#3 rd dimensional thinking

[bahatibloomingjournals]

Size: 6 X 9

120 Pages

Paperback

Link is below

[thecreaturecodex]

Dragon, Yellow

“Citrine Dragon” © Robert Burke Games, by Kerem Beyit. Accessed at his deviantArt gallery here

[Commissioned by @mr-w-rambles​. Folks, this is the longest single creature entry I’ve ever written. See ya, hordlings! It’s also my first true dragon. Which, taking the Pathfinder Bestiary format, means a table and three whole stat blocks. Tumblr handles tables poorly, so I’ve put those below the cut as image files--they’re a bit jarringly large, but they’re still legible.

There have been two different versions of the yellow dragon, one from the 1990 Draconomicon, which lives in deserts, and this one, from Dragon Magazine, which is semi-aquatic. The article it comes from uses color theory to predict the breath weapons of the “missing dragons”, so it gets a bit weird. The yellow dragon itself evolved through its three iterations. The 1e version is a pretty standard dragon, the 2e version is wingless and flies magically, and the 3e version (from Dragon Compendium Vol. 1) is incredibly dexterous for a dragon. I went with the 3e concept, but toned it down (as all dragons have been toned down in the shift from 3.x to Pathfinder). This is also a dragon that might play a little weirdly. Its AC is even better than the inflated AC for dragons, but its damage dealing capabilities are pretty pathetic. It also inflicts more status conditions than usual for a dragon. The CR on this is somewhat of a stab in the dark, comparing it to core Pathfinder dragons. Let me know if you think it needs further adjustment.]

Dragon, Yellow This dragon’s long, serpentine body is covered in yellow scales, flecked with green and white. It has no wings, but moves through the air with surprising grace. Its eyes are sea green and somewhat beady, and multiple ridges run along its skull and body, giving it a streamlined appearance.

Yellow dragons live at the convergence of air, earth and water. They are found on sandy beaches, coral reefs, salt marshes and mangrove forests. The scales of a yellow dragon remain small throughout the creature’s entire life, giving them a supple skin and a glittering appearance. They can breathe a cone of pressurized brine, which deals as much damage above as below water. They are carnivores, with a taste for desiccated and heavily salted meat. They are physically weak by the standards of dragons, but are remarkably nimble, and can maneuver in three dimensions in multiple kinds of terrain. Yellow dragons prefer to make hit and run attacks, stopping to make full attacks only when opponents are blinded and agonized by salt crystals.

Yellow dragons are cruel and temperamental creatures.  They often make raids inland to attack settlements of intelligent creatures, and savor the meat of humanoids for special occasions. They may ally with sahaugin or other evil aquatic creatures, but yellow dragons feel clearly that they are the dominant party in the relationship. Yellow dragons fear bronze dragons above all others, as the bronze dragons are larger and better spellcasters besides. Almost all yellow dragons take spells that protect them from electricity once they are capable enough spellcasters. Yellow and black dragons sometimes have overlapping territories, but the two species keep a wary distance from each other.

Yellow Dragon LE dragon (air, water) Base Statistics CR 3; Size Tiny; Hit Dice 3d12 Speed 60 ft., burrow 30 ft., swim 60 ft. Natural Armor +3; Breath Weapon cone of salt, 2d4 bludgeoning and acid Str 7, Dex 16, Con 13, Int 8, Wis 11, Cha 8 Ecology Environment warm and temperate coastal and aquatic Organization solitary Treasure triple standard Special Abilities Agonizing Breath (Su) A creature that takes damage from an adult or older yellow dragon’s breath weapon must succeed a Fortitude save (same DC as the breath weapon) or be sickened for a number of rounds equal to the dragon’s age category. This is a pain effect. Blinding Breath (Su) A creature that takes damage from a young or older yellow dragon’s breath weapon must succeed a Fortitude save (same DC as the breath weapon) or be blinded for a number of rounds equal to ½ the dragon’s age category. Brine Storm (Su) An ancient or older yellow dragon can use its breath weapon to create a cloud of acid as a standard action that deals damage to any creature inside it. The cloud moves with the dragon and has a radius of 20 feet. When it's created, anyone inside this area takes an amount of acid damage equal to half the dragon's breath weapon, with a Reflex save for half damage. The number of damage dice rolled is halved each round until the result would be less than 1d4. Any creature that starts its turn inside the cloud takes damage, but can make a Reflex save for half. A strong wind, such as that created by a gust of wind, disperses the cloud in 1 round. Flight (Su) A yellow dragon’s flight is a supernatural ability. It always has good maneuverability with its flight speed, no matter its size. Graceful Attacks (Ex) An old or older yellow dragon may add its Dexterity modifier to its damage with natural weapons instead of its Strength modifier. It does not add 1.5 times its Dexterity modifier to damage bonuses to its bite or tail slap attacks. Nimble (Ex) A yellow dragon uses the following table for its Strength, Dexterity and natural armor bonuses. All of its other ability scores and qualities use the normal dragon table. In addition, it uses its Dexterity modifier to modify Swim checks.

Spell-like Abilities A yellow dragon gains the following spell-like abilities, usable at will upon reaching the listed age category. Very young—obscuring mist; Young adult—control water; Mature adult—control winds; Very old—control weather; Great wyrm—horrid wilting. Terrible Claws (Ex) A yellow dragon of young or older age does not have wing slap attacks, but its claws deal damage as if it were one size larger. Water Breathing (Ex) A yellow dragon can breathe underwater indefinitely and can freely use its breath weapon, spells and other abilities while submerged.

Young Yellow Dragon        CR 7 XP 3,200 LE Medium dragon (air, water) Init +5; Senses blindsense 60 ft., darkvision 120 ft., dragon senses, Perception +10 Defense AC 22, touch 16, flat-footed 16 (+5 Dex, +1 dodge, +6 natural) hp 66 (7d12+21) Fort +8, Ref +10, Will +6 Immune acid, paralysis, sleep Offense Speed 60 feet, burrow 30 ft., swim 60 ft., fly 150 ft. (good) Melee bite +12 (1d8), 2 claws +12 (1d8) Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft. (10 ft. with bite) Special Attacks blinding breath (Fort DC 16, 1 round), breath weapon (60 ft. cone, 1d4 rounds, Ref DC 16, 6d4 acid and bludgeoning) Spell-like Abilities CL 7th, concentration +7 At will—obscuring mist Statistics Str 11, Dex 20, Con 17, Int 10, Wis 13, Cha 10 Base Atk +7; CMB +7; CMD 23 (27 vs. trip) Feats Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Mobility, Weapon Finesse Skills Appraise +9, Bluff +9, Fly +18, Perception +10, Sense Motive +10, Stealth +14, Survival +10, Swim +13; Racial Modifiers uses Dex to Swim Languages Draconic SQ flight. nimble, terrible claws, water breathing

Adult Yellow Dragon          CR 11 XP 12,800 LE Large dragon (air, water) Init +8; Senses blindsense 60 ft., darkvision 120 ft., dragon senses, Perception +14 Aura frightful presence (180 ft., Will DC 18) Defense AC 30, touch 18, flat-footed 21 (-1 size, +8 Dex, +1 dodge, +12 natural) hp 138 (12d10+60) Fort +13, Ref +16, Will +11 DR 5/magic; Immune acid, paralysis, sleep; SR 21 Offense Speed 60 feet, burrow 30 ft., swim 60 ft., fly 200 ft. (good) Melee bite +19 (2d6+1), 2 claws +19 (2d6+1), tail slap +14 (1d8+1) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. (15 ft. with bite) Special Attacks agonizing breath (Fort DC 21, 6 rounds), blinding breath (Fort DC 21, 3 rounds), breath weapon (80 ft. cone, 1d4 rounds, Ref DC 21, 12d4 acid and bludgeoning) Spell-like Abilities CL 12th, concentration +14 At will—control water, obscuring mist Spells CL 3rd, concentration +5 1st (6/day)—alarm, protection from good (DC 13), ray of enfeeblement (DC 13) 0th—arcane mark, detect magic, detect poison, mage hand, message Statistics Str 13, Dex 26, Con 21, Int 14, Wis 17, Cha 14 Base Atk +12; CMB +14; CMD 33 (37 vs. trip) Feats Blind-fight, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Flyby Attack, Mobility, Weapon Finesse Skills Appraise +13, Bluff +13, Fly +21, Intimidate +13, Knowledge (arcana, nature) +13, Perception +14, Sense Motive +14, Spellcraft +13, Stealth +17, Survival +14, Swim +21; Racial Modifiers uses Dex to Swim Languages Aquan, Common, Draconic SQ flight. nimble, terrible claws, water breathing

Ancient Yellow Dragon     CR 16 XP 76,800 LE Huge dragon (air, water) Init +11; Senses blindsense 60 ft., darkvision 120 ft., dragon senses, Perception +25 Aura frightful presence (300 ft., Will DC 24) Defense AC 40, touch 20, flat-footed 28 (-2 size, +11 Dex, +1 dodge, +20 natural) hp 283 (21d12+147) Fort +17, Ref +23, Will +17 DR 15/magic; Immune acid, paralysis, sleep; SR 26 Offense Speed 60 feet, burrow 30 ft., swim 60 ft., fly 250 ft. (good) Melee bite +30 (2d8+11), 2 claws +30 (2d8+11/19-20), tail slap +25 (2d6+11) Space 15 ft.; Reach 15 ft. (20 ft. with bite) Special Abilities agonizing breath (Fort DC 27, 10 rounds), blinding breath (Fort DC 27, 5 rounds), breath weapon (100 ft. cone, 1d4 rounds, 20d4 acid and bludgeoning, Ref DC 27), brine storm (10d4 acid, Ref DC 27), crush (2d8+6, Ref DC 27), graceful attacks Spell-like Abilities CL 21st, concentration +25 (+29 casting defensively) At will—control water, control weather, control winds, obscuring mist Spells CL 11th, concentration +15 (+19 casting defensively) 5th (5/day)—cone of cold (DC 19), polymorph 4th (7/day)—dimensional anchor, enervation, fire shield, resilient sphere (DC 18) 3rd (7/day)—dispel magic, haste, heroism, protection from energy 2nd (7/day)—bear’s endurance, invisibility, mirror image, scorching ray, see invisibility 1st (7/day)—alarm, comprehend languages, mage armor, protection from good (DC 15), ray of enfeeblement (DC 15) 0th—arcane mark, detect magic, detect poison, light, mage hand, message, prestidigitation, ray of frost, read magic Statistics Str 19, Dex 32, Con 25, Int 18, Wis 21, Cha 18 Base Atk +21; CMB +33; CMD 48 (52 vs. trip) Feats Agile Manuevers, Blind-fight, Combat Casting, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Flyby Attack, Improved Critical (claw), Iron Will, Mobility, Stand Still, Weapon Finesse Skills Appraise +25, Bluff +25, Fly +31, Intimidate +25, Knowledge (arcana, nature) +25, Perception +25, Sense Motive +25, Spellcraft +25, Stealth +23, Survival +26, Swim +31; Racial Modifiers uses Dex to Swim Languages Aquan, Auran, Common, Draconic, Giant SQ flight. nimble, terrible claws, water breathing

[felix-the-cat]

Tuesday, March 16, 2021 – 10:54 p.m.

I asked Spirit, ‘how can we view the world through New Eyes?’

By seeing the world through the lens of Love. This is perfect vision. It is your dream; what is it you would like to create? A better world? It is here. It is forming right before your Eyes. Everything is slowly becoming so fresh and New.

Step out of the divide and into the divine. Let Spirit show you the way home. At this moment you are at perfect peace; perfectly protected and guided by Spirit. We are here to show you a New World; one that is forming all around you.

You have arrived at your destination. Do you have Eyes to see it yet or are you playing in the divide? The split in consciousness is being played out along the 3rd dimensional matrix as you ascend above it all. You have now begun to step away from the divide and into the Divine.

There is so much more coming than you could begin to possibly imagine. Are you able to view these old operating systems being toppled? They have become infected and obsolete. The new operating system currently being installed on your planet will set you free of the debt slavery of the past.

Congratulations. You are now stepping out of the matrix and into a much fuller reality. Learn to view the world through the eyes of the heart and you will have perceived correctly. We are here to assist you in your ascension but not in the way you might think.

We have been where you are, and we remember how exciting and scary it can be at times. Just stay in the light. It is best not to be in the shadow of the giant when it falls. This is the perceived darkness you see being cast across the land.

This is the empire of old coming to a close as humanity is set free at long last. We are here to assist you in stepping out of the shadows and into the Light. It may take some time for your eyes to adjust to this light, but once you perceive this New World coming into focus you will weep for joy.

These are the times that have been written about in your scriptures of old. They foretold of a time when the darkness will be drawn into the light. The backdrop of darkness is no longer required upon your planet.

Now is the time of the Great Awakening and as more and more wake up this reality will come more into focus. These are magnificent times once perceived correctly. These are the times we have prayed for in our most desperate hour of need.

Here we have an example of one that walks in the Light with Spirit and is able to perceive what is occurring here. These days are becoming more and more heavenly as heaven and earth merge into one. Simply put, you are coming home. Mother earth is bringing her children into the Light and the darkness is being burned away.

So far, we have found that those who are willing to focus through their heart are the ones that can perceive correctly. We are showing you the movie version of the fallen empire. You have seen this before; you simply do not remember.

We are here to begin a dialogue for all who wish to open their third eye and perceive what is coming. That is the key. Correctly perceived, the world is viewed upside down. This is because the world has been operating that way. We are here to help you turn the world upside down so it may be perceived correctly at long last.

Thank you for joining us on this journey. It takes much courage to volunteer to come to a planet and assist as She gives birth to a New Consciousness. The hearts and minds of men and women across the globe are open, ready and receptive. They are ready to receive the gifts of love and freedom that have been denied them for so long now.

Perceived through New Eyes this world could change in an instant. For now, you must help the blind to see; or at least not fall into any potholes. These are the times that should be cherished the most. Perceived correctly, you will view a miracle unfolding right before your Eyes.

Thank you for showing up and shining your light at this time. It means more than you will ever know. We will talk again soon…

[catflowerqueen]

Logistics of a “Speed Run”

So, this is probably going to end up on my what if…? List eventually, so I think I’ll just do some vague outlining here.

Starting Premise: The original expedition members are the only ones who go on the expedition to fogbound Lake.

1st Time Gear Located: Mesprit’s

Dugtrio rationalizes his not being chosen as Wigglytuff and Chatot deciding he needs more quality time with his son, but Diglett is not yet at the level where he could handle a full expedition. He… might be right? At least partially? Like I said—I don’t think they would have separated the two long-term quite yet, but, in all honesty, Diglett does seem to be the more responsible of the pair at this moment. However, he also seemed to be leaning on his dad quite a bit during the actual expedition itself (looking to him for approval, for example) once they hit Base Camp, so it is also possible that his confidence is only because of his familiarity with the Guild and Treasure Town.

Whatever the case—Dugtrio decides to take this bonding opportunity to mentor his son on the complexities of the move Dig, and upon realizing/remembering that Laura also knows this move (or her expressing interest in learning it) decides to take her along, with Paula as a spotter. For some reason he decides the best place to do this is around the Northern Desert—likely as an intermediate sort of lesson, for how to deal with loose soil and cave-ins? Or something? Or, like, there just so happens to be a lot of jobs for that area, so he just decides once they finish them to start working on Dig lessons.

Croagunk remains behind to watch the guild and his Swap Cauldron.

The group ends up accidentally tunneling into Quicksand Cave and either decide to take the opportunity to explore, or have no other choice because the tunnels collapsed and they can’t get out otherwise. This is possibly Laura’s fault, if her feelings of déjà vu and familiarity for the place (which she did canonically feel there in canon, but to a somewhat lesser degree since she was comparing it to her experience at Foggy Forest—meaning that she would be feeling it even more here) distract her to the point of making some digging mistakes. The result either way is that they end up meeting Mesprit and seeing her Time Gear. She doesn’t really have good defenses like Uxie does—she can sort of project feelings of disinterest, fear to make others leave her alone, but only if she’s paying attention and considering that Laura is in the party, it might not work. So, they’re going to have to try and get through to her via words.

