do with paranormal phenomena dating back to the
late 1970s. Written by the university professor (and Nobel prize
winner in 1913) Charles Richet (whom I mentioned in a previous
entry), the work containing this excerpt was published in French
in 1922 with an English translation released only a year later –
probably because I would think that there was strong demand for titles
exploring what was called then psychical research up until the late
twenties. Part of the phenomenon Charles Richet describes in this
footnote of his seems to fall under the category of ‘cognitive
dissonance’. As I believe this phenomenon to be particularly prevalent
in current times, I felt compelled to reproduce this excerpt here,
both in English and French. Finally, although this short excerpt also
deals with a fascinating topic (child prodigies), I do not wish to
explore it here; however, anybody interested in doing so could start
with the article for which I provide a hyperlink after the original
French quote.
*I have been able to observe a curious instance of the folly with
which this fear of the unaccustomed can afflict an honourable
scientist. During the Exhibition of 1900 at Paris, I presented to
the Psychological Congress a Spanish child, Pepito Arriola, aged
three years and three months, who played amazingly on the piano. He
composed military or funeral marches, waltzes, habaneras, minuets,
and played some twenty difficult pieces from memory. A hundred
members of the Congress heard and applauded him. This tiny marvel of
precocity came to my house, and in my drawing-room, on my piano,
twice during the day and in the evening before a number of persons,
he played at a distance from his mother. Then, four years later,
comes an American psychologist, Mr. Scripture, who announces that I
was the victim of an illusion, and that the music had been played
not by Pepito Arriola, who was too little to play, but by his
mother! Incredulity carried to such a point of aberration matches
the credulity of the celebrated geometer Chasles, who showed with
pride an autograph letter, in French, from Vercingetorix to Julius
Caesar. The scepticism of Mr. Scripture is of the same stamp as the
credulity of Chasles.
Thirty Years of Psychical Research, from page 10 of the
section entitled ‘Concerning Metapsychics in general’; translated by
Stanley de Brath; published by Macmillan both in London and New York
in 1923.
1. J’ai pu constater un curieux exemple des
sottises que la crainte de l’inhabituel (néophobie) peut inspirer à
un savant honorable. Lors de l’Exposition de 1900 à Paris, j’ai
présenté aux membres du Congrès de Psychologie un enfant de trois
ans et trois mois, PEPITO ARRIOLA, espagnol, qui jouait étonnamment
du piano, composait des marches funèbres ou guerrières, des valses,
des habaneras, des menuets, et exécutait de mémoire une vingtaine,
et peut-être plus, de morceaux difficiles. Les cent personnes du
Congrès l’ont entendu et applaudi. Ce minuscule petit pianiste,
véritable prodige de précocité, je l’ai fait venir chez moi, et dans
mon salon, deux fois dans la journée, une fois le soir devant de
nombreuses personnes différentes, il a joué du piano, sur mon piano,
loin de sa mère ... Et voilà qu’un psychologue américain, M.
SCRIPTURE, a annoncé, quatre ans après, que j’avais été victime
d’une illusion, et que les airs entendus avaient été joués non par
PEPITO ARRIOLA, trop petit pour jouer, mais par sa mère!... (Americ.
Journ. of Psychology, 1905.) L’incrédulité
portée à ce degré d’aberration est digne de la crédulité de
l’illustre géomètre CHASLES qui montrait avec orgueil une lettre
autographe — en français — de VERCINGÉTORIX à JULES CÉSAR. Le
scepticisme-de M. SCRIPTURE est de même acabit que la crédulité de
M. CHASLES.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5846623z/f27.texteImage
Link
https://allaboutheaven.org/sources/arriola_pepito/133
[#18
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Pepito+Arriola&t=ffab&ia=web]
Lausanne, posted on the nineteenth day of the eighth month of the
year two thousand and twenty-one.
Novalis’s ominous quote from 1799
Novalis got it so right in 1799. Except that it is even worse than what he
had realised was happening after the French revolution. Well, this is how I
interpret the quote I am about to give you here. I came across it by chance.
