Category Archives: …and other stuff

miscellaneous postings by Lawrence R. Spencer

...and other stuff, ART, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, PICTURE POEMS, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

ACE OF CUPS

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ace-of-cups

Ace of Cups is a card used in Latin suited playing cards (Italian, Spanish and tarot decks). It is the Ace from the suit of Cups. In Tarot, it is part of what card readers call the “Minor Arcana”, and as the first in the suit of Cups, signifies beginnings in the area of the social and emotional in life.  Tarot cards are used throughout much of Europe to play tarot card games.

Playing cards first entered Europe in the late 14th century, probably from Mamluk Egypt, with suits very similar to the tarot suits of Swords, Staves, Cups and Coins (also known as disks, and pentacles) and those still used in traditional Italian, Spanish and Portuguese decks.

The first known documented tarot cards were created between 1430 and 1450 in Milan, Ferrara and Bologna in northern Italy when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the common four-suit pack. These new decks were originally called carte da trionfi, triumph cards, and the additional cards known simply as trionfi, which became “trumps” in English. The first literary evidence of the existence of carte da trionfi is a written statement in the court records in Ferrara, in 1442.  The oldest surviving tarot cards are from fifteen fragmented decks painted in the mid 15th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan.

The Ace of Cups shows a hand holding a cup or chalice that is overflowing with five streams of water. The hand that appears from the clouds represents our consciousness of spiritual energy and influence. Radiating from the hand are rays which symbolizes that you must always trust your inner feelings and your heart to lead the way. This is your intuition and inner power talking to you. The five streams represent the abundance and power of the spirit and the effect of spiritual energy upon our five senses. A dove holding a wafer or small disc in its mouth descends from above, signifying the incarnation and appearance of the spirit in the material world. Below the hand is a great sea covered with lotus blossoms, symbolizing the awakening of the human spirit.

The Ace of Cups Tarot card’s meaning is of joy and inner peace from friends and family. The five streams pouring out of the cup represent the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch.  As a symbol of possibility in the area of deep feelings, intimacy, attunement, compassion and love, in divination, it shows that a seed of emotional awareness has been planted in your life although you may not yet recognize it. When the seed sprouts, it could take almost any form. It might be an attraction, strong feeling, intuitive knowing, or sympathetic reaction. On the outside, it could be an offer, gift, opportunity, encounter or synchronistic event.

This card also suggests inner spirituality. Cups are the suit of the heart, and the Ace stands for the direct knowing that comes from the heart. Trust what your feelings are telling you. Seek out ways to explore your consciousness and your connections with Spirit.  Allow the power of your emotions to guide you in a new direction. Embrace the love that is the Ace of Cups.

...and other stuff, BULLSHIT, LIVES, READING MATTER

FRAUDULENT “BRAIN” SCIENCE

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An investigation now reveals that as many as 20,000 published scientific papers each year are fraudulent.  Remember the Nazis? They thought they were the Super Race because their brains were bigger and better than the rest of us.  They proved it by trying to kill everyone on the planet who wasn’t a “pure” Aryan.

Writing in Nature, science journalist Colin Macilwain, discusses the shocking fact of how scientific misconduct has become a depressing reality.

“Considerable hard data have emerged on the scale of misconduct. A metastudy (D. Fanelli PLoS ONE 4, e5738; 2009) and a detailed screening of all images in papers accepted by The Journal of Cell Biology (M. Rossner The Scientist 20 (3), 24; 2006) each suggest that roughly 1% of published papers are fraudulent. That would be about 20,000 papers worldwide each year”.

HERE IS A WONDERFUL EXAMPLE OF FRAUDULENT “PSEUDO-SCIENCE”:

Macilwain writes, “Among some “connectomics” scholars, there is a grand theory: We are our connectomes. Our unique selves – the way we think, act, feel – is etched into the wiring of our brains. Unlike genomes, which never change, connectomes are forever being molded and remolded by life experience.  A human connectome would be the most complicated map the world has ever seen. Yet it could be a reality before the end of the century, if not sooner, thanks to new technologies that “automate the process of seeing smaller,” as Sebastian Seung puts it in his new book, Connectome: How The Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are.  How far should scientists go to find a way to become immortal?  Hayworth looks at the growth of connectomics – especially advances in brain preservation, tissue imaging, and computer simulations of neural networks – and sees something else: a cure for death. In a new paper in the International Journal of Machine Consciousness, he argues that mind uploading is an enormous engineering challenge but one that can be accomplished without “radically new science and technologies.”

If you think that YOU and your memories are stored in a piece of meat called a brain, you have a lot bigger problems with your mind than can be solved in another 20,000 fraudulent “scientific” papers!

...and other stuff, ART, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, PICTURE POEMS, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

FANTASY REALITY

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FANTASY REALITY

A Gentle Maiden I do See!
She does not turn to look at Me.
An Enchanting Spirit floats nearby…
She follows with Her Loving Eyes.
All My Kingdom I would trade
For a Single Glance, a Longing Gaze
from this Perfect, Precious Maid!
How can I be a Butterfly?
My Angel, I am Floating Near!
There is nothing You should fear.
Come, and Fly Away with Me!
Yet this cannot be Reality….
Alas, My Dreams are Fantasies.

_______

Lawrence R. Spencer. 2013.

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MAKE FRIENDS

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FRIENDS WITH YOUR SELF

Maxwell Maltz (March 10, 1889 – April 7, 1975) was an American cosmetic surgeon and author of Psycho-Cybernetics (1960), which was a system of ideas that he claimed could improve one’s self-image. In turn, the person would lead a more successful and fulfilling life.  He wrote several books, among which Psycho-Cybernetics was a long-time bestseller — influencing many subsequent self-help teachers. His orientation towards a system of ideas that would provide self-help is considered the forerunner of the now popular self-help books.

The book introduced Maltz’s views where a person must have an accurate and positive view of him- or herself before setting goals; otherwise he or she will get stuck in a continuing pattern of limiting beliefs. His ideas focus on visualizing one’s goals and he believes that self-image is the cornerstone of all the changes that take place in a person. According to Maltz, if one’s self-image is unhealthy or faulty — all of his or her efforts will end in failure. —  (reference: Wikipedia.org)