“
But this Scroll too has magical properties. From the moment I first saw it, the paper warmed to my touch. I know it came alive as I held it. Did you know there’s a serpent on the back? Some say it’s a dragon. It winked at me. Its lashes are gold.
”
”
Susan Rowland (The Alchemy Fire Murder (Mary Wandwalker #2))
“
I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.
It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process.
It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.
And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.
That’s the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.
”
”
Osho
“
…a man should say to his soul every morning, "God has given thee twenty-four treasures; take heed lest thou lose anyone of them, for thou wilt not be able to endure the regret that will follow such loss.
”
”
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (The Alchemy of Happiness (Forgotten Books))
“
I'll be grateful for every second that I can say that I belong to you, Saeris Fane. Eighty years or eighteen hours. It doesn't matter to me. It'll still be the highest honor of my life.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
I’ll be grateful for every second that I can say I belong to you, Saeris Fane.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
Medicine rests upon four pillars—philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics. The first pillar is the philosophical knowledge of earth and water; the second, astronomy, supplies its full understanding of that which is of fiery and airy nature; the third is an adequate explanation of the properties of all the four elements—that is to say, of the whole cosmos—and an introduction into the art of their transformations; and finally, the fourth shows the physician those virtues which must stay with him up until his death, and it should support and complete the three other pillars.
”
”
Paracelsus (Paracelsus: Selected Writings)
“
Her books on alchemy were marvellous objects, every page a work of the engraver's art, but they nowhere contained instructions like "Be sure to open a window". They did have instructions like "Adde Aqua Quirmis to the Zinc untile Rising Gas Yse Vigorousky Evolved", but never added "Don't Doe Thys Atte Home" or even "And Say Fare-Thee-Welle to Thy Eyebrows.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Feet of Clay (Discworld, #19; City Watch, #3))
“
No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.
”
”
Diane Ackerman (An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain)
“
If the ways of this world are based on equivalent exchange, as alchemy says, then in order to allow for a new generation to enjoy good fortune, then the price that we must pay is to carry the bodies of the dead across a river of blood.
”
”
Hiromu Arakawa
“
The way I feel about you doesn't come with a set of restrictions. There are no rules that say if you do this or you don't do that, I won't care anymore. This is just an aspect of who you are and I love you for the entirety of you, not for the different pieces I can pull out.
”
”
Donna Augustine (Redemption (Alchemy, #4))
“
The difference between the "natural" individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realized, is tremendous. In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning. In the second case so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light, and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight. The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light which shines in the darkness is not only comprehended by the darkness, but comprehends it. The filius solis et lunae (the son of the Sun and Moon) is the possible result as well as the symbol of this union of opposites. It is the alpha and omega of the process, the mediator and intermedius. "It has a thousand names," say the alchemists, meaning that the source from which the individuation process rises and the goal toward which it aims is nameless, ineffable.
”
”
C.G. Jung (Answer to Job)
“
The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense)
“
Please, for the love of the gods, don't say anything. Just let me have my fantasy. Just for tonight.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
Imagine a young Isaac Newton time-travelling from 1670s England to teach Harvard undergrads in 2017. After the time-jump, Newton still has an obsessive, paranoid personality, with Asperger’s syndrome, a bad stutter, unstable moods, and episodes of psychotic mania and depression. But now he’s subject to Harvard’s speech codes that prohibit any “disrespect for the dignity of others”; any violations will get him in trouble with Harvard’s Inquisition (the ‘Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’). Newton also wants to publish Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, to explain the laws of motion governing the universe. But his literary agent explains that he can’t get a decent book deal until Newton builds his ‘author platform’ to include at least 20k Twitter followers – without provoking any backlash for airing his eccentric views on ancient Greek alchemy, Biblical cryptography, fiat currency, Jewish mysticism, or how to predict the exact date of the Apocalypse.
Newton wouldn’t last long as a ‘public intellectual’ in modern American culture. Sooner or later, he would say ‘offensive’ things that get reported to Harvard and that get picked up by mainstream media as moral-outrage clickbait. His eccentric, ornery awkwardness would lead to swift expulsion from academia, social media, and publishing. Result? On the upside, he’d drive some traffic through Huffpost, Buzzfeed, and Jezebel, and people would have a fresh controversy to virtue-signal about on Facebook. On the downside, we wouldn’t have Newton’s Laws of Motion.
”
”
Geoffrey Miller
“
To set out for rehearsals in that quivering quarter-hour is to engage conclusions, not beginnings, for one walks past the guilded hallucinations of poverty with a corrupt resignation touched by details, as if the destitute, in their orange-tinted back yards, under their dusty trees, or climbing into their favelas, were all natural scene designers and poverty were not a condition but an art. Deprivation is made lyrical, and twilight, with the patience of alchemy, almost transmutes despair into virtue. In the tropics nothing is lovelier than the allotments of the poor, no theater is as vivid, voluble, and cheap.
”
”
Derek Walcott (What the Twilight Says: Essays)
“
Lot of damn mixin' things up and saying, hey, what'll happen if we add a drop of the yellow stuff, and then goin' around without yer eyebrows for a fortnight.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
For a business to be truly customer-focused, it needs to ignore what people say. Instead it needs to concentrate on what people feel.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
“
I remember a man, a very lonely man, coming up to me at the end of a reading and looking into my face and saying, 'I feel as if I have looked down a corridor and seen into your soul.' And I looked at him and said, 'You haven't.' You know, Here's the good news and the bad news: you haven't! I made something, and you and I could look at it together, but it's not me; you don’t live with me; you're not intimate with me. You're not the man I live with or my friend. You will never know me in that way. I'm making something, like Joseph Cornell makes his boxes and everyone looks into them, but it's the box you look into; it's not the man or the woman. It's alchemy of language and memory and imagination and time and music and sounds that gets made, and that's different from 'Here is what happened to me when I was ten.
”
”
Marie Howe
“
I've now learned that when you share the darkest parts of your life, and find that thousands of people say 'Me too', it transmutes those black memories into spun gold. Sharing is like alchemy.
”
”
Catherine Gray (The Unexpected Joy of Being Single)
“
Invisible prose only!" rules out the sparkling style of [writers]. . . For [whom] vivid prose, and the visionary mind it evinces, rich with speculation, insight, and subjectivity, is the craft and offers a unique caliber of truth. Is there any other art form one would praise by saying it's "invisible"? By definition, art transcends the ordinary, calls attention to itself, and offers virtuosity as its calling card. One that makes it possible to do what metaphor does so well: illuminate what can't be wholly understood.
”
”
Diane Ackerman (An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain)
“
Reality is based on your perception of the truth.
Think about that statement for a bit, it will blow your mind, and blow the lid of what you perceive to be real and what is an illusion.
You are here to live YOUR life, YOUR way and on YOUR terms, not for the people you work for, not the people in the media, and not to live in the little box that society may have placed you in.
You are a unique individual, with talents, with drive, with passion, with ambition, with love, with laughter, with a soul that could melt the hardest of hearts, and with a mind as creative as Da Vinci.
You chose this life for a reason, and it certainly wasn't to live a reality created by others. Is this the time to stand up, and say I can live my own reality, create what I want for my own life, have the things I want in life without guilt, knowing that you deserve anything you want and are prepared to put the time and effort into getting?
What if there was a way to bend your reality, a way to use your mind consciously to get what YOU want in life, become wealthy, feel comfortable in your own skin, meet the perfect man or woman, become more spontaneous, feel free, love, be open, be honest, be heartfelt, be grateful, be the one, love life, live, feel it, breathe it.... Welcome to Mind Alchemy Is this the time to Bend Your Reality?
”
”
Steven P. Aitchison
“
I have to say, I was expecting that to go differently,” he mused. And then I punched him square in the mouth.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
One makes one's nature by one's likes and dislikes, by what one favors or disfavors. When a person says, 'I don't like this food,' he has built something into his nature. And then that food, when eaten, will often disagree with him. It is not that it was meant to disagree with him, but he made it disagree by disliking it. By
”
”
Hazrat Inayat Khan (The Alchemy of Happiness (The Sufi Teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan Book 6))
“
It seems like such an amazing predicament to me, how one does not become a better person by seeking out in the world those who are lesser than himself and then saying, "I will be better than you because you're not as good as me." You don't become better by looking at others and trying to be better than them. You become a better person by looking at yourself in the mirror, and, seeking to overcome and to overthrow all the flaws within yourself, you overcome the weaker you, the lesser you; you become the better You, the stronger You, the higher You. That's how it goes.
