Exhibiting Clarity - Part Two

What does it mean to bewitch, entrance, beguile and enchant?

Is apparent witchcraft really nothing more than the ability to attract attention, maintain attention and be persuasive?

Is it no more than charisma?

Do you have much interest in answering such questions?

If so, why?

What do you know about your own persuasiveness?

Perhaps you are mostly interested in the philosophical subject of constitutionalism and possibly even enjoy exploring the history of constitutional crises.

Or perhaps you are not interested in such subjects at all.  

You may have no interest whatsoever in history and philosophy.

Perhaps you are not even investing in an intelligently kind culture of any sort.

Perhaps you think economic, social and cultural rights do not apply to anyone but yourself, though you may possibly believe they apply to people you regard as similar to yourself. 

Who are the people similar to yourself, and why are they similar?

Do you regard yourself as possessing charisma?

Do other people regard you as charismatic?

Perhaps you have a born-to-rule mentality.

Who is highborn, and what does that mean in practice?

What does it mean to be low-born, and who says so? 

What were the socioeconomic, political, geographical and cultural circumstances of your birth?

What do you know for certain about your family history over the past three centuries?

If you are a student of genealogy, why have you taken an interest in the subject?

What do you know about class consciousness and class conflict? 

How do you assess the history of social class in various societies?

What does investing in appropriately high standards mean to you in various situations?

What do you believe it means to be guilty by association?

Charisma appeals to emotion, in much the same way as a desire to continue a dynasty.

Perhaps you believe charismatic authority is inherited and/or a sign of spiritual giftedness.

Do you usually regard talents as spiritual gifts?

Were you ever regarded by anyone as an intellectually gifted child or even as a child prodigy?

What is talent other than a particular aptitude?

What is attraction but an attitude associated with interest, whether serious or playful or predatory?

How do you assess social influence and its causes? 

What, if anything, have you discovered about superficial charm and other forms of psychological manipulation?

What, if anything, have you discovered about abuses of power and how to prevent them?

How, if at all, have you explored the influence of the performing arts and/or belief-derived traditions and/or political hypocrisy on expressions of abusive power and control?

What is your attitude to traditional authority, and how do you define that authority?

What is your attitude to traditional morality, and how do you define that morality? 

How do you assess biases, including your own?

How do you assess emotions, including your own?

Perhaps the questions in this grimoire frighten you.

Perhaps the images in this grimoire frighten you.

Perhaps this grimoire angers you.

Perhaps every grimoire angers you.

Perhaps you are annoyed by everything and everyone not matching your biases, your feelings, your beliefs, your experiences, and even your thoughts, interests and talents.

But do you have any power to express yourself genuinely?

Do you often feel as though you must hide your true self?

Do you often put on an act to attract attention, possibly for economic reasons and/or emotional ones and/or artistic ones?

Do circumstances beyond your control often prevent you from living as you would prefer to live?

Do too many distractions prevent you from expressing your true talents as you would prefer to express them?

Perhaps you would prefer a life of melodrama, glamour and spectacle, or perhaps you would already live such a life and would prefer something less superficial.

Perhaps you are aware that glamour is a form of shapeshifting.

If you believe you are currently investing in importantly useful information, what do you hope the return on this investment will be, not only for yourself but beyond yourself?

How do you usually think about in-groups and out-groups?

Do you currently regard wonderful witches as part of your in-group or as part of an out-group?

Perhaps you have a satirical attitude towards the people you regard as different than yourself.  Perhaps you mainly desire to encourage their conformity to your beliefs about normality. 

Or perhaps you regard your in-group, and yourself as an individual, as lacking power.

Perhaps you have felt entirely powerless for your entire life, or only during moments of it.

Perhaps you are obsessed with stories of violent crime and/or otherwise sordid aspects of society, whether the society is your own or another, or of an earlier time.

Perhaps your idea of the sordid is mainly associated with your imagination rather than the truth.

Perhaps you mainly form opinions through your fantasies.

