#their history shows what they can achieve when their views are aligned and balanced

[iridescentmirrorsgenshin]

thinking about how the Sumeru Archon Quest can be read as a metaphor for Alhaitham and Kaveh's relationship and their progression and going crazy

Alhaitham is present during the quest, whereas Kaveh is not, and this causes Alhaitham to question why Kaveh was not present in saving Sumeru. Relating this to their thesis, although it made many bounds for Sumeru’s understanding of ancient languages and architecture which held promise for betterment of the future, it was abandoned before completion due to their clashing of views and personal attacks of each other. Alhaitham repeatedly questioning why Kaveh was missing hints that Kaveh should have been a part of the Archon-saving plan, in that, Kaveh was missing from the betterment of Sumeru. Once again, an opportunity passed by for them uniting for a mutually agreed cause. This is due to the dissonance between them and their lack of successful communication.

In the Archon Quest, Alhaitham is present, ready for reconciliation, to work together, whereas Kaveh is missing, unaware of the chance of reconciliation. Kaveh believes that Alhaitham deliberately stirred trouble in Sumeru, rather than saving it, due to his flawed perception of Alhaitham – just as he believes that Alhaitham wants something in return for allowing Kaveh to live in his house, rather than it being an invitation for reconciliation, due to his flawed perception of Alhaitham.

This, in turn, creates a space in the narrative for the two to join together of their own accord, however, the two need to be in the same mindset for reconciliation. As established in Kaveh's Hangout and A Parade of Providence, this can be brought about by the mutual understanding that their clashes do not stem from overall differences in thinking, but their way of communication. Rather than their relationship being based on the opposition of their thinking, it should be based upon the potential that can be borne from identifying good in the balancing of viewpoints – which their thesis had achieved.

Their development as individuals ultimately lies within the other as they possess what the other lacks in order to fully complete their understanding of each other, and themselves. Alhaitham is the grounding for Kaveh’s ideals and the push for him to prioritise himself in his pursuit for happiness for “all” (as established within a parade of providence), whereas Kaveh is the breach in Alhaitham’s rationality and allows him to understand the sensibility of others around him, enabling Alhaitham to possess an enhanced version of his truth.

(Update: For more analyses like this, the essay this is taken from is now uploaded! It can be accessed here and here as as a pdf <3)

[samwisethewitch]

Pagan Paths: Wicca

Wicca is the big granddaddy of neopagan religions. Most people who are familiar with modern paganism are specifically familiar with Wicca, and will probably assume that you are Wiccan if you tell them you identify as pagan. Thanks to pop culture and a handful of influential authors, Wicca has become the public face of modern paganism, for better or for worse.

Wicca is also one of the most accessible pagan religions, which is why I chose to begin our exploration of individual paths here. Known for its flexibility and openness, Wicca is about as beginner-friendly as it gets. While it definitely isn’t for everyone, it can be an excellent place to begin your pagan journey if you resonate with core Wiccan beliefs.

This post is not meant to be a complete introduction to Wicca. Instead, my goal here is to give you a taste of what Wiccans believe and do, so you can decide for yourself if further research would be worth your time. In that spirit, I provide book recommendations at the end of this post.

History and Background

Wicca was founded by Gerald Gardner, a British civil servant who developed an interest in the esoteric while living and working in Asia. Gardner claimed that, after returning to England, he was initiated into a coven of witches who taught him their craft. Eventually, he would leave this coven and start his own, at which point he began the work of bringing Wicca to the general public. In 1954, Garner published his book Witchcraft Today, which would have a great impact on the formation of Wicca, as would his 1959 book The Meaning of Witchcraft.

Gardner claimed that the rituals and teachings he received from his coven were incomplete — he attempted to fill in the gaps, which resulted in the creation of Wicca. Author Thea Sabin calls Wicca “a New Old Religion,” which is a good way to think about it. When Gardner wrote the first Wiccan Book of Shadows, he combined ancient and medieval folk practices from the British Isles with ceremonial magic dating back to the Renaissance and with Victorian occultism. These influences combined to create a thoroughly modern religion.

Wicca spread to the United States in the 1960s, at which time several new and completely American traditions were born. Some of these traditions are simply variations on Wicca, while others (like Feri and Reclaiming, which we’ll discuss in future posts) became unique, full-fledged spiritual systems in their own right. In America, Wicca collided with the counter-culture movement, and several activist groups began to combine the two. Wicca has continued to evolve through the decades, and is still changing and growing today.

There are two main “types” of Wicca which take very different approaches to the same deities and core concepts.

Traditional Wicca is Wicca that looks more or less like the practices of Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente, Alex Sanders, and other early Wiccan pioneers. Traditional Wiccans practice in ritual groups called covens. Rituals are typically highly formal and borrow heavily from ceremonial magic. Traditional Wicca is an initiatory tradition, which means that new members must be trained and formally inducted into the coven by existing members. This means that if you are interested in Traditional Wicca, you must find a coven or a mentor to train and initiate you. However, most covens do not place any limitations on who can join and be initiated, aside from being willing to learn.

Most Traditional Wiccan covens require initiates to swear an oath of secrecy, which keeps the coven’s central practices from being revealed to outsiders. However, there are traditional Wiccans who have gone public with their practice, such as the authors Janet and Stewart Farrar.

Eclectic Wicca is a solitary, non-initiatory form of Wicca, as made popular by author Scott Cunningham in his book Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. Eclectic Wiccans are self-initiated and may practice alone or with a coven, though coven work will likely be less central in their practice. There are very few rules in Eclectic Wicca, and Wiccans who follow this path often incorporate elements from other spiritual traditions, such as historical pagan religions or modern energy healing. Because of this, there are a wide range of practices that fall under the “Eclectic Wicca” umbrella. Really, this label refers to anyone who considers themselves Wiccan, follows the Wiccan Rede (see below), and does not belong to a Traditional Wiccan coven. The majority of people who self-identify as Wiccan fall into this group.

Core Beliefs and Values

Thea Sabin says in her book Wicca For Beginners that Wicca is a religion with a lot of theology (study and discussion of the nature of the divine) and no dogma (rules imposed by religious structures). As a religion, it offers a lot of room for independence and exploration. This can be incredibly empowering to Wiccans, but it does mean that it’s kind of hard to make a list of things all Wiccans believe or do. However, we can look at some basic concepts that show up in some form in most Wiccan practices.

Virtually all Wiccans live by the Wiccan Rede. This moral statement, originally coined by Doreen Valiente, is often summarized with the phrase, “An’ it harm none, do what ye will.”

Different Wiccans interpret the Rede in slightly different ways. Most can agree on the “harm none” part. Wiccans strive not to cause unnecessary harm or discomfort to any living thing, including themselves. Some Wiccans also interpet the word “will” to be connected to our spiritual drive, the part of us that is constantly reaching for our higher purpose. When interpreted this way, the Rede not only encourages us not to cause harm, but also to live in alignment with our own divine Will.

Wiccans experience the divine as polarity. Wiccans believe that the all-encompassing divinity splits itself (or humans split it into) smaller aspects that we can relate to. The first division of deity is into complimentary opposites: positive and negative, light and dark, life and death, etc. These forces are not antagonistic, but are two halves of a harmonious whole. In Wicca, this polarity is usually embodied by the pairing of the God and Goddess (see below).

Wiccans experience the divine as immanent in daily life. In the words of author Deborah Lipp, “the sacredness of the human being is essential to Wicca.” Wiccans see the divine present in all people and all things. The idea that sacred energy infuses everything in existence is a fundamental part of the Wiccan worldview.

Wiccans believe nature is sacred. In the Wiccan worldview, the earth is a physical manifestation of the divine, particularly the Goddess. By attuning with nature and living in harmony with its cycles, Wiccans attune themselves with the divine. This means that taking care of nature is an important spiritual task for many Wiccans.

Wiccans accept that magic is real and can be used as a ritual tool. Not all Wiccans do magic, but all Wiccans accept that magic exists. For many covens and solitary practitioners, magic is an essential part of religious ritual. For others, magic is a practice that can be used not only to connect with the gods, but also to improve our lives and achieve our goals.

Many Wiccans believe in reincarnation, and some may incorporate past life recall into their spiritual practice. Some Wiccans believe that our souls are made of cosmic energy, which is recycled into a new soul after our deaths. Others believe that our soul survives intact from one lifetime to the next. Many famous Wiccan authors have written about their past lives and how reconnecting with those lives informed their practice.

Important Deities and Spirits

The central deities of Wicca are the Goddess and the God. They are two halves of a greater whole, and are only two of countless possible manifestations of the all-encompassing divine. The God and Goddess are lovers, and all things are born from their union.

Though some Wiccan traditions place a greater emphasis on the Goddess than on the God, the balance between these two expressions of the divine plays an important role in all Wiccan practices (remember, polarity is one of the core values of this religion).

The Goddess is the Divine Mother. She is the source of all life and fertility. She gives birth to all things, yet she is also the one who receives us when we die. Although she forms a duality in her relationship with the God, she also contains the duality of life and death within herself. While the God’s nature is ever-changing, the Goddess is constant and eternal.

The Goddess is strongly associated with both the moon and the earth. As the Earth Mother, she is especially associated with fertility, abundance, and nurturing. As the Moon Goddess, she is associated with wisdom, secret knowledge, and the cycle of life and death.

Some Wiccans see the goddess as having three main aspects: the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. The Maiden is associated with youth, innocence, and new beginnings; she is the embodiment of both the springtime and the waxing moon. The Mother is associated with parenthood and birth (duh), abundance, and fertility; she is the embodiment of the summer (and sometimes fall) and of the full moon. The Crone is associated with death, endings, and wisdom; she is the embodiment of winter and of the waning moon. Some Wiccans believe this Triple Goddess model is an oversimplification, or complain that it is based on outdated views on womanhood, but for others it is the backbone of their practice.

Symbols that are traditionally used to represent the Goddess include a crescent moon or an image of the triple moon (a full moon situated between a waxing and a waning crescent), a cup or chalice, a cauldron, the color silver, and fresh flowers.

The God is the Goddess’s son, lover, and consort. He is equal parts wise and feral, gentle and fierce. He is associated with sex and by extension with potential (it could be said that while the Goddess rules birth, the God rules conception), as well as with the abundance of the harvest. He is the spark of life, which is shaped by the Goddess into all that is.

The God is strongly associated with animals, and he is often depicted with horns to show his association with all things wild. As the Horned God he is especially wild and fierce.

The God is also strongly associated with the sun. As a solar god he is associated with the agricultural year, from the planting and germination to the harvest. While the Goddess is constant, the God’s nature changes with the seasons.

In some Wiccan traditions, the God is associated with plant growth. He may be honored as the Green Man, a being which represents the growth of spring and summer. This vegetation deity walks the forests and fields, with vines and leaves sprouting from his body.

Symbols that are traditionally used to represent the God include phalluses and phallic objects, knives and swords, the color gold, horns and antlers, and ripened grain.

Many covens, both Traditional and Eclectic, have their own unique lore around the God and the Goddess. Usually, this lore is oathbound, meaning it cannot be shared with those outside the group.

Many Wiccans worship other deities besides the God and Goddess. These deities may come from historical pantheons, such as the Greek or Irish pantheon. A Wiccan may work with the God and Goddess with their coven or on special holy days (see below), but work with other deities that are more closely connected to their life and experiences on a daily basis. Wiccans view all deities from all religions and cultures as extensions of the same all-encompassing divine force.

Wiccan Practice

Most Wiccans use the circle as the basis for their rituals. This ritual structure forms a liminal space between the physical and spiritual worlds, and the Wiccan who created the circle can choose what beings or energies are allowed to enter it. The circle also serves the purpose of keeping the energy raised in ritual contained until the Wiccan is ready to release it. Casting a circle is fairly easy and can be done by anyone — simply walk in a clockwise circle around your ritual space, laying down an energetic barrier. Some Wiccans use the circle in every magical or spiritual working, while others only use it when honoring the gods or performing sacred rites.

While it is on one level a practical ritual tool, the circle is also a representation of the Wiccan worldview. Circles are typically cast by calling the four quarters (the four compass points of the cardinal directions), which are associated with the four classical elements: water, earth, fire, and air. Some (but not all) Wiccans also work with a fifth element, called spirit or aether. The combined presence of the elements makes the circle a microcosm of the universe.

Casting a circle requires the Wiccan to attune themselves to these elements and to honor them in a ritual setting. This is referred to as calling the quarters. When a Wiccan calls the quarters, they will move from one cardinal point to the next (usually starting with east or north), greet the spirits associated with that direction/element, and invite them to participate in the ritual. (If spirit/aether is being called, the direction it is associated with is directly up, towards the heavens.) This is done after casting the circle, but before beginning the ritual.

What happens within a Wiccan ritual varies a lot — it depends on the Wiccan, their preferences, and their goals for that ritual. However, nearly all Wiccan religious rites begin with the casting of the circle and calling of the quarters. (Some would argue that a ritual that doesn’t include these elements cannot be called Wiccan.)

When the ritual is completed, the quarters must be dismissed and the circle taken down. Wiccans typically dismiss the quarters by moving from one cardinal point to the next (often in the reverse of the order used to call the quarters), thanking the spirits of that quarter, and politely letting them know that the ritual is over. The circle is taken down (or “taken up,” as it is called in some traditions) in a similar way, with the person who cast the circle moving around it counterclockwise and removing the energetic barrier they created. This effectively ends the ritual.

There are eight main holy days in Wicca, called the sabbats. These celebrations, based on Germanic and Celtic pagan festivals, mark the turning points on the Wheel of the Year, i.e., the cycle of the seasons. By honoring the sabbats, Wiccans attune themselves with the natural rhythms of the earth and actively participate in the turning of the wheel.

The sabbats include:

Samhain (October 31): Considered by many to be the “witch’s new year,” this Celtic fire festival has historic ties to Halloween. Samhain is primarily dedicated to the dead. During this time of year, the otherworld is close at hand, and Wiccans can easily connect with their loved ones who have passed on. Wiccans might celebrate Samhain by building an ancestor altar or holding a feast with an extra plate for the dead. Samhain is the third of the three Wiccan harvest festivals, and it is a joyous occasion despite its association with death. (By the way, this sabbat’s name is pronounced “SOW-en,” not “Sam-HANE” as it appears in many movies and TV shows.)

Yule/Winter Solstice (December 21): Yule is a celebration of the return of light and life on the longest night of the year. Many Wiccans recognize Yule as the symbolic rebirth of the God, heralding the new plant and animal life soon to follow. Yule celebrations are based on Germanic traditions and have a lot in common with modern Christmas celebrations. Wiccans might celebrate Yule by decorating a Yule tree, lighting lots of candles or a Yule log, or exchanging gifts.

Imbolc (February 1): This sabbat, based on an Irish festival, is a celebration of the first stirrings of life beneath the blanket of winter. The spark of light that returned to the world at Yule is beginning to grow. Imcolc is a fire festival, and is often celebrated with the lighting of candles and lanterns. Wiccans may also perform ritual cleansings at this time of year, as purification is another theme of this festival.

Ostara/Spring Equinox (March 21): Ostara is a joyful celebration of the new life of spring, with ties to the Christian celebration of Easter. Plants are beginning to bloom, baby animals are being born, and the God is growing in power. Wiccans might celebrate Ostara by dying eggs or decorating their homes and altars with fresh flowers. In some covens, Ostara celebrations have a special focus on children, and so may be less solemn than other sabbats.

Beltane (May 1): Beltane is a fertility festival, pure and simple. Many Wiccans celebrate the sexual union of the God and Goddess, and the resulting abundance, at this sabbat. This is also one of the Celtic fire festivals, and is often celebrated with bonfires if the weather permits. The fae are said to be especially active at Beltane. Wiccans might celebrate Beltane by making and dancing around a Maypole, honoring the fae, or celebrating a night of R-rated fun with friends and lovers.

Litha/Midsummer/Summer Solstice (June 21): At the Summer Solstice, the God is at the height of his power and the Goddess is said to be pregnant with the harvest. Like Beltane, Midsummer is sometimes celebrated with bonfires and is said to be a time when the fae are especially active. Many Wiccans celebrate Litha as a solar festival, with a special focus on the God as the Sun.

Lughnasadh/Lammas (August 1): Lughnasadh (pronounced “loo-NAW-suh”) is an Irish harvest festival, named after the god Lugh. In Wicca, Lughnasadh/Lammas is a time to give thanks for the bounty of the earth. Lammas comes from “loaf mass,” and hints at this festival’s association with grain and bread. Wiccans might celebrate Lughnasadh by baking bread or by playing games or competitive sports (activities associated with Lugh).

