Quotes about Psychic Powers (Clairvoyance, Telepathy, etc.) and Witchcraft

I promised some posting this week, didn't I? Well, here's some quotes on psychics and witchcraft at least (I know they're not the same thing from a practitioner's point of view, there was no malicious intent to lumping them together):

“We are always mentioning people, and in that very instant they appear before us. We laugh and say, 'speak of the devil' and so forth and there we drop it. It is a cheap and convenient way of disposing of a grave and puzzling mystery. The fact is it does seem to happen too often to be an accident.”
(Mark Twain)

“I was brought to a realization of the seriousness of trifling with the hallowed reverence which the average human being bestows on the departed, I was chagrined that I should ever have been guilty of such frivolity and for the first time I realized it bordered on crime.”
(Houdini, on preforming medium acts)

“. . . things that did not really happen . . . which only took place on some boundary between real experience and fantasy. . .”

(Blake, “The Poison Tree”)

“Innocent lives are taken, and by a new alchemy gold and silver coined from human blood.”

(Cornelious Loos, on witchcraft trials)

“I'll readily speak your wine [aka desire].”

(Jacotte Colin, offering to confess to witchcraft)

“God's death witch, if you budge I will smash both your eyes with my stool.”

(Demenge Grand Cole, to a supposed witch)

“. . .relatively few correct predictions are heralded and therefore widely remembered, while the much more numerous incorrect predictions are conveniently forgotten or de-emphasized. . ."

(Prof. John Allen Paulos, on the 'Jeane Dixon Effect')

“Even the dark side of the human imagination demonstrates our unity.”
(Dominic Alexander, Spellbound, on accusations of black magic)

“So far as we can see, all that is proved is that some record of life on Earth is laid up in some unearthly archives, and that under the right circumstances, this record is accessible to the minds of the living.”

('Review' on spirits and psychics)

“Magic was a kind of technology to control the supernatural.”

(Dominic Alexander, Spellbound)
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Weekly Update 2016/04/18 - 2016/04/24 (w/ 2016/04/11 - 2016/04/17)

Okay, so I missed last weeks update, but that's okay, because there's not much to tell. I was crazy busy and had to deal with an emergency.

Continued researching NDE and Reincarnation this week; found a promising book on kids remembering past lives. There's a bit of evidence-less speculation at times, but in general the events and information are presented in a clear, matter of fact, narrative manner.

This of course means not so much progress on researching medieval ghosts and other medieval beliefs, but that's the way deciding what to research in the allotted time works.

Fiddling with writing something up a couple things on spirits; might combine them, that makes sense [to me]. Should probably finish my water monster guides as well. Maybe when I've finish and posted all three, I'll do a revised version with some extras as a eBook. Or maybe it is better if I write something new and keep it completely secret until release?

Have a great week everyone, I'll try to make sure I post some stuff this coming week.

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Quotes about the Unknown, Investigation, Research, and Determination

As might be expected, I come across a lot of quotes I like when read/watching things for paranormal research. Here's some nice general ones relating to the mysteries of the world and investigating them:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious, the source of all true art and science.”
(Einstein)

“I do it because I genuinely want to know.”
(Ben Redford, sceptic - on why he instigates the paranormal)

“There is a vast gulf between impossible and impossible to imagine.”
(Sherlock, 'Elementary')

“Why is it so noble and respectable to find whence man came, and so suspicious and dishonorable to ask and ascertain whither he goes?”
(Hyslop)

“Cryptology is the science of writing secret messages that no one except the intended receiver can read. Cryptanalysis is the science of reading them anyways.”
(Chuck Missler, Cosmic Codes)

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”
(Einstein)

“When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you.”
(Keith Richards)

“If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that all crows are; it is enough you prove one single crow to be white.”
(William James, on psychical research)

“They say when you have a case coming up, you will know because stuff will happen to you.”
(Susan Benzine, on paranormal investigation and exorcisms)

“I never said it was possible. I only said it was true.”
(Charles Richet)

“How does this happen? . . . I do not know.”
(Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, on dreams of others, idea transposed on ghosts)

“How are we to interrupt all those tales, passed down by the literate of the Middle Ages [Clerics], . . . that assert as a given what we have great difficulty admitting; that the dead appear in full daylight to people who were wide awake and of perfectly sound mind?”
(Jean-Claude Scmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages; the Living and the Dead in Medieval Society)

“I know there's things it the world we aren't told about; I hear them every day.”
(Ted)
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Weekly Update 2016/4/04 - 2016/4/10

It's been a week already, amazing. Not the week mind you, the way time passes.