Of course, the pen name of Novalis was not unknown to me as in high school
we had to study some excerpts from the Romantic period (by the way, his full
name was Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg). However, (unless
I cannot recall having done so), I have not read anything by him – and in
fact, I still have not. I came across the following quote in one of these
books whose purpose even if it is nowhere stated to be to demonstrate the
existence of the Creator ends up doing so indirectly. Through a specific
technique, the German photographer Alexander Lauterwasser was able to
capture the structures of water surfaces reacting to sound vibrations: Wasser
Klang Bilder, in German, or sound images. Such underlying patterns
are of stunning beauty – click here
to see what I mean; you will see the first few pages of the French
translation of Mr Lauterwasser’s book. The page containing the bibliographic
data in the French translation is preceded by a quote from Novalis’s
‘Christianity or Europe – A fragment’ (a title which was not Novalis’s) set
as follows:
Le sous-titre la musique créatrice de l’univers est tiré de l’essai de
Novalis L’Europe ou la chrétienté (Œuvres complètes, Gallimard 1975, p.
315: « Mieux encore, cette haine de la religion, par une pente très
naturelle et très logique, s’étendit à tous les objets de l’enthousiasme :
imagination et sentiment ; sens moral et amour de l’art ; avenir et passé
furent odieusement discrédités. À peine était-ce si l’homme était laissé à
sa place au premier rang des êtres naturels ! Et l’infinie musique créatrice
des mondes n’était plus que le bruit monotone du battement d’un moulin
monstrueux, entraîné par les sols du hasard et voguant sur ses eaux, moulin
en soi, sans architecte, ni meunier, pur perpetuum mobile, à vrai
dire, un moulin se moulinant soi-même. »
A few clicks and not only was I able to find the German text in an early
printed version (given here in modern German):
Noch mehr – der Religions-Haß, dehnte sich sehr natürlich und folgerecht
auf alle Gegenstände des Enthusiasmus aus, verketzerte Fantasie und
Gefühl, Sittlichkeit und Kunstliebe, Zukunft und Vorzeit, setzte den
Menschen in der Reihe der Naturwesen mit Noth oben an, und machte die
unendliche schöpferische Musik des Weltalls zum einförmigen Klappern einer
ungeheuren Mühle, die vom Strom des Zufalls getrieben und auf ihm
schwimmend, eine Mühle an sich, ohne Baumeister und Müller und eigentlich
ein ächtes Perpetuum mobile, eine sich selbst mahlende Mühle sey.
https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/novalis_christenheit_1826?p=21
...but two English translations:
Furthermore, the hatred of religion extended very naturally and
consistently to all objects of enthusiasm, disparaging fantasy and
feeling, morality and the love of art, the future and past. This new
philosophy placed man of necessity at the top of the series of natural
beings, and made the infinite creative music of the cosmos into the
uniform clattering of a gigantic mill – a mill in itself driven
by and swimming in the stream of chance without architect or miller, a
genuine Perpetuum mobile, a self-grinding mill.
(unknown translator; source: https://www.starcenter.com/Novalis--Christendom.pdf)
Other translation (by Margaret M. Stoljar):
https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Lg2ulMgA7JMC&hl=de&pg=PA144&img=1&zoom=3&sig=ACfU3U2psgCVNERX6Qc5l3TT2-BAkRzyyA&w=1280
Now I shall let you guess why I have used the adjective ‘ominous’ in the
title of this post.
No idea? Maybe this will be of help then: https://paulzanotelli.ch/blog/fringe/history/the-same-forces-behind-1789-1917-and-2020-onwards_question-mark.html.
Other links
https://foto-lauterwasser.de/wir/alexander-lauterwasser
https://web.archive.org/web/20181107044130/http://www.masaru-emoto.net:80/english/water-crystal.html
‘Romantic Cosmopolitanism: Novalis’ “Christianity or Europe”’
Kleingeld, Pauline, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol.