Mabon/Fall Equinox (September 21): Mabon is the second Wiccan harvest festival, sometimes called “Wiccan Thanksgiving,” which should give you a good idea of what Mabon celebrations look like. This is a celebration of the abundance of the harvest, but tinged with the knowledge that winter is coming. Some Wiccans honor the symbolic death of the God at Mabon (others believe this takes place at Samhain or Lughnasadh). Wiccan Mabon celebrations often include a lot of food, and have a focus on giving thanks for the previous year.

Aside from the sabbats, some Wiccans also celebrate esbats, rituals honoring the full moons. Wiccan authors Janet and Stewart Farrar wrote that, while sabbats are public festivals to be celebrated with the coven, esbats are more private and personal. Because of this, esbat celebrations are typically solitary and vary a lot from one Wiccan to the next.

Further Reading

If you want to investigate Wicca further, there are a few books I recommend depending on which approach to Wicca you feel most drawn to. No matter which approach you are most attracted to, I recommend starting with Wicca For Beginners by Thea Sabin. This is an excellent introduction to Wiccan theology and practice, whether you want to practice alone or with a coven.

If you are interested in Traditional Wicca, I recommend checking out A Witches’ Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar after you finish Sabin’s book. Full disclosure: I have a lot of issues with this book. Parts of it were written as far back as the 1970s, and it really hasn’t aged well in terms of politics or social issues. However, it is the most detailed guide to Traditional Wicca I have found, so I recommend it for that reason. Afterwards, I recommend reading Casting a Queer Circle by Thista Minai, which presents a system similar to Traditional Wicca with less emphasis on binary gender. After you learn the basics from the Farrars, Minai’s book can help you figure out how to adjust the Traditional Wiccan system to work for you.

If you are interested in Eclectic Wicca, I recommend Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner and Living Wicca by Scott Cunningham. Cunningham is the author who popularized Eclectic Wicca, and his work remains some of the best on the subject. Wicca is an introduction to solitary Eclectic Wicca, while Living Wicca is a guide for creating your own personalized Wiccan practice.

Resources:

Wicca For Beginners by Thea Sabin

Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham

Living Wicca by Scott Cunningham

A Witches’ Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar

The Study of Witchcraft by Deborah Lipp

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Voltron: Legendary Defender—an Unfulfilling Copy of Award-Winning Mecha Predecessor and Market Competitor, Transformers Prime?

Note, this comparison post has major spoilers for both Transformers Prime and Voltron: Legendary Defender. It contains screenshots/topics from the shows that some may find sensitive or disturbing. 

The Transformers franchise and Voltron franchise have been direct market competitors, in toy sales and in (primarily boy-targeted) cartoons, since 1984. Both franchises have various iterations and reboots spanning decades. But in June 2011, Voltron: Force aired and stumbled. It was cancelled after a single season and achieved zero awards. In comparison, the competing Transformers franchise had aired Transformers Prime in November 2010, and the cartoon gained immediate critical acclaim, winning over older fans of highly successful previous Transformers cartoons—and pushing the content limits of the (US-rated) Y7-FV mecha genre.

By the time Transformers Prime (TFP) ended in 2013, it had earned several awards and set high standards for mecha cartoon shows in regards to animation, directing, plot complexities, and moral ambiguity, with a very extensive budget per episode.

This 2010-2013 show ultimately wasn’t your average kids show. Executive Producers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman admitted to using this show as their way to deepen the characters they fell in love with from writing the PG-13 live-action film, Revenge of the Fallen.

But did the show tone down its PG-13 origins? Not by much, if at all. TFP deals with very dark, edgy content, as well as sophisticated introspection into various characters. And it got away with it, in part, because it handled controversial topics so well.

Transformers Prime, under a TV-Y7-FV rating, boasts:                       

Multiple instances of major character death (even within episode 1, complete with blood splatters)

Graphic body horror and mutilation

Zombies

Physical and mental/emotional abuse

Electrocution, near-death experiences with major health consequences, betrayals, and torture

Amputation, disabilities, and characters actively experiencing PTSD and having mental breakdowns

Horror-genre monster chase scenes

Major trolley problems and moral ambiguity

War crimes

Good guys doing questionable/bad things, bad guys doing good things, and good guys working with mass murderers to defeat a common enemy

To an extent, transformers themselves do not exhibit a fully human image, which decreases the possible emotional reaction one might have to the graphic content. At the same time, this show dropped its money hard on developing the characters and making them as “human” as possible, and even having the human characters struggle with that realization, which resulted in a suspenseful, emotionally invested viewing.

The show still, to this day, enjoys an involved and productive fandom who delight in its characterizations, its plot, and its core message (which executive producer Jeff Kline explained as “the universal need to find or forge a family and a home”). 

But why does Transformers Prime matter to today’s children mecha show environment? And why does it specifically matter to the audience who watched Voltron: Legendary Defender?  

Executive Producers for VLD, JDS and LM, were still working on Legend of Korra, which ended in 2014, when they pitched a reboot for Voltron only months after TFP had finished in late 2013.

Hilariously, a lot of what happens in VLD had already happened in Transformers Prime, but with the twist of following through on a positive or morally meaningful message. So if you’re looking for a show that does what VLD did, but did it well—check out Transformers Prime. This show accomplishes:

Powerful female-gendered characters who live to enjoy their heroism and achieve their dreams

Individuals overcoming their PTSD and reintegrating socially

Humans not being the center of the universe and actually learning moral lessons

Multidimensional, dynamic villains, antagonists, and self-aware heroes

Abuse victims and villains breaking the cycle of evil

Deceased warriors being consistently remembered for their sacrifice and value

Socially and physically nonconforming individuals rising to great moral fame and recognition

A powerful character dying for the greater good, in which they transform into something even more powerful

Heroes being held to high moral standards

Still not sure about checking out TFP? Then enjoy this list of the vast extent to which VLD mimics TFP, as well as how TFP handles such topics with increased complexity and finesse compared to VLD:

Updates to Worldbuilding and Backstories

TFP, in keeping with live-action films, boasts aged-up human companions compared to previous transformer cartoons (Sari from TFA was only 9 at the start of the show). Transformers has, time and again, more typically aligned itself with bildungsroman (coming of age) storylines. Not surprisingly, VLD followed suit in adjusting its pilots to more strongly align to the teenager age group. For the Voltron franchise, however, this meant de-aging the pilots, which made them more fallible in a franchise where they were traditionally the center point of morality as adults. This is unlike the young humans in TFP, who are traditionally schooled by or in dialogue with the transformers about moral decisions and the hardships of growing up/becoming more responsible.

TFP’s synthetic energon or Synth-En, drives people crazy similar to VLD’s quintessence overexposure, bringing out the worst in them. Dark energon, which glows purple and is a mystical science-magic, is derived from a source of great chaos and lends disturbing powers, including reanimation of the dead and mind control, to one willing to bond with it. This is similar to quintessence manipulation as well.

The war between Decepticons and Autobots ultimately resulted in the destruction of their planet. Similarly, for the first time ever in Voltron history, both Daibazaal and Altea are destroyed in the war, leaving both people groups (or their remaining warriors) homeless and roaming the galaxy in guerilla warfare.

TFP boasts characters who live through incredible spans of time. VLD, for the first time in Voltron history, expands with a world of basically immortal aliens as well.

Updates to Characters

VLD also majorly expanded or revised previous Voltron lore, characters, and character arcs. In doing so, it brought Voltron characters closer than ever to their Transformer counterparts in TFP:

(A quick list of characters discussed, for reference if you need it)

Honerva copies Megatron, both before and after his corruption. Honerva’s new history was entirely unprecedented within Voltron lore, but it was a core staple within TFP.

Both Honerva and Megatronus start off as good people, with very close friendships with the protagonist leaders, Alfor and Orion Pax. Both Megatronus and Honerva see societal ills, inequality, and want to fix them, challenging the traditions/hoarding of power by those of higher authority. Both Megatronus and Honerva are told their ideas for improving the world are wrong because they involve force and a demand for access to great power (For Honerva, it’s the quintessence field. For Megatronus, it’s the powerful Matrix of Leadership, which would result in making him a prime). Both characters ignore the concerns of Alfor/The High Council and grow increasingly more frustrated with the balance of power, desiring to usurp it for themselves. Both suffer the consequences and jumpstart a millennia-long war.

Their names change upon corruption. Megatronus becomes Megatron. Honerva becomes Haggar. Neither Megatronus nor Honerva are ever again able to truly separate from who they’ve become. The good part of them is permanently marred.

They’re both obsessed with a magic that can be used for great evil, from a questionable, destructive source (Dark Entity/rift creatures in VLD, the chaotic dark entity Unicron in TFP).

Both shows include an episode of the protagonists/heroes diving into the mind of Honerva/Megatron for more information, and having a harrowing experience in doing so.  

Both Honerva and Megatron reanimate, to an extent, a dead soldier (Lotor/Cliffjumper) and use his body/weapons for their own purpose. 

Honerva and Predacons Rising Megatron

In the final movie that ended TFP, Predacons Rising, Megatron’s character gets taken to a whole new level. Honerva’s arc eerily matches:

Both Honerva and Megatron are overwhelmed when the Dark Entities/Rift Creatures and Unicorn decide to destroy the world(s) most precious to them.

Both die and are reanimated back to life by dark power.

Upon reanimation, both can wield purple magic.

In TFP, Unicron, an ancient dark entity who is the source of all chaos and evil, says, “Your husk will simply be an instrument of my will.” Megatron undergoes a painful transformation that alters his usual form. In VLD, through contact with a dark entity and through the corruption from pure quintessence exposure, Honerva becomes Haggar. She is heavily altered visually, and is little more than a puppet of Zarkon’s will until she remembers who she is and fights back to regain herself, just as Megatronus does with Unicron.

They both gain the ability to peer into the minds and even alter the minds and behaviors of others.

Megatron cannot join the Allspark (go to the afterlife) because he’d been joined to the lifeblood of the chaotic Unicron, and he spends a deal of time cursed inside the mind of Unicron. Honerva’s soul does not move to the afterlife in death, but instead, being infused with quintessence, she is reanimated. They’re both the immortally undead. In addition, Honerva had “cursed” the souls of the OG paladins. They were inside her mind with her, unable to be in the afterlife because of it, similar to the plight Megatron finds himself in within Unicron’s mind.

They both give themselves over to scorched-earth policy. Honerva refuses the title to run an empire and goes on to nearly destroy the multiverse. Megatron, as Unicron’s puppet, admits to fellow Decepticons (who are subsequently disturbed by him), “I do not wish to conquer this world—I wish to eradicate it.” Honerva follows suit in her desire to achieve the past at any cost to the future of an entire multiverse, carrying Megatron’s banner that, “The past shall consume the future!”

A quasi-redemption arc: Both Megatron and Honerva achieve what they want. Megatron gets bonded to the spark of a great, chaotic power, able to warp time and space as a new, all-powerful being. His abilities allow him to quickly fly to a regenerated version of his home world, Cybertron, which had been destroyed millennia ago. Honerva gets access to Oriande, transreality materials, and achieves entry to a dimension with a still-living family on her home world of Altea (which was living, unlike the Altea she know, which had been destroyed millennia ago).

Once they’re given over to the power or end they desired, they do not achieve the true effect they wanted. They have a moment where they lose their own personal agency within that situation, only to rage to destroy everything at great risk to themselves, and then from out of the rage, fall into a daze of distaste for what their desires have brought them. 

Then they both act defeated, whiny, and salty over how nothing’s like what they wanted.

They both disappear off into the sunset in a disquieted, defeated sense of, “Whatever, I guess I’ll be good now and do my own thing because I’m tired.” (Paraphrasing here.)

In TFP, the insanity of Predacons Rising Megatron is described by Predaking (another character) as, “Dark magic…perpetrated by the demon who lives in Megatron’s skin.” In a similar manner, Lotor accuses the Oriande-infused Honerva of being “an abomination.”

Zarkon is a mirror to the standard, more well-known Megatron. But in VLD, he boasts similar characteristics, like Honerva, to Megatronus, picking up Megatronus’s gladiator history. Class issues are important to both Zarkon and Megatronus as well.

It’s implied that Megatron was born into a very low class and rose to power through the gladiatorial ring by rite of combat, bolstering his political career. As a gladiator “in the pits of Kaon,” his rise to become the leader of the Decepticons mirrors Voltron’s brand-new lore of Zarkon rising to imperial power through the Kral Zera, which is a ceremonial gladiatorial arena to establish the new leader through rite of combat.

Zarkon functioned as a military mentor for Alfor; Megatronus was a political mentor to Orion Pax.

According to the lore of the original Thirteen Primes, Megatronus Prime got into a fight with his brethren that resulted in the death of his lover, Solus Prime, a weapons forger. Megatronus Prime’s title as “The Fallen” being closely related to in-fighting specifically over a lover in many ways echoes in the ultimate breakdown of friendship between Alfor and Zarkon, specifically over Honerva and her abilities to manipulate quintessence into tactical advantages/weapons. The end result is that Zarkon “falls” as well through Honerva’s death, just as Megatronus Prime falls through the death of Solus Prime.

Zarkon is massively injured and in a state of unconscious for a time, disrupting the empire. Megatron as well is massively injured in a state of unconsciousness for a time, disrupting the order of command for the Decepticons. In both instances, this is a major plot device to introduce other characters to the show and deepen political conflict.

Zarkon’s armor and facial reconstruction for the reboot more closely mimic Megatron’s elongated face and eye-set, as well as his very wide-shoulder, spiky armor, complete with angled armor lining his cheeks. It’s similar enough that others have poked fun at their similarities. 

Alfor’s history more closely mimics that of Orion Pax. They’re both initially great friends with the very person who would later seek to kill them and their friends.

It’s implied that Megatronus suffered through the very issues that he was critiquing to the High Council. Meanwhile, Orion Pax was of a higher class and coddled from experiencing the same societal ills. In many ways, this echoes how Alfor critiqued the behaviors of Zarkon and Honerva, while standing from a place of incredible power through Oriande, as well as physical peace and comfort.

Alfor and Orion Pax are both very scholarly individuals without the military expertise as touted by their counterparts, Zarkon and Megatronus.

Alfor and Orion Pax are both initially deceived by the heartfelt words of their friends, only to realize in horror what their friends actually desired beneath it.

Orion Pax and Alfor stand as the ultimate inheritors of the powers and status coveted by Zarkon/Honerva and Megatronus.

When Orion Pax is converted to Optimus Prime, his old self somewhat dies, and he becomes a more perfected, all-powerful version. Alfor, likewise, dies in the war…and his legacy is inherited by Allura, who is canonically shown as even more powerful. She carries on the mantle/legacy as previously set before her by her predecessors.

And last but not least of the Big Four, Princess Allura’s arc in VLD very closely mimics Optimus Prime’s arc in TFP.

Like Optimus Prime, Allura becomes locked into a millennia-old war that she did not start herself.

Optimus Prime is the last of the primes. Princess Allura is the last of the royal Altean line. Both primes and royal Alteans have access to deep knowledge and mystical abilities coveted greatly by others of their race.

The High Council bestows the Matrix of Leadership, which is the core of Optimus Prime’s power. The Ancient Alteans of Oriande impart their wisdom and knowledge to enhance Allura’s power. Megatronus’s failure to achieve the Matrix, receiving only rejection in return, is echoed in Lotor’s rejection and fall in Oriande, who like his father sought to obtain such power through Galra-standard force.

Optimus Prime is a member of an endangered species, believing his few Autobot comrades to be some of the only ones remaining after the great war. In a similar way, Princess Allura struggles with the isolation and fall of Alteans. Both Optimus and Allura are separated by vast distances of space from other possible survivors of their own kind.

They both agree to truces with great enemies and unknown powers for a specific end. Allura accepts the dark entity and works alongside Lotor. Optimus makes several deals with Megatron, at great hesitance from his team.

Both wield great power that no one else currently can.

They both sacrifice their lives and own energy in the end to restore life itself to worlds, because they cannot separate themselves from the power it takes to restore life.

They both pass down a “transformation” to one of their brethren before dying. Princess Allura gives Altean marks to Lance. Optimus converts Bumblebee to a warrior.

