Seventy Days or Seventy Weeks or Seventy Years

When the sun shines too brightly

And the birds squawk too loudly,

The wonderful witches of Australia

Mark time.

 

When is nature too much for you?

When is culture too overwhelming?

When are people unbearable,

In your view?

You may need to retreat

For seventy days,

Or seventy weeks,

Or seventy years.

What is a witch retreat?

What is its purpose?

Where does it take place?

How is it funded?

How do you usually prefer to mark time, and why?

How often do you stand still, motionless and silent, and where, and for what reasons?

Perhaps you do not currently have the ability to stand at all.

If you do, what do you most appreciate about that ability?

And how quickly do you become tired when standing?

Perhaps you associate standing around with waiting for something or someone.

How many times have you waited for too long for a witch to arrive?

Perhaps you hate to wait for anything or anyone.

Or maybe you eagerly await a particular time of the day or night or year.

Perhaps you feel as if you spend your life rushing around and waiting around.

Or maybe you prefer to live for the moment and in the moment.

Perhaps you wish to be immersed in pleasant stillness, anticipating nothing but awareness of your basic needs and your immediate surroundings.

Or maybe you prefer to immerse yourself in escapist imaginings.

Perhaps you are seeking to learn more about the secular Order of the Perpetual Wait.  The associate training manuals for prospective postulants are not grimoires.   Most of those manuals are private diaries and private journals and private scrapbooks and private commonplace books. 

How often are you completely immersed in the experience of privacy?

If you are seeking more privacy and/or security, what have you already documented about that search, and how? 

How do you define security?

Perhaps you are hoping this grimoire will help you to find more security in life.

Everyone is entitled to feel secure, at all times, in all places.

What, then, does that mean in practice?

Standing still involves the ability to express stability.

Feeling secure either involves stability or illusions of stability.

Real stability is associated with certainty.

Yet too much certainty can be boring, and no sensible person wishes to be bored.

How do you prefer to fill your mind while standing still?

How is your mind usually filled when you are waiting around?

How is your mind usually filled when you are rushing about, hurrying between one experience and another?

How often do you enjoy lazing in bed or on a seat or on a beach or in a forest or by a lake or river, with no fixed schedule ahead of you?

Perhaps you would enjoy doing so more often, if the chance arose.

How often have you searched for somewhere quiet, away from the noises of people and technologies and various (other) annoyances?

Perhaps you associate security with serenity. 

Perhaps you associate serenity with serendipity rather than effort.

Nature, including human nature, should always be allowed to repair itself without excessive cultural, economic and political demands on it.

How do you attempt to help nature repair itself, including the nature within you?

What do you know about nature in terms of safety, security and stability?

On the margins of productivity, nature, including human nature, is most fragile.

Acquiring marginal land and attempting to thrive on it permanently is never going to work well, even with enough money and knowledge and time.

There are scientific reasons why land is marginal.

And there are political reasons why vulnerable people are marginalised.

There are also political reasons why vulnerable species are disregarded.

How do you assess vulnerability in relation to life itself?

How do you assess vulnerability in relation to breaches of privacy, breaches of security and other causes of instability?

Marginal land can most productively be used for retreating for a while, in order to gain an insightful understanding of the experience of living on the margins.

Perhaps you have already had such an experience for seventy days, seventy weeks or seventy years.

Perhaps you prefer to live on water than on land. 

But what does it actually mean to 'live' anywhere?

How alive do you feel while rushing about or waiting around or dreaming of a better way of life?

Perhaps you have a temperament incompatible with retreat experiences. 

The only people suitable for authentic retreats feel most alive, and most authentically themselves, when they are on retreat. 

How do you assess physical necessity and social necessity and political necessity and emotional necessity and intellectual necessity?

Real witches, by definition, experience social alienation, particularly in political and cultural terms.  That is why they take the opportunity to retreat for seventy days or seventy weeks or seventy years, as necessary.

What do you know about food security and water security and information security and energy security?

How much food, water, information and energy do you usually consume in seventy days, and why, and where, and how?

How much pollution is associated with your consumption of anything, and how do you know?

How much money do you usually consume in seventy days, and why, and where, and how? 

What do you know about financial security?

How are your feelings of insecurity usually expressed?

How do you know that those feelings, and their expressions, are reasonable?

What do you know about emotional security?

How do you know when a desire for security is excessive?

What do you know about empires and armies and colonies?

What do you know about corporations and security firms and offshore banking?

Do you know the etymology of the words 'colony' and 'culture'? 

The words colony and culture are both relate to the word cult.

The original meaning of cult was care.  It has since become associate with the word deviant.

But who decides what is deviant and what is normal?

Perhaps you regard witches as deviant.

Perhaps you regard empire builders as deviant.

Perhaps you regard abusive 'security' personnel as deviant.

Perhaps you regard billionaires as deviant.