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
Him with his whole heart. The saint Fudhail said to a certain man, "If anyone asks you whether you love God, keep silent; for if you say, 'I do not love Him,' you are an infidel; and if you say, 'I do,' your deeds contradict you." The
”
”
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (The Alchemy of Happiness)
“
Is attention soul? If I pay attention to my mother’s sorrow, does that give it soul? If I pay attention to her unhappiness—if I put it into words, transform it, and make it into something new—can I be like the alchemists, turning lead into gold? If I sell this book, I will get back gold in return. That’s a kind of alchemy. The philosophers wanted to turn dark matter into gold, and I want to turn my mother’s sadness into gold. When the gold comes in, I will go to my mother’s doorstep, and I will hand it to her and say: Here is your sadness, turned into gold.
”
”
Sheila Heti (Motherhood)
“
Question: Couldn't one say that whenever there is a real spiritual experience it should become manifest?
Dr. von Franz: There is no 'should' about it. I think a real spiritual experience I don't know exactly what you have in mind when you say that does become manifest. Mythos means communication. If you are overwhelmed by a spiritual experience it itself wants you to communicate it, i.e., manifest it; that is the meaning of the word mythos. There is no religious experience where there is not the need to tell of it; that is natural, but one need not add the word 'should.' If it is true, it will become real, its natural flow will be into reality.
”
”
Marie-Louise von Franz (Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology)
“
I’d give anything,’ he says, ‘to take you home with me and curl myself around you all night.
”
”
Elodie Hart (Undulate (Alchemy, #2))
“
The art of the alchemist, whether spiritual or physical, consists in completing the work of perfection, bringing forth and making dominant, as it were, the “latent goldness” which “lies obscure” in metal or man. The ideal adept of alchemy was therefore an “auxiliary of the Eternal Goodness.” By his search for the “Noble Tincture” which should restore an imperfect world, he became a partner in the business of creation, assisting the Cosmic Plan. Thus the proper art of the Spiritual Alchemist, with whom alone we are here concerned, was the production of the spiritual and only valid tincture or Philosopher’s Stone; the mystic seed of transcendental life which should invade, tinge, and wholly transmute the imperfect self into spiritual gold. That this was no fancy of seventeenth-century allegorists, but an idea familiar to many of the oldest writers upon alchemy—whose quest was truly a spiritual search into the deepest secrets of the soul—is proved by the words which bring to an end the first part of the antique “Golden Treatise upon the Making of the Stone,” sometimes attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. “This, O Son,” says that remarkable tract, “is the Concealed Stone of Many Colours, which is born and brought forth in one colour; know this and conceal it . . . it leads from darkness into light, from this desert wilderness to a secure habitation, and from poverty and straits to a free and ample fortune.
”
”
Evelyn Underhill (Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness)
“
Truly, you understand the reverse art of alchemy, the depreciating of the most valuable things! Try, just for once, another recipe, in order not to realise as hitherto the opposite of what you mean to attain: deny those good things, withdraw from them the applause of the populace and discourage the spread of them, make them once more the concealed chastities of solitary souls, and say: morality is something forbidden! Perhaps you will thus attract to your cause the sort of men who are only of any account, I mean the heroic. But then there must be something formidable in it, and not as hitherto something disgusting!
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
“
Trot? I laughed scathingly. “Nothing you can say or do will incentivize me to smash my genitals against this saddle any harder or faster than they’re already being smashed.” “Feeling a little sore, human?” “Sore doesn’t come close,” I grumbled. “I’ll happily kiss all of your aches and pains better for you once we strike camp. I’ve been told my mouth has healing properties. Especially when administered between a pair of thighs.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
You tell it a joke then!” I held out the crucible containing the quicksilver, and Carrion huffed, peering at the roiling liquid metal. “All right. Fine. A husband turns to his wife one day and says, ‘y’know, I bet you can’t think of something to tell me that will make me both happy and sad at the same time.’ The wife doesn’t even need to think about it. She turns to her husband and says, ‘your cock is way bigger than your brother’s.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
Even with the cruel smirk playing across his mouth, Kingfisher was savagely handsome. “What can I say?” he purred. “Being completely cut off from civilization and summarily forgotten about has a way of changing you after a while.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
Life will give you what you need once you will do something with it. It may not give you what you want so as to be as comfortable as you want, as Nature’s concern is need as it relates to evolution. In my humble opinion, Nature is too kind, but, as I say, the game is big, and the challenges and temptations absolute. And this is a fascinating aspect of the totality of beauty; it gives more than is only necessary. The generosity is mind- and heart boggling.
”
”
Darrell Calkins (Re:)
“
SOUTH AMERICA’S GREAT Atacama Desert is a place unlike any other. Its climate is different, with close to zero rainfall but occasional thick fogs. Its plants and animals are different—what there are of them, which is to say almost none—capable of living with almost no water. Even its rocks are different. The floor of the Atacama is crusted and shot through with a riot of strange chemicals: nitrates, chromates, and dichromates; perchlorates, iodates, sulfates, and borates; chlorides of potassium, magnesium, and calcium; minerals “so extraordinary,” a researcher wrote, “were it not for their existence, geologists could easily conclude that such deposits could not form in nature.” How
”
”
Thomas Hager (The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler)
“
Wouldn't it be nice to return to some of the old theories? Soul and body? The four humours?'
'Oh, they never worked.'
'Of course they did. Everything works in its own period. Don't you think that people were cured by medieval doctors, soaking up black melancholy bile with white salpetre? We could no more use their remedies than they could use ours, but they did work once. That's what you have to remember. Of course some people say that they might work again.
”
”
Peter Ackroyd (The House of Doctor Dee)
“
In an age when alchemy was still a common approach to natural phenomena, Kepler filled the universe with invisible forces acting all around us, and helped usher in the Scientific Revolution. His fastidious documentation of every meandering path his brain blazed is one of the great records of a mind undergoing creative transformation. It is a truism to say that Kepler thought outside the box. But what he really did, whenever he was stuck, was to think entirely outside the domain.
”
”
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
“
I have a soft spot for the religious practice of saying grace before a meal, since paying attention to good things that one might easily take for granted seems a good approach to life – a pause to focus attention on a meal should add to its enjoyment.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
“
Many of the Chinese medical texts dating back from 2,000 years ago lament the ills of 'modern times' and allude to the traditional 'good old days' another 3,000 years before that. A common theme in these texts is the decline in human health due to careless lifestyles and the deterioration in human relations due to lack of love: degenerative conditions that Taoist alchemy as well as psychoneuroimmunology would link as symptoms of the same syndrome.
In his essay entitled 'Loving People' Chang San-feng, the thirteenth-century master, summed it up by saying: 'Therefore to those who want to know the way to deal with the world, I suggest, Love People.' This is a potent description for health and longevity that generates positive healing energy throughout the human system by stimulating the internal alchemy of psychoneuroimmunology.
”
”
Daniel Reid
“
radioactive elements decayed into other elements—that one day you had an atom of uranium, say, and the next you had an atom of lead. This was truly extraordinary. It was alchemy, pure and simple; no one had ever imagined that such a thing could happen naturally and spontaneously.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
Abdullah Ibn Dinar relates, "Once I was walking with the Caliph Omar near Mecca when we met a shepherd's slave-boy driving his flock. Omar said to him, "Sell me a sheep." The boy answered, "They are not mine, but my master's." Then, to try him, Omar said, "Well, you can tell him that a wolf carried one off, and he will know nothing about it." "No, he won't," said the boy, "but God will." Omar then wept, and, sending for the boy's master, purchased him and set him free, exclaiming, "For this saying thou art free in this world and shalt be free in the next." There
”
”
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (The Alchemy of Happiness)
“
Let me give a simple example. The Uber map is a psychological moonshot, because it does not reduce the waiting time for a taxi but simply makes waiting 90 per cent less frustrating. This innovation came from the founder’s flash of insight (while watching a James Bond film, no less*) that, regardless of what we say, we are much bothered by the uncertainty of waiting than by the duration of a wait. The invention of the map was perhaps equivalent to multiplying the number of cabs on the road by a factor of ten – not because waiting times got any shorter, but because they felt ten times less irritating.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
“
[Annie] Sprinkle is a many-gendered mother of the heart. And many-gendered mothers of the heart say: Just because you have enemies doea not mean you have to be paranoid. They insist, no matter the evidence marshaled against their insistence: There is nothing you can throw at me that I cannot metabolize, no thing impervious to my alchemy.
”
”
Maggie Nelson (The Argonauts)
“
Our desires, dreams and hopes, open portals. These portals manifest in our conscience and five senses, in the form of decisions related to the material world but also opportunities. Now, at the exact same time, or maybe even slightly before in time, we get the exact opposite, the temptation, the illusion and deception. And when we are about to make a decision, as if by magic, the two things come stronger to us, as if pushing us into a duality that makes it hard to decide. Now, this brings me to another super interesting fact: Most people assume that they have freewill, and that choices are hard to be made, and that life is full of dualities. And I've learned that this is just a great deception related to our planet, which, as human beings, we must transcend. And what I'm really saying here is that the duality and the freewill don't exist. There's only one choice to be made, the one that bring us upwards. Self-destruction is not a choice. And yet, every duality presents exactly that, and not really a choice.
”
”
Robin Sacredfire
“
What is art? It is not decoration. It is the re-living of experience. The artist says, 'I will make that event happen again, altering its shape, which was disfigured by its contacts with other events, so that its true significance is revealed'; and his audience says, 'We will let that event happen again by looking at this man's picture or house, listening to his music or reading his book.' It must not be copied, it must be remembered, it must be lived again, passed through those parts of the mind which are actively engaged in life, which bleed when they are wounded and give forth the bland emulsions of joy, while at the same time it is being examined by those parts of the mind which stand apart from life. At the end of this process the roots of experience are traced; the alchemy by which they make a flower of joy or pain is, so far as is possible to our brutishness, detected. What is understood is mastered. If art could investigate all experiences then man would understand the whole of life, and could control his destiny.
”
”
Rebecca West (Black Lamb and Grey Falcon)
“
An Alchemist’s journey is really a struggle to continue individual existence long after physical death, long after the bubble has burst. Another way to say this would be to say that an Alchemist’s journey is about changing the nature of the bubble that is his individuality, so that it becomes superfluid, unbound, unbreakable by the tides of the Dark Sea.
”
”
John Kreiter (The Way of the Projectionist: Alchemy’s Secret Formula to Altered States and Breaking the Prison of the Flesh (The Magnum Opus Trilogy Book 2))
“
However, misunderstandings are all too common, because Dutch conversation tends to be astoundingly direct, while British English is oblique and often coded to the point of derangement. In a business context a Dutchman might say, ‘We tried that and it was shit, so we won’t do it again,’ while an Englishman intending to say the same thing might say, ‘I think it might be a little while before we try that again.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
“
Humans get hungry for blue, it seems: to hold the sea in
their hands, to wear the sky in their hair, to drape themselves in the hazy blue of distant mountains. Blue is more
than a colour: it is a feeling. We don’t say that we feel orange or
purple, but we say we feel blue when our souls are sad and heavy. We
play or sing or listen to the blues to express this sensation. Like any
colour, it cannot be adequately described with words, only experienced, known through the eyes and the soul.
Making blue has always been magic: the domain of alchemists since the beginning of human history. To find red only required blood or
berries or the smearing of red clay. To make brown was as simple as
reaching down to the earth beneath one’s feet. White chalk is plentiful in many places, or can be replaced by fire ash. But blue appears
rarely in forms from which paints or dyes can be made…blue requires earthly magic.
”
”
Lucy H. Pearce (She of the Sea)
“
The Netflix documentary Sour Grapes is a fascinating insight into this world. A crooked, though brilliant, Indonesian wine connoisseur called Rudy Kurniawan was able to replicate great burgundies by mixing cheaper wines together, before faking the corks and the labels. He was rumbled only when he attempted to fake wines from vintages that did not exist. I am told that it is possible to detect a forged Kurniawan wine by analysing the labels, but not by tasting the wine. I hate to say this, but Rudy was an alchemist. Several experts I have talked to in the high-end wine business regard their own field as essentially a placebo market; one of them admitted that he was relatively uninterested in the products he sold and would sneak off and fetch a beer at premium tastings of burgundies costing thousands of pounds a bottle. Another described himself as ‘the eunuch in the whorehouse’ – someone who was valuable because he was immune to the charms of the product he promoted.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
“
Japanese is a highly context-sensitive language, but then so are all languages. In British English, when said in the right context and tone, ‘You stupid fucking idiot’ can be a term of affection – something that can wrongfoot Americans, who mostly speak the same language but tend to interpret it more literally.* In translation, it is an enormous mistake to assume that what the translator conveys is what the speaker intended, and it is equally foolish to assume that what you intended to say is what will be understood.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
“
Geim says of his approach to science: ‘I jump from one research subject to another every few years. I do not want to study the same stuff “from cradle to coffin”, as some academics do. To be able to do this, we often carry out what I call “hit-and-run experiments”, crazy ideas that should never work and, of course, they don’t in most cases. However, sometimes we find a pearl . . . This research style may sound appealing but it is very hard psychologically, mentally, physically, and in terms of research grants, too. But it is fun.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
“
It wouldn’t matter much if only Goldman Sachs, say, or a few elite institutions used this criterion, but when everyone else copies the same approach, it is ludicrous. Since almost half of graduates should by definition fall below this hurdle, it will either result in thousands of people spending three years at university for no benefit or to grade inflation in universities, with degree classes becoming meaningless.* This is another example of people not using reason to make better decisions, but simply for the appearance of being reasonable.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
“
We're both of the invented Caribbean, Nesto says, a Nuevo Mundo alchemy of distilled African, Spaniard, Indian, Asian, and Arab blood, each of us in varying mixtures. He likes to compare our complexions, putting his arm next to mine, calls me 'canelita, ni muy tostada ni muy blanquita' showing off his darkness, proof, his mother told him, of his noble Yoruba parentage and brave cimarron ancestors, la raza prieta of which he should be proud no matter how much others have resisted mestizaje, hanging onto the milky whiteness of their lineage like it's their most precious commodity.
”
”
Patricia Engel (The Veins of the Ocean)
“
You say our ward's locked down so tight because we're quarantined. You say we're afflicted with a sickness. That we're contagious. But we aren't, Captain. We're being slowly and methodically poisoned because we don't matter. Because we ask questions. Because we say no. Because Madra sees us as a burden on the city. She feeds us foul, dirty water, and we die in droves because of it. Meanwhile, you and yours turn the handle, and fresh, clean water flows into your canisters. No one standing over you, looking over your shoulder, beating you and telling you enough. Have you ever asked yourself why—
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
One of the towering figures of the age of Enlightenment was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, known to this day in German-speaking lands as the poet of princes and prince of poets. Unlike Voltaire, he openly practiced esoteric disciplines, particularly alchemy. He wrote a famous verse about the Cathars, which translated says: “There were those who knew the Father. What became of them? Oh, they took them and burned them!” Goethe's chief work, of course, is his Faust. As noted in chapter 8, the figure of Faust was inspired by the image of the early Gnostic teacher Simon Magus, one of whose honorific names was Faustus. While in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play,
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”
Stephan A. Hoeller (Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing)
“
As you know, there was a famous quarrel between Max Planck and Einstein, in which Einstein claimed that, on paper, the human mind was capable of inventing mathematical models of reality. In this he generalized his own experience because that is what he did. Einstein conceived his theories more or less completely on paper, and experimental developments in physics proved that his models explained phenomena very well. So Einstein says that the fact that a model constructed by the human mind in an introverted situation fits with outer facts is just a miracle and must be taken as such. Planck does not agree, but thinks that we conceive a model which we check by experiment, after which we revise our model, so that there is a kind of dialectic friction between experiment and model by which we slowly arrive at an explanatory fact compounded of the two. Plato-Aristotle in a new form! But both have forgotten something- the unconscious. We know something more than those two men, namely that when Einstein makes a new model of reality he is helped by his unconscious, without which he would not have arrived at his theories...But what role DOES the unconscious play?...either the unconscious knows about other realities, or what we call the unconscious is a part of the same thing as outer reality, for we do not know how the unconscious is linked with matter.
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”
Marie-Louise von Franz (Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology)
“
counterintuitive notion that to best realise your musical intentions as a conductor, you have to set the frame of how the players work together – and then get out of the way. ‘That’s the hard thing,’ Rattle says, ‘that you have to learn to allow them to listen, and that means being less rather than more precise in your gestures.’ Just as the players infused themselves with Thomas Adès’s music, this is a process that comes from the ground up, from the roots of the music they’re playing, rather than being imposed on them by a stick-wielding technocrat. It’s a process that explains why the Berlin Philharmonic does not have a reputation as the most precise orchestra in the world. Rattle admits:
”
”
Tom Service (Music as Alchemy: Journeys with Great Conductors and their Orchestras)
“
But the ability to hold the means of exchange (in defiance of Say’s law) also awakens a passion, a “lust for gold.” “The hoarding drive,” he says, “is boundless in its nature.” Witness Christopher Columbus: “Gold is a wonderful thing! Its owner is master of all he desires. Gold can even enable souls to enter Paradise” (229–30). Here Marx, quoting Columbus, returns to the idea that once you can hang a price tag on something, you can hang it on anything—even a person’s soul, as his allusion to the Catholic Church’s infamous medieval practice of selling indulgences (i.e., papal pardons that promised entry into heaven) suggests: Circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out again as the money crystal. Nothing is immune from this alchemy, the bones of the saints cannot withstand it. (229)
”
”
David Harvey (A Companion to Marx's Capital)
“
After all, no big business idea makes sense at first. I mean, just imagine proposing the following ideas to a group of sceptical investors: ‘What people want is a really cool vacuum cleaner.’ (Dyson) ‘. . . and the best part of all this is that people will write the entire thing for free!’ (Wikipedia) ‘. . . and so I confidently predict that the great enduring fashion of the next century will be a coarse, uncomfortable fabric which fades unpleasantly and which takes ages to dry. To date, it has been largely popular with indigent labourers.’ (Jeans) ‘. . . and people will be forced to choose between three or four items.’ (McDonald’s) ‘And, best of all, the drink has a taste which consumers say they hate.’ (Red Bull) ‘. . . and just watch as perfectly sane people pay $5 for a drink they can make at home for a few pence.’ (Starbucks)*
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
“
A VALEDICTION: OF THE BOOK I'll tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do To anger destiny, as she doth us; How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus, And how posterity shall know it too; How thine may out-endure Sibyl's glory, and obscure Her who from Pindar could allure, And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name. Study our manuscripts, those myriads Of letters, which have past 'twixt thee and me; Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all whom love's subliming fire invades, Rule and example found; There the faith of any ground No schismatic will dare to wound, That sees, how Love this grace to us affords, To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records. This book, as long-lived as the elements, Or as the world's form, this all-graved tome In cypher writ, or new made idiom; We for Love's clergy only are instruments; When this book is made thus, Should again the ravenous Vandals and Goths invade us, Learning were safe; in this our universe, Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse. Here Love's divines—since all divinity Is love or wonder—may find all they seek, Whether abstract spiritual love they like, Their souls exhaled with what they do not see; Or, loth so to amuse Faith's infirmity, they choose Something which they may see and use; For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit, Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it. Here more than in their books may lawyers find, Both by what titles mistresses are ours, And how prerogative these states devours, Transferred from Love himself, to womankind; Who, though from heart and eyes, They exact great subsidies, Forsake him who on them relies; And for the cause, honour, or conscience give; Chimeras vain as they or their prerogative. Here statesmen, (or of them, they which can read) May of their occupation find the grounds; Love, and their art, alike it deadly wounds, If to consider what 'tis, one proceed. In both they do excel Who the present govern well, Whose weakness none doth, or dares tell; In this thy book, such will there something see, As in the Bible some can find out alchemy. Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I'll study thee, As he removes far off, that great heights takes; How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be; To take a latitude Sun, or stars, are fitliest viewed At their brightest, but to conclude Of longitudes, what other way have we, But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be?
”
”
John Donne (The Love Poems)
“
One of the greatest myths is that it’s hard to know how to lead a contented life. It’s actually quite straightforward, and the heart will take us there every time: Love. Serve. Explore your sense of purpose until you find a way to offer your gifts to others. Let the practice of compassion bring you peace. If we can love and serve others and ourselves against the backdrop of inner alchemy and the discernment it’s instilled in us, the doors of the Great Work will open for us. We can have the spiritual experiences we yearn for, and the wild moments that make our hearts sing, while leaving the world better off for those who come after us. Through acts of love and service, we continue aligning our levels of being and allowing our vibration to rise. Then one day we experience it: the bliss of the present moment and the undimming effulgence of a wide-open heart. There’s nothing like it, and it never gets old. If someone asks us how we got there, we can say, “There is this thing called ‘the Little Work.’ It’s a path as old as time, and it’s available to anyone who dares to take it on. How much do you want to be free?
”
”
Durgadas Allon Duriel (The Little Work: Magic to Transform Your Everyday Life)
“
When Someone Says I Love You"
the whole room fills up with iced tea, something gives: the sun peels
from your window, a sugared lemon, whole, flaming, hanging there.
You tell them they must: puncture your chest with a straw to suck
all the empty out, but because they say love they think they can't
hurt you, even to save your life, which is why you float up up up,
knocking your curled toes and bedeviled breath hard against the tea-
stained ceiling, why you swim sentry over the oxheart that flooded
your bed, hollowed you out. See it there: big and bobbing wax fruit,
sweating with the effort of its own improbable being, each burst of
wetness a cry to which you are further beholden, a sweetness trained
against your own best alchemy. Witch, you can only watch this
bloodletting from above, can only amend the deed to your body: see
it say it back, see it like a little rabbit with a twist on its neck and
wish you could be that, being had, being held, but instead you grow
wooden and spin on your back. Propeller? No, there is no getting
away from this, and so: ceiling fan, drowning their hushed joy,
going schwa schwa schwa in the bed's sheath of late afternoon
light.
”
”
Karyna McGlynn (Hothouse)
“
Did I develop my own set of random assumptions by utilizing the very little information available to me? For example, Leo Vodnik had held a magazine titled Construction Engineering Australia. Men are ten times more likely than women to die at work. Is that all it took for me to predict a “workplace accident” as his cause of death? Ethan Chang had his arm in a cast. Was it his injury that made me choose “assault,” together with the fact that injury and violence is a leading cause of death for young adult men? I know I watched Kayla Halfpenny at the airport and saw her knock over her drink and then her phone. Was it my observation of the sweet girl’s clumsiness together with the fact that road traffic injuries are one of the leading causes of death among young adults that led me to say “car accident”? Did I simply make random choices? Is that what led me to pancreatic cancer, the most feared cancer, for the vibrant woman who reminded me of my friend Jill, and breast cancer for the pregnant woman? Did I temporarily believe I was Madame Mae? I must have been thinking of my mother, because I kept saying “fate won’t be fought.” Had I somehow become a strange alchemy of the two of us? Both of us, after all, specialized in predictions.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (Here One Moment)
“
This Is Not an Elegy
At sixteen, I was illegal and brilliant,
my fingernails chewed to half-moons.
I took off my clothes in a late March
field. I had secret car wrecks,
secret hysteria. I opened my mouth
to swallow stars. In backseats
I learned the alchemy of guilt, lust,
and distance. I was unformed and total.
I swore like a sailor. But slowly the cops
stopped coming around. The heat lifted
its palms. The radio lost some teeth.
Now I see the landscape behind me
as through a Claude glass—
tinted deeper, framed just so, bits
of gilt edging the best parts.
I see my unlined face, a thousand
film stars behind the eyes. I was
every murderess, every whip-
thin alcoholic, every heroine
with the silver tongue. Always young
Paul Newman’s best girl. Always
a lightning sky behind each kiss.
Some days I watch myself
in the third person, speak to her
in the second. I say: I will
meet you in sleep. I will know you
by your stillness and your shaking.
By your second-hand gown.
By your bruises left by mouths
since forgotten. This is not
an elegy because I cannot bear
for it to be. It is only a tree branch
against the window. It is only a cherry
tomato slowly reddening in the garden.
I will put it in my mouth. It will
be sweet, and you will swallow.
”
”
Catherine Pierce (Famous Last Words)
“
Even stranger than our teeth-brushing behaviour is our preference for stripy toothpaste. When it first appeared, in a product called Stripe, it aroused a great deal of debate over how it was made. Many people dissected the empty container; others froze a full tube and then cut it open in a cross section.* What was strange was that nobody ever asked ‘Why?’ After all, the moment toothpaste enters your mouth, all the ingredients are mixed together, so what was the point of keeping them separate in the tube? There are two explanations: 1) simple childish novelty and 2) psycho-logic. Psychologically, the stripes serve as a signal: a claim that a toothpaste performed more than one function (fighting cavities, tackling infection and freshening breath) was thought to be more convincing if the toothpaste contained three visibly separate active ingredients. In general, people are impressed by any visible extra effort that goes into a product: if you simply say ‘this washing powder is better than our old powder’, it is a hollow claim. However, if you replace the powder with a gel, a tablet or some other form, the cost and effort which have gone into the change make it more plausible to the purchaser there may have been some real innovation in the new contents.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
“
The BFMSS [British False Memory Syndrome Society]
The founder of the 'false memory' movement in Britain is an accused father. Two of his adult daughters say that Roger Scotford sexually abused them in childhood. He denied this and responded by launching a spectacular counter-attack, which enjoyed apparently unlimited and uncritical air time in the mass media and provoke Establishment institutions that had made no public utterance about abuse to pronounce on the accused adults' repudiation of it.
p171-172
The 'British False Memory Syndrome Society' lent a scientific aura to the allegations - the alchemy of 'falsehood' and 'memory' stirred with disease and science. The new name pathologised the accusers and drew attention away from the accused. But the so-called syndrome attacked not only the source of the stories but also the alliances between the survivors' movement and practitioners in the health, welfare, and the criminal justice system. The allies were represented no longer as credulous dupes but as malevolent agents who imported a miasma of the 'false memories' into the imaginations of distressed victims.
Roger Scotford was a former naval officer turned successful property developer living in a Georgian house overlooking an uninterrupted valley in luscious middle England. He was a rich man and was able to give up everything to devote himself to the crusade.
He says his family life was normal and that he had been a 'Dr Spock father'. But his first wife disagrees and his second wife, although believing him innocent, describes his children's childhood as very difficult. His daughters say they had a significantly unhappy childhood.
In the autumn of 1991, his middle daughter invited him to her home to confront him with the story of her childhood. She was supported by a friend and he was invited to listen and then leave. She told him that he had abused her throughout her youth. Scotford, however, said that the daughter went to a homeopath for treatment for thrush/candida and then blamed the condition on him. He also said his daughter, who was in her twenties, had been upset during a recent trip to France to buy a property. He said he booked them into a hotel where they would share a room. This was not odd, he insisted, 'to me it was quite natural'. He told journalists and scholars the same story, in the same way, reciting the details of her allegations, drawing attention to her body and the details of what she said he had done to her. Some seemed to find the detail persuasive. Several found it spooky.
p172-173
”
”
Beatrix Campbell (Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony)
“
If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God. But if you shut up your soul in your body, and abase yourself, and say “I know nothing, I can do nothing; I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount to heaven; I know not what I was, nor what I shall be,” then what have you to do with God?
”
”
Dennis William Hauck (The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy of Personal Transformation (Compass))
“
In those days there were two dark elves who lived in a fortress by the sea. They did magic there, and feats of alchemy. Like all dwarfs, they built things, wonderful, remarkable things, in their workshop and their forge. But there were things they had not yet made, and making those things obsessed them. They were brothers, and were called Fjalar and Galar. When they heard that Kvasir was visiting a town nearby, they set out to meet him. Fjalar and Galar found Kvasir in the great hall, answering questions for the townsfolk, amazing all who listened. He told the people how to purify water and how to make cloth from nettles. He told one woman exactly who had stolen her knife, and why. Once he was done talking and the townsfolk had fed him, the dwarfs approached. “We have a question to ask you that you have never been asked before,” they said. “But it must be asked in private. Will you come with us?” “I will come,” said Kvasir. They walked to the fortress. The seagulls screamed, and the brooding gray clouds were the same shade as the gray of the waves. The dwarfs led Kvasir to their workshop, deep within the walls of their fortress. “What are those?” asked Kvasir. “They are vats. They are called Son and Bodn.” “I see. And what is that over there?” “How can you be so wise when you do not know these things? It is a kettle. We call it Odrerir—ecstasy-giver.” “And I see over here you have buckets of honey you have gathered. It is uncapped, and liquid.” “Indeed we do,” said Fjalar. Galar looked scornful. “If you were as wise as they say you are, you would know what our question to you would be before we asked it. And you would know what these things are for.” Kvasir nodded in a resigned way. “It seems to me,” he said, “that if you were both intelligent and evil, you might have decided to kill your visitor and let his blood flow into the vats Son and Bodn. And then you would heat his blood gently in your kettle, Odrerir. And after that you would blend uncapped honey into the mixture and let it ferment until it became mead—the finest mead, a drink that will intoxicate anyone who drinks it but also give anyone who tastes it the gift of poetry and the gift of scholarship.” “We are intelligent,” admitted Galar. “And perhaps there are those who might think us evil.” And with that he slashed Kvasir’s throat, and they hung Kvasir by his feet above the vats until the last drop of his blood was drained. They warmed the blood and the honey in the kettle called Odrerir, and did other things to it of their own devising. They put berries into it, and stirred it with a stick. It bubbled, and then it ceased bubbling, and both of them sipped it and laughed, and each of the brothers found the verse and the poetry inside himself that he had never let out.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Norse Mythology)
“
there is no such thing as "magic" Daoism, "daojia" and "daojiao" had different meanings way back then, and now. The priginal term dao jia 道家was counterposed to rujia,儒家 the folks who swore by Confucius, and fajia 法家realists who (legalists), like modern day republicans equated money, weapons w political power. Daojia was the category for every one else, ie those who were neither.Confucian or Legalist. Daoism, “the way that never parted,” is a great river flowing thru all of China's history, fed by many streams. Many of the "modern" "western" people such as "sex hygiene" 房中 and other "Dao for $$$" folk (eg a multi-millionaire in Pacific Grove - 17 Mile Drive) have made fortunes by claiming to teach "Daoist Secrets", in a system that forbids taking recompense of any kind for receiving true Daoist teachings. So much more to say, the writings of the late Anna Seidel show how what we call "Dao Jiao" 道教(Dao teaching), which includes liturgy as well as inner alchemy meditation, derives from the Guweishu 古緯書, ie the ancient "wei" (parallel threads or "woof" thread), human compassion for each other and oneness with change in nature, as opposed to the "jing" 經 vertical (Confucian, political up-down) threads that support the Imperial governing power. Buddhism appears as sacred art painted on the surface of the Chinese cultural fabric, which is eventually accepted because it won the hearts of the people by praying for the deceased, something that was not a part of the original Buddhist teachings from India, but essential in China."
[Saso FB Post May 4th 2015]
”
”
Michael Saso
“
suppose, that all the historians who treat of England, should agree, that, on the first of January 1600, Queen Elizabeth died; that both before and after her death she was seen by her physicians and the whole court, as is usual with persons of her rank; that her successor was acknowledged and proclaimed by the parliament; and that, after being interred a month, she again appeared, resumed the throne, and governed England for three years: I must confess that I should be surprised at the concurrence of so many odd circumstances, but should not have the least inclination to believe so miraculous an event. I should not doubt of her pretended death, and of those other public circumstances that followed it: I should only assert it to have been pretended, and that it neither was, nor possibly could be real. You would in vain object to me the difficulty, and almost impossibility of deceiving the world in an affair of such consequence; the wisdom and solid judgment of that renowned queen; with the little or no advantage which she could reap from so poor an artifice: All this might astonish me; but I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature. 38 But should this miracle be ascribed to any new system of religion; men, in all ages, have been so much imposed on by ridiculous stories of that kind, that this very circumstance would be a full proof of a cheat, and sufficient, with all men of sense, not only to make them reject the fact, but even reject it without farther examination. Though the Being to whom the miracle is ascribed, be, in this case, Almighty, it does not, upon that account, become a whit more probable; since it is impossible for us to know the attributes or actions of such a Being, otherwise than from the experience which we have of his productions, in the usual course of nature. This still reduces us to past observation, and obliges us to compare the instances of the violation of truth in the testimony of men, with those of the violation of the laws of nature by miracles, in order to judge which of them is most likely and probable. As the violations of truth are more common in the testimony concerning religious miracles, than in that concerning any other matter of fact; this must diminish very much the authority of the former testimony, and make us form a general resolution, never to lend any attention to it, with whatever specious pretence it may be covered. 39 Lord Bacon seems to have embraced the same principles of reasoning. “We ought,” says he, “to make a collection or particular history of all monsters and prodigious births or productions, and in a word of every thing new, rare, and extraordinary in nature. But this must be done with the most severe scrutiny, lest we depart from truth. Above all, every relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy: And no less so, everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
“
Interest in alchemy seems to be nowadays on the rise. Whereas the educated public at large remains no doubt skeptical and indeed disdainful of the ancient discipline, there is today a deepening awareness among the better informed that what stands behind many an “exploded superstition” may be in fact a long-forgotten wisdom. Although Carl Jung was obviously exaggerating when ! he suggested that four centuries after being expelled from our universities,- alchemy stands “knocking at the door,” a number of factors have conspired; to render the prospect of re-admission less remote, at least, than it had been ; during the heyday of materialism. In any case, no truly solid grounds for rejecting the ancient doctrine have yet been proposed. Take the case of the so-called four elements: earth, water, air and fire. One can be reasonably certain that these terms were not employed alchemically in their ordinary sense, but were used to designate elements, precisely, out of which substances, as we know them, are constituted. Somewhat like the quarks of modern physics, these elements are not found empirically in isolation, but occur in their multiple combinations, that is to say, as the perceptible substances that constitute what I term the corporeal domain. Now, as I have argued at length in The Quantum Enigma (Peru, Illinois: Sherwood Sugden, 1995), corporeal objects are not in fact mere aggregates of quantum particles; and this clearly suggests that there may indeed be elements of the aforesaid kind. It turns out that our habitual opposition to alchemy is based mainly upon scientistic prejudice: upon a reductionist dogma, namely, for which there is in reality no scientific support at all.
”
”
Wolfgang Smith (The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology: Contemporary Science in Light of Tradition)
“
You are wise, because you observe everything from a distance,” the boy said. “But you don’t know about love. If there hadn’t been a sixth day, man would not exist; copper would always be just copper, and lead just lead. It’s true that everything has its Personal Legend, but one day that Personal Legend will be realized. So each thing has to transform itself into something better, and to acquire a new Personal Legend, until, someday, the Soul of the World becomes one thing only.” The sun thought about that, and decided to shine more brightly. The wind, which was enjoying the conversation, started to blow with greater force, so that the sun would not blind the boy. “This is why alchemy exists,” the boy said. “So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life. Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold. “That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.” “Well, why did you say that I don’t know about love?” the sun asked the boy. “Because it’s not love to be static like the desert, nor is it love to roam the world like the wind. And it’s not love to see everything from a distance, like you do. Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. When I first reached through to it, I thought the Soul of the World was perfect. But later, I could see that it was like other aspects of creation, and had its own passions and wars. It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that’s where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.
”
”
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
“
Newton, a devout Puritan believer, has anecdote that when he claimed that no disciple had God, he refused to claim atheism, saying, "Do not speak disrespectfully about God, I am studying God."
He paid much attention to the Bible and had an eschatological belief that the Saints would resurrect and live in heaven and reign with Christ invisibly. And even after the day of judgment, people would continue to live on the ground, thinking that it would be forever, not only for a thousand years. According to historian Steven Snowovell, he thought that the presence of Christ would be in the distant future centuries after, because he was very pessimistic about the deeply rooted ideas that denied the Trinity around him. He thought that before the great tribulation came, the gospel activity had to be on a global scale.
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Newton studied alchemy as a hobby, and his research notes were about three books.
Newton served as a member of parliament on the recommendation of the University of Cambridge, but his character was silent and unable to adapt to the life of a parliamentarian. When he lived in the National Assembly for a year, the only thing he said was "Shut the door!"
In Newton's "Optics" Volume 4, he tried to introduce the theory of unification that covered all of physics and solved his chosen tasks, but he went out with a candle on his desk, and his private diamond threw a candle There is a story that all of his research, which has not been published yet, has turned to ashes.
Newton was also appointed to the president of the Minting Service, who said he enjoyed grabbing and executing the counterfeiters.
Newton was a woman who was engaged to be a young man, but because he was so engaged in research and work he could not go on to marriage, and he lived alone for the rest of his life.
He regarded poetry as "a kind of ingenious nonsense." [6]
Newton was talented in crafting inventions by hand (for reference, Newton's craftsmanship was so good at his childhood that when he was a primary school student he was running his own spinning wheel after school, A child who throws a stone and breaks down a spinning wheel, so there is an anecdote that an angry Newton scatters the child.) He said he created a lantern fountain that could be carried around as a student at Cambridge University. Thanks to this, it was said that students who were going to attend the Thanksgiving ceremony (Episcopal Mass) were able to go to the Anglican Church in the university easily.
Newton lost 20,000 pounds due to a South Sea company stock discovery, when "I can calculate the movement of the celestial body, but I can not measure the insanity of a human being" ("I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men ").
”
”
프로포폴,에토미데이트,카톡【AKR331】텔레【RDH705】에토미데이트가격,프로포폴가격,에토미데이트팔아요
“
The most intensely value-laden artifacts of human creativity - works of art - are now the purist examples of that old capitalist alchemy: turning human value into exchange value. At a certain point, and that point has been passed, the art market will only be a mathematical exchange. Art is worth money, but what’s money worth? Money is the ultimate numbers game. What the furor over the art market brings tantalizingly close to the surface is the fact that it is not just the value of art that is dependant on a shared fantasy, it is also money itself.
Warhol is not the name of an artist, it is the name of a currency. “Warhol” is a big number because its denomination (soup cans, Brillo box simulacrums, etc.) is presumed to be stable and growing. But it can inflate or deflate like any stock or bond or national currency. Jeff Koons is also a currency but less stable. The only thing that really changes hands are the numbers that are for some reason associated with these opaque talismans called “artworks.” The billionaire buyers of these works have been reduced to South sea natives who insist on the magical properties of certain queer objects - a cornhusk doll with pearls for eyes and a colourful ribbon about its head - but are unable to say why they are so important or why their world would collapse without them. Investors in the art market need to fear bot only the economic boogies of bubbles and ponzi schemes but also that dreaded moment when they look at one another in panic and say, “What were we thinking? What is this stuff? What could have possessed us to say that a glass balloon dog is worth thens of millions? Sell! Sell!
”
”
Curtis White (We, Robots: Staying Human in the Age of Big Data)
“
Schema therapy gives us a clear map of destructive habits. It details the emotional contours of, say, the fear of abandonment, with its constant apprehension that a partner will leave us; or of feelings of vulnerability, such as the irrational fear that a minor setback at work means you will end up jobless and homeless.
”
”
Tara Bennett-Goleman (Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart)
“
The wise men understood that this natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom. That’s what I mean by action.” “Should I understand the Emerald Tablet?” the boy asked. “Perhaps, if you were in a laboratory of alchemy, this would be the right time to study the best way to understand the Emerald Tablet. But you are in the desert. So immerse yourself in it. The desert will give you an understanding of the world; in fact, anything on the face of the earth will do that. You don’t even have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation.” “How do I immerse myself in the desert?” “Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there.” * * * They crossed the desert for another two days in silence. The alchemist had become much more cautious, because they were approaching the area where the most violent battles were being waged. As they moved along, the boy tried to listen to his heart. It was not easy to do; in earlier times, his heart had always been ready to tell its story, but lately that wasn’t true. There had been times when his heart spent hours telling of its sadness, and at other times it became so emotional over the desert sunrise that the boy had to hide his tears. His heart beat fastest when it spoke to the boy of treasure, and more slowly when the boy stared entranced at the endless horizons of the desert. But his heart was never quiet, even when the boy and the alchemist had fallen into silence. “Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” the boy asked, when they had made camp that day. “Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.” “But my heart is agitated,” the boy said. “It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it’s become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when I’m thinking about her.” “Well, that’s good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say.
