#hes a magician and as such hes fascinated by all methods of connecting with the universe

[opal-owl-flight]

I honestly don't know how to feel about this. Mags? you opinion.

Meow. (They fight through raging currents and predators alike, they spawn, they die. I always thought that it mustve been a frightening ordeal for them…Im kinda glad they see it as an honorable act.)

Meoo. Mrrp! (Cephalopods have turf wars, they have their salmon runs. Speaking as a land-born mammalian, Id say its simply the way of the sea — fighting as honor, fighting as a lifestyle. If this is how they unite themselves with the world and the universe, all Id say is that I have much to learn about this world!)

[thetypedwriter]

The Atlas Six Book Review

The Atlas Six Book Review by Olivie Blake 

This book rocked. 

It wasn’t a perfect book but it was pretty close, or rather, closer than any book that I’ve read in months. 

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake is a mysterious fantasy featuring dark academia, imminent murder, and complex characters and their intrinsic relationships to each other. I love almost everything about it.

Dark Academia is a favorite trope of mine ever since reading M. L. Rio’s If We Were Villains and Blake’s novel handles it with a chef’s kiss. Six powerful medians (aka magicians) are selected by the elite secret Society in order to become initiates. 

For a year they will train under the Society’s Caretaker, Atlas Blakely and his assistant, Dalton Ellery, in order to pass Initiation and gain full access to the Society’s archives. 

In this case, the Society’s archives are the knowledge starting with the Library of Alexandria and culminating in thousands of years worth of information gathered by the world’s upper echelon of intellectuals. 

Each protagonist has some motivation for wanting access to these records, whether to save their hybrid-human friend from a dismal existence, finding a cure for a degenerative disease, or even simpler motivations like hunger and ambition. 

While all these aspects in of themselves are fascinating—a secret society, the mythical Library of Alexandria, knowledge beyond your wildest dreams, etc, it was the characters and their connections that really drew me into this novel and held me in its clutches. That and the added plot that one of them will have to die in order for the five other chosen medians to be initiated. 

What starts as a seemingly harmless one-year program slowly devolves until each character, for one reason or another, is willing to kill someone else in order to stay. Dun dun dun. 

When I first started reading and learned that there were six protagonists, I was skeptical, especially as Blake switches POV’s between all of them. In my experience, switching POV’s beyond four people is usually a disaster for most authors as the characters lack development and pages. 

However, Blake does a seamless job of incorporating her characters well, along with their motivations, development, and relationships from being too shafted from one chapter to the next. It’s incredible when you actually consider the book’s length and what she was able to accomplish with six different main characters. 

All of them felt like they got even amounts of focus, and while I did naturally like some more than others, I found to my immense surprise that I didn’t dislike any of them. Blake does a fantastic job of making each character important to the plot as a whole and does well to ensure that each character changes and grows at an understandable rate. 

I’ve been pretty vague about specifics up to this point, so please read with caution onwards. If you don’t want spoilers, you can stop here. 

My favorite characters ended up being Callum, Parisa, and Tristan. Callum I found fascinating—his power, his simultaneously nihilistic and hedonistic view on living, his understanding of emotions and yet lack thereof. He’s a powerful ticking time bomb and all the characters know it, including Callum himself. I found his self-awareness to be addicting and his manipulative tendencies a massive influence on every other character. 

Parisa I liked almost immediately. She’s confident, sly, clever, powerful, and calculating. She knows what she wants and she doesn’t hesitate to go after it. That being said, she’s not heartless. In an encounter with Callum, she finds herself shaken after he murders an intruder. I liked the dichotomy of Parisa, her entanglement with Dalton, and her cutthroat methods to achieve her desires. 

Tristan was my favorite dark horse character. He’s tragic, but interesting. His lack of knowledge about his own power makes him either weak or unbelievably strong—both of which have intriguing implications for the story. I liked his emotional turmoil, his pessimism, and his complex relations with most major players in the story, including Parisa and Callum. More than any other character, I’m excited to see Tristan in Blake’s sequel The Atlas Paradox. 

The other three characters were interesting in their own right, but I didn’t care for them as much. Reina seems to be the most straightforward character, for better or worse, Nico I found to be annoyingly altruistic, and Libby was just annoying. 

I understand that Libby is supposed to be irritating, but I think Blake was almost too effective in making her so. She’s a great comparison character in that she doesn’t see her own value, constantly questions herself, and secretes meekness compared to the others who are confident and self-aware of their powers, but her schtick got old to me very fast. 

Because Blake set Libby up as this stuttering vexation for the others, it was hard for me to believe that the others liked her, especially given their own self-assurant personalities. Nico and Libbby make sense because of their past history. Parisa and Tristan, however, I had a harder time getting behind, Tristan especially. 

Why was he so attached to Libby? To the point that he wondered if he was in love with her? It was a little baffling. Blake does provide some reasoning, being that Libby is powerful, but with that reasoning Tristan could be in love with any of the initiates, so the logic falls a little flat. 

Regardless, that criticism is a small thorn in an otherwise beautiful rose garden. 

An interesting thing Blake chose to do was to showcase very little of what the characters were actually learning from their classes. From my understanding, they had classes daily or weekly, but were otherwise free to read and study in peace. I both liked and disliked this choice. 

On the one hand, the class discussion and subject matter were actually very high-level, often discussing physics, chemistry, and psychology. I both liked how advanced and sophisticated these conversations were compared to the juvenile drivel that YA novels spit out, but at the same time most of it intentionally went over my head. 

It was interesting to me that Blake chose to omit so much of their academics, and while I don’t necessarily disagree, it would have fleshed out the world more to see bigger moments in the characters’ day-to-day-lives. 

That being said, the driving force of my interest, and seemingly the book, were the character relations themselves. I want more. Some of them came across a tad rushed— like since when are Nico and Parisa friends?—but for the most part, the reader can fill in the blanks and make realistic assumptions that certain relationships blossomed. 

However, it still would have been nice to see those progressions, even tiny moments of them, regardless if it inevitably made the book longer. 

The last point I’ll mention is Ezra. The surprise to me at the end was indeed just that: surprising. I didn’t think Ezra would be as important as he became and I loved the reveal overall of Atlas Blakely being the villain—if that actually is true. We shall have to see. 

However, an earlier chapter of Ezra speaking to an unnamed character, only to find out on the last page of the chapter that it’s actually Atlas, was disappointing to me. Not only did it reveal earlier that Ezra was more important than he seemed and not who he seemed, but it deflated some of the tension that the ending otherwise could have had. 

I didn’t get the point of the chapter at all, especially as Ezra essentially espouses some philosophical quandaries about power that largely (and verbosely) goes over the reader’s head. 

Those small criticisms aside, this book was tremendously impressive. The fantasy elements of magic, the myriad abilities, the complex characters, their intertwining bonds, and an unraveling plot of uncertain mysteries where deciding who to trust might be the deadliest decision of all. 

Recommendation: Dark academia now owns my whole heart. This book has everything you want and does it well: an interesting setting that includes the legendary Library of Alexandria, a perplexing plot that beckons me to read more, versatile writing that entices me to think deeply about a multitude of subjects, and labyrinthine characters that I crave more and more.

Score: 9/10

[magicalgirlagency]

Please may I request Terra,Ceres and Shadow from Final Fantasy 6? (since their game’s ending has all the magic disappear from the world)

If your series ends with the magic fading away from good, then it's NOT a good series.

Terra "Tina" Branford is now Star Magician Terra, A-Rank Magi, Assigned Gemstone is Star Garnet, Essence is Light (Aether);

Upon realizing that the disappearance of magic can lead to serious troubles in the long run, Terra wants to redeem herself by learning to see magic as a neutral force, rather than a negative one;

She grows fascinated about Wondarian Magic, and studies about it as much as possible;

Terra is also curious about the earthlings' fascination with magic, thus developing an interest towards esotericism and homeopathy;

Her favorite subject of studies are the gemstones and their metaphysical properties. There's something charming about the earthlings finding their own ways to do magic;

Though she is reluctant on using magic, Terra does her best to embrace it. Her goal is to embrace the unknown and grow more independent, as well as help other magic users to navigate through their abilities;

She becomes a Magi as a way to atone for the end of magic. Instead of seeing it as a burden, she wants to learn more about it and see how useful it can be to help others.

Coming up next, it's Ceres:

Ceres Chère is now Cryo Knight Ceres, A-Rank Magi, Assigned Gemstone is Opal, Essence is Water (Ice);

She is Terra's sister, wanting to help her to better understand the neutrality of magic;

Ceres is very disciplined and methodical, due to her past experience as a general. Now that she is free, she goes on a personal journey to prioritize her own happiness;

Her hobby is gardening, and she brews potions and other conoctions with her plants as ingredients;

Much like Terra, she wants to atone for the absence of magic. She studies alchemy to perfect her potions, as well as understand the utility of magic;

She becomes a Magi to relearn her positioning on magic and power in general. Power doesn't breed war, it's all a matter of discipline from the one that utilizes it.

Last but not least, here's Shadow;

Shadow is now Phantom Shinobi Shadow, A-Rank Magi, Assigned Gemstone is Sugilite, Essence is Darkness (Poison);

He still is a mercenary, travelling the world and working in exchange for money and other goods;

His identity and motivations are still a mystery to the wondarians. However, they don't force him to change, but saved him from his potential demise;

Albeit confused at their interference, he still accepts the offer of becoming a Magi. Deep down, he is grateful for the rescue, because he wants to contemplate life a little longer;

Shadow travels around Earth, instead of Wondaria. Despite working solo, he has stablished connections with fellow merc Magis around the globe;

He won't admit it out loud, but he is fascinated by the Magis' resolve and deeply cares for others. He still prefers to do stuff on his own because he doesn't want to get too attached;

Becomes a Magi solely for the rewards at the end of a well-done job. He also wants to live life to the fullest, so he travels the world to expand his skills and wisdom, so he can rest in peace one day.

[truevinekidsmagic]

The Reasons Magic Show Should be a Part of Kid’s Party in Singapore

Magic shows are an extraordinary method for enlivening both grown-up and kids' parties. Concerning magic, there are no age limitations. With the progression of time, the art becomes more noteworthy and impressive, provoking the curiosity of individuals, of all ages. Parties, especially those for kids, will incorporate more enjoyable components. It's significantly more engaging when there's a tad of magic included. The magic adds soul to the gatherings and keeps the visitors engaged. The following are five convincing motivations to consider hiring a kids party magician in Singapore for a children's party.

Kids Love Magic Individuals become entranced by magic. There aren't many individuals who aren't influenced by remarkable and splendid magic stunts. Kids, particularly at parties, are searching for something to do. Gone are the days when youngsters would stroll around with their stuffed toys and be happy with them. These days, kids have better standards, which you can meet with an incredible magic show for kids birthday in Singapore.

At the point when there is magic, kids become excited and anxious to get more familiar with it. It tends to be very useful to enlist a reputed magician in Singapore who can keep your kids engaged all through the party.

A Beneficial outcome On Children The utilization of a magic stick doesn't initiate a magical stunt. It involves various elements, including the speciality of storytelling and imparting confidence to youngsters. When the performer is playing out his magic in front of an audience, you can anticipate that he should share an abundance of information as stories and energizing experiences. The crowd will be captivated by the performer's magic as well as his mind-blowing execution.

When your youngsters are completely submerged in the art, they can see the value in how great a trick is and how smoothly it is performed. They can likewise connect with specific deceives and show a strong fascination with finding out more.

An Extraordinary Addiction Magic shows, in contrast to different types of entertainment, don't rapidly disappear. When the crowd and your youngsters are keen on the show, they will recollect it for a long time and keep the interest streaming. A bunch of magic stunts, along with dances, music, and balloon sculpting can keep the group engaged. Your party will be recalled affectionately, and your visitors will leave with affectionate recollections and a full heart.

Stays away from Dullness Sooner or later, a party becomes dull, and individuals retreat to their familiar surroundings or leave and call it a night. While each party should reach an end eventually, finishing it on a downer may not be the most ideal decision. A magic show is the one you need to keep the spirit of your party alive and your children dynamic and invigorated.

If you desire to have the best kids party magician in Singapore performing at your party call True Vine Kids Magic at +65 9234 6300 to book a show.

Source From: https://truevinekidsmagic.wordpress.com/2023/01/09/the-reasons-magic-show-should-be-a-part-of-kids-party-in-singapore/

[astrolovecosmos]

Scorpio Common Archetype, The Detective

Inquisitive, a sharp mind and memory, obsessive, controlling, having a “sixth sense”, strong-willed, and relentless tends to be associated with a detective character. The detective much like Scorpio can also have an unwavering view on justice or right and wrong. While Scorpio’s archetype the magician tells how they grow and about their introspective relationship - I think the detective looks into how Scorpio interacts with others and the world. 

Scorpio is an investigative person who pays attention to both details and the big picture. There is a passionate curiosity to their being. Sometimes this curiosity is fueled by a desire for power or control, other times it is a tempting call to discover what lies hidden. Scorpio can feel how deep and intricate the world is and wants to learn about this, connect with it. In their closest relationships they desire intense intimacy and knowledge about others. 

While this sign craves intimacy and strong attachment, sometimes their desire to know more and to dive down into the good, the bad, the ugly can also be a protective method. Astrologers tend to talk about how Scorpio prefers to know more about you than you know about them and this can come from a place of pain and insecurity. A Scorpio who is free of fear or has overcome their past wounds will still want to know all your cracks and threads. Scorpio’s curiosity can be underrated, especially since it goes into the origin of things, how things work. Scorpio wants to know more than the rules or general makeup, they want to know the source, the possible outcomes, the potential of someone or something. 

Many times in our movies and novels the detective won’t let go of the case. He or she is obsessive and won’t stop at anything to bring justice or solve the mystery. Scorpio can be all too familiar with obsession and the madness it can bring... but also the fruits it sometimes brings too. Scorpio is stubborn and unyielding. While it is a lesson to learn to let things go, Scorpio has the willpower that can uncover truths or reach a goal. When it comes to “truth” many times Sagittarius or the fire element is talked about. For Scorpio there can be an obsession of proving themselves right, of discovering secret knowledge, or dispelling rumors or lies. Profound truth can come from this archetype but sometimes the truth is warped into nothing but a bias. Fire signs practice honesty, air signs seek out factual information or knowledge in the realm of study, Sagittarius and Gemini have relationships with inner truth and meaning in life - Scorpio is about facing inner demons, the dark or flawed side of people, the hidden subjects, feelings, fantasies, or ideas of the world. Scorpio is about making the unseen seen, sometimes this is highly “truthful” other times it is a subject that needs to be reexamined - transformed.  Scorpio is to mystery as peanut butter is to jelly. Scorpio can’t resist a good puzzle or mystery themselves. Many times being private, reserved, or mysterious is used as a way to protect themselves. Sometimes they use an air of mystery to attract others. “Moth to a flame” is used to describe Scorpio’s enticing appeal, but Scorpio also finds themselves frequently fascinated and maybe lustful after those who are guarded or a situation that is enigmatic. 

Scorpio has a protective side and one of the best ways they protect their loved ones is by going out and finding why someone is doing something, finding out how the system works. Scorpio wants to be 10 steps ahead, making sure everything is going as planned, THEIR PLAN. While there can be romanticism around Scorpio’s attentiveness and passion, much like the paranoid, compulsive, or hyper focused detective in fiction Scorpio may have to deal with and overcome challenges of getting carried away, obsessions, controlling, and maybe having a superiority complex in their closest relationships. 

The detective in our stories also sometimes fall into habits of distrusting others. It is the detectives job to get inside the heads of criminals. Scorpio does have a great understanding of the sinister or problematic in human nature. This speaks volume to how Scorpio can be in relationships. Everyone can have a level of trust issues, but Scorpio is strongly associated with being suspicious of others, even paranoid. It is Scorpio’s job to overcome that distrust not anyone else, but many loved ones will likely face consequences of that distrustful nature. Scorpio can also fall into the selfishness and preoccupied nature of trying to “solve a case”. Meaning superficial or non-related matters can become a spotlight in their relationship, really covering up the true conflict or challenge. 

While I shared some challenges and negatives with Scorpio as the detective in relationships, the archetype still shows how devoted and truly interested they can be in others. If you shred back their fears and insecurities there is someone who wants to know how the world ticks, how you tick. Someone who sticks to a problem and solves it. Someone who can be passionate about right and wrong, and who in their nature is willing to help others out in the darkest moments or subjects of life. Scorpio as the detective is a complex person, sometimes the hero, but many times more of an anti-hero. While Scorpio themselves may try to fit the world into black and white, you certainly cannot fit them into either; no one knows this better than their loved ones. 

[spectacledemagie-blog]

The Way to Getting More Magic Shows Booked On the web

This article is the aftereffect of a discussion I had with a magician about his site. He needed to know whether I could assemble him a pleasant looking site that had his name and contact data on it. I disclosed to him the reason for having a site and what you need guests to do when they land on your site.

For what reason Do You Have a Site?

The main explanation magicians have sites is self image. They need to have the option to state to individuals, "You can visit my site at [http://www.bite-me-hard.com]." When the individual visits the site they normally observe one of two situations:

Leaflet Site

Commonplace Magician's Site - See Section 2 of this arrangement for a model.

The leaflet site is pleasantly planned with contact data and a couple of pictures. These destinations typically look overall quite spotless. The issue is guest change. Numerous individuals see the site and proceed onward to another site. They may stay away for the indefinite future. You have passed up the occasion to fabricate a relationship with them. The key component regularly missing with this sort of site is the capacity to catching the guest's name and email address so that follow up direct showcasing should be possible. The immediate showcasing brings the deal to a close. It is uncommon for individuals to employ magicians as a hasty purchase.

The ordinary magician's site is marvel to observe. By what method can one individual find so a wide range of approaches to utilize free enlivened illustrations on the landing page? Obviously the magician planning his site figured out how to shading text, change textual styles, and increment text dimension. All done in a similar section! Look at my earlier article recorded above for an itemized conversation of this point.

Your site exists to get individuals to give you their authorization. Truth is stranger than fiction, their authorization. The objective of the site is to get guests to give you their name and email. In all honesty this is important data that isn't parted with uninhibitedly. The site should be organized to initiate individuals to believe you enough to give this data to you.

This is the reason pamphlet locales and ordinary magician's destinations don't ordinarily function admirably. In the event that you haven't constructed a relationship with the likely customer, at that point it is far-fetched they will book your magic show. It resembles it was in secondary school. You can approach the prettiest young lady in school and state "Do me!" Odds are it won't be viable. Your site should build up a relationship with likely customer and gain her authorization. After that you can move toward her and state, "Book me!"

Reason for Authorization Advertising

This way to deal with advertising is called Authorization Showcasing. It has consistently been rehearsed yet Seth Godin instituted the term with his book by a similar name. Purchase a duplicate and Amazon or your nearby book shop. The reason for Consent Advertising is to transform outsiders into companions, and companions into customers.

I am not prescribing spamming individuals to get more magic shows. The vital components of Authorization Showcasing are interchanges from you are normal, individualized, and intriguing to the individual. Let,s take a gander at the components with regards to messages:

Expected - Individuals are expecting messages from you since they requested that you send them messages through your membership structure on your site. Continuously utilize a twofold pick in membership framework.

Individualized - Each email sent by you should be customized to the individual getting it. I couldn't care less in the event that you are conveying ten or 1,000 messages. Each individual ought to get an email that seems as though it was composed only for them.

Fascinating - The subject of each email should be connected and applicable to the explanation the individual gave you're his authorization in any case. In the event that you allure an individual to give his name and email to figure out how to utilize a magic show to make the ideal birthday celebration, at that point don't send messages about an extraordinary business opportunity called Amway. click for more info spectacle de magie en ligne

Another significant component of Consent Advertising is that there are various degrees of authorization. Consent levels range from spam (no authorization) to intravenous (sending items out to clients without him requesting them). As individuals give you their names and messages you start at the authorization scale (simply above spam). Your primary errand is to utilize your correspondences and administrations to move individuals up the authorization scale. While you will never likely get authorization to simply show and do magic shows excluded (intravenous), you can assemble a base of trusting and steadfast clients.

[dlkardenal]

It’s a kind of magic - Looking at the history of magical practices

Hey there, traveler!

That’s right, it’s Dar here with today’s cadaver on the dissecting table: magic. Given that magic isn’t technically one trope but a broad term used to define many things mostly in fiction genres it won’t be a single post but a short series about the topic. Let’s start with the basics: what do we mean by this short word, where did it come from and what’s the big deal? This episode is more of a ‘fun facts from the history of magic’, but I think they are interesting enough to inspire some readers. So have fun!

Magic is roughly saying a supernatural method to affect beings or forces that we can’t manipulate with mundane methods. From witches’ brew to voodoo dolls, chants and sacrifices, magic can appear in many forms but the main gist is the same: the user does something symbolic and commands a force to alter reality in some way. Some may think magic was born with J.R.Tolkien, but as you can guess from the introduction, it is a tale as old as time.

The more ancient civilizations accepted magic as a fact, a tool against certain dire events. Ancient Mesopotamia, for example, had a jurisdiction system in place as it was believed that nearly every person could cast magic, and thus cursing someone and protecting oneself from such a curse was no more extreme than getting into a fistfight. There was the offender, the evil magician who cast the curse and the defendant, who used magic in self-defense. This wasn’t as spectacular as one would think, it mostly consisted of imprisoning magic energies, unwillingly committed sins or the essence of some illnesses into objects, and then burning them to cleanse the magical power, be it ill or beneficial from this world.

In Egypt, there was a personified apparition of magic called heka, and they thought magic was a tool given to men by the creator to ward against certain events. Their use of magical energies came from the understanding that humans shared the divine nature of gods, they could create things and effects with words. Yupp, like Skyrim, only more desert-vibe. Do you know the pictograms and hieroglyphs inside pyramids? Those are words of magical nature, tailored to provide the dead royal with the means to survive in the afterlife. Fun fact, they were written inside the pyramids to keep them secret from the commoners, as it was a prerogative of the pharaoh to be guided by such spells.

But not all was rosy. The modern term ‘magic’ has a Greek origin and comes from the time of the Greek-Persian wars. The greeks learned this word from the Persians who followed a different religion then the polises, so the term ‘magos’ (meaning mage or magician) quickly gained a derogative connotation and referred to the alien, heathen religions of the Persians. This however quickly diluted and spread into the Hellenic masses and quickly became synonymous with charlatan and quack. This was the time magic and religion became inseparable for quite a long time after, the former being an improper, insulting form of the latter.

That derogative meaning continued into early and later Christianity. Theologists described magic as the opposition to miracles, supernatural phenomena created by God’s power (basically the same concept with a different source). This was further strengthened by the fact that the Celtic and german tribal religions (the so-called heathens) still thought of magic as a method to control the natural world and more importantly to commune with the divine. During the Middle Ages as Christianity spread magic was always an opposing force and almost solely present in druidic and supposedly in Jewish and Islamic religions. This is an important fact because these cultures became the foundations for the modern representation of magic, including the witches, the future tellers, the alchemists, and astrologists.

An interesting thing happened when Europe went to conquer the world. Our brave ancestors brought their beliefs and conventions with them, and that meant the way they thought about magic. They were quick to stamp every foreign religion, be it African, indigenous American, or Asian as magic, and tried to replace it with some good-old Christianity. That resulted in some quite fascinating things. For example, the Portuguese word feitiço means spell or incantation, but when they applied this to some West-African religious practices, the concept of fetish was born. Another example (my favorite) is the Haitian and Louisiana voudou, the mixture of some African beliefs and strong Christian pressure by the French. This created a religion worshipping Bondye (from French Bon Dieu, meaning „good God”) and the loa, the lesser deities or spirits connecting mortals to Bondye. Due to the forced but unwilling shift in faith, there are some really interesting anomalies, like the correlation of the death loa Maman Brijit and St. Brigitte of Ireland. Just to give an example why is this my favorite mythology, voudin rituals include the summoning of a specific loa into a „Mount”, a practitioner who lets the loa inhabit his or her body for a while. Then, you have to buy the loa’s attention with gifts. In other religions, this would be animal sacrifices or burning food, but not here. The loa are not so old-timey. Some of them need a good cigar, others desire pink champagne, while Baron Samedi, for example, the tophat wearing king of death likes his followers to host a funeral for his Mount so he can magically spring to life and laugh.

However as modern age approached like a steaming, oil-smelling mechanical monster, some magic turned out to be very real and very mundane and people had a new name for it – science. The line between technology, actual magic, and quack machinations became blurred and people were uncertain what to believe anymore. This uncertainty gave way to the witch hunts where basically anything unexplainable was marked as magic and thus diabolical. This public uproar raged on for quite some time in short and long periods all over the globe before the whole thing turned into skepticism.

The Modern Age brought with it a philosophy of intellect’s absolute dominance over every other virtue. An intelligent man didn’t believe in dubious practices, an intelligent lady never turned to clearly fraud future-tellers and mediums. This, however, went an interesting way. As it was no longer punishable by being burned alive but only shunned and ill-advised, it sparked a certain curiosity in people. Young girls bored out of their minds found an interesting mystery in these charlatans, and with that magic was reborn. During the Victorian era seances multiplied, secret magical organizations grew like mushrooms after the rain and the whole romantic (and terrifying) way we think about magic came into existence.

I think I’ll stop here for today. Next week we’ll move onto the mages, the practitioners and adepts of magic and take a look at how their real-world counterparts evolved during the ages. Did you find it interesting? Do you know more facts about historical magic practices? Which age and culture is your favorite to draw inspiration from to create a unique magic system? Let your voice be heard in comments or reblogs!

Cheers,

Dar

[blorgon-schmorgon]

BtVS Rewatch 1x09 The Puppet Show

continuing my weekly rewatch of buffy with my partner (his first time watching), we watched the puppet show last week, which I expected to dislike. I remember feeling bored the last time I saw it, and was anxious to move past it, but I think it might actually have been the episode my partner enjoyed the most? He spent most of it guessing how it was going to go, and never caught on, which is probably testament to how tightly written the episode was and the good use of red-herrings and false leads. Watching him watch it gave me a new perspective on the strength of the episode, and speaks to what morgue.isprettyawesome claims is the best bit of this episode - the genuine surprise and the use of Buffy’s format to keep the audience guessing and introducing a slew of weirdness that somehow clicks together. I don’t feel like any Buffy episode will introduce this many twists again, but it’s a very solid method of doing Buffy, and feels very season 1 in its horror movie riffing. 

some thoughts on youth and the wider world: 

I just made a recent imagery series about youth in season 1, and I think this episode really captures some of the themes of youth really well? Sid the Dummy is kind of antithetical to the monsters we’ve seen thus far (Moloch, The Master, Miss French, Catherine Madison), as a creature that has a simulacra of eternal youth foisted upon it rather than seeking that youth. Of course, the real monster of this episode is the demon going undercover as a magician seeking youth in his own way, but he receives so little screentime and focus that he really seems like an excuse to explore Sid the Dummy instead. Initially, Sid seems to be another variation of these previous monsters - attempting to steal the youth of high school students - but turns out to be the opposite, a demon hunter cursed to live in the body of a puppet, a quasi-child, until he completes his purpose of slaying a set of demons. In some ways, Sid seems to be an archetype for what Angel will eventually become, and the role Angel is currently playing in the show - Buffy’s connection to a wider world of monsters and demon fighters that exist beyond her, a model of her future development and growth. The connection these two make in this episode is similar to the connection she will build with characters like Angel, Kendra, and Faith, the shadow selves that will nudge her into and away from separate paths of growth. Here, she meets someone who has fought the good fight and is unable to leave, trapped in a fight he no longer wants to be a part of, an inversion of the short-lived Slayer, which he comments on:

Sid:  Don't get sniffly on me, sis. I've lived a lot longer than most demon hunters. Or Slayers, for that matter.

Buffy herself will feel trapped in a role she doesn’t want to play again and again - particularly in season 6 - and so Sid feels like a useful metaphor for thinking through that future pain and feeling of entrapment. Sid doesn’t quite fit any high school metaphor the way previous monsters have, but as I said about I Robot, You Jane, seems to be a way for the show to begin commenting on itself. Here, Sid holds up a fractured mirror to Buffy, her growth, and the Slayer as a construct. 

On the flip side, the episode also introduces Principal Snyder. Where Sid represents a path of adulthood for Buffy to consider and step into, Snyder represents malevolent adulthood, a force to be fought by rebellious and independent youth envisioning an alternative future. Snyder represents conformity, order at the expense of justice and change, and compliance to authority. These themes will emerge more strongly in season 3, but here remain a useful kick in the pants for a show that hasn’t quite found its grounding and a sense of conflict. Until this point, the key authority figures were Principal Flutie and Joyce Summers - Snyder represents a tangible human figure of conflict for the Scooby Gang to organize against, as opposed to the more benevolently negligent Flutie and Joyce. This is important set up work for future seasons! The show is beginning to come into its own here, and its great!

Another notable moment that emerges from this episode is Buffy’s fear of dummies stemming from a childhood experience, and Xander gaslighting her fear of Sid by drawing on that - it’ll happen again in Killed by Death with Buffy’s fear of Kindestod, and is an interesting, if not quite effective way, of heightening the episode’s tension. The show is beginning to understand the importance of personalizing the threat to the main characters, but drawing on experiences in the past is a little cheap, and doesn’t quite work.

I’m also fascinated by the character of Morgan - Morgan who is Sid’s helper, Morgan who seemed to be invested in this fight too, Morgan who dies offhandedly, Morgan the enigma and someone who seems to be a shadow of Ford in Lie to Me, or even Ben in season 5. A cancer/death-stricken youth who seems to choose good in a way these future variants don’t. What is his relationship with Sid? What are his motivations? His disposability seems linked to this episode’s twisting surprises, but I wish he had gotten more of a focus and been sketched out more clearly. Sid doesn’t remark on his death at all, which seems like such a wasted opportunity to flesh out Sid and Morgan more clearly, and relate it to the show’s larger themes.

On a final note, what I love about this episode upon rewatch is how much fun the cast seems to be having, and how relaxed the Scooby Gang seem to be - we won’t see this for the rest of the season as they’re put in more harrowing situations that shake up the dynamics of the group in interesting ways, but we will see this a lot in season 2 that helps to ground a heavy and emotionally tough season. Season 1 is doing a lot of important legwork with this episode, and it’s great to see the family unit of the show come into itself! I love their teasing of Giles, I love the epilogue, and I love their familiarity with each other!

[yurireview]

Ambition and Affection the drama of Croix and Chariot

it's been 2 years since the LWA premiere and I still like the dynamics of Croix and Chariox even though the dynamics of Diana and Akko is very good, I think the engine of the series were the two teachers who took separate paths ... that said I will begin the review in honor of my favorite dynamic and for the anniversary of the series

Litte Witch Academia is probably one of my favorite anime has all the elements for a good story, the focus is fun, true friendship and a path of the “hero” well simplistic but with great development, it can be said that it is one of the few Current projects that do have a soul unlike the current anime, but in the middle of this show there are 2 characters that really give a maturity to the show

Croix and Chariot were the reason why half of the season was the best part, it had an incredible development and it really made me wish that the anime had focused on that issue from the beginning to show us a lot more, but let’s continue with the review

Croix and Chariot

I hate that in the Fandom they tend to simplify their connection with saying “They’re like Diana and Akko if there was no jealousy” which is ridiculous if they can really figure out how deep Chariot and Croix’s relationship is not that they do not have parallels but that It is very different because of the context of their situations.

The anime leaves a lot of them in the mystery but what little it shows is quite revealing, to start with Croix was an excellent student and did not get together with other people because she did not care and did not need it. This image summarizes what Croix was then and his contrast with Chariot even before she met her.

Croix’s life was just becoming good enough to excel and achieve his goal that was all, only had his knowledge … but look at the change of Croix to meet Chariot, this shows us how special this girl meant to her.

Many in the fandom have wondered that it took an introverted girl to join Chariot who was the opposite of her and that probably Chariot’s dream would have seemed naive and stupid.

The answer to this is given in chapter 23 in the conversation of Diana and Akko, which point to one of the main points of the series as a whole and this is that many were fascinated by the magic of Chariot, but few realized that the first to fall in love with that cheerful and silly half-wit was Croix, even in the midst of all her seriousness and cynicism she was attracted to Chariot’s cheerful and problematic magic and encouraged not to give up and what makes this better is that it was Croix who in the end was the one who tells him the famous words “Believing is your magic”

Many have referred to this anime as the “Harry Potter in anime” which is inaccurate … but I must focus that Chariot and Croix’s part is like a less dark version of Dumbledore and Grindelwald, if they realize in spite of the “Friendship” of the two young magicians that really united them was the attraction of the Deathly Hallows were ambitious young but clear with different goals…with Croix and Chariot is basically the same, even in spite of that instant connection Croix ambitioned the “Magic to change the world” and influenced Chariot to help her look for it but each with different goals

it must be a tremendous irony that Chariot took Croix words as a personal motto while Geller took the words of Albus as his personal motto

“Believing is your magic” “For the greater good”

After becoming close they went to look for the wand … each one with their respective dream to neither of them the dream of the other seemed stupid, until Chariot was chosen, that was the beginning of the problems since for the first time Croix looked at Chariot with frustration and anger as he had ruined all his goals and I must say that this reaction is normal in someone like Croix

But if we continue the scene when Chariot cries exclaiming that he did not want that and thinking that Croix hated her, after seeing her cry Croix hugs her and swallowing her pride, her anger, her ambitions just for not seeing her cry … she trusted in her and encouraged Chariot to move forward at that time his affection for her was greater than his ambition which unleashed one of the Words and as we saw in the case of Akko this word has to be with a special person and clear a feeling of immense gratitude both parties.

Although I must say something curious Croix is ​​the only witch who is not even allowed to touch the Shiny Rote and this is because Croix is ​​the kind of witch that is supposed to be protected by the Grand Triskelion … What would happen if she used the magic of world reconstruction with its ambition to become the most powerful witch? Taking your dream to the extreme and transforming into something else

People like Croix are very explosive and their dreams are quickly transformed into very unpleasant things, in the whole series we see that their only emotional link is to Chariot and otherwise had no remorse, just imagine:

What would happen if she unleashed the words or found a way to dominate all the power?

Here again I can make an accurate comparison with Harry Poter … just imagine how many deaths would have been saved if Gellert Grindelwald could not have obtained the power of the Deathly Hallows for magical protection, as Dumbledore himself said. “He lost the control when receiving power ”

In the incident of the Shiny Rote and the “chosen” was something that created a big wound that would affect both long-term, but as we see in chapter 12 of Akko vision, there Chariot is with the Shiny Rote next to Croix who looked at her and applauded him, sharing a nice moment what basically eliminates those who say that right there they stopped spending time together.

I must say that this memory is very romantic

Although Croix was half resentful, he had not turned away but his relationship with his special person, to see the way Chariot executed his mission and truly the distancing worsened when Chariot became an “Idol” and the famous “Shiny Chariot” was born “

If you remember chapter 23 Croix tells you that thanks to the Full Dream Spirit his plan is now possible, but if analyze Chariot little Flashback this is a lie, after several months of using the Full Dream Spirit it was confirmed that it was a Total success and Croix told him the effects, but really Croix if he wanted to help his way with that spell because Croix thought that was the way to get the Seventh Word that’s why he let go of his frustration when Chariot said “I do not want that power” , is angry that the “Chosen” is a stupid who does not see the “reality” of the magical world, it is more Chariot stopped looking for the last word in concentrating on his show.

One of the reasons why Chariot believes she is responsible as Croix for the theft of magic is because he knew in his heart that Croix had become selfish and ambitious for power through her, but decided to ignore him and trust in his methods…because of her affection for her, she pretended that everything was fine, but in the end that caused much more damage to both of them and to the people who lost their magic

After their fight even when they separated Croix was watching her as her career was broken and even with everything that happened between the two Croix worried and was very surprised to see how Chariot destroyed herself because of all her problems and pressure that it was carrying … although the reality is that Chariot became selfish and that made Rote reject it.

Returning to the current events in the series, you will notice that the day that Chariot retired was when Croix truly went on his way and a plan to carry out his mission and if we see the bigger picture, Croix had already surpassed Chariot in terms of “Achievements” when they spent 10 years each separated by their way, Croix was admired and they said that the future of magic was on their shoulders, since she was a revolutionary in “modern magic”

In the incident with Akko in Chapter 15 where Chariot confronts her, she says this very revealing phrase:

“You have not changed in anything, you are always trying to get things for yourself”

Chariot sentence proves what I mentioned before and makes a lot of sense with the guilt he has for the Theft of Magic because she let herself be deceived and ignored the truth until Croix herself confessed it, although ironically Croix revealed this information because she thought that Chariot was not going to be an “Immature” because from Croix’s perspective “Good justifies the means” for her. What good is it for a few to preserve their magical talent if the magic in the world were to disappear?

In all their interactions there is a kind of tension that only people who liked in the past possess, are practically enemies and have different goals and ideologies … but in their confrontations, none of them actually seeks to hurt the other because they can not .

If Croix had wanted to kill Chariot, he would have done so long ago and the same with Chariot, she could stop Croix before he started his plan, only that he did not really want to confront her and not give her away even without knowing his plan.

Why do you think I did not give it away? Why do you think he did not tell Akko about Croix? again I can use something from Harry Poter … when Dumbledore was asked to face Grindelwald he did not make his decision in 5 years where there was a lot of confusion and chaos in Europe, where he said “I had an emotional bond for man”. … basically Chariot had the same dilemma with Croix, she really wanted to stop her without having to face her directly and her internal conflict is very well done.

Although Croix is ​​not better, he had the same weakness for Chariot and this is clear in chapter 21 where he was holding Chariot to arrive with Akko

When one of her attacks left her unconscious and Chariot was going to die in the fall, Croix did not hesitate 1 second to go and save her in a state of panic, forgetting all her goals.

A simple and powerful scene that gives us a good background of both

The moment Chariot reacts and stares at Croix for the body language you can determine that he was feeling our “villain” and asks him to stop trying to save Akko to which Chariot refuses knowing that Croix was not going to stop her anymore.

Chariot just decides to stop Croix when he hurts Akko revealing the truth in the worst way crushing the dreams of his special student and fuck if it was such a well done scene

In the only real showdown in the whole anime was between Croix and Chariot in chapter 24 when both abandoned all their emotions to fulfill each his dream, even though it lasted little I would say that Croix won by managing to stop Chariot and defeat her

When Croix breaks the seal and thinks that he already won by getting the magic that changed the world, upon receiving it he realizes that not only can not use it but it is not what she expected … something curious about Croix is ​​that it is the Witch who has an ambition of real power not “smiles” and see that the “Great magic” was about that left her shocked

In this part he shows us how his own egoistic dream is in constant conflict with and I dare to say, the love that Croix has for her. That is why in the series this is what leads to their contradictory actions. She can never really settle on either, no matter how much she tries on herself. She may think that she knows what she really wants, but in fact, she has no damn idea and the moment Woodward appears she reproaches him that nobody is guiding her and that she felt set apart.

Being stripped of her dream and consequently of her ambition, the other great thing she had left was the feelings towards Chariot and that is why after her magic gets out of control she asks Chariot to leave her and to save her several times, showing true repentance for what he did and recognizing that it was all his fault.

When Akko uses great magic the result is something that Croix never came to expect since honestly it is such a joyful magic that I really do not think Croix would have imagined something like that.

Understanding this should not be surprised that Croix helped Chariot and the little witches or the speed with which Chariot forgives her and re-establishes what they previously had … it can be said that Akko not only revived the magic in the world and he gave the redemption to Chariot but he made Croix understand what really mattered about magic and about his own feelings.

In the final scene of both that I must say is my favorite because it symbolizes a new beginning for Croix and Chariot that has a lot of romantic charge in his farewell especially by Chariot his facial language to the departure of Croix is ​​amazing and his final words are even better “! Croix will be waiting! … I’ll be waiting for you”

No doubt a great conclusion and definitely the only couple (lesbian) of the series

[illusionistoxzd401-blog]

Our Mentalism Statements

One way of maintaining on your own inspired and also involved is setting on your own challenges. What might https://en.search.wordpress.com/?src=organic&q=mentalist & mind reader have been if Derren Brown had decided to stop as soon as he got his first break as a magician? If he had just established his autopilot to 'cruise'? You require to set on your own goals as well as obstacles to encourage and also thrill you as well as maintain points fascinating.

Third, make certain you use the magic area! Places like the Conjuror Community Club are excellent for illusionists to motivate and also encourage each various other to brand-new heights. So to recap; right here's your detailed guide to discovering mentalism Action 1: Find Out Mentalism Step 2: Practice, Method, Method Step 3: Get In Touch With Like Minded Magicians Tip 4: Purchase Your Success Step 5: A Formula For The Years Ahead Many thanks for reading this overview on finding out to come to be a mentalist! We wish you located this guide beneficial! If you still have any kind of more concerns, do not hesitate to leave a comment, and we'll return to you on it.

Experience mindreading, magic, and also funny, all in one show! The Phenomenon brings his self-invented personality of The Mind reader to the. Voted Best Illusionist in Las Las Vega, this is not a show you want to miss out on! A mentalist incorporated with investigative abilities he picked up from his father, McCambridge surprises audiences with his mindreading capacities.

Facts About Reading People's Minds Uncovered

To see the very best in the art of mentalism, obtain your tickets to see The Mind reader currently and also witness magic like you have actually never seen it before! SEE REQUISITES & ISSUE ON THE BACK. ALL LATE ARRIVALS ARE TOPIC TO HAVE THEIR CAR SEATS REASSIGNED. This ticket will certainly NOT be shipped to you.

Sale is non-refundable, and also consumer needs to offer business with legitimate image ID * for a ticket to the occasion acquired. All bookings are final. Have to choose up ticket at package workplace no less than one (1) hr prior to the program. * legitimate photo recognition acceptable to Company is a driver's permit, state recognition card, or military identification card.

Invite to the modern-day mentalism and also amusement show - Intuitions. In a span of simply 75 mins this program provides you fun, surprise, entertainment and also excitement. The program is packed with funny, thriller, hypnotic aspects, audience interaction, music and finishes with a thrilling orgasm. This non-stop interactive program is perfectly designed to entertain both household as well as company audience.

A Biased View of Mentalism

You might have seen mind readers at the workplace in shows and also tvs and also wondered at the tricks and also predictions they were able to do. Mentalism is a new form of magic that has established, as well as numerous typically display impressive tricks with their mind abilities. While normal magic techniques such as drawing a bunny out of a hat have ended up being old, mentalism is a form of magic that is frequently carried out by making use of specific mental telepathy capabilities as well as techniques.

Nevertheless, there are particular secret strategies that such individuals harness and also establish in order to excite their viewers as well as generate the illusion that they read minds. Mentalism as a whole is an understanding of human actions and having the ability to predict outcomes. It develops the illusion that a person has the ability to review the minds of others.

Right here are some key tricks that every effective mind reader uses to be effective in their efficiencies. A mentalist will frequently tell an individual in the target market to consider a thing or a word as well as repeat it lot of times in their head. The mentalist will certainly after that discuss other things, however the person will continue to believe about that word or idea in their head repeatedly.

Top Guidelines Of Mind Reading Magic Tricks

The mind reader will certainly notice the indicators by viewing the lips of the viewer. Normally, the first or the last letters of the word mouthed provides a secret regarding what is being claimed or thought about. An experienced mentalist is then able to think the word or suggestions correctly.

This is the art of misdirection which obtains the target market or the targeted individual to consider that thing or idea. This is made with body movement as well as the option of words. A seasoned mind reader will certainly misdirect the viewers to a certain suggestion or idea and also after that be able to predict it properly.

Afterwards if she or he recommends that individuals in the target market consider a device, a lot of will consider the watch they are using. This is a trick that many effective mind readers utilize. It is the power of tip that works for many individuals. Individuals are much more vulnerable to be influenced by tips than they wish to confess.

The 6-Second Trick For Magic Tricks

Experienced Mentalists normally obtain info out of their spectators or their target market in manner ins which individuals do not also understand. Information is removed by discussing general subjects which usually seem relevant to individuals and could seem as if the mind reader reads their mind. For example, the mind reader could recommend that she or he is seeing a number.

This often makes people rely on their brainpowers. As they begin relying on the mind reader, they come to be more available to the pointers made and also being even more unsuspecting. The major attribute that is necessary to success in mentalism is being able to check out individuals as well as to get beneficial details about them.

The majority of people break down spoken and also non-verbal indications that permit you to understand their history, their mindset and also other information. An seasoned mentalist is able to choose up on such information as well as predict a person's mindset properly. This increases the persuading nature of the performances and results in greater success in the mentalist's program.

Unknown Facts About Mentalism Magic

About Mind Reading Tricks

Excitement About Mentalism

As one of the hottest promising performers in the Denver area, Scotty Wiese is many points performance illusionist, company performer, master of events, and also skilled mind reader. Wait a min what's that last word? For starters, it's not a typo mentalism is a special form of performance magic that has a few crucial distinctions from "standard" illusionist acts.

Mentalism, basically, is a kind of magic that concentrates on the mind. Whereas lots of traditional magic methods concentrate on spectacle and sleight of hand, numerous mentalist techniques can be executed totally verbally. If standard magic asks the target https://mindreader.co.il מופע לבר מצווה market to think that the entertainer can really, amazingly, adjust the real world around them (as high as suspension of shock permits), mentalism asks the target market to believe that the entertainer has supernatural or psychic powers.

While Scotty doesn't really have superordinary, mind-reading powers (or does he?), there are numerous little tricks in mentalism that permit the performer to deduce what the audience participant could be thinking.p The Mentalist asks the subject to believe of a number in their heads and leads them with some mental calculations, ultimately inquiring to connect the numbers to letters in the alphabet which are then utilized to get them to call a nation, pet, as well as shade.

Some Known Details About Mentalism

The mentalist asks the topic a collection of random inquiries, and at the end, he asks them to call a shade and also tool. He provides a notepad which thought their answer beforehand, which is usually a red hammer. The mind readers asks the subject to compose down a number on a folded paper.

Bear in mind the examples over are exceptionally basic, as well as real mentalism efficiency acts will certainly be far more awe-inspiring. For apparent reasons, Scotty's best methods can not be spoiled right here! However if you're asking yourself exactly how the examples above work, there are a few various examples. In the first one, the number and also letter combination inevitably causes "D" and "E" whatever the beginning number is.

In the 2nd, the inquiries cause subconscious synapses that make it exceptionally likely for the individual to think "red" and also "hammer" together. In the third, deception is used by the mentalist in a very specific manner in which enables them to obtain a peek of the number as they shred it up.

Not known Incorrect Statements About Mind Reader

Because we do not desire to ruin the enjoyable and disclose Scotty's mentalism tricks right here, why not book him for your next event or corporate event to see him at work yourself? We understand that you'll be bewitched by Scotty's efficiency. Ready to publication? Click on this link to begin!.

Prior to we obtain better right into the topic, we would like to attend to a couple of disclaimers. Betting could be all fun and also video games till you go too much down the rabbit hole. Just be cautious how you play! Second, we're not trying to persuade you that you truly need a mind reader to step up your gambling enterprise game! We just believe that this is an intriguing topic that you may like, as well as we would just such as to existing realities that either verify or deny that this is feasible.

Whether it is seeing into the future or speaking to the dead, a whole lot of these experts are identified as mentalists. So, exactly what is a mind reader? Not to be confused with magician these 2 are various arts that do not generally go together. Nevertheless, there are still some individuals that execute the so-called mental magic, which integrate high intuition and also magic tricks based upon the power of impression.

Magic Tricks Can Be Fun For Everyone

The suggestions are based on the mentalist's instinct and, usually, on an individual's body language. Everyone responds differently to a certain word or action, which acts as an indication for the mind reader and also helps him choose the appropriate pointers in the situation. Have you viewed 'The Mentalist'? If not, you ought to get hold of some snacks and go watch it today.

Long tale short, this is an American crime step-by-step TELEVISION collection, where one of the main personalities, Patrick Jane (played by Simon Baker), is the mind reader. He is an investigator/detective that solves enigmas as well as criminal offenses with his 'psychic' capabilities. One extremely legendary scene, which stimulated our interest and gave us the concept for this post, is when Patrick remains in prison as well as takes component in an online poker video game alongside various other prisoners.

Did you see that? This led us to the big question and the major subject of this blog site message if this guy was that efficient betting himself, would certainly a person like him be able to aid you win at texas hold'em? Extra significantly can a mentalist assistance you win while dipping into an online casino website? Apparently, people work with or speak with a mentalist to enhance their online supplier games.

Reading Human Mind Things To Know Before You Get This

There are ways for individuals to forecast the relocations and the upcoming cards from the deck simply by looking at the display. A great deal of big online forums like 2 Plus 2 and The Magic Caf share some technique on just how you can do it on your own. There is also a digital book by Ben Harris, ' PSY-Poker', which, from what we have actually checked out, describes the magic of psi-poker and just how you can use easy trickery to.

Nonetheless, we wouldn't wish to trouble you further with way too much details. Some bettors are encouraged that a mind reader can assist you win at a real-time online poker game. They declare that the screen of the computer or the phone can not interrupt the person's 'powers' as well as he/she might quickly make suggestions, based upon the activities of the dealership.

In either instance, you'll possibly need to prepare your wallet the expense to winning a game isn't that small! A great deal of players think that a mentalist might help you get some added smackers, while others assume that it is far better to buy a poker instructor or individual training.

Not known Details About Reading People's Minds

Counting cards is also not a great concept, because you can make an error, plus, it is not allowed land-based gambling enterprises. You can try while playing on your computer system, but we believe it would certainly be harder for you. So, what do we believe? In general, We're sure that there is a way for mentalism and also wagering to co-exist; however, we're not completely persuaded to confirm anything.

[mentalismmagicvwof121-blog]

The 6-Minute Rule for Mind Magic Tricks

One way of maintaining yourself determined as well as engaged is establishing on your own challenges. What might have been if Derren Brown had made a decision to stop when he got his very first break as an illusionist? If he had just set his auto-pilot to 'cruise'? You need to establish on your own objectives and also challenges to inspire and delight you and keep points fascinating.

Finally, ensure you make use of the magic community! Places like the Conjuror Area Club are perfect for illusionists to motivate and also encourage each other to new elevations. So to evaluate; below's your step by action overview to discovering mentalism Action 1: Discover Mentalism Step 2: Method, Method, Technique Step 3: Get In Touch With Like Minded Magicians Tip 4: Spend In Your Success Action 5: A Formula For The Years Ahead Thanks for reading this guide on finding out to end up being a mind reader! We wish you found this guide valuable! If you still have any additional inquiries, really feel free to leave a remark, and we'll get back to you on it.

Experience mindreading, magic, and also funny, all in one show! The Sensation brings his self-invented personality of The Mentalist to the. Elected Best Magician in Las Vegas, this is not a program you wish to miss out on! A mentalist incorporated with investigator abilities he discovered from his papa, McCambridge astonishes audiences with his mindreading abilities.

The 8-Second Trick For Mind Reader

To see the finest in the art of mentalism, obtain your tickets to see The Mentalist now as well as witness magic like you have actually never ever seen it prior to! SEE REQUISITES & CONDITIONS ON THE BACK. ALL LATE ARRIVALS UNDERGO HAVE THEIR SEATING REASSIGNED. This ticket will certainly NOT be shipped to you.

Sale is non-refundable, and also customer must offer business with valid picture ID * for a ticket to the occasion acquired. All bookings are final. Should select up ticket at package workplace no less than one (1) hr prior to the show. * valid image identification acceptable to Firm is a vehicle driver's permit, state identification card, or armed forces recognition card.

Welcome to the modern mentalism and amusement show - Intuitions. In a span of simply 75 mins this program provides you enjoyable, surprise, enjoyment as well as excitement. The program is packed with comedy, thriller, hypnotic aspects, audience interaction, music and also ends with a thrilling climax. This continuous interactive program is completely created to captivate both household and business audience.

The 10-Minute Rule for Reading Human Mind

You may have seen mentalists at the workplace in shows and also tvs as well as admired the methods and also predictions they were able to do. Mentalism is a brand-new kind of magic that has created, and also several usually flaunt impressive techniques with their mind capacities. While ordinary magic techniques such as pulling a rabbit out of a hat have become old, mentalism is a type of magic that is typically carried out by utilizing certain telepathy capabilities as well as methods.

Nevertheless, there are particular secret techniques that such people harness as well as develop in order to thrill their spectators as well as generate the impression that they read minds. Mentalism as a whole is an understanding of human behavior and having the ability to predict results. It creates the illusion that a person is able to review the minds of others.

Below are some crucial secrets that every effective mentalist uses to be successful in their performances. A mind reader will certainly frequently tell a person in the target market to consider a thing or a word and also repeat it sometimes in their head. The mentalist will then speak about other things, but the individual will continue to consider that word or idea in their head consistently.

Mind Reading Magic Things To Know Before You Get This

The mentalist will certainly notice the indications by enjoying the lips of the viewer. Usually, the initial or the last letters of words mouthed gives them a trick as to what is being claimed or אמן אשליות ישראלי considered. An experienced mentalist is after that able to presume the word or suggestions correctly.

This is the art of misdirection which obtains the audience or the targeted individual to believe regarding that point or idea. This is finished with body language along with the choice of words. An experienced mentalist will certainly misdirect the viewers to a particular concept or idea and after that have the ability to anticipate it properly.

Afterwards if she or he recommends that individuals in the target market consider a device, many will assume of the watch they are using. This is a trick that the majority of successful mind readers use. It is the power of suggestion that functions for many people. People are extra susceptible to be affected by pointers than they would love to confess.

The Greatest Guide To Mentalism

Experienced Mentalists generally obtain details out of their viewers or their target audience in means that people do not even understand. Information is drawn out by talking regarding basic topics which commonly appear appropriate to individuals and also could appear as if the mentalist reads their mind. For circumstances, the mind reader could suggest that he or she is seeing a number.

This commonly makes people think in their brainpowers. As they begin relying on the mind reader, they come to be more available to the suggestions made and being even more gullible. The primary trait that is necessary to success in mentalism is having the ability to read individuals and to grab useful info about them.

Many http://edition.cnn.com/search/?text=mentalist & mind reader individuals offer verbal and non-verbal indicators that enable you to recognize their history, their frame of mind and other details. An knowledgeable mind reader is able to notice such information as well as forecast a person's frame of mind accurately. This enhances the convincing nature of the efficiencies and also results in better success in the mind reader's show.

Things about Mental Telepathy

Getting The Reading Human Mind To Work

The 6-Second Trick For Mind Reading Magic

As one of the hottest promising performers in the Denver location, Scotty Wiese is lots of points efficiency magician, company performer, master of ceremonies, as well as talented mentalist. Wait a min what's that last word? For starters, it's not a typo mentalism is an one-of-a-kind kind of efficiency magic that has a couple of crucial differences from "standard" illusionist acts.

Mentalism, in short, is a kind of magic that concentrates on the mind. Whereas numerous traditional magic tricks focus on phenomenon as well as sleight of hand, several mentalist techniques can be performed entirely vocally. If conventional magic asks the target market to believe that the performer can truly, amazingly, control the real world around them (as long as suspension of disbelief allows), mentalism asks the audience to think that the performer has supernatural or psychic powers.

While Scotty does not in fact have supernatural, mind-reading powers (or does he?), there are numerous little tricks in mentalism that enable for the performer to deduce what the target market participant may be thinking.p The Mind reader asks the based on believe of a number in their heads as well as leads them through some mental computations, ultimately asking them to connect the numbers to letters in the alphabet which are then made use of to obtain them to call a nation, pet, and shade.

The Mind Reading Magic Tricks Ideas

The mentalist asks the topic a series of random questions, and also at the end, he inquires to call a color and device. He provides an item of paper which thought their solution in advance, which is usually a red hammer. The mentalists asks the subject to create down a number on a folded up paper.

Remember the examples above are extremely easy, and also real mentalism efficiency acts will be far more awe-inspiring. For evident reasons, Scotty's ideal tricks can't be spoiled below! Yet if you're asking yourself just how the instances above work, there are a couple of different examples. In the first one, the number as well as letter combination invariably results in "D" and "E" regardless of what the beginning number is.

In the 2nd, the inquiries result in subconscious synapses that make it extremely likely for the individual to think "red" as well as "hammer" with each other. In the third, sleight of hand is used by the mind reader in a really specific manner in which permits them to obtain a peek of the number as they shred it up.

How Mind Reader can Save You Time, Stress, and Money.

Considering that we do not wish to ruin the fun as well as expose Scotty's mentalism techniques below, why not book him for your following celebration or company event to see him at work on your own? We understand that you'll be enchanted by Scotty's efficiency. Ready to book? Go here to get begun!.

Prior to we obtain better into the topic, we would love to resolve a couple of please notes. Gaming can be all fun as well as video games until you go too much down the bunny opening. Just beware exactly how you play! Second, we're not attempting to encourage you that you truly require a mentalist to tip up your casino video game! We just believe that this is an interesting topic that you might like, as well as we would only like to present realities that either validate or deny that this is possible.

Whether it is seeing right into the future or speaking to the dead, a whole lot of these experts are labelled as mind readers. So, exactly what is a mentalist? Not to be perplexed with magician these 2 are various arts that do not typically go together. Nonetheless, there are still some individuals that carry out the supposed psychological magic, which incorporate high instinct and magic tricks based on the power of illusion.

The 8-Minute Rule for Mind Reading Tricks

The ideas are based on the mentalist's instinct and also, commonly, on an individual's body movement. Everyone reacts in a different way to a specific word or activity, which acts as an indicator for the mind reader as well as aids him choose the ideal pointers in the scenario. Have you enjoyed 'The Mind reader'? If not, you should get hold of some snacks and go see it right now.

Lengthy story short, this is an American crime step-by-step TV series, where among the major characters, Patrick Jane (played by Simon Baker), is the mind reader. He is an investigator/detective that resolves enigmas and also criminal offenses with his 'psychic' capabilities. One very legendary scene, which triggered our rate of interest as well as provided us the concept for this article, is when Patrick is in prison as well as participates in a casino poker video game alongside various other prisoners.

Did you see that? This led us to the huge question and the major topic of this blog article if this man was that efficient betting himself, would certainly a person like him be able to help you win at online poker? A lot more significantly can a mentalist aid you win while playing at a real-time gambling enterprise site? Apparently, individuals hire or speak with a mind reader to boost their real-time dealer games.

The Single Strategy To Use For Mind Reader

There are methods for people to forecast the steps and also the upcoming cards from the deck just by looking at the screen. A great deal of large discussion forums like 2 Plus Two as well as The Magic Caf share some trick on just how you could do it for on your own. There is even an e-book by Ben Harris, ' PSY-Poker', which, from what we have actually checked out, clarifies the magic of psi-poker and how you can use very easy hoax to.

Nevertheless, we would not wish to bother you better with way too much info. Some bettors are convinced that a mentalist can help you win at a live poker video game. They assert that the screen of the computer system or the phone can not interrupt the individual's 'powers' as well as he/she could quickly make suggestions, based upon the motions of the dealer.

In either instance, you'll most likely have to prepare your wallet the expense to winning a video game isn't that small! A lot of players believe that a mind reader could help you obtain some additional smackers, while others think that it is far better to buy an online poker trainer or individual training.

Everything about Mentalism Magic

Counting cards is likewise not a great suggestion, because you can make a mistake, plus, it is not allowed land-based gambling establishments. You can attempt while playing on your computer system, however we think it would be harder for you. So, what do we think? Overall, We make certain that there is a method for mentalism and betting to co-exist; nonetheless, we're not totally persuaded to validate anything.

[gavinhalm]

A Discussion of Tom Gunning's “Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations”

Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations: Spirit Photography, Magic Theatre, Trick Films, and Photography's Uncanny.

In one of his more famous essays on photography, Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations, Tom Gunning describes the medium as being fraught with a double existence as both an icon, or bearer of resemblance, as well as an index, which points to the photograph as a literal, empirical trace of past-time. Also essential to this view is the fact that photography is inherently a kind of scientific, chemical/mechanical machine free from the "unreliability of human discourse" (i.e., an image making medium far different than drawing or painting). But, the most striking aspect of photography's early development and mass consumption were the feelings of discomfort experienced by many when viewing this new technology, along with its association with the occult.

The Uncanny and the Double

To describe the startling, “uncanny” experience felt by 19th century viewers of photography, Gunning begins with a fascinating quote from Balzac's novel Cousin Pons, where the author states, in a narrative digression shot-through with notions gleaned from Spiritualist metaphysics, that the figure or thing represented in a photograph exists as a kind of specter or ghost that is constantly producing, shedding, or radiating images of itself outward towards the camera in order to be recorded. In essence, the sensitized photographic plate, via the camera's lens, captures moments of a kind of spiritual singularity emanating from the Real World, and Real Things, and freezes them all forever, in a kind of half-religious and proto-quantum mechanical matrix of psychology, observation, recording, and iconographic image making not far removed, for Gunning, from any number of Christian panel and canvas paintings executed over the previous millennium.

Next, Gunning steers the discussion towards another famous author of the 19th century, Sigmund Freud, who locates the feeling of the uncanny through a personal story in which he found himself walking in circles through a shady part of town filled with prostitutes, thus experiencing repetitively strange and uncomfortable feelings and perceptions while in orbit around this urban space.

Without getting into the peculiar erotic connotations (for Freud himself) implicit within this story, or the refined way Gunning links Freud’s own complex theory of the “Return of the Repressed” to his walkabout, it is enough to say that the uncanny, spooky, deja-vu feeling Freud describes was the impetus for his important concept of the “Double”: Doubling refers to the representation/projection of the ego outward that can assume various forms outside the physical self of the subject (twins, mirroring, reflections, self/portraiture, etc), and has no small connection to aspects of primitive animism as well as the mythological story of Narcissus, and, of course, to photography as a medium. 

What photography does, according to Gunning, is to provide a technology which could summon feelings of the uncanny through a visual-empirical doubling of reality, thus grounding Spiritualism in science/technology and helping to give it quasi-rational justification for proliferating its beliefs.

He also relates other pseudo-empirical methods of communication with the dead to his discussion, such as the example of the Fox sisters who became famous for their seances whereby they rapped out messages from the beyond (Morse Code-like, and in an empirical auditory way that could also be “directly” sensed)–Even famous public figures of the time, such as Thomas Watson of Alexander Graham Bell's laboratory, often fell into believing the efficacy of the sisters’ contacts with the otherworldly. Spiritualism now becomes, according to Gunning, intertwined with the development of early forms of mass communication and the scientific/technological in general.

Doubling of the Double Through the Photographic Mirror of American Spiritualism

A whole host of optical methods were used by spirit photographers to prove the existence of the Spirit Realm, the most successful of which was the sandwiching of different negatives in order to reveal the sought-for ghostly figures in a final photographic object–From President Lincoln's towering ghost standing behind his seated widow (complete with his hands upon her shoulders), to multiple exposures of dead children's faces next to their mothers, to strangely arranged circular galleries of ghostly heads, all were examples of the different arrangements spirit photographers executed in order to display the other-worldly beings and loved ones from the beyond. 

Often appearing within these photographs were, incredibly for their early viewers, images people had seen elsewhere–Recognizable public images lurking both out in the Real World, and within in the dark recesses of the secret archives each spirit photographer possessed, were somehow (re)appearing. In order to rationalize these doubly-doubled images’ inclusion, a spirit photographer would argue that, in order for people to recognize the spirits, they themselves must use common, understandable imagery for communicative reasons. So, in short, the spirits were also producing photographs, which is a profoundly revelatory thesis that had deep metaphysical implications for both the realms of the living and the dead.

Photography also engaged in a fascinating alliance with another aspect of Spiritualism in which entranced mediums would throw up, evacuate, or generally excrete "materializations" of some uncertain gelatinous substance (in this case, not of a silver halide nature) that often included yet more images of the dead. Also, Spiritualists claimed that by merely holding a piece of photographic material, without the aid of a camera, one could produce images of ghosts, or, even more incredibly, a ghost in its entirety could be materialized via (any) photographic methods and then be touched, and even smelled.

One of Gunning’s most impressive examples during this discussion uses the instance of the ghost of one Katie King, whose supposed conjuring famously fooled one of the finest British scientists of the era, William Cookes, and would end up giving more than a little credence to the beliefs of the Spiritualists through his association–Though it was later shown that the medium who conjured Ms. King looked identical to the ghost she was purportedly summoning, thus conjuring a spirit that was, in essence as well as literally, a living double of a dead double (perhaps the most truly astonishing instance where photographic material begat the very thing it represented).

All of these meta/physical mechanizations involving photographic technology take us in one direction or another from the material, to the immaterial, and back to the material again, providing the structure for an infinite empirical/spiritual feedback loop. What could be more uncanny, or more to the point, what could provide more exemplary evidence for the existence of the Spirit Realm, then a new technology being able to not only open the doors of perception, but to actively enable communication with the Other Side? 

Indeed, in Spirit Photography the mediating technology itself takes over the human medium's role, and the most profound connection between photography and Spiritualist manifestation lies in the concept of the sensitive medium (literally and figuratively, as both the sensitive medium that conjures up the ghosts, as well as the sensitive plate that captures them)–This double figuration of a sensitive, doubling medium is the ultimate medium-as-message.

--

What Gunning does throughout his essay is weave a very subtle, very detailed socio-historical analysis which provides an exceptional lens through which to observe one of the final sociocultural waves in the 19th century that shifted the larger focus from the religiously-subjective, to the near complete domination of the empirical/visual in our own present culture, and his analysis convincingly fuses together issues relating to period gender bias, economics, legal issues concerning fraud and quackery, the spectacles of magic shows, and showmanship itself. †

In the end, Gunning returns to the idea that Balzac found so compelling in which photography didn't simply capture the trace of something, but that this something was involved in a nearly endless series of self-referential image production. Therefore, what we end up having during this time in Western history is a situation in which the feeling of the uncanny, the idea of the Double, the fear of death, along with a new technology, engenders a metaphysics that would have the spirits on the other side creating infinitely reproducible photographs of themselves in order to communicate with the living. 

We have, in short, a model of the universe where things reproduce themselves through a never ending re-production of images, but have no real, “original” existence outside of these images. Sounds uncannily familiar, doesn't it?

Notes:

† Cf. the film The Spiritualist Photographer, by the great 19th/20th century contemporary filmmaker-magician Méliès, which exposed the entire farcical display of Spiritualist photography's practice in order to produce a film that disrobes the specious, tenuous ties Spiritualism had to the scientific, and unveiled it as being all novel spectacle and showman-like trickery rather than an awe inspiring event.

[alittlebookdust]

Book Review: A Darker Shade of Magic

Author: V.E. Schwab Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC Publishing Date: 2015 Pages: 398

I know I’m a little late reading this book, but nonetheless here we go:

This book is essentially about an angsty magician and a cross-dressing pirate forming an unlikely friendship to battle evil and save the world. And it’s pretty dang good.

First off, I want to commend Schwab for introducing a cast of delightfully complex characters. It’s always refreshing to see YA novels come to life in this way, where the characters are unique and sympathetic in their strengths and weaknesses, and riddled by pellicles of visceral imperfections. No character was completely “bad” nor completely “good”—except perhaps our two main antagonists—but even the absolute corruptness of the Dane twins was believable due to Schwab’s excellent world-building. The novel takes place somewhere within the early 19th century across multiple Londons: Grey London, which is considered the normal world in which magic is dormant and scarce; Red London, where is revered and the streets are drenched with the red hue it; White London, “a city drained through a magical war” and home of the treacherous Dane twins; and Black London, a London lost to chaos and ruin.

So Kell is our magician from Red London, with the rare ability to cross the parallel worlds. This makes him an ambassador between the Londons by day, and a smuggling collector by night. This hobby, Schwab cleverly uses to get the plot rolling.

Kell smuggles something quite complicated from White London in to Grey, which is where Delilah Bard, our cross-dressing pirate wannabe, steals from him. Again, we have an excellent manipulation of plot by Schwab, who uses the personalities of her characters to bring the storyline in to full swing through a series of believable choices that they make. It’s a classic and technical move on her part, one that is just flat out wonderful to see in a YA novel nowadays.

Similar to her methodical plot development, Schwab uses some pretty intelligent decisions regarding story structure as well. [Wannabe writers, pay attention] The book is written in a 3rd person limited POV, going back and forth predominantly between Lila and Kell with a few exceptions. However, this decision not only made the pacing of her chapters more fast-paced and enjoyable, but it also gave a nice tonal balance to the book as a whole due to the way Lila and Kell’s personalities complimented each other.

[I’m going to spend sometime on character analysis, so if you haven’t read the book yet of aren’t interest, just skip down until you see the ** for the rest of the review]

Let’s analyze Kell:

At the beginning of the book, our introverted magician came off as an insecure and anxious youth with a sort of inferiority complex with which he always made himself to be less than what he actually was. Despite his familial connection to Red London royalty, his deep bromance with Prince Rhy, and the profound reverence Kell generates from the citizens in Red London, Kell still manages to convince himself that he is just a pawn and a possession of the crown, no more. It’s sort of fascinating, however, the way he hides all of this behind a serene composure built upon his abilities. Kell knows he’s rare, he knows he’s powerful, and he’s always trying to act like he knows this, but also comes off short. Here’s a quote I actually found really interesting regarding this:

The people here believe that magic chooses its path…but by that logic, the magic had chosen Kell, and he did not believe that. Someone else could just have easily woken or been born with the Antari mark, and been brought into the lush red folds of the palace in his stead. (pg 256)

Kell can’t even bring himself to believe that he’s worthy of being chosen in any regards. Even though he puts all of his identity in his abilities, he can’t even manage to believe his abilities chose him. In effect, Kell is so insecure and sometimes even pathetic that Schwab needed to bring in just the right companion to refine our magician, teaching him to be a bold and confident person. So, essentially, Schwab carves out Kell’s opposite.

Enter Delilah Bard.

At first, I have to be honest, I didn’t entirely like Lila. I thought she was reckless, stupid, naively arrogant, and a fake. She’s this cutthroat who thinks she’s a pirate, but has no ship or crew or people skills, and despite all this she one-hundred percent believes she’s capable of such a lifestyle. Impossible.

However, the more Schwab unveiled her character, especially during in interactions with Barron, the owner of Grey London’s Stone’s Throw, I began to sympathize with her on a much deeper level than I had even with Kell. Here’s why: Lila Bard is the kind of person who could never form an emotional attachment to anything or anyone due to this profound fear she has towards settling.

…staying would have meant settling. In the end it’s been easier to hand the place and run. Not away, Lila had told herself. No, Lila had been running towards something. Something better. And even if she hadn’t reached it yet, she would… (pg 139)

Lila has, by far, some of the best quotes in the book:

“I’d rather die on an adventure than live standing still.” (pg 199) “A life worth having is a life worth taking.” (pg 139)

So here we have quite the determined little thief just trying to make something better out of what she has. It was here that I realized, these dreams of being a pirate and an adventurer, were really all she had to ignite a fire that was so often dulled by the harsh realities of a life full of abandonment and neglect. This made her significantly more believable to me, and I honestly came to realize that Delilah Bard would truly die just for the chance to reach out and seize any beauty from life, because—unlike so many of us—she really had nothing to lose.

Now, put a courageously reckless cutthroat with a powerful and insecure magician, you get the brilliant chemistry found within Kell and Lila’s friendship. I loved them more together than I did each of them apart. It was a fantastic duo, one which Schwab used to teach Kell bravery, to be confident in himself and his power, and to be grateful for the love he possesses. On the opposite end, Lila learns loyalty and friendship. She recognizes that there are things she could never do alone, and places she could never get to without some help. Her development, however, was a bit more subtle. At first, she used Kell to get her adventure, and slowly she began to actually care for him. At the same time, Kell began to care for her. Schwab brings about these affections through snippets of brilliant moments where we see our seemingly opposite protagonists connect with each other upon some very subtle similarities:

A wry smile cut across Lila’s mouth. ‘You’re a smuggler…If you live with royals and you dine with them and you belong to them…Why risk it?’ Kell clenched his jaw…’You wouldn’t understand.’ ‘Crime isn’t that complicated,’ she said…‘If they’re not in it for the money, they’re in it for the control. The act of breaking the rules, makes them feel powerful…Some people steal to stay alive, and some steal to feel alive…’ ‘And which are you?’ asked Kell. ‘I steal for freedom,’ (pg 266)

Kell feels as though he’s a possession being used. He steals in order to feel in control of a life that he feels is not his own. Lila steals not only for money, but for the hope that is constantly inside her; the hope that tells her “I have to be more.”

There are other moments, such as the one were Lila snaps at Kell for pitying himself in regards to his life with the king and queen—for having a family in which he feels more useful than loved. Lila goes on a memorable rant, raging:

‘…I’d wager you have everything you could ever need, and you have the audacity to claim it all forfeit because it is not love...Love doesn’t keep us from freezing to death…Love doesn’t buy us anything, so be glad for what you have and who you have because you may want for things but you need for nothing…’ (pg 235)

And in this moment, Kell saw Lila “not as she wanted to be, but as she was.”

**

I know this review ran long, but to sum up, buy the book. For aspiring writers, it’s a great way to look at the way a plot and chapters are structured, how the narrative moves from Kell’s more angst-driven tone to Lila’s sarcastic and witty one, and of course it’s a lovely example of wonderful character development. Especially take note of the way Schwab uses character decisions to carry her plot forward, and how she uses dialogue and circumstance to do most of the character revealing as opposed to straight-on just telling the reader. It’s most important to recognize that Schwab’s characters change. This is the key to satisfying any reader, and is the backbone to any good story.

Of course, A Darker Shade of Magic is not perfect. I actually think Rhy was not as present as he should’ve been—most of his character development was second hand from Kell and thus felt impersonal—and I think Holland was so close to being an complex antagonist, though it was clear he was written to garner more empathy.

Another issue was the plot resolution. I thought it was sort of a cop-out that conflict was resolved due to a fault (pride) on the antagonists’ end as opposed to a display of some epiphany of Kell’s part regarding his strength or character. It all came about too quickly, and I actually think Schwab could have spared another fifty pages or so, drawing out the complexity of the conflict.

Nonetheless, the book was absolutely solid with moments of flittering brilliance. I completely recommend it, and am excited to move on to the sequel. 

[foxhenki-blog]

Amphisbæna

Metaphysics are abstract theory. They exist within our mind. They are how we condition ourselves as chaos magicians to a particular discipline or practice. They are also are route through deprogramming, a necessary step before taking on the next discipline. This new sub-project to Lovecraftian Magic builds on what was learned through the critical esoteric reading of Lovecraft’s oeuvre-as-grimoire. The Simonomicon Workings are a record of internalizing one of the most famous incarnations of the imaginal grimoire, the Necronomicon. What lies below these words are, as stated, a preliminary metaphysics based on the clues given by ’The Editor’ in the material introducing the grimoire proper.

We begin with the dedication:

“to the Demon PERDURABO, without whose help the presentation of Book would have been impossible.” (Simon, IX)

Perdurabo is the pseudonym for Aleister Crowley. Here, Simon is treating and invoking him as a demon. This begins the work by acknowledging the connection found between Lovecraft and Crowley in The Thing on the Doorstep. All of the magical tech found in this tale of the Azathothian Witch, Asenath Waite, can be applied as precursors to using the Simonomicon in one’s practice. 

The lessons from The Thing on the Doorstep are many. I will attempt to summarize them here in order to establish a firm foundation for our work with the Simonomicon. 

Magic works better when it is predictive, as opposed to reactive. Asenath Waite played the long game when it came to achieving power. Magic needs a plan and forethought. Forethought begs for an exploration of the princeps that lead to the praxis. Magic is not reactionary, it is preventative. The protagonist of ‘Doorstep’ is one Edward Pickman Derby. This vector into Pickman’s model is a metaphorical gate into the Dreamlands, where all meaningful spirit contact from the Simonomicon takes place. 

Edward Derby, an ailing child, is an archetype for using the imaginal, or the life of the mind, as a key to freedom in a world that cannot be understood or controlled. Asenath Waite, Derby’s consort, is traced back to Innsmouth and it is eluded that she possesses the same bloodlines into the race of the Deep Ones as all others in that town. This makes her the perfect angel to preside over the preliminary metaphysics of the Simonomicon. At Waite’s side, Derby is initiated into occult practices. He talks of meetings deep in the woods where secret doorways lead to vast staircases and into vaulted subterranean worlds of impossible geometry. This is an image one should hold on to throughout, one that is reinforced further, below. Within these imaginal chthonic spaces a malefica cultivated through the practice of Journeying and turned onto the elitist and imperial forces of our world, with the aid of the Simonomicon, is unleashed.

It should be no surprise if these preliminary practices result in encounters with woodland-based cryptids such as Razorshins, Willamalones, Windigos, and Dingballs. Razorshins appear as humanoids with sharp shin bones and an insatiable thirst for liquor. Willamalones are squirrel-like and posses knowledge of natural poisons, especially fungi and lichen. They only pose a danger if one falls asleep in the woods, however. Windigos are pervasive throughout Canada and the Northern United States, wherever there are long swaths of wooded land. They appear as unusually tall men, typically wearing clothes made from animal skins, and having a grayish, greasy appearance. They eat humans and to eat food offered by them results in yourself becoming a Wendigo as well. Dingballs look like cougars, but with a skeleton tail. They sing in a human voice to lure their preferred food to them, using their sharp tails to crack open skulls and dine on one’s brain.

Turning again to Asenath Waite, a critical examination of The Thing on the Doorstep reveals it to be a parable of gender dysphoria and the power that comes from embracing your true self, whatever that may be. Asenath Waite is a man trapped in a woman’s body who uses Lovecraftian Magic to embody his true gender. The origins of the Simonomicon, as will be revealed, are deeply entrenched in the world of LGBTQAI+ persons and their open battle against colonization and imperialist rule. It is at this point in ‘Doorstep’ that it is revealed that Edward Derby, in an attempt to stop the fish-witch Asenath Waite from inhabiting his physical body, travels to New York to meet with Perturbado himself, The Beast 666, Aleister Crowley. It is with Crowley’s help that Edward is able to maintain his true gender and personality in the face of the Deep One’s magic.

The Simonomicon was first published on December 1st, 1977 and this day should be marked with auspiciousness and ritual for those that own and wish to work the tome. It is mentioned by ‘The Editor’ that:

“the [Simonomicon] is… the connection between two separate clauses, between a fascinating past and a darkly-mysterious future.” (Simon, XI)

This is the first indication that it is this grimoire’s time has fully arrived, as we are living in that darkly mysterious future, presently. Summerland is also mentioned in the introductory text, a reference to the afterlife the bookmaker responsible for the 31st addition has retired to. Summerland is commonly known as the Theosophist afterlife. As is the way of Gnome School we look further back to the Spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis. Davis lived during Lovecraft’s time (1826 - 1910), HPL would have no doubt been aware of his work.

Summerland is mentioned in his work ‘The Great Harmonia,’ which was published thirty years before Lovecraft was born. A digital copy of the original can be found at the Hathi Trust and is worth a look to develop a grounding in a foundational Lovecraftian Magical Aesthetic relevant to working the Simonomicon.

Another piece of predictive text in the Simonomicon is presented when it is stated that:

“Owners — and Users — of the [Simonomicon] will be well prepared to deal with both the social and spiritual unrest… that will take place in troubling times.” (Simon, XIII - XIV)

The Simonomicon is the grimoire for the Viruspunk age. 

Viruspunk, a term coined by Miguel Connor - the host of Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio - on an episode of the Rune Soup podcast with Gordon White. White further extrapolates the meaning of Viruspunk, juxtapositioning it against Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and Solarpunk.

White states that Viruspunk is associated with bringing opposition or trouble to Biopower and Biopolitics, likely referencing the work of Foucault in Security, Territory, Population. White goes on to bring more clarity to the term when he writes that:]

“Viruspunk… must be explicitly biopolitical. It must explore the formulation of the body through the imposition of biopower…” (Retrieved from https://runesoup.com/2020/05/viruspunk-is-biopolitical/)

One does not have to look far in order to find more ties between the Simonomicon and our Viruspunk present. For example, The Editor states that:

“The interface between the [Simonomicon’s] software and your own personal hardware will reveal the demonic computer for what it really is: the machine that will bring about the era of liberation for every sentient being.” (Simon, XIV)

This is a clear Viruspunk-aware statement, using the metaphor of human-computer interfaces as a method of enlightenment. It paints the Lovecraftian Magician as either a user of, or a soldier against a type of spiritual app, a system of code written in human and spirit DNA, which creates a synergistic interface. 

As is established in the dedication to Perdurabo, the Simonomicon draws on many spirit-forms or saints that had possessed recent human lives or those brought into existence specifically through human activity. When speaking about the bookmaker who’s craft brought the one of the editions of the Simonomicon to the light of day, it is said that this bookman was:

“lured into the Magickal Childe bookstore in Manhattan one day by an incarnated thought form we may only refer to by his initials, B.A.K.” (Simon, XV)

This passage identifies an egregore that may be attracted by future workings of the Simonomicon. We can also expect the spirit or minions of the late occult book maker Herman Slater [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Slater] to be drawn by it's working. This association makes the Simonomicon a powerful weapon against racism as Slater’s path to the occult was in reaction to theologically driven anti-Semitism. Slater was also made ill by bone tuberculosis, so his spirit’s connections to widespread illness should make it a sympathetic parter in the Viruspunk age. Eddie Buczynski, Slater’s partner, can also be found hovering nearby during concentrated efforts utilizing the Simonomicon. The grimoire is a talisman for the LGBTQAI+ community — an active protective shield against all types of prejudice and xenophobia. This is also in line with Lovecraftian Magic as all of the practitioners in Lovecraft’s fiction are anti-colonial archetypes, immigrants, gypsies, African-Americans, Native Americans, Irish, queer, transgender, etc. It is through the offices of this occult bookstore that the manuscript copy of the Simonomicon found its publisher. This is the same method of transmission found in so many mentions by Lovecraft of the original imaginal grimoire, the Necronomicon.

The Simonomicon possesses the same powers imparted to the grimoires of the hedge witches and clever men, those powerful traffickers in magic that used their books not for their spells, but as sentient power items that cast their own magics. It is stated by The Editor that:

“the book is… an amulet, a protective shield, that guards its own from the machinations of evil. Extraterrestrial or primevally elemental, alien beings or subconscious repressions, they are powerless against us if we consider deeply the message of this book.” (Simon, XVIII)

And with this statement the unique chaos magic power of literature is extended to Simonomicon Workings. The Editor makes mention of the tale ‘There Are More Things’ by Jorges Luis Borges. This short story was dedicated by Borges to Lovecraft. Examining it in some detail reveal it to be a potent vehicle for applying to our work with the Simonomicon. It begins as many of Lovecraft’s tales do, with the protagonist’s recollection of a fondly thought of, if distant, relative:

“I learned that my uncle Edwin Arnett had died… on the remote frontier of South America. I felt what we always feel when someone dies — the sad awareness, now futile, of how little it would have cost us to have been more loving.” (Borges, 437)

This quote encapsulates what all of us, save for the plaguemongers, are feeling now for those we have lost personally, for those our friends have lost that we might not have known, and for those that strangers separated from us by the fog of cyberspace have lost. For all the lost we gain only awareness of how little love costs us all. It is this feeling that drives the Viruspunk to pick up weapons such as the Simonomicon and employ its technology against the plaguemongers and their imperialist hoards.

Borges also makes exquisite references to forgotten works of science, philosophy, and art perfectly mimicking Lovecraft’s own tropes in this same vein. A useful example can be found in the following:

“Hinton’s treatises… attempt to prove the reality of a fourth dimension in space, a dimension the reader is encouraged to intuit by means of complicated exercises with colored cubes.” (Borges, 437)

The mention made here refers to the Tesseract or Hypercube. Even a novice will recognize the significance of the Hypercube to Lovecraftian Magic. Its contemplation can be a cleansing breath before and after working the Simonomicon. ‘There Are More Things’ brilliantly weaves the subtlest of literary devices into its densely packed tapestry:

“My uncle was an engineer. Before retiring from his job at the railway, he made the decision to move to Turdera… the architect of his home there [was] his close friend Alexander Muir… The Red House stood on a hill, hemmed in to the west by swampy land… Instead of flat roofs where one might take the air on a sultry night, the house had a peaked roof of slate tiles and a square tower with a clock…” (Borges, 437)

The manor house near the moor and the implementation of a tower are well known tropes from the Lovecraftian Magic project, and are employed masterfully here by Borges. The mention of Alexander Muir can only be a placement of the well-known Canadian architect in Borges’ universe:

“My first step was to go and see Alexander Muir… He greeted me at the door of his house in Tempurado — which predictably enough resembled my uncle’s, as both houses conformed to the solid rules of the good poet and bad builder William Morris… Our conversation was flinty; not for nothing is the thistle the symbol of Scotland…” (Borges, 437)

The Muir of British Columbia was indeed of Scottish origin and of the same demeanor as the Muir described therein. Aside from houses designed as William Morris poems there are also dreams in ‘There Are More Things’ that give us more clues into how we must cultivate our taste to merge effectively with the Simonomicon. Borges protagonist recalls:

“That night I couldn’t sleep. Toward sunrise I dreamed of an engraving in the style of Piranesi, one I’d never seen before or perhaps had seen and forgotten — an engraving of a kind of labyrinth…” (Borges, 440)

Piranesi is perhaps most famous for his engravings of a fictional underworld of prisons containing impossible geometries. It is here that we join up again with Derby’s experiences in the vaulted abysses beneath the thick woods of Maine in ’The Thing on the Doorstep.’

Here is Derby’s recollection again:

“Edward’s calls now grew a trifle more frequent, and his hints occasionally became concrete… He talked about terrible meetings in lonely places, of Cyclopean ruins in the heart of the Maine woods beneath which vast staircases lead down to abysses of nighted secretes, of complex angles that lead through invisible walls to other regions of space and time, and of hideous exchanges of personality that permitted explorations in remote and forbidden places on other worlds, and in different space-time continua.”

Continuing the dream in ‘There Are More Things’ we find ourselves presented with a:

“stone amphitheater with a border of cypresses, but its walls stood taller than the tops of the trees. There were no doors or windows, but it was pierced by an infinite series of narrow vertical slits. I was using a magnifying glass trying to find the Minotaur. At last I saw it. It was the monster of a monster; it looked less like a bull than like a buffalo, and its human body was lying on the ground. It seemed to be asleep, and dreaming — but dreaming of what, or of whom?” (Borges, 440)

The monster not dead but dreaming, Borges appropriately ties classical monstrous archetypes with Lovecraftian dreams. Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons also give us a glimpse into what Samuel Coleridge described to his friend Thomas de Quincy as a series of visions achieved during fever delirium.

Following this dream, which does not enjoy further exposition, The protagonist enters The Red House designed for his uncle by his friend Muir, but now inhabited by the unknown. When encountering the furniture made for the new owner, the protagonists points to another classical reference:

“From some page in Lucan, read years ago and then forgotten, there came to my lips the word amphisbæna, which suggested… what my eyes would later see…” (Borges, 442)

Lucan was a Roman Poet from Córdoba, Spain. His final legacy is one of anti-Imperialism in the Roman context. The amphisbæna is a lizard or serpent with a head at the top of its neck and another at the end of its tail. Lucan mentions it in his epic poem Pharsalia, Book 9, verses 714 - 733:

Sole of all serpents Scytale to shed In vernal frosts his slough; and thirsty Dipsas; Dread Amphisbæna with his double head Tapering; and Natrix who in bubbling fount Fuses his venom. Greedy Prester swells His foaming jaws; Pareas, head erect Furrows with tail alone his sandy path; Swift Jaculus there, and Seps whose poisonous juice Makes liquid bone and flesh: and there upreared His regal head, and frighted from his track With sibilant terror all the subject swarm, Baneful ere darts his poison, Basilisk 5 In sands deserted king. Ye serpents too Who in all other regions harmless glide Adored as gods, and bright with golden scales, Are deadly here: for Afric air inhaled Bestows malignant gift, as poised on wings Whole herds of kine ye follow, and with coils Encircling close, crush in the mighty bull. Nor does the elephant in his giant bulk, Nor aught, find safety; and ye need no fang Nor poison, to compel the fatal end.

The Amphisbæna is the symbol for the Viruspunk.

Instead of the infinite Ouroboros swallowing itself, the amphisbæna is a symbol of two entities in one body, confronting the other. On the microscale, this is the virus and the human battling for supremacy. For one victor this results in death of both of the heads, for the other, if results in one of the heads being bitten off — the victor alive but forever wounded. On the macroscale the same is true for the Viruspunks themselves and their fight against the poppet plaguemongers and their imperialist puppeteers. 

Having formed the mental image of The Red House’s new owner, Borges’ protagonist postulates on the amphisbæna’s motivations:

“What must the inhabitant of this house be like? What must it be seeking here, on this planet, which must have been no less horrible to it than it to us? From what secret regions of astronomy or time, from what ancient and now incalculable twilight, had it reached this South American suburb on this precise night?” (Borges, 442)

Here Borges captures the empathy required for engaging properly with the spirit-forms of the Simonomicon. They come to us when we call, but only because they need something from us or from our planet, as Borges writes. It is an exchange. The unknowable qualities of these spirit-forms are all related to their needs, that which drives them to engage in humans. Knowing what they seek is the key to opening the gates that they guard. Further, Borges’ mention of the incalculable horror living in The Red House in an otherwise normal suburban neighborhood marks Simonomicon Workings with a very Lynchian feel of the abnormal hiding in plain site — this is also a very Viruspunk feeling — of attempting to live out a normal life while death, misery, and totalitarianism close in on you in an invisible wave. Instead of hiding from the regime and its gaslighted zombiekin, the Viruspunk looks straight on. 

“Curiosity got the better of fear, and I did not close my eyes.” (Borges, 442)

In working the Simonomicon, the Viruspunk does not turn away from life, no, she turns to face it. She is the first responder, the front line worker, the one person wearing a face mask in a sea of plaguemongers buying novelty t-shirts, rainbow slushies, and drinking oceans of ale and liquor like so many razorshins.

“This book… contains the formulae for evoking incredible things into visible appearance, beings and monsters which dwell in the Abyss, and Outer Space, of the human psyche.” (Simon, XXIII)

Successful workings of the Simonomicon are tied to visual manifestations of spirit-forms, extraterrestrials, and shadows pulled directly from the Lovecraftian Magician’s mind. Visual manifestations, however, can happen in dreams — humankind’s most visual realm of existence and one which fits directly into the niche of the Lovecraftian Magical aesthetic. 

The Editor, in the nesting labyrinthian prefaces of the 31st Anniversary edition of the Simonomicon quotes Job 3:8 in an effort to show the pervasiveness of the Deep Ones, Dagon, and the primeval entities called upon in the grimoire: 

“Let them curse it that curse the day, who are skillful to rouse Leviathan.” JOB 3:8

When examining Job in detail it is revealed that the full passage is a lament by Job for having ever been born. Such as in Job 3:23 “Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?” He is asking those that can rouse Leviathan to curse him and the day that he was born. In one reading this could give legitimacy to the power of cursing by those that employ it and traffic with ageless masters. In another reading, one can see a curse as a type of cleansing in their hands, wiping clean Job’s base human nature and supplanting it with a sublime one. Furthering his argument, The Editor states that:

“The Leviathan mentioned in Job, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, is the Hebrew name given to the [chaos-dragon] Tiamat… there was in existence a cult… who worshipped or called up the Serpent of the Sea, or Abyss… [The chaos-dragon] is well known to cult worship all over the world. In China… the [chaos-dragon] is given a place of pre-eminence… The Chinese system of geomancy, feng shui… is the science of understanding the ‘dragon currents’ which exist beneath the earth.” (Simon, XXIX)

When it comes to rituals of space, none of more precise or potent than feng shui. Instead of (or in addition to) a magical circle, one’s altar (especially) and the room or landscape one performs Simonomicon Workings in should be optimized to attract the favor of the chaos-dragon Tiamat using the principles of this most ancient science.

One key difference between working classical grimoires and the Simonomicon is how the entities are dealt with once summoned. According to The Editor:

“there are no effective banishing for the forces invoked in the [Simonomicon] itself… The deities and demons identified within have probably not been effectively summoned in nearly six thousand years. Ordinary… banishing formulae have… proved extremely inadequate…” (Simon, XXXI)

Banishings are typically of Christian origin and, in fact, possibly a Christian invention dating back to Solomon. The spirit-forms of the Simonomicon have no frame of reference and possibly no working knowledge of the entities used to compel them to banish. There have been experiments conducted by Simon and those close to him that have proven effective. From the text:

“Solar formulae have proved… effective in successfully banishing [Simonomicon] demons and intelligences.” (Simon, XXXVI)

This allows the Lovecraftian Magician to bring in possibly the closest living cousin of the imaginal grimoire, the Greek Magical Papyri, and its implementation of prayers and petitions to Helios as a method to properly banish spirit-forms from the Simonomicon. These experiments should only be conducted when absolutely necessary, however, for the true intent of the Viruspunk is to unleash the unlimited cosmic horrors into our universe so that they may devour and destroy the endless and ever-growing pathogen that is imperialism and their biopower as manifested in the passive and mindless march of their plaguemongering hordes. This is explicitly stated by The Editor when discussing the morally agnostic approach the Sumerians took towards using magic against their enemies:

“Pazuzu was a prime example of the type of Devil of which the Sumerians were particularly aware… [Whose] purpose was to ward off the spiritual — and psychic — circumstances which would precipitate a plague… ‘Evil destroys evil’…” (Simon, XXXVI)

The spiritual and psychic circumstances that have brought about the 2020 pandemic are those of the conservative and tyrannical political forces around the world. The spirit-forms of the Simonomicon are a powerful antidote and their summoning against these plaguemongers is the core driver of the Viruspunk. This is the most important component of our preliminary metaphysics.

Evil destroys Evil.

Simonomicon Workings are directed against the enemies of the Viruspunk and are laid out in meticulous plans using the predictive analytics of the Tarot, scrying, and other methods of divination. We embrace our devils, look straight into the abyss of impossible geometries, and call loudly for those entities that existed before time, calling for them to wipe out colonization, imperialism, and the orcish hordes of plaguemongers barring our way to the sublime.

References

‌Borges, J. L., & Hurley, A. (1998). Jorge Luis Borges: Collected fiction. New York: Penguin.

Lovecraft, H. P. (2011). The complete fiction. New York: Barnes & Noble.

Simon (2008) Necronomicon. Lake Worth, FL: Ibis Press.

[unixcommerce]

The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts

Welcome to the second piece in our new multi-part “Collective Wisdom” series of content marketing strategy articles, where you’ll learn proven methods taking you from the beginning of the content planning cycle to its final post-publication conclusion, and featuring insight from some of the world’s most respected and successful digital marketers. Previously in “How to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts By Planning Ahead,” we looked at implementing a smart and robust content planning strategy. Now it’s time to take a look at the intrinsically important content creation stage of any successful content marketing campaign.

Crafting Powerful Content

As we’ll explore, skillfully crafting content is one of the most important steps on a successful content marketing journey. After all, content is the centerpiece you present to the digital world — so let’s examine some of the strongest tactics to incorporate in your next campaign. [bctt tweet=”“Crafting content is a mélange in which you wear the varied hats of artist, air traffic controller, plumber, magician, statistician, salesman, marketer, and librarian.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis” username=”toprank”]

Tactic 1: Incorporate Appropriate, Effective, and Engaging Visuals

Should you use visual elements in your content? Here’s a hint: Yes! Today’s marketing draws heavily on the use of interesting and compelling images and other visual content to both draw people in and clearly illustrate messages. It’s no surprise that marketers use more visuals of all types — images, animated GIFs, videos, in-content playable games, and others — than ever before. Over time, a barrage of studies have shown their superior ability for us to remember them. Compared to plain text copy, which by some calculations has only about 10% recall after three days, some 65% of visual content stays in our memories after the same period of time, according to Dr. John Medina’s “Brain Rules” and other studies. Furthermore, according to HubSpot research, visual content is over 40 times more likely to be shared on social platforms, and brands have become increasingly creative in using techniques including animated GIFs, such as the good examples shown in “10 brands using beautifully creative GIFs right now.” Videos, graphic presentations, charts and other data visualizations, animated GIFs, stock photos, fine art photos, screenshots, scans, and experimental imagery should all be considered and used to fill your specific content needs. The trick is knowing what to use and where to incorporate it, and understanding your audience helps narrow down the most appropriate and effective visuals for any particular piece of content. [bctt tweet=”“You’ve got seconds to grab your audience’s attention and only minutes to keep it.” — Dr. John Medina @BrainRulesBooks” username=”toprank”] TopRank Marketing Senior Content Marketing Manager Joshua Nite has looked into the importance of choosing dynamic and compelling images to include in written content campaigns, as he deftly explains in “How to Choose Dynamic Images for Your Blog Posts.” [bctt tweet=”“The right visual does more than take up space. It captures attention, creates a little mystery, invites the reader to dig into your carefully-crafted text.” — Josh Nite @NiteWrites” username=”toprank”] Aside from its use in blog posts, great imagery’s power of engagement carries over into the realm of content promotion. “Good visuals are doubly important for amplification, too: Your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn shares will all include an image,” Josh noted. Knowing your intended audience and where they’re most likely to encounter a link to the shiny new content on your website is an important factor in choosing which visual elements will have the greatest pull and engagement. For example, if your audience is clicking on a link to your new blog post or other content primarily on Reddit, the imagery and overall experience those people expect and find engaging is usually quite different than what someone finding your content on LinkedIn in looking for. Use authoritative research on user experience to guide the visual imagery you choose, including the latest statistics on these elements, such as those Jeff Bullas has compiled in his “15 Visual Content Marketing Statistics That’ll Blow Your Mind.” [bctt tweet=”“People will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Jeff Bullas @jeffbullas” username=”toprank”]

Tactic 2: Make it Easy For Readers to Share Your Content in the Ways They Prefer

You can have plenty of winning content in place, but without intuitive and expected methods in place to share your carefully-crafted work, it will likely remain largely a content island unto itself — a phenomena Lee Odden calls Invisible Content Syndrome. Every audience has their own preferred means of sharing the things they find and love online. So, part of your content creation process should be to see that these methods are fully implemented, whether its as simple as having easily-found social sharing buttons and functionality, offering click-to-tweet messaging, or as advanced as using automatic copying of shortened and trackable URLs. Heidi Cohen, Chief Content Officer at Actionable Marketing Guide, has gathered together some of her favorite ways of giving readers a variety of ways to share content, in “7 Ways to Get Extra Mileage From Your Blog Posts.” [bctt tweet=”“It’s eye candy that attracts readers by making it easy for them to get the meaning of your post quickly.” — Heidi Cohen @heidicohen” username=”toprank”] More content than ever is including click-to-tweet functionality, as it provides a useful way for readers to quickly and easily share key takeaways or especially insightful quotes, however, it may not be right for your content if your audience is not generally using Twitter.

Tactic 3: Harness the Power of Gamification

Interactive content and entertaining game-based or game-like content, including elements such as quizzes, polls, and surveys, are a proven way to boost engagement and content stickiness, raising time-on-page rates as fast as racking up a high score. According to data from DemandGen, 91% of B2B buyers prefer interactive and visual content, which should come as no great surprise considering that such content stands out and is often a sign of well-thought-out content strategy. Live-streaming platform Twitch has grown to become the twelfth most-visited site in the U.S. according to Alexa data, and its 15-million-plus daily users have helped bring active audience participation into the mainstream, as our own content strategist Nick Nelson detailed recently in his fascinating “How Twitch is Breaking New Ground In Audience Engagement #CMWorld.” Our own Caitlin Burgess recently examined the power of interactive content in “Interactive Content Marketing: Why B2B Marketers Should Take Their Content from Boring to Bold,” a helpful deep-dive into not only why this form of content creates such strong engagement, but how to best use it in your content marketing campaigns. [bctt tweet=”“The real opportunity with #interactivecontent doesn’t lay in the interactivity itself. The real value creation is in the excitement or connection that you can make with your audience.” — Caitlin Burgess @CaitlinMBurgess” username=”toprank”] Or, as Liraz Rahmin Postan noted in her look at gamification for Outbrain: “As content marketers, it’s so important to keep your audience engaged and motivated to keep going. Fun, game-based and interactive content does this really well.” Gamification can include video, as our team did ahead of this year’s Content Marketing World conference, with retro 8-bit videos featuring event speakers: TopRank Marketing digital strategy director Ashley Zeckman shows the entire series of video in “Ready Player One: Top CMWorld Speakers Dish Go-To Classic Content Marketing Combos.”

Tactic 4: Run With Traditional On-Page SEO Tactics

Crafting content wouldn’t be complete without using longstanding, tried-and-true SEO tactics such as basic metadata, some of which are so fundamental that they should always be used. Some of the same metadata elements I first used in 1993 during the pre-Google days are still wise to incorporate, including the ubiquitous-but-important HTML title and description tags. Eighty-two percent of marketing influencers say that the effectiveness of SEO is generally increasing, according to MarketingProfs and Octos statistics. Our own CEO, Lee Odden, explores some of these fundamental SEO questions in his “Power Pages and Best Answer Content: Should You Go Long or Short Form?” In addition, SparkToro’s Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz, also takes a look at just what SEO means today in his helpful piece “What Does It Mean to “Write for SEO” in 2018?” [bctt tweet=”“There’s no reason you have to use this old-school junk methodology that became like pseudoscience in the SEO world and had a recent revival. You should be using words & phrases that Google has related to a particular keyword.” — @randfish” username=”toprank”] SEO is so ingrained in the structure of the web that it’s been surprising to hear it being given the last rites by some in the industry. However, from our perspective, SEO is not only still a viable tactic, but also necessary — you just need to put the time into thoughtfully analyzing the data so you can pull actionable insights. [bctt tweet=”“Every marketer has access to this data. It’s time to analyze it and use it to inform your content strategy to create customized, relevant, and insightful content that is more valuable to your target audience.” — @annieleuman” username=”toprank”]

Tactic 5: Creativity Is Key For Making Best-Answer Content That Stands Out

No matter how many technical tricks or contraptions you use in a content marketing campaign, the road will be a long uphill one if you don’t present creative and useful information that fills a need for your audience. Being the best answer is the key tenet of Lee’s “Be the Best Answer: 5 Steps to Grow Influence for Your Brand,” which shows how creating or co-creating relevant and credible content is a vitally important step in a successful digital marketing campaign. [bctt tweet=”“Influence plays an important role in a ‘Best Answer’ marketing strategy.” — Lee Odden @leeodden” username=”toprank”] The best content creation involves both art and creativity, as comic author Scott Adams once summed up by pointing out that, “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep,” or as artist Paul Klee said, “One eye sees, the other feels.” The greater the creativity you and your team have, the more of an an edge you can have on the competition, and creative content draws audiences in, entertains, and when done well, enlightens. It’s one of the main ways to differentiate your content.

Tying It All Together — What Next?

By incorporating appropriate, effective, and engaging visuals, making sharing easy, harnessing the power of gamification, using fundamental SEO tactics, and offering best-answer content, your content marketing will include the elements that give your strategy a much better chance at success. These aren’t the only elements you’ll want to include in your content crafting tool bag, however, and next up we’ll take a close look at another group of important content creation tactics as we continue our “Collective Wisdom” series. In the meantime learn more by catching us at an upcoming conference or webinar, including these four:

Pubcon Las Vegas 2018 on October 17 in Las Vegas — “5 Secrets to Growing Influence in Marketing”

ITSMA Marketing Vision 2018 on November 7 in Cambridge, MA. — “Influence the Influencers – How B2B technology companies can build brand awareness with content and influence ”

MarketingProfs 2018 Marketing B2B Forum on November 15 in San Francisco — “The Confluence Equation: How Content & Influencers Drive B2B Marketing Success”

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[christopheruearle]

The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts

Welcome to the second piece in our new multi-part “Collective Wisdom” series of content marketing strategy articles, where you’ll learn proven methods taking you from the beginning of the content planning cycle to its final post-publication conclusion, and featuring insight from some of the world’s most respected and successful digital marketers. Previously in “How to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts By Planning Ahead,” we looked at implementing a smart and robust content planning strategy. Now it’s time to take a look at the intrinsically important content creation stage of any successful content marketing campaign.

Crafting Powerful Content

As we’ll explore, skillfully crafting content is one of the most important steps on a successful content marketing journey. After all, content is the centerpiece you present to the digital world — so let’s examine some of the strongest tactics to incorporate in your next campaign. [bctt tweet="“Crafting content is a mélange in which you wear the varied hats of artist, air traffic controller, plumber, magician, statistician, salesman, marketer, and librarian.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

Tactic 1: Incorporate Appropriate, Effective, and Engaging Visuals

Should you use visual elements in your content? Here’s a hint: Yes! Today’s marketing draws heavily on the use of interesting and compelling images and other visual content to both draw people in and clearly illustrate messages. It’s no surprise that marketers use more visuals of all types — images, animated GIFs, videos, in-content playable games, and others — than ever before. Over time, a barrage of studies have shown their superior ability for us to remember them. Compared to plain text copy, which by some calculations has only about 10% recall after three days, some 65% of visual content stays in our memories after the same period of time, according to Dr. John Medina’s “Brain Rules” and other studies. Furthermore, according to HubSpot research, visual content is over 40 times more likely to be shared on social platforms, and brands have become increasingly creative in using techniques including animated GIFs, such as the good examples shown in “10 brands using beautifully creative GIFs right now.” Videos, graphic presentations, charts and other data visualizations, animated GIFs, stock photos, fine art photos, screenshots, scans, and experimental imagery should all be considered and used to fill your specific content needs. The trick is knowing what to use and where to incorporate it, and understanding your audience helps narrow down the most appropriate and effective visuals for any particular piece of content. [bctt tweet="“You've got seconds to grab your audience's attention and only minutes to keep it.” — Dr. John Medina @BrainRulesBooks" username="toprank"] TopRank Marketing Senior Content Marketing Manager Joshua Nite has looked into the importance of choosing dynamic and compelling images to include in written content campaigns, as he deftly explains in “How to Choose Dynamic Images for Your Blog Posts.” [bctt tweet="“The right visual does more than take up space. It captures attention, creates a little mystery, invites the reader to dig into your carefully-crafted text.” — Josh Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"] Aside from its use in blog posts, great imagery’s power of engagement carries over into the realm of content promotion. “Good visuals are doubly important for amplification, too: Your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn shares will all include an image,” Josh noted. Knowing your intended audience and where they’re most likely to encounter a link to the shiny new content on your website is an important factor in choosing which visual elements will have the greatest pull and engagement. For example, if your audience is clicking on a link to your new blog post or other content primarily on Reddit, the imagery and overall experience those people expect and find engaging is usually quite different than what someone finding your content on LinkedIn in looking for. Use authoritative research on user experience to guide the visual imagery you choose, including the latest statistics on these elements, such as those Jeff Bullas has compiled in his “15 Visual Content Marketing Statistics That’ll Blow Your Mind.” [bctt tweet="“People will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Jeff Bullas @jeffbullas" username="toprank"]

Tactic 2: Make it Easy For Readers to Share Your Content in the Ways They Prefer

You can have plenty of winning content in place, but without intuitive and expected methods in place to share your carefully-crafted work, it will likely remain largely a content island unto itself — a phenomena Lee Odden calls Invisible Content Syndrome. Every audience has their own preferred means of sharing the things they find and love online. So, part of your content creation process should be to see that these methods are fully implemented, whether its as simple as having easily-found social sharing buttons and functionality, offering click-to-tweet messaging, or as advanced as using automatic copying of shortened and trackable URLs. Heidi Cohen, Chief Content Officer at Actionable Marketing Guide, has gathered together some of her favorite ways of giving readers a variety of ways to share content, in “7 Ways to Get Extra Mileage From Your Blog Posts.” [bctt tweet="“It’s eye candy that attracts readers by making it easy for them to get the meaning of your post quickly.” — Heidi Cohen @heidicohen" username="toprank"] More content than ever is including click-to-tweet functionality, as it provides a useful way for readers to quickly and easily share key takeaways or especially insightful quotes, however, it may not be right for your content if your audience is not generally using Twitter.

Tactic 3: Harness the Power of Gamification

Interactive content and entertaining game-based or game-like content, including elements such as quizzes, polls, and surveys, are a proven way to boost engagement and content stickiness, raising time-on-page rates as fast as racking up a high score. According to data from DemandGen, 91% of B2B buyers prefer interactive and visual content, which should come as no great surprise considering that such content stands out and is often a sign of well-thought-out content strategy. Live-streaming platform Twitch has grown to become the twelfth most-visited site in the U.S. according to Alexa data, and its 15-million-plus daily users have helped bring active audience participation into the mainstream, as our own content strategist Nick Nelson detailed recently in his fascinating “How Twitch is Breaking New Ground In Audience Engagement #CMWorld.” Our own Caitlin Burgess recently examined the power of interactive content in “Interactive Content Marketing: Why B2B Marketers Should Take Their Content from Boring to Bold,” a helpful deep-dive into not only why this form of content creates such strong engagement, but how to best use it in your content marketing campaigns. [bctt tweet="“The real opportunity with #interactivecontent doesn’t lay in the interactivity itself. The real value creation is in the excitement or connection that you can make with your audience.” — Caitlin Burgess @CaitlinMBurgess" username="toprank"] Or, as Liraz Rahmin Postan noted in her look at gamification for Outbrain: “As content marketers, it’s so important to keep your audience engaged and motivated to keep going. Fun, game-based and interactive content does this really well.” Gamification can include video, as our team did ahead of this year’s Content Marketing World conference, with retro 8-bit videos featuring event speakers:

TopRank Marketing digital strategy director Ashley Zeckman shows the entire series of video in “Ready Player One: Top CMWorld Speakers Dish Go-To Classic Content Marketing Combos.”

Tactic 4: Run With Traditional On-Page SEO Tactics

Crafting content wouldn’t be complete without using longstanding, tried-and-true SEO tactics such as basic metadata, some of which are so fundamental that they should always be used. Some of the same metadata elements I first used in 1993 during the pre-Google days are still wise to incorporate, including the ubiquitous-but-important HTML title and description tags. Eighty-two percent of marketing influencers say that the effectiveness of SEO is generally increasing, according to MarketingProfs and Octos statistics. Our own CEO, Lee Odden, explores some of these fundamental SEO questions in his “Power Pages and Best Answer Content: Should You Go Long or Short Form?” In addition, SparkToro’s Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz, also takes a look at just what SEO means today in his helpful piece “What Does It Mean to "Write for SEO" in 2018?” [bctt tweet="“There's no reason you have to use this old-school junk methodology that became like pseudoscience in the SEO world and had a recent revival. You should be using words & phrases that Google has related to a particular keyword.” — @randfish" username="toprank"] SEO is so ingrained in the structure of the web that it’s been surprising to hear it being given the last rites by some in the industry. However, from our perspective, SEO is not only still a viable tactic, but also necessary — you just need to put the time into thoughtfully analyzing the data so you can pull actionable insights. [bctt tweet="“Every marketer has access to this data. It’s time to analyze it and use it to inform your content strategy to create customized, relevant, and insightful content that is more valuable to your target audience.” — @annieleuman" username="toprank"]

Tactic 5: Creativity Is Key For Making Best-Answer Content That Stands Out

No matter how many technical tricks or contraptions you use in a content marketing campaign, the road will be a long uphill one if you don’t present creative and useful information that fills a need for your audience. Being the best answer is the key tenet of Lee’s “Be the Best Answer: 5 Steps to Grow Influence for Your Brand,” which shows how creating or co-creating relevant and credible content is a vitally important step in a successful digital marketing campaign. [bctt tweet="“Influence plays an important role in a ‘Best Answer’ marketing strategy.” — Lee Odden @leeodden" username="toprank"] The best content creation involves both art and creativity, as comic author Scott Adams once summed up by pointing out that, “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep,” or as artist Paul Klee said, “One eye sees, the other feels.” The greater the creativity you and your team have, the more of an an edge you can have on the competition, and creative content draws audiences in, entertains, and when done well, enlightens. It’s one of the main ways to differentiate your content.

Tying It All Together — What Next?

By incorporating appropriate, effective, and engaging visuals, making sharing easy, harnessing the power of gamification, using fundamental SEO tactics, and offering best-answer content, your content marketing will include the elements that give your strategy a much better chance at success. These aren’t the only elements you’ll want to include in your content crafting tool bag, however, and next up we’ll take a close look at another group of important content creation tactics as we continue our “Collective Wisdom” series. In the meantime learn more by catching us at an upcoming conference or webinar, including these four:

Pubcon Las Vegas 2018 on October 17 in Las Vegas — “5 Secrets to Growing Influence in Marketing”

ITSMA Marketing Vision 2018 on November 7 in Cambridge, MA. — “Influence the Influencers – How B2B technology companies can build brand awareness with content and influence ”

MarketingProfs 2018 Marketing B2B Forum on November 15 in San Francisco — “The Confluence Equation: How Content & Influencers Drive B2B Marketing Success”

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