Nautonnier Blog

I’m supposed to be doing some emergency coding this weekend - hence the unusually high level of blogging activity St Nectan’s Glen has been a popular subject on the psychicQuesting.com website over the years. It contains one of the most recent comments in the forums and the only set of photos in the photo gallery (click here to see the forum thread). I think a large part of this has to do with the impact of Yuri’s drawing.

On another track, I’ve been reading the Magdalene Line books by Kathleen McGowan (finished "The Expected One", half-way through "The Book of Love"). The books take as their starting point the very well-trodden, and perhaps now over-familiar, territory of "The Holy Blood/Holy Grail" & "Da Vinci Code" with Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus and mother of his children. However, she does take this is a new direction and the style is very different to anything else I’ve read. Interspersed with the novel "proper" are excerpts from Mary Magdalene’s own Gospel. In addition the relationships between the characters are carefully detailed so that by the end of the first book, the author has painted a vibrant and engaging picture of the earliest days of the Christian church and the people who drive it forward. Whether you believe this to be historically accurate (and, as mentioned, Kathleen* does introduce some very original twists into the familiar material) is an entirely different question but it doesn’t detract from the strength of the novel.

The structure of the novel is a standard split-time sequence. A modern investigator, using a combination of historical research and visionary experience, unravels the ancient threads while the information she learns about the time of the Christians is played as cut-scene sequences shot from the perspective of Mary Magdalene. The "ancient" sequences thus have something of the style of Geraldine Cummings’ books - only infinitely more readable! Where it gets very interesting for me is that at the end of the book, in the Afterword, Kathleen writes that the lead character who has been on this voyage of discovery is actually a novelistic version of herself. So suddenly we are to understand (and there are no clues that this admission is itself a fictional, post-modern flourish although I guess this is always a possibility) that Kathleen McGowan has, "in true life" (as my kids say when they want to make it clear that they are moving out of the world of make-believe), been on a quest to uncover the path of Mary Magdalene and the earliest proto-Christians - a quest on which she has experienced psychic flashes, full-on visions and uncovered genuine historical artefacts. All of which exactly describes Psychic Questing.

As I was reading the books, I kept experiencing a nagging sense of deja vu. Finally I realised that I was subconsciously comparing the books to Louise Langley’s book "The Sacred Quest". "The Sacred Quest" is also written in the third person although the protagonist is acknowledged to be Louise herself. It too features the theme of an unbroken bond of sacred love that transcends time. It highlights the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. It details the upheaval in the life of its (female) protagonist and shows her moving out of what has been her normal day-to-day existence and into a more authentic, spiritual way of life. Both have strong connections to Ireland.

I’m not sure how pleased either author would be about their books being compared and I do it only to show that it feels like something more is at work here. If, as artists, they are tuned to the vibrations of coming events should we expect that such experiences will become much more prevalent? And what impact will this have on society? I am personally deeply suspicious of the whole 2012 thing (which seems to be a natural continuation of the older new-age "Age of Aquarius" meme). We all face our personal apocalypses and we tend to project our fears about this onto the outside world. On the other hand, there are some very weird things happening (and this investigation is obviously the meta-theme of my blog). Scientists have reached down to touch the bottom of reality, trying to get hold of the smallest "chunk" of solid matter. But like a cartoon character suspended in mid-air above a canyon, when they reach out around them, the solid base they thought was there has completely disappeared. Far from our world being built up from tiny bricks, the foundation appears to nothing more substantial than clouds of probability. If science can suggest that consciousness plays a part in creating the physical world around us then, it is important to pay attention to emerging global patterns of consciousness.

But I digress…I guess I’m wondering whether Louise and Kathleen form the vanguard of something that we will soon be commonly observing (and even experiencing for ourselves).

One last point. Joseph of Arimathea and his role as tin trader and his visits to Britain also play a part in Kathleen’s books. This legend, as popularised in the hymn version of William Blake’s poem "And Did Those Feet in Ancient times…" has just been picked up by Louise in a post on her blog. And the connection for her was made at…St Nectan’s Glen. It seems that there is some special energy there that may warrant further investigation…

[* As I go on to refer to Louise Langley as "Louise", it seemed to jar and be slightly hostile if I was referring side-by-side to Kathleen McGowan as "McGowan". I hope Ms McGowan will forgive me the over-familiar use of her first name.]

A scary thing happened to me last night. I was doing my usual “surf the music channels” routine when my attention was caught by a Transporter-esque scene in which a nubile young lady cavorted to a song which, to my critical ears, sounded very cool and pop-rocky. “Ah!”, I thought to myself, “I’ll watch this to the end to see who it is”. Soon I was muttering along with the popstress “Don’tcha wish you were a fly on the wall?” The horrific revelation, when the song credits popped up at the end, that the singer was none other than Miley Cyrus has catapulted me into an existential crisis from which I have yet to emerge.

This, remember, is Miley Cyrus as in Disney tweenie creation Hannah Montana. This is the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus (is any song more universally reviled than “Achey Breaky Heart”?) This is a girl so prefabricated that she makes The Monkees look like The Sex Pistols. Not since I found myself (briefly, OK?) fancying Sporty Spice have I been so horrified at my own behaviour (and taste). And besides Miley Cyrus is only 16.

This is not my first attempt to re-engage with the music of today. Previously, I stumbled across the Filthy Dukes in a similar Friday night surf and their debut album is brilliant and not, it has to be said in my defence, wildly out of kilter with other CDs in my collection. I can convince myself that I’m not like Tony Blair, simply draping himself in the flag of Cool Britannia and hoping that it would somehow make him cooler by association. The fact that I have the Lady GaGa album in my Amazon shopping basket is harder to justify but she has openly admitted that her two biggest influences are Bowie and Queen so again a genuine lineage back to my pre-crisis collection is provable. In addition, at 23, she doesn’t fall into the deeply unsettling “less than half my age” category.

And this, I think, is the major problem with Miley. Are my daughters going to grow up afraid of bringing their friends home because they know they won’t be able to mop up the drool from their pervy father’s mouth? Is this just the first symptom of an incipient mid-life crisis? I know the signs as I’ve watched those male friends around me buy sports cars, get kitted out in new leather jackets and, yes, pathetically chase younger girls. As a psychologist, I can understand the need to prove to yourself that you *are* still relevant, still cool. That your ever expanding gut could be slimmed down once more if only you put your mind to it and that you could still get yourself in the best shape of your life. That like Peter Pan we are, in fact, not growing old and still immortal.

I would like to hereby coin the phrase “a Miley crisis” to describe that first occurrence, the identifiable starting point, of the later descent into full-blown male mid-life angst. The pattern is clear. And the most terrifying thing of all? If it starts with Miley Cyrus then it ends with the bastard Triathlon.

Imagine that you have just stepped onto the down escalator at Angel tube Station at rush hour. Far below, in amongst the almost solid throng of people, your eye is caught by a girl (change gender as appropriate) stepping onto the escalator and travelling up in the opposite direction. Coincidentally she raises her head and looks up. She catches your eye and smiles. A surge of electricity fires through your body. You smile back. Most improbably she keeps looking at you and smiling. As you both get closer to the centre of the escalator you can sense an amazing connection with this gorgeous girl. And, instead of recoiling in horror as is usual, she appears to feel the same. You realise that you are going to have to say something as you go past. The crush of people means that you won’t have the time to circle around at the bottom, go back up, then try to follow and find her. No, you just have single chance as you meet in the middle. You are approaching now and you desperately try to think of what to say in that split second. Instead she leans as far as she can towards you, smiles one last time and quickly recites her phone number.

And then that’s it. You’re down towards the bottom and she is already way up near the surface. All you have left is the memory of that electricity and sense of connection…and, if you still remember them, the numbers she spoke to you.

All of which is by way of an introduction to a question I’d like to ask. Does anyone know of a method of remembering numbers? No, I’m not expecting to find myself in the situation described above but I am rather hoping that Lady Luck whispers some nearly-as-important numbers into my ear. And if I don’t have a way of quickly committing them to memory, I fear an opportunity will have been lost.

These numbers, as you may have guessed, are the lottery numbers. Never mind for the moment how I come to have them whispered in my ear (although I will get onto this in a future post), the fact is that unless I can recall them exactly right, I may as well not hear them at all. If we take the UK or EuroMillions games, we have a set of numbers ranging, roughly, from 1-50. It strikes me that this is close to the number of playing cards in a deck and as mnemonists routinely memorise multiple decks, there must be a reasonably easy (or at least well-honed) technique for doing this.

Does anyone know these techniques or can you point me to some relevant links on the web? Has anyone practised this sort of thing before and have any tips or tricks? Any feedback greatly appreciated.

(P.S. Those of you who have actually used the escalator at Angel and secretly wondered what it would be like to ski down it need wonder no more - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFqQOlYE4EE ).

Here’s an intrguing little nugget of information that I came across while reading Dean Radin’s summary of Extrasensory research (”Entangled Minds”).

Apparently Sony set up a lab with four staff to investigate whether ESP was real or not. The ESPER lab, as it was known, was shut down after 7 years of investigation, concluding: “We found out experimentally that yes, ESP exists, but that any practical application of this knowledge is not likely in the foreseeable future”. In other words, they claim to prove it’s real but can’t find a way to sell it to consumers.

The second part of their statement certainly has the ring of capitalist truth about it which makes me inclined to believe the first part - that they did believe they had found evidence for ESP.