Being Selective

I think a major feature of the fairly neat compartments into which our world has been dividing itself for some years, is that one side is real and the other isn't. That's why the right wing attracts the flat earthers and conspiracy theorists: the whole thing is a fib.

'But they're mistaken or have been lied to' goes the narrative at this point.

I'm afraid at this point I honestly don't care. At this point if you claim to think the earth is flat, Trump won, Brexit was a sensible decision, abortion is murder, covid doesn't exist, etc, you are choosing to believe this nonsense. The reality is as an adult it behoves you to orientate yourself to reality, and I don't owe these people a discussion, evidence, or even an audience. They're fools and will not be persuaded because they don't want to be (that is, if they're even actual people, on social media).

Is this judgemental? Of course. Am I being horrible? You bet. Do I care? Do I fuck.

When you don't care about these fools, it changes your perspective. It gives you the opportunity to concentrate and be very selective who you talk with. This means that I don't waste the remaining years of my life around people that I can't stand, and I think we can all agree that this is a desirable thing.

In my misspent youth hanging around the monastic world I got to know the idea of being focused on thing, being alone, and so on. In a Christian monastic world this tends to mean being focused on God and the other people in the community form the lessons that God teaches you by the love of neighbour. I suppose in true witchy fashion I've turned this on its head to focus on what I want to focus on, and not be distracted by fools. The Hound's rule for monasteries would tend to end up with a very different end product than St Benedict's!

I honestly can't really see a downside to this approach. I can see an objection that you would never get your opinions challenged if you only hang out with people of your own opinion. However if you're just making a point of avoiding unreality and argument with the unpersuadable I think you actually get challenged more. I think this is the result of seeking out intelligent people.

This also highlights that in a witchy/Pagan milieu, rather than the single eye being focused on God, it will necessarily be focused on the world and open to all the possibilities therein. Just not fools.

Subtle, I know.

Crying Wolf Too Often

Surely we are all familiar with the story of the boy who kept crying 'Wolf!' when there wasn't one with the result that eventually nobody believed him and then one day there was an actual wolf. Of course everyone ignored his cries that there was a wolf with predictable results.

I realize that I have been thinking quite a lot over the past couple of years of how, like falsely saying there's a wolf, many of the principles of our society are not strategies intended for long term use and in fact cry wolf. I've referred to the way capitalism negates itself when carried to its natural conclusion, for example. Specifically the mythology of capitalism is that it encourages competition and anyone can get in on the act if they want. And so we have endless copies of the same businesses making the same products. But it also includes its downfall, because if there is actual competition there is nothing to stop the consumer choosing where to shop and putting some of the businesses out of business.

And so this is why the competition aspect easily flips into a monopoly (Amazon, anyone?) before progressing into fascism and force. The choice supposedly built into capitalism is an illusion, or rather a lie.

Perhaps the best example of this is the UK's privatised water companies, where in fact nobody gets any choice and can't not use them.

The theme of entities lying is built into religious and spiritual traditions across the board. For example Christians call their Satan the father of lies. And this idea of an untrue threat or promise can be found in hero myths.

It's most present to us moderns in social media, which is perhaps the best example of why lying and building systems on illusions doesn't work. You would have to be incredibly naive in 2024 not to be at least aware that accounts on social media may not be telling the truth and may not even be real people. It's so prevalent that I don't think there can be anyone unaware that media and social media manipulates things now. The almost laughably bad AI has also added to this.

This is exactly the same phenomenon as the boy crying wolf: you just can't keep on lying because people notice.

In this General Election year there's a lot of scare mongering going on about how the Tories are going to use disinformation in their campaign. I honestly can't understand why: beyond the +/- 25% who are so stupid, bigoted or blinded that they would vote for them anyway, in Britain the words Tory and liar are now synonymous. And this purely because of their prolific lies. 

The reality is that lying does not gain any cause or business a huge following alone (of course motivation is always more complex than I'm painting it here because I'm focusing on fibbing, monopolies and the way our institutions are not built on sustainable foundations).

The moral of the story is that sometimes if a situation feels like it can't be changed the thing to do is just let it progress as it is. Our overlords are not geniuses and it's very unlikely they'll have thought out the consequences of their actions.

And then have a good laugh at them. This is very important because it's an important banishing ritual in chaos magic.

Another Triumph

Two years ago I wrote about the effectiveness of The Review Spell. It's a magnificently powerful spell, and as I wrote then has a great effect in encouraging people who know something is wrong but aren't sure what.

I have been using this on the hopeless management company of this building for some time (not everything I do appears here). I have to say, apart from the obvious reviews from employees' friends, their reviews are terrible, and include words like fraud and criminal. I left a review commenting that people can get them back by claiming compensation from the ombudsman scheme that they have to belong to by law, and this review got ten likes very quickly.

Then this weekend they wrote letters addressed to the leaseholders about revised fire safety precautions following a risk assessment. Now, normally they write by post to the leaseholders because they're not all resident: this is what they do when they demand the service charge to make sure the leaseholders get them.

Instead what they did with these letters addressed to the leaseholders was scatter them on the floor outside the flats like pizza menus. They were therefore making sure not all the leaseholders would see them. And this is about fucking fire safety.

So I took pictures of the letters on the floor and posted them on their Google review with a dramatic caption to say they were for the Health and Safety Executive if there's a Grenfell here so they would know they hadn't communicated the revised fire precautions.

Guess what, a week later I got two more copies of the letter in the post, one to the resident and one to the leaseholder. 

And it's not even like they can reply to my review because I'll point out they still haven't replied to the complaint I sent them in January. But of course I have a separate plan for that. Once you're cursed by the Hound your life just becomes more and more difficult.

Happiness is Rebellion

Let's start with a tale Snopes says is an urban legend:

Lunching with English friends at the time of her husband's retirement, Madame de Gaulle was asked what she was looking forward to in the years ahead. "A penis," she replied without hesitation. The embarrassed silence that followed was finally broken by the former president. "My dear," he murmured, "I think the English don't pronounce the word quite like that. It's 'appiness.'"

We all know one of them, one of those annoyingly superior people who know best and act as if the world is their oyster. I'm not talking about becoming quite one of them, but about the attitude. They're ok and always will be. In the UK they tend to shop in Waitrose.

We have many of them in the government and nobody else's views impinge on them in any way.

What if we take the attitude and rebel by being happy? In a stressful, conflicted world it would be natural to be depressed and stressed beyond belief. I'm also not talking about minimising any of the shit that's going on in the world.

I'm talking about doing things that make us happy as a rebellion against the nonsense. An act of self care in the face of everything, if you like. A way of changing the script slightly.

Because when you make small changes they tend to have knock on effects elsewhere, like all magical acts.

It is also my firm conviction that the world is increasingly dividing into two factions. In true Hound fashion I call the factions the people who are cunts, and the ones who aren't cunts. The cunts want everyone except themselves to be miserable, and the non-cunts want everyone to be happy. This means that being happy, making sure you can be happy by doing things which make you happy, is actually an act of rebellion against the people who want everyone else to be miserable.

And this isn't just a positive behaviour. It is actually witchcraft. If you think about the bit in the Gospel of the Witches about the feast, it says, you will dance, sing, feast, make music and love, all in my praise... and this will continue until every last one of the oppressors is dead.

That sounds very much like the sort of thing I'm getting at. Like sticking your fingers up. And strangely enough I have a soundtrack for this!

Finally if you'd like something quieter I've just recently discovered there are people (all men, apparently) who are made happy by racing washing machines! AND they even get people in the comments requesting particular cycles. 😂

My Next Prediction

Swear to Goddess, I don't know what's wrong with people. The pundits are busy saying that there will be a General Election in this country in the Spring, around May time. So let's look at this.

The reality is the only person in this country who by law can call a General Election is the current Prime Minister and he's a twat. So there are actually two different things going on here.

1. The law is that a GE must be called by a date early in 2025 - I think it's the end of January although this is without checking. People keep quoting this because they're law-abiding folks who take their turn but for some reason they're still not noticing that the government are not like that. What is wrong with them? So it isn't impossible that they will use any excuse they can find not to hold an election at all, whether or not it's legal. Their Rwanda programme has been judged illegal but they've continued with it, so why people would think they would follow any other law is incredible.

2. If they decide they've asset stripped the country of whatever they can (not for any reason of democracy or legality), Riski will call the election much later this year, in the Autumn or even as late as December.

Assuming we have an election the next government will be a Starmer Labour government which would not currently be my preferred outcome. I do hope the people who vote for it aren't disappointed at what they actually get. I've actually never voted for any of the governments we've had in my lifetime and don't intend to start now!

I'm also going to predict something about a result which is unlikely. In the event we have yet another Tory government this would be a disaster and tragedy because of the deaths but would have a strange side benefit.

This would be that another Tory term would essentially end the Conservative and Unionist Party. This may sound like it's impossible but previously the Whig and the old Liberal Parties were fixtures of our country and no longer exist. 

Every year marks further deaths of traditional Tory voters and the youngsters who are cunts will vote Reform UK. If they don't have another term to keep reminding people how terrible they are, the pendulum will swing back and we'll get future Tory governments. 

The reason the same donors are giving to both Tories and Labour is they can also see the scenario of the Conservative party dying out and they have millions to spend in double bribes. They also correctly see that if the Conservative Party dies the real hard right (a minority) would vote Reform UK but the furthest right Party would then be Labour.

It's also not unusual for political parties to move round on the political scale or even swap over. For example the Republican party abolished slavery in the US but now want the death penalty for an abortion FFS.

In the event Labour takes the place of the Tories moderates would go to the Lib Dems and leftists to the Greens. 

My best prediction is an election late Autumn into the Winter and Starmer to win. Here in Birmingham Ladywood I'll be voting Green and I think we'll get the same Labour MP with a reduced majority because she's pissed off the Muslims. If I thought the Lib Dems could unseat her I would vote for them.

This is the Party anthem of the Liberal Democrats, just because I like it.

My Lent Book

As is the custom I have nicked from the Christians, every year I choose a book to be my Lent book. Despite not keeping Lent in any way at all, obviously.

This year it has rather chosen itself because in January I already started re-reading Robert Wang's Qabalistic Tarot, for something like the third time. I felt a pull towards it and a desire to read it again very slowly and let it sink in.

It's not an easy subject, or book, obviously, and I also felt strongly that to do so I should clear some dead wood out of my psychic space to enable the change to happen. In this case it meant getting together a number of individually very minor annoyances with the company that manages this building and putting them together into one complaint. Not to put too fine a point on it, it felt so clearing to do this that I now understand why cats zoom around the house after using the litter tray! I am delighted to say that they ignored this complaint so it's now with the ombudsman and out of my head.

Last year, after Lent, I also performed the exercise of reading all the way through the bible again. I used the New English Translation that has translators' notes online and read the Oxford Bible Commentary as a companion. I think this is the third time I have done this in my life, although the first while I haven't been one of the faithful.

The main thing this experience did for me was to reinforce what I already knew, that Christian topics of obsession are almost never based on what the bible actually says. For example I have commented here before on the biblical approach to 'the unborn', which is to treat them purely and simply as property and afford them none of the value given to people. The other major thing it reinforced was my conviction that the majority of Christians read the bible selectively at best, and probably repeat reading the same bits. Of course there are some who put in the necessary work to get to the bottom of the multivocal, repetitive, contradictory and disjointed text, but the road to atheism is littered with well-read bibles. Because if you read it and don't conclude that a lot of it is about land grabs and that God just loooves genocide, you're not paying attention.

I would have loved to have this book, actually by Richard Littler, the creator of Scarfolk, but sadly it doesn't exist.

Sense of Place: Made in Birmingham (Again)

This is Jess Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley constituency. I fucking love this woman AND she voted against the whip for a ceasefire and resigned her shadow cabinet role in protest.

You just *know* she's thinking 'set of cunts', don't you? This is why people either like or loathe Birmingham: it reflects back what you give out yourself and most people can't take that.

Incidentally I see Labour and the Tories are reported to be closer in polls than they were. I really hope that continues because a Lab/Con coalition government with a Lib Dem/Green coalition opposition would be hysterical.