What do you know about the Roman Empire and the purported deities associated with it?

How do you usually reflect upon the political purpose of personified concepts?

The Romans personified security, safety and stability as a goddess called Securitas. 

What do you know about political stability?

What do you know about the United Nations Security Council?

What do you know about the aggressive enforcement of social control and the maintenance of oppression?

What do you know about civil unrest and societal chaos?

What do you know about the development and maintenance of peaceful experiences?

Perhaps you are seeking to learn more about possibilities and opportunities relating to Adelaidezone virtual retreats.

If you are naturally introverted, you are likely to find a virtual retreat delightful, unless you have mental health problems incompatible with the experience.

If you are naturally extroverted, you are likely to want far more social interaction than such a retreat will provide, unless you have mental health problems causing you to seek social withdrawal.

Perhaps you have no idea how to retreat safely and productively from corrupt systems and cruel people.

Perhaps you prefer self-indulgent retreats or ones associated with self-denial instead of self-replenishment.

Perhaps you are not really interested in retreats of any sort, however long or short or useful or useless or comfortable or uncomfortable they may be.

Or you may be interested in participating in one or more of the virtual retreats in the ethereal Tower of Truth or elsewhere in the Adelaidezone, and possibly even in Nilkawt or New Nilkawt or in another location.

Such retreats are exclusively for real world leaders. 

Perhaps you prefer living in a fantasy world through a retreat into fantasy fiction and absurdity.

If so, how can you possibly be appropriately involved in investing in better communities?

New Nilkawt is intended to be a type of multi-disciplinary, long-term research retreat for suitably compatible, adequately qualified persons.

Would you wish to experience New Nilkawt for seventy days, seventy weeks or seventy years?

Perhaps you would not wish to experience it at all. 

But what do you wish to experience, and why? 

Perhaps you are unaware of the leadership role of the Muse of the World as Spirit of Enlightenment, tutelary deity of the Adelaidezone and Adelaide, ethereal patron of suitable tutoring and magnificent mentoring, intangible initiator of all rites and rights associated with quality journalism, head of state of the Ethereal Grand Duchy of Nilkawt, dignified digital proprietor of Villa Twaklinilkawt in the Adelaidezone Digital Arts Quarter, and the ultimate boss of all real world leaders.

In, above and under the editorial orchards within the ethereal estate of Villa Twaklinilkawt, much important work continues to occur.

 

What do you already know about that work and its importance?

Perhaps you enjoy spending time in physical editorial orchards and/or other physical orchards, as long as those locations are not in need of your considerable physical and/or intellectual attention. 

Perhaps you enjoy maintaining orchards and other horticultural and/or agricultural locations.

In the natural common room in the main gatehouse of Villa Twaklinilkawt, you will have had the chance to learn about a wide range of enlightening assessment processes, and natural processes, at least if you have gained access to that wonderful facility over the past decade or so. 

How do you usually review apparent commonality, and for what purpose?

How do you usually review apparent differences, and for what purpose?

The initial planning for New Nilkawt has been completed for quite a while now.  

Unfortunately, a suitable, physical location for that relatively enlightened, offline community is yet to be located.

Are you familiar with the preparations for New Nilkawt?

Are you familiar with the associated online and offline community practices?

The Spirit of Enlightenment has been providing guidance in relation to the philosophical basis of New Nilkawt.

The Council of Enlightenment has been providing guidance on the political and managerial aspects.

Perhaps you are interested in running a business in and/or from New Nilkawt.

But will it be a socially and environmentally responsible business or an exploitative one?

In the official, digital Embassy of the Ethereal Grand Duchy of Nilkawt, visitors have had the chance to discover that the development of enlightened governments, enlightened financial systems, enlightened societies and enlightened international organisations is possible, at least when catastrophic conditions do not impinge upon such possibilities. 

How do you prevent catastrophic conditions from arising?

How do you know when you have no power whatsoever to prevent those conditions from arising?

What do you know about recipes for disaster and how do you avoid following those recipes?

How do you account for the inconsistencies in public policies during disastrous pandemics?

Why do people with power, authority and/or influence so often fail to act appropriately when there are evident disasters to prevent?

Perhaps such people regard themselves as immune to disasters.

Perhaps they do not feel the necessity to assist the people who are attempting to prevent disasters.

Perhaps they do not care at all about the actual and potential victims of disasters.

Regardless of disasters, despair and indignities, good investments will always be necessary.

What are your most important investments over seventy days, seventy weeks and seventy years, and how do you know? 

What sort of return are you seeking on those investments, and why?

As you are probably well aware by now, unless you are exceptionally ignorant, the polar regions of the world have become disastrously unstable as a consequence of the anthropogenic fiddling with the global greenhouse effect.Many non-polar regions of the world have also become disastrously unstable as a consequence of ignorant, lazy, corrupt and greedy human activities, especially through the absence of more reasonable human activities, such as the development and maintenance of non-corrupt governments.