Been doing a bit of gardening, since spring is finally here, which gives me time to think. You may have heard the analogy that the mind/soul is like a garden. You got to plant good things and pull the weeds. Simple yes? No, no, not quite. . . You've got have the right tools and some knowledge of plants. There's normal weeds you can just pull up, then there's things like dandelions where you've got to dig up the roots, and blackberries where you've got to protect you hands dig even deeper, and worse still there's plants (I don't know the name of this plant) that take over the whole garden during winter, having a runner root that breaks really easy, making it almost impossible to get rid of them.

If the weeds are really bad, it's tempting to simply take out the hoe and tear it all up, but might still be some good things in there. Asparagus come back year after year as long as the roots are safe, and potatoes can regularly spring up from missed roots or seeds. The best solution to that is to keep up on weeding, once you've weeded the garden, it's easier to remove young weeds as they appear, before they can take hold. Though sometimes it's tempting to leave young plants, until you can tell what they are. There was a lush green plant growing among my sunflowers, and I thought it was a cherry tomato. It had tomato-like leaves, tiny tomato-like flowers, and then little green berries. And suddenly one day, they turned black (without any visible variation of shades between green and black). It wasn't tomatoes, but another member of the nightshade family, Black Nightshade, which can be poisonous. Though pretty with the striking black berries, I have nephews that know I grow food in the garden, so it had to go.

What does this have to do with mental or spiritual health? Well, you have to recognize the bad things in your life. You prepare yourself to deal with them, and taking preemptive action almost always works better then procrastination. It probably won't be easy, but you're doing it for you, and you're doing it for those you love.

Okay, the mushy motivational stuff is over.

OpenOffice likes to try to predict what I'm typing. Typing 'better' it suggests 'betelgeuse', and typing 'love' it suggests 'Lovecraft', this probably says something about my mind garden. . .

I also looked into some books on Near Death Experiences and Reincarnation, so far nothing that doesn't make me scoff with skepticism about poor research and manipulation when it comes to supporting their personal theories, but I'll keep looking. Looking into a couple of investigative leads as well. I think it'd be interesting to investigate a fairy case. Even in these modern times, patches of trees in farmland left for fairies (or more logically, wildlife), are surprisingly common.
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It's Doomsday Again!

So, apparently today (April 6th) is another Doomsday, according to the Church of Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. But with how little time is left in the day, and with their leader in prison, I'm seriously doubting any apocalypse.

It also didn't make Wikipedia's list of Doomsday Dates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
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Weekly Update 2016/3/28 - 2016/4/3

My blog posting has become increasingly sporadic (blame it on whatever you like; work, family, summer, laziness, evil spirits), so I've decided to give weekly Sunday updates on my research, experiences, and investigations a try. I don't know how well I'll do at this, but I felt it was worth a try.

I should be doing a large update to the ParaDex soon. I've got a lot of locations and book references to add, as well as few TV/Movie ones. I'm also researching places from an old collection of haunted locations in the US, to make a list with their current status (since I couldn't find an update list already posted anywhere), so I'll probably make a whole post out of that.

Lately I've also been reading up on the Medieval attitudes towards ghosts. It's some interesting stuff, heavily affected by the Catholic Church, clerical officials of which usually recorded the majority of ghost stories from that time. So there may be more on that in the not too distant future.

Also, The Story of God w/ Morgan Freeman started tonight. So far, there's not been too much I didn't already know about, but the change in prescriptive is nice. It's probably worth a watch if you're curious about different religions.

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