{A Tarot Reading [continued]}[28th June 1981]

[Redbook2:186-187][19810628:2240a]{A Tarot Reading [continued]}[28^th June 1981]

19810628.2240

[continued]

Anything might have happened: at the time of writing they still apparently do not know what it was, and it is conceivable that – just as illness often holds off during activity and strikes on relaxation – had she been going to Zimbabwe the excitement and preparation would have postponed the painful symptom until she actually got there. The surgeon – the expert in the field – almost operated; it was suggested that anyone else would have, and presumably – in Zimbabwe – without her records etc.. But this is all speculation; the real connections may have been quite different, and the danger (if any) of a different kind or to a different person. It may still exist.

[The possibility cannot be discounted that the use and consequences of use of the Tarot pack in this way gave rise to the abdominal obstruction; or, of course, that there were no connections of any kind, one way or the other. See final footnote to last previous entry.]

[continues]

[PostedBlogger31012015]

{A Tarot Reading}[28th June 1981]

[Redbook2:185-186][19810628:2240]{A Tarot Reading}[28^th June 1981]

19810628.2240

I am off to Germany tomorrow, and this 'log' is overdue. I was unhappy for months about M going to Zimbabwe, but did not know why. I suppose I rationalised it: first by the political situation out there – an unsatisfactory basis – and second by L's vulnerability: why not, I suggested, leave L behind, or take L elsewhere. When she finally told me in [T] that she had booked the tickets, I was deeply concerned. As soon as I got home (she had gone out again) I took out the Tarot Pack which I had for some reason brought with me (this was on 23^rd May), and shuffled them and, following exactly the Kaplan* instructions for the Tarot Classic, laid them out, keeping in mind (across the table) 'M (and L) to Rhodesia'. I have not done this before and I do not expect to do so [again], although I suppose I may. The results were:

1 – Empress – Present position.

2 – High Priestess – Immediate influence.

3 – Chariot – Goal or Destiny.

4 – Star – Distant Past Foundation.

5 – Emperor – Recent Past Events.

6 – Fool – Future Influence.

7 – Judgment – (Questioner).

8 – Magician – (Environmental Factors).

9 – Devil – Inner Emotions.

10 – Tower – Final Result.

I stuck to the interpretation given in the pamphlet; but, as the pamphlet does not, I did not distinguish 'negative' aspects in reversed cards only but instead treated 'positive' and 'negative' as different possible manifestations of the same outcome. While this obviously can build in personal bias, it actually affects very few of the cards which appeared. In any case, I thought the actual combination which resulted to be sufficiently remarkable** to show to M. She cancelled her tickets on the next working day; and at the end of the week – Friday very early morning – suffered an abdominal obstruction which caused her great pain and landed her in hospital for more than a week.

*Stuart R. Kaplan 'Tarot Classic Instructions' – with Tarot Classic book by Muller & Cie for U.S. Games Systems Inc. <930116>

**[-- Given personal and family circumstances. This appears to be the only time the Tarot pack was used for this type of activity.  Its use for this type of activity is neither endorsed nor recommended.]

[continues]

[PostedBlogger30012015]

{A Dream-Event Connection: Abort Take-off}[20th April 1981]

[Redbook2:183-184][19810420:2230]{A Dream-Event Connection: Abort Take-off}[20^th April 1981]

19810420.2230

I hope I am not becoming blasé about it all: this one happened a week or so ago. I was talking to M a few weeks ago about her trip to Zimbabwe when I said, half-teasing, that I had dreamt I was in a crashing aircraft. Then I added that it had not seemed to be a dream of particular significance, in the sense in which some have been when they forecast events.

All this was true: in the dream I had been in an aircraft filled with people, the nose was steeply down and the aircraft descending (or so it seemed) at great speed, and I think someone was talking about crashing, over the P.A.. I had thought that we were crashing. I had considered entering this in this book, but on reflection it did not seem to carry the intensity of previous predictive dreams, so I did not.

