Planning to Improve the Planet - Part One

You may or may not associate witches with psychopomps.

You may or may not have an obol for Charon.

What is your sympathetic nervous system currently doing, and why?

Perhaps it is urgently addressing immorality, including your own.

How have you been assessing the initial outcomes of COP26 over the past week, and for what reasons?

You may know that Australia is currently run by evil lunatics.  They are more interested in supporting profits of coal companies than in preventing the demise of life on Earth.  They must be stopped, as peacefully as possible, like all mass murderers.

What is your acquaintance with sympathetic strings, sympathetic resonance and sympathetic magic?

What is your acquaintance with the biography of Hypatia and the legend of Catherine of Alexandria?

How clearly do you distinguish between biographies and legends?

What do you know about histories associated with crazy mobs of religious nutcases, inside and outside parliaments?

What is your acquaintance with Neoplatonism and perennial philosophy?

How do you interpret stories about the sphinx?

How do you interpret stories about, and the science of, the psyche?

How do you interpret the duties of wonderful witches?

What to you know about the history of buildings made from earth?

What do you know about other objects made from earth?

What do you know about the structure of the Earth? 

What do you know about the structure of the world?

From where do you contemplate the future?

What do you know about Earthrise as an image?

What do you know about Earthrise as a  peaceful and practical political movement expressing the harmonious interplay of beauty, understanding and magnificence?

The Earthrise image depicts a moment in history, on 24 December, 1968.

How do you reflect upon that moment, and from which perspective(s)?

In which context(s) do you reflect upon any moment in history, and why?

What do you know about the casting of shadows and the casting of spells?

What do you know about removing shadows and removing spells?

How do you compare later fact and earlier fiction?

How do you distinguish between myth and reality in relation to the momentous?

How do you distinguish between myth and reality in relation to the monumental?

Perhaps you view the Earth as a tomb rather than as a cradle.

How do you reflect upon the concepts and consequences of darkness and light?

How do you interpret riddles?

How do you reflect upon pre-scientific and non-scientific views of the Earth, and the world?

Perhaps you are seeking knowledge and skills with which to improve your prescience.

But what is the point in possessing accurate prescience without the likelihood of gaining adequate political influence?

How will you compare December 2021 with December 1968? 

And how will you use this grimoire in the weeks ahead?

Knowledge of the truth breaks the spell of illusion.  Yet many people do not want their own illusion to end.  They feel they own the illusion.  They do not feel they own reality.

What do lunar phases mean to you, and why?

What does the Earth mean to you, and why?

What does the word firmament mean to you, and why?

Perhaps you think about the 1960s mainly in terms of Western popular culture.

But how have you recently been thinking about the 2060s?

How do you compare the myths of creation with the facts of destruction?

How do you interpret the Genesis creation narrative in various contexts?

How do you assess human activities in culture-related terms?

What do you know about the politics of evangelism and the politics of proselytism and the politics of scepticism and the politics of artistic practices?

Perhaps you regard the Earth mainly as a work of art, and possibly even as an incomplete work of art.

How relevant is the past in your view of the present and future?

How do you respond to the continuing politicisation of science and the continuing denial of scientific fact?

People are often afraid to question their own assumptions.  They may not even possess the intellectual, political, emotional and economic tools with which to do so.

Perhaps you posses those tools.

Perhaps you do not.

Perhaps you currently regard your knowledge of the truth to be a completed or incomplete puzzle.  But what do you do when additional information does not seem to fit within your picture of the truth?

How do you reflect upon historical ideas and historical images and historical artifacts?

How do you know when an event is historical rather than ongoing?

Who was the historical 'you' and who is the ongoing 'you' and who will be the future 'you' and how do 'you' know?

How do you compare the Earth and the Moon? 

How do you imagine the experience of orbiting the Moon?

What do you know about the orbit of the Moon around the Earth?

How does your view of the Universe compare with the views of the Neoplatonists?

What are your ontological views, and how did you acquire them?

How often do you reflect upon the fact that the Earth is a celestial object, speeding elliptically around the Sun at approximately 107,200 kilometres per hour?