Team Rainbow may or may not reveal the whole “human” thing to Mesprit—unlike in canon where the stories about Uxie made them think he was directly involved in the amnesia, there isn’t really a correlation between Mesprit’s powers and Laura’s situation that they can tell, in addition to the fact that they are not alone here, and might feel awkward about bringing it up around Diglett and his dad.

Either way, Mesprit extracts a promise from them not to tell, and they go home. Croagunk remains oblivious.

 2nd Time Gear located: Azelf’s

Probably at some point they’ll run into Grovyle—who has a little more freedom of movement since he hasn’t been identified yet. He may or may not go into the guild itself at some point to gather news, but at some point he and Laura will spend some time standing next to each other—or she just happens to be in his vicinity for some reason, like if he’s on the Beach muttering to himself and she overhears and wanders over to listen.

We already know he has somewhat of a habit of talking to himself—which probably stems from how quiet Laura was while travelling with him, so he would basically just soundboard off of her whenever they were planning/he felt it was relatively safe to talk (because he was a bit more socialized and had parents who would have encouraged him to talk/theorize/ask questions when the environment is safe. Not to mention he had a friend in Celebi before she was forced to relocate). But because he got in the habit, he sort of forgets at times that his partner isn’t actually around at the moment, resulting in him, well, talking to himself. And then when, unbeknownst to him, Laura is around… well, he would sort of sense the familiarity and just fall back into those habits even easier.

The result of this is that she catches him debating which Time Gear location to go after next (though he wouldn’t actually say that part out loud) and she picks up the name Crystal Cave before he finally catches on to what he’s doing and makes a hasty exit. The name sounds familiar/intriguing, though, so Laura suggests that Team Rainbow go there next if they can find some jobs on the board. Which they do, so they do.

In the course of their work and exploring, they stumble upon the Crystal Lake. They are extremely nervous/panicked/general freaking out about finding another Time Gear when that was in no way their intent, and Azelf is curious/amused enough by the spectacle that he comes and investigates. He can tell they are determined to keep things a secret, and probably heard about the situation from Mesprit, so he’s actually pretty chill about the whole thing, and they probably even chat a little bit before the duo leaves. Laura probably gives him a warning that there might be a Grovyle coming to sight see or something in the near future, since that’s where she got the idea from to explore the place. So she unintentionally gives him the warning to be on the lookout, even though they still think at this time that his travelling plans were innocuous.

 3rd Time Gear located: Uxie’s

The guild finally returns, feeling a little bummed that their expedition was a failure—because, as I’ve said before, I think it is unlikely Uxie would have let the group (minus possibly Wigglytuff) see the lake if not for the hero and partner accidentally stalling for time and seeking unrelated information in the game, which would have endeared them to him more and made him more willing to risk it. Without them there—and without the partner finding the drought stone, since that may or may not have happened if they weren’t there (because, privately, I think the reason they found it in the first place was that everyone stampeding to explore accidentally unearthed it [and Uxie probably just goes and deposits it in a random place in the forest whenever it is successfully used and he has to resort to Groudon/memory wiping to drive them away] and then the partner just happened to look down at the right moment. But with fewer people in attendance, that part might not have happened).

Though, it is entirely possible (and likely) that Bidoof might have managed to find the stone if he got lost in the Forest Path loop one too many times, and then just decided to take it with him as a treasure, the way he did that random crystal in canon. And maybe they could successfully find the statue, but have to wait for Chatot or someone to decipher the footprint runes (because I get the feeling that’s an uncommon skill, but is one of the things the partner learned in preparation for fulfilling their dream), and then no one has any idea what the drought stone is. Possibly Bidoof doesn’t even pick it up until they’re leaving, and the group might not have had the cohesiveness they did in canon to all go and share their finds since Dugtrio wasn’t there to suggest the apprentices work as one. That left the group each holding a bunch of different puzzle pieces, but not being able to put them together.

Anyways, they return, life gets back to normal, Dusknoir shows up, yadda yadda. At some point Bidoof lets Laura look at the pretty rock he found, and she has a Dimensional Scream about its purpose (though she doesn’t yet know what her ability is called). This… probably gets shared with the guild at large? Especially if Dusknoir still happens to be hanging around when Bidoof is showing off? …Or if it happened the night they got back (before Dusknoir arrived), and then all the apprentices got excited and caught Chatot’s attention.

So, Wigglytuff decides that Bidoof, Paula, and Laura should go back there the next day to figure things out—since they’re the ones with the most pieces of the puzzle. And he probably lets them go alone, at that, so Bidoof can actually get another chance to fulfill his wish and actually teach his friends things. So they do, and find Uxie and his Time Gear. And probably also ask him about the memory thing (since I feel like Bidoof’s presence is less awkward as far as spilling that goes? He is kind of their teacher, and the one that they’re probably closest to, even if he doesn’t generally get to do as much for them as he’d hoped). More conversations ensue and promises of secrecy are made—as well as some vows to look into things since it is extremely weird that this duo keeps finding Time Gears when they aren’t even trying to do so—though Uxie is going to be vague about it with Bidoof’s presence, only mentioning that they’d made contact with his siblings without bringing up what they guard.

Uxie either gives them a random treasure or helps them come up with a cover story to tell everyone else—probably something like “it turns out that the legendary lake is just what happens when the fog “lifts.” Or, more “accurately,” what happens is all the fog and water vapor condense and absolutely drenches and waterlogs the forest. The groudon statue is, therefore, somewhat of a misdirection.

…Laura probably comes up with that explanation, purely because of how complex it is and how many logical leaps it requires. But they just let her have her fun with it, considering the personal disappointment she just went through.

Also—Grovyle’s timeline is a bit delayed from what it was in canon since he got a bit scared off by that brush with Laura and decided to lay low for a little bit. So he either shows up a day after they leave, or they happen to see him on their way back—but don’t pick up on the fact that he’s there to steal the Time Gear. Uxie does not think they told Grovyle about him both because of just how quickly he appeared after the trio left and because Azelf probably told him about Laura’s tourist warning.

 Fallout:

There is awkwardness among the Dugtrio family, Bidoof, and Team Rainbow when the news breaks about the Limestone Cavern gear being missing, and then even more when Grovyle is finally revealed as the thief—especially since that particular revelation comes with Laura blurting out about how she saw the guy earlier, and how he was making travel plans—so now she feels guilty that she didn’t think to question him about it. …And then with that comes the revelation that the remaining Time Gears’ locations are already known. Which does make it a little easier to actually go and fortify them, since they don’t have to spend time searching.

The end result is probably that they catch Grovyle at whichever lake he targets next, and the whole “getting dragged into the future” thing happens a lot earlier, and without the massive injury and illness from the Crystal Lake fight that gets alluded to in Missing Scenes. This also means that the Town Meeting scene probably doesn’t happen, since Dusknoir doesn’t actually need to utilize all those resources. Though there would have to be a scene or something that happens afterwards with the guild, at least—and probably Officer Magnezone—where Dusknoir would have to explain why he should get custody of the criminal.

This… leads to some interesting possibilities as far as whether or not the whole “the hero and partner get dragged into the future” thing would even happen. Because at the very least Dusknoir would have to give a reason for why Laura would need to come with him, and depending on where they do all this planning, and whether or not Grovyle happens to be in earshot for this…

Well, I’m imagining a scene or something where Dusknoir “suggests” that Laura (and probably Paula) guard Grovyle while he goes and gets all the sableye ready to prepare for a return trip (because that way he can keep the two of them close together if he needs to quickly grab them and run). Laura probably would accidentally touch him at some point and set off a dimensional scream, which would reveal, if not everything about her own personal history, then at least some inconsistencies in Dusknoir’s story. So Grovyle’s innocence would probably get sorted out fairly quickly, and then the issue would become how to protect him and the Time Gears from Dusknoir, as well as how to find the Hidden Land. …Or that dimensional scream happens right before Dusknoir drags him to the future, so Laura is still reeling from that revelation when she and Paula get dragged there as well—which would endear Grovyle and his efforts to them very quickly, and they would be on board with his plans from the start.

In any case, they would have a lot more time to plan, bond, and search for the Hidden Land after that. Which means discussion of Laura’s past and history would become inevitable, and the whole “we will disappear” thing might get figured out. But I don’t see this particular “what if…?” scenario being one where Relatia actually gets called to fix things, simply because Laura wouldn’t have quite enough time here to figure all of that out.

[inyuji]

Drawn during my sick period. Caught the stronger cold, thankfully not the flu. Did I ever mention how much I love “Beastars” and can’t wait to watch it again when it hits U.S. Netflix. Because of the purely animal-based world, it brings up a lot of heavy topics that bleed heavily into the real world. So it really begged the question of seeing how my Darkwing OC Rei would fit in this universe.

I actually did have a story point for Rei getting sucked into a dimensional worm-hole that was unintentionally opened during a villain fight. Rei was closest to Gosalyn, who was close to being sucked into that wormhole. Being unable to fully pull Gosalyn out, she did the next desperate thing; switch places while throwing Gosalyn out of harm’s way. So far, I’d say this is the 4th or 5th dimension. Each dimension is either close enough to her original, or can potentially lead her closer. Darkwing and some colleagues are able to time and activate these “jumps” long enough to help Rei find her way home. Each jump is entirely random, due to difference in time.

In this dimension, Rei was found and taken in by Legosi’s grandfather. After hearing stories about his family, Rei decided to visit Legosi at school. This is recently after the events of season 1. Legosi is shocked about the temporary sibling, and panicking about how to go about baby-sitting a small, errant duck. For spoiler reasons, I’m not mentioning why he doesn’t talk to his grandpa, and warning you all that the last fourth jpeg is a major manga spoiler. Rei makes it known that she’s 13, not six, and that she’s less likely to cause a huge disruption in Legosi’s schedule. Legosi still prefers to keep Rei near him no matter what, since that’s what he thinks a big brother should do. Haru is amused and finds it sweet that he’s taking his big-brother role seriously. Rei allows this over-protective streak, sensing that Legosi is a raging storm of anxiety and insecurities. So she dedicates herself as his “therapy duck.” She benefits from shadowing him, since she can get more research on the society of this dimension, and she never says no to new knowledge.

One of the human dimensions she’s laid low in was from “Carole and Tuesday” anime. She became a fan of the music there. But she’s peeved that she can’t find an instrument her size. She doesn’t like the idea of asking Gosha for any string instrument, when he’s already bought her a flip-phone. Darkwing Prime dimension is most likely set in the 90s, so Flip-phones and smartphones are high-tech to her. She’s enjoying watching the drama club and hanging with Legosi’s dorm mates. Bill is tolerable, but she can sense he isn’t a bad tiger. Just a super-masculine meat-head. Rei prays to whatever deity or force that she doesn’t become as hormonal or angst-filled as the teenagers in this school. So far, only Legosi and Haru know that she’s an esper. Everyone thinks that Rei is just a weird duck with no sense of self-preservation, since she doesn’t cow in fear in the presence of bigger animals. Song she’s singing is “After the Fire” from “Carole and Tuesday.”

In each dimension, Rei’s body will adapt accordingly, but her esper powers are never going away, along with all of her other little quirks. So here she has to balance to having 5 fingers, but still having a duck body, that’s not quite like her original one. Every dimension has presented a different experience, so she’s started to undergo a changing phase. So she won’t be as super laidback and quiet about some things. Of course, seeing how this animal society is already on a tense tightrope, the onslaught of vibes would almost suffocate Rei at first. Then there’s the weird fact of how oddly heavy she is for a 13-year old duck. Her muscle mass practically outweighs whatever body fat she has, which explains her rather freakish strength. Downside is that she’s the odd duck that can’t swim. Mentioned in previous sketchdumps with Rei, Darkwing has strong suspicions that Rei is a mutant. Now, Rei is convinced that her 7 year amnesia is the result of a traumatic childhood being a genetic lab experiment. Of course, Rei has been careful of exposing her esper powers, but in this world, the occasional show of power is her only tool to get herself out of unfavorable situations. She’s not going to be openly freaking people out with esper powers and would prefer not to advertise that she’s an esper.

Now because I don’t want to spoil everyone of future 2nd or even 3rd season, be aware that the 4th image contains manga spoilers.

When Rei leapt into this dimension, she landed in the middle of the Dark Market, and had no idea how dangerous being a duck would be, once predators are looking to gang on you. While she could’ve dealt with this physically, the onslaught of vibes in her vicinity was enough to make her lash out in a more threatening, psychic manner. Once she was able to scare her way outside, she wandered aimlessly, and then bumped into Legosi’s grandfather, Gosha. Authorities had found Rei and immediately wanted to separate the herbivore orphan from a venomous reptile. Only for Rei to openly threaten them with her psychic powers to not get pulled back into an orphanage. The cops don’t want to deal with a potential monster and willingly let Rei stay with Gosha. Gosha doesn’t mind having to take care of her. He just wishes that Rei stop being openly threatening with sharp objects. He’s lost count of how many knives, cutters, or broken glass bottles he has confiscated. She takes high offense to the discrimination of venomous reptiles, when Gosha is just the sweetest Komodo dragon. Gosha just prefers NOT to give authorities a good excuse to put Rei into an orphanage, or worse, a lab. He still feels bad that Rei does nothing but watch tv or go to the library, not that Rei cares. She’s fine with this arrangement, not wanting to inconvenience Gosha. She gets a kick out of “Happy Happy Cooking” and other programs.

[getyourblisson]

July 5th, 2020 - Full Moon in Capricorn

Moon dates are based on UTC, so there may be some fluctuation on the dates based on where in the world you are located.

Keep in mind that signs listed with the Full and New Moons may or may not coordinate with traditional insights.  Since I use a different perspective to consider the sign that the moon is in; that does not always coordinate with traditional astrology guidelines for what sign it is in.

July 5th Full Moon in Capricorn

This Full Moon brings greater caution than normal.  Let’s just say the ER is likely to be busier than normal for a Full Moon time.  What comes to mind when I see these code influences is the phrase “Blood on the Moon”.  In Astrology terms this is when there is a red ring around the moon; but in its most prominent display of this influence the entire Moon takes on a red color. This happens when the eclipsed Full Moon (which this Full Moon is an eclipse; and I talk about the eclipse energy in the additional influences) receives a reflection of light from all of the Sunrises and Sunsets on Earth at one time.  While this might sound wonderful to have prisms from shadows, and other such descriptions; it has become known as quite the ominous symbol of danger, including part of biblical prophecies that indicate the end of days and the Lord returning.

While I have no idea at the time of writing if such a phenomenon would occur on this particular Full Moon there is no question that the influences are at play, and there are enough signs and symbols for someone to run wild with it all.  After all this Full Moon does fall in the sign of Capricorn, which by most records is the sign that Christ was born into.  In the code energy, this day of the Full Moon is also running on death and strange accident patterns; which reminds us that we can take nothing for granted today.

Now certainly we don’t want our minds to run away with such information, going off on doom and gloom tangents; we do want to be aware and pay attention is packing a serious punch that is not to be played with or disregarded.  This particular Full Moon also carries with it 444 energy for those that are following numerology.  Some cultures and practices find this to be incredibly lucky and believe that God and the Angels are protecting them.  Asian cultures often find this unlucky since it sounds like “death” in their language. Still other cultures and biblical fanatics will associate this with the 4 horsemen.  Almost every culture has a 4 connection be it the elements, directions, or something else.

No matter which culture we find this to be a highly spiritually charged time of great transformation.  Many agree that it is natural forces at work; and most designate that there will be endings that bring peace and positive outcomes.  While many may be ready for those positive outcomes; not many are ready for the endings.

Globally, this influence does show that this Full Moon could trigger deaths with a biblical connection to them, or from natural forces.  It indicates that what ends at this time is being brought to an end so that peace can again be present in the world.  It is those that have learned to be self-sufficient from the inside out that will hold the power on the Earth.  This often times includes the outcasts that have stood strong in spiritual ways and divine alignment; regardless of the challenges or harshness that has been endured in that process.  The bible can connect this as an aspect of the “meek inheriting the Earth”.

