Tue 11 Mar 2014
Posted by PJ under hatred, love, quote of the day, religion
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Random quote of the day:
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
—Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Fri 7 Mar 2014
Posted by PJ under prayers, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”
—Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Noah Brooks, Harper’s Monthly, July 1865
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Wed 5 Mar 2014
Posted by PJ under gods, men, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.”
—André Gide, Literature and Ethics
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Tue 4 Mar 2014
Posted by PJ under conscious and subconscious, dreams and dreamtime, quote of the day, stories
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Random quote of the day:
“Beware of stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.”
—Ben Okri, Birds of Heaven
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Mon 3 Mar 2014
Posted by PJ under anxiety, leadership, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Mon 24 Feb 2014
Posted by PJ under giving, quote of the day, wealth
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Random quote of the day:
“Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.”
—Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Fri 21 Feb 2014
Posted by PJ under contradictions, lies, quote of the day, truth
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Random quote of the day:
“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the want of contradiction a sign of truth.”
—Blaise Pascal, Pensées (tr. W. F. Trotter, E. P. Dutton, 1958)
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Thu 20 Feb 2014
Posted by PJ under paradox, quote of the day, reality, science
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Random quote of the day:
“The ‘paradox’ is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ‘ought to be.'”
—Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. III
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Wed 19 Feb 2014
Posted by PJ under hatred, love, quote of the day, society
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Random quote of the day:
“Excess in love, indeed the only desirable, belongs to saints. Societies, they exude excess only in hatred. This is why one must preach to them an intransigent moderation.”
—Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Tue 18 Feb 2014
Posted by PJ under disasters, hauntings, poetry, ritual
No Comments
Last week, thanks to a link provided by asakiyume, I read an absolutely riveting article from the London Review of Books, 6 February 2014: “Ghosts of the Tsunami” by Richard Lloyd Parry. In it, Parry discusses the paranormal experiences had by people after the 2011 tsunami in Japan. He speaks a lot about the difference between “contained” ancestral spirits and the wild or “hungry ghosts” unleashed by natural disaster and also by having their ancestral shrine anchors destroyed by natural disaster. He writes about spirit-ridden people and a spirit-ridden society, survivors guilt, paranormal experiences, and exorcisms. It’s a long article but absolutely worth the read. Very, very moving.
It also reminded me of something I’d read somewhere a long time ago about the hungry ghosts created after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I couldn’t find the specific reference, but I did find a passage in Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton. He speaks of how many of the survivors of the A-bomb blasts were haunted—whether psychologically or spiritually—by hungry ghosts, a literalization of survivors’ guilt. He writes:
“Japanese Buddhist tradition has stressed ‘quick separation of souls from physical bodies’ so that they ‘became ancestral souls, gradually became calm, settled in dwellings in high mountains, and came down to their children’s homes and rice fields on certain occasions.’ These calm and appropriately placed ancestral souls are the antithesis of the homeless dead—of the ‘wild souls’ and ‘hungry ghosts’ whose way of dying, or neglect by survivors, caused them to be denied proper separation from, and continuity with, these same survivors. Significantly, at the annual Bon Festival, the time when visits from ancestral souls are expected, special offerings of food are also put out for anonymous ‘hungry ghosts’ who, it is thought, might otherwise have no one to provide for them—another expression of survivors’ sense of responsibility for their ‘homelessness…’ For the survivor must reject the dead (particularly the newly dead) until he can place them safely within a mode of immortality: in Japanese tradition, permit them to become ancestor souls (or gods); in Christian tradition, immortal souls.”
Similar things were reported in the aftermath of the horrific tsunami which hit Thailand and other spots in the Indian Ocean in 2004. The fear of hungry ghosts kept many Asian tourists away from these spots. Maybe it still is.
EVPs
(On hearing tapes of spontaneously-generated “spirit
voices,” so-called EVPs: Electronic Voice Phenomenon)
The mumbling dead
speak non-sequiturs
as if they have forgotten
language, that thing
which made them most human.
“I came up with Betty;â€
“I went to see the warâ€â€”
one-phrase grooves
clicking on and off
with ancient preoccupations.
Sometimes what they say
freezes in my heart
and turns my lungs cold.
“The soul stays down here,â€
says the voice from the crypt,
and I cannot catch my breath.
Are the souls of the dead
crowding round us even now,
like ekimmu out of Babylon,
jealous of the air we breathe,
hungry for the touch of flesh
they cannot possess?
Then give me oblivion.
If not the golden light,
if not even the fires below,
then I want nothing, nothing.
Anything but wandering feet
which cannot feel the road.
—PJ Thompson
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