It was only a few days before I left that I realised that it could be me, since I was flying to Germany. So I was relieved to arrive in Germany without incident. Anxiety was greater as we taxied out for the return trip from Gütersloh. The aircraft turned straight on to the main runway and started its take-off run. Its nose lifted quickly as speed increased. Suddenly the engine noise faded and its nose came quickly down. I knew at once what my dream had referred to. As soon as the nose wheel had touched ground the aircraft engaged reverse thrust with an appalling roar, and after a perceptible interval we slowed down.

As we turned off the runway – there had been some anxiety in the aircraft – the Captain explained that when we were 1/3rd of the way along it the control tower had radioed that there was an obstruction on the runway and that he should abort, so he had. We took off “again” and reached Luton without apparent incident. I was relaxed for the whole flight after that abortive take off, because I knew that the event had occurred.

[PostedBlogger29012015]

{Classic and Romantic}[29th March 1981]

[Redbook2:182][19810329:1515]{Classic and Romantic}[29^th March 1981]

19810329.1515

We live in a classic age. The great quantity of 'romantic' work – in a more precise sense – at the base of culture shows only that men still yearn for the great romance. But the height – the direction – of our culture is rigidly anti-romantic, so out of touch with even the true nature of romance that there is ignorance of what is actually being done. So when a major work of romantic culture occasionally breaks through, after much doubt and soul-searching by the classic censors, and succeeds with ordinary people, the classics [sic] are left totally mystified by its success. It has come outside their control.

[PostedBlogger28012015]

{Flying Saucers}[8th December 1980]

[Redbook2:181][19801208:2335]{Flying Saucers}[8th December 1980]

19801208.2335

The reason why I wrote 'flying machine'* was because I thought of the Silver [...]-type [flying machine] vehicle I have been writing about in ['0']**. Flying saucers are not lightly invoked – at least by me. Before I wrote it, I could not understand why I wanted that passage of the [flying machine]'s journey in ['0'] – I almost left it out in July. I rewrote the crucial passage – which only became crucial when I rewrote it – in October, 25^th I think. The peak is reached when [the Narrator], by arrangement of the mind, learns to control the [flying machine], bringing her in a vertical power dive from a great height to a few yards above ground level. The sensation and sight of the dive is vividly described. The rest of the journey is tidying up, anti-climactic***.

I had been told that A's plane crashed into the side of a hill – suggesting a gliding crash landing. Today I learnt for the first time [sic] that it was seen (apparently) by two labourers to dive vertically out of the sky at great speed. No reason is known. The remains had to be buried in one coffin, so great was the impact.

Two possibilities suggest themselves.

(1) Is my writing misconceived, merely confusing the issue?

(2) What is cause (if any) and what is effect?

I do not like either of them much.

*on the note to p.176? [[Redbook2:176-177][198001126:0050a]{(A Dream of Teaching [continued]:) ...and the Vehicle.}[26th November 1980]]

**[Subsequently renamed]

***[Subsequently changed]

[PostedBlogger27012015]

{Outward and Inward Spirals}[3rd December 1980]

[Redbook2:180][19801203:2050]{Outward and Inward Spirals}[3rd December 1980]

19801203.2050

It seems obvious to me now that +Mk's Dance of Death has no place in the final scene [of the second book] as at present intended – since there is no death there. But it is also interesting that the spiral moves inwards there, whereas at the end of ['O']* it moves outwards. If the outward passage of the Spiral represents the slow death of Creation, of which birth, growth and dissolution are a part, then its inward passage might represent the other aspect of Death: towards Unity, the Beginning – and also the End, since the spiral itself has no end (the apparent 'ends' in fact proceed into Eternity, where they are One) and does not move: it is the individual who moves, and the apparent direction of his movement reflects perhaps his own view of life and death.

*[Subsequently renamed]

[PostedBlogger26012015]

{Stonehenge Spiral}[2nd December 1980]

[Redbook2:179-180][19801202:2320a]{Stonehenge Spiral}[2nd December 1980]

19801202.2320

[continued]

On the way to work this morning, there came to mind the possible climactic scene of the second book, at Stonehenge when the Net begins: a clear image of +Mk dancing within the great circle of the Net, inwards through the ring of Stones, in a tightening spiral around the centre where stands +C, the focal point of +Mk's Dance of Death.

It is, of course, easy to be wise after. But the joy is real.

[PostedBlogger25012015]

{Joy}[2nd December 1980]

[Redbook2:179][19801202:2320]{Joy}[2nd December 1980]

19801202.2320

The note on my bed this evening:

'[HUNTER]

Can you come and see me please.

M.'

– communicated its urgency so well that I speculated that D might be dead, moving rapidly into fantasy: financial consequences, compassionate leave....

In fact it was [Aunt][A]*: killed in an air crash. Hard to comprehend at first: later I kept myself busy with cooking supper for us. As the reality has sunk in I have felt, not grief or bereavement – except occasionally when others have communicated it – but an extraordinary feeling of deep joy for one who in one way or another continues. This is at present the true reaction. I have tried others, but they were contrived. The joy is not without its poignant sadness, as perhaps all great joy must be. Grief for my own present and material loss my well come later.

***[See [Redbook2:57][19740909:0725b]{A Trip to the Colonies [continued]}[9th September 1974] PostedBlogger26for25042014]

[PostedBlogger24012015]

{Nature and Purpose}[28th November 1980]

[Redbook2:178][19801128:0015]{Nature and Purpose}[28th November 1980]

19801128.0015

In the last chapter of Esdras God is seen as creating the Universe by mere words. I would see it as an act of 'deep creation'; but the interesting question is whether the process was led, as it were, from the bottom up or from the top down – whether the creation was constructed from (say) sub atomic particles or forces upwards or from its totality in conception downwards – from its nature or from its purpose. It is not quite enough to say that the whole sprang as one, because we are not discussing time. It seems that, by definition, the purpose has the mastery, controlling the development [of] successive hierarchical levels of the nature, which suggests that fundamental nuclear physicists, in order to understand further and make sense of the fundamental nature of the Universe, may have first by their imagination and inspiration to explore and discover the Mind of God.

[PostedBlogger23012015]

{Venus}[26th November 1980]

[Redbook2:177][19801126:0050b]{Venus}[26th November 1980]

19801126.0050

[continued]

Some weeks ago I awoke early, and witnessed the occultation (?) or transit (?) of the Moon by Venus (?) – a lovelier sight in the early morning blue is hard to imagine, than the bright silver crescent and the silver spark hung from its tail.

[PostedBlogger22012015]

{(A Dream of Teaching [continued]:) ...and the Vehicle.}[26th November 1980]

[Redbook2:176-177][19801126:0050a]{(A Dream of Teaching [continued]:) ...and the Vehicle.}[26th November 1980]

19801126.0050

[continued]

I was alone in a large, glass vehicle*. It was stationary. The others were in a building up the hill. It was night. One came down to me, saying: 'X (a friend in the T[erritorial] A[rmy]? – N[G?] …?] is dying. He wants you to go to him.' I said that I ought not to leave the vehicle unguarded; but I ran with him up the hill to the room where everyone stood. X lay on a bed. He said to me words to the effect: 'I am dying. Tell me what happens the other side. Tell me it is true.' Close to him, I told him what to expect, in detail.

There was in me then such a wholeness, an integrity, as I have only felt once before, so far as I know: in the healing dream recounted above**

*19801202.2350. Wisdom after: I had nearly written 'cabin of a flying machine' but felt that to be my own (contemporaneous) gloss or interpretation, so wrote 'vehicle'.

**[Redbook2:161-162][19800130:0015]

[PostedBlogger22for21012015]

{A Dream of Teaching: The Tunnel … }[26th November 1980]

[Redbook2:176-177][19801126:0050]{A Dream of Teaching: The Tunnel … }[26th November 1980]

19801126.0050

A dream early this morning, of which I remember two parts.

We had to pass a mountain through a tunnel. There was a suggestion of a way over; but I do not know whether this was in fact possible. In the middle of a long, small tunnel the file of us became stuck. The tunnel was mansize and rather suffocating. But we emerged eventually – into a large chamber of oddly carved architecture. How should we get out? Eventually the answer came – I rushed at the far wall and broke through in a shower of thin materials to daylight, outside a kind of Indian Temple carved into the mountain from which I had come.

[continues]

[PostedBlogger20012015]

{More pre-rational connections [continued(3)]}[23rd November 1980]

[Redbook2:174-175][19801123:2200b]{More pre-rational connections [continued(3)]}[23rd November 1980]

19801123.2200

[continued]

In the morning of – was it Saturday? – last week I dreamt of being in a train some of whose vehicles I could see jump the tracks into the path of another train. In the [news]paper when I got up was a description of a train crash in Italy where something rather similar happened.

The interesting thing about these, if they mean anything, is that they 'forecast' nothing that has not already happened: the arrival of a magazine, or a rail crash the day before.

[PostedBlogger19012015]

{More pre-rational connections [continued]}[23rd November 1980]

[Redbook2:174-175][19801123:2200a]{More pre-rational connections [continued]}[23rd November 1980]

19801123.2200

[continued]

I do regret giving up parachuting: I think it is true to say that jumping has always caused me a certain amount of anxiety, and I have the stomach for it. I have enjoyed the experience, on the rare occasions when I have managed to get a jump. I do not have the stomach to wait around for a whole weekend, again and again, and get nothing. So if I do become self-employed and can use weekdays, and have time, I shall go again. But I want to keep the first jump fresh in my memory; it was an intense experience: the preparation and flight (I was No.4), the moment of 'free' fall in intense blue nothingness, the flight across the airfield, and a clumsy landing. There is a danger that subsequent jumps might blur this memory.

[continues]

[PostedBlogger18012015]

{More pre-rational connections}[23rd November 1980]

[Redbook2:174-175][19801123:2200]{More pre-rational connections}[23rd November 1980]

19801123.2200

I do not wish (or wish to appear: so I am self-conscious here) to overdo this. Last week, I think it was, in the morning, I dreamt, as I very rarely do, of parachuting; and when I got up the British Parachuting Magazine was waiting for me in the mail. This is, of course, something that keeps happening with the [...] [Railway Preservation Society] Magazine (which I think comes in an unmarked envelope).

[continues]

[PostedBlogger17012015]

{Foresight [continued(3)]}[19th November 1980]

[Redbook2:173][19801119:0015]{Foresight [continued(3)]}[19^th November 1980]

19801119.0015

A curious sequel to the previous paragraph is that after the drowning man image, on successive nights I saw rushing waters – mostly in rivers. On Thursday following these I was asked, unexpectedly, to go to a party on a river bus. It was on a Friday evening. I had an anxious time: at first I remembered the images of water; but quickly I forgot that, and was made tense by the presence of half a dozen or more young men from the Regulars, insecure and aggressive. I also rediscovered my own lack of sympathy with most of the men of my own Regiment, and their women. The experience was memorable and intense, in a slightly unpleasant way, punctuated by the sight of water rushing close past the low windows of the lower deck. Perhaps I remembered it backwards in time, for since then no more water has flown [sic] past my inner vision.... Once[,] one of the visitors started to climb over the rail. A curt command from the 'bridge', repeated, made him change his mind – after a moment. But I had wondered whether he would go on, or fight.

 

[PostedBlogger17for16012015]

{Foresight [continued]}[13th November 1980]

[Redbook2:172-173][19801113:2310c]{Foresight [continued]}[13^th November 1980]

19801113.2310

[continued]

I can identify at least three different kinds of inner image: 'memory' and 'imagination', which I know are closely linked (though distinguishable), and the third: vivid and uncontrolled, largely scenic but increasingly (if sparingly) populated. What is it? Is it the same source as produced the recurrent images taken to forecast R's stillbirth and S's diabetes? I write at risk, suspecting that others, maybe descendants, may read. It takes a certain courage to explore these possibilities on paper; but writing is so crucial a part of my own development that I feel to do so may be important as more than record.

[continues]

[PostedBlogger15012015]

{Foresight}[13th November 1980]

[Redbook2:171-172][19801113:2310b]{Foresight}[13^th November 1980]

19801113.2310

[continued]

Still I do not know* what is reality and what fantasy, or even if they differ; nevertheless as I remember … (interrupted) … seeing Robert Mugabe on television for the first time and saying on impulse (or impression) 'That is the future Prime Minister of Black Rhodesia' – and later qualifying it – so I remember seeing Michael Foot** in a photograph of a demonstration many years ago, wielding his stick against the zealots (or so it appeared), and thinking that he counted for more than any other Labour politician I knew of. I have always since then been surprised that he did not rise higher.

But this whole business is fraught with ambiguities. I do not know what will happen to Foot. Somehow it is hard to imagine him now as Prime Minister, or indeed as anything. Will he just die away? Experience has taught that I cannot achieve anything in this area by concentration, even to the extent of thinking seriously about something – which is what I have been taught to do (and have resisted doing). It is the incidentals – the co-incidentals? – which count for something – but are they picked by retrospective selection by my own perception of the present, so that all the non-co-incidental incidentals are ignored? Will [S[Q]] drop dead***? Or was it only his own fears which led me to pinpoint unerringly and innocently the centrepoint of that fear? Is [S[N]]'s affair with [D[M]] about to end****? And if so, need anything more than experience and her words inform me? Did my image of the drowning man sinking, and the other striding from the Sea holding some body (dead or alive) across his arms, signify anything at all? The sense of significance just before was overwhelming: I had forgotten, but must have known, that that it was U.S. Election Night.

*(i.e. of what I next discussed [in this entry], I think) <921108>

**Michael Foot, who became leader of the Labour Party in 198011, was replaced by Neil Kinnock in October 1983 <900806> (without having been P[rime] M[inister] <921108>)

***[He didn't as far as I know]

****[Reader, she married him.]

[continues]

[PostedBlogger14012015]

{This Book}[13th November 1980]

[Redbook2:170-171][19801113:2310a]{This Book}[13^th November 1980]

19801113.2310

[continued]

And is this*, too, a conceit, in either main sense? Perhaps; but it is my own, and it is my own Book. My prose works elsewhere I write according to my own direction, but to stand in the World or fall, and if the World reject them, I may reject it, but I cannot complain of ill-treatment for myself. My poems, so little as they are, are pure of myself, for the most part, and criticism has no relevance or standing: their validity is in their existence as an expression of myself, not in their relation to others. This Book is for myself: others may read it and draw their own conclusions, but unlike the other prose works it is not meant for them. So tiptoe walk, and talk in whispers.

*[See last previous entry]

[PostedBlogger13012015]

{Physical and Spiritual Death}[13th November 1980]

[Redbook2:170][19801113:2310]{Physical and Spiritual Death}[13^th November 1980]

19801113.2310

Thinking of Oxfam.... I am, perhaps, different from them in one respect, in that although my heart is torn by these dying children, I do not believe that the worst has happened to them. About the most that can be said of them is that they were born, suffered grievously, and died. Still I would wish to choose that, rather than become … who? I am not sure specifically which person, since I am not the Judge, but it might be the Chairman of a great international finance house, or one of his rising middle managers, or Hitler. I doubt whether I should have the strength to make that choice as I would wish to make it, but I would wish to choose physical against spiritual death.

[PostedBlogger13for12012015]

{Currency}[28th August 1980]

[Redbook2:169B][19800828:0000]{Currency}[28^th August 1980]

19800828

?Unit of Currency value based on what one man can produce in one hour. Currency supply based on total being produced by number of hours required.

[PostedBlogger11012015]

{A Dream: of a snow-bound train}[19th August 1980]

[Redbook2:169A][19800819:1040]{A Dream: of a snow-bound train}[19^th August 1980]

19800819.1040

In [...]land – early days (Victorian Utopia period) – clearing deep snow to a summit [railway] line – cloudbase about fifty feet above – dogs and sled also (sheltering under warm locomotive)....

[PostedBlogger10012015]

{'[0]' [continued]}[5th August 1980]

[Redbook2:168-169][19800805:2325]{'[0]' [continued]}[5th August 1980] 19800805.2325 [continued] That day* I learnt that **[JQ]'s brother had just died, and that **[IM]'s brother-in-law had just been told he had only weeks to live. In the evening I reread some of what I had written, and was of course depressed by the amount of cutting, pruning and rewriting needed. *[See last previous entry] **[re colleagues at work] [PostedBlogger09012015]

{'[0]'}[5th August 1980]

[Redbook2:168-169][19800805:2325]{'[0]'}[5^th August 1980]

19800805.2325

I finished [writing] '[0]'* at about seven or eight on Sunday evening – except for the last two or three winding-up pages. I went up the hill to sit on the gatepost and watch the most beautiful Sunset. I thought: all I need now is for a deer to come past me through this gateway. Within a few minutes, as the heifers were licking my shoes, I heard a crackle, turned and saw a deer walk into the field from the wood. It stood looking at me for about half a minute, then, refusing my silent suggestion that it should come to me, walked off down the hill.

I had become so involved with the last part of ['0'] that I could not sleep on Saturday night – much. But the Sunset** brought me some peace and enabled me to finish with the last few pages, which I may have to rewrite. I stepped outside last thing – clear starlit night – and thought: 'All I need is a meteorite' and there was one.

I did not sleep excellently on Sunday night either. I was up at 5.30am. I had been dreading the return to London; but in the car driving up, thinking still of the Wheel of Fire and [...]'s Dance of Death, I found myself singing all I knew of the Messiah, with tears in my eyes.

*[Subsequently renamed]

**[On Sunday, presumably]

[continues]

[PostedBlogger08012015]

{Overlord}[c.28th July 1980]

[Redbook2:166-167][19800728:1230]{Overlord}[c.28^th July 1980]

19800728.1230

The 'Overlord' concept: the international conflicts are of such complexity and are so interlocked that specialist negotiators will never solve the problem: only 'overlords' from each party, with the power to negotiate (and to bind?) in any area, can do so.

For example: the North[-]South dialogue is being held up not least by Britain. Britain itself has trade problems which contribute to this attitude. Therefore Developed-Nation trade cannot be separated from North-South inequalities. More money would be available for the Third World (from own and others' resources) if they stopped spending disproportionate sums of money on arms. But each arms budget is measured against someone else's. This is partly a consequence of the availability of arms from Developed Countries. But this is part of East-West conflict, carried out in the Third World. Therefore, to help the Third World financially the North must end its East-West rivalries. But this requires trust, open inspection, a respected United Nations – and that requires a U.N. probably consisting of stateless persons....

So – to mention only a few major items – it seems that Third World Poverty, Developed Nation Trade, the East-West Arms Race and the United Nations must all be treated together. To this, without stretching the imagination, one could add Nuclear Power, Energy, Natural Resources, Ecology, Racial differences, Cultural identity, National territory, Religious awareness....

[PostedBlogger07012015]