Perhaps you mainly hide your true beliefs, and even your true interests and emotions.

All real leaders are capable of quaternary understandings.  That is why they are consistently investing in quaternary possibilities.  They are doing so on a long-term basis, and possibly even into perpetuity.

What do you know about body language and tone of voice and style of dress as forms of shapeshifting? 

What do you know about artistic and political narratives and their influences on human behaviour?

You may be aware that the lurid has always been popular with the inadequately educated, the least mature and less intelligent sections of societies.  Yet such distastefulness has also been attractive to overly educated and/or overly privileged hypocrites.

Only adequately sensitive persons genuinely disdain the lurid. 

How do you identify depth of thought, depth of feeling and depth of character, and who or what helps you to do so?

You may be aware that a considerable number of superstitious persons are afraid to experience a quaternary level of education.  They are therefore afraid of enlightenment in both its secular and spiritual forms. 

If you have phobias, how did they arise?

If you have, or have had, enemies, what caused their hatred towards you?

If you have often been objectified, why have you been treated that way?

If you are in the habit of objectifying particular types of people, why do you do so?

When the people with most power over the use and abuse of money, including other people's money, and/or with more power over the use and abuse of land and other resources than most other people, what does that say about the future of the world?

What has your access to money and other resources, at various times of your life, indicated to you about how wealth is used and abused?

 

So many people seem to think that offering money as an expression of charitable giving is a measure of kindness when it is nothing of the sort.  It merely makes the world noisier and people less free.  It fails to account for the causes of injustices.

 

What have your experiences of socialisation taught you about yourself and social interactions?

 

What have you discovered about legal authority and the extent of corruption and incompetence? 

What have you discovered about the continuing prevalence of forced labour, in every society?

When, if ever, have you been forced to do a task you would have preferred not to do, for whatever reason?

How does your use of money encourage improvements in the world?

 

How does your abuse of money cause suffering in the world?

 

How do you distinguish between obligations and free choices?

How do you distinguish between reasonable choices and self-indulgent extravagances?

How well do you attempt to live without needing money, and how do you know?

How do you attempt to cut your expenses without reducing your health and comfort, and for what purpose?

How do you usually think about money in relation to health and comfort?

 

What do you consider to be extravagant, and why?

What do you consider to be a false economy, and why?

What do you know about depth psychology, and how do you know it?

Perhaps you are mostly interested in the entertainment value of acquiring knowledge, and experiences of the arts.

How would you describe your intellectual curiosity, and why?

How would you describe your critical thinking, and why?

How would you describe your moral development, and why? 

How do you tell the difference between ordinary people and extraordinary ones?

How do you tell the difference between good leaders and not-so-good leaders?

How do you define leadership in various contexts?

How do you assess traditions?

How do you assess non-conformity to social expectations?

How, if at all, do you express autonomy, and what gives you the power to do so?

How do you identify valuable uniqueness, and how do you define that value?

How do you prefer to acquire money, and why?

How do you prefer to spend money, and why?

How do you prefer to save money, and why?

What does investing money mean to you in terms of definitions and values?

Perhaps you believe that the acquisition of money will magically transform a situation for the better.

Perhaps you believe that your access to this grimoire will help you to transform a situation magically without money.

Who have been your role models, and why?

To whom are you a role model, and why?

How seriously do you act during that modelling assignment?

How kindly have you been investing in intelligent frugality, and where?

How effectively are you investing in elegant egalitarianism, and where? 

Perhaps you are unaware that investing in good policy does not require money, it requires the expression of real goodness, through well-informed kindness.  

What value do you place on the prerequisite enlightenment any genuine expression of well-informed kindness requires?

The cruel act unethically because they are cruel.

The stupid act unethically because they unthinkingly follow crowds and/or their own ill-informed opinions and/or their own fleeting whims and/or the vagaries of their own gullibility.

How much private property of the physical sort do you currently own, and why?

How much private property of the financial sort do you currently own, and why? 

How have you assessed the value of the property you own? 