46, 2008, p. 269-284.
https://www.rug.nl/staff/pauline.kleingeld/kleingeld-romantic-cosmopolitanism.pdf
On the fringes of a city named after the Celtic word for river (Laus),
on the twelfth day of August.
More light is needed on and for the agents of the forces of darkness.
Had the tone of Psalm 67 not been so harsh and even merciless, I
would have paired it with Psalm 34 (35 in versions of the Old Testament
based on the Hebrew Masoretic text; 34 corresponds to the numbering of the
Latin Vulgate, the text
I would have quoted for both psalms), as was intended by Pope Leo XIII in
his famous exorcism (see this previous
entry of mine). So save maybe for ‘et captio quam abscondit
conprehendat eum et in laqueo cadat in ipso’ [34:8 – which translated
literally gives ‘the deceit/trick that he [the force of darkness] hid
may catch him and in the trap may he fall himself’], I shall refrain
from quoting any such vindicative psalms again this month. In fact, what the
agents (from the Latin verb agere, to act; so ‘those who act on behalf of’) of such invisible
forces need is not any ‘of their own medicine’ being administered to
them – as this can only result in more negative and even destructive
forces being unleashed.
Ideally, light should
be cast for them to come to realise the extent of the damage caused by
their decisions or deeds (which comprise but are not limited to pain,
misery, poverty, death, etc.). It should be possible to effect this
through truth-telling (as darkness
should normally not be able to neutralise the light that is being shed
on it*), peaceful and
non-confrontational demonstrations, praying,
etc. Finally, for some, light stands for
love in its highest form of expression: unselfish
and all-embracing – i.e., pure.
Is this some wish-wash and wistful thinking in
the face (pun intended) of agents that seem to be as soulless as the
proprietor of the following pair of eyes**?
[He is the ‘leader’ of an important country in Europe.]
I would reply ‘probably not if enough people believe this to
be the case’. The more so as there is a very potent
force (this I am sure) that has
still to be tested (at least at) at
the national level: the combined effects to be derived by millions
of people fasting for a day (from dawn until
sunset) with all these spirits joined together in a common
prayer (i.e. calling for the defeat of the
forces of darkness that are
behind this gigantic operation against humanity). May such
prayers come to be prayed – together and several times!
* Imagine two rooms separated by a wall
with a door. One is as black as the darkest piece of coal found in
the deepest bowels of a quasi bottomless pit; the other is full of
light. If the door is opened, what happens to the room full of
darkness? Not only do you, dear reader, know the answer but you
also know that the converse may not take place: darkness cannot
invade the room full of light… [I borrowed this metaphor (set in
tamer language) from Dr Luc Bodin, Le grand livre de
nettoyage, protection et prévention énergétique, Paris,
2020, bottom of page 123.)
** A pair of eyes apparently in
contradiction with Cicero’s ‘animus
autem sensum omnem effugit oculorum’ (but the
soul eludes all visual perception) as these eyes really
seem (to me at least) to go so well with this quote I stumbled
across only yesterday:
‘The eyes of a psychopath will deceive you, they will destroy
you. They will take from you, your innocence, your pride and
eventually your soul. These eyes do not see what you and I can
see. Behind these eyes, one finds only blackness, the absence of
light. These are of a psychopath.’
Dr. Samuel Loomis
Lausanne, the above was posted on the tenth day of August 2021
Psalmus LXVII (‘atque nostri’
and ‘atque
nos’
added)
Exsurgat
Deus, et dissipentur inimici ejus atque
nostri: et fugiant odientes eum atque
nos a facie ejus. Sicut deficit fumus, deficiant; sicut
liquefit cera a facie ignis, sic pereant peccatores a facie Dei.
Let
God arise, and let his and
our enemies be scattered: and let them that hate him
and us flee from
before his face. As smoke vanisheth, so let them vanish away: as wax
melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of
God.
[Please note that ‘our’ and ‘us’
stand for the collective, i.e.
for humanity, not for the ‘pluralis
majestatis’].
The frog and the scorpion (a
cautionary tale for our times from
Soviet central Asia)
I’ll tell you something, comrade Chief, listen:
“One day a big green frog was sitting on the bank of a
river croaking merrily, and the other frogs answered him.
At that moment a scorpion ran up to the bank and said:
‘Frog, frog, carry me over to the other side as quickly as you can.’
‘But you won’t bite me?’ asked the frog.
‘He’ll bite, he’ll bite, don’t carry him!’ croaked the
other frogs.
‘I swear by whatever you like,’ said the scorpion, ‘that
I won’t bite you.’
‘Well, sit on my back,’ said the frog, ‘and I’ll carry
you over the river to the other side.’
The scorpion sat on the frog’s back, and the frog swam
off. It swam as far as the middle of the river, and there the scorpion bit
it.
‘What have you done?’ cried the frog. ‘I’m dying, I shall
drown in a minute, but you’re going to be drowned with me!’
‘I couldn’t do anything else. It’s my nature,’ answered
the scorpion.
And they were drowned, the pair of them.”
Extracted
from page 320 of Georgy Tushkan’s The Hunter of the Pamirs. A novel of adventure in Soviet Central Asia
(London, Hutchinson & Co., 1944) with the aid of the book section of
a famous search engine. The translation was that of the Englishman
Gerard Shelley (whose interesting life is outlined at http://tacotichelaar.nl/wordpress/en/biographies-english/grigorii-rasputin/gerard-shelley).
So why did I use the adjective ‘cautionary’? Well, you could
go and explore what happened to the Russians when the country was under
the Marxist boot (i.e. during the Soviet
régime); in particular, I would suggest that you find out whether the population increased or decreased
during that troubled period of Russia’s history.
Even leaving aside the current
context, the tale can still be read as offering a more general comment
on some aspects of the human nature, as pointed out by Raj Soren’s
conclusion to his very short interpretative comments about the tale’s
meaning (which come after his own rewriting of it): ‘Hopefully you are not the scorpion, however,
we may have the seeds of nature of self-destruction
or self-sabotage and sit in our comfort zone rather than take the
risk to succeed.’
Source: page
72 of Raj Soren’s Little Pocket
of Confidence - Ten Golden Steps, Dream Publications
(Sarkheldih, Jamtara, Jharkhand, India), 2020 (a book which I have not
read: I simply stumbled across this reference as I was looking for the
text of this tale).
A prayer for activists (by Peggy Hall)
A prayer for activists As there are mounting
signs that there will be a new witch hunt in the USA, this time
not against alleged witches or communist agents, but against
people who dispute the official narrative regarding covid-19 and
the ongoing vaccination campaigns (a witch hunt which I expect to
spill over to other parts of the world, including the country
where I live, especially since it recently armed itself with a new
terrorism law which allows for the discretionary detention of
presumed terrorists for enough months to destroy their chances of
maintaining a livelihood thereafter), I think that the following
prayer (which I came across on
21st July) deserves to be better known.
A PRAYER FOR
ACTIVISTS
O Lord, I long that people might
hear the truth.
Give me assistance in reaching others,
with my heart uplifted for grace and
wisdom.
Guide me to share my views with
fullness of truth,
clarity of thought,
proper expressions,
fervency and conviction,
guided by your wisdom and light.
Keep me conscious of my faults and flaws.
Open my heart to hear the sorrows of
others,
and shine your light of comfort and peace.
May no soul be lost to your love.
Strengthen me by your spirit.
Stand between me and all strife
so I may speak fully and freely
and do this work you have called me to
do.
by Peggy Hall*
Source:
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec33703d876e52434d8b91c/1589958035354-KTX7REYH9FMYKJQOJLRU/1-+Healthy-Ameircan-Prayer-for-Activists-Peggy-Hall.jpg
*https://www.thehealthyamerican.org/peggys-story
Lausanne, the above was posted on the fourth day
of August 2021