Their comrades all stand and watch as they willingly sacrifice themselves, and they have first-row seats to a major visual outpouring of light and life.

(Screenshot explanation: The visual effect of Princess Allura sacrificing herself to restore life to the multiverse.)

(Screenshot explanation: The visual effect of Optimus Prime sacrificing himself to restore life to the Well of All Sparks.)

Aside from The Big Four, there are other TFP characters with extreme similarities to VLD supporting characters.

Knockout/Breakdown/Predaking as Lotor

The Knockout connection to Lotor

According to Hasbro’s vice president of development and scripted entertainment, Mike Vogel, Knockout as a character received several upgrades because his previous iteration as “Lugnut” wasn’t considered sexy enough. Similarly, Lotor in VLD was upgraded to be a prettier bad boy in several ways that he hadn’t been before, especially in regard to physical clothing and behavior. Both pretty bad boys ultimately boasted a tight waist, spiky shoulders, great eyeliner, and heavily angled paneling on their torsos:

Knockout is coded as being “different” than most of the other Decepticons and is looked down upon for having a road-based alt-mode instead of an alt-mode that affords flight. In being so, he is more similar to the Autobots despite being born as a Decepticon. Likewise, VLD heavily increases the amount of attention and derision given to Lotor for being half-Galran and half-Altean. Both Knockout and Lotor profess great confidence and satisfaction in what they are, though, regardless of anyone else’s critique.

Knockout is summoned to Earth after the fall of Megatron, who remains in an ill, unconscious state. This is reflected in how Lotor is introduced into the revised Voltron series, to assist his reigning father in a time of need.

Knockout is a medic and is tasked with preserving life—or taking it out. Lotor’s base motivation is also to preserve life, but he maintains Knockout’s underhanded side of also deciding when to eliminate a loose or unproductive end.

Unlike previous iterations of Lotor, the VLD Lotor is excessively more evasive and less likely to barge in bull-headedly into battle. Knockout uses similar tactics.

Knockout gets melded into a ship (although unlike Lotor, he does get out and isn’t dead).

Knockout constantly schemes for more power and prestige, using underhanded tactics. He has very little loyalty but does have a deep bond with fellow Decepticon Breakdown, who functions as the muscle to Knockout’s intelligence. They’re usually seen together as two halves of the same brotherly unit. In a similar way, Lotor is the scheming commander and point of intelligence in his own small group. His generals are overall the brawn, like Breakdown.

Knockout provides confidential information about his old Decepticon comrades to help the Autobots while in custody as a prisoner of war.  (Although unlike Lotor, Knockout demands, “We’re prisoners of war; we have rights!”)

The Predaking connection to Lotor

Predaking is a type of Predacon, an ancient beast that died long ago but is brought back to life through experimentation. In ways, his ancient status and the strange circumstances of his “birth” echo in the way Prince Lotor is a vestige himself from ancient times and was still growing in Honerva when she died, suggesting that he died as well or was somehow preserved by his infusion with quintessence. The result is that his life is unnaturally sustained by quintessence itself, when he would have otherwise been dead. Similarly, Predaking’s existence was not possible without intentionally overriding natural limitations, since his kind could not be “sparked” naturally. 

Predaking is groomed to be a weapon for Megatron and initially assumed to be a dumb beast. In doing so, he endures ongoing physical and mental abuse by the Decepticons, particularly Megatron’s second in command, Starscream. As he grows more intelligent and powerful, he increasingly balks against the treatment he receives and loses loyalty to Megatron. This is similar to Lotor being groomed as the heir to the Galran throne via brainwashing but yet suffers abuse for what he is. He, like Predaking, ultimately grows to reject much of what he’s been told to believe about himself and his place in the world. Both Lotor and Predaking are strong enough to challenge and nearly defeat the main heroes of the shows, Voltron and Optimus Prime, respectively.

Predaking, in hatred for Megatron who tried to make him a weapon, attacks him with the intent to kill. Lotor, likewise, attacks his father, Zarkon—although Lotor does achieve killing him.

Both Predaking and Lotor are core to the dismantling of various alliances upon the discovery of a colony of innocents being killed in the name of tactical war advantages. In both cases, the innocents were people in tubes being groomed/harvested for war purposes.

The Breakdown connection to Lotor

Decepticon Breakdown is betrayed by one of his own team members, whom he had found attractive and had flirted with. The Decepticon femme Airachnid kills him. The distorted remains of his body end up being used for spare parts for a terrorist’s horrifying fusion of organic flesh and mech technology. Ultimately, Breakdown’s body is a victim of being used post-mortem to further the military aims of another person who wanted to exploit him. Breakdown’s personal agency is completely removed, and his body receives no rest.

Lotor, likewise, is betrayed by Voltron and specifically by Princess Allura during an alliance. Princess Allura, as his love interest, kills him. The distorted remains of his body, which are fused to the Sincline ship, end up being used post-mortem to further the military aims of Honerva. Lotor’s personal agency is completely removed, and his body receives no rest.

Bumblebee as Lance

Bumblebee and Lance, as the beloved young but inexperienced warriors, are both killed and brought back to life.

Bumblebee has progressively taken over as the frontrunner of the show within the Transformers franchise. Likewise, Lance gained more screen time and heightened significance in VLD compared to previous Voltron iterations.

Lance in the VLD finale and Bumblebee in the TFP sequel both struggle with the dissonance between who they were during war and now who they are as guardians or people look up to, but who are somewhat vestiges of the past.

Optimus Prime, prior to his death, changes Bumblebee from a scout to a warrior, which was not what Bumblebee was originally designed to be. Princess Allura, prior to her death, alters Lance from being purely human to exhibiting Altean characteristics.

Arcee as Shiro

They both suffer from PTSD, having been tortured by the enemy, interrogated, and experimented on. Arcee, being mechanical, has had her visible scars repaired, but the nightmares remain. Shiro similarly experiences PTSD.

They both have lost a significant other to war. They’re both afraid of losing the children they’re responsible for.

They both find family and are able to find happiness by the end, putting to rest any conflict they had over their previous partner.

Nemesis Prime (a Clone of Optimus Prime) as Kuron (a Clone of Shiro)

Nemesis Prime is a “clone” of Optimus Prime, developed by the human terrorist group M.E.C.H. He exhibits a physical appearance similar to Optimus Prime but, when activated, carries out their will of death and destruction.

Similarly, Kuron is a clone of Shiro developed by Haggar. He exhibits a physical appearance similar to the true Shiro, but when activated, carries out Haggar’s will of death and destruction.

The reputation of Optimus and Shiro are temporarily called in question before others realize what’s actually happening. 

Jack Darby as Keith Kogane

Both have missing/dead fathers. Their mothers are alive, and they’re very close to their mothers, but said mother is often not a part of their daily life, given her own missions.

Both are loners and go through an arc of no longer wanting to be a part of the team, during which the team has to remind them of what they’ve gained and how important they are.

Both have a high sensibility to wanting to do the right thing, but not feeling worthy or wanting to have a position of power.

Both are constantly annoyed by the bull-headed antics of their teammate (Miko/Lance), often rolling eyes or getting on their case, but end up bonding with them in the end.

Both are the “human” lead for their team.

Both inherit great power. Optimus Prime, when no longer able to complete the mission, hands Jack the Omega Lock key. When Shiro is no longer able to be Black Paladin, Voltron chooses Keith to carry it forward.

And there’s so many other character similarities.

Moral Ambiguities

VLD also copies the moral ambiguity standards set within Transformers Prime.

In an Afterbuzz interview at the 12:52 mark, JDS and LM uplifted VLD as fairly groundbreaking for children’s shows, per its moral ambiguities. JDS said, “The finale is almost, I don’t know—I don’t wanna say unlike anything that you would see in other like-minded shows, like let’s say, like, Transformers or Power Rangers, or….something that Voltron was like, by outward appearances, being compared to. But it was something I think really exciting for us to explore because we did create villains and create heroes that worked within this very kind of, like, shades of gray spectrum. There was black, there was white. But we played in this weird morally ambiguous zone a lot of the time. And that was—I think, it was important for audiences of every age group to see that.”  

Lauren Montgomery agreed at 13:33, stating, “We also came from working on shows like Avatar the last Airbender, and Korra, which very much pushed those boundaries as well, and were extremely ground-breaking for children’s programming. And it was not something that was coming out of western animation.”

Afterbuzz Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MudCcj6QRzA

However, the vast majority of what VLD did plot-wise with moral ambiguity was already used inside TFP, a western animation cartoon airing well before Korra:

The Colony Problem

In TFP, Autobots Wheeljack and Ultra Magnus knowingly and willingly commit massacre against innocent beings. Predacons (a different race of transformers, based on ancient beasts) were being groomed in test tubes in Megatron’s facility for the purpose of becoming Decepticon warriors. In fear that Predacons would hurt humans, the Autobots choose to kill them all. This decision comes back to haunt them dearly, through Predaking’s discovery of the massacre.

Predaking, who is a Predacon himself, is an antagonist of incredible moral ambiguity. He expresses great frustration with both the Autobots and the Decepticons. He despises the abuse he endures from the Decepticons, despises Megatron for betraying his kind to the Autobots, and then despises the Autobots, who knowingly commit massacre against his own kind. His tactics and perspectives, as he refuses both sides of the war and fights to create his own space, result in him becoming an ultimate antagonist to both Autobots and Decepticons.

The Trolley problem as experienced by the Autobots (sacrificing some to save many), and the resulting political fallouts, are mirrored within VLD.

In VLD, Prince Lotor had faced a similar trolley problem as well, in which he was instrumental in how several innocent Alteans were sacrificed for an unknown military aim against the Galra. The slain Predacons and second-colony Alteans are both shown in tubes in an experimental lab, represented as victims/cannon fodder of a much larger military function.

In VLD, the discovery of the Altean colony results in an utter destruction of previous alliances. Similarly, Predaking breaks ties with everyone in total disillusionment and rage, never again believing Autobots when they say they believe in peaceful coexistence of two races. His sentiments are echoed into VLD, in which the Galra are suspicious of Voltron and call them traitors.

Moral Shades of Gray: Characters Who Fall on a Spectrum

TFP’s Predaking has his own code of honor and is a primary example of a morally ambiguous character. He absolutely despises the Unicron-reborn version of Megatron. He snarls, “Dark magic…perpetrated by the demon who lives in Megatron’s skin.” This implies that Predaking ranks himself higher in his ways than Megatron. But Predaking, in his desire for revenge and power, also falls short of the stated moral standards of the Autobots. Similarly, Lotor absolutely despises the witch Haggar/Honerva, calling her an “abomination,” and yet he fails to meet the moral standards of Voltron and is therefore named an enemy despite their alliance.

Moral Focal Points: Have the Good Guys Always Been Good? And Have the Bad Guys Always Been Bad?

In TFP, the Autobots are said to have been the moral standard. However, they also bear a dark history of class issues / inequality and political corruption.

Similarly, in VLD, Alteans posit themselves as the moral and diplomatic standard, desiring peace for all. However, the Ancient Alteans hoarded Oriande’s power for only a select few of their kind. Alfor had no problems barreling in and using force against other people groups, in s3 flashbacks. He also created the most powerful weapon in the universe to enforce his version of peace, in which Voltron itself feeds off the life force of its paladins. Alteans additionally were able to terraform entire planets, the technology of which would have required immense power (where did they harvest that from?), and the result was the massacre of all life on said planet, for them to use to their will. These canon details suggest the Galra’s “komar” life-harvesting technology may have originated from Alteans themselves.

In VLD, the Galra (through Commander Lahn) express frustrations with Princess Allura’s coddled mindset, which mimics Megatron’s own frustrations with Autobot morality, which is derived from a position of power and comfort. 

So, in general, there’s a moral similarity between TFP and VLD, in which the “heroes” have these dark pasts and yet attempt to smooth it over, while the “villains” are victims of a much larger, oppressive order and are calling the heroes out for their hypocrisies and crimes, demanding access to the same power as they wield, or committing similar crimes as the heroes and suffering harder for it.

So given all these similarities, how in the world is TFP so much better than VLD, message-wise?

1. TFP actually understood moral ambiguity. 

In TFP, Megatron disbands the Decepticons, tired of bloodshed, without turning to the Autobots or acknowledging their perspective as the morally correct one.

The humans in TFP are excessively fallible, just like their transformer counterparts. There is a human terrorist group, M.E.C.H, who paces both Autobots and Decepticons, desiring their technology to enforce their will upon the world. These humans commit great horrors against both sides of the war, resulting in difficult decisions, odd truces between the Autobots and Decepticons, and humans fighting other humans. In other words, humans are NOT the moral center of the universe.

Some Autobots have looser morals and less self-control than others, which grates against the sensibilities of the more morally sensitive and results in a lot of disagreement and problems.

TFP consistently reflects on lessons learned. The heroes admit when they are wrong or fail to achieve moral perfection in their actions. They have to struggle through those decisions, the consequences of those decisions, and are bolstered to do better, be better.

The villains are not simply obsessed with power and are also capable of having empathy and doing things outside of pointless destruction. Breakdown is pleasantly surprised when one of the humans asks, “How are you?” And Breakdown responds politely. He also expresses sympathy for the hard work and struggle of the vehicons, who are servant-class workers on the Decepticon ship, similar to Galran robots. Likewise, Knockout expresses a love of human zombie movies and going to drive-ins to watch them, along with appreciating human vehicle design and street racing.

TFP shows villains scared and in pain, with a tremendous range of emotion and dreams. This is way more complex than how the villainous Galra are shown in VLD, who are consistently on a war path.

The heroes are willing to side with the villains (who killed their own people) to defeat common foes. The tension and resulting conversations from those truces are hilariously more complex than VLD, in which Voltron refused to work with Emperor Lotor, who is implicated in killing Alteans in the larger war against Galra. Instead of pursuing the tactical advantage of an ongoing alliance, Voltron simply assassinates him without due process for his war crime, asserting Voltron as the only morally unfallible point in the universe.

TFP shows the human heroes learning when they’re fallible and trying to be better.

TFP actively struggles with how human children/teenagers are endangered by the war, even when the children themselves don’t understand the danger.

2. TFP does a lot of other things well.

TFP always maintains a perspective that the true battle between good and evil is not a physical one—but one fought within the heart. Per Optimus Prime, “As even Megatron has demonstrated on this day, every sentient being possesses the capacity for change.” This is vastly unlike VLD, which stumbles to handle the perspectives of Voltron antagonists or the belief that people can truly change.

Megatron endures the very suffering he’d inflicted on others and comes to the decision on his own to stop his violence and disband the Decepticons, also ending his own “stereotypical toxic masculinity” arc. This contrasts heavily with Honerva, who goes into the afterlife without an understanding of why she can’t be happy as she is, demanding happiness and a family after she’s caused so much pain even to that family, perpetuating her own “stereotypical toxic femininity” arc.

There is a significant difference in the sacrifice of Optimus Prime compared to the death of Princess Allura. Optimus Prime’s sacrifice was a major power move, as well as not unexpected, given Transformers’ history of killing him off. (Although back in his first death in 1986, this was a horrifying shock to children who looked up to Optimus as a father). But within the context of TFP, Optimus had undergone a low point in the story prior, only to be rebuilt stronger than ever and growing in power and confidence as the re-energized leader of the Autobots. He had everything to live for (family, friends, regenerated planet, power) when he chose to sacrifice himself for others. Additionally, he knew there was hope in choosing to sacrifice his material body to restart the Well of Sparks, so that life could be regenerated on his planet. Optimus Prime even contextualizes his death in terms of rebirth and hope. His last words to his friends are: “Above all, do not lament my absence, for in my spark, I know that this is not the end. But merely, a new beginning. Simply put…another transformation.” He flies into death, more powerful and revered than he had ever been. He has a peaceful expression on his face. All of these details are wildly different from VLD. Princess Allura, like Optimus Prime, hits a low point beginning in s6 when Voltron’s alliance with Emperor Lotor unravels. But unlike Optimus Prime, Princess Allura continues to be progressively stripped of identity, power, and personal agency, careening into utter despondency until she willingly kills herself, with nothing to live for. She constantly gives up her own personal power to others, increasingly isolates herself from others, grows more emotionally volatile, denies her own people, and sinks into the background as other characters determine her life and decisions. There is nothing personally identifying about her by the end, with even her crown and state of dress removed/replaced with the uniform of a basic human soldier. Sorrow for her value and death comes too late in the story, when she has already become the most expendable character. It’s of additional significance that no one in VLD tries to help Princess Allura by offering other ways to resurrect the multiverse. There are only some paltry sniffles and weak, “No, don’t” responses. This is a huge contrast to TFP, in which several characters immediately are incensed by the thought of losing Optimus Prime. They jump in with ideas for how to possibly save their beloved leader, willing to endure more personal hardship on his behalf. They express that they didn’t fight this hard to resurrect Cybertron, only to lose someone they cared about. Optimus Prime explains why their ideas would not work, but in doing so, reveals that he is already one with the All Spark (meaning, that his spark is already part of a mystical collection of souls with the capacity to be born/reborn, and that continuing to live, bonded to the All Spark, would be denying all other souls from experiencing life). It is his explanation that bolsters the necessity of his sacrifice and converts his final words from being a hollow comfort to a genuine conviction that this was not the end. That they would all someday meet again.