 

If anyone has ever attempted to pay you to be cruel, how did you respond?

What do you know about corporate punishment and its victims?

What do you know about capital punishment and its victims?

What do you know about structural inequality and its victims?

Your access to this grimoire has been made possible through a mysterious power. 

What do you believe you know about that power, and how do you know it?

How are you currently investing in conservation, and where is your evidence? 

What do you prefer to conserve, and why?

How do you define capital?

What do you know about various forms of capital and capitalism, and how have you acquired that knowledge?

How much time, money and energy do you usually spend per day on investing in evidence, and why?

How do you know you are investing in good rather than greed?   

Perhaps you are mainly looking for hope or love or money or excitement or someone else to lead the way to a pleasant future for you. 

Or perhaps you are mainly seeking to acquire more power to change the world in your favour.

If you can only find meaningfulness in your life through the manipulation of other people, why do you behave so cruelly?

If that is how you usually express yourself, why are you not yet a good person?

Perhaps you regard your powers of persuasion as entertaining.

Perhaps you even regard your use of force as entertaining.

Perhaps the only way you know how to respond to your own incompetence and cruelty is through direct or indirect violence, or both.

Perhaps you believe you have a right to violate other people's rights.

What do you know about crimes against humanity?

Perhaps you have an authority bias.

Perhaps you believe a monopoly on violence encourages peace.

Perhaps you believe that such violence is a legitimate form of social control.

Perhaps you believe coercion is necessary for prosperity to arise.

You may be aware that accuracy is a necessary prerequisite for understanding the truth.

Inadequately democratic persons are not investing in enlightened philanthropy.  They are investing in expressions of egotism, even if they attempt to convince themselves otherwise.

Authentic intellectuals do not seek dominance.  They seek reasonableness. 

What do you seek?

Perhaps you are unaware that wonderful witches are authentic intellectuals.

If you enjoy violent video games, violent sports, violent news, violent films, violent interpretations of history, and even violent interpersonal relationships, why do you do so?

Perhaps you have inflicted self-harm on yourself from time to time.

Perhaps your body modifications are a sign of self-harm and self-delusion and gullibility.

Perhaps you regard society and/or government as an extension of yourself.

If you have an addiction to anything, why did you give yourself that problem?

Why did you fail to check the facts about dangers beforehand?

If you are currently drowning in debt, why did you not take notice of the depth gauge before signing up?

Why did you fail to check the facts about economic difficulties and other societal disruptions?

Perhaps you are a political reactionary.

Perhaps you become angry when asked reasonable questions.

What do you know about the biases associated with reification?

Are you sure you are investing in awareness sufficiently well?

If so, what do you know about obedience and deviance?

What do you know about patrimonialism?

What is most clear to you at present, and why? 

How do you tell whether Lady Macbeth, her husband, Hecate or the Three Witches are the most evil characters in Shakespeare's play?

How do you assess rationality in relation to morality?

How do you assess the dramatic arts?

How do you assess images associated with historical persons and events?

How do you assess images associated with fictional persons and events?

How do you distinguish between the possible and the impossible in various situations?

 

Perhaps you regard the impossible as more entertaining than the possible.

How do you invest in the mortal parts of yourself?

How do you invest in the immortal parts of yourself?

When, if ever, have you written immortal words?

When, if ever, have you created immortal worlds?

How do you prevent yourself from investing in immorality?

How do you usually express your appreciation of well-informed, kind persons who are no longer inhabiting the world of mortals?

How, for that matter, are you preparing for the moment when you will permanently enter the ethereal realm?

How do you know when it is necessary to seek advice?

How do you know the advisor(s) you seek out are trustworthy?

What are you seeking to achieve, directly and indirectly, over the next twelve months, and over the next twelve years, and why, and with whom?

How do you currently try to understand people?

When you invest time, what do you seek in return?

Why are you investing time in examining this grimoire?

When and where do you usually prefer to take a few moments to update and upgrade your qualities as an enlightened world leader?

How carefully have you been investing in purposeful reviews?