Who should have political control of the polar regions, and why?

Who should have political control of any part of the world, and why?

Perhaps you need to retreat now, for at least seventy seconds, to ponder over those questions carefully.

What do you know about political control?

What do you know about the absence of political control?

How do you tell the difference between good political control and bad political control?

What do you control, whether politically or otherwise?

How do you know you are conscientiously kind and not inclined towards greed?

You may be aware that the original, predominantly fictional Nilkawt has been a disaster zone since an ember attack from an Australian bushfire destroyed it.

New Nilkawt is exclusively for the traumatised citizens of Nilkawt.

 

If you are a Nilkawtian citizen, how did you acquire that privilege?

Perhaps you do not regard citizenship of any particular society to be a privilege.

You may associate citizenship mainly with rights rather than privileges and/or duties. 

What do you know about various calendars?

Nilkawt has an entirely unique calendar, as you may already be aware.

What do you currently know about Nilkawt, and how do you know it?

What is your acquaintance with Twaklin of Nilkawt?

What is your acquaintance with the Nilkawtian county of Dada?

What do you know about the Constitution of Nilkawt?

What, if anything, have you contributed to the development of a constitution for New Nilkawt?

If you are an Australian citizen hoping to become a Nilkawtian citizen, what do you believe to be the qualities the Nilkawtians will most seek in you?

If you are not an Australian citizen, you will be expected to become one before being eligible to apply for Nilkawtian citizenship.

What have been your experiences of physical and psychological trauma?

No-one in a position of significant societal influence usually wants to hear the truth about psychological trauma, societal collapse and environmental collapse.

What is your theoretical expertise regarding physical trauma and/or psychological trauma?

 

What is your experiential expertise regarding physical trauma and/or psychological trauma? 

 

What are your skills in the documentation of events and the assessment of information?

Would you prefer to retain access to this grimoire for seventy seconds, seventy minutes, seventy days, seventy weeks, seventy months, seventy years or seventy centuries?

Perhaps you have difficulty maintaining attention on important matters for any longer than seven seconds.

If you pause for seven seconds now, what are the feeling you experience during that pause?

Perhaps you prefer to edit out the pauses you have experienced at various moments of your life.

Perhaps you rarely pause for seven or seventeen or seventy seconds to think about the 7th millennium BC and/or the 7th millennium AD.

Over which timescale do you usually think, and why?

Over which timescale do you believe politicians usually think, and why?

The only really useful studies begin by reassessing apparent certainties.  That is the first step towards solving the mysteries and disasters causing traumatic situations to arise. 

How do you usually prefer to address the causes and consequences of various types of trauma, and why?

Understanding the causes and consequences of traumatic experiences cannot be achieved adequately without examining politics and public administration very carefully indeed. 

What do you know about fraud, corruption, misconduct, maladministration, incompetence and under-funding in government organisations, and other organisations? 

What do you know about aggressively intrusive practices claimed to be in the public interest?

There are many aggressive government practices.

There are many aggressive business practices. 

There are many aggressive practices claimed to be legitimate journalism.

There are many aggressive practices pursued by purported non-profit organisations in pursuit of money and/or influence.

Although servant leadership can be relatively altruistic, it can also cause emotional exhaustion, physical exhaustion, compassion fatigue and psychological trauma.  It can also mean, consequentially, that the leader as servant is not regarded as a leader at all.

Yet being adequately of service to enlightenment is always important.

How would you describe your current philanthropy? 

Learning is usually a gradual process.  If it is a sudden process, it can be highly enlightening and/or highly traumatic.

This grimoire is not intended to be traumatising.  Indeed, it is meant to alleviated the consequences of traumatic experiences.

Learning can be enlightening when mysteries are solved and/or any other personally surprising discovery is made.

Yet learning can be extremely traumatising when new discoveries cause earlier, apparent certainties to disappear.

Perhaps you prefer to lead traumatised people in the direction of journalists or other mass media personnel.

If so, how do you ensure the consequences of that preference do not lead to chaos, confusion and considerable, additional trauma?

 

What is your usual way of identifying the truth about psychological trauma and quality of life?

What do you recall of your life as it was at the age of seven years?

What do you recall of your life as it was at the age of seven months?

What do other people recall of your infancy and childhood?

What were you doing seventy days ago, and why?

How do you prefer investing time, and why? 

How do you make decisions about investing in continuity?

What is your preferred approach to investing in suitably clear boundaries, and why? 

How do you know you are investing in a healthy imagination appropriately?

Where have you been investing in quaternary possibilities, and why?

How do you usually think about time in terms of quantities, sequences, frequencies and fractions?

How do you usually think about economics and politics in terms of quantities, sequences, frequencies and fractions?