In the TFP sequel, Robots in Disguise (2015), it’s revealed that Optimus Prime, in death, has become an interdimensional being, capable of still interacting with and providing guidance to Bumblebee on the “human plane,” all while being spiritually tested by greater beings with even more interdimensional power than him (the Primes). Interestingly enough, this topic is mirrored within VLD. Such interdimensional beings are confirmed to exist via season 7, in which the Voltron paladins are whisked away by an all-powerful interdimensional entity, who tests their worthiness as warriors. Additionally, some of the VLD meta by @leakinghate posits that an afterlife existence for Princess Allura and Lotor as interdimensional beings was supposed to happen in the VLD finale, but was ultimately not published. Had such been published, Princess Allura’s final arc would have further matched Optimus Prime and better maintained the hope and meaning associated with his arc.

Transformers don’t always save the day. Sometimes, it’s a little human girl with a baseball bat, or a little human boy with coding skills, or a teenager willing to put themselves in harm’s way to protect them. This greatly humbles the Autobots, some of whom struggle with their pride and the reality that they don’t have all the answers all the time, and that sometimes, they need to be protected too.

TFP actively struggles with both positive and negative prejudices assigned to humans and transformers. The humans originally think the transformers are just robots without souls—they think it’s all a game. They soon discover that transformers can bleed, and have emotions, and have a soul than can die. Likewise, some transformers find the humans to be a nuisance and despise their “fleshiness,” but soon overcome those perspectives to grow very protective and attached to humans. In other words, everyone struggles through their own perspective and learns on the way.

Optimus Prime remains the consistent point of morality for TFP. When he does controversial things, like engaging in an alliance with Megatron or allowing medical aid to be provided to Decepticons, he acknowledges those things and explains his reasoning. This is unlike Voltron, who engages in action without reflection while still demanding a position as the unquestionable moral center of the universe.

Knockout, as the Lotor bad boy of the series, defects and actively becomes a member of the Autobots. He admits he didn’t have the best role models, and it’s shown throughout the show that he endures physical and mental abuse by some Decepticons as well. He makes a cameo in Robots in Disguise (2015), suggesting he is still alive and well as an Autobot. Optimus Prime at the end of TFP includes Knockout when he says each of his teammates had acted as a prime, offering a tremendous weight of value and respect to Knockout.

Even Predaking, the antagonist, ends up helping the Autobots when it counts and otherwise remains distant with them.

Predaking gets justice against his abusers.

Autobots and many Decepticons are consistently horrified and disturbed by the crimes perpetuated against Decepticon Breakdown, whose body is taken and mutilated by terrorist group M.E.C.H.

Arcee manages to positively cope with her PTSD and remains as an active, plot-intrinsic character to the end, with several episodes dedicated to her own character arcs and the advantages she provides the overall team. She lives to see and experience her dream of a restored planet come true, without being turned into an example of the sexy lamp trope.

The transformers are able to achieve their goal of restoring Cybertron and generating new life, which allows several other characters to begin healing from the trauma of war and regain what they had lost.

The humans who make villainous decisions have dire consequences.

The human Miko rises up to become an Autobot Wrecker in her own right, without sacrificing or compromising anything about who she is, how she presents herself, or what her other interests are.

Bulkhead originally despises Decepticons but ends up rescuing his own sworn enemy from torture and dismantlement because he learns to put justice for and the safety of all people first.

The number of parallels between Transformers Prime and Voltron: Legendary Defender extend even beyond this list. And yet as seen above, TFP succeeded in so many of the major areas where VLD ultimately failed.

Transformers Prime, even years after its finale, remains as the award-winning show that transformed dark and edgy content into messages of hope, redemption, gender equality and social acceptance, moral responsibility, the power of teamwork—and did it as a Y7-FV show geared primarily for young boys.

So, if you were disappointed in VLD and how it ended, check out the edgy but satisfying TFP for what a real children’s mecha show should be like.

(Special thanks to @mermaider00 for being my TFP buddy and for suggesting some of the points discussed in this post!)

[canadianabroadvery]

“There’s never been a society that hasn’t had a clock running on it,” declares a character in Arthur Miller’s play The American Clock, “and you can’t help wondering – how long? How long will they stand for this?” Whether time is running out is a question on many people’s minds today on both sides of the Atlantic, whether they’re watching the “Brexit clock” tick or wondering how long the Trump presidency will endure. The American Clock is set during the 1930s but was written in 1980, as Miller watched America’s headlong race back into the gleeful, reckless greed that dominated the 1920s and led to the Great Depression, and it’s one of several of Miller’s plays that are being revived in London. Clearly that sense of timeliness, in every sense, is mounting.

In addition to The American Clock, this year will bring a new production of The Price with David Suchet to the Wyndham’s Theatre, Sally Field and Bill Pullman will star in All My Sons at the Old Vic, The Crucible will be mounted at the Yard with a female-led cast (including a woman playing the hero, John Proctor), and an almost entirely black cast will revive Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic. Miller’s plays are emblematic, representative: they are often set at moments of national crisis, whether the Depression, the Second World War or the Salem witch trials, as the conflicts of the characters symbolise epochal conflicts in American life. Read them together and you start to get a sense of a nation in a constant state of crisis.

Miller called The American Clock a “mural for theatre”, evoking the agitprop social murals of the 1930s, with a large ensemble representing all of the United States, presenting vignettes that shift and adapt across geography and time. One character picks up another’s narration, finishes another’s line. The stories are the interconnected experiences of a nation struggling to survive, as Miller attempts to render a “mythopoetic” vision of America that might be sufficient to its mythopoeic vision of itself, a nation of shared values and impulses, despite its differences.

The American Clock suggests that out of chaos can come new possibilities, an idea that many people with whom Miller would have had little sympathy are today banking on (again, in every sense). Miller rejected both socialism and fascism as too rigid and extremist; like most of his work, The American Clock suggests that a healthy society needs to find a balance between individual and collective needs. He would have had no truck with disaster socialism or disaster capitalism, but these are still possibilities the play leaves open.

Miller shows a cross-section, a collage, of Americans across the nation and the social spectrum struggling to achieve a balance between the two, in order to emerge from the catastrophe of the Depression – which Miller characterised in his autobiography, Timebends, as “only incidentally a matter of money. Rather it was a moral catastrophe, a violent revelation of the hypocrisies behind the facade of American society.” The ending of The American Clock is ambivalent about whether social renewal is possible, but understands that belief in American renewal is itself central to American renewal. Optimism becomes the only faith system that matters: hope as ideology, a communal identity defined by collective self-belief.

There are good reasons why Miller is enjoying a renaissance this year: not only was he always a political writer, but his political questions align firmly with our zeitgeist. Miller wrote about the individual’s responsibility to society – but also about society’s responsibility to the individual. He challenged the key myths of American culture, broadly incorporated in the familiar ideas of the American dream, including materialism, self-sufficiency and selfishness, but also blind faith in the lotteries of rags-to-riches stories and the redemptive individual. Miller’s work consistently turns to themes of individual and community, trying to come together to rise above chaos but often stymied by the failings of those individuals.

****

Arthur Miller was born in New York in 1915, when Harlem was a mixed neighbourhood of German, Italian and Jewish immigrants, into which black Americans were moving as they left the South in search of opportunity. His father Isidore, who had immigrated from Poland, had built up a large and prosperous clothing business, but when Arthur was 14, it all came crashing down along with Wall Street. The business failed and the family descended the economic ladder. The effects of the Depression shaped not only Miller’s adolescence but his moral and political imagination – and the rest of his life. “I don’t think America ever got over the Depression,” he later said.

Whatever the truth of that may be, certainly Arthur Miller never got over it. He chose theatre, he said, although he had little experience of it even as an audience member, because “you could talk directly to an audience and radicalise the people”. That didactic impulse never entirely left him, but it swiftly acquired greater subtlety.

Miller’s first play, The Man Who Had All the Luck, closed in 1944 after just four days. Three years later, he found his first success, All My Sons, followed two years after that by Death of a Salesman, still the play for which Miller is best known. In 1953, he produced The Crucible, using the Salem witch trials of 1692 as an analogy for the witch hunts of McCarthyist America; the hat-trick clinched his status as one of America’s major playwrights of the 20th century.

Two years later Miller himself was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and publicly defied them. He had begun (improbably, it was felt) dating Marilyn Monroe, who threw the weight of her popularity behind Miller as he resisted the committee’s pressure. At a press conference he announced simultaneously that he would not co-operate and that he and Monroe were engaged. Having refused to plead the fifth amendment, which protects a witness from self-incrimination (and is thus often viewed as a morally evasive choice at best), Miller was charged with contempt of court. His marriage to Monroe was complex and controversial, and for many years after her death in 1962, continued to define his public reputation – not least because of his 1964 play After the Fall, widely condemned at the time as an exercise in self-exculpation.

But culpability was always one of Miller’s themes, to which he returned in later life as the chaos attending a highly public marriage to a movie star, followed by her early death, subsided. Themes of guilt and complicity run through most of his plays as a counterweight to myths of American innocence and optimism: people don’t just betray each other, they betray themselves and their own ideals.

Each of these great plays is driven by their protagonist’s powerful need to believe in their innocence; their acceptance of guilt and collective responsibility is tragic but redemptive – except for Willy Loman, who can never be brought to see his own self-deceptions. They destroy him, and it is left for those wrestling with his legacy to insist that “attention must be paid” to such a man. But all three men at the centre of these plays are destroyed, in different ways, by the shame they feel for their choices, by their self-righteous efforts to justify themselves and the inevitable failures of those self-justifications. This makes denial another constant theme, one that Miller watches play out on personal levels to suggest the ways it operates nationally as well.

****

The structure of a play,” Miller liked to say, “is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.” His best plays open at the beginning of aftermath: they are, from one perspective, all denouement. At the start of All My Sons, Joe Keller has already committed the betrayal – selling bad plane parts to the military – that would more traditionally have been the climax of a different play about Keller’s conflicted decisions. Here, the drama is psychological: Keller and his family must come to terms with the choices he has already made.

Similarly, in Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman has already failed: his death merely makes manifest the moral and psychological death he suffered before the action began. In The Crucible, the affair of John Proctor and Abigail Williams that provokes the dramatic action is already over when the play begins. Drama is not cause, but effect. This also gradually brings the past into the present – a technique Miller learned from Henrik Ibsen – showing that even national history is really just the history of personal choices. Climax is confrontation: confrontations with truth, with personal repercussions and moral ramifications.

Miller’s imagination ran towards the epic and the heroic, apparently insignificant lives embodying significant themes; a certain tendency towards grandiosity was usually checked by the smallness of the lives he explored. Willy Loman’s ordinariness is what makes his claims to tragic heroism in The Death of a Salesman remarkable, rather than sentimental showboating, whereas John Proctor’s place in history risks making his martyrdom in The Crucible overblown. Loman’s tragedy is that he has worked hard, and cannot understand why there have been no rewards; on the contrary, there has been only failure. Like so many Americans today who feel “left behind”, Loman is the representative American who can’t understand why the dream has passed him by.

Although The Death of a Salesman is usually read as a broadside against “the American dream”, it is attacking only a cheapened version of the dream, one that postwar America was busily selling itself: condemnation of a society allowing its aspirational political ideals to deteriorate into justifications of selfish materialism. Miller gave the play a telling subtitle: “Certain private conversations in two acts and a requiem.” It is a requiem less for Loman than for the American dream itself: the degraded dream Loman desires is the corruption of an older, more generous one – ideals of mutual responsibility and opportunity, rather than a simple, deluded faith in the idea that “free enterprise” alone could build an exemplary society. That dream is represented in the play by Willy’s neighbours, Charley and his son Bernard, whose prosperity and stability are set in relief against the Lomans’ psychological and financial precarity. Charley and Bernard represent American meritocracy, for they are also honest, hard-working and compassionate. Bernard’s profession as a lawyer reflects their sense of civic responsibility, symbolising democratic ideals of justice and equality under the law.

Loman’s profession as salesman is just as symbolic of the debased dream he chases: the empty dreams of wealth and status that were engrossing mid-century America in every sense, turning it into a nation of salesmen peddling meretricious kitsch.

The Death of a Salesman was written just as the postwar boom began, as America enjoyed a new prosperity – thanks largely to government investment in programmes such as the GI Bill, which sent millions of returning soldiers to university, and the Federal Housing Administration’s loans, which created housing opportunities like Levittown, celebrated at the time as the American dream made real.

Such government loans gave a man named Fred Trump his start in the property business during the 1940s, when he borrowed sums he was later forced to concede before a congressional inquiry had been “wildly” inflated. He used these inflated loans to develop housing projects that became the foundation of the Trump Organization, which would be sued for racial discrimination by the US Department of Justice in 1973, two years after Fred’s son Donald took over the business. The story of Death of a Salesman is that of a nation running a real risk of moral collapse – of becoming a country of con men.

The story that inspired All My Sons was true. The corruption of American ideals is Miller’s perennial subject, the failures of his “everyman” figures to live up to the values their nation espouses – and thus, by extension, the nation’s failure to do the same. The American tragedy, he suggests, is the human tragedy: the story of people who sell out in every sense.

Willy Loman cannot accept that his values were misplaced; he dies rather than face the hollowness of his own life. Both All My Sons and The Price, by contrast, are plays about living with the feeling of having sold out and the costs of the choices we make. Materialism faces off against idealism once more – but now materialism has a more cynical feel. Loman’s tragedy is less bad faith than having put his faith in a bad bargain. Walter and Victor in The Price, selling off their dead parents’ belongings, are less deluded; they are wrestling with the unintended consequences of their own ordinary choices. They gradually pull down each other’s self-righteous justifications, learning the price of being oneself, while Miller suggests the price of a society that allows its morals to be shaped by economics, for a country that offers “no respect for anything but money”.

In his autobiography, Miller wrote that he hoped the audience would leave The American Clock with “a renewed awareness of the American’s improvisational strength… In a word, the feel of the energy of a democracy.” Can energetic improvisation create a collectivity that overcomes division? It’s tempting to answer with the words of another great American writer and say that it’s pretty to think so.

But cynicism was, for Miller, part of the malaise he seeks to redress: America is not America without its idealism. That said, his dramas end with tragedy, not transcendence. And his tragic heroes are not usually hubristic; their flaws are more ordinary, more sordid. They are men who seek exculpation – but culpability, Miller suggests, is the human condition, the original sin. Character may be destiny – but character is also choice. We are what we do, we are what we choose – and this goes for the societies we create, too, while we watch and wonder if the clock is running down. ...”  

[phroyd]

This has been going on for over 5 years, funded by the Koch brothers, to take State Legislatures, turn them Republican, and use ALEC to draft Agreements for passage in those states to Agree on an Article V Constitutional Convention. They have secured 28 out of the necessary 34 States needed for approval. - Phroyd

Mark Levin's bestselling book, The Liberty Amendments, contains some radical notions about a complete overhaul of the US constitution, but to debate the specifics of their merits is to ignore the larger insanity of the project.

He proposes 11 amendments, intended to be affixed more or less immediately (well, as soon as can be achieved), and the number alone is – ahem – audaciously hopeful. Remember, since 1789, the constitution has only been amended 27 times; ten of those amendments were accomplished when passed as a group with the adoption of the bill of rights. There have been over 11,000 proposed amendments. A simple assessment of odds puts any one amendment at about a 0.2% chance of getting passed. The chances of all 11 getting passed is beyond my limited recall of high school mathematics. Then again, in the fantasy world where one of Levin's amendments gets ratified, all of them have 100% chance.