How can you be sure such reviews exhibit clarity sufficiently well?

What have you discovered about imps and angels and gamblers?

What do you know about comic opera and dramatic tragedy?

What do you know about feudalism and utopian socialism?

What do you know about Gesamtkunstwerk?

Perhaps you regard this grimoire as such a work.

Do you enjoy exploring your own mind or are you quite afraid to do so?

How do you usually assess time complexity?

How do you usually assess social complexity?

How do you usually attempt to gain a better understanding of literal and figurative angles, lines, points and spaces?

Do you know much about the constant time of the EverTime?

Are you appropriately acquainted with linearity and linear systems?

Are you quite well acquainted with the art movement known as Symbolism?

Are you quite will acquainted with French grand opera and Viennese Waltzes?

Perhaps you are familiar with the Emperor Waltz by Johann Strauss II.

Perhaps you are acquainted with that composer's operetta of 1887 called Simplicius.  You may even be familiar with the original story from the 1600s.

What is your acquaintance with the Danube Mermaid?

What do you know about The Guardian of Paradise by Franz von Stuck?

What do you know about the career of Ellen Terry and her portrayal of Lady Macbeth, and Portia and Imogen?

What do you know about the story of Hansel and Gretel and the associated opera?

What do you know about the story of Rumpelstiltskin?

What do you know about scientific socialism, class traitors, race traitors and gender traitors?

What do you know about The Langs' Fairy Books and the various interests of Andrew Lang?

What do you know about the career of Henry Jamyn Brooks?

What do you know about the Pavane and Requiem composed by Gabriel Fauré?

What do you know about the career of Oscar Wilde?

How have you assessed social inequality as expressed at various times and places, and in various ways?

What do you know about Victorian morality? 

What do you know about popular fronts and united fronts in various times and places, and their associated purposes?

What do you know about Prince Albert Victor and the gossip surrounding the Cleveland Street scandal?

What do you know about the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas?

How do you define a scandal, and from whose point of view?

What do you know about the careers of Franz Joseph I of Austria, Leopold II of Belgium, Wilhelm II of Germany and Queen Victoria?  

How do you compare relatively small-scale indiscretions with major atrocities?

What is likely to be of most interest to the mass media, in any decade?

Are you acquainted with the political activities of Élisabeth de Gramont?

Are you acquainted with the career of William Powell Frith?

Are you able to make an accurate comparison between a satirical picture and a realistic representation? 

Are you able to compare Artistic Dress with fashionable dress?

Do you know how to interpret a history painting?

Do you know much about the activities of Les XX and Octave Maus in Brussels and the associated exhibitions?

Are you acquainted with Neo-Impressionism and the controversy associated with The Can-can by
Georges Seurat?

Do you know much about the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria and/or the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II? 

Have you discovered anything interesting about the history of the French Left and the French Popular Front?

Do you know much about the career of Otto von Bismark?

Do you know much about the career of Leo XIII?

Are you acquainted with the career of his predecessor?

How do you compare late 19th century state leaders with those today?

Do you know much about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and his works, including La Toilette and La Blanchisseuse?

Have you thought much about garden parties at Buckingham Palace in the 19th century and later?

Do you know much about portraits of Queen Victoria?

Do you know much about portraits of Vincent van Gogh?

Are you acquainted with the life and work of Natalie Clifford Barney?

Perhaps you know something about Giuseppe Verdi's compositional interpretations of Shakespeare, including Otello and Falstaff, and his earlier Macbeth.

Effectiveness requires clarity of understanding, based on good evidence and accurate interpretations.

How much experience have you had in investing in social research, whether in time, money, continuity, reasonableness, responsibility, or in any other way? 

How do you tell the difference between an intended purpose and an unintended consequence? 

Are you mostly interested in investing in creativity or talking about Michelangelo and/or other creative persons?

What does investing in exploration mean to you?

What does investing in creativity mean to you?

What does investing in civility mean to you?

What does investing in structure mean to you?