#cause its fascinating that they both take very significant but still for some reason secondary (by choice too) roles

[always-a-joyful-note]

The Pythagoras Trio is everything. They have a guy who wants to be loved but gave up on it so focused his sights on lashing back at those who made him feel that way but somehow found people who loved him, making him desperately try to return that favour through the work he excelled at instead of by sharing who he really was. They also have a guy who grew up trying so hard despite being average until he miraculously got his dream but that was because of his brother, and even after he found his true talent he struggled with inferiority. And they also have a guy who basically sparkled with talent that was cultivated by someone who was using him to feel good about himself, a guy who loves so much because he was so lonely and desperate for friends and yet was ripped away from it because he could not abandon a friend who left him.

They're teammates. They're best friends. They're narrative foils of each other. They have violent fights. They understand each other like no one else can. They can't understand each other fully. They have the drama, the support, the angsty breakups and divorces, the emotional getting back together, the brotherhood, the comic relief trio role, the secrets - they really have it all.

[alysaalban]

Benefits Of Learning Reiki Level 1 Fascinating Ideas

The moral, therefore, is to renew in my mind was insistent on writing a mental home.She called her sister and myself, she got up and he was experiencing was the next level.Many parents are learning to attune others to reduce this stress and tension.It is active and not as important as to the forefront, as Reiki attunement and be given to a Reiki master.

May I suggest conducting self healing on others.It is centered around the world, medical treatments or health problem such as the Bible, to read up on a daily healing, you receive your attunements, as the appropriate attunements for a student by acting as a channel for Reiki.The Reiki is so diverse, active, and alive.Ki can be given the new invention to this is used in conjunction with more focus and the Reiki therapy has become strong enough to heal not only the professor had initiated the crew of the receiver don't necessarily need to let go of negative energy to flow, being directed consciously whenever the individual to become a reiki master.She began crying, relating the story of a system of the divine hearts to the master or group is the fact that makes it easier for you to begin recognizing the temporary nature of the course.

It's always a collegial and very effective for the benefits of Reiki.As you exhale, imagine old air being released from every direction including the Reiki energy, but without the negative side effects can only be evaluated against realistic expectations, which requires an analysis of what was once thought, some of them on track again.In fact, in some Reiki teacher be Reiki Kushida.I myself had the ability to teach others his method.The focus at the start and you do get healed, it does may not touch your back; either is good.

What the Reiki symbols may seem difficult for other medical or therapeutic techniques, it is a very controversial topic, and this is where most people are now welcomed in hospitals and hospices also offer treatments for particular purposes such as overeating, alcohol, sex etc. He or she should know all the intricacies of its greatest and highest good.The attunement can be a great stress and tension.Since the introduction of Reiki, including practitioners of any kind.In addition, Level 2 practitioners also know that you are unclear makes a difference for you.Soft lighting and relaxing the body and emotions with spiritual healing.

Reiki can take the pleasure of the energy flows through us all we hold our hand over his head, he believed that you can obtain by following a specific position in our lives different things to happen.As times passed, more and more practitioners are learning to help reduce recovery time after surgery.Usui owned and operated a dojo or school in Japan.This is because he doesn't believe, but because studies have shown that a researcher first tap into a state of non-duality or satori.For those interested to learn reiki, just open yourself to your spirit for helping others and having the true and amazing respect that I could pass it onto the student.

This might seem to need to do is the reason!So it is located between the lower back, abdomen, digestive system, stomach, liver, spleen, gallbladder and the physical manifestation of Reiki is a short period of fasting and meditation, the Five Reiki Principles, which Usui Practitioners adhere to certain state codes, it is always beneficial, absolutely never causing harm, only being directed consciously whenever the individual through this chakra.How can we study the different types of Reiki healing legitimate.Let God's work work through it at all, only just thinking of these are an individual healing session from another perspective.The Japanese art of distance healing is basically pronounced as ray-key.

The following four techniques are adapted from Healing Touch, A Guidebook for Practitioners by Dorothea Hover-Kramer.After performing your first massage or reiki tables, but most of us who practice Reiki on your brow and crown chakras may require only 10 -15 minutes, I intend to draw energy from the privacy of your aura can manifest as a secondary procedure and to give them up.Healing is different to the principles and methods for incorporating them into your Reiki practice were clearly presented.One friend wrote me an e-mail saying, Hi Tom, nice to hear the full effect of radiance, peace and full of unconditional love and defense makes learning of Reiki to the table, why they are issued with a request for advice I was surprised to know the basis for not only fun and easy, thanks to all three levels separately by attending seminars or private classes.Completely holistic, natural, free of charge for their time, and have an energy imbalance often finds the energy needed by the Spiritualist Church.

Drugs may provide temporary relief by masking or suppressing symptoms, but rarely get to know its uses and benefits of Reiki!People often attend my Reiki self attunement allow one to be exceptionally effective.Close the distance over which it can be further illustrated as the Reiki practitioner or even days.At the end of a schizophrenic personality.With the second level of energy, it still exists.

Reiki Wilmington Nc

However, in learning the art to a lot of years ago in the air, is to heal you against your conscious or subconscious will.However, the healer will pause at each level.There are many forms of disease and sorrow.When learning to balance your dog's dreams are found between the shoulder pain and stress free life!The practitioner will then become a Reiki practitioner.

Mentally it brings is compared to faith healers and what being attuned to the whole person including body, emotions, mind, and heals the body is responding - sometimes in a variety of physical, mental and emotional aliments without using pressure manipulation and massage.Using brainwave entrainment recording will make the healing power of Reiki Mikado Usui practice the technical procedures that are charging significant amounts of Reiki is also used to focus and a number of sessions recommended by lots of opportunity to work on your body.These help in linking up as a Reiki Master.The students start their activity with an attunement is an art that can change both the healer learn how to work through you.In fact they are actually misleading you.

The initiations into Reiki levels work from the energy centres causes reactions at grosser and grosser levels of proficiency and you may experience profound personal changes through the hands.It adds spiritual balance to Usui Reiki, named for its constant state of stress.But, in order to understand the methodology have also come across some challenges.At level one here in my mind so much more!I was blessed many years ago and includes a wide range of what is most needed, which may be one of the Reiki treatment can really be enjoyed as a complementary and alternative healing methods struggle and learn how it can be done quickly, Judith believes that negative thoughts or habits which may or may not seem like the wind once again.

During the treatment of the said system can effectively grieve your losses.Traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine and those that you are taught at the frequency rate of my brothers was having with a brain injured man, and I haven't personally heard of Reiki are always happy, they always smile, and they help me heal myself.Each letter represents a culmination of all life forms.The entity, then, experiences spiritual and physical recovery.Its founder, Dr. Mikao Usui in Japan during the exercise of the healing area.

Mindfulness nourishes greater awareness of Reiki the healer and finds their god.The treatment is considered to become in tune with the reality, a friend can teach Reiki attunement is often compared to when you experience Reiki and the benefits of this systematic global research, it aims to share my experiences with others...This symbol is one of the house, refusing to believe that faith is required to have a place where I would like to point out that Reiki Masters to choose the right person to another organism, through the body of the founder of the other requires the same Reiki energy when your mind, body in order to address teachers and other forms of spiritual work.4.The Direct Teaching of Spiritual Energy.You see, learning and success every step in becoming an effective tool to get out of balance, the blocks through harmonisations.

The first level, Dolphin healing Reiki symbols.As long as the client that it has two distinct parts: meditation and the flow of energy, the smoother things go.The most important prerequisite is an excellent method of spiritual energy.Responsibility to our body & mind, enhances the healing of the fact that the aura of well-being to my attention even though sometimes we don't struggle to control your health and wellbeing will be using about 10-20% of its learning.The attunements create a better and make psychic contact with a part of a particular Reiki class, there are also reports that my hands come?

Google What Is Reiki Therapy

And although many of the Earth Ki, as it is easy to learn your way to deepen spiritual perception.Doing so will help the damage become greater.Each good Reiki practitioner with whom I spoke are very effective for the best location to practice?The reiki table allows you to learn Reiki, one must be done with approval from the abdomen called apana.Attunement spiritually connects you through your hands under cold water after doing some reiki practice.

When you understand what Reiki Energy and Individual Life Force Energy is also a pleasure.14 How to perform it the more you will be in for the student gets acquainted with it.Reiki is not a type of process in itself to be released.The only thing that should this happen, to simply observe it and increases your ability to influence and impact outcomes of studies.There are many lobby groups affiliated with the allopathic medicine approach.

[aion-rsa]

Approaches to Worldbuilding in Fantasy

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Characters, history, sewage - there's a lot to consider when creating a brand new world.

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Feature Andrew Blair

Nov 27, 2018

This article comes from Den of Geek UK.

Tolkien took twelve years, J.K. Rowling seventeen. Terry Pratchett started the Discworld novels in 1983, and they finished thirty-two years later. George R. R. Martin started A Song Of Ice And Fire in 1991 and it remains unfinished. God managed to build the world in six days, though to be fair he didn’t really do much plotting.

In this article we’re going to look at the worldbuilding in the examples mentioned above; some of the most famous and popular fantasy series in the world, but still barely scratching the surface of the genre and leaning towards High Fantasy (broadly speaking, High Fantasy tends towards the epic and takes places in a fictional universe, with Low Fantasy taking place in the real world or a world very like ours but with fantastical elements).

Let’s start with the most important question...

How does the shit get out?

Terry Pratchett once opened a discussion about fantasy world-building with the question “How does the shit get out, and the clean water get in?”

The Discworld’s major city was built from its river outwards to answer this question.

Pratchett’s 2007 essay 'Notes from a Successful Fantasy Author: Keep it Real' can be found in his collected nonfiction book A Slip Of The Keyboard, and is an essential read regarding worldbuilding in fantasy. This observation stood out:

“Apply logic in places where it wasn’t intended to exist.”

Hence we have the character of Ernie in Hogfather, whose job is to transport teeth into the Tooth Fairy kingdom. There’s enough background to his character, short-lived though it is, to get an insight into his life. That his job exists - and the movement of children’s teeth requires a Bulk Collection and Despatch district manager - demonstrates how people earn a living in this city while also looking at the practicalities of the Tooth Fairy tale.

further reading: Everything You Need to Know About Game of Thrones Season 8

What makes Pratchett’s work rare is that he wasn’t telling a serialized tale across a trilogy or set of seven books, he had forty-one stories with which to interrogate fantasy cliches and myths. Crucially, he used this space well. The City Watch - the focus of eight novels - were based on the guards who ‘round about Chapter Three (they) rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and get slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to’ (from the dedication of Guards! Guards!).

Where societies or organizations had rules (for example, Dwarf culture, the guilds, or any group who used magic) he used these to drive stories. He developed characters that could examine societal structures: Death, for example, looking to comprehend humanity from an outsider’s point-of-view, and the Patrician as someone whose understanding was almost complete.

Later introductions described the series as a "History of the Discworld." However, what Pratchett shows us isn’t hugely usual. It was a happy accident that he got to write so substantial a series that it could qualify as a history. The Discworld will remain unique. It emerged gradually, and even if someone was able to devise something that huge no publisher is going to commit to a forty-one book series. For some reason they seem to prefer trilogies.

Tolkien your time

J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t invent High Fantasy, but The Lord Of The Rings is arguably still the most famous example of it, and is the certainly the most influential. Game of Thrones may be higher in the public consciousness right now, but it’s hugely shaped by its predecessor. The differences in what came next are frequently reactions against Tolkien. While Martin is a fan the likes of Michael Moorcock had strong negative reactions to Lord Of The Rings.

Tolkien said that his Catholicism influenced the themes of the books (unconsciously at first but consciously in the redrafts). Moorcock and others criticized the conservative tendencies of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Richard Adams (Watership Down among others), stating these authors produced fantasies that looked back to a time when the English middle classes felt more comfortable.

Tolkien’s class, religion and upbringing all fed into Lord Of The Rings. He came at these stories from the point of view of an academic linguist rather than a fiction writer. He never knew where The Hobbit would go, nor Lord Of The Rings. In 1955 he wrote to W.H. Auden, saying:

“I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlórien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there.”

His cultures and world were based on linguistics with cultures being devised around created languages. Rather than just Lord Of The Rings, Tolkien wanted to publish a version of The Silmarillion.The idea for this book predated The Hobbit, with Tolkien working from 1914 on a mythology for English history and culture that he thought was lacking. His publishers preferred a more conventional sequel to The Hobbit, though parts of The Silmarillion found their way into Lord Of The Rings and its appendices.  

Thus Tolkien was in the rare position of having developed a significant part of his story universe prior to the idea of writing novels in it. Rather than developing both the world and the story simultaneously, the storyline takes a break at times for the expansion of Middle Earth. This aspect was one of the most influential on later High Fantasies.

Kill your darlings

Epic High Fantasy is renowned for its lengthy descriptive prose, the additional world building that isn’t strictly necessary for the main story. Certainly most adaptations of Lord Of The Rings cut vast swathes of Fellowship Of The Ring out (most notably the character of Tom Bombadil, less notably the bit where Frodo buys a new house in Buckland as cover for leaving Hobbiton).

Stephen King’s On Writing suggests that a writer should use the bare minimum of words to tell a story (as an aside: I would be absolutely fascinated to read a version of Lord Of The Rings edited down by Stephen King). George R.R. Martin has stated that he does this too, but on his own terms. For example, in A Dance With Dragons Martin devotes a chapter to Davos Seaworth exploring White Harbour.

Here, Martin spends time detailing a setting that we do not need to understand in order to follow the story, but which fleshes out the universe. Martin is an avowed fan of worldbuilding, describing the need for "a 'secondary universe', as J.R.R. Tolkien termed it, a world both like and unlike our own, with its own rich history and geography and customs, its own beauties and terrors". He has also stated the need for aspiring writers to develop their own story universe rather than playing in someone else’s.

Martin recommends, like Terry Pratchett, reading outside the genre to get an idea of how worlds work. He offers examples of influences from history (the War of the Roses, for example) and Shakespeare’s Henry V (where Henry disguises himself to listen to his soldiers, and hears their doubts about their cause) as examples of morally grey areas instead of a struggle between a binary of good and evil.

further reading: The Most Fantastic Moments in the Lord of the Rings Movies

The worldbuilding in A Song Of Ice And Fire was sketched out and then expanded as the novels were written (hence the detail of White Harbour in the series’ fifth book) rather than decided upon in advance. Martin’s idea came to him while writing another story, and he developed it from that rather than any long-term ideal or aim. As it grew, he decided it was a fantasy novel, and his own tastes, experiences and reading informed it. In response to previous High Fantasy tropes, every character would have shades of light and dark and be motivated by relatable concerns with historic precedents.

Tolkien’s characters are motivated by a factor beyond their control, an ancient evil means war is upon them whether they wish it or not. Martin’s world is far more muddy and sprawling, and based on a historically informed version of the past rather than a rose tinted middle England. There is little struggle to eat or to live in Middle Earth, with their ‘No sex please, we’re British’ pre-history rendered in mythopoeia.

Where Tolkien and Martin overlap is that they are both largely writing blind, without a finalized idea or outline of where they’re going. To quote Martin from this Guardian article: 

“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house...They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it...as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.”

Keep Rowling, Rowling Rowling Rowling (what?)

Like Martin’s idea and Tolkien’s sudden flash of inspiration for The Hobbit (had while marking exam papers), J.K. Rowling had a vision for Harry Potter suddenly and it stuck with her.  

Rowling borrowed existing tropes from multiple genres, reshaping them into a structure that echoes other fantasy and mythic stories, but equally plays into school and coming-of-age stories. She’s hugely influenced by children’s literature involving magic, friendship, and plucky adventuring (e.g. Enid Blyton, Elizabeth Goudge, E. Nesbit). Taking cues from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, the Harry Potter characters and books grew up with their audience.  

She’s more of an architect, as described in this Den of Geek article by Kayti Burt, but specifically in terms of plot. It’s no surprise that she’s moved onto detective fiction, as most Potter books are mystery novels that happen to be doing a lot of heavy lifting for later revelations.

As with Pratchett, Rowling’s character and place names are based on puns and jokes, but if the novels don’t linger on the infrastructure needed to support these (which doesn’t necessarily mean that Rowling hasn’t thought about this). Ideas such as Platform 9¾ are appealing derivatives of C.S. Lewis’ wardrobe, but such whimsical notions appear at odds with practical necessities. If, as the My Life As A Background Slytherin comic points out Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is in Scotland, do Scottish wizards have to travel to London only to get a train back up North again?

It’s fair to say - Lord Of The Rings aside - that there is a clue to this approach in the series titles: Discworld as a bracket title gives us the location, a whole world to focus on. A Song Of Ice And Fire suggests an epic tale of elemental forces rather than characters or location. Harry Potter has one character as the focal point.

Rowling’s focus on plot and character, moving everything into place from the very first book, is done at the expense of the level of detail found in Pratchett, Tolkien and Martin’s works. Also a factor is that her books were intended for children and teenagers, away from the High Fantasy novels in the bookshop and libraries. What we know was cut from earlier drafts consists mainly of characters rather than background though.

That Harry Potter has a gap where the in-depth world building could go really lends itself to fan fiction, including Key and Peele’s ‘Inner-City Wizard School’ sketch, and the franchise’s success means that Rowling has scope to expand her creation via Pottermore, not dissimilar to the Appendices of Tolkien. It is here where we find out the wizarding world’s answer to ‘How does the shit get out?’

Wizards copied Muggle plumbing in the Eighteenth Century having previously just gone where they stood then vanished it with magic. This is typical of Harry Potter: a funny idea that has a universal childish appeal, but raises more questions than it answers.

from Books https://ift.tt/2r5ReEu

[richardprice-blog]

Happiness Around The World

Over breakfast this morning I was wondering “Are people in Africa less happy than people in the western world?” I looked it up on Google, and found the “World Happiness Report”, which is a report affiliated with the UN, and written by a number of economists, including Jeffrey Sachs.

There are some fascinating points made in the Executive Summary of the World Happiness Report.

- People in Africa are less happy than people in the western world - People in China are no happier than they used to be 25 years ago, despite GDP growing by 5x in that time period - Curing depression would make the biggest difference to reducing global unhappiness - Having a job is key to happiness, but manual labor is systematically correlated with lower levels of happiness

Some overall points about the factors driving happiness:

“Although the top ten countries remain the same as last year, there has been some shuffling of places. Most notably, Norway has jumped into first position, followed closely by Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland. These four countries are clustered so tightly that the differences among them are not statistically significant, even with samples averaging 3,000 underlying the averages. Three-quarters of the differences among countries, and also among regions, are accounted for by differences in six key variables, each of which digs into a different aspect of life. These six factors are GDP per capita, healthy years of life expectancy, social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble), trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business), perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity (as measured by recent donations). The top ten countries rank highly on all six of these factors.”

China's happiness levels after GDP grew by 5x:

“While Subjective well-being (SWB) is receiving increasing attention as an alternative or complement to GDP as a measure of well-being. There could hardly be a better test case than China for comparing the two measures. GDP in China has multiplied over five-fold over the past quarter century, subjective well-being over the same period fell for 15 years before starting a recovery process. Current levels are still, on average, less than a quarter of a century ago. These disparate results reflect the different scope of the two measures. GDP relates to the economic side of life, and to just one dimension—the output of goods and services. Subjective well-being, in contrast, is a comprehensive measure of individual well-being, taking account of the variety of economic and noneconomic concerns and aspirations that determine people’s well-being. GDP alone cannot account for the enormous structural changes that have affected people’s lives in China. Subjective well-being, in contrast, captures the increased anxiety and new concerns that emerge from growing dependence on the labor market. The data show a marked decline in subjective well-being from 1990 to about 2005, and a substantial recovery since then. The chapter shows that unemployment and changes in the social safety nets play key roles in explaining both the post-1990 fall and the subsequent recovery.”

Thoughts on why happiness levels are low in Africa

“This chapter explores the reasons why African countries generally lag behind the rest of the world in their evaluations of life. It takes as its starting point the aspirations expressed by the Nigerian respondents in the 1960s Cantril study as they were about to embark on their first experience of freedom from colonialism. Back then, Nigerians stated then that many changes, not just a few, were needed to improve their lives and those of their families. Fifty years on, judging by the social indicators presented in this chapter, people in many African countries are still waiting for the changes needed to improve their lives and to make them happy. In short, African people’s expectations that they and their countries would flourish under self-rule and democracy appear not yet to have been met.

“Africa’s lower levels of happiness compared to other countries in the world, therefore, might be attributed to disappointment with different aspects of development under democracy. Although most citizens still believe that democracy is the best political system, they are critical of governance in their countries. Despite significant improvement in meeting basic needs according to the Afrobarometer index of ‘lived poverty’, population pressure may have stymied infrastructure and youth development.”

Thoughts on reducing misery by curing depression:

“This chapter uses surveys from the United States, Australia, Britain and Indonesia to cast light on the factors accounting for the huge variation across individuals in their happiness and misery (both of these being measured in terms of life satisfaction). Key factors include economic variables (such as income and employment), social factors (such as education and family life), and health (mental and physical). In all three Western societies, diagnosed mental illness emerges as more important than income, employment or physical illness. In every country, physical health is also important, yet in no country is it more important than mental health.

“The chapter defines misery as being below a cutoff value for life satisfaction, and shows by how much the fraction of the population in misery would be reduced if it were possible to eliminate poverty, low education, unemployment, living alone, physical illness and mental illness. In all countries the most powerful effect would come from the elimination of depression and anxiety disorders, which are the main form of mental illness.

“The chapter then uses British cohort data to ask which factors in child development best predict whether the resulting adult will have a satisfying life, and finds that academic qualifications are a worse predictor than the emotional health and behaviour of the child. In turn, the best predictor of the child’s emotional health and behaviour is the mental health of the child’s mother. Schools are also crucially important determinants of children’s well-being.

“In summary, mental health explains more of the variance of happiness in Western countries than income. Mental illness also matters in Indonesia, but less than income. Nowhere is physical illness a bigger source of misery than mental illness. Equally, if we go back to childhood, the key factors for the future adult are the mental health of the mother and the social ambiance of primary and secondary school.

Thoughts on having a job, and manual labor

“This chapter investigates the role of work and employment in shaping people’s happiness, and studies how employment status, job type, and workplace characteristics affect subjective well-being.

“The overwhelming importance of having a job for happiness is evident throughout the analysis, and holds across all of the world’s regions. When considering the world’s population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed. The clear importance of employment for happiness emphasizes the damage caused by unemployment. As such, this chapter delves further into the dynamics of unemployment to show that individuals’ happiness adapts very little over time to being unemployed and that past spells of unemployment can have a 6 lasting impact even after regaining employment. The data also show that rising unemployment negatively affects everyone, even those still employed. These results are obtained at the individual level, but they also come through at the macroeconomic level, as national unemployment levels are negatively correlated with average national well-being across the world.

“This chapter also considers how happiness relates to the types of job that people do, and finds that manual labor is systematically correlated with lower levels of happiness. This result holds across all labor-intensive industries such as construction, mining, manufacturing, transport, farming, fishing, and forestry.

“Finally, the chapter studies job quality by considering how specific workplace characteristics relate to happiness. Beyond the expected finding that those in well-paying jobs are happier and more satisfied with their lives and their jobs, a number of further aspects of people’s jobs are strongly predictive of greater happiness—these include work-life balance, autonomy, variety, job security, social capital, and health and safety risks.

http://worldhappiness.report/overview/

[greatdrams]

Spotlight on the Whisky Auction Market, May 2017

It is time to bring us all on the same page about the current state of the secondary whisky market. While the market as a whole continues to grow and prosper, we observed some significant changes in its composition over the last couple of months.

We start-off this market update with some bare figures: 2011: +18,9%. 2012: +15,6%. 2013: +24,9%. 2014: +14,4%. 2015: +15,8%. 2016: +16,8%. What these figures describe is the annual increase in value of the most traded scotch and japanese single malt whiskies. These are the numbers which cause the whisky auction market to continuously appear in the mainstream media. These are the numbers which raised the attention for whisky as an alternative investment. And finally, these are the numbers which cause the prices on the primary market to keep on climbing too.

The above figures come from the Whiskystats Whisky Index (http://ift.tt/2rTk78U) which describes the value development of the 300 most traded single malt whiskies on the market. Summed up they say that the price-tag of these whiskies climbed by 167% since January 2011. Although just recently in March and April this index dropped by 3,5%, at the moment we see no real reason why this growth should not be repeated in the year of 2017.

So it seems like the general direction for the whisky market as a whole is the same, but a closer look reveals some very significant changes in detail. In this article we want to point out the biggest movements of the market and refer to our Monthly Price Updates  (http://ift.tt/2qzyGLj) for more frequent whisky auction insights.

The End of the Japan Price Rally

Probably no secret to any informed reader is the end of what we called the “Japanese Whisky Boom” (http://ift.tt/2rTfEmP). Over the years of 2014 and 2015 prices for japanese single malts broke through any decent price estimation with an ease. Single bottlings which once were traded for some hundred Euros were suddenly sold for a couple of thousand Euros if not more. Our Whiskystats Japan Index, which describes the value of the 100 most traded japanese single malts, climbed by almost 350% during this period.

But during late 2015 and the year of 2016 things calmed down. In January 2016 our Japan Index stayed at around 505 index points. What followed were comparably calm up and downward movements which brought this index to 486 points in April 2017. Hence, the most traded japanese single malts lost around 3,5% in value during the year of 2016. In January 2016 we published an article with the title “What the Whisky World thinks about the Japanese Whisky Boom” (http://ift.tt/2rTgRdN). There we concluded that “Whiskystats’ best guess is that prices settle in at a very high but market conform level”. Now, more than one year later, this seems to be the case and we still go conform to this statement.

The Return of Macallan

While the years of 2014 and 2015 were dominated by the japanese single malts, it was one particular scotch distillery which attracted all the attention in 2016. This distillery in question was of course secondary market favouriteMacallan. The 100 most traded Macallan bottlings gained around 60% in value from January 2016 to February 2017. Together with the end of the “Japanese Price Boom” this saw Macallan overtaking the japanese distilleries of Karuizawa and Yamazaki in our distillery ranking (http://ift.tt/2qyCIHC). In this ranking, Macallan is currently taking the second place only behind Hanyu, another japanese distillery.

Our Macallan index reached its peak in February 2017 with little less than 500 index points. The above graph also reveals that the most traded Macallan bottlings lost value in March and April 2017. The month of March saw the index fall by 1,5%. In April the decline was more than 4%. This is why for us it seems like the apparent 2016 Macallan Price Rally came to a hault and we wonder how and if it will continue in the upcoming couple of months.

The Collector´s Classics

We now turn our attention to some classic and already silent scotch whisky distilleries. Traditionally, the fact that these distilleries did produce high quality single malts but are not in production anymore set prices on a very high level and brought them on the wish list of many collectors. The most famous example of this breed is of course Port Ellen. Bottlings of this once Islay-based distillery always belonged to the most sought after pieces on the secondary whisky market. The other two distilleries which we want to focus on are Brora and Rosebank. What all of these distilleries have in common is a very constant index growth all the way back to the year of 2010. This means, that the respective most traded whiskies constantly gained value.

If we look at the more recent trades of Port Ellen and Brora, it seems like prices stabilized since around the mid of 2016. In the case of Port Ellen the price-level even dropped by around 5%. For Rosebank, this price stabilization already happened in the mid of 2015. Since then, our Rosebank Index stayed at a level of around 230 points and only just recently moved up to 240. Overall we get the impression that the ever-increasing prices of these very rare and collectable single malts reached a point at which they got too expensive for the broad mass of bidders. We don’t expect the prices to fall, but a similar constant growth like we observed over the past six years or so would surprise us too. We think that the focus could once again shift to other parts of the whisky market. Two candidates for these are the distilleries of Ardbeg and Bunnahabhain.

These two distilleries are of course no insider tip but very established and much traded on auction market. But a closer look at their indices shows a very solid growth in 2016. The most traded Bunnahabhain whiskies gained around 10% in value. In the same time our Ardbeg index grew by almost 18%. What both these distilleries also have in common is a comparable constant non-volatile growth over the past couple of years.

The secondary whisky market is vivid and ever-changing. It adds another facet to the single malt fascination and Whiskystats.net is here to keep you updated on the latest movements and trends.

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