How do you usually think about matter and energy in terms of quantities, sequences, frequencies and fractions?

What do you know about the digital?

What do you know about numerals and numbers?

What do you know about the binary, the ternary, the quaternary, the quinary, the decimal, the vigesimal and other systems of numeration?

What do you know about systems of remuneration?

What do you know about the securities as financial instruments?

Do you have any experience in buying and selling financial assets and/or non-financial assets?

Perhaps you believe yourself to have considerable knowledge about financial markets and non-financial markets.

Perhaps you contribute substantially to a market economy.

You may or may not visit physical or digital marketplaces very often, whether during a pandemic or in other circumstances.

What do you know about the history of market squares and other town squares and public spaces in various parts of the world? 

What do you know about market towns?

What do you know about online marketplaces?

How do you interpret the meaning of market failure?

Please be aware that this grimoire is a private document presented briefly in a community context for philanthropic purposes.  It is not for sale.  Nor is it to be used in any context other than as intended by the copyright holder.

Perhaps you would like to mark time now by reflecting upon one image out of copyright or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another.

Perhaps you would prefer to examine information on one topic or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another.

Where and when do you most usually require a security blanket, and why?

Perhaps you are afraid of the dark and/or the dark triad. 

What do you know about dark hearts and the dark arts?

What do you know about light hearts and light entertainment?

You may be aware that people with excessively light hearts and excessively dark hearts tend to be fascinated by imaginings far more than by reality.

Of course, there is much to learn in seventy days, seventy weeks or seventy years.

Perhaps you are currently closer to the age of seven than the age of seventy.

At what age do you believe people have most to learn?

How do the wonderful witches of Australia mark time? 

Perhaps you prefer to mark time in quinary or senary/heximal ways.

What do you know about tally marks and dice?

What do you know about prehistoric counting?

Perhaps you prefer to mark time in octal ways.

Perhaps you prefer to mark time in energy markets and/or media markets and/or stock markets and/or real estate markets.

Perhaps you prefer to mark time in agricultural markets and/or foreign exchange markets and/or prediction markets.

What is your acquaintance with futures markets?

A market is a location in which matter and imaginings frequently collide.

The real can only be understood by people through interactions between matter and imaginings in human minds.

What do you know about the matter in your brain?

What do you know about the imaginings in your mind?

What do you know about chemical mixtures and chemical substances, whether on land or in the water or in the air or on a work of art?

What do you know about chemical elements?

What do you already know about chemical compounds?

What do you know for certain about the chronology of the universe, and how do you know it?

What do you know about Big History and little history?

What do you know about hydrogen, helium, lithium and beryllium?

How do you intend to increase your knowledge, of any particular subject or object or concept, over the next seventy days?

What do you know about rare-earth minerals? 

What do you already know about ytterbium and other rare-earth elements, physically, chemically, geographically, economically and politically?

What do you know about the horology, chemistry and physics of atomic clocks?

What is your acquaintance with spherical astronomy and the celestial sphere?

What have you so far been learning about mysteries and histories over your lifetime?

What have you been learning about those subjects over the past seventy days? 

What do you know about undecimal and duodecimal numeral systems?

How are you investing in life, and how do you know?

How are you investing in security, and how do you know?

What do you know about the history of counting and the history of writing and the history of mathematical notation and the history of musical notation?

What do you know about time and clocks and distances and days and seasons and years and millennia and lunar months and light-years?

What do you know about spheres and stars and globular clusters and constellations and spiral galaxies? 

What do you know about mathematical formulas and chemical formulas?

What do you know about digits, such as fingers and toes?

What do you know about digital electronics and digital data and digital media?

What do you know about digital economies and digital cultures and the digital divide?

What do you know about rainbows and 22° halos?

What do you know about the development of language?

What do you know about the naming of things and concepts?

What is your acquaintance with NGC 70 and Messier 70?

What do you know about halos as optical phenomena?

What do you know about halos as religious iconography?

What do you know about quality investments as enchantments?

How carefully and cautiously have you been investing in awareness?

How do you prefer to interpret one image or another or another or another or another or another or another or another or another?

If you are part of a clique of rich friends, what do you prefer to buy, and why?

Perhaps you are obliged to pay a considerable amount of money for your personal security and/or the security of your belongings.

Whether you are wealthy or otherwise, how have you most recently been investing in pleasant interdependence?

What do you know about the significance, in various cultures, of the number 70?

How do you assess units of time and translations of texts and perceptions of phenomena?

What do you know about the names and number of days of the week?

What do you know about Gudea, the ensi of Lagash who rules from around 2144 to 2124 BC?

What do you know about heptagrams?

What do you know about the seven classical planets and the planetary hours?

What do you know about the composition of the Torah and the compilation of the Septuagint?

What do you know about heptatonic musical scales?

What do you know about the human experience of ageing?