How do you compare the observations recorded by members of ancient civilisations with the beliefs expressed by influentially people today?

How do you compare one image with another and another and another?

What do you know about Cosmas the Monk who journeyed from Egypt to India by sea in the 6th century AD?

What do you know about the reign of Darius the Great in Persia from 522 BCE to 486 BCE?

What do you know about the 520s BC more generally?

What do you know about the Palace of Darius at Susa?

What do you know about the Imperial Aramaic language and the history of wisdom literature?

How do you know you are urgently and effectively addressing immorality?

Perhaps you believe you are doing so with protest marches and/or protest songs, with or without the presence of television cameras.

How do you think about the soul and the spirit and the solar wind and the concept of stillness?

What do you know about fixed stars?

Would you want to navigate your way through space and back to Earth with not much more than a sextant and the stars to guide you, as was the contingency plan on Apollo 8? 

Would you want to have access to magic spells if there is a possibility they may not work as you expect them to work?

If you dream about a happy future for currently oppressed people, possibly including yourself, what do you believe will be the process of turning that dream into reality, and when and how will it begin?

If you believe the world can be improved entirely through expressions of love, how are you already addressing, and preventing, arrogance, hypocrisy and deception?

What, if any, is your preferred approach to identifying and addressing inefficiency, and for what reasons?

What do you know about the origins of various religious views about the soul? 

What do you know about mythological stories on the same topic? 

Investing in importantly useful information is necessary in order to ascertain trustworthiness and its opposite.

When, if ever, have you used an astrolabe?

When, if ever, have you sung one or more anti-war songs? 

When, if ever, have you read a bawdy, ancient Roman novel?

How do you tell whether any type of investor or adventurer is greedy or generous or somewhere in between?

How do you tell whether an individual investor, or individual investment manager, or anyone else for that matter, is excessively gullible? 

What have been your experiences of the cycles of nature?

What have been your experiences of enterprise life cycles?

What have been your experiences of political life cycles?

What do you know about advances in knowledge, advances in technology and the lack of advancement in human enlightenment?

What do you own, and why do you own it?

What do you owe, and why do you owe it?

Why do you apparently not wish to invest in better communities with the urgency the task deserves?

Perhaps you do not even wish to invest in better governments adequately.

How have you been comparing one important image with another and another? 

How do you know you are capable of accurately defining a successful state, whether the state is a mental state or a governmental state?

Where is the evidence associated with your interpretations of urgently-required reforms?

How have you been investing in improving political practices, and where, and with what level of success?

What do you know about the Latin words mundus and mundi, and how?

You may be familiar with the terms anima mundi and mappa mundi and spiritus mundi.

What does the word anima mean to you?

You may know something about the ancient Roman goddess Tellus/Terra Mater and the ancient Greek goddess Gaia and the Etruscan Cel.

What do you know about the Greek word cosmos, and how? 

Yet your services as an enlightened world leader are urgently required in the public sphere, in the public interest, and within community pursuits and in the private sphere.  They are also urgently required in the biosphere.

How, then, do you intend to become an enlightened world leader?

What is currently your preferred approach to investing in amazingly successful planning, and why?

There is still as much arrogance in the world now as there was in 1968.  There may even be much more now than there was then.

In 1960, the estimated human population on Earth was three billion.  The figure apparently reached four billion in 1974.  The estimate is for there to be eight billion in less than two years from now, but are future estimates reliable?  

With the waste and pollution and destruction and overcrowding and pandemic illnesses and chronic illnesses and structural injustices, what is the true likelihood of an improved planet Earth, and who will define, and direct, that improvement? 

Perhaps most of your attention is on making money, not improving the world. 

Perhaps you think making money improves the world.

All urgent reforms are associated with the implementation and maintenance of world peace.

What does investing in urgent reforms mean to you in practice?

Perhaps it means acknowledging and addressing injustices from one century to another and another. 

Perhaps it means acknowledging images of one sort and another and another.

Perhaps it means acknowledging cultural influences from one source to another and on towards various others, on one continent or another, and even all around the world.