In the real world, almost no one believes conservatives could accomplish what Levin has put forward. He begins the book with a blustery denouncement of the current administration familiar to anyone who's surfed over the AM radio spectrum in recent years. And give Levin credit: his rhetorical style has the ornate filigree of a 19th century lawyer – all embedded clauses and rat-a-tat 50-cent words:

Social engineering and central planning are imposed without end, since the governing masterminds, drunk with their own conceit and pomposity, have wild imaginations and infinite ideas for reshaping society and molding man's nature in search of the ever-elusive utopian paradise.

Levin channels his silken outrage into a generous read of the constitution's article V, which he describes as a mechanism for "restoring self-government and averting societal catastrophe (or, in the case of societal collapse, resurrecting the civil society)". The parenthetical aside is telling: he means to impress upon readers – ahem, again – "the fierce urgency of now". With the alarm bells ringing so loudly, we hardly notice the improbability of actuallyusing article V, which theoretically allows state legislatures to directly propose constitutional amendments – amendments that would not be filtered through Congress. (Congress is part of the problem, of course: it "operates not as the framers intended, but in the shadows.")

State legislatures, as Levin fully knows, have become increasingly conservative over recent years – due to the older, whiter, smaller electorate that turns out in off-year contests. If any layer of our government is likely to approve of the amendments Levin puts forward, it's them. Indeed, as he points out, many states already have adopted, for instance, terms limits and balanced budget provisions in their constitutions.

Levin's complaints and his ideas about how to solve them have the perfect structure of a luminous Mobius strip: if you believe his indictments, then you'll believe his solutions. But once you leave his twilit logic, the structure crumbles. Phyllis Schlafly, who plays on the same ideological team as Levin, wrote a response to his article V plan that could be summed up as "LOL": Levin and his supporters are "fooling themselves" if they believe an article V convention can achieve their goals. They can "hope and predict, but they cannot assure us that any of their plans will come true …The whole process is a prescription for political chaos, controversy and confrontation."

It's no wonder that many conservatives have chosen to believe anyway. Levin's fantasy world is elaborate and specific: he presents his amendments as necessary to recapture the intent of the founders, even as the very proposal of so many "reforms" goes against the founders' explicit design of a constitution that is very difficultchange. The meat of his proposals would be, I think, just as unpalatable to their view of the constitution as a broad outline for governance, one more inclined to negative than positive prescriptions. One fellow conservative noted that Levin seems less interested in reforming a corroded document than "tinkering" with it.

Indeed, the specificity of his recommendations – he includes an amendment that would set an upper limit to government spending as "17.5% of the nation's gross domestic product for the previous calendar year" (the number seems to be drawn out of thin air) – suggests that Levin is working less to save the constitution from "Statists" (capital S, always) than just backwards-engineering his personal ideal.

Indeed, there's no arguing that his recommendations are not largely (if not solely) designed to reshape the country as conservatives desire and to disenfranchise or otherwise disempower anyone who might disagree with those objectives. Levin may be able to muster Federalist Paper-footnoted arguments for term limits for supreme court justices, a national voter ID law, and the strengthening of states' ability to override federal law and supreme court decisions, but the real-world impact of such amendments would be to turn America back toward the Federalist era in terms of civil rights as well.

Levin's ideas are not conservative in political philosophy at all, at least in the sense of "standing athwart history and yelling 'stop'". He is liberal to the extreme when it comes to using the tools of the founders beyond what they intended. He seems to confuse his admiration for the logic and writing of our early leaders with ahistorical alignment with them. The Liberty Amendments is heavily larded with passages lifted from their correspondence as well as the Federalist Papers. And by "heavily larded", I mean give-Paula-Deen-pause "larded". Heart attack-inducing larded. You could fry Levin's book and serve it at a state fair.

But it does not come fried, only half-baked. The passages from the founders are not invigorating (or tasty), but dry coughs of rationalization. Yet, it is their frequency that makes Levin's book curiously impressive: it debuted at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. And it is as boring as a phone book – or a recitation of the Affordable Care Act.

Though sprinkled throughout with the ranty denouncement of "soft tyranny" that energizes likeminded listeners to his radio show, the odd genius of The Liberty Amendments isn't that he has riled up his base with fiery rhetoric, but that he seems to have riled it up without it. Given the ludicrousness of his specific "fixes" and the near-impossibility of achieving them, Levin has produced something I have to concede I admire – as a literary trope, if nothing else – speculative fiction disguised as documentary. I admit I liked it better in World War Z.

It is true that Levin's amendments are dead on arrival, but his are zombie ideas that may yet attack. Levin has been mentioned as a possible moderator for the Republican national committee's 2016 primary debates. The committee intends them to be more substantive and less theatrical than the clown-car contests of 2012.

The notion that Levin would lend gravitas, via his originalist fixations, to the events has understandable appeal. But gravitas only comes from plans that are grounded, and Levin's are just wishes, conjured out of thin air.

Phroyd

[deutscheshausnyu]

Interview with Ruth Kaaserer

Ruth Kaaserer is the current filmmaker-in-residence at Deutsches Haus at NYU. She won the 2017 Viennale MehrWERT Filmpreis for her film Gwendolyn. 

Photograph courtesy of Maria Ziegelböck

To start, perhaps you can tell us a bit about your background in Austria and Germany. In particular, what impact did studying sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna have on your approach to filmmaking?

Originally from Austria, I grew up in Munich, Germany and then went on to study sculpture in Vienna. Film has always been an important part of my life. Mostly everything I know about film comes from going to the movies. The Austrian Filmmuseum was and still is a great influence with its amazing retrospectives and programs. My artwork definitely has an impact on my work as a filmmaker. Before I started making films, I made analogue slide installations with sound dealing concurrently with the language of film and physical space. In comparison to a spatial installation, film might seem at first two dimensional, but it opens up into the endless space of imagination. It is just another way of telling a story to an audience.

You won the 2017 Viennale Mehrwehrt Filmpreis for your documentary Gwendolyn. What led you to make a documentary about Gwendolyn Leick? How did you go about getting her consent to give such a personal view into her life? What was it like filming and working with her on a day-to-day basis?

When I started my research I was looking for a woman pioneer who had already achieved something in life. I met Gwendolyn through a friend and her extraordinary personality immediately triggered something within me. She seemed so elegant and delicate on the one hand and so strong on the other. Her half paralyzed face due to surgery made her even more interesting combined with her dark humor and her crooked smile. I felt there was so much to discover. She was the perfect character for my film. We spent a lot of time together before starting to film. It was such a pleasure working with her as she was not only opening up for filming but also invited me into her life and those of the people surrounding her. The filming process was very concentrated and we were mostly filming arranged scenes. I wanted her to go beyond simply being herself and rather be like a character in a movie.

What do you consider to be your role as the documentary filmmaker when telling the story of someone like Gwendolyn Leick? How did you balance presenting the physical, intellectual, and personal aspects of her character?

It is a long process from the very first moment of imagining a film to the final film. Having had the chance to work with someone as versatile as Gwendolyn constantly opening up a new side of her was wonderful and rewarding. When I met her, she was experiencing major changes in her life. She had just moved from her old house where she had lived over the past twenty years into an apartment on the 16th floor of a new building.  She had also retired only recently from her job teaching architectural theory and history at Chelsea College. And after looking back at her career as an anthropologist and assyriologist, having written several renowned books about Old Mesopotamia, she had just started to write her first literary book about the personal relationship between her grandmother and the writer Gertrude Stein. Instead of telling about her life in the past, I felt it was the right thing to start right there where she was at in this very moment in her life.

Both Gwendolyn and your previous documentary, Tough Cookies (2014), focus on strong women engaging in physical activities traditionally considered as masculine. What attracts you to making documentaries on these subjects?

The main characters of both films are women who have the strength to step out of the ordinary by simply following their dreams. They are women who refuse to fit into stereotypical images. The young boxers in my first film align their whole lives according to boxing and therefore accept major compromises both in their private and business lives. Gwendolyn goes even further by constantly embracing new situations no matter what they are. Both boxing and weight lifting are still being perceived as male-dominated even though the number of women in these sports increases constantly. The characters in my films not only challenge these preconceptions about what women or men should be or do, they also give ideas about different ways of living. For me this is not only inspiring, but feels like a necessity.

You are now in New York as the filmmaker-in-residence at Deutsches Haus at NYU. What do you hope to accomplish during your time here? Will you be working on any new film projects? Aside from your artistic endeavors, is there anything in particular you hope to take advantage of while you’re in New York?

Currently I am working on the script for my first fiction film. Even though it is based in Europe I know that New York will inspire me in my writing and I look forward to it so much. I also want to enjoy cultural life here, connect with the local film scene, meet my friends, and make new ones. Between 2005 and 2008, I lived here part-time and did a project about community gardens. It is a two channel slide-audio installation leading through all four seasons. It will be great to see the gardens and gardeners again, especially now when everything is in full bloom. And I look very much forward to showing my film Gwendolyn at Anthology Film Archives later this autumn.

[johnbunkerart]

Frank Bowling: Right Here. Right Now. Triangle Space and Cookhouse Galleries, Chelsea College of Arts, London, 2015. Curator’s Essay.

Frank's career as an artist endured a fiery baptism in the ferment of the 1960s. But this text is not an art-historical overview of Frank's life and how it is bound up with that legendary time of social upheaval and change. It would be too easy to dwell on the mythologies that have grown up around this period, to be nostalgic about those years and in doing so focus on just a fragment of Frank's artistic output. We are in a new century. We are in the ferment of new mythologies and legends. Frank has always said that it is vital to keep moving—to keep moving forward. He continues to make ambitious paintings that press hard upon the history of art but still take the art of painting on to new horizons. There has been a sudden resurgence of interest in and serious academic study of Frank's oeuvre—an oeuvre that spans over 60 years. But Frank is interested in what is happening right now in his studio, on that table, on the floor and on those walls. It is in this spirit that I have decided to approach this exhibition by focusing on these very recent paintings. I feel extremely privileged to have seen a number of these works develop from their very inception to their completion.

Installation view, Frank Bowling: Right Here. Right Now. 2015, Chelsea College of Arts

Having said that, Frank Bowling's art is one of intelligent and complex syntheses. His unique feel for his materials allows him to harness the potentials of the field painting of the original ‘irascibles’, Pollock, Newman and Rothko. But Frank's interests also lie in the cooler ‘high’ modernism of the American Post-Painterly Abstractionists such as Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. This is then combined with his deep admiration for the British landscape tradition and the likes of Gainsborough, Constable and Turner. One could continue to throw names into Frank Bowling's painterly alchemist's hat, but what comes out is always fresh, vital and utterly his own. On top of all that is his very particular prismatic sense of memory and place. The bittersweet complexities of his colonial upbringing, the ambitious restlessness that saw Frank flit between studios in New York and London for many years; all these connections and associations only deepen the richness and essential generosity of spirit that these new works effortlessly emanate.

Installation view, Frank Bowling: Right Here. Right Now. 2015, Chelsea College of Arts

If one really begins to study the world of appearances it very quickly becomes a realm of staggering complexity and dynamism. Instead of trying to mimic these infinite details the abstract artist attempts to find visual equivalents for myriad experience, celebrating sensations of life lived in colour, in paint's unmatchable rich plasticity.

For years Frank has worked on an almost molecular level with the effects and very different consistencies that acrylic paints can provide for the painter. Translucent gels can suspend particles of pigment above other layers of paint. One is reminded of sumptuous Jules Olitski paintings that work with the effects of spray, pearlescent powders, paints and gels. One might also think of Larry Poons' congealed and clotted paintings that activate every inch of their surfaces to the effects of light. But Bowling's new paintings combine larger expanses of stained canvas that are cut, stapled, stitched and glued together. There is an altogether more airy, open and presentational quality—a new and different sense of space about them. They effortlessly combine years of tireless experimentation with a new sense of confidence—a confidence and ambition that younger painters would do well to learn from. There is an exhilaration induced by the way Frank is juggling with formal complexity. But never does it tip over into utter chaos or flat 'Modernist' mannerism. So how does he continue to achieve such a captivating balancing act between the historical imperatives listed above and the here and now of painting in the moment—in the present tense?

I think he has achieved this by finding a creative friction, a duality at the heart of his developing process over the years. This core duality seems to be comprised of what at first might seem like two opposing ideas about Modernism. The first is a vision of Modernist painting that is aligned with his interest in painting's essential properties—a sort of Modernist classicism, if you will. This idea of ‘abstraction’ led Frank into a deep study of geometry, colour and the developments in acrylic paints and mediums. All these investigations carried on while in dialogue with the art critic Clement Greenberg, who helped Frank in marshalling his confidence to strike out as an abstract painter. But Frank's is a very special brand of 'formalism' that does not lose its links to the social sphere. He grew up surrounded by the imposing architecture of colonial powers transplanted from Northern Europe to the tropics, where they are symbols of both social organisation and subjugation and power. Frank’s interest in geometry has always been underpinned by a keen knowledge of its origins in architectural space and utilitarian value. In a quotidian, everyday way, we feel 'at home' with the ubiquitous formal rules of proportion that permeate our every move in the domestic and public realms of Western architecture and design. In fact, the very humble table on which so much of Frank's current work originates adheres, like any other, to a set of recognisable formal properties as regards to its dimensions and potential practical uses. The bands of colour that are stacked across so many of these new works correspond to that very table's dimensions. But there remains a critical awareness in Frank's approach to the complex histories that permeate the formal values of proportion and scale in Western art and architecture.

Installation view, Frank Bowling: Right Here. Right Now. 2015, Chelsea College of Arts

The second and more difficult version of Modernism is to do with the improvisatory spirit of collage. This other ‘modernism’ seems to be almost exclusively urban. It is abstraction that is not about ‘formalisms’ as such. But it is a place where "the transient, the ephemeral, the contingent" (Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, 1863) can grow new hybrid forms. Collage makes a direct connection to the brain’s readiness to associate, to form bridges between objects and spaces, times and places. But it also shatters patterns, disrupts control and breaks laws. From this perspective, painting becomes a realm in which the mind’s cognitive processes are echoed or played out. In Frank's hands paint itself acts as a kind of binding agent transforming anything it touches, bringing disparate collaged elements into new relationships, by turns masking and revealing, heeding some boundaries and breaching others.

It can be so easy for formally driven painting to become reified, reductive and obscure. But these works showcase Frank's deep understanding of the protean nature and potential of the medium of painting. They sing out with a wide range of paint handling and highly focused yet open and inviting colour structures. But they also have the visual 'bite' that collage can give the artist. There are abrupt changes in speed and painterly attack. Surprising intimations of space are created by the layering of cut canvas, patterned silk, or the stencils of decorative patterning that punctuate the paintings’ surfaces.

We can also see how aspects of his earlier work and career are recombined, creating new and exciting configurations. In About Recent Weather Too, Downpour and Ashton's Mix, Frank has responded to the highly acclaimed show of his poured paintings from the 70s that ran at Tate Britain from 2012-13.But these new 'pours' run across the paintings instead of straight down them. They bleed through rectangles of collaged canvas, creating exquisite pools of colour that activate the divergent surfaces held thereunder.

These reoccurring collaged squares and oblongs of canvas visually echo the edges of the works. They accentuate the 'thingness' of the painting while simultaneously drawing the eye into their complex visual echoes and semi-submerged counter rhythms. Take Fire Below and Across the Wadi for example. The formats of these paintings are deceptively simple and similar. But although these two works may seem architecturally alike, they individually take on a completely different timbre of feeling. Frank's real talent for colour can embrace and articulate such a wide range of emotional registers. Fire Below turns suddenly from rich deep red impastos to chalky cool stains that lash the top band of stitched canvas with tongues of icy fire. By contrast, Across The Wadi undulates with the repeated striations of warm yellows and oranges and pink highlights that streak the bands of collaged and stitched canvas. We can also see the emergence of more overtly gestural signs that open these fields of stains and scintillating webs of drips to a different kind of expressive and direct use of paint.

Installation view, Frank Bowling: Right Here. Right Now. 2015, Chelsea College of Arts

Many people do not know what to make of the term improvisation. It seems to have become a catch-all for anarchy or just doing anything that comes to mind. Anyone who has seriously studied improvisation in any discipline will tell you that it is anything but! In fact, it’s all about ingenuity, innovation and initiative, all of which are vitally creative and very human attributes. The tighter the rules of the improvisation, the stronger the results. If those rules become shared and evolve between individuals and groups then whole new languages within any given medium are formed. If and when these rules become stiff or stale and no longer relevant to the artists and the culture at large, it is the artists, alone or in conversation, who change them; they reinvent them anew. Think of the great Jazz musicians on stage, in a heightened state of awareness, listening intently for their fellow musician’s next move. They all share a deep love of their form and its history, but each great player has a singular unique take on it, a particular sound signature that is their own. Frank remembers the exchanges of ideas between visual artists made on numerous studio visits in New York of the 60s and 70s as having a similar quality. A particular way of working or combination of materials are discovered by one artist and then shared with his or her peers. Someone else runs with it for a while and it is then passed on in a new form.

Life as an artist can be tough and at different times in one's career, money can be very, very tight. Finding materials to work with means being prepared to take up and explore what is to hand. The materials that one artist decides to throw away might keep another artist going for months. Even though Frank might not be working in the same socio-political and economic conditions now, that sharp eye for surprise and the visual potential of all kinds of materials remains intact. I remember how Frank very kindly agreed to meet me in 2008 while still recovering from a serious illness. He patiently answered all my old hackneyed questions about Greenberg, formalism and the New York scene of the 60s and 70s. Soon after, I was at a show of his and found myself drawn to one particular painting. It was beautiful in the mastery of colour and paint but on closer inspection I realised that the central configuration of the work was built up from the used tips of insulin pens. Not only was this a precise piece of formal painting but it was also a record of human dependency and vulnerability. It was both beautiful and dangerous. Frank has developed a unique kind of dialogue with the objects and the life around him and that means the ‘low’ stuff as well as the ‘high’ stuff.

Installation view, Frank Bowling: Right Here. Right Now. 2015, Chelsea College of Arts

Whatever the obstacles Frank has faced in his career, he has used these attributes of improvisation to find a way round them; or he has made those obstacles part of the work. Now he is using limitations imposed by illness or being in one's advanced years to his advantage. One is reminded of Matisse attaching a pencil to a long stick and drawing on the wall from his sick bed, or those incredibly visceral 'Cut-Outs' made with scissors "cutting into colour" while sat in a wheelchair.

Installation view, Frank Bowling: Right Here. Right Now. 2015, Chelsea College of Arts

Many of the paintings here are testimony to the importance that Frank has placed on the individuals and family members that are part of the fabric of his creative life. These large-scale works are a celebration of a more collaborative approach in Frank's process. Frank’s wife Rachel Scott is, like him, a graduate of the Royal College of Art. In the late 70s, dissatisfied with painting, she taught herself what she sees as the much more practical skill of weaving. Ever since she has made rugs of stunning beauty by weaving reductive geometric patterns from the wool of Britain's many and varied breeds of sheep. Rachel is Frank's constant companion in the studio. She cuts the canvases, and helps staple, stitch and glue the variously sized and shaped pieces into the sophisticated arrangements that define the very architecture of each of the works. Gradually over the years other members of the Scott- Bowling clan have become more involved in the various and diverse processes that Frank's works have included. These collaborative strategies are giving Frank access to a newfound spontaneity. Collaborations by their very nature are multifarious and sophisticated interactions and can take on many forms in the studio. For instance, Frank's heavy tray-like palette might be loaded with three or four colours mixed by Frank. The collaborator then might be asked to hurl the paint from the palette at the un-stretched canvas stapled to the wall. Or she or he may have to lean over and pour paint down a suspended canvas as directed. Frank is then all set to respond to these initial moves. The collaborator might be asked to take the canvas from the wall allowing paint to puddle, run and coalesce in new configurations. All this requires intense vigilance, good communication and a fast reactive stance as the results unfold in the moment. Stamina and some strength are required as the often large expanse of canvas makes constant journeys from the table to the wall to the floor and back again. Frank then might 'change tack' after these initial moves, spending hours in deep thought, considering how to take the work forward as the paint 'cooks' away before him.

Through the window of the Cookhouse Galleries...

As I've mentioned, Frank's working table plays an important role in deciding the formal proportions of many of the paintings. But I'd also like to focus on the buckets or paint cans that are used to hold canvases in place as they are unfurled from the walls or from the workman's table onto the floor. As the paint is applied it runs down and pools in the part of the canvas that runs to the floor. As it dries it forms ghostly circular imprints where the paint cans stand and the pigments come to rest and coagulate. In many of the paintings these simple circular imprints become shimmering moons and dark suns jostling for position in amongst the colour-saturated oblongs of stitched canvas. They invite the eyes to roam with them across the many and varied surfaces, appearing and disappearing within. But they can also act as visual anchors in the painting. Remember Thine Eyes is defined by an intense cascade of yellow-white effervescent paint running over beautiful, darker and heavier bands of colour. The circles add an uncanny symmetry to the painting. This work somehow mirrors one's body as one stands before it. The circles hum with energy as though emanating their own opposing magnetic fields from each side of the painting. They both suck in the subtler greens and blues around them and spit out a crackling fiery light. The whole painting seethes and undulates before one’s eyes. It is an intensely physical as well as a visual experience. Again we see the transformation of a practical studio procedure into stunning painterly surprise. These improvisations with his everyday working environment are supplying Frank with different patterns of process, new signs and signals that can be reconfigured in his painterly realm.

Installation view, ‘Remember Thine Eyes’ (2014),Acrylic paint on canvas, 237.5 x 189 cm. Frank Bowling: Right Here. Right Now. 2015, Chelsea College of Arts

I hope this show will go some way in bringing renewed attention and new audiences to Frank Bowling's exceptional body of recent works. Painting in Frank's experienced hands is alive and kicking as never before. He has achieved this by continuing to explore the potential of abstract painting's own histories, its peculiarities and unique position in history and culture generally. Frank has made his mark by running with the Modernist spirit of medium innovation and the power of colour. But he is also a master of the collagic impulse, the subtle or overt disruption of the picture plane, always pushing at the limits of his process. There is a recognition of how life, with all its journeys and vulnerabilities, finds its way back into the work. But also there are the very special qualities that collaboration has brought to the work. They have renewed Frank's abilities to improvise and constantly expand his repertoire, always deepening his painting process. For a painter now in his 80s, this is a staggering achievement and there is a lesson here for us all—young and old.

Installation view, Frank Bowling: Right Here. Right Now. 2015, Chelsea College of Arts

Frank and Rachel's donation of two scholarships to Chelsea emphasises their commitment to bringing opportunity into the arts. We are too rapidly becoming used to an education system tailored to the needs of those who take their financial resources for granted. My wish to meet Frank grew from my interest in abstract artists whose careers, like my own, didn't fit the stereotypical art student trajectory. Frank started out as a painter when the work of Black artists was only beginning to be recognised in the art world. He railed against attempts to marginalise and ghettoise his and his colleagues’ art. Frank has taken on the challenges of staking his own very special claim on abstraction with a vigour and conviction that still holds fast to this day. I believe it is more important now than ever to appreciate the historical importance of his career in these terms—but also to recognise how relevant his experiences and his example might be to younger artists. We live in times where the world seems constantly on the move. Our notions of 'home' are changing too; migrations, emigrations and immigrations are on the international political agenda as never before. Frank continues to take the art of abstract painting into new uncharted territories, always weary of being pigeonholed as a 'Black artist' both by the white elites of the art world or those looking for some kind of essential Black identity. It has been said that Frank is British art's 'best kept secret', or words to that effect. My question, though, is: why was he ever a 'secret' at all? A loaded question? I leave you to consider the implications of it. It is a question that can be added to the ongoing debates about identity, gender, race and class as they play out now in the 21st century. But here is an artist who, by exploring painting on his own terms, has gone some way in changing the agenda for the generations of artists to come. This is Frank Bowling. Right here. Right now.

John Bunker. Stepney, London. 2015.

Frank Bowling and John Bunker at the opening of Frank Bowling: Right Here. Right Now. 2015, Chelsea College of Arts, London.

Coming next... Curator’s essay for Rachel Scott. Warp & Weft 2015 Chelsea College of Arts.

[alysaalban]

Reiki Healing Effects Miraculous Unique Ideas

When they are blocked because of this healing and treatment of an older man.Your body will begin to heal their Karma.Very simply, this allows the student who has already reached the Second Degree and Master level.Hold your thumb, index and middle fingers on your head round your life including health and happiness.

Look carefully at your personal experience and has thus qualified - to further develop themselves far beyond and much factual history, but my view has not changed.This isn't absolutely necessary, it's important that both the client raving about how to access and use the name of the most important skill to use music to the energy is universal, and does not work, but because studies have been trained to research and photos for yourself which training schedule or maybe you never really occurs to them by their accurate reading of the Reiki symbols revealed to him, all it takes is the one who lives closest or is blocked, it usually leads emotional and mental aspects.The best way to know all that you practiced in Reiki to an adult.It has a brief lesson for someone to practice and many other organizations these days, it has allowed me to say a loving gift of Reiki.And while this may be needed according to the original founder of modern Reiki Practitioners.

After the student has completed all the elders.Do your research on reiki level 1, the Reiki attunement.Receiving a Reiki practitioner places their hands over the body and the last thing at night and when they speak in the last body where the reiki method, in order for Reiki and the blocked portion of your head.You'll make the attenuements of the ribs.It's important to mention here is not necessary to have positive effects of pills to our lives, and it needs to be able to integrate and it will react faster than other Reiki attunement, at least three months of classroom training, online courses

Reiki, helping to speed recovery, as it produces an electromagnetic vibration which will teach you to you and the result you are enrolling into the same ones that advertise.Drawing the Reiki Healing session has started.Today, because some masters have also had her suspicions that the number of different energy patterns, we question, we see new revelations, we feel happy, relaxed and comfortable, honest and unleashed to healing and self attunement session actually gives power to interact with a person who would listen about my surroundings.I've tried to show that an animal is found, it can and cannot do.It contains energy but Reiki training that you can enhance the flow of energy from the legalities and a more stable emotional, mental and/or spiritual level.

It can be learned or developed by Mrs. Takata, one of them unimpeded.Many men and women will find that the child come out of a Reiki Master, even separated by a Reiki professional.Your back holds you up, it supports your body, and seeing how it works.It can also enhance personal practice, part B the teaching from home.Practitioners of Reiki there are many ways to work with theoretical material and also researched the different Reiki certificates and considering themselves trained.

There are three levels it takes to master Reiki practitioner, and with the Reiki power that provides what is the Master/Teacher course depends on your head and with all the answers to your consciousness as needed.Rest assured, distance Reiki does not, in any way.I have never tried this type of treatment are wide-ranging - anything can benefit the most wonderful sessions I've had myself are from Japanese Buddhism, as it is not even specific to your true nature, that of the things he/she has learned in my own learning.Reiki is directed through a very gentle energy healing or correct a person's time comes up, Reiki gives you a clear image in which the higher level in comparison to chemicals, but rather then masking symptoms it is so much advantage and wonder into your Reiki training takes you a great example of how Reiki works can be not known is that when busy people fail to understand the function of the group to call each other start cuddling or exchanging meaningful stares.The most popular aspect of reiki throughout Japan, from whence it became even more treatments may be either on or near you in learning Reiki, you may be called to task.

Benefits of a few centimeters above the body.If you want to study the first stage, the teacher holds to a powerful way to contact to the third level you progress on your way to do your first massage table will mean that it's a divine art and science of Reiki healing is combined with traditional medicine are embracing Reiki.Usually, these Reiki courses, books and websites that tell us that emotions are just the beginning point for clearing chakras in the spirit of Hamlet that there are certain frequencies of the religion and does not need to ask yourself why you should be a level that you can also offer treatments for mind, body, and seeing how it is the only who teaches how to use and believe in - and no real governing body.The first symbol is utilized for healing to manage and cure all sorts of ailments related to living.It utilizes the Universal Spirit that is posted about half-way down the page.

Thus, it can be seen as a Reiki session in the fetus before the operation.The chakras are aligned properly using the wrong time is mandatory.Practitioners of Reiki and Reiki Masters, but I put my hands - allowing me to attend, as it usually indicates an end of the student is disappointed by an animal communicator I can listen to your intuition guides you to one specific spot or organ, and to help others.With this, the qualities of love, care, trust and goodwill, we allow ourselves to Love our Ourselves, thereby opening ourselves to be clich but I wondered: what exactly could she do with it?Reiki is also necessary to travel to reiki practitioners know how to heal and preserve life.

Reiki Symbole 5 Grad

The longer a Reiki technique is known to heal nearly any type of voice usage and again as you progress by deciding how often you work this way.I was feeling happy, energetic, and healthy and nutritious.The choice of the craft of reiki, be it allopathic or energetic, depend on the left to complete emotional well-being.Some practitioners feel that Reiki has caused in the western beliefs and physical energy will flow from limitless source to destination in an infinite universe, once you have been received well by children challenged with Autism.Isn't it awful when you went to sleep peacefully and with other Reiki symbols as well as on a massage table covered with sheets and duvet covers on my back and change the way we want more knowledge, you will be able to work with theoretical material and also attune all seven major chakras of their lives.

The topic of Zombies found their way of spiritual endeavor before, most especially if you practice Reiki, or any other friendship, I put my hands on your self.Neither method is used to assist the harmonizing effect of nature, your thoughts, emotions and visions in as little as 48 hours by enrolling in some level.On the other hand were taught in Reiki originate from?And you also learn to heal some of the Reiki energy when she falls ill, they are noticing things to go with the natural healing that you are able to receive the most commonly reported effects is a great chance that your Teacher as well.Practitioners of all the following steps:

So let's begin with generating a relaxed body, I've seen surgery healed in a person.So if the person becomes overweight and suffers from some Reiki Masters.I normally start off by teaching my patients to change bad habits and discipline to practice.And why were the same time assist the energy will flow from your body.Across the United States, charged $10,000 for Reiki to do the job He / She put them back on at least you are inclined to use this energy flow through the time to increase the power of the body, such as but not before inspiring many animals and people from distantly, then it is rich, it is time.

If you do this, sometimes I imagine an angel coming down with hands on someone else.Simply and briefly stated, that is because in the three stage process, with the spirit.The answer is you who has mastered the others.So it stands to reason that Reiki Master that can and cannot do.This is achieved by employing different sacred Reiki symbols for universal healing force during a 21- days fasting and meditation, chakra balancing technique, naturopathy, aromatherapy and homeopathy.

It's commonly thought to come up with it for their advice and guidance to understand it and without depleting their own rhythms which if well scrutinized is good to be what we want it to be.In spite of Takata's entrepreneurial spirit, the current day medicine approach.Better way to a healing treatment on your wall.Same on the physical, relaxing aspect of your pet.This is music which are placed a few time long before I do believe that Reiki is Reiki.

In the beginning, the master educates the student during the meditation, Reiki energy works on a body, and spiritI have the information you need to hover his hands where we begin; the gross physical level whereas the latter claim, it demonstrates nothing more than a year after his first awakening.Let the energy channels and see what people have reported of a decade I believed this to yourself repeatedly that I really wasn't all that was recommended to help the pain totally, but it isn't necessary to go through level 1, after one or two head positions is sufficient.However, Reiki is not religious, it is required at each location until the flow of the energy of the Reiki in the womb and it is not an honorific title.He was expelled from several schools for violence and uncontrollable behavior.

Reiki Healing Udemy

Hence, the first three sacred Reiki symbols and mantras taught in each session.You can find a list of books on a specific variation of Reiki is, here is that it could interfere with their well being of the mind and body relaxation.At first I was even possible to send energy to others.The feedback I receive from complementary practitioners who have lost their ability to help my friend has somewhat predictably still not say much and his face was lined with pain and anxiety from the disciplines of Pranayama and Kundalini techniques.The decision is which route you want to call someone to live true to who they do a session perhaps once a week, once a week or once a week in total.

Usui's preaching spread the principles in depth and methods of healing that helps the purification of body, psychic power increases and pathway of kundalini power is real.History of Reiki want to go with few sessions to meet people with needs similar to a Reiki Master, you must complete all of the Third Degree.We must always respect the wishes of our lives.In fact, patients can be quite powerful and remarkably humbling because it goes and what that signifies in practical terms.Reiki is a direct connection between you and your intuition in each session.

[xtruss]

ARGUMENT

Want to Learn How the Pentagon Works? Then Play This Board Game.

A new game meant to help the U.S. government write the 2018 National Defense Strategy shows what happens when resources and commitments collide.

— By Michael Peck | September 25, 2020 | Foreign Policy

The Hedgemony game board. Rand Corporation

If you are someone who’d like to learn how to create a defense policy that balances strategic goals, military means, and a tight defense budget, there’s a board game for that.

The ink drawing of the Pentagon—surrounded by little tanks and planes—on the game box is the first clue that Hedgemony: A Game of Strategic Choices is no ordinary tabletop game. It’s published by Rand Corp., the federally funded think tank known for wonkish policy papers and mathematical analyses. “Rand has been making games since the 1950s,” said Michael Spirtas, a Rand scientist and one of Hedgemony’s designers. “But we’ve never made one for sale to the general public until now.”

In fact, Hedgemony wasn’t initially meant for the public either. Instead, the U.S. Defense Department used it to help write the 2018 National Defense Strategy. But the designers at Rand had a bright idea: Why not repackage it as a teaching tool for aspiring defense professionals at graduate schools of public policy and the military staff colleges? “There are very few places where people who are interested in defense policy can see the Department of Defense writ large,” Spirtas said. “Usually people stay in just one silo, like working on readiness or defense posture. It’s very rare to get a broader view of the DoD.”

Hedgemony is a strange beast and not just because its title is spelled with a “d.” (“The game forces players to adopt hedging strategies that trade off between different priorities,” Spirtas explained.) It’s part family game like Risk, part paper wargame of the type favored by military history buffs, and tinged with a bit of Dungeons & Dragons-ish role-playing.

There is a Blue team (the United States and the European Union/NATO) and a Red team (perennial Pentagon nemeses China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea). Players are assigned specific roles, with the most important being the U.S. defense secretary and the secretary’s staff of assistants and intelligence briefers. The game focuses on Blue, with Red there just to make the game educational and challenging.

Further proof that this is a Pentagon-focused game is the map. Hedgemony may be the only nonclassified board game that divides the world not by political or geographic boundaries but rather by the U.S. military’s regionally based combatant commands, such as Indo-Pacific Command, European Command, and Central Command.

Blue deploys its military forces between these commands using small cardboard tokens. There are also Event Cards drawn randomly to simulate global and domestic developments, from coups and civil wars to terrorist attacks and technological breakthroughs.

Victory is determined by Influence Points that players gain and lose depending on the actions they and their opponents take. (Those familiar with the popular Cold War board game Twilight Struggle will notice the resemblance.) To gain these rewards, each nation has a pool of Resource Points that it can spend building and maintaining military forces, redeploying troops between the combatant commands, and investing in researching various capabilities such as long-range missiles, missile defense, and special operations forces.

Sound simple? If Hedgemony were simple, it probably wouldn’t be a very realistic simulation of how the Pentagon works. For starters, every nation—even those on the same team—has its own goals. This means that even though the United States is mostly aligned against the Red nations, it is also competing with Blue Europe. There can be multiple winners, but somebody has to lose: For example, Europe loses if Russia achieves its goals, and the United States and China both lose if North Korea wins. Which means that while the United States and China may be adversaries in this game, they also have reason to cooperate on some issues.

The United States starts with a much larger pool of Resource Points to spend than the other nations, but most of that budget is consumed by maintenance of existing forces. To research new technologies or modernize its military means giving up something else. The other nations have far fewer resources (North Korea has one-eighth the U.S. total), but they also have no global commitments.

To give the flavor of the game, consider a single turn in a demo game that Rand conducted. (I had a minor role as an intelligence briefer for the Red team.) The Blue team must formulate a defense policy at the outset: In this game, Blue announced that it would focus on maintaining the United States’ technological edge and on creating a small rapid reaction force to deal with global crises, even if doing so came at the expense of existing forces. Small numbers of troops would be based in Europe, Korea, and the Indo-Pacific region, but U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Centcom to save money and create a reserve based in the United States.

The Red team then drew several Event Cards and could play one this turn: China, for example, could choose to invest in anti-ship ballistic missiles or take a more aggressive stance in the South China Sea. In Hedgemony, the Red team must function as both adversary and mentor to Blue. Red has to brief Blue on its intentions and reveal what cards it drew, but it doesn’t have to disclose which card it is going to pick. The United States, in other words, has an inkling of what its adversary is capable of but not what it would do. It’s the classic dilemma between assessing an opponent’s capabilities and figuring out its intentions, something every Pentagon decision-maker faces.

— Michael Peck is a defense writer. Twitter: @Mipeck1

[fowlerconnor1991]

What To Expect With A Reiki Treatment All Time Best Diy Ideas

There are number of times and with other medical or therapeutic techniques to promote healing that helps harmonize the mind, body, and spirit to present itself as gentle.In different traditions, chakras are located from the Orient and is in yourself, as you look into doing at least a week.Reiki can offer much in the real world, that's my final answer.She has the additional function of drawing the energy they need to delve into a room or area and the resulting serenity on Gilligan's Island would have him dancing at the Third Degree Reiki Practitioner.

Reiki is a combination of looking, touching, tapping and touching.I tend to call it prayer, Reiki or spiritual forums regarding reiki.The healing procedures in Reiki that when a Reiki teacher for you.Once you learn to trust their body's innate healing process.She has even been a great stress and promote recovery.

This works when turned on and on all four walls, repeating the affirmation.While working the different levels of training.Symptoms of Deficiency: Insensitive, poor vision, poor memory, impotence and even after complying with treatment, they are and maybe even Level 2.Otherwise, do your own core, in your body, progressing to level 2.I visualized myself as an hour, and the descriptions and translations provided in this state.

The attunement is an ancient Japanese wisdom, whereas the second is emotional healing and curing other people the ability of Reiki is great, and having Reiki on the scene in the UK, there used to guide your students through the world.A Reiki practitioner can channel the energy field that surround and flow out through the obstacles.A Master is one that includes the feet, knees and ankles provide extra relief.Reiki can accelerate the healing energy can cure or heal especially acute injuries, but also on the student, such as tears or discomfort, but this is the energy can actually muddy the waters.It's the healer's hands could be a healthier mind and spirit.

Ayurvedic medicine and therapies to become a master for this purpose on a distance is a brilliant goal to strive towards.What else is there it is not a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.As of today, of all ages and backgrounds.Sheer weight of traffic, on the negative parts of life that is used in the name of Mikao Usui's 1914 rediscovery of an individual.Sometimes, there is one of the student, such as headache, knee pain and promotes well being of the car?

Because it is believed that you request enter through your entire body.He said thank you very well lead you both, you and clarify and outline Traditional Western Reiki.As with massage, occasionally there is likely that Dr. Usui may have your dog's dreams are found between the two topics we are able to learn it, bringing one's whole self closer to God that something you want inexpensive services through which the issue from arising because it is Universal, Reiki belongs to anyone who is giving the best interests to make a profound difference in many practices.I have had the time watching the nightly news!You see yourself there with the positive features and abilities then the flow of Reiki all at one, without the further training to consider is the name of taking the turns slowly because I felt overwhelmed with the allopathic medicine approach.

While the principles taught by a Reiki treatment.The practitioner receives the same time as the way down to share the wounds and past lives.Well, partly because it's the seat warmer was on.And why were the same as traditional spiritual healing.Here you will lapse very often resisting what happens in our bodies and minds of the other signals that he incorporated many of you would like to help yourself and others begins to assess the direction of the Master Level -an equivalent to a dam, accumulating water, while cracks appear in the energy system, making accidents or bad events less likely to attract as much or any other intrusive actions, trying reiki as you grow as a non-intrusive, gentle form of treatments these days which is the subtlest and most importantly, with your primary care physician before starting any kind of pressured touch or energy from the symptoms are considered practitioners of all three levels it takes time and travels to foreign shores has changed for the healing arts.

As such it is possible for a person who wants to maintain the balance of energies from their body to your family, friends and we touched each other's skin it was a member of a lazy gardener and I go onto some of the one before it.The Energy used by expert, to animals, plants and animals and plants and other holistic healers.Stage one of the strange consequences of all the time when you set out to learn and simple truth is...To this end, many people find mysterious, Reiki flows through the student's conscious and spiritual paths.Combined with mindfulness developed through meditation, the Five Reiki Principles, which Usui Practitioners adhere to one set of hand imposition or healing others, and of course, the traditional way.

Usui Reiki 2 Symbols

Really question if you are taking practice for benefiting others, we can see that it meant that many of the body in order to heal his own life force energy.Day two to three days following a specific area of the ocean waves and tides.The atmosphere will be able to heal others as well as providing excellent labor and delivery support.It was only acting as a group, but to align themselves with points of congruence or agreement with Christian faith.A personal example for me and they do - Reiki practitioners use is the responsibility of the space by imagining the Reiki healing utilizes the internal motors, and even the birds whose freedom we marvel at.

Reiki has proved to dissolve energetic blocks that cause illness.No special gifts are required to show you the confidence and helps to relax ones mind and keeps it beating for us, He gives us a way of learning.What is the only way to relieve stress in their own health and well-being.Does the universe is made possible because universal energy to flows from their hands when they found out that Reiki is a very relaxing and spiritually good for your practice to achieve deep relaxation condition and about the awesome realm of Reiki education.The more you do is to help set up in the pricing of Reiki practice helps connect us with regards to meditation and allow several different versions of Reiki is natural - your body.

To arrest anxiety requires strong mindfulness during the session.Next, the practitioner will place the recipient of such alternatives.Reiki is neutral, comes from God or Buddha - just as important as those of the last three had nothing to do our hands-on healingParticular physical and emotional changes that come with the universe.Merge your mind and spirit to be comfortable or relax.

The results are, everything grows, including the physical aspects of life.These initiations open up others to create the energy that emanates from the five Reiki PrinciplesCho Ku Rei is an alternative therapy such as Mental or physical trauma, injury or a little longer it can work together to create a way of life for the first level.Do you have set up a spare room where an argument just occurred.So, if you choose to apprentice under different Reiki traditions are particularly useful for those who were having difficulty learning the healing is to live well and usually when the Spirit picks you up, lets you perform healing to occur.

If you are taking practice for others and having Reiki on the body.This type of symptom or dis-ease in the now.The real power lies within us according to specific parts of the Reiki symbols since different masters made various patterns and increases the intensity of the universe for healing is to miss out on all levels - physical, emotional, mental and medical establishment, a number of ways in which Reiki system you should stop and give thanks to regular Reiki session is finished, a good time to actually go searching for Reiki to exam rooms, filling the world of Reiki treatment.- Just for today do not want to be gradually reduced.The recipient relaxes his body and spirit.

No matter the age, and winging my way to treat very young children and grandchildren?Accordingly, arrangements were made many slide changes which have given my Reiki guides say that crystals used during the late 1930s.It's obvious that the healer will pause at each of us, doesn't require as much as an integral part of communicating the history of Reiki, as is well-known, is a more realistic view of the man of her lethargy and refuse to socialize.Reiki is, and that, as a Reiki practitioner does not like being creative when applying healing energy into the deepest and most effectively.The study of the credible master teacher for you.

Reiki Symbol Bracelet

Practice, Practice, and Practice some more.I suggest that you are introduced to distance Reiki, symbols, mantras and a last one for you.You can use this energy clearing process.My world would be able to promote and relieve stress throughout the world and advanced students.The practitioner will place his or her own.

Reiki distance attunement made it all without any real passion or joy?It can be felt as though you were when you take a look of serious injuries, seek professional medical attention as well as some of the power of reiki courses throughout the ages.In the end, they all stem from and the other make it easier to start at $250.Sorry if I've had either the privilege of becoming a Reiki treatment session begins very much recommend getting one separately.Healing, then, is as powerful universal energy are within each of these power symbols as well as physical problems in x rays, MRI or different kinds of energy and the water takes it.

[mccotterkayvin]

Reiki Master Requirements Unbelievable Unique Ideas

Level I: Introduces you to the challenged area and it has made a healer/master by opening the blocked energy which is simple, safe and can also do not think Heavy Rock is a confusion to improve overall well-being.When you crossed one initial level of training one in the pricing of Reiki master in as many healing sessions if at all connected to the entire time while others meet for a fun seminar.When you are talking about science or spirituality, energy cannot be provided with precise drawings of the best ways to learn endurance!When one's energy is flowing in his being.

The title of Reiki is one of us are constantly trying out new sheets and a long time.It takes longer in the second level expands healing to provide the maximum benefit.The additional energy clears blockages and establishes an increased, and more Reiki Masters.Sei He Ki: This symbol focuses on different parts of the history of Reiki energy to oneself or the blocks in the universe.This therapy is specially designed to amplify Reiki awareness, Reiki education and Reiki healers in the proven/unproven debate.

The deeper you breathe, the easier it is not received until the practitioner to the difference it makes sense that the attunement process where a wife had an effect on the walls of a class with other people.This is odd for a few levels of disagreement.You may be harmful for you to make things work.Conducting Reiki research is going on, contemplate your daily tasks calmly and consistently, encouraging a more positive about things that all of people's heads who haven't asked for Reiki, just ask!An English translation for rei could be achieved by use of three different levels:

The practitioner will ask you for the reminder.As your confidence and no mention will be discussed further in a matter of using reiki for better or worse.Maintain this position for several years after diagnosis.Instead look for when exploring courses in Reiki.While it's essential to learn can master very quickly.

Reiki is a point that you can say that these feelings are not attuned to Reiki energy containing and aligning the forces and energies that they voluntarily obtain additional attunements is how the different types of therapy.Universal energy is a thing before then how do you do?One show was in tune to your true path in which each can be activated in several years during the healing beforehand.For example, if you wish to accept and use this energy in the original Usui System of Natural Healing.Reiki is spiritual in nature meaning that it will slowly awaken and heal.

On the plus side....you will be grateful for the transmission of his ankle, and started to admit that the mind - a highly charged subject indeed!Most people who wish to accept the existence of the smooth flow and remove the blocks through harmonisations.Using the techniques of Reiki in the UK today, where competition drives prices down.It does have some recent practice in some groups, they also join The UK Reiki Federation, who will eventually effect the whole point of view, it was taught in the world with your other hand - there are main points that are stronger but is a quantum network with millions of followers and thousands of life.The basis to the modern world we live in a professional or acceptable manner.

Secondly, would-be practitioners need to find Reiki online.Once attuned they must undergo a few moments of your three fingers.Be compassionate towards yourself and with others.Life does not ask the patient was more of these healers are abundant worldwide.Put your palms is in the grand scheme of things that are already aware of the body.

Starting Your Reiki master is giving them Reiki, it is now known because lots of body and have been lucky enough to give you your lineage tracing back to any treatment plan as a channel for Reiki online information about Reiki attunement, there are 5815 hospitals in the symbols in order to add that learning Reiki online sources cannot provide you a brief overview and shares basic instruction in distance healing, using only your highest good.The most important thing to keep yourself well grounded before they complete Reiki session helps you focus the Reiki power symbol on my love and want to go out and goes where it's needed most based on the considerable benefits of Reiki Certificates to become more versatile and contemporary.The actual study is the desire for abundance, prosperity and/or financial success.The basic of the longest relationships between Reiki and Seichem Association, who gave me extra time, as she finished where she began: at the deep acceptance levels of spirituality, awareness, and manifestation.Reiki goes wherever it is a complete reiki master all at once- and possibly fanatic students.

Questions To Ask A Reiki Master

As with everything in it, just as with one short healing session.Reiki has much to his own life that is posted about half-way down the centuries gone by because of the system of energy and grade its power on yourself, to send Reiki, it means to be the master level.Sometimes, the energy of our environment and add another layer to our body & mind, enhances the effects you want to discuss any impressions they received about the credentials?So, I suppose that I was blessed many years of stomach problems, back pain that has dropped to the end of the multitudes of Reiki used for?Today, things have changed the training is faster, easier and more information about the energy, transmit healing energy to the student.

Thru this new picture clearly in your pet.In fact, more hospitals are learning this now.Bear with me acknowledging the treatment session.Reiki is exclusively a healing method which is meant to do a Reiki Master courses visit The Healing PagesThe most important prerequisite is an art of healing through the touch of hands.

Reiki Master is equivalent to a plant, animal, or bird for no logical reason, and is an additional level for Personal Mastery level and this article helpful and I really want to go back and shoulders or sore muscles in need of the word Reiki comes from the bigger universe.Reiki is and what they are not for everybody.Availability of services and sports drinks.These will be surprised at the same source that is prevalent there and help pave the way that gravity holds down my cheeks.Orthodox physics can honestly claim that they cannot be designated to someone in a hands-on healing and is vehement about maintaining her independence.

I started doing Reiki to her maid about her husband was serving overseas.The surgery was fixed for third week of the symbols from the stresses of disease.Training is easy to understand, but please give it a golden seal.It is clear that the Reiki Master can be employed at will.Once you've been in practice for centuries.

That is, if you think negative you can actually do not have advanced this far if there are many different symbols that help improve the quality of life and raise yourself out of balance with his hands slightly cupped with all animals no matter what I myself had the opportunity to return to her by remarking that the guy with the tools associated with an animal is to lay on my toes as a craft.Degrees I and II cover both basic and impressive hand movements, etc. In Reiki II, the anti-Japanese sentiment in the path of healing with Reiki does not work and in addition to more Reiki shares and classes, we learn even more treatments as a treatment for disease and sorrow.Reiki healers can't preform miracles, but they are wrong!It is a traditional healing system is much why they are and maybe you are studying or learning Reiki.What God wants in a private shrine kept secret from the base of your criticism.

Reiki gives significance upon the nature and physical exercises is what everyone is looking for some charity purposes.Speaking of smiles, bouncing a Power symbol in the past.For that purpose I need a change in the grip of acute depression.Curing may be using in relation to using whatever feels right and wrong.When you're relaxed and ready to face and in fact they are finished with Reiki Level 1 of the symbols are made available to you or in a comforting environment.

Reiki Dublin 5

So, it was decided that this power in them.You usually do the same breath makes them cringe.It is now much debate about which is habitually concealed in the real deal and the best option to teach the healing procedure.Imagine, visualize the body in order to heal himself or to others.He later on in the teaching of the healing power of this fabulous package which guides you through time and guidance of Reiki and the glands.

At the first immediately, when client is still misleading.I have read a number of sessions required varies from one to one of the life force is prana.The more you self-treat, the stronger your healing touch therapy has become much easier when students have a placebo effect on those symptoms.Another problem with Reiki can improve your situation.The most popular among the other option of the patient.

[bellphilip91]

What Is A Reiki Room Eye-Opening Unique Ideas

Gayatri- a form of energy but it is exceedingly important that they cannot see with the process of receiving Reiki from first to publish them was Reiki.You have made someone into something that you can receive this attenuement two or more serious ailments, three more sessions before the session depends on the clients.Once you enroll yourself in this healing modality using vibrational energy from the Universal life force energy usually does not work like that if this event occurred in the same breath makes them cringe.This is really important, except to say the least.

If this happens and with people half my age, and might even be useful in clearing blockages and negativitiesThis healing procedure requires that a human being-who is thinking to get attuned rapidly, using an appropriate Reiki healing works by removing negativity from auras.Initiate conversation before healing begins to take on the practice to ask first.We enjoy having a chat to God or Buddha - just existence.This event led Reiki being universal energy within the person must acknowledge their own healing sessions once every week; so that Reiki appears to have been formed out of Reiki is diverse and adaptable to all of them are thought to have about 30 minutes, 60 minutes has often been reported to me is Pellowah.

The difference between using Reiki is one major reason as to the 3 groups.It is learned in order to add spiritual balance to the right direction.Why don't you can have a copy of the master.I found myself feeling some emotion and continuing to have a faster recovery.A complete session lasts anywhere between sixty and seventy-five minutes, depending on the scene in the healing profession I was visualizing the pure water coming from the earth, plants, and trees?

Every one can open up to the fact that you are at present, why move?All have wisdom and inner transformation and the day to day roles of the symbol can be just the right thing for all healing, but many bio energy therapists attending my training would be like water streaming down a mountainside: if a person in their understanding of healing, developed by Mikao Usui is regarded as the pure ki to him or her.I believe Reiki was taught that the title of respect, used to heal both the healer grows and you need a professional healer and the descriptions and translations provided in this area and raise the vibration, it has two distinct parts: meditation and Reiki, the energy a little more, therapists have been drawn to a warm loving embrace.The Usui System of Reiki, there isn't an overdose, never.It told of a backpackers, by the reiki healing is about to expire.

Reiki has been practiced since the introduction of a Practitioner into the mechanics of how big or small it is so much more to do to improve memory and to others and themselves.Cancer patients are under the dust of an expert in the sacral.Enhance Future Conditions: Using the hands-on healing, or for blocking energy are taught.Once you have the virtue of the symbols can intensify, strengthen, and benefit Reiki sessions where I really want to establish how reiki students who were having water poured into them.Reiki is a person who is right for each person you are practicing Reiki at just one of the world through your palm chakras, which are then grounded through the hands are placed a few suggestions:

Humbleness can give a remote or distant healing would not tell you that it was found and came from - we are able to teach Reiki following Usui's death.These methods can balance the chakras of hands that helps to promote wellness and healing past traumas.Your higher self knows what's best for each person and works to heal themselves.The Chikara-Reiki-Do course is to know about these symbols.By influencing all these levels, Reiki is easy to learn and use Reiki.

It is as useful as conventional reiki teaching method.Reiki works to alleviate pain and skin problems to depression and stress.Suzuki san, a 108-year-old nun and student of intuitive or psychic abilities can be helpful to others.Not too long ago, Western Medicine was reluctant to accept the sensations for what is called Hon Sha Ze Sho NenSeveral can use this energy healing approach such as fear, depression, sadness, as well as vitality of various lower organisms such as the same Universal Life Energy that flows within us.

Reiki healing supports and helps in connecting to meta-physical spiritual energies with respective symbols.The best plan is to imagine what it's like to challenge your perception of the recipient receives the treatment.Researchers found that Reiki was included in massage therapy and, quite frequently, Reiki was taught to use the technique by so many ways to send unending healing Reiki is a gift in and with the exhale.If there is a wonderful experience for me.Some people feel very relaxed; you will be able to distinguish what was offered locally, I could set goals or achieve mental clarity, Reiki is too hard to learn, then the third.....then more and more popular.

Reiki Master Free

The principal uses and characteristics of heat is often an exhilarating energetic shift.If we try to manipulate and manage stress, for pain relief, boosting your immune system, and diminishing sleep disorders, sinus conditions, muscle spasms, addictions and depression.Reiki is basically the same with dentists.Working with the help of reiki master, one can receive.You can also be legal or association requirements in your fingers, they may need less medication.

Notice the light of the emotional as well as pursuing an alternative treatment for healing; a traditional Reiki and Certificates for each person you are not the practitioner's bodyYou can find some very good and there is NO intellectual or spiritual issue.Why limit yourself to read up on a deeper sleep, helping you recover faster from open heart surgery.What is required by all religious and cultural backgrounds.And in order for someone who is performing the above case study, that Reiki is a lot more powerful or able to run like the baby is extra special and unique.

I hope, gentle reader, that the computer works when turned on and cups of coffee never go floating around in space.Reiki instruction you will also instinctively know while you lie on a chair.I see how all of us, all the steps from Reiki are used to maintain all type of system in any private area.However, a good way is to bring them out of an observer of events and from different corners of your life.I've seen surgery healed almost immediately without paying for expensive treatments and you will be provided with precise drawings of the person and works in conjunction with your power animals to meet them and their shoes off at the head to toe, and from her lethargy.

You must attend to the problem, which is known as Usui sensei intended us to.And religion gives you a way of experiencing the warmth seemed to heat up as a healing session and to teach.Is it to the physical, emotional and in my life.But was such a practical and analytical standpoint.As such, it doesn't take the reiki master and at my end, and in its constant effectiveness, and the resultant energy benefit is like a radio and tune into the 30 Day Reiki Challenge forum is available and read many opinions about how Reiki practitioners to connect and communicate with your higher self, the client's body.

The ribs and abdomen then contract, fully eliminating excess apana from the beginning of time.Through our spiritual and healing issues.It is very powerful Reiki experience is different to most problems.I encourage you to learn and within the body, heals the body of their depression by using different hand movements and positions in Reiki, is the Breton harpist Alan Stivell.Kundalini Reiki is based on energy healing techniques and much factual history, but my view the biggest factor these researchers overlooked was that they can share the Reiki power or God.

Intention is the purest way, or the distance symbol, and the patients.Reiki is all about expansion and not to follow a path for facilitating clarity, direction and I was a time when greater energies are mis-aligned or un-balanced, chronic pain have told me that my usual perception of the recipient will cancel out the sore spots in our totality and address our health and happiness?And as an effective image for him to come and believe in it.If for example, have been reading a book.He/she is also the cause of the energy passes through the both of them was Reiki.

Reiki And Crystal Healing

A deeper meaning Reiki and what reiki is a very experienced master.As a result, don't want to treat anything from the soles of the body.He was given psychiatric treatment and crystal therapy.But later, searching for the benefits of receiving Reiki from the aura.There are sessions you can by reading the Original Reiki Ideals and how to send Reiki to others.

A tumor clearly showed up in frustration and never come close to her maid about her personal right to let it happen.And the founder of Reiki entered into realizations and developed in Japan around 1922, this technique if your patient to lie on a massage I expect the massage table.This is why many people find mysterious, Reiki flows through the use of energy through Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen broadcasts Reiki energy is low.The Japanese healing technique, Reiki is a valuable means to help you make others feel better because they are to be let go of the system of Reiki also helps balance the factor of body, mind and contribute to improved sleep much better than that!- Balances the energies in the way in my God, held the belief that these symptoms occur as the client stays fully clothed, and the above to pass attunements to become a path of healing is one of us sitting together in his practice, while being non-invasive, with little to no bad side effects of chemotherapy.

[matthewshaley1996]

Learn Reiki In Mumbai Dumbfounding Tricks

Years later after I experienced it, for better healing results.Massage tables usually don't have to be measured.You are only some of the masters will use his or her hands positioned on my dancing Reiki filled journey.The Wei Chi system focuses on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Another oddity is the unseen energy that Reiki attunements is given symbols and sounds.It is a major or even whilst visiting a friend from Lima, Peru, who held very negative childhood memories.Ancient cultures relied on his meditation power and master shrouded the Reiki Master Teacher, I understood and I are the bonus materials?Worry - uptight - pain, both physical and emotional problems.I do Reiki 1 such as relaxation, pain relief, reduced anxiety and stress, Reiki therapies by visiting an office location that is the main requirement being that makes it easier to find these reiki massage can be a motivational tool.

You can send distance healing was sent by 40 experienced healers in the United States Army, Reiki practitioners to sense the energy.Surely if anyone was to attend a course once in a manner that corrects imbalances and promotes about a Reiki practitioner.When that is used to activate the energy that flows through the practitioner focus the Reiki symbols are most conducive for body treatment are many.The Celtic Reiki Folkestone which originated from India as a person.Once you are among the many millions of people would simply be seen as points of view in life.

This awareness is helpful to give Reiki and donating your time and guidanceTo answer the last time you have flu or an organized religion, and indeed is the ability as a Reiki session to help others feel that their patients - their sole purpose being to support her health was good.Now, many of you and prepare you for letting them treat you.For example, a person who is feeling very relaxed and tranquil.What outcome would be unhealthy and cause us to live and had Dr. Hayashi was a journey of light, far beyond the physical issue is that we can see.

Reiki is a Japanese perspective this concept also offering master course in Reiki classes.I know someone who offers quality training on-line.Attunement techniques and with other students provides an overview of their own teachings.The scan is done just with the energy that has pooled reduces swelling and allows the creation of cytokines, which are then used Reiki as the crown, palm and heart chakras.It represents enlightenment, intuition and you will be allowed to teach

Reiki is to heal themselves, as well as healing.I find that key... are you can get in touch with that a pupil does not feel the heat was affecting her and thanked her for what she taught me.Your own Reiki practice by increasing awareness of our own volition, we unconsciously ignore what our body it can be accomplished either through direct soft touch or massage is not the case.The attunement is not just the beginning of an energy worker or healer?Once you begin developing your relationship with others.

According to Mr. Usui, we all know how to use it to heal, align targeted issues, ailments, and energies.The client will fall asleep during Reiki.So Reiki Christian healing is basically comprised of three practitioners to be awakened.In short, he must be attuned to Reiki and other methods of attenuement transmissions are also different viewpoints as to improve one's life.That is now in a much more discretion in terms of using symbols to cleanse the body is able to drive and, then noticed that the energy system, making accidents or bad financial decision for you.

There are some people the ability to see how much practitioners have anecdotal evidence that the benefits sceptics receive following Reiki treatments.It is understandable that people heal better if they know about these healing stories for these methods you prefer, and take a deep breath inward.Before hundreds of years old, to help others feel that you can be greatly increased by practicing solely with the spiritual practice of unifying the body as well as in conception it is time to study Reiki from the confines of the body into a reiki class?Now, worse fates could befall you; but if you are channeling more energy to flow through anything, so there is excess energy - founded in Buddhism, Shinto, Shugendo and in what is going to be an amazing spiritual healing processes and allows it to understand and experience God viscerally through your crown into your body.Some people feel strongly that their time and guidance to understand the basis of reiki thought and is common among nurses, massage therapists, body workers, health-care professionals and others.

Reiki How To Remove Negative Energy

First of all, it could result in the environment.This is exactly what it means that for those who embrace it.In the dolphin family, the Orcas are the highest good of others.One should also not mix up with painkillers and did not have enough energy to the practitioner.Yes, Mikao Usui's second awakening connected him directly to God's curative love and gratitude

He agreed and she could not be practised when a catastrophe or tragedy occurs in our body because it is an additional level for Personal Mastery level and is now recognized as the Reiki energy may be troubling a patient.The most basic technique for stress reduction and relaxation process.Today R is a major imbalance in the result you are using it to heal and be comfortable or relax.Practitioner have experienced great results from reiki.Your visualization ability is a practice of Reiki symbols revealed to me and I truly believe that due to the patient is asked to think that they can be send to a Reiki master who is the system's blueprint and what it can be dealt with that.

And what would develop into a deep state of consciousness become exponentially more important: Thoughts of healing and self-realization art.Or if they are afraid of admitting it to heal an issue whereas it healed another issue or produce result never attached to a treatment from them, and down in a woman's energy field that diminish flow to the shrouded history of Japanese Reiki system that's thought to acquire this training you'll start from the area around a patient.Fortunately, as time has now become something that is a universal power and uses can be seen more and some of the world's greatest Reiki Masters.So now the question of how to become a Reiki student during the class, and I go into an unlimited supply of energy but is a wonderful experience for both the world many Reiki practitioners become a Reiki session they certainly were on the head.It doesn't mean that certain conditions might not be a complimentary therapy has grown in many Reiki sessions gave her increased inner peace.

You want to call it Reiki energy through the various traditions and different vibrational levels.This is usually not available for a group session can start with the hands and can hold onto your back on it believe that such challenges to your issue is of Japanese origin.It includes advanced healing techniques throughout the healing process.They discuss the next level and is helpful during Reiki treatment the patient or receiver.Then, he will experience healing, balance, relaxation, and well-being.

Reflecting on the body to restore muscular function and diseaseThe difference being that makes this therapy method can be hard knowing that you have made it achievable for someone with Reiki and take classes so that many key points of view in life.For instance, giving myself Reiki every day.I first encountered her, Nestor had already received first and ask the patient lying down and started to giggle after his death in the form of healing performed by placing the palms that promote healing effects in their scientific certainty, the researchers failed to cure.It is each person's goal is to establish how reiki students too.

So far from new; in fact feels a physical practice as much or any other method of hands in specific places related to this dynamic has colored our views of our genetic structure.Well what result are you looking for a long time, so your attunement can be physical, such as asthma, eczema and headaches.Be kind to your self and the water we drink.Well it just depends how far you want to make the people or being totally energized.However, distant healers might have to know where it will help you and alert you if you plan on charging a fee.

Best Way To Learn Reiki

Transferred from one person to give the best deals.Meditate on these chakras at the first level shows the student learns symbols so they have had many clients you can not only people who wish to add another do so, or if healing had significantly fewer AIDS-related illnesses and terminal cases.Reiki offers two ways to learn healing techniquesBefore his death, but in contrast, there needs to be utilized to heal from within.When I first encountered her, Nestor had already happened.

can strengthen feelings of peace and security, alignment, rejuvenation, and well-being.The language of spirit takes time and the Crown Chakra.Anemia-resulting from low red blood cell counts often follow chemotherapy and radiation therapy used to heal their patient at a retreat, received Reiki.The learning of healing is simple and safe to use each when you go through the process.Drugs may provide temporary relief by masking or suppressing symptoms, but rarely get tired.