”
”
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
“
Krulak wrote back that the United States did not need the Marine Corps; the Army and Air Force could do anything the Marines could. The Marine Corps flourished, he said, because of what “the grassroots of our country believes we are and believes we can do.” He said that America had three beliefs about the Marine Corps. First, when troubles come, the Marines will take care of them and do so at once. Second, Americans had an “almost mystical” belief that when the Marines go to war, their performance will be “dramatically and decisively successful—not most of the time, but always.” And third, Americans saw the Marines as masters of an “unfailing alchemy” that converts “unoriented youths into proud, self-reliant, stable citizens into whose hands the nation’s affairs may safely be entrusted.” He ended by saying that although America did not need the Marines, it wanted them. But, he warned, if Marines ever lost the ability to meet the high, almost spiritual standards of the American people, “the Marine Corps will then quickly disappear.
”
”
Robert Coram (Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine)
“
Coming to the alchemists, we find the view that the metals are all composed of two elementary principles—sulphur and mercury—in different proportions and degrees of purity, well-nigh universally accepted in the earlier days of Alchemy. By these terms “sulphur” and “mercury,” however, must not be understood the common bodies ordinarily designated by these names; like the elements of Aristotle, the alchemistic principles were regarded as properties rather than as substances, though it must be confessed that the alchemists were by no means always clear on this point themselves. Indeed, it is not altogether easy to say exactly what the alchemists did mean by these terms, and the question is complicated by the fact that very frequently they make mention of different sorts of “sulphur” and “mercury.” Probably, however, we shall not be far wrong in saying that “sulphur” was generally regarded as the principle of combustion and also of colour, and was said to be present on account of the fact that most metals are changed into earthy substances by the aid of fire; and to the “mercury,” the metallic principle par excellence, was attributed such properties as fusibility, malleability and lustre, which were regarded as characteristic of the metals in general.
”
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H. Stanley Redgrove (Alchemy: Ancient and Modern (Illustrated))
“
In any turmoil or with any problem, as Tulku Thondup says, “The greatest source of help and strength is our minds.
”
”
Tara Bennett-Goleman (Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart)
“
When she caught herself in such moments, she’d talk back to her deprivation schema, saying, “I’m not depriving you if I don’t eat this ice cream.
”
”
Tara Bennett-Goleman (Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart)
“
I really had nothing to ask. I just wanted to say his name.
”
”
Jeannie Lin (Gunpowder Alchemy (The Gunpowder Chronicles, #1))
“
Newton, a devout Puritan believer, has anecdote that when he claimed that no disciple had God, he refused to claim atheism, saying, "Do not speak disrespectfully about God, I am studying God."
He paid much attention to the Bible and had an eschatological belief that the Saints would resurrect and live in heaven and reign with Christ invisibly. And even after the day of judgment, people would continue to live on the ground, thinking that it would be forever, not only for a thousand years. According to historian Steven Snowovell, he thought that the presence of Christ would be in the distant future centuries after, because he was very pessimistic about the deeply rooted ideas that denied the Trinity around him. He thought that before the great tribulation came, the gospel activity had to be on a global scale.
카톡pak6 텔레:【JRJR331】텔레:【TTZZZ6】라인【TTZZ6】
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포폴,에토미,알약수면제 판매하고있습니다
Newton studied alchemy as a hobby, and his research notes were about three books.
Newton served as a member of parliament on the recommendation of the University of Cambridge, but his character was silent and unable to adapt to the life of a parliamentarian. When he lived in the National Assembly for a year, the only thing he said was "Shut the door!"
In Newton's "Optics" Volume 4, he tried to introduce the theory of unification that covered all of physics and solved his chosen tasks, but he went out with a candle on his desk, and his private diamond threw a candle There is a story that all of his research, which has not been published yet, has turned to ashes.
Newton was also appointed to the president of the Minting Service, who said he enjoyed grabbing and executing the counterfeiters.
Newton was a woman who was engaged to be a young man, but because he was so engaged in research and work he could not go on to marriage, and he lived alone for the rest of his life.
He regarded poetry as "a kind of ingenious nonsense." [6]
Newton was talented in crafting inventions by hand (for reference, Newton's craftsmanship was so good at his childhood that when he was a primary school student he was running his own spinning wheel after school, A child who throws a stone and breaks down a spinning wheel, so there is an anecdote that an angry Newton scatters the child.) He said he created a lantern fountain that could be carried around as a student at Cambridge University. Thanks to this, it was said that students who were going to attend the Thanksgiving ceremony (Episcopal Mass) were able to go to the Anglican Church in the university easily.
Newton lost 20,000 pounds due to a South Sea company stock discovery, when "I can calculate the movement of the celestial body, but I can not measure the insanity of a human being" ("I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men ").
”
”
에토미데이트부작용
“
It all comes from fear, right?’ Belle says. ‘That’s the ultimate fear-driven behaviour. You and I have different opinions, and only one of us can be right, and when you think differently from me you scare the hell out of me, so I’m going to suppress and persecute the hell out of you until you shut up and stop threatening me with your weird, “other” beliefs.
”
”
Elodie Hart (Unfurl (Alchemy, #1))
“
I have to say,’ he says in a conversational tone as his hand goes to the bow of my robe and halts there, ‘it’s criminal that no man has touched you before.
”
”
Elodie Hart (Unfurl (Alchemy, #1))
“
Not yet,” he murmured against me. “You don't get to come until I say so.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
You could at least say hello before you start eye-fucking me.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
Where are you taking me?” “To the camp healer,” he gritted out. “You need to take something.” “What do you mean, I need to take something?” “Because of last night. Because children might be extraordinarily rare between the Fae and humans, but they can still happen, and—” I burst out laughing. Fisher stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes wide. “I don’t pretend to understand you at the best of times, but why is this funny to you?” he demanded. “I can’t have children, Fisher. I was cleansed when I was fourteen.” I expected to see relief on his face. But instead, his face drained of color. “What the fuck did you just say to me?
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
“
Did I develop my own set of random assumptions by utilizing the very little information available to me? For example, Leo Vodnik had held a magazine titled Construction Engineering Australia. Men are ten times more likely than women to die at work. Is that all it took for me to predict a “workplace accident” as his cause of death? Ethan Chang had his arm in a cast. Was it his injury that made me choose “assault,” together with the fact that injury and violence is a leading cause of death for young adult men? I know I watched Kayla Halfpenny at the airport and saw her knock over her drink and then her phone. Was it my observation of the sweet girl’s clumsiness together with the fact that road traffic injuries are one of the leading causes of death among young adults that led me to say “car accident”? Did I simply make random choices? Is that what led me to pancreatic cancer, the most feared cancer, for the vibrant woman who reminded me of my friend Jill, and breast cancer for the pregnant woman? Did I temporarily believe I was Madame Mae? I must have been thinking of my mother, because I kept saying “fate won’t be fought.” Had I somehow become a strange alchemy of the two of us? Both of us, after all, specialized in predictions. There are certain events in my life that I believe may have had a profound effect on me. For example: the little boy who drowned at the blowhole when I was a child. I have never forgotten the sound of his mother screaming. That boy had brown eyes and dark hair. When I saw that dear little brown-eyed, dark-haired baby, did I think of that poor boy and therefore predict the baby would drown at the same age? Did I look at the young bride, Eve, and remember the charming woman who came to my mother for readings, who was so excited about her forthcoming wedding, the first wedding I ever attended? Did I think of the time I saw her at the shops, her inner light snuffed out, and remember how she died in a fire believed to have been lit by her husband? Why did I choose self-harm for Allegra, the beautiful flight attendant? Was it simply that I saw repressed pain in her eyes from the back injury I now know she suffered on that flight? Was it because I knew the rate of suicide in young females has been steadily increasing over recent years? Was I thinking of death as I boarded the plane and contemplating the fact that everyone on that plane would one day die, and wondering what their causes of death would ultimately be? Well. That’s the only one of my questions I can answer with certainty. Of course I was thinking of death. I had my husband’s ashes in my carry-on bag. I was missing my two best friends. I was thinking of every person I had ever lost throughout my life.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (Here One Moment)
“
The world is determined by its essence (the Universal Mind's “immaterial substance”) and by its universal laws, which are the same everywhere and are determined. If they are determined, that implies no uncertainty, but this conclusion is incorrect. Regardless of the essence from which everything comes to be (or is transformed), its manifestation, or its material substance, the world (Universe) will constantly evolve differently in any particular manifestation. The starting point, if nothing else, will always be different and form different universes in every specific manifestation.
Both the Being and Nonbeing are limitless, which makes them “infinite,” and infinity is zero. Their frame is the Absolute itself, simultaneously providing the absolute limit and potential (infinity). The purpose of the world and the Absolute is not one particular existence and one particular world (Universe) or one life but a continuation of existence (universes) ad infinitum. Without infinity, there would be no real life because, at one point, existence would cease to exist forever, and it would be as if it had never existed. But infinity (although never reachable) secures continuation. Any manifestation of the Absolute, in the form of the World, follows the uncertainty principle, preserving the youth of the Absolute and originality (uniqueness) of any or all universes existing simultaneously or at any past or future time.
The “Dimensions” we can never explore are not some exotic dimensions of the string theory but rather the “dimensions” of the micro-micro and macro-macro-level that humans will probably never reach.
We can bypass the laws of physics only if we bypass the consequences of physical transformation. If we could operate on the level of pure information and return to the material form, not only would time travel be possible, but more valuable and fundamental endeavors would also be possible. When we say time travel, we do not mean traveling to the past or future using a time machine. That would be something similar to alchemy. Perhaps humankind, or any other species, can never achieve this level of science and technology except God. But we can imagine Beings transcending their physical existence and becoming immaterial. We can also imagine such beings on other levels beyond the “physical” world and existence known to us. The Ultimate Source, the Universal Mind, is the Ultimate Alchemist of Reality and the Universe.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
I had the idea of turning up at an apartment with five smoke detectors; the fire officer was to casually carry in all five, before saying, ‘I think we can make do with three here … How many would you like, three or four?’ We are highly social creatures and just as we find it very difficult to answer the question ‘still or sparkling?’ with ‘tap’, it is also difficult to answer the question about ‘three or four’ smoke detectors with ‘one’.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense)
“
All right. Fine. A husband turns to his wife one day and says, ‘y’know, I bet you can’t think of something to tell me that will make me both happy and sad at the same time.’ The wife doesn’t even need to think about it. She turns to her husband and says, ‘your cock is way bigger than your brother’s.
”
”
Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy #1))
“
The production of rivets under communism demonstrated a similar pattern. Typically a factory was given a monthly quota that it was required to manufacture – the unbranded rivets were then sent to a central rivets depository, where they intermingled with all the other factories’ rivets. From there, all the rivets, whose provenance was by now completely indistinguishable, would be transported to wherever they were needed. The Soviets soon found that, without a maker’s name attached to a product, no one had any incentive to make a quality product, which pushed quantity upwards and quality downwards. The easiest way to produce a million rivets every month was to produce a million bad rivets, which soon led to ships falling apart. Furthermore, you did not know which factory to blame, because the rivets had become commoditised, which is to say anonymised. Eventually the regime swallowed their ideological pride and made factories stamp their names on their rivets – the feedback mechanism was restored and quality returned to acceptable levels.
”
”
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense)
“
Birds of the Western Front
Your mess-tin cover's lost. Kestrels hover
above the shelling. They don't turn a feather
when hunting-ground explodes in yellow earth,
flickering star-shells
and flares from the Revelation of St John.
You look away
from artillery lobbing roar and suck and snap
against one corner of a thicket
to the partridge of the war zone
making its nest in shattered clods.
History
floods into subsoil to be blown apart. You cling
to the hard dry stars of observation.
How you survive. They were all at it:
Orchids of the Crimea
nature notes from the trench
leaving everything unsaid - hell's cauldron
with souls pushed in, demons stoking flames beneath -
for the pink-flecked wings of a chaffinch
flashed like mediaeval glass.
You replace gangrene and gas mask
with a dream of alchemy: language of the birds
translating human earth
to abstract and divine. While machine-gun
tracery gutted that stricken wood
you watched the chaffinch flutter to and fro
through splintered branches, breaking buds
and never a green bough left.
Hundreds lay in there wounded.
If any, you say, spotted one bird
they may have wondered why a thing with wings
would stay in such a place.
She must have, sure, had chicks
she was too terrified to feed, too loyal to desert.
Like roots clutching at air
you stick to the lark singing fit to burst at dawn
sounding insincere
above the burning bush: plough-land
latticed like folds of brain
with shell-ravines where nothing stirs
but black rats, jittery sentries and the lice
sliding across your faces every night.
Where every elixir's gone wrong
you hold to what you know.
A little nature study. A solitary magpie
blue and white
spearing a strand of willow.
One for sorrow. One for Babylon,
Ninevah and Northern France,
for mice and desolation, the burgeoning
barn-owl population
and never a green bough left.
”
”
Ruth Padel
“
One of the great images to come down to us through Zen Buddhism is the encounter between an enlightened master and an advanced apprentice during the course of a shared meal. The apprentice, becoming fed up with the stress and waiting and the master’s apparent disregard for him, demands an explanation without complication of exactly how to become enlightened. The master asks, “Have you finished your rice?” “Yes,” says the apprentice. “Then go wash your bowl.
”
”
Darrell Calkins (Re:)
“
Terrifying: Jax remembered what had happened to the last Clakker to say no. They'd broken his legs, and filled his mouth with glue, and tossed him into the hellish forges of the Clockmakers' Guild. The humans had destroyed the rogue Clakker Adam, who'd been born Perjumbellagostriavantus, and made a public spectacle of it. Practically declared a citywide holiday. They had called him rogue and demon-thrall, melted his body to an alchemical slurry, and incinerated his hard-won soul until there was nothing left of it but a shiver in the spines of the human voyeurs.
Rogue. That's what they'd call Jax too, if they caught him. They'd condemn, damn, torture, and melt him.
”
”
Ian Tregillis (The Mechanical (The Alchemy Wars, #1))
“
I'm not saying therapy is bad, it's just too much work for me. I'm more about embracing my broken self for all that she can be.
”
”
Donna Augustine (Keepers & Killers (Alchemy, #2))
“
The saints have said, "Even suppose God, should forgive thee, after a wasted life, thou wilt not attain to the ranks of the righteous and must deplore thy loss; therefore keep a strict, watch over thy tongue, thine eye, and each of thy seven members, for each of these is, as it, were, a possible gate to hell. Say to thy flesh, 'If thou art rebellious, verily I will punish thee';
”
”
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (The Alchemy of Happiness)
“
I’ll be hanged if I can understand how it concerns Evolution to get us out of a mere scrape.”
“Out of all kinds of scrapes, my dear Brumm, Evolution has the power to deliver us. There is no conceivable scrape which is not a link in the great chain—in Chance, which is the empirical name for Evolution, and bears the same relation to it that alchemy bears to chemistry, and astrology to astronomy. And the last little scrape of all, death, is simply the charming means Evolution takes to get us out of the great big scrape, life. You will never be happy, my dear friend, until you submit to the Evolutionary will. If it were not so amusing, nothing would be more insufferable than the unanimity and persistency with which all men and kindreds and nations shout up into space, ‘What a scrape were in!’ It is the first thing the child says in its inarticulate way with the first breath of air it is able to employ. ‘Oh, what a scrape to be sure!’ And it is the last thing the man feels on his death-bed. And you will find that all the books and newspapers and music in the world are only expositions and sermons and fugues and variations on the one theme. ‘Oh, what a scrape!’ Now, it is my mission to change the world’s tune. I mean to teach it that scrape, luck, chance, is law, is Evolution, is the soul of the universe; and having brought man’s will into accord with the Evolutionary will, in a very short time it will come about that children will laugh with their first breath, as much as to say, ‘ What a delightful thing it is to come into the world.’ And on their death-beds men will cry, ‘How refreshing and noble it is to pass away,’ while all the books and newspapers and music of the world will cease to be a mere complaint, will cease—altogether, the books and newspapers, perhaps, and only glad music remain.
”
”
John Davidson (A Full and True Account of the Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender, which Lasted One Night and One Day; with a History of the Pursuit of Earl Lavender and Lord Brumm by Mrs. Scamler and Maud Emblem)
“
I should've written a contract up before we slept together so he understood exactly what it entailed outside the bedroom. It meant you have to agree with everything I say, especially when people I don't like are present
”
”
Donna Augustine (Shattered (Alchemy, #3))
“
I had never seen her wearing lipstick, but knew better than to say so in case she did that mysterious alchemy some girls do and transformed the comment into my accusing her of having gained weight.
”
”
Helen Oyeyemi (White Is for Witching)