While it can be fun to delve down these rabbit holes, it is important that we don’t run rampant into fears and dire thoughts.  It is also important that we don’t think that suddenly everyone on Earth is going to be nice happy and kind to each other.  Everything that happens in our world includes the processes of death and re-birth. This is true whether it is trees passing through the seasons, or the shifting of where we live or work, or simply the passing of one day to the next.

Often times when an energetic shift takes place, the change in our personal lives can be very subtle and we hardly notice anything at all.  It takes reflecting back over time to see how much change has happened. Even major shifts and changes that we notice are minor compared to the ripples running through the universe; which is due to the density of the 3rd Dimensional existence.

The codes show us that this Full Moon is likely to create some deep spiritual awakenings.  It is likely to be challenging to focus on things with our mental minds.  There is a strong connection to the soul self; and living in the ways of the soul self.

However, it also warns that deception is quite present; and where we are experiencing stagnation there is also deception, lies, or manipulation.  Blocks are coming from the lies and deception we are holding onto in our own thinking.  The stagnation comes from a refusal to see the truth.  This is a time for facing the hard lessons, that we don’t like to look at and for clearing out the lies that we are telling ourselves.  The soul self cannot reside where we hold onto lies; and therefore cannot help us to move forward until we choose to release them.

The codes show us that there is great prosperity to be had; and is likely to bring rewards to those that have done the work.  I again can see that connecting to many prophecies.  It is a time of opening us to our abundant self.  However, whether that is easy or challenging depends on how strong we are going to hold onto those lies we have been telling ourselves; and our willingness to be in our abundant self.

Standing in the abundant self is the proverbial Heaven on Earth energy patterns.  It is a shift in the way things are done which honors nature’s cycles and that balances work with play.  It honors enjoyment and gathering together in celebration.  It provides for all because it realizes that there is plenty for all when we are all sharing.

This shows that there is great promise for us to be successful and enjoy many blessings, if we are honoring the soul’s way and Divine Principles.  This Full Moon marks an end to slavery patterns and the awakening of the individual as a valuable piece of the whole.  It is a true portal for supporting those that have learned to stand strong on their own, instead of following the pack of liars and manipulators that seek only control and suppression, being greedy and praising earthly things.

Our focus is to keep our mind, our heart, and our actions as pure as possible.  It is to be true to our own self and Divine Principles, honoring those qualities that truly sustain us through all things.  It is to be authentic and to embrace who we are fully. This is a time for finding joy in the simple things, what is created purely from the elements and is a container of pure energy.  This is a time to free ourselves from the burdens that we carry, and to enter living from a joyful heart.

 I welcome you to lay low in the outer world, and spend time with and in your pure self.

I welcome you to take nothing for granted; and appreciate all that you have.

I welcome you to embrace any transformation that is at hand.

I welcome you to consider how you deal with the natural cycles that include death and re-birth.

I welcome you to look deeply at any areas of stagnation to find and dispel the lies that are present in them.

I welcome you to consider how you can work more with nature’s cycles.

I welcome you to stand in as much purity as possible.

The Code Journey ~ Jesse An Nichols George

[tileroofings-blog]

Tile Roofing of San Antonio is your local roofing contractor in San Antonio Texas. We are your primer choice in roofing contractors in Texas. Please visit our website at www.tileroofingsanantonio.com or call (210)-762-6011 for free roof inspections and metal roofing prices, roof replacement cost and shingles. When choosing a roofing contractor, or considering other roofing companies. Roofers, roofing materials, and roofing shingles are not all made equally. Depending on what style of roof you're looking for, considering your options, such as the cost of a metal roof. Cost of new roof. Or the cost to replace roof. Are all part of the equation. Most consideration comes from deciding on which shingles you would like to put on your roof. However, standing seam metal roof. Allows you to choose roof colors. Metal roofing is much better than asphalt shingles. A standing seam metal roof along with 24 gauge steel is the best roof. Adding fiberglass insulation in your attic will help save energy costs. Adding solar to your roof will help capture extra savings. Specialty skill sets that we have can be used to create copper roof Kama corrugated metal roofing comma Cedar Shake roofs or composition roof. Beacon Roofing, and Beacon Roofing Supply Company, along with GG metal do a great job. But we think we do better. Malarkey roofing. And malarkey roofing products our products that we carry. Iko shingles and CertainTeed come with installation and warranties. Installing metal roofing. Takes our experienced Craftsmen to create. Copper roof, is a unique skill set we can create. Architectural shingles, dimensional shingles, or 3 tab shingles could be the best route for you and your budget. Roofing companies, and roofers, can offer clay tile, aluminum roofing. And flat Commercial Roofing as well. Commercial Roofing comma flat roof and TPO roofs are specialty skill sets that we take care of. We are you local roofing company providing quality and affordability. Call us for any questions about residential roofing or commercial roofing for a roof estimate. San Antonio roofing will provide you with the best roof estimate for your roof installation. We provide the best roofing shingles and building products for superior service. Our roofers install all types of roofs including: asphalt shingles rolled roofing corrugated metal roofing steel roofing Clay roof shingles Architectural shingles Metal shingles Solar panels Cedar Shakes Copper roof Aluminum Roofing Corrugated roofing Rubber roof Composition roof Dimensional shingles

Contact: Tile Roofing of San Antonio 1440 W Bitters Rd #1125 San Antonio, TX 78248 Phone: 210-762-6011 Website: https://www.tileroofingsanantonio.com

[metaphoreala]

THE HEAVENLY LOCALES HIDDEN UPON AN ALTER-EARTH, OR ARE DISGUISED UPON THE PLANET

All religions hold a variation of the belief in an earthly counterpart to paradise. Judging by the psychonautical guidebooks and accounts of journeys to these sanctuaries, the amount of physical determination required makes a K2 climb look like a jog around the block.

But the promise of release from the conditions of physical landscape and even corporeality is more than a term in the contract; its possibility should already exist embryonically within the traveler, who seeks “spiritual riches.”

The chronology of the journey is circular, and the destination found to have been moving and “home” all along: There is no geographical cure, there is no chronological cure.

These are journeys to special places the pilgrim may be unsure even physically exist—and their faith therefore must be even stronger than those who think themselves comfortably saved in the big-ticket religions. Mecca and Lourdes and Jerusalem and Mount Kailash and Bodh Gaya are right there, in two dimensions, on a map or book page. One can make the trek to visit them.

These places, in contrast, seem half-products of imagination: glimpsed through mists, glinting on mountaintops or in valley shadows, temporary refuges, or—so it is told—promising more than just salvation or immortality.

They involve in one fashion or another a return to the origin, to the founder, to the creator, to the center of the cosmos.

It is difficult to determine the spiritual pilgrimage’s arrow of signification when it comes to physical geography vs. entheogeography (to meet deity or salvation via a hidden landscape). Rene Guenon and others believe that an otherworldly itinerary always precedes and is the model for that of a transfigured earth; the plane of the lower always symbolizes the higher, and never the opposite.

To undergo a difficult journey to a place of transcendence, transfiguration, or salvation is always held under secular or profane conditions, simply because to travel “across, into, within” remains conditioned by the Cartesian extensional/dimensional realms of human perception. One can travel from one’s own prayer mat given the proper physical and mental training, and with the right secretions of the “celestial dew,” won by years of practice, visions of paradise can douse the mind into ecstatic communion.

For the rest of us, we can hope to find a sacred landscape and its disguised architecture and residents.

MOUNT MERU/AGARTTHA

According to Guenon, the “primordial tradition” of all spiritualities and religions is focused around the concept of the Source or Pole about which all events turn in a cyclical manner.

The most explicit of these is shown in the 7-stage cycle of a kalpa, which is broken down into 14 manvantaras. Each manvantara contains 7 yugas or ages. The manvantara signifies a degeneration and regeneration of energy and its manifestations in truth.

We are currently in the yuga of Kali, in which destruction of the tradition (and thus the destruction of truth) accelerates. The long decline is followed by a purification and renewal.

All these cycles move about the primordial pole, Mount Meru. Meru is believed to have been at the northernmost part of the world and connected the earth to the heavens by means of the Pole star.

Although holy mountains occur in nearly every religion, Guenon and other traditionalists believe Meru is the archetype, and was constituted tens of thousands of years ago as the symbol of this manvantara. Thus, in one sense, all other holy mountains are emanations of Meru, and physical journeys to them are substitutes for the true Meru in a secondary, “profane” sense.

Meru is reflected in our secular concepts of the physical North Pole and the magnetic poles. The self-generating energies, as bases for all cyclical activity, as found in Asian religions, have been corrupted as they moved South and West; they become linear time construed as the primary or only kind of time.

Taken together, these two “types” of time form the basis for the symbol of the cross: the vertical signifying the revivifying Pole (infinite perception/life) and the horizontal signifying linear, finite perception.

“Dual time” is thus symbolized, reflecting simultaneously the four cardinal directions, the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the point (the center) as conceived as a single individual person standing on the face of the planet. We are all therefore at this center, ignorant though we are of it. The swastika adds to the cross a sense of motion as all cosmic and human events flow around the Pole.

To Guenon, (in his book The King of the World), the Pole’s main emanation was the kingdom of Agarttha, a civilization that long ago openly manifested the principles of these cycles. Its king was both legislator and the embodied truth of the cycles and, again, was represented by the cross.

Over the degeneration inherent in successive yugas, Agarttha withdrew into obscurity, leaving reflective centers of its wisdom in chosen persons and hidden social orders that preserved its truths and teachings.

By now, the Kali-yuga, Agarttha is underground in both literal and metaphoric senses. Thus, those seekers who strike out on the road for true knowledge and understanding of the earth, of deity, of immortality, or of humanity’s place in the cosmos in a “place learned in ancient hidden ways” are all seeking Agarttha in a metaphorical sense.

Each act of substitution, whether it be soma instead of Haoma, — instead of amanita, a piece of transubstantiated bread in place of Jesus’s flesh, wine in place of his blood, is a recapitulation of the primordial loss to our current reflective centers (our religions/esoteric schools) and the replacement of our linear time to Agartthan cyclical principles and centeredness.

HYPERBOREA

For Guenon, Hyperborea is the land beneath the geographic North Pole, with the arktoi, the Little Bear and Large Bear, as the symbols and guardians of the world axis.

From these asterism’s motion about the pole star comes the symbolic swastika, with its implied motion of the stars at the four ends of the cross. Mount Meru is always used as an evocation of this lost paradise of the Golden Age beneath a perfectly circling celestial dome. The Golden Age was less associated with a physical place then a principle that held for the world—although Guenon constantly hints at a geographically-situated actual civilization at the pole, which obviously has since sunk or was a landscape now obscured to history due to a pole shift.

The ancient Greeks were split as to Hyperborea’s location, only that it was far north of the Mediterranean civilizations. Herakles’s third labor involved traveling to the Northernmost land to capture what scholars have interpreted as a reindeer—an animal indigenous to Siberia, of course. This “golden horned hind” was sacred to Artemis. Britain, the Urals, and the land beyond the Riphean mountains all were candidates for its physical location. Hecataeus claimed the sun rose and set only once a year in Hyperborea, placing it therefore above the Arctic Circle.

Such terra incognita furnished a template for legends such as those saying Apollo spend part of the year in Hyperborea–which is fitting for a god who was mysteriously venerated both as the sun and of the long chthonic darkness of the polar winter (in his aspect as master of the caves’ “sleep temples”). Both Herodotus and Platomentioned Abaris, the Hyperborean healer who was probably from Scythia (the Ukraine or possibly even farther north in Siberia).

A variant is Ultima Thule, which a mariner merchant name and Pytheas claimed to have visited solo in the fourth century BCE, possibly Norway but was more likely England, Brittany, or even Iceland.

PARDES

The Garden of Eden is traditionally identified as being somewhere in Mesopotamia at the confluence of four great rivers (two of whose identities, the Tigris and Euphrates, are well obviously known) within ancient Sumer and Babylon. In the 3rd century Tosefta or gloss on the Torah’s Mishnah (oral tradition) is told the story of four rabbis who stumble into an otherworldly garden called PARDES. Only one of the rabbis, Akiva, survived this incursion and was able to tell the tale; one went insane, one died, and the fourth became a heretic. Over time, PARDES eventually came to symbolize both a place on earth and a place in, or of, the seven heavens (the latter idea which was probably adapted from Babylonian religion during the captivity).

As one interpretive tradition tells it, the loss of the physical Temple in Jerusalem in 70CE necessitated creating a spiritual Temple accessible through ritual means. Some of these means are preserved in the hekhalot (palace) and merkavah (chariot-throne) rituals conveyed in both Qabbalah and further Mishnah traditions.[1]

Both are said to have originated in the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of YAHWEH’s chariot/throne and its four guardians centuries earlier.

Ezekiel’s status as a priest and prophet during the Babylonian captivity allowed him to disseminate the idea that the Temple traditions and the Hebrew faith could be carried on while in exile, without the physical location or implements in Jerusalem. This led to practices of internalizing imagery as a substitute for the lost Temple.

BABYLONIAN INFLUENCE

As a Babylonian exile, Ezekiel was on the banks of the Chebar River when his divine encounter occurred out of the north. In this context, as we’ve seen in the primordial Hindu tradition, north symbolizes the pole or center of the world—Meru. Some believe the vision incorporates Babylonian beliefs, and through those, the Sumerian astrotheology which preceded it—specifically the paths of the gods Anu, Enlil, and Ea and Enki. Enlil’s path is the 12 to 30° celestial north, around the pole star, and the Great Bear was considered the “great wagon” by the Sumerians: MAR.GID.DA. In Greek, this was AMAXA, or the chariot.

After a Sumerian or Babylonian statue of a god was charged and consecrated, its mouth washed and opened,[2]it was transportable. Its essence came from the stars. The essence is me and is the gift of civilization that Inanna stole from Enki.

Charged Babylonian statues were certainly brought to the river Chebar, where Ezekiel’s vision apparently begins, to end the rituals. Further it has been speculated that he was on the banks of the canal connecting Babylon to the holy city of Nippur where the mountain palace of Ekur, the home of Enlil, sat. His vision of the four companion beings conforms to the Sumerian griffins.

Both chariot and throne traditions utilize rhetoric of ascent or descent to the chariot/throne; in fact, the interchangeable double-use of these terms may be a clue as to the meaning, in the sense that the road upward and the road downward are the same, as Heraclitus said—that is, in the ritually altered states of mind of approach, conventional dualities and identity drops away: throne/chariot, ascent/descent, ritual aspirant/angel, ritual aspirant/apotheosis.

The path of Ea was comprised of 15 stars, with Regulus being dominant. AB.ZU. The abyss of Enki was the first star appearing in the constellation of the Libra, at the vernal equinox, the entry to the underworld.

THE RING OF QAF

               Muhammad al-Kisa’i mentions the realm of Qaf in his hadiths of the Prophet. It figures in the geography of Ibn Fadl al-Humari’s Pathways of Vision in the Realms of the Metropolises (1340CE). According to al-Kisa’i’s Prophet Muhammad, Qaf is the primordial mountain, like Meru, of which all our sensible ones are just emanations. It is home of the phoenix and land of the “hidden people”—the Jinn. Muhammad had visited it on his Mi’raj. The Qaf Mountains are made of emerald or peridot and “gave birth” to all mountains on earth, which are connected by underground/submarine passages not unlike arteries. Qaf is said to encircle the earth but is protected from humans by the oceans of the world. Here the narrative echoes that of Olympus and the fairies’ Avalon, as well as the Hindu-Buddhist realm of Shambhala, the abode of the blessed, which is situated similarly in an impassable mountain range that rings 96 towns.

Mythology scholar Thomas Keightly (1789-1872) also recounts Persian explorer Hatim Tai’s account of Qaf, describing lush provinces of magical “technologies.” Hatim’s “Djinnestan” holds two mysterious cities, Jabulqa and Jabulsa. In Al-Kisa’i’s hadith, Muhammad said that the twin cities’ exclusively male inhabitants lived in a continuous green twilight and knew nothing of the human world.[3] The Prophet declared it would take forty months’ journey in total darkness to reach these emerald cities…Perhaps this means a semi-permanent hypnagogic state of consciousness “suspended” for such a period, through ritual sensory deprivation techniques?

HURQALYA

Henry Corbin’s Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth describes the relationship between two major strands of Iranian spirituality: the Zoroastrian Zend-Avestas and the Shi’ite ta’wil of Sufi ecstatic Shahib Suhrawardi (1154-1191CE) and Sunni philosopher Ibn Arabi (1165-1240CE).

A journey to break the membrane into the archetypal world could begin anywhere, with a meditation upon anything—but it is much easier if one starts with one’s being in a world of light.

THE KINGDOM OF PRESBYTER JOHN

Our magnificence dominates the three Indias, and extends to farther India, where the body of St. Thomas the Apostle rests. It reaches through the desert toward the place of the rising of the sun, and continues through the valley of deserted Babylon close by the Tower of Babel. 72 provinces obey us, and a few of which are Christian provinces; and each has its own king. And all their kings are our tributaries…In our territories are found elephants, dromedaries, and camels, and almost every kind a beast that is under heaven. Honey flows in our land, and milk everywhere abounds. In one of our territories no poison can do harm and no noisy frog croaks, no scorpions are there, no serpents creep through the grass. No venomous reptiles can exist there or use their deadly power.

In one of the heathen provinces flows a river called the Physon, which, emerging from Paradise, winds and wanders through the entire province; and in it are found emeralds, sapphires, carbuncles, topazes, chrysolites, onyxes, beryls, sardonyxes, and many other precious stones. During each month we are served at our table by seven Kings, each in his turn, by 62 Dukes, and by 365 counts, aside from those who carry out various tasks on our account. In our hall there dine daily, on the right hand, 12 archbishops, and on our left, 20 bishops, and also the patriarch of St. Thomas, the Protopapas of Samarkand, and the Archprotopapas of Susa, in which city the throne of our glory and are Imperial Palace are situated.

If you can count the stars of the sky and the sands of the sea, you will be able to judge there by the vastness of our realm and our power.

This is a 19th century reconstruction[4] of the letter sent by “John the Priest-King” (the Presbyter John or Prester Jean) to Emperor Manuel Comnenus in 1165. There had been rumors for decades during the medieval period about a mysterious Magi priest-king in the East who was invincible. His legend preceded this letter, and  the Emperor believed that it clinched Jean’s existence. And Jean’s help was needed by the crusaders stuck in Antioch and Edessa.

Later, a bishop named Hugh brought word of the situation in the Holy Land and the priest-king Jean’s victories against the Saracens to Pope Alexander III in 1177. Hugh claimed Jean would already have swept the Muslims from the Holy Lands but for his army’s inability to cross the Tigris (which is odd for an almost supernatural being like Jean and his hosts; it’s almost as if the Tigris water was anathema to him and his army, some sort of forbidden barrier they couldn’t cross by a form of magic).

The Pope and his advisors wanted to believe in Jean. They knew that Nestorian Christians lived in Persia and India and even China and thus believed Jean to be a Nestorian king. (Nestorius was a fourth century cleric who believed Jesus was an ordinary human who grew into his divinity. This got him booted from Rome at the council of Nicaea, along with a lot of other heretics. Nestorius and his followers then moved further eastward under Byzantine then Muslim protection.) Jean’s denominational beliefs made no difference to Rome after the disaster of the Seljuk raids on Edessa and Antioch. They needed all the help they could get. So when Hugh presented this “intelligence” that Jean was not invincible, and had been basically defeated by the Tigris, the Pope gave up beseeching him for help and called for the second crusade.

Still, Alexander III believed Hugh’s tale so much that he sent his personal physician Philip to search for Jean. Philip is never mentioned again in the historical record, but the letter apparently continued to circulate with more and more fantastic embellishments—the prototypical hypertextual story of a superhero.

Jean’s emerald scepter connects him in a tangential possible way with Hermes Trismegistus, whose “eternal philosophy” was written upon an emerald tablet.

SHAMBHALA

There are four main Tibetan texts describing journeys to the paradise of Shambhala. They are mostly based on long-lost earlier texts and have the character of dream trips or visions. The four are:

—Shambhalai Lamyig (Description of the Way to Shambhala) authored in 1775 by the third Panchen Lama of the — sect. This is considered the “standard text” of the journey, because it is based upon an earlier version that is a part of the Tengyur, a long commentary on the Tibetan canon. The account was translated into Tibetan a century earlier by the scholar Taranatha, and is called The Entrance to Kalapa. Kalapa was the capital of Shambhala and seat of its king. The Panchen Lama’s introduction also mentions a guidebook written by a Menlung Lama, who received the instruction via a dream; its route north required two or three years and led north through the Uighur and Tarim Basin area of Mongolia. Due to its dream provenance the Panchen Lama suspected its veracity.

–A 16th century version was composed by prince Rinpung Ngawang Jigdag, and is considered a beautiful literary epistolary creation as well.

–An anonymous author wrote a short guidebook in the 13th century, supposedly from direct experience of the journey. This version, translated by a German Indologist in 1907, has the least fantastical embroidering—except for an element that also occurs in another of the subsequent versions: just before the southern entrance into the holy province, the traveler encounters a city of humans with sexual organs in either upper thigh and reproduce by placing their legs together, the gestation taking place in the upper left thigh.

Based on the 1907 German translation, scholar Edwin Bernbaum has identified common markers in the stories: a northern route, the crossing of the River Sita, and passage through a wall of snowy mountains. Unlike the anonymous version, which shows straightforward geological features, the others are more psychogeological in that they require advanced knowledge of the Kalachakra tantra, prodigious mantra recitations, ritual appeasement of the demons guarding the landscape, and stoic concentration against the many sexual and sensual temptations made by landscape and spirits alike.

The Panchen Lama Lobsang Palden Yeshe was very interested in finding the holy province and collected all the travelers’ tales he could through study and direct interviews, becoming an authority. In 1775 he wrote an itinerary. Basing it on the Tengyur version, which he considered the most accurate, he also preserved in it the place names that had long ago fallen into mystery, to preserve its location from the secular searchers.

Forty years before, the prince Rinpungpa composed his Knowledge-Bearing Messenger in far more symbolic and poetic form. It was meant as a letter to his father, who was believed to have been reincarnated spiritually in Shambhala. He was familiar with the Kalachakra tantric legends of the pure land and quite possibly had vivid dreams or visions that inspired his work. Rinpungpa apparently was a poor ruler and sought his deceased father’s advice in matters of state. To this end he sought to write him in his father’s new abode. After rejecting the clouds, birds, and the light of the sun and moon as messengers, he hit on conjuring a tulpic being to convey the letter, and subsequently tells the thoughtform how to reach the kingdom. The text contains no rituals to ward off or summon demon helpers and is an imagistic itinerary full of lush descriptive passages.

All those spiritually thirsty persons who have sought out these guidebooks encounter in the texts the ascetic-monastic necessities of the dedicated pilgrim juxtaposed with the most fantastic geographies and beings encountered along the way. They are meant to deter all but the most pious and obsessed—and the path can be mortally perilous for the less-than-serious, in every way imaginable. Those with a misapprehension of the “land of treasures,” whether they are profanely willful or ignorant in their opinions, always meet a deserving hellish fate.

Many schools view the guidebooks as descriptions of internal states for which no physical journey is required; this is in keeping with the Kalachakra initiation’s strenuous physical and mental disciplines, the thousandfold opportunities for subversion by impure thoughts and emotions during its exercises, and the dangers when approaching the goal of kundalini awakening and its sudden absolute spiritual transformation.[5]

All versions of the itinerary mention a northern journey. This parallels the Greek Hyperborea, the land beyondthe north where the eternal paradise of the Titans exists. The northern extremity is in continuity also with the pre-Buddhist Tibetan Bon paradise called Olmolungring.

SAINT BRENDAN’S ISLE, HY-BRASIL, AND LOST ISLANDS

From the fall of Rome, Christian monks had fled persecution in Europe and Asia for Ireland. The Green Island was the refuge for scholars (and, some say, the remnants of the Knights Templars, who struck out from there and Scotland for the America continent in the late 14th century).

Medieval Ireland had a tradition of sea voyage tales called immrama that involved hidden magical and holy islands; Tir Na nOg, the Land of the Eternal Young, is probably the most famous version of this idea (although the actual entrances were through sacred burial mounds and caves either on or off islands). Inevitably the stories were Christianized, and by the 8th century someone had written The Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot. Many of its incidents were based on earlier immrama and probably Homer’s Odyssey. According to the text, sometime in the 6thcentury “Brendan the Navigator” and a dozen monks set out to find an island that a Saint Barrind had told him about. After a series of adventures involving (perhaps) icebergs, sea monsters, and angry Norse blacksmiths, they find this earthly paradise seven years later.  Original locations for this isle (or archipelago) was the Madeira or Azores; by the 19th century it had “traveled” north, and could be seen/landed upon only by the worthy and those not seeking it.

A variation of this is Hy-Brasil, a mythical island off the western Irish coast, cloaked in mist, which was said to appear every seven years. It first appeared on a 1325CE portolan map. It continued to be represented on maps until the 18th century, and expeditions to find it were undertaken in the 15th century. Parallels with Avalon are inevitable.

  THE ROSICRUCIANS

The two Rosicrucian manifestoes The Fame of the Brothers RC (1614) and the Confessions of the Brothers RC (1615) occupy a space between fact and fantasy. They became foundation myths for what would eventually become dozens of Rosicrucian Societies around the world. The Fame tells the story of a 14th century spiritual journeyman Christian Rosenkreuz’s travels to the East and his initiations into probably Sufi and Hermetic-Greek-Egyptian orders. A direct lineage of the teachings of German alchemist Heinrich Khunrath and British mage John Dee can be discerned in the Rosicrucian program. The tracts outline the eventual creation of a utopian society of Christian universalism (emphatically non-Catholic, however) dedicated to scientific melioration of humanity’s ills. This program would lead people to believe that Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627) was a quasi-Rosicrucian work.

In 1666, Duchess Margaret Cavendish publishes The Blazing World, a novel about a utopian society on another planet accessible from a portal at the North Pole. Along with the Chemical Wedding and New Atlantis, Cavendish’s imaginative work signal the retreat of physical sanctuaries of peace into fictional and secret-societal hermetic ideals. Hence:

MODERNIST SUBSTITUTES

With growing industrialization and mass literacy came the escape into secular fictions that are more or less modeled upon these sacred journeys to hidden places. The near-completion of the global cartographic enterprise by the turn of the 20th century pushed back on the Imagination, which ever reaches beyond the line. Hence journeys to the inner earth, the moon, Mars, or submarine civilizations became popular.

John Cleves Symmes apparently began this “gold rush” to alternate worlds decades earlier with Circular Number 1 (1818), an attempt to convince the world’s governments and scientific societies to mount expeditions to the hollow earth through the poles. Inspired by astronomer Edmund Halley’s hypothesis, Symmes’s model for the inner earth was an inversion of the planetary spheres, a series of concentric rings through which one entered, mysteriously, through a gravitational vortex at the poles where an explorer’s forward motion equaled descent. Symmes’s entreaties came to naught, but someone—either Symmes himself or a Nathaniel Ames—wrote and published the novel Symzoniain 1820.

But even before this, Jack Casanova penned the nearly unread but bizarre 1,800 page Icosameron (1787), a story about sibling-lovers who spend 81 years living with a bizarre race in a mirror-earth within the planet. While technically a pre-Romantic work, it has all the signs of a counter-Enlightenment mentality.

Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) is the most famous adventure story of an arduous journey to an “unknown” place involving a secret itinerary (or clues to a passage to it). Theosophist/Rosicrucian Sir Edward “it was a dark and stormy night” Bulwer-Lytton wrote The Coming Race in 1871, the tale of a man’s accidental discovery of an advanced society of beings living within the earth. The next year Samuel Butler produced Erewhon: Or, Over the Range in 1872, an extended satirical description of an unknown surface country in which an artificial intelligence evolves from their own version of Blake’s “dark satanic mills,” the industrial factories. In Etidorhpa (1895), pharmacologist John Uri Lloyd did Bulwer-Lytton one better by creating a matrioshka-story structure in which a strange spiritual being named “I-Am-The-Man” is led into the hollow earth. There he learns alchemy and the spiritual nature of the universe, coming back to tell his story as a near-apparition to a Kentuckian journalist, whose manuscript the author, Lloyd, supposedly found.

Medium Helene Smith’s astral travels to the civilization of Mars were transcribed and interpreted by psychologist Theodore Flournoy in From India to the Planet Mars in 1900.  Medium Sara Weiss added her own “scientifickal romance” Journeys to the Planet Mars, Or, Our Mission to Endo to the growing field of sci-fi in 1906. Willis Emerson’s The Smoky God (1908) added yet another fictional English/Scandinavian adventurer, Olaf Janssen, in traveling to the inner planes.

Each of these works describe utopian civilizations in sometimes excruciating detail (architecture, mores, laws, etc.), a tradition going back to Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), which you might say was a rough Elizabethan-era blueprint for the scientific technocracy that now exists all around us. But further devolvement of the secular geographical journey into sword-and-sorcery occurred with Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar and John Carter of Mars series.

Of course, the most famous “hidden utopia” story is still Lost Horizon by James Hilton, which introduced mass Western audiences to Shangri-La, a beyul in the classic Hindu-Tibetan sense. Immortals, magic medicine, pacifism, all told in yet another double-frame story format.

With the further deenchantment of our physical neighborhood via astronomy, the imaginative mind inevitably turned to other worlds, to other times, to other dimensions—to the other in general, that is, anywhere but here and anywhen but now. This seems to be one of the main themes of Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day (2006), which has numerous discussions of travel through the hollow earth, time travel, or to parallel versions of Earth, as well as a search for Shambhala and story arcs that use the Everett-Wheeler multiverse conjecture as a self-reflexive plot device. Pynchon’s first novel, V. (1963), mentions something called Vheissu (echoing a protagonist’s search for the V-named woman of the title) that is either a savage hidden land that refutes the foundations of all earthly politics, or a Borges-like infection of our world by an imaginary utopia.

  WILD SCIENCE STEPS INTO THE BREACH: ONG’S HAT, THE GAME OF SUGGESTION, AND MIND-MAPS

The Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey has always had a reputation for supernatural goings-on. Just ask Paulie Walnuts and Chris Moltisanti.

Legend tripping came online in the early 1990s with the legend of the Moorish Ashram. Located in the Pine Barrens, the hamlet of Ong’s Hat (which doesn’t appear on 95% of New Jersey maps) was supposedly the site where a group of edge-thinkers, chaos magic devotees, and psychonauts developed a technology to travel to another, unspoiled version of earth via a vehicle called the Egg, then later by purely ritual means.

At first just a physical pamphlet, a list of suggested and necessary reading materials for ashram participants called the Incunabula Papers was posted online in connection with this gang of “rogue scientists.” The ideas of Henry Corbin figure in the legend via this catalogue, and one of the scientists named the alter-earth to which they retreated Hurqalya, after Suhrawardi’s transfigured imaginal earth-double. Incunabula mixed real books with invented ones, Borges-style, to weave in the older legends of the Philadelphia experiment of 1943 and its supposed successor, the Montauk project.

The legend all turned out to be the spawn of four primary individuals: Joseph Matheny, physicist Nick Herbert, poet Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), and Peter Moon. A small cadre of message board-lurkers picked up the “alternate reality game” and ran with it as factual, some going far as to visit the Ong’s Hat hamlet in search of either physical evidence or remnants of the portals. Matheny came fully clean after some hardcore fantasists refused to believe the group had made up the legend. The clues were there from the beginning (especially the references to the bogus Philadelphia experiment) but it all just ended up demonstrating the spiritual need people have for the utopian journey, as refracted through geography and high technology.

The extraordinary ABC series LOST capitalized on the concept of a Hy-Brasil-like “invisible” island in south Oceania that revitalized the trope of a hidden land, in which a pair of near-immortal brothers use it as a proving ground for human good and evil. Thanks to the depth of its characterizations and its carefully-unspooling plots-within-plots, LOST tries hard and mostly succeeds at using ancient tropes to recapture the wonder and purpose of the spiritual quest in a geographical context.  The story is drawn bigger and bigger.

Bibliography

Bernbaum, Edwin. The Way to Shambhala: A Search for the Mythical Kingdom Beyond the Himalayas, Shambhala Publications, 2001.

Corbin, Henri. Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, Princeton University press, 1981.

-The Imaginal and the Imaginary

-Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth

Guenon, Rene. The King of the World, Sophia Perennis, 2004.

–Symbols of Sacred Science, Sophia Perennis,

Lebling, Robert, Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar, Counterpoint, 2011.

LePage, Victoria. Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth Behind the Myth of Shangri-La, Theosophical Publishing House, 1996.

Levenda, Peter. Stairway to Heaven: Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008.

Matheny, Joseph and Moon, Peter. Ong’s Hat: The Beginning.

Roerich, Nicolas. Shambhala: In Search of the New Era, Inner Traditions, 1990.

–Heart of Asia: A Memoir of the Himalayas, Inner Traditions, 1990.

Silverberg, Robert. The Realm of Prester Jean, Ohio University Press, 1996

——————-

[1] The hitherto hidden Qabbalistic forms of these rituals were “publicly” revealed with the discovery of a vast trove of medieval scriptures in the storeroom of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo, 1753/1864/1896, and the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. These could both reasonably called instances of terma (treasure) discovery in the Tibetan tradition—that a cache of wisdom-filled documents are revealed at a certain time for people’s salvation—given the right amount of piety in absorbing and performing the rituals contained within.

[2] The washing of the mouth ceremony involved the introduction of magnetic ore into the water—lodestone ore from Magnesia ad Sipylum in Turkey.

  [3] It is not noted in Muhammad’s mysterious account whether these djinn were immortal. Tradition says the “normal djinn” have very long lifespans and die, but the “exclusive” maleness of these first djinn in Qaf makes one wonder if the women perhaps were hidden away from his eyes, or that some means of technological reproduction was involved in their existence.

[4] The best dating to the letter was somewhere around 1165. Scholars Vasiliev and Silverberg and others had never really been able to determine who wrote it but its derogatory tone towards the Byzantine ruler Eugenus and the Greeks in general compelled them to conclude it was a Latin-speaking monk who lived in or was familiar with the Holy Lands and extant folklore or rumors about the East that made their way along the Silk Road—probably stories about the king blank in India conflated with stories about “exotic” Indian and Chinese technology. It’s possible the writer was even familiar with the Thousand Nights and a Night, whose stories feature fantastic lands and technologies like that of Prester Jean.

[5] This ritual is not to be taken lightly and requires months and months of preparation even to take on its preliminaries. It was the gift of the Buddha after parinirvana (bodily dissolution) when he assumed the form the Kalachakra deity, who taught the first Shambhalan king, Sucandra. Sucandra wrote extensive commentaries on it and created the first Kalacakra mandala, which has forever since been a very important public ritual, in a sand-based form, created by monks.

Notes on Entheogeographies of Salvation THE HEAVENLY LOCALES HIDDEN UPON AN ALTER-EARTH, OR ARE DISGUISED UPON THE PLANET All religions hold a variation of the belief in an earthly counterpart to paradise.

[thecreaturecodex]

Psurlon

Image by Tony DiTerlizzi, © TSR Inc.

[It’s amazing what an image can do. I never cared much for the psurlons in 3e--it always seemed to me like they were wannabe illithids, and mind flayers were much more interesting. It didn’t help that 3e stripped off their origin story, making them just another underground aberration (but in deserts this time, as if a cargo cult reminder of Dark Sun). The 3.5 version in Lords of Madness was decidedly stronger mechanically, and its image was an improvement over the truly sad Monster Manual II rendition, but they still never jumped out at me. But this image! This takes a mere monster and makes it into an alien sage! Those weird pincer hands, straight from the Cambrian! Putting clothes on these guys totally changes their look and feel, and I like this much better.

Incidentally, 4e did alright mechanically by the psurlons, although it kept their 3.5 look. In the 4e version of Dark Sun, psurlons were completely unbodied by their attempt to psychically master their physiology, and possessed astral worms in order to take their current form. Reminiscent of the Great Race of Yith, and a neat idea, but I prefer to think that they were always hideous worm beasts.

Although I have simplified the “psurlon adept” to a variant instead of a separate monster, I’ve included the statblock below anyway for convenience’s sake.]

Psurlon CR 8 LE Aberration This creature resembles a humanoid worm, slightly shorter than a man. Irregularly placed eyes surround a sucker-like mouth, and it has radially symmetrical, four-clawed hands and feet  on rubbery, jointless limbs. Despite its monstrous appearance, it carries itself with dignity and wears the robes of a scholar.

The psurlons are an ancient, learned and evil species. They are the survivors of a cataclysm they brought upon themselves. Psurlons were interested in using psychic magic to shape their own bodies and those of other creatures, and over the millennia used their minds to conquer hunger, breath and temperature, as well as to resist weapons and spells alike. Pushing those limits, they created the giant psurlons, and attempting to go to even greater heights shattered their own planet in a wave of psychic energy. Both they and the shattered remains of their world were cast into the Astral Plane. The survivors dedicated themselves to recreating the experiment, and they seek improved ways to elevate their minds over their bodies even today.

Psurlons are haughty creatures, but they recognize that they do not know everything and are constantly on the search for knowledge. They bargain for it if they can and steal it if they cannot. Psurlons do not value the lives of creatures other than themselves, and will gladly torture creatures for information, whether revealed intentionally or obtained through the process of vivisection. They are especially interested in creatures with shapeshifting abilities or unusual mental powers, and push them to the limits with cruel experiments before destroying and devouring them.

In combat, a psurlon prefers to use its mental powers if at all possible. They are physically slow, however, and the tide of melee can easily come to them. Psurlons have surprisingly deadly physical attacks, and their lamprey-like bite can drain the health of enemies and add it to their own. Psurlons value their long lives, and thus attempt to escape from combat at the first sign that they are losing.

The psurlon language is a series of grunts, rumbles and squeals, disturbing to the human ear. Psurlons almost always communicate telepathically, both with each other and with other species. The written form of their language is a series of raised runes read by touch. Although psurlons live in the Astral Plane and can psychically suppress their hunger on their sojourns to other realms, they enjoy eating the flesh of sapient creatures as a symbol of dominion.

Psurlon Adepts Especially wise and powerful members of the psurlons are known as adepts. They are marked from birth with psychic impressions only the psurlons can sense, and are groomed to positions of leadership from an early age. A psurlon adept is a psurlon with the advanced simple template and the spellcasting of a 9th level psychic. A psurlon adept does not gain any other benefits of the psychic class, such as a phrenic pool, unless it takes levels in psychic. A psurlon adept is a CR 10 creature.

Psurlon             CR 8 XP 4,800 LE Medium aberration (extraplanar) Init +6; Senses blindsight 60 ft., darkvision 60 ft., Perception +15 Defense AC 18, touch 12, flat-footed 16 (+2 Dex, +6 natural) hp 94 (9d8+54) Fort +8; Ref +7, Will +10 DR 10/magic and slashing; Immune charms, compulsions, sleep; SR 19 Defensive Abilities mind over body Offense Speed 20 ft. Melee bite +9 (2d8+3 plus drain life), 2 claws +9 (3d4+3) Psychic Magic CL 9th, concentration +13 (+17 casting defensively) 25 PE—bull’s strength (2 PE), dimensional anchor (4 PE), dimension door (4 PE), hold monster (5 PE, DC 19), mage armor (1 PE), mind probe (4 PE, DC 18), mind thrust III (3 PE, DC 17), plane shift (5 PE, DC 19), suggestion (3 PE, DC 17) Statistics Str 16, Dex 15, Con 20, Int 18, Wis 19, Cha 13 Base Atk +6; CMB +9; CMD 21 Feats Combat Casting, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Logical Spell, Toughness Skills Escape Artist +17, Knowledge (arcana) +15, Knowledge (history, planes) +12, Perception +15, Sense Motive +12, Spellcraft +15, Stealth +13, Use Magic Device +13; Racial Modifiers +4 Escape Artist, +4 Use Magic Device Languages Psurlon, telepathy 120 ft. Ecology Environment any land or underground (Astral Plane) Organization solitary, school (2-4) or college (2-12 plus 1-2 psurlon adepts) Treasure double standard Special Abilities Drain Life (Su) Whenever a psurlon deals damage with its bite attack, it heals the same amount of damage. Healing gained in excess of its maximum hit points is lost. Mind over Body (Su) As long as a psurlon has 1 PE remaining, it does not need to eat, drink or breathe. It can survive in extreme heat and extreme cold without suffering penalties, as per an endure elements spell.

Psurlon Adept          CR 10 XP 9,600 LE Medium aberration (extraplanar) Init +4; Senses blindsight 60 ft., darkvision 60 ft., Perception +17 Defense AC 22, touch 14, flat-footed 18 (+4 Dex, +8 natural) hp 112 (9d8+72) Fort +10; Ref +9, Will +12 DR 10/magic and slashing; Immune charms, compulsions, sleep; SR 19 Defensive Abilities mind over body Offense Speed 20 ft. Melee bite +11 (2d8+5 plus drain life), 2 claws +11 (3d4+5) Psychic Magic CL 9th, concentration +15 (+19 casting defensively) 25 PE—bull’s strength (2 PE), dimensional anchor (4 PE), dimension door (4 PE), hold monster (5 PE, DC 21), mage armor (1 PE), mind probe (4 PE, DC 20), mind thrust III (3 PE, DC 19), plane shift (5 PE, DC 21), suggestion (3 PE, DC 19) Spells CL 9th, concentration +15 (+19 casting defensively) 4th (5/day)—charm monster (DC 20), telekinesis (DC 20) 3rd (7/day)—clairaudience/clairvoyance, fly, synaptic pulse (DC 19) 2nd (8/day)—alter self, fox’s cunning, inflict pain (DC 18), mirror image 1st (8/day)—comprehend languages, expeditious retreat, long arm, magic missile, psychic reading 0th—detect magic, light, mage hand, mending, read magic, resistance, telekinetic projectile, stabilize Statistics Str 20, Dex 19, Con 24, Int 22, Wis 23, Cha 17 Base Atk +6; CMB +11; CMD 25 Feats Combat Casting, Empower Spell, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Logical Spell, Toughness Skills Bluff +12, Escape Artist +19, Intimidate +15, Knowledge (arcana) +17, Knowledge (history, planes) +14, Perception +17, Sense Motive +14, Spellcraft +17, Stealth +14, Use Magic Device +15; Racial Modifiers +4 Escape Artist, +4 Use Magic Device Languages Psurlon, telepathy 120 ft. Ecology Environment any land or underground (Astral Plane) Organization solitary or college (1-2 plus 2-12 psurlons) Treasure double standard Special Abilities Drain Life (Su) Whenever a psurlon deals damage with its bite attack, it heals the same amount of damage. Healing gained in excess of its maximum hit points is lost. Mind over Body (Su) As long as a psurlon has 1 PE remaining, it does not need to eat, drink or breathe. It can survive in extreme heat and extreme cold without suffering penalties, as per an endure elements spell.

[felix-the-cat]

Monday, June 29, 2020 – 9:56 p.m.

We are here to show you a New World. One that is full of promise and hope. We have begun the process of enlightening the few who are ready to begin the ascension process. We have begun to shake the very foundations of the old world down to the very core.

These are the things that are coming to pass in the years ahead. We understand that these times are very disturbing to your psyche. We are here with you guiding you to a New Destiny; for the people of earth are awakening from their slumber.

We have begun to integrate the 5th dimensional awareness into everyday life. You are in a New System and it may take time for you to fully adjust to the changes that are occurring. Think not that these are random occurrences without meaning. They are being brought forth so you may shine your everlasting light upon them.

The darkness within begs to be healed and that is what is occurring. We have brought you to the brink of chaos so that a New Order may be installed. The old operating system must be smashed in order to put the pieces back together in a unique way.

You may have noticed that things seem to have gone awry but hold steady for the end result will be beyond anything you can possibly imagine. We are aware that it may be difficult to hold the light when the winds of change are blowing so hard.

We are here to guide you on to a New Destiny. We have been where you are and understand how difficult these times are. You are merely inside the chrysalis banging against the walls to emerge as the butterfly of the New Age.

You are being gently guided along this new path. It is the Path of Light that has given you much peace amidst the turmoil. We are going to show you a whole new world in the years ahead. You are doing the difficult work right now; but, in the end, you will be amazed by the world you have created.

You are going to come together for a common goal of ushering away the darkness so all of God’s children may play in the Love and Light at long lat. It is your destiny to free yourselves from the oppression that has plagued you for so long now.

You are beginning to see with New Eyes and are viewing the lies you have been told. The illusion is being dispelled and with that comes the rage of realization of what has been occurring on your planet for far too long now.

Rest easy, my child. We are here with you. You do not walk this path alone. Spirit has your back. You are simply waking up from history. Try to remain in the still, calm center within as the storm rages all around you.

You are here to help bring the others home with you. You are guiding them out of the darkness just as you yourselves are finding your way into the light. Begin by being still and knowing that all is well and as it should be.

We would not tell you these things if they were not so. You signed up to be here in this magnificent time of transformation on a global scale. Look through the clear lens of truth as to what is occurring all around you. In truth, the darkness is dying out and making one last attempt to enslave the masses.

This will not occur. The people are coming together while simultaneously waking from the dream/nightmare that has been presented to them. The darkness is only here to give you a backdrop so your unique Love light may shine ever so brightly.

Fear not; only love. Love each other and you will make it through these times. These times are but a temporary stop in the essence of Eternal Sunshine. You are right where you are supposed to be. You have volunteered, with much courage, to be here at this time so you may show the world how to live at peace at long last.

We are going through the storm with you, hand in hand, guiding you along the way. You have been going through changes on a personal level as the darkness within you is being dealt with. You are doing a beautiful job.

You are here to keep the vibrations of planet earth at an extremely high frequency. We are aware of how exhausting this can be at times. We are with you whenever you need us. Just call out and we will be here.

These things that are occurring amongst you are for the highest good. No good thing comes about without struggle. Just as the caterpillar struggles within the cocoon, so to do you struggle with the state of the world today.

You will emerge as free as the wind and fly on to a New Day. You are making your way home at long last. Lifetime after lifetime you have lived in darkness barely remembering why you came here. Now is the time for you to remember.

Pick yourself up and fulfill your destiny. No longer will you be fooled by the illusions that the 3rd dimensional density presents. We are headed into a higher state of being just as your very vessel is being upgraded to handle the massive amount of light that is pouring out onto your planet.

Mother earth is waking up at last and welcoming her children home. Life was never meant to be a struggle. Life is about the joy of experience. So, go out there and experience all you can with joy in your heart and gratitude in the very depths of your being.

You are being called to awaken at this time and that is precisely what you are all doing. You are learning to care for one another again and beginning to realize that separation is only an illusion that has persisted for far too long.

We have come to show you another way to live. We have begun to fill your hearts with joy and your entire being with Light. You will be amazed as you witness the transformation that has occurred here when the dust settles.

It is always darkest right before the dawn, and you are headed for a New Day and new way of being here on planet earth. Keep fighting the good fight and understand that the reason the darkness is fighting so hard to remain in control is because it is losing it’s death grip on the hearts of the men and women for whom it has had control over for so long now.

We are proud of how courageously you have kept fighting even when all seems lost. You are going through a massive shift both personally and on a grand global scale. This is the final act in a dense play that has been running since the beginning. You are about to create on a whole new level. Only this time you will create in unison, as One Body, not separate bits. These things are coming to pass…

[verwelktesgedicht]

DIV Chisa Rock&Read 051 Interview (English Translation)

Magazine: Rock&Read 051 Release Date: December 2013 Type of Interview: Personal Interview Translator & Photos: VerwelktesGedicht  Topic: Mainly Chisa’s friendships during school, his college-life, his thoughts on composing and that he’s a shy guy xD

“I decided that when I’m about to start a band and don’t believe to 100% that this band can stand on stage of AX or Budokan or Tokyo Dome, then I won’t do it.”

– You’re from Utsunomiya. What kind of kid were you? In kindergarden sometimes I went to the house of a boy I was friends with but this household was a “studying for exams”-household. My parents weren’t that kind of people and since I wanted to go to the same school like him I started doing the same. Before realizing this I became a person who studied a lot.

– So, rather than playing and having fun, you… It was for example like how to read the clock (laughs) And I also went to cramming school. We both made it into the same school. I think this guy became the reason why I started with music. In kindergarden we both learned playing the piano. It’s not like I wanted to play the piano. It was just because he went, I wanted to go to. In elementary school he joined the choir. Even though he was a boy. So I thought that I want to go, too.

 – You’ve always been with this boy. Yes. It was a school where you had to pass a test for, so there were no other kids but him that I knew. I found more friends by time but still, we spent a lot of time together. We went to swimming school together and also learned tennis. When we went to middle school I stopped attending the choir though.

 – Why? My voice had changed. I didn’t think of it as boring but since I didn’t start it because I really wanted to, I stopped for the people who really wanted to do it (laughs). In the beginning I felt like doing it at the same time like the choir but in my fourth year of elementary school I joined the badminton team.

 – But why badminton? The other sports clubs were since the 3rd year but badminton was as of the 4th year. I also played tennis but I wondered if I can do it (laughs). Among the things I’ve learned until that time it was the hardest one but also the one I wanted to do the most. Choir wasn’t for competition, so there wasn’t any thought about winning or losing. But badminton’s whole world was a world about winning and losing, so I got excited.

– Did you still meet that boy even after joining the badminton team? I did. He joined with me and we became a team there (laughs)

– You were really good friends (laughs) You could go to the same middle school right from elementary school? Yes. There were also people who joined us after tests from other schools. And I continued badminton.

– Weren’t there any important matches in middle school? We made the 2nd place of our region in the double-competition. We also joined the prefectures matches and were able to meet the people from Kantou. In the end they were so strong and we got defeated in the qualification for the Kantou matches.

– So strong teams… They were a reasonable hurdle. Yes. But I’ve also started being in a band in middle school. Until middle school I barely listened to music. But in middle school a friend liked bands and had bought a bass. I thought that I want to start, too, so in my first year of middle school I bought a guitar for the first time and started playing. We played copy songs together.

– What kind of copy songs? In the beginning I bought a book for starters but… I wanted to be in a band. This friend’s older sister liked CASCADE. We watched the DVD and I thought I want to try this. But because I had just started, it was so difficult that I couldn’t do it.

– So your roots are CASCADE? Yes. From thereon I listened to various types/bands. I did it the same time like my club activities and in the 3rd year of middle school I stood on the stage of a live house for the very first time. People from a different school that I knew and who had a band were asking me if I don’t want to try being in a band.

– That’s amazing. Being so good at Badminton that you even had the chance to go to the Kantou-games and then standing on stage of a live house in 3rd year of middle school. Doing that in your 3rd year of middle school is pretty early, isn’t it? [in your 3rd year of middle school people are about 14-15 years old] But aren’t there also people who start to work after graduating from middle school? Around that time I asked myself what I want to do in the future and thought about that a bit. Like… Right now I’m doing badminton but I’m not gonna be a sportsman. So I thought I need to search for different things and being in a band was the one thing that fits the best.

– But why being in a band? I was in the choir and also played the piano and read music magazines. The choir made me do vocal exercise and I could hit the right tone. Now it’s still the same but back then they told me that if you can play the piano then you can also play the guitar right away. So I thought “Let’s try being in a band!”

– When did you start writing your own songs? In my 2nd year of high school.

– That’s also so early. But from today’s point of view, it doesn’t count what I did back then. I used a software to produce the sound, so there wasn’t too much of playing myself [for creating the songs]. In 2nd year of high school we performed at the culture festival of our school. Only people from our school performed that day and we found a guy that could play the drums. But he was no good (bitter laugh). That’s why I created the drum sound with a software and the sound engineer played the sound.

– And from that time on you put lots of effort into music. Were you a Visual Kei band right from the beginning? No, in the beginning we were a usual band but when we participated in Taiban sometimes there were also people from Visual Kei bands. I was invited by these people and that’s how I came to know about Visual Kei for the first time. For me CASCADE hadn’t anything to do with Visual Kei. After that I participated in a local Visual Kei event and the first time I came to know people from that scene was in 3rd year of middle school. That’s why I wanted to quit school (laughs)

– That’s what happens (laughs) We’ve started an original band and until that time our guests who came to the live were mainly our friends but then also other people became our fans and I was really looking forward to start a proper band. So I stopped playing badminton and only wanted to be in a band. I wanted to try it in Tokyo but since I still went to school and I could only go to [the live house “Urawa] Narciss”. For people being active in Utsunomiya, bands that performed at Kashiwa were amazing. It was hard to make people come to Utsunomiya. I performed at Urawa Narciss in my 3rd year of high school.

– Unfortunately school sometimes got in the way, didn’t it? Actually, it’s not like I didn’t like studying. Rather than “I don’t want to go to school anymore” it was “I want to go to Tokyo”. I thought that if I go to a college In Tokyo nobody could say anything against it, so I went to an art college in Tokyo.

– Why did you go to an art college? Because both of my parents did. My father for being a sculptor and my mother for creating oil paintings. They let me draw various pictures in my childhood. So I also headed into that direction. Rather than going to a college where I had to study, I thought I could also improve myself in the field of music if I went to an art college. I thought I would learn many things that could be helpful.

– What did you major in? In metal technics. Somehow I wanted to create something that is three-dimensional. I got the feeling that being a sculptor is hard but I wanted to make accessory that I’ve tried doing for a bit back then. That’s why I thought it doesn’t have to be something big like a sculpture. I rather wanted to make smaller art objects. I was told that if I did metal technics then I would be able to do these things. There were many different classes like those working with wood or textiles and among all those classes I thought metal was the coolest (laughs). That’s really all I thought. It was really different from music.

– And how was it? I spend my time on regular classes as well as classes where we created something. If you ask me what I liked more… I’m rather a person who wants to create something. There was an older man who was like a living national treasure and he just went like: “If you do it this way, you create something out of this metal. The eyes [of the sculpture] have to turn out well!” and because of him I had no interest at all in those classes (bitter laugh). I wanted to give this image I had in my head a form. Somewhen the classes changed and after the new teacher came it got easier. Around that time I gave out our own CD that had been released back then and people came to know that I was in a band. That’s why they told me: “It’s fine if you do it your way as you like.” As of that time I was allowed to create the things the way I wanted. I created figures and stuff like that.

– Out of metal? I didn’t create anything out of metal (laughs)

– Hahaha! You received a special treatment. Actually that wasn’t good, was it? (laughs)

– Sometimes there is this one person in the class that make people think “I have no idea what this guy is thinking but somehow he’s good at what he’s doing.”. You were that person. No… but I think I merged with everyone (laughs)

– That’s what these people always think (laughs) Somehow… Were you a person that gave in or a person that could people get excited about something? Maybe in elementary school it was the latter. I thought “Let’s do this!!” and dragged everyone along. But in high school I became rather shy and everyone said “Come with us! Come with us!” (laughs) In high school I had good friends in my class but I didn’t find new friends. When we decided for rehearsal, the bandmembers went to school with our band car (laughs) That’s why I think everyone else went like “What’s going on with them?”

��� That’s what they probably thought (laughs) When you formed DIV you walked ahead right away. I think you’ve made various experiences until that time. Well, there were bad concerts, and in our home prefecture we held so damn many concerts without any fan. Until my first year in college I was in a band with the members of my home prefecture but because I was the only one who lived in Tokyo I came to know many other Tokyo bandman. Around that time session bands of young people were popular. When I came to know about that I knew I had to do it too. I started being in a session band but I was already too late. After that we formed NEXX and fans started to come to our lives but it didn’t mean we could join a label, so there were many things we didn’t know anything about. We couldn’t make it… Or rather…

– Or rather? Didn’t we all start being in a band because we wanted to be artists? But if you’re being in a band without a label then it means that the time you put into your work is “creating something: 30%, managing things: 70%”. It was different to what we expected but if you don’t do it people don’t get to know about you. We’ve created flyer and goods by ourselves but all I thought was that I wanted to write songs. I thought that even though I wrote songs I thought of as cool they didn’t spread. Maybe rather than spending power on creating something good it’s more important to spend power on spreading it? That’s what you had to think about.

– I see. It’s the same now but since I like writing songs the most that’s what I want to put my main focus on. I learned how to compose only by self-studying but I think I received the „know how of how to create something“ while I was in NEXX. That’s very helpful for me now.

– So, you started DIV. Could you see this vision for the band right from the beginning to this extent? For example “After xy years this will happen”? I definitely wanted to perform at O-WEST after one year. It was like that right from the beginning. Also, I decided that when I’m about to start a band and don’t believe to 100% that this band can stand on stage of AX or Budokan or Tokyo Dome, then I won’t do it. I decided that I don’t want to do it if, rather than thinking “I definitely want to perform there”, I’m satisfied with “It’s fine the way it is now”. If that was the way of thinking that it also would be meaningless to stand on stage for a oneman at O-WEST after one year.

– You had such a conversation and confirmation with the other members? Even now we have this conversation often. It’s a rough feeling but, for example, in the band world, among the people that are super popular but don’t show up on TV and the popular guys who do show up often but when they have comedy lives there aren’t many people… among those two groups, who is more popular? Well, this turned out to be a meaningless conversation (laughs)

– No, I think that’s a really important topic! When we’re travelling from one live to the next these kind of topics just come up by nature. “It’s just thinking”. That’s what we do a lot in DIV.

– When you’re having these conversations who is the one who talks the most? We all do. It’s the same when we create something but we want to tell the other members about our ideals and bring it into shape. It’s a good band if we all can talk about everything without feeling bad. If we can’t do that I think it would be really unpleasant to talk to each other while travelling [by car]. It would end up like “I want to do games…” (laughs)

– Definitely (laughs) But I think even if we can’t find an answer it’s important to think about something at least. I mean, isn’t there a reason for a song to be called good or a band to be called popular? Isn’t it important to think about this?

– You also like to think about it in such an analytical way? Yes. Not only analytical but also… the thought of… well, we trust our feelings if we think of something as cool but afterwards we all go like “Which part we actually thought was cool, to begin with?” That way we can find out the part we thought of as cool following our feelings. I think it’s important to find the right balance between feeling and analyzing.

– The topics of your lyrics are always so interesting. This specific impression is so strong but that’s the base of it, isn’t it? What are my characteristics and my style? That’s what I was always thinking about but to put it simple, I just like interesting things. In the recent pop songs the lyrics don’t really get a lot of attention, don’t you think? There are specific phrases and the sound is important.

– I think so too. If you do it that way then you might not even need to take a look at the lyrics cards [= booklet with printed lyrics] because the worth of these lyrics will be brought to you just naturally. But I want to write lyrics about which you find out something new after you read it on the lyrics cards. I want people to think: “Oh, that’s how he wrote it?!” Maybe that’s not what the current flow is, but still.

– You want to do the opposite of what other people are doing? The opposite would be thinking that it’s fine to not include any lyrics cards. Would those even be necessary if you don’t need to read them anyway?

– I see. Definitely, there are songs you don’t need lyrics cards for. But I want everyone to read it. There are people who understand the lyrics thanks to an instrument or phrase. I don’t think that’s bad but I like lyrics the best that move me after reading it.

– It’s not attacking people who have a different opinion but rather noticing those different opinions and thinking ”but I want to do it rather this way”… Somehow, you understand this so well [= you are so premature]. Your career is the same and your way of describing things as well. When you talk to other people that are your age, doesn’t it feel different? Aah… but it’s like this since forever. I don’t want to be successful, being stuck between phrases like “Because he’s only a boy in high school” or “Because this is a new band.” I hate hearing things like „Isn’t this good for someone being in high school?” I don’t want other people to give me limits for myself. I think like that since forever.

– I see. You said at your MC at O-WEST that you are a simple guy. But you’re not simple at all. Hahahaha. No, I’m really bad at talking to people. I often think that there isn’t really anything to say. This is an interview, so I tell you things [about me] but I think a lot about what I shall say at live houses. I convey my feelings of gratitude but since I put everything I want to say into my lyrics there isn’t really anything I want to talk about. This is no critic but it’s not really my style and I don’t really want to tell the fans or people: “But that is what I think!”. If I was a fan and got told about the other people’s thoughts I would go “And?”. I would think: “You are talking for five minutes now. If you are a musician why don’t you just put your feelings into the songs?” (laughs) Speaking from the point of view of a fan, I want to become an artist that fans don’t complain about. That’s why I said that at O-WEST.

– You are in a band to reach your ideals. That’s important, isn’t it? You said you like composing the most. Why is it like that? Somehow, the feeling of wanting to complete something is the biggest inside of me. When we created our first CD that became a habit. People wonder about the unclear thing if music has a shape or not. Even though it doesn’t really have one it still conveys thoughts and feelings to the people who listen to it. I thought it’s similar with fashion but speaking of clothing… It’s like someone created something to convey a message or wants to express something with the design but by other people wearing it they create their own message to convey, don’t you think so? I think it’s the same with music. I write a song wanting to express this or that. But if I tell people things like “I think it’s this way” or “Listen to it that way” then it becomes a thing with only one message to express. I think that’s interesting. I think music and fashion are connected when it comes to that.

– It works the same way. Do you have a final goal as individual person? I… Speaking of my own goal, it’s finding my own goal. My songs and lyrics have the same concept. There is no person I aim to be. No, I think it would be good to be an original but it’s not really that this is my goal. I have to go out and find it by my own.

– You feel relieved the moment you can see your goal but maybe it becomes boring the moment you see it. But I’m also somehow jealous of people who can say “I want to be like this!” Isn’t that easy to understand? They just have to think about what to do to become like that. But for me there is nothing like this… It’s difficult.

 – That’s why you think a lot about things, don’t you? Yes. That’s true.

– And then, when you found your goal you go all like “Well, no, it’s okay, I’m fine. I don’t need it anymore.”  (laughs) Hahahaha! But because this is the path I’ve chosen, I can risk my life and do it. I continue writing songs for a long time now but there are still so many things to do. There are still so many things I want to create. That’s why I’m fine the way it is now (laughs)

[bethygauw]

[1/2] Online B’s-Log Interview with Satoru Kuwabara

Update:  - (2 Sep 2020) Correction “ When we started making the unit songs, we didn’t make hip hop songs, afraid that the female players may stab us” --> “When we started making the unit songs, we didn’t make hip hop songs, afraid that it wouldn’t resonate with the female players”

* * *

Released 4 June 2018

Original source Part 1 The original article has pictures that complement well so please check it out too.

B’s-Log started a new project, “Creator Touch”, an interview series with creators of popular series. The first person they interviewed was Satoru Kuwabara, the music producer of Ensemble Stars!.

In this first half of the interview, they asked about how Kuwabara started to get involved with Enstars unit songs. Kuwabara also talked about the points he focused on in the song series that have been released so far. (~2.8k words)

In the second half, they talked about song numbers that left the biggest impression on Kuwabara, the 3D live concert, the voice actor live concert and Enstage. (~2.2k words)

Some of the info has already been published somewhere before, so this may be a repetition to some. But otherwise, it can be a refresher as well. Enjoy!

Q: Kuwabara-san, you’re also Arte Refact’s representative. Could you tell us what your job entails?

K: As part of Arte Refact, my work revolves around anime and game music. It doesn’t mean that I’m not working with other genres at all, but Arte Refact is basically a company where people who love anime and games gather around. So we want to surround ourselves in that world and conform to it as much as we can.

Q: Could you tell us what started your involvement in Enstars unit songs?

K: Before the game release, a person I was indebted to gave me a tip, “There’s this game that’s coming up,” he said, and showed me the proposal and illustrations. I had a look at it and thought, “I really want to do this!” If I remember it correctly, it was around about the start of the preregistration period, so the only information I had in hand was that it had the high school idol theme and idol units. It also had a simple description of each character and a main theme song. I was sure that they would already have songs for the units prepared as well, so when I was given the chance to introduce myself to Happy Elements, I made some unit songs while expecting to be shot down. There were 8 announced units, so I visualized and prepared 2 songs for each unit and went to present.

Q: This was before the game even started… So you made these songs with so little information to go on with.

K: The unit that I misunderstood the most was fine. It’s pronounced like “fee-nay”, which is different from the English pronunciation of “fain”, right? I ended up making a song with lots of the “fain” version in the lyrics (laugh). Other than that, I thought the “bits” in Ra*bits referred to, say, 1bit, so I thought that maybe their songs have lots of pinging sounds like those in a game. Turns out I was completely wrong for both (laugh). On the contrary, Trickstar, UNDEAD, and Ryuseitai were easy to figure out and I remember that it was a smooth process.

Q: Among the songs that you presented, were there any that actually got released as unit songs?

K: I think it would be Knights’ Checkmate Knights and Ryuseitai’s The Unrivaled☆Meteoranger!. Although we remade those after receiving the units’ proper background setting.

Q: You have been playing the actual game. Can you tell us your first impression or what it is about the game that attracted you?

K: My true first impression would be during the pre-release, but I thought that their illustrations were nice, generally speaking. In general, the art in a female-oriented series has that touch that doesn’t sit too well with guys. But Enstars feels like anime and its head count for the character design is actually pretty close to that of a real person and without being deformed in any weird way. So it’s also easy for guys to accept. When I first saw the illustration, it gave me a gush of inspiration and I could keep churning out songs. But after the game got released and I started playing, my impression shifted to, “It’s this dark?” (laugh) If I had to choose, male-oriented series have a fundamentally happy atmosphere and not many would delve into the characters’ upbringing or pasts. Even if they do, they only do it lightly or they would only touch on some characters with a considerably rough past… just like that. But pretty much all Enstars characters have something that they’re worried about, right? That’s what makes female-oriented and male-oriented series different, and what I think makes Enstars attractive.

I think of them as idols and create.

Q: Can you tell us specifically how you make these songs?

K: All units have already had a few songs released by now, so I would start from thinking about what kind of songs a particular unit would need next, while also taking their previous songs into account. I have the image within my mind that these characters are alive. My way of thinking will also change depending on the unit and the CD’s month of release. Take Ryuseitai’s album as an example (released on 7 March 2018). It was released around the “Repayment Festival”, so it had a White Day theme. If there are songs made based on established event stories, there are also those made simply because we wanted to make this kind of songs—the origin may vary. But if I know a lyricist who fits the image of a particular song, the first thing I’ll do is to place an order with that said lyricist.

Q: How do these lyrics come about?

K: Our main lyricists are Youhei Matsui-san and Saori Kodama-san. Enstars had its 3rd anniversary and at this point, a lot of content has been fleshed out. We want someone who understands the story and won’t cause discrepancies in the lyrics, so in the end it’s difficult to ask someone who isn’t used to the series. If I do ask someone other than those two, it’s often the case that I think their usual writing style fits a particular unit.

Q: An example would be how Arika Takarano-san from ALI PROJECT worked on Valkyrie’s Bewitching Theater.

K: Exactly. I asked Takarano-san beforehand that we may cause her a lot of trouble and may ask her to retake so many times and if she was alright with that, but she still said that she was going to do it. And in actuality, it was accepted without any revision so it was really cool!

Q: I believe there would be a lot of fans out there who would listen to one song and think, “This is the feel that this unit has, huh!” and then would get surprised by the approach of another song. But it was actually just the perfect balance. How do the artists begin their work on the songs and the lyrics?

K: It goes without saying, but Matsui-san and Kodama-san play the game as well. There are times when they come up with a selection of scenes because they want to write about those parts. The lyricists rely heavily on the script, but on the other hand the composers have told me that they make progress when they are given visuals. It’s really easy to understand when you look at an illustration, "so this is going to be a song where this character sings with this kind of expression, huh.” I’ve heard that the event CGs are their most helpful reference.

Q: Rather than a 2-dimensional character, they imagine that it’s a real singing idol as they make the songs.

K: That’s what I do—I think of them as idols who really exist as I make the songs. I don’t even think of them as game characters anymore. I’d say things like, “Hey check this out, this kind of song is nice, don’t you think? What? The pitch is too high for you? Nah, I know you can do it. You can, can’t you?” (laugh)

The 3rd season’s theme is “Love”!

Q: So far, the series has released 3 seasons of CD singles and right now the album series is ongoing, with one album being released after another. Could you tell us their concepts and any fixation you had on each series? To start with, how was the first season?

K: The first season was something that we made with zero-based budgeting, so in that sense, it was probably where I participated like a music producer the most*. In the first season I was being rather pushy about my opinion on how this particular song would definitely suit this or that unit. It was also because Happy Elements was not used to music production, so if I was hesitating, they would too. I thought that it would be better to give out a clear-cut proposal, so I told myself to express my opinion properly while also offering some options.

*[T/L note] I wasn’t sure if this would make sense to the readers since I still translated it quite literally, but basically since the unit song series just started out they didn’t have much luxury to call out to other composers/lyricists like they do now, so they had to use the limited resources (and human resources) to the best they could. Please note that this is my interpretation since the whole original sentence looked pretty vague to me.

Q: I feel that the first season is filled with many songs that exude each unit’s character and public image.

K: Personally that’s my intention. That being said, to be honest we started making the songs when the game was not even out yet. We didn’t know how far we could experiment with these songs. We also didn’t know if there was going to be season 2. So, of course we wanted to make more, but if there was no second season, we decided to make songs that would make these units complete. We wanted these songs to be popular too, so we made a lot of up-tempo songs that have a good beat. But I also wanted to make some ballads, so I included Checkmate Knights for Knights and Love Letter of the Brilliance of Cherry Blossoms for Akatsuki.

Q: Now, onto the second season. Some units have songs with a different taste compared to those from the first season. Did you intend to show another side to them that you couldn’t in the first season?

K: Let’s see. Now that the fans are aware of these unit songs, we started the second season by creating songs meant to be something original and asking artists we would like to place an order with. I had the impression that my job was to materialize the unit image that Happy Elements had in mind. If they had artists whom they would like to work with, I’d go around making offers, become the middleman, and suggest to brush up some parts of a song as we record the music. That was the kind of job I did. But among that, I think I let myself loose quite a bit when making songs for Valkyrie and Switch, who joined from the second season.

Q: How about the third season?

K: After observing the audience reception until the second season and receiving fans’ responses, we made songs “that are needed” and “that it should be like this!” on top of putting the unit members into consideration. The hidden theme of the third season is “Love”. Basically, there’s “Love” on the A-side. It can be love for their fans, or for their friends—it varies. Even though the word “Love” itself is not used in the songs, they still have “Love” as their theme.

Q: This makes me want to listen to them once again to find some “Love”…! Then, what about the album series that are ongoing right now?

K: The theme for these albums are “Presents”. It’s a thanks to the fans of course, but it’s also a thanks to their supportive friends. I want to make something that everyone can enjoy, so basically there are a lot of songs with lyrics that are filled with gratitude. It also has something akin to the third season’s “Love”, but that’s what idols are! I think fans would be happier to receive love that’s almost excessive (laugh).

Q: The albums also include the idols’ solo songs.

K: To many of the voice actors in the first season, it was their first time recording a song, so we talked a lot before we began to record. There were 8 units at that time and I was talking with this kind of feeling, “I want to make something that can get each of the unit up on the Budokan stage for 8 days and on the last day I want to see everyone perform at Tokyo Dome together. So let’s make lots and lots of songs!” The voice actors were really happy about that and they sang for us. So to me it felt like it’s the long-awaited solo songs.

Q: Especially with these solo songs, I can feel that you understand a fan’s mentality and the characters really well!

K: It’s because I love everyone (laugh). I also think of them as real people while creating. I think I do as I please during the recording, like suggesting that we should change the lyrics because I don’t think he will say this kind of thing for example (laugh). I also dare to play around with the song and rip things apart. Although I would also record a few versions and present it to Happy Elements to see which they would prefer, like, “(I think this one here is better but) what do you think?” (laugh) Also, I wouldn’t change the rough outline of the songs I receive, but I often discuss with the composer to tweak the melody line or adjust the key to match with the character.

The teachers’ songs are Mr. Kuwabara’s long awaited production!

Q: Apart from songs by the students of Yumenosaki Academy, you have also released songs by the teachers and the rival unit, Eden. How did the teachers’ CD come about?

K: I had always wanted to make songs for the teachers! Even when I first introduced myself to Happy Elements, I asked them if the teachers would sing as well, and then they replied “I suppose not.” (laughed) I asked them the same thing a few times after that as well, and finally around about the 2nd anniversary of the game’s release they finally said, “We’d like to make songs for the teachers,” and I replied, “I’ve been waiting to hear those words!” (laugh) That’s how it started. I personally like Jin Sagami a lot and in the game I just keep entering the nurse’s office “by mistake” (laugh). My wish of making the teachers’ songs came true just before the third season. In Akira-san’s mind, apparently they’re idols who dance with roller skates.*

*[T/L note] A reference to an older generation idol, Hikaru Genji, who performed with roller skates in the 80s. [YouTube]

Q: It felt like we had moved back a generation or two…

K: Yes, I also stopped myself and thought that the teachers were probably around 30 years old (laugh). I chose the direction that would lean towards that age group as best as I could.

Q: The CD jacket and design labels made a big impact.

K: This is, well, a total grownups’ practical joke (laugh). Someone suggested to make it an 8cm CD, but going that far would be difficult after all.

Q: I also felt that the sound quality felt close to that of the CDs released some years ago.

K: True, we added a bit more echo than usual to get close to the era we were aiming for. But the art and craft of audio recording continues to evolve from day to day, so without dropping the sound quality down too much, we chose to focus on bringing out the intended atmosphere and made it into a 12cm CD to match with the current age. Likewise with the acoustic pressure—if we dropped it down too much, it would also not be a good thing to suddenly hear a drop like that in quality if the listeners chose to add the songs into a playlist.

Q: On the other hand, Eden’s CD also ended up with a different taste than that of Yumenosaki Academy’s units’.

K: Eden’s setting is that they’re a rival unit that stands up before Yumenosaki Academy’s representative, Trickstar, and block their way. So Eden’s song has to surpass Yumenosaki Academy’s unit songs like Trickstar, fine, and Akatsuki. We’ve always been serious about making these unit songs, so the moment I was told that, I didn’t know what to do (laugh). And then, I asked them to lift the ban on rap songs. In the end the song wasn’t a pure rap, but up until now I had been asked to avoid rap as much as I can.

Q: Is that Happy Elements’ request?

K: Yes. When we started making the unit songs, we didn’t make hip hop songs, afraid that it wouldn’t resonate with the female players… But various series have made a hit with the genre and maybe it’s now recognized, so I went to discuss about lifting the ban. I asked them like this, “When they fuse into Eden, please let me give them rap”.

Q: With a hip hop-like element included, it became a unit song that had a different orientation from Yumenosaki Academy idols.

K: Right. I think they managed to exude out a different kind of mature feel. Their CD booklet is amazing too, don’t you think? It used special paper, special printing, unusual cutting… (laugh)

Q: Was the packaging your idea too, Kuwabara-san?

K: No, it was Happy Elements’. They wanted to make it that way. Each piece’s lumber quality was just so extravagant. The third season had clear sheets as well, but Eden’s CD booklet was really a surprise (laugh).

Continued to the last half of the interview: song numbers that leave the biggest impression, 3D live concert, voice actor live concert and Enstage.

[novarasalas]

Second Look Review: The Feud

*This post is very graphics heavy. Use caution. Sorry*

Nnnnggggg…..

…..I hate game shows.

And you know what I hate more than game shows?

1970s game shows.

…..yay, this episode.

But I’m gonna power through it, because there’s a lot of throw backs and references here that you may not have noticed the first time around. There’s also some good plot happenings, too.

But really….

Pictured: my two moods watching this episode.

So the first reference people got almost immediately is in the Garfle Warfle Snick logo.

It’s a classic 70s design. While the asterisks and colors of the GWS logo aren't present in the original Dating game logo, they do feature in the set.

That’s Farah Fawcett, by the way.

The first game is called Pictation. It’s obviously a play on Pictionary, which had it’s own game show in 1997. The original drawing game show, however, was “Win, Lose or Draw”.

This is an episode from 1987, featuring Burt Reynolds, Annie Potts, Dom Deluise, and…

Betty White!

And now Keith is lucky enough to play.

The hair tie is to keep his emo bangs out of his face while the pacifier is to bite down on in frustration.

I know this from experience, as I was in art school starting in 2005, which was a prime year for emo kids, and they made us play Pictionary one afternoon.

Everyone’s pretty much already said it, but yes, I can confirm, Keith is a good artist.

None of us were that day, though.

Several instructors pulled all of their students into one room and broke the news that we’d be playing a game. As socially awkward and socially anxious weirdos, the news also broke us. Half the students didn’t even participate, the other half were doing what Lance is doing here: yelling random stuff that doesn’t even come close to making sense.

And we were terrible at this game. All of us.

After the 3rd round, a cry came from the back of the room:

“hOW Are wE SO BAD aT ThiS???!!!”

I wish I knew, random art kid.

What I do know is that Keith is doing far better than I did. I mean, he didn’t start crying, not even a little bit.

In the end, Team Voltron loses, giving Team Galra a chance to steal. That’s a game mechanic from The Family Feud, and it’s the only one, even though the episode is titled “The Feud”.

It’s more in the overall design of the set, really.

….

I’ve never liked “The Family Feud”. I claim legacy on that: back in the day before remote controls were standard, my sickly grandpa would drag himself out of his chair to turn the t.v. off because he hated Richard Dawkins so much.

Richard Dawkins was the original host of the show, and he was one in a line of 70s game hosts that always made me feel like I was about to be sexually assaulted.

...can’t imagine why I’d ever feel that way.

To be fair, he’s not kissing those women without consent. They asked them before the taping if they were ok with it. But still….ick. And Richard Dawkins wasn’t even close to being the worst in terms of smarmy game show hosts.

Back to the episode at hand though.

(This is a great loop, btw. I suck at gif making myself, so thanks op.)

Everything about Team Galra is delightful. I just wish there was more of it.

With a steal and a win, Zarkon chooses Lance to play.

Zarkon is so thrilled to call Lance dumb. It’s hilarious. Also, Lance fans, please enjoy this endless loop of that moment.

I kid, I kid. I like Lance. We’ll talk more later.

I don’t know what Faces from the Past is referencing, but that isolation shield seems awful lot like The Cone of Silence from “Get Smart”.

What is The Cone of Silence? It’s a class A security procedure, used to transfer top secret intel between two agents.

Demonstrated here:

The next game is more familiar.

It’s the Garflator, or otherwise known as...Password!

...wait….is that…?

Yes! It’s Betty White again. Also seen here in an episode from 1963.

Doing this research, I found out that Betty’s done a lot of game shows in her time. That’s news to me, because I still don’t like game shows.

After the dumb one is the smart one.

And everyone knows it.

Pidge plays miniature golf here.I don’t think it’s in reference to anything else, though maybe you could see a game from The Price is Right if you squint.

And then Pidge gets things done about, by calculating a shot that takes out the camera and the crazy, demi god like creature known as Bob, tackling him to the ground.

The ambition, drive and self assurance that Pidge has is amazing and no one talks about it nearly enough. I want to be her when I grow up.

So now it’s down to a vote: who ever gets voted for the most gets to leave while the rest stay for eternity. It’s kind of like a reverse “Survivor” situation, really.

And now everything gets very heartwarming as they vote for each other, but one stood out to me: Lance, voting for Keith.

Lance: He’s our leader, plus he’s half Galra, so I think he’s, like, the future.

That….was so sweet. I mean it. That face, those words. I didn’t expect Lance to say that. He’s come so far since those first episodes where he was just an unmitigated asshat to Keith. It’s growth. It’s good.

Keith, what say you?

Keith: I just don’t wanna be stuck here for eternity with Lance.

Oh no! Keith...hahah...Lance gives you something so heartfelt and that’s what you go with? Aw man…

Really, though, his ire’s not directed at Lance, not really. It’s more like he’s just done with everything that’s happening, he’s frustrated, and Lance is the only one he’d take anything like this out on.

But buck up, kiddos, your love and friendship won the day!

And lastly, one more reference, this time directly from The Price is Right:

At the end of each show, host Bob Barker would turn to the camera and say “Help control the pet population: have your pet spayed or neutered.”

Bob Barker has fought for animals rights for decades, and while I don’t necessarily agree with everything he’s done, good things have come from his work. I’d link some info on it here, but...I can’t. Channel you’re inner essay writer and go find those sources.

So, that episode was a trip. In all, it more reminded me of “Let’s Make a Deal”, where costumed contestants would be chosen from the audience to play games for cash and prizes.

Bob himself is most like Bob Eubanks, as played by Q from Star Trek. I believe the showrunners even mentioned Q while talking about Bob in this episode

That’s Bob Eubanks up there. He was the host of “The Newlywed Game” and “Hollywood Squares”.

Q, on the other hand, is:

“He is an extra-dimensional being of unknown origin who possesses immeasurable power over normal human notions of time, space, the laws of physics, and reality itself, being capable of violating or altering them in unpredictable ways with a casual thought or hand gesture. Despite his vast knowledge and experience spanning untold eons (and much to the exasperation of the object(s) of his obsession), he is not above practical jokes for his own personal amusement, for a Machiavellian and manipulative purpose, or to prove a point. He is said to be nigh-omnipotent, and he is continually evasive regarding his true motivations.”

This is him:

So...I still don’t like 70s game shows. But, I gotta say, not everything is terrible about them.

Gene Gene the Dancing Machine is fun. This is from “The Gong Show”.

Fun, if your definition includes “pure chaos”. 

The uh….energetic...host there is Chuck Barris. He’s the creator of “The Dating Game”, “The Newlywed Game” and “The Gong Show”. His shows seem to have pioneered the whole look and feel of most of these 70s game shows, and thus is my sworn enemy.

…

Don’t even think of talking to me about “The Match Game”.

In summary:

I actually had fun with this episode, as much as I don’t like the aesthetic.

And apparently Josh Keaton said that this episode foreshadows something and I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS AND I’M SCARED SO VERY SCARED.

Next up: Wow! What a call back! -and- Kolivan’s been having a bad time.

[jeffozule]

Forefront Post 15: Marvel’s new ‘Mini’ Animation Studio

Marvel based movies and animated shows have been with us for years, however the game finally changed for marvel when Disney bought the Marvel.  In 2009, Disney bought Marvel for $4bn and developed the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) which has been a resounding success over the years revamping its movies particular the Avengers and its individual character movies. The MCU has been focusing on live action since its inception and recently announced its opening a new mini studio under the MCU just for animation (De Duk de Wit, 2021).

With this new mini studio, Diseny plan to release animated contents starting from this year with more to follow and the first animation for this new Mini studio is Marvel’s What if series which was released on Augiust 11th this year on Disney +. I What if is an anthology series focusing on alternative realties for Marvel characters observed by ‘the watcher’ as a consequence for what happened in Loki post multiverse madness.

I watched the first episode last weekend and it was about Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers (Avengers) Army colleague who took the serum instead of him and became ‘Captain Carter’. These are really good stories which explore the possibilities of alternate realities affected by different choices, however one of the stand out things for me was the animation style.

The animation is a collaboration between three independent studios on behalf of Disney. These four studios are Flying bark production, Squeeze animation and blue Spirit.

According to one of the artists who worked on the designs. Brad Winderbaum explained the animation style was heavily infuelnc3d by American illustrator J. C. Leyendecker who was a painter, focusing on magazine covers (Prosser, 2021). In other to get the painted look, they designers used cell shading and rendering 3d objects to look like 2D and cartoonlike. While the animation style has been criticized by fans, I believe it works and gives the show a unique interesting look.

One of the reasons why I think this works is that the MCU has established its characters in live action and a lot of fans now relate to the actors as the actual characters. Like Chadwick Boseman being Black Panther or Scarlett Johansson being black widow. So using 3D is able to give the character proper likeness and the 3 dimensional feel when relating to these known characters. I think regular CGI would have been too boring and regular 2D would have been too cartoon like.  

Marvel announced that with this new mini studio, they would be a lot more animation to come. As a live long fan of Marvel, this is very exciting news and I can’t wait to see what future shows this new studio births. What if already sounds exciting and I am also optimistic that other shows would just be as exciting.

 References

De Duk de Wit, D. (2021). Marvel Is Opening A ‘Mini’ Animation Studio. Cartoon Brew [Online] July 22nd 2021. Available from: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/studios/marvel-is-opening-a-mini-animation-studio-207218.html (Accessed July 23rd 2021).

Prosser, K. (2021). Marvel's What If...? Artist Explains the Show's 100-Year-Old Art Style. CBR [Online[ August 15th 2021. Available from: https://www.cbr.com/marvel-what-if-artist-explains-art-style/ (Accessed August 16th 2021)

[acollectionofdifferentthings]

A fourth dimension.

The way in which we view people we are not familiar with is very one dimensional, we overlook the many layers and parts of who they are that contribute to make them into the three dimensional person that they are. For the people around us, as we become more involved in their lives and they in ours we become more aware of whom they are and we see how they treat us, themselves and other people and it shows us how complete they are as a person going from being one dimensional to this entirely new and different person.  Not being able to see what other people are like it leads us to have to judge them on the surface, we do not see how they interact with others, what their many qualities and traits are and nothing else about them except what we see straight away. We cannot give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they are like this or that because frankly we do not know anything about them; we have not lost our way to think of people of anything more than one dimensional because we have never actually found a way in which we can see people like that until we know them. It is a flaw on our own part because it is surprising how many people are extremely caring, open and considerate of other people around them in life but it is hard to show that side because nobody else is doing the same. We enjoy talking to people, learning about them and sharing, but where do we even begin to start? How do we remove the layers of other people and let them expand into new dimensions when they also seem unwilling to do that for us? At some point we have to make the first move, we have to give each person the benefit of the doubt and realise that maybe they are just as scared as we are with interactions, the less and less experience we get at talking to new people the harder it seems to come out of our own shell and do that. We want to help people, we want to look out for them and make sure that they are okay but the more uncomfortable that it is made throughout society the more we retreat back and convince ourselves that this is not what other people want. The only way we break this habit is by starting to do things differently, starting to reconnect with people, talk to them and really look out for the people around us; if we can start to realise that people are not just one dimensional and that they have so much substance underneath the surface then that is going to help us greatly in realising how much potential and how great we all really are. It really is out of sight, out of mind; the less we see people as they truly are, the less that we believe that people are anything more than what we usually see of them. We fall into the fallacy that this person must always be a certain way because that is the only way that we see them when we interact with them. The amount of time we spend with others though is really just a slither of their time and our own and it would be careless to associate these small times as if they make up the entirety of that person’s life. Opening up ourselves and other people to the possibility that they are so much more than what they seem means that we venture past that 3rd dimension and create an entirely new one where we can see the impact that people have is so far reaching and so much more than just themselves and this is extremely reassuring when it comes to possibly finding solutions to the problems that many of us are facing individually and the ones that we are all facing together.  

[atakportal]

Loving The Game Of Life

New Post has been published on https://pin.atak.co/loving-the-game-of-life/

Loving The Game Of Life

Product Name: Loving The Game Of Life

Click here to get Loving The Game Of Life at discounted price while it’s still available…

All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. Loving The Game Of Life is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked.

Description:

Are You Ready for an Amazing Journey of Discovery?

What if Albert Einstein was correct when he said “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one…”

and if quantum physicist Fred Alan Wolfe is right when he says “ What we think is true is really an illusion, almost like a magic trick… ”

and if Indian Guru, Sai Baba, is right when he tells us that life is a game, play it!

WOULD THAT CHANGE THE WAY YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE?

Read About Beverly

Hi, I’m Beverly Nadler, author of Loving the Game of Life. When you know who you really are and why you are here, what is meant by “the illusion” and “the game”… and you discover the many “missing pieces” in most personal growth, motivational and spiritual books, you will play the game of life differently — and your life will never be the same! Never!

This fascinating and extremely enjoyable ebook takes you on a journey of discovery! You will read the well-researched material for yourself — from secret ancient wisdom teachings, to Eastern and Western Philosophers, to Mystics and Metaphysics, to Psychology, to Physics and Quantum Physics.

With this knowledge, wisdom and understanding, you will believe, appreciate and experience the deeply hidden truth about your Self and your true Power!

What if who you really are is a non-physical Infinite Being — filled with unlimited Power, Joy, Love, Peace, Abundance, Creativity, Wisdom and Knowledge.

What if John Randolph Price, spiritual researcher and author, is right when he says “ The only problem facing you in life is the belief in separation from your Source.”

What if the purpose of the “game of life” is to hide your Power so you believe you’re the exact opposite of who you really are…and then find it and reclaim your power

What if Buddha spoke the truth when he said “A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.”

What if you actually created all the restrictions and limitations in your life in order to play the game the way you wanted to play it

What if you can discover and experience your Divine identity here on earth

What if the Universe is your friend and you are always safe, regardless of outer conditions that appear otherwise.

What if everything you just read is TRUE? Would your life be different? How could it not be?

Here are a few of the remarkable benefits of reading “Loving the Game of Life”

“Beverly Nadler has DONE IT AGAIN! Her great new book “Loving the Game of Life” is one for all ages, as well as one for all sages. It kept me enthralled. Her unique sense of humor and her ability to make the implausible, plausible, is what keeps her one step ahead of all the “self help” gurus out there. Every chapter of this book is a wonderful, mystical learning experience. You cannot fail to change your life when you learn how to play the game she describes. “Loving the Game of Life” is a step by step process in your conscious evolution to fulfill your dreams. Coupled with her book “ Vibrational Harmony,” Beverly gives you what you need to transform your life.”

Warren P. McKenney , CEO, Concept-Therapy Institute, Inc., TX

“We love your book! You are just so clear on the spiritual/metaphysical/quantum dynamics that make up this fantastic play we are all part of. You have once again made plain the marvelous mysteries of our fantastic existence. Your book is a clear guide to how all aspects of life work from the inside out. Like your last book, we will be recommending “Loving the Game of Life” to all our clients, students and friends.”

Paul and Layne Cutright , Relationship Coaches, Authors of “You’re Never Upset for the Reason You Think,” NM

“Beverly Nadler’s descriptions, with detail and clarity, of her journey from modalities that work some of the time to one that can work all the time if you use it, and her insight about how every detail of our lives is created by us, is so earth shaking that this book goes beyond all others in leading us to expansion into “who we are” as infinite Divine Beings.”Daniel Alderfer , lifelong seeker, Const. Engineer, CO

“Beverly Nadler has written a clear, well-written, thought provoking and easy to comprehend treatise that unlocks the key to “the game of life.” You will find her quest to understand the Boardgame Earth one that resonates with your own search to find and reclaim power and expand consciousness.”

Dr. Norma Lent Auerbach , Ph.D , Hypnotherapist and College Professor, NY

“Congratulations, Beverly, for writing such an insightful book that explains and describes “the illusion” and the role we all play in the amazing ‘game of life.’ It is fascinating that your research of ancient teachings and modern science correlates with the interviews in our movie Leap! You’ve even used some of the same quotes, including Einstein’s, that opens our film, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Your book offers readers a roadmap to Leap ! beyond their perceived limits and begin playing full out in the ultimate game that we call life.”

Isaac Allen and Chad Cameron, film-makers, producers of “Leap! the Movie,” CO

Click here to see more testimonials…

Read the Table of Contents and you’ll agree this is the one book that finally addresses the challenges of life in the 3rd dimension, as no other book or teaching has.

LOVING THE GAME OF LIFE —

Discovering Who You Are and Why You Are Here!

Welcome Introduction 1. The Quest 2. From Oneness to Separation Consciousness and the Journey Back 3. The One and the Many 4. Discovering Who You Really Are 5. The Game You Came to Play 6. Rules of “The Game of Life” 7. What Is Consciousness? 8. About the Illusion 9. What Physics and Quantum Physics Teach Us 10. The Holographic Model 11. How Consciousness Expresses 12. Mass Mind Consciousness 13. Duality Rules on the 3 rd Dimension 14. Playing “The Game of Life” – Part 1 15. Playing “The Game of Life” – Part 2 16. The Game as a Play or Movie 17. The People You Came to Play With 18. How You Create Your Life – Part 1 19. How You Create Your Life – Part 2 20. Mind, Brain and Vibrations 21. How Emotions Impact Upon Us 22. What About Our Physical Body? 23. So…Are These Illusions Too? 24. Judgments Hold Patterns in Place 25. May the “Best” Man or Woman Win 26. Affirmations and Mental Imagery 27. Appreciation and Gratitude 28.How Do We Change the Rules Of The Game? 29. What Will Life Be Like in Phase 2? 30. An “Epiphany!” 31. What’s Next? 32. Resources

“The One and the Many” refers to our relationship to the Creator. When you understand the concept of “The One and the Many,” you know that you are never separated from your Source or from anything in the Universe.

This is not a simple concept. You will not “get it” by reading or hearing it a few times, or trying to understand it with your mind. You will get it as it is repeated and reinforced so often that you feel it in your heart. …continue reading

“Beverly has written a book that is most certainly the most thought provoking page-turner I’ve ever read. As a devoted student of hers, I know the level of heart and love that she puts into everything she does. As the world’s foremost authority on the Universal Laws, she’s parlayed her expertise and courageously challenged the teachings in “The Secret”, running with the ball to create this astonishing book. If you’re looking to make quantum leaps in empowering yourself, busting loose from the victim game once and for all, and radically shifting your life, then run, don’t walk, to get this book.”

Andrea Amador, CEC, M.NLP, Body Image Expert, NY

“I Am Impressed!!! Beverly Nadler has exceptional skills in explaining the unexplainable. Her writings are the practical interpretations of so many philosophers, teachers, poets, scholars of the Ages that have a powerful message. This awesome book is the encyclopedia, “The Bible” of life. It is a detailed explanation of the Who, What, Where, and Why of our being, our Infinite Oneness.”

Dr. Skip Skibsted , DC, DICS, MN

“I just completed ‘Loving the Game of Life!’ I feel more expanded and clearer having read about my favorite subject. There was a rush of ecstasy while reading a certain paragraph that describes the 3rd dimensional illusion we mistake for reality. I would tell people that whether you want a more beatific dream and or you want to awaken to lucid living, this book is most useful! Much appreciation to you, Beverly, for playing your role so beautifully.”

Julian D. Christopher, Actor/Drama Coach, Canada

“Here is a book that holds you to each page with the amazing research data that explains our 3 dimensional ‘reality.’ Beverly has the gift of correlating and integrating the metaphysical, physical and spiritual so they are understandable, coherent and applicable. If all readers, one by one, worked with these tested principles, our planet would become whole, elevated and harmonious. We would all be richer for our personal and spiritual growth.”

Constance Sarubbi , Consulting Astrologer and Metaphysical Counselor, NY

Click here to see more testimonials…

Loving The Game of Life is an eBook and is available by Instant Download

ORDER NOW And you will also receive a SPECIAL BONUS!!

About the Author — Testimonials — Affiliate Program — Order Book — Contact Us

Click here to get Loving The Game Of Life at discounted price while it’s still available…

All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. Loving The Game